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ST. PAUL'S
LIFE AND
..STTERS

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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF
William H. Owen

-Third Fourth

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THE STORY
of
ST. PAUL'S LIFE AND LETTERS

BY
J. PATERSON SMYTH
B.D., LL.D., Litt.D., D.C.L.
Late Professor of Pastoral Theology, University of Dublin;
Author of "The Gospel of the Hereafter, " "The Bible
in the Making," "How We Got Our Bible," etc.

NEW YORK
JAMES POTT & CO.
1917

Copyright, 1917
BY
JAMES POTT & CO.
FT^o

press or
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

PREFATORY NOTE

During several years past, for some months each
year, I have treated my Sunday morning congregation
as a great Bible-class, taking them straight through
the whole Bible in broad outline. This book is the
substance of one of these lecture-series, which accounts
for a few phrases and peculiarities of diction not easily
eliminated.
J. P. S.
St. George's, Montreal,
Easter, 1917.

CONTENTS

PART I
INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER PAGB
I. How to Study St. Paul  i
II. The Greek, the Roman, and the Jew  8
PART II
YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
III. The Thoughts of Youth are Long, Long Thoughts 15
IV. The Crisis of Conversion  28
V. Saul of Tarsus Finds His Life Work  40
PART III
THE MASTER BUILDER
VI. The Fight for Freedom  53
VII. Second Missionary Tour  67
VIII. How the Gospel Came to Europe  78
IX. In Athens  88
X. The New Testament in the Making  102
XI. Diana of the Ephesians  115
XII. The Care of All the Churches  129
XIII. Faith and Works  134
XIV. The Works of the Law in the Twentieth Cen
tury  *4r
vii

viii CONTENTS

PART IV
TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
CHAPTER PAGE
XV. Going up to Jerusalem  151
XVI. Riot and Arrest  159
XVII. Four Cesarean Pictures  169
XVIII. The Shipwreck  183
XIX. In Chains  191
XX. Letters from Rome  199
XXI. Letters from Rome— Continued  206
XXII. The Passing of Paul  213

PART I
INTRODUCTORY

THE STORY OF
ST. PAUL'S LIFE AND LETTERS

PART I
INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER I
How to Study St. Paul
One sometimes wonders why we should have in
the Bible so much more of the Life and Letters of the
one apostle whom Christ appointed after His Ascen
sion than of the others whom He appointed in His
earthly life. But we have no doubt that if only one
was to be given that one should be St. Paul. For no
one of the others, not St. Peter, not even St. John,
counted for so much in the beginnings of the Chris
tian Church.
It is almost impossible to overstate what Paul meant
to Christianity. The simple, affectionate peasant men ,
of Galilee could tell with convincing power, as no I
others could, of the wonderful three years when they
walked with Jesus over the fields of Palestine, how they
learned to love Him as no man was ever loved before,

2 INTRODUCTORY
how they saw Him dead, how He came back to them
alive, how their deep affection rose into wonder and
awe and adoration as they realized who He was who
was their Comrade and Friend. As one of themselves
puts it long afterward1 " We declare to you that which
we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes,
that which we beheld and our hands handled concerning
the Word of Life. The Word became flesh and taber
nacled among us and we beheld His glory, the glory
as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace
and truth." No one else could do what they did.
The simple story, the deep conviction, the personal
touch were irresistible.
But the Church had to go out into the pagan
world and down into the coming centuries, to meet
cold indifference and clever scepticism and fierce op
position and controversies too keen for " unlearned
and ignorant men." Was that why the Lord of the
Church intervened, who had promised to be with it
always to the end of the world ? He called to Him
a man, gave him personal touch with Himself, con
vinced him. beyond all gainsaying, won his passionate,
adoring gratitude and love — a man who was a genius,
a scholar, a thinker and intellectual leader of men and,
above all, a man who in his utter devotion all his life
after delights to call himself " the bond-slave of Jesus
Christ." That is the marvellous thing in the story of
Paul who had never seen Jesus in the flesh and who
was so obstinately unbelieving — the utter trust, the
complete surrender, the close, reverent, personal love
which the Lord won from him in that mysterious hour
on the road to Damascus. 1Johni:i;. John_i:i4.

HOW TO STUDY ST. PAUL S
n
We are to study his life-story. It is not easy, for
the beginning and the end of the story are cut off. We
have only the record of his middle life from the day
when in his mature manhood St. Luke met him and
began putting him into his diary to the day, thirty
years later, when the diarist dropped his pen, probably
stricken from him by the hand of death. We have no
record of his youth, no record of his old age, nor of
the end. ^ Though in another sense than his Lord he
seems to come to us like Melchisedek "without 'father
or mother or genealogy, without beginning of days or
end of life.'^
And even that imperfect story is full of gaps. The
biographer was not always present. There were many
things that he did not know. Take for example this
one sentence out of one of Paul's letters 2: "Of the
Jews five times received I forty stripes save one; thrice
was I beaten with rods; once was I stoned; thrice I
suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in
the deep; in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in
perils among false brethren, in hunger and thirst, in
fastings, in cold, in nakedness."
Not one of the five scourgings finds place in the
history; not one of the three shipwrecks, though a
later one is described fully. No word of that terrible
night and a day clinging probably to a raft in the wide
Mediterranean. Think of all the romantic interest of
the robber attacks in the mountains; of the rivers
suddenly rising in flood to sweep away the boats. What
an interesting life of Paul we should have if we knew
it all! 1 2 Cor. xi: 24.

INTRODUCTORY

in
Happily, we are not quite left to St. Luke's diary.
There are thirteen of St. Paul's letters bound up in
the New Testament. Some others seem to have been
lost, and unfortunately, we have so badly arranged
those thirteen as to spoil their value in some degree
to the general reader. There is no attempt at chrono
logical order, no attempt it would seem at any order
except that of placing them according to length, which
not only confuses the sequence of facts mentioned in
them but also obscures the gradual development of the
writer's thought and teaching. We have known all
this for a long time but we are too conservative to alter
it. Let us hope that some Bible publisher will some
day put it right. In this book I have attempted to
place the letters in their order and as far as possible
to put each in its right setting.
These letters illumine the whole story. They not
only gives us additional facts, but they do much
towards giving us the man himself. For they are real
letters, not formal treatises or sermons (except per
haps the Epistle to the Romans). Genuine letters to
living men whom he knew and cared for, giving im
mediate answers to pressing questions and warnings
and exhortations bearing on the everyday life of people
with whom he was intimate — easy, natural letters like
our own giving the personal touch, the impetuous
temper, the affectionate nature of the man.
Indeed for our purpose they are rather better than
our own letters, for they are dictated and so come
straight from his heart. Busy men then as now dic
tated their letters, and perhaps Paul's eyesight made

HOW TO STUDY ST. PAUL 5
it more necessary. So we read: e.g., "I, Tertius, who
write this epistle salute you." Then at the close Paul
scrawls in his ending: "I, Paul, salute you with mine
own hand, which is my token in every epistle."
The man just talked as he walked the room, or sat
on the floor working with the tent-cloth on his knees.
You can hear him talk, you can see him impetuously
break off in the middle of a sentence as a new thought
strikes him. It puzzles commentators, but it gives
you the living Paul. IV
It is well worth while for any Bible reader to give
several months of his Bible-reading time to the careful
deliberate study of St. Paul. Let him take a month,
if necessary, to one epistle. One book thoroughly
studied is worth a dozen superficially read, and each
book so studied will whet the desire and strengthen
the habit of studying other portions with similar care.1
Perhaps the reading of this present little volume
may help as a preliminary to such study. For further
help I offer a few suggestions:
In reading the history in the Acts of the Apostles
let imagination play on it, supplying form and colour,
living in the scene, making pictures. It is the main
secret of pleasurable reading, 'Put yourself in his
place,' not merely in picturing the outward scene but
also, in so far as may be, entering into the mind of
the speakers and actors. Anyone can do it and it is
'There is much to be said in favour of steady, systematic reading
according to a calendar by which the portion for each day is definitely
fixed. Yet as a rule one can seldom do very thorough study by that way
alone. Perhaps for some readers it would be well to combine it with the
method here recommended — to read, say, in the morning according to the
calendar, and at night to aim at the slower and more thorough study of
certain special books as suggested above. ,

6 INTRODUCTORY
worth the effort. True, a more vivid imagination will
give one an advantage over another, but all that is
really needful is some little knowledge of the circum
stances and surroundings and the effort to think one
self into them.
To do this you must bring in the Epistles. You
want to feel his mind, you want to read his letters,
if you would know Paul. It is in letters to his friends
that a man shews his heart.
When you have got the right setting for it, first
read your Epistle rapidly straight through two or three
times to get your grip of it as a whole. Then go
over it in detail with a simple commentary (e.g., The
Cambridge Bible for Schools). Try to put yourself
into the place of the writer and the readers. Do not
read it as if addressed to you. .He had no thought of
you. He did not write for publication. He never
imagined in his wildest dreams that he was writing
scriptures for the Church for all the ages. True, the
Holy Spirit was guiding him, but if you are to under
stand the letters of St. Paul you must take them quite
naturally as letters written like your own, with no
thought of anyone but the persons you are writing to.
Read the letters naturally. Get in sympathy with
the writer. Feel with him in his rejoicing, in his
despondency, in his exultant fighting moods, in his
keen irony, in his sensitiveness when people have hurt
him by ugly insinuations. Feel with him in his affec
tionate greetings, "God is my witness, how I long after
you all," in his impetuous temper, where he is vexed
with these "fools of Galatians," in his love for his fellow
countrymen, "I would be willing to be accursed from
Christ for the sake of my brethren."

HOW TO STUDY ST. PAUL 7
Watch the little personal touches. He sends his
love to Rufus and his mother, "who is also a mother
to me," and you see the gratitude of a lonely man to a
dear, kindly old lady who had mothered him. Watch
him in Rome chained to a soldier as he writes the
familiar ending to his epistle, "I, Paul, salute you with
my own hand. Remember my chains." You can hear
the fetters clanking as he tries to write. Or read that
exquisite little note to Philemon, whose young slave
had robbed him and run off to Rome to have a good
time. Paul seems to have met the scamp and won him
to religion and grown to love him dearly. Now he
is sending him back with this note in his pocket. "Re
ceive him," he says, "he is my child Onesimus whom
I have begotten in my bonds. I will repay that
money. I might have demanded this favour of thee,
for thou owest me thine own soul. But for love sake
I only entreat it as Paul the aged prisoner of Jesus
Christ." I have been thinking chiefly here of the human
side, of the human interest in the Bible, for the ignoring
of it by religious people has tended much to make
Bible reading uninteresting and unreal. Is it necessary
here to remind any reader that the more he habituates
himself to read his Bible naturally and sympathetically,
recognizing fully the human side of it, the more neces
sary it is to remember with reverence and awe that God
is, in the truest sense, its author; the more he enjoys
the personality of the writers, the more needful to keep
in mind that the writings "came not by the will of
man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved
by the Holy Ghost " ?

CHAPTER II
The Greek, the Roman and the Jew
Fully to understand Paul's life we need to under
stand Paul's world. We turn to secular history for
the picture of his environment — the people amongst
whom he moved. It helps us to appreciate his eager
ness and the need and heart hunger of that lonely
world- Paul's world was the Roman Empire. Here are
three great varieties of national life. The Greek, and
the Roman, and the Jew divide the world between
them. When Pilate wrote the inscription on the Cross
in Hebrew, Greek and Latin it was for them. It ex
presses the position as it appeared to Pilate — as it
appeared to Paul — the three people Hebrew, Greek and
Roman. We shall afterward see how wonderfully in
God's providence they were combined to prepare for
the coming of the Christ. The Jew with his bible and
his religion, and his hope of the Messiah. The Greek
with his flexible language, the universal language of
civilization, making a vehicle for the gospel message.
The Roman welding together in the strong framework
of the empire, the incoherent provinces and peoples
on which Christianity was to act.
Keep these people steadily before you. Paul was
always in the midst of them. Whether in Jerusalem,
or Corinth, or Athens, or Rome, or in his boyhood
home in Tarsus — everywhere was the Greek and the
8

THE GREEK, ROMAN AND JEW 9
Roman, and the Jew. It was to them he brought the
story of the crucified Christ. He knew their need.
They from their high position looked down with con
tempt on him. But he, from his higher position,
looked down with love and pity on them, for he knew
that in its inner heart that poor world was tired and
lonely, and that only Christ could help.
But we cannot discuss that here. I want you to
see these people amongst whom Paul lived. I want
to bring that old world before you.
n
There were the Greeks, the proud, eager, restless,
beautiful Greeks, with their noble art and literature and
philosophy, and their love of the beautiful, and their
poetic imagination which peopled Olympus with the
gods. To this day the whole civilized world looks to
these ancient Greeks with wonder and gratitude. We
ewe to them the best of our culture. Above all things
they stood for culture. Never was any nation prouder
of its culture. Never had any nation better reason
to be proud.
But, alas, we are learning in these days what culture
can come to without religion, and the poor Greeks of
St. Paul's day were learning what Germany may some
day learn for her eternal good, that the world cannot
get on with culture only. I picture these Greeks as
like the modern Parisians, a light, pleasant, quick
witted people, who like to amuse themselves, to enjoy
themselves. But the enjoyment was a good deal on
the surface. Down underneath life was a bit pathetic.
Their best days were over. The golden age of Greece
was in the past. Their political integrity was lost.

10 INTRODUCTORY
They spent their time in frivolity, and worse. Profli
gacy and corruption were eating like a cancer, and their
beautiful religion had no power to check their bad
propensities. How could it? Even in the best days
their beautiful gods on Mount Olympus were not very
moral. You could not imagine anyone offering them
spiritual prayers.
But at any rate, their gods were real to them then.
They had some spiritual vision. They were men.
Jove was the good-natured father and creator. Their
gods fought with them at the Pass of Thermopylae,
where the famous 300 laid down their lives for Greece
and for right.
But now they were a hopeless and effeminate race.
Though they kept up their forms and their images,
they had utterly lost all real belief. Their mythology
had become a fairy tale. "Men had climbed up into
Olympus and found no gods there." And so it was a
lonely world. The Bishop of Tokyo told me the other
day that this is the condition of Japan to-day. In
young, happy days nations and men can get on with
frivolity and pleasure, and statues and poetry, but there
are days when these things fail. In our sorrowful
times we want a god of some kind to turn to. Even
Jupiters and Junos will be some use provided we be
lieve in them. But, alas, if we do not!
in
Then there were the Romans. The Roman Empire
in Paul's day was in no decline like the Greek. The
Romans were the masters of the world. It was a proud
boast even of Paul himself to be a Roman citizen —
a member of the great Roman Empire, with its wise

THE GREEK, ROMAN AND JEW 11
laws, its splendid armies, its boundless wealth, its world
wide rule. Rome was the very personification of pagan
power and pride and mastery. That was her imperial
ambition. For that she kept her unconquerable armies ;
for that she trampled weaker peoples into the ground.
The Roman was the German of those ancient days in
his pride of power and mastery and success. The
Roman was the superman. His kingdom was utterly
a kingdom of this world. It was a brave, splendid,
magnificent world. You cannot help admiring it.
But read the great historians and you see that
underneath all the power and magnificence was a sink
of rottenness. Tourists are shown in Rome to-day the
splendid marble palaces of the emperors. Paul's em
peror, Nero, lived in one of these palaces. He was out
wardly a scholar and a polished gentleman. But in
his marble palace he executed his old mother and kicked
his wife to death, and in later days covered Christians
with tar and burned them for torches to light the
palace grounds.
Travellers to-day wonder at the Roman amphi
theatres, the stupendous relics of national greatness.
The Coliseum held 30,000 spectators; the Circus Maxi-
mus held 200,000. But the historians teach us that
they were built on blood and agony by hosts of wretched
slaves. That when built they were crowded daily with
maddened, yelling multitudes of men, women, and even
children, citizens of Rome, watching the horrible car
nivals of blood. Under Trajan 10,000 gladiators were
used up in a half year. Men fought with lions and
tigers. Serpents and crocodiles were brought to keep
up the novelty. Women fought women, dwarfs fought
dwarfs, blindfolded men fought each other, while the

12 INTRODUCTORY
citizens cheered and laid bets on the fight. How could
they be other than degraded and brutalized. You
want to realize the position if you are to understand
the terrible intensity of St. Paul with his gospel of
Christ. Slavery was the blackest curse of the empire. The
invincible armies brought multitudes of captives from
all over the world. Strong men, beautiful women,
many of them refined, educated people, reduced to
slavery. Two men out of every three who walked the
streets of Rome were slaves. Aye, and two women out
of every three, and two girls out of every three. Think
of it. When every man could do what he liked with
his slave. Every gust of passion, every suggestion of
lust, the slaves must bear it. The slaves were wretched.
The best of them crowded into Christianity for com
fort. The worst of them debauched Rome. They
brought in new, unnatural, abominable vices. They
corrupted their masters. They corrupted the children.
Every passion of the golden youth of Rome was min
istered to by them. In the purlieus of the bath, and
the circus, and the stage, the Roman boys learned what
they should never have known. They grew old and
jaded, and rotten with indulgence of vice before they
were out of their teens. A world without God.
Yet they had gods in multitudes, in every street, in
every home. If a man wanted money, or success in
some evil scheme, he hired a priest and invoked the
gods. But prayer had no moral significance. No man
would think of unburdening his soul to his gods.
Then they wanted novelty in their religion. In
Paul's day they had begun to introduce the oriental
religions with their shameless impurities, and the wild

THE GREEK, ROMAN AND JEW 13
orgies of prostitution in the open temple, in the sight
of the sun, before the altars of the Goddess of Fruit-
fulness. Here one dare not do more than hint at these
abominations. I only hint at them at all that you
may be helped to realize the awful need of Christ in
that splendid, successful, godless world. How deeply
Paul felt it is indicated in his terrible first chapter of
the Epistle to the Romans, "God gave men up to un-
uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts."
IV
The Greek, the Roman and then the Jew. The
mysterious, miraculous Jew. You can hardly doubt
God's hand, and the providential preparation for Christ,
when you see spread out over the empire the one race
set apart from of old, with their genius for religion;
their worship of the one holy God; their complete
Old Testament as we have it to-day. They were every
where. From distant Babylon, the land of Shadrach,
Mesach and Abednego, to all the coasts around the
Mediterranean. You remember the list of them that
came back to the Pentecost — "Parthians and Medes,
and Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Pontus,
and Asia, in Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and
Libya," etc. Think what it meant in that poor unholy
world, with its multitude of degrading gods, to have in
every city the worship of the one God, holy and pure;
men with the spiritual vision of sin and righteousness;
men with the inspired Bible in their hands; men with
the eager outlook for a golden age in the future when
Messiah should come to bless the people of God.
True, they were a narrow and bigoted people; true,
when Messiah came they crucified Him; true, they were

14 INTRODUCTORY
- ' - TV
the bitter enemies of the Church which set out to
preach that crucified Messiah. But you can see how
their presence all over the empire laid a broad foun
dation for Christianity to build on. And in one of
their Jewish homes in the city of Tarsus they were
rearing up a boy named Saul.

PART II
YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME

PART II
YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME

CHAPTER III
The Thoughts of Youth are Long Long Thoughts
Unexpectedly, suddenly, out of the unknown,
Saul of Tarsus makes his first appearance on the stage
of history. The curtain rises on a howling Eastern
mob and stones hurtling through the air and a young
Jewish rabbi in the background with white robes
piled at his feet. Amid this crowd of cursing fanatics
gnashing with their teeth " they stoned Stephen calling
upon God and the witnesses laid down their clothes
at a young man's feet whose name was Saul."
This is our first sight of Saul of Tarsus. He is
here called a young man, but he is already prominent
in Jerusalem, so we may set him down as probably
about thirty years of age. We have no earlier knowl
edge of him except from a few hints in his letters
and speeches, but we can gather something from them.

We can go back twenty years. When the boy Jesus
was playing in the carpenter's shop, and the boy John,
his forerunner, was growing up in the hill country of
Judea, away across the sea in the pagan city of Tarsus
15/

16 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
was another boy who in human sight had no connexion
with either, but who learned in later years that God
had destined him from his mother's womb1 to stand
beside them both in the eternal purpose of humanity.
The memories of childhood are the most lasting of
all. I want you to see " the pictures that hung upon
memory's wall " when Paul thought of his boyhood.
Tarsus was a town rather like Montreal in its
earlier days, a university town and a great central
mart of trade, especially the lumber trade. You could
see the barefoot loggers riding on the logs and prizing
open the jam above the Cydnus Falls. It was in a
fine position for commerce. Behind it through the
mountains ran the 'Cilician gates,' the traders'
mountain pass to the lands beyond the Taurus.
Through the midst of the town the navigable river
Cydnus ran down to the sea, with its crowded ships,
and quays, and dockyards. Saul's grandfather saw
the mountain as a robber's fastness, and the river as a
shelter for the pirates of the Levant. When Saul's
father was a boy (b. c. 41), all Tarsus crowded on the
river's bank to see the gorgeous pageant that day when
Cleopatra sailed up the Cydnus attired as Venus in her
golden barge to meet Mark Antony. I am not sure
whether the banquet was at Tarsus or Alexandria when
she dissolved her pearls in the wine, but at any rate
the old Pharisee would not have been invited there.
So you see Tarsus was not without its romantic stories.
There I see the boy Saul watching the ships with
his companions; shouting to the lumbermen floating
past; climbing on the bales of goods piled along the
quay; listening to the traders, in their varied costumes
^1.1:15.

THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH 17
and varied dialects, from all parts of the empire. And
the lad evidently took notice, for long afterwards in
his letters we find the illustrations of the sealing, and
the earnest money, and the branding of bales, and the
hucksterings, and the adulterations of goods. And I
note that in the providence of God the man who was to
spend his life in pagan cities was brought up in a pagan
city. He who was to preach a universal religion for
all races was brought up, not on the green hills of
Galilee, but in a crowded centre of trade where all
races met. n
He was proud of his native town. "It was no mean
city," he says. And he was proud of his ancestry.
The Roman boy might look down on the Jewish boy,
but the Jewish boy knew he belonged to a race that
was making history before Rome was born. He be
longed to the famous little tribe of Benjamin, and was
namesake of the famous Benjamite, King Saul. When
the other Tarsus boys played soldiers in the woods or
dreamed, as boys do, of old heroic days — of the fight
at Marathon — of Romulus and Remus — and
"How Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old,"
Saul fed his imagination on Abram and Jacob, and the
brilliant adventures of Joseph in Egypt — on Elijah
and Saul and David and Daniel and Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego, and the wild days, dear to
a boyish mind, when Samson was smashing the Phil
istines' skulls with an ass's jawbone. That is the sort
of thing that appeals to a boy.

18 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
And when the other boys learned of Jupiter and
Juno and Venus, Saul learned of the Almighty, all-
holy Jehovah, the God of his own people.
in
His father in that business town was probably a
merchant. He was evidently a man of some position
(the fact that his son was a tent-maker proves nothing
against this. Every Jewish boy learned a trade). He
had won the proud distinction of citizenship of Rome.
Paul says he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a Pharisee
of the Pharisees, of the strictest sect of his religion.
You can see him walking in his broad phylacteries, strict
in ritual observances. I think of him as an austere
man, a righteous man, silent, strict, bigoted, like the
old Scotch Covenanters. I wonder if he was in St.
Paul's mind when he wrote "Fathers, provoke not your
children to wrath." I should not wonder if he did
not spare the rod on young Saul. I should not wonder
if young Saul needed the rod, judging from Saul, the
fierce, passionate persecutor, and even from the Paul
of later life, though chastened and softened by the
grace of God. I can well imagine that his father found
him a passionate, strong-willed boy, not very easy to
bring up, and I can well believe that in later days,
heart-broken by that son's apostasy, when he disgraced
the proud old name, and became a renegade from the
faith, that that father could choke down his love and
disown his son, and turn him out penniless to follow
the sect of the Nazarenes. Perhaps that was why he
was so poor all his days, and so sensitively proud that
he would not allow his people to help him.
We learn that Saul had a sister who was afterwards

THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH 19
married in Jerusalem, and some cousins or kinsmen,
who he says, "were in Christ before me." x I wish we
knew something of his mother. One always wants to
know what the mothers of great men were like. He
never mentions her. Perhaps her husband made her
cast him off when he disgraced the family. Perhaps
she died early. Somehow, I always think of him as a
motherless boy. Perhaps that accounts for the touch
ing little reference in the close of one of his letters.
"Salute Rufus and his mother, who was also a mother
to me" 2 — that kindly old lady who took his mother's
place for him. IV
Whether we are right or not in guessing his father
to be a Tarsus business man, at any rate he seemed to
have designed his son for the ministry — what the
Canadian business man does not. I wonder why?
You are not mere money-seekers. Many of you are
good Christian people. And with splendid self-sacrifice
you give your boys to the war. Why do you not give
your boys a chance of finding their vocations to the
noblest of all professions — and the happiest. In all
sincerity I say to you to-day — with all its difficulties,
and strain and worry — I would not change my office
for that of a king on his throne. If I had a dozen boys
I would wish them all as I am. Of course you cannot
decide for them, but you could give them a chance to
decide. Does no mother dream the dream for her boy
of helping the tempted and preaching God's fatherhood
and consecrating at the altar the bread from heaven
for the strengthening of human souls. Let us hope in
1 Rom. xvi:7. 2 Rom. xvi:i3.

20 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
the new, solemn world after the war, when our boys
come home, we shall have a better story to tell.

So one day Saul went off to Jerusalem to college.
A great day to a Hebrew boy when he first sees the holy
city — the dream city of his people. And a great day
when he first goes to college, and greater still when, as
he tells us, the president of the college is the famous
Rabbi Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, "held in honour
of all the people." His fame is not confined to the
Christian New Testament. The Jewish Talmud has
embalmed his memory. Every educated Jew in our
city to-day can tell you of Gamaliel's place in history.
Not only a famous scholar, but a broad, large-minded
leader of thought. So says the Jewish Talmud. So
says the Christian New Testament. Take that one
instance in the Acts of the Apostles, when his bigoted
fellow priests were persecuting the Christians, "Let
them alone," said Gamaliel; "if this thing be of men
it will come to naught, but if it be of God, ye cannot
overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to fight
against God." 1 A broad-minded man.
One wonders why Christianity did not appeal to
him. But it did not. There is a legend that it did,
but I do not believe it. The Jews know nothing of it.
He lived and died a Jew, and before he died he wrote
a long liturgical prayer against this new heresy of the
Nazarenes. You can see what an advantage it was to the im
petuous Saul to be under the influence of that wise,
calm leader all his college years. Saul did well in
'Acts v:o.

THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH 21
college. "I advanced," he says, "beyond many of mv
age in learning the Jews' religion."
The teaching in those days was more interesting
than the college lectures of our day — more conver
sational. The students were accustomed and encour
aged to ask questions all through the teaching. Our
professors require silence in the class-room. The stu
dents in Saul's days "sat at the feet of the doctors
hearing them and asking questions."
Does not that start in your memory some words of
St. Luke about the boy Jesus ? Did you ever think of
Jesus at Gamaliel's lectures. I may be wrong, but I
cannot help thinking what happened one day in Jeru
salem — of a boy twelve years old getting lost for three
days, while his frightened people searched everywhere
for him. I think of that lost boy, wandering all over
the strange city, sleeping where he could at night,
getting food from some kind woman in the daytime,
and at last on the third day wandering into Gamaliel's
class-rooms in the Temple precincts and sitting down
with the other students. And there the distracted
mother finds him "in the midst of the doctors, hearing
them and asking them questions."1 Is not that what
you would expect of Jesus ? Not a boy pertly exam
ining the great rabbis, but a modest pupil learning at
their feet.
Of course it is a conjecture, but I think it quite
probable that one day Jesus sat like Saul at the feet
of Gamaliel. i Luke 11:46.

22 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME

VI
Paul says of his studies — "I advanced beyond many
of my age." What were his studies ? The Bible. The
Bible only.
Spoiled, no doubt, by stupid rabbinical commentary,
as it is spoiled to-day by our stupid clerical sermons.
But you cannot quite spoil the Bible. Saul knew it as
you know your alphabet. He knew it in Hebrew and
Septuagint Greek — as we see from his quotations —
and he knew it by heart. He could not carry bulky
rolls around with him. His speeches in the Acts con
tain quotations and allusions from nearly every Old
Testament book. In his Epistles are 198 quotations.
The man's mind was saturated with Scripture. Who
doubts that it told largely in making him the great
man he was. No wonder he thought it the world's
great treasure. "What advantage, then, hath the
Jew?" he asks. "Chiefly that unto them were com
mitted the oracles of God."
We have that Bible of his, and the New Testament
with it, but our tables are strewn with light magazines,
and the newsboy piles up on our doorstep the Gazette,
and the Star, and the Herald, and the Evening News,
and some of us have not time for anything higher. I
do not want to scold about the Bible — I am not so good
about it myself — but don't you think we might do
better? If the Scriptures are the power of God unto
salvation, a storehouse of power from God, might we
not at least read a chapter before our prayers every
night. I hope most of us do. If anyone does not,
will he resolve to begin to-night taking one of the
gospels to commence with ?

THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH 23

VII
We take a long step forward. Ten years have
elapsed since Saul of Tarsus bade good-bye to his college
and his wise old president, when we find him back in
Jerusalem again. I think of him going to the school
to greet his old master. In these ten years occurred
the mission of Jesus and His crucifixion. Jerusalem is
being deeply agitated by his followers, who claim that
he is the Messiah; that he is risen from the dead; that
he is the eternal Son of God. At first they were
frightened and lay low, but after the first Pentecost,
and the miracle of the Holy Spirit, they could not
longer be held down. This glorious thing that they
knew could no longer be kept to themselves. In the
very streets of the city which had crucified him, they
proclaimed "Jesus and the Resurrection." Peter, a
few weeks after his cowardly denial, flung his chal
lenge in the teeth of priest and Pharisee. "Ye killed
the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer
to be granted unto you. Ye killed the Prince of Life
whom God raised from the dead, of which we all are
witnesses." And the people listened; Jerusalem was
deeply stirred.
At this crisis, as I judge, Saul came back to the
capital. How do I know he had been away? Well,
I cannot believe he was there during the ministry of
Jesus, partly because he never hints at having seen
Him on earth, partly because I judge that a man of
Saul's type coming in personal contact with the Lord,
must, perforce, either have persecuted Him or followed
Him — and he certainly did neither.
Probably he left college for some country charge

24 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
as many of our students do, and just as the ablest of
our young country clergy to-day are drawn back into
the city, so the clever young rabbi soon gravitated
to Jerusalem. He came back with his splendid Jewish gospel that
"God so loved — the Jew" that he chose him out of all
the world to bless him, and one day would send the
anointed Messiah to deliver Israel from the Roman
power and raise it to a pinnacle of glory and right
eousness. A brave, stirring gospel for the Jew.
But heretics in Jerusalem were teaching the Gospel
of the Nazarene and, worse still, they were being listened
to. "The number of the disciples multiplied greatly,
and a great company of priests were obedient to the
faith." "We are Jews," said these Nazarenes. "We believe
in the Messiah, but there is no Messiah to look forward
to now. The Messiah has come already, and you in
your blind bigotry have crucified Him. But God has
raised him from the dead. Repent and receive him
every one of you, and turn to God for forgiveness."
That was not pleasant hearing for the Pharisees and
scribes. VIII
The worst of these heretics was Stephen, the deacon.
He was afraid of no man. He challenged them all.
They held a great debate one day in which the syna
gogue of the Cilicians took part. Paul was of Tarsus
in Cilicia, and probably was in the debate. He was a
clever debater, but in Stephen he found an adversary
worthy of his steel. If Stephen had lived he might
have been another Paul. Stephen was too strong for

THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH 25
them in the debate. "They were not able to resist
the wisdom and the spirit in which he spake." And
soon after the whole city writhed under his public
rebuke: "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart
and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost. No
wonder you persecuted and killed the Christ. Which
of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?
They showed you the coming of the Righteous One of
whom now ye have been the betrayers and murderers."
Certainly Stephen did not fight with kid gloves.
Saul and his party could stand no more. They
must fight for the Faith. Stephen must die. Be
quite fair to them. They looked for a Messiah in
power and glory who should make Israel and the faith
of Jehovah triumphant in the earth. They believed
that their holy religion was in danger. That it was
blasphemy to worship a crucified Jew. Is it not
written in the law "cursed is everyone who is hanged
on a tree"?
Men are quite right to fight for what they believe
to be the truth, but these fought with the bigot temper,
and the bigot slander, and the bigot misrepresenting
of the other man's words. Just as in religious con
troversies to-day, when Protestants and Roman Catho
lics, churchmen and non-churchmen say unkind things
each about the other. By all means have controversy
when truth is in danger. Without it Christianity would
have been swamped long ago, but let it be Christian
controversy, — kindly and honourable controversy, look
ing for truth and not for victory, thinking and believing
the best about opponents, never using unfair arguments,
never misrepresenting other men's views, never malign
ing the motives of those who differ. Say, we are on

26 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
both sides honest men seeking the truth. Let us listen
to each other and trust each other.
Such controversy can do nothing but good, but it
was too much to expect in those old days. "So they
stoned Stephen calling upon God and praying, 'Lord
Jesus receive my spirit. Lord, lay not this sin to their
charge.' And the witnesses laid down their clothes
at a young man's feet whose name was Saul."
IX
Saul never forgot that day. All through his life
you can see the keen remorse, "when the blood of thy
martyr Stephen was shed, I was standing by and con
senting to his death. I am not worthy to be called
an Apostle because I persecuted the Church of God."
Looking back on it from his later years he would
probably see this day as one of the moulding influences
of his life. I wish he had told us how he felt that
night when the heretic was dead. Was conscience
stirring? Was remorse beginning? He was a brave
man himself and had seen a brave man die. He could
not easily forget that dying prayer. I wonder if Saul
lay awake that night — if he thought about what was
happening outside in the darkness where devout men
carried Stephen to his burial, and frightened women
sobbed over a mangled corpse, "whose dead face was
as it were the face of an angel."
Let me close with a lesson. Trust God when things
are hopeless. God buries his workers, but carries on
His work. On the first Good Friday Christ was dead.
His enemies had triumphed. The hopes of the dis
ciples seemed shattered forever. But Easter came.
Now Stephen is dead, the ablest of their champions.

THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH 27
The chief hope of Christianity seemed dead with him.
But truth cannot die. God is behind it. Who would
have thought as Stephen fell that within a month his
fiercest opponent would take his place and accomplish
what Stephen could never have done.
St. Augustine says in a sermon "that we owe Paul
to the prayer of Stephen:" "Si Stephanus non orasset
Ecclesia Paulum non haberet." Truly God moves in a
mysterious way His wonders to perform.

