The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles Volume Ii Part 16

Christ. Antiqq._ Many instances of it occur in the literature of the early Celtic Church in Ireland, which was an offshoot of the Gallican Church and, through Gaul, of the Church of Western Asia Minor. In fact, this custom of calling bishops seniors or presbyters was used in Ireland till the twelfth century: see Ussher's Works, Ed. Elrington, vi. 517, 528. St. Bernard, for instance, in his Life of St. Malachy, calls the Bishop of Lismore "Senior Lesmorensis." I do not, as I have said, propose to enter any further into the debateable subject of Church government; but as I have come across this pa.s.sage, and as I have already announced that I am writing this commentary as a decided Churchman, I may be permitted to state my own views, as history seems to me to set them forth, without entering into any discussion on the point. During the apostolic age the terms bishop and presbyter were interchangeable. As the apostles pa.s.sed away, they seem to me to have established Episcopacy as the normal rule of the Church, though, doubtless, it was only by degrees that the t.i.tle of bishop was appropriated to the office so created. By the time of Ignatius, that is, about 110 A.D., this appropriation was complete. As regards my authority for saying the apostles established Episcopacy, I simply appeal to Irenaeus, who, in his great work against Heresies, Book III., ch. iii., states in section i. that "the apostles inst.i.tuted bishops in the churches,"

and then in sec. 3 proceeds to trace the line of these bishops in the Roman Church, beginning with Linus, "into whose hands the blessed apostles committed the office of the Episcopate." Now it is upon Irenaeus we largely depend for the proof of the canon of the New Testament and the Johannine origin of the Fourth Gospel.

Surely if Irenaeus is a witness sufficient to establish the apostolic origin of the Gospels, he should be quite sufficient to establish the apostolic origin of Episcopacy! If Irenaeus is a competent witness to the true authors.h.i.+p of an anonymous doc.u.ment like the Fourth Gospel, he is surely competent to tell us of the true origin of a worldwide inst.i.tution like Episcopacy. It is a.s.suredly much easier to learn the origin of inst.i.tutions than of doc.u.ments.

When the Apostle had thus terminated his address, which doubtless was a very lengthened one, he knelt down, probably on the sh.o.r.e, as we shall find him kneeling in the next chapter (xxi. 5, 6) on the sh.o.r.e at Tyre. He then commended them in solemn prayer to G.o.d, and they all parted in deep sorrow on account of the final separation which St.

Paul's words indicated as imminent; for though the primitive Christians believed in the reality of the next life with an intensity of faith of which we have no conception, and longed for its peace and rest, yet they gave free scope to those natural affections which bind men one to another according to the flesh and were sanctified by the Master Himself when He wept by the grave of Lazarus. Christianity is not a religion of stoical apathy, but of sanctified human affections.

CHAPTER XVII.

_A PRISONER IN BONDS._

"Having found a s.h.i.+p crossing over unto Phnicia, we went aboard, and set sail.... We sailed unto Syria, and landed at Tyre: for there the s.h.i.+p was to unload her burden.... When we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.... Then the chief captain came near, and laid hold on him, and commanded him to be bound with two chains; and inquired who he was, and what he had done.... But Paul said, I am a Jew, of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and I beseech thee, give me leave to speak unto the people."--ACTS xxi. 2, 3, 17, 33, 39, 40.

"And they gave him audience unto this word; and they lifted up their voice, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live.... But on the morrow, desiring to know the certainty, wherefore he was accused of the Jews, he loosed him, and commanded the chief priests and all the council to come together, and brought Paul down, and set him before them."--ACTS xxii. 22, 30.

"And after five days the high priest Ananias came down with certain elders, and with an orator, one Tertullus; and they informed the governor against Paul."--ACTS xxiv. 1.

"And Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art permitted to speak for thyself. Then Paul stretched forth his hand, and made his defence."--ACTS xxvi. 1.

The t.i.tle we have given to this chapter, "A Prisoner in Bonds,"

expresses the central idea of the last eight chapters of the Acts.

