;•'.'-.' -.- ¦ ¦ - Y^iLH«WMHViEi&s]rirY° • iunBiK^iKsr • FROM THE LIBRARY OF JOHN PUNNETT PETERS YALE 1873 /?j-% THE MESSAGES OF THE BOOKS .s- THE MESSAGES OF THE BOOKS DISCOURSES AND NOTES ON THE BOOKS OE THE NEW TESTAMENT F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. \fj,a,TiKa) ; . the fourth, more of its inmost spiritual meaning.1 The first three are, to use a convenient modern term, more objective ; the fourth, more subjective. The first three deal more with action ; St. John with contemplation. The first three speak more of the labour and of the way ; the fourth, more of the rest and of the home. Hence the first three are called the Synoptists, because one tabular view can be given of their narratives ; 2 the fourth stands in many respects apart. Once more, the first three are more fragmentary than the fourth. The first three " may be compared to a succession of pictures, 1 The remark that St. John's is the spiritual Gospel (irrevfiaTiKov) is as old ss Clement of Alexandria (ap. Euseb., H. E. iii. 24). 2 The Greek word Synopsis has the same meaning as the Latin Conjpcctui, viz. " a collective view." The first three Evangelists are called "Synoptists " because their Gospels can be arranged and harmonised, section by section, in a tabular form, since they are mainly based on a common outline. The term appears to be quite modern, but has been rapidly brought into general use since its adoption by Griesbach. See Holtzmann in Schenkel, Bibcl- Lexicon, s.v. Evangelien; and Ebrard in Herzog, s.v. Harmonic. I am not aware of any earlier use of the word "Synopsis," as applied to a tabular view of the first three Gospels, than Georgii Sigelii Synopsis historiae Jes. Christi quemad modum Matthams, Marcus, Lucas, descripsere in forma tabulae propositi. Noribergae. 1585. Folio. The Synoptists and St. John. 11 in which a painter represents a complete history; " the fourth the four produces the effect of a more ideal unity.1 gospels. But the fact that the Gospels are, to borrow the phrase of St. Augustine, " various, not contrary," is a distinct advantage. They thus become, as it were, the sacred stereoscope which sets before us the life of our Saviour, not in its bare surface, but in its living solidity. If we had only possessed the three first we should have known much about our Lord, but not the whole. "Tbe Synoptic Gospels contain the Gospel of the Infant Church, that of St. John, the Gospel of its maturity." They give us, for the world, the experience and origin of a society ; St. John gives us, for the Church, the inspired in tuitions of a disciple.2 There is contrast between them, but no contradiction.3 In Greek literature we have two widely divergent records of Socrates, but we know him all the more thoroughly from the different way in which his personality affected the minds of two men so unlike each other as the busy, active, and practical soldier, and the deep-souled, poet-philosopher. Xenophon sketches for us the outer life of Socrates, Plato gives us an idealisation of his inmost spirit. The Synoptists, it has been truly said, furnish us with pictures like those three separate portraits of Charles I. which Vandyke pre pared for the sculptor who was to reproduce in marble the very man.4 We may borrow an analogy from the physical world, and say that the first three Evangelists give us divers aspects of one glorious landscape ; St. John pours over that landscape a flood of heavenly sunshine which seems to trans form its very character, though every feature of the landscape Holtzmann in the Protestanten Bibel (Eng. Trans, i. 40). The fragmen- tariness of the synoptical memoirs is illustrated by the fact already mentioned, that they confine ihemselves almost exclusively to the Galilean ministry, though they were well awaro of the ministry in Judaea (Matt. xxi. 8, 9 ; xxiii. 37 ; xxvii. 57, &c ). 2 Westcott, Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, p. 197. 3 " Per hujusmodi evangelistarum locutiones i-ariassed non contrarias disci- mus nihil in cujusque verbis nos inspicere debere nisi voluntatem." — Aug, De Consens. Evang. ii. 28. * Westcott, Introd. p. 234. 12 The Gospels. the four remains the same. Their circumstantial differences recall the gospels. variety 0f Nature; their substantial agreement resembles its marvellous and essential unity. For the object of each and all of the Gospels is that expressed by St. John, " that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through His name." 1 iii. Hence the Church has always been thankful for the fact that "holy men of old, moved by the Holy Ghost," have left us four separate, and mainly, if not absolutely, inde pendent Gospels. We are thus furnished with such a weight of contemporaneous testimony as is wanting to the great majority of events in Ancient History. A fourfold cord is not easily broken.2 Early Christian writers compared the Gospels to that river which, flowing out of Eden to water the Garden of God, was parted into four heads, compassing lands of which the gold 1 John xx, 31. 2 It is no part of my purpose to enter in detail into the question of the authenticity or even the canonicity of the various books of the New Testa ment. To attempt this would require a volume, and the task has already been most admirably performed by many abler scholars. I may refer the reader to two English books — Dr. Westcott, On the Canon of the New Testament, and Dr. Charteris, On Canonicity (which is based on Kirchhofer's Quellensamm- lung), as well as to the widely different views taken by Dr. Davidson in his Introduction. I may, however, mention the remarkable confirmation to the early date of the Gospels, and therefore the refutation of the theories of the Tubingen school, and of many German scholars, which results from a recent discovery. The Mechitarist Fathers at Venice have published a translation from the Armenian of a commentary by Ephraem Syrus in the fourth century on the work known as the Diatessaron of Tatian. From this it is finally clear that Tatian's Harmony was a close weaving together of our four present Gospels. Now Tatian was a disciple of Justin Martyr, and the fact that the Gospels had already in his day (circ. a.d. 160) received an exclusive recognition, entirely refutes the hypothesis of many that, in their present form, several of them are not older than the middle of the second century. Thus Baur refers the Gospel of St. Matthew to a.d. 130-134, and Volkmar places it not earlier than a.d. 105. Irenaeus is now proved to have been much nearer the mark when he placed it a.d. 64 (Haer. iii. s. 1). The testimonies of Papias, Irenaeus, TertuUian, of the Muratorian Canon, and of Clemens of Alexandria, to say nothing of Justin Martyr, show how early the Gospels had acquired a position of supreme authority. But, apart from this, the undisputed Epistles of St. Paul, as well as those of St. James, and the First of St. Peter, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, are sufficient to confirm the Gospels in every important particular. Cherubic Emblems. 13 is good, and which have bdellium and the onyx-stone.1 But the four a still commoner symbol of the Evangelists is that derived G0SPELS- from the four living creatures, "the fourfold- visaged four"— the cherubim which form the chariot of the Lord in the Vision of Ezekiel by the river Chebar.2 In almost every church you find, somewhere depicted, the four symbols of the Evan gelists — the man or angel for St. Matthew; the lion of St. Mark; the calf of St. Luke; the eagle for St. John. The man was chosen as the emblem of St. Matthew because he brings out Christ's kingly and human character;8 the lion for St. Mark, from the strength and energy of his delineation;4 the ox for St. Luke, because he indicates Christ's priestly and mediatorial office ; 5 the eagle for St. John, because "he soars to heaven above the clouds pf human infirmity, and reveals to us the mysteries of the Godhead, and the felicities of Eternal Life, gazing on the 1 " Paradisi hie fluenta Nova fluunt sacramenta Quae descendunt coelitus : His quadrigis deportatur Mundo Deus, sublimatur Istis area vectibus." Adam de S. Viotore. 2 Ezek. i. 5-26. As early as Irenaeus we find the expression " the four- shaped Gospel." Adv. Haer. iii. 11, s. 8. rerpap-optpoti rh eCayyeAior, eut -irneifLari o-vvix'p-^"ov. He fancifully dwells on the number four as that of the four winds and the four elements. Adam of St. Victor says : — " Circa thema generale Habet quisque speciale Styli privilegium, Quod praesignat in propheta Forma pictus sub discreta Vultus animalium. " Dante symbolises them as — " quattro animali Coronato ciascun di verde fronda, " Purgat. xxix. 93. The green leaves which crown the four living creatures are emblems of the leaves of the Tree of Life. 3 In the oldest mosaics the type is human (bearded), not angelic. 4 According to some because St. Mark was specially the historian of the Resurrection, and the mediaeval notion was that young lions were born dead and vivified by the parent lion's roar in three days. Rupert of Deutz in Apoc. iv., and Mark xvi. 16, connects it with the terribleness of this Gospel, beginning with the voice "crying" (rugiens) in the wilderness, and ending with a curse. 3 The ox being the emblem of sacrifice. THE FOUR GOSPELS. 14 The Gospels. light of immutable truth with a keen and steady ken." This, then, is why the Gospels are compared to the Vision of the Four at the river of Chebar. " Like them the Gospels are Four in number ; like them they are the Chariot of God Who sitteth between the Cherubim ; like them, they bear Him on a winged throne into all lands ; like them, they move wherever the Spirit guides them : like them they are mar vellously joined together, intertwined with coincidences and differences ; wing interwoven with wing, and wheel inter woven with wheel : like them they are full of eyes, and sparkle with heavenly light : like them they sweep from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, and fly with lightning speed and with the noise of many waters. Their sound is gone out into all lands and their words to the end of the world." 2 Whatever may be the archaeological and artistic interest of these universal symbols, it must be admitted that they are fanciful and arbitrary ; and this is rendered more obvious from the varying manner in which they used to be employed and justified. But as there is no element of mere fancy in what has been already said as to the value of having four Gospels, and as to the differences between St. John and the three who had preceded him, so there will be none in the 1 Aug. De Consevs. Evang. i. The union of the four emblems into one figure was called " the Tetramorph," or Animal Ecclesiae. Calvin, in a style not usual with him, compares the Gospels to a four-horsed triumphal chariot — the quadriga of Christ. 2 Wordsworth, Greek Test., The Four Gospels, p. xii. The first iustance of this symbolism is found in Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. iii. 11, s. 8), who, however, assigns the eagle to St. Mark and the lion to St. John. St. Augustine assigns the lion to St. Matthew, the man to St. Mark (De Consens. Evang. i. 6). Pseudo-Athanasius again (Synapsis Script.) assigns the ox to St. Mark, the lion to St. Luke. The distribution sanctioned by St. Jerome is that which has finally prevailed. "Prima hominis facies Matthaeum significat qui quasi de homine exorsus est seribere Liber generation-is Jesu Christi, filii David, filii Abraham. Secunda Marcum in quo vox leonis rugientis in eremo auditur (Mark i. 3). Tertia Vituli quae Evangelistam Lucam a Zacharia sacerdote initium sumpsisse praefigurat. Quarta Evangelistam Joannem qui assumtis pennis aquilae, et ad altiora festinans, de Verbo Dei disputat." Praef. in Comment. Ev. Matth. (See Lange, Leben Jesu, i. 156 ; Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, i. 132-143 ; Schaff, Hist, of Christian Church, 585-589.) St. Matthew. 15 brief preliminary sketch which will now be given of the the four main characteristics of each separate Gospel.1 gospels. 1. St. Matthew wrote in Judaea, and possibly wrote his earliest sketch of the Discourses of Christ in the Jewish language, though in that case, it is obvious for critical reasons, that he must himself, at a later period, have trans lated his work into Greek. This very fact goes far to illus trate the specialities of his Gospel. It is the Gospel for the Jews ; it is the Gospel of the past ; it is the Gospel of Jesus as the Messiah. It is the Gospel which reflects the tone of mind which prevailed in the Church of Jerusalem among the " Hebrews of the Hebrews " headed by James the Lord's brother, whose Epistle recalls most frequently the first Gospel, especially its record of the Sermon on the Mount. That it is the Gospel for the Jews appears in the very first words, " the book of the generation of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham "; — the son of David, and therefore the heir to the Jewish kingdom ; the son of Abraham, and therefore the heir of the Jewish promise. That it is the Gospel of the past appears in the constant formula — the refrain as it were — ¦ "that it might be fulfilled," which recurs on nearly every page of the book. This Gospel contains no less than sixty-five quotations from the Old Testament ; nearly three times more than those in any other Gospel. Even in the first two chapters the Evangelist sees in five incidents of the infancy of Jesus the fulfilment of five ancient prophecies. Another point is that this Gospel is mainly didactic, being marked by five great continuous discourses — the Sermon on >•. vii. the Mount ; the Address to the Apostles ; the Parables on x. the " Kingdom of the Heavens," a Jewish phrase peculiar to St. Matthew ; the Discourse on the Church ; and the Discourses *"?:;_ on Judgment; — these discourses all bearing on the work of xxiii. -xxv. 1 These generic peculiarities were very early noticed. Thus in the Carmen of St. Gregory of Nazianzus we find : — VlarSaios p.lv %ypa$ev 'EBpalois Baifiara Xpioroi, Mdpicos 8' 'lrakly, Aovnas 'AxadSri, riatri 5' 'ladyrns K-i]pvl; fxeyas oiiparoipolrns. 16 Tiie Gospels. the Messiah as Lawgiver, as Judge, and as King. The Gospel of St. Matthew was then as it were "the ultimatum of Jehovah to His ancient people : recognise Jesus as your Messiah, or accept Him as your Judge." 1 2. St. Mark is said to have written in Rome for Latins. It is a very natural supposition that when St. Peter was in his Roman prison, awaiting death, the Roman Christians asked Mark to preserve for them the great Apostle's reminis cences of the life of the Lord. Hence St. Mark's Gospel corresponds to the character of him who first made the great confession. It is the Gospel of the present ; the Gospel for the practical Roman world ; the Gospel of Jesus as Lord of human society. It is the Gospel which reflects the tone of mind prevalent in that moderate section of the Jewish- Christian Church of which St. Peter was the acknowledged head. So completely does the Evangelist represent the views of St. Peter that St. Peter's speech to Cornelius, in Acts x., has been called " the Gospel of St. Mark in a nutshell." If St. Matthew's is the didactic Gospel, or the Gospel of popular discourses, St. Mark's is the anecdotical ; the Gospel of ener getic incident. It is a book of Apostolic memoirs,2 and is marked by the graphic vividness which reflects the memory of an eye witness. It is the Gospel which, apart from any special references to theology or to prophecy, simply describes in 1 Godet, Bible Studies, Eng. Trans, p. 23. We shall see hereafter that St. Matthew's point of view is so little exclusive that he can admit passages which point to the evanescence of the law and the universality of the Gospel (ix. 16 ; xii. 7, 8 ; xiii. 31 sq. ; xxvii. 19, &c). It should be carefully borne in mind that these characteristics are merely general and relative. It is not meant that the Evangelists represent our Blessed Lovd exclusively, hut only predominantly, under the aspects here mentioned. It must not be supposed that any one of the Evangelists wrote with a. deliberate subjective bias. They dealt with facts not theories, and in no way altered those facts in the interests of any special view. They neither did, nor could, invent or create ; it was their sole duty to record. It is only from the grouping of facts, and from the prominence given to particular incidents or expressions through out the several Gospels, that we deduce the ruling conceptions of the inspired writers. St. Augustine's expression that they wrote " ut quisque meminerat et ut euique cordi erat " (De Consens. Evang. ii. 5) is not a very happy one. 1 'PLtroiivriii.oreifia.Ta, Just. Mart. Dial. 103. St. Lukes Gospel. 17 brief and startling succession, our Lord's deeds as He lived, the four and moved among men. gospels. 3. St. Luke on the other hand wrote in Greece, for the bright, clever, affable Greek world. Hence his Gospel is in its language the most accurate, in its order the most his torical and artistic.1 It is the first volume of a great narrative, tracing the victorious advance of Christianity from Galilee to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to Antioch, from Antioch on its westward course to Rome. It reflects the tone of mind which was prevalent in the school of St. Paul. It is the univer sal Gospel of the Gentile convert.2 It does not deal with the yearnings of the past,3 or with the glory of the present, but with the aspirations of the future.4 It paints Christ's Gospel not as the fulfilment of Prophecy, or as " the Kingdom of the Age," but as the satisfaction of our moral cravings ; it describes Jesus to us, not as the Jewish Messiah, or the Univer sal Lord, but as the Saviour of sinners. One of its keynotes is "My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." It is a Gospel, not national, but universal ; not regal, but human. It is the Gospel, " cleansed from the leprosy of castes,'' and the blindness of limitations. It is the Gospel for sinners, for Samaritans, for Gentiles. It is " the revelation of divine morcy ; " it is " the manifestation of divine philanthropy." It is Christianity for man. 4. It might then have been imagined that the three Synoptic Gospels had exhausted the possible aspects of dawning 1 The word Kadetfs, " in order," is peculiar to his writings. 2 Hence he omits particulars (e.g. in the Sermon on the Mount) which would have been less intelligible to Greek readers, and substitutes 'E7ricrTa'r7js or AiSacrKaAos (" Master " or " Teacher ") for Rabbi ; "lawyer" for "scribe ; " "yea" or "verily" for "Amen ;" the Greek TT]p£a,s t<£ A.oa> avrov iv acpecrci aaapniav avrwv, and xxiv. 47, /cal Ki)pvx^r\vai iirl rip bvouari avrov |xcTavoiav Kal acjiecriv &|mpTi«v els iravra to edvw, dp£a- txevov dirb 'lepova-aAijfi. c 2 20 The Gospels. the four The motto for St. John — indicative of the depth of view gospels. wj1icn pervades all his Gospel— could only be the four most marvellous and epoch-making words ever written, words which concentrate into themselves long centuries of divine history and world-wide speculations, " The Word became flesh!' The extent to which the differences which we have pointed out were felt and recognised is curiously illustrated by the preference given to one or other of the Gospels by different sects of heretics. Thus, St. Matthew's Gospel was, as we might have expected, the favourite of the sects of Jewish Christians; of the Nazarenes, with their limited and imperfect conceptions of Christian truth, and the Ebionites, with their denial of the supernatural birth of Christ. St. Mark was preferred by the followers of Cerinthus, the Docetae and other sects who made a distinction between the human Jesus and the Divine Christ.1 St. Luke's — or rather a mutilated version of it — was the chosen Gospel of the Marcionites, who were the most ex travagant of the anti-Judaic followers of St. Paul. St. John's Gospel, with its mystic depths, was the accepted Gospel of the Valentinians, and other philosophising Gnostic sects. The four Gospels are meant to show us what Christ was, and what He meant us to be ; and what the salvation was wherewith He saved us from sin, and from Satan, and from ourselves. If we desire to realise their inner unity we must find it in ourselves. We shall need no further verification of theii- general testimony if we put on the new man which after Christ Jesus is created in righteousness and true holiness. When we have learnt to read those books aright Ave shall find their harmony in thoughts purified, in lives ennobled by the spirit of Christ. The glad tidings will help to dissipate oui 1 Iren. Hacr. iii. 11, § 7. IIoiv to read the Gospels. 21 sadness and brighten our discouragements. We shall look the four upon ourselves more hopefully ; and we shall look upon our GOs:PELS' fellow men with more of patience and of tenderness, because we shall then regard both ourselves and them in the light of those words into which surely the spirit of all the four Gospels may be compressed — as souls — "for whom Christ died." 00 The Gospels. NOTE I. THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. the four rpHE main phenomenon presented by the Synoptists, when we read them side by side, is the coexistence of minute resemblances with wide divergence. a. The resemblances extend even to slight peculiarities of language such as the rare and dubious word eiri.ovo-i.os " daily " in the Lord's prayer ; the use of the diminutive ariov "little ear" (John xviii. 10 ; Matt. xxvi. 51 ; Luke xxii. 51) ; the curious adverb oWkoAws- to mean "with diffi culty " (Matt. xix. 23 ; Mark x. 23 : Luke xviii. 24) ; the irregular Doric form of the perfect passive a8ev irda-w diepiftaSs) in order that his friend might fully know (tva imyvas) the actual and certain facts (rr/v ao-(pdAeiav) about all the truths in which he had already been orally instructed. Christ had not commanded His Apostles to write, but to preach. The Gospels were produced to meet a more and more imperious necessity. The same impulse and the same reason ings which weighed with St. Luke may well have influenced the other Evangelists at nearly the same time. That St. Luke did not include these Gospels among the "attempts" with which he was dissatisfied, and indeed that he was not acquainted with them, though he had recourse to traditions and documents which they also had incorporated, is clear from every page of his Gospel. 7. If then this hypothesis of a fixed oral tradition gradually reduced to writing, be insufficient to account for the differences and resemblances of the Evangelists, it is at least certain that no more reasonable sugges tion has yet been made.1 The Four Gospels superseded all others and won their way into universal acceptance by their intrinsic value and authority.2 After " so many salutary losses " 3 we still possess a rich collection of Apocryphal Gospels, and, if they serve no other good purpose, they have this value, that they prove for us undoubtedly the unique and transcendent superi ority of the sacred records. These bear the stamp of absolute truthfulness, all the more decisively when placed in contrast with writings which show signs of wilful falsity. We escape from their " lying magic" to find sup port and help in the genuine Gospels. " And here we take refuge with the greater confidence because the ruins which lie around the ancient archives of the Church look like a guarantee of the enduring strength and greatness of those archives themselves."4 1 This is the view which has been adopted in the main by Herder, Gieseler, (who first developed it in 1818) Schulz, Credner, Lange, Ebrard, Thiersch, Norton, Alford, Renan, Godet, Westcott, Schaff, Weiss, and Archbishop Thomson. 2 ' ' Multi conati sunt scribere Evaugelia, sed non omnes recepti, " Orig. Hom. in Luc. 3 Keim, Jesu of Nazara, i. 45 (E. T.) 4 Keim, i. 45. 28 The Gospels. NOTE II. STYLE, AND DIFFERENT BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. the four One of the greatest modern stylists has said that there are at least gospels. f1Ve different styles in the New Testament. Under this head he ranks together 1. Matthew. Mark. The Apocalypse. 2. Luke and the Acts. 3. General Epistles of St. Paul. Hebrews. 1 Peter. 4. James. Jude. 2 Peter. Pastoral Epistles. 5. The writings of John. There is much insight in the remark, though it is open to criticism. But adds M. Eenan, what constitutes (in this point of view) the strength of all these writings is that they are written in Greek but conceived in Aramaic. The absoluteness of Old Testament idiom, in which there are no nuances, in which all is black or white, shade or sunshine, which instead of saying " I preferred Jacob to Esau," says " Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated," retains in the New Testament also its startling and overwhelming energy and fascination. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. " The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.". — Matt. i. 1. 1. When we desire to know something about a book our st. matthew. first question is, " Who wrote it ? " Fortunately we know that the author of the Gospel which stands first in our New Testament was the apostle St. Matthew. We are told but little about him personally. He was a son of Alphaeus, a brother of James the Little ; possibly, as criticism has con jectured, a brother of St. Thomas called Didymus, whose name means " the twin " ; possibly, as tradition has said, a kinsman of our Lord according to the flesh. The Gospels, not excepting his own, record nothing about him except his call and his farewell feast. ' He had been a publican ; that is, he had held the low and despised office of collector of the taxes imposed by the conquering Romans on his oppressed fellow-countrymen.2 That office was all the baser because of its gainfulness. It was usually stained with dishonesty. In a Jew it bore the stigma of unpatriotic subservience to an alien 1 Matt. ix. 10. The modest reticence of the Evangelist appears in his sup pression of his share in this feast. Comp. Luke v. 29. 2 Herod Antipas may perhaps have been allowed to collect his own taxes, and Matthew may have thought himself comparatively justified in serving as a revenue officer to a semi- Jewish king. On the other hand, as Herod had to pay tribute to the Romans, the discredit which the office attached to a faith ful theocratic Jew was just the same ; and it is clear that the tax-collectors were as much detested in Galilee as everywhere else. 30 The Gospels. st. matthew. oppression. From a position thus sordid and despised one word of Christ redeemed him. Touched by the Matt. vm. 19, jttuxriel spear of His Master's love, he sprang up from a tax-gatherer into an apostle. He who rejected the scribe accepted the publican, . and enabled the subseivient Matt. ix. n. officii to work side by "side with the flaming ¦fealot.1 One farewell feast, to his old companions, on a Pharisai^fast- 1 Mark ii? 15.' ^aJ — a feast m which the guests were so numerous as -'bo prove that St. Matthew had something to lose by the aban donment of his functions— and then, forsaking all, he followed Christ. It is he alone who has appended to' his own nam.e the opprobrious addition of "Matthew the publican."1 He need not have done so, for Matthew was a new name. His old name had been Levi. -"Maithew means " the gift of God." 2 The old name Levi had* been abandoned with the old profession.3 In that single word, "the publican" (x. 3), and in the absolute suppression of his own personality throughout the Gospel, we see the deep humility of the Evangelist. Not one incident, not one question, of his is recorded. He occupied a very retiring and humble position in the apostolic band. Tradition only records one saying of his and one fact about him. The traditional fact is that he lived the life of an ascetic, on herbs and water.4 The saying is that when the neighbour of an elect man sins, he himself has sinned; for had he lived as the Word commands, his 1 It has been fancied that St. Matthew shows traces of the matters which formerly occupied his attention in the use of the word "tribute-money" not "penny " in xxii. 17 — 22, and in recording the miracle of the stater. 2 Ma-rfleuos is the Greek form of ,P1D) shortened from H'lTO (perhaps another form of Amittai, Jonah i. 1) 0eo5a>pos. Mattathias, 1. Mace. ii. 1. Matthias, Acts i. 23. 3 The identification of Matthew with Levi (Matt. ix. 9, x. 3. Mark ii. 14. Luke v. 27) has indeed been questioned (what has not been questioned ?), but it has been all but unanimously accepted from the earliest ages. The chief exceptions are the Valentinian Kerakleon (Chem. Alex. Strom, iv. 9, 73) ; Origen (c. Gels. i. 62), Grotius, Michaelis, de Wette, and Ewald (Christus, pp. 289, 321). 4 Ma-r6a7os fxev ovv o diroOToXos 0-irep/j.a.Tuiv teal a/cpoSlW leal Aaxavwv avev Kpeav fiereXapL^ave. Chem. Alex. Paed. ii. 1, p. 16. If so this manner of life seems to have been adopted in later days (see Matt. ix. 10 — 14, Matthew's feast). St. Matthew. 31 neighbours would have so reverenced him as to refrain from st. sin. These traditional particulars have no intrinsic impro bability. It was believed in the early Church that certain ascetic or half-Essene tendencies existed in the circle of our Lord's earthly relatives. We see a certain general resemblance between the Judaic sternness and simplicity of James, " the Lord's brother," and of St. Matthew. The sternness is illus trated by the fact that in this Gospel the idea of punishment and retribution is more prominent than in the others. 1 As to the death or labours of St. Matthew we know nothing. It is said that he went forth from Jerusalem as a missionary ; 2 but whither he went — whether to ^Ethiopia or to Parthia — is uncertain ; nor is it known whether he died peacefully, or whether he won the martyr's crown.3 2. But out of this life, so discredited in its youth, so un recorded in its manhood, there flowed a most memorable service — the first Gospel. He thus lived to confer an eternal benefit on that Church of God, which he alone of the Evan gelists has mentioned by that name.4 It is not the only instance in which one who seems to have lived much alone with God and his own soul has, like John Tauler or Thomas a, Kempis, embalmed in one brief book the inmost fragrance of a blessed spirit, to last for a life beyond life. 3. His comparative obscurity, his unpopular profession, help to make his authorship more indisputable. No forger 1 See Matt. vii. 13, 23, 42 ; xviii. 34, 35 ; xxii. 13 ; xxiii. 33 ; xxiv. 50, 51 ; xxv. 30, 46. 2 Euseb. H. E. iii. 24 ; v. 10 ; Socrates, H. E. i. 19. 3 Herakleon (np. Clem. Alex. I. c.) excepts from the number of martyrs Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Levi aud many others. In all western works of art he is represented as being slain by the sword. Greek artists uniformly exhibit him as dying in peace, while an angel swings the censer beside his bed ; as on the ancient dome of San Paolo at Rome. (Mrs. Jameson. ) As to his missionary labours, Eusebius only says that he went eip' erepovs. Eusebius and Jerome have nothing to add to this. Macedonia, Persia, &c, are only specified by later writers, till at last, Nicephorus Callistus (in 1350) specifies the Anthropophagi ! 4 'EKK\i)iJia. Matt. xvi. 18 ; xviii. 17. The fact that this word, so common in the Epistles, where it occurs 112 times, should occur here only in the Gospels, like the fact that the title "Son of Man," so common in the Gospels, is not found in the Epistles, is an interesting but entirely undesigned coinci dence, which throws light on the purpose, age, aud credibility of the Gospels. 32 The Gospels. st. matthew. would have attributed his work to one whose name belonged to the least distinguished among the Apostles. It would have been natural to forge an Epistle of St. Peter ; no one would have thought of an Epistle of St. Matthew. And yet antiquity is unanimous in the belief, both that he wrote this Gospel,1 and that he wrote it originally in Aramaic, for his own countrymen.2 If so, the Aramaic original has perished 3 and the Greek translation must, for almost undoubted critical reasons, have come from the hands of the Apostle himself.4 The Gospel of St. Matthew was, in all probability, the earliest of the four.5 It is natural to suppose that when the demand for a written Gospel had arisen, the Church would desire to possess such a document from the pen of an actual Apostle. Silent, observant, faithful, belonging to the Lord's own friends and relations, familiar with the art of writing by the necessities of his trade, and not otherwise prominently 1 Credner, Volkmar and others, argue that " the Gospel according to (koto) Matthew " does not imply direct authorship ; but their view is disproved by usage (Bleek, Einleitung, 87 ; De "Wette, § 78), Hilgenfeld (Einleitung, 149), shows that the phrase implies that the one Gospel was set forth iu four Gospels. Thus in 2 Mace. ii. 13, the Book of Nehemiah is referred to as KaTa Nee/itav, and Epiphanius (Haer. viii. 4) has t\ Kara Moivcrea Tlevrarevxas. It is not impossible that the office of St. Matthew involved a familiarity with the art of writing, and with other forms of literary activity. 2 This is asserted by Papias (ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 39) : Irenaeus (Haer. iii. 1, s. 1) ; Origen (ap. Euseb. vi. 25) ; Eusebius (H. E. v. 8) ; Jerome (De Virr. illustr. 3) ; Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. xiv. 5) ; Epiphanius (Haer. xxx. 3, li. 3), &c. It is now generally believed (a)'that the Greek style of the book, in spite of the Hebraic colouring which it has in common with nearly all the books of the New Testament ; and (/3) the use of the LXX. in the majority of the quotations, prove our present Greek Gospel to have been an original. Keim aud others suppose that Papias and all who followed him may have been led into confusion by the existence of the "Gospel of the Hebrews" which mainly agreed with the narrative of Matthew. See the note at the end of this discourse. 3 There would bo nothing very extraordinary about this fact. Josephus tells us that he first wrote his Antiquities in Aramaic. 4 The Greek figure paronomasia occurs twice (vi. 16 ; xxi. 41). It is notice able too that in the Gospel to the Hebrews the Holy Ghost is feminine (" my mother the Holy Ghost") because the Hebrew rj-ll is feminine; but there is nothing of this kind in St. Matthew. 5 Ep. Barnab. iv. vii. Iren. Haer. i. 26, § 2 ; iii. 1, §. 1. Euseb. H. E. iii. 27. Origen, ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 25. Cerinthus (circ. a.d. 110) used the Gospel (Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 14), as also Clement, Hermas, Justin, &c. And this view is accepted even by Schwegler, Strauss, Hilgenfeld, Keim, &c. Irenaeus (Haer. iii. 1) dates it a.d. 61—64, which is probably a little too early. St. Matthew. 33 engaged in apostolic work, St. Matthew may have been st. matthew. specially marked out for that high task. He may have undertaken it when twelve years had elapsed after the death of Christ. At that time the Apostles — in accordance with a command which (as tradition says) they had received from the Lord — began to disperse from Jerusalem to make disciples in all the world.1 The written words would supply the void left by their absence from the Holy City.2 And his Gospel is one of pre-eminent importance. We have already seen that of the entire materials of the evan gelic history, two-fifths are common to the Synoptists. Only one-third of the materials belongs to the others indi vidually and peculiarly. But St. Matthew's Gospel, which is nearly as long as St. Luke's, contains fourteen entire sections which are found in him alone. These sections, moreover, are of the deepest interest. Among the forty-two peculiarities are ten parables,3 two miracles,4 four events of the Infancy,6 seven incidents connected "with the Passion and Resurrection,6 and not a few great passages in our Lord's discourses.7 In deed, it is the prominence of our Lord's discourses in St. Matthew that makes it characteristically " the didactic Gospel," so that one-fourth of the whole is taken up with 1 The tradition is first found in the Preaching of Peter quoted by Clement of Alexandria (Strom, vi. § 43), and is alluded to by Apollonius (a.d. 180) ap. Euseb. H. E. v. 18. 2 Euseb. H. E. iii. 24. 3 The Tares ; the Hid Treasure ; the Pearl ; the Drawnet (xiii. 24-50) ; the Unmerciful Servant (xviii. 23 — 35) ; the Labourers in the Vineyard (xx. 1 — 16) ; the Two Sons (xxi. 28—32) ; the Marriage of the King's Son (xxii. 1—14) ; the Ten Virgins (xxv. 1—13) ; the Talents (xxv. 14—30.) 4 The Cure of Two Blind Men (ix. 27—31) ; The Stater (xvii. 24—27.) 6 The Magi ; the Massacre of the Infants ; the Flight into Egypt ; the return to Nazareth. 6 The Bargain, and Suicide of Judns ; the Dream of Pilate's wife ; the departed saints who rose ; the watch at the sepulchre ; the story of the Sau- hedriu ; the earthquake on Easter morning. 7 Ten in all. Parts of Sermon on Mount (v. — vii.) ; the revelation to babes ; the invitations to the weary (xi. 25 — SO) ; about Idle Words (xii. 36 — 37) ; the prophecy to Peter (xvi. 17 — 19) ; on Humility and Forgiveness (xviii. 15-35) ; Rejection of the Jews (xxi. 43) ; the Great Denunciation (xxiii.) ; the Eschato logical Discourse (xxv. 31-46) ; the Great Commission and promise (xxviii. 18 — 20). Hence the frequency of such phrases as "And when Jesus finished these sayings" (vii. 28 ; xi. 1 ; xiii. 53 ; xix. 1 ; xxvi. 1). D 34 The Gospels. st. matthew. the actual words and sermons of the Son of Man. Mean while these minute analyses have established the great result that the Evangelists are, as witnesses, independent of each other, and that as each gave his own testimony in his own way, they weave the separate strands of that fourfold cord of evidence by which the Church is moored to the living Bock of truth. 4. The next question which we ask about a book is, " When was it written ? " When we remember that we owe exclusively to the Gospels our knowledge of the life and death of our Saviour Christ; when we recall that our faith centres in a Person and that the Gospels are our sole nar rative of His life, we see how much it imports us to know at what date they were penned.1 Had the records of the life of Jesus, like those of the life of Buddha, been only written long centuries after His death, we could feel no security as to their faithfulness. Tradition may last unimpaired for a generation, but after that time it becomes obliterated and confused. The divine features of our Saviour's life would have been blurred, as in the Apocryphal Gospels, by all kinds of false and puerile traditions, if they had not been committed to writing before the eye-witnesses were dead. We may thank God for the certainty that the three first Gospels, like every other book of the New Testament, even the Gospel and Epistles of St. John, were written in the same generation which had witnessed the death of Christ, crucified as He was in early manhood.2 1 Other sources, whether Pagan or Apocryphal, or Oriental, or early Christian, have not preserved for us a single fact. At the best, a. few of the unrecorded sayings [iiypaipa H6yixaro) are possibly genuine, as is certainly that preserved by St. Paul (Acts xx. 35). They are deeply interesting, and have often been collected, as by Eabricius, Cod. Apocr. N. T. i. 32 ; Grabe Spicileg. i. 12 ; Kdrner, De Sermonibus Christi dypiipois, 1776 ; Hess. Lcben Jesu, ii. 553 ; Westcott, Introd. Append. C. The three most interesting and well- attested of the traditional sayings are, "Show yourselves approved money changers." (Origen, in Joann. xix.) " He who wonders shall reign, and he who reigns shall rest." (Clem. Alex. Strom, ii. 9, § 45.) " Near Me near the fire. Far from Me far from the Kingdom." (Origen in Jer. iii.). There are interest ing traditions in the Codex Bezae (D) added to Matt. xx. 28. Luke vi. 4. 2 It is interesting to notice that the title " Son of Man " is recorded eighty-four times in the Gospels. It is the human, the Messianic title, which Early Date of the Gospels. 35 Fortunately the epoch of the Old Dispensation was closed st. matthew. by an event so stupendous that it completely revolutionised the religious history of Judaism, and fundamentally affected the thoughts of Christians. That event, of which the results are still unexhausted, was the Fall of Jerusalem. Had that catastrophe preceded the writing of the Synoptic Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul, nothing is more certain than that it must have been directly mentioned, and that it must have exer cised an immense influence on the thoughts and feelings of the Apostles and Evangelists. No writer, dealing with the topics and arguments and prophecies with which they are constantly occupied, could possibly have failed to appeal to the tremend ous sanction which had been given to all their views by God Himself, who thus manifested His Providence in human history, and showed all things by the quiet light of inevitable circumstances.1 It may then be regarded as certain — it is indeed, admitted by many sceptical critics — that the Gospels were, and from their own internal evidence must have been, published before A.D. 70, and therefore within forty years after our Lord's crucifixion. It is scarcely possible to exag gerate the importance of this fact in estimating the evidences of historic religion. If we had not possessed the records of any who were actually contemporaries of our Lord Jesus, imagine how intense would have been our desire to see such records. Scholars have sometimes regretted that there is no extant account of Socrates from the pen of Kebes or one of his less gifted disciples. But the importance of Socrates is absolutely infinitesimal, even in a purely historic point of Jesus gave to Himself. Nothing is more natural than the fact that it is used to describe our Lord in the Gospels only. 1 Such passages as Matt. v. 35 ; xxii. 7 ; xxiii. 2-34 ; xxiv. 2 ; (" The Holy City," "The Holy Place," "The City of the Great King " &c. ) could not have been written after the destruction of Jerusalem. The whole of Chapter xxiv. implies expectations which were indeed fulfilled, and fulfilled in the sense intended, but in a sense very different from that which was under stood by the early Christians, or anticipated by the Evangelists and Apostles. See especially xxiv. 15 ; again, such passages as xvi. 28 ; xxiii. 36, 39 ; xxiv. 34 ; xxvi. 64 ; xxvii. 8 ; xvii. 24, are certain proofs that the Gospel was written before a.d. 70. D 2 36 The Gospels. st. matthew. view, in comparison with the importance of the Christ. Had we not possessed the Gospels we should certainly have been willing to sacrifice whole libraries, nay, whole languages and literatures, in exchange for authentic details, attested by contemporary evidence, of the human life of Him " whose bleeding hand lifted the gates of the centuries off their hinges," and whose words and deeds have stirred to their inmost depths the hearts of men — yes, even of those who believe not on Him.1 But here, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, we have the very treasure which Ave should have so ardently desired. St. Mark Avas not an Apostle ; St. Luke was not an Apostle. We have reason to believe that they represent the testimonies respec tively of St. Peter and St. Paul ; but Ave do not know to what extent St. Mark Avas an eye-Avitness, and St. Luke implies that he was not personally an eye-Avitness at all. St. John, indeed, had lived in the closest intimacy Avith Jesus ; but his Gospel Avas not so much intended for a record of external facts. But in St. Matthew's Gospel we have a sketch of the life of Christ — and probably the earliest of them — by one Avho Avas perhaps the kinsman of Jesus; certainly His Apostle; certainly one of His chosen TAvelve ; certainly one of those who had lived in His nearest intimacy; — by one Avho had walked and talked Avith Him in the fields of Galilee, and on the slopes of Olivet ; one Avho had sat with Him in the syna gogue, and sailed with Him in the boat, and prayed Avith Him under the star-lit sky ; one who had seen and heard, and his hands had handled the Word of Life : — and that which he had seen and heard declares he unto us. And we must count it as a distinct blessing — a circum- 1 Tims Strauss speaks of Christ as something unique, and says "Never at any time will it be possible to rise above Him, nor to imagine any one who should even be equal with Him." Goethe calls him, " the Divine Man, the Saint, the type and model of all men." Channing says, "I believe Jesus Christ to be a more than human being." Renan says, "Between thee and God there is no longer any distinction." J. S. Mill says that there is no better rule than "so to live that Christ would approve our life." Similar testi- monips might be indefinitely multiplied. Some of tbem I have quoted in my Hulsean Lectures on The Witness of History to Christ. A Simple Narrator. 37 stance in which Ave see the Providence of God— that there st. matthew. is no trace Avhatever that St. MattheAv was naturally a highly-gifted man. The glory of his Gospel consists in the inherent glory of the divine events which it Avas his high mission to narrate. We have already seen that not an act, not a sentence, not a question of his own, is recorded in any of the Gospels. So far as we are aware, he did not possess, either before or after the Crucifixion, a particle of special, still less of preponderant, influence in the apostolic band. His call is mentioned, and after that he is in no way distinguishable from the mass of his brother-Apostles. He was present at Pentecost, and thenceforth he disappears alto gether from the pages of New Testament history. We do not know either where he lived, or Avhat he did, or Avhen or Iioav he died. For the world the significance of his life is simply concentrated in his authorship of the Gospel. His writings do not show a trace of that glorious and indefinable quality for which there cannot be found any other name than genius. For the Church it is a happy circumstance that neither he, nor Apostles ten times more gifted than he, had the ability to invent the words, so inexhaustible in their profundity, the character so divine in its poAver, which on this earth have belonged to Christ alone. On every page of St. John's Avritings we do see the marks of an individual genius, unique and indisputable. This very circumstance has led many sceptics to discredit his testimony, and depreciate the his toric value of his Gospel. They have seen in him a Avriter who had the high capacity to modify or even in some measure to originate. No such suspicion has ever attached to the Gospel of the less gifted Publican. He gives us exactly what we most needed : he could be a simple and faithful narrator, and he aims at nothing more. 5. We knoAv then who wrote the Gospel, and when ; but Avhy did he write it ? Every book worth calling a book is Avritten with an object; what is the object of the Gospel of St. MattheAv ? If the book be part of a revelation, what 38 The Gospels. st. matthew. does it reveal ? We have seen that it is infinitely valuable as a record of Christ's life and work by one who knew Him. But how does it differ from the other Gospels ? What Avas the special conception of the Evangelist ? Under what distinct aspect does he represent the Lord of Life ? 6. Even apart from unanimous tradition, we should see at a glance that he wrote mainly for his own countrymen.1 It was plainly his object — his "one literary passion" — to con nect the Law with the Gospel ; to fling an illuminated bridge of inspired truth between the Old and the New Dispensa tions ; to connect the memories of his readers with their hopes; to show that the Lord of the Christian Avas the Messiah of the Jew.2 This Gospel, as we have already seen, is the Gospel in relation to the Past; the Gospel represented as the fulfilment of the long ages of Prophecy; the Gospel designed to prove to the Hebrews, and to all the Avorld, that no chasm of discontinuity separated the NeAv Age from the days of the Fathers. It was a most noble and necessary design thus to shoAv that all Revelation was one unimpeded progress in knoAvledge and broadening of the light. This Gospel Avas the eternal Avitness against those heretical Chris tians Avho, like the Marcionites and many Gnostic sects, strove to dissever themselves wholly from the God Avho had revealed Himself of old time to patriarchs and prophets. It Avas St. Matthew's task to show that in the Old Testament the NeAv was prefigured, and. in the New Testament the Old Avas revealed. He might have used the Avords quoted by the old Carthusian monk in answer to the frivolous youth Avho asked him hoAV he had managed to get through his life, " Cogitavi 1 Tois diro 3Iovdato-[j.ov irt.OTevo-o.aLv. Orig. ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 25. The word "lawlessness" (dvop.ia) occurs four times in St. Matthew (vii. 23 ; xiii. 41 ; xxiii. 28 ; xxiv. 12), but in no other Gospel. The comparison of Mark vii. 3, 4, with Matt. xv. 1, 2, illustrates the difference between one who Avrote for Romans and one who wrote for Jews. 2 This was noticed as early as the days of Irenaeus. to Kard Mareaiov el irpos 'lovdaiovs eypdip-n outol ydp eire6v,uovv irdvv o- &c.); xiii. 33-37 (Watch !) ; xvi. 6-11 (details of the appearance of the risen Christ). Life of St. Mark. 55 scene both of the Last Supper and of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. He was a cousin of Barnabas, and therefore, was of Levitic descent,1 and as Barnabas was from Cyprus, Mark may have owed his Latin name to this circum stance.2 He was the companion of Paul and Barnabas in their first journey. Becoming the unwilling cause of the sharp dispute between them, he Avent with Barnabas to Cyprus. Afterwards we find him. in the closest and dearest intimacy with St. Peter in Eome, and completely forgiven and trusted by St. Paul also during his Eoman imprisonment. The great Apostle of the Gentiles mentions him in one Epistle Avith a kindly message, and in another specially wishes for his presence, because he was " profitable to him for ministering." 3 There is no ground for the fancy that St. Mark was the young man in the linen sheet whom he mentions in the unique and characteristic incident of the arrest at Gethsemane.4 Tradi tion says that he went to Alexandria ; founded the famous Catechetical school in that city, and there died a martyr's death.5 3. The date of his Gospel was certainly before the fall of 1 Col. iv. 10, dvtyios, not "sister's son," as in A. V. Epiphanius (Haer. li. 6) says (without probability) that St. Mark was one of the seventy disciples of Christ, and fell away from Him (John vi. 66) but was brought back by St. Peter. 2 The name was adopted (after the Jewish fashion) for use among Gentiles. It was one of the commonest Latin names, as John was one of the commonest Hebrew names. 3 1 Pet. v. 13 ; Philem. 24 ; 2 Tim. iv. 11. St. Peter uses vlis, not reKvov, but evidently the term is one of affection. 4 This precarious identification has been rendered all the more popular because it falls in with the fancy that each of the Evangelists has, as Godet expresses it, left in a corner of his picture a modest indication of his own personality ; Matthew in the Publican whom Jesus calls by a word from the receipt of toll ; Mark in the young man in the linen garment ; Luke in the companion of Cleopas on the walk to Emmaus ; John in the unnamed disciple whom Jesus loved (St. Luc. ii. 447). If the last supper was held (as is pro bable) in the house of Mary the mother of Mark, the Evangelist may have been " the man bearing a pitcher of water." To bear a pitcher of water was most unusual for a man, and this man could only have been the master of the family bringing the water for some sacred purpose. Possibly too the signal had been privately agreed on. It must be remembered that our Lord was at that time under the ban, and that there was a price upon His head. 5 Euseb. H. E. ii. 16 ; Epiphan. Haer. li. 6 ; Jer. De Virr. III. 8 ; Chrys. Hom. in Matt. ; Hicephor. ii. 43. For numerous legends and their treatment in Art, see Mrs. Jameson, i. 147-154. 56 The Gospels. st. mark. Jerusalem. It was probably published within a few years of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke. Mutual inter course and the fact that Apostolic teaching was already fixed in its general outline and expressions— can (as we have seen) alone account for the many resemblances combined with the many dissimilarities of these three Gospels. And yet, as a distinct whole, St. Mark's Gospel entirely differs from the others. Though it contains but a handful of verses, Avhich have no parallel in St. Matthew and St. Luke, it was written with a different object, it is stamped Avith a different individuality. 4. For instance, it is obvious that St. Mark wrote for a code of different readers. St. Matthew wrote for Hebrews, St. Luke for Greeks, St. Mark wrote for Eomans,1 probably in Eome. He has ten Latin words, such as legio, centurio, quadrans, flagellare, census, sextarius, speculator, praetorium^ some of Avhich are peculiar to himself. He uses several distinctly Latin idioms.3 He has feAver references to the Old Testament than the other Evangelists, and only one which is peculiar to himself ; i in other Avords his quotations are always cyclic, i.e. they belong to the narrative, not to the recorder.5 He always adds a note of explanation to Jewish words and 1 But even Romanists have given up the view of Baronius that he wrote in Latin, a statement which is found in some MSS. The Roman Christians all spoke Greek. Even Clement of Rome wrote in Greek. 2 KpaPfiaros (grabatus), which, he, alone of the Synoptists, uses five times, occurs also in John v. 8-12, Acts v. 15 : ix. 33. At the end of the Gospel the Peshito version adds: "End of the Holy Gospel of the preaching of Mark, who spoke and preached in Latin at Rome. 3 to Uavdv iroteiv, xv. 15. He also has crvp&ovXiov SiSovai, consilium dare ; eVxaras exeiv, in extremis esse — a phrase which Phrynichus says was only used by the vulgar, iipa rroXXri, vi. 35. No less than eight words Avhich St. Luke avoids are used by St. Mark, and are condemned by Phrynichus as "slang" words (KpdfS&aros, jxoviipBaXii.os, eho-xvfiwv (in the sense of rich), KoXXv/Sarrat, Kopdtrtov, SpxlCa, l>dirio-fx.a, paifiis). The last word for "needle" is used by Hippocrates, but Phrynichus reprehends it severely, and St. Luke used $eX6v-n instead (Luke xviii. 25, B. D. L.). His Greek is sometimes incorrect, orav with indicative ; 'Iva first Avith the conjunctive aud then the infinitive (iii 14, 15). 4 Mark i. 2, 3. The reference in xv. 28 is omitted in our Revised Version, as perhaps a gloss from Luke xxii. 37. B Seventeen of these quotations (out of nineteen) are from the LXX., and for the most part agree with St. Matthew almost verbally. Object of St. Mark. 57 Jewish usages.1 The word "Law" does not occur in his st. mark. pages, though it occurs eight times in St. Matthew, nine times in St. Luke, and fifteen times in John.2 Even the style seems to catch something of the energetic brevity, something of the haughty compression of the Eomans for Avhose instruc tion his Gospel was designed. 5. Then again, in addressing different readers, he wrote for a different purpose. St. Matthew desired to link the Present to the Past; to point to the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies ; to prove that Jesus was the Messiah of the Jew, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. St. Luke Avrote to connect Christianity with the advancing future; to associate the work of Jesus with Humanity; to set Him forth as the Son of Adam ; the Saviour of the World. St. John wrote to connect Christ with the Eternal ; to serve the deepest needs of the soul ; to satisfy the most yearning aspirations of the spirit. The object of St. Mark, in this concise, vigorous, vivid Gospel was more limited, though not less necessary.3 It was to manifest Jesus as He had been in the present, in daily actual life; Jesus living and working among men, in the fulness of His energy ; Jesus in the awe-inspiring grandeur of his human personality as a Man Avho was also the Incarnate, the wonder-working Son of God.4 He narrates eighteen of the Miracles, but only four of St. MattheAv's fifteen Parables, and those in briefest form. 1 See vii. 1-5, 11-18 ; vii. 3, 4 ; xii. 18 ; xiv. 12 ; xv. 42, &c. 2 St. Mark uses "the commandment" (evroX-ii) eight times (vii. 8; x. 19, &c). 