The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles Volume Ii Part 11

[150] The guild of dyers at Thyatira is celebrated in the inscriptions belonging to that city found in Bckh's _Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum_.

This was an important incident in the history of the Philippian Church, and was attended by far-reaching results. Lydia herself, like so many others of G.o.d's most eminent saints, disappears at once and for ever from the scene. But her conversion was a fruitful one. St.

Paul and his friends continued quietly but regularly working and teaching at the oratory. Lydia would seem to have been a widow, and must have been a woman of some position in the little community; for she was able to entertain the Apostle and his company as soon as she embraced the faith and felt its exceeding preciousness. When inviting them, too, she uses the language of a woman independent of all other control. "If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there," are words with the tone of one who as a widow owned no superior, and whose will was law within her own household; as well as the language of a woman who felt that the gospel she had embraced demanded and deserved the consecration to its service of all her worldly possessions. Previously to this conversion St. Paul had lived in hired lodgings, but now he moved to Lydia's residence, abiding there, and thence regularly wors.h.i.+pping at the Jewish oratory.

The presence of these Jewish strangers soon attracted attention. Their teaching too got noised abroad, exaggerated doubtless and distorted after the manner of popular reports. And the crowd were ready to be suspicious of all Eastern foreigners. The settlers in the colony of Philippi belonged to the rural population of Italy, who, after the manner of countrified folk of every generation, were a good way behind, for good or ill, their city brethren. The excavations made at Philippi have brought to light the fact that the colonists there were wors.h.i.+ppers of the primitive Italian rustic G.o.ds, specially of the G.o.d Silva.n.u.s, eschewing the fas.h.i.+onable Greek deities, Jupiter, Juno, Venus, Diana, Apollo, and such like. A temple of Silva.n.u.s was erected at Philippi for the hardy Italian veterans, and numerous inscriptions have been found and have been duly described by the French Mission in Macedonia to which we have already referred, telling of the building of the temple and of the persons who contributed towards it.[151]

These simple Western soldiers were easily prejudiced against the Eastern strangers by reports spread concerning their doctrines, and specially concerning the Jewish King, of whose kingdom they were the heralds. Political considerations were at once raised. We can scarcely now realise the suspicions which must have been roused against the early preachers of Christianity by the very language they used. Their sacramental language concerning the body and blood of Christ, the language of Christian love and union which they used, designating themselves brethren and sisters, caused for more than two centuries the dissemination of the most frightful rumours concerning the horrible nature of Christian love-feasts. They were accused of cannibalism and of the most degraded and immoral practices; and when we take up the Apologists of the second century, Justin Martyr and such like, we shall find that the efforts of these men are largely directed to the refutation of such dreadful charges.[152] And as it was in morals so was it too in politics. The sacred and religious language of the Christians caused them to be suspected of designs hostile to the Roman Government. The apostles preached about a King who ruled the kingdom of G.o.d. Now the Romans abhorred the very name and t.i.tle of king, which they a.s.sociated with the cruel acts of the early tyrants who reigned in the times of Rome's fabulous antiquity.

The hostility to the t.i.tle was so great that, though the Roman people endured a despotism much worse and crus.h.i.+ng at the hands of the Caesars, they never would allow them to a.s.sume the t.i.tle of kings, but simply called them emperors, imperators or commanders of the army, a name which to their ears connoted nothing savouring of the kingly office, though for moderns the t.i.tle of emperor expresses the kingly office and much more. The colonists in Philippi, being Italians, would feel these prejudices in their full force. Easterns indeed would have had no objection to the t.i.tle of king, as we see from the cry raised by the mob of Jerusalem when they cried in reference to Christ's claim, "We have no king but Caesar." But the rough and rude Roman veterans, when they heard vague reports of St. Paul's teaching to the Jews who met at the oratory by the river-side, quite naturally mistook the nature of his doctrine, and thought that he was simply a political agitator organising a revolt against imperial authority.[153] An incident which then occurred fanned the slumbering embers into a flame. There was a female slave the property of some crafty men who by her means traded on the simplicity of the colonists. She was possessed with a spirit of divination. What the nature of this spirit was we have not the means of now determining. Some would resolve it into mere epilepsy, but such an explanation is not consistent with St. Paul's action and words. He addressed the spirit, "I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And the spirit, we are told, came out that very hour. The simple fact is that psychology is at the best a very obscure science, and the mysteries of the soul a very puzzling region, even under the Christian Dispensation and surrounded by the spiritual blessings of the kingdom of G.o.d. But paganism was the kingdom of Satan, where he ruled with a power and freedom he no longer enjoys, and we can form no conception of the frightful disturbances Satanic agency may have raised amid the dark places of the human spirit. Without attempting explanations therefore, which must be insufficient, I am content to accept the statement of the sacred writer, who was an eye-witness of the cure, that the spirit of divination, the spirit of Python, as the original puts it, yielded obedience to the invocation of the sacred Name which is above every name, leaving the damsel's inner nature once more calm and at union within itself. This was the signal for a riot. The slave owners recognised that their hopes of gain had fled. They were not willing to confess that these despised Jews possessed a power transcending far that which dwelt in the human instrument who had served their covetous purposes. They may have heard, it may be, of the tumults excited about this same time by the Jews at Rome and of their expulsion from the capital by the decree of the Emperor, so the owners of the slave-girl and the mob of the city dragged the Apostles before the local Duumvirs and accused them of like disturbances: "These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, and set forth customs which it is not lawful for us to receive or to observe, being Romans." The accusation was sufficient. No proof was demanded, no time for protest allowed.

