FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]See this portion of Baur's theory refuted in Dr. Salmon'sIntroduction to the New Testament, ch. xviii., p. 335, 4th ed., where the writer admits a certain parallelism between the history of SS. Peter and Paul in the Acts, but denies that it was an invented parallelism. He remarks on the next page, "What I think proves decisively that the making a parallel between St. Peter and St. Paul was not an idea present to the author's mind is the absence of the natural climax of such a parallel—the story of the martyrdom of both the Apostles.... If the object of the author of the Acts had been what has been supposed, it is scarcely credible that he could have missed so obvious an opportunity of bringing his book to its most worthy conclusion, by telling how the two servants of Christ—all previous differences, if there had been any, reconciled and forgotten—joined in witnessing a good confession before the tyrant emperor, and encouraged each other in steadfastness in endurance to the end."[2]The tradition mentioned by St. Jerome is not the only one which deals with the early life of St. Paul. Another very learned writer of the same, or perhaps we should rather say of a still earlier, period was St. Epiphanius, the historian of Heresies and bishop of Constantia, or Salamis, in Cyprus. He wrote a great work describing the various heresies which had sprung up in the Church, containing much valuable information which his research and early date enabled him to incorporate in his pages. He describes, amongst others, the Ebionites, telling us of their hostility to St. Paul and of the charges they brought against him. The Ebionites denied that he was a Jew at all. The words of Epiphanius are "They say that he was a Greek, and sprung from the Gentiles, and then afterwards became a proselyte," in opposition to which he quotes the Apostle's own words in Phil. iii. 5 and in 2 Cor. xi. 22. Epiphanius then proceeds to explain how St. Paul might have been born in Tarsus and yet have been a Jew by nation, because that, under Antiochus Epiphanes and at other times, vast numbers of the Jews had been dispersed as captives among the Gentiles. See Epiphanius, inCorpus Hæreseologicum, Ed. Oehler, vol. ii., p. 283. Berlin, 1859. This is a good instance how the Jewish hostility, which pursued St. Paul through life, had not quite died out three centuries later. Epiphanius was born aboutA.D.310. He wrote his work on Early Heresies aboutA.D.375, calling itPanarion, or, as he himself explains in his introductory epistle, the Medicine Chest, full of remedies against the bite of the Old Serpent. Epiphanius must have had a great store of early literature at his command which has now completely perished. See a long and critical account of him and his writings, written by Dr. R. A. Lipsius, in theDict. Christ. Biog., vol. ii.[3]See 2 Tim. i. 5, and iii. 14, 15. It is evident that St. Paul's language implies an acquaintance with Timothy's family of very long standing.[4]Schœttgen'sHor. Hebr., vol. i., p. 89; Lewin'sSt. Paul, vol. i., p. 7.[5]Josephus,Antiqq., XVIII., ix., 1, says of certain Jews of Babylon, "Now there were two men, Asineus and Anileus, brethren to one another. They were destitute of a father, and their mother put them to learn the art of weaving curtains, it not being esteemed a disgrace among them for men to be weavers of cloth." Then we find in the New Testament Simon of Joppa was a tanner, Aquila a tentmaker, the apostles fishermen, and our Lord a carpenter. See a long note on this subject by Mr. Lewin in hisLife of St. Paul, vol. i., p. 8. Massutius, a Jesuit commentator on St. Paul's life, lib. i., cap. iii., notices that Charlemagne, according to his biographer Eginhard, would have his sons and daughters taught some mechanical trade.[6]See Acts xvii. 28; Titus i. 12; 1 Cor. xv. 33.[7]See an article on "Greek the Language of Galilee in the time of Christ," by the Rev. Dr. Abbott, Professor of Hebrew in the University of Dublin, in hisEssays chiefly on the Original Texts of the Old and New Testaments. London, 1891.[8]Basnage, in hisHistory of the Jews, translated by Thomas Taylor, Book III., ch. vi., p. 168 (London, 1708), states, "It is agreed by the generality of Jewish and Christian doctors that the Talmud was completed in the 505th year of the Christian Æra." Cf. Serarius,De Rabbinis, Lib. I., c. ix., p. 251; Bartolocci,Bibl. Rabbin., t. i., p. 488, t. iii., p. 359; Morinus,Exerc. Bibl., Lib. II., ex. 6, c. ii. and iii., p. 294. Schaff'sEncyclopædia of Historical Theology, vol. iii., pp. 2292-96, has a good article on the Talmud, giving a long list of authorities to which reference may be made by any one interested in this subject.[9]Philo is the subject of a very long and learned article by Dr. Edersheim in Smith'sDict. Christ. Biog., vol. iv., with which may be compared a shorter article in Schaff'sEncyclopædia of Hist. Theol., vol. ii.[10]These facts throw much light upon our Lord's words in Matt. xv. 1-9 and xxii. 34-40.[11]The rabbinical device of mixtures is fully explained in Buxtorf'sLexicon, col. 1657, Ed. Basil (1639), or in Kitto'sBiblical Encyclopædia, under the article "Sabbath." The Talmud had a special treatise calledTractatus Mixtorum, which taught how, for instance, dwellings might be mixed or mingled so as to avoid technical breaches of the Sabbatical law. Planks were laid across intervening residences, so that houses at a very great distance might be brought into touch and connexion, and thus regarded as one common dwelling for a number of people who wished for a common feast on the Sabbath. This was calledMixtio conclavium. It was simply one of those wretched devices to which casuistry always leads; something like the rules for banquets on fast days, which we find in Lacroix,Manners of the Middle Ages, p. 170, where a most sumptuous Episcopal banquet is described. It was given on a fast day, therefore no flesh is included; but its place was amply supplied by rare fish and other dainties: see G. T. Stokes,Ireland and Anglo-Norman Church, p. 143.[12]Prosbol is simply a transliteration into Hebrew of two Greek words, πρὸς βουλήν. The Jewish Law enacted a cancelling of all debts in the Sabbatic year on the part of Jews towards their brethren. This enactment was found to hinder commerce about the time of Hillel—i.e., 75 yearsB.C.The rich would not lend to the poor on account of the Sabbatical year. So the doctors devised the Prosbol, which was a declaration to the effect that the Sabbatical year was not to affect the debt. There was a legal fiction invented which made void the law. The creditor said to the debtor, "In accordance with the Sabbatical year I remit thee the debt," and then the debtor replied, "Nevertheless I wish to pay it," and then the creditor was free from the obligation of Deut. xv.[13]The parallel between Hagar and Sarah is drawn out at full length after the rabbinical method in Basnage'sHistory of the Jews(Taylor's translation), book iii., ch. 22; in Lightfoot'sGalatians, pp. 178, 179, 189-99, and Farrar'sSt. Paul, ch. iii. Philo in his writings uses the very same illustration. Perhaps it may be well to add the concluding words of Bishop Lightfoot when discussing on p. 197 of hisGalatians, the similar use made by St. Paul and by Philo of this illustration of Hagar: "At the same time we need not fear to allow that St. Paul's method of teaching here is coloured by his early education in the rabbinical schools. It were as unreasonable to stake the Apostle's inspiration on the turn of a metaphor or the character of an illustration or the form of an argument, as on purity of diction. No one now thinks of maintaining that the language of the inspired writers reaches the classical standard of correctness and elegance, though at one time it was held almost a heresy to deny this. 'A treasure contained in earthen vessels,' 'strength made perfect in weakness,' 'rudeness in speech, yet not in knowledge,' such is the far nobler conception of inspired teaching, which we may gather from the Apostle's own language. And this language we should do well to bear in mind. But, on the other hand it were mere dogmatism to set up the intellectual standard of our own age or country as an infallible rule. The power of allegory has been differently felt in different ages, as it is differently felt at any one time by diverse nations. Analogy, allegory, metaphor—by what boundaries are these separated the one from the other? What is true or false, correct or incorrect, as an analogy or an allegory? What argumentative force must be assigned to either? We should at least be prepared with an answer to these questions before we venture to sit in judgment on any individual case."[14]The latest instance of this method which I have noticed isIllustrations of Tennyson, by J. C. Collins, reviewed by the Dean of Armagh in the January number of theBookman, where a number of such parallelisms are quoted which seem to me rather dubious.[15]Bishop Lightfoot, on Galatians iii. 11, says of this verse, "In its original context the passage has reference to the temporal calamities inflicted by the Chaldean invasion. Here a spiritual meaning and general application are given to words referring primarily to special external incidents." See also Farrar on St. Paul's method of scriptural quotation, in hisLife of St. Paul, ch. iii.[16]See St. Paul's address to the Jews of the Pisidian Antioch in Acts xiii. 34. Other specimens of the same rabbinical method used by St. Paul will be found in Rom. iii., iv., and ix. 33; 1 Cor. ix. Eph. iv. 8.[17]The great leaders in the divine struggle for righteousness, in every great onward movement on behalf of truth have always been men of this varied training. Moses, David, Elijah, Ezra, Saul of Tarsus, were great leaders of thought and action and they were all men whose education had been developed in very various schools. They were not men of books merely, nor men of action alone. They gained the flexibility of mind, the genuine liberality of thought which led them out of the old rucks by experiences gained from very opposite directions. The mere man of books may be very narrow; the practical man, whose knowledge is limited to every day affairs and whose horizon is bounded by to-morrow, is often an unthinking bigot. A man trained like Moses, or David, or Saul is the true leader of men for his mind is trained to receive truths from every quarter.[18]What an interesting anticipation of Christian times do we find in this passage. "The estate of the elders" is the Presbytery in the original Greek, and the words "the brethren" by which St. Paul refers to his unconverted fellow-countrymen are an anticipation of the expression he always uses for the Christian believers. Even in these little details Christianity is but an expansion of Judaism, as, in another direction, the Catacombs of Rome and the ornamentation used therein were all derived from the customs of the Jewish colony in Rome long before the time of Christ. See a treatise by Schurer, calledDie Gemeindeverfassung der Juden in Rom in der Kaiserzeit, p. 13 (Leipzig, 1879), where that learned writer points out the continuity between Judaism in Rome and early Christianity.[19]St. Paul, indeed, in his persecuting days may have been the inventor of the test, which seems to have consisted in a declaration that Jesus was not the Christ, but an impostor. We find a reference to the Jewish custom of blaspheming the name of Jesus in the Epistle of James (ii. 6, 7): "Do not the rich oppress you, and themselves drag you before the judgment-seats? Do not they blaspheme the honourable name by the which ye are called?" with which may be compared St. Paul's words in 1 Cor. xii. 3: "No man speaking in the Spirit of God saith, Jesus is anathema." The same custom continued in the second century, as we learn from frequent notices in Justin Martyr'sDialoguewith Trypho the Jew, as in the following quotations: ch. xvi., "cursing in your synagogues those that believe on Christ"; in ch. xlvii. he enumerates amongst those who shall not be saved "those who have anathematised and do anathematise this very Christ in the synagogues"; and in ch. cxxxvii. he exhorts the Jews, "Assent, therefore, and pour no ridicule on the Son of God; obey not the Pharisaic teachers, and scoff not at the King of Israel, as the rulers of your synagogues teach you to do after your prayers." The Romans, as I have said, early borrowed the custom from the Jews. They strove to compel the Christians to blaspheme, as we see from Pliny's well-known epistle to Trajan in hisEpistles, book x., 97, where he describes certain persons brought before him as "invoking the gods, worshipping the emperor's statue, and reviling the name of Christ, whereas there is no forcing those who are really Christians into any of these compliances."