3 The brevity of St. Mark's Gospel was eariy commented on, Jerome, Cat. 8. In Hippolytus (Philos. vii. 30) we find the curious epithet MdpKos 6 KoXo/ioSaKTvXos, "Mark, the stump-fingered." In later days it originated the legend that St. Mark had maimed one of his fingers to disqualify himself for the priesthood ; but it probably arose from the abridged narratives of his Gospel (see Keim, Jesu of Nazara, i. 117). 4 The first Avords of St. Mark, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," are a most fitting keynote to the whole book. "The Son of God " is here omitted by tf, but the same title is given to Christ in seven other passages of the Gospel. 58 The Gospels. Unanimous ancient tradition has connected St. Mark's Gospel Avith the eyeAvitness of St. Peter.1 It contains many special allusions to St. Peter. Whole passages look as if they only put into the third person what St. Peter had narrated to the Avriter in the first person. This Gospel displays the same con ciliatory spirit of catholicity as that which marked the great Apostle of the Circumcision. St. Peter's speech in Acts x. to the Eoman centurion — in which he describes the essence of Apostohc testimony to be "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with poAver, who went about doing good, and healing all that Avere oppressed of the devil ; for God was Avith Him " — has been called by Meyer Avith happy insight " a programme of the Gospel." " What is this ? A neAV teaching with power ! The very demons obey Him." Into these words are compressed the main features of the work of Christ as here revealed to us ; its startling; origin- ality, its authoritative tone, the astonishment inspired by its supernatural and beneficent ascendency. Such was the Day of Christ as it appeared to St. Peter and to St. Mark. 6. We cannot fail to observe how admirably this Gospel of St. Mark accords with the aim which he had in vieAv. i. First of all it is characterised by an almost impetuous activity. In St. MattheAv the element of discourse is most prominent ; in St. Mark that of action. St. MattheAv's is the didactic, St. Mark's the energetic Gospel. Nothing can be more characteristic of the fact than the Avords " immedi- 1 Some have seen an allusion to this in 2 Pet. i. 16. Papias (ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 39) calls Mark au "interpreter" (ipuvvevT-iis) of St. Peter. Justin Martyr (Dial. 106) quotes Mark iii. 17 under the title of "Memoirs (dirofivnfj.ovevp.aTa) of Peter." Irenaeus (Haer. iii. 1), Clemens. Alex. (ap. Euseb. vi. 14), TertuUian (" Marcus quod edidit evangelium Petri affimatur," c. Marcion. iv. 5), Origen, Eusebius (H. E. ii. 15) all give evidence to the same effect. St. Jerome says, "Marcum, cujus evangelium Petro nan-ante et illo scribente compositum est " (ad Heel. i. 5 : Epp. cxx. 10). Minute incidents connected with St. Peter are found in i. 29 ; ix. 5 ; xiv. 54, 72 ; xvi. 7. The remark of Eusebius (0cm. Evang. iii. 5) about Peter's silence ori matters to his own credit is founded on vii. 27-33 (compare Matt. xvi. 13-23). Mrs. Jameson (Legends of Sacred and Legendary Art, i. 149) mentions many early and beautiful representations of the Evangelist writing while Peter dictates. Vividness. 59 ately," "anon," " forthAvith," "by and by," "straightway," i " as soon as," " shortly," Avhich seven Avords in our version represent the one Greek word evdscos " immediately," a word so characteristic of the original that it occurs no less than forty-one times in these few pages, though only eight times in the much longer Gospel of St. Luke. St. Mark has no long discourses, no developed parables. He does not wear the noAving robes of St. Matthew : his dress is " for speed succinct." Swift and incisive, his narrative proceeds straight to the goal like a Eoman soldier on his march to battle.1 In reading St. Mark, carried away by his breathless narrative, we feel like the Apostles who — as he alone tAvice tells us — ¦ among the press of people coming and going, " had no leisure so much as to eat." Event after event comes upon us in his pages Avith the impetuous sequence of the waves in a rising tide. ii. Again his Gospel is marked by special vividness. It is full of charm and colour. It is brightened by touches inimitably graphic : the Evangelist is a word-painter. We have repeated details of person,2 of number, of time, of place, which often throAV on the narrative a flood of light. The spies are " scribes from Jerusalem " ; the questioners are " Peter and Andrew and James and John" ; Simon of Cyrene is " the father of Alexander and Rufus," whom the Roman Christians know. The SAvine " are in number about tAvo thousand " ; the cock croAvs " twice." The time is " a great while before day"; or "the third hour"; or "eventide." The scene is " over against the treasury " ; or " on the sea shore " ; or on the slopes of Olivet, or in the courtyard, or in the porch. The interlocutors speak and answer in the first person. The very looks and accents, and gestures of Jesus are recalled alike in His publicity and in His solitude.3 They 1 Observe the phrases "And He went out from thence" (vi. 1), "And from thence He arose" (vii. 24 ; ix. 30; x. 1, 2). Hence the Gospel has been called "inartistic, disproportioned, uncouth, a string of anecdotes," yet "full of naive simplicity and single-mindedness." 2 Bartimaeus, Boanerges. 8 i. 28, 35, 37, 45 ; ii. 1-4, 15 ; iii. 10-12 ; vi. 32, 33, &c. CO The Gospels. mark, are painted as it were from the photograph of them on St. Peter's memory. Jesus " looks round " on the worshippers. He " takes the little children in His arms," and (how mothers Avill thank St. Mark for that detail !) " lays His hand on them and blesses them." He " sits doAvn " and calls the Twelve.1 His very accents are recorded in their original Aramaic —"Boanerges" " Ephphatha," " Talitha Cumi," "Abba," " Corban." Take by way of example the description of the storm upon the lake. In St. Mark alone do we see the waves breaking over and half SAvamping the little ship. In St. Mark alone do we see Jesus in His utter weariness sleeping on the leather cushion of the steersman at the stern. Take another scene, the Feeding of the Five Thousand. St. Mark alone tells us of the fresh green grass on which they sat doAvn by hundreds and by fifties ; and, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the word Avhich he uses for "companies" means literally " flowerbeds," as though to St. Peter those multi tudes, in their festal Passover attire, Avith its many-coloured Oriental brightness of red and blue, looked like the patches of crocus and poppy and tulip and amaryllis which he had seen upon the mountain slopes.2 Again, in the narrative of the Transfiguration it is in St. Mark that Ave see most clearly the dazzling robes of the Transfigured Lord as they shed their golden lustre over Hermon's snow ; and it is St. Mark who shows us most vividly the contrast of that scene of peace and radiance with the tumult and agitation of the crowd below ; — the father's heartrending anguish at the foam ing and convulsion of the agonised demoniac boy, the trouble of the disciples, and the noble passion of the Lord. As you gaze on Raffaelle's immortal picture of the Trans- 1 Hence what are called his "pictorial participles " — "looking up," "look ing round," "springing up,' "stooping down," "speaking indignantly," " turning round," "groaning," &c— (dvafiXeifias, irept@Xeipas, irepi0Xe\lidfxevos, dvawnSrio-as, Kvipas, efxf3pip.iioafj.evos, eiricrTpaipeis, diroaTevatas, &C. See. viii. 12 ; x. 14.) For details of looks and acts see iii. 5 ; vii. 31-37 ; viii. 22-26 ; v. 41 ; xiv. 36. 2 See Life of Christ, i. 402. The remark has often since been copied. Eealistic. 01 figuration, you will see at once that it is from the narrative of St. Mark that it derives most of its intensity, its move ment, its colouring, its contrast, and its poAver.1 It is these gifts of the Evangelist which make one writer say of him that "he wears a richly embroidered garment"; 2 and another —thinking of his bright independence and originality — that in his gospel Ave breathe " a scent as of fresh flowers." 3 iii. Both the characteristics on which Ave have dwelt are important, as they tell irresistibly against all theories of the mythic origin of the Gospels. But once again— what is still more important— St. Mark's Gospel is memorable for its special presentation of the life of Christ. It is not Messianic like St. Matthew's; it is not tenderly and universally Humanitarian like St. Luke's ; it is not mystic and spiritual like St. John's : but it is essentially realistic. Apart from all theories of the future, apart from all prophecies in the past, apart from all deep subjective impressions, he represents Jesus as He lived in Galilee, at once divine and human. If St. MattheAV wrote specially for the JeAV, St. Luke for the Gentile Christian, and St. John for the theologian, St. Mark writes for the ordinary practical man. His Roman readers, in their blunt speech, and rough good sense, might have said to him, "We knoAV nothing of your Old 1 It is, perhaps, to the desire for vividness that we owe St. Mark's constant double expressions. See ii. 19 ; iii. 5, 27, &c. Thus in iii. 22 he has two phrases for " He has Beelzebub," and yet another in iii. 30. Papias speaks of his desire to omit nothing that be had heard. Such an expression as o\f/ias de yevouevifs '6re eBvoev d VjXios (i. 32) may be taken as a type of these "re duplicated phrases," and combines the words separately used by Matt. viii. 16 and Luke iv. 40. 2 " He is an author in a flower-bedecked garment. He makes the narrative more effective by the contrast between rapid progression and contemplative stillness, painting the scenery with a thousand touches, the house, the sea, the followers, the growing throng, the names of persons, the numbers of the men, and of the animals, and of the pieces of money, the greenness of the grass, the pillow in the stern of the boat on Gennesareth — all given Avith a preference for affectionate and familiar diminutives, and in the present tense." — Keim. The same picturesqueness of style is found in the Epistles of St. Peter, and in narratives which must have come from him. Compare the account of the cripple healed by St. Peter— which is full of graphic details— (Acts iii. 1-11) with the much less vivid account of the cripple healed by St. Paul (Acts xiv. 8-10). 8 Ewald. Meyer calls him malcrisch, anschaulich. 62 The Gospels. Testament : Ave have no philosophic or speculative genius ; we are not ripe for your dogmas; but tell us what Jesus was, how He looked, what He did. Set Him before us as we should have seen Him had we been centurions in Syria, or soldiers beside the Cross. Before we can believe in the Son of God, we must know something of the Son of Man He must be dissevered from JeAvish peculiarities or religious formulae. He must be ' universal as our race ; he must be individual as ourselves.' " iv. Now St. Mark meets these very needs. He shows us a Man indeed ; one who is no Docetic phantom — one who needs rest, and sleep, and food ; one who can love, and sigh, and pity, and be moved Avith anger and indignation ; but a Man heroic and mysterious, who inspires not only a passionate de votion, but also amazement and adoration ; one the very hem of whose garment heals the sick; one on whom the multitudes throng and press in their eagerness to touch Him ; one Avhom the unclean spirits no sooner see than they fall flat with the Avild cry, " Thou art the Son of God." Here, for instance, is a single touch of description from Christ's last approach to Jerusalem, found in St. Mark alone — " And they Avere on the Avay going up to Jerusalem ; and Jesus went before, and they were amazed, and they that followed were afraid." What a unique and marvellous picture ! All hope Avas noAV gone. The doom was near. Alone, with bowed head, in deep and awful silence, like the leader of some fatal enterprise, Jesus Avalked in front. But even in that supreme hour of His desolation and rejection, when He Avas excom municate, when a price was on His head, in the lowest deeps of the valley of His humiliation, on the path to His Cross of shame, He inspires not the patronage of compassion, but an awful reverence, a hushed and terrified amaze.1 No sorrov/ 1 St. Mark uses five words expressive of fear, wonder, trouble, amazement, extreme astonishment, (i. 27 ; v. 28, eBap.^-he-nca.v iravres ; ii. 12, &a-re e'lio-Tao-flo^ irdrras ; iv. 41, erpopijByo-av , fi\dirTa>, iravraxov, eiraKu\ov6eta, avvepyeat, /3e/3cuoco, irdcra kt'io-is, iieru raiira, vcrrepov, uev ovv, besides seven words which are unique, but might conceivably be due to the subject ; and two remarkable variations from St. Mark's usual construction (ev ra ovouari for em, emOeivai eiri Tiva, and eKfiaXKeiv dirb for enfiaWeiv eK). 8. We have the title " the Lord " twice ; which St. Mark never uses elsewhere.1 In verse 9 the subject (6 'i^o-oOy) is strangely omitted. 9. The use of the connecting particles in verses 19, 20 is rare in St. Mark, and the omissions of the copula in verses 10 and 14 is unusual. 10. Besides these very numerous and undeniable peculiarities thus accumulated into a few verses, the powers promised to " believers," in verses 17, 18 (handling of serpents, drinking poison, speaking with " new " tongues) are unparalleled, and suggest difficulties. 1 St. Mark invariably uses the address "Rabbi," or "Rabboni," even where "Lord " is used in the parallel passages of the Synoptists. F 2 68 The Gospels. st. mark. 11. "He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved" is an expres sion unlike any other saying of our Lord. 12. The general style has none of the features and favourite expres sions which we recognise throughout the rest of the Gospel. 13. It appeared to some readers in very ancient days to contain state ments at variance with those of the other Evangelists.1 Supposing that such a mass of surprising facts had met us in the pages of any secular writer whatever under similar circumstances, it is hard to believe that any critic would have been able to accept the genuineness of the passages. But when we turn to the external evi dence the suspicion about the authenticity of the verses is indefinitely strengthened. 1. It is wanting in two of the best and most ancient Uncials — the Sinaitic, and the Vatican MSS. 2. In other MSS., and in MSS. of Syriac and Latin versions we are told that it was omitted by many ancient copies. It is also absent from some old MSS. of the Armenian version, and from one Arabic version. 3. Eusebius, Jerome, Gregory of Nyssa (or Hesychius), and the Scholia of several MSS., say that in their day it was wanting in almost all the Greek copies of the Gospels.2 4. It seems to have been unknown to Cyril of Jerusalem (?), Tertul- lian, and Cyprian ; and is not mentioned by Clement of Eome or Clement of Alexandria. 5. A different, shorter, and unquestionably spurious ending is found in some MSS. and versions (e.g. L. and Cod. k. of the Itala, and the margin of the Philoxenian Syriac). Even if the internal evidence in its favour had been strong, the external evidence against it would have made us at least doubtful as to its authenticity. But when we find it thus deficient in external evi dence, while at the same time the internal evidence is so startlingly unfavourable, we can hardly wonder that it is rejected or questioned by such critics as Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, SchulthesSj Schulz, Ritschl, Auger, Zeller, Eritzsche, Credner, Eeuss, Wieseler, Holtzmann, Keim, Scholten, Klostermann, Hitzig, Schenkel, Ewald, Meyer, Weiss, Alford, Norton, Godet, Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort. The external arguments in its favour are, a. That it is found in most Uncials, and all Cursives (though in the latter often with an asterisk, or a note mentioning its omission in older copies) ; in most versions, and in all Greek and Syriac lectionaries, &c. 1 tci. 8e A^tjs (Mark xvi. 9-20) airaviws iv Tiaiv h,XX' ovk ev irao-i (pep6txeva irepiTTa a.v etn, Kail iidXlOTa eXirep exotev avriXoyiav Trj toov Xoiir&v eiiayyeXlo-T&v ixapTvpla. Euseb. Qu. 1, ad Marinum. " Omnibus Graeciae libris paene hoc capitulum in fine non habentibus, praesertim cum diversa atque contraria evangelistis caeteris narrare videatur." — Jer. ad Hedib. Qu. ii. 2 Greg. Nyss. Orat. de Resurrect. See the previous note. Mark xvi. 9—20. 69 It is quoted by Irenaeus, possibly by Justin Martyr, and by many of st. mark. the Fathers. (3. Internal arguments in its favour there are, so far as I can discover absolutely none, with the exception that if this passage be removed, the Gospel would end with erpofiovvro ydp. It would, indeed, be a very strange ending, though perhaps it might be paralleled. Considering the characteristic of St. Mark's style, it does not seem to be an impos sible one ; nor is it at all impossible that the original ending should have been lost. The " triple tradition " of the Synoptists, as Dr. Abbott has pointed out, ended with the return of the women from the sepul chre, and St. Mark may have scrupled to make any further addition. In these matters we must make allowance for idiosyncrasy, and cannot judge by modern ideas. Let the reader compare the phenomena presented by these verses with those found in John xxi. That too is regarded, and in all probability rightly regarded, as an appendix, but there can be no doubt that (with the possible exception of the last two verses) it proceeded from the pen of the Apostle himself. This passage of St. Mark stands on a wholly different footing. It is accepted as canonical — in other words it has been accepted by the Church as having a right to be regarded as a part of Scripture ; but the number of competent critics who still believe it to be genuine is diminishing. The passage is, hoAvever, defended, as genuine by Mill, Bengel, Schleiermacher, De Wette, Bleek, Olshausen, Lange, Ebrard, Hilgenfeld, Scrivener, WordsAVorth, McLellan, Cook, Morrison, and Burgon. All who desire further evidence may seek it in the second volume of West cott and Hort's Revised Greek Text, pp. 38, sqq. ; and will find every thing which can be said in its favour in Dean Burgon's monograph on the subject (Oxford and London, 334 pp.). Having read both sides on the controversy they will be able to estimate the value of Dean Burgon's remark that, " not a particle of doubt, not an atom of suspicion, attaches to the last twelve verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark." THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. " Utilis ille labor, per quem vixere tot aegri ; Utilior, per quem tot didicere mori." " He was a physician : and so, to all, his words are medicines of the drooping soul." — S. Jer. Ep. ad Paulin. " Vidi due vecchi in abito dispari Ma pari in atto, ognuno onesto e sodo, L'un si monstrava alcun de famigliari Di quel sommo Ipoerate, che natura Agli animali fe' ch' ella ha pin cari." Dante, Purg. xxix. "Whose joy is, to the wandering sheep To tall of the great Shepherd's love ; To learn of mourners while they weep The music that makes mirth above ; Who makes the Gospel all his theme, The Gospel all his pride and praise." Keble, St. Luke's Day. " Thou hast an ear for angel songs, A breath the Gospel trump to fill, And taught by thee the Church prolongs Her hymns of high thanksgiving still." — Keble. " A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."— Luke ii. 11. I CHOOSE these words as being perhaps the most charac teristic which I could find to describe the idea which pervades the Gospel of St. Luke. About the Evangelist himself we know but little. Apart from guesses and traditions, our information respecting him is exceedingly scanty. He does not mention himself by name in the Gospel or in the Acts of the Apostles, though the unanimous voice of St. Luke. 71 ancient tradition, coinciding as it does Avith many probabilities derived from other sources, can leave no doubt that he was the author of those books. There are but three places in Scripture in which his name is mentioned. These are Col. iv. 14, "Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you;" 2 Tim. iv. 11, "Only Luke is with me ; " and Philem. 24, where he is mentioned as one of Paul's " fellow-labourers." From these we see that St. Luke was the faithful companion of St. Paul, both in his first Eoman imprisonment, Avhen he still had friends about him, and in his second Eoman imprisonment, when friend after friend deserted him, and was " ashamed of his chain." From the context of the first allusion we also learn that he Avas "not of the circumcision." Tradition has always declared that he was a Gentile, and a " proselyte of the gate." i The attempt to identify him with " Lucius of Cyrene " in Acts xiii. 1 is an error, since his name Lucas is an abbrevi ation not of Lucius but of Lucanus, as Annas for Ananus, Zenas for Zenodorus, Apollos for Apollonius, &c. The guess that he was one of the Seventy disciples is refuted by his OAvn words, nor is there any probability that he was one of the Greeks who desired to see Jesus (John xii. 20) or one of the two disciples at Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 13). 2 Eusebius and Jerome say that he was a Syrian of Antioch, and this agrees with the intimate knowledge which he shows about the condition and the teachers of that Church.8 If in Acts xi. 28 we could accept the isolated reading of the Codex Bezae (a reading known also to St. Augustine), which there adds 1 Acts i. 19. 2 He implies (Luke i. 1) that he was not an eye-witness. 8 He speaks of "Nicolas of Antioch" in Acts vi. 5, without mentioning the native place of any other of the six deacons. Mr. Smith of Jordanhill, in his dissertation on St. Luke, points out the interesting parallel that of eight accounts of the Russian campaign, only the two Scotch authors (Scott and Alison) mention that General Barclay de Tolly was of Scotch extraction. Schaff. Hist, of Christian Church, p. 651. Some of St. Luke's special infor mation about the Herods may have been derived from Manaen, the foster brother of Antipas of Antioch, Acts xiii. 1. 72 The Gospels. a-vvea-Tpafifj-ivav Be ^fioov, "but while we were assembled together," it would prove that St. Luke had been acquainted Avith the Apostle shortly after his arrival from Tarsus to assist the work of Barnabas. In that case he may well have been one of the earliest Gentile converts 1 whom St. Paul ad mitted into full rights of Christian brotherhood, and with Avhom St. Peter was afterwards, for one weak moment, ashamed to eat. We cannot, however, trace his connection with St. Paul with any certainty till the sudden appearance of the first personal pronoun (in the plural) in Acts xvi. 10, from which we infer that he joined the Apostle at Troas, and accompanied him to Macedonia, becoming thereby one of the earliest Evangelists in Europe. It is no unreasonable con jecture that his companionship was the more necessary because St. Paul had been recently suffering from an acute visitation of the malady Avhich he calls " the stake, or cross, in the flesh." Since the " we " is replaced by " they " after the departure of Paul and Silas from Philippi (Acts xvii. 1), we infer that St. Luke Avas left at that town in charge of the infant Macedonian Church. A physician could find means of livelihood anywhere, and Luke seems to have stayed at Philippi for about seven years, for we find him in that Eoman colony when the Apostle spent an Easter there on his last visit to Jerusalem (Acts xx. 5). There is, however, every reason to believe that during this period he was not idle, for if he were "the brother, whose praise is in the Gospel" (i.e. in preaching the good tidings) "throughout all the churches" (2 Cor. viii. 18), we find him acting with Titus as one of the delegates for the collection and custody of the contributions for the poor saints at Jerusalem. The identifi cation of St. Luke Avith this " brother " no doubt originated in a mistaken notion that " the Gospel " here means the Avritten Gospel ; 2 but it is probable on other grounds, and is supported by the tradition embodied in the superscription, 1 In Col. iv. 11, 14, he is distinguished from "those of the circumcision." 11 Jer. De Virr. ill. 7. Life of St. Luke. 73 which tells us that the Second Epistle to the Corinthians was conveyed from Philippi by Titus and Luke. From Philippi St. Luke accompanied his friend and teacher to Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 15 — 18), and there we again lose all record of his movements. Since, however, he was with St. Paul at Caesarea when the Apostle was sent as a prisoner to Eome, it is probable that he was the constant companion of his imprisonment in that town. If the great design of writing the Gospel was already in his mind, the long and otherwise unoccupied stay of two years in Caesarea would not only give him ample leisure, but would also furnish him with easy access to those sources of information which he tells us he so diligently used. It would further enable him to glean some particulars of the ministry of Jesus from sur vivors amid the actual scenes where He had lived.1 From Caesarea he accompanied St. Paul in the disastrous voyage which ended in shipwreck at Malta, and proceeding with him to Eome he remained by his side until his liberation, and probably never left him until the great Apostle received his martyr's croAvn. To him — to his allegiance, his ability, and his accurate preservation of facts — we are indebted for the greater part of what we know about the life of the Apostle of the Gentiles. We finally lose sight of St. Luke at the abrupt close of the Acts of the Apostles. Although we learn from the Pastoral Epistles 2 that he must have lived with St. Paul for two years beyond the point Avhich his narrative has there reached, he may not have arranged his book until after Paul was dead, 1 But although he may have been gathering materials for his Gospel at Caesarea (A.D. 54) there is good reason to believe that it was not published till a later date. The general tone of the Gospel — e.g. the use of abr 6s and v. 3 The word Ebionite is derived from the Hebrew Ebion, "poor." The Ebionites were Jewish Christians who maintained the eternal validity of the Jewish law, and the Messiahship but not the Divinity of Christ. They gradually dwindled into a sect on the shores of the Dead Sea. On the imaginary relation of St. Luke to the Gcspel of the Hebrews, see Keim i. 104. The Gospel of the Poor. 83 supper ; he alone the warning not to choose chief seats, and of the humble exalted ; he alone the counsel to the Pharisees to "give alms"; and to the disciples to "sell what they have : " and the advice of St. John the Baptist to part with one of two coats.1 It is not by any means that he reprobates the mere possession of riches. He recognises the faithfulness of a Nicodemus and a Joseph of Arimathaea ; but he saAv the special necessity, in such days as those, to admonish the rich men Avho were grasping and oppressive and illiberal. Like St. James, he felt it to be his duty to warn all who were tempted, as the rich in all ages are tempted, to trust in un certain riches, instead of being " rich towards God." It is not that he holds poverty in itself to be a beatitude, but only that kind of poverty Avhich is " not voluntary nor proud, but only accepted and submissive ; not clear-sighted nor tri umphant, but subdued and patient — partly patient in tender ness of God's will, partly patient in blindness of man's op pression — too laborious to be thoughtful, too innocent to be conscious, too long-experienced in soitoav to be hopeful ; waiting in its peaceful darkness for the unconceived dawn, yet not without its SAveet, complete, untainted happiness, like intermittent notes of birds before the daybreak, or the first gleams of heaven's amber in the eastern grey." Which is there of us all who does not need this lesson ? " Who is there almost," as Milton asks, "who measures wisdom by simplicity, strength by suffering, dignity by lowliness ? " And if we need that this lesson should be brought home to us, where can we find it more tenderly and more affectionately expressed than in St. Luke ? VI. But, more than this, St. Luke's Gospel is the Gospel not only of children and of the Gentiles, and of the humble and the despised, of the blind, the lame, the halt, the maimed, but even of the publican and the harlot, the prodi gal and the outcast ; not only of Mary, but of the Magdalene ; 1 See iii. 10, 11 ; x. 38-42 ; xiv. 12-24 ; xvi. 14-31. We find in the Acts the same fondness for the Gospel of self-denial. G 2 84 The Gospels. st. luke. not only of Zacchaeus, but of the dying thief. There are tAvo conditions of human life ; — the one is pompous, critical, in dependent, self-satisfied. It is represented in the world by the airs of little, brief authority, and in the Church by the boastful tone, the censorious arrogance, the broad phylactery. It is human life as seen in the rich and haughty Pharisee of to-day, no less than it was seen 2,000 years ago ; — the life and bearing of the person who has succeeded in trade, or made a good marriage, or of whom people are afraid ; of the man who " holds his head high, and cares for no man, he." And there is quite the other side of human life; — the condition of the depressed, the poor, the unprosperous ; of the man avIio has not made a success of life, as men count success ; of the Aveak, who feel themselves Aveak. It is the life of failure which recognises itself as failure, for which no hope dawns on this side the grave. Or, much sadder even than this ! There is the humanity that is conscious of its shame : crushed by its evil, accepting as its due the contempt poured upon it ; not turning like even the trampled worm ; which knows that it has squandered all, and made of health a ship wreck, and of character a byAvord, and of all life a blank mistake. How pitiless is the Avorld to these ! How it exults over a man that has once slipped ! Hoav it rakes out of his past years his buried faults ! How it evokes from the un- forgetting tomb the pale ghosts of his past delinquencies ! The lessons of this Gospel should make us blush if ever Ave are eager to point the first finger, or to fling the first stone. To delight in blame, to revel in depreciation, is the charac teristic of the very basest of mankind. And are we more sinless than the sinless One ? more indignant at Avrong than He ? Yet, while He had plain thunderings and light nings for impenitent Pharisaism and triumphant wickedness, how did He treat the sinful who kneAv that they were sinful, and the fallen who did not deny their fall ? Now it is a tax-gatherer of bad reputation, and He says, " He also is a son of Abraham." Noav it is a gay young fool, who has The Gospel of Sinners. 85 devoured his living with harlots, and comes all ragged and degraded from the far land and the feeding sAvine ; and while he is yet a great way off, his father has compassion on him, and falls on his neck and kisses him. Now it is a broken- down woman who has touched Him, and He tenderly shields her shrinking anguish from the scorn of the unsympathising crowd. Now it is a coarse bandit, dying in agony upon the cross, and He says, " To-day shalt thou be with Me in Para dise." Noav it is a miserable castaAvay, her soul full of seven devils, Avho steals behind Him to kiss His feet as she weeps amid her tangled hair ; and, while the proud, hard Pharisee scoffs, and comments, and sneers, He says, " Simon, seest thou this woman ? I came into thy house ; thou gavest Me no water for My feet, but she hath wetted My feet with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest Me no kiss ; but this woman, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss My feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint; but this woman hath anointed My feet with ointment. Wherefore, I say unto thee, her sins which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved much. And He said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven." VII. Lastly, this divine and gracious universality of tender ness is extended — which seems among Christians to be the hardest thing of all — even to those who differ from us in religious opinions. St. Luke's is pre-eminently the Gospel of tolerance.1 Even against the Jews he does not breathe a single harsh syllable. It shows how deeply he has grasped the truth that Christ hath " other sheep which are not of this fold," though they all form the one flock. St. Luke may teach us the deeply-needed lesson that all religious rancour — Avhether it call itself Protestant or Catholic, Evan gelical or Eitualist — is not religious but irreligious; not Christian, but un-Christian and anti-Christian. Hear what Christ says. The Samaritans were held by the Jews to be 1 " On ne fut jamais moins sectaire. Tout y re'vele un esprit large et doux. " — Renan, Les Evangiles, p. 282. 86 The Gospels. st. luke. deadly heretics, and Jesus Himself told them that they " Avorshipped that which they kneAV not:"1 — yet how does He commend the gratitude of the Samaritan leper ! How does He choose as His type of love to our neighbour, not the indifferent priest, or the peering Levite, but the Good Samaritan ! " Let us call down fire from heaven as Elijah did," cry the religious controversialists of all times ; and to all times comes the meek rebuke of the Saviour, " Ye know not, ye, what manner of spirit ye are of ; 2 for the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." " We forbad him, because he followeth not us ; " so have the champions of party dogmatism fiercely exclaimed, age after age, hampering aud hindering many a grand discovery of science and many a holy work of good ; to whom comes across the centuries, the mild, healing word of the tolerance of Jesus, " Forbid him not ; for he that is not against us, is for us." VIII. Such, then, is the Gospel of St. Luke ; — the Gospel of the Greek and of the future ; of catholicity of mind ; the Gospel of hymns and of prayers ; the Gospel of the Saviour ; the Gospel of the universality and gratuitousness of salva tion ; the Gospel of holy toleration ; the Gospel of those Avhom the religious world regards as heretics ; the Gospel of the publican, and the outcast, and the humble poor, and the weeping Magdalene, and the crucified malefactor ; the Gospel of the lost piece of money and the lost sheep ; the Gospel of the good Samaritan and of the prodigal son ; 8 the Gospel of the saintly life, of pity, of forgiveness obtained by faith, of pardon for all the world ; the Gospel of grace and of the glad tidings of free salvation ; the Gospel of Him who was, as we all are, the Son of Adam, and who died that we all 1 John iv. 22 2 Luke ix. 55, oix olSare vueis. " It is remarkable that St. Matthew's formula for parables is " The kingdom of Heaven is likened unto." That of St. Luke is more " human and humane " viz., "A certain man," " A certain rich man," &c. See x. 30 ; xiv. 16 ; xv. 11 ; xvi. 1, 19; xviii. 2 ; xix. 12. Beauty of the Gospel. 87 might be the sons of God. Such are its lessons.1 Have not some of us very much misread and mistaken them ? Has the best Christian among us all done more than just begin to spell out their meaning ? 1 " Das Evangelium desMensehensohnes, der Humanitat Christi, derVerklarung aller Humanitat," Lange, Bibelkunde, p. 187 ; "Le son pur et clair d'une ame tout argentine," Renan. The word xa?a, occurs in this Gospel no less than eight times (Luke i. 14 ; ii. 10 ; viii. 13 ; x. 17 ; xv. 7, 10 ; xxiv. 41, 51). Such termsas eXeos, iritTTis, SiKaioo-vvif, irvevpa ayiov, yvwais, &c, are common to St. Luke and St. Paul. 88 The Gospels. NOTE I. FURTHER CHARACTERISATION OF ST. LUKE. Besides the ten characteristics of St. Luke's Gospel which Ave have pointed out, we may notice further that St. Luke's Gospel is differen tiated by (xi.) Its careful chronological order (1—3). The bias of St. Luke is historical, as that of St. Matthew is theological. " Luke is like a botanist who delights to study each flower in the very spot where it has sprung up, and amidst its native surroundings. Matthew resembles the gardener who is culling splendid bouquets for some special purpose Avhich he has in A'iew." — Godet, New Test. Studies, p. 16. (xii) Its very important preface. This preface tells us that St. Luke had read previous " attempts " to write Gospels, and deeming them in adequate, had used all diligence to secure completeness (irtia-w), accuracy (aKpi^ios),1 chronological order (KaBegrjs), and earlier commencement (uvcnBev). (xiii.) Its command of the Greek language.2 (xiv.) The prominence given to the antithesis between light and dark ness, forgiveness and non-forgiveness, God and Satan (iv. 13 ; viii. 12 ; x. 17-20; xiii. 10-17 ; xxii. 3, 31-34). (xv.) The familiarity ivith the LXX. (imf3ak\ov, ema-iTio-fibs, v-^-urros, erTiypir], dvnfiak'heiv, evderos, isepia-naaBai, hoyf), \voirekei, &C.) and the Apocrypha (see xii. 19 ; xviii. 8 ; vi. 35 ; i. 42). (xvi.) The numerical concinnity Avhich marks the arrangement of the sections. In the sections and sub-sections Ave find a constant recurrence of the sacred numbers 3 and 7. Although there is an Hebraic tinge in the hymns and speeches which St. Luke merely records, and in narratives where he is folloAving an earlier or Aramaic document, his OAvn proper style abounds in isolated phrases and Avords chiefly classical,2 and his style is more floAving than 1 " Lucam tradunt veteres. . . magis Graecas literas scisse quam Hebraeas. Unde et sermo ejus. . . . comptior est, et snecularem redolet eloquentiam." — Jer. ad Damas. Ep. 20. Where the style is less pure, and abounds in Hebra isms, we find internal evidence that St. Luke is closely following some Aramaic document in which the oral tradition had been reduced to Avriting. The preface shows in Avhat a perfect Greek style he could have written. 2 Instances are— vo/j.iko\ for ypa/jpiaTeis, e-nia-Tdrns for VafiPl, xl/xvii for BiXava-a. Sirreic Xvxvov or irvp for Kaleiv, irapaXeXvfievos for irapaXvTiit6s, KXtvv for Kpo.pPa.Tos, -iropevo/.iai for inrdyu, (except in one or two places), the particles Further Characteristics. 89 that of St. MattheAV and St. Mark. His peculiar skill as a writer lies rather in "psychologic comments,"1 and the reproduction of conversations with their incidents, than in such graphic and vivid touches as those of St. Mark. He is also a great master of light and shade, i.e. he shows re markable skill in the presentation of profoundly instructive personal contrasts — e.g. Zacharias and Mary ; Simon and the Sinful Woman ; Martha and Mary ; the Pharisee and the Publican ; the Good Samaritan, Priest, and Levite ; Dives and Lazarus ; beatitudes and Avoes ; tears and Hosannas ; and the penitent and impenitent robber.2 It is the presence of these characteristics that has earned for this Gospel the praise (already mentioned) of being " the most beautiful book that has ever been Avritten." 3 p.ev ovv and re, the combination at/Vis i, the more frequent use of the optative, to eipif/ievov for to jnfBev, &c. He avoids the Latinism KoSpdvnis, and the word " metamorphosis" (pieTeuopipiiB-n) which the Greeks might have misunder stood (ix. 29). He uses 'lepoa6xvpia only three times, but 'UpovcraX^ix twenty-six times. A long list may be found in Dr. Davidson's Introd. lo the New Test. ii. 57-67, and in Dr. Abbott's article "Gospels" in the Encycl. Britannica. In some instances St. Luke corrects an awkward phrase found in the other Synoptists, e.g. by using epiXoivrmv for BeX6vrav do~!rao-fj.ovs (xx. 46) ; by the addition of Taoad/ievos after vir e^ovo-lav (vii. 8) ; by saying ireireio-fjevos iaTiv 'ludv-nv irpoqj-fiTnv elKai (xx. 6) for ixovai tov '\advv-nv iis irpotpi\T-nv ; by substituting oi KaretrBiovoi (xx. 47) for oi KaTeo-Bovres; by using irevixpa (xxi. 2) for irrax-h (except when quoting Christ's words), and vaTep-ffuaTos for the less accurate io-Tep-fio-eas (xxi. 4). For other instances of St. Luke's editorial changes see iv. 40 ; vii. 25 ; viii. 1 ; xi. 13, 36, 39, 49, 51, xii. 51, 55. Expressions of St. Mark which might have been cavilled at (e.g. "He was not able," Mark vi. 5 ; "to lay hands on Him," iii. 21) were omitted, or softened ; see the tentative miracle (Mark viii. 24). 1 iii. 15 ; vi. 11 ; vii. 29, 30, 39 ; xvi. 14, &e. Bishop Ellicott, Hist. Led. p. 28. 2 Satan is mentioned six times ; only three times in St. Matthew and once in St. John. It is a curious circumstance, showing the common use made by the Synoptists of a fixed oral tradition that they only use Sal/j.uv in the Gadarene narrative (Matt. viii. 31 ; Mark v. 12 ; Luke viii. 29) ; but $cup6i>u>v forty-five times. It is much to be regretted that our revisers^ did not keep up the marked distinction between haunting " demons " and " devils." "Devils" occurs many times in our Bibles, but not once in the New Testa ment, except in the sense of "slanderers" (2 Tim. iii. 3 ; Tit. ii. 3) ; and "Devil" is only used by St. Paul in Eph. iv. 27 ; vi. 11 ; 1 Tim. iii. 6 ; 2 Tim. ii. 26. . . 3 This praise is the more striking because of the source from which it comes. The Avri ter adds that it shows " un admirable sentiment populaire, une fine et touchante poesie." " C'est surtout dans les recits de TEnfance et de la Passion que Ton trouve un art divin. . . Le parti qu'il a tire de Marthe et de Marie sa soeur est chose merveilleuse ; aucnne plume n'a laisse' tomber dix li<*nes plus charmantes. LVpisode des disciples d'Emmaus est un des recits°les plus fins, les plus nuances qu'il y ait dans aucune langue."_ "Son livre est un beau recit bien suivi, a la fois hdbraique et hellenique, joignant l'emotion du drame a la se"renite de l'idylle. Tout y rit, tout y pleure, tout y chante ; partout les larmes et les cantiques ; c'est l'hynme du peuple nouveau, l'Hosanna des petits et des humbles introduits dans le royaume de Dieu." — Renan. 90 The Gospels. st. luke. The Miracles peculiar to St. Luke are — 1. The miraculous draught of fishes, v. 4-11. 2. The raising of the Avidow's son at Nain. vii. 11-18. 3. The woman Avith the spirit of infirmity, xiii. 11-17. 4. The man with the dropsy, xiv. 1-6. 5. The ten lepers, xvii. 11-19. 6. The healing of Malchus. xxii. 50, 51. The Parables peculiar to St. Luke are — 1. The two debtors, vii. 41-43. 2. The good Samaritan, x. 25-37. 3. The importunate friend, xi. 5-8. 4. The rich fool. xii. 16-21. 5. The barren fig-tree. xiii. 6-9. 6. The lost piece of silver, xv. 8-10. 7. The prodigal son. xv. 11-32. 8. The unjust steAvard. xvi. 1-13. 9. Dives and Lazarus, xvi. 19-31. 10. The unjust judge, xviii. 1-8. 11. The Pharisee and the publican, xviii. 10-14. The two first chapters and the great section, ix. 51 — xviii. 14, are mainly peculiar to St. Luke. This section, descriptive of the inci dents in the Journey of Christ, has sometimes, but inadequately, been called " the Gnomology " or collection of moral teaching. No place is mentioned by name (ix. 52 ; a. 38 ; xi. 1 — xvii. 12). Besides the "greater insertion" there is a lesser insertion (vii. 11 — viii. 3). And in addition to those already noted above, other remarkable inci dents or utterances peculiar to him are John the Baptist's answers to the people (iii. 10-14) ; the weeping over Jerusalem (xix. 41-44) ; the conversation with Moses and Elias (ix. 28-36) ; the bloody sweat (xxii. 44) ; the sending of Jesus to Herod (xxiii. 7-12) ; the ad dress to the Daughters of Jerusalem (27-31) ; the prayer, " Father, for give them " (xxiii. 34) ; the penitent robber (40-43) ; 'the disciples at Emmaus (xxiv. 13-31) ; particulars of the Ascension (xxiv. 50-53). Additional touches which are sometimes of great importance may be found in iii. 22 (" in a bodily shape "), iv. 13, (" for a season "), i v. 1-6 ; v. 17, 29, 39 ; Ad. 11 ; vii. 21, &c. As Jestis was " born under the Law," the Law is more often men tioned in Chap. ii. (vv. 22, 23, 24, 27, 29) than in the rest of the Gospel. The Gospel of Marcion. 91 NOTE II. THE GOSPEL OF MARCION. Marcion (about a.d. 140) not only knew the Gospel of St. Luke, but adopted it as the basis of his OAvn Gospel with such mutilations as suited his peculiar opinions. This fact is not only asserted by Irenaeus, TertuUian, Epiphanius, &c, but may now be regarded as conclusively proved, and accepted by modern criticism. Marcion omitted chapters i. ii. and joined iii. 1 with iv. 31. His Gospel, in fact, was a Gospel, " Avritten a priori." Marcion, the son of a bishop of Sinope, was expelled from that city by his father, went to Borne about a.d. 143, and becoming an adherent of the Syrian heretic Cerdo, founded a formidable schism. There were in his system Gnostic elements of dualism and docetism. He wrote a book called Antitheses to contrast the teachings of the Old and NeAv Testaments, and his total rejection of the Old Testament necessitated his rejection of a large part of the New which bears Avitness to the Old. Consequently he only accepted the authority of ten Epistles of St. Paul (discarding the Pastoral Epistles) and of a mutilated gospel of St. Luke, in Avhich about 122 verses were excinded. Our knowledge of Marcion's gospel is chiefly derived from TertuUian (Adv. Marcionem) and Epiphanius (Haer. 42). Volkmar (Das Evang. Marcion) demonstrated that Baur and Ritschl were mistaken in supposing that Marcion's gospel represented an earlier form of St. Luke's. He proves that it was merely a copy with a few dubious readings (e.g. in x. 22 ; xi. 2 ; xvi. 17 ; xvii. 2 ; xviii. 19 ; xx. 2, &c), and arbitrary omissions of all that tended to overthrow Marcion's special heresies. On this subject see Canon West- cott's Introd. to the Gospels, Appendix D, iv. pp. 441-443, Canon of the New Test. pp. 312-315 ; Sanday, Gospels in the Second Century, c. viii., and Fortnightly Rev. June, 1875. For a reproduction of Marcion's Gospel see Thilo. Cod. Apocr. i. 401. The strangest omission by Marcion is that of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. As regards the readings, modern opinion inclines to the view that some at least of these may be worthy of consideration, especially as they often affect no doctrine or point of importance. 92 The Gospels. NOTE III. ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. st. luke. The general outline of St. Luke's Gospel is as follows : 1. Introduction, i. 1-4. 2. The Preparation for the Nativity, i. 5-80. 3. The Nativity, ii. 1-20. 4. The Infancy, ii. 21-38. 5. The Boyhood, ii. 30-52. 6. The Manifestation, iii. 1-iv. 13. 7. Early Ministry, iv. 14-vii. 50. 8. Later Ministry in Galilee and its neighbourhood, viii. 9. Close of Galilean Ministry and Journey northwards, ix. 1-50. 10. Incidents and Teachings of the Journey to Jerusalem, ix. 51- xviii. 14. 11. Incidents and Teachings of the last stages of the Journey, xviii. 14-xix. 46. 12. Closing Scenes and Death, xix. 47-xxiii. 49. 13. The Burial and Resurrection, xxiii. 50-xxiv. 49. 14. The Ascension, xxiv. 50-53. The keynote of the Gospel is struck in i. 77, " To give knowledge of salvation unto His people in ihe remission of their sins." Compare the first public declaration of Jesus Himself : " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor," iv. 18, 19. And His last declaration, " Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead ; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name unto all the nations beginning from Jerusalem." xxiv. 47. NOTE IV. THE MURATORIAN FRAGMENT ON LUKE. The allusion to St. Luke at the beginning of the Muratorian fragment in as follows "Tertio Evangelii libram secando Lucan Lucas iste medicus post acensum Xpi cum eo Paulus quasi ut juris studiosum The Muratorian Fragment on Luke. 93 secundum adsumsisset immeni suo ex opinione concriset dmn tamen nee ipse dvidit in carne et ide pro asequi potuit ita et ad nativitate iohannis incipet dicere." Corrected from the gross blunders of an ignorant scribe, and conjecturally emended, this seems to mean " the third Book of the Gospel according to Luke. This Luke, a physician, after the ascension of Christ when Paul had chosen him as a companion of his journey wrote in his own name as he heard (ex opinione eg amorfs, or possibly Kara to hot;av, Luke i. 3.) Yet neither did he himself see the Lord in the flesh, and he too did as he best could (?) so he began his narrative even from the birth of John." THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. WRITTEN PROBABLY AT EPHESUS ABOUT A.D. 90. " Sed Joannes ala binS Caritatis, aquilina Forma, fertur in divina Puriori lumine." Adam de Sto. Victouk "Sumtis pennis aquilae et ad altiora festinans de Verbo Dei disputat." — Jek. Prol. in Malt. "Aquila ipse est Johannes sublimium praedicator et lucis internae atque aeternae fixis oeulis contemplator." — Aug. in Joh. Tr. 36. " St. John revealed to the world in his three works the threefold picture of the life in God :— in the Person of Christ (the Gospel), in the Christian (the Epistle), and in the Church (the Apocalypse). He anticipated more perfectly than any other the festival of eternal life." — Godet. " And the "Word became flesh." — John i. 14. Every one who knows anything whatever of Biblical studies is aware that of late years there have been many formidable attacks on the authenticity of the fourth Gospel. Happily it does not belong to my present object to enter into the interminable controversies which have arisen around that question.1 It has of course been my duty to 1 The discussion began with Evanson's Dissonance of the Evangelists in 1792. It was continued by Vogel, Bretschneider(1820), Strauss (1835), Weisse (1838), Bruno Bauer (1840), F. C. Baur (1844), and since that time by a host of writers, especially Zeller, Schwegler, Volkmar, Keim, and Hilgenfeld. The latter tried " to throw light by the torch of Gnosticism on the sanctuary of Johannine theology," and was followed by Reville, D'Eichthal, and others. The position recently adopted by Keim, Scholten, &c, is that St. John was never in Asia at all ; but this view has been amply refuted. An excellent Genuineness of the Gospel. 95 study all that can be urged against the Gospel by the ablest followers of Baur, and by those Avho in this particular have accepted their conclusions ; but neither in Baur, nor Strauss, nor Hilgenfeld, nor Reuss, nor Keim, nor any other of the able critics Avho have persuaded themselves that the Gospel Avas the work of a Gnosticising dreamer in the second century, have I met with any argument that does not seem to me to have been fully and fairly answered. So long as the arguments of such writers as Ewald, Luthardt, and Weiss, in Germany ; Godet in France ; Bishop Lightfoot, Dr. Westcott, and Dr. Sanday in England remain unrefuted, we may still hold to the conviction that we have before us in this Gospel a genuine work of the beloved disciple. Dr. Westcott especially, in his invaluable commentary, has proved in a most decisive manner that the writer was a JeAV ; a JeAV of Palestine ; an eyeAvitness ; an Apostle : and when this is established the in ference becomes irresistible that he Avas the Apostle John. The direct evidence, the indirect evidence, the external evidence, the internal evidence, all combine, and severally suffice, not indeed to clear the subject from difficulties, many of Avhich are inevitable and must remain insoluble, but to prove that the hypothesis of spuriousness is encompassed Avith diffi culties far more formidable. No one has ever doubted the sketch of the controversy is given by Holtzmann (in Bunsen's Bibclwcrk), Reuss (Gesch. d. heil. Schrifts i. 2 and 7), and by Godet in his St. John (Introd. c. ii). John the Presbyter — a soit of "spectral duplicate" of the Apostle, who, as has been shown elsewhere (by Zahn, Riggenbacn, and Professor Milligan, and in my Early Days of Christianity, ii. ad fin.) is none other than the Apostle himself — has been evoked as the author. The reader will find powerful defences of the genuineness of the Gospel in the editions of the Gospel by Liicke, Meyer, Hengstenberg, Ewald, Luthardt, Lange, Godet, Westcott, and in Bishop Lightfoot (Contcmp. Rev. February, 1876) ; in Dr. Sanday's Fourth Gospel ; in Weiss's Leben Jesu ; and in Dr. Ezra Abbott's Authorship of the Fourth Gospel. The Johannine literature in this century alone would fill a library ; but the objections urged against the genuineness of the Gospel have been met point by point, and nothing can invalidate the mass of external and internal evidence in its favour from early, varied, and unanimous testimony ; from the proof that \w the second century it was not only widely known, but various readings had already risen in the text ; from the style, the knowledge of Palestine, the depth of insight displayed, the many subtle indications that we are reading the words of an eye-witness ; and from multitudes of conspiring probabilities derived from the most opposite quarters. 96 The Gospels. depth and the beauty of this Gospel. No one can reasonably doubt that it was written by the author of the First Epistle. If St. John did not write it, it was written by one whose spiritual insight it would be hardly possible to exaggerate Where, whether within the Apostolic circle or outside of it, is such a writer to be found unless we find him in St. John ? Above all, where are we to look for such a writer in the second century 1 The extant Christian literature of that century is before us. Except to those who have studied the writings or fragments of Clemens Romanus, the pseudo-Bar nabas, Papias, Hegesippus, Hermas, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, and other Avriters,1 it Avould be impossible to convey a conception of the immeasurable inferiority by which they are separated from the Gospel of St. John. In that litera ture there is scarcely a gleam of the exalted genius, of the profound thought, of the indescribable charm which in all ages has won the homage of mankind to this Gospel ; and which, even in this age, has extorted the often un willing eulogies of sceptical critics.2 To Avhich of the second century Avritings would Luther have applied the glowing language which he uses of the Fourth Gospel ? Which of tbe Fathers Avas even remotely capable of giving forth Avhat Herder beautifully calls " this echo of the older Gospels in the upper choirs ? " Keim is one of the most devout, and learned of the assailants of this Gospel, yet when he tries to meet this argument his embarrass ment becomes almost ludicrous. He does not attempt to face it except in one brief note, and all that he has to say is that there is in the literature of the second century " one pearl " in the Epistle to Diognetus, and " much that is fine in the Apologists," and " even on Roman soil there are Minucius Felix with the splendid scenery of his beautiful dialogue, and the clever and beautiful composition in the Clementine Homilies." If this is all that can be said by a 1 To these must now be added the newly-discovered and very important AlSax^J r®v ScoOeKa 'Atoo-t6Xcov. 2 Almost the sole exception is John Stuart Mill (Three Essays, p. 253). Genuineness qf the Gospel. 97 writer like Keim in answer to such an objection, we can only say cadit qtiaestio. Who can forbear a smile when he hears of Justin Martyr, or Minucius Felix Avith his pretentious prettinesses, or even the anonymous Avriter of the extravagantly estimated Epistle to Diognetus, spoken of as even remotely comparable to St. John ? The forgery — I avouM use the word in its least invidious sense, and only because there is no other — of this Gospel in the second century would involve a literary problem indefinitely more difficult than Avould the appearance of Dante's Divine Comedy or Milton's Paradise Lost in the days of Walafrid Strabo or Alcuin. If, in the middle of the second century there had been any man who could have produced such a book, is it conceivable that one who towered so immeasurably above all his contemporaries should have remained a nameless forger — unnoticed and unknown ? Further, supposing that such a person could haA^e existed, Avould he Avith such beliefs as this Gospel indicates have dared or wished to palm upon the world an audacious fiction respecting the Divine Word ? If the Fourth Gospel be the work of a falsarius, then the discourses which centuries of saints have regarded as the divinest parts of their Lord's teaching were the Avork of a pseudonymous romancer, who wrote with the deliberate intention to deceive. What could be more base than his solemn asseverations — which would in that case be not only shameless, but little short of blasphemous falsehoods — that he is a truthful wit ness ? Renan, with skilful euphuism, talks of the compo sition of the Gospel in the name of St. John as "a little literary artifice, resembling those of which Plato is fond ! " 1 Without pausing to show that the reference to Plato is here profoundly misleading, it suffices to say that the matter in question assumes the proportions not of " a little literary artifice," but of a monstrous and inexcusable deception. And this deception is not only in this case a literary miracle, it is also a spiritual impossibility. Weiss2 says 1 Renan, L'Eglise ChrUicnne, p. 53. a Lcben Jesu, i. 124. H ST. JOHN. 93 The Gospels. with perfect truth that "if it be the poetry of a semi- gnostic philosopher in the second century, the Fourth Gospel is not only an illusive will of the wisp, but in reality a huge lie." But the man who had the intellectual capacity to forge this book, must have been little short of a portent if he also had the spiritual baseness and the reckless audacity to thrust upon the Church his own fancies as the record and revelation of the Living Christ. I do not think that any one has ever had the courage to charge the author of the Fourth Gospel with gross irreverence and fundamental insincerity. No one has ever ventured to hint that he did not believe heart and soul in the Christ of whom he wrote, as the Incarnation of the very God. If then this were so, could there be any presumption so monstrous as that of a writer Avho, with the Gospels in his hands, devised a deliberate falsification and invention of the words and works of Him whom He pro claimed to be the Son of God ? This at least was a course on which the Avorst and boldest of the Gnostic heresiarchs would hardly have ventured — much less the holy and humble disciple who gave to the world " the spiritual Gospel." It has been well said by Gustave Schwab— " Hat dieses Bueh, das ew'ge "Wahrheit ist, Ein lugenhafter Gnostiker geschriebeu, So hat seit tausend Jahren Jesus Christ Den Teufel durch Beelzebub vertrieben." 