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FEOM 
 
 JEEUSALEM TO ANTIOCH 
 
 SKETCHES OF THE FRIMITIVE CHURCH. 
 
 BY 
 
 J. OSWALD DYKES, M.A.,D.D. 
 
 author op 
 
 "the beatitudes of the kingdom," 
 
 ' the relations of the kingdom to the world,' 
 
 *' the laws of the kingdom." 
 
 ^lovSaiQ) T6 TTpCOTOV /COL '^EWtJPI,, 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 
 PATEENOSTEB KOW. 
 1874. 
 
tJNWIK BROTHEBS, PKINTEES BY WATEE POWEK. 
 
-^ 
 
 4^ 
 
 ^&^ 
 
 npHE first half of this volume has already appeared 
 in the pages of the " Preacher's Lantern." Nor 
 was it quite out of place there, since these chapters had 
 been originally spoken from the pulpit, substantially 
 as they now stand, in the ordinary course of the 
 writer's ministry. It is only right to add that, in 
 preparing them for publication, an effort has been 
 made to remove the traces of spoken address, in order 
 that the flow of an historical narrative may be as 
 little as possible impeded. But of course the stand- 
 point is still that of Christian faith, the end hoped 
 for is still Christian instruction. Therefore it has 
 not been deemed necessary to defend against objectors 
 those miraculous incidents which stud Luke's pages, 
 any more than it is possible for the candid historian 
 to get rid of them. The battle for miracle, however, 
 is not to be fought out over the Book of Acts. He 
 who has been led to accept such stupendous evangeli- 
 cal miracles as the Incarnation and the Kesurrection, 
 will hardly find much in the records of the primitive 
 
VI FEE FACE. 
 
 Churcli to try his faith. It is not strange if the sweep 
 through human history of the Very God in His own 
 person should have left in its wake a whirl of supra- 
 natural commotion, felt even by remote actors, or in 
 ways that look at first sight trivial. 
 
 In venturing to prefix to each chapter a " revised 
 version" of the sacred text which is nearly our sole 
 authority, it may be as well to say that I have not 
 presumed to aim at idiomatic elegance (such as any 
 revision of the Authorised Version must retain which 
 is designed to supersede it in popular use), but simply 
 at such a measure of literal accuracy as may enable 
 the English reader to see what support the original 
 affords for the view I take of the events related. 
 
^oixtmk. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Ascension Day 1 
 
 II. Waiting for the Promise 19 
 
 III. Pentecost 39 
 
 IV. The First Gospel Sermon 59 
 
 V. The First Christian Baptism 77 
 
 VI. The Infant Church 95 
 
 VII. St. Peter's Second Apology 115 
 
 VIII. In Collision with the Sanhedrim ... 137 
 
 IX. Ananias and Sapphira 161 
 
 X. A Second Collision with the Sanhedrim 181 
 
 XI. Hellenist and Hebrew 203 
 
 XII. The Proto-Martyr 223 
 
riii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XIII. Simon Magus 247 
 
 XIV. The Ethiopian Courtier 267 
 
 XV. Saul's Conversion 287 
 
 XVI. After Conversion 305 
 
 XVII. An Apostolic Tour of Inspection 325 
 
 XVIII. Cornelius ... ' 345 
 
 XIX. Peter Eeports to the Church 383 
 
 XX. The Church of Antioch ... 399 
 
 XXI. Fruit from the Gentiles 417 
 
 XXII. Peter and Agrippa 435 
 
 XXIII. Conclusions 455 
 
/^ 
 
 I. 
 
 SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. 
 
Acts i. 1-11 ; cf. Luke xxiv. 45-53. 
 

 Ee VISED Version. 
 
 The first history I made, Theophilus, about all things 
 which Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day 
 when, having given comniandmients through the Holy 
 Ghost to the apostles ivhom He had chosen, He was 
 taken up : to whom also He shoived Himself alive after 
 His passion by many proofs, during forty days, being 
 seen by them and speaking the things concerning the 
 kingdom of God. And being assembled with them. He 
 charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to 
 await the promise of the Father, ''which ye heard of 
 Me. For John indeed baptized ivith water, but ye 
 shall be baptized in the Holy Ghost after not many 
 days.'' 
 
 They therefore, ivhen they were come together, asked 
 Him, saying — 
 
 " Lord, is it at this time Thou dost restore the king- 
 dom to Israel ? " 
 
 But He said to them: ''It is not yours to knoiv 
 times or periods ivhich the Father fixed by His 07vn 
 authority, but ye shall receive poiver when the Holy 
 Ghost is come upon you, and shall be My ivitnesses 
 both in Jerusalem and in all Jud^sa and Samaria, and 
 unto the furthest part of the earth.'' 
 
 And having said these things, while they were look- 
 ing, He ivas taken up, and a cloud received Him from 
 
 2^ 
 
their eyes. And ivhile they ivere gazing into heaven as 
 He went, behold, two men were standing beside them in 
 ivhite garments, who also said : 
 
 ''Men of Galilee, why do ye stand looking into 
 heaven ? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you 
 into heaven, shall so come in the same manner as ye have 
 seen Him go into heaven.^' 
 
 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the hill called 
 " Hill of an Olive-yard,'" which is near Jerusalem, a 
 Sabbath journey. And ichen they entered, they ivent up 
 to the Upper Room ivhere they usually resorted : both 
 Peter and John, and James and Andrew, Philip and 
 Thomas, Bartholomeio and Matthew, James of Alphceus 
 and Simon the Zealot, and Judas of James : these all 
 were continuing with one accord in ptrayer ivith the 
 women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and His 
 brothers. 
 
I. 
 
 NOTHING can appear more natural than that St. 
 Luke, who was himself a Gentile Christian, a cul- 
 tured Greek, and a fruit of that great missionary move 
 ment to the westward which it was the work of his master 
 and friend St. Paul to lead, should have been prompted 
 by the Spirit of God to tell the story how the new 
 Christian Church sprang out of the bosom of Judaism, 
 and how, under the propulsion of its Divine Head, it 
 moved forward till it had traversed the Greek-speaking 
 provinces on either side the Mgean, and reached at length 
 the mistress city of Eome. From Jerusalem '' unto the 
 uttermost parts of the earth," is the thread which gives 
 unity to his narrative. The oldest title given by the 
 Church to that narrative— '' Acts of Apostles "—scarcely 
 expresses its design. What this earliest of Church his- 
 torians has really done is, first, to show by what succes- 
 sive stages there were formed out of the purely Hebrew 
 Church, of which the nucleus had been gathered by our 
 Lord's personal labours, first, a mixed Hebrew-Hellenistic 
 Church in Judaea, next, a Samaritan, and lastly, a purely 
 Gentile one ; and then to trace the westward spread of 
 Christian missions from that Gentile mother-church at 
 Antioch, till its chief missionary had reached the centre 
 of the heathen world. This precisely describes the actual 
 
6 FBOM JEBTJ SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 contents of the book : and no other treatment of primi- 
 tive Church history could have possessed equal interest 
 for its first reader, a Greek convert of rank, residing, 
 probably, in the imperial capital. ''From Jerusalem to 
 Rome" marks the extreme points embraced in the eight 
 and twenty chapters of the volume sent to Theophilus. 
 " From Jerusalem to Antioch " defines the earlier half 
 of it, with which alone we propose to deal. Antioch, 
 where the battle of Gentile freedom from Mosaic law was 
 first waged, and where the followers of Jesus were first 
 termed Christians, constitutes the middle point or half- 
 way house of the whole narrative. 
 
 The book of Acts, however, as every one knows, does not 
 form an independent work. It is, speaking strictly, the 
 Second Part of a larger history, of which Part First is our 
 third Gospel. In its opening sentence, the author ex- 
 pressly links it on to his "former treatise " {ov first history^), 
 and by dedicating it more briefly to the same person, he 
 makes it plain that it is a mere continuation of the Gospel. 
 I apprehend, too, that this second part is marked by 
 the same historical thorouglmess of research and careful 
 reference to the best authorities to which Luke in the 
 preface to his first; volume lays such express claim.^* It is 
 of com-se impossible for us to be sure where or from whom 
 this writer got those minute particulars regarding the 
 earliest days of the Church, which he has recorded in the 
 first twelve chapters ; but if he resided at Caesarea during 
 St. Paul's long imprisonment there, and came into such 
 close intercourse with the Judsean apostles and other eye- 
 witnesses as to verify at their lips all the facts which his 
 Gospel contains respecting Jesus' ministry and passion, 
 * T6v TcpCjTov \6yov, Acts i. 1. '^ Luke i. 1-4. 
 
ASCENSION DAY. 7 
 
 it is easy to see how he may have gathered from St. Peter 
 himself, or equally competent authorities, the course of 
 events which immediately followed our Lord's departure. 
 This continuity in St. Luke's double history is more 
 than a literary accident. It expresses a deeper fact. The 
 events which precede Jesus' Ascension, and those which 
 follow it, are themselves continuous. The history of our 
 Lord's own earthly life, and the history of our Lord's 
 Church, are, in a very real and deep sense, not two, but 
 one ; two parts of one whole. I am not quite sure that 
 St. Luke meant us to find all this in his peculiar ex- 
 pression, "All that Jesus began both to do and teach; " 
 but it is certainly most true, and it is a truth which under- 
 lies the whole "acts of apostles." Jesus' personal work 
 on earth was not His whole work. It was properly no 
 more than preliminary, initiating, or fundamental work. 
 By His own obedience unto death, satisfying justice, re- 
 versing the curse and redeeming the world, He laid first 
 a firm platform on which He could rear the true spiritual 
 kingdom of God among men. By choosing and training 
 twelve apostles to head a band of less eminent disciples 
 round them, He prepared receptive and fit agents, through 
 whom He could continue to work forward by the Holy 
 Ghost, after He Himself was gone. By withdrawing then 
 His personal presence in the body, He made way for the 
 advent of that spiritual Agent through Whom alone a 
 spiritual kingdom could be built. But all this was only 
 " beginning to do and teach." The transference of His 
 local seat from earth to heaven put no arrest upon His 
 own activity. It did not relegate Him to a place of sub- 
 lime inaction, from which He could thenceforth only see 
 the work done here by others, but could not co-operate. 
 
8 FBOM JEBU8ALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 No — tlie agents liere are His agents ; the Cliurcli is His 
 body ; the Spirit His messenger. He continues to be as 
 much as ever, one might even say, more than ever, the 
 Head and Heart of the whole movement ; the Originator 
 of Hfe, Determiner of action, Guide of progress, Lord of 
 influence, and Controller of events within the Christian 
 Church and each Christian soul. He is the Worker and 
 the Teacher still ; though He has withdrawn His corporeal 
 presence behind the veil, and must carry on His work and 
 teaching through lips and hands that are moved by a far- 
 reaching spiritual influence *' sent down from heaven." 
 
 It is quite necessary to seize firmly and hold fast by 
 this thought that the " acts of apostles," and all sub- 
 sequent ** acts" of their true successors, are (as Bengel 
 says) a " continuation of Christ's own history," if we 
 would understand either St. Luke's opening section of 
 Church history, or any after section of it from Luke's 
 day till now. The one event in which St. Luke finds the 
 meeting point of these two great eras is the Ascension. 
 It finds a place at the end of his Gospel, and at the be- 
 ginning of his Church history, because it is really com- 
 mon to both. It was needful, first, as the crown and 
 end of His earthly life. Who came down from heaven 
 that He might return thither. That ambiguous, myste- 
 rious state of life in which our risen Lord spent forty 
 days, could not possibly be His abiding state. To be 
 neither of the earth nor of the heaven ; to pass at un- 
 certain intervals from invisibihty out into visibility, 
 and back again ; to eat, yet not live by food ; to frequent 
 the society of mortals without being mortal ; to wear a 
 glorified body, and in it haunt the abodes of our present 
 
ASCENSION DAY. 9 
 
 humiliation : this, indeed, became ver}^ well an interval 
 of transition, in which temporary ends were to be served, 
 and which was to break to the disciples the abruptness 
 of the change from constant material intercourse with 
 Him to no such intercourse at all. But it could not be 
 the permanent condition of the glorified Eedeemer. 
 Back to the Father's bosom the Son must fly^ when His 
 work is done, to receive the assurance of approval and 
 the earnest of reward. Up to that brighter land He must 
 carry with Him the humanity which, though fashioned 
 once in Mary's womb, has been made anew in Joseph's 
 grave, and made now unfit for the limitations, and the 
 strenuous, sorrowful toils of earth. Our Lord's gospel 
 life will halt lamely to its close if it be not crowned by 
 the peaceful exodus of an Ascension. On the other hand, 
 the Ascension is a starting-point as well as a conclusion. 
 It is not less urgently demanded by the history to follow 
 than by the history past. In order to the coming of the 
 Holy Ghost, and that work which by the Spirit Jesus had 
 still to prosecute upon earth, it was needful that He 
 should mount His throne at the seat of divine empire, 
 and gather (as one says 2) into His pierced hands the 
 reins of providential government. He must receive from 
 the Father the promise of the Spirit, and be installed as 
 both Lord and Christ, and exchange the service of obe- 
 dience for the service of command. Only thus could 
 there open for the development of the divine kingdom 
 a new era— that of the Christian Church. This era, in 
 
 1 Compare Watts's spirited lines : — 
 
 " See how the Conqueror mounts aloft, 
 And, to His Father flies." 
 
 2 See Lange, in loc. 
 
10 FBOM JEEUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 which we also live, opened when the Su]3reme Citizen of 
 the Jewish commonwealth " went into a far country," as 
 He said once in parable, " to receive for Himself a king- 
 dom ;" ^ and it shall take end at His return. The Chris- 
 tian Church was an impossibility till its Head had been 
 taken up to the right hand of power. It dates, in a 
 sense, from the Ascension. 
 
 It is from this latter point of view that we have now 
 to consider the recapitulation which Luke has given us 
 (by way of preface to the second portion of his history) 
 of what happened on '' the day in which He was taken 
 up." 
 
 "We have reached the last of the forty days. It is the 
 Thursday (as we reckon) of the sixth week since that 
 first Day of the Lord on which He rose again with glad- 
 ness from the grave.^ It is a day in early summer, when 
 the heavens are clear with sunlight. There is a solemn 
 preconcerted meeting in the city of Jerusalem of the full 
 apostolic band, of the eleven, that is ; for none can avoid 
 noticing the vacant place from which one has fallen. 
 For the last time the apostolic college meets in session, 
 with its Divine President at its head ; a day to be re- 
 membered ; His last on earth — their first of loneliness. 
 The forty days, with their many appearances 3 and "in- 
 falhble proofs ;" the proof of touching and eating, which 
 showed He was no spirit, but had flesh and bones ; and 
 the still better proof of " speaking the things of the 
 kingdom" with His old grace and truth, which showed 
 He was nowise changed in thought or heart, but in- 
 
 1 Luke xix. 12, ff. ^ ^gth May, a.d. 30, according to Wieseler. 
 
 ^ Nine or ten at least can be counted up. 
 
ASCENSION DAY. 11 
 
 wardly, as well as outwardly, the same Man He ever was; 
 these forty days, I say, had done then- work. Not a mis- 
 giving lurked in a single apostle. No Thomas doubted 
 now. The glad fact that He was alive had become real 
 to every one of them, indubitable, a thing to die for. So 
 for the last time, yet (like many of us when our treasures 
 are about to leave us) not knowing that it was the last 
 time, they clustered round Him — Him Whose fitful tran- 
 sient visits, by the Galilean lake or in the city chamber, 
 had become their chief joy of hfe. 
 
 Their meeting this time was neither by lonely lake nor 
 in close-shut chamber. In some disguise, I suppose, which 
 hid Him from the street crowd. He led them forth by the 
 city-gate, and down the well-known path that still crosses 
 Kedron by a narrow arch, and past Gethsemane,^ and up 
 the hill which breathed all over with memories of the 
 last three years, and over its summit, where the tradi- 
 tion of three centuries later has fixed the Ascension scene. ^ 
 On the summit He did not stay. Tradition loves the con- 
 spicuous ; Jesus loved the retired. The crest of Olivet 
 is a Sabbath-walk from the city, as Luke says ; 3 but it 
 was nearly twice as far as that He led them forth, " as 
 far as to Bethany." There He paused. It had often 
 been a sore stiff walk for His weariness to climb that 
 hill after a day's work in the city ; His long earthly walk 
 is ended now. Often it had been like going home, to 
 reach at evening the quiet hamlet where Martha lived 
 with Lazarus and Mary; now He was going home indeed. 
 
 ^ If the traditional " Gethsemane" may at all be trusted, which I 
 doubt. 
 
 2 Tradition grew up round the memorial church which the Empress 
 Helena erected on the top of the hUl. 
 
 3 Acts i. 12. 
 
12 FBOM JEBTJSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 It was not at the village itself, as I take it/ tliat He 
 halted, but at a point equally remote from Jerusalem, 
 and beside the village. It seems difficult when one is at 
 the spot not to identify it. Close by the tiny hamlet, yet 
 not within sight of it, there lie at this day such sweet se- 
 cluded little hollows, softly scooped out in the mountain's 
 eastern slope, shut in so by neighbouring ridges from the 
 prying of curious eyes, and set still with fig and olive and 
 almond — that when on a fair Easter morning I first set 
 eyes on them, I could not choose but think it a place to 
 go to heaven from. "It is very secluded indeed ; out of 
 sight of Bethany and of the high road to Jericho, with 
 the mountain between you and the city behind, shut in by 
 its spurs on both hands, but looking down the wilderness 
 of bare rocky knolls towards the deep valley of the Dead 
 Sea, and the lonely far-off walls of Moab. A deliciously 
 rural, quiet, exquisite little spot, snugly embosomed in 
 the mountain-side, gay with anemones when I saw it in 
 the sprightliness and coolness of that spring morning. "^ 
 
 The farewell words which, after they had gained this 
 solitude, Jesus addressed to the eleven men on whom, 
 so far as agents went, the whole results of His earthly 
 work rested, are very notable words. They mix command 
 and rebuke with the strong wine of hope. When I try to 
 realise the position of the apostles — so confident in their 
 Lord's restored presence, so unsuspicious of His impend- 
 ing departure — I feel that they stood on the brink of a 
 very grave danger. A few weeks before they had been 
 disbanded, scattered, smitten into hopelessness by His 
 
 1 The words of Luke xxiv. 50, t^oj eojg eig jSyjB^aviav, do not neces- 
 sarily imply this, and the occasion was one which evidently called for 
 more privacy and quiet. 
 
 2 From the writer's note-book, written at the time. 
 
ASCENSION DAY, 13 
 
 death, even though He had expressly foretold to them 
 His rising again, and the very day of it. May not this 
 second departure work similar mischief ? Let them see 
 Him go away hefore their eyes, and vanish into the 
 distant sky — let them feel afresh their loneliness and 
 feebleness just when they expected, as they plainly did, 
 that the Kisen One was going to crown His work by 
 setting up Israel's kingdom in visible glory : what was 
 to keep them from being plunged from dreams of fancied 
 royalty into the depths of disappointment and disheart- 
 enment ? A second shock, a second panic, a second 
 scattering like the first, might have proved fatal. So 
 Jesus, with consummate skill as well as kindness, held 
 out before their eyes, to kindle their imagination and 
 stimulate expectation, a splendid though undefined hope. 
 He brought it very near, " not many days hence." 
 He magnified it as the very thing which, before all other 
 things, God had always held out as the hope of men 
 — foretold, not only in express texts of Isaiah, Joel, 
 Ezekiel, and Zechariah, ^ but by he whole tenour of 
 Hebrew revelation — " the promise of the Father." He 
 reminded them how, on the memorable night of betrayal, 
 at the supper table. He had Himself foretold them of it 
 as the advent of a second Comforter, in words which, 
 not St. Luke, but St. John, has preserved to us.^ He 
 threw them back even on their own past hopes, so many 
 of them as had been scholars of the Baptist, when years 
 before they left one, who only baptized with water to re- 
 pentance, for the service of a mightier Man, Whose more 
 excellent mission it was to baptize with the Holy Ghost 
 
 ^ E.g., Isa. xliv. 3 ; Joel ii. 28 ; Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27 ; Zech. xii. 10. 
 '^ John xiv. 16, 26 ; xv. 26 ; xvi. 7-14 ; cf. vii. 38. 
 
14 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 and with fire.^ In the hope of that better baptism, num- 
 bers of them had abandoned John for Jesus — in the hope 
 of it had clung to Jesus to that hour. Let them wait yet 
 ''not many days," and the long-deferred promise shall be 
 fulfilled, and the better baptism will come. But, as if 
 hope alone might prove too weak a motive, He reinforced 
 it by authority. He straitly charged them on their alle- 
 giance not to separate, nor go home, nor on any pretext 
 be drawn or driven from the Holy City, till this promise 
 of the Father should have come. 
 
 What this "promise" precisely meant, it will be our 
 duty by-and-by to inquire. How the near prospect of 
 it did bind in one the waiting disciples through the ten 
 days of suspense which followed, and kept hope alive 
 in their hearts, we shall see in next chapter. At the 
 time, however, their ^preoccupied minds seem hardly to 
 have taken it in. AVe read between the lines of God's 
 word as our own wishes or preconceptions prompt us : 
 and so did they. For I think that, when they put that 
 question about ''restoring at this time the kingdom to 
 Israel," they had some idea that such a restoration of 
 their oppressed countrymen to ancient independence and 
 prosperity might turn out to be the " promise of the 
 Father," or, at least, might coincide with it. Their 
 patriotic interest in a national restoration met with nc 
 rebuke from Jesus. Their mistaken interpretation of 
 Messianic prophecy (if it was mistaken) found no correc- 
 tion. One thing only the Master censured, and He cen- 
 sured it that He might enforce practical duty. As when, 
 long before, some one had asked, "Are they few that 
 be saved?" He somewhat sternly answered, "Strive to 
 * See Luke iii. 16, with synoptic parallels. 
 
ASCENSION DAY. 15 
 
 enter in ;" or as, a few weeks before, on the other slope 
 of this same hill, He had said, " Of that day and hour 
 knoweth no man :" " Watch, therefore, because ye know 
 not the hour ;" ^ so here again He called them from an 
 idle, meddling curiosity about future "times and seasons," 
 to the duty of the present. It is a weakness which has 
 not died out of the Church to this day. For some per- 
 sons it seems a hard lesson to learn that periods of time 
 during which divine dispensations run on unchanged, 
 as well as such epochs or crises of change as do come at 
 last — both the duration of the one and the date of the 
 other — are things which the Father has ^' settled in the 
 exercise of His own authority," ^ and of which He has 
 given account to no man. 
 
 " But," added the Master, recalling His apostles from 
 vain questioning to hard prosaic duty, "but ye shall 
 receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon 
 you, and ye shall be My witnesses." 3 Thus He brought 
 them back to His own former point, and renewed to them 
 His unapprehended promise. But He did so in such a 
 way as virtually to answer their question. There can be 
 no such restoration of the kingdom as they are dreaming 
 of, for a long time to come, if first they are to be " wit- 
 nesses" in Judaea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the 
 earth. Did they dream of "power" — the power of co- 
 regents with a regnant Messiah ? Yes, power they shall 
 receive, but only to " witness a good confession," as 
 Jesus had done "before Pontius Pilate," 4 but as they 
 had not done ; such power as would lately have saved 
 
 > Cf. Luke xiii. 23, 24; and Matt. xxiv. 36-44. 
 
 '■^ Acts i. 7 : Xpovovg r] Kaipovg ovg "o 7rar?)(0 tBero iv ry l^iq, 'e^ovaiq,. 
 
 ^ Mou fidpTvpeg, not fioi, is the better reading. 
 
 •'Cf. 1 Tim. vi.' 12-14. 
 
16 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 Peter, liad lie possessed it, from denial, and all of tliem 
 from desertion ; sucli power as we shall see tliey did 
 get in splendid measure after the Holy Ghost had de- 
 scended upon them. It is the power to be faithful, to be 
 sure of the truth, to speak it boldly, to suffer for it gladly 
 — the power that wraps up all the graces of the mis- 
 sionary and the martyr. Or did they dream of royalty 
 in such a restored kingdom of Israel ? of sitting on 
 thrones with the King of the Jews ? Ah, but they had 
 first to learn, as we all have to do, what means that deep 
 answer given by the King of the Jews to Pontius Pilate's 
 question — *' Art Thou a king, then?" "Thou sayest 
 that I am a King. To this end was I born, and for this 
 cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness 
 unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth 
 My voice." ^ Are not these eleven apostles become true 
 kings in history ? "What realm so wide as the realm of 
 souls over which their words are law ? What dynasty 
 has stood so long as the authority of apostolic men ? 
 Before what monarch in his apotheosis did subjects ever 
 pay such homage as Christendom has paid to the names 
 of Peter, Paul, and John ? They won it, as Jesus won 
 His own crown, by bearing witness to the truth. In 
 their case, as in His, it was a witness-bearing which rose 
 into martyrdom. But it is the secret of strength. Out 
 of such weakness comes forth power. To be His wit- 
 nesses, to speak and live His truth, to show men the 
 Father as He showed Him, to proclaim the Son in His 
 passion to be a Prince and Saviour, to confess Him by 
 the Holy Ghost as our living Lord, our very life, when 
 men jeer, or curl learned lips, or pity our credulity, or 
 
 * John xviii. 37* 
 
ASCENSION DAY. 17 
 
 are deaf to our voice : tliis is the Christian's royalty, his 
 true SLiccessorship to aj)Ostolic witnesses. 
 
 After these weighty, yet heartening words were spoken, 
 while the eleven were dimly divining in their souls of 
 what sort their apostohc task was likely to prove, hut 
 with what divine aid they were to be furnished for it, 
 Jesus added one more word of supreme and unspeakable 
 consolation. In order to wipe from their hearts the last 
 trace of disappointment or regret or cowardice, '' He 
 lifted up His hands" in solemn gesture, "and blessed 
 them."^ Last parting blessing, as of one who dies and 
 leaves an orphaned family; full of clinging love, and 
 tender with the grief of a farewell! Yet, unlike the 
 feebleness of good wishes on men's dying lips, this strong 
 benediction of the Prince of Life commands and confers 
 the blessing, while from His radiant face and form, and 
 down from His uplifted hands, there rains into the souls 
 of the eleven a rain of gracious influence, of hope and 
 courage and content and gladness. Then came a wonder. 
 There, as He stood, His hands still raised, raimented as 
 He was, without a hint or voice. His blessed feet ceased 
 to touch the soil. Like a thing of rarer quality, which 
 by its own upward virtue ascends through the grosser 
 atmosphere below. His blessed body rose with a still 
 and slow and stately movement into the pure bright 
 upper air. Nor stayed ; but, followed by the fixed gaze 
 of the amazed men, rose on, until, still raining blessings 
 down. He reached the region where white clouds rest. 
 Then suddenly there swept beneath His feet a cloud that 
 shut Him from their envious eyes. Oh, who of us would 
 not strain a wistful gaze into the sky, if back from its 
 > Cf. Luke xxiv. 50. 
 3 
 
18 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 blue depths we miglit but see Him come and grow upon 
 the sight, or if perchance some cloud like that which 
 swallowed Him would open to let Him through ? Do 
 not our hearts, when new-robbed only of some most dear 
 but mortal friend, whom the other world has snatched 
 too soon from our embrace, yearn towards that other 
 world and long to follow, and hope almost against hope, 
 by might of love's desire, to draw even yet from the 
 place beyond one more word or look or token of re- 
 membrance ? How much more these men who on the 
 Hill of Olives had lost Jesus Christ, who came out from 
 Jerusalem with Him, but must go back without Him ! 
 
 ' Yet the two shining ones were right. " Why seek 
 
 ye the living among the dead ? " '* Why stand ye gazing 
 up into heaven ?"^ 
 
 This is no time for idle, melancholy despondencies, 
 that root themselves in the past : for profitless longings 
 after that which is not. Gazing into heaven will not 
 fetch Christ back, nor any other departed. Let us return 
 to Jerusalem. Earth has its calls to duty, and heaven 
 will chide us if we do not heed them. Let us go; to 
 watch and pray in the upper room — to receive power 
 from on high — to be His witnesses in the earth — to work 
 for Him, speak for Him, die for Him ; and let this be 
 the spur which quickens labour and the hope which 
 cheers exhaustion, that " this same Jesus Who is taken 
 up from us into heaven, shall so come in like manner 
 as they saw Him go into heaven." 
 
 * With Acts i. 11, compare Luke xxiv. 5. The (same ?) two men in 
 ■white had appeared forty days earlier, with a very similar message. 
 
II. 
 
 ^artiiT0 fcrr t\}t '^xamm. 
 
 BUM EXPECTAT OEAT. 
 
 3^^ 
 
Acts i. 12-26. 
 
Eevised Version. 
 
 And in those days, Peter standing up in midst of the 
 brethren said {the crowd of names [i.e., of persons] in 
 one place ivas about a hundred and twenty) : 
 
 "Men and brethren, it behoved that the scripture 
 be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spake before through 
 the mouth of David concerning Judas, ivho became 
 guide to those that arrested Jesus ; because he ivas num- 
 bered among us and received the lot of this ministry. 
 This man, then, purchased a field out of the ivages of 
 the iniquity, and falling headlong, burst in the middle, 
 and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to 
 all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that that field is 
 called in their own dialect, ' Akeldamach,' that is, 'field 
 of blood: For it has been written in the Book of 
 Psalms : 'Let his habitation become a desert, and let 
 the inhabitant of it be no more ;' and, ' His office let 
 another take.' It behoves therefore, that of the men 
 who companied with us at every time when the Lord 
 Jesus came in to us and came out, beginning from the 
 baptism of John until the day in ivhich He ivas taken 
 lip from us, that of these one should become a loitness 
 of His resurrection along with us.'' 
 
 And they put forward tivo, Joseph called Bar-Sahbas 
 who ivas surnamed "Justus;' and Matthias; and pray- 
 ing, said: 
 
" Thou, Lord, Who knoicest the hearts of all, appoint 
 tvhom Thou hast chosen, one of these two, to take the 
 place of this ministry and apostolate from which Judas 
 turned aside [transgressed] to go to his own place.'' 
 
 And they cast lots for them : and the lot fell on 
 Matthias, and he ivas numbered along luith the eleven 
 apostles. 
 
II. 
 
 OUR Lord went back to heaven on the fortieth day 
 after His resurrection ; on the fiftieth day, the Holy 
 Ghost came down from heaven. The ten days between, 
 of which we have the history in this section, formed an 
 interval of silent suspense, a pause during which the out- 
 ward m&rch of events seemed to be arrested. God never 
 works in haste. Here, at the last moment, when, after 
 so long time spent in preparation, the gospel is at length 
 complete, and its heralds stand together, ready in act to 
 fly abroad with the message on their tongues which is to 
 bring life to countless souls a,nd hope as from the dead to 
 all men,— here, in the supreme moment of the world's 
 fate, whei our impatience would have rushed forward, 
 God holds back. For ten weary days of inaction were these 
 men kept waiting in the chamber of prayer, prisoners of 
 hope, kept there dumb witnesses to the truth which saves, 
 while outs.de their chamber door a world lay dying. 
 
 It was not merely to show the absolute dependence of 
 the Churcli on God the Holy Ghost, that it was made to 
 wait so loLg for His advent ; nor only to check that rest- 
 less temper which will have the kingdom to appear at 
 once, chafes at the long delays of providence, and is for 
 ever antecating the turning-points of history; nor was 
 it just to postpone the birthday of the Church till another 
 festival slDuld have filled Jerusalem again with strangers, 
 
24 
 
 FBOM JEBTJ SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 that the eclat and success of its first appearance might be 
 the greater. I think that, in fact, all was not ready for 
 the coming of the Holy Ghost when these ten days began. 
 Outwardly, no doubt, everything seemed to be ready. 
 There, in heaven, was the Christ gone up : here, in Jeru- 
 salem, were the disciples assembled. What wait we for ? 
 But the true preparation for each onward step in God's 
 kingdom is within us, not without. It is to hearts' that 
 are gathered well into themselves, exercised upon the past 
 sayings of God, roused to wait on Him for new blessings, 
 and quick with patient, resolute desire, and th/J calm 
 strength of faith, that the Spirit comes. Christ came, 
 indeed, in the night-time, when busy Bethleli^m had 
 other things to think of ; He will come again as ja robber 
 by night, and shall not find faith, perhaps, on tie earth. 
 But when the Holy Ghost comes, He comes to expectant, 
 prayerful, and prepared men. Our Father gives this gift, 
 Jesus tells us, to those who ask Him. Ten dajs, or ten 
 times ten days, if need be. He will wait and i withhold 
 
 Himself till we feel we need Him, and ha-ve lea 
 
 for Him, and are disciplined into faith by the lopg silence 
 of the heavens, and can say, as we continue d? ly in un- 
 wavering petition, " We have waited for Thy salvation, 
 Lord." This interval before Pentecost is the model for 
 all seasons of united and special prayer which a'e wont to 
 precede a revival of the Church. 
 
 When the Eleven returned from the " Hill of the Olive- 
 yard"^ and entered the city again, they went straight to 
 their well-known place of meeting in that larg) hall im- 
 mediately under the roof of a disciple's dwell ng-house, 
 
 1 Ver. 12 : tXaiojvoQ only here in New Testament ; but so Josephus, 
 Antiq. vii. 9. 2. 
 
 nt to ask 
 
WAITING FOB THE PB0MI8E. 25 
 
 of wHicH we read so much under the name of " the upper 
 chamber."^ Very probably, I think, it was in this same 
 room that Jesus had held the Last Supper, and had again 
 and again appeared to them on successive Lord's Days 
 after His rising. Probably it was from this very room 
 He and they had gone forth together but an hour or two 
 before on their last walk to Olivet. Here they seem to 
 have found the company of disciples awaiting their return, 
 into whose greedy ears they poured the joyful news that 
 He had actually gone bodily up into heaven, with words 
 of blessing on His lips, and an angelic promise of His 
 coming back again. No troubled or despondent party was 
 this, although they were the few partisans of a Leader 
 Whose cause seemed to the public to have been defeated : 
 although they were the slender orphaned relict of a 
 Guardian just vanished from their sight. Their Leader 
 lived ; their vanished Guardian was gone up to be the 
 Lord of all ; all that they had expected from this Man 
 was true ; their Jesus was Christ, and King, and God's 
 eternal Son. So their souls were nerved by the strength 
 of assured conviction, and made buoyant with the joy 
 of hope. True, they had lost Him from their midst, yet not 
 for ever ; true, they were alone and weak, but the Spirit 
 was to come. To lose Him thus, Jesus had said, was to 
 be a gainer. The magic of His last words worked potently 
 within them, infusing comfort ; and the radiance of that 
 recent glimpse into the heavens lay still upon their faces. 
 The infection of this joy of the apostles wrought 
 effectually on all the rest. Day by day they went 
 regularly as pious Jews to the Temple services, and 
 
 * Note the article in kg to vTrepqJov (ver. 13). Such rooms were 
 usual under the flat roof, reached by an outer stair from the court. 
 
26 FROM JEBVSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 while their fellow-worshippers thought bitterly of one 
 more pretender exposed, and the true Christ as far off 
 as ever, those hundred and twenty were in their secret 
 souls singing songs of rejoicing to Jehovah over His 
 Messiah's advent and the glory which had crowned His 
 passion.^ The more this joyful faith of theirs contrasted 
 with the blindness and the blunders of their incredulous 
 fellow-citizens, so much the more must the disciples — 
 warm-hearted and impetuous as some of them were — 
 have burned to bear witness to their faith ; and the more 
 they must have been driven back, under the recollection 
 of their former disgraceful failure and cowardly dis- 
 persion, upon that mysterious word which barred their 
 way — "Ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is 
 come ;" " Wait for the promise of the Father." It was 
 not enough as Jews to praise Jehovah in public ; as 
 Jesus' destined witnesses, they must in secret learn to 
 seek from Him that gift which was to be the condition of 
 their strength. United prayer-meetings in the upper 
 room were thus the natural out-come of their situation. 
 To this, circumstances shut them up. Statedly and 
 habitually they spent their time together in this exercise 
 of special prayer ; not the Eleven only, but all those 
 who trusted in Jesus and were at that time to be found 
 in Jerusalem. The little company included His own now 
 believing " brethren, "^ His mother herself, who here for 
 the last time appears in the story ere she passes back 
 
 ' See Luke xxiv. 52, 53. 
 
 ^ The mention of His "brethren " here, separate from the apostles, 
 is thought by some to exclude them all from the number of the 
 apostles (see John vii. 5). Like Jacob's sons, they now knew their 
 Joseph (Gen. xlv. 15), Tradition makes St. John take Mary, some- 
 what later, to Ephesus, where she died. 
 
WAITING FOB THE PBOMISE. 27 
 
 into the obscurity of private life, and the other faithful 
 and loving women, who had either come up (like the 
 Magdalen) from Galilee, or resided (like the Bethany 
 sisters) in the vicinity of the capital. All these, fused 
 in one by a common hope, kept together as helpers of 
 one another's faith. Through daily fellowship in prayer, 
 they nourished the new-born grace of brotherly love. With 
 supplications which were not wavering, and though 
 earnest, were not impatient ; perchance with tears too, 
 which sprang out of tender memories of the Departed, and 
 were full of happy love ; all these, who had ever clung 
 about our blessed Jesus in the days of His flesh, and 
 never proffered a neglected request, clung now to the 
 footstool of His grace, and, where He had so lately knelt 
 and prayed with them, they knelt now and prayed to 
 Him.^ Ah, such prayers, how could they fail to be like 
 silken cords thrown about the heart of that new-departed 
 Friend, drawing back His thoughts to the friends He 
 had left. When mother and brothers, John the beloved, 
 and Peter, and she who loved much, and all that was 
 dearest and most familiar to His human heart, pleaded 
 before Him those sweet words He had spoken only six 
 weeks before — " Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My 
 name : ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be 
 full," — why, oh, why were the heavens so shut and deaf 
 for ten lingering days ? 
 
 It was expedient for them, as the like delays are for us. 
 It taught them to pray. It educated them to think of 
 their well-known One as God their Saviour. It gave 
 them time to realise their own helplessness and depen- 
 dence on spiritual aid. It drew out their confidence in 
 ^ Yet He was praying with them still. See John xiv. 16. 
 
28 FBOM JEBV SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 His power to hear and to help, in spite of the interval 
 which now stretched between. Be sure their prayers 
 grew deeper, purer, and more trustful, as day passed 
 after day; less alloyed with earthly feeling, as though 
 they were favourites of heaven, privileged to be impatient; 
 more full of such humble confidence as becomes devout, 
 forgiven men, who only echo back the strong sure words 
 of God. It could not but be for good reasons tbat Jesus 
 refrained Himself while they prayed ; for who could think 
 that delay meant refusal? Had He not Himself bidden 
 men pray always and not faint ? When their hearts are 
 purged through this trial, and their faith is sure of its 
 ground, and their hope has ripened into patient expecta- 
 tion, and their waiting longing souls are ready for Him — 
 then, and not till then, the Holy Ghost will come, and 
 come abundantly. Let us pray and wait, as they did. 
 Surely we, too, shall have our Pentecost. 
 
 To this general preparation of the whole body of 
 disciples for the Spirit's advent, there was added during 
 those ten days a special preparation of the apostolic 
 body, by the election of a successor to Judas. I do 
 not know that there is anything in the sacred text to 
 make it quite certain that this step was taken in com- 
 pliance with the mind of Christ. But I cannot imagine 
 that in such a matter the whole body of disciples should 
 have been left to blunder on their very first attempt at 
 co-operation with their ascended Head. Besides, Jesus 
 had expressly foretold ' that the twelve apostles should 
 be at last enthroned as twelve judges, one over each of 
 the tribes of the chosen people. This promise, which is 
 ' Matt. xix. 28 ; Luke xxii. 30. 
 
WAITING FOB THE PBOMISE. 29 
 
 in entire harmony with the whole relation of the first- 
 chosen apostolic band to their Jewish countrymen, is 
 specially restricted to apostles who " followed " Jesus, and 
 *' endured His temptations " with Him. It therefore ex- 
 cludes that noblest of all apostles,^ whose name is apt to 
 occur to one's mind as the true Christ-elected successor 
 of the apostate. St. Paul was not a personal companion 
 of Jesus' footsteps; and he seems even to distinguish 
 himself from the complete body of the Twelve, not only 
 as ** one born out of due time," but also as the one 
 apostle of the Gentiles, to whose sicgle hand that mighty 
 ministry had been entrusted.^ 
 
 I cannot but think, therefore, that St. Peter was rightly 
 led in this matter. He seems to have felt that, as the 
 apprpaching advent of the Comforter was designed to 
 fit the apostles for their peculiar work as witnesses, the 
 normal number should be first made up, so that there 
 might be no blank when on them all the heavenly Might 
 descended. Only it must strike every one as remarkable 
 that it should be Peter, of all men, who called his 
 brethren's attention to the lapse of the unhappy Iscariot, 
 and the seat his fall had emptied. On Peter, no doubt, 
 the leadership very naturally devolved, since even during 
 the presence of Jesus he had uniformly acted as their 
 foremost spokesman. Natural disposition, recognised 
 publicly by Christ Himself, fitted this man for the post of 
 chief among his' fellows, which we shall see him hence- 
 forth hold. Still, of all the Eleven, Peter's own conduct 
 at the trial of his Master had been the worst, and had in 
 its external features come the nearest to that of Judas. 
 
 ' This is Rudolph Stier's view. See his Reden d. Ap. 2nd edition. 
 2 Cf . his words in 1 Cor. xv. 8 ; Gal. ii. 7-9 ; Eph. iii. 8. 
 
30 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 If Judas betrayed Christ in His security, Peter abjured 
 Him at His need. Although between the two cases there 
 was all the difference betwixt a deliberate crime which 
 tops a career of conscious imposture and unconfessed 
 hypocrisy, and a solitary fall, under sudden provocation, 
 due to the weakness of self-deception — a difference this so 
 vast, that while the one stands as the New Testament 
 type of an honest man's infirmity and repentance, the 
 other is the whole world's example of that dark remorse 
 which precedes suicide — yet between the two cases there 
 was also enough of superficial resemblance to make us 
 watch narrowly how Peter the saved will have the heart 
 to speak of Judas the lost. It says a good deal for the 
 purity of Peter's penitence that he speaks as he does. 
 He handles the sad facts of his brother apostle's sin and 
 ruin with unaffected frankness and simplicity. He 
 neither conceals nor palliates them. Yet he is as far as 
 possible from either vulgar abuse or unctuous lamenta- 
 tion. Judas' sin is simply this — " He was guide to them 
 that took Jesus." Judas' fate is veiled in the words of the 
 praj^er under this soft phrase (but more, and not less, 
 awful because it is soft) — **He went to his own place." It 
 must have cost Peter something to speak on this, subject 
 at all ; but his words are, in their spirit, a model to all 
 Christian men whose duty it is to deal with the scandal or 
 vrith the punishment of a sinning brother. 
 
 It is further worthy of notice in the same connection 
 how St. Peter lifts this whole matter as much as possible 
 from the level of a wicked man's free and guilty will to 
 its place in the higher purposes of Providence. The 
 traitor's act was indeed an " iniquity," a *' transgression," 
 by which he wilfully threw away the " portion " Jesus 
 
WAITING FOB THE PROMISE. 31 
 
 had given liirn," in the highest rank of spiritual service, 
 for sixty shekels' worth of land on earth, and the lot 
 which was justly his own in the next world. That is not 
 concealed. Yet that aspect of it, now that the wretched 
 man had gone into God's presence, was a thing betwixt 
 him and God. Peter was not his judge, nor are we. 
 What he had to do with was the divine predestination 
 which permitted such a gap to he made in the most 
 select number of Christ's servants, and the divine will 
 which prescribed how the gap should be filled. Both these 
 points, therefore — the vacancy, caused not by Judas' 
 death, but by Judas' sin, and the filling up of the vacancy 
 — Peter finds divinely foreshadowed in the experience of 
 Jesus' great ancestor and type, King David. In going 
 back upon the psalms of David's exile for a prophetic 
 parallel, Peter closely copied his Master ; for a few words 
 from the 41st Psalm had been once quoted by Jesus with 
 reference to this very case of Judas ; ^ and the betrayal 
 He had repeatedly spoken of as necessary to fulfil old 
 predictions. From two other psalms of the same class 
 as the 41st, Peter accordingly selects texts, which, though 
 written anciently of the foes of David, were, by the con- 
 sent of Hebrew expositors and the sanction of Christ's 
 own example, applicable in a higher degree to David's 
 Anointed Successor. From the 69th Psalm, 3 first, he 
 deduces the inevitable vacating of Judas' apostolic seat 
 in consequence of his crime ; since the expulsion of the 
 rightful king's rebel foes out of their places and inherit- 
 ances in the kingdom is a principle applicable both to 
 
 1 Or " lot " (tr. " part") =k\t]poq. s. v, 17. cf. " clergy." 
 
 2 In John xiii. 18 ; cf . xvii. 12 ; Matt. xxvl. 24. 
 
 ^ Psa. Ixix. 25 is quoted from LXX., not literally : dvroii for avrCuv. 
 
32 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 King David and King Christ. This psalm is one cited 
 repeatedly elsewhere, even by our Lord, and is full of 
 messianic allusions.^ Next, from another psalm, which 
 used in the ancient Church to be called '* Iscariot's," — 
 the 109th 2 — he deduces that it is God's will the vacant 
 ofl&ce should not be left vacant. The psalm is one full 
 of imprecations against Ahithophel, imprecations which, 
 whatever may be thought of the royal sufferer's right to 
 utter them, or the spirit in which he did it, are plainly 
 understood here as prophetic references by the Spirit of 
 God to one who with more than Ahithophel's malice sold 
 over to death One Who was better than David. 
 
 It is this wonderful foreshadowing of the events of our 
 Lord's history in antecedent type which makes it plain 
 how every part of that history (including even men's 
 freest and worst acts) was foreseen and prearranged of 
 God. Though we might not have been able, like Peter, 
 to deduce the need for a new election from a verse of the 
 109th Psalm, yet we see enough to feel how pregnant the 
 old Scripture must have become to apostolic readers, after 
 it had j)l6ased the Lord Christ to open their eyes to it, 
 and expound to them the things concerning Himseif.3 
 
 There is even in form a curious parallel between the 
 fate of Absalom's adviser, who, when he found his trea- 
 son against his sovereign on the point of being baffled, 
 went home and hanged himself, and the very similar end 
 of Christ's betrayer. In deeper fact, Judas is the arch- 
 tjTpe of all treason within the kingdom of God ; of all 
 men, before or since his day, who, not being in their 
 
 » Cf . Psa, Ixix. 4 c. Jolin xv. 25 ; v. 9 c. John ii. 17 and Kom. xv. 3 ; 
 V. 21 c. Matt, xxvii. 34, 48, &c. 
 
 ^ Psa. cix. 8 is from LXX., literally. 
 
 3 Luke xxiv. 27, 32, 45. Cf. 1 Pet. i. 10-12. 
 
WAITING FOB THE PBOMISE. 33 
 
 hearts content with the spmtual privileges to which God 
 has called them in His spiritual realm, betray the inte- 
 rests of God's cause for some selfish worldly gain. The 
 honour of being an elect apostle of Messiah, the moral 
 advantages such a position offered, loyalty and gratitude 
 to his Master, the very life of Him on Whom man's hope 
 depended ; — all these seemed to the covetous heart of 
 the man, hardened by years of secret peculation and em- 
 bittered by detection, of less value than thirty silver 
 coins. For the lowest market price of a slave, he sold 
 the Son of God, sold his apostolate, sold himself. Satan 
 drives hard bargains with men when evil passion blinds 
 them, but never a bargain harder than this. The chance 
 of doing such a crime came only once in this world's 
 history ; and the unhappy man who, tempted by circum- 
 stances and impelled of the devil, chose to do it, reaped 
 so little from it, that the hatefulness of his deed is almost 
 equalled by the pitifulness of his fate. About the par- 
 ticulars of that fate of his, indeed, there hangs a mist of 
 uncertainty. The two accounts we have present differ- 
 ences which it is not easy to harmonize. According to 
 St. Matthew,' Judas, in a fit of passionate remorse, flung 
 back the " blood -money " into the hands of those who 
 had hired him, and "went and hanged himself." The 
 scrupulous councillors, who thought their own bribe would 
 pollute God's treasury, invested it in a bit of land, to be 
 used as a cemetery for foreign Jews dying at Jerusalem ; 
 and the name of the place was changed from the 
 " Potter's Field" to the " Field of Blood."^ But in the 
 
 ' Matt, xxvii. 3-10. 
 
 ^ Matthew's quotation is not from our present text of Jeremiah. 
 Zech. xi. 13 is not very closely related to it, but may be the one 
 meant. Tradition showed a field on the south slope of Zion, near 
 
 4 
 
84 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 book of Acts, St. Peter or St. Luke (for I cannot feel 
 gure whether verses 18 and 19 are or are not an explanation 
 by the reporter, or how much of them is so) tells us that 
 Judas himseK bought the field, and met his death, in that 
 very field, apparently, by falling on his head with such 
 violence as to produce rupture of the body. Of course, 
 conjectures in reconcihation of these narratives have been 
 often hazarded. That Judas is only said to have done 
 what the Sanhedrim did with his money ; that he hanged 
 himself first, but afterwards fell in the way described, 
 through the breaking of the rope or otherwise ; and that 
 the spot on which his suicide occurred was the spot pur- 
 chased for that very reason by the priests : these guesses 
 are possible, and may serve, therefore, to repel a captious 
 objector. But if they silence, they hardly satisfy, and we 
 shall do best, I think, to say that without the knowledge 
 of some more particulars it is not possible now to be sure 
 how the apostolic traitor met his end. While the details 
 remain thus doubtful, the horrid fact remains to appal us, 
 as it has appalled eighteen centuries. The intolerable 
 remorse of guilt ; the dark despair of life ; the rash dis- 
 missal by his own hand into the presence of his Judge ; 
 the going away to his own place : this is what Judas 
 made by his sin. Let the fearfulness of such a typical 
 example solemnize and terrify all of us, especially if ever 
 we are tempted to make gain out of our godliness, to thrive 
 through the advantages of our religious position, or to 
 sacrifice spiritual concerns entrusted to us to some 
 personal end. No sin a man can do ever pays in the long 
 run — this sort of sin least of all. He who tries to traffic 
 
 Tophet, where Williams ?b,j? there is a bed of white potter's clay (?), 
 and Baumgarteu makes much use of this connection with Tophet. 
 
WAITING FOB TEE PBOMISE. 35 
 
 for a portion in this world, with the portion to which God 
 has called him in the next, shall forfeit both. There is a 
 " place " ^ which may be called "his own ;" but it is neither 
 the " potter's field " on earth, nor a throne in heaven. 
 
 Peter's speech being ended, the brethren proceeded to 
 fill up the vacant ofiice. The way in which this appoint- 
 ment was gone about is very instructive. It was done at 
 the suggestion of the leading apostle ; yet it was done not 
 by the apostles, but by the whole hundred and twenty ; ^ 
 nor because an apostle proposed it, but because he sup- 
 ported his proposal with Scripture. The body of disciples 
 took action up to a certain point ; they defined the 
 qualifications of the ofiice, sought out such men as 
 possessed these qualifications, and possibly selected from 
 among them the two best qualified. But this was as far 
 as they dared to go. It was the prerogative of an apostle 
 to be expressly designated by Jesus : the others had been 
 so, and the new one must be so, too. At this point, 
 therefore, the brethren pause, stand aside, and invoke the 
 direct personal decision of their departed Lord. Both the 
 candidates — the unsuccessful Joseph, son of Sabbas, with 
 his Latin cognomen " Justus," and Matthias the successful 
 — are said by tradition to have been of the Seventy, but 
 are previously unknown to history. Both must have been 
 early converts of Jesus, His companions from the opening 
 of His ministry, and witnesses of His risen life ; for this 
 was the condition of their selection. 3 Probably, too, they 
 were in all outward signs of character alike unexceptionable; 
 
 ' Cf. TOTTov in V. 25, bis. 
 
 ^ " Together," v. 15 ^^ "in one place," IttI to avrb {xdipiov sc). 
 
 ^ The conditions are : — 1. Knowledge of His ministry (a) in its whole 
 duration (St. John xv. 27) : {b) minute and constant (St, Luke xxii. 
 28). 2. Personal e\idence of His resurrection. 
 
 4^c 
 
36 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 since tlie appeal is made to Jesus as the Divine Searcher 
 of hearts, and on this heart-knowledge, unattainable by 
 the brethren, the choice is at last made to turn. But in 
 their prayer to Jesus (which seems to have been offered 
 by Peter in the name of all) the brethren take for granted 
 that the " Lord " has already made His choice. "With an 
 allusion perhaps to His own words, " Have not I chosen 
 you twelve?" — "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have 
 chosen you;" they beg the Lord Jesus to show ^ them 
 ** whether of these two Thou hast chosen.'' And, having 
 praj^ed, ihej remit the matter to the decision of the lot. 
 These men, let it be remembered, stood still on the plat- 
 form of Mosaic Judaism. They had not yet received the 
 Spirit Who confers the gift of " discerning of spirits." 
 In this special election, as never again, their object was 
 to leave the choice immediately in God's hands. Lot- 
 casting was not only in heathendom (in Greek classic 
 times, for example) a mode of divination ; it was also 
 among the ancient Hebrews a recognised means of ascer- 
 taining the divine will, resorted to in the partition of 
 territory, the detection of criminals, the election of rulers, 
 and the conduct of war.^ But this solitary and extra- 
 ordinary example of it before Pentecost is no precedent 
 for its use in the appointment of Church office-bearers ; 
 and it never has been imitated in the Church, save once 
 in Spain, about the seventh century, and by the modern 
 Moravians. Still less can its solemn and prayerful 
 application here, to decide what man could not decide, be 
 any apology for the frivolous or irreverent employment of 
 
 1 " Show," rather " appoint," v. 24. 
 
 '^ Cf., e.g., the partition of Palestine (Josh. xiv. 2) ; the detection of 
 Achan (Josh. vii. 16, &c.) (?) ; the election of Saul (1 Sam. x. 20). See 
 examples, heathen and Hebrew, in Smith's Diet. Cf. Prov. xvi. 33. 
 
WAITING FOB THE PB0MI8E, 37 
 
 the lot, either to reHeve men from the responsibihty of 
 decision, or to afford them the excitement of gambUng. 
 The rightness or wrongness of all such applications of it 
 must be judged of on other grounds. 
 
 Thus, then, at length the framework of the Christian 
 Church stood complete, a prepared body of Hebrew be- 
 lievers in an attitude of devout and joyful expectation. 
 Boldly closing their ranks and perfecting their broken or- 
 ganisation, in the energy of a faith which counts that 
 what God promises is already as good as done, this noble 
 band stood and waited, ten days long, praying in their 
 upper room. What is this but the last result of all the 
 long Hebrew ages, the product from millenniums of He- 
 brew piety ? A body of saints whom the last " Minister of 
 the circumcision"^ has Himself trained, and who, full of 
 the ripe faith which expects and desires, the grand old wait- 
 ing faith of patriarch and prophet, are ready to be trans- 
 formed at a stroke into the Church of Christ ? What is 
 lacking save the Transformer ? the life, the energy, which 
 shall knit, and fuse, and kindle, and turn the mere frame- 
 work into a body, and be the soul of that body, and dwell 
 in it, and work through it for ever ; the life, the energy, 
 of the Holy Ghost ? The next step u Pentecost. 
 ^ Kom. XV. 8. 
 
III. 
 
 Iv kvi TTvevfiaTt t'lfitig iravTiQ kg 'iv aw}xu 'tjBaTTriaQriixiv. 
 
Acts ii. 1-13. 
 
Ee VISED Yeesion. 
 
 And ivhile the day of Pentecost ivas heing accomplished, 
 they were all together at the same place ; and suddenly 
 there came out of heaven a sound as of a rushing mighty 
 blast, and filled the ivhole house ivhere they tvere sitting ; 
 and there appeared to them cloven tongiies as of fire, 
 and sat upon each one of them, and they ivere all filled 
 U'ith the Holy Spirit, and began to speak ivith different 
 tongues, according as the Spirit gave them to utter. 
 
 Noiv there ivere dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout 
 men, from every nation of those that are under the 
 heaven. And ivhen that voice occuj-red, the croicd 
 came together and ivas confounded because they heard 
 them speaking each one in his own dialect. So they 
 ivere all amazed and wondered, saying : 
 
 *' Behold, are not all these tvho are speaking Gali- 
 leans ? And how do ive hear, each in our own dialect 
 in which we ivere born ? Parthians, and Medes, and 
 Elamites, and the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, of both 
 Judcea and Cappadocia, Po7itus and Asia, Phrygia and 
 also Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Lybia ivhich 
 lie towards Gyrene, and the Roman sojourners, both 
 Jews and proselytes, Gretes and Arabians, we hear them 
 speaking in our own tongues the great things of God.'^ 
 
 So they were all amazed, and ivere disputing one with 
 another, saying, " What may this beV But others 
 mocking said, " They are full of sweet wine /" 
 
III. 
 
 AT last the birthday of Christ's Church had come. 
 The tenth morning after His return to heaven 
 brought round to the disciples the second great national 
 festival of the year;^ and vrhether or not they felt that 
 indefinite presentiment which now and then betokens 
 some impending change in one's life, at least they could 
 hardly escape a tenser stretch of expectation than on any 
 of the nine days already spent in waiting prayer. Pente- 
 cost, or the Fiftieth, was the Greek name for what in the 
 books of Moses is called, variously, the Feast of Harvest, 
 or of Weeks, or of First-Fruits.^ It marked the lapse of 
 seven times seven days from the one which succeeded to 
 Passover Sabbath, and seemed to round off the final close 
 of the great Paschal solemnities. Its usual name at the 
 time of our Lord denoted this : " The Concluding As- 
 sembly." 3 It was, in its primary design, an agricul- 
 tural festival of thanksgiving. As Passover was supposed 
 to coincide with the opening of harvest operations, when 
 the earliest crop, the barley, was ripe, so that its first cut 
 sheaf could be waved before Jehovah on the morning 
 
 * Whether this fell on a Saturday or Sunday, depends on the day 
 when our Lord held His last supper. Wieseler says Saturday ; Meyer, 
 Sunday. 
 
 '^ See Exod. xxiii. 16 ; xxxiv. 22 ; Num. xxviii. 26 c. Lev. xxiii. 17 ; 
 Deut. xvi. 10. ^ •' Atsereth." 
 
44 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 after the Paschal Sabbath, so the mtervening seven weeks 
 were presumed to have brought the sta^ole cereal, wheat, 
 also to maturity. Grain harvest was now about to be- 
 come general, in fact ; and the characteristic ceremony of 
 Pentecost consisted in the sacrifice by fire of a couple of 
 leavened loaves, baked from the new wheat of the season, 
 "a new meat-offering" of the land's first-fruits in the 
 form of prepared human food. Who can tell whether it 
 dawned that day on any of the more thoughtful disciples, 
 such as John, that whereas Jesus had been offered ui> at 
 Passover, like the first sheaf of God's great spiritual har- 
 vest of men, so perchance at Pentecost there might be 
 consecrated to the Lord the first-fruits of a wider inga- 
 thering ? At all events we can now see how scrupulously 
 it pleased the wise Builder of the Church to respect the 
 memorials of the old whilst laying the foundations of the 
 new ; how He honoured the festivals of an economy which 
 was about to vanish away, by making them the initial 
 points of a larger history ; and how gently He slid into 
 His scholars' hearts the vaster thoughts of His spiritual 
 kingdom through the all but worn-out and effete machinery 
 of Mosaic ritual. 
 
 Modern Jews are now accustomed to find in the Pen- 
 tecostal service another significance.^ As Passover was 
 the anniversary of the Exodus, so Pentecost was the 
 anniversary of the legislation on Sinai ; for that great 
 moral birthday of the Hebrew polity followed fifty days 
 after the Red Sea was crossed. Eemembering this, it 
 may be permitted to detect a special propriety in the 
 coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, to rewrite in men's 
 
 * Cf. Meuschen's " Nov. Test, e Talmude lUustratum," p. 740. 
 Also Smith's Diet. , Art. Pentecost. 
 
PENTECOST. 45 
 
 hearts what under the legal covenant had been on that 
 day written only on tables of stone. From the earthly 
 mount which, when God's finger touched it, burned with 
 fire, Moses, the cloud-concealed, received for the redeemed 
 from Egypt a law, hard as the granite it was written on, 
 a law which only caused offences to abound, and minis- 
 tered to the offender condemnation.^ But now the law 
 has led the world to Christ ; and He from His celestial 
 mount, His holy hill of Zion into which the cloud received 
 Him, sends down to His redeemed no code of impossible 
 precepts, but the Spirit of law, the Spirit of that love 
 which fulfils law and makes obedience for the first time 
 possible. Beautiful as this parallelism unquestionably is, 
 it is not biblical, nor have we any reason to think that it 
 had occurred to the Jews of our Lord's age. The Hebrew 
 literature even of the next generation knows notliing of 
 it. 2 It is an after thought, for which we have to thank 
 some later Kabbi; but to the patristic Church, some three 
 or four centuries later, it became a familiar idea, and lent 
 its own charm to the AVhitsuntide festival. 3 
 
 Men who live through any marked epoch in history 
 rarely if ever see its meaning as those do who come after. 
 I dare say the minds of the hundred and twenty (or as 
 many more of Jesus' followers as had joined them for the 
 feast) were full that morning only of a dim vague longing 
 for something, a blind going forward of the soul to meet 
 they hardly knew what. At least, they were early at the 
 
 ' Cf . 2 Cor. iii, 7 ff. ; Heb. xii. 18-24 ; Eom. v. 20 ; viii, 2-15 ; Gal. 
 iii. 19-iv. 7. 
 
 '^ It is not named in Philo or Josephus. See Hofmann's Schrift- 
 heiveis. 
 
 2 Cf., for example, Jerome and Augustine, quoted in Smith, 1. c. ; 
 and Severian and Tlieophylact, referred to by Wordsworth, in loc. 
 
46 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 place of meeting, in an attitude of exi3ectation. Before 
 the sun was three hours up, before the morning time 
 of prayer had brought worshippers to the temple, these 
 were in their places at their upper room. Probably 
 they had already prayed, and now they sat ^ to wait. 
 Yet that which we wait for most intently comes on us at 
 the last as a surprise. Suddenly, with a shock that struck 
 through every soul, there rushed down upon the house 
 roof, as if it fell out of the clear sky, a sound, which was 
 like nothing so much as the impetuous, furious blast of 
 a gale ;^ a sound which in a moment filled the house. 
 With the sound came a brightness, as of a fiery stream, 
 which parted itself to each, so that each brother or sister 
 saw on every other's head a flame-like tongue-shaped 
 thing, which seemed to alight there and to rest. These 
 were material signs, audible to the ear or visible to the 
 eye, which expressed in a language of nature the advent 
 and the presence of God. 3 The elements are the servants 
 of the Eternal. They herald His coming. They proclaim 
 His x^resence. He Who cannot be seen robes Himself 
 in them as in a garment, and men trace in thunder 
 His voice, His marching in the light. " The winds 
 He makes His messengers; His ministers are the 
 flaming fire." 4 When the storm-blast leaps down with 
 a roar from the upper currents, or the forked tongues of 
 
 ' See ver. 2. Why does the earlier Christian art represent them as 
 standing ? See this still retained, e.g., in the frescoes in the Spag- 
 nuoli Chapel at Santa Maria Novella, at Florence. 
 
 '^ axTirep (ptpofikvrjq Trvoifg (Siaiag, v. 2. 
 
 ^ See examples of wind as a symbol of God, in Song of Sol. iv. 16 ; 
 Ezek. xxxvii. 9 (i. 4 ?) ; Isa. xl, 7 ; John iii. 8 ; xx. 22. And of fire : 
 Isa. iv. 4 (Gen. xv. 17 ?) ; Mai. iii. 2 ; Matt. iii. 11 c. Luke iii. 16 ; 
 Eev. iv. 5. * See Psa. civ. 4, quoted in Heb. i. 7. 
 
PENTECOST. 47 
 
 flame play with fierce dartings through the air, we 
 see, as Elijah did at Horeb, forerunners of the Divine 
 Majesty, trumpeters of His strength. Yet it is not in the 
 wind nor in the fire that the Lord is. Behind the 
 material portents of Pentecost, which were like dramatic 
 accessories to startle and pierce the stupid hearts of men 
 into apprehension of the divine, we must look for the 
 Divine Comer Himself. Invisible as the breath from 
 which He borrows His human name, penetrating as the 
 flame to which He likens His working, the Holy Spirit 
 comes into the human spirit of each waiting believer in 
 the crowd ; quickens with His breath the slumbering fire 
 of spiritual life ; pours light and heat, insight and holy 
 passion, into the soul ; fills up the vessel of the heart 
 with unheard-of certainty, courage, gratitude, and exulta- 
 tion in God : till the over-brimming tide of celestial emo- 
 tion almost drowns consciousness or self-restraint, and 
 flows out in rapt ecstatic passionate utterance of jubilant 
 praise. Here is the true inner wonder of the day. Here 
 lay the heart of the event — in this simultaneous elevation 
 of the whole company who had prayed so long to such a 
 level of divine emotion that they could not choose but 
 praise, could not choose but utter their praise aloud, 
 testifying to God, in the hearing of whoever might hear, 
 what magnificent mercies God had granted them. A 
 feebler presence of God the Spirit within men quickens 
 that desire of the heart which is prayer ; but to be full 
 of the Spirit is to praise. Before Pentecost, the Holy 
 Ghost had enabled these disciples to believe, to hope, to 
 wait, to ask. Hitherto He had been with them in the 
 measure of the old economy. It was an economy which 
 expected, but had not attained ; which reached out 
 
48 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 towards the assurance and the adoption and the hberty 
 and the fellowship of sons in God's Son Jesus. But 
 when He came to them to make them Clnristians by bap- 
 tising them into the new economy of the Church, He 
 lifted them as by a sudden flood-tide up to another level — 
 to Jesus' own level. He broke the barrier, now grown 
 very thin, which held them back at their legal standpoint, 
 and floated them in to a new world of privilege, in to 
 closer nearness to God, in to confidence, to freedom, to 
 the joy of possession. In a word. He made them in full 
 and conscious standing sons of God, and, like other sons 
 of God, they shouted aloud for gladness. 
 
 We are not permitted — no man is — to set eyes on the 
 exact point at which God the Spirit touches man the 
 spirit, nor to catch the manner of His work. But the 
 effects of the divine coming reveal its nature. The 
 noise as of a storm-blast which smote the house had 
 been loud enough to spread over the adjacent part of 
 the city at least, and to arrest the attention of many of 
 the citizens. Its apparent direction guided the aston- 
 ished neighbours to the spot. Crowding in, they found 
 something stranger even than the rushing blast. A hun- 
 dred and twenty persons of both sexes talking simulta- 
 neously, in an excited manner, not to each other, but — 
 as if unaware of each other's presence — addressing all 
 of them some invisible Hearer ; their many discordant 
 voices mingling and confounding one another till nothing 
 could be understood: this scene was certainly extra- 
 ordinary enough. But among the crowd wliich gathered, 
 many, both of the born Jews and of the heathen proselytes, 
 were natives of foreign lands, who had either come up to 
 the feast, or were from motives of rehgion settled in the 
 
PENTECOST. 49 
 
 Holy City, as so many pious Jews are to this day, that 
 they might spend their remaining years beside the sacred 
 temple, and lay their bones at last in sacred soil. By 
 degrees, these foreigners began to distinguish, amidst 
 the medley of sounds, familiar words of their mother- 
 tongue from one or other of the disciples ; and listening 
 more carefully, they discovered, to their still greater i^er- 
 plexity, that each dialect of every land of the Dispersion 
 had its representative among the speakers. The utter 
 amazement which Luke labours to depict in the audience 
 at this discovery,^ has not to this day ceased among the 
 expositors and commentators of his history. But how- 
 ever wonderful this gift of tongues may have been, it is 
 hardly open to doubt what its nature was. A veritable 
 speech in languages or dialects which the speakers had 
 never learned, is what Luke means us to understand, if 
 words have meaning. That the number of such lan- 
 guages spoken was considerable, is plain both from his 
 rhetorical phrase, '' every nation under heaven," and 
 from the list he gives of fifteen territories. Beginning 
 with four oriental races which then inhabited the lands 
 about the Caspian and the Euphrates, over which 
 Babylon and Persia of old held sway, and linking these 
 to western Asia by the link of Palestine itself,^ Luke 
 names next five provinces of Asia Minor, crosses to the 
 two leading political divisions of North Africa, and closes 
 with the imperial city itself, as representing the whole 
 Latin West. Or rather, meant to close with it ; but, 
 recollecting himself, adds as a supplement the important 
 
 ' Cf. the expressions, avi'exi'^ih ver. 6 ; L^iaravTO, i^avfiaciov, ver. 7 ; 
 f-ticrravTO, di)]7ropovvTO, ver. 12. 
 
 ^ It seems impossible to explain the occurrence of 'lovSdiav in 
 ver. 9. 
 
 5 
 
50 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 island of Crete (now Candia) and the great Arab 
 family. ^ 
 
 The power of speaking the six or eight distinct lan- 
 guages used in all these lands, to say nothing of their 
 local dialectic varieties, was no permanent gift bestowed 
 on these disciples for the purpose of preaching the gospel. 
 It is next to certain that the apostles availed themselves 
 of no such power. The gift here was given to every one, 
 but it was not used for preaching. It was not used for 
 speaking to men at all. The crowd of outsiders found 
 these brethren speaking to God — not, for edification, to 
 one another ; still less, for conversion, to unbelievers. ^ 
 The effect on the hearers of such a Babel of tongues 
 could only be to excite wonder, or, as in the Corinthian 
 Church at a later date, to make ignorant persons think 
 the Christians were mad or drunk. When it became 
 needful to preach the gospel to the multitude, Peter used 
 no foreign tongue, but spoke to all in the language of 
 every-day life. Hence it appears that these mysterious 
 utterances (which probably the utterer did not understand, 
 or would not have understood had he heard another 
 utter them) were what St. Paul himself calls them, 
 *' a sign." I take the matter thus. The soul and spirit 
 of the believer being full of the Holy Ghost, and uplifted 
 thereby into a state of extraordinary spiritual elation, 
 intent on God and rapt in His praise, must utter what 
 it feels. Naturally, it would do this in its own most 
 familiar mother-tongue. But, supernaturally, the laws 
 of mental association which govern utterance have been 
 
 * Cf. Acts X. 44-47 (e. xi. 15) ; xix. 6 ; 1 Cor. xiv., for the relation 
 of the " tongues " to (1) praise and (2) " prophecy." See in Neander 
 [Pjianz. u. Leit.) passages from Irenaeus and Tertnllian, which he 
 thinks prove the continued existence of such a gift. 
 
PENTECOST. 51 
 
 in certain cases overborne, and the organs of speech used 
 by God the Holy Ghost to utter sounds which expressed 
 the same emotions in a foreign tongue. The man him- 
 self may or may not be aware with his understanding of 
 what he is actually saying ; he may not know. what his 
 words in themselves mean. He is absorbed in spiritual 
 emotion. He feels rather than thinks. His spirit praises 
 or prays, his understanding being unfruitful. He means 
 praise, and praise only ; but over the form in which his 
 IDraise is uttered, he exerts no intelligent volition, but is 
 the instrument of God, and speaks, literally, as the Spirit 
 gives him utterance. Now, wherever such a miracle as 
 this was wrought, — whether in Jerusalem, or Csesarea,^ 
 or Corinth — it was, in Paul's words, " a sign to them 
 that believe not;" a proof, as any other miracle would 
 have been, of the special presence and favour of the 
 Almighty. Further, such a miracle, done, not on 
 nature, but on men ; nor on man's body only, but on 
 his intellectual powers and habits ; a miracle wholly in- 
 terior, subjective, controlling the nexus betwixt the willing 
 emotional soul of a man and his bodily organs, was 
 (I venture to think) specially in its place under the dis- 
 pensation of the Spirit. Such work as the Holy Ghost 
 does on the very soul itself, when He kindles the life of 
 faith and love to God, can be made directly visible or 
 audible to no man : but when the first hot living utter- 
 ance of this new life is plainly seen to be divinely guided 
 on its way from the soul to the tongue, seen to be seized, 
 as it were, by God's own hand, liquid from the heart, 
 and turned past the wonted channel of speech into 
 another unknown channel ; when, I say, God thus breaks 
 
 I See Acts x. 46. 
 5* 
 
52 FBOM JEEUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 open a path for the tide of spiritual Hfe through words 
 never before heard by the ear or uttered by the voice of 
 His servant ; does He not proclaim to all how intimately 
 He has made Himself Lord of the inner being, the 
 Master and the Quicken er of the very soul ? What is 
 this but a counterpart in saved men to that last worst 
 instance of diabolic domination over lost menx* ^ Where 
 a legion of unclean spirits had forced the tongue to talk 
 blasphemies, there God the Holy Ghost inspires and 
 guides the utterance of praise. A glorious exchange ; 
 a sweet miracle of mercy, where sin had wrought its 
 miracles of blasting ! 
 
 Nor is this all. There is a notable propriety about the 
 use which it pleased God to make of the gift of tongues 
 on the first day of the Christian Church. These believers 
 in the messiahship of Jesus are to be turned into His 
 witnesses. The truth which, held hitherto in their hearts, 
 has made new men of them, is to be carried to the hearts 
 of their countrymen, and thence beyond to the far-off 
 world, by means of spoken testimony. Hitherto Jesus 
 alone has borne witness to the truth, and on that witness- 
 bearing of His, His royalty as a spiritual Sovereign re- 
 poses. Now, each subject of His is to have a tongue to 
 speak for Him. Now, through fiery speech fresh from a 
 soul on flame and charged with the enthusiasm of per- 
 sonal conviction — in a word, through preaching — is the 
 glad message to fly abroad, and run from lip to heart, 
 and from heart back again to lip, till all men shall have 
 heard and all men have believed. The new-born Church 
 takes therefore, as by instinct, to her proper work — she 
 preaches. But her preaching is based on her praises. It 
 ' Cf. Luke viii. 27-35. 
 
PENTECOST. 53 
 
 is because the disciples believe, they speak. And before 
 they testify of God to .men, they must testify their own 
 faith to God. A Church that shall first praise, then y 
 preach, and shall do both with spontaneous impulse and 
 a tongue of fire, is an apostolic Church. 
 
 The congregation in that upper room was thus the 
 representative, or, as it were, the seed-germ, of the whole 
 catholic Church of all the centuries and of every land. 
 First of all, indeed, it met there as the ripe and ready 
 ''first-fruits" of Israel's twelve tribes scattered abroad, 
 made ready, through so tedious a ripening time, to be 
 offered now at last on this Pentecostal festival. But it 
 was more than a first-fruit of Israel : it was in eminent 
 measure what Israel was always looked upon as being, 
 the world's first-fruit.^ For a symbol of this, its world- 
 wide significance, the little new-made Church rehearsed 
 the praises of redemption in all the tongues of all the 
 lands over which God had scattered the tribes of Israel. 
 This polyglot praise was the consecration of heathen 
 speech to the service of Israel's Jehovah. It fore- 
 shadowed the catholic grace of God which has turned 
 common and unclean tongues to holy use. It meant, 
 though they knew it not, the gathering in of Gentile races 
 to the God of Jacob. One thinks naturally enough of the 
 ancient sundering of our race into mutually repellent 
 tribes through another "gift of tongues" on the plains 
 of Babylon. But I cannot conceive how some can find 
 here ^ the reversal of that ancient curse, or any type of the 
 reduction of mankind to unity through the abolition of 
 
 ' Cf. what St. James, the apostle of the Hebrew Church, ssljs Id 
 his letter to the Diaspora, James i. 18. 
 
 '^ As Stier does, for example. See his Reden d. Apostel, in loc. 
 
54 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 national distinctions. There is a reduction of mankind to 
 unity foreshadowed here, but it is to a unity in faith and 
 worship by one Spirit — not surely to a denationalised 
 cosmopolitanism such as should obliterate ethnic and 
 tribal peculiarities by reducing all to one type of life or 
 one mode of speech. Had a hundred and twenty persons, 
 whose mother- tongues were diverse, been made to talk 
 the same language, then one might have seen in it an 
 emblem of that formal mechanical union which the so- 
 called catholic Church of Eome aims at when, over all 
 the lands of the globe, she demands a rigid compliance 
 with one ritual, and serves God in the unvarying mono- 
 tony of one dead tongue. Pentecost reads me a different 
 lesson from that. The Holy Spirit of God brings a spm- 
 tual coincidence out of various life.^ Frankly accepting 
 the diversities which obtain among men, He only pene- 
 trates them all alike with the spirit of one Master, adapts 
 them to the worship of one Father ; and so out of super- 
 ficial discordance He fetches forth a heavenly harmony. 
 Let us not be too fond of uniformity : that is false 
 Catholicism. Let us seek the higher unity which rests on 
 freedom and variety. In the true catholic Church which 
 stands in our creed and is dear to our hearts, there are 
 many tongues and forms of utterance — tongues so diverse 
 that, alas ! we often fail quite to recognise one another ; 
 yet is there only one Spirit, Who inspires, and, having 
 inspired, interprets; Who is above all, and through all, 
 and in us all ! 
 
 We are the heirs of Pentecost. Then first the waiting 
 Church below was linked tight in uttermost unity of hfe 
 
 ■ See Wordsworth in loc. on avpexv^n (ver. 6). c. ^r^^i in Gen. 
 xi. 9 (cf. LXX.). 
 
PENTECOST. 55 
 
 to its reigning Lord above. One Spirit embraces the 
 tlirone in heaven and the upper room on earth. Down 
 from the King-Priest, Who ministers and prays and rules 
 in the true sanctuary on high, there falls the precious 
 purchase of His passion, a Divine Person, to animate and 
 unite His still mortal members ; then from their mortal 
 tongues there goes up to thek Priest-King on high one 
 various consenting song of confident, thankful praise. 
 The blessed link has never since been broken. ''From 
 that day," said Pope Leo the Great in the fifth century, 
 ''the trumpet of gospel preaching has sounded; from that 
 day showers of gifts, rivers of blessings, have watered 
 every desert and the whole parched earth. "^ It is true. 
 Hard as it is to recognise the identity of Christ's visible 
 Church, during much of her sorely-corrupted annals, with 
 the Church of Pentecost, yet it is true that the gift of that 
 day has never been recalled; the fire of divine life has 
 never gone quite out ; the tongues of the saints have 
 never wholly ceased to echo back heaven's praises and 
 preach to men the mercy of God. To each Christian man 
 in every Christian age, there has stood, and still stands 
 open, the unrevoked grant of the fulness of the Spirit 
 — such fulness as will fill him, if he be willing to take 
 it in, up to his capacity. To each of us it is, and has 
 been, according to our faith. If we are carnal, cold, 
 timid, desponding, servile-hearted, fearful; it is not be- 
 cause we live under the law, nor because God has set 
 bounds to His grace, nor because the Holy Ghost is 
 not yet, as if Clnist were not yet glorified. It is because 
 we have either no heart to desire, or no faith to expect. 
 We have not, now, because we ask not. ''Ask and ye 
 * Quoted by Dr. Wordsworth in loc. 
 
56 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 shall receive," said Jesus. It is true that the ecstasy 
 
 which marked the first full bestowal of the Spirit, when 
 
 for the first time in this world sinful men knew themselves 
 
 to be the redeemed sons of God, is not a normal effect of 
 
 the Holy Ghost. Entire absorption and forgetfulness in 
 
 devotional rapture is exceptional in the kingdom of Christ. 
 
 But it is not unknown. It has been seen since. It has 
 
 occurred, and is at any time i)0ssible, that some Christian 
 
 heart, long purged by trial and kept waiting for its joy, 
 
 may be of a sudden so filled with the new wine from the 
 
 Vine of God,^ as to seem, like the first disciples, beside 
 
 itself with joy. The fervours of Christian life, the holy 
 
 excitement of one who lives in another element than 
 
 common men know, and sees what is hidden from them, 
 
 may be mistaken by outsiders for the intoxication of 
 
 fanaticism or of wine, the excess of incipient delirium. 
 
 Yet it never passes beyond self control, unless other 
 
 elements than the divine one mingle in the case. From 
 
 ecstatic praise, Peter could jiass on the instant to cool 
 
 and temperate reasoning. The spirits of the prophets, in 
 
 Paul's experience, were subject to the prophets. In all 
 
 His ordinary working, at any rate, God the Holy Ghost 
 
 still retains those characters which He displayed at 
 
 Pentecost. He is still wind-like, to go abroad with 
 
 untraced feet ; fire-like, to penetrate, reduce, and inflame 
 
 the soul. He is still the Spirit of confidence, of courage, 
 
 of praise, of gladness. To such as mourn and fast and 
 
 pray in Zion, He still gives "beauty for ashes, the oil of 
 
 joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of 
 
 ^ This reference to vessels (or bottles) full of new wine is found 
 in many patristic writers, as, e.g., in Augustine, Cyril, Tertullian, &c. 
 Cf. Eph. V. 18, " Be not drunk -u-ith wine, wherein is excess; but be 
 filled with the Spirit." 
 
