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THE 
 
 CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES 
 
 AN HISTORICAL INQUIRY 
 
 J. M. CAPES, M.A, 
 
 Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standcst is 
 holy ground." — ExoDUS iii. 5 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., i, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
(.The rights of translation and of 7-e/>!odiictipn are reseiiied.) 
 
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 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Author to his Readers ... ... ... ... vii 
 
 Chronological Table ... ... ... ••• ••■ xiii 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. On the Historical Study of the New Testament ... i 
 
 II. Christianity and the Roman Empire ... ... 22 
 
 III. Thessalonica ... ••• ••• 38 
 
 IV. Galatia ... ... ... ... ... ••• 52 
 
 V. Corinth ... ... ... ••. •■ ••• 61 
 
 VI. Rome ... • ... .. ... ••• ••• 74 
 
 VII, Ephesus ... ... .. ... •■• •• 8r 
 
 VIII. CoLOSSE ... ... ... ... ... ... 91 
 
 IX. Philippi ... ... ... ... ... ... 97 
 
 X. The Epistle to Philemon ... ... ... 108 
 
 XI. The Epistle to the Hebrews ... ... ... 112 
 
 XII. The Epistle to Timothy ... ... ... ... 122 
 
 XIII. The Epistle to Titus ... ... ... ... 130 
 
 XIV. The Epistle of St. James ... ... ... i39 
 
 XV. The Epistles of St. Peter ... ... ... ••• i44 
 
 XVI. The Epistles of St. John ... ... ••• 151 
 
 XVII. The Epistle of JUDE... ... ... ••• ••• I55 
 
 XVIII. General Character of the Apostolic Church ... 157 
 XIX. The Millennium ... ... ... •■• •■• ^79 
 
 XX. Predestination and Free-Will ... ... ... 188 
 
 XXI. Modern Objections to a Belief in Miracles ... 197 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS. 
 
 It is with no slight regret that I find my task 
 completed, and nothing now remaining for me but 
 to add a few sentences of farewell to my readers, 
 to be prefixed, according to custom, to my little 
 book. In my opening chapter I have so fully 
 explained the object of the present inquiry, that 
 I have now only to point out the singular value 
 of the Epistles of the New Testament as a store- 
 house of materials for the study of the life of the 
 first Christians when they were formed into com- 
 munities after our Lord had left this world. 
 
 Every one knows the importance of contempo- 
 rary documents in the study of the history of any 
 period of the past, and it is the meagreness of such 
 documents in connection with the second century 
 which makes it so difficult for the ecclesiastical 
 historian to trace the stages by which the Chris- 
 tianity of the apostolic period was modified or 
 developed into the Christianity of the patristic period 
 and of the Council of Nice. The mere external 
 
Vlll THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS. 
 
 symbols of the real life of man are now eagerly 
 sought for, as illustrating his habits, feelings, and 
 opinions. Inscriptions, coins, medals, paintings 
 upon vases, and tablets of burnt clay, are made to 
 yield trustworthy information as to the realities of 
 an existence which once seemed to survive only 
 in name ; and the sympathetic imagination supplies 
 the details necessary to fill up the void still remain- 
 ing, so as to complete the historical picture. These 
 details may sometimes be scarcely warranted by 
 well-proved facts ; but they are often in strict 
 harmony with the ascertained laws of human nature 
 itself. 
 
 Here, then, in the letters actually written by 
 St. Paul and St. John, by St. Peter and St. James, 
 we have a treasure of instruction for the historian, 
 priceless in value. And its value is enhanced by 
 the fact that these letters were written simply as 
 letters, and with no thought of their being subse- 
 quently collected together, and circulated among 
 Christians in all ages, as a manual of faith and 
 conduct. The condition of some local Church, or 
 the circumstances of the time, made it desirable that 
 each letter should be written ; and each one has 
 thus a freshness of feeling and a spontaneous fervour 
 of expression which could hardly have been looked 
 for had the writers foreseen the uses to which their 
 writings would be turned in after-times. 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS. IX 
 
 A word is necessary as to the order in which 
 the Epistles ought to be read, for whatever purpose 
 they may be consulted. By some unaccountable 
 mischance a general misplacement has taken place 
 in our Bibles, and the reader has nothing to guide 
 him when he wishes to follow St. Paul's Epistles 
 as a reflection of the character of the great apostle. 
 The result has been most unfortunate, and has 
 materially obscured the popular conceptions of the 
 apostle's teaching which have become current in 
 all sections of the Christian Church. I have, I 
 venture to hope, contributed some little help towards 
 the disentanglement of the confusion thus produced ; 
 and for the convenience of the reader I have added 
 to this preface a chronological table, showing the 
 dates of the several Epistles, and the places from 
 which they were written, as practically settled by 
 modern criticism. Even if there still remains any 
 doubt as to the exact year in which a few of the 
 Epistles were written and despatched, there is none 
 as to their general order. 
 
 The reader will also notice that the places from 
 which the Epistles are here stated to have been 
 written do not always correspond with those given 
 in the New Testament at the end of the several 
 Epistles. How these erroneous statements crept 
 into early copies of the original manuscripts no one 
 now knows. Copyists are proverbially addicted to 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS. 
 
 making explanatory additions to manuscripts en- 
 trusted to them for transcription ; and in the present 
 case the additions have been made so heedlessly as 
 to be sometimes contradicted in the substance of 
 the letters to which they are appended. The 
 mistakes are not without importance, for they tend 
 to lessen the vividness of our impression of the true 
 character of the Epistles, as the letters of real men 
 to real men and women, showing the influence of 
 the circumstances under which they were written 
 upon the writers themselves. 
 
 In the case of St. Paul these mistakes are 
 especially to be regretted. His comprehensive and 
 cultivated intellect, and his sensitive and affectionate 
 heart, made him peculiarly open to impressions 
 from those with whom he was from time to time 
 associated ; and his letters often show that the 
 current of his thoughts while writing flowed in 
 directions suggested by the circumstances in which 
 he was placed. Yet, when the reader has found 
 it easy to trace in the Epistle to the Thessalonians 
 the effect of the apostle's observations on the 
 wretchedness and hopelessness of paganism in 
 dissolute Corinth, from which the Epistles to the 
 Thessalonians were really written, he is surprised 
 at being told, at the end of the letters, that they 
 were wTitten from Athens, whose people worshipped 
 the goddess of wisdom and the unknown God, while 
 
THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS. xi 
 
 Corinth adored Venus, the goddess of pleasure, and 
 practised without shame her voluptuous rites. And 
 so with other Epistles, Wherever there is an error, 
 it tends to obliterate the features of the picture which 
 these letters enable us to draw of the great apostle, 
 and weaken our perception of his wonderful per- 
 sonality, at once so commanding and so irresistibly 
 attractive. 
 
 The historical importance of the information thus 
 acquired cannot be overrated. The sentence from 
 the Book of Exodus, which I have placed on my 
 title-page, applies in its measure to the life of the 
 Christians of the apostolic age. That period is 
 emphatically holy ground. No other epoch in the 
 history of Christianity will bear comparison with 
 it in exhibiting the true Christian life, as the result 
 of the life, death, and resurrection of our blessed 
 Lord. 
 
 Three circumstances combined to make the 
 Church of the apostles our standard in faith and 
 morals, more trustworthy than any other that the 
 records of Christianity can show to us. Christians 
 were then under the personal guidance of the 
 apostles themselves. The presence of God among 
 them was shown in the frequency with which 
 miraculous gifts were exercised, not only by the 
 apostles, but by many of the private believers ; and 
 the sincerity and piety of the believers were tested 
 
Xll THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS. 
 
 by persecutions of all kinds, ending frequently in 
 martyrdom. 
 
 Whatever, then, have been the changes to which 
 the growth of civilization and the multiplication of 
 conversions have given birth, never again was the 
 Church in so happy a spiritual condition as she 
 enjoyed while the apostles lived ; and therefore 
 never again had she equal claims on our respect, 
 our affection, and our reverence. And the more 
 closely and critically these records of her life are 
 examined, the more strikingly will the life of the 
 apostolic period be seen to correspond with the ideal 
 life of Christians in this world which is set forth in 
 the four Gospels themselves. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, 
 
 SHOWING THE DATES OF THE EPISTLES, AND THE PLACES 
 FROM WHICH THEY WERE WRITTEN. 
 
 
 Written from 
 
 
 A.D. 
 
 I Thessalonians 
 
 Corinth 
 
 
 
 52 
 
 2 Thessalonians 
 
 Corinth 
 
 
 
 52 
 
 Galatians 
 
 Corinth 
 
 
 End of 52 
 
 or beginning of 53 
 
 I Corinthians 
 
 Ephesus 
 
 
 
 57 
 
 Romans 
 
 Corinth 
 
 
 End of 57 
 
 or beginning of 58 
 
 2 Corinthians 
 
 Macedonia 
 (perhaps 
 
 Philippi) 
 
 
 58 
 
 Ephesians 
 
 Rome 
 
 
 
 61 
 
 Colossians 
 
 Rome 
 
 
 
 62 
 
 Philippians 
 
 Rome 
 
 
 End of 62 
 
 or beginning of 63 
 
 Philemon 
 
 Rome 
 
 
 End of 62 
 
 or beginning of 63 
 
 Hebrews 
 
 Italy 
 (perhaps 
 
 Rome) 
 
 End of 62 
 
 or beginning of 63 
 
 I Timothy 
 
 Macedonia 
 
 
 
 64 
 
 Titus 
 
 Macedonia 
 
 
 
 64 
 
 2 Timothy 
 
 Rome 
 
 
 
 65 
 
 James 
 
 Judeea 
 
 
 
 61 
 
 I Peter 
 
 Rome 
 
 
 
 64 
 
 2 Peter 
 
 Rome 
 
 
 
 Beginning of 65 
 
 I John 
 
 Unknown 
 (perhaps 
 
 Ephesus) 
 
 
 68 or early in 69 
 
 2 and 3 John 
 
 Ephesus 
 
 
 
 68 or early in 69 
 
 Jude 
 
 Unknown 
 
 
 
 63 or 64 
 
r* 
 
 THE 
 
 CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON THE HISTORICAI, STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 Whatever may be the merits or dements of the 
 age in which our lot is cast, posterity will certainly 
 be grateful to us for having been the first to com- 
 prehend the significance of the great truth that 
 every relic of the past is to be valued as an indica- 
 tion of the characteristic life which crave it birth. 
 Not that past generations were entirely ignorant of 
 this truth, but that it has been reserved for our own 
 to apply it to many subjects to which our ancestors 
 never suspected that it could be applicable. 
 
 They were, in a word, antiquaries and collectors, 
 but nothing more. With a childlike simplicity they 
 gathered together all things old and strange, and 
 had no thought of the lessons their collections were 
 capable of teaching. Fossils, minerals, bones of 
 extinct animals, mummies from the Nile, urns from 
 
 B 
 
2 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 the Catacombs, arrow-heads from caves, jewels from 
 the East, the marbles of Greece, the vases of 
 Etruria, fragments of manuscripts written in cha- 
 racters neither Greek, nor Roman, nor Hebrew, 
 were treasured as rarities, costly and novel, and 
 beyond the understanding of the vulgar mind. 
 
 At length a new conception dawned upon the 
 lovers of the relics of the past. They began to 
 suspect that there might be some hidden secret 
 which would give vitality to all these heterogeneous 
 remains. By degrees it came to be imagined that 
 there might be some sort of organic relationship 
 between objects hitherto regarded as utterly dis- 
 similar and unconnected by any common bond of 
 union. Day by day and year by year the new 
 conception grew, and was felt even when not dis- 
 tinctly understood. This was the conception of life, 
 as the source of the innumerable varieties in the 
 works accomplished by man, and also in that visible 
 universe in which human intelligence has no part 
 to play. 
 
 Thus arose the sciences of comparative physio- 
 logy, comparative anatomy, and comparative philo- 
 logy ; all of them bearing witness to the great truth 
 that a knowledge of the externals of existence is not 
 to be called knowledge at all, unless it leads to the 
 study of that secret life to whose prolific force all 
 the changing phenomena of man's history are due. 
 Hence the increasing conviction that a history of 
 the beliefs of the past is not a history of abstract 
 
HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 3 
 
 ideas and speculations, but the history of human 
 beings like ourselves. It is the history of their 
 actual life, rather than a statement of the different 
 views which have from time to time prevailed in 
 respect to the subjects which have interested man- 
 kind. 
 
 Everywhere are to be seen signs, sometimes 
 
 trifling but always significant, of this change in the 
 current of the thoughts of educated people. Every- 
 where there is a recognition of the principle that 
 correctness of knowledge as to the real facts of 
 human life is the first condition of all historical study 
 that is worthy the name. The history of England 
 is somethino- more than a record of the reio'ns of 
 kings, of battles and sieges, and other public events. 
 If this old-fashioned chronicle of public affairs, which 
 the last century looked upon as history, is not vivi- 
 fied with information as to the habitual life that was 
 lived by the men and women from whom we spring, 
 it is no real history at all. 
 
 This is the secret conviction which lies at the 
 root of that laborious examination of the architec- 
 ture, the dresses, the armour, and weapons of war, 
 which has occupied so much of the attention of the 
 present century. And it is the same with our present 
 studies of all languages. 
 
 We no longer regard them as a sort of mys- 
 terious invention of grammarians, but as an out- 
 growth of humanity, the most wonderful of all the 
 implements that have been devised for practical 
 
4 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 use by the great tool-making animal, man ; and as 
 attaining their maturity by certain definite stages of 
 development in harmony with the growth of human 
 nature itself Thus the science of comparative 
 philology has grown up side by side with the science 
 of comparative physiology ; both alike based on the 
 study of life, as such ; the one on the emotional and 
 thinking life of man, the other on the facts of the 
 physical life which he shares with the whole animal 
 creation. We should no more think of studying our 
 own language, or the ancient languages of Greece 
 and Rome, apart from the phenomena of the San- 
 skrit or Semitic languages, than we should think of 
 classifying plants by the Linnaean method of number- 
 ing the pistils and stamens of their flowers, or 
 animals by the shape and arrangement of their teeth. 
 
 In a like spirit there is a growing tendency to 
 repudiate the habit of regarding the New Testament 
 as a species of magazine of texts, to be employed 
 for controversial purposes; or at the best as a collec- 
 tion of theological documents, originally written and 
 providentially published for the general use of man- 
 kind. Christianity, we are now learning to see, is 
 the one great fact in the history of the human race ; 
 and neither Christianity itself, nor the human race 
 itself, can be understood apart from one another. 
 
 According to the old theory, the New Testament 
 is a kind of concrete entity ; an organic whole, to be 
 read without any constant reference to the origin 
 of its separate parts, or to the personal characteristics 
 
HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 5 
 
 of its various authors. As far as the Epistles are 
 concerned, no one supposed that they were to be 
 placed as much among the historical as among the 
 doctrinal jDortions of the sacred volume. 
 
 It was through the prevalence of these views 
 that many persons felt as if a severe shock was 
 given to their faith when they learnt that grave 
 doubts were entertained as to the connection of the 
 first three Gospels with the personal disciples of 
 Jesus Christ, whose names they bear. What ground 
 for our faith have we, they asked, if we cannot trust 
 these lives of our Lord as three independant narra- 
 tives of His life and teaching, written by those who 
 were personally instructed by Himself? 
 
 The synoptical theory, however, by degrees 
 made its way, and helped to familiarize men's minds 
 with the conviction that the daily life of the first 
 believers after the departure of Jesus Christ from 
 the world is an elementary fact of the utmost 
 moment, to be taken into account by every one 
 who would understand Christianity itself. 
 
 Any honest attempt to realize the actual life of 
 the first disciples at once dissipates the fears of those 
 who imagined that their faith depended upon the 
 maintenance of the old views as to the origin of the 
 Gospels. What, it was asked by thinking people, 
 was the daily existence of the men and women who 
 believed in the Son of Mary as their Redeemer 
 and Teacher ? They were for the most part poor 
 and illiterate, and could not read books, even if they 
 
6 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 had them. Yet they must have possessed some 
 detailed record of the hfe and teaching of their 
 Master; some narrative of His birth, death, and 
 resurrection. It is simply incredible that no such 
 history was in existence from the first, sufficient for 
 the guidance of the believers. It cannot seriously 
 be maintained that they had no traditional life of 
 Jesus generally current among them, until some 
 of His original followers wrote down in Greek 
 their personal recollections and circulated them as 
 authentic narratives. In other words, the synoptical 
 theory as to the origin of the three first Gospels 
 is in harmony with the facts of the life of the 
 first Christians, as we cannot fail to perceive the 
 moment we study the beginnings of the Christian 
 Church as a history of the real life of human beings 
 like ourselves. 
 
 Examining this theory on its merits, we find that 
 it is based upon certain undeniable peculiarities in 
 the three first Gospels themselves. None of them, 
 of course, pretends to record in full detail all the 
 words which Jesus uttered when He instructed His 
 followers, whether in parables or in any other way. 
 Such verbal minuteness would have been as im- 
 possible as was unnecessary. What the believers 
 needed was a record of the substance of their 
 Master's teaching, and of the circumstances of His 
 life and death, practically so correct as to be accepted 
 as the groundwork of their faith and conduct. 
 St. John's Gospel concludes with a kind of protest 
 
HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 7 
 
 against any other system of narrative as an attempt 
 to do that which was impossible. 
 
 In comparing, then, the three first Gospels with 
 one another, the reader is at once struck with a 
 surprising phenomenon. While agreeing substan- 
 tially as narratives designed for practical guidance, 
 they disagree absolutely in certain details which 
 could hardly have escaped the observation of eye- 
 witnesses ; at the same time that they agree ver- 
 bally in many matters where independent observers, 
 relating the substance of what they had seen and 
 heard, would naturally differ. 
 
 What is the explanation of these singular charac- 
 teristics ? The explanation is obvious, as soon as 
 we realize the actual circumstances of the life of the 
 believers. These three Gospels are really three 
 separate versions of the one traditional narrative 
 which was current when they were written. When 
 three different writers undertook to preserve the 
 current narrative, their own personal varieties of 
 feeling and temperament would lead them to record 
 facts and discourses with differences of detail and 
 more or less fulness, as the case might be ; while 
 at the same time they preserved with rigid verbal 
 accuracy such portions of the history as they con- 
 sidered to require minute exactness. Each evan- 
 gelist's narrative was thus a synopsis of the pre- 
 viously existing history of the life of Jesus Christ. 
 Accepting this explanation of their origin, the diffi- 
 culties which have been often caused by the dis- 
 
8 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 crepancies in these three Gospels disappear. The 
 authorship of St. John's Gospel is determined by 
 different considerations, into which my present pur- 
 pose does not make it necessary for me to enter. 
 As to the other three, instead of appearing less 
 trustworthy as narratives, the adoption of the synop- 
 tical theory makes them more valuable than before, 
 and we read them with an undoubting conviction 
 that they bring us into the very presence of the 
 incarnate Son of God. 
 
 In this spirit of historical criticism I propose to 
 examine the Epistles of St. Paul and of the other 
 writers in the New Testament, with the view of 
 ascertaining what insight they may furnish into the 
 lives, the feelings, and the beliefs of the Christian 
 communities of the apostolic period. A vivid pic- 
 ture of the life of the Patristic period has been 
 drawn by Cardinal Newman in " The Church of 
 the Fathers ; " and those who wish to know what 
 were the externals, and incidentally the inner life, 
 of the times subsequent to the conversion of Con- 
 stantine the Great, will find ample information, 
 mainly in respect to the Christianity of the Latin 
 races, in Dr. Roch's elaborate " The Church of our 
 Fathers." 
 
 In the picture which I am now attempting to 
 draw, the personality of one great figure stands out 
 in striking relief. It is that of St. Paul himself; 
 and the more carefully his writings are studied from 
 the historical point of view, the more are we im- 
 
HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 9 
 
 pressed with the heroic greatness and the exquisite 
 charm of character of that v/onderful man, appointed 
 by a special revelation to be the apostle of the 
 Gentiles. The more closely his character is ex- 
 amined, the more fitting he appears to have been 
 the one chief exponent of the faith of Christ, both 
 as a preacher and as a writer whose exposition of 
 the doctrines of the Gospel v/as to be the treasure 
 of Christians in all coming ages. 
 
 That, with very few exceptions, St. Paul really 
 wrote the letters attributed to him, there is not the 
 shadow of a doubt. It is as certain that he wrote 
 them as that Julius Caesar wrote his " Commentaries," 
 or Dante the " Divina Commedia." The authorship 
 of the Epistle to the Hebrews is a question on which 
 critics are divided. Many attribute the Epistle to 
 Apollos, the close friend and disciple of St. Paul. 
 But whoever was its actual writer, its value is un- 
 doubted, as illustrating those peculiar elements in 
 the character of the Hebrew converts to the gospel 
 which the writer of the Epistle regarded as requiring 
 special attention. As such, it is one of the most 
 important historical documents of the apostolic 
 period. 
 
 It need hardly be added that it is by no means 
 simply as an interesting literary and historical in- 
 quiry that I undertake the fulfilment of my present 
 task. An inquiry into the facts of the lives of the 
 early Christian communities is not like an inquiry 
 into the rise and progress of Buddhism, or the 
 
lo THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 origin of the strange religions of Central America. 
 I approach my investigation into the habits and 
 beliefs of the first Christian Churches with a con- 
 viction that I am about to study the inmost lives of 
 men who had been, by the will of God, placed in a 
 position different from that of all the rest of mankind. 
 They had learnt truths of which the wisest and most 
 learned were ignorant. Their chief teacher had 
 been himself the subject of a supernatural interpo- 
 sition, which had changed his whole nature, and he 
 had subsequently been miraculously instructed on 
 many details of the matters which he communicated 
 to his followers. 
 
 In examining these letters, therefore, I begin by 
 recognizing the divine origin of the religion which 
 St. Paul taught, Christianity, I see, is the one 
 great fact in the history of the world. We, who are 
 involved in the mystifications of modern popular 
 talk, do not always understand this historical aspect 
 of the religion in which we have been brought up. 
 We regard it as a collection of doctrines and pre- 
 cepts, supported by an ingenious arrangement of 
 texts and authorities, whose miraculous elements 
 have become things of the past, and have no practical 
 bearing upon our everyday existence. 
 
 The Christianity of the early Christians was of a 
 different kind. It was essentially a religion which 
 recognized the reality of supernatural agencies, con- 
 tinued without interruption from the time when 
 Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It seems unprofitable, 
 
HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, ii 
 
 therefore, to inquire into the history of St. Paul's 
 converts until we have satisfied ourselves that no 
 valid reason exists for disbelieving the reality of 
 that supernatural life which St. Paul assumed to be 
 involved in the fundamental constitution of Christi- 
 anity itself The most modern speculations on this 
 momentous question will be discussed in a subse- 
 quent chapter; but it may be well to anticipate at 
 once the difficulties which in earlier times have 
 presented themselves to serious thinkers who see 
 in all supernatural events an infraction of the laws 
 of the universe. 
 
 Were, then, the miracles recorded in the Gospels 
 and the Acts of the Apostles in themselves im- 
 possible } That they were in themselves, strictly 
 speaking, impossible, cannot be supposed by any 
 thinkinof mind which believes in the existence of an 
 Almighty God, and His power over all things that 
 He has created. 
 
 But the notion of the impossibility of miracles is 
 supplemented by another theory, at first sight more 
 plausible, but which disappears on close examination. 
 All miracles, it is argued, are violations of the prin- 
 ciple of the inviolability of law, as the expression of 
 the eternal and unchancreable nature of God Himself. 
 Undoubtedly this is so. But the objection has no 
 bearing upon the reality of the Christian miracles, 
 which are based upon the fact that man's nature is 
 twofold. If there is a God, and we are capable of 
 any actions of a moral or immoral kind, it follows, as 
 
13 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 a necessary consequence, that we are responsible to 
 Him for all our conduct. If our nature were in all 
 respects identical with that of the brutes, matters 
 would be different. Our interests would be confined 
 to the affairs of the present life and to the laws 
 which regulate the visible universe. 
 
 But, inasmuch as our nature has its moral and 
 spiritual as well as its corporeal relations, it is sub- 
 ject to a twofold system of law ; the laws of the 
 invisible universe as well as those of the visible ; 
 and farther, we must recognize in the eternal and 
 unchanging nature of the Godhead the cause of the 
 permanent reign of law in the unseen as well as in 
 the things that are seen. When, therefore, in the 
 furtherance of our moral discipline, it pleases God 
 to interfere with the regular course of the laws 
 which reofulate visible thinofs, we are not to regard 
 Him as violating the first principle of the uniformity 
 of law in itself. On the contrary. He is breaking 
 into the inviolability of visible law, in order to teach 
 us His presence as the Author of that higher law 
 which has reference to the nobler portion of our 
 being ; that is, our moral and spiritual nature. 
 When an Infant is born from a virgin mother, the 
 laws of the material universe are interrupted, but 
 not those of the spiritual universe, and man learns 
 that in a true and real sense the new-born Child is 
 the Redeemer, the Son of the Most High, come to 
 save him from his sins. 
 
 When, then, I find, in more than one of St. Paul's 
 
HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 13 
 
 letters, that he speaks of certain supernatural gifts, 
 possessed by members of the community to which 
 he is writing, my conviction of the inviolability of 
 law, as such, is not interfered with. The phenomena 
 spoken of are simply phenomena ; wonderful, indeed, 
 but not incredible. I do not doubt that they really 
 existed, precisely as St. Paul described them. I 
 am not driven, in bewilderment, to take refuse in 
 the supposition that St. Paul was either so simple- 
 minded and credulous as to mistake his own illusions 
 for actual facts, or so dishonest as to suppress his 
 conviction that the supposed miraculous gifts were a 
 dream or an imposture. I accept the statement in 
 his Epistles as the historical record of real events, 
 which were altogether in harmony with the promises 
 made by our Lord during His lifetime. 
 
 If I am asked whether I have ever been person- 
 ally cognisant of the exercise of such powers by 
 Christians at the present day, I reply that I have 
 not ; and I add without hesitation, that if I did 
 witness any professed miracle, I should, of course, 
 be astonished, and I should try its reality by the 
 severest tests ; but I should not hold that it was 
 necessarily a delusion. 
 
 As a Christian, I am convinced that I am livino- 
 in the midst of an invisible and supernatural world, 
 which is as truly an objective reality as the things 
 which I touch and see and hear. It is real, because 
 God Himself is real. To this unseen reality I 
 myself have access by means of faith and prayer ; 
 
14 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 and I am not an unreasoning fanatic because I 
 habitually ask God to give me many things which I 
 desire, and believe that He often grants my requests. 
 This, I say, is what every intelligent Christian holds; 
 and if it is objected that such a belief is equivalent 
 to an assertion that our prayers work miracles, I 
 reply that I am not to be frightened by words from 
 exercising the privileges which as a Christian I pos- 
 sess. If any person imagines that it is preposterous 
 to suppose that he or I, or any one, should have 
 the power of communicating with the Eternal God, 
 and by a mere silent prayer to induce Him to make 
 some alteration in the course of the visible universe, 
 the answer is obvious. God is everywhere, and to 
 Him nothing is little and nothing is great. The 
 trifles of daily life and the shock of empires are in 
 His eyes alike deserving of the attention of His 
 wisdom and the control of His omnipotence ; and 
 that man best does his duty to his fellow-men, and 
 walks with surest step through the tangled paths of 
 this visible world whose vision of unseen things is 
 most clear and uninterrupted, and whose look is 
 most steadily fixed, not upon his own miserable 
 inward self, but upon that living Presence in which 
 he lives and moves and has his being.* 
 
 Such being our own daily life, we study the 
 
 details of the Epistles in the New Testament with 
 
 intense interest, but not with any very great surprise. 
 
 If it is sometimes difficult to picture to ourselves 
 
 * See chap. xxi. 
 
HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 15 
 
 States of society such as existed in Thessalonica, or 
 Corinth, or Rome, or Ephesus, it is not so much on 
 account of their reHgious pecuHarities as because 
 the general conditions of their civihzation were so 
 unhke our own. To superficial observers old times 
 seem to be specially distinguished from the present 
 by differences in language, in architecture and furni- 
 ture, in dress, and in customs of eating and drinking. 
 These things, however, were only the externals of 
 ancient life, as they are the externals of our own. 
 
 The differences between our lives and those of 
 the Christians of the apostolic period lay far deeper 
 than any mere investigation of the externals of civili- 
 zation can reveal. The influence of Christian morality 
 has left such an impression upon our personal, social, 
 and domestic ideas, that we find it difficult to realize 
 the tone of thought and feeling which prevailed in 
 all classes of men and women brought up under 
 the accumulated influences of hundreds and thou- 
 sands of years of heathenism or unmodified Judaism. 
 Looking back upon our own English life, such as it 
 was some two or three centuries ago, any trustworthy 
 contemporary record of its features convinces us that 
 our ancestors of those days were in some respects 
 singularly unlike ourselves. Still more strikingly 
 is this the case when the retrospect is carried into 
 foreign countries, and we are brought face to face 
 with their private life, such as it existed some eight 
 or ten crenerations a^o. We are sometimes so 
 startled by what we see to have been their habitual 
 
1 6 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 modes of thought, that we are ahnost tempted . to 
 ask whether these people were literally of the same 
 flesh and blood as ourselves. 
 
 Imagine, then, what the citizens of Rome, or 
 Corinth, or Ephesus were, before one Christian idea 
 had penetrated into the chaotic compound of notions 
 engendered by Oriental, Greek, and Roman mytho- 
 logies, complicated with the incessant conflicts of 
 political strife, in which our modern ideas of right 
 and wrong, and of the relations of the sexes, had no 
 place. 
 
 Side by side with these pagan elements was the 
 power of what I have called unmodified Judaism, 
 when the Christian ideas which have now so largely 
 modified the ancient Judaism were unknown to the 
 Jew of Judaea, of Italy, or of Asia, except as objects 
 of his aversion or contempt. The Gospel histories 
 show distinctly to what a small extent the popular 
 Judaism of the day had shared in such civilization 
 as the world then knew. There seems to have 
 been only one important element in social life in 
 which the Jews had changed for the better. They 
 had, as far as can be gathered from the Gospels, 
 given up the practice of polygamy, and the recog- 
 nized concubinage of the patriarchs seems to have 
 been laid aside. In this abolition of polygamy they 
 simply acted upon the ideas which were current in 
 the nations of civilized Europe, Greece and Rome 
 alike having come to the conclusion that the practice 
 of polygamy was inconsistent with the well-being 
 
HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 17 
 
 of society. But the Jews of the time were still lax 
 on the subject of divorce, while, so far from having 
 made any approach towards the fundamental Chris- 
 tian doctrine of the forgiveness of injuries their 
 natures were as hard and cruel as they had ever 
 been. To-day, few cultivated Jews would assert that 
 the Lord's Prayer addresses Almighty God in a 
 manner which is alien to his Hebrew feelings ; 
 but this is the result of that indirect influence 
 which Christianity has exercised in so many quarters 
 where its light has shone, undarkened by gross 
 corruptions. The Jew of eighteen centuries ago was 
 a being as little like the half-Christianized Jew, with 
 whose merits we are now familiar, as the voluptuous 
 heathen of Corinth was unlike the philosophic 
 moralists of Athens or the ascetics of Brahmanism 
 in India. 
 
 Imagine, then, I say, what life must have been 
 in those old days, and we shall recognize the 
 difficulty of understanding it, whether in its lights 
 or its shadows, as it was lived by the Christian 
 converts in the time of the apostles, 
 
 I should add a few words of a personal nature, 
 which will perhaps not lessen the interest which the 
 reader may feel in the attempt I am now making 
 to enable him to realize the actual life of the early 
 Christian Churches. ]\Iost men, as they advance 
 in years, grow more and more conscious of the 
 unsatisfying character of that strange development 
 of religious civilization in which we now find our- 
 
1 8 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 selves. All things seem In confusion, and almost 
 unreal and dream-like. There is a vast amount of 
 good intention and goOd feeling among us, notwith- 
 standing the violence of ecclesiastical and political 
 partisanship. But sensible persons, as they grow 
 old, learn to dislike partisanship with a cordial dis- 
 like. They know that there are few subjects which 
 are not many-sided and complex, and on which wise 
 and honest minds may not differ. Still, though 
 they can never be vehement partisans, their human 
 hearts long for sympathy with living beings like 
 themselves. Those who are young and eager do 
 not understand this desire for sympathy on the part 
 of the old. They do not understand why men and 
 women who seem to belono- to a dead generation 
 cannot content themselves with the interests of the 
 past, and satisfy their vain cravings with abstract 
 reasonings and critical studies, especially of a devout 
 description. 
 