1 Are Ave to believe that the writer who gave its supreme and final form to the theology of the New Dispensation — Avho, in the judgment of nineteen Christian centuries, saAV most deeply into the heart of the Lord Jesus,2 and expressed most perfectly His inmost teaching, — the writer Avho, more even than St. Paul, has moulded the thoughts of all Christendom in its conception of what is the very essence 1 Lines given to, and quoted by, Dr. Schaff. The interesting and not im probable legend of the circumstances which led St. John to write his Gospel at the entreaty of the Ephesian elders is related in the Muratorian fragment, in Victorinus of Pettau (Migne, Patrol, v. 333), and in Jerome (Com. in Matt. Prol.). 2 " In reading St. John's writings I always seem as if I saw him before me at the Last Supper, leaning on his Master's breast." — Claudius. Outline of the Gospel. 99 of Christian truth — was a man Avho, while defiantly re constructing Christ out of his own consciousness, Avas capable of impudent and wicked asseverations that he was bearing a true and personal witness to things Avhich he had seen and heard ? What Christian would have dared to fancy that the ideal Christ of his own invention was to be preferred to the Son of Man ? Have we been misled by the phantom of a dreamer ? If that be so, then the Christian Avho has built his faith and his hopes on teaching Avhich he believed to be that of St. John, the bosom friend of the Lord, "will be tempted to exclaim in despair that — ¦ ' ' The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble. " Let us, then, with such convictions, take the Gospel as it is and consider its plan and outline ; its object ; its character istics ; and its relation to the other Gospels. I. It falls at once into tAvo divisions, the Prologue, which contains the essence of all that the Evangelist intends to set forth, and the Narrative, in which the truths of the Prologue are illustrated and proved. (1) The Prologue occupies not only the first five, but the first eighteen verses. It sets forth the Word of God — that is, Christ the Son of God — (a) absolutely as pre- existent; as in perfect communion with God ; as being God ; and (b) in relation to the universe as its source, its agent, its quickening ; and (c) in relation to created beings, as life and light. Then he tells us that there is a conflict between light and darkness (5), and that John bore prophetic Avitness to the manifestation of the light in the darkness (6 — 8). This light had shone even before the Incarnation in the heart of every man (9), but had shone unrecognised (10). When it was more fully revealed at the Incarnation, He, the Incarnate Light, was rejected by His own people (11), but accepted by those who, in receiving and believing on Him, became by a new and divine birth " children of God" (12, 13). The reader is now prepared for the consummate declaration, which contains the essence of H 2 100 The Gospels. St. John's Gospel and of all Christianity, that the Word became Flesh ; tabernacled among men ; and was witnessed by them, as being full of grace and truth. To this Incarnate Word John bore the witness of prophecy (15) ; believers experienced His full grace (16) ; and His revelation super seded the old Law (17), for it is the only vision of God which is possible to man (18). II. Having in this Prologue set forth with unequalled depth and fulness the Eternal Truths which it is the object of his testimony to establish, St. John passes at once to life and to history, in order to show the revelation of God by His Word to men. (2) The whole subsequent narrative is based on the funda mental antithesis between Faith and Unbelief, betAveen the World and the Disciples. It narrates Christ's Revelation of Himself to the World (i. 19 — xii. 50), and His Revelation of Himself to His Disciples (xiii. — xxi). The Revelation to the World is divided into three parts, (a) the Proclamation (i. 19 — iv. 54) ; (b) the Recognition (iii. iv.) : (c) the Antagonism (v. 1 — xii. 50).1 A. The Proclamation again falls into two divisions, namely, (a) the Testimony to Christ (i. 19— ii. 11), and (/3) the Work of Christ (ii. 13— iv. 54). a. The Testimony to Christ is threefold. (i.) That of John the Baptist, which is the Testimony of the Old Dispensation in its closing prophetic utterance (i. 19—34). (ii.) That of the Discijales, Avho recognise Him (35 — 51). (iii.) That of miracles, Avhich St. John calls " Signs " and "Works" (ii. 1—11). 1 It will be seen that I have been mainly guided by Dr. Westcott (St. John vii. and passim), Keim (Jesu of Nazara, i. 156-160), and Reuss (La Theologie Johanntque, 22-25), in their view of the divisions into which the Gospel falls : but also that I have varied from them. Godet's outline is very simple. He divides the Prologue into three parts— the Word (1-5) ; the Word rejected by unbelief (6-11) ; the Word accepted by faith (12-18) ; and he thinks that the Gospel has three corresponding sections— the Son of God ; Jewish unbelief ; Christian faith— namely, i.-iv. ; v. -xii. ; xiii.-xvii. Then follow the con summation of unbelief (xviii., xix.) and of faith (xx.). Outline of the Gospel. 101 B. The initial recognition of Christ is threefold : (a) by the learned Pharisee (ii. 13— iii. 36) ; (/3) by the ignorant and heretical Samaritans (iv. 1 — 32) ; (7) by the Galilean courtier (iv. 43—54). C But the opposition soon began, and it runs its course side by side with works ever more decisive, and testimony ever more and more emphatic. In Jerusalem Jesus heals the impotent man, and reveals His relation to God (v.). In Galilee He feeds the five thousand, and reveals in anticipated sacra mental teaching, His relation to men (v.). In Jerusalem, at the Feast of Tabernacles He holds His great controversy with the wavering multitudes and proclaims Himself as the Light of the World (vii. viii.) ; at the Feast of Dedication He heals on the Sabbath the man born blind, and gives to the hostile Pharisees His clear testimony to Himself as the Door and the Good Shepherd, and as one with the Father; He is in consequence compelled to escape to Peraea (ix. x.). Then comes the final sign — the Raising of Lazarus— and the Revelation of Himself, to those who love Him, as tho Resurrection and the Life. But the sign is in vain. It is followed by the final and most deadly antagonism. Jesus is condemned to death, and conceals Himself in the little town of' Ephraim (xi.). The twelfth chapter gives us three closing scenes of the public ministry — the Feast at Bethany ; the triumphal entry into Jerusalem ; and the request of Greeks to see Jesus. His ansAver to the request is folloAved by a voice from heaven ; by His last warning to the Jews to walk in the Light while they had the Light; by a summary (37 — 43) in which the Evangelist points out that the rejection of Christ's ministry Avas in accordance with ancient prophecy ; and by another summary (44 — 50) in which Jesus Himself utters His judg ment respecting those who believe and those who do not believe on Him, and His emphatic testimony to the truth of His words, as being the commandment of the Father Avhich is life eternal (50). 102 The Gospels. st. john. III. The next great division of the Gospel shows us Christ among His oavti. It occupies in point of time but one single evening. The period of conflict and antagonism Avith the multitude and Avith their leaders is practically over. Jesus has been rejected by the world ; He noAV has to reveal Him self to His disciples in such a way as through them— after they have been endued with power by the Holy Ghost — to Avin the Avorld unto Himself. It falls like the former division into three sections: — A. the last supreme revelation by acts of humility and love. B. the last discourses. C. the prayer of consecration. These dis courses have been called The Sermon in the Chamber. " The Sermon on the Mount sets forth the New Law of Christ, the Sermon in the Chamber vivifies the NeAv Law with the New Spirit." A. In the first of these sections the Lord washes the Disciples' feet, and separates the last element of antagonism by dismissing the traitor into the night. B. The discourses fall into tAvo groups — those in the Upper Chamber (xiii. 31 — xiv. 31) ; and those on the way (xv. xvi). This double group of discourses corresponds to the double preamble. The former discourses mainly arise from the questions of individual Apostles, and deal with the Lord's approaching departure, His relation to the Father and the Disciples, and the promise of the Holy Ghost. The discourses on the way dwell on the living union Avith Christ, with its issues as regards the Disciples and the Avorld ; the fuller promise of the Paraclete ; and the promise of final victory and joy (xv. xvi.). C. Then folloAvs the Great High-Priestly Prayer — the Prayer of Consecration — in which the Son pours forth His heart to the Father (a) for Himself (1—5); Q3) for His Disciples (6 — 19), and (7) for the whole Church (20—26). IV. The next division shows us "the denouement of the two relations previously established — the double supreme Outline of the Gospel. 103 peripety of the divine tragedy."1 Jesus has revealed Himself to the world, and the world has rejected Him. He succumbs to that opposition and remains dead to unbelief. But He triumphs for faith, and His death becomes the source of life. These chapters are much more than a narrative. Through the narrative they set forth the Person and the Idea. With the history they suggest the interpretation of its inner meaning.2 They show us that the sufferings of the Lord were voluntary, were predetermined, and in no wise obscured His majesty. The narrative, as usual, falls into three sections — (i.) the Betrayal ; (ii.) the Trial ; (iii.) the End. V. The last division tells us of the victory over death, as evinced by the Resurrection, and believed by St. John, by the Magdalene, by the disciples, by Thomas, and by many who have not seen and yet have believed. The chapter " lays open a new Life in Christ, and a neAV life in men/' This narrative of the Resurrection is " the counterpart and com plement to St. John's narrative of the Passion. His history of the Passion is the history of the descent of selfishness to apostasy ; his history of the Resurrection is the history of the elevation of love into absolute faith." 8 The exclamation of Thomas, " My Lord and my God," shoAvs that the Word had finished His Avork by winning the perfect recog nition of Himself as being that which the prologue had set forth.4 VI. The last chapter is obviously an appendix or epilogue. The Gospel, so far as the original plan of the Evangelist is concerned, clearly terminates with xx. 31. The main object of St. John in adding this chapter apparently was to correct an error which had gained currency respecting himself. In doing so the Apostle gives us an exquisite narrative of an appearance of Christ to some of His disciples by the Lake of 1 Reuss, p. 26. 2 Westcott, p. 249. 8 Westcott, p. 287. 4 Reuss (Heilige Schriften, i. § 221) summarily divides the Gospel as follows : — 1. Prologue. 2. First Section (i. 6-xii.). Manifestation in the World, with recapitulation (xii. 37-50). 3. Opposition and Acceptance (xiii.-xv.). 3. History of the Passion (xviii.-xx.). 104 The Gospels. Galilee, in which He teaches them by a living allegory that work for Him is work which is always blessed, and then indicates the future duties and destinies of His two chief Apostles, of whom the one is to feed His sheep and little lambs (apvld), the other is to tarry till He comes. The Gospel ends with two verses which some have supposed to be an attestation of the Ephesian elders to whom, in accordance with a very probable tradition, the Gospel was originally intrusted. After this attestation the scribe, or the Apostle himself, explains in a boldly hyperbolical expression the reason why the Avritten Gospel was, and must inevitably have been, of a fragmentary character. 2. Such is the Gospel of St. John. Of its object happily we need not have a moment's doubt, for the Apostle distinctly foreshadows it in his prologue, and states it at the conclusion. He admits that the book is a selection ; that Jesus did many other signs which are not written in this book : " but these," he says, " are Avritten that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye may have life in His name." 1 This statement of the writer's threefold object is at once terse and extraordinarily comprehensive. i. In very early days there began a fatal tendency (as we shall see hereafter) " to sever Jesus," i.e. of the tAvo natures to make two persons ; to draw a distinction between the human Jesus and the eternal Christ ; to represent the life of Jesus on earth as purely phantasmal ; to say that the Divine nature only united itself Avith Him at His baptism, and abandoned Him at the Cross.2 It Avas St. John's object to testify that 1 Reuss (Heilige Schriften, ii. p. 222) divides the scheme of St. John's system into three parts. 1. Theological premisses— God and the Son. 2. Historic premisses — The Incarnate Son and the world. 3. Mystic theology — Faith and Life : or Light, Love, Life as oorresponding to the Being of God ; which the world lacks, but which are offered by the Son and received by the elect. John iii. 15 ; 1 John iv. 9. 2 See the remarks of Irenaeus about Cerinthus (Haer. i. 26), and the note on 1 John iii. , iv. 3 infra, and for further information see Early Days of Christianity, ii. 446-451. Object of the Gospel. 105 Jesus loas indivisibly and distinctly (aBiatpeTw;, do-vyyvTOj^) the Son of God.1 ii. But it was his object, further, to connect this Revelation with all the past. Jesus, the Son of God, was also the Christ, the Jewish Messiah. Christianity Avas no sudden break, no startling discontinuity in the course of God's revelation. Christianity did not dissever itself from the glorious annals and holy foreshadowings of Judaism. To St. John as to St. Matthew the old dispensation was the new prefigured ; the neAV dispensation was the old fulfilled. iii. But this twofold polemic or demonstrative object was subordinate to the high moral and religious object. If St. John Avrote to show that the present was the consummation of all that was blessed, and the universalisation of all that was narrow in the past, he did so that in this belief we might have life: — " these signs have been Avritten that ye may believe that Jesus is (i.) the Christ, (ii.) the Son of God, and that (iii.) believing ye may have life in His name." God who, in time past, spake fragmentarily and multifariously in the prophets, hath at the end of the days spoken unto us in the Son ; and if Ave be one with Him as He is thus set forth we shall have life — true life, eternal life. The thesis of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the central conception of St. Paul — which was mystic union with Christ and life " in Christ " — are in these few pregnant words united with the Messianic theme of the first Evangelist, St. Matthew. The words have that stamp of supreme finality which a vaulting criticism would vainly attribute to an unknown, second-century Gnostic forger, but which we believe to have been the consummate glory of the bosom Apostle. 3. The characteristics of the Gospel are very clearly marked. First it is eminently the spiritual Gospel, the 1 In his prologue St. John shadows forth the outline of a great philosophy of religion. 1. The contradiction between God and the world, with the Logos as mediator. 2. The coming of the Logos into the world (but never fully recognised) in the form of an illuminating revelation. 3. The Incarnation of the Logos. 4. The coming of the Spirit, as the highest and final blessing. See Keim, pp. 148-153. 106 The Gospels. Gospel of Eternity, the Gospel of Love. This feature Avas observed in the earliest days. The other Gospels were called in contradistinction to it the " bodily " gospels. The Synoptists represent the objective teaching of the Apostles (Acts xi. 49) ; this Gospel represents the deeper and more developed thoughts of St. John. The fourth Gospel is distinguished from the other three, in that it is shaped with a conscious design to illustrate and establish an assumed conclusion. If Ave compare the purpose of St. John with that of St. Luke (i. 1 — 4) it may be said Avith partial truth that the inspiring impulse Avas in the one case doctrinal, and in the other historical. But care must be taken not to exaggerate or misinterpret this contrast. Christian history is doctrine, and this is above all things the lesson of the fourth Gospel. The Synoptic narratives are implicit dogmas, no less truly than St. John's dogmas are concrete facts. The real difference is that the earliest Gospels contained the fundamental words and facts which experience afterwards interpreted, "while the latest Gospel reviews the facts in the light of their inter pretation." 2 It is only in this sense that the Gospel can be called "a theological treatise," or that St. John can be regarded as being, in a technical sense, Avhat the early fathers called him, " the theologian," " the divine." These vieAvs tend at once to correct and to absorb the counter theories that the Gospel was didactic ; 2 or supple mentary ; 3 or polemical ; 4 or an Eirenicon. It is all of these in its effects, but none of these in exclusive design. It is didactic only because the interpretation lay in the facts recorded. It is supplemental, and even avoAvedly supple mental, in so far as the author constantly assumes that certain facts are already in the knowledge of his hearers,5 1 Westcott, p. xii. 2 Muratorian Fragment, and Clement. Alex. ap. Euseb. ff. E. vi. 14. 3 Clem. Alex. ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 24. 4 Iren. Haer. iii. 11. 6 i. 32, 46 ; ii. 1 ; iii. 24 ; vi. 70 ; vii. 3, &o. Hence St. John, though he speaks at such length of the Last Supper, does not narrate the Institution of the Eucharist. On the one hand that was universally known and practised ; on the other he has already given its inmost idea in ch. vi. Characteristics of the Gospel. 107 and adds other facts out of the abounding specialty of his own information;1 bat at the same time it expressly dis claims all intention to be complete.2 The object of the Evangelist is not so much the historic record of facts as the development of their inmost meaning. It is polemical, since it is incidentally a correction of incipient errors by the state ment of truth. It is an Eirenicon only because St. John had attained to the apprehension of the one consummate truth — " the Word became Flesh " — in which all religious con troversies are reconciled. Every truth which is so supreme and final in character is the synthesis of minor oppositions.3 For instance, the early Church was profoundly agitated by the question about the Law ; St. John, without so much as touch ing on the question, sets it aside and solves it for ever by the one sentence, " The Law was given by Moses ; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." 4. It is emphatically and preeminently the Gospel of the Incarnation. MattheAV had set forth Christ's Messianic func tion ; Mark His active Avork ; Luke His character as a Saviour ; St. John sets forth His Person.4 Christ fills the Avhole book, and absorbs the whole life of the drama of Avhich He is the centre.5 The informing idea of every page and chapter is "the Word made flesh." The idea of the Logos, as Godet says, very far from being the mother of the narrative is the daughter of it. The title of Logos is not used by Christ Himself or in the body of the Gospel. He is nowhere, like the Philonian Logos, a vague, changeful, bodiless abstraction, but He is a living human being. St. John sets forth to us that there is no \*ast unspanned abyss between God and man, but that God became man; that 1 See ii. 23 ; iv. 45 ; x. 32 ; xi. 2 ; xii. 37, &c. For many special points of information see as to names vi. 71 ; xii. 1 ; xiii. 26; xviii. 10 ; xix. 13, &c. He supplies our knowledge of the first cycle of the teaching of Jesus, His Judaean ministry, His greatest miracle. 2 xx. 30, "many other signs . . . which are not written in this book." It is therefore absurd to say that, if any point is omitted it is disparaged. 3 See especially Westcott, xii. xiii. 4 Godet, St. John, Introd. 6 Keim. IOS The Gospels. there is nothing inherently evil in the bodily nature of man, but that the Word became Incarnate Man. Jesus is the Son of God, and yet is no Docetic phantom, but hungers and thirsts and is weary, and knows human anguish and human joy.1 This is the characteristic which led Origen to speak of this Gospel as the consummation of the Gospels, as the Gospels are of all the Scriptures ; and Luther to say that it is the unique, the tender, the true master-Gospel, Avhich, with the Epistle to the Romans and the First EjDistle of St. Peter made up a NeAv Testament sufficient for his needs. Yet it is entirely untrue to assert that St. John represents a different Christ, " another Jesus " than the Christ of the Synoptists. The scenery, indeed, in Avhich He is placed is partly different, and the form and time, and to some extent the substance of His teaching. But there is no difference as regards His Divinity, and the Emperor Julian2 was totally wrong when he said that " John, in declaring that the Word was made flesh, had done all the mischief." Christ is the same Christ, though looked at from a different point of view; and (externally) the coincidences in the tAVofold delineation are to be counted by scores. They are coin cidences in place, dates, duration, incident, words, doc trines, imagery ; and they have been pointed out again and again.3 There are in St. John no scribes, no lepers, no publicans, no demoniacs ; there is little or nothing Avhich can be called anecdotic. This is accounted for by the avowed character of the book, which also explains why the miracles are here narrated in the light of symbolic acts ; not as por tents (ripcna), nor as exhibitions of poAver (Bvvdfieis), nor as deeds which excited wonder (OavfiaTa), nor as contrary to expectation (irapaBo^a), but as "deeds" (epya) perfectly natural to the Doer, and as signs (o-^ptela) of His poAver, and manifestations of His glory (ix. 3, xi. 4). The difference 1 i. 18 ; iii. 13 ; x. 18 ; xvii. 11, &c. ; compared with iv. 6, 7 ; xi. 38 ; xii. 27 ; xv. 11 ; xix. 28. * ap. Cyril c. Julian. 3 See Schaff, History of the Christian Cliurch, 697 ; Godet, i. 197 ; West cott, Ixxix.-lxxxiri. The Representation of Christ. 109 in the form of His teaching is due to the difference of cir cumstances and of interlocutors. That teaching is given not in the form of apophthegms, or parables, or eschatologies, el even (often) of continuous discourses, but generally in the form of conversations, which are perpetually interrupted by the misunderstandings — always unspiritual, often simple, some times almost grotesque — of those who heard Him.1 The difference, so far as there is any, in the substance of the teaching arises from the deeper apprehension of St. John. The method in which the teaching is set forth of course reveals the writer's individuality, but it has been repeatedly shown that the teaching itself diverges in no single particular from that of the Synoptists. St. John was a mystic, and delighted in mystic symbolism. Hence, while he does not narrate a single parable, he brings out another side of the doctrine of Jesus, parabolic indeed in character, but less easy of popular apprehension — namely, the allegoric. In the allegoric dis courses about bread and wine, about light, the door, the gate, the vine, the shepherd, St. John brings out in a different manner the same essential truths. When Keim talks of St. John as " going over to Paulinism with drums beating and colours flying," and of the Jewish-Christian Apostle as "having broken with all the sacred principles of his youth, his manhood, and his ministry,"- — so much of fact as corre sponds to this violent exaggeration is accounted for Avhen we remember that St. John wrote latest of the sacred writers ; wrote as the last of those Apostles whose brows had reflected the lambent gleams of Pentecost ; wrote as the bosom- disciple who had enjoyed a most intimate communion Avith his Lord. When he penned his Gospel a flood of light had been cast on the truths of the New Covenant by the full absorption of Gentile Christians into the Church, by the development of Christian thought, by the antagonism of anti-Christian error, above all 1 See Reuss, p. 8. This feature recurs no less than twenty-five times (ii. 20 ; iii. 4, 9 ; iv. 11, 15, 33 ; vi. 28, 31, 34, 52 ; vii. 27, 35 ; viii. 19, 22, 33, 39, 41, 52, 57 ; ix. 40 ; xi. 12 ; xiv. 5, 8, 22 ; xvi. 29). 110 The Gospels. st. john. by the Destruction of Jerusalem, and that Second Coming of Christ to close for ever the Old Dispensation. Many of the same essential doctrines are common to the Apocalypse and the Gospel, and if there be also a deep difference between them it is a difference due to the lapse of twenty years marked by events of unparalleled importance, and by a reli gious development rich and rapid be3rond that of any other epoch in the history of the world. 5. It is the Gospel of Witness. In accordance with the symbolic character of the book we find throughout it— as has been so admirably shoAvn by Canon Westcott x — a sevenfold witness to Christ. i. The Witness of the Father (v. 34, 37, viii. 18). ii. The Witness of the Son (viii. 14, xviii. 37). iii. The Witness of His Avorks (x. 25, v. 36 &c). iv. The Witness of Scripture (v. 39—46). v. The Witness of the Forerunner (i. 7, v. 35). vi. The Witness of the Disciples (xv. 27, xix. 35). vii. The Witness of the Spirit (xv. 26, xvi. 14). 6. It is the Gospel of " the Logos," 2 of Christ the Word of God. The profound insight — let us say rather the spiritual illu mination — which led the Evangelist to use this title for Jesus Christ the Son of God has been recognised in all ages. In the use of it St. John stands alone. Other Apostles seem, as it Avere, to hover on the verge of it, but they do not definitely adopt it, still less do they dwell prominently upon it. Whether St. John borrowed it from the Logos of Philo,8 or 1 Westcott, I. c. xlv. 2 When Epiphanius says that the Gospel was rejected by the Alogi, he pro bably means to imply by paronomasia that the sects which rejected it and the doctrine of the Logos were "without reason." (Comp. Iren. Haer. iii. 11.) 3 Some of Philo's strongest and most remarkable expressions about the Logos are as follows. He calls the Logos "the second God" (Deprofug., De Monast. Opp. ii. 225); "the archetype of the visible world;" the ideal unity of all things; the "idea of ideas ; " "the image of God, by whose means the whole universe was created;" "the bond of all things;" the manna; the source of life and holiness; "the soul of the world." See Gfrbrer, Philo, i. 176-243 ; Siegfried, Philo, 219-223. "The Word." Ill from the Memra or Debura of the Jewish schools (afterwards used in the Targums), his adaptation of it infused into the title a majesty and a depth of meaning which were absolutely original. In Philo the Logos is, at the best, a dim abstrac tion in whose Avavering outlines it is impossible to affirm that any absolute hypostasis is meant. In the Jewish schools the use of Memra and Debura (meaning " the word ") was due to the desire to soften the simple anthropomorphic and anthro- popathic phrases of the Old Testament — phrases which attributed to God human parts and human passions. Thus both in Philo and in the Rabbis the object was to make God seem more distant rather than more near ; to interpose lower agencies between Him and the material world ; to bridge by imaginary conceptions the infinite chasm which seemed to separate the Divine from all created things. The object of St. John was the very reverse. It was to shoAV that God had come down to man in order that man might arise to God. The Manichean dread of all matter as essentially evil, the Agnostic desire to regard God as unspeakably remote and incomprehensible, were fundamentally overthroAvn by the immortal utterance that "the Word became flesh." To make such a use of the title " the Word " was to slay those con ceptions which lay at the heart of Alexandrian theosophy and of Jewish scholasticism with an arrow winged with feathers from their own nests. It was to adopt their most cherished watchwords in order to substitute for their favourite idols an eternal truth. And this being the case the title Logos receives all the fulness of its meaning. It means all that the Rabbis implied by the Shechinah and the Metatron, and the Targumists by Memra and Debura. It means both uttered reason and immanent speech, both the spoken Avord (\6yos Trpoabopucos) and the inner thought (A.0'70? ivSidderos) of the Stoics and of Philo. It means all that is included in the Latin words used by different Fathers and translators to express it — Verbum, Sei-mo, Ratio. It means alike (as in the famous lines of 112 The Gospels. st. .tohn. Goethe), "das Wort," "der Sinn," "die Kraft," "die That" the Word, the Thought, the Power, the Act. It fixes and, so to speak, crystallises all that had been said in the Sapiential books of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha about the Word, the Angel of the Presence, and the Wisdom of God, as Avell as all the speculations of Gentile, Rabbinical, and Alexandrian philosophy. At the same time it supersedes and transcends all those dim approximations to half-appre hended truths. It infuses into them a life which raises them into a loftier sphere of being. More epoch-making Avords — words which more express the inmost meaning of all revela tion in all ages — Avere never written than the four words of this Gospel, " The Word became flesh," which modern writers are content to assign to an unknown forger of the second century.1 7. It is the Gospel of symbolism; and mystic numbers prevail even throughout the arrangement of the topics. "The clothing of the book is Greek, but the body is HebreAv."2 The arrangement of the book is throughout constructed Avith direct reference to the sacred numbers three and seven. Almost all the sub-sections run in trip lets. " Jesus is thrice in Galilee, thrice in Judea, twice three feasts take place during His ministry, and particularly three Passover feasts — in the beginning, the middle, the end — Avhich either foretell or procure His death. He works three miracles in Galilee and three in Jerusalem. Twice three days is He in the neighbourhood of John; three days are covered by the narrative of Lazarus, and six by the fatal Passover. He utters three sayings on the Cross, and appears thrice after His Resurrection." 3 1 See Early Days of Christianity, i. 273-276. 2 Godet, p. 20. See too Keim, p. 157. Of all the Greek connecting par ticles St. John only uses Be, nal, ovv, &s, and KaBas. Godet strangely says that he only uses uev once ; but it occurs only eight times. 3 Unless the Avalking on the sea be regarded as a part of the great scenic miracle of the loaves, there are seven miracles (at Cana ; the nobleman's son ; the paralytic ; the loaves ; walking on the sea ; the man born blind ; Lazarus), together with the draught of fishes in the supplementary chapter (xxi.). Keim's triplets require to be carefully criticised. Glory of the Gospel. 113 The grouping round the three Passovers is part of St. st. john. John's original plan (ii. 13, vi. 4, xi. 55). And it can hardly be an accident that Christ utters seven times " I am," and so reveals Himself as the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the Door of the Sheep, the Good Shepherd, the Resurrection and the Life, the Way, and the True Vine. In reading the Gospel and First Epistle of St. John we are reading the last words of special revelation ; we catch, as it were, the final whisper of the voice of Christ as it was echoed in the heart of the disciple whom He loved. And the tone of the speaker's mind is worthy of the charm which we find in its accents. " Here we have rest and harmony — peace, joy, and blessedness such as the Christian seeks for; and though struggle is not Avanting, varied and intense — heat want, trouble, zeal, anger, irony — yet the struggling Christ is a part of the Christian life which seeks to find expression in him; and Christ's finale, at the parting supper, on the cross, after the resurrection, is peace, victory, glory." l 1 Keim, p. 159. 114 The Gospels. NOTE I. SPECIAL WORDS AND PHRASES IN ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL. st. JOHN. On the style of St. John, see infra. He has been called "a ' master of lucid obscurity," J and the remark, though meant as a sneer, is a happy one. His style is pre-eminently lucid ; his thoughts are someAvhat obscure. Their spirituality and profundity make them " dark Avith excess of light." We find both in the Gospel and the Epistle the same "emphatic remoteness," the repeated Avords, the simple constructions, the positive and negative statements (i. 7, 8, 20 ; iii. 15, 17, 20, &c.) of the same truth.2 We see in the Gospel, as in the Epistle, the ideality which regards all subjects in the light of their absolute antitheses : — " Light and darkness, God and the Avorld, heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, life and death, truth and error, love and hatred, eternal and transitory, Christ and Satan, the Church and the world, present Christianity attaining to victory through contest." 3 It is obviously an undesigned coincidence — an unconscious trace of personality — that the Evangelist speaks of the Baptist as " John " Avith out adding his title, as the other Evangelists do. An interesting sign of the later date at which he wrote is that he alone speaks of the Sea of Galilee as the Sea of Tiberias (vi. 1 ; xxi. 1). Thirty years earlier, Avhen the other Evangelists wrote, Herod's new toAvn of Tiberias had not yet succeeded in giving its name to the lake, and superseding its older designation. It is a very remarkable fact that every one of St. John's peculiar phrases and expressions is found also in his reports of the teaching of our Lord.4 It has been often made a serious difficulty that the style remains essentially the same alike in the discourses of John the Baptist, of our Lord, and of the Evangelist himself. Much has been written on this subject, but no further explanation can be given than that the Avriter 1 Strauss, who compares him to Correggio. 2 There is not in St. John (taking the best text) a single optative, or a single instance of oblique narration. " La langue de l'evangeliste n'a pas d'analogue dans toute la litterature profane ou sacree ; simplicity enfantine et transparente profondeur, sainte melancolie et vivacite non moms sainte : par dessus tout, suavite d'un amour pur et doux."— Godet. 3 Davidson, Introd. ii. 348. 4 See an interesting note in Huidekoper's Indirect Testimony of History to the Gospels, pp. 93-102. Phraseology of St. John. 115 was intensely influenced, and, if the expression be allowed, magnetised st. john. by what he had heard from the lips of Jesus as it was reflected in his own subjectivity. Though the style differs, even opponents of the genuineness of the Gospel admit the close and constant identity of the teaching of our Lord as represented by the Synoptists and by St. John. Every reader may verify this fact for himself again and again.1 Words which specifically mark St. John's tone of thought are— " Saying " (wapoiuia 4 times, Xo'-yor many times). He does not use "parable" once. " To gaze upon" (Sempeiv). This occurs 23 times, and only 15 times in all the three Synoptists. " The Light " (i. 4, 5, 7-9, &c, 23 times ; " Glory," 20 times). " Glorify," 22 times. " Darkness," 9 times. " The Truth," 25 times. " Love," 6 times. " To love," 12 times. " The World," 78 times (only 15 times in the Synoptists). " Flesh," 8 times. "Eternal Life," 15 times. " To abide in," 18 times. " To manifest," 8 times. " To judge," 19 times ; "judgment" 11 times. " To believe," 98 times ; twice as often as all the Synoptists. " The last day," 7 times. " Witness,'' 47 times. " To know," 55 times " Works," 23 times. " Name" 25 times. " Signs," 17 times. Thus the vocabulary is certainly poor. John uses fewer words than any one of the Synoptists, very far fewer than St. Luke, but " these expressions soon make amends to the reader for their small number by their intrinsic wealth." They are few in number, but divine in quality. They deal with celestial glories. 1 See Reuss, Heilige Schriften, ii. p. 224. I ii US The Gospels. NOTE II. THE MURATORIAN FRAGMENT. Corrected and conjecturally emended the passage in this ancient frag ment on the canon seems to mean, " The fourth book of the Gospels, John, one of the disciples (wrote). On being exhorted by his fellow-disciples and bishops, he said, ' Fast with me to-day for three days, and let us mutually relate what shall have been revealed to each.' That same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the Apostles, that John should set forth all things in his OAvn name, while all revised. Hence, though various points of importance are taught in separate Gospels, it still makes no difference to the faith of belieA'ers, since all things about the Nativity, Passion, Resurrection, intercourse with His Disciples, and about His twofold coming, flrst in the humility of contempt, which has been, then glorious in royal poAver, which is to be, have been set forth in them all by one supreme Spirit. . . . What wonder is it then if John so consistently brings forth each point also in his Epistles, saying about himself, ' What we have seen Avith our eyes, and heard with our ears, and our hands have handled, those things we have written.' Eor thus he proclaims himself not only an eye-witness, but a hearer too, and also a writer of all the wonderful things of the Lord in order." NOTE III. EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. It would be absurd here to enter into evidence which it would require a whole volume of controversy to sift and establish, but it may, I think, be most fairly asserted that the admission of the weight of external evidence is gaining ground. The practical certainty that the Gospel Avas incorporated in Tatian's Diatessaron has now been established by the commentary of Ephraem Syrus.1 Even Keim, though he rejects the genuineness of the Gospel, has made the important admission that "the actual indication of its existence extends about as far back as those of 1 Hence Renan's assertion that by Aid Teaadpav Tatian meant "perfect accord," and that he borrowed the phrase from Greek music (L'Eglise Chritienne, p. 503) falls to the ground. Genuineness. 117 the other Gospels " (Jesu of Nazara, Eng. Trans., i. 187), and allows st. john-. that it was known to Justin Martyr, and even to the Pseudo-Barnabas, and that Hermas was acquainted with the first Epistle. Bishop Light foot (see quotations from his unfinished work in Plummer's St. John, p. 19) shows that allusions to it are found even in the shorter Greek forms of the Ignatian Epistles. The firBt Epistle (and, therefore, probably the Gospel) was known to Hermas and to Polycarp. "When such a writer as Keim rejects the attempts of the Tubingen school to bring down its date till after the middle of the second century, and places it as far back as a.d. 100-117, the weight of the external evidence can hardly any longer be questioned, and the immense force of the internal evidence, added to the impossibility of finding or imagining a forger, will be duly felt. Among the most recent and powerful contributions to the arguments in favour of the Gospel are the Commentaries of Canon Westcott, and the chapters inWeiss's Life of Christ (v. -vii.). THE ACTS OE THE APOSTLES. THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. WRITTEN PROBABLY AT ROME BEFORE A.D. 61. " The best evidences for the truth of the Gospel are Christianity and Christendom. " " Multiiudinis credentium erat cor unum et anima una,. Quand on a ecrit cela on est de ceux qui ont lance au coeur de l'liumanite l'aiguillon qui ne laisse plus dormir jusqu'a ce qu'on ait decouvert ce qu'on a vu en songe et touohe ce qu'on a r§ve." — Renan. " Dieses Buch wohl mochte heissen eine Glosse fiber die Episteln St. Pauli." — Luther Vorrede. "So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." — Acts xix. 20. The preciousness of a book may sometimes best be esti- the acts of mated if we consider the loss Avhich Ave should experience THEAP0STI'ES' if we did not possess it. Tf so, we can hardly value too highly the Acts of the Apostles. Had it not come down to us there would have been a blank in our knowledge which scarcely anything could have filled up. The origin of Chris tianity would have been an insoluble enigma. We should have possessed no materials out of which it could be con structed, except, on the one hand, a few scattered remnants of ecclesiastical tradition, and on the other hand shameless misrepresentations, like the pseudo-Clementine forgeries. We might then have had no escape from wild conjectures, such as may be found in the later writings of the followers of Baur, who represent Paul and James as irreconcilable enemies, and consider that the Epistle of St. Jude and .parts of the 122 The Acts of the Apostles. the acts of Apocalypse of St. John were envenomed attacks of Jewish the apostles. Christians on the authority and character of the Apostle of the Gentiles. It is only from the Acts of the Apostles that Ave are enabled to understand that union between Judaism and Christianity, for Avhich, as has been said, it would other wise have been as impossible to account as for a junction of the waters of the Jordan and the Tiber. To very feAV since the world began has it been granted to render two services so immense as those Avhich have been rendered by St. Luke in his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.1 In the one he has given us the most exquisite and perfect sketch of the Saviour of Mankind ; in the other he has enabled us to watch the dawn of the Gospel which the Saviour preached as it broadens gradually into the boundless day. In his earlier Avork St. Luke had many predecessors, and his task Avas to sift the materials which they presented, and to com bine them with all that he had been able to learn by personal inquiry. In his second work he was at once an historian and in great measure an eye-witness, and he took no small part in the events Avhich he narrates. We have in the Acts a picture of the origins of Christianity drawn by one who was himself a leading actor in the early evangelisation of the Avorld. Quiet, retiring, unobtrusive, the beloved physician has yet so used for us his sacred gifts of calm observation, of clear expression, of large-hearted catholicity, of intelligent research, that he has Avon for himself a conspicuous place among the benefactors of mankind. Let us first look at his treatise as a whole, and then endeavour to grasp its special peculiarities. We see at the first glance that it falls into tAvo great sec tions, of which the first (i. — xii.) is mainly occupied Avith the doings of St. Peter, and the second (xiii. — xxviii.) is exclusively devoted to the missions and sufferings of St. Paul ; or, dividing 1 Eusebius, H. E. iii. . 25 ; reckons the Acts among the Hom'ologoumena. The extraordinary fact that in St. Chrysostom's day there- were many who were unaware of its existence (Hom. i.) was perhaps due to its having been addressed to one person. Outline of the Acts. 123 it on another principle, we may say that tbe first section (i. — the acts of ix. 30) records the establishment of the Church in Palestine, the apostles. and the second (ix. 31 — xxviii. 31) its extension as far as Rome. The first fourteen verses are introductory. They describe the final interview of the risen Lord Avith the disciples, and they give fuller details of His Ascension than were knoAvn to — or, at any rate, were recorded by — the Evangelist Avhen he Avrote his earlier volume. Here alone Ave learn that forty days elapsed between the Resurrection and the Ascension. The Gospel was a narrative of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach as the inauguration of His kingdom. The Acts furnishes the continuation of that beginning. Prominent in those last words of Christ are " the promise of the Father " and "the baptism of the Holy Ghost." The eighth verse might stand as the motto of the whole book, " Ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you ; and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." The first section of the book narrates the fulfilment of the earlier part of this promise ; the later sections show its complete accomplishment. In the meeting of the Apostles Avith the disciples and the holy women in the upper chamber where they were abiding Ave see the cradle of the infant Church. That upper chamber belonged in all probability to the mother of St. Mark the Evangelist. If so it must have been Avithin those hallowed walls that Jesus had partaken with His disciples of the Last Supper ; and they were destined to be shaken not many days after Avhen, at the Descent of the Holy Spirit, suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind. The first act of -the little community Avas to select, partly by lot, a new Apostle in place of the traitor Judas. Even in the brief notice of these earliest meetings, we learn three facts of the deepest interest. One, that the disciples were only 120 in number ; a second, that even then the beginning of a neAv epoch Avas indicated by the presence among them of 124 The Acts of the Apostles. the acts of Mary the mother of Jesus and other women, not separated from them as in the seclusion of the synagogue, but m the midst of them as in the Avorship of the church ; the third, that the brethren of the Lord, who hitherto had been at the best but partial believers, had by this time been fully convinced by the Resurrection, and from henceforth cast in their lot, no longer Avith the Avorld — which therefore from thenceforth hated them — but with the obscure and persecuted followers of the Nazarene, the Crucified. The next chapter explains all that follow by telling us of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and of the instantaneous results in the conversion of 3,000 souls after the first Apostolic sermon. It also gives us a glimpse of the sweet and simple lives of the first believers in Jerusalem, and their interesting experiment of communism which, as experience soon proves, is neither possible nor desirable in the existing conditions of the world (i.). The next tAvo chapters narrate the cure of the lame man, Avhich was the first Apostolic miracle ; the death of Ananias and Sapphira; and the beginnings of persecution which resulted from the many conversions caused by the first Apos tolic sermon, the preaching, and the miracles of Peter. We see the spread of the Gospel in Jerusalem, and the antagonism — at once perplexed and futile — of the Jewish Sanhedrin, which Avas checked partly by divine interpositions and partly by the wise counsel of the Rabbi Gamaliel, who herein proved himself a worthy descendant of his grandfather, the noble and gentle Hiilel (iii. — v.). The next two chapters narrate the election of deacons ; the widening of the sympathies of the Church by the preaching of the Hellenists ; and the career, trial, and defence of the first martyr, St. Stephen, the precursor of St. Paul. It was in all probability from St. Paul — who, as a Sanhedrist,1 1 St. Paul must have been a Sanhedrist (and therefore married) if we take literally the words of Acts xxvi. 10, "when they were being put to death, I gave my vote against them " (dvaipovuevuv re avTuv KaTijveyKa ipijipov). Outline of the Acts. 125 must have been present at the trial of St. Sterihen, and who, the acts of as we can trace in his Epistles, had been deeply, though THE AP0STLES- at the time unconsciously, influenced by his words — that St. Luke derived the outlines of that noble speech in which the protomartyr furnishes us with the first sketch of a philosophy of Jewish history (vi. vii.). The next chapter tells us of the first great persecution Avhich proved that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.1 The scattering of the Christians of Jerusalem led directly to the conversion of Samaria by the labours of Philip the Evangelist. In this chapter also — which is essentially a chapter of memorable beginnings — we are told of the first confirmation ; the first instances of heresy and simony in the person of Simon Magus ; and the first baptised Gentile convert, the eunuch chamberlain of Candace, queen of Ethiopia. The ninth chapter narrates the event which was to have supremest importance for the whole future of Christianity — the conversion of St. Paul. It tells us of his work at Damascus (after his Arabian retirement) ; his escape from a plot of the Jews ; his introduction by Barnabas to the naturally reluctant and suspicious Church of Jerusalem ; his second escape from a plot of the Hellenists ; and his retirement to Tarsus. Meanwhile, during the divine education of this hero of faith for his great work as the Apostle of the Uncircumcision, St. Peter, in accordance with his Lord's promise, was intrusted Avith the glorious privilege of admitting uncircumcised Gentiles, not only to baptism, but to the full and unfettered participa tion in all Jewish and Christian privileges. After the miracles which Peter was permitted to work at Lydda and Joppa, he had that memorable vision on the roof at Joppa, which first fully revealed to him the universality of the Gospel, and the abrogation of all the jealous and exclusive preroga tives of JeAvish particularism. He had the courage to act up to the enlightenment which he had thus received. He 1 "Semen est sanguis Christianorum," Tert. Apol. 60. 126 The Acts of the Apostles. the acts of faced, and for a time allayed, the storm of jealous indignation the apostles, ^ich the act of eating with uncircumcised Gentiles had roused in the breasts of the Circumcisionists, whose narrow ness would have made of JeAvish institutions not only the bands in which Christianity was to be nursed, but also cords Avhereby it should be strangled (ix. 32 — xi. 18). At the close of the eleventh chapter are brief sections of the utmost importance. One of these (xi. 19—21) records no less an event than the practical transference of the capital of Christianity from Jerusalem to Antioch. It shows that the conversion of the Gentiles had now passed beyond the region of timid initiatives. Hitherto the scattered members of the Church of Jerusalem had only ventured in Cyprus and Phcenice to preach the Gospel to Jews. At Antioch, en couraged probably by what they had heard of the conversions of the eunuch and of Cornelius, the wandering missionaries preached boldly to the Gentiles, and their words were crowned with a success which Avas their completest justification, proving as it did that their work was blessed by God. The next paragraph (22 — 26) tells us how the Elders of Jerusalem, alarmed by the free admission of Gentiles into the Church, sent Barnabas to Antioch to see what was going on, and to report to them. The choice of such an emissary was a very happy one. A narrow ecclesiast would in that day, humanly speaking, have ruined the destinies of the infant Church. The large-heartedness of Barnabas tended to counteract the Pharisaism of the more bigoted Judaists. His position as a Levite and a man of wealth, who had so Avholly thrown in his lot with the brethren as to sell his estate for their support, gave him a deserved influence. He had already shown his magnanimous breadth of insight by taking Paul by the hand and introducing him to the Apostles and the Elders; he now showed it still more conspicuously by two memorable acts. He gave his entire approval to the work among the Gentiles at Antioch, and feeling the need of some one who would be adequate to help him, he made a journey to Tarsus, New Developments. 127 and summoned from his retirement the man whose thoughts the acts of were thenceforAvard to shake the Avorld. The gradual growth THE AP0STLES- of the Church, the grandeur of its ever-broadening and brightening horizon, and its destined emancipation from the yoke of Mosaism, were illustrated by the fact that at Antioch the brethren first received their new and distinctive name of " Christians." That cosmopolitan name — which clothed a Hebrew conception in a Greek Avord ended by a Latin termi nation — though first given in scorn, was soon accepted with triumph. At first it Avas almost synonymous Avith malefactor and Avas everywhere spoken against, first with ridicule, then with angry scorn, at last Avith furious execration ; and yet it was destined to hold its own against all the forces of philosophy and of empire until the lords of the nation Avere proud to claim it, and it became the ideal term for all that is great and good and wise in the nature and faith of man. At first the bold profession Christiamis sum was the answer to the yells of Christian os ad leoncs. But four centuries had not elapsed when it became the murmur of the courtier and the hypocrite as well as the confession of the persecuted saint. The last paragraph of this chapter (27-30) gives us a glimpse of Christian prophets, and in the subscription raised by the Antiochene Christians on behalf of their brethren* Avho were suffering from the famine in Jerusalem, it shows us how the Gentiles began to repay by material services the spiritual benefits which they had received from the Jews. Side by side with the work of the Church pastoral, and the Church militant, and the Church evangelistic, we have here our first developed specimen of that Christian sympathy shown by almsgiving, Avhich has henceforth continued to be so conspicuous a part of the work of the Church beneficent. In the twelfth chapter we see Christianity for the first time in antagonism with kings. Our Lord had promised the tAvo sons of Zebedee that they should drink of His cup and be baptised Avith His baptism. In this chapter we read hoAV James, the elder of them, became the first apostolic martyr. 