THE BAMPTON LECTURES FOR M.DCCCLXX. Cjmstbratg us tagfrt bg JS.$)miI. CONSIDERED IN EIGHT LECTURES PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, IN THE YEAR 1870. On the Foundation op the late Rev. John Bampton, M.A., CANON 01? SALISBURY. BY WILLIAM J. IRONS, D.D., OF QUKEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD J BECTOa OF 8. MARY WOOLXOTH, LONDON J AND PBF.BENDARY OF S. PAUL'S. TO WHICH 13 ADDED AN APPENDIX OP THE CONTINUOUS SENSE OF S.PAUL'S EPISTLES; WITH NOTES AND METALEGOXENA. SECOND EDITION. ©rfarit mtfc Itanium: JAMES PARKER AND CO. 1876. )V\ pcUD EXTRACT FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THE LATE REV. JOHN BAMPTON, CANON OF SALISBURY. " I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the " Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of " Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and singular the " said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the intents and " purposes hereinafter mentioned ; that is to say, I will and " appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ox- " ford for the time being shall take and receive all the rents, " issues, and profits thereof, and (after all taxes, reparations, " and necessary deductions made) that he pay all the re- " mainder to the endowment of eight Divinity Lecture Ser- " mons, to be established for ever in the said University, and " to be performed in the manner following : " I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in " Easter Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads " of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room adjoining " to the Printing- House, between the hours of ten in the " morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity " Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary's in " Oxford, between the commencement of the last month in " Lent Term, and the end of the third week in Act Term. EXTRACT FKOM CANON BAMPTON S WILL. " Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Sub jects — to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics — upon the divine au- ' thority of the holy Scriptures — upon the authority of the ' writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and prac- ' tice of the primitive Church — upon the Divinity of our Lord ' and Saviour Jesus Christ; — upon the Divinity of the Holy 1 Ghost — upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as compre- 1 hended in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. " Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lec- ' ture Sermons shall be always printed, within two months ' after they are preached ; and one copy shall be given to the ' Chancellor of the University, and one copy to the Head of ' every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of ' Oxford, and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library; ' and the expense of printing them shall be paid out of the ' revenue of the Land or Estates given for establishing the ' Divinity Lecture Sermons ; and the Preacher shall not be ' paid, nor be entitled to the revenue, before they are ' printed. '•' Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be quali- ' fied to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath ' taken the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the < two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge ; and that the ' same person shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Ser mons twice.'" TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN BAMPTON THE FOUNDER OF THE LECTURE THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED: WITH GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE TRUST REPOSED IN ME BY THE UNIVERSITY; AND WITH MUCH RECOGNITION OF THE VALUED LABOURS OF MY PREDECESSORS. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Having learned from my respected pub lishers that the first thousand of these Lec tures is exhausted, and that it seems desirable to re-issue the work so as to meet the require ments of an enlarged circle of readers, I avail myself of the opportunity thus offered to re view, very briefly, the position of that part of our Sacred Literature which occupied atten tion so prominently in 1870, when Renan's " St. Paul" had been circulating recently among us, and which of late has even grown in im portance. The moral condition of the Roman empire in St. Paul's days, delineated in the first of the Lectures, suggested some parallel to our own times ; and it was noticed by the " Edin burgh Review*" in referring to this volume. But events have greatly developed since 1870. « April, 1871. b x PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The state of Europe is more deeply disturbed than was anticipated at the time of the pro mulgation of the Vatican decree b, and the pro clamation of the Franco-German war which also marked that year. The religious founda tions of society are still indeed so rapidly changing, and its old elements so passing away, that all thoughtful men foresee great social embarrassment ; while none can sup pose, as a leading Jesuit writer0 in Italy is forward to admit, any possible return to the forms of the previous civilization. But " Christianity as taught by St. Paul " 1800 years ago, touching as it did all the gravest questions of human thought and hu man interest, is certainly destined to be a moving power among us, as truly as when it stirred the populations of old Ephesus, Co rinth, or Rome; or was resisted by Judaism and Gnosticism, or became the centre of that Pauline conflict of the second century, out of which emerged the completed canon of the new Scriptures, which even Marcion and his b Lect. VIII. p. 281. ¦= F. Curci. PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. xi followers so largely admitted at last. A dis tinguished critic, recently noticing from his own point of view the present Lectures'1, re marks that the course of religious controversy has very practically shewn that " Christianity as taught by St. Paul " was fitly chosen at this time as a religious study. The appro priateness, however, is enhanced among us by the fact, that special versions of " Pauline " thought and doctrine have become naturalized in our country, and are, it is to be feared, determining very largely the hostility to Chris tianity itself, which is being manifested among both our scientific and ethical thinkers. A writer in the ablest organ of the common unbelief having tersely expressed the popular faith as to Original Sin, Atonement, Justifica tion, and future Retribution, has linked it not unreasonably with the no less popular conception of a Divine "decree" fixing all the future in the eternal past. This is so far revolting men's moral instincts — for we meet with it on all sides — that it is even an 11 The Church Quarterly for October, p. 250. xii PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. urgent duty devolving on us to shew that St. Paul is not, as imagined, at all responsible for the modern Gnosticism engrafted on him. Nor is it enough to clear the Apostle's writings from what are termed "extreme conclusions," if even the germs of the supposed principles are conceded to be in them ; for to be illogical is to be irrational. The most recent writers, however, on the work and teaching of St. Paul have avoided a philosophical dealing with the great Apostle's meaning as a whole. They limit themselves to translating more minutely, or pictorially illustrating, or adding slightly to historical details already familiar. If in some cases they aim at a dogmatic view of the Epistles, it results only in exegesis, or paraphrase, or in terpretation, or exposition, or whatever else it may be called, proceeding from a previously adopted theory. They give us what is termed perhaps a "view;" such as Bishop Colenso's book on the " Romans," or Mr. M. Arnold's on Pauline " Protestantism," or Professors F. C. Baur's or E. Zeller's Tubingen Disquisi- PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. xiii tions on "Paul's Life and Works," and "the Acts," or Mr. T. Lewin's very elaborate and complete Pauline book with "Fasti Sacri," beautiful maps and 400 plates and etchings — which in its own line surpasses every other. As far, however, as the Apostle's main sense in what he wrote is concerned, we have no thing fresh, but rather the various writers' own views have been expressed in the worn phrases which translated or "rendered" St. Paul in the time of our Authorized Version, or since modern criticism began its special work. Not unfrequently such reading in old grooves puts the Apostle's thoughts entirely aside ; and it uses certain phraseology in the interest of new fancies or fanaticisms of the day, as completely as when cherished " se condary meanings" are placed on the Penta teuch, or used to be in former ages on Homer. So long as St. Paul is read through a kalei doscope, cultivated minds will be hindered in accepting the Gospel of Christ from him. The common sense and morality of the age will resent it, in proportion as it is educated. xiv PREFACE 10 THE SECOND EDITION. Serious is the responsibility of those who will persist in putting before men the great thoughts of St. Paul, the great truths of Christ our Lord, in a form which refuses to mingle with the ideas of Right, Good, and Respon sibility, which cannot even be supposed absent from human nature. No one would know any of the beauty of a Greek poet, by merely reading a literal word-for-word version (p. 312). A realizing of the historical conditions, and even a render ing into some natural movement or metre which should stir the reader as the original writer was stirred, are absolutely necessary to give the sense of a true inspiration. — Archaeo logical meanings and derivations of words, and etymological play with syllables, may have a good place, but will never, we mean, lead to the understanding of St. Paul's Epistles. As readers, we must place ourselves as in the writer's mind; isolating ourselves as far as possible from every system that has been thought or acted out since St. Paul wrote • and yet sympathizing with truth, and nature, PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xv as they are now known. We must idealize the civilization of the Augustan era, in Rome, or Corinth, or Alexandria, or Palestine, or in the Hebrew and Greek synagogues of the Roman world; while our problem is, for our own sakes, — to find what meaning would ne cessarily have been attached to the Greek of St. Paul, by those who had just received the moral training of that time, together with the oral tradition of the life of our Lord, and the teaching of the Pentecost. This is what has been earnestly attempted in these Lectures, and in the " Continuous Sense" of St. Paul's Epistles which are placed in order and read through, in the Appendix. That Ap pendix, indeed, with its brief historical con nexions, determined the course of the Lec tures, and may not untruly be regarded as a distinct work. To evince the coherence of its teaching with the other New Testament writings, I have partly prepared also a " Con tinuous Sense" of St. John's writings, his Gos pel, three Epistles, and Apocalypse ; and a sim- xvi PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. ilar work on the "Catholic Epistles," which I may hope to complete. But, meanwhile, the Continuous Sense of St. Paul must speak for itself. The Chronology of his letters is determined so approximately by the history itself, that, with the exception of the short Epistles to Timothy and Titus, there is a consent in most particulars among critics, Roman and Protestant, at home and abroad. The "great dearth which came to pass in the days of Claudius Csesar," (a.d. 44,) brings us into the presence of the Apostle at Jeru salem6; and the Procuratorship of Festus in Judsea, (a.d. 61,) marks the date of the Apo stle's departure to Rome, where he was im prisoned for " two whole years f." His Epistles, all written within that time, and his mission ary journeys to which they refer, mutually illustrate each other, and fix their own dates. They thus fall into two groups. The six Epistles, to Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome, and Galatia, determine themselves bv e Acts xi. 28. f Acts xxviii. 30. PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. xvii their internal evidence to the time between the Apostle's leaving Jerusalem for Antioch, (a.d. 51,) and returning to Jerusalem to meet his imprisonment (a.d. 60-61). Then secondly, to the years of his Roman captivity, (a.d. 62-64,) the Epistles to Ephesus, Colosse, and Philippi, and to Philemon, belong without question ; and, we may add, that to the Hebrews also — since the year 64 saw the beginning of the last Jewish war, in which the temple was "ready to vanish awayg." Critics so widely different, in other respects, as the Roman Catholic Danko, our learned Bishop of Lincoln, and the Protestants Lard- ner and Dr. Davidson, or Renan the most 'free -thinking of Rationalists,' and Dr. Tre- gelles the most conservative of 'free Chris tians,' (if I may so describe him,) commonly ap-ree with our arrangement of the former six in the first group, and the latter five in the second. As to the Pastorals, there is no such con sensus. They occupy but few pages, though s Heb. viii. 13. xviii PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. the literature respecting them is voluminous. I must be content to let the order I have adopted be determined by internal evidence; and I leave it without doubting that minds not pre-occupied, and importing nothing into those letters which they do not plainly con tain, will agree with me, on reading the " Con tinuous Sense." The "Pastorals," however, add little, if anything, to the spiritual teaching of the Apostle in his eleven other Epistles. It is to that teaching, men's minds will surely be directed in the generation before us. Some peculiar doctrines as to Predesti nation, Faith, and Grace, which have been wrongly associated with St. Paul's Gospel, will certainly be compared with the moral constitution of human nature, and the belief in a Personal God. Men will not be put aside by any equivocations, nor by humility falsely so called, refusing all " reason," — which would here mean a declining to be conscientious. Supposed Divine decrees concerning human actions and destiny will be compared with the PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. xix character of God and the responsibility of man. Men will see that an eternal fixing of events, an eternal past determination on the part of a Divine Being so absolute that there never was a beginning of His decree or deter mination, is equivalent to Pantheism, or Athe ism ; to Pantheism, if the whole order of things be affirmed to be working impersonally as one fixed system ; to Atheism, if the Divine Being never had the beginning of any act which is called His. The thorough reading of St. Paul,' putting his whole course of thought into such shape as we may suppose moral beings to have ap prehended at the time, or to understand at any time, will shew not only that no such philosophy ever crossed the Apostle's mindh, but also that St. Paul's Epistles place the Gospel of Christ in its true position in the moral system of the world. My experience since 1872, as a Member of the " School Board for London," has obliged h See Lecture V. ; and also, "The Church of all Ages," pp. 141, and 321. xx PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. me to ask, how the Scriptures will be read and understood in the coming generation ? With the inevitable growth of the present system of undenominational schools, the fact arises that the primary Religious teaching of the masses will be given by the laity, whose time must needs be principally occupied by secular subjects. We are bound to see that the Sacred Text-book which is the basis of the instruction they may give in the schools, is not misleading; and there ought to be no delay in rescuing the New Testament at least from uncouth traditions which distort its natural sense. I ought not to conclude now without offer ing my thanks to writers both at home and abroad, in our own Church and in other com munions, who have examined my Bampton Lectures with so much care, and treated the writer of them with so much kindness. WILLIAM J. IRONS. St. Mary "Wqolnoth, Advent, 1875. CONTENTS. Lecture I. II.III. IV.V. VI. VII.VIII. Appendix Notes 3569 103 141 179 217 155 3°5497 LECTURE I. THE SUBJECT PROPOSED : — CHRISTIANITY AS TAUGHT BY S. PAUL. aypos eo-nv o koctjios. I. THE TIME CHBISTIANITY APPEARED. 