CHAPTER IV
The Crisis of Conversion
Our last picture was the stoning of Stephen. We
saw Saul looking down on a mangled corpse whose dead
face was "as the face of an angel." I ventured to sug
gest that from what we know of his tenderness of heart
in later life that already there would be in him the stir
rings of pity and remorse. I still think the same, in
spite of all the evidence against it. The more I know
of him the more I think it.
But if it were so, he certainly gave no outward sign.
He was 'exceedingly mad' against the new religion.
He made himself chief of the inquisition. Like Tor-
quemada in Spain; like Claverhouse on the hills of
Scotland, he harried the disciples from house to house,
"and haling men and women committed them to
prison." Think of his inquisitors visiting houses in the night,
dragging people out of their beds, and scourging not
only men, but women. He mentions women three
times as if in aggravation of his cruelty. Think of
flogging a woman. The civilized world which took so
calmly the killing of countless men rose into fierce
anger last year over the shooting of Edith Cavel, be
cause she was a woman. Saul flogged women. He
compelled the disciples to blaspheme the name of Jesus,
and if they refused, he voted death for them. He
tells us that himself. Stephen was not the only one
stoned by him. He was the terror of the whole

THE CRISIS OF CONVERSION 29
countryside. He was cordially detested as well as
feared. Far off as Damascus they knew his evil fame,
¦ — "how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jeru
salem"; how he hath made havoc of the Church, i.e.,
rooted it up, as a wild boar would root up a garden.
He was an obstinate, cruel man. Evidently he had
not profited much by the wise, calm teaching of his old
master Gamaliel.
Ah, poor Saul! He was laying up bitter memories
for himself in later days. He never got over the pain
of it. Even in his old age, when he knew himself
forgiven by God, he could never forgive himself. He
had to go through it all himself later on. He was
hated, and persecuted, and scourged and stoned. He
never whines. I think it was rather a comfort to him
that he should suffer what he had himself inflicted.
At any rate, he takes it like a man — "rejoicing in
tribulation. Our light affliction which is but for a
moment." Saul was a very cruel man, but there was
nothing small about him.
Naturally the disciples fled for their lives. All
except the apostles, the appointed heads of the Church.
Jerusalem was emptied of disciples; no more street
preaching, no more meetings in the upper room. Saul
had wiped out the plague from the Holy City. But
with bitter anger he found that he had only spread it.
"They that were scattered abroad went everywhere
preaching the word." It was the first missionary tri
umph of the little Church. God thus overrules the
designs of men. n
Six months later I find Saul one morning with his
company riding out of Jerusalem by the Damascus

30 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
gate "breathing out threatenings and slaughter." He
has 150 miles before him on a most interesting road, if
his evil temper would let him think of it. Exquisite
scenery alive with historic memories; back to Naaman,
the leper, back 2000 years to Abram's old steward,
Eleazar of Damascus.
But he was in no mood for scenery. He never did
care for scenery any way. Not like Our Lord, who
was a lover of nature, who talks of the lilies how they
grow, and the red sunset sky, and the fowls of the air,
and the fields white with the harvest.
Saul was a man of cities. You find no references
to nature in his writings. And just now, especially, he
has something else to think about. He is baffled and
angry. A Christian conventicle has been set up in
Damascus and Saul is out hunting disciples.
Aye, but he is not the only hunter out this morning,
for the Lord of the disciples is out hunting Saul. Do
you know Thomson's famous poem, "The Hound of
Heaven," telling of God's untiring, unceasing pursuit
of the souls who are fleeing from Him? He is always
pursuing. Men call it doubt, misgivings, remorse, stir
ring of conscience. Men tell me sometimes how they
lay awake all night, and their thoughts were hell to
them. Do you ever feel like that — regrets and mis
givings, remorse about your life? That means God
pursuing. It is the " Hound of Heaven " ever after you.
It is the Good Shepherd on the desolate mountains
seeking what is lost if so be that He may find it. Think
solemnly about it.
For the Christ pursues as we rush on,
With a sorrowful fall in his pleading tone:
"Thou wilt tire in the dreary ways of sin,
I left My home to bring thee in.

THE CRISIS OF CONVERSION 31
In its golden street are no weary feet,
Its rest is pleasant, its songs are sweet."
And we shout back angrily, hurrying on
To a terrible home where rest is none:
"We want not your city's golden street,
Nor to hear its constant song."
And still Christ keeps pursuing us, pur
suing all along.
And as He pursues us, so He pursued Saul. And
it was harder for Saul to escape in those six days. For
now he is out of the whirl and rush of life through which
so many escape God. He has no one to talk to but
his attendants. He has six days to ride alone. He has
six nights to think.
He has been thinking at odd times lately, but had
shaken off his thoughts. Now that he is alone the
ghosts are coming back. In the secret tribunal of
conscience he has to stand before himself. I feel that
I am right that conscience was goading him. Jesus on
the Damascus road knew what was in his heart. "It is
hard for thee to kick against the goads." God knows
what he is thinking — what secret misgivings, what
haunting doubts come back : "Am I right in killing men
and flogging women for their faith? Could there be
any doubt Stephen was wrong? After all Isaiah did
write of a suffering Messiah, 'who hath borne our
griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him
stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.' But surely
all my life study cannot be wrong. Gamaliel and all
the clergy cannot be wrong. These are but tempta
tions of the devil. To worship that crucified Nazarene
is blasphemy against God, and I am determined to
stamp it out. It is my duty to stamp it out."
He had reached the hilltop looking over Damascus.
Then — in a moment — the crisis came. Suddenly from

82 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
the heavens flashed a blinding glory, "above the bright
ness of the sun"; he says, "shining about me and them
that travelled with me." And in the midst of the
glory he saw — the Christ of God — whom he never again
lost sight of all his life long. And a voice spake to
him in the Hebrew tongue — a voice which he never
ceased hearing all his life long. "Shaoul, Shaoul, why
persecutest thou Me?" "Who art thou, Lord?" "I
am Jesus whom thou persecutest." And he believed
it, believed it instantly. No question, no doubt was
possible to him then or forever. Trembling and as
tonished he fell to the ground in absolute surrender.
"Lord, what wilt thou have me do?"
in
That is the story of the conversion of Saul. Explain
it as you will; think of it as you will. Saul was the only
one who knew what happened. As to what he saw and
heard he never wavered. He tells it repeatedly, and
always substantially the same story. The men told it dif
ferently, confusedly. "They saw the glory. They stood
speechless hearing a voice, but seeing no one." That is
what we should expect. It was not meant for them. It
was meant for him. He knew. It was the unalterable
conviction of his life. It shook him to the depths of his
innermost being. He had actually seen Jesus Christ.
The Hunter of Heaven had got him at last, and all
life was changed. In an instant, as he fell there
shattered and blinded by the roadside, he became
Christ's man utterly and entirely forever and ever.
Does anyone want to argue about it? You have
a perfect right to do so, but there is no basis for argu
ment. Nobody in the world knows anything about it

THE CRISIS
except Paul. Paul was absoT
seen the risen Lord. On that certainty"
all his hopes for time and eternity. All his life long he
insists, "I know — not from men, or through men —
but from Jesus Christ."
That is what gets me — that absolutely unshakeable
conviction of the man himself. It was no vision, no
dream, no hallucination of a disordered fancy. I have
read the books that explain it away as the dream of a
hysterical weakling. Paul was no hysterical weakling.
If ever a man had a sane, healthy mind, Paul had. If
ever a man felt sure of anything all through his life
Paul felt sure. If ever a man proved his belief by the
sacrifice of his whole life, Paul proved it.
"I have seen the Lord." All his life he reiterated
that, "I have seen Jesus Christ." It was not books,
nor arguments, nor evidence of apostles. It was the
actual appearance of the Risen Lord that made him a
Christian; that gave him boundless joy and certainty;
that gave him the Gospel of the Resurrection to preach.
That is what gave Paul's preaching its tremendous
reality. That is the difference between his preaching
and ours. Only yesterday I thought as I meditated on
the scene that, if Jesus appeared to me as he appeared
to St. Paul, I would make you spring to your feet and
follow Him to a man.
That was his claim to be as good an Apostle as the
others: "Have I not seen Jesus Our Lord!" When he
is telling what the apostles told him of the appearances
of Jesus after his resurrection — to Peter — to John — to
500 brethren, "Last of all He was seen of me also,
as of one born out of due time," he puts the appear
ance to himself on an absolute par with the others.

34 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
And here is a point hardly ever noticed. When in
his grand Resurrection chapter he speaks of the glori
fied spiritual body that shall be, where did he get his
idea of the spiritual body ? You feel at once the picture
in his mind. Where else could he have got the idea —
the glorified Jesus as he saw him at Damascus, "who
shall change our vile body that it may be like unto his
glorious body" — that body which I saw that day at
the Damascus gate. IV
As one of the evidences of the truth of Christianity,
do you see the tremendous force of this conversion of
Paul? That the determined enemy of Christianity,
should in one hour be so utterly changed into an un-
shakeable believer, and a devoted lover of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and joyfully sacrifice his whole life to his
service. Unbelievers in our days may say that it is
not easy to estimate the evidence for the story of Jesus
who lived 2000 years ago. But this Saul of Tarsus
lived in Jesus' time. He was a very clever man. The
evidence pro and con was ready to his hand. The liv
ing men were there to question. He knew all the
reasons that convinced Annas and Caiaphas that the
whole thing was an imposture. His whole brilliant
career was at stake. He had everything to lose; he
he had nothing to gain. He was absolutely prejudiced,
the whole attitude of his mind was dead against be
lieving. Yet in a moment — account for it as you may
— he had become Christ's man forever. If Saul of
Tarsus was mistaken that day, I can only say that it
was one of the most improbable and incomprehensible
mistakes in the whole of history.

THE CRISIS OF CONVERSION 35

Now I see the attendants lift from the road a broken,
trembling man, with shattered nerves and eyes blinded
by the shock, as they lead him by the hand into Da
mascus. He refuses food; he refuses greetings. He
only wants to get away from everybody— to be alone.
For three terrible days and nights he was alone in
a dark room, and neither did eat nor drink — alone with
his conscience, alone with his God — thinking, think
ing. When a great soul is being torn up by the roots
the crisis can only come thus in agony and shame.
No one can ever tell what passed through his
soul in these three silent days, but one thought there
must have been — to still the agony of remorse — the
thought of the tender, forgiving love of Christ who
had come to him. That He should come after the
Resurrection to his beloved disciples in Galilee was
to be expected, but that he should come to him and
forgive, and bless, and receive a wicked torturer
and slaughterer, and persecutor! Ah, Saul never
could forget that. We have seen how he never for
got his wickednessness of the past. But it was be
cause he never forgot either the tender kindness of
Jesus. To every true man that is what most deepens
the sorrow for sin. That the Lord whom he has
ill-treated should love him and forgive him. Ah,
it is worth while loving that way. It pays. Christ
gets great results. Saul became his follower, and lover,
and devoted slave all the days of his life. The love
of Christ is the very centre of his gospel.
With that joy in his heart you cannot entirely

36 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
pity Saul in his terrible struggle. Soon the peace
of God came stealing into his heart, and the crisis
ended with a sobbing man on his knees. And the
Lord saw him, and the message came to Ananias in
a dream: "Go down Straight Street, and enquire
for Saul of Tarsus, for, behold, he prayeth." Did you
ever think of God knowing your street and number
of your house. "Go down to Sherbrooke Street and
enquire for A. B., of the parish of St. George's, for
behold he prayeth!" VI
The next words in the history rather jar on me.
Immediately, says St. Luke, he began to preach
Jesus that He is the Son of God. Somehow that
does not seem like the Saul that we know. I can
quite see that it would make a great sensation and
draw much attention to the Gospel of Christ. And
I can quite believe that after a sudden change the
really converted drunkard, and the really converted
prize-fighter that we sometimes hear of, might make
Christ more real than some of our clergy could make
Him, but this does not quite fit in with what we
know of the great souls, the deep, earnest spirits, who,
after a sudden conversion, have influenced the world.
They need a breathing space. They need to learn —
to co-ordinate their troubled thoughts. They need
to think and meditate, and still the tumults of their
emotions, and commune in secrecy and silence with
their souls and with God.
A reserved man does not talk about these secret
things of life. Probably Luke never knew. The only
hint we have is one single verse in the letter to the

THE CRISIS OF CONVERSION 37
Galatians: "After it pleased God to reveal His Son
in me, immediately I conferred not with flesh and
blood, but I went into Arabia, and returned again
unto Damascus." That is all.
You see St. Luke's story is all right about the
preaching in Damascus, but he does not know, or at
any rate does not tell about this retirement to Arabia.
We do not know either, except those few words, but
at least it leaves room for the conjecture that pic
tures the lonely man for months in the deserts of
Arabia, in the shadow of Mount Sinai, thinking,
brooding, meditating, restudying his Bible in the new
light come to him — planning his future in the ser
vice of his dear Lord — and above all, praying, living
in communion with God. That is what makes big
men. That is what makes great preachers. It would
make a vast difference in the preaching of Christ's
gospel if we clergy spent more time in communion
with God. Brethren, pray for us.
VII
Suddenly one day this grave, solemn man reap
peared in the city, and at once began his daring
mission, and "confounded the Jews who dwelt in
Damascus, proving that this is the very Christ."
But the Jews would not listen to him. They hated
him as a renegade. They watched the gates day and
night to kill him, and at length the disciples one night
planned his escape, and lowered him over the wall
in a basket.
So his first attempt was a bad failure. But you
could not discourage a man who felt God behind him.
"I'll make men listen yet," said Disraeli, when he

38 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
failed in his first speech in the House of Commons.
"I'll make them listen yet," said Paul, when they
hunted him from Damascus. So he took his next
step. He would very much like to go back to Jeru
salem to see the divinely appointed heads of the
Church, and especially he wanted to see Peter their
chief. So, friendless and penniless, he started to walk
that long one hundred and fifty miles. We are told
nothing of that journey. But you know without
any telling that the lonely man knelt down in the
darkness as he passed the spot where Christ appeared
to him. You know how he must have felt as he
passed the scene of Stephen's murder. You can feel
with him as he passed the old college walls in Jeru
salem, knowing that his old master and his old friends
would never speak to him again — a renegade from
their holy faith.
However, it would be all right, he thought, when
he saw the disciples. But the disciples did not want
to see him. They were afraid of him. They did
not trust him. It took all the persuasion of his old
friend Barnabas even to get him an interview with
Peter and James. VIII
For fifteen days he stayed there in intercourse with
Peter. The Bible is a very tantalizing book. It says
no word of these fifteen days. What a dramatic pic
ture that intercourse would make. The two great
leaders of the Church — two honest, earnest, loving men
— Saul listening, Peter telling the story of the three
wonderful years with Jesus.

THE CRISIS OF CONVERSION 39
I hear Saul impetuously breaking in with questions.
I fancy him one night opening his heart: "Peter, what
I feel most is the wonder of His love. That He should
love and forgive a murderer, a blasphemer, a persecu
tor." And Peter replies, "Saul, it was just like Him.
He was always like that. You don't know my story.
I was a worse man than you. You were not a coward,
anyway. He picked me out of all the world to be His
closest friend, and the night before they killed Him I
turned against Him and denied Him while He lay help
less in His enemies' hands. I cursed and swore that I
never knew Him. He just raised His eyes as He heard,
and the sorrow in that look nearly broke my heart. I
rushed out and wept bitterly. I walked the streets
all night. I would have given anything to go back
and tell Him how sorry I was, but I had no chance.
Next day they crucified Him. It was too late then.
For three black, awful days I slunk away in my shame
and misery. The Master who loved me was lying cold
and dead in Joseph's tomb, and the last words He had
heard from me were words of blasphemous denial. Oh,
if He could only know how sorry I was! Then the
Easter morning came. The Lord was risen. And what
do you think? I found He had known and was think
ing of me those three days in the World of the Departed.
I found He had left a message with the angels at the
tomb. 'Go tell my disciples, and especially tell Peter.'
Tell Peter! Tell me! Could I ever forget that? I
who had been a traitor, an apostate, I who did not think
myself a disciple any more. Tell Peter! Do you won
der that I love Him? Do you wonder that I would die
for Him?"

CHAPTER V
Saul of Tarsus Finds His Life Work
Paul on that interesting fortnight's visit did not
spend all his time with Peter. He went out through
the city. He tried to preach. He could not keep to
himself the great discovery. He thought that what so
convinced him must convince everybody. But he
failed badly. Nobody would listen to him. Every
speech was a signal for a riot. Every sentence was
punctuated with curses and stones. It was a worse
failure even than that in Damascus.
He felt it keenly. He tells us later that he went to
the temple and on his knees told his troubles to God.
"Lord, nobody will listen to me. They know too much
about me; that I imprisoned and flogged in every
synagogue, and when the blood of thy martyr Stephen
was shed I held the raiment of them that slew him."
He saw he had failed. I daresay Peter and Barna
bas had already told him, "Saul, it is no use, you are
only making trouble." At last when his life was en
dangered the disciples brought him down to Caesarea
— where so many of the shipping lines called — and
thence he sailed to Tarsus.1 #
I wonder why? If there were any reason to think
that his family had become Christian or friendly I
should think it quite natural that a tired, broken man
1 Acts ix: 30.
40

SAUL FINDS HIS LIFE WORK 41
would want to go home and let his mother comfort him,
and rest him till his nerves grew quieted and he could
start again. There is no one like the dear old mother
at such a time. But there is no justification for sup
posing that there were any of his family or friends to
greet him. Saul had to remain a lonely man all his
life. He had the Lord Jesus for his friend and that
must suffice him.
Without the cheer of sister or of daughter,
Without the stay of father or of son,
Lone on the land and homeless on the water,
Passed he in patience till bis work was done.
A well-known writer suggests that one of his three
shipwrecks might have occurred on this voyage and
landed him, without his will, in the harbour of his na
tive town. We do not know. At any rate he need
not have stayed there. But he did.
Twenty years ago he had left Tarsus to go to college.
It was a lonely thing to come back after twenty years
to the boyhood home. In twenty years people die;
people grow old and forget — and if you come back with
the stigma of renegade and with the stigma of failure
when you are approaching forty, they forget still more.
New faces met him in the old haunts. A new gener
ation of boys tramped on the wharf and shouted to the
lumbermen on the river as he had done twenty years
before. It was lonely. It made a man feel old. Probably
he tried to preach — and probably he failed. The
proverb about the prophet in his own country is all the
stronger when that prophet is not liked. It was a try
ing time, but it was God's training for him. All study
of famous biographies teaches that God trains his great-

42 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
est servants largely by times of depression, and lone
liness, and failure, and disappointment.
There we leave him for the present, thinking, brood
ing, forgotten of men, eating out his heart in his boy
hood's home, wondering if those sins of his past life
would forever prevent success in preaching about his
Lord. n
Again the scene changes. And Saul is not in the
new scene. It is a city, the magnificent heathen city of
Antioch in Syria. Paul's story will always take us to
cities and crowds. Already Tarsus, Jerusalem, Damas
cus, now a city greater still and more important in the
history of Paul and of the early Church. After Jeru
salem, Antioch became the second mother of the Church.
Antioch became the centre of Gentile Christianity.
Antioch became the central home of Paul for twenty
years. "And the disciples were called Christians first
in Antioch." Since Antioch bulks so largely in our story we had
better try to visualize it that we may remember it each
time we come to it. First from the outside. Call up
in your minds the north-east angle of the Mediterra
nean, the shores of Palestine forming one side and the
shores of Asia Minor meeting it at right angles. There
is Antioch on the river Orontes, in touch with all places,
an ideal centre for a Church which was to spread
among the Gentiles. Whenever Paul saw from his
ship that angle of the coast it meant home. Then,
landing at the Antioch port of Seleucia, he passed up
through groves of palm, and olive, and myrtle, and
gardens bright with gorgeous flowers, into the city of
palaces, the queen of the East, the third metropolis of

SAUL FINDS HIS LIFE WORK 43
the world — the nearest approach to home that poor
Paul ever had.
You cannot visualize a whole city. When I think
of Montreal I picture its main artery, St. Catherine
Street, four miles long, with Mount Royal on the
north, dominating all. When an Antioch man thought
of Antioch he thought of its central street, the glorious
street of the Colonnades, also exactly four miles long,
paved for the greater part with blocks of white marble
— with its grove of trees, its palaces and shops, and the
stately covered colonnade at either side — four miles
of shelter from the sun and rain. And, dominating
the whole city, the mountain behind, with its highest
peak carved into a giant statue of Jupiter, keeping
guard over the city, the heathen god claiming this
heathen city for his own.
Since you cannot get a whole city into your imagi
nation, whenever we come to Antioch in this story,
picture this beautiful central street of the Colon
nades, with its branching side streets, and the mighty
Jupiter dominating it all.
The inhabitants were mainly the peoples that I have
pictured to you already — the Greek, the Roman,
and the Jew. The Greek, who had lost his faith in
his beautiful gods; the Roman, satiated with his lust
of pride of mastery: the Jew, in his haughty claim to
be the sole favourite of the Almighty, standing coldly
aloof. The Jewish religion, therefore, had little real
influence. The only religion that counted at all was
the so-called worship of the ancient gods, the deifica
tion of cruelty and lust. Surely, that beautiful proud
city of Antioch sorely needed the gospel of Jesus
Christ.

44 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME

in
How did Christianity first touch Antioch ? Through
the providence of God. Through the blunders of
Saul and his friends. In the persecution that arose
about Stephen the hunted disciples travelled as far
as Antioch, "speaking the word to none save only
the Jews." Notice that phrase: "speaking only to
the Jews." Thereby hangs a tale to be told later on.
But the river of the water of life could not be held
by such boundaries. The Gentiles wanted to hear,
and some men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who had not
the strict prejudice of the Jerusalem Jews, ventured
to preach to the Gentiles.
The results were startling. The people came crowd
ing in : " The hand of the Lord was with them, and
a great number believed and turned to the Lord."
And immediately there arose a problem and a con
troversy which afterwards shook the Church to its
foundations. Shall Israel lose its peculiar glory and
be merged with other races in the church of the Mes
siah? Shall the uncircumcised heathen be admitted
to the Church on a level with the ancient people of
God? Must they not first be circumcised and be
obedient to the law? Must they not first become
members of the Jewish Church? Keep this in mind
if you would understand the Epistles of St. Paul.
The news about the Antioch Mission reached the
heads of the Church at Jerusalem. They had had
to face the question already. Peter in the teeth of his
own prejudices had felt impelled to baptize the heathen
centurion, Cornelius, because he saw the visible sign
of God's approval. The gift of the Holy Ghost had

SAUL FINDS HIS LIFE WORK 45
come on Cornelius and his house. The Jerusalem
Christians immediately challenged his action and
brought him before the Apostolic Council. Peter
related the whole story and defended himself: " What
else could I do?" he asked. " Who am I that I should
withstand God?" And the Apostles and the brethren
listened in wonder. Their prejudices also were strong
against such action, but when they had heard they held
their peace and glorified God and said, " Then hath
God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto
life." It was evidently a new idea to them.
Now came to them the news from Antioch and they
decided to send down a delegate to look into it, and they
chose Saul's friend, Joseph Barnabas. You remem
ber Barnabas, the man who introduced Saul to the
Apostles when they declined to see him. The story
suggests that he was an old friend — perhaps a friend
of his college days. Since he is prominent in the later
story you need to know him, to recognize him when
you see him. IV
As I see him he is quite a contrast to his friend.
Barnabas is built in a large mould — a big, handsome,
bearded man, with honest eyes, and what we call a
good face — a face to be trusted at first sight. He is
a bright, cheery comforting sort of man — straight,
simple, not particularly clever, but very sympathetic
and, above all, a man of deep and real religion. That
is Barnabas. Just the right friend for a man like
Paul. You get hints for this portrait here and there
through the Acts if you use your imagination as
you read. You find that the wild highlanders of

46 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
Lycaonia one day mistook him and Paul for gods.
They called Barnabas Jupiter, — the stately majestic
father of the gods; and they called Paul Mercury
— the small, swift, eloquent message of Olympus.
That gives you at once the appearance of the two men.
As to his character. We first hear definitely of
him at Jerusalem when the young Church in its first
enthusiasm started what seems to have been an unwise
experiment in Socialism — rich and poor to share and
share alike. It did not work, but Barnabas took
part and sold his estate for the poor and brought the
money and laid it at the Apostles' feet (what Ananias
and Sapphira pretended to do). Only a generous
enthusiast would do that. Next I notice that he must
have been a very kindly, sympathetic man, for the
Apostles named him Barnabas, the Son of Consolation.
And soon after St. Luke expresses the opinion of the
Church, " He was a good man and full of the Holy
Ghost."

Barnabas came to Antioch and saw the street of
the Colonnades and the great statue of the god, but
he was more interested in the side street where the
Christians met. It was called Singon Street in the old
Church traditions. " When he came," I read, " and
had seen the grace of God he was glad and exhorted
them all with purpose of heart they should cleave unto
the Lord." He evidently kept clear of the burning
question of the day. He did not tell them to be cir
cumcised or to become Jews. He was a simple man,
but he saw through to the essentials. " Cleave unto
the Lord," he said. That was his religion.

SAUL FINDS HIS LIFE WORK 47
But still the controversy did not cease. The prob
lem was there still, and Barnabas probably felt that he
was not a big enough man to handle it, and he knew
the man who could handle it. There was no petty
jealousy in Barnabas. " Then departed Barnabas
to Tarsus to seek Saul." One day in Tarsus, Saul,
restless and despondent, suddenly came on his big
friend in the street. "Saul, you are needed; come
back with me to Antioch."
The hour had struck. The man was ready. Saul
of Tarsus had found his life work.
VI
A year has elapsed. The Christians of Antioch
are assembled with their presbyters in Singon Street
for a special service of prayer and fasting, and waiting
for guidance from the Holy Spirit for a special under
taking which they had in mind — " While they minis
tered before the Lord fasting." The Greek word used
for their ministrations is that from which we derive
our word Liturgy — our word for the Communion
office. We need not discuss it further here. Nat
urally, the Holy Communion, the central service,
would be the chief part.
What were the special devotions for?
During the past year Saul and Barnabas had
ministered in the city. We are only told that for a
whole year "they assembled with the Church and
taught much people." It was probably a happy, rest
ful time in Saul's troubled life, going in and out
with his old friend in quiet pastoral duties, and it
seems to have been a successful year too, for we find
five prominent ministers now in Antioch.

48 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
We, after nineteen centuries of Christianity, can
never realize all it meant to man when it was new.
It is an old story with us. It was new tidings to
them — tidings of wonder, and joy, and hope. " We
know that the Son of God is come. We believe in
the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. We believe in the
Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life."
And all that year it would seem that the feeling
had been growing that they must spread the good news.
" This is the day of good tidings and we hold our
peace. The whole heathen world is around us dreary
and helpless and sinful as we were a year ago. We
must go and tell them." They believe that this
strong impulse is from the Holy Ghost. Now they
are waiting for His further guidance. Whom shall
they send?
Watch the congregation assembled with their five
clergy. Three white men, two black men from Africa.
Read the list in Acts xiii. 1-7. Barnabas and Lucius
of Cyrene, and Simeon that was called Niger or black,
and Manaen the foster-brother of Herod the tetrarch,
and Saul. I like to look at the group. First, the
tall handsome Barnabas; next to him, a coloured
man Lucius of Cyrene, an African town; next to
him, Simeon Niger or negro — not what we know as
negro — the northern African was a different type.
Was he also of Cyrene like Lucius? Simon, the
Cyrenian? Was he Simon the Cyrenian who car
ried the cross for Jesus on the way for Calvary? I
think it quite probable, though I have never seen it
suggested before, and the evidence is only the prob
ability that I refer to. If I am right, cannot you

SAUL FINDS HIS LIFE WORK 49
imagine his interest in Christianity? Next to him
the foster-brother of King Herod. That set us think
ing. Just think of it. Two boys mothered at the
same breast. One a tyrant, an adulterer, a mur
derer, the other a preacher of the Gospel of Christ.
To these add Saul of Tarsus, and I think you have
as interesting a group of clergy as you have ever
seen. Now, then, who is to go on the heathen mission?
Black or White? Doubtless they drew lots, as at the
election of Matthias. They asked the Holy Ghost
to guide them by the lot. That I think is the meaning
of the words : " The Holy Ghost said separate me
Barnabas and Saul."
Barnabas and Saul! The congregation had prayed
for guidance, but I wonder if they liked the answer?
The beloved Barnabas, the brilliant Saul, the very
pick of the Antioch ministers! Are they to lose their
best? I think that only their deep belief in the pres
ence of the Holy Ghost restrained their murmuring.
I have heard a good deal of such murmuring in the Old
Country, when the most brilliant of our clergy were
sent to the mission field. I have heard over and over
(you have heard it too) " are there not plenty of heathen
at home? "
There is here a great missionary lesson for the
Church. Were there not plenty of heathen at home,
there in a city of 500,000. But they, at least, were
within reach of the good news, whether they cared for
it or not. The poor outside heathen had no chance
at all. And so the Holy Spirit of God spake in their
hearts. "Sacrifice yourselves. Send them your best."
Think of it to-day in the Church's missionary work.

50 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
Six hundred millions of these heathens, in the world
still. The Church instantly bowed to the decision. They
laid their hands on them in loving benediction, and the
two friends went away together on their perilous jour
ney of three long years. VII
Next chapter we shall follow them on that journey.
Now let us linger a little in Antioch. Paul and
Barnabas are gone. Three clergy remain — the two
Africans and the king's foster-brother, but the Church
kept growing — growing fast. The next words indicate
it, "and the disciples were called Christians first in
Antioch." The name we Gentiles glory in to-day was
started that year in Singon Street in the city of the
Street of the Colonnades. I do not think it originated
with Christians. They called themselves the Disciples,
the Brethren, the Saints. It certainly did not originate
with the Jews, who would never give a name acknowl
edging the Christ. They called them "the sect of the
Nazarenes." It must have come from the general public, who had
to have some name for these people who were begin
ning to be talked about. Probably it began as a nick
name in the slang of the town, but it shows that they
were becoming important, and since they embraced
every race and every colour, they had to have a com
prehensive title. Black or white, rich or poor, male
or female, Greek, or Roman, or Jew, their one dis
tinguishing mark was that they were followers of the
Christ. Let us not forget why we are called Christ
ians.

SAUL FINDS HIS LIFE WORK 51

VIII
They grew so fast that in a few years later they had
in Antioch the full organization of the Church — bishop,
priests and deacons, without which there was no church
of Christ anywhere in the world for 1 500 years. Have
you ever heard of St. Ignatius of Antioch, the most
famous of the early bishops ? He was born in the life
time of St. Paul. He was a disciple of St. John. He
was fifteen years old at the time of that missionary
service in Singon Street. I wonder if the boy was there
that day. About thirty years later he was con
secrated Bishop of Antioch, and thirty years later still
he was flung to the lions in the Roman amphitheatre.
One of the most pathetic stories in history is the story
of that dear old Bishop of Antioch going up to die.
On the way they had to rest at Smyrna, where Poly-
carp, a disciple of St. John, was bishop — and the bishops
of Ephesus and Magnesia with several presbyters and
deacons came to receive his blessing, and the old
man wrote letters to the churches around.
Let me give you a few sentences out of these epistles
of Ignatius. He was very uneasy lest the unity of the
Church should be broken — lest sects and divisions
would arrive when he was gone. To keep the unity, he
says, cling to your bishops. They are the guardians
of unity. "Remember in your prayer the Church of Syria,
which now has God for its shepherd instead of me.
Jesus Christ must be its bishop when I am gone."
"Keep in unity with your bishops, and presbyters,
and deacons who have been appointed according to the
mind of Jesus Christ. Apart from that there is no

52 YOUTH AND PREPARATION TIME
Church. Do nothing without your bishops, who to
the uttermost bounds of the earth, are according to the
will of Jesus Christ. Reverence your bishop as you
would the Lord himself. Reverence your presbyters
as the holy apostles."
It is no part of my purpose now to discuss this
subject. Some day I hope to lecture fully about it,
but I cannot pass from the Church of Antioch without
referring to it. It has become a very important subject
in recent years owing to the earnest efforts of Christian
people towards reunion, especially the great Faith and
Order Movement started in America. Since three-
fourths of all Christendom is under episcopal rule the
question of the episcopate has to be discussed. And
there is no more hopeful sign of the sincerity of these
movements than the frank, candid way it is being ap
proached on all sides.

PART III
THE MASTER BUILDER

PART III
THE MASTER BUILDER

CHAPTER VI
The Fight for Freedom
Paul and Barnabas are starting out on the Church's
first missionary expedition to the heathen. Watch
them as they start, with some of their church people
seeing them off, from Singon Street, through the street
of the Colonnades, under the colossal shadow of Jupi
ter, to the pier of Seleucia, which is visible still on
clear days down under the sea.
I think they are happy as the ship glides out into
the deep blue Mediterranean. For they are two close
friends going off together, and they are young enough
yet to feel the thrill of an unknown adventure, and they
have a mission that rouses their highest enthusiasm,
and they know as few other men have known the cer
tainty that they are sent by God. And another pleas
ant thing, to Barnabas at least, they have his young
cousin, John Mark, as their attendant. You remember
John Mark in the gospel story. His mother Mary kept
open house for the Apostles at Jerusalem, where they
came together in the evening to talk and to rest.
When Peter escaped from the prison he made straight
for that house and found his friends there assembled,
53

54 THE MASTER BUILDER
praying for him. Young Mark was evidently a favour
ite of his. He calls him in an Epistle, "Marcus, my
son." Probably that lad and his mother knew more
of the inner thoughts of the Apostles than any other
family in Jerusalem. n
So they sail away from the harbour of Antioch.
Many proud expeditions have left that harbour of
Antioch before and since. Powerful kings and great
generals, and dashing armies of crusaders. But history
has forgotten them. When travellers are to-day shown
the old pier under the sea, it is as the starting point of
three poor humble missionaries going out to tell the
heathen the story of Jesus.
Now I see them landing at Barnabas' old home at
Cyprus, where friends are greeting their big pleasant
friend, and for his sake welcoming his two companions.
Now they are across the island in the white city of
Paphos by the sea, telling their wonderful story. The
pro-consul, Sergius Paulus, has asked them to Govern
ment House to tell it to him. His evil genius, the sor
cerer Elymas, is present, snarling, fighting hard for his
own hand, defying Paul, blaspheming Jesus, striving to
turn the pro-consul from the faith. Paul is capable of
pretty strong language when a man does that. "O,
thou full of all evil and villainy, thou son of the devil,
thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease
to pervert the right way of the Lord. Behold, the
hand of the Lord is upon thee, thou shalt be blind
for a season." Like a whipped cur the sorcerer fled,
"and the pro-consul believed and turned to the Lord."
Whatever the reason, one is conscious from this point

THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM 55
of a curious change in the story. From this point Paul
is the chief figure. Barnabas is moving into the back
ground. And at this point, curiously enough, the name
is changed. As Abram became Abraham and Simon
became Peter at a crisis in the story of each, so we find
at this crisis Saul became Paul. His Jewish name is
changed for his Gentile name. Nobody ever calls him
anything else in all the rest of his story.
HI
From Cyprus they follow the course of the trading
ships to Perga, on the mainland, and here an unpleasant
incident occurred, which had very serious results five
years later. Young Mark refused to go on. Perhaps
he wanted to go back to his mother — perhaps he was
frightened at the dangers in front — perhaps he was
vexed that his cousin Barnabas was taking second place.
At any rate, he took advantage of a homebound ship
and left them there in the lurch, and Paul resented it
sharply. He had no use for a shirker.
They continued their journey without him — up the
mountain road, into the dangerous interior — across
rushing torrents — through passes which were dreaded
by the whole country round as the dens of the bandits.
What happened to them in those first months no one
has told. Perhaps we should place here the perils of
rivers, and perils of robbers which Paul mentions in
his letters later. IV
The whole expedition occupied probably three years,
very slightly sketched for us. As these lectures have
to be kept within narrow bounds, I shall only give you
two glimpses of them on the road.