Twenty years and more had now elapsed since St. Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. These twenty years had been times of unceasing and intense activity. Now we come to some five years when the external labours, the turmoil and the cares of active life, have to be put aside, and St. Paul was called upon to stand apart and learn the lesson which every-day experience teaches to all,--how easily the world can get along without us, how smoothly G.o.d's designs fulfil themselves without our puny a.s.sistance. The various pa.s.sages we have placed at the head of this chapter cover six chapters of the Acts, from the twenty-first to the twenty-sixth. It may seem a large extent of the text to be comprised within the limits of one of our chapters, but it must be remembered that a great deal of the s.p.a.ce thus included is taken up with the narrative of St. Paul's conversion, which is twice set forth at great length, first to the mult.i.tude from the stairs of the tower of Antonia, and then in his defence which he delivered before Agrippa and Bernice and Festus, or else with the speeches delivered by him before the a.s.sembled Sanhedrin and before Felix the governor, wherein he dwells on points previously and sufficiently discussed.[236] We have already considered the narrative of the Apostle's conversion at great length, and noted the particular directions in which St. Paul's own later versions at Jerusalem and Caesarea throw light upon St. Luke's independent account. To the earlier chapters of this book we therefore would refer the reader who wishes to discuss St. Paul's conversion, and several of the other subjects which he introduces. Let us now, however, endeavour, first of all, to gather up into one connected story the tale of St. Paul's journeys, sufferings, and imprisonments from the time he left Miletus after his famous address till he set sail for Rome from the port of Caesarea, a prisoner destined for the judgment-seat of Nero. This narrative will embrace from at least the summer of A.D. 58, when he was arrested at Jerusalem, to the autumn of 60, when he set sail for Rome. This connected story will enable us to see the close union of the various parts of the narrative which is now hidden from us because of the division into chapters, and will enable us to fix more easily upon the leading points which lend themselves to the purposes of an expositor.

[236] Thus in ch. xxiv. 10-16 he enlarges upon the subject of "the Way which they call a sect," a topic and a name fully discussed above on pp. 32, 33.

I. St. Paul, after parting from the Ephesian Church, embarked on board his s.h.i.+p, and then coasted along the western sh.o.r.e of Asia Minor for three days, sailing amid scenery of the most enchanting description, specially in that late spring or early summer season at which the year had then arrived. It was about the first of May, and all nature was bursting into new life, when even hearts, the hardest and least receptive of external influences, feel as if they were living a portion of their youth over again. And even St. Paul, rapt away in the contemplation of things unseen, must have felt himself touched by the beauty of the scenes through which he was pa.s.sing, though St. Luke tells us nothing but the bare succession of events. Three days after leaving Miletus the sacred company reached Patara, a town at the south-western corner of Asia Minor, where the coast begins to turn round towards the east. Here St. Paul found a trading s.h.i.+p sailing direct to Tyre and Palestine, and therefore with all haste transferred himself and his party into it. The s.h.i.+p seems to have been on the point of sailing, which suited St. Paul so much the better, anxious as he was to reach Jerusalem in time for Pentecost. The journey direct from Patara to Tyre is about three hundred and fifty miles, a three days' sail under favourable circ.u.mstances for the trading vessels of the ancients, and the circ.u.mstances were favourable. The north-west wind is to this day the prevailing wind in the eastern Mediterranean during the late spring and early summer season, and the north-west wind would be the most favourable wind for an ancient trader almost entirely depending on an immense main sail for its motive power. With such a wind the merchantmen of that age could travel at the rate of a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles a day, and would therefore traverse the distance between Patara and Tyre in three days, the time we have specified. When the vessel arrived at Tyre St. Paul sought out the local Christian congregation. The s.h.i.+p was chartered to bring a cargo probably of wheat or wine to Tyre, inasmuch as Tyre was a purely commercial city, and the territory naturally belonging to it was utterly unable to furnish it with necessary provisions, as we have already noted on the occasion of Herod Agrippa's death. A week, therefore, was spent in unloading the cargo, during which St. Paul devoted himself to the instruction of the local Christian Church.

After a week's close communion with this eminent servant of G.o.d, the Tyrian Christians, like the elders of Ephesus and Miletus, with their wives and children accompanied him till they reached the sh.o.r.e, where they commended one another in prayer to G.o.d's care and blessing. From Tyre he sailed to Ptolemais, thirty miles distant. There again he found another Christian congregation, with whom he tarried one day, and then leaving the s.h.i.+p proceeded by the great coast road to Caesarea, a town which he already knew right well, and to which he was so soon to return as a prisoner in bonds. At Caesarea there must now have been a very considerable Christian congregation. In Caesarea Philip the Evangelist lived and ministered permanently. There too resided his daughters, eminent as teachers, and exercising in their preaching or prophetical functions a great influence among the very mixed female population of the political capital of Palestine. St.

