dependence on the Divine will which is characteristic of a Christian's life, whether his vocation be to the labours of an Apostle, or to the routine of ordinary toil. We shall see that St. Paul's promise was literally fulfilled, when we come to pursue his progress on his third missionary circuit. 2 The voyage to Syria lay first by the coasts and islands of the Ægean to Cos and Cnidus, which are mentioned on subsequent voyages, and then across the open sea by Rhodes and Cyprus to Cæsarea. This city has the closest connection with some of the most memorable events of early Christianity. We have already had occasion to mention it, in alluding to St.. Peter and the baptism of the first Gentile convert. We shall after wards be required to make it the subject of a more elaborate notice, when we arrive at the imprisonment which was suffered by St. Paul under two successive Roman governors. The country was now no longer under na tive kings. Ten years had elapsed since the death of Herod Agrippa, the last event alluded to (Ch. IV.) in connection with Cæsarea. Felix had been for some years already procurator of Judæa. If the aspect of the country had become in any degree more national under the reign of the Herods, it had now resumed all the appearance of a Roman province.? Cæsarea was its military capital, as it was the harbour by which it was approached by all travellers from the West. From this city roads had been made to the Egyptian frontier on the south, and northwards along the coast by Ptolemais, Tyre, and Sidon, to Antioch, as well as across the interior by Neapolis or Antipatris to Jerusalem and the Jordan. 8 The journey from Cæsarea to Jerusalem is related by St. Luke in a single word. No information is given concerning the incidents which oc curred there :-no mectings with other Apostles,-no controversies on disputed points of doctrine,-are recorded or inferred. We are not even sure that St. Paul arrived in time for the festival at which he desired to be present.10 The contrary seems rather to be inferred; for he is said simply to have "saluted the Church," and then to have proceeded to Antioch, It is useless to attempt to draw aside the veil which conceals the particulars of this visit of Paul of Tarsus to the city of his forefathers 1 Τοῦ Θεοῦ θέλοντος. See James ir. 15. Ἐὰν ὁ Κύριος θελήσῃ καὶ ζήσωμεν. Acts xxi. 1. xxvii. 7. See p. 115. Compare p. 53. Tac. Ann. xiv. 54, and Josephus. 3 See Acts xxi. 1-3. 7 See pp. 28 and 55. See the map of the Roman roads in Palestine, and the remarks, p. 84. 'Avabúç, v. 22. Some commentators think that St. Paul did not go to Jerusalem at all, but that this participle merely denotes his going up from the ship into the town of Casarea: but, independently of his intention to visit Jerusalem, it is hardly likely that such a circumstance would have been specified in a narrative so briefly given. 10 We shall see, in the case of the later voyage (Acts xx. xxi.), that he could not have arrived in time for the festival, had not the weather been peculiarly favourable. As if it were no longer intended that we should view the Church in con nection with the centre of Judaism, our thoughts are turned immediately to that other city,' where the name "Christian" was first conferred on it. From Jerusalem to Antioch it is likely that the journey was accom. plished by land. It is the last time we shall have occasion to mention a road which was often traversed, at different seasons of the year, by St. Paul and his companions. Two of the journeys along this Phoenician coast have been long ago mentioned. Many years had intervened since the charitable mission which brought relief from Syria to the poor in Judæa (Ch. IV.), and since the meeting of the council at Jerusalem, and the joyful return at a time of anxious controversy (Ch. VII.). When we allude to these previous visits to the Holy City, we feel how widely the Church of Christ had been extended in the space of very few years. The course of our narrative is rapidly carrying us from the East towards the West. We are now for the last time on this part of the Asiatic shore. For a moment the associations which surround us are all of the primeval past. The monuments which still remain along this coast remind us of the ancient Phoenician power, and of Baal and Ashtaroth,'-or of the Assyrian conquerors, who came from the Euphrates to the West, and have left forms like those in the palaces of Nineveh sculptured on the rocks of the Mediterranean,3-rather than of anything connected with the history of Greece and Rome. The mountains which rise above our heads belong to the characteristic imagery of the Old Testament: the cedars are those of the forests which were hewn by the workmen of Hiram and Solomon; the torrents which cross the road are the waters from "the sides of Lebanon." But we are taking our last view of this scenery: and, as we leave it, we feel that we are passing from the Jewish infancy of the Christian Church to its wider expansion among the Heathen. Once before we had occasion to remark that the Church had no longer now its central point in Jerusalem, but in Antioch, a city of the Gentiles." The progress of events now carries us still more remotely from the land which was first visited by the tidings of salvation. The world through which our narrative takes us begins to be European rather than Asiatic. So far as we know, the present visit which St. Paul paid to Antioch was his last. We have already seen how new centres of Christian life had 1 Κατέβη εἰς ̓Αντιόχειαν, ν. 22. The ruins of Tortosa and Aradus. * The sculptures of Assyrian figures on the coast road near Beyrout are noticed in the works of many travellers. These torrents are often flooded, so as to be extremely dangerous; so that St Paul may have encountered "perils of rivers" in this district. Maundrell says that the traveller Spon lost his life in one of these torrents. 