2. THE HEATHEN CIVILIZATION. 3. THE JEWISH CIVILIZATION. 4. CONTACT OF CHRISTIANITY WITH HEATHENISM AND JUDAISM. B OUTLINE. THE Subject Proposed : Christianity as taught by S. Paul. Reasons for considering it. . Exegesis of the facts must be real. Change from the ancient world to the modern. Its examination a duty. ..... II. III. IV. Estimate of the times -when Christianity appeared. The world had been waiting for the change that came. Two lines of fact converging to the change. Points where Morality and Religion touch. . Climax of Rome's corruption, in their total separation. Attempted revival of Heathen Rehgion. Religion, law, and conscience, formerly united in Rome This union was broken up. ..... The Imperial position which ensued. Efforts to consolidate an Imperial Religion : . Their failure. . . .... Details of Heathen Civilization — of the first half-century : And of the second. The Twelve Caesars. .... Trajan and his times : . His meeting with Christianity in Bithynia, through Pliny. Christianity first known as a Society. Moral aims of Christianity recognized. . Apollonius of Tyana, and Pagan missions. The Jewish Civilization not to be overlooked. Autonomy of the Jews under the Eomans. Twofold division ofthe Jewish nation ; . Babylonian Jews, and their head ; . Patriarchate in Palestine ; Continued after the fall of Jerusalem. . General moral decay. .... Sadducees, and Pharisees. Growing blindness, and demoralization ; Confessed by all men, at the fall of Jerusalem. Savage criminality of next generation. . Second fall of Jerusalem, Compared with the first. Judaism still surviving in a fixed form. Early recognition cf Christianity, In its contact with Judaism and Philosophy. Silence of its growing success. Opening of the Second Century. . The Renewal begun A new Life. .... 3 3 4 5566 7 9 io n n 121213 HIS 16i7 18181920 20 21 222.32324 2425 2626 2627 27 2829 29 3131 32 3233 LECTURE L THE TIME CHRISTIANITY APPEARED. So is the Kingdom of God as if a mem should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. — S. Mark iv. 26, 27. IHE question is once more being asked in various The Sub ways, and with an importunity which will not be posed. put off and a freshness almost surprising, What was Christianity as first given to the world 1 It is a question so practically brought to us, that our moral and social not less than our religious future must be concerned in its present solution. In the ensuing Lectures on the mission and writings of the great Apostle of the Gospel, we shall necessarily survey our Religion from the point of view of its first century, and it is not unreasonable to think that, with those authentic materials which are in fact the oldest Christian documents we possess, we may at least learn what it was that S. Paul taught when he went forth to the nations and proclaimed ' Jesus and the Eesurrection.' It cannot be without use even to the well-in- Seasons for . . considering structed believer in times hke ours, when the pro- it. gress of new thought and the lengthening of the B 2 4 STATE OF THE WORLD [lect. old traditions may seem to magnify the distance from the first historic Christianity, that he should thus go back to breathe once more the air of that earlier day, and touch again, if it may be so said, the soil of his birthplace. We know indeed that the appeal to Primitive Christianity is trite enough, and is made with un guarded confidence by many who identify it with an ideal of simplicity corresponding with very little in the past. But we have to think of some, who will now explore our origines very really, though with no sympathies of religious partizanship, and perhaps even coldly, resolutely, and from without. Exegesis of Ancl there are others, doubters whose half-implied the facts L mmtbe challenge when sincere may not be declined. True real. ° J critics should be fellow-workers ; and we need not bring to our task the zeal of theorists, though we may approach it with the insight which must belong to believers. Some indulgence, it is hoped, may be conceded if we here pause and look over the field, though familiar to so many, in which the sacred seed of our Eeligion was sown. By so doing, we shall after wards better trace the earliest appearances of the growth of that seed ; and let it be borne in mind, that it is no dry historical defence of the faith that is here intended, but simply the exegesis of the facts of the Gospel as first presented and speaking for themselves. Every one recognizes in some way the great change which passed over the world eighteen hun- i.] AS CHRISTIANITY FOUND IT. 5 dred years ago, the full import of which is far from being yet known. Old Eeligions, old philo- The change sophies, old nationahties were shattered, and even ancient their languages transmuted into other forms. It lo"tu was not that large populations then changed their Tenew^i" masters, from the barbarian boundary of the North to the deserts of Africa in the South ; from the pillars of Hercules looking out on the Atlantic, to the confines of far-off India. No, for that kind of revolution had happened before. The change was now a more real one perhaps than human nature had ever gone through, so penetrating indeed, that it seemed as if implied on all hands that another order of things was coming, though as yet men 'knew not how.' That renewal which soon began, in whatever terms we may describe it, is what this nineteenth century of ours inherits. From that epoch dates the generally accepted faith of modern civilization. While as Christians we feel that the events of its exami- that time are associated with all our sentiments of not incon- , .i i n i iii sistent with reverence, we are not the less called on to deal ,-everence. with them also as simple facts. FuUy acknow ledging, indeed, that there are depths in the early springs of the Christian life which no analysis can reach, we need not on that account reject any true and just scrutiny that has been made ; and we may not hold back, if the lamp has. been carefully carried down, at any time, for the exactest explora tion of our holy places. We shall be venturing into no forbidden ground. 6 CHANGE APPROACHING. [lect. i. I. If we look to the times immediately preceding ^S0/the coming of our Deliverer, and next glance at fgZutl tne days which followed the departure of His last Hadrian. Apostles,— view, that is, the conditions of the Empire of Augustus and then the phenomena towards the days of Hadrian,— we have the interval of a century; and that is 'the Field' in which the Gospel was sown. It is there that we must find the substantial details of the transition which took place. Taking only the facts which emerge after the most careful (We might examination, it is certain that towards the end of Eenan's that period a mighty growth had begun to show as suffi1-' itself throughout a considerable part of the social system. It had been little noticed at first, among the world-embracing' interests of the great Eoman polity ; but it was plain enough when the second century arrived. A ' seed ' had surely been sown, and even if ' men knew not how,' it was springing on every side. Most true it had been, indeed, that 'men knew not how,' and we may see this in the confused utterances of Pliny, or the obscure words of the historian Tacitus, or the fainter allusions of Juvenal. The very Apologies which bring our Ee ligion to the more formal knowledge of the world's rulers, do but show that the ' light had been shining in darkness, while the darkness comprehended it not.' Tlie world But a world thus unconscious at first of the rising was then /~1 . . . . - ,. ° waiting for Christianity had yet been waiting for it. It was not tlie change • j i i -, that came, indeed, as some have suggested, a natural sequence in the moral movement of the ages; yet in the I.] INDICATIONS OF THE TRANSITION. T great order of events it surely had a Divine fitness. -Bom. v. 6 ; It could make no lower claim ; its earliest tra- Eph. iv. 10. ditions, the events which were contemporary with it, and its unquestioned literature and primary organization, alike affirm it. It is this fitness of our Eeligion for the position it assumed, which accounts for its acquiring by the second century that hold on the world from, which, as wiU be seen, it could not be dislodged We cannot desire better means of eventually judging of this, than we have in those writings, accepted in the main as genuine by both the Church and the world, the letters of S. Paul which we shall examine. In them we shall find a vivid panorama spread before us of this new Faith as it showed itself not only in the syna gogues of Judaea, its first home, but as it existed in the great centres of Imperial power, such as Antioch,. Ephesus, Corinth, and even Eome itself. There were two lines of fact, long converging Two lines of fact towards the moral change that was to be effected, morally i "pi i converging First, it is attested by every writer oi that age that to the there had been a growing debasement of the general conscience of men. The sense of right and wrong in the commonest matters was everywhere enfeebled, and yet scarcely appeared to have reached its lowest point ; for it seemed to be losing its way down with increasing dimness. Some minds more noble than the rest could but acknowledge, with a de spondency akin to despair, this deepening corruption \ Then among these higher spirits we have what a Note A. 8 PEILOSOPEERS AND PEOPLE [lect. may be thought the counterfeit of an eclectic mo rahty, showing an advance both in their philosophy and their practical aims ; while these also will be seen to move towards some coming change. On the one hand, then, there was the powerful multitude ap proaching a crisis at which morality threatened to be impossible ; and on the other, a powerless few, apparently reaching the unsatisfactory hmits of spe culative virtue. Nor are we to regard the philosophers and the multitude as merely extremes of society ; for they included all : and there was one fatal charac teristic which even these had equaUy shown. In both there was an entire separation of Morality and Eeligion. The virtue of the few, even when purest, was not religious, and did not profess to be so, nor a general aim to interpret its own aspirations. The religion of Religion of the masses, even when enthusiastic, was so little ity the com- moral that it seemed to have no root at all in man sign of . i -r» i the coming conscience, in any worthy sense. Perhaps no one among us could muse over those times, the days of the closing Bepublic, of the wars of the Triumvirs, and the consolidation of the power of Augustus, without a feeling of amazement at the moral chaos. As we move in thought from the court to the city, from the city to the camp, from thence to province, or village, we see even the best men bewildered as to this life, while profoundly distrusting a future ; we see the millions perpetuating and increasing superstitions with no element of goodness. The philosophers are smiling calmly at the devotions of i.] SEPARATE MORALITY AND RELIGION. 9 the temple, and there are scoffers throughout the crowd, while the devotees show themselves the basest of mankind. We must not hastily dismiss this, for it concerns us to understand it. The separation of Eeligion what is and Morality evidently did not mean, that either ITSsepaTa- had been formally given up, nor that there was opposition distinctly intended between them. We can best judge of this actual separation by observing its internal nature, whatever its outward profession may have been. No doubt a secular morality may be arrived at, and some principles ascertained, by examining the (as in the facts of human hfe : but there still would remain Mco- the difficulty of stirring the individual conscience to that morahty. Eules and laws will not do this ; and their operation on man's inner nature is but little, and is far from being elevating ; which no one, indeed, so effectually points out as S. Paul. Rom. vm. The life of all virtue implies a personal approval iii. 2'i . of right-doing ; this, too, has its counterpart in an acquiescence in retribution as due to wrong-doing. But can we stop here 1 Must we not say, that since this idea of retribution is moral, it requires a moral government of the world, and would be unsatisfied without it 1 And what is this, but that very belief which lies at the foundation of Eeligion \ And if so, it follows that we cannot have the morality The point of persona] righteousness in separation from Eeligion. ofthemorai For thus the right and the religious so meet, from the religious first, in our moral nature, that to divide them is to ^ l ' 10 MORAL DECAY OF THE EMPIRE. [lect. destroy their life. We are pressing for no theory here. It is weU that men should face this, — that morals lose vitality when separated from the moral government of the world ; while it is also true that Eeligion sinks to superstition in proportion as it ceases to have the approval of the personal conscience. It is certainly no vague charge that we bring, when we say that this climax was reached, hy the heathenism of the Eoman Empire. Many of the most thoughtful of the time began therefore to look on human nature as wildly drifting to some unknown catastrophe. This it was that made the more pru dent hail the strong hand of the Emperor ; sub mitting themselves to a social tyranny, for the protection of the immediate interests of all. tu moral It is a ghastly thing for moral beings to be ruined rf 1TYi ft or OT the corrup- within ; for their need of external association and Rome. mutual life still remains, and thus they accelerate each other's evil condition. The Government of the Empire soon discovered the overwhelming work it had to do, in dealing with myriads of people in whom individual morality seemed hastening to ex tinction. Though as if terror-struck at times at the magnitude of the task, the duty of arresting the moral disintegration was recognized by Emperor after Emperor as admitting of no delay. Not that, from their point of view, either the true extent of the evil or the nature of the remedy could be per ceived ; but it seemed evident to them, and it is full of interest to observe it now, that some return to antecedent principles was imperative. To fall i.] ATTEMPT AT HEATHEN REVIVAL. 