Paul and St. Luke abode in Caesarea several days in the house of Philip the Evangelist. He did not wish to arrive in Jerusalem till close on the Feast of Pentecost, and owing to the fair winds with which he had been favoured he must have had a week or more to stay in Caesarea. Here Agabus again appears upon the scene. Fourteen years before he had predicted the famine which led St. Paul to pay a visit to Jerusalem when bringing up the alms of the Antiochene Church to a.s.sist the poor brethren at Jerusalem, and now he predicts the Apostle's approaching captivity. The prospect moved the Church so much that the brethren besought St. Paul to change his mind and not enter the Holy City. But his mind was made up, and nothing would dissuade him from celebrating the Feast as he had all along proposed. He went up therefore to Jerusalem, lodging with Mnason, "an early disciple," as the Revised Version puts it, one therefore who traced his Christian convictions back probably to the celebrated Pentecost a quarter of a century earlier, when the Holy Ghost first displayed His supernatural power in converting mult.i.tudes of human souls. Next day he went to visit James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, who received him warmly, grasped his position, warned him of the rumours which had been industriously and falsely circulated as to his opposition to the Law of Moses, even in the case of born Jews, and gave him some prudent advice as to his course of action. St. James recommended that St. Paul should unite himself with certain Christian Nazarites, and perform the Jewish rites usual in such cases. A Nazarite, as we have already mentioned, when he took the Nazarite vow for a limited time after some special deliverance vouchsafed to him, allowed his hair to grow till he could cut it off in the Temple, and have it burned in the fire of the sacrifices offered up on his behalf. These sacrifices were very expensive, as will be seen at once by a reference to Numbers vi.

13-18, where they are prescribed at full length, and it was always regarded as a mark of patriotic piety when any stranger coming to Jerusalem offered to defray the necessary charges for the poorer Jews, and thus completed the ceremonies connected with the Nazarite vow. St.

James advised St. Paul to adopt this course, to unite himself with the members of the local Christian Church who were unable to defray the customary expenses, to pay their charges, join with them in the sacrifices, and thus publicly proclaim to those who opposed him that, though he differed from them as regards the Gentiles, holding in that matter with St. James himself and with the apostles, yet as regards the Jews, whether at Jerusalem or throughout the world at large, he was totally misrepresented when men a.s.serted that he taught the Jews to reject the Law of Moses. St. Paul was guided by the advice of James, and proceeded to complete the ceremonial prescribed for the Nazarites. This was the turning-point of his fate. Jerusalem was then thronged with strangers from every part of the world. Ephesus and the province of Asia, as a great commercial centre, and therefore a great Jewish resort, furnished a very large contingent.[237] To these, then, Paul was well known as an enthusiastic Christian teacher, toward whom the synagogues of Ephesus felt the bitterest hostility.

They had often plotted against him at Ephesus, as St. Paul himself told the elders in his address at Miletus, but had hitherto failed to effect their purpose. Now, however, they seemed to see their chance.

They thought they had a popular cry and a legal accusation under which he might be done to death under the forms of law. These Ephesian Jews had seen him in the city in company with Trophimus, an uncirc.u.mcised Christian, belonging to their own city, one therefore whose presence within the temple was a capital offence, even according to Roman law.[238] They raised a cry therefore that he had defiled the Holy Place by bringing into it an uncirc.u.mcised Greek; and thus roused the populace to seize the Apostle, drag him from the sacred precincts, and murder him. During the celebration of the Feasts the Roman sentinels, stationed upon the neighbouring tower of Antonia which overlooked the Temple courts, watched the a.s.sembled crowds most narrowly, apprehensive of a riot. As soon therefore as the first symptoms of an outbreak occurred, the alarm was given, the chief captain Lysias hurried to the spot, and St. Paul was rescued for the moment. At the request of the Apostle, who was being carried up into the castle, he was allowed to address the mult.i.tude from the stairs. They listened to the narrative of his conversion very quietly till he came to tell of the vision G.o.d vouchsafed to him in the Temple some twenty years before, warning him to leave Jerusalem, when at the words "Depart, for I will send thee forth far hence unto the Gentiles," all their pent-up rage and pride and national jealousy burst forth anew. St. Paul had been addressing them in the Hebrew language which the chief captain understood not, and the mob probably expressed their rage and pa.s.sion in the same language. The chief captain ordered St. Paul to be examined by flogging to know why they were so outrageous against him.