[20]St. Paul, in 1 Tim. i. 15, says, "Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." This verse is of ancient and of very modern interest too. It shows that to the last St. Paul retained the keenest sense of his early wickedness. It is of present interest because it helps to correct a modern error. There are people who object to use the Litany and the Lord's Prayer because of the prayers for forgiveness of sins and the occurrence of such expressions as "Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners." Their argument is, that believers have been washed from all their sins, and therefore should not describe themselves as miserable sinners. St. Paul, however, saw no inconsistency between God's free forgiving love and his own humility in designating himself the chief of sinners. God may have cast all our sins behind His back; but, viewing the matter from the human side, it is well, nay, it is absolutely necessary, if spiritual pride is to be hindered in its rapid growth, for us to cherish a remembrance of the sins and backslidings of other days. The greatest saints, the richest spiritual teachers have ever felt the necessity of it. St. Augustine in hisConfessionsmingles perpetual reminiscences of his own wickedness with his assured sense of God's mercy. Hooker deals in his own profound style with such objection to the Litany in the Fifth Book of hisEcclesiastical Polity, ch. xlvii., where he writes, replying to the objection that the expressions of the Litany implying fear of God do not become God's saints: "The knowledge of our own unworthiness is not without belief in the merits of Christ. With that true fear which the one causeth there is coupled true boldness, and encouragement drawn from the other. The very silence which our own unworthiness putteth us unto doth itself make request for us, and that in the consequence of His grace. Looking inward we are stricken dumb, looking upward we speak and prevail. O happy mixture, wherein things contrary do so qualify and correct the danger of the other's excess, that neither boldness can make us presume as long as we are kept under with the sense of our own wretchedness; nor while we trust in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, fear be able to tyrannise over us! As therefore our fear excludeth not that boldness which becometh saints; so if theirfamiliaritywith God (referring to his opponents) do not savour of this fear, it draweth too near that irreverent confidence wherewith true humility can never stand." Bishop Jeremy Taylor understood the bearing of St. Paul's view on personal religion. In hisHoly Living, in the chapter on Humility, he teaches those who seek that grace thus: "Every day call to mind some one of thy foulest sins, or the most shameful of thy disgraces, or the indiscreetest of thy actions, or anything that did then most trouble thee, and apply it to the present swelling of thy spirit and opinion, and it may help to allay it."[21]The references for all these changes are given in Lewin'sFasti, and in hisLife of St. Paul, with which Josephus,Antiqq., XVIII., iv., should be compared.[22]See vol. i., pp. 174-6, 271.[23]The decree of Julius Cæsar, upon which the Jewish privileges were built, expressly calls the high priest the ethnarch (ἐθνάρχης), or ruler, of the Jews. See Josephus,Antiqq., XIV., x., 3.[24]This point is worked out at great length and with a multitude of references in Lewin'sLife of St. Paul, ch. iv., vol. i., pp. 44-7. Josephus, in hisAntiquities, book xiv., ch. x., gives the words of Cæsar's decree. In ch. viii. of the same book he describes the warlike assistance lent by the Jews to Julius Cæsar in his Egyptian campaign.[25]I know it is a common opinion that the Jews had no power of capital punishment and that the Romans permitted the infliction merely of scourgings and such minor penalties. Lightfoot, in hisHoræ Hebraicæon Matt. xxvi. 3; John xviii. 31; Acts ix. 2, controverts this view in long and learned notes. The Jews certainly stated to Pilate, according to John xviii. 31, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death." But then, on the other hand, the Sanhedrin put St. Stephen to death, and St. Paul tells us that when the saints were put to death he voted against them; showing that the Sanhedrin did put many of the disciples to death. Lightfoot thinks that the Jews merely wished to throw the odium of our Lord's execution upon the Romans, and therefore pleaded their own inability to condemn Him for a capital offence, because of the particular chamber where the Sanhedrin then sat, where it was unlawful to judge a capital crime. The Pharisees, too, joined in the attempt to bring about our Lord's death, and their traditions made them averse to the shedding of Jewish blood by the Sanhedrin. The Sadducees were, however, the dominant party in the year 37, and they had no such scruples. They were always of a cruel and bloodthirsty disposition and stern in their punishments, as Josephus tells us in hisAntiqq., XX., ix., 1. This was of course the natural result of their material philosophy which regarded man as devoid of any immortal principle. Lightfoot gives instances too (Matt. xxvi. 3) of a priest's daughter burned to death and of a man stoned at Lydda even after the destruction of the city, showing that the Sanhedrin still contrived to exercise capital jurisdiction. The time when Saul set out for Damascus was very favourable from political reasons for any new or unusual assumptions of authority on the part of the Sanhedrin. Vitellius the Prefect was very anxious to be deferential in every way to the Jewish authorities. He had just restored the custody of the high priest's robes to the Sanhedrin and the priests. This may have encouraged them to adopt the fiercest and sternest measures against the new sectaries. As for the minor punishment of flogging, the synagogues in Holland have been known to exercise it so lately as the seventeenth century.[26]The Acts of the Apostles in this respect throws an interesting light upon theTeaching of the Twelve Apostles, published a few years ago by Bishop Bryennius, and helps us to fix its early date. That important relic of early Christianity never speaks of the followers of the new religion as Christians. It opens by describing the two ways, the way of Life, which is Christianity, and the way of Death. It must therefore have been composed when the memory of the Church's earliest designation, "the Way," was still fresh. By the time of Aristides (A.D.125) and of Pliny the title "Christians" was the common one both inside and outside the Church.[27]This sense of the awful importance of Christianity as the Way made the Christians enthusiastic and determined in their efforts to spread their religion. In the earliest apology or defence of Christianity, that of Aristides, which I have fully described in the previous volume of this Commentary, we find this fact openly avowed and gloried in as in the following passage: "As for their servants or handmaids, or their children, if they have any, they persuade them to become Christians for the love they have towards them; and when they have become so, they call them without distinction brethren." A system so broad as to view all religions as equally important would never have innate force enough to lead a man to become a missionary, and most certainly never would have produced a martyr. Christianity really understood is a very broad religion; its essential dogmas are very few; but there is a kind of breadth in religion now fashionable which the early Christians never understood or they would not have acted as they did. Who would have throw away his life amid the cruellest tortures if it was all the same whether men worshipped Jupiter or Jesus Christ?[28]Tertullian, about the year 200, tells us (Apologet., ch. v. and xxi.) that the Emperor Tiberius, under whom our Lord suffered, was so moved by Pilate's report of the miracles and resurrection of Christ as to propose a bill to the Senate that Christ should be received among the gods of Rome; while, as for Emperor Alexander Severus,A.D.222 to 235, he went even further. In Christ he recognised a Divine Being equal with the other gods; and in his domestic chapel he placed the bust of Christ along with the images of those men whom he regarded as beings of a superior order—of Apollonius of Tyana, and Orpheus, and such like. Heliogabalus,A.D.219, is credited with a desire to have blended Christianity with the worship of the Sun: see Neander,Church History, vol. i., pp. 128, 173, Bohn's edition.[29]See Petrie's "Tara" in theTransactions of the Royal Irish Academy, t. xviii., andIreland and the Celtic Church, by G. T. Stokes, pp. 80, 81, for illustrations of this point.[30]See Geikie'sThe Holy Land and the Bible, p. 38.[31]The question of the site of the conversion is discussed at length in Lewin'sSt. Paul, vol. i., ch. v., p. 49.[32]Lord Lyttelton'sObservations on the Conversion of St. Paulis a work now almost unknown to ordinary students of the Bible. It was written in the reign of George II. by the Lord Lyttelton of that day famous as a historian and a poet. Dr. Johnson said of it that it is "a treatise to which infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer." It will be found reprinted in a cheap and handy shape by the Religious Tract Society, with a valuable preface by the well-known Henry Rogers. Lord Lyttelton touches upon the subject of the light seen by St. Paul on p. 164, and then adds, "That God should work miracles for the establishment of a most holy religion which, from the insuperable difficulties that stood in the way of it, could not have established itself without such an assistance, is no way repugnant to human reason; but that without any miracles such things (as the light above the brightness of the sun and St. Paul's blindness) should have happened as no adequate natural causes can be assigned for is what human reason cannot believe."[33]See Exod. iii., Isa. vi., and Dan. x.[34]Here it may be well to point out that people should not fancy that their own spiritual experience must necessarily be like St. Paul's. Some persons have troubled themselves because they could not say that they had passed exactly through the same religious feelings and struggles as St. Paul's. But as no two leaves are alike and as no two careers are exactly parallel, so no two spiritual experiences are exactly the same. The true course for any individual to adopt is not to strive and see whether God's dealings with himself and the response which his own spirit has made to the Divine Voice have been exactly like those of others. His true course is rather to strive and ascertain whether he is now really following, obeying, and loving God. He may leave all inquiry as to the methods by which God has guided his soul into the paths of peace to be hereafter resolved in the clear light of eternity. Some God awakens, as He did St. Paul, by an awful catastrophe; others grow up before Him from infancy like Samuel and Timothy; others God gradually changes from sin and worldliness to peace and righteousness, like Jacob of old time.