11 back on the old Eeligions, right or wrong, with phi losophy or without it, was the inevitable expedient, the natural instinct, of the Eoman statesmen. Nor was this unreasonable ; for they could not but a revival know that beneath the surface of all the old heathen Religions Eeligions there was a sense of the supernatural, with- attempted. out which the natural exterior of customs very soon is lifeless. If the moral reaction which was needed were to have any strength in it, it could only come from the revival of that ineradicable though abstract sense of Eeligion which lies so deep in man's nature. There is a twofold aspect of Polytheism, presenting almost two Eeligions, an esoteric as well as exoteric, which goes so far to account for its power, its per manence, and in some sense its unity. Customs, (illustrated rites, legends of those numerous gods of old Olympus, Gladstone's even fables of the most grotesque mythology, derived Corner and influence from that which was truer and better Mundl) beneath. Some of them always were outward signs of an unuttered faith. To revive once venerated Polytheism, might it not be to restore all that seemed formerly to have given it life % Such, at all events, was the apparent resource of the troubled world in the hour of its need. This Imperial attempt at restoration of Eeligion Religion, i • n , law, and was doubtless assisted m Eome itself by the com- conscience pactness of the union of Eeligion and Law, familiar united in to the people from the foundation of their city ; and a glance at this may assist us. For well nigh eight centuries the conscience of the Eoman people had a kind of national unity, of 12 THE DECAY AS FELT AT ROME. [lect. which every institute and tradition among them was the expression, and to which in every citizen there was some echo. To Eomans, the founder of the nation was a deity, and Eome herself a goddess ; and thus their very patriotism was a religion. True, they had also wider mythology, and more comprehensive faith ; but the practical religious power, that which was dear to them beyond ah besides, the pro aris et foeis, was significantly national, rooted in every ancestral memory, pervading every law, and quickening the assurance of their nation's future. The union The de-nationalization of Eome began with the broken up. gradual introduction of Greek art, religion, and phi losophy. The extension of the Imperial rule brought with it further foreign elements, changing more and more the simplicity and ideal unity of the state. Nothing at length was more acceptable in Eome than Oriental pageantry, with its apotheosis of pomp and power. Was it possible then to revive the popular faith, and concentrate, once more, Eome's conscience, religion, and laws % That was the question for Augustus ; and its difficulty was the greater, because the old population of Italy, and still more of Eome itself, had been almost destroyed by the civil wars, by the colonization of the provinces, and by the flow of strangers to the centre of Empire. Everything that could be done was attempted Theim- _ by the Emperor. As Perpetual Tribune, Consul, Uonathfnn' Censor, Augur, and High Priest, he held control not only over the army and the public service, but over the laws ; for he had a veto on the i.] IMPERIAL EFFORTS TO ARREST IT. 13 least modification of them : and he so wielded this power that he obtained an almost fanatical popularity. Nothing could be demanded by this ' Prince of the Senate' which was not accorded with acclamation. AU the conditions of success seemed to be in his hands, and it looked, at first, as if everything might respond to his touch. The laws framed during the earlier years of Au gustus were wisely adapted to secure that organiza tion and unity which the first Caasar had designed, as well as to meet special necessities of his own times. As Pontiff, he was able to inaugurate old national Efforts to rites from time to time with policy and skill, increasing an imperial the strictness and parade on every available occasion. And this was accompanied with great liberahty to old Eeligions, not excepting Judaism when possible. Then even the domestic life of Eome came under (Auius closer supervision ; and the demoralizing celibacy of the luxurious classes was legaUy discouraged, and the ' Bona Dea,' the ideal wife, held up for venera tion. Foundations, in fact, were laid for a complete revision of aU the laws of the Empire b. Those re lating to land, and to the family, to the power of the father, and the position of the slave, were at once re-adjusted, and a large number of wise restraints imposed on individual licence. Nothing seemed to be overlooked. The body of Eoman law was already growing to be a noble vindication of human rights, foreshadowing that completeness which crowned the Augustan legislation in the Perpetual Edict of t> Note B. 14 THEIR FAILURE. [lect. Hadrian and the Provincial Edict of Aurelius. But what after all is the practical result that history Their entire records 1 With all this mighty and prolonged effort failnr -the old faith did not return, nor any revival of con science in morals. The fables of the gods were still rejected by the philosophers ; the auguries, and omens, and sacrifices were stiU ridiculed by those who yet used them. As to crimes, and cruelties of every form, it seemed as if nothing could even stem the tide. In all the terrible moral descent there was not in truth a moment's pause. The darkness of that portentous Augustan era arrests us by the very con trast when we read in the beginning of our Gospel, as if it had been the consummation of the marvel, — ' it came to pass in the days of Augustus Caesar.' 11. II. The materials are abundant, which enable us to know even minutely the times of which we speak ; and if we briefly group some of them for present use it may give emphasis to the broader statement that Somede- has been made. During the first half century from tails of the . . , . . . first half- the birth of Christ, we may learn heathenism m its to Heatiien- highest estate from Seneca and his nephew Lucan, from Strabo and the elder Pliny. We will not here enlarge the list. Seneca. In Seneca we have perhaps the fairest type of the old Stoic, formed by the best of the Alexandrian school. Wise, calm, magnanimous, and overflowing with noble sentiments, he had charge of the future ruler of the nations0. We find him, however, power less for good, as we watch his career. He was c Suetonius, in Nero. See Lect. VI. p. 100. i.] ASPECT OF THE FIRST HALF-CENTURY ; 15 unable to touch either his imperial pupil, or the court around him, or the people beneath. The facts are even proverbial. If we turn and enquire, whether Seneca himself advanced at length to any higher views of human destiny than those of a generation (md there before, when the first Caesar proclaimed death to be lar pro- our extinction, the truth is not to be concealed, that amidst the Seneca died making a libation to Jupiter, in whom ofthe he did not believe. — What words can sufficiently vohition.)6" describe such utter moral confusion 1 His relative, Lucan, could have no claim to detain Lucan. us a moment, but that he was well trained in the best philosophy, though unfaithful to all its teach ings and dead to its hopes. He ended life re pudiating every moral and rehgious conviction — an unnatural betrayer of his own parent, and a coarse denier of aU .the ' Superior Powers.' Without good ness, without peace, he loved nothing, and trusted nothing, beyond the pleasure of the present hour. Strabo, the contemporary of Augustus throughout strabo. his reign, the careful student and geographer spread ing before us the map of that world which Apostles and their followers were so soon to traverse, ' the most Stoic of phflosophers,' as he has been called d, utterly (yet, as a lover of Homer, how inconsistently,) dis misses all rehgious ideas with quiet contempt ; ' phi losophy for the few, poetry for the manyc,' condenses his hopeless creed : and yet Strabo was practical, and had a dread of prodigies f! d Casaubon. e pp. 20, 24, 474, 475. f Renan, S. Paul, p. 28: and Bishop Randolph's Prcelectiones in Eomerum, p. 16. 16 THE SECOND HALF-CENTURY ; [lect. Equally limited in every thought and hope to the sphere of the present life, the elder Pliny seems to stand on the canvas of history with a lonely sad- PUnythe ness peculiarly his own. He was a youth about the time of our Lord's crucifixion, and lived through the apostolic age and beyond the time of the fall of Jeru salem. A thoughtful scholar, a careful writer, yet the present was aU to him ; the Stoic conflagration was the end that he looked for. — Is it not as if there were almost a typical forecast of the Stoic's dream in the tragic story of Pliny's death at the burning crater of Vesuvius % And standing in thought on the spot where we see him for the last time, and gazing now on the long-buried world of hopeless Eoman phflosophy that lies around, we cannot, if we would, clear the lava of ages from Porch or Academy, the moral Herculaneum or Pompeii o£ that ancient world. It is all a sepulchre, and there is a chill as we pass among the excavations of heathen virtue struck dead in all its pomp. We find nothing but cold and useless dogmas, and vainly we lay them bare to the light of day and the breath of heaven. The second We pass to the second half of the same century; tury. and there the Stoic sternness may seem mitigated in Plutarch, Epictetus, and some others. There was, at length, a new feature in the times ; for efforts were made to impress on the people the old Pagan morality and religion in a didactic way, showing that philosophers, no less than statesmen, felt the need of restoring the conscience of the multitude. Yet even these efforts illustrate still further the i.] TO THE LAST OF THE TWELVE CAESARS, 17 hopelessness of the moral decay. We may feel, indeed, that the phUosophers had not receded from Plutarch their ideal of disinterested virtue ; but then they law. were banished from Eome, again and again, by the Emperors ; and, at the same time, the popular super stitions grew more and more intense. Plutarch's s work too enables us to judge ofthe cold ' consolations' of the best form of Heathenism, and the pictures of domestic life which we may obtain from him are painfully those of a perishing social system. There was a sort of instinct, at times, in the later Amam, Eoman Stoics towards rehgion of a dim kind; clrysos- but their reason paused. In truth, the Neo-plato- fu-y0Jng%., nicians of the following age were the first heathen f/^y™™ in whom the ethical and religious spirit re-appeared apwU'ius- as one. Individual examples of theistic aspiration may be seen here and there, as in Epictetus and Arrian, as well as in Plutarch. Dion too, the friend of the younger Pliny, may be named as an exception ; but scarcely Pliny himself. Maximus of Tyre, and Apuleius, were no doubt believers in one God ; but we can add no other names. It seemed as if the fulfil ment of the solemn words of the apostle were stUl to go on, ' God suffered all men to walk in their own ways.' We must reserve to a later page some of the The well-known outlines which may be traced of the Twelve Csesars themselves, which Suetonius and Tacitus11 enable us so fully to appreciate. The most profligate and cruel of them all was the greatest s Ad Uxorem; and also in the Moralia. n Suetonius, Nero, 10; and Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 50, gi. C 18 AND TRAJAN, AND HIS TIMES. [lect. favourite in Eome, and, long after his death, the people clung to the thought that Nero was alive. The story of that Imperial line as a whole, from Augustus down to Domitian, is one of almost in credible baseness ; while reign after reign is crowned with a ' deification' of the emperor, amidst universal applause. But at length a worthier ruler appeared ; and at the close of the century, it almost seemed as though the clouds might clear. The letters of the younger Pliny give us so fair a view of the character of the Times of Emperor Trajan, that the thought is suggested that an era of justice and goodness might yet dawn on the Empire. But hope arises only to be quenched in the revelations of the satirist, exhibiting in the reign of Trajan an audacity of universal crime never surpassed. Yet in the letters of Pliny to which we refer there are signs of a different order of things — signs which neither Trajan nor his proconsul understood — telling indeed that another moral life was rising among men, though the heathen 'knew not how.' Writing to the Emperor, Pliny says, that in Bithynia, (bordering on the sphere, as we know, of apostolic labours), he who comea found certain persons, not only natives of that pro- in contact with Chris- vince but some who had come from Eome, who were Bithynia, caUed ' Christians,' and were vaguely accused of Procoisui.3 Ulegal practices in their assemblies. He had not yet been present at the trials of any of these men, though the rise of their sect was by no means recent, and he had known cases of Christians of twenty i.] CHRISTIANITY RECOGNIZED AS A SOCIETY. 1& years' standing. Their numbers, he continues, were considerable, and both in country places and in towns enthusiastically increasing. He intimates a desire to put down these * Christians ;' and some of them had been detected by the operation of an imperial law regulating certain assemblies in private houses ; Christians being best known as members of Com munities meeting together under some rules of their own. Pliny further persuaded himself that he saw signs that the Pagan worship, which had been failing in Bithynia, might yet revive. It appears singular that the Proconsul was so little informed as to the origin of these Christians ; and it shows how sUent had been their growth. They had christi- now been brought before him indirectly, and as a known as a new sodality or company. There had been for ages, under both the Grecian and Eoman laws, numerous municipal and social guUds (as we should call them) allowed though scarcely regulated by the State at any time. Synagogues among the Jews came under the shelter of this general permission, and in them, and offshoots from them, Christianity first took refuge. As a specimen of these tolerated societies, Pliny mentions a charitable club of the Amisenians which had then obtained a legal status with rights secured to it. But at this crisis, some such provincial asso ciations had been abused to purposes of sedition, and stricter measures were therefore contemplated to test their loyalty. It was perhaps unavoidable that such tests should be of a mixed political and reli gious character. Thus unconsciously and blindly the c 2 20 NEW EFFORTS OF PAGANISM. [lect. representative ofthe Emperor came into colhsion with Christians ; for this rehgious test they could not take. Pliny's apparent ignorance of Christianity is the more remarkable, because he was acquainted with Tacitus, whose annals of the reign of Tiberius in cluded the . now-lost portion, which recorded the The moral procuratorship of Pilate in Judaea 'l. Enough how- ac7ris°i- ever is said to show, that in the Society of Christians rSniz^d. Phny soon recognized a moral stand made by them against the corruption of the times : a fact which in many cases must have won his sympathy. For among the acuter minds of heathenism, the consciousness of wide moral ruin began to incline some very favourably towards new efforts at good ness. In a few instances, their own virtuous zeal took a kind of missionary character. We may refer Rumours perhaps, in illustration of this, to the story of Apol- Apoiionius lonius of Tyana, (who by no means is a solitary of yana, cage^ ^e o^jg^ 0f whose career was the religious and and others moral reform of Heathenism ; and whose imitators after him ; n i • xi f» n • x are found in the following century. If we may trust the account of him, written how ever some generations after his times k, it was the aim of his hfe to become a strict Pythagorean ; and in all places where he sojourned or travelled, he desired to missions lead back the minds of the people to the temples of died. ' the forsaken gods, and the practice of ascetic virtue, which was the heathen ideal of goodness. He was i The lost portions of Tacitus are those of the times of our Lord's Death, a.d. 29-31 ; those of S. Paul's first ten years, a.d. 37-47 ; and those of the fall of Jerusalem. k Note C. !