More fortunate, however, on this occasion than at Philippi, he claimed his privilege as a Roman citizen, and escaped the torture. The chief captain was still in ignorance of the prisoner's crime, and therefore he brought him the very next day before the Sanhedrin, when St. Paul by a happy stroke caused such a division between the Sadducees and Pharisees that the chief captain was again obliged to intervene and rescue the prisoner from the contending factions. Next day, however, the Jews formed a conspiracy to murder the Apostle, which his nephew discovered and revealed to St. Paul and to Claudius Lysias, who that same night despatched him to Caesarea.[239]

[237] See Lightfoot's _Ignatius_, vol. i., p. 452, upon the presence of Jews in the towns and cities of Proconsular Asia.

Antiochus the Great transported two thousand Jewish families to these parts from Babylonia and Mesopotamia.

[238] Inscriptions, according to Josephus, were graven in Greek and Latin on stones fixed in a wall or bal.u.s.trade which ran round the Temple, warning the Gentiles not to enter on pain of death: see Josephus, _Wars_, V. v. 2; _Antiqq._, XV. xi. 5. One of these stones was discovered some twenty years ago by M. Clermont Ganneau, with the inscription intact. It had been buried in the ground on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, where this learned Frenchman discovered it. A transcript of it can now be seen in Lewin's _St. Paul_, ii. 133. The inscription literally translated runs thus: "No alien to pa.s.s within the bal.u.s.trade round the Temple and the inclosure. Whosoever shall be caught (so doing) must blame himself for the death that will ensue." This stone must often have been read by our Lord and His apostles, as they frequented the temple.

[239] It is very curious how perpetually St. Paul escaped the plots of the Jews at Corinth, Ephesus, and elsewhere. At Corinth the plot formed was revealed as it would seem just as he was about to go on board his vessel (ch. xx. 3). Doubtless there were concealed Christians to whose ears the plots came and by whom they were revealed.

All these events, from his conference with James to his arrival under guard at Caesarea, cannot have covered more than eight days at the utmost, and yet the story of them extends from the middle of the twenty-first chapter to the close of the twenty-third, while the record of twelve months' hard work preaching, writing, organising is embraced within the first six verses of the twentieth chapter, showing how very different was St. Luke's narrative of affairs, according as he was present or absent when they were transacted.[240]

[240] See Lewin's _Fasti Sacri_, pp. 314-16, for an elaborate account of each day's proceedings, and a discussion of the various problems, chronological and otherwise, which they raise.

From the beginning of the twenty-fourth chapter to the close of the twenty-sixth is taken up with the account of St. Paul's trials, at first before Felix, and then before Festus, his successor in the procurators.h.i.+p of Palestine. Just let us summarise the course of events and distinguish between them. St. Paul was despatched by Claudius Lysias to Felix accompanied by a letter in which he contrives to put the best construction on his own actions, representing himself as specially anxious about St. Paul because he was a Roman citizen, on which account indeed he describes himself as rescuing him from the clutches of the mob. After the lapse of five days St. Paul was brought up before Felix and accused by the Jews of three serious crimes in the eyes of Roman law as administered in Palestine. First, he was a mover of seditions among the Jews;[241] second, a ringleader of a new sect, the Nazarenes, unknown to Jewish law; and third, a profaner of the Temple, contrary to the law which the Romans themselves had sanctioned. On all these points Paul challenged investigation and demanded proof, asking where were the Jews from Asia who had accused him of profaning the Temple. The Jews doubtless thought that Paul was a common Jew, who would be yielded up to their clamour by the procurator, and knew nothing of his Roman citizens.h.i.+p. Their want of witnesses brought about their failure, but did not lead to St. Paul's release. He was committed to the custody of a centurion, and freedom of access was granted to his friends. In this state St. Paul continued two full years, from midsummer 58 to the same period of A.D. 60, when Felix was superseded by Festus. During these two years Felix often conversed with St. Paul. Felix was a thoroughly bad man. He exercised, as a historian of that time said of him, "the power of a king with the mind of a slave." He was tyrannical, licentious, and corrupt, and hoped to be bribed by St. Paul when he would have set him at liberty.

