The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles Volume Ii Part 9

[122] We miss the true standpoint whence to judge St. Paul's conduct aright, when we think as people generally do that St. Paul opposed circ.u.mcision _per se_. He simply opposed it when connected with wrong ideas. The Judaising disciples viewed the Jewish nation as the covenant people to whom alone salvation belonged. St. Paul viewed the Church as the body to whom alone salvation belonged, admission to which was gained by baptism. If any Christian holding St. Paul's view chose to add any private ceremony such as circ.u.mcision in order to gain admission into any human society, St. Paul would not have opposed him any more than, if he were now alive, he would have opposed or denounced a Christian man because he became a Freemason, or an Orangeman, or joined the Oddfellows, observing the special ceremonies appointed for admission. The nearest approach in later times to the position taken up by the strict Jewish party will be found in the history of mediaeval monasticism. The Cistercians and subsequently the Mendicant Orders endeavoured to persuade every person that every one who wished to be saved must join their Orders and a.s.sume their peculiar dress.

On this account Fitz Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh, and his friend Wickliffe denounced them most vigorously. I have given some amusing instances of the opposition to the Cistercians evoked two centuries earlier by similar claims in _Ireland and the Anglo-Norman Church_, p. 42.

This is the explanation of St. Paul's own conduct. Some have regarded him as at times inconsistent with his own principles with regard to the law of Moses. And yet if men will but look closer and think more deeply, they will see that St. Paul never violated the rules which he had imposed upon himself. He refused to circ.u.mcise t.i.tus, for instance, because the Judaising party at Jerusalem were insisting upon the absolute necessity of circ.u.mcising the Gentiles if they were to be saved. Had St. Paul consented to the circ.u.mcision of t.i.tus, he would have been yielding a.s.sent, or seeming to yield a.s.sent, to their contention (see Gal. ii. 3). He circ.u.mcised Timothy at Lystra because of the Jews in that neighbourhood; not indeed because they thought it necessary to salvation that an uncirc.u.mcised man should be so treated, but because they knew that his mother was a Jewess, and the principle of the Jewish law, and of the Roman law too, was that a man's nationality and status followed that of his mother, not that of his father, so that the son of a Jewess must be incorporated with Israel.

Timothy was circ.u.mcised in obedience to national law and custom not upon any compromise of religious principle. St. Paul himself made a vow and cut off his hair and offered sacrifices in the Temple as being the national customs of a Jew. These were things in themselves utterly meaningless and indifferent; but they pleased other people. They cost him a little time and trouble; but they helped on the great work he had in hand, and tended to make his opponents more willing to listen to him. St. Paul, therefore, with his great large mind, willing to please others for their good to edification, gratified them by doing what they thought became a Jew with a true national spirit beating within his breast. Mere externals mattered nothing in St. Paul's estimation. He would wear any vestments, or take any position, or use any ceremony, esteeming them all things indifferent, provided only they conciliated human prejudices and cleared difficulties out of the way of the truth. But if men insisted upon them as things necessary, then he opposed with all his might. This is the golden thread which will rule our footsteps wandering amid the mazes of this earliest Christian controversy. It will amply vindicate St. Paul's consistency, and show that he never violated the principles he had laid down for his own guidance. Had the spirit of St. Paul animated the Church of succeeding ages, how many a controversy and division would have been thereby escaped![123]

[123] I have often noted what I consider an unfair use of this controversy and of St. Paul's position in it. Men in the heat of argument have represented the High Church, or rather the so-called Ritualists in the Church of England, as answering to the Judaisers of St. Paul's day. There seems to me, however, no parallel between them. The Judaisers contended for a certain ceremony as _necessary to salvation_. I never heard of any Ritualist who considered any of his dearest practices in this light. He may view them as lawful, as edifying, and very necessary for the instruction of the people; but I have never heard of their most extreme adherents contending for their necessity to salvation. It would be just as true to identify their opponents with the Judaisers, because they have insisted, and often with great vigour, upon the use of the black gown in the pulpit. I have known extreme men to take up the position that the gospel could not be preached where the black gown was not used. Any one who will take the trouble to read the _Life of Bishop Blomfield_ of London, edited by his son, vol. ii., will see some striking ill.u.s.trations of the extent to which such views were pushed half a century ago.

III. Now let us turn our attention to the actual history of the controversy and strife which raged at Antioch and Jerusalem, and endeavour to read the lessons the sacred narrative teaches. What a striking picture of early Church life is here presented! How full of teaching, of comfort, and of warning! How corrective of the false notions we are apt to cherish of the state of the primitive Church!

There we behold the Church of Antioch rejoicing one day in the tidings of a gospel free to the world, and on the next day torn with dissension as to the points and qualifications necessary to salvation.

For we must observe that the discussion started at Antioch touched no secondary question, and dealt with no mere point of ritual. It was a fundamental question which troubled the Church. And yet that Church had apostles and teachers abiding in it who could work miracles and speak with tongues, and who received from time to time direct revelations from heaven, and were endowed with the extraordinary presence of the Holy Ghost. Yet there it was that controversy with all its troubles raised its head, and "Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension" with their opponents. What a necessary warning for every age, and specially for our own, we behold in this narrative! Has not this sacred Book a message in this pa.s.sage specially applicable to our own time? A great Romeward movement has within the last seventy years, more powerful in the earlier portion of that period than in the latter, extended itself over Europe. English people think that they have themselves been the only persons who have experienced it. But this is a great mistake. Germany forty and fifty years ago felt it also to a large extent. And what was the great predisposing cause of that tendency? Men had simply become tired of the perpetual controversies which raged within the churches and communions outside the sway of Rome. They longed for the perpetual peace and rest which seemed to them to exist within the Papal domains, and they therefore flung themselves headlong into the arms of a Church which promised them relief from the exercise of that private judgment and personal responsibility which had become for them a crus.h.i.+ng burden too heavy to be borne. And yet they forgot several things, the sudden discovery of which has sent many of these intellectual and spiritual cowards in various directions, some back to their original homes, some far away into the regions of scepticism and spiritual darkness. They forgot, for instance, to inquire how far the charmer who was alluring them from the land of their nativity by specious promises could satisfy the hopes she was raising. They hoped to get rid of dissension and controversy; but did they? When they had left their childhood's home and their father's house and sought the house of the stranger, did they find there halcyon peace? Nay, rather did they not find there as bitter strife, nay, far more bitter strife, on questions like the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility than ever raged at home?

