HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS
THE FIRST JOURNEY
79. Paul’s Companions.-From
the beginning it had been the wont of the preachers
of Christianity not to go alone on their expeditions,
but two by two. Paul improved on this practise
by going generally with two companions, one of them
being a younger man, who perhaps took charge of the
traveling arrangements. On his first journey
his comrades were Barnabas and John Mark, the nephew
of Barnabas.
80. We have already seen that
Barnabas may be called the discoverer of Paul; and,
when they set out on this journey together, he was
probably in a position to act as Paul’s patron;
for he enjoyed much consideration in the Christian
community. Converted apparently on the day of
Pentecost, he had played a leading part in the subsequent
events. He was a man of high social position,
a landed proprietor in the island of Cyprus; and he
sacrificed all to the new movement into which he had
been drawn. In the outburst of enthusiasm which
led the first Christians to share their property with
one another, he sold his estate and laid the money
at the apostles’ feet. He was constantly
employed thereafter in the work of preaching, and he
had so remarkable a gift of eloquence that he was
called the Son of Exhortation. An incident which
occurred at a later stage of this journey gives us
a glimpse of the appearance of the two men.
When the inhabitants of Lystra mistook them for gods,
they called Barnabas Jupiter and Paul Mercury.
Now, in ancient art Jupiter was always represented
as a tall, majestic and benignant figure, while Mercury
was the small, swift messenger of the father of gods
and men. Probably it appeared, therefore, that
the large, gracious, paternal Barnabas was the head
and director of the expedition, while Paul, little
and eager, was the subordinate. The direction
in which they set out, too, was the one which Barnabas
might naturally have been expected to choose.
They went first to Cyprus, the island where his property
had been and many of his friends still were.
It lay eighty miles to the southwest of Seleucia,
the seaport of Antioch, and they might reach it on
the very day they left their headquarters.
81. Cyprus-Change
of Name.-But, although Barnabas appeared
to be the leader, the good man probably knew already
that the humble words of the Baptist might be used
by himself with reference to his companion, “He
must increase, but I must decrease.” At
all events, as soon as their work began in earnest,
this was shown to be the relation between them.
After going through the length of the island, from
east to west, evangelizing, they arrived at Paphos,
its chief town, and there the problems they had come
out to face met them in the most concentrated form.
Paphos was the seat of the worship
of Venus, the goddess of love, who was said to have
been born of the foam of the sea at this very spot;
and her worship was carried on with the wildest licentiousness.
It was a picture in miniature of Greece sunk in moral
decay. Paphos was also the seat of the Roman
government, and in the pro-consular chair sat a man,
Sergius Paulus, whose noble character but utter lack
of certain faith formed a companion picture of the
inability of Rome at that epoch to meet the deepest
necessities of her best sons. In the proconsular
court, playing upon the inquirer’s credulity,
a Jewish sorcerer and quack, named Elymas, was flourishing,
whose arts were a picture of the lowest depths to
which the Jewish character could sink. The whole
scene was a kind of miniature of the world the evils
of which the missionaries had set forth to cure.
In the presence of these exigencies
Paul unfolded for the first time the mighty powers
which lay in him. An access of the Spirit seizing
him and enabling him to overcome all obstacles, he
covered the Jewish magician with disgrace, converted
the Roman governor, and founded in the town a Christian
church in opposition to the Greek shrine. From
that hour Barnabas sank into the second place and Paul
took his natural position as the head of the mission.
We no longer read, as heretofore, of “Barnabas
and Saul,” but always of “Paul and Barnabas.”
The subordinate had become the leader; and, as if
to mark that he had become a new man and taken a new
place, he was no longer called by the Jewish name
of Saul, which up to this point he had borne, but by
the name of Paul, which has ever since been his designation
among Christians.
82. The Mainland of Asia.-The
next move was as obviously the choice of the new leader
as the first one had been due to Barnabas. They
struck across the sea to Perga, a town near the middle
of the southern coast of Asia Minor, then right up,
a hundred miles, into the mainland, and thence eastward
to a point almost straight north of Tarsus. This
route carried them in a kind of half circuit through
the districts of Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia,
which border, to the west and north, on Cilicia, Paul’s
native province; so that, if it be the case that he
had evangelized Cilicia already, he was now merely
extending his labors to the nearest surrounding regions.