 Yet it is really because certain old books corre- 
 spond to this desire for personal knowledge and 
 sympathy that they hold their place among the 
 great masterpieces of literature of all ages, and have 
 retained their charm for successive generations of 
 men. 
 
 Such is that most perfect of all books outside 
 the sacred Scriptures, the "Imitation [or, 'Following'] 
 of Christ." Its authorship, as critics are aware, is 
 attributed to two different persons, placed in very 
 different circumstances — Thomas a Kempis, a 
 
HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 19 
 
 member of a Flemish monastery ; and Gerson, a 
 French ecclesiastic filling a distinguished post, and 
 engaged in the active controversies of a stirring age. 
 But whichever of the two men was the writer of 
 the wonderful book, every person who now reads 
 it feels that he is not merely following the guidance 
 of an incomparable spiritual teacher, but is holding 
 communion with a living human being, no longer 
 present in this world, but still speaking to us, heart 
 to heart, as a personal friend, in his saintly pages. 
 
 And this is just the kind of sympathy which is 
 to be found in the lives of the apostolic Christians 
 when we have learnt to realize their characteristic 
 features. Here, at any rate, were people into whose 
 daily struggles we can throw^ our whole hearts with- 
 out fear of indulging in vulgar partisanship. Grant- 
 ing that at times some of them fell into grievous sin, 
 and that they were occasionally misled by opinions 
 whose foolishness is now manifest, still they were 
 the uncompromising servants of Jesus Christ, who 
 lived for Him and often died for Him. In the 
 study of their daily customs, their difficulties, their 
 occasional failures, their hopes, and their victories, 
 we live their lives over a^ain ; we are at home 
 among them, with a brotherly sympathy that satisfies 
 us when we are most lonely amidst the crowd of 
 nineteenth-century combatants. 
 
 The peculiar character of St. Paul's mind ma- 
 terially lessens any difficulty that might be felt in 
 reproducing the life of the early Christian Churches 
 
20 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 from the letters which he addressed to them, I do 
 not mean his personal and moral nature, which will 
 come out in stronQf relief as we examine his writings 
 in detail, but his intellectual nature. This was 
 eminently of the practical type, as distinguished 
 from the purely speculative. However abstract are 
 the subjects that he treats, he invariably contem- 
 plates them in their relation to human action, and 
 the capacity of the human intellect to turn them to 
 profit in its efforts to comprehend Divine mysteries. 
 
 This is especially notable in his method of 
 treating the subject of the Divine foreknowledge, 
 and of election and predestination. The subject, as 
 is well known to every one who is familiar with it, 
 is in itself a metaphysical question, involving ideas 
 as obscure as they are profound. How to reconcile 
 our conceptions of liberty and necessity, of God's 
 foreknowlege of events with man's freedom of action 
 in human affairs, is a problem which has proved 
 insoluble to the keenest intellects in all ages, though 
 it has never ceased to perplex and excite the serious 
 thinkers of every race. 
 
 In reality the problem is necessarily insoluble. 
 It involves conceptions of the operations of the 
 Divine mind which are simply beyond the reach of 
 any human intelligence. " Canst thou by searching 
 find out God ? " says the Scripture ; and the ab- 
 surdity of the attempt is demonstrated when we try 
 to frame a distinct idea of that which is in itself 
 infinite without falling into self-contradictions. Fore- 
 
HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 21 
 
 knowledge and predestination being essentially the 
 acts of a Being whose modes of action imply powers 
 which are in themselves incomprehensible to us, any 
 attempt to reconcile them theoretically with the free 
 agency of beings whose every action is thus fore- 
 known must result in the invention of mere hieh- 
 sounding phrases, as destitute of intelligible meaning 
 as the empty vibrations of a drum.'" 
 
 When St, Paul introduces the subject, as he does 
 in writing to the Romans, he never treats it as a 
 matter of interesting philosophical and theological 
 speculation, involving serious difficulties, to be ap- 
 proached with due caution and with a careful 
 balancing of apparently contradictory propositions. 
 He views the doctrine of election as a simple truth, 
 having certain definite practical bearings upon the 
 life of the believer. He points out the conse- 
 quences which it involves, and the several steps 
 in the process of perfecting the true saint, by 
 which God carries out His own predestinating will. 
 The contrast between St. Paul's method and that 
 of writers of the speculative school is complete, and 
 deepens our impression of his marvellous personal 
 fitness for the work to which he was called when 
 God made him the apostle of the Gentiles. 
 * See chap. xx. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
 
 I. In attempting to picture to ourselves the actual 
 life of the Christian believers of the apostolic period, 
 our. attention is at once arrested by two great facts 
 — the vast and homocreneous organization of the 
 Roman empire, and the absence of any complete 
 and vigorous organization in the spiritual kingdom 
 which was to prove its overthrow. 
 
 The fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles 
 records the first steps which were taken to lay a basis 
 for the general organization of the Christian Churches, 
 and to secure uniformity in faith and practice. This 
 was nearly twenty years after the death of our 
 Lord. The apostles and elders then met in council 
 at Jerusalem, in order to decide upon the pretensions 
 which had been put forward by the Jewish party 
 among the believers after the conversion of the 
 Gentiles had been admitted as cominof within the 
 scope of the command given by Jesus Christ to 
 the apostles. 
 
 Defeated in their exclusive claims, the Jewish 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 23 
 
 party devised a new scheme for fettering the con- 
 sciences of the Gentiles, whose conversion they 
 could not prevent. They Insisted that the obser- 
 vance of the whole Mosaic law, Including the rite 
 of circumcision, was obligatory upon all Christians, 
 whether of Jewish or Gentile origin. The agitation 
 caused by this assertion, and the pertinacity with 
 which It was urged, were so great that the apostles 
 and elders assembled In council at Jerusalem to 
 decide the matter. On the proposition of Peter, 
 who had himself opposed the admission of Gentiles 
 to the privileges of Christians till he was convinced 
 by a vision, the pretensions of the Judaising party 
 were formally condemned, and messengers were 
 sent to communicate the decision to the disturbed 
 districts. 
 
 II. In the mean time Divine Providence was 
 preparing a new supernatural force, which would 
 exercise the most momentous influence in the con- 
 version of the world and in the administration of 
 the affairs of the Church. When the first martyr, 
 Stephen, was murdered by the Jews in Jerusalem, a 
 young man, named Saul, stood by, exulting in the 
 crime, and thinking that the murderers were doing 
 God service. This young man, afterwards called Paul, 
 was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, of good family, 
 and belonging to the sect of the Pharisees. He was 
 also a Roman citizen, having inherited the privileges 
 of citizenship from his father. It is to be noted 
 that the . personal rights of citizenship, when in- 
 
24 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 herited, were greater than those connected with a 
 citizenship conferred upon an individual foreigner. 
 Upon this pecuHarity in the Roman law the sub- 
 sequent fortunes of Paul turned on a certain great 
 occasion, and through the operation of this privilege 
 the destinies of the Christian Church were materially 
 affected. 
 
 Saul, .though a Hebrew of the Hebrews, was 
 born at Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a place of much 
 cultivation, where he was educated in all the accom- 
 plishments of the time, learning to speak both 
 Greek and Latin. According to the custom which 
 prevailed among the wealthy Jews, he learnt a 
 mechanical trade, and was able, if necessary, to 
 support himself by tent-making. When his home 
 education was finished, he was placed under the 
 care of Gamaliel, a rabbi of high reputation at Jeru- 
 salem, From Gamaliel he acquired a full know- 
 ledge of the written and unwritten traditions of the 
 Jewish law. His full knowledge of the writings 
 of the Old Testament might have been acquired 
 before he became the pupil of Gamaliel. 
 
 He was endowed, besides, with a bodily consti- 
 tution of extraordinary vigour, and united sensitive- 
 ness of feeling to tenacity and courage to an unusual 
 degree. He was passionately devoted to his race 
 and all its laws and customs, and he threw himself 
 with ardour into the o-rowinof conflict between 
 Judaism and the religion of Jesus, of which latter 
 he knew little or nothing. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 25 
 
 After witnessing the hideous deatii of Stephen, 
 and exasperated by the martyr's faith and constancy, 
 Saul proceeded to take active steps for stopping 
 the progress of the new creed. The pretence that 
 the Christians were disloyal to the Roman power 
 enabled the Jews to obtain warrants for their appre- 
 hension, the execution of which was entrusted to 
 Saul, w^ho started at once for Damascus. 
 
 On his way Jesus spoke to him, without showing 
 Himself to his bodily eyes. He had nearly reached 
 the city when he was startled by a sudden light 
 blazing before him. He fell to the ground, but at 
 once he knew that he was in the presence of a 
 Divine manifestation. " Who art Thou, Lord ? " 
 he asked. A voice replied, "I am Jesus, whom thou 
 persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the 
 pricks." The words pierced the heart of the young 
 man, and he understood that he had been the victim 
 of his own passionate self-will, and that the perse- 
 cuted Christians w^ere the only followers of the one 
 true God. His whole nature instantly submitted 
 without reserve, and he was directed to go into 
 Damascus, where he would learn what he was to 
 do. The voice then was silent ; and Saul, who 
 had been blinded by the light, was led into the 
 city by his attendants, who had heard the voice, 
 but seen nothing. In Damascus he vras found by 
 Ananias, a disciple, who had been supernaturally 
 instructed to meet him, and by whom, after his 
 sight was miraculously restored, he was baptized. 
 
26 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 III. And thus Jesus Christ prepared the new 
 apostle, who was to be pre-eminently the teacher 
 of the Gentile world, and to stand face to face with 
 the gigantic organization of the Roman empire. 
 From this time the history of the conflict between 
 the power of Rome and the spiritual kingdom of 
 Christ is, to a large extent, a history of the life of 
 St. Paul, and a description of the lives of the 
 various Christian communities to whom he wrote 
 the numerous letters collected together in the New 
 Testament. It seems probable that all the letters 
 he thus wrote have been preserved. In the com- 
 munities to whom they were addressed there would 
 naturally exist the greatest anxiety for their preser- 
 vation ; and, when supplemented by the Epistles 
 written by a few of the original apostles, they 
 thus supply ample materials for a fairly complete 
 narrative of the daily existence of the first Chris- 
 tians and of the influences which the Roman empire 
 brought to bear upon their lives and fortunes. 
 They have only to be studied without prejudice 
 or controversial bias in order to enable us to realize 
 the true nature of that conflict with the world in 
 which Christians are necessarily engaged, and will 
 be engaged, as long as the world shall last. Such 
 a picture of the energetic life of " the Church of 
 the Apostles" must be not only in the highest 
 degree interesting, but will supply an important 
 element towards a thorough comprehension of the 
 history of Christian doctrine, and of that growth of 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 27 
 
 Christian practices and modes of expression which 
 has been the result of the undying vitaHty of the 
 Church. 
 
 It is instructive, too, as has been already said, to 
 us who are born in an age when it is comparatively 
 easy to live a Christian life, to recall the terrible 
 nature of the strife which was maintained by our 
 spiritual forefathers eighteen centuries ago, when the 
 circumstances of civilized society were so little like 
 those of our own time, and a sharp line marked the 
 followers of Jesus Christ from those who were His 
 enemies. 
 
 IV. In the fifty-second year after the birth of 
 our Lord, when the earliest of St. Paul's letters, that 
 which he sent to the Thessalonians from Corinth, is 
 believed to have been written, the Roman empire 
 was master of nearly all the thickly-peopled parts of 
 Europe and of a considerable portion of Asia, to 
 say nothing of the footing which it had gained on 
 the northern shores of Africa. And thus it is, 
 that, when we trace the features of the life of the 
 Church in the apostolic age, we find everywhere 
 the signs of that peculiar influence which Rome 
 exercised over the races subject to her sway. It 
 was through that unity of government which was 
 characteristic of her system that the first preachers 
 of Christianity were able to travel to and fro at their 
 pleasure, with little or no hindrance. The general 
 use of the Greek lano-uagre as a means of commu- 
 nication, like French in modern times, was another 
 
28 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 effect of the Roman unity of administration, whose 
 importance it is difficult to overrate when the 
 apostles came to write to the converts whom they 
 made. Even when writing to the Jewish Christians 
 in general, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 wrote in Greek, with no apology for using a language 
 which might be supposed strange in their ears. 
 
 V. Aofain, it was through the action of the 
 Roman system that ^rge numbers of Jews were 
 already settled in many of the cities to which 
 the apostles carried the tidings of the gospel. 
 Hence it was that the fundamental doctrine of 
 Christianity, which asserted that the gospel was 
 designed for all mankind without distinction of 
 nation, was at once made a matter of vehement 
 practical discussion, sometimes embittered with all 
 the acrimony which an ancient and narrow-minded 
 people like the Jews were capable of feeling. 
 
 VI. Another important element in the practical 
 application of the teaching of Jesus Christ was the 
 result of the peculiar temperament of the Jewish 
 race when brought into collision with the peculiar 
 temperament of Rome and of all persons whose 
 natures were moulded by her example. To some 
 extent the subtle, passionate, and poetic Greek 
 nature had modified the hard, straigrhtforvvard, and 
 relentless Roman nature ; but it had not seriously 
 lessened its resoluteness and love for practical 
 thoroughness, as distinct from intellectual refinements 
 and fondness for artistic propriety and beauty of form. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 29 
 
 " Grcecia capta',' said the Roman poet, ''fcrtun vido- 
 rem cepii, et artes intidit agresti Latio!' But though 
 conquered Greece thus made her conqueror captive, 
 it was her arts that she introduced into rude and 
 rustic Latium. The essence of the Roman nature 
 remained unchanged, and the more so, as it was at 
 first ahnost exclusively the higher ranks of Roman 
 society which felt the influence of Greek culture. 
 
 In the national stubbornness of the Jewish race 
 Rome met with her equal in determination and 
 obstinacy. The old type of the Hebrew tempera- 
 ment remains, in truth, but little altered to this hour. 
 Eighteen centuries have passed away, but the Jew 
 is still very like what he was when he endured all 
 the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem under the 
 Emperor Titus, not twenty years after St. Paul wrote 
 his Epistles to the Thessalonians. 
 
 Thus it was that the early controversies con- 
 cerning the doctrines and morals of Christianity 
 were carried on by two races unlike any others in 
 the world, and their issues were determined by men 
 to whom feebleness and vacillation were known only 
 to be regarded with contempt. 
 
 VII. What was the prevalent morality of Roman 
 society when the apostles preached the moral law 
 of Christ it is not easy to determine. Its corrupt- 
 ness has sometimes been exaggerated by Christian 
 writers, who have thus thrown needless difficulties 
 in the way of those who wish to picture to them- 
 selves the details of the life of the different com- 
 
30 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 munlties to whom the apostolical Epistles were 
 addressed. A correct estimate of the notions on 
 right and wrong which prevailed in Roman society 
 must not be looked for in the denunciations of a 
 professed satirist like Juvenal, any more than in a 
 poem like the " ^neid," in which Virgil makes one 
 of his chief personages express his belief in a doctrine 
 scarcely distinguishable from the Catholic doctrine 
 of purgatory, or in the exquisite burst of feeling in 
 which Tacitus speculates on the eternal destiny of 
 the virtuous Agricola. 
 
 A more trustworthy exponent of the recognized 
 tone of Roman morals is to be found in Horace ; 
 gentlemanly, Epicurean, and almost refined in his 
 tastes ; a thorough man of the world, as we under- 
 stand the form when we describe a person to whom 
 the Christian ideas of purity and humility are 
 empty phrases. There is little doubt that in 
 Horace we have a correct type of old Roman life, 
 as it existed, with occasional exceptions, in the 
 cities of Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor. Corinth, 
 it is true, was pre-eminently a city of pleasure, like 
 Paris or Bucharest to-day. But it is a mistake to 
 suppose that gross vice was always found flourishing 
 in the Gentile world in apostolic times, or that no 
 virtues were to be found in the popular heathenism. 
 The figures of the Sibyls on the ceiling of the Sistine 
 Chapel in the Vatican, sitting side by side with the 
 Hebrew prophets, are not simply the creation of a 
 painter's daring imagination. They embody the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 31 
 
 historical fact, that in the pagan world there were 
 many men and women to whom the preaching of 
 the gospel came as a revelation ardently longed for 
 by the deepest desires of their hearts, and clearing 
 up the difficulties which were bowing their intellects 
 to the ground. 
 
 VIII. The internal condition of the Roman em- 
 pire was, in truth, the chief element in that " fulness 
 of time," of which St. Paul speaks in his Epistle to 
 the Galatians, when it was intended in the counsels 
 of God that His Son should be born of a woman. 
 We cannot but believe that by the phrase " the 
 fulness of time," and similar expressions, St. Paul 
 meant that from all eternity God had fixed a certain 
 date for the appearance of the Messiah, and that 
 when that year had arrived Jesus would be born. 
 
 The birth of Jesus at the exact period when it 
 took place was really an illustration of that mystery 
 of Omnipotence by which God accomplishes its 
 purposes through the agency of the free will of man. 
 When the peculiar character of any individual man 
 makes him specially fit for some purpose which it 
 is the will of God to accomplish, that individual man 
 is placed in the circumstances suited to the work 
 which he has to do. 
 
 The study of St. Paul's Epistles places in the 
 clearest light this method of adapting means to 
 ends which is characteristic of the Divine govern- 
 ment. If ever there was a man personally fitted 
 for a certain work, the great apostle of the Gentiles 
 
32 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 was that man. Nevertheless, the conversion of the 
 Gentiles was not a question of biography, just as 
 the date of the birth of the Messiah was not a 
 question of chronology. It was, to use a modern 
 term, a question of evolution. Mary was made the 
 mother of Jesus because the Jewish nation and the 
 Gentile world had reached precisely that stage of 
 growth which most completely harmonized with the 
 hidden intentions of the Almighty Lord of all. 
 
 Thus It is that the unprecedented circumstances 
 of human society, under the sway of Roman ad- 
 ministrative Imperialism, supplied the soil in which 
 it was the will of God that the teachings of the 
 gospel should grow freely and flourish. These cir- 
 cumstances do not, as Gibbon and other sceptical 
 writers vv^ould have us believe, account for the 
 spread of Christianity as a purely human invention. 
 They simply illustrate the universal method by 
 which God governs the world which He has created. 
 
 IX. On the correctness and completeness of 
 the conception that we can form of the influence 
 exercised by this Roman power upon the first 
 Christians depends, as I have implied, the correct- 
 ness of our estimate of the life of the apostolic 
 Churches, viewed as societies of human beings, of 
 flesh and blood like our own. To frame this con- 
 ception. It Is not enough to recall the language and 
 literature of Rome, or the costumes and architecture 
 of Pompeii and Herculaneum, now disinterred from 
 the ashes and the lava where they have lain burled 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 33 
 
 almost since the days of St. Paul. It is not enough 
 to recall the public and political events of the apos- 
 tolic age. These things are only the dry bones of 
 the past, like those which the prophet saw in his 
 vision in the valley of Jehoshaphat. A fruitful 
 imagination must make these dry bones live again, 
 and clothe them with the flesh and blood, with the 
 beating hearts and flashing eyes of breathing and 
 moving men and women. Then we shall under- 
 stand what life really was at Rome, and Corinth, 
 and Ephesus, and Philippi. We shall comprehend 
 what the gospel was — a vitalizing force rather than 
 a system of theological propositions — because we 
 shall sympathize with the human beings who re- 
 ceived it, and sit with them when they talked 
 with one another, and walk with them when they 
 went into the fields to meditate. This is really to 
 understand Christianity, as well as to follow the 
 course of ecclesiastical history. It is to realize the 
 truth, not only that all races of men are of one 
 nature, but that the saints of God are all one, 
 united in one Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. 
 
 X. In thus recalling the practical life of the 
 apostolic Christians in the midst of the influences 
 of Roman opinion, one circumstance, at first sight 
 inexplicable, stands out with marked prominence. 
 This is the universal hostility of the philosophic 
 systems of the time towards the doctrines of the 
 gospel. Again and again we find St. Paul referring 
 to it, and writing' as if he rei^^arded the antaq-onism 
 
 
34 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 as perfectly natural. In the strongest terms he not 
 only warns the believers against the subtle influences 
 of the philosophies of the heathen world, but he 
 assumes it as a necessary element in their lives that 
 philosophy should not predispose men's minds to 
 accept Christianity as of Divine origin. 
 
 How was this ? it will be asked. What was the 
 nature of those philosophic theories which thus had 
 the effect of creating an actual antagonism to the 
 gospel, instead of leading men to recognize in it the 
 solution of that mystery of existence which all wise 
 men had been attempting to explain ? 
 
 The philosophic systems which had taken pos- 
 session of the Roman intellect were really only two, 
 both of them practical rather than speculative — the 
 systems of Epicurus and of Zeno the Stoic. Epi- 
 curus taught that the gods^o not trouble themselves 
 about human affairs, and that the wisest men are 
 those who make this life a period of tranquil enjoy- 
 ment. Zeno held different views, and was the 
 master of nearly all the nobler minds of Rome. 
 Wisdom, he taught them, consists in self-conquest, 
 and in rising superior to all the pains and anxieties 
 of life. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius has left us a 
 remarkable picture of the power of the Stoic philo- 
 sophy in his " Meditations," or "Diary." His natural 
 character was singularly refined and elevated, and his 
 opinions on questions of right and wrong approach 
 the morality of the gospel. The work is really a 
 daily record of his own inner life, and exhibits him 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 35 
 
 as a model of the virtues to which heathenism could 
 attain in an essentially Roman nature. 
 
 The more speculative philosophies of Plato and 
 Aristotle had less attraction for this Roman nature. 
 What would have been their effect in predisposing 
 men's minds towards the gospel, or against it, we 
 have few materials for judging; but it seems likely 
 that their tendencies would on the whole have been 
 anti-Christian. What we have to note is the un- 
 doubted fact, that even the austere morality of 
 Stoicism did not lead those who acted upon it to 
 recog^nize in the ofreat Teacher of the Sermon on 
 the Mount a Master whose claims to be accepted as 
 a Divine Lawgiver demanded the most respectful 
 attention. How is this to be accounted for ? 
 
 XL The explanation is at hand. No Greek 
 philosopher ever formed a conception of the truth 
 that profound personal humility is the only basis of 
 all moral goodness. Every attempt at being wise 
 or good which rests on self-reliance is an utter 
 failure. Hence, when the philosophers heard of the 
 Christian doctrine of the self-humiliation of the Son 
 of God, they scorned it as a preposterous absurdity. 
 When paganism had dreamed of any sort of incar- 
 nation of its divinities, it had invented fables w^hose 
 revolting character is thinly veiled, but not disguised, 
 by the exquisite poetry of the "Iliad" and the 
 " Odyssey," and the dignity and loveliness of the 
 sculptures of Phidias and Praxiteles. These fables 
 of popular mythology were, indeed, treated as 
 
36 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 fables by the philosophic intellect ; but they were 
 the creations of minds akin to itself, and were 
 thought to be poetic and harmless, and even useful 
 for the multitude. 
 
 Conceive, then, the amazement of the haughty 
 philosophic Greek or Roman, when he heard from 
 the lips of St. Paul or of some Christian convert 
 any expressions corresponding with the doctrine 
 of the Incarnation, as set forth in the Epistle 
 to the Philippians : " Let this mind be in you, 
 which was also in Christ Jesus : who, being in the 
 form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal 
 with God : but made Himself of no reputation, and 
 took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made 
 in the likeness of men : and being found in fashion 
 as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient 
 unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore 
 also God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him 
 the name- which is above every name : that at the 
 name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
 heaven, and things on earth, and things under the 
 earth ; and that every tongue should confess that 
 Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the 
 Father." '" 
 
 To our philosopher the very phraseology of these 
 sublime sentences would be but imperfectly intelli- 
 gible, but he would understand enough of their 
 general drift to kindle his passionate anger or his 
 contemptuous scorn. And in his private intercourse 
 ^- Phil. ii. 5-1 1. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. yj 
 
 with those who bowed their knees to Jesus, he would 
 direct his keenest sarcasms to undermine their faith, 
 and when he failed to undermine it, he would try 
 so to distort it with his insinuations, that all its 
 simplicity and purity would be gone. 
 
 What wonder, then, that we find St. Paul again 
 and ao-ain warning the believers arainst the influ- 
 ences of the philosophy of men, and teaching them 
 that the doctrines of the cross must necessarily 
 appear foolishness to the wise men of the world ? 
 And the more closely the matter is examined, the 
 more distinctly we recognize the necessary antago- 
 nism of the ancient philosophies to a creed which 
 rested on a belief in the incarnation of the Eternal 
 Son, not for His own gratification, but in order to 
 save from its sins a helpless and miserable world. 
 
38 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THESSALONICA. 
 
 I. On the southern coast of Macedonia, close to 
 the great mlhtary road leading from Dyrrachium 
 to Byzantium, and overlooking the waters of the 
 ^gean Sea, stood an ancient city, whose name is 
 familiar to modern readers, from its importance as 
 a strategical and commercial centre, and as an object 
 of open desire on the part of those nations who are 
 now ea^er to share in those remains of the old 
 Roman empire which have been for centuries under 
 the rule of the Mahometan Turks. Salonica, once 
 Thessalonica, was associated with one of the most 
 momentous events which have marked the history 
 of mankind, nearly five hundred years before the 
 birth of Jesus Christ. From the summit of the hills 
 above its bay, Xerxes looked down upon the vast 
 fleet bearing the hordes with which he hoped to 
 crush the power of civilized Greece, and rule with 
 autocratic tyranny over tribes of conquered slaves. 
 Before these five centuries had well expired, the last 
 great monarchy of the heathen world was already 
 
THESSALONICA. 39 
 
 showing signs of that silent undermining which was 
 destined to break it in pieces, and rear in its place 
 a new monarchy, the spiritual kingdom of the Son 
 of Mary, the maiden of Bethlehem. 
 
 When the news of the birth, death, and resur- 
 rection of Jesus was first brought to Thessalonica, 
 it was still an important and thriving place, distin- 
 guished from other cities on the seaboard of Asia 
 Minor by its social and political reputation, as the 
 residence of the Roman governor of Macedonia. 
 Its inhabitants in general inherited much of that 
 force of character through which Philip, the Mace- 
 donian king, had overpowered the resistance of the 
 Athenian soldiery, though inspired by the fiery 
 eloquence of the heroic Demosthenes. In the two 
 letters which St. Paul wrote to his converts at 
 Thessalonica, it is easy to discover tokens of that 
 simplicity and thoroughness of nature, still surviving 
 among them, which were to be noted in the Mace- 
 donian troops of Philip and his son Alexander, and 
 not in the brave though vanquished people of Athens 
 and the Greeks of the Peloponnesus. Certainly 
 there was something in them which called into play 
 all the emotions of St. Paul's affectionate heart. 
 Again and again he returns to the subject, and tells 
 them of the comfort he found in thinking of their 
 steadfastness, and how he habitually prayed for their 
 welfare. And all this comes out so spontaneously, 
 that we cannot fail to understand what sort of people 
 these Thessalonian Christians were ; how simple- 
 
40 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 minded, generous, and unaffected. Nor are we sur- 
 prised when we read what the apostle says about 
 the influence which their example exercised upon 
 the believers in other parts of the country. Clearly, 
 there were few local Churches which cost him so 
 little anxiety, and which exhibited to their heathen 
 friends and kinsfolk so striking an exemplification of 
 those peculiarities of the Christian character which 
 were at once so strange and so winning in the eyes 
 of intelligent paganism. 
 
 II. It was about twenty years after the death of 
 Jesus Christ that it was rumoured in the market- 
 place and on the shore of the bay of Thessalonica 
 that a visit was expected from the wonderful man, 
 about whom the inhabitants had heard such conflict- 
 ing reports. It was said that he was a Jew of high 
 caste, once a persecutor of the Christians, but now 
 the fearless advocate of the claims of the crucified 
 Jesus. What he specifically taught, and what kind 
 of man he was, no one seemed to know, except 
 vaguely. What was certain was, that wherever 
 he and his companions had been, an indescribable 
 movement of popular feeling had been the result 
 of their speaking, Paul, as he was generally called, 
 notwithstanding his Jewish origin, made friends and 
 enemies everywhere, his enemies accusing him of 
 turning the world upside down, and his friends 
 attaching themselves to him with inexplicable fer- 
 vour. If only from curiosity to see and hear so 
 extraordinary a person, all classes in Thessalonica 
 
THESSALONICA. \i 
 
 were more or less excited by the news that he was 
 to appear among them. 
 
 III. Soon it was known that he had arrived, 
 and that on the next day he would speak in the 
 synagogue which belonged to a community of Jews 
 settled in the city. Of the crowd that came together 
 to hear him, few can have been prepared for his 
 exact appearance when he presented himself. He 
 was not a man of commanding presence, and those 
 who expected a display of the arts of the popular 
 orator or the professed rhetorician were disappointed. 
 Those who could read deeper than the surface saw 
 a man apparently of good education, animated by a 
 sense of personal dignity, all the more remarkable 
 because of his absolute absorption in the subject on 
 which he spoke. Tradition has not preserved any 
 account of the peculiar quality of St. Paul's voice ; 
 but from the knowledge of his character which 
 we gather from his various Epistles, it cannot be 
 doubted that the tenderness of an unusually sweet 
 and loving disposition was apparent in every 
 sentence that he uttered. Recalling the scene in 
 that provincial synagogue, as he stood before his 
 Jewish and Gentile hearers, and told them that the 
 crucified Jesus was the Son of the Eternal God, we 
 can realize the deep silence that fell upon the as- 
 sembly, unbroken except by the sob or sigh of some 
 listener, touched to the quick by the tidings of the 
 salvation which Paul offered to all men in the name 
 of God. 
 
42 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 At length the speaker ceased, and the Hsteners 
 dispersed. On the two following sabbaths Paul 
 repeated his reasonings, and their effect was not 
 long in showing Itself. Of the Jews not many were 
 convinced. Their proud, narrow, unspirltual na- 
 tionalism blinded their minds to the apostle's argu- 
 ments. It was in vain that he showed them that the 
 Messiah whom their Scriptures promised was One 
 who would suffer and die in order to set up a king- 
 dom not of this world. With few exceptions, they 
 were unconscious of that sense of sin and misery 
 which leads the Intellect to acquiesce In a spiritual 
 Interpretation of the Old Testament promises of 
 a conquering Deliverer. Of the Gentiles, on the 
 contrary, not a few were moved by Paul's argument. 
 Ignorant though they were of the writings of the 
 Hebrew psalmists and prophets, many among them 
 were overpowered by a sense of helplessness and 
 misery which the speculations of the most enlight- 
 ened paganism failed to explain. Frequent conver- 
 sations with the apostle himself and with Silas his 
 companion confirmed the Impressions made upon 
 these pious Gentiles, and strengthened the resolu- 
 tions of those who might be disposed to waver. 
 
 Then quickly the natural bitterness of Judaism 
 broke out Into personal hostility. The unconverted 
 Jews stirred up the passions of a mob of the lowest 
 inhabitants of the city, always ready for a riot ; and 
 Paul and Silas were dragged before the magistrates, 
 and accused of designs against the Roman authority. 
 
THESSALONICA. 43 
 
 It was the standinsf charo^e aofainst the followers of 
 Christ, as it had been the charge urged against 
 Himself, as false as it was malicious. But it 
 answered the purpose of those who got up the 
 cry ; and the magistrates of Thessalonica being 
 no wiser or more honest than Pontius Pilate, the 
 friends of Paul and Silas saw that there was no 
 way of securing their safety if they remained in 
 the city, and they accordingly sent them away by 
 night. 
 
 From Thessalonica Paul went to Berea, but 
 the malignity of his Thessalonian Jewish enemies 
 followed him thither, and, with Silas, he was com- 
 pelled to fly. Me visited Athens and Corinth, and 
 from Corinth he wrote his letters to the converts 
 whom he had left behind at Thessalonica. Before 
 writing the first of the two letters he had sent his 
 disciple Timothy to see them, and to bring him 
 confidential information concerning their spiritual 
 condition under the trying circumstances in which 
 they were placed, aggravated as were their diffi- 
 culties by his own enforced flight from the city and 
 neighbourhood. Timothy brought back with him a 
 most cheering account of their steadfastness and 
 faith, and of the affection which they cherished for 
 Paul himself. 
 
 IV. On receiving this report, the apostle, who 
 was then at Corinth, wrote and despatched his First 
 Epistle to the Thessalonians, which, as far as is 
 known, is the first letter that he ever wrote to any 
 
44 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 of his converts. It is singularly interesting, and, 
 when read in connection with the second letter, 
 which was not long in following, it enables us to 
 realize distinctly the life which was being led by the 
 Christian believers in the midst of their still uncon- 
 verted fellow-townsmen. Quite as much as any of 
 St. Paul's Epistles, it is stamped with the marks of 
 that individuality of character which distinguished 
 him, and which was one of the secrets of his wonder- 
 ful success among persons of every variety of nation- 
 ality and cultivation. It was this profoundly sympa- 
 thetic heart of the great apostle that made him a 
 master among men, wherever he carried the tidings 
 of that Divine love which had won over his own 
 heart, and changed the persecutor of the followers 
 of Jesus into the preacher, the confessor, and at last 
 the martyr for Christ's sake. 
 