[35]The Rev. Dr. Abbott, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in a learned work,Biblical Essays, lately published, pp. 142 and 146, points out that the lower classes of the Jewish population did not understand the ancient Hebrew, a knowledge of which was in his opinion confined to a few scholars. Cf. also p. 168, where he writes, "It deserves to be noticed that for the vast majority of the Palestinians the Greek Bible was the only one accessible. The knowledge of the ancient Hebrew was confined to a few scholars, in addition to which the Hebrew books were extremely expensive."[36]There is nothing about St. Paul's seeing the Lord in the narrative of the conversion in Acts ix. 4-7; but St. Paul asserts that he saw Christ, in his speech before Agrippa, when he represents our Lord as saying (xxvi. 16): "For to this end have Iappearedunto thee to appoint thee a minister," etc. And again in 1 Cor. xv. 8, "And last of all, as unto one born out of due time, Heappearedto me also"; with which should be compared the words of Ananias (ix. 17): "The Lord whoappearedunto thee in the way which thou camest"; and those of Barnabas (ix. 27): "But Barnabas declared unto them how Saul hadseenthe Lord in the way." The reader would do well to consult Lewin'sSt. Paul, vol. i., ch. iv., p. 50, for a learned note concerning the apparent inconsistencies in the various narratives of the conversion.[37]See Cornelius à Lapide on Acts ix. 5, quoting from Bede; and St. Chrysostom in Cramer'sCatena, p. 152, as quoted in Conybeare and Howson'sSt. Paul, vol. i., ch. iii., p. 111 (London, 1877).[38]Conversion is scarcely a fit word to apply to the Lord's dealings with Cornelius. He had evidently been converted long before the angelic message and Peter's preaching, else whence his prayers and devotion? The Lord simply made by St. Peter a fuller revelation of His will to a soul longing to know more of God.[39]We should carefully observe, however, that there is a marked difference between the cases of Cornelius and Saul. An angel appeared to Cornelius, Christ Himself to Saul. St. Peter is sent to Cornelius to instruct him in the revelation made by Christ. That revelation was made by Christ Himself to Saul in the vision by the way, during the three days of his blindness, and probably during his stay in Arabia. Ananias was sent to Saul merely to baptize him, and predict his future. "Enter into the city and there it shall be told thee what thou shaltdo," is our Lord's direction to Saul. St. Paul's knowledge of Christ was neither by man nor through man. His knowledge even about the institution of the sacraments was by immediate revelation: see 1 Cor. xi. 23.[40]See Tertullian'sDe Pudicitia, § 13, and compare Bishop Lightfoot'sGalatians, p. 183 note.[41]See Dr. Farrar's long Excursus X., vol. i., p. 652, in hisLife of St. Paul, for a discussion of this question. There is a portrait of St. Paul in Lewin'sSt. Paul, ii., 210, which shows him as blear-eyed. It is engraved from a Roman diptych of the fourth century. Lightfoot takes quite another view of the thorn in hisGalatians, pp. 183-8.[42]"In the Roman age, and up to the period of the (Mahometan) Conquest, a noble street extended in a straight line from Bab-el-Jabyah (the West gate) to Bab Shurky (the East gate), thus completely intersecting the city. It was divided by Corinthian colonnades into three avenues, of which the central was for foot passengers, and of the others one was used for chariots and horsemen proceeding eastward, and the second for those going in the opposite direction. I have been enabled to trace the remains of the colonnades at various places over nearly one-third of the length of this street. Wherever excavations are made in the line fragments of columns are foundin situ, at the depth, in some places, of ten feet and more below the present surface, so great has been the accumulation of rubbish during the course of ages. There can scarcely be a doubt that this is 'the street called Straight' referred to in the history of the Apostle Paul. Its extreme length is about an English mile, and its breadth must have exceeded 100 feet."—Porter'sDamascus, p. 47.[43]Josephus, in hisAntiquities, xx., 23, tells us of an Ananias, a Jewish merchant, who was instrumental in the conversion of Helena, Queen of Adiabene. The name Ananias signifies "Pleasing to God." Ananias was also the name of the messenger who is said to have conveyed the pretended letter of Abgar, King of Edessa, to Christ. SeeThe Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, by R. A. Lipsius (Leipsic, 1891), p. 274.[44]St. Chrysostom, in hisHomilies on the Acts, notes the spiritual eminence of this hidden and unknown disciple. In his nineteenth Homily he observes that when St. Philip, one of the seven, was sent to baptize the eunuch, Christ did not appear but merely sent an angel to the evangelist; but Christ Himself appeared to Ananias, and opened out His whole will to him about the future of St. Paul. His conversation with our Lord was, too, that of one accustomed to Divine visitations and communion with Heaven. See Massutius on the Life of St. Paul, p. 107. Massutius was a Jesuit commentator, whose writings are often rich in spiritual suggestiveness. He published hisVita S. Pauli Apostoliin 1633. In the first and ninth chapters of the second book he has many acute and learned remarks upon Ananias and his history. The calming effect upon life's fever of spiritual religion and close converse with God is a point often dwelt upon in Scripture. The Old Testament prophets knew this secret of a peaceful life right well. Isaiah often sings of it, as in ch. xii. 2, "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid"; in ch. xxvi. 3, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee"; in ch. xxviii. 16, "He that believeth shall not make haste"; in ch. xl. 31, "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint." Habakkuk proclaims it in ch. iii. 17: "For though the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." A strain which St. Paul takes up in his Epistle to the Philippians when he bids them (ch. iv. 6), "In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God"; to which he adds the promise, not that their requests shall be answered, for that would often be very unfortunate, but the much more consoling one, "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus." How much calmer and sweeter life would be did Christ's people thus realise their privileges as God's ancient servants did! Ninety per cent. of life's worries and anxieties would thus pass away for ever. Alas! how pagan nominal Christians are in this respect![45]See, for both the Greek and Latin stories about Ananias,Acta Sanctorum, Ed. Bolland., 25 Jan., ii., 613.[46]Judas of Acts xv. 22 is surnamed Barsabbas, as is also Joseph Justus of Acts i. 23. Lightfoot,Hor. Heb., on Acts i., conjectures that Judas of Acts xv. may have been the apostle of that name and that Joseph Justus was his brother.[47]The seventeenth-century travellers in Palestine, Syria, and the East often give us much valuable information. See, on the subject of Damascus, Quaresmius,Elucidatio Terræ Sanctæ, t. ii., lib. 7, Peregrinatio 6, cap. 3, with which may be compared Radzivilus,Peregrinatio, p. 33,A.D.1614. See also Conybeare and Howson'sSt. Paul, ch. iii.[48]Massutius,loc. cit., has a long chapter (book ii., ch. i.) on the date of St. Paul's conversion. See Findlay'sEpistles of St. Paul, pp. 5, 6, for a concise statement of the arguments concerning it. Lewin'sFasti Sacri, pp. lxvi. and 253, contains long dissertations upon this point, a simple reference to which must suffice.[49]See vol. i., pp. 338-41.[50]I am referring in this passage to what we may designate the Antinomian method of expounding First Corinthians still current in many circles. They first determine that the word saint is always used by St. Paul to express a truly converted man, one, therefore, in their idea who has no need to ask pardon for sin and who never can finally fall away. They then find this term "saints" applied to the Corinthian Church, which must therefore have been composed of truly converted men alone, else, they think, St. Paul would not have called them saints. But then a difficulty arises, How about the gross sins prevalent in that Church? Their peculiar system of theology, however, rapidly solves this perplexing point. All the sins of believers, past, present or to come, have been forgiven long before they were born, therefore these gross immoralities at Corinth were mere believer's slips, as I have heard them called. A believer guilty of them should be sorry for them as causing scanda to the world, but as far as final salvation is concerned he has nothing to do with them save to assure himself of their pardon wrought out by our Lord on the cross. Abundant instances of this method of exposition will be found in the works of Dr. Williams, the Nonconformist of the time of William III., founder of the well-known library in Grafton Street, London. He had a great controversy with the Antinomians of the day, who represented themselves as the true champions of the doctrines of grace. They were simply teaching the ancient Gnostic heresy that the soul can be in communion with God while the body is all the time wallowing in the depths of sin. Precisely the same views are now commonly taught and called as in Williams's day, two hundred years ago, "the Gospel." If, however, we recognise the New Testament use of the word saints as meaning "dedicated to God, consecrated to His service," the meaning of the First Corinthians and of the words of Ananias is quite clear and plain, and no such immoral results follow as the Antinomian exegesis implies, but rather the saintly character of baptized Christians becomes the foundation of the most practical exhortations to holiness of life.[51]It should be carefully noted that the great end of St. Paul's election is set forth by our Lord when speaking to Ananias as "to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel." From the very outset of Paul's Christian career his work as the Apostle of the Gentiles is thus clearly revealed through Ananias. I saythroughAnanias, and nottohim; for I suppose that Ananias could not himself have realised the real force and meaning of the Divine words.[52]Archbishop Whately used to make an important distinction between thingsanti-Scriptural and thingsun-Scriptural. Thingsanti-Scriptural cannot be tolerated by the Church, because they contradict the Word of God. Thingsun-Scriptural, that is, things about which Scripture is silent and for which no direct warrant can be produced, may be right or wrong, useful or vicious. Sunday schools, for instance, are in this sense unscriptural. The Scriptures are silent about them, and if direct warrant with chapter and verse be required for them, none such can be produced. Hooker, in his Third Book, ch. v.-viii., has a powerful argument upon this subject as against the ultra-reformers or Puritans of his day, who would have tied the Church within much tighter bonds than ever Judaism submitted to.[53]I have known cases where baptism was rejected avowedly on these grounds. This is of course a natural result of the pushing individualism in religion to an extreme, and is often found among what we may call extreme Protestants. It naturally results from two errors. First of all, from a rejection of the article of the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." Such men reject the doctrine of a Church as a great fundamental article of the Creed, one of the necessary articles of the Christian faith, and therefore they reject baptism which is the door of entrance into the Divine society. And, secondly, they reject the true definition and idea of a sacrament. They view baptism, for instance, as the expression merely of a faith already received, and as nothing more. If, then, they express this faith sufficiently by their life and actions, baptism seems to them an empty and vain ceremony. But surely this was not St. Paul's view, either when he received baptism at the hands of Ananias, or when he wrote in the sixth of Romans "We were buried therefore with Him through baptism into death."[54]Romans x. 10.