The magistrates with their own hands dragged the clothes off the backs of the Apostles, and they were flogged at once by the lictors or sergeants, as our translation calls them, in attendance upon the Duumvirs, who then despatched their victims to the common prison.

Here a question may be raised, Why did not St. Paul save himself by protesting that he was a Roman citizen, as he did subsequently at Jerusalem when he was about to be similarly treated? Several explanations occur. The colonists were Italians and spoke Latin. St.

Paul spoke Hebrew and Greek, and though he may have known Latin too, his Latin may not have been understood by these rough Roman soldiers.

The mob again was excited, and when a mob gets excited it is but very little its members attend to an unfortunate prisoner's words. We know too, not only from St. Paul's own words, but from the testimony of Cicero himself, in his celebrated oration against Verres, that in remote districts this claim was often disregarded, even when urged by Italians, and much more when made by despised Jews. St. Paul tells us in 2 Cor. xi. 25, that he received three Roman floggings notwithstanding his Roman citizens.h.i.+p, and though the Philippian magistrates were afraid when they heard next day of the illegal violence of which they had been guilty, the mob, who could not be held accountable, probably took right good care that St. Paul's protest never reached the official ears to which it was addressed. These considerations sufficiently account for the omission of any notice of a protest on the Apostle's part. He simply had not the opportunity, and then when the tumultuous scene was over Paul and Silas were hurried off to the common dungeon, where they were secured in the stocks and thrust into the innermost prison as notorious and scandalous offenders.

[151] See Leon Heuzey's _Mission Archeologique de Macedoine_, p.

71 (Paris, 1864-76). One tablet found furnishes a list of benefactions. One man gives a bronze statue of the deity, another helps to roof the building. Another tablet gives a list of the officials of the temple wors.h.i.+p. Curiously enough among these officials occur names well known to us from St. Paul's Epistles, as Crescens, Secundus, Trophimus, Aristarchus, Pudens, Urba.n.u.s, and Clemens: cf. the Philippian inscriptions in the _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, vol. iii., par. i., pp. 120-28. Among these rude Italian veterans, unspoilt by the glitter and vices of Greek idolatry and civilisation, the Cross may have found out many true soldiers of Jesus Christ: see Lewin's _St. Paul_, vol. i., p.

210. It is interesting to notice that a similar set of tablets commemorating the benefactors of the temple of Diana at Ephesus was discovered in the excavations made twenty years ago at that place. The inscriptions are translated in the Appendix to Wood's _Ephesus_.

[152] See, for instance, Justin Martyr's _First Apology_, ch.

xxix., _Second Apology_, ch. xii., and Athenagoras' _Apology_, chs. x.x.xi.-x.x.xv. These pa.s.sages will be found in Justin Martyr and Athenagoras as translated in T. & T. Clark's Ante-Nicene Series, pp. 32, 81, 415-19.

[153] This political prejudice against Christianity lasted into the second century: see the _First Apology_ of Justin Martyr, ch.

xi.: "When you hear that we look for a kingdom, you suppose, without making any inquiry, that we speak of a human kingdom; whereas we speak of that which is with G.o.d, as appears also from the confession of their faith made by those who are charged with being Christians, though they know that death is the punishment awarded to him who so confesses"; words which imply that in Justin's day many had been martyred on mere political accusations.

No ill-treatment could, however, destroy that secret source of joy and peace which St. Paul possessed in his loved Master's conscious presence. "I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake," is his own triumphant expression when looking back a few years later over the way by which the Lord had led him, and therefore at midnight the astonished prisoners heard the inner dungeon ringing with unwonted songs of praise raised by the Jewish strangers. An earthquake, too, lent its terrors to the strange scene, shaking the prison to its foundations and loosing the staples to which the prisoners' chains were fastened. The jailor, roused from sleep, and seeing the prison doors opened wide, would have committed suicide were it not for Paul's restraining and authoritative voice; and then the astonished official, who must have heard the strange rumours to which the words of the demoniac alluded--"These men are the servants of the Most High G.o.d, which proclaim unto you the way of salvation"--rushed into the presence of the Apostles crying out in words which have ever since been famous, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" to which the equally famous answer was given, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house." The jailor then took the Apostles, bathed their bruised bodies, set food before them, gathered his household to listen to the glad tidings, which they received so rapidly and grasped so thoroughly that they were at once baptized and enabled to rejoice with that deep spiritual joy which an experimental knowledge of G.o.d always confers. The jailor, feeling for the first time in his life the peace which pa.s.seth all understanding, realised the truth which St.