Did they not find, and do they not find still, that no man and no society can put a hook in the jaws of that Leviathan, the right of private judgment, which none can tame or restrain, and which a.s.serts itself still in the Roman Communion as vigorously as ever even now when the decree of Papal infallibility has elevated that dogma into the rank of those necessary to salvation? Else whence come those dissensions and discussions between minimisers and maximisers of that decree? How is it that no two doctors or theologians will give precisely the same explanation of it, and that, as we in Ireland have seen, every curate fresh from Maynooth claims to be able to express his own private judgment and determination whether any special Papal decree or bull is binding or not?[124] This is one important point forgotten by those who have sought the Roman Communion because of its promises of freedom from controversy. They forgot to ask, Can these promises be fulfilled? And many of them, in the perpetual unrest and strife in which they have found themselves involved as much in their new home as in their old, have proved the specious hopes held out to be the veriest mirage of the Sahara desert. But this was not the only omission of which such persons were guilty. They forgot that, suppose the Roman Church could fulfil its promises and prove a religious home of perfect peace and freedom from diverging opinions, it would in that case have been very unlike the primitive Church. The Church of Antioch or of Jerusalem, enjoying the ministry of Peter and John and James and Paul,--these pillar-men, as St. Paul calls some of them,--was much more like the Church of England of fifty years ago than any society which offered perfect freedom from theological strife; for the Churches of ancient times in their earliest and purest days were swept by the winds of controversy and tossed by the tempests of intellectual and religious inquiry just like the Church of England, and they took exactly the same measures for the safety of the souls entrusted to them as she did. They depended upon the power of free debate, of unlimited discussion, of earnest prayer, of Christian charity to carry them on till they reached that haven of rest where every doubt and question shall be perfectly solved in the light of the unveiled vision of G.o.d.

[124] The conduct of the Romish clergy in Ireland when the Papal rescripts were issued concerning the Parnell tribute, boycotting, and the Plan of the Campaign was an amusing commentary on their view of Papal Infallibility. Any one who will take the trouble to search the columns of the _Freeman's Journal_ at that time will see how freely curates even criticised the Papal infallible utterances. One of them remarked to me at the time, "I think we have taught the old gentleman a lesson he will not forget,"

referring to the Papal rescripts. Infallibility is very good so long as it is with us, but when against us it becomes very fallible. Such is clearly the view of Irish Roman Catholics.

Then, again, we learn another important lesson from a consideration of the persons who raised the trouble at Antioch. The opening words of the fifteenth chapter thus describes the authors of it: "Certain men came down from Judaea." It is just the same with the persons who a short time after compelled St. Peter to stagger in his course at the same Antioch: "When certain came from James, then St. Peter separated himself, fearing them of the circ.u.mcision" (Gal. ii. 12). Certain bigots, that is, of the Jewish party, came, pretending to teach with the authority of the Mother Church, and secretly disturbing weak minds. But they were only pretenders, as the apostolic Epistle expressly tells us: "Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls; ... to whom we gave no such commandment." These religious agitators, with their narrow views about life and ritual, displayed the characteristics of like-minded men ever since. They secretly crept into the Church. There was a want of manly honesty about them. Their pettiness of vision and of thought affected their whole nature, their entire conduct. They loved the by-ways of intrigue and fraud, and therefore they hesitated not to claim an authority which they had never received, invoking apostolic names on behalf of a doctrine which the apostles had never sanctioned. The characteristics thus displayed by these Judaisers have ever been seen in their legitimate descendants in every church and society, East and West alike. Narrowness of mind, pettiness and intolerance in thought, have ever brought their own penalty with them and have ever been connected with the same want of moral uprightness. The miserable conception, the wretched fragment of truth upon which such men seize, elevating it out of its due place and rank, seems to destroy their sense of proportion, and leads them to think it worth any lie which they may tell, any breach of Christian charity of which they may be guilty, any sacrifice of truth and honesty which they may make on behalf of their beloved idol. The Judaisers misrepresented religious truth, and in doing so they misrepresented themselves, and sacrificed the great interests of moral truth in order that they might gain their ends.