At this period of his life St. Paul twice came in contact with the Herodian house which thenceforth disappears from sacred history. Felix about the period of St. Paul's arrest enticed Drusilla, the great-granddaughter of Herod the Great, from her husband through the medium as many think, of Simon Magus. Drusilla was very young and very beautiful, and, like all the Herodian women, very wicked.[242] Felix was an open adulterer, therefore, and it is no wonder that when Paul reasoned before the guilty pair concerning righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come, conscience should have smitten them and Felix should have trembled. St. Paul had another opportunity of bearing witness before this wicked and bloodstained family. Festus succeeded Felix as procurator of Palestine about June A.D. 60. Within the following month Agrippa II., the son of the Herod Agrippa who had died the terrible death at Caesarea of which the twelfth chapter tells, came to Caesarea to pay his respects unto the new governor. Agrippa was ruler of the kingdom of Chalcis, a district north of Palestine and about the Lebanon Range. He was accompanied by his sister Bernice, who afterwards became the mistress of t.i.tus, the conqueror of Jerusalem in the last great siege. Festus had already heard St. Paul's case, and had allowed his appeal unto Caesar. He wished, however, to have his case investigated before two Jewish experts, Agrippa and Bernice, who could instruct his own ignorance on the charges laid against him by the Jews, enabling him to write a more satisfactory report for the Emperor's guidance. He brought St. Paul therefore before them, and gave the great Christian champion another opportunity of bearing witness for his Master before a family which now for more than sixty years had been more or less mixed up, but never for their own blessing, with Christian history. After a period of two years and three months' detention, varied by different public appearances, St.

Paul was despatched to Rome to stand his trial and make his defence before the Emperor Nero, whose name has become a synonym for vice, brutality, and self-will.

[241] The Romans were always afraid of Jewish seditions. Seven years before St. Paul's imprisonment there had been a terrible outburst, in which Ananias the high priest had been himself involved, and which led to the despatch of Felix himself as procurator. He had effectually put down all disturbances, which led to the prolongation of his rule in Palestine for the very unusual period of eight years, from 52 to 60 A.D. This accounts for the words of Tertullus (ch. xxiv. 2): "Seeing that by thee we enjoy much peace, and that by thy providence evils are corrected for this nation." See Lewin's _Fasti_, pp. 296-98, 315, 320; Conybeare and Howson, ch. xxii.; and for the latest authority, Schurer's _Geschichte des Judischen Volkes_, i. 477-83, ii. 170 (Leipzig, 1886).

[242] Drusilla perished with her child by this union with Felix in the famous eruption of Vesuvius A.D. 79.

II. We have now given a connected outline of St. Paul's history extending over a period of more than two years. Let us omit his formal defences, which have already come under our notice, and take for our meditation a number of points which are peculiar to the narrative.

We have in the story of the voyage, arrest, and imprisonment of St.

Paul, many circ.u.mstances which ill.u.s.trate G.o.d's methods of action in the world, or else His dealings with the spiritual life. Let us take a few instances. First, then, we direct attention to the steady though quiet progress of the Christian faith as revealed in these chapters.

St. Paul landed at Tyre, and from Tyre he proceeded some thirty miles south to Ptolemais. These are both of them towns which have never hitherto occurred in our narrative as places of Christian activity.

St. Paul and St. Peter and Barnabas and the other active leaders of the Church must often have pa.s.sed through these towns, and wherever they went they strove to make known the tidings of the gospel. But we hear nothing in the Acts, and tradition tells us nothing of when or by whom the Christian Church was founded in these localities.[243]

[243] See my remarks in the next chapter on the case of the church at Puteoli, which St. Paul found flouris.h.i.+ng there on his voyage to Rome.

We get glimpses, too, of the ancient organisation of the Church, but only glimpses; we have no complete statement, because St. Luke was writing for a man who lived amidst it, and could supply the gaps which his informant left. The presbyters are mentioned at Miletus, and Agabus the prophet appeared at Antioch years before, and now again he appears at Caesarea, where Philip the Evangelist and his daughters the prophetesses appear. Prophets and prophesying are not confined to Palestine and Antioch, though the Acts tells us nothing of them as existing elsewhere. The Epistle to Corinth shows us that the prophets occupied a very important place in that Christian community.