PENTECOST. 57 
 
 heaviness."^ AVhat need have we for a baptism in the 
 Spirit != It is to us the need of needs. We languish 
 and are half asleep ; we falter and hold our hand for 
 trifles ; we are slothful and cowardly ; we expect little 
 good, and do less ; we find all duty hard and much of it 
 impossible; we sigh, we grumble, with shaking knees and 
 eyes that seek the ground; without praise, or with such 
 as is heartless; without testimony to Jesus, or with such 
 as is timid — what un-Pentecostal Christians are we! 
 Down, if down we must be, on our knees ! If we are to 
 grovel, let it be in penitence and shame ! Dumb are we ? 
 Then let us weep ! If we can do no more, at least let us 
 lie, and cry, and wait : it may be that even to us a 
 Pentecost will come, which shall set us on our feet again, 
 and put a new song within our mouth, and make new the 
 spirit within our breast ! 
 
 ' Isaiah Ixi. 3. 
 
 '^ " In the Sphit ;" for it is always 'tvYIvsvi.iaTi, just as it is'svvdan. 
 See the passages iu Bruder, sub voce (SaTrnZtiv. 
 
IV. 
 
 ©Ij£ .first 6flspd Scrmoit. 
 
 FAITH COMETH BY HEARING. 
 
Acts ii. 14-36. 
 
Ee VISED Yeksion. 
 
 But Peter, standing icitli the Eleven, lifted up his voice 
 and cried to them : 
 
 ''Men of Judcea, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 
 he this known to you, and give ear to my tvords ! For 
 these are not, as you suppose, drunk, for it is the third 
 hour of the day ; but this is ivhat ivas spoken of through 
 the prophet : ' It shall he in the last days, saith God, 
 I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh, and your 
 sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young 
 men shall see visions, and your elders shall dream dreams, 
 and even upon My hondmen and upon My bondwomen 
 will I pour out of My Spirit, and they shall prophesy. 
 And I will give ivonders in the heaven above, and signs 
 on the earth beloiv, blood and fire and vapour of smoke. 
 The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to 
 blood, before the coming of the great and manifest day 
 of the Lord. And it shall be, every one tuhosoever shall 
 call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.' 
 
 " Men of Israel, hear these 2uords : Jesus the Naza- 
 rene, a man certified to you by God with mighty ivorks 
 and wonders and signs, ichich God did through Hhn in 
 the midst of you, as yourselves knoio— this Man, betrayed 
 in the fixed counsel and foreknowledge of God, you 
 through the hands of lawless men nailed up and des- 
 jxitched, Whom God raised again, having loosed the 
 
jmngs of death, since it ivas not possible for Him to he 
 held by it. For David says ivith reference to Him : 
 " ' I foresaw the Lord before me at every moment, 
 
 For on my right hand is He, in order that I be 
 not moved. 
 
 For this teas my heart glad, 
 
 And my tongue exulted, 
 
 Nay, even my flesh shall tabernacle in hope ; 
 
 For Thou icilt not leave my soul to Hades, 
 
 Nor give Thy holy one to see corruption. 
 
 Thou ivilt make 7ne know paths of life. 
 
 Thou u'ilt fill me with gladness with Thy 
 countenance.' 
 " Men and brethren, it is permitted to say to you icith 
 boldness of the patriarch David, that he both died and 
 ivas buried, and his tomb is among us to this very day. 
 Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that ivith an 
 oath God su'ore to him to seat of the fruit of his loin 
 upon his throne, he foreseeing this, spoke about the 
 resurrection of the Christ, that neither was He ' left to 
 Hades,' nor did His 'flesh see corruption: This Jesus 
 God raised again, of which all we are witnesses. Being 
 therefore by the right hand of God exalted and having 
 received the promise of the Holy Ghost from the Father, 
 He poured out this ivhich ye [both] see and hear. For 
 David did not go up to the heavens, but says himself : 
 '' ' The Lord said to my Lord : 
 
 Sit on My right hand 
 
 Till I make Thine enemies a stool for Thy feet.' 
 ''Assuredly therefore let the whole House of Israel know 
 that God made Him both Lord and Christ — that same 
 Jesus Whom ye crucified /" 
 
IV. 
 
 ST.PETEE made a fit reply to those Jewswlio, ''mock- 
 ing, said, ' These men are full of new wine,' " when he 
 quietly reminded them that the sun was still barely three 
 hours up and the morning sacrifice not yet slain, an horn- 
 before which no reputable Jew was accustomed either to eat 
 or drink, nor any one, Jew or Gentile, to be found the worse 
 for wine. For, as St. Paul says, " they that be drunken 
 are drunken in the night." All suspicion even of over- 
 excitement through the influence of the Holy Ghost, or 
 such intoxication of the feelings as for the time obscures 
 the judgment, is still more fully laid to rest by the tone 
 of his speech. Anything more quiet, or better considered, 
 or freer from every trace of agitation, it is difficult to 
 conceive. Fresh from that first burst of divine enthu- 
 siasm which, following the rushing noise, had set each 
 disciple's heart on fire, with the confused sounds of many- 
 tongued exultation still in his ear, this man, who was wont 
 to be so hot and easily moved, delivered his first address, 
 as the Christian spokesman, with greater composure of 
 manner and closeness of thinking, than, before Christ's 
 death, his words had ever exhibited. His sermon is a 
 chain of argument buttressed by texts of Scripture and 
 by appeals to fact, unfolded with admirable tact, as of a 
 man who had all his wits about him, and leading up to 
 
64 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 his desired conclusion by rigorous force of logic. It is 
 plain that the spirit of this prophet is " subject to the 
 prophet." It is plain that the Spirit Whom Jesus has 
 sent is of another sort from that wild breath of demoniac 
 inspiration which pervaded heathen rehgion, which flung 
 the foaming priestess of Apollo to the ground in nervous 
 convulsions, or drove the worshippers of Thammuz in 
 frantic dances over the mountains of Phrygia. The 
 superstitions of those tribes in Western Asia, with which 
 the Hebrews were ethnologic ally allied, were full of such 
 delirious and frenzied worship. It is in notable contrast 
 to these, that this sober rational enthusiasm of Chris- 
 tianity, as a quite new thing in religious experience, 
 claims special admiration. Peter, speaking here under cir- 
 cumstances which might have quickened the pulses even 
 of a cooler man, is full of the Spirit ; yet the Spirit by 
 Whom he is filled only constrains him to calmer, wiser, 
 and more cogent speech. 
 
 A brief analysis of the sermon will help us to realise 
 this. It consists of two parts. The handle which the 
 occasion offered led him first to explain what had so 
 astonished the bystanders — I mean that simultaneous 
 praising of God in many languages by the whole crowd of 
 believers. The explanation of this is, therefore, the first 
 part ; but it leads on to the second, which establishes the 
 messiahship of Jesus. 
 
 Speaking as he did, a Jew to Jews, at the moment when 
 one of the last great predicted crises in Hebrew history 
 was occurring, Peter needed few words of his own to 
 explain the event. As soon as he had refuted the intoxi- 
 
THE FIBST GOSPEL SEBMON. 65 
 
 cation theory, lie turned for a better explanation to those 
 prophetic writings in which, under God's teaching, the 
 forefathers of his audience had anticipated, centuries 
 hiefore, what had now occurred. Out of the short book 
 of Joel, an early prophet of Judah, he cited by memory 
 from the Septuagint ^ (whence it may be gathered that he 
 spoke in Hellenistic Greek) five verses in which God had 
 foretold a great outpouring of His Spirit. In the original 
 text, the date at which this prediction was to be fulfilled 
 had been left purposely vague. " It shall come to pass 
 afterward,'' said Joel ; and his words have had many a 
 fulfilment. This *' afterward," however, St. Peter ex- 
 changed for another phrase, elsewhere used in prophetic 
 Scripture. " In the last days " is more definite than 
 •' afterward ; " for " the last days " cover the whole inde- 
 terminate extent of that final economy of God toward 
 men which began with the first coming of Christ, and 
 shall end probably at His second. How soon the close of 
 this period should follow on its opening, St. Peter here, 
 and generally the apostolic writers, did not know. We 
 know now that its duration has already been vastly 
 longer than any of them expected, and the end of it 
 is hidden from our forecasting no less than from theirs. 
 Alike to them and to us. aU that lies betwixt the 
 two fixed points which bound this vast section of human 
 history is comprehended in the prophetic phrase "the 
 last days." Whatever has happened or shall happen 
 between the two advents, happens in the " last time." 
 In the verses which Peter quotes, events from the 
 beginning and events from the end of this long era are 
 brought into one line of vision so as to appear together. 
 1 See Joel ii. 28-31, in LXX. 
 6 
 
66 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 The effusion of the Spirit marked its opening, and is 
 continued or renewed all along its course ; it is probable 
 that the portents in earth and heaven, the blood and the 
 fire, are to be more immediate heralds of its close. Such 
 convulsions in nature, or in the civil polity of nations, or 
 in both, are foretold as harbingers of the end in our 
 Lord's prophecies and in His revelation which He sent to 
 His servant John.^ Eepeatedly during the past history of 
 Christendom has Europe traversed such zones of disaster, 
 when prodigies in the sky, with war and flame and pesti- 
 lence on earth, have affrighted the souls of men and 
 shaken the timorous or superstitious with apprehension of 
 approaching judgment. In fact, they are become the 
 s|iOck-in-trade of professional alarmists, whose cry of 
 *'wolf" excites now only incredulous contempt. The 
 true moral or lesson from this and the like Scriptures 
 is not that our hearts should be set a-quaking by every 
 epidemic or breach of public peace, as if it were a trum- 
 pet of doom ; but that at all times, even the serenest, we 
 should recollect, wdth reverent and sober awe, that our lot 
 is to live in " last days," with Pentecost behind us, 
 bequeathing to us the final gift of the Holy Ghost, and 
 judgment ahead of us, as the next chief incident in the 
 divine economy. To the spiritual eye, the time already 
 past, which we know to have been long, and the time to 
 come, which for aught we know may be also long, are 
 equally drawn near. The great event at Pentecost and 
 the great event at Judgment are each of them to us the 
 next or nearest act of God in history. The grace of 
 Pentecost which brought the gospel close to us that we 
 
 • - See Matt. xxiv. 29 ; Kev. vi. 12, ff. (Cf. similar imagery in I&a. 
 xiii. 10 ; Ezek. xxxii. 7, 8.) 
 
THE FIBST GOSPEL SEBMON. 67 
 
 might be saved, and the reckoning of the end which shall 
 avenge all disobedience and unbelief, are both of them 
 impending facts, between which, and under the spiritual 
 shadow and power of both of which, it is ours to live.^ 
 We expect no other or greater revelation of mercy : we 
 do expect now the final revelation of judgment. To us, 
 therefore, as to Peter's hearers, the strong plain lesson 
 from the time we live in, still is, to " call on the name 
 of the Lord," that in this '' great and notable day of the 
 Lord," we may be " saved." 
 
 To those pious and instructed Jews whom Peter ad- 
 dressed, this mere citation served aU his purpose. To 
 them, God's outpouring of His Spirit on '' all flesh," on 
 young as well as old, women as well as men, slaves as 
 well as free, and that in such a measure as to make the 
 humblest of the Lord's people not less privileged in the 
 knowledge of His truth than had been the few favoured 
 patriarchs and prophets to whom truth came of old, 
 through vision or dream : — this outpouring, I say, meant 
 to them the advent of Messiah's reign. Only when He 
 should come Who is called the Christ, the Anointed of 
 the Lord, could this supreme hope of Israel be realised. . 
 Then only was the entire people to become (what Moses 
 wished them to be) a people of prophets, or (as Isaiah 
 foretold) a nation of priests ; then only (in Zechariah's 
 words) should the feeble among them be as David, and 
 the house of David as the Angel of the Lord for strength 
 
 ' Besides many other passages in the apostoHc epistles, compare 
 especially Peter's own words in 1 Pet. i. 17-21. The " fear " in which 
 our present life is to be spent results from those two great events, 
 between which it lies, and by which it is, so to speak, overshadowed, 
 the Father's judgment according to works and our redemption "in 
 these last times " by Christ's precious blood. 
 
 6* 
 
68 FBOM JEEUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 and wisdom.^ Yet this, and nothing less, was what 
 Peter declared had come to pass. The sum of all 
 ancient promise and of all patient hope lay here. The 
 whole company of souls within the inner circle of belief 
 had received, without one exception, an inspiration from 
 on high, which made every tongue prophesy and set the 
 seal of a divine consecration upon every forehead. Old 
 limitations, inequalities, and short-comings were swept 
 for ever away. God had come down to all, and the times 
 of Messiah had at length appeared. 
 
 Where then was the Messiah ? Peter felt that this 
 question was seething up in every heart, and that he must 
 answer it in the second and harder portion of his speech. 
 
 Not one there but knew how, only a few weeks before, 
 One, Who for years had been calling Himself Messiah, 
 had been formally found guilty of imposture by the court 
 of judges and handed over for execution to the Roman 
 magistrate. Few there perhaps who had not swelled the 
 mob's cry of *' Crucify Him." These very men were to 
 be told now to their face, not only that their national 
 ' Deliverer had come and gone, unrecognised and un- 
 honoured, but that their deliberate judgment on Him had 
 been to reject Him, and that their national response to His 
 call had been to murder Him. They were to be told, yet 
 so that they should not arise and smite the speaker, that 
 the hope and pride of their fathers for more than a 
 thousand years, the One to look for Whom, and wait for 
 Whom, and pray for Whom, had become wrought into 
 the national heart like an hereditary passion; He for 
 Whose sake they would all to a man have called it a 
 * Cf . Num. xi. 29 ; Isa. Ixi. 6 : and Zech. xii. 8. 
 
THE FIRST GOSPEL SEBMON. 69 
 
 glad tiling to die, was the very Nazarene Whose blood 
 last Passover they imprecated on their heads ! So to tell 
 them this as to convince them of the fact, convict them 
 of the crime, and persuade them to repent, tasked Peter's 
 courage much, and his skill even more. But now had 
 come the first occasion on which his Master's words were 
 to come true : " It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of 
 your Father Which speaketh in you." ^ Heightened and 
 guided by his Father's Spirit, the intellect of Peter felt 
 its way by an instinct to the fittest choice, arrangement, 
 and statement of his subject ; so that he spoke such 
 words as in the same Spirit's hand were to cleave their 
 way like a sword to the soul and conscience of a thousand 
 sinners. It was the inauguration of the gospel ministry : 
 the first example of gospel preaching. Pray that min- 
 isters may preach, and congregations hear, in the Holy 
 Ghost ! 
 
 Postponing to the end any statement of his grand doc- 
 trine that Jesus is Lord and Christ, St, Peter leads up 
 towards it through a series of more and more conclusive 
 historical proofs. Starting afresh in this new section of 
 his address by a solemn call to attention, and setting 
 then in the forefront the well-known historic name of the 
 Man Whom they had slain, he sketches in brief the 
 biography of " Jesus of Nazareth," from His first public 
 appearance down to that very hour, with a view to trace_ 
 at each step God's dealings with the Man Jesus, and to 
 gather up from these cumulative evidence of His messiah- 
 ship. There are four links in this chain of evidence. 
 The first two, lying within the knowledge of his hearers, 
 are briefly handled; the last two, being facts lying outside 
 ' Matt. X. 20. 
 
70 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 their observation, are confirmed at length by Scripture 
 and hving testimony. 
 
 (1) God's hand first appeared in the pubHc ministry of 
 Jesus by the miracles which He had wrought. The 
 number and variety and notoriousness of such works are 
 hinted at in the accumulation of names which Peter 
 heaps up: "miracles," for the power they revealed; 
 "wonders," for the startling effect they produced; 
 " signs," for the spiritual significance they conveyed. 
 On these proofs the preacher had no need to dwell. They 
 were known to all. They had been done "in the midst 
 of" the public. They had been acknowledged even by 
 the authorities. They had been constantly appealed to 
 by Jesus Himself. The miraculous in the ministry of 
 this Man, was, in those days, a recognised fact to start 
 with, however much it may of late have lost its weight 
 with modern sceptics. It was the earliest public token of 
 divine ai)proval ; and such a token as, at the very outset, 
 made the Jews' after treatment of Jesus inexcusable. 
 
 (2) But now came the stumbling point with the au- 
 dience. This Man of Nazareth, the fame of Whose works 
 had filled Palestine, had been by the national rulers 
 solemnly adjudged a cheat and a blasphemer ; and they, 
 the people, in a fickle hour, had turned upon their former 
 favourite, and cried out for His blood. If it was needless 
 to enlarge on His miracles, to dwell on this fact was still 
 less desirable. Yet, two things must be done. Their 
 criminal share in the memorable paschal tragedy must be 
 plainly charged home ; justice demanded that : and the 
 consistency of such a death with the Sufferer's messiah- 
 ship must be explained ; for the course of his argument 
 required that. In one short sentence Peter does both. 
 
THE FIBST GOSPEL SEBMON. 71 
 
 Jesus' crucifixion was not out of keeping with His Christ- 
 hood; since it was by God's " dehberate counsel and 
 foreknowledge," that He — He Who could raise the dead 
 to life — was Himself "delivered" up to die. Who could 
 have taken away that life, if God had not been pleased to 
 give it up ? It was part of the prearranged, predicted 
 history of the Christ (as Peter by this time had learned), 
 that He should " suffer many things and be killed." 
 Suffering and dying were proofs of Christhood ; not ob- 
 jections to it. Yet, not for a moment did this divine 
 predestination of Messiah's sacrifice lighten his guilt, 
 who " delivered" Him up in the garden with a kiss,^ or 
 theirs, who, by the hands of lawless Eoman soldiers, 
 nailed Him up and slew Him.^ Nakedly Peter recalls the 
 harsh and horrid deeds of seven weeks before, and bluntly 
 charges them on the crowd before him, so that each 
 man's share in that Friday's work might rise up out of 
 memory before his soul and tear his conscience with 
 remorse and shame. Only his proof of the messiahship 
 of the Crucified is still far too incomplete to justify his 
 dwelling on so irritating a theme ; and therefore, without 
 giving time for pause, or even breaking off his sentence, 
 he goes on to announce (3) that novel and astounding 
 fact of resurrection, by which God had set His seal for 
 ever beyond all cavil to the innocence, the claims and the 
 sonship of the Lord Jesus : " Whom God raised up." 
 
 It was well enough known in Jerusalem 3 that4he tem- 
 porary tomb of Jesus had been found empty on the Sunday 
 morning: but the "public ear" had been "abused" 
 
 ' tK^oTov in verse 23 refers to Judas probably. 
 
 ^ The text is : Sid x^'-P^Q o.v6fio>v 7rpo(T7ri]^avTeg civkXaTe. 
 
 ^ See Matt, xxviii. 11-15. 
 
72 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 with a forged tale about the abstraction of the body by 
 His friends ; and this was the first time that the true 
 explanation of that vacant, but not rifled, grave, had been 
 given to the world. In proof of the fact that Jesus had 
 come to life, Peter had more than a hundred witnesses at 
 his back, witnesses by eye and ear and finger-touch, each 
 one of them ready to stake his life upon the fact. But 
 Peter knew very well how hard it is for any amount of 
 testimony to win credence for an unwelcome as well as 
 unlikely fact. Before men believe in a miracle, they must 
 be willing to recognize the miraculous. The spiritual 
 probability of divine intervention, or the religious and 
 moral value of the wonder, must be recognised in order to 
 prepare the way for evidence of the fact. Now, it was an- 
 tecedently probable that, if Messiah ever should come and 
 die, God would restore Him again to life. Nay, it was 
 certain. For, first, it lay in the nature of the case that a 
 dead Saviour could not save ; that He "Who died for 
 others' sins should not be holden of death, as they are 
 who die for their own ; but that the Prince and Captain 
 of hfe would find the grave to be like a new womb,^ out 
 of which he should rise to newness of life. Besides this 
 inherent spiritual necessity, of which any one could judge 
 for himself, Jews, who believed their own Scriptures, had 
 an additional reason to expect it. Ancient prophecy had 
 pointed expressly to a resurrection of Messiah. This 
 Peter proved by an elaborate exposition of the last four 
 verses of the sixteenth Psalm, quoted from the Septuagint. 
 The steps of his reasoning are these : — (a) The words can- 
 - not apply to King David (who is assumed to have been 
 
 » See V. 24, (^^veg (H)? "^^^rj, Psa. xviii. 5) =-. " birth-throes ; " 
 but the Hebrew has the double meaning of " bands" as well, which 
 the Hellenistic Greek word never has (see Meyer in loc). 
 
THE FIBST GOSPEL 8EBM0N. 73 
 
 the author of this Psalm) ; for, although the current Eab- 
 binical interpretation might not look beyond the Psalmist, 
 yet it was notorious, and might be affirmed without dis- 
 respect to the head of the royal line,^ that he still slept 
 in his family monument on mount Zion, within a few 
 hundi-ed yards of the spot where Peter stood, [b) David 
 knew enough to enable him to speak thus in the name 
 of his descendant, the Christ; both because he was ge- 
 nerally a " prophet, "2 and also because God had in words 
 which it was felt Solomon could not exhaust, sworn to 
 him that He would raise up One of his seed to sit, and 
 sit for ever, on his throne. Was not this indeed the very 
 hope of Israel ? But (c) what was thus true nevermore 
 of David, but only of One greater than David, of the 
 Christ, had been now, in point of fact, fulfilled in Jesus : 
 and here, with clenching effect, St. Peter could turn and 
 appeal to the unanimous evidence of the whole disciple- 
 hood. What any devout and thoughtful Jew ought to 
 have been looking for, as the chief mark of Messiah when 
 He came, as God's crowning attestation to David's Son, 
 could not be a thing incredible, when at last affirmed of a 
 Man Who declared to the death that He was Messiah. If 
 Jesus should be after all what He said He was, God must 
 
 1 This is the force of fisrd Trapprjmag. For the unusual title of 
 "Patriarch," in v. 29, s. 1 Chron.xxiv. 31, LXX, , where it is applied 
 to David along with other public men of his realm. It is used of 
 Abraham in Heb. vii. 4, and of the twelve sons of Jacob by Stephen 
 in Acts vii. 8, 9. 
 
 '^ In the general sense, that is, of a man inspired to teach ; for king 
 David did not belong to the order described by the technical title of 
 "prophet," although it seems to have existed from the time of 
 Samuel's prime, nor is the title ever appHed to him in the Old 
 Testament. 
 
 3 See 2 Sam. vii. 12-16. (Of. Psa. Ixxxix. 3, 4, and cxxxii. 11.) 
 
74 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 have raised Him up : ' but God had raised Him up, 
 "whereof," adds the preacher, "we ail are witnesses." 
 
 (4) One more proof, and only one, remained. Eesur- 
 rection from the dead was neither the only nor the latest 
 test of Christhood offered by ancient prophecy. For in 
 another passage which Peter quotes (as Jesus had Him- 
 self quoted it with the same api3lication'), the same 
 royal prophet had spoken of the anointed King's exalta- 
 tion to the right hand of divine rule and power, in terms 
 which could never apply to himself. David had not 
 ascended into heaven to sit there in the seat of supreme 
 celestial monarchy and thence subdue all earthly foes ; 
 but Peter was prepared to say that Jesus had. This 
 last token of Jesus' messiahship was one on which Peter 
 / himself and ten others with him could have given partial 
 witness, on the evidence of their own senses. They had 
 seen Him rise from the hill -side of Olivet and go up till, 
 behind the veil of cloud, they watched Him disappear into 
 the heavens. But it was not to this St. Peter made 
 appeal. Neither he nor any other mortal had witnessed 
 those stupendous events which followed on the disap- 
 pearance of the Lord Jesus, and were the real fulfilment 
 of ancient promises. No eye had pursued His retreating 
 figure till it was received into the congratulations of 
 impatient troops of angels, who waited, out of sight of 
 men, that, circling round and heralding before with 
 jubilant trumpet and the waving of celestial palms, they 
 might escort His conquering feet into the heavenly 
 Jerusalem. None saw what august inauguration followed 
 His reception by the Father, and crowned His toil and 
 passion with the joy which had been set before Him, 
 ^ In Matt. xxii. 44, quoting Psa. ex. 
 
THE FIBST GOSPEL SERMON. 75 
 
 when in His still marred flesh He sat down upon the 
 throne which is at God's right hand, gathered to His 
 hands that were pierced the sceptres which sway creation, 
 and received for the first time, in mediatorial right, the 
 homage of assembled spirits. In the secresy of heaven had 
 been transacted that fulfilment of the Father's iDromise 
 which conveyed to His Son, man's obedient accepted 
 Substitute, the right and power to pour out upon His 
 waiting Church this oil of gladness — the abundance of 
 the Holy Ghost. Yet, though neither apostles nor we 
 were suffered to witness the effusion of the Spirit on the 
 crowned and priestly head of Jesus in the day of His 
 coronation and enthronement, yet from that Christ, 
 Anointed One, there have come down to earth droppings 
 of the sacred oil. At Pentecost, the chrism touched each 
 disciple's brow, and set each disciple apart for praise, a 
 glad priest, prophet, and king thenceforth. ' In the 
 change which that anointing Holy Ghost had wrought, in 
 their joyful worship as new-made priests to God, in the 
 prophetic insight with which they preached the Word to 
 men, in the more than kingly power by which their words 
 swayed, and bent, and captured the hearts and souls of 
 thousands — these men at Pentecost were living proofs 
 that their Master, though refused, baffled, slain on earth, \ 
 had been exalted and enthroned in heaven, and had 
 "received of the Father," what He had now sent down to 
 them, "the promise of the Holy Ghost." Pentecost 
 itself — " what ye now see and hear " — is the supreme 
 demonstration of Peter's thesis that Jesus is the Christ : \ 
 
 'Compare St. John's words: "Ye have an unction" — a chrism, 
 Xpiafia — " from the Holy One ; " " The anointing " — the chrism, to 
 X|oT(Tiwa — which ye received from Him abideth in you." 1 John ii. 
 20, 27. 
 
76 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 for on Jesus' friends, and on none else, lias come what 
 prophets promised and the just have waited for. He is 
 the Lord on Whom, if one call, one shall be saved. 
 Peter's explanation of the wonder, his apology for his 
 brethren's enthusiasm, his demonstration of his Master's 
 claims, his conviction of the hearers as rejecters of the 
 Messiah, are all now complete ; and the preacher sweeps 
 grandly, with rising boldness and the majesty of an am- 
 bassador for God, to the conclusion he has been driving 
 at all through: — "Therefore, let the whole house of 
 Israel know assuredly, that God did make that same 
 Jesus, Whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ." 
 
 Peter's message has come down to us through the lips 
 of ten thousand preachers. We are of the "all flesh," 
 on whom God has not only promised to pour His Spirit 
 but is doing it ; and calling on the Lord Jesus for salva- 
 tion, we may plead on our own beliaK His ancient " who- 
 soever." The merciful and gracious Man of Nazareth, 
 Who spread out His hands for us on Pilate's cross, has 
 been now for eighteen hundred years King of the spiritual 
 universe and Lord of divine influence, with all hearts 
 beneath His finger, and the keys of heaven and hell at 
 His girdle. The message is : For salvation He is reigning 
 still ; not for destruction. Call now, and He will save. 
 In this first gospel sermon there lay the gist of all gospel 
 preaching till the end of time. 
 
V. 
 
 Kal y)[.iag avTirvrrov vvv <Tw^£t (ScnrTiafia. 
 
Acts ii, 37-41. 
 
Eevised Veesion. 
 
 Now, whe7i they had heard, they tvere pricked in the 
 heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles : 
 " What shall we do, men and brethren V 
 
 Then Peter to them : ^^ Repent, and he baptized each 
 of you upon the name of Jesus Christ for remission of 
 sins, and ye shall receive the free-gift of the Holy 
 Ghost, For to you is the promise, and to your chil- 
 dren, and to all ivho are far off, as many as the Lord 
 our God may call to Him J' With many other words, 
 too, did he continue to ivitness, and exhorted them, 
 saying: ^' Be saved from this generation of i^erverse- 
 ness^ 
 
 Those, therefore, icho did receive His ivord tvere 
 baptized ; and there ivere added in the same day about 
 three thousand soids. 
 
V. 
 
 *' TTTHEN He is come," said Jesus, si3eaking of the Holy 
 » T Ghost, ** He will ' convict ' the world of sin, because 
 they believe not on Me."^ Of this prophecy Pentecost saw 
 the first fulfilment. It was not simply that the word of 
 Peter went to the hearts of his Master's murderers ^ 
 like a sword, as it well might ; for had that been all, it 
 would have stung them into rage, as did the words of 
 Stephen to the Sanhedrim a little later. Along with the 
 word there struck home, on that first day of grace, the 
 Spirit of God, Whose blessed work it is to arouse within 
 a self-satisfied sinner, not the resentment of impenitent 
 remorse, sorrow twined with hatred and working death, =* 
 but the gracious relentings of a humble and devout 
 repentance. Already that morning the Holy Ghost had 
 come to those who believed and were waiting for Him ; 
 now He came — a second wonder — to men who believed 
 not, and looked for nothing less. If the Spirit of comfort 
 and might has flame for His symbol, the Spirit of con- 
 viction is like a goad to ''prick" or a hammer to Kreak. 
 He brings not peace to earth, but a sword, y 
 
 Peter's sermon, like all true gospel preaching, was fitted 
 to stir in the soul, when God's saving power went with it, 
 a tumult of contending emotions. For, first, he had pro- 
 
 ' John xvi. 8, 9. ^ Cf. 2 Cor. vii. 10. 
 
82 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 claimed that the last days were begun, those days the end 
 of which is judgment, and that he who would escape from 
 that impending doom had need (hke Jonah in the ship) to 
 arise and call upon his God. This " terror of the Lord," 
 as St. Paul calls it,^ heard behind a man, and the hope of 
 salvation set before his face, are two strong persuasions 
 to awake, bestir himself, and flee. Had Peter preached 
 nothing else, fear and hope would have concurred to breed 
 within his hearers a hot and vehement desire to be saved. 
 But he had charged them, on the other hand, with refusing 
 and IdlHng that very Lord and Christ through AVhom 
 alone salvation could be had. After heaping proof on 
 proof to convince their understanding that the crucified 
 pretender of Nazareth (as they deemed Him) had after all 
 been God's Anointed, the preacher's closing words had 
 gone into their conscience like red-hot shot, agonising 
 them 2 with their own tremendous, and, as it seemed, fatal 
 guilt. They were crucifiers of thek Saviour. Did not 
 this mean that they. had thrown their last chance away ? 
 What hope of mercy could remain to men who had blun- 
 dered so frightfully as to murder their Kedeemer ? As 
 powerfully as the in'ospect of judgment and the promise 
 of a Saviour combined to impel them forward, so power- 
 fully did the reproaches of their own consciences, starting 
 into life at Peter's voice, thrust them back from deliver- 
 ance. Men who, when the Deliverer came, had given Him 
 a cross for answer, might well imagine that they had 
 barred against themselves the gates of hope. Thus flung to 
 and fro by conflicting passions in a dilemma out of which 
 
 ^ To (p6j3ov Tov Kvpiov. 2 Cor. v. 11. 
 
 'The yf Old KaravvcraHi^ (v. 37) =" compunction " (Alford) ; only 
 in LXX. and Apocrypha ; used of any shai-p emotion. See Meyer 
 in loc. 
 
THE FIBST CHBISTIAN BAPTISM. 83 
 
 they could see no escape, softened, too, by sorrow and 
 desire, many of the Jews cried out in their distress, or, 
 clinging to him who had spoken and to his fellows, - 
 assailed them with impatient, eager, and affectionate 
 questionings :^ "Men and brethren, what shall we do ?" ^ 
 Now, in this sudden access of spiritual earnestness seiz- 
 ing a multitude at once, flashing new light along their past 
 life to discover its guilt, and so powerfully affecting them 
 with the apprehension of near judgment and of possible 
 mercy still nearer, as to throw them into a paroxysm of 
 alarm and regret and longing — in this, as in many a simi- 
 lar scene since then, may be seen, not less plainly than in 
 the gift of tongues, that force above nature, for which so 
 many tell us they search human experience in vain. It 
 is God's finger 2 stretched forth to touch men's hearts. 
 Nor ought we to be greatly startled if religious emotion, 
 not less sudden or vivid, should at any time burst forth, 
 as' it did at Pentecost, in outcries which transgress the 
 decorous propriety of a modern audience. When a strong 
 wind is wrestling with the forest trees, you expect some 
 crackling of the branches. Only the same power may be 
 traced equally at work, when, alone in his chamber, with 
 no help from the sympathy of numbers, one single sinner 
 is bowed down upon his knees under the same novel sense 
 of guilt ; when, horror-struck at the discovery of his real 
 position as a lost, wandered, godless soul, under con- 
 demnation, a man cries out bitter cries, with sobs of 
 strong desh-e, which reach no ear save His Who always 
 listens to catch such sounds amid the uprising din of ^ 
 earthly labour, strife, and grief. 
 
 ^ The address : ddtX(poi (v. 37) shows the relenting of their minds 
 towards the disciples. 
 
 ^ Cf. tv daKTv\<i> Qtov. Luke xi. 20. 
 7- 
 
84 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 Cliallenged to allay, if they could, terror and distress 
 whicli their own words had occasioned, the apostles again 
 put Peter to the front. He and they together, with I dare 
 say all the unofficial brethren as well, wore that long 
 day away in what may be termed the second function of 
 the Christian ministry, pointing penitents to the Lord 
 Jesus. The gist, however, of the ''many words," which, 
 spoken with a loud voice to the crowd, or pressed home to 
 here a little group and there a single listener, did that 
 day, ere the sun went down, turn a Bochim into a Salem, 
 weeping of thousands into peace ; the gist of all is found 
 in those few words of Peter, which have been preserved 
 for us by the historian. His own history explains best 
 how St. Peter was led to use them. 
 
 Some three years before that day, or rather more, a 
 very strong voice, sounding through Palestine from the 
 waste land along the farther bank of Jordan, had called 
 these same Jews out into the wilderness. Peter himself, 
 and most of the eleven at his side, as well as many among 
 the crowd before him, had heard and followed it. In the 
 heat of a spiritual awakening, of which this scene at Pen- 
 tecost seems to have reminded him, Peter, and multitudes 
 besides, had obeyed the voice which spoke then in God's 
 name and bade them " repent and be baptised." But 
 John had done more than baptise with water : he had 
 foretold a second baptism and a greater Baptist. Not all 
 the thousands who, in the fervour of a popular movement, 
 went down into the river under the hands of the rude 
 prophet, laid to heart that blessed sequel to his message, 
 or learned to look for the mightier One Who, coming 
 after, should baptise with the Holy Ghost and with fire. 
 Peter, indeed, did : and his long waiting and his patient 
 
THE FIBST CHBISTIAN BAPTISM. 85 
 
 faith in Jesus as ** Him Who should come," have been 
 this very day rewarded. The fire, the Holy Ghost, have 
 been poured upon the heads of Jesus' followers, as John 
 foretold ; theirs is the second baptism. But how shall 
 these men before him, who would not believe that Jesus 
 was the predicted Christ to baptise with the Spirit, would 
 not believe, but, on the contrary, very loudly denied, and 
 put denial into deeds, since they refused and sold and slew 
 " the Son of the living God," — how shall they receive the 
 Holy Ghost ? Peter did not falter. No touch of self- 
 righteous jealousy dimmed his frank admission of his 
 Master's murderers to a place as privileged as his own. 
 " Let them become at last even as we are : " this was what 
 his words meant. "Let them now at last repent in very 
 deed, since that show of penitence in John's days has been 
 put to mockery by the crime done seven weeks ago. Let 
 them repent of having refused God's Anointed, and believe 
 now, as we have believed for long, that the Crucified is the 
 Christ. Let them testify their new faith (as Jesus has 
 bidden) by a rebaptism. Then shall they be even as we 
 were this morning, who needed not to prove by any 
 baptism, but had by years of patient devotion proved our 
 discipleship. On them, too, there shall surely come, just 
 as it came an hour ago on us, as free, as full, as blessed, 
 this gift of the Holy Ghost. For Joel's promise is wider 
 than to compass our little band. It is * to all flesh ; ' to 
 you, therefore, and to your ' little ones ' with you,^ to the 
 far off, to whomsoever 'the Lord our God shall call,' that 
 they may ' call ' on Him. Out therefore from this evd 
 generation of Jews — a generation ' jperverse and crooked,' 
 
 ' Cf. Joel ii. 28 with ver. 39. Tskvolq, not = " descendants" here, 
 but " children." 
 
V 
 
 86 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 whose s^Dot is not the spot of God's children,^ — ' be ye 
 saved ' whose hearts He hath pricked. Suffer yourselves 
 to be also saved, like us, by Jesus the Christ." 
 
 Thus, for the second time, the old cry is repeated, here 
 in the city as by John in the desert : " Eepent 'and be 
 baptised." Yet it is easy to see, even from its first 
 administration, how much more Christian baptism in- 
 volved than John's, and how much more it conferred. 
 It involved two conditions, of which only one was pre- 
 supposed in John's, and that one only partially ; it con- 
 ferred two blessings, of which John's conferred neither, 
 but merely promised them. 
 
 I. The double condition of Christian baptism is repen- 
 tance and faith in Jesus Christ. 
 
 (a) Kepentance, or the resolute turning and changing 
 of the life, to face right round, away from old sin, 
 towards new holiness, was the one demand of John, the 
 first baptiser. His was a baptism eminently " of re- 
 pentance. "^ Yet even this change of mind, as he preached 
 it, and as the people performed it at his bidding, was a 
 much less thorough thing than the repentance which 
 Peter preached. It was more like a reformation of man- 
 ners then a renewal of the heart. He bade the greedy 
 people learn to be liberal ; the farmers of taxes he 
 rebuked for extortion ; the soldiers for violence and dis- 
 content ; and he warned the sanctimonious that for the 
 fruits of good living only, not for a godly lineage, would 
 God spare the tree at whose root the axe lay. 3 Whereas, 
 
 * There is a reference in ver. 40 to Deut. xxxii. 5, Note, too, that 
 eioQriTf. is not = " save yourselves;" for whicli cf. Matt, xxvii, 40 
 {aCJnov aeavTov). ^ It is so called in Mark i. 4. 
 
 3 The fullest record of what sort of repentance John insisted on is 
 found in Luke's own Gospel, iii. 7-17. 
 
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 87 
 
 now, what the Jews of Pentecost needed was nothing 
 short of a moral and spiritual revolution, equivalent to a 
 second birth. Their whole attitude towards Jesus, as 
 haters of His truth and slayers of His life, had proved 
 them to be (in His own words) children of the devil, who 
 is a murderer and a liar.^ Because He came a light into 
 the world, they, being sons of darkness, refused Him. 
 His good works rebuked them, and they stoned Him. He 
 came from God, and because God they hated. Him they 
 slew. No mere sweeping of the life as clean as might be 
 (such as John's brief ministry had effected), could turn 
 into saints men whose hands were red with the blood of 
 Christ, whose hearts were filled with hatred to Christ. 
 They must be born again : and the repentance which goes 
 with that means nothing short of a reversal of the inner- 
 most springs and sources of moral action ; the slaying of 
 one nature, or one set of ruling tendencies, that another ::>. 
 may come to life. Since now their hearts were so far 
 touched, and the Holy Ghost had already begun to turn 
 them, Peter urges instant, prompt decision f a yielding at 
 once of their will and entire nature to that tide of sacred 
 influence which ha3 just set in, and was able to swing 
 them round into a new life. 
 
 (h) A second condition Peter asked, which John had not 
 asked — faith in Jesus as the Messiah. John, indeed, had ^ 
 foretold in general terms that the Christ was at hand, 
 and had used that fact as a motive for repentance ; but he 
 
 ' In John viii. 31-59. This whole passage, with others from our 
 Lord's teaching, such as John iii. 3-8, v. 21 £f. ; vi. 32 ff. ; Luke xi. 
 24-26, &c., shows how He insisted upon a deeper and more vital ~" 
 change than the reformation advocated and partly effected by His 
 precursor. 
 
 2 Cf. the force of the aorist in fiEravorjfraTe, ver. 38. 
 
88 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 did not hinge his baptism on any profession of faith in 
 
 this impending advent ; still less could he ask his hearers 
 
 to identify as the Messiah a Man Who was still unknown. 
 
 Now, however, the most central and characteristic thing 
 
 about the hew baptism is that it rests " on the name of 
 
 Jesus Christ ; " ^ that is to say, on the identification of 
 
 / the Man of Nazareth, Whom Pilate crucified, with the 
 / 
 promised anointed Son of God, Whom Israel looked for 
 
 as its King. In this one fact, the fact which Peter's 
 previous discourse had been devoted to proving, lies the 
 centre of gravity of the whole apostolic testimony ; and, 
 though the word " faith " is not once named, yet such a 
 cordial acceptance of this fact, as implies reliance upon 
 Jesus Christ for salvation, is plainly the chief differentia 
 distinguishing apostolic from Johannine baptism. It 
 was, indeed, a very brief confession of faith on which 
 these primitive converts were received. Yet it is possible 
 to trace the essential Christian verities back into this 
 solitary article of the Church's creed. In it lay unde- 
 veloped whatever is most precious in the confessions of 
 Christendom. 2 First, it implied to Jewish hearers, and 
 on Jewish lips, all that Old Testament revelation had led 
 ^ men to expect the Christ either to be or to do. Whatever 
 lay in Israel's messianic hope, of a suffering Victim 
 bearing sin, of an expiating Priest more effectual than 
 Aaron, of a diviner Legislator than Moses, of a Kuler 
 more just and noble than David, more splendid and 
 peaceful than Solomon ; nay, of One Who was the 
 eternal Wisdom of the Godhead, the Fellow of Jehovah, 
 
 ^ Observe, the preferable reading in ver. 38 is k-n-l, not tv. 
 
 ^ It would be instructive, and to our age very helpful, to have this 
 worked out in detail, which cannot here be done. The sentences 
 that follow in the text are meant for suggestions. 
 
THE FIB8T CHBISTIAN BAPTISM. 89 
 
 before Whom divine, not civil, homage must be paid, and 
 that, not by men only, but by angels — all this is here, at 
 one stroke, swei^t over to the lowly Son of Mary, Naza- 
 reth's carpenter. Who was nailed to Pilate's cross. For 
 next, there is here assumed, as a matter of course, all 
 those facts about the earthly life of Jesus as an historical ^ 
 personage, which, to the first speaker and first hearers of 
 this creed, were so notorious ; as well as all such super- 
 natural events connected with His advent, ministry, or 
 departure, as served to substantiate His mission. The 
 miracle of a non-natural entrance into human life, and of 
 a non-natural resumption of it after death, with whatever ^^ 
 else lay in His special character as the Sent of God, must ' 
 plainly be accepted if we call Him Christ. More even 
 than that. The words which He Himself spoke about ' 
 Himself are all true, if He be Christ ; words so strongly 
 and so plainly asserting an unique relation to the 
 Father, that for them, when men thought them false, 
 they sought to kill Him. This Teacher left men no 
 standing-ground betwixt two extremes : either to worship 
 Him as God, or to stone Him as the most impious and 
 daring blasphemer the world had ever seen. As a blas- 
 phemer He died. Did they err in His death ? then they 
 slew the very God. For He called Himself the Son of 
 God, Whom to see was to see God, Who only knew God, 
 Who had been before Abraham with God. He bade us 
 trust Him as we trust God, honour Him as we honour 
 God ; our life He said He was, 6ur Hght, our door to 
 heaven, our meat and drink, our sole Shepherd, our future 
 Judge. Confess Him, and you confess the everlasting/ 
 Father, Whom He reveals. Confess Him, and you confess 
 the Holy Ghost, Whom He promised to bestow. His 
 
90 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 central Name, in tlie tlirice-holy baptismal formula, in- 
 Yolves the other Two. 
 
 II. So far of the conditions of Christian baptism, by 
 which it widely differed from its predecessor, the Johan- 
 nine baptism. The difference is not less wide in that 
 
 ^ which it expressed and sealed to the faithful. Two 
 blessings are named by St. Peter : remission of sins, and 
 the gift of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 (a) John's baptism is indeed called, by two of the 
 Evangelists, ** a baptism of repentance for the remission 
 of sins."^ But this could only be because it pointed to 
 the Lamb on Whom every confessed sin was to be laid, 
 and promised forgiveness through His blood, precisely as 
 the sprinkling with hyssop had done under the Mosaic 
 ritual. Peter's converts, on the other hand, accepted an 
 actual, not a prospective, expiation for sin. For the sin 
 
 V, of putting Jesus to death, they accepted that very death 
 itself as God's expiatory sacrifice. They looked, as all 
 converts have since done, to the blessed Sufferer on 
 Calvary as the trne Lamb, foreshadowed by every sacri- 
 ficial victim ; and they received, through His shed blood, 
 the pardon of their sins. This pardon was expressed to 
 their faith by the rite of baptism, not merely as a washing 
 clean from old stains, which might need frequent renewal 
 all their life long; but rather as a union once for all 
 with the Victim in His death to sin, in order that, 
 emerging with Him again, they might live thenceforth 
 the consecrated and purged lives of men who are one with 
 Christ. Christian baptism, as afterwards explained by 
 the most theological of the apostles, ^ is burial with 
 
 ' See Mark i. 4 and Luke iii. 3. The preposition in both cases is 
 iiQ = " with a view to," as the ultimate result. 
 '■^ See Bom, vi. 3-7, and Col. ii. 12. 
 
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 91 
 
 Christ. It means such acceptance of the sacrifice as 
 identifies with the Victim. It seals for ever, without 
 need of renewal, a sinner's incorporation with the sinner's 
 representative Head, when He bore the sins of His 
 mystical body "in His own body on the tree." 
 
 (6) But the crowning glory of Christian baptism was that 
 it preceded or followed,^ and always expressed, the Pen- 
 tecostal gift of the Holy Ghost. It must have become 
 sufficiently plain to such readers as have followed the 
 history down to this x^oint, that the characteristic effusion 
 of divine influence which dates from Pentecost does not 
 just mean any action of God in impelling to pious or 
 holy activity the souls of men. God has always drawn 
 men to Himself. God the Spirit has always been at 
 work in this world, not only checking evil or suggesting 
 good, enabling wise men to be wise, and true men to be 
 true, but also changing, cleansing, and hallowing sinful 
 hearts. Again and again under Hebrew ordinances (as 
 many as twenty separate times at least), do we read of men 
 into whom the Spirit or Breath of God breathed whatever 
 npble or excellent gift they possessed ; as, for example, 
 political sagacity to Joseph, artistic skill to Bezaleel, 
 bodily strength to Samson, insight to the prophets, pa- 
 triotic valour to Othniel or Gideon, loyalty to the chief of 
 David's captains ; and the like.^ It was the sa^me Spirit 
 
 ^ Preceded here, ver. 38 ; cf. viii. 15-17 ; but followed in x. 47. 
 
 ^ Those who care to study the Old Testament references to the 
 Holy Ghost may compare the following passages: — Gen. xli. 38; Ex. 
 xxxi. 3; Num. xxiv. 2, xi. 25, xxvii. 18; Deut. xxxiv. 9; Judg, iii. 
 10, vi. 34, xi. 29, xiii. 25, xiv. 6, 19, xv. 14 ; 1 Sam. x. 10, xi. 6, xvi. 
 
 13, xix. 20, 23 ; 2 Sam. xxiii. 2 (c. Mark xii. 36 and Acts i. 16) ; 
 1 Kings xviii. 12 ; 2 Kings ii. 9 ; 1 Chron. xii. 18 ; 2 Chron. xv. 1, xx. 
 
 14, xxiv. 20; Ezek. ii. 2, iii. 24, xi. 5, xxxvii. 1, et alibi ; Mic. iii. 8 ; 
 &c. (Cf. 2 Pet. i. 21.) 
 
92 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH, 
 
 Who alone could sustain the faith of • patriarchs, the 
 courage of pre-Christian martyrs, and, in fact, the spiritual 
 life of all the elder saints. Whilst Peter was yet speaking, 
 the same Spirit was working contrition and godly relent - 
 ings within his hearers, as He had long before wrought 
 them in Peter himself. But the peculiar character of 
 the Holy Ghost's presence, as now sent down by the as- 
 cended Christ upon the baptised members of His Church, 
 lies in this, that He is the Spirit of intimate, personal, 
 and conscious union to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy 
 Ghost comes specially to us, to dwell in us as the Spirit 
 of Christ ; to assure us of acceptance in the Beloved ; to 
 fill us all alike, if we choose, with the full hfe of Christ ; 
 to witness to our sonship unto the Father ; to seal us 
 against the day of our redemption. He is the Anointing 
 'Which teaches; He makes us free; He gives strength; 
 He enables us for all things ; He keeps our mind in peace ; 
 He knits us all into one body; He fills' us with all joy ; 
 He is the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of liberty, the 
 Spirit of unity, the Spirit of glory. ^ It is more than 
 personal conversion He works, or occasional and official 
 qualification. He works that large, bold, joyful liberty, 
 as of an accepted child of God, which distinguishes the 
 Christian saint at his best, and that organised catholic 
 community of interests in one body which ought to mark 
 the Christian Church. There are Christians, indeed, 
 who live to-day as if the Holy Ghost were not yet given. 
 They believe, as men used to believe, who only hoped for 
 mercy to come. They have no more than half thrown off 
 
 ^ By way of contrast to the list from the Old Testament in the fore- 
 going note, let the following New Testament texts be noted : — Kom. 
 viii. 9-11 and 14-17 ; 1 Cor. vi. 19 ; Gal. iv. 6 ; Eph. i. 13, iv. 30 ; 
 1 John ii. 27 ; 2 Cor. iii. 17 ; Eph. iii. 16 ; 1 Pet. iv. 14. 
 
THE FIBST CHBISTIAN BAPTISM. 93 
 
 the shackles of a legal spirit, and are as joyless as though 
 Christ were not risen. They have neither courage in 
 their Father's presence, nor any liberty to tell others of 
 His love. They are like owls, that mope and mourn in the 
 twilight; under the open eye of the gospel day, abroad 
 through the free air of heaven, they cannot sweep like 
 doves on gladsome wing. But this is their own fault — 
 not the fault of their time. We are gospel saints ; bap- 
 tised into, not John's, but Christ's own baptism. Let us 
 arise and claim our heritage. Let us invoke the Spirit Who 
 came at Pentecost to come to us ; for '' where that Spirit 
 of the Lord is, there is liberty," there is life, there is joy 
 in the Lord. 
 
 It was a mighty draught which Peter, the fisherman, 
 drew to land that day. Three thousand converts were 
 swept at once into the infant Church ; not swamping the 
 modest company of older believers, yet not in any wise 
 inferior to them. How many of these new converts 
 turned out ill on trial, no record survives. It was no 
 time for suspicious inquiry or probation. On a high tide 
 of spiritual feeling the crowd was borne into the bosom 
 of the prepared Church, to be nurtured there on apostolic 
 doctrine, and kept by the more trusty arms of men and 
 women who had followed Christ in His sorrows. Well for 
 them that they were thus kept and nurtured, and well for 
 the Church on the whole — even though Ananias and 
 Sapphira should prove false, and the Hellenists and the 
 Hebrews should by-and-by contend. Tides of grace, as 
 of opportunity, are to be taken at the flood. The 
 Pentecost sun went down on a large Church of tender 
 happy souls, new- washed in the blood their own hands had 
 
94 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 shed — a Church born in a day. It was a blessed day of 
 hard, yet manageable work, to guide to peace in Christ 
 (in round numbers) some three thousand anxious souls. 
 Divide them among the hundred and twenty (and there 
 were more than a hundred and twenty to start with), and 
 you have but five-and-twenty apiece to be pointed to the 
 Saviour, and baptised in His name, within nine hours, 
 from nine o'clock in the forenoon till sunset. Not here 
 lies the wonder, but in this rather that we think it 
 wonderful ; that we see so few times of rapid ingathering 
 and large godward movements of men which can at all 
 compare with it. Some, thank God, have been seen. 
 Would we have more ? Then let these two things be 
 noted : That ten days of steadfast, expectant prayer, in 
 which every believing soul took part, preceded Pentecost ; 
 and that it was when the Church had first been filled with 
 heavenly assurance, joy, and praise, that the testimony of 
 her first preacher won the hearts of thousands. Lessons ! 
 these are lessons. The Spirit works when we beg Him to 
 work ; and the ingathering to the Church holds ever a 
 strict proportion to the life of the Church. Christians 
 are the fountain, fed from Christ, out of which dead souls 
 around are to be quickened ; but not till they run over ! As 
 we would have the world converted, let us seek for the 
 Church overrunning life ! 
 
VI. 
 
 HEAVEN LIES ABOUT US IN OUR INFANCY. 
 
Acts ii. 42-47 ; cf. iii. 32-35. 
 
Ee VISED Version. 
 
 And they ivere continuing in the instruction of the 
 apostles and the commo7i - life, the breaking of the 
 hread, and the [stated] prayers. But on evey^y soul 
 came fear, and many ivonders and signs took place 
 by means of the apostles. And all the believers ivere 
 of the one company, and had all things common, and 
 kept selling their lands and goods, and dividing them 
 to all as each had need. Daily, too, continuing with 
 one accord in the Temple, and breaking bread at home, 
 they did eat food in gladness and simplicity of heart, 
 praising God and having favour with the whole people. 
 And the Lord added those who tvere being saved daily 
 to the one company. 
 
« 
 
VI. 
 
 AVEEY few verses furnish the only record extant of 
 what one would like to know in much fuller detail — 
 I mean the state of the primitive Church in those earliest 
 days which immediately followed Pentecost. During the 
 subsequent wide departures of the Church from its first 
 simplicity, it has happened every now and then that a few 
 earnest and reforming spirits ;have sought to fall back on 
 primitive Christianity, by ^constructing the Christian 
 community on the lines of its old foundation. The con- 
 ception is more beautiful than wise ; it is only to a certain 
 extent either desirable or realisable. That the Church of 
 Christ should always remain in spirit what God the Spirit 
 first made it, is indeed an aim very earnestly to be 
 striven after. That it should never substitute ceremo- 
 nial for faith, or worldly ambition for spiritual influence, 
 or the autocratic sway of a hierarchy and the pretensions 
 of a priesthood for the simplicity of a brotherhood made 
 one in Christ — this is an end, not desirable only, but im- 
 perative. In doing this, it does keep to the original lines 
 of its constitution, in the best sense, for it keeps to the 
 very idea of its existence. But those who would per- 
 petuate, not the spiritual characteristics, but the ^details 
 of the primitive Church, or construct a society which in 
 this century should mimic precisely the arrangements of 
 
 8* 
 
100 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 the first, attempt a thing which is impossible, and, if 
 possible, would be inexpedient. The apostolic period 
 covered about seventy years ; and there is in truth no 
 single date, from Pentecost to the close of the canon, at 
 which one can say that the apostolic Church is known 
 to have reached its finished form, or to have assumed 
 everywhere a uniform and unalterable tyi^e. The society 
 developed its arrangements as circumstances called for 
 them. At first little more to its own consciousness than 
 a Jewish sect, it only learned by degrees to gather in 
 Gentile believers, and to organise itself on an indepen- 
 dent footing. In its passage from the East to the West, 
 from Hebrew to Greek, and from Greek to Koman, it 
 necessarily underwent, as experience suggested them, 
 changes in points of detail, which make its early history 
 (so far as we are able to trace it) a history of variations 
 superinduced on one elementary type. Even if we should 
 fix on any single moment in the process, and desired to 
 reproduce the Church, or a part of it, as it then stood — 
 (say this first Church at Jerusalem, for example ; or the 
 Church at Antioch, as it existed at the synod of Jerusalem, 
 about twenty years later ; or the Church of Achaia, when 
 St. Paul wrote his letters to Corinth ; or that of Ephesus 
 at the death of St. John) — it would be impossible for us 
 to make out precisely all the arrangements then in ex- 
 istence, the of&ce-bearers with their relative duties, the 
 form of service and its parts, or the relation of separate 
 congregations to one another. So much we know through 
 merely incidental notices as to afford a few leading prin- 
 ci^Dles, and over even these modern Protestant Churches 
 have fought long and obstinate battles. But no man who 
 dispassionately studies the matter will affirm, I think. 
 
THE INFANT CHUBCH. 101 
 
 that the New Testament records enable us to construct 
 with certainty a facsimile of any apostolic Church what- 
 ever, at any given year of its history. Tantalising, 
 however, as this scantness of information must appear to 
 those who like to have exact scripture precedent for every 
 detail, it seems to me to harmonise better with the free 
 spiritual character of the new institute. We see the 
 Divine Creator of life given to the young Church, to 
 create it, and inform it, and rule it. By degrees, and 
 with struggles, the new society is found to shake itself 
 loose from its Hebrew swaddling bands. We gather as we 
 proceed, how, bit by bit, the new life it possessed worked 
 out for itself, under the leading of the Spirit, fit utterance 
 for its own feelings, a fit provision for its needs, and fit 
 organs for its action. A gracious harmony of order with 
 liberty prevails from the first. Few and simple obser- 
 vances nourish the young Church life. Disorders are 
 corrected, fresh requirements are met, by the heaven- 
 taught inventiveness of the Church itself. From first 
 to last, the bond of union which hinders schism, and 
 makes discipline possible, and gives to effort its purpose 
 and its concentration, is not any outward restraining 
 bond of statute, but the inward constraining bond of 
 fraternal love. Only when we have receded a genera- 
 tion's length from the birthday of the Chm^ch, so that 
 a mixture of foreign elements has crept in, do tones 
 of authority begin to be heard, and the threat of apostolic 
 penalty is needed to sustain persuasions to apostolic 
 charity. 
 
 It is quite in keeping with this view that St. Luke should 
 have given us, instead of a record of Church organisation, 
 a vivid picture of Church life, as it existed in the earliest 
 
102 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 days. The features of this picture — its beautiful family 
 unity, its prevailing kindliness, its idyllie simplicity, its 
 unearthly impressiveness — let us try to set as vividly as 
 we can before our hearts. 
 
 First, we must discriminate several stages in the his- 
 torian's account. He describes the progress of the new 
 converts (ii. 42) ; the feelings of the rest of the public 
 (ver. 43) ; the internal state of the Church at large (ver. 
 44-4 7a) ; and the continuous growth of the Church by 
 fresh conversions (ver. 4:7b). 
 
 (1) It might have been feared that the sudden accession 
 of so large a number as three thousand to so small a 
 number as an hundred and twenty or little more, would 
 alter materially the character of the body. Through the 
 grace of the Holy Ghost, such a result was avoided, as 
 appears from the patient persevering attention with which 
 the three thousand joined themselves to those who had 
 previously been disciples. Since instruction ^ in the 
 messialiship of Jesus and in His teaching was the point 
 at which these new believers chiefly came short of those 
 who had enjoyed their Lord's personal ministry, it fell to 
 the Twelve to supplement this deficiency. This regular 
 tuition of the new converts must have embraced two 
 sections : first, the fulfilment in Jesus of Old Testament 
 messianic Scriptures ; and second, the truths which Jesus 
 had Himself taught to the Twelve respecting the kingdom 
 of God, both before His death and after His resurrection. 
 Here we seem to recognise the germ of the Christian 
 pulpit as an instrument, not of evangelistic preaching 
 (for that we had at Pentecost), but of Christian edification. 
 
 ^ 
 * Here called " doctrine," by an old English use of that word, now 
 grown obsolete. 
 
THE INFANT CHURCH. 103 
 
 To sucli teacliing by the Twelve, were added the share 
 which these new converts now took in the close social 
 intercourse of the disciples,^ and their assiduous attend- 
 ance on two means of grace — namely, "breaking of bread " 
 at home and public " prayers " in the temple. ^ 
 
 (2.) While those who had been won to the faith on its first 
 great field-day were, in Peter's words, 3 desiring the sincere 
 milk of the Word, like new-born babes, that they might 
 grow by it, the Church's Lord was so displaying His glory 
 in the midst of it, as to erect a wall of spiritual fire round 
 about it. Considering the recent fate of Jesus and the 
 feebleness of His followers, it was quite a possible danger 
 that the hostility of the Jerusalem population, led by a 
 powerful party in the council, might at once stamp out 
 the infant Church. A little later, to be sure, persecution 
 only made it grow; but just at present, persecution might 
 have killed it, so new was it, so raw, so void of that con- 
 fidence which comes by experience. Against this risk its 
 watchful Head provided. A spiritual awe, akin to fear, 
 partly produced by the deep solemnity of the sight when a 
 whole crowd was smitten down in a day by the mere force 
 of truth ; partly kept up, too, by tokens of the divine 
 presence and power which each fresh day reported ; this 
 spiritual awe lay on the souls of priest and Sadducee, and 
 held them back from opposition as with a bit. Not for 
 long, indeed, yet for long enough to give the Church time 
 to consolidate her gains, to fortify her new converts, and 
 to feel her strength. For of course each day that passed, 
 
 I Here called " fellowship," Koivwvia, ver. 42, 
 
 2 1 think KoS-' oIkov, in ver. 46, being opposed to kv t<P up(p, must 
 mean " at home," rather than " from house to house ; " though Luke 
 uses such a construction in Luke xviii. 1 and Acts xv. 21. But see 
 Meyer in loc. ^ 1 Pet. ii. 2. 
 
104 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 with its miracles done and converts added and the fruits 
 of spiritual life exhibited, brought fresh assurance to the 
 disciples that Jesus was really aiding them from heaven. 
 By this assurance it also knit them more closely into one 
 body, with cohesion sufficient to withstand the storms 
 which were to come. 
 
 (3) It was during this brief hour of childlike peace, 
 while yet the fear of God cowed all the people, and left 
 it safe room in which to unfold in fearless freedom its 
 beautiful new hfe in the Holy Ghost, that the Church 
 wore that gracious aspect sketched so long after by St. 
 Luke. Thirty years later, from the midst of a Church 
 often wet now with blood and tears, a Church which, all 
 over the Mediterranean lands, had already begun its 
 death - grapple with the pagan world ; fresh fi'om its 
 perilous labours, perhaps at the very side of its chief 
 missionary as he lay chained in a Koman prison, this 
 man Luke cast back his eyes on the sweet prime and 
 glad day-dawn to draw this picture, which has ever since 
 entranced the weary, fighting Church of God, and shines 
 in our far retrospect, as it shone in his, with the Hght of 
 a golden age. 
 
 When we try to set before our minds the Christian life 
 of those days in Jerusalem, I think one is most struck by 
 its social, almost family, character. The number of the 
 disciples was already a large one, but it was not yet felt 
 to be too large for them to be all " together " in one place. 
 Not that the historical ** upper room," which held the 
 hundred and twenty while they expected the Holy Ghost, 
 and which had probably other memories to hallow it, 
 could accommodate the thousands now baptised ; but it 
 may have remained still the head-quarters, and, as it were. 
 
TBE INFANT CHUBCH. 105 
 
 family home, to which all had a right to come, and at 
 some time or other came. The old close intercourse 
 which, so long as the Lord lived on earth, His immediate 
 followers had been used to, was too pleasant a thing to be 
 lightly given up. With them He had been accustomed 
 to lead a social life, which made them all, as it were, 
 members of one large household. With the Twelve, at 
 least, He had one purse and ate at one table. Others 
 who at times kept Him company assisted of their means 
 to meet common charges. All, in fact, who believed 
 in Him, He reckoned as members of His family, as 
 "brother and sister and mother."^ About the time of 
 His last sufferings and after it, this close fellowship 
 of His disciples seems to have become closer. Many 
 came up then to Jerusalem and remained in it after the 
 tragical end. Common sorrow first, and afterwards com- 
 mon joy and hope, held them together ; and the large 
 " upper room " became more than ever a home to the 
 disciples. This bond of oneness in their Lord, and of a 
 peculiar brotherhood through Him, was so far from being 
 slackened when the Holy Spirit came, that it was just 
 His coming which intensified it and gave it permanence. 
 Hence, when three thousand new believers were added to 
 the old, the family circle was only widened enormously 
 to take them in. They were admitted as a matter of 
 course, and, as far as possible, to the old fellowship, the 
 common table, and the daily household intercourse. This 
 eflbrt to realise on a wide scale the intensest and most 
 perfect type of all society, the family, as a true expression 
 for the new sacred bond of brotherhood which now knit 
 them to the Father through the Elder Brother, appears 
 1 See Matt. xii. 48-50. 
 
106 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 to me to explain nearly everything which is peculiar in 
 the arrangements of that primitive time. 
 
 Take their worship, for example. That was indeed 
 curiously two-sided, because they had not ceased to be 
 Jews in becoming Jehus' disciples. As yet they differed 
 from their countrymen only in holding Jesus to be their 
 national Christ, and they did not feel that this required 
 them to withdraw from the national worship or become 
 schismatics from their ancestral faith. What was new 
 was only the legitimate outcome of all the old, the crown 
 both of Mosaism and of prophetic Scripture ; nor, in fact, 
 did Christianity ever fully cut itself clear of its Judaic 
 birthplace, till Judaism had of its own accord cast 
 Christianity adrift. These first believers, at any rate, 
 remained good Jews. Their "prayers" were, if not 
 exclusively, yet primarily, the public prayers in the 
 temple,^ which they frequented as diligently, at the stated 
 hours,^ as if they had been Pharisees. The only dis- 
 tinction it was possible to establish in this conformity 
 which they practised, was that they attended the temple 
 in a body,3 presenting to the worshippers the spectacle of 
 a sect within Judaism, which believed all that other Jews 
 believed and one thing more. It was no fault of theirs 
 if Judaism, calling itself orthodox, by-and-by cast them 
 out. 
 
 Another act of worship, however, was peculiar to them- 
 selves, and to it they gave the most social and family 
 character possible : I mean the service called, in the 
 earliest apostolic period, 4 the '' breaking of bread." This 
 
 ^ The expression raig Trpoaevxalg, in ver. 42, can hardly refer to any 
 other, I think. 
 
 '^ Cf. Acts iii. 1, of Peter and John, ^ Cf, ufJ.o^vf^acuv, ver. 46. 
 
 ^ Not so used later than Acts xx. 7. 
 
THE INFANT CHUBCH. 10 7 
 
 name appears by its very ambiguity to reflect tlie ambi- 
 guous character of the observance. It was not an ordinary 
 meal (although the phrase " to break bread " is some- 
 times used of that ^), nor the Eucharistic commemoration 
 merely ; but it included both. Every evening after sun- 
 down, at the customary hour for the principal meal of a 
 Jewish household, ^ these brethren appear to have come 
 together to a family table, very much as our Lord and 
 the Twelve had done on the memorable night in which He 
 was betrayed. It was the chief token and bond of their 
 unity in their departed, but still spiritually present. Head 
 and Householder. To make the bond tighter by more 
 formally recalling its basis in His death Who sat no 
 longer at the head of the board, they closed their meal 
 by breaking bread as He had done, and had bade them 
 do "in remembrance" of Him. So far as we are told, 
 this was at first their only formal act of separate (or 
 Christian) worship; and though it most probably would 
 be accompanied, as the first supper had been, by words 
 of comfort and the chanting of psalms, yet it was in its 
 essence nothing else than a prolongation of that divine 
 and unforgettable communion of daily family life which 
 His followers had kept with the Son of God while He was 
 on earth. That family fellowship of Jesus Christ with 
 His own had been to them the seal of a deeper soul fellow- 
 ship with One Whom they loved as their Saviour. At the 
 table, it was so still. He had expressly consecrated table 
 intercourse into a badge of unity, a memorial of His 
 
 1 See Luke xxiv. 30, where, however, there may be an alhision to 
 something peculiar in our Lord's way of doing it ; and Acts xxvii, 35, 
 where a religious reference seems excluded. 
 
 ■■^ So in Herzog, s.v. " Mahlzeiten ; " and Smith, s.v. " Meal ; " but 
 Winer thinks noon, rather (see art. "Mahlzeit "). 
 
108 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 Passion and a seal of disciplesliip. By the '* breaking of 
 bread," therefore, there were naturally expressed, (1) the 
 continuity of their intercourse with One in Whom, though 
 now they saw Him not, yet believing, they still rejoiced ; 
 (2) their own fraternity, as the children of One Whom the 
 Son had taught them to call '' our Father ; " and (3) their 
 expectation of His speedy return Who had only gone 
 away that He might make the Father's great house above 
 ready for all the family. Let us try to forget, if we can, 
 the abuses which, after a while and among the Greeks, 
 darkened this primitive love-feast, and led to the separa- 
 tion of the Holy Supper from what had become an unholy 
 repast. Let us still endeavour, as often as we renew the 
 sacred rite, to catch its tender and homely interest. It is 
 a reminiscence of days when men did eat and drink with 
 the Eternal God in flesh. It is a pledge that all who still 
 love Jesus Christ are members in Him of one '* household 
 of faith." Above all, it leads us to associate the religious 
 sanctity of our inner life as a life in Christ with what- 
 soever we daily do, '' whether we eat or drink. "^ 
 
 In the same endeavour to give to the brotherhood of 
 believers a family character, I think we may find the best 
 key to what has been (not very correctly) called theii* 
 " community of goods." This social peculiarity of the 
 Jerusalem Church during the early weeks of its existence 
 is attended with a little difficulty, but that difficulty has 
 been increased by the discussion which has raged over it. 
 When we throw ourselves back into the circumstances of the 
 time, what really happened becomes more than intelligible 
 — it becomes natural. During the Master's ministry. He 
 and His itinerant assistants, who formed, as I have said, 
 » 1 Cor. X. 31. 
 
THE INFANT CHURCH. 109 
 
 one household for the time being, had naturally one 
 purse, out of which their common expenses were defrayed. 
 This fund, when low, was recruited by the voluntary gifts 
 of well-to-do and generous friends, especially females, who 
 had received spiritual blessing from the Master. The 
 unity of the brotherhood had thus been realised even in 
 its financial arrangements. Now, matters were not felt 
 to have materially changed. There was still a band of 
 Twelve, who could not earn a subsistence because they 
 had si3iritual work to do, as well as a number of incap- 
 able, aged, and sickly brethren, widows, like the Mother 
 herself, and young children. There was also a larger 
 number than before of somewhat wealthy disciples, such 
 as Nicodemus, Joseph, and Barnabas. All these, as 
 brethren, ate daily at one common table, and counted 
 themselves to be one large family of God, left by their 
 divine Head, indeed, yet not orphans, since the Comforter 
 had come.^ But how can we speak of brotherhood in the 
 family if the abundance of one brother is not to be a 
 supply for another's want ? Inequalities, indeed, are not 
 inconsistent with the family idea ; but destitution is. 
 There is, to be sure, no suggestion of what moderns call 
 " equality," as a result of this "fraternity;" only there is 
 an intolerance of downright want. There must not be 
 among them any who lack. The spirit of fraternity in 
 Christ will at least forbid that; forbid it, not by any 
 statute, but by the instinct of brotherhood working 
 spontaneously, yet working irresistibly. The common 
 expenses of the house and table, which belonged to all; 
 the support of the apostles ; the relief of destitute and 
 widowed members : all these were from the first a very 
 * Compare Jesus' words in John xiv. 16-18, Greek. 
 
110 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 pressing and patent care. For such purposes a fund was 
 formed under the charge of the apostles. Into that fund 
 all those who had landed property or real estate of any 
 sort brought the proceeds of its sale. Besides, I think 
 there is a hint that some capitalists distributed their 
 wealth at their own discretion/ as well as through the 
 hands of Church officers. Anyhow, the result was that, 
 under the strong and general feeling of Christian charity 
 which sprang out of Christian unity, men gave as freely 
 as if what they had were not really their own, but only 
 held by them in trust for others. Practically, what was 
 any brother's came to be the brethren's ; no man asserted 
 his private proprietorship, or " said that aught of the 
 things which he possessed was his own." 
 
 This free, fervent outburst of Christian brotherly-kind- 
 ness offers to my mind features, not simply of clear 
 distinction, but of sharp contrast with the communism of 
 modern Socialists. No doubt both are rebellions against 
 the same reigning principle of selfishness which has 
 always moulded social relations, and on which it is 
 thought to be a glory of the past century 3 to have 
 erected a theory of political economy. That by each man 
 doing the best for himself, and for himself alone, society 
 will do best on the whole ; since, through human selfish- 
 ness, supply and demand will always regulate themselves, 
 and the common wealth will increase the most : this is, 
 I believe, the creed of economists since Adam Smith. 
 
 * In Acts ii. 44, 45, where " all the believers " are spoken of as 
 *' parting " their possessions to all as each might require. This infer- 
 ence, however, is not a sure one. Qui facit per alium,facit per se. 
 
 2 Quoted from Acts iv. 32, where the subject is specially handled, 
 and by which the reference in chap. ii. 44 is to be explained. 
 
 3 The " Wealth of Nations" was published in 1776. 
 
THE INFANT CHURCH. Ill 
 
 Against this, as an exhaustive or satisfactory account of 
 society, and especially against its practical working with 
 the cruel consequences which we daily see around us, 
 early Christianity and modern Socialism both protest ; 
 only their remedies are unlike. Socialism is commun- 
 istic ; it annihilates property ; it compels men to labour 
 for a common, not for private, gain ; it equalises incomes, 
 and of course abolishes both wealth and poverty. It does 
 this, or seeks to do it, by force of law ; that is, by the 
 strength of the majority. But this simply means to take 
 by compulsion from him whose work is worth much, and 
 give a part of his fair earnings to one whose work is 
 worth less. 
 
 The Church at Jerusalem did no such thing. It did 
 not abolish property ; it produced no artificial equality ; 
 it imposed no constraint. It simply bred in men's 
 hearts so intense a sense of their oneness as brothers 
 in Christ, that the extreme destitution of any one be- 
 came a sight intolerable to all the rest. Thus, by a free 
 spiritual movement of charity resting upon sympathy, 
 it solved, for a time and on a small scale, the problem 
 of society. It is the only time at which that problem has 
 been healthily and safely solved ; the only way in which 
 it can ever be. Religious communisms have generally 
 rested, like the monastic orders, on an ascetic rather than 
 a social basis. The fanaticism of the German Anabaptists, 
 indeed, did not lack force, but it involved the ruin of 
 society. Recent humanitarian attempts in France and 
 America to realise a voluntary communism, wanting a 
 religious motive, have broken down.^ There is no real 
 cure for diseased society except the regeneration of the 
 ^ See art. " Communismus," in Herzog. 
 
112 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 individual, and the individual is regenerated when you 
 have substituted brotherly-kindness for selfishness as the 
 ruling motive or ground of character. This no system 
 has even attempted to do save Christianity. Just in so 
 far as any man takes in the peculiar teaching of the 
 gospel, such as the saving mercy of the Father in heaven, 
 our oneness in the incarnate Son, and the binding com- 
 mon life of the Holy Ghost — to that extent he will cease 
 to be a difficulty in the way of social economics. He 
 will help others as much, and grasp as little for himself, 
 as possible. To penetrate society at large with such 
 influences till society becomes Christian, has been the 
 aim and hope of the Church from the first. Yet its 
 success in this attempt has been, let it be sorrowfully 
 confessed, very partial. The number of men over whom 
 it has attained sufficient influence has never (unless in 
 the case before us, or in a sphere as narrow and for a 
 period as brief) been considerable enough to determine 
 the condition of society. Vice is always breeding penury, 
 as fast as, or faster than, such Christianity as we have 
 can relieve it. We seem hardly, if at all, nearer to-day 
 than ever to the return of that ideal state, touched once 
 in Jerusalem, in which no rich man is illiberal and no 
 poor man greedy. 
 
 (4) The original impact of new-born fervid faith upon 
 the incredulous population of Jerusalem, which had with 
 divine power carried thousands over at a rush, did not all 
 at once cease to tell. There followed a steady daily gain 
 of members, although at a slower rate. The persistent 
 testimony of the original members, who had been eye- 
 witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus, must have con- 
 tinued to convince numbers of their neighbours. The 
 
THE INFANT CHURCH. 113 
 
 sight of so warm and loving a society, radiant with a new 
 gladness, may have attracted even more. There is a won- 
 derfully fascinating power about genuine enthusiasm so 
 long as it is new. Besides, among the people who had 
 themselves seen and heard Jesus, there would be a great 
 many within whose hearts His own life had left soft 
 touches, over whom His own voice had months before put 
 forth its charm ; and though these very persons might 
 have been dragged along when the popular judgment 
 turned against Him, it is easy to imagine how the earlier 
 and better instincts of their hearts would reawaken now 
 that Jerusalem was once more ringing with the praises 
 of a multitude who loved Him, and hailed Him as Israel's 
 Lord and Israel's Christ. The Church had sprung to 
 sudden life on a prepared soil. Its own warmth was con- 
 tagious. New-born convictions always spread the fastest. 
 The same Spirit of divine life, Who breathed and spoke 
 in the Church, moved no less within the outside listening 
 bystanders. So, one by one, ''the Lord [Christ] added 
 daily those who were being saved. "^ 
 
 It was very lovely while it lasted, that first flush of 
 spiritual life. Before hypocrisy or discontent had grown 
 up within, or wicked hands had smitten it without, the 
 Church dwelt secure and innocent, like a happy family. 
 I have called it the Church's ** golden age." It was its 
 infancy, and the beauty of it is the beauty of childhood. 
 Simplicity marked it, called in our Bible "singleness of 
 heart;" a gracious, childlike absorption in one happy 
 thought, careless of the future ; a simplicity, which is 
 
 • TdvQ acu^ofitvovQ, ver. 47. This would be the first use of " The 
 Church" in its New Testament sense, if the textus reccptus could 
 be trusted. But the weight of authority is against it. 
 
 9 
 
114 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 to the sterner discipline of the Church's after history as 
 infancy is to manhood, or as pastoral to civil life. Along 
 with simplicity there was gladness too ; such gladness as 
 one notes to this day, when into a number of young 
 hearts the blessed gospel first comes, and the Holy Spirit 
 gives them assurance of the love of God in Christ. Then 
 with joy they sing their artless hymns of praise, and the 
 touching grace of their fresh pure life wins from the 
 spectators favour. Shall we sigh over the disappearance 
 of these primitive infantile beauties ? There is reason 
 that we should, if in their stead we have reached nothing 
 manlier or more noble. Well indeed for those most happy 
 souls who can keep their first childlikeness unfaded even 
 through the toil and change and trial of spiritual manhood : 
 yet it is better both for the Church and for the spiritual 
 man to travel away from childhood, even at some risk of 
 ''forgetting things behind." There comes a day when 
 all things that are now so old and withered shall be made 
 new. Then we, too, shall renew our youth ; and anointed 
 with the oil of gladness — which is the Spirit of God — and 
 sitting down as brothers with Christ at the feast-table of 
 eternal hfe, we too shall " eat our meat with gladness and 
 singleness of heart." 
 
VII. 
 
 St. "^tUxB Saoittr ^p0l00jr. 
 
 " YE ARE MY WITNESSES, SAITH JEHOVAH, 
 AND MY SERVANT WHOM I HAVE CHOSEN." 
 
 BEHOLD, I HAVE GIVEN HIM FOR A WITNESS TO THE PEOPLE, 
 A LEADER AND COMMANDER TO THE PEOPLE.' 
 
Acts iii. 1-iv. 4. 
 
Ee VISED Yeesion. 
 
 Noiv Peter and John ivere going up to the Temple at the 
 hour of prayer — the ninth. And a certain man who 
 tvas lame from his mother's womb tvas being carried, 
 whom they placed daily beside the door of the Temple 
 called ^' Beautifid,'' to beg alms of those who were 
 entering into the Temple ; who seeing Peter and John 
 about to enter into the Temple, asked to receive an alms. 
 But Peter, gazing upon him loith John, said : " Look 
 on us.^^ ^So he gave heed to them, expecting to receive 
 something from them. Then said Peter : 
 
 " Silver and gold have I none. But tvhat I have 
 that give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ the 
 Nazarene, tvalk." 
 