IV. The distractions and controversies of Antioch were overruled, however, by the Divine providence to the greater glory of G.o.d. As the Judaisers continually appealed to the authority of the Church at Jerusalem, the brethren at Antioch determined to send to that body and ask the opinion of the apostles and elders upon this question. They therefore despatched "Paul and Barnabas and certain other of them,"

among whom was t.i.tus, an uncirc.u.mcised Gentile convert, as a deputation to represent their own views. When they came to Jerusalem the Antiochene deputies held a series of private conferences with the leading men of Jerusalem. This we learn, not from the Acts of the Apostles, but from St. Paul's independent narrative in Galatians ii., identifying as we do the visit there recorded with the visit narrated in Acts xv.[125] St. Paul here exhibits all that tact and prudence we ever trace in his character. He did not depend solely upon his own authority, his reputation, his success. He felt within himself the conscious guidance of the Divine Spirit aiding and guiding a singularly clear and powerful mind. Yet he disdained no legitimate precaution. He knew that the presence and guidance of the Spirit does not absolve a man anxious for the truth from using all the means in his power to ensure its success. He recognised that the truth, though it must finally triumph, might be eclipsed or defeated for a time through man's neglect and carelessness; and therefore he engaged in a series of private conferences, explaining difficulties, conciliating the support, and gaining the a.s.sistance of the most influential members of the Church, including, of course, "James, Cephas, and John, who were reputed to be pillars."

[125] The reader should consult what Mr. Findlay has written on this point in his _Galatians_, chs. vi. and vii., pp. 92-112.

Is there not something very modern in the glimpse thus given us of the negotiations and private meetings which preceded the formal meeting of the Apostolic Council? Some persons may think that the presence and power of the Holy Ghost must have superseded all such human arrangements and forethought. But the simple testimony of the Bible dispels at once all such objections, and shows us that as the primitive Church was just like the modern Church, torn with dissension, swept with the winds and storms of controversy, so too the divinely guided and inspired leaders of the Church then took precisely the same human means to attain their ends and carry out their views of truth as now find place in the meetings of synods and convocations and parliaments of the present time. The presence of the Holy Ghost did not dispense with the necessity of human exertions in the days of the apostles; and surely we may, on the other hand, believe that similar human exertions in our time may be quite consonant with the presence of the Spirit in our modern a.s.semblies, overruling and guiding human plans and intrigues to the honour of G.o.d and the blessing of man.

After these private conferences the apostles and elders came together to consider the difficult subject laid before them. And now many questions rise up which we can only very briefly consider. The composition of this Synod is one important point. Who sat in it, and who debated there? It is quite clear, from the text of the Acts, as to the persons who were _present_ at this Synod. The sixth verse says, "The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider of this matter"; the twelfth verse tells us that "all the mult.i.tude kept silence, and hearkened unto Barnabas and Paul rehearsing what signs and wonders G.o.d had wrought among the Gentiles by them"; in the twenty-second verse we read, "Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole Church, to choose men out of their company, and to send them to Antioch"; while, finally, in the twenty-third verse we read the superscription of the final decree of the Council, which ran thus, "The apostles and the elder brethren unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia." It seems to me that any plain man reading these verses would come to the conclusion that the whole mult.i.tude, the great body of the Church in Jerusalem, were present and took part in this a.s.sembly.[126] A great battle indeed has raged round the words of the Authorized Version of the twenty-third verse, "The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles," which are otherwise rendered in the Revised Version. The presence or the absence of the "and" between elders and brethren has formed the battle-ground between two parties, the one upholding, the other opposing the right of the laity to take part in Church synods and councils.

Upon a broad review of the whole affair this Apostolic a.s.sembly seems to me to have an important bearing upon this point. There are various views involved. Some persons think that none but bishops should take part in Church synods; others think that none but clergymen, spiritual persons, in the technical and legal sense of the word "spiritual,"

should enter these a.s.semblies, specially when treating of questions touching doctrine and discipline.[127] Looking at the subject from the standpoint of the Apostolic Council, we cannot agree with either party. We are certainly told of the speeches of four individuals merely--Paul, Barnabas, Peter, and James--to whom may be conceded the position of bishops, and even more. But, then, it is evident that the whole mult.i.tude of the Church was present at this Synod, and took an active part in it. We are expressly told (vv. 4 and 5): "When they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the Church and the apostles and the elders.... But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed, saying, It is needful to circ.u.mcise them."

This indeed happened at the first meeting of the Church held to receive the Antiochene deputation when they arrived. But there does not seem to have been any difference between the const.i.tution and authority of the first and second meetings. Both were what we should call Ecclesiastical a.s.semblies. Laymen joined in the discussions of the first, and doubtless laymen joined in the discussions and much questioning of the second.

[126] The fifth verse states that after Paul had rehea.r.s.ed the wonders done among the Gentiles certain of the sect of the Pharisees rose up saying, "It is needful to circ.u.mcise them." Some maintain that this was in a missionary meeting before the Synod, but that this is no proof that such laymen, if they were laymen, were allowed to raise the question in the Synod. Of course the next verse states that "the apostles and elders" came together to consider this matter; but it also states that there was much questioning before St. Peter opened his mouth to speak on the subject. Surely the much questioning must have been on the part of the "certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed"!

[127] It is a curious thing that three parties otherwise very much opposed unite in this view: the extreme High Church party in England, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Wesleyan Conference, which latter body restrains all questions of doctrine and discipline to ministers alone as rigorously as either of the others. The Presbyterian a.s.semblies are in many respects open to the same charge, the elders who represent the laity being ordained by imposition of hands as truly as the ministers and signing the same doctrinal tests. I cannot say how far this may be true of the Established a.s.sembly in Scotland, but as far as the Free Church and the Irish General a.s.semblies are concerned, I am bold to say that no unordained layman sits in them. I was much amused some time ago reading the charge of a Wesleyan President of Conference to the newly ordained ministers of the Irish Conference, when he bid them remember that Christ had entrusted to them alone the care of all questions touching doctrine and discipline. See for the High Anglican theory, which is just the same as the Wesleyan President's, Joyce's _Acts of the Church_, A.D. 1531-1885, p. 12.