•] THEIR ENTIRE FAILURE. f21 brought up in the famed schools of Tarsus, and must have been there with Athenodorus the Stoic, if not also when S. Paul was in that city before his departure for Antioch. He is said to have prac tised abstinence and observed celibacy with a strict ness which elevated him in the eyes of the popu lace above mortality1. Nothing was wanting, ap parently, to perfect his influence among them. But there was no result. Not the least rumour remains, in all the age in which he lived, of the suc cess of his efforts for his faith or virtue. His name is absolutely unmentioned by any writer till eighty years after his death ; nor of all the moral missions (Anemi- attributed either to him, or others before and after Ephesus, . him, is any historical trace to be found. At the end mk-as ' , of the century the desolation of philosophic no less aiox.'ado- than popular paganism is complete. Only in Egypt, andepere- — at Esneh, Ombos, Dendera, and Hermonthis, — f^XLs there was a transient re-founding of heathenism, f^0 IIJ,~ which quickly perished. AuiusGei- ^ «/ J. hus, Nodes, xii. ii.) III. It was evident, on all hands, that in the in. separation of Eeligion and morals in human hfe were involved problems of which natural society could find no solution111. But we must not forget The Jews' civilization that there was 'scattered throughout the world, and must not had been for many ages, another form of civilization, looked. holding itself everywhere apart from the nations. It claimed to have been constituted on a supernatural basis, organized by God Himself a thousand years l Lect. III. p. 9g. m Lect. VI. p. 211. 22 JEWISH CIVILIZATION ; [lect. before Eome had made any beginning. Though at present distinct from the surrounding world, it pro ton, xii. 3. fessed that it was designed for the ultimate blessing of all; and indeed, it had therefore survived the strangest vicissitudes of history, whUe other peoples and races one after another had changed and per ished. We cannot complete our brief view of the condition of the first century without looking at the state of things among the Jews ; especially also as amidst them our Christianity took rise, using both their social and religious system. This long dispersed people had in many ways ob tained from their heathen rulers a Uberty of internal Their auto- self-government. The Eomans, after the Holy Land mlcmia,ni. feU under their power, acquiesced in this. Their con quests being so wide, and of so various a character, it was necessary for them everywhere to adopt much of the local administration of society, and the Jews had the full benefit of this. Unless the fault were their own, they were but little molested, out of Syria ; and not unfrequently had, in addition to a certain national exemption, the privileges of Eoman citizenship, and even the position and favour of b.c. 42. Eoman officials. Before Juhus Caesar, their San- (ithad hedrim had indeed been abohshed for a time; but pressed, he restored it. Among them, therefore, the means favour of of moral and religious advancement had remained ; Jurw? but, we have to enquire, with what results 1 We must think of the Synagogue of the Dispersion as everywhere a little republic, in confederacy with numerous societies like itself, ordered by traditional i.] ITS CONDITION SINCE TEE CAPTIVITY; 23 customs and laws. The nation, after the Babylonian Twofold ... . , n. . . . division of captivity, was mamfy divided into two sections, con- the nation. sisting of those who returned to Jerusalem on the permission of Cyrus, and of those who remained in Babylon. The temple was the common centre of both. In both were schools of the law, in con nexion with the synagogues ; of every synagogue there was an elected ' ruler,' and he was subordinate in certain vital points to the ' Nasi' " or to the ' Eesh Glutha,' as the case might be. Their independence was greater, indeed, in the East than in Palestine ; they who lingered in the Persian kingdom of Alex ander's successors not coming fully under the Eoman yoke, as Persia maintained a kind of freedom of its own throughout the whole period of Eoman power, and was only subdued by the Saracens in the seventh century of our era. The head of the Babylonian Jews, the ' Prince The sdby- of the Captivity,' as he at length was called, was Jews.- and thought to be of Eoyal extraction ; and the nobler part of the nation remained with him. The Palestinian Patriarch was, however, long deemed his superior, and was elected to his office by the council of the elders. It was the duty of both to transmit the Scriptures, and the traditions of the fathers : and they had their Schools, zealous in per forming this. The Babylonian Jews, in their old settlements between the Tigris and the Euphrates, enjoyed large and prolonged protection ; and even maintained their succession for a thousand years after n The Patriarch of the West ; and the Prince of the Captivity. 24 AND AT TEE AUGUSTAN ERA; [lect. Christ, under their Prince-Babbies. The Patriarch, of the West extended his power by means of sub ordinate patriarchs in chief places of Jewish resort ; ; appointed his apostles, 'shalekim,' as his messengers; and received tribute from the remotest of his spiritual TheJu- subjects. Even the Emperor acknowledged his dig- tHanhate nity, nor was it abolished till the time of Theodosius. in Pales- J . Une. We may see then at a glance the unity of the J ewish civUization. Indeed for three hundred years after the fall of Jerusalem their spiritual chief could, almost single-handed, hold together the massy fragments of his scattered people. Schools of At the era of Augustus — the period which we must keep before us — the Schools of Jerusalem were frequented by Jews from all quarters. The illus trious Eabbi Hillel, followed by Simeon and by Gamaliel in succession, presided. The increasing troubles induced Gamaliel to transfer the schools a.d. 51. to Jamnia, near Joppa, in the reign of Claudius ; in fact about the time of the council of apostles at Acts ix. 32. Jerusalem. At Lydda, a few years after S. Peter's visit to that place, we find a school, devoted chiefly to mystic and cabbalistic learning, perhaps as best adapted to meet both the rising Christianity and the GentUe philosophy. Other schools arose at the capitals of Gahlee and lower GalUee, Tzephoria and Continued Tiberias, (the latter the Patriarch's seat), and at faiTof 6 Csesarea, the chief city of the Eoman province and a colony. We have thus the outline of the Jewish civilization of the first Christian century. After the fall of Jerusalem, Tiberias which had been endowed i.] AND IN THE NEXT AGE. 25 by Nero with many privileges, and escaped greatly in the general desolation, became the head-quarters of Judaism; and a hundred years later it was, we know, the birth-place of the Talmud. Among this people so intensely organized, and so ' dwelling alone ' in all the world, there was at this time an earnest belief that a ' Kingdom of Heaven,' a new and higher order of things, was at hand. Their prophets had taught them to watch for it ; their ' Tar gums,' or synagogue-interpretations, bore witness to it ; their heroes had died in the faith of it ; their princes had but the ambition to hold place till King Messiah should appear. We have to ask, what had they done to prepare themselves for this % or what for the ' blessing of the nations of the earth ' around them % One whom all the people owned as a prophet, suddenly appeared among them, preaching to them, ' repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.' Thev did not exactly understand what he demanded what had . been the of them ; and he said that he required the result. plainest duties of justice and mercy, instead of that exclusive reliance on their Abrahamic descent which s. Matt. had become the substance of their religion and virtue. When the leaders of the people ap- a general 7 -i moral proached him at the Jordan, he spoke as U' he de- decay. spaired of them, and told them that they were a 'generation of vipers,' and that 'the axe was laid at the root ' of their long sacred polity. On looking closer yet, we learn that the wealthiest and most cultivated among this people were Sadducees, who owned no life at all beyond the present, any 26 TEE PEARISEES AND SADDUCEES. [lect. The Sad ducees, infidels ; the Phari sees, for malists. Jewish blindness with demo ralization confessed by all men at the fall of Jeru salem. A.D. 70. more than the heathen Epicureans had done. They denied the Eesurrection, they only half-accepted their prophets, and yet they held authority as chief priests and rulers. A more numerous body of the nation, Pharisees and their followers, clung to all the Scrip tures, interpreting them to the people however in the most secular sense, 'making them void by their tradi tions.' Without denying either the Eesurrection, or a future world, they left them out of their practical teach ing, so that they were but theories for controversy with the Sadducees. And in their philosophy they were well nigh as fatalistic as the Stoics of heathenism. The heartless exclusiveness of the Pharisees, and their perversion of the very ground of morals, whether with the poor of their own people, or with the Gen tiles to whom their nation should have brought bless ing, drew on them ' the woes' that were inevitable ; while their adherence outwardly to the Law blinded them even to the last. The Eoman historian declares that the Jews came to be regarded as the very ' ene mies of the human race,' a proverb of mahgnity and cruelty. Josephus, one of themselves, who would gladly have been their panegyrist, is the unwUling chronicler of their crimes. PhUo, a real patriot, while ex alting Moses as warmly as he praises the 'sacred Pythagoras' and the 'sweetest Plato,' is witness of the abhorrence of the world for his own people. The most thoughtful men of Israel, when they saw their ^ - temple in flames, confessed that ' God is just.' A lull followed the wars of Vespasian and Titus ; but the terrible story of Judaism that soon ensued I.J FINAL RUIN OF THE TEMPLE. 27 is such as revolts human nature ; while it discovers what the ancient people of God had become. With Trajan and Hadrian, the 'days of vengeance' so (Iks^™. mournfully spoken of by Christ, return once more. xii. 22.) The Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, what fearful Savage 1 tit 11111 criminality memories are these ! We see, as we look back, de- of the next moralized Paganism and frantic Judaism grasping each other in fierce and pitiless death-struggle0. It seemed as if aU conscience had perished among this people, even more than among their heathen foes. Imperial Edicts, forbidding their reUgious assemblies and even the practice of circumcision, (in consequence of the conspiracies of the people), precipitated the last dreadful revolt, under Bar-cochab, the pretended a.d. 135. Messiah who had the sanction of the Sanhedrim. Then came the second overthrow of Jerusalem, — the The second 'cup was filled with the iniquities ofthe people.' ofJeru- Seventy years had passed since the legions of ' Titus had fired the sacred house of the God of Israel then rising in its marble splendour on the hill of Sion 'the joy of aU the earth.' But there ' had been a kind of stern consolation for the people in that first overthrow, when the news quickly reached them that the central home of Eoman heathenism was smitten, as at the same hour, by a stroke from heaven. For a cry of terror had rung through affrighted Eome while on the Tarpeian rock the ancient temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was then burnt to the ground. But there was no such bitter aUeviation now, when Israel's second judgment had o Basnage, vi. c. 8, 9 ; Dio Cassius, lxviii. and lxix. 2& RISE OF THE TALMUD. [lect. come. Heathen Eome, so recently in flames, seemed aU triumphant. By Hadrian's decree, no child of Abra ham might henceforth set foot in Jerusalem, nor come The second near enough to see it. Its very name was changed. coZtrasud No longer was it the ' vision of peace,' but iElia, a first the colony of Eomans. On the spot where the presence of Jehovah so long had been worshipped, the relent less idolatry reared its rival fane ; and iElia Capito- lina defiled in Jupiter's name the Moriah of Abraham 'the friend of God,' — the sacred mount where Solomon the typical King of peace had prayed his wondrous prayer, whUe ' glory filled the house.' Not that the heathen had really prevaUed. Though temple, priests, and sacrifice were overthrown, the nation of God could not be absorbed, nor Judaism perish. It had a mission still. Even yet, while the terrors of the conqueror were all around, three or four Eabbies, escaped from atrocities never equaUed, met in a lonely vale of Palestine, at a place called Ussa, and in that extreme moment of their people's fate had the courage to elect a new ' patriarch' (a youth at the time), to choose new members of the Sanhedrim, and reconstruct the shattered synagogue of Tiberias, and even of Jamnia. Judaism Soon after this, all the dreary fragments of the past survives, gravitated to their centre. In another generation we find the Talmud, that lifeless conglomerate of fossUized tradition and law, the monument aUke of the wisdom and the frivolity, the learning and the moral ignominy of the nation. A long unwritten past, teeming with so much of blasphemy, baseness *¦] ALEXANDRIAN JUDAISM. 