Augustine afterwards embodied in the immortal words: "Thou, O G.o.d, hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee."[154]

[154] Augustine's _Confessions_, i. 1.

Let us look for a little at the question of the jailor and the answer of the Apostle. They are words very often used, and very often misused. The jailor, when he rushed into St. Paul's presence crying out "What must I do to be saved?" was certainly not the type of a conscience-stricken sinner, convinced of his own sin and spiritual danger, as men sometimes regard him. He was simply in a state of fright and astonishment. He had heard that these Jewish prisoners committed to him were preaching about some salvation which they had to offer. The earthquake seemed to him the expression of some deity's wrath at their harsh treatment, and so in his terror he desires to know what he must do to be saved from this wrath. His words were notable, but they were not Christian words, for he had yet much to learn of the nature of sin and the nature of the salvation from it which the Apostles were preaching. The Philippian jailor was a specimen of those who are saved violently and by fear. Terror forced him into communion with the Apostles, broke down the barriers which hindered the approach of the Word, and then the power of the Holy Ghost, working through St. Paul, effected the remainder, opening his eyes to the true character of salvation and his own profound need of it. St. Paul's words have been misunderstood. I have heard them addressed to a Christian congregation and explained as meaning that the jailor had nothing to do but just realise Christ Jesus as his Saviour, whereupon he was perfect and complete so far as the spiritual life was concerned; and then they were applied to the congregation present as teaching that, as it was with the jailor, so was it with all Christians; they have simply to believe as he did, and then they have nothing more to do,--a kind of teaching which infallibly produces antinomian results.[155] Such an explanation ignores the fact that there is a great difference between the jailor, who was not a Christian in any sense and knew nothing about Christ when he flung himself at St. Paul's feet, and a Christian congregation, who know about Christ and believe in Him. But this explanation is still more erroneous. It misrepresents what St. Paul meant and what his hearers understood him to mean. What did any ordinary Jew or any ordinary pagan with whom St. Paul came in contact understand him to mean when he said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved"? They first had to ask him who Jesus Christ was, whence He had come, what He had taught, what were the obligations of His religion. St. Paul had to open out to them the nature of sin and salvation, and to explain the obligation and blessing of the sacrament of baptism as well as the necessity of bodily holiness and purity. The initial sacrament of baptism must have held a foremost place in that midnight colloquy or conference concerning Christian truth. St. Paul was not the man to perform a rite of which his converts understood nothing, and to which they could attach no meaning. "Believe on the Lord Jesus" involved repentance and contrition and submission to Christian truth, and these things involved the exposition of Christian truth, history, doctrines, and duties.

[155] See more on this point in vol. i., pp. 134-37, where I have given conclusive proofs of the misuse of this text from the writers of the seventeenth century.

This text, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved," is often quoted in one-sided and narrow teaching to show that man has nothing to do to be saved. Of course in one sense this is perfectly true. We can do nothing _meritoriously_ towards salvation; from first to last our salvation is all of G.o.d's free grace; but then, viewing the matter from the human side, we have much to do to be saved. We have to repent, to seek G.o.d for ourselves, to realise Christ and His laws in our life, to seek after that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. There were two different types of men who at different times addressed practically the same inquiry to the Apostles. They were both outside the Church, and they were both seekers blindly after G.o.d. The Jews on the day of Pentecost said, "Brethren, what shall we do?" and Peter replied, "Repent ye, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, unto the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Such was apostolic teaching to the Jews of Jerusalem. The jailer demanded, "What must I do to be saved?" and St. Paul replied, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved." Such was apostolic teaching to an ignorant pagan at Philippi; more concise than the Jerusalem answer, but meaning the same thing, and involving precisely the same doctrines in the hands of such a great master of the spiritual life as was the Apostle of the Gentiles.[156]

[156] Mr. Sadler, in his Commentary on the Acts, treating of this pa.s.sage has a long explanation identical in meaning with that which we have above urged. He says, for instance, p. 314: "This statement of the way of salvation is one of the most important in the New Testament. It contains the seed of the whole body of apostolic doctrine respecting salvation by Christ. When I say apostolic, I mean the doctrine of SS. Peter and John, as well as of St. Paul; for all being full of the Holy Ghost preached the same. Few places have been more perverted in order to uphold a heresy which, if St. Paul had been alive now, he would have abhorred, and denounced as fatal to the whole revelation of the Son of G.o.d, and that is antinomianism.... The Philippian jailor to whom the words were first addressed had never in all probability heard the name of Jesus Christ before.... 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ' then meant to him, 'Believe on Him whom we are now about to set forth to thee.' And they there and then began to set Him forth, for they spake unto him 'the word of the Lord.'... This Word must have shown him how--on what principle--he could exercise faith in Him so as to be saved. But did they call on him in his then state to believe anything respecting the Church and the sacraments of Christ? Unquestionably; for St. Paul would certainly not baptize a man who was totally ignorant of the grace of union with Christ which he would receive, and the obligations to serve Christ which he would come under, by being baptized."