5 Pp. 108, 109. • Antioch is not mentioned in the Acts after xviii. 22. been established by him in the Greek cities of the Egean. The course of the Gospel is further and further towards the West; and the inspired part of the Apostle's biography, after a short period of deep interest in Judrea, finally centres in Rome. CHAPTER XIII "We see not yet all things put under Him."-Heb. ii. 8. THE SPIRITUAL GIFTS, CONSTITUTION, ORDINANCES, DIVISIONS, AND HERESIES OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH IN THE LIFETIME OF ST. PAUL. We are now arrived at a point in St. Paul's history when it seems needful for the full understanding of the remainder of his career, and especially of his Epistles, to give some description of the internal condition of those churches which looked to him as their father in the faith. Nearly all of these had now been founded, and regarding the early development of several of them, we have considerable information from his letters to them and from other sources. This information we shall now endeavour to bring into one general view; and in so doing (since the Pauline Churches were only particular portions of the universal Church), we shall necessarily have to consider the distinctive peculiarities and internal condition of the primitive Church generally, as it existed in the time of the Apostles. The feature which most immediately forces itself upon our notice, as distinctive of the Church in the Apostolic age, is its possession of supernatural gifts. Concerning these, our whole information must be derived from Scripture, because they appear to have vanished with the disappearance of the Apostles themselves, and there is no authentic account of their existence in the Church in any writings of a later date than the books of the New Testament. This fact gives a more remarkable and impressive character to the frequent mention of them in the writings of the Apostles, where the exercise of such gifts is spoken of as a matter of ordinary occurrence. Indeed, this is so much the case, that these miraculous powers are not even mentioned by the Apostolic writers as a class apart (as we should now consider them), but are joined in the same classification with other gifts, which we are wont to term natural endowments or "talents." Thus St. Paul tells us (1 Cor. xii. 11) that all these The two great classifications of them in St. Paul's writings are as follows: Class 1. ᾧ μὲν αι) λόγος σοφίας. (*) λόγος γνώσεως, I. (1 Cor. xii. 8.) (β') πίστις. (3*) χαρίσματα ιαμάτων. (35) διακρίσεις πνευμάτων. Class 3. érépy de γ) γένη γλωσσῶν. (γ) ερμηνεία γλώσσαν charisms, or spiritual gifts, were wrought by one and the same spirit, who distributed them to each severally according to His own will; and among these he classes the gift of healing, and the gift of Tongues, as falling ander the same category with the talent for administrative usefulness, and the faculty of Government. But though we learn from this to refer the ordinary natural endowments of men, not less than the supernatural powers bestowed in the Apostolic age, to a divine source, yet, since we are treating of that which gave a distinctive character to the Apostolic Church, it is desirable that we should make a division between the two classes of gifts, the extraordinary and the ordinary: although this division was not made by the Apostles at the time when both kinds of gifts were in ordinary exercise. The most striking manifestation of divine interposition was the power of working what are commonly called Miracles, that is, changes in the usual operation of the laws of nature. This power was exercised by St. Paul himself very frequently (as we know from the narrative in the Acts), as well as by the other Apostles; and in the Epistles we find repeated allusions to its exercise by ordinary Christians. As examples of the operation of this power, we need only refer to St. Paul's raising Eutychus from the dead, his striking Elymas with blindness, his healing the sick at Ephesus, and his curing the father of Publius at Melita." The last-mentioned examples are instances of the exercise of the gift II. (1 Cor. xii. 28.) (2) ἀντιλήψεις. (3) κυβερνήσεις. (4) γένη γλωσσών. See (γ'). It may be remarked, that the following divisions are in I. and not in II.; viz. p', 33, and y2: a1 and a2, though not explicitly in II., yet are probably included in it as necessary gifts for ἀπόστολοι, and perhaps also for διδάσκαλοι, as Neander supposes It is difficult to observe any principle which runs through these classifications; probably I. was not meant as a systematic classification at all; II., however, certainly was in some measure, because St. Paul uses the words рŵτоv, deúteрov, 7pí1cv, &c. It is very difficult to arrive at any certain conclusion on the subject, because of our imperfect understanding of the nature of the xapícuara themselves; they are alluded to only as things well known to the Corinthians, and of course without any precise description of their nature. In Rom. xii. 6 another unsystematic enumeration of four charisms is given; viL (1) προφητεία, (2) διακονία, (3) διδασκαλία, (4) παράκλησις. 1 Gal. iii. 5, ó ¿vεpyův [observe the present tense] dvváμɛtç év úμìv, is one of many examples. Acts xix. 11, 12. On this latter miracle, see the excellent remarks in "Smith's Voyage and Ship wreck of St. Paul," p. 115. |