felt in his soul that the next course was to sail across the Ægean Sea
into Europe. He felt it so clearly and strongly that it seemed to him as
though he heard a man from the European side of the sea calling to him
and saying: “Come across into Macedonia and bring us help.” But it was
more than Macedonia that was calling. It was the whole of Greece. It was
more than Greece that was calling. It was the whole of Europe. It was
more than Europe that was calling. It was undiscovered America that was
stretching out its hands that night and saying: “Come over and help us.”
You see, if Paul had not gone into Europe, across the Ægean, perhaps we
who live in America and in England would never have been followers of
Christ, so that this call meant very much! Paul heard it and he was
“ready” at once. He answered: “Yes, I will come.” The next morning he
set sail from Troas on the eastern shore to Philippi on the western
shore of the Ægean. Silas and Timothy were with him and he also found
here a new companion. This new travelling-companion kept a Diary and
wrote the account of this journey and of other journeys, too. You can
find his Diary in the sections of the Book of Acts that say “we”—“the We
Narratives.” Philippi in Macedonia is the first spot in Europe on which
Paul set his foot and so far as we know the people in Philippi were the
first people of all Europe who heard of Christ. They were not as eager
to hear as you might expect. If they were calling to Paul to come over
and help them, they did not recognise him when he arrived, for they very
soon seized him and put him in prison and beat him with rods. Some of
the people in Philippi, however, did recognise him. They were very glad
to hear him and they were full of love for him and for his truth. They
joined him and worked with him and a new church was formed—perhaps the
first in all Europe. These Christians in Philippi were very dear to
Paul’s heart and they loved him as though he had been their own father,
and they remembered him later when he lay in prison in Rome and was
lonely. When he left Philippi, he went on through the great cities of
Macedonia, preaching and building up churches, wherever he could find
people ready to listen to his message. In the city of Thessalonica,
which is now called Salonika, Paul found many listeners and formed a
successful church to which a little later he wrote two epistles. He
found another splendid group in the city of Berœa and formed a church
there. But in all these cities of Macedonia he had serious trouble, just
as he had had in the province of Galatia. The Jews hated him and
everywhere he came they raised a riot and tried to drive him out of the
city or to get him into prison. They set the mob against him in some of
the cities and in others they had him arrested and badly treated. But in
spite of all their efforts to hinder him, he succeeded in doing a great
work and in forming Christian churches all up and down the famous
province of Macedonia.
From the time Paul heard the voice calling him over into Macedonia, most
of the rest of his life was to be lived and most of his future work in
the world was to be done around the shores of the Ægean Sea. All the
churches which he gathered after this time were around the Ægean and all
his epistles from this time were written either to Ægean cities, or
written while he was living in Ægean cities. It was Paul who shifted the
centre of Christianity from Jerusalem to the Western World and during
his life-time the great centres were around the shores of this famous
Sea. The most famous of all the cities around the coasts of this Sea was
Athens, the home of Socrates and Plato and of a hundred other great men,
and to this wonderful city of the ancient world Paul now came.
[Illustration: MAP [2ND MISSIONARY JOURNEY]]
XVI
ALONE IN ATHENS
As Paul’s two companions, Silas and Timothy, had been left behind in
Berœa to finish the work which had been begun in Macedonia Paul found
himself “alone in Athens.” It was the most interesting city in the world
for a traveller to visit. It was the “eye of Greece” and Greece had for
five hundred years been leading the world in art, in poetry, in
philosophy, in architecture and in many other things. The most beautiful
temples that had ever been built were there for Paul to see. The most
wonderful statues that had ever been carved were there for him to gaze
upon. The most perfect poems that had ever been written were in the
libraries there in Athens for him to read. A short walk would take him
to the garden of the Academe where Plato once had his school. He could
stand where Socrates stood. He could see the home of Stoic philosophy
which he had heard about all his life. He was under the most perfect sky
the sun shines through. He looked over the glorious hills where great
deeds had been wrought. Delightful air wrapped him round and inspiring
sights met him at every turn.
But Paul thought little of these things. His mind was filled with
something else which seemed to him more important. He wanted to make
this famous city see what he saw. He wanted to build a church of Christ
in the city that had built the Parthenon. He wanted to tell his message
of truth to the people who gloried in the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle.
As he was walking about alone in the city, he noticed an altar with the
inscription on it: “To God Unknown.” At once, he thought, “How I should
like to make these people know the God whom I know, but whom they have
not found yet. They want to find Him, or they would not build altars
like that. All their philosophers have wanted to find Him, and sometimes
they almost did find Him. Oh, if I could only make them see!” While Paul
was walking around the city, wishing for a chance to tell his message,
the Athenian people in the streets and market-places were watching him.