There is not indeed a hint which would lead us to conclude that the Pharisees, who rose up and argued on behalf of the binding character of the law of Moses, held any spiritual office whatsoever. So far as the sacred text puts it, they may have been laymen pure and simple, such as were the ordinary Pharisees. I cannot, indeed, see how any member of the Church of England can consistently maintain either from Holy Scripture, ancient ecclesiastical history, or the history of his own Church, that laymen are quite shut out from councils debating questions touching Christian faith, and that their consideration must be limited to bishops, or at least clergymen alone. The Apostolic Church seems to have admitted the freest discussion. The General Councils most certainly tolerated very considerable lay interference.

The Emperor Constantine, though not even baptized, obtruded much of his presence and exercised much of his influence upon the great Nicene Council. Why even down to the sixteenth century, till the Tridentine Council, the amba.s.sadors of the great Christian Powers of Europe sat in Church synods as representing the laity; and it was only in the Council of the Vatican, which met in 1870, that even the Roman Catholic Church formally denied the right of the people to exercise a certain influence in the determination of questions touching faith and discipline by the exclusion of the amba.s.sadors who had in every previous council held a certain defined place. While again, when we come to the history of the Church of England, we find that the celebrated Hooker, the vindicator of its Church polity, expressly defended the royal supremacy as exercised within that Church on the ground that the king represented by delegation the vast body of the laity, who through him exercised a real influence upon all questions, whether of doctrine or discipline. I feel a personal interest in this question, because one of the charges most freely hurled against the Church of Ireland is this, that she has admitted laymen to discussions and votes concerning such questions. I cannot see how consistently with her past history as an established Church she could have done otherwise. I cannot see how the Church of England, if she comes in the future to be disestablished, can do otherwise. That Church has always admitted a vast amount of lay interference, even prior to the Reformation, and still more since that important event. Extreme men may scoff at those branches of their own Communion which have admitted laymen to vote in Church synods upon all questions whatsoever; but they forget when doing so that statements and decrees most dear to themselves bear manifest traces of far more extreme lay intervention.

The Ornaments Rubric, standing before the order for Morning Prayer, is a striking evidence of this. It is dear to the hearts of many, because it orders the use of eucharistic vestments and the preservation of the chancels in the ancient style; but on what grounds does it do so? Let the precise words of the rubric be the answer: "Here it is to be noted that such ornaments of the Church and of the ministers thereof, at all times of their ministration, shall be retained, and be in use, as were in this Church of England, _by the authority of Parliament_, in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth." Objections to the determinations, rules, and canons of the Irish Church Synod might have some weight did they profess, as this rubric does, to have been ordained and imposed by the order of laymen alone. But when the bishops of a Church have an independent vote, the clergy an independent vote, the free and independent vote of the laity is totally powerless by itself to introduce any novelty, and is only powerful to prevent change in the ancient order. I do not feel bound to defend some ill-judged expressions and foolish speeches which some lay representatives may have made in the Irish Church Synod as again no member of the Church of England need trouble himself to defend some rash speeches made in Parliament on Church topics. In the first moments of unaccustomed freedom Irish laymen did and said some rash things, and, overawing the clergy by their fierce expressions, may have caused the introduction of some hasty and ill-advised measures.

But sure I am that every sincere member of the Church to which I belong will agree that the admission of the lay representatives to a free discussion and free vote upon every topic has had a marvellous influence in broadening their conceptions of Scripture truth and deepening their affections and attachment to their Mother Church which has treated and trusted them thus generously.[128]

[128] I may perhaps be allowed to refer to a little tract of my own on this topic published at the time, on "The Work of the Laity in the Church of Ireland," as embodying the principles of Hooker applied to modern times and needs.

V. The proceedings of the Apostolic Synod next demand our attention.

The account which has been handed down is doubtless a mere outline of what actually happened. We are not told anything concerning the opening of the a.s.sembly or how the discussion was begun. St. Luke was intent merely on setting forth the main gist of affairs, and therefore he reports but two speeches and tells of two others. Some Christian Pharisee having put forward his objections to the position occupied by the Gentile converts, St. Peter arose, as was natural, he having been the person through whose action the present discussion and trouble had originated. St. Peter's speech is marked on this occasion by the same want of a.s.sumption of any higher authority than belonged to his brethren which we have noted before when objections were taken to his dealings with Cornelius. His speech claims nothing for himself, does not even quote the Scriptures of the Old Testament, but simply repeats in a concise shape the story of the conversion of Cornelius, points out that G.o.d put no difference between Jew and Gentile, suggesting that if G.o.d had put no difference between them why should man dare to do so, and then ends with proclaiming the great doctrine of grace that men, whether Jews or Gentiles, are saved through faith in Christ alone, which purifies their hearts and lives. After Peter's speech there arose James the Lord's brother, who from ancient times has been regarded as the first bishop of Jerusalem, and who most certainly, from the various references to him both here and elsewhere in the Acts (chs. xii. 17, xxi. 18) and in the Epistle to the Galatians, seems to have occupied the supreme place in that Church. James was a striking figure. There is a long account of him left us by Hegesippus, a very ancient Church historian, who bordered on apostolic times, and now preserved for us in the _Ecclesiastical History_ of Eusebius, ii., 23.