 And seizing him by the right hand, he raised him: and 
 instantly his soles and ankles tvere strengthened, and 
 leaping up, he stood and ivalked and entered with them 
 into the Temple, walking and leaping, praising God. 
 And the whole people saw him tvalking and praising 
 God, and recognised him that it ivas the same who sat 
 for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, and were 
 filled with wonder and ecstasy at tvhat had happened to 
 him. While he then was holding Peter and John, the 
 whole people ran together to them at the Portico called So- 
 lomon's, amazed: ivhich Peter seeing replied to the people : 
 
" Men oj Israel, ivliy do ye marvel at this man, orivhy 
 do ye gaze on us as if hy our own power or piety ice 
 had made him ivalk ? The God of Ahraham and Isaac 
 and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant 
 Jesus Whom ye indeed betrayed and denied before Pilate's 
 face when he decided to release Him. You it ivas icho 
 denied the Holy and Righteous One, and desired a man 
 who ivas a murderer to be granted you, but the Leader of 
 Life you killed, Whom God raised from the dead, of luhich 
 we are ivitnesses. And by the faith of His name, this 
 man tvhom ye behold and Jaioiv, His name it ivas that 
 strengthened him, and the faith that is through Him gave 
 him this soundness in presence of you all. And now, 
 brethren, I knoio that you acted ignorantly, just as 
 your rulers also. But God did thus fulfil ivhat He had 
 Joretold through the mouth of all the prophets, that His 
 Messiah should suffer. Repent, therefore, and turn, for 
 the tviping out of your sins, so that seasons of refresh- 
 ing shall come from the Lord's face, and He shall send 
 Christ Jesus , appointed beforehand for you. Whom heaven 
 indeed must receive until the times of restoration of all 
 things, of which [t'unes] God spoke through the mouth 
 of His holy prophets from the beginning. Moses indeed 
 said : * A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up 
 to you of your brethren like me. Him shall ye hear 
 in all things whatever He shall speak to you ; and it 
 shall be that every soul that will not hear that pro- 
 phet shall be destroyed from among the people.* 
 And all the prophets too, from Samuel and those that fol- 
 low, as many as spoke, also announced these days. Ye 
 are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which 
 
God established icith your fathers, saijing to Abraham, 
 * And in thy seed shall all the families of the earth 
 be blessed.' To you first, God, having raised up His 
 Servant, sent Him to bless you in the turning away of 
 each one from your iniquities.'' 
 
 But while they were speaking to the people, came on 
 them the priests and the Captain of the Temple and the 
 Sadducees, displeased on account of their teaching the 
 peop)le and announcing in the [case of] Jesus the resur- 
 rection from the dead. And they laid hands on them 
 and put them into custody till the morroiv, for it was 
 already eventide. But many of those who had heard 
 the word believed, and the number of the men was made 
 up to [about] five thousand. 
 
vn. 
 
 THE beautiful hour of dawn was soon overcast : how 
 soon we do not know ; but glancing forward, we find 
 only a succession of disasters, from without the Church 
 and from within, till the Jerusalem Church is broken up, 
 and the history of the kingdom of God shifts onward to 
 Samaria and the ends of the earth. The beginning of 
 persecution about the lame man was followed by the affair 
 of Ananias and his wife ; a second and more serious im- 
 prisonment of the apostles had at its heels the internal 
 dissatisfaction which called for the new office of the dea- 
 conship; and that led finally to Stephen's martyrdom and 
 the scattering of the disciples. This is, in brief, the his- 
 tory detailed by our historian in the next five chapters of 
 his work ; a history of evil overcome, discipline improved, 
 suffering bravely borne, and progress achieved in the face 
 of violence. 
 
 The first important incident in this new section of 
 Luke's narrative^ is the examination of the apostles before 
 the Sanhedrim. It may be said to have been the Church's 
 earliest confession of the name of Christ in the face of an 
 adverse civil power. Very much for the sake of that 
 examination is Peter's sermon in Solomon's porch re- 
 
 * Although the long passage, Acts iii, 1-iv. 31, can be broken into 
 paragraphs, it is in fact one story, of which the main and central 
 part lies in iv. 1-21. 
 
122 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 corded ; and very mucli for the sake of Peter's sermon 
 does the mkacle at the Gate Beautiful find its place. 
 Among many acts of healing done in those days by 
 apostolic hands/ this one alone is told at length ; because 
 it led to a discourse, which is itself worth reporting, be- 
 cause it in turn led to the arrest, imprisonment, and 
 judicial trial of the Church's chiefs and spokesmen. In 
 the present chapter it is only with the miracle and the 
 discourse which followed it that I propose to deal. 
 
 At the usual hour for evening sacrifice and prayer, 
 the two foremost apostles, setting before their converts 
 an example of attendance on the services of their ances- 
 tral religion, were going up together ^ to the temple. 
 Having passed through the outer court, open to Gentiles, 
 they were about to enter the inner one by that central 
 gate on its eastern side, which, because it led the worship- 
 per right in front of the altar and the sanctuary, had 
 been made by far the largest and richest of all the ten 
 that afforded the faithful access to the second or more 
 sacred enclosure. This noble gate is described by Jo- 
 sephus 3 as made of Corinthian brass, very richly over- 
 laid with gold and silver plates, and so massive as to task 
 the strength of twenty men to turn its leaves upon their 
 hinges. Eight by its portals, at the hours when the 
 stream of worshippers was fullest, his friends were wont 
 to lay an unfortunate man, now forty years of age, who 
 had never been able to walk through congenital weakness 
 
 ' Acts ii. 43. 
 
 ^ The reading which joins '(ttI to civto to chap, ii., and begins chap. 
 iii. with Trkrpot; ck k. t. X,, seems indeed to be preferable (so A, B, C, 
 and the Sinaitic) ; still the " together " of the A. V. is correct as to 
 the fact. 3 gee b. J. v. 5. 3 ; also vi. 5. 3. 
 
ST. PETEB'8 SECOND APOLOGY. 123 
 
 of the ankle-joint. It is startling to find that after the Lord 
 Jesus had gone in and out by this very gate so often for 
 years past, and had healed so many, this man was still 
 lying, as he had lain for long, an impotent beggar. It 
 seems to me plain that during Jesus' own ministry he 
 never can have had so much faith as to ask healing from 
 Him Who had given sight eight months before' to a blind 
 man sitting at another temple gate, and had even restored 
 a sufferer at the neighbouring pool of Bethesda, at least 
 more than a year before.^ If he had ever asked, not alms, 
 but healing, of that gracious Worshipper, would He have 
 refused to give him what He had ? I question very much 
 whether it was our Lord's custom to confer miraculous 
 aid on such as neither sought it for themselves, nor were 
 brought to get it by their friends. That He sometimes 
 did so, indeed, is proved even by the two cases just cited. 
 Yet I think the prevailing tone of the Gospel narratives 
 implies that such cases were exceptional, and due either 
 to a certain inward fitness of the sufferer to receive what 
 he lacked courage or perhaps opportunity to ask for, or 
 else to some peculiar service to be rendered to the kingdom 
 of God by the performance of a miracle. 3 Now, however, 
 what this cripple had neither asked nor got from the 
 Master, he received, to his own surprise, at the hand of 
 
 ' At the Feast of Tabernacles, in October ; John ix. 1 ; cf, Wieseler, 
 Chron. Synop. p. 270. 
 
 ^ See John v. In March was a year before the Passion, if it was a 
 Purim, and if Wieseler is right (see Synop. p. 205, ff.) ; but two years, 
 if John V. refers to a Passover. 
 
 2 Possibly the case of the blind man in John ix. comes under both 
 these categories. Cf. his behaviour before the Sanhedrim, and the 
 words of Jesus in John ix. 3. In the other case of the Bethesda 
 cripple, there is only Jesus' question, " Wilt thou be made whole? " 
 to guide us (John v. 6). 
 
124 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 the servant. Had then Pentecost and the spiritual joy of 
 the new converts warmed into life within his breast a 
 faith which the presence of the Lord Himself had failed 
 to quicken ? Or did the earnest gaze of Peter' first move 
 him to receive with faith a salvation which was now at 
 last to single him out for blessing, because now God's 
 time of gracious choice had come.^ The time and mode 
 of the genesis of the cripple's faith we cannot determine, 
 but that his own faith was present at the instant of cure, 
 as a concurrent factor, seems plain enough. What man 
 in his case, who was utterly sceptical as to Peter's claims 
 and Peter's Master, would have taken seriously a command 
 to rise and walk, or grasped with instant compliance the 
 outstretched hand which offered to help him up ? His 
 seizure of Peter's hand, and his own effort to raise him- 
 self at Peter's word, were both elements in the cure ; and 
 they both presuppose in him some idea that cure was 
 possible, some hope that divine help might come. It is 
 thus that a helpless soul, lacking the strength of grace 
 within itself to arise and come away from sin to God, or 
 to walk and run in His holy paths, is bound to meet 
 Christ's offer of divine aid. Not in hopeless scepticism, 
 but gazing into the honest searching eyes which gaze on 
 it, to learn how serious and how capable this great Helper 
 is, the soul is bound to welcome His help with hope "and 
 spiritual effort, rousing itself to grasp the Hand that is 
 held out, and, in obedience to His call, letting itself be 
 
 ' Cf. with Acts iii. 4 the exactly parallel cure by Paul at Lystra, 
 Acts xiv. 8-10; esp. "steadfastly beholding him, and perceiving that 
 he had faith to be healed." 
 
 ^ Can it be to call attention to God's sovereign choice of the sub- 
 jects of miraculous help, that Eaphael has put the second uncured 
 cripple into his cartoon ? 
 
ST. PETEB'S SECOND APOLOGY. 125 
 
 lifted up and strengthened, willingly. To attempt any 
 spiritual rising or walking without straining that divine 
 Hand with the weight of our acknowledged impotency, is 
 a vain thing. At the same time no man can so grasp 
 Christ as to burden Him with the soul's weight, unless he 
 is putting forth an effort of his own will in the direction 
 of obedience. It was therefore a speaking parable which 
 Peter acted at the Beautiful Gate. In it the Church has 
 always found an apt and helpful illustration of that mys- 
 tery in religion, the concurrence of man's will with God's 
 sovereign enabling grace, in the greater miracle of a 
 sinner's conversion. 
 
 It is worthy of notice how entirely, in this first re- 
 corded miracle wrought by an apostle, the manner of 
 Christ's own miracle-working is kept up. Careful students 
 of our Lord's life know that the sort of miracles He did, 
 and the way in which He did them, are as significant of 
 His character as anything else about Him. Beneficent 
 restorations of disturbed nature to order and health, sym- 
 bolical all of them of deeper spiritual blessings, and there- 
 fore full of teaching; done, not at hap-hazard, but with 
 choice and for a purpose ; having, moreover, an appro- 
 priate moral bearing, both on the person healed and on 
 others ; accomplished, for the most part, through some 
 close and very human contact betwixt Himself and the 
 sufferer, so that personal compassion in Him awoke 
 personal desire or receptivity in the patient : these were 
 the most striking characteristics of His usual miracle- 
 doing. Now, so closely is this of Peter's analogous to 
 his Master's works, that I venture to say, that if one who 
 was familiar with the four Gospels were to read this 
 passage of the Acts for the first time, changed only in 
 
126 FBOM JEBU SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 the name and leaving out the servant's reference to his 
 Master as the source of power, he would accept it as en- 
 tirely bearing the stamp of the miracles of Jesus. He 
 would refer it to the Prophet of Nazareth. Shall we say, 
 then, that Peter consciously copied the manner of his 
 Lord, or that he had through long intercourse acquired 
 it involuntarily ? The first supposition would be fatal to 
 the spontaneity and simplicity of the narrative, nor have 
 studious cop^asts any such success as this. The second 
 supposition is out of harmony with the history of 
 Peter down to the day of Pentecost. For will any man 
 who reflects on this apostle's behaviour and style of speech 
 towards the close of his Master's life, say that he was 
 steadily growing into such unconscious accordance with 
 the spirit of Jesus' acts and words, that a close resem- 
 blance in manner betwixt the two might be expected ? If 
 it is possible, with some show of reason, to say this of 
 John, no man would dream of applying it to Peter. Yet 
 it is Peter, and not John, who here acts and speaks so 
 entirely in the manner of Jesus. I submit that no ex- 
 planation of this is possible save the one evidently implied 
 ^ both by Peter himself and by his historian. That is, that 
 ^ Peter acted here under the impulse of a divine Spirit, 
 Who was the same Who informed and guided the public 
 /life of Jesus ; in other word, that Jesus was, by a spiritual 
 /Agent sent down from Himself, prolonging His own Hfe- 
 ^ work, through the hearts and lips and hands of these men, 
 ^ as His ministers and organs. This is the full New Testa- 
 ment significance of Pentecost. It is to be viewed as the 
 resumption of work ^ on earth by the Lord Jesus, the 
 Church's Head and Life. It was His virtual return in 
 * Cf. Acts i. 1 : " Began both to do and teach." 
 
ST. PETEB'S SECOND APOLOGY. 127 
 
 spiritual power to do tlirougli His brethren such works as 
 He had done in person, and greater works than these. ^ 
 In this sense it must be presupposed if we are to explain 
 so much as a single chapter in primitive Church history. 
 
 The temple received a new worshipper that after- 
 noon, and a joyful one. Making the best use of his 
 freshly- gotten strength, the man accompanied his healers 
 (who had been one in the act, though only one of them 
 could act in it) to evening prayer. There his excited 
 conduct drew general observation. He kept the apostles' 
 hands in his, and, as he walked, could not forbear, in the 
 joy of a new power, to leap, as Isaiah foretold the lame 
 should do, and lift up his voice as well, in ejaculations of 
 thanksgiving to the God of Israel. As an old habitue of 
 the gateway, his person was well known, and when the 
 rumour of the wonder spread through the crowded court, 
 he and the two apostles became the observed of many 
 amazed and curious witnesses. After service, when they 
 retired by the Beautiful Gate == to the outer court again, 
 and crossed it to that double colonnade which ran along 
 the exterior eastern wall of the temple area, in which the 
 disci]3les (following in this their Lord's exam23le 3) were 
 accustomed to meet, the multitude of worshippers hm'ried 
 after them from every side, and thronged the portico, to 
 catch a glimpse of them. In reply to eager looks and 
 questioning words,4 Peter delivered a discourse which 
 
 1 Cf. John xiv. 12, 18, ff., with Eom. xv. 18, 19 ; Acts xv. 12, xix. 11. 
 
 '■* The associations connected with the spot would revive in the man 
 his demonstrations of joyful gratitude to the two. See ver. 11. 
 
 ^ See John x. 23, and cf. Acts v. 12. In the former case for shelter 
 from winter cold, but here, probably, to escape from the afternoon 
 sun. 
 
 ■* The force of aiT(.KpivaTO in ver, 12; 
 
128 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 may well be called his second apology. One compares it 
 naturally with the first, delivered on the day of Pentecost, 
 and the parallel betwixt the two is remarkably close. 
 Here he gives the true explanation of a miracle wrought 
 by himself, as formerly of a miracle wrought upon him- 
 self. Here, as there, he starts with repelling the mistaken 
 views of the crowd. ^ The lame man has not been cured 
 by his or John's magical power, nor as a reward of their 
 eminent virtue, any more than the gift of tongues was 
 due to wine. Jesus is the Worker in both wonders. Here, 
 as there, too,^ his main drift throughout the earlier half 
 of his address is to prove God's exaltation of Jesus as the 
 true Messiah, in contrast with his hearers' treatment of 
 Him ; only, on this occasion, his reproaches of them for 
 their share in the death of Jesus become even sharper and 
 more keen than at Pentecost. He not only specifies their 
 crime as betrayal, denial, and murder, but aggravates it 
 by opposing the righteous Leader and Bringer of life, 
 "Whom they had put to death, to the insurgent murderer 
 w^hom they had saved ahve.3 More incisive words he 
 could not use. But again, as before, ^ he turns suddenly 
 from their treatment of Jesus to God's — ''Whom God 
 raised from the dead ; " and to the Man thus raised and 
 glorified of God, he traces with the most absolute 
 emphasis this day's, as he had before traced that day's, 
 wonder. So far the former half of his present address 
 closely answers to his earlier one. But it will be remem- 
 bered that at Pentecost St. Peter followed up his first ser- 
 mon, in which he mainly smote the hearers' consciences, 
 
 » Cf. Acts iii. 12 with ii. 15. ^ Qf ^^ts iii. 16 with ii. 33. 
 
 ^ Cf. Acts iii. 14, 15 with ii. 23. apxnyoc (also used by Peter iu v. 31 ; 
 only elsewhere in Heb. ii. 10 ; xii. 2) = Leader, Author, Cause even. 
 See Bleek on Heb. ii. 10. " See Acts iii. 16, cf. ii. 24. 
 
ST. PETER'S SECOND APOLOGY. 129 
 
 by a second, in which, after some interval, he answered 
 their alarmed inquiry, " What shall we do ? " That 
 later address must be very imperfectly reported, for it is 
 condensed by St. Luke into a sentence.^ Here, on the 
 other hand, the second half follows at once on the word 
 of conviction, and is apparently given with equal fulness, 
 so that we get a substantial addition to our knowledge of 
 Peter's public preaching. 
 
 Now, if this latter portion of the speech ^ be examined, 
 it will be found that its central point, on which is thrown 
 the chief weight of exhortation, is precisely the same as 
 in Luke's abridged version of the former speech. " Repent 
 and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out," he 
 says here. " Eepent, and be baptized for the remission 
 of sins," he said then. A change and turning of the in- 
 dividual heart away from those sins which have pierced 
 and grieved God, to seek and love and serve Him Whom 
 we have grieved and pierced — this is the uniform plain" 
 demand of the gospel. To the sinner who does so turn 
 and face round to God, God offers pardon, the " remission 
 of sins ; " or, as it is here, the blurring over and effacing 
 of them as an indictment against the sinner.3 Only this 
 uniform demand and promise are to be variously recom- 
 mended to men by considerations drawn from each man's 
 special position. As though God were beseeching his 
 countrymen through his lips, Peter here prayed them in 
 Christ's stead to be reconciled to God ; 4 and he used such 
 motives as, in the mouth of a Jew speaking to Jews, were 
 most fit and likely to persuade. 
 
 • See Acts ii. 38-40. = Ibid. iii. 17-26. 
 
 ^ The words are, elg to tS.aXeifSrijfai vfxuJv rag afxapriaQ, ver. 19. 
 Compare Col. ii. 14. " Like Paul in 2 Cor. v. 20. 
 
 10 
 
130 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH, 
 
 In the first place he suggested, as an extenuation of 
 their guilt, that it had been contracted in "ignorance." 
 It may not have been quite true of all, but it certainly 
 was true of the vast mass of the people, who wheeled so 
 readily from applauding Jesus to execrating Him, that 
 neither when they did the one nor the other had they any 
 real knowledge on solid grounds Who He was. While 
 such ignorance was vastly more culpable in its spiritual 
 guides than in the mob, yet it seems to have been true of 
 the majority even of them, that they acted under this mis- 
 taken notion that, in putting a false pretender to death, 
 they were doing God service. Even Paul says, that " had 
 they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of 
 glory." ^ It ill becomes us to be harder on these Jews 
 than, in their first excitement, the apostles were. It is 
 j)erfectly true that the religious authorities were guiltily 
 blinded byi^rejudice, preconception, and official jealousy. 
 It is true, also, that the less biassed mind of the populace, 
 till it was poisoned by its leaders, responded frankly 
 enough to the words of Jesus. Still, this is to be 
 said for the people, that few men at any time have the 
 courage to follow their own instincts of truth against the 
 force of tradition and the authority of experts who are 
 supposed to know best ; and for the rulers, this also, that 
 where interest, class feeling, and educational bias are all 
 on one side, few men have intellectual honesty enough to 
 welcome, or moral honesty enough to confess, disagreeable 
 discoveries. In the Hebrew nation at that day there 
 were of course all degrees of sincerity on the one hand, 
 and of criminal resistance against light on the other ; 
 but the broad fact remains that, for whatever reason, the 
 ' 1 Cor. ii. 8. 
 
ST. PETEB'S SECOND APOLOGY. 131 
 
 bulk of those who voted, by next to universal suffrage, 
 for Jesus' death, believed themselves to be voting what 
 was either just or XDolitic or necessary. Such ignorance 
 as this does not excuse a crime, but it palliates it. It 
 makes it more pardonable. Peter only followed here the 
 example of his Master, and probably had in his mind 
 those very words, so touching and so generous, which 
 escaped His blessed lips when, extended on the bed of 
 His shame, the anguish of the nails first wrung His 
 flesh : " Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do."^ Even if we apply that divine prayer, as I 
 think we ought to do, primarily to the four Eoman 
 soldiers who at the moment were rudely piercing His 
 tender limbs, and who, in obeyiog military orders, cer- 
 tainly little knew Whose body it was they handled ; yet 
 the principle applied of course to all others implicated 
 in that crime just in so far as they too were doing it in 
 ignorance. St. Paul, who certainly was as well taught 
 a Pharisee as any, and not given to extenuate his own 
 sins, tells us that the reason he " obtained mercy " after 
 persecuting Christ was that he had done so ♦' ignorantly 
 in unbelief." ^ It was, therefore, no mere piece of 
 oratorical craft, but a wise and generous concession 
 to fact, when Peter blunted a little the edge of his ow^n 
 charges against his fellow-citizens, by conceding that in 
 ignorance they had done it. Was he remembering that if 
 they denied Jesus ignorantly, he himself had denied Him 
 wittingly ? 
 
 Further to open his hearers' hearts to penitence, he 
 
 reminded them, as he had done at Pentecost, 3 how their 
 
 very crime had been the fulfilment, all unknown to tliem- 
 
 » Luke xxiii. 34. = i tj^^^ ^ i^^ 3 ggg ygj.. 18, and cf. ii. 23. 
 
 10 '^ 
 
132 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 selves, of those predicted sufferings wliicli it had been 
 God's will to inflict upon Messiah. Through their slay- 
 ing of the Christ, God had ordained that the Christ 
 should become their Saviour. The deep loving purpose 
 of our Father takes up into His own hand our roughest- 
 hewn deeds, and shapes them to consummate and noblest 
 ends. 
 
 But the most singular motive by which Peter here 
 pressed his countrymen to repent, is that, upon their 
 
 ^ doing so, had been made to hinge the return of Christ 
 in glory, and that predicted era of blessedness which 
 is to enter when His personal presence is restored to the 
 earth. ^ Evidently, Peter has now clearer and truer ideas 
 
 ^. of the messianic kingdom than he had, when, before Jesus' 
 ascension, he questioned Him, and got for answer that 
 the times and the seasons are in the Father's power. He 
 is far indeed from having abandoned the hereditary hope 
 ' of his nation. The whole testimony of Old Testament 
 prediction pointed him forward to a period when, under 
 the mild sway of David's Anointed Son, Israel's long 
 harassments, oppressions, and dispeace should have an 
 
 / end. After millenniums of turmoil, the land was at 
 length to be refreshed with rest and enjoy its Sabbath ; 
 
 • See Acts iii. 19-26. This difficult passage has been rendered, 
 not difficult, but false, by a mistranslation. The Authorised Version 
 reads : " Be converted, that your sins may be blotted out ivhen the 
 times of refreshing shall come ; " as if the forgiveness of sins were a 
 thing postponed till some future epoch. It ought to read : " Be con- 
 verted, that your sins may be blotted out, in order that (uTrujg dv) 
 times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord." These 
 times or seasons (Kaipol) of refreshing, and those " times (xpovoi) of 
 restitution (or restoration) of all things which God hath spoken " (in 
 ver. 21), both seem to refer to the same great hope of the Church, and 
 are connected with the second sending forth of Jesus Christ from 
 heaven to earth. 
 
ST. FETEB'S SECOND APOLOGY. 133 
 
 wrong was to be reversed, tyrants displaced, suffering 
 healed, and the torn and wasted tribes reduced to their 
 old prosperity in a long glad final jubilee. Of prospects 
 like these, Hebrew Scripture is full. To such a golden 
 age pointed especially those six and twenty closing chap- 
 ters of the book of Isaiah, where the Christ is spoken 
 of as Jehovah's "Servant;" a prophecy clearly before 
 the mind of Peter in this sermon, because he twice \^ 
 over applies that very title ^ to Jesus. Through his 
 Master, therefore, Peter still expects the kingdom to 
 be restored to Israel. In Isaiah's language, Judah's 
 wilderness was to be planted with myrtle and cedar ; 
 the merchandise of Ethiopia and Egypt was to come 
 over to her ; Palestine was to be thronged with inhabit- 
 ants, and Jerusalem clothed with beauty like a city 
 of jewels, with its gates for ever open, and the Gentiles 
 crowding to its light. Then should there be no more 
 weeping in that holy city, nor anything to hurt ; but 
 long life, '* abundance of glory," riches, peace, righteous- 
 ness, and everlasting joy.^ Gentile Christians have long 
 since learned to read these splendid promises to the land 
 and people of the Jews with hardly a thought of what 
 they meant in a Jewish ear. We mentally carry them 
 over to another "Jerusalem which is above," a new "holy 
 city " of the saints, which, long after Peter spoke, his 
 companion, who stood that day by his side in Solomon's 
 porch, was to see in vision on a lone ^gean island,3 after 
 Titus's army had laid the earthly city and its temple 
 in the dust. From Peter all this was still hidden. To 
 
 ' Wrongly translated " Son " in ver. 13 and 26. 
 '^ Cf. Isa. xli. 19, xlv. 14, xlix. 19, liv. 11, Ix. passim, Ixv. 19-25, 
 Ixvi. 11. ^ Cf . Eev. xxi. passim ; and see Gal. iv. 26. 
 
134 FROM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 him the promises were national. "Ye," said he, "are 
 the children of the i3rophets and of the covenant." If in 
 Abraham's seed " all the kindreds of the earth were to 
 be blessed," it was only through then- "joining them- 
 selves to the Lord," " taking hold of His covenant," and 
 being " made joyful " in that house which was to be "a 
 house of prayer for all peo^^le." Not for a good while 
 yet, and not without both vision and providence to teach 
 him, did the apostle of the circumcision learn to " call 
 no man common or unclean." ^ He was a still older 
 man when he taught his brethren to hope for an inherit- 
 ance reserved for them in heaven.^ Though there was so 
 much which Peter had not yet learned, this much he now 
 saw, that such glorious times of refreshment and restora- 
 tion — the "golden age" of the future — could not come 
 till the words of the angel on Mount Olivets should be 
 fulfilled by the return of the ascended Jesus. The object 
 of his Lord's retirement into the heavens he took to be the 
 conversion of Israel to faith in Himself. So long as He 
 was here, they had denied Him ; now, in His absence, 
 they were to return and call with tears upon Him Whom 
 they had pierced. Had not a beginning of this happy 
 conversion been already seen in the three thousand at 
 Pentecost, and the daily additions since ? Let the work 
 go on. The faster Israel turned to Jesus, the sooner 
 would Jesus return to Israel ; for, as Peter wrote a great 
 many years later, " the Lord is not slack concerning His 
 promise " to return ; He is only " long-suffering, not 
 willing that any should perish." 4 With urgency, there- 
 
 * See Acts x. passim. ^ 1 Pet. i. 4. ^ Acts i. 11. 
 
 * It is interesting to compare with this address 2 Pet. iii. passim, 
 and especially ver. 3, 9, 12. 
 
ST. PETEB'S SECOND APOLOGY. 135 
 
 fore, did the preacher that day press upon his " brethren," 
 as "Israehtes," to turn " every one from his iniquities," 
 so that there might come the sooner those times of 
 national reviving and restoration which had so often been 
 predicted to their fathers. 
 
 While he was yet speaking, ^ came the leaders of his 
 nation and put him in hold ! It seemed a bitter mockery 
 of this noble Jew's sanguine prospects and impassioned 
 appeals. Israel was not then, by a long way, and it is 
 not yet, at the end of its denial of its Christ. Is then 
 the national hope which, through so long and brilliant a 
 line of patriot seers, descended upon Peter, a defeated, or 
 is it only a postponed, hope ? Time will show ; but I 
 should incline to answer, even if defeated in the letter, 
 yet, in its spirit, only postponed. " Through their fall 
 salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them 
 to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the 
 world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the 
 Gentiles, how much more their fulness ? ... If the 
 casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, 
 what shall the receiving of them be but life from the \ 
 dead?"/ So wrote that grandest Christian Jew who is 
 also the Doctor Gentium. His discussion at a later date is 
 the safest commentary on St. Peter's early sermon ; and '^ 
 his words are worth our heeding when he adds this 
 warning: *' Because of unbelief they were broken off, 
 and thou standest by faith. Be not high-minded, but 
 fear." " Unto you," may we now read St. Peter's per- 
 oration as adapted to our modern and Gentile Church : 
 " Unto you, not first, but second, God has sent His Son 
 to bless you also in turning, away every one of you from 
 * AaXSvvTOJp dk dvrutv, chap. iv. 1. '■^ Kom. xi. 11-15. 
 
136 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 his iniquities. Eepent ye, therefore, and be converted, 
 that your sins may be blotted out ; so that those predicted 
 times of refreshing may come the more speedily, which, 
 so soon as the fulness of us Gentiles is come in, shall 
 be to all Israel salvation, and to ourselves life from the 
 dead." 
 
VIII. 
 
 |n CnllisxoH foitlj tijc Sanljctriim. 
 
 'I AM IN THE PLACE WHERE I AM DEMANDED OF CONSCIENCE TO 
 
 SPEAK THE TRUTH, AND THEREFORE THE TRUTH I SPEAK, 
 
 IMPUGN IT WHOSO LIST." 
 
Acts iv. 5-31. 
 
Ee VISED Veksion. 
 
 NoWy it came to pass on the morroiv, that their rulers 
 and the elders and the scribes assembled in Jerusalem, 
 and Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas and John and 
 Alexander, and as many as icere of high-priestly lineage; 
 and having set them in the midst they demanded : 
 
 " In ivhat kind of poiver, or in ivhat kind of name did 
 ye do this ? " 
 
 Then Peter, being filled ivith the Holy Ghost, said to 
 them : 
 
 ^^ Riders of the people and elders [of Israel], if we 
 are questioned this day concerning the good deed of the 
 impotent man, ivhereby this man has been saved, be it 
 known to you all and to the ivhole people of Israel, that 
 in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, Wliom ye 
 crucified. Whom God raised from the dead, in the same 
 does this man stand before you ivhole. This is the 
 ' Stone ' ivhich has been set at naught by you the 
 * builders,'' ivhich is become ' head of the corner.' And 
 there is not in any other salvation ; for neither is there 
 another name under the heaven given among men in 
 ivhich we must be saved.'' 
 
 Beholding then the boldness of Peter and John, and 
 having perceived that they were illiterate men and lay- 
 men, they marvelled and recognised them that they had 
 
been ivith Jesus ; and seeing the man standing ivith them 
 icho had been healed, they had nothing to gainsay. But 
 ■when they had commanded them to go aside out of the 
 Sanhedrim, they conferred ivith one another, saying : 
 
 " What shall tee do to these men? For that indeed 
 an acknoivledged sign has been done through them, is 
 manifest to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and ive 
 are not able to deny it. But in order that it may not 
 be still more spread to the people, let us threaten them 
 [with threats] not to speak at all on that name to any 
 man.'' 
 
 And having called them, they enjoined on no account 
 to utter a icorcl nor to teach on the name of Jesus. But 
 Peter and John answering said to them : 
 
 " Whether it is just before God to hearken to you 
 rather than to God, judge ye. For ive [for our part] 
 are not able not to speak ichat ice saw and heard.'' But 
 they, having further threatened, released them, finding 
 no means by which they might punish them, on account 
 of the people, for all were glorifying God for what had 
 happened. For the man on whom this sign of the 
 healing had happened was more than forty years old. 
 
 Now, ivhen they were released, they ivent to their own 
 [company] and reported whatever the high priests and 
 the elders had said to them ; who, ivhen they had 
 heard it, with one accord lifted up their voice to God 
 and said : 
 
 " Ruler, Thou Who didst make the heaven and the 
 earth and the sea, and all things which are in them, 
 Who by the mouth of our father David Thy servant, 
 through the Holy Ghost, didst say, 
 
" ' Why did the Gentiles rage, 
 
 And ijeoi^les jpurijose vain things 1 
 There stood up the kings of the earth, 
 And the riders conspired together in one 
 Against the Lord, and against His Christ.' 
 ''For there ' conspired' of a truth in this city against 
 Thy holy Servant Jesus, Whom Thou didst 'anoint,' 
 both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the ' Gentiles' and 
 ' peoples ' of Israel, to do ivhatever Thy hand and Thy. 
 counsel foreordained to happen. And now, Lord, 
 have a regard to their threats, and grant to Thy bond- 
 servants tvith all boldness to speak Thy word in [Thy] 
 stretching forth Thine hand for healing, and that signs 
 and wonders be done through the name of Thy holy 
 Servant Jesus." 
 
 And ivhen they had prayed, the place urns shaken in 
 which they ivere assembled, and they were all filled with 
 the Holy Ghost, and continued to speak the ivord of God 
 ivith boldness. 
 
VIII. 
 
 ST. PE TEE'S address in Solomon's portico on the cure 
 of the cripple was even more important for its results 
 than for its own sake. On the one hand, it won a large 
 accession of members to the young Church : how many is 
 not told, but the total list of believers, probably exclud- 
 ing women and children,^ was brought up by it to the 
 sum of five thousand. On the other hand, it brought the 
 new sect for the first time into collision with the national 
 authorities. That afternoon began the long and glorious 
 story of Christian confessorship and martyrdom. The 
 peaceful prosperity of the primitive Church met here with 
 its earliest check. 
 
 The captain of the temple guard, as the officer on duty 
 charged with maintaining good order throughout the ex- 
 tensive precincts of the holy house, had an obvious excuse 
 for interference. For an excited crowd to rush about the 
 cloisters, and be harangued by an unauthorised preacher, 
 might fairly enough be described as a breach of the tran- 
 quillity which is usually supposed to reign in a sacred 
 building. Those jpriests who had just been officiating at 
 
 * The use of tmv avdpCJv, in ver. 4, compared with the careful dis- 
 tinction of sex in chap. v. 14, leads to this inference. I take the 
 figure stated to be the total number converted up to this date. Un- 
 fortunately we have no means of even guessing what time elapsed 
 between Pentecost and the cure of the cripple. 
 
144 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH, 
 
 evening service not unnaturally joined the temple police 
 in the interests of order. So far the action of the author- 
 ities might not have meant much. It assumed a more 
 serious complexion when these temple officials were seen to 
 be backed up by members of the Sadducean party. This 
 small but wealthy and powerful sect of rationalistic deists 
 was, to be sure, no more popular at that time than it 
 usually was ; but it held the chief offices of state, it con- 
 trolled the priesthood, it was noted for harsh severity 
 where it had the power, and just then it had reasons of 
 its own for resenting extremely the teaching of the new 
 faith. All that the apostles preached turned upon one 
 ^ alleged fact, the return to life of Jesus Who had been put 
 to death. Such a fact, if established, was fatal to the 
 whole system of Sadducean unbelief. That God ruled men, 
 indeed, in this world by temporal rewards and penalties, 
 they held in common with their orthodox countrymen ; 
 but that the soul had no separate existence after death, and 
 therefore could not reanimate the flesh in order to be 
 judged or dealt with in another world, was then, whatever 
 it may originally have been,^ their prime tenet, To such 
 a party of freethinkers, the report with which the apostles 
 had for days been filling Jerusalem could not fail to be 
 offensive. To the apostles the hostility of such a party 
 could not fail to be full of danger. 
 
 The situation, therefore, was a grave one when, next 
 
 morning, at its usual hour of session, the supreme court 
 
 of judicature met for the trial of the two prisoners. This 
 
 body was believed to be the lineal representative of those 
 
 ^ seventy elders who acted as assessors to Moses himself,^ 
 
 ' See the conjecture of Prideaux, that at first they only rejected 
 tradition, in his Connection, part ii. book 5. 
 
 2 Of the seventy elders, cf. Exod. xxiv. 1, 9, c. Numb. xi. 16, 21, ff. 
 
IN COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDBIM, 145 
 
 and it still retained tlie largest authority over all spiritual 
 causes, as well as over sucli secular matters as had not 
 been seized by their Eoman masters. In the eyes of a 
 l^atriotic and religious Jew it was the most venerable and 
 authoritative court on earth. Its president was God's 
 high-priest, and the elite of the holy nation sat in it. Ex- 
 high-priests, with the heads of the twenty-four classes into 
 which the priesthood had been for convenience divided, 
 formed a strong sacerdotal element ; the learning of the 
 age was represented by doctors of sacred law ; and the 
 old tribal division of the people was probably still recog- 
 nised by the presence of heads of ancient houses.^ In 
 this body the great influence of Sadduceeism at that time 
 probably centered in the descendants of Aaron. At the 
 head of this ancient family of high-priests, by far the 
 most powerful family in the nation, was the veherable 
 Annas, who had long held the office, and who still, through 
 his personal influence, shared the title with his own son- 
 in-law, Caiaphas. Both these important members were 
 present ; both were Sadducees ; and with them were other 
 members of the same pontifical lineage, of whom two are 
 named by the historian. Of John nothing further is 
 known ; Alexander may have been the head of the Jews 
 settled at Alexandria, and a brother of the most eminent 
 Alexandrian Jew of that generation, the great scholar and 
 thinker, Philo.^ It was before judges like these, august 
 by descent, learning, and personal weight, as well as by 
 official authority, that two men were that morning brought 
 to the bar, of whom, when their Master stood before the 
 
 ' See Alexander in loc. for some reasons for thinking that this is 
 the dass described as " the elders " (oi Trpetr/Strfpot in ver. 5), but the 
 conclusion is an uncertain one. 
 
 ^ Cf. Josephus, Antiq. xviii. 8. 1. 
 11 
 
146 FBOM JEBVSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 same tribunal a couple of months before, both had deserted, 
 and one had expressly denied Him. It has never failed to 
 strike the enemies as well as the friends of Christianity 
 how extremely these men's conduct now contrasted with 
 their conduct then. In fact, it struck their judges at the 
 time. To every one who rejects the historical fact of the 
 resurrection, with the special advent of a divine influence 
 at Pentecost, this contrast must remain one of the 
 stumbling-blocks of the narrative. Admit these two in- 
 tervening facts, and everything is plain. Deny them, and 
 the story becomes a puzzle. 
 
 The question put by the court to the apostles frankly 
 assumed that the crippled beggar had been healed. It 
 was idle to affect to question this. Nor was the question 
 one which laid any charge against them. They were not 
 yet in the position of accused persons, they were simply 
 brought up for examination. The object was just to elicit 
 
 ^ their own explanation of the miracle. At the same time 
 the interrogation was so framed as to entangle them, if 
 possible, in an admission which should criminate them- 
 selves. For it ran thus : — " In what sort of power or in 
 what sort of name did you do this ? " ^ To understand 
 this phraseology, it must be remembered that at that time, 
 as for long before, there existed a numerous class (among 
 Jews not less numerous than among Gentiles) who pre- 
 tended by magical formulae, and the invocation of names 
 of more than mortal might, to expel demons, cure diseases, 
 or in other ways change the course of nature. Jewish 
 
 / exorcists of this class were wont to trace their art to King 
 Solomon. To this day, indeed, over all the East that 
 monarch's name is held in popular reverence as the patron 
 ' Yer. 7. The words are peculiar : 'tv Ttoiq. dvvd^u n Iv ttoiV ovonan. 
 
IN COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDBIM. 147 
 
 and prince of magicians. Josephus, who seems even to 
 have beheved in the art, tells us that he saw with his own 
 eyes a Jew cast out a demon, in presence of the Emperor 
 Vespasian and a crowd of Koman officers, by using the 
 name and the incantations of Solomon.^ Such practices 
 had been branded by the Mosaic law as profane, and made 
 punishable by death,^ but they never were extirpated from 
 Jewish soil. We read of them in the reigns of Saul and 
 of Ahab and of Manasseh. Isaiah speaks of them ; so 
 does Micah ; so does Malachi.3 In our Lord's ministry 
 they were quoted to Him as rivals. Later they encoun- 
 tered Peter in Samaria, and Paul at Paphos and at 
 Ephesus.4 It is impossible to comprehend the history of 
 the planting of our faith through a divine supernaturahsm 
 without realising how thoroughly the world, heathen and 
 Hebrew, was then saturated with the conception of a de- 
 moniac and magical supernaturahsm. It is in this light 
 we must read the question of the Sanhedrim. A wonder 
 is confessed. The doers of it are assumed to have done 
 it in some ghostly " power " or by the charm of some 
 compelling " name;" and they are adjured to say in what 
 sort of " name " or '* power," divine or magical, good or 
 evil. Of course it was not obtruded on their attention 
 that by virtue of the old Mosaic statute they might be 
 stoned to death if they confessed to having used any 
 other " name " than that of Jehovah ; but, equally of 
 course, this fact was present to their own recollection 
 
 ' See Antiq. viii. 2. 5. 
 
 2 Exod. xxii. 18; Lev. xix 21, xx. 27 ; Deut. xviii. 9-14. 
 ' 3 Cf. 1 Sam. xxviii. ; 2 Kings ix. 22 ; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6 ; Isa. ii. 6, 
 Ivii. 3 ; Mc. v. 12 ; Mai. iii. 5. 
 
 4 See Matt. xii. 22-30 (c. ver. 43), and paraUels; Acts viii. 9-19, 
 xiii. 6-12, xix. 11-20. 
 
 11 * 
 
148 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH, 
 
 not less than to the mind of the examiners. It was, if 
 ^ the court chose to make it such, a question of life and 
 '' death. 
 
 Hence the courage of Peter's reply is to be estimated 
 by the double danger which he ran. By avowing that, in 
 the name of Jesus, not nominally in that of '' Jehovah," 
 the cure had been effected, he ran the risk of being con- 
 demned for sorcery. By preaching to their face the resur- 
 rection of Jesus, as the authentication of His divine 
 power, he braved the strongest and most implacable 
 party in the court. He shrank from neither danger ; and 
 the reason given by the sacred recorder is that there was 
 then, for the first time, fulfilled a promise, spoken not 
 long before by Jesus Himself, and preserved for us by the 
 //. same pen : ^ — " They shall lay their hands on you and 
 persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and into 
 prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for My 
 name's sake ; and it shall turn to you for a testimony. 
 Settle it therefore in your hearts not to meditate before what 
 ye shall answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, 
 which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor 
 resist." A special breath of God's Holy Ghost animated 
 the first confessor of Christ in the hour of confession. 
 The words which his Master gave him rang with a novel 
 boldness in the ears of Israel's rulers. A senate, accus- 
 tomed to overawe all men into such deference as only the 
 conjunction of civil with spiritual power can inspire, was 
 struck dumb with astonishment when two " unlettered lay- 
 men " dared to speak at its bar in tones of prophet-hke 
 authority. As St. Luke says, using the very word of 
 
 • See Luke xxi. 12-15 , cf . xii. 11, 12, c. Mark xiii. 11. Cf. ver. 8. 
 -nXrjaOdg TrviVjxaTOQ ayiov. 
 
IN COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDBIM. 149 
 
 Jesus' promise/ they were not able to " gainsay " them. 
 It seemed to high-priests and scribes Uke having Jesus 
 among them again — risen from the dead in spirit, if not 
 in the flesh, Tliey looked at the two confessors till they 
 recognised them for men who had been often seen in the 
 company of the Crucified. ^ It is the very life of Christ 
 Himself, breathed into His saints, which forms the cha- 
 racteristic of their Christian life. That Spirit of Christ 
 looks through their serenely confident eyes, speaks in their ^ 
 free, undoubting sentences, even as it informs their gra- 
 cious and mighty deeds ; till they grow, in s-upreme 
 moments, to be so like reproductions of that Christ Whom ^ 
 the world refused, as to vex the world's conscience with 
 the recollection of its rejected Lord. It was a most not- 
 able instance of what has often occurred when the wicked 
 world has striven to put out its moral lights. John is 
 beheaded, but the fame of Jesus troubles King Herod. '^ 
 Jesus is crucified, but Peter charges the Sanhedrim with 
 His death. Stephen is stoned, but Saul returns a mightier \ 
 Stephen. There is a Light which the world cannot put out. 
 The unpremeditated, yet picked and close-packed words 
 of Peter's defence need not detain us, since they are a 
 briefer echo of his popular sermons. To the Sanhedrim, 
 as to the crowd, he explains the miracle by the power of 
 the risen Nazarene. On the Sanhedrim, more bluntly than 
 on the crowd, he charges the death of Jesus as the rejec- 
 tion of God's Christ. They, not the people, were the 
 official *' builders " of God's temple on earth ; yefc they, 
 more truly than the people, had refused that chosen and 
 
 ^ 'AvtuttIiv, in ver. 14, is only elsewhere used in Luke xxi, 15, in the 
 New Testament. 
 
 ^ See ver. 13 ; and cf. aypdfxiiaToi k. ihCJTai with what was said of 
 Jesus, John vii. 15. 
 
150 FBOM JEEUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 precious ''Stone" on wliicli alone the temple could rest. 
 By Ms citation from Psalm cxviii./ Peter probably recalled 
 to some of bis audience what he himself no doubt remem- 
 bered, Jesus' own use of the same text a few days before 
 His death. By it he paved the way for a strong unflinch- 
 ing assertion that only through Jesus could salvation 
 come from God to any soul of man. To refuse Jesus, like 
 the rulers, was to be lost ; to receive Him, like the lame 
 man, was to be saved. In speaking thus, Peter had 
 travelled far past the cure which was the immediate 
 matter of inquiry, but not without reason. To him, as 
 to his Master, each minor salvation from any ill of body 
 or eartlily suffering was but a visible promise of the one 
 catholic salvation from both moral and physical evil of 
 every sort which Jesus came to work. It never escaped 
 the view of Jesus or His apostles that there must be a 
 solidariU about salvation simply because there is a solida- 
 1 rite in evil. This makes it vain to look for true help from 
 the least evil, save from One Who can rescue from the 
 greatest; but it also justifies this one true Deliverer's 
 claim to deliver in six troubles, yea, even from the mystic 
 seven. 2 He Who can save at all can save wholly; the 
 conscience from guilt, the heart from lust, the will from 
 infirmity, the reason from darkness, as well as the body 
 from disorder and death. By one great Name has this 
 cripiDle been "saved "3 from lameness; by the same one 
 
 ' Psa. cxviii. 22. See our Lord's use of it in Matt. xxi. 42 ; and 
 cf. the same Psalm quoted previously on His entry, by the crowd, in 
 Matt. xxi. 8. With this speech of St. Peter cf. his First Epistle ii. 4, 
 and his own name of rock-foundation. In 1 Pet. ii. 4-8 he quotes 
 both Isa. xxviii. 16 and Psa. cxviii. 2 j^^ ^^ ^g^ 
 
 ^ 26TW(rrai is the word used in ver. 9 of the cure, where the A. V. 
 reads " is made whole." 
 
IN COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDBIM. 151 
 
 Name alone, and by no other, can any one of us be saved - 
 from sin and everlasting death. 
 
 The Sanhedrists were Hebrew theologians, and must 
 have known perfectly what Peter meant. He was charm- 
 ing with no name of demon or false god. It was not in- 
 consistent with the strictest monotheism, nor any treason 
 against Jehovah, to say that Jehovah had sent His fore- 
 told Deliverer, His Anointed, and that through Him 
 salvation had come to Israel. Had Jesus Himself said 
 no more about Himself than that. His condemnation 
 would have wanted even the shadow of ground which it 
 had. But the claims of Jesus to be Messiah, which Peter 
 reasserts, rest now on new evidence, said to have trans- 
 pired since His condemnation. It is on the resurrection 
 that Peter, after his wont, bases his preaching of Christ,,, 
 and the resurrection was to the council a new fact in evi- 
 dence. Much as individual Sanhedrists must have heard 
 about it since that morning when they bribed the Eoman 
 legionaries to keep silence,' this was the earliest occasion 
 since then on which it came under the formal cognizance 
 of tbe court. Mark how they treat this fresh light on the 
 gravest question a Sanhedrim ever discussed, which has 
 thus, by mere chance as one might say, struggled into 
 their council chamber. Two Galileans are found ha- 
 ranguing a crowd inside the temple ; and on examination 
 it is brought under their official observation, (1) that the 
 crucified Pretender to messiahship is affirmed to be alive 
 again ; and (2) that through His name and living power 
 a miracle has been effected. Honest men under official 
 
 ' Matt, xxviii. 11-15. The language of Matthew favours the im- 
 pressioa that the report of the guard was commuuicated at a regular 
 meeting of the council ; but it may have been only an irregular 
 gathering of the majority which had condemned Jesus. 
 
152 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 responsibility to find religions truth for their countrymen, 
 would have fastened on two such alleged facts as of pri- 
 mary importance, and would have either publicly ad- 
 mitted or publicly refuted them. What do these men do ? 
 They pass by the first and chief fact alleged — that of resur- 
 rection — in absolute silence. Was it because they already 
 had on record the report of certain Eoman soldiers vho 
 had spent a night on duty at the door of a certain tomb ? 
 To me, this absolute silence in the Sanhedrim respecting 
 ^ the statement of Peter that God had raised up Jesus, is 
 one of the most noticeable things in the narrative. Grant- 
 ing that the Sadducean members were glad to let such 
 a statement alone, were there not Pharisees in the se- 
 derunt who might eagerly have seized on it as a weapon 
 against Sadducean scepticism ? Or had the Pharisaic 
 party, who had mainly pressed on the execution of Jesus, 
 reasons of their own for avoiding that subject ? To make 
 a point in their polemic against the materialistic school, 
 would be a dear-bought triumph if it could only be done 
 by convicting themselves of having slain the Christ of 
 God. There was, however, a second fact which could not 
 be ignored. The healed beggar, who never stood before, 
 was ** standing" before their eyes, and the notoriety of 
 his cure compelled them to notice it. Had even this fact 
 been either inquired into or accepted in a candid temper, 
 it must have led them to the truth. Yet when the court 
 was cleared for private conference, the question vhich 
 agitated these fathers was not what religious meaning 
 ^ such a fact might have, or what bearing on the Christ- 
 hood of Jesus ; but only this — How can the affair be best 
 ^ hushed up ? A miserable result of official bigotry ! 
 When spiritual corporations know nothing better to do 
 
IN COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDBIM. 153 
 
 with a new fact or fresli light than to keep it from spread- 
 ing further, sx^iritnal corporations are not far from their 
 end. Christianity was once a new truth feared by the 
 conservative and traditional religion which it came to 
 supersede. Need Christianity itself fear to be in turn 
 superseded by a truth which is newer still ? Or it is the 
 mere Rabbinism of Christendom, its narrow, interested, 
 and traditional misgrowth, which, whether in Papal or in 
 Protestant councils, fears the touch of light, and would 
 smother up facts that they spread no further ? All 
 systems tend, when they get old, to grow timorous, as 
 old men do, because they have a fashion of growing away 
 from the vital truth which created them, till they come 
 to stand at last like a husk without a kernel. If we did 
 not believe that Christianity is not to be identified with 
 any visible system, but carries in it an indestructible 
 Spirit, Who can rejuvenate the old materials and recreate 
 old establishments, we might fairly be excused if, at this 
 hour of Christian history, we too gave way to alarm. 
 Christian systems of dogma, of polity, of national re- 
 ligious life, of ancient worship, are cracking and toppling 
 to their fall on every hand. They and the people whose 
 lives are bound up in them may fear; but the simple 
 Christian of a primitive and New Testament type, whose 
 religion is in the spirit, not the letter, in the spirit, not the 
 system, can afford to welcome (as the Sanhedrim ought 
 to have done) every indication that, out of the debris of 
 older forms, God the Spirit is about to build up afresh 
 for us, in nobler beauty, the kingdom of Jesus Clu'ist. 
 
 Weak as the decision of the court was, their subsequent 
 behaviour was far weaker. It was a " lame and impotent 
 
154 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 conclusion " to forbid the apostles to preach. When the 
 
 apostles refused obedience, to do no more than forbid 
 
 them a second time, and then send them home, was much 
 
 more '' lame and impotent." Had this been lenity, or a 
 
 tender sparing of misguided citizens, it would have been 
 
 at least respectable. But it was no such thing. It was 
 
 simply weakness. Hollow authority, authority filled up 
 
 by no truth, had come into collision with the might of 
 
 conscience informed by the truth. So often as this is 
 
 seen, it is the earthen pitcher to the iron pot. And it has 
 
 been often seen. Surely it is a mistake to represent this 
 
 as the first occasion on which the human conscience 
 
 asserted its inalienable right against spiritual tyranny. 
 
 The first Christian instance of course it is, and Christian 
 
 history has been much more full of similar instances 
 
 than the history of any other faith. The genius of 
 
 heathendom is unfriendly to supreme loyalty to truth. 
 
 The circumstances of Judaism offered few opportunities 
 
 for it. Still, the case of Daniel,^ at least, will occur to most 
 
 minds as a parallel before Christ to these words of Peter, 
 
 nearly as notable as the case of Luther, after Christ. The 
 
 Hebrew statesman at Babylon and the German reformer 
 
 at Worms were both alike impelled by conscience to defy 
 
 a full unbroken front of civil authority in its utmost 
 
 strength, rather than, not deny, but conceal, divine 
 
 truths given them to proclaim. This is precisely what 
 
 Peter and John did. If there ever lay on a man's 
 
 conscience an absolute moral necessity, a compelling 
 
 duty, not to hide in his own heart the truth he knew, but 
 
 ^ The events of the Maccabean period are less generally known, 
 owing to the excessive neglect into which all the apocryphal writings 
 have indiscriminately fallen ; yet the Maccabean period is the martyr 
 age of Judaism, par excellence. 
 
IN COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDRIM. 155 
 
 at whatever liazard to utter it in tlie ears of all men, it 
 was lying on these two who said, " Whether it be right in 
 the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto 
 God, judge ye : for we cannot but speak the things which 
 we have seen and heard." To have been eye and ear- 
 witnesses of facts in which was wrapt up God's salvation 
 for the world, bound them to speak. To have been silent 
 would have been disobedience to the supreme voice of God, 
 and treason against the spiritual hopes of mankind. "Woe 
 unto them, as Paul wrote of himself, if they preached not 
 the gospel ! ^ Silence those men, those few, poor, 
 Galilean laymen, whom Christ chose for His witnesses, 
 and you strangle in its cradle the kingdom of God. Not 
 often has it happened that on the faithfulness of so few 
 hung results so immense. Only at rare turning- times in 
 the unfolding of divine truth to the world can so vast a 
 responsibility be laid on a single soul or on a handful of 
 men. Yet at all times, and on every man, there undoubt- 
 edly lies a measure of responsibility, small, but his own, 
 to quench or conceal no light which God has kindled in 
 him. Christian experience is also a sort of seeing and 
 hearing ; it implies a personal acquaintance with Jesus 
 Christ in His spiritual power to save of such a kind as 
 gives the man assurance of the truth. Therefore it turns 
 every one who has it, as truly, though far less eminently 
 than Peter, into a witness for Christ. Within a narrow 
 circle, it may be, and to very few people, or through most 
 quiet and hidden ways, yet really, each of us who has the 
 faith of experience is bound to speak. Either by word or 
 sign or act of life, we ought to tell forth, not whatever in 
 our shallow conceit we may fancy we understand better 
 1 1 Cor. ix. 16. 
 
156 FROM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 than other men, but simply that which in the deep secrets 
 of our personal religious life we have seen and heard of 
 God's salvation. To do this on our little scale, with 
 small issues hanging on it, is a duty not less binding on 
 us, nor less testing to our loyalty, than was Peter's 
 witness on that day when the history of the Church hung 
 upon his lips. He who is not faithful in a little will not 
 be faithful in much. To me it is a failure as grave and 
 full of blame should I withhold my humble testimony, as 
 to Peter it had been to stifle his through fear of death. 
 It is his fidelity to duty, not the magnitude of his service, 
 which approves the servant. 
 
 From the court - room they retired to the church. 
 Christian confessors win their victories in the face of 
 day; but the strength by which such victories are 
 won is only to be got where Jesus got His, in secret. 
 Eemember Luther's broken cries as he lay on his chamber 
 floor at early morning on the 18th of April, 1521.^ In 
 every crisis of strain and peril through which our lives 
 must pass, at every moment of supreme difficulty. Sanhe- 
 drim threatenings, AVorms Diet, or whatever less thing it 
 be before which our faith and courage quail, there is for us 
 no place of help like the secret footstool of Almighty God, 
 nor any w^eapon like the cry of faith. Faith, grasping 
 the word of God's promise as the first Church then grasped 
 ^the Second Psalm,^ and laying hold on the faithful help 
 of Him " AVho hath made heaven and earth and the sea," 
 can procure that, not the chamber only shall be shaken, 
 
 ^ See D'Aubigne, Hist, of the Beformation, book vii. chap, 8. 
 
 ^ See the words of their prayer in ver. 25, 26, citing Psa. ii. 1, 2; 
 as in Yer. 24 they had already referred, without express citation, to 
 Exod. XX. 11. 
 
IN COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDBIM. 157 
 
 but kingdoms too, and principalities of evil, and ghostly 
 powers of darkness ruling over human souls. The re- 
 porting at length of this noble prayer, and the answer 
 which came with outward sign, almost like the signs of 
 Pentecost itself, show us how critical the moment was 
 felt to be for the infant Church. It is true that the 
 council had been too weak and inconsequential to enforce 
 its decision for the present. Still, it had decided ; and 
 its decision against the new faith was a sore blow and 
 grievous discouragement. It meant, first of all, that any 
 hope of a national recognition of Jesus' messiahship, by 
 a formal reversal of the national judgment which con- 
 demned Him, was in the meanwhile at an end. The 
 supreme national authority has again rejected the risen, 
 as it before rejected the unslain, Messiah. Israelites may 
 repent and believe, separating themselves one by one ^ 
 from the guilty people ; but Israel, through its chiefs and 
 rulers, has deliberately repeated its crime, and refused the 
 salvation of God. It meant more than that, however. 
 The conversion even of individuals was now become im- 
 mensely more difficult, since every man who joined the 
 new sect must brave the Sanhedrim. Each word spoken 
 for Christ must thenceforth be spoken at the risk of 
 liberty. Even to listen to apostolic words was now a 
 breach of law. Every fresh convert forfeited the rights 
 of a good citizen, ran a chance of excommunication, and 
 cast in his lot with a band of convicted heretics. Men 
 who are clothed with a venerable name may grossly abuse 
 their power, yet every new faith has to learn through 
 stern experience how great is the power of venerable 
 names. The Hebrew Sanhedrim was still a word to con- 
 ' Comp. Peter's words to the people, Acts ii. 40. 
 
158 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 jure witli. Nay, it could bite as well as bark, as a few 
 days more were to show. 
 
 Wliat the Church needed under such changed circum- 
 stances, and what the Church prayed for, was, first, a 
 spirit of courage in her spokesmen, " that with all bold- 
 ness " the apostles ''may speak Thy Word," undeterred 
 by the threatenings of powerful and bitter foes ; next, 
 that a way might still be kept open for the Word into the 
 hearts of the people. Here it is surely quite worth noting 
 that the means chiefly relied on by the Church at Jeru- 
 salem for both these ends is miracle. To fortify the 
 apostles' hearts, and carry forward the new kingdom, it 
 begs for " signs and wonders to be done by the name of 
 Thy holy Child Jesus." ^ This language is characteristic 
 of the very earliest days of the Church. At no later 
 period would such exclusive stress have been laid on this 
 external aid of miracle. Long since have we outgrown it 
 altogether, and learned to lean on the native, self-com- 
 mending virtue of the gospel message, enforced to the 
 heart by the inward virtue of the Holy Ghost. But just 
 then, living in an atmosphere charged with the miracu- 
 lous, and in a city accustomed to be fed on wonders,^ 
 fresh too from a sudden cure which had added multitudes 
 to their " company," the young Church asked, what under 
 the circumstances was probably the best thing it could 
 ask, a continuance of those special manifestations of 
 divine might by which it had been founded and its witness 
 at first authenticated. The prayer was heard. Once 
 more the name of Jesus was proved to have power with 
 
 ' Or rather " Servant," as in ver. 27 (also Acts iii. 26), where the 
 same word ttcuq occurs. 
 2 Cf. John iv. 48 c. 1 Cor. i. 22 also Matt. xii. 38 and parallels. 
 
IN COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDBIM. 159 
 
 God. However strictly the exhibition of that power may 
 have been limited, since the apostolic age, to the spiritual 
 sphere alone, it is the same power still, and not less e£Q- 
 cacious now than it was then for the pardon of guilt and 
 for the renewal of spiritual life in men. It is not less 
 true now than then, nor a whit less solemn for us to hear 
 than for the Jews, that " there is none other Name under 
 heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." 
 
IX. 
 
 UT POENA DUOBUM HOMINUM SIT DOCTEINA MULTORUM. 
 
 12 
 
Acts iv. 32— V. 11. 
 
Ee VISED Yeesion. 
 
 Now, the croivd of those ivho had believed ivas of one 
 heart and soul, and not one said that anything of what 
 belonged to him tvas his oivn, but all things were common 
 to them. And with great power did the apostles con- 
 tinue to give their testimony to the resurrection of the 
 Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. For 
 neither was there among them any one in zvant ; for as 
 many as were owners of lands or houses, having sold 
 them, kept bringing the prices of what was being sold 
 and laying them at the feet of the apostles: and it was 
 distributed to each as he had need. 
 
 And Joseph, ivho ivas surjiamed Barnabas by the 
 apostles, which is being interpreted ^' son of consolation,''^ 
 a Levite, a Cypriote by birth, being owner of a field, 
 sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the feet of 
 the apostles. But a certain man, Ananias by name, with 
 Sapphira his ivife, sold a property, and put aside from 
 the price for himself, the ivife also being privy, and 
 having brought a certain part, laid it at the feet of the 
 apostles. But Peter said : 
 
 ^^ Ananias, luhy did Satan fill thine heart, that thou 
 didst lie to the Holy Ghost, and put aside for thyself 
 from the price of the land ? While it remained, did it 
 not remain thine oivn, and after it ivas sold, was it not 
 
 12'^ 
 
in thine own power ? Why ivas it thou didst put this 
 deed in thine heart ? Thou hast not lied to men, hut to 
 Godr 
 
 Then Ananias hearing these words, fell and expired. 
 And great fear came on all tvho heard. And the 
 younger men rose and lorapt him up, and having carried 
 him out, buried him. And it happened about a space 
 of three hours after that his tvife, not knoiving ichath ad 
 happened, went in. To her answered Peter : " Tell me 
 if for so much ye sold the land?'* And site said: 
 *' Yes, for so much.'' Then Peter to her : 
 
 *' Why is it that ye agreed between you to tempt the 
 Lord's Spirit? Behold, the feet of them that have buried 
 thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out." 
 
 Then she fell instantly at his feet and expired. And 
 the young men when they came in found her dead, and 
 having carried her out, buried her beside her husband. 
 And great fear came on the ivhole Church and on all 
 who heard these things. 
 
IX. 
 
 ^APPOSITION from without, when it drives the Church 
 ^^ to prayer, becomes a source of strength and a crown 
 of honour. The real foe of the spiritual kingdom is^ 
 corruption within. Two apostles may lie in ward all 
 night, and be tried for their lives in the morning; but 
 the Church, like every community and every man, is dis- 
 graced only when she disgraces herself. 
 
 It is also to be noticed, that as the ripest fruits are 
 nearest rotting, so the first sign of internal decay which 
 alarmed the Church of Jerusalem showed itself in that 
 which had been her noblest boast. The love which, in 
 Calvin's words, '' made that common to the needy which 
 was proper to every man ;" ^ the strong sense of brother- 
 hood, which, acting as a bond of unity, levelled the 
 inequalities of fortune, and for a time realised a virtual 
 community of wealth : this was, of all features in the 
 primitive Jewish Church, the rarest and loveliest. Yet 
 precisely here corruption entered. 
 
 I have already had occasion in an earlier chapter to 
 speak of the unity of the Church and the nature of that 
 charity which at first signalised it. In these respects we 
 
 ^ " Tunc quod proprium erat singulis, commune egenis faciebat 
 caritas." — Calvin in loc. I quote in the text from the translation 
 by Fetherstone, 1585, reprinted by Calvin Trans. Soc. 1844. 
 
166 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 are informed that the general condition of the Church 
 was httle affected by the recent threats of the Sanhedrim. 
 Large as the number of the disciples had now become, 
 and critical as was their relation to the public authorities, 
 their internal harmony remained unshaken. The storm 
 drove the flock closer — it could not scatter it. Nor was 
 the witness which the Church's spokesmen bore to the 
 resurrection of Jesus (which was their special proper 
 work," and the burden of their preaching) one whit less 
 bold or telling because the highest court of law had for- 
 bidden it. Filled anew wdth holy courage, Christ's con- 
 fessors set at nought the prohibition of the rulers, and 
 obeyed God rather than men. In this they were sup- 
 ported by the whole body of believers. To take up such 
 a position of open defiance to the lawful heads of their 
 nation was a serious step. It was likely to entail the 
 most painful consequences. Excommunication, social 
 ostracism, scourging and imprisonment of the leaders, 
 scattering of the followers ; all these things were coming,^ 
 and any man might foresee that they were sure to come. 
 Nevertheless, the brethren showed themselves prepared to 
 face such hazards by the cordiality with which they clung 
 to one another. Left alone, they sought mutual support, 
 and made up for the pain of their isolation by the 
 warmth of their brotherly-kindness. 
 
 The chief way in which at that time a member of the 
 Church could express his unshaken devotion to the 
 common cause, or his willingness to sacrifice to the last 
 penny for the common weal, was by placing his realised 
 capital at the disposal of the brotherhood. The en- 
 
 * This is the force of the article in to fiapTvpiov (ver. 33). 
 2 See chap. v. 18, 40, and vii. 57-viii. 4. 
 
ANANIAS AND SAPPHIBA. 167 
 
 dangered position of the little community thus tended 
 to inflame the fervour of its charity, and gave a new 
 impetus to that common relief fund which had heen 
 started at Pentecost. It probahly became more than 
 ever the fashion for well-to-do believers to sell all that 
 could be sold of their property ; and in the heat of the 
 moment (for the time was one of growing spiritual excite- 
 ment) some doubtless did from a mixture of imperfect 
 motives what the best did purely for love. I can hardly 
 suppose Ananias to have been the solitary case, though 
 he was an extreme one, of a disciple who followed others 
 in doing what the public 0]3inion of the body prescribed 
 as the right thing to do, when, if left to himself, he would 
 rather have let it alone. The specific sin of Ananias did 
 not lie in this, but in something worse than this ; and 
 such deference to public opinion from mixed motives is' 
 far too common for us to believe that he stood alone in it. 
 The wealthy part of the Church^ was no doubt made up 
 of two classes ; men who were full of the new Spirit, and 
 so hearty in the cause of Jesus, that they were forward of 
 their own accord to put all they had into the Church 
 treasury, in order that no lover of Jesus might lack ; and 
 men honest enough in their belief, only less enthusiastic 
 or generous, who gave, partly indeed from good-will, but 
 partly also through the force of example or the fear of . 
 censure. To whatever extent this latter class existed, it 
 formed a dangerous element. When high-pitched virtue 
 becomes a fashion, men learn to pay to it the homage of 
 hypocrisy. 
 
 Of each of these classes, Luke has preserved an extreme 
 
 ^ For this narrative only concerns the propertied members. The 
 poor of the Church had another and a different temptation in store 
 for them, as appears from Acts vi. 
 
163 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 example. In what respect, indeed, Joseph,^ the Cyprian 
 Levite, whom the apostles called Barnabas, surpassed 
 other warm-hearted benefactors, is not told. I should 
 suppose mainly in the purity and strength of his motives, 
 since all we know of him leads us to judge that he was 
 a singularly unselfish and generous Christian. Empha- 
 tically he was " a good man." ^ To his ready friendliness 
 St. Paul himself was much beholden. He was the fittest 
 to be sent to encourage the infant Gentile Church in 
 Antioch. His gift of prophetic speech was chiefly a gift 
 (as Luke's translation of his by-name shows) 3 of con- 
 solation and heartening. It was like him, therefore, to be 
 forward with his sale of land, so that, reverting to the 
 primitive Levitical life,4 he might with unembarrassed 
 hands give himself to better than Levitical work. Pos- 
 sibly the promptitude of his benefaction, or something in 
 his manner of making it, caused him to be singled out 
 for mention as an example of the better class of givers. 
 
 For an example of the worst class, there could be no 
 doubt whom to choose. There might be several Josephs-: 
 there was, let us hope, only one Ananias. Even if we are 
 justified in the conjecture that others, as well as he, 
 followed the example of men like Barnabas with some 
 reluctance or from a wish to stand equally high in the 
 Church's esteem, still no one probably except himself 
 and his wife allowed vanity and greed together to lead him 
 
 * The true reading of his name in Acts iv. 36, is 'Iwff^^, on the 
 authority of A, B, D, E, not 'lujoijg, as in the Textus Receptus. 
 
 ^ As he is called in Acts xi. 24 ; cf. besides, chap. xi. 22-26, ix. 27, 
 and xiii. 1. 
 ^Barnabas (from HMinD), rendered vtbg TrapcucXriffetog in chap. iv. 36. 
 
 * Levites by law could not own land (Num. xviii. 20; Deut. x. 9), 
 except round about the Levitical cities (cf. Jer. xxxii. 7) ; but this 
 may have fallen into disuse in later Judaism. 
 
ANANIAS AND SAPPHIBA. 169 
 
 into downright falsehood. So long asimper. feet motives, 
 wrong motives even, secretly mix {hemseives with the 
 spiritual life of a religious community, as they always do. 
 Church disciphne can take no notice of them. In the 
 case of this wretched pair, all the baser ingredients which 
 marred the splendid charity of those days came con- 
 spicuously to the surface in very gross sin, and the sinners 
 became at once the mark for an ecclesiastical judgment of 
 the most awful description. The crime for which Ananias 
 died was certainly not the first appearance of evil in his 
 heart. Men never do such things, never do them at least 
 so deliberately, without a previous period of moral 
 deterioration. The crime is the fruit of a plant of un- 
 righteousness which has been tolerated or fostered for a 
 while. Nor were Ananias and his wife the only disciples 
 who were tempted to give less than all they had to spare * 
 to the Church plate. Others there might be who, grudg- 
 ing to give so much, gave less, and frankly called ifc less. 
 Others still may have given their all with some little 
 grudge, yet gave it. And there were probably some who 
 battled with the temptation to lie, as Ananias lied, but 
 overcame the tempter. The peculiar sin of this pair lay 
 here, that, being tempted by two evil things — the love of 
 money and the love of applause — they suffered both these , 
 unchristian passions to enter and occupy their souls, to 
 fill them up bit by bit, driving out the love of men and 
 the fear of God, till, grown blind and hard and reckless 
 through sin, they plotted in cold blood to cheat the Church 
 and lie to the face of God. Had they been covetous only, 
 they would have kept their property ; vain only, they 
 would have given it all. In either case the motive had 
 been a bad one, but in neither case would the offence 
 
170 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 Lave grown into a scandal. It was the effort to reconcile 
 two conflicting passions, to be close and seem generous, 
 to keep their gold yet win the credit of giving it, which 
 betrayed these Christians into the first open and shameful 
 breach of Christian morality. Out of the confluence of 
 "covetousness with vanity came forth a lie. 
 
 In tracing thus the genesis of their great sin, we must 
 not leave out of account that extra-human tempter to 
 whom St. Peter pointed. Ananias and Sapphira were the 
 Adam and Eve of that early Christian paradise, and their 
 fall is referred to the inspiration of the same agent. Or, 
 if you like, the covetous hypocrisy of him who fell from 
 his seat in the apostolate was reappearing even within 
 the new Church of the Holy Ghost ; and Peter recognised 
 the presence of the same spiritual adversary who had filled 
 Judas' heart.' Men may and ought to resist his suggested 
 evil. It is their own fault if they suffer him *' to fill 
 their heart." Yet his presence is not to be forgotten, nor 
 may his influence ever be more surely detected than in a 
 lie ; above all, such a lie as sin tells when it would pass 
 for virtue. The " father of lies " is in character when he 
 comes among the sons of God as *' an angel of light." ^ 
 With that strong desire to get rid of the inexplicable which 
 almost dominates recent literature, men are more ready 
 just now than ever before to explain away the personality 
 of the devil. There can be no doubt, however, among 
 impartial students of Scripture, that all Scripture autho- 
 rity, including that of our Lord Himself, represents man 
 as set betwixt a twofold world of invisible moral influences. 
 From the Above and from the Beneath alike, real per- 
 
 * Cf. what is said of Judas in John xiii, 27. 
 ^ See John viii. 44 ; 2 Cor. xi. 14 ; and Job i. 6. 
 
ANANIAS AND SAPPHIBA. 171 
 
 sons operate upon this doubtful border-land of mingled 
 good and evil where we spend our period of probation ; 
 and in the background of man's spiritual being they are 
 represented as rival actors, inspiring, though they cannot 
 determine, the activity of his will. To any one but a 
 materialist, this conception of antagonist spiritual in- 
 fluences, a Spirit of God Who leads upwards to good, and 
 a spirit against God who heads the realm of evil and 
 tempts downward, need offer no serious difficulty. To a 
 careful thinker, it may even appear to answer some of the 
 darkest questions of history, and explain many of the 
 deepest experiences of spiritual life. To me it seems to 
 complete the scheme of the personal world by linking all 
 its members into one whole, and binding our own moral 
 history with those vast realms of spiritual existence which 
 lie on either hand of us. Neither the Holy Spirit nor 
 the unholy needs to trench upon the sacred awful region 
 of human responsibility. Men resist the Holy Ghost ; 
 men, too, " resist the devil." ^ Welcome either, yield to 
 either ; lean this way or that ; and the power of with- 
 drawal from your chosen spiritual ally may be indefinitely 
 diminished. You may become, by a law of personal 
 life, more and more the *' slave "^ of him whom you 
 elect to obey. Yet after such an appalling supremacy 
 of evil over good has become most pronounced, so that 
 a man has come to fulfil with little scruple the worst 
 suggestions of the devil, it can still be said to him, as was 
 said to Ananias, " Why did Satan fill thy heart ? " There 
 is no answer to that "TF%.?" save the first guilty con- 
 sent of the free will which opened up the heart to the 
 foul one's breath and laid the springs of action in his hand. 
 ^ See Eph. iv. 30, and Jas. iv. 7. ^ Cf. Jolm viii. 34 (Greek). 
 
172 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 It was in a full Cliurcli meeting, possibly at one of the 
 Hours of daily prayer, that Ananias came to offer his gift 
 to the Lord. The apostles, as the office-bearers of the 
 society, were the official custodians and dispensers of this 
 charity. Devoted to the service of the Lord's poor, the 
 money was evidently looked upon as consecrated to the 
 Lord Jesus Himself, and the oblation of it formed there- 
 fore an act of public worship. It was laid solemnly '' at 
 the apostles' feet " while they sat in their seats as pre- 
 siding teachers and heads of the holy family. One won- 
 ders much more at the audacity of the man who ventured 
 to lay down before God, as the whole price of his estate, 
 so much only as he and his wife could find it in their 
 hearts to part with, than one does at the spiritual insight 
 of the apostle. It sometimes happens that pure-hearted 
 women ' and little children shrink with involuntary dis- 
 like from false bad men whose real character is still by 
 the world undetected. So, where the Holy Spirit dwells 
 eminently in the heart, as He then dwelt in Peter's, He 
 may bestow what will look like supernatural insight into 
 character by simply heightening to greater acuteness than 
 in other men the sensitiveness of the true soul to the ap- 
 proach of the false. In the One Man in Whom the Spirit 
 
 ' Cf. what Marguerite says of Mephistopheles, in " Faust:" — 
 
 " Der Mensch den du da bei dir hast 
 1st mir in tiefer inu'rer Seele verhasst ; 
 Es hat mir in meinem Leben 
 So nichts einen Stich ins Herz gegeben 
 Als des Menschen widrig Gesicht," 
 
 *' Seine Gegenwart bewegt mir das Blut." 
 
 ***** 
 
 "Auch wenn er da ist, konn't ich nimmer beten." 
 
 U. 8. to. 
 
ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA. 173 
 
 dwelt without measure, tins insight into the hearts of men 
 reached its maximum,^ and He it was Who gave a mea- 
 sure of the like insight to His chosen servants. 
 
 Precisely this eminent presence of God the Holy Spirit 
 in the assembly of believers, and in their chiefs above all, 
 was the fact which aggravated the offence of Ananias. In 
 secretly purloining ^ part of the money which he had 
 already devoted to God's treasury, he did what, if not 
 exactly a sacrilegious robbing of God, like the sin of 
 Achan, is extremely like it. In presenting the remainder 
 under the pretence that it was the whole, he, at any rate, 
 committed a lie in act ; and since God the Spirit (Whose 
 personality and divinity are here unmistakably assumed) 
 was the informing Breath of the new Church, the Guar- 
 dian of its purity and the Inspirer of its worship, the 
 man's lie passed beyond his human brethren to that dread 
 august Personality Who inhabited them. What Peter 
 says, is not that Ananias bore false witness of the Holy 
 Ghost, in representing his own offering as dictated by the 
 spirit of love, when it was only wrung out of the grip of 
 greed by a desire for praise. That is true : but what 
 Peter says is that Ananias bore false witness to the Holy 
 Ghost, lied to Him, as though he would, if he could, 
 deceive God.3 Or, to state it as Peter stated it, three 
 
 ^ See examples of this in our Lord, in John ii. 23-25, and (regard- 
 ing Judas) in John vi, 70, and xiii. 27. Cf. the ease of Paul, in Acts 
 xiv. 9. 
 
 '■'Ver. 2, tvotrrplnaTO (only elsewhere in Tit. ii. 10, of theft) = "put 
 aside for himself" (in Mid.). Of Achan, see same word in LXX., 
 Josh. vii. 1 (though used generally of Israel). Cf., on robbing God, 
 Mai. iii. 8-10 ; and on this use of our text, see Hooker's Eccl. Pol. 
 vii. 24, 17. 
 
 '^ The expression is \pev<TaaSrai ce to Trvtvfia = " to deceive by a lie." 
 (With ace. of the person is classic usage, though only here m N. T. 
 See Meyer in loc.) 
 
174 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 hours after to tlie woman, tliis couple put God the all- 
 knowing Spirit to the proof, tried Him whether He would 
 let Himself and His holy Church be taken in with a lie.^ 
 The exceptional guilt of this falsehood did not consist in 
 its attempting to deceive men. A false statement made 
 out of doors to any curious questioner would have borne 
 that complexion and no darker one. Here was the ex- 
 ceptional feature that, in trying to impose on the Church 
 of God, they tried to impose on God Himself — "lied not 
 unto men," as Peter strongly put it,^ ''but unto God " the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 It seems to me that we have much need to lay to heart 
 the lessons of this incident. Christ's Church has long 
 since come to include so many false or unspiritual mem- 
 bers, and to be so blent with the world, that we fail to 
 realise its ideal sanctity as the body of Christ, animated 
 in a pecuhar manner by the divine presence. We fail to 
 feel that to offend against the saints is to offend Christ ; 3 
 that to fetch our worldly sins of conceit, ambition, envy, 
 or covetousness, into sacred seiwices, is to affront God to 
 His face ; that to defile the Church is to defile God's 
 temple, and "if any man defile the temple of God, him 
 shall God destroy." Nay, more than this. We are apt 
 to lose out of our hearts that faith in the Third Person of 
 the adorable and undivided Trinity, which reahses Him 
 as One Who can be wronged, grieved, insulted, or lied 
 to ; One Who, though He keeps Himself out of view, is 
 
 ' Cf. Ter. 9, TTHpaaai rb Trvtvfia icvpiov. , 
 
 2 Yer. 4, 6vk av^pwiroig dWd T<f B«p. Cf., on the rhetorical ab- 
 soluteness of this negation, Winer, Gr. p, 440. 
 
 3 Compare our Lord's words in Matt, xviii. 5, 6, with Paul's in 
 1 Cor. viii. 12 ; and for an Old Testament parallel, see Zech. ii. 8. 
 
AXAXIAS AND SAFPHIEA. 175 
 
 yet sensitive to the treatment -^liich, in the persons of 
 righteous men, He daily receives from the profane. "We 
 are apt to treat the collective Church and the individual 
 Christian as if God were not in any special way resident 
 in them ; forgetting that when we commit a sin against 
 them as a Christian man or as the Christian community, 
 our sin goes past the human object of it, to strike against 
 One Who informs the Christian's life and guides the ser- 
 vice of His Church. Priestly assumption, by monopo- 
 lising for her official members alone the whole of that 
 reverence which is due to the Church at large ; and 
 superstition, by extending a like reverence over places, 
 times, emblems, robes, and other ecclesiastical adjuncts, 
 have between them disgusted sober and manly thinkers. 
 On the other hand, the rude irreverence into which some 
 sections of evangelical society are in danger of falling, as if 
 the Church of God, as the body of His people, had no 
 greater sanctity than any other society of respectable per- 
 sons, is clearly against Holy Scripture and spiritual facts. 
 Official ordination does not make a man hoher than other 
 men, any more than consecration makes a building hoher 
 than other buildings. But the organised society of God's 
 saints, in whose hands are the keys of the kingdom of 
 heaven, is a more sacred thing than other societies are. 
 To mahgn Christ's little ones ; to deceive the Church ; to 
 turn God's worship into a performance ; to use Church 
 influence for private profit ; to break the vows of our holy 
 reUgion or profane its sacraments ; to be called a Christian 
 yet outrage the proprieties of Christian conduct ; to des- 
 pise the services, the ministers, or the discipline of the 
 Church — these things are not, and cannot be, just the 
 same as similar offences against a secular and self-made 
 
176 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 society. The peculiarity whicli makes this Society the 
 kingdom of God, if it is the kingdom of God at all, must 
 aggravate offences done against it ; and the special pre- 
 sence of the Holy Ghost, if He is specially in it, must 
 stamp all contempt or outrage with a sacrilegious die. 
 