56 THE MASTER BUILDER
The first is to give you a specimen of Paul's preach
ing. Perhaps a year after leaving Antioch they came
to a mountain town of the same name. (They had the
Canadian habit up there of repeating the names of
famous towns.) On the Sabbath they went to the
Synagogue service. They sat on the strangers' seat,
wearing the Tallith on their heads to indicate that they
were Jews, as distinguished from the Gentile proselytes
who usually formed part of the congregation. After
the prayers and the reading of the Lessons, the chief
rabbi turned courteously to the two strangers, "Sirs,
if you have any words of exhortation to the people,
say on." That gave Paul his chance. He arose, and
making a gesture with his hands to the congregation,
began his sermon: "Men of Israel and ye proselytes
of the Gentiles, give audience."
Paul was a true orator. A true orator must have
some convictions that he would die for if necessary,
and he must have the tact to put these convictions
attractively. He began by conciliating the Jews, tell
ing the glorious history of the past; of Jehovah's care
and training of this chosen people of God. But he
explained that all this glory of the history of the past
was but the preparation for the greater glory of the
future. He points out that their prophets have borne
witness to a great Messiah to come, not to destroy the
Law, but to fulfil it. So far the Jews are with him.
Now comes the startling thing. "I am here to pro
claim that the Messiah has come." See, he says, how
he fits in with the old prophecies; see how the great
forerunner, John the Baptist, was foreseen by Malachi.
True, our leaders at Jerusalem have rejected and
crucified the Messiah, but that too was foretold by

THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM 57
the prophets, "He was to be despised and rejected of
men." They have fulfilled the prophecies in condemn
ing him.
Then comes the most startling statement of all.
Our rulers blindly killed the Messiah, "but God has
raised him from the dead." (You can feel the audience
catching their breath.) That too is part of our
prophecies. "Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One
to see corruption." That resurrection, he, says, is God's
greatest proof. After his resurrection he was seen for
many days by those who were with him, who are now
his witnesses to the people of Israel.

No wonder they were stirred. A pretty fair amount
of excitement for one sermon. And he closes with
solemn, daring words: "Be it known unto you, there
fore, men and brethren, that through this Jesus is
proclaimed unto you the forgiveness of sins — and in
Him all who have faith are justified from all trans
gressions. Beware, therefore, lest that come upon you
which is spoken by our prophet Habakkuk, ' Behold ye
despisers, and wonder and perish. For I work a work
in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe,
though a man declare it unto you.' "
That gives you the general line of Paul's sermons
to Jews. With Gentiles he takes a different line, as
we shall see later. Paul had not failed this time.
He left them gasping with excitement. The congre
gation crowded around him beseeching him to stay
and repeat these things next Sabbath. All the week
they talked of nothing else, and on the next Sabbath
" came almost the whole city together to hear the word

58 THE MASTER BUILDER
of God." The synagogue was crowded to the doors
and beyond, but many of that crowd were Gentiles.
Paul had hinted that his message was for all — that the
Messiah was for all. The Jews could not stand that.
They too had been talking together all the week.
They came into church angry and embittered. The
prayers were spoiled for them, every thing was spoiled.
When Paul arose to speak he was greeted with howls
and curses. As he argued they sprang up in fierce
opposition, contradicting and blaspheming.
Paul bore it as long as he could. Then with a
stern gesture he forced them into silence. He had
to decide quickly. In a moment during the uproar
he made the decision of his life — a decision which caused
a perfect revolution in the church of the future. In
slow, measured words, tense with restrained emotion,
he announces it, " It was necessary that the word of
God should first have been spoken to you; but seeing
that ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy
of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so
hath the Lord commanded us, saying, ' I have set
thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest
be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.' "^
That sermon marked a crisis for Paul and for the
Church. That day Paul nailed his colours to the
mast. The Jew is no longer the sole favourite of God.
The Church is for all the world. To us that is a mere
truism. To the Jewish world of Paul's day it was
nothing less than a revolution.
After that there was no staying in Pisidia. The
Jews stirred up the honourable women, and in all ages
when the honourable women get after a man he may
as well get out. The honourable women stirred up

THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM 59
the honourable men, and the missionaries were driven
across the border. VI
Away in the mountains three months later we have
another glimpse of the expedition. It is the mountain
town of Lystra. It seems a festival or market day,
for the town is crowded. Paul is preaching in a public
place. In his audience is a poor cripple whose wist
ful eyes are holding the preacher. He positively
cannot get on with his sermon with these pathetic
eyes on him. Paul looking earnestly on him and per
ceiving that he had the faith to be healed cried with a
loud voice, " Stand upright on thy feet — and he
leaped and walked, and the people cried out in the
speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us
in the likeness of men." And they called Barnabas
Jupiter (from his stately appearance), and Paul, Mercu-
rius, because he was the chief speaker. And the priest
of Jupiter brought oxen and garlands and would have
done sacrifice with the people, but Barnabas and Paul
rent their garments and rushed in among the crowd.
" Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of
like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye
should turn from these vanities unto the living God,
which made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all the
things that are therein."
Not quite so tactful as his sermon in Pisidia.
It is dangerous to meddle with the passions of a
mob. It is dangerous to call their gods vain things;
it is dangerous in the midst of their superstitious
emotions, when they want to worship you, to make
them feel ridiculous by having mistaken you for a god.

60 THE MASTER BUILDER
Mobs are ticklish things to handle. This crowd grows
silent, grows sulky; begins to listen to the hostile
Jews from Iconium. " If they are not gods, then
they healed the cripple by the power of the Evil One."
So when Paul tried to preach next day he could scent
trouble in the air. He found a changed atmosphere:
The crowd is hostile. Soon the yelling roughs from the
back lanes are jostling and crowding around him. Soon
the stones are flying. He sees that there is no escape.
He is hit. He is down. His eyes are closed, but his
brain is forming vivid pictures of another stoning
twelve years before in which he himself took part and
a dead face, that was as the face of an angel. Soon a
stunning blow on the head sends his pictures flying,
and Barnabas is looking on another dead face, and look
ing out into the lonely years without his comrade.
But Paul is not dead. It would take more than that
to kill him while his great life work remained undone.
VII
And here is a very interesting coincidence. Twelve
years ago the young Paul had been a spectator at the
stoning of Stephen, and largely as the result of that
stoning the Church had gained her doughtiest cham
pion. This day a frightened lad is spectator at the
stoning of Paul — a Lystra boy living with his mother
and grandmother, and largely as a result of that ston
ing, Paul is going to win his best fellow-worker, to be
to him as a son in his old age. We hear nothing of
him here, but two years afterwards in passing through
this town of Lystra Paul finds young Timothy a con
vert of his own. Long years afterwards, when Timothy
is a bishop, Paul writes to him praising the religious

THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM 61
influence of his mother, Eunice, and his grandmother,
Lois, and he reminds him, " Remember, Timothy,
what I suffered in Lystra." So you see there is little
doubt that he was there at the stoning.
We cannot follow this journey in further detail.
When they reached Derbe they stopped and turned
back in their tracks — over all the towns where they
preached the gospel. They made choice of fit persons
to serve in the sacred ministry of the Church and
ordained presbyters in every city. These presbyters
could not do much preaching. They did not know
much themselves, but they could remember and repeat
what was carefully taught to them, and they could
administer the sacraments as the Lord commanded.
Thus ends the first missionary journey.
VIII
So they return to Antioch, under the shadow of
Jupiter, across the Street of the Colonnades, down to
Singon Street, and there at a gathering of the church
which had sent them out three years ago, we are told
in two lines, "they rehearsed all that God had done
with them and how he had opened a door of faith unto
the Gentiles." You can easily imagine for yourselves
the interest of that meeting. I have no time for it
now. I am thinking, rather, of the night time, when the
meeting was over and Paul and Barnabas were talking
privately with the chief lay people and with the clergy,
the two Africans and the king's foster-brother: "How
are things doing. here in Antioch?" "Very badly;
they could hardly be worse. There is trouble ahead."
"What is the trouble? " "O, just the old trouble with

62 THE MASTER BUILDER
the Jerusalem people, but now things are coming to
a crisis. A little while ago certain men came down
from Jerusalem and taught the brethren here, 'Except
ye be circumcised after the custom of Moses ye cannot
be saved.' Our Gentile converts are puzzled and irri
tated. We have been teaching them free salvation
for Jew and Gentile who cleave unto the Lord. Those
men say we are wrong; that these brethren must be
circumcised and obey the Jewish ordinances. So things
are pretty miserable. If something is not done soon
we are likely to have the Church split in two."
Evidently it was quite time Paul and Barnabas got
back. The big fight was on everywhere. Not only
away in their lonely mission, but here in Antioch, and
in Jerusalem, — all over the Church. It was a fight
for liberty, and Paul set his face grimly to fight it to
a finish. He would not let his Gentile converts be
dragged under the yoke of Judaism. He would not
let Christianity become a Jewish sect. He flung out
his challenge, which later he repeated: "Stand fast,
therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you
free, and be not entangled with the yoke of bondage."
IX
To understand Paul's lifelong fight for liberty in
the Church you must try to understand his opponents.
They too, had their deep religious convictions. The
divine law of the Jews demanded isolation from the
heathen. The idolatry and abominable immorality of
heathendom made it necessary. "Come ye out from
among them and touch not the unclean thing." Touch
not, taste not, handle not. It was just like the law of
caste in India. As Peter said to Cornelius, "It is

THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM 63
unlawful for a man who is a Jew to keep company or
come unto one of another nation." The only way in
which a Gentile could join in the worship of Jehovah
was by becoming a proselyte and obeying the Jewish
ordinances. Mark you, this was the law of God — the
rule of religion for a thousand years. Naturally they
felt that this must go on. The Jewish Christians
thought that Christianity should be just a purer, holier
form of Judaism.
Now comes this revolutionary Paul. He says no,
the old law was only for a limited time — only a prepa
ration for the kingdom of the Messiah. Christ is the
Messiah, not for Israel only, but for the whole of
humanity. When the Gentile comes to Christ, when
his idolatry is abandoned, and his immorality gone,
Jew and Gentile stand equal as brothers in the uni
versal Church.
There is the whole question. Both sides claim the
authority of God. Both were equally determined. In
the face of this difficulty how was there ever to be a
united Church? The solution of the problem seemed
in that day almost impossible, and without the inter
vention of God's grace on His servants it would have
been impossible. But God gave to the Apostles the
wisdom and discretion and firmness necessary, and
through His grace Paul became the great instrument
in accomplishing a work necessary to the very existence
of a Catholic — a Universal Church.
You see Paul was determined to fight, and Paul
felt he could win, but he saw it would not do to win at
the cost of splitting the Church in two — a Jewish
Christian Church, with its centre at Jerusalem; and
a Gentile Christian Church, with its centre at Antioch.

64 THE MASTER BUILDER
The Church in all ages needs not merely determined
fighters for right, but also reasonable, sympathetic,
statesman-like men, who will go and talk things over
with the other man, and try to understand his position.
Clearly there must be no schism, and clearly the
whole position must be taken before the heads of the
Church. So I read, "the brethren appointed Paul and
Barnabas and certain others to go up to Jerusalem to
the Apostles and elders about this question."

Now we are in Jerusalem. It is the first synod of
the Catholic Church. Not in a stately synod hall.
Probably in the upper room of the house of John Mark's
mother. But no stately council of Nice or Trent had
so vital an issue before it. No doubt it had been
prefaced by very earnest prayer. As far as we can
judge James, who was Bishop of Jerusalem, presided,
and since he was known to be a very strict Jew I
dare say Paul's opponents hoped much from his po
sition. Both sides evidently tried to win adherents.
There is a great deal of human nature even in Church
synods. Now the lists are set, the big fight is on.
I read, "After there had been much questioning."
I know enough about Synods with burning questions
to know what that meant. The attack of the Judaisers,
the replies of their opponents, strong arguments and
sometimes hot words — a long, eager controversy — prob
ably for hours. Then the Apostles rose to speak, and
the multitude kept silence.
Peter was the first speaker. He spoke strongly
against the Judaisers and in favour of Paul: "You
are well aware," he said, " that these heathen in Syria

THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM 65
are not the first heathen who have come to the Church.
I myself was chosen by God to begin this work, which
Paul is continuing. You know how I baptized the
heathen centurion Cornelius, how God, which knoweth
the heart, bare them witness, giving them the Holy
Ghost even as He did unto us. He made no distinc
tion between us and them. Now, therefore, why tempt
ye God, putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples,
which neither our fathers nor we are able to bear.
We believe that they and we together shall be saved
in the same way through the grace of the Lord Jesus."
That was a hard knock for the Judaisers. However,
there was still hope, James had not spoken yet. Then
Paul and Barnabas were called, and all the multitude
kept silence and hearkened unto Barnabas and Paul,
rehearsing what wonders God had wrought among
the Gentiles by them. You can imagine how elo
quently Paul fought his cause.
And after they had held their peace, James arose.
This was the sensational moment. Both sides waited
with bated breath for his decision. No judgment would
have such weight with the Judaising party as his.
He was a thorough Jew — if anything a narrow Jew.
In garb and appearance he was like John the Baptist,
a stern, silent, deeply holy man, with the bare feet
and unshorn head of the Nazarite.
When James arose and solemnly pronounced that
the Mosaic customs were not of eternal obligation,
and that he agreed with Peter and with Paul, that prac
tically closed the question. The Council closed in a
spirit of charity and mutual forbearance. They had
sought the guidance of the Holy Spirit; they accepted
this as his guidance, and Paul and Barnabas were sent

66 THE MASTER BUILDER
back happy to their church in Antioch, carrying this
Apostolic letter as their authority if there should be
further trouble:
"The Apostles and elders unto the brethren of the Gentiles
in Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicia, greeting: For much as we have
heard that certain which went out from us have troubled you
with words subverting your souls, it seemed good unto us to send
Silas and others with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, who have
hazarded their lives for the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
"It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you
no greater burden than these necessary things; that ye abstain
from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things
strangled, and from the fornication, from which if ye keep your
selves ye shall do well. Fare ye well."

CHAPTER VII
Second Missionary Tour
Happy and triumphant after their signal victory
at the Council of Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas re
turned to Antioch and there I read, " they tarried
teaching and preaching the word of the Lord with many
others also." Amongst these others were Silas, who
had been sent with them from Jerusalem by the Apos
tles, and also, as we learn from the Epistle to the Gala
tians, Peter, who on one of his tours had come down
to Antioch, and brought with him his young favourite,
John Mark. You remember young Mark, who had
deserted Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary
expedition. " Paul and Barnabas tarried together in Antioch."
In the light of later history that little statement is
pathetic. The two old friends, after their three years
missionary tour, after winning side by side the fight
for the Church's freedom, were now living happily
together in the quiet comradeship of pastoral work
in Antioch. How little they thought that it would
be their last year together. That before the year was
over there should come through their own fault a
break in that close friendship which should part them,
never again to meet on earth.
lit is a sorrowful story, but very human. Two
67

68 THE MASTER BUILDER
most unpleasant incidents spoiled what should have
been one of the happiest years of their life.
n
Paul and Barnabas, and Silas, and Peter, and Mark,
and the king's foster-brother, and the two Africans,
were working happily together, rejoicing in their new
freedom, living in pleasant intercourse with Jew and
Gentile converts alike, when one day another band of
the bigoted Christian Jews came down from Jerusalem.
They dared not oppose the Apostolic decree, but by
their haughty, stand-off attitude toward the Gentile
converts they made things very unpleasant.
Paul could stand this all right so long as his com
rades stood by him, but soon to his surprise he sees
Peter wavering. Peter had fought bravely beside
him for the equality of the Jew and the Gentile in
the Church, but it is not easy for men to shake off
altogether the prejudices of a lifetime. Peter in
this city of strangers naturally associated much with
the Jerusalem people who were old acquaintances,
and soon there were signs that he was leaning to their
side. The other Christian Jews were influenced by
Peter, even Barnabas began to keep aloof from the
Gentile converts. Naturally these converts were very
much hurt. Paul bore with it as long as he could,
but he soon saw that a determined stand must be taken,
even at the risk of vexing his comrades.
There is no word of all this in the history, but ten
years afterwards Paul tells it in his Galatian letter:
" But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood
him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For
before that certain men came from James he did eat

SECOND MISSIONARY TOUR 69
with the Gentiles, but when they were come he with
drew and separated, fearing them which were of the
circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled like
wise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was
carried away with their dissimulation. But when I
saw that they walked not uprightly according to the
truth of the Gospel, I said unto Peter before them all,
if thou, being a Jew, etc."1
It was a hard thing for Paul to rebuke his closest
friends in a public assembly, but hard things have to
be done. Evidently his action was effective. Barna
bas and Peter were doubtless big enough men to ac
knowledge their fault, and so the situation was saved,
but I cannot help suspecting that it made a little rift
within the lute, which accounts for later troubles.
Public rebukes are not easily forgotten even by good
men. hi
Three months later the next trouble came. It is
time for Paul and Barnabas to set out again on the
next missionary journey. Barnabas very much wants
to take his young cousin, John Mark, again. "No,"
said Paul, "I cannot trust any man who deserted us
as he did. This work of God is too serious to be in
jured by shirkers. I will not have young Mark again."
Barnabas pleaded, Paul was determined — neither would
give in. Probably the recent wavering of Peter and
Barnabas was referred to. One word brought on
another, "and the contention was so sharp between
them that they separated one from the other," never
to meet again. It is a sorrowful story, but, alas, it is so
1 Gal. ii: 14.

70 THE MASTER BUILDER
human that we can easily understand it. The very
depth of their affection made the contention the
sharper. Each thought the other should yield. So
"Each spake words of high disdain,
Sharp words that hurt his heart's best brother,
But never either found another
To keep the lonely heart from pain.
Like cliffs that had been rent asunder,
They parted not to meet again."
The Bible is very candid about the failure of its
heroes, and it is some comfort to us, who are very faulty,
that God can make saints out of very faulty people.
But it would be happy for us if our quarrels had as
noble a cause. It was no selfish quarrel as to who
should be more successful, or who should gain some
thing. It was just a difference as to the best way ot
serving Christ, whether by the gentler way of indul
gence to young Mark, or by the sterner way of putting
Mark aside. Well for us if our quarrels had no worse
ground than that.
You may be sure Paul often looked back to the days
when that faithful comrade stood by him when others
suspected him, especially to that never-to-be-forgotten
day when he found his life work, when "Barnabas
came to Tarsus to seek Saul." You may be sure
Barnabas, too, thought regretfully of those days of
loving comradeship.
It is pleasant to look forward to later years when
Paul writes affectionately of his old comrade — when
Peter writes of the Epistles " of our beloved brother
Paul " — when Paul found that young Mark was a bet
ter man than he had thought: "Bring Mark to me;
he is profitable to the ministry."1 And it is some com-
1 2 Tim. iv: n.

SECOND MISSIONARY TOUR 71
fort for faulty people like ourselves to see that God
could make holy saints out of these faulty men.
IV
At any rate God's work must not suffer. So Bar
nabas took Mark and sailed into Cyprus, where an
old tradition says that he died for his Lord; and Paul
chose Silas. I am sure Silas was a wise friend and a
valuable missionary. But he was not Barnabas.
I think Paul was already feeling the stir of that
ambitious impulse which afterwards took him ever west
ward, westward; took him to Rome, even to Spain,
to the bounds of the Empire, to plant there the banner
of his beloved Lord. Soon he saw clear signs that God
was so guiding him. They started by land up through
the northern highlands, out through the dark defiles
of the Cilician gates, that great frowning pass, eighty
miles long. Then westward for days along the moun
tain road, till he touched the region of his first missionary
journey. One evening from the heights he looked down
on Derbe and rejoiced that he was to meet the old
friends again. Next day along the mountain road to
Lystra, where Barnabas and he had been Jupiter and
Mercury, and where Barnabas had lifted him up for
dead after the mob had stoned him. Everything would
remind him of Barnabas.
I can easily picture these visits. Last year with
the Bishop of Montreal I called on Archbishop Ger-
manos of the Syrian Church, who was visiting his
churches in Canada and the United States. In a street
off Notre Dame I found him staying with one of his
Syrian people. He was sitting in his black robes with
his presbyters beside him, and his people were crowd-

72 THE MASTER BUILDER
ing in to greet him and to consult him. It was a pic
ture from the unchanging East.
It was just Paul over again. I see him come in to
Lystra and the converts crowd around him delighted to
see him, and I am sure the first question is, Where is
Barnabas? And the next is, Have you recovered from
the effects of the stoning? And so they talk together
in affectionate intercourse, and Silas is introduced, and
at night the presbyters bring their difficulties to be
solved, and are taught still further of the Gospel of
Christ, for they do not know very much, these presby
ters, and there are no written Gospels as yet to teach
them. Amongst the visitors that day was probably young
Timothy, who lived with his mother and grandmother
on the Iconium road. Paul seems to have known him
at his previous visit. He had probably been present
when Paul was stoned. He must have been a very
attractive lad, for the older man was greatly drawn to
him. From all the disciples at Lystra he singled him out:
"Him Paul would have go forth with him." He was
a lonely man with a tender, affectionate heart, and it
would be delightful to have with him and to have the
training of this youth who seemed to love him already,
and who might be to him in his old age his son in the
Gospel. So he inquires of the presbyters and friends, " What
do you think of Timothy? Is he a man to make a
presbyter? Is he a man to take with me ? " And they
reply, " He is well reported of by the brethren at
Iconium." So he directs him to be circumcised, since
his mother is a Jewess. He arranges for his ordina-

SECOND MISSIONARY TOUR 73
tion, since he will have to administer the sacraments.
Perhaps at Lystra or at Iconium the following Sunday
that solemn ordination took place. Many years
afterwards toward the close of his life he writes to
Timothy, who had become to him all or more than he
had ever hoped, and who at that time was himself
a Bishop of the Church : " I thank God for thee my
son Timothy, unceasing is my remembrance of thee in
my prayers. Night and day I am longing to see thee.
I remember the faith of thy grandmother Lois and thy
mother Eunice. Stir up the gift of God that is in thee
through the laying on of my hands, together with
the hands of the presbytery." x " You know what I
suffered in Lystra."

But Paul cannot delay with his friends at Lystra.
A higher Power is compelling him westward — ever
westward. St. Luke has so set his eyes on the western
goal that he will not take time to tell what happened
on the way. " They went through Galatia," he says.
Evidently Paul meant to go through without stopping.
The historian does not tell that there came on him a
sudden, sharp attack, probably of that old malady —
that loathsome " thorn in the flesh " which he refers
to in his letters, which so prostrated and humiliated
him whenever it occurred. It is generally believed
to be a disfiguring affection of the eyes, accompanied
with horrible pain like a stake driven through the
flesh. We only know of this stay of Paul amongst the
Galatians through a letter which he wrote them after-
>i Tim. i: 14; a Tim. i:6.

74 THE MASTER BUILDER
ward. It is a stern letter of rebuke for their fickle
ness, and in it he affectionately recalls this first visit
and their loving reception of the poor, sick stranger
in a strange land : " Ye did not despise me or loathe
me in my humiliating malady. Ye listened to my
teaching on my sick bed as if I were an angel of God.
I bear you witness that ye would have plucked out
your own eyes and given them to me if it would do me
any good. Why have ye changed? 0, foolish Gala
tians, who hath bewitched you, that ye have so soon
turned aside." It is a most interesting sidelight,
showing the intense earnestness of a man in the misery
of his sickness telling these wild Galatian tribes the
glorious news about Jesus.
By the way, these Galatians ought to be the most
interesting to us of all Paul's converts. They are the
nearest race to ourselves of all whom Paul had met.
The others are Greeks and Romans, and Jews and East
ern tribes. These are the people whose kinsmen we
know. Galatians is the Greek name for Gauls. The
Greeks called the inhabitants of western France,
Galatians. The Romans called them Gauls. Their
old name is Celts. They are the Celtic people who
inhabited France and Ireland. The Epistle to the
Galatians is the Epistle to the Gauls — to the kindred
of the wild Irish in the ancient world. And Paul
found in them the same characteristics, the same lov
ing, affectionate hearts for the sick stranger in trouble,
the same impetuous nature, the same fickleness which
he rebukes, the fighting and devouring which he bids
them avoid. Fighting is in the very nature of the Celt.
To Irish and other Celts to-day it should be inter
esting to find their ancient kinsmen nursing St. Paul.

SECOND MISSIONARY TOUR 75
I hope it will make them read the Epistle to the
Galatians. VI
Now the missionaries have left Galatia. They
are moving on westward — westward. Their route
on the map is almost a straight line toward the sun
set. Something is impelling them. Something hap
pens to stop them at every turn from the path, " We
assayed to go into Mysia, but the spirit of Jesus suf
fered us not. We were forbidden of the Holy Ghost
to preach the word in Asia." On, on, ever on, toward
the West.
At last from the hilltops they catch sight of the
sea, and across it the dim outlines of the mountains
of Europe. But Paul, and Silas, and Timothy are
looking on what was much more exciting to the world
of their day. They are looking down upon the Plain
of Troas. Surely Paul as a Roman citizen was stirred
at the sight. Surely young Timothy knew of its roman
tic associations. For — do you know where we are?
We are on the Plains of Troy, the land sung by Homer
and Virgil, the cradle of the Roman race, the dream
land of chivalry and romance to the ancient world.
To this day schoolboys everywhere study the classic
tale of Priam and Agamemnon, and Helen of Troy,
and Achilles dragging dead Hector around the walls.
There is no reference here to these classic glories.
I do not think Paul was excited about them as we should
be. Put yourself in his place. If you were a courier
hurrying back from Belgium with the news that Ger
many had surrendered, and that the liberty of Europe
was saved, you would hardly spend a day sentimental-

76 THE MASTER BUILDER
izing on the field of Waterloo. Paul was God's
courier, with exciting tidings all fresh and new that
the son of God had come; that there was forgiveness
of sins; that death was only birth into a fuller fife;
that humanity was having a splendid new start.
It was all new and fresh and exciting. The poor
old world was in sore need of it. Paul could not
spend much thought on the glories of Troy.
VII
Here in Troy came another of the close friendships
of Paul's life. There was a young physician, prob
ably practising in Troas. Perhaps he came to attend
Paul, not yet recovered from his Galatian illness. He
was a man of literary taste; he had probably known
Paul before. At any rate, he was to know him well
in the future. He became to him his friend and com
panion, his physician in illness, the biographer to whom
we owe the story of his life: "Luke, the beloved
physician," he calls him, and in the loneliness and
depression of the days before his death, when all others
had forsaken him, he writes, " only Luke is with me."
Think what it meant to the world this acquaintance
with Paul. St. Luke's name has become a household
word through all the world, through all the ages.
But not as a physician.
Through his acquaintance with Paul, God called
him to a greater, wider work — to give to the world the
Acts of the Apostles and the precious Gospel of St.
Luke. How do we know that Luke met Paul at Troas?
Because in his history he changes for the first time
from the third to the first person. If you are reading

SECOND MISSIONARY TOUR 77
the Acts carefully you will find in certain sections
" we " instead of " they." Where this occurs we may
assume that St. Luke was present.
VIII
We are now in the theatre of the present war. The
men who are fighting around Gallipoli, the allied
troops encamped at Salonika, to which afterwards
came the Epistles to the Thessalonians, should be
interested in this part of the story of St. Paul. They
are standing where Paul stood 1900 years earlier.
They, too, are standing there for the helping of the
world, for the honour of Christ.
Now comes a point in the story of vital interest
to ourselves. One evening Paul stood at sunset
on the confines of Asia at Troy looking out at the dim
mountains of Europe across the sea, and when dark
ness came — in the visions of the night he learned the
meaning of that impulse that was urging him west
ward. The meaning was Europe. In Europe was
to be planted the banner of the Cross. A vision ap
peared to Paul in the night — a man of Macedonia
beseeching him and saying, " Come over and help us.
And Straightway we concluded that God had called
us to preach the good news unto them. Straight
way we sought to go forth." In the morning round
the shipping in the harbour were the newly arrived
travellers seeking a passage. " Setting sail from
Troas we made a straight course to Samothrace, and
next day to Neapolis, and from thence to Philippi."
Thus came the Gospel to Europe.

CHAPTER VIII
How the Gospel Came to Europe
That was a great day in the history of the world
when Paul and his comrades first set foot on the shores
of Europe and laid the foundations of the Kingdom of
God amongst the orogressive and influential peoples
of the West.
It seemed but a very ordinary day in the bustling
harbour of Neapolis, where amid the clanking of chains
and the shouts of hurrying porters unlading the ships,
four poor missionaries landed unnoticed and alone
and wended their way to the city to look for lodgings.
From the quayside we climb the hill road with them,
and with them pause to look down on another scene
of chivalry and romance. We are still on historic
ground. Straight from Troy we have come, to the
plains of Philippi, which, after Troy itself, would in
the days of Paul most stir the pulses of any citizen
of the Empire seeing it for the first time. You remem
ber how Shakespeare in " Julius Caesar " has immortal
ized those plains of Philippi.
Paul and his comrades are looking on the scene
where Brutus and Cassius fought with Marc Antony
for the liberty of the world 90 years before. Here
is the marsh where Antony crossed. Here is the
camp ground of Brutus and Cassius. Here on the
hill Cassius died. There Brutus fell on his sword
78

HOW THE GOSPEL CAME TO EUROPE 79
when the fight for freedom was lost. One wonders
if Paul and his comrades realized that day on the field
where the fight for freedom was lost that they were
taking up the fight where Brutus left it, that they
with their simple story of Christ were to do more for
the world's freedom than all the warriors of the past.
n I
It is Sabbath morning in Philippi. The Missiona
ries are looking for a synagogue to worship in. There
is no synagogue. By the Rabbinical law unless there
were sufficient wise men to form a court there could
be no synagogue. But where they could not have a
synagogue they must have a little prayer place of some
kind. For the wise Rabbis knew what we are learn
ing to our cost, how the neglect of public worship leads
to practical atheism.
Therefore, Paul expected to find some place of
prayer, and they found it in the Jewish quarter down
by the river. When they looked in they found a
congregation of women only. Their men had stayed
at home. Which custom is not peculiar to Philippi.
So they came and taught these women their story
of Jesus. Some people think that a congregation
of men is much more important to preach to than one
of women. One would like to know why — except
perhaps that they need it more. These few women
may not seem very important, but their attitude
made them important. They did not know much,
but they knew that they wanted God, and whoso
ever knows that is very near to knowing more. To
whom more fitly than to praying women could the
gospel of Jesus come, especially in that old world

80 THE MASTER BUILDER
so cruel to women where Jesus would be the more
needed ?
Chief amongst them was Lydia, a seller of purple
robes from Thyatira, whose heart the Lord opened as
she gave attention to the things spoken by Paiil.
Don't you think she deserved it — because she gave
attention — because she was there at all.
This was not Jerusalem where the Sabbath was
observed. There was no Sabbath in Philippi. It
was a heathen city. The shops and bazaars were in
full swing. The rival sellers of purple were making
their gains. Lydia thought it worth while to lose
something in order to worship God, and so she won
the blessing of being the first Christian in Europe,
and probably had something to do with the founding of
the Church in her native town, which you read of in
the Epistles to the Seven Churches. " To the angel
of the Church in Thyatira write."
So when the gospel of Jesus came to Europe, it
came first to women because the men were not there.
This is a story for women. One likes to get a glimpse
of women in their relation to Jesus. Women were the
last at His cross when He died. Women were the first
at His sepulchre when He rose, and in all the stories
of bigotry, and hatred and desertion in the gospels
there is none of women hostile to Jesus nor of any
woman deserting Him. Here women are the first mem
bers of his Church in Europe, and in all the ages since
they have been the centre and heart of it. The men
of Europe have talked and preached and stood more in
the limelight, but it is the woman in the home, teaching
her little child, that has made the Christianity of
Europe.

HOW THE GOSPEL CAME TO EUROPE 81

HI
Some months later there is another woman in the
story. A poor, half-crazy slave girl, a spiritualist
medium in touch with unseen mysteries. The Greek
poets of that time describe such women. She is in
touch with the spirit world. The spirits which touch
her are evil, but they give her second sight. She can
tell fortunes, and "she brought her masters much gain
by soothsaying." Her uncanny knowledge has taught
her too much. Day by day wherever they go she
follows Paul and Silas with her crazy cry, "These men
are the servants of the Most High God, these men are
the servants of the Most High God," till at last Paul
grieved for the poor girl, and annoyed by her impor
tunity, cast out the evil spirit in the name of Christ.
"And her masters saw that the hope of their gains
were gone."
Thus came the first assault from the heathen.
Paul's enemies up to this had always been Jews. The
Jews attacked him when he touched their religion;
the heathen when he touched their pockets.
Next morning Paul is up with Silas before the court,
listening to the prosecutor's charge. "These men are
Jews; they are disturbing the city; they are upsetting
religion; they are teaching things not lawful for us
being Romans." The magistrates make short work of
the case, "Strip them, flog them, put them in the
dungeon." "How we were shamefully entreated at
Philippi," he writes in later years. That is Europe's
way of thanking Paul for his gospel.
It was a pretty cruel world in which he lived his
outer life, but it was a glorious world in which his

82 THE MASTER BUILDER
spirit lived in the practice of the presence of God.
"He endured as seeing Him who is invisible."
There are in the loud stunning tide
Of this world's care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime.
Who carry music in their heart
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart,
Who ply their daily task with busier feet
Because their secret souls a holier strain repeat.
IV
Such was Paul. That is what made him a hero.
We are proud to-day of the dashing heroism that rushes
fearlessly to the cannon's mouth, but there is higher
heroism in many lives which never get a V. C. or a
D. S. O. Look at this poor little sick Jew who "cut
out the hero stuff" and took it all in the day's work.
Weak, sensitive, highly strung, he is tied to the whip
ping-post and the white flesh flogged to ribbons on his
back. He is flung into the stench of the inner dun
geon. He never whines about such things. He has
too much to be glad about. Look at his whole life —
disappointed, persecuted, deserted, misunderstood — and
then hear the continual refrain of his letters — " Rejoice
in the Lord" — "Rejoicing in tribulation" — "Our light
affliction is but for a moment." "I have learned," he
writes to these people of Philippi, "in whatsoever state
I am therein to be content."
That religion of Christ is worth something if it
makes heroes like that. And it is no unreasoning
fanaticism that makes him brave and cheery. It is
simple common sense. "What matter if men oppress
me? God is beside me. What matter if my preach-

HOW THE GOSPEL CAME TO EUROPE 83
ing fails this time ? God will win out some day. What
matter if they, put me to death ? It is but to depart
and be with Christ, which is far better."
The world cannot conquer that sort of man. It
cannot even make him very greatly unhappy. "This
is the victory that overcometh the world even our
faith." At midnight they were singing hymns unto the Lord,
the beautiful old Psalms learned in their childhood,
"Praise the Lord O my Soul." "The Lord hears the
mourning of those in captivity."
"And the prisoners were listening." Yes, and the
jailer too. It was a new experience to hear the pris
oners, instead of howling, singing songs of praise.
I could not do it. Perhaps you could not do it.
But you can imagine men of Paul's type, who could
see what life really means to every poor servant of
Christ, a life only begun on earth, a life of splendid
values, of ages of progress, a life that leaves you young
when you are older than Methuselah, a life of eternal
joyous service in the presence of the Lord. You can
imagine such a man looking at his troubles as we look
on the little child crying over her broken doll. One
day we too shall see it that way.