There he is described as an ascetic and a Nazarite, like John the Baptist, from his earliest childhood. "He drank neither wine nor fermented liquors, and abstained from animal food. A razor never came upon his head, he never anointed with oil, and never used the bath. He alone was allowed to enter the sanctuary. He never wore woollen, but linen garments. He was in the habit of entering the Temple alone, and was often found upon his bended knees, and interceding for the forgiveness of the people; so that his knees became as hard as camels', in consequence of his habitual supplication and kneeling before G.o.d. And indeed on account of his exceeding great piety he was called the Just and Oblias, which signifies the Rampart of the People." This description is the explanation of the power and authority of James the Just in the Apostolic a.s.sembly. He was a strict legalist himself. He desired no freedom for his own share, but rejoiced in observances and restrictions far beyond the common lot of the Jews. When such a man p.r.o.nounced against the attempt made to impose circ.u.mcision and the law as a necessary condition of salvation, the Judaisers must have felt that their cause was lost. St. James expressed his views in no uncertain terms. He begins by referring to St. Peter's speech and the conversion of Cornelius. He then proceeds to show how the prophets foretold the ingathering of the Gentiles, quoting a pa.s.sage (Amos ix. 11, 12) which the Jewish expositors themselves applied to the Messiah. His method of Scriptural interpretation is exactly the same as that of St. Paul and St. Peter.

It is very different from ours, but it was the universal method of his day; and when we wish to arrive at the meaning of the Scriptures, or for that matter of any work, we ought to strive and place ourselves at the standpoint and amid the circ.u.mstances of the writers and actors.

The prophet Amos speaks of the tabernacle of David as fallen down. The rebuilding of it is then foretold, and James sees in the conversion of the Gentiles this predicted rebuilding. He then p.r.o.nounces in the most decided language against "troubling those who from among the Gentiles are turned to G.o.d" in the matter of legal observances, laying down at the same time the concessions which should be demanded from the Gentiles so as not to cause offence to their Jewish brethren. The sentence thus authoritatively p.r.o.nounced by the strictest Jewish Christian was naturally adopted by the Apostolic Synod, and they wrote a letter to the disciples in Syria and Cilicia embodying their decision, which for a time settled the controversy which had been raised. This epistle begins by disclaiming utterly and at once the agitators who had gone forth to Antioch and had raised the disturbances. It declared that circ.u.mcision was unnecessary for the Gentile converts. This was the great point upon which St. Paul was most anxious. He had no objection, as we have already said, to the Jews observing their legal rites and ceremonies, but he was totally opposed to the Gentiles coming under any such rule as a thing necessary to salvation. The epistle then proceeds to lay down certain concessions which the Gentiles should in turn make. They should abstain from meats offered in sacrifice unto idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication; all of them points upon which the public opinion of the Gentiles laid no stress, but which were most abhorrent to a true Jew. The decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem, as the inspired historian expressly terms them in ch. xvi. 4, were mere temporary expedients. They determined indeed one important question, that circ.u.mcision should not be imposed on the Gentiles--that Judaism, in fact, was not in and by itself a saving dispensation; but left unsolved many other questions, even touching this very subject of circ.u.mcision and the Jewish law, which had afterwards to be debated and threshed out, as St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians proves. But, turning our eyes from the obsolete controversy which evoked the Apostolic Epistle, and viewing the subject from a wider and a modern standpoint, we may say that the decrees of this primitive Synod narrated in this typical history bestow their sanction upon the great principles of prudence, wisdom, and growth in the Divine life and in Church work. It was with the apostles themselves as with the Church ever since. Apostles even must not make haste, but must be contented to wait upon the developments of G.o.d's providence. Perfection is an excellent thing, but then perfection cannot be attained at once. Here a little and there a little is the Divine law under the New as under the Old Dispensation. Truth is the fairest and most excellent of all possessions, but the advocates of truth must not expect it to be grasped in all its bearings by all sorts and conditions of men at one and the same time. They must be content, as St. Paul was, if one step be taken at a time; if progress be in the right and not in the wrong direction; and must be willing to concede much to the feelings and long-descended prejudices of short-sighted human nature.

CHAPTER XI.

_APOSTOLIC QUARRELS AND THE SECOND TOUR._

"And after some days Paul said unto Barnabas, Let us return now and visit the brethren in every city wherein we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they fare.... And there arose a sharp contention between them, so that they parted asunder one from the other."--ACTS xv. 36, 39.

"And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia....

They came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There was a man of Macedonia standing, beseeching him, and saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us."--ACTS xvi. 6, 8, 9.

The second missionary tour of St. Paul now claims our attention, specially because it involves the first proclamation of Christianity by an apostle within the boundaries of Europe. The course of the narrative up to this will show that any Christian effort in Europe by an apostle, St. Peter or any one else prior to St. Paul's work, was almost impossible. To the Twelve and to men like-minded with them, it must have seemed a daring innovation to bring the gospel message directly to bear upon the ma.s.ses of Gentile paganism. Men of conservative minds like the Twelve doubtless restrained their own efforts up to the time of St. Paul's second tour within the bounds of Israel according to the flesh in Palestine and the neighbouring lands, finding there an ample field upon which to exercise their diligence.