 It is to mark the sanctity of that enclosure which is now 
 for the first time called '' the Church,"^ that this narra- 
 tive of judgment is set thus in the forefront of its his- 
 tory. On the earliest appearance of open sin within the 
 Church follows the earliest infliction of Church discipHne. 
 Because it is the earliest, it is taken out of the hands of 
 servants, to be administered with appalling severity by the 
 hand of the Master. For it ought to be well observed that 
 it was not Peter who slew Ananias and Sapphira. Not 
 even as the executioner of a divine sentence can he be 
 said to have slain them. In the first case, that of the 
 husband, Peter only exposed and denounced the crime; 
 he neither threatened nor foretold — probably did not even 
 expect — the punishment. I can well believe that it took 
 the apostle by surprise, as well as any bystander, when 
 right at the back of his words, as if these words had been 
 blows, the wretched man fell prostrate and dying to the 
 floor. In the wife's case, Peter, after he had first given 
 her space for confession, foretold, indeed, what he now 
 foresaw to be her parallel fate ; he foretold, but did not 
 threaten, still less inflict. In both cases the stroke was 
 struck by an unseen Hand. In the days of His flesh, 
 Jesus, Who came *' not to destroy men's lives, but to save 
 
 1 In Acts V. 11. The reading in chap. ii. 47 is very doubtful — 
 not found in A, B, C, or the Sinaitic. Here it is undoubted. The 
 word occurs before this in only two passages in St. Matthew (xvi. 18, 
 xviii. 17), as used by Jesus. After this, twenty-two times in Acts, 
 and in the Epistles x^assim. See Bruder. 
 
ANANIAS AND SAPPHIBA. Ill 
 
 them," used His power over human bodies in beneficence, 
 never in judgment. He refused to call down fire upon 
 His enemies.^ But Jesus raised to the right hand of God is 
 clothed with the responsibilities as well as the prerogatives 
 of divine rule, and one of these is judgment. What did 
 not become the subject Son lies as a duty upon the exalted 
 Lord. He has a kingdom to govern : to defend its purity, 
 to vindicate its sanctity, to avenge its dishonour, are plain 
 functions of His royal office. From the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, then, the Head of His insulted Church, came, as 
 I take it, the blows which stretched these two confede- 
 rates upon the ground. It was awfully severe : it was 
 meant to be awful in its severity. As an exercise of earthly 
 discipline it was entirely exceptional, a warning not to be 
 repeated. Church discipline, administered in its normal 
 form through ministerial human hands, is a discipline by 
 words, not blows. It employs spiritual deprivation, not 
 corporeal chastisement. But since it pleased the offended 
 Lord to step down for once into the earthly congregation 
 of His saints and execute before men's eyes the supreme 
 sentence of law on the earliest profaners of His House, no 
 one can say that instant loss of life was a judgment too 
 heavy for the greatness of their sin. The lives of all 
 men are in His hand. Daily He is cutting them off in a 
 moment — even hot with lust or red-handed from crime. 
 His doom now and then antedates the slower processes of 
 human law. The time and fashion of all our deaths is 
 with Him. The life which we are daily forfeiting for 
 transgression is daily spared through mercy. If one 
 day His mercy turned to judgment, and He took from 
 the earth two forfeited lives for the warning and the 
 
 ' See Luke ix. 52-56. 
 13 
 
178 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 bettering of many, wlio shall say either that the lesson 
 wa,s clearly bought or that the penalty was undeserved. 
 It is well that men should be taught once for all, by sud- 
 den death treading swiftly on the heels of detected sin, 
 that the gospel, which discovers God's boundless mercy, 
 has not wiped out the sterner attributes of the Judge. 
 " He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under 
 two or three witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment, 
 suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy who .... hath 
 done despite unto the Spirit of grace ? "^ 
 
 I am far from saying that this awful manner of death 
 implied of necessity the perdition of Ananias and Sap- 
 phira. They were members of the first Church, baptized 
 as believers in the Lord Jesus ; and though they had 
 suffered Satan in this thing to fill their hearts, it is 
 not for us to say that even sin so gross was quite in- 
 consistent with grace, or that even a death so sudden 
 quite shut out repentance. With the final fate of these 
 two culprits, in short, we have nothing whatever to do. 
 Only the time, the place, and the manner of their death 
 were meant for the teaching of the Church — as a protest 
 that the Holy Ghost is in her, as a warning against 
 hypocrisy. To be false in their hearts, and to thrust 
 this falsehood into their religious worship and pretended 
 service of God in His Church, was the offence for which 
 they died. There never has been a time from that day 
 to this in which the Church has not needed the lesson. 
 Let each Christian lay his hand upon his heart and 
 say if he does not need it. Do none of us try to gain 
 the world and save our soul at the same time ? Who 
 never renders to God a divided worship ? Is it so rare 
 I Heb. X. 28, 29. 
 
ANANIAS AND SAPPHIBA. 179 
 
 to seem better than we are ? to cultivate a cheap repute 
 for piety ? to give that we may be seen of men, while 
 we grudge what we give and love dearly what we keep ? 
 Are our prayers at no time false, as though we sought 
 to deceive God ? Or do modern Christians never show 
 themselves devout before fellow-worshippers with a pre- 
 tence of devotion ? Is there no Holy Ghost now to be 
 lied to ? Or is He grown indifferent to insults through 
 long endurance of them? Because judgment against 
 our evil works and evil worship is not executed so 
 speedily as on Ananias, shall we dream that God the 
 Spirit has ceased to care, or God the Son ceased to rule ? 
 Two tombs only outside Jerusalem, rifled perchance long 
 since, and clean forgotten now: but over how many 
 Ananiases and Sapphiras hangs the unexecuted sentence? 
 God grant us repentance to the acknowledging of our 
 sins, and fill our hearts with the spirit of reverence, 
 truthfulness, and godly fear, lest another spirit fill us 
 with lies, with greed, with vain-glory, and with presump- 
 tuous impiety. 
 
 18* 
 
X. 
 
 % ^ttonH €allkxm foitlj tljt 
 
 IF ANY MAN SUFFER AS A CHRISTIAN, LET HIM NOT BE ASHAMED. 
 
Acts V. 12-42. 
 
Eevised Version. 
 
 Now hy the hands of the apostles ivere many signs and 
 iconders ivrought among the people. And they ivere all 
 with one accord in the Portico of Solomon ; hut of the 
 rest, no one dared to attach himself to them ; on the 
 contrary, the people magnified them. But all the more 
 ivere believers added to the Lord] croivds both of men 
 and ivomen. So that along the streets they brought out 
 the infirm, and laid them on couches and mattresses, in 
 order that at least the shadow of Peter passing might 
 overshadow some one of them. There ivas also coming 
 together the crowd from the towns around Jerusalem, 
 bearing infirm persons, and those vexed by unclean 
 spirits,' all of ivhom were being healed. 
 
 But the High Priest rising up, and all ivho ivere ivith 
 him, being the sect of the Saddiicees, were filled ivith 
 zeal, and laid their hands on the apostles, and put them 
 in custody in gaol. But an angel of the Lord, by night, 
 having opened the doors of the jyrison and led them out, 
 said: " Go, stand and speak in the Temple to the people 
 all the ivords of this life.'' And ivhen they heard that, they 
 entered at clay -break into the Temple and ivere teaching. 
 But the High Priest coming, and they who ivere with him, 
 called together the Sanhedrim and the whole eldership 
 
of the children of Israel, and sent to the prison-house to 
 have them brought. But the officers ivhen they came did 
 not find them in the prison. So on their return, they re- 
 ported, saying : " The prison-house ice found shut in all 
 security, and the guards standing at the doors, hut ivhen 
 we had opened ive found no one ivithin." And ivhen 
 the Captain of the Temple and the High Priests heard 
 these u'ords, they ivere at a loss concerning them, what 
 this should come to. But one came and reported to 
 them : " Behold, the ynen whom ye put in the prison are 
 standing in the Temple, and teaching the peoj^le.'' Then 
 went away the Captain w'ith the officers and brought 
 them, not tvith force, for they ivere afraid of the people, 
 lest they should have been stoned. And having brought 
 them, they set them in the Sanhedrim. And the High 
 Priest asked them, saying : 
 
 " We straitly enjoined upon you not to teach on this 
 Name, and behold ye have filled Jerusalem with your 
 teaching, and mean to bring down upon us the blood of 
 this Man!'' 
 
 Then Peter and the apostles answering said : 
 
 '* One must obey God rather than men. The God of 
 our fathers raised up Jesus, Whom ye murdered by hang- 
 ing upton a stake. This Man God exalted with His 
 right hand a Leader and Saviour, to give repentance to 
 Israel and remission of sins. And we are His tvit- 
 nesses of these matters — [ive] and also the Holy Spirit 
 Whom God gave to those xvho are obedient to Him.'' 
 
 Noiv ivhen they heard, they ivere cut through, and 
 were consulting to take them off. But there stood up a 
 certain Pharisee in the Sanhedrim, Gamaliel by name, 
 
a teacher of the Icnv honoured hy the whole x>eople, ivho 
 ordered to init the men outside for a little, and said to 
 them : 
 
 ''Men of Israel, take heed to yourselves in regard to 
 these men, ivhat action ye are about to take. For 
 before these days rose up Theudas, saying he himself 
 was somebody, to tvhom adhered a number of men, about 
 four hundred ; ivho ivas slain, and all as many as obeyed 
 him ivere. scattered, and came to nothing. After him 
 rose up Judas the Galilean, in the days of the census, 
 and dreiD people after him. He also perished, and all 
 as many as obeyed him ivere dispersed. And noiv I say 
 to you: Refrain from these men, and let them alone. 
 Because if this plan or this work be of men, it u'ill be 
 destroyed ; but if it is of God, ye tvill not be able to 
 destroy it, lest ye should be found fighters against God 
 also.'' 
 
 So they ivere persuaded by him; and having summoned 
 the apostles and scourged them, they charged them not 
 to sp)eak on the name of Jesus, and released them. 
 They therefore went rejoicing from the presence of the 
 Sanhedrim, because they had been deemed tvorthy to be 
 disgraced on account of the Name, and every day in 
 the Temple and at home they ceased not to teach and 
 preach Jesus as the Christ. 
 
X. 
 
 ST. LUKE lias given no data for fixing with certainty 
 the chronology of his narrative, during the first 
 ten chapters of it at least. If we could tell exactly the 
 date of Saul's conversion, we should know pretty nearly 
 when the Jerusalem Church was broken up by the 
 martyrdom of Stephen, or rather by the outburst of 
 persecution which followed it. This there are no materials 
 for doing. Still we can approximate more or less to 
 chronological correctness ; and we shall be tolerably 
 safe in saying that from Pentecost to Stephen's death 
 must have been a period of from five to eight years. A 
 less number indeed has been assigned by some ; but the 
 balance of authority and the results of the latest and 
 most reliable chronologists lean to the longer rather 
 than to the shorter period. It is, therefor^, a great mis- 
 take to suppose, as I fancy many people do, that the 
 events related in the first six chapters of the Acts were 
 all crowded into as many months. The growth of the 
 earliest Church was a much more gradual thing. Her 
 times of trial recorded in detail by her historian were 
 separated by considerable intervals of peaceful progress, 
 over which he passes more lightly. She was allowed 
 for year after year to consolidate her position and loosen 
 
188 FBOM JEBV SALEM TO ANTIOCB. 
 
 lierself from the Jewish state, before her membership 
 was scattered about Syria by the violent blast of a 
 general persecution. 
 
 When we glance over the incidents preserved to us 
 out of this period, such as the first arrest of Peter and 
 John, the death of Ananias, the second imprisonment 
 of the apostles, or the election of deacons, we find our- 
 selves unable to say in what part of these years any one 
 incident occurred, or how long an interval elapsed be- 
 tween any two of them. Those general descriptions of 
 the Church's state by which Luke separates the particu- 
 lar incidents ' are obviously meant to cover considerable 
 intervals of time ; but how long the interval may have 
 been in any case, we have no means of determining. At 
 the same time, I think there is an internal probability 
 that the interval of popular favour and wide increase 
 which succeeded the death of Ananias and Sapphira 
 must have been one of considerable duration. The 
 immediate results of that first dreadful act of discipline 
 had time to work themselves out. One natural effect 
 of it was to cut a sharj)er line of demarcation betwixt 
 the new converts and the body of their countrymen. To 
 the Chm'ch itself it taught the lesson of its own i^eculiar 
 sanctity as a divine society, inhabited by the Holy Ghost, 
 and ruled from heaven by its departed Founder. Now, 
 for the first time, it began to wear its characteristic 
 name of "Church," ecclesia, or select community; ^ and 
 now more than ever it had its meetings in a recognised 
 quarter of the Temple buildings. That portico on their 
 eastern side, in which Jesus had been wont to teach, 3 
 
 ' As at Acts ii. 42, seq., iv. 32, seq., v. 12, seq., v. 42, vi. 7. 
 2 See ver. 11. ^ John x. 23. 
 
A SECOND COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDBIM. 189 
 
 where Peter, too, liad addressed the crowd on the heahng 
 of the cripple, ' became at this time an accepted ren- 
 dezvous ^ for the twelve chiefs of the young spiritual 
 commonwealth which was so fast developing itself. On 
 the mind of the pubhc outside, the fate of two unworthy 
 members had im^Dressed a wholesome respect for the 
 new sect. It checked any disposition to make light of 
 the apostles or of their doctrine, and it cleared a free 
 space within which the Church could develop her peculiar 
 life, shielded by popular admiration from Sadducean 
 hostility. 
 
 One of the most noticeable things about this period 
 is the contrasted attitude of the common people on the 
 one hand, and of the influential classes on the other. 
 It is the experience of Jesus Himself repeated in the 
 experience of His cause. So long as the mass of plain 
 country people in Galilee and Judaea were favourable to 
 the Prophet of Nazareth, all the weapons of His enemies 
 among the learned and official classes fell harmless. 
 They feared to touch Him because of the people. 3 It 
 was not till the passions of the mob were for a moment 
 enlisted on the side of bigotry that His condemnation 
 (resolved on long before) could at last be carried out. 
 
 » Acts iii. 11. 2 ibia. V. 12. 
 
 ^ See specially such passages as Matt. xxi. 45, 46, xxvi. 4, 5 ; 
 Mark xi. 18, 32 ; Luke xiii. 17, xix. 47, 48, xx. 19, xxii. 2. Such 
 passL,ges are very strong. St. John rather represents the other side 
 of the situation — the popular fear for the displeasure of the ruling 
 party. See vii, 13, ix. 22, xi. 42. Yet the fourth Gospel also con- 
 tains incidental confirmations of the popular enthusiasm for Jesus 
 (e. g., vii. 47-49, xi, 48, 55-57, xii. 11, &c.), which make it probable 
 that the repeated failures of His enemies to arrest Him really arose 
 from His being in such favour with the mob. Cf. John v. 16, vii. 
 30, 44, viii. 20, 59, x. 39, xi. 53-57. 
 
190 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 So it fell out with the Church. The Sanhedrim had pro- 
 hibited x^reaching in the name of the Crucified ; yet so 
 overwhelmingly was public feeling in Jerusalem against 
 the Sanhedrim, that not only did the apostles every day 
 defy that prohibition within earshot of the council 
 chamber, but even when the authorities ventured to 
 arrest them, it had to be done " without violence, for they 
 feared the people lest they should have been stoned." 
 
 Various causes, no doubt, contributed to this popularity. 
 There is a charm to the common mind in the audacity 
 with which the apostles of any new creed must brave the 
 resistance of established authorities; and the creed which 
 was now proclaimed was one that always awoke an answer 
 in Hebrew breasts, for it was the advent of the Messiah. 
 Besides, the holy separation of the disciples, with their 
 mutual charity and unearthly enthusiasm, probably told 
 on the imagination of their countrymen. There can be 
 no doubt, however, what the chief source of attraction was. 
 It was the same as had for years been drawing multitudes 
 about the feet of Jesus Himself — miracles of healing. 
 The number of these mkacles wrought by the apostles in- 
 creased after the affair of Ananias, and St. Luke gives us 
 a lively picture of the eagerness with which the citizens 
 crowded for aid to these new wonder-workers, just as they 
 had lately crowded to that greater Wonder-worker Whom 
 they preached. For as, in the days of His flesh, men and 
 women pressed on one another to touch Jesus, reaching 
 eager fingers past their neighbours to clutch so much as 
 His robe's fringe ;^ so now, when His apostles made their 
 way on foot through the narrow streets of Jerusalem to 
 and from the Temple, householders hasted to carry to the 
 * Compare Mark v. 27, vi. 56. 
 
A SECOND COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDBIM. 191 
 
 door the bedridclen invalids of their homes, in the hope 
 that, as he loassed along the sunny street, Peter's tall 
 form might at least cast its shadow across their open 
 doorway; and if it fell for a moment on the wasted frame 
 over which love had bent and watched and prayed in vain , 
 their simple hearts leaped in them for joy. It may have 
 been a silly superstitions faith, at which we who know so 
 much can afford to smile ; but I do not find that God 
 mocks the hope of any simple soul that really trusts in 
 Him, because its faith clings too foolishly to external aids. 
 A little knowledge may puff us up to despise our ancestors 
 who knew no better than to seek their Saviour through 
 charms and relics, or to sneer at the contemporary devo- 
 tion of untaught and mistaught Christians ; but, thank 
 God ! He Who is the wisest is above despising any. This 
 enthusiasm created by miracles extended beyond the city 
 walls. It infected the villages which lay within easy 
 access of the capital. It drew a concourse of sufferers 
 from the country; and these all, as they returned cured to 
 their rural homes, must have helped to spread far and 
 near the better tidings which every day to all comers 
 the apostles preached. In that first medical mission, as 
 in every one which we plant to-day in order to utilise in 
 the service of the gospel those unmiraculous " gifts of 
 healing " which our Master has given to this generation, 
 the thing which is of all things most toucliing to be 
 noted is how sadly in earnest men are, and how pains- 
 taking, to have the ills of this brief and not too joyful life 
 relieved; while, as to the true ill of an impenitent and 
 unholy heart, which has not the love of God in it, they 
 have no mind to try that rare remedy which the Son of God 
 hath brought us in His holy gospel. Not that it was so 
 
192 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 with all. For the Jerusalem Church went on growing — 
 grew faster than before : at that prosperous time when God 
 had put a bit in the mouth of her enemies, even timid 
 women found courage openly to join her communion.^ 
 Yet not all who laid their sick in Peter's way received 
 Peter's Master ; else would the populace not have turned 
 by-and-by so suddenly upon Stephen, as they had before 
 turned on Jesus, to clamour for his blood. Christianity 
 counts it no conquest to draw a crowd, to win its vivas, to 
 be sued for temporal blessings or praised for granting 
 them. That only is true success which takes captive by 
 the cross the hearts of men, and binds them for ever in 
 unselfish loyalty to the kingdom of God. 
 
 To this friendly attitude of the common people there 
 stood contrasted, exactly as during Jesus' ministry, the 
 displeasure of the ofiicial and educated classes. Priests, 
 rabbis, Sanhedrists, all who had been active in procuring 
 the death of the Man Whom Peter affirmed to be alive, had 
 now the strongest motive for shutting Peter's mouth. To 
 be sure, those who were Pharisees had not that additional 
 ground of quarrel which the Sadducees found in their denial 
 of any possible resurrection. Somewhat later a number of 
 the rank and file even of the priesthood went over to the 
 new faith. ^ At this period, however, all the sacred and 
 ruhng orders appear to have been kept aloof from the 
 Church by a public opinion of their own, so strong that no 
 individual member of these orders had as yet the courage to 
 oppose it. " Of the rest durst no man join himself to " the 
 apostles. 3 Members of the priesthood and of the rabbinical 
 
 ' See ver. 14. ^ ^cts yI. 7. 
 
 3 Cf. ver. 13. Doubtful whether "the rest" refers to the general 
 public, or to that section of it only which stood contrasted with 
 •' the people. " 
 
A SECOND COLLISION WITH THE SANHEBBIM. 193 
 
 schools, who were also high in civil authority, must have 
 watched with special uneasiness the progress of the 
 Church. Not only was their official mandate set daily at 
 defiance by the apostolic preachers, but every day, too, 
 Jerusalem rang with words about the resurrection and 
 the messiahship of Jesus, which were a direct accusation 
 against those who had sentenced Him to an impostor's 
 death. It is clear that for a while nothing held the 
 magistrates back from fresh arrests except the appre- 
 hension of a popular rising. It is also clear that a point 
 was sure to come, sooner or later, at which this fear of 
 irritating the mob would be balanced by the rising dis- 
 pleasure with which the rulers heard themselves denounced 
 as the murderers of God's Christ. Caution must some 
 day yield to rage. Nay, there came to be a new danger 
 even in delay. The very populace whom they had 
 hounded on to cry out for Jesus' blood, might now be 
 provoked, under the excitement of Peter's oratory, to turn 
 and rend those who slew their Prophet. It would have 
 availed little in such a case to remind the infuriated 
 people that everything which had been done on that 
 Friday had been done with their own loud acclamations 
 of consent. Policy therefore concurred with irritation in 
 impelling the rulers to strike. So a day came at length 
 when the apostles — the whole of them apparently— were 
 suddenly arrested and lodged in gaol. This arrest, like 
 the former one,^ was made at the instance of leading 
 Sadducees, who supported that political party of which 
 the high priest was the head. Like the former one, too, 
 it took place late in the day, with a view to an early 
 examination next morning. But when the Sanhedrim 
 
 » Acts iv. 3. 
 14 
 
194 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 assembled for that purpose, and witli it apparently some 
 special convocation of other experienced and aged citizens,^ 
 it was discovered that the prisoners had been mysteriously 
 set free. The design of this miraculous rescue is not at 
 first sight a^Dparent. That Jesus ^ sent a messenger from 
 heaven to liberate His witnesses was certainly not due to 
 any intention to extricate them out of a difficulty, for it 
 did not postpone their trial even for a day. Its main 
 purpose could only be to encourage their confidence in the 
 gracious concern He felt for them, and in His power to 
 protect them if He chose. It matters comparatively little 
 through what straits or pain it pleases God to lead His 
 saints for the high ends of His cause or for tlieir own 
 discipline ; but it does matter a great deal that their 
 hearts shall not fail or sink within them under pain and 
 straits, that they lose their hold neither on the love nor 
 on the power of God. So on the eve of a very trying day, 
 their first day of actual physical suffering for' Jesus' sake, 
 the apostolic company was comforted by the words and 
 emboldened by the temporary aid of an angel, even as 
 Jesus Himself had been on the eve of His own great 
 passion. At the same time I cannot help thinking that 
 this strange rescue of prisoners was designed to carry its 
 lesson also to the Sanhedrim. I recall that very strange 
 incident at the arrest of our Lord in the garden, when, 
 before the silent meek majesty of the Man, Who a few 
 moments earlier had been prostrate in sorrow, the band 
 of Temple i)olice and Eoman soldiery "went backward 
 
 ^ This seems the most probable sense to be given to the very un- 
 usual word yEpovaUi, in verse 21. 
 
 '■^ That the divine messenger came from the Lord Jesus, is implied 
 in the words dyysXog 6e Kvpiov. 
 
A SECOND COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDRIM. 195 
 
 and fell to the ground."^ That was no vulgar attempt to 
 escax3e from apprehension. Their victim waited till they 
 recovered, and held out His wrists to be bound. Neither 
 was it, obtrusively, a miracle ; no prayer from His lips 
 called angels out of heaven to beat His assailants back. 
 It was a secret, silent hint only of a power above their 
 own, into the origin of which no man cared too curiously 
 to look. Very similar was the incident before us. That 
 it was an angel who had opened the prison the Sanhedrim 
 could not know unless they chose (and they did not choose) 
 to inquire. Yet there was enough of wonder about the 
 occmTence to suggest Whose hand had possibly undone 
 the bolts. This, too, was no vulgar rescue ; for the men 
 stood quietly in the Temple to be recaptured. Miraculous 
 aid was the first explanation which would occur to any 
 Jew of that day, whose mind was habituated to miracle, 
 and who knew that these men's Master had spent His 
 ministry in doing miracles, and that they themselves were 
 filling Jerusalem still with miracles done in their Master's 
 name. It follows that, had the authorities even now been 
 only tolerably open to spiritual warnings, this very midnight 
 dehverance, wrought for His servants by the Man Whom 
 they had slain, might have warned them back from the 
 fresh persecution which they were already plotting against 
 Jesus and His cause. 
 
 The defence offered by the apostles through Peter's lips 
 is in substance the same as he had made at the former 
 examination. There is the same assertion of a divine 
 necessity laid on them to preach, which overrode the 
 authority even of God's magistrates ; the same bold 
 ' John xviii. 6. 
 14* 
 
196 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 charge against the court of having compassed the Messiah's 
 death ; the same testimony to the fact of the resurrection ; 
 and the same preaching of the good news through the 
 exalted Christ under cover of an apology for preaching. 
 But an examination of the two speeches will show that, 
 while covering the same ground, a quite different tone 
 characterised this second one. It is less respectful and 
 less elaborate. The question put this time by the court 
 had been edged with personal fear and spite : ♦' Ye intend 
 to bring this Man's blood upon us ? " Caution, therefore, 
 and courteous reserve, would plainly be thrown away on 
 such judges. The strife has passed into a bitterer stage. 
 Peter spoke, not with less dignity or skill, yet with a more 
 unsheathed directness, such words as the Holy Ghost gave 
 liim to say. 
 
 The main historical interest of the scene, however, lies 
 in the speech of Gamaliel. This remarkable man is the 
 only member of the court who possesses importance in 
 the contemporary history of his country. The son of one 
 distinguished Hebrew doctor, and the grandson of a 
 greater, Gamaliel has personal claims on our attention 
 which outweigh those which are hereditary. In his own 
 day he stood at the head of that most eminent school of 
 rabbinical interpretation which his grandfather Hillel had 
 founded. Posterity reckoned him as the first of seven 
 doctors who were dignified by the title of " great." ^ As 
 the mediaeval scholastics were dignified with sobriquets 
 by their admirers, so was he surnamed in the Hebrew 
 schools "the Glory of the Law; " and after Christ won 
 from him his scholar Saul of Tarsus, he left no worthy 
 successor in the rabbinical colleges. The speech by which 
 ' Eabban or Eabboni = " Our Master," in the sense of excellence. 
 
A SECOND COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDRIM. 197 
 
 on this occasion he sought to moderate the blind fury of 
 his colleagues is his only appearance in sacred history, 
 and we shall fail to do him justice unless we consider how 
 the question had now shaped itself. Previously, when 
 Peter and John came up for examination on the cure of 
 the cripple, the point to be determined had been a theolo- - 
 gical one. It was this : *' Was the miracle due to divine 
 or to demoniac power?" Had the senators decided that 
 it was divine, they ought to have received the apostolic 
 teaching; had they decided that it was demoniac, they 
 ought to have put the apostles to death. But they decided 
 nothing. They shirked their proper duty as guardians of 
 the national religion, and contented themselves with an 
 idle order, which was no better than a police regulation, 
 that the apostles should not preach. Now, the charge on 
 this second examination did not bring up the original 
 question — the moot point about the miracles. It turned 
 simply on disobedience to the prohibition of public teach- 
 ing — a mere technical charge, affecting the authority of 
 the court, but nowise touching the real merits of the case. 
 It will be noticed, however, that at the moment when 
 Gamaliel interposed his advice, the majority of the court 
 were on the point of taking a step which would have 
 thoroughly foreclosed the larger question. Stung by 
 Peter's words into momentary forgetfulness of their owq 
 dignity, and of their position as a judicial body, they were 
 consulting how to have the apostles put to death. Kage 
 blinded them to the fact that they could have no pretext 
 for putting the accused to death, unless they found them 
 guilty of miracle-working through demoniac aid, whereas 
 the apostles had not been arraigned on this capital 
 charge, but merely on a charge of disobedience. It was of 
 
198 FBOM JERUSALEM TO'ANTIOCH. 
 
 course open to Gamaliel to point out, if he chose, that his 
 brethren were assuming a matter to be settled which was 
 not even before the court ; but what hope could he have 
 of saving life by thus recalling them to the graver ques- 
 tion ? Nothing had been easier than to put the men once 
 more on their trial then and there on the old issue — 
 *' By what power or by what name have ye done this ? " 
 and such a trial, in the heated temper of the assembly, 
 could have no end save one. To recall his colleagues to 
 this undecided point, by what spiritual help Peter wrought 
 his wonders, might have given a colour of legality to the 
 sentence of death, but would hardly have saved innocent 
 life. Gamahel therefore kept the matter away from the 
 dangerous region of theology altogether, and argued it on 
 the only ground on which it came technically before him, 
 the ground of public policy. For his immediate purpose, 
 his argument was extremely judicious. Had the old 
 Eabbi been, what later Christian tradition called him, a 
 secret ally of the apostles, he could not have i)led their 
 cause more skilfully. First he sent tlie prisoners from 
 the chamber, because the sight of them was inflaming his 
 passionate colleagues. Next he went calmly back upon 
 historical examples, as if to gain time and let their excite- 
 ment cool. He appeased them, too, by contemptuously 
 likening these new popular leaders to certain political 
 fanatics, whose brief career had come to a speedy and mis- 
 erable end. It was only at the close of his speech that he 
 found them sufficiently calm to be open to a superstitious 
 fear lest they might after all be fighting against God. All 
 this is very clever, and deserved to succeed. Still, there is 
 no doubt that a blunder lay at the bottom of his reasoning. 
 He took for granted that the divine or human origin of 
 
A SECOND COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDRIM. 199 
 
 the new sect (for lie says nothing of demons) could not be 
 decided as yet ; that no data were accessible by which the "^ 
 Sanhedrim could come to a judgment on this head ; and 
 that the source of the movement was to be tested only by 
 one test of slow apx^lication — success or failure. If it 
 broke down, as other risings under false Messiahs were 
 ever and anon breaking down in that troubled and fana- 
 tical period, then it too would be proved to be a mere 
 u]3heaval of popular discontent. If, which he seemed to 
 think not unlikely, it succeeded in dislodging the Eomans 
 and establishing a messianic kingdom, then it would have ;^ 
 established its claim by the best of evidence — by succeed- 
 ing. Clearly this is the logic of a shrewd politician, not 
 of a religious teacher. It might be quite right to turn for 
 the instant the torrent of fanatical zeal in his heady 
 colleagues by such cool and wary counsel as practical 
 statesmen would comprehend ; but it was quite wrong for 
 Gamaliel, as a great Eabbi and chief guide of God's 
 people, to judge the pretensions of the new gospel by 
 no higher touchstone than the vulgar device of letting 
 it alone. Nothing in the text shows how far he acted 
 throughout on the principles of his speech. Only the 
 fact that he lived to see his best scholar demonstrate 
 the new faith, even by his own and the world's argument 
 — success — and yet died in the faith of Judaism, dictating 
 with failing lips a prayer against the Nazarene, suggests 
 the apprehension that he grew narrower as he grew 
 older, and never honestly did his duty by an impartial 
 inquiry into the claims of Christianity. I question 
 if many of us are entitled to fling a stone at the 
 devout old Jew. Experience is always showing how 
 hard it is for men who have grown grey in traditional 
 
200 FBOM JEBU SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 ideas to welcome new light ; and Gamaliel, the master, 
 may well have lived and died in the faith of Moses, even 
 though Saul, the scholar, became an apostle of the faith 
 of Jesus. 
 
 Be this as it may, Gamaliel's speech saved the lives of 
 the apostles from Sadducean violence. That their lives 
 could be so easily saved, and that a leading Pharisee could 
 be found to do it, shows how very little any one antici- 
 pated the fierce conflict which was so soon to be waged 
 betwixt the Church and Pharisaism. It remains to be 
 seen how, under the influence of a new leader, those 
 elements of spiritual freedom and catliolicity were de- 
 <v veloped, which as yet only slumbered in the bosom of the 
 society represented by Peter ; and how, so soon as they 
 were developed, they called forth from the very school 
 of Gamaliel a bitterness of hostility which nothing but 
 blood could quench. As yet neither Stephen nor Saul 
 had entered into history. 
 
 There was no inconsistency in scourging men whom it 
 was resolved not to kill. Contumacious resistance to the 
 authority of the court had laid the apostles open to a 
 punishment which was commonly inflicted for minor 
 offences. These nine and thirty stripes, however, mark a 
 fresh point of departure in the history of Christianity. 
 For the first time, pain and public penalties are borne, as 
 Jesus foretold they should be, for Jesus' sake. The first 
 martyrdom has not come yet, but the first persecution 
 has, and the Church's baptism of blood begins. That 
 the chiefs of the new faith — those divine witnesses who 
 were divinely witnessed to by such glorious signs of favour 
 from God — should be openly stripped and flogged by the 
 
A SECOND COLLISION WITH THE SANHEDRIM. 201 
 
 common executioner, was a serious blow. Tlien appeared 
 beneath the lash the novel strength of that power which 
 had begun to work among men. Christianity has no 
 monopoly of martyrs. Besides Judaism, the faiths of 
 Mahommed and of Buddlia have had their witnesses unto 
 death. But to rejoice in suffering for one's faith, as in a 
 crown of honour, was a new thing on the earth. Its ex- 
 planation lay here, that these men bled not for an ab- 
 stract truth, but for the love of a Man Whom they knew 
 to be the very God in flesh. . For the beloved Friend Who 
 for them had been, a few weeks before, stripped and 
 scourged before He died, showing how low the love of 
 God could lead God to stoop for men — for His sake to 
 give the back to the smiter and so be brought nearer in 
 likeness to Himself, and offer Him back blood for blood 
 and blow for blow, this was not only, as Horace sang of 
 patriot deaths, " a sweet thing and a seemly "^ — it was (as 
 Peter wrote long after) a thing " thankworthy," a blessing 
 for which Christian men might glorify God with great re- 
 joicing. ^ To be borne up and inspired to meet shame and 
 j)ain in such a spirit as this, was a more wonderful 
 thing than to have one's prison bolts withdi-awn by the 
 hand of an angel. This spiritual glorying in tribulations, 
 of which apostles set the example, has never died out of 
 Christ's Church. An army of martyrs has gone to death 
 since then, not only with the natural gallantry of brave 
 men, but with the strange unearthly joy of one who goes 
 to greei a Iieavenly spouse. If we would not be unworthy 
 followers of those who carry palms in heaven, we must 
 seek to be so possessed with the love of our most blessed 
 
 ^ " Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." 
 ^See 1 Pet. ii. 19-21, iii. 14-18, iv. 12-16. 
 
202 FEOM JEBTJ SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 God and Saviour, and with the spirit of His passion, that 
 when shame comes on iis for His sake, or loss, or evil 
 names, we too shall rejoice that we are counted worthy to 
 fill up that which remains of the sufferings of Christ for 
 His body's sake. 
 
XI. 
 
 THESE JEWS ABE ALREADY GOTTEN INTO ALL THE CITIES, AND 
 IT IS HARD TO FIND A PLACE IN THE HABITABLE EARTH THAT 
 HATH NOT ADMITTED THIS TRIBE OF MEN AND IS NOT POSSESSED 
 BY THEM.—Strabo, quoted by Josephus. 
 
 MOSES OF OLD TIME HATH IN EVERY CITY THEM THAT PREACH 
 HIM, BEING READ IN THE SYNAGOGUES EVERY SABBATH-DAY. 
 
Acts vi. 1-6 
 
Eevised Yeksion. 
 
 But in those clays, when the disciples hecame numerous, 
 there arose a murmuring of the Hellenists against the 
 Hehreivs, because their ividoivs were being overlooked 
 in the daily ministration. So the Twelve, having sum- 
 moned the midtitude of the disciples, said : 
 
 *' It does not please us that ive should abandon the 
 Word of God to minister at tables. Look out there- 
 fore, brethren, seven men of you, well spoken of, fidl 
 of the Spirit and of ivisdom, tvhom ive shall appoint 
 over this business. We on the other hand ivill apply 
 ourselves constantly to prayer, and to the ministry of the 
 Word:' 
 
 And the luord pleased the ivhole multitude, and they 
 elected Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy 
 Spirit, and Philip, and Prochoros, and Nicanor, and 
 Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaos a proselyte of 
 Antioch, ivhom they set before the apostles ; and having 
 vrayed, they put on them their hands. 
 
XI. 
 
 FEOM the first the Church of Jerusalem had held 
 within its hosom two opposed tendencies. So long 
 as its numbers were not too large, and its original en- 
 thusiasm had not yet spent itself, this underlying division 
 created no difficulty. A moment, however, was at length 
 reached, fruitful in results for the after history of Chris- 
 tianity, when the jealousy of Hellenist and Hebrew began 
 to give promise of that deep schism which was by-and- 
 by to cause prolonged and anxious strife, and to end 
 only through the withering up of one of the divisions 
 of Christendom altogether. Here also that saying came 
 true — " The elder shall serve the younger." Hebraic 
 Christianity has long since disappeared ; Hellenic Chris- 
 tianity has overshadowed the earth. 
 
 It is quite needful for the understanding, I do not say 
 of this first incident only, but of the whole subsequent 
 history, that we should pause at this point to ascertain 
 what this distinction betwixt Hellenist and pure Hebrew 
 meant, and how it came about. Its origin goes back to_ 
 the time of the Captivity. Down till the day when Ne- 
 buchadnezzar's general burnt Jerusalem and swept off 
 the flower of Judah into slavery, the Jews had dwelt as 
 far as possible alone, a peo^Dle of husbandmen, clinging 
 every man to his ancestral plot of sacred soil, fearing 
 
208 FBOM JEBV SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 and shunning Gentile contact. The Captivity changed rU 
 that. A small colony of Jews was deported into Egypt, 
 a larger one to Babylonia : thence they spread through 
 Persia, through Media, in fact, through all the huge 
 empire, stretching from India to the ^Egean, which owned 
 the sceptre of Xerxes. The numbers who returned to the 
 Holy Land under Zeruhbabel, and again under Ezra, 
 fell very far short of the total number then to be found 
 scattered over the East ; and although a connection as 
 close as possible was kept up betwixt the Jews in Judaea 
 and the Jews of the Dispersion,^ yet it was impossible 
 but that contact for centuries with pagan nations should 
 greatly modify the old Hebrew customs and modes of 
 thought. Especially was this the case after the conquests 
 of Alexander the Great, and during the wars of his 
 successors, when Palestine itself became a battle-field to 
 the kings of the north and south,^ of Syria and of Egypt. 
 It was the settled policy of Alexander, as well as the 
 natural effect of his rapid victories, to break down the 
 barriers of race, and, by facilitating peaceful interchange 
 between nations, and making the Greek tongue the 
 universal medium of intercourse, to fuse East and West 
 into one world. It resulted that the characteristic feature 
 of several centuries before Christ was a general flux and 
 confluence of peoples which before had been sternly kept 
 asunder. No race of the East felt this outgoing, colonising 
 movement, more than the Jews. Already their ancient 
 tie to their own land had been seriously weakened. A 
 new spirit of commercial and industrial enterprise now 
 
 ' Or, of the Diaspora, by which accepted designation they are 
 named in the inscription of St. Peter's first Epistle. See 1 Pet. i. 1 : 
 tKXeKToig TrapiTTiSriiJioic Siacnropag. 
 
 2 So called in Daniel's prophecy, chap. xi. 
 
HELLENIST AND HEBBEW. 209 
 
 awoke witlim them as a new world opened to their 
 wandering feet. Large colonies of them settled not only 
 in Alexandria itself, that typical city, which the great 
 conqueror created to embody the new ideas which he had 
 impressed upon history ; but in Antioch, and all along 
 the coasts of Asia Minor, in the Greek cities, in the 
 Mediterranean Islands, and in North Africa. They went 
 wherever openings for trade were to be found. The an- 
 cestral faculty for acquiring wealth which their Palestine 
 life had crushed, developed itself. The restless activity 
 proper to a homeless and landless nationality fitted them 
 for a period when men were more cosmopolitan than they 
 have ever been before or since. 
 
 Some of the effects of all this close and active inter- 
 course with the great Grseco- Gentile world upon a race 
 so exclusive and peculiar as the Hebrew were very re- 
 markable. Home Jews who continued to live in Pales- 
 tine recoiled from defihng contact with foreigners, sharp- 
 ened all the lines of national demarcation, grew prouder, 
 bitterer, and more narrow, as well as more rigid, in their 
 religion : hardened, in short, into Pharisaism by way of 
 needful reaction, or under an instinct of self-preservation. 
 Those Jews, on the contrary, who lived abroad, took on a 
 strong tinge of Greek culture. Very early they abandoned 
 the use of their Semitic mother tongue, and spoke Greek. 
 The Alexandrian translation of the Old Testament 
 became their Bible. They began to give their children 
 Greek names. Many of them studied Greek literature. 
 In Alexandria especially, a school arose which strove to 
 bring their own sacred books into affinity with Greek 
 speculation. Above all, the spirit of secular gain broke 
 down among them that feeling of separatism, or, rather, 
 
 15 
 
210 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 that sense of divine consecration to a holier work than 
 God had given to profane Gentiles, which had been the 
 very kernel of ancient Judaism. So powerful were all 
 these influences together that nothing save their deep 
 rehgious antagonism to polytheistic idolatry, an antagon- 
 ism now fairly burned into their nature by the long cap- 
 tivity and the Maccabaean wars, could have saved them 
 from being submerged in the stream. That they held 
 fast by. Strict monotheists in face of whole pantheons 
 of gods, spiritual worshippers where all other worship 
 was material, sensuous, and idolatrous, the dispersed 
 Jews gained far more proselytes than they lost. It is 
 very noticeable indeed how the exigencies of their dis- 
 persion, in so far as these modified their religion at all, 
 modified it for the better. Cut off from the Temple ritual 
 on Mount Zion, they carried with them neither priest 
 nor sacrifice ; they carried only the Septuagint and the 
 synagogue. The local, temporary, external parts of Mo- 
 saism, its cumbrous dress of liturgy and washings and 
 victims, had to be left behind. What they retained was 
 just what was portable ; and that which was most portable 
 was that which was most spiritual. Wherever they 
 went, they built them a synagogue. They met to pray, 
 they read the law, they sang the psalms ; and by this 
 simple unsacerdotal worship they really were both pre- 
 pared themselves and helped to prepare the Greek world 
 for the preaching of a more spiritual faith. 
 
 When at last Christianity arose and ventured forth into 
 heathendom, it found everywhere in the synagogues its 
 first base of operations. We see it groping its earliest 
 way thi'ough Asia Minor and Europe simply by laying 
 hold on synagogue after synagogue. From the scanty 
 
HELLENIST AND HEBBEW. 211 
 
 records which remain, it is impossible for us fully to 
 estimate how far Hellenised Judaism served to prepare 
 susceptible minds even among the native Greeks to re- 
 ceive a faith still more spiritual than itself. But this 
 much is certain, that it was among Hellenised Jews that 
 Christianity found its first and its best missionaries to 
 the Greek and Koman world. They formed the true link 
 betwixt the ancient Hebrew cradle into which Christianity 
 was born, and this western European world where its ^ 
 manhood was to grow to strength. Men who were Jews 
 by birth, and Greek by training ; thorough Hebrews in ^ 
 their monotheism and their hope of the Christ, but with 
 less Hebrew bigotry or traditionalism than their Palestine 
 countrymen ; men who added to the intensity of religious 
 fervour and moral gravity which the law had given them, 
 a width of human sympathy due to intercourse with the 
 Hellenic race : such men as Stephen was, and Paul ulti- 
 mately became ; men like Barnabas, Apollos, Timothy ; — ^ 
 these were the men to whom we chiefly owe it, under 
 God, that the Church of Jesus grew out of all risk of 
 continuing a Judaean sect, and became the religion of 
 civiHsed mankind. 
 
 From the very day of Pentecost, the Jerusalem congrega- 
 tion had embraced a number of these Hellenists or foreign- 
 trained Jews,^ though we have no means of knowing what 
 proportion they bore to those born in Palestine, called by 
 Luke '' Hebrews." It is certain that their influence must 
 have been out of proportion to their numbers. They were ^^ 
 men of higher average intelligence and energy than the 
 
 ' Cf. the li?t given in recording the gift of tongues, Acts ii. 9-11. 
 " Hellenists " is rendered " Grecians " in vi. 1 (A. V.). 
 
 15* 
 
212 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH, 
 
 villagers of Judaea or the small traders of the capital, and 
 were not likely to acquiesce silently in any neglect which, 
 from being in a minority, they might suffer at the hands 
 of the home -born. Whether they had just ground to 
 complain that the poor widows belonging to their section 
 of the Church received less than their share in the daily 
 distribution of money and rations, or only fancied that 
 they had, is of no moment. In either case, the complaint 
 was a mere symptom on the surface of far deeper elements 
 of incongruity and severance. There was always a ten- 
 dency on the part of Palestine Jews to pride themselves 
 on retaining the purest type of orthodoxy, and to suspect, 
 as well as dislike, their countrymen who had taken on 
 Gentile manners. On the other hand, it came very na- 
 turally to the foreign Jew to look down on stay-at-home 
 "^nd old-fashioned Hebrews as narrow or bigoted as well as 
 ignorant. A grave danger threatened the young Church 
 if her members imported into her communion such mutual 
 jealousies as these ; and that slight *' murmuring " about 
 the widows' rations meant nothing less. The apostles 
 took alarm. So far as one can see, the murmurs of the 
 Hellenists reflected on the apostles, and on no one else. 
 As yet the society appears to have possessed no other 
 officers. Christ's Church was not launched fully equipped, 
 with all her machinery complete, as Moses, at God's bid- 
 ding, launched the Hebrew polity. The Chm-ch is a body 
 in spiritual communion with an invisible Head. It is 
 that in the first instance, and, at first, it was no more 
 than that. Just as contact with the world and the forces 
 of secular society compelled it into more material relation- 
 ships, did its wants grow more complex. It was called 
 upon ere long to provide for the affairs of an external and 
 
HELLENIST AND HEBBEW, 213 
 
 visible corporation. But for each emergency as it arises 
 it has it in its power to provide. Its Lord left no cut and 
 dry system of officialism, of ceremonial, or of government. 
 He did not profess to legislate beforehand for the details 
 of a kingdom which was meant to be as wide as mankind 
 and as enduring as history. For this the deepest reason 
 is that He has not truly left His kingdom. He is still in 
 it, at the head of it. He rules it at each new turn in its 
 affairs through a Spirit of wisdom Whom He inspires into 
 it. The shifting forms, therefore, of self-manifestation 
 and self-rule, through which the Church passes in succes- 
 sive ages, are none of them meant to bind it for the 
 future, or to he on it with the weight of a tradition ; but 
 are good only so long as the need for them shall last. As 
 often as new needs call for new arrangements to meet 
 them, so often is Christ prepared to lead His servants 
 into fresh ways of expressing the old gospel, or of living 
 out His own undecaying life, or of accomplishing their 
 unchanging task of saving men's souls. The Church 
 Catholic is above her own traditions, since the Lord Jesus 
 is not to be bound even by His own past. The Church 
 has an inherent autonomy, a right and power of self- 
 government, which nothing can take from her; no, not 
 one generation even of her own members from the one 
 which succeeds it. But when I say this, I do not mean 
 the Church as divorced from her Head, but the Church as 
 one with her Head : a Church over which the Head, 
 Christ, retains His true, practical, and unhindered sway, 
 by the gift of the Holy Ghost within the hearts of beUevers. 
 It may indeed be hard to hold fast such an ideal of 
 Church life as this when one recalls the past course of ec- 
 clesiastical history, yet it seems to me to lie clearly in the 
 
214 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 sacred text. Hitherto the Twelve whom Jesus named His 
 witnesses had been the only officers of the young society. 
 They personally, or such substitutes as they employed, 
 had hitherto served out the daily supplies which the 
 charity of the rich provided abundantly for the poor. 
 Now the work had grown beyond their power of personal 
 supervision, and when one side of the Church grumbled 
 that the distribution was unfair, some new arrangement 
 was clearly called for. Even the apostles were no auto- 
 crats in Christ's house. They assumed no power to 
 institute offices at their pleasure. If the Church was 
 governed by an oligarchy of Twelve, it was an oligarchy 
 which rested on a democratic basis. The '* crowd of the 
 disciples," ^ or body of faithful men constituting the 
 Church, is that in which supreme legislative power was 
 felt to reside. What the apostles did was at first to sug- 
 gest, initiating measures ; and at last, to confirm appoint- 
 ments, consecrating officers. But the adoption of the 
 measure, the establishment of the office, and the election 
 of the office-bearers, were all the work of "the whole 
 multitude." It pleased them to have deacons, and they 
 chose seven, and they set them before the apostles for 
 ordination. I do not for a moment suppose that, in 
 creating a new office to meet a difficulty, the Church at 
 Jerusalem thought it was acting out vital principles of 
 Chm'ch polity, or setting an example which should be 
 authoritative for all time. I do not suppose it thought 
 about principles of polity at all. It simply obeyed the 
 instinct of social Christian hfe. It followed what it felt, 
 and truly felt, to be the Spurit of its Master ; and in doing 
 
 ' To TrXriOog ToJv naOrjTwv in ver. 2. Cf. 'evojiriov navTog tov rrXtjOovg 
 in ver. 5. 
 
HELLENIST AND HEBBEW. 215 
 
 tliis it became an unconscious exponent of primitive 
 Churcli principles. It showed, all the better that it did 
 not mean to show anything, how unfettered the new 
 kingdom of Christ is by external regulations, how full 
 of self-regulating power, how unhierarchical, how free ; 
 how unlike great modern Church estabhshments ; how 
 like a large family of brothers administering their own 
 affairs, by subdividing among themselves the work to be 
 done. The mode in which this election of the seven was 
 gone about did virtually embody, as essential to perfect 
 Church life, such principles as these :— The right of the 
 Church to transact under Christ its own business ; the 
 ministerial, not lordly character of even its highest offices ; 
 the subordination of all material interests to its spiritual 
 work ; and the ultimate seat of Church authority in the 
 whole body of believers. In carrying out these principles, 
 it is true, no Church can long retain arrangements so 
 simple as those of the first Church. This very narra- 
 tive tells how the first Church itself began to devise a 
 more complex machinery. Still, any Church system 
 whose arrangements flatly contravene these principles, 
 must be held to have departed by so much from primitive 
 order. 
 
 Another thing which the act of that day did, and was 
 recognised even at the time as doing, was to begin the 
 severance betwixt the spiritual and temporal work of the 
 Church. It had become impossible any longer to com- 
 bine the serving of tables with the ministry of the Word. 
 That the work might be well done, a division of labour 
 was called for, and the apostles could not hesitate which 
 side of their double office they should abandon. To bear 
 \dtness to the saving work of Jesus Christ is not a 
 
216 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 secondary or accidental function of the visible associa- 
 tion we call the Church. It is its very end, its raison 
 cVetre, its one task, to which all else is a mere acces- 
 sory. For that it exists, and to that all other things 
 must minister, if they can ; or, if they cannot minister, 
 they must be sacrificed to it. "While the supreme dignity 
 and weightiness of its spiritual functions were thus fully 
 recognised, the early Church declined, on the other hand, 
 to treat even its secular work as wholly unspiritual. It 
 deserves to be remarked how carefully the new office and 
 its duties were lifted up out of the atmosphere of mere 
 business into that of worship. The particular duty in 
 question is the least secular of all secular transactions — 
 the disbursement of alms in the name of Jesus. The men 
 eligible to office are to be full of the Holy Ghost as well 
 as of wisdom. They are set apart to their work with equally 
 solemn religious services and symbolical acts of consecra- 
 tion as if their work had nothing to do with serving tables. 
 The only two among the seven of whom we know any- 
 thing are known for the zeal, success, and saintly enthu- 
 siasm with which they preached Christ, added to His 
 Church, refuted gainsay ers, and witnessed unto death. 
 Stephen and Philip were each of them a good deal more 
 than a treasurer or an almoner. I think it probable, 
 indeed, that so long as this office stood alone, it sus- 
 tained a more evangelistic and pastoral character than 
 afterwards came to belong to the order of Deacons^ which 
 grew out of it. "We do not know when or on what 
 occasion the more spiritual order ^ of presbyter - bishoj) 
 arose, which we find existing from the eleventh chapter of 
 
 * The word Siukovoq is not used in Acts as an official name. It only 
 occurs in Phil, and 1 Tim. (and of Phoebe in Kom. xvi. 1). 
 
HELLENIST AND HEBBEW, 217 
 
 St. Luke's liistory onwards,^ and which takes precedence 
 of the diaconate in St. Paul's first letter to Timothy. It 
 is at least possible that the institution of such a purely 
 spiritual class restricted somewhat and defined the func- 
 tions of the diaconate. Yet the earliest instinct of the 
 Church was a perfectly just one, that no office in the 
 kingdom of God can be discharged as it ought to be, no 
 matter how exclusively external or secular it may appear, 
 unless it be discharged by a spiritual man and in a 
 spiritual way. All the servants of the Church must be 
 first servants of her Master, " men of honest report, full 
 of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 With the ordination of these seven men a new page 
 of early Church history opened. It marked a stage in 
 the Church's progress towards separate existence. This 
 is clearly no mere fresh sect of Hebrews which the 
 apostles are founding, since it rounds itself off as a self- 
 governed body, and begins to swing clear of both Temple 
 and Synagogue. It was also the first step towards perma- 
 nence. The apostles cannot live for ever ; but if the new 
 society has the power, under Christ, of founding new 
 orders of office-bearers fit to share in the ordinary labours 
 of the apostolate, then it carries within itself the con- 
 ditions of self-preservation, self- adaptation to changed 
 times, and perpetual progress. More important than all, 
 this election brought a new element to the front. Every 
 one of the seven bears a Greek name ; and though this is 
 not a conclusive proof that they were all Hellenised or 
 foreign Jews, since even within Palestine it had become 
 an affectation with some to adopt Greek alternative names, 
 yet the presumption is that most of them belonged to that 
 
 ' It is first named in Acts xi. 30. 
 
218 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH, ' 
 
 section of the Churcli whose complaints had led to the 
 election. At all events, one of them was not even a Jew 
 by birth at all, but a Gentile who had adopted the Hebrew 
 faith ; while the man whose name stands first, and whose 
 martyrdom was to crown the young diaconate with its 
 earhest honours, appears, from his connection with syna- 
 gogues of Hellenists, to have been certainly a Hellenist. 
 The result, therefore, was this, that through the murmurs 
 of a few widow women, those members of the Jerusalem 
 Church were lifted into office who represented its most 
 free, most spiritual, most un - Hebrew and catholic 
 elements. One man especially was, by this incident, 
 thrust forward into public life who was destined to rouse 
 the narrow and ultra-national party of the Pharisees to 
 persecution, as Peter had already roused the Sadducees, 
 and whose death was to be a signal for the scattering of 
 the whole Church over Syria. It was even to lead more 
 remotely to the conversion of another man who should 
 one day fetch into the apostolic college itself and vindicate 
 as an inheritance for Christendom that larger and more 
 spiritual view of Christianity of which Stephen was the 
 first exponent. 
 
 The ministry and trial of Stephen will presently unfold 
 more fully this change in the state of the Church — a 
 change which nearly amounted to a revolution. Already, 
 however, we can see how it was through the natural 
 development of events, under Christ's providence, that all 
 this was brought about. The Lord, Who, from His seat 
 of oversight in heaven charges Himself with the conduct 
 of His cause on earth, saw that the Jerusalem Church 
 was ripe for change. It had been shielded from violence 
 till it was now strong enough to bear it. Piepresented as 
 
HELLENIST AND HEBBEW. 219 
 
 it was by native-born men like Peter, strongly attached to 
 the Temple and the Law, nothing had yet been done to 
 alienate from it Pharisees like Gamaliel, or to offend 
 popular prejudice ; while any irresolute blows which the 
 sceptical Sadducees dared aim at the new sect only in- 
 creased its popularity. So long as the Church wanted 
 shelter and time for quiet growth, these were the best 
 conditions for it. Now, however, it had grown large and 
 vigorous. Increase of numbers even threatened its purity. 
 Subtle elements of discontent and worldliness were creep- 
 ing in. A little more favour with the mob might corrupt 
 it. A little closer approximation to the narrower side of 
 Hebrew orthodoxy might shrivel it up into a local and 
 national sect. The time had therefore come for it to enter 
 on a new career, to understand itself better, to develop 
 its essential antagonism to ultra- Judaism, to make proof 
 unto blood of its own spiritual force, to be scattered as a 
 bearer of the free gospel of divine grace to Samaria, to 
 Cffisarea, to Damascus, to Antioch. No miracle from 
 heaven accomplished this needful change in the Church's 
 attitude and destiny. No supernatural revelation alone 
 led the apostles into the new path. In the spiritual 
 kingdom, events are determined in accordance with 
 natural law, and men are led mainly by the thread of 
 circumstance.^ The voices of poor women comparing 
 their own dole with that of their neighbours is the first 
 link in a chain of events of which one later link is the 
 martyrdom of Stephen, another the call of Saul, and a 
 third the conversion of the Gentiles. St. Peter and his 
 
 ^ Later it needed both circumstance and supernatural visions to 
 persuade St. Peter to accept frankly the new cathohc basis of the 
 kingdom. See the history of Cornelius. 
 
220 FBOM JEBTJ SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 fellows saw a very little way ahead when they advised the 
 appointment of official almoners, but One above St. Peter 
 saw a long way indeed. From this collision of Hellenist 
 with Hebrew He meant to strike a spark which should set 
 the civilised world on fire. 
 
 The story, surely, speaks a rebuke to our shortsighted 
 alarms, to whom the small dissensions and apparent 
 disasters of the hour appear so serious. We see the di- 
 vided congregation ; we hear its murmuring voices ; we 
 try our little remedy, not knowing if Stei^hen and his 
 fellows will allay the mischief ; we even bury our mar- 
 tyrs with tears of despair, and lose all heart when the 
 Church is rent and blown to the winds. One thing we 
 forget to see : even Him Who sits now above the clouds 
 which darken men's horizon, searches the far future with a 
 serene eye which sees the end, and lays His mighty hand 
 on human hearts, and secular powers, and spiritual helps, 
 on politics, and science, and speculation, and all the com- 
 plex factors of history, that He may bend the fortunes 
 of His Church towards some *' far - off divine event." 
 Shut up within our little world, creatures of our own 
 age, to us affairs look like confusion. They are tangled 
 fragments of thread in a web God is weaving. Let us 
 have faith and be quiet. Let us trust Him and be hope- 
 ful. Let us do, by His help, our little part, seeking to 
 put straight whatever crooked thing lies before our face, 
 not too timid to trust the Spirit of wisdom Whom Christ 
 gives us. We, too, are Christ's members. We, too, 
 touch our Head at first hand. The long centuries which 
 lie between us and Stephen do not lie between us and 
 Jesus. If we lack wisdom, let us ask ; and whatever He 
 puts into our heart and head to do for the better ruling of 
 
HELLENIST AND HEBBEW. 221 
 
 His house or the greater honour of His gospel, that let us 
 do with a frank courage which looks to spiritual results 
 and is not shackled by the past. Above all, let us beware 
 of dreaming that we and our age are the Church of Christ. 
 The Church has a long life. The generations are its 
 years. It is no hot-bed plant ; but has to take many a 
 buffet from the winds of heaven, to outlive scorching 
 summers, to bear fruit for far - severed centuries. Its 
 roots go deeper than we fancy. Its boughs shall yet 
 spread wider than we know. Only let us, who are as 
 tiniest twigs on its latest outshoot, and know next to 
 nothing of the mighty tree we hang on, make sure that 
 we are livingly attached to Him Who is our stem and 
 root. By leaf, or flower, or fruit, each of us may display 
 a httle of His sacred beauty, and help to make this world 
 a trifle pleasanter or wholesomer to the few who know us. 
 
XII. 
 
 Ci^e ||r0t0-P;arfgi'. 
 
 NOMEN HABES CORONATI ; 
 TE TORMENTA BEGET PATI 
 PRO CORONA GLORIA. 
 
Acts vi. 7-viii. 1. 
 
Eevised Veesion. 
 
 And the ivorcl of God increased; and the number of 
 the disciples in Jerusalem went on multiplying greatly, 
 and a great crowd of the priests became obedient to the 
 faith. Stephen, too, full of grace and power, ivas 
 doing great tvonders and signs among the people. But 
 there stood up some of those of the synagogue called 
 that of Freedmen, and of Cyrenians, and of Alexan- 
 drians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, disputing 
 - ivith Stephen, and were not able to ivithstand the wis- 
 dom and the Spirit with ivhich he spoke. Then they 
 suborned men to say : " We have heard him speaking 
 blasphemous matters against Moses and God,''' and 
 stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, 
 and having come upon him, seized him, and led [him] 
 to the Sanhedrim, and set up false witnesses to say: 
 
 ** This man does not cease speaking matters against 
 the holy place and the laiv. Forive have heard him say: 
 * This Jesus the Nazare^ie ivill destroy this place and 
 ivill change the customs which Moses delivered to us.' " 
 
 And, gazing upon him, all ivho were sitting in the 
 Sanhedrim saiv his face as the face of an angel. But 
 the high priest said: "Are [then] these things soT* 
 And he said : 
 
 16 
 
" Men, hrethren, and fathers, JiearTcen. The God of the Glory 
 apxjeared to our father Abraham ivhen heiuasinMesoi^otamia, 
 before he dwelt in Haran, and said to him : ' Go out from thy 
 land and [from] thy kindred, and come to the land ivhich 
 I will show thee ! ' Then, going out from the land of the 
 Chaldeans, he dwelt in Haran ; and thence after the death of 
 his father He removed him to this land in which you now 
 dwell, and did not give him an inheritance in it, not a foofs 
 breadth, and promised to give it to him for a possession, 
 and to his seed with him, when he had no child. But God 
 spake thus : That his seed should be a stranger in a foreign 
 land, and they should enslave it and ill-treat it four hundred 
 years. ' And the nation to which they shall be enslaved will 
 I judge,' said God, * and after that they shall come out and 
 serve Me in this _pZace.' Ayid He gave him a covenant of cir- 
 cumcision ; and thus he begat Isaac, and circumcised him on 
 the eighth day, and Isaac Jacob, and Jacob the twelve patri- 
 archs. And the patriarchs, envious at Joseph, sold him into 
 Egypt ; and God was with him and delivered him out of all his 
 troubles, and gave him grace and wisdom before Pharaoh, king 
 of Egypt, and he appointed him governor over Egypt and his 
 whole house. But there came a dearth upon the whole of Egypt 
 and Canaan, and a great trouble, and our fathers were not 
 finding fodder. But Jacob, havitig heard there was grain in 
 Egypt, sent out our fathers first ; and at the second time Joseph 
 was made [again] known to his brothers, and Joseph's race 
 became manifest to Pharaoh. But Joseph sent and called for 
 his father Jacob and the whole kindred, in all seventy -five souls. 
 And Jacob went down [to Egypt] and died, he and our fathers, 
 and tvere carried over to Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre 
 which Abraham bought for a sum of money from the sons 
 of Hamor of Sychem. 
 
 ^^ But as the time of the promise which God sivore to Abra- 
 ham drew near, the people increased and was multiplied in 
 Egypt, until there arose a different king ivho did not knoiu 
 Joseph. The same being crafty against our race, ill-treated 
 the fathers, so that they exposed their infants that they might 
 not be preserved alive. In which time was born Moses, and 
 was fair to God, who was nourished up three months in the 
 house of his father. But wheyi he was exposed, Pharaoh'' s 
 daughter took him up and nourished him up as a son for 
 
herself. A^id Moses ivas educated in every hrancJi of wisdom 
 of the Egyptians^ and ivas powerful in his ivords and deeds. 
 But luhen he had completed a period of forty years, it arose 
 in his heart to inspect his brethren the children of Israel. 
 And seeing a certain one wronged, he defended and tooTc 
 vengeance for him who was being oppressed, smiting the 
 Egyptian. But he supposed his brethren to understand that 
 God by his hand would give them salvation ; but they did not 
 understand. The following day also he appeared to them as 
 they fought, and ivas reconciling them to peace, saying : 'Men, 
 ye are brethren ; why is it that ye ivrong one another ? ' But 
 he who ivronged his neighbour thrust him aiuay, saying : 
 * Who set thee up a ruler and judge over us ? Dost thou wish 
 to hill me in the way thou didst Ttill the Egyptian yesterday P 
 But Moses fled at this luord, and became a stranger in the land 
 of Midian, where he begat two sons. 
 
 " And when forty years were completed there appeared to 
 him, in the ivilderness of the Mount Sinai, an angel in the fiery 
 flame of a bush; and Moses, when he saw, wondered at the 
 sight. But, on his drawing near to examine, came the Lord's 
 voice : ' I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, 
 and Isaac, and Jacob.' But Moses, beginning to tremble^ 
 durst not examine. And the Lord said to him : * Loose the 
 sandal from thy feet, for the place on which thou standest is 
 holy ground. I have surely seen the ill-treatment of My 
 people which is in Egypt, and their groaning I heard, and ano 
 come doicn to deliver them. And now, come, let Me send thee 
 to Egypt.'' This Moses whom they refused, saying : ' Who set 
 thee up a ruler and judge ? ' the same has God sent [to be] both 
 ruler and redeemer, ivith the hand of the angel ivho appeared 
 to him in the bush. This man led them out, doing wonders 
 and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Bed Sea, and in 
 the ivilderness forty years. This is the Moses ivho said to 
 the children of Israel : 'A propihet will God raise up to you 
 of your brethren, like me.' This is he who was in the church 
 in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him in the 
 Mount Sinai, and [with^ our fathers, who received living 
 sayings to give to us, to whom our fathers were not willing 
 to become obedient, but thrust \}iirn\ aivay and returned in 
 their hearts to Egypt, saying to Aaron : * Make for us gods 
 who shall mai'ch before us ; for this Moses luho led us out 
 
 16^' 
 
from the Icmd of Egypt, we do not hiow ivliat is become of 
 him.' And they made a steer in those days, and brought a 
 sacrifice to the idol, and delighted themselves in the worTcs 
 of their hands. But God turned and gave them up to serve 
 the host of heaven, as it is written in the BooJc of the Prophets : 
 * Did ye offer to Me victims and sacrifices forty years m the 
 wilderness, house of Israel ? Yea, ye carried about the 
 tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Bephan, the 
 figures which ye made to worship them; and I will carry 
 you off beyond Babylon.' Our fathers had the Tabernacle 
 of the Testimony in the wilderness, according as He Who 
 spohe to Moses directed to maJce it after the figure which he 
 had seen; tvhich also our fathers, having talien it over, carried 
 ill with Joshua in their possession of the nations whom God 
 drove out from the face of our fathers, until the days of 
 David, who found grace before God, and requested to find 
 a tent for the God of Jacob. But Solomon built for Him an 
 house. Only not in what is made with hands does the Highest 
 dwell, as the prophet says : ' The heaven is a throne for Mcy 
 and the earth a footstool for My feet. What sort of house 
 will ye build for Me, saith the Lord, or what is the pilace of 
 My rest ? Did not My hand maTce all these ? ' 
 
 " stiff-necJi'ed and uncircumcised in the heart and the ears, 
 ye do continually rush against the Holy Spirit: as your 
 fathers, so you ! Which of the projJiets did your fathers not 
 persecute ? And they slew those who announced beforehand 
 the coming of the Righteous One, of Whom now you are 
 become betrayers and murderers ; you who received the Law 
 at \the'\ arrangements of angels, and did not keep it.'' 
 
 But ivhen they heard these things, theytvere cut through 
 in their hearts, and gnashed their teeth at him. But, 
 being full of the Holy Ghost, he gazed into heaven, and 
 saiv God's glory and Jesus standing on the right hand 
 of God, and said: " Lo, I behold the heavens opened, 
 and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." 
 But they, crying ivith a loud voice, stopped their ears 
 and rushed ivith one accord upon him, and having cast 
 
him out of the city, proceeded to stone him. And the 
 zvitnesses laid down their rohes at the feet of a yotmg 
 man called Said. And they icere stoning Stephen, in- 
 voking and saying: ^^ Lord Jesus, receive my sinritJ'^ 
 Then falling on his knees, he cried with a loud voice : 
 ''Lord, lay not this sin upon themr cind sayiyig this he 
 fell asleep. 
 
 But Saul ivas a consenting party to his execution. 
 
XII. 
 
 A MONG the four hundred and eighty synagogues 
 -^^ which, according to the Eabbis, existed in Jeru- 
 salem before its fall, there were some frequented exclu- - 
 sively by foreign Jews of the Dispersion. Families 
 which had removed from the same distant region of 
 heathendom, to settle for purposes of devotion in the 
 holy city, clustered together for daily prayer in the same 
 congregation ; exactly as, to this day in Jerusalem, 
 Polish and German Jews only are found in some syna- 
 gogues, Jews of Spanish origin in others.^ The language 
 of St. Luke leaves it doubtful whether all the Hellenistic 
 settlers named by him belonged to one synagogue or 
 to several. They fall naturally, however, into three 
 divisions. First, the Libertines {Lihertini) or Freed-men 
 from Eome. Some ninety years had now passed since 
 the Syrian campaigns of Pompey carried off a multitude 
 of Jewish captives to Eome ; ^ and their descendants, 
 most of them manumitted by their masters, had either 
 settled in the Trastevere 3 or been banished from Italy. 
 
 * Spanish Jews (called Sephardim) have dwelt in Jerusalem since 
 1497, and have now four synagogues, German and Polish Jews are 
 called Askenazim. See Porter, Handbook, i. 83. 
 
 2 Jerusalem was taken by Pompey, b.c. 63. Cf. Prideaux, Connec- 
 tion, vol. iv. p. 514 (ed. 1807). 
 
 ^ The southern portion of that part of Eome which lies on the 
 right bank of the Tiber is so called, and was a poor and populous 
 suburb in the days of the early Empire. It is still inhabited chiefly 
 by the working classes. 
 
232 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 It is possible that many of the four thousand whom 
 Tiberius is known to have deported to Sardinia in the 
 year a.d. 19,^ had by this time found their way back to 
 their own land. Next come Jews from the north of Africa, 
 from Alexandria, that is, and from the city Gyrene, which 
 stood where Tripoli now stands. Gyrene was then the 
 capital of a province (Libya) which had under one of the 
 Ptolemies been added to Egypt, and since then had 
 swarmed with Jewish immigrants. Lastly, Asiatic Jews 
 are mentioned ; two provinces of Asia Minor being 
 named, the one known in Eoman official language as 
 "Asia," and always so called in the New Testament; 
 the other Gilicia, from whose capital came the young 
 Pharisee whose name was Saul. 
 
 With these various representatives of Hellenised Juda- 
 ism, the Church now came for the first time into conflict. 
 The elevation of Stephen, along with others, to official 
 rank, had this for one of its results, that the spiritual and 
 intellectual gifts with which God had gifted this man 
 found at once a wider and more public sphere. His 
 duties as almoner brought him into daily contact with 
 poor believers of his own section of the Ghurch, and 
 through them with then- neighbours who did not believe. 
 These opportunities he used for the preaching of the 
 gospel. Stephen was a great deal more than an almoner. 
 He was a deep student of the Old Testament, a theo- 
 logian of unusual insight, a powerful reasoner, and an 
 advanced Christian. In him first we find those gifts of 
 healing, which Jesus had given to the apostles, ^ exercised 
 by a man who was no apostle. In him, too, we find that 
 
 ' See Tacitus, Ann. ii. 85, and Josephus, Antiq. xviii. 3. 5. 
 
 2 And to the Seventy, Luke x. 9, 17. See, in this connection, Matt. 
 X. 1, 8 ; Mark iii. 15, vi. 7 ; Luke ix. 1. 
 
THE PBOTO-MABTYB. 233 
 
 promise fulfilled which had hitherto heen fulfilled to 
 Peter, ^ the promise of such wisdom in speech as no 
 adversary could gainsay. His manner of speech, how- 
 ever, was unlike that of Peter. Peter was a witness, 
 and preached by witness-bearing. Stephen was a student, 
 and preached by exposition and controversy. These 
 synagogues of foreign Jews, to which no doubt he him- 
 self belonged, were homes of learning and of bigotry. In 
 them men of keen wits, sharpened by Greek culture, 
 applied the methods of traditional interpretation to 
 the sacred books. Pedantic as much of that Hebrew 
 scholasticism was, and given up already to allegorical 
 conceits or, ingenious trifling, it bred fiery passions. 
 Schools in which youths like Saul were " profiting in 
 the Jews' religion," being "exceedingly jealous of the 
 traditions of their fathers, "^ could scarcely fail to become 
 nurseries of a passionate fanaticism. Intense enough, 
 and terribly sincere, were the disputants whom Stephen 
 thus encountered, but proud, narrow, self-righteous, and 
 bitter ; just the men to argue themselves into bad temper, 
 and, when beaten in logic, to fall to abuse. 
 
 One is ready to wish that we knew more of these con- 
 troversies in the Hellenistic synagogues. We are left to 
 gather their subject from their result. From the angry 
 charge brought against Stephen, from the evidence of 
 the suborned witnesses, and from his own defence, we 
 must infer as best we can the character of his doctrine. 
 The great question under discussion was plainly this — 
 What is the bearing of the new faith of Jesus on the 
 old system of Moses ? In his very earliest sermons, 
 Peter had hinted that the advent of Jesus, His passion, 
 
 ' Cf. Luke xxi. 15 : c. Acts iv. 14. 2 q^i. i, 14. 
 
234 FEOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 and His resurrection, formed the consummation towards 
 which Mosaism had from the beginning pointed — were, in 
 fact, the accomplishment of that great hope which all the 
 prophets had foretold, and for which Israel waited. The 
 whole of the apostolic preaching up to this time had 
 gained a favourable hearing, just because the new faith 
 did not profess to be more or less than the completion 
 of the old. It came, in its Founder's words, '' not to 
 destroy, but to fulfil." Orthodox Jewish citizens did not 
 cease to be either Jews or orthodox when they received 
 baptism into the name of Jesus Christ. Up to this time 
 the question seems never to have been raised — What if 
 the Jewish hierarchy and commonwealth reject God's new 
 revelation through His Son the Christ ? Is then the new 
 faith so tied to the old framework of holy places and holy 
 rites that it cannot live without them ? By this time, 
 however, it was getting to be not at all unlikely that the 
 Sanhedrim might excommunicate the Church, might 
 banish it as a heresy from its quarters within the temj)le 
 courts, and forbid its presence at the sacrifices. Suppose 
 it did, was that to be conclusive against the Church ? 
 Must that be of necessity a false revelation which the 
 majority of the Jewish people called false ? Was Mosaism 
 to last for ever ? Was no glory of the divine Presence 
 possible, nor any worship acceptable, save within the 
 temple and before the altar ? Must every new economy 
 of grace be fettered by the limitations of the old ? Or 
 was God perchance leading His people towards a wider 
 and more spiritual dispensation ? Nay, did not the 
 very coming of Him to Whom the whole symbohc ritual 
 pointed, require the abolition of symbolic ritual, and 
 initiate of necessity a new worship ? 
 
THE PBOTO-MABTYB. 235 
 
 How far Stephen went in this direction, what questions 
 in this line his polemic led him to put, or what to answer, 
 it is impossible now to tell. But it is clear that it was in 
 this direction his face was set. He was the first man who 
 dared to think that the gospel of Jesus was a divine step 
 forward, a new economy of God, which the existing He- 
 braic institutions might indeed refuse to accept, but which 
 in that case would not only dispense with, but in the end 
 overturn, the Hebraic institutions. In the hot discussions 
 which in those days went on within the Hellenistic syna- 
 gogues, he probably went a good way in apparent depre- 
 ciation of the Mosaic system. He certainly appears to 
 have regarded it as a system which, if not yet superseded, 
 was at least liable to change. To be sure, those were 
 ** false witnesses" who represented him as blaspheming 
 Moses and the law ; and his words which they professed 
 to report, about Jesus destroying the temple and altering 
 the ritual, were probably twisted to a sense quite as inac- 
 curate as the similar words quoted against Jesus Himself 
 when He was on His trial.^ Still, something like this 
 Stephen must have said, nor is it hard to guess in what 
 sense he said it. The whole of Mosaic worship on its 
 external national side was anchored to that sacred rock on 
 which the temple stood. There was nowhere else any 
 altar, any priesthood, any expiation, any shrine, any holy 
 of holies, any symbolic ritual. Moreover, the current 
 faith of the people, which found in Pharisaic rabbinism its 
 scientific form, believed in all this external system of 
 temple worship, and believed in little else. That was its 
 palladium, its idol. So long as that stood, God was pro- 
 pitious and Israel blest ; no matter how full the temple 
 » Cf. Matt. xxvi. 61 ; c. John ii. 19. 
 
236 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 miglit be of cheating, or Jerusalem of uncleanness. To 
 the painful observance of ritual, the average Jew ascribed 
 a magical virtue which made righteousness or the fear of 
 God practically superfluous. When told to '^ amend their 
 ways," they still, as in Jeremiah's time, trusted in lying 
 words, saying, with idle insistency, *' The temple of Jeho- 
 vah, the temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah are 
 these. "^ This was the system which threatened to reject 
 the gospel of the Son of God. As it had aheady slain 
 Christ, it seemed about to cut off from its fellowship 
 Christ's Church. Its hierarchical council of rulers, its 
 sacerdotal order, its colleges of learned men, its red-hot 
 zealots, its popular masses ; all seemed, so far as Stephen 
 could read the indications, to be fast making up their 
 mind against the new Saviour Whom God had in these 
 last days sent to His chosen people. What did that 
 prognosticate ? The downfall of Christ's cause, or the 
 downfall of the temple system ? Stephen had read the 
 history of his nation with other eyes than those of the 
 rabbis. Underneath all the changes of Hebrew story, he 
 had learned to trace a divine progress, a slow but blessed 
 unfolding of the gracious thoughts of God towards some 
 still unaccomphshed spiritual end. He had not found in 
 this latest phase of national religious life, that of the 
 temple and its services, such a finality as his countrymen 
 dreamed of. The most material, local, symbolical, and 
 unspiritual of all forms which Hebrew worship had ever 
 worn, did not seem to him the form most likely to be 
 everlasting. But one thing he had found to mark the 
 whole of his long ancestral history. As often as it had 
 
 ' See Isa. vii. 2-15, and cf. the charge against him in xxvi. 11, 12, 
 referred to by Baumgarten, in loc. 
 
THE PBOTO-MABTYB. 237 
 
 pleased God, through chosen messengers of His will, to 
 lead Israel forward through a new moment of change into 
 a fresh spiritual epoch of blessing, so often had God's 
 thoughts been misunderstood, His purpose hindered, and 
 His messenger rejected, by the bulk of Israel. This had 
 been their national failing — to cling to the present and the 
 material, whenever God was calling them to higher spiritual 
 good. This they had done so often, that their doing it now, 
 by rejecting a spiritual Christ and idolising a material 
 temple, was only of a piece with their entire history. 
 
 Here, then, we seem to have the key to Stephen's long 
 speech in self-defence before the council. Arraigned at 
 last on a charge of blasphemy by the discomfited contro- 
 versialists, and set before hostile judges in presence of a 
 crowd of foes, Stephen discovered his profound insight 
 into Scripture, and the rare adroitness of his intellect, by 
 constructing an " apology" under the veil of an historical 
 resume. Not till he had patiently traversed the whole 
 period from Abraham to Solomon, selecting such facts as 
 made for his own case and setting them in skilful array, 
 did he suffer one word to escape him at which even his 
 most adverse hearer could take open exception. Then, 
 when he had insinuated out of their own boasted annals 
 the true answer to all their charges against himself, then 
 only did he permit himself to draw from the same story 
 a scathing invective against them, and used the last mo- 
 ment allowed for speech in charging home upon their 
 consciences their own guilt. 
 