83. At Perga, the starting-point
of this second half of the journey, a misfortune befell
the expedition: John Mark deserted his companions
and sailed for home. It may be that the new
position assumed by Paul had given him offense, though
his generous uncle felt no such grudge at that which
was the ordinance of nature and of God. But it
is more likely that the cause of his withdrawal was
dismay at the dangers upon which they were about to
enter. These were such as might well strike
terror even into resolute hearts. Behind Perga
rose the snow-clad peaks of the Taurus Mountains,
which had to be penetrated through narrow passes,
where crazy bridges spanned the rushing torrents, and
the castles of robbers, who watched for passing travelers
to pounce upon, were hidden in positions so inaccessible
that even the Roman army had not been able to exterminate
them. When these preliminary dangers were surmounted,
the prospect beyond was anything but inviting:
the country to the north of the Taurus was a vast
tableland, more elevated than the summits of the highest
mountains in this country, and scattered over with
solitary lakes, irregular mountain masses and tracts
of desert, where the population was rude and spoke
an almost endless variety of dialects. These
things terrified Mark, and he drew back. But
his companions took their lives in their hand and went
forward. To them it was enough that there were
multitudes of perishing souls there, needing the salvation
of which they were the heralds; and Paul knew that
there were scattered handfuls of his own people in
these remote regions of the heathen.
84. Can we conceive what their
procedure was like in the towns they visited?
It is difficult, indeed, to picture it to ourselves.
As we try to see them with the mind’s eye entering
any place, we naturally think of them as the most
important personages in it; to us their entry is as
august as if they had been carried on a car of victory.
Very different, however, was the reality. They
entered a town as quietly and as unnoticed as any
two strangers who may walk into one of our towns any
morning. Their first care was to get a lodging;
and then they had to seek for employment, for they
worked at their trade wherever they went. Nothing
could be more commonplace. Who could dream that
this travel-stained man, going from one tentmaker’s
door to another, seeking for work, was carrying the
future of the world beneath his robe!
When the Sabbath came round, they
would cease from toil, like the other Jews in the
place, and repair to the synagogue. They joined
in the psalms and prayers with the other worshipers
and listened to the reading of the Scriptures.
After this the presiding elder might ask if any one
present had a word of exhortation to deliver.
This was Paul’s opportunity. He would
rise and, with outstretched hand, begin to speak.
At once the audience recognized the accents of the
cultivated rabbi: and the strange voice won their
attention. Taking up the passages which had
been read, he would soon be moving forward on the
stream of Jewish history, till he led up to the astounding
announcement that the Messiah hoped for by their fathers
and promised by their prophets had come; and he had
been sent among them as His apostle. Then would
follow the story of Jesus; it was true, He had been
rejected by the authorities of Jerusalem and crucified,
but this could be shown to have taken place in accordance
with prophecy; and His resurrection from the dead
was an infallible proof that He had been sent of God:
now He was exalted a Prince and a Saviour to give
repentance unto Israel and the remission of sins.
We can easily imagine the sensation
produced by such a sermon from such a preacher and
the buzz of conversation which would arise among the
congregation after the dismissal of the synagogue.
During the week it would become the talk of the town:
and Paul was willing to converse at his work or in
the leisure of the evening with any who might desire
further information. Next Sabbath the synagogue
would be crowded, not with Jews only, but Gentiles
also, who were curious to see the strangers; and Paul
now unfolded the secret that salvation by Jesus Christ
was as free to Gentiles as to Jews. This was
generally the signal for the Jews to contradict and
blaspheme; and, turning his back on them, Paul addressed
himself to the Gentiles. But meantime the fanaticism
of the Jews was roused, who either stirred up the mob
or secured the interest of the authorities against
the strangers; and in a storm of popular tumult or
by the breath of authority the messengers of the gospel
were swept out of the town. This was what happened
at Antioch in Pisidia, their first halting-place in
the interior of Asia Minor; and it was repeated in
a hundred instances in Paul’s subsequent life.