128 The Acts of the Apostles. the acts of We are told also of the imprisonment and deliverance of the apostles. g£_ peter; an(j of the agonising death of the first royal per secutor (xii.). Herod Agrippa I. thus furnished the earliest instance of the mortes persecutorum, and experienced the truth of the prophecy, " He that falleth on this stone shall be broken to pieces; but on whomsoever it shall fall it will scatter him as dust." II. From this point forward the narrative is mainly occupied with the work of St. Paul. The thirteenth and fourteenth chapters narrate the first mission-journey of Paul and Barnabas. They detail their successes among Gentiles and their persecution by Jews in Cyprus, at the Pisidian Antioch, at Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, and their happy return to the Syrian Antioch from this first eagle-flight of the mission spirit to preach an eternal Gospel.1 The fifteenth chapter, in a conciliatory narrative, tells us of the liberal compromise or concordat which for a time restored peace to the agitated partisans of JeAvish and Gentile Christianity after the first Church synod. In this synod the genius of Paul, the gentle dignity of Barnabas, and the daring impetuosity of Peter so completely Avon over the hesitations -of St. John and of St. James, the Lord's brother, that the Gentiles Avere set free by direct and unanimous apostolic authority, from the necessity for circumcision and from the crushing and now useless burdens of the Levitic law (xv. 1—35). Soon afterwards St. Paul, in spite of his unhappy quarrel with Barnabas, started with Silas for his second great mis sionary journey. He passed through Syria and Cilicia, and then, taking with him from Derbe the young Timotheus, traversed Phrygia, Galatia, and Mysia till they arrived at Troas. At that point, immediately after the vision which determined the great missionary to carry the Gospel for the first time into Europe, there begins that use of the pronoun 1 Rev. xiv. 6 Outline of the Acts. 129 "we" (xvi. 10), which shows that at Troas St. Luke joined the acts of the travellers. We then follow the fortunes of St. Paul, re- the apostles. joicing in his successes, and filled with admiration for the indomitable courage and endurance with which he braved all perils and difficulties as he founded church after church in Philippi, in Thessalonica, in Berea, in Athens, in Corinth, and in Ephesus, until he once more pays a brief visit to Jerusalem (xv. 36 — xviii. 22). After a short stay at Antioch he began his third missionary journey. Revisiting Galatia and Phrygia he came to Ephesus. In that great city he stayed for nearly three years. After he had Avorked with eminent success, his departure was pre cipitated by a riot of interested partisans. He then Avent through Macedonia to Corinth, and after spending three months there made his way overland (to escape a Jewish plot for his assassination) to Philippi. Thence he proceeded to Troas and Miletus ; and thence to Tyre, Ptolemais, Caesarea, and Jerusalem (xviii. 23 — xxi. 17). This interesting journey, so full of touching incidents, is narrated Avith the graphic details which mark an eye-witness. St. Luke seems to have rejoined his friend at Troas (xx. 5), and was henceforth his constant companion. At Jerusalem, following the unfortunate counsel of James and the other elders to take part in a Nazarite vow, he became entangled in a fierce tumult of bigoted Jews, and, after a powerful speech, was nearly torn to pieces by them. Rescued by Lysias ; tried before the Sanhedrin ; escaping by a ruse Avhich he afterwards seems to have regretted;1 again rescued, despatched to Caesarea, and there imprisoned, he was tried before Felix, before Festus, and before Agrippa, and appealing to Caesar was sent as prisoner to Rome, where he arrived after a long and stormy voyage culminating in a shipwreck at Malta. This disastrous voyage is minutely described in what is evidently an extract from the diary of 1 Acts xxiv. 21. His respite was due to the latent animosities which he roused among his accusers. K 130 The Acts of the Apostles. the acts op St. Luke, Avho was his companion during all those weary the apostles. months 0f imprisonment, peril, and adventure (xxi. 18 — xxvii. 44). After a stay of three months in Malta he was taken on to Rome, and there handed over by the centurion Julius to Burrus, the Praetorian Praefect. After three days he called the Jews together to state his case and to preach to them the Gospel. Some of them believed, but the hostility of the majority was so evident that in stern words of rebuke St. Paul warns them that thenceforth the salvation of God Avas sent unto the Gentiles, and that they would hear it. At Rome he Avas alloAved to live in his own hired house, and there he stayed tAvo years, receiving all that came to him and preaching to them with all confidence, unimpeded. In that one word — diccoXvTQ}^ — a cadence evidently chosen for its emphatic weight, which is expressive of motion suc ceeded by rest, of action settled in repose * — the genial, and skil ful Avriter Avho has thus far accompanied us suddenly drops the curtain. It is impossible to explain why he ends his sketch of the Apostle at that period. Did he do so deliberately or accidentally? Did he carry doAvn his narrative to the period at which he first wrote his book ? Did some remarkable change in the prisoner's condition take place at the close of those tAvo first years in Rome ? Did St. Luke intend in yet another book to say what more he knew respecting St. Paul and other Apostles and Evangelists ; and was he prevented from writing such a book by the Neronian persecution, or by Avant of leisure, or by death ? These questions can never be answered. All that can be said is that after the fire of Rome and the outbreak of the persecution which resulted from the false accusation of the Christians, the whole condition of Christianity Avas for a time profoundly altered. To write a book about the progress of Christianity while yet it Avas a rcligio licita, and under the great protecting wino-s of the 1 Acts xxviii. 31 ; the word is an epitrite (~ ). See Bishop Words worth s note on this verse. Sudden Close of the Acts. 131 Roman eagle, was a very different thing from writing a book the acts of in which the author could only have dwelt Avith horror onTHEAPOSTLEs. the cruel atrocities of Roman imperialism. During that spasm of violence, when every Christian, merely because he was a Christian, Avas liable to arrest and death, the only kind of treatise which could circulate without the danger of involving a whole community in indiscriminate ruin if it were denounced by an informer, or given up by some weak traditor, was some cryptograph, unintelligible to the heathen, like tbe Apocalypse of St. John. Even a few lines more, Avere it only to tell us that St. Paul was liberated before the blood of martyrs began to flow like Avater in the world's capital, would have been most valuable to us and would have saved the necessity for endless discussions. That they should never have been written is for us an irreparable loss. But a thousand circumstances — the intention to compose a third book in better and safer times, or even his own death— may have made it impossible for Luke to write them. Meanwhile by leaving off at this point he has given to his whole purpose a magnificent unity ; he has exactly fulfilled the object Avhich he had in view ; he has shoAvn us how, in a space of thirty years, the Gospel reached to the far West ; 1 how it was made known to the Samaritans, to the Greeks, to the Asiatics, to the Romans ; how the sceptre of righteousness Avas transferred from the hands of the JeAV to those of the Gentile ; hoAV the centre of gravity of the Christian Church as an outAvard organisation Avas shifted from Jerusalem to Antioch, from Antioch to Rome. Let us now consider some of the chief features of this invaluable and deeply-interesting book. 1. The title, "Acts of the Apostles," does not come from 1 The {out points de repire for the chronology of the Acts are xi. 28 ; xii. 23 ; xviii. 2 ; xxiv. 27. The Famine in the Days of Claudius, A.D. 44, 45. The Death of Agrippa I. a.d. 44. The Decree for the Expulsion of JeAVS from Rome, a.d. 49. The Recall of Felix, a.d. 60. K 2 132 Tiie Acts of the Apostles. the acts of the author, and is misleading. He probably called his book the apostles. fey the then common tit]e of « Acts " only.1 The Apostles in general are only mentioned once. St. John only appears on three occasions in an entirely silent and subordinate capacity. Of St. James the elder Ave learn nothing except his martyrdom. On the other hand, non-Apostles, like Stephen, Philip, and Barnabas, are prominent. It is clear, therefore, that the record is essentially fragmentary. Although so much of the book is devoted to St. Paul it tells us but a tithe of his manifold adventures. That portion of the Acts Avhich narrates St. Paul's mission-labours has been called " the Christian Odyssey," but it is an Odyssey at once imperfect and discontinuous. Not one of St. Paul's five scourgings Avith Jewish thongs, one only of his three beatings Avith Roman rods, not one of the three shipAvrecks Avhich preceded the one so elaborately recorded, are mentioned by St. Luke. He tells us nothing of that day and night in the deep. He mentions tAvo only of seven imprisonments.2 There are even Avhole classes of the Apostle's perils and hardships — perils of rivers, perils of robbers, perils in the Avilderness, perils among false brethren, and miseries of hunger, thirst, fasting, nakedness, of which St. Luke says nothing. He does not so much as allude to the fact that St. Paul wrote a single letter. He never even gives the name of so beloved, faithful, and able a companion of St. Paul as Titus. Of the council of Jerusalem he gives us but a partial conception. It is clear that the Acts does not pretend to be a complete history. Its omission of events and circumstances can be largely supplemented by the information furnished in the Epistles to the Corinthians, Romans, and Galatians, in the Pastoral Epistles, in the first Epistle of St. Peter, and in the earlier chapters of the Apocalypse. It is only by combining these Avith what St. Luke tells us that Ave can form any adequate conception of all that the Apostle of the Gentiles was and did. 1 There were "Acts of Pilate;" "Acts of Philip;" "Acts of Paul and Thecla," &c. 2 'E7ttcik!s Seo-ixa (popeaas. Clem. Rom. Ep. ad Cor. 5. the apostles. The First Church History. 133 2. But though thus fragmentary it is a book of the highest the acts -of. importance. St. Luke is Avriting with a special purpose and ' is selecting materials on which he could rely. In spite of its marked lacunae his book is more valuable than if it had been constructed out of looser elements. As it is St. Luke only narrates that which suits his immediate object, and which he knew by eye-Avitness or from trustworthy sources.1 3. The " Acts " is the earliest sketch of Church history. It is, as we have seen, a book of origins. It tells us of the first apostolic miracle ; the first apostolic sermon ; the first beginnings of ecclesiastical organisation ; the first persecution ; the first martyr; the first Gentile convert; the first ecclesiastical synod ; the first mission journey ; the first European Church. 4. It is also an Eirenicon, a " tendency-writing,'' a book with an object. It sets forth the exquisite ideal for which the writer yearned — simplicity, holy gladness, entire unselfish ness, a cheerful activity, unanimity of heart and soul.2 This has been urged to its discredit.3 The fact that it exhibits a mediating tendency has been supposed to diminish its credi bility. There is not the least reason why St. Luke should be less trustworthy because of his desire to be catholic. Let it be granted that he Avished to prove that there was no irreconcil able opposition betAveen St. Paul and the Twelve, between the Churches of Antioch and Jerusalem, betAveen JeAvish and Gentile Christians. Let it be granted that the allusion to the synod of Jerusalem in the Epistle to the Galatians gives a glimpse of severer struggles and keener heart-burnings than Ave might have divined from the narrative of St. Luke. Let it be assumed that subjective and artificial considerations played their part in the selection and arrangement of the narratives which are here brought together. These conces- 1 The "we sections " are xvi. 10-xvii. 1 (St. Luke seems to have been left at Philippi, and St. Paul found him there again seven years later), xx. 5, to the end. St. Luke was with St. Paul during his Caesarean and both his Roman imprisonments. 2 See Acts ii. 44-47 ; iv. 32, &e. 3 Especially by Baur, Schwegler, Zeller, and the Tiibingen critics in general. See Hilgenfeld Einleitung, 575. 134 The Acts of the Apostles. the acts of sions in no Avise detract from the credit due to St. Luke as a the apostles. genu;ne historian. They only show that he Avas too earnest to be a sceptic or a neutral. His bias, if bias it were, was a truly noble one. Real history can never be written by those who look Avith philosophic indifference on the great passions Avhich it brings into play, nor is truth the less truth because it can and indeed must be regarded under different aspects by different minds. St. Luke has misrepresented nothing. There were divisions of opinion in the Apostolic Church as there always have been in all religions communities ; St. Luke has nob concealed the existence of those conflicting views. But under this partial divergence there Avas an essential and fundamental unity. To the beautiful spirit of the historian this unity appeared to be more real as well as more important than the superficial disagreement, just as the ocean is more important than the ripples upon its surface. He wished to show us the movement of the great universal tide, not the advance or recession of this or that individual Avave. It is to his glory and not to his discredit that his sympathies were so large as to dwell rather on the reconcilement of brethren than on the disunion of schools of thought. There must always be a difference between the impressions left by the same events upon different minds, but there is not a single event Avhich St. Luke narrates Avhich can be shoAvn to be inconsistent with the evidences derived from other sources. 5. And Ave are happily able to declare Avithout any qualifica tion that St. Luke, in every instance where we can absolutely test his assertions, triumphantly establishes his claim to be regarded as a conscientious and accurate historian. a. He can be tested in numerous points of minute allusion. He certainly wrote the Acts without any intentional refer ence to any of the Epistles ; and yet in scores of circum stances there are coincidences between the Acts and St. Paul's letters of the subtlest character and wholly undesigned. No one can read even Paley's Horce Paulines— -which now could be greatly enlarged — without seeing at once that any writer Minute Accuracy. 135 who was not thoroughly acquainted Avith the facts which he the acts of details would have fallen into multitudes of contradictions THEAP0STLES' and discrepancies in dealing with events so complicated as the incessant journeys and troubles of St. Paul. This evidence of genuineness is the more convincing because (as we have seen) St. Luke not only does not use any single Epistle, but does not mention the fact that St. Paul ever wrote an Epistle at all. And yet St. Luke not only agrees Avith the indications given by the Apostle in an immense number of small particulars, but can be proved to do so even when there might seem, at first sight, to be obvious contradiction. The proof of his credibility, Avhich is founded on these undesigned coincidences, is at once striking and beyond the reach of dispute. /3. But further than this, St. Luke touches on many points of secular history, and geography, and archaeology, and biography. We can test him again and again from the most unsuspected sources.1 He introduces sketches of historical personages, both JeAvs and Gentiles, of whom comparatively little is knoAvn — of Jews, like Gamaliel and the High Priest Ananias ; of Idumeans, like Herod Agrippa I., Agrippa II. , Bernice, and Drusilla ; of Romans, like Felix, the brother of Pallas, Festus, Gallio the brother of Seneca, and Sergius Paulus 2 — and in each instance his sketch, incidental as it is, has been confirmed by all that we can learn from non-Christian sources. He mentions strange and .obscure titles, like the Protos of Malta, the Recorder, and the Asiarchs at Ephesus, the local Praetors at Philippi, and the Politarchs of Thessa lonica ; and his accuracy is proved by rare coins and broken inscriptions. He speaks of a Proconsul of Cyprus, of Asia, and of Achaia, and his correctness, though challenged, has been absolutely established. He tells us of the famine in the days of Claudius ; of the popularity-hunting policy, and 1 There is an unsolved difficulty about Theudas (v. 36) but St. Luke is at least as likely to be accurate as Josephus who contradicts him. 2 Even the name of this Cyprian Proconsul has been discovered in an inscription at Soli by General Cesnola. 136 The Acts of the Apostles. the acts of sudden death of Agrippa L; of the cosmopolitan insouciance the apostles. of Agrippa II. ; of the cultured disdain exhibited by Gallio ; of the Italian Band at Caesarea ; of the decree for the expul sion of the Jews from Rome ; of Candace, Queen of Meroe ; of the sale of purple at Thyatira ; of the dialect of Lycaonia ; of the traces left by the local legends of Baucis and Philemon ; of the survival of the old cult of Zeus and Hermes ; of the silver aediculae, which formed a staple trade of Ephesus ; of the famous Ephesian amulets and books of magic; of the colonial privileges of Philippi; of many details of ancient navigation ; of the modes of dealing with Roman prisoners ; of the inviolable rights of the Roman citizen. In all these minute facts, as well as in many others, extending even to the description of Fair Havens and Lasaea in Crete, and the actual soundings and nature of the bottom off Point Koura on the north-east side of Malta,1 it has been demonstrated that he is writing with minute knowledge and careful repro duction of tested facts.2 6. The book records the rapid growth and triumphant progress of Christianity in the midst of deadly opposition. Its epitome is given in the words : " So mightily grew the Word of God." In the Agamemnon of Aeschylus there is a magnificent description of the fire-signals by Avhich the Greek hero made known to his queen at Argos the capture of Troy. The poet tells us hoAV the courier flame flashed from mountain to mountain, leaping over the plains and seas from Ida to the scaur of Hermes in Lemnos, thence to Mount Athos, then to Makistus, Messapium, Cithaeron, and so at last to the roof of the Atridae. Even so does St. Luke, a poet, and more than a poet, tell us how the beacon-lights of Christianity flashed from Jerusalem 1 This is strikingly proved in the monograph on the voyage and shipwreck of St. Paul by Mr. James Smith of Jordanhill, aud in recent works. 2 Every one of the discoveries made by Mr. J. T. AVood in his excavations at Ephesus tended to establish the accuracy of St. Luke. See Bishop Lightfoot in the Contemp. Rev. for May, 1873. . THE APOSTLES. Grandeur of the Acts. 137 to Antioch — from Antioch to Ephesus, and to Troas, and to the acts of Philippi — from Philippi to Athens and Corinth, until atT last it Avas kindled in the very palace and Praetorian camp of the Caesars at Imperial Rome. The Light of the World dawned in the little Judean village, and brightened in the Galilean hills, and then it seemed to set upon Golgotha amid disastrous eclipse. The book of "Acts" shows us how, rekindled from its apparent embers, in the brief space of thirty years, it had gleamed over the Aegean and over Hadria, and had filled Asia and Greece and Italy Avith such light as had never shone before on land or sea. 7. And it gives us at the same time the secret of this progress, in Avhich the neAv faith by " the irresistible might of weakness " shook the Avorld. That secret, as we learn from the first verses, Avas the promise of the Father, the power of the Resurrection, the outpouring at Pentecost, and afterwards, of the Holy Spirit of God. " The Spirit" — the " Holy Spirit" — is mentioned more often in this book than in any other part of Scripture.1 It is a comment on the old prophecy : " Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." 8. Lastly, the book is beautifully stamped Avith the indi viduality of the Avriter in its amiable catholicity, its " sweet reasonableness," its abounding geniality, its zeal, and hope and love. In these respects as it is the earliest, so too it is the most unique and attractive of all Church Histories. Ecclesiastical history is not always pleasant to read. It is too often the record of supine indifference on the one side and on the other of daring usurpation. It abounds too often in sanguinary episodes, it is disgraced too often by fierce partisanships and arrogant passions. It furnishes melancholy proofs of insidious corruption; of the holloAV compromise betAveen spirituality and Avorldliness ; of the deadly facility with Avhich ritual and organisation can take the place of manly freedom and heart religion. It tells us hoAV Christians, 1 No less than seventy-one times. 138 The Acts of the Apostles. the acts of out of careless ignorance and the eternal Pharisaism of the the apostles. human heart, submit to the reimposition of abrogated tyrannies and thrust priests and formulse, and all sorts of external in fallibilities between themselves and the Spirit of the Lord. There are many centuries — especially when Christianity began to lose more and more of its true simplicity — in which Church History is only exhilarating to those who love to trace the groAvth of formalism and the decadence of faith. But in the Origines Christianae of St. Luke Ave see a spectacle which is in all respects worthy of the faith of Christ. We see irre sistible advance ; Ave see indomitable resolution ; we see the conciliatory spirit which leads to mutual accommodation ; Ave see the Spirit of God triumphing not only over the idolatrous corruptions of Paganism, but also over the more subtle and dangerous opposition of false types of orthodoxy, and false types of Christian life. We read the ultimate doom of Antichrist, alike in his semblance to Christ, and in his enmity against Him. We see that when men are faithful their dead liest foes may be those Avithin as well as those Avithout the fold Avhich they would defend ; but that, hoAvever feeble God's servants may be, and however furiously they may be hated, God still strengthens them to the pulling doAvn of invincible strongholds. It can never be ill Avith the Church of God so long as she remains true to the high lessons of hope, of courage, and of sweetness, which she was meant to learn from this brief and fragmentary, but faithful and glowing, history of her earliest days.1 Her best and most persecuted sons — not those who swim with, but those who stem, the tide of her current insincerities ; not those who spread their sails to the summer breeze, but those who are ready to face the storm ; men like Wiclif, Huss, Savonarola, Luther, Wesley, Whitfield —may read in the story of how it fared with St. Peter and 1 The word x<*P's "grace" (akin to xa!Pa "I rejoice") is characteristic of St. Luke and St. Paul. It occurs in John i. 14-17, iu St. Luke's Gospel, eight times, in the Acts seventeen times, and incessantly in St. Paul. XapiCoiJai occurs twice in St. Luke's Gospel, three times in the Acts, and often in St. Paul ; but not elsewhere in the New Testament. Lessons of the Acts. 139 St. Paul, that the servant must still be as his Master, and the acts of that they can never be exempt from the hatred of false T1IEAP0STLES- Apostles, like Judas, and false princes, like Herod, and false rulers, like Pilate, and false religious parties, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, led on by false priests, like Annas and Caiaphas ; — but that nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, " The Lord knoAveth them that are His," and " Let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." THE EPISTLES. FORM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT EPISTLES. Der Schlaehtruf, der St. Pauli Brust entsprungen Rief nicht sein Echo auf zu tausend Streiten ? Und welch ein Friedensecho hat geklungen Durch tausend Herzen von Johannis Saiten I Wie viele rasche Feuer sind entglommen Als widerschein von Petri Funkenspriihen ! Und sieht man Andre still mit Opfern kommen Ist's weil sie in Jakobi Sehul' gediehen : — Ein Satz ist's der in Variationen Vom erstem Anfang forttont durch iEonen. — Tholuok. " Letters weighty and strong." — 2 Cor. x. 10. The New Covenant is the Revelation of the Gospel of the epistles. Jesus Christ. A large part of that revelation is conveyed to us in the form of letters. Those letters are twenty-one in number. The NeAv Testament is indeed entirely composed of a collection of letters, together with five historical books and one Apocalyptic Vision. In this respect the records of Christianity are absolutely unique in the religious history of the world. Of all the sacred books Avhich the world has seen there is not one which is composed mainly, or at all, of letters, with the single ex ception of the New Testament. The Bibles of the world — the Vedas, the Zend Avesta, the Tripitaka, the Koran, the writings of Confucius — are poems or rhythmic addresses, or legendary histories, or philosophic discourses. In this, as in all other respects, the ways of God's Providence differ 14-1 The Ep>istles. the epistles, from man's expectations. We may thank God that we derive some of the deepest truths of our belief from documents so simple, so individual, so full of human interest and love — Avritten, most of them, " in a style the most personal that ever existed." Yet it may perhaps be doubted Avhether there are ever many persons in an ordinary congregation who, if asked to explain Avhat is the special scope and outline — the charac teristic meaning and tenor — of any one of those deeply important letters, Avould be able to do so with any definite ness. But surely it is necessary for an intelligent acquaint ance with " the oracles of God " — for a real knowledge of, and reverence for the Bible, and a power to read it aright — that Ave should know something of its books as well as of those isolated fragments Avhich we call " texts." That is the reason why it seems desirable, in a very simple Avay, to make clearer, for those who need such help, the totality and general bearing of the books of Scripture. And the best result Avhich we could desire would be that, like the noble Bereans of old, Ave should all be stimulated to readand to inquire — searching the Scriptures for ourselves whether these things are so. 1. Noav the twenty-one letters, Avhich occupy more than a full third of the New Testament, fall into well-marked groups. Two of them — the Epistle to the Hebrews and the 1st Epistle of St. John — to some extent also the Epistle to the Romans — are more like treatises than letters; of the remainder, four are Catholic — that is, addressed to the Church in general ; nine are addressed to separate Churches ; and six are Avritten to private persons. These twenty-one letters represent the thoughts of at least six writers. Thir teen of them are by St. Paul, who had the chief share in moulding Hellenistic Greek for the purpose of expressing Christian truth ; three by St. John ; one, and perhaps in directly two, by St. Peter ; two by St. James and St. Jude, both brethren of the Lord ; and one — the Epistle to the Manifold Wisdom. 145 HebreAvs — by an unknown Avriter, probably Apollos.1 There the epistles. is an inestimable advantage in this rich variety. The glory of Christianity — the sevenfold perfection of undivided light — - was too bright to be adequately reflected by any single human mind. It is an infinite privilege that, by divers and manifold reflexions, we are thus enabled not only to see the commingled lustre of the jewels of the ephod, but also the separate hues of each oracular gem. We are thus enabled to realise what St. Paul beautifully describes as the many- coloured, the richly- variegated wisdom of God. We see Christianity from the first in its manifold diversity, as Avell as in its blended simplicity. We can judge of it as it ap peared to men of differing temperaments, and as it was understood in divergent yet harmonious schools of thought. In the letters of St. Peter we see it in its moderate, its con ciliatory, its comprehensive, its Catholic aspect. In St. James and St. Jude it is presented in its more limited and more Judaic phase. In the Epistle to the Hebrews Ave see hoAV it Avas regarded by the philosophic school of Alexandrian students. In the letters of St. Paul Ave have the Chris tianity of freedom ; of complete emancipation from Levitic externalism ; — the Gospel to the Gentile world. In those of St. John we have Christianity in its intensest spirituality, in its abstractest essence, as the religion of spiritual purity, love, and adoration. And Avith all these glorious sources from Avhich to learn, we may Avell feel a humble thankfulness and exclaim with the poet, " Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine And the configurations of their glorie ; Seeing not only how each verse doth shine, But all the constellations of the storie ! My object in this discourse will be twofold : First of all, to show the advantage of this epistolary form for the 1 That God chose His own fit instruments and that the sacredness of the books was due to the prior position of these writers is clear from the fact that only four of the writers Avere Apostles. Most of the Apostles lived and died unknown. L 146 The Epistles. the epistles, conveyance of divine truth ; secondly, by getting a clear conception of what Christian letters were, to study the method adopted in nearly all of them, and especially in those of the great Apostle St. Paul. These Pauline letters occupy more pages than the first three Gospels put together, and, if we count the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is also Pauline in its general tone, are more than three times the bulk of all the other letters. I. As to the first point, the epistolary form of the New Testament, it might perhaps strike us as strange that the deepest truths and the highest arguments of our religion should have been conveyed to us in casual letters. For casual, humanly speaking, they were. They are only pre served to us out of many which must have perished.1 Every Christian will feel that they were preserved by a special divine Providence ; but it is none the less true that their preservation was owing to causes which, in ordinary language, might be called accidental. Nor, again, were they pre determined letters, but they rose, for the most part, out of the circumstances of the day. St. Paul wrote one letter because in a previous letter of his to the same Church he had been somewhat misunderstood; another because he had been secretly calumniated and opposed ; a third to check an in cipient apostasy ; a fourth to express his warm gratitude for 1 This must have been so from the nature of the case, and is now generally admitted. "We can hardly see any other form in which the care of all the churches could have come upon St. Paul daily (2 Cor. xi. 28). There is no more reason to believe that every word which an Apostle wrote was " inspired " than every word which he spoke. Traces of letters written by St. Paul which have now perished are found in 1 Cor. v. 9. "I wrote to you in the letter not to associate with fornicators ; " and in 2 Cor. x. 9, 10, " That I may not seem as though I would frighten you by my letters " (Sid tZv iirio-ToXuv). Another lost letter may be alluded to in Eph. iii. 3 ; and another, which may however be an Epistle to the Ephesians, in Col. iv. 16. It is impossible to suppose that St. Paul never wrote to thank the Philippians for the contribu tions which they twice sent to him to Thessalonica (Phil. iv. 16) ; or that he dictated no line to the Thessalonians when he despatched Timothy to them from Athens (1 Thess. iii. 5). In 2 Thess. iii. 17, he speaks of his signature as the authentication " in every letter " ; could he have used this expression, if, as yet, he had only written one? The preservation of brief Epistles written on fugitive materials in troublous times is far more surprising than that others (perhaps undoctrinal and unimportant) should have perished. Occasions of Writing. 147 a pecuniary contribution Avhile he Avas in prison; a fifth be- the epistles. cause he wished to intercede for a runaway slave ; a sixth because, in his last days, he longed to be cheered by the society of a beloved convert. St. John wrote one letter — a little note, as Ave should call it — to convey a kindly message to a Christian lady ; another to a hospitable friend to warn him against the presumption of an intriguing presbyter. We see then that Providence has ordained that many of the documents from Avhich we derive our faith should be in the form of unconstrained epistolary intercourse. And this, so far from being a matter of regret, was a happy circumstance. We might, indeed, assume a priori that the form chosen for the dissemination of the Gospel by the Providence of God was the best that could be chosen ; and it may be safely asserted that the hold which the New Testament has taken on the minds of men has been due in great measure to its personal element. Christian theology would have been im measurably less effective if it had been conveyed to the world in canons, or articles, or liturgies, or scholastic treatises.1 II. The epistolary form of Christian instruction Avas, then, a providential arrangement, first of all — I say it with out hesitation — because that form of writing is essentially unsystematic. It might Avell seem an astonishing circum stance that we should have been left to learn almost all that we know, not only about Church organisation, but even about many deep theological mysteries from forms of writing so apparently unpremeditated. But the method of the Bible is alien from the spirit of elaborate, technical, all- explaining theological systems, which attempt to store away the infinite in the little cells of the finite, and to soar up to the secrets of the Deity on the waxen wings of the under standing. We may thank God that it has not pleased Him to 1 The same human and personal interest, in other forms, reigns throughout the Old Testament. Letters, indeed, are naturally rare (though Ave find a prophet's letter in 2 Chron. xxi.) because Palestine was a small country, and personal intercourse was easy. It was a different matter when Christian communities were scattered over hundreds of miles of sea and land. L 2 148 The Epistles. the epistles, express the plan of salvation in dialectics. The technical termi nology, the rigid systematisation of divine mysteries is due to exigencies caused by human error — sometimes even to the pride of human reason — far more than to the initiative set us by the sacred writers.1 III. Again, the epistolary form of so much of the New Testament was better adapted than all others to the indi viduality of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. It suited that impetuosity of feeling — that warm, emotional nature Avhich modern cynicism would have sneered at as " gushing '' or "hysterical " — which could not have been fettered down to the composition of formal treatises. A letter could be taken up or dropjsed, according to the necessities of the occasion or the moods of the writer. It permitted of a freedom of expression far more vigorous, and far more natural to the Apostle, than the regular syllogisms and rounded periods of a formal book. It admitted something of the tenderness and something of the familiarity of personal intercourse. Into no other literary form could have been infused that intensity of feeling Avhich made Casaubon truly say of St. Paul that he alone of writers seems to have written, not with fingers and pen and ink, but with his very heart and vitals, and the very throb of his inmost being ; which made St. Jerome say that his words Avere so many thunders ; which made Luther compare them to living creatures with hands and feet. A letter is eminently personal, flexible, spontaneous ; it is like ¦' a stenographed conversation." It best enabled Paul to be himself, and to recall most vividly to the minds of his spiritual children the tender, suffering, inspired, desponding, 1 St. Paul's letters, with their numerous antimonies, as much resist the process of formal and scholastic systematisation as the Sermon on the Mount. "Tracts for the time they were tracts for all times. Children of the fleeting moment, they contain truths of infinite moment. They compress more ideas into fewer words than any other writings, human or divine, except the Gospels. They discuss the highest themes which can challenge an immortal mind. And all this before humble little societies ! And yet they are of more real and general value to the Church than all the systems of theology, from Origen to Schleiermacher. For 1800 years they have nourished the faith of Christendom and will do so to the end of time. "—Schaff. Hist, of Christian Church, p. 741. Individuality of the Epistles. 149 terrible, impassioned, humble, uncompromising teacher Avho, the epistles. in courage and in trembling, in zeal and weakness, in close reasonings and strong appeals, had first taught them to be imitators of himself and of the Lord. His Epistles came fresh and burning from the heart, and therefore they go fresh and burning to the heart.1 Take aAvay from them the traces of individual feeling, the warmth, the invective, the yearning affection, the vehement denunciations, the bitter sarcasms, the distressed boasting, the rapid interrogatives, the frank colloquialisms, the private details, the impassioned personal appeals — all that has been absurdly called their " intense egotism" — and they Avould never have been as they are, next to the Psalms of David, and for something of the same reason, the dearest treasures of Christian devotion ; — next to the four Gospels, the most cherished text-books of Christian faith. St. Paul was eminently and emphatically a man ; a man who had known much of life ; a man Avho, like the legendary Ulysses, had seen many cities and kneAv the minds of men. He was no narrow scribe, no formalising Pharisee, no stunted ascetic, no dreaming recluse, no scholastic theologian, no priestly externalist, who could suppose that the world depended on the right burning of the two kidneys and the fat ; — he was a man, full of strength and weak ness, full of force and fire. He was not a man to mistake Avords for things, or outward scrupulosity for true service, or verbal formulae for real knowledge. Whether it is with a burst of tears or in a flame of indignation that he seizes his 1 Of the special style of St. Paul I have spoken fully elsewhere, and I have shown the extreme probability that he had attended classes of rhetoric in his early years at Tarsus. Otherwise, considering the thoroughly Semitic cast of his mind, it would be difficult to account for the fact that there is scarcely a figure of Greek rhetoric which he does not familiarly use. The same remark would apply to no other writer of the LXX. or of the New Testament. Here it will be sufficient to refer to his Enumerations (Asyndeta 1 Cor. xiii. 4-8; 2 Cor. vi. 4-10 ; xi. 22-28 &c.) ; Antitheses (2 Cor. iv. 7-12 ; v. 21) ; Climaxes, (1 Cor. xiii., 2 Cor. vii. 11) ; Rapid interrogatives (Rom. viii. 31-34 ; 1 Cor. ix. 1-9 ; Gal. iii. 1-5) ; Irony (1 Cor. iv. 8 ; 2 Cor. xi. 16, &c.) ; Multiplication of Synonyms (2 Cor. vi. 14-16 ; Rom. ii. 17-23) ; Oxvmora (2 Cor. ii. 2, viii. 2, xii. 10) ; and Paronomasias (Rom. i. 29, 30 ; 2 Cor. iii. 2 ; Phil. iii. 2, 3, &e.) 150 The Epistles. the epistles, pen or begins his dictation, he will always speak out the very thing he thinks. The mere form of these Avritings led to blessed results. When Ave remember that the Christians of the first one or tAvo decades after the Crucifixion had no Christian books at all, and that all, or nearly all, the letters of the Apostles were the very earliest books of the NeAV Testa ment, and were known to Christians before the Gospels, we cannot doubt that to their fresh individuality is due, at least in part, the radiant simplicity, the glad enthusiasm of the early Church. What can be more free, and buoyant, and varied than St. Paul's letters ? Brilliant, broken, impetuous as the mountain torrent freshly filled ; never smooth and calm, but on the eve of some bold leap ; never vehement, but to fill some pool of clearest peace ; they present everywhere the image of a vigorous joy. Beneath their reasonings and their philosophy there may ever be heard a secret lyric strain of glorious praise, bursting at times into open utterance and asking others to join the chorus. His life Avas a battle, from Avhich, in intervals of the good fight, his Avords arose as the song of victory. 2. Such, then, is the epistolary form in Avhich, by God's Providence, a large part of His latest dispensation has been handed doAvn to us. It must be borne in mind that letters betAveen Churches and their teachers were no new things.1 From very early times the Jewish communities had thus corresponded with each other by epistles which Avere carried by travelling deputations. These epistles, which were often upon disputed points of doctrine, were called iggeroth (rvn^x). The intercourse between various communities in the cities of Italy, Greece, and Asia Avas immensely de veloped. Emissaries, "Apostles " in the original sense of the word, the synagogue — ministers whom the JeAvs called Sheloochim,2 were in constant employment. Inscriptions 1 Baruch vi. is a (spurious) letter of Jeremiah to the Babylonian exiles, 2 Maoc. i. gives us an ancient specimen of such a letter. 2 The "delegate" or "messenger of the congregation" was known as Sheliach Zibbur. Form of the Epistles. 151 tell us of the scores of times that a merchant or agent had the epistles. sailed between the coast of Asia and Corinth or Brundusium. Even in St. Paul's little circle Ave observe the incessant activity of missionary Avork which occupied the time of Luke, Timothy, Titus, Crescens, Apollos, Mark, Aristarchus, Stephanus, and others. And it is probable that they rarely went from Church to Church without carrying at least a few lines of written greeting, or instruction, or consolation, or, at the very least, of introduction and authentication. Thus, and thus only, Avas St. Paul able to sate the ardour of his missionary zeal. 3. And Avhat is the uniform outline of almost every one of these Epistles ? Amid all their rich exuberance of detail we find in them all a general identity of structure.1 St. Paul's Epistles to the Churches fall, almost invariably, into these six divisions. i. First, a greeting, sometimes very brief, sometimes ex tending over several verses, in which he generally manages with consummate skill, to strike the keynote of the whole letter. ii. Secondly, a thanksgiving to God for the Christian gifts and graces of his converts. iii. Thirdly, a doctrinal part, in which he argues out or explains some great topic of Christian truth, specially re quired by the condition of the Church to which he is Avriting. iv. Fourthly, a practical section, in which he applies to daily moral duties the great doctrines which he has developed. v. Fifthly, personal messages, salutations, and details. 1 Reuss, Th4ologie Chret. ii. 11. It is an interesting subject of inquiry to what extent there was at this period an ordinary form of correspondence which (as among ourselves) was to some extent fixed. In the papyrus rolls of the British Museum (edited for the trustees by J. Forshall) there are forms and phrases which constantly remind us of St. Paul. Renan is probably richt in comparing the journeys of the Christian delegates, so far as thoir outward circumstances are concerned, to those of Ibn Batoutah or Benjamin of Tudela. 152 The Epistles. the epistles. vi. Sixthly, a brief autograph conclusion to ratify the genuineness of the entire letter. This or that division may be wanting, or may be subordi nate, in one or other of the letters to the Churches, but this is the almost invariable outline — the scheme and form so to speak — of them all.1 Noav though the mere salutations at the beginning of the letters might seem to be a small matter, we should observe the beautiful element of novelty, of universality, and of depth which they involve. The ordinary salutation of a Greek letter Avas "joy" (-^alpetv);2 of a Jewish letter " peace " (Shalom). The Apostles unite both, and into each they infuse a far deeper intensity of meaning. Into Hellenism and Hebraism they struck the divine spirit of Christianity.3 The Christian has a right to the joy of the Greek and to the peace of the JeAV, and to both in supreme measure. The " grace " is the Greek's bright joy embathed in spiritual blessing ; the " peace " is a peace hitherto hardly dreamed of ; a peace of which there is scarcely the faintest trace in all the golden realms of heathen literature ; a peace Avhich passeth all understanding. And thus, as it were, by one touch, in a single phrase, does the Apostle show, quite incidentally, yet Avith finest significance, that Christianity is not only for individuals, not only for nations eATen, but for the world ; — that in Christ the distinctions of castes and nations are done away; that in Him there is neither Greek, nor Jew, nor barbarian, nor bond, nor free ; that for us the blessings of Hellenism and Hebraism may be severally intensified and mutually combined. 1 Something not unlike this general form may be seen even in the letters to the Seven Churches in the Apocalypse. 2 See the letter of Lysias to Felix, Acts xxiii. 26 ; and (which is curious) the letter of the Synod of Jerusalem to the Gentile Church (Acts xv. 23), and even the letter written to Jews by the Judaist St. James (Jas. i. 1). 3 "'Grace' which is the beginning of every blessing; 'Peace' which is the end of all blessings." St. Thomas Aquinas. In his later Epistles he made the touching addition of " mercy." The salutation of the Eoman world — from which our word "salutalion" is derived — was "health" (s.p.d. salutem plurimam dicit.) Greeting and Thanksgiving. 153 4. Another noteworthy point in these initial greetings is that the epistles. in his later letters St. Paul addresses his words, " not to the Church," but to " the saints." Let us not carelessly overlook the deep lesson involved in this. Whatever we are we are called to be, we are meant to be, saints, i.e. holy. No Church can be bound together, no Avorship can be arranged, no rules of Christian living laid doAvn on any other supposition. The very Avord for " Church " in the original means " called out " ' — summoned forth from the world to higher aims and holier aspirations. We may fall indefinitely short of our ideal ; we may be very Avavering in our pledged allegiance ; but let us never forget that the Gospel is addressed to those who, even if they be sinners, are yet called of God, called to sanctifieation. In Christians an unholy life is not only neglect but rebellion ; not only indifference but desertion ; not only ignorance but apostasy. Does not the whole tone of St. Paul's letters, even to such Churches as Corinth, does not the whole tone of our OAvn Prayer Book proclaim to us that we are by our very birthright Christians, i.e. a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people ? 2 5. Then how remarkable is the thanksgiving which St. Paul places after the greeting in the letter to every Church except that impetuous rebuke which he addressed to the Galatians. What a spirit of hopefulness does it display — 1 The word 'EKKXnaia is used in the Gospels by St. Matthew alone (Matt. xvi. 18 ; xviii. 17). It corresponds to the Hebrew 7Hi3. St. James still characteristically retains the word " synagogue " to describe even a Christian place of worship. Jas. ii. 2. 2 The peculiarities of the opening salutations of St. Paul's Epistles may be summed up as follows, (i.) In all his Epistles after his two first (1, 2 Thess.) written at a period before the Judaisers had questioned his Apostolic authority — he calls himself " an Apostle" ; except in the private letter to Philemon, and in the letter to his beloved Philippians to whom the designation was needless, (ii.) In his five earliest Epistles (1, 2 Thess. 1, 2 Cor. Gal.) he addresses himself to "the Church." (iii.) In 1, 2 Thess. he writes "to the Church of the " ; in later letters " to the church which is in " (1, 2 Cor. Gal). (iv.) In all the later letters he addresses himself "to the saints." (v.) He wishes them " grace and peace " in all but the Pastoral Epistles which hava "grace, mercy, and peace." 154 The Epistles. the epistles, hopeful trust in man, hopeful trust in God! We knoAV, for instance, what a factious, conceited, ungrateful, unfaith ful Church Avas that of Corinth ; yet even in his letters to Corinth St. Paul begins by thanking God, not indeed for their moral graces (that he could not do), but at least for their intellectual gifts. Even to them he says that " his hope of them is steadfast." These "thanksgivings" are neither an insincere compliment nor a rhetorical artifice (captatio benevolentiae). We may see in them the bright virtues of Christian hope. Never let us despair of ourselves ; never let us despair of others. There is a light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world ; we may dim it as with the darkness of the mine ; Ave may make it burn low as in the vapours of the charnel-house — but quench it quite finally and utterly Ave cannot. " Our lamps are gone out," say the foolish virgins in the parable, but it is in the original not " our lamps are gone out," but our lamps are being quenched, are going out ; and even then they are bidden not utterly to lose heart, but to go to buy fresh oil, that even for them at last their care may be — " Fixed and zealously attent To fill their odorous lamps with deeds of light, And hope that reaps not shame." 6. I will not here speak specially of the third and fourth divisions — the doctrinal and the practical sections of St. Paul's letters — because the special aim of the doctrinal portion varies in each Epistle ; but it is important to notice hoAV, in St. Paul's vieAV, doctrine and practice are inseparably blended. There is no divorce betAveen them ; no attempt to treat either as superfluous. On the loftiest principles are based the humblest duties : from the sublimest truths are deduced the simplest exhortations. One swift beat of the wing is sufficient to carry the Apostle from the miserable factions of squabbling Corinth to the sunlit heights of Christian charity, and like the lark whose heart and eye, even in its highest flight, are with its nest on the dewy ground, so in one moment — as in Final Salutations. 155 the Epistle to the Ephesians — he can drop at will from the the epistles. most heavenly spheres of mystic vision to the commonest rules of Christian intercourse :— " Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam, True to the kindred points of heaven and home." But from this interweaving of doctrine and practice we may learn a great lesson. Does it not teach us that noble thoughts make noble acts, that a soul occupied with great ideas best performs the smallest duties ; — that, as has well been said, "the divmest vieAvs of life penetrate into its meanest emergencies " ? Nothing less than the Majesty of God and the poAvers of the Avorld to come can sustain the sanctity of our homes, the serenity of our minds, and the patience of our hearts ! 1 7. Even the final salutations have their own deep human interest. In themselves, indeed, there is nothing specially sacred about them. The names Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Olympas, &c. have nothing in them more intrinsic ally mysterious or important than the names of Smith and Jones. Many of them Avere names of slaves and artisans, undistinguished and ordinary persons. Some of them, like Tryphaena and Tryplrosa {" tire want-on," "the luxurious"), could have been little less than insulting ; Nereus, Hermes, Phoebe Avere names of heathen deities in Avhom men believed no longer, grotesquely bestoAved on slaves ; Stachys " wheat- ear," Asyncritus "incomparable," Persis, a poor slave-girl brought from the Persian slave-market — all these names, even when not ridiculous, involved more or less of a stigma. They were not the sort of names Avhich were borne by the wise and mighty and noble. In any case the salutations sent to these poor persons have no more inherent importance than the salutations which any modern clergyman might send in a letter to any poor pensioners or aged widows in his flock. Felix Neff, "the apostle of the Hautes Alpes," two days before 1 " Paulus ad Romam xi capitibus fidem fundit, et v capitibus deinde mores superaedificat. . Sic in aliis quoque epistolis facit." — Luther. 156 The Epistles. the epistles, his death, "being scarcely able to see, traced the following lines at different intervals, in large and irregular characters, which filled a page, "Adieu, dear friend, Andre Blanc; Antoine Blanc ; the Pelissiers whom I dearly love ; Francois Dumont and his wife ; Isaac and his wife ; Aim6 Desbois, Emilie Bonnet, Alexandrine and their mother ; all, all the brethren and sisters at Mens. Adieu, adieu." Now this is exactly the style of St. Paul's final salutations ; and yet how rich are they in value and interest ! They illustrate Paul's affectionateness ; his honour for women ; his respect even for slaves ; the way in which he esteemed man as simply man; his nice discrimination of character. They are interesting too for the immortality which they bestowed on those obscure and humble Christians whose names, though they were less than nothing to the world, were eternally inscribed in the Lamb's book of life.1 Very interesting too is that autograph message and benedic tion which the Apostle always adds. Afflicted in all proba bility with ophthalmia, it was impossible for him, without pain and difficulty, to Avrite his own letters. He therefore employed the aid of an amanuensis.2 But, partly to express his own personal interest in the last feAv words of blessing and greeting, partly to prevent the disgraceful forgeries which existed even at that early time, he authenticated 1 " There is a Book By seraphs writ in beams of heavenly light, On which the eyes of God not rarely look, A chronicle of actions just and bright ; There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine, And since thou own'st that praise I spare thee mine." — C'OWPEIt. 2 The use of an amanuensis partly accounts for the constant "we" which St. Paul interchanges with "I." He does not mean to make those whom he associates with himself in the opening salutations at all responsible for his words, for he sometimes uses " we " when he can only be speaking of his indi vidual self (1 Thess. ii. 18 "we. . . even I, Paul.") The use of "we" is partly due to the modesty which in all languages dislikes the needless promi nence of "I." "We" is chiefly characteristic of 1, 2, Thess. In 2 Thess. the only passage which relapses into "I" is ii. 5. Silas and Timothy ara associated Avith him in 1, 2 Thess. Sosthenes in 1 Cor., Timothy in 2 Cor. Phil. Col. Philem. Paul writes in his own name only to the Romans and Laodiceans (Eph.), which Churches he had not personally visited. Autograph Conclusions. 157 every letter with his own signature and written benediction the epistles. and thus secured to future ages also a proof that they are reading the words of him who AA-as indeed " a vessel of election." 1 Such then, in the most rapid and summary view, is the general structure of the Epistles of the New Testament ; and such, in the briefest possible form, suggested rather than worked out, are some of the lessons Avhich that structure suggests. Any one Avho will read the Epistles through, each at a sitting, to verify these facts will more and more realise what a hid treasure we may find in the field of these sacred letters. We may thus become more earnest, more intelligent, and more faithful students of the Book of God. 1 St. Paul first adopted this final authentication (yvdpirrua) or badge of cogni sance — in 2 Thess. iii. 17 ; and implies that he means henceforth to use it. (ti e Written at Corinth. Romans, a.d. 58. j 1 Some of these (1, 2 Cor., Gal.) were addressed to little groups of Churches in Achaia, Galatia, &c. 2 See a paper by the author iu the Expositor, July, 1883. the epistles. 174 The Epistles. EPISTLES OF THE FIRST IMPRISONMENT. Third Group. — Personal and Cliristological. Philippians. circ. a.d. 62. Written at Rome. Colossians. 1 • „ PO „, ._ J- circ. a.d. 63. Philemon. J Ephesians. circ. a.d. 63. EPISTLES OF CLOSING YEARS. Fourth Group. — Pastoral Epistles. 1 Timothy, a.d. 65 or 66. Written in Macedonia (?). Titus, a.d. 66. Written in Macedonia (?). 2 Timothy, a.d. 67 or 68. "Written in Rome. The following dates (of Avhich some can only be approximate) may be found useful ; — • A D. Gaius (Caligula), a.d. 37. St. Paul's conversion and martyrdom of St. Stephen . 37 St. Paul's first visit to Jerusalem 39 Claudius, a.d. 41. St. Paul summoned from Tarsus to Antioch .... 41 Famine. Second visit to Jerusalem 44 First Mission journey ... 45 Expulsion of Jews from Rome .... ... 49 Third visit to Jerusalem . . ... . .51 "1 Thessalonians" 52 " 2 Thessalonians " . ... 