 Into a detailed exposition of this very remarkable ora- 
 tion, it does not belong to our present iDlan to enter. 
 It is notable for the freedom with which the facts and 
 
238 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 words of the Old Testament are handled ; ^ for its coin- 
 cidence with contemporary Jewish literature on points 
 where Holy Writ fails us ; ^ for its parallels in thought 
 and expression to the writings of St. Paul, and especially, 
 or still more, to the Epistle to the Hebrews; 3 but most 
 notable of all, as the JBrst attempt in the New Testament 
 to read the outstanding lessons of the Old. I pass over 
 the many minute and casual touches by which the speaker 
 made it obvious that he was no blasphemer, but a vene- 
 rator of the fathers of his nation, of the law of Moses, 
 and of the temple of God.4 These will suggest them- 
 selves on a careful perusal. I can only indicate the main 
 ideas which seem to be kept in view all along, and by 
 which his treatment of the Old Testament narrative 
 appears to be determined. These are two. 
 
 First, that a mode of worship limited to a single spot 
 and fixed ritual was by no means essential to God's ser- 
 vice, but had been late in its origin and temporary in its 
 purpose — being only one most recent stage in a very long 
 and gradual process of divine manifestation ; second, 
 that at every critical turning time in Israel's history, 
 Israel had mistaken the leadings of God, and resisted 
 those whom He sent to save it. 
 
 ' See Dean Stanley's art. "Stephen" in Smith's Dictionary, for 
 twelve deviations in speech from the Old Testament. In at least 
 three instances the facts themselves cannot, with fairness, be squared 
 with the scriptural statements. I cannot see, however, how the in- 
 spiration of the canonical books is at all implicated in the question 
 whether or not Stephen erred in details through ignorance or inad- 
 vertence. ^ E.g., cf. V. 22 with Josephus and Philo. 
 
 ^For these parallels, cf. Wordsworth in loc, and Conybeare and 
 Howson, i. p. 87. 
 
 * Cf, especially, verses 2, 17, 38, 44, 46, &c., and his frequent use 
 of the expression, " our fathers." 
 
THE FBOTO-MABTYB. 239 
 
 In the historical development of these ideas, Stephen 
 fastens on three chief e]3ochs, which he connects with 
 the names of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses. Under the 
 first he is able to conciliate the nation's pride in its 
 Abrahamic origin, by noting the call, the promise, and 
 the covenant by which " the God of glory " so signally 
 distinguished His Mesopotamian "friend," and elected 
 him to be the father of all believers. At the same time, 
 Stephen quietly hints how far Abraham's privileges were^ 
 from being tied to any spot of sacred soil. His call 
 found him first in Mesopotamia. Again it found him in 
 Haran. He got no inheritance in the Land of Promise. 
 Nay, his seed were to be slaves to the foreigner for four 
 centuries before they could set up so much as an altar 
 on holy ground. This leads on to the life of Joseph, 
 who, though chosen by God to be the saviour both of his 
 own people and of a foreign land, was despised, refused, 
 and sold into bondage by his very brethren. Joseph is 
 Stephen's first instance of Israelitish misconception of 
 God's meaning, and rejection of God's chosen one. His 
 next is Moses. But as the name of that great legislator 
 was associated with the law of ceremony and ritual 
 which Stephen was charged with blaspheming, it was 
 worth while to handle his history more in detail. Here, 
 therefore, lay the main weight of his defence. Some 
 five and twenty verses are devoted to showing how the 
 Israel of Moses' own day misunderstood and refused 
 him, first as champion, then as liberator, and finally as 
 prophet; just as their posterity were now refusing and 
 misreading that One, like unto, but greater than, Moses, 
 Whom he foretold. 
 
 From the outset, God designed Moses to avenge, deliver, 
 
240 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 and judge His people. Yet when lie first stood forth 
 as their protector, in virtue of his position in the royal 
 house of Egypt, '-they understood not" that ''God by 
 his hand would deliver them," but " thrust him away." 
 Forty years after, indeed, he returned to them with a mes- 
 sage from God, and succeeded in setting them free. Then, 
 however, God meant him to be something more than a 
 deliverer. He was God's proj)het. To him God gave 
 *' lively oracles " for the peoj)le. He was in " the church 
 in the wilderness with the Angel " Whose presence made 
 the desert bush and the mount Sinai " holy ground." 
 Yet even then the people once more thrust him away, 
 refused his law, and went back in their hearts to the 
 idolatries of Egypt. So rebellious were they to this 
 boasted law, on its first promulgation, that God, in anger, 
 gave them up to a continual series of apostacies, which 
 were only avenged at last by the crowning disaster of 
 their captivity in Babylon. 
 
 Here he might have ended ; but the second item in the 
 charge against him ' leads Stephen to add a sentence on 
 the exaggerated value which his opponents set on the 
 local seat of worship. Was it blasphemy to speak of 
 divine service anywhere but in the temple ? There was 
 no temple in Moses" day, only a movable tent of witness. 
 There was none in David's day, much as he desu-ed it. 
 When Solomon, at last, did build a temple, it was only 
 as an "house" to harbour the ancient ark, and in the 
 very moment of its consecration the spirituality of its 
 great Indweller and of His worship were solemnly re- 
 
 * He liad spoken " blasphemous words against Moses . . . and the 
 law." He " ceased not to speak " also "against this Holy Place" 
 (chap. vi. 11, 13). 
 
THE PBOTO-MARTYR. 241 
 
 affirmed. For Solomon himself, like later prophets after 
 him, exclaimed, " The heaven of heavens cannot contain 
 Thee ! How much less this house which I have built." ^ 
 
 Thus, by a very skilful use of facts selected out of the 
 national history, this man, on whom rested so much of 
 that Unction Which teacheth all things, this early 
 ''wrestler" for a spiritual gospel, as Adam de S. Victor 
 calls him, 2 replied, without seeming to reply, to the 
 charges of his enemies. He evinced true reverence for 
 Moses' law, by acknowledging its divine origin and 
 binding force. He paid honour to Solomon's temple- 
 house, without treating it with such superstitious worship 
 as idolatrous Israel paid to " the tabernacle of Moloch, or 
 the star of their god Kephan." He vindicated the free 
 spiritual elements which had always existed in Hebrew 
 religion against the hard and dry Pharisaism which 
 boasted in the law, but did not keep it, and trusted in the 
 stones of the temple more than in the Most High "Whose 
 hand made heaven and earth. He set forth the pro- 
 gressive and gradual character of divine revelation, 
 and made it fully probable that, as the outward frame- 
 work of Judaism had been slowly built up to serve 
 special ends, so, on the advent of a nobler and wider faith, 
 of a Prophet greater than Moses, it might be taken 
 down again. 
 
 But Stephen did far more than stand on the defensive. 
 His speech is a polemic quite as much as an apology. 
 More than either, it is an indictment. Not he is the 
 blasphemer of God's revelation, or of God's messengers, 
 
 ' 2 Chron. vi. 18. 
 '^ *' Agonista, nulli cede, 
 Certa certus de mercede 
 Persevera, Stephane." (See Baszler, p. 220.) 
 17 
 
242 FBOM JEBV SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 but they are. He charges it on his nation that, from the 
 first, they have been blind to God's signs and deaf to His 
 words ; that each step in spiritual progress has been taken 
 in spite of them ; that as the patriarchs treated Joseph, 
 and the Hebrews treated Moses, so it was their way to 
 refuse fresh light and kill new prophets. As he develops 
 this accusation in the later history of Moses in particular, 
 his words grow keener and take a sharper edge, and his 
 allusion to the recent fate of Jesus of Nazareth shines 
 clearly through the veil of narrative. After he has closed 
 his historical sketch, or been interrupted in it,^ he abruptly 
 breaks out upon his unwilling audience with some home- 
 thrusting words, which stick like arrows and scorch like 
 flame. The prisoner, who began in self-defence^ ends by 
 hurling at his judges the most audacious charges. They 
 were stiff of neck. They were uncircumcised heathens at 
 heart. They resisted God's Holy Spirit, like their fathers. 
 They had betrayed God's Eighteous One ; they had mur- 
 dered Him. They possessed the law, but this was how 
 they had kept it. So far they heard. At this point a 
 howl of execration from mouths which clashed with rage 
 drowned the voice of the accuser. Stephen paused ; his 
 face changed again ; the tumult died. Men recalled the 
 look which he had worn before his speech began. "When 
 they first set him in presence of the council, they gazed 
 upon a face so radiant with spiritual confidence, courage, 
 and gladness, that, like the face of Moses of old, it seemed 
 to shine with an unworldly light. Very unlike such an- ' 
 gelic serenity and sweetness are these words which have 
 just been flying like shafts of fire from his impetuous 
 
 • It may be either, but I rather incline to think he has finished all 
 that he designed to say on the history of his people. 
 
THE PBOTO-MABTYB. 243 
 
 tongue.^ Only when the heat of passionate indignation 
 and the severity of deserved rebuke are the heat and 
 severity of a noble unselfish soul kindled with zeal for 
 Go'd, or inflamed beyond itself through the breath of the 
 Holy Ghost, are they like that wrathful fiery face which 
 looked out from the midnight cloud to throw Pharaoh's 
 host into confusion, but left the sweet light of heaven 
 shining from within the cloud upon the trustful eyes of 
 Israel. Stephen's heart abode still in the light of God. 
 From the instant he heard that cry which told him the 
 end was come, he ceased from rebukes which wrought no 
 penitence, but only rage. He fell back from men whom he 
 could not save upon the Master for Whom he still could 
 speak. He raised his eyes from those bitter faces pressed 
 back upon stiff necks, and shooting anger through their 
 eyes ; he raised them to the invisible, which opened itself 
 to his soul's sight. To the strong gaze of faith, that which 
 was in heaven became as real as earthly things to sense. 
 The glory of God bathed him with its light, and a familiar 
 Form, which in its mortality he had known below, was 
 recognised amid the unapproachable splendour of the 
 celestial throne. The old radiance stole back again upon 
 his countenance, when, 
 
 " — looking upward, full of grace, 
 He prayed, and from a happy place 
 God's glory smote him on the face."^ 
 
 Angry voices ceased, and angry eyes grew awed to see the 
 silent rapture of worship with which he stood and bent 
 his upturned shining countenance on what they could 
 not see. At last he spoke — spoke amid the hush words 
 
 1 Cf. Psa. Ixiv. 3 ; Jer. ix. 3. 
 
 2 " The Two Voices," see Tennyson, Poe??is, p. 299. (The lines refei 
 in the original to a moment a little later.) 
 
 17* 
 
244 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 which broke the spell : " Behold, I see the heavens 
 opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand 
 of God." That hated name let loose the tide of rage 
 which awe had for a moment frozen, and with illegal 
 tumult, councillors and bystanders, turned through sheer 
 passion into a mob, swept him from the chamber with a 
 rush and hurried him for execution beyond the northern 
 city gate. 
 
 This first martyrdom of a Christian, Hke the death of 
 Christ Himself, was a mixture of legal forms with po- 
 pular violence. The people now, and not the Sanhedrim 
 alone, were bitter against the new faith. They had come 
 to understand its spiritual nature, and their fanaticism 
 saved the Sanhedrim from a difficulty. It might have 
 been too serious a stretch of jurisdiction to sentence and 
 execute a blas^Dhemer without reference to the Eoman 
 Procurator. It was easy to plead their inability to hinder 
 a mob from taking the law into its own hands. At the 
 same time, the execution was as legal as such an execu- 
 tion could be. The place, the mode of death, the first 
 stone thrown by the witnesses, were all in exact accord- 
 ance with ancient precedent and express Mosaic statute.^ 
 By such formahties they sought to represent their bloody 
 work as a solemn vengeance of national law upon a blas- 
 phemer of Jehovah. One at least in the crowd (and I 
 doubt not far more than one) thought he was doing God 
 service* by consenting to the martyr's death. I take it 
 for a kindness to the Church and her future apostle, that 
 the young man from Tarsus had no direct hand in stoning 
 
 ' See Lev. xxiv. 13-16 ; Deut. xiii. 6-11, xvii. 2-7. 
 ^ Cf. John xvi. 2 ; c. Acts xxvi. 9. 
 
THE PBOTO-MABTYB. 245 
 
 his great predecessor. It was enough to bear his full 
 share in the day's guilt, " standing by," and <' keeping the 
 raiment of them that slew him ;" a sin that to be remem- 
 bered and deplored to his old age,^ without his hand being 
 actually upon him to shed his blood. Touching, however, 
 as was Saul's presence there that day, and full of mean- 
 ing for his future life, all other interests pale before the 
 Christ-likeness of the martyred saint himself. To see for 
 the first time what has so many times been seen since 
 then, how one who trusts and loves Jesus can walk 
 along His own royal road of pain, and carry with a like 
 meekness His cross behind him ; to mark the divine 
 spirit of charity in which Jesus died descend on a frail 
 and evil man who calls Him Lord ; to hear the divinest 
 words of the dying King echoed by the lips of His fol- 
 lower ; to realise that transfiguration of death in its most 
 horrid shapes into a gate of life,^ which it is the praise 
 of Christ to have wrought for His saints ; to watch how 
 the peace of God which Jesus gives can lay a man to the 
 easy and serene repose of his last sleep, though his bed 
 of death be hard as stones, his body bruised, and his ears 
 filled with the din of curse and jibe : — this makes to all 
 Christian ages the iDreciousness of the martyr's death. 
 Many a soul, weaker than this hero of Christ, has proved 
 a brave soldier in the long and " noble army of martyrs " 
 which has followed Stephen's steps and won Stephen's 
 crown. But of all the Church's blessed palm-bearers, 
 
 1 1 Tim. i. 12-16. 
 
 - " Tibi fiet mors natalis; 
 
 Tibi pcena terminalis 
 
 Dat vitae primordia." 
 
 Adam de S. Victor, ut supra. [St. Stephen's Day is next after 
 
 Christmas, 26th Dec.l 
 
246 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 not one lias quitted himself with a diviner meekness, or 
 rendered back to Jesus' hands his ransomed spirit with a 
 sweeter forgiveness of enemies, or a more assured expec- 
 tation of glory, than he whose honour it was to lead the 
 host, and set to Christ's confessors an example of dying. 
 It was Jesus Who, from the cross as from a pulpit (as 
 Augustine writes^), taught to Stephen the law of devout 
 living ; and it was Jesus, too. Who, when His scholar had 
 well learned that rule and fully practised it, rose from 
 His throne to crown him. Before us we too have the 
 same Unchanged One to gaze at, nor can the long proces- 
 sion of succeeding saints hide Him from our eyes. He 
 Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, hath 
 set open unto us also the gates of everlasting hfe. From 
 beside the throne of God He beckons unto us as He 
 beckoned Stephen. Stephen, by His grace, followed and 
 entered in, but entering did not break the bridge (to 
 quote Augustine again =), nor shut the gate behind him. 
 Martyrs we may not be unto blood ; but witnesses, and 
 sufferers, too, for Christ we all must be. In our lives, if 
 not in our deaths, we surely need great Stephen's stead- 
 fast courage, and his clear-eyed faith, and his heaven- 
 piercing hope, and his godlike charity. After such life, 
 death shall be sweet as a falling on sleep, and beyond it 
 is the crown laid up, and the conqueror's palm, and the 
 welcoming Lord. 
 
 * " Sedebat in cathedra crucis Christus et docebat Stephanum re- 
 gulam pietatis." (Augustine, quoted by "Wordsworth, in loc.) 
 ^ On this passage, cf. the rest of Augustine's sermon, ut supra. 
 
xm. 
 
 ©tmott 5Kagu8, toeld^ict uBcrl^au^jt lux^ tie Slnfc^aumig ter erfleit Sal^r'^untertc 
 ium JRcprafentanten unb 35orgdngcr atlec ^aretif^icit (Rid^itungcn bet fpaUren Scit 
 geftcmvcU ju njertcn vflegtc. Neander. 
 
Acts viii. 1-24. 
 
Eevised Veesion. 
 
 Noiv there took place on that day a great persecution 
 against the Church ivhich ivas in Jerusalem, and all 
 were dispersed about the districts of Judcsa and Samaria, 
 except the apostles. Yet devout men carried Stephen 
 [to hurial] , and made a great lamentation over him. 
 But Said was ravaging the Church, going in from house 
 to house, [and] dragging both men and ivomen, he com- 
 mitted them to prison. 
 
 Those then ivho ivere dispersed went about preaching 
 the Word. And Philip, coming down to a city of Sa- 
 maria, ivas proclaiming to them the Christ, and the 
 croivds gave heed to the things ivhich were said by Philip, 
 ivith one accord, ivhen they heard and saw the signs 
 which he was doing. For [as to] many of those who 
 had unclean spirits, shouting with a loud voice, they 
 ivent out, and many paralytics and cripples were healed. 
 And there ivas much joy in that city. But a certain 
 man, Simon by name, ivas already in the city, using 
 magic arts, and amazing the people of Samaria, saying 
 that he himself was some great one ; to whom they all 
 gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying : *' This 
 man is the poiver of God which is called great.'* But 
 they gave heed to him on account of their having been 
 amazed for a considerable time ivith the magical arts. 
 
But when they believed Philip preaching about the 
 kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they 
 ivere baptized, both men and women. And Simon him- 
 self also believed, and having been baptized was con- 
 tinuing with Philip, and beholding the signs and great 
 deeds of power which took place, was amazed. 
 
 Now, the apostles in Jerusalem, when they heard 
 that Samaria had accepted the ivord of God, sent to 
 them Peter and John, who having come down, prayed 
 for them, so that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 
 For not yet was He fallen upon any one of them, but 
 only they were persons who had been baptized into the 
 name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands 
 on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. But ivhen 
 Simon saio that through the laying on of the hands oj 
 the apostles the Spirit was being given, he offered them 
 money, saying : 
 
 ** Give to me also this poiver, in order that on whom- 
 soever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Spirit,'' 
 
 But Peter said to him: " Thy silver ivith thyself 
 go to destruction, because thou didst mean to buy for 
 money the free-gift of God. To thee there is no part 
 nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the 
 presence of God, Repent therefore from this evil of 
 thine, and pray the Lord if possibly the purpose of thy 
 heart may be pardoned thee. For into a gall of bitter- 
 ness and a bond of iniquity I see thou art [fallen] ." 
 
 But Simon answering said: *' Pray ye on my behalf 
 to the Lord, so that nothing may come upon me of the 
 things ye have said," 
 
XIII. 
 
 STEPHEN'S martyrdom was the signal for a general 
 persecution. From St. Luke's words ^ one might 
 almost gather that the crowd which stoned him outside 
 the gate, rushed back with its blood up, or, as Calvin says, 
 like a wild beast which has once tasted blood, and threw 
 itself there and then upon the company of brethren who 
 perchance had met to pray secretly in their upper room 
 for the brother who before men was playing so well his 
 honourable and perilous part. At all events passions were 
 awake which a single victim could not satisfy. Circum- 
 stances, too, had brought about a coalition of dangers for 
 the Church. Now at last Sadducee and Pharisee agreed 
 in their hostility. The Sanhedrim had at last committed 
 itself by the execution of one disciple. The people's 
 favour for men who healed their sick had turned into 
 popular fanaticism against men who blasphemed Moses. 
 Even the Koman authorities seem to have been accessory 
 or supine. In brief, a favourable juncture had come when 
 the bigots, who hated this growing heresy, and really 
 cared to crush it, might hope to do so. With the hour 
 
 ^ Which literally are Iv tKeivy ry nfikpq,, " on that day ; " an expres- 
 sion which seems never to occur in any other than its literal sense, 
 except in reference to some vague future " day," such as the time of 
 the Judgment, of the Second Advent, or of the New Dispensation. 
 See Bruder. 
 
252 FBOM JEBV SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 had come tlie man. One young Pharisee, at least, born 
 to do with his might whatever he did, and be, for good or 
 ill, a leader of men, took to persecution as a pious task, 
 and pushed himself into notice as the arch-inquisitor. 
 Saul was "exceedingly mad against" the saints.^ Not 
 content with breaking up the Christian assemblies, driving 
 their prominent members into exile, and silencing the 
 public preachers, he hunted up and down among the syna- 
 gogues for concealed adherents. He even stooped to 
 domiciliary visits. He forced the timorous to recant and 
 blaspheme their Christ ; when the more resolute refused, 
 he dragged them by violence to the authorities. Women 
 he spared no more than men. He had his victims im- 
 prisoned, he had them flogged. Nay, we have it on his 
 own authority that he voted in the Sanhedrim for their 
 death, ^ so that others besides Stephen must have won 
 at his hands the crown of martyrdom. Thus, says St. 
 Augustine, there raged against the flock that wolf, who 
 was soon to be made, through grace, a lamb first, and 
 then a shepherd of the sheep. 3 
 
 Two features have been preserved to us which relieve 
 the darkness of that first persecution. While its opening 
 fary lasted, men were found, not Christian men probably, 
 but godly adlierents of the law of Moses,^ who dared to 
 reverence the poor broken flesh of God's martyred con- 
 fessor, and, gathering it up from among the stones, to bear 
 
 * Acts xxvi. 11. '-^ The exact force of KarrjveyKa \p?j(l)ov in xxvi. 10. 
 
 ^ " Exue te lupo ; esto de lupe, ovis ; de ove, pastor." See Words- 
 worth, in loc. Also used by Calvin, in loc. See Kuinoel, in loc, for 
 uses of tXv[xaiveTo, v. 3. 
 
 '' IvXajSng seems to me to be chosen for its vagueness, to include 
 disciples and Hellenists and Palestinian Jews indifferently. Probably 
 some of each were engaged in it. The one point of contact was, they 
 were all pious men. 
 
SIMON MAGUS. 253 
 
 it, as Nicodemus and Josei^li had borne liis Lord, to an 
 honourable and lamented burial. Christ, Who cares for 
 His servants' dust, found stranger hands to pay those last 
 decent offices which His gospel has hallowed into a ser- 
 vice of piety. The character of a man like Stephen, his 
 charity, his wisdom and his courage, are often found to 
 win affectionate admiration from true-hearted onlookers, 
 even among such as do not share his faith. The other 
 fact is the behaviour of the Twelve. Since this outbreak 
 was primarily directed against Hellenistic believers, it is 
 possible that the apostles were at first in less personal 
 danger than they had been at an earlier period. Still, 
 for the chiefs to remain after all other well-known mem- 
 bers of the flock had fled the city, was obviously to provoke 
 or to invite an attack. Yet nothing but their remaining 
 could, at that moment, have secured the permanence of 
 the Church. Out of Jerusalem it had as yet no seat. Within 
 Jerusalem it had, except themselves, no leaders. Had 
 they given way, either by following that tempting per- 
 mission ^ of their Master to flee to another city, or by 
 scattering themselves about the rural neighbourhood for 
 the purpose of concealment, the Church would have ceased 
 to have any organisation, any head-quarters, or any visible 
 corporate existence. The strength of its footing in the 
 holy city would have been for the time, perhaps for ever, 
 lost. What they did was the wisest thing they could do. 
 As many of the male members as could leave, especially 
 all prominent or active members like the rest of the Seven, 
 were sent hither and thither for safety. The Twelve 
 themselves remained in the city, to comfort the women 
 and those who could not leave, to watch over the interests 
 ' Given to the Twelve dui-ing Jesus' lifetime at least : s. Matt. x. 23. 
 
254 FBOM JEBTJ SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 of the arrested, and to form a strong base of support and 
 means of intercommunication for the scattered brethren. 
 By this means the very disaster which threatened to ex- 
 tinguish the Church served to disseminate it. Every: 
 exiled behever became a travelHng missionary. From 
 the central apostolic college, lines of evangelism began 
 for the first time to radiate throughout Judaea and into 
 Samaria. By degrees they even came to stretch beyond 
 as far as Damascus, Antioch, Cyprus, and Sidon ; so that 
 the indefatigable persecutor, when he had done what he 
 could to break up the sect in Jerusalem, had to follow its 
 adherents " even unto strange cities." ^ To use the image 
 of a great Father, already quoted, the foolish Jews, who 
 thought to stamp out the fire, only scattered embers all 
 through the wood.^ 
 
 Into the footsteps of only one out of those many ban- 
 ished evangelists does the historian lead us; but the 
 spark which fell upon Samaria was a very bright one, and 
 the wood into which it fell was very dry and ready. 
 Philip was that deacon, second on the list, who stepped 
 to the front when Stephen fell. After the two incidents 
 recorded in the eighth chapter of the Acts, he disappears 
 for many years from the history. He seems to have re- 
 turned to the capital no more, but to have settled with 
 his family in Caesarea, where, if he could not any longer 
 act as '* one of the seven," he had at least ample exercise 
 for his functions as an " evangehst." 3 Like Stephen, 
 
 * See Acts ix. 13, xxvi, 11. 
 
 '^ " Stulti JudaBi . . . carbones ignis in silvam mittebant." — Augus- 
 tine, ut supra. 
 
 3 Perhaps this connection with Caesarea explains why in the Sinaitic 
 MS. (and it alone) we find KaiQapiag in v. 5, instead of Xaixapeiag. 
 See xxi. 8, 9. 
 
SIMON MAGUS. 255 
 
 lie belonged to the freer section of the Church. It was 
 quite in the line of Stephen's teaching when Philip broke 
 clean away from Judaea and the Jews altogether, and 
 can-ied the gospel into Samaria. It is true Samaria was 
 an exceptional fragment of the Gentile world, peopled by 
 an ambiguous race, which could be looked on, and did 
 look on themselves, as either pure Gentile or almost 
 Jewish, at pleasure. The Samaritans were descended 
 from Assyrian colonists settled in the land of Israel after 
 its own inhabitants had been carried off to captivity.^ It 
 is uncertain whether these colonists from the far East 
 found any Jewish remnant left in the land to mix with.^ 
 At any rate, the infusion of Hebrew blood could have been 
 but small, if any. The chances are that they remained, 
 what they look to this day,3 almost pure Gentiles by race. 
 Not, however, by religion. They early combined a sort of 
 Judaic worship with their ancestral idolatries. They 
 practised circumcision ; they built a temple to Jehovah ; 
 they revered the Pentateuch and kept the Passover. In 
 process of time they grew to believe or to claim that they 
 were more orthodox Jews than the Jews themselves. 
 Josephus, however, complains with some bitterness that 
 they called themselves Jews only when it suited their in- 
 terest to do so ; whereas, when doing so entailed trouble, 
 they had no scruple to declare themselves (what they 
 were) heathens, Sidonians or Cuthites or Assyrians, as 
 seemed best.4 This ambiguous position of the Samaritans 
 was, no doubt, the reason why our Lord on one occasion 
 preached the gospel to them, although on every other 
 ' See 2 Kings xvii. 24-41. 
 
 ^ See this discussed in Smith's Diet. Art. " Samaria." 
 3 See Eobinson, Bibl. Ees. ii. 282 (3rd Ed.). But cf. Stanley, 
 S. and F. p. 240. * See Antiq. xi. 8. 6, xii. 5. 5. 
 
256 FBOM JEBVSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 occasion He steadily avoided doing so outside the territory 
 of the chosen people ; and why, in sketching the progress 
 of His Church, He named them as a link between " all 
 Judasa" and the " uttermost part of the earth." ^ So far, 
 therefore, the gospel was already come — thanks to its 
 persecutors — as far as to Samaria. 
 
 It is uncertain what Samaritan city Philip selected for 
 his mission. 2 The city of Samaria, the old capital of 
 King Ahab's dynasty and of Jehu's, after many a disaster 
 had been lately rebuilt by Herod the Great, and colonised 
 by his discharged foreign troops. To it, Philip was less 
 likely to go than to the true centre of Samaritan life and 
 worship, the city of Sychar or Shechem, some six miles 
 off, where, too, he would be exactly on the footmarks of 
 his Master. In that town Jesus had found fields white to 
 harvest, and into His labour Philip was now to enter. 3 
 The welcome which the Shechemites had given to the 
 words of Jesus, and the great joy which Philip's preaching 
 now brought to the city, show how open the Samaritans 
 then lay to a new revelation of religious truth. They were, 
 quite as eagerly as the Jews, looking for the advent of 
 a Messiah, and their expectations from Messiah when 
 He came were rather less political, rather more spiritual, 
 than those of the Jews. But events had been happening 
 among them between the date of Jesus' visit and that of 
 Philip's, which indicate that their religious susceptibility 
 was less an intelligent desire for moral help than a vague 
 and restless craving after anything which promised to 
 bring the supernatural near. In this, indeed, they only 
 
 * See Acts i. 8. 
 
 2 Instead of " the city of Samaria," in verse 5, we should probably 
 read, "a city of Samaria," although both A and B have the article. 
 So has ^, only with " Csesarea " for Samaria, 
 John iv. 5-42 ; cf. esp. verses 35, 38. 
 
SIMON MAGUS. 257 
 
 shared a cliaracteristic of their time. All over the Imown 
 world, the nations were at that critical hour in history 
 agitated hy a vague unrest and a feverish anticipation of 
 some impending change. Everywhere men turned dis- 
 satisfied from their ancestral divinities and worn-out 
 beliefs. Everywhere they turned in their uncertainty to 
 foreign superstitions, and welcomed any religion which 
 professed to reveal the unknown. The frightful calami- 
 ties wrought by war and pestilence and slavery, which 
 had accompanied the break-up of national life and the 
 submergence of the whole world under the military power 
 of Eome, had worn out men's hearts, and taught them 
 to sigh for help. The earth groaned for a deliverer, who 
 should reveal to the individual, at least, a better hope 
 beyond this life, if no better national life could be looked 
 for on this side of death. Along with this came a strange 
 longing to penetrate the secrets of the world, to commu- 
 nicate with the invisible, to break the cruel dumbness of 
 nature and get at the soul of things— the God Who hides 
 Himself there, behind this universe of appearance and 
 of matter. To persons in this expectant and restless 
 condition, there could be no lack of prophets. Asia 
 bred them, Egypt ripened 'them, the West swarmed with 
 them. He who reads the book of Acts to its close, will 
 come on many traces of them. Even Samaria, the half- 
 Jewish land which owned the Pentateuch and looked for a 
 Messiah, had found some for itself. Contemporary with 
 our Lord, we read of one Dositheus, whose scholar Simon 
 is said to have been, who gave himself out to be the 
 prophet whom Moses foretold— a severe, ascetic man, who 
 rigorously kept the Mosaic law, and fasted himself to 
 death in a cave. After him had come one of a different 
 
 18 
 
258 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 stamp: a crafty, ambitious, able man, who deceived others 
 more than be deceived himself, and knew how to cover 
 both greed and lust under a cloak of spiritual pretension. 
 Simon was a Samaritan, born in a village not far from 
 Sychar ; ^ but he had been educated, we are told (though 
 on rather doubtful authority 2), at Alexandria. He cer- 
 tainly had picked up ideas which were not Samaritan : the 
 occult learning of his time, its black arts, and those endless 
 speculations on the hidden powers of nature, the spiritual 
 emanations from the Godhead, and the like abstruse and 
 profitless subjects, which, under the name of Gnosticism, 
 were, for two centuries after, to be the plague of the 
 Christian Church. Thus equipped, he had returned to 
 astonish his countrymen, and Philip found him already 
 in established possession of the ground. We shall pro- 
 bably understand Simon Magus best, if, to skill in the art 
 of magic, we add a tacit claim to be an incarnation of the 
 divine. He was first a magician, then a pseudo-Messiah. 
 It was to the wonderful performances which he effected 
 through magic that he owed his earliest influence over 
 the Samaritan mind. Ignorant and superstitious people, 
 who find the whole world about them to be full of un- 
 known powers, and whose chief longing is to break the 
 bonds of material, commonplace nature, so as to reach the 
 occult, the superhuman, or the divine, lend greedy and 
 credulous ears to any one who seems to have a spiritual 
 power which others have not, to be able to lay his finger 
 on those secret springs which influence events, or, by 
 
 ' Gitton, now Kuryet Jit. s. Eobinson, ii. 308, note. So we learn 
 from Justin Martyr, also a Samaritan, born only some sixty or 
 seventy years after this date. The Simon of Josephus {Antiq. xx. 
 7. 2) I incline to think must have been a different person. 
 
 ^ That of the Clementines. 
 
SIMON MAGUS. 259 
 
 some mysterious force, to effect the desired and achieve 
 the marvellous. The men who at that period traversed 
 Asia and Europe in shoals, winning fame and wealth by 
 their art, worming themselves into the secrets of the 
 great and ruling the fears of the superstitious, were not 
 all of them mere vulgar cheats or juggling charlatans. 
 Magic, on its best side, springs from a certain mystical 
 religiousness ; and in that age it rested largely on philo- 
 sophical and theological theories as to the relation of 
 God to the universe. In its professors, there was no 
 doubt to be found some self-deception, combined with 
 some real knowledge of nature, and some conscious pre- 
 tence, and all three elements in varying proportions. 
 But it is of the essence of magic, at its best, to depend for 
 its wonders upon secret powers, superhuman or divine, 
 which obey other than moral laws. It never aims at 
 moral results, never works through moral processes. A 
 pure heart or penitent will is no condition of its power. 
 It lends itself as fast to the foulest as to the holiest 
 ends. It serves spiritual pride, or passion, or revenge, 
 or covetousness, equally with the noblest thirst for good- 
 ness. It is, therefore, essentially irreligious, because 
 unethical. Besides, it professes to discover laws, or 
 charms, or hidden fates, which compel the divine will 
 and make the power of God an involuntary minister 
 to the desires of man. Instead of serving God, it thinks 
 to make God serve human caprice. Thus it is again 
 irreligious. It is so in its newest form of spiritual- 
 ism, which also has its apparent wonders and gifts of 
 healing ; for spirituahsm, which is only a recoil from the 
 scientific materialism of our century, is an attempt to 
 obtain power over unknown and spiritual agencies, with- 
 
 18* 
 
260 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 out regard to those moral and religious conditions of 
 purity and piety under wliicli alone God will discover 
 Himself to man. 
 
 Simon was a bad man but a good magician. On the 
 ground of his apparent miracles, he spoke vaguely of 
 himself as something more than mortal — " some great 
 one." It seems, however, to have been the deluded people 
 who called him " the great power of God," ^ rather than 
 he himself who claimed that title. Whatever distinct 
 idea they attached to these words, it is pretty certain that 
 they took the man for an incarnation of the Very Highest 
 — a manifestation than which no greater could be had of 
 the Divine Almightiness. They took him for the Christ — 
 the Divine Man, Who was to come. He suffered them to 
 take him for that, although he knew he was not that. His 
 role evidently was to use his superior knowledge and skill 
 for the acquisition of spiritual power over men's minds, 
 and then, by encouraging their extravagant devotion to 
 him, to trade upon and make gain of them. Spiritual 
 ambition, working through imposture and ministering to 
 covetousness, will perhaps fairly enough describe the 
 base of this man's character. The main interest of 
 what follows lies in the effect on such a person of the 
 gospel of Jesus. Here, no doubt for the first time, 
 Christianity encountered a rival wonder-working Christ, 
 and set its claim to be *' the power of God unto salva- 
 tion " in front of a sham " power of God." The 
 issue therefore is interesting as a test of Christianity, 
 but it is more interesting as a critical moment for 
 Simon. To him, as to every man, the coming of the 
 
 ' " The power of God which is called Great," is the true reading. 
 That is, than which is no greater. 
 
SIMON MAGUS. 261 
 
 message of God through His Son proved a turning 
 time in his personal history, on which hinged all his 
 after life. 
 
 Let us briefly recite what happened. 
 
 To a people so thirsty for wonders and so preoccupied 
 by the marvellous arts of their prophets, as these Sama- 
 ritans, Christianity first addressed itself through miracle. 
 As Moses in Egypt withstood Jannes and Jambres,^ so 
 Philip met the delusive sorceries of Simon by counter 
 wonders. Only the mnacles of the evangehst, like 
 those of his Master, bore their best commendation in the 
 fact that they were miracles of healing, fit to usher in and 
 symboHse a spiritual salvation. What Simon had done had 
 put the people beside themselves with amazement.^ What 
 Philip did filled the city with great joy. When foul 
 spirits left the possessed, and the lame man walked, and 
 the palsied limb grew supple, these gracious exercises of a 
 strength which was proved to be divine by its being bene- 
 ficent, only led the wonder-worker on to discourse of a 
 kingdom of God in which, through penitence and faith, the 
 soul is cleansed from foul affections, liberated from spiritual 
 impotence, and restored to moral soundness and purity. 
 He led them through miracle to Jesus ; told them of His 
 mission of love from heaven, reminded them of His 
 teaching in their own towns, related the story of His cross, 
 and preached to them His resurrection. In the name, 
 not of himself, but of the crucified, glorified Son of God, 
 he proclaimed to them reconciliation to God, forgiveness, 
 and the renovation of the whole inner hfe. Philip's victory 
 was complete. His message filled the hearts of the 
 people, for it satisfied cravings which Simon had not 
 
 * 2 Tim. iii. 8. ^ Qf^ i^iaravujv in ver. 9 ; and see ver. 7. 
 
262 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 satisfied. This was real help from God, not feigned 
 help; gratuitous, as all heaven's gifts are, not to be 
 trajQEicked for ; spiritual help, too, and not magical ; a 
 very gospel of glad tidings; and ''there was great joy in 
 that city." All, save one, were glad. Simon saw his 
 influence sapped, his occupation and his gains gone. 
 The defection of his adherents, as they flocked to receive 
 baptism at the hands of the new teacher, compelled 
 Simon's attention to the works and doctrine of his rival ; 
 and after a while he too believed and was baptised. 
 There is no need to weaken the force of Luke's words,' 
 or to question the sincerity of that profession of faith 
 which Simon made at his baptism. It is quite true that he 
 had unhappily a motive for conversion. It was his interest 
 to believe. Still, I am not disposed to say that the man 
 feigned a belief which he did not entertain, just in order 
 to find out wherein Philip's superior power lay. What 
 Simon professed was a conviction that Jesus, not he him- 
 self, was the true Christ, the incarnation of the power of 
 God, and that by His name true miracles were done, greater 
 than he had himself attempted. There is no reason 
 to doubt that this was an honest profession, and it im- 
 plied a great deal. He was for the time beaten out of 
 his own blasphemous pretensions. Eecognising in the 
 works of Philip a power above his own, he turned to it, 
 reverenced it, and believed in it. But Simon's fault was 
 this — and it was a fatal one — he was stiU bent, not on 
 holiness, but on power. He saw in the gospel a new and 
 superior sort of wonder-working, but he saw nothing more. 
 He cared now no more than he had ever done for moral 
 nearness to God, for truth or purity or nobleness of life. 
 ' •' Simon himself believed also," ver. 13. 
 
SIMON MAGUS. 263 
 
 His faith had not a moral, it had only an intellectual 
 basis. He expressed no compunction for having deceived 
 the people and blasphemed God. The whole ethical side 
 of Christianity, its power of bringing man into peace 
 with God, and of making man like God, was shut 
 against him. For that he had no ear. Against that 
 his heart was closed. He believed therefore without 
 being converted ; accepted Christ as divine, and bowed 
 to His name, without realising any personal need of 
 Him as a Saviour and Sanctifier: a faith this wliich 
 is so far from being unusual amongst ourselves, that 
 its occurrence in the case of Simon need bring us no 
 surprise. 
 
 From the primitive habit of administering baptism 
 without probation, on a mere verbal profession of faith 
 in Jesus, the shallowness of the change produced on the 
 false prophet could not be at once detected. What 
 brought it to light was the visit of Peter and John. It 
 was very natural that the extraordinary success of the 
 gospel in Samaria should attract the attention of the 
 apostles, who had remained in Jerusalem just on purpose 
 to overlook from that centre all the scattered disciples at 
 work in the various provinces of Palestine. It was 
 natural, too, that a deputation of leading men should 
 be sent down to inspect, to advise, and to sanction so 
 important a step as the foundation of a Samaritan 
 Church. This step implied neither jealousy of Philip nor 
 any incompetency on his part. The apostles were the 
 responsible chiefs of the whole body. They were bound 
 to see to its welfare, and in every way to aid its progress. 
 It was of the utmost moment that a branch Church, 
 formed among an alien and hostile people, should not fall 
 
264 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 out of the unity of brotherhood with the mother Church 
 at Jerusalem. ^ Besides, it is plain that the formal re- 
 cognition of the converted Samaritans as members of the 
 kingdom of Christ was expressly reserved for the apos- 
 tolic deputies. Baptism had put them into the position 
 of the hundred and twenty before Pentecost ; but the 
 full bestowal of spiritual influence, evidenced by visible 
 or audible tokens like the gift of tongues,^' took place 
 only when, after solemn prayer for the assembled breth- 
 ren, Peter and John laid their hands successively on the 
 head of each. It was during the progress of this most 
 sacred and awful transaction, when, as in the upper room 
 at Pentecost, a quite manifest afflatus of divine enthu- 
 siasm possessed one after another of the converts, and 
 set them on loud and rapturous utterance of His praise 
 Who had called them to His kingdom and fellowship, 
 that Simon, in his excitement, betrayed how utterly out 
 of sympathy he felt with the whole sphit of the Church. 
 Such a scene stirred in him also that which was deepest 
 in his heart. The deepest thing in him was neither the 
 burden of an evil and unspiritual life, nor the yearning 
 after God, nor the gladness of a pardoned sinner. It 
 was just what it had always been — ambition, the lust 
 after spiritual power. As he gazed, amazed, on the 
 sublimest exhibition of sphitual power which he or any 
 other man had ever seen — the descent of the Holy Ghost 
 on the souls of men, so as to master their bodily organs 
 as well, and to lift the whole man into an ecstasy of de- 
 votion, — the one desire which leapt up in him and sprang 
 to his lips was, that he too might possess power like an 
 
 ' So Calvin in loc. See Alford on the reasons of this visit. 
 ^ Cf. the case of Cornelius before baptism, Acts x. 44^8. 
 
SIMON MAGUS. 265 
 
 apostle, to give power like this to men ! But there was in 
 unhappy Simon, as there had been in Balaam of old, a 
 baser passion than even ambition. To him spiritual 
 power was valuable because he could turn it to profit ; 
 take captive the silly by it, and wheedle them out of their 
 money. "What will win gold, is worth gold. What can 
 be sold may also be bought. To one who had affected 
 to traffic in what is superhuman till he had ceased to 
 believe in what is really divine, the two apostles were 
 only deeper magicians than himself. They possessed 
 some more potent formulas. They could work upon some 
 mightier spirit than he knew. If they were like himself, 
 they might be bribed to share their secrets with him and 
 enter into profitable partnership. Thus, in presence of 
 the holiest, the unholiest in Simon came to light. Tested 
 and discovered by his own words, he was gibbeted by the 
 indignant imprecation of a very different Simon. " Thy 
 money perish with thee ! " So he became the godfather 
 of all those who, from that day to this, have either sought 
 or used the spiritual powers of God's house for ends of 
 secular gain. 
 
 The horror and severity of Peter's first words yielded 
 to Christian pity. He seems to have feared lest the 
 wretched prophet might have committed the unpardonable 
 sin, by blaspheming the Holy Ghost ; yet with such plain 
 speaking as shook the sinner's soul with terror, he blended 
 an earnest exhortation to pray, *'if perhaps the thought 
 of thine heart may be forgiven thee." Poor Simon Magus 
 knew not how to pray. Into his soul no hint of shame, 
 or penitence, or grace found entrance. The awfulness of 
 that threat, from one in whom he recognised a power above 
 his own, crushed him only in abject and cowardly terror. 
 
266 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 He shows no relenting — not even remorse. He dreads 
 the perdition which one mightier than himself has hung 
 over his head : his sin he does not feeL The very sense 
 of guilt has been lost in the man because he has lost faith 
 in God. It is very horrible ; to be so near the kingdom of 
 God ; baptised into it, too ; and yet so dead in soul — 
 dead in pride and earthliness and lies and greed ! 
 
 Simon Magus disappears here from inspired history, 
 but not from Christian literature. His name for centuries 
 became the centre of legends which grew as legends grow.' 
 From the witness of his countryman, Justin, who was 
 born little over half a century after this event, we may 
 conclude that the man who had come so near to Christ 
 and been self-repelled from Him, grew afterwards into 
 a more daring and more wicked impostor than ever. He 
 founded a sect which lingered long in Samaria. He tra- 
 velled as far as Eome in the pursuit of his profession. 
 Everywhere he opposed the gospel. He appears as the 
 bitter foe of Peter in particular. He added lust to 
 covetousness, calling the paramour whom he had taken 
 from the stews of Tyre a divine emanation like himself. 
 If he does not deserve to be termed, as the Church fathers 
 term him, the parent and type of all heresy, he seems 
 at least from that memorable day to have gone ever 
 further off from the pure faith which once he had pro- 
 fessed, and from that blessed hope which in His mercy 
 God once brought near him. 
 
 ' Lechler (in Lange in loc.) and others seem too summarily to set 
 the legends aside. Why should not the main features of his after 
 history be trusted ? 
 
XIV. 
 
 ETHIOPIA SHALL SOON STRETCH OUT HEB HANDS UNTO GOD ! 
 
Acts viii. 25-40. 
 
Ee VISED Veesion. 
 
 So then, after witnessing and speaking the Word of the 
 Lord, they were returning to Jerusalem, and ivere 
 evangelizing many villages of the Samaritans. But 
 an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying : 
 
 " Arise and go toward the south, to the road that 
 goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza : it is a desert 
 [way] ." 
 
 And he arose and ivent. And behold, a man, an 
 Ethiopian, an eunuch, a statesman under Candace, 
 queen of the Ethiopians, who ivas over all her treasure, 
 [ivho] had come worshipping to Jerusalem, and teas 
 ret^irning, [and] sitting on his chariot, and read the 
 'prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to PJiilip : 
 " Go near and join thyself to this chariot." 
 And running forward, Philip heard him reading 
 Isaiah the prophet, and said : 
 
 " Well, but dost thou understand what thou art read- 
 ing T' 
 
 And he said: 
 
 ** How then should I be able, unless some one should 
 guide meV 
 
 And he besought Philip to come up and sit ivith him. 
 Now, the contents of the Scripture ivhich he ivas reading 
 were these : 
 
" He was brought as a sheep to the slaughter, 
 And as a lamb before its shearer [is] dumb, 
 So he opened not his mouth. 
 In his humiliation, his judgment was taken 
 
 away; 
 But who shall declare his generation ? 
 For his life is taken from the earth." 
 And the eunuch, answering, said to Philip : 
 ** I pray thee, about whom does the prophet say this ? 
 about himself or about some other ? " 
 
 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from 
 that Scripture, loent on to preach to him Jesus. But 
 as they were going along the road, they came on a certain 
 water, and tJie eunuch said : 
 
 ** Behold, ivaterf what hinders me to be baptized?^* 
 And he ordered the chariot to stand, and they ivent 
 down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, 
 and he baptized him. But when they came up out of 
 the water, the Lord's Spirit caught away Philip, and 
 the eunuch saw him no more. For he was going on 
 his way rejoicing, but Philip was found at Azotus; and 
 passing through he evangelized all the cities, until his 
 arrival at Ccesarea. 
 
XIV. 
 
 IT is only snatches which have been preserved to us 
 from the overflowing Church life of the apostohc 
 time ; a single incident here and there, saved by one 
 man's pen out of the great darkness of forgetfulness 
 which has swallowed up the unwritten acts of all the 
 apostles and of all their colleagues. We are able, for ex- 
 ample, to follow a little longer the missionary footsteps 
 of Philip, after his departure from Samaria; but what 
 success the two greatest apostles had in that province, or 
 how the mother Church in Jerusalem was meanwhile 
 faring under the eyes of the Twelve, remains untold. 
 Phihp, too, is only one out of a crowd of scattered 
 preachers, who, at that time, were all as busy as he in 
 carrying the good news abroad over Palestine and beyond 
 it ; yet no name but his own lives in the history. The 
 sad case of Simon, and the glad case of the African,^ are 
 only specimens out of the mission-work of a single la- 
 bourer, and he is only a specimen of many missionaries. 
 It ought to be remembered, however, that the recorded 
 incidents are not selected for record simply as specimens. 
 Other incidents might have served equally well for 
 that use; no other incidents could have served so weU 
 the use to which the sacred writer puts them. His motive 
 
 1 "An idyl out of the missionary history of the apostolic Church." 
 Lechler in Lange in loc. 
 
272 FROM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 of selection can be inferred from liis work. It was to 
 illustrate the outward, heathenward, and westward drift 
 of the Church's main progress during the first quarter of 
 a century. He has aimed at showing how, through sheer 
 stress of circumstances, as, for instance, by the violence 
 of persecution, by a confluence of providential leadings, 
 by the express orders of her Head, or by the gradual 
 teaching of her officers, the Church, which began as a 
 Judaic sect cradled within the temple, was urged, or driven, 
 or led, out and forward, step by step, across one frontier 
 line of nationality and of creed after another, till she 
 found herself, almost in her own despite, the Catholic 
 Church of mankind. The prohibition of preaching by 
 the Sanhedrim, the Hellenism of Stephen, the dispersion 
 of the brethren by Saul, and Philip's success in Samaria, 
 have been so many distinct steps in this direction. The 
 conversion of the eunuch is another step. 
 
 It was while Peter and John were leisurely travelling 
 back to the mother city, preaching as they went, in village 
 after village of that despised Samaria, which had embraced 
 the glad news refused by Jerusalem, that Philip received 
 a heavenly visitor.^ We are told that one of Christ's 
 angels, or messengers from the invisible, charged with an 
 errand from the King, became visible to the evangelist, 
 and, speaking the words of a man, bade him leave his 
 work, to travel southwards by a certain road. We have 
 already had occasion to observe how, during those days 
 of the Church's infancy, her Lord's tutorship took a 
 more direct form than it has since worn, and brought the 
 
 * See Alford in loc. on the imperfects and the force of de in ver. 26. 
 Cf. also Meyer in loc. 
 
THE ETHIOPIAN COUBTIEB. 273 
 
 superhuman Overseer into more immediate contact with 
 the human actors. Jesus was still dictating each fresh 
 step in the progress of His cause by a mingled system 
 of influence, one part of which, indeed, lay in natural 
 circumstances and the inward play of men's thoughts 
 about them," while another embraced the visible inter- 
 ference of celestial or super-earthly forces. It was only 
 by degrees that what was supernatural was to die away, 
 leaving only that which was natural behind. The lesson 
 which we may suppose He desired by this means to write 
 upon the heart of His Church is, that He is present in 
 the natural not less than in the supernatural. Thus He 
 works spiritual changes in men to-day, although no 
 longer at the laying on of hands do tongues and ecs- 
 tasies betray the presence of the Spirit. He guides the 
 labours of true evangelists to-day, although no angel 
 comes to bid them travel by a special road. What to us 
 would be the value of any record full of mere idle 
 marvels ? Or what the better shall we be for such 
 protrusions of the other world through the veil which 
 screens it from vision, unless they teach us that 
 there is, out of sight, behind this material world, another 
 with which we and this life of ours do stand for ever 
 in the closest and most vital relations ? The Church 
 ought no longer to need her Lord's messengers to be 
 present to sense, because by this time the perpetual 
 unseen action of the Lord ought to be always present to 
 her faith. By an ordinary combination of circumstances, 
 with a rational conscientiousness in the discovery of duty, 
 men are still really led by God into " the south," where 
 the way is " desert." Few can have thoughtfully ob- 
 served their own lives, or those of their friends, without 
 
 19 
 
274 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 noticing instances quite as strange as this order must 
 have appeared to Philip. Away from a position of pro- 
 mising usefulness, where a whole city lay waiting to be 
 blessed, and the fruits of past labour seemed ready for the 
 harvesting, God forced His servant. He drove him by 
 providences not to be withstood into a lonely place, to 
 pass some days there in aimless and unwilling inaction-. 
 Nor could it be one whit an easier thing for Philip 
 contentedly to abandon his field of work and go, per- 
 plexed and purposeless, whither that angel bade him, 
 than it is for us to follow any disappointing providence. 
 God's will was not less baffling or hard to obey, because 
 an angel spoke it. Neither is it the less unmistakable 
 or supreme because now no angel speaks it, but men are 
 left to gather it from the events of life. What is life but 
 a practice of trust in a silent and unseen Guide, Who 
 explains nothing at the time, but leaves us to interpret 
 His meaning only after we have seen the end? Lives 
 without number are being Hved all round us, which seem 
 to have gone astray, through no fault of their own, 
 from their very start; as if God had sent them 
 early into a way which is desert and had left them 
 there — misshapen, blighted hves, which have found no fit 
 place, we think, to work in, nor any fit home to dwell in. 
 Even such, if they seek God's guidance, are really led of 
 Him ; and, if true to duty, they shall be found, when the 
 play is all played out, to have finished the work which 
 He gave them to do. 
 
 It seems impossible with our present information to 
 be quite sure by what route Phihp was meant to go. 
 Whether the words, *' which is desert," are an insertion 
 
THE ETHIOPIAN COUBTIEB. 275 
 
 of tlie historian or a direction by the angel, there is no 
 doubt that PhiHp himself understood the precise route 
 from Jerusalem to Gaza which was intended. At present, 
 however, not one of the four roads by which it seems to 
 have been possible in the first century to travel betwixt 
 these two points, is so distinguished above the rest by 
 superior wasteness as to prefer an indubitable claim. 
 Perhaps the most frequented tracks for ancient travellers 
 going from Jerusalem towards Egypt, especially with 
 wheeled vehicles, were those which first led right down from 
 the hills by the usual route to Jaffa, and then turned 
 sharply southward along the whole plain of Philistia. But 
 then these roads traversed precisely the most highly cul- 
 tivated and densely peopled district in all Palestine. On 
 the other hand, the shortest cut was a nearly straight one, 
 which seems to have struck diagonally across the hills to 
 Eleutheropolis, and thence across the plain to Gaza. But 
 even if this was passable to wheels in its mountainous 
 parts, there remain such numerous traces of villages all 
 along its course that it could hardly be styled desert. The 
 use of that word by the Hebrews certainly did not imply 
 barrenness, but it implied at least a sparse population, - 
 and a country more given up to pasture than under tillage. 
 A rather early tradition placed the scene of the baptism 
 at a spot some twenty Roman miles from Jerusalem on 
 the way to Hebron ; and at that very spot there remain 
 to this day unusually large tanks of water by the road- 
 side, fed by strong springs. This was one of the main 
 thoroughfares of communication from the earliest times, 
 as it is to-day, and bears to this hour the mark of ancient 
 wheels; yet it might be fairly called ** desert," since it 
 traversed the backbone of the Judsean highlands, through 
 
 19 - 
 
276 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 an open, pastoral, and lonely district. The difficulty in 
 this case lies in seeing how the foreigner's chariot could 
 get across the rough country between Hebron and Gaza, 
 a route almost unexplored by modern travellers, and cer- 
 tainly destitute of any important road. The usual course 
 of travellers going down into Egypt via Hebron was 
 not to diverge to Gaza at all, but to hold on southward 
 along the great highway past Beersheba and the southern 
 desert of Et Tih. In this uncertainty we must be content 
 to leave the question for the present ; ^ but if it is impos- 
 sible to identify the place where Philip met the Eunuch, 
 we have less difficulty with the far more important point 
 of this stranger's position and previous training. 
 
 In the upper Nile valley, stretching south from the 
 frontier of Egypt at Syene, as far as the point of junction 
 of its two great confluents, the Blue and White Nile, lay 
 a realm embracing what is now called Nubia and part of 
 Abyssinia,^ which had for its capital, at the time when our 
 era opened, the island city of Meroe. During some four 
 centuries it seems to have been ruled by a dynasty of 
 queens, whose official name of Candace descended, like 
 that of Pharaoh in Egypt, from one sovereign to another. 
 Under the reigning queen of that title this man held the 
 important office of chief treasurer. AU over the East, 
 from the very earliest times to this day, members of his 
 unhappy class have been advanced by preference to respon- 
 sible posts at the courts of tyrants ; not only to the charge 
 of the harem, or the tutorship of princes, but also to the 
 
 ' It is possible that further light may be shed upon the point by the 
 trigonometrical survey now going on at the charges of the Palestine 
 Exploration Fund. ^ Qr perhaps, more correctly, of Sennaar. 
 
THE ETHIOPIAN COUBTIEB. 277 
 
 most weighty offices of state, to the privy council of the 
 sovereign, and even to the command of armies. It is this 
 man's race, too, which has always furnished by far the 
 largest number of such victims to oriental suspiciousness 
 and the cruel exigencies of polygamy. Against vast hin- 
 drances this nameless African had come to know and 
 worship Jehovah. He lived on the extreme frontier of 
 civilisation. He belonged to a class excluded from the most 
 humane influences of life, a class wont to be heartless, 
 crafty, spiteful, and cowardly, to a proverb. In his own 
 sphere he had attained what might have satisfied the 
 ambition of most men. IJe had won power, wealth, and 
 rank, three idols which do most of all to enslave or 
 deaden the spiritual life. Why was he not at rest ? Or, 
 if still ill at ease, why did he seek relief elsewhere than in 
 political intrigues ? How, above all, had he risen within 
 a barbarous pagan court to such purity and simple 
 nobleness of character ? It is more easy to imagine how 
 a thirst after divine truth and spiritual life might be 
 quickened or kept quick within him, through the words of 
 the Old Testament, than to represent to oneself how a soul 
 could be nursed into graciousness, and grow so gentle, 
 transparent, docile, and lowly, within a palace at Meroe. 
 Yet so it was. He comes before us as already one of 
 Jesus' sheep, who were not of the Hebrew fold. That 
 Septuagint version of the Scriptures, which, with all its 
 defects, did right noble service by leavening every Greek- 
 speaking land with the great thoughts of the old revela- 
 tion, and so preparing the earth for the coming of its 
 Christ, had found its way into the Eunuch's hands. 
 Studying it in Queen Candace's court, he had learned 
 there to worship one only living God, Who can be set forth 
 
278 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 by no goat-headed Ammon, no, nor Greek Ax^ollo ; Wlio 
 is not to be pictured under material forms nor served with 
 cruel rites ; but to be sought in the secret devotion of the 
 heart and pleased with the service of a righteous life. 
 From vagrant Jews, who came to Meroe as they came to 
 every place, he may even have learned a little more. At 
 all events he plainly felt, as all simple and honest readers 
 do, that there was a hidden deep of meaning within the 
 sacred word — especially within the proi^hetic books — 
 which no painful search of his could reach. Much of it 
 was dark, because he was still ignorant; much more, be- 
 cause it was itself profound ; but most of all, perhaps, 
 because it wrapped up truth within a casket for which he 
 possessed no key. Yet he was sure that truth lay there, 
 since such plain texts as he could understand led him, 
 while he pondered and obeyed them, into a life higher 
 than that which men lived about him. He knew Jehovah's 
 law to be perfect, for it converted his soul.^ The serene 
 trust in God, the lofty adoration, the pure, severe 
 righteousness which breathed from the law and from the 
 psalms, touched and moved his heart, and drew him 
 above dishonour, above pride of rank and lust of power and 
 envy of men and the petty discontents of a courtier. If 
 that which lay open upon the page of this strange volume 
 could do so much for the soul's life, what might not be 
 hoped for, could only that treasure be unlocked which 
 was hidden within its dark prophetic sections, or those 
 mysterious promises be fulfilled which sparkled in its 
 words? The glorious restlessness of a soul which has 
 found, yet not fully found, God, which has drunk the 
 waters of life, but not drunk enough, possessed him, and 
 ^ See Psa. xix. 7. 
 
TB.E ETHIOPIAN COUBTIEB. 279 
 
 urged him from cares of office and the ease of kixury to 
 a long and toilsome journey. Away down his river valley, 
 and heyond the cities of Egj^pt, and across the sands, 
 there lay the home of that favoured people whose God was 
 now his God. Might it not be that, before the sacred 
 shrine in the holy city, and from the learned priests who 
 ministered to Jehovah there, would come a light to lighten 
 the darkness of these ancient words, and fill his soul with 
 peace ? I take it to have been no thirst for barren 
 learning which provoked him to so unusual an expedition. 
 There are hearts that cannot be content so long as they 
 think they can get nearer God, or know Him better, or 
 have a clearer beam of favour from His face. The 
 Eunuch's heart was one of these. 
 
 I fancy too that his heart must have been heavy when 
 Philip accosted him by the way. He had turned his back 
 on the holy city, and his face toward his distant heathen 
 home, without having found what he came to seek. It 
 might be some satisfaction to him (as it is now to us) to 
 tread the streets of Jehovah's city ; and his piety could 
 hardly fail to burn within him in a more fervent flame 
 when he worshipped, though from afar, before the place 
 where God had dwelt, or sent up his praises from the outer 
 court, ^ while trumpets blew loud anthems within and sweet 
 incense rose with the smoke of lambs to the evening sky. 
 Yet, after all, was he nearer God than he had been at 
 Meroe ? Had the priests or the scribes unlocked for him 
 these mysterious oracles? This chapter of Isaiah, for 
 example, so glorious dark, with included light piercing it 
 everywhere, have they made it plainer to the understand- 
 ing ? or taught him who it is whose soul is to be made art 
 ' A eunuch could be no more than a Proselyte of the Gate. 
 
280 FBOM JEBVSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 offering for sin? or what rigliteous " Servant of God" is 
 to bear the iniquities of many ? We know what a vain 
 quest it was for a sin-pressed soul in those days to go 
 seeking light from Caiaphas or Gamaliel. The pedantic 
 scholarship of the Eabbis, the superciliousness of orthodox 
 Pharisaism to an uncircumcised Ethiopian, the zeal of 
 legalists who were too busy stamping out the heresy of the 
 Nazarene to mind anything else ; these were what he had 
 found in the city of God. He must have turned his back on 
 it with a heavy heart. Here, however, comes out the sweet 
 and childlike disposition of the man. He goes back to his 
 Bible. Not just to while away the tedium of a long march, 
 for he has not yet left many miles beliind him ; but with 
 such a touching longing after light as hopes against hope, 
 he will recite again the mysterious words and ponder over 
 the manuscript where truth lies hid. ** There is then no 
 man," he thinks, ''to guide me, not even in Jerusalem. How 
 can I understand the Scripture ? " It is very noteworthy 
 how the education of years, and all the slow processes 
 through which this heathen had been divinely led to 
 know Jehovah, to seek better knowledge of Him, and to 
 miss finding it where he most expected it — combined to 
 ripen him for that brief decisive hour in the wilderness of 
 Judaea. One line of providence has brought Philip, only 
 within the last two days, from Samaria ; another line of 
 providence has brought the Ethiopian, through many 
 years, from idolatry to Judaism, from Meroe to Jerusalem, 
 from the temple to the desert. Now these converging lines, 
 of which the touch, the contact, is to be the birth of a 
 Christian hfe, have met.^ 
 
 * " Not in the temple of Jerusalem, but on the desert way to Gaza, 
 was he to find the pearl of great price. Thus formerly the wise men 
 from the East had to journey on from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to find 
 the new-born Jesus." Gerok in Lange in loc. 
 
THE ETHIOPIAN COUBTIEB, 281 
 
 I liave felt justified in taking the Ethiopian's modest 
 and serious question, " How can I, except some man should 
 guide me ? " along with his courteous invitation to the 
 stranger to occupy a seat beside him in the chariot that he 
 might instruct him, as indicating the state of preparation in 
 which Philip found him. It betrays his sense of ignorance, 
 and his desire, now grown next to hopeless, for light. This 
 seems to explain his instantaneous reception of the truth. 
 It needed no more than one full talk by the way, followed 
 by a hasty wayside baptism, and he, who left Jerusalem 
 hardly a Jew, entered Gaza wholly a Christian. Further, 
 we can trace God's careful leading up to a swift result, in 
 the particular section of his Greek Old Testament, which 
 (as we say) the man chanced to read, in eastern fashion, 
 half-chanting it aloud to himself, when the wayfarer drew 
 near enough to overhear. The paragraph which opens 
 with the thirteenth verse of the fifty-second chapter of 
 Isaiah, and includes all the fifty-third, has always been 
 felt, both by Jew and Christian, to be the supreme point 
 of prophetic anticipation. That yearning after a Christ, 
 Who, through service and suffering, should solve the 
 problem of man's reconciliation to God, which runs 
 throughout Hebrew revelation from Genesis to Malachi, 
 giving weight to the whole history, and meaning to every 
 type, attains its utmost distinctness in the section which 
 the Eunuch read. Jehovah's Servant Israel, of whom the 
 entire prophecy^ treats, is in these fifteen verses held 
 forth with such startling vividness of language, first in 
 His lowliness and unmerited passion, then in His sav- 
 ing strength, that we, who read our best commentary 
 on it in the Gospels, can hardly persuade ourselves that 
 ' Isa. xl.-lxvi. 
 
282 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 the words are propliecy, not history, or were not always 
 as clear as they are now. For the first time in the in- 
 terpretation of these precious words, prophecy and history 
 met together when Philip and the Eunuch sat side by 
 side. The Eunuch is the latest voice of the old economy, 
 and one of its noblest, searching what the Spirit Who was 
 in it did signify ;^ Philip is the clear, no longer parabolic, 
 voice of the new, testifying what had been seen with 
 men's eyes and handled by men's hands of the Word of 
 Life.2 The one economy is figured to us by this weary- 
 hearted student, puzzling over dumb oracles, who, as he 
 strains eager eyes for an answer, asks doubtfully, '' Of 
 whom speaketh the prophet ? " The other is like a herald 
 lightly girt for travel, whose mouth is quick to answer — to 
 tell with joyful and assured words the story of Jesus, and 
 preach to all men salvation through the Man Who died on 
 the cross and rose out of the grave. As the messenger 
 of the new, Philip held the very key which that student 
 of the old had sought so long in vain. What wonder if, 
 while an ardent loving disciple of Jesus ran over with 
 kindling eye and deepening voice the strange story, grown 
 so common now, yet no whit less touching or less tragical 
 for use — how God's own Son became a babe and grew to 
 work the homely works of a Man in Nazareth ; how He 
 spoke words from His Father and did His Father's works ; 
 how He was all love and grace and truth, the very light of 
 God shining through the humblest, meekest, and sweetest 
 of the sons of men ; how some men loved Him above all, 
 and some hated Him to death.; what shame He bore, what 
 bitter anguish for our sins, when the people rejected 
 Him, and the Lord bruised Him, and on the dark cross 
 » 1 Pet. i. 11. 2 1 John i. 1. 
 
THE ETHIOPIAN COUBTIEB. 283 
 
 His soul was poured out an offering for sin ; but how at 
 the third dawn God raised Him up to be a Saviour of the 
 sinful, and by His knowledge to justify many because He 
 had borne their iniquities : — what wonder, I say, if all this 
 tale Philip had to tell while the chariot rolled heavily 
 along the lonely Syrian road, rushed into the waiting heart 
 which God had ripened to receive it, and lit up the dark- 
 ness of years, and answered his unanswered questions, 
 and stilled the fears, and more than realised the hopes, 
 and filled up with a great gladness the mighty longings 
 of his soul ? This, then, was what God had had it in His 
 heart to do for guilty, evil men. This had been the blessed 
 hope which glimmered obscurely in the pages of the 
 prophets. God is no longer afar off, to be sought for at 
 Jerusalem; a God to be yearned after, longed for, guessed 
 at, or hoped in — if perchance He will somehow, some day, 
 have mercy. He is now a God-with-us, grown human 
 and very near, because "numbered," as the prophet speaks, 
 "with us transgressors; " a God sacrificed like a lamb 
 for sin, dying all for love, yet living, too, to bless ; a Man- 
 God, God-Man, Who pours His whole heart out upon our 
 heart, breathes His own breath into our spirit, lives in 
 us, and draws us up to live with Him ! One half envies 
 the man who, in the ripeness of his manhood, after 
 thirsting years, for the first time heard such things as 
 these, and drank in the desert these waters of eternal life. 
 "For," says Calvin here,^ "what truer matter' of joy 
 can be invented than when the Lord doth not only set 
 open to us the treasures of His mercy, but poureth out 
 His heart into us (that I may so speak), and giveth Him- 
 
 1 Commentary in loc. I quote from Beveridge's translation (in 
 the Calvin Society's publications). 
 
284 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 self in His Son, tliat we may want nothing to perfect 
 felicity ? The heavens begin to look clear and the earth 
 beginneth to be quiet then ; the conscience being then 
 delivered from the doleful and horrible feelings of God's 
 wrath, being loosed from the tyranny of Satan, escaping 
 out of the darkness of death, beholdeth the light of 
 life." 
 
 There is little more to be added. That verse of the Ke- 
 ceived Text which contains an express profession of the 
 Eunuch's faith as a condition of baptism, is very pro- 
 bably to be rejected as an interpolation, inserted at an early 
 date by some who felt the absence of such a formula to 
 be a hazardous precedent for the Church. That the con- 
 vert was so forward of his own accord to ask for the rite 
 of initiation which sealed the pardon of his sins, and 
 Philip so forward to grant it ; that the Divine Guide, at 
 whose call Philip had come to the Eunuch, should have so 
 suddenly rapt him away when his work was done ; and 
 that the new-made Christian found in his faith and in the 
 abiding unction of the Holy One such joy as made the 
 loss of his human teacher a thing indifferent — are all 
 touches which still further show how open God had before- 
 hand made this stranger for His gospel, and what easy 
 and abundant entrance it found into his heart. It is 
 probably an idle guess which ascribes to him the first 
 foundation of a Church in Abyssinia. At the same time, 
 there are few who will refuse to see in this incident, with 
 the early Church, a fulfilment of that psalm-word which 
 says that ''Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God,"^ 
 or who can reflect without emotion on the providence 
 which so early scattered far afield the good news from 
 ' See Psa. Ixviii. 31 ; early quoted by the Fathers. 
 
THE ETHIOPIAN COUBTIEB. 285 
 
 heaven. Formally the door of faith had not yet been 
 opened to the Gentiles. Yet here is at least one sporadic 
 , ase, long before the angel was sent to Cornelius. Already 
 •the young kingdom of God begins to gather into itself 
 the children of God scattered abroad.^ How many such 
 children of God were there, and in what strange places 
 concealed from view, to whom, in that age even, not to 
 say throughout the long ages of previous preparation, no 
 Philip was sent and no Christ preached ! There is a fear 
 we may do less than justice to the " other sheep which 
 are not of this fold." The Queen of Sheba very long 
 before, and this Queen of Ethiopia's chamberlain — of 
 how many more are these the types, to whom just so much 
 of God's precious truth percolated, like water through the 
 under-rocks, that they could contrive to drink and live, 
 although it was never possible for them to move one step 
 nearer Him, after Whom, through the dark heathen night 
 and in the waste heathen lands, their souls sighed and 
 cried for longing ! How many such shall come from 
 East and West to judge us, on whose face the sunshine of 
 Christ's truth lies full, and whose very feet are laved, 
 whether we will or no, by the streams of His grace ? to 
 condemn those of us who are too well content to possess 
 the light for us ever to open our eyes to see it, nor care to 
 stoop, that, throwing away the dust of earth which fills 
 our grasping, busy hands, we may quicken our souls with 
 the refreshment, and cleanse them in the purity of Christ's 
 Holy Gospel ? 
 
 ' Compare Jesus' words in John x. 16, as well as John's in xi. 52. 
 
XV. 
 
 ad's Cnnkrsinn. 
 
 ESTO DE LUPE OVIS. 
 
Acts ix. 1-9. 
 Compare Acts xxii. 1-11, and xxvi. 9-20. 
 
Ke VISED Veesion. 
 
 Noiv Saul, still breathing threats and murder against 
 the disciples of the Lord, went to the High Priest, and 
 asked from him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, 
 so that if he should find any who were of the Way, both 
 men and ivomen, he should bring them bound to Jeru- 
 salem. And in the journey it happened that he tvas 
 approaching Damascus, when suddenly there shone about 
 him a light out of heaven; and falling on the earth, he 
 heard a voice saying to him : 
 
 *' Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me ? " 
 And he said : " Who art Thou, Lord ? " Then He : 
 ^' I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest. But rise and 
 go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must 
 do:' 
 
 Now the men who were journeying with him were 
 standing speechless, hearing the voice indeed, but behold- 
 ing no one. And Saul rose from the earth, and on his 
 eyes being opened, he saw nothing ; but, leading him by 
 the hand, they led him into Damascus. And he was 
 three days without sight, and did neither eat nor drink. 
 
 20 
 
T 
 
 XV. 
 
 HAT blessed war of aggression which Jesus Christ 
 wages upon the evil world is a war which is made 
 to maintain itself. Christ's soldiers are His captured 
 enemies. Every soul won from resistance to the cross is 
 marked at once with the cross-badge, and sent into the 
 field to win others. Of this the most notable instance in 
 Christian history is the conversion of Saul. Jesus Christ 
 never encountered a bitterer or an abler foe ; Jesus Christ 
 never won a mightier captain for His army of Hglit. 
 Our narrative has brought us to one of the great days of 
 the Church. What happened that noon-day near Da- 
 mascus was the most signal intervention in her affairs 
 which Christ has effected since He went to heaven. It 
 did more than any other event after Pentecost to deter- 
 mine the current and colour the future of Christianity. 
 To one who reflects how much the theology of the New 
 Testament and the later developments of doctrine in the 
 Western Church have owed to this " Doctor of the 
 Gentiles," the interest of the event may appear to be 
 mainly a theological one. Again, when we fix our atten- 
 tion on the revolution which was wrought by it in Saul 
 himself, and find that we can trace in his own letters, 
 down to his latest, ineffaceable traces of this crisis, we 
 might be forgiven if we made its biographical importance 
 
 20* 
 
292 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 most prominent : especially since we have from liis own 
 lips two earlier narratives of what took place — the one 
 spoken to a fanatical mob of Jews from the stairs of the 
 castle of Antonia — the other recited in the palace at 
 Caesarea, before the brilliant court of King Agrippa. To 
 the student of St. Paul's life, these original accounts of 
 his conversion are of the first value. Here, however, it 
 is neither the theological nor the biographical bearings of 
 the incident which hold the chief place. The record of 
 Luke is that of a Church historian, and all remoter or 
 more personal interests are subordinated to that which is 
 strictly historical. St. Luke is not writing a life of his 
 master, Paul. He is writing a history of the steps by 
 which Jesus Christ led His infant Church, from its birth 
 at the coming of the Holy Ghost on a hundred and twenty 
 disciples, till it had filled the Koman empire with orga- 
 nised Christian communities. This scope of his work the 
 author never forgets, and we must never forget it. Now, 
 to the current Church history of the time the vast im- 
 portance of what occurred at Damascus lay in this, that 
 it won for the Christian cause the man who was to be 
 its first and greatest Gentile missionary. It was one of 
 the preliminary steps towards the disentanglement of the 
 Church from Judaism and the accomplishment of its 
 catholic mission as a gospel for all men. Other steps 
 succeeded ; especially Peter's vision at Joppa, and the 
 baptism of Cornelius.^ These are to be presently related. 
 Meanwhile, this conversion of Saul, the arch-inquisitor of 
 Pharisaism, while it brought to the Church an imrnediate 
 
 • Note how Luke alone gives the visions by which Saul and Ananias 
 were brought together ; and note further how this runs parallel to 
 the preparation of Peter and Cornelius to meet each other, in chap. x. 
 
SAUL'S CONVEBSION. 293 
 
 rest from persecution, prepared for the ultimate extension 
 of a free, un-Hebraic gospel to the great world beyond. It 
 was the winning for the young enterprise of a soldier, who 
 by his Antiochian ministry was in a few years to found ^ 
 the first Christian Church in heathendom ; whose mission 
 trip to Pisidia was to raise the question of Gentile liberty 
 settled at the Jerusalem Synod ; whose second mission 
 tour was to open to Christ the doors of Greece ; whose 
 third was destined, through his arrest as an apostate Jew 
 and his appeal to Nero, to conduct him to the very centre 
 and capital of the imperial heathen world. 
 
 This historical importance of the fact, that such a man 
 suddenly abandoned the Pharisaic party who opposed the 
 new sect, and became the Church's chief apostle and 
 foremost preacher, amply justifies the detail with which 
 St. Luke has related the entire story. Not only the appa- 
 rition on the road, but the three days' blindness, and the 
 visit of Ananias, all of which formed so many stages in 
 the conversion, are reported at length. To the first of 
 these stages, however, a quite special importance attaches 
 itself. The immediate occasion of Saul's change of hfe ^ 
 was quite as exceptional as the change itself was eventful. 
 This was not the ordinary case of a man led to beheve in 
 Jesus through the evidence of others, or through the 
 testimony of the Church, or through the pressure of 
 spu'itual need. It was not even an extraordinary case to 
 which there are few parallels ; it was a unique case which \^ 
 has no parallel. The agent in the conversion of this man 
 was not a mortal man, his fellow ; it was the Lord Jesus 
 Christ Himself. Christ directly called His misguided 
 persecutor to Himself; He called him in person. For 
 the apparition which confronted Saul on the Damascus 
 
294 FBOM. JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 road was no inward vision, such as afterwards appeared 
 to Ananias, no dreamlike impression, as if the inquisitor 
 saw what was not there bodily to be seen, or heard words 
 which did not really stir the air. It was not a seeing and 
 hearing only '' in the Sphit," as when John the seer saw 
 mystic sights in Patmos. It was (as I read the records) 
 a veritable return of Him Who went up from the Mount 
 of Olives, to show Himself once more in His risen hu- 
 manity to the eyes, and speak with His own lips in the 
 ears, of a mortal. Such a personal manifestation of Him 
 Whom the heavens have received is, I suppose, solitary 
 in Christian history. The evidence for it therefore is, 
 as it needs to be, exceptionally strong. No event in the 
 sacred narrative, of which, from its very nature, only one 
 person could be directly cognizant, is historically better 
 supported than this. Of course such a transaction cannot 
 be compared, in respect of evidence, with public events, 
 like the death or the resurrection of Jesus, to which many 
 eye and tar witnesses could speak. Here there could be 
 no eye or ear witness, but one. His evidence alone is at 
 first hand, and it is explicit. It was upon this fact — that 
 he had personally seen his risen Master, just as the 
 other apostles saw Him — that Paul rested his claim to 
 the privileges of the apostolate. " Am I not an apostle ? 
 . . . Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord ? " ^ *' He was 
 seen of James ; then of aU the apostles. And last of all 
 He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time."^ 
 Further, in reporting the words which he had heard from 
 Ananias, when on the third day his sight returned, Paul 
 cited them thus : " The God of our fathers hath chosen 
 thee, that thou shouldest know His will, and see that Just 
 » 1 Cor. ix. 1. 2 11^^^^ XV. 7, 8. 
 
SAUL'S CONVEBSION. 295 
 
 One, and shouldest hear the voice of His mouth." ^ The 
 evidence of Paul himself, thus confirmed by the vision of 
 Ananias, was plainly accepted as conclusive by the Chris- 
 tian Church at the time ; for it was only after Barnabas 
 had declared to the older apostles at Jerusalem how the 
 new convert " had seen the Lord in the way," that his 
 apostolic claims received public recognition.^ 
 
 Possibly it may be due to the emphasis so justly laid 
 by the sacred records on this solitary appearance of the 
 ascended Master, that very little has been told us of the 
 internal history of the conversion. Its outward details we _ 
 know; the great objective cause of it, the glorious One 
 Whose face illumined. Whose voice thrilled into new life 
 the soul of the Pharisee, has been left conspicuous — a 
 figure of light — in the foreground. But we are not told, 
 what we should have greatly liked to know, through what 
 preparatory workings of soul the persecutor had been pre- 
 pared for such a crisis, or what struggles accompanied the 
 new birth of a nature so powerful as his, and filled up 
 these three days of lonely and blind silence. As we follow 
 the impatient traveller down to the moment when that 
 sudden light prostrated him, and as we dwell upon those 
 dark hours of secret thought through which he passed in 
 the house of Judas, we can hardly help feeling it to be 
 strange (though it may well be believed to be wise) that so 
 little has been told us of the interior and spiritual history 
 of this grandest of all conversions. Yet, let us check our- 
 selves. AVho can tell the spiritual processes of any con- 
 version ? Or why should we pry too curiously into that 
 mysterious and sacred place, where, under cover of dark- 
 ness, the Spirit of God broods over a soul whom He will 
 ' Acts xxii. 14. ' Ibid. ix. 27. 
 
 l^ 
 
296 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 renew of His great grace into the life and likeness of the 
 Eternal Son ? 
 
 At the same time, the general nature of the change 
 which unexpectedly passed upon Saul, can be pretty well 
 made out from what we know of the man, both before and 
 after it. 
 