The remainder of the story is soon told. When the morning came there came quiet reflection with it as far as the magistrates were concerned. They became conscious of their illegal conduct, and they sent their lictors to order the release of the Apostles. St. Paul now stood upon his rights. His protest had been disregarded by the mob. He now claimed his rights as a Roman citizen. "They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned men, that are Romans, and have cast us into prison; and do they now cast us out privily? Nay, verily; but let them come themselves and bring us out." These are St. Paul's words, and they are brave, and at the same time wise words. They were brave words because it took a strong man to send back such an answer to magistrates who had treated him so outrageously only the day before.

They were wise words, for they give us an apostle's interpretation of our Lord's language in the Sermon upon the Mount concerning the non-resistance of evil, and show us that in St. Paul's estimation Christ's law did not bind a man to tolerate foul injustice. Such toleration, in fact, is very wrong if it can be helped; because it is simply an encouragement to the wicked doers to treat others in the same scandalous manner. Toleration of outrage and injustice is unfair and uncharitable towards others, if they can be lawfully redressed or at least apologised for. It is a Christian man's duty to bring public evil-doers and tyrants, instruments of unrighteousness like these Duumvirs of Philippi, to their senses, not for his own sake, but in order that he may prevent the exercise of similar cruelties against the weaker brethren. We may be sure that the spirited action of St.

Paul, compelling these provincial magnates to humble themselves before the despised strangers, must have had a very wholesome effect in restraining them from similar violence during the rest of their term of office.

Such was St. Paul's stay at Philippi. It lasted a considerable time, and made its mark, as a flouris.h.i.+ng Church was established there, to which he addressed an Epistle when he lay the first time a captive at Rome. This Epistle naturally forms a most interesting commentary on the notices of the Philippian visit in the Acts of the Apostles, a point which is worked out at large in Bishop Lightfoot's Commentary on Philippians and in Paley's _Horae Paulinae_. The careful student of Holy Writ will find that St. Paul's letter and St. Luke's narrative when compared illuminate one another in a wondrous manner. We cannot afford s.p.a.ce to draw out this comparison in detail, and it is the less necessary to do so as Dr. Lightfoot's writings are so generally accessible. Let us, however, notice one point in this Epistle to the Philippians, which was written about the same time (a few months previously, in fact) as the Acts of the Apostles. It corroborates the Acts as to the circ.u.mstances under which the Church of Philippi was founded. St. Paul in the Epistle refers again and again to the persecutions and afflictions of the Philippian Church, and implies that he was a fellow-sufferer with them.[157] St. Paul dwells on this in the beginning of the Epistle in words whose force cannot be understood unless we grasp this fact. In the sixth verse of the first chapter he expresses himself as, "Confident of this very thing, that He which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ: even as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers with me of grace." St. Paul speaks of the Philippians as personally acquainted with chains and sufferings and prison-houses for Christ's sake, and regards these things as a proof of G.o.d's grace vouchsafed not only to the Apostle, but also to the Philippians; for St. Paul was living at that high level when he could view bonds and trials and persecutions as marks of the Divine love. In the twenty-eighth verse of the same chapter he exhorts them to be in no wise "affrighted by the adversaries," and in the next two describes them as persons to whom "it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer in His behalf: having the same conflict which ye _saw_ in me, and now hear to be in me,"

words which can only refer to the violence and afflictions which they witnessed as practised against himself, and which they were now themselves suffering in turn. While to complete St. Paul's references we notice that in an Epistle written some five years later than his first visit to Philippi he expressly refers to the persecutions which the Philippian Church in common with all the Macedonian Churches seems to have suffered from the very beginning. In 2 Cor. viii. 1, 2, he writes: "Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of G.o.d which hath been given in the Churches of Macedonia; how that _in much proof of affliction_ the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality." Now all these pa.s.sages put together confirm for us what the Acts expressly affirms, that from the very outset of their Christian career the Philippian Church had endured the greatest trials, and experienced a fellows.h.i.+p in the Apostle's sufferings. And surely we may see in the character of the Philippian Epistle something eminently characteristic of this experience! It has been remarked that the Philippian Epistle is the only Epistle addressed to a Church in which there is no trace of blame or reproof. Temptation and trial and chastis.e.m.e.nt had there worked their appointed purpose. The Philippian Church had been baptized in blood, and grounded in afflictions, and purified by the cleansing fires of persecution, and consequently the tried Church gathered itself closer to its Divine Lord, and was perfected above all others in His likeness, and profited above all others in the Divine life.[158]

[157] Bishop Lightfoot (_Philippians,_ p. 57) says: "St. Paul's first visit to Philippi closed abruptly amid the storm of persecution. It was not to be expected that where the life of the teacher had been so seriously endangered, the scholars would escape all penalties. The Apostle left behind him a legacy of suffering to this newly born Church. This is not a mere conjecture; the affliction of the Macedonian Christians, and of the Philippians especially, are more than once mentioned in St.

Paul's Epistles (cf. 1 Thess. ii. 2). If it was their privilege to believe in Christ, it was equally their privilege to suffer for Him."