53 Nero, a.d 54. Fourth visit to Jerusalem 54 " 1 Corinthians " 57 " 2 Corinthians " ... 58 " Galatians " 58 "Romans" .... 58 St. Paul at Rome 61 "Philippians" 62 " Colossians " and " Philemon ;' 63 "Ephesians" .... G3 Paul liberated 63 " 1 Timothy " 64 "Titus" 65 or 66 " 2 Timothy " 67 Martyrdom 63 THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. WRITTEN FROM CORINTH, A.D. 52. " He came who was the Holy Spirit's vessel, Barefoot and lean." — Dante, Parad. xxi. 11 9. "Habet haec epistola meram quandam dulcedinem, quae lectori duleibns affectibus non assueto minus sapit quam caeterae severitate quadam palatum stringentes. " — Bengel. "Im ganzer ist es ein Trostbrief." — Hausrath, N. Test. Zeitgcsch. ii, 299. "Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus, unto the Church of the Thessa lonians." — 1 Thess. i. 1. 1. At the north-western angle of the Archipelago, the ancient l thess. Aegean Sea, lies the beautiful city of Saloniki, an important commercial emporium of 70,000 inhabitants. Rising with its Avhite domes and minarets, its vines and cypresses, up the sides of a steep hill, between two ravines, it presents a splendid appearance as the traveller sails into the deep blue Avaters of its noble bay, and gazes from it upon the snowy mountain-crests of Olympus and Pelion. But Avhen you enter the toAvn all its beauty disappears. Its streets are tortuous, filthy, and neglected, like those of most toAvns which are blighted by the curse of Islam. It is oppressed by the greed, withered by the atrophy, and unsettled by the fanaticism of Turkish misrule. KnoAvn in old days as " the Orthodox city," and for centuries the bulwark of Christendom against 176 The Epistles. the Turks, it was taken by Amurath II. in 1430, and the majority of its 70,000 inhabitants are now Mohammedans and Jews. It was the outbreak of rage and massacre in this city in the year 1876 which AAras the first prominent event in the later phases of that Eastern question which has noAV for so long a period engrossed the attention of the civilised world. 2. In the first century, Thessalonica, the ancient Thermae, the capital of Macedonia Secunda, and the residence of a Roman Proconsul, shared Avith Ephesus and Corinth the com merce of the Aegean. Into this busy emporium, 1,800 years ago, there entered by the great Egnatian road three travellers. One was a grave elder from Jerusalem, another was a timid and youthful deacon from the bleak highlands of Lycaonia, the third was a worn and suffering Jew of Tarsus The names of these three poor wandering missionaries Avere Silas, Timotheus, and Paul. Tavo of them, only a few days pre viously, had endured a terrible flagellation with Roman rods in the open market-place, and had then been thrust into the lowest dungeons of Philippi, from which they had been saved by a manifest interposition of Divine poAver. The whole aspect of the persecuted Avanderers bespoke their poverty, their sufferings, and their earthly insignificance. Hated as the JeAvs were in classical antiquity, it is probable that these Avayworn and afflicted wanderers Avould be met on all sides by suspicious glances and expressions of contempt. Yet their object Avas the most nobly disinterested which it is possible to conceive. A famine was at that time raging in the Roman empire, and the commonest necessaries of life had risen to six times their proper value. But these missionaries had deter mined to be independent. Their first object, therefore, was to find a lodging in the JeAvish quarter and the means of earning their daily bread. Paul, the most worn, the most suffering of the three, had, as a boy, according to the admir able JeAvish custom, learnt a trade. It Avas the humble mechanical trade of weaving the black goats' hair of his native province into tent-cloth ; but even by toiling at this Gentiles at Thessalonica. 177 mean occupation night and day he could barely earn sufficient 1 thess. for their common maintenance, and but for a kindly contribu tion from his converts of Philippi the three devoted Evan gelists must have nearly starved. If this alone had not been sufficient to damp the Apostles' ardour, it might well have been thought that the peril and agony of their recent experi ences in Macedonia would at least have induced them to give up all thoughts of mission effort. But their hopes, their aims, Avere not selfish, or worldly, or commonplace. They were not swayed by the vulgar motives, the narrow domesticities, the self-seeking purposes which are the dominant forces in all ordinary lives. The first three Sabbaths saw them duly in the Jewish synagogue delivering their dangerous message to angry and suspicious Jews. After that, seeing in all pro bability the uselessness of such appeals, they turned from the large Jewish community and worked among the Gentiles. The Gentiles had long lost all practical belief in the Pagan religion. Their ancient poets had imagined that awful deities met amid the clouds that rolled over " the azure heights of beautiful Olympus ; " but now men had long grown sceptical, and, as Cicero had sadly said when he was an exile at Thessa lonica, he saAv nothing there but snow and ice. But the human soul cannot live in a vacuum. Man must have some belief in the future and the unseen to save his life from de struction and despair. Hence many of the Gentiles, and above all the gentler and more faithful souls of Gentile Avomen, eagerly embraced the message of a Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The success among the Gentiles of these JeAvish teachers of a new faith kindled among the Jews a bitter jealousy.1 The deadly hatred which, Avith incessant plots of murder, had 1 That the church of Thessalonica was predominantly Gentile is clear from 1 Thess. i. 9, 10, and is implied in Acts^xvii. 4, if we read " and of the prose lytes and of the Greeks a great multitude " (rdiv Te o-efSouevtav Kal 'EXX-fivwv, a.d. Vulg. Copt. Lachmann, Tregelles, &c). ii. That they were a small community appears from ii. 11, where St. Paul speaks of exhorting them one by one ('4va. eKatrrov iuav). (iii, ) That they were mainly slaves and artisans appears from iv. 11, 12. N 178 The Epistles. l thess. already chased Paul from city to city — from Damascus, from Jerusalem, from Antioch of Pisidia, from Iconium, from Lystra, from Philippi, as it drove him afterwards from Beroea and from Corinth — broke out once more against the bearers of the glad tidings of peace. The Jews themselves were afraid to act, but they enlisted in their bad cause the services of " cer tain lewd fellows of the baser sort " — the rabble which can always be assembled for mischief from the scum of great cities. This worthless mob set the city in an uproar and assaulted the house of Jason in which the missionaries lived. The rioters were too late. Their intended victims had received timely notice and had escaped into safe concealment. But the mob dragged Jason and one or tAvo other Christians before the magistrates.1 St. Luke calls those magistrates "poli- tarchs," a name Avhich is not found in a single ancient author, and which Avould certainly have been set down as a blunder by sceptical criticism but for the happy providence which has preserved it on a large inscription of St. Paul's day, and Avhich St. Paul's own eyes must have seen carved on the entablature of a triumphal arch which once spanned the main street of Thessalonica. The Turks, with their usual disregard and ignorance, recently destroyed this arch; but the stones on which ran the inscription Avere happily pre served by our British consul, Avere shipped to England during the outbreak of 1876, and are now safe in the British Museum. They furnish an interesting confirmation of the accuracy of the Evangelist. The politarchs made Jason and his companions give bail, and since their mission labours were thus rudely disturbed, Paul and Silas, leaving Timothy to teach the converts of Thessalonica, made their escape secretly 1 The specific charge was (practically) laesamajestas, the creation of disturb ances by proclaiming "a different emperor" (erepov PatriXea). Christianity being "the Gospel of the kingdom " (Matt. iv. 23, &c.) could be easily thus misrepresented. St. Paul not unfrequently uses the term kingdom (1 Thess. ii. 12, and altogether fourteen times in his Epistles) ; but the obvious danger of misapprehension prevented the Apostles from using it so frequently as in the Gospels where it occurs 124 times. Thessalonica was an urbs libera, and the Greek cities were slavishly loyal to the Emperor. The Earliest Christian Writing 179 by night. Such was the manner in Avhich Christ had been l thess. preached in the Church of Thessalonica — the second Church founded in European Christendom. 3. St. Paul felt so deep an interest in these earlier European Christians that in his absence from them he felt like a man bereaved.1 He longed to visit them again, and made vain attempts to do so from Beroea, from Athens, and from Corinth. At the latter city Timothy came back to him, and while giving a most favourable account of the Church in general, told the Apostle tAvo special facts about them. The one Avas that they Avere subjected to severe persecutions both froir. Jews and Gentiles ; the other that many of them Avere deeply discouraged by the deaths of some members of their little community, who, they seemed to think, Avould be terrible, and perhaps hopeless, losers from not having survived till that second advent of their Lord, which all Christians at that day supposed to be immediately imminent. 4. It Avas under these circumstances that, being unable to go to them in person, Paul determined to send them a letter. It Avas his twofold object to console them under persecution and to exjnain the groundlessness of their lack of hope about their brethren who had died before seeing the second coming of Christ. With a heart full of solicitude, longing to guide and comfort them, he bade Timothy, who had just arrived from his visit to them,2 to sit down and Avrite while he dictated. Doubt less he would have written a letter Avith his OAvn hand, as he did to the Galatians, but the chronic weakness of his eyesight rendered it difficult and painful for him to do so. Whether that letter — the First to the Thessalonians — was the first he ever wrote we do not knoAv, but it is at any rate the first that has come down to us ; and since it was Avritten some time before the Gospels, in reading the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, Ave are reading the oldest book of the NeAv Testament, the earliest document of the Christian religion, 1 ii. 17. i]/j.e?s Se dSeXipol airicptpavtoBeVTes dtp' -diLmv. 2 iii 6. &oti 5e eXB6vros TiuoBeov irabs rtuds dip' vixrHv. N 2 180 The Epistles. 1 thess. the first extant written testimony of any Christian after the death of Christ. Surely this fact alone ought to give to this brief letter an imperishable interest. What a moment was that in the religious history of the world when Paul first began to entrust to the fugitive papyrus words which were destined to possess so eternal a significance ! 5. The circumstances under Avhich the little letter was written explain its object. We can without difficulty under stand its general characteristics, its main outline, and its special lesson for ourselves. i. Its general characteristics can be explained in very few words. It is of all St. Paul's letters the gentlest. There is not a word of controversy in it. It is written almost exclusively to Gentiles, and hence has no controversy, no difficult reason ing, no developed doctrine. Its style is unusually simple. With the exception of one very severe remark about the Jews in the second chapter, it is marked by an extreme sweet ness of tone. A loving fatherly spirit breathes in every line. It is in all respects a letter of consolation. Two words strike the key-notes of its two most important sections — " affliction," "advent." He has preached to them in affliction; he has warned them that they would suffer affliction, and that warning has been fulfilled. But he has also preached to them of the coming of Christ, and in that hope all sorrow vanished ; so that by a splendid and daring paradox, which was not a rhetorical figure but a blessed truth unknown to the world before, they had received the word in tribulation, yet with joy — in much tribulation yet with joy of the Holy Ghost. That joy was like a green isle of peace in the world's troubled and storm-swept sea, on which the waves might beat, but on which they must for ever beat in vain. ii. Now look for a moment at the outline of this gentle letter of consolation. It will be seen at a glance that it falls into two main divisions— one personal and retrospective, the other practical and hortatory. It is also clear that it has the six features which occur in nearly all St. Paul's letters to The Second Advent. 181 Churches, namely : (1) the greeting, (2) the thanksgiving, l thess. (3) a doctrinal section, (4) a practical section, (5) personal messages, and (6) a final salutation. In this Epistle, how ever, the personal and the practical elements prevail through out and blend with each other. The only specially doctrinal portion is that from iv. 13 — v. 11. In that section St. Paul speaks of Christ's advent and its bearing on the dead. It should, however, be carefully noted that although only one doctrinal topic receives full treatment, the letter abounds with germs of thought which are developed in later Epistles,1 and also that the Christology of the Epistle implies though it does not elaborate the most advanced Christology of even the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians.2 The first three chapters are mainly personal and historical, the last two mainly hortatory. Each division ends with an earnest prayer. After greeting them in his OAvn name and that of his tAvo fellow-missionaries, he thanks God that the news of their faith had sounded like a trumpet-blast (e^ijxvTai) throughout Macedonia,3 and that they had become " imitators " (/jLifirjTal) of their teachers and of the Lord. The second chapter is occupied with reminiscences of his ministry among them and their hearty response. It is clear that calumny had been busily at work, or the self-defence of this chapter would not have been necessary. Happily, however, the missionaries — slandered as good men have been in all ages of the Avorld's history — needed only to appeal to the knowledge of their converts.4 Whatever enemies might say, the Thessalonians knew that their teachers had borne no resemblance to the mercenary quacks Avho in that day swarmed throughout the cities of the empire ; that no deceit, no avarice, no flattery, 1 E.g. 1 Thess. v. 8, "the armour of righteousness " (Eph. vi. 13-17) ; iv. 16, "the trump of God" (1 Cor. xv. 52) ; 1 Thess. v. 12, the duty towards minisfers (1 Cor. ix. 2-15 ; 2 Cor. xi. 8-10) ; self-defence (1, 2 Cor.). 1 See 1 Thess. i. 1 ; iii. 11, 12 ; v. 28. 3 The position of Thessalonica as a much-frequented commercial city is amply sufficient to account for this phrase. 4 This point comes out remarkably and repeatedly, i. 4, "knowing." ii. 1, "for ye yourselves know." ii. 9, " for ye remember." ii. 11, " even as ye know." iii. 3, " for ye yourselves know. " iv. 2, " for ye know. " 182 The Epistles. l thess, no subterranean motives had mingled with the exhortations. They knew the diligence, the unselfishness, the disinterested independence, the affectionate enthusiasm in which the mission to them had been characterised. And the Thessalonians had believed their message, and in spite of bitter persecutions had stood fast in the faith. At this point the incidental mention of the Churches of Judaea, who had been equally faithful amid similar tribulations, makes St. Paul " go off at a ii. Thess. 14- word " and digress into a severe denunciation of the Jews lti- Avhich must have arisen from the bitter, though momentary exacerbation caused by their conduct towards him at Acts xviii. 5- Corinth.1 But after this outburst he instantly recovers his calm of mind. He continues to thank God for con verts who were "his glory and his joy." He had sent Timotheus to encourage them, since he had himself been twice hindered by Satan from coming to them in person. That dear felloAV- worker with God had brought back an almost unexpectedly encouraging report of their steadfastness, Avhich had been to the Apostle amid his own heavy trials a fresh spring of life. St. Paul's feelings towards his little Churches were those of all true pastors since. " Oh hoAV rich a prisoner were I," wrote Samuel Rutherford to his flock at Anworth, " if I could obtain of my Lord the salvation of you all ! My witness is above : your heaven would be two heavens, and the salvation of you all as two salvations to me." 2 The third chapter ends Avith a fervent prayer for them, and 1 The transient nature of this feeling is shown by the tenderness of such passages as Rom. ix. 1-5, written only a few years afterwards. But the feeling must have been strong at the moment, since it led St. Paul to speak of his fellow countrymen in terms which recall the bitter scorn of Tacitus (Hist. v. 5), and Juvenal (Sat. xiv. 100), where Jews are charged with "hatred of the human race." This is one of the passages which led Baur to treat the letter as spurious. But he mistakes the meaning of 1 Thess. ii. 16, " but the wrath is come (eipBaaev) upon them to the uttermost." St. Paul means that their guilt involves their doom ; that their rejection of Christ is Christ's rejection of them ; their wrath against Christ was His wrath against them. Their doom was consummated (Matt, xxvii. 25) in the fulness of their criminality, though the final punishment was for seventeen years longer postponed. St. Paul must have heard from the Apo.stles about the great eschatological discourse of Christ (Matt, xxiii. 37-39 ; xxiv. passim). Ewald speaks of " Christusworten die ihnen gewiss aueh seliriftlich vorlagen." 2 Quoted by Dr. Donald Fraser, Synopt. Lectures, iii. 98. The Second Advent. 183 then (iii. 11—13) begins the practical section of the Epistle. 1 thess. These converts had grown up amid the impure laxity and manifold temptations of Paganism. St. Paul has, therefore, to warn them first of the high duty of purity (iv. 1 — 8), then of brotherly love (iv. 9, 10) and a calm frame of mind. Quiet ness, he tells them, should be their ambition ((piXorifielaBai, r)o-vxa fetv), and faithful diligence (iv. 11 — 12). St. Paul would evidently have had a strong dislike for all fanatical excite ment, for all holy mendicancy, for all consecrated idleness. From this duty he passes to the feeling which had disturbed their calm, namely, a needless despondency about those of their body who had died Avithout seeing the second coming of the Lord. This (iv. 13 — 18) forms the doctrinal kernel and chief motive of the Epistle. And yet that it did not furnish St. Paul with the original motive for the Epistle is incidentally but decisively shown by the word " finally " in iv. 1 ; showing that even at that point he was thinking of bringing his letter to a conclusion. By the suddenness and awfulness of that coming he exhorts them to maintain an attitude of armed watchfulness (v. 1 — 11), cheerfulness, and vigilance, and hope. They were to abandon for ever the Gentile views which, in spite of dim hopes and splendid guesses, looked on the Avorld beyond the grave as being at the best " a dolorous gloom," and to adopt that bright Christian confidence which in later years filled even the catacombs with emblems of peace and music and beauty — the dove, the green leaf, the Good Shepherd, the Orphean harp.1 1 Here again these few casual words of St. Paul mark an epoch. Rarely, as in the lovely lines of Pindar about the sunlight and golden flowers in the islands of the Blest, had any ancient poet spoken hopefully of the world beyond the grave. And the Islands of the Blest were only for the few, the prevalent conception is that of even Agamemnon in the Shades : — " Talk not of reigning in this dolorous gloom, Nor think vain words, he cried, can ease my doom ; Better by far laboriously to bear A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air Slave to the meanest hind that begs his bread, Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead. " A despairing Roman epitaph says, " Mortuus nee ad Deos nee ad homines aoceptus est" (Corp. Inscr. i. 118). Le Boissier, La Rcl. Rom. i. 304. 184 The Epistles. l thess. From that point — the eleventh verse of the fifth chapter — he ends the Epistle with moral exhortations of extraordinary force, freshness, and beauty. There were traces of insub ordination among them, and he bids them respect and love, for their work's sake, their spiritual pastors.1 There were traces of despondency among them, and he bids them encourage the faint-hearted and take the weak by the hand. There Avere traces of impatience and quarrelsomeness among them, and he bids them to seek peace among themselves, to avoid all retaliations and seek after all kindness (v. 12 — 15). Then follow little arrow-flights of sentences, unique in their orgin- ality, and pregnant in meaning : " Rejoice always," " Pray unceasingly," " Give thanks in everything," " Quench not the Spirit," " Despise not preachings," 2 " Test all things," " Hold fast the honourable," " From every kind of evil refrain." 3 Then he breathes his last prayer for them that God would sanctify them wholly in spirit, soul, and body — a prayer remarkable as being the earliest passage in which the tri chotomy of our human nature is recognised in Scripture. He asks their prayers, bids them salute one another Avith the kiss of charity, adjures them (opKifa u/^a?) that his letter be read to all the holy brethren, and ends his letter with an Apostolic blessing.4 6. Such then is the oldest book, or tract, or letter of the New Testament ; the first extant written communication addressed by Christians to Christians ; the first dawn of that glorious Christian literature which was to enshrine during nineteen following centuries so many immortal names ; the first brief flight, as it were, of the young eagle from the ark 1 The vagueness of the ecclesiastical organisation here indicated is one of the proofs of the early date of the letter. 3 It has been fantastically supposed that in these two profound but brief and casual exhortations lies the whole motive of the lelter. 3 This, and not " from every appearance of evil," is the true rendering (diro iravibs eXSovs, V. 22). 4 The tender and affectionate relation in which St. Paul stood to these little Churches may be seen in these salutations and in such passages as 1 Cor iv 15 ; 2 Cor. vi. 11-13 ; Gal. iv. 12-21. See 1 Thess. ii. 7-11 ; where St. Paul compares himself both to a father and a mother. Importance of the Letter. 185 of Christ's Church, which, over a world where at least the 1 thess. hilltops were beginning to emerge out of the deluge of in iquity, was to soar hereafter with supreme dominion through the brightening air. It may easily be imagined with what delight such a letter would be received by the little storm- tossed community of recent converts. In its tenderness, in its simplicity, in its sincerity, in its sanctity, it marked a new aeon in the world's history. It was worthy to be read to all the holy brethren; worthy to be read to all time. Letter- writing has been in all ages a branch of literature. From the letters of the Greek philosophers down to those of Cicero and Pliny, and from these down to those of Cowper and Carlyle, we have hundreds of specimens of letters ; yet I doubt whether mankind would not consent to part with every one of them rather than part with this simple missive, dictated perhaps in a few hours, partly as a personal appeal against prevalent calumnies, partly as a Christian consolation under real trials and needless despondency. There are tones, in the human voice which, when once heard, we can never forget ; which from their own natural quality vibrate for ever in the memory. So it is with the voice of inspired Christian wisdom. We need no proof of its inspiration. It thrills straight to the inmost heart, and its accents can never be forgotten. What illimitable hopes, what holy obligations, Avhat golden promises, what lofty ideals, what strange renovation of the whole spirit and meaning of life lie hidden in these simple words ! 1 Respecting the main doctrinal section of this brief letter — ¦ that which relates to Christ's Advent— a more favourable op portunity for speaking will be offered by the Second Epistle. We may, however, notice the fact that the views of St. Paul in later and more important letters grew and widened amid 1 There can be no more touching illustration of these remarks than the fact that when in the earthquake at Manilla in 1853, the cathedral fell on the clergy and congregation the voice of one of the dying sufferers, whom it was impossible to rescue was heard calmly uttering the Avords of 1 Thess. iv. 16. (See the Bishcpof Deny, ad. loc. in Speaker's Commentary.) 186 The Epistles. l thess. the divine teaching of events which constituted the spiritual education of his life. Here, writing to recent converts, his main points are (i.) Flee from idolatry and the pollutions of heathendom ; (ii.) Wait for the return from heaven of the Risen Christ.1 He had not yet been called upon (as in 1, 2, Corinthians) to defend against Jewish Christians his Apostolic commission ; or as in the Galatians to prove the abrogation of circumcision and the annulment of the law ; or as in the Romans to establish the great doctrine of justification by faith ; or as in the Pastoral Epistles, and those of his imprisonment at Rome, to dwell on the conception of the Church as the visible establishment of Christ's kingdom. In the course of these controversies, as time sped on and the horizon of his thoughts Avas widened, and Christianity spread, and the Lord did not visibly return, he was naturally led to think more — though not exclusively2 — of our present union Avith Christ, and of our still nearer union with Him when death should set us free. The tAvo practical duties on Avhich St. Paul thought it right to offer a special warning may however be here fitly noticed. a. The first is Purity. St. Paul was one of the very few men to whom it has been granted to speak on this painful subject, with stainless delicacy, yet with absolute precision. To him the Spirit of God seems more especially to have intrusted the high task of raising the world out of the depths of vileness to which it had sunk down. In what few words, in a tone how solemn and how fatherly, with arguments how weighty, does he speak at the opening of the fourth chapter. These Thessalonians had been Gentiles ; and the life of the Gentiles was socially a life of almost unblushing sin, scourged yet unenlightened by sin's natural retributions. Therefore he entreats and exhorts them to Avalk as he had taught them to walk, and to abound more and more. He tells them of 1 See 1 Thess. i. 9-10. 2 See especially Phil. iii. 20. Purity. 187 the deep sin of sensual indulgence, because the will of God 1 thess. was their sanctifieation. He bids them each learn hoAV to possess their bodies in sanctifieation and honour — that is to obtain a holy and noble mastery over themselves and the impulses of their lower nature. If they neglect this, he tells them — and this they knew full well — that they rendered themselves liable to the aAvful and inevitable consequences of permitted sin ; and he tells them further, what they had not yet learnt so Avell, that to despise these injunctions was to despise not man but God, who had given to them that Holy Spirit Avho loves " before all temples the upright heart and pure." And these loving and aAvful admonitions are not for the Thessalonians only, but for all time. What Paul said more than 1800 years ago one of the greatest Avriters of our day — not a clergyman, not a Puritan, not in any sense a Churchman - — felt constrained to say in a great work a few years ago, namely, that " to burn away in mad waste the divine aroma and plainly celestial elements from our existence ; to change our Holy of Holies into a place of riot; to make the soul itself hard, impious, barren ; — surely a day is coming when it will be knoAvn again what virtue is in purity and continence of life ; how divine is the blush of young human cheeks ; how high, beneficent, sternly inexorable, if forgotten, is the duty laid ... on every creature in regard to these particulars. Well, if such a day never comes again, "then I perceive that much else will never come. Magnanimity and depth of insight Avill never come ; heroic purity of heart and of eye ; noble pious valour to amend us, and the age of bronze and lacquer, hoAV can they ever come ? The scandalous age ... of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotencies and mendacities Avill have to run its course till the pit SAvallows it." So writes the great English moralist Thomas Carlyle, and this passage has often been noticed for its eloquence and poAver. Yet, though written eighteen centuries later, how incomparably does it fall below the few solemn, simple, weighty words of 1 THESS. 188 The Epistles. St. Paul to his Thessalonians at the beginning of the fourth chapter ' How far more spiritually religious are St. Paul's words I Hoav far more deeply do they go to the very heart of the matter ! And how superior are they in this respect above all, that St. Paul does not only warn, does not only remind of duty, does not only recall to us a sense of the dignity of our being, as having the image of God stamped upon it, and as being highly ransomed and ennobled to a filial relationship with Him, but he also points out to us the source of strength, the secret of victory, without which all warning is useless, — which source of strength lies in the awful words that " He that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who has also given to us His Holy Spirit." b. Of the second virtue on which he here touches — that of brotherly love — we need not dwell. But let it be observed how infinitely neAv all this was. To us it is as familiar as household words, but there is nothing Avhatever even remotely resembling it in the vast field of Pagan literature. On the darkness of heathen immorality sentence after sentence of this simplest of the Epistles must have fallen like a sun beam from God — a ray out of eternity. Imagine the joy of that young, tried, perplexed community as they received it ! It was a blessing to be comforted and inspirited by the words of the dear teacher Avho had changed the current of their lives. It was much to know that he was still with them in heart, healing their incipient disagreements, silencing their needless fears. But to be told truths so utterly new, so divinely precious, as that there could be "joy of the Holy Ghost" even amid " much affliction " ; that God had " called them to His kingdom and glory"; that they should, after death, be for ever with Him ; that they were all the children of light and of the day ; that the Spirit of God dwelt in them — surely such truths transfigured all life, as much as sunlight transfigures the dark cold world. If such words and thoughts shine brightly to us through the indurated dust of age-long familiarity, hoAv must they have sparkled for them, New Truths. 189 in their fresh originality, with heaven's own light ! Hoav i thess. must they have rejoiced to know that they might use, for their daily wear, such glory and holiness of thought as had scarcely been attained by the greatest spirits of their race at their rarest moments of inspiration ; and therewith that grandeur of life, which, in its perfect innocence toAvards God and man, was even to these unknown ! 190 The Epistles. 1 THESS. NOTE I. LEADING IDEA OF THE FIRST EWSTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. The leading words of these Epistles are Advent (Tlapovo-id) and Affliction (6\i\jns). The Avord Parousia for advent occurs six times, and St. Paul only uses it once elseAvhere (1 Cor. xv. 23). Its key-note is Hope. It first expressed the Christian possession of spiritual joy in the midst of calamity. " Much affliction, Avith joy of the Holy Ghost " (i. 6). This was no rhetorical oxymoron, but the sign of a neAV epoch in the history of human souls. Its main theme is Consolation from the near hope of the Second advent. "The dead in Christ shall arise first ; then we that are alive, that are left, shall, together with them, be caught up in the clouds to meet ihe Lord in the air ; and, so shall we ever be ivith the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another loith these words." — 1 Thess. iv. 17, 18. NOTE II. The general outline of 1 Thess. is as follows : It falls into two main divisions. I. Retrospective (i. ii. iii.) II. Hortatory (iv. v.) I. Retrospective. Greeting (ii.). Thanksgiving (i. 2-10). Appeal to them as to the character of his ministry (ii. -112). Thanksgiving for their constancy ; and bitter complaint of the Jews (ii. 13-16). Personal messages, and prayer (ii. 17 ; iii. 13). II. Hortatory. Warnings and exhortations : Be pure, Be diligent (iv. 1-12). Doctrinal kernel of the Epistle : Be comforted. The Dead aud the Advent (iv. 13-v. 11). Further exhortations: Be watchful, Be helpful, Be glad, prayerful, thankful, tolerant, aim at perfectness (v. 12-24). Last words and blessing (v. 25 -28). The Genuineness of 1 Thessalonians. 191 In this Epistle the personal, doctrinal, and practical sections are 1 thess. intermingled ; and there are no special salutations. NOTE III. ON THE GENUINENESS OF 1 THESSALONIANS. This may be regarded as finally established. The Epistle is thoroughly supported by external testimony, and probably alluded to even by Polycarp and Ignatius. The first to hint a doubt, Avas J. E. C. Schmidt, Einleit. ii. 256, who has subsequently been followed by Baur, Hilgenfeld, and others. Baur's arguments (Paulus, cap. vii. and Theol. Jahrb. xiv. 141) are mainly based — 1. (a) On the "colourlessness" and theological unimportance of the Epistle, which he says is (/3) built on the Acts, with (y) the help of reminiscences from the Epistles to the Corinthians. 2. On supposed traces of a later age. 3. On an " un- Pauline " Apocalypse in iv. The ansAver is simple. 1. Why should Ave suppose that St. Paul could write nothing loss important than Epistles to the Romans 1 1 (0) So far from being built on the Acts, it is not at first sight easy to reconcile the data of the Epistle with the events narrated in the Acts, (y) May an author have no recurrent phrases 1 2. The supposed traces of a later date aie exaggerated inferences from i. 7-9 (this needs no explanation, since Thessalonica Avas a centre of commerce from Avhich traA'ellers went in all directions ; and Paul himself may have spread the good fame of the Church) and iv. 13 (as though there Avere any difficulty in supposing that several deaths might have occurred at Thessalonica during the intervening months !). 3. The assertion that the Apocalyptic verses (iv. 13-18) are "un- Pauline " simply assumes that St. Paul's opinions Avere stereotyped ; not to mention that there is nothing in them which conflicts with Avhat lie writes elseAvhere. 4. The outburst against the Jews, which some have regarded as sus picious, is closely analogous to that in Phil. iii. 2, and is sufficiently accounted for by Acts xviii. 2-1 3. The whole Epistle was an answer to the secret calumnies of Jews who charged him with " deceitfulness, un cleanness, guile." In this way they began the controversy which did not end till his death (see Lipsius, Stud. a. Krit. 1854). 1 "Der Apostel schrieb nicht lauter Romerbriefe. "— Hofmann. 192 The Epistles. 1 thess. NOTE IV. DATES IN THE HISTOET OF THESSALONICA. B.C. (?) Founded in ancient clays, and known as Emathia, Halia, and, from its hot springs, Therma. 421 Occupied by the Athenians in the Peloponnesian war. 315 Rebuilt by Cassander and called Thessalonica after his wife, a daughter of Philip. 168 Surrenders to the Romans after the battle of Pydna, and becomes the capital of Macedonia Secunda. 42 Made a free city by Antony and Augustus. A.D. 51 Christianity founded by St. Paul. 389 Massacre by Theodosius. 904 Taken by Saracens. 1 185 Retaken by Tancred. Eustathius Bishop. 1876 Outbreak of Turkish fanaticism. Destruction of the arch of the " Politarchs." Saloniki is now the third city of the Turkish Empire with 85,000 inhabitants, of Avhom about half are Jews, THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. WRITTEN FROM CORINTH, A.D. 52, OR EARLY IN A.D. 53 (SOME MONTHS AFTER THE FIRST). " Ergo latet ultimus dies ut observentur omnes dies." — Aug. "Utraque Epistola ad Thessalonicenses fere singula capita singulis suspiriis obsignata habet." — Bengel. " These things must first eome to pass, but the end is not immediately.'' — Luke xxi. 9. Very shortly after St. Paul had despatched his first letter 2 thess. to the Thessalonians he received further neAvs of their con dition. It was on the Avhole favourable. In his first letter he had urged them to still greater advance in faith, and in brotherly love, and had encouraged them to steadfastness amid the heavy persecutions to which it appears that they Avere constantly liable. He had also urged on them the duties of purity and diligence, and of due submission to those who Avere set over them in the Lord. He had, above all, shown the groundlessness of their fears as to any irreparable loss of those Avho had died without seeing the advent of Christ. In all these matters his letter had produced excellent effects. He has no need to repeat his solemn warnings about chastity and obedience, and he can begin his second letter by thanking God Avith unusual fervour for the exceeding increase of their faith and charity. 194 The Epistles. 2 thess. 1. But yet there was one new and serious danger — over- excitement about the coming of the Lord ; a mistaken notion as to its immediate instancy; and a consequent spirit of disorderliness, Avhich sprang from the neglect of daily duties. A restless feeling of alarm had even spread into the heathen Avorld, and the gravest historians of the epoch recount the portents and prodigies which made many hearts faint with fear.1 It is this attitude of mind that he now mainly endeavours to counteract. His second letter — so brief and simple that it probably cost him no effort — must have been Avritten within a few months of the first. It has all the six usual divisions — the greeting of the first two verses; the thanksgiving, which, with its accompanying prayer and description of the Advent, occupies the first chapter; the doctrinal part, which, with exhortations and a concluding prayer, takes up the second chapter; the practical section, which, with mingled prayers and commands, forms the third chapter ; and the final salutation and benediction in the last two verses. But the main point and object of the whole letter could not be better summed up than by those words of our Lord which I have placed at the head of this discourse. That object is clearly stated in the first verse of the second chapter, which literally rendered runs as follows : " Now Ave beseech you, brethren " (not " by," but) " as regards the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not quickly tossed as by a flood, from your intelligence, nor be alarmed, either by spirit, or by word, or by letter professing to be mine, into the supposition that the day of Christ is here." It appears that they had thus, as it were, drifted from their moorings ; been tossed out of their sound sense. They had been excited, filled with reprehensible panic and disturbing exultation, by spirit, i.e. by some among them professing to speak under inspiration, or with the gift of tongues ; and by word, i.e. by some rumoured expression 1 Tac. Ann. xii. 64. Suet. " Claud." xlvi. &o. aud comp. 4 Esdras, vassim • Orac. Sib. iv. &c. l ' Occasion of the Letter. 195 of the Apostle's opinions ; and by letter, as though coming 2 thess. from St. Paul, i.e. either by mistaking Avhat he really had said to them ; or by believing in a forged letter, or in some letters which professed to give his sentiments, but misrepre sented them. He had told them in his first Epistle to " prove all things '' ; and it was clear that they had not sufficiently done so. They needed to observe that not every man was infallible who claimed infallibility ; or inspired who asserted his inspiration. What they required was " discerning of spirits." That there was a possibility of their being mis led by forged letters or spurious messages appears from the close of the Epistle, Avhere St. Paul appends his autograph signature to what had been written by his amanuensis, in order to furnish them Avith a specimen of his handwriting as an authentication for this and all future Epistles.1 But besides this liability to be deceived, the eschatological en thusiasm of the Thessalonians had evidently attributed ex aggerated importance to one expression which St. Paul had undoubtedly used. He had said that at Christ's coming " we who are alive and remain shall not anticipate," not get the advantage of, " them that sleep." Did not that little Avord " we " shoAV decisively the Apostle's expectation that he per sonally should survive to see the Second Advent ? And if so, of what use were the petty details of daily routine, the petty energies of daily effort ? So the Thessalonians seem to have argued. They began the unfortunate example of extravagant literalism. They unduly pressed the sense of a mere passing expression. St. Paul does not, indeed, tell them that they were mistaken in their general inference as to the nearness of the Advent. He probably did expect, at this period of his life, though not later, to see in person the return in glory of his Lord. In common with all the early Church, as we see in almost every one of the Epistles,2 St. Paul 1 The energetic adjuration in 1 Thess. v. 27, seems to show some misgiving that his letters might be suppressed or tampered with. 2 1 Thess. i. 9, 10 ; 1 Cor. i. 7, xv. 51 ; Jas. v. 8, 9 ; 1 Pet. iv. 7 ; Rev. xxii. 2U. o 2 196 The Epistles. believed that the close of the Age, the end of all things, the visible Epiphany of Christ in judgment, would occur very soon ; that literally, as Avell as metaphorically, the Lord was at hand ; that universally, as well as individually, the time was short ; that not merely in national judgments, and new revelations, but in flaming personal Apocalypse, they should see the Risen and Returning Christ. In the truest and deepest sense those early Christians were not mistaken. The divine and steady light of History soon made it clear to the Church that our Lord's great Prophecy of the last things had referred in the first instance, and in its primary fulfilment, not to His visible but to His spiritual return in the destruction of Jerusalem and the full inauguration of the last aeon of God's dealings with mankind. It Avas the winding up of all the Past; the starting point of all the Future. It was at once the death-blow to Paganism, and the annulment of the Jewish Law. Within seventeen years of the date at which St. Paul was writing (a.d. 52 or 53) the Pagans saAV an awful sign of the anger of their gods, which Tacitus calls " the saddest and most shameful bloAV." It was nothing less than the burning of the great Temple of the Capitolian Jupiter in the war between Vitellius and Vespasian, on December 19, a.d. 69. Six months afterwards the Jews saw a yet more awful sign that God had forsaken them, when a soldier of Titus flung the brand which consumed to ashes the Temple of Jerusalem, whereby the very possibility of obeying their worshipped " Law " sank into ashes for ever. These events were a coming of the Lord. The heirs of both Temples, the Capitoline and the Jewish, were the worshippers in the Universal Temple which is the Church of God— the handful of women, slaves, and artisans to whom were Avritten the Epistles of St. Paul.1 Now, so far as the anticipations of Christ's visible reappearance by' the early Christians were mistaken, they were so only on a subject as to which they professed no certainty, and on a subject Avhich their Lord 1 Dbllinger, Judenth. u. Heindenthum. The Man of Sin. 197 Himself had emphatically told them that it was not given to 2 thess. them, or even to the angels of God, to know. But as to St. Paul's expression, "we who are alive and remain," the Thessalonians had, in any case, emphasised its meaning un warrantably. They had mistaken a generic phrase for a specific and individual one.1 St. Paul had used the word " we '' to mean " we, the living," as opposed to the deed. Even if he implied, he had not meant to lay the slightest stress on his OAvn possible survival to that great day. He merely shared the feeling which prevailed even through the Gentile world, that some aAvful catastrophe Avas near at hand.2 2. He writes to them therefore with two great objects, one doctrinal and one practical. As a matter of doctrine, he wishes to remind them that the second coming of Christ, though he held it to be near (iyyvs) 3 was not instant (eveo-TTj/cev), had not, so to speak, actually begun ; and as a matter of practice he Avishes to instruct them how it was their duty to live Avhether that day Avas near or far. He does not Avrite to explain away Avhat he had said before, but only to bring out its true meaning. i. The doctrine forms, as I have said, the one prominent topic of the second chapter ; and is in fact the celebrated passage about the Man of Sin. Now about this passage whole volumes of controversy have been Avritten, which have for the most part only succeeded in darkening counsel by the multitude of words without knowledge. What St. Paul says is perfectly plain, though he spoke with an obvious caution which makes his reference obscure. Do not be startled, he says, out of your sound sense by any assertion, whatever its supposed source — not even if it claims to be inspired, or professes to come from me — as that the Day of the Lord is 5 1 Tbess. iv. 15 : rfueis . . . ov irepl eaurov \oy6s) of this Apocalypse has not, to the minds of those who have really studied the passage, the remotest con nexion with hell or with penal fire. The Avords " in fire of flame " are to be joined with " revelation," not with " inflicting retribution." They allude to the light of Christ's coming (Dan. vii. 9 ; Ex. iii. 2) ; the glory of the Shechinah ; the Sinaitic splendour of the clouds that bum into gold and crimson before His Advent feet. The Avords "taking ven geance " are a severe exaggeration of a rare Greek phrase, which means rather " assigning retribution for the sake < f others " (BlBovat iKBlKwcriv, 2 Sam. xxii. 48, LXX.). Those who are punished are not poor ordinary sinners, but wilful rejecters and hardened persecutors. The punishment is not " everlasting destruction," but spiritual cutting-off in the period between the Advent and the Judgment, from the Presence of the Lord; in other Avords, an exclusion from the Beatific Vision at Christ's First Advent, not at the final Judgment Day. But passing from this, we may add, that if of the '' Hoav?" of Christ's Advent we know little, of the " When ? " of the Advent 202 The Epistles. we know nothing. We believe that Christ will come to judge both the quick and the dead ; but it would not be true of any one of us that we are living in special expectation of that coming. For 2,000 years the world has waited. We know not — no human being professes to know — whether the Avorld may not last any number of thousands of years more. Any one Avho says that he is now living, as the early Christians did, in daily expectation of Christ's visible return, must (to say the least) be a man of exceptional views. No ! Ave do look for His coming to us in the constant daily calls and providences of life ; we do look for His coming to us at the hour of death ; we do look for His coming to us in the judgments and destinies of nations : — but, since the Bridegroom delayeth His coming, if we do but keep our loins girded and our lamps burning, Ave, like even the wise virgins, so far as immediate expectancy is concerned, may blamelessly slumber, provided that when He comes we be but ready to spring up at once, and to meet His call. The lessons, then, not to be disorderly; not to eat any man's bread for nought; to earn Avith quietness our own living ; not to be weary in well-doing ; are as essential to us as to the poor artisans of Saloniki 1,900 years ago. A sailor once leapt overboard to save a comrade at peril of his own life, in a stormy and dangerous sea, and was asked Avhen rescued " if he had thought that he was fit to die ? " "I should not have been made more fit," he answered, " by declining to do my duty ; " and he, too, like the old Pilgrim Father, gave, unconsciously, the very essence of the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. 4. Christ comes in many ways. In some way, we know not How ; some day, we know not When : it may be this very day ; it may be (for to Him a thousand years are but as one day), it may be long aeons hence, He shall return in Visible Presence on the rolling clouds of heaven, with ten thousands of His saints. But meanwhile to each of us, in one way or other, in mercy or in judgment ; like the falling dew or the flaming fire ; by natural retributions, or. in special providences ; Be Ready. 203 in the events of life, or at the hour of death, Christ comes. 2 thess. There are for us but tAvo lessons as regards His coming, which this Epistle, and Avhich all Scripture teaches ; the first is, Be ready for Him ; the second is, Be ready by the faithful performance of your duties, Avhatever they may be, in that state of life to which God has called you. i. Be ready. To us, as to the world, Christ shall come as thieves J in the night—" In an hour Avhen ye know not the Bridegroom cometh." " The last day is hidden, that all days may be observed." The attempt to calculate the day by Apocalyptic dates is distinctly anti-scriptural, as Avell as foolish. Christ " puts doAvn the childish fingers that count the number of the days." 2 The lesson to us, the lesson to all, is, Watch. One of those old JeAvish Rabbis — the Rabbi Joshua Ben Laive — Avhose lives Avere spent in watching for the coming of that Messiah, Avhom, alas ! though He had come, they knew not, tells how once in vision he asked the Prophet Elijah Avhen should Messiah come ? " Go and ask Him," said Elijah to the Rabbi. " Where shall I find Him ? " " He sits among the beggars at the gate of Rome." The Rabbi went and found Him, and asked Avhen He Avould come. "To-day," Avas the ansAver. The Rabbi returned to Elijah the Prophet and told him the story ; but even while he Avas telling it, the day was over, and the sun had set. " How ? " exclaimed the Rabbi. " The day is past, and He has not come ! Has He then spoken falsely to me ? " " No," answered the Prophet ; " what he meant was, ' To-day if ye will hear His voice.' " Yes, and that too is a summary of the Second Epistle : — " To day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." 3 ii. Be ready then ! And how are we to be ready ? Not by religious excitement ; not by intrusive curiosity ; not by feeble heresy-hunting; not by cheap prophesying the exact year in which the world is to end ; not by going about and 1 KXerrras, B. 2 " Omnes calculantium digitos resolvit," Aug. on Matt. xxiv. 36 ; quoted by the Bishop of Derry in Speaker's Commentary. 3 Sanhedrin, f. 98, 1. 204 The Epistles. 2 thess. asking people, "Are you converted ?" or, " Hoav is your soul ? No; but by humbly, faithfully, cheerfully doing what God makes it clear to us that we ought to do. Religion is neither a diseased self-introspection ; nor an intrusive impertinence ; nor an agonising inquiry. What is it ? It is the way of the supreme good, plain and indisputable, and ourselves travelling on it. It should be " an all-embracing heavenly canopy, an atmosphere, a life-element ; " not always spoken of, but always presupposed. It should be as the bottom of the ocean, always there, always necessary, though not always seen. " It was the custom of this young lady," says a great Avriter of fiction (and how simply beautiful a description of the spirit of true religion it is), " it was the custom of this young lady, to the utmost of her power, and by means of that gracious assistance which Heaven awarded to her pure and constant prayers, to do her duty." Let us do our duty, and pray that we may do our duty here ; now ; to-day ; not in dreamy sweetness, but in active energy ; not in the green oasis of the future, but in the dusty desert of the present ; not in the imaginations of otherwhere, but in the realities of noAV. " Man never is, but ahvays to be blessed," says the poet ; but if Ave do not wring our happiness out of the fair, peaceful, humble duties of the present, hoAvever great its trials, we shall never find it in the weakened forces, in the darkened rays of the future. Our duty lies, not in regrets ; not in resolutions ; but in thoughts followed by resolves, and resolves carried out in actions. Our life lies, not in retro spect of a vanished past; not in hopes of an ambitious future ; our life is here, now, to-day ; in our prayers ; in our beliefs ; in our daily, hourly conduct. If we have realised this Ave have learnt the lesson of St. Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians. If we have learnt this we are not far from, yea, we are in the Kingdom of Heaven. If we have learnt this Ave are both looking for, and hasting unto, the coining of our Lord. The Man of Sin. 205 NOTE I. 2them. LEADING FACTS ABOUT THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. This is the shortest of St. Paul's letters to any Church. The general idea is patient and quiet waiting for the day of the Lord. The key-note is ii. 1, 2, "that ye be not quickly shaken (a-a\ev6r,vai) from your mind, nor yet be troubled ... as that the day of the Lord is now present " (eveo-TrjKev). The peculiar doctrinal section is that on the Man of Sin. NOTE II. OUTLINE OF THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. i. The Greeting (i. 1, 2). ii. The Thanksgiving, mingled with exhortations and prayers (i. 3 -12 ; ii. 13-17) ; in Avhich is inserted iii. The doctrinal section ; the Man of Sin (ii. 1-12). iv. The practical section (iii. 1-16) mingled with messages, and ended by a prayer. v. The autographic conclusion and benediction (iii. 17, 18). The sections floAV into each other with no marked separations. Each of the prayers (ii. 16 ; iii. 16) begins with Avtos- Se 6 Ku'pios. The authenticity of the Epistle is all but universally accepted, though Hilgenfeld sees in it " a little Pauline Apocalypse of the last year of Trajan" (Einleit. 642). A few critics (Grotius, EAvald, Baur, Bunsen, Davidson) think that the second Epistle was really the first ; but they have found hardly any folloAvers. External and internal evidence are alike against them. NOTE III. THE MAN OF sin (2 Thess. ii. 1-12). This passage is not well rendered in the A. V. By the coming, should be "touching (i-rrep) the Presence." In mind should be "from your sense." Is at hand should be " is here." A falling away should be " the Apostasy." Above all should be " against every one." As God is 206 The Epistles. 2 thess. probably spurious, not being in X A. B. D. "E\eyov should be " I used to tell you;" to \jrevSei "the (not a) lie;" Kpidam, "be judged" (not "damned"); rois airoXXvpLevois "the perishing," &c. These inaccura cies are mostly corrected in the R. V. " No man," says Paley, " writes unintelligibly on purpose." St. Paul wrote this passage in a way Avhich his Thessalonians could understand because they had his oral instructions to help them.1 But the passage is intentionally Avritten so enigmatically as to render it obscure to any chance "informer" (delator) Avho might drop in to the Thessalonian synagogue. So far as it is of doubtful meaning it can have no special significance for us. In any case it dwells on a topic to which St. Paul never again recurred. Henceforth he spoke scarcely at all on the Second Personal Advent, but very much on our mystic union Avith Christ. The most natural supposition about the passage is that by "the checker" (6 Kare-j/av, qui claudit) St. Paul meant the reigning Emperor Claudius ; and by " the check " the Roman Empire. This vieAV — besides the fact that St. Paul is speaking not of the Pope, Protestantism, Mahomet, &c, but of something near at hand — has in its favour, 1. Early Christian tradition. " Quis nisi Romanus status ? " Tert. De Resurr. Carnis, 24 ; comp. Apol. 32 ; Iren. Haer. v. 25, 26 ; Aug. De Civ. Dei,xx. 12 ; Jerome, Qu. xi. ad A/gas.; Lactant. Div. Instt. vii. 15, &c. 2. Early Rabbinic notions. " The Messiah will not come till the world has become all white with leprosy " (i.e. has embraced Christianity), Sanhedrin, f. 97, 1. Soteh, f. 49, 2 (Amsterd. ed.). The JeAvs gave to Antichrist the name Armillus, by which they seem to mean the brace- leted Caligula (Armillatus, Suet. " Calig." 