And then when we turn to St. Paul and St. Barnabas, who had dared to realise the freeness and fulness of the gospel message, we shall see that the Syrian Antioch and Syria itself and Asia Minor had hitherto afforded to them scope quite sufficient to engage their utmost attention. A few moments' reflection upon the circ.u.mstances of the primitive Christian Church and the developments through which Apostolic Christianity pa.s.sed are quite sufficient to dispel all such fabulous incrustations upon the original record as those involved in St. Peter's episcopate at Antioch or his lengthened rule over the Church at Rome. If the latter story was to be accepted, St. Peter must have been Bishop of Rome long before a mission was despatched to the Gentiles from Antioch, if not even before the vision was seen at Joppa by St. Peter when the admission of the Gentiles to the Church was first authorised under any terms whatsoever.[129] In fact, it would be impossible to fit the actions of St. Peter into any scheme whatsoever, if we bring him to Rome and make him bishop there for twenty-five years beginning at the year 42, the time usually a.s.signed by Roman Catholic historians. It is hard enough to frame a hypothetical scheme, which will find a due and fitting place for the various recorded actions of St. Peter, quite apart from any supposed Roman episcopate lasting over such an extended period. St. Peter and St. Paul had, for instance, a dispute at Antioch of which we read much in the second chapter of the Galatian Epistle. Where shall we fix that dispute? Some place it during the interval between the Synod at Jerusalem and the second missionary tour of which we now propose to treat. Others place it at the conclusion of that tour, when St. Paul was resting at Antioch for a little after the work of that second journey. As we are not writing the life of St. Paul, but simply commenting upon the narratives of his labours as told in the Acts, we must be content to refer to the Lives of St. Paul by Conybeare and Howson, and Archdeacon Farrar, and to Bishop Lightfoot's _Galatians_, all of whom place this quarrel before the second tour, and to Mr. Findlay's _Galatians_ in our own series, who upholds the other view. Supposing, however, that we take the former view in deference to the weighty authorities just mentioned, we then find that there were two serious quarrels which must for a time have marred the unity and Christian concord of the Antiochene Church.

[129] St. Jerome places the beginning of St. Peter's twenty-five years' episcopate at Rome in A.D. 42--that is, two years before Herod's attempt to put St. Peter to death. This idea has been worked up into an elaborate story, which will be found duly set forth in great detail in Fleury's _Ecclesiastical History_, Book I., where St. Peter is made Bishop of Rome prior to the death of Herod Agrippa, whence he despatches disciples to found Churches in various towns of Italy, and whence he writes his first Epistle to the Jews of the Dispersion in Asia Minor. A simple statement of this is sufficient refutation for any one who knows the bare text of the Acts. There seems, however, no reason whatsoever to doubt the ancient tradition which fixes the martyrdom of St. Peter at Rome. See on the whole subject the interesting article on St.

Peter in Schaff's _Encyclopaedia of Theology_, p. 1814. In the _Acta Sanctorum_, published by the Bollandists, April, vol. iii., p. 346, we are told that St. Peter despatched St. Mark to found the Church of Aquileia, which claims the next rank to the Church of Rome among the Italian sees. In fact, the Bishops of Aquileia regarded themselves as of such importance, owing to their apostolic origin, that they headed a separation from the Church of Rome, which lasted from about A.D. 570 to 700. See Robertson's _History of the Church_, ii., p. 306, and the authorities there quoted, on this interesting antic.i.p.ation of the Reformation in England.

The reproof of St. Peter by St. Paul for his dissimulation was made on a public occasion before the whole Church. It must have caused considerable excitement and discussion, and raised much human feeling in Antioch. Barnabas too, the chosen friend and companion of St. Paul, was involved in the matter, and must have felt himself condemned in the strong language addressed to St. Peter. This may have caused for a time a certain amount of estrangement between the various parties. A close study of the Acts of the Apostles dispels at once the notion men would fain cherish, that the apostles and the early Christians lived just like angels without any trace of human pa.s.sion or discord. The apostles had their differences and misunderstandings very like our own. Hot tempers and subsequent coolnesses arose, and produced evil results between men entrusted with the very highest offices, and paved the way, as quarrels always do, for fresh disturbances at some future time. So it was at Antioch, where the public reproof of St. Peter by St. Paul involved St. Barnabas, and may have left traces upon the gentle soul of the Son of Consolation which were not wholly eradicated by the time that a new source of trouble arose.

The ministry of St. Paul at Antioch was prolonged for some time after the Jerusalem Synod, and then the Holy Ghost again impelled him to return and visit all the Churches which he had founded in Cyprus and Asia Minor. He recognised the necessity for supervision, support, and guidance as far as the new converts were concerned. The seed might be from heaven and the work might be G.o.d's own, but still human effort must take its share and do its duty, or else the work may fail and the good seed never attain perfection. St. Paul therefore proposed to Barnabas a second joint mission, intending to visit "the brethren in every city wherein they had proclaimed the word of the Lord." Barnabas desired to take with them his kinsman Mark, but Paul, remembering his weakness and defection on their previous journey, would have nothing to say to the young man. Then there arose a sharp contention between them, or, as the original expression is, there arose a paroxysm between the apostles, so that the loving Christian workers and friends of bygone years, "men who had hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ," separated the one from the other, and worked from henceforth in widely different localities.

I. There are few portions of the Acts more fruitful in spiritual instruction, or teeming with more abundant lessons, or richer in application to present difficulties, than this very incident. Let us note a few of them. One thought, for instance, which occurs at once to any reflecting mind is this: what an extraordinary thing it is that two such holy and devoted men as Paul and Barnabas should have had a quarrel at all; and when they did quarrel, would it not have been far better to have hushed the matter up and never have let the world know anything at all about it? Now I do not say that it is well for Christian people always to proclaim aloud and tell the world at large all about the various unpleasant circ.u.mstances of their lives, their quarrels, their misunderstandings, their personal failings and backslidings. Life would be simply intolerable did we live always, at all times, and under all circ.u.mstances beneath the full glare of publicity. Personal quarrels too, family jars and bickerings have a rapid tendency to heal themselves, if kept in the gloom, the soft, toned, shaded light of retirement. They have an unhappy tendency to harden and perpetuate themselves when dragged beneath the fierce light of public opinion and the outside world. Yet it is well for the Church at large that such a record has been left for us of the fact that the quarrel between Paul and Barnabas waxed so fierce that they departed the one from the other, to teach us what we are apt to forget, the true character of the apostles. Human nature is intensely inclined to idolatry. One idol may be knocked down, but as soon as it is displaced the heart straightway sets to work to erect another idol in its stead, and men have been ready to make idols of the apostles.