[158] Bishop Lightfoot, in his _Commentary on Philippians, l.c._, dwells on this point: "The unwavering loyalty of his Philippian converts is the constant solace of the Apostle in his manifold trails, the one bright ray of happiness piercing the dark clouds which gather ever thicker about the evening of his life. They are his 'joy and crown, his brethren beloved and eagerly desired.'

From them alone he consents to receive alms for the relief of his personal wants. To them alone he writes in language unclouded by any shadow of displeasure or disappointment."

After the terrible experience of Philippi Paul and Silas pa.s.sed on to other towns of the same province of Macedonia. The Apostle, however, when quitting Philippi to do the same evangelistic work, breaking up the ground in other towns after the manner of a pioneer, did not leave the Church of Philippi devoid of wisest pastoral care. It is most likely, as Dr. Lightfoot points out in the Introduction to his Commentary on Philippians, that St. Luke was left behind to consolidate the work which had been thus begun by such a n.o.ble company. Then Paul and Silas and Timotheus proceeded to Thessalonica, one hundred miles west, the capital of the province, where the proconsul resided, and where was a considerable Jewish population, as we see, not only from the fact that a synagogue is expressly said to have existed there, but also because the Jews were able to excite the city pagan mob against the Apostles and drag them before the local magistrates.[159] St. Paul at Philippi had for the first time experienced a purely pagan persecution. He had indeed previously suffered at the hands of the heathen at Lystra, but they were urged on by the Jews. At Philippi he gained his first glimpse of that long vista of purely Gentile persecution through which the Church had to pa.s.s till Christianity seated itself in the person of Constantine on the throne of the Caesars. But as soon as he got to Thessalonica he again experienced the undying hostility of his Jewish fellow-countrymen using for their wicked purposes the baser portion of the city rabble.[160] St. Paul remained three weeks in Thessalonica teaching privately and publicly the gospel message, without experiencing any Jewish opposition. It is an interesting fact that to this day St.

Paul's visit to Thessalonica is remembered, and in one of the local mosques, which was formerly the Church of Sancta Sophia, a marble pulpit is shown, said to have been the very one occupied by the Apostle, while in the surrounding plains trees and groves are pointed out as marking spots where he tarried for a time. The Jews were at last, however, roused to opposition, possibly because of St. Paul's success among the Gentiles, who received his doctrines with such avidity that there believed "of the devout Greeks a great mult.i.tude, and of the chief women not a few." In Thessalonica, as elsewhere, the spirit of religious selfishness, desiring to have gospel promises and a Messiah all to themselves, was the ruin of the Jewish people. The Jews therefore, a.s.sisted by the pagans, a.s.saulted the residence of Jason, with whom St. Paul and his friends were staying. They missed the Apostles themselves, but they seized Jason and some of the apostolic band, or at least some of their converts whom they found in Jason's house, and brought them before the town magistrates, who, acting under the eye of the resident proconsul, did not lend themselves to any irregular proceedings like the Philippian praetors. A charge of treason was formally brought against the prisoners: "These all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another King, one Jesus"; in the words of which charge we get a glimpse of the leading topic on which the Apostles insisted. Jesus Christ, the crucified, risen, glorified King and Head of His people, was the great subject of St. Paul's teaching as it struck the heathen. The Thessalonian magistrates acted very fairly. They entered the charge which was a serious one in the eye of Roman law. Bail was then taken for the accused and they were set free. The Apostles, however, escaped arrest, and the local brethren determined that they should incur no danger; so while the accused remained to stand their trial, Paul and Silas and Timotheus were despatched to Bera, where they were for a time welcomed, and free discussion permitted in the synagogue concerning the truths taught by the Evangelists. After a time, however, tidings having reached Thessalonica, agents were despatched to Bera, who stirring up the Jewish residents, St. Paul was despatched in charge of some trusty messengers who guided the steps of the hunted servant of G.o.d to the city of Athens. We see the physical infirmities of St. Paul, the difficulties he had to contend with, hinted at in the fourteenth and fifteenth verses of the seventeenth chapter. "Then immediately the brethren sent forth Paul," and "They that conducted Paul brought him to Athens," words which give us a glimpse of his fearfully defective eyesight. His enemies might be pressing upon him and danger might be imminent, but he could make no unaided effort to save himself. He depended upon the kindly help of others that he might escape his untiring foes and find his way to a place of safety.

[159] Thessalonica is to this day the abode of a large Jewish population. Tozer, in his _Highlands of Turkey_, vol. i., p. 146, says: "Of the sixty thousand inhabitants of Salonica two-thirds are Jews, the rest being Turks and Greeks.... From early times the Hebrew race seem to have been attracted by the commercial advantages of Salonica. Thus when St. Paul preached there he found a considerable Jewish community.... A large number of the Salonica Jews are rich merchants, and a great part of the wealth of the place is in their hands." Mr. Lewin, in his _St. Paul_, vol. i., p. 222, gives a table of the distances all along St. Paul's route.