[1]See this portion of Baur's theory refuted in Dr. Salmon'sIntroduction to the New Testament, ch. xviii., p. 335, 4th ed., where the writer admits a certain parallelism between the history of SS. Peter and Paul in the Acts, but denies that it was an invented parallelism. He remarks on the next page, "What I think proves decisively that the making a parallel between St. Peter and St. Paul was not an idea present to the author's mind is the absence of the natural climax of such a parallel—the story of the martyrdom of both the Apostles.... If the object of the author of the Acts had been what has been supposed, it is scarcely credible that he could have missed so obvious an opportunity of bringing his book to its most worthy conclusion, by telling how the two servants of Christ—all previous differences, if there had been any, reconciled and forgotten—joined in witnessing a good confession before the tyrant emperor, and encouraged each other in steadfastness in endurance to the end."

[2]The tradition mentioned by St. Jerome is not the only one which deals with the early life of St. Paul. Another very learned writer of the same, or perhaps we should rather say of a still earlier, period was St. Epiphanius, the historian of Heresies and bishop of Constantia, or Salamis, in Cyprus. He wrote a great work describing the various heresies which had sprung up in the Church, containing much valuable information which his research and early date enabled him to incorporate in his pages. He describes, amongst others, the Ebionites, telling us of their hostility to St. Paul and of the charges they brought against him. The Ebionites denied that he was a Jew at all. The words of Epiphanius are "They say that he was a Greek, and sprung from the Gentiles, and then afterwards became a proselyte," in opposition to which he quotes the Apostle's own words in Phil. iii. 5 and in 2 Cor. xi. 22. Epiphanius then proceeds to explain how St. Paul might have been born in Tarsus and yet have been a Jew by nation, because that, under Antiochus Epiphanes and at other times, vast numbers of the Jews had been dispersed as captives among the Gentiles. See Epiphanius, inCorpus Hæreseologicum, Ed. Oehler, vol. ii., p. 283. Berlin, 1859. This is a good instance how the Jewish hostility, which pursued St. Paul through life, had not quite died out three centuries later. Epiphanius was born aboutA.D.310. He wrote his work on Early Heresies aboutA.D.375, calling itPanarion, or, as he himself explains in his introductory epistle, the Medicine Chest, full of remedies against the bite of the Old Serpent. Epiphanius must have had a great store of early literature at his command which has now completely perished. See a long and critical account of him and his writings, written by Dr. R. A. Lipsius, in theDict. Christ. Biog., vol. ii.