85. Sometimes they did not get
off so easily. At Lystra, for example, they
found themselves in a population of rude heathens,
who were at first so charmed with Paul’s winning
words and impressed with the appearance of the preachers
that they took them for gods and were on the point
of offering sacrifice to them. This filled the
missionaries with horror, and they rejected the intentions
of the crowd with unceremonious haste. A sudden
revolution in the popular sentiment ensued, and Paul
was stoned and cast out of the city apparently dead.
86. Such were the scenes of
excitement and peril through which they had to pass
in this remote region. But their enthusiasm never
flagged; they never thought of turning back, but,
when they were driven out of one city, moved forward
to another. And, total as their discomfitures
sometimes appeared, they quitted no city without leaving
behind them a little band of converts-perhaps
a few Jews, a few more prosélytes, and a number
of Gentiles. The gospel found those for whom
it was intended-penitents burdened with
sin, souls dissatisfied with the world and their ancestral
religion, hearts yearning for divine sympathy and
love; “as many as were ordained to eternal life
believed;” and these formed in every city the
nucleus of a Christian church. Even at Lystra,
where the defeat seemed so utter, a little group of
faithful hearts gathered round the mangled body of
the apostle outside the city gates; Eunice and Lois
were there with tender womanly ministrations; and
young Timothy, as he looked down on the pale and bleeding
face, felt his heart forever knit to the hero who
had courage to suffer to the death for his faith.
87. In the intense love of such
hearts Paul received compensation for suffering and
injustice. If, as some suppose, the people of
this region formed part of the Galatian churches,
we see from his Epistle to them the kind of love they
gave him. They received him, he says, as an
angel of God, nay, as Jesus Christ Himself; they were
ready to have plucked out their eyes and given them
to him. They were people of rude kindness and
headlong impulses; their native religion was one of
excitement and demonstrativeness, and they carried
these characteristics into the new faith they had
adopted. They were filled with joy and the Holy
Ghost, and the revival spread on every hand with great
rapidity, till the word, sounding out from the little
Christian communities, was heard all along the slopes
of Taurus and down the glens of the Cestrus and Halys.
Paul’s warm heart could not
but enjoy such an outburst of affection. He responded
to it by giving in return his own deep love.
The towns mentioned in their itinerary are the Pisidian
Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe; but, when at
the last of them he had finished his course and the
way lay open to him to descend by the Cilician Gates
to Tarsus and thence get back to Antioch, he preferred
to return by the way he had come. In spite of
the most imminent danger he revisited all these places
to see his dear converts again and cheer them in face
of persecution; and he ordained elders in every city
to watch over the churches in his absence.
88. The Return.-At
length the missionaries descended again from these
uplands to the southern coast and sailed back to Antioch,
from which they had set out. Worn with toil
and suffering, but flushed with the joy of success,
they appeared among those who had sent them forth and
had doubtless been following them with their prayers;
and, like discoverers returned from the finding of
a new country, they related the miracles of grace
they had witnessed in the strange world of the heathen.
THE SECOND JOURNEY
89. In his first journey Paul
may be said to have been only trying his wings; for
his course, adventurous though it was, only swept in
a limited circle round his native province.
In his second journey he performed a far more distant
and perilous flight. Indeed, this journey was
not only the greatest he achieved but perhaps the most
momentous recorded in the annals of the human race.
In its issues it far outrivaled the expedition of
Alexander the Great, when he carried the arms and
civilization of Greece into the heart of Asia, or that
of Cæsar, when he landed on the shores of Britain,
or even the voyage of Columbus, when he discovered
a new world. Yet, when he set out on it, he
had no idea of the magnitude which it was to assume
or even the direction which it was to take.
After enjoying a short rest at the close of the first
journey, he said to his fellow-missionary, “Let
us go again and visit our brethren in every city where
we have preached the word of the Lord and see how
they do.” It was the parental longing
to see his spiritual children which was drawing him;
but God had far more extensive designs, which opened
up before him as he went forward.
90. Separation from Barnabas.-Unfortunately
the beginning of this journey was marred by a dispute
between the two friends who meant to perform it together.
The occasion of their difference was the offer of
John Mark to accompany them. No doubt when this
young man saw Paul and Barnabas returning safe and
sound from the undertaking which he had deserted,
he recognized what a mistake he had made; and he now
wished to retrieve his error by rejoining them.