Prophesying indeed was princ.i.p.ally preaching at Corinth; but it did not exclude prediction, and that after the ancient Jewish method, by action as well as by word, for Agabus took St. Paul's girdle, and binding his own hands and feet declared that the Holy Ghost told him, "So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles."[244] But how little we know of the details of the upgrowth of the Church in all save the more prominent places! How entirely ignorant we are, for instance, of the methods by which the gospel spread to Tyre and Ptolemais and Puteoli! Here we find in the Acts the fulfilment of our Lord's words as reported in St. Mark iv. 26: "So is the kingdom of G.o.d, as if a man should cast seed upon the earth; ... and the seed should spring up and grow, he knoweth not how." It was with the last and grander temple of G.o.d as it was with the first. Its foundations were laid, and its walls were built, not with sound of axe and hammer, but in the penitence of humbled souls, in the G.o.dly testimony of sanctified spirits, in the earnest lives of holy men hidden from the scoffing world, known only to the Almighty.

[244] This prophecy was not literally fulfilled. The Jews did not bind St. Paul, nor deliver him into Gentile hands. The Romans took him out of Jewish hands, and bound him for their own purposes. The Jews, however, brought this binding about, and were the cause of his captivity in Roman hands. On the question of prophets and prophesying in the primitive Church, see Dr. Salmon's article on Hermas, in the _Dictionary of Christian Biography_, vol. ii., pp.

916-19.

Again, we notice the advice given by James and the course actually adopted by St. Paul when he arrived at Jerusalem. It has the appearance of compromise of truth, and yet it has the appearance merely, not the reality of compromise. It was in effect wise and sound advice, and such as teaches lessons useful for our own guidance in life. We have already set forth St. Paul's conception of Jewish rites and ceremonies. They were nothing in the world one way or another, as viewed from the Divine standpoint. Their presence did not help on the work of man's salvation; their absence did not detract from it. The Apostle therefore took part in them freely enough, as when he celebrated the pa.s.sover and the days of unleavened bread at Philippi, viewing them as mere national rites.[245] He had been successful in the very highest degree in converting to this view even the highest and strictest members of the Jerusalem Church. St. James, in advising St. Paul how to act on this occasion, when such prejudices had been excited against him, clearly shows that he had come round to St.

Paul's view. He tells St. Paul that the mult.i.tude or body of the Judaeo-Christian Church at Jerusalem had been excited against him, because they had been informed that he taught the Jews of the Dispersion to forsake Moses, the very thing St. Paul did not do. St.

James grasped, however, St. Paul's view that Moses and the Levitical Law might be good things for the Jews, but had no relation to the Gentiles, and must not be imposed on them. St. James had taught this view ten years earlier at the Apostolic Council. His opinions and teaching had percolated downwards, and the majority of the Jerusalem Church now held the same view as regards the Gentiles, but were as strong as ever and as patriotic as ever so far as the Jews were concerned, and the obligation of the Jewish Law upon them and their children. St. Paul had carried his point as regards Gentile freedom.

And now there came a time when he had in turn to show consideration and care for Jewish prejudices, and act out his own principle that circ.u.mcision was nothing and uncirc.u.mcision was nothing. Concessions, in fact, were not to be all on one side, and St. Paul had now to make a concession. The Judaeo-Christian congregations of Jerusalem were much excited, and St. Paul by a certain course of conduct, perfectly innocent and harmless, could pacify their excited patriotic feelings, and demonstrate to them that he was still a true, a genuine, and not a renegade Jew. It was but a little thing that St. James advised and public feeling demanded. He had but to join himself to a party of Nazarites and pay their expenses, and thus Paul would place himself _en rapport_ with the Mother Church of Christendom. St. Paul acted wisely, charitably, and in a Christlike spirit when he consented to do as St. James advised. St. Paul was always eminently prudent. There are some religious men who seem to think that to advise a wise or prudent course is all the same as to advise a wicked or unprincipled course.

They seem to consider success in any course as a clear evidence of sin, and failure as a proof of honesty and true principle. Concession, however, is not the same as unworthy compromise. It is our duty in life to see and make our course of conduct as fruitful and as successful as possible. Concession on little points has a wondrous power in smoothing the path of action and gaining true success. Many an honest man ruins a good cause simply because he cannot distinguish, as St. Paul did, things necessary and essential from things accidental and trivial. Pig-headed obstinacy, to use a very homely but a very expressive phrase, which indeed is often only disguised pride, is a great enemy to the peace and harmony of societies and churches. St.

