_SIMON MAGUS AND THE CONVERSION OF SAMARIA._
"And Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and proclaimed unto
them the Christ.... But there was a certain man, Simon by name,
which beforetime in the city used sorcery, and amazed the people
of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: to whom
they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This
man is that power of God which is called Great."--ACTS viii. 5,
9, 10.
The object of the earlier part of this book of the Acts is to trace
the steady, gradual development of the Church among the Jews, the
evolution, never ceasing for a moment, of that principle of true
catholic and universal life which the Master implanted within her, and
which never ceased working till the narrow, prejudiced, illiberal
little company of Galileans, who originally composed the Church,
became the emancipated Church of all nations. This process of
development was carried on, as we have already pointed out, through
the agency of the Hellenistic Jews, and specially of the deacons who
were so intimately connected with that class. We have in the last few
lectures surveyed the history of one deacon, St. Stephen; we are now
led to the story of another, St. Philip. His activity, as described in
the eighth chapter, runs upon exactly the same lines. St. Stephen
proclaims the universal principles of the gospel; St. Philip acts upon
these principles, going down to the city of Samaria, and preaching
Christ there. The prominent position which the deacons had for the
time taken is revealed to us by two notices. Philip leaves Jerusalem
and goes to Samaria, where the power of the high priest and of the
Sanhedrin does not extend, but would rather be violently resisted.
Here he is safe for the time, till the violence of the persecution
should blow over. And yet, though Philip has to leave Jerusalem, the
Apostles remain hidden by the obscurity into which they had for a
little fallen, owing to the supreme brilliancy of St. Stephen: "They
were all scattered abroad except the Apostles." The deacons were
obliged to fly, the Apostles could remain: facts which sufficiently
show the relative positions the two classes occupied in the public
estimation, and illustrate that law of the Divine working which we so
often see manifesting itself in the course of the Church's chequered
career, the last shall be first and the first last. God, on this
occasion, as evermore, chooses His own instruments, and works by them
as and how He pleases.
I. This reticence and obscurity of the Apostles may seem to us now
somewhat strange, as it certainly does seem most strange how the
Apostles could have remained safe at Jerusalem when all others had to
fly. The Apostles naturally now appear to us the most prominent
members of the Jerusalem, nay, farther, of the Christian Church
throughout the world. But then, as we have already observed, one of
the great difficulties in historical study is to get at the right
point of view, and to keep ourselves at that point under very varying
combinations of circumstances. We are apt to fling ourselves back, or,
if the expression be allowed, to project ourselves backwards into the
past, and to think that men must always have attributed the same
importance to particular persons or particular circumstances as we
do. We now see the whole course of events, and can estimate them, not
according to any mere temporary importance or publicity they may have
attained, but according to their real and abiding influence. Viewing
the matter in this light, we now can see that the Apostles were much
more important persons than the deacons. But the question is, not how
we regard the Apostles and the deacons, but how did the Sanhedrin and
the Jews of Jerusalem in Stephen's and Philip's time view these two
classes. They knew nothing of the Apostles as such.[141] They knew of
them simply as unlearned and ignorant men who had been once or twice
brought before the Council. They knew of Stephen, and perhaps, too, of
Philip, as cultured Grecian Jews, whose wisdom and eloquence and
persuasive power they were not able to resist; and it is no wonder
that in the eyes of the Sadducean majority, who then ruled the Jewish
senate, the deacons should be specially sought out and driven away.
[141] The very name Apostle connotes for us an extraordinary
office and dignity, placing the Twelve upon an exalted plane far
above all others. But the Jewish Council knew nothing of this. The
term Apostle was in common use amongst the Jews. To us it seems
almost presumptuous to apply the name to any but the Twelve,
though the New Testament applies it more widely. The title Apostle
was given among the Jews to the legate or Church officer who
attended on every synagogue and discharged its commands. It was
also specially bestowed upon the messengers of the Jewish high
priest or patriarch who collected the temple tax while the temple
existed, and afterwards the poll tax or tribute paid by every Jew
throughout the world towards the support of the patriarch and the
Sanhedrin. The name Apostle is found in this sense in the
Theodosian Code down to so late a period as the fifth century. Our
Lord and the early Church simply adopted this title Apostle from
the synagogue, as they adopted so many other rites and usages,
baptism, holy communion, the various orders of the ministry, and a
liturgical service.
