INTRODUCTION.

THE purpose of this work is to give a living picture of St. Paul himself, and of the circumstances by which he was sur rounded.

The biography of the Apostle must be compiled from two sources; first, his own letters, and secondly, the narrative in the Acts of the Apostles. The latter, after a slight sketch of his early history, supplies us with fuller details of his middle life; and his Epistles afford much subsidiary information concerning his missionary labours during the same period. The light concentrated upon this portion of his course, makes darker by contrast the obscurity which rests upon the remainder; for we are left to gain what knowledge we can of his later years, from scattered hints in a few short letters of his own, and from a single sentence of his disciple Clement.

But in order to present anything like a living picture of St. Paul's career, much more is necessary than a mere transcript of the Scriptural narrative, even where it is fullest. Every step of his course brings us into contact with some new phase of ancient life, unfamiliar to our modern experience, and upon which we must throw light from other sources, if we wish it to form a distinct image in the mind. For example, to comprehend the influences under which he grew to manhood, we must realise the position of a Jewish family in Tarsus, "the chief city of Cilicia;" we must understand the kind of education which the son of such a family would receive as a boy in his Hebrew home, or in the schools of his native city, and in his riper youth "at the feet of Gamaliel" in Jerusalem; we must be acquainted with tho

profession for which he was to be prepared by this training, and appreciate the station and duties of an expounder of the Law. And that we may be fully qualified to do all this, we should have a clear view of the state of the Roman empire at the same time, and especially of its system in the provinces; we should also understand the political position of the Jews of the "dispersion;" we should be (so to speak) hearers in their synagogues; we should be students of their Rabbinical theology. And in like manner, as we follow the Apostle in the different stages of his varied and adventurous career, we must strive continually to bring out in their true brightness the half effaced forms and colouring of the scene in which he acts; and while he "becomes all things to all men, that he might by all means save some," we must form to ourselves a living likeness of the things and of the men among which he moved, if we would rightly estimate his work. Thus we must study Christianity rising in the midst of Judaism, we must realize the position of its early churches with their mixed society, to which Jews, Proselytes, and Heathens had each contributed a characteristic element; we must qualify ourselves to be umpires (if we may so speak) in their violent internal divisions; we must listen to the strife of their schismatic parties, when one said "I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos;" we must study the true character of those early heresies which even denied the resurrection, and advocated impurity and lawlessness, claiming the right "to sin that grace might abound," "defiling the mind and conscience" of their followers, and making them abominable and disobedient, and "to every good work reprobate; we must trace the extent to which Greek philosophy, Judaizing formalism, and Eastern superstition blended their tainting influence with the pure fermentation of that new leaven which was at last to leaven the whole mass of civilized society.

Again, to understand St. Paul's personal history as a missionary to the heathen, we must know the state of the different popu lations which he visited; the character of the Greek and Roman civilization at the epoch; the points of intersection between the political history of the world and the scriptural narrative; the social organization and gradation of ranks, for which he enjoins respect; the position of women, to which he especially refers in many of his letters; the relations between parents and children,

INTRODUCTION.

slaves and masters, which he not vainly sought to imbue with the loving spirit of the Gospel; the quality and influence, under the early empire, of the Greek and Roman religions, whose effete corruptness he denounces with such indignant scorn; the public amusements of the people, whence he draws topics of warning or illustration; the operation of the Roman law, under which he was so frequently arraigned; the courts in which he was tried, and the magistrates by whose sentence he suffered; the legionary soldiers who acted as his guards; the roads by which he travelled, whether through the mountains of Lycaonia or the marshes of Latium; the course of commerce by which his journeys were so often regulated; and the character of that imperfect navigation by which his life was so many times' endangered.

While thus trying to live in the life of a bygone age, and to call up the figure of the past from its tomb, duly robed in all its former raiment, every help is welcome which enables us to fill up the dim outline in any part of its reality. Especially we delight to look upon the only one of the manifold features of that past existence, which still is living. We remember with pleasure that the earth, the sea, and the sky still combine for us in the same landscapes which passed before the eyes of the wayfaring Apostle. The plain of Cilicia, the snowy distances of Taurus, the cold and rapid stream of the Cydnus, the broad Orontes under the shadow of its steep banks with their thickets of jasmine aud oleander; the hills which "stand about Jerusalem," the "arched fountains cold" in the ravines below, and those "flowery brooks beneath, that wash their hallowed feet;" the capes and islands of the Grecian Sea, the craggy summit of Areopagus, the landlocked harbour of Syracuse, the towering cone of Etna, the volup trous loveliness of the Campanian shore; all these remain to us, the imperishable handiwork of nature. We can still look upon the same trees and flowers which he saw clothing the mountains, giving color to the plains, or reflected in the rivers; we may think of him among the palms of Syria, the cedars of Leba non, the olives of Attica, the green Isthmian pines of Corinth, whose leaves wove those "fading garlands," which he contrasts'