Towards morning came the earthquake shock and
the shaking of the prison and the jailer rushing in to
commit suicide, believing that his prisoners had fled.
He finds Paul and Silas calmly waiting, and one can
understand the man's feelings. He knew something
already of these men who were proclaiming some
wonderful good news, some extraordinary way of sal-

84 THE MASTER BUILDER
vation. He has seen them flogged yesterday for their
teaching. He has heard them singing their doxologies
in the night. And there comes on him the awe of the
supernatural — the admiration of a brave man for their
courage and calmness, the wonder at the curious secret
power in their lives. He would like to know the inner
meaning of it all. He has little belief in his gods. He
has little to comfort him in the troubles of his life.
From the depths of his poor soul the question is forced,
"Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Is there any way
in which I could be a man such as you? "
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt
be saved. And the man believed and his whole house."
Of course, it does not mean that Paul said no more
— that an ignorant pagan became Christian in a mo
ment. Paul was not the sort of man to baptize ignorant
people. He settled down to teach the man and his
family, the love of God, the story of Christ, the call of
a holy life — the strength of the Holy Ghost through
prayer and sacraments. It was an interesting sight as
the light fell on the prison walls and the staring criminals
and the blood drying on the apostle's back as he post
poned all thought of comfort and relief in his eagerness
to win a poor heathen soul. Surely it made a close tie
between them for ever. I like to think of the pleasure
to Paul in meeting that friend whenever he revisited
Philippi. When I read the Epistle to the Philippians,
I like to think of the jailer in church listening to that
letter of his friend, the first Sunday after it arrived.
VI
Let us not pass over the jailer's question and its
answer. It is hard to guess how much that poor

HOW THE GOSPEL CAME TO EUROPE 85
ignorant pagan meant. At any rate he saw the vast
difference between his own poor, struggling, dreary life
and that of those bright, cheery souls who seemed in
such friendly intercourse with their gods that they were
always happy, who for some secret joy that was set
before them made light of flogging and imprisonment
and danger and death. "If I could get to be like them!
If I could learn their secret! What must I do?"
Perhaps he expected Paul to say you must be good.
You must conquer this sin and that, you must acquire
this virtue and that. Paul meant him to do all this —
but he did not put it that way. "Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Join the ranks
of my dear Lord, the Lord of Heaven and earth. Put
yourself in His hands as I have done and He will do all
for you. Offer yourself to Him — let me baptize you
into His name — and all the comfort and peace and joy
and strength that you see in us will come to you too,
and you shall be as we are."
And that poor jailer risked it in simple faith — and
Jesus confirmed the promise of His servant — and the
new beautiful life began. No wonder with results such
as that around him that Paul felt it worth while to
suffer for his gospel.
And the Church has gone on ever since with just
that same simple gospel. And all through the ages
men have been testing its truth. In days of dissatis
faction and aspiration after better things they have
asked, What must I do to be saved from my sins, to
become pure and noble and generous and true, to be
happy in this life and hopeful for the next ? And the
Church has replied, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
— give yourself to Lord Jesus. And they have tried it

86 THE MASTER BUILDER
as the jailer of Philippi tried it. And the answer has
come. VII
Next day Paul and Silas were banished from Philippi
and had to leave their new friends and new-made con
verts. It was a great comfort that they were able to
leave Luke with them. We are not definitely told that
they did. But at this point the narrative which has
been using the first person "we" — again changes to
"they" — tells only of Paul and Silas going. So we
infer that Luke remained behind to watch over that
infant community and perhaps, too, in his spare time
elaborate his notes for his Gospel or for the Acts.
If there were many converts like Lydia and the
jailer, religion must have been very real in that little
church of Philippi. And apparently it was so. Ten
years afterwards Paul writes from a Roman prison his
Epistle to the Philippians, the most delightful reading
of all his epistles, and from it we learn much. For
some reason these. Philippians seem nearest to his heart;
they are the only people to whom he writes no reproofs
and the only people whom he allowed to minister to
him in his necessities. With all others he kept his
proud position of earning his own living and refusing
all gifts of money.
Evidently in all his troubles Paul had the comfort
of very close personal friendships amongst his converts,
and especially it would seem in Philippi. Most clergy
know that one of the pleasantest things in their minis
try is the kindly friendship of their people, even when
they very little deserve it.
But what is especially noticeable in the epistle is

HOW THE GOSPEL CAME TO EUROPE 87
the close personal relation to Our Lord, both of Paul
and his converts, and as a consequence the joyous tone
of the whole letter. One sees that the Christian life
to them was such a tender, personal relation to the Lord
Jesus. He was no dead teacher of noble doctrines.
He was the ever-present close personal friend, the living,
loving Lord for whom they were glad to suffer and would
be glad to die. Christianity was a very real thing in
the teaching of Paul.

CHAPTER IX
In Athens
Recently the papers have been busy with Salonika,
where some of the lads dear to ourselves are taking
part to-day in holding that difficult position. You
have seen the pictures of it in the war illustrations,
the beautiful old town nestling deep in the mountains
by the sea, with its strong fortifications on the hill
behind. It would be interesting to give this lecture
to the British gunners to-day if I could show them
the path right between their guns where Paul and Silas,
sore from the flogging at Philippi, came down that
summer morning long ago into the town. It was then
called Thessalonica, and to its people afterwards came
the very first words of the New Testament ever written,
Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians.
Do you imagine he began by brilliant spectacular
preaching? Nay. The first thing was to look for
lodgings and the next to look for work in some tent-
maker's shop to cover the expenses of support and
travelling. It is only as I look closely into his life that
I realize what a hero Paul was. In the keen strain of
clerical life I wonder how long I should stand it if I
had to sit up at night to cut and stitch tentcloth to
earn my breakfast — if I had a chronic disease — if I
was persecuted and disliked — and if I varied the
monotony by getting stoned or flogged once a year. I
might do it for the sake of some one whom I greatly
88

IN ATHENS 89
loved. It helps me to see how much a man can do who
is intensely in earnest. It helps me to estimate how
deep was this man's love to the Lord who had been so
good to him on the Damascus road. Those months of
study are helping me to appreciate and admire Paul as
I never did before. II
As his custom was everywhere, he began his teach
ing in the Jewish Synagogue, where he and his audience
had their Bible, the Old Testament as common ground.
Here he argues from the Scriptures that their idea of
a Messiah, glorious in temporal power, was an error —
"opening and alleging that it behoved the Christ to
suffer and to rise again from the dead and that this
Jesus whom I proclaim unto you is the promised
Messiah." It was the very line that Jesus took with
the disciples at Emmaus on Easter day. "Ought not
the Christ to have suffered these things and entered
into his glory? And thus He interpreted to them in
all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."
It was a hard proposition for Jews. For ages the
national hope had been fed on glowing pictures of
Messiah and his brilliant reign, ignoring all the hints
of suffering and humiliation, how he should bear our
griefs and carry our sorrows. Indeed it is only through
the life of Christ and the teaching of the Apostles that
that side of the picture has come out into prominence.
" And some were persuaded " — and some were
not. It is so in all preaching and depends largely on
the attitude of the hearers towards the right. Even
Paul could not make some men care. I notice that
the believers were chiefly Greek proselytes who were

90 THE MASTER BUILDER
admitted to the synagogues as a sort of inferior
outer circle. And you can see why. The Jews had a
great religion already. The poor Greeks had nothing
but the fables about gods in whom they had lost belief,
and who could never be any help to an earnest soul.
If Paul's gospel were true — if God were really in close
touch with men, as Paul said He was, it was delight
ful news for them in their sore need of Him.
Then came the old trouble. The unbelieving Jews
stirred up the rabble, the loafers, and idlers, the lewd
fellows of the baser sort. The mob was in a riot. Paul
could not show his face in the streets. After about
two months he had to go.
One would expect the little church to die out now
when its great leaders are gone. Far from it. Here
we see the innate power of the Gospel as Christ pre
dicted. " Like seed," he says " sown in the ground."
Like seed. For the seed has in it a hidden life, you
cannot hold it back. It must grow. Throw a hand
ful of seeds on the ground and neglect them. They
will grow. Throw a few acorns, pile up rocks to keep
them down, they will force up their way and wedge
open the rocks. You cannot hold down a seed with
the life germ in it. So Paul's little group of converts
by the power of the Holy Spirit grew and flourished
and rejoiced in the Lord. They would seem even to
have spread the gospel in the districts around. The
best modern parallel I know is that of the poor heathen
of Uganda in Africa whose bishop has told us how they
started little missionary bands to carry God's good
news to the heathen around them.
The Thessalonians show the quickest growth of
any church we know. Only a couple of months later

IN ATHENS 91
Paul wrote his first epistle to them in great delight.
Two months ago they were degraded idolators, he says,
who turned from idols to serve the living God. Now
already " the word of the Lord hath sounded forth
from you in Macedonia and Achaia. In every place
your faith towards God has gone forth."
Let us believe more in the power of that living
seed. Let us put more heart and hope into our mis
sionary efforts, for we are sowing the seed of eternal life
and nothing can stop it. It has the life in itself.
hi
I just notice, in passing, his next station, Berea,
because it is the only place where the whole synagogue
of the Jews gave him a fair hearing. They were not
bigots like the other Jews; and like many of our
selves. They were fair, honest men who could listen
with open mind. That is all God wants for His truth.
Not blind credulity, but the honest heart that will
listen fairly. So the Bereans have come down to us
in history with a fine reputation. " These were more
noble than those of Thessalonica for they heard the
word with all readiness of mind and searched the
Scriptures whether these things were so." They
searched the Scriptures, " therefore many of them
believed." We have little more to tell of them. For the bigots
of Thessalonica found out where Paul was and soon
Berea became too hot to hold him. Paul was the chief
object of their pursuit. If they could get rid of him,
the others did not matter much. Paul was not very
good at .taking care of himself. I think he was sick
again. The kindly Bereans had to carry him off to

92 THE MASTER BUILDER
the sea and put him on board a ship of the Athens
line, but he left Silas and Timothy at Berea to set the
little church on its feet, as he had previously left Luke
at Philippi. For Paul was not a mere wandering
preacher, he was an Apostle and Bishop founding the
church. He had to leave everywhere the nucleus of
a church with its ordained ministry and sacraments.
I am the more convinced that he must have been
sick, for they not only carried him off to the ship, but in
the kindness of their hearts they would not let their
poor nerve-racked friend go on alone. They went with
him and looked after him on the way to Athens and
came back with the ship on its return voyage.
IV
Nothing like a sea voyage for a man sick and tired.
For three days he is sailing by that lovely coast amid
scenes vivid with heroic memories. Poetry and history
and romance are on every side. Olympus and Mara
thon and the pass of Thermopylae where the Spar
tans died. And the soft sea breezes are around him
bringing God's healing power to body and spirit till
on the third morning the clouds on the far horizon
began to take on substance. He makes out head
lands and cliffs and then the sun brightens on the
distant fairyland of white towers and spires like a
delicate lacework against the blue. That is Athens!
Famous, glorious, beautiful Athens, the world-centre
of knowledge and beauty and art.
But that is only our point of view. We should be
enthusiastic over Athens. Paul would not. His He
brew ideal was not beauty and art but Righteousness.
He would value more a sweating slave boy who loved

IN ATHENS 93
the Lord than a whole university of artists and philos
ophers. Some would call this fanaticism. It depends
on their viewpoint. His passionate missionary zeal
seems fanaticism to men who care only for money-
making. His longing after God and his deep sense of
sin seem fanaticism to the careless crowd. It depends
on one's viewpoint. At any rate, like many men
who have accomplished great things for the world,
he was a man of one persistent idea.
He would feel quite lonely amongst these cultured
pagans with no Christian soul to talk with him about
Jesus. He writes touchingly to Thessalonica, " I
was left in Athens alone." He directs his Berean
friends as they bid him good-bye, " Tell Silas and
Timothy to come to me as soon as they can." A
strange city is a lonely place anyway. A strange
pagan city is especially lonely for Paul.

I see him next day wandering lonely through that
lovely city, wondering at its glorious sights, its stately
civic buildings, its splendid temples of Juno and
Ceres, and Apollo and Minerva, the multitude of ex
quisite statues of the gods in gold and silver and white
marble. Every street corner has its deity, every in
stitution has its patron god. One heathen writer
tells us that Athens was swarming with statues —
another says satirically that it was easier to find gods
there than men. If the outward appearance repre
sented inward realities, Athens should be the most
religious city in the world.
But, alas, Paul knew that they represented no
realities except the shameful realities of impurity and

94 THE MASTER BUILDER
insincerity. Once in early virile days the Greeks were
men of purpose. They believed in the supernatural.
They believed in the gods and in the strength of that
belief they did heroic deeds which the world will not
easily forget.
Now they had lost their faith. The beautiful gods
of Olympus were but heroes of fable. Their worship
was but a screen for lust and rottenness. Life was
beautiful, bright, sparkling, on the surface. But it
was utterly hollow. The human soul made in the
likeness of God could not get satisfaction out of beauty
alone. The day of sorrow came to them and there
was no comfort. The day of death came and they had
no hope. In art and culture they were first of the
nations. If it were possible for human wisdom alone
to find out God, Athens must have found him. But,
alas, as Paul writes later to the Romans " the world
by wisdom found not God." For it is through spiritual
aspiration, not through intellectual knowledge, that
men find the Father.
To a cultured tourist Athens of that day would be
a dream of beauty and delight. But Paul was not
enjoying it. " His spirit was stirred within him as
he saw the city crowded with idols." " The ugly little
Jew," says Renan, " had no taste for beauty." That
may be. But that is not the explanation. That
ugly little Jew stood on a higher plane. His eyes
were on God and Righteousness, and the love of Christ,
and the strength to conquer sin, and the glory of the
life eternal. So he looked on these proud people,
not with envy or admiration, but with heartfelt
pity. Vanity of vanities. They had missed the
Highest.

IN ATHENS 95
And the saddest thing was that they were not sad
about it at all. People can get accustomed to doing
without God. In our own city as well as in Athens,
there are many who seem to get on very well without
Him, except in their better moments, when Conscience
stirs, when vague aspirations after better things come,
when bereavement and sorrow and dissatisfaction
with life, bring blind longing for something they hardly
know what. At other times — and that is the tragedy
of it — they do not miss God at all. That is the
tragedy. " Thou sayest I am rich, I have need of
nothing, and knowest not that thou art poor and miser
able and blind and naked." The Athenians would
be amused at the pity of that ugly little Jew, But
the ugly little Jew was right. VI
Wondering amongst this profusion of images, with
his spirit stirred within him at a whole city given to
idolatry, I see him suddenly pause. I see his attention
caught. It is a white statue at a street corner with
this inscription Agnosto Theo, " To God unknown."
Why does that arrest him? For this reason I think
if we may judge from the use he made of it later in
his speech, that his broad sympathies read in it an
expression of the craving of the heathen world for some
thing higher and better than they knew, a blind " grop
ing after God, if haply they might find Him who in
truth is not far away from every one of us." The
early legends of many races bear witness to this crav
ing — from that Arabian idolator before Mahomet's
day, repeating his poor prayer, " God, if I knew how
thou wishest to be served, I would serve thee, but,

96 THE MASTER BUILDER
alas, I know not," to the prayer to the blue sky in the
ancient books of India.
When we tremble like the cloud driven by the wind,
When we commit an offence through forgetting the Right,
Have mercy, Varuna, have mercy.
These were cries to the unknown God. It was some
comfort to Paul in the midst of his despondency,
" They have cravings for something beyond what they
know. I can at any rate tell them about the unknown
God." VII
So he made it his custom to sit in the stately central
square, where the gay idlers met and chatted and gos
siped in the afternoon. They were a gay, frivolous,
gossiping crowd. Demosthenes had charged their
ancestors fiercely, " Instead of guarding your liberties,
you are for ever gadding about and looking for news."
The Bible story tells us that " they spent their time
in nothing else but to tell or to hear some new thing."
So they soon got to talking with the ugly Jew. I
don't think he was an easy man to talk to, but in
this case he wanted to talk, and anybody could get
on with these pleasant, courteous Athenians. So
Paul talked with them as Socrates four hundred
years earlier had talked about the unknown God.
He had three or four weeks of this intercourse, and I
cannot help thinking that it accomplished far more
than his famous later speech before the Areopagus.
Soon the philosophers were introduced to him.
Philsophers were thoughtful men, guessing at the riddle
of the universe, and from their conclusions forming

i r

IN ATHENS 97
rules of life. They professed to be seekers after truth,
and no man can be that without helping towards Right
eousness. But, of course, their practice often fell
below their professions. The two schools here men
tioned are the Epicureans and Stoics. The Epicu
reans taught that the world was made by chance.
The gods were not troubling themselves about men.
Therefore, men need not trouble about them. Happi
ness is the chief end of man. Therefore, seek happi
ness. In theory they would say seek other men's
happiness too. But in degraded days it read : " Seek
your own happiness. You will be a short time alive,
you will be a long time dead. Let us eat and drink,
for to-morrow we die."
The Stoic had a nobler teaching. Seek virtue.
Listen to the voice of conscience. Probably there is
some great Being behind that voice. Nobody knows.
But even if not, you should follow the inner voice.
Take life calmly. Do not get excited over it. Bear
its ills silently with dignity. If they get too bad you
can always get out by suicide. With the exception of
the suicide the Stoics had a very noble philosophy of
life. But of course they also were not as good as their
creed. I do not suppose Paul took much interest in their
creeds. He was too greatly in earnest about his won
derful gospel. So they were puzzled. Some said he
was a mere babbler. Others that he was a setter forth
of strange gods because he talked of Jesus and the
Resurrection. At any rate, he had something to say
which they had not heard before and they thought his
teaching of sufficient importance to be submitted to
public enquiry.

98 THE MASTER BUILDER

VIII

It is the court day of the Areopagus, the Senate
which had charge of matters connected with the State
religion. On the hill of Mars beneath the open sky,
the councillors are assembled — grave seniors, men of
distinction in the nation. Four hundred years before
on that same hill the Council had met to judge the
greatest of all their thinkers. He was charged with
disparaging the gods and bidding men turn to the guid
ing voice within. And for that Socrates had to drink
the hemlock poison. Now they have Paul on a sim
ilar charge. But Paul will not have to drink hemlock
poison. The Athenians do not take religion so seriously
now. They are just politely interested. "May we know
what this new teaching is?" It does not read as if they
cared very much. But Paul cared. It was the chance
of his life for bringing his message before the cultured
scholars and leaders of Greece. He never had an
audience like that before and never would again.
You may be sure he prepared his speech carefully.
You may be sure he prayed hard for the help of the
Holy Ghost.
Read the speech over carefully. Let me first offer
these preliminary remarks :
(i) Notice how different his sermons to Jews and
pagans. With the one he appeals to the Word of God.
With the other to the works of God in nature around.
(2) The speech you have here could be said in two
minutes, so that evidently it is only a brief summary —
perhaps Paul's notes of the speech which he handed
to Luke. (3) The important part was never delivered. Just

IN ATHENS 99
as he was leading up to his teaching about Christ the
audience contemptuously broke up the meeting.
(4) Our version uses an unfortunate word at the
opening. "Men of Athens, I perceive that you are
too superstitious." Paul would never have said that.
Not only would it be discourteous, but it would preju
dice his whole speech. The Greek word means re
ligious, devoted to the worship of gods. He used it
as a complimentary introduction. IX
Now hear the speech. Put yourselves in their place.
I am Paul. You are the learned and dignified assembly
before whom I plead — not for myself but for my dear
Lord. Above us is the open sky. Around us are the
glorious temples and the beautiful images gleaming in
white marble, and silver and gold. Let me expand
the speech as I think he did.
"O Athenians, I perceive that you are a very re
ligious people, devoted to the worship of your gods.
You charge me with introducing strange gods. Nay.
For as I studied the object of your worship through the
city, I came on an altar with this inscription 'To the
God unknown.' That unknown God whom you wor
ship, not knowing Him, Him declare I unto you. That
unknown God has revealed Himself. He is the one
God over all gods who made the world and all things
therein. He being Lord of the Earth dwelleth not in
temples made with hands as you represent Him. He
fills this glorious world around you and all the worlds.
It is He who giveth to all life and breath and all things.
He has made all the nations and appointed the bounds
of their habitations. He has placed them for his gra-

100 THE MASTER BUILDER
cious purpose that they should seek God if happily
they might find Him who in truth is not far from any
of us. Deep in your hearts you know this is true.
Your own poets confess it. ' We are also His offspring.' "
Up to this, the audience are entirely with him. It
is a fine speech and appeals to them.
"Forasmuch as He is so great and we are His
children, we ought not to belittle Him, we ought not
to think that the Godhead is like unto these images
of gold, silver, and stone, graven by art and men's
device. Those small thoughts were allowable in the
child races of the world. We are beyond that now.
The times of the old ignorance God overlooked. But
the end of it has come. The race is to rise. Old things
are passed away. God has revealed Himself. And
now He commandeth every man to repent and turn to
Him. For He has revealed Himself, by Him whom
He hath ordained who shall one day judge the world.
I and my nation, have seen that Appointed One. We
did not know Him. We crucified Him. But God has
given confirmation unto all men in that He hath
raised Him from the dead." X
Now there is coming the crisis of the whole speech
which the rest only led up to. Paul is now going to
preach Christ. But in a moment the whole life goes
out of his speech. The audience is laughing! An eager
speaker can stand uproar and opposition, but he can
not go on when people are laughing. They are moving
in their seats, impatiently muttering to each other,
"Nonsense, come away. The man is a fool. Resur-
surection from the dead indeed! Let us get away out

IN ATHENS 101
of this!" The chiefs of the assembly are courteous to
the end. They bow him politely out of the court.
"Thank you, sir, for your speech. We hope to hear you
again some other time."
Thus "Paul went out from among them." I see
him walk back to his lodging sore and disappointed
and feeling as every impassioned speaker at such times
would feel. "I have failed badly. I might have done
better if I had kept back the mention of the Resur
rection till I had told them the story of Jesus. Anyway
I am done with these conceited scholars. I go back to
the simple work-people who will listen to me. In future
I will preach Christ only."
He could riot easily forget that day. I see the
memory of it repeatedly in his letters later. "Not
many wise or noble are called. The wisdom of this
world is foolishness with God. We preach Christ cru
cified to the Jews, a stumbling-block to the Greeks'
foolishness — but to us who are called, Christ the power
of God and the wisdom of God."

CHAPTER X
The New Testament in the Making
Paul has left Athens, disappointed and discouraged.
He has failed — and he does not like failing. And he is
a good deal troubled too about his converts at Salon
ika. The last he had seen of them was in the street
riot, when the Jews had stirred up the scum of the town
against them. With keen sympathy he realizes all that
they have to face, the movements against their faith;
the lies and slanders, the many temptations that would
drag them back to their old evil life.
And he can get no news. At Athens, Timothy had
caught him up, but in spite of his loneliness he had sent
him to Salonika to help and to report. But no message
has come yet.
So Paul is troubled. It is not strange that Paul
should have his despondent moments. We are all
creatures of temperament. He was a truly happy man.
His high faith in God taught him a boundless optimism.
He could sing psalms in the dungeon. He could bid
his people rejoice always. Neither life nor death had
any terrors for a man who knew God as he did. Every
Christian has a right to go through life with this op
timist attitude.
But we all have our passing fits of depression,
especially if we are in bad health, when we are not able
to realize all that we have to be glad about. I don't
102

THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE MAKING 103
suppose they do us much harm provided that they come
seldom. It is human, and Paul was very human.
ii
So it was a rather troubled man that walked one
day unnoticed and unknown into the great, wealthy,
wicked city of Corinth. How little the people of Cor
inth could have imagined that in ages to come the
chief historic significance of their great city would
centre on the fact that this poor Jewish missionary had
come that day into it. Down in the lower town he finds
a tentmaker at his shop door. He asks for work. The
tentmaker is a friendly man and takes rather a fancy
to him. He tells him that his name is Aquila, lately
banished with other Jews from Rome. He introduces
him to his good wife Priscilla and gives him a place
in the workshop and a room in his house. And thus
begins one of the pleasantest friendships of Paul's life,
a friendship that resulted for Aquila and Priscilla in
the joy of becoming followers of Christ.
Thus Paul began his ministry in Corinth, "in weak
ness and fear and much trembling," he says. His fail
ure in Athens had evidently shaken him. I think he
expected to fail in Corinth too. One hardly wonders.
For Corinth was about the most wicked city of the
world at the time. Its vice was so rampant and un
blushing that it became a proverb. "A Corinthian
drinker," a "Corinthian banquet" were bywords for
the lowest profligacy.
But he must face it. Every day he worked in the
shop, and you may be sure that workshop was a purer,
nobler place for his presence. Would that that could be
said of us all! Every evening after work was done, he

104 THE MASTER BUILDER
tried to tell people about Jesus and the conquering
power of the Holy Ghost over sin. And every Sabbath
he reasoned in the synagogue. But the Jews had little
sympathy with him. They could not stand his teach
ing that all the proud hopes of their nation for centuries
had ended in a Messiah on the cross of shame. At last
they rose up fiercely against him, contradicting and
blaspheming. There was a limit to what Paul could stand from
them. One day in fierce anger he shook out his raiment
in stern repudiation, "Your blood be on your own heads;
henceforth I go to the Gentiles." Then the fight was
on. Paul did not shirk it. He hired a little hall next
door. He drew crowds of people. He converted and
baptized Crispus, their chief in the synagogue. There
could be no truce with him after that.
It was not a pleasant time. But he could bring
all his troubles and leave them with God. And every
night he could talk things over with Aquila and Pris
cilla. And then one night when things were at their
worst came the turn of the tide. The Lord appeared
unto him in the visions of the night : " Fear not, Paul,
and hold not thy peace, for I am with thee and I have
much people in this city." In a moment the whole
outlook changed. The sun was shining, the world was
bright. What mattered anything with Christ beside
him and the power of the Omnipotent at his back! It
was a changed man that his friends saw at breakfast
next morning. Hi
Thus began one of the most successful missions of
his life. Perhaps it was because his preaching had
grown simpler and more intense. There was a re-

THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE MAKING 105
bound from his philosophical preaching which had
failed at Athens.
Now he would talk only about Christ. He writes
later to these Corinthians who had compared his
teachings with the clever oratory of Apollos. "I
was determined to know nothing among you save
Jesus Christ, and him crucified." As a result many
believed and were baptized. We learn from his Cor
inthian letters what sort of people they were, "Not
many wise nor noble," mostly working people and
many of the profligate and degraded classes. Corinth
was a city of drunkards, extortioners and libertines.
He tells them straight out. "Neither fornicators nor
adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves
with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor extor
tioners shall inherit the Kingdom of God, and such were
some of you." These were the people on whom to
test the power of Christianity. If Christ could save
them from sin He could save anybody. And He
plainly was saving them. Men could see it in the
bright, hopeful faces marked deep with lines of de
bauchery and sin. Grafters and drunkards and thieves
and jailbirds and prostitutes were mingled in that
little meeting-room with people of decent lives. But
they all had the peace of God in their hearts and the
light of hope in their eyes. They had tested Christ
and He had not failed them. Religion becomes an
intensely real and practical thing when men see results
like that. If you were Paul and had a gospel that
could do that, would you not feel that nothing was
too much to do for it? You are not Paul. But you
have a gospel like that. Don't you forget it in your
missionary efforts.

106 THE MASTER BUILDER
So came hope and courage back to Paul, and he
wondered why he had ever been so despondent.
IV
Then something else very pleasant happened.
One day a shadow falls through the door of the
workshop; he looks up from his tentmaking to see
Silas and Timothy standing at the door! News at
last from Salonika! And it is delightful news that
Timothy brings. "They are unshaken in their faith.
They are making fine progress. The heathen are
impressed by them. And they have the kindliest
feelings for you, Paul. They are most affectionate
about you and are longing to see you again." It
was a great delight to Paul. "I live again," he says,
"when ye stand fast in the Lord."
"Of course," Timothy said, "it is not all rose-
coloured. Some have fallen back. A. and B. and
the old sailorman C. have been drinking badly. Those
three girls near the city gate have gone back on
the street. And there is another thing I do not
like. There is a rather unwholesome excitement
about the second coming of Christ that keeps the
people restless and disinclined for quiet work. And
death has been busy with the little congregation.
Our old friend on the hill has lost his wife. Four ot
our men were drowned at Cenchrea last month and
the mourners are not only sorrowing for their dear
ones but rather perplexed as well. They are asking,
What about the second coming of the Lord in our life
time? Our beloved are dead. Have they missed Him
altogether? And so on."
I see Timothy telling the news. I watch the

THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE MAKING 107
eagerness of Paul and the quick changes on his face
as he listens.
"O Timothy, I wish I could go to them this
moment. But I cannot with this growing congre
gation so eager in Corinth. Look here, go down to
the artist's shop in the next street and buy sheets
of papyrus. We will write them a letter."
That was a happy thought for the world. Thus
began the most important stage in Paul's great life
work. Thus began the making of the New Testament.

Perhaps you do not all know that the New Tes
tament began with the writing of the Epistles. And
that Paul began it that day in the shabby little work
shop of Aquila, the tentmaker.
It is the year 50 a.d., 17 years after the Cru
cifixion. There was no Bible except the Old Testa
ment. Not a page of our gospels was written yet —
nor for nearly twenty years afterwards. It is a
curious fact. One would have expected that the first
thing Christians would do after Pentecost would be
to go to the Apostles and ask them, Write us down
in a book at once everything that you have seen
and heard and learned about Jesus in those wonderful
three years. But they did not. You see they were
not accustomed to books. They did not want books.
Most of them could not read. Their whole training
had been oral. Their knowledge of a thing had
always come by hearsay. There were no newspapers.
When there was any news somebody told it. Written
books or read books, except the Bible, were not at
all in their line.

108 THE MASTER BUILDER
They were simple, plain people, fishers and farmers
and servants and tentmakers and artisans. They
were very happy in their new religion. One thought
dominates all life for them. "We know that the
Son of God is come." They want to hear every
thing about Him. But they do not want books.
Also if you put yourself in their place you will
see that it is hardly worth while writing books. For
mingled with their new joy is a restless expectancy.
They believe that Jesus will come back during their
lifetime to take them all to Heaven. They do not
know the moment. It may be any day "at evening
or at midnight, or at cockcrow or in the morning."
Even Paul expects this. He writes in this very
epistle to the Thessalonians, "We which are alive
and remain unto the coming of the Lord." So with
Heaven lying about them there was no need of writing
books for the future. There was no future except
a future in glory with the Lord.
So they gathered together in their weekly assem
blies to listen to the burning words of men who had
been with Jesus or had learned about Him from those
who had. The prominent facts were most frequently
taught, the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resur
rection, the Ascension, the Glorified Jesus.
And everywhere in a hundred places together
were the preparation classes for Baptism like our
Confirmation classes. Converts had to be taught
in regular order the life of Jesus. They grew quite
familiar with it.
Thus there arose an oral gospel published through
the whole Church, not in written books, but in the
fleshly tables of the heart. By and bye the listeners

THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE MAKING 109
wrote out little bits of it, sayings of Jesus and such
like. But not one of our four gospels was written
till nearly twenty years after this date.
VI
So the first Christian writings were the Epistles
of St. Paul, and first of them all was this letter to
the Thessalonians, called forth by the simple neces
sities of the moment. God's ways are not our ways.
We should probably expect the Christian Bible to
begin with solemn, formal, logically written books.
But God knows best. We believe that the Holy
Ghost was inspiring Paul. And we believe that He
guided him to write not formal treatises, but simple,
natural, unconventional letters such as we should
write ourselves to-day to our soldier boys in this
same Salonika. A formal treatise might have its
advantages. But this simple letter style had its
advantages too. It was more natural. It gave more
scope for freedom of expression and intensity of feeling
and the free familiarity of personal intercourse.
Paul wrote straight from the heart. This gives
that vivid freshness of style, that intenseness and
sincerity and personal touch. A formal book would
never have moved the world as these letters have
done. Take away the traces of passion, the stern
denunciation, the affectionate entreaties, the frank
colloquialism, the personal details, and you would
never have had the grip of these writings on the soul
of the world. God guided Paul to write simple,
natural letters, and when you read them you had better
keep that in mind.
Thessalonians is Paul's first Epistle. I wish some

110 THE MASTER BUILDER
publishers would have the courage of breaking with
the stupid old tradition and print the Bible with the
Epistles in their chronological order. It would help
us to understand the development of Paul's thought,
and in some measure, the development of the early
Church. The present arrangement seems to be based
on no plan, or on the plan of putting the longest first
and then arranging in order of length. We have
actually Paul's first Epistles and his last side by side.
It is very stupid. But it has gone on so long that
people are afraid to change it. I am in correspondence
with a great Bible house, and I am hoping to per
suade them to try a small edition of the Bible printed
in the way I suggest. It will need some courage.
But it will have valuable results if they do it/
VII
Now I picture to myself the very first beginning
in the making of the New Testament. Paul and
Silas and Timothy are in the shabby workshop after
hours. They have bought the papyrus sheets in
the artist's shop around the corner. Parchment was
not used for letters. In any case it would be too dear
for poor people. But they could buy papyrus sheets
in the shops as we buy foolscap from six to eighteen
inches wide and of any length required. We know
that from the papyri that have been discovered.
Paul is dictating the letter while he works. Busy
people then as now dictated when they could instead
of writing and perhaps Paul's weak eyes made it more
necessary in his case. At any rate, we know that it
was his custom. Then at the close he would scrawl
in a few words of blessing or remembrance with his

THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE MAKING 111
name, "which is my token," he says, "in every epistle."
This dictation gives much of the vividness in his letters,
the broken sentences, the frequent interruptions of his
thought. They are just his rapid thoughts taken down as
they arise. I think Silas is the writer, for I find him
afterwards acting as writer in the epistle of Peter
(i Peter, v:i2). Now listen to Paul dictating:
"Paul and Silvanus" — (Silas is short for Silvanus,
but Paul is a dignified person and calls men by their
full names). "Paul and Silvanus and Timothy to
the Church of the Thessalonians, grace be to you and
peace." "But," I hear Silas say, "Paul, this is your letter
— our names should not appear."
"No, Silvanus, it is our letter. We feel the same
about our friends in Thessalonika."
I like to think of the kindliness, and modesty, and
generous courtesy of the man associating his sub
ordinates as equals with himself. And I think, too,
how little these two thought that day that they
were writing in that mean little workroom the first
words of the great Christian Scriptures for all ages
to come. VIII
First, he must let them know how glad he is :
We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention
of you in our prayers; remembering without ceasing your work
of faith and labour of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus
Christ, before our God and Father.
Then he changes the note. He is thinking of all
the slanders of his enemies about him, that he was

112 THE MASTER BUILDER
not a real apostle like the others, that he had some self-
seeking purpose, that this collecting of money for the
poor looked suspicious, etc. "You know it is not
true," he says.
God is my witness that I did not hide covetousness under
fair pretences . . . that I did not seek anything from you. You
remember how I worked night and day that I might not burden
any of you, while I proclaimed the glad tidings of God.
I am longing to see you again. I tried to get to you, but
I could not. I have been very anxious about you. When I
was left in Athens alone, I sent Timothy to inquire about you.
He has only just come back with the happy news, and I am greatly
comforted. For I live again if ye be steadfast in the Lord.
And now I want to write about your manner of life. Watch
especially against lustful passions, the chief sin of your past life
and your great danger still. For God hath not called us to un-
cleanness, but unto holiness.
Concerning brotherly love I need not write to you, for you
are taught of God to love one another. But I desire that you
settle down quietly to work. Do not get restless and excited
about the coming of the Lord. He may come any day. I know
not when, but let him find you doing your ordinary work well,
that the outsiders may not reproach us.
Then comes his tender thought of them mourning
for their dead, and troubled because their dear ones
have missed the second coming. With deep sympathy
he dictates that classic passage, the comfort of count
less mourners in all the ages since.
I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them
that are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others which have
no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also those
that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say
unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and re
main unto the coming of the Lord shall not go before those who
are asleep.
For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with the voice

THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE MAKING US
of the archangel and .the trump of God. And the dead in Christ
shall rise first. Then we who remain shall be caught up with
them to meet the Lord in the air, wherefore comfort one another
with these words.
Next comes a little set of short practical exhortations.
Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. Continue to give
thanks whatever be your lot. Quench not the spirit. Keep clear
of every form of evil.
Now I see him scrawling in the conclusion of the
letter himself in his own handwriting.
May the God of peace sanctify you wholly and may your
spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless at the offering
of Our Lord Jesus Christ. God will fulfil my prayer for you.
And brethren, pray ye for me. See that this letter be read to
all the brethren. The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ be with
you. I wish you would read that letter through at one
sitting. You cafi do it in fifteen minutes. And as
you read it, call up in your mind that poor tentmaker
dictating it with the joy of God in his heart, and the
tender, solicitous sympathy for the friends he loved.
Put yourself in his place. Put life and heart into it.
Make it real. IX
A few months later he writes again. I shall not
comment on the second Epistle. It is not nearly
as interesting as the first. Evidently he has heard
that they are losing balance, in their restless excite
ment expecting Christ any day. They will not settle
down to ordinary work, but are going about in dreamy
contemplation, singing and holding prayer meetings
and watching for the Lord.