The action of the Apostles themselves may have conduced to this. Here
let us recur to a thought we have already touched upon. We are
inclined to view the Apostles as if the Spirit which guided them
totally destroyed their human personality and their human feelings. We
are apt to cherish towards the Apostles the same reverential but
misleading feeling which the believers of the early Church cherished
towards the prophets, and against which St. James clearly protested
when he said, "Elijah was a man of like passions with ourselves." We
are inclined to think of them as if there was nothing weak or human or
mistaken about them, and yet there was plenty of all these qualities
in their character and conduct. The Apostles were older than the
deacons, and they were men of much narrower ideas, of a more
restricted education. They had less of that facility of temper, that
power of adaptation, which learning and travel combined always confer.
They may have been somewhat suspicious too of the headlong course
pursued by Stephen and his fellows. Their Galilean minds did not work
out logical results so rapidly as their Hellenistic friends and
allies. They had been slow of heart to believe with the Master. They
were slow of heart and mind to work out principles and to grasp
conclusions when taught by His servants and followers. The Apostles
were, after all, only men, and they had their treasure in earthen
vessels. Their inspiration, and the presence of the Spirit within
their hearts, were quite consistent with intellectual slowness, and
with mental inability to recognise at once the leadings of Divine
Providence. It was just then the same as it has ever been in Church
history. The older generation is always somewhat suspicious of the
younger. It is slow to appreciate its ideas, hopes, aspirations, and
it is well perhaps that the older generation is suspicious, because it
thus puts on a drag which gives time for prudence, forethought, and
patience to come into play. These may appear very human motives to
attribute to the Apostles, but then we lose a great deal of Divine
instruction if we invest the Apostles with an infallibility higher
even than that which Roman Catholics attribute to the Pope. For them
the Pope is infallible only when speaking as universal doctor and
teacher, a position which some among them go so far as to assert he
has never taken since the Church was founded, so that in their opinion
the Pope has never yet spoken infallibly. But with many sincere
Christians the Apostles were infallible, not only when teaching, but
when thinking, acting, writing on the most trivial topics, or
discoursing on the most ordinary subjects.
II. Let us now turn our attention to Philip and his work, and its
bearing on the future history and development of the Church. Here,
before we go any farther, it may be well to note how St. Luke gained
his knowledge of the events which happened at Samaria. We do not
pretend indeed, like some critics, to point out all the sources whence
the sacred writers gathered their information. Any one who has ever
attempted to write history of any kind must be aware how impossible it
often is for the writer himself to trace the sources of his
information after the lapse of some time. How much more impossible
then must it be for others to trace the original sources whence the
sacred or any other ancient writers derived their knowledge, when
hundreds and even thousands of years have elapsed. Our own ignorance
of the past is a very unsafe ground indeed on which to base our
rejection of any ancient document whatsoever.
It is well, however, to note, where and when we can, the sources
whence information may have been gained, and fortunately this book of
the Acts supplies us with instruction on this very point. A quarter of
a century later the same Saul who, doubtless, helped to make St.
Philip fly on this occasion from Jerusalem, was dwelling for several
days beneath his roof at Cæsarea. He was then Paul the Apostle of the
Gentiles, who bore in his own person many marks and proofs of his
devotion to the cause which Philip had proclaimed and supported while
Paul was still a persecutor. The story of the meeting is told us in
the twenty-first chapter of this book. St. Paul was on his way to
Jerusalem to pay that famous visit which led to his arrest, and, in
the long run, to his visit to Rome and trial before Cæsar. He was
travelling up to Jerusalem by the coast road which led from Tyre,
where he landed, through Cæsarea, and thence to the Holy City. St.
Luke was with him, and when they came to Cæsarea they entered into the
house of Philip the Evangelist, with whom they abode several days.