 In writing to the simple-minded people of Thes- 
 salonica, all this characteristic warmth of St. Paul's 
 nature is called into activity. They were not a 
 community of highly cultivated or courtly men and 
 women, whose spiritual progress might be supposed 
 to have had special attractiveness for the well-born 
 Cilician Hebrew of the Hebrews, nurtured in the 
 school of the philosophic Gamaliel. They were for 
 the most part a hardy folk, of the old Macedonian 
 type, gaining their living by the. occupations be- 
 longing to a seaport town, while the higher 
 families of the place felt the influence of the 
 presence of the Roman governor of the province, 
 
THESSALONICA. 45 
 
 whose official residence was fixed at Thessalonica 
 and of the travellers along the great road leading to 
 Byzantium. 
 
 V. As might be expected in the case of new 
 converts in such a population, what they needed 
 from their spiritual father was practical advice and 
 consolation, rather than explanations of subtleties 
 and bewildering speculations. Hence we find St. 
 Paul assuming that they habitually recognized the 
 practical value of prayer, as a means for obtaining 
 the objects they desired from God. If they wanted 
 him to visit them, they had only to pray for it, and 
 he trusts that their prayers will be answered. Again 
 and again phrases incidentally occur, showing how 
 undoubting was the apostle s own faith in the effi- 
 cacy of constant and earnest praying, and his cer- 
 tainty that the Thessalonians shared his faith. Of 
 the fine-drawn distinctions between prayer for spiri- 
 tual graces and prayer for temporal gifts, which now 
 exercise so much influence on sincere Christians, 
 these unsophisticated Thessalonians knew nothing. 
 They had never heard of what we now call the laws 
 of nature, and the molecular relations of the physical 
 universe to its component parts. If they wanted 
 rain, they prayed for it. If they wanted calm waters 
 in the yEgean, they prayed that there might be 
 calm ; just as when they wanted a visit from St. 
 Paul, they prayed for it. 
 
 Then, again, it is evident that they had not com- 
 pletely got rid of their old heathen habits of licen- 
 
46 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 tlousness and dishonest dealing, of which apparently 
 some of them thought little. 
 
 But if there was one element in the practical life 
 of the believers of Thessalonica which seems espe- 
 cially strange to most Christians of to-day, it was the 
 manner in which they looked forward to a speedy 
 termination of the existing constitution of the world, 
 and the grounds on which they took comfort when 
 grieving for the loss of those they loved. As was 
 the case with all persons who were converted to the 
 faith of Christ, their affections for one another were 
 deepened by their newly learnt love of God. The 
 mother learnt to mourn for her dead children, the 
 sister for her brother, the husband for his wife, and 
 the friend for the friend, with a sorrow that refused 
 to be comforted by the fancies of pagan mythology, 
 or even the faint hopes which the pious Jew gathered 
 from the Old Testament Scriptures. 
 
 VI. To these wounded hearts St. Paul brought 
 the Christian consolation. The resurrection of Jesus, 
 he taught them, is the pledge of the resurrection of 
 man, and of that reunion with those whom we have 
 lost which alone can dry our tears. And to this 
 reunion with the dead these Thessalonian Christians 
 looked forward as about to occur under conditions 
 the attractiveness of which many people to-day find 
 it difficult to realize. The sio-nificant fact to be 
 especially noted, when we recall the actual life of the 
 Thessalonian Christians, is this — that they were not 
 taught by St. Paul simply to look forward to a re- 
 
THESSALONICA. 47 
 
 union with the dead in some future state of exist- 
 ence, but to expect it soon, through the reappear- 
 ance of Christ Himself in this world. There is no 
 doubt whatever as to the meaning of the apostle's 
 teaching. The Lord will come, he said, and the 
 dead in Christ will at once arise, and will be taken to 
 meet the Lord, before us who are alive. He does 
 not say, before those who will be alive. He speaks 
 of himself and the faithful in Thessalonica as beinof 
 still alive, and as being preceded by the risen dead 
 to the immediate presence of Christ. Then the 
 living and the dead would be united for ever. And 
 in this expectation St. Paul bids the believers to find 
 consolation in their sorrows for those whom they had 
 loved and lost, and to comfort one another in their 
 griefs. 
 
 That the believers took this consolation to heart, 
 and that a conviction that Christ would speedily re- 
 appear entered deeply into their practical existence, 
 is evident from St. Paul's second letter, and from the 
 mischievous inferences which some of their number 
 drew from the apostle's teaching. It was perhaps 
 natural, in a hardworking race like the Thessa- 
 lonians, to think that a freedom from laborious toil 
 would be one of the chief delights of heaven ; and it 
 is not much to be wondered at that some of the more 
 ignorant among them argued that if the present 
 constitution of society was speedily to come to an 
 end, they might as well anticipate the pleasures of 
 a heavenly existence by taking at once to idleness. 
 
48 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 leaving to their wealthier neighbours the business of 
 finding them food and such clothing as they needed. 
 Probably they were somewhat surprised when St. 
 Paul's second letter arrived, and they were told by 
 him that those who would not work should be left to 
 starve. 
 
 Accompanying this denunciation of selfish indo- 
 lence, we find St. Paul implying that though he 
 had written under a belief that he himself would 
 be alive at the coming of Christ, he had uttered no 
 word which might be regarded as a declaration that 
 he really knew the precise period at which this 
 coming might be looked for. In fact, it was im- 
 possible that he could ever have countenanced such 
 a notion. Though he was not present on the 
 occasion described in the beo-inningf of the Acts of 
 the Apostles, he must have been well aware that 
 on that occasion the Lord had expressly declared 
 that the knowledo^e of the dates of comingf events 
 was no part of the revelation which He commis- 
 sioned the apostles to teach to all the nations of 
 the earth. 
 
 At the same time, while St. Paul thus cautioned 
 the Thessalonians against assumino- that the Lord 
 either was or was not about to return, he told them 
 that this return must undoubtedly be preceded by 
 a certain event which had not then taken place. 
 This event was the completion of the anti-Christian 
 and idolatrous work of a certain power whom he 
 terms " the man of sin," whose machinations were 
 
THESSA L ONICA . 49 
 
 already beginning when the letter was written. 
 Who or what was this man of sin, and what was 
 the controlling power that partially restrained these 
 deadly results, no one now really knows. It is to be 
 remarked, however, that St. Paul seems to expect 
 that the people of Thessalonica would without 
 difficulty understand his meaning, at least as a 
 practical warning. 
 
 VII. And thus we are able to complete our 
 picture of the daily life of the brave and faithful 
 souls who fouoht the o-ood fiorht more than eitrhteen 
 centuries ago, and who were the first Christian 
 community who enjoyed the privilege of receiving 
 a letter signed by the hand of the great apostle 
 of the Gentiles. Nothing in the existing city of 
 Salonica remains to suggest to the traveller that he 
 sees the very stones of the buildings on which the 
 great apostle's eyes rested when he came to the 
 old city, and on those three sabbath days proclaimed 
 that the tragedy on Calvary was the murder of the 
 incarnate Son of God. It is different in some other 
 of those venerable sites, such as Corinth or Ephesus; 
 and now at last there are fragments of the famous 
 Ephesian temple of Diana to be seen in London 
 itself. Yet the daily life of the Christians of Thessa- 
 lonica can be recalled in all its completeness. An 
 active, vigorous, and hearty race ; not poetical, nor 
 controversial, nor mietaphysical, they received the 
 gospel as a guide to their conduct and a consola- 
 tion in their troubles. Their unbelieving Jewish 
 
 £ 
 
50 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 neighbours might persecute, and then* Gentile neigh- 
 bours might jeer at them, but they went on beheving 
 in Jesus and His promises, and whatever they 
 wanted they prayed for. They stood by the graves 
 of those whom they had loved and lost, and wondered 
 how soon those graves would open, and the living 
 forms of the dead in Christ would rise, and meet 
 Him as He came in His glory. In what way, they 
 asked one another, was the mystery of iniquity, the 
 man of sin, now working ? Was it, perhaps, at 
 their very doors } Who could say ? And they 
 asked one another all the more eagerly and anxiously 
 when ships from various ports in the Mediterranean 
 sailed into their harbour, and people who had been 
 to Rome or Byzantium brought news of the growing 
 audacities of the imperial soldiery, and the weakness 
 and folly of the feeble-minded Claudius who now 
 sat upon the throne once filled by the magnificent 
 Augustus. What did it all portend to themselves ? 
 And why, they could not help asking, is the Lord 
 so lonof in coming- ? What harm could there be in 
 entreating Him to come quickly } When they 
 repeated His own prayer again, and said, "Thy 
 kingdom come," it was only natural that in their 
 hearts they should mean, "May Thy visible kingdom 
 come quickly." 
 
 Such was the Church of Thessalonica eighteen 
 hundred and thirty years ago. Imperial Rome was 
 in her decline, and hastening to her fall, though it 
 was long delayed. Byzantium, the new Rome, of 
 
THESSALONICA. 51 
 
 which these Thessalonians heard so mucli, soon 
 to be transformed into Constantinople, was giving 
 promise of its future splendours, with nothing to 
 foreshadow the fate that awaited it, or of that last 
 destiny which is still hidden from our modern eyes. 
 
 All now is changed. The Moslem, with his 
 ruthless foot, has trampled upon the very spot where 
 the saintly lips of the great apostle once proclaimed 
 the unsearchable riches of Christ. All is changed 
 and gone, except that faith and love which Divine 
 grace infused into the souls of those devout believers, 
 whose very names are unknown to us. That faith 
 and love will still survive in every Christian heart 
 till the purposes of God are accomplished ; and then 
 Jesus will be once more amongst us, not in His 
 humiliation, but in His power and glory. 
 
52 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GALATIA. 
 
 I, A STRIKING illustration of the differences of 
 character which marked the Christians of the 
 apostolic age is supplied by the letter which St. 
 Paul wrote to the Churches of Galatia shortly after 
 he wrote his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. 
 Thessalonica was not far from the southern border 
 of the province of Asia Minor, in those days called 
 Galatia ; but in reading the Epistle to the Galatians 
 we seem to be passing into a new world of thought 
 and feeling. The simplicity, the steadfastness, and 
 the cordiality of the Thessalonians have all vanished, 
 and the tone of the apostle's remonstrances to the 
 Galatians bears little resemblance to that of the 
 warm-hearted, thankful sentences in which he writes 
 to the faithful men and women of Thessalonica. 
 Of course he is still the same man himself, and the 
 lovingness of his nature breaks out in the midst of 
 the indiofnant remonstrances which he addresses to 
 his unstable converts, both of Jewish and Gentile 
 origin. Yet the general impression which the letter 
 gives of the Galatian Christians is not agreeable. 
 
GALATIA. 53 
 
 And it is only by remembering the peculiar 
 influences which Judaism exercised upon the Jews 
 of the day that we can at all understand the state of 
 mind of the Galatian believers. The controversies 
 which agitated them have passed so completely 
 into the regions of extinct speculations, that we 
 study St. Paul's reasonings with a half-antiquarian 
 interest, wondering at the angry character of the 
 disputes which made Galatia the reverse of a home 
 of peace and quiet. It is only by recollecting 
 that the roots of the controversy lay deep in the 
 unchangeable infirmities of human nature that we 
 can recognize in much of the apostle's argument 
 anything that practically concerns ourselves. From 
 this point of view the condition of the Galatian 
 Churches is full of interest, and abounds with sue- 
 gestions of the utmost consequence. 
 
 II. Situated in the middle of Asia Minor, the 
 district of Galatia was within an easy distance from 
 Thessalonica. The peculiar origin of the population 
 of Galatia partly accounts for the peculiarities of its 
 people when converted to the faith of the gospel. 
 A colony of the Gaulish invaders of the Roman 
 Republic had settled in this part of Asia Minor, 
 giving their name to the district, and had been 
 mingled, rather than united, with the people of 
 other races who inhabited the territory. In St. 
 Paul's days the Gaulish temperament was as un- 
 changed as it is to this day in France ; and when 
 it came into contact with Greek, or Asiatic, or, still 
 
54 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 more, with Jewish influences, it exhibited all the 
 characteristics of an impulsive, though bold and 
 energetic nature. 
 
 Thus it was, that while in Thessalonica the 
 spirit of Judaism chiefly affected the unconverted 
 Jews, whom it excited to personal violence towards 
 Paul and Silas, in Galatia the mischief it worked 
 was far more serious, as it aftected the converted 
 Jews themselves. The believers were thus divided 
 into two parties ; and if it can hardly be said that 
 the two broke out into open hostility, their disputes 
 were incessant, and the very springs of Christian 
 love and good works were poisoned. The Jews, 
 though sincerely converted, took the admission of 
 the Gentiles to the privileges of the Gospel with 
 a very ill grace. They had found it useless to 
 contend not only against the reasonings of Paul, 
 the avowed apostle of the Gentiles, but against 
 the authority of Peter himself, who had been at 
 one time inclined to the national exclusiveness, 
 though he had yielded to the determined remon- 
 strances and public opposition of Paul. But, having 
 unwillingly submitted, they, or at least the leading 
 men among them, adopted a new line of argument, 
 at first sight so plausible, that, when urged with the 
 characteristic persistency of their race, it bewildered 
 the Gentile converts. Not being attached to St. 
 Paul himself with the fervour of devotion and admi- 
 ration of the warm-hearted Thessalonians, and not 
 loving the self-denying precepts of the gospel with 
 
GAL ATI A. 55 
 
 any very practical love, these Galatian Gentiles had 
 little to fall back upon, when their Jewish fellow- 
 converts gave them no peace, tormenting them with 
 assertions that every Gentile Christian was bound 
 to be circumcised, alleging that the law of Moses, 
 being confessedly given by God, could not be abro- 
 gated, and was of universal obligation till the end of 
 the world. 
 
 As they were unable to detect the fallacy which 
 this theory embodied, the whole personal life of 
 the Gentile converts was disturbed and materially 
 suffered. How could it be otherwise } It was 
 difficult enough for men who had been brought up 
 in the self-indulgent, unloving habits of heathenism 
 to master their passions, and adopt the law of 
 Christ, surrounded as they were by fellow-country- 
 men devoted to jovialities and revellings, and as 
 quarrelsome as they were licentious. And when 
 to these trials of their morality were added the 
 astounding assertions of their Jewish fellow-Chris- 
 tians, claiming to be more enlightened than them- 
 selves, their whole spiritual life was endangered, and 
 their peace of mind was well-nigh gone. 
 
 III. What was the extent of the reform which 
 was effected by St. Paul's letter to them we have 
 no means of knowing. But it must have been 
 thorough, for it attacked their errors at the very 
 root. The letter is not long, but it states the whole 
 case in St. Paul's most forcible manner. The law 
 of Moses, he says, was undoubtedly of Divine origin, 
 
56 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 but it was designed to serve one special purpose ; 
 and when it had served that purpose, all its cere- 
 monial enactments, including the observance of 
 certain days and years as sacred, were abrogated. 
 The one purpose of the Mosaic lav/ was to teach 
 man his utter helplessness when dependent upon 
 himself; and thus, as a schoolmaster, to bring him 
 to Christ. It bade man attempt a perfect life as 
 a work within his own capacity, and with all the 
 help that ceremonial observances could give him, 
 and then to mark the result. Absolute failure was 
 sure to follow, for in such a case nothing less than 
 complete success in every detail could be accepted. 
 If man was to stand upon his own rights before 
 God, he could not present himself as half a sinner 
 and half a saint. The bond was absolute in the 
 conditions which it required to be fulfilled. To 
 state the Jewish view was, in fact, to disprove it. 
 Man, without a mediator, and without the indwelling 
 of a Divine Spirit in his soul, cannot present himself 
 with any claims before God. Thus he is compelled 
 to have recourse to the mediation and help of 
 Christ ; and the law of Moses, having thus fulfilled 
 its purpose, is abolished, except, of course, in those 
 duties of morality which existed from the first 
 moment of man's creation, and were not created by 
 any positive enactments of Moses. These duties 
 the grace of Christ now made it possible for man 
 to fulfil in all their completeness. In the sight of 
 God, therefore, the one question was, not what race 
 
GALATIA. 57 
 
 or community a man belonged to, but whether or 
 not his nature was renewed by the operation of the 
 Holy Spirit of God. 
 
 IV. As for the conduct of the Galatians them- 
 selves, St. Paul tells them in the plainest terms 
 that, while busying themselves with this miserable 
 controversy, they had been neglecting the first 
 duties of the moral law, enforced by the teaching 
 of Christ, as they must have understood it from 
 his own instructions when with them. 
 
 All this, in truth, gives a melancholy, though, 
 perhaps, not very surprising picture of the spiritual 
 condition of the Christians of these towns and 
 villages scattered about this Asiatic province. What 
 does surprise us is their treatment of St. Paul him- 
 self. This treatment is an illustration of the effect 
 which clearness of aim and tenacity of purpose exer- 
 cise in all human affairs. The non-Jewish inhabit- 
 ants of Galatia being a mixed race, in whom the 
 old Gaulish nature, itself impetuous rather than 
 persevering, was not thoroughly welded with the 
 Greek, Roman, and Asiatic elements into one 
 homogeneous character, could not resist the dogged 
 pertinacity of a people so intensely national and 
 united as the children of Abraham have remained 
 from generation to generation. Accordingly, when 
 the Jewish party set to work to undermine St. 
 Paul's apostolic authority, which was confessedly 
 hostile to their pretensions, the wavering Gentile 
 converts could not devise any sufficient reply. All 
 
58 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 through the Galatian district, what we should now 
 call the mot d'ordre was given to the Jewish mem- 
 bers of the Church ; and whenever a Gentile pleaded 
 St. Paul's authority against the intolerable preten- 
 sions of the Jewish partisans, Who is this Paul, 
 it was asked, that we should submit ourselves to 
 his dictation ? He calls himself an apostle ; but 
 every one knows that while Jesus was alive, he 
 hated those who believed in Jesus. The real 
 apostles are all at Jerusalem. Has Peter autho- 
 rized Paul to upset the law of Moses ? Have any 
 of those who are at Jerusalem sanctioned his 
 teaching ? Did he ever pretend that they had ? 
 He is nobody ; and if 3'ou Gentiles wish to be 
 saved you must submit to the laws of Moses, how- 
 ever much you may dislike them. 
 
 V. When Paul heard of this avowed rebellion 
 against his authority, his indignation was uncon- 
 cealed ; and the Christian Church of all ages is under 
 the deepest obligations to the perverse Galatians for 
 having thus drawn from the great apostle of the 
 Gentiles a statement in detail of the course of his 
 personal history after his conversion. How much 
 we thus owe to the fickleness of these people, and 
 to the perverse ingenuity of the Jews among them, 
 it is not easy to estimate. It was the same in their 
 case as in that of other Churches, whose internal 
 condition gave occasion to the writing of that wonder- 
 ful series of letters which have become the treasure 
 of the Church in all as^es. 
 
GALATIA. 59 
 
 The Epistle to the Galatlans, indeed, in a 
 remarkable deo^ree reminds us of the soundness of 
 the principle recognized in the present inquiry, and 
 convinces the Biblical student that then only can 
 these Epistles be estimated at their correct value, 
 and be rightly understood, when they are studied as 
 actual letters called forth, in each case, by peculiar 
 circumstances, and that it is absurd to read St. Paul's 
 writings as if they were a collection of theological 
 documents, published, as it were, by him for the 
 benefit of believers in general. As we read this 
 Epistle, we are continually called to remember that 
 they are bond fide letters, written to actual persons, 
 with especial reference to their circumstances and 
 their conduct. Their style, again, is for the most 
 part almost colloquial, and though it bears no trace 
 of hastiness, yet the letters often pass from one 
 subject to another without formal method or 
 arrangement, just like other letters which are 
 intended by their writers to be personal communi- 
 cations, and not essays put forth to the world under 
 the guise of Epistles. 
 
 Thus it is that, when we study St. Paul's letter to 
 these fickle Galatians, it is at first really difificult to 
 understand the condition of a Christian society which 
 called for such assertions of the writer's apostolic 
 claims as we now read after the lapse of so many 
 centuries. Still, these claims must have been to 
 some extent new to the Galatian believers. When 
 they vacillated between the true gospel and a mock 
 
6o THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 reproduction of Judaism, they could hardly have 
 been prepared to hear that St. Paul did not receive 
 his apostolic commission from the original apostles, 
 but supernaturally from Jesus Himself; and that the 
 same Jesus who thus gave him his commission to 
 preach the gospel, supernaturally communicated to 
 him a knowledge of its doctrines. Thus, when the 
 Galatians were instructed by their teacher in the 
 faith of Christ, it was as if they were listening to 
 the very words of the crucified and risen Redeemer ; 
 and no man, whether Jew or Gentile, could dare to 
 gainsay His teaching. 
 
 What was the final impression produced upon 
 the Galatian believers by St. Paul's letter we have 
 no means of knowing. We can but speculate upon 
 the discussions it aroused in the towns and villages 
 scattered about on the mountainous slopes of the 
 whole region. It is impossible to set a limit to the 
 operations of Divine grace, and it may be that 
 the Galatian Christians were so changed as to 
 become saints and even martyrs for Christ. If they 
 were thus changed, they would deserve to be re- 
 corded among the brightest examples of the power 
 of the Holy Ghost, enlightening human stupidity 
 and making the fairest flowers grow in the most 
 uncongenial soils. 
 
( 6i ) 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CORINTH. 
 
 I. When St. Paul had finished his work in Mace- 
 donia, he v/ent on, with his companions, to Athens, 
 on his way to Corinth. His visit to Athens was one 
 of the most memorable of those which are described 
 in the Acts of the Apostles, as it was there that he 
 delivered the famous address, in which he explained 
 the spiritual nature of the Godhead, and recognized 
 the holiest motives of many of the heathen world in 
 their efforts to penetrate into the mystery of the 
 unseen. This visit to Athens has also a special 
 interest for us who are of the English race, as vv'e 
 have in our possession the actual sculptures of the 
 superb temple which was the glory of Athens and 
 the envy of all Greece wdien St. Paul was there. 
 When we stand before those wonderful marbles, our 
 pulse throbs quicker and our eyes glisten, as we 
 remember that when the great apostle of the Gentiles 
 walked through the streets of Athens and watched 
 the devotions of the people he had before him, those 
 identical bas-reliefs which then adorned the frieze of 
 
62 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 the Parthenon, and which, now known as the Elgin 
 Marbles, are among the most precious relics of 
 antiquity that time has spared, to show us what 
 Greek art was in the days of its glory. St. Paul, 
 however, thought nothing of Phidias, or of that 
 statue of ivory and gold within the temple in which 
 the greatest of sculptors had embodied the highest 
 conceptions of eternal wisdom to which the Greek 
 intellect had attained ; for his heart was stirred 
 within him as he reflected that these men of Athens, 
 with all their acuteness and philosophy, were so 
 utterly ignorant of real wisdom that they worshipped 
 their fabled goddess Minerva as their ideal and 
 virgin teacher, and yet imagined that the essence of 
 the Godhead was such that the Eternal One could 
 live in temples made by human hands. 
 
 II. And then he saw an altar with a strange 
 inscription, which awakened all his sympathetic pity, 
 for it was addressed " to the unknown God." What 
 would we not give now if, in addition to the bas- 
 reliefs of the combats of the Centaurs and the Lapi- 
 thae, we could discover that identical altar, reared to 
 the unknown divinity, by a people so much given * 
 to worship the unseen powers, that their piety, 
 ignorant as it was, called forth the apostle's un- 
 grudging praises ? 
 
 III. When, then, with the recollections of Athens 
 still haunting his memory, St. Paul went on to 
 Corinth, he found himself in another world. In 
 
 * AetcrtSat/xoi'ecrTepot. 
 
CORINTH. ei 
 
 Athens the glory of the city was a temple reared in 
 honour of wisdom. In Corinth they gloried in a 
 temple raised to the goddess of carnal love ; and 
 what Minerva was to the Athenians, Venus was to 
 the Corinthians, with whom the most unrestrained 
 licentiousness was recognized as lawful and honour- 
 able . 
 
 And thus it came about that when the apostle, 
 after founding a Christian Church in t-lie heart of 
 that city of pleasure, went on his journey, and shortly 
 afterwards wrote his letters to the Corinthian be- 
 lievers, we find him again and again contrasting the 
 wisdom of the Greeks with the true wisdom of the 
 gospel. The influence of what he had seen and 
 heard in Athens was evidently still powerful in his 
 recollections ; at the same time that both of the 
 letters to the Corinthians show that a belief in the 
 perfection of human philosophy was as dominant 
 among them as among the less licentious and more 
 speculative people of Athens. The practical differ- 
 ence between the religions of the two cities was 
 indeed great. No altar dedicated to an unknown 
 God was to be seen in Corinth. They cared only 
 for the subtleties of the Greek philosophy, so far as 
 its proud self-sufficiency left the enjoyments of life 
 unrestrained by any stern or severe morality. 
 Athens might cry out in her distress to the unseen 
 and unknown. It was enough for Corinth that she 
 had the Paphian goddess for her tutelary divinity. 
 
 St. Paul's two Epistles record, at the same time, 
 
64 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 some singular aberrations of thought among the 
 Corinthian converts. Many of them being of 
 Jewish origin, the influence of the Jewish party in 
 the whole community was considerable. In fact, 
 Crispus, the chief person in the synagogue, had 
 become a Christian ; and from the salutation in the 
 beginning of the first Epistle, which includes the 
 name of Sosthenes, it appears that the gospel had 
 been received by the very man who had instigated 
 the mob of Jews in the city to drag Paul and Silas 
 before Gallio, the Roman Governor of Corinth and 
 of all Achaia. 
 
 IV, St. Paul's whole stay in Corinth lasted 
 about eighteen months, and when at last he went 
 away, he supposed that the believers were an en- 
 lightened community, and that neither the moral 
 corruptness of the place nor the vain speculations 
 of heathen philosophy would materially interfere 
 with their spiritual progress. He was not a little 
 surprised and disappointed. The spirit of sectarian- 
 ism, which v/as a natural result of the division into 
 opposing schools of thought among the Greek 
 philosophers, gave birth to divisions among the 
 Corinthian Christians which, to our modern judg- 
 ment, appear as ludicrous as they were in reality 
 serious. There was no specifically Jewish party in 
 Corinth as there was in the more rustic population 
 of Galatla. The divisions of the Corinthians were 
 essentially Greek, a result of the national fondness 
 for the dialectic methods of the philosophers ; only. 
 
CORINTH. 65 
 
 instead of ranking themselves as Stoics, or Epi- 
 cureans, or devotees of the Academy, they separated 
 into petty sects, calHng themselves by the names of 
 their Christian instructors. Some of them declared 
 that they followed the doctrine of Paul, others that 
 of Apollos, others that of Cephas, and others that of 
 Christ. A curious spectacle they must have pre- 
 sented to their heathen fellow-citizens, still satisfied 
 with their own worship of Venus, and upholding her 
 unholy rites. This result, of course, troubled the 
 Corinthian sectarians but little, or not at all. Men 
 and women who could persuade themselves that the 
 gospel of the crucified Jesus was not essentially one, 
 but might be modified at the will of the teachers 
 who proclaimed it, were not likely to distress them- 
 selves about the disedifying effect of their quarrels 
 upon their unbelieving neighbours. To us, who see 
 in these Corinthian parties only a caricature of the 
 partisanship of the disciples of Zeno and Epicurus 
 and Aristotle, their essentially anti-Christian character 
 is evident enough, and they seem almost childish in 
 their shallowness. 
 
 To St. Paul, however, they seemed to demand 
 the most serious refutation ; and in the manner of 
 the refutation which he wrote to them we cannot 
 help recognizing the impression which had been 
 made upon his feelings by all that he had lately 
 been seeing at Athens. The whole community of 
 Corinthian Christians was, in truth, agitated by these 
 squabbles of a knot of self-satisfied schismatics, and 
 
66 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 St. Paul treats their divisions as intimately con- 
 nected with a certain error of vital moment, which 
 more or less affected the faith of the entire Corin- 
 thian Church. With certain exceptions, they were all 
 infected with that pride of the Greek philosophers 
 which blinded them to the perception of the truth 
 which lies at the root of the gospel system ; the 
 truth, that is, that suffering is, by the ordinance of 
 God, appointed to be the instrument for the re- 
 demption of humanity from all the evils that afflict 
 it. This is the law of the cross ; and it was this 
 law which appeared simply ridiculous in the eyes of 
 the Greek teachers of wisdom. The various philo- 
 sophic sects had each of them their peculiar methods 
 of reasoning, and they set up different standards of 
 perfection to be aimed at by the chosen few who 
 could rise above the level of the vulgar herd. But 
 in all their speculations they never penetrated to the 
 heart of the great mystery which enshrouds the 
 destiny of our race, or solved the one inscrutable 
 problem. 
 
 V. From their hereditary national belief in the 
 value of these various philosophic theories, the 
 Christians of Corinth had by no means freed them- 
 selves. The fundamental law of the gospel, that 
 every good thing comes to the soul of man through 
 suffering, was still very imperfectly grasped by them. 
 And yet, as St. Paul reminds them, the proofs of 
 the helplessness of human wisdom were constantly 
 before their eyes. The followers of the crucified 
 
CORINTH. 67 
 
 Jesus were, indeed, multiplying in Corinth and else- 
 where, but for the most part they were of the 
 plebeian and uncultivated classes; not noble, or 
 wealthy, or learned ; but shopkeepers, like Lydia of 
 Thyatira, who sold scarlet silk and cloth ; or tent- 
 makers, like Aquila and Priscilla. 
 
 What could the philosophers make of such a 
 religion as this ? The fables of heathen mythology 
 they taught were of course false ; but there was 
 something grand and beautiful about many of them. 
 It was impossible to laugh at the idea of the cloud- 
 compelling Jove, or of Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, 
 worshipped with so much splendour by the people 
 of Athens. And as for their own favourite o^oddess 
 of pleasure, the devotion of Corinth to her rites 
 might be excessive, but nevertheless their Venus 
 was the embodiment of all that is lovely in humanity. 
 
 As for this new God of the Christians, what 
 cultivated intellect could admit His claims ? He 
 was a Jew, which fact alone was enough to pre- 
 dispose the lordly Greek mind to ridicule Him. 
 And He was a poor man, and His mother, though 
 of royal ancestry, was an obscure person. He was 
 treated by the Jews themselves as a malefactor, and 
 put to a shameful death. Who could regard as any- 
 thing but foolish a doctrine which taught that this 
 crucifixion Vv^as the source of human redemption } 
 
 So argued the philosophers of Corinth, and with 
 so much success that not a few of the new converts 
 were bewildered, and failed to clincr to the truth 
 
68 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 which excited the scorn of the Greek thinkers, as the 
 very essence of the gospel which they had learnt 
 from the apostle of Jesus himself. 
 
 As a consequence of this inadequate conception 
 of the gospel as a law of suffering and death, they 
 were staggered by the objections which they heard 
 made to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. 
 The argument in which St. Paul points out the 
 philosophic flaw in the difficulty felt by the Corin- 
 thian Christians is a signal illustration both of the 
 wide range of his own philosophic thought and of 
 the beauty and force of rhetorical style to which he 
 could rise when his subject demanded it. Taken 
 in connection with the exposition of the nature of 
 Christian charity in the same Epistle, this famous 
 passage shows that the great apostle's powers as a 
 writer were on a level with those of the greatest 
 masters, both in poetry and prose ; and we cannot 
 doubt that, as a speaker, he rivalled the most 
 renowned orators of Greece and Rome. 
 
 VI. The difficulty which distressed the minds 
 of the Corinthian Christians was, indeed, plausible, 
 and required a carefully reasoned answer. How 
 can there be such a thing as a resurrection of these 
 miserable bodies of ours ? The very conception 
 of such a futurity brings its own refutation with it. 
 Thus they argued, and could see no way out of the 
 difficulty. St. Paul's reply is complete. Your diffi- 
 culty, he says, shows that you have not learnt the 
 obvious lesson which is taught by our gardens and 
 
CORINTH. 69 
 
 fields and by the skies above us. The whole animal 
 and veofetable world exhibits endless varieties of 
 species, serving many different purposes, and all 
 alike the work of the Almighty Creator's hand. To 
 limit our conceptions of the essential nature of the 
 human body to our experience of its present capacities 
 Is to overlook all the facts of physical science, in- 
 volving a violation of all the laws of reasoning. 
 We cannot assume that there is only one possible 
 type of corporeal framework for our non -corporeal 
 souls, for the universe abounds with innumerable 
 varieties in every part. 
 