52). 3. The resemblance to the language of Daniel about Antiochus Epiphanes (Dan. vii. 25, xi. 36, 37), who is also called a " Man of Sin " (dvqp apaproiXos, 1 Mace. ii. 48, 62). The touches of description (" sitteth in the temple of God," &e.) are evidently suggested by the insane attempts of Caligula to place his statue in the temple at Jerusalem, and to the stories that he used to go into the Temple of Jupiter at Rome, and pretend to hold conversation Avith. him, during which he would sometimes get angry and frown at him. 4. The fact that St. Paul is evidently touching on a perilous subject on which he could not Avithout danger to his readers speak more plainly. 5. The fact that the oral teaching to Avhich lie alludes had already caused a charge of high treason to be brought against him (Acts xvii. 7, aitlvavxi twv dnypidraiv Kaio-apos irpdrTovat). 6. The prophetic resemblance to the actual course of events. John in 1 " Nos qui neseimus quod illi seiebant pervenire labore ad id quod sensit Apostolus cupimus nee valemus." — S. Aug. The Man of Sin. 207 the Apocalypse saAV the Antichrist in Nero. To this day, as Renan points 2 thess. out, the Armenian name for the Antichrist is Neren, and Nero's death was folloAved by the fall of Jerusalem — the coming of Christ to close the Old Dispensation. 7. The exact analogy presented by the cautious language of Josephus in explaining Daniel (Jos. Ant. x. 10, § 4). He stops short in order to avoid the necessity of explaining that the fourth Empire (Avhich he takes for Rome) is to be dashed to pieces by the stone cut without hands. The perilous jealousy and suspiciousness of Roman officialism drove the Christians from the first to the use of secrets and dim allusions (rytfus, 666, &c), just as the Talmudists Avere driven to similar crypto graphs by similar persecution in later centuries. The mystery lay not in the facts allude,! to, but in the symbols by which it had to be partially concealed from those who Avere not in the secret. Baur, who is always suggestive even when his vievre are most untenable, lias an interesting parallel between these passages and the Revelation of «t. John (Paul. ii. ft 24, f. E. T.). THE FIEST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. WHITTEN FROM EPHESUS, ABOUT APRIL, A.D. 57. "Ecclesia Dei in Coriniho : laetum et ingens paradoxon. " — Bengel. " Est enim haec periculosa tentatio nullam Ecclesiam putare ubi non appareat perfecta puritas. " — Calvin. "Epistola prior ad Corinthios tota contra seeuritatem humanorum cordium scrip ta est. " — Luther. "Paul — to the Church of God which is in Corinth." — 1 Cor. i. 1, 2. 1 cokinth. The First Epistle to the Corinthians comes next in chrono logical order after the two to the Thessalonians. It Avas Avritten some four or five years later. . After Avriting to the Thessa lonians, St. Paul had paid a brief visit to Jerusalem, and had then lived for nearly three years at Ephesus.1 He had thus been nearly four years absent from his Corinthian converts ; and Avhen he wrote to them he had to deal with so many topics that it will be impossible to do more than briefly indicate the characteristics of this, the longest, and in some respects the most magnificent, of his Epistles. We saw that the leading idea of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians might be summed up in the thought of hope in the nearness of the Second Advent ; and of the Second, in warning against un profitable religious excitement arising from the fancy that that Advent Avould instantly occur. The First Epistle to 1 See Acts xix. 10 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 3-8. The Corinthian Church. 209 the Corinthians is capable of no such swift summary. It 1 corinth. deals, on the contrary, with eleven or twelve distinct topics, and it intermingles those topics with weighty and memorable digressions. In it we see the method of St. Paul in handling questions of Christian casuistry — in dealing with many difficulties of belief and practice. The endeavour to guide, amid these difficulties, the little Christian communities which he had founded, formed no small part of that heavy burden Avhich daily rested on him, "the care of all the Churches." While St. Paul was at Ephesus, Apollos returned to Corinth, and the news which he brought of the condition of the Church Avas very grave. The converts, let us remember, were but a small body in a large city of some 400,000 in habitants.1 When we speak of the Apostolic Churches, we are apt to forget that they occupied the position now held by solitary ghettos, or small Moravian settlements, or isolated dissenting communities. The members of these little bodies were mostly of low position, and some of them of shameful antecedents ; 2 and they were left in the midst of a heathen dom which, at Corinth, presented itself under the gayest and most alluring aspects. The past history of the city, the beauty of its situation, which made it " the star of Hellas," the splendour of its buildings, the activity and variety of its commerce, arising from its being " the gate of the Pelopon- nese " 3 and the " bridge of the sea ; " i the multitude of slaves, the actual slave-market, the mongrel and hetero geneous population of JeAvs, Greeks, Romans, Asiatics, and Phoenicians; the confluence of sailors and merchants from all parts of the civilised world, the absence of ennobling traditions, the general smattering of popular philosophy, the aesthetic tastes, the sale of spurious antiquities, the Isthmian o-ames, above all, the consecration of impurity in the worship of Aphrodite Pandemos, the thousand Hieroduli in her 1 1 Cor. i. 26, ov iroXXol evyeveis. 2 1 Cor. v. 9, 10 ; vi. 11 ; ravrd tivis 7jre ; 2 Cor. xii. 21. 3 Pind. Ncm. vi. ii. * Xeu. Ages, 2. V b 210 Tiie Epistles. l corinth. temple on Acrocorinthus, all contributed to this result. Corinth Avas the Vanity Fair of the Roman Empire ; at once the London and the Paris of the first century after Christianity. In the Gentile world it was famous-infamous for dishonesty, debauchery, and drunkenness.1 It is not in a day that the habits of a life can be thrown aside. Even the most sincere of the converts had a terrible battle to fight against two temptations — the temptation to dishonesty (nrXeive^la), in their means of obtaining a daily livelihood, and the temptation to sensuality (atcaOapo-la), which was entangled with the very fibres of their individual and social life. So long as Paul Avas with them they were comparatively safe. The noble tyranny of his personal influ ence acted on them like a spell. But when he had been so long away ; — when they Avere daily living in the great, wicked streets, among the cunning, crowded traders and the aban doned proletariat — in sight and hearing of everything which could quench spiritual aspiration and kindle carnal desires, in " a city the most licentious of all that are and have ever been"2 — when the careless, common life went on around them, and the chariot wheels of the Lord were still afar, it was hardly wonderful if the splendid vision of the life of heaven on earth waxed gradually dim. And so it began to be with some of them as it was Avith Israel of old when Moses was on Sinai ; they sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. Many of them, very many — some in the shame and secrecy of a self-Avounded conscience, others openly justi fying their relapse by the devil-doctrines of perverted truth 3 — had plunged once more into the impurity, the drunkenness, 1 Even in modern languages " Corinthians " meant profligate idlers. "I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle."— Shakspeare, I. Henry IV. ii. 4. In Greek KopivBiaCeo-Bai meant "to play the profligate. "—Pollux ix 6 § 75. Plato, Rep. iii. p. 404. Further, see my Life of St. Paul, ii. 553-573' 2 Dion. Chrysost. Orat. Corinth, (opp. ii. 119, ed. Reiske.) 8 1 Cor. xi. 30, iroXXol ao-BeveZs Kal dfipao-Toi, xv. 32. fj.evoi, V. 2 ; i) yvcSais (pvffio?, viii. 1 ; ij dydiri) oh ipvuiovTai, xiii. 4 ; cpvotuoeis, 2 Cor. xii. 20. Elsewhere the word only occurs in Col. ii. 18. 2 The Corinthians eould hardly have asked these questions unless they had been visited by some teacher from Jerusalem of Essene proclivities. St. James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, was, according to Hegesippus, a Nazarite, and both to him and to his kinsman St. Matthew, Essene practices are attributed (Hegesippus ap. Euseb. H. E. ii. 23 ; Clem. Alex. Paedag. ii. 1). Now one branch of the Essenes looked on marriage as necessarily and essentially de grading. It was probably in the self-styled "Christ-party" that thete notions were rife. 3 St. Paul, in writing from Corinth, had already laid down in 1 Thess. v. 1 9, 20, two pregnant principles which might have solved these difficulties. Questions and Scandals. 213 that the Resurrection was purely spiritual, and that it was l corinth. past already. Would Paul give them some solution of the difficulties with which the subject was surrounded ? (vi.) Paul, in his (lost) letter, had asked them to establish an offertory for the poor at Jerusalem. What plans would he recommend to them about this ? (vii.) Lastly, would he send Apollos back to them ? They had enjoyed his knowledge and eloquence. Would Paul try to persuade him to return, and also pay them his own promised visit ? Such were the seven main inquiries of a letter which had been conveyed to St. Paul at Ephesus by Stephanas, Fortu- natus, and Achaicus, the worthy slaves of a Greek lady named Chloe. The letter was in itself sufficient to awaken some deep misgivings in his mind, both by the self-complacent assumption of its tone, and by the restless intellectualism of its speculations. But this was not all. St. Paul had heard from Apollos some hints about the innovations and tur bulence of the Achaian Church. But when he came to talk further with the slaves of Chloe, and they, no doubt reluct antly, bit by bit, in answer to his questionings, had told him all the truth, then he stood simply overwhelmed with grief and horror. For he learnt (viii.) that the Church was split up into deplorable factions, Avith the usual accompaniment (so sadly illustrated in many Churches) of "strifes, heartburnings, ra°"es, factions, backbitings, inflations, whisperings, disorderli- ness." x Some prided themselves on their breadth, and culture, 1 2 Cor. xii. 20 ; epeis, C'0^ot> Bvuol, epiBelai, KaraXaXial, ipiBvpto-jnol, ipvaidiireis aKaTaaTao-'iai. Hillel had said "many teachers, much strife." The factious ness at Corinth had been first caused by the visit of Apollos, and then in creased (probably) by wandering missionaries from the rank and file of parties at Jerusalem who represented (respectively) the views of Peter, and of James " the Lord's brother." St. Paul in his impetuous way reminds them that though they had " ten thousand pedagogues (1 Cor. iv. 15, /ivptovs iraiSayayoiis) in Christ," yet after all he was their sole spiritual father. This "detestable and unholy spirit of faction," as it is called by St. Clement of Rome, continued long afterwards (Clem. Rom. Ep. ad Cor. i.), and was "carried to a pitch of dementation " of which the world has seen many subsequent specimens. 214 The Epistles. and philosophical views, and said, " I am of Apollos ; " others on their sacerdotal pretensions and ecclesiastical correctness, and said, " I am of Cephas ; " others on their unsophisticated orthodoxies, and said, "We alone preach the Gospel; Ave are the only Christians — we are of Christ." (ix.) Then not unnaturally these party factions, which rent and deracinated the unity and wedded calm of the Church at Corinth, had led to the grossest irregularities in their very Avorship: — egotisms of rival oratory, mutual recriminations in sacred places, the utterance of angry and even blasphemous language even in their Sabbath gatherings, abuses of gloss- olaly so extreme that half-a-dozen enthusiasts would be on their legs at once, each pouring forth a jargon of unintel ligible sounds.1 So bad was the state of things that there was danger lest any chance Gentile listener should set them down as a number of maniacs.2 Even their women — Christian matrons — got up in the assemblies and gave their opinions Avith a positiveness and an assurance as im perturbable as though they were masters in theology. So far from being a scene of peace, the Sunday services of the Corinthian community were a battle-ground of contending factions. (x.) There was worse behind. Even in their social gatherings — the Agapae or love feasts — the deadly leaven of selfishness had worked. The kiss of peace was interchanged by Christians who were going to law with one another, and that before the heathen, about matters of ordinary honesty. The rich greedily devoured their luxurious provisions at the common table, in presence of the poor, half-starved slaves — the hungry-eyed Lazaruses — who had little or nothing of their own to bring ; and these, indignant and discontented, watched with hatred and envy their full-fed brethren. To so terrible an extent had gluttony and worldly pride thrust themselves into the most sacred unions, that men nominally Christian 1 1 Cor. xii. xiii. xiv. passim. a 1 Cor. xiv. 23 ; ovk tpovaiv Sti patvecQe ; Scandals at Corinth. 215 had been seen to stretch drunken hands to the very chalice l corinth. of the Lord.1 (xi.) Last and worst ; there existed among them a depraved casuistry — a reckless Antinomianism. Not only had unclean ness found open defenders, but one prominent, and probably wealthy, member of the Church had been guilty of a sin on which the very heathen cried shame ; and yet, blinded by we know not what strange Rabbinic sophistries,2 or perverted by we cannot tell what plausibilities of perverted liberty, the Church, in which too many Avere impenitently guilty of the impurity which was the besetting sin of Corinth, had actually con doned this glaring crime ! 3 Such was the state of a Church in which St. Paul had toiled personally for eighteen months, and in which his fervent energies had been seconded by such loyal Avorkers as Silas, and Timothy, and Titus, and Apollos, and Sosthenes, and Erastus. Truly if the ideal Church be the spotless bride of Christ, here in Corinth, at any rate, " the glory of the orange flower had faded," the whiteness of the virgin robe Avas stained ! We often hear the early Church spoken of as though we had nothing to do but to sit at her feet, and learn, and weep be cause we have fallen so far short of her example. That is the conventional fiction; very different is the hard reality, as Scripture faithfully reveals it to us. The early Church, as represented by so important a brotherhood as that at Corinth, though Paul had laboured there so long, was in a worse con dition than the worst of our Christian congregations. The early Church Avas the Church of the mustard seed ; ours is the Church of the full-grown tree. Thus then, like stroke after stroke of some death-knell to all his hopes, the evil tidings about this turbulent, conceited, 1 1 Cor. xi. 21, is /lev ireiva 'is Se fieBiei. 2 The Rabbis held that proselytism put an end to all previous relationships ; and possibly some Jewish Christians had casuistically applied this Halacha of the Scribes. . . 3 2 Cor xii. 21. In no Epistles are his warnings against uncleanness more solemn and emphatic, 1 Cor. v. 11 ; vi. 15-18 ; x. 8 ; xv. 33, 34, &c. 216 The Epistles. l corinth. party-shaken, clever, restless, backsliding Church of Corinth fell on the ears of St. Paul. It seemed like the shipAvreck of every fond anticipation Avhich had sprung up in his mind during his mission labours of a year and a half. It might Avell have caused in him extreme passion, or unmitigated despair. He might have sat down at once to Avrite an apocalyptic letter, full of burning denunciation, against these impure, disunited, self-satisfied disgracers of the name of Christian, — rolling over their startled consciences thunders as loud as those of Sinai. Or, suffering and harassed as he already was by the trials and persecutions of Ephesus, he might have folded his hands in utter despair, and, proclaiming his Avhole life to be a failure, he might have fled like Elijah into solitude, saying " Now, 0 Lord, take aAvay my life, for I am not better than my fathers." He did neither — this great, this indomitable man. He first took the practical steps which Avere imme diately necessary. He at once gave up for the present his intended visit to Corinth. He sent a messenger to Timothy to tell him not to proceed on the journey to Corinth overland,1 on Avhich he had been already despatched. In place of Timothy he commissioned the bolder and more active Titus to make what arrangements were most immediately pressing.2 Then, calling Sosthenes to his side as his amanuensis, he began to dictate to him this astonishing and eloquent Epistle. He tells us himself that he Avrote it with throbbing heart and streaming eyes ; 3 and yet, suppressing his emotion to the ut most, he proceeded to deal with the eleven questions and topics — the party factions, the notorious offender, the law-suits, the questions about marriage, about meat offered to idols, about headdresses, about speaking with tongues, the Lord's Supper, the offertory, and the Resurrection — Avhich the Corinthian missive and the news which he had heard had forced upon his attention. 1 1 Cor. iv. 17 ; xvi. 10. 2 2 Cor. xii. 18 ; viii. 6. 3 2 Cor. ii. 4, 4k ydp iroXXrjs Bxiipeus Kal crvvoxiis Kapdias eypa^ia vjiiv Sid iroXXoiv SaKpvtav. Intellectual Force. 217 Nothing could be more varied than the elements of thought 1 corinth. and practice Avith which he Avas thus suddenly called upon to deal. He had to heal the ravages made by Greek culture, and Greek rhetoric, and Greek philosophy upon the simplicity of faith. He had to rebuke alike the admixture of casuistical immorality with Christian liberty, and the encroachments of " voluntary humility " upon Christian holiness. He had to rebuke Judaic narrowness and spiritual license. He had in the same breath to deal with Hellenic sensuality and Ebionite exaggeration. For the first time he was called upon to apply the principles of Christianity alike to the most opposite per plexities of thought and to the wildest diversities of practice. How is it that he thus shoAvs himself perfectly at ease Avhether he is moving in the rarefied ether of dogmatic theology, or steering his steady course amid the concrete and complicated realities of daily administration ? It is because problems however dark, details however intricate, become lucid and orderly in the light of eternal distinctions. " The eagle which soars through the air does not Avorry itself how it is to cross the rivers." If this letter of St. Paul be compared with the someAvhat similar letter which Gregory the Great sent to St. Augustine in answer to inquiries which are of much the same character as to arrangements about the English converts, we see at once how immeasurably more decisive and minute the Pope is than the Apostle.1 But for this very reason, as Mr. Maurice says, the First Epistle to the Corinthians is " the best manual for the ductor dubitantium, because it teaches him that he must not give himself airs of certainty on points where certainty is not to be had." 2 Thus in the very difficult questions about marriage — Avhich seem to have been suggested by members of the Church Avho had perhaps imbibed an admiration for the practices of the Essenes, and who may have been led to their particular view by the fact that our Lord lived a celibate 1 The letter is preserved in Bede. * Maurice, Unity of the New Testament, p. 423. See Kuenen, Profeten, 11. 67 ; Lord Lyttelton in Contemporary Review, xxi. 917. 218 The Epistles. l corinth. life — St. Paul ansAvers hesitatingly. He does not wish to elevate his OAvn personal leanings into a rule of faith. It would have been Avell for many of the early and mediaeval ascetics if they had imitated in this respect the moderation and humility of the great Apostle.1 And yet we see at once that his letter Avas not, as a whole, uncertain and laborious, but SAvift and perfectly spontaneous. St. Paul had no need to burn the midnight oil in long studies. He had that divine enlightenment which enabled him at once to see to the heart of moral difliculties. Even his most elaborate letters were not in reality elaborate. Their most eloquent passages leapt like vivid sparks from a heart in which the fire of love to God burnt until death with an ever brighter and brighter flame. Before we proceed a step further, what a lesson does his conduct teach us ! What practical good sense does he dis play 1 What noble and perfect self-control ! What power to shake off a despondency which would have been so perfectly excusable, and to crush doAvn deep within his heart a passion and resentment which could hardly have been blamed ! What a lesson to us who are so easily de pressed and discouraged if our little plans fail, and our little efforts are less successful than we could desire ! And again, what a model of controversy and of wisdom does he furnish to the Christian Church of all ages — a model, alas ! how little imitated ! How clear do practical details become in the light of absolute principles ! How different is the per spective under which we see the hard and jarring collisions of Christian opinion, when we only see them under the light of that brotherly love to which, infinitely more than to ortho doxy or knowledge, is granted the vision of all things in God ! May we not all learn from this fine example ? When difficulties surround us ; when, after all our labours, nothing 1 The way in which asceticism has tampered with the Greek text in vii. 3, 5, and the comments of St. Jerome on the passage show how different a spirit prevailed at a later period. Rebuloe of Factiousness. 219 seems to be done and everything remains to be done ; in l corinth. the midst of apparent failures, in the midst of very real per plexities, in the midst of the babble of criticism and the strife of tongues, let us like St. Paul sit down bravely at once and always to embrace the first plain, practical step of duty which seems wisest at the moment. In quietness and con fidence, undeterred and undiscouraged, let us take the best part our adult spirits can. A great statesman once said, " I do not know Avhat is meant by painful responsibility. I do the best, the wisest, the utmost thing I can ; and no man can do more. My moral responsibility ends with the use of my best endeavours." That too was the brave and practical spirit of St. Paul. God had given him Avork to do, and he felt that he must do it, and ought not to yield to discouragement in it. Duties were his ; results were God's. It is not here our object to enter fully into the manner in which St. Paul deals with the eleven topics or problems presented to him. They must be studied by each reader for himself. We only now need to consider the outlines of the letter. After the greeting, and a guarded thanksgiving which dwells on spiritual gifts, not on moral graces, St. Paul pro ceeds at once to rebuke and correct the fatal party spirit of the Church ; but he prepares the way for this even in his greeting by " nailing them down " (to quote St. Chrysostom's expression) to the name of Christ. If a Church be truly " in Christ," there may be differing opinions, but there cannot be the shameful and shameless wranglings of party hatred and party faction. Hence in no Epistle is the name of Christ so continuously introduced. It occurs no less than nine times in the first nine verses. This correction of Church partisan ship, of the conceit of knowledge which springs from it, of the want of love by which it is fomented, occupies the first four chapters. One of the many things Avhich are remark able in their holy irony and impassioned appeal is that, though one of the parties took his own name, St. Paul will 220 The Epistles. l corinth. not say one Avord to identify himself Avith any of the parties, nor will he say Avhich section of wrangling Churchmen or wrangling theologians is most in the right or most in the Avrong. All that he insists upon is that he had preached the Cross of Christ, because he knew that " by the foolishness of the thing preached " 1 it pleased God to save mankind. What lie rebukes is the spirit of party. So far as they had yielded to that, they Avere all alike in the wrong. He shows them that where there is the humility of true wisdom — where there is the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ — where there is a right estimate of Christian ministers as of mere human instruments of whom nothing is required but simple faithfulness — where there is a due appreciation of the royal privileges of every Christian soul — where there is sufficient modesty to prevent every ignorant Christian from assuming that he alone pos sesses an absolute monopoly of truth — there the spirit of party melts away in the pure air of Christian love. In the fifth and sixth chapters he deals with the case of the notorious offender. He passes on him, out of mercy, and solely to secure his amendment, a, stern sentence, and warns them to shun, and to exclude from the brotherhood of Christ, all whose lives notoriously disgrace it. After an incidental rebuke of their litigious spirit, he gives them with awful emphasis those arguments against impurity which had never before been so clearly stated. Having thus far corrected disorders, he now proceeds to reply to inquiries. In the seventh chapter he answers their questions about marriage. The principles are stated with special reference to the persecutions and peculiarities of that epoch. We are here furnished with Paul's opinions not in the abstract, but as a question of immediate expediency in a perilous time when the coming of Christ was near. The eighth, ninth, tenth, and the first verse of the eleventh chapter are all devoted to the question of meats offered to Cor. i. 21, 5ta ttJs iiwplas tov Knpvy/xaTos. Idol-offerings. 221 idols. It was a problem of immense importance to converts l corinth. from heathendom, because they could hardly buy meat in the market, or go to any social entertainment, without being con fronted by it. It was in fact one of those burning questions on which timid, conventional men usually avoid speaking, because it is not possible to speak without giving offence to one side or the other. St. Paul's principles are clear. An idol is nothing in the Avorld. A Christian is free. He may buy in the market what he will, and eat what is set before him where he will, Avithout morbid Avorry or servile scrupulosity. Thus Ave see at once how completely St. Paul, Jew though he was, abandoned those rules about meat cere monially clean (Kashar) which to this day are so burdensome to the modern Jews. In spite of his Rabbinic training he rose indefinitely superior to the micrology of Rabbinism. Yet he would not let his own breadth of view be a stumbling- block to less instructed brethren. If, by his claim of liberty, others were led to assert an emancipation which wounded their weaker consciences, then since kindness is nobler than knowledge, and Christian love more sacred than even Chris tian liberty, every good man ought to be ready to give up his own personal rights rather than endanger his brother's soul.1 The ninth chapter is designed to prove that he practised what he preached ; for though, as an Apostle, he had the fullest right to claim maintenance at their hands, he had waived the right in order to cause no offence. In the tenth he warns them that not only is it wrong to shoAV deficient regard to the tender consciences of weak brethren, but also that it is very easy to use liberty in such a way as to underrate the difficulties and temptations which beset our earthly life. He begs them therefore to imitate himself in abridging their own rights, and so to avoid the peril of themselves perishing or of causing others to perish by permitted things. 1 St. Paul does not even refer to the decision of the synod of Jerusalem, which was a local and temporary compromise. 222 The Epistles. l coEiN-rn. In the eleventh chapter he settles the question about covered and uncovered heads,1 and sternly rebukes the gross disorders which had defiled their Eucharistic feasts. In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth chapters, of Avhich the thirteenth, the paean to Christian charity, is the most glorious even in the writings of St. Paul, he shows that the loftiest spiritual gifts are not those which are the most dazzling, but those which tend most to edification ; and that the simplicity of holy love constitutes the golden perfectness of the whole Christian life. The fifteenth chapter is the magnificent passage in Avhich he exposes their errors and resolves their doubts about the Resurrection — the chapter so familiar to us as we hear it in our Burial Service, "When our heads are bowed with woe, "When our bitter tears o'erflow, When we mourn the lost, the dear." It is but a casual chapter. In other words, it is no elaborate and premeditated treatise like the Phaedo of Plato, but the ready response to some suggested perplexities. Yet Avho would not give the Phaedo of Plato in glad exchange for this simple section of St. Paul's Epistle ? 2 St. Paul ends the letter with messages, salutations, and a final benediction. Such then is the First Epistle to the Corinthians. It is full of priceless gems. It abounds in rich digressions. Besides the two immortal passages on charity and on the 1 This passage (xi. 2-16) is not a mere detached paragraph. The fact that women claimed the right to appear with uncovered heads was part of the self-assertion which he is combating. 2 It is a remarkable and interesting fact that the question of the Resurrec tion had at this epoch received fresh prominence from tho asserted re-appear ance of the Phcenix in Egvpt twenty years before the letter was written, (Tae. Ann. vi. 28,) and the exhibition of a live Phcenix (!) in the Co-nitium of Rome in A.D. 47, exactly ten years before this letter was written, (Plin. H. N. x. 2.) Clement of Rome in his Epistle to the Corinthians actually appeals to the fable of the Phcenix as a collateral proof of the Resurrection. At that epoch all Gentiles and therefore many Christians believed in the existence of the Phoenix. It is impossible not to recognise a grace of superintendence in the fact that the New Testament is not discredited by any such allusion. Practical Lessons. 223 Resurrection, there is the ironic contrast between earthly 1 corinth, Avisdom and heaA'enly folly in chapter one ; the passage about the Christian race in chapter nine ; the sketch of the labours of the Apostles in chapter four ; the enumeration of the appearances of the risen Christ in chapter fifteen ; and many other paragraphs which ever since have been inestimably dear to the Christian Church. It would require many a thoughtful hour of personal study to master its manifold doctrines, to win but a few of its rich treasures. But three main lessons which dominate the Epistle — not, however, including the splendid episode on the Resurrection — may be summed up as being (1) practical unity amid divergent opinions ; (2) little details decided by great principles ; and (3) life in the world, yet not of it. (1) Divergent opinions in Christian communities there will ever be, and they Avill be harmless if only they be blended, like the intentional discords of some great piece of music, in the vast harmony of love. We may belong to parties ; but let us remember that the more of partisanship we display, the less Christian shall Ave be. If our party spirit be bitter and unfair, it is not only not religious, but anti-religious — irreligious — yes, even though it dwell on religious themes. Partisanship is generally far fiercer in the cause of error than in the cause of truth ; but Truth herself rejects and repudiates with majestic scorn the crude and bitter champions who, in thrust ing themselves forward for her defence, wound to the death her sister Charity. (2) Little details can only be regulated by great prin ciples. Little details to this day — be they even so little as the position of a celebrant or the manner of a genuflexion, and even after eighteen centuries of Christianity — may sometimes oive trouble. Little questions may arise about the authen ticity of clauses and the value of manuscripts, Avhich yet kindle great conflagrations. If we would be scholars of St. Paul, never let us squabble about them with personal recrimi nations and railing indictments. Let us refer them to great 22-1 The Epistles. 1 corinth. principles and they will cease to be perplexing. St. Paul refers the questions which had risen in his day to two great principles : (i.) Be fully persuaded in your own mind ; i.e., never do Avhat your conscience tells you is wrong ; and (ii.) Let all things be done Avith charity ; i.e., in all but the first essentials it is better to waive your rights and your opinions than to insist on them. FoIIoav this method of controversy, and you will pass, with one SAveep of the wing, from the small exacerbations of petty differences to those great ethereal realms where all dark clouds and all human colourings are lost in the boundlessness of light. (3) Lastly, we must live in the world, and in the world we must often come in contact Avith low standards and sinful Avays. But though Ave be in the Avorld, we need not be of it. A diamond may fall even into the mire, but it will be a diamond still ; or, as the good emperor expressed it — " What ever any one does and says, I must be good and true, as though the gold, or the purple, or the emerald were always saying thus : whatever happens I must be emerald and keep my colour." Here surely are great lessons, and they may all be summed up in this one great truth — that the life of the Christian is a life in Christ, and that a life in Christ is a life of peace, a life of order, a life of humility and self-repression, a life of purity, a life of love. Outline of the Letter. 225 NOTE I- 1 corinth. LEADING IDEAS OP THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. The Epistle is occupied Avith questions of morality and Church disci pline. The Apostle dwells on, i. Love and unity amid divergent opinions. ii. The decision of small details by great principles. iii. Life in the Avorld, not of it. It is specially interesting as shoAving us the conditions of life in an early Christian Church in all their variety and fulness ; and the masterly poAvers of government and prompt decision displayed by St. Paul. NOTE II. OUTLINE OF THE LETT HI!. 1. Greeting (i. 1-3). 2. Thanksgiving (i. 4-9). 3. The sin of party spirit (i. 10 iv. 21). 4. Disorders in the Corinthian Church. i. The incestuous offender (v. 1-13). ii. LaAvsuits, &c. (vi. 1-11). iii. Impurity (vi. 12-20). 5. Answers to the Corinthian inquiries, and cognate matters. i. Concerning marriage and celibacy (vii. 1-40). ii. Concerning things offered to idols (viii. 1-x. 33) illustrated by St. Paul's OAvn example of foregoing his OAvn just rights (ix.) and Avarnings against the abuse of Christian freedom (x.) iii. Regulations about gatherings for Avorship. a. As to covering the head (xi. 1-16). /3. As to the Agapae and the Lord's supper (xi. 17-34). y. As to the abuses of glossolaly (xii. -xiv. 40) which would be rendered impossible if Christians recognised the supremacy of love. iv. Concerning the Resurrection (xv.) v. Concerning the collection for the poor saints (xvi. 1-4). 0. Personal messages and exhortations (xvi. 5-18). 7. Salutations (xvi. 19-20). b. Autograph conclusion (xvi. 21-24). 223 The Epistles. 1 CORINTH. NOTE III. DATES IN THE HISTORY OF CORINTH. The main previous moments in the history of Corinth Avere, B.C. 24.3. Aratus and the Achaean League. 197. Battles of Cynocephalae. Corinth occupied by a Roman garrison. 146. Corinth taken and burnt by L. Mummius. 46. The Colonia Julia Corinthus founded by Julius Caesar, and peopled with old Italian veterans (Corinthienses not Corinthii). A.D. 52. St. Paul founds Christianity in Corinth. Gallio Proconsul of Achaia. 57. St. Paul's letter to the Church of Corinth. 95. Clement of Rome Avrites to the Church of Corinth. 135. The Church of Corinth visited by Hegesippus. (Euseb. H. E. iv. 22.) 174. Corinth visited and described by Pausanias.' For ancient descriptions of the city, see Livy, xiv. 28 ; Stat. Theb. vii. 106 ; Claudian, De Bell. Get. 188 ; Pausanias, ii. 2 ; Strabo, viii. p. 379. For modern, see Leake, Peloponnesiaca, p. 392 ; Morea, iii. 229 ; Curtius, Peloponnesos, ii. 514; Byron, Siege of Corinth; and Clark, Pelopon nesus, pp. 42-61. THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. written at philippi (?) a.d. 57 (late) or a.d. 58 (early). "There are three crowns ; the crown of the Law, the crown of the Priest hood, and the crown of Royalty ; but the crown of a Good Name mounts above them all."— Pirke, Aroth. iv. 19. "I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness." — 2 Cor. xiii. 10. Circumstances sometimes arise in life Avhich induce, and 2 corinth. almost compel men, who are otherwise of the most reserved and retiring disposition, to draw aside the veil of natural reticence, and, at the cost of whatever pain, to speak to the world of themselves, of their motives, and of their claims. A man who occupies a prominent public position, who wields a large, and desires to Avield a beneficent influence, who, whatever may be bis imperfections in the sight of Him before Avhom the very heavens are not clean, has an honoured, and as far as man is concerned a deservedly honoured name — is not altogether his own. His life, his actions, his motives are to a certain extent public property. It may not, therefore, be in all cases right, or even possible, for him to leave slanderous imputations to perish of their own inherent rottenness. That is no doubt, in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred (as every sensible man is aware), the only wise and proper course. No man, Avho emerges ever so little Q 2 22S The Epistles. 2 ookinth. above the croAvd, has ever, since the world began, Avholly escaped attacks. The thistles gather, in their tangled growth, round the foot of the cedars of Lebanon, and fires Avhich come forth from the crackling brambles scathe often, if they cannot wholly devour, the forest trees. The stainless purity of Joseph did not save him from accusation; nor the perfect meekness of Moses; nor the splendid services of Samuel. Elijah Avas a glorious patriot, and his king met him with the question, " Art thou he that troubleth Israel ? " Shimei cursed and flung dust at David. Of the Baptist's stern, self- denial men could only say " He hath a devil ; " of the Saviour's boundless sympathy, "Behold a gluttonous man and a winebibber." And if they called the Master of the house Beelzebub, hoAV much more them of His household ? The early Christians Avere accused on all sides of infant-murder and Thyestean banquets. Athanasius, Calvin, Luther, were charged with the most flagrant iniquities. The life of Richard Hooker, the most honoured divine of the Church of England, was embittered by a Avicked lie. The saintly Francis de Sales was charged with levity and impurity. St. Vincent de Paul long laboured under an imputation of theft. George Whitefield spent his life amid a roar of execration. Four years ago died one of our noblest and bravest prelates, and he, in the colony to which he had devoted his vast self- sacrifice, knew Avhat it was to be greeted by the cry " Three groans for Bishop Sehvyn." Few modern statesmen, feAV modern writers, few public men of any kind, are so fortunate as to escape misrepresentation. Most of them take it as a matter of course, — as much a matter of course as sick ness, or old age, or bereavement, and Avisely and quietly let it alone. A good man's life is generally sufficient to defend itself; and sooner or later in the justice of Heaven tho curse and the falsehood rebound upon the head of him Avho uttered them. " They say ! What say they ? — Let them say," — is the best attitude to adopt in an age ignobly pre eminent for gossip. "My accuser says that I have taken Apologia. 229 bribes from the enemy. I, M. Aemilius Scaurus, deny it. 2 corinth. Utri crcditis, Quirites? Which of the two do you believe, gentlemen?" A noble Roman considered that to be a sufficient defence ; and a good man may usually do the same. But, as I have said, it is sometimes necessary for the sake of others, to enter upon self-defence. We have a conspicuous example in this generation. One of its most honoured and saintly characters, stung by what he regarded as an undeserved taunt, wrote an Apologia pro Vita Sua, which has added a valuable book to the treasure-house of Christian litera ture. In that book he gives a sketch of his biography, and of his opinions, so far as seemed desirable for the public advantage. In such conduct there is neither vanity nor egotism. It is the answer of a good conscience toAvards God, declared also to men, that they may be ashamed who falsely accuse our good conversation in Christ. I have touched on these considerations because the Second Epistle to the Corinthians is, in the first century, a Avriting of exactly the same origin and character as Cardinal Newman's Apologia in the nineteenth. It is the Apostle's answer to them that accused him. It is St. Paul's Apologia pro Vita Sud — his self-defence against an outburst of opposition and calumny. It was necessary to defend himself because he was only attacked out of hatred to the Gospel which he preached to the Gentiles. His present object may be summed up in the tenth verse of the fifth chapter — " For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have someAvhat to answer them Avhich glory in appearance, not in heart." 2. Soon after St. Paul had Avritten his first extant letter to Corinth, there occurred at Ephesus that terrible riot which is described in the Acts of the Apostles, and Avhich (as we gather from scattered allusions) v/as even more perilous and agitating to the Apostle than we might at first have supposed.1 1 Lang, in the Protcstanten Bibel, conjectures from 2 Cor. i. 8-10, compared withiv.8, 9, that in the tumult at Ephesus, St. Paul, hunted through the 230 The Epistles. 2 corinth. Rescued from this terrible danger by the devotion of Aquila, Priscilla, and other friends, who risked their own lives for his, he Avent straight to Troas, and once more began to preach (2 Cor. ii. 12, 13). But though his preaching was blessed — though " a door was opened for him in the Lord " — he forgot himself in anxiety about the feelings of his converts. He could not stay at Troas from extreme anxiety to know the effect produced upon the Corinthians by the severity of his letter, and especially by his sentence upon the notorious offender. He had told Titus to rejoin him there, and bring bim news; but either Titus had been delayed, or the pre cipitation of Paul's escape from Ephesus liad brought the Apostle to Troas earlier than Titus had expected^ At any rate at Troas he had no rest for his spirit, because he found not Titus his brother. And since he grew more and more uneasy, at length (ii. 13), his oppression of spirit became so intolerable that he could Avork no more, and hurried from Troas into Macedonia. There — at last — probably at Philippi he met Titus. What Titus said to him the Apostle, in his eagerness, forgets to tell us ; but it appears, from the burst of thanksgiving at the close of the chapter, that he brought news which, though chequered, was on the whole favourable. The effect of the severe letter had been to a great extent satisfactory. It had caused among the Corinthian Christians a salutary grief Avhich had shoAvn itself in yearning affection and remorseful endeavour to amend. Titus himself had been received cordially, yet with fear and trembling. The offender, if he had not been dealt Avith exactly as Paul had ordered 1 — which was perhaps rendered unnecessary by his repentance — had still been visited by the majority Avith severe reprobation. Accordingly, he sent Titus back — and streets, driven into a corner, and dashed to the ground, bad barely escaped with his life, and had sud'ered severe bodily injuries from which he had scarcely yet recovered. 1 This seems clear from a comparison of 1 Cor. v. 3-5, Avith 2 Cor. ii. 5-10. Had Titus been the bearer of another short letter, no longer extant » It is a question which we cannot answer. Attacks on St. Paul. 231 with him Luke — to finish the good work Avhich he had 2 corinth. begun.1 On the other hand, there had arisen against St. Paul a defiant and influential opposition from the two Judaic factions which called themselves the Cephas-party and the Christ-party, who attacked him with every weapon of fanatical religious hatred. His change of plan in not paying them a double visit had led to much unfavourable criticism. Many injurious remarks on his character and mode of action had been industriously disseminated, especially by certain itinerant Judaic teachers, who were unhappily countenanced, or at any rate professed to be so, by commendatory letters from Christian Pharisees in the Church of Jerusalem. These factious partisans, as we see from the undercurrent of self- defence which runs so strongly throughout the letter, had said, or at least insinuated, that Paul Avas a man who was so capricious as not to know his own mind ; that he wrote private letters to intrigue with individual members of his congrega tion ; that there were good reasons why he had no com mendatory letters to show ; that there was a great deal in his antecedents which Avould not bear examination ; that he walked craftily, and adulterated the Word of God. Now St. Paul had a human heart, not an artificial one ; and he does not even pretend that such calumnies did not sting and Avound him. They stung him, and all the more because they came upon him at a time of great mental discouragement and physical prostration (iv. 8 — 12), when, as he said, " our flesh had no rest, but we are troubled on every side ; from Avithout fightings, fromAvithin fears" (vii. 5). We can under stand the phenomena of a letter written under such circum stances. If Hope is the key-note of the Epistle to the Thessalonians, Joy of that to the Philippians, Faith of that to the Romans, the Heavenlies of that to the Ephesians, " tribulation " is the one predominant word, and " consolation under tribulation" the one predominant topic of the first » 2 Cor. vii. 6-11, 13-15 ; viii. 6. 18. 23. 232 The Epistles. 2 corinth. great section of the second Epistle to the Corinthians. These two words, though unfortunately varied by synonyms in the English version, occur again and again inextricably inter- tAvined in the first chapter. Thus, in the third and fourth verses we read, " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Mercies, and God of all consola tion, who consoleth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to console those in all tribulation, by the consolation Avherewith we are ourselves consoled by God." This incessant recurrence of the same words — now " tribulation," 1 noAV " consolation," 2 now " boasting," 3 noAV " weakness," i now " simplicity," 6 noAV " manifest " and " manifestation " 6 noAV " folly," 7 — are characteristic of the extreme emotion of mind in which the letter was Avritten. The manner in which thankfulness and indignation struggle Avith each other, the difficult expressions, the abrupt causal connections, the labouring style, the iteration of taunting Avords, the inter change of bitter irony with pathetic sincerity — only serve to throw into stronger relief the frequent outbursts of im passioned eloquence. The depth of tenderness which is here revealed toAvards all who are noble and true, may serve as a measure for the insolence and wrong which provoked, in the concluding chapters, so stern an indignation.8 Of all the Epistles this is the one Avhich teaches us most of the Apostle's personality. It enables us, as it were, to lay our hands upon his breast, and feel the very throbbings of his heart. If you Avould know St. Paul as he was, you must study the Epistle again and yet again. 3. Hence of all his letters this is the least, as the First i extyis, Bxl8o;iai, i. 4, 6, 8 ; ii. 4 ; iv. 8, 17 ; vi. 4 ; vii. 4 ; viii. 13. - irapdxX-no-is, eleven times : the verb 17 times. s Twenty-nine times in 1 and 2 Cor. * do-Beveia, 2 Cor. xi. 30 ; xii. 5, 9, 10 ; xin. 4, &c. • xirxirns, i. 12 ; viii. 2 ; ix. 11, 13 ; xi. 3. 6 , ii. 14 ; iii. 3 ; iv. 10 ; v\ 10, 11 ; vii. 12 ; xi. 6. ¦ 2 Cor. xi. 1, 16, 17, 19, 21 ; xii. 6, 18. B St. Paul assumes that he may rely on the loyalty of the majority ; hence his appeal to viieis irdvres (ii. 3-5 ; iii. 18 ; v. 10 ; vii. 13 : xiii. 13), whereas the opponents are only rives (iii. 1 ; x. 2, 7, 12 ; xi. i ; xiii. 21, &c). Self-defence. 233 Epistle to the Corinthians is the most systematic. Indeed 2 corinth. the order of its thoughts might almost be called geographical, as he passes in memory from the dangers of Ephesus to the anxiety of Troas, to the afflictions of Macedonia, and to the dark prospect of his coming visit to Corinth.1 But this historical thread of the Epistle is interwoven with digressions. After the greeting, the thanksgiving and an allusion to the fearful trials through Avhich he had just passed in Asia, he proceeds at once to defend himself from accusations of levity and insincerity in having postponed his intended visit. He tells them that if, on this account, they charged him with saying now " yes," and noAV " no," with the shiftiness of an aimless man, there was at any rate in his teaching one emphatic " yes," and one unchangeable " Amen " ; the in finite " yes " of God in Christ, and the everlasting Amen of the Christian to all God's promises. And then he calls God to witness that it Avas to spare them that he had not come; because he did not like to visit them in grief. As for the offender, he had repented, and their obedience had been tested. If they forgave the man, Paul forgave him too. Then he tells them of his anxiety as to the effects of his letter, and ends the second chapter with a paean of eucharist to God who led him in triumph through the Avilling captivity of his weary life. Then in the third chapter he asks, Is this self-commenda tion ? does he need commendatory letters to them ? Nay, they were themselves his commendatory letter ; a letter Avhich he had himself administered. And since this reminds him of the grandeur of his ministry, he compares its eternal glory Avith the evanescence of the transient gloAv on the face of Moses, and proceeds to contrast the splendour of the ministry Avith the weakness of the ministers. Like the torches hid in Gideon's pitchers, their treasure of light Avas in earthen vessels, that the glory might be God's, not theirs. This was Avhy they Avere in everything " afflicted yet not crushed ; 1 " Tota Epistola itinerarium sapit." — Bengel. 23-1 The Epistles. ; corinth. perplexed, but not in despair ; persecuted, but not forsaken ; cast down, but not destroyed." This theme — defending him self against charges of folly and insincerity — he pursues to the sixth chapter, in which he breaks out into a noble appeal.1 He says that he and his friends strove to commend them selves as ministers to God " in much endurance, in tribula tions, in necessities, in pressure, in bloAvs, in prisons, in tumults, in toils, in spells of sleeplessness, in hungerings, in pureness, in knoAvledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the poAver of God ; by the arms of righteousness on the right hand and on the left; by ill report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true ; as being ignored, and yet recognised ; as dying, and behold Ave live ; as being chastened yet not being slain ; as being grieved and yet rejoicing ; as paupers, yet enriching many ; as having nothing, and yet as having all things in full possession." 4. He may Avell appeal, as he does in the eleventh verse of the sixth chapter, to this fervid rush of spontaneous eloquence as a proof that there is no narrowness, no insincerity, no want of affection, no " crypts of shame " in his heart towards them. Taken alone, passages like these might seem pain fully personal ; Ave might have thought that the man had got the better of the ambassador. But the man and the ambassador are one, and Avhat he wants from them is not a cold and critical appreciation of his eloquence, but the sympathy of Christians, if not the affection of sons.2 He proceeds therefore to tell them that if he had written to them severely in his former letter it was only to inflict upon them a holy and a healing pain. Then he ends the seventh chapter with the generous assurance that he had good heart about them in all things. As a proof of this confidence, he appeals to their generosity 1 The passage, vi. 4-vii. 1, is a powerful appeal to them against incongru ous fellowship with evil. It is somewhat parenthetic in character, and some have regarded it as a marginal note. 2 Maurice, Unity of the New Testament, 488. Sudden Brealc. 235 in a matter dear to his heart — the offertory for the poor at 2 corinth. Jerusalem. The churches of Macedonia, hard pressed as they were, had contributed Avith generous self-denial. Their liberal collection Avas already finished, though Achaia and Corinth had begun to collect before them. He had therefore sent Titus and two dear brethren to Corinth, to look after and hasten this matter. He had boasted to the Macedonians about the readiness of the Corinthians, because he had relied on their promises. The simple fact Avas (though St. Paul only hints it in the most delicate manner) that he had been misled by the glib professions of these most unsatisfactory Corinthians, which there was only too much reason to fear Avould evaporate in talk. As to the value and importance of the offertory he need surely say nothing ; but, anxious that both he and they should not be ashamed of a charity Avhich lagged far behind its own promises, he reminds them that " He who soweth sparingly, sparingly shall also reap ; and he who soweth bountifully — or, as it is literally, Avith blessings — shall also reap with blessings." x And then, identifying himself with the grateful recipient Avho, he says, would glorify God for this proof of genuine religion, he ends the ninth chapter Avith the words " Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift." 2 5. At that point there comes a complete break, an absolute dislocation, so to speak, in the letter. In the last four chapters — the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth — the Avhole tone of the letter so completely changes that many have imagined the chapters to be not only a separate letter, but even to be the stern missive alluded to in the eighth and folloAving verses of the seventh chapter, about the reception of Avhich he had suffered so much cruel anxiety.3 It is difficult to accept this theory in defiance of 1 ix. 6 ; 4ir' eiXoyiais, i.e. in a large, liberal spirit. 2 These two chapters are memorable as being the fullest exposition of the duty and plan of almsgiving in the Bible. 3 The Avrbs Se eyib UavXos of x. 1, at once marks the change of tone, (comp. Gal. v. 2 ; Eph. iii. 1). There is a similar, but less marked change 23G The Epistles. 2 corinth. the evidence of the manuscripts, and yet something must have happened to make the tone of these chapters so different from all that had gone before. What happened appears to have been this. After he had despatched Titus, some one seems to have come from Corinth who brought the disastrous intelligence that the party of his opponents had been reinforced and animated by the arrival of an obtrusive emissary with introductory letters from Jerusalem,1 whose opposition to St. Paul had been more marked, and more unscrupulous than any with which he had yet had to deal.2 Incited by this Judaic sophister, some of the Corinthians had been passing their censures on St. Paul still more freely than before. They had been saying — as this new messenger from Corinth, perhaps unAvisely and unnecessarily told St. Paul — that his presence was mean ; that he was untutored in speech ; that he was only bold in letters and at a distance ; that he Avalked according to the flesh — that is, that his motives were worldly, not spiritual ; that there was in him a vein of folly, or even of insanity;3 that he had sinister designs in suggesting the offering for the saints at Jerusalem ; that his sending of Titus was only a crafty cloak for his own avarice ; 4 that his apparent self-denial rose from the fact that he had no commendatory letters to sIioav ; 6 that he had never known Jesus, and had misrepresented him altogether ; ° that he Avas not to be regarded as a true Apostle. The fact that such calumnies should have been current among the converts Avhom he loved made him at once Avretched and indignant. Dazzled by the outrageous pretensions of this in Rom. xiv. xv., aud we notice a similar phenomenon in Demosth. De Corona. 