[160] Mr. Findlay, in a little work lately published, _The Epistles of Paul the Apostle_, has many valuable observations on the subject of the Jewish opposition experienced by the Apostle at Thessalonica.

Thus ended St. Paul's first visit to Thessalonica so far as the Acts of the Apostles is concerned; but we have interesting light thrown upon it from an Epistle which St. Paul himself wrote to the Thessalonians soon after his departure from amongst them. A comparison of First Thessalonians with the text of the Acts will furnish the careful student with much information concerning the circ.u.mstances of that notable visit, just as we have seen that the text of the Philippian Epistle throws light upon his doings at Philippi. The Thessalonian Epistles are more helpful even than the Philippians in this respect, because they were written only a few months after St.

Paul's visit to Thessalonica, while years elapsed, eight or ten at least, before the Philippian Epistle was indited. First Thessalonians shows us, for instance, that St. Paul's visit to Thessalonica lasted a considerable time. In the Acts we read of his discussing in the synagogue three Sabbath days, and then it would appear as if the riot was raised which drove him to Bera and Athens. The impression left on our minds by St. Luke's narrative is that St. Paul's labours were almost entirely concentrated upon the Jews in Thessalonica, and that he bestowed very little attention indeed upon the pagans. The Epistle corrects this impression. When we read the first chapter of First Thessalonians we see that it was almost altogether a church of converted idolaters, not of converted Jews. St. Paul speaks of the Thessalonians as having turned from idols to serve the living G.o.d; he refers to the instructions on various points like the resurrection, the ascension, the second coming of Christ, which he had imparted, and describes their faith and works as celebrated throughout all Macedonia and Achaia. A large and flouris.h.i.+ng church like that, composed of former pagans, could not have been founded in the course of three weeks, during which time St. Paul's attention was princ.i.p.ally bestowed on the Jewish residents. Then too, when we turn to Philippians iv. 16, we find that St. Paul stayed long enough in Thessalonica to receive no less than two remittances of money from the brethren at Philippi to sustain himself and his brethren. His whole attention too was not bestowed upon mission work; he spent his days and nights in manual labour. In the ninth verse of the second chapter of First Thessalonians he reminds them of the fact that he supported himself in their city, "For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of G.o.d." When we realise these things we shall feel that the Apostle must have spent at least a couple of months in Thessalonica. It was perhaps his tremendous success among the heathen which so stirred up the pa.s.sions of the town mob as enabled the Jews to instigate them to raise the riot, they themselves keeping all the while in the background. St. Paul, in First Thessalonians, describes the riots raised against the Christians as being the immediate work of the pagans: "Ye, brethren, became imitators of the Churches of G.o.d which are in Judaea in Christ Jesus.

For ye also suffered the same things of your own countrymen as they did of the Jews"; a statement which is quite consistent with the theory that the persecution was originally inspired by the Jews. But we cannot further pursue this interesting line of inquiry which has been thoroughly worked out by Mr. Lewin in vol. ii., ch. xi., by Conybeare and Howson in ch. ix., and by Archdeacon Farrar, as well as by Dr. Salmon in his _Introduction to the New Testament_, ch. xx. The careful student will find in all these works most interesting light reflected back upon the Acts from the apostolic letters, and will see how thoroughly the Epistles, which were much the earlier doc.u.ments, confirm the independent account of St. Luke, writing at a subsequent period.

Before we terminate this chapter we desire to call attention to one other point where the investigations of modern travel have helped to ill.u.s.trate the genuineness of the Acts of the Apostles. It has been the contention of the rationalistic party that the Acts was a composition of the second century, worked up by a clever forger out of the materials at his command. There are various lines of proof by which this theory can be refuted, but none appeal so forcibly to ordinary men as the minute accuracy which marks it when describing the towns of Asia Minor and Macedonia. Macedonia is a notable case. We have already pointed out how the Acts give their proper t.i.tle to the magistrates of Philippi and recognise its peculiar const.i.tution as a colony. Thessalonica forms an interesting contrast to Philippi.

Thessalonica was a free city, like Antioch in Syria, Tarsus, and Athens, and therefore, though the residence of the proconsul who ruled the province of Macedonia, was governed by its own ancient magistrates and its own ancient laws, without any interference on the part of the proconsul. St. Luke makes a marked distinction between Philippi and Thessalonica. At Philippi the Apostles were brought before the praetors, at Thessalonica they were brought before the politarchs,[161]

a t.i.tle strange to cla.s.sical antiquity, but which has been found upon a triumphal arch which existed till a few years ago across the main street of the modern city of Thessalonica. That arch has now disappeared; but the fragments containing the inscription were fortunately preserved and have been now placed in the British Museum, where they form a precious relic proving the genuineness of the sacred narrative.