[3]See 2 Tim. i. 5, and iii. 14, 15. It is evident that St. Paul's language implies an acquaintance with Timothy's family of very long standing.

[4]Schœttgen'sHor. Hebr., vol. i., p. 89; Lewin'sSt. Paul, vol. i., p. 7.

[5]Josephus,Antiqq., XVIII., ix., 1, says of certain Jews of Babylon, "Now there were two men, Asineus and Anileus, brethren to one another. They were destitute of a father, and their mother put them to learn the art of weaving curtains, it not being esteemed a disgrace among them for men to be weavers of cloth." Then we find in the New Testament Simon of Joppa was a tanner, Aquila a tentmaker, the apostles fishermen, and our Lord a carpenter. See a long note on this subject by Mr. Lewin in hisLife of St. Paul, vol. i., p. 8. Massutius, a Jesuit commentator on St. Paul's life, lib. i., cap. iii., notices that Charlemagne, according to his biographer Eginhard, would have his sons and daughters taught some mechanical trade.

[6]See Acts xvii. 28; Titus i. 12; 1 Cor. xv. 33.

[7]See an article on "Greek the Language of Galilee in the time of Christ," by the Rev. Dr. Abbott, Professor of Hebrew in the University of Dublin, in hisEssays chiefly on the Original Texts of the Old and New Testaments. London, 1891.

[8]Basnage, in hisHistory of the Jews, translated by Thomas Taylor, Book III., ch. vi., p. 168 (London, 1708), states, "It is agreed by the generality of Jewish and Christian doctors that the Talmud was completed in the 505th year of the Christian Æra." Cf. Serarius,De Rabbinis, Lib. I., c. ix., p. 251; Bartolocci,Bibl. Rabbin., t. i., p. 488, t. iii., p. 359; Morinus,Exerc. Bibl., Lib. II., ex. 6, c. ii. and iii., p. 294. Schaff'sEncyclopædia of Historical Theology, vol. iii., pp. 2292-96, has a good article on the Talmud, giving a long list of authorities to which reference may be made by any one interested in this subject.

[9]Philo is the subject of a very long and learned article by Dr. Edersheim in Smith'sDict. Christ. Biog., vol. iv., with which may be compared a shorter article in Schaff'sEncyclopædia of Hist. Theol., vol. ii.

[10]These facts throw much light upon our Lord's words in Matt. xv. 1-9 and xxii. 34-40.

[11]The rabbinical device of mixtures is fully explained in Buxtorf'sLexicon, col. 1657, Ed. Basil (1639), or in Kitto'sBiblical Encyclopædia, under the article "Sabbath." The Talmud had a special treatise calledTractatus Mixtorum, which taught how, for instance, dwellings might be mixed or mingled so as to avoid technical breaches of the Sabbatical law. Planks were laid across intervening residences, so that houses at a very great distance might be brought into touch and connexion, and thus regarded as one common dwelling for a number of people who wished for a common feast on the Sabbath. This was calledMixtio conclavium. It was simply one of those wretched devices to which casuistry always leads; something like the rules for banquets on fast days, which we find in Lacroix,Manners of the Middle Ages, p. 170, where a most sumptuous Episcopal banquet is described. It was given on a fast day, therefore no flesh is included; but its place was amply supplied by rare fish and other dainties: see G. T. Stokes,Ireland and Anglo-Norman Church, p. 143.

[12]Prosbol is simply a transliteration into Hebrew of two Greek words, πρὸς βουλήν. The Jewish Law enacted a cancelling of all debts in the Sabbatic year on the part of Jews towards their brethren. This enactment was found to hinder commerce about the time of Hillel—i.e., 75 yearsB.C.The rich would not lend to the poor on account of the Sabbatical year. So the doctors devised the Prosbol, which was a declaration to the effect that the Sabbatical year was not to affect the debt. There was a legal fiction invented which made void the law. The creditor said to the debtor, "In accordance with the Sabbatical year I remit thee the debt," and then the debtor replied, "Nevertheless I wish to pay it," and then the creditor was free from the obligation of Deut. xv.

[13]The parallel between Hagar and Sarah is drawn out at full length after the rabbinical method in Basnage'sHistory of the Jews(Taylor's translation), book iii., ch. 22; in Lightfoot'sGalatians, pp. 178, 179, 189-99, and Farrar'sSt. Paul, ch. iii. Philo in his writings uses the very same illustration. Perhaps it may be well to add the concluding words of Bishop Lightfoot when discussing on p. 197 of hisGalatians, the similar use made by St. Paul and by Philo of this illustration of Hagar: "At the same time we need not fear to allow that St. Paul's method of teaching here is coloured by his early education in the rabbinical schools. It were as unreasonable to stake the Apostle's inspiration on the turn of a metaphor or the character of an illustration or the form of an argument, as on purity of diction. No one now thinks of maintaining that the language of the inspired writers reaches the classical standard of correctness and elegance, though at one time it was held almost a heresy to deny this. 'A treasure contained in earthen vessels,' 'strength made perfect in weakness,' 'rudeness in speech, yet not in knowledge,' such is the far nobler conception of inspired teaching, which we may gather from the Apostle's own language. And this language we should do well to bear in mind. But, on the other hand it were mere dogmatism to set up the intellectual standard of our own age or country as an infallible rule. The power of allegory has been differently felt in different ages, as it is differently felt at any one time by diverse nations. Analogy, allegory, metaphor—by what boundaries are these separated the one from the other? What is true or false, correct or incorrect, as an analogy or an allegory? What argumentative force must be assigned to either? We should at least be prepared with an answer to these questions before we venture to sit in judgment on any individual case."