They have been ready to imagine them supernatural characters, tainted with no sin, tempted by no pa.s.sion, weakened by no infirmity. If these incidents had not been recorded--the quarrel with Peter and the quarrel with Barnabas--we should have been apt to forget that the apostles were men of like pa.s.sions with ourselves, and thus to lose the full force--the bracing, stimulating force--of such exhortations as that delivered by St. Paul when he said to a primitive Church, "Follow me, as I, a poor, weak, failing, pa.s.sionate man, have followed Christ." We have the thorough humanity of the apostles vigorously presented and enforced in this pa.s.sage. There is no suppression of weak points, no accentuation of strong points, no hiding of defects and weaknesses, no dwelling upon virtues and graces. We have the apostles presented at times vigorous, united, harmonious; at other times weak, timorous, and cowardly.

Again, we note that this pa.s.sage not only shows us the human frailties and weaknesses which marked the apostles, and found a place in characters and persons called to the very highest places; it has also a lesson for the Church of all time in the circ.u.mstances which led to the quarrel between Paul and Barnabas. We do well to mark carefully that Antioch saw two such quarrels, the one of which, as we have already pointed out, may have had something to say to the other. The quarrel between St. Paul and St. Peter indeed has a history which strikingly ill.u.s.trates this tendency of which we have just now spoken.

Some expositors, jealous of the good fame and reputation and temper of the apostles, have explained the quarrel at Antioch between St. Paul and St. Peter as not having been a real quarrel at all, but an edifying piece of acting, a dispute got up between the apostles to enforce and proclaim the freedom of the Gentiles, a mere piece of knavery and deception utterly foreign to such a truth-loving character as was St. Paul's.[130] It is interesting, however, to note as manifesting their natural characteristics, which were not destroyed, but merely elevated, purified, and sanctified by Divine grace, that the apostles Paul and Barnabas quarrelled about a purely personal matter. They had finished their first missionary tour on which they had been accompanied by St. Mark, who had acted as their attendant or servant, carrying, we may suppose, their luggage, and discharging all the subordinate offices such service might involve. The labour and toil and personal danger incident to such a career were too much for the young man. So with all the fickleness, the weakness, the want of strong definite purpose we often find in young people, he abandoned his work simply because it involved the exercise of a certain amount of self-sacrifice. And now, when Paul and Barnabas are setting out again, and Barnabas wishes to take the same favourite relative with them,[131] St. Paul naturally objects, and then the bitter pa.s.sionate quarrel ensues. St. Paul just experienced here what we all must more or less experience, the crosses and trials of public life, if we wish to pa.s.s through that life with a good conscience. Public life, I say--and I mean thereby not political life, which alone we usually dignify by that name, but the ordinary life which every man and every woman amongst us must live as we go in and out and discharge our duties amid our fellow-men,--public life, the life we live once we leave our closet communion with G.o.d in the early morning till we return thereto in the eventide, is in all its departments most trying.

It is trying to temper, and it is trying to principle, and no one can hope to pa.s.s through it without serious and grievous temptations. I do not wonder that men have often felt, as the old Eastern monks did, that salvation was more easily won in solitude than in living and working amid the busy haunts of men where bad temper and hot words so often conspire to make one return home from a hard day's work feeling miserable within on account of repeated falls and shortcomings. Shall we then act as they did? Shall we shut out the world completely and cease to take any part in a struggle which seems to tell so disastrously upon the equable calm of our spiritual life? Nay indeed, for such a course would be unworthy a soldier of the Cross, and very unlike the example shown by the blessed apostle St. Paul, who had to battle not only against others, but had also to battle against himself and his own pa.s.sionate nature, and was crowned as a victor, not because he ran away, but because he conquered through the grace of Christ.

[130] "Origen started this theory that the dispute between Peter and Paul was simulated; in other words, being of one mind in the matter they got up this scene that St. Paul might the more effectually condemn the Judaisers through the chief of the apostles, who, acknowledging the justice of the rebuke, set them an example of submission. Thus he, in fact, subst.i.tuted the much graver charge of dishonesty against both apostles in order to exculpate the one from the comparatively venial offence of moral cowardice and inconsistency. Nevertheless this view commended itself to a large number of subsequent writers, and for some time may be said to have reigned supreme." (Lightfoot's _Galatians_, p.

129.) St. Chrysostom and St. Jerome maintained the same view, while St. Augustine opposed it. The epistles exchanged between Jerome and Augustine on this topic are very interesting. They may be most easily perused in Augustine's _Epistles_, vol. i., pp. 131 and 280, as translated in T. & T. Clark's series (Edinburgh, 1872).

[131] Mark is usually regarded as nephew to Barnabas. This opinion is grounded upon Col. iv. 10, as translated in the Authorised Version. They were, however, cousins merely. The Revised Version translates Col. iv. 10 thus: "Mark, the cousin of Barnabas." Dr.

Lightfoot, in his _Colossians_, p. 236, has a long note showing that the word used about St. Mark in that pa.s.sage is ? ??e????, which always means cousin german: see Thayer's edition of Grimm's _Lexicon of New Testament_, _s.v._

And now it is well that we should note the special trials he had to endure. He had to fight against the spirit of cowardly self-indulgence in others, and he had to fight against the spirit of jobbery. These things indeed caused the rupture in the apostolic friends.h.i.+p. St.