Paul displayed great boldness here. He was not afraid of being misrepresented, that ghost which frightens so many a popularity hunter from the course which is true and right. How easily his fierce opponents, the men who had gone to Corinth and Galatia to oppose him, might misrepresent his action in joining himself to the Nazarites!

They were the extreme men of the Jerusalem Church. They were the men for whom the decisions of the Apostolic Council had no weight, and who held still as of old that unless a man be circ.u.mcised he could not be saved. How easily, I say, these men could despatch their emissaries, who should proclaim that their opponent Paul had conceded all their demands and was himself observing the law at Jerusalem. St. Paul was not afraid of this misrepresentation, but boldly took the course which seemed to him right and true, and charitable, despite the malicious tongues of his adversaries. The Apostle of the Gentiles left us an example which many still require. How many a man is kept from adopting a course that is charitable and tends to peace and edification, solely because he is afraid of what opponents may say, or how they may twist and misrepresent his action. St. Paul was possessed with none of this moral cowardice which specially flourishes among so-called party-leaders, men who, instead of leading, are always led and governed by the opinions of their followers.[246] St. Paul simply determined in his conscience what was right, and then fearlessly acted out his determination.

[245] St. Paul, writing twelve months earlier than his arrest, expressly lays down this principle in 1 Corinthians vii. 18-20: "Was any man called being circ.u.mcised? let him not become uncirc.u.mcised. Hath any been called in uncirc.u.mcision? let him not be circ.u.mcised. Circ.u.mcision is nothing, and uncirc.u.mcision is nothing; but the keeping of the commandments of G.o.d. Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called."

[246] We see enough of this in politics. We see it in the Church as well. Writing as one with nearly a quarter of a century's experience of a disestablished, and therefore of a popularly governed Church, I have seen a great deal of this tendency in ecclesiastical matters. Prominent and ambitious men are ever apt to fall into the snare here noted. The tendency of popular a.s.semblies is ever to develop a cla.s.s of men who will have but little backbone, and will be always ready to rectify their convictions to suit their const.i.tuencies. "Show thou me the way I should walk in," but in a very different sense from the Psalmist's, is the unuttered prayer of their lives, addressed to the popular audiences of whose opinions they are the mere expressions, not the guides. For such men this typical history has many a reproof in St. Paul's brave conduct upon this and every other occasion. He was never afraid of a little temporary misrepresentation, and therefore he proved a real guide to the Church of his own and of every age.

Some persons perhaps would argue that the result of his action showed that he was wrong and had unworthily compromised the cause of Christian freedom. They think that had he not consented to appear as a Nazarite in the Temple no riot would have occurred, his arrest would have been avoided, and the course of history might have been very different. But here we would join issue on the spot. The results of his action vindicated his Christian wisdom. The great body of the Jerusalem Church were convinced of his sincerity and realised his position. He maintained his influence over them, which had been seriously imperilled previously, and thus helped on the course of development which had been going on. Ten years before the advocates of Gentile freedom were but a small body. Now the vast majority of the local church at Jerusalem held fast to this idea, while still clinging fast to the obligation laid upon the Jews to observe the law. St. Paul did his best to maintain his friends.h.i.+p and alliance with the Jerusalem Church. To put himself right with them he travelled up to Jerusalem, when fresh fields and splendid prospects were opening up for him in the West. For this purpose he submitted to several days restraint and attendance in the Temple, and the results vindicated his determination. The Jerusalem Church continued the same course of orderly development, and when, ten years later, Jerusalem was threatened with destruction, the Christian congregations alone rose above the narrow bigoted patriotism which bound the Jews to the Holy City. The Christians alone realised that the day of the Mosaic Law was at length pa.s.sed, and, retiring to the neighbouring city of Pella, escaped the destruction which awaited the fanatical adherents of the Law and the Temple.[247]

[247] See Eusebius, _H. E._, iii. 5, and the notes of Valesius on that pa.s.sage.