[14]The latest instance of this method which I have noticed isIllustrations of Tennyson, by J. C. Collins, reviewed by the Dean of Armagh in the January number of theBookman, where a number of such parallelisms are quoted which seem to me rather dubious.

[15]Bishop Lightfoot, on Galatians iii. 11, says of this verse, "In its original context the passage has reference to the temporal calamities inflicted by the Chaldean invasion. Here a spiritual meaning and general application are given to words referring primarily to special external incidents." See also Farrar on St. Paul's method of scriptural quotation, in hisLife of St. Paul, ch. iii.

[16]See St. Paul's address to the Jews of the Pisidian Antioch in Acts xiii. 34. Other specimens of the same rabbinical method used by St. Paul will be found in Rom. iii., iv., and ix. 33; 1 Cor. ix. Eph. iv. 8.

[17]The great leaders in the divine struggle for righteousness, in every great onward movement on behalf of truth have always been men of this varied training. Moses, David, Elijah, Ezra, Saul of Tarsus, were great leaders of thought and action and they were all men whose education had been developed in very various schools. They were not men of books merely, nor men of action alone. They gained the flexibility of mind, the genuine liberality of thought which led them out of the old rucks by experiences gained from very opposite directions. The mere man of books may be very narrow; the practical man, whose knowledge is limited to every day affairs and whose horizon is bounded by to-morrow, is often an unthinking bigot. A man trained like Moses, or David, or Saul is the true leader of men for his mind is trained to receive truths from every quarter.

[18]What an interesting anticipation of Christian times do we find in this passage. "The estate of the elders" is the Presbytery in the original Greek, and the words "the brethren" by which St. Paul refers to his unconverted fellow-countrymen are an anticipation of the expression he always uses for the Christian believers. Even in these little details Christianity is but an expansion of Judaism, as, in another direction, the Catacombs of Rome and the ornamentation used therein were all derived from the customs of the Jewish colony in Rome long before the time of Christ. See a treatise by Schurer, calledDie Gemeindeverfassung der Juden in Rom in der Kaiserzeit, p. 13 (Leipzig, 1879), where that learned writer points out the continuity between Judaism in Rome and early Christianity.

[19]St. Paul, indeed, in his persecuting days may have been the inventor of the test, which seems to have consisted in a declaration that Jesus was not the Christ, but an impostor. We find a reference to the Jewish custom of blaspheming the name of Jesus in the Epistle of James (ii. 6, 7): "Do not the rich oppress you, and themselves drag you before the judgment-seats? Do not they blaspheme the honourable name by the which ye are called?" with which may be compared St. Paul's words in 1 Cor. xii. 3: "No man speaking in the Spirit of God saith, Jesus is anathema." The same custom continued in the second century, as we learn from frequent notices in Justin Martyr'sDialoguewith Trypho the Jew, as in the following quotations: ch. xvi., "cursing in your synagogues those that believe on Christ"; in ch. xlvii. he enumerates amongst those who shall not be saved "those who have anathematised and do anathematise this very Christ in the synagogues"; and in ch. cxxxvii. he exhorts the Jews, "Assent, therefore, and pour no ridicule on the Son of God; obey not the Pharisaic teachers, and scoff not at the King of Israel, as the rulers of your synagogues teach you to do after your prayers." The Romans, as I have said, early borrowed the custom from the Jews. They strove to compel the Christians to blaspheme, as we see from Pliny's well-known epistle to Trajan in hisEpistles, book x., 97, where he describes certain persons brought before him as "invoking the gods, worshipping the emperor's statue, and reviling the name of Christ, whereas there is no forcing those who are really Christians into any of these compliances."

[20]St. Paul, in 1 Tim. i. 15, says, "Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." This verse is of ancient and of very modern interest too. It shows that to the last St. Paul retained the keenest sense of his early wickedness. It is of present interest because it helps to correct a modern error. There are people who object to use the Litany and the Lord's Prayer because of the prayers for forgiveness of sins and the occurrence of such expressions as "Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners." Their argument is, that believers have been washed from all their sins, and therefore should not describe themselves as miserable sinners. St. Paul, however, saw no inconsistency between God's free forgiving love and his own humility in designating himself the chief of sinners. God may have cast all our sins behind His back; but, viewing the matter from the human side, it is well, nay, it is absolutely necessary, if spiritual pride is to be hindered in its rapid growth, for us to cherish a remembrance of the sins and backslidings of other days. The greatest saints, the richest spiritual teachers have ever felt the necessity of it. St. Augustine in hisConfessionsmingles perpetual reminiscences of his own wickedness with his assured sense of God's mercy. Hooker deals in his own profound style with such objection to the Litany in the Fifth Book of hisEcclesiastical Polity, ch. xlvii., where he writes, replying to the objection that the expressions of the Litany implying fear of God do not become God's saints: "The knowledge of our own unworthiness is not without belief in the merits of Christ. With that true fear which the one causeth there is coupled true boldness, and encouragement drawn from the other. The very silence which our own unworthiness putteth us unto doth itself make request for us, and that in the consequence of His grace. Looking inward we are stricken dumb, looking upward we speak and prevail. O happy mixture, wherein things contrary do so qualify and correct the danger of the other's excess, that neither boldness can make us presume as long as we are kept under with the sense of our own wretchedness; nor while we trust in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, fear be able to tyrannise over us! As therefore our fear excludeth not that boldness which becometh saints; so if theirfamiliaritywith God (referring to his opponents) do not savour of this fear, it draweth too near that irreverent confidence wherewith true humility can never stand." Bishop Jeremy Taylor understood the bearing of St. Paul's view on personal religion. In hisHoly Living, in the chapter on Humility, he teaches those who seek that grace thus: "Every day call to mind some one of thy foulest sins, or the most shameful of thy disgraces, or the indiscreetest of thy actions, or anything that did then most trouble thee, and apply it to the present swelling of thy spirit and opinion, and it may help to allay it."

[21]The references for all these changes are given in Lewin'sFasti, and in hisLife of St. Paul, with which Josephus,Antiqq., XVIII., iv., should be compared.

[22]See vol. i., pp. 174-6, 271.

[23]The decree of Julius Cæsar, upon which the Jewish privileges were built, expressly calls the high priest the ethnarch (ἐθνάρχης), or ruler, of the Jews. See Josephus,Antiqq., XIV., x., 3.

[24]This point is worked out at great length and with a multitude of references in Lewin'sLife of St. Paul, ch. iv., vol. i., pp. 44-7. Josephus, in hisAntiquities, book xiv., ch. x., gives the words of Cæsar's decree. In ch. viii. of the same book he describes the warlike assistance lent by the Jews to Julius Cæsar in his Egyptian campaign.

[25]I know it is a common opinion that the Jews had no power of capital punishment and that the Romans permitted the infliction merely of scourgings and such minor penalties. Lightfoot, in hisHoræ Hebraicæon Matt. xxvi. 3; John xviii. 31; Acts ix. 2, controverts this view in long and learned notes. The Jews certainly stated to Pilate, according to John xviii. 31, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death." But then, on the other hand, the Sanhedrin put St. Stephen to death, and St. Paul tells us that when the saints were put to death he voted against them; showing that the Sanhedrin did put many of the disciples to death. Lightfoot thinks that the Jews merely wished to throw the odium of our Lord's execution upon the Romans, and therefore pleaded their own inability to condemn Him for a capital offence, because of the particular chamber where the Sanhedrin then sat, where it was unlawful to judge a capital crime. The Pharisees, too, joined in the attempt to bring about our Lord's death, and their traditions made them averse to the shedding of Jewish blood by the Sanhedrin. The Sadducees were, however, the dominant party in the year 37, and they had no such scruples. They were always of a cruel and bloodthirsty disposition and stern in their punishments, as Josephus tells us in hisAntiqq., XX., ix., 1. This was of course the natural result of their material philosophy which regarded man as devoid of any immortal principle. Lightfoot gives instances too (Matt. xxvi. 3) of a priest's daughter burned to death and of a man stoned at Lydda even after the destruction of the city, showing that the Sanhedrin still contrived to exercise capital jurisdiction. The time when Saul set out for Damascus was very favourable from political reasons for any new or unusual assumptions of authority on the part of the Sanhedrin. Vitellius the Prefect was very anxious to be deferential in every way to the Jewish authorities. He had just restored the custody of the high priest's robes to the Sanhedrin and the priests. This may have encouraged them to adopt the fiercest and sternest measures against the new sectaries. As for the minor punishment of flogging, the synagogues in Holland have been known to exercise it so lately as the seventeenth century.