29 and feebleness, was not allowed by Providence to sink, like the literature of Egypt or Babylon, into oblivion. It had provoked Heaven's justice more deeply. Eabbi Judah Hakkadosh, the best of their sages, and is fixed as if perforce, began to arrange what the schools of Babylon were afterwards to complete. Thus the moral code of that Judaism which prophets had con- isa. i. 10- fronted of old, remains for aU time, the nation's wit ness against itself. IV. And now, pausing upon aU this ruin of the iv. religions and moralities of the world, Jewish and Gentile, we see ' the Field ' in which our Gospel was sown. We have not noticed the PhUosophy of the Jews, for it had no wide influence on their nation, or on the world at that time. The Alexandrian Judaism may seem an exception Judaism to this statement, but is not so on examination, intermingle It is as isolated as the Spanish Judaism of a later world. century ; and indeed more so. Two hundred years before Christ, the encouragement of the Ptolemies had borne fruit ; and a noble temple was raised at HeliopoUs, served by priests and Levites, on the model of that at Jerusalem. The translation of the Old Scriptures helped to bring together the Hebrew and Gentile mind, and a foundation was laid for that eclectic Jewish phUosophy which at a later day opposed a formidable front to Christianity. This is all that was done. The Judaism did not elevate Heathenism ; it rather tended itself to subside into Platonism, (as in Syria also before the time of 30 SILENT ADVANCE OF THE GOSPEL, [lect. the Maccabees), or to adopt the obscurities of the oriental Gnosis. In such a Jew as PhUo, for in stance, we seem to have at once the Academic, the Magian, and the Essene. Whether from mystic Alexandria, or from Tarsus the home of Stoics, the influence which went forth was destructive on the one hand to the faith and hope of the ancient people of God, and faUed on the other to touch the civiliza tion of the world. The Augustan period in its greatness and its weak ness is all before us. But as it passes, and a new century is rising on our vision, there are, as we have already seen, signs of another life on every hand. Early _ The thirty years after the fall of Jerusalem passed recognition iii i t n p • i of chHs- so far peaceably that there was httle ol violent inter ference with those principles of the new social Ufe which PUny found in such a state of advancement. Some intermittent resistances there were, giving warning that a penetrating work was going on ; but the growth was greatly beneath the surface, and only attracted imperial notice when at times it broke up its contact some public way. The first hostile contact of the Judaism, Gospel with the social system around it had been necessarily in the synagogues of Judaism. Though the Jews themselves had been constantly harassed by persecutions, they had been able to offer a powerful opposition to Christianity, until they were forced to silence by their great national overthrow ; but during that ensuing peace the growth of the Gospel was rapid. The new Eeligion and the old Philosophy had also i.J NOT WITHSTOOD BY PEILOSOPEY. 31 come face to face, very soon after the first attempt and with to evangelize Europe, if not indeed before it : but p Lllosophy- philosophy, whether at Athens, or Corinth, or Alex andria, or Tarsus, was inclined to despise Christianity, and let it alone P. The message of a new order of things, the coming Kingdom of Eighteousness, was in all cases a message to conscience. It scarcely asked for converts to opinion, as opinion. It spoke of Eesurrection, and a Judgment to come, as facts. Proclaiming truth, it trusted truth to find its own. Some consciences ' trembled' — divers ' were hardened and went their way •>.' It ' taught with authority,' and not as the Scribes or the Sophists ; and it was felt as a power. Sometimes the 'common people listened gladly.' And thus, notwithstanding ' the darkness that covered the earth, and gross darkness the people,' 'that generation passed not away' without seeing the beginning of the mighty change, the coming Be newah Some even of those who once had stood near the Divine Master in GalUee ' did not taste of death' tiU His Kingdom had ' come with power r.' Virtues The silence and graces had sUently appeared in the world amidst ing success. the Society of Christians that the heathen saw ; and while in the prolonged peace this Society kept spread ing, we may see faltering philosophy, and smitten Judaism, and baffled statesmanship, waking periodi- CaUy to the growing fact. ' Men slept and rose, night and day, and the seed grew, they knew not how.' ' The Kingdom of Heaven was like unto this.' p Lect. III. p. 79. a Lect. VIII. p. 256. * Lect. VII. p. 217. 32 OPENING OF THE SECOND CENTURY. [lect. And thus began the second century of our era. of the , , ,1 second Early in Hadrian's reign — so rapid was now tne pro- cent"-ry- grggg of the change— the Christians of Asia were protected by Imperial decree against the clamours of the yet heathen crowd. The historian Eusebius looks back to this as ' emphatically the time when the saving teaching shone forth to all men.' Yes, the 'saving teaching,' for the world needed saving. It was a moral ruin, and nothing but Eenewal would avail. And now human nature rising from the depths to which it had fallen, began, in this land and in that, to look once more on Him in whose image it had first been formed, and to own, 'He hath brought me out of the horrible pit, and out of the mire and clay, and set my feet on a rock, and ordered my goings ; and He hath put a new song in my mouth, even a thanksgiving unto our God.' And man was now to be Eenewed, not by phi losophy, not by law, not by civilization ; ' not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.' Nor was it to be achieved by a renewal of the foundations of righteousness, a revision of first principles ; for that would have destroyed the appeal which the Gospel ever makes to conscience, and would have regarded goodness as founded on law, instead of law on goodness s. It was to be Eenewal according to the character of Him Who is ever the Same, and ever Good. The The Eenewal had in truth asserted its life. That Renewal . was begun which must ^henceforth go on, and wUl 9 See Dr. Ward's Nature and Grace, Book I., throughout. i.] THE WORLD'S RENEWAL BEGUN. 33 abide for ever. It wiU now be our work to watch the onward movement of that hidden life ; a Ufe which, being moral and spiritual, must take time to work its way among responsible men. As yet there were no broadly scattered records, read and known of all, telling the Christian story. That wide spread Society which Trajan heard of, and Hadrian better knew, united in a common rite and aiming at a higher and purer life, was Christianity as the outer world first beheld it. But it is for us to look also at Christianity from within ; to hear what was said by Christians to Christians, and read the admitted and indeed unquestioned words of the Apostles of Him Who taught to man a virtue not bounded by this world's horizon, and Who, in place of all the wavering guesses of phUosophy, ' brought life and immortality to Ught.' We must know the interior as well as the exterior life that had begun. For that new Creation no longer remained only as a New Life. a vision of prophecy, or a hope of saints. The deso late earth had indeed been ' without form and void, with darkness on the face of the deep,' but now the Spirit of God had moved on the waters ; and God had 'said let there be Ught, and there was light ; and God had divided the light from the darkness; and the evening and the morning were the first Day.' TJ LECTUEE II. AovXfieiv Bern ££>vti Kai ak-qdivw. I. HISTORICAL BEGINNING OF CHRISTIANITY. 2. S. PAUL'S PLACE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 3. HIS FIRST CHURCHES IN THE WEST. 4. MONOTHEISM, AS VITAL TO PURITY, THE BASIS. D 2 OUTLINE. PAGE First movement of the Gospel in Europe : It asserts itself. ¦ -37 Its record in S. Paul's Epistles 37 Character of those addressed in the earliest Epistles : . . . 38 Their distinctness from the heathen, and from the Jews. . . -39 They seem, externally, to be a new Society of Monotheists. . . 39 A living body; (not putting out a Literature). . . . -4° Literary expectations are artificial, in such case. . . -4° Consciousness of the Christian Society, or ' Church.' . . . 41 We must conceive of the Society, while we read the Epistles to it. . 41 Epistles grew in authority : the Church clinging to its Traditions. . 42 Epistles are the Churches' biography : (hence their ready circulation). 43 They assert, and spread the Apostolate. The Apostolate being a primary fact of the Gospel : S. Paul claims the Apostolate with emphasis. II. St. Paul's place in the Christian history. ..... His education among Pharisees. . . ... The Ethos of Pharisaism. ....... ' Its Hypocrisy.' (Example : — exceptions of course admitted). S. Paul before his Conversion. ...... His Conversion. The account given at the time. . Conversion, a fact beyond analysis. ..... The pause which followed. — S. Paul's proceeding to convert others S. Paul's first speeches on record — ' to Jews first ; ' . Then to the Gentiles, at Athens. ...... These speeches belong to an advanced Christianity. The position ofthe Church, and of S. Paul. Retired influence of the Church of Jerusalem. III. The Western progress of the Gospel, by means of S. Paul. . S. Paul in Macedonia. His reception. .... The sudden appearauce of S. Paul in Thessalonica, and his leaving His letters, on his departure. The first letter ; ethical in object. Omissions in the letters : (noticeable rather in the second than first) Appeal to Christ Himself, in behalf of moral Purity. The second letter, and its peculiarities : its reserve. Special teaching in it : as to the fall of Jerusalem, and of Heathenism. Nature of the crisis : its demand on patience. The mystery of Providence, working amidst evil. . Moral triumph to be the issue of man's turning to God. IV. Monotheism not a speculation. .... Its inculcation the primary work of the Apostle. Moral contrast of Monotheism and Polytheism. This was the reason of ' God's controversy with Israel.' This the condemnation of the Gentile world. . How the approach to God may purify us. Christ came 'to bring us to God.' . He alone has power to do it. . Basis of S. Paul's Christianity as now appearing. Future of the Gospel under the Apostolate. . 44 44 45 46 46 464748 495°Si52 52 53 53 54 64 5555 5556 575811 616262 63 63 64 646565666768 LECTUEE II. HISTORICAL BEGINNING OF CHRISTIANITY. How ye turned to God from idols, to serve the Living and True God. — i Thess. i. 9. I. bUCH are the brief words in which the oldest i- known monument of Christianity caUs to mind the movement first movement of the Gospel in Europe, which %lsv\nn began twenty years after the Evangehcal preaching f^^s in the synagogues of Judgea. (Ind u.' . ). They are S. Paul's words, appeaUng to the recol lection of the Christians of populous Thessalonica, the metropolis of Macedonia. They occur in one of its record , . t , n • i • • • i in S. Paul's his letters to tnem, which represent in so vivid a way Epistles. the actual position of his recent converts in that city. The historical value of these letters is estab lished, as we have intimated, beyond the disputes of antiquarian theorists ; scattered copies of them, and of other Epistles of the same writer, are found to have been in the common possession of Christians in most places at the opening of the second century. They are no new discoveries, but simple records of the then recent past, recognized and cherished. In examining them we may watch, even now, the first stirring of the heart of the heathen world to Christ its DeUverer ; and may in some degree read 38 THE CHURCH, [lect. the deepest thoughts and feelings and learn the new moral hopes of man, when 'turning to God from idols, to serve the living and true God.' We know, indeed, that the revival of the inner Ufe impUes far more than external observation detects, or phUosophy explains ; but in this case the phe nomena suffice at once to show how the Gospel in stantly addressed itself to the restoration of the knowledge of God and the aspirations of virtue in man. The persons who received these earliest letters, an associated body of the Thessalonians, were connected with S. Paid, had been taught by him, and were still Thecha- looking to him as their guide. It would seem that those who they were somewhat familiar with Judaism, though "dressed in now apart from the synagogue. Their great teacher Epkties. wrote to them, indeed, as none but a Jew could have ch. ii. 14. written ; but his message had been rejected by the representatives of his own people in that part of Macedonia a, as emphatically as it had been by the hmtx-noia-. Sanhedrim of Judaea. We find him significantly- comp. ch. , ° -* i. 1, and calling the Thessalonians a ' Church,' — the name. S. Matt. . . . ' xvi. 18; lt seems, traditionary received from Christ for His l^poll'pia. followers. Their 'ready faith' is apparently con- iThess.i.i. trasted with the painful hesitation of a neighbouring city ; and from them, it is said, the Gospel ' sounded ch. i. 8. out,' not only to the Macedonian province, but on wards to Achaia, and to every chief place along those grand roads of the Empire b, there branching forth as if to aid in opening anew the moral inter course of mankind. a Appendix, Speeches I. and II. b Strabo, vii. 323. n.] A SOCIETY OF MONOTHEISTS. 39 These Christians of Thessalonica, like those of Their dis- o i n -i ii , tinctness other places soon afterwards, are not only seen to from the be separated from the Jews, but distinct from, if world, as not in some collision with, the world around them, from the Their teacher reminds them of the persecutions lately ews' undergone by him in that sacred cause which they had espoused in common. He refers them to no Divine scriptures, nor to anything but his own teaching, for comfort or guidance ; notwithstanding their evident acquaintance with Judaaan Christianity °. They are almost addressed as if they were a kind of new synagogue, though their ritual is undescribed and (as in.ffe&. their law unwritten. He thus speaks to the ' Church,' — it is his first word — as disconnected alike from the ancient Israel and from the heathen population. This attitude of the new believers may have a new checked the otherwise natural suspicion of the world, ofMono- that the Gospel was but a schism among Jews, troublesome chiefly to themselves ; and rulers and magistrates were certainly more and more at a loss (Acts xviii. ja xix. o how to deal with this phenomenon, this growmg and xvii. association, for such it was, hostile to the religions and customs of the whole empire. Externally viewed, it was but a sect of monotheists aiming at moral purity ; but the members of the sect were acting to gether in the name of Christ, on some subtle under standing, some secret not easUy got at by others, and expecting a 'judgment to come.' What is thus far said seems to lie on the surface c The Old Testament Scriptures are not noticed in the Epistles to the Thessalonians. 