Barnabas naturally wished to take his nephew, but
Paul absolutely refused. The one missionary,
a man of easy kindliness, urged the duty of forgiveness
and the effect which a rebuff might have on a beginner;
while the other, full of zeal for God, represented
the danger of making so sacred a work in any way dependent
on one who could not be relied upon, for “confidence
in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a
broken tooth or a foot out of joint.”
We cannot now tell which of them was
in the right or if both were partly wrong. Both
of them, at all events, suffered for it: Paul
had to part in anger from the man to whom he probably
owed more than to any other human being; and Barnabas
was separated from the grandest spirit of the age.
91. They never met again.
This was not due, however, to an unchristian continuation
of the quarrel; for the heat of passion soon cooled
down and the old love returned. Paul mentions
Barnabas with honor in his writings, and in the very
last of his Epistles he sends for Mark to come to
him at Rome, expressly adding that he is profitable
to him for ministry-the very thing he had
disbelieved about him before. In the meantime,
however, their difference separated them. They
agreed to divide between them the region they had evangelized
together. Barnabas and Mark went away to Cyprus;
and Paul undertook to visit the churches on the mainland.
As companion he took with him Silas, or Silvanus,
in the place of Barnabas; and he had not proceeded
far on his new journey when he met with one to take
the place of Mark. This was Timothy, a convert
he had made at Lystra in his first journey; he was
youthful and gentle; and he continued a faithful companion
and a constant comfort to the apostle to the end of
his life.
92. Unrecorded Work.-In
pursuance of the purpose with which he had set out,
Paul began this journey by revisiting the churches
in the founding of which he had taken part.
Beginning at Antioch and proceeding in a northwesterly
direction, he did this work in Syria, Cilicia and
other parts, till he reached the center of Asia Minor,
where the primary object of his journey was completed.
But, when a man is on the right road, all sorts of
opportunities open up before him. When he had
passed through the provinces which he had visited before,
new desires to penetrate still farther began to fire
his mind, and Providence opened up the way.
He still went forward in the same
direction through Phrygia and Galatia. Bithynia,
a large province lying along the shore of the Black
Sea, and Asia, a densely populated province in the
west of Asia Minor, seemed to invite him and he wished
to enter them. But the Spirit who guided his
footsteps indicated, by some means unknown to us, that
these provinces were shut to him in the meantime;
and, pushing onward in the direction in which his
divine Guide permitted him to go, he found himself
at Troas, a town on the northwest coast of Asia Minor.
93. Thus he had traveled from
Antioch in the south-east to Troas in the northwest
of Asia Minor, a distance as far as from Land’s
End to John O’ Groat’s, evangelizing all
the way. It must have taken months, perhaps
even years. Yet of this long, laborious period
we possess no details whatever, except such features
of his intercourse with the Galatians as may be gathered
from the Epistle to that church. The truth is
that, thrilling as are the notices of Paul’s
career given in the Acts, this record is a very meager
and imperfect one, and his life was far fuller of
adventure, of labors and sufferings for Christ, than
even Luke’s narrative would lead us to suppose.
The plan of the Acts is to tell only what was most
novel and characteristic in each journey, while it
passes over, for instance, all his repeated visits
to the same scenes. There are thus great blanks
in the history, which were in reality as full of interest
as the portions of his life which are fully described.
Of this there is a startling proof
in an Epistle which he wrote within the period covered
by the Acts of the Apostles. His argument calling
upon him to enumerate some of his outstanding adventures,
“Are they ministers of Christ?” he asks,
“I am more; in labors 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 beaten with rods.
Once was I stoned. Thrice I suffered shipwreck.
A night and a day have I been in the deep.
In journeyings often, in perils of water, in perils
of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils
by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in
the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among
false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings
often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in
cold and nakedness.”
Now, of the items of this extraordinary
catalogue the book of Acts mentions very few:
of the five Jewish scourgings it notices not one, of
the three Roman beatings only one; the one stoning
it records, but not one of the three shipwrecks, for
the shipwreck so fully detailed in the Acts happened
later. It was no part of the design of Luke to
exaggerate the figure of the hero he was painting;
his brief and modest narrative comes far short even
of the reality; and, as we pass over the few simple
words into which he condenses the story of months or
years, our imagination requires to be busy, filling
up the outline with toils and pains at least equal
to those the memory of which he has preserved.