 But, further, the law of decay and reproduction 
 from that which decays is universal with our plants 
 and trees. The seed falls into the ground and seems 
 to perish, but it carries within it the germ of a new 
 life, which is practically brought about by its own 
 dissolution into the dust of the earth. When, then, 
 he concludes, I teach you the doctrine which I have 
 learnt from the risen and glorified Jesus, I teach you 
 nothing to which a sound philosophy can make any 
 objection. 
 
 VII. The Corinthian Church was, in fact, one 
 of the most intellectually gifted of all the apostolic 
 Churches. And, with all the foolish sectarian 
 divisions which disturbed them, they were personally 
 a noble example of the power of the gospel in mould- 
 ing men's lives in the midst of one of the most 
 sceptical and licentious centres of Greek heathenism. 
 They had a character of their own, unlike that of 
 
70 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 the good, simple-hearted Thessalonians or the more 
 rustic inhabitants of the villag-es clustered on the 
 hilly slopes of Galatia. Indeed, it is impossible to 
 imagine St. Paul sending either to Thessalonica or 
 Galatia such letters as he addressed to the more 
 subtle intellects of Corinth. The very character of 
 the faults against which he remonstrates in writing 
 to the Corinthians, his method of appealing to their 
 cultivated intelligence, prove the profound interest 
 with which they had inspired him. To them, if not 
 with all the hearty fulness with which he wrote to 
 his beloved flock at Thessalonica, yet with most 
 spontaneous cordiality, he poured forth all that 
 sweet tenderness of feeling which was his most 
 winning characteristic. 
 
 VIII. To us, after the lapse of so many 
 centuries, and living in a state of society and civili- 
 zation which would have roused the wonder and, in 
 some respects, the ridicule of Corinth and Athens, 
 the social and personal life of the Corinthian Chris- 
 tians is still a subject which awakens keen curiosity 
 and suggests anxious reflections. First of all, the 
 strictly miraculous powers * sometimes conferred 
 upon His servants by the Divine Head of the 
 Church were evidently by no means uncommon in 
 Corinth. What St. Paul writes leaves no room for 
 doubt in the matter. Some of them could heal 
 diseases ; some could speak in languages which they 
 had never learnt, not always themselves under- 
 * See chap. xxi. 
 
CORINTH. ji 
 
 Standing the meaning of the words they uttered ; 
 others could interpret the meaning of the words thus 
 uttered by those who possessed the gift of tongues. 
 But whatever are the precise ideas which we are 
 to attach to these expressions of the apostle, it is 
 undeniable that the Corinthians were familiar with 
 the practical exercise of powers of an unquestionably 
 miraculous kind, and that the possession of these 
 gifts, as an effect of the presence of the Holy Ghost 
 in the soul, was not regarded by St. Paul as an 
 altogether exceptional phenomenon. 
 
 IX. We must take it for granted, then, that 
 for some special reason, unknown to us, it was the 
 will of God that in this city of sensuality, frivolity, 
 and intellectual conceit the heathen inhabitants 
 should see in the midst of them a certain com- 
 munity of men and women, for the most part not 
 belonging to the higher classes of society, counting 
 among its members persons who could heal the 
 sick, or declare truths unknown to man, or speak 
 languages which they had not learnt by the ordinary 
 methods of learning. All this, too, they asserted 
 to be the effect of the presence of a Divine afflatus, 
 communicated to them by the crucified Son of a 
 Jewish virgin mother, who had risen from the 
 dead, and was now administering the affairs of His 
 followers, though Himself unseen. What a marvel- 
 lous spectacle ! And not less marvellous was the 
 fact that, with whatever occasional failings, these 
 people repudiated the old sensual, passionate life of 
 
72 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 heathenism, and devoted themselves to a Hfe of 
 purity, humihty, and the patient love of their 
 fellow-creatures. 
 
 One strange abuse, which had crept in among 
 the Corinthian Christians, was no doubt unknown 
 to their heathen neighbours, as it was confined to 
 their private assemblies, when they met to celebrate 
 the Lord's Supper. The passage in the Epistle in 
 which St. Paul denounces this abuse is not easy to 
 understand in all its expressions, but its general 
 bearing is clear enough. The habitual practice of 
 the believers brought into prominence the fact that, 
 even on such an occasion as this, the distinction 
 between the rich and the poor was not kept out of 
 sight. The poor came to celebrate the Last Supper 
 with keen appetites, which they took the opportunity 
 of then satisfying, eating and drinking to supply 
 the wants which they could not satisfy in their 
 own houses. The behaviour of the wealthy appears 
 to have been more decorous, though St. Paul cen- 
 sures them severely for putting the poor to shame. 
 The censure, in fact, was addressed to the Corin- 
 thians as a community. Its chief value to ourselves 
 consists in the account which it led St. Paul to give 
 of the actual institution of the Lord's Supper, as 
 made known to him by the special revelation of 
 Jesus Christ, and not derived from information 
 which he had gathered from the other apostles. 
 
 Taking the Epistle, then, as a whole, it is not 
 surprising that when St. Paul wrote a second time 
 
CORINTH. 73 
 
 to the Corinthian believers, the tone of his letter is 
 a good deal changed. Once more the extraordinary 
 sweetness of his nature inspires him to enter upon 
 details in his personal history, such as a man writes 
 only to those whom he loves ; though he has still 
 to rebuke the Corinthians for some of their old 
 faults. He tells them of the extraordinary favours 
 bestowed by the Divine goodness upon himself; 
 how it pleased God to afflict him with " a thorn in 
 the flesh," in order to keep him humble ; and how, 
 when he prayed earnestly for its removal, the Lord 
 had bidden him to bear it patiently, strengthened 
 by the power of that grace whose aid is most con- 
 spicuous when human frailty is weakest. Then, 
 further, he reminds them of all his own labours 
 and sufferings in the cause of the gospel, a cata- 
 logue little short of appalling to ordinary men, and 
 proving that, besides all his other personal qualifi- 
 cations, the great apostle possessed a physical con- 
 stitution and extraordinary powers of endurance. 
 
 Altogether, we are impressed with a confidence 
 that the daily life of the Corinthian Christians be- 
 came a striking illustration of the power of that 
 preaching of the cross which has convinced men 
 in every age that death is the source of all life, and 
 suffering the source of all joy and peace. 
 
74 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ROME. 
 
 I. The precise year in which the Epistle to the 
 Romans was written is not known with such accuracy 
 as to place it beyond dispute. But for our present 
 purpose it may be taken for granted that it was 
 written soon after the Epistles to the Corinthians. 
 It certainly was written after the first of the two. 
 
 St. Paul's visit to Rome is recorded in the con- 
 cluding chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, which 
 ends with the statement that he passed two years 
 there, living in a house which he rented for himself, 
 preaching the gospel without hindrance to every 
 one who came to hear him. 
 
 His position in Rome was singular, and strikingly 
 illustrates the real attitude of the Roman authorities 
 towards the first preachers of the gospel, and the 
 toleration, mingled with a certain contempt, which 
 the mighty rulers of the world accorded to the 
 religion of the crucified Jesus. This tolerant spirit 
 was characteristic of the practical and haughty 
 Roman intellect. It was the guiding influence in 
 
ROME. 75 
 
 the mind of Pontius Pilate himself ; and it must be 
 remembered that it was the Roman governor of the 
 province of Achaia who would have nothing to do 
 with the charges brought against the great apostle 
 by the fiery Jews of Corinth. And now that he 
 had come to Rome, in consequence of his appeal as 
 a freeborn Roman citizen to the imperial tribunal, 
 he was controlled as little as was possible in the 
 case of a person charged with treason by his 
 own fellow-countrymen. He was placed under the 
 guardianship of a private soldier, who lived in the 
 house with him, and who doubtless troubled himself 
 little enouofh with the doinofs of one whom he 
 regarded with some wonder, though probably with 
 much personal regard. 
 
 We have no information in the Acts of the 
 Apostles respecting the first preaching of the gospel 
 in Rome. It seems most likely that the first con- 
 verts came from Jerusalem, after the miraculous 
 descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, 
 as recorded in the second chapter of the Acts. It 
 is expressly stated that among the believers then 
 present were strangers from Rome, both of the 
 original Hebrew race and of the class known as 
 proselytes. These men must have returned to 
 Rome, after sharing in the gifts conferred by the 
 great miracle, and must have communicated to their 
 friends the wonders they had seen and heard. And 
 thus the foundation of a Church was laid, and a 
 preparation made for the instructions which St. 
 
76 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Paul would give, when his appeal to Caesar brought 
 him nominally, but scarcely in reality, a prisoner to 
 the imperial city. 
 
 And this belief as to the origin of the Roman 
 Church is confirmed by the character which St. Paul 
 found prevailing among the Roman Christians 
 when he at length reached the imperial city. 
 They were intensely Jewish in their habits of 
 thought, and practically resisted the calling of the 
 Gentiles to the utmost of their power, confirming 
 the apostle's general experience of the serious 
 obstacle which the Judaism of the day presented 
 to the progress of the gospel. Heathenism had 
 its own characteristic sins to answer for, but the 
 sins of Judaism were still more obstinate in harden- 
 ing men's minds against a creed which struck at 
 pride as the most deadly of all moral evils. 
 
 From the letter, however, which St. Paul after- 
 wards wrote to the Romans, it is evident that this 
 spirit of proud independence had infected the Roman 
 Christians generally, though the Jewish members 
 of the Church were worse than the converted 
 Gentiles. 
 
 II. This, indeed, was what might have been 
 expected in the inhabitants of the imperial city, 
 the Christians as a rule glorying in their title to 
 be regarded as Roman citizens. Rome was the 
 metropolis of power, as Athens was the metropolis 
 of the intellect, and Corinth the metropolis of 
 pleasure. She was mistress of all the known world. 
 
ROME. yy 
 
 Her armies subdued every people that resisted her ; 
 and if she herself was no longer a free republic, the 
 master to whom she had bowed her neck was, after 
 all, the first of Roman citizens, and it was more 
 glorious to be the subject of a Caesar than to be the 
 inhabitant of any free republic on the face of the 
 earth. 
 
 III. In the recognition of this characteristic 
 haughtiness we have a key to the understanding of 
 the general drift of the Epistle to the Romans. 
 With the exception of the numerous salutations to 
 individuals in the last chapter, it contains few of 
 those personal details which appear in the Epistles 
 to the Thessalonians and the Corinthians, and from 
 first to last seems to be devoted to the working out 
 of the great truth, that God is supreme over all 
 things that exist ; that with Him there is no re- 
 spect of persons ; that the pride and self-sufficiency 
 of the Jew were odious in His sight, and that there 
 is only one way of salvation alike for Jew and 
 Gentile, that is, the way of faith ; in other words, 
 the seeking for it as a free gift at the hands of God. 
 The whole argument culminates in the celebrated 
 passage in the eighth chapter, in which the apostle 
 expounds in detail the doctrine of the eternal fore- 
 knowledge of God, and of the predestination of 
 the elect. This predestination, he also points out, 
 includes a predestination to a life of personal 
 holiness according to the Christian standard, thus 
 condemning every one who might abuse the 
 
78 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 doctrine of predestination as excusing indulgence 
 in sin.* 
 
 Following up this exposition, he introduces the 
 illustration of the potter and his clay, out of which 
 the potter fashions one vessel to noble and beautiful 
 purposes, and another for useful but inglorious 
 services, in every case solely according to his own 
 will. 
 
 Throughout the whole letter this is the truth 
 which St. Paul impresses upon the haughty, domi- 
 neering Roman mind ; a truth, it is obvious to 
 remark, not a little applicable to the typical English- 
 man of to-day, who glories in being the modern 
 representative of the mighty Roman of the past, and 
 dislikes to be reminded that, if he differs from other 
 races, it is the sovereign and predestinating will of 
 God which alone has made him what he is. 
 
 IV. As for the Roman Church itself, what makes 
 its internal life especially attractive to us is the long 
 list of devout men and women to whom St. Paul 
 sends his affectionate greetings. They were a holy 
 community, whatever their national faults, and St. 
 Paul refers to their widely spread reputation in the 
 beginning of the Epistle. But the reality of their 
 devout spirit and of their love for one another is 
 brought out in the clearest light by this mention 
 of the many pious people of different classes to 
 whom St. Paul sends his greetings. He is still the 
 same Paul as of old ; fierce and passionate as a 
 * See chap. xx. 
 
ROME. 79 
 
 persecutor before he understood what the gospel 
 really was, but now overflowing with unaffected 
 friendliness to every one whom he knew. In all 
 his Epistles there are few things more touching than 
 this long list of persons never forgotten by that 
 heroic heart ; heroic in its sweetness as well as in 
 its strength, and before very long to beat with its 
 last throb, dying for the crucified Jesus, among his 
 much-loved saints in Rome. 
 
 V. Three years after his first visit he returned, 
 never more to leave Rome alive. The interval was 
 spent in carrying on his apostolic labours, and when 
 he came back, he foresaw that the Master whom he 
 served would soon take him to his reward. Nero, 
 the bloodthirsty persecutor of the Christians, held 
 the imperial sceptre, abhorred as he was ; and in 
 A.D. 66 the great apostle was taken from the 
 Mamertine prison, into which he had been thrown, 
 and beheaded. 
 
 That prison still remains ; and surely, of all 
 things that are to be seen in Rome, it awakens the 
 sweetest and saddest memories. The splendours 
 of Christian art, the very church that was built 
 over the spot where tradition says that St. Paul 
 was buried, the catacombs themselves, hardly touch 
 our hearts as we are touched by the sight of the 
 walls of that gloomy cell where the martyr awaited 
 in peace the executioner's sword. That the blow 
 was indeed welcome we cannot doubt. He had 
 told his friends that though he was willing to live 
 
8o THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 for the good of others, yet he had a desire to 
 depart and to be with Christ. Who can wonder 
 that at last even that resolute heart was weary ? 
 He had long ago renounced his own will ; and if 
 he rejoiced in being at last set free, it was still 
 because he knew that it was the will of his risen 
 Lord that His servant should now come to see Him 
 in His glory. 
 
( 8i ) 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 EPHESUS. 
 
 I. The Epistle to the Ephesians, which was written 
 about A.D. 6 1, is one of those which forcibly illustrate 
 the many varieties of type that existed among the 
 Churches of the apostolic period. It differs from 
 the letters which up to this time had been written 
 by St. Paul, in being mainly devoted to the develop- 
 ment of contemplative theology of the mystical kind. 
 The account of St. Paul's visit to Ephesus, given 
 in the Acts of the Apostles, details some of the most 
 surprising incidents which befell him in the whole 
 course of his journeys before he reached Rome. 
 The nucleus of the Ephesian Church was already 
 in existence, though it numbered only about twelve 
 members ; all, apparently, of Jewish extraction. 
 They knew little of the doctrines of the gospel, 
 having been baptized with what was known as 
 the baptism of John, which symbolized repentance 
 from sin, and was simply a preparation for that 
 baptism which conveyed the special Christian gift of 
 the Holy Ghost to the penitent soul. Of this gift, 
 
82 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 indeed, they knew nothing ; but when St. Paul 
 baptized them with the baptism of Christ, they were 
 at once filled with that Divine presence which 
 makes all Christians the temple of the living God. 
 Some of them, moreover, were put in possession of 
 those miraculous powers which were given to the 
 believers at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. 
 Miracles, also, were wrought in connection with 
 the person of the apostle himself, and altogether 
 Ephesus was in a striking degree the scene of those 
 marvellous manifestations of Divine power with 
 which it pleased God at times to accompany the 
 preaching of the truth. 
 
 II. From this time the gospel began to make 
 its way, not only among the Jews and Gentiles of 
 Ephesus, but throughout the whole of Asia Minor, 
 of which Ephesus was one of the chief cities, hold- 
 ing a conspicuous place in the Ionic confederation, 
 glorying in its wealth, and in the magnificence with 
 which it worshipped the heathen goddess Diana. 
 The temple of Diana was, in fact, one of the most 
 superb in all Asia and Greece, though less perfect 
 as a model of architectural beauty than the Athe- 
 nian Parthenon ; as Diana, the virgin daughter of 
 Latona, was the embodiment of a less noble idea 
 than that of the wisdom symbolized in the idea of 
 the Athenian Minerva. 
 
 In promoting this worship of their favourite god- 
 dess the Ephesians spent their money lavishly, and 
 supplied occupation to a numerous body of workers 
 
EPHESUS. 83 
 
 in silver. The success of St. Paul's preaching made 
 these men furious ; and one of their craft, by name 
 Demetrius, stirred up a riot, which would have 
 ended fatally for the apostle had he ventured into 
 the infuriated mob. His friends, however, kept him 
 concealed until the chief magistrate had, with great 
 difficulty, quieted the rioters, when he left the city, 
 and proceeded on his way to Macedonia. 
 
 III. Such were the circumstances under which 
 the Christian faith was planted in Ephesus the 
 magnificent. What was the condition of the famous 
 city at the beginning of the present century modern 
 travellers have informed us, with an instructive 
 fulness of detail. 
 
 " On entering Ephesus," we are told, " the first 
 objects seen are the remains of the stadiinu, or 
 circus, the area of which is six hundred and eighty- 
 seven feet in length, the northern or lower side 
 having been raised on vaults, which still remain, the 
 upper end resting on the slope of the hill. The 
 seats have all been removed ; and of the front only 
 a few marbles and an arch remain. The area is 
 a cornfield. The vestiges of a theatre are to be 
 seen further on, in the side of the same mountain. 
 The seats and the ruins of the front have been 
 removed, but some architectural fragments and an 
 inscription prove that this was the site of the 
 theatre, probably that into which the mob rushed 
 tumultuously at the instigation of Demetrius, crying, 
 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! ' Advancing from 
 
84 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 the theatre, we come to a narrow valley. Here are 
 the ruins of a church, and vestiges of an odeon, 
 or music-hall, and further still, the remains of a 
 larofe structure resemblinof another at Troas, with an 
 arcade. The top of one of the arches is painted 
 with waves and fishes. This was the gymnasium, 
 and was at the back of the city. Opposite to the 
 stadium there remains a basin of white marble, 
 streaked with red, about fifteen feet in diameter, 
 and, according to Pococke, of a single stone. It is 
 supposed to have belonged to a fountain, but one 
 learned traveller thinks it was used for sacrifices, 
 though there is a tradition that St. John baptized in 
 it. Other ruins extend in the same direction, as the 
 portico adjoining the theatre, having behind them 
 a morass, once the city port. Near the highest of 
 them, says Dr. Chandler, is the entrance of a subter- 
 raneous passage. Opposite to the portico is a vacant 
 quadrangular space, with many bsses of columns 
 and marble fragments scattered about. Here it is 
 probable was the agora, or market-place. 
 
 " The other remains are perhaps those of the 
 arsenal, the public treasury, the prison, and the like 
 buildings, which in the Greek cities were usually 
 near the market-place. At the end of the street, 
 and near the entrance of the valley, is the prostrate 
 heap of a temple, the length four hundred and 
 thirty feet, the breadth eighty feet. The cella, or 
 nave, was constructed of large coarse stones. The 
 portico was of marble, of the Corinthian order, the 
 
EPHESUS. 85 
 
 columns four feet six inches in diameter, and their 
 height, including the base and the capital, more than 
 forty-six feet. The shafts were fluted, and, though 
 their dimensions were so great, each was cut from 
 a single stone.^ 
 
 " But what," asks the same traveller, " has 
 become of the temple of Diana ? Can a wonder 
 of the world have vanished like a phantom, without 
 leaving a trace behind ? '' Then he expresses his 
 regret at having searched for the site to as little 
 purpose as preceding travellers, though its stones 
 are known to have been far more ponderous than 
 those of the columns above mentioned, and the size 
 of the building larger beyond comparison than that 
 of the ruined temple which remains. An ancient 
 author has described it as standing at the head of 
 the port, and shining like a meteor. Like a meteor 
 it had disappeared. Later researches, however, have 
 discovered portions of the Temple of Diana, and 
 have proved that the size of its columns was quite 
 as great as tradition had reported. 
 
 IV. Such has been the doom of the famous 
 glories of that pagan worship, whose votaries 
 attacked the apostle when he exposed the follies of 
 idolatry. All this, too, must be carefully borne in 
 mind while we examine the letter in which St. Paul 
 taught the Christian Ephesians what are the mys- 
 teries of that spiritual religion which recognizes the 
 true nature of the one Eternal God and of His 
 presence in the soul of man. 
 
86 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 In this examination into the subjects which 
 St. Paul considered to be especially suitable to 
 the character of the Ephesian believers, we have 
 to bear in mind those peculiar manifestations of 
 His power which God had displayed in the city 
 where Diana was worshipped. The pagan Ephe- 
 sians adored a certain imaginary being, and cherished 
 as precious an image which they fancied had come 
 down from Jupiter. To the chosen few who had 
 learnt to reject these dreams, and to look to the 
 crucified Jesus for enlightenment and help, God 
 showed the effects of the presence of His Spirit in 
 the soul, not only in its power of transforming the 
 old helpless, sinful nature of man into a practical 
 reflection of the Divine holiness, but in its confer- 
 ring a visible power over the ordinary laws of the 
 physical universe. By these supernatural phe- 
 nomena the contrast between a faith in the one 
 invisible God and a belief in the idols of Greek 
 mythology was placed in the clearest light. The 
 Christians in the city of Diana were enabled to com- 
 prehend with an intense vividness the reality of 
 that spiritual presence in the believer's soul, which 
 made him, to use the metaphor occasionally employed 
 by St. Paul, the temple of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 V. Bearing all this in mind, we see the appro- 
 priateness of the peculiar subjects treated of by St. 
 Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians. He natu- 
 rally begins his instructions with a brief exposition of 
 the doctrine of predestination. From all eternity, 
 
EPHESUS. 87 
 
 he reminds the beHevers, God has foreseen and fore- 
 ordained all things. This is the only possible expla- 
 nation of the mystery of human life. As on other 
 occasions, St. Paul does not here attempt to lead 
 the human intellect into speculations which are 
 beyond the reach of all created beings. He takes 
 the simple fact, that there is an election of indi- 
 vidual men and women to privileges which are denied 
 to others. Then he points out what are the special 
 privileges of Christians, what consequences those 
 privileges involve, how they may be properly em- 
 ployed, and the moral obligations which accompany 
 them. The whole Epistle is, in fact, a working out 
 of the truths briefly summed up in the third chapter, 
 when St. Paul says that he prays God that the 
 Ephesians, being rooted and grounded in love, may 
 be able to comprehend with all saints what is the 
 breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and may 
 know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, 
 and be filled with all the fulness of God. The whole 
 work of God in Christ, he teaches, is a vast and 
 profound mystery, which no created intelligence can 
 thoroughly comprehend, but which is in a measure 
 to be understood by those who approach the study 
 of it with hearts filled with love. For love alone 
 can understand love, and none but those who love 
 the Lord Jesus in sincerity can hope to penetrate 
 into the secrets of that Divine love which mani- 
 fested itself in the incarnation of the Eternal Son 
 in the womb of a virgin mother. To these favoured 
 
88 THE CHURCH OF 'THE APOSTLES. 
 
 ones, seeking, in the midst of the distractions of this 
 Hfe, to know more of the hidden mystery, by the 
 process, not of argument, but of contemplation, Jesus 
 reveals Himself by the action of the Holy Spirit 
 upon the heart and intellect already enlightened by 
 the indwelling of that same Spirit. This is the 
 essence of the mystical or contemplative life, to 
 which all Christians are called, but which few 
 attempt to attain in their own case. This is the 
 main idea of St. Bernard's hymn, "Jesu, dulcis 
 memoria ; " * and of the " Imitatio Christi," in which 
 A Kempis teaches that the action of the Holy Spirit 
 upon the soul is sine strepittL vei^borum ; without the 
 sound or noise of human lanofuaee. 
 
 Such, then, were the persons who, beneath the very 
 shadow of Diana's temple, had learnt that wisdom 
 which none of the princes of this world knew, and 
 which, in the eyes of the haughty Jew and the subtle 
 Greek alike, was a stumbling-block or mere foolish- 
 ness. To us moderns it is, perhaps, as difficult to 
 conceive ourselves in the midst of a state of society 
 like that which thus existed among the Ephesian 
 Christians as into that of Galatia or Corinth. We 
 cannot, however, doubt that St. Paul well understood 
 their intelligence and general spiritual condition, and 
 we may constantly turn with delight to the thought 
 of the course of their lives, and of the peaceful faith 
 with which they meditated on the hidden mysteries 
 
 * " The love of Jesus, what it is, 
 None but His loved ones know." 
 
EPHESUS. 89 
 
 of Divine love, and learnt to understand more and 
 more fully the relations of the Eternal God towards 
 the creatures of His will. 
 
 VI. We can imagine, too, what the superb city 
 was in the days of its splendour, and see it on 
 some festive day, when the prostrate and marble 
 sculptures are reared again, and the great temple is 
 hung with garlands, and the country people are 
 flocking in from the neighbourhood to join in the 
 merry-making and the religious ceremonial, and to 
 catch a sight of the celebrated statue which they 
 had been assured was sent down by Jupiter, king 
 of gods and men, to represent his daughter Diana, 
 the sister of Apollo, the great sun-god. 
 
 Then, from within and without the temple, 
 shouts arise and fill the air. " Great is Diana of 
 the Ephesians ! " they cry, and toss up their arm^s 
 into the air. Clouds of incense float around and 
 intoxicate the senses, while the figures of richly- 
 robed priests and priestesses lend solemnity to the 
 dazzling scene. If Diana herself had appeared, 
 visibly descending from the clouds, it would scarcely 
 have astonished her devotees. 
 
 Meanwhile, here and there in the deserted 
 streets of the city, or sitting in the now quiet 
 stadium, a few men and women remain unmoved 
 by the clamour. An inward voice is speaking to 
 them without the sound of words. With their eyes 
 they see only one Figure — the Figure of a Man with 
 outstretched arms, fastened to a cross; and on His 
 
9° THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 head is a crown, not of gold, bat of thorns. As 
 they look, their eyes half blinded with tears, the 
 crucified Figure seems to fade away, and in its place 
 is One seated on a royal throne, with a look of 
 infinite tenderness upon His features. It is the 
 same Jesus as before, now living to save and comfort 
 His own loved ones, as only One who is God as 
 well as man can save and comfort those for whom 
 He has died. Thus, with the eyes of faith beholding 
 the risen Jesus in His glory, their ears are deaf to 
 the shouts of the excited crowds crying, " Great is 
 Diana of the Ephesians ! " Their ears, quickened 
 by faith, hear only the hymn of the adoring multi- 
 tudes before the throne, as with one voice they 
 sing, " Alleluia ! for the Lord God Omnipotent 
 reigneth ! " From star to star, and beyond every 
 star in the firmament, in ineffably sweet harmonious 
 modulations, men's, women's, and children's voices 
 unitino" in the marvellous chorus, the same song is 
 echoed, and dies away and rises again in ever- 
 varying notes of rapture — ever varying, but ever 
 repeating the same strain, " Alleluia ! for the Lord 
 God Omnipotent reigneth ! " 
 
 Such were the meditations of the devout people 
 to whom the great apostle wrote this wonderful 
 Epistle. And are they not still the meditations of 
 those to whom it is given to listen to that inward 
 voice, which, without the sound of words, unfolds 
 more and more of the mystery that is hidden in the 
 words, " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away 
 the sin of the world " ? 
 
( 91 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COLOSSE. 
 
 I. The Epistle to the Colossians was written from 
 Rome about a.d. 62. In one respect it is perhaps 
 of less interest than the Epistle to the Ephesians, 
 which bears the manifest impress of the circum- 
 stances under which St. Paul preached the gospel 
 at Ephesus. The Epistle to the Colossians does 
 not suggest any recollections of the circumstances 
 under which a Christian Church was founded at 
 Colosse ; but it supplies some striking illustrations 
 of those peculiarities of thought and feeling which 
 were characteristic of the apostolic period, and 
 which find so few parallels in our modern times. 
 
 It especially illustrates the astonishing practical 
 influence of the perverse Judaism of the day. Few 
 people now realize the exact nature of this Judaism, 
 or the extent to which it obstructed the progress of 
 the pure spiritual Christianity of which St. Paul 
 was the chief expounder. It is commonly imagined 
 that when the prejudices of St. Peter were overcome 
 by the vision described in the Acts of the Apostles, 
 
92 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 and the leader of the advocates of exclusiveness was 
 thus himself converted, the way was made clear for the 
 advance of the true gospel without let or hindrance. 
 
 The supposition is most erroneous. A know- 
 ledge of human nature, and especially of the old 
 Jewish human nature, prepares us for the fact that 
 exclusiveness and olio^archical haugrhtiness never 
 died harder than they did when their aim was to 
 shut out the enormous majority of the human race 
 from the blessings of the salvation obtained by the 
 sacrifice of the Son of God upon the cross. 
 
 II. Foiled in their desires to retain for them- 
 selves alone the privileges of the promised redemp- 
 tion, the disappointed Jews adopted a new device 
 for ensuring for themselves a kind of hereditary 
 supremacy in the newly created Church, from which 
 they could not banish all Gentile intruders. The 
 device was astute enough for the times, as the 
 issue proved — easy as it is for us to detect its fallacy 
 under the guidance of St. Paul's acute and penetrat- 
 ing exposure. Nothing is to us more evident than 
 the essential distinction between the moral and the 
 ceremonial portions of the law of Moses. Not so 
 with the Christians of the apostolic age. From 
 some cause, not at first sight very evident, they 
 were often unable to perceive the distinction so 
 obvious to ourselves ; and their minds were thus 
 open to the influence of those Judaizing notions 
 which were the bane of so many of the local 
 Churches. 
 
COL OSS E. 93 
 
 To understand how this strange state of things 
 came about it is necessary to examine carefully into 
 the facts of the time, in order, if possible, to trace the 
 popular currents of thought to their source, and so 
 account for a condition of feeling otherwise inex- 
 plicable. 
 
 III. The explanation is to be found in that 
 defective conception of the nature of the gospel 
 itself which St. Paul's Epistles show to have pre- 
 vailed to a serious extent among the first Christians. 
 Human nature is human nature always and every- 
 where, even when men have learnt to accept the Son 
 of Man as their Redeemer; and what human nature 
 most desires is freedom from punishment for guilt. 
 
 Hence, while the believers rejoiced in the know- 
 ledge that by the sacrifice on the cross Jesus had 
 reconciled them to an offended Judge, they paid 
 comparatively little heed to what they were taught 
 as to the main object of the Divine Sacrifice, 
 namely, the transformation of their whole souls into 
 a likeness to their Redeemer, through the action of 
 an indwelling Spirit upon their hearts and lives. 
 This, I say, was the result of the fact that they were 
 human beings, loving ease and enjoyment, and 
 valuing sanctity as a beautiful idea rather than as 
 a personal reality. 
 
 On this account it was that St. Paul found it 
 necessary to insist again and again upon the same 
 truth, contemplating it from every point of view, 
 illustrating it by various metaphors, and pointing 
 
94 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 out its connection with all the details of daily life, 
 but always implying- that this renewal of our whole 
 nature by the gift of the Holy Ghost is the one 
 transcendent object which God had in view when 
 He gave His Son to die for our sins. In the eighth 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Romans St. Paul con- 
 denses his constant teaching into one pregnant 
 sentence. "What the law could not do," he says, 
 " in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending 
 His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as 
 an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that 
 the demands of the law might be fulfilled in us, who 
 walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." 
 
 And it was from their faint perception of this 
 great doctrine that the believers too often attained 
 only an indistinct perception of the real nature of 
 the new spiritual life in its essence and its details. 
 They did not completely shake off the old pagan 
 notion of virtue as a succession of formalities or 
 ideas external to man's inner nature, and to be 
 accomplished by his own self-reliant power. Of 
 morality as residing in the heart, and of love as its 
 essence, they had scarcely a glimmering conception. 
 
 IV. In the state of mind thus briefly de- 
 scribed, the Gentile converts naturally did not take 
 the alarm when their Jewish friends urged on them 
 the necessity of accepting the law of Moses as a 
 complete whole, without repudiating even its most 
 arbitrary ceremonial regulations. One portion of 
 this law seemed to them much the same as another, 
 
COLOSSE. 95 
 
 both in essential quality and in Divine sanction. 
 They were, therefore, simply bewildered by the 
 demands made upon them. When the Hebrew 
 converts came and said to them. You must be cir- 
 cumcised ; you must not touch this thing or eat that ; 
 you must observe certain days and months and years 
 as holy ; the unhappy men had not a word to say. 
 If what their Jewish friends said was untrue, where 
 was the authority of the ten commandments ? Did 
 not the obligation to avoid murder and adultery rest 
 on the same authority as the rite of circumcision ? 
 If God commanded the one duty He also com- 
 manded the other. And thus in so many of the 
 apostolic Churches the Judaizing party had their 
 own way, at least to an extent which destroyed 
 the harmony of the daily life of the believers. 
 