[161] This case of Thessalonica is an interesting ill.u.s.tration of Bishop Lightfoot's statement:--"The government of the Roman provinces at this time was peculiarly dangerous ground for the romance-writer to venture upon" (_Essays on Supernatural Religion_, p. 291). If the Roman provinces were a dangerous ground for a romance-writer, such as some critics would make the author of the Acts, the government of the large Graeco-Roman towns and cities was still more dangerous, as scarcely any two successive ones were alike. Thessalonica is a good instance of this. St. Luke calls the magistrates politarchs, and the triumphal arch at Thessalonica calls them politarchs; a t.i.tle which seems to have been a very rare one, as only one other instance of its occurrence has been discovered. Monastir, in the north-west of Macedonia, is an important town, and there an inscription belonging to the ancient Deuriopus, twelve miles distant, was found more than twenty years ago containing the same t.i.tle, politarchs. Surely the stones out of the walls of Thessalonica and of Monastir cry out in defence of St. Luke's accuracy! See Mr. Tozer's _Highlands of Turkey_, vol. i., p. 145, and vol. ii., p. 358, Append. B; Bckh's _Corp. Ins. Graec._, No. 1967; articles by the Abbe Belley in the _Acad. des Inscript._, x.x.xviii., p. 125, and by Mr.

Vaux in the _Trans. of Roy. Soc. of Literature_, vol. viii., new series.

CHAPTER XIII.

_ST. PAUL IN GREECE._

"Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him, as he beheld the city full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the market-place every day with them that met with him.

And certain also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, What would this babbler say?

other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange G.o.ds: because he preached Jesus and the resurrection."--ACTS xvii.

16-18.

"After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth."--ACTS xviii. 1.

There are parallelisms in history which are very striking, and yet these parallelisms can be easily explained. The stress and strain of difficulties acting upon large ma.s.ses of men evolve and call forth similar types of character, and demand the exercise of similar powers.

St. Paul and St. Athanasius are ill.u.s.trations of this statement. They were both little men, both enthusiastic in their views, both pursued all their lives long with bitter hostility, and both had experience of the most marvellous and hairbreadth escapes. If any reader will take up Dean Stanley's _History of the Eastern Church_, and read the account given of St. Athanasius in the seventh chapter of that work, he will be strikingly reminded of St. Paul in these various aspects, but specially in the matter of his wondrous escapes from his deadly enemies, which were so numerous that at last they came to regard Athanasius as a magician who eluded their designs by the help of his familiar spirits. It was much the same with St. Paul. Hairbreadth escapes were his daily experience, as he himself points out in the eleventh chapter of his Second Epistle to Corinth. He there enumerates a few of them, but quite omits his escapes from Jerusalem, from the Pisidian Antioch, from Iconium, Lystra, Thessalonica, and last of all from Bera, whence he was driven by the renewed machinations of the Thessalonian Jews, who found out after a time whither the object of their hatred had fled. Paul's ministry at Bera was not fruitless, short as it may have been. He established a Church there which took good care of the precious life entrusted to its keeping, and therefore as soon as the deputies of the Thessalonian synagogue came to Bera and began to work upon the Jews of the local synagogue, as well as upon the pagan mob of the town, the Beran disciples took Paul, who was the special object of Jewish hatred, and despatched him down to the sea-coast, some twenty miles distant, in charge of certain trusty messengers, while Silas remained behind, in temporary concealment doubtless, in order that he might consolidate the Church.[162] Here we get a hint, a pa.s.sing glimpse of St. Paul's infirmity. He was despatched in charge of trusty messengers, I have said, who were to show him the way. "They that conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens." His ophthalmia, perhaps, had become specially bad owing to the rough usage he had experienced, and so he could not escape all solitary and alone as he did in earlier years from Damascus, and therefore guides were necessary who should conduct him "as far as the sea," and then, when they had got that far, they did not leave him alone. They embarked in the s.h.i.+p with him, and, sailing to Athens, deposited him safely in a lodging. The journey was by sea, not by land, because a sea journey was necessarily much easier for the sickly and weary Apostle than the land route would have been, offering too a much surer escape from the dangers of pursuit.

[162] It is well, perhaps, to bear in mind the distances which separate the various stages of St. Paul's progress through Macedonia. Thessalonica was about a hundred miles from Philippi, Bera fifty from Thessalonica, and the sea-coast of the Thermaic Gulf, or the Gulf of Salonica, as it is now called, some twenty miles from Bera.

The voyage was an easy one, and not too prolonged. The boat or s.h.i.+p in which the Apostle was embarked pa.s.sed through splendid scenery. On his right hand, as he steered for the south, was the magnificent mountain of Olympus, the fabled abode of the G.o.ds, rising a clear ten thousand feet into the region of perpetual snow, while on his left was Mount Athos, upon which he had been looking ever since the day that he left Troas. But the Apostle had no eye for the scenery, nor had St. Luke a word to bestow upon its description, though he often pa.s.sed through it, absorbed as they were in the contemplation of the awful realities of a world unseen. The sea voyage from the place where St. Paul embarked till he came to Phalerum, the port of Athens, where he landed, lasted perhaps three or four days, and covered about two hundred miles, being somewhat similar in distance, scenery, and surroundings to the voyage from Glasgow to Dublin or Bristol, land in both cases being in sight all the time and splendid mountain ranges bounding the views on either side.[163]

[163] The best description which I know of this neighbourhood is that given by Mr. Tozer in his _Highlands of Turkey_, vol. ii., p.