94. Crossing to Europe.-It
would appear that Paul reached Troas under the direction
of the guiding Spirit without being aware whither his
steps were next to be turned. But could he doubt
what the divine intention was when, gazing across
the silver streak of the Hellespont, he beheld the
shores of Europe on the other side? He was now
within the charmed circle where for ages civilization
had had her home; and he could not be entirely ignorant
of those stories of war and enterprise and those legends
of love and valor which have made it forever bright
and dear to the heart of mankind.
At only four miles’ distance
lay the Plain of Troy, where Europe and Asia encountered
each other in the struggle celebrated in Homer’s
immortal song. Not far off Xerxes, sitting on
a marble throne, reviewed the three millions of Asiatics
with which he meant to bring Europe to his feet.
On the other side of that narrow strait lay Greece
and Rome, the centers from which issued the learning,
the commerce and the armies which governed the world.
Could his heart, so ambitious for the glory of Christ,
fail to be fired with the desire to cast himself upon
these strongholds, or could he doubt that the Spirit
was leading him forward to this enterprise?
He knew that Greece, with all her wisdom, lacked that
knowledge which makes wise unto salvation, and that
the Romans, though they were the conquerors of this
world, did not know the way of winning an inheritance
in the world that is to come; but in his breast he
carried the secret which they both required.
95. It may have been such thoughts,
dimly moving in his mind, that projected themselves
into the vision which he saw at Troas; or was it the
vision which first awakened the idea of crossing to
Europe? As he lay asleep, with the murmur of
the Aegean in his ears, he saw a man standing on the
opposite coast, on which he had been looking before
he went to rest, beckoning and crying, “Come
over into Macedonia and help us.” That
figure represented Europe, and its cry for help Europe’s
need of Christ. Paul recognized in it a divine
summons; and the very next sunset which bathed the
Hellespont in its golden light shone upon his figure
seated on the deck of a ship the prow of which was
moving toward the shore of Macedonia.
96. In this passage of Paul,
from Asia to Europe, a great providential decision
was taking effect, of which, as children of the West,
we cannot think without the profoundest thankfulness.
Christianity arose in Asia and among an Oriental
people; and it might have been expected to spread
first among those races to which the Jews were most
akin. Instead of coming west, it might have gone
eastward. It might have penetrated into Arabia
and taken possession of those regions where the faith
of the False Prophet now holds sway. It might
have visited the wandering tribes of Central Asia
and, piercing its way down through the passes of the
Himalayas, reared its temples on the banks of the Ganges,
the Indus and the Godavery. It might have traveled
farther east to deliver the swarming millions of China
from the cold secularism of Confucius. Had it
done so, missionaries from India and Japan might have
been coming to England and America at the present day
to tell the story of the Cross. But Providence
conferred on Europe a blessed priority, and the fate
of our continent was decided when Paul crossed the
Aegean.
97. Macedonia.-As
Greece lay nearer than Rome to the shore of Asia,
its conquest for Christ was the great achievement of
his second missionary journey. Like the rest
of the world it was at that time under the sway of
Rome, and the Romans had divided it into two provinces-Macedonia
in the north and Achaia in the south. Macedonia
was, therefore, the first scene of Paul’s Greek
mission. It was traversed from east to west
by a great Roman road, along which the missionary
moved, and the places where we have accounts of his
labors are Philippi, Thessalonica and Beroea.
98. The Greek character in this
northern province was much less corrupted than in
the more polished society to the south. In the
Macedonian population there still lingered something
of the vigor and courage which four centuries before
had made its soldiers the conquerors of the world.
The churches which Paul founded here gave him more
comfort than any he established elsewhere. There
are none of his Epistles more cheerful and cordial
than those to the Thessalonians and the Philippians;
and, as he wrote the latter late in life, the perseverance
of the Macedonians in adhering to the gospel must have
been as remarkable as the welcome they gave it at the
first. At Beroea he even met with a generous
and open-minded synagogue of Jews-the rarest
occurrence in his experience.