Barnabas, apostle though he was, thought far more of the interests of his cousin than of the interests of Christ's mission. St. Paul with his devotion to Christ may have been a little intolerant of the weakness of youth, but he rightly judged that one who had proved untrustworthy before should not be rapidly and at once trusted again.

And St. Paul was thoroughly right, and has left a very useful and practical example. Many young men among us are like St. Mark. The St.

Marks of our own day are a very numerous cla.s.s. They have no respect for their engagements. They will undertake work and allow themselves to be calculated upon, and arrangements to be made accordingly. But then comes the stress of action, and their place is found wanting, and the work undertaken by them is found undone. And then they wonder and complain that their lives are unsuccessful, and that men and women who are in earnest will not trust or employ them in the future! These are the men who are the social wrecks in life. They proclaim loudly in streets and highways the hard treatment which they have received. They tell forth their own misery, and speak as if they were the most deserving and at the same time the most ill-treated of men; and yet they are but reaping as they have sown, and their failures and their misfortunes are only the due and fitting rewards of their want of earnestness, diligence, and self-denial. To the young this episode proclaims aloud: Respect your engagements, regard public employments as solemn contracts in G.o.d's sight. Take pains with your work. Be willing to endure any trouble for its sake. There is no such thing as genius in ordinary life. Genius has been well defined as an infinite capacity for taking pains. And thus avoid the miserable weakness of St. Mark, who fled from his work because it entailed trouble and self-denial on his part.

Then, again, we view St. Paul with admiration because he withstood the spirit of jobbery when it displayed itself even in a saint. Barnabas in plain language wished to perpetrate a job in favour of a member of his family, and St. Paul withstood him. And how often since has the same spirit thus displayed itself to the injury of G.o.d's cause! Let us note how the case stood. St. Barnabas was a good pious man of very strong emotional feelings. But he allowed himself to be guided, as pious people often do, by their emotions, affections, prejudices, not by their reason and judgment. With such men when their affections come into play jobbery is the most natural thing in the world. It is the very breath of their nostrils. It is the atmosphere in which they revel. Barnabas loved his cousin John Mark, with strong, powerful, absorbing love, and that emotion blinded Barnabas to Mark's faults, and led him on his behalf to quarrel with his firmer, wiser, and more vigorous friend. Jobbery is a vice peculiar to no age and to no profession. It flourishes in the most religious as in the most worldly circles. In religious circles it often takes the most sickening forms, when miserable, narrow selfishness a.s.sumes the garb and adopts the language of Christian piety. St. Paul's action proclaims to Christian men a very needful lesson. It says, in fact, Set your faces against jobbery of every kind. Regard power, influence, patronage as a sacred trust. Permit not fear, affection, or party spirit to blind your eyes or prejudice your judgment against real merit; so shall you be following in the footsteps of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, with his heroic champions.h.i.+p of that which was righteous and true, and of One higher still, for thus you shall be following the Master's own example, whose highest praise was this: "He loved righteousness, and hated iniquity."[132]

[132] The sequel of this story as made known through the Epistles is most interesting. The quarrel between St. Paul and St. Barnabas was not a permanent one. Five years or so later, when writing the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians (ix. 6), St. Paul a.s.sociates himself with Barnabas as if they were companions once again: "Or I only, and Barnabas, have we not a right to forbear working?" It is interesting too to trace the change that came in subsequent years over the relations between St. Paul and St. Mark as revealed by the Epistles. About the year 50 St. Paul treated Mark sternly, and that same sternness was most beneficial to the young man. It was just what his character wanted. Fifteen years pa.s.sed over both their heads, and the scene was then very different. In Col. iv.

10, 11 Mark is commended unto the Church of Colossae as one of the few Jewish Christians who had been a comfort in his bonds to the prisoner of Jesus Christ; while again, when on the point of his departure, in the 2nd Epistle to Timothy, iv. 11, the once weak disciple is most touchingly and lovingly remembered: "Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is useful to me for ministering." St. Mark, after being the cause of this quarrel, appears no more in the Acts. The traditions about him will be found collected in English in Nelson's _Fasts and Festivals_, under his Feast Day, April 25th; or better still in Cave's _Lives of the Apostles_, pp. 217-23 (London, 1684); and in Latin in the _Acta Sanctorum_, Ed. Boll., April, iii., 344-58.

Cave and the Bollandists give all the traditions about his foundation of the Church of Alexandria, the patriarchs of which still claim descent from him. Some historical writers have maintained, that they used to be ordained by the imposition of St.

Mark's dead hand. This seems a mistake, however. Mr. Butler, in his _Coptic Churches of Egypt_, vol. ii., p. 311, says that the newly ordained Patriarch of Alexandria used to hold St. Mark's head in his hands during the celebration of Ma.s.s after his consecration. (See also COPTIC CHURCH in _Dict. Christ. Biog._).

Renaudot, a learned French writer, published a history of the Alexandrian Patriarchate in 1713, which industriously collects all the details of St. Mark's life true and imaginary alike. St.

Mark's supposed body was carried to Venice from Alexandria about A.D. 1235.

We have now bestowed a lengthened notice upon this quarrel, because it corrects a very mistaken notion about the apostles, and shows us how thoroughly natural and human, how very like our own, was the everyday life of the primitive Church. It takes away the false halo of infallibility and impeccability with which we are apt to invest the apostles, making us view them as real, fallible, weak, sinful men like ourselves,[133] and thereby exalts the power of that grace which made them so eminent in Christian character, so abundant in Christian labours. Let us now apply ourselves to trace the course of St. Paul's second tour.