8. St. Paul embarked at the head of the long, narrow gulf, called anciently the Thermaic Gulf, leading up to the city of Thessalonica. The Apostle must have sailed in a mere fis.h.i.+ng smack or good-sized boat, as the iron-bound western coast of this gulf is devoid of harbours sufficient for large s.h.i.+ps. Mr. Tozer himself sailed from Thessalonica in such a vessel, see _l.c._, vol. ii., p. 4: "We chartered a vessel to convey us down the bay, a six-oared Smyrna caque, quite elegant in her appointments as compared with the ordinary lumbering market boats and coasters of these seas, and a tight little craft withal, for though not more than six feet in width, and without a deck, she had made a voyage to the Crimea during the war." Cicero, even when going as proconsul into Asia travelled in the "undecked vessel of the Rhodians," of whose weakness and slowness he complains: see his letters to Atticus, v. 12 and 13.

St. Paul landed about November 1st, 51, at Phalerum, one of the two ports of ancient Athens, the Piraeus being the other, and thence his uncertain steps were guided to the city itself, where he was left alone in some lodging. The Beran Christians to whom he was entrusted returned perhaps in the same vessel in which they had previously travelled, as the winter season, when navigation largely ceased, was now fast advancing, bearing with them a message to Timothy and Silas to come as rapidly as possible to his a.s.sistance, the Apostle being practically helpless when deprived of his trusted friends. At Athens St. Paul for a time moved about examining the city for himself, a process which soon roused him to action and brought matters to a crisis. St. Paul was well used to pagan towns and the sights with which they were filled. From his earliest youth in Tarsus idolatry and its abominations must have been a pain and grief to him; but Athens he found to exceed them all, so that "his spirit was provoked within him as he beheld the city full of idols." We have in ancient Greek literature the most interesting confirmation of the statement here made by St. Luke. We still possess a descriptive account of Greece written by a chatty Greek traveller named Pausanias, in the days of the Antonines, that is, less than a hundred years after St. Paul's visit, and when Athens was practically the same as in the Apostle's day. Pausanias enters into the greatest details about Athens, describing the statues of G.o.ds and heroes, the temples, the wors.h.i.+p, the customs of the people, bestowing the first thirty chapters of his first book upon Athens alone. Pausanias's _Description of Greece_[164] is most interesting to every one because he saw Athens in the height of its literary glory and architectural splendour, and it is specially interesting to the Bible student because it amply confirms and ill.u.s.trates the details of St. Paul's visit.

[164] This important work may be most easily consulted in s.h.i.+lleto's translation, published in Bohn's Cla.s.sical Library, Bell & Sons, London, 1886.

Thus we are told in words just quoted that St. Paul found "the city full of idols," and this provoked his spirit over and above the usual provocation he received wherever he found dead idols like these usurping the place rightfully belonging to the Lord of the universe.

Now let us take up Pausanias, and what does he tell us? In his first chapter he tells how the ports of Athens were crowded on every side with temples, and adorned with statues of gold and silver. Phalerum, the port where Paul landed, had temples of Demeter, of Athene, of Zeus, and "altars of G.o.ds unknown," of which we shall presently speak.

Then we can peruse chapter after chapter crowded with descriptions of statues and temples, till in the seventeenth chapter we read how in their pantheistic enthusiasm they idolised the most impalpable of things: "The Athenians have in the market-place, among other things not universally notable, an altar of Mercy, to whom, though most useful of all the G.o.ds to the life of man and its vicissitudes, the Athenians alone of all the Greeks a.s.sign honours. And not only is philanthropy more regarded among them, but they also exhibit more piety to the G.o.ds than others; for they have also an altar to Shame and Rumour and Energy. And it is clear that those people who have a larger share of piety than others have also a larger share of good fortune." While again, in chapter xxiv., dwelling upon the statues of Hercules and Athene, Pausanias remarks, "I have said before that the Athenians, more than any other Greeks, have a zeal for religion."

Athens was, at the time of St. Paul's visit, the leading university of the world, and university life then was permeated with the spirit of paganism, the lovers of philosophy and science delighting to adorn Athens with temples and statues and endowments as expressions of the grat.i.tude they felt for the culture which they had there gained.[165]

These things had, however, no charm for the Apostle Paul. Some moderns, viewing him from an unsympathetic point of view, would describe him in their peculiar language as a mere Philistine in spirit, unable to recognise the material beauty and glory which lay around. And this is true. The beauty which the architect and the sculptor would admire was for the Apostle to a large extent non-existent, owing to his defective eyesight; but even when recognised it was an object rather of dislike and of abhorrence than of admiration and pleasure, because the Apostle saw deeper than the man of mere superficial culture and aesthetic taste. The Apostle saw these idols and the temples consecrated to their use from the moral and spiritual standpoint, and viewed them therefore as the outward and visible signs of an inward festering corruption and rottenness, the more beautiful perhaps because of the more awful decay which lay beneath.