99. Women and the Gospel.-A
prominent feature of the work in Macedonia was the
part taken in it by women. Amid the general decay
of religions throughout the world at this period,
many women everywhere sought satisfaction for their
religious instincts in the pure faith of the synagogue.
In Macedonia, perhaps on account of its sound morality,
these female prosélytes were more numerous than
elsewhere; and they pressed in large numbers into
the Christian Church. This was a good omen;
it was a prophecy of the happy change in the lot of
women which Christianity was to produce in the nations
of the West. If man owes much to Christ, woman
owes still more. He has delivered her from the
degradation of being man’s slave and plaything
and raised her to be his friend and his equal before
Heaven; while, on the other hand, a new glory has
been added to Christ’s religion by the fineness
and dignity with which it is invested when embodied
in the female character.
These things were vividly illustrated
in the earliest footsteps of Christianity on our continent.
The first convert in Europe was a woman, at the first
Christian service held on European soil the heart
of Lydia being opened to receive the truth; and the
change which passed upon her prefigured what woman
in Europe was to become under the influence of Christianity.
In the same town of Philippi there was seen, too,
at the same time an equally representative image of
the condition of woman in Europe before the gospel
reached it, in a poor girl, possessed of a spirit
of divination and held in slavery by men who were
making gain out of her misfortune, whom Paul restored
to sanity. Her misery and degradation were a
symbol of the disfiguration, as Lydia’s sweet
and benevolent Christian character was of the transfiguration
of womanhood.
100. Liberality of the Churches.-Another
feature which prominently marked the Macedonian churches
was a spirit of liberality. They insisted on
supplying the bodily wants of the missionaries; and,
even after Paul had left them, they sent gifts to
meet his necessities in other towns. Long afterward,
when he was a prisoner at Rome, they deputed Epaphroditus,
one of their teachers, to carry thither similar gifts
to him and to act as his attendant. Paul accepted
the generosity of these loyal hearts, though in other
places he would work his fingers to the bone and forego
his natural rest rather than accept similar favors.
Nor was their willingness to give due to superior
wealth. On the contrary, they gave out of deep
poverty. They were poor to begin with, and they
were made poorer by the persécutions which they
had to endure. These were very severe after
Paul left, and they lasted long. Of course they
had broken first of all on Paul himself. Though
he was so successful in Macedonia, he was swept out
of every town at last like the off-scourings of all
things. It was generally by the Jews that this
was brought about. They either fanaticized the
mob against him, or accused him before the Roman authorities
of introducing a new religion or disturbing the peace
or proclaiming a king who would be a rival to Cæsar.
They would neither go into the kingdom of heaven
themselves nor suffer others to enter.
101. But God protected His servant.
At Philippi He delivered him from prison by a physical
miracle and by a miracle of grace still more marvelous
wrought upon his cruel jailor; and in other towns He
saved him by more natural means. In spite of
bitter opposition, churches were founded in city after
city, and from these the glad tidings sounded out
over the whole province of Macedonia.
102. Achaia.-When,
leaving Macedonia, Paul proceeded south into Achaia,
he entered the real Greece-the paradise
of genius and renown. The memorials of the country’s
greatness rose around him on his journey. As
he quitted Beroea, he could see behind him the snowy
peaks of Mount Olympus, where the deities of Greece
had been supposed to dwell. Soon he was sailing
past Thermopylae, where the immortal Three Hundred
stood against the barbarian myriads; and, as his voyage
neared its close, he saw before him the island of
Salamis, where again the existence of Greece was saved
from extinction by the valor of her sons.
103. Athens.-His
destination was Athens, the capital of the country.
As he entered the city, he could not be insensible
to the great memories which clung to its streets and
monuments. Here the human mind had blazed forth
with a splendor it has never exhibited elsewhere.
In the golden age of its history Athens possessed
more men of the very highest genius than have ever
lived in any other city. To this day their names
invest it with glory. Yet even in Paul’s
day the living Athens was a thing of the past.
Four hundred years had elapsed since its golden age,
and in the course of these centuries it had experienced
a sad decline. Philosophy had degenerated into
sophistry, art into dilettanteism, oratory into rhetoric,
poetry into versemaking. It was a city living
on its past. Yet it still had a great name and
was full of culture and learning of a kind.