 Down to the moment when the glory smote him, this 
 ^ man was a Hebrew of the most extreme type.^ A Ben- 
 
 *- jamite of pure blood, and by birth a Pharisee, he had 
 
 1^ been educated in the chief rabbinical school of the holy 
 city. In ardent study, in knowledge of patristic tra- 
 ditions, in zeal for the God of Israel and for His chosen 
 race, in the strict observance of Pharisaic religion, he 
 claims to have outstripped all his contemporary fellow- 
 students under Gamaliel's tuition. With that intensity 
 which was always his leading characteristic, this young 
 Jew became a red-hot zealot for Judaism ; this Pharisee 
 followed Pharisaic prescriptions with the ''most strait" 
 observance. So far as punctilious keeping of Mosaic 
 ritual and the customary piety of his time could go, his 
 
 < *' righteousness, which was of the law, was blameless." 
 Nor was this, in his case, as in the case of so many in 
 his time, a solemn farce, cloaking secret immorality. 
 This young man's soul was true, and it was bent on being 
 righteous with its whole might. He thirsted after 
 
 V righteousness with a noble thirst which only very noble 
 natures know. So far, therefore, as he knew or under- 
 stood what would please God, he laboured in utter 
 sincerity to please Him. But the law, as Judaism ex- 
 pounded it, was a very shallow thing, and the sort 
 
 ^ Compare the following : Phil. iii. 7 ; Gal. i. 14 ; Acts xxii. 3, 
 xxvi. 5. 
 
SAUL'S CONVEBSION. 297 
 
 of righteousness which it required was quite within the 
 reach of any man in earnest. Saul was singularly free '^ 
 by temperament from the lower appetites.^ The currents 
 of his nature ran towards a rigorous and proud morality. ^ 
 To such a man Pharisaic vktue was easy. He kept the 
 letter of the law. He observed every detail of ritual. 
 He shunned Gentile defilement. He boasted in his know- 
 ledge of God's will. He thanked God he was not as 
 
 -o other men.2 Such a school of morality, a morality of the 
 letter and not of the spirit, is a very hotbed of pride. 
 These were the days in which young Saul was " alive 
 
 ^l without the law," going about to establish his own blame- 
 less righteousness, and trusting to his own merits as a 
 
 "* ** gain," in which, beyond others, 3 he might safely boast. 
 It is easy to see that to such a man the preaching of 
 repentance and faith in the cross of a crucified Deliverer 
 
 ^ from sin must have been gall and wormwood. The new 
 sect insisted that Saul and his school had misread their 
 Bibles and misunderstood God ; that their boasted right- 
 eousness was nothing ; that they had no less need to 
 repent and confess their sins than other men ; and that, 
 so far from being favourites of heaven or children of 
 God, they could only enter into God's kingdom by the 
 help of One Whom they and their agents had persecuted 
 unto death. To Saul, as an orthodox Jew, all this must 
 have appeared to be flat blasphemy against Moses and the w- 
 God of Moses. To Saul, as a self-satisfied and righteous 
 Pharisee, it was like a personal insult. Accordingly, with 
 his usual impetuosity, he flung himself into the work of 
 stamping out a heresy which, on public and personal 
 ' See 1 Cor. vii. 7. 
 ' Compare again Eom. ii. 17 ff, x. 3, vii. 10 ; Phil. iii. 
 ^ Cf. his words, •' I more," in Phil. iii. 4. 
 
298 FBOM JUBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 grounds alike, he had such good reason to hate. He led 
 the inquisition after suspected persons. He voted, as we 
 have seen, for the death of the arrested. He hunted the 
 sect from town to town. He volunteered his services to 
 the Sanhedrim as a commissioner to purge even Damascus 
 from the taint of Nazaritism. 
 
 All this while I think it probable that Saul's mind was 
 not quite at ease. It may be too much to say that he 
 lashed himself into greater rage against the new " Way,"^ 
 or pushed his restless hostility to an extreme, just on 
 purpose to crush down secret misgivings which began to 
 stir in his bosom. Nor can we now discover how far the 
 holy face of dying Stephen, lit up with the light of God, 
 may have haunted and troubled the memory of the man 
 who guarded the robes of the witnesses. But at least one 
 can gather from those first suggestive words which Jesus 
 spoke to him, while he lay prone, with muffled face, upon 
 the road, that all had not been quite serene in the soul 
 of the persecutor. Oxen do not kick back against the 
 prickings of the ox-goad ,2 without feeling pain and restless- 
 ness. Jesus must have been before this trying to guide 
 into the right ** way " His furious and mistaken assailant. 
 A few words heard in controversy with Stephen, it might 
 be, or some meek victim's patience, a secret craving of 
 Saul's own deepest heart, or a breath in quiet hour from 
 the Spirit of God, — something must have stirred within 
 this man, who appeared to other men so resolute, and 
 
 '^ His name for it at this time. See Acts ix. 2 (xiii. 10 ?), xvi. 17, 
 xxii. 4, xxiv. 14. Cf. Luke's own use of the same expression in 
 xviii. 25, 26, xix. 9, 23, xxiv. 22. The complete form is " God's way 
 of salvation," as opposed to the Hebrew "way." 
 
 2 The words, " It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks," are 
 genuine in Paul's own account, Acts xxvi. 14, whence they have 
 been improperly transferred to the Beceived Text of ix. 5, 
 
SAUL'S CONVEBSION. 299 
 
 wlio told himself that he was so unquestionably in the 
 right, a suspicion or a fear that, possibly, after all, the 
 ^ Nazarenes might not be altogether wrong. Against such 
 prickings Saul had kicked. Who, from his own ex- 
 perience, cannot understand Saul's case ? To whom has 
 it never happened that, when he felt well contented with 
 his religious state, and pleased to think he was so near 
 to heaven's favour, some ghastly doubt looked up of a 
 sudden to trouble him, — some fear which refused to be 
 reasoned away, that after all his standing might not turn 
 out to be so very safe, or his religion so very perfect ? 
 Such occasional misgivings, promptly repelled, leave no 
 i trace behind, nor do they alter in the least the main 
 "^^ purpose and course of a man's life. It is possible that 
 Saul scarcely admitted to himself that he had misgivings. 
 He certainly would have admitted them to no one else. 
 His persecuting ardour burned none the less hot for them. 
 Having caught sight of that scene, one of earth's loveliest, 
 where the old delicious city of Damascus gleams white by 
 its watercourses among green orchards, ravishing the 
 eyes of the traveller weary with days of toilsome march 
 across untilled wastes ; having, I say, caught, a little 
 before noon, his first glimpse of this, from the heights 
 which bound upon the south the gem-like valley of the 
 Abana, Saul pressed on, long past the usual hour for halt, 
 pressed on beneath the fiercest midday sun, eager only 
 to do the God of Israel service by cleansing so fair a bit 
 of earth from those who were perverting the faith of 
 Jehovah's chosen ones. 
 
 Suddenly, in a blaze of glory which drowned the sun at 
 
 noon, the Man appeared Whom Saul believed to be a 
 
 ^ dead impostor. The shock which this apparition gave to 
 
300 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH, 
 
 his whole nature was as severe as it was sudden. Every- 
 thing speaks of instantaneous and utter collapse. His 
 physical frame felt it in being cast powerless to the earth, 
 in the blinding of his eyes through excess of light, and in 
 the feebleness under which for days he lay. It is to be 
 traced also in those few and timid words which he was 
 able to stammer out : ''Who art Thou, Lord ? " <* What 
 shall I do, Lord ? " These are the words of one who is 
 broken down, not in physical fright only, but by a blow 
 which has snapped the strength of old pride on which all 
 his former life rested, and thus for the moment crushed 
 the man into the helplessness of a child. When we see 
 him rise, staggering, groping, humbly letting his scared 
 attendants guide him, confused and bewildered, to his 
 lodgings, we have a picture in his outward of his inward 
 state. The discovery of one single fact had undermined 
 in a moment the whole foundation on which Saul had 
 been building from his boyhood — was now working hard 
 in his manhood. That fact was this — That the Nazarene 
 is risen : is God ! It took three whole days and nights of 
 solitary mental struggle and spiritual agony before the 
 strong man worked his way, by God's help, to the cordial 
 acceptance of this fact, and of all that it meant for him ; 
 yet, from the very first instant on the road, he must have 
 felt, at least, that it made his faith, his religion, his j)ride, 
 his whole life, his very self, an utter and sheer mistake. If 
 Jesus is the Lord, he, Saul, had always been hopelessly 
 and fatally wi'ong. Nay, it may take more than three 
 days' solitude, it may take years in Arabia, and a world of v 
 thinking, before he will quite recover himself, or build up 
 a new life into such strength and compactness as the old 
 one had. But at least the old is shattered at a blow, and 
 
SAUL'S CONVERSION. 301 
 
 for ever. It rises, it lives, no more. One look into a dead 
 man's — what do I say? — into a living Man's face, has 
 done that. Jesus lives, and Saul dies. Gamaliel's pupil, 
 Sanhedrim inquisitor, blameless Pharisee, slayer of 
 Stephen, — this old man is dead. 
 
 "What those meditations were which filled up the three 
 days before he recovered himself sufficiently to pray, we 
 do not certainly know. I think we shall not greatly err, 
 however, if we conceive the chief experience of these 
 three days to have been the discovery of a spiritual law, 
 which condemned his legal righteousness as (in his own 
 words) '* loss," and " dung."^ Nor is it very hard to 
 guess how this discovery might be made. Saul needed 
 no man now to tell him that his way of pleasing God had 
 been a hideous blunder, since it had led him to persecute 
 God's Christ. But if such punctilious legal obedience as 
 he had been straining after was proved to be consistent 
 with the grossest possible breach of the law in its spirit, 
 then Saul's dialectic was acute enough to see that it must 
 be the spirit, and not the letter, of the law in which the 
 secret of righteousness has to be sought. Nay, there was 
 little need for dialectic. The spiritual sense of the man, 
 purged now from pride and illumined by the Spirit of 
 God, saw what false education and self-righteousness had j 
 hitherto kept him from seeing, — that "the law is spi- / 
 ritual." The moment that spiritual law of love to God 
 and man, a law of heart-motives and not overt acts, came 
 to him, sin revived, and he died.^ Back through all his 
 past life his memory must have gone ranging during that 
 awful interval. Bit by bit what he had called ''righteous- 
 ness " became to his astonished soul ungodliness, pride, 
 ' See Phil. iii. 8. » Cf. Kom. yii. 9. 
 
302 FBOM JEBTJSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 uncharity, sin; what he had called "gain" appeared 
 utter loss. In the end, when the need of atoning blood, 
 of divine forgiveness, and of a new spirit of life grew 
 within his soul into clear consciousness, he began to look 
 up out of his prostration and collapse. God began to 
 ^ reveal His Son in him. Hopeful desires formed them- 
 selves. His mind reverted for help to the names of those 
 very disciples whom he had come to arrest. In a sweet 
 vision he seemed to see one of these friends of Jesus 
 come in to him, where he lay in his darkness, to give him 
 light. Inner light, more even than the light of the eyes, 
 his soul craved ; and, grown meek now through all this 
 
 -^ prolonged spiritual struggle, behold, he prayed ! He 
 Whose first coming in person, by the way, had brought 
 judgment with it, darkness, and feebleness, and almost 
 death, came now, a second time, by the gentle words of 
 His servant and the blessed sacraments of His Church. 
 So coming, He brought light and peace and the hope of a 
 new and better life. 
 
 I have said that no parallel, rarely any approximation, 
 is to be found in later conversions to this of Saul. Yet 
 in one inward, and in one outward respect, it has been 
 often paralleled. Substantially it is repeated in the 
 history of ten thousand souls. The same appalling dis- 
 covery that the exterior observances of piety and virtue, 
 
 I which one took for righteousness before God, are no 
 righteousness in His sight at all, but ^' filthy rags," ^ 
 unspiritual and unprofitable ; this same discovery has 
 been made times upon times since Paul made it. It is 
 a common type of conversion among the well-trained, well- 
 conducted of every Christian age. And though it is not 
 * Isa. Ixiv. 6. 
 
SAUL'S CONVEBSION. 303 
 
 often that God's disclosure of it bursts upon any one with 
 such a violent catastrophe as we have here, rending to its 
 base a strong man's strength, yet it will be the wisdom of 
 us all to search and see whether or not we have, in any 
 fashion or at any time, made the Pauline discovery and 
 learnt the Pauline lesson. 
 
 In another respect this story is not exceptional. One 
 unexpected day has often revolutionised a life. We all live 
 in the jpresence of spiritual forces which may at any moment 
 get unlooked-for access to us. A stray word, a new acquain- 
 tance, the book we open, or some sudden disaster, may 
 prove the very turning of our history. None can tell how 
 events, which are diligently planned for quite other ends, 
 may really be, in God's hands, leading us blindly up to the 
 predestined moment which is to make all things for us 
 new. Yet it is no man's business to remain an idle 
 waiter on such critical moments of providence, since to 
 all the question shall be at last put — " "Why hast thou 
 kicked against My goads ?" It is in ordinary quiet hours, 
 through every-day instruments, and within our own secret 
 hearts, that for the most part God is now striving to 
 prick men up to duty and guide them into the right way. 
 Nor is there any room to expect that, if we stifle such 
 interior suggestions of truth, or rebel against that guiding 
 hand, Christ will ever meet us, as He met Paul, in a shape 
 we cannot resist, to turn us by sheer force, as it were, from 
 our mistaken path. We know enough, and we have re- 
 minders enough of what we know. Therefore let us hear 
 His voice, which, if we will hear, we may; and yield to 
 His touch, which, if we only choose, we shall feel. 
 
XVI. 
 
 %fkx €anbmxm, 
 
 DE OVE, PASTOR. 
 
 21 
 
Acts ix. 10-80. Compare Acts xxii. 12-21. 
 
Revised Vebsion. 
 
 But there ivas a certain disciple in Damascus, hy name 
 Ananias ; and the Lord said to him in a vision, 
 *' Ananias ;" and he said, " Behold, I am here, LordJ*^ 
 And the Lord to him : 
 
 ** Arise, go to the lane which is called * Straight,* 
 and seek in the house of Judas, Sa^d hy name, of 
 Tarsus. For behold, he is praying, and saw a man, 
 Ananias hy name, coming in and laying his hand on 
 him, so that he might recover sight," 
 
 And Ananias ansivered : 
 
 ** Lord, I heard from many about this man, tvhat 
 evils he did to Thy saints in Jerusalem; and here he 
 hath authority from the chief priests to hind all who 
 are callers upon Thy name.''* 
 
 But the Lord said to him . 
 
 ** Go, for this man is to Me a vessel of election, for 
 the purpose of bearing My name before both Gentiles 
 and kings and children of Israel. For I [Myself] 
 luill show him what things he must suffer on account of 
 My name.''* 
 
 So Ananias ivent away, and entered into the house, 
 and laying his hands on him, said : 
 
 ** Saul, brother, the Lord has sent me — Jesus Who 
 ajopeared to thee in the ivay by which thou earnest, so 
 that thou mightst recover sight and be filled with the 
 Holy Ghost:* 
 
 21 * 
 
And immediately there fell from his eyes as it ivere 
 scales ; and he recovered sights and rose and was hap- 
 tizedy and having taken food teas strengthened. 
 
 And he was with the disciples ivho were m Damascus 
 some days, and immediately in the synagogues he 'pro- 
 claimed Jesus, that He is the Son of God. But all 
 who heard were amazed, and said: 
 
 ** Is not this he who wasted in Jerusalem the callers 
 on this Name ? and has come here for this purpose, 
 that he might bring them bound to the chief priests ? " 
 
 But Said went on strengthening the more, and con- 
 founded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that 
 this is the Christ. But when a good many days were 
 fulfilled, the Jews plotted together to despatch him ; but 
 their plot became known to Said. They ivere also 
 watching the gates both day and night, so that they 
 might despatch him ; but his disciples took and let him 
 down by night through the wall, lowering [him] in 
 a basket. And when he arrived at Jerusalem, he at- 
 tempted to join himself to the disciples, and they were 
 all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. 
 But Barnabas took and brought him to the apostles, and 
 related to them how m the way he saw the Lord, and 
 that He spoke to him, and hoiv in Damascus he had 
 been bold in the name of Jesus. And he was with them 
 going in and going out at Jerusalem. Being bold in 
 the name of the Lord, he was both speaking and dis- 
 jmting with the Hellenists. But they were taking in 
 hand to despatch him : and ivhen the brethren were 
 aware of that, they brought him down to Ccesarea, and 
 sent him on to Tarsus, 
 
XVI. 
 
 SAUL was still lying blind and weak upon his bed, only 
 the tumult of a spiritual convulsion, the inner struggles 
 of a new birth, were over ; so that he lay placid and 
 humbled, praying not without hope. Lying thus, he was 
 aware of some one's hands ^ laid gently on his head, and 
 a kindly voice just over him said: "Brother Saul, the 
 Lord sent me — Jesus, Who appeared to thee in the way 
 as thou camest — that thou mightest receive back sight 
 and be filled with the Holy Spirit." Opening his eyes, 
 from which it seemed to him as if scales fell at that word,^ 
 they rested on the same face which he had just been con- 
 templating in fancy in a pleasant vision that had come to 
 him through the darkness ; and Ananias, the messenger 
 of the Lord, was at once no stranger, but a brother, wel- 
 come as an angel of God. The last face seen before 
 noonday turned to midnight, had been the face of the 
 wonderful Divine Man, Whom, in His saints, Saul had 
 ignorantly persecuted. The first face seen, when sweet 
 morning light revisited his eyes, was the face of one whom 
 Jesus sent, or rather, in whom Jesus came, to save. If 
 the Lord was present in the saints of His Church to suffer 
 
 • Or " hand." In ver. 12 the readings vary. Tischendorf prefers 
 X^ip9; but A, B, C, E, and Sin. have pi. In ver. 17 it is certainly plural. 
 ^ So we may take the wcrfi. See Hackett on Acts, in loc. 
 
310 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 with them, and in their persons to he scourged and slain, 
 He was no less present in His Church memhers to work 
 through them, and by their words to bless with comfort 
 and peace the penitent persecutor. At the voice of a plain 
 disciple, otherwise unknown to history, Jesus restored 
 sight to the eyes which alone of mortal eyes had been 
 permitted to look upon His glory. By the hands of the 
 same disciple, Jesus imparted the gift of the Holy Ghost 
 to a " chosen vessel," Who in spiritual gifts was not to be 
 behind the very chiefest apostles. Ananias baptized St. 
 Paul, as if to teach that the Church is instinct with life 
 through all its true members, however lowly. Jesus, Who 
 is everywhere in His body, pours His Spirit through its 
 meanest parts. The least may be His organ of ministry 
 to the greatest ; or rather, no instrument is little when 
 Christ's hand wields it, nor any soul mean whom Christ 
 inhabits. 
 
 Baptism and the communication of the Spirit through 
 imposition of hands were the usual rites by which a new 
 convert passed into the full fellowship of the Church ; and 
 they meant exactly the same thing to Saul as to any other 
 convert. He made the customary profession of faith, in- 
 voking the name of Jesus as his Lord,* and received the 
 customary seal of the forgiveness of his sins.^ There was 
 only this peculiarity about the baptism of Saul, that it 
 was administered at the express command of Jesus. In 
 this, as in everything else connected with His apostle's 
 call, the Master acted throughout in person. *' Though 
 Jesus Himself baptized not — but His disciple," 3 yet it 
 
 ' See Acts xxii. 16. The reading is avrov ; but the gloss, tov 
 Kvp'iov 'hjaov, shows how the early Church understood it, and no doubt 
 rightly. ^ Ibid, "wash away thy sins." 
 
 3 Cf. John iv. 2. 
 
AFTER CONVEBSION. 311 
 
 was not on His own responsibility that Ananias ventured to 
 number among tlie brethren a man who, two days before, 
 had been their keenest foe. It was on the same warrant 
 as Peter afterwards had to receive Cornelius — the express 
 orders of the King. Thus, in those days, did the lately 
 departed Chief continue to interpose His personal direction, 
 when critical moments arrived in the administration of 
 His young Church. 
 
 Yet while Saul's baptism meant the same as that of 
 any other convert, it is very possible that he submitted to 
 that solemn sacrament with a far deeper insight into its 
 meaning than most of the early converts attained. Ex- 
 pressions in his letters ^ show what importance he attached 
 to it at a later period. If we recall the experience through 
 which he had just been passing, it will appear that even 
 at the time it must have come to him charged with a world 
 of spiritual significance. That it meant the washing away 
 of the guilt of sin was plain ; and it was a vast change for 
 Saul the Pharisee to confess himself a guilty sinner, in 
 need of washing. But the consciousness of sin with which 
 Saul had been penetrated during these last three days, was 
 not by any means exhausted in the simple recognition of 
 the fact that he, like other men, had done things which he 
 ought not to have done. It was not just through recalling 
 isolated actions, by which he had literally transgressed a 
 command of God, that Saul came to feel himself guilty. 
 To some men, whose sinning has been of another type 
 than his, the conviction of guilt does come in this way. 
 Flagrant misdeeds, wilful and aggravated, and blacker 
 than the rest of life, stand up before the consciences of 
 such men to condemn them. Saul, however, had been 
 I See Bom. vi. 3-6 ; Gal. iii. 27 ; Col. ii. 12 ; Tit. iii. 5. 
 
312 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 finding out, not so mucli that he had done sins, as that he 
 was sin ; that his very nature, not at its worst, hut at its 
 hest, was flesh ; that in it dwelt absolutely no good thing ; 
 that it was impossible for it to please God ; that indeed its 
 essence was enmity against God. He found that the more 
 he had tried to serve God the less he had loved Him. 
 Love alone, he now saw, could be the fulfilling of the real 
 law, that law which is spiritual ; whereas, in all his own 
 attempts to keep the law, there had been no touch or 
 breath of love : only pride, and fear, and dislike. He found 
 that the more closely he apprehended the spirit in 
 which a true son of God must serve his Father, the more 
 unattainable became that filial spirit ; since every attempt 
 to drag himself, under the constraint of divine commands, 
 to do what is commanded, only provoked him either to 
 slavish dread or to rebellious resistance. All that was in 
 him rose up and refused to be subject to the law of God, 
 once it was perceived to be a law of love. 
 
 Now, where sin has been realised in this fashion as the 
 very principle of one's unrenewed nature, nothing will 
 satisfy the soul short of the destruction of that old man 
 and the regeneration of a new. Propitiation through 
 blood indeed there must be for the remission of sins that 
 are past ; " peace through the blood of the cross ; "' and 
 Saul was now for the first time grasping the ' ' faithful 
 saying" that " Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
 sinners." 2 Yet even this will not meet the case unless the 
 principle of the old life — the inward law of dislike to God 
 and His will — be at the same time slain, and a new power 
 of spiritual love and childhke obedience created within 
 the soul. This, and nothing short of this, was what Saul 
 ' See Eom. iii. 25 ; Col. i. 20. ^ 1 Tim. i. 15. 
 
AFTEB CONVERSION. 313 
 
 had begun to find in the cross of the Nazarene. In it his 
 sin was condemned and slain. In it the law was visibly 
 satisfied, magnified, and abolished. In it death even was 
 put to death, and the sinner redeemed from the curse. 
 But more than all these, in it his own enmity against God 
 was slain. It is impossible to dislike any more a God 
 Who is no longer threatening or commanding on pain of 
 death, but Who, for His great love wherewith He loved us 
 when we were dead in sins, has died for us, to justify us 
 freely by His grace. The old carnal mind, which is not 
 subject to the law of God, cannot survive this death of the 
 Son of God. The cross kills it. Saul — the former carnal, 
 self-righteous, God - disliking Saul — was crucified with 
 Christ. Nevertheless he lived, because Christ lived. If 
 the cross had proved fatal to his old self-righteous life, 
 Jesus risen became the source of a new one. He will 
 henceforth be a limb of Jesus. He will let Jesus animate 
 him. He will lend himself to the service, he will become 
 the slave of Him Who loved him and gave Himself for 
 him. He will know nothing now — do nothing — boast of 
 nothing — but what is done in him through the Son of 
 God, by Whom, while ignorantly persecuting Him, he 
 has been so suddenly and marvellously snatched in over- 
 abounding mercy from eternal death. 
 
 What a mighty revolution did it symbolise, that bap- 
 tism at the hands of Ananias ! From darkness to light 
 — from death to life — from Satan to God ! what words of 
 contrast could then or afterwards describe the magnitude 
 of a change which turned the whole nature of one of the 
 strongest men God ever made, to run in precisely the 
 opposite direction ; which made him love with passionate 
 devotion One Whom he had been persecuting with fiercest 
 
314 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 hate ; which transformed a Pharisee into a Saint ; and 
 prepared the man who was ravaging God's flock like a 
 bloodthirsty wolf, to become a good shepherd, wilhng to 
 lay down his life for the sheep. Surely it was out of the 
 remembrance of his own life-crisis that Paul wrote these 
 words to Corinth : " If any man be in Christ, he is a new 
 creature : old things are passed away : behold, all things 
 are become new."^ 
 
 There was still, however, a great deal to come and go 
 before Saul could be called ready for the special work to 
 which God had destined him. Kevolutions in spiritual 
 history are often enough abrupt, rapid, and decisive, as 
 this one was ; yet are they almost always succeeded by a 
 more slow and gradual development. In the words which 
 the Lord addressed in vision to Ananias, and which were 
 by him communicated to Saul,^ it was foretold that he 
 should bear witness to what he had seen of Christ's glory. 
 This function he was not slow to begin to discharge at 
 Damascus. But something had also been said of a mission 
 to heathen nations, in the execution of which he was both 
 to encounter serious perils and to testify for his Master 
 before the face of kings. The destined dignity of the 
 apostolate, and the exceptional character of his future work 
 as the Apostle of the Gentiles, are plainly enough fore- 
 shadowed in these words of Christ at that early date. It 
 is doubtful, however, how far Saul himself comprehended 
 their significance at the time. It rather appears from 
 
 I 2 Cor. V. 17. 
 
 ^ See Acts ix. 15, where they are spoken by the Lord to Ananias, 
 and in xxii. 14 repeated by Ananias to Saul. In xxvi. 16, they 
 appear as if spoken immediately by the Lord to Saul on the road, 
 the middle agent being dropped from the narrative. 
 
AFTER CONVEBSION, 315 
 
 the story, as if it was only after a pretty long iDeriod of 
 probation and schooling that he was led up through various 
 providences to the great task for which the Lord had 
 destined him. One finds no evidence even of apostohc 
 authority, certainly none of any ministry among Gentiles, 
 until after Saul had been for. some time settled at home 
 in his native town. Yet we know, on his own undoubted 
 evidence,^ that three years had elapsed from the date of 
 his conversion before he paid that first hasty visit to Je- 
 rusalem which ended in his being sent to Tarsus. Even 
 if we understand these " three years," after the Hebrew 
 manner of computation, as meaning only one entire year 
 and part of two others, we get an interval longer by a 
 good deal than the narrative of St. Luke would lead the 
 reader to guess. Over this section of Paul's life, indeed, 
 Luke hastens so cursorily that we are compelled to supple- 
 ment his account from other sources. Why he does so I 
 confess myself unable to decide. It could hardly be from 
 ignorance that the sojourn in Arabia was passed by. Luke 
 had been Paul's companion too long not to have heard of 
 so singular and weighty a passage in his history. It cer- 
 tainly was not from ignorance that the vision in the temple 
 was left out at this point, since it is related in a subsequent 
 chapter.^ I can only suppose that the various steps by 
 which the future missionary-apostle was trained, through 
 retirement, experience, and private revelations, for his life- 
 work, did not appear to this writer and to Him Who guided 
 the writing, to be needful for our understanding of the 
 Church's history. Not the less is it our duty to make the 
 most we can of what has been told, endeavouring, by 
 comparison of other passages, to understand how the 
 
 » Gal. i. 18. 2 Acts xxii. 17, ff. 
 
316 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 Lord completed what He began on tlie Damascus road — 
 the preparation of His *' chosen vessel." 
 
 After a few days spent in quiet Christian intercourse 
 with his new brethren, the little flock which he had come 
 from Jerusalem to scatter, it was deemed advisable that 
 Saul should publicly commit himself to the new cause by 
 announcing in the synagogues the grounds of his conver- 
 sion. He did so by proclaiming to his astonished coun- 
 trymen that Jesus Whom he had come to persecute was 
 certainly nothing less than the Son of God. This first 
 preaching of Saul would seem to have been less contro- 
 versial than it afterwards became. Perhaps it was literally 
 not much more than a full recital of what he had 
 seen and heard. What had taken place outside the city 
 gate must have been known to the whole Jewish popula- 
 tion, so far as the outward facts of it went, at least. The 
 blaze of light, the inarticulate voice, the sudden blindness 
 of the commissioner — every one had heard of these strange 
 things from Saul's companions, and every one desired to 
 know the explanation of them. By simply telling, on his 
 faith as an honest man, how he had actually seen the 
 crucified Teacher of Nazareth and heard Him speak, 
 Saul could, in the first instance, preach Christ most 
 effectually. It is no wonder that the Jews were struck 
 dumb with utter wonder. Had any fanatical adherent of 
 the new sect produced a tale of marvellous interviews with 
 the dead Man Whom they worshipped, it would have been 
 easy to set it down to a heated fancy. But when the 
 rabid foe of the sect, the trusted emissary of the Sanhe- 
 drim, whose prepossessions ran no less violently against 
 such a delusion than his shrewd and powerful intellect, 
 seemed to secure him from it — when this man came for- 
 
AFTER C0NVEB8I0N. 817 
 
 ward to say that the dead Jesus was alive, that he had 
 himself both seen and spoken with Him, and that the new 
 sect was right in worshipping Him as Jehovah's Son, the 
 Lord of Glory, it was not so easy to set such testimony 
 aside. A plain unvarnished tale of personal experience in 
 religion, even when that experience has nothing marvel- 
 lous about it, will often arrest and impress persons who 
 are incredulous of spiritual truth. Only, unless the 
 hearer have an honest and willing heart, such impressions 
 are likely to be very transient. Paul soon found that his 
 countrymen began to listen to his narrative, with less 
 astonishment indeed than at first, but with not a whit 
 more faith in it. It is a very frequent trial to new con- 
 verts, that what has struck them so sharply and seems to 
 themselves unspeakably certain and precious, meets with 
 indifference or scepticism from everybody else. To Saul 
 this was only the first of a thousand trials of a like sort 
 he was fated to meet -with ere his work was done. On 
 him, however, it seems to have had (what indeed it has on 
 most robust and manly natures) a bracing influence. " He 
 gathered strength the more." He dropped the merely per- 
 sonal testimony, which was losing whatever force it origi- 
 nally possessed, and out of the Old Testament writings, by 
 collation of texts and force of reasoning, he sought next to 
 shut up the intelligent Jews of Damascus to the conclusion 
 that Jesus must be their promised Messiah. Utilising his 
 rabbinical scholarship in a way he never expected, and 
 borrowing those very arguments against which, when 
 Stephen used them in the Cilician synagogue at Jerusalem, 
 he had stoutly argued, Saul made his first essay in that 
 Christian exegesis of prophecy in which he was afterwards 
 to have such ample practice and surpassing success. 
 
318 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 It may even have been tliis attempt to explain the 
 Scriptures in harmony with his new creed, which first 
 suggested to him a retirement from Damascus for 
 purposes of study and reflection. At any rate, we know 
 that he did withdraw into Arabia, and there are some 
 things which make it probable that in Arabia he spent the 
 greater portion of the first three years after his conversion. 
 It would not need a long interval after his return to 
 Damascus in fresh force, to stir up the Jews to that plot 
 from which he escaped so narrowly ; and one can better 
 understand the suspicion of the Jerusalem Church on his 
 arrival there, if, since his conversion, he had been for the 
 most part living a retired life in an out-of-the-way place, 
 than if he had already been for years a public preacher of 
 the faith at Damascus. This would be the case, whether 
 Saul was occupied with evangelistic work in Arabia, or 
 only secluded himself for meditation and prayer. On 
 that point we have nothing but probabilities to guide us, 
 and each reader will lean in the direction to which his 
 own temperament inclines him. If any very active and 
 ardent disciple thinks so fiery a preacher as Saul could 
 not keep silence for a year or two, that he might commune 
 with his own heart and with God, I shall not dispute. 
 At the same time, the parallel cases of Moses, Elijah, 
 the Baptist, and (beyond all parallel) of the Lord Jesus 
 Himself, together with the need which so many of God's 
 most eminent servants in later times have felt, of long and 
 sometimes of frequent retirement to those lonely retreats 
 where the fire of spiritual enthusiasm can best be 
 cherished into a glow through still heart-communings 
 with the Eternal and His truth — all this persuades me to 
 think that his steady zeal, which was to burn unconsumed 
 
AFTEB CONVEBSION. 319 
 
 for thirty years, no less than the profound and systematic 
 knowledge of God's whole earlier and later revelation, 
 which made St. Paul the teacher of the New Testament 
 Church, was won in solitary study, prayer, and revelations 
 from heaven, when, in the hack wastes of Arahia, he 
 nourished his mighty heart for the labours and sorrows of 
 his ministry. The St. Paul whom we know in the later 
 chapters of Acts, and in the marvellous epistles which follow 
 in the canon, is a very altered man from the youthful and 
 unchastened Saul whom we have up to this moment fol- 
 lowed. One need hardly scruple to credit his so well 
 authenticated, and yet so strangely concealed, sojourn in 
 Arabia with a large share in that alteration. It may, to be 
 sm-e, seem a superfluous training to some men, in an age 
 so busy, social, and superficial as our own, — an age in 
 which hardly any one ever is alone, or, if he be, deems it 
 a calamity against which he must provide by paltry pas- 
 times, or from which he must take refuge in sheer want 
 of thought. To persons whose own character has run to 
 shallowness through perpetual contact with many people 
 and many things, m who never sat down to think alone for 
 one good hour of any single thing which is worth thinking 
 about, it may possibly appear absolute waste of time to 
 send this '' chosen vessel," like a hermit, into Arabia, while 
 the world was waiting for its Christian message. For all 
 that, there are only two ways of ripening to their best men 
 of deep and wide natures, or rather one way to which 
 two things belong, and these are solitude and thought. If 
 the soul you propose to rear is to be, not great only, but 
 great for God — which is the greatest of all — and be fit to 
 do His highest work on earth, then must you add a third 
 thing to th3S2 two, and say, solitude, thought, and prayer, v^ 
 
320 FBOM JEBTJSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 Witli a gospel wliicli lie had ''neither received of man, 
 nor been taught, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ," ^ 
 Saul returned at length to Damascus. Still the way was 
 not yet clear for his special apostolic work. To the inward 
 fitness of the man there were still to be joined the public 
 authentication and destination of the apostle. He was as 
 yet unknown to the Church, and the special sphere of 
 his labour was unknown even to himself. No doubt Saul 
 must by this time have been aware that he was to play 
 a great part, and be a special messenger of his Master. 
 Yet we find him waiting to be led, by the hand of Divine 
 Providence, into that particular place where his work was 
 to lie, just as we all, if we are honest servants of God, 
 must learn His will for ourselves through the develop- 
 ments of His providence. He tried Damascus, but that 
 field of labour was soon closed against him. From a 
 Jewish plot of assassination, which was the more likely 
 to succeed because it could use the military force of the 
 Ethnarch, who happened at the moment to hold the 
 city for an Arabian chieftain,^ Saul escaped by night 
 through a window which opened on the outside of the city 
 wall.3 It was the first of many " hairbreadth 'scapes." 
 He went to Jerusalem. There no door seemed at first to 
 open ; for the disciples remembered his activity in per- 
 secution three years before, and were suspicious. Even 
 when the kind offices of his friend Barnabas, the Cypriote, 
 introduced him to Peter and James, the only apostles 
 then in the Holy City, and when through their assurances 
 
 • Gal. i. 12. 2 2 Cor. xi. 32. 
 
 ^ Either projecting over the wall on which it was built, as in illus- 
 tration in Conybeare and Howson ; or a window pierced through the 
 city wall, as Hackett saw them in Damascus (Com. in loc.) and Thom- 
 son at Sidon {Land and Book, p. 97). 
 
AFTEB CONVERSION. 321 
 
 the Church consented to welcome him, the door thus 
 opened was in a few days violently closed again. Saul 
 had set his heart on repairing his former ravages, by 
 preaching Christ where he had first made himself con- 
 spicuous by persecuting Christians, at the focus and head- 
 quarters of Jewish bigotry. Back therefore to the 
 familiar synagogues, in which he had disputed with 
 Stephen, he went, eager to take up Stephen's broken 
 work. He seems to have hoped with the hopefulness of 
 young and inexperienced zeal, that his testimony would 
 count for something with those men by whose side he had 
 in his ignorance fought against God. If ever an honest 
 convert might expect to persuade his former friends, it 
 was Saul. Before he had been more than a fortnight in 
 Jerusalem, his old Hellenistic comrades were doing to 
 him as he and they together had done to Stephen ; " they 
 were going about to slay him." It was not the danger to 
 his life which made this trial so exceedingly bitter. It 
 was the discovery that, after all, his words for his Master 
 carried no weight, his ministry found no ** free course." 
 It was the disappointment of his cherished craving to 
 win from death those very men among his misguided 
 countrymen whom he himself had helped to misguide. 
 He was depressed, baffled, perplexed. The Lord had bade 
 him preach, and promised to use him for great ends. 
 Yet in Damascus the Jews, in Jerusalem the Hellenists, 
 refuse him and hate him. His words find no entrance ; 
 .his work bears no fruit. The brethren were urging him 
 to flee ; but to what end ? Where can he look for hotter 
 hope of success ? What would the Lord have him to do ? 
 In this state of mind Saul had gone up to the famiHar 
 temple courts, to pray for light and guidance, when in 
 
 22 
 
322 FBOM JEBV SALEM TO ANTIOCH, 
 
 a trance he received from the Lord Jesus a new indication 
 of his appointed mission. In answer to his prayer, it 
 seemed as if Jesus stood before him in the temple ^ and 
 bade him do what the brethren urged, by quitting Jeru- 
 salem at once : " They will not receive thy testimony 
 concerning Me." It proves how much Saul's heart was 
 bent on succeeding with his work, in that before all other 
 places, that in the teeth of so express an assurance, he 
 ventured to urge reasons why his testimony might be 
 expected to avail in Jerusalem. Just because they knew 
 so well how he had imprisoned and beat the believers, 
 what part, too, he had taken in the martyrdom of Stephen, 
 Saul hoped that his own conversion might become the 
 instrument of theirs. A second time, and more impera- 
 tively than before, came the hard word, ** Depart." This 
 time, however, there was graciously opened to the ser- 
 vant a clearer glimpse into the work towards which he 
 was being blindly led or driven by the Master. " Depart," 
 said the Lord, "for I wiU send thee far hence unto the 
 Gentiles." So he arose and suffered the brethren to lead 
 him forth quickly to C^esarea, and thence, for greater 
 safety, home to Tarsus. Thus doors were shut one after 
 another, that at last the feet of the great Missionary 
 might be ready to enter in at one undreamt-of door, 
 which should by - and - by be opened : the door behind 
 which there lay in unvisited darkness the mighty civilised 
 peoples of the west — Greece and Eome and Gaul, and the 
 hope of a new Christendom that should be, and the life 
 of all the world. 
 
 * In the same place where Isaiah saw His glory (Isa. vi. ; John xii. 
 41) so long before, and received his fruitless mission to prophesy to 
 his unheeding countrymen, did the Messiah discharge Saul from 
 that vain errand, and send him to more productive heathen fields. 
 
AFTEB CONVEBSION. 323 
 
 Wliile thus one messenger was being i^repared of God, 
 and kept in readiness at Tarsus, he who held the keys 
 for Christ was elsewhere being led against his will to 
 open the kingdom to the Gentiles at Caesarea. 
 
 Dare we imagine that there is no Divinity Who shapes 
 the ends of men ? or shall we doubt whether the hands 
 which hold the threads of earthly providence be after all 
 those very hands which were "nailed for our advantage 
 to the bitter tree " ? 
 
 22 '^ 
 
XVII. 
 
 Auyfipu) viiuiv kv vTro}.ivr](rii T7]v tiXiKpivij didvoiav fivt]<jB')']vai tcuv 
 Trpoitpr]ii'ivu)V pr]p.aT(t}V. 
 
Acts ix. 31-43, 
 
Eeyised Version. 
 
 Note then the church through the ivhole of Judaea and 
 Galilee and Samaria had peace, being edified and 
 lualking in the fear of the Lord, and was multiplied 
 by the exhortation of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 And. it came to pass that Peter, passing through all 
 
 [the saints], came doivn also to the saints ivho divelt 
 
 at Lydda, and found the'^e a certain man, jEneas by 
 
 name, ivho for eight years had lain on a mattress, being 
 
 paralyzed. And Peter said to him : 
 
 " AEneas, Jesus the Christ healeth thee. Arise and 
 make the bed for thyself^* 
 
 And immediately he arose, and all the inhabitants 
 of Lydda and the Sai'on [plain] saiu him ; who also 
 turned to the Lord. 
 
 But in Joppa ivas a certain discij^le, Tabitha by 
 name, ivhich being interpreted is called Dorcas. She 
 was full of good works and alms, which she was 
 accustomed to do. But it happened in those days that 
 after falling sick she died ; and having washed her, 
 they laid her in an upper room. But Lydda beiiig near 
 to Joppa, the disciples ivho had heard that Peter was 
 in that [toivn], sent two men to him, entreating: "Do 
 not grudge to come on as Jar as to us.'* So Peter 
 
arose and went with them ; whom on his arrival they led 
 up to the upper room, and there stood beside him all the 
 widows wailing and showing tunics and robes such as 
 Dorcas used to make while she was with them. But 
 having put them all forth, Peter bent his knees and 
 prayed; and when he had turned to the body, he said: 
 *' Tabitha, arise.^^ And she opened her eyes, and seeing 
 Peter, sat up. Then giving her his hand, he raised her 
 up, and ivhen he had called the saints and the ividows, 
 he presented her ahve. And it became known through- 
 out the whole of Joppa, and many believed upon the 
 Lord. And it came to pass that he stayed a good many 
 days in Joppa with a certain Simon j a tanner. 
 
XYII. 
 
 A T this point closes one long and important section of 
 -^^ our narrative.^ The raid upon the Church which 
 began with the murder of the first deacon ended after the 
 conversion of the chief persecutor. It has been seen how 
 the persecution sprang out of the dislike felt by narrow 
 conservative Judaism for the spiritual and catholic 
 teaching of Stephen ; how it led to the planting of a 
 Church in Samaria, and the spread of evangelists through- 
 out every province of Palestine ; and how at last a 
 greater successor to the dead Stephen was won in the 
 person of Saul. From their own point of view, the 
 traditional or Pharisaic faction had made little by that 
 outbreak of hostility. The heresy which they !;hought 
 to stamp out was only scattered far afield beyond any 
 stamping-out of theirs. Under Providence, a vast stride 
 had in reality been taken towards disengaging the new 
 faith from the old. When the persecution closed, the 
 Church stood on the eve of discovering God's great 
 " mystery," that it was to be a Church not for Jews only, 
 but for mankind. From this point of view, it was a 
 gain to the new community to be driven out of orthodox 
 communion by the Sanhedrim, for it was forced thereby to 
 assume a more independent attitude and to know itself as 
 ' Acts vi. 1-ix. 30. 
 
330 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 something distinct from Judaism. It was no less a gain 
 to have its converts dispersed against their will to every 
 corner of Palestine and beyond it; to Cyprus, Antioch, and 
 Damascus on the north, to Ethiopia on the south. And 
 the best gain of all was the preparation in secret of a 
 future apostle, adapted to Gentile and western peoples. 
 At this point, accordingly, there opens a fresh section of 
 St. Luke's narrative.' 
 
 The next event of primary moment was the conversion 
 of Cornelius ; but the importance of that event in the 
 development of Church history was so great, that it is 
 worth the historian's while not only to relate its occurrence 
 with extreme minuteness, but also to show how it was 
 providentially brought about, and to what results it led. 
 Peter's tour of visitation, with the circumstances which 
 led him to Joppa ; the separate preparation of both the 
 apostle and the centurion through heavenly visions ; the 
 particulars of their meeting ; the manner of the Gentile's 
 conversion and baptism ; as well as the full recapitulation 
 of all this which Peter gave in self-defence to the Jeru- 
 salem Church — everything is related with an almost ex- 
 cessive circumstantiality, in marked contrast with Luke's 
 usual rapid manner. Everything, however, is meant to 
 bear upon the great fact. The preceding narrative has 
 brought matters to this point, that there remains nothing 
 more to do but formally to open the door of the Church to 
 uncircumcised heathen. For this the Church stands 
 ready. The new wine ferments within the old skin of 
 Mosaism, and an ampler vessel must be found for it. 
 Christ's following is already more than a Jewish sect ; it 
 
 ' The long paragraph which begins at chap. ix. 31, ends only with 
 the 18th verse of chap. xi. 
 
AN APOSTOLIC TOUB OF INSPECTION. 331 
 
 is a Jewish Church. But Christ's Church cannot he for 
 ever a Church of Jews only. The next step is the ad- 
 mission of non-Jewish memhers. Here, therefore, the 
 history of the purely Hebrew Church is virtually at an 
 end. The interest of the story is about to pass away from 
 that elder branch of Christendom. A new, long, and as 
 yet inexhausted era of religious history is about to open. 
 Easily as a careless reader may pass without thought 
 from the thirtieth to the thirty-first verse of Luke's ninth 
 chapter, he is really turning over, one of those great leaves 
 which mark the opening of another chapter in human 
 history. 
 
 It was while Peter was engaged in visiting certain 
 scattered groups of converts which were already to be 
 found in the maritime plain of Sharon that he was first 
 brought into contact with the Eoman officer at Csesarea. 
 Probably, therefore, that visitation was introduced into 
 St. Luke's narrative primarily to show how Peter came to 
 be found in his vicinity at the sea-coast town of Joppa. 
 If any circumstances could appear accidental to a devout 
 eye, these surely could not which led an apostle, without 
 knowing it, to the spot where, with his back to Jerusalem 
 and his face to the western world, he was destined to 
 break down for ever a wall of privilege which for at least 
 two thousand years had confined God's grace within a 
 sinf'le family line. No chance-laid train, but a call from 
 heaven, had originally brought the Chaldean shepherd to 
 Mamre, that the world's blessing might be shut up within 
 his own circumcised body and that of his son. So now, 
 when the long restriction was about to be withdrawn, 
 and the jealously imprisoned blessing to be set free to 
 
832 FBOM JEBV SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 overflow the world, it could be nothing less than the 
 visible hand of God which made all things converge and 
 meet at one predestined moment. First, rest from per- 
 secution suggested to Peter a quiet visitation of the 
 scattered brethren. Then the cure of Eneas, talked of 
 all over the plain of Sharon, made Peter's presence and 
 power known in Joppa, and possibly in Csesarea. At the 
 same juncture, the death of Dorcas suggested to the be- 
 reaved Church at Joppa to send for the apostle. Once 
 there, the fame of her restoration opened a door of useful- 
 ness, which detained him on the coast till, through the 
 faUing-in of a separate line of events, the messengers 
 of Cornelius found him in the tanner's house. 
 
 Besides this direct value of the introductory narrative, 
 however, it possesses a secondary interest. Eather, an 
 interest which may have been only secondary in the 
 writer's thought has become to his modern readers the 
 more interesting of the two. We get here our last glimpse 
 into the state of the purely Hebrew Church in Palestine. 
 From the venerable mother Church whose centre was in 
 the holy city, the history is about to pass away. Antioch 
 is to become a more fertile mother of Churches and the 
 true focus of Christian life. But before the interest is 
 shifted, the historian dwells on tliis progress of the great 
 Jewish apostle from the city to the coast, that we may see 
 how pleasant and pure was the religious life which grew 
 up within the remnant of Israel, saved according to the 
 election of grace. ^ The Jerusalem Church of the earliest 
 days, the Church on which the Holy Ghost first descended, 
 the Church where brotherly love almost solved the problem 
 of social inequality, the Church which was defended by 
 I Eom. xi. 5. 
 
AN APOSTOLIC TOUB OF INSPECTION. 333 
 
 the eloquence and watered by the blood of Stephen, had 
 now become, thanks to its persecutors, the Church^ of 
 Palestine. It owned congregations in every province ; in 
 Galilee and in Samaria, as well as in Judsea. It counted 
 saints even in the smaller townships like Lydda and 
 Joppa. Neither persecution nor extension had dimmed 
 its characteristic graces. It continued to be as holy as 
 ever in its walk, and not less full of the comfort of the 
 Spirit. It abounded still in charity to the poor. It was 
 gladdened by the mighty works of Christ's apostles. It 
 was almost as closely knit in the unity of a family, as in 
 those early days when its members sat down at one 
 board within the walls of one holy city. 
 
 Luke's description of the Palestine Church during that 
 interval of peace of which Peter took advantage for his 
 visit of superintendence, tells of singular spiritual pros- 
 perity. The Church had rest from war. It was " built 
 up," or edified.^ This word has passed into the peculiar 
 vocabulary of Christendom, always in the same sense of 
 inward growth in the spiritual life through the cultivation 
 and expression of Christian feeling. Probably its pri- 
 mary reference in this passage was to the resumption of 
 those frequent assemblies of disciples for common prayer 
 
 * The reading in ver. 31 is eKKXyjaia, and the singular is maintained 
 throughout. The plural of the word does not occur till xv. 41 ; 
 though the idea of a plurality of Churches lies in kut' eKKXrjaiav, in 
 xiv. 23. 
 
 2 The standing metaphor of St. Paul for progress in Christian life 
 may have been borrowed by him from our Lord's own use of an ex- 
 pression in one of the Psalms. See Psa. cxviii. 22, quoted in Matt, 
 xxi. 42 and parallels (of. Jesus' words, Matt. xvi. 18). Consult Bruder 
 for Paul's frequent use of the word and its derivatives. Here it seems 
 to be imitated from St. Paul, by his scholar Luke. But the image is 
 not foreign to St. Peter either : see Acts iv. 11, where he also follows 
 Jesus' use of Psa. cxviii., and with this compare 1 Pet. ii. 5-7. 
 
334 FROM JEBTJ8ALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 and the Holy Sacrament which persecution had made for 
 a time impossible or perilous. At any rate the private 
 life of these Hebrew brethi-en answered to their social 
 devoutness. The Church "walked in the fear of the 
 Lord." Towards their new Lord, Jesus Christ, as the 
 Son of God, the disciples directed that reverential ethical 
 "fear" of Jehovah in which Hebrew piety had always 
 been accustomed to find the very root and secret of all 
 religion. To a godly Jew of the best time and of the best 
 type, to fear Jehovah was the beginning of sacred wisdom 
 and the fountain of spiritual life. By it men learned 
 to hate and forsake evil. It i)rolonged men's days. It 
 brought them riches, honour, and happy life.^ The con- 
 sistent Christian conduct of these Palestine believers was 
 coloured by this that they had inherited a grave and awful 
 regard for the divine authority, such as had deepened 
 almost into sternness the moral character of their most 
 religious ancestors. Only it was in the dear and familiar 
 face of Jesus of Nazareth that they had now learned to 
 recognise the Jehovah of their fathers. God was become 
 nearer and kindlier than before, yet no whit less venerable 
 for utter sanctity. No wonder such a Church grew. The 
 proved constancy of these brethren under persecution, to- 
 gether with their reverent and righteous Hves in days of 
 quietness, might well attract their neighbours to the faith. 
 It was not this, however, but another force which mainly 
 added to the membershij) of the Church. " It was multi- 
 plied by the exhortation of the Holy Ghost." The Para- 
 clete did His predicted work of convicting the world of 
 sin, and regenerating the souls of men through the 
 
 » Cf. Job xxYiii. 28 ; Psa. cxi. 10 ; Prov. i. 7, xiv. 27, and xix. 23. 
 See also Proy. viii. 13, x. 27, xvi. 6, xxii. 4 ; P£;a. xix. 9. 
 
AN APOSTOLIC TOUB OF INSPECTION. 335 
 
 preaching of the gospel. The word which converts is 
 ever that word of exhortation growing into a word of 
 comfort,^ which only the Holy Ghost Himself can give to 
 the preacher. When men feel that it is God Who addresses 
 them in the message of salvation, then the Church's 
 witness to her Lord becomes an aggressive, converting, 
 and conquering word. So the Church of Palestine 
 tlirove and grew, having peace. 
 
 Out of Peter's journey of apostolic inspection, ^ only two 
 incidents have been preserved, one at Lydda and one at 
 Joppa. It is plain, however, that his tour may have em- 
 braced a considerable tract of country before he arrived 
 at Lydda. That town lay only some eighteen miles from 
 the capital on the direct road to Caesarea ; but it could 
 not have been his first halt, for we are told that he arrived 
 there while he was passing through among all the saints. 3 
 
 I Both these ideas must be held fast in the TrapdicXrjmQ from which 
 the Holy Spirit borrows His most characteristic New Testament title. 
 
 ^ It is much to be desired that we could say with confidence whether 
 this journey of Peter preceded or followed Saul's visit to him at 
 Jerusalem. With our present chronological data, I fear we cannot 
 hope to settle that question. That it comes after Saul's visit to 
 Jerusalem (ver. 26-30) in the narrative proves of itself nothing. A 
 new paragraph has here begun ; and it would be quite in Luke's 
 manner, if, after following the career of Saul, without interruption, 
 till his return home to Tarsus, he should now fall back to take up 
 matters which had been elsewhere happening in the meantime. If it 
 was the cruel attempt of the Emperor Caligula to coerce the con- 
 science of the Jewish people, which gave the Sanhedrim something 
 else to do than, in its turn, persecute the Nazarenes, then this peace 
 must have fallen before the year 41, which was the year of Caligula's 
 death. This, however, is only a guess ; and even this, were it certain, 
 would still leave the date of Saul's conversion nearly as uncertain as 
 ever, 
 
 ' We have to supply tCjv ayiiov in ver. 32, and not, as in the au- 
 thorised version, tCjv roTrwv. The Kal and the general construction 
 require this. 
 
336 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 It is probable enougli that be bad already visited tbe 
 central bigblands, or even Samaria and Galilee, before be 
 turned back to overtake tbe coast plain. Tbere, bow- 
 ever, tbe interest of bis tour culminated. Between tbe 
 limestone bills wbicb form tbe backbone of Palestine, and 
 tbe Mediterranean Sea, stretcbes from nortb to soutb a 
 long, ricb, fat, and in ancient times well-peopled plain. 
 Only at two points of tbe sea-board is tbis continuous 
 flat of deep loam broken by a sudden spur of rock. Tbe 
 one is at Carmel, tbe otber at Joppa. Tbe portion of 
 coast plain wbicb lies betwixt tbese two was called as bere 
 " the Sbaron ; "^ tbe city of Caesarea being about midway 
 between tbe two extremities of it : wbile tbe part lying 
 to tbe soutb of Joppa as far as Gaza, bears in Holy 
 Writ anotber name wbicb our version bas not preserved 
 but translated, tbe name of " Sbepbelab." Like Sbaron, 
 tbat word means simply, "plain." It is tbe plain of 
 Pbilistia. Now, almost due inland from tbe low rock on 
 wbicb tbe conspicuous and unmistakable port-town of 
 Joppa bas stood so long, is tbis small town of Lydda 
 (now Lud), girdled witb olives. It stands quite near tbe 
 base of tbe bill-country where you drop down upon tbe 
 plain tlirougb tbe passes of Benjamin. 
 
 If Lydda was tbe first of all tbe tbick-set villages of 
 tbe flat country to be visited by Peter, as it well migbt 
 be, tben it is easy to see bow tbe fame of a miracle done 
 tbere upon a confirmed paralytic, would naturally spread 
 from one rural bamlet to anotber across tbe ten unbroken 
 miles to Joppa, and along tbe main Boman road as far 
 nortbward as Csesarea or fartber. Its effect upon tbe 
 population is pitbily described as botb extensive and 
 * " Or Saron." Ver. 35, tov ^dpiova. 
 
\ 
 
 AN APOSTOLIC TOUR OF INSPECTION. 337 
 
 deep.^ For us it is difficult to realise the part wliicli 
 miracle-working appears to have played in the early dif- 
 fusion of the gospel. Not only does it seem to moderns 
 as if hardly any miracle could be so well authenticated as 
 really to be accepted by the public at large ; one fails no 
 less to reahse that state of mind in which a person could 
 be led through any spiritual or moral revolution, even by 
 a miracle which he did accept. The first of these diffi- 
 culties is Hghtened indeed when we duly estimate how 
 unhke were the views of a first century Jew to those of 
 a nineteenth century Englishman on this matter of the 
 supernatural. The Jew was prepared to expect divine com- 
 munications, and he expected no divine communication 
 without a visible or tangible miracle. His national his- 
 tory was full of such interpositions ; the hopes of his race 
 demanded their recurrence. Our Lord accordingly found 
 no scepticism among the people as to the reahty of His 
 wonders. Whatever party spite might allege as to their 
 source, in respect of their actual occurrence He found 
 easy credence and an appetite for them only too gross. 
 But the second point is more difficult. What relation is 
 there between crediting the bare fact of a miracle and 
 being morally converted to genuine penitence or trust ? 
 Here the experience of our Lord's ministry affords us no 
 assistance. He did not win followers through wonder- 
 working. He won popularity, not success. He drew 
 crowds but not hearts. Yet in the case of this man 
 Eneas at Lydda, a general conversion of the agricultural 
 population in the Sharon plain is stated to have been the 
 immediate result— a conversion so general that Luke can 
 
 ' Acts ix. 35. 
 23 
 
V 
 
 338 FROM JEBU8ALEM TO ANTIOCEC. 
 
 employ a popular hyperbole and say, they *' all turaed to 
 the Lord." The explanation of this unusual success lay, 
 as I am disposed to think, in the circumstances of the 
 plain-population. So far as we are informed, our Lord 
 had never visited that district. Whatever the people may 
 have known of Him in other ways, they were less har- 
 dened against His claims by previous familiarity with 
 and rejection of them, than either the Galileans or the 
 Judaaans. It was like virgin soil therefore, and recent 
 evangelism by such scattered disciples as PhiHp, who 
 resided at Csesarea,^ had already prepared the ground. 
 Before Peter's visit many among the devout country people 
 must have been aware of the tenets of the new sect and 
 predisposed to accept Jesus as Messiah, who had not yet 
 decided to join the little nuclei of converts meeting here 
 and there for worship. On such susceptible villagers the 
 falling of this single spark sufficed to set the country in a 
 blaze. 
 
 However this may be, it was the knowledge of Jesus' 
 great favour shown to Eneas through the word of Peter, 
 which brought the apostle a pressing invitation from the 
 saints at Joppa. On the humble little Church in that 
 town there had come in those days a serious loss. Acute 
 observers of moral changes in history have remarked how 
 Christianity suddenly shifted the supreme type of cha- 
 racter from the masculine to the feminine virtues. In 
 the pagan world, "virtue" itself meant simply manful- 
 ness. It was the combination in the perfect Man Him- 
 self of all those graces which formerly had been deemed 
 womanish or weak, such graces as humility, meekness, 
 * See Acts viii. 40, xxi. 8. 
 
AN APOSTOLIC TOUB OF INSPECTION. 339 
 
 tenderness, and serving charity, with that stately group 
 of virtues which made up the antique ideal — foresight, 
 fortitude, justice, and self-control : ^ it was this combina- 
 tion in Jesus which rectified the judgment of humanity 
 and restored to us a symmetrical image of character. To 
 effect such a rectification, however, it was needful to lift 
 into special x^rominence the hitherto despised graces of 
 feminity. Manliness in Jesus is everywhere taken for 
 granted; womanliness in its best sense is made con- 
 spicuous. The cross of the Man of Sorrows confutes the 
 ancient preferences of the world. It is the glorification ^ 
 of self-sacrifice, of gentleness, of endurance, and of meek 
 forgiveness. One immediate result of this was not only to 
 foster a fuller development of all such beauties of character y 
 as belong most eminently to womanhood, the quiet and 
 lowly spirit, chaste modesty, and silent loving patience ; 
 but also to give scope within the Christian Church for the 
 true functions of woman. With the birth of Christian 
 beneficence came the recognition of woman's work. Shut 
 out from ofiice in the State, woman found for the first 
 time within the Church a sheltered and becoming sphere 
 for all truly womanlike services. While Jesus yet lived, 
 she found her sphere in ministering to His personal com- ^ 
 forts.^* After He was gone, she found it still in ministering ^ 
 to Christ in the persons of His poor ones.3 Doing it to 
 them for His sake, she still was able to do it unto Him. 
 At least two female orders can be traced in the obscure 
 arrangements of the primitive Church: the order of 
 deaconesses and the order of widows ; of which the one 
 
 1 The four cardinal virtues : prudentia, fortitude, temperantia, and 
 justitia. ^ Luke viii. 2, 3 ; Mark xv. 41. 
 
 2 " Christo in pauperibus." Cf. Matt. xxv. 40, and John xii. 8. 
 
 23* 
 
340 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 organised, and the other rewarded, the Christian labours 
 of faithful women. ^ 
 
 To that small congregation at Joppa belongs the honour 
 of having contributed the first female name to the records 
 of Christian service. She, whom the people called, both 
 in their homely Aramaic and in their Greek speech, by 
 the name of " the Gazelle," because that loveliest of 
 Syrian animals was from early times, to the amatory poets 
 of the East, a favourite emblem of a beautiful w^oman,^ 
 has fitly bequeathed her name of Dorcas to express, not 
 the gift of personal beauty in her sex, but the Chris- 
 tian ornament of meek and gracious charity. Dorcas 
 was no deaconess ; the age of Church organisation had 
 not yet come ; but whatever she was, maid or w^idow, she 
 had learned of Jesus Christ her Lord His best lesson, 3 and 
 was enough of a woman to discover how she could most 
 fitly practise it. By quiet feminine handiwork it was 
 her wont 4 to work for Christ. Among the desolate and 
 friendless of her own sex she found suitable objects for 
 her unobtrusive aid. 
 
 Her death was to the saints of Joppa a common grief. 
 It brought out for the first time how much she had been 
 to them. It was not the widows only who missed their 
 benefactress, but the whole congregation lost one who was 
 to them a ''living epistle" of Jesus Christ. They seem 
 to have conceived some hope that the loss might noti)rove 
 
 1 See Eom. xvi. 1 (Greek) ; 1 Tim. v. 9, ff. 
 
 ^ Sn'^^tO = ^opKag. Same name, in f jrm H^^*?, occurs in 2 Kings 
 xii. l,and 1 Chron. viii. 9, of different persons, Cf. amatory allusions 
 in Song of Solomon ii. 9, 17, iv. 5, vii. 3 ; Prov. v. 19. The grounds 
 of the comparison lie in the delicate grace of form, the large deep soft 
 dark eye, and perhaps the light springing movements of the creature. 
 
 ^ She is called fiaOijTpia, a -word of late Greek, only here used 
 in N. T. * Cf. the imperfect, in ver. 39. 
 
AN APOSTOLIC TOUB OF INSPECTION. 341 
 
 a final one. Was not Christ's cliief apostle within a dozen 
 miles of them, and had not Jesus just been showing on 
 the paralysed limbs of Eneas that, though absent, He 
 could still work as in the years when He lived with men ? 
 Might not a courteous but urgent message bring into the 
 midst of themselves the organ of divine life and power ? 
 and might not the Lord hear in pity His bereaved saints ? 
 It is hardly to be supposed that Peter accompanied the 
 deputation back to Joppa with any certain knowledge what 
 it might please his Master to do for the mourning Church. 
 But when he stood beside the dead in the centre of that 
 touching group who wailed in the upper chamber and 
 pointed to the very clothes they were wearing ^ as evidences 
 of the greatness of their loss, he felt shut up at least to 
 carry to his Master the petition of His people. Having 
 imitated the behaviour of Jesus in the house of Jairus,^ 
 by putting them all forth, he imitated the behaviour of 
 Elijah in an upper room at Zarephath,3 by cry^ig unto 
 the Lord. As he had said to Eneas, ''Jesus Christ healeth 
 thee," so now he begged Jesus Christ to revive dead Dor- 
 cas : for it is Jesus Christ — the Master — Who alone 
 saves autocratically at His choice ; Peter, and all other 
 servants, only ministerially, as their divine Lord enables 
 them. Still, therefore, it is the very life of Jesus, poured 
 through His Christian members, which giveth life to the 
 world. While Peter prayed alone in the awful silence of 
 death, that incommunicable secret assurance of faith 4 in 
 which must have always lain the authority of any man 
 
 ' This is conveyed in ver. 39 by the middle voice, sTrideiicvvnevai. 
 
 See Meyer in loc. (iiote.) 
 '^ Matt ix. 25. ^ See 1 Kings xvii. 19-22, 
 
 * Cf . the -jraaav rfjv tt'kttlv uxtte opt] ixtdicraviiv, of which Paul speaks 
 
 in 1 Cor. xiii. 2. 
 
842 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 to attempt a miracle, possessed his soul, and enabled him 
 with calmness to do, what, without it, only insanity could 
 have done — to speak to the cold corpse these words, 
 " Tabitha, arise." 
 
 This is the second recorded death within the Christian 
 community. In Jerusalem, a young man, a public ofiBcer 
 of the Church, and a foremost witness to Jesus in high 
 l^laces, died beneath the stones of his enemies. At Joppa, 
 a lonely unobtrusive woman expired in the quiet of her 
 own sick room. Both in Stephen and in Dorcas the life 
 of Christ was seen to vanquish death. That was not 
 death, as men count dying, to " fall asleep " with the face 
 of Jesus full in sight, and His voice of welcome already 
 beginning to be heard. Neither is this death, as men 
 have hitherto known it, when dead Dorcas quietly opens 
 eyes which seemed to have shut for ever, to find an apostle 
 kneeling by her bed. Henceforth it is not Christian to 
 fear a foe which our Lord Christ hath so plainly bound. 
 Let it be remembered, too, that Stephen's victory was a 
 better one than that of Dorcas ; and Stephen's is the 
 victory which may be ours. It has not been granted to 
 many of the saints to return, and calmly to resume, like 
 her, their wonted tasks of earthly ministration. It would 
 be no kindness if it were. To depart, in St. Paul's judg- 
 ment, is far better. Whereas to aU saints who seek the 
 grace of faith for dying need, it will be granted to fall 
 asleep as Stephen did in the serenity of Christian hope, 
 and to pass like him from the shadows of the valley to 
 the face of God. 
 
 The restoration of Dorcas to her weeping widows, 
 through so rare and signal an act of power, was jDrobably 
 a seal set of purpose by the Lord on that new department 
 
AN APOSTOLIC TOTJB OF INSPECTION. 343 
 
 of charitable labour within His Church which Dorcas had 
 made so much her own. To the Church, rather than to 
 Dorcas, was the kindness done, when one who was so 
 " needful " was suffered to " abide " a little longer in the 
 flesh." ^ The widows were comforted ; all Christian ages 
 have learnt how the Master values the humble and re- 
 tiring industry of devout women when it clothes Christ's 
 poor by its own needle ; while through a splendid demon- 
 stration of what divine strength lay concealed behind the 
 diviner charity of Christ's ministering Church, many 
 souls in Joppa and elsewhere *' believed in the Lord." 
 > Cf. Phil. i. 22-26. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 I WILL GIVE UNTO THEE THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 
 
 THAT THE OFFEEING UP OF THE GENTILES MIGHT BE ACCEPT- 
 ABLE, BEING SANCTIFIED BY THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
Acts X. 1-48. 
 
Eevised Version. 
 
 Noiv, a certain man in, Ccesarea, hy name Cornelius, 
 a centurion of the cohort called the Italian, devout and 
 fearing God tvith his ivhole house, giving also many alms 
 to the peojde and praying to God continually, saw in 
 a vision plainly somewhere about the ninth hour of the 
 day, an angel of God coming in to him and saying to 
 him: " Conielius.'' And he gazing at him and becom- 
 ing alarmed, said: " What is it, Lord ? " But he said 
 to him : 
 
 " Thy prayers and thine alms came up for a memorial 
 before God. And now send men to Joppa, and fetch a 
 certain Simon, ivho is surnamed Peter. He is lodging 
 with one Simon a tanner, ivhose house is by the sea.'' 
 
 And when the angel loho ivas speaking to him de- 
 parted, he called two of the domestics and a devout 
 soldier of those tuho ivaited on him, and having related 
 all things to them, sent them to Joppa. 
 
 Now on the morrow, as these icere journeying and 
 draiving near to the city, Peter ivent up on the roof to 
 pray about the sixth hour. But he became hungry and 
 tvished to eat ; and ivhile they icere making ready, there 
 fell on him an ecstasy, and he beheld the heaven opened 
 and a certain vessel like a great sheet descending, let 
 down hy four corners upon the earth, in which were all 
 the quadrupeds and reptiles of the earth and birds of 
 the heaven. And there came a voice to him : 
 
" Rise, Peter, slay and eat.^^ 
 
 But Peter said : 
 
 "By no means, Lord, for never did I eat anything 
 common and unclean.'^ And a voice again the second 
 time to him : 
 
 " What God cleansed, make not thou common.'^ 
 
 Now this happened thrice, and immediately the vessel 
 was taken up into heaven. 
 
 But while Peter icas at a loss in his own mind \lit., 
 in himself] what the vision might he ivhich he had seen, 
 behold, the men ivho had been sent from Cornelius had 
 made inquiry for the house of Simon, and stood at the 
 gate ; and having called, were asking if Simon who is 
 surnamed Peter ivere lodging there. So while Peter 
 ivas meditati^ig about the vision, the Spirit said to him : 
 
 " Behold, [three] men [are] seeking thee. But rise, 
 get thee down arid go tvith them, doubting nothing ; 
 because I have sent them.'' 
 
 So Peter went doivn to the men and said : 
 
 " Behold, I am lie 2chom ye seek. What is the cause 
 for tvhich ye are come ? " And they said : 
 
 " Cornelius a centurion, a man just and fearing God, 
 borne witness to also by the ivhole nation of the Jews, 
 received a response from a holy angel to send for thee 
 to his house and to hear things from thee.'' 
 
 Having therefore called them in, he lodged them. 
 
 Now on the morrow, he rose up and ivent forth with 
 them ; and certain of those brethren ivho were of Joppa 
 went toith him ; and the next day they entered into 
 CcBsarea. Now Cornelius was expecting them, having 
 called together his kinsmen and intimate friends ; and 
 
ivhen it came to jmss that Peter was entering, Cornelius 
 met him, and falling at his feet, icorshipped. But Peter 
 raised him, saying: ''Stand up: I also am myself 
 a many And conversing ivitli him, he entered, and 
 found many come together, and said to them : 
 
 " You [well] know hoiv unlauful it is for a man ivho 
 is a Jew to associate ivith or come near to one of a 
 different race ; and to me God showed that no man is 
 to he called common or unclean; ivherefore also ivitli- 
 out gainsaying I came ivhen I was sent for, I ask, 
 therefore, for lohat reason ye sent for me ^ " 
 
 And Cornelius said : 
 
 ''Four days ago, until this hour icas I [fasting, and] 
 at the ninth hour praying in my house, and behold a man 
 stood before me in bright clothing, and said: ' Cornelius, 
 thy prayer icas heard and thine alms tvere remembered 
 before God. Send therefore to Joppa, and call hither 
 Simon who is surnamed Peter. He is lodging in the 
 house of Simon a tanner, by the sea [who ivhen he is 
 come shall speak to thee] .' At once therefore I sent to 
 thee, and thou didst icell to come. Now therefore, all 
 ive are present before God to hear all the things ivhich 
 are prescribed to thee by God.'' 
 
 Then Peter opening his mouth, said : 
 
 *' Of a truth I perceive that ' God is no respecter of 
 persons; but in every nation he loho feareth Him and 
 icorketh righteousness is accepted ivith Him. The 
 word which He sent to the children of Israel, preaching 
 pteace through Jesus Christ {He is all men's Lord);— 
 ye know the matter ivhich was spoken of throughout the 
 whole ofJudcsa, beginning from Galilee after the baptism 
 
which John 'proclaimed — Jesus Who ivas from Nazareth ; 
 how God anointed Rim ivith the Holy Spirit and poiver ; 
 Who went about doing good and healing all that ivere 
 over-mastered by the devil, because God was with Him. 
 Andive [are] witnesses of all things ivhich He did, both in 
 the country of the Jeivs and [in] Jerusalem : Whom also 
 they sleiv by hanging upon a stake. Him God raised on 
 the third day, and granted that He became manifest, not 
 to the whole people, but to ivitnesses who had been chosen 
 before by Go'd, to us who ate loith [Him] and drank 
 ivith Him after His resurrection from the dead. And 
 He charged us to proclaim to the people and to bear 
 witness that it is He Who tvas ordained by God, Judge 
 of living and dead. To Him all the prophets bear 
 witness, that every one who believes in Him receives 
 remission of sins through His name.^* 
 
 While Peter was yet speaking these things, there fell 
 the Holy Spirit upon all who were hearing the Word. 
 And the believers of the circumcision, as many as came 
 with Peter, were amazed, because upon the Gentiles also 
 ivas poured out the free -gift of the Holy Spirit. For 
 they IV ere hearing them speaking with tongues and 
 magnifying God. Then answered Peter: 
 
 *' 7s any one able to forbid the water, that these should 
 not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as 
 we also [did] ? " 
 
 So he directed them to be baptized in the name of the 
 Lord. 
 
 Then they prayed him to remain some days. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 AT length we reach a moment in the history of the 
 Church second only to the day of Pentecost for the 
 magnitude of its results. 
 
 The reception of the first Gentile into Christian fellow- 
 ship forms a tale with three parts or scenes, through 
 which the action moves as in a drama towards its de- 
 nouement. Each of these has a day to itself. The first 
 takes place at Caesarea, about the hour of three in the 
 afternoon, within the chamber of Cornelius. The second 
 is in Joppa, at noon of the next day, on the roof of 
 Simon the tanner's house. The third falls two days later. 
 Again we are at Caesarea, within the centurion's quarters, 
 and again the hour is three in the afternoon. The 
 first and second lead up to the third, but the first has its 
 share also in preparing for the second. Throughout this 
 progress we trace the successive propulsions of a Divine 
 Hand. In the opening scene, a heavenly messenger gives 
 the first movement to the action by bidding the soldier 
 send for the apostle. In the next, a vision from heaven 
 prepares the apostle for the soldier's message. In each of 
 these the human subject is alone at a still hour of prayer, 
 and he alone is witness to the Hand which guides to its 
 result. In the third, however, when the issues for which 
 both these two have been preparatory are ripe for their 
 
352 FBOM JEBU SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 accomplishment, then what has been secretly wrought 
 
 breaks into open light, and in the presence of a house full 
 
 of witnesses the same Divine Hand crowns and seals its 
 
 work. 
 
 I. 
 
 C^sarea and Joppa, lying some thirty miles apart, were 
 
 at that time the two seaport towns of Palestine. The one 
 
 was the ancient Jewish harbour, the other the new and 
 
 more splendid Roman port. Joi)pa is as old at least as 
 
 the conquest of the land by Joshua,^ and reappears at 
 
 intervals in Hebrew history as the great gate to all 
 
 comers by the sea. Through it arrived the pine and 
 
 cedar from Lebanon, with which Solomon fitted up the 
 
 first, and Ezra the second temple.^ From it Jonah sailed 
 
 in his flight to the west. 3 It was the single landing-place, 
 
 and a very bad one, on the whole of that harbourless 
 
 shore which bounded Israel on the westward, and which 
 
 served, by the fact of its being harbourless, to cut Israel 
 
 off from maritime enterprise, as weU as from contact with 
 
 maritime nations. When the Jews began, shortly before 
 
 our Lord's birth, to have more close and friendly relations 
 
 with western peoples, the want was felt of a new coast 
 
 city, with greater western luxury about it and a safer 
 
 port. This want the magnificent energy and profusion 
 
 of Herod the Great supplied. He created an artificial 
 
 harbour of refuge, guarded from the south and west by 
 
 enormous breakwaters ; and he built a city of palaces, 
 
 furnished with every convenience for the luxurious life of 
 
 the Greco-Roman world.^ Greeks and Jews contended 
 
 whether the new city, at once seaport and metropolis, 
 
 1 Josh. xix. 46. 2 2 Chron. ii. 16 ; Ezra. iii. 7. ^ Jonali i. 3. 
 '' Cf. here Joseplius, Antiq. xv. 9. 6, and B. J. i. 21. 5-8. 
 
COBNELIUS. 353 
 
 should be considered more Jewish or more Greek. ^ In fact, 
 however, it was essentially Eoman. Its very object was 
 to mark the tie of amity between its founder and the 
 Eoman State. Its name of Cassarea Sebaste was a compli- 
 ment to the first Koman emperor. The building which, 
 amid a crowd of theatres, baths, and temples, rose 
 highest, and the white stone of which gleamed farthest 
 across the Mediterranean, was a shrine to the honour of 
 Eome and of its emperor. C^sarea seemed a ready-made 
 Eoman capital ; and when, after Herod's death, Palestine 
 was annexed to the Eoman province of Syria, his great 
 coast city received the court of the Eoman procurator, 
 and its barracks sheltered the Eoman troops. 
 
 Here then was quartered the regiment, or cohort, in 
 which Cornelius was a subordinate of&cer. Three legions 
 the Eomans usually kept in JudaBa, numbering in all some 
 35,000 men, 2 and these were recruited from the population 
 of the province. On the other hand, the cohort to which 
 Cornelius 3 was attached, probably received its name of 
 the "Italian " because its ranks were made up exclusively 
 of home-born Italians. It may have been a company of 
 the Pretorian Guards,^ or it may have been a corps of 
 Italian volunteers -J at aU events this officer, who bore the 
 name of one of the most noble Eoman clans, must have 
 been a Eoman by blood and birth. 
 
 The New Testament literature abundantly proves how 
 
 1 So Greek was its population, that in the synagogues the Old 
 Testament was read in the Septuagint version. 
 
 ^ Known to have been the 5th, 10th, and 15th. See Conybeare 
 and Howson, ii. 341, ff. 
 
 ^ A centurio was over ^th of a cohort = ^ maniple. 
 
 * Josephus speaks of five such at Caesarea — one called Augustan. 
 See B. J. ill. 4. 2. * So Wieseler, Chron. d. Ap. Zeitalters, p. 389. 
 
 24 
 
854 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 extensively Jewish influence had paved the way among 
 Gentile nations for the coming of Christianity. This was 
 , one task assigned to the peculiar people of Jehovah, 
 which had not been left undone. Of course, orthodox 
 Jews believed that for a heathen God could entertain no 
 favour, until the heathen became by circumcision an 
 adopted member of the select family of Abraham. There- 
 fore they compassed sea and land (as Jesus said) to make 
 one proselyte.' In spite of the sternness, rigour, and, 
 in some aspects, repulsiveness of the Mosaic code as read 
 by later Pharisaism, they succeeded. Some men, and 
 far more women, all over the pagan world fully em- 
 braced Judaism. But the influence of the Jewish faith 
 was much wider than this.= Many earnest and thoughtful 
 men, disgusted with traditional polytheism and its worn- 
 out myths, yet finding no peace to their souls, either in 
 the fashionable scepticism of the time or in its abominable 
 license, turned with curious interest to that solitary 
 antique faith which still stood erect, self-confident even 
 to arrogance, and pure even to severity, in an age 
 which had dissolved or corrupted every other religion. 
 The worship of Jehovah was to be found in the cities 
 of every civilised land. No intelhgent and travelled 
 man could have escaped some knowledge of it. Its syna- 
 gogues stood open. Its sacred books circulated in Greek. 
 
 * Matt, xxiii. 15, 
 
 2 On the question so much debated, whether Cornelius was or was 
 not a Proselyte of the Gate, it seems probable that this class of pro- 
 selytes was a later arrangement of the Eabbis (if it ever existed, 
 save on paper), but that it fixed what had been floating and un- 
 formed before — viz., the position of such foreigners as are here de- 
 scribed, who drew more or less near to the worship of Jehovah and 
 the customs of Israel, without committing themselves by formal 
 conversion to Judaism. See Plumptre, in Smith's Diet, of the Bible. 
 
COBNELITJS, 355 
 
 Its emissaries and devotees went everywhere. Though it 
 founded no formal missions, it proselytised with ardour ; 
 while its unlikeness to every other religion, its self-con- 
 tainedness and spirituality, its proud exclusiveness, its 
 glorious hopes, were of themselves enough to attract the 
 eyes of many. A gentleman from the west, possessed of 
 some culture, and stationed for years in a Jewish city, 
 Lad the best possible opportunity for studying the reli- 
 gion and the literature of the Jews. If such a man 
 happened at the same time to be serious in his search 
 for light and frank in his acceptance of it, he was likely 
 to draw very close indeed to the foreign faith which he 
 found around him. Cornelius, like another centurion in 
 the Gospel,^ is an example of the best type of such men. 
 He had not only gone the length pf discarding his ances- 
 tral idols and the ceremonies of the State religion ; he 
 even worshipped God after the fashion usual among the 
 Hebrews. "We find him fasting all day till three o'clock, 
 observing the stated hours for daily prayer, and liberal in 
 giving alms to the Jews^ of Caesarea; alms, prayers, and 
 fasts being (as we see from the Sermon on the Mount) 3 
 the three cardinal points of popular Hebrew piety. Nor 
 can there be any question as to the sincerity of this 
 soldier's faith in God, and devout spiritual life ; for he 
 evinced it by his upright and humble behaviour. His 
 domestics and his orderly describe him as a "just man," of 
 *• good report among the Jews." The terms on which he 
 stood with the slaves 4 of his household show him to have 
 been a considerate and gentle master. Nor is this all. 
 