 V. At Colosse, which was itself an unimpor- 
 tant town in Phrygia, the influence of the Jewish 
 pretensions seems to have been peculiarly disastrous. 
 From many parts of the letter which St. Paul sent 
 to them it is evident that not a few of their number 
 were persons of great sanctity, and well deserved 
 the name of saints with which he addressed them. 
 
 Nevertheless, the community as a whole did not 
 see its way to the detection of the fallacies involved 
 in the Judaizing theory, and it yields a most sug- 
 gestive illustration of the singular conditions of the 
 religious life of the time. The full details as to a 
 Christian's duties which the Epistle contains suggest 
 also a doubt as to whether the Judaizing speculations 
 
96 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 had not injuriously affected the general personal and 
 domestic life of the believers. The instructions 
 given by St. Paul seem so little to require enforce- 
 ment, that we may conclude that there must have 
 been something very faulty in a small community 
 which could require guidance in such very obvious 
 duties. 
 
 All experience, however, shows that any such 
 conclusion would be superficial and rash. One must 
 be both very conceited and very unobservant of the 
 daily life of other people if one imagines that there 
 is any relation between man and man in which the 
 most conscientious minds are not liable to all sorts 
 of self-deception, and do not require frequent self- 
 examination in just such matters as those in which 
 St. Paul instructs the Colossians. There is no 
 reason for doubting that, if not furnishing an espe- 
 cially striking example of primitive saintliness, the 
 Colossians were nevertheless a society of men and 
 women whose lives were in marked contrast to the 
 lives of the other Phrygian towns where the old 
 heathenism had its way undisturbed. When the 
 country was ravaged by an earthquake a few years 
 later, and Colosse with many other places was 
 destroyed, every reader of this Epistle must be 
 satisfied that its Christian inhabitants were at all 
 times ready for whatever fate might befall them. 
 They were not faultless ; but we cannot doubt that 
 they died as they had lived, sincere and courageous 
 Christians. 
 
( 97 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PHILIPPI. 
 
 I. The very name of Philippi recalls associations 
 contrasting with every Christian idea, yet reminding 
 us of the great fact that the time was at length come 
 when the promised Redeemer was to be born. The 
 Roman empire was about to be consolidated into 
 one united whole ; and when man saw only the 
 ruin of Republican armies before the hosts of the 
 Imperialist factions, the foundations were laid for 
 that despotic uniformity of administration which, 
 with all its evils, made it possible for St. Paul and 
 his companions to travel wherever they would, and 
 carry the news of the gospel to all parts of the 
 civilized world. 
 
 It was at Philippi that the great conflict was 
 fought which issued in the deaths of Brutus and 
 Cassius, and which before long made Octavius 
 Caesar master of every country that owned the 
 Roman sway. It was in anticipation, too, of his 
 coming fate at Philippi that an event occurred 
 to Brutus himself, according to the story told by 
 
98 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Plutarch, which strikingly illustrates the practical 
 side of that heathen philosophy which was about to 
 enter upon a mortal struggle with the gospel, as 
 one of its deadliest enemies. 
 
 The story is sufficiently curious to deserve 
 repeating, simply In connection with the personal 
 history of a man imbued with that very form of 
 Greek philosophy which at first sight seems to be 
 akin to the self-denying morality of the gospel. 
 Accordinof to Plutarch, Brutus was one ni^ht sittlno- 
 in his tent in the Republican camp, while the army 
 was resting for a few hours on its way to meet the 
 enemy, when, lifting up his eyes, he saw before him 
 a terrible spectre. " Who art thou ? " he asked, but 
 little moved. " I am thine evil genius," replied the 
 spectre, " and I will see thee again at Philippi." " I 
 will meet thee there," replied Brutus ; and the spectre 
 disappeared. When Brutus told his friend Casslus 
 what he had seen, Casslus laughed at him, and 
 declared his conviction that the whole thins;- was 
 an illusion, produced by bodily derangement, the 
 consequence of fatigue and want of sleep. Casslus 
 held the opinions taught by the philosopher Epi- 
 curus, who asserted that there are no such beings 
 as spectres or demons, or that, If there are, they 
 take no part in human affairs. Brutus, on the 
 contrary, was a follower of Zeno and the Stoical 
 philosophy, whose stern morality bore a certain 
 resemblance to the proud Judaism of the day. Both 
 of them were representative men, and types of the 
 
PHILIPPI. 99 
 
 self-styled philosophic spirit which exhibited the 
 bitterest hostility to the doctrines of the cross, 
 rebelling vehemently against that union of humility 
 and love which is the elementary conception of 
 Christian morals. 
 
 At Philippi the speculations of the two men led 
 them to the same characteristic end. Black despair, 
 a passion abhorrent to the Christian heart, seized 
 alike upon the self-mortifying Stoic and the self- 
 indulgent Epicurean. At the first reverse of the 
 Republican army Cassius killed himself, and was 
 extolled by his friend as the last of the Romans. 
 Brutus attempted another struggle with the con- 
 querors ; but when defeat seemed inevitable, he 
 bade a companion take his sword and hold it firmly 
 by the hilt, that he might throw himself upon the 
 blade and die. Thus perished Brutus, the most 
 formidable of the enemies of the Caesars and their 
 despotism. 
 
 II. A few years later a Divine Infant was born 
 in a stable at Bethlehem ; and within a century 
 the foundation of a Christian Church was laid at 
 Philippi, to which the apostle of the Gentiles, then 
 a prisoner In Imperial Rome, despatched his affec- 
 tionate letter to console the believers in the afflictions 
 which they endured for the sake of Christ. 
 
 III. It is difficult to imagine any contrast 
 between two different aspects of human life more 
 complete than that which Is presented by the scenes 
 enacted at Philippi, when the old Gentile paganism 
 
loo THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 was doine its best and its worst for man's social 
 condition, and that of the quiet Christian com- 
 munity to whom St. Paul wrote this most interest- 
 ing and touching Epistle. 
 
 None of his letters contain more ample testi- 
 monies to those elements in St. Paul's character 
 which fitted him for the work to which the Divine 
 will called him. Nowhere do we feel more dis- 
 tinctly that we are reading the words of a man to 
 whom self-consciousness was an infirmity absolutely 
 unknown. This infirmity is, indeed, an especial 
 characteristic of our modern days. The deliberate 
 self-inspection which is cultivated even by good 
 Christians, with a view to describing their inner 
 life in verse or prose, to be published for the 
 benefit of others, was a practice unheard of when 
 the world was still young or middle-aged. And 
 with all St. Paul's knowledge of the singularities 
 and eccentricities of human nature, it may be ques- 
 tioned whether he ever formed a conception of this 
 remarkable growth of modern civilization. And if 
 it were possible for the Philippian Christians to have 
 been transported Into a state of society such as that 
 which now exists in England, France, and Italy, 
 and, above all, in Germany, their surprise at the 
 prevalence of this spirit of self-consciousness would 
 amount to something like bewilderment. Can it be 
 possible, they would ask, that the authors of these 
 introspective poems, autobiographies, and works of 
 fiction can be men and women who understand the 
 
PHILIP PI. loi 
 
 Christian graces of simplicity and meekness ? These 
 old-world people could understand such vehement 
 outpourings of passion as the poetry of Sappho, or 
 the more refined emotionalism of Anacreon. The 
 thirteenth century, too, would offer no incompre- 
 hensible phenomena for their study ; and even our 
 own Elizabethan writers and the men of the Italian 
 Renaissance would not seem to the apostolic Chris- 
 tians to have intellects and feelings very different 
 from their own. But as for this nineteenth century, 
 they would confess that it was incomprehensible, 
 and that its current phraseology represented certain 
 ideas which to themselves were simply unknown. 
 What do you mean, they would inquire, by a morbid 
 state of feeling ? And you call a certain way of 
 looking at things unreal — what is that ? 
 
 IV. In truth, the change that has gradually 
 come over the modes of thinking general in civilized 
 society is so great, that without a sustained effort 
 we cannot do justice to those elements in the 
 nature of St. Paul, which show themselves in 
 everything that he wrote, and with especial force 
 and beauty when he was writing to his beloved 
 Philippians. 
 
 Every sentence that he has here written about 
 himself beinof thus marked with his usual absolute 
 unaffectedness, we are carried on with ever-in- 
 creasing interest, as we read his self-portraiture, 
 admitting us, as it does, into the innermost recesses 
 of as pure and noble a nature as was ever trained 
 
I02 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 by Divine grace to live a life of self-sacrifice for 
 others. 
 
 At this time, indeed, being now a prisoner at 
 Rome, St. Paul was beginning to grow weary of his 
 long and exhausting labours. He tells the Philip- 
 pians that he is in a strait between two desires, 
 drawing him in different directions. He longs for 
 his release, that he may depart and be with Christ, 
 which, he says, is far better. But as he thinks it 
 will be for their good if he should live a little longer, 
 he is ready to remain while his Master has occasion 
 for him. 
 
 The manner, again, in which he thanks the 
 Philippians for the contribution in money which 
 they had sent him, exhibits just the same simple- 
 minded cordiality, and that union of affectionateness 
 and dignity which constituted a chief source of his 
 wonderful influence wherever he was known. Hear- 
 ing of his imprisonment at Rome, and thinking that 
 he might want money, the Philippian Christians 
 made a collection among themselves, and sent their 
 contributions to him by the hands of Epaphroditus, 
 who is mentioned by Theodoret as being the bishop 
 of the Philippian Church. On receiving their offer- 
 ings, and hearing also of their devout lives, and the 
 courage with which they withstood persecution of 
 every kind, he wrote to thank them for their gift, 
 and to pour forth all his personal love for them, 
 calling their attention at the same time to the great 
 doctrines of the gospel, the knowledge of which 
 
PHILIP PI. 103 
 
 was the inestimable blessing of their lives, as it was 
 of his own. 
 
 V. The Philippian Church seems, further, to 
 have been one of those communities which were but 
 slightly troubled by the pretensions of the Judaizing 
 converts. These latter appear to have been less 
 numerous than the believers of Gentile origin. But, 
 however this may be, there is but one sentence in 
 this Epistle in which "St. Paul warns the Philippians 
 against the plausible theory which in some Churches 
 proved so formidable an obstacle to the cultivation 
 of the spiritual life, and of peace and harmony among 
 the believers. 
 
 VI. Judging from the Epistle as a whole, we 
 cannot help concluding that the Philippian Church 
 was one of the happiest and most cultivated of 
 the Christian communities of the apostolic period. 
 And it is easy to picture to ourselves the delight 
 with which this letter was received, and read and 
 pondered over from week to week in the quiet 
 gatherings of the believers. We, indeed, familiar 
 as we are with the whole treasure of the ereat 
 apostle's writings, can scarcely understand what 
 it was to these devout and often persecuted men 
 and women to receive one of these letters. 
 
 Yet it is worth while to make the effort, and try 
 to understand the condition of persons whose early 
 associations and whose circumstances were so unlike 
 our own ; when there were no dogmatic creeds in 
 existence, and everything that was known of Jesus 
 
I04 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Christ was from unwritten tradition only, and be- 
 lievers like those in Philippi lived upon their recol- 
 lections of what St. Paul had personally taught 
 them a few years before. 
 
 When we have done this, we shall be able to 
 understand the emotion that moved the faithful 
 Church when it was known that a messenger had 
 come from Rome with a letter from their much- 
 loved teacher in his prison. We can imagine the 
 eager questions which one put to another concern- 
 ing the contents of the letter, until it was read aloud 
 in their assembly ; how they pressed the messenger 
 himself for news of their friend, about his health, 
 his needs, the severity of his imprisonment, and the 
 progress of the appeal to the imperial tribunal 
 which had taken him to Rome. 
 
 Then, when they had heard the letter, and well 
 weighed every part of it, and not the least anxiously 
 his acknowledgment of the gift they had sent him, 
 their thoughts would be fixed upon the words in 
 which he eave utterance to his wish for death. How 
 natural it was, they would feel, that this should be 
 his desire ; and how natural, too, that he should take 
 them into his confidence without scruple, and with 
 all his usual straightforwardness and directness ! 
 How could he help wishing for his Master's 
 summons ? It was impossible that it should be 
 otherwise. 
 
 To us, in our modern days, it is not so easy to 
 enter into the apostle's real desire for death as it 
 
PHILIPPI. 105 
 
 was to the believers who would suffer so much by 
 what would be his gain. To us, indeed, a desire for 
 death is not an unknown thing-, even when accom- 
 panied with an unhesitating submission to the 
 Divine will. But, then, when good Christians desire 
 death, it is because of their weariness under the 
 sorrows that afflict them, and which have made all 
 enjoyment of life impossible. 
 
 Not so with St. Paul. For very many years — 
 ever since his "conversion, in fact — he had renounced 
 all thought of life as a period of possible enjoyment. 
 He had been living for the sake of others, and for 
 their sake only. With us, on the contrary, if it 
 rested with ourselves to alter our circumstances, life 
 would not be, what it often is, a wearisome burden 
 or a miserable failure. 
 
 The Philippians, however, knew what St. Paul's 
 life was, which they could partly understand from 
 their experience of what it was to be a Christian in 
 the midst of a cruel and contemptuous heathen 
 society. To them it was not a matter for surprise 
 that their much-loved friend should at last be worn 
 out. Even the most heroic natures are at lengfth 
 exhausted, and it was not for them to complain 
 when their spiritual guide frankly confessed that he 
 should be Mad if it were the will of God that his 
 labours should be ended. 
 
 How crenuine w^as the resio;nation to the Divine 
 will which the Philippians shared with their teacher 
 cannot easily be understood by ourselves. We 
 
io6 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 should, however, frame a very imperfect conception 
 of the actual state of things in the apostolic 
 Churches like that of Philippi if we measured their 
 ideal of a Christian life by our own. With us it is 
 usually our aim to extract as much enjoyment from 
 life as we can without falling into sin. But the 
 Philippians passed their days and nights in a per- 
 petual conflict, not knowing what was next to befall 
 them, and in their degree sharing the apostle's own 
 feelings w^hen he said, " To me to live is Christ." 
 The one great comfort of their lives, and the 
 source of their joy and peace, was their faith in 
 Christ and their love of Christ in the midst of a 
 persecuting world. 
 
 Hence there gcew up among them a certain 
 healthy, manly, cheerful tone of mind, not common 
 in our easy-going civilisation, which kept them 
 ready for every emergency. It v/as this vigorous 
 serenity which supported the believers in Rome 
 when the horrible cry, " Christianos ad leones ! " 
 struck upon their ears, yelled forth from the savage 
 multitudes assembled in the Coliseum, to whom no 
 sig-ht was so sweet as that of the manned limbs of 
 a dying Christian, torn by the savage lions from the 
 sands of Africa. And these memories it is that rise 
 in our thoughts when we stray amidst the now silent 
 amphitheatres of Verona and Rome. Still the 
 echoes of the old cry, " Christianos ad leones ! " seem 
 to linger among the crumbling walls and arches, and 
 to tell us what it was to be a faithful Christian 
 eighteen hundred years ago. 
 
PHILIPPI. 107 
 
 Yes ; those days are past. The world is 
 eighteen centuries older. Is It eighteen centuries 
 wiser or better ? Who amono^ us would exchanore 
 his own age, which has made him what he Is, for 
 any other epoch in the years gone by ? Never- 
 theless, if only for the purposes of study, it Is well 
 to make these letters of the great apostle our daily 
 companions, and to attempt by their help to realize 
 the conditions of a past civilization, and the hopes 
 and joys of a generation so little akin to our own. 
 Then, when we have really recalled those scenes 
 of blood and passion, at once so horrible and so 
 glorious, we shall know Indeed what it was to live 
 at PhilippI in the old days. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON. 
 
 I. The Epistle to Philemon was written about the 
 same time as the Epistle to the Philippians, while 
 St. Paul was still a prisoner at Rome. Being 
 addressed to a single person, it is chiefly valuable as 
 illustrating the character of St. Paul himself. Here 
 he appears just the same man as he shows himself 
 on every other occasion ; and we hardly know which 
 most to admire, his simple, unaffected dignity, or 
 the loving tenderness of his heart. 
 
 Philemon was a member of the Church at Colosse, 
 in which he held an official position. From this 
 Epistle it appears that he had been converted to 
 Christianity by St. Paul, who evidently held him in 
 high esteem for his goodness, setting aside his feelings 
 of personal regard. 
 
 Onesimus, who brought the letter from Rome, 
 was the servant, apparently the slave, of Philemon, 
 from whom he had run away. At Rome he 
 made the acquaintance of St. Paul, under whose 
 instructions Onesimus became a Christian. Probably 
 
THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON. 109 
 
 he was already prepossessed in favour of the rehgion 
 of Christ by what he had seen in the family of 
 Philemon, and was thus induced to go to St. Paul, 
 especially when he found so many people flocking 
 to see the wonderful man, concerning whom rumour 
 spread such strange reports. 
 
 II. What kind of a person was this runaway 
 servant we do not learn from the Epistle. But it 
 must be remembered that the relation of a slave to 
 his master in those days implied none of that sense 
 of degradation with which we now associate it. At 
 any rate, Onesimus had become a good Christian, 
 and St. Paul at once sent him back to his old master 
 at Colosse, carrying this letter with him. 
 
 The letter is a model of skill and good taste, 
 and, considering the difficulty of writing such a letter, 
 must be accepted as a proof of that astonishing 
 versatility in the great apostle, which was one of 
 his most striking characteristics. Philemon must 
 have been less than an ordinary man, and, still more, 
 less than an ordinary Christian, if he was not 
 touched by St. Paul's appeal to his consciousness 
 that in reality he owed to him his spiritual life, and 
 that his father in the faith might reasonably have 
 asked him, as an obedient son, to receive back the 
 penitent Onesimus. But instead of doing this, 
 St. Paul puts it to him as a favour, and undertakes 
 himself to repay to Philemon whatever losses 
 he may have suffered through the misconduct of his 
 servant. 
 
no THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 III. Studied thus by itself, this short letter 
 impresses us afresh with the amazing variety of 
 St. Paul's writings. Now that they are collected 
 together as an integral portion of the New Testament, 
 we are apt to read them so much as a whole, as to 
 overlook their strongly-marked differences. Know- 
 ing that they teach but one gospel, and are the 
 work of one man, we compare phrase with phrase 
 and context with context, and arrange the result 
 into a compendium of theology. And all this is well, 
 provided that we do not overlook their biographical 
 aspect. 
 
 The value of the Epistle to Philemon is therefore 
 considerable, as a contribution to our knowledge of 
 St. Paul's personality — a subject, it need hardly be 
 said, of the first importance in any attempt to repro- 
 duce the actual life of the Christian Churches of the 
 apostolic period. And, in truth, the more closely 
 we study St. Paul's Epistles with the view of under- 
 standing the life of the time, the more vivid is the 
 impression we receive of the personal qualities of 
 the writer. I do not think that I exaggerate when 
 I say that St. Paul stands almost alone, in the 
 records of the Christian Church, as at once the most 
 highly-gifted and the most lovable of men, as he 
 certainly held a position unlike that of any other 
 among the first preachers of the gospel. As an 
 example of careful skill in writing to a friend on a 
 delicate subject, this Epistle to Philemon has always 
 been held to be unsurpassed. But to estimate it 
 
THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON. 
 
 correctly, it must be taken in connection with all St. 
 Paul's other letters, and then it will be recos^nized as 
 the spontaneous work of a nature, simple in all its 
 complexity, because its animating principles were 
 humility and love. 
 
112 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 I. There is hardly any difficulty in determining the 
 date when this Epistle was written, which may be 
 assumed to be a little after the year in which St. 
 Paul wrote to Philemon. But there is some difficulty 
 in determining its authorship, of which nothing is 
 said in the Epistle itself. The references to it in 
 the writino-s of the Fathers leave its actual author- 
 ship open to doubt. It has been attributed to 
 Barnabas, to Timothy, and to Apollos. Modern 
 scholarship inclines to attribute it to Apollos. 
 
 For our present purpose the question is not very 
 important. It is undeniable that, if not actually the 
 composition of St. Paul, the Epistle came from one 
 of his intimate associates, and that it embodies the 
 substance of the doctrinal teaching which he wished 
 to enforce upon the Christian believers of Hebrew 
 origin. 
 
 Whether the Christians thus addressed are to be 
 regarded as the Hebrew believers generally, or as 
 those of some one country in particular, is a further 
 
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 113 
 
 question. From the contents of the Epistle, I am 
 myself disposed to concur in the opinion that it was 
 the Jewish believers settled in Palestine whom the 
 writer had mainly in view. Knowing" as we do, 
 from St. Paul's letters to local Churches, what was 
 the kind of influence that the Jewish converts 
 generally attempted to exercise over their brethren 
 of Gentile origin, it would be strange indeed to find 
 no reference to such influence in this Epistle, if it 
 was addressed to the Hebrew believers settled in 
 Asia Minor, Italy, or Greece. It is clear, I think, 
 that the writer had in his mind the Jewish Christians 
 of some district where they were numerically almost 
 the only persons who had received the gospel. 
 Such a district was Palestine, a province of the 
 Roman empire, but practically inhabited only by 
 the descendants of Judah and Benjamin. 
 
 Further, although the doctrines enforced in this 
 Epistle are identical with those taught by St. Paul 
 in his undoubted writings, the method by which they 
 are here expounded would have been uninteresting, 
 if not unintelligible, to any but thoroughly Jewish 
 minds, more habitually accustomed to the elaborate 
 ritual of the temple-worship at Jerusalem than would 
 have been the case with the Jews scattered about in 
 the countries beyond the limits of Palestine. 
 
 II. But whether or not the Epistle was especially 
 addressed to the converted Jews in Palestine, it is 
 certain that the highly figurative illustrations by 
 which the mediatorial office of Christ is explained 
 
114 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 presuppose a familiarity with all the details of the 
 Mosaic ritual which would be found in Jews alone. 
 If we put ourselves in the place of the early believers 
 who were educated as Gentiles, we shall see at once 
 that they would scarcely have understood the subtle 
 reasonings by which the writer of this Epistle shows 
 the typical nature of the old Mosaic priesthood^ and 
 its bearing upon the sacerdotal functions of the 
 Eternal Son, incarnate for the sins of the whole 
 world. 
 
 III. The Epistle, then, must be studied as 
 addressed to the Hebrew Christians of the Apostolic 
 period, regarded simply as they were in themselves, 
 and without reference to that narrow-minded 
 arrogance which they often displayed towards the 
 Gentile Christians. At the same time, that peculiar 
 temper which the writer of this Epistle evidently 
 regards as characteristic of the Hebrews, as such, 
 is closely akin to that special mental fault which led 
 them to invent the theory concerning the perpetual 
 obligation of the law of Moses with which they 
 harassed the Gentile believers in so many places. 
 This temper may be briefly described as a haughty 
 worldliness. 
 
 As a corrective of this temper, throughout this 
 Epistle, the aim of the writer Is to point out the 
 office and power of faith, as being that attitude of 
 the mind which alone befits men in their intercourse 
 with God, and In their interpretation of the facts of 
 human life. Faith is here defined as the substance 
 
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 115 
 
 of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 
 It is in this sense that the word is used by our Lord, 
 when He says to the disciples, " If ye have faith as 
 a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this moun- 
 tain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall 
 remove, and nothing shall be impossible to you." 
 
 By faith, then, as the term is employed in this 
 Epistle, the Christian, under the gospel dispensa- 
 tion, like every good man in times past, views all 
 things as they are in reality, not mistaking the 
 shadow for the substance, nor the type for the thing 
 typified, nor the temporal for the eternal, nor the 
 physical laws of the universe for a power greater 
 than God who creates those laws. He lives in the 
 midst of a visible world, never forgetting that what 
 he sees and hears is a species of veil, behind which 
 are all the realities of the spiritual world, with God 
 who is the Creator and Lord of all. In this God 
 he trusts with undoubting faith, distrusting himself 
 and repudiating himself, but confidently relying, with 
 perfect humility, upon the power, the promises, and 
 the goodness of Him who is unseen. 
 
 IV. Thus it was that the saints of old, many of 
 whom are specified by name in this Epistle, triumphed 
 over the difficulties which beset them. And thus it 
 is that the Christian realizes all that is Involved in 
 his relation to the risen and glorified Jesus, and to 
 the saints who have already entered into their rest, 
 the inhabitants of the heavenly Jerusalem. This 
 relationship, being not an empty metaphor, but a 
 
ii6 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 practical reality, is briefly described towards the end 
 of the Epistle in the words, " Ye are come to Mount 
 Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly 
 Jerusalem,, and to an innumerable company of angels, 
 to the general assemblao'e and Church of the first- 
 born, who are written in heaven, and to God the 
 Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made 
 perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New 
 Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, which 
 speaketh better things than that of Abel " (chap. xii. 
 22-24). 
 
 V. Faith being thus the necessary action of the 
 mind when it contemplates its own relation towards 
 its Creator, its function is pointed out with especial 
 emphasis by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, 
 where he explains that man is justified by faith, and 
 not by the works of the law, as was imagined by the 
 corrupt Judaism of the tim.e. 
 
 VI. The impression which the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews thus leaves upon us is much the same as 
 that produced by the letters in which St. Paul 
 places before us the characteristic temper, or 77^09, 
 of the Hebrew race in general. They were a proud, 
 unspiritual, worldly minded people, who would have 
 made a bargain with God Himself, and claimed as 
 a right what could only have been granted them as 
 a free eift. Even when their conversion to the 
 faith of Christ had brought them under the power 
 of its morality, and taught them humility and love, 
 the stubbornness, hardness, and pride which were 
 
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 117 
 
 inherent in the children of Abraham made it neces- 
 sary for their spiritual guides to insist again and 
 again upon the cultivation of those Christian graces 
 which were most alien to their national tendencies. 
 
 VII. The perpetuity of character in the Hebrew 
 race is, indeed, one of those psychological and 
 physiological phenomena which seem irreconcilable 
 with our accepted theories on the laws of healthy 
 vitality. To this very day the Jew remains very 
 much what he was in the days of the Pharaohs. 
 From the time when the descendants of Abraham 
 were organized into twelve separate tribes by 
 the authority of Moses after their escape from 
 bondage in Egypt, they have exhibited a tenacity 
 of existence and character under circumstances 
 which would have proved fatal to any other variety 
 of mankind. Even during their bondage in Egypt 
 they seem to have given proofs of an unparalleled 
 tenacity and unity of disposition which made them 
 formidable to their masters. Who but Moses, him- 
 self a pure Hebrew, could have controlled such a 
 people as he had to deal with during their long 
 wanderincjs in the desert before the land of Canaan 
 was finally reached and conquered ? 
 
 Then followed the many centuries of national life, 
 under an elaborate system of rigid tribal division, 
 and of marriage regulations involving the inter- 
 marriage of blood-relations, which would have 
 reduced to an effete feebleness any people of the 
 prolific Aryan stock. Few, comparatively, as were 
 
ii8 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 these men and women of Semitic origin, and 
 practising, moreover, polygamy and family concu- 
 binage — customs the reverse of invigorating to any 
 people which adopts them — still the children of 
 Israel have gone on from century to century, fight- 
 ing their enemies, surviving a second captivity, pre- 
 serving their old law, giving birth to all the prophetic, 
 poetic, and devotional literature enshrined in the 
 Old Testament, and, since the triumph of Christianity, 
 resisting successfully every attempt to convert them 
 by persecution, or to crush out their unconquered 
 vitality. 
 
 VIII. In all this wonderful history one fact stands 
 out with startling prominence. St. Paul refers to 
 this fact in his second letter to the Corinthians. 
 " Even unto this day," he says, " when Moses is read, 
 the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless, when 
 it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken 
 away" (2 Cor. iii. 15, 16). 
 
 And the more we reflect upon the contents of 
 this Epistle to the Hebrews, the more impossible 
 we find it to forget the fact, that from the times of 
 the apostles to our own the Jewish mind has 
 remained impervious to the Christian interpre- 
 tation of the law of Moses and of the Psalms and 
 prophecies of the Old Testament. During the 
 apostolic period, with all the bitterness which the 
 Hebrew race displayed towards the preachers of 
 the gospel, it yielded many converts to their argu- 
 ments, though apparently not nearly so many as 
 those who were converted from heathenism. 
 
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 119 
 
 But since those early times, with few exceptions, 
 the Jewish race has been as Httle moved by argu- 
 ment as by persecution. It is true that here and 
 there a sincere conversion has occurred, and does 
 now occur ; but these are so few that they serve 
 only to draw attention to the general fact described 
 by St. Paul in the words, " When Moses is read, the 
 veil is upon their heart." 
 
 IX. To every thoughtful mind the phenomenon 
 is unquestionably one of the most inexplicable in 
 ecclesiastical history, though it can partly be ex- 
 plained by those peculiarities of hereditary tempera- 
 ment to which I have been calling attention. The 
 psychological unity of the race of Israel, from the 
 time of Abraham downwards, unparalleled in the 
 records of any Indo-Germanic nation, goes some 
 way to account for its attitude tow^ards Christianity 
 since the period when it gave thousands of believers 
 and many martyrs to the faith of Christ crucified. 
 
 X. But why is it so no longer ? Why are 
 sincere conversions from Judaism so rare, that 
 argumentatively they may be set down as practically 
 non-existent ? The question cannot be answered 
 by any of the ordinary theories which are brought 
 forward to account for men's actions. The Jews are 
 a phenomenon in modern society of the strangest 
 kind. Why are they what they are ? And why do 
 they everywhere awaken in tolerant and enlightened 
 minds such a mixture of respect, admiration, and 
 aversion ? They are among the chief financiers of 
 
I20 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 the world ; they are everywhere loyal citizens ; their 
 intellectual capacities are great and varied. 
 
 But see how strange is the position which they 
 hold in European life. I will not insist on their 
 legal status in a country like Roumania, where the 
 people are uncouth and only partially civilized, 
 and the aristocracy one of the most dissolute of 
 oligarchies. Nor must too much stress be laid upon 
 the anti-Jewish ferocities of Muscovite towns and 
 villages. What seems inexplicable is the bitterness 
 with which the Hebrew race is regarded by many 
 of the best-educated and tolerant people in Germany, 
 the very land of free thought — a feeling which bears 
 no likeness to anything in this country, though it is 
 not to be denied that even here the feelings of the 
 most liberal-minded people are not very friendly 
 where Jews are concerned. 
 
 Is it not the case, then, that everywhere there 
 lurks in most people's minds an uncomfortable 
 suspicion that there is something radically dangerous 
 in the hereditary Jewish nature ? Is there, or is 
 there not, a supernatural aspect to this singular 
 feeling towards a race who seem so little to deserve 
 this almost universal dislike ? I do not pretend to 
 answer the question with any dogmatic positiveness. 
 But I see no way of reconciling the fact with the 
 ordinary facts of human life, except by supposing 
 that there does exist some hidden reason for this 
 continued alienation, only to be understood by its 
 connection with what- St. Paul said when he wrote 
 
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 121 
 
 to the Corinthians, that " when Moses is read, the 
 veil is upon their heart." 
 
 If this is so, then we are further justified in 
 looking forward to the fulfilment, sooner or later, of 
 St. Paul's anticipation that the Jewish heart will 
 " turn to the Lord ; " and then the veil will be 
 removed from the eyes so long unable to recognize 
 the Messiah in the Son of Mary. Then, too, will 
 the whole hereditary force of their race be devoted 
 to the propagation of that gospel to whose claims 
 they are still blind. Let us hope that this change 
 in the Jewish hearts Is not far distant. Whether, 
 however, it is still far off, or whether it is near, its 
 time of coming Is one of those secrets which are 
 known only to God Himself. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE EPISTLES TO TIMOTHY. 
 
 I. The Epistles to Timothy have a twofold interest. 
 They are valuable as exhibiting the feelings enter- 
 tained by St. Paul towards one whom he loved with 
 the affectionateness of a father, and as illustrating 
 the condition of the Ephesian Church, of which 
 Timothy was the bishop. They are thus supple- 
 mentary to the Epistle to the Ephesians, which was 
 written only a few years before the First Epistle to 
 Timothy. When St. Paul first wrote to Timothy, 
 he was a prisoner for the first time at Rome. When 
 he again wrote, he was once more a prisoner, and 
 he urges Timothy to come to see him and comfort 
 him with his presence. He foresaw his approaching 
 martyrdom, to which he looked forward with the joy 
 of a faithful servant about to receive his reward. 
 The affectionateness of St. Paul's nature is strikingly 
 brought out in his desire to see his much-loved son 
 in the faith once more before he died. 
 