114 THE MASTER BUILDER
History tells of a similar condition more than
once. In the year iooo a.d., and at the time of the
Reformation and more or less at other times, even
down to fifty years ago when fanatics were prophesying
and fixing dates for the end of the world. We had
a slight renewal of it last year, owing to the war.
This letter is written to steady the Thessalonians.
Its main thought is expressed in that old story of
New England, when one day in one of those times of
excitement about the end of the world, a sudden
darkness came at noonday while the Assembly was
in sitting. Men got frightened and cried, "It is the
coming of Christ, it is the end of the world."
"Bring in candles," said the old president, "and
go on with your work. If the Lord is coming, how
better can He find us than quietly doing our duty."
That is the spirit of Paul's second Epistle to the
Thessalonians.

CHAPTER XI
Diana of the Ephesians
After writing the Thessalonian letters Paul re
mained on in Corinth, founding a Church of Christ
amongst the lowest classes, largely slaves and people
of degraded life. On the one hand it was the most
inspiring work, proving the glorious power of Christ
on the lowest sinners. But on the other hand, as we
see later, such classes make a perilous setting for a
church unless their founder can stay with them.
Perhaps that was why he stayed nearly two years.
But he must go on. He is the pioneer of the
gospel to the civilized world. He cannof stay in
one place. He can only ordain presbyters and in
struct them carefully and entrust Corinth to his
Lord. So early in the year 53 a.d. he starts for Jerusalem
to keep the Passover and then steers straight for his
home base at Antioch, the city of the Colonnades,
from which he had started five years ago on his second
missionary journey. There is not time to follow
him here. You must imagine for yourselves the interest
of his Passover at Jerusalem, meeting the other Apostles,
telling of his work, mingling in the worshipping crowd
from every land. I do not think he enjoyed it as
much as we should expect. He was never very happy
with the Jerusalem Christians. They were timid, con-
115

116 THE MASTER BUILDER
servative, bigoted. They looked askance at his daring
revolutionary methods with the heathen. It is pleas-
anter to picture his triumphant reception at the dear old
home church of Antioch, now become the great mother
church of Gentile Christianity. He was their be
loved chief and hero. He belonged especially to them.
Theirs was the high honour of having sent him forth on
his already famous world mission for their Lord.
How delightful if he could stay with them! But
he must not. The vastness of his life work is being
revealed to him. And old age is coming in sight.
Not many years left, and so much to do before the
end. So he bids good-bye to his beloved Antioch,
never to see it again, and starts on the greatest and
most fruitful stage of his life, which was to end at
the headsman's block in Rome. n
First came his episcopal visitation, as we may call
it, confirming many churches which he had founded,
passing through his boyhood home at Tarsus, visiting
Lystra, the home of his young comrade Timothy.
I cannot follow him in this journey. At its close I
present him entering the great city of Ephesus to
claim its surrender to the Kingdom of Christ. So
far as we can judge, Timothy was with him and also
another young comrade, Titus, who now comes prom
inently into his life. And who do you think were
waiting for him in that lonely heathen city? His
dear old friends from Corinth, Aquila and Priscilla
of the tentmaker's shop! You can imagine what it
meant to a lonely, burdened man to find that kindly
old couple waiting to receive him.

DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS 117
It was most important for the Church to get a
footing in Ephesus, a great central city with its fine
Roman roads branching out in every direction. In
its district lay the six towns whose names are so
familiar now through the Book of the Revelation of St.
John, Sardis and Smyrna and Philadelphia and Laod-
icea and Pergamos and Thyatira, the city of Lydia
the seller of purple. St. John, you know, in his later
life settled down as bishop in Ephesus, so you will
understand why these churches were in his mind as
he wrote "to the angel of the church in Sardis,"
"to the angel of the church in Thyatira," and so on.
These with Ephesus are the seven churches founded
most probably during this mission by Paul and his
companions. Ephesus has a high claim on our atten
tion, if only for these churches. And Ephesus has
a still higher claim on our attention as giving us fifty
years later the Gospel of St. John. Pity someone
could not tell to Paul on that lonely day of his entry,
what Ephesus would afterwards mean to the Church
of God. It did not look much like it that day. Ephesus
was one of the greatest strongholds of paganism.
Its fame rested chiefly on its magnificent temple of
Diana, one of the seven wonders of the world. The
sun, it was said, saw nothing in his course more glorious
than the temple of Diana at Ephesus. The whole
province of Asia contributed to its erection. All the
Greek cities around were enthusiastic about it. It
was the great rallying point of heathenism. You can
see it depicted on the Ephesian coins in the British
Museum to-day with its ugly black idol that fell down
from Juoiter. The Ephesians were inordinately proud

118 THE MASTER BUILDER
of their black idol and of the fame of their city as the
temple-keeper of Diana.
This worship of Diana made Ephesus the centre
of magic and sorcery. There the professors of the
black art practised their incantations openly. They
could raise the devil, they could frighten the wits —
and the money — out of their credulous votaries,
calling up evil spirits, principalities and powers and
rulers of darkness. You remember how Paul thinks
of it in his letter to these Ephesians. "We wrestle
not with flesh and blood but against principalities and
powers and the rulers of darkness and the spiritual
hosts of wickedness in high places."
Think of a poor missionary facing that abode
of Satan with nothing but his improbable little story
of Jesus and his little service of Bread and Wine —
to win for his Lord a vast pagan city nearly as large
as Montreal! Surely Christ must have been very
real to him when he could dare to attempt such an
enterprise as that. Surely Paul, if he were not the
wildest of dreamers, must have had a tremendous
faith in the presence and power of the Eternal Son
of God. If we had even a tithe of his faith to-day
we too should turn the world upside down in our
enthusiasm. That Son of God is just as real and
as close and as powerful to-day. But, alas ! we do not
turn the world upside down for Him. Fools that we
are, and slow of heart to believe! Lord increase our
faith! hi
At the very beginning of his mission in Ephesus,
we get a curious sidelight on the story. He met one

DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS 119
day twelve men. They seemed to be baptized Chris
tians, but they rather puzzled him, their ideas were
so defective. He asked them, "Have ye received
the Holy Ghost when ye believed ? " The gift of the
Holy Ghost, you know, was conferred by laying on
of apostolic hands after baptism. The whole Cath
olic church continues this still in the rite of Confir
mation. So that Paul's question would mean as
if we should ask, Have ye been confirmed since ye
believed? Have ye received the Holy Ghost by the
laying on of hands after Baptism? "No," they said,
"we have not so much as heard about the Holy Ghost."
"Into what then were ye baptized?" And they
said, "Into John's baptism." So he discovered the
curious fact that they were disciples of John the
Baptist's teaching and had never got any farther.
Then he taught them the fuller teaching about Christ
and the gift of the Holy Ghost and handed them
over to his assistants to be baptized, and then he laid
his hands on them and the power of the Holy Ghost
fell on them.
That was an interesting experience for Paul.
But it was doubly so when Aquila and Priscilla got
talking with him about things that had happened
in his absence. They told him of another man of
the same group, a great scholar and most attractive
preacher, mighty in the Scriptures. His name was
Apollos. His preaching had made quite a sensation
in Ephesus before Paul came. In spite of his defective
teaching he was like another Baptist preparing the
way of the Lord. Aquila and Priscilla went one day
to hear him. It was powerful preaching, but they
missed the confident ring of Paul. They saw that

120 THE MASTER BUILDER
the preacher did not know what they knew. So they
made friends with him — I think anybody would make
friends with that dear old couple — and he came often
to their house and they taught him the way of God
fully as they had learned it from Paul. And now
he was off in Corinth preaching Jesus Christ.
Was not it nice to hear that? Those dear old
friends could not preach, but they could love and
make religion lovable and they could tell in simple
words about the Lord who was so dear to them.
I think you would enjoy knowing Aquila and Priscilla.
By the way, there was some trouble about this
matter later on in Corinth. For Apollos was a much
more attractive and eloquent preacher than Paul.
And like some modern Christians, some of the Cor
inthians ran after their favourite preacher and boasted
about his superiority over Paul. We shall hear of
this later on. IV
As usual, Paul began with the Synagogue of the
Jews, and as usual, the Jews cast him out. They
could not stand the shame of a crucified Messiah.
It is one of the mysterious tragedies of history that
rejection of the Messiah by his own people who had
been looking forward to him for iooo years. As St.
John pathetically puts it, "He came unto his own
and His own received Him not."
Then a lecturer named Tyrannus lent his school
after hours and there for two whole years, as he tells
afterwards, he ceased not to admonish everyone day
and night with tears, preaching both to Jews and Greeks
"repentance toward God and faith towards Our Lord

DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS 121
Jesus Christ." The same simple old Gospel which
the Church has to teach to-day. Very practical.
Very simple. No cleverness required to understand
it. "The wayfaring men though fools shall not err
therein." Just that I should see my sin and be sorry
for it and turn to God with earnest resolve — and then
— just trust myself utterly to Christ.
v
Through the blessing of Him who was watching
over Paul, that simple Gospel became a mighty
power in Ephesus in the midst of its foul sins and
idolatries and black magic. I read that not only
the Ephesians, but the whole province of Asia heard
the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.
I read that the Church grew so fast that it needed
many presbyters to preside over it.1 I read of one
never to be forgotten scene where, in the midst of
an enthusiastic crowd, the professors of sorcery and
magic brought their cabalistic books into the square
for a great bonfire and while the books were burn
ing and the Christians were praising God, some one
calculated roughly the value of those books at 50,000
pieces of silver. It was like the days of Savonarola
at Florence in the Middle Ages. You can imagine
the delight of Paul as he watched that fire and thanked
God for the honest practical religion which caused it,
and for the glorious triumph of his dear Lord in
Ephesus. VI
The devil has to get busy at a time like that.
So we are not surprised at another spectacular event
^ctg xx : 17.

122 ,THE MASTER BUILDER
soon after. It is the month of May, the month of
Diana, when the whole province has crowded into
Ephesus for the annual celebrations. From the towns
of the coast and the interior they swarm, in their pic
turesque national dress, to enjoy the games and revel
ries, in honour of their goddess. It was a brilliant sight.
To the Jews it would call up the historic picture of
that famous day in Babylon long ago — of Nebu
chadnezzar and Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego and
the image which Nebuchadnezzar the King had set up.
This was the great harvest time for the makers
of shrines and images. But this year there is a serious
drop in their trade. The Christians have been teach
ing that "the Godhead is not like to silver and gold
graven by art and men's device." The bonfire in
the square has set people thinking. The craft of the
image makers is in serious danger.
So in the midst of the gay celebrations Demetrius
the silversmith calls the craftsmen together to lecture
them — on religion. Demetrius was very much con
cerned about the injury to religion — when it touched
his pocket. That is a very human touch. When the
tariff injures the trade in cattle, the Ontario farmer
writes of the danger to the country. When the drink
trade is injured by prohibition we hear stirring appeals
for the liberty of the subject. So Demetrius is greatly
troubled "lest the image of the great goddess Diana
should be despised whom all Asia and the world
worshippeth." Soon the mob has caught up the cry, and a rush
is made for the Jewish quarter and the tentmaker's
shop. They are on a visit to Paul. If they had
caught Paul just then it would have finished these

DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS 123
lectures. But Paul was not at home. Aquila and
Priscilla had probably made clever plans. "They
risked their necks for me," says Paul in his Roman
epistle. At any rate, the mob did not get him. He
tried to go and face them when he saw danger for
his friends, but the brethren held him back, and the
Asiarchs, who presided over the games, sent him a
kindly message that his coming would only do worse
harm by exciting the mob. So the mob had to spend
their energies in shouting through the streets for the
space of two hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephe
sians." There is a capital little touch here about the
intelligence of .mobs, "the greater part knew not why
they were come together."
We believe that Paul and the disciples were praying.
We believe that the Lord was watching over His
little church and could guide the hearts of men, whether
pagan or Christian. God works by ordinary means.
Two hours of shouting does a good deal to tire people,
and the whole mad uproar which might have had
serious results, fizzled out after a wise speech from
the town clerk of Ephesus. "Go home and be quiet.
If Demetrius and his friends have any cause of com
plaint, the courts are open to them. As for you,
your city is in grave danger of being called in question
for this day's uproar."
Though Paul escaped with his life, his letter written
from Ephesus at this time hints of a terrible time.
"After the manner of men I fought with beasts in
Ephesus — despairing even of life — buffeted, reviled,
persecuted, defamed, made as the filth of the world
and the offscouring of all things."
He makes very little of these outward things, but

124 THE MASTER BUILDER
in one verse he refers to a burden which we do not
sufficiently keep in mind, "that which cometh upon me
daily, the care of all the churches." I refer to it now
because it introduces his Epistle to the Corinthians,
written at this time from Ephesus. VII
"The care of all the churches." During all this
time of strain he had been watching anxiously over
the many churches he had founded. So little would
suffice to throw them back. Just now he is especially
troubled about his last mission, the young church in
Corinth. Disquieting rumours had come. Degraded
heathen people do not become saints in a moment.
While he was with them, things went well. But that
was three years ago. And they were living in very
wicked surroundings, where Christian purity and
honesty were things to be laughed at and where every
thing tended to drag them back into the old evil life.
In their first enthusiasm for Christ, they thought
they could never fall. But Corinth was not Heaven.
Christ had not come back. The dull, prosaic life had
to be lived and the Heavenly vision began to fade.
Apollos the great preacher had come back to
Ephesus, and could tell Paul what was happening
in Corinth. So he wrote the Corinthians a letter
•which is now lost (see I Cor. v:9), bidding them to
cast out fornicators from the Church.
Then they wrote back a self-satisfied, conceited
letter which vexed him a good deal. In this letter
they asked him several questions. Whether second
marriages were lawful to Christians. Whether a
Christian should divorce his heathen wife. Whether

DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS 125
men should marry at all in view of the coming of
Christ. Whether they might eat meats offered to
idols. They wanted directions about church services
and especially Holy Communion, and they had serious
difficulties too, about the Resurrection. The letter
was not pleasant reading.
Meantime some Christians of the household of
Chloe had come and told him still worse things.
Nowadays when things go wrong in the church we
are pointed back to the delightful days of the early
Church when everybody was so holy and happy.
Paul's experience takes the glamour off this. True,
there were many who were a joy to his heart. But
to his deep distress he learns that schisms and factions
had arisen — that the church worship was often irrev
erent and disorderly — men had been seen drunk at
the Holy Communion — that uncleanness of life was
easily tolerated. Indeed, there was one horrible 'story
of a baptized Christian living in open sin with his
stepmother in his father's lifetime, and the church
had not cast him out, probably because he was rich
and important.
Paul was horrified. It was enough to make any
man but Paul throw up his work in despair. But
Paul was not built that way. It was Christ's work
and he trusted Christ. If Christ could have patience
with these people just out of heathenism, he must
have patience. You may be sure there was much
of prayer and deep communion with God before he
dictated to Sosthenes that most interesting of all
his letters, his first Epistle to the Corinthians. I
have but space to touch on a few prominent points
that may help you to read this epistle for yourselves.

126 THE MASTER BUILDER
VIII
After thanking God for all the good that is still
amongst them through the grace of Christ, he goes on :
Now I beseech you, brethren, that there be no divisions amongst
you. For it hath been told me by those of Chloe's household
that ye are divided. "I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas,
I of Christ." Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?
Were ye baptized into the name of Paul? What is Apollos and
what is Paul? Ministers through whom ye believed. Never
think of us. Keep Christ before you. Keep your unity in Christ.
I hear sad things of you. And ye are not ashamed and sor
rowful about it. Ye are conceited and puffed up as though I
would not come back with my authority as Christ's apostle. What
will ye? Shall I have to come with a rod? I wrote unto you
in a former letter, not to keep company with fornicators. And
you conceitedly tell me that this is impossible unless you went
out of the world altogether. You know what I meant. Now
I tell you distinctly — if any baptized Christian be a fornicator,
or idolator, or drunkard, cast him out of the church, banish him,
do not eVen eat with him. A horrible story has come to me of
a Christian man living in sin with his father's wife. And ye
are not ashamed. Now I command you to gather the Church
together, in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and cast him out
for his soul's good. Deliver him to Satan, for the destruction of
his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
And here is another wrong. How dare you Christian people
bring lawsuits against each other in heathen courts, so that they
mock at your religion of love?
Now, concerning the things you asked me about. First about
marriage and the chastity of marriage. These are my directions.
(Here comes in a whole chapter of directions. I notice just one
point concerning divorce of a heathen wife or husband.) Do
not do it. Do not marry heathens. But if you are already
married do not separate. How do you know that you may not save
that heathen wife or husband as they watch your Christian life.
That common sense advice appeals to us all.
Paul evidently had not before him the more difficult
case that has repeatedly come up in our day in the

DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS 127
missions in Africa, where the convert has already
half a dozen heathen wives. A Christian cannot live
in polygamy. Shall he divorce them all? Or shall
he keep one, and if so, which one? The first one or
the one he likes best? -This question has caused grave
perplexity to Archbishops of Canterbury and I am
sure the English bishops have often wished that Paul
had had such a case.
Now concerning meats offered to idols. Since an idol is nothing
but a piece of brass it does not really matter. You are free, but
take care how you use your freedom. For you have to think
of weaker brethren who have not full knowledge. You may do
them harm by doing a thing which otherwise is not really wrong.
They may think it a justification of idolatry. You must think
of them. If even the innocent eating of meat cause my brother
to offend, I will eat no meat while the world lasteth lest it make
my brother to offend.
That is an important rule for the guidance of the
Christian conscience. It may be an innocent thing
to drink wine. You perhaps may do it quite safely,
but you must also consider if your action may do
harm to others who cannot do it safely. For a Chris
tian man who has lovingly worshipped God and
received His Holy Communion, it is quite an inno
cent thing to play a game of golf on Sunday. If you
were on a desert island with a couple of Christian
friends I should see no harm in it. But suppose you
do it in this city with a crowd of careless, godless
men, who habitually neglect the worship of God —
see how much harm the example may do. They do
not know your heart or how earnestly you have wor
shipped God this morning. They will be encouraged
in their sin. Therefore, you are not always at liberty
to do what is innocent.

128 THE MASTER BUILDER
Now concerning the Holy Communion. Think of the awfulness
of approaching Christ in a drunken condition. For Christ himself
is in that sacrament. For I have received of the Lord that which
I delivered unto you that the Lord Jesus, the same night that
he was betrayed, took bread and blessed it and said, "This is
my body." In like manner he took this cup and said, "This is
the new covenant in my blood. This do in remembrance of me."
The bread which we break is not the communion of the Body
of Christ. The cup which we bless is not the communion of the Blood
of Christ. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat and drink unworthily is guilty
of the body and blood of the Lord. He eateth and drinketh
judgment to himself not discerning the Lord's body.
Then come other questions to be answered. But
instead of giving petty rules and exact details he lifts
all life up into the presence of his Lord and his Lord's
great law of love.
You want rules of spiritual gifts, about precedence in the
church, about your relations in the world. I show unto you a
more excellent way. Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity
envieth not. Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth
not behave itself uncourteously, beareth all things, believeth all
things, hopeth all things.
Then comes the magnificent fifteenth chapter at
the close, the great Resurrection Lesson of the Church
through all the centuries. Death matters little, since
Christ is at the other side. " O Death, where is thy
sting ? O Grave, where is thy victory ?"
I close with the thought how God brings good
out of evil. Do you not think it was worth while to
have all that evil in the church in Corinth and all
those doubts and questionings and errors, to bring to
us those glorious chapters on conscience, and charity,
and on the Resurrection ?

CHAPTER XII
The Care of All the Churches
The period dealt with in this chapter, about nine
months of the year 56 a.d., is rather difficult and
perhaps not very interesting. St. Luke, in his diary,
passes it over with a few sentences. We might do
the same if we were dealing, as he is, only with Paul's
life. But his letters also come into our plan. And
his three most important letters were written in this
period. In the last chapter we saw him deeply troubled
about his converts in Corinth and writing his most
interesting First Epistle to the Corinthians. This he
sent by his young comrade Titus. Since then rumours
have come that things were worse than he thought.
The bigoted Jerusalem Christians are busy again
trying to tie up the great free Gospel in the swaddling
clothes of the Jewish Law, and they have many
adherents in Corinth.
The church in Corinth seems in danger of utter
disruption. Now he is at Troas impatiently waiting
for Titus and for news.
You remember Troas on the historic plains of
Troy, whence he started on his mission to Europe
six years before. Then there were only himself
and his three comrades, four Christians in Europe.
Now he can look back on thousands of converts and
the Church in Europe fairly started. He ought to
129

130 THE MASTER BUILDER
be in high spirits over it. But he is not. The
rumours from Corinth have shaken him badly. He
is very despondent; all the more so because he
seems to be sick again of his old humiliating, de
pressing malady, "the thorn in the flesh" as he calls
it. In the second Corinthian letter, which I am
just coming to, he says, "I prayed the Lord thrice
to relieve me of it, but the only comfort I got was,
My grace is sufficient for thee." ii
From Troas he moves to Philippi — to the jailer
and Lydia and the dear people that he loved best,
I think, of all his converts. And there at last Titus
met him.
"Titus, tell me how they do in Corinth? Is the
Church in danger? Have they read my letter? How
did they take it?"
Titus tells him, "The majority are loyal. In the
main they took your directions kindly. They have
cast out that incestuous sinner. They are reforming
abuses. I think the loyal churchmen will be quite
able to save the Church."
What a relief to Paul! "God who comforteth the
despondent, comforted me by the coming of Titus."
But Titus adds, "The trouble about dogtrine is
still serious. There is a strong minority who are
very bitter. Of course, the Jerusalem crowd are at
the back of the trouble, and have seduced some of
our people."
"What are they saying?"
"Oh, just the same old things — that your teaching
is dangerous — that you are no real apostle, since you

THE CARE OF ALL THE CHURCHES 131
have not been commissioned by Jesus when on earth.
They say you are vain and self-seeking — that you
are brave in your letters but cowardly in their presence.
In fact, they are taking every mean advantage of
your absence. They are even whispering ugly insin
uations about money, about this collection of yours
for the poor saints at Jerusalem."
Poor Paul ! This was his thanks for all he had ,
done and suffered. Don't you forget this when you
get little thanks for your efforts.
Fancy all this coming on a man already depressed
and sick. Many of us too have had our discouraging
experiences. Well for us if, like Paul, we can go to
Our Lord with them.
All through his letters you see that was where
his comfort lay. Jesus was his stand-by. He was a
poor, weak, lovably human man, nervous, sleepless,
depressed about his troubles. But the calm, strong
Son of God was there to flee to. Jesus was not nerv
ous or sleepless or depressed about things. Paul
could leave all in His hands who loved him and sym
pathized. That was the secret of his strength.
m
Paul is thankful for the faithful Christians. But
he is uneasy and he is very indignant. He sees the
grave danger to the Church. He is not going to stand
much more of this. "You go right back, Titus, with
another letter."
Thus we get the Second Epistle to the Corinthians.
It is quite different from the first. It is intense,
strained, passionate. The air is electric. Keen irony,
indignation, warning, threatening, bold insistence on

132 THE MASTER BUILDER
his apostolic authority from Christ. It is the Church's
danger that has roused him. But through it all you
can see the personal note too. You can see that his
heart is quivering. For Paul is a very sensitive man
who loves his people and has been hurt to the quick
by their desertion. Strong men have often their sen
sitive nerve spots very near to the surface.
In the first part of the Epistle he seems thinking
of the faithful friends. The hurt feeling shews itself.
But he does not let himself go till the tenth chapter.
There he hits out hard. But he hits out like a gentle
man — with the quiet dignity of a Christian man :
Now I Paul exhort you by the gentleness of Christ I who
am mean forsooth and contemptible in outward presence yet
very bold at a distance. I beseech you don't force me to shew
the boldness with which I reckon to deal with some of you when
I return. The weapons that I wield are not fleshly weapons, but
mighty in God's strength to overthrow adversaries. I am ready
to punish all who may be disobedient. I have the authority
which the Lord hath given me. I am not writing empty threats.
"For his letters," says one, "are weighty and powerful bat in
bodily presence and speech he is contemptible." Let such a man
assure himself that I will bear out my words by deeds. They
boast and commend themselves. They are forsooth the old
church, the true Hebrews, the seed of Abraham. But a man
is worthy not when he commends himself but when the Lord
commends him.
If men are to boast, perhaps I too should have something to boast
of. I entreat you do not count me a fool. Or if you do, you are
such wise people you might bear with a fool and let him boast
a little like these very Apostolic people from Jerusalem. Are
they Hebrews? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So
am I. Are they ministers of Christ? I speak as a fool. I am
more. In labours more abundant — in stripes above measure,
in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times
received I forty stripes save one — thrice was I scourged, once was
I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have
been in the deep, in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils

THE CARE OF ALL THE CHURCHES 133
of robbers, in perils from my own countrymen, in perils from the
Gentiles, in perils from the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils
in the sea, in labour and travail, in watchings often, in hunger
and thirst, in fastings and cold and nakedness. Besides these
things that which cometh on me daily the care of all the churches.
The God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who is blessed for
evermore knoweth that I lie not.
In what have I done you wrong? Is it a crime that I proclaimed
to you the glad tidings of God without fee or reward? You in
sinuate about money. Even when I was in want did I ever let
one of you contribute to my support? Why? Because I love
you not? God knoweth that I love you. But what I do I will
continue to do that I may cut off ground of slander. For these
men whom you follow are false and deceitful, clothing themselves
in the garb of Apostles of Christ. No wonder. Even Satan
their master can transform himself into an angel of light.
I do not think those Jerusalem visitors were very
happy as this letter was read out next Sunday in
Church. I am afraid I rather enjoy seeing them get
what they deserve. But Paul did not enjoy it. He
is too big a man to enjoy scolding. And his letter
closes on a kindly note.
I warn you all. But I trust I shall not have need of severity.
Finally, brethren, farewell. Reform what is amiss. Be of one
mind. Live in peace and the God of love and peace shall be
with you. The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the love
of God and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with you all.

CHAPTER XIII
Faith and Works
Titus was sent back to Corinth with this Second
Epistle and soon after Paul followed it in person. He
came to Corinth to encourage the faithful, to punish
the wrongdoers, to excommunicate those who were
wilfully obstinate in their sin. And so, in some degree,
he brought peace to that distracted Church.
But scarce had he accomplished this, when, while
he still remained in Corinth — like a bolt from the
blue came tidings from Galatia of the very same
trouble and worse, because the fickle Galatians were
more easily led away. Again the Church was in
serious danger and Paul had to buckle on his armour
and again spring into the breach. Hence comes the
Epistle to the Galatians, and a few weeks later, while
his heart is full of the subject, he wrote his majestic
Epistle to the Romans, for which the Galatian Epistle
provided the rough draft.
It is manifestly impossible in my limited space
to comment on these great Epistles. But it is most
important for your understanding of the Epistles
that you should see clearly what Paul was fighting
for ever since that day when he brought it before
the Council of Jerusalem, and that you should realize
that, humanly speaking, during that fight the very
existence of the Christian Church was trembling in
134'

FAITH AND WORKS 135
the balance. If Paul was beaten, Christianity might
have survived as an Eastern sect, as a hanger-on of
Judaism, but the great, universal, world-wide Catholic
Church for all humanity would never have been.
ii
Let us state the question in dispute. Here are
the two sides :
(i) Salvation by the Works of the Law.
(2) Salvation by Surrender to and Faith in the
Son of God.
What is meant by the works of the Law ?
Originally, in purer days, it meant real devotion
to God, fenced in by concrete rules, such as the Ten
Commandments, to guide the people. This is what
the Law meant originally. This is what the Prophets
fought to win back.
But Jewish religion had sadly deteriorated. The
few rules of guidance grew and grew as priests and
rabbis and scribes went on "fencing the Law" for
centuries, till these external rules numbered hundreds,
many of them petty and tedious and vexatious, and
as they grew the soul died out of them and the external
rules became substitutes for the living God. If you
do these things you have won your salvation. If
you fail you are lost. And so God became a great
taskmaster whose rules were hard to count and hard
to know and harder to do. The common crowd who
did not know them were damned. "This people who
knoweth not the Law are cursed," x said the Pharisees.
They cannot be saved. The earnest, conscientious
1 John vii : 49.

136 THE MASTER BUILDER
Jew who tried to keep them fully had a very bad time.
You remember how Paul tells in the Epistle to the
Romans, his own miserable experience of trying to
win salvation by the Law. "I cannot succeed. I
try hard. I often fail. And if I succeed in one hundred
points, and fail in one point, I am guilty of all."
It was a miserable, distressing struggle.
You remember the stern indignation of Jesus about
the burden of these rules, and how He castigated the
teachers till in their rage they arose and crucified Him.
"Wo unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Ye
shut the Kingdom of Heaven on men by your rules.
Ye bind grievous burdens on their shoulders. Wo
unto you, ye blind guides. Ye cleanse the outside
of the cup and platter (by your external rules) while
within it is full of evil and excess. Ye give tithes of
such trifles as mint and anise and cummin and leave
undone the weightier matters of the Law, judgment
and mercy and faith. Ye fools and blind ! Ye whited
sepulchres! Away with your petty little command
ments of the Law! There are only two real com
mandments of the Law, 'Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart and Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. On these two hang all the Law
and the Prophets.' "
Now you see what Paul was fighting for, what the
Prophets were fighting for, what Jesus was fighting
for. You see what is meant by the works of the
Law, with which Jerusalem Christians wanted to fetter
the gospel. An ecclesiastical code of troublesome, com
plicated, external rules with the soul gone out of them.
And Jewish rules, too. Note this especially. For if
the gospel was to be put in these Jewish fetters —

FAITH AND WORKS 137
if Jewish rules were to be made burdens on Greek
and Roman and Celt and Saxon, what likelihood was
there of a great world-wide Church of Christ?
Do you wonder that Paul fought fiercely, indig
nantly ? Do you wonder that he felt heartbroken when
the tidings came that the Galatians had been drawn
away from the freedom of his gospel ? Can you won
der that this Epistle to the Galatians is a very war cry ?
in
Let us look at this Galatian Epistle.
It begins abruptly — severely. It is the only Epistle
oeginning without words of praise and thankfulness.
He is greatly hurt that those whom he loved should
take sides with his enemies. He contradicts the false
hoods and calumnies. He tells the story of his life
and his call by Christ. But chiefly he insists that this
doctrine of the Judaizers would destroy the very
essence of Christianity and reduce it from an inward
spiritual life to a dry, external ceremonial system.
He meets their objections, "Then what use is the
Law ?" The Law, he says, was very useful as originally
given as a check on humanity in the preparation stage
for Christ. Child rules are necessary for children.
But we are past that child stage now that Christ has
come. The Law, too, is as a tutor, a child-leader
to bring us to Christ. Finding that we cannot of
ourselves keep God's laws, we want the loving Christ
and the power of the Holy Ghost. If you will read
the Epistle over rapidly all at one sitting, again and
again, keeping Paul's purpose in mind, you will easily
get into the attitude of the writer and see what an
interesting and valuable letter it is.

138 THE MASTER BUILDER

IV
Now comes his greatest literary work, the Epistle
to the Romans. He had long looked forward to
visiting the great metropolis of the world. There was
no church yet in Rome founded by any Apostle. It
was probably at this time just a gathering of Chris
tians from many parts gravitating to the great city.
We have not space here to discuss the origin of the
Roman Church. At any rate Rome was the metrop
olis of the Empire, the centre of influence, and Paul
felt the importance of giving to the Christians there
a full and clearly reasoned statement of the Gospel.
Perhaps he felt as old age was creeping on him, that
it was full time he should lay down in a systematic
treatise the great thoughts that had grown in him
by God's inspiration through all his chequered life.
Therefore this is not a mere letter, called forth by
some special need, as are other letters. This is a great
theological treatise for the Church, bearing on the
points of most importance at the time. And he
gives especial emphasis to the main question of the
day — justification by faith in Christ as opposed to
justification by the works of the Law. He had fought
this battle fiercely in his Second Epistle to the Cor
inthians. He had fought it at white heat in the
stress of the conflict in the Epistle to the Galatians.
Now he writes more calmly. For the victory is al
most won. The catholic position of the church is
fairly well assured against the assault that might have
destroyed it.

FAITH AND WORKS 139

I have no thought of commenting on this noblest
and deepest of all Paul's pronouncements. It is far
too long a subject to deal with in detail here. But
avoiding its deeper depths, let me try to give some
little idea of its main thought to help you in reading it.
After saluting them and introducing himself, he
tells why he is writing and why he intends to come
to them. "As the Apostle to the Gentiles I owe to
them, I am debtor to them to bring the good tidings.
I am debtor to Greek and Barbarian. So as much as
in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you at
Rome also."
First realize this. You know in your hearts that
you need a Saviour because all, Jews and Gentiles,
have broken God's law. You may say the Gentiles
never had that law to break. Yes, they have. The
Law of God in their conscience. So all have sinned.
And we can do nothing ourselves to save ourselves.
We are all shut up under condemnation.
Now comes God's good news. The loving Father
has provided the remedy, a free gift through Christ.
On his side it is free, generous giving; on our side
it is free,- unmeritorious receiving. No room for
bargaining or independence or pride. It is God's
free gift to men undeserving. You cannot save your
selves. "Through the works of the Law can no
flesh living be justified."
God makes no distinction. Jew or Gentile, great
sinner or small, all are welcome to Him. To every
penitent soul he will give not only forgiveness for the
past, but the power of the Holy Ghost for their future.