It swarmed with so-called philosophers of different
schools, and with teachers and professors of every
variety of knowledge; and thousands of strangers of
the wealthy class, collected from all parts of the
world, lived there for study or the gratification
of their intellectual tastes. It still represented
to an intelligent visitor one of the great factors
in the life of the world.
104. With the amazing versatility
which enabled him to be all things to all men, Paul
adapted himself to this population also. In the
market-place, the lounge of the learned, he entered
into conversation with students and philosophers,
as Socrates had been wont to do on the same spot five
centuries before. But he found even less appetite
for the truth than the wisest of the Greeks had met
with. Instead of the love of truth an insatiable
intellectual curiosity possessed the inhabitants.
This made them willing enough to tolerate the advances
of any one bringing before them a new doctrine; and,
as long as Paul was merely developing the speculative
part of his message, they listened to him with pleasure.
Their interest seemed to deepen, and at last a multitude
of them conveyed him to Mars’ Hill, in the very
center of the splendors of their city, and requested
a full statement of his faith. He complied with
their wishes and in the magnificent speech he there
made them, gratified their peculiar tastes to the full,
as in sentences of the noblest eloquence he unfolded
the great truths of the unity of God and the unity
of man, which lie at the foundation of Christianity.
But, when he advanced from these preliminaries to touch
the consciences of his audience and address them about
their own salvation, they departed in a body and left
him talking.
105. He quitted Athens and never
returned to it. Nowhere else had he so completely
failed. He had been accustomed to endure the
most violent persecution and to rally from it with
a light heart. But there is something worse
than persecution to a fiery faith like his, and he
had to encounter it here: his message roused neither
interest nor opposition. The Athenians never
thought of persecuting him; they simply did not care
what the babbler said; and this cold disdain cut him
more deeply than the stones of the mob or the lictors’
rods. Never perhaps was he so much depressed.
When he left Athens, he moved on to Corinth, the
other great city of Achaia; and he tells us himself
that he arrived there in weakness and in fear and
in much trembling.
106. Corinth.-There
was in Corinth enough of the spirit of Athens to prevent
these feelings from being easily assuaged. Corinth
was to Athens very much what Glasgow is to Edinburgh.
The one was the commercial, the other the intellectual
capital of the country. Even the situations
of the two places in Greece resembled in some respects
those of these two cities in Scotland. But the
Corinthians also were full of disputatious curiosity
and intellectual hauteur. Paul dreaded the same
kind of reception as he had met with in Athens.
Could it be that these were people for whom the gospel
had no message? This was the staggering question
which was making him tremble. There seemed to
be nothing in them on which the gospel could take hold:
they appeared to feel no wants which it could satisfy.
107. There were other elements
of discouragement in Corinth. It was the Paris
of ancient times-a city rich and luxurious,
wholly abandoned to sensuality. Vice displayed
itself without shame in forms which struck deadly
despair into Paul’s pure Jewish mind. Could
men be rescued from the grasp of such monstrous vices?
Besides, the opposition of the Jews rose here to
unusual virulence. He was compelled at length
to depart from the synagogue altogether, and did so
with expressions of strong feeling. Was the soldier
of Christ going to be driven off the field and forced
to confess that the gospel was not suited for cultured
Greece? It looked like it.
108. But the tide turned.
At the critical moment Paul was visited with one
of those visions which were wont to be vouchsafed to
him at the most trying and decisive crises of his
history. The Lord appeared to him in the night,
saying, “Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not
thy peace; for I am with thee, and no man shall set
on thee to hurt thee; for I have much people in this
city.” The apostle took courage again,
and the causes of discouragement began to clear away.
The opposition of the Jews was broken, when they
hurried him with mob violence before the Roman governor,
Gallio, but were dismissed from the tribunal
with ignominy and disdain. The very president
of the synagogue became a Christian, and conversions
multiplied among the native Corinthians. Paul
enjoyed the solace of living under the roof of two
leal-hearted friends of his own race and his own occupation,
Aquila and Priscilla. He remained a year and
a half in the city and founded one of the most interesting
of his churches, thus planting the standard of the
cross in Achaia also and proving that the gospel was
the power of God unto salvation even in the headquarters
of the world’s wisdom.