 It is not known whether Timothy was able to 
 reach Rome before St. Paul's death. Nor is any- 
 
THE EPISTLES TO TIMOTHY. 123 
 
 thing known with certainty concerning Timothy's 
 own personal history during the latter part of his 
 life, but tradition says that he too received the crown 
 of martyrdom. 
 
 II. Of his life and difficulties at the time when 
 St. Paul wrote to him, these two Epistles give a 
 tolerably distinct picture. He was still a young 
 man — very young for the difficult post to which 
 St. Paul had appointed him. His health was not 
 good, and he suffered from maladies for which 
 St. Paul advised him to drink a little wine, instead 
 of confining himself to water alone. 
 
 His task, as head of the Ephesian Church, was 
 by no means an easy one, and he had need of all 
 the strength and enlightenment which he had 
 received from his careful Christian education, under 
 his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. His 
 early knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures 
 stood him in good stead in dealing with the peculiar 
 questions which disturbed the peace of the Ephesian 
 Christians, and which it is evident had no small 
 attraction for their somewhat unstable, though 
 devout, natures. Timothy's youth also added to his 
 other difficulties, for no men liked to yield to the 
 authority of a person much younger than themselves, 
 and no little tact was required both in the treatment 
 of those who caused scandal by open misconduct, 
 and in the delicate handling of the susceptibilities of 
 widows, in such matters as second marriages, and 
 their enrolment in the number of those who were to 
 
124 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 be reckoned as widows indeed, and to be employed 
 in some sort of supervision of the younger women, 
 setting them a good example by cultivating sobriety 
 in dress. Those who were recognized as real 
 widows were, by St. Paul's directions, to be not less 
 than sixty years of age. 
 
 III. The general fault of the Ephesian Church, 
 when St. Paul wrote these letters, seems to have 
 been what may be described as free living or self- 
 indulgence. It is surprising, indeed, to learn, from 
 the instructions given to Timothy for the appoint- 
 ment of bishops and deacons, that men of anything 
 but irreproachable character might be expected 
 sometimes to aspire to sacred offices. The virtues 
 which St. Paul specifies as necessary qualifications 
 for the offices of bishop and deacon are, in truth, by 
 no means extravagantly severe. What is noticeable 
 is the fact that he should have thought it necessary 
 to give these detailed directions to a person like 
 Timothy, who, though young, was eminent both for 
 his piety and his wisdom. And the fact compels us 
 to form a somewhat low estimate of the reliofious 
 condition of the Ephesian Christians, and to contrast 
 it with the very high estimate which St. Paul had 
 formed of their spiritual state when he wrote his 
 Epistle to them. The meaning of one of the 
 directions here given to Timothy is at first sight not 
 very obvious. St. Paul says that a bishop, and also 
 a deacon, is to be the husband of one wife. This, 
 of course, does not mean that to other persons 
 
THE EPISTLES TO TIMOTHY. 125 
 
 polygamy was allowable, but simply that the bishops 
 and deacons were to be men who had not been 
 twice married. St. Paul also urges the importance 
 of the effect of a well-governed family in a bishop's 
 house upon the good conduct of the Church in 
 eeneral. A man who could not rule his own 
 household well is declared to be unfit to govern 
 the Church of God. 
 
 Taken in connection with the rules given on 
 the recognition of widows who wished to be re- 
 garded as widows indeed, these directions illustrate 
 St. Paul's views on the subject of second marriages 
 in general, which he regards as inconsistent with 
 devotion to any sort of spiritual office. The cares 
 of married life, in his judgment, distract the attention 
 of men and women alike ; and he thinks that a 
 woman who marries a second time would be happier 
 if she remained all her life a widow. 
 
 IV. Examining these two epistles further in 
 detail, it appears that there had grown up among 
 the Ephesian believers one peculiar tendency for 
 which we were little prepared, either by the narra- 
 tive of St. Paul's preaching at Ephesus, as given in 
 the Acts of the Apostles, or by the letter which he 
 wrote to the Ephesians themselves. Many of them, 
 it seems, now betrayed a fondness for all kinds of 
 quibbllngs and straw- splittings, and for what St. 
 Paul calls endless grenealoeies. Whether we are 
 to understand by this phrase some interminable 
 disputes as to a man's Jewish or Gentile origin, or 
 
126 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 whether it refers to some sort of family pretensions 
 and disagreements, it is evident that the spirit which 
 magnifies trifles and substitutes words for realities 
 was rife in a community in which the power of the 
 one true God had been not long before displayed in 
 miraculous events, such as were vouchsafed to few 
 of the infant Churches of Asia. Until we recollect 
 what human nature is, in all ages and countries, it 
 is almost startling to learn that these follies were 
 common in the very city where the Christians had 
 thrown off the worship of Diana, and God had 
 wrought so many wonders by the hands of his 
 apostle. Yet in this very city the minds of the 
 believers were in so unsettled a condition that St. 
 Paul found it necessary to remind their bishop to 
 discourage the spread of triflings so foolish that he 
 contemptuously described them as old wives' fables. 
 One special class of pretenders to eminent 
 sanctity are described in terms which have led to 
 the conclusion that they belonged to the Jewish sect 
 of the Essenes, whose rigorism had an attraction 
 for those persons who were dissatisfied alike with 
 the worldliness and pretensions of the Pharisees and 
 the cold-hearted scepticism of the Sadducees. It is 
 not easy to ascertain from Josephus and other con- 
 temporary writers what were the exact opinions of 
 the Essenes, or how far their conventual system 
 rested upon such absurd notions as to eating and 
 drinking as those referred to by St. Paul in writing 
 to Timothy. At any rate, there was a marked 
 
THE EPISTLES TO TIMOTHY. 127 
 
 similarity between the practice of the Essenes and 
 the teaching of the Ephesian sectaries, who forbade 
 marriage and denounced the use of certain kinds of 
 food. 
 
 At the same time, it seems clear that the funda- 
 mental theories of the Manichean system had gained 
 a footing in the Ephesian Church. According to this 
 ingenious Oriental speculation, the awful mystery of 
 human life, with its sufferings and moral evils, can 
 only be explained by the hypothesis that two mighty 
 invisible powers are always contending for the 
 dominion of humanity, and that corporeal activity 
 and enjoyment are the special instruments by means 
 of which the evil power thwarts the efforts of the 
 beneficent Power for the good of mankind. What 
 St. Paul says of the mischievous assertions of the 
 Ephesian sectaries undoubtedly corresponds with 
 the speculations of Manicheism, more closely than 
 any errors which were rife among the Jews, as far 
 as they can be ascertained from the Gospels and 
 the Acts of the Apostles. 
 
 V. As to St. Paul's own teaching, the Epistles 
 to Timothy are clear and precise. With all his 
 unconcealed views as to the greater happiness of 
 the unmarried, when compared with the married 
 state, he denounces absolutely all prohibitions of 
 marriage, as such, and all abstaining from certain 
 kinds of food, on the ground that they are unclean. 
 
 VI. On the whole, the impression left by these 
 two Epistles as to the condition of the Ephesian 
 
128 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Church is not altogether very favourable. At the 
 same time, it is to be borne in mind that, in writing 
 to the bishop of the Church, St. Paul would naturally 
 dwell more upon the faults to be corrected than 
 upon the virtues to be commended. It is to be 
 noted, too, in the directions which he gives as to 
 the public worship of the believers, he makes no 
 mention of any such abuses as those which he had 
 condemned in the Corinthian Church when the 
 Lord's Supper was celebrated, or such as are de- 
 nounced in the Epistle of St. James. Whatever 
 were the faults of the Ephesian Christians, they 
 seem to have been tolerably free from the abomi- 
 nable sin of despising the poor, which was common 
 among the Corinthians and the Jewish converts to 
 whom St. James wrote. 
 
 VII. The Ephesian Church, again, included 
 persons of all classes, both rich and poor, and many 
 of the women were inordinately fond of dress and 
 personal adornment. This fondness for dress was, 
 however, an infirmity by no means confined to the 
 Ephesian women. It is condemned by St. Peter 
 in his First Epistle in terms which show that it was 
 common enough among the Asiatic Christians in 
 general. In both cases, the rebukes of the apostles 
 are especially directed to the women's fondness for 
 jewellery and for elaborate fashions in dressing their 
 hair, reminding us of the figures of the Roman 
 empresses in the British Museum, which exhibit 
 a steady increase in the extravagant styles of 
 
THE EPISTLES TO TIMOTHY. 129 
 
 arranging the hair, as the dynasty of the Caesars 
 drew nearer and nearer towards its close. 
 
 VIII. Of Timothy himself, as he prosecuted his 
 difficult task, the two Epistles suggest a delightful 
 picture. Still so young in years, yet so mature in 
 goodness and wisdom, he seems to be an example 
 for all asfes of the lifelonof effects of a Christian 
 education, such as a Christian education always 
 ought to be, and such as it might be, were all 
 mothers and grandmothers like the wise and holy 
 Eunice and Lois. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. 
 
 I. The Epistle to Titus is one of the most sug- 
 gestive of St. Paul's letters. It is short, and much 
 of it is occupied with the purely doctrinal and 
 personal subjects which were never absent from St. 
 Paul's thoughts. He touches, in passing, on the 
 great truth that it was by the free and undeserved 
 election of God that he was made a Christian and 
 an apostle ; and he points to the reappearance of 
 Christ upon earth as an event to be practically 
 looked for and longed for. 
 
 But, besides all this, the Epistle clearly shows 
 what St. Paul thought of the Cretan believers. 
 Gentiles as well as Jews. It was written to Titus, 
 as the head of the Church in Crete, shortly after 
 the First Epistle to Timothy. And if it is clear 
 from this last that the young Timothy had a hard 
 task in ruling the Ephesian Christians, it is equally 
 clear that the position of Titus in Crete required 
 not a little tact, wisdom, and firmness in administer- 
 ing the affairs of the Cretan believers. 
 
THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. 131 
 
 II. St. Paul strikes the key-note to the general 
 condition of the Cretan Church, when he quotes a 
 well-known saying of a Greek poet, who said that 
 the Cretans were always liars, ill-conditioned animals, 
 and lazy gluttons. The charge must, of course, be 
 accepted with reservation, as the exaggeration of a 
 satirist ; but that it condensed into one line the 
 typical vices of the inhabitants of the island can 
 hardly be doubted. They were a lively, quick, self- 
 indulgent race, fond of wine, not caring for strict 
 truth in their conversation, with a taste for ill- 
 natured gossip, and liable to be taken in by pre- 
 tenders and charlatans of all sorts. We gather, 
 also, from the instructions given to Titus, that they 
 were disposed to dispute the legal rights of the 
 authorities in the Island, apparently on the ground 
 that they were aliens in race from themselves. The 
 Judaizing party among the Christians seems to 
 have been numerous and powerful, with the same 
 result as at Ephesus, creating a fondness for verbal 
 quibblings and genealogical disputes, to the injury 
 of the simplicity and humble faith of the uncorrupted 
 gospel. 
 
 III. It is to be remarked, further, from the 
 qualifications which St. Paul desired Titus to re- 
 quire from the men whom he was to appoint as 
 deacons in different cities, that, as in Ephesus, 
 persons sometimes sought sacred offices who were 
 given to drinking and devoted to money getting. 
 Money getting generally seems to have been a 
 
132 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 passion with these islanders, who came of a Greek 
 stock, not of the most distinguished or purest type. 
 
 As a whole, we cannot help concluding that the 
 Cretan Church was materially affected by those 
 influences of race which are to be traced so dis- 
 tinctly in many of the apostolic Churches. This 
 modifying influence of hereditary personal qualities, 
 upon belief as well as conduct, is one of the most 
 curious psychological phenomena in the history of 
 humanity, and nowhere is its reality more strikingly 
 illustrated than in these numerous letters of St. Paul. 
 And the value of the contribution thus yielded 
 towards our knowledge of the religious life of the 
 day is increased by the circumstance that St. Paul 
 himself had no theories on the matter. Our modern 
 theories on the subject of race and the hereditary 
 transmission of different mental capacities had not 
 in his day been invented. Nobody knew to what 
 an extent thought and feeling are connected with 
 the molecular activity of the brain, and still less had 
 any theories been devised to account for the origin 
 of species and the similarity of the brains of man 
 and those of sundry brutes. St. Paul simply noticed 
 the facts as he found them, and the remarkable 
 varieties in his method of dealing with the spiritual 
 condition of the difterent Churches to which he 
 wrote are due to his freedom from any preconceived 
 psychological system. 
 
 IV. One very important conclusion which is to 
 be drawn from this Epistle to Titus is the support 
 
THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. 
 
 which it gives to the fundamental principle of all 
 real Christian civilization — the principle, that is, that 
 the family is the unit of the entire social state. Not 
 merely in his instructions as to the ordination of 
 deacons, but incidentally in other passages in this 
 Epistle, we see that the idea of a well-ordered 
 Christian household was constantly before St. Paul's 
 mind. And this is the more remarkable, because 
 no man ever had a clearer perception of the cares 
 and anxieties of a married life. Only, as marriage 
 is a divine institution and must always exist, St. Paul 
 habitually recognizes the household as the basis of 
 society, and he expects Christian perfection to be 
 attained in the performance of the relative duties of 
 husbands and wives, and of parents and their children. 
 And it is the more important to bear in mind 
 this element in St. Paul's teaching, when we wish 
 to realize the Christian life of the past, because 
 undoubtedly the conversions both of Jews and 
 Gentiles were sometimes confined to one or two 
 members of a family. How far, indeed, this was 
 the case it is not easy to ascertain ; though, from 
 the absence of any general instructions to individual 
 believers who suffered from family persecution, it 
 would seem that, as a rule, the conversion of one 
 member of a family led to the conversion of the rest. 
 As to the general tone of the family life of the 
 first Christians there can be no dispute — at least, if 
 it was modelled on the teaching of St. Paul. That 
 teaching is, indeed, somewhat distasteful both to the 
 
13+ THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 men and the women who may be taken as the 
 typical creation of the last half of the nineteenth 
 century. St. Paul's one conception of a Christian 
 family was that of a household in which obedience 
 was the ruling principle, both of the wife towards 
 her husband and of children towards their parents. 
 It was an affectionate obedience, and the authority 
 was exercised with considerateness ; but still, it was 
 essentially obedience, and not a mock obedience 
 disguising a real equality. 
 
 As to the typical nineteenth-century woman, 
 who claims an equality with man, both in character 
 and in rights, such a being never crossed the great 
 apostle's imagination. His ideal of a Christian 
 woman is that of a creature essentially feminine, 
 whether as friend, wife, sister, mother, or daughter. 
 He understood what we call female vanities well 
 enough, and his censures of extravagance in the 
 plaiting of hair and the wearing of jewellery show 
 that he had a keen eye for female foibles. But of 
 that theory which claims for women an actual 
 equality with men, he had not the faintest concep- 
 tion. And when we read the names of the many 
 women to whom he sends greetings in his different 
 letters, we may rest assured that, whatever were 
 their varieties of character, and whatever their gifts 
 and their intellect, there was not one of them who 
 bore the slightest resemblance to that eccentric 
 product of modern civilization which we call a, 
 strong-minded woman. 
 
THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. 135 
 
 V. At the same time, in forming our estimate of 
 the general character and habits of the women of 
 the apostoHc period, allowance must be made for 
 those peculiarities of race which prompted the 
 special instructions which St. Paul gave to Timothy 
 and Titus. There is no reason for assuming that 
 the women of Ephesus and of Crete were fair 
 representatives of the Christian women in all parts 
 of the Roman empire. The people who were 
 governed by Timothy and by Titus were a warm- 
 blooded race, and their faults as well as their virtues 
 were to some extent the result of hereditary tempera- 
 ment, modified by the circumstances in which they 
 lived. So it is with ourselves to-day. All the 
 women of the civilized world are not like Eng-lish 
 women, whether in their defects or their good 
 qualities. The English woman, as such, is made 
 what she is by her Anglo-Norman blood, and by 
 the free political institutions amidst which she is 
 nurtured. The result has been the oradual formation 
 of a character which is often admirable and some- 
 times absurd, and as often excites the envy as the 
 ridicule of the people of other countries. This 
 character is also so deeply seated as to withstand 
 the effects of transplantation to all parts of the 
 world, while its peculiarities are intensified when 
 they take root in places where the peculiar merits 
 and demerits of our English life within its sea-girt 
 shores are themselves intensified. 
 
 To answer, then, the important question. What 
 
136 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 were the women like in the apostoHc Churches ? we 
 must include a wider range of life than is afforded 
 by Ephesus and Crete, and by the converted Jewish 
 inhabitants of Asia Minor to whom St. Peter 
 addressed his two Epistles. Thus judged, there is 
 every reason to conclude that the Christian women 
 of the apostolic times were, as a rule, modest and 
 simple in their ways, avoiding luxury and ex- 
 travagance in their dress and in the manaofement of 
 their households, and looking for the re-appearance 
 of Christ in this world. If they had been, in any 
 sense, given to worldliness, they would not have 
 been the mothers, wives, or sisters of martyrs ; or 
 themselves, as they sometimes were, martyrs also. 
 This test of martyrdom is, indeed, conclusive as to 
 the daily life of the women in the days of persecu- 
 tion. Martyrs do not come from the households 
 where foolish and frivolous women give the tone to 
 the whole family. And one almost shudders to 
 think of the probable effects of a real persecution 
 upon the members of our modern households, in- 
 fluenced by the daily and hourly guidance of the 
 multitude of mothers and sisters who represent the 
 self-glorifying religious world of to-day. 
 
 VI. One other question occurs to the mind, as 
 we close our examination of the Epistles of St. 
 Paul. What would be his view of the Christian 
 civilization of this country at the present time ? I 
 have failed in my attempt to represent the great 
 apostle as a living personality to my readers, if I 
 
THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. i37 
 
 have left them under an impression that he was a 
 man who would judge the Christians of the first 
 century by one test, and those of the nineteenth by 
 another. 
 
 Most undoubtedly he would apply his old twofold 
 test to the England of to-day. He would inquire 
 how far our legislation and our public and private 
 social institutions tended to promote the knowledge 
 of Christ crucified, and whether the men and women 
 who profess themselves Christians habitually live 
 like persons who are convinced that they are called 
 to be holy, being chosen to that end by the eternal 
 foreknowledge and predestination of God, under 
 which same conviction they constantly look for the 
 return of their Divine Master to this visible world. 
 To St. Paul's mind, all other considerations would 
 be trifles and comparatively uninteresting. He 
 would walk about London as he walked about 
 Athens, perhaps with the same sympathy which he 
 there felt for those who worshipped the goddess 
 of wisdom and the unknown God ; but possibly with 
 the same feelings which were kindled in him at 
 Ephesus, where they worshipped Diana, or at 
 Corinth, where they worshipped Venus, the goddess 
 of unholy love. 
 
 Still more keen and searching would be his 
 inquiries into the reality of our religious life, when 
 he found Bibles in every decent house, and his 
 own letters in Greek in the hands of almost all 
 educated men, while he saw that the poor were 
 
138 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 crowded into dens of misery unknown to the ancient 
 world, and the streets recalled the pleasure haunts 
 of Corinth and the secret infamies of Tiberius Caesar. 
 Can we doubt what would be the conclusions that 
 he would draw from what he saw and heard ? And 
 can we help wondering whether, in the good Provi- 
 dence of God, another St. Paul will ever be given to 
 the world ? 
 
( '39 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 
 
 I. The writer of this Epistle was James, the son of 
 Alphaeus, sometimes called James the Less, to dis- 
 tinguish him from the other apostle of the same 
 name, who was the son of Zebedee. He was a 
 kinsman of our Lord, probably a cousin, the Greek 
 word used by St. Paul implying some sort of actual 
 consanguinity. As far as any indications of his 
 character can be gathered from this Epistle, we can 
 clearly trace the peculiar personal influence which 
 an early intimacy with the Divine Son of the ever- 
 virgin mother would exercise upon a mind naturally 
 sweet and humble, such as we conceive to have 
 been that of the devout Simeon, who uttered his 
 Nunc Dimittis w^hen he received the Holy Infant in 
 his arms in the Temple. 
 
 The Epistle is addressed to the Jewish converts 
 generally. And it is to be noticed that they are 
 addressed as the twelve tribes, either because some 
 few descendants of the lost ten tribes were still to 
 be found among the descendants of Judah and 
 
I40 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Benjamin, or because the old conception of the 
 Israelites as consisting- of twelve tribes was most 
 familiar to the Jewish households of the day. 
 
 The contents of the Epistle suggest the recollec- 
 tion that the writer was a poor man, very devout 
 and humble, but without the ardent enthusiasm of 
 St. Paul, as he was without his keen and cultivated 
 intellect. He had a fondness for finding comparisons 
 in inanimate objects to illustrate spiritual truths, 
 twice drawing his illustrations from seafaring 
 matters, as when he compares the action of the 
 tongue upon a man's whole life to that of the rudder 
 in shaping the course of a vessel at sea. 
 
 II. What his fellow-countrymen, the Jews, were 
 really like he knew very well, and his censures 
 upon their love of riches enable us to complete the 
 picture drawn by St. Paul of the characteristics of 
 that wonderful people, even when converted to the 
 faith of Christ. He does not analyze the preten- 
 sions of the Judaizing theorists with St. Paul's acute 
 logic. He is a simple man, and he merely looks at 
 facts as they presented themselves, and he tests them 
 by the lessons he had learnt from his Divine Master. 
 He sees that the Jewish Christians are given to 
 glorying in what they called their faith, but to his 
 eyes they seem to care more for money than for 
 anything else. He goes into their assemblies for 
 the worship of God, and there he sees all the best 
 places reserved for the rich and well-dressed, and 
 the poor and ill-clad thrust into the worst seats. 
 
THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 141 
 
 Against this scandalous abuse he remonstrates, not 
 vehemently, for he is never vehement, but with that 
 gentle seriousness which has more force than any 
 strength of words. 
 
 III. So, too, when he has to notice other faults, 
 resulting from the intense pride and worldliness of 
 the Hebrew race, he does not argue, but simply 
 points out what are the duties of a Christian in his 
 own calm way, and with that simplicity of definition 
 which results from the transparent simplicity of his 
 own mind, and which gives to many passages in his 
 Epistle a concentrated force not surpassed by any- 
 thing in all the other Epistles. Even when he has 
 to remind the self-satisfied Jews that the faith in 
 which they trusted was not faith at all, but a mere 
 dead intellectual formality, he still writes in the 
 same unimpassioned, paternal tone, recalling, if it 
 may be said with reverence, the manner in which 
 Jesus Himself taught His disciples. 
 
 IV. Apart, however, from the circumstance that 
 this Epistle was specially addressed to the believers 
 of Hebrew origin, there is no reason for thinking 
 that its warnings were not applicable, though per- 
 haps less generally, to the Christians of Gentile birth. 
 The infirmities which led to the corruptions here 
 condemned are too deeply seated in human nature 
 to make it credible that the poor Gentile Christians 
 were not as often neglected and looked down upon 
 by their wealthier brethren as were the Jewish 
 believers themselves. Nothing, too, that St. James 
 
143 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 here condemns was more scandalous than the dis- 
 tinctions between rich and poor in the celebration of 
 the Lord's Supper, which St. Paul denounces in the 
 Corinthian believers, without drawing any contrast 
 between the Jewish and the Gentile sections of the 
 Church. 
 
 So, too, it is only because men are men that they 
 are prone to rest satisfied with their religious creed 
 or faith, however dead it is and unproductive of love 
 and all good works. The Epistle of St. James is, 
 in fact, applicable to every age and to the wealthy 
 believers of every race. The unpleasant truths 
 which it quietly sets forth are echoed in the secret 
 consciences of so many persons making loud profes- 
 sions of religious zeal, that we can hardly be surprised 
 when its value is depreciated by a class of critics 
 who understand neither St. Paul nor St. James. 
 
 V. Regarded as a means for estimating the 
 character of St. James himself, the Epistle, short as 
 it is, furnishes a picture of a noble, saintly nature, 
 strong in its loving faith, patient under persecution, 
 and habitually looking for the return of the Master 
 to this world in His glory. It is a beautiful picture ; 
 not, perhaps, kindling in us the same personal sym- 
 pathy which St. Paul's letters awaken, but moving our 
 hearts with a very real affection. It is interesting, 
 too, to remember that St. James was the only one of 
 the apostles, besides St. Peter, with whom St. Paul 
 had an}^ conversation when he went up to Jerusalem 
 after his conversion (Galatians i. 19). And we can 
 
THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 143 
 
 understand the soothing influence of his devout and 
 simple nature upon the ardent young convert. When 
 St. James wrote his Epistle, many years had gone 
 by since that first meeting at Jerusalem, and St. 
 Paul was now on the eve of martyrdom. But they 
 had spent their lives in the service of the same 
 Master ; and now, though eighteen centuries have 
 passed away, they still live by their writings in our 
 grateful memories. They themselves are in their 
 eternal homes. 
 
144 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF ST. PETER. 
 
 I. The Epistles of St. Peter do not supply many 
 details of the life of the apostolic Churches, but they 
 deepen our perception of the extent to which the 
 individual personality of each apostle is reflected in 
 the letters that he wrote. In this way they add 
 distinctness to our conceptions of the actual existence 
 of the Christians of the time, which would be very 
 imperfect if we had nothing more than a kind of 
 shadowy vision of the teachers who lived among 
 them, or from time to time addressed to them those 
 communications which have come down to our- 
 selves. 
 
 The value of the New Testament Epistles in 
 thus enabling us to understand the peculiar characters 
 of their writers cannot easily be overstated. The 
 men to whom Jesus Christ committed the work of 
 propagating His religion were not mere unintelligent 
 instruments, giving forth sounds like a trumpet when 
 it is played upon. They were as unlike one another 
 as they could well be. When, by the teaching of 
 
THE EPISTLES OF ST. PETER. 145 
 
 Jesus and the operation of an inward spiritual power, 
 they became new men, both in their behefs and in 
 the motives which swayed their conduct, their original 
 intellectual and emotional natures remained the 
 same as before, and they exhibited the same varieties 
 of type, as living men, as are exhibited by devout 
 persons to-day. 
 
 All this is so obvious, when plainly stated, that 
 it seems unnecessary to insist upon it. But it is 
 not so. No book has suffered more than the New 
 Testament from being read as a collection of docu- 
 ments rather than as the record of the lives, the 
 beliefs, and the sufferings of human beings in all 
 things like ourselves. Thus, too, its extraordinary 
 value as a practical guide has been obscured ; and 
 people go about with it in their possession, almost 
 as unconscious of its hidden energy as a child, play- 
 ing in the fields of Golconda, who picks up an un- 
 polished diamond, and, taking it for a common stone, 
 tosses it backwards and forwards in a game with his 
 companions. 
 
 II. Another consequence of this general forget- 
 fulness of the differences of character in the writers 
 of the Epistles is, that we are thus led to overlook 
 the conclusions to be drawn from the absolute 
 identity of the doctrines they teach and the morality 
 they inculcate. This unanimity becomes the more 
 striking, the more their letters are examined in 
 connection with the individuality of the writers 
 themselves. 
 
146 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 Occasionally, for want of recollection of these 
 facts, issues have been raised, and controversies 
 have raged, which, but for the seriousness of the 
 questions involved, would be almost ludicrous. 
 Such, for instance, is the contrast which has been 
 drawn between the teaching of St. Paul and St. 
 James on the subject of justification by faith, while 
 in reality their teachings are identical. 
 
 III. Regarded, then, as a contribution to our 
 knowledge of St. Peter's own character, these two 
 Epistles seem to be precisely what we should have 
 expected from the apostle whose virtues and whose 
 failings appear so distinctly in the Gospel narratives. 
 From the day when he was first called to leave his 
 occupation as a fisherman and become a fisher of 
 men, up to the moment when the eyes of the 
 Master whom he had just denied were turned upon 
 him in sad reproach, bringing him to instant and 
 bitter repentance, the Gospels place before us a 
 bold, vigorous, warm-hearted, impulsive nature ; 
 manly, self-reliant, and courageous, notwithstanding 
 his one terrible experience of the truth of the teach- 
 ing that pride goes before a fall. 
 
 Just such he appears in his two Epistles. As 
 compositions, they have no pretensions to polish of 
 style ; but they are forcible and straightforward, 
 abounding in sentences which linger in the memory 
 and touch the feelings. Being written about a.d. 64, 
 when the persecutions of the Christians were on the 
 increase, St. Peter s special aim is to encourage and 
 
THE EPISTLES OF ST. PETER. 147 
 
 instruct the believers in their trials. And he does 
 this with his characteristic fervour, and with all 
 those unaffected expressions of love for his Master 
 and confidence in His power and goodness which 
 we should expect from the living Peter of the 
 Gospels, converted from his old Jewish exclusive- 
 ness by a special vision from heaven. 
 
 He says but little of himself personally, just 
 mentioning that he held the office of a deacon, when 
 he is pointing out to deacons in general the duties 
 which their office involved. The most important 
 passage of a personal nature is that in which he 
 refers to the letters of St. Paul, with many of which, 
 if not with all of them, he was evidently acquainted. 
 He calls him his beloved brother, and adds that in 
 his letters there were some things hard to under- 
 stand, which ignorant and unstable persons per- 
 verted to their own injury. Whether he meant that 
 his brother apostle's methods of reasoning were 
 such as he himself found it difficult to enter into, 
 or whether he only thought them difficult to ignorant 
 and unstable minds, we can well imagine that he did 
 not always follow their subtle and profound lines of 
 argfument without an effort. He was born and bred 
 a fisherman ; and though both he and the accom- 
 plished scholar whom God had made the apostle 
 of the Gentiles preached the same gospel, their 
 methods of teaching were different. 
 
 Now and then, it is true, there is almost a verbal 
 similarity between the expressions used by the two 
 
148 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 writers. St. Peter's reference to the foreknowledge 
 and election of God, which had made the believers 
 what they were, is almost in its very words identical 
 with St. Paul's references to the same doctrine. 
 Another agreement is to be noticed in their way of 
 treating a subject of a very simple kind. Both of 
 them censure the prevailing fondness of many of the 
 women for luxury in dress, especially mentioning 
 the elaborate dressing of the hair and the wearing 
 of jewellery as unbecoming the modesty and sim- 
 plicity of persons who were the followers of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 IV. There is not much difficulty in determining 
 the meaning of the term " strangers," to whom these 
 two Epistles are addressed. St. Peter calls them 
 the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, 
 Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia — meaning, no doubt, 
 the converted Jews who had settled in Asia Minor, 
 under the stress of persecution in their own country. 
 Some error, however, has crept into the enumeration 
 of the countries specified, which are all of them 
 provinces of Asia Minor, while there is no district 
 known as " Asia." Possibly this word was sub- 
 stituted for Thracia, in the course of the various 
 copyings which the original manuscript underwent 
 as time wore on. 
 
 However this may be, those Asiatic converted 
 Jews seem, in St. Peter's judgment, to have felt 
 keenly the persecutions they had to endure, besides 
 the ordinary trials and temptations which beset those 
 
THE EPISTLES OF ST. PETER. 149 
 
 who Strive to live up to a Christian standard in this 
 weary world. Like the various Churches addressed 
 by St. Paul, they found in the conviction that they 
 were the elect of God, not a pretext for sin, but an 
 incentive to a pious life. 
 
 And thus, though these two Epistles do not add 
 materially to the details of the early Christian life, 
 they deepen our conviction of the contrast between 
 the realities of ancient times and those of our own. 
 It was one thing to be a Christian in the days of 
 St. Peter and St. Paul ; it is quite another thing to 
 be a Christian in our own days. For myself, I 
 suppose that I only express the feelings of most 
 people, when I say that I think it is easier, on the 
 whole, to be a good Christian to-day than it was in 
 those primitive times, even though the believers 
 had the advantage of the personal guidance of the 
 apostles. 
 
 At the same time, we are entitled to claim kinship 
 with those noble souls, men and women who kept 
 the faith amidst trials from which our more timid 
 natures shrink, even in thought. And with these 
 feelings in our mind, we conclude our examination 
 of St. Peter's exhortations to the faithful of his day, 
 by once more reading what St. John says of him 
 at the end of his Gospel. Surely, in the sacred 
 narratives there are not many things more full of 
 pathos than the words in which the risen Lord 
 foretells to His devoted and penitent servant by what 
 death he should glorify God. And as we read the 
 
ISO THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 narrative, in our silent hearts we repeat the adoring 
 cry of the Te Deiim, " Te martyrum candidatus 
 laudat exercitus." In all that white-robed army of 
 martyrs, what voice is now sweeter in the ears of 
 the glorified Jesus than that of the repentant saint 
 on whom He cast that look of sad reproach in the 
 hour of His humiliation and death ? 
 
( 151 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. 
 