They saw at once that he was a stranger and of a different race. They
noticed him gazing around. Some of them asked him questions and sounded
him to see whether he brought any new ideas. But they did not expect
much from a mere Jew. They thought from the little they listened to that
he believed in two gods—or a god and a goddess—whom they had never heard
of before, for he spoke of Jesus and of the resurrection. They thought
Jesus was a new god and that the Resurrection was a new goddess. But
most of the people thought that he was a “babbler”—a man who was talking
about trifles. They never dreamed that this foreign visitor, this Jew,
could teach them, wise Athenians as they were, anything that mattered to
them. But some of the inquisitive and curious ones got Paul to come up
to their great meeting-place on the Hill of Mars, which they called the
Areopagus, and speak to them. That was exactly what Paul wanted. Now he
had a chance to tell them his great truth. Would they listen? Would they
understand?
With a polite wave of the hand, he began to speak in the Greek which he
had learned as a boy at Tarsus. “Athenian men,” he said, “you are very
religious people. I see altars everywhere and you have filled your city
with objects of worship. One strange thing I noticed as I walked about.
I saw an altar on which was this inscription, ‘To God Unknown.’ That
means that you have not quite found God yet. Let me tell you about Him,
for I know. He made the world. He made all things above and all things
beneath. But He does not dwell in temples. He does not need the things
which men make with their hands, idols and images and statues. He has
given life and breath to all living beings. He has planned the universe
and put His wisdom into all the parts of it. He has arranged everything
for men. He expects them to become one great family. He has put
something into men’s hearts which makes them seek after Him and which
makes them try to feel their way, as blind persons do, to find Him if
they can. But He is never far away from anybody. He is near, within
reach. We live in God. We move in Him. All our life is flooded with Him,
and without Him we could not live at all. Your poets knew that. They
have tried to tell you about it. One of them in his poem says that we
are ‘offspring of God’—we have come from Him. If that is true, as your
poet says it is, you ought not to think that God is like silver or gold
or marble, or that He can be carved and made into a statue. All that is
childlike and is the result of ignorance. When men were in the child
stage and did not know any better, God excused them and waited for them
to learn. But now that you are older and wiser, there is no excuse. God
expects everybody now to live differently, to change their lives, and to
prepare for the great beyond. He has sent His Son to show them how to do
it, and He has raised Him from the dead.”
They did not listen very well and when they found that the Resurrection
was not a new goddess they were not interested any longer. They drifted
away to look for something that was more exciting and they politely told
Paul that they would hear him again some other time. One man who was a
senator and one woman, who had listened eagerly, were convinced that
this was the truth about God and they believed and accepted Paul’s way
of life. But Athens was not ready yet for the great message and so the
chance went by! In a few days Paul sailed away, out of that wonderful
harbour, looking back on the beautiful city that had missed its
opportunity, and landed in the great seaport city of Corinth, at that
time the capital of the province of Achaia.
[Illustration: MARS HILL—ATHENS]
XVII
CORINTH AND EPHESUS
In Corinth Paul made two new friends who became very dear to him and who
were able to be great helpers in his work. Their names were Aquila—a Jew
from Pontus who had lived sometime in Italy—and his wife Priscilla who
was a very remarkable woman. They became followers of Christ and joined
with Paul in the work of spreading Christianity in the great Greek city
of Corinth. Aquila and Priscilla were also tent-makers and part of the
time they all worked at this trade to get money to live by. Then they
gave all the rest of their time to the main business for which Paul had
come to Corinth. It was a very happy group of workers for they all loved
and enjoyed each other and they all loved and enjoyed their work. As
Corinth was a great city close to the sea, people from all countries in
the world came there. There were men of many colours and men of many
languages. They had not learned how to live good and beautiful lives.
Very wrong things were done in Corinth. We sometimes think that the
world is wicked to-day but if we could see the way the Corinthians lived
and then see how men live to-day we should discover that there has been
some improvement.
For a year and a half, this little group of missionaries laboured in the
city, telling about Christ and His love and His death for men and His
resurrection and of His Spirit working in the hearts of men. All kinds
of people were changed by the power of this message. Jews and Greeks and
persons from many lands listened and rejoiced and believed and followed
Christ. Paul’s old enemies, the Jews, who had heard about his past life,
made all the trouble they could for him, but he had been through trouble
before and he knew how to bear it now. He went straight ahead with his
work and was not disturbed by the difficulties. His soul was filled with
joy as he saw his little church growing larger every day. New persons
kept coming and there were more all the time who were trying to live the
new way. All kinds of people came in to form the new church in Corinth.
A few of them were learned and well off, but most of them were poor and
ignorant. They were working people who had never had any real _life_
before, and now the whole world seemed changed for them. It was as
though they had been living in a dark cave before and now they had come
into the beautiful world where the bright sun was shining.