140 THE MASTER BUILDER
(Notice how emphatically he dwells on this power of
the Holy Ghost.) To win this while we were yet
sinners Christ died for us. Nothing can keep back
His love for the penitent. "Neither death nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers are able to
separate us from the love of Christ.
Then come the chapters on the deep mysteries of
God's calling and election, so frequently misunderstood.
Here he gives the mysterious hope to poor Israel who
has lost its high calling for the present. One day all
Israel shall be saved.
So he closes, Pray for me that I may come to you
in the fullness of the gospel, and may the God of peace
be with you all. Amen.

CHAPTER XIV
The Works of the Law in the Twentieth Century
This is a postcript to the preceding chapter. I
have been thinking myself into the place of the reader
of that chapter as he follows St. Paul in his strenuous
fight against the Jewish Christians as to the meaning
of Christ's religion. He can see distinctly the two
sides in the controversy, the Religion of Faith in
Christ versus the Religion of the Works of the Law,
or in other words, the Devotion of the heart to God
versus the Keeping of External Rules.
Is he thinking that though all this may be in
teresting as a controversy of men of the first century,
yet it has little practical bearing on men of the twentieth
century who have quite passed beyond such thoughts ?
I think he is, and my purpose here is to point out that
he is wrong. The Religion of the Works of the Law
as opposed to the Religion of Devotion to God belongs
to the twentieth century as much as to the first.
It belongs to all ages. It belongs down deep in the
bedrock of human nature. ii
Let us go over the two sides again. First look
at Paul's side.
This, said Paul, is the Glad Tidings revealed by
Christ. God is not the Great Taskmaster, coldly
watching to see if you keep or break external rules.
141

142 THE MASTER BUILDER
God is the loving Father who cares tenderly for all
His poor children and cannot bear to lose one of them.
He seeks not the cold keeping of external rules, but
the warm affection and devotion of His child. His
supreme purpose is the making of beautiful, lovable
character. That is what He wants for His child.
That is Salvation. That is Heaven.
It is not a case of your anxious independent effort
to win Salvation by your own deservings. Conscience
tells you you cannot. Every earnest man who ever
tried it knows his failure. God cares more than you
care. So the Eternal Son of God has taken hold for
you. He died to win forgiveness for you. His Holy
Spirit is inspiring in you noble thoughts and strength
ening you to noble deeds. Trust yourself to Christ.
He makes Himself responsible for you. Let yourself
go. Trust yourself utterly to his loving care for you
here and hereafter. And his love for you will win yours
in return. in
Beside this put the Religion of the Works of the
Law as St. Paul knew it. It means not only the earning
of Salvation by one's own independent efforts, but
the earning it by ceremonial observances and the
keeping of certain external rules. This appeals not
only to the pride, but also to the indolence and un-
spiritualness of human nature. The whole teaching
of the Prophets is a continuous protest against it.
The relation of the heart to God, they insist, is what
supremely matters. A well-known passage of Micah
gives concisely the attitude of all his brethren.
Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before
the High God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings

WORKS OF LAW IN THE 20th CENTURY 143
and calves of a year old? Shall I give my firstborn for my trans
gressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good. What doth the
Lord require of thee but to do justly and love mercy and walk
humbly with thy God ? 1
But the prophets had been long dead and in the
centuries between religion had drifted back to the
old low standpoint. Now again in the hands of
Scribes and Pharisees it had come to mean the winning
of God's favour by keeping external rules.
This was the Religion of the Works of the Law
in the days of Paul. "Here are certain external rules,
moral and ceremonial. He that doeth these things
shall live by them. You need not do more. You must
not do less. If you succeed, then, by your own efforts
and deservings you have won. If not, you have failed."
Even in the light of old prophetic teaching this
attitude would be wiong. How much more so after
Christ had revealed the tenderness of God's father
hood. Apart from its hopelessness, it was such a
cold, unloving attitude towards the Father. It was
a cold, independent legal claim upon God. Like as
if your boy should coldly say, So long as I behave
decently and learn my lessons, my father is bound
to support me and leave me his money when he dies-—
when you know how you lie awake at night thinking
and planning for him and that all the joy of life would
go if your boy went wrong. IV
Now let us see how this Religion of the Works
of the Law worked out in practice.
1 Micah, vi.

144 THE MASTER BUILDER
The nobler type of Pharisee, like Saul of Tarsus,
before his conversion, set himself diligently, with minute
scrupulosity to keep the two hundred and forty-eight
precepts and the three hundred and forty-six pro
hibitions. But it did not satisfy his soul. In his
higher moments he felt the unreality and hollowness of
mere external rules and doubted if he could ever
really win God's full approval. "I have kept certain
precepts. I have failed in others, and he that offendeth
in one point is guilty of all." Paul himself tells of
this miserable time in his own life. All the same
you cannot help respecting men like him who tried
to do hard things.
But — and this is what I want especially to em
phasize here — the average Jew did not bother about
all these fine-drawn rules. In fact, he did not know
them all. He kept the same attitude of winning
salvation by his deeds. But he had an easy con
science. He chose the few prominent rules that ap
pealed to him and left out the rest. He must be cir
cumcised and go to the Festivals and not be an idolator
or a thief or an adulterer. He was quite conscientious
about living up to this easy standard. But he was
satisfied with himself when he had done so. His
conscience took him no farther. The devotion of his
heart to God did not come in. So long as he kept his
little external code, he did not see what further claim
God had on him. He resented any further claim.
No higher light from above was allowed to come in
to rouse him to nobler things.
This was the lower view, the average man's view
of the religion of the Works of the Law.

WORKS OF LAW IN THE 20th CENTURY 145

Now I repeat my assertion that this Religion of
the Works of the Law is as common in our day as in
that of St. Paul. And the worst of it is — pay special
attention to this — that is not the nobler type of it,
as in the earnest Pharisee scrupulously struggling
to keep all the precepts, but the lower type, the
religion of the average Jew. Like the average man in
Jerusalem the average man in Montreal leaves out the
relation of his heart to God. To satisfy his conscience
he picks out a little modicum of rules as they fit him
self and as they are sanctioned by the public opinion
of his class. He makes his religion the keeping of these
few easy external rules without ever a thought of the
father's real claim upon his child, "My son, give me
thine heart."
"Without ever a thought," I said. No, that
is not quite true. Now and then the thought ob
trudes, that what he has learned about God's love
and Christ's atonement on the Cross ought to make
some claim on his heart. But since he is not prepared
for surrender to that claim he avoids thinking about
it. "I am not a very religious man," he says, "but I'm
not a bad sort of fellow. I am not doing anything
wrong and I don't think God has anything much against
me." VI
Now I want to locate this twentieth-century man
or woman. You must have noticed that, whether
there be any heart relation to God or not, all decent
people in a Christian country have a certain little

146 THE MASTER BUILDER
standard of life, rather a low, easy standard, but about
which they are most conscientious. Not a bad little
standard so far as it goes, and so long as they do not
mistake it for religion. Religion must have God in
it. Religion means in its essence the relation of the
heart to God.
The average decent schoolboy has three main laws:
He must not lie nor bully a little chap, and above all
things he must not be a sneak, to tell tales on another
fellow. The average soldier feels that he must not disgrace
his uniform, must be loyal to his country at any cost,
must be brave even unto death where duty calls him.
And he is doing very fine things to-day oh these few
rules. The average decent woman has her minimum
standard. She must be chaste, must care for her
husband and children, must send her children to
church even if she does not go herself.
The average business man's conscience insists that
he must be honest, must live a decent life, must care
for his wife and children, and if he can afford it must
give something to charity or to patriotic funds.
Even the selfish idle rich has his little works of the
Law. He must be polite, he must live respectably,
he must obey the code of honour in his set, he must
rigidly at any cost pay his gambling debts — debts
of honour he calls them — even if he be careless about
other debts.
Each is most conscientious about this little standard
of his and quite pleased with himself when he keeps
up to it. Of course he adds a little more to these
foundation laws. But if he be the man that I am

WORKS OF LAW IN THE 20th CENTURY 147
thinking of, he never thinks of adding the supreme
thing, God. His heart is in no personal relation to
God. There is no love to God, no gratitude to God,
no sense of duty to God, no dissatisfaction with his
life, no deep penitence, no passionate prayer, no long
ing that God's Holy Spirit should lead him to any
thing higher than this.
His conscience is strict about these three or four
life laws. So far it is good. But his conscience is
quite content with that little standard. He shuts out
all the light that would lead him to a higher standard.
He is nervously afraid of the very idea of aiming at
the highest and surrendering his life to the guidance
of God wherever it might lead. No. He feels satis
fied with himself at present by keeping his standard
low. He might be very much dissatisfied with him
self if he let God raise his standard. And he does not
want to be dissatisfied. He feels all right — God, he
thinks, has nothing to complain of.
VII
This is the modern man's ' Justification by the
Works of the Law,' without thinking of the relation
of his heart to God. He is, in short, the Pharisee,
but he is much lower than the Pharisee. For he has
made himself a low standard. The Pharisee at least
had a difficult standard. " I fast twice in the week.
I give tithes of all that I possess." He has a much
easier rule.
God wants to lift him up to be the noblest thing in
the Universe. But he prefers to live down with his
low little standard.
I am thinking of some such men that I have met

148 THE MASTER BUILDER
at a time when one aims at heart-to-heart talks —
when the man perhaps is dying and one wants to
try and diagnose his spiritual condition. Here is a
frequent answer, " Well, I don't think God has any
thing against me. I have never cheated in busi
ness nor wilfully injured another. I am not an extor
tioner nor unjust, nor an adulterer, nor even as this
publican. I fast twice — no I don't do that. I give
tithes of — no I do not. But any way I respect religion.
I'm not an unbeliever, I go to Church sometimes if
it is not raining or if I am not tired. I am quite
conscientious about this."
But if one asks him, " What of the relation of
your heart to God? Have you any love to the Father
in Heaven. Any gratitude to the Blessed Lord?
Would it make much difference to you if the story
of the Gospel were proved false?' Are you very dis
satisfied and penitent? Are you praying that God
would lift you up to be a noble servant of Christ
to your life's end ?" He smiles at it. " That is all
high-falutin sort of parson's talk. I think I am doing
very well."
Here is the easy modern edition of the religion of
the deeds of the Law. It is an easy religion. Like the
children's lesson books, 'French without tears,' 'Latin
without tears,' this is Religion without tears. It
does not cost much and it does not accomplish much.
It makes a man satisfied and independent of Christ.
But oh, it shuts out the light from Heaven and
keeps him from the beautiful progressive growth of
soul which God designs for him. The man is shut
ting out the Christ out of his life and his soul is grow
ing flabby and withered and rotten within him.

WORKS OF LAW IN THE 20th CENTURY 149
VIII
Let no one misunderstand or misrepresent this
teaching. I read an infidel book lately which rep
resents the Gospel as teaching that doing right was
less important than believing something about Christ —
that trying to do good works might land you in hell.
Intelligent Christians do not talk like that. The Bible
says it was for good works God created us. " God
created us unto good works" — "shew me thy faith by
thy works," " be careful to maintain good works," etc.
The contrast I present to you is not between right
conduct and right belief — but between the man who
apart from any heart relation to God makes his own
few self-chosen external rules and considers that obe
dience to them justifies him with God and is quite
satisfied with himself — between him I say and the man
who, feeling his own sin, longing to rise to the highest,
finds out how God loves, finds out how Christ cares,
and then casts himself on him in humble trust, to be
enabled to do such good works as he could never
dream of by himself, and to go on to an eternity of
such beautiful deeds for ever and ever.
And I say deliberately that any man living in the
light of Christianity as we are, who is not penitently
praying to get nearer to God, who is contentedly keep
ing his few rules of decent respectability and making
them his cold legal claim on the Eternal Father —
should have ringing in his ears the solemn warning
of Scripture: " By the deeds of the Law shall no
flesh living be justified. Except your righteousness
exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees
ye shall in no case enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
That is Paul's attitude in his fight for religion.

PART IV
TO PRISON AND TO DEATH

PART IV
TO PRISON AND TO DEATH

CHAPTER XV
Going up to Jerusalem
It is the month of February, a.d. 58. Paul has
been nine months in Europe. He has accomplished
great things in that time. He has laid the founda
tions of the Catholic Church of the West.
One would think that he might rest now. He has
had a hard life. He has done a great work. He is
growing old. The time of youthful enthusiasm ought
to be over for him. But some men never grow old at
heart. To Paul all that he has accomplished seems only
a beginning. He is dreaming of far greater doings in
the future.
His vision is expanding to the far horizon — to the
limits of the Roman Empire, to the shores of Spain,
to the Pillars of Hercules where the world ends. Even
there he means to carry the banner of the Cross com
mitted to him by Jesus on the Damascus road. And
the centre of his vision is the Imperial City, Rome.
We have hints of his great project in the epistle
which he has just sent to Rome.
" I have long wished to see you. I hope soon to
151

152 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
come to you"on my way to Spain. I must first go to
Jerusalem to meet the chiefs of the Church and to bring
my collections for the poor. When that is done I hope
to start for Rome. If it be God's will. But pray for
me earnestly that I may be delivered from the dangers
before me in Judea that I may come with joy to you,
that through the will of God I together with you may
find rest."
Yes ! Paul, through the will of God you will come
to them in Rome, but in a way that you little dream
of to-day. And through the will of God you will find
rest in Rome — the rest that will come to you through
the headsman's axe! n
Now in this month of February, 58, he is starting
from Corinth on the beginning of that expedition.
But first he must go to Jerusalem to meet the heads of
the Church and to bring the moneys collected for the
poor. Young Timothy is with him, and Luke and Tro-
phimus the Ephesian and four other delegates from the
churches of Asia, probably bringing with them the
moneys collected in their towns.
First to Jerusalem. He wants to get there in time
for the Passover. It is not easy to get a passage just
now, for all over the land the caravans are on the
march, the Passover pilgrims are assembling. Down
at the harbour he finds quite a crowd of them already
waiting for a ship.
And soon he finds that it is an ugly crowd and dan
gerous. Black looks and muttered curses greet him
as he comes. There is no time when a fanatic crowd
is so excited and inflamed as just before a religious

GOING UP TO JERUSALEM 153
festival, and if Paul had been a wiser man he would
have chosen some other port than that of Corinth,
where he was so well known and so well hated by
the Jews. They are already pointing him out, the
renegade who speaks blasphemous words against
Moses and the Law. They are biding their time. A
crowded ship on a dark night is a capital place to knife
a man or hustle him overboard. Paul's friends get
wind of the treacherous plot, so they have to decide
to start overland through Macedonia.
It is an ominous beginning for the great expedition
to the ends of the earth. And there is no chance now
of being in Jerusalem for the Passover. However, it
is a pleasant journey with pleasant friends, in the beau
tiful springtime just before Whitsuntide, and it takes
them through towns where dear old friends will meet
them. I think Paul got sick with his chronic disease
when they came to Philippi, for I find that he and the
physician Luke had to stay there while their party
passed on to Troas. If so, it was not a bad place to fall
sick, amid the best beloved of his converts, Lydia and
the jailer and all the rest of them.
Which suggests to us not to think gloomily of Paul's
life in spite of its dangers and troubles. Such friend
ships around him everywhere made a large compensa
tion. I wish we had more time for such friendships in
this great lonely city of ours. There are many pleasant
friendships in the careless world, but it is no cant to
say that Christian men's friendships grow closer in
the common tie of friendship with their Lord, and
the hope in common that their friendships shall be
eternal in the boundless life of the hereafter. True
friendships are what give colour to life. Someone once

154 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
asked Charles Kingsley what he was most thankful
for in his life, " That God gave me friends," he said.
So with Paul. He had no wife or child or family
ties. But God gave him friends. If few men had
more bitter enemies than he, few men also had more
devoted friends. And that meant happiness in spite
of all his troubles. m
He spent Passover week in Philippi. Passover
fell that year on Thursday, April 7th, and the Chris
tian Jews were keeping the festival. But no longer
as a mere Jewish celebration. Already Paul had put
into it the Christian meaning, " Christ our Passover
is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast."
It was the beginning of our present-day celebration of
Good Friday and Easter.
Next day he and Luke left Philippi and five days
later caught up their friends at Troas, that classic
ground by the plains of Troy from which he had started
last year on this European trip. Here they had all
to wait for a ship till Monday the 18th. This gave
them a Sunday in Troas, and Luke has jotted down in
his diary an interesting picture of their Church service
in the upper room. You feel that the picture is by an
eyewitness. You see the picture before him, the
eager assembly, the many lights, the windows flung
open in the warm night. You see him uneasily watch
ing the lad Eutychus in the upper window dozing and
dropping asleep, and as the sermon goes on borne
down by deep sleep, till with a startled cry, before
anyone can reach him, he falls out through the open
window three stories high. An upper window ledge
is not a good place for sleeping in sermon time.

GOING UP TO JERUSALEM 155
There is not much sleep for anyone else that night,
for the ship sails at dawn. After their Communion
service together, Paul sees his comrades on board and
starts off alone on a twenty-mile walk to catch them
up at the next port. He wants a long walk. He
wants a rest from people for the present. He wants
to be alone for quiet thought and communion with
God. There is much to think about. The events
of the last few weeks have shaken his confidence.
Forebodings are in his heart that his great expedition
to Spain is falling through. Somehow he feels that
the brightest days of his ministry are probably over,
and that the future holds hard times for him. Down
the cemetery road, past the hot springs of Troas,
through the oak woods, he wends his way, deep in
thought all day, and at night catches up the ship at
Assos. iv
On an evening ten days later we pick up his party
again as they enter the harbour at Miletus. The
ship had passed Ephesus without stopping, but there
was time at Miletus to send a messenger to summon
at least the presbyters of Ephesus to meet him. Next
day they arrive at Miletus and here we get another
of the graphic pictures in Luke's diary. ^
There is the ship unloading her cargo, the sailors
shouting and singing at their work. Out on the sands
a sad little group of clergy gathered to say good-bye to
their master and friend. Paul is speaking:
" I leave Ephesus in your charge. Take heed to
yourselves," he says, " and to the flock over which the
Holy Ghost hath made you overseers to feed the church

156 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
of God which he hath purchased by his own blood.
Give to them of your best. Remember the words of
the Lord Jesus how he said, ' It is more blessed to give
than to receive.' Ye know how I bore myself among
you since the first day that I set foot in Asia, teaching
publicly and from house to house repentance towards
God and faith towards Our Lord Jesus Christ. Now
I am going away from you, not knowing what is before
me, saving that in every place the Holy Spirit testifies
that bonds and afflictions await me. What matter
provided I finish my course faithfully and the ministry
which I received of the Lord Jesus. So I have to say
good-bye to you, a long good-bye, for ye among whom I
lived proclaiming the glad news shall see my face again
no more. Be watchful. Be faithful. Farewell to
you all. I commend you to God and to the word of
his grace who is able to build you up and give you an
inheritance among them that are sanctified. Now let
us kneel down and pray to him to have you in his
holy keeping."
And they all kneel down sobbing through the prayer,
" sorrowing most of all for the word which he had said
that they shall see his face again no more."
So they parted, " tearing themselves away," and
again we realize how men held him in their hearts,
and how deeply he meant those affectionate greetings
in his letters to the churches when he was far away
from them.

Another week of delightful sailing in those sunny
April days past Cos and Rhodes on its island of roses,
on to Patara, where they change ship for Palestine.

GOING UP TO JERUSALEM 157
The third day he can see from the deck the highlands
of Cyprus open up before him — Cyprus, the home of
his old friend Barnabas, now with his Lord in the spirit
land. " Ah, Barnabas, I wish I had been less im
patient with you that day at Antioch!"
They spent a week in Tyre, famous in Jewish pro
phecy. There the brethren warned him of the danger
in Jerusalem, and there was repeated the scene at
Miletus, " they all with their wives and children
accompanied us out of the city, and kneeling down on
the beach we prayed together and said good-bye."
VI
Now they are in beautiful Caesarea, the capital and
seat of government — only three days from Jerusalem.
There are fourteen days to spare before Pentecost,
and it is pleasanter to spend them here with friends
than in Jerusalem, where his reception is more doubt
ful. Paul is the guest of Philip the evangelist, a man
after his own heart, with his own broad views. We
remember when Philip was ordained one of the Seven
Deacons — when he dared to preach the Gospel to
the heretic Samaritans — when he baptized the black
eunuch of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, and,
leaving him, preached from town to town till he came
to Caesarea. That was twenty years ago, and here he
is in Caesarea still with his four daughters, the virgins
that did prophesy.
What memories he would bring back to Paul as
they sit together in the evenings talking over old times
— that day when they had been present at the stoning
of Stephen, the time when Paul had chased him and
his comrades from Jerusalem, and how their loving

158 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
Lord from the heavens had overruled all for good, how
Paul's pursuit of the disciples had spread the Gospel
more widely, how Philip, far away from the narrowing
influences of Jerusalem, was more in touch with Paul's
wide views than were the Christians at headquarters.
And as they talked, young Luke was surely lis
tening and making voluminous notes for his book. It
was good for Paul to get these restful days in Caesarea,
the last he should have of such restful days for many a
year to come. Even these were broken by warnings
of coming dangers, and friends weeping and beseeching
him not to go on. But Paul's purpose was fixed. He
saw where duty lay. Like his Master before him amid
similar warnings, " he steadfastly set his face to go to
Jerusalem."

CHAPTER XVI
Riot and Arrest
Another week has passed. Paul is in Jerusalem.
The last visit of his life to the Holy City. And the
saddest. He had come with boyish eagerness in the
old college days long ago. He had come back, a
man shaken by many emotions after his vision on the
Damascus road. He had come up with Barnabas to
win his battle for the freedom of the Church. Now he
is come for the last time with foreboding in his heart
" ready not only to be bound but, if necessary, to
die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus."
He is staying with Mnason of Cyprus, an " old
disciple " who has a house in Jerusalem. Through his
window he can see the Pentecost crowds in the street,
the crowds that he had been accustomed to since early
days. " Parthians and Medes and Elamites and
dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Pontus and Asia." And
Asia! He does not like the look of that crowd from
Asia. There is a group of them passing now, easily
recognized in their bright national costume so familiar
to him in his three years at Ephesus. He could very
well do without these, his bitterest opponents, the
bigots who hated him and stirred up riots against him
everywhere he went. He knows very well that they will
be his chief danger in Jerusalem. The less he sees of
them the better. ii
But he cannot avoid them. For the brethren at
Jerusalem have put him in an embarrassing position.
159

160 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
On the whole, one feels disappointed at their attitude.
Just a week ago he had entered the city. They do
not seem to have provided hospitality for him, the
greatest churchman of them all. He had a pleasant
welcome from friends on his arrival. But the next
day was a serious ordeal when he appeared before the
assembled church. Some of them were in full agree
ment with him, but he knew that many were quite
out of sympathy with his broad views about the Gen
tiles. They could not agree that the despised heathen
should be received into the Church on a level with the
ancient people of God. So Paul was not at all received
with the unanimous enthusiasm that we should have
expected. He had brought them a large money collection for
the poor which had taken years of thought and execu
tion. He gave them a glowing account of his work
for the Lord — of all the heathen converted to Christ,
all the important churches that he had founded in the
West. But I think Luke his biographer is disappointed
at their response, judging from the entry in his diary.
True, " they glorified God." They could hardly
help doing that. Then immediately they chill him
with the cautious advice: " Brother, you must be
careful. Our people here are very much concerned
about your teaching. You not only abolish all dis
tinction between the Gentiles and the chosen people;
you seem even to go farther. You speak very un
guardedly. They think you are overthrowing Moses
and the Law. Now be advised by us. Be very cau
tious. Clear yourself of suspicion. Do not get
religion into discredit. Shew yourself publicly a good
Jew. Here are four poor men who have a Jewish
vow. Take charge of them publicly. Be their sponsor

RIOT AND ARREST 161
and go to the Temple with them daily, paying their
charges for shaving their heads and other purification
ceremonies. So shall men see that you are loyal to
the Jewish rules." Ill
No doubt it was wise advice, if only it had come
at some other time, not just then when his pulses were
throbbing with the excitement of his great story of the
triumph of Christ amongst the heathen. If you want
a favourable hearing for your doctrine you must not
antagonize people unnecessarily. The Church was
in a critical position at this transition time from
Judaism to Christianity. If the church at Jerusalem
at this crisis had repudiated Paul the results might
have been disastrous. The Church always needs not
only eager enthusiasts, but also farsighted, prudent
men, and it was God's good providence that a wise,
cautious man like James should be at the helm just
then. Still, it is possible to overdo caution; and it is
possible to put it at the wrong time. One can imagine
the disappointment of Paul after his passionate speech
about the glory of Christ and the conversion of count
less heathen, that their prominent thought should be
the soothing of popular prejudice by conformity in
what to him were but the " weak and beggarly ele
ments." As if the Church of England thirty years ago
should meet a famous missionary who had come back
in triumphant enthusiasm to tell of a continent won
for Christ, " Brother, we want you to be in church to
morrow that the people may see you wear the black
gown in the pulpit or that they may see you taking
the Eastward Position at the altar."

162 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
Of course Paul could conscientiously do it. It was
quite right for him as a Jew and it might conciliate
Jewish Christians even though it might also be mis
understood by Gentile converts. What seems to have
been forgotten was that it would put him in unde
sirable prominence amongst the excited fanatic Jews
from every land who were daily crowding the temple
courts. Especially those Jews from Asia who had
been pursuing him with slanders and murderous plots
all through his ministry. IV
On the seventh day they got him — those Jews
from Asia. That morning they had suddenly recog
nized him in the streets walking with his Gentile
friend Trophimus the Ephesian, and now they see him
in the temple with his four poor men and they are but
too ready to suspect that he had brought in the Gen
tile into the holy place. He had not done anything
of the kind, but suspicious people will believe any
thing. Straightway the fierce hatred is flashing in
their eyes and with a wild shout of rage the men of
Asia are upon him. "Men of Israel, help! This is
the wretch that teaches everywhere against Moses and
the Law and the Temple of God. Now he has brought
Gentiles into the temple and polluted the holy place ! "
The defilement of the temple was the unspeak
able crime. Even the Roman authorities had to be
most careful about that. In a moment the rumours
had spread among the fanatic crowd, and in another
moment they have rushed him. He is struck to the
ground and flung violently down the steps through
the Beautiful Gate. And straightway the gates are
shut behind him, lest the Temple should be desecrated

RIOT AND ARREST 163
by murder. The murder does not matter so much
provided it is done outside. Ah, Paul, it will go hard
with you now unless the Christ of the Damascus
road be watching you! There is no mercy in that
trampling mob now that they have got you down.
But his time has not yet come. The Roman police
are well trained in riots, and before he well has time to
commend his soul to God he hears the sharp military
command and the rush of armed men who lifted him
in their arms as they beat back the crowd. In spite
of their quickness he was nearly torn from them,
and only that line of armed men, that line of bright,
flashing steel on the stairs kept them from following
into the barracks.
Behind that line of steel the chief captain, Clau
dius Lysias, looks at his prisoner all bruised and
bleeding but calm and undaunted as he faces the crowd.
Paul had been close to death too often to be much dis
concerted. Calm and undaunted he turns to the chief
captain. " May I speak unto thee, Captain ? "
"What! Can you speak Greek? I thought you
were that rascal Egyptian who led the Passover riots
last year whom we chased from the city with his band
of assassins! "
" No, I am a Jew, a citizen of Tarsus. I beseech
thee for leave to speak to the people."
Surely an unexpected request from a man whom
just now they had been trampling to death. But
after all they were his own people and he longed to
help them. " Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer
for Israel is that they should be saved."
Evidently, Claudius Lysias is impressed. A brave
man is quick at recognizing a brave man. He is

164 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
curious too to see the result of this speech. Perhaps
it might disperse the crowd for him without further
bloodshed. But at any rate he will take no chances.
He will keep that line of steel guarding the stairs.

Paul steps forward. His compelling personality
and the sound of his words in their native tongue
grips the crowd at once and " immediately there is
a great silence."
" Brethren, I am a Jew like yourselves. Like you,
I fiercely rejected the claim of Jesus to be the Messiah.
Many of you remember how I hated His name and per
secuted His followers as you do to-day. What changed
me? I will tell you." In simple, graphic words he
tells the story of his life crisis when the Christ of God
appeared to him in glory on the Damascus road. " ' I
am Jesus, whom thou persecutest! ' In that solemn
hour He commissioned me from Heaven to proclaim
the Righteous One whom I had seen and heard.
How could I resist him after that? "
Up to this he holds his audience spellbound. It
was a fascinating story and quite new to most of them.
But what more had Jesus said to him? " He said to
me, ' The Jews will not receive thy testimony about
me.' He said, ' Depart, for I will send thee far hence
unto the Gentiles!' "
Then in a moment pandemonium broke loose.
The Gentile to be put in the place of the Jew! They
went wild with anger. " Down with the renegade!
Down with the traitor ! Away with such a fellow from
the earth! It is not fit that he should live! "
And Claudius Lysias thought that it was just as
well that he had kept that line of steel upon the stairs.

RIOT AND ARREST 165
VI
But Claudius Lysias was vexed and disappointed.
For Paul, instead of quieting the crowd had roused
them into raving lunatics. Of course, he could not
understand Paul's speech. What had he said? What
was the trouble? "Take him in and strip him and
examine him by scourging. We must get to the
bottom of this, somehow."
Paul held his tongue as they bared his back and tied
his hands for the torture. The rough Roman police
would not understand him. But when an officer
passed, he quietly asked, "Is it lawful for you to scourge
a Roman citizen uncondemned ? "
" What ! A Roman citizen ! "
If there was one thing more than another promi
nent in the police regulations, it was the respect due
to a man who could utter the proud boast " Civis
Romanus sum." Claudius Lysias is hurriedly called
and with new respect for his prisoner and apprehension
in his heart that he had maltreated a Roman citizen,
he delivers Paul from the torture.
But he must try. to understand the case. So next
day he invites the Jewish Sanhedrin and places Paul
before them. Nothing comes of it. There is too much
tension. Scarce had Paul begun his defence when the
High Priest commanded to smite him on the mouth.
Then very naturally Paul lost his temper. One only
wonders that he kept it so long. " God shall smite
thee, thou whited wall who sittest there to judge
me according to the law and commandest me to be
smitten contrary to the law! "
He had not recognized that it was the High Priest,
probably through his defective sight. But some
of the judges must have enjoyed the thrust. The

166 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
" whited wall " struck home in that company which
knew the old hypocrite High Priest so well. • Then,
Paul, seeing that the council was composed of Phari
sees and Sadducees and that in the present temper
of the assembly there was no chance of a fair hearing,
cleverly divides his opponents and plays them off
against each other. " Men and brethren, I am a
Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, of the hope of the
Resurrection I am called in question." Straightway
the Pharisees swing around to his side in order to have
a hit at their Sadducee opponents. The whole meet
ing is in uproar and the chief captain has again to carry
Paul off by force.
On the whole, Paul does not shew up to his usual
high level on this occasion. Critics have contrasted
his attitude with the quiet, silent dignity of Jesus at
his trial. It is not a fair criticism. It is expecting
too much of the man. For Paul was not Jesus. And
in the long, splendid record of that life to which the
Spirit of God had raised him, one needs a reminder
sometimes that he was only human like ourselves.
That is the comfort of such biographies. If God's
grace could so ennoble a poor passionate human struggler
who was only a man like myself, may I not hope that
He will also accomplish something worth while in me?
VII
I see Paul, that night, in his prison cell. His
position is now very serious. Only the strong hand
of the Roman police kept back the powerful faction
that sought his life. And the Roman police must not
interfere too much with that jealous people. They
had got into trouble more than once for doing so.
It was a bad time for Paul. Imprisonment and death

RIOT AND ARREST 167
face him. His enthusiastic scheme for carrying Christ's
gospel to Rome and to the ends of the empire seems frus
trated. He has passed through two days of terrible
strain and he knows that the next day has more trouble
in store. Most of us in his position would have gone
to bed gloomily in that barrack cell. I dare say that
Luke and Trophimus and Mnason, his host, had an
anxious night thinking about him. I dare say Paul,
too, felt despondent. It was only human. But I
have no doubt that he took his despondency to the
right place and told God all about it before he went
to bed. So he could sleep quietly.
Many of us, I trust, have that habit, morning and
evening, of spending some time with God upon the holy
mount telling Him of our plans and hopes and cares and
anxieties and failings, and commending our lives to
His loving care. We can understand why he slept
quietly. As when the waves are tossing on the surface
of the ocean the depths below are calm and untroubled,
so when this man's outer life was harassed and dis
turbed, his inner life was hid with Christ in God.
That is the secret of a Christian man's peace and " a
stranger intermeddleth not with it. If God be
with us, who can be against us ? " If Christ approveth
who is he that condemneth?
And in his sleep in the visions of the night the Lord
stood by him. If the Lord stood by him it did not
greatly matter if men refused to do so. If we lived
as close to Christ, perhaps we too should have such
visions. "Cheer up, Paul! Be of good cheer. You
have borne witness faithfully for me in Jerusalem, you
shall also bear witness for me in Rome."
Think what it meant to that desponding man.
If all men were treating you wjth insult and contempt

168 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
and all life looked dark, what a pleasure if even a
passing friend greeted you kindly. How it would
bring tears to your eyes if some important person
should clap you on the shoulder, " You are doing the
right thing, my friend, I am heartily with you." But
if it was the one whose approval was your highest
ambition; if it was the eternal Christ, your beloved
Master and Friend ! And besides — " You shall also
bear witness for me in Rome." Then, after all, per
haps his great expedition is not quite beyond hope.
At any rate, the Lord has said he should bear witness
in Rome. Never forget that inner secret of Paul's life, the
constant realizing of the close presence of his Lord.
The whole value of this biography is lost if we forget
Christ in thinking of His servant, if in admiring his
faith and courage and endurance we lose sight for a
moment of the secret of it all. He lived in Christ's
presence. Behind, over the heads of priests and gov
ernors and howling mobs, he could always see Jesus.
He sought only His approval. He knew Him for his
friend in life or in death. In life he looked to Him for
salvation and grace and comfort and help. " Not I,
but the grace of God which was in me." In death he
looked to him for the joy of the hereafter. " I desire
to depart and be with Christ. I am persuaded that
He is able to keep that which I have committed to
Him against the Great Day."
Therefore his peace flowed like a river, the river
whose streams make glad the city of God. God give
us grace to live that life in some degree at least. For
if we could but live thus close to our Lord we should
not have a trouble in the world but that we did not
love Him enough and trust Him enough.