40 A LIVING REALITY; [lect. of the letters to the Thessalonians. Of course some knowledge of the new faith, some rumours of Galilee, more or less vague, would be rife in Macedonia, as in other parts of the Roman world, and be differently interpreted by believers and unbeUevers. Compara tively little, however, would be certain, except to those who were under specific teaching concerning Him Who 'had come from God, and gone to God;' and these looked for the speedy return of this Jesus the Lord. a living It is important that we should pause on this first body, amd . not a lite- aspect of our Religion, its appearance as an energetic fact, rather than a 'written vision' like Ezekiel s, or a 'burden of the Lord' like Isaiah's, or the 'roll of a book' like Jeremiah's read out before kings and people. It does not seem that any one yet asked for a record of the life of the Great Master Himself, nor of the doings of each of His chief apostles, nor for a formal synopsis of the Gospel teaching ; but here was this living reaUty before men, the Christian ' Church,' rapidly making proselytes among aU classes. It may be natural for people of our modern habits to be disturbed by the form in which our Rehgion thus showed itself. We are surprised that there was no strict registration of facts, which from the first Literary were to be so vital. But are we reasonable in this ? tions are Surely in real life, — and never was life more real than in Christianity, — there are very few who pause to think that they are acting history, for the guidance of future times. That is a higher spirit which is self-forgetting, or only notes so much of the present as may suffice for those who are immediately to artificial. ii.] AND SO PRECEDING ITS OWN HISTORY. 41 follow. And then the first Christians daily expected the present to be wholly eclipsed in the splendours of the approaching future. Now if we conceive of a Christian Society any where, as a body which had internal reason for its existence, we must attribute to it some self-con sciousness. It would of course have a story and theory of its own. Letters sent to such a society would imply its previous life or being. This we Having CPT^tQA th have to bear in mind in referring to what may be Epistles, termed the archives of a primitive Christian com- c. to religion, I see your devotions,' — but I preach to (re)3l£0.„aTa, you of righteousness and judgment, and I call you to repent, in the name of Jesus, Who will be your Judge. We may form some estimate from these two ex amples of the Apostle's primary idea of Conversion to Christ, and of his thoughtful method with class after class whom he encountered. But we must hot suppose that these were the earliest essays of his zeal. S. Paul was no neophyte when he made Both those speeches ; nor was Christianity then a new belong to a thing, httle as many of the heathen stiU thought Advanced of it. We must not forget that many years of an?ty.' active work for Christ had passed. Cities of Pales tine all along the coast, Lydda, Joppa, Csesarea, the Syrian Antioch, had become deeply penetrated with the new faith. A great change, too, for the worse had taken place in the spirit of Judaism. Gamaliel, the revered teacher of the Apostle, was dead ; the 54 POSITION OF JERUSALEM. [lect. Sanhedrim was in Jamnia ; the troubles of Jerusalem and her people were increasing k. The stern Simon had succeeded his wiser father, and all disasters were falling fast on the synagogue. The mind of the Jewish nation was embittered, and it grew fiercer. We learn from other sources that distress prevaUed from the Jordan to Samaria, which smote the Churches no less than the synagogues ; and Apostles preached in the midst of men who were roused to reality by seeing Theinflu- around them the signs of coming convulsions. The Church of Church of Jerusalem, though the object of reverence diminished, to Christians, had relaxed its hold on their obedi ence, which at first it had been disposed to claim. Antioch in Syria was a new centre, and the fol lowers of the Gospel there took the name of ' Chris tians,' and thence the great Apostle went forth, again and again, on his now best-known missions. We see then at this epoch the position of S. Pa%l, as he moved gradually to his work in the West, leaving behind him in the care of S. James the sUent mother-Church, in a dignity less and less ob trusive, not deserting as yet the doomed city, but waiting, in prayerful expectation of the judgment, as wrapped in the silence of meditation profound and calm. in. III. Thus in the midst of an advanced Christi- The anity we may open the first letters of S. Paul. We coZse of learn from himself that, having made his way from t e ospe . Antioch to the western coast of Asia Minor, he was fc Lect. I. p. 24. ii.] S.PAUL AT THESSALONICA. 55 summoned by a heavenly vision to leave Troas and pass over to Macedonia. He paused not at the inter vening islands — a voice had called him ' to come over.' Not far from the spot where the first of the Churches of Europe was to rise, Mount Athos stiU Ufts its sacred head ; and as the light of day moves onward, it throws a lengthened shadow to distant Lemnos, far in the eastern waves": and, as if fulfilhng the type, the glory of the Gospel in its GentUe career soon cast the shade of the European hills over the islands and across the valleys of the Orient. And stiU that light is westward in its course *. Let us think of the Apostle, after a brief and some- s. Paul in TJhQSSCL~ what unsuccessful appearance at Philippi, making his lonica. way to Thessalonica. There he unfolded the message of his Master, as he himself had learned it by direct revelation, and by the companionship of S. Barnabas, S. Luke, and others, who for some years 'had laboured with him in the Gospel.' He was able to stay there long enough to form and instruct a Chris tian community, as we saw at first (p. 39), apart from the synagogue : but in the midst of his work he was compelled to retreat with some haste before the storm of Jewish and Gentile opposition which pur sued him to the neighbouring towns, and obliged him to retire southward, as far as Athens and Corinth. The two letters to which we must give our attention, which he wrote from the latter place to his Thessalonian friends, furnish at the time the im mediate and only supplement of the teaching which he 1 Bishop Berkeley's Verses on America. 56 HIS SUDDEN DEPARTURE. [lect. had given by word of mouth when among them, and enable us to form an idea of the original instruction of a living Church by a Divinely gifted Apostle. Suddenness The Gospel, we must recoUect, came on Thessa- of his . appearance lonica suddenly, and found the people in the midst parture. of the worst darkness of the heathen ignorance and imperial demoralization already described. Being instantly and violently ejected from the synagogue, and before it could fully constitute needful rules, and Acts x™. use its unworldly gifts aright, Thessalonian Chris tianity was unexpectedly obliged to act as a body in a whoUy new position and with responsibfliti.es little ascertained. The Apostle's first letter shows that he felt the imperfect condition in which he had left the ' devout Greeks ' his converts, and that he intended to return as soon as possible ; an intention which the second letter proves to have been frustrated. His letters j_n this position of events it is full of interest to on this x occasion.-— mark what the Apostle does not, as well as what he the first letter. does say ; and especially in the second letter. In the first, httle might be looked for beyond sym pathy, congratulation, and words of encouragement. It could not be expected that in such an Epistle S. Paul would enumerate, at aU events he did not, the points on which he had instructed them already ; for it would not only have been beside the occasion, but might have implied that the Thessalonians had not fuUy accepted or appreciated those rudiments of iThess.1 5. the faith. Then the special grace of the Divine Spirit among them would, assuredly, supply largely ' that which had been lacking ' in the Apostle's n.] HIS WRITING TO THESSALONICA. 57 absence. But these considerations cannot all apply with the same force to the second Epistle, written when he knew he was not going back to Thessalonica. That seemed to afford an opportunity to say some thing both as to the doctrine and discipUne of Christ among them. But what is the fact 1 It might have seemed of the first importance to the Omissions new behevers to define their own principles of order as utters .- a community ; but yet we find that the Apostle says the second). no more than that as ' touching the brotherliness ' they ttjs ^i\a- were already sufficiently ' taught by God : ' aUuding * Tl™' both to his own teaching oraUy among them, and to iv- 9- the presence of the Spirit. As to the Apostolate he had exercised among them, or the forms and rules of Baptism, he says not a word : his aUusion, if it be one, to the Eucharist is such as only caUs to re membrance known duty, but adds nothing m. New i Thess. converts would also naturally have valued from the 2'yAm_ Apostle some account of the relation of the Gospel U1- 6- to previous dispensations, or some testimony to the Incarnation, the Nativity, and events in the wondrous earthly life of Christ : but again there is nothing said by him now, beyond a commendation of those who i Thess. a. essentially followed 'the Churches of Judaea.' ' "' The topic which fills his mind is not the historical Moral TJ -it Y*l fit ff) 0 or prophetical outline of the Faith. His Gospel here chief sub- begins, if it may be so expressed, at the Resurrec- Jec '""""'' tion more than the birth of our Lord ; that which Apostles witnessed rather than the shepherds ; and is instantly fiUed with the thought of His promised m See Appendix, Epistles to Thessalonians. 58 FIRST EPISTLE : ETHICAL. [lect. i Thm. second coming, and the abiding of His Spirit until Acu'xvii ^e aPPears- AM the main object, the substance of 3- the first Epistle apart from the apologetic and ex planatory passages, no doubt is purely ethical. His one Apostolic hope, expressed urgently throughout, i Thm. is that a strict social purity may distinguish his 1V' 5' converts from those ' Gentiles which know not God,' and who, in losing true rehgion, had been destitute^ of aU moral good. This is what was to have been expected, and this is what we here find. The ; An assertion that they who were worshippers of appeal the true God must be 'holy,' and that that was m-mseif , His express 'wiU concerning them,' is made in cf Purity, this Epistle too with all the solemnity of a direct i Thess. iv. appeal to Christ Himself ; ' I beseech you by the Lord Jesus.' A moral boldness like that of John Baptist, a courage in looking forward to the day i Thess. ii. of judgment which reminds us of S. Peter at the l\Thess. v. Pentecost, together with some echoes of the pro- i, &c phetic words of Christ Himself, as to His Advent, — such, no doubt, are features of the first Christian This is his Epistle which strike every reader. But the simple teaching. Apostolic basis is, that the Gospel of God is in separable from Moral Purity. The Doctrine of this Gospel here briefly affirms, — that there is ' one living and true God,' Whom we must ' purely' serve in His Son Jesus Christ, through the Spirit Whom He has sent ; and that there is an organization as of 'a brotherhood, which God taught by His Spirit,' im plying duties of the subordination of Christians to those who were ' over them.' But the main work of n.] SECOND EPISTLE— 59 this Gospel is a 'patient and holy waiting' for the im^rov end, the Judgment in Righteousness. pwT"v' Now the Second letter closely corresponds with the The second first in all these respects; but it has a more definite L^e'cu"™ outline of the Christian struggle with departing hea- hanhes- thenism. Both Epistles resemble S. Paul's address to the Athenians, rather than that to the synagogue in Pisidia, in making no allusion to the law or the prophets ; — (unless there may be, in one place, a memoriter glance of an indirect kind at the prophet Comp. Daniel, who however lived among Gentiles). 4, and"'" In this Second Epistle, then, S. Paul calls to mind a*'X1' 3 ' that when he was among the Thessalonians he had taught them much, which he does not here repeat, as to the prospects of the Gospel, and the pagan overthrow. The uncertainty of the time of the Reserve im advent, the previous removal of the Jewish polity and priesthood, and the changes to be expected in the Roman Empire, had all been spoken of, as was natural, in connexion with prophecies of our Lord Himself. He now repeats this, though in necessarily guarded terms11, as if he meant to be unintelligible to those who had not been orally instructed by him. This inspired prudence is apparently intended to restrain undue excitements, and teach the Thessa lonians that the course of the Gospel would be prepared by Providence. At a distance from the venerated centre of Jewish Special worship in Jerusalem, the Thessalonians were natu- in a, raUy less impressed than Jews would have been with " See Appendix, 2 Thess. chap. ii. 60 AS TO TEE OVERTHROW OF JUDAISM [lect. its august destiny, and they expected its overthrow with impatience. The circumstances of the world and the Church seemed urgent, and the new behevers 1*0^™ could not understand delay. The measured gran- 2 Thess'. deur of so Divine a judgment as the faU of the ^ to the ancient people of God scarcely affected them with fail of sufficient awe. And it is the Apostle's aim at this Jerusalem. . x moment so to write as to hold their minds, as it were, in a state of thoughtful transition. His unwillingness to deal with matters definitely as yet, or treat anything as permanent, is very sig nificant. ' The Spirit suffered him not' seems the inevitable explanation of his here ' holding back,' as we know he did in so many other respects. His position towards them is this : ' You have the Christian facts : you know what I taught when among you : the presence of the Spirit is with you, 2 Thess. ii. and your natural conscience is aroused to virtue. You must wait0.' It is impossible to follow his continuous sense throughout, without feeling this. Not a definition, therefore, does he give, as to doctrine, or ritual, or even morals. The Roman heathenism around them is waiting for its doom. The nature The tyranny has culminated, and aU abominations ofthecrisis; . amd its de- have exceeded even the experience which the Apostle mand of i i -i i • a • tt i i ¦ • patience, had had in Asia. He sees around him m Corinth (where he was writing) the worst forms of the evil ; though in the Galatian and Phrygian provinces too, which he knew so well, nothing could be much more revolting than the immoral prostration to the imperial u See Appendix, 2 Thess. ii. n.] AND OF HEATHENISM. 61 idolatry. To ' do contrary to the decrees of Csesar' ooy^wv V . n . -. . Kaiffapos. in rehgion was so unpopufar, that the imputation ^rfsxvii.7. raised a fanatical cry against Christians. By those ' decrees' the Emperor's statue might be anywhere set up for worship, and thus would be brought to a climax the heathen resistance to mono theism. There was even a rivalry among the cities in zeal for this degradation, which was not unaccom panied by the obscenest rites. It was not ten years since Caligula had aspired to place his own image in 2 Thess. a. the temple of God at Jerusalem — a kind of defile ment which was again anticipated p. Nor was it an imaginary fear ; and behevers in Christ therefore are taught that they must not fail before the assault of the enemy. The Divine mys- The tery was energizing in the midst of evil, held in 'worketh check by Providence in many ways, both political f^mptol and moral 1. But a great probation was going on, ^sll"-" and nothing might be unduly hurried. The faU of lua5^' Judaismand the utter confusion of heathenism must be moral events ; and the triumph of the Gospel must so follow at the Coming of the Deliverer. For that triumph was to be the supremacy of goodness, the reversal of the immoralities of ages. And therefore with the utmost energy the Apostle The moral reiterates the demand of righteousness and purity expected. among the Thessalonians as followers of Christ. It is this which is his one subject. He requires, in a tone far exceeding aU that he had thus far used, implicit p Lect. VI. p. 187. 