THE THIRD JOURNEY
109. It must have been a thrilling
story Paul had to tell at Jerusalem and Antioch when
he returned from his second journey; but he had no
disposition to rest on his laurels, and it was hot
long before he set out on his third journey.
110. In Asia.-It
might have been expected that, having in his second
journey planted the gospel in Greece, he would in his
third have made Home his principal aim. But,
if the map be referred to, it will be observed that,
in the midst, between the regions of Asia Minor which
he evangelized during his first journey and the provinces
of Greece in which he planted churches in his second
journey, there was a hiatus-the populous
province of Asia, in the west of Asia Minor.
It was on this region that he descended in his third
journey. Staying for no less than three years
in Ephesus, its capital, he effectively filled up
the gap and connected together the conquests of his
former campaigns. This journey included, indeed,
at its beginning, a visitation of all the churches
formerly founded in Asia Minor and, at its close,
a flying visit to the churches of Greece; but, true
to his plan of dwelling only on what was new in each
journey, the author of the Acts has supplied us only
with the details relating to Ephesus.
111. Ephesus.-This
city was at that time the Liverpool of the Mediterranean.
It possessed a splendid harbor, in which was concentrated
the traffic of the sea which was then the highway of
the nations; and, as Liverpool has behind her the
great towns of Lancashire, so had Ephesus behind and
around her such cities as those mentioned along with
her in the epistles to the churches in the book of
Revelation-Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis,
Philadelphia, and Laodicea. It was a city of
vast wealth, and it was given over to every kind of
pleasure, the fame of its theater and race-course being
world-wide.
112. But Ephesus was still more
famous as a sacred city. It was a seat of the
worship of the goddess Diana, whose temple was one
of the most celebrated shrines of the ancient world.
This temple was enormously rich and harbored great
numbers of priests. At certain seasons of the
year it was a resort for flocks of pilgrims from the
surrounding regions; and the inhabitants of the town
flourished by ministering in various ways to this
superstition. The goldsmiths drove a trade in
little silver models of the image of the goddess which
the temple contained and which was said to have fallen
from heaven. Copies of the mystic characters
engraven on this ancient relic were sold as charms.
The city swarmed with wizards, fortune-tellers, interpreters
of dreams and other gentry of the like kind, who traded
on the mariners, merchants and pilgrims who frequented
the port.
113. Paul’s work had therefore
to assume the form of a polemic against superstition.
He wrought such astonishing miracles in the name of
Jesus that some of the Jewish palterers with the invisible
world attempted to cast out devils by invoking the
same name; but the attempt issued in their signal
discomfiture. Other professors of magical arts
were converted to the Christian faith and burnt their
books. The vendors of superstitious objects
saw their trade slipping through their fingers.
To such an extent did this go at one of the festivals
of the goddess that the silversmiths, whose traffic
in little images had been specially smitten, organized
a riot against Paul, which took place in the theater
and was so successful that he was forced to quit the
city.
114. But he did not go before
Christianity was firmly established in Ephesus, and
the beacon of the gospel was twinkling brightly on
the Asian coast, in response to that which was shining
from the shores of Greece on the other side of the
Aegean. We have a monument of his success in
the churches lying all around Ephesus which St. John
addressed a few years afterward in the Apocalypse;
for they were probably the indirect fruit of Paul’s
labors. But we have a far more astonishing monument
of it in the Epistle to the Ephesians. This is
perhaps the profoundest book in existence; yet its
author evidently expected the Ephesians to understand
it. If the orations of Demosthenes, with their
closely packed arguments between the articulations
of which even a knife cannot be thrust, be a monument
of the intellectual greatness of the Greece which
listened to them with pleasure; if the plays of Shakspeare,
with their deep views of life and their obscure and
complex language, be a testimony to the strength of
mind of the Elizabethan Age, which could enjoy such
solid fare in a place of entertainment; then the Epistle
to the Ephesians, which sounds the lowest depths of
Christian doctrine and scales the loftiest heights
of Christian experience, is a testimony to the proficiency
which Paul’s converts had attained under his
preaching in the capital of Asia.