12 Cor. xi. 25, "thrice have I suffered shipwreck ;" and this was before he was wrecked upon Melita.

"The hills stand about Jerusalem; even so standeth the Lord round about his people." Ps. cxxv. 2.

1 Cor. ix. 25.

with the "incorruptible crown," the prize for which he fought. Nay we can even still look upon some of the works of man which filled him with wonder, or moved him to indignation. The temples "made with hands" which rose before him—the very apotheosis of idolatry-on the Acropolis, still stand in almost undiminished majesty and beauty. The mole on which he landed at Puteoli still stretches its ruins into the blue waters of the bay. The remains of the Baian Villas whose marble porticoes he then beheld glittering in the sunset-his first specimen of Italian luxury-still are seen along the shore. We may still enter Rome as he did by the same Appian Road, through the same Capenian Gate, and wander among the ruins of "Cæsar's palace" on the Palatine, while our eye rests upon the same aqueducts radiating over the Campagna to the unchanging hills. Those who have visited these spots must often have felt a thrill of recollection as they trod in the footsteps of the Apostle; they must have been conscious how much the identity of the outward scene brought them into communion with him, while they tried to image to themselves the feelings with which he must have looked upon the objects before them. They who have experienced this will feel how imperfect a biography of St. Paul must be, without faithful representations of the places which he visited. It is hoped that the views which are contained in the present work, and which have been drawn for this special object, will supply this desideratum. And it is evident that, for the purposes of such a biography, nothing but true and faithful representations of the real scenes will be valuable; these are what is wanted, and not ideal representations, even though copied from the works of the greatest masters; for, as it has been well said, "nature and reality painted at the time, and on the spot, a nobler cartoon of St. Paul's preaching at Athens than the immortal Rafaelle afterwards has done."3

For a similar reason Maps have been added, exhibiting with as much accuracy as can at present be attained the physical features of the countries visited, and some of the ancient routes through them, together with plans of the most important cities, and maritime charts of the coasts where they were required.

While thus endeavouring to represent faithfully the natural

objects and architectural remains connected with the narrative, it has likewise been attempted to give such illustrations as were reedful of the minor productions of human art as they existed in the first century. For this purpose engravings of Coins have been given in all cases where they seemed to throw light on the circumstances mentioned in the history; and recourse has been had to the stores of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as to the collection of the Vatican, and the columns of Trajan and Antoninus.

But after all this is done-after we have endeavoured, with every help we can command, to reproduce the picture of St. Paul's deeds and times-how small would our knowledge of himself remain, if we had no other record of him left us but the story of his adventures. If his letters had never come down to us, we should have known indeed what he did and suffered, but we should have had very little idea of what he was. Even if we could perfectly succeed in restoring the image of the scenes and circumstances in which he moved, even if we could, as in a magic mirror, behold him speaking in the school of Tyrannus, with his Ephesian hearers in their national costume around him,—we should still see very little of Paul of Tarsus. We must listen to his words, if we would learn to know him. If fancy did her utmost, she could give us only his outward not his inward life. "His bodily presence" (so his enemies declared) "was weak and contemptible;" but "his letters" (even they allowed) "were weighty and powerful." Moreover an effort of imagination and memory is needed to recal the past, but in his Epistles St. Paul is present with us. "His words are not dead words, they are living creatures with hands and feet,"3 touching in a thousand hearts at this very hour the same chord of feeling which vibrated to their first utterance. We, the Christians of the nineteenth century, can bear witness now, as fully as could a Byzantine audience fourteen hundred years ago, to the saying of Chrysostom, that "Paul by his letters still lives in the months of men throughout the whole world; by them not only his own converts, but all the

1 For his speeches recorded in the Acts, characteristic as they are, would by themselves have been too few and too short to add much to our knowledge of St. Paul; but illustrated as they now are by his Epistles, they become an important part of his personal biography.

• 2 Cor. x. 10.

• Luther, as quoted in Archdeacon Hare's "Mission of the Comforter," p. 449.