 I. As we finish the concluding sentences of the first 
 of these Epistles, our thoughts recall the interior of 
 a large upper chamber in Jerusalem, and all that 
 there took place on the evening of the Passover, 
 thirty-five years before this Epistle was written. 
 We see a table, showing that the Passover supper 
 is nearly ended. At the table are placed twelve 
 men, all but one with grave and thoughtful coun- 
 tenances, attentive to every word that falls from 
 their Master, as He speaks of His approaching 
 death. One of their number, who is placed next to 
 Him, and even leans upon His breast, watches Him 
 with an indescribable look of lovine tenderness. 
 
 Several hours have passed away, and the Master 
 is dying in agony upon a cross on Mount Calvary. 
 Before He dies, He utters a few occasional words, 
 for even in His anguish His thoughts are in heaven 
 as well as upon earth ; and among these last words 
 are those addressed to His mother Mary, who stands 
 by His cross with breaking heart, and to the disciple 
 
152 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 who leaned on His breast at the supper, and who 
 now stands before Him, by His mother's side. To 
 that beloved disciple He commits the care of His 
 mother ; and, when all is over, the disciple takes her 
 to his own home. 
 
 n. The Epistles of St. John are the natural 
 utterances of this beloved disciple. The thirty-five 
 years that have passed since the voice of Jesus 
 sounded in his ears have not clouded his memory or 
 chilled his heart. He is still the disciple whom 
 Jesus loved, only now he is an old man, with all the 
 fruits of a long experience of all the perversities and 
 weaknesses of human nature in those to whom he 
 has taught the gospel of his Master. And now, 
 before the infirmities of age have at last enfeebled 
 him, he writes these letters as his offering to the 
 followers of the Master who has given him this long 
 life to be spent in His service. 
 
 As a contribution to our knowledge of the life of 
 the apostolic Christians, St. John's Epistles must be 
 taken in connection with his accounts of the con- 
 dition of the seven Churches in Asia Minor, which 
 are given in the opening chapters of the Apocalypse, 
 in which St. John records the visions which he saw in 
 the island of Patmos. However obscure are many 
 parts of these revelations of the future destiny of 
 the Church and the world, there is no difficulty in 
 understanding the warnings addressed to the seven 
 Churches. Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, 
 Philadelphia, Sardis, and Laodicea stand out dis- 
 
THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. 153 
 
 tinctly before us, as they appeared to St. John 
 himself; and their characteristic virtues and faults 
 must be regarded as proofs of the extent to which 
 they had obeyed or neglected the teaching of St. 
 John's Epistles. 
 
 It is evident that in most of these communities 
 there was a tendency to fall away before the subtle 
 insinuations of speculative reasoners who were not 
 content simply to adore Jesus as God. In this 
 respect the Asiatic Churches seem to have been 
 more disposed to go astray than the generality of 
 the communities of Christian believers. At the 
 same time, it is to be remembered that we have no 
 account of the condition of the Churches to whom 
 St. Paul wrote, subsequent to his letters to Timothy 
 and Titus, which only give us an insight into the 
 affairs of Ephesus and Crete. 
 
 To the beloved disciple, who had leaned upon 
 the breast of Him whom he worshipped as God 
 manifest in the flesh, any speculations that tended 
 to obscure a simple belief in the reality of the In- 
 carnation must have been indescribably abhorrent, 
 and if anything could have embittered his own 
 loving nature it was this appearance of the delusion 
 which made men turn against the Divine Lord 
 whom he loved. These accounts of the seven 
 Churches further confirm the conclusion gathered 
 from many parts of St. Paul's Epistles as to the 
 tendency to licentiousness, so difficult to eradicate 
 from many of the believers, brought up in all the 
 
154 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 voluptuous self-indulgence of Asiatic heathenism. 
 In the people of Laodicea another characteristic is 
 severely censured. They seem to have given up 
 all serious care for either virtue or vice, and their 
 name has become proverbial for a lukewarmness, a 
 temper of mind which the speaker in the Apocalyptic 
 vision condemns with an unsparing rigour, incom- 
 prehensible to those who do not know the hopeless- 
 ness of attempting to move those who are neither 
 cold nor hot, but merely indifferent, in any cause, 
 however good and great. 
 
( 155 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE EPISTLE OF JUDE. 
 
 The general impression that we derive from this 
 brief but vigorously-expressed letter, is in many 
 respects the same as that which is produced by the 
 Epistles of St. John and the warnings addressed to 
 the seven Churches of Asia Minor in the Apocalypse. 
 It was written about the same time as St. John's 
 Epistles, and must be regarded as practically illus- 
 trating the chief faults of the time. The difference 
 between the characters of the two writers is very 
 evident, but in both of them we observe a keen 
 sense of the dangers, both to faith and morals, which 
 beset the believers to whom they wrote. The burden 
 of the EjDistle of Jude is the inevitable punishment 
 which follows a falling-away from the gospel, as 
 first received by those who embrace it. How far 
 these strictures are to be taken as implying any 
 extensive changes in the beliefs and lives of the 
 apostolic Churches generally, it is not easy to 
 determine. Probably the Epistle represents the 
 zeal and the fears of the writer's heart, rather than 
 
156 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 his deliberate judgment as to actual facts. The 
 severity of its tone certainly does not prepare us for 
 the heroic constancy displayed by the Christians of 
 the day, when the great persecution under Nero 
 tried their faithfulness to the utmost. And the chief 
 inference to be drawn from the Epistle is the pro- 
 found reality of the struggle that went on in the 
 minds of the believers, resulting in the defection of 
 the few, and the triumphant victory of the many, 
 over the most subtle of snares and the most terrible 
 of deaths. 
 
( 157 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 I. The history of the apostoHc Church, as gathered 
 from the materials suppHed by the Epistles in the 
 New Testament, extends over a period of about 
 sixteen years. We are thus in possession of abundant 
 information concerning the details of the life of the 
 various Christian Churches from a.d. 52, when 
 the first Epistle to the Thessalonians was written, 
 down to the beginning of the great persecution 
 under Nero. 
 
 Practically, this Christian life was almost con- 
 fined to Greece, Palestine, Asia Minor, a few islands 
 in the Mediterranean, and, in Italy, to Rome. A 
 glance at the map of the world, as known to the 
 ancients, shows how small was the region, judged 
 by mere size, to which Christianity had penetrated 
 during the first thirty-five years after the death of 
 its Divine Founder. But in the conquests it had 
 thus made it had captured the very heart and head 
 of the human race. With the exception of those 
 districts in the farther East, where, in the cradle of 
 
158 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 the great Aryan, afterwards the Indo-Germanic 
 race, Brahmanism and Buddhism held undisputed 
 sway, the rehgion of the cross had been planted in 
 the chief centres of civilization, and the temples of 
 mythological deities were rocking to their founda- 
 tions. Everywhere, in the midst of wondering and 
 hostile populations, crowds of men and women were 
 living, looking like other men and women, and 
 following the same callings as their fellow-citizens, 
 but assertinof that the Son of a virofin mother, born 
 in an obscure town in Judsea, and crucified at the 
 instigation of his fellow-countrymen, was the Son of 
 the one only true God, and would one day return to 
 reward those who believed in Him. 
 
 To their heathen neighbours these Christians 
 seemed all very much like one another, and pos- 
 sessed with one incomprehensible fanaticism ; but 
 yet in many respects their separate communities 
 differed not a little. Still, as Christians, they were 
 all agreed in certain characteristic beliefs, some of 
 which would have been peculiarly odious to their 
 heathen neighbours, even if correctly understood ; 
 and which, being only imperfectly comprehended, 
 did make them formidable in the eyes of those 
 who watched them with mingled jealousy and fear. 
 
 II. Of these universal Christian beliefs, none 
 was more intolerable to the heathen world than the 
 conviction that each local Church was an integral 
 portion of one vast spiritual kingdom, governed by 
 its own laws, and ruled over by the risen and 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 159 
 
 glorified Jesus. Of this fundamental element in the 
 faith of the apostolic Christians, the heathen could 
 only master the conception that the Church was a 
 powerful kingdom, and therefore to be dreaded. It 
 was nothing to them that it had none of the externals 
 of royalty, none of the pomp and magnificence and 
 the emblems of power which they saw in the sove- 
 reignty of the Caesars. To them the Christian was 
 not a mere dreaming fanatic, a sort of peevish 
 puritan, who would take no part in drunken revels 
 or licentious pleasures of any kind. He was a 
 revolutionist, a disturber of society ; he was not 
 onlya disagreeable, he was a dangerous man. 
 
 To the unconverted Jews this belief in a universal 
 spiritual kingdom was as odious as it was to the 
 idolatrous Gentile. The Christian was in their eyes 
 a marked man wherever he was found. As he went 
 about his private affairs, he was the living embodi- 
 ment of a denial of the Jewish aspirations after a 
 temporal Messiah. Every word that he uttered 
 concerning the glories of the heavenly Jerusalem 
 was equivalent to an assertion that the Jewish ex- 
 pectations of a triumphant Jerusalem, rich, glorious, 
 and free, were doomed to disappointment ; and the 
 Jew therefore hated the Christian with a bitterness 
 all his own. 
 
 This universal aversion of Jews and heathens 
 was further intensified by the expectation of the 
 return of Jesus to this visible world which was 
 general in the apostolic Church. That he would 
 
i6o THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 certainly thus return, perhaps in a few years, was 
 undoubtedly the conviction of the Christians who 
 were taught by St. Paul and the other writers of the 
 Epistles. Jew and Gentile could alike understand 
 what the Christian meant when he stated his ex- 
 pectation that perhaps before a year was over the 
 Son of Mary, who had been crucified in Judaea, 
 might appear and take possession of the world, with 
 all His saints about Him. Here was an announce- 
 ment which appealed to the senses of the non- 
 Christian inhabitants of every town and village where 
 Christians were to be found. It is, therefore, no 
 riiatter of surprise when we find, as time wore on, 
 that however the Christians were tolerated in the 
 apostolic period, they were surrounded by latent 
 feelings of hostility, which quickly broke out into 
 a flame when excited by any fresh stimulus to 
 popular passion. 
 
 There was no difficulty, again, in knowing who 
 were Christians and who were not. The Church 
 which the Christians believed in was a visible 
 Church. The theory that has been invented in 
 modern times, which regards the Church of Christ 
 as made up of pious souls, bound together in an 
 invisible union, was unknown in the apostolic 
 Church itself. People, it was universally held, were 
 made Christians by being baptized, when they 
 received that special gift of the Holy Ghost which 
 enabled them to fulfil the law of God. Every one, 
 therefore, in Corinth, or Rome, or Ephesus, knew 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH. i6i 
 
 who were Christians as well as they knew who were 
 Jews and who were worshippers of Venus or 
 Diana. There might be bad Christians, as well as 
 good Christians ; and we cannot doubt that those 
 who showed themselves false to their faith by in- 
 dulging in gross sin, excited far more contempt than 
 sympathy in their unbelieving neighbours. 
 
 One other element in the belief of the Christians 
 of those days was of a more secret nature, but, 
 whenever it came to the ears of their unconverted 
 companions, aggravated not a little the dislike 
 already entertained towards the followers of Jesus. 
 This was their belief that it was by the election of 
 God, and by His free grace, that they had been 
 chosen out of a sinful and miserable world, to be 
 His saints upon earth, and the inheritors of eternal 
 life. Even when stated with the utmost humility 
 and charity towards all men, this doctrine is apt to 
 create irritation in many minds amongst ourselves. 
 What, then, must have been its effect on the un- 
 believing Jews and pagans, already sufficiently dis- 
 posed to denounce the arrogance of these insolent 
 Christians ? It was nothing to them that the 
 Christians held that predestination to eternal happi- 
 ness involved a predestination to a life of holiness, 
 after the pattern set by Jesus Christ Himself, and 
 that those who were not made holy were not of the 
 number of the elect. It was enough to arouse 
 the anger of Jew and Gentile, to hear these 
 Christians professing themselves the elect of God, 
 
1 62 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 according to His eternal foreknowledge and omnipo- 
 tent will. 
 
 The anger aroused by this doctrine of election 
 was further intensified when it was remarked that 
 those who held it were for the most part persons in 
 a humble social position. Some of them were rich 
 and well dressed, and patrician in their family con- 
 nections. Not so the greater number of those men 
 and women who pretended to be the salt of the 
 earth. The Christians, as a body, were a plebeian 
 race, and their spiritual arrogance was all the more 
 intolerable. 
 
 And yet they gained ground in an inexplicable 
 manner. Wherever the wealthy Greek or Jew 
 travelled, in Asia, or Greece, or on the shores of the 
 Mediterranean, he found adherents of the new sect 
 quietly and firmly settled. They were often thriving 
 people, as they attended to their own affairs, 
 quarrelled with nobody, and wasted nothing in 
 riotous living. They associated chiefly with one 
 another, and had their own meetings for religious 
 worship. But they would take no part in the 
 religious ceremonies of paganism, and would not 
 even eat anything which they knew to have been 
 laid^ upon an idol's altar. It was useless to argue 
 with them, or to remind them that wise men among 
 the pagans conformed to the national religious 
 customs, though they derided the popular belief in 
 gods and goddesses. These obstinate people, who 
 were mechanics, or shopkeepers, or even fishermen, 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 163 
 
 accounted themselves wiser than their betters, and 
 they deserved all the social and judicial annoyances 
 to which they were subjected. 
 
 III. Nor did the Christians find more favour 
 with the speculative theorists who called themselves 
 philosophers. The stern and self-repressing fol- 
 lower of Zeno, the pleasure-loving disciple of 
 Epicurus, and the thoughtful, critical Aristotelian, 
 agreed in regarding Christianity as a mean and 
 contemptible superstition. Such theorists were 
 found everywhere in the chief centres of civilization. 
 Not only in intellectual Athens and voluptuous 
 Corinth, but in masterful Rome, and wherever the 
 characteristic Roman intellect made itself felt, those 
 philosophic systems had their adherents. For the 
 Roman intelligence, enlightened by Greek culture, 
 was now in its most energetic activity. Its literary 
 power betrayed but few signs of decay, though the 
 golden age of Augustus was passed. Its artistic 
 faculty was at its highest, as was shown by the 
 multitude of marble statues in the public buildings 
 and private houses of Rome. The architectural 
 gifts of the Romans were great, and they left behind 
 them many masterpieces worthy of the conquerors 
 of the world. They had learned from the Etrurians 
 the use of the arch, unknown to the Greeks, as a 
 principle of construction, suited to the vastness of 
 their own designs, and they had invented a new 
 order of architecture, the Composite ; not, it is true, 
 very pure or satisfying, but exhibiting their power 
 
i64 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 of assimilating and combining the thoughts of other 
 men. 
 
 Thus, in the full activity of his intellect, the 
 Roman conqueror and colonizer often adopted some 
 one of the philosophic systems to which the genius 
 of Greece had given birth, and applied it to practical 
 purposes with all his own rough and daring energy. 
 And thus it was that the Christians of the Apostolic 
 period constantly found themselves confronted by an 
 enemy very unlike the coarse and vulgar mob of 
 illiterate and unconverted Jews and Gentiles. 
 
 This enemy, too, was all the more dangerous an 
 opponent to the progress of the gospel, because it 
 exercised a material influence on the weaker and 
 more superficial minds among the Christians them- 
 selves. Its attacks were for the most part not 
 - directed against the details of Christian morals, 
 which were in many respects akin to the teachings 
 of the Stoics and the Aristotelians. It was the 
 elementary conception of a religion based on the 
 humiliation of Jesus which excited the ridicule of 
 the philosophers, and in many places bewildered the 
 believers, even where it did not seduce them to 
 absolute unbelief. 
 
 How this came about it is easy to understand, if 
 we judge by our own present experience of the 
 effects of philosophic theories in predisposing people's 
 minds against the obvious meanings of St. Paul's 
 writing's in the New Testament. It is true that 
 we have adopted a new phraseology of our own. 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 165 
 
 Nobody cares now for the speculative philosophies 
 of ancient Greece. People would as soon regulate 
 their eating- of beans by the teaching of Pythagoras 
 as deliberately modify their interpretation of the 
 Bible by studying the Dialogues of Plato or the 
 " Memorabilia " of Xenophon. Our present oracle 
 calls itself science, especially physical science, or 
 physiology — excellent subjects of knowledge in 
 themselves, though by no means equivalent to that 
 knowledge of God and the invisible world which 
 Christianity unfolds. And it is only necessary to 
 observe the widespread influence of certain scientific 
 theories at this very day to enable us to realize the 
 bewildering philosophic sneers upon the humble but 
 quickly receptive members of the Church of the 
 apostles. 
 
 Placed thus in the midst of a hostile society, the 
 internal affairs of the apostolic Christians were in 
 various respects singularly unlike anything we are 
 accustomed to. Of these, one of the most important 
 was the absence of those documents which go by 
 the name of creeds. The simplest and earliest of 
 these summaries of belief, known as the Apostles' 
 Creed, was not yet in existence. The faith of the 
 believers rested entirely on what had been taught 
 them by the apostles themselves and their com- 
 panions in the work of conversion, and it was to the 
 enforcement and explanation of the doctrines thus 
 originally taught, that St. Paul's and the other 
 Epistles were mainly directed. As time went on, 
 
i66 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 things changed in this respect, but during the 
 apostolic period no one, either teacher or learner, 
 had formed any conception of a formal dogmatic 
 statement of Christian truths such as was drawn up 
 nearly three centuries later at the Council of Nice. 
 Thus, if the believers were left without any condensed 
 summary of Christian doctrines like the Nicene 
 Creed, still less had they any idea of such a document 
 as that which is known as the Athanasian Creed, 
 which is essentially of an argumentative character, 
 discussing the doctrines of Christianity from a 
 controversial point of view. Indeed, if we wish to 
 rea:lize to the full the difference between the 
 intellectual life of the apostolic Christians and that 
 of a later period, it is only necessary to compare 
 St. Paul's method of teaching controversial subjects, 
 as in the Epistles to the Romans and the Corinthians, 
 with the method adopted by the author of the Atha- 
 nasian Creed in expounding the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation. 
 
 Nowadays, it is almost impossible to contemplate 
 religious doctrines in the manner in which the early 
 Christians contemplated them. We see them under 
 the lurid light of theological controversy. No one 
 can escape its effects. The most ignorant and un- 
 educated are affected by the prevailing influence, for 
 those who teach them are themselves the product of 
 an age unlike anything that has gone before it. No 
 matter what religious communion a man belongs to, 
 the teachers in that communion have been made 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 167 
 
 what they are by successive generations of con- 
 troversy. For more educated people, it is an age 
 of discussions, of newspapers, of magazines, and of 
 pubhc meetings ; an age not of enthusiasm, but of 
 restlessness, which satisfies its feeble ardours by 
 setting up innumerable societies and collecting 
 subscriptions, all duly advertised in influential 
 periodicals. 
 
 IV. Compared with this artificial religious life 
 in which we are now involved, the method by which 
 the apostolic Churches first learned the doctrines of 
 Christianity was simplicity itself, and can with 
 difficulty be understood by minds educated like our 
 own. The believers owed all their knowledge to 
 the occasional visits of an apostle, and rarely were 
 personally instructed by any one else. The older 
 believers, of course, instructed the younger ; and 
 conversions often followed from the conversations of 
 Christians with their unbelieving friends and neigh- 
 bours. But, both in general outlines and in details, 
 all Christian doctrine was taught by word of mouth, 
 by St. Paul, or his companions, or one of the other 
 apostles. 
 
 Much of this instruction was given in conversation 
 and private intercourse ; but the chief method seems 
 to have taken the form of addresses to gatherings of 
 the believers, more or less numerous, corresponding 
 to what we now call preaching, or what perhaps 
 might be termed catechetical instruction, only that 
 there were no such things as catechisms, or any 
 
i68 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 similar convenient summaries of definite religious 
 doctrines. 
 
 V. What was St. Paul's manner, and that of 
 the other apostles, when they spoke to an assembly, 
 may be understood from their manner in the Epistles. 
 It must have been destitute of all elaborate formality ; 
 discursive in arrangement — probably with little or 
 no arrangement at all ; full of substantial thought 
 and meaning, though, of course, not condensed into 
 a comparatively few sentences, as is the instruction 
 given in the Epistles ; varying according to the 
 characteristic personality of each apostle, but never 
 for a moment degenerating into those vices of 
 wordiness and rhetorical amplification with which 
 modern oratory has made us so painfully familiar. 
 
 That St. Paul's preaching was wonderfully 
 forcible, we have every reason to believe ; but it is 
 equally certain that religious doctrines were pre- 
 sented by him to his hearers in a more simply 
 practical form than is now possible, when discussion 
 and controversy have moulded Christian truths into 
 crystallized forms of words, in which every speaker 
 and writer has to express his own thoughts. 
 
 VI. No element, however, in the early Christian 
 life is so strange to our eyes as the conflict, nearly 
 universal, between the believers of Hebrew origin 
 and those who had been brought up as Gentiles. I 
 call it a conflict, for the word is not too strong for 
 the feelings of exasperation and dread produced 
 by the persistent efforts of the Jewish party to 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 169 
 
 enforce the observance of the whole Mosaic law, 
 including the rite of circumcision, upon all Gentile 
 Christians. In our eyes the conflict has lost all 
 practical interest, and we may be disposed to regard 
 it as a mere quarrel, such as might be expected from 
 an ill-educated and unspiritual generation. Any 
 such conclusion, however, is inconsistent with a 
 recollection of that conception of the gospel which 
 was presented by St. Paul and the other apostles 
 to the universal Church. Yet certainly, at first 
 sight, the conflict was an amazing one, and the 
 modern reader may be pardoned if he is bewildered 
 at the recollection, that by such a dispute the peace 
 and happiness of nearly the whole Church were dis- 
 turbed, and its very existence seemingly imperilled. 
 For the conflict raged almost everywhere. There 
 was scarcely a city or a village where the Gentile 
 believers were not agitated by these demands upon 
 their credulity, for the Jews themselves seemed to 
 be everywhere. Their national fondness for settling 
 wherever the Roman imperial administration made 
 it practicable had carried them to the- most important 
 cities of the empire ; and as these settlements 
 yielded many converts to Christianity, their position 
 in the infant Church was numerically important, 
 even when their number was not equal to that of 
 the Gentile believers. 
 
 To the Gentile believers themselves it was scant 
 consolation to see that the theory which harassed 
 them was put forward by their Jewish fellow-Chris- 
 
I70 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 tians from very questionable motives. The men 
 who tormented them might be proud and domineer- 
 ing ; but the difficuhy was, how to answer them. 
 The Gentile Christians had been tauo-ht to venerate 
 Moses as an inspired law-giver; and it was by 
 appealing to the Jewish Scriptures that the claim of 
 Jesus to be regarded as the Saviour of all men was 
 vindicated by St. Paul and the other apostles. 
 How, then, could they, brought up in the outer 
 world of heathenism, pretend to set up their opinions 
 against people who had been the special objects of 
 Divine favour ? What right had they to choose 
 for themselves certain portions of this holy Mosaic 
 system, and reject the rest ? However steadily 
 their common sense and secret convictions might 
 rebel against these pretensions, however keenly 
 they felt in their hearts that there was something 
 radically unsound in the Judaizing theory, they could 
 not put their convictions into logical shape, and 
 silence their tormentors while they satisfied them- 
 selves. 
 
 Then came the great apostle, himself a con- 
 verted Jew, and placed the whole case before them, 
 first in personal intercourse, and afterwards, as time 
 went on, in letters to different local communities 
 where the strife had been hottest. It was unneces- 
 sary, he showed them, to enter into any minute 
 examination of the details of the -Mosaic law, or to 
 divide it into its ritual and moral elements. It was 
 a mistake to imagine that men's obligations towards 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 171 
 
 God and towards one another depended upon the 
 ten commandments or any teaching of Moses. These 
 obligations always existed, and the object of the 
 Mosaic system was to serve as a schoolmaster to 
 bring mankind to Christ, by showing them that it 
 is impossible to serve God by our own unaided 
 strength. Every one who tries to keep the law 
 of God, and thus place himself in the position of one 
 who makes a bargain with his Maker, utterly fails. 
 Thus man learns the extremely difficult lesson of 
 his own helplessness, and comes to God in humility 
 and faith, asking for salvation from his sins as a free 
 gift. This God gives him in that spiritual presence 
 of the Holy Ghost, which it was the object of the 
 humiliation and death of Christ to procure. Thus 
 the moral law is not abolished, but fulfilled, and the 
 whole Mosaic law, as such, disappears from among 
 divinely constituted authorities. 
 
 Against this reasoning the Judaizing party could 
 make no head. Their influence seems to have died 
 away, and the whole Church, no longer torn by in- 
 ternal dissensions, was able to prepare in peace for 
 a life and death struggle with the ferocity of Roman 
 paganism. While Christianity had been winning 
 its triumphs in the chief seats of Grseco-Roman 
 cultivation, a specially brutalizing influence had been 
 steadily at work among the populace of the largest 
 and most thickly inhabited cities of the empire. The 
 whole population, indeed, was in process of deterio- 
 ration, from the imperial court downwards. Scarcely 
 
172 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 a trace was left of the old public spirit of the re- 
 public which had fought against Hannibal, and 
 against the hordes of northern barbarians. 
 
 VII. The general building of amphitheatres in 
 the chief cities of Italy was at once a cause and an 
 effect of this growth of national brutality. The 
 Coliseum at Rome, and the amphitheatre at Verona 
 show us how large were the sums expended on such 
 structures, and how popular were the exhibitions 
 for which they were designed. There the hired 
 gladiators fought with one another ; while a more 
 debasing practice can scarcely be conceived than 
 that which authorized the excited multitude to de- 
 termine, by a movement of their thumbs, whether 
 a vanquished and prostrate combatant should be 
 spared or instantly slaughtered by the victor in the 
 fight. 
 
 Thus was nourished in the populace that hideous 
 passion for the sight of blood and mortal suffering 
 which lies deep in the human heart, when degraded 
 to its lowest level, and thus was the Roman mob 
 prepared to delight in the horrible enjoyment pro- 
 vided for them by the Emperor Nero, when that 
 grotesque and licentious tyrant cast upon the 
 Christians the odium of setting fire to the city, 
 in order to turn away popular suspicion from him- 
 self. 
 
 Then came the deadly conflict, and the Christians 
 were found faithful. Day after day they heard the 
 cry of the bloodthirsty populace, " Christianos ad 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 173 
 
 leones ! " More appalling than the sword of the 
 gladiator was the rush of the savage lions, reserved 
 for such shows, that they might tear the limbs of 
 the faithful followers of Him who died upon the 
 cross ; and when each tragedy was over in the 
 bloodstained arena, the gratified multitude and their 
 rulers went back to their homes, eager for more 
 and more slaughter, and imagining that the cause 
 for which the martyrs died was for ever crushed 
 out. 
 
 The same generation witnessed the final extinc- 
 tion of the Jewish nation as a people claiming a 
 national independence. History tells us of no resist- 
 ance to an overwhelming force more heroic than 
 that of the Jews to their imperial conqueror. The 
 story of the sieges of Jotapata and Jerusalem, in all 
 their terrible details, places in the clearest light not 
 merely the horrors of all war, but the hereditary 
 tenacity of the Jewish race, and the force of the iron 
 hand of Rome, when it was stretched out to destroy 
 those whom it could not control. 
 
 Only one power could ever withstand that iron 
 hand, and that power was more than human. It 
 was the Church of the poor and humble, whose early 
 history, as it spread itself throughout the provinces 
 of the empire, I have attempted to sketch, conscious 
 at once of the greatness of the theme and the feeble- 
 ness with which my words have responded to Its 
 Inspiring power. 
 
 At the same time, the picture which I have here 
 
174 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 drawn, however faint its outlines, may be of use to 
 those of my readers who may be disposed to re- 
 examine the New Testament Epistles for themselves, 
 as a record of the life of the first century. The 
 intellect must be dull, and the sympathies cold 
 indeed, which are not moved by such a study, and 
 transported from the dreary troubles of to-day to a 
 time when saints and apostles were living in the 
 world, and men and women died for Christ, instead 
 of disputing- about Him. 
 
 If such a study of the Epistles appears attractive 
 before it is undertaken, its prosecution has a charm 
 which must be felt to be understood. And who is 
 there amongst us who would not be the happier for 
 being enabled thus to realize a little better all the 
 truths that are implied in the doctrine of the Com- 
 munion of Saints ? Even those — how few they 
 are ! — who have nearly completed their lives with- 
 out being bruised and wounded in the struggle with 
 doubts and temptations, cannot altogether escape 
 the paralyzing influence of those strange complica- 
 tions of good and evil, of knowledge and ignorance, 
 of sincerity and worldliness, which mark the age in 
 which our lot is cast. 
 
 For every one, then, who is not hopelessly 
 indifferent or prosaic, it is no small gain to be able 
 to live over again, in thought, the days long gone 
 by. For after all, in the things that concern eternity, 
 a thousand years are as one day ; and the records of 
 the life of the apostles and those who knew them 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 175 
 
 are like the story of what happened among our own 
 friends and kindred only yesterday. 
 
 VIII. On some questions, indeed, which are of 
 no little interest to-day, the apostolic Epistles yield 
 little or no information. On the general organiza- 
 tion of the Christian Churches, or what is commonly 
 called Church government, we have to content 
 ourselves with noticing a few isolated facts ; impor- 
 tant in the way of suggestion, but that is all. Over 
 the communities to which St. Paul writes he exer- 
 cises absolute authority ; occasionally giving minute 
 and detailed directions on practical matters, and 
 taking it for granted that no one would dispute his 
 right to be obeyed. 
 
 From the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, it is 
 evident that the control of the affairs of each town 
 or district was vested in the hands of a single person. 
 To Timothy and Titus, as being charged respectively 
 with the control of the Churches in Ephesus and 
 Crete, St. Paul gives directions for the appointment 
 of these local chiefs or bishops, specifying carefully 
 the qualifications necessary for the office. Similar 
 qualifications are specified for the subordinate office 
 of deacon, apparently the same as that which is 
 spoken of by St. Peter under the term elder, when 
 he calls himself an elder, and exhorts the elders 
 generally to piety and zeal. 
 
 Of the rules by which the Christians conducted 
 their assemblies the Epistles give scarcely any indica- 
 tions. In writing to Timothy, St. Paul directs that 
 
176 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanks- 
 givings should be offered for all men ; and in 
 particular he names kings and persons in authority, 
 in order that every one might lead a quiet and 
 peaceable life. In writing to the Corinthians, he 
 reproves them for certain scandalous excesses in the 
 celebration of the Lord's Supper, one effect of which 
 was to make the poor man ashamed of his poverty. 
 St. James's reproof to the believers for the same 
 subservience to rich people in their assemblies 
 shows the strenofth of the abuse condemned, but 
 gives no information on the character of the religious 
 services of the time. 
 
 On one subject of great practical importance, the 
 silence of the Epistles is conclusive as to the instruc- 
 tion which the apostles gave to the infant Churches. 
 Not a word is said as to the attempt made by the 
 believers at Jerusalem to share their property with 
 one another, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.* 
 It is clear that the attempt practically failed ; though 
 it was a natural and praiseworthy effect of their 
 newly learnt feelings of universal brotherhood. The 
 believers speedily found that human feelings were 
 too strong for abstract theory ; and that then, as 
 now, not socialism, but individualism, was the only 
 possible basis of a healthy Christian life. 
 
 Such questions as these, however, may be set 
 aside, as of secondary importance, by the reader who 
 would enjoy the full benefit of the invigorating 
 * Acts ii. 44, 45. 
 
GENERAL CHARACTER OE APOSTOLIC CHURCH. I77 
 
 influence of the historical study of the New Testa- 
 ment Epistles. The historical spirit, being essentially 
 calm and unprejudiced, seeks for real information 
 only, and examines with judicial acuteness such 
 testimony as is accessible to the persevering inquirer. 
 And it is a grave mistake to imagine that this calm- 
 ness of judgment is incompatible with a deep sense 
 of the importance of the subject under investigation. 
 The very contrary is the case. The more momentous 
 are the issues involved, the more dispassionate ought 
 to be our investigations as to actual facts, and the 
 more constant our fear of inventinsf conclusions 
 which the real facts do not warrant. Only those 
 readers who study the Epistles in this strictly 
 historical spirit can yield themselves up to the fasci- 
 nation of the conclusions at which they arrive when 
 they find themselves in the living presence of their 
 brothers and sisters in the faith, who lived and died 
 for Christ eighteen hundred years ago. 
 
 Then, indeed, we may forget the present in our 
 sympathy with the past. We may realize in our 
 own case the three great truths which animated the 
 followers of Christ in the old days. We may live in 
 thought among them, and hear how they talked to 
 one another of the marvellous and inscrutable elec- 
 tion of God, which had made them possessors of the 
 Holy Ghost,* and taught them to look forward to 
 the return of Jesus to this world in His glory, when 
 they would once more be united to those whom they 
 * See chapters xix., xx., xxi. 
 