 * Luke vii. 1, ff. 
 2 T(fJ \a(p, in ver. 2 = to the [chosen] people of the Jews. 
 
 3 Matt. vi. 1-18. 
 
 ■• Not dovXog is used in ver. 7, but the humaner word oiKeTr]^. 
 
 24- 
 
356 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 It seems indubitable that he was at this very time in deep 
 spiritual anxiety, craving clearer light from God. He 
 knew of the coming and preaching and wonders of the 
 holy Man of Galilee. He could not fail to have heard of 
 a new sect that everywhere declared this Man to be the 
 promised Saviour. The neighbouring country was at the 
 moment ringing with Peter's name. In his own town 
 there dwelt a deacon and evangelist of the Church.^ But 
 these new revelations from the Jehovah of Israel, Who 
 had (it was said) visited His people at last to raise up for 
 them an horn of salvation,^ were revelations of mercy for 
 the elected and covenanted nation, the circumcised sons 
 of Abraham. For himself, a Gentile foreigner, was there 
 any word of hope and peace from the one great God of 
 heaven ? Will God hear his prayers, or accept his offer- 
 ings? Or must he, after all, if he would have life, forsake 
 his nationality, his profession and his friends, to enter by 
 the straight door of circumcision into that narrow alien 
 fold of Judaism ? 
 
 There can be little doubt that over this question the 
 honest heart of the centurion was struggling when he 
 resolved to devote the whole morning of one quiet day to 
 fasting and prayer in his own chamber. For when, at 
 the hour of vespers, there came in to him a visitor in 
 shining apparel, who roused him from his prostrate 
 posture with the word " Cornelius," the first answer he 
 received to his startled and reverential question — " What 
 is it, Lord?" was this, "Thy prayer is heard." 3 What 
 
 * Philip. See Acts xxi. 8. ^ See Zacharias' hymn, Luke i. 68, ff. 
 
 ^ So in Cornelius's own account of the interview in ver. 31, it is in 
 the singular: rrou r; Trpooevxn- St. Luke, on the other hand (ver. 4), 
 gives it in the plural. His petitions were many, but they had one 
 specific scope. 
 
COBNELIUS. 357 
 
 that prayer was, which the blanieless and charitable hfe 
 of the Eoman caused God to remember, we gather from 
 God's answer to it ; and the answer is this : " Send men 
 to Joppa, and call for Simon, who shall tell thee words 
 whereby thou shalt be saved." ^ 
 
 Scattered all round the wide shores of the Mediter- 
 ranean and beyond it, there were at that day multitudes 
 of souls whom Jesus called His '' other sheep," who were 
 not of the Jewish fold,^ whom also He desired to gather. 
 Very various as must have been their degrees of preparation 
 for the gospel, of present faith and light, or of readiness to 
 hear His voice, yet the Shepherd's eye rested upon them 
 all. Their prayers were heard. The day, long sighed for 
 by sages and godly souls through that night in which 
 God '' winked at " the ignorance of men, 3 the day of 
 hope for all nations, was dawning. The light which had 
 already risen on Israel was moving westward to rise upon 
 the Gentiles, and become the light of the world. Nor 
 could any better representative of western heathendom be 
 found than this Eoman soldier — type of Eome's all con- 
 quering world-might and latest product of a long-growing 
 civilisation, which was soon to give place to another. He 
 was ready. To him, first of heathens, God, by plain 
 voice and vision of a celestial messenger, spoke words of 
 acceptance ; and the heart of Cornelius — a prompt and 
 honest and obedient heart — was open to the word of the 
 great Captain. ''Immediately, therefore, he sent for Peter." 
 
 ^ The three reports which we have of these words of the angel are 
 all different. In chap. x. 6, the words, " He shall tell thee what thou 
 oughtest to do," are to be rejected from the text. In chap. x. 32 it is 
 simply, " Who, when he cometh, shall speak unto thee." This imphes, 
 however, that Peter would speak God's answer to his prayer. And so 
 Peter understood it when he less exactly reported it iu chap. xi. 14. 
 
 2 John X. 16. ^ Acts xvii. 30. 
 
358 FBOM JEBV SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 II. 
 
 Peter, on the other hand, a day's journey off, in Joppa, 
 was not ready. The Gentiles of that age were prompter 
 to enter the Church, than was the Church to open its 
 doors. Although no more than thirty miles lay between 
 these two representative men ; although he who held 
 the keys had come down, led by God, to the very fore- 
 post of Israelitish territory, whence, as from a watch- 
 tower, he looked right west across the Gentile sea towards 
 the Gentile lands ; yet in spirit that spokesman and door- 
 keeper of the Jewish Church stood at a great gulf's dis- 
 tance from the foremost Gentile who was knocking so 
 patiently at the Church's gate. To Peter, of course, as 
 to every other Jew, it was quite a familiar idea that the 
 Gentiles should come one day to worshii) God and believe 
 in His Messiah ; but it had never yet occurred to him, or 
 to almost any other Jew, that this could happen unless 
 by the Gentiles first becoming Jews. By training, Peter 
 was a Jew of the intensely national school. In spite of 
 their faith in Christ, he and the bulk of Palestine be- 
 lievers had remained, up to this point, Jews still. To 
 such men the division which God had set up betwixt the 
 two portions of mankind did not seem at that time a 
 temporary party- wall (as St. Paul afterwards described 
 it '), intended to be taken down after it had served its pur- 
 pose, in order that wider room might be made for both in 
 one new temple. It was a fence of permanent and hopeless 
 exclusion for all beyond, of permanent inclusion for all 
 within. God had, as they believed, limited His grace for 
 ever to the covenant of circumcision. All men who had 
 not been brought near by that covenant and consecrated 
 » Eph. ii. 14. 
 
C0BNELIU8. 359 
 
 by its rites, were unclean and profane. It followed that 
 the Church, or assembly of such as believed in Jesus 
 Christ, could not be a wider communion than the followers 
 of Moses, but a narrower. It formed a lesser fold inside 
 the fold of Judaism. It was a more retired and safe 
 shrine, to which you could only pass through the fore-court 
 of the law. Any man might, it was felt, get into the 
 fellowship of Jesus, and all men, it was hoped, would 
 some day do so ; still, to the great world of uncircumcised 
 heathen sinners, access could lie only through that pre- 
 liminary apparatus of cleansing which God had prepared 
 in the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic ritual. 
 
 To rectify this mistake was the design of Peter's vision 
 on the housetop. It was the day after Cornelius sent off 
 his messengers : two household slaves and one orderly, all 
 of them men who sympathised with their master's religious 
 convictions, and knew the purport of their mission. These 
 three Italians, having walked a portion of the distance 
 after three o'clock on the evening before, were now, at 
 noon of the next day, coming pretty near to Joppa. They, 
 had not loitered, for it is a ride of eleven hours to the 
 modern traveller,^ and they were on foot. Noon was an 
 hour of prayer ; and Peter had chosen for his oratory the 
 flat housetop, 2 which, at the hottest time of day, would 
 be as quiet and still a spot as could be had. It was a spot, 
 too, most apt to awaken thoughts of God's great line of de- 
 marcation betwixt chosen Jew and uncovenanted heathen. 
 Before him, as he knelt, lay the land of Abraham and of 
 the promise. From his rock to which the town's white 
 houses clung silent in the heat, he could look over green 
 
 ^ See Porter, in Murray's Handbook, ii. 364. 
 ^ See ver. 9 : liri to dwfia = " upon the house." 
 
360 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 groves of orange-trees at its foot, to the broad well-cropped 
 plain across which he had journeyed, till his eyes rested 
 on the fainter line of Benjamin's hills. There, behind the 
 hills, unseen save by fancy, stood the holy city, to whose 
 familiar temple he still with the pious usage of his people 
 turned his face to pray. On the right hand and the left, 
 stretched to south and north the yellow streak of blown 
 sand, which, then as now, must have marked the line of 
 coast. He was on the furthest verge of sacred soil. 
 Behind him was nothing but the sea ; not the sheltered 
 tiny lake of his fishing days, but the Great Sea, mysterious, 
 cruel in its brightness, oj)pressive for its vastness, beyond 
 whose far horizon lay the strange foreign world of the un- 
 circumcised — the unknown and dreadful lands from which 
 came the infidel and the conqueror. If, in such a place, 
 any natural thoughts awoke in Peter touching the limits of 
 his nation's fold and the lost sheep who were not of the 
 House of Israel, they were interrupted by a very com- 
 monplace and prosaic craving. It is improbable that 
 noon was a usual meal-hour, so that Peter's hunger pro- 
 bably had some special occasion. Yet to this slight and 
 casual circumstance the whole revelation attached itself. 
 He was hungry, and while the household of his namesake 
 the tanner prepared food below, he on the roof, fresh from 
 prayer and meditation, was overtaken in an ecstasy.' He 
 was awake, like Cornelius the day before, and, like 
 Cornelius, he was fasting; but, unlike Cornehus, who 
 retained his senses unoppressed, Peter was absorbed out 
 of consciousness of external facts, through the unusual 
 power of spiritual impressions. Being lifted above his 
 ordinary thinking, he lay open to whatever super-sensuous 
 
 ' 'Eyivero iir' dvTov iKaraaiQ. 
 
CORNELIUS. 361 
 
 communications might anyhow reach his spirit. The 
 divine teaching came in the form of a vision. The sky- 
 above appeared to divide, that down from its secret glow- 
 ing depths of blue might come a thing, which wore the 
 look of a vast linen cloth, gathered up at its four corners 
 into four ends,' by which it was, as it were, suspended 
 from the sky. Slowly this thing came down,^ till, as it 
 neared the apostle, 3 he could see over its rim, and in it was 
 the appearance, which grew plainer as he gazed, of innume- 
 rable living things of every kind that walks, or creeps, or 
 flies, as if all animals known to Peter in his Syrian home 
 had somehow been collected in one vast crowd. Clean and 
 unclean creatures, it struck him, were mixed promiscu- 
 ously together. While hj gazed, a voice seemed to say 
 beside him, '' Eise, Peter, kill and eat : " and to the unseen, 
 unknown Speaker, Peter made characteristic, energetic, 
 and very Jewish answer — " By no means, Lord, for com- 
 mon or unclean thing never entered into my mouth." 4 
 The words which replied upon these of Peter — the second 
 utterance of the mysterious Voice — formed the key words 
 of the whole vision, and are precisely identical in both the 
 reports which we possess : — " What God did cleanse, make 
 thou not common." It remains uncertain whether only 
 these pregnant words were repeated three times, or (which 
 seems less likely) the whole conversation ; but after the 
 third repetition, suddenly the gathered sheet with all its 
 
 ^ 'Apxai can hardly refer to "rope ends" here (Alford), or to the 
 corners of the open sky (Wieseler). The reference to the four quar- 
 ters, which even Alford admits, is also doubtful. 
 
 ^ Cf, the imperfect Kara(3alvov, in ver. 11, with evOvg dvt\)]ix(p9r], in 
 ver. 16. 3 See ijXQev dxpi kjiov, xi. 5. 
 
 * Cf. chap. X. 14 with xi. 8. Peter's own version is the more vivid 
 and energetic. 
 
362 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 varied life seemed to be drawn quickly back into the sky 
 by some invisible Hand. 
 
 Taken by itself, this vision might hardly have been 
 quite intelligible to Peter. It might on reflection have 
 indicated no more to him than some approaching change 
 in the laws which regulated food. But the providence of 
 God soon helped him to a clue. He was still meditating 
 on the meaning of what he had seen, when he heard the 
 three strangers approach the outer gate of the entrance 
 court, and call to know if one Peter were lodging there. 
 Hurrying down the outside stair, which led from the roof 
 to the court without passing through the house, Peter 
 himself met and admitted the men. In the light of their 
 message and the dealings of God with their master, Peter 
 felt instinctively that he was meant to read the true lesson 
 of his ecstasy. So read, it was not hard to interpret it 
 aright. He saw that in the abolition of that symbolical 
 distinction bewixt clean animals and unclean, betwixt 
 what might and might not be eaten, there was also en- 
 closed the abolition of all such unreal distinctions as 
 had hitherto divided before the face of God the Gentile 
 from the Hebrew. 
 
 It could hardly fail to strike a thoughtful Jew that the 
 distinction drawn between different species of animals in 
 the eleventh chapter of Leviticus,^ whatever foundation 
 for it might be discoverable in nature, was closely con- 
 nected at least with that segregation of Israel from all 
 other peoples to be alone holy to Jehovah, which is really 
 the vital nerve of the entire civil legislation of Moses. 
 For one thing, the distinction could not be merely a 
 dietetic one. The law embraced more than the use of, or 
 '" Eecapitulated in Deut. xiv. 3-21. 
 
COBNELIUS. 363 
 
 the abstinence from, certain beasts as food. Unclean 
 animals were unclean to touch as well as to eat. Not 
 when alive, indeed, for that would have made ordinary- 
 existence intolerable ; but whatever or whoever (certain 
 cases excepted) touclied the dead body of a x^rohibited 
 animal, became ceremonially unclean. Dishes were to be 
 broken, if breakable, and if not, to be steeped in water, 
 which had contained any portion of such carcases or 
 been touched by them. The avoidance of such contact 
 with these creatures was enforced in the most solemn 
 manner by the special sanctity which as God's people 
 belonged to Israel : " Ye shall not make yourselves abomi- 
 nable with any creeping thing that creepeth, neither shall 
 ye make yourselves unclean with them, that ye should be 
 defiled thereby. Tor I am Jehovah your God : ye shall 
 therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy : for I 
 am holy." ^ Besides, it was obvious that the distinction 
 of meats was then, as it is to this day, a very powerful 
 instrument for keeping Jew and Gentile a^jart in social 
 intercourse. Like innumerable other laws discouraging 
 contact with foreigners, this difficulty about food made it 
 practically most inconvenient for any Hebrew to live on 
 terms of ordinary friendship with a Gentile. Table com- 
 panionship was, as it still is with strict Jews, a thing next 
 to impracticable. After the Jews came into hostile con- 
 tact with other nations, carefulness on this head became 
 almost a sacramental badgeof loyalty to Jehovah's covenant 
 and the exclusive prerogatives of their race. The refusal 
 of Daniel and his companions to defile themselves with 
 the " meat " provided by the King of Assyria,^ is, perhaps, 
 not an instance to the point, for these royal " dainties " 
 1 Lev. xi. 43, 44. ^ pan. i. 
 
864 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 were probably not flesh, but baked meats which had been 
 presented before an idoL But in the horrible persecution 
 of the Jews under Antiochus, "men chose rather to die 
 that they might not be defiled with meats, and profane 
 the holy covenant ; " and the refusal to eat swine's flesh 
 took its j)lace beside circumcision and Sabbath-keeping 
 as a test of martyrdom for the faith of Jehovah/ 
 
 It is clear, therefore, how the uncleanness of Gentile 
 food and the uncleanness of Gentiles themselves came to 
 be so inseparably associated in Hebrew thought, that the 
 one was the incessant reminder and index of the other. 
 Peter's vision, in which God expressly abolished the one, 
 was thus a suitable preface to the outpouring of His 
 Holy Spirit on Cornelius, by which He was about to 
 abolish the other. Even before Peter had seen that most 
 eloquent of all demonstrations that divine grace is not 
 limited by physical boundaries of race, or bound to cere- 
 monial purifications, he had by reflecting on vision and 
 providence together, under the Spirit's teaching, gathered 
 the drift of the revelation made to him. God showed 
 him before he reached Caesarea that •* he should not call 
 any man (as little as any beast) profane or unclean." I 
 can hardly imagine that St. Peter needed any special 
 teaching to free him from that vulgar and uncharitable 
 prejudice of his race, which despised every Gentile as 
 inferior, and shunned him as outcast of God. It was 
 quite another thing to see that God had seen fit to cancel 
 a distinction between men which He had Himself esta- 
 blished, and which He had made it the very business of 
 His people to respect. Neither Peter nor any other man 
 had a right to set aside the compulsory condition of cir- 
 1 See 1 Mace. i. 63 : 2 Mace. vi. 6-18, vii. 1. 
 
C0BNELIU8. 365 
 
 cumcision and ceremonial observance until it pleased God 
 to set it aside. If it did please Heaven now to throw 
 down that ancient restriction, and open the doors of its 
 favour to men of every race without a shadow of prefer- 
 ence, then this new law of the kingdom must be revealed 
 as unmistakably as the old law had been. 
 
 In this vision, therefore, interpreted to Peter by the 
 Holy Ghost, Gentile Christians may read the charter of 
 their gospel freedom. We owe it to the revelation of that 
 noontide at Joppa that we are Christians and yet not 
 Jews ; bound no longer by the ceremonial which pressed 
 upon ancient saints like a yoke ; encircled no longer by 
 artificial distinctions of clean and unclean ; but Christ's 
 freemen in a world where to the pure heart all things are 
 pure, and all men are equal before God. To persons who 
 have been born and bred in an atmosphere of Western 
 and of Christian thought, it may seem as if it were no 
 very wonderful discovery to make that God will forgive 
 men who are not circumcised as readily as men who are. 
 We have drifted so far away from the time at which this 
 idea was novel that it fails to strike us as surprising. Yet 
 it is that very " mystery " of which St. Paul became later 
 the guardian and administrator, for which he contended 
 his life long, in which he found the kernel of Christian 
 liberty, and over which he so frequently chants doxologies 
 of thankfulness — "the mystery which in other ages was 
 not made known unto the sons of men as it is now revealed 
 unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit — that 
 the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, 
 and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel." ^ 
 
 ' Eph. iii. 5, 6. Cf. ver. 9, 10, also i. 9-14, ii. 11-22 ; Col. i. 25-27 ; 
 Bom. id. pass., xvi. 25-27. 
 
866 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 It is to the atonement of our blessed Lord and Saviour 
 Jesus Christ that the non-Jewish world (according to St. 
 Paul) ow^es this reconciliation. We were far off ; now are 
 we " made nigh by the blood of Christ." We were aliens 
 from the commonwealth of Israel ; He hath broken down 
 the middle wall of partition. We were hated by the pri- 
 vileged Jew and him we hated, till Jesus abolished in His 
 flesh that enmity which sprang from the law of command- 
 ments contained in ordinances. We were without God in 
 the world, but Christ reconciled us to God in one body by 
 the cross. The strangers and foreigners are now fellow- 
 citizens with the saints ; they are of the household of 
 God. Moreover, if it is Jesus' priestly death which has 
 made all this possible for unclean men, it is Jesus' kingly 
 rule which brought it about. Not the servants, but the 
 Master, must we thank for it. To Paul He revealed it 
 in secret : to Peter, by a vision. Step by step, through 
 symbol and through providence, by the opening of men's 
 minds and by visits of angels, by force of facts and His 
 own direct downpouring of the Holy Ghost, He Who 
 reigns and loves us all for whom He died, did force upon 
 the reluctant Church of these first days the conviction 
 that the road to Christ does not lie by Moses alone, no, 
 nor by Abraham ; but that Christ's kingly City of Kefuge 
 and Peace " lietli four-square," ' with gates wide and high, 
 always open, to face each quarter of the globe ; so that the 
 penitent pilgrim, whether he follow in that Italian soldier's 
 steps, or draw near from any farther-off shore or province 
 of great dark heathendom, may have no roundabout 
 journey, past Sinai and Moriah, to reach the portal; but 
 may approach by a straight path, and enter right in, to 
 find sweet welcome from the King. 
 
 » See Rev. xxi. 10-17. 
 
CORNELIUS. 367 
 
 III. 
 
 The event, for which the preceding steps had heen a 
 preparation, took place on the tliird day after the vision 
 of Coruehus, on the second after that of Peter. The scene 
 shifts back to the officer's quarters in the barracks at 
 Caesarea. The good centurion had calculated quite cor- 
 rectly the length of time likely to be consumed by the 
 journey of his messengers and their return. He allowed 
 one night for rest at Joppa, as well as for Peter to make 
 his arrangenients to accompany them ; and because the 
 distance exceeded an average day's march, he supposed the 
 party to have spent another night on the road. This 
 delay was made all the more requisite by a circumstance 
 which Cornelius could not anticipate. Conscious that 
 the divine summons to Csesarea and his vision on the 
 housetop must be precursors of some very momentous 
 transaction, by which the future relations of Jew and 
 Gentile within the Church were to be affected, Peter 
 adopted the precaution of taking witnesses along with 
 him. No fewer than six ^ of the believing Jews of Joppa 
 were selected to be his companions, in order that their 
 evidence might afterwards confirm to the whole Jewish 
 Church whatever indications of His will the Lord should 
 vouchsafe. The party, thus increased to the number of 
 ten, did not actually reach C^sarea till towards three 
 o'clock 2 in the afternoon of the second day. By that 
 time Cornelius was fully expecting them. 
 
 ' See Acts xi. 12. 
 
 2 So I understand the difi&eult and disputed words of Cornelius in 
 ver. 30. Mtxpt Tavrrjg Trjg S)pag seems to imply that he was then 
 speaking at about the same hour of the day as that to which his 
 fast, four days before, had extended. But the prayer which was 
 interrupted by the angelic apparition must have followed immedi- 
 ately on that ia^t, and it took place at the ninth hour. 
 
368 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 It was probably not the first occasion on which his 
 house had been the rendezvous for a number of serious 
 Eoman inquirers. This centurion was in all probability 
 the centre of a circle, partly made up of relatives and 
 partly of intimate friends, who shared to a certain extent 
 his own religious sentiments. To them he had in the 
 mean time made it known how God had been pleased to 
 promise him that, through the words of a Jewish teacher 
 from Joppa, those difficulties respecting Judaism and the 
 new Nazarene sect over which they had often prayed 
 together would be resolved, and satisfaction given to that 
 deep craving after peace of soul which they had so long 
 sought in vain to appease. Cornelius had evidently taken 
 God's promise of a teacher not at all in the sense of a 
 private favour granted to himself for his own peculiar 
 desert, but as a common grace, in which it was meant 
 that his friends were to share. So it had been arranged 
 that they should meet that day within his rooms to await 
 the messenger of God. It is significant of the state of 
 things prevailing among more thoughtful heathens in the 
 first century, that, at one garrison town, so many ^ persons 
 should have been found, all of whom were sufficiently, if 
 not all equally, ripe to welcome, on its first announcement, 
 the glad tidings of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The centurion met the apostle at the outer gate of his 
 quarters. That he prostrated himself at the feet of his 
 visitor, could not mean in a Roman, what it might have 
 meant in an Oriental, a simple obeisance of courtesy. It 
 was really in some sort an act of religious reverence, and 
 for -this heathen, nothing could be more natural. To 
 heathen habits of feeling, the worship which belonged to 
 \ Cf. TToXXovg, in ver. 27. 
 
COBNELIUS. 369 
 
 the immortal gods, belonged also in an inferior degree 
 to a crowd of subordinate but semi-divine beings, deified 
 men, or local and tutelar divinities. It spread itself 
 abroad, in a still laxer form, over everything which was 
 at all connected with the State religion, its idols, its 
 temples, or its priests ; and at Rome itself, religious rites 
 had just begun a few yeiars before to be paid to the Head 
 of the State ^ as the quasi -divine representative upon 
 earth of celestial rule. The strict barriers, therefore, 
 which among Jews confined religious adoration in every 
 form and degree to the one true God alone, were utterly 
 foreign to pagan habits of thought. This man only 
 obeyed an instinct which every Gentile would have owned, 
 when he prostrated himself before one whom he had 
 been told by a heavenly messenger to regard as a special 
 agent and oracle of the Supreme God. The decision with 
 which Peter at once repelled such exaggerated reverence 
 marks the strong contrast between Hebrew and heathen 
 feeling.2 To the Jew, there stretched an infinite and 
 bridgeless gulf betwixt Him Who is alone God, adorable 
 for ever, and all other beings who, as dependent creatures, 
 are like nothing before Him, and vanity. This gulf 
 paganism had striven to fill up with whole species of 
 imaginary personages, somewhat less than the supreme 
 deity, but a good deal more divine than man; in con- 
 sequence of which the sentiment of adoration was broken 
 down, and the stern awful sense of divine sanctity or sepa- 
 rateness was enfeebled, till worship became a graduated 
 system of more or less respectful observances. It is 
 
 ^ See Alford, in loc, citing Suetonius {Octav. 52). 
 2 Cf. with ver. 26 the words of the angel to St. John, in Eev. xxii. 
 8,9. 
 
 25 
 
870 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 needless to add how much nobler as well as more true 
 was the Hebrew than the pagan view. Such a horror of 
 idolatry as feared to divert from the one Jehovah to any 
 created being the least particle of that religious reverence 
 which the Jealous One had challenged for His own, was 
 one of the most important lessons taught to the world 
 through the House of Israel. It early happened to the 
 Gentile Churches of East and West to suffer this rigid 
 monotheism which they had learned from Palestine to be 
 corrupted by the inveterate pagan proclivities of their 
 members.^ From this source there rapidly sprang adora- 
 tion of saints, picture and image worship, and the vene- 
 ration of the relics of martyrs ; till in the seventh century 
 multitudes in the East revolted from a Christianity which 
 had become little better than baptized polytheism, and 
 flung themselves back upon the more rigorous monotheism 
 and the more spiritual worship of Mahommed. It were a 
 happy thing for Christendom if all its Churches even yet 
 understood these early words of him whom the great 
 Latin Church has selected for its favourite patron and 
 reputed founder : " Stand up : I myself also am a man." 
 This state of superstitious awe in which the Eoman 
 approached St. Peter was most unfavourable to the frank 
 or intelhgent reception of a message so simple and 
 human in its form as the gospel. But the friendly 
 conversation in which it was remarked that Peter engaged 
 his host as he accompanied him to the guest room,^ with 
 the outspoken and manly explanation which he there gave 
 
 1 Especially after a.d. 325, when the Church was deluged with 
 half-converted, conforming heathen. 
 
 ' See ver. 27, (two^iXojv avn^ {i. e., with Cornelius) iiarj\9(v (into 
 the room: the former e«'<Tf\0etj/, ver. 25, refers to his entrance into 
 the court by the outer gateway). 
 
COBNELIUS. 371 
 
 to the assembled guests, put Cornelius entirely at liis 
 ease, and brought him back to his habitual attitude of 
 quiet thoughtful inquiry. This stranger, though heralded 
 by a celestial apparition and bearing words from God, 
 was yet — not only a " man " — but quite a plain and or- 
 dinary Jew, with a provincial accent,^ and attended by 
 companions whose social standing was equally humble. 
 His look wore nothing celestial to overbear the imagina- 
 tion of the soldier. He was not even above the prevailing 
 social prejudices of his countrymen, for his first words, 
 uttered with the abruptness which belonged to his im- 
 pulsive character, were an apology for having ventured 
 to disregard the usages of his nation. No law of God 
 forbade to the Jew all intercourse whatever with Gentiles, 
 only it had grown by this time to be the rule in circum- 
 spect Jewish society, as we learn from Latin writer s,^ 
 and the later regulations of the Talmud fixed it as a 
 sacred duty. These Gentiles, quartered in a Jewish town, 
 knew very well what the practice of devout Hebrews 
 was ; 3 and Peter was frank enough to admit that for his 
 own part 4 nothing but a special revelation from heaven 
 could have induced him to depart from it. By the vision 
 at Joppa, by inward spiritual direction, and by the force 
 of events, God had now made it clear to His servant 
 that no man was henceforth to be treated as profane or 
 unclean. The distinction among mankind, on which 
 
 1 Matt. xxvi. 73. 
 
 2 See in Alford, in loc, passages from Juvenal and Tacitus. The 
 passage in Josepkus c. Apion, ii. 29, has doubtful force here. Cf., 
 however, John xix, 28. The case in Josephus, Antiq. xx. 2. 4, is 
 therefore exceptional. 
 
 3 Cf. the emphatic vung tTriarafTOe, in ver. 28. 
 
 * Compare the Ka/iot, in ver. 28, with did, in ver. 29. 
 
 25* 
 
372 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. . 
 
 Hebrew usage rested, was at last so far abolished that 
 the Gentiles had been by the blood of Christ made clean 
 enough for Jewish touch ; even as the ancient distinction 
 of meats, which before ke^^t them ajDart, had been 
 abolished, so that Peter could sit now at Cornelius's table 
 with an untarnished conscience. It was for this reason, 
 as he explained, that he had come when sent for, without 
 one word of objection or of scruple, and he begged to 
 know why they had sent for him. 
 
 The composed account which Cornelius thereupon gave 
 of his vision four days before, and the polite terms of 
 welcome^ in which he expressed the readiness of himself 
 and his friends to hear God's message, reflect the simple, 
 transparent character of the man. In tone they form a 
 contrast to the energetic, almost vehement, rapidity of 
 Peter in the discourse which followed. The moment was 
 come for the apostle to deliver the message with which 
 his Divine Master had charged him, and the soul of the 
 man kindled with his blessed burden. He brought glad 
 tidings to these longing souls ; and the first words in 
 which he is reported to have opened his testimony are so 
 impetuous, so defiant of construction, that they have been 
 the despair of grammarians. ^ Yet before he even begins 
 to preach the gospel, he gives most emphatic expression 
 to the great lesson which this whole series of events had 
 been teaching to himself. Before him sat an audience 
 such as he had never previously preached Christ to. The 
 narrative of Cornelius and the waiting faces of his friends 
 have crowned that sequence of proofs by which God had 
 
 1 The phrase, crv re KoXwg tTroirjaag, ver. 33, is not a compliment to 
 Peter, but a courteous form of welcome. 
 
 2 Ou the construction in ver. 36-38, the reader may consult Meyer, 
 Alford, Olshausen, &g., in loc, and Winer, Gram. (6th ed.), p. 507. 
 
COBNELIUS. 373 
 
 been conducting liim, whether he would or not, to a con- 
 clusion grand enough to thrill him with agitation. That 
 God respected no man's person, was a doctrine he had 
 read indeed often enough in Holy Scripture,^ and, in the 
 letter of it, knew by heart. But never till now had he 
 realised its import or dreamed how wide its application 
 was. Never had he seen that this impartiality of God, 
 which passes by external differences to deal only with 
 what is moral and spiritual in men, places all just and 
 pious souls of whatever nationality on the same plat- 
 form before God's grace, and makes them equally fit 
 on that ground alone to receive the kingdom of God's 
 dear Son. Peter had heard his Master say, in that 
 amazing sermon preached at Capernaum,^ that the one 
 condition of any man's coming unto Him was a cer- 
 tain secret inward drawing of the soul by the Father 
 in heaven ; and that whosoever came, being thus taught 
 and drawn of God, He should in no wise cast out. 
 He had also heard Jesus declare in the temples that the 
 moral and religious preparation required for the reception 
 of His gospel, lay in that tractableness of will which 
 desires with a child's docihty to do God's will. Still 
 Peter had never before reaUsed that such words pos- 
 sessed spiritual width enough to take in uncircumcised, 
 as well as circumcised, men : so that every one through- 
 out God's world who was of the truth should hear Christ's 
 voice.4 Now he saw it. Here were men, pure Gentiles, 
 who yet, through God's mysterious grace, feared God and 
 wrought righteousness ; in whom the moral and spiritual 
 conditions of acceptance into the kingdom were complete, 
 
 » See, e. g., Deut. x. 17, and 2 Chron. xix. 7. 
 Cf. John vi. 37, 44, 45. ^ Ibid. vii. 17. * See Ibid, xviii. 37. 
 
374 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 although the external physical conditions he had supposed 
 needful were wholly wanting. These men God Himself 
 had so far recognised as fit candidates for mercy, that to 
 them as they were God had sent him to declare the glad 
 tidings of peace. 
 
 No question is raised here, either in Peter's mind or by 
 his words, as to God's acceptance of men Hke Cornelius 
 without their believing on Jesus Christ. The acceptable- 
 ness he is thinking and speaking of is acceptableness 
 simply as persons to whom the gospel of Christ may fitly 
 be sent and with success preached. Further than this 
 we are not at liberty to press his language. That most 
 fascinating mystery, over which charitable hearts will 
 always hang, of the position which such men as Cornelius 
 would occupy were they never to hear the name of Jesus 
 or be baptized into His Church ; that unanswered ques- 
 tion, touching the hopes of the honest-minded heathen, 
 who, having not the law, do by nature the things con- 
 tained in the law,^ walking after such light as they 
 possess, is left by this Scripture in the same darkness as 
 by every other Scripture. Devout and reverent thinkers 
 may allow to themselves such secret thoughts as are 
 consistent with a due submission to the justice and 
 sovereignty of God ; but the Church, which can speak in 
 her public testimony only where God has spoken, must 
 here be silent. That only which has been revealed, is 
 matter of faith. 
 
 Yet let no one deem it a trivial discovery which St. 
 
 Peter made at Caesarea. That God bids all ready and 
 
 waiting and willing souls alike welcome to His blessed 
 
 evangel, and without reference to their antecedents or 
 
 * Kom. ii. 14. 
 
COENELIUS. 375 
 
 their advantages or their conventional recommendations, 
 has flung wide to them the doors of His free grace, was 
 then and is now the very glory of the kingdom of Christ. 
 Here is no question asked, but. Are you inwardly prepared 
 to receive the gospel? A heart made good and honest 
 by the grace of God, a will to do His will, a fear of God 
 and effort after justice, an ear that waits to hear, a lowly 
 spirit that prays for light — these are the conditions of 
 acceptance. It is true, such a person has still need to be 
 told of Jesus Christ Who reconciled us to the Father ; 
 since, besides His, there is no other name given under 
 heaven whereby we must be saved. ^ Only such a person 
 is very welcome to Christ, indeed is already not far from 
 Him. He hears at once the voice of Christ "Who seeks 
 him, and comes at once to Christ's light, when the light 
 of Christ only comes to him.^^ 
 
 So much of his intended sermon as Peter had delivered 
 when he was gloriously interrupted,3 falls into three parts. 
 The first is an historical retrospect of facts which, 
 having happened within a few years before and in their 
 immediate neighbourhood, were already known to his 
 audience. The second is the testimony of an eye-witness 
 to one stupendous fact, not yet certainly known to the 
 hearers, which filled up with light and meaning all the 
 preceding history. The third is an authoritative procla- 
 mation on behalf of God of the way to pardon at His 
 judgment-seat through His exalted Son, Jesus Christ. 
 The whole speech thus moves through the same cycle of 
 ideas as are found in all other speeches of St. Peter. It 
 
 Compare Acts iv. 12. * John x. 16, iii. 21. 
 
 This appears from ev Sk Tip dpXaaOai fxi XoXhv, of si. 15. 
 
376 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 wears tlie same threefold character of an historical review, 
 an apostolic witness, and an evangelist's proclamation of 
 peace. 
 
 In the first place, Peter rapidly recalled certain noto- 
 rious facts connected with the ministry of the Nazareth 
 Teacher, that ministry which began in the adjacent pro- 
 vince of Galilee after John's baptism, and was terminated 
 by Jesus' own violent death at Jerusalem. People who 
 lived in Csesarea could not help knowing that rumour 
 which a few years before had gone abroad ^ and convulsed 
 society in Palestine ; how, after receiving, as was said, at 
 His baptism in Jordan the unction of the Holy Ghost 
 which marked Him out for the Christ, Jesus had traversed 
 the whole land as a teacher and a wonder-worker ; how, 
 as a minister of God specially to the circumcision^ (though 
 He was at the same time **Lord of all men," Jew and 
 Gentile ahke; as Peter parenthetically interjects). He 
 had preached to the children of Israel God's gospel of 
 peace 3 through Himself as their Messiah ; how He proved 
 that He was not alone in this nor " spoke of Himself, "4 
 but had '' God with Him," by beneficent works of healing, 
 wrought everywhere on such of His unhappy countrymen 
 as evil spirits had afflicted with sore troubles, especially 
 those over whom Satan had, as it were, tyrannised,5 
 mastering even their wills ; finally, how a Man Who thus 
 carried about with Him, in some pregnant, though as yet 
 
 ' This seems to be the meaning of to yevofievov pnna, in ver. 37. 
 
 2 Cf. Paul in Kom. xv. 8. 
 
 ^ 'Ei/ayyfXt^ojuevoe kpr/vijVf ver. 36. 
 
 * John viii. 16, 29, xiv. 10, vii. 17, viii. 28. 
 
 * Cf. KaradwafTTevoiJievovg, in ver. 38, only found elsewhere in Jaa. 
 ii. 6. See similar language of spiritual possession in St. Paul, 2 Tim. 
 ii. 26. 
 
COBNELIUS. 377 
 
 indefinite, sense, the special presence of God,^ had been 
 violently put to death by crucifixion. 
 
 So much they already knew by common rumour. What 
 they could not yet know was that the Crucified had since 
 come to life again. The evidence of this (Peter said) had 
 not been given publicly to the nation which had rejected 
 Him. It was kept for chosen witnesses previously selected ^ 
 of God for that end when Jesus called them to apostle- 
 ship. Yet, since this fact was one which made all the rest 
 weighty, and transformed the biography of the Nazarene 
 into a gospel for mankind, therefore to these chosen 
 witnesses the evidence had been made absolutely com- 
 plete. They not only saw Him ; they ate with Him ;3 
 they drank with Him. Proof the most searching and 
 indubitable had been afforded them in order that their 
 words might certify the world. " And we," said Peter, in 
 name of his absent colleagues, "we are they who ate and 
 drank with Him after He rose from the dead." 
 
 Thus far the preacher sketched in outline the historical 
 basis on which the gospel reposes. To us, both these 
 classes of facts, those which were patent to Jesus' con- 
 temporaries, and those of which the Twelve were witnesses 
 at first hand, are become matters of remote history, borne 
 down to us on the credible authority of certain written 
 documents. We cannot, as Cornelius could, cross- 
 
 » Peter's words here, 6 ^ebg 7> juer' ivrov, seem purposely guarded. 
 They express the conclusion to which any candid observer ought to 
 have arrived at the date of Jesus' crucifixion. His resurrection led, 
 of course, to more than that. The reference here to Jesus' works, as 
 proofs that He was sustained by the power of God, is in stnkmg 
 harmony with much of Jesus' own in the fourth Gospel. 
 
 2 npoKexiipoTovriiJtevoig, in ver. 41, is a utt. Xey. 
 
 3 See Luke xxiv. 40-43 ; c. John xxi. 13. His use of liquid food is 
 not expressly stated in the Gospels. 
 
878 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 examine a man wlio had eaten with the risen Christ ; nor 
 can we, as he, by a week's tour among the highlands of 
 Gahlee might have done, investigate what it was this 
 Man taught, and what were the works He was said to do. 
 Under this disadvantage must He every generation except 
 that first one. Yet the first-hand evidence has been pre- 
 served to us with such freshness and abundance in those 
 collected pamphlets which we call the New Testament, as 
 substantially to defy criticism and to satisfy with quite 
 reasonable certainty a candid historian. More than this 
 we have no right to ask. Less than this we could not 
 trust to ; for it is on this substructure of plain fact that 
 we must place, just as Peter did, the stupendous doctrines 
 of Christ's gospel.^ These doctrines, as recited by that 
 primitive preacher, are mainly two : the one that God has 
 made Jesus of Nazareth to be the Judge at last of all 
 men, living or dead, Jew or Gentile ; the other, that the 
 road to pardon and justification at the bar of this Judge 
 lies through faith in Himself. The elevation of a Person 
 Who appeared at a given period in human history to the 
 throne of divine justice, so that in His hands, through 
 which men drove nails, shall yet lie the everlasting doom 
 of every living soul, is not so much a doctrine as a re- 
 vealed fact. It is one of those facts, however, which wraps 
 within its bosom a world of teaching. The divine dignity 
 of the Man thus entrusted with the supreme task of Deity, 
 the innocence and sacrificial worth of His passion, with 
 the vital moment of each other man's relation to this 
 single Man ; these are all implications involved in that 
 
 ^ It is noticeable that Peter speaks of his message as a thing Jesus 
 commanded him to preach. This command was probably on a dif- 
 ferent occasion from any recorded in the Gospels — different from 
 Matt, xxviii. 29, or Acts i. 8. - 
 
CORNELIUS, 379 
 
 fact and carried along with it. Further, it is because 
 Jesus is to judge that He can now save. Absolution from 
 sin, like condemnation for it, lies in His hand. It comes 
 through His name. It comes to the men who trust Him 
 for it. It lies open and free to trusting souls of any land 
 or race. Finally, it is in this Saviour Judge and His 
 pardon of sin that we must find the focus, the burning 
 centre, of the earlier Old Testament revelation, preparing 
 for or foretelling grace to men — the centre, in fact, of all 
 earlier training or drawing of human hearts to wait in 
 darkness for a light to arise : «* To Him give all the 
 prophets witness." 
 
 To this point only Peter had arrived, purposing to amplify 
 and urge his message ; but for prepared hearts few words 
 are needful. Men who are waiting for God leap before 
 the preacher. The inspiration of the Holy Ghost makes 
 speech superfluous. The advent on these heathens in its 
 highest form of that peculiar spiritual influence which is 
 characteristic of the Christian Church — I mean of the 
 Holy Ghost as the Spirit not only of new birth, but also 
 of the assurance of sonship to God — is an event which 
 has no parallel save Pentecost. This was the Pentecost 
 of the Gentiles. Suddenly, just as at Jerusalem, on the 
 whole assembly of worshippers, with some visible, unmis- 
 takable signs, if not with rush of wind or tongue of 
 flame, there fell the Holy Ghost. Again, too, as at Jeru- 
 salem, the tongues of the heathen men were filled with 
 strange and unknown words of exultation, and aloud, in 
 the heat of a holy rapture, each one broke into the praises 
 of the God of salvation. It was not possible for Peter 
 and the Church then, it is not possible for us now, to mis- 
 take the divine purpose in this repetition at Csesarea of 
 
380 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 what had occurred in Jerusalem. God would put the 
 alien and so long *' unclean " nations on a i)latform • no 
 less high than that of the Jewish mother Church. He 
 would authenticate by as solemn a baptism from heaven 
 their admission into the household and kingdom of His 
 Son. " What God hath cleansed," said the voice in the 
 vision, " that call not thou common." The marvel of 
 Cassarea repeated the warning. God did cleanse heath- 
 endom in the person of Cornelius and his fellows, and 
 Peter dared no longer call heathen men common. It was 
 this perfect parallel between God's gift of His Spirit to 
 these Komans and the gift of His Spirit " at the begin- 
 ning," which Peter employed, both at the time and after- 
 wards,^ as a conclusive proof that God meant, under the 
 new gospel economy, to treat the circumcised and the un- 
 circumcised alike. Those words in which the Lord Jesus, 
 on the eve of His ascension, had promised to the first little 
 company of friends who clung regretfully about Him, that 
 He would soon baptise them with that Spirit-baptism of 
 which John's had been a figure, flashed through Peter's 
 mind when he saw the memorable scene of the upper 
 chamber renewed in the barrack-room. ^ This, too, was a 
 fulfilment of that promise. This, too, was the true bap- 
 tismal blessing, the actual reception of men into the 
 Church of Christ. Cornelius and the rest are not circum- 
 cised ; but they are indubitably disciples by the best right, 
 and in the fullest communion with the Head, since they 
 have been introduced into fellowship by Christ's own 
 hand, and sealed with Christ's own seal. *' Who can for- 
 bid the water, 3 where He has not withheld the Spirit ? " 
 
 1 Immediately after at Jerusalem, Acts xi. 15-17, and in the Synod 
 later, chap. xv. 7-9. ^ See Acts xi. 16, c. i. 5. 
 
 ^ Note the article in to I'^wp, ver. 47, parallel to to irvtviia. 
 
COBNELIUS. 381 
 
 Wherever, therefore, we find the fruits of the Holy 
 Spirit of Christ, there, on the authority of an apostle, 
 we are bound to recognise the Church of Christ.^ 
 Churches which unchurch communions of believing and 
 holy men, because their ecclesiastical order is not vaHd, 
 nor their episcopal descent continuous, appear, on these 
 principles, to be guilty, not only of folly, but of schism. 
 They misunderstand, and then they rend, the spiritual 
 body of Christ. But if hierarchism and high-churchism 
 accord ill with the transactions at C^esarea, it fares little 
 better with the ultra-spiritualism of those who despise 
 church order, or deem of no account the due administra- 
 tion of the holy sacraments. Never, save on that soli- 
 tary occasion, did the special gift of the Holy Ghost pre- 
 cede the baptism of a convert. Even on that occasion 
 the exceptional presence of the thing signified did not 
 render superfluous the observance of the sign. God is 
 not bound even to His own order ; nor can baptism possess 
 any magical virtue to confer what God conferred without 
 it. Yet the Church even then followed in the steps of 
 her Lord, ratifying by her outward act what He had 
 already done by inward grace. To administer the sacra- 
 ments, indeed, was not in that primitive age the highest 
 ofiice of Christian ministers. Following the same rule as 
 St. Paul observed,^ Peter left it to the six brethren from 
 Joppa to complete by baptism the formal reception into 
 church-fellowship of these first Gentile converts. Bap- 
 tised they were, however, with the baptism of water, con- 
 fessing their sins and invoking the name of the Lord 
 Jesus. 
 
 Thus was consummated the first formal or official 
 ^ UM Christus, ibi ecclesia. 2 j Qqj.^ j^ 14-17. 
 
882 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 recognition that tlie law of Moses and the older rites of 
 Abrahamic Judaism were, as conditions of life and rules 
 of duty, for ever abolished in the Christian Church. Of 
 the far-reaching theological issues of that day's trans- 
 action, we shall find the clearest, no less than the most 
 authoritative, exposition, in these words by the most 
 theological of the apostles :^ — 
 
 " For now, the righteousness of God, to which both the 
 law and the prophets had so long borne witness, has been 
 made manifest, quite apart from the law ; that righteous- 
 ness of God, which comes through trust in Jesus Christ 
 to all those who do trust Him, whether Jew or Gentile. 
 For now there is no longer any difference ; since we have 
 all alike sinned and fallen short of the moral likeness of 
 God our Father ; so are we all alike justified gratuitously 
 by His free grace through the one atonement made for all 
 in Christ Jesus. Him God has set before us all at last as 
 a propitiatory sacrifice through faith that rests in His 
 blood. Thus, too, is the righteousness of God at last 
 made evident. In His forbearance it pleased God of old 
 to pass over in silence the sinful acts of men in times gone 
 by ; but now in this present age He has set Christ before 
 us all to make His righteousness plain — how He can be 
 
 just and yet justify the child of faith God is no 
 
 God for Jews only. He is the God also of the Gentiles : 
 one and the same God, Who will justify circumcised and 
 uncircumcised men alike, through their faith." 
 
 ' Eom. iii. 21-30. I have used the freedom to modify the Au- 
 thorised Version, and slightly to paraphrase the text, in the hope of 
 giving greater freshness to the sense of the original. 
 
XIX. 
 
 fjir]d' o}g KUTaicvpiEvovTeg tojv KXrjpuiV. 
 
Acts xi. 1-18. 
 
Ee VISED Veksion. 
 
 Noiv the apostles and the brethren who tvere throughout 
 Judcea heard that the Gentiles also had received the 
 Word of God, And ivhen Peter loent up to Jerusalem 
 they of the circumcision were contending ivith him, 
 saying : " Thou didst go in to men uncircumcised, and 
 didst eat with them.'^ But Peter began and set forth 
 to them from the beginning, saying : 
 
 *' I IV as in the city of Joppa praying, and saw in an 
 ecstasy a vision, a certain vessel descending like a great 
 sheet let down by four corners out of heaven, and it 
 came even to me ; into which when I gazed, I observed 
 and saio the quadrupeds of the earth, and the ivild 
 beasts and the reptiles, and the birds of heaven. I also 
 heard a voice saying to me : ' Rise, Peter, slay and eatJ* 
 But I said: * By no means. Lord, for common or 
 unclean thing never entered into my moitth.^ But the 
 voice answered a second time out of heaven : ' What 
 God cleansed, make not thou common,^ Now this 
 happened thrice, and all ivere draivn up again into 
 heaven. And behold, at once three men stood there by 
 the house in which I ivas, sent from Ccesarea to me. 
 And the Spirit bade me go loith them. But there went 
 with me also these six brethren, and we entered into the 
 
 26 
 
house of the man, and he reported to us how he had 
 seen the angel in his house, standing arid saying to him : 
 * Send to Joppa and call for Simon ivho is surnamed 
 Peter, zvho shall speak things to thee in ivhich thou 
 shalt he saved, and thy whole house.'* But on my 
 heginning to speak, there fell the Holy Ghost on them, 
 as also on us at the heginning : and I rememhered the 
 Lord's tvord, hoiv He said : * John indeed haptized 
 tvith tvater, hut ye shall he haptized in the Holy Ghost.* 
 If therefore God gave to them the like free-gift as to us 
 also, tvho helieved on the Lord Jesus Christ, icho was 
 I, ahle to hinder God ? " 
 
 Now, ivhen they heard these things, they held their 
 peace, and were glorifying God, saying : " Then to the 
 Gentiles also did God give the repentance unto life!''* 
 
XIX. 
 
 THE importance of the centurion's baptism rested, not 
 simply on its being the issue of a series of divine in- 
 terpositions which led up to it, but quite as much on its 
 being instantly recognised and accepted by the Church 
 as the commencement of a new era. Its recognition by 
 the Church, however, hinged on its having been manifestly 
 brought about by the hand of God. Hence, Peter's nar- 
 rative of those divine revelations and interpositions by 
 which the Lord had Himself fitted everything together so 
 as to leave no doubt of His will, was necessary before the 
 Church could welcome with joy the new and altered con- 
 ditions of Church membership. 
 
 News of what had occurred at Csesarea reached Jerusa- 
 lem before St. Peter. He does not appear to have sent 
 any report to his colleagues at head- quarters, nor did he 
 go up to the capital until he had first spent some days 
 with the new converts. Still it is natural to conjecture 
 that his return would be somewhat hastened by the 
 unexpected turn things had taken. He could scarcely 
 feel free to complete his round of visitation at leisu're, as 
 if nothing of importance had happened. He took with 
 him to the capital those six believing Jews of Joppa 
 whom he had brought with him to Caesarea, which looks 
 as if he returned straight from Caesarea to Jerusalem 
 
 26* 
 
388 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 without any further visitation of Churches, under some 
 expectation that he might need to explain or vindicate 
 what he had done. Meanwhile, during the days he 
 remained with Cornelius, imperfect rumours of these 
 strange events had reached, not only Jerusalem, hut also 
 the believers who lived in the landward districts of Judaea 
 and were in immediate dependence upon the mother 
 Church in the city. That mother Church was still 
 watched over by more than one apostle besides Peter 
 himself. James the son of Zebedee had not yet received 
 the grace of martyrdom. In all likehhood, James the 
 son of Alphsens was already the recognised resident 
 head of the Jerusalem congregations. Others, of whom 
 history is silent, may have still exercised their office 
 within the original territory of Judaea. All these, with 
 the brethren throughout the province,^ heard that the 
 Gentiles also had received the word of God, the gospel 
 message of life in Jesus Christ. From the terms of 
 Luke's narrative we gather some notion of the rumour 
 which reached them. Caesarea, not Joppa, was the 
 source from which it came. Therefore they knew little 
 or nothing about Peter's vision and the chain of circum- 
 stances by which he had been prepared to treat Gentiles 
 as no longer unclean. They knew of Cornelius ^ and of the 
 angelic visitant whom God had sent to him. 3 Whether 
 or not the more spiritual side of his conversion was 
 reported, or the advent of the Holy Spirit on him and 
 his friends in wonderful manifestation, they were at least 
 told that Peter had sanctioned the administration of 
 
 1 Cf. Kara rrjv 'lov^aiav, in ver. 1. 
 
 ^ Cf. Tov dvdpoQ, in ver. 12, which, while sinking his name, assumes 
 that the man had been heard of by them. 
 ^ Cf. the art. in ver. 13, rbv dyytXop. 
 
PETEB BEPOBTS TO THE CHUBCH. 389 
 
 baptism to men who liad not first submitted to circum- 
 cision, and had entered into domestic table fellowship, 
 possibly into holy eucharistic fellowship,^ with them. 
 Even as thus imperfectly reported, the event was felt to 
 be one of the highest possible moment. That persons 
 who stood wholly without the pale of the chosen people 
 and the ancient covenant should have the gospel preached 
 to them at all, should receive it gladly, and should profess 
 so much faith in Jesus, that an apostle could judge them 
 fit for baptism — this alone meant an immense deal. For 
 if to Cornelius and his comrades the message of the 
 kingdom could come, why not to other Eomans outside 
 Palestine ? Why not to all heathens throughout the world ? 
 A vision began to open up of expansion and progress, 
 which, to homebred Jews, nursed in Hebrew exclusiveness, 
 would seem next to bewildering. Nor could the news, 
 in one aspect of it, appear to hearts that loved Jesus a 
 thing to be regretted. Joy at the diffusion of the Saviour's 
 precious name, and at the making glad of human souls 
 through forgiveness of sins by His blood, could not fail 
 to be the first instinct of every genuine disciple. Only 
 the circumstances under which the thing was reported to 
 have occurred, looked, at first sight, so suspicious, that 
 joy was crossed or checked by uncertainty and alarm. 
 What they knew as yet was no more than the naked fact, 
 and even that put in its worst light, that Peter had 
 broken through all rule by treating uncircumcised men, 
 both ecclesiastically and socially, as if they were circum- 
 cised. Why he had done so, or by what steps he had 
 been led to make so serious an innovation, they did not 
 know. Therefore they hardly knew whether to be glad 
 ^ Can the (rvvk<payeg, in ver. 3, mean this? 
 
890 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 or vexed. For heathens to receive the word of life was 
 one thing ; for the Church to receive heathens off-hand, 
 without the usual legal purifying, was a yery different thing. 
 Thus matters stood when Peter reached Jerusalem. 
 It is not easy to be sure how the affair came up for dis- 
 cussion. Luke says that Peter delivered his explanatory 
 report at a time when ''they of the circumcision" were 
 disputing or contending with him; ^ but it is hard to 
 ascertain what such a phrase as '' they of the circum- 
 cision " can mean, when applied to that period of the 
 Church. By the time St. Luke wrote, the i)hrase had in- 
 deed become usual to denote primarily the whole number 
 of Jewish, as opposed to Gentile, Christians, and then spe- 
 cially the party which urged the observance of Jewish 
 ritual. But at the earlier time of which he was writing, 
 such a phrase could not have been in use in either sense. 
 No Judaizing party yet existed, and as all the converts 
 were Jews, it was not needful to distinguish Jewish con- 
 verts by any specific name. By applying, then, this later 
 phrase to the early Church, does St. Luke intend to 
 describe the whole body of believers, who were all of 
 course, in the literal sense of the words, " men of the 
 circumcision" ? or does he designate that portion only of 
 the believers who afterwards came to form a Judaizing 
 party ? I incline to the latter alternative. It appears to 
 me hardly likely to have been the entire company of the 
 " apostles and brethren " who set themselves in open 
 opposition to Peter's conduct. In that case it would have 
 been more natural for the writer, who had just named 
 them in the preceding sentence, to refer to them by a 
 pronoun — "When Peter was gone up to Jerusalem they 
 * dieKpivovTo, ver. 2. 
 
PETEE BEPOBTS TO THE CHUBCH. 391 
 
 were contending with liim. More probably, the difficulty 
 which all more or less felt came to speech in the mouths 
 of a certain section of the Church, The strong Jewish 
 prejudice in favour of Mosaic law, which a few years later 
 was to work such wide-spread mischief, as all St. Paul's 
 letters show, must have already lain latent in the minds 
 of many baptized Jews. No occasion had till now arisen 
 to stir that prejudice into activity, but these recent 
 events at Caesarea did form such an occasion. Those 
 brethren who were sure to feel most aggrieved by Peter's 
 laxity, and to resent it most warmly, were precisely the 
 very brethren who at a later day, when Gentile liberty had 
 come to be a question hotly contested, consolidated them- 
 selves into an avowed and active party. Nothing could be 
 more natural than that the dissatisfaction with Peter's 
 action, which to some extent every Jew in the mother 
 Church may have shared, should first break out into open 
 displeased remonstrance from that class of Jews who 
 were Dhe most conservative, the most national, the most 
 bigoted, and the most zealous for law and custom. Jews 
 of this type were more numerous in Jerusalem than any- 
 where else. At a later period they proved strong enough 
 to overbear even Peter's firmness.' And if Luke desired 
 to indicate them, he could scarcely avoid using the 
 familiar term which, when he wrote, described the cor- 
 responding church -party of his time. It is true they 
 were not yet a party " of the cu'cumcision," but they 
 were the men out of whom such a party was soon to 
 grow ; and their action that day was really the earliest 
 open exhibition of those opinions which the circumcision- 
 party came ultimately to embody.^ 
 
 1 Gal. ii. 12. ^ go Calvin (m loc.) and Lange {Bibel Werk). 
 
392 FBOM JEBU8ALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 Tliis view is supported by tlie language ascribed to 
 these complainants. Had it been his fellow- apostles who 
 desired from St. Peter an account of what had passed at 
 Caesarea, the great sjpiritual transaction of the reception 
 of Christ by heathens, and of heathens by Christ in 
 baptism, would surely have formed the m,atter of inquir}^ ; 
 whereas the point in Peter's conduct over which his ques- 
 tioners wrangled was the subordinate detail of " eating " 
 with the uncircumcised. In social intercourse at the 
 house of Cornelius, he had disregarded, not a law of 
 Moses, but a traditional usage of orthodox Jews, and 
 this they make the head and front of his offending. 
 Nor would the official heads of the Church have been 
 likely to edge their reproaches against a foremost apostle 
 with any w^ord of contempt cast at the Gentiles ; yet the 
 phrase used by the objectors for the new Roman con- 
 verts (though rendered softly in our Authorised Version, 
 '* men uncircumcised ") is in fact an untranslatable ex- 
 pression of rude and displeased contempt.^ 
 
 By whomsoever put, Peter met the question with a 
 calm and careful narrative of facts. It can hardly fail to 
 startle those who know how his name has since been 
 used in Christendom to cover the most unbounded claims 
 of Church authority, that we should here find this first 
 of apostles reduced to justify his apostolic action before 
 an assembly of his brethren. Yet this is in perfect accord 
 with the whole New Testament. The apostolic Church 
 is never represented as a close oligarchy, much less as 
 an empire with an infalhble head. Not even apostolic 
 office confers autocratic power. Not even miraculous 
 gifts of inspiration are held to secure practical infallibility. 
 
 ' Trpug dvSpag ciKpofSvariav txovrag, ver. 3. 
 
PETER BEPOBTS TO THE CHUBCH. 393 
 
 The grace and wisdom of Jesus Christ reside exckisively 
 in no man 'or college of men, but in that ^' Body" of 
 Jesus Christ which is the assembly of all the faithful. 
 Before that assembly of the faithful^ it is that the 
 ''Prince of the Apostles" is content to plead. If any 
 man might have carried matters within the Church with 
 a high hand, surely it was this Eock-Man, to whom 
 Jesus had given the keys ; and if ever he had an ex- 
 cuse for being peremptory or self-assertive, it was at the 
 moment when, led by the voice of his Master, he had 
 just set open to the whole heathen world the gates of the 
 kingdom of God. Yet to his brethren, even to brethren 
 whose tone was unpleasant and disputatious, he felt 
 bound to offer a most careful explanation, to fortify his 
 statement by the evidence of witnesses, and to appeal to 
 their own reason in justification of his conduct. Peter, 
 not less than Paul, might have fairly said : " We do not 
 preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as the Lord, and our- 
 selves as only your servants for Jesus' sake." ^ 
 
 The narrative which St. Peter gave passed lightly over 
 facts which his hearers already knew, to relate in detail 
 those previous revelations to himself which had prepared 
 him for the reception of Cornelius. Having in a previous 
 chapter considered the events at Joppa, it is not neces- 
 sary to repeat them here. Only it is worth remark how 
 Peter connected together his significant vision of the clean 
 and unclean beasts with the coincident arrival of the Eo- 
 man messengers and the inward monition of the Holy 
 Ghost, 3 as a threefold cord, of which each strand was 
 severally spun by a celestial Hand, and which drew him 
 
 » As we see here, and more fully in the fifteenth chapter of Acts. 
 2 See 2 Cor. iv. 5, in the original. ^ ^^Q^ 9_i2. 
 
894 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 with a force lie dared not withstand to the new work God 
 had waiting for him at Caesarea. So far the incident had 
 been purely personal, and rested on his sole testimony. 
 At this point there entered the corroborative evidence of 
 the six brethren. They knew as well as he what took 
 place in the centurion's house. On the uncircumcised 
 Eomans they too had seen the Holy Ghost descend in 
 manner and in measure as at Pentecost upon the waiting 
 apostles. On this final and decisive fact Peter reared his 
 brief but very conclusive argument. While he actually 
 stood in the soldier's chamber and saw the afflatus inspire 
 his heathen hearers, there had occurred to his recollection 
 his Master's mighty promise to baptise His disciples with 
 that Divine Spirit of Whom water-baptism was only the 
 symbol and pledge. That promise he now recalled to the 
 brethren's minds. This second effusion of the predicted 
 Spirit he recognises as precisely identical in character 
 with the former one at Pentecost — a fulfilment of the 
 Master's promise not less signal. And from the " like 
 gift," given by the same Heart- searcher, he infers a hke 
 si^iritual condition in the receivers. They too must have 
 found forgiveness and acceptance with God. Nay more, 
 it was Peter's conviction that on himself and the rest of 
 the original disciple-band, God had bestowed this free 
 gift of His Spirit in excellent measure simply because 
 they had believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.^ It was 
 neither their Jewish birth, nor their circumcision, nor 
 anything peculiar to their external position, which formed 
 the ground of their baptism at Pentecost. It was simply 
 
 ^ This is implied in the words of ver. 17, which thus become of 
 very great importance : avroig . . . ojg kuI rjijuv TrioTivtraaiv Ittl tov 
 Kvpiov ktX. 
 
PETEB BEP0BT8 TO THE CHURCH. 395 
 
 their faith in Jesus. To Gentiles therefore who believed 
 had now come the very same '* free gift " of God, as once 
 on Jews who believed, on purpose to prove that, in this 
 cardinal matter of favour with God and reception of the 
 promised Spirit of life in Christ, " neither circumcision 
 availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, hut faith." ^ 
 " Since God (says he) gave to them the identical free 
 gift which He also gave to us who were believers on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, what was I, that I could withstand 
 God?" In these few words, spoken at so early a date by 
 the lips of St. Peter, there lies, shut up as in a seed, the 
 whole doctrine of free grace and justification by faith alone, 
 which in after years it became the work of St. Paul's life 
 to develop and defend. No better commentary on these 
 words can anywhere be found than the later language of 
 his " beloved brother Paul :" — '' We, Jews by nature and 
 not sinners of the Gentiles, yet knowing that a man is not 
 justified by works of law, but through faith of Jesus 
 Christ, even we did believe on Christ Jesus, in order that 
 we might be justified by faith and not by works of law ; 
 for by works of law shall no flesh be justified." ^ 
 
 This is language which Paul addressed to Peter in the 
 city of Antioch. Years had come and gone since first 
 Peter defended himself before a company of brethren at 
 Jerusalem for the offence of eating with Gentiles. A se- 
 cond time he was arraigned before a company of brethren 
 at Antioch, but it was for the opposite offence of refusing 
 to eat with Gentiles. In Jerusalem, fresh from the won- 
 derful vision of Joppa and the more wonderful revival of 
 Cassarea, Peter was strong in his apostolic conviction that 
 God was treating all men alike, and had " made clean by 
 1 Gal. V. 6. *^ Gal. ii. 15, 16. From the Greek text of Tischendorf. 
 
396 FBOM JEBVSALJEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 faith" alone the hearts both of Jew and Gentile.^ To 
 place on Gentile necks a Jewish yoke seemed then to him 
 nothing short of "withstanding" and *' tempting" God.^ 
 Before his manly speech the incipient misgivings of He- 
 brew prejudice were for the moment silenced. The enthu- 
 siasm of the Jewish converts over this new-won freedom, 
 and their happy consciousness of a wider brotherhood, 
 broke forth in general praise. It seemed at that promising 
 dawn as if the new-comers out of heathendom might be 
 suffered without jealousy — or even welcomed with joy — to 
 sit down at the table of the kingdom with the children of 
 Abraham, to eat one bread of God and drink one cup of 
 salvation. It might have been hoped then that the Church, 
 knowing no more distinctions of race or privilege, would 
 pass without strife or schism from its old subordination to 
 Mosaic law into the spiritual freedom of Christ, from the 
 swaddling-clothes of its childhood to the rights of its ma- 
 jority. Did not the whole Judaean Church hold its peace 
 from objections at the explanations of St. Peter, and give 
 continuous glory to God Who to the Gentiles also had 
 granted repentance unto life ? Alas ! so fair a promise was 
 doomed to be early overcast. The rise of a separate Gen- 
 tile Church at Antioch not long after came to be viewed 
 with rivalry, not, it is true, by the chiefs of the Judasan 
 mother Church, yet by a large and influential section of 
 its stricter members. A synod at Jerusalem could decide 
 the question, but it could not compose the strife. By the 
 time Paul met Peter face to face in Antioch, the pressure 
 of ultra-Hebrew feeling in the Jerusalem Church had 
 waxed so strong, that before it Peter himself wavered and 
 gave way. In a moment of feebleness he actually pr.e- 
 1 Acts XV. 9. 2 cf. xi. 17, c. xv. 10. 
 
PETEB BEPOBTS TO THE CHUBCH. 397 
 
 tended to disown the truth which God had first taught 
 him on Simon's housetop, and consecrated for ever in the 
 centurion's room ; pretended to respect distinctions which 
 he, foremost of all men, had been honoured to declare 
 abolished within the Church of Christ. The sterner stuff 
 of which Paul was made withstood that pressure of par- 
 tisan bigotry to which Peter yielded. Paul, not Peter, is 
 the rock which, by God's grace, turned aside for ever from 
 the Gentile Churches a current which would otherwise 
 have swept Christianity into Mosaic legalism and Hebrew 
 exclusiveness. Yet in their convictions the two apostles 
 were absolutely at one. All suspicion of any real anta- 
 gonism which might be drawn from Peter's unhappy 
 inconsistency at Antioch is rebutted by his noble words 
 spoken long before in Jerusalem. The language in which 
 he summed up to his brethren the net result of the 
 whole series of divine acts and providential coincidences 
 which had led to his action in Csesarea, is actually the 
 earliest appearance in Church history of what is termed 
 by pre-eminence, from its chief teacher and most steady 
 champion, the Pauline doctrine of free and impartial grace 
 for all men through faith alone. 
 
 The limitation which for so many centuries confined 
 the light of revelation and the saving favour of God to the 
 members of one small and strictly -guarded tribe of Syrian 
 Shemites, was a limitation which must for ever have shut 
 out us and our fathers. So long as the road to the true 
 Light of men led only through the narrow portals of Solo- 
 mon's temple, the uncircumcised world lay in hopeless 
 darkness. Heaven was inaccessible, save from one privi- 
 leged and sacred spot of earth. Even under this limitation, 
 men owed it to God's goodness that heaven was accessible 
 
398 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 at all. No compulsion, save that of His own free love, 
 lay upon our Father to widen the area of His grace. In 
 His wise pleasure He had elected Israel; in His wise 
 pleasure He might have let the election stand. But the 
 very election itself contemplated from the first ultimate 
 catholicity. Israel was made a guarded focus of light just 
 that it might one day enlighten the Gentiles. Happy had 
 they all known their calling of God, as their best prophets 
 and seers knew it, the Jews might have enjoyed the 
 conscious honour and blessedness of being the teachers of 
 mankind, freely handing round to every other nation the 
 truths which had been taught and the life which had 
 been given to themselves. It was their national selfish- 
 ness which grew proud over the exclusive possession of 
 blessings which it ought to have been their nobler pride 
 to make the common heritage of men. What God gave 
 to mankind they strove to keep to their tribes. Thus it 
 came that, violently and with ruin to themselves, the grace 
 of life had to tear itself away from their grip, in order to 
 overspread the globe ; and this curse was fulfilled in their 
 national experience: "He that will save his life shall 
 lose it." Yet it was by the hands of Jews, after all, 
 that the grace of God was first conveyed to a Gentile 
 home in Caesarea ; by the lips of Jews that thanks for 
 that grace were first rendered to God at Jerusalem. Nay, 
 through the remote instrumentality of Jewish mission- 
 aries, are we ourselves become the heirs and fellows of 
 that earliest band of uncircumcised children of God which 
 clustered round a Eoman officer in the Csesarean barracks. 
 
XX. 
 
 tvxapKrrovfisv aoi on to oi'Ofia tov xptoroiJ (tov tmKsKXjjTai kef rffiag. 
 
 Liturgy of S. Clement. 
 
Acts xi. 19-26. 
 
Ee VISED Veksion. 
 
 Now then, they loho were scattered from the trouble 
 which arose on account of Stephen, passed through as 
 far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the 
 Word to none except to Jews only. But some of them 
 were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who coming to Antioch 
 began to speak to the Greeks [also] , preaching the Lord 
 Jesus. And the Lord's hand was with them, and a 
 great number who believed turned to the Lord. But 
 the report about them came to the ears of the Church 
 which was in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas 
 to pass through as far as Antioch. Who when he 
 came and saw the grace which was of God, rejoiced 
 and exhorted all ivith the purpose of their heart to 
 cleave to the Lord ; for he was a good man, and full 
 of the Holy Ghost and of faith. And a considerable 
 multitude was added to the Lord. But he went out 
 to Tarsus to seek out Saul, and when he had found 
 [him] brought [him] to Antioch. And it came to 
 pass that for a whole year they assembled in the 
 Church and taught a considerable multitude, and that 
 the disciples were first called " Christians^' in Antioch. 
 
 27 
 
XX. 
 
 So long as an historian is called on to narrate events 
 wliicli have succeeded each other on the same field of 
 action, his story may run on in continuous chronological 
 order.' But where several series of events have occurred 
 about the same time, in different places, his narrative will 
 cease to be rigidly chronological. One set of connected 
 incidents must be related together till the narrative has 
 reached some natural pause. Then the narrator has to 
 go back upon an earlier date, to take up events which have 
 meanwhile been transpiring elsewhere. The earlier half 
 of the book of Acts is a narrative of this latter sort. At 
 least, it becomes such a narrative after the death of 
 Stephen. That great occurrence set in motion more than 
 one line of Christian activity at various points within 
 and beyond the limits of Palestine. Already we have 
 followed three distinct narratives which sprang out of it. 
 First came Philip's successful mission to Samaria. Then 
 followed Saul's inquisitorial expedition to Damascus, with 
 the wonderful change which ensued. Lastly, we have 
 considered St. Peter's visitation of the persecuted congre- 
 gations on the coast-plain after the Church found rest 
 again, and the divine reception of uncircumcised Romans 
 at Csesarea to which it led. In proceeding now to relate 
 the next great forward step taken in the self-development 
 
404 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 and propagation of our Christian faitli, by the founding 
 of a Gentile Church at Antioch, the historian has once 
 more to fall back, for his point of departure, upon the 
 scattering of the Jerusalem Church on the death of her 
 first martyr.^ This was another and a still more remote 
 line of Church extension, due to the same dispersion. Sa- 
 maria, Damascus, Caesarea, and Antioch were thus four 
 centres of independent movements ; but how far the 
 movements were synchronous or successive it is impos- 
 sible now to determine. It is quite possible that Saul 
 may have been spending part of his three years in Arabia 
 and Damascus when St. Peter was receiving Cornelius 
 into the Church at Csesarea. It is very probable that 
 the conversion of Cornelius was not even known at An- 
 tioch when the first-fruits of heathendom began to be 
 congregated there. The two or three years which pre- 
 ceded, and the two or three which followed a. d. 40, 
 formed a time of restless progress and prodigious change 
 for the new faith. Cut off from orthodox Judaism by 
 the sentence which condemned Stephen, it was beating 
 in every direction against the bars of Hebrew exclusive- 
 ness, and finding out by experiments in various lands 
 how wide was the field which its Head had destined it to 
 occupy. Of all the doors by which it found admission to 
 the Greco-Eoman west, the readiest and the widest was 
 Antioch. 
 
 Our inspired account of the founding of the mother 
 
 Church of heathendom is disappointingly brief, but it is 
 
 extremely interesting. When the trouble which arose 
 
 about Stephen burst asunder the Judaean Church after 
 
 * See Acts xi. 19, alluding to viii. 4. 
 
THE CHURCH OF ANTIOCH. 405 
 
 years of silent growth, and projected its members as exiles 
 and fugitives over the whole of Syria, one band of dis- 
 persed believers took the northern road through Samaria 
 to that strip of fertile coast lying along the Levant for 
 some hundred and twenty miles to the north of Tyre, 
 which went under the name of Phoenicia. Dispersion 
 made every believer a missionary. Whether outspoken 
 by temx3erament, or the reverse, no disciple of Jesus who 
 found himself among fellow Jews who had never heard 
 His name, or did not yet receive Him as Messiah, could 
 feel at liberty to conceal his new convictions. He must 
 proclaim his Lord as the promised hope and salvation of 
 his countrymen. Each adherent of the new creed thus 
 became of necessity a propagandist, and the testimony of 
 faith spread the faith. Now, the Phoenician coast towns 
 maintained a lively commercial intercourse with the great 
 Levantine island of Cyprus opposite. Cyprus, again, had 
 equally close business relations with the mouth of the 
 Orontes as with the harbourless Phoenician coast, and 
 the mouth of the Orontes was the port for Antioch. By 
 such natural stages, following the routes of trade, the 
 gospel passed from port to port, one Jew trader conveying 
 the tidings to his fellow, and the scattered Jerusalemites 
 carrying it everywhere, till it found for itself a foothold 
 within the great Syrian capital, the wealthy, corrupt 
 meeting-place of West with East. 
 
 Antioch was at that time one of the three leading 
 centres of civilization. Eome as an apex, Antioch and 
 Alexandria as base angles, may be said to have formed 
 a triangle embracing the commercial and political power 
 of the world. Of these three, Antioch was the first to 
 receive the gospel of Christ. At the outset, here as else- 
 
406 FROM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH, 
 
 where, it was only in the synagogues and amongst the 
 Jews, large colonies of whom were settled in the city, that 
 Christ was preached. But after a while, how long after 
 we do not know, a fresh band of ardent promulgators of 
 the Cross came over from Cyprus, Hellenistic Jews, who 
 were themselves natives of that island or of Cyrene, and 
 who introduced, whether of design or through that leading 
 by circumstances which men call chance, the daring in- 
 novation of speaking about Jesus to the Greek population 
 as well as to the Hebrew. These new-comers were by no 
 means leaders or missionaries or official members of the 
 Church. They were plain traders, full only of the love 
 of the Lord Jesus. If they had committed a mistake 
 in speaking of Him to Gentiles, it could not have com- 
 promised the Church; but their bold love guided them 
 more truly than the timid prejudices of the apostles. 
 That they had not gone beyond the mind of their Master, 
 was soon made plain by the extraordinary success which 
 at once attended the experiment. It is a striking fact, 
 needful to be known if we would understand the planting 
 of the Church, that, at that prepared and chosen moment 
 in the world's history, the Jew was the only man who had 
 any strong religious convictions. Him oppression and 
 change had made only more tenacious of his ancestral 
 faith and of everything which separated him from other 
 people. But the Gentile population, especially in great 
 cities and seaport towns, was restlessly sceptical, trying 
 many religions without believing in any. It cost the 
 Gentile, therefore, far less than it did the Jew, to lend an 
 ear to the new gospel which began to be spoken about : 
 it cost him far less to embrace it. Within the Jewish 
 quarter in the city of Antioch, fewer conversions had fol- 
 
THE CHUBCH OF ANTIOCH. 407 
 
 lowed ; but once the news spread to the heathen, a great 
 number, even in dissolute, gay, and abandoned Antioch, 
 turned from Apollo, and the unnameable pollutions of 
 his foul Daphne groves, to be cleansed in the precious 
 blood of God's dear Son. The hand of Him Whom they 
 preached as the Lord of all men was with these foreign 
 evangelists. That inward mysterious might of the Holy 
 Ghost sent by Jesus Christ, which makes preaching 
 effectual at His pleasure, made their preaching effectual. 
 It is not a bad test by which to judge of any new or 
 doubtful plan for spreading the gospel, which the more 
 active and venturesome spirits in the Church may 
 start, to ask whether the hand of the Lord Jesus be 
 visibly with it. Success, when it really means the 
 highest of all success, becomes its own apology. That 
 cannot be bad mission-work which saves a multitude of 
 souls. 
 
 It was this reputed success of the new movement which 
 drew attention to it at head-quarters. It was its unautho- 
 rised novelty of procedure which exposed it to suspicion. 
 A cautious and conservative mother Church in Jerusalem, 
 still the head and seat of undivided ecclesiastical authority, 
 heard, not with aversion but with doubt, what Greek- 
 speaking brethren were doing in the Syrian capital. It 
 was resolved to send down a commissioner to inquire. At 
 the same time, the choice which the Church made of an 
 agent is sufficient to show that this step was taken in no 
 unfriendly or narrow spirit. Of aU prominent men known 
 to us in the earliest Church, Barnabas is the man who 
 was most likely to look kindly on the proceedings of the 
 lay preachers at Antioch. Himself a Hellenist and a 
 Cypriote Hke themselves, he had been early distinguished 
 
408 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 for his warm-heartecl liberality and his power of impres- 
 sive exhortation. It might well be that he still shared 
 the mistake of the whole Church, in believing Judaism to 
 be the only regular porch to Christianity, and went down 
 to Antioch with some misgivings as to what he should 
 find there. But no man in the Church was less suspicious 
 than he, of a more open spirit, or more generous instincts. 
 The body which sent down such a commissioner had 
 clearly not prejudged the case, and the result justified its 
 choice. *' He was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost 
 and of faith," says Luke; and because he was so, he 
 rejoiced when he had seen the grace of God in the new 
 converts from heathenism. Any one who has ever been 
 privileged to witness a widespread quickening in the reli- 
 gious life of a community, or to come close to any large 
 number of people who have simultaneously and recently 
 received the good news of salvation as a new thing, and, 
 for them, most certainly a true thing, will not forget the 
 unmistakable and inimitable stamp of divine gladness 
 set upon men's faces, or the sweet, simple affection 
 with which brothers and sisters in Jesus greet one another, 
 the tender sense of new-pardoned guilt, the devout suscep- 
 tibility to the divine Word, the frank personal clinging to 
 Jesus as to One quite near, the elevation above their 
 usual carefulness and each petty vexation of daily life, 
 which are the beautiful marks of such a time. All this 
 Barnabas had seen some years before. He had been 
 present in Jerusalem when the first unction of holy joy 
 came from the Lord in heaven. He was himself one of 
 those who had been carried away most completely with 
 the enthusiastic love of those early days. Now, at An- 
 tioch, in a heathen city, in the very stew of pagan un- 
 
TEE CHUBCH OF ANTIOCH. 409 
 
 cleanness, lie found himself to his surprise in the midst 
 of the same wonderful young life in God. The very same 
 fresh child-like sense of reconciliation and peace, and the 
 same pure, devout joy, were filling the new-born Gentile 
 Church which had at first filled the new-born Hebrew 
 Church. He recognized the grace of God in Jesus Christ, 
 and was glad. Misgivings about Gentile unfitness or the 
 uncleanness of uncircumcised men, could not live in such 
 an atmosphere. The life was the life of Christ; the air 
 was the air of heaven. 
 
 In virtue of his personal character, as well as of his 
 commission, Barnabas would at once assume a leading 
 place in the direction of the young society. He seems also 
 to have seen at once what was required. A crowd of per- 
 sons who, only a few months or weeks before, had been 
 worshippers of impure idols, were now disciples of Jesus. 
 The number of neophytes who pressed to baptism daily 
 increased. The fervid expansive zeal of the brethren was 
 still drawing large accessions from their heathen neigh- 
 bours. What the Church most wanted now was not fresh 
 missionaries ; it was instruction, confirmation, and up- 
 building. In the case even of well-taught Jews at the 
 capital of Judaism, who had enjoyed the preparation of 
 the old economy and were acquainted with its sacred 
 books, the apostles had found daily instruction requisite 
 for the establishment of new converts.^ How much more 
 needful was it for men bred in utter ignorance and in 
 gross idolatry ! Besides, the Antiochians were a clever, 
 but giddy and fickle people, fond of change, and demora- 
 lized by the exciting amusements of their gay capital. 
 Barnabas accordingly bent all that power of fervent exhor- 
 1 Cf. Acts ii. 42. 
 