1 2 Cor. iii. 1 ; x. 13-17. 2 iii. 1 ; v. 11 ; vii. 2, 3 ; x. 2, 7, 10, 11, 12, 18 ; xi. 18-20. It is possible that the attack on St. Paul's authority was fomented by some who resisted his sentence on the offender. 3 v. 13, 16 ; xii. 6 ; xi. 16, 17, 19 ; comp the blunt "Thou art mad, Paul," of Festus. 4 xii. 16. 6 2 Cor. iii. 1-6 ; the taunt that he had none of those " commendatory letters" stung St. Paul dreply (iv. 7-vi. 10). 6 2 Cor. xi. 4, dXXov '\i\oovv . . . erepov evayyeXiov, comp. 1 Cor. ix. 1. Hatred of St. Paul. 237 Pharisee, benumbed by the torpedo-touch of his avarice, the 2 corinth. Corinthians were beginning to repudiate their true teacher.1 The absolute necessity of refuting such attacks rose from the importance of his position, and is further illustrated by tho extreme vitality of the Ebionite hatred of St. Paul, Avhich smouldered on for a century later, and even in the pseudo- Clementine writings shows its treacherous and sullen fires.2 From this point of his letter onwards the tender effusiveness and earnest praise to which we have hitherto been listening is replaced by a tone of suppressed indignation, in Avhich love, struggling with bitter irony, renders the language con strained, like the words of one who with difficulty checks himself from saying all that his emotion might suggest. One characteristic of these chapters is the constant recurrence of the word "boast" and "boasting," Avhich occurs twenty-nine times in these Epistles, and only six times in all the rest. Now " boasting " was a thing of which the most distant resemblance Avas abhorrent to the nature of the Apostle. But something which his enemies might have charac terised as " boasting " was simply wrung from him by the injus tice of his opponents, and the defection of his flock. To three things especially he could appeal — to his Apostolic activity, to his spiritual gifts, to the Churches Avhich he had founded.3 1 See x. 1 8 ; xi. 8 ; (ou KarevapK-naa, " I did not benumb you like a torpedo " one of St. Paul's " cilicisms " according to Jerome) xi. 20 ; xii. 13, 14. Theo doret thought that St. Paul wrote x. 12-18, with kind and intentional obscurity (aaatpas). St. Chrysostom saw that many expressions in this section are quo tations from the sneers of his enemies (/car' elpuveiav tp-no-l Td eKeivwv tp3eyy6[ievos). 2 On these insinuations see x. i. 10, 12 ; xi. 6, 16, 17, 19, &c, and note 2, at the end of this discourse. In the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies Paul is surreptitiously attacked under the name of Simon Magus. In the spurious letter of Peter to James, he is called " the lawless one." In the Recognitions he is evidently meant by " the enemy " sent by Caiaphas to arrest St. Peter at Antioch, who also threw St. James down the Temple steps. A pestilent fiction called the "Ascents of James " is believed to have been the source of the notable story that he was a Gentile who had accepted circumcision in hopes of marrying the High Priest's daughter, and who apostatised when his hopes were disappointed. See Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 16. Ps. Chem. Recogn. iv. 34. Hom. xi. 36. Baur, First Three Centuries, (E.T.) i. 89-98 ; Life of St. Paul, i. 673-678. 3 ii. 14 ; iii. 2 ; xi. 20-23 ; 1 Cor. ix. 1 ; xv. 10, &c. 238 The Epistles. 2 corinth. It Avould be impossible to summarise this long and pas sionate appeal, of Avhich the varying tones are changeable as those of an Aeolian harp, but Ave may be deeply thankful that to it we OAve the one famous passage which shows us that, many and various as are the trials and afflictions of the Apostle narrated for us in the Acts of the Apostles, we have not there one tithe of the story of the long martyrdom of the life of Paul — I mean the passage in the eleventh chapter in Avhich, Avith a mere allusive glance at but a part of what he had endured, he says that he had been " in toils more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in prisons more abundantly, in deaths oft ; of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one ; thrice was I beaten with rods ; once was I stoned ; thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I spent in the deep ; in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my OAvn race, in perils from Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in toil and weariness, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness — besides the things additional to all these, the care which daily besets me, my anxiety for all the Churches. Who is weak and I share not his weakness ? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation ? If I must boast, I will boast of this my weakness. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ knoweth that I am not lying. In Damascus the ethnarch of Aretas the king was guarding the city of Damascus, wishing to seize me, and through a window, in a basket, I was let doAvn through the wall, and escaped his hands." Surely this is the most marvellous fragment ever written of any biography. We -.may read the lives of many of the saints of God, and such reading is eminently profitable; but this is a fragment beside which, not merely the ordinary biographies of comfortable Christians, but even the most imperilled fives of the most suffering saints shrink into Chief Lessons. 239 insignificance. It is the very heroism of unselfishness — 2 corinth. the life of an " Apostle of the Third Heaven." 6. Such then is the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. It is as rich as all the Epistles are in all moral and spiritual truth. In a very feAV words we may emphasise its main and general, as apart from its special, lessons. a. First, then, let this Epistle teach us to beAvare of judging others, and above all to beAvare of judging and con demning them because of their religious opinions. Let us do rather what St. Paul bids his critics do — test ourselves, prove our own selves. There are few things more saddening than the self-sufficiency of religious ignorance. If nothing else will teach us modesty, let us bear in mind that the so-called " religious Avorld " has unanimously anathematised some of the greatest saints, and some of the wisest thinkers, that ever pleaded the cause of God. Let us remember that Paul, the greatest of the Apostles, the most glorious of the saints, was all his life long, and continued to be for a century after his death, a victim of the abuse — sincere perhaps in its OAvn narroAV region, but grossly and obstinately ignorant — of a self-styled orthodoxy. Let us beware of thinking that God's ark is always tottering, or that, if it is, it needs our poor and feeble hands to hold it up. It can at any rate never be our duty to slander, to rail, to blacken, to misrepresent, to lie for God. How many an Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, Avho holds himself to be an uncom promising champion of imperilled truth Avill be shamed and astonished hereafter to hear God's aAvful disavowal and stern reproof, and to find that, all the while, they were not worthy to touch the very skirt of the garment of those whom they denounced as heretics and sinners. /3. This, then, for the large class of religious accusers who, in the original Greek are called " devils " (BtaftoXow;).1 And for the accused this. The cases are rare in which it is wise for any man, as it was for St. Paul, to refute sneers, or expose 1 1 Tim. iii. 11 ; 2 Tim. iii. 3 ; Tit. ii. 3. 210 The Epistles. 2 corinth. calumnies against ourselves. The Avisest Avay is simply to entrust our cause to God. "What idle whispers here concern thee aught i Follow thou me, nor heed what others say ; Be like a tower that never stoops its head , Bellow the tempests fiercely as they uiai .' ' It is said that an eminent person of the present day has treasured up in a book all the fiercest attacks Avhich have been made upon him and, without ever having ansAvered one Avord either good or bad, keeps that book for the amusement of his friends. Better perhaps was the observation of another, " They cannot harm me by what they say of me. I am too near the Great White Throne for that ! " At any rate we can all imitate the forgiving spirit of good Archbishop Tillotson. Among his papers, at his death, Avas found a bundle of all the worst lampoons Avhich had ever been written against him, Avith the pathetic memorandum, " May God forgive them ; I am sure I do." And there is one way at any rate to rob all criticisms of their sting. It is to prove their falsity by the innocence and simplicity of our lives. If we be sure of God's smile, men may say Avhat they Avill. Moral nobleness is the one shield of adamant against the arrows of intolerable Avrong. 7. One brief lesson more. What had Paul that we have not ? He was weak, he was sensitive, he was uncomely, he was hated, he Avas poor ; even religious persons in churchly circles at Jerusalem and in Syria looked on him askance. And yet, amid the world's storms of hate and persecution, he carried the lighted torch of truth till it had flashed from Damascus to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to Rome. If this Jew, Avhom Gentiles despised, whom JeAvs detested, did so much, can Ave, the richly-blessed sons of imperial England do so little ? Let us look at our lives. Are we living for self ? for 1 " Che ti fa ci6 che quivi si pispiglia ? Vien dietro a me, e lascia dir le genti ; Sla come torre, fermo, che non crolla Giammai la ciina per soffiar di venti." Danie, ~°urg. v. 12 15. Usefulness. 241 pleasure ? for gold 1 for ambition 1 What a misery, what a 2 corinth. vanity of vanities, what a failure of failures is such a life ! Are we of any use at all in the world, beyond our mere mechanical routine with its variations of sleeping and eating ? " O my God, grant me " (so they are taught to pray in some monasteries in France), " grant me that to-day I may be of some use to some one." If God, for our good, see fit to deny us all else, may He, as His best gift of all, grant us this, to be of some real, of some deep use to our fellow men, before we go hence and are no more seen. R 242 The Epistles. NOTE I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EPISTLE. " The whole Epistle reminds us of an itinerary, but it is interwoven with the noblest precepts." — Benqel. "Non mihi videtur digitis calamo et atramento scripsisse, verum ipso corde, ipso affectu et denudatis visceribus." — Casaubon. " This Epistle is the most striking instance of a new philosophy of life poured forth not through systematic treatises, but through occasional bursts of human feeling." — Stanley. " God exhibits death in the living, life in the dying." — Alford. The Epistle is St. Paul's Apologia pro VitA Sud. The importance of this letter in the Antijudaic controversy was great, for unless St. Paul effectually established his Apostolic authority, his arguments in the Epistles to the Galatians and Eomans would not have counterbalanced the leanings and prejudices of the Jewish Chris tians who claimed the sanction of St. James and the Church of Jerusalem. The two Epistles to the Corinthians have a special value. The first gives us our chief insight into the character and con dition of the early Churches ; the contests by which they were agitated ; the practices which were struggling for existence in their worship ; the manifold thoughts and speculations Avhich were seething in the midst of them. We see Christianity, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, endeavouring " to grasp and to set its seal upon life in all its variety." The second gives us our chief insight into the life and character of the great Apostle. Here, in self-defence, he opens the most secret recesses of his heart. We see his keen logic, his nervous excitement, his deep indignation, his constant self-denial, his strong sense of independence, his immeasurable love. We see his sympathy with the strong combined with his tenderness for the Aveak ; his fire and passion ; his practical good sense and tact ; his religious fervour ; his immense devotion to the cause of Christ in which he was ready to spend and to be spent.1 1 "rJirgends finden wir die Subjeotivitat des Apostels in so hohem Grade und so verschiedener Weise angeregt wie in diesem Briefe, nirgends die redner- ische Seiv6Tns so haufig hervortretend (iv. 8-11 ; vi. 4-10 ; vii. 11 ; xi. 22-29)." Immer, Theologie des N. T. p. 240. Hausrath Neut. Zeitg. ii. 710. Outline. 243 The First Epistle deals with the elements of peril which sprung up 2 cofinth for the most part in the Hellenic section of the Church— inflated culture, spurious liberty, &c. The second is aimed almost exclusively at Judaic antagonists. NOTE II. outline of the epistle. It falls into three main divisions. L-vii. Personal and ministerial. viii-ix. About the collection for the poor. x.-xiii. Direct personal self-defence. 1. Greeting (i. 1-2). 2. Thanksgiving (L 3-7). 3. Hortatory and retrospective. An endeavour to come to a better understanding Avith the Church of Corinth. An undercurrent of apology (i. 8-vii.) darkened by suppressed indignation. Concerning the contribution for the poor saints (viii., ix.) ; suggestions coloured by sorroAvful emotion. 4. Indignant defence of his Apostolic position (x.-xiii). 5. Farewell greetings. " Farewell ; be perfect, be comforted ; be united ; be at peace." 6. Autograph blessing. As though to make up for the severity of the letter this is the fullest form of the Apostolic blessing "thence adopted by the Church in all ages as the final blessing of her services." This is the least systematic, as the first is the most systematic, of St Paul's Avritings. The thread of the Epistle is historical, but it is interwoven with digressions. The broken threads of narrative will be found in i. 8, 15 ; ii. 1 (Ephesus) ; 12 (Troas) ; 13 (arrival in Macedonia) ; vii. 5 (Macedonia) viii. 1 ix. 2 (id.) ; xiii. 1 (intention to Arisit Corinth). NOTE III. EFFECTS PRODUCED BT THE EPISTLE. In the NeAV Testament we hear no more about the state of the Church of Corinth ; but Ave have two glimpses of it within the century which ensued. One is furnished by the letter of Clement of Eome to the Corinthians (circ. a.d. 95). We see from this letter that the Church of E 2 244 The Epistles. 2 corinth. Corinth was still in much the same condition as when St. Paul wrote — full of tendencies to faction, insubordination, and doubt. In a.d. 135, the church was visited by Hegesippus, who stayed there some days on his way to Eome. The account which (from a Jewish-Christian point of view) he gives is more favourable. The Corinthian Christians were under an excellent and active bishop named Primus ; women like Phcsbe and Priscilla had found a successor in Chrysophora ; and the Church was Avell spoken of for liberal almsgiving. NOTE IV. ATTACKS UPON ST. PAUL, AND HIS REPLIES. This Epistle is so largely motived by the determined assault upon St. Paul's authority that it is worth while to track out the indications of what calumny had to say of him. I. The calumnies were aimed, (i.) at his person, (ii.) his teaching, (iii.) his character. i. As to his person. u. He is "abject" (raireivos, x. 1.) 0. Weak (do-6evr)i, x. 10.) y. A contemptible speaker (6 Xo'yos egovdevnp.evos, x. 10), only big and strong in his letters when he is at a safe distance (i'oWjjs ev Xoya, xi. 6.) ii. As to his TEACHING. a. He arrogates too much to himself (virepeKrelvei, x. 12-18). (3. He is no true Apostle, and that is why he does not dare to claim the privilege of maintenance as an Apostle (1 Cor. ix. 1-23 ; 2 Cor. xi. 7-12 ; xii. 13). y. He has nothing to boast of like the true Apostles, the " out and out Apostles" (ol virepkiav aVooroXoi, xi. 5) and is in fact "nothing" (xi. 16-33 ; xii. 11). 6\ His Gospel is a hidden, crafty, mysterious one (iv. 3) ; a charge founded on 1 Cor. ii. 7. e. The Jesus and the Gospel he preaches is not the true Jesus or the right Gospel (xi. 4). C He falsifies the word of God (ii. 17, iv. 2). 17. He preaches himself and not Christ (iv. 5). Self-defence. 245 iii. As to Ms character. u. He cannot produce any commendatory letters.1 /3. He is fickle and changeable ; altering his announced plan ; first he says " Yes " and then " No " (i. 15-17). y. The reason is that he is afraid of having his pretensions put to the test ; He dare not come (xiii. 3 ; x. 9-11 ; xii. 20, 21 ; 1 Cor. iv. 18-21). S. He boasts of his disinterestedness, but this collection about which he is so eager is very suspicious. He sends Titus to get the money out of you, and "suck you dry " (2 Cor. xii. 16-19 ; viii. 20-23). €. The only excuse for him is that his mind is hardly sound (v. 13 ; xi. 16-19 ; xii. 6), and hence he has only visions to appeal to, never having really known Christ (xii. 2 ; v. 16).2 II. To all this the Apostle's answer is indignant and complete : indeed to some of the charges he hardly deigns to give any further ansAver than a passing word. i. As to his person it matters little or nothing. a, /3. God is no respecter of persons (Gal. ii. 6). He comforts the "abject" (vii. 6). He strengthens the weak (xiii. 4). They ought not to look at men's faces (x. 7), but at their hearts (v. 12). y. Whatever he was in speech, he was not contemptible in know ledge ; and he would ansAver in person the sneers that he Avas afraid to come (x. 11 ; xi. 6 ; i. 23 ; xiii 1-3, 10). ii. As to his teaching, a. It is his opponents who are obtrusive and arrogant, not himself (x. 12-18). 0. He is an Apostle of Christ's own calling (x. 18) ; he has only foregone his right to maintenance at their hands that he might not "benumb " or burden them (xi. 7-12 ; xii. 14-16). y. If he must boast he has done more than the " out and out " Apostles of Avhose countenance and letters the Judaic missionary boasted (xi. 23-33). He has had divine visions (xii. 1-10). He has shown all the signs of an Apostle (xii 11-13). The Apostles possess no single privilege of Avhich he is destitute (xi. 1 This was remembered against St. Paul by the Ebionites long afterwards. See Ps. Clem. Recogn. iv. 3, 5, where Peter is made to give directions that everv one is to be regarded as a false Apostle who cannot produce a " testimonial" from James the Bishop of Jerusalem. 2 Even in the Clementines we find a surreptitious sneer at St. Paul's visions as being mere subjective fancy, or deceit of the devil. Ps. Clement Hom. xvii. 13, seq. irws Se a-bl «al irio-Teuerouev avr6 ; . . . irus Se ooi ko.1 SoipBn, birbre avrip to ivdvrta Tij SiSaaKaXit} ippoveis • 246 The Epistles 2 corinth. 22), and if he be " nothing " he is at any rate not inferior to them (xii. 11). 8. His Gospel is absolutely open, honest, and manifest except to the Avilfully blind (iv. 1-6). {, n, 6. He preaches the true, and the only Christ, not himself (ii. 17, 18; iv. 1-6, 13-18; xi. 1-4). iii. As to his character, a. He stands above the need for " commendatory letters." They Avere themselves his commendatory letter (x. 18 ; iii. 1-6). /3. If he be " fickle," at any rate his preaching is absolutely fixed (i. 18) ; but in point of fact his change of plan was due to deliberate kindness towards them that he might not visit them in anger (i. 15-24 ; xiii. 1, &c). y. They shall judge Avhether he is afraid or no (xiii. 1-10). 6. He indignantly disclaims the charge of interested conduct and appeals to plain facts (xii. 14-18 ; xi. 7-10 ; vii. 2-4). f . To the insinuation that he is not in his right mind he only opposes a few allusions of tender irony (v. 13 ; xii. 6 ; xi. 16- 19, &c). EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. WRITTEN AT CORINTH ABOUT A.D. 58 AtSaKTw6v, dve^'iKanov. — 2 Tim. ii. 24. "For charuth "graven" (Ex. xxxii. 16) read cheruth "freedom." — R. Meir. "Principalis ad versus Judaismum Epistola." — Marcion (ap. Tert. adv. Mare. v. 2). " He is a freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves beside." INTKODUCTOKY. It may be regarded as certain that by " Galatians" St. Paul galatians. meant the inhabitants of Galatia proper (the Trocmi, Tectosages, Tolistoboii, with their three capital towns of Tavium, Pessinus, and Ancyra). To speak of the Neo- Galatians of the Eoman province, which included Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe as Galatians, would be like writing a letter " to the Prussians," which was specially intended for the people of Schleswig-Holstein, or Alsace and Lorraine. St. Luke never dreams of calling Pisidia and Lycaonia by the name Galatia (Acts xiv. 6, ll).1 1 See Hilgenfeld, Einleit. p. 251, Hausrath, Zeitg. ii. 248 The Epistles. galatians. St. Paul had founded these Churches A.D. 52, in the visit of which Ave learn the particulars from Acts xvi. 6, Gala tians iv. 13 — 16. When he paid them a second visit, in A.D. 55, he saw some ground for misgiving, and seems to have been much more coldly received (Acts xviii. 22, 23, iv. 16—20). The date of the Epistle to the Galatians is, within narrow limits, fixed both by external and internal evidence. It was evidently Avritten within a short time of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians ; for — especially in the self- vindication of chapters i., ii. — it greatly resembles that Epistle in tone, feeling, style, and mode of argument, as well as in many casual expressions. It must have slightly preceded the Epistle to the Eomans, since it is preoccupied with the same order of thought. It is the rough sketch of which the Epistle to the Eomans is the finished picture. It is an impassioned, controversial, personal statement of the relation of the Gentiles to the Jews, especially as regards circumcision. The Epistle to the Eomans is a full, systematic, general treatise on the relation of the Gospel to the Law (see Bishop Lightfoot, Galatians, pp. 44 — 46). The difference between the two is that Galatians was written in deep emotion, Eomans with calm, mature reflection. At no long period after St. Paul's second visit (" so soon ") the Galatians had been " fascinated," " bewitched," by the JeAvish emissaries, partly from their natural levity of character and fondness for novelty, and partly because the Judaising ritual bore some resemblance to their own Asiatic and semi- Phrygian cults. The elaborate and orgiastic character of these local superstitions made the Gauls feel discontented Avith the simple spirituality of Christian worship. " It was necessary," says Baur, " that the particularisms of Judaism, Avhich exposed to the heathen Avorld so repellent a demeanour, and such offensive claims should be uprooted, and the baselessness of its prejudices and pretensions fully Jewish Tactics. 249 exposed to the world's eye. This was the service which the galatians. Apostle achieved for mankind by his magnificent dialectic." 1 The tactics of the Jewish emissaries were very simple. They began with the Psalms and pure monotheism, and so, when they had made their " proselytes of the gate," they put forward so strongly the desirability of further advances, and the peril of not accepting legal observances that they gradually got to the knife of circumcision and the whole yoke of the Levitic Law,2 and so made them " proselytes of righteous ness," and in some cases, as our Lord said, twofold more the children of Gehenna than themselves. It was thus that they had treated the royal family of Adiabene, some of whom he buried in " the tombs of the kings " near Jerusalem. Queen Helena, in performance of a Nazarite vow (tAvice renewed), spent twenty-one years in Jerusalem, and during the famine of Claudius's reign fed its paupers with dried figs imported from Cyprus. The family had been converted to Judaism by a liberal-minded Jewish merchant named Abennerig, who wisely told them that circumcision was not essential. Then came a bigoted Pharisee, JI. Eliezer of Galilee, who so worked on the fears of the princes Izates and Monobazus that they both had them selves secretly circumcised. Josephus tells us many particulars about this interesting family.3 Josephus had the greatest difficulty in preventing the circumcision by force of " two great men " Avho came to him from Trachonitis ; and they had to save their lives from the fury of the_Jewish bigots by a hasty flight ( Vit. Jos. 23, 31). The Eabbis say that "Eabbi" (Juda Hakkodesh, who edited the Mishna) induced the Emperor Antoninus to be circumcised. The story is none the less significant though it is a fable, and it is uncertain which emperor is meant by Antoninus.4 1 First Three Centuries, i. 73. 2 See Hausrath, Neut. Zeitg. ii. p. 263. 3 See Jos. Anlt. xx. 2, § 2, B. J. v. 6, § 1, vi. 6, § 3. * Jer. Mcgillah. c. 1. Avoda Zara. f. 10, 2. GALATIANS. 250 The Epistles. It was an advantage to St. Paul that he was able in this Epistle to concentrate the force of his argument on the single point of circumcision. For a. The Jewish teachers put it in the forefront. They said that " but for circumcision heaven and earth could not exist " (Nedarim, f. 32, 1) ; that it was equivalent to all the com mandments of the LaAV (id.) ; and that angels so detest an uncircumcised person that, before Abraham was circumcised, God spoke to him in Aramaic, which the angels do not understand. (Yalkut Chadash, f. 117, 3.) /3. If therefore St. Paul could show that for Gentiles circumcision was worse than useless, it became unnecessary to enter on further questions. With circumcision fell the whole Levitic laAV. In vehemence, effectiveness, and depth of conviction this Epistle is only paralleled by Luther's De Captivitate Bahy- lonica, in which he realised his saying that his battle with the Papacy required "a tongue of which every word is a thunderbolt." St. Paul did his work so completely that thenceforth in the Christian Church the question as to the need of circumcision for Gentiles was at an end. In the Epistle of Barnabas circumcision is even treated with contempt, and its institution attributed to the deception of an evil angel (Ep. Barnah. c. ix.). In the Ignatian letter to Philadelphia we read of " the false Jew of the earthly circumcision " (Ep. ad. Philad. C). Even in the Ebionite pseudo-Clementine homilies the} Avho desire to be de-Hellenised (dobeXXTjviadrjvai, " to be un-Greeked ") must be so not by circumcision, but by baptism and the new birth. Of circumcision not a word is said, even by these extreme Judaists. The leading thoughts of the Epistle are the Freedom of the Gospel ; Justification by Faith, not by works of the Law ; circumcision nothing and uncircumcision nothing, but a neAV creation in Christ. Epistle to the Galatians, 251 EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. " Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." — Gal. v. 1. 1. In the history of mankind ages of torpor and oppression galatians. are often ended by a sudden crisis of deliverance, due to the bright genius and burning courage of one man. The man whom God appoints to this high task has, in most instances, to face the fury of a world suddenly awaked from the deep slumber of decided opinions ; and by that fury he is always persecuted, and sometimes slain. It is astonishing to note how nations and Churches can be smitten for centuries with a paralysis of mental inactivity; hoAV they can suffer custom to lie upon them with a weight " heavy as frost, and deep almost as life " ¦ — how they can allow themselves to be crushed under false systems of belief and morals, without so much as once inquiring on what those systems rest. We are sometimes driven to think that men in general will endure anything rather than the honest pain of facing great questions for themselves. Of how many an age has it been a true de scription that " the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means, and my people love to have it so ! " Is not Israel in this respect a type of all mankind ? Eeleased from the sensual serfdom of Egypt, and led— a free people — into the eager air of the wilderness, did they not murmur, and rebel, for their lost fleshpots, and leeks, and onions, and full-fed ease ? Even so do men love the indolent Egypt of intellectual servitude. " TheA' bawl for freedom in their senseless mood, But still revolt when truth would set them free ; License they mean when they cry liberty, For who loves that, must first be wise and good." The Bible, rightly used, is eminently the book of freedom. All the noblest and most inspiring parts of its history tell of 252 The Epistles. the struggles of a free people against colossal tyrannies. All the most glorious pages of its prophets are like the blasts of trumpets bloAvn to awaken men from immoral acquiescence and apathetic sloth. Its spiritual laAV is a perfect law of liberty. The very spirit of its gospel is " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." And yet, so innate and perverse is the propensity of mankind to prefer their familiar fetters to the perils and the pains — the ennobling perils, the glorious pains — of freedom, that they have managed to degrade the very Scripture into an instru ment of oppression, and have manufactured out of its mis interpretation the subtlest engines of tyranny. But since this is so, since phrases of Scripture have been made so dangerous to mankind, since oftentimes the dead letter of it has been an instrument of murder in the hands of ignorance, a firebrand of bigotry in the grasp of folly, an arroAV of death in the quiver of fanaticism — they for whom God has " illuminated the eyes of the understanding," 1 they who know that the very Scriptures of God, as St. Peter says, may be wrested, by the unlearned and the unstable, to their own perdition 2 — are more than ever bound to use the Bible on behalf of that liberty — that civil, that social, that intellectual, that moral, that spiritual liberty — of which it was meant by God to be the shield and sword. The letter of the Bible, if it have been used to wound, may also, thank God — like the fabled spear of Achilles — be used to heal. By the help of the Bible, in time, we freed the slave, though vested interest quoted Moses and St. Paul to prove the sacredness of slavery. By the help of the Bible, in time, we shall make England temperate, though men quote the Epistle to Timothy to defend the system Avhich maddens men and women with ardent spirits into desperate crimes. By the help of the Bible, in time, the English nation shook to the dust a system of despotism, though priests quoted the Apostles to prove the 1 irecpaiTio-uevovs tovs btpBaXfiovs ttjs Siavotas.— Eph. i. 18. 2 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16. Liberty. 253 duty of passive obedience. A thousand years of papal galatians. usurpation had been built, like a pyramid upon its apex, on the inch of argument seized by Eomanism in the text " Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my church." But, in time, by reading the Epistle to the Galatians, a light burst upon the soul of Luther, and he nailed his theses to the cathedral door of Wittenberg, and flung the papal bull into the flames. Every nail he used that day was a nail in the coffin of tyrannous priestcraft ; every flame he kindled that day was a flame to consume the chaff of false inferences from false assumptions. What he burnt was the right of designing tyrannies to build themselves upon isolated texts. I have said that it was the Epistle to the Galatians which thus became to Luther a weapon for the emancipation of man kind. He said himself, in his own rough way, " The Epistle to the Galatians is my epistle. I have betrothed myself to it. It is my wife." Its very characteristic is that it is the Epistle of Freedom. In writing it, Paul stood as it were alone upon a mountain-top, and shouted " Liberty." Eleven times in these short chapters, and in this connection more often than in all the other Epistles put together, the thought occurs, " Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free," and "Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty." " Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all." l Those words are the summary and key-note of the Epistle. " Free from what ? " you will ask. Free, I answer, from all things which enslave the body and the soul; free from morbid scrupulosities of conscience ; free from morbid anxieties of service ; free from the manifold rules of " Touch not, taste not, handle not ; " free from the encroachments of a spiritual usurpation; free from the strife of contending sects, which make religion consist of shibboleths or badges ; free from timorous ritualisms and small ceremonial punctu alities ; free from anything and everything but the law of faith, the law of grace, the royal law of liberty, the law of those 1 Gal. ii. i; iii. 28; iv. 22, 23, 26, 30, 31 ; v. 1, 13, 254 The Epistles. galatians. wri° are not slaves, but sons ; the laAV which, is fulfilled in one Avord even in this, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." But this freedom is " in Christ." Forty-three times in this Epistle does the name Christ occur, and thirty-nine of these times it is Christ, not "the Christ;" Christ the personal name, not Christ the descriptive appellative; Christ the Saviour, the man Christ Jesus. 2. What St. Paul was principally thinking of — the freedom in which, to him, all other freedom Avas involved — -was freedom from Judaism ; freedom from the petty and intolerable yoke of circumcision, washings, fasts, feasts, sacrifices, new moons, sabbaths, incessant assemblies, sacerdotal micrology, and all wearing and fretting externalism ; freedom from all, save what was of eternal, moral significance in the Mosaic law. Perhaps you may think that it was indeed necessary to deliver Christianity from this yoke, but that now the Avork is done ; so that this Epistle has no longer any concern for us. It is indeed the principal letter against Judaism ; but Judaism, you will say, is dead. It was a splendid service to cut Christianity loose from the decaying corpse of obsolete traditions ; but it was a service which has for us nothing more than an historical interest. Alas ! such a notion is greatly mistaken. Judaism was something more than a dead system ; it is a living tendency. There is a Judaism in the secret heart of every one of us, of which we must be aware ; and the more you study this Epistle, the more you will recognise that the significance of its teaching is as great for the nineteenth century as for the first. The early Apostles were Jews, all of them circumcised, all of them attending the Temple three times a day, all of them offering sacrifices, and keeping that Levitical law which was indeed necessary, at first for a stiffhecked nation of sensual slaves, Avho were hankering in their hearts for the specious renewal of Egyptian idolatries under Jewish forms, but which, now that Christ had died, was for the Jews half meaningless, and for the Gentiles wholly pernicious. Christ, in accordance with Innate Judaism. 255 the divine economy had not, in so many words, abrogated the Mosaic law ; but He had taught spiritual truths Avhich in volved the necessity for its abrogation. He had left the consummation of His teaching to that light of God which " shines on patiently and impartially, showing all things in the slow history of their ripening." Now the Law was, as St. Peter said, a yoke, which neither the Jews nor their fathers were able to bear ; but the Law alone was as nothing to the mass of infinitesimal minutiae, at once preposterous and puerile, which Scribes, and Eabbis, and Pharisees, had built upon it. By arguments and inferences, and in ferences from those arguments, and arguments from these inferences, they, by the spirit which has been the besetting sin of theologian and commentator in all ages, had darkened God's whole heavens with the smoke of an attenuated exegesis which curled " out of the narrow aperture of single texts." Eeligion is a broad, deep, free, bright, loving, universal spirit : broad as the path of God's commandments, deep as the ocean of His love, free as His common air, bright as His impartial sunshine, loving as His all-embracing mercy, universal as His omnipotent rule. For the centre, and head, and heart of Christianity is Christ, and there was nothing narrow, nothing scholastic, nothing jealously exclusive, in Christ. But, in the craft and subtlety of the devil and man, Eeligion has ever tended to wither away into Judaism, into Eabbinism, into scholasticism, into ecclesiasticism, into Eomanism, into sectarianism, into dead schemes of dogmatic belief, into dead routines of elaborate ceremonial, into dead exclusiveness of party narrowness, into dead theories of scriptural in spiration, into dead formulae of Church parties, into the dead performance of dead works, or the dead assent to dead phrases. Now it was just this fatal tendency of human supineness against which Paul had to contend. Judaic Christians — apparently one man in particular3 — had come 1 v. 10 ; St. Paul here speaks of his opponents as ol dirb tt\s 'lovSalas, ol Ik twv iapio-alav. The synagogue had, as it were, been honourably buried in the GALATIANS. 256 The Epistles. galatians. from Jerusalem to his fickle and ignorant Galatians with the hard, ready-made Biblical dogma " Unless ye be circumcised, and keep the whole law, ye cannot be saved." 1 They wanted to substitute external badges for inward faith ; legal bondage for Christian freedom; observance of practices for holiness of heart. They were striving to put the new, rich, fermenting wine of Christianity into their old and bursten Avine-skins of Levitism. In their hands, Christianity would have decayed into exclusiveness, self-congratulation, con tempt of others, insistence upon the outward, indifference to the essential — a Christianity of the outward platter, a Christianity of the whitened grave. It Avould be interesting to tell how St. Paul had converted the Galatians, and how and why these formalists and Pharisees had perverted them ; but we can only mention the bare fact. Suffice it that, in order to pervert them, the Judaisers (as at Corinth) had in dulged in surreptitious innuendoes against the authority and teaching of St. Paul. Moses, they said, was inspired ; Moses gave the Law at Sinai ; Moses wrote the Holy Book by verbal dictation ; Moses laid down all the rules of Leviticus. Who is this Paul who teaches you that you are free from these things ? What ? deny the inspiration of the Bible ? What ? fly in the face of a divine revelation ? Eead for yourselves, they said to the Galatians. The Bible bids you to be circumcised ; the Bible says " Cursed be he that abideth not by all the things written in the book of the laAV to do them." How dare you disobey Moses and listen to this sceptic, this rationalist, this unorthodox, unsound Paul ? And further than this, they used the two bad arguments of every bad cause — personality and persecution. Paul was not there for them to persecute, but they could abuse him. " He is no Apostle ; he is quite inferior to the Apostles ; he is disobedient to the Synod at Jerusalem (see Carpzov, He Synagogd cum honore sepultd, 1716), but these Christian Pharisees were engaged in its resuscitation. 1 Exactly as the Jew Trypho in Justin Martyr's dialogue (c. viii. p. 226) Rays " First be circumcised, then keep the Sabbaths, and the feasts of the new moons of God, and in a word, do all the things written in the law, and then perhaps (I) you will find mercy from God." St. Pauls Indignation. 257 Apostles ; he is inconsistent ; all Scripture (by which they galatians. meant, more ecclesiastico, all their interpretations of Scripture) is against his views ; he is heretical ; he is dangerous." So, blinded by the conceit of ignorance, and the violence of party, many professing Christians spoke of Christ's saints and servants then, as many professing Christians speak of Christ's saints and servants now. 3. St. Paul saw that it was time to speak out, and speak out he did. The matter at issue was one of vital importance. The Gospel did not mean that the Gentiles were to be con verted into Jews. The essence of the Gospel, the liberty which Christ had given, the redemption for which He had died was at stake. The fate of the battle — of the battle of spirituality against historic tradition — hung apparently upon his single arm. He alone was the Apostle of the Gentiles. To him alone had it been granted to see the full bearings of this question. A new faith must not be choked at its birth by the past prejudices of its nominal adherents. The hour had come when concession was no longer possible. It was necessary to prove once and for ever the falsity of the position that a man could not become a perfect Christian without becoming a partial Jew. Accordingly he flung all reticence and all compromise to the winds. There was in St. Paul none of that timid pettiness and effeminate conventionality which has been too often the bane of priests. Hot with righteous anger he wrote the Epistle to the Galatians. It was his gage of battle to the incompetence of traditionalism, his trumpet-note of defiance to the usurpations of Pharisaism ; and it gave no uncertain sound. Against all slavery to the outward — all reliance on the mechanical — he used words Avhich were battles. If he had given grounds for the charge of "inconsistency" by his indifference to trifles, and his willingness to sacrifice details to principles, there should at least be no further doubt as to what he meant and taught. He would leap ashore among his enemies and burn his ships behind him. He would draAV the sword against this false 258 The Epistles. galatians. gospel, and fling aAvay the scabbard. What Luther did at Wittenberg, and at Worms, and at Wartburg, that, and more than that St. Paul did when he wrote the Epistle to the Galatians. It Avas the manifesto of that spiritual reformation which was involved in the very idea of Christianity. More than any book which was ever written these few pages marked an epoch in history. It was, for the early days of Christi anity, the Confession of Augsburg and the Protest of Spires in one. But it was these combined with intense personality and impassioned polemics. His weakness of eyesight usually compelled him to employ an amanuensis ; but in this instance he felt driven, at all costs, to write with his own hand, though it could only be in large, awkward, uneven characters. To the Churches of Galatia he never came again ; but the words scrawled on those few sheets of papyrus were destined to wake echoes which have lived, and shall live for ever and for ever. Savonarola heard them and Wiclif, and Huss, and Luther, and Tyndale, and Wesley. They were the Magna Charta of spiritual emancipation. 4. It requires much thought and study to feel the force and beauty of a letter of which almost every sentence is a thunderbolt, and of which every word, when one understands it, is alive. It has six chapters. Eoughly speaking, the first tAvo chapters are an autobiographic retrospect, written to establish his Apostolic independence ; the next two prove the dogmatic position; the two last are the practical application. The opening salutation, and the closing words of an Epistle, often furnish us with its main purport. It is so in this instance. " Paul an Apostle — not from men, nor by the instrumentality of any man — but by Jesus Christ, and by God our Father, and all the brethren Avith me " (for he writes from Corinth, where he had many with him1) "to the churches of Galatia.2 Grace to you and peace from God the 1 Timothy, Gaius of Derbe, Aristarchus, Trophimus, Titus, Justus Sosthenes, &c. 2 The separate nationality of the Churches of Galatia bound them very Impetuous Abruptness. 259 Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our galatians. sins that He may deliver us from this present evil world." Notice, first, the stern compression of the salutation. It is not, as in other Epistles, to " the beloved of God ; " not to " the saints in Christ Jesus ; " not to " the saints and faithful brethren ; " but, in his impetuous desire to deal at once with their errors, simply "to the Churches of Galatia." Notice too, the emphatic assertion of his Apostolate, as though he had said, " Speak not to me of the authority of James, or of the TAvelve — the 'super-exalted Apostles' of your Judaic seducers 1 — I am not responsible to them. I owe to them no allegiance. My commission is not through them, but direct from Christ. 2 Then notice, thirdly, how he strikes the key note of the Epistle in the word " deliver."3 Your circumcisions, and your Judaisms are vain. In Christ alone — only by faith in Him — does salvation come. Then, without a word of the thanksgiving which is found in every other Epistle, he bursts, with startling abruptness, into the subject of which his mind is so indignantly full. " I am amazed that you are so quickly shifting from the grace of Christ into a different Gospel." The very Avord " shifting " may perhaps, as Jerome says, be a sharp paronomasia — a reference to their name Galatae, as though it were derived from a Hebrew word meaning " to move." " Your galatising " closely into one community. Bleek, Einleit. 5, 155. The Church was com posed both of Jews (hi. 13, 23, 25 ; iv. 3, 5) and Gentiles (iii. 29 ; iv. 8, 12, 17, 21 ; v. 2 ; vi. 12). _ , 1 Acts xv. 24, Tives e| i]fj.wv e^eXBSvres . . . dvao-Kevd^ovres Tas tyvxds vuiav . . . as ov SietXTeiXaueda. 2 A candid reader can hardly fail to see that St. Paul writes almost in a tone of irritation at the use made of the names of the Twelve to disparage himself. Otherwise he would hardly have invented and used twice over, the strange and ironical phrase, ol virepXlav dirioToXoi, "the out-and-out," or "over-exceedingly" Apostles. He was a man of like passions with ourselves, and even our Lord's example shows that "the spirit of meekness" must sometimes give place to indignation. There was scarcely a Church apparently which Paul founded with such infinite toil and peril, into which these easy aud comfortable missionaries, with their exalted pretensions, did not thrust themselves. But we must bear in mind that when they had unwarrantably used the names of James and of the Twelve at Antioch they had 1 >een expressly repudiated by those Apostles in the synodieal letter from Jerusalem. 8 Gal. i. oirois QeXnrai i)aa.s. See Bishop Lightfoot, ad. loc. S 2 260 The Epistles. galatians. is but too like your name.1 Your Jewish teachers have told you that I am shifty and inconsistent ; that I try to please men. The blame applies to you rather than to me. But no one shall at any rate mistake what I now say, which is, that if man or angel preach a different gospel, let him be anathema — let the ban fall on him. Is that clear ? If not I repeat again, " Let him be anathema." 2 He then plunges to the end of the second chapter into a personal narrative, to prove the absolute independence of his own authority. He proves it negatively by showing, from his education and conversion, how small had been his intercourse with any of the Apostles. He proves it positively, by showing that the Apostles had been compelled by facts to recognise his mission; and that, on one very memorable occasion, he had, before the Avhole Church3 withstood and condemned Peter to his face, and proved to him that if the works of the law were necessary, then Christ had died in vain. 5. He then turns, in the third chapter, from personal self- defence to the defence of the truth he had preached. He shows them that their new ceremonialism, so far from being 1 MeTarlBeoBe, Gal. i. 6. Jerome thinks that St. Paul mentally connected Galatae with ppj. If so, there is an indignant play on the name as though it implied inherent fickleness. St. Paul insists that the teachings of the Judaists do not constitute a mere subordinate school of thought. It is not merely "another" (dXXo) but a "different" Gospel (erepov). - St. Paul's impetuosity of feeling is here 'indicated, not only by the em phatic repetition of dvdBeiia tarai, as though he were determined that there should be no mistake about it ; but also by the way in which he almost passes an anathema on an imaginary angel. We must remember that in spite of all he had endured (in) St. Paul had been accused of complaisance (i. 10), and even that his truthfulness had been called in question (i. 20). His enemies had represented him as a sort of ecclesiastical demagogue (1 Thess. ii. 4-6) serving no ends but his own and Satan's. 3 This was an offence for which the Ebionites never forgave St. Paul. " If you call me flagrantly in the wrong, (KaTeyvwa/xevov)," says St. Peter (Ps. Clem. Horn. xvii. 19), "you accuse God who revealed Christ to me." The Praedicatio Petri says that the two Apostles were not reconciled till death. Even the fathers tried to explain away the passage. Origen (ap. Jer. Ep. cxii.), Chry sostom, and (at first) Jerome treated it as a pre-arranged scheme between the Apostles (KaTa axon*) ; and Clemens of Alexandria (ap. Euseb. H.E. i. 12) tries to make out that Kephas does not mean St. Peter. St. Peter's weakness bore other bitter fruit, long years afterwards. It was one ultimate cause of Ebionite attacks on St. Paul ; of Gnostic attacks on Judaism ; of Porphyry's slanders against the Apostles (comp. Celsus ap. Orig. v 64) ; and of Jerome's quarrel with Augustine (see Lightfoot, pp. 123-126). Ceremonialism. 261 an advance, was a mere retrogression. It was a retrogression galatians. from the spirit to the flesh, from faith to works, from the Gospel to the law, from the eternal to the transient, from Christian manhood to childish tutelage. " Dull Galatians I who bewitched you with his evil eye? — you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ crucified was conspicuously painted." I held up before you a banner, as it were, blazoned with the Cross of Christ ; 1 and lo ! under some strange sorcery of sinister influence, you are apostatizing to Judaic rituals ! And then, throughout these tAvo chapters, he proceeds to shoAV them that the law of which they boasted so much, on which they relied so much, really placed them under the curse which it had itself pronounced on its imperfect fulfil ment ; that the promise to the faith of Abraham preceded the Law ; that the Law — so far from being supreme and final — had a mere pedagogic function for those in an inferior con dition ; that it was meant only to be " an usher to Christ " (iii. 24) ,2 meant to educate men into the sense of their own sinfulness and helplessness, and thus lead them to Christ. So far from being permanent and perfect, the Law was but supplementary,3 parenthetical, * provisional,5 mediate ; 6 a means not an end; a relative purpose of God taken up and lost in His absolute purpose ; a training for infants ; a harsh incident in a necessary tutelage ; a fetter for slaves who 1 Just as Augustine of Canterbury, with his monks, carried an embroidered banner with the monogram of Christ when they came before King Ethelbert. 2 St. Paul puts the Promise to Abraham in all respects above the Law, and indeed regards it as an anticipated Gospel (iii. 14-18). The difficult verse iii. 16 seems merely to be a specimen of what the Rabbis would have called s6d, the mystic explanation of Scripture. St. Paul says that the word " seed " (o-irepfna) is a singular and collective term, and points to Christ. It is true that to use either the Hebrew Zeraim or the Greek o-rrepaara for " offspring " would be a barbarism, for either plural could only mean " kinds of grain " as St. Paul was perfectly aware (1 Cor. xv. 38). But the illustration (it is no more, comp. Rom. iv. 13-18) depends on the fact that the collective singular term (Zerah, o-irepua) was used in Genesis, and not " sons" or "children." 3 iiriSiaTdccreTai, iii. 14 ; irpoaeTeBn, iii. 19. 4 irapeio-rjXBev, Rom. V. 20. 6 tw irapaffdcreav x<*-Plvi &XP'S °3 k.t.X. iii. 19. This passage requires Rom. vii. 7-13 for its comment. 6 Given mediately by Angels, not by God (Deut. xxxiii. 2, &c.) ; and received mediately from Moses, not direct from God. 262 The Epistles. galatians. had to be educated into a yearning for liberty.1 They must choose between Christ and the Law. If the Law sufficed, Christ had died in vain. If Christ sufficed, the LaAV was needless. And then, with many a tender reproach and appeal, he adopts the Eabbinic fashion of exegesis, in which he had been trained, and proves by the allegory of Sarah and Agar 2 that we are no longer slaves but sons ; that the physical seed of Abraham may be the spiritual seed of Ishmael ; that circumcision may in God's sight be uncircumcision, and uncircumcision the only true circumcision ; 3 that the actual Jew may be in God's sight the Gentile, and the actual Gentile the spiritual Jew. And all this, remember, he had the daring to urge at a time when Judaism was growing ever narrower and narrower in its haughty exclusiveness ; ever more and more damnatory in its rigid demands ; ever more and more idolatrous of its deified LaAV. Imagine the feelings of a prejudiced Jew, who should thus hear one of his own blood arguing that his prized nomocracy was valueless ; that his haughty particularism was usurpation ; that his Levitic law consisted of " weak and beggarly elements ; " 4 that, in them- 1 It is here that we have the famous verse, " Now a mediator is not a medi ator of one; but God is one" (iii. 20), with its "300 different expla nations." This diversity of interpretation arises from isolating the words from their context, and mistaking the simple meanings of "mediator" and " one." The obvious, and now generally-accepted meaning of the passage seems to be — the Promise to Abraham is not only antecedent to the Law of Moses, but intrinsically above it. The Law is of the nature of a contract which requires two contracting parties ; but in the promise God stood alone, and no " mediator " (no intermediate agency like that of Moses or the Angels) was necessary. 2 But the immense superiority of St. Paul's allegorising over that of Philo is shown by his plain acceptance of the literal history in which he traces a divine law. He does not with Philo make Abraham a symbol of " the soul," Sarah of "Divine Wisdom;" Isaac of "Human Wisdom;" Ishmael of "Sophistry," &c. 8 It was all the more necessary for St. Paul to speak thus plainly because his opponents (owing to his circumcision of Timothy, and as I believe, of Titus also), had taunted him with having himself, at one time, preached cir cumcision (v.^11). Similarly in Ps. Clement (Hom. ii. p. 3), St. Peter charges "the enemy" (i.e. St. Paul) with having represented him as preaching the abolition of the Law. 4 iv. 3, 9. The word aroixela either means "rudiments" the A B C of religion; or "physical elements" material and sensuous symbols invested with religious significance. St. Paul's Boldness. 263 selves, his ritualisms were as unavailing as the ritualisms of heathendom; that his vaunted circumcision was noAV as useless and as indefensible as the ghastlier concisions of the Priests of Dindymus.1 To the bigoted few every one of these propositions Avould seem to be a startling and offensive paradox. It requires no small knowledge of history fully to realise the splendid originality, the superb courage, required for the enunciation of such opinions. And let us never forget that, as St. Paul differed from all other saints and martyrs in the intensity and prolongation of his sufferings, so too did he differ from them in being not only an heroic sufferer, but a man of such fearless and leading genius as the world has rarely seen. But he kneAV what he was doing. He had fully counted the cost. His enemies charged him Avith hunting- for popularity by suppressing his real convictions. " Am I noAV seeking to please men?" he asks (i. 10). He might have said with Luther, " In former days I used to be most safe. Now I have loaded myself with the hatred of all the world." 2 6. From these personal and doctrinal sections he passes to the practical part of the letter. The two last chapters are rich in counsel, as are all similar parts of St. Paul's teaching. Here you have the law of Christian love ; the works of the flesh, and the fruit of the Spirit ; the duty of meek forgiveness, 1 Nothing would have been more exasperating to the Judaisers than this suggested analogy between their ceremonies and those of heathendom. But, as Hausrath points out (N. Zeitg. ii. 268), St. Paul at least seems to imply that there is no essential difference between observing the new moon in the synagogue, and observing it in the temple of Men ; between living in booths in autumn, or wailing for Altis in spring ; between circumcision and the self-mutilation of the Galli. Nearly all critics are now agreed that "OipeXov Kal diroKiipovrai in v. 12 means "since they attach so much importance to circumcision, would that they would go a little further and make eunuchs of themselves altogether. " (Comp. diroKeKou/ievoi, Deut. xxiii. 