[26]The Acts of the Apostles in this respect throws an interesting light upon theTeaching of the Twelve Apostles, published a few years ago by Bishop Bryennius, and helps us to fix its early date. That important relic of early Christianity never speaks of the followers of the new religion as Christians. It opens by describing the two ways, the way of Life, which is Christianity, and the way of Death. It must therefore have been composed when the memory of the Church's earliest designation, "the Way," was still fresh. By the time of Aristides (A.D.125) and of Pliny the title "Christians" was the common one both inside and outside the Church.

[27]This sense of the awful importance of Christianity as the Way made the Christians enthusiastic and determined in their efforts to spread their religion. In the earliest apology or defence of Christianity, that of Aristides, which I have fully described in the previous volume of this Commentary, we find this fact openly avowed and gloried in as in the following passage: "As for their servants or handmaids, or their children, if they have any, they persuade them to become Christians for the love they have towards them; and when they have become so, they call them without distinction brethren." A system so broad as to view all religions as equally important would never have innate force enough to lead a man to become a missionary, and most certainly never would have produced a martyr. Christianity really understood is a very broad religion; its essential dogmas are very few; but there is a kind of breadth in religion now fashionable which the early Christians never understood or they would not have acted as they did. Who would have throw away his life amid the cruellest tortures if it was all the same whether men worshipped Jupiter or Jesus Christ?

[28]Tertullian, about the year 200, tells us (Apologet., ch. v. and xxi.) that the Emperor Tiberius, under whom our Lord suffered, was so moved by Pilate's report of the miracles and resurrection of Christ as to propose a bill to the Senate that Christ should be received among the gods of Rome; while, as for Emperor Alexander Severus,A.D.222 to 235, he went even further. In Christ he recognised a Divine Being equal with the other gods; and in his domestic chapel he placed the bust of Christ along with the images of those men whom he regarded as beings of a superior order—of Apollonius of Tyana, and Orpheus, and such like. Heliogabalus,A.D.219, is credited with a desire to have blended Christianity with the worship of the Sun: see Neander,Church History, vol. i., pp. 128, 173, Bohn's edition.

[29]See Petrie's "Tara" in theTransactions of the Royal Irish Academy, t. xviii., andIreland and the Celtic Church, by G. T. Stokes, pp. 80, 81, for illustrations of this point.

[30]See Geikie'sThe Holy Land and the Bible, p. 38.

[31]The question of the site of the conversion is discussed at length in Lewin'sSt. Paul, vol. i., ch. v., p. 49.

[32]Lord Lyttelton'sObservations on the Conversion of St. Paulis a work now almost unknown to ordinary students of the Bible. It was written in the reign of George II. by the Lord Lyttelton of that day famous as a historian and a poet. Dr. Johnson said of it that it is "a treatise to which infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer." It will be found reprinted in a cheap and handy shape by the Religious Tract Society, with a valuable preface by the well-known Henry Rogers. Lord Lyttelton touches upon the subject of the light seen by St. Paul on p. 164, and then adds, "That God should work miracles for the establishment of a most holy religion which, from the insuperable difficulties that stood in the way of it, could not have established itself without such an assistance, is no way repugnant to human reason; but that without any miracles such things (as the light above the brightness of the sun and St. Paul's blindness) should have happened as no adequate natural causes can be assigned for is what human reason cannot believe."

[33]See Exod. iii., Isa. vi., and Dan. x.

[34]Here it may be well to point out that people should not fancy that their own spiritual experience must necessarily be like St. Paul's. Some persons have troubled themselves because they could not say that they had passed exactly through the same religious feelings and struggles as St. Paul's. But as no two leaves are alike and as no two careers are exactly parallel, so no two spiritual experiences are exactly the same. The true course for any individual to adopt is not to strive and see whether God's dealings with himself and the response which his own spirit has made to the Divine Voice have been exactly like those of others. His true course is rather to strive and ascertain whether he is now really following, obeying, and loving God. He may leave all inquiry as to the methods by which God has guided his soul into the paths of peace to be hereafter resolved in the clear light of eternity. Some God awakens, as He did St. Paul, by an awful catastrophe; others grow up before Him from infancy like Samuel and Timothy; others God gradually changes from sin and worldliness to peace and righteousness, like Jacob of old time.

[35]The Rev. Dr. Abbott, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in a learned work,Biblical Essays, lately published, pp. 142 and 146, points out that the lower classes of the Jewish population did not understand the ancient Hebrew, a knowledge of which was in his opinion confined to a few scholars. Cf. also p. 168, where he writes, "It deserves to be noticed that for the vast majority of the Palestinians the Greek Bible was the only one accessible. The knowledge of the ancient Hebrew was confined to a few scholars, in addition to which the Hebrew books were extremely expensive."

[36]There is nothing about St. Paul's seeing the Lord in the narrative of the conversion in Acts ix. 4-7; but St. Paul asserts that he saw Christ, in his speech before Agrippa, when he represents our Lord as saying (xxvi. 16): "For to this end have Iappearedunto thee to appoint thee a minister," etc. And again in 1 Cor. xv. 8, "And last of all, as unto one born out of due time, Heappearedto me also"; with which should be compared the words of Ananias (ix. 17): "The Lord whoappearedunto thee in the way which thou camest"; and those of Barnabas (ix. 27): "But Barnabas declared unto them how Saul hadseenthe Lord in the way." The reader would do well to consult Lewin'sSt. Paul, vol. i., ch. iv., p. 50, for a learned note concerning the apparent inconsistencies in the various narratives of the conversion.

[37]See Cornelius à Lapide on Acts ix. 5, quoting from Bede; and St. Chrysostom in Cramer'sCatena, p. 152, as quoted in Conybeare and Howson'sSt. Paul, vol. i., ch. iii., p. 111 (London, 1877).

[38]Conversion is scarcely a fit word to apply to the Lord's dealings with Cornelius. He had evidently been converted long before the angelic message and Peter's preaching, else whence his prayers and devotion? The Lord simply made by St. Peter a fuller revelation of His will to a soul longing to know more of God.

[39]We should carefully observe, however, that there is a marked difference between the cases of Cornelius and Saul. An angel appeared to Cornelius, Christ Himself to Saul. St. Peter is sent to Cornelius to instruct him in the revelation made by Christ. That revelation was made by Christ Himself to Saul in the vision by the way, during the three days of his blindness, and probably during his stay in Arabia. Ananias was sent to Saul merely to baptize him, and predict his future. "Enter into the city and there it shall be told thee what thou shaltdo," is our Lord's direction to Saul. St. Paul's knowledge of Christ was neither by man nor through man. His knowledge even about the institution of the sacraments was by immediate revelation: see 1 Cor. xi. 23.

[40]See Tertullian'sDe Pudicitia, § 13, and compare Bishop Lightfoot'sGalatians, p. 183 note.