178 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 had loved and lost. This is the reward that may- 
 be expected by every honest Christian mind that is 
 wearied with this strange, unsatisfying life, and turns, 
 as the tired traveller drinks from the cool springs in 
 the hot desert, to the recollection of those who are 
 gone before. 
 
( 179 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 In the foregoing chapters it has been taken for 
 granted that the reader is already acquainted with 
 the theological and philosophical subjects of which 
 mention has been made in connection with the 
 details of St. Paul's Epistles and those of his brother 
 apostles. There are, however, a few subjects which 
 still give rise to so much controversy, and involve 
 principles of so wide a range, that they require a 
 somewhat fuller treatment than was convenient when 
 our attention was first called to them. 
 
 Such is the doctrine of the Millennium, or per- 
 sonal reign of Christ upon earth. That St. Paul 
 and the other apostles taught the Christians of their 
 day to look forward to the personal coming of Christ, 
 and not simply to expect to see Him in another life, is 
 as undeniable as that they taught them to believe In an 
 eternal future of happiness ; but the prophecies which 
 have given rise to expectations concerning the events 
 which are to follow upon earth after the return of 
 Christ are not touched upon In the apostolic Epistles. 
 
i8o THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 In almost all a^es of the Church many persons 
 have held that these prophecies show that Christ 
 will reign, with His saints, here on earth, for a 
 thousand years ; after which will come the second, 
 or general resurrection. Hence those who hold 
 these views are popularly termed Millenarians, or 
 Chiliasts, according to the corresponding Greek 
 numeral. From the Patristic period till to-day, 
 there have been two schools of opinion on the 
 question, represented by Lactantius and Jerome 
 among the Fathers. One of these schools holds 
 that during the Millennium Christ will reign at 
 Jerusalem ; and that the Jewish race, at length con- 
 verted to a belief in Him as the true Messiah, 
 will be restored to their ancient home. The other 
 school attributes to the prophecies in question a 
 spiritual meaning only, and sees in them a forecast 
 of the practical devotion to the glorified Jesus which 
 will distinguish all nations during the thousand years' 
 reign. 
 
 Both of these interpretations have attractions 
 for many minds ; for it is the case, that the more 
 obscure a prophecy is, the greater is the eagerness 
 of some persons to undertake its interpretation, and 
 the more positive they are that their own interpreta- 
 tion is correct. It is well if they do not accuse of 
 stupidity or perverseness all who cannot see with 
 their eyes and hear with their ears. 
 
 But whatever is the correct interpretation of the 
 prophecies in question, it is important to remember 
 
THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 that they have no bearing upon our knowledge of 
 the Hfe of the apostoHc Church, as unfolded to us 
 in the apostohc Epistles. Whatever St. Paul and 
 his brother apostles knew or believed respecting the 
 details of the life that would follow upon earth after 
 the return of Christ, they did not communicate 
 their knowledge to those to whom they wrote their 
 letters. 
 
 And I am the more anxious to call attention to 
 the fact, because, with the great majority of devout 
 minds, any suspicion that a cordial acceptance of St. 
 Paul's teaching necessarily leads to a belief in 
 Millenarianism, prevents them from deriving from 
 it that practical guidance which it is calculated to 
 afford. The result of a sympathetic study of the 
 life of the apostolic Church is not only, as I have 
 already pointed out, to enlarge our knowledge of 
 Christianity, and of the fortunes of humanity, but to 
 quicken our perception of the profound reality of 
 the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. Especially 
 it has that influence upon those of us whose lives 
 are darkened by the deaths of those with whose 
 lives everything that brightened existence was bound 
 up. With such persons the one question which they 
 are alw^ays asking themselves is this : How and 
 when shall we see again those who are gone ? And 
 when we recall the faith of the oldest days of the 
 Church, a new light brightens the gloom of this 
 world. We linger in the churchyards where lie the 
 remains of those who are gone from our sight, and 
 
1 82 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 as each sculptured cross or simple memorial kindles 
 afresh our thoughts of the relics, ever sacred to us, 
 which are hidden below, faith sees the heavens 
 opened, and One, fairer than the children of men, 
 returninof to the scene of His sorrows. And then 
 the graves give up their dead, and we look upon the 
 loved features once more ; the sweet voices speak 
 again ; and while we wait and watch, they are 
 already with Jesus. Then comes our own turn. We 
 know not how it comes about, but so it is. The 
 lono--looked-for moment has arrived. We are with 
 those whom we loved, and there is to be no separa- 
 tiort for ever. Love is to be thenceforth the source 
 of joy only, as it has hitherto been the source of 
 more pain than happiness ; and whatever is to be 
 the destiny of this visible world, we and the recovered 
 lost ones are together with the Lord. 
 
 But will all this take place in our lifetime ? it 
 is naturally asked. More than eighteen hundred 
 years have gone by since St. Paul wrote to the 
 Thessalonians that with hopes like these they should 
 comfort one another under the loss of those who 
 were dear to them, and yet Christ has not come. 
 Was St. Paul, then, mistaken ? That he himself 
 believed that Christ mio-ht return durinof his own 
 lifetime is certain. But what are we to think, now 
 that all these ages have gone by, and human society 
 has passed through stage after stage of development 
 and growth ? How can we regard the belief in the 
 second coming as a thing affecting our practical 
 
THE MILLENNIUM. 183 
 
 actions ? Is it not all a kind of beautiful dream, 
 which wise men will do well to set aside, while they 
 occupy themselves solely with the realities of death 
 and judgment ? 
 
 The reply to these natural questions is twofold. 
 In the first place, it is, of course, a matter of choice 
 for a good Christian whether or not he will occupy 
 himself with the thought of the visible return of our 
 Lord to this earth. But this I will say, that no 
 person can study the life of the apostolic Church 
 under the guidance of the apostolic Epistles, with 
 an honest desire to identify himself with that life as 
 a practical reality, and yet regard this expectation of 
 our Lord's return as merely a subject of interesting 
 speculation. Persons who thus regard it are out of 
 sympathy with their fellow-Christians of the old days 
 in a matter which affected the whole tone of their 
 daily lives. They may think themselves more 
 sensible and more enlightened by modern ideas 
 than those who share the faith and feelines of ancient 
 times in all their enthusiastic warmth, but I repeat 
 that they are Christians of a modernized type ; and 
 that the Thessalonians and other ancient Christians 
 would have accounted them very foolish, for all their 
 cautious criticisms. 
 
 In the second place, St. Paul and his brother 
 apostles invariably regarded the precise date of the 
 second advent as a thing which God had not made 
 known, and consequently, as furnishing no reason 
 for our ceasing to look for it, however long delayed. 
 
1 84 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 St. Paul and St. Peter themselves emphatically 
 taught that whenever Christ should really return 
 His coming would be unexpected, for He would 
 come " as a thief in the night " — a phrase which 
 makes it clear that, however obscure and enigmatical 
 are the warnings which St. Paul gave concerning 
 the previous manifestation of the great mystery of 
 iniquity, they were not designed to induce us to 
 relax for a single day our expectation that Christ 
 might be personally amongst us. The notion that 
 such an expectation cannot reasonably be a matter 
 of practical importance at the present day, would 
 have seemed absolutely absurd to the great apostle 
 of the Gentiles. When he himself, in one of his 
 last letters, exchanges his old expressions of expecta- 
 tion of Christ's coming for a simple statement that 
 he had a desire to depart and to be with Christ, it is 
 not because he was weary of waiting for Christ to 
 come ; it was not that " hope deferred, which 
 maketh the heart sick," that made him anxious for 
 death. He was worn out with his long and ex- 
 hausting labours for the good of other men ; and the 
 wonder is that he was not utterly worn out long 
 before. 
 
 The obscurity, again, of St. Paul's description of 
 the manifestation of the power of evil, which is to 
 precede the return of Christ, supplies no valid reason 
 for setting aside the thought of His possible return 
 in our own day. The obscurity is, indeed, very 
 great ; and it is deepened by the highly figurative 
 
THE MILLENNIUM. 1S5 
 
 character of the terms employed by St. Paul to 
 convey his meaning to the Thessalonians. How 
 far, in truth, he intended that they should under- 
 stand the full meaning of his words, may be a 
 matter of doubt. It Is very possible that, as In the 
 case of prophetic declarations in Scripture generally, 
 this prophecy was designed only to be thoroughly 
 understood after Its accomplishment. 
 
 In the mean time, it is precisely one of those 
 which have a special attraction for minds which 
 delight in interpreting the enigmatical, and In con- 
 verting prophecies Into weapons for discomfiting a 
 controversial adversary. St. Paul says that a 
 mystery of iniquity Is to be revealed, and that It 
 was already at work, but was hindered in its anti- 
 Christian triumphs by a certain opposing power, of 
 which no definite description is given, while its 
 ultimate disappearance from the struggle Is dis- 
 tinctly foretold. This mystery of iniquity is termed 
 the man of sin, who will exalt himself above all that 
 is called God, or Is worshipped ; even claiming to 
 be himself worshipped In the temple of God. As 
 to the exact date when this man of sin will attain 
 the climax of his atheistic power, St. Paul says 
 nothing ; but he declares that when this climax Is 
 reached, it will be accompanied by the falling away 
 of many persons. 
 
 This man of sin will also work many signs and 
 wonders, with the object of leading minds astray, 
 until he himself is at last swept away by the Divine 
 
1 86 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 vengeance. The whole picture is at once so full of 
 details, so strange and so suggestive, that while it 
 stimulates to the utmost our desire to know in what 
 degree it is applicable to real persons and events in 
 our own time, it leaves us in the dark when we 
 attempt any thorough and dispassionate investiga- 
 tion of its meaning. St. Paul's words imply that 
 the Thessalonians knew something of the character 
 of the power which at that time hindered the full 
 operation of the deceiving influences of the godless 
 mystery ; but that is all that can be gathered from 
 his brief words in the way of reliable guidance 
 towards the solution of the difficulty. 
 
 As to any complete and candid interpretation of 
 the whole prophecy, it appears to be impossible, 
 until the course of human events has unfolded itself, 
 aud new light is thrown upon the facts of history, 
 past and present. No interpretation that I have 
 ever heard of, or that I can invent for myself, corre- 
 sponds to the complete picture drawn by St. Paul, 
 and to the circumstances of human life, when 
 examined without prejudice or passion. I have 
 found no key which even seems likely to unlock the 
 secret, and I therefore accept the simple repeated 
 expressions in the Epistles which speak of the 
 coming of Christ, in their practical bearing, without 
 attempting anything more, confident that when the 
 time comes, all will in a moment be clear. 
 
 The whole difficulty in connection with the 
 second advent is, in truth, in harmony with the 
 
THE MILLENNIUM. 187 
 
 ascertained facts of human experience, whether in 
 connection with the Christian Scriptures, or inde- 
 pendent of them. It seems ahiiost a truism to say 
 that no one understands anything till some subse- 
 quently discovered fact reveals the interpretation of 
 the past. Yet all practical action would be impos- 
 sible, if we waited to understand any physical or 
 intellectual law before taking any steps which seem 
 to imply that we understand it. And thus, while a 
 scriptural prophecy is a sufficient guide to practical 
 action, it may remain obscure until light is thrown 
 upon it by that practical action itself. 
 
 Such is the course which St. Paul recommends 
 to the Thessalonians, and to the believers in general. 
 Do not speculate, he says in substance, but believe. 
 Expect the Lord to come at any time. His coming 
 will be preceded by lying wonders ; be, therefore, 
 always prepared for them also. But remember that 
 with God a thousand years are as one day, and one 
 day as a thousand years. It is for man to believe 
 and to obey ; and for God to understand and to 
 explain, only always in His own good time. Yet 
 to us it is permitted to pray constantly, " Thy 
 kingdom come ; even so. Lord Jesus, come quickly." 
 
1 88 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 PREDESTINATION AND FREE-WILL. 
 
 It is Impossible to examine the apostolical Epistles 
 with careful and unprejudicial attention, and yet 
 pass over these repeated references to the doctrine 
 of predestination and election. And It Is therefore 
 equally impossible to find ourselves in sympathy 
 with the apostolic Church In the tone of Its daily 
 life, as long as we regard this doctrine with a half- 
 hesitating fear or dislike, or take refuge In an 
 arbitrary Interpretation of the expressions used by 
 St. Paul and his brother apostles. It would be an 
 intelligible course to close our eyes altogether to 
 the subject, as being too difficult for an ordinary 
 man's understanding — this, I say, would be in- 
 telligible, and quite consistent with a humble faith 
 and a reasonable performance of daily duties. 
 
 But such a course is not recommended for 
 general adoption by the writers of the Epistles 
 themselves. They unanimously refer to this doctrine 
 as an elementary part of a Christian's belief, and 
 are unconscious of its unsultableness for ordinary 
 
PREDESTINATION AND FREE-WILL. 1S9 
 
 understandings. The grave and even appalling 
 aspect which it assumes in the minds of many 
 devout persons to-day, was certainly not present 
 to the judgment of St. Paul and the other early 
 teachers of the gospel. And we must therefore 
 conclude that we are mistaken, when we turn away 
 from the subject as unpractical, or as fit for investi- 
 gation only by intellects of unusual subtlety and 
 logical power. 
 
 In recommendinor the honest and courageous 
 adoption of the apostolic teaching to the general 
 reader, I should at once admit that as a matter of 
 mere intellectual speculation the whole subject is, 
 without doubt, unsuited to the capacities of ordinary 
 persons. It leads directly into those profoundly 
 difficult metaphysical inquiries which are, for obvious 
 reasons, as unprofitable as inquiries into the nature 
 of the forces by which the earth and the heavens 
 were brought into their present condition. For 
 ordinary thinkers to attempt the solution of the old 
 difficulty concerning the relation between "liberty" 
 and "necessity" (to use the ancient philosophical 
 phraseology), would be about as fruitless as the 
 attempt to prove to a non-mathematical mind that 
 there cannot by any possibility be such a thing as 
 the square root of a negative quantity. What 
 ordinary persons have a right to ask for is some 
 such statement of the facts involved in the predes- 
 tinarian doctrine as shall convince them that it is 
 not a paralyzing doctrine, destroying all vitality 
 
I90 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 in daily life, and leading to sin rather than to 
 holiness. 
 
 The question, then, as treated by St. Paul, is to 
 a great extent one which rests upon the ascertained 
 phenomena of human action. And we have a most 
 significant illustration of the practical influences of 
 predestinarianism ready to our hand in the races 
 which have adopted the Mohammedan creed. The 
 belief in predestinarianism is a vigorous reality in 
 these races ; and it is certain that, so far from 
 paralyzing their energies and seducing them into a 
 listless inactivity, it stimulates them to unceasing 
 efforts to obtain the ends which they desire, and 
 which they hold to be predestinated. These ends 
 may be unlike everything that Christianity bids men 
 seek for, and the morality of Mohammedanism is in 
 many respects flagrantly unchristian. But the fact 
 remains the same as to the influence of the pre- 
 destinarian belief upon the active energies of human 
 nature. It actually impels the Mohammedan fatalist 
 to incessant activity in the accomplishment of those 
 ends which he holds to be already determined by 
 Divine decrees. Whether or not he is philosophically 
 consistent in what he does and what he thinks, it is 
 not necessary to decide. His human nature impels 
 him to act as he does act ; and he thus serves as an 
 example to encourage the timid Christian conscience, 
 which fears the demoralizing effects of a belief in the 
 supremacy of the Divine decrees upon a devout 
 man's obedience to the laws of the gospel. 
 
PREDESTINATION AND FREE-WILL. 191 
 
 What, then, is the difficulty which serious and 
 reasonable thinkers have a right to ask me to solve ? 
 In laying before them what appears to me to be a 
 perfectly satisfactory practical reply, without under- 
 statement or over-statement, I must first beg their 
 attention to a preliminary truth of the utmost 
 moment. It will be seen, as we proceed, that the 
 real question to be decided is this : Can God create 
 a free agent ? Inasmuch as the nature of the created 
 being is in every respect the result of His own 
 omnipotent Will, can that being be called, in any 
 sense of the word, free ? 
 
 This being the root of the difficulty, it is neces- 
 sary to remind the inquirer that unless we proceed 
 with the utmost caution we shall find ourselves 
 attempting to solve a problem which, from the 
 nature of the case, is entirely beyond the reach of 
 the human intellect, and which, therefore, no man 
 in his senses would attempt to solve. That problem 
 is, How does God produce those effects of which 
 His Will is the sole and the efficient cause ? In 
 other words, what is the mode in which God acts, as 
 the cause of everything that takes place in the 
 universe ? Now, it is obvious that in order to under- 
 stand this essential nature of the Divine operations 
 the created intellect must cease to be a created 
 intellect, and must possess in itself that creating 
 power which belongs only to One who is eternal 
 as well as omnipotent. To comprehend how God 
 acts, a man must be God, for he is destitute of any 
 
192 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 experience of his own, to guide him in penetrating 
 into the mystery which he would explain. 
 
 Our own experience, when we reflect upon it, sup- 
 plies no clue to guide us in a region beyond its limits. 
 We accomplish our ends by what we call some sort 
 of process or instrumentality. We can do nothing 
 without forming a plan, or intention, which we then 
 take steps to put into execution. If I desire simply 
 to lift my foot from the ground, I first form the 
 intention to do this ; then, by means of my brain, I 
 put in motion certain nerves, which communicate an 
 activity to the tendons of my leg ; and thus, still by 
 means of nerves, I move my foot. 
 
 But with God nothing of the kind is necessary. 
 This we know and understand. We understand our 
 own methods of accomplishing our purposes ; and 
 at the same time we are certain that no such methods 
 can be attributed to God. But here we are com- 
 pelled to stop. Our knowledge of God's method of 
 producing results is purely negative. All we know 
 of it is that it is not ours. We know that, as a 
 matter of fact, such and such effects have been pro- 
 duced by Him, and that is all. 
 
 It is undeniable, then, that the utmost caution is 
 necessary in deciding that God cannot have accom- 
 plished any particular end, on the ground that it 
 was beyond the reach of His power. It is not true 
 that it would be absurd to say that there is literally 
 nothing which is beyond the power of an omnipotent 
 and eternal Being. God could not create another 
 
PREDESTINATION AND FREE-WILL. 193 
 
 God, omnipotent and eternal like Himself, and in 
 all respects His own equal. This truth is included 
 in our elementary idea of God, and therefore must 
 be accepted without fear of error. 
 
 In discussing the doctrine of free-will and pre- 
 destination, we are concerned with a very different 
 class of ideas. If there is predestination, it is argued, 
 there can be no freedom of action, and consequently, 
 no moral responsibility. This, however, is only 
 another way of stating the assertion that there can 
 be no freedom of action in any created being. The 
 Creator knows beforehand the exact nature of all 
 the powers, moral and intellectual, of the creature 
 whom He forms. He knows how that creature will 
 be influenced by the combined operation of these 
 qualities, or gifts, with which the created being is 
 endowed ; He knows what the result of this com- 
 bination of feelings, or motives, will be, in every 
 possible variety of circumstances. He thus foresees 
 what will be the course pursued by this being 
 through all time, even down to the most trivial 
 thoughts and events of daily life. This is that 
 Divine foreknowledge of which St. Paul speaks in 
 writing to the Romans ; and the reality of this fore- 
 knowledge no rational person can deny. 
 
 Further, inasmuch as these intellectual and 
 moral elements in our nature were given to each of 
 us by our Creator, their combined operations are 
 really the result of His will ; and therefore, it is 
 argued, we cannot be blamed for our thoughts and 
 
 o 
 
194 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 actions, any more than for the shape of our features 
 or the constitution of our bodies. 
 
 This, then, is the practical question. When God 
 creates each one of us, does He endow us with a 
 certain power of choice between conflicting incHna- 
 tions ? or are we so helpless that our actual conduct 
 is determined by the strength of the inclination 
 which at the moment is most powerful within us ? 
 Analyzing our mental processes still further, is, or is 
 not, our final decision the result of the entrance of 
 a third motive, essentially moral in its quality, which 
 decides between the claims of the already conflicting 
 inclinations, and is, in other words, our free-will ? 
 This, then, is t/te question ; and I repeat, that it 
 cannot be determined by any antecedent speculations 
 as to what is, or is not, in the power of God to 
 accomplish. It is simply a question of fact, to be 
 determined by our personal experience, and that of 
 the rest of mankind. 
 
 And surely the universal consent of mankind is 
 decisive in the matter. Can it be seriously argued 
 that the whole human race is under a delusion, when 
 it recognizes in every person a real power of choice 
 in the daily affairs of human life ? I do not pretend 
 to say how far this power of choice extends, but 
 I say that it exists, and that every one is so certain 
 of its existence in himself, that he admits that he 
 can be praised or blamed without being the victim 
 of injustice, according to his actual conduct. The 
 whole world is agreed in repudiating the notion that 
 
PREDESTINATION AND FREE-WILL. 195 
 
 men and women are helpless machines. From the 
 private intercourse of individual men, up to the 
 combined actions of states and nations, we are all 
 agreed in holding that our power of choice is not 
 a phantom, but so undeniable a reality that no one 
 complains of being treated as a free agent. 
 
 Every one, indeed, complains if no limits are set 
 to this system of rewards and punishments. Every 
 one complains if he is punished for yielding to 
 irresistible temptations. But the very complaint 
 itself assumes that there are some temptations which 
 are not irresistible — that is, which a man is able to 
 resist if he chooses, or, in other words, if he exerts 
 his power as a free agent. 
 
 If, then, we know that we are capable of acting 
 as free agents in our dealings with one another, we 
 are capable of the same freedom of choice in 
 connection with our own duties towards God ; for 
 the question is not whether we are really free, under 
 all possible circumstances, but whether we can be 
 free under any. And on this point we are all agreed 
 in action, whatever the lovers of metaphysical 
 puzzles may allege in the way of abstract theory. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter is, therefore, 
 as follows. All things are predestinated, and yet 
 we are free agents, because we are predestinated to 
 be free agents. The two doctrines may seem to 
 contradict one another, but this is only because our 
 intellect is limited, and does not enable us to under- 
 stand the manner in which the Creator accomplishes 
 
196 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 His Will. We know, in other words, that predesti- 
 nation viicst be true ; and we know that the doctrine 
 of free-will is true. 
 
 Other considerations, indeed, have to be taken 
 into account, if we would find ourselves in complete 
 sympathy with the thoughts and feelings of the 
 apostolic Christians. They held not only that all 
 things are the result of the sovereign Will of God, 
 but that every believer was under the special 
 influence of the Spirit of God, given to him in order 
 that he might be conformed to the image of God in 
 Jesus Christ ; and that, being thus predestinated to 
 this conformity, all things worked together for his 
 good. That this conviction was as consolatory as it 
 was profound, will not be doubted ; and we may be 
 sure that it exercised a permanent and powerful 
 influence in enablino- the faithful to undergo the 
 special trials of the time, ending so often in actual 
 martyrdom. They cheerfully bore the troubles of 
 daily life, as being a predestinated element in the 
 process by which they were made obedient to the 
 Divine Will ; and when martyrdom came, still it 
 was the result of the same predestinating sovereignty. 
 And therefore, instead of bewildering themselves 
 with metaphysical subtleties, they obeyed the Will 
 of God, whether in life or in death. Such was the 
 influence of predestinarianism, when all Christians 
 were predestinarians. 
 
( 197 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 MODERN OBJECTIONS TO A BELIEF IN MIRACLES. 
 
 The critical reader of St. Paul's Epistles is some- 
 times unable to identify himself with the life of the 
 first Christians, because he is haunted with a sus- 
 picion that the miraculous events to which the 
 apostle refers did not really take place as actual 
 matters of fact. 
 
 Modern ingenuity, indeed, has devised a very 
 summary method for disposing of such statements 
 when they occur in narratives like the four Gospels, 
 or the Acts of the Apostles. What is called the 
 mythical theory is applied without hesitation to 
 those statements ; and we are asked to believe that 
 because certain wonderful stories, purely fabulous, 
 were gradually crystallized into historical realities by 
 the votaries of heathen religions, therefore all accounts 
 of supernatural incidents are to be set down as the 
 result of a similar process of transformation. The 
 audacity with which the German Professor Strauss 
 carried this theory into the whole life of our Lord 
 startled so many people with its novelty, that for a 
 
 o 3 
 
198 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 time "The Life of Jesus" acquired a notoriety and 
 exerted an influence which have now passed away. 
 Logic, even with the headlong British thinker, has 
 resumed its sway, and critics of the New Testament 
 have come to see that the element of supernaturalism 
 in the Christian Scriptures cannot be got rid of by 
 attributing it to that superstitious tendency in human 
 nature which converted the shadowy fables of un- 
 civilized Greece into the concrete gods and goddesses 
 who figure in the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey." 
 
 In dealing with the supernatural element in St. 
 Paul's writings, a totally different method for dis- 
 crediting it has been adopted, and has found favour 
 with many persons of undoubted intelligence and 
 sincerity. This view may be briefly described as 
 the molecular difficulty. It is held that everything 
 that exists, and which is not strictly non-corporeal, 
 is made up of a multitude of extraordinarily small 
 particles, called atoms. These, when combined into 
 groups, are called molecules ; and it is by the 
 varying combinations and movements of these 
 molecules that every alteration in the condition of 
 our bodies, and in that of the earth, and all things 
 upon it, is effected. Inasmuch as it is by means of 
 our brain that we think and feel, and our brain is 
 made up of molecules, all our actions are dependent 
 upon some sort of molecular movements and com- 
 binations. 
 
 From this it follows that, as every corporeal act 
 or change is the result of some movement or change 
 
MODERN OBJECTIONS TO BELIEF IN MIRACLES. 199 
 
 in many molecules, which again are connected with 
 many others, no limit can be set to the modifications 
 in the physical system of the universe which result 
 from the introduction of each successive cause of 
 movement in its constituent elements. Each suc- 
 cessive phenomenon is the result of some previous 
 molecular activity ; and all this vast system of life 
 and death, of health and disease, of growth and 
 decay, in the midst of which we live, is carried on in 
 accordance with certain fixed rules, which are termed 
 the laws of nature, so that nothing which contravenes 
 these laws can possibly take place. 
 
 A miracle, on the other hand, is a contravention 
 of these laws. Those who maintain that any 
 supernatural event has taken place, assert that some 
 change has been effected in the molecular condition 
 of a human body, or in that of the earth and its 
 surroundings, without the agency of any previously 
 existing molecular movements or combinations. As 
 there is no limit to the extent to which the effect of 
 these changes may extend, the whole system of the 
 universe is thus thrown out of gear — a result which, 
 it is alleged, is simply incredible. 
 
 In reply to this difficulty, I admit at once, that 
 such a disturbance must undoubtedly take place, 
 supposing that the molecular theory of the universe 
 is sound. Its soundness I neither affirm nor dispute ; 
 but, granting its soundness, I would point out to 
 those who disbelieve in miracles, that the molecular 
 condition of the universe is incessantly modified by 
 
200 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 the voluntary agency of man. It is by our choice 
 and interference that the operation of the laws of 
 nature is, in innumerable instances, carried out. 
 However vast is the field in which these laws 
 produce their results without the agency of man, he 
 does, as a matter of fact, habitually interfere in the 
 action of natural law, and become an agent in the 
 entire system of the universe. 
 
 Thus, various diseased conditions of our bodies 
 are cured by the action of certain known remedies. 
 In other words, the molecular condition of our 
 bodies is modified by the instrumentality of cer- 
 tain visible substances, which themselves undergo 
 certain fixed molecular changes in producing the 
 anticipated result. But it is the will of man that 
 first begins these particular operations of medicinal 
 substances. The medicines do not manufacture 
 themselves, or administer themselves. Man manu- 
 factures them, and man administers them, and is 
 thus the real originator of the molecular changes 
 which they involve. 
 
 The corn grows in the fields, and ripens under 
 the action of the sun and the rain ; and men and 
 cattle are fed, and the routine of agricultural life is 
 carried on in harmony with ascertained physiological 
 and chemical laws ; but it is the voluntary agency 
 of man that begins the work of growth, and sets the 
 causes at work which produce the wonderful result. 
 He cannot, it is true, change the direction of the 
 wind at his pleasure, or institute alternations of sun- 
 
MODERN OBJECTIONS TO BELIEF IN MIRACLES. 201 
 
 shine and showers to suit the various crops that he 
 is cultivating ; but he can actually change the climate 
 in which they grow. He can plant or cut down 
 trees on a large scale, and alter the whole atmo- 
 spheric state of a district from dryness to moisture, 
 or from moisture to dryness. Still, I say, it is man 
 who is practically the agent who causes these 
 boundless molecular modifications in a portion of 
 the universe. 
 
 In the case of a miracle, these same modifications 
 are effected without the operation of those previous 
 physical causes which man is obliged to set in 
 motion, in order to produce the effects which he 
 desires. But in each case it is the power of God 
 that really produces the result. When man sows 
 the seed in the ground, it does not germinate of 
 itself. The molecular particles, by whose recom- 
 binations the seed throws out its roots and buds and 
 leaves, do not move or affect one another by any 
 inherent powers of their own. God, who alone has 
 life in Himself, works these changes by His ever- 
 present power, following certain exact stages, which 
 He has laid down for Himself to observe, and which 
 we call the laws of nature. For a law is not a force ; 
 it is a rule, and has no effect unless it is enforced 
 by an actually existing being. We are the victims 
 of a species of verbal sleight-of-hand when we 
 speak of law, which is an abstraction, as if it were a 
 concrete reality. The operation of the remedies 
 that we take for the cure of diseases is, in like 
 
202 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 manner, due to the Divine agency, which carries out 
 in each case those molecular combinations which 
 produce the healing of the diseased portions of our 
 bodies. The direct agency of God Himself never 
 ceases or is suspended ; and it extends from the 
 movements of the microscopic animalcules which 
 elude the vision of our unassisted eyesight, to the 
 regions where suns and solar systems are so distant 
 that even to the eye that looks at them through the 
 most far-reaching telescope, they seem only bright 
 specks of light in the boundless firmament of heaven. 
 When, then, at the intercession of a man, God 
 works what is called a miracle, He is simply doing, 
 in answer to prayer, what he is incessantly doing in 
 compliance with certain acts of ours, in which the 
 initiative is taken by ourselves. The difference of 
 the two cases lies in the frequency of their occur- 
 rence. Human life is carried on through the con- 
 stant enforcement by God of the rules of the physical 
 universe, while in the case of miracles, which if they 
 were not rare would cease to be miracles, the action 
 of the ordinary physical laws is varied in some 
 manner not in harmony with their ordinary opera- 
 tion. But in both cases the only real author of the 
 molecular changes that take place is God Himself; 
 and in both cases the voluntary agency of man 
 enters in, and seems to set in motion the agency of 
 omnipotence. 
 
 In reality, all things, both natural and super- 
 natural, are illustrations of the Divine Will. And 
 
MODERN OBJECTIONS TO BELIEF IN MIRACLES. 203 
 
 therefore, when we examine the evidences alleged 
 for any reputed miracle, we do this without any 
 suspicion that it cannot have taken place, because it 
 must have involved an extensive interference with 
 the normal condition of the universe, and produced 
 consequences far beyond its own limits. We see 
 such interferences incessantly going on, and think 
 nothing of them. If we only lift up our hand or 
 utter a few words, alterations are produced in the 
 molecular combinations of the atmosphere which 
 spread far and wide, we know not where. Being 
 familiar with such phenomena, we think nothing of 
 them, and classify them under the general heading 
 of the laws of nature. But the phenomenon are not 
 thus explained, or even analyzed, as long as we 
 overlook the elementary phenomena of our own will, 
 which must be taken into account in any really 
 scientific classification of the facts of cause and effect 
 which come under our personal experience. 
 
 Remembering all this, we approach the proofs 
 that maybe offered of the occurrence of any miracle, 
 ancient or modern, just as we test the evidence of 
 any extraordinary occurrence in which no question 
 of the supernatural is concerned. We are told, for 
 instance, that some person has lived to be a hundred 
 years old. We know that this is in a high degree 
 improbable, but it is not impossible ; and if we have 
 to inquire into the fact, we exercise the utmost 
 caution in sifting the evidence laid before us. Just 
 so when a miracle is reported, whether of the first 
 
204 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 or the nineteenth century. All probability is against 
 it ; but for all that it may be true, and, if true, it is 
 simply one of the unusual exercises of the power of 
 Him in whom we live, and move, and have our 
 being. It is a question of fact, and nothing more. 
 And the explanation of the fact is to be found in 
 the recognition of the presence and power of Him 
 Who inhabits eternity, and Who has foreseen and 
 foreordained all things that exist, from the founda- 
 tion of the world. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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