Another answer, too, may be made to this objection. It was not his action in the matter of the Nazarites that brought about the riot and the arrest and his consequent imprisonment. It was the hostility of the Jews of Asia; and they would have a.s.sailed him whenever and wherever they met him. Studying the matter too even in view of results, we should draw the opposite conclusion. G.o.d Himself approved his course. A Divine vision was vouchsafed to him in the guard-room of Antonia, after he had twice experienced Jewish violence, and bestowed upon him the approbation of Heaven: "The night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer; for as thou hast testified concerning Me at Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome." His courageous and at the same time charitable action was vindicated by its results on the Jerusalem Church, by the sanction of Christ Himself, and lastly, by its blessed results upon the development of the Church at large in leading St. Paul to Rome, in giving him a wider and more influential sphere for his efforts, and in affording him leisure to write epistles like those to Ephesus, Philippi, and Colossae, which have been so instructive and useful for the Church of all ages.

Another point which has exercised men's minds is found in St. Paul's att.i.tude and words when brought before the Sanhedrin on the day after his arrest. The story is told in the opening verses of the twenty-third chapter. Let us quote them, as they vividly present the difficulty: "And Paul, looking stedfastly on the council, said, Brethren, I have lived before G.o.d in all good conscience until this day. And the high priest Ananias commanded them that stood by him to smite him on the mouth. Then said Paul unto him, G.o.d shall smite thee, thou whited wall: and sittest thou to judge me according to the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law? And they that stood by said, Revilest thou G.o.d's high priest? And Paul said, I wist not, brethren, that he was high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of a ruler of thy people."

Two difficulties here present themselves. (_a_) There is St. Paul's language, which certainly seems wanting in Christian meekness, and not exactly modelled after the example of Christ, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, and laid down in His Sermon on the Mount a law of suffering to which St. Paul does not here conform. But this is only a difficulty for those who have formed a superhuman estimate of St. Paul against which we have several times protested, and against which this very book of the Acts seems to take special care to warn its readers. If people will make the Apostle as sinless and as perfect as our Lord, they will of course be surprised at his language on this occasion. But if they regard him in the light in which St. Luke portrays him, as a man of like pa.s.sions and infirmities with themselves, then they will feel no difficulty in the fact that St.

Paul's natural temper was roused at the brutal and illegal command to smite a helpless prisoner on the mouth because he had made a statement which a member of the court did not relish. This pa.s.sage seems to me not a difficulty, but a divinely guided pa.s.sage witnessing to the inspiring influence of the Holy Ghost, and inserted to chasten our wandering fancy which would exalt the Apostle to a position equal to that which rightly belongs to his Divine Master alone.

(_b_) Then there is a second difficulty. Some have thought that St.

Paul told a lie in this pa.s.sage, and that, when defending himself from the charge of unscriptural insolence to the high priest, he merely pretended ignorance of his person, saying, "I wist not, brethren, that he was high priest." The older commentators devised various explanations of this pa.s.sage. Dr. John Lightfoot, in his _Horae Hebraicae_, treating of this verse, sums them all up as follows. Either St. Paul means that he did not recognise Ananias as high priest because he did not lawfully occupy the office, or else because that Christ was now the only high priest; or else because there had been so many and so frequent changes that as a matter of fact he did not know who was the actual high priest. None of these is a satisfactory explanation. Mr. Lewin offers what strikes me as the most natural explanation, considering all the circ.u.mstances. Ananias was appointed high priest about 47, continued in office till 59, and was killed in the beginning of the great Jewish war. He was a thoroughly historical character, and his high priesthood is guaranteed for us by the testimony of Josephus, who tells us of his varied fortunes and of his tragic death. But St. Paul never probably once saw him, as he was absent from Jerusalem, except for one brief visit all the time while he enjoyed supreme office.

Now the Sanhedrin consisted of seventy-one judges, they sat in a large hall with a crowd of scribes and pupils in front of them, and the high priest, as we have already pointed out (vol. i., p. 181), was not necessarily president or chairman. St. Paul was very short-sighted, and the ophthalmia under which he continually suffered was probably much intensified by the violent treatment he had experienced the day before. Could anything be more natural than that a shortsighted man should not recognise in such a crowd the particular person who had uttered this very brief, but very tyrannical command, "Smite him on the mouth"? Surely an impartial review of St. Paul's life shows him ever to have been at least a man of striking courage, and therefore one who would never have descended to cloke his own hasty words with even the shadow of an untruth![248]