[41]See Dr. Farrar's long Excursus X., vol. i., p. 652, in hisLife of St. Paul, for a discussion of this question. There is a portrait of St. Paul in Lewin'sSt. Paul, ii., 210, which shows him as blear-eyed. It is engraved from a Roman diptych of the fourth century. Lightfoot takes quite another view of the thorn in hisGalatians, pp. 183-8.

[42]"In the Roman age, and up to the period of the (Mahometan) Conquest, a noble street extended in a straight line from Bab-el-Jabyah (the West gate) to Bab Shurky (the East gate), thus completely intersecting the city. It was divided by Corinthian colonnades into three avenues, of which the central was for foot passengers, and of the others one was used for chariots and horsemen proceeding eastward, and the second for those going in the opposite direction. I have been enabled to trace the remains of the colonnades at various places over nearly one-third of the length of this street. Wherever excavations are made in the line fragments of columns are foundin situ, at the depth, in some places, of ten feet and more below the present surface, so great has been the accumulation of rubbish during the course of ages. There can scarcely be a doubt that this is 'the street called Straight' referred to in the history of the Apostle Paul. Its extreme length is about an English mile, and its breadth must have exceeded 100 feet."—Porter'sDamascus, p. 47.

[43]Josephus, in hisAntiquities, xx., 23, tells us of an Ananias, a Jewish merchant, who was instrumental in the conversion of Helena, Queen of Adiabene. The name Ananias signifies "Pleasing to God." Ananias was also the name of the messenger who is said to have conveyed the pretended letter of Abgar, King of Edessa, to Christ. SeeThe Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, by R. A. Lipsius (Leipsic, 1891), p. 274.

[44]St. Chrysostom, in hisHomilies on the Acts, notes the spiritual eminence of this hidden and unknown disciple. In his nineteenth Homily he observes that when St. Philip, one of the seven, was sent to baptize the eunuch, Christ did not appear but merely sent an angel to the evangelist; but Christ Himself appeared to Ananias, and opened out His whole will to him about the future of St. Paul. His conversation with our Lord was, too, that of one accustomed to Divine visitations and communion with Heaven. See Massutius on the Life of St. Paul, p. 107. Massutius was a Jesuit commentator, whose writings are often rich in spiritual suggestiveness. He published hisVita S. Pauli Apostoliin 1633. In the first and ninth chapters of the second book he has many acute and learned remarks upon Ananias and his history. The calming effect upon life's fever of spiritual religion and close converse with God is a point often dwelt upon in Scripture. The Old Testament prophets knew this secret of a peaceful life right well. Isaiah often sings of it, as in ch. xii. 2, "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid"; in ch. xxvi. 3, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee"; in ch. xxviii. 16, "He that believeth shall not make haste"; in ch. xl. 31, "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint." Habakkuk proclaims it in ch. iii. 17: "For though the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." A strain which St. Paul takes up in his Epistle to the Philippians when he bids them (ch. iv. 6), "In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God"; to which he adds the promise, not that their requests shall be answered, for that would often be very unfortunate, but the much more consoling one, "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus." How much calmer and sweeter life would be did Christ's people thus realise their privileges as God's ancient servants did! Ninety per cent. of life's worries and anxieties would thus pass away for ever. Alas! how pagan nominal Christians are in this respect!

[45]See, for both the Greek and Latin stories about Ananias,Acta Sanctorum, Ed. Bolland., 25 Jan., ii., 613.

[46]Judas of Acts xv. 22 is surnamed Barsabbas, as is also Joseph Justus of Acts i. 23. Lightfoot,Hor. Heb., on Acts i., conjectures that Judas of Acts xv. may have been the apostle of that name and that Joseph Justus was his brother.

[47]The seventeenth-century travellers in Palestine, Syria, and the East often give us much valuable information. See, on the subject of Damascus, Quaresmius,Elucidatio Terræ Sanctæ, t. ii., lib. 7, Peregrinatio 6, cap. 3, with which may be compared Radzivilus,Peregrinatio, p. 33,A.D.1614. See also Conybeare and Howson'sSt. Paul, ch. iii.

[48]Massutius,loc. cit., has a long chapter (book ii., ch. i.) on the date of St. Paul's conversion. See Findlay'sEpistles of St. Paul, pp. 5, 6, for a concise statement of the arguments concerning it. Lewin'sFasti Sacri, pp. lxvi. and 253, contains long dissertations upon this point, a simple reference to which must suffice.

[49]See vol. i., pp. 338-41.

[50]I am referring in this passage to what we may designate the Antinomian method of expounding First Corinthians still current in many circles. They first determine that the word saint is always used by St. Paul to express a truly converted man, one, therefore, in their idea who has no need to ask pardon for sin and who never can finally fall away. They then find this term "saints" applied to the Corinthian Church, which must therefore have been composed of truly converted men alone, else, they think, St. Paul would not have called them saints. But then a difficulty arises, How about the gross sins prevalent in that Church? Their peculiar system of theology, however, rapidly solves this perplexing point. All the sins of believers, past, present or to come, have been forgiven long before they were born, therefore these gross immoralities at Corinth were mere believer's slips, as I have heard them called. A believer guilty of them should be sorry for them as causing scanda to the world, but as far as final salvation is concerned he has nothing to do with them save to assure himself of their pardon wrought out by our Lord on the cross. Abundant instances of this method of exposition will be found in the works of Dr. Williams, the Nonconformist of the time of William III., founder of the well-known library in Grafton Street, London. He had a great controversy with the Antinomians of the day, who represented themselves as the true champions of the doctrines of grace. They were simply teaching the ancient Gnostic heresy that the soul can be in communion with God while the body is all the time wallowing in the depths of sin. Precisely the same views are now commonly taught and called as in Williams's day, two hundred years ago, "the Gospel." If, however, we recognise the New Testament use of the word saints as meaning "dedicated to God, consecrated to His service," the meaning of the First Corinthians and of the words of Ananias is quite clear and plain, and no such immoral results follow as the Antinomian exegesis implies, but rather the saintly character of baptized Christians becomes the foundation of the most practical exhortations to holiness of life.

[51]It should be carefully noted that the great end of St. Paul's election is set forth by our Lord when speaking to Ananias as "to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel." From the very outset of Paul's Christian career his work as the Apostle of the Gentiles is thus clearly revealed through Ananias. I saythroughAnanias, and nottohim; for I suppose that Ananias could not himself have realised the real force and meaning of the Divine words.

[52]Archbishop Whately used to make an important distinction between thingsanti-Scriptural and thingsun-Scriptural. Thingsanti-Scriptural cannot be tolerated by the Church, because they contradict the Word of God. Thingsun-Scriptural, that is, things about which Scripture is silent and for which no direct warrant can be produced, may be right or wrong, useful or vicious. Sunday schools, for instance, are in this sense unscriptural. The Scriptures are silent about them, and if direct warrant with chapter and verse be required for them, none such can be produced. Hooker, in his Third Book, ch. v.-viii., has a powerful argument upon this subject as against the ultra-reformers or Puritans of his day, who would have tied the Church within much tighter bonds than ever Judaism submitted to.

[53]I have known cases where baptism was rejected avowedly on these grounds. This is of course a natural result of the pushing individualism in religion to an extreme, and is often found among what we may call extreme Protestants. It naturally results from two errors. First of all, from a rejection of the article of the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." Such men reject the doctrine of a Church as a great fundamental article of the Creed, one of the necessary articles of the Christian faith, and therefore they reject baptism which is the door of entrance into the Divine society. And, secondly, they reject the true definition and idea of a sacrament. They view baptism, for instance, as the expression merely of a faith already received, and as nothing more. If, then, they express this faith sufficiently by their life and actions, baptism seems to them an empty and vain ceremony. But surely this was not St. Paul's view, either when he received baptism at the hands of Ananias, or when he wrote in the sixth of Romans "We were buried therefore with Him through baptism into death."

[54]Romans x. 10.

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