CHAPTER XVII
Four Cesarean Pictures
Next morning in the barracks Paul is seated in his
cell with a new happy light in his eyes as memory runs
over that vision of the night, when suddenly he hears
hurried footsteps in the corridor— his cell door is
flung open and his nephew, the son of his married sister
in Jerusalem, rushes in all gasping and excited.
" What is the matter, my lad ? "
" Murder is the matter, Uncle Paul! I have only
just got ahead of the deputation who are coming up to
interview the chief captain. They want him to bring
you down again for the completing of yesterday's
conference. But it is all a treacherous plot. If you
leave these barracks you are a dead man. At a meet
ing last night more than forty of them have bound
themselves under a curse not to eat or drink till they
have killed you, and they are all lurking about the
lanes near the barracks as I came in."
Evidently the lad was in a position to know. Which
brings back our earlier conjectures about the attitude
of Paul's family. I notice that in his visits to Jerusa
lem he never stays at his sister's house. I suggest
that her husband was in the hostile camp — that he
had been at that meeting last night and expressed
his feeling against the plot when he got home. A
man might object strongly to his brother-in-law with
out wishing to see him treacherously slain. And a
woman, at such a time, would forget all her brother's
169

170 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
faults and think only of the little Saul who played with
her long ago in the old home in Tarsus. I think of her
in the early morning stealing up to her son's bed and
sending him post-haste off to the barracks.
ii
Paul immediately sends the lad to the chief captain,
and thus Claudius Lysias gets to know of the precious
plot as he is preparing to meet those honourable gentle
men waiting in the anteroom. I wonder if the Roman
officer kept his temper with them better than Paul had
done yesterday.
The chief captain is a good deal worried over the
matter. This prisoner of his is becoming an embarrass
ing responsibility. He is responsible for his safety as
a Roman citizen. What with threatening mobs and
scheming priests and fanatics whose plots stop not
short of assassination, he will be lucky if he can get
him safe out of Jerusalem. Secretly he makes his
plans. Under cover of the night we hear the tramp of
horses and the soldiers assembling in the barrack
square, nearly 500, so serious is the danger. All
night the escort travels to the government head
quarters at Caesarea. You remember Paul had been
staying in Caesarea a week since with Philip the dea
con. Philip and his daughters and the friends who had
warned Paul of this danger last week see their prophe
cies fulfilled as their friend comes in bound, with a
cavalry troop guarding him.
The governor is in his office and the officer of the
guard hands him the chief captain's letter:
Claudius Lysias unto his excellency Felix, sendeth greeting.
This man was seized by the Jews and was about to be slain
by them when I rescued him, having heard that he was a Roman
citizen. I found him accused of certain questions of their law

FOUR CESAREAN PICTURES 171 1
but of nothing worthy of death or of bonds. And discovering
a dangerous plot against him I sent him to thee forthwith, charg
ing his accusers to go down and speak before thee.
The Governor looks up from the letter :
" Of what province is this man ? "
" Cilicia, your excellency."
" I will hear the case when his accusers come.
Meantime let him be kept in Herod's guardroom."
hi
Thus began the Caesarean imprisonment.
Two full years of the few that yet remained to him
Paul was to waste in that prison in Caesarea. It was
a weary time. True, they were pretty good to him,
these Romans. They always were. There was some
thing in the brave, quiet man that seemed to appeal
to these rough pagan soldiers. ' Treat him kindly,'
said Felix, ' and let his friends come and visit him.' So
Philip and the friends in Caesarea could come to see
him and Timothy and the travelling companions
whom he had left in Jerusalem might sometimes come,
and Luke had come down to stay near him and watch
over his health.
I wonder what Paul did with himself during these
two years. We hear of no epistles written as in his
later imprisonment. I can guess what Luke was doing.
I always think of Luke as going about with two man
uscript books in his baggage — one of them his diary
of his travels with Paul, some day to be completed
as the Acts of the Apostles — the other a book much
nearer completion, the notes for his coming gospel
dedicated to Theophilus.
There was not much material for the diary during
these two monotonous years, and, perhaps, for that
reason the few things that did happen get rather dis-

172 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
proportionate space and prominence. Perhaps, too,
he wanted to offset the Jewish opinion of his hero by
showing how favourably the unprejudiced outsiders
thought of him. He likes telling of the impression
made on Claudius Lysias and Felix and Festus and
King Agrippa and Julius the centurion.
St. Luke sketches for us in his diary four vivid little
pictures of these Caesarean days. This is the first:
IV
It is the court room of the castle. Felix, the
governor, is on the judgment seat and Ananias, the
high priest, is present among the accusers. He has
brought down a Jerusalem lawyer to conduct the pros
ecution of the man who had called him a " whited
wall." The Pharisees and Sadducees have laid aside
their quarrel and are present in court combined against
the heretic.
Tertullus, the attorney, opens his case for the
prosecution by a fulsome eulogy of the judge. " The
Jews are specially fortunate in having so noble and
beloved a governor." (Of course, he knows that
Felix is the best hated governor they ever had. He
had bullied their people and killed their high priest.
But you cannot say that in the pleadings.) " It is
really a shame to trouble your Excellency with this
case. The Sanhedrin would have settled it them
selves only that Claudius Lysias had, in a high-handed
way, taken the man out of their hands. The man is
a pestilent fellow, a disturber of the peace, a profaner
of the temple and a ringleader of the sect of the Naz-
arenes, the followers of a fanatic, called Jesus, who was
crucified by the late governor, Pontius Pilate, some
years ago."

FOUR CESAREAN PICTURES 173
" That is our case, Your Excellency. The reverend
gentlemen who are present will bear out what I have
said." But Felix knows too much about those reverend
gentlemen. He wants to hear what Paul has to say.
The poor prisoner arises with the chains on his hands
and at once holds the attention of the court.
" I also am glad to have Your Excellency as judge,
for from your long residence you are acquainted with
Jewish affairs. I claim that the whole charge is false —
all mere assertion. Where are the witnesses, the
friends who knew me, the men of Asia who seized me ?
Why are they not here? Where are the people who
saw me bring Gentiles into the temple? The truth
is that twelve days ago I came up to Jerusalem to wor
ship at Pentecost and to bring moneys collected for
the poor. These people found me purified in the tem
ple without crowd or tumult. They set on me and
would have murdered me but for the interference of
Claudius Lysias. I have done no wrong. I have
nothing to confess but this, that after the way which
they call heresy I worship the God of my fathers. I
believe in the Messiah as looked for by the prophets
and look forward with hope in God to the resurrec
tion of the dead."
There is something very convincing in the attitude
of an honest man standing out amongst shams and
hypocrites, and Felix, though no honest man himself,
evidently felt it. He knew very well what justice Paul
would get if he were handed over to the Sanhedrin.
" The case is postponed," he said, "for further evi
dence. Let the prisoner be put back and treat him
kindly — let him have all possible freedom, and let his
friends come to visit him."

174 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
Evidently Paul had made a good impression on
Felix. So he went back to his prison. And Luke,
the beloved physician, came to attend him and to make
more notes in that precious diary.

The next is a curious picture, strange and unex
pected. Paul is again before Felix. Or rather, Felix is
before Paul. For Paul is now the dominant figure.
This is no legal trial, but a private Court drawing-room
called by Felix and his young bride, Drusilla, to hear
the prisoner tell — of what think you? Of the faith
of Jesus Christ for which he was in bonds ! What an
extraordinary summons! Surely Paul was as much
surprised as we are.
I dare say it arose from mere idle curiosity — a
bored little company of the Governor's guests seeking
some distraction to pass a dull evening. If there was
anything more serious in it I do not believe it came from
Felix at any rate.
One wonders if it was the young bride Drusilla.
She is a Jewess and may wish to hear the teaching
of her famous fellow-countryman. Probably she has
heard already about Jesus Christ, for she is daughter of
that King Herod who persecuted the Church and killed
St. James and in this very castle of Caesarea five
years ago was eaten of worms and died. Perhaps
she is curious about this religion that seems to make
that poor prisoner so happy. I doubt if she is very
happy herself. She is young and gay and very beauti
ful, as were all the women of her family, but this does
not always bring happiness. And her life does not
tend to happiness. Her morals are no better than those

FOUR CESAREAN PICTURES 175
of other Court ladies of the time. She is here to-day
because this elderly profligate Felix, a man of very
unsavoury reputation, has seduced her from her young
husband and married her. So that neither she nor
His Excellency are very respectable people from Paul's
point of view.
But Paul says nothing rude to her. When Paul
denounces people they are usually men. God only
knows what is in that girl's heart or why she
wanted to hear him speak of the faith of Jesus
Christ. Paul does not judge her. But she hears
him speak very plainly of the sins common in that
Court. Probably she has heard of John the Baptist
before Herod, calling adultery by its right name,
though the adulterer was a king, and losing his head
for it. Here is another of the Baptist type. He has
no thought of his own safety, only of his great message.
He longs for her soul and all their souls. He feels him
self, as he told the Corinthians, " an ambassador for
Christ beseeching men in Christ's stead, be ye recon
ciled to God, beseeching them that they receive not
the grace of God in vain." I wish we clergy could
always feel our position as keenly. We should make
men listen then.
Paul made them listen. We do not know what
Drusilla felt, but as Paul reasoned of Righteousness
and Temperance and the Judgment to come, Felix
trembled. He had reason to tremble. Conscience
had him by the throat. Many a scene of greed and
treachery and lust and blood, of murdered men and
dishonoured women are there in his past life for
memory to call up for that Judgment to come. For
Felix's record in history is infamous, and conscience
tells him bitter things as he listens to Paul.

176 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
But it is of no avail. Conscience is God's kind
voice calling him to repentance. And for the moment
it seems as if he wanted to repent. But like many
another he does not want to repent just yet. " Go
thy way, some other day at a more convenient season
I will call thee again."
Ah! some other day. We are all going to do great
things some other day. Some other day we will
repent and yield ourselves to Christ and conquer
our evil habits and be wonderfully good people.
Every time a man says that he makes it less likely
that he will do it. Every time you are brought in
contact with Christ and higher things, and put off
to " a more convenient season " — makes it less prob
able that that convenient season will ever come.
Every such refusal draws blood, as it were, on the
spiritual retina. Every such refusal hardens the heart.
There is no ice so hard as that which melts a little on
the surface and hardens again when the sunlight
departs. Ah Felix! that convenient season will never arrive
for you. In a few months you will be cast out of your
high position and vanish from history in obscurity
and shame. That fair young wife will be swallowed
up with her son in a terrible eruption of Mount Vesu
vius. Well for you both if you had given heed to Paul
that day when he reasoned of Righteousness and Con
tinence and Judgment to come, and told you the
meaning of the faith of Jesus Christ.
VI
The next scene is in the following year. The
governor Felix is gone in disgrace to be tried in Rome
on an accusation of the Jews, and to win favour with

FOUR CESAREAN PICTURES 177
his accusers he meanly threw them a sop as he departed
by leaving Paul bound. So after his two weary years
he is up again for trial before the new governor Festus.
His enemies are more hopeful now. This governor
is a new man. He does not know them as Felix did.
But Festus is not quite so simple as they think.
For when they innocently suggest that Paul should
be sent back to Jerusalem where their assassins could
easily reach him, " No," replies the governor, " Paul
stays where he is. Bring your case before me here in
Caesarea." So they are assembled again in the Great Hall of
the Castle. But they are no better prepared than be
fore. The same wrangling and abuse and accusations
without proof till Festus grew weary of the whole
business and wanted to get rid of it. "Here, Paul,
what do you say to this suggestion that you go back
to Jerusalem where people understand these perplex
ing subtleties? Are you content to go back and there
be tried before me?"
Paul knows too well what that would mean. He
is sick of these delays. He sees little hope since even
the governor seems yielding now. Better risk every
thing to put an end to it. Instantly he throws out his
challenge as a freeborn citizen of the Empire. " No,
Your Excellency, I am not content, I stand here at
Caesar's judgment seat where I ought to be judged.
I am willing to die if adjudged guilty of wrong,
but I am not going back to Jerusalem to be mur
dered. I am a Roman citizen. I appeal unto Caesar! "
There was no evading that appeal. It was the
proud privilege of every Roman citizen that he could
always on just cause appeal to the Emperor. So
after consulting his assessors the governor pronounced

178 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
the only possible sentence. " Hast thou appealed
unto Caesar? Unto Caesar then thou shalt go."
So the great case ended for the present and the
Jews had to go home baffled, outmanoeuvred. And
Paul wonderingly saw that in a far different way from
what he had planned for himself the word of the Lord
was to be fulfilled. 'Thou shalt one day go to bear
witness for me in Rome.' VII
How little we can tell how our prayers will be an
swered. For years Paul had desired and prayed that
he might go to Rome. Now in the Providence of
God he is to go, but as a prisoner in chains. It seemed
a most disappointing answer. But we know better
now. One of the greatest treasures of Church and
people for 2000 years has been the noble group of
epistles that Paul wrote from his prison in Rome
which we might never have had at all if he had gone
as he desired, as a busy, active missionary.
It is a good thing to tell God all that we desire.
Even if our prayers be foolish. God is not foolish.
But it is a good thing, too, to leave the answer in His
hands. Not to dictate the method of it or to say that
if God does not answer as you expect you will cease
to believe in prayer. For we are foolish children and
don't know what is best.
I had a friend once who told me a curious thing.
For years he had kept in a book a sort of Debit and
Credit account with God. On the left-hand page
the things he had most earnestly prayed for, and
opposite, the answers whenever they came. The
result was very interesting. Sometimes the answers
Were opposite the prayers. Sometimes there was a

FOUR CESAREAN PICTURES 179
blank where no answer came, and he often saw later
that that too was good. And sometimes the answer
came in a form quite different from what he expected.
I think that too would be Paul's experience.
Years after this disappointing answer he writes to
the Philippians from his Roman imprisonment. " I
would have you to know that the things which have
happened to me have fallen out rather unto the prog
ress of the gospel."
Pray to God, but leave the issue in His hands, for
God knows best and God cares.
VIII
The fourth picture in Luke's diary is a curious
duplication of what happened in Felix's day. While
waiting for his despatch to Rome there is again a sort
of public drawing-room trial to amuse some distin
guished guests of the governor. For King Agrippa,
the son of Herod, with his wicked, profligate sister
Bernice, the Lucrezia Borgia of her day, had come down
in state to visit the new governor in the palace where
their young sister Drusilla had been mistress a few
months ago. In course of conversation one day,
Festus mentioned this prisoner of his who was accused
by the Jews on some stupid question of religion, " and
of one Jesus who was dead whom Paul affirmed to
be alive." King Agrippa had more Connection with the matter
than the governor knew — probably more than he knew
himself. For Agrippa was a Jew, the last of the Herods,
and the whole destinies of his house had been linked
up with this Jesus whom Paul preached. His great
grandfather Herod was the man who had slaughtered
the1 Innocents at Bethlehem to destroy the child Jesus.

180 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
His uncle Herod was the man who sent John the
Baptist to death and sent Jesus to Pilate with a
scarlet robe of mockery on his shoulders. His father
slew St. James and persecuted the church. Agrippa
had some reason to know about this religion of Paul.
" I would like to hear this man myself," he said.
" Well," replied the governor, " you shall hear him
to-morrow." " So on the morrow," I read, " when Agrippa was
come and Bernice with great pomp and were entered
into the place of hearing with the chief captains and
principal men of the city at the command of Festus,
Paul was brought in. . . . And Agrippa said
unto Paul, " Thou art permitted to speak for thy
self." And the prisoner arose with the chains on his
hands before that brilliant assembly. He knew that
nothing depended on this trial, since he had already
appealed to Caesar. But it was another opportunity
to speak for his Lord.
" I think myself happy, King Agrippa, that I
am to speak before a king who is my own country
man and knows of the prophecies and hopes of our
nation. I am accused of believing in that Messiah
whom the prophets, for ages, have looked forward to.
I know that He has come and that God has raised Him
from the dead whom Pilate crucified. You know
the story, O King, better than His Excellency the
Governor, who is but a stranger. Twenty years ago
all Jerusalem was ringing with it, for these things were
not done in a corner.
" Why should it be thought impossible with you
that God should raise the dead? I myself am no
mere credulous enthusiast; I was more bitter than most
men in my obstinate unbelief. I am known as the

FOUR CESAREAN PICTURES 18ll
fiercest persecutor of the men who had been with Jesus,
persecuting and slaying and compelling them to blas
pheme. Why do I believe? Because I was forced to
believe. Because that risen Messiah in His glory
appeared -to me and commissioned me in His name."
Then he repeats his oft-told story, how the Christ
of God appeared to him on the Damascus road. " And
He has sent me, O king, on a great mission to open
men's eyes, to turn them from darkness to light and
from the power of Satan unto God, that they might
receive remission of their sins by faith that is in Him.
Wherefore, O king, I was not disobedient to the
heavenly vision. That is the cause of this persecu
tion and of the Jews going about to kill me. But
here I stand and must always stand, testifying both to
small and great what the prophets and Moses did say
that the Christ must suffer and by the resurrection of the
dead proclaim light to the people and to the Gentiles."
In the midst of this passionate appeal Festus inter
rupts. He is impatient of this foolish talk about a
crucified Jew risen from the dead.
" Paul, you are beside yourself. Your great learn
ing has made you mad."
" Nay, I am not mad, most noble Festus. The
king will understand me. King Agrippa, you under
stand? You believe the prophets? I know that you
believe them."
But Agrippa is not convinced, or is ashamed to re
spond. In good-natured banter he laughingly replies.
" With little persuasion,1 Paul, you expect to make
me a Christian. "
1 We have to give up the familiar translation of the Authorized Version,
the text of so many sermons, " Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."
The Greek shows that this is no cry of, a soul almost convinced, but the
jest of a proud man who would scorn to believe. (See Revised Version.)

182 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
But I can fancy the smile dying away as he hears
the touching reply, in all sincerity, from that loving
heart. " I would to God that whether by much or by little
persuasion, not only thou, but all who hear me this
day were such as I am except " — as he feels the chains
rattle on his outstretched hand — " except these bonds."
No doubt those proud pagan lords would smile at
such a wish, but would not any poor follower of Jesus
to-day understand it? Paul knew \he happiness and
peace and hope in his own heart for this world and the
world to come. He knew that life meant deeper and
nobler things than ever entered these men's hearts to
conceive. Do you wonder that he impressed them favourably?
Do you wonder that they should feel as they went
back to their palace, this fanatic is at least a real man;
that Agrippa should say to Festus as he departed,
" We could set him at liberty to-day if he had not
appealed unto Caesar?"
So Paul went back to his prison to prepare for his
voyage, and the governor went to his office to write
his report to Rome, whose favourable tenor we may well
believe had much to do with Paul's acquittal in his
first trial before Nero.

CHAPTER XVIII
The Shipwreck
We have now come to that portion of St. Luke's
Diary known to us as the 27th chapter of the Acts of
the Apostles, " the sailors' chapter " which Nelson
studied on his flagship the morning of the Trafalgar
fight. It is suggested that Luke must have been a
sailor or a ship's doctor before Paul first met him in the
harbour of Troas. For sailors say that no landsman
could have written so accurate a sea story.
1
a.d. 60. A late September morning in the har
bour of Caesarea with the sun flashing on the pikes and
helmets of Roman soldiers. They are a troop of the
Augustan Regiment — the " King's Own " as we should
say — drawn up on the quay surrounding a group of
prisoners in chains. Paul is one of the prisoners. As
a Roman citizen on appeal to the Emperor he is doubt
less a man of some distinction amongst the other pris
oners, many of whom when they get to Rome will
probably be flung to the lions in the arena.
Julius, the centurion, is in charge of the escort. A
kindly man is Julius the centurion, and a good friend
to Paul. He has got to know him well during his
imprisonment. He was probably one of the guard of
honour when Agrippa and Bernice heard that generous
appeal, " I wish to God that you were all such as I
am — except these bonds." One would like to know
whether Paul's religion appealed to Julius the centurion.
183

184 ^ TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
There is a coasting ship, of Adramytium waiting
at the side. Soon the centurion has his charge on
board, and Paul is at last started towards his goal of
many years — to Rome. He knew he must go some
time, since the Lord had willed it, but how little he
expected to accomplish it like this — in chains.
Not that he would face it gloomily. Paul was no
pessimist. He knew it was God's leading. He knew
he was in God's care. He longed to see the Imperial
City and hoped to accomplish something for his Master
there in the world's centre. He had an interesting
and exciting adventure before him which would bring
him face to face with the emperor of the known world.
True, it might end in death. But that only meant a
still more interesting and exciting adventure in that
wondrous life of the hereafter. And besides, what
would mean a good deal to Paul, he was not alone.
Luke, " the beloved physician " and friend, was with
him, and another old friend, Aristarchus, from Mace
donia. We see from his Roman epistle that he had
many friends in that city. We see, too, in that epistle
that he had sent salutations to his old comrades
Aquila and Priscilla. So he would expect that dear
old couple also to meet him in Rome.
Things were not so bad, after all, in spite of fetters
and dangers. There is always a bright side to a
Christian man's troubles. With his friendships and
hopes and his sense of God's presence and the quiet
confidence with which he looks on death, the world has
little power to keep men like Paul gloomy.
n
Next day they reach Sidon, and Julius, the centu
rion, courteously treated Paul and sent him ashore on

THE SHIPWRECK 185
parole to visit his friends. A week later they reach
Myra, where a great Alexandrian grain ship is at the
wharf overtopping all the shipping in the harbour.
This exactly suits the plans of the centurion, for the
ship is one of the Egyptian grain fleet bound for Italy.
Egypt, like Canada to-day, was one of the chief
granaries of the Empire, and this is evidently one of
the Government transports. So, notwithstanding the
crowd already on board, Julius exercises his right as a
Government officer and promptly tranships his com
pany. Better, perhaps, had he been less prompt, for the
grain ship is clumsy and heavily laden, and the time
of the winter storms is near. They are uneasy from
the beginning. They start out on an ugly sea. They
lumber along for many days hugging the shore, and
when at last they have to venture out into the open
they are glad to take refuge soon in the Cretan port of
Fair Havens.
Now they have to make a serious decision. It is
death to venture into the raging storm outside. There
is a strong feeling in favour of lying up where they are
for the winter. But the captain of the ship thinks he
can creep along the coast to Phenice, where there is a
safer harbour, though at the risk of being blown out to
sea. They never got to Phenice. When the south
wind blew softly, the captain made his venture. But
that " south wind blowing softly " played the traitor.
Out beyond the headlands they see the coming tempest.
In an hour the Euroclydon is upon them sweeping
down from the Cretan hills threatening to blow the
ship out of the water, and there is a treacherous rock-
bound shore on the lee. So there is nothing for it but
to run out into the open and scud before the gale.

186 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
Then came a terrible time, never to be forgotten,
when even the most experienced sailors abandoned
hope. Luke writes in his diary: "All hope that we
should be saved was taken away." The pressure on
the great central mast wrenched the whole frame
work of the ship, arid the pumps could not keep down
the water in the hold. This was the chief danger in
ships of that period, and in the midst of the mad storm
they had to attempt the only remedy. They passed
ropes under the keel undergirding the ship to prevent
further opening of the seams. But it availed them
little. The leaks gained on them. In desperation
they threw out all they could to lighten the ship, and
the next day they threw over all the spare gear.
Then followed days of dark despair. Literally
dark, for the sky above them was black as ink and
neither sun nor stars for many days appeared, and
still the storm howled and the huge ship was flung
about helpless on the waves.
It is an awful thing to know that death is sweeping
down upon you hour by hour, to hear it coming with
its hideous thunder, and yet, in the darkness to see
nothing of your danger nor of the way out. There
was no mariner's compass in those days — only the sun
and stars to guide. They could take no observations
of sun by day or stars by night. They knew not where
the reefs were or the rockbound shore. Nerves were
tightly on the strain. Any moment might mean death.
And there were 276 people crowded together in the
darkness and wet and bitter cold waiting for the end.
So tense was the strain that they took no meals for
days together. No one who has not been through such
a time can realize what it meant.

THE SHIPWRECK 187
III
In the midst of it all stood one man confident
and calm. Not merely brave. There were other
brave men on that ship who could die without Whining
about it. There are many brave men, thank God,
even without religion, as some stories from the front
abundantly testify. And I think bravery, even with
out religion, is a fine thing in God's sight. Finer, at
any rate, than cowardice without religion.
But confidence and calm at such times is a different
thing, and for that one wants God. That only comes
from consciousness of God's presence and God's love
to all His poor children. That was what gave Paul
the unshaken nerves, the steady hand, the heart beating
evenly. He had been in three shipwrecks already. A
night and a day he had tossed in the deep clinging to a
spar. He had faced furious crowds and scourging and
stoning. Now he seems facing certain death by drown
ing. And still his face is calm and his heart is brave,
strengthened with God's presence in the inner man.
Life had no terrors for the man who felt Christ beside-
him. Death had no fear for one who desired " to
depart and be with Christ which is far better."
IV
That is set before us here as the attitude of a Chris
tian man facing death. Do you feel that it is too high
an ideal, that you could never reach that life of calm ?
I feel the same — and yet I think we are wrong. Paul's
secret was that he lived much in prayer and commun
ion with God. Here in the midst of this terrified
uproar I read that he found time for prayer and inter
course with his Lord, and that somehow assurance
came to him that all would be well.

188 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
You know as well as I — however little we may
profit by it — that there is no other such help in the
troubles of life as the habit of getting some little
time at least every day to withdraw into the holy
mount with God. The men who in every age have
done most to brighten life and lift the world towards God
have been the men who lived thus. It is only they who
can really witness to the value of it. And they would
all tell you, with Paul, that prayer means power,
that prayer means victory, that prayer means peace
and calm. They could not do without it. Paul
could not do without it. The Lord Himself could not
do without it. Away from the troubles and disap
pointments of earth he would retire into the lonely
mountain to continue all night in prayer and com
munion with the Father. Both Paul and his Lord are
continually exhorting us to this secret of peace and
calm. Perhaps we can never get into the heights,
but could we not do a little better than we are doing
to win the habit of running to God like little children
and telling Him things and being calmed by His
presence? v
Then we should be able to cheer and hearten other
people as Paul did. From his communion with God
he comes to that frightened crowd. "Cheer up!
Be of good cheer! Take your food and strengthen
your hearts, for I have assurance from God, whose I
am and whom I serve, that all will be well."
I call your attention to that picture of Paul cheering
up those troubled people. " Cheer up ! Be of good
cheer! " That familiar phrase of Jesus should express
the ministry of every Christian man and woman. It
is your business, every one of you. You are not all

THE SHIPWRECK 189
called to the ministry of preaching, but you are all
called to the ministry of cheering and heartening up
your poor comrades in this troubled world. They
want it badly; never, perhaps, more than in these
sorrowful war days. God wants you to " hearten up "
people. If you have your own troubles keep them to
yourself. Keep a bright face. Wag your tail even
if things are hard with you. That itself is a help and
it is pleasing to God.
But you say Paul had a Divine assurance that all
would be well. Well, have you not a similar assurance
to give ? Even in life's big troubles God has given to us,
as to St. Paul, assurance that should cheer men's hearts.
We can tell the man miserable about his past life of the
forgiveness of sins. Even in the worst troubles — even
to the mother whose boy has died in battle, we can
tell of God's revelation, of the wondrous new adventure
into which her young soldier has gone in the great Life
of the Hereafter. Let us do our part, every one of us,
to help this poor world to "be of good cheer."
VI
See how those troubled people respond to Paul's
hopefulness. Sailors in times of danger are readiest
of all men to believe in intervention from another
world. They feel that this man is in touch with God.
So they take their food and their nerves grow calmer
to face, with new courage, what is still before them.
They need all their courage for the last terrible
night. At midnight there is a cry of " Land ahead! "
They can hear the sound of the breakers and see the
angry line of white, an awful sight when you cannot
tell what is in front. So they sounded and found it
twenty fathoms, and in a few moments more it is

190 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
fifteen fathoms. They see the end is near. They
dare not cast anchors from the bow lest the ship should
swing round to the rocks. Desperately they cast out
four anchors from the stern and long for the day.
Whatever is before them they can do nothing more now.
While they wait in the darkness Paul hears whis
perings and surreptitious movements. The hour of
danger shews up dastards as well as heroes. The
sailors are trying to lower a boat and escape. He
whispers to the centurion, and in a moment the Roman
sword has severed the rope, and the empty boat is gone.
But there is a danger closer to him. As the cen
turion turns his officer salutes him, " Sir, shall we
execute the prisoners lest they escape? " It says much
for the fine discipline of the soldiers that they should
think of this terrible duty at such a crisis. But Julius
thinks of Paul, to whom the whole ship's company owes
so much. They could not afford to let Paul die. So
he takes it on himself to forbid the execution.
At last came the dawn. Right in front is a break
in the rocks and a sandy cove. " Cut the anchor
ropes. Let her drift ashore! " But a cross current
caught the ship and flung her broadside to the sea.
And the waves leap on her, they fling her on the rocks,
they tear her to pieces. In the wild confusion each
man grasps what floating thing he can, and crushed
and bleeding they were flung upon the shore. God
was caring as he cares for all of us whether there be a
Paul amongst us or not.
Perhaps you will remind me that He often lets us drown.
Even so. Even when Heletsus bedrowned and swept into
theUnseen, He is caring none the less. He is at the other
side waiting. " And so, some on boards and some on
broken pieces of the ship, they all escaped safe to land."

CHAPTER XIX
In Chains
Thus ends another crisis in the life of Paul. As
we close the story one cannot help feeling, what a
pity Luke was not with him all the time. What a
life of exciting adventure we should hear of if we
could have the whole stirring story thus graphically
told instead of having to content ourselves with the
bare passing mention of the days that Paul had in
his memory before he met his biographer or when the
biographer was away.
I fear Paul must have been a very silent, unsatis
factory companion to the man who was writing the
story of his life. In the quiet days on shipboard, in
the four prison years when they were so much together,
what things he could have told and how well Luke
could have recorded them. I wonder if Luke ever
saw that tantalizing reference to earlier days in the
Corinthian letter:
Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Three
times was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, three times I
suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep,
in joumeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils
from my countrymen, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the
city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among
false brethren, in labour and travail, in watchings often, in hunger
and thirst and fastings and cold and nakedness. 2 Cor. xi : 24.
What a stirring narrative that would have made in
the hands of the man who has told so graphically the
story of the shipwreck. 191

192 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
But I suppose Paul did not care to talk about him
self, except when it was necessary in talking about his
Lord. The mysterious Presence in which he lived
dwarfed all else for him. I can picture the silent man
looking out over the sea as memory played over those
pictures in the panorama of his life, and tracing more
and more the Guiding Hand, even where he had not
seen it at the time. And I can imagine what an
interesting vision will be our own life-pictures, by
and bye, when we see them in memory from the life
beyond and see God always in the midst, though we
knew it not. ii
That shipwrecked company found themselves on
the island which we call Malta. The place is almost
certainly identified in what is now called St. Paul's
Bay. The " barbarous people " shewed them no
little kindness and Paul responded to their kindness
by healing the sick and telling the people his joyous
gospel of hope. We can conjecture what three months
of such ministry must have meant to the Maltese.
in
Three months later.
Italy is in sight. The winter is over. On the
shores of the lovely bay of Naples the land is putting
on its spring mantle of green. In the fine harbour of
Puteoli, the Liverpool of ancient Italy, sailors on the
crowded wharves are cheering the entrance of the
first Alexandrian grain ship of the season, the Castor
and Pollux. She sails in proudly with topsails set,
the privilege only of Alexandrian grain ships. She
is carrying the bread of life for Italy — carrying also,

IN CHAINS 193
in a deeper sense, the Bread of Life for the world, for
Paul and his shipwrecked company are on board. She
has picked them up at Malta on her way.
We have a picture in Roman history of another
Alexandrian grain ship coming into this same harbour
of Puteoli a few years earlier. Before her in the bay
lay the royal barge carrying the dying Emperor
Augustus. The sailors on the grain ship crowded the
yards to cheer him and with garlands and incense
they worshipped their emperor as a god. The religion
of ancient Italy reached no higher than that, the wor
ship of a dying conqueror.
The herald of a greater Conqueror was coming in
now, but no one took any notice. The world had not
grown better since Augustus' day. The Emperor
was still the representative of the Divine. Roman
society was rotten to the core. These lovely villas
on the bay were homes of profligacy and lust, of
unnatural vices and filthy abominations such as can
not be mentioned here. In one of these villas the
man who was now emperor had killed his own mother.
Just a year later when Paul was in Rome, this same
emperor, the representative of the Divine, put his
young wife to death and sent her head to his adul
terous mistress, Poppea, and divine honours were
paid to the adulteress and her baby. Such was the
condition of the world before Christianity came. And
sometimes even now, both in war and peace times, the
newspapers give us ugly reminders of what we might
drop back to again if we let our religion slip.
It was the most beautiful scene on earth that Paul
looked on that morning from the deck of the Castor
and Pollux. But, oh! it sorely needed Paul's mes
sage — it sorely needed Christ.

194 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH

iv
There were Christians to meet him even in Puteoli.
Curious in what unexpected places these Christians
seem turning up. We hear nothing of any mission
aries sent to Italy. But that seed of the Kingdom has
a strange power of spreading.
Julius, the centurion, has to hasten on his company
on the great Appian road to Rome, crowded all day
long with the varied traffic between Puteoli and the
Imperial city. No doubt there were stirring sights on
that march, but our historian is only interested in the
dirty little town of Apii Forum, on the way, at the
end of the canal, with its motley population of mule
drivers and tavern keepers and drunken bargemen.
For there Paul first meets the brethren from the city,
come to meet him. Some he knows personally, others
only by hearsay. We have a list of his friends to
whom he sends salutations in his epistle to the Romans.
It was pleasant to meet them all, but I fancy his heart
stirring with a deeper pleasure as he sees amongst
them the dear old faces of Aquila and Priscilla, those
old comrades of his, laughing in the delight of meeting
him again. And I read, "he thanked God and took
courage."

Now from the shoulder of the Alban hills he gets
his first view of the Eternal City. He has seen many
fine cities in his time, but nothing like this. Glorious,
beautiful Rome, with all her historic associations, the
incarnation of earthly power, the mistress of the world!
His friends point out the Capitol and the Imperial
Palace, the countless temples and the stately triumphal

IN CHAINS 195
arches commemorating the Empire's glories, the vast
Circus Maximus on the left, where every year 10,000
victims died, butchered to make a Roman holiday,
in that old world without Christ.
Now they are in the city. On through the narrow
streets they march amid ever-increasing throngs of
people, till the weary soldiers halt at last at the bar
racks of the Praetorian Guard and Julius, the centurion,
surrenders his prisoners. And here begin the two or
more long years of Paul's imprisonment in Rome.
vi
Like his time in Caesarea it seems to have been
made as easy as possible for him. Julius, the cen
turion, would be sure to speak well of him to the
officers of the guard. " He is a splendid fellow, this
Paul. We owe much to him on this journey. You
can trust him to the uttermost. If you were even to
parole him on his own simple promise you would be
perfectly safe. Such men as he could not lie to you.
Be as good to him as you can."
And so instead of languishing in the Praetorian
dungeons, he was allowed to live outside in his own hired
lodging with the soldier that guarded him and with
free leave to see and communicate with his friends.
Evidently Paul's circumstances must have im
proved in his old age, since he, who had to work for
his daily bread on his missionary tours, could now
afford to live in his own hired dwelling and support
himself. It is suggested that his father had died and
his family inheritance had come to him, which seems a
fairly probable conjecture.
So I read " he abode two whole years in his own
hired dwelling . . . teaching the things concerning

196 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, no man for
bidding him." VII
These are the last words in the Acts of the Apostles.
Here St. Luke's diary suddenly fails us. Why?
Surely Luke did not mean to leave his hero there
in prison with his trial pending. We know that
Luke was with him. One feels sure that another
book was intended to complete the biography. But
we have not got it. Probably it was never finished.
It may be that Luke lost his life in the terrible per
secution which caught his master later on and that
the rest of his diary, for which the world would give
so much to-day, was flung out unnoticed on a Roman
rubbish heap.
So we have to go on now without his guidance.
We have the traditions of the early Church, but they
do not carry us far. Fortunately we have the letters
which the Apostle wrote during his imprisonment,
and on these we have largely to depend for the rest
of his story.
From these letters we gather that even with all
his privileges it was not a pleasant time. The letters
refer frequently to his chains and his bonds. " The
soldier that guarded him " may seem a small matter.
But put yourself in his place. Think of the intolerable
infliction of being chained all the time to another, a
heathen soldier, often a brutal, beastly sort of man.
We read that in the imprisonment of King Agrippa I
in Rome, the Praetorian prefect was bribed to secure
that the soldiers chained to him should be decent,
good-tempered men. The guard would be relieved
twice a day, but Paul had no relief — no privacy.