[Illustration: EPHESUS]
After eighteen months of this hard and happy work, Paul, with his two
companions, and with his two new friends, sailed away from Corinth,
leaving behind a great group of Christian men and women and children
gathered into a church. We can well believe that all these people, who
had found the new life, were on the shore of the harbour at Cenchrea to
say “farewell” and to wave their last greetings as the missionaries
pushed out to sea. They sailed in and out among the famous islands of
the Ægean and across its blue waters to the eastern shore and came to
Ephesus. Paul had wanted to go to Ephesus at the beginning of this long
missionary journey, but he had not been able to accomplish his desire
then. Now after wonderful experiences, dangers and trials and after many
months of work in Europe he found himself at last in the great city of
Ephesus. He knew that this was to be one of the most important fields of
his entire lifework, but he still felt that the time for his work in
Ephesus had not come yet. So he left Aquila and Priscilla there and went
on by ship to Cæsarea and then to his beloved home church group at
Antioch.
There were many things to tell as the Christian Jews and Greeks of
Antioch flocked in to hear Paul recount the wonderful events of the
greatest journey of his life. How the field had widened and how
Christianity had spread in these eventful years since he last saw
Antioch! After a short stay at Antioch, Paul went once more, and this
was to be the last time, to see his dear friends in Galatia. When this
visit was finished, he came over the great stretch of country which
formed the ancient province of Asia to its capital, Ephesus. He had made
a little beginning of work here before his return to Antioch and now he
came back to finish what he had begun.
Ephesus was much larger than Corinth and it was also, like Corinth, a
very wicked city. There was much to do here and much to suffer before
Ephesus could be changed into a city of pure and beautiful citizens. But
nothing ever discouraged Paul. He went at his great task as though he
fully expected to see it done. It was like fighting beasts in the arena
to work among the hard and wicked people who tried every way they could
to defeat Paul and spoil his work. Steadily he fought on—gaining a
little all the time—explaining to everybody who came to hear and proving
that he had found a new way to live.
Right in the midst of this great work of transforming and remaking
Ephesus, Paul heard very bad news from Corinth, across the Ægean. He
heard that the church there was in sad trouble. The people had divided
into parties and were quarrelling. Some of the people had gone wrong and
were doing the kind of things they used to do when they were heathen.
Paul wrote a wonderful letter to them—our First Corinthians. It was full
of good advice and counsel and it showed them how to get back into the
new way of living. The most wonderful thing in the letter was what Paul
said to them about love. He told them, in the most beautiful words that
perhaps were ever written that love was the greatest thing in the world,
that when everything else failed love would not fail and when everything
else vanished away love would still abide.
You would have thought this letter would have settled all their troubles
but it did not. When people get wrong it is very hard setting them right
again and it often takes a long time and much patience. Things went from
bad to worse. Finally Paul had to leave his work in Ephesus and go
across to Corinth, to see the people there in person and to straighten
out their trouble. But even when he got among them, they remained
stubborn and difficult, and he had to go back without getting the
trouble settled. Then he sent Timothy over and he failed. It looked as
though the church would fall to pieces and Paul would lose all his
friends in Corinth. Then he wrote another letter, full of pleading,
which he sent by his friend Titus, who was now his companion.
While he was waiting, full of anxiety, for Titus to come back with the
answer from Corinth, some dreadful catastrophe happened in Ephesus.
There was a great uprising in the city against Paul. It seemed for a
time as though there was no hope that his life could be saved. He has
told us that the sentence of death was pronounced against him—probably
the sentence that he should be thrown into the arena to fight with
lions. For a time there seemed no hope. But his friends Aquila and
Priscilla, whom Paul sometimes calls “Prisca,” saved his life. He says
that they “risked their necks” for him and that he was “delivered from
death.”
This catastrophe may very likely be connected in some way with the
strange event so powerfully described in the nineteenth chapter of Acts.
It happened this way. There was a man in Ephesus named Demetrius. He was
a silversmith and made little silver images of the goddess Diana which
he sold in great numbers to the people. These images were little copies
of the great statue of Diana which the Ephesians believed had fallen
down from heaven, and so it was looked upon with awe and was very
sacred. One of the most beautiful temples in the world—one of the seven
“wonders”—had been built to Diana in Ephesus and in this temple stood
the famous statue. Now Demetrius made a great deal of money selling his
silver images to those who visited the temple. But suddenly he
discovered that people were not buying as many of his silver Dianas as
they used to do. He began to wonder what was happening and he hit upon
the idea that all the trouble was caused by the preaching of Paul! Paul
was calling people to Christ and when they believed in Christ, they no
longer worshipped Diana. They stopped going to her temple and they did
not care to have copies of the great statue. Demetrius was losing money.