410 FBOM JEBXJSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 tation from whicli lie drew his surname upon tlie task of 
 consolidating the hastily gathered congregation. '' He 
 exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they would 
 cleave to the Lord Jesus." He did hetter than that. He 
 did the hest thing for the cause of Christ in Antioch, 
 and in all the West, when he called to his side in this 
 arduous work his far greater friend from Tarsus. Here, 
 again, the selection of Barnabas as the delegate from 
 Jerusalem turned out most providential. It is doubtful 
 whether any other man in the Church would have recog- 
 nised that the hour had come for Saul, and that Saul was 
 the man for the hour. Ever since he knew the miraculous 
 circumstances of Saul's conversion, Barnabas seems to 
 have watched his career as one who foresaw to what great 
 things God had destined him. He was probably aware 
 that, once and again, the Lord Jesus had expressly indi- 
 cated the heathen world as the true sphere of Saul's 
 labours. He at least knew that, by twice conspiring 
 against his life, once at Damascus and once at Jerusalem, 
 the Jews had shut against the ex-inquisitor the door of 
 access to themselves. Since Saul's hasty flight from the 
 holy city, when his friends sent him down for safety to 
 the obscurity of his native town, it may well have appeared 
 to Barnabas a puzzling circumstance that a man so excep- 
 tionally gifted, so divinely summoned, and so fit for the 
 widest usefulness, should be virtually imprisoned and 
 silenced at Tarsus. We cannot indeed suppose that 
 Saul's mouth was altogether shut from speaking of his 
 Lord where he had opportunity ; yet it is certain that at 
 Tarsus he could not find a very large Jewish population 
 within reach, and it was only to Jews he was as yet called 
 to minister. Some of his relatives had already been 
 
THE CHUBCH OF ANTIOCH. 411 
 
 disciples for years ;^ and, as he quietly wrouglit at tent- 
 making in his paternal home, he may have succeeded in 
 turning to the faith of the'^ Crucified others of his own 
 family, or of his compatriots who had heen the companions 
 of his boyhood at the synagogue school. Still, for a man 
 so ardent, ambitious, and energetic, such limited activity 
 as this was comparative idleness : it seemed a poor result 
 to have reached through special revelations and appari- 
 tions from heaven. But God's plans unfold themselves in 
 God's own time. To the devout heart of Barnabas it was 
 given to see, in this new opening at Antioch, the call for 
 which Christ's servant had been kept waiting in Tarsus. 
 He went " to Tarsus to seek Saul, and, when he had found 
 him, he brought him to Antioch." 
 
 At the pleasant task of instructing newly-baptized 
 converts from paganism, the two friends laboured hai)pily 
 together for a twelvemonth. It is not said that they 
 themselves evangelized. Their work was pastoral, not 
 missionary, lying inside the infant Church. The number 
 of catechumens who passed through their hands must 
 have been very considerable, and the result of such syste- 
 matic and thorough training could not fail to be a steady 
 congregation, well knit together, and tolerably organized. 
 In the bulk of it, it was a congregation of Gentiles ; of 
 persons who were not only Greek in speech and culture, 
 but born heathens, uninitiated into Mosaism by circum- 
 cision, and ignorant even of Jewish usages. It is true that 
 its two chief pastors were pure Jews, its earhest evange- 
 lists had been Jews, and the hst of its prophets given a 
 little later contains only one non-Hebrew name.^ Still, 
 the rank and file of its membership was drawn from the 
 
 * Bom. xvi. 7. ^ See Acts xiii. 1. Lucius is not a Hebrew name. 
 
412 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 worshippers of Apollo — not from the followers of Moses. 
 They had never undergone the process which made men 
 prosetytes to Judaism. This was a fact the importance 
 of which can hardly be overstated. Christ's Church grew 
 up out of the bosom of an exclusive and jealously-guarded 
 people, but at Antioch for the first time it came to stand 
 clear of national limits. In that memorable year (a.d. 43 
 or 44), Christianity shook itself loose from the restraints 
 of Mosaism. It took, no doubt, a long while before its 
 freedom could be vindicated and secured ; still the earliest 
 practical assertion of it, an assertion unchallenged for the 
 moment, took place in the year when Saul and Barnabas 
 presided together over the new-born communion of Syrians 
 in the Syrian metropolis. For many a long year after, 
 Christianity wore a double form. It gathered round two 
 head-centres, not one — a Hebrew centre at Jerusalem, a 
 Gentile centre at Antioch. Only by slow degrees did the 
 younger Church, like the son in the patriarch's family, 
 become first the rival, and then the supplanter, of the 
 elder. 
 
 The establishment of this great fact, of a Church inde- 
 pendent of the synagogue and the temple, was signalized 
 by the coining of a name. So long as those who believed 
 that Jesus was the Messiah were all Jews, and continued 
 to frequent Jewish worship and observe Jewish rites, so 
 long they were undistinguished by the general public 
 from other Jewish sects. Within the strange enclosure of 
 Judaism, it was well known that various subdivisions of 
 that religion found a place. This new *'way" of worship 
 might be only a fresh variety added to the catalogue. 
 But when a quite separate society came to be formed out- 
 side the Jewish religion, which was seen to embrace Gen- 
 
THE CHUBCH OF ANTIOCH. 413 
 
 tiles as such, and to impose on its converts no Hebrew 
 peculiarities, it became needful for sake of convenience to 
 distinguish it by a separate name. The heathen popula- 
 tion of Antioch had little difficulty in inventing one. I 
 find no reason to suppose that " Christian " was at first a 
 nickname or a term of reproach. It is true that it was 
 never, in apostolic times, accepted or used by the disciples 
 themselves ; and when Christians began to be persecuted, 
 the word very naturally became a badge of discredit, a 
 popular term of abuse. ^ In its first use, however, it may 
 quite weU have been no more than a serviceable and 
 harmless designation. The one characteristic tenet of 
 the new religionists was that Jesus was the Divine 
 Saviour of mankind, and this they expressed by trans- 
 lating into Greek the old Hebrew title of Messiah, the 
 " Anointed " or " Consecrated One." They constantly 
 called Him " Christ," because, to call Him " Christ," was 
 by a single word to express their whole faith in Him ; ^ 
 and their heathen neighbours, taking this recurring title 
 for a proper name, formed from it (in the regular Latin 
 way) the party name of " Christianoi," Christians. It was 
 some time before the Church learned to glory in the name 
 which strangers had given her, so far as to give her Lord 
 thanks that His name was named upon her.3 In the 
 meanwhile she continued to call her members only " dis- 
 ciples," "brethren," or " saints. "4 Ultimately, however, 
 the Antiochian term passed over all Christendom. It has 
 
 » Cf. 1 Pet. iv. 16. 
 
 2 Hence the monogram formed by the two first letters of the Greek 
 word •' Christ" (v^) came to be — what it still is— the most wide- 
 spread symbol of our faith. 
 
 3 See the Clementine Liturgy, quoted by Conybeare and Howson, 
 and elsewhere. ^ Cf . the Apostohc Epp. jpassim. 
 
414 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 long been the most honourable name a man can carry. 
 It is itself enough to convict or to abash the man who 
 wears it with an evil life. 
 
 As Western Christians, we are the spiritual descendants 
 of these first Syrian converts. Ultimately, we may trace 
 our ecclesiastical pedigree to the Church of Pentecost, 
 but the line comes through Antioch. It was Antioch 
 which soon afterwards began to be the focus of missionary 
 enterprise for the whole of the heathen West. From it 
 were sent forth those missions which evangelized in suc- 
 cession Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Spain, Gaul, and 
 Britain. It proved itself a prolific parent of Gentile 
 Churches. Yet it owed its own origin to the unauthorized 
 and experimental labours of a handful of Cypriote Jews. 
 No apostle's hand planted the infant Church, no formal 
 mission agency broke ground in heathendom. To spo- 
 radic lay Christians, trying to do good where business led 
 them, and driven by love for souls to attempt new modes 
 of spreading Jesus' name, belongs the honour of opening 
 to Christ's gospel the door of all the mighty heathen 
 West. It is better so. It suits better the genius of a free 
 and spiritual faith, the least encumbered of all faiths with 
 priestly orders, ritual, or privilege, in which life is every- 
 thing and form the least of all things, that it should 
 burst the barriers of the old economy by a sheer explosion 
 of spii'itual life. The new wine fermented till the old 
 skin cracked ; then both Asia and Europe drank of the 
 wine of God's salvation. Surely the European Churches 
 stand condemned by the conditions of their own birth, if 
 they suffer this self-propagating life to be stifled up with 
 hierarchical or official trammels ; if they refuse to let the 
 
THE CHUBCH OF ANTIOCH. 415 
 
 glad tidings overflow and pour tliemselves abroad npoiL 
 sinful souls through the lips of any brother, or through 
 the channel of any novel yet unforbidden agency. The 
 Churches of to-day are not less free than the first Church 
 was to adapt their methods to the unexampled conditions 
 of our modern populations. They are no more entitled 
 than it was to look coldly on fresh movements of Chris- 
 tian zeal on which it may please the Lord to set His own 
 seal of success. If we share the lively joy in Christ 
 which lifted up His brethren of old, or the same warm 
 and courageous love for our unchristian neighbours, there 
 will hardly be a single member in our Churches who 
 will not find openings to speak for Christ. The good 
 news will be for ever finding vents. Grace and salvation 
 will percolate through a thousand little acts and words, 
 till it reaches here and there some heart that only waits 
 to be reached. To modern Christians has been given the 
 same Word as to the Cyprian disciples. Antioch appeared 
 in their eyes a city more hopeless to tell upon for good 
 than London or Paris in ours. They were very few ; we 
 are many. Only they had, what we too much lack, faith 
 in the hand of Christ ; and they had what we lack still 
 more, an impulsive love that cannot keep still. So they 
 spoke to the Greeks also ; and the little effort grew, till in 
 Apollo's grove of laurel a Christian Church supplanted 
 Apollo's shrine, and Antioch became one of Christendom's 
 ecclesiastical capitals and the venerable mother of the 
 Christianity of Europe. 
 
XXI. 
 
 I CAME TO BRING ALMS TO MY NATION, AND OFFERINGS. 
 
 28 
 
Acts xi. 27-xii. 4, 
 
Ee VISED Veksion. 
 
 But in those days prophets came doivn from Jerusalem 
 to Antioch. And one of them, Agabus by name, stood 
 up and signified through the Spirit that a great dearth 
 was about to take place throughout the whole inhabited 
 earth; which came to pass under Claudius, So the 
 disciples, according as every one was able, resolved each 
 of them to send [something] by way of ministry to the 
 brethren dwelling in Judcsa ; ivhich also they did, 
 sending [it] to the presbyters through the hand of 
 Barnabas and Saul. 
 
 But about that time Herod the king laid hands on 
 certain of the [members] of the Church to ill-treat them. 
 And he took off James the br'other of John with the 
 sivord ; and seeing that it was agreeable to the Jews, 
 he proceeded to apprehend Peter also — it was [the] days 
 of the unleavened bread — whom when he had arrested 
 he put into prison, delivering [him] to four quaternions 
 of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover 
 to bring him out to the people. 
 
 28* 
 
XXI. 
 
 THE relation of the new Church at Antioch to the old 
 Church in Judasa was sure to become, sooner or 
 later, a delicate point. It was remarked in the preceding 
 cha^Dter that Antioch became "first the rival and then the 
 supplanter " of Jerusalem. For the first years, however, 
 of their joint existence, there was no word of either rivalry 
 or supplanting. The relation of the two Churches was 
 that beautiful one which St. Paul, writing years after- 
 wards under parallel circumstances, described in these 
 words: ''If the Gentiles have been made partakers of 
 their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto 
 them in carnal things." ^ "Without ceasing to be " Gen- 
 tiles," Antiochian Greeks had become equal sharers with 
 their Jewish brethren in " spu-itual things," which until 
 now had been the exclusive patrimony and privilege of 
 the Jew. Israel's Jehovah was now their God as well. 
 His Anointed was their Saviour. They were fellow-heirs 
 and fellow-citizens with the ancient Israel. It was a 
 becoming acknowledgment of the vast debt under which 
 all the world must ever lie to the Jew, but it was no re- 
 payment of it, when rich Antioch sent bread to poor and 
 starving Judaea. It was the first fragrant and pleasant 
 fruit 2 of a love which it had been well if no later strife 
 had ever turned into resentment. 
 » Eom. XV. 27. Cf. 2 Cor. ix. 12-15. 
 Cf. Pauliu Eom. xv. 28, " When I have sealed to them this fruiV 
 
422 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 This then was the earhest relation of the two Christian 
 centres. Jerusalem sent " prophets " to Antioch ; to Je- 
 rusalem Antioch sent back corn. One of the prophets 
 was named Agabus. Once again in the history^ does this 
 man appear, and then also he appears as a predictor by 
 symbol,^ not by word only, of future disasters. This is 
 the more noticeable that prediction was by no means the 
 usual or characteristic function of the prophetic order in 
 the apostolic Church. They were men whom God's Holy 
 Spirit gifted with persuasive and impassioned speech, 
 combined with insight into spiritual truth ; so that in the 
 Christian assemblies they poured forth addresses which 
 searched the heart, kindled the devotion, or stung the 
 conscience of the hearer. We have lost the name long 
 ago ; the thing in substance has never failed in the Church 
 of Christ. The public prediction of Agabus 3 had, on this 
 occasion, a very immediate and practical design. He 
 foretold an impending dearth in Judaea, that the Church 
 might make provision for it, and on the hint they 
 acted. The whole reign of Claudius was marked by pub- 
 lic disasters, dearth and earthquakes, at many points 
 throughout the empire. No single year of scarcity, indeed, 
 affected the entire inhabited world which lay in peace 
 beneath his sceptre. But in the opening years of his 
 reign it was Italy which suffered from failure of crops ; 
 in the fourth year, Palestine ; in the eighth or ninth, 
 Greece; in the eleventh, Italy again. Thus, from time to 
 time, in this land or in that, God was laying upon the 
 nations His evil rod of famine. The special occasion to 
 
 * Acts xxi. 10. ' Cf. iarinaviv, in ver. 28. 
 
 ' Cf. avaarag, ver. 28, wliicli shows that it was in the public meet- 
 ing for worship. 
 
FBUIT FBOM THE GENTILES. 423 
 
 wliich tlie prophecy of Agabus pointed, seems to have 
 been the great distress in Judaea during the year a.d. 45 
 and after it. We are here on sure chronological ground. 
 We know that in that and succeeding seasons the want of 
 food was so great, that many deaths by starvation occurred 
 in Jerusalem, and great exertions were made for the relief 
 of the population. A new convert to Judaism, of high 
 rank, visiting that city for worship, was so struck with its 
 condition that she sent to Alexandria and Cyprus for sup- 
 plies. I refer to the Queen of Adiabene, whose son also, 
 when he was " informed of the famine, sent great sums 
 of money to the principal men in Jerusalem."^ On such 
 occasions it was usual for the foreign synagogues of 
 wealthy Jews settled abroad to remit aid to their brethren 
 in the Holy Land, as at this hour numbers of indigent 
 Jews in Jerusalem are sustained by the charity of their 
 compatriots scattered over Europe. The Church at An- 
 tioch, however, did not contribute through the synagogue 
 of Antioch. In the separate assistance despatched to the 
 disciples of Jesus by a congregation of Greek Christians, 
 there lies the first express historical recognition of the 
 fact that Church and Synagogue had parted company; 
 that to be a follower of the Nazarene cut off a son of 
 Abraham from the charities of his own people ; and that 
 henceforth the tie of fellow - Christian was to prove a 
 stronger bond betwixt Jew and Gentile than any older 
 bond which bound Jew to Jew or Gentile to Gentile. A 
 new force had plainly entered humanity. A new name, 
 the name of Christian, had been uttered, and it had 
 already begun to dissolve ancient unities, to reconcile an- 
 cient feuds, and to construct on the ruins of race-hatreds 
 ^ See Josephus, Antiq. xx. 2. 5. 
 
424 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANT IOCS. 
 
 and national distinctions a spiritual and catholic society, 
 whose watchword is one crucified Lord, and whose cement 
 is one Spirit of love. 
 
 It seems, I think, certain that, thanks to divine fore- 
 warning, the Christians were beforehand with their cha- 
 rity. Matters only reached their worst some two seasons 
 later, when the good queen and her son came to the 
 relief. But the supplies destined for the poor believers of 
 Judaea were already in the hands of the Church autho- 
 rities at Jerusalem in the course of the summer of a.d. 44. 
 This is evident from the fact that the visit of the com- 
 missioners who carried it to Judaea happened about the 
 same time as Peter's imprisonment and Herod's death. ^ 
 Now Peter was imprisoned in April, and Herod died 
 in August. Somewhere, therefore, in the spring or 
 summer of that year the generous offering of the young 
 Syrian Church was handed over to the presbytery ^ of 
 Jerusalem, for future use in the impending time of need. 
 Antiochian Christians were most prompt to credit God's 
 warning, and to come to the aid of the mother Church. 
 They even gave handsomely to others when as yet they 
 could not be sure that the famine would not press griev- 
 ously upon themselves. The signs employed by Agabus 
 indicated no limits to the visitation, and Syrian crops 
 might fail as likely as not just when Judaean crops failed. 
 
 ' I adhere to the order in Luke as here chronological. The mis- 
 sion (xi. 30) synchronizes with the commencement of persecution 
 (xii. 1, Kar ikuvov t6v Kaipbv). Then follow the events of xii. 1-24, 
 extending to the 6th August. After that, Barnabas and Saul return, 
 notwithstanding [ci) that the gospel was making special progress in 
 Judaea in consequence of these events (xii. 24, 25). 
 
 "^ The 01 TTpeafivTipoi must have acted as a body in receiving a sum 
 .of money. 
 
FBUIT FROM THE GENTILES. 425 
 
 Besides, at that very time their own city was lying in 
 partial ruin from a recent earthquake, which must have 
 told heavily upon numbers of its population. All this 
 enables us to appreciate the hearty cheerful generosity 
 which inspired these new converts. However sore a 
 famine coming at the heels of an earthquake might prove 
 for Antioch, Antioch owned resources which Judsea had 
 not. Antioch had capital, commerce, and docks ; the 
 rich grain countries of Cyprus and Egypt lay open to its 
 ships ; no failure of crops could mean to it what it must 
 mean to poor isolated agricultural Judaea — simple star- 
 vation. Besides, had it not received from Judaea those 
 spiritual blessings of salvation which had made the Chris- 
 tians glad? Was it not their duty to minister back 
 again to Judaea in carnal things ? 
 
 It is true to this day that Christianity plants in genuine 
 Christian hearts a brotherhood which can cross the bar- 
 riers of nationality and of speech. When the spirit 
 of reformation, for example, revived the primitive faith 
 throughout Europe, the newly -reformed Churches of Ger- 
 many, Switzerland, France, Holland, and England, were 
 at once brought into close and friendly relations. They 
 exchanged famous teachers, they sheltered one another's 
 confessors, they shared each other's fortune, they leagued 
 their political influence for their common good. It even 
 seemed at one time as if revived Christianity might have 
 welded the reformed nations into that for which now men 
 begin to sigh, a permanent federation of friendly com- 
 monwealths. The Evangelical Churches of our own day 
 (such as the Wesleyan Connexion and the Presbyterian 
 Churches of Scotland and America) have shown a similar 
 readiness to succour feeble and struggling congregations 
 
426 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 of Evangelical Protestants in Eoman Catholic lands, as 
 in France, in Bohemia, in Italy, and in Spain. Such, 
 however, are only slight examples of a force which ought 
 to fuse all Christendom into one spiritual brotherhood. 
 If ever that decaying virtue called patriotism is to lose 
 itself in a larger or more cosmopolitan charity, it must 
 be on a Christian, not (as some noble spirits are vainly 
 dreaming) on a communistic or democratic basis. So- 
 cialism has no lord of the conscience to substitute for 
 Jesus Christ. Where the conscience owns no lord, there 
 can be no real loyalty ; and without loyalty to the Chief, 
 love for the brotherhood can be at best a sentiment, not 
 a principle. It is sad to see how many of the best hearts 
 in Europe are to-day groping after the foundations of a 
 new civil order, in which all men shall be brothers and 
 no man shall wrong his fellow's rights, while yet they 
 cast off the very name of Him in Whom alone these two 
 principles of love and order, of freedom and authority, 
 meet and kiss. But there is something sadder still to see. 
 It is a Christian Church so rent into rival morsels by 
 theological and sectarian animosity, that, instead of prac- 
 tically demonstrating to the distracted peoples where to 
 seek for the true secret of human brotherhood, it rather 
 repels from Christ and from His faith those whose hearts 
 are most passionate for peace and fellowship. No man 
 who judges Christianity only by the existing Churches of 
 Christ, take them all in all throughout Christendom, can 
 rest on them his hopes for the unification of the world 
 into a federation of equal, free, and peaceful men, mutually 
 respecting each other's rights. The ecclesiastical organi- 
 sations of Christendom have caricatured the divine idea 
 of the kingdom of God. The spirit of schism is the 
 
FBUIT FROM THE GENTILES. 427 
 
 cause of our torn and helpless and un-Christlike Chris- 
 tianity — that spirit wliich puts orthodoxy into the place 
 of faith, ritual in the room of love, and substitutes its 
 esprit de corps — its own petty self-conceit — for the catholic 
 fraternity of Jesus Christ. In a return of the Churches 
 to true catholicity — which means a practical recognition 
 of one another as fellow-members in that one Body, 
 which is Christ — lies the return of strength to the Church. 
 Then, when Jerusalem shall not envy Antioch nor An- 
 tioch vex Jerusalem, when Churches that are poor in 
 this world are rich in faith,^ and those that are rich in 
 this world are "ready to distribute, willing to communi- 
 cate," 2 when visible Churches are felt to be knit together 
 by invisible bonds of love and helpfulness — -then, if ever, 
 will men learn that to be a Christian is to be free of 
 a universal, because spiritual commonwealth, all whose 
 citizens are one, all equal and all loving. 
 
 The Gentile Church made its gift more precious by 
 sending it through its most honoured members. Saul 
 and Barnabas were its chief pastors — its twin strength 
 and ornament. By their hand was its offering conveyed 
 to the '* elders." 3 It is notable that just before we part 
 from the mother Hebrew Church of Judaea do we hear for 
 the first time, and in quite a casual fashion, of its being 
 ruled by presbyters. TJiis official name, the most vener- 
 able and biblical of ecclesiastical designations, frequently 
 recurs in later documents, at first associated with the 
 apostles in connection with the synod at Jerusalem, 4 
 afterwards with deacons, of alone, in the Churches of 
 
 * Jas. ii. 5. 2 1 Tim. vi. 18. ^ gee Acts xi. 30 
 
 * Cf. Acts XV. 2, 4, 6, 22, 23, xvi. 4, also xxi. 18. 
 
428 FROM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 Ephesus,^ Crete,2 Pliilippi,3 and the congregations of dis- 
 persed Hebrews 4 throughout Asia Minor. Here it occurs 
 for the first time, but without a word of comment, as 
 though every reader of the history would know as a matter 
 of course that the Jerusalem Church had its presbyters. 
 That the Jerusalem Church had almoners or deacons, 
 Luke's readers have been already informed ; and if that 
 office had not already fallen into abeyance on the very spot 
 where it arose and won its first palm, it would be the dea- 
 cons' duty, when the time came, to disburse the liberality 
 of Antioch. Yet it was to the elders, as official represen- 
 tatives and heads of the Church, that the capital sum 
 was formally transferred by the commissioners ; not to the 
 apostles, whose function was catholic rather than local ; 
 not even to James the Less, whose relation to the Jud^ean 
 Church appears to have been specially close; 5 not to the 
 deacons, whose duties were administrative only ; but to 
 the presbyters or elders. The origin of an office and a 
 name, around which so much later controversy has raged, 
 remains untold.^ 
 
 The two commissioners found the mother Church in 
 the holy city entering on a dark and perilous time. A 
 good many years 7 had passed since it enjoyed rest from 
 the former persecution which arose about Stephen. Of 
 
 ' See 1 Tim. passim (specially i. 3). Cf. Eph. vi. 21 (Greek). 
 ^ Tit. i. 5 (though in this letter deacons are not named). 
 Phil. i. 1, though the parallel name, kirictKoiToi, is here used. 
 
 * Cf. Jas. i. 1, c. V. 14 ; and 1 Pet i. 1, c. v. 1. 
 
 * See Acts xii. 17, and xxi. 18. 
 
 ^ Its occurrence, however, first i^i the Jerusalem, or pure Hebrew 
 Church, may be held to tell, quantum valeat, in favour of its having 
 been originally borrowed from the usage of the synagogue. 
 
 ' Neander {Pjlanzung u. Leitung) thinks about eight years. It de- 
 pends on the uncertain chronology of Stephen's death. 
 
FBUIT FBOM THE GENTILES. 429 
 
 its progress during the interval we know nothing. The 
 mention of " elders " alone indicates that its organisa- 
 tion may meanwhile have been developed. The renewal 
 of persecution suggests that possibly it was aggressive or 
 prominent. The galaxy of apostles clustered at its head 
 ought to have kept it spiritual and ardent. More than 
 this it is impossible to discover. At any rate, the Lord 
 saw fit to renew its time of trial. A second time blood 
 was spilt for Christ. This persecution had a quite dif- 
 ferent origin from the last. Then, it was the Sanhedrim 
 which moved; the occasion was a theological controversy, 
 the excuse was a charge of blasphemy. Now, it was 
 merely a political move on the part of a crafty prince 
 who had reason to court popularity with the conservative, 
 orthodox, or national party. Herod Agrippa the First 
 was a born Jew, but bred, hke other young princes of 
 tributary dynasties, at the imperial court in Kome. After 
 a life of vicissitude and intrigue he had, some years 
 before, been set up as a puppet-ruler over the northern 
 divisions of Palestine. The accession of Claudius brought 
 him further promotion. Judasa was added to his do- 
 minions, and once more, as in the days of his grandfather 
 Herod the Great, all Palestine owned a single native 
 king. Herod Agrippa had inherited, along with his 
 grandfather's splendid extravagance, his grandfather's 
 crafty poHcy. While he built theatres and held games, 
 to gratify the Grecianized part of his subjects, he affected 
 zeal for the national faith, to concihate the strict Phari- 
 saic faction. Little as he can have cared for the laws or 
 worship of his ancestors, he spent much of his time in 
 Jerusalem, repaired its walls, dihgently attended the 
 daily sacrifice, was scrupulous in the observance of cere- 
 
430 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 monial rites, and so far succeeded as to win from the 
 Jewish historian of the time a better reputation than he 
 deserved/ It seems to have been in pursuance of this 
 poHcy that the king, with that unscrupulous violence 
 which characterised the Herodian house, began to assail 
 the Church. His measures were tentative and gradual, 
 like the steps of a man who acts on policy, not convic- 
 tion. To begin with, he arrested, and probably scourged, 
 certain unnamed but no doubt active and prominent 
 members of the new sect.^ Encouraged by the success 
 of this experiment, he ventured on a more decided blow. 
 James the son of Zebedee was not only one of the Twelve, 
 but one of the innermost Three, and from his vehement 
 character 3 is certain to have made himself conspicuous. 
 Some handle he may possibly have given to the king 
 through his fiery words, but even if he had his execution 
 was a strong step to hazard. It is very singular that St. 
 Luke, who narrates many occurrences with great minute- 
 ness, chronicles the martyrdom of the first apostle who 
 fell for the faith without a syllable of explanation or 
 detail. In two words only, with a swiftness like the 
 descending sword-stroke of the headsman, does he record 
 at once and dismiss the tragedy. To us it may be al- 
 lowed to recall Who it was Who foretold to James in the 
 day of liis ambition that he should indeed drink of his 
 Master's cup, and be baptized with a like bloody baiDtism.* 
 In a way he little dreamt of, was he to pass from the 
 block to that throne in the kingdom for which he had 
 
 ' See Josephus, Antiq. xix. 7. 3, and elsewhere. 
 
 2 This is the meaning of iTrifSaXev . . . rag x«'P«C Kcucioadi rivas 
 kt\. See Meyer, in loc. 
 
 3 He was one of the viol ^povrfig, Mark iii. 17. Cf. Luke ix. 64. 
 ^ Matt. XX. 23. 
 
FBUIT FBOM THE GENTILES, 431 
 
 ignorantly begged, and discover by experience the mean- 
 ing of that deep saying of bis Master — " Whosoever will 
 lose his Hfe for My sake shall find it." ^ 
 
 It seems to have been at first questionable how this 
 unjust beheading of a prominent citizen by the new king 
 would be taken by the Jewish authorities. Mere pride of 
 citizenship might have led them to resent an act of illegal 
 violence. Yet so bitter had now become the enmity of 
 the Sanhedrim against the disciples, that that court could 
 witness its own jurisdiction overridden by a despot, the 
 tool of a foreign power ,= not only without resistance, but 
 even with applause, so long as tyranny sought its victims 
 among the saints. Even Herod was welcome if he would 
 rid them of the Nazarenes. The approbation with which 
 his first step had been received must have been quite 
 undisguised, since he at once followed it up by the arrest 
 of the leading man in the Church. To seize and im- 
 prison Peter was to strike at the head of the community 
 — its boldest spokesman, its most active superintendent, 
 its foremost representative. That Peter was all this is 
 plain from the part he played in the preceding history. 
 A reflection, too, of the importance which both sides at- 
 tached to this seizure, may be seen on the one hand in 
 the unusual precautions 3 taken to guard against escape, 
 as if the king feared a rescue might be attempted ; and 
 on the other hand in the continuous, night-long meetings 
 of the brethren to beg for the special interposition of their 
 
 > Matt. xvi. 25. 
 
 ^ Beheading was a Boman, not a Jewish mode of execution ; so 
 that it was done without a sentence of the Sanhedrim — done as his 
 uncle had done to John the Baptist. 
 
 ^ The four soldiers appointed for each watch ; and the being 
 chained to a soldier by both hands, not, as was customary, by one 
 only. 
 
432 FBOM JEBTJ SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 celestial Chief Himself. I must reserve for another chap- 
 ter the singular deliverance which Jesus granted on the 
 supplication of His saints, and the designed contrast in 
 which the sacred historian has set the two narratives of 
 the apostle's liberation and the tyrant's death. Here it 
 is only with the perturbed condition in which the deputies 
 from Antioch found the Church that we have to do. I 
 see no good reason to doubt that Saul and Barnabas may 
 have been in Jerusalem when the Church was praying 
 for Peter.^ The season was Passover, and they would 
 naturally hasten to reach the holy city in time for that 
 solemnity, to whose sacred associations St. Paul at least 
 long continued to be attached.^ A dark and heavy Pass- 
 over it proved to be. But many of those who met on the 
 night succeeding it in Mary's house had seen a heavier 
 and a darker. They had seen the Passover on whose eve 
 the great Lamb of God had been offered up a sacrifice for 
 our sins. They had watched and wept through those 
 long and weary nights when He lay fast asleep, not like 
 Peter, in the king's prison, but in the deeper prison-house 
 of the King of Terrors. Through two nights of unex- 
 ampled gloom and despair had they watched then, with 
 too little hope left in them even for prayer. Now there 
 could come to them no more such nights of blank and 
 
 ' The guess (see Meyer, in loc.) that they first visited the landward 
 congregations, in order to avoid the wrath of Herod, seems to be 
 without all probability, and assumes an independence in the separate 
 congregations of which there is no evidence. Jerusalem dominated 
 Judaea too much for such men not to proceed at once to the sacred 
 capital as head-quarters. If they set out from Antioch about the 
 same time (xii. 1) as Herod made his first move against the Church, 
 they might well be in Jerusalem before the end of the days of un- 
 leavened bread. 
 
 2 See Acts xx. 16, c. xviii. 21. Cf. 1 Cor. v. 7, 8. 
 
FRUIT FBOM THE GENTILES. 433 
 
 utter grief. How could they forget that the seals and 
 guards even of that dungeon of the grave had not heen 
 able to hold their mighty Friend; that from His arms He 
 had flung the cold fetters of death ; that forth from His 
 prison-house He had emerged in glory, a King of life 
 and death, a Lord of heaven and earth. Let this Pass- 
 over be the gloomiest the Church has yet kept since Pen- 
 tecost — days when the unleavened bread must be soaked 
 with the tears of saints who weep over one pastor slain 
 and fear for another in peril; who, if the pastors are one 
 by one removed, must flee again as scattered sheep before 
 the sword — yet no Passover can be like that one when the 
 sword of Jehovah awoke against His fellow, and the chief 
 good Shepherd was laid a dead man in His grave. 
 
 After that Passover there came an Easter. Joy, deliv- 
 erance, victory, life, all things, came with the morning in 
 which Jesus rose. Could they forget, these women who 
 had been to His vacant tomb — these men who had met 
 Him in the upper room, how He had risen ? how strong 
 He was, how serene and radiant! how full of the old love, 
 but of new power ! how the kings of earth and the angels 
 of heaven were His, for their sakes, who were His early, 
 dear, and chosen friends. Not despairingly, but with the 
 light of hope amid their tears, they gathered round His 
 royal footstool. From Him, not from Herod, did they 
 beg their pastor's life. His feet they held with hands of 
 prayer, to His face they turned their eyes, and would not 
 let Him go. 
 
 If it was into the midst of such a Church Saul and 
 Barnabas came, it must have been to join their tears and 
 prayers with those of the brethren. No moment that to 
 speak of presents from dear saints at Antioch : a moment 
 
 29 
 
434 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 rather for the clinging together of Christian hearts in 
 presence of a common peril, and staying one another's 
 faith in their common Helper. Not money first, but 
 sympathy and prayers, would these Antiochian brethren 
 bring. The Apostle of the Gentiles joined, in his Gentile 
 converts' name, to ask for the life of the Apostle of the 
 Jews. The one Lord, " Who is rich unto all that call 
 upon Him," heard that common cry from the two halves 
 of His beloved Church. It is at the darkest hour of 
 night that the angels of God begin to draw near. Before 
 the earliest dawn Peter stood a free man at Mary's door. 
 Next day came the cessation of the storm, confusion to 
 the adversaries, the departure of the mortified prince to 
 Caesarea, and leave for the saints to draw safe breath 
 again. Then, at ample leisure, would be laid upon the 
 heart of the delivered Church the sweet love-offering of 
 her far-off brethren, a cordial sent for this time of faint- 
 ness and distress. A few months later, and even her 
 last fear of further violence was taken away. God smote 
 the evil king that he died, and " the word of God," un- 
 bound again, to be spoken by glad delivered Hps, " grew 
 and multiplied." 
 
XXII. 
 
 LOOK HERE UPON THIS PICTURE AND ON THIS. 
 
 29 
 
Acts xii. 5-25. 
 
Eevised Version. 
 
 So then Peter was being kept in the prison ; but 
 earnest prayer was being made by the Church to God 
 for him. But when Herod was about to bring him 
 forth, that very night was Peter sleeping between two 
 soldiers bound with two chains, and guards before 
 the door were keeping the prison. And behold, an 
 angel of the Lord stood by, and a light shone in the 
 apartment: and having struck the side of Peter, he 
 raised him, saying: *' Rise up quickly.''^ And his 
 chains fell off from his hands ; and the angel said 
 to him: ^^ Gird thyself and bind on thy sandals ;^^ 
 and he did so. And he said to him: " Cast thy robe 
 about thee and follow me." And going out, he followed, 
 and did not know that what was done by the angel was 
 true, but thought he saw a vision. So having passed by 
 the first guard and the second, they came upon the iron 
 gate zvhich leads into the city, which of its oicn accord 
 opened to them, and when they had gone out they passed 
 along one lane, and immediately the angel was away 
 from him. And Peter coming to himself, said : 
 
 ''Now I know of a surety that the Lord sent His 
 angel and delivered me out of Herod's hand, and all 
 the expectation of the people of the Jews," 
 
And ichen he became aware [of it] , he ivent to the 
 house of Mary the mother of John, who is surnamed 
 Mark, where were a good many gathered together and 
 'praying. But as he ivas knocking on the door of the 
 gate, a damsel came close to hearken, Rhoda by name, 
 and when she recognised the voice of Peter, for [very] 
 joy she did not open the gate, but ran in and told that 
 Peter was standing before the gate. But they said to 
 her : " Thou art mad,^^ She however kept stoutly 
 affirming that it was so, ivhile they were saying : " It 
 is his angel.'' But Peter ivas going on knocking ; and 
 when they had opened they saw him, and were amazed. 
 But beckoning to them with the hand to be silent, he 
 related how the Lord had brought him forth out of the 
 prison, and said : " Tell these things to James and 
 to the brethren.'' And he went out and departed to 
 another place. 
 
 Now, when it icas daay, there was no small commotion 
 among the soldiers, what was become of Peter. But 
 when Herod had searched for him and not found \him\, 
 after examining the guards, he ordered [tliemi to be exe- 
 cuted ; and having gone down from Judcea to Ccesarea, 
 he stayed [there]. Now he was in a hostile mood against 
 Tyrians and Sidonians ; but with one accord they came 
 to him, and having persuaded Blastos who was over the 
 bedchamber of the king, they were asking peace on ac- 
 count of their country being nourished by the king's. 
 And on a set day, Herod, having put on royal apparel 
 and sat down on the tribune, was making a public 
 oration to them ; and the people gave a shout : " God's 
 voice and not man's!" But instantly there smote him 
 
an angel of the Lord, in return for his not having 
 given the glory to God ; and becoming ivoiin-eaten, he 
 expired. 
 
 But the icord of God went on growing and multiply- 
 ing. But Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem 
 when they had completed the ministry, taking along with 
 them also John ivho was surnamed Mark, 
 
XXII. 
 
 ST. LUKE'S very vivid description of the apostle's 
 deliverance and the monarch's death is like a pair 
 of careful historical pictures set in instructive contrast, 
 or like a drama with two scenes and a moral. 
 
 When the first half of the narrative opens, Peter's pro- 
 spects are at their darkest. For some days he has been 
 lying in gaol, in apprehension of sharing the fate of his 
 fellow-apostle St. James, and now it is actually the eve 
 of his execution. The closing day of the sacred festival is 
 past. To-morrow he is to be led forth before the people, 
 to be made, like his Master, first their butt and then 
 their victim. The king has arranged it so, and all the 
 bigoted in Jerusalem who hate the Jesus-party, and all 
 the idle vulgar who only love a scene, expect it. The 
 night wears on to dawn. It is already the fourth watch. ^ 
 Twice has the watch been changed since it was first set 
 at sunset, four Koman soldiers retiring and a fresh 
 quaternion succeeding each time. This was done last 
 at three o'clock, and it is now some time past three, for 
 both Peter and his guards have fallen fast asleep. They 
 are lying in that deep sleep which, during the latest hours 
 of night, comes on men whose rest has been broken in the 
 earlier part of it. The month is April, at the equinox, 
 
 ^ This is fixed by the fact that Peter was not missed by the guards 
 till sunrise (six o'clock). See ver. 18, yevofiivTjg de rj/uspaQ. 
 
442 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 when there is very Httle hght till close on six o'clock : 
 all is still dark therefore in the dungeon. The whole 
 night through the Church has been praying outside, 
 while Peter within has snatched his broken hours of sleep 
 between the relievings of the guard, as a calm-souled 
 martyr may well do who needs to be strong for confession 
 and for death when daylight comes. Soon daylight will 
 come. One hour, at most two hours more;^ and how 
 shall their prayers be answered ? Of help there seems 
 slender hope now, or none. Look at the man. He lies 
 between the two slumbering Eomans, uneasily, on one 
 side. On each wrist there is a fetter, attached to a chain 
 which links him to the fettered arm of a soldier — to this 
 one on this side, to that one on that. The least move- 
 ment, a turning only in his sleep, and his keepers will be 
 instantly startled. Outside the bolted door can be heard 
 the heavy breathing of a third soldier who keeps guard 
 without. A little further along the corridor the fourth 
 is posted. With such precautions, what hope is there of 
 escape ? 
 
 But God's help comes silently; it comes like the light. 
 His messengers of spiritual aid are everywhere. At all 
 hours, by day or night, they stand beside us, looking 
 upon us in their love. As God bids them they minister 
 to us. It is only our eyes which are holden that we 
 should not see them. This gracious and kindly ministry of 
 strong pure creatures, who are as strong and pure as we 
 should be if we were good, and as we shall be when we 
 grow like them in the resurrection ; ^ this blessed com- 
 panionship, out of vision, of God's perfected servants 
 with His still imperfect saints ; this heavenly tutelage 
 
 "The circumstances seem to confine us to somewhere between four 
 and five a.m. '■^ Cf. Luke xx. 36. 
 
PETER AND AGBIPPA. 443 
 
 and guardianship of each one who loves the Lord hy mes- 
 sengers of hght from the land of the holy/ has been so 
 clearly revealed to faith that it is surprising, even in our 
 sceptical age, that Christians are not more generally won 
 by the sweetness and the fitness of it to believe it. For 
 that Christians of the present day as a rule do actually 
 believe it, or do in practice hold it for a simple daily fact, 
 is more than questionable. 
 
 Was it not that angel who through the darkness had 
 been watching over Peter's sleep, who then, somewhere 
 betwixt three and six on that spring morning, became 
 suddenly revealed in light — a form made visible in the 
 dark through its own light, brilliant enough to make 
 beautiful even the condemned cell ? The sudden silent 
 light awoke none of the sleepers ; but at a blow on the 
 side and a voice in his ear which was for his ear alone, ^ 
 Peter had started to his feet before he noticed that the 
 iron fetters which would have hindered such a movement 
 had been already snapped by a divine touch, and were 
 lying empty on the floor. The sudden awaking and the 
 
 1 In the sense of Matt, xviii. 10, and perhaps in that of this pas- 
 sage, ver. 15, this might be called probably "Petf;r's angel." The 
 author of the art. "Angel," in Herzog (iv. 25), quotes Schelliug's 
 view that a man's angel represents his own ideal. The brethren 
 must have at least supposed Peter's angel to borrow his voice, unless 
 they took the apparition for a " wraith," or double self, appearing 
 before or after death, as a warning. But I am not aware of any trace 
 of such a notion among the Hebrews. 
 
 2 It is a happy fancy of Keble that the touch and the voice, ming- 
 ling with the prisoner's dreams, seemed to him as the expected sum- 
 mons to execution : — 
 
 " His dream is changed — the tyrant's voice 
 Calls to that last of glorious deeds ; 
 But as he rises to rejoice, 
 
 Not Herod, but an angel leads." 
 
 Christian Year : St. Petefs Day. 
 
444 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 dazzling splendour seem to have dazed the apostle, for he 
 had to be told to perform each needful act, and obeyed 
 mechanically. To tighten the girdle which confined his 
 tunic, to strap on the light sandals he had laid aside for 
 ease in sleep, to resume his heavy upper cloak as a de- 
 fence against the keen morning air outside — these were 
 just what any man fully awake to what was passing, and 
 ready for what was coming, would have done. Peter was 
 neither ready nor quite awake. Only he did what he was 
 bid, and being bidden to follow, he followed. Silently, 
 that light before and the apostle after, they two traversed 
 the galleries of the castle, past the first sleeping guard 
 and past the second, and at last through the great leaves 
 of the outer gate communicating with the street, which 
 swung silently back at their approach; and still, with 
 not a word spoken, the heavenly guide led along one 
 street only, out of sight or risk of immediate pursuit, then 
 became as suddenly invisible again, passing back into the 
 unseen. How slender, yet how firm, must be the parti- 
 tion which keeps this world we know by our senses from 
 that other hidden world which fills, as it were, the same 
 room, yet makes upon our senses no mark of its exist- 
 ence ! How closely must the spiritual press upon the 
 material I It even penetrates us at every point. Yet in 
 vain do we beat against the stubborn barrier of sense. In 
 vain do we call with tears and passionate entreaty for 
 some word, or flash, or token, some sensible sign of a spi- 
 ritual presence with us, here and now "where the night 
 and morning meet." Our loves go from our fingers into 
 the unknown, and for all our yearnings to follow them, 
 follow we cannot, nor will they by so much as a whisper 
 or a gleam send back one hint that still they Hve and still 
 
PETEB AND AGBIPPA. 445 
 
 they love. Nay, God Himself must dwell thus close be- 
 side us, yet seems to be so infinitely far off, because He is 
 not touched by any sense. And we, whose faith is weaker 
 than can be told, who, when filled with the darkness of 
 distrust, would give worlds for the reassurances of sense, 
 shall never know by any earthly sign that we have a God. 
 Mute, dark, impalpable spirit-land ! wilt thou never more 
 send forth thine angels to shine in mortal eyes ? 
 
 The disappearance of his guide brought the apostle to 
 a standstill. He had been, naturally enough, following 
 like one in a dream,^ who is not sure whether the strange 
 things which seem to happen will not melt into air when 
 he awakes. Now he roused himself to think. With per- 
 fect consciousness came the certainty that he was free, 
 that the unearthly visitor had been real, that Jesus the 
 Lord had sent him, and that the dreadful to-morrow (it 
 was already a to-day about to dawn) would bring to him 
 no horrors of execution, but to his persecutors disappoint- 
 ment. What to do was clear. To advertise the brethren 
 of his liberation and to flee were obvious duties, and 
 to do both with haste, since already the air was quick 
 with the breath of morning. For this reason, when he at 
 last gained admittance at Mary's gate, he stilled his as- 
 tonished friends with an impatient wave of the hand,- and 
 leaving only a hurried message for the head of the Church, 
 hastened into hiding. This woman to whose residence 
 he repaired was probably one of the wealthier disciples. 
 Her brothers Barnabas had been originally a man of sub- 
 stance, and her dweUing was commodious enough to form 
 
 ' Cf. Psa. cxxvi. 1. 
 
 '^ KUTaTeiaag, " waving up and down," ver. 17. 
 J Col. iv 10. But Alford {in loc.) takes dv^cdg = cousin; so that 
 Mary would be aunt to Barnabas. 
 
446 FBOM JEBU SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 a rendezvous for at least one circle of the faithful. Since 
 the family were Cypriotes, it was likely to be the freer 
 Hellenistic side of the Church which chiefly drew around 
 it. James at least was evidently not present at that 
 prayer-meeting. No doubt similar gatherings were being 
 held in other quarters of the city. To Mary's house it 
 was natural for Peter to betake himself, for between him 
 and this whole family there existed some close tie. Mary's 
 son, John Mark (whom his uncle was in a few days to 
 take back with him to Antioch), is, in a letter written 
 from Babylon long after, spoken of affectionately by St. 
 Peter as " my son." ^ The words of course cannot be taken 
 literally, since in that case Mary's house would have been 
 simply Peter's own house, and would have been called 
 BO : still they indicate some long-standing and peculiarly 
 tender intimacy between the families. Now if, as was 
 shown in last chapter to be very probable, Saul and Bar- 
 nabas had already arrived in Jerusalem, it becomes next 
 to certain that Barnabas at least would form one of the 
 party met under his sister's roof ; and in that case it is 
 sufficiently probable that his fellow-commissioner might 
 also be present. ^ It is a strangely interesting group 
 which is thus offered to the imagination. In a widow's 
 home at Jerusalem are gathered the men who had already 
 done most and were soon to do much more to spread to 
 the great xiultured world the gospel whose birthplace was 
 Jerusalem. In the prayers of that solemn night they join 
 to ask their uplifted King to rescue the famous Jewish 
 
 1 1 Pet. V. 13. 
 
 ^ The relationship of Barnabas to Mary and her son, who were such 
 close friends of Peter, helps us to understand the position of the 
 Cypriote Levite as a natural link betwixt Paul and Peter, the apostle 
 of the Gentiles and the apostle of the circumcision. 
 
PETEB AND AGBIPPA. 447 
 
 apostle, still the undisputed first among his fellows,^ out 
 of the jaws of death. And while Saul and Barnabas and 
 Mark and Mary, with their friends, plead in the inner 
 room beneath the lamplight — unweariedly plead and pray 
 through the last watch — a few streets off, within the 
 gaol, the King's bright messenger has undone the locks 
 of Herod's prison-house, and the captive stands a free 
 man at the gate. Peter's knock — sounding strange, un- 
 welcome, even harsh, in the still night, since it awakened 
 fears of further arrests and violence — Peter's own im- 
 patient and repeated knocking breaks through the low 
 voice of prayer in the inner chamber. A few hurried 
 words spoken in the courtyard, ^ broken greetings, brief 
 explanations, counsels, adieus, and they who had met to 
 pray returned with tearful joy to give thanks and praise. 
 It was a great deliverance. Peter's death at that early 
 date would have been to all human conjecture the sorest 
 blow which could have fallen on the cause of Christ. 
 It was also a signal reply to the prayers of saints — very 
 comforting as a token that the King on high could hear 
 and pity and help, that He was still, as He used to be, 
 accessible to the voice of friends. But by far the chief 
 significance of the wonder for all after time lay. here, that 
 above the most powerful forces of earthly kingdoms there 
 is a spiritual King Whose hand is on all His adversaries, 
 Whose eye is upon all His friends. Who will never desert 
 those who are loyal to Him, and Who knows how to 
 
 ' The very importance attached by the Church to his arrest shows 
 this, as well as the place he fills throughout the first twelve chapters 
 of the Acts. 
 
 2 It is impossible to decide whether Peter entered the house itself 
 or not. This depends on the meaning of i^AQUjv, in ver. 17, " out of 
 the house," or " out of the city." 
 
448 FROM JEBV SALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 deliver them out of the worst trials. If in other cases no 
 such help is sent as was sent in this case ; if James is 
 beheaded though Peter escapes ; if neither through visible 
 shining executants of the celestial will, nor through the 
 humbler but no less real ministry of natural providences, 
 there should come to the faithful soul any deliverance 
 when strong world-powers threaten to overwhelm; it is 
 not because the unseen King cannot, nor yet because He 
 will not, grant salvation. It can only be because it is 
 kept for a later stage, granted not before but after earthly 
 foes have done their worst ; a salvation (it may even 
 chance) on the further, not on the hither side of death, 
 before the eyes not of mortal men but of glorified im- 
 mortals. Yet come it always must. To serve Grod and 
 His Son Jesus is sure to mean in the end deliverance, 
 welfare, and success, however it may within the narrow 
 horizon of our darkened time appear to mean nothing 
 else but oppression, disaster, or failure. This is the faith 
 of all the martyrs, and without some martyr-like faith of 
 this sort who of us could live loyal lives for Christ at all ? 
 
 The lesson has its counterpart, however. 
 
 Herod Agrippa I. was at his highest state when the 
 second half of the story opens. He too had been a 
 chained prisoner in his day,' but after many vicissitudes 
 his fortune was now in the ascendant. The emperor's 
 favourite, ruling a realm as wide as that of his famous 
 grandfather, he was still comparatively a young man in 
 the August of the year 44.=* Many years of prosperous 
 and splendid life might be before him. Months had 
 1 See Josephus, Antiq. xviii. 6. 7. 
 
 He died in the fifty-fourth year of his age. See Josephus, Antiq. 
 xix. 8. 2. 
 
PETEB AND AGBIPPA. 449 
 
 passed since that spring morning when Peter escaped, and 
 the irritation of a pubhc discomfiture was by this time 
 forgotten. The festival week which his grandfather had 
 established half a century before, to celebrate the honour 
 of the Eoman Csesar by games and banquets, a festival 
 observed only once in five years, had come round again ; ' 
 and the very day on which it opened, the first of August, 
 chanced to be also the birthday of his imperial friend and 
 patron, the reigning Augustus. Everything conspired to 
 crowd his new and splendid sea-coast capital with the 
 fashion and gaiety of Syria. For the second day of the 
 fete and of the month, the king had arranged a state cere- 
 monial at which his own magnificence should be specially 
 displayed before the eyes of the populace. ^ The occasion 
 was this. Some political difficulty had arisen between 
 the Court of Palestine and the rich trading towns which 
 lay along the Mediterranean coast at the base of Lebanon, 
 and ambassadors were at that moment in C^sarea seek- 
 ing to propitiate the king and avert a rupture of com- 
 mercial relations. Tyre and Sidon having next to no 
 back country between them and the mountains, had from 
 remote times been large customers of Palestine for her 
 staple products of wheat and olive oil. 3 In return for 
 these imports, the Tyrian merchants supplied the whole 
 of Palestine, through the old port of Joppa and the new 
 one at Caesarea, not only with timber from Lebanon, but 
 also with spices and other luxuries of far-off climes, the 
 
 ' I follow Wieseler's (pp. 132-6) view, that the Quinquennalia are 
 meant (cf. Bell. JiidA. 21. 8). 
 
 ^ For the scene that follows, Josephus is the best commentator on 
 St. Luke. See Antiq. xix. 8. 2, and xix. 9. 1. 
 
 Cf. the evidences of this trade in Solomon's time, 1 Kings v. 11 ; 
 at the Captivity, Ezek. xxvii. 17 ; and after it, Ezra iii. 7. 
 
 30 
 
450 FBOM JEBXJSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 trade of whicli was largely in their hands. Hence arose 
 their anxiety to be on friendly terms with the king. 
 Herod, on his part, designed a public reception and reply 
 to the embassy, such as might add to his own credit 
 among his subjects. At an early hour on that second of 
 August the new and spacious theatre was full. Its tiers 
 of marble benches, gleaming white against the blue sky, 
 and sweeping round in lovely curves, overflowed with 
 spectators. Accompanied by his suite, the king entered 
 by the western approach in a robe woven of silver thread, 
 and when the level rays of the early sun fell aslant across 
 the theatre on the glittering tissue, they were reflected 
 into the faces of the audience, so that the monarch 
 seemed for the moment to be *' clothed with light as with 
 a garment." He spoke ; and when he ceased, amid the 
 plaudits of the people, here one and there another of his 
 courtiers ventured to raise the cry of adulation : " A god, 
 a god! be gracious unto us, divine lord Herod!" The 
 flattery was too paganish and blasphemous for his Jewish 
 subjects, but not for the prince's taste. Presently — even 
 as his ears di-ank in, well pleased, the impious homage — 
 he was struck where he sat with sudden illness. An 
 angel from God smote him, says St. Luke. In a state of 
 violent pain he had to be carried from the theatre to his 
 palace, a dying man. After this shocking interruption to 
 the ceremony the crowd broke up in consternation. The 
 town went into mourning. For five days long the king 
 lay in the grip of his horrible and excruciating malady. 
 On the sixth of August the king was dead. Then the 
 false and heartless mob, that had been ready to worship 
 the sovereign while he Hved, and had filled the streets 
 with pretended lamentations for his seizure, gave them- 
 
FETEB AND AGBIPPA. 451 
 
 selves up, troops and populace together, to the most 
 indecent and open rejoicing over his decease, toasting the 
 tyrant's end in public banquets, and heaping cowardly 
 and brutal insults on the royal princesses.^ So amid lies 
 and shame and execration there passed away into corrup- 
 tion and .the grave the godlike Herod. 
 
 Why should this old-world story be rehearsed in Sacred 
 Writ ? Is it that there was anything miraculous in this 
 man's illness ? or that putrid internal ulcers, of which 
 Antiochus Epiphanes^ and Herod the Greats had both 
 died before him, is a disease specially fit to scourge the 
 royal persecutors of the faith? or that the sudden death 
 of wicked men is always to be looked for and accepted as 
 a special judgment from Almighty God ? 4 No ; but to 
 teach us that God the Avenger, with His spiritual minis- 
 ters of judgment, stands as close beside wicked and im- 
 pious sinners, even in the hour of their proudest success, 
 as, in the night of a saint's trial, there stands by him 
 the angel of deliverance. When vice is most flattered, 
 when ambition, pride, lust, and cruelty are seated on 
 their highest or securest seat, and before them the crowd 
 kneels with most abject obeisance, then is insulted and 
 indignant God not far off but nigh at hand. God's 
 angels can touch men to consume as well as to save. 
 The hand of Him in Whom we live can reach up to the 
 loftiest, to pluck down from their seats, as well as down to 
 the lowliest, to uplift. If, here again, we are not often 
 
 * Josephus says on their "statues ;" but Photius (see note to Whis- 
 ton's Josephus) says on themselves. 
 
 ^ For the case of Antiochus, see 2 Mace, ix, 5. 
 ' See Josephus, Antiq. xvii. 6. 5. In this case complicated ap- 
 parently by syphilitic disease (cf. Sir. xix. 3). 
 
 * So some have understood Isa. li. 8. (See article Krankheit in 
 Herzog.) 
 
 30* 
 
452 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 suffered to see tlie end as it was seen in the case of Herod 
 Agrippa, if no such dramatic denouement should point the 
 moral of a selfish life, nor loathsome deatii follow always 
 like a satire on the heels of pride, it is not because 
 God's angel of wrath has not been standing all the while 
 beside the chair of state or at the board of luxury ; it is 
 only that the wicked are kept a little longer for the day 
 of their judgment. 
 
 The lesson is precisely the same as the rescued Apostle 
 Peter has deduced, in his second catholic epistle, from 
 the ancient examples of Noah and of Lot — namely, that 
 ** the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temp- 
 tations — out of a trial ^ — but to reserve the unjust to a 
 day of judgment to be punished." Among the crowd of 
 historical instances by which God has at various times 
 enforced on the world this double lesson, that He can de- 
 liver the godly when their peril is greatest and in His set 
 day can overthrow the wicked in the fulness of their pride, 
 this example from Peter's own life holds a prominent 
 place. The lesson is one which men need to be always 
 learning. In that unending contest betwixt good and 
 evil, betwixt men who serve God and men who please 
 themselves, which fills history, we continually find the 
 world's power and prestige on the ungodly side. The 
 relations between David and King Saul, between Elijah 
 and Ahab, between Hezekiah and Sennacherib, between 
 Jeremiah and Zedekiah, between Daniel and Darius, be- 
 tween Mordecai and Haman, between the babe Jesus and 
 Herod the Great, between John Baptist and Herod An- 
 tipas, between Peter and Herod Agrippa, between Paul 
 and Nero, are all so many repetitions, age after age, of a 
 ' 2 Pet. ii. 9. Ik TreipatJuov is Tischendorf's reading. 
 
PETEB AND AGBIPPA. 453 
 
 fundamental contrast wliicli is as truly to be found in our 
 modern English life to-day, if we had only eyes to see it, 
 as in Bible story. Still, as ever, the obscure and lonely 
 servant of God finds that faithfulness to truth and right 
 means for him antagonism to the great strong world 
 which has fortune and honour and success and wealth to 
 bestow. Still, as ever, it means an unappreciated, unre- 
 warded wrestle against what is most tempting in life, 
 often with actual overthrow in the wrestle. And still, as 
 ever, he needs to be borne up under real disaster and 
 apparent defeat by the profound spiritual conviction that 
 things are not in this life what they seem to be ; that what 
 looks like defeat is not always defeat, and what is at pre- 
 sent called success may be no success. 
 
 Very helpful to faith are those few recorded instances 
 in which God has made this palpable by working unex- 
 pected relief for His oppressed saints, and sending patent 
 discomfiture upon their prosperous persecutors. Miriam 
 sings praise on the shore of a sea which has engulfed the 
 hosts of Egypt. Hymns rise from the temple courts 
 when Sennacherib's troops lie in the sleep of death. An 
 angel breaks Peter's fetters, and an angel smites to death 
 the impious Agrippa. But these things are not in the usual 
 order of present providence. If they were, we should be 
 able to walk by sight instead of having to walk by faith. 
 For the most part we see the good man go down before 
 the prosperity of the wicked, and we do not see that pros- 
 perity dashed with everlasting overthrow. It is an old, 
 old complaint : — 
 
 " As for me, my feet were almost gone ; 
 My steps had well nigh slipped ; 
 For I was envious at the foolish : 
 
 I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 
 
454 FBOM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 *' Their eyes stand out with fatness ; 
 They have more than heart could wish. 
 
 ******* 
 
 ** Behold these ungodly ones, who prosper in the world ; 
 They increase in riches ! 
 Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, 
 And washed my hands in innocency !" 
 
 Let the man who is vexed with this temptation enter 
 into the sanctuary of God ; then he shall understand the 
 end of the ungodly : — 
 
 " Surely, Thou didst set them in slippery places ! 
 
 Thou castedst them down into destruction ! 
 How are they brought to desolation as in a moment ! 
 
 They are utterly consumed with terrors. 
 As a dream when one awaketh — 
 O Lord ! when Thou awakest, Thou shalt despise their 
 
 image !" ' 
 
 ^ Psa. Ixxiii. 2-20. 
 
XXIII. 
 
 THESE THINGS ABE WRITTEN FOB OUB ADMONITION, UPON WHOM 
 THE ENDS OF THE WORLD ARE COME. 
 
XXIII. 
 
 THE task I prescribed for myself at the outset of this 
 volume has now been completed. That task was to 
 trace, under St. Luke's inspired guidance, the course of 
 events from the Lord's ascension down to the commence- 
 ment of formal missionary enterprise among the Gentiles 
 by the Church of Antioch. Throughout this portion of 
 the earliest Church history the sacred writer has kept in 
 view one definite design, to show how, under the over- 
 sight and by the leading of the absent Master Himself, 
 Christ's Church developed from a small and unorganised 
 band of Hebrew sectaries into a free, catholic, self-acting 
 and self-propagating Church for both Jew and Gentile. 
 
 Before dismissing the subject, it may serve a useful 
 purpose to gather up briefly some leading conclusions 
 respecting the origin and nature of the Church of Christ 
 which such a study has yielded. 
 
 The main outstanding fact about the Church, which 
 lies on the opening page of her history, which is assumed 
 throughout every page, and without which the narrative 
 becomes utterly inexplicable, is this : — That the Church 
 is the product and prolongation among men of a certain 
 spiritual and supernatural force which entered mankind 
 at the birth of Jesus. There are at bottom but two con- 
 sistent theories to account for Christianity, of which one 
 
458 FBOM JEBVSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 must be true and the other false. The one is the theory 
 into which all infidel systems resolve themselves in the 
 long run, and to which a rationalistic treatment of the 
 New Testament logically conducts, namely — that Jesus 
 was a wise and great Teacher Whose lessons founded a 
 faith or religion among His fellow-men, which, in virtue 
 of its inherent force of truth, made way after His death 
 and survived all resistance till it became the religion of 
 civilised mankind. The other is the next to universal 
 view of Christians themselves — that Jesus was and is the 
 Son of God, supernaturally incarnate in our nature. Who 
 by His atonement has become the source of superhuman 
 life and virtue to individual men, and Who now creates, 
 inspires, and rules the society of the saved as its living 
 Head, by a divine force continually exerted upon believers. 
 It needs no proof to show that this latter is the view taken 
 by the author of the Book of Acts. Here plainly the life 
 of the Church is represented as a continuation of the life 
 of Jesus. It is put before us as a perpetuation of that 
 supernatural activity of God in history which began when 
 He was born at Bethlehem. The advent of God in the 
 person of Mary's Son introduced into the human race a 
 divine Helper, Who, though put to death for our sins 
 according to a divine purpose, revived through the divine 
 power, and Whose immediate j)ersonal connection with 
 His fellow-men by no means ceased when He ceased to be 
 visible upon earth. He is the person uniformly styled in 
 Luke's pages "the Lord." He it is to Whom the dis- 
 ciples pray, as if He were still beside them, or at least 
 could still hear them as He used to do. He it is Who 
 sends into their hearts a superhuman influence which 
 they recognise as a personal Spirit meant to animate their 
 
CONCLUSIONS. 459 
 
 spirits, filling tliem with liglit and power. He it is more- 
 over who draws new members into the fellowship of the 
 believing ; He Who enables them to work wonders just 
 as He Himself had been wont to work them ; He Who by 
 His messengers opens their prison doors, and restrains 
 the hostility or defeats the plans of their enemies. He 
 directs their movements. He shows Himself to their 
 chief leaders. He reveals His will at new crises of the 
 history. He is from first to last the moving mainspring 
 and director of the whole enterprise, the heart and head 
 of the whole body. To attempt to subtract the continued 
 action of Jesus from the narrative of Luke would not be 
 to mutilate, it would be to destroy it. This fact is so 
 plain that every one admits it, and of course for such as 
 pay any respect to the document as inspired of God, 
 this fact is simply conclusive. But even non- Christian 
 readers, who read the history with no religious faith but 
 merely with historical criticism, may convince themselves 
 that the events which are said to have followed Pentecost 
 never could have happened if Pentecost had not happened. 
 In other words, take away from the forefront of this his- 
 tory the coming to life again of the crucified Jesus, His 
 departure visibly towards heaven, and the real inspiration 
 of His Church by a supernatural afflatus from heaven — 
 that is, take away the three connected miracles of Easter, 
 Ascension -Day, and Pentecost, and the after history of 
 His followers becomes a riddle. It is simply impossible 
 on that supposition to explain how the little company 
 of dispirited and disappointed men who survived their 
 Leader's death attempted anything beyond nourishing, 
 through hidden meetings among themselves, what could 
 only be at best a feeble and flickering faith in the Cru- 
 
460 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 cified ; how they had the heart to do more than cling to 
 a dear but vanishing memory during the first generation ; 
 or how both the faith and the memory of the dead Teacher 
 escaped being trampled out in the second or Hngering to 
 death in the third generation. So true is this, that if no 
 Easter or Pentecost had been recorded, we should have 
 had to imagine both. Some facts corresponding to Easter 
 and to Pentecost, some resuscitation of the marvellous 
 Life which seemed to end at Calvary, some reinvigora- 
 tion of the spiritual life which He had kindled indeed in 
 His followers, but which burned in them so feebly, the 
 philosophical historian must have postulated, had he been 
 called upon to explain without assistance the first forty 
 years of Christian Church history. 
 
 If the Church is thus a supernatural product, and its 
 life the life of Jesus under another form, it will follow that 
 the Church itself ought to be the best possible demonstra- 
 tion that in Jesus God aj^peared on earth. To persons 
 who look at the Church from the outside or possess only a 
 nominal attachment to it, it is not strange that it should 
 seem to be anything rather than that. About the mere 
 framework of Church order, and in the lives of its average 
 members, there is so much which is most commonplace, 
 weak, vulgar, unspiritual and undivine, that few specta- 
 tors might take it for a superhuman thing bearing within 
 it a celestial life. Yet I do think that any man who will 
 take the Christian gospel into his heart, and let the 
 Christian faith become his own faith, so as to get into the 
 penetralia of church-life and learn to know it from within, 
 will find in it sufficient evidence of its superhuman origin 
 and of the divineness of Him Who is its Head. This 
 species of evidence it is impossible to analyse; yet all 
 
CONCLUSIONS. 461 
 
 genuine Christians are aware of it. They know^ that 
 they have in Christ touched God our Father, that the new 
 life they share in common with their fellow- churchmen is 
 God's life, that they are become free of a commonwealth, 
 parts of a body, the animating Spirit of which is from 
 above. Nor do I know what else can be done by those 
 who have received this interior and immediate certainty, 
 reposing upon their deepest experience, than continue 
 quietly and steadily to bear witness to it. Such a wit- 
 ness, drawn from men of the most varied types of Chris- 
 tian opinion and modes of Christian worship, as well as 
 continued unbroken along the line of Christian history, 
 ought in the judgment of a sober science to reckon for 
 something. 
 
 The ministry of Jesus of Nazareth was a constant pro- 
 test against two evil tendencies, which are not confined to 
 His day or to the corner of Syria where He lived. The 
 one, which is only clumsily described by the term "ra- 
 tionalism," is the tendency to doubt the supernatural 
 and believe only in what can be discerned by the physical 
 senses. He was from above, from a spirit home, an 
 Eternal Being, and during His short mortal life here He 
 kept Himself linked still to the immaterial or unseen 
 spirit-land from which He had come. Visitors from it 
 visited Him, and forces which were more than earthly 
 worked at His call. Jesus is the great fact in history 
 which rationalism or naturalism fails to explain. He was 
 nothing if not super sensuous, spiritual. The other false- 
 hood with which He warred may be termed hierarchism 
 
 ' Compare one of the very earliest and most explicit statements of 
 this interior certainty, in 1 John v. 18-20. 
 
462 FBOM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 or priestcraft or superstition or Pharisaism — for its names 
 are many. It is the inveterate tendency to dissociate 
 devotion from morahty, so that religion degenerates into 
 a system of forms and names and offices, a thing which a 
 man may be perfect at, yet have no spirit of God within 
 him. Against this false caricature Jesus uttered His most 
 fearful invectives. With Him religion meant to be one 
 in life with the Father in heaven. Worship was in spirit 
 and in truth. The test of piety was practical righteous- 
 ness ; not to wash hands, or wear phylacteries, or recite 
 long prayers, or be of a chosen race or of a sacred order. 
 
 Now it belongs to the Church to continue this two- 
 faced fight. Born of a miracle, maintained by a super- 
 human Presence, leaning always on the invisible, the 
 Church of Christ is nothing if not super-rational. It 
 must protest on behalf of a spiritual world, near and ac- 
 cessible to mortals, in which dwell God and His Christ, 
 and from which proceeds the Spirit of its own life. On 
 the other hand, it began by being inward, free, a thing of 
 moral and spiritual life, and not of forms. Against all 
 narrowing and trammelling of itself through external 
 ritual or arrangement, therefore, it must for ever protest. 
 In its earliest shape, while still enclosed within its He- 
 brew cradle, it was simply a brotherhood who clung to 
 the genuine faith of their fathers, protesting only against 
 Pharisaic accretions, and preached a gospel of penitence 
 and faith in the Messiah. It possessed at first no organi- 
 sation. It aimed at no separate existence. It had but 
 its twelve witnesses whom Jesus trained. Hierarchy, 
 ritual, liturgy, holy places of its own, it had none. A 
 mere temporary difficulty suggested the creation of its first 
 office-bearers. How other orders arose we do not even 
 
CONCLUSIONS. 463 
 
 know. Nor would it ever have sought, apparently, to de- 
 tach itself entirely from Hebrew worship or to consolidate 
 the framework of an independent Society, had not Judaism 
 with a murderous hand pushed it from its bosom. So 
 far from being hierarchical or bound by official rules, its 
 chief progress was made through unlicensed preaching. 
 Everybody preached. Its scattered adherents became 
 volunteer missionaries. The man who evangelised Sa- 
 maria was only a deacon ; the men who founded the Gen- 
 tile Church at Antioch were laymen. Barnabas himself, 
 so far as we hear, was a layman ; so was Saul, till Christ 
 made him an apostle. It was only by degrees and under 
 the pressure of circumstances that even the rudiments of 
 a Church system showed themselves. At first there was 
 simply life — hardly more than life. The spirit was every- 
 thing, the form nothing. The fact is, that the earliest 
 work Christ's Church found to do, once it came to be full- 
 grown, was to overthrow an ancient and venerable system 
 of stereotyped usage and ritual. Its earliest martyr died 
 because he taught that Jesus would abolish the temple 
 and the customs of Moses. Its foremost chief was the 
 man who set aside at his Master's bidding, along with 
 the distinction of clean and unclean food, the deeper dis- 
 tinction between clean and unclean men. Its greatest 
 convert spent his hfe in fighting for freedom from every- 
 thing Jewish, even from circumcision. In the room of 
 the stiffened prescriptions which it thus laboured to ^'^ 
 destroy, the Church set up no hard and fast system. 
 Wherever disciples were, there was the Church. Each 
 Christian's house constituted a place of worship. The 
 most stereotyped or ritualistic act which it performed was 
 the holding of a family meal with bread and wine. It is 
 
/r 
 
 464 FHOM. JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 true that from the first there was order, for order is neces- 
 sary to healthful life. Without order of some sort there 
 could have been no discipline, and Ananias and Simon 
 show that from the first discipline was indispensable. It 
 is no less true that as the Church grew more independent 
 of the synagogue and realised better its corporate unity, 
 officers were multiplied, regulations were laid down, and 
 a polity and an order of worship became inevitable. But 
 the important point to note is this, that life came first, 
 and forms only second. Life shaped forms for itself as it 
 wanted them. The Church took its external mould under 
 the slow pressure of providence. Through the inward 
 impulse of Christ's Spirit it grew, as living things grow, 
 freely, variously, everywhere. It did not come full-fledged, 
 officered, accoutred, or organised, into the world. 
 
 So far indeed was the Church from being launched in 
 its final or perfect shape, that it is extremely difficult to 
 say at what point of its slow development it really became 
 the Church at all. The personnel of a Church met in Je- 
 rusalem before Pentecost, but these hundred and twenty 
 formed only the materials for a society — the Spirit had to 
 enter the body. At Pentecost the new brotherhood re- 
 ^ ceived its Spirit, and it may be said the Church was born ; 
 yet it continued to worship in the temple and form an 
 
 /. integral part of Judaism for years. The death of Stephen 
 broke that spell and cut that bond, yet the scattered He- 
 
 /^ brew believers remained as Hebrew as ever. A society 
 from which every one but a Jew was shut out hardly de- 
 served to be called in strict sense the Church of Christ. 
 The reception of Cornelius settled the wide spiritual basis 
 ' of the Church in principle indeed, yet it was not at once 
 followed up by the apostles. In fact, it might be said that 
 
CONCLUSIONS. 465 
 
 not till Jerusalem liad welcomed Antioch, and Antioch 
 greeted Jerusalem, was there really and truly a Cliurcli > 
 free of Mosaism or catholic for all men. Even after this 
 point was reached, questions of organisation and legis- 
 lation, about office-bearers, liturgy, discipline, and the 
 like points of controversy, still slumbered among the un- \ 
 stirred difficulties of the future. So gradually did the ^ 
 Church become the Church. 
 
 There is nothing to be gained by childishly striving to 
 mimic, even if we knew them, the earliest forms (or rather 
 formlessness) of the Christian brotherhood in its inceptive 
 and infantile j)eriod. Well-meaning but not over-wise en- 
 thusiasts for simplicity are every now and again striving 
 to hark back upon what they call primitive models, and 
 object to everything for which there is no written prece- 
 dent in these scanty records of the primitive age. They do 
 not appear to see that this is to fly in the face of the pri- 
 mitive spirit. The characteristic of the earliest believers 
 was that they had no model, worked without precedent, 
 and let rules arise as they were required. To make their 
 ways therefore a rule or a precedent or a model for our- 
 selves, is to do them the poor compliment of aping their 
 acts in defiance of their spirit. Kash change of usages 
 which are harmless, or an abandonment of those legiti- 
 mate means for securing order and edification which the 
 experience of the past has suggested, merely in the inter- 
 ests of what is termed "primitive simplicity," is not a 
 course which commends itself to sober Christian wisdom. 
 On the other hand, it must ever be maintained that the 
 living Church of the present is not the slave of her own 
 past. Where there is life, there must be movement and 
 freedom. To bind upon the Ciuris-tian Church an inelastic, 
 
 31 
 
466 FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 immovable code of arrangements or formula of belief con- 
 trived by the Christians of some long past century, to 
 forbid her to touch one of the traditions of the fathers, to 
 legislate for every utterance, robe, and posture of her 
 ministers by minute and express enactment, to tremble 
 when Christian faith asks leave to utter itself to God 
 through a new channel — in short, to confer upon each 
 man - invented, man-imposed detail of worship, govern- 
 ment, or usage, the consecration and the indestructible 
 authority of a divine law, certainly seems to be a pro- 
 cedure out of all harmony with the opening pages of 
 Christian history. It is to undo, as I conceive, what the 
 infant Church did when it cast off the sheath of Mosaism. 
 It is to put form above life, and law above spirit. It is 
 to go back again to be in bondage to what Paul's robust, 
 incisive, and masculine intellect, liberated by the Spirit of 
 God, long ago branded as '' beggarly elements." 
 
 The characteristic of the earliest Church, as we see it 
 in these chapters, was life, fresh, intense, overflowing 
 spiritual life. It was a sudden breath from heaven. The 
 means by which so many human souls were unexpectedly 
 and simultaneously moved was the most elementary gos- 
 pel truth. It was only elementary truth which people 
 seemed as yet to care for or need — the truth of God's 
 mercy newly granted to men in the conscious forgiveness 
 of sins through His slain but revived Son. This one 
 truth, seizing candid hearts, inspired them. But the 
 power which used this truth, bore it home to the con- 
 science and affections, roused the dormant nature to re- 
 cognise it, flooded the receptive soul with swift clear joy 
 over it, and with a burning affection for its Saviour : this 
 
CONCLUSIONS. 467 
 
 power was a personal one, a divine messenger, God the 
 Holy Ghost. These were eminently days of the Spirit. 
 Men lived intensely, because a Spirit worked in them 
 mightily. His breath both set hearts on fire and kept 
 them burning. The serene, confident courage of the first 
 confessors, their insight into truth, their hopefulness, 
 their close cleaving to one another, their superiority to 
 fear or peril, their tender charity, their strong appeals to 
 heaven and their certainty that God was with them, are 
 all marks of a Spirit within man Who lifteth up man's 
 fearful, craven, selfish spirit above itself, and inflameth 
 him with a celestial fire. This Spirit disclosed no doubt 
 within the secret haunts of the disciplehood endless 
 tokens, sweet and memorable, of warm brother-love, of 
 generosity, of mutual forgiveness, and of that self-for- 
 getfulness in ministering to each other's wants which 
 promised at one time actually to realise prematurely a 
 voluntary Christian communism. To the outside world, 
 however, the most striking feature about the new life in 
 the Spirit was its contagious and aggressive enthusiasm. 
 The brethren were like men who, in the first intoxication 
 of a glorious discovery, ran telling it to all around. They 
 were so sure of life and peace in Jesus that they bubbled 
 over with it. To each one of them the message was so 
 real, that, when they told it, they made men listen. It 
 sounded like a true thing, it evidently was a great thing. 
 The propulsive force of such enthusiasm carried Christ's 
 mighty fame from man to man, from land to land. How 
 else can we explain that, with absolutely no formal propa- 
 gandism, within fourteen years from His death His wor- 
 shippers were to be found from Cyprus to Damascus and 
 from Abyssinia to the Orontes ? If we may judge by the 
 
468 FROM JEBUSALEM TO ANTIOCH. 
 
 fragments of Peter's sermons preserved in Luke's narra- 
 tive, the gospel preaclied during tliis period (as indeed for 
 long after) was a very simple and naked message. No 
 theological divergence could as yet appear in the Church, 
 for as yet there was no theology. A theology arises after 
 men have had time to reflect on their religious faith and 
 to formulate it. The time for such reflection had not yet 
 arrived. Preaching was, what it always is at its essence, 
 a personal witness to facts connected with hfe in Jesus 
 Christ. That He was sent of God, that He had died and 
 was now alive, that He gave the Holy Ghost, that some 
 men had been forgiven and saved by Him, that all men 
 might be — this was the whole. The proof ? It lived and 
 spoke before you. Apostles and first disciples could speak 
 to outward facts of Jesus' history; each believer could 
 attest the inner fact of his own change. Indeed, such 
 attestation was hardly needful. Men's altered lives, their 
 new virtues, their beaming faces, their happy hymns — 
 these spoke for them. It was a re\ival. That is to say, 
 it was a wide -spread, sympathetic quickening of many 
 men under a swift and pronounced movement of God 
 upon their souls. Of all revivals, it was the first, the 
 greatest, and the most typical. And this is the charac- 
 teristic of all revivals — that the visible change efi'ected, 
 together with the spontaneous testimony of each changed 
 soul, touches neighbour souls, and carries on the work of 
 quickening as by a spiritual contagion. 
 
 Two leading elements blend in this enthusiasm of ag- 
 gression — the one a faith in the living Saviour as having 
 saved us, so vivid that it is usually joyful and sometimes 
 jubilant ; the other a godlike love for others who are yet 
 unsaved, so overpowering that it compels the convert to 
 
CONCLUSIONS. 469 
 
 speak. Search the popular literature of any genuine re- 
 vival — say its hymn literature — and it will be found how 
 prominent are these two moods, the joy of assured per- 
 sonal possession of Christ, and the burning insistence 
 that others shall get it too. Both of these we find in the 
 early records of the first age — the expulsive, self-expand- 
 ing age — of the Church. They are genuinely apostolic. 
 It is true that after such a time of rapid development 
 there must follow, by spiritual laws, one of slow consoli- 
 dation, the marks of which are theological reflection and 
 practical upbuilding. It is also true that after both these 
 stages there is ready to follow, by the laws of a fallen 
 nature, a period of stagnation, formalism, and decadence, 
 which may last longer than both the others put together. 
 Still, whenever the Church is to be mightily and widely 
 aggressive, her life must revert to the primitive type. 
 These elementary graces of joyful assurance and pas- 
 sionate pity for sinners must be anew developed; her 
 old style of personal testimony must be resumed ; and 
 quite as certainly, something of her early freedom, in- 
 formality, directness, and unofficial activity will also re- 
 appear. 
 
 miWIN BKOTHEKS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWOETH AND LONDON. 
 
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