1.) Reuss calls this "une phrase affreuse qui revolte notre sentiment." But Paul says elsewhere that " circumcision " would be to the Gentiles a mere "concision," a mere "cutting the flesh" (Phil. iii. 2, 3), and we must not judge a writer by the taste of nearly two millenniums later. What modern feeling would stigmatise as coarse, ancient feeling would accept as justifiable plain-speaking. 2 Luther went through the same experiences as St. Paul. "Ministerium Ecclesia;," he adds, " omnibus periculis expositum est ; diaboli insultationibus, mundi ingratitudini, sectarum blasphemiis. " — Colloq. i. 13. GALATIANS. 264 The Epistles. galatians. the noble rule " bear ye the burdens (JSdprj) " of one another s cares and weaknesses ; the solemn warning " each one shall bear his own load ( Jos. Antt. xvii. 9-11. B. J. ii. 6. 8 The growing fear, jealousy, aud detestation, inspired by the Jews at Rome is indicated by the intensely scornful remark of Tacitus on this occasion, "Si ob gravitatem coeli interissent, vile damnum." — Ann. ii. 85. 9 Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, § 5, 1, and Acts ii. 10. Tae. Ann. xv. 44. 10 See Philo, Lcgatio ad Gaium ; and Contra Flaccum. 11 Acts xviii. 2. Suet. Claud. 35. 12 Sen. ap. Aug. De Civ. Dei. vi. 11. THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. (AVRITTEN IN PRISON AT ROME, CIRC. A.D. 62.) " Summa Epistolae— gaudco, gaudctc." — Bengel. " An Epistle of the heart." — Meyer. " That man is very strong and powerful who has no more hopes for himself, who looks not to be loved any more, to be admired any more, to have any more honour or dignity, and who cares not for gratitude ; but whose sole thought is for others, and who lives on for them." — Helps. INTRODUCTORY. There cannot be the shadoAV of a doubt as to the genuine- philippians ness of the Epistle to the Philippians. Baur, who Avas the first to suggest any suspicion on the subject (Paulus, i. 458), on very insufficient grounds, has been decisively answered by many scholars.1 It is amply supported by external evi dence, and the objections brought against it are more than usually Aveak, fantastic, and untenable. The unity of the Epistle is equally established. Stephen Le Moyne's division of it into two Epistles only rose from the expression of Polycarp, who, Avriting to the Philippians, says, " Neither I, nor any one like me, can reach the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, who also, Avhen absent, wrote to you letters into Avhich if ye look ye will be able to edify your selves in the faith which has been given to you." But (1) eVto-roXa? (Thuc. viii. 51, Jos. Anit. xii. 4, 6, 10) may mean " a letter " just as literae does in Latin, and, indeed, a little further on Polycarp speaks of only one letter (xi.) ; (2) St. 1 De Wette, Schenkel, Reuss, Lunemann, Bruckner, Ernesti, Meyer, AVilibald Grimm, B. "Weiss, Pfleiderer, Hilgenfeld, Lightfoot, &c. 294 The Epistles. philippians. Paul may have Avritten other letters to the Philippians — indeed, he probably did (iii. 18). All attempts to divide the letter into two (Heinrichs, Paulus, Weisse, &c.) have signally failed, and Phil. iii. 1 has no bearing on the question. Few noAV suppose that it was Avritten in the imprisonment at Caesarea. (1) In that imprisonment he could not have hoped for a speedy liberation for he had appealed to Caesar. (2) He Avas not chained at Caesarea till Felix left ; but in this Epistle (i. 7, 13, 16, 17), and in the others, he constantly refers to "his bonds." See further Bleek, Einl. p. 161. The certainty that this Epistle is authentic is a strong additional argument in favour of the authenticity of those to the Ephesians and Colossians to Avhich this letter forms the connecting link. It marks the beginning of Paul's "later manner,'- and sIioavs traces of the neAV conceptions — less indi vidual and more universal, less national and more cosmo politan, less relating to special Churches and more to the Avhole Church, less impassioned and more severe in their maturity, less relating to Judaic questions and more to the questions w hich rose from Gentile speculation, less Judaic and Hellenic and more Eoman — which were certain to have resulted from the growth of the Church, and from the change in St. Paul's circumstances, when he was no longer the Avandering missionary engaged in daily controversies, but the prisoner at Eome, chained to Eoman soldiers and expecting his trial before the Emperor of the world. The Church of Philippi was itself an illustration of the confluence of nationalities at this epoch. It Avas a Church founded by two Jewish missionaries and the Jewish son of a Gentile father (Timothy) in a Eoman colony which had occupied the old Greek city of " the Fountains " (Crenides) ; and as Meyer says, " the toAvn thus vindicated its original name in a higher sense for the entire West." We may collect the general manliness of the inhabitants from the military metaphors (i. 27, ii. 25, iv. 7), and their culture from such terms as a'la6ricn<;, p-opipr}, avrapK,^. Date of the Epistle. 295 THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. " I joy and rejoice with you all." — Phil. ii. 17. 1. It was during St. Paul's detention at Eome in a sort of philippians. military custody for two years, and in the later and severer phase of it, that he wrote the four letters Avhich constitute his third group of Epistles — those to the Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians. The Epistle to the Philippians, Avritten some four years later than that to the Eomans, is the first which breaks the silence of his sad captivity.1 2. It arose directly out of one of the few happy incidents Avhich diversified the dreary uncertainties of the prisoner's lot. Just as gleams of sunshine brighten the incessant showers of an April day, so God sometimes touches with brightness the tears of life. The incident which thus cheered the brave heart of the imprisoned Paul was the visit of Epaphroditus, a leading presbyter of the Church of Philippi. 1 I can feel little or no doubt that this is the earliest of the Epistles of the Captivity. For (1) when St. Paul wrote it he was quite uncertain as to what his ultimate fate would be (i. 20-25 ; ii. 23), though he hoped to be acquitted (ii. 24). On the other hand, when lie wrote the letter to Philemon (and there fore those to the Colossians and Ephesians) he was sufficiently sanguine of acquittal to ask Philemon (v. 22) to prepare him a lodging. Further (2) the order of thought in this Epistle has an affinity with that of the letters to the Galatians and the Romans. It breathes the same tone as the letter to the Romans, and has many parallels of thought and expression. On the other hand, when he wrote to Ephesus and Colossae, a new set of experiences, and the necessity for dealing with problems of a wholly different character from those which he bad hitherto faced, had carried him into wholly different subjects. Seeing the delicate susceptibility of St. Paul's mind, and its tenacity of recent phrases and impressions, I hold it to be a psychological impossibility that he should have written Philippians after Colossians and Ephesians, and yet have shown no traces of the special thoughts with which he had been so recently and so powerfully occupied. It could not have been Avritten at the beginning of St. Paul's imprisonment, because time must be allowed for the news of St. Paul's arrival at Rome to reach Philippi ; for the journey of Epaphroditus from Philippi to Rome ; for his illness ; for the reception of the news of that illness at Philippi ; and for the return of their expressions of sorrow and sympathy. But this would not require more than a year. Philippi is about 700 miles from Rome, and the journey occupied about a month. 296 The Epistles. philippians. He brought with him no less than the fourth pecuniary con tribution by Avhich that loving and generous Church had ministered to his necessities. At Eome the Apostle was unable with his fettered hands to work, as he had done else- Avhere, for his own livelihood. One would have thought that the members of the Eoman Church — some, for instance, of those brethren who a year or two earlier had thronged forth as far as Appii Forum to meet him1 — were sufficiently numerous and sufficiently wealthy to have saved the great Apostle from the wearing degradation of pecuniary anxiety ; but they treated him with the same unaccountable indiffer ence of inconsiderate selfishness 2 with which, to this day, in thousands of English parishes, ministers are left to struggle unaided with the anguish of scanty means. And it was an additional source of sorrow to him that even in the Eoman Church the party spirit of the Judaists and others was so bitter that some were preaching Christ of strife and envy. Nothing but the Apostle's splendid magnanimity could have helped him to bear this trial. It Avas something that, in any Avay Avhatever, the name and the Gospel of Christ should be made known. It Avas being made known in the best way by the courage which his bonds inspired and by the intercourse Avith Praetorian soldiers which those bonds necessitated.3 " In every way," he says, " whether in pretence or in truth the story of Christ is being told (KajayyeWerai), and therein I rejoice, yea a*id I will rejoice." i 1 Acts xxviii. 15. 2 In ii. 21 he says with deep sadness that "all (of irdvres) seek their own interests." 3 He says (i. 13) that "his bonds became manifest in Christ, iv '6Xip t$ vpaiTaplcp," not (as in A.V.) " throughout the whole palace," but (as in R.V.) "throughout the whole praetorian guard," casirum praetorianum (Suet. Tib. 37) ; and he adds, "to all the rest." Even in Caesar's household (iv. 22) some had been converted. The ingenious speculations which try to connect St. Paul with Seneca through. Gallio and Burrhus have no real base. The resemblances to Stoic doctrines as enunciated by Seneca, which are found in this Epistle, are of a general character, and refer to truths which, so to speak, were "in the air." See Bishop Lightfoot's Essay on St. Paul and Seneca (Philippians, pp. 263-326). 1 It may be that St. Paul would hardly have used such mild words in the earlier stages of his Judaic controversy. But as Hitzig says the age of the Epaphroditus. 297 Amid neglect, misery, and opposition St. Paul felt all the philippians. keener appreciation for the kindness of one truly generous community. From the Philippians he could accept the aid which they on their parts esteemed it a privilege and a bless ing to be allowed to give. Philippi was specially dear to him. It was the first of all the Christian Churches which he had founded in Europe. " See ! what a yearning he feels for Macedonia ! " says Chrysostom. He liked the manly independence and affectionate enthusiasm of the Eoman citizens of Macedonia. His use of the word " citizenship " and " play the citizens " shows how he shared Avith them the honourable pride of a claim to the franchise of the empire. Perhaps the wealth of a feAV converts like Lydia made it less difficult for him to avail himself of their bounty. It was about autumn when Epaphroditus arrived from Philippi, with the offering,1 which supplied the suffering Apostle Avith all that was immediately necessary for his simple needs. Flinging himself into the work of the Gospel at Eome at that unhealthy and malarious season, Epaphroditus Avas soon prostrated by a dangerous and all but fatal sickness. The news of this illness caused great soitoav at Philippi, and Paul too felt that the death of " his brother Epaphroditus," as he tenderly calls him, would have plunged him in yet heavier sadness. No miracle was thought of. The cases of Epaphroditus and of Trophimus show that, in ordinary life, the Apostles never dreamt of exerting any supernatural power. But those Avere days in Avhich all Christians had an unfeigned belief in prayer. Paul and the Philippians pleaded with God for the life of their sick friend, Apostle, which was now perhaps approaching sixty years, and the trial of his imprisonment tended to soften his feelings. Further, these Roman Jews may not have belonged to the "ultramontane " Judaists, who demanded that the Gentiles should be circumcised. Calvin was not a man of very mild dis position, yet he said of Luther, "he may call me 'a beast,' and 'a devil,' but I shall always think of him as a good servant of Jesus Christ." 1 They had ministered to his necessities twice before at Thessalonica (iv. 1 6) and once at Corinth (2 Cor. xi. 9). 298 The Epistles. philippians. as Luther and the Reformers pleaded for the life of Melanch thon.1 God heard their supplication. Epaphroditus recovered ; and deeply as St. Paul, in his loneliness and discouragement, would have liked to keep this dear friend by his side, yet, Avith his usual unselfishness, he yielded to the yearning of Epaphroditus for his home, and of the Christians of Philippi for their absent pastor. He therefore sent him back, and Avith him he sent this letter, in which he expressed his heart felt gratitude for the affection Avhich had so happily cheered the monotony of his sorrows. Thus the Epistle to the Philippians is what we should call an occasional letter. There is nothing systematic or special about it. It is not a trumpet-note of defiance like the Epistle to the Galatians. It is not the reply to a number of ques tions like the First to the Corinthians. It is not a treatise of theology like the Epistle to the Eomans. It has more of a personal character like the Second Epistle to the Corin thians ; but it is poured forth, not to those towards Avhom he had little cause for gratitude and much need for forbearance — not to jealous critics and bitter opponents — but to the favourite converts of his ministry, to the dearest children of his love. It is a genuine and simple letter — the warm, spon taneous, loving effusion of a heart which could express itself with unreserved affection to a most kind and a most beloved Church. That Church of Philippi seems to have been eminently free from errors of doctrine and irregularities of practice. One fault, and one alone, appears to have required correction, and this was of so personal and limited a character, that St. Paul only needs to hint at it gently and with affec - tionate entreaty. This was a Avant of unity between some of its members, especially between two ladies, Avhom St. Paul entreats to be reconciled to each other. I have already men tioned that in the greeting or thanksgiving of each of St. Paul's letters Ave almost always find a hint of their main 1 " Allda musste mir unser Herr Gott herbalten. Denn ich rieb Ihm die Ohren mit alien promissionibus exaudiendarum precum,"- — Lvtheh. Unity. 299 motive or object.1 In this letter we find it in the predominance philippians. of the Avord " all " in the thanksgiving of the third verse — " I thank my God in all remembrance of you, always in all my supplication for you all, making my supplication Avith joy at your united work for the Gospel." This general unity had existed from the first day he had visited them, ten years ago, until now. He recurs to the same topic at the beginning of the second chapter,2 where he again urges them to unity. " Fulfil my joy that ye may think the same thing ; having the same love ; heart-united ; thinking one thing. Nothing for partisan ship, or for empty personal vanity ! but in loAvliness of mind, each of you thinking others his own superiors, not severally keeping your eye on your own interests, but also severally on the interests of others. Be of the same mind in yourselves that Christ Jesus Avas in Himself, Avho, existing in the form (i.e. in the very nature, p,optpfj) of God, deemed not equality with God a thing for eager seizure, but emptied Himself, taking the form (the very nature, p.op(jjiiv) of a slave, revealing Himself in human semblance (6/j,otd>p,aTi) ; and being found 3 in figure (axwan) as a man, humbled Himself, showing Him self obedient unto death, ay, and that death the death of the Cross." And so having, for our example, in lowliness and unselfishness, descended from the infinite summit of glory to the most abysmal depths of self-humiliation, He was again exalted by God to a throne above all thrones, and a dominion above all dominions.4 1 An interesting feature of this greeting is that here alone he makes special mention of the " bishops and deacons." From the word "bishops" we must exclude all modern connotations of the word. At this period "bishops " were simply "presbyters." The plural form of the word shows the date of the Epistle before the separation of the office of the ' ' Episcopos " from that of the " Presbuteroi." 2 There are two sections in the letter which are devoted to the subject of unity — i. 27— H. 18 ; and iv. 1-9. Unity was all the more essential in the presence of persecution (avTiKeifievoi, i. 28). 3 See John i. 45. 4 It is characteristic of the extreme depth and fulness of the mind of St. Paul, that even into an exhortation to the common Christian duty of unity he thus casually introduces a passage so theologically important. The chief truths of the profoundest Christology could not have been expressed more grandly, and at the same time more tersely than in this swift outline of 300 The Epistles. philippians. 3. This exhortation to perfect unity, founded upon the abso lute humility and self-sacrifice of Christ, was the most serious object of this letter. Its infinite charm rests in its exquisite spontaneity. It is not of course such a letter as that to the Eomans, but it is in all respects worthy of St. Paul, and shoAvs him in some of the SAveetest aspects of his character. St. Paul cannot always wear the majestic cothurnus, yet his lightest words are full of dignity. He could never be colour less. Even his briefest and most casual letters derive their colouring from those rich hues of the writer's individuality, which made it impossible for him to Avrite five lines without giving us some of those jewels of spiritual thought or noble expression "which on the stretched forefinger of all time sparkle for ever." The outline of this delightful letter of thanks to a loving Church is simply as folloAvs. The exhortation to unity occupies sixteen verses of the second chapter, and, with this exception, after the greeting and thanksgiving, the rest of the first two chapters is filled with personal details about his feelings and work at Eome, especially the touching words about his difficulty of choosing between life and anticipated death. The letter, in fact, is mainly composed of tAvo factors — personal details (i. 12 — 26 ; ii. Christ's passage downwards, step by step, from the infinite heights into the uttermost abyss of self-humiliation (ii. 6-8), and then His re-ascent upwards into the super-exaltation * of unimaginable dominion (ii. 9-11). Each word of the passage is full of meaning. Around the single verb " He emptied Himself" t has risen a wide controversy known as "the kenosis controversy," and there is much significance, though no shadow of Docetism, in the contrast between the expressions "form" and "fashion" — the abiding and essential form or inmost nature (p.oprpri) of God, in which Christ eternally was, and the outward transitory fashion (oxniJ-a) of a man in which He was found. In this passage the " thought it not robbery to be equal with God" of the A.V. is an unfortunate mistranslation which almost reverses the real meaning. The whole context proves the meaning to be that " He counted it not a prize " — dpirayii6v colloquially, perhaps incorrectly, used in the sense of ap-iray/ia — or "a thing to be grasped " to be on an equality with God. "We can only mention it as a literary and theological curiosity that so able a critic as Baur fancied that this was an allusion to Wisdom (Sophia) the last J5on of the PJeroma in the Valentinian system, whose offspring sank back into the Emptiness (Kenomn) when she attempted to unite herself to the Absolute ! 11. 9. virepbipaa-e. t ii. 7, eaorbv iKevaoev. A Sudden Outburst. 301 17—30 ; iv. 10 — 15) and exhortations to unity (i. 27 ; ii. 16 ; philippians. iv. 1 — 9). But in the second verse of the third chapter the Apostle is suddenly interrupted and disturbed by we knoAV not what bitter gust of feeling, caused by we know not what machination of JeAvish malice. Apparently he was on the point of ending his letter. He had said "finally," and " farewell," Avhen, with a sudden burst, as it were, he breaks into a digression singularly unlike the calm, SAveet, tolerant tone of the rest of the letter. It is like coming across a stream of molten lava in the midst of green fields. He Avarns the Philippians in words of intense severity against Jewish and immoral opponents, Avhom he calls dogs and evil workers, and of whom he says that their god is their belly and their glory in their shame. With the vain boastings and unhalloAved worldliness of these Judaists — this " mutilation party/' as he calls them — he contrasts his OAvn trust (in spite of all his privileges of birth and life) in Christ alone.1 He tells them that, so far from counting himself perfect, he aims at resembling one of those Avild-eyed charioteers of Avhom his soldier-guards told him so often Avhen they had come from Avitnessing the races in the Circus Maximus. He too was a charioteer on the road to righteousness, leaning forward, as it were, in his flying car ; bending over the shaken rein and the goaded steed, forgetting everything — every peril, every com petitor, every circling of the meta in the rear, as he pressed on for the goal by, which sate the judges with the palm, which should be the prize of his heavenly calling of God in Christ.2 1 This passage (iii. 2-19) is, with the famous passage about Christ's self% inanition (ii. 5-11), the most distinctive and doctrinally important in the letter. Having begun the chapter, " Finally, my brethren, farewell in the Lord, to write to you the same things" — i.e. these constant exhortations to unity, or perhaps to joy — "is for me not burdensome, but for you it is safe," he stops, and adds with startling suddenness, "Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the concision." There is nothing un- Pauline in the words. In 2 Cor. xi. 13, he had spoken of Judaists as "deceitful workers," and if " concision" — a word Avhich implies that circumcision may be a mere physical mutilation — be a very severe expression, it is at any rate less so than the (perhaps half-humorous) sternness of the expression 6 for iv tvxv = Gad) to show that they were not really women ! 2 In iv. 3, we have " Yea and I beseech thee, also, true yokefellow " (yvS]o-ie av£vye). Who is this unnamed yokefellow ? Renan (S. Paul, 165) thinks that it was Lydia, and Clemens of Alexandria (Strom, iii. 6, 53) that she Avas Paul's wife ! Baur thinks that it was meant (by the forger) to indicate St. Peter. It is so unusual to salute a person Avithout mentioning his name that I believe we have here a paronomasia, and that the Philippian's name was Syzygus. It would be quite in St. Paul's manner to address him as Syzygus "yokefellow" in heart as in name. The Tubingen school suppose the Philippian Clement who is here saluted to be meant for Clement of Rome, and they identify him Avith the martyred Consul, uncle of Domitian ! Clemens was a very common name, aud there is nothing to show that he was not a member of the Philippian Church. Another question occurs to us, why does he add to the salutation of the saints, "especially they of Caesar's household"? That question cannot be answered. "They of Caesar's household" were probably a handful outof the thousands of slaves who filled the palace of Hero. Liberality and Joy. 303 the edge of what may be called a someAvhat selfish domes- philippians. ticity, over the verge of the slightly expanded egotism of the private home, Iioav many of us do anything appreciable to alleviate the distresses, to lessen the misery, to heal the open sores of the Avorld, to visit Christ in His sickness, to relieve Christ in His hunger, to comfort Him in His imprisonment, or clothe Him in His nakedness ? And if this be so, if it be not ours to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, or to discharge in person the high duties of Christian charity, Ave can only fulfil these duties at all by generous giving. Hoav many are there who adequately discharge this duty ? May Ave not all learn from these Philippians, the depths of Avhose poverty abounded to the riches of their liberality ? ii. Notice, lastly, the speciality of this letter in its fine throbbing undertone of spiritual joy. It has been said that the sum of the Avhole letter is " I rejoice, rejoice ye." When Paul and Silas lay in the deepest dungeons of Philippi, scored and bleeding from the flagellation which the local " Praetors " had inflicted upon them in the forum, they had sung songs in the night. Another song noAV emanates from the Apostle's Eoman prison. His letter is like one of those magnificent pieces of music which, amid all its stormy fugues and mighty discords, is dominated by some inner note of triumph which at last bursts forth into irresistible and glorious victory. It is new and marvellous. What was there thus to fill the soul and flood the utterance of St. Paul with joy ? The letter Avas dictated by a worn and fettered Jew, the victim of gross perjury, and the prey of contending enmities ; dictated by a man of feeble frame, in afflicted circumstances, vexed with hundreds of opponents, and with scarce one friend to give him consolation. Could any one have been embittered with deeper Avrongs, or tormented by deadlier sufferings ? Before we look upon this serene cheerfulness, this unmurmuring^ resignation of St. Paul as a matter of course, compare him for a moment with others Avhose circum- 304 The Epistles. philippians. stances were a thousandfold less pitiable than his. I will not take the case of Ovid and the Availing agony of his Tristia, for Ovid was a poet whose genius had been debased by the enervation of long-continued sensuality. But let us compare St. Paul Avith men of finer fibre and purer life. Cicero was, for a short time, exiled. His exile had every mitigation. He was not imprisoned. He could choose his own home. He was surrounded wherever he went with wealth, luxury, admiration, troops of friends. He knew that the great and the poAverful were using all their influence on his behalf. And yet, though he claimed to be a philosopher, though he had published whole volumes of lofty exhortation, there is scarcely one of the many letters which he wrote during that short exile which is not full of unmanly lamentations. Take another instance. Seneca was a contemporary of St. Paul ; he may even have seen him. He was a man of immense wealth, of high rank, of great reputation ; a man who wrote books full of the most sounding professions of Stoic endurance and Stoic superiority to passion and to pain. He too was, for a short time, exiled to Sardinia. He too was free, and rich, and he had powerful friends. How did he bear his exile ? He too broke into abject complaints, and in spite of his Stoicism was not ashamed to grovel with extravagant flatteries at the feet of a worthless freedman, to induce him to procure his return. Take another instance, and this time a Christian — Dante. We know what he thought and felt about " the hell of exile, that slow, bitter, lingering, hopeless death, which none can knoAV but the exile himself." We know hoAV, when the monk who opened for him the door of the monastery of Santa Croce asked him " What seek you here ? " he gazed round him with hollow eyes and slowly ansAvered " Pacem /" " Peace." We might take other instances. We might compare St. Paul in exile with Clarendon, or Atterbury, or Bolingbroke. His lot was incomparably Avorse than theirs, for he Avas Joy in Affliction. 305 not only an exile, he Avas cold and hungry, and a prisoner philippians. and lonely, and suffering and distressed by the constant machinations of bitter opponents, and with the sword of the headsman hanging, as it were, by a thread over his neck. Yet his magnanimity stands out in bright contrast with even the best and greatest of these. He does not, like Cicero, weary his friends with complaints and importunities. He does not, like Seneca, favra upon the worthless. He does not, like Dante, yield to a brooding melancholy. No such gloom comes over him as that which fell on our own great exiles. Yet he was more guiltless than any of these, and his sufferings were infinitely more un merited. Amid poverty and imprisonment, with the froAvn of the tyrant bent on him, death seeming to stare him in the face, the fundamental note in the many-toned music of his letter is the note of joy. He recalls to our minds the runner who, at the supreme moment of Grecian history, brought to Athens the news of Marathon. Worn, panting, exhausted Avith the effort to be the herald of deliverance, he sank in death on the threshold of the first house which he reached with the tidings of victory, and sighed forth his gallant soul in one great sob, almost in the very same Avords as those used by the Apostle, ^a/pere, %aipo[iev, " Eejoice ye, we too rejoice ! " The whole letter bears " the impress, at times almost elegiac, of resignation in view of death with high apostolic dignity, unbroken holy joy, hope, and victory over the world." 1 Here at least is one grand example for us all to follow, one glorious lesson for us all to learn. Let us try to attain to the secret of this peace which is like the deep peace in the heart of ocean in spite of all its surface agita tions. Let us try to catch this gloAving spirit which, even in the midst of sorrow, gives to the Christian a pure and incommunicable joy. Amid the gloom, amid the vapours of the charnel house, let our heavenly hope be still " Like the lone lamp which trembles in the tomb." They talk of the 1 Meyer. X 306 The Epistles. philippians. depression of the age. Pessimism is becoming a popular philosophy. In its luxury, and in its struggles, and in its sensuality, and in its very successes, the age is sad. We deserve and we receive the punishment of those whom the great Italian poet described as duly punished for this guilt, since — "Once we were sad In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun, Now in this milky darkness, Ave are sad." But the inward joy of the Christian, if brightest in the sunshine, is unquenched even by the storm. The true Christian, the perfect Christian, the saint of God, can be glad even in adversity, and rich in poverty, and calm in the prospect of death. Why ? Because he has a freedom which no fetters can coerce, and a treasure which makes as nothing the loss of all ; and because death, which guilty men regard as the most awful of penalties, is to him the sleep which God sends to His beloved when their day's Avork is done. St. Paul stood on a rock which no lightning could shatter, no billoAV shake. He stood high above the need of riches, above the dread of enemies. In a sense infinitely truth: than the vaunt of the Stoic, he superabounded on the verge of hunger ; he was a king in the slave's dungeon ; in the midst of deser tion he had many friends. '' Hath he not always treasures, always friends " — the holy Christian man ? Yes ! ' ' Three treasures, life, and light, And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath, And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death." Outline of the Epistle. 307 NOTE I. philippians. OUTLINE OF THE EPISTLE. 1. Greeting, i. 1, 2. 2. Thanksgiving and prayer, i. 3-11. 3. Personal details, and messages, and thanks (i. 12-26 ; ii. 17-30 ; iv. 10-19). 4. Exhortations to unity (i. 27- ii. 16 ; iv. 1-9). 5. Digression and warning concerning false Judaising teachers (iii. 2-21). 6. Doxology, salutations, and blessing (iv. 20-23). The letter is the least systematic of all the Epistles, but it contains several very striking and beautiful passages. Such are — ¦ i. 19-26. The doubt respecting the choice of life or death. ii. 5-11. The appeal to the example of Christ, ia His "inanition" (kenosis) which Avas followed by exaltation. iii. 7-11. His readiness to sacrifice everything for Christ. iv. 12-16. His continued sense of imperfection. As regards the phraseology of the Epistle we may notice the expressions — ¦ iv. 8. If there be any virtue. This is the only place where the word aperr) occurs in St. Paul. That ye may approve the things that are excellent (els to bs0Kip.a£eiv Ifias to biaqbepovTo). Lit. " that ye may discriminate the transcendent," i.e. that even in good things you may discern what things are best. Comp. Rom. ii. 8. i. 13. In all the praetorian camp. The residence of a king or governor might be called a Praetorium in the Provinces (Matt, xxvii. 27), but we may be sure that this term (properly "general's tent") was not used at Borne, Avhere it would have been insultingly suggestive of a military despotism. i. 25. I shall bide, and abide with you all (pievd> m\ o-vpirapaueva) ; the play of words is quite in St. Paul's manner (Bom. i. 28, 29, 30 ; ii 1 ; xii. 3 ; 2 Cor. iii. 2 ; vi. 10 ; vii. 31 ; xi 29 ; 2 Cor. iv. 8, &c.) i. 27. Live as citizens, worthily of the " Gospel of Christ " (iro\iTexSeo-de comp. irokiTevpia, iii. 20). The Philippians enjoyed the Eoman franchise as St. Paul himself did. The substantive " citizenship " does not occur again in the New Testament ; the verb only in Acts xxiii. 1. x 2 308 The Epistles. philippians. if 1. If there le any tender mercies and compassions. The reading of nearly all the Uncials is e'i tis crirXayxva ku\ oiKTipp.o\, " if any one be tender mercy and compassion." This has been treated as a mere clerical error, but St. Paul may have Avritten it as he writes iv8vcrao-6e a-ifXayxva. Col. iii. 12. ii. 17. If I am poured out upon the sacrifice and offering of your faith. The metaphor is taken from the drink-offering poured over a sacrifice. 2 Tim. ii. 6. Seneca when dying (Tae. Ann. xv. 64) sprinkled the by standers Avith his blood, saying, " Libare se liquorem ilium Jovi Libera- tori." So too Thrasea, " Libemus, inquit, Jovi Liberatori." Id. xv. 35. ii. 19. Hazarding his life. The reading of the best MSS. is napafio- \evo-afnevos. The Avord was technically used oi parabolani, who as it were " played the gamblers " with their lives in attending on the sick. iii. 1. Rejoice in the Lord. The word xatpere means both "farewell," and " fare ye well." iii. 9. A righteousness which is through faith in Christ, the righteous ness which is of God by faith (8ia nlo-reas . . . ex Oeoii . . . em tt> iriaTei), i.e. a righteousness by means of faith, coming from God, based on faith. iv. 10. Ye have revived your thought for me (dveddXere ro virep ipov (ppoveiv). Lit. " Ye bloomed again to think on my behalf." Here the A.V. keeps the metaphor "your care for me hath flourished again." It was a " fresh springlike outburst " of old kindness. ii. 25. Your messenger. (" Apostle " in the lower and untechnieal sense of the word. 2 Cor. viii. 23.) iii. 21. Our vile body. Happily this is, in the A.V., a mistranslation of to 0-ap.a Trjs Taireivacreas r)p.d>i; "the body of our humiliation." Scripture nowhere sanctions the Manichean notion of the vileness of the body or the inherent evil of matter. iv. 5. Let your moderation be known unto all men (vpolv to eirieiKes). Rather your " courtesy," Tyndale ; modestia, Vulg. ; " softness," Cranmer ; "your reasonableness." iv. 7. The peace of God shall guard your hearts. God's peace shall stand armed — shall keep sentry over (povpr)o-ei) your hearts. iv. 12. I have learned. Bather, " I have been initiated," " I have learnt the secret " (pep.v-np.ai). THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. WRITTEN DURING THE FIRST ROMAN IMPRISONMENT. ABOUT A.D. 63. "Christ all in all." " Per Me venitur, ad Me pervenitur, in Me permanetur." — Aug. In Joann. xLi. "'Ev «»t^! irepiira.Te'iTe. In eo ambulate; in illo solo. Hie Epistola scopus est. " — Bengel. "Walk in Him."— Col. ii. 6. St. Paul's Epistles — as Ave have already had occasion to colossians. observe — generally grew out of Avhat (in ordinary language) would be called " accidental circumstances." To the Christian, hoAvever, there is no such thing as " chance " or " accident." Even the word Tv^f} does not once occur in the NeAV Testa ment. It is therefore only with the limitations which every Christian can supply for himself that the Apostle's writings can be called, in the phrase of a French writer, " des icrits de cir Constance'.' It is, hoAvever, perfectly true that he never seems to have Avritten without some express reason or immediate occasion for doing so. Of the four letters despatched during his three years' imprisonment, the letter to the Philippians was caused by the arrival of Epaphroditus from Philippi with a pecuniary gift. The letter to Philemon was written to secure a kindly reception for a runaway slave. The letter to the Ephesians and Colossians rose out of the visit of Epaphras, a Colossian 310 The Epistles. colossians. presbyter, who came to St. Paul at Eome, and whom he calls his " dear fellow servant," and " fellow prisoner." St. Paul says that the Colossians had never " seen his face in the flesh." But he felt a deep interest in them, and the news Avhich Epaphras brought of their condition was so strange and serious that he felt himself impelled to Avrite to them, in order, if possible, to prevent irreparable mischief. Among the tributaries of the Maeander in Asia Minor is the river Lycus, a river Avhich, like the Anio, clothes its bed and valley with calcareous deposits, and forms for itself natural bridges of gleaming travertine, of which the fantastic effect is increased by the earthquakes to which this region has been peculiarly liable. On the banks of this strange river were three populous cities, Hierapolis, Laodicea and Colossae. Hierapolis is famous as the birthplace of Epictetus, Avhose moral teaching is the fairest floAver of heathen philosophy ; and as the See of Papias, Avhose writings were of much importance to the early Church. Laodicea, wealthy and magnificent, was the oldest and least faithful of the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse. Colossae, or (as the name appears on coins and inscriptions) Colassae, afterwards called Chonos, was an ancient but dwindling township, " the least important to Avhich any letter of St. Paul is addressed." 1 Although he Avas Avithin such easy reach of these three interesting cities, St. Paul, strange to say, had never visited them during his long residence at Ephesus.2 Perhaps his labours " night and day " among his Ephesian converts had detained him almost exclusively in the great city of Artemis. Yet, indirectly, he had become the founder of the Churches of the Lycus. For among his hearers at Ephesus had been Philemon, and Epaphras of Colossae, and Nymphas of Lao dicea ; and they, acting on the grand principle that every Christian is God's missionary, seem to have founded these 1 In the days of Herodotus (vii. 20) and Xenophon (Anal. i. 2, § 6) it had been great and flourishing. In the days of Strabo it had sunk into a ir6Xiapa (xii. 17). 2 Col. ii. 1. The Colossian Heresy. 311 daughter Churches of the Ionian metropolis.1 St. Paul Avas writing on a private matter to the Colossian Philemon. He took the opportunity of addressing the Church of that place and the Churches in the more splendid neighbour-cities Avhich Avere in the same valley, and within easy reach of each other. He was all the more eager to seize this opportunity because Epaphras brought with him the disturbing tidings that the germs of a new heresy were there springing into life. This heresy — neAV yet old, local yet universal — was but another of the Protean forms assumed by the eternal gravitation to erroneous extremes. In outward features it differed from that tendency to apostatise into Judaism, from Avhich St. Paul had finally saved the Church by his Epistles to the Galatians and Eomans, nor was it mixed up with that personal antagonism Avhich adds so much additional sting and bitterness to his previous controversies. It was more insidious, but less violent. It was an incipient form of those dangerous and inflating heresies — bred in the decay and the ferment of neAv faiths, and mixture of old creeds — Avhich were soon to be known under the name of Gnosticism. The strange district, " sombre and melancholy," rent by earthquakes, and " burnt up, or rather incinerated by volcanic catastrophes,'' seemed to invite its inhabitants to a dreamy mysticism. Their religiosity Avas full of formalism and fear. It may have sprung up among Jewish Essenes, influenced by subtle Asiatic speculations.2 It Avas a mixture of ascetic practices and dreamy imaginations. It combined a crude theosophy with a hard discipline and an elaborate ritual. It made much of meats, and drinks, and new moons, and sabbaths. It laid down valueless rules of " Touch not, taste not, handle not." While professing to debase the body Avith hard mortification, it Avas no real remedy for self-indulgence. 1 The true reading of i. 7 is virep ripHv. Epaphras had been a missionary to these cities on Raid's behalf. 3 On the Colossian heretics, see Bishop Lightfoot's Essay in his edition of the Epistle, and an excellent note of Nitzseh in Bleek's Einleitung, § 163. Vorlesungen, pp. 15-17- colossians. 312 The Epistles. colossians. Under the guise of a voluntary humility, it concealed an ex travagant pride. But worse than this, being tainted with the heresy that evil resides in matter, and therefore that the body is essentially and inherently vile, the adherents of this perverted doctrine Avere perhaps led to hint at some distinc tion betAveen the human Jesus and the divine Christ. They were certainly trying to thrust all kinds of intermediate agencies, especially angels, between the soul and God. Such were the crafty errors — swiftly germinating in the "loose fertility" of the Asiatic intellect — which St. Paul had to combat in AArriting to Christians, of whom the majority were personal strangers to himself. He met them, not by indignant controversy, for as yet these errors were only undeveloped ; nor by personal authority, for these Christians Avere not his converts ; but by the noblest of all forms of controversy, which is the pure presentation of counter truths. To a cumbrous ritualism he opposes a spiritual service ; to inflating speculations a sublime reality ; to hampering ordinances a manly self-discipline ; to esoteric exclusiveness a universal Gospel ; to theological cliques an equal brotherhood ; to barren systems a neAv life, a neAv impulse, a religion of the heart. But most of all, he adopts the one best way of meeting the aberrations of Christianity, which is to lead back the soul to Christ. Already to the Thessalonians he had spoken of Christ as the Judge of quick and dead ; to the Corinthians as the Invisible Head and Euler of the Church ; to ihe Galatians as the breaker of the yoke of spiritual bondage ; to the Eomans as the Deliverer from sin and death. He had now to develop a new truth more nearly akin to that revela tion of Christ Avhich we find in St. John. He has to set Christ forth as the eternal and yet Incarnate Word ; as the Eedeemer of the universe; as the Lord of matter, no less than of spirit ; as one who, being the fulness of God's per fections, is the only Mediator, the only Potentate, the sole source of life to all the world. The sum, the Avhole scope of the Epistle to the Colossians is that Christ is the Pleroma— Style. 313 the Plenitude — at once the brimmed receptacle and the total colossians. contents of all the gifts and attributes of God ; Christ is all in all ; walk in Him and in Him alone. The style of the Epistle is someAvhat laboured. It lacks the spontaneity, the fire, the passion, the tender emotion, Avhich mark most of St. Paul's Epistles. The reason for this is tAvofold. It is partly because he is addressing strangers, the members of Churches which he had not directly founded, and to whom his expressions did not Aoav forth from the same full spring of intimate affection. It is still more because he is refuting errors with Avhich he Avas not familiar, and which he had not witnessed in their direct immediate workings. He had only heard of these errors secondhand. He only understood so much of their nature as Epaphras had set before him in his Eoman prison. In dealing with them he Avas engaged upon a new theme. When he was a little more familiarised with the theme— when he is writing of it a second time in the Epistle to the Ephesians, and when he is addressing converts whom he had personally Avon to Christ — he writes Avith more fervency and ease. The difference between the Epistles is analogous to that between the Epistles to the Galatians and the Eomans. In the close similarity between the letters to Ephesus and Colossae, and yet in the strongly marked individuality of each, we have one of the most indisputable proofs of the genuineness of both. The two are different, but each has its own greatness. If this Epistle has less of the attractive personal element, and the winning pathos of other letters of St. Paul, it is still living, terse, solid, manly, vigorous; and brief though it be, it still, as Calvin says, contains the nucleus of the Gospel. It falls into five well-marked sections : the introduction, and the doctrinal, the polemic, the practical, the personal sections. 1. After a brief greeting (i. 1, 2), the Apostle utters a fuli thanksgiving to God for the faith, and love, and fruitfulness, Avhich sprang from their hope of heavenly blessedness (i. 3-8). He then tells them of his ceaseless prayers for 314 The Epistles. colossians. them, that they may be filled with full knowledge and spiritual understanding, still bearing fresh fruit, and being strengthened with fresh power, and perpetually giving thanks to God, who rescued us from the power of darkness, and qualified us for our share of the inheritance of the saints in light, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have our redemption, the remission of our sins (1-13). 2. This leads him gradually to the great doctrinal passage respecting the nature and office of Christ, as supreme alike in relation to the Universe and to the Church, alike in the natural and in the moral creation (ii. 15-17). It is this passage which constitutes the theological germ of the Epistle, and stamps it pre-eminently as the Christological Epistle. In the following verses St. Paul characteristically dwells on the thoughts at once exalting and humiliating, that the full absolute, and universal revelation of this long-hidden mystery should have been intrusted to him; and he expresses his earnest desire that the Churches of the Lycus valley, though they had not seen his face in the flesh, may be helped by him to the full knowledge of that mystery of God, AAdiich is Christ, in Avhom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, to be by us sought for and enjoyed (i. 11 ; ii. 3). His object in Avriting is that they may be founded and firm in their faith, like pillars and temples which are exempt from the earthquake-shocks,1 of which they saAV the terrible traces on every side, and Avhich at last shook their city into the dust. 3. From this he passes to the direct polemic against the encroachments of the error by Avhich the letter had been occasioned (ii. 4-iii. 4). There Avas (he implies) at Colossae a certain Essene mystic, Avhom he Avill not name, Avho, with his seductive plausibility,2 Avas making a prey of them by a so- called " philosophy," which was nothing else but vain deceit 1 i. 23, u)i peraKivoifievoi, "not earthquake-shaken." 2 ii. 8, 6 buds 0-vXayaiyiav Sid Tijs (piXoooipias. ii. 4, fxi) tis vpds irapa- Xoyi^nrat iv iriBavoXoyia. Moral Applications. 315 in accordance with human traditions and earthly rudiments, colossians. not in accordance Avith Christ. After exposing the special errors which this man Avas trying to inculcate (ii. 4 — 23), he shows them, in a powerful passage, that the true remedy for carnal temptations Avas to be found in thoughts and practices far different from the Avorrying scrupulosities of ceremonialism and asceticism (iii. 1 — 4). 4. Leaving the regions of doctrine and controversy he passes to the direct moral applications of the practical part of his letter. This consists partly of general (iii. 5 — 17), partly of special precepts (iii. 18 ; iv. 6). As general precepts he bids them slay at a blow x by the new life which is in Christ, and Avhich is Christ, the sensual passions of their heathen past, together Avith all the hatred and falsehood of the old man Avith his deeds, and to put on at once the new man, Avho is being ever reneAved to full knowledge according to the image of the creator in that region where all earthly distinc tions are done away. Above all, love, in all its forms, is to be a part of this new being, and peace and spiritual fervour are to dominate in all their Avords and deeds (iii. 5 — 17). Passing to special precepts,2 he has a Avord of exhortation for Avomen, for men, for children, for fathers. Thinking perhaps of Onesimus and Philemon, he impresses faithfulness on slaves, and justice on masters. He urges on them the duty of earnest and constant supplication, and specially asks their prayers on behalf of his OAvn labours in the Gospel. He further bids them Avalk in wisdom, earnestness, and holiness of speech. 5. The rest of the letter is personal (iv. 7 — 17). Tychicus the bearer of the letter, and their fellow toAvnsman Onesimus would tell them all about him. He sends them greetings from Aristarchus his fellow captive, Mark the cousin of Barnabas, and Jesus Justus, his Jewish comforters and fellow workers. Their pastor Epaphras, Luke the physician, the 1 iii. 5. Nexpi&o-aTe ... 8. diriOeoBe. All that was evil was to be blown up at once, but all good habits Avere to be continually built up. 8 These are all in the present imperative, implying continuous duties. 316 The Epistles. colossians. beloved, and Demas — about whom there is a someAvhat ominous reticence — greet them. They are to salute the Laodicean Christians and Nymphas and his friends, and to see that this letter and the one which he is Avriting to Laodicea be interchanged and read in both Churches.1 Archippus, perhaps the son of Philemon and chief pastor of Laodicea, is to be stirred up to more earnest efforts. The letter closes Avith the brief autographic salutation of St. Paul, in that shorter form — " Grace be with you "—which is characteristic of his later Epistles. But St. Paul rarely Avrote even a single paragraph without adding some individual touch, and here he inserts the pathetic words " Eemember my bonds." Perhaps as he rose to take the reed from his amanuensis — Timothy or Tychicus — the coupling-bond which bound him by the wrist to the Praetorian soldier clanked upon the floor, and he was reminded (as when he wrote to Philemon) that he presents the strange anomaly of " an ambassador in a chain." Even in the dust of St. Paul's writings there is gold, and there is not a single clause of this Epistle which has not its OAvn beauty, value, or interest. Clearly hoAvever the two most specific and important passages are the Doctrinal and the Polemical — in which combined he presents the loftiest possible Christology as the only effectual counterpoise, both morally and intellectually, to Gnostic error. Let us glance at these two passages. I. In the first (i. 19 — ii. 3), after thanking God for the redemption and remission of sins Avrought by the Son of His Love, he proceeds to set forth Christ in His unmistakable, unapproachable, eternal divinity. In relation to God He is God's image, alike His representation and manifesta tion. In relation to the Universe He is the Mediator between 1 It is called tV ix AaoSiKeias because it would come to Colossae from Laodicea, which was lower down the Lycus valley nearer to Ephesus. The " Laodicean " letter is probably the circular letter to " the Ephesians." The extant letter "to the Laodiceans " is a spurious and valueless cento of Pauline phrases. Christology. 317 God and all created things, being prior to all creation, and colossians. sovereign over all creation. Mystic dreamers might invent Angelologies, and thrust intermediate agencies between man and God, thus interfering with man's most blessed privilege of immediate access ; but Christ is all in all. All things — in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible— whether '" thrones," or " lordships," or " principalities," or " powers,"— all things were created (etcTiaOri) by His agency ; all things continue their being (e/CTunat) with reference to Him ; His divine prae-existence {ai/Tb<; eartv) precedes all things, and in Him as the band of the universe all things cohere. Such is His relation to God, and to all the natural Universe. The constant repetition of the words "all things" 1 shows with what absolute jealousy St. Paul would exclude His universality of pre-eminence from every encroachment, whether of Angels or of iEons.2 However great they may be in themselves "thrones, dominations, virtues, princedoms, powers," are nothing in respect to His all-completeness. St. Paul will hear of none but "Him first, Him last, Him midst, and without end." 3 For, being thus in Himself, what is He to the Church ? The Church is the body of which He is the Head. He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, the presiding power in all things, because God thought good that in Him the whole Plenitude — the totality of the divine attributes and agencies — should take its dwelling. " In Him," he adds a little later on — in a passage which is the nearest approach of any other writer to St. John's " the Word became flesh " — " in Him resides 4 all the Plenitude of Godhead bodily." The human Jesus is one with the Eternal Christ. But if He be so immense, if He be the Consummation, 1 irdoris Krlcreuis, 15. Tairavra . . Ta iravra, 16. irpoiravrav . . ra irdvra, 17. 2 The Valentiuians, according to Irenaeus (Haer. i. 4, § 5), talked not only of "thrones" and "lordships," but even of "godships" (BeirnTes). St. Taul has already warned the Colossians in this Epistle that the plenitude of Godship is in Christ. 3 Col. i. 15-17. 4 KUToiKel. St. John uses the word eo-Kiivaaev (i. 14). 318 The Epistles. the Fulfilment, the Pleroma, if He be what the Jewish theosophists called "the Place" — (Hak&m) — the Universe, of which they said " God is not the Makom, but all the Makom is in God" — there was an obvious danger that speculating errorists might try to disunite Jesus — to separate the human, the suffering Jesus from the Divine, Eternal Son. St. Paul at once guards against such heresies by adding that it was also God's will by His means to reconcile all things to Himself, making peace by the blood of His cross. St. Paul does not shrink from a juxtaposition of these two words — the Supreme, the Pleroma on the one hand, who is the summit of all exaltation, and on the other the lowest depths of the most abysmal degradation, the gibbet of a malefactor's shame. He therefore emphatically repeats the words that " By Him " God thus reconciled all things to Himself — yea, by His cross — whether the things on earth or even those in the heavens (i. 15 — 20). And having thus compressed into a few lines the description of Christ's work generally, he proceeds to speak of His work specially for the redeemed Colossians (21, 22), if only they abide in the faith, and are not shaken away from the moorings of their hope. This is the mystery — the truth long hidden now revealed — of the wealth and glory of which St. Paul became a steward and a minister, that he might preach it, not to chosen mystae, and not with esoteric reserve, but completely and universally, warning every man, teaching every man in all wisdom, to present every man, as fully initiated, to Christ (i. 23— 29).2 II. Turning to the polemic against the incipient heresy (ii. 4— iii. 4) we find from the counter truths presented by St. Paul that— j ^e mis clearly some analogy between the Makom of this Jewish proverb and the Pleroma. The Kabbalistic method of Gematria or assigning numerical equivalents to words (the Greek isopsephia) aided this usage. For HIIT (Jehovah) = 10 + 5 + 6 + 5 = 26; and Makdm = 102 + 52 + 62 + 53 = 186. See Philo, De Somn. i. p. 575. Bereshith Rabba, § 68. iravra. dvBpairov, thrice repeated, iv ird