His business was in danger. Something must be done. He called together
all the silversmiths and stirred them up to do something at once to
drive Paul out of the city. “Just see,” he cried, “how our trade is
going down! We are losing all our business! We are making no money! This
stranger has come to our city and he has told people that gods are not
made of silver and gold; that gods made by hands are no gods at all! He
has carried people away with his new ideas. They won’t buy our images
now. Not only is our business in danger, but our whole city will suffer
as well. People will stop coming to see the great temple which all the
world admired. We must act. We must save the city and defend the great
goddess!” Then all the silversmiths and goldsmiths and coppersmiths and
workers in iron and brass began to make processions through the city,
shouting as they marched, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” “Great is
Diana of the Ephesians.” The whole city was aroused. People rushed out
of their houses to see what was happening and a great commotion and
excitement followed. The throng pressed into the immense city theatre
and everybody kept shouting, some one thing and some another, as
generally happens in a vast mob of excited people. Paul tried to get
into the theatre. He was, as usual, ready to face the danger and stand
his ground. But his friends kept him back and would not let him risk his
life in such a wild and seething and furious crowd. When any one tried
to speak the mob drowned the voice of the speaker with their shouts. A
man named Alexander—perhaps he was “Alexander, the coppersmith,” who,
Paul says, did him “much evil,” a little later—tried to speak, when
suddenly the vast throng of excited people began crying again, “Great is
Diana of the Ephesians.” “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” For two
hours nobody could stop this cry which went on and on, with the
continual shout, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” At last the
town-clerk of the city got the people quiet and made a sensible speech
to them, telling them if they had any charge against Paul the right
thing to do was to take the matter to the courts and not to get up a
riot and endanger the liberty and reputation of the city. Then he sent
the people away to their homes.
How this uproar affected Paul we do not know. What danger threatened him
now because of the hate of Demetrius and the silversmiths we cannot
tell. Nobody knows exactly what happened, but in some way Paul escaped
from the city, never to go back again. He got to Troas in safety and
then crossed over the Ægean at the same place where he crossed the first
time he entered Europe, and reached Macedonia where he was among his
friends.
Here in Macedonia where Paul was waiting, worn and perplexed and
weary—but not cast down—Titus came to him from Corinth and told him the
good news that his letter to Corinth had done its work, had saved the
day, and that now his church there was ready to be faithful to him.
Nothing in his life ever touched his soul with more joy than did that
report which Titus brought. If you wish to see how he felt, you must
read the first nine chapters of Second Corinthians, for he wrote those
chapters just after Titus came to him. It makes you love Paul to find
how eagerly he loved his friends and his churches, and to see how much
he suffered when they did wrong or turned against him. Soon after this
he went to Corinth and spent three months there with his old and new
friends of that city.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF DIANA]
XVIII
“READY TO BE BOUND”
There were many things to do in Corinth, on this last visit of Paul’s
life to the city where he had worked so long and suffered so much. He
had many things to tell them. There were many changes to make in the
management of the church. There were many families to visit and all the
time there were new people being added to the church. Then Paul was
raising a great fund of money which he hoped to carry up to Jerusalem on
his return, for the support of the church in that city. Finally he had
letters to write to his other churches, advice to give them,
difficulties to settle and problems to solve. Perhaps the most important
thing he did during this stay in Corinth—certainly the most important
for us—was to write a letter, which we now call an Epistle, to the
Christians in the city of Rome. It is the longest of all Paul’s Epistles
and the one in which he sets forth most carefully and fully his entire
message about Christ. He had not been to Rome yet and he had not met the
Christians there, but he was planning to go to Rome, after he had been
to Jerusalem, on his way to Spain and he wanted to prepare the
Christians in the great capital of the empire for the teaching which he
expected to give them when he arrived. He little thought as he was
writing this wonderful letter that when he did come to Rome he would
come chained to two soldiers and that this would be the end of his
journey! He told the people at Rome, in this letter, how hard he had
tried as a young man to make himself perfect, how he had resolved to
keep the law and be absolutely righteous, and how miserably he had
failed. “When I meant to do right,” he wrote, “I did wrong. The things I
wanted to do I did not do. The things I did, were just those things
which I ought not to have done. And when I was defeated and beaten and
hopeless then suddenly I discovered the love of God which Christ
revealed to me. I found a power to live by, which delivered me from the
old power of sin in my nature. Now through that love and that power I am
more than conqueror. I know now that nothing can ever separate me from
the love of God. Neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor
depth, nor anything that has ever been made in the universe, can
separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”
He told these unseen friends of his in the far-away city how to live the
new way day by day in the difficult world. He told them not to overcome
evil by doing evil in return but to overcome it by being good and by
doing good. He told them not to worry, or fret, or be disturbed, when
things were hard and difficult, but to keep calm and steady and full of
faith in the love of God, and when they had done the best they could, to
leave it all with God. They were, as far as possible, to live in peace
and love with all kinds of people and no matter what others did to them,
they were to go right on loving them and doing good to them.