1 See Appendix, in loco, as to the ' mystery ;' and God's Providence at work concerning the dvojxta. Note D. 62 ASSERTION OF MONOTHEISM. [lect. 2 Thess. ii. 15; iii. 6. comp. I Thess. v. 14; 1 Thess. iii. 3, 6. obedience therein to the traditions of Christ ' which they had received of him ;' once more he claims their submission to his Apostolate, and commands them to suspend from their Society any irregular and dissolute persons who rejected his holy message. This is precisely what emerges in all its simplicity from the facts as they lie before us in this second letter of the Apostle. His mission is ' to turn men' from baseness to goodness, from false gods to the true. This is the first element of the conversion of the world ; ' this the wUl of God, even your Sancti fication.' They could only be ' sanctified by the Truth.' There is no turning of fallen conscience to virtue, without a turning from this world's idols, ' to serve the living and true God.' iv. Mono theism not a specu lation. IV. Assuredly then we find it was no mere dogma to which S. Paul had devoted his life, when he sought to lead men to God. If it had been a speculation of the schools only, if a matter of real unconcern, a question, whether men should have an opinion that there were several gods, or only one, most certainly a conversion to monotheism had been worth no Apostle's toil. But it was a simple fact, that the Moral Con version of the Thessalonians turned whoUy on this. Such was our historical beginning in Europe. The mission of the Apostle was beforehand declared by Christ to be, — 'to turn men from darkness to Ught, from the power of Satan to God :' and it was so. And it was the fulfilment of the work of Jesus Himself, Who came ' that He might bring us to God.' n.] ITS SANCTIFYING POWER. 63 It was the only possible thing to begin with, itsincui- 1 . cation, a among ruined nations ; as it is also the real primary i o n • ji <-( i • work ofthe end ot all existence, that ' God must be all in Apostle. aU.' The Apostle's own conversion from a hard and worldly Pharisaism had taught him that he was morally raised only by ' light from Heaven.' His knowledge of God had now become intense, close and personal. All that he had perceived of rehgion as Saul of Tarsus, had been but the outer framework of truth, as recognized here on earth : his conversion opened his eyes to another world. His knowledge of Jesus was such a revelation, and to him as truly as to the elder Apostles, Jesus 'had shown the Father.' He had learned to pro nounce with a meaning, unutterably beyond aU that he had known before, that overwhelming article of a holy Faith, ' I believe in God.' Nothing can be done with any man tiU he has known this. This solemn act of Faith is the beginning of aU reality in Religion. And this Faith was sanctifying just in proportion Moral con- as it was real ; while aU forms of earth's idolatries, Mono- . -i ¦ i • i j iii r* i theism and whatever else their character, had been found essen- p0iytheism. tially impure. The moral contrast is a fact. Poly theism had many phases, but it constantly dissipated the noblest aspirations of man. Polytheism always deifies, and then worships, greatness, — any greatness — and that of itself is vile. For greatness which is not goodness is essential evil. And, theory apart, the worships of the old world all demoralized the worshippers. Idealized men, or passions, or virtues, been ' God's controversy'with Israel. 64 IMPURITY OF POLYTHEISM. [lect. or powers, — gods of the old world, — what were they aU, but the world itself magnified ? what but partners with us in the dread hierarchy of this sad present Ufe? Evils of our lower plain were all reflected by heathenism into the overarching sky of successful might, and there adored. Calm goodness, had no place in the Theodice. The action and existence of such 'gods' seemed but a 'war in the heavens;' and goodness and justice unknown. The Apostle saw then in ' hght from Heaven ' what the state of men had been universally, and how Con- Thishad version to God was the one need of mankind. He knew that the controversy moraUy waged in Israel for ages had been this. That people had yielded to ' the abominations' of Canaan, Tyre, and Babylon, and lastly, of Roman power and pride. Chemosh and Ashtoreth and Molech and Remphan in the old time, differed indeed from the Herodian secularity of a later day; but they were all impure, and denounced as such by prophet after prophet, from Elijah to the Baptist. All impure. — For think of the searching energy of the true thought of God, and see how the phi losophy and the fact correspond. Has your moral nature ever turned to this, — the conviction that the Eye of searching Purity is directly on you % — about your path, and about your bed ? — your constant Watcher, whether you wake or sleep, whether you speak or are sUent ? close to your eye as you gaze, close to your breath as you breathe, close to your thought as you think ? — ' I beheve in God ! ' And the nations around Israel the Apostle perceived ii. J REUNION OF RELIGION AND CONSCIENCE 65 to be all involved in this guilt, even alienation from tm», */« God. If Israel's formalism had been an inward denial tion of the of the truth of God, the Gentile sensualism had been not less, but more infidel. ' They did not like to retain God in their knowledge' is the solemn testi mony against them. The annals even of the ReU gions of heathenism would be but the record of incredible orgies, aU horrible cruelties and crimes, and indecencies insulting human nature itself in her most sacred instincts. There could be no hope for Ezekiel Israel, no hope for the world, but in entire conver sion to God, and so to Goodness. This, and this only, purifies the aims and ennobles How the the whole bearing of any man. To hold high and God may constant communion with Him Who is above us — pun y m' the Supreme, the Pure, the Everlasting ; to know that for us there is a Sympathy ever true, whenever we are right — a Justice ever ruling all with love ; to know that we have personal nearness to the ' Father of spirits,' and Uve with Him, — this is ReUgion, this the pure beginning of Holiness, the basis of Christianity. You may talk, you may specu late, you may dogmatize easily, without this ; but you are pretenders only, you do but beat the air. Religion and Conscience being separate, you have no faith, no life of Goodness. And had it indeed come to this, that that vital seed of good had to be sown as if afresh in the world that God had made ? Yes : and ' the Sower was Christ came 'to bring the Son of Man.' For never until He came to us tis to God.' from the invisible, and showed the certainty of a F 66 FIRST WROUGHT BY THE GOSPEL. [lect. world beyond this present, was it possible largely to revive in our nature the true thought of the Invisible Lord of all. ' The Only Begotten Who is in the bosom of the Father hath declared Him.' He so declared Him that countless hearts of men in fact soon awoke, responsive to His call. The mes- s.Joim xvi. sage from the lip of Jesus, ' I come unto you from t s. Peter the Father,' the same message of His Apostle, ' grace 1- 23' from God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord,' was as the seed of an incorruptible life to man. Never at the mere bidding of an earthly teacher, had Thessalonica 'turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God.' A Heavenlier caU was needed, the voice of His Son ' Whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus.' Europe had never ' come to itself and returned as a prodigal to the Divine Father, but through faith in Him Who stirred the moral memories of a higher home, a paradise for man, and taught a new reliance on the love that was there to be found. Farther and farther the whole world had wandered away, until in most marveUous love He came, True ' Light from heaven above the bright ness of the sun,' — •' I am Jesus ;' and then, as never before, was man 'brought nigh.' — Ere long, the whole darkness we know must pass ; whUe nations recovered of their blindness ' arise and are baptized.' He alone Seems it to any that we assert an enigma to them, tTdoiu when, with all the facts of the past on our side, we thus boldly include in one formula, true Faith in God and the Moral elevation of man ? We cannot shrink from it ; for the only possible beginning of a il] A FUTURE TO BE WORKED OUT 67. Gospel is here. Law had often grown strong, and often been wise and pure ; but never had any power to make man righteous. It was a rule, but there Gal. iii. 21. was no gift in it of a moral vitality. The millions had done their utmost to unmake their own hu manity, and destroy the image in them of Him Who had formed them for Himself. And no earth-born phUosophy and no earth-bound virtue had sponta neously risen up to work the change ; when 1 800 years ago the line of Christ's saints began, and the Ufe of Sanctity shed forth its quiet penetrating light. It was His doing alone, the First-Born condescending to His ' brethren :' ' I am come that they might have Life, and have it more abundantly.' Thus far, then, our problem proceeds to its solution. The future advance of the moral Renewal remains to be examined. If we seek the Christi- Power of anity first taught by the Apostle of the nations, its christian- ethical ground is here, — a return to the true God appearing. and to Hohness, by faith in Jesus, and love of Him, Who had come to us from the invisible. — O mighty and most sure beginning ! its development yet to be traced through aU the lines of human probation. To spread abroad that holy faith in Him, S. Paul's entire Ufe was now given up. From the hour he first ' saw that Just One, and heard from heaven the voice of His mouth,' the ' love of Christ constrained him.' And again, from that night at Troas, when he beheld in vision the man who cried for help in Macedonia, a shadowy hand beckoned him onwards and onwards F 2 68 UNDER THE APOSTOLATE. to his work for God, and for Him Whom God had sent. Nothing could stay his longing to bring men to ' Jesus Christ the Righteous.' And 0 how myste riously gifted was this earnest preacher, even from the first, to make others feel what he had felt ; for ' the word was with power !' The love of Christ that was in him went forth to those who received his message ; and converts soon found themselves in the same moral atmosphere as himself, influenced strangely by the same Spirit, touched by the same growing longing for Holiness and Christ. Thefature It is a marveUous assemblage of men surely, that was ........ before the standing as they then did in the midst of, yet apart from, the surrounding heathenism of that sinking empire of Claudius and Nero, — Paul and the con verts of his Apostolate, everywhere looking heaven ward for the Dehverer, — like to the men on OUvet a generation before, who saw the bright fringe of the last cloud that received the Lord out of their sight. Like them too we know they waited for His return, waited long ; and at length the trance was broken by angels whispering in the spreading Churches that a mighty work of the Spirit was first before them, the work for God, and holiness in the whole earth. — ' Why stand ye gazing ? ' ' the End is not yet : ' 'is it for you to know the times and seasons ? ' Move on in prayer to your Future, children of Christ and heirs of the Apostolate He gave, and again the promise shaU have Divine fulfilment, ' Ye shaU be endued with Power from on high ! ' LECTURE III. 'O Sevrepos avdpamos e| Obpavov. I. THE NEW LIFE FEOM HEAVEN. 2. 'POWEES OF THE WOELD TO COME' MANIFESTED. 3. MORAL QUESTIONS UEGENT FOE SETTLEMENT. 4. THE ADVANCING, AND THE WAITING, OF S. PAUL. OUTLINE. I. Vitality of the Gospel felt in the world. New life from heaven. A Pentecost spreads in the Churches The ' Gifts ' are facts, though inscrutable in many ways. . The history of the first six years at Corinth, seen in the Epistles. Brief stay of S. Paul at Athens : he moves on : . . He founds the Church at Corinth ; and stays there two years and a half. .......... Confusions during the three years after his departure. S. Paul's experience then, as bearing on his teaching. His teaching as to the Sacraments. The moral occasions of this teaching. Tone of the Apostle at the time of writing to Corinth. The silence of Philosophy in presence of the Christian facts. . The fading of Judaism before the Church. II. ' Powers of the world to come' — felt in the Church. . Such powers, the need of our nature ; . . . 81 And must be used morally. . ..... 82 Distinctive moral doctrine of S. Paul. Its philosophy. . . 83 Moral Power through Christ, — as connecting Monotheism and Goodness. ......... 83 ' Knowledge of Christ ' means knowledge of the Eesurrection. Faith in the Resurrection is a Power. ...... 84 The Apostle's realizing the Resurrection. . . 85 Vision ofthe End. ... 86 PAGE 7172 72 73 73 7475 75 76 77787979 80 III. Anxious Moral questions still remain. .... Adjustment of the position of the Church and world needed. This would depend on the length of time preceding the Advent. The Apostle's conclusions oblige to nothing morally contingent. Practical guidance not withheld. ...... The same difficulties exist now as in S. Paul's days. Europe threatens separation from formal Christianity. The Christianity having been unfaithful. .... View ofthe grounds of heathen and Christian society. Cases solved by S.Paul, on one principle, — the nearness of the End. Case of the married ; and of the unmarried. .... Case of celibacy ; as to its heathen principle. .... The Corinthian proposition as laid before S. Paul; and rebuked. Summary of Apostolic advice on these points. Principle embracing all these teachings further explained. Reverence for human society inculcated now. . While preparing for the organization of the future life : . The due ranks of being to be now kept. ..... IV. Origin of the second letter to Corinth Change in the tone of S. Paul ; his advancing, and his waiting. Further opening of spiritual things. .... Earthly questions lost sight of to some extent. He is looking for heaven. ....... His Epistles to Corinth not really incomplete. Distinct in Moral outline. ...... His position of suspense. ... 