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new faith. Hence, he passed by all the conservative Baptists at Jerusalem, and made no mistake in bringing the radical young Tarsian to be captain of the Lord's Gentile host.

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Antioch had a population of about 500,000, being inferior only to Rome and Alexandria. But, as the third city in the empire it vied with these in magnificence, state, luxury, wealth, art and brilliant culture, being called the Queen of the East.' Yet, it was the home of every thing vile. Rénan, the skeptic, names it, 'The capital of all lies, and the sink of every description of infamy.' It knew nothing of truth or purity, it was unbridled in its debaucheries, atheistic in its philosophy, and vulgar in its pleasures and worship. Its wit was sharp and its squibs scurrilous, which accounts for the derisive nickname coined there, 'Christians;' and the sights

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perpetrated at its shrines were ribald, nay, shocking beyond degree. This was the battle-field chosen by Jesus for the first real clash of arms between his Gospel and the Gentile gods, and Saul was his chosen missionary. However small the company of disciples within its walls at this time, with this Apostle as their leader, Antioch soon planted all the Asiatic churches, and became the world's pulpit for the cross. Even then it gave promise of the day when Ignatius was to pass its gates to seal the truth with his blood, in the Roman amphitheater. Chrysostom was to be born there, to tell the story of the risen King in Constantinople; and there 100,000 men were to bind the sacred name of derision to their hearts; and above all, there Bible theology and Gospel songs were to be framed for the inspiration of our race. From the day that Saul entered Antioch, the faith of Christ cut every leading-string which bound it to Mosaism, and this city became the birth-home of a pure Christian nobility, into which all bloods and races were fused, in the name of Jesus. That was a strange cry which this embassador raised in Antioch, when he

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called her satirists and wits, her rhetoricians and military men, her quacks and necromancers, her buffoons and dancing girls, to 'Behold the Lamb.' But he continued in this toil for a whole year,' and a 'great multitude believed.' A famine occurred in Judea in the fourth year of Claudius, and collections were taken up in Antioch and other Gentile churches for the relief of the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem. These contributions were sent by the hands of Barnabas and Saul, A. D. 45; this was the Apostle's second visit after his conversion, and in the same year he returned to Antioch; from thence he, Barnabas, and John Mark, went forth on the Apostle's First Great Missionary Expedition.

When Columbus left the harbor of Palos with two small caravels, no such moral results hung in the balance as those which impended when Barnabas and Saul left all that was dear to them in Antioch. They must first go to Seleucia, the sea-port of Antioch, fourteen miles west, and five miles north of the mouth of the river Orontes, to take ship for the Island of Cyprus, for from that black-sand beach the ark of the world must be launched. The Mediterranean had now become the highway of civilization, ideas and empire, as well as of commerce; and they sailed about a hundred miles, when they landed at Salamis, on the island where Christ wrought signs and wonders by the Gospel. Here, the great Apostle dropped the name of Saul, and was known thereafter only as Paul or Paulus. Some think that the Roman name was assumed to conciliate Gentile prejudice, but more likely this had been his Roman name from childhood, while amongst the Hebrews he had been known as Saul. From that time the sacred story changes, Paul taking higher rank. He is no longer second to Barnabas, as at Antioch, but he takes precedence, and now we read of 'Paul and Barnabas,' not only the order of names being reversed, but Barnabas falls into the background and Paul becomes the great figure on the glowing canvas, by land and sea.

No story could be more enchanting or instructive than that of following Paul through his three great missionary tours, but this our limits forbid. Nothing in

history is so enriched, excepting the life of Jesus. It is an inspired panorama. The account covers so many lands, tongues, climates and civilizations that it opens the ancient world to us. His various methods of travel, his many companions, the endless phases in which he met every possible development of Judaism and paganism, his devious styles of preaching, his orders of controversy, the unfoldings of old truths and the revelation of new, his nameless sufferings and successes, are themes preg nant with importance, and every temptation presses to their full treatment. But self-denial imposes silence here, as well as upon his numerous Church organizations, especially those to whom he addressed his wonderful Epistles, as the Galatians, the

ANCIENT SHIP.