IN CHAINS 197
I read lately of a mediaeval tyrant chaining two men
together for months as a distressing punishment.
But Paul had to get used to it. And I think he
did more, that he made his guards like him. You see
the duty would not be very irksome to them for a
few hours at a time. They could not help admiring
the high character and kindly disposition of their
prisoner. I can well believe that some of them grew
attached to him, that little groups of them off duty
would drop in and talk to him in the evenings. And
Paul could not be long in intercourse with any man
without helping him towards higher things. They
often chatted to each other in barracks about their
prisoner and his religion. And he is quite pleased at
this. He tells the Philippians in a letter of this period
" the things that have happened to me have turned
out for the furtherance of the gospel, for my bonds in
Christ have become manifest throughout the whole
Praetorian guard." We gather that some of them
became faithful disciples of Christ, for he writes in the
same letter: "The Christian brethren that are here
salute you, especially those that are of Caesar's house
hold," who would probably be the Praetorian life
guards. When one thinks how many soldiers would
come in close touch with him in the continual change
of the guard, during two years, one can imagine the
difference it would make in that regiment.
VIII
One day, just after his arrival, he invited some of
the chief Jews of the city to meet him, but the inter
view was very unsatisfactory. The Roman Chris
tians were, of course, his most frequent visitors.

198 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
You can well believe that his presence in that prison
room deepened the whole life of that Christian com
munity. Many a poor sinner would come to him in
his trouble. Many a poor presbyter would come to
consult him and to talk about Jesus and go back to his
congregation with his spirit stirred to preach to them
the next Sunday as he had never preached before.
But we learn from the epistles of this period that
his sphere of action spread far beyond these. Even
in his Roman prison there still lay upon him " the
care of all the churches." He still watched over his
distant converts. And for this he had to keep around
him his faithful band of friends who should travel to
and fro and keep him in touch with them.
He tells us that Luke was with him, and Tychicus
his old companion in travel, and young Timothy his
" beloved son in the faith," dearest and closest of
them all, associated with him even in the writing of his
epistles. And with especial interest we read that
John Mark was with him. You remember young
Mark who had deserted when Paul and Barnabas
were on their first missionary journey and who was
the cause of that unhappy separation between him
and Barnabas. Paul was very angry with him then
and refused to let him go with them any more. There
fore it is very interesting to find him helping him now
and to see how much Paul had grown to care for him.

CHAPTER XX
Letters from Rome
Visitors often came, too, from these far-off con
gregations. All roads led to Rome. Members of these
congregations had often to come to the city on busi
ness and, of course, would come to see him and bring
him affectionate messages and perhaps little com
forts for his prison life. And Paul would send back
his greetings and sometimes send important letters.
You remember Philippi, where he had been scourged
so cruelly and where the Philippian jailer had been
converted in the dungeon. One day an old friend
from Philippi arrived. His name was Epaphroditus,
and we judge from expressions about him that he was
much beloved in the church. Probably he was one
of their presbyters. For all that we know, he may
have been the converted jailer. All the old friends,
Lydia and the rest, sent their love and they also sent
him a present. The old man was greatly touched. He
loved his Philippian people better than any other
and he thought much about them in the coming weeks,
for Epaphroditus fell sick in Rome, " sick, nigh unto
death," and the home people were anxious about him.
They and Paul prayed earnestly to God. Prayer was
a very real thing to Christians then. He must have
been a close friend of Paul, judging from his relief
at his recovery. " God had mercy on him," he writes,
" and not on him but on me also lest I should have
sorrow upon sorrow." 199

200 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
When Epaphroditus was convalescent, Paul wrote
a letter to the Philippians which his friend should take
home with him, the most beautiful and tender of all
his epistles. And the most joyous. Out from the
dreary prison room it came to the troubled Philippians
and to despondent poor Christians all over the world
since, telling of the inner gladness welling up in his
heart. " I rejoice in the Lord." " Fulfil ye my joy."
"Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say, rejoice!"
All down the ages we have countless such instances
of the happiness which religion gives in the midst of
troubles. And it is worth thinking of in these troubled
days. It is hard to be cheery with this black war-cloud
resting on us. But God is near and God is caring, and
it is wholesome for us to see what religion can do for
men who are really living close to their Lord.
n
When you read this epistle put it in its right setting.
Paul, writing or dictating it to Timothy, in his prison
room with a soldier chained to him, and his sick friend
waiting to carry the letter home. Let us glance over
some of the little papyrus sheets as Timothy lays them
down: I thank my God upon all my remembrance of you, always
making my supplication with joy for your fellowship in further
ance of the gospel from the first day until now. . . . For God is
my witness how I long after you all in the tender mercies of Christ
Jesus. And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more
and more . . . that ye may approve the things that are excellent,
that ye may be sincere and void of offence unto the day of Christ,
being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are through
Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God.
Do not be troubled about me. The things which have hap
pened to me have fallen out unto the furtherance of the gospel

LETTERS FROM ROME 201
through the whole Praetorian guard and through the brethren
here who have grown abundantly bold to speak the word of God
without fear.
And do not trouble about the result of my trial. I think I
shall be acquitted, but what matter so that Christ be magnified
in me whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ,
to die is gain. Either alternative is good. I hardly know which
I should choose. To depart and be with Christ would be better
for me, to abide in the flesh would be better for you. And 1
believe I shall abide and meet you again. Only let your life be
worthy of the gospel of Christ that whether I come to you or not
I may know that ye stand fast in the Lord.
Now be careful about those little disagreements among you.
If there is any comfort in Christ, if any consolation of love,
if any fellowship of the Spirit, fulfil ye my joy having the same
love, doing nothing through strife or vainglory but in lowliness
of mind, each counting other better than himself, not looking each
to his own things but each also to the things of others. Have
this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus.
Even if I am to be offered as a sacrifice, I joy and rejoice with
you all as you do with me.
I hope to send Timothy shortly to you that I may be of good
comfort when I know your state. For ye know that as a child
with his father he has served with me in the furtherance of the
gospel. But I trust in the Lord that I myself also shall come
to you shortly.
I send back Epaphroditus, your friend and your minister to
my need. He has been very sick, nigh unto death, but God had
mercy on him and on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon
sorrow. Receive him in the Lord with all joy and hold such men
in honour always.
Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. Whatever
happens rejoice in the Lord. I count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. . . . One
thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind and stretching
forward to the things that are before, I press toward the mark
for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brethren, think high thoughts. Whatsoever things
are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things

202 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
arc just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are honour
able and lovely and of good report, think on these things.
I am greatly pleased at your kind thought of me in sending
your gift. Not that I speak in respect of want, for I have learned
in whatsoever state I am therein to be content. But now I have
all things and abound having received from Epaphroditus this
gift that came from you. And my God shall supply all your
need according to his riches in Christ Jesus. Give my love to all
the friends. The brethren here send their greetings to you, es-
Eecially those that are of Caesar's household. The grace of the
ord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Ill
Amongst the many visitors to Paul in his prison
room came one day a young runaway slave, named
Onesimus. He had run away from his master at
Colossae and we suspect, from a reference in Paul's
epistle later, had stolen money from him. He had
made for the great city to hide himself and to have a
good time. A big city is the safest of all hiding places.
But one day some one brought him to see Paul. Or,
perhaps, the poor, hunted lad remembered Paul as a
visitor in old days at his master's house. For his master,
Philemon, was one of Paul's old converts. He was a
member of the Colossian church and he and his good
wife, Apphia, were close friends of the apostle, the
sort of friends to whom you can write and offer your
self for a visit without waiting for an invitation.
" You might get a room ready for me," Paul writes to
him, "as I hope, through God's blessing, to come soon
and visit you." It is only to very intimate friends
that you can write like that.
Paul's heart warmed to the young slave. Young
men had always a special attraction for him, and this
young scamp must have had something very winning
about him in spite of his wickedness. For there grew

LETTERS FROM ROME 203
a very close friendship between them. And Onesimus
became penitent and became a disciple of Christ.
IV
It is sometimes an awkward thing to become a
Christian. For you feel impelled to do the right thing,
which is so often a very unpleasant thing. The
religion which Paul taught was very practical. Onesi
mus must not merely tell God that he is sorry, he must
go back to his master and confess and take his punish
ment and make what restitution he can.
Some of us think it all right if we just tell God
that we are sorry. That is a very easy thing to do,
for we feel that God knows it already. Confession
does not bring any awkward consequences. I once
asked a small boy whether he had confessed to God a
certain sin. " Yes," he said. And then he made me
smile as he added, " You see, I don't mind telling God
because He won't tell anybody." Have not you
often felt like that? Repentance means more than
that. It means earnest resolve for the future, also
restitution, where possible, and willingness to take the
unpleasant consequences. That was what Paul taught
his convert. " You must go back, my lad, and do the
right, though it will be very hard for you to go and
very hard for me to part with you. But I will write a
note to my old friend to take with you."
So he sends back Onesimus with this note in his
pocket and, fortunately, Philemon kept the note and
I suppose he gave it afterwards to the Colossian church
to preserve with Paul's epistles.
It is a very interesting little page of the Bible. No
formal teaching or disquisition on doctrines, but just
a little impromptu letter dashed off at the moment.

204 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
But it gives a glimpse into the heart of the writer,
better than some more formal epistles. And it is a
valuable illustration of the way in which Christianity
deals with social problems, slavery and war and such
like. Slavery was an unutterably cruel institution. The
man, the woman, the young girl, the child belonged to
the master to do what he liked with. This very year
of Paul's arrival in Rome the prefect of the city was
killed by the slave lover of one of his slave girls.
Probably he deserved killing. In revenge for it the
whole body of his 400 slaves, men, women and chil
dren, were put to death. How did Christianity deal
with slavery? Not by stirring up rebellion or rousing
slaves to insurrection, but by gradually leavening
society with the spirit of that religion which recog
nized all as brethren and as equal in the sight of the
Father of us all. " Onesimus," writes Paul to the
master of this young slave, " Onesimus is my friend
and a disciple of your Lord and mine. Receive him
as a brother." " Masters," he writes in the Ephe-
sian epistle, "be good to your slaves, for their master
and yours is in Heaven and there is no respect of per
sons with him." That is the spirit of the religion of
Jesus and whendt grew sufficiently strong in the world,
slavery was swept away forever.
That too is how wars will be swept away. That
is God's method. Not by paralyzing the aggressor
or smiting him with fire from heaven, but by
gradually permeating life with the religion which
makes all men brothers. God's plan is slow, but it is
sure, like the incoming of the tide. It is slow because
its appeal is to individual wills, and everyone who
yields his life to it is hastening that coming day when

LETTERS FROM ROME 205
men will look back on war with the shame with which
they now look back on slavery.

Here is the letter which Onesimus brought to his
master and from which you can gather the whole of his
story :
Paul a prisoner of Jesus Christ and Timothy our brother, to
Philemon our beloved and to Apphia our sister and to Archippus
and the church in thy house. ... I thank my God always
making mention of you in my prayers. For I had much joy and
comfort in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been
refreshed through you, my brother.
Wherefore, though I might enjoin you to do what is fitting,
yet for love's sake I rather beseech you being such a one as Paul
the aged and now a prisoner of Jesus Christ. I beseech you for
my child Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds. . . .
whom I send back to you though I fain would have kept him with
me that in your behalf he might minister to me in the bonds of
the gospel, but without your mind I would do nothing that your
goodness should not be of necessity but of free will.
For perhaps he was parted from you for a season that you
might have him for ever, no longer as a bondservant but as a brother
beloved. ... If then you count me as a partner, receive him
as myself. If he has wronged you or owes you anything put it
down to my account. I, Paul, write with my own hand I will
repay it. Though indeed you owe to me even your own soul.
. . . Having confidence in your obedience I write, knowing that
you will do even beyond what I say.
But withal prepare me also a lodging, for I hope through
your prayers I shall be granted to come to you.
Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus, salutes you,
and so do Mark and Aristarchus and Demas and Luke, my fellow-
workers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

XXI
Letters from Rome — Continued
But before Onesimus started for Colossae there
was occasion for another letter to be sent to the church
in his home town. There had arrived in Rome an
other Colossian, either the founder or an important
presbyter of the Colossian church. His name was
Epaphras. He consulted with Paul about some diffi
culties that had arisen. It seems that a travelling
preacher had come teaching Christianity, but a Chris
tianity mixed up with some queer notions of Rab
binical theology and Greek philosophy — about the
worship of angels, and the necessity of an extremely
ascetic life, and other errors. The danger was that
it looked so like Christianity. Just as if a Christian
Science teacher, for example, should preach his Chris
tianity to us.
So Paul decided to write an epistle to the Colossians
and send it by Tychicus, one of his associates, who
should also take charge of young Onesimus on his
way home. From the letter it is evident that Paul
did not know the Colossians personally, and perhaps
was not very clear about the false teaching either. He
had to go on what Epaphras told him.
I omit the synopsis of this Colossian letter, as
I want to keep your attention fresh for the following
epistle where some of its best thoughts are even bet
ter expressed. Two sentences, however, I quote with
a special purpose. "All my affairs shall Tychicus
206

LETTERS FROM ROME— (Continued) 207
make known unto you — I send him to you, together
with Onesimus, the faithful and beloved brother,
who is one of yourselves." " Give my salutations to
the brethren in Laodicea and when this epistle has
been read among you, cause that it also be read in the
church of the Laodiceans and ye also read the epistle
that I am sending to Laodicea." n
So the two messengers start for Colossae, Tychicus
to present his epistle to the church, Onesimus to face
the master whom he had wronged, carrying with him
his precious letter of apology. Here we regretfully
bid Onesimus farewell. We should like to know how
he turned out afterwards, for Paul had a great belief
in the lad. History tells of a bishop of Berea named
Onesimus, and some think that he was the former
slave. It is only a conjecture.
But Tychicus had another letter to carry and
thereby hangs a tale. We have seen that Paul speaks
of an epistle to the Laodiceans which he was sending
at the same time. Now we have in the Bible no
epistle with that title, wherefore many have concluded
that it is lost. But we have an extremely important
one called the Epistle to the Ephesians. It is rather
puzzling, since it has none of the personal references
which we should expect in a letter to people whom
he knew so well for three years and amongst whom he
had such an exciting time. It might have been
written to any church. The personal element is quite
absent. Some passages look as if he had only a
hearsay knowledge of the people. One is inclined to
doubt if it was really addressed to the Ephesians.
In addition to this we have statements from sev-

208 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
eral ancient fathers of the Church that the manu
scripts of this epistle which they had, omitted the
word Ephesus in the inscription. The two oldest
copies in existence to-day bear this out. One is in
Petrograd and one is in the Vatican library at Rome.
They have no title. And finally we have a testi
mony that, in some places at least, it was known as
the Epistle to the Laodiceans. Yet there must be
some good reason for the fact that the title " Ephe
sians " always clung to it in church tradition.
in
The question is not worth discussing further. I
believe it was a general Pastoral letter for Ephesus
and Laodicea and other churches — if so, it was the
greatest Pastoral ever written. I call your attention
now to the Epistle to the Ephesians. It is Paul's last
and noblest letter to the Gentile churches. Here he is
at his best and greatest. He passes away and rises
far above all the (necessary) lower controversies of
other epistles about Jews and Gentiles and ceremonial
rites and systems of theology. He rises into the
sublime and the infinite. His imagination is peopled
with things in the heavenly places, his fancy is rapt
into visions of God before the world was. To many
devout students this epistle represents the high-
water mark of Paul's inspired thought after his four
prison years of contemplation of the stupendous
mystery of God's dealings with man.
IV
First comes the tremendous thought of God's
Divine purpose from the beginning before anything
was made that was made. This church of Christ

LETTERS FROM ROME— (Continued) 209
he says, is no accident, no afterthought. It was the
eternal purpose of God's love before the foundation of
the world that the eternal Christ should save humanity,
that evil should be swept out of the Universe forever.
that the poor children should be gathered into the arms
of the Father, that God should be all in all.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ,
as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world,
having predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ,
according to the good pleasure of his grace wherein he hath made
us accepted in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through
his blood even the forgiveness of sins. . . . that in the dispen
sation of the fulness of times he might gather unto one all things
in Christ, according to his purpose who worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will.
"I want you to know," he says, "this wondrous plan of God's
everlasting purpose of love. "I pray that the God and Father
of Our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of glory, may give unto you
the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him;
the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may
know the hope of his calling and the riches and glory of this in
heritance and the exceeding greatness of his power toward us
who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which
he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set
him at his own right hand far above all principality and power
and might and dominion and hath put all things under his feet
and gave him to be head of all things to the Church which is his
body." See how this plan of God is working out.
Even you Gentiles come into this loving purpose who were
aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, having no hope and
without God in the world. Now you who were far off are made
nigh by the blood of Christ. Now ye are no more strangers and
foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the house
hold of God built upon the foundations of the apostles and proph
ets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.
God has allowed even me, the poor prisoner of Jesus Christ,
to understand and teach this mystery which in other ages was
not made known to the sons of men. To me who am the least
of all saints was this grace given that I should preach among the

210 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to make men see
this mystery which from the beginning hath been hid in God
. . . according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ
Jesus our Lord. For this cause I bow my knees to the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he would grant you that ye being
rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend this
mystery, that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what
is the breadth and length and depth and height of that love of
Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all
the fulness of God.

This is a brief and very imperfect resume of the
first half of the epistle. Even if there were time
and if I understood him better, still it is not easy to
express simply Paul's thought in this passage. For
his thoughts are deep. And his style is difficult. One
of his sentences here is like a German sentence, twelve
verses long. But perhaps I have given you at least
some little glimpse of the awe and wonder and adoring
gratitude with which he contemplates this mystery
of God's eternal purpose of love to men, before the
time when " in the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth."
Now, in the beginning of the fourth chapter he
turns straight to the practical conclusion from all this,
with the word " therefore." Because of God's love
and God's care and God's thought for you from the
eternities. " Therefore I, Paul, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to
walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called." That is
the keynote of his appeal.
Therefore, keep unbroken the unity of the Church, one Lord,
one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above
all and through all, and in you all.
Therefore walk no longer as other Gentiles walk in the vanity
of their mind. Put off the old man which waxeth corrupt and
put on the new man which after God hath been created in right
eousness and true holiness.

LETTERS FROM ROME— (Continued) 211
Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak every man truth
with his neighbours. Let him that stole steal no more. Let
no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. Let all
bitterness and wrath and anger be put away from you and be ye
kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even
as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
Therefore be ye imitators of God as dear children and walk
in love, even as Christ also loved you and gave himself for you.
Ye were once darkness but are now light in the Lord. Walk
as children of the light and have no fellowship with the unfruitful
works of darkness.
Keep your family life as God would have it. Wives be sub
ject to your husbands. Husbands love your wives even as Christ
loved the Church. Children obey your parents in the Lord.
Servants be obedient to your masters not with eye service as men-
E leasers but as servants of Christ, doing your service as to the
ordnot unto men. And ye masters, do the same by them,
knowing that both their Master and yours is in Heaven and there
is no respect of persons with him.
Finally be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
Put on the whole armour of God that ye may be able to stand in
the evil day.
And continue in supplication for all Christians and for me
that utterance may be given to me to make known with boldness
this mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in a chain.
Peace be to the brethren and love with faith from God the
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all them that
love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. VI
These are the four Epistles of the Captivity,
Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, some
of the results of Paul's two years in that prison room.
Which suggests a lesson for us. To many of Paul's
friends it must have seemed such a waste that God
should leave his great apostle cooped up in confinement
for two years when he might have been preaching
Christ and building up in the Imperial City the cen
tral church of Christendom.

212 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
We, looking back on the results to-day can hardly
feel like that. Perhaps it was worth while in order
that Christ's gospel should get a hold in the Roman
army who went to all parts of the world, who prob
ably had much to do with first bringing that gospel to
Britain. Surely it was worth while to give Paul time
to think. Surely these four Epistles of the Captivity
were of more value to the Church than would be two
years' preaching in Rome. So St. John was exiled to
lonely Patmos and wrote the Book of the Revelations.
So Bunyan, kept twelve years in Bedford Jail, wrote
his Pilgrim's Progress. So Luther, shut up in the
Wartzburg, translated the New Testament for the
Germans. (One wishes they had made better use of it.)
So, too, to some of ourselves it has seemed waste
that we have been disappointed of certain promotions,
that we have been relegated to an obscure position or
set aside by ill health from active work. It is not
easy, but it is wise to say at such times, Let me take
it as God's will. Let me culture my soul and help my
neighbours and make happiness around me and leave
the results with God. That was what Paul did and
God took care of the results. God was guiding. God
was loving. God was caring. Storm and shipwreck,
soldier and fetter, Caesarea and Rome, all worked out
right for Paul in the end. These things that hap
pened to me, he writes, have turned out all right for
the furtherance of the Gospel.
Learn the lesson. Do not fret at the limitations
and disabilities of your life. Rest in the Lord. If
you are trying to live for Him, wherever you are placed,
all things will work together for good to achieve God's
ideal in you, to make you what in your best moments
you long to become.

CHAPTER XXII
The Passing of Paul
After these weary years of the law's delay, at
length, in the spring of a.d. 63, the trial came on.
He stood at last before Nero's Court of Appeal.
As he had anticipated in his letters the verdict was
favourable. He was set free. Possibly the Jews had
grown tired of pursuing him. The reports of Festus
and Agrippa and the Chief Captain Lysias were in
his favour. The kindly centurion, Julius, would help
him all he could. The officers of the guard would say
their good word for him. And in any case, Roman
judges would not be much concerned about a charge
which turned largely on mere Jewish superstitions.
Therefore, though his biographer does not tell the
story, we may accept the uncontradicted belief of
the early Church, that he was set free from his chains
and went out again in his closing days to finish the
great work to which the Lord had called him that
day long ago on the Damascus road.
11
He had a narrower escape than he knew. If his
trial had been delayed a little longer nothing, humanly
speaking, could have saved him.
For in the July of the next year (a.d. 64), came the
historic Great Fire of Rome, blazing for six days and
nights and nearly destroying the city. And, just as
in the Great Fire of London the mob charged the
213

214 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
crime on the Roman Catholics, so now they charged
it on the inoffensive Christians. Those who knew
best had their dark suspicions of the half insane
emperor, Nero, and he, for his own sake, was only too
glad to encourage the slander against the Christian
community. So the year after Paul's trial a Chris
tian was about as safe in Rome as a mad dog. A
fierce persecution arose. They were tortured and
crucified. That devilish emperor covered living men
and women with tar and burned them as torches to
illuminate the gardens. The Roman historian Tac
itus tells us that a great number of Christians perished.
However, that was a year ahead, and meantime
Paul was far away from Rome closing up his life work.
Now, more than ever, we miss that lost notebook of
St. Luke. For, surely it had an interesting story of
the old man's last years. Outside his own letters
we have only vague tradition to guide us. But, fortu
nately for us, his three last letters remain, the
Pastoral Epistles, as they are called, to Timothy and
Titus. No one can read them without seeing that
they belong to this period.
Beyond the hints in these letters we cannot trace
his movements. We may fairly suppose that he fol
lowed his intention expressed in his recent letter to
Philemon, that he visited Colossae and stayed with
Philemon and met young Onesimus again, that he
made a great final visitation of the churches which he
had founded and confirmed their organization for the
years when he should be gone. There is some evidence
that he sailed by the Marseilles shipping line and
founded Christian churches as far west as Spain. But
we know very little about these closing years of his

THE PASSING OF PAUL 215
life. The whole picture is vague and shadowy want
ing the lost notebook of St. Luke.
in
Somewhere in these journeyings he wrote his First
Epistle to Timothy, giving directions about the order
and government of the church, the ordaining of clergy
and the rules of life which Timothy must prescribe
to be observed by Christian people.
The time had come for Paul as well as the other
apostles to think of laying down their work and ap
pointing successors and leaving broad rules for the
guidance of the church when they should have gone
back to their Master. Paul was now a worn-out man
in broken health, approaching his seventieth year.
The impetuous soul was wearing through the frail,
delicate little body. He had had a very hard life.
He had done stupendous work. He had suffered
greatly in body and mind. He was still cordially
hated by a good many people. He had pressing
anxieties, growing heavier as he grew older, " the care
of all the churches." He was tired out. It must have
been a relief to pass on his work to others. It must
have been with a restful feeling that he wrote a little
later " The time of my departure is at hand."
In this preparation for the future he must divest
himself of friends who are needed for important
positions in the church. He must part from his
life companion, Timothy, just when his old age most
needed him. It was for both of them a sore parting.
" I remember your tears," he writes to Timothy a
year later.
He invested Timothy with authority over the
church in Ephesus and the regions around, and soon

816 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
afterwards he similarly appointed Titus to Crete.
They were to ordain clergy to rule the Church, to do
what we now call and what the Church for eighteen
hundred years has called, the work of a bishop. They
were young for such positions. They would require
advice and directions. They might, perhaps, need
Paul's letters as credentials. So a few months after
parting with him he wrote from Macedonia his First
Epistle to Timothy: IV
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, unto Timothy my true child
in the faith, grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and
Our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . This charge I commend to thee my
son Timothy, that thou fight the good fight holding faith and a
good conscience, which some having thrust from them, have made
shipwreck of the faith, of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander,
whom I have delivered unto Satan that they may learn not to
blaspheme. I direct you how to act in the house of God the Church of the
living God.
I exhort therefore first of all that supplications, prayers, inter
cessions be made for all men — I direct how you are to enjoin
men to behave in the church. I direct how women are to act.
Faithful is the saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop
he desireth a good work. (The word " bishop " here is misleading
to us. The Greek word episcopos means simply an overseer,
one who presides. While the Apostle lived it was used of pres
byters who were overseers over congregations. But as the Apostles
began to pass away, the name became restricted to the Chief
Overseers, the successors of the Apostles who were invested by
them with authority to ordain and rule. So the name Bishop
and the office continue ever since. But here the name is applied
to the presbyters ordained by Timothy as overseers of congre
gations.) The Apostle is directing him what sort of man to ordain —
he must be blameless, the husband of one wife, not given to much
wine, ruling his household well and having a good reputation
outside. "Lay hands suddenly on no man. Be careful whom
you ordain. And when you have ordained them, see that they
are properly supported, for the labourer is worthy of his hire.
Likewise the deacons must be men of high character."

THE PASSING OF PAUL 217
Thus and thus must you behave toward the widows on the
poor fund — towards the younger women, etc. Thus I direct with
regard to the rich, to slaves, to false teachers. So he lays down
his direction to the young bishop for his guidance in the church.
Then for his personal life. Keep thyself pure. Watch against
the love of money. O man of God, flee from these things — follow
after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.
Fight the good fight of faith. I charge thee in the sight of God
and of Christ Jesus that thou keep the commandment without
spot until the appearing of Our Lord Jesus Christ. O Timothy,
guard that which is committed unto thy trust. Peace be with you.
So ends the first epistle to Timothy. i

Soon afterwards Paul visited the churches of Crete
with Titus. He could not stay long enough to do all
that was needful in ordaining clergy and checking false
teachers. So he had to leave Titus there in the same
position and authority as Timothy at Ephesus. Titus
was young for a bishop and it would seem that his
authority was questioned. So, later on, it was nec
essary to write to him also. It is not necessary here
to comment on the epistle to Titus, as it is, in sub
stance, very like that to Timothy. VI
So Paul continued his tour from town to town, from
church to church, setting things in order, bidding them
good-bye, leaving them " sorrowing for the words
which he had said that they should see his face no
more." Every month danger drew nearer. The rage
against Christians had spread from Rome to the
Provinces and such a prominent leader could not be
safe for long. He would have to steal in and out of
towns secretly, trusting the loyalty of the church people
not to betray him. He had no lack of enemies, Jews

218 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
and Gentiles. At last they got him. Some informer
laid a charge against him. "Alexander, the copper
smith, shewed against me much evil by his accusation," x
he writes before his death. Perhaps it was he. We
do not know and it does not matter. He could not
have escaped anyway. So they arrested him, perhaps
at Nicopolis, where he meant to spend the winter,
perhaps at Troas in the house of Carpus, where, in
the hurry of departure, he left his old travelling cloak
and his books and parchments, of which we shall hear
again. It seems probable that to escape an unfair
trial in the Provinces he again used his privilege of
appealing to Caesar. At any rate he was taken to
Rome again to be tried. VII
It was a lonely journey to Rome this time — not like
the last. One and another of his friends either had
been sent on missions or else had deserted him in his
trouble. Luke remained with him.
And when he got to Rome there was no group of
friends to meet him as before. It was as much as their
lives were worth to be seen with him now. Dear old
Aquila and Priscilla had fled to Ephesus. Most of the
others had escaped somewhere from Rome. Demas for
sook him. The men of Asia Minor, when they came to
Rome on business, no longer called to see him. " They
have all turned away from me," he says. One brave
friend from Ephesus stands out in fine contrast.
We gather that he was dead when Paul wrote about
him. " The Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesi-
phorus, he was not ashamed of my chains but when he
was in Rome he sought me diligently and found me.
May the Lord grant him mercy in the Great Day."
1 The Greek verb here expresses this thought.

THE PASSING OF PAUL 219
We gather, too, that his imprisonment this time was
very strict. No lodging in his own hired apartment as
before, but shut up close within prison walls. We hear
nothing of preaching or conversing with friends. We
hear no word of hope that he might some day be free
and visit old friends again. He is a doomed man, no
prospect but death. " The time of my departure is
come." VIII
We get one closing glimpse of him that goes to our
heart in the second epistle to Timothy, so far as we
know, his very last written words.
In the great crises of life there is usually one friend
whom above all others a man specially wants near him.
With Paul it was Timothy. We remember how deeply
he was attached to him. Ever since the day when he
first met the lad in Lycaonia, living with his mother
and grandmother on the Lystra road 1 he had made
him his closest friend. He was associated with him in
his epistles, entrusted with important missions, taking
the troublesome details of work off his hands in his
care for all the churches. The childless old man
loved him as a son and he writes to the Philippians
" You know that as a son with his father he has been
to me." Now, in the lonely prison facing death, he wants
to see Timothy again that he might give him final
directions and advice and that his soul might bless
him before he died.
Not that we are to imagine him sad and dispirited,
thinking Sentimentally of himself and his loneliness.
Not a bit of it. Paul is not of that kind. The letter
is full of hope and encouragement and wise advice for
1 See page 12.

220 TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
the guidance of the church in case Timothy should
not arrive in time. But he greatly wants him to
arrive in time. " I am longing to see you. If you
would see me alive come soon. Do your diligence to
come to me quickly — before the winter, if you can —
before the end." IX
Second Epistle to Timothy.
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God to Timothy
my beloved son, grace, mercy and peace from God our Father
and Christ Jesus our Lord.
I thank God whenever I make mention of you, as I do continually
in my prayers, night and day. I am longing to see you that I
may be filled with joy remembering your tears when you parted
from me. I remember your unfeigned faith which dwelt first in
your grandmother, Lois, and in your mother, Eunice, and I am
persuaded also in you. Wherefore stir up the gift of God which
is in you through the laying on of my hands.
Be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor of me, his
prisoner. ... I am not ashamed for I know him whom I have
believed and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I
have committed to him against that day. Hold fast what you have
heard from me in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. That
goodly treasure committed to your charge, guard through the
Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.
You know already that all those of Asia have deserted me. May
the Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, for he was not
ashamed of my chain, but when he was in Rome he sought me
diligently and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy
in the Great Day.
Thou, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace which is in Christ
Jesus. And the things which you have heard from me amongst
many witnesses, the same commit to faithful men who shall be
able to teach others also. . . .
Abide in the things which you have learned and been assured
of, knowing of whom you have learned them and that from a child
you have known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make you
wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Every
scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the
man of God may be furnished completely unto every good work.

THE PASSING OF PAUL 221
I charge thee in the sight of God and of Jesus Christ, who shall
judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom,
preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove,
rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and teaching. . . .
Accomplish your ministry fully. For I am now ready to be
offered up and the time of my departure is come. I have fought
the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.
Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which
the Lord will give me in that day.
Do your diligence to come to me shortly. Demas has forsaken
me, Crescens and Titus I have sent on missions. Only Luke
remains with me now. Bring Mark with you. Bring with you
my cloak which I left with Carpus at Troas and the books, espe
cially the parchments. Do your diligence to come to me before
winter. The Lord be with thy spirit. Grace be with you.

That is our last glimpse of Paul. Whether he
ever got that old cloak and parchments, whether
Timothy got to him in time we cannot tell. We hope
for Paul's sake that it was so. They would have but
a short time together anyway. For the end was now
very close.
What a picture it would make, that final trial. The
best man and the worst man in the world at the time
facing each other. The Right and the Wrong meeting.
And the Right was in the fetters and the Wrong was
on the throne. It is often so in this topsy-turvy world.
So often that, even apart from Revelation, men are
constrained to believe in a great Setting-Right some
day. But even in this world things are not so topsy
turvy as they seem. For even here, in the long run
Right wins. Nay, even in the moment of seeming
defeat Right wins. Who doubts which was happier
that day — the brave old fighter who had lived his life
for God and who, at its close, possessed of earthly

TO PRISON AND TO DEATH
goods just an old cloak and a few parchments, or the
proud, wicked emperor who had lived his life for
self, who had exhausted life's enjoyments and dissi
pations and had boundless wealth and power at his
disposal. The trial was soon over. There was no advocate,
no defender, no man stood by him. It mattered little.
If Christians were accused of destroying Rome and if
Paul was accused of being the Christian leader, what
defence would avail in the state of public feeling at the
time? The vote was for death. The prisoner was to
be beheaded. Probably it was only his Roman citizen
ship that saved him from worse.
We have no details. There is a persistent tradition
that, like his Master, he " suffered without the gate "
at the Pyramid of Cestius on the Harbour Road.
We can easily picture the scene. The hot, white
road, the yelling mob, the small, quiet old man walk
ing silently amid the guards with the light of another
world in his eyes.
One hopes that they were men of the old Praetorian
Guard who knew him and would shield him from the
insults of that howling mob. Then the halt — the
headsman's block — a broad sword flashing in the sun
light — and an old white head lying dishonoured on the
ground. Not even the band of Christians, as in
Stephen's day, " to make much lamentation over him."
The further scene it is not for us to paint when those
eyes that closed thus in the darkness of death opened
on ' a light that never was on sea or land ' and the poor
humble soul who felt himself " the chief of sinners "
was again with the Jesus of the Damascus road to give
up the commission which he had received that day.

THE PASSING OF PAUL 223
Doubtless, there were more glorious commissions for
him now.
" We doubt not that for one so true
God will have other nobler work to do "
in the great adventure of the Hereafter. One day we
shall know of that new adventure too. But not now.
The curtain has fallen on Paul's earthly life. Suffice it
that he has won his heart's desire " to depart and be
with Christ which is far better."

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