86 88 89 9090919192 929293 94 95 9697 97 98 99 99 100 100 100101102 LECTUBE III. THE NEW LIFE FROM HEAVEN. Tive first man is from the earth, earthy: tlie Second Man is from heaven. And as we have borne the image of ihe earthy, we shall also bear tlie image ofthe Heavenly. — i Coe. xv. 47, 49. I. 1HE first advances of the Gospel have been 1. seen, as we looked back on them, to have been marked theGo%ei, by a kind of vital activity which indicated at once atthefirst- the presence of the higher hfe. Its farther progress does not appear, any more than its beginning, to have been made by the methods of investigation and ex amination, which seem so natural to us now. We may easily attribute even to miracles a, in the ordinary sense of the term, more influence than they actually had in the estabhshment of the Faith. It was still a new Life that was announced, and, in this place and in that, men simply began to live it in companies. awexesv- Another order of things was rising, as from an ActsT'2'1 -. inward spring, 'a Power of God.' iv^T* As S. Paul at Thessalonica had not won converts x 2"" by assertions or by arguments alone, so he appealed subsequently to their experience when he said, ' our 1 Thess. i. Gospel came not to you in word only, but in power and in the Holy Ghost.' An intense faith was ir\-npo• IO. livered from the wrath to come.' Eeferences, then, to Baptism and the Eucharist seem prominent in these Corinthian Epistles, just as the owning of the One True God, and the holy obedience to Him in Christ, stand out in the ad dresses to the Thessalonians. But there is no real Moral t nn n » i • i occasions difference ; for the Apostfe s attention here to of this these 'Sacraments,' as we call them, arose from his anxiety to secure Holiness among Christians. And thus, speaking generaUy, the teaching is in both cases the same. He appealed also to what ' they knew' from him already ; and therefore he gave no fresh explanations or definitions ; so much so that, had there been no need of moral rebuke, it seems as if Baptism and the Lord's Supper might not have been openly referred to in the Corinthian letters, any i Cor. xi. more than in those to the Thessalonians. There were, as we have intimated e, certain sub jects brought definitely to the Apostle in con nexion with Corinth for his decision ; before how ever we consider them, we should complete a general view of these Epistles, illustrating as they do the growth of Christianity notwithstanding aU defects, in the face of both heathenism and Judaism, a growth of a very significant kind. The Uving society of Christians, at Corinth and e P- 75- 78 INCREASING STRENGTE OF THE GOSPEL, [lect. elsewhere, had been in contact with the Uving society around it, Jewish and Gentile, for six years, as Tone of we have said. It seems impossible to overlook the tie time of tone of increased confidence of S. Paul towards the to Corinth, once formidable and stiU irritated synagogue, as well as with the philosophers. Much had passed since he had left Corinth to show the Apostle how the Gospel was striking its roots in Asia Minor, his former sphere, as well as in Europe, in a way scarcely to be ac counted for on ordinary principles of probability and experience, and surely attesting its own divinity. The truth had been preached to people of widely different degrees and kinds of civilization, so that, humanly speaking, the task of keeping up the teach ing, even when a good beginning had been made, would have been one of well-nigh insuperable diffi culty. The supernatural gifts which accompanied the first missions would seem to be, again, a plain, perhaps the only, explanation of success. With the active powerful life of the world going on all around the new Churches, could anything but the Divine hfe sustain them 1 Intercommunion of such Churches would give but little help, and would often be impossible. In Cap- padocia and Paphlagonia, in Lycaonia and Syria, and even Phrygia, the local tongues were stiU spoken by the common people. From Lydia, Caria, and parts of Galatia, they had disappeared, and given way to an imperfect Greek. In places of renown, Pergamos ' the famous ' with its grand library, Sardis ' the cele brated,' Smyrna 'the most fair,' all within reach of in.] AMONG GENTILES, AND JEWS, 79 Ephesus where S. Paul had been living, the me- sumceof tropolis, ' the eye of Asia,' — what various and special in presence obstacles would be presented to the spread of the tianmole- Gospel. The extremes of luxury and of coarseness, of superstition and of philosophy, had to be Divinely met. Most observable it is however that no effort was made aU this time by philosophers seriously to understand, or oppose, the Gospel and its growing societies. Literally in the spirit of the brother of Seneca, then at the head of the Achaean province, they ' cared for none of these things.' It seems impossible to avoid the remark, as we a self-con- proceed, that when philosophy passes by the con- fact. sideration of Eeligion it always condemns itself. It proclaims its own incompetency to deal with facts, since it fears to enter a whole province of human life. From Tarsus to Ephesus indeed, from Athens to Thessalonica, the philosophies were but effete remains of once-energetic schools. The calm Apostle saw that they were fit for nothing but to die out. And they surely died. And after these six years' knowledge of the best and worst that philosophy could do among 'wise or unwise, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free,' the Apostle was able at the outset of his address to Corinth to throw down his challenge ; ' where is the wise \ where the disputer 1 hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world V As to Judaism, the tone of S. Paul is not less Failure of confident and clear. Again and again he visited before the Jerusalem, but only to find the distance increasing between the advancing Gospel and his failing country- 80 VIEWED GENERALLY. [lect. men. Between the decree of S. James at Jerusalem and the times preceding the letter of S. Paul to the Galatians, what feehngs had been rent asunder ! what ground had been gone over ! Eeluctantly did, the Apostle himself accept the result, as if weeping Rom. ix. for 'his kinsmen' in the spirit of his Lord, ' 0 Jeru- 1_3' salem, Jerusalem!' But he had no hesitation. 'Where is the scribe'?' he enquires with no re serve ; though there is affection mingled with his confidence as he says, ' even to this day when Moses is read, the veU is on their hearts !' ii. II. Turning from this general view, we now direct our thoughts to special aspects of the moral and spiritual life, which the state of Christianity in Corinth had called to S. Paul's attention. And happy it is for the Church of all ages that so much has here been recorded as to the renewal of our man hood in Christ, both in principle and in detail. 'Powers of And first, in principle. — It appears that the gifts to come' of the Divine Spirit so abundantly bestowed, as we Church -. have said, for that renewal of the inner nature, the ail used formation of the 'new man which is from heaven,' an9 0- (gifts, which were so truly ' powers of the world to come,') were but Ul-regulated and misused in Corinth after the Apostle's departure. Strong himself in the grace of Christ, the Apostle therefore enquired at once i c132 133!33 134 I3S 136 137 137 138J39140 LECTUEE IV. Previous questions as to probation. The election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded. Romans xi. 7. I. WE are following the great career of the Apostle T- of the nations, and marking how his teaching ex- position i further panOS . examined. S. Paul's second letter to Corinth preceded his arrival by a very few weeks, his whole stay in Greece at this time being but three months. Having there accomplished what he intended, and completed his arrangements for his visit to Jerusalem which he regarded as important, he sent forward to Troas his friend Timothy and some Ephesians who were with hima. His messenger Titus who had preceded him to Corinth, he there 'left behind' for a mission in Crete, and then went northward to Macedonia and so passed into Asia, rejoining the Ephesian party at Troas. But before making and carrying out these arrangements, and while Timothy was still with him in Greece, he wrote an Apostolic letter to the Christians in Eome whose instruction he was unwilling to delay as to some of the grave questions then opening on Christianity and even Questions tt- -i i i t-> waiting for pressing for solution. His right so to teach the Eomans solution. a See App., Preface to Romans. 106 CHRISTIANITY IN ROME ; [lect. he claims at the outset, on the ground of his Divine ch.i. i. Apostolate. This letter was sent by a trusted mes- Rom. xvi. i . senger, a deaconess of Cenchrea. There was no difficulty in addressing the Epistle ; for, though the Apostle had never been in Eome, The some of his friends had just gone there. During fnendT his five or six years' residence, at Corinth first and Roml"m '" then at Ephesus, from the time of the decree of Claudius banishing the Jews from the capital, to the later edict which gave them favour b, S. Paul had continued in intimate friendship with Priscilla and Aquila, persons of some influence, who had formerly hved in Eome, and now returned there. By them he would naturaUy have been informed that the growth of Christianity in the Imperial city dated from the Pentecost, when ' strangers of Eome, Jews and proselytes' visiting Jerusalem, had there heard K\r,Tois the preaching of S. Peter. The earhest Eoman Chris- ayloLS. . tians thus having been Jews, must have found their religious association greatly broken up by being scattered more than once from their Eoman homes ; and this may account for S. Paul's not writing to ch. i. 7. them as a ' Church,' but ' to all that be in Eome,' that is, all believers there. The existence of Christians a.d. 58. in the capital of the Empire was a fact likely to be widely known ; and all the more, no doubt, in ch. i. 8. consequence of the dispersions both in Europe and Asia. Of S. Peter in Eome there is no trace. .and had At the time of Aquila and Priscilla returning his way. thither with their friends, the visit of S. Paul was b Suetonius, Claud. 25 ; Josephus, Ant. xix. 5. iv.] IN WHAT CONDITION WJIEN S. PAUL WROTE. 107 already determined on. His Epistle came first into the hands of this party of his friends, and the salu tations at the close appear to be nearly confined to them, and the 'Church in theU house;' as if the iJom.xvi.s. reorganization of Christians on their return to the city had its nucleus with these associates of S. Paul. This is not out of harmony with the common tradi tion which hnks the two Apostles, S. Peter and S. Paul, as joint founders of the Eoman Christianity. When, three years or more after writing his state of Epistle, S. Paul arrived in Eome, very httle pubhc s^PauTs progress seems to have been made, and the Chris- tians must have kept themselves much apart from the synagogue. This may have been from poli tical motives, and fears of another expulsion ; but whatever were the cause, the half-informed tone of the synagogue when S. Paul first came, and the Acts xxvffi. retired manner of the brethren who met him at Appii Forum, show how much the Gospel had suf fered by the banishments, not only in the days of Claudius but, more than once, in those of Tiberius c. Yet something of Jewish narrowness may thus have been dissipated, and a clearer course made for the mission of S. Paul. It can hardly be doubted, how ever, that Jews would greatly predominate in num bers among the believers in Eome, whatever success Aquila and Priscilla and their friends may have had in introducing Gentiles. We can be at no loss to understand the anxiety Feitim- ,, _ . portance of of S. Paul from the first to carry his mission to Rome. <= Whose clemency is nevertheless owned by Philo. — Leg. ad Cai. 108 HIS DESIRE TO SEE ROME. [lect. the heart of the Empire, boasting itself ' the Eternal City.' Eome may be said to have naturally belonged to his position as God's ambassador to the Gentiles. Not recognizing it as S. Peter's sphere, he had long felt, and now owned, that he 'must have fruit of ch. i. 9-13. his Apostolate' there. Hitherto it had not been possible, and even now it might be dangerous ; but this consideration would not deter him. The thought Acts xix. which stirred within him before he left Ephesus, ' I 21. must see Eome ; ' the vision that soon afterwards Acts xvi. came to him in Jerusalem, that he ' must bear witness xxii. 25-29; in Eome also;' even his natural feeling as a Eoman xxlll . 1 1 ; xxv. 10-12; citizen, which was so perpetually showing itself; aU point in the same direction. Por S. Paul to have omitted Eome would have been wholly uninteUigible. In what terms then would he be expected to have written to that metropolis of the world, while thus cherishing the thought of personaUy carrying on the work of the Gospel there 1 Contempia- Pausing at Corinth, the contemplation of his whole tion of tlie . . , x futurefrom mission at this moment was one, surely, of surpassing solemnity. Looking from that lofty rock, standing there as he did probably for the last time, with the corrupt city of the isthmus lying beneath, he might see from afar the western sea, and then turning next to the more familiar east, would recall its long sacred history. On the one side there lay the untrodden sphere of the Divine work assigned to him ; and on the other his natural home, the land of his fathers. The vastness of the charge that he had accepted could be no secret now. To him, a iv.] QUESTIONS AT SAME TIME SUGGESTED, 109 son of Abraham, how overwhelming the retrospect ; and how more amazing stiU the prospect opening before his faith of a salvation that was hourly felt to be * nearer than when he first believed.' oh. xiii. 1 1 . To estimate aright the duty of the present was urgent. No one could muse awhile with S. Paul at this crisis without feelinp; it. Must not the past and the future of the heavenly The Ques- j. ,. -t -. -, . tions sua- dispensations be, in some reaf sense, a harmonious gested, ' whole 1 And could that old priority of the Hebrew ch. 1 16. people, which had been so emphaticaUy asserted in the plans of Providence, be without permanent meaning 1 In other words, was the old Covenant to pass away, and the new to come in, without any principle as to their relation 1 Or, to put the case in a form yet more touching to the Apostle's patriotic nature, were his Jewish brethren, with aU their inheritance as to the of wondrous memories, to be left to find an un- the Gospel 171/ t-tLP marked place in the future ? Or, yet once more, scheme of , i ¦ n ,i ., . Providence; and even more practically, was tnat social system which had existed with so much of Divine sanction ch. ii. 17. among the ancient people of God, to be dissolved 1 And further, was the social pohty of the heathen world also — better surely than unordered licence — • to be everywhere seriously disturbed, if not broken up 1 And this with no comprehensive suggestions as to what should take its place 1 For what, in fine, if the state of Christian duties contemplated in his late advice to Corinth should prove to be not so transitory as he had supposed d ? How, in that a Lect. III. p. 88. 110 ARISING FROM THE FACTS [lect. ch. i. 16. case, would the Gospel display itself as a ' Power of God' in the world, as S. Paul had proclaimed it to be? as to the Such were questions which could not but rise moral cor- before his mind, and which forced him now to write. Ihefewneis True, they might not all be ready for elucidation. tians^and Much might be involved in them which must wait tutesT: "^ f°r moral development ; but evidently some deter mining principles should at once be known, if perUous mistakes were to be avoided. We admit that in Acts xx. 27. some places the oral teaching of his Apostolate had given guidance ; but not everywhere, and not in Eome. He felt this himself; for to deal with these ch. i. 1, 5, questions ' by word or by epistle,' was the special work committed to him as 'Apostle' of the Gentiles. o