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Philippians, the Thessalonians, the Corinthians, the Ephesians and others; together with their contents and the circumstances which called them into existence. All this, with much more, must be omitted, until we meet him on a cold, murky November morning, at the close of his great voyage and shipwreck. His wonderful life's work was substantially done when he stood shivering with that wretched group of two hundred and seventy-six souls, on that tongue of land now known as St. Paul's Bay, on Malta. Bruised, shelterless and haggard, they stood near the headland where two seas met,' in a more significant sense than is indicated by currents and shoals on a dangerous sea-coast. There, while huddled together in a pelting rain, and drenched in sea-water, Paul and his party, hungry and benumbed

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with cold, gathered a heap of brush and made a fire. But a chilled viper had been unwittingly thrown with the sticks into the blaze. Blistered with heat, the reptile darted out in anger and fastened its poisonous fangs on Paul's hand. He coolly shook it off again into the fire and remained unhurt: a fit type of the victory which awaited him at Rome, where God would shortly beat down Satan under his feet. On reaching Puteoli, in Italy, the news of his arrival quickly flew to Rome, a distance of a hundred and forty miles which he must travel in chains over the immortal Appian Way. And yet, no conqueror in triumph, no Emperor in purple, had ever passed over this pavement, on whom such tremendous results hung in Roman destiny. When forty miles from Rome they came to Appii Forum, at the end of the canal which ran through the Pontine Marshes. There they were met and welcomed by a company of disciples from the Eternal City. A few miles farther on, a second group of Roman brethren met and greeted them, at the Three Taverns,

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where the road from Actium came into the main road, and where multitudes of travelers met.

When the Apostle saw that he had a home in the hearts of so many whom he had never before seen in the flesh, he thanked God and took courage.' The thought that he must enter Rome, a mass of two millions of people from all lands, a prisoner, unknown and nearly alone, may have dampened and even stifled his companionable soul with a sense of that unutterable loneliness which is never so deeply felt as in a crowd. But when the great city burst upon his sight from the Alban Hills, and he found a band of faithful, redeemed souls, on his right and on

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his left, the old Jerusalem-Philippian-Ephesian fire glowed anew in his brave spirit, and in a moment he was strong to preach the Gospel at Rome also. Thus, in the month of March, in the seventh year of Nero's reign, and the sixty-second of that Christ, whose he was and whom he served, the immortal tent-maker passed through the Carpenian Gate, to save the Eternal City.

That day Julius delivered his precious charge to Burrus Afranius, the Prefect of the Prætorian Guard, a humane and honest officer, who made his report to the imperial court. The illustrious prisoner, however, was permitted to dwell by himself in his own hired house, within the limits of the Prætorian quarter, still linked to his guard by his humiliating chain. He had been in Rome but three days when he sought a conference with the principal officers of the seven synagogues

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there, before whom he desired to lay his case for consultation. They assured him that they had received no communication concerning him from Jerusalem, although they knew that his sect was in bad repute every where. Yet, they assembled on an appointed day to hear him expound its doctrines in his own lodgings: a practice which he continued for two whole years, for the benefit of all who wished to hear him. It is clear also, from his Epistles of the Imprisonment, that he met with much success in preaching the Gospel in Rome; some of his converts being found in Cæsar's household. It is not now easy to determine the exact district to which his person was limited, as the Prætorian camp was outside the walls, at some distance short of the Fourth Mile-stone. The Prætorium was the head-quarters of the Roman military governor, and the camp so called at Rome, was created by Tiberius, before whose time the troops were lodged in different parts of the city.

The direct Scripture narrative concerning Paul's career closes with his arrival at Rome, and the statement that he remained there 'two years.' But the various allusions and references made in his Epistles of the Imprisonment indicate that he was released A. D. 63-64, and that after this he traveled through Asia Minor, Crete, Macedonia, Greece; and many think that he visited Spain, and some, that he planted Christianity in Britain. The fair inference is, that he returned to Rome voluntarily, as we have no hint of the time and place of his arrest, nor of any charge against him. That he finally endured martyrdom there is clear; some think as early as A. D. 64, while others put the date as late as A. D. 68. When a prisoner, he was comforted by the presence of Luke, Timothy, Aristarchus of Thessalonica, and Epaphras, a Colossian; also by Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, and Tychicus, of Asia. It is difficult to account for the long delay of his first hearing before the Emperor. But these two years were not lost; as he expresses it, they turned out for the furtherance of the Gospel.' The charges sent by Festus were, most likely, lost in the shipwreck; and if so, much time would be consumed in waiting for a duplicate copy from Cæsarea. The slowness of his accusers to appear against him, because of the known weakness of their case, was disheartening to him, as well as the long delays in the course of Roman law at its fastest pace; meanwhile, false brethren were studiously adding affliction to his bonds, by persecuting his converts, and he was betrayed by some of his friends.

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We may as well dismiss the legend of horrors in the Mamertine Prison, as one of those fictions which will not bear the light of history. His sufferings sank deeper than the shudderings of the body in a dark and wet dungeon, whose walls were great blocks of tufa anchored together by clamps of iron, and where every limb was chilled for want of his 'cloak.' We know that he was sick in person, and that he was ill-treated by Tigellinus, the wretch who followed Burrus, as Chief Prætorian Prefect. How many sighs he heaved in secret before God we never can know, till we read the stains on the immortal page which Jehovah keeps. But no voice in history brings down to us such a touch of melancholy as we hear in the

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