What hallowed conversations St. Luke must there have listened to! How
these two saints, Paul and Philip, would go over the days and scenes
long since past and gone! How they would compare experiences and
interchange ideas; and there it was that St. Luke must have had
abundant opportunities for learning the history of the rise of
Christianity in Samaria which here he exhibits to us.
Let us now look a little closer at the circumstances of the case. The
place where Philip preached has raised a question. Some have
maintained that it was Samaria itself, the capital city, which Philip
visited and evangelized. Others have thought that it was a city,--some
indefinite city of the district Samaria, probably Sychar, the town
where our Lord had taught the Samaritan woman. Some have held one
view, some the other, but the Revised Version would seem to incline to
the view that it was the capital city which St. Philip visited on this
occasion, and not that city which our Lord Himself evangelized. It may
to some appear an additional difficulty in the way of accepting Sychar
as the scene of St. Philip's ministry, that our Lord's work and
teaching some five years previously would, in that case, seem to have
utterly vanished. Philip goes down and preaches Christ to a city which
knew nothing of Him. How, some may think, could this have possibly
been true, and how could such an impostor as Simon have carried all
the people captive, had Christ Himself preached there but a few short
years before, and converted the mass of the people to belief in
Himself? Now I maintain that it was Samaria, the capital, and not
Sychar, some miles distant, that Philip evangelized, but I am not
compelled to accept this view by any considerations about Christ's own
ministry and its results. Our Lord might have taught in the same city
where Philip taught, and in the course of five years the effect of His
personal ministry might have entirely vanished.
There is no lesson more plainly enforced by the gospel story than
this, Christ's own personal ministry was a comparatively fruitless
one. He taught the Samaritan woman, indeed, and the people of the city
were converted, as they said, not so much by her witness as by the
power of Christ's own words and influence. But then the Holy Ghost was
not yet given, the Church was not yet founded, the Divine society
which Christ, as the risen Saviour, was to establish, had not yet come
into existence; and therefore work like that done at Samaria was a
transient thing, passing away like the morning cloud or the early dew,
and leaving not a trace behind. Christ came not to teach men a Divine
doctrine, so much as to establish a Divine society, and, till this
society was established, the work done even by Christ Himself was a
fleeting and evanescent thing. The foundation of the Church as a
society was absolutely necessary if the doctrine and teaching of
Christ was to be preserved. The article of the creed, "I believe in
the Holy Catholic Church," has been neglected, slighted, and
undervalued by Protestants. I have heard even of avowed expositors of
the Apostles' Creed who, when they came to this article, have passed
it over with a hasty notice because it did not fit into their narrow
systems. And yet here again the Supreme wisdom of the Divine plan has
been amply vindicated, and the experience of the New Testament has
shown that if there had not been a Church instituted by Christ, and
established with Himself as its foundation, rock, and chief
corner-stone, the wholesome doctrine and the supernatural teaching of
Christ would soon have vanished. I am here indeed reminded of the
words and experience of one of the greatest evangelists who have lived
since apostolic times. John Wesley, when dealing with a cognate
subject, wrote to one of his earliest preachers about the importance
of establishing Methodist societies wherever Methodist preachers found
access, and he proceeds to urge the necessity for doing so on
precisely the same grounds as those on which we explain the failure of
our Lord's personal ministry, so far at least as present results were
concerned. Wesley tells his correspondent that wherever Methodist
teaching alone has been imparted, and Methodist societies have not
been founded as well, the work has been an utter failure, and has
vanished away.
So it was with the Master, Christ Jesus. He bestowed His Divine
instruction and imparted His Divine doctrine, but as the time for the
outpouring of the Spirit and the foundation of the Church had not yet
come, the total result of the personal work and labours of the
Incarnate God was simply one hundred and twenty, or at most five
hundred souls. It constitutes, then, to our mind no difficulty in the
way of regarding Sychar as the scene of Philip's teaching, that Christ
Himself may have laboured there a few years before, and yet that there
should not have been a trace of His labours when St. Philip arrived.
The Master might Himself have taught in a town, and yet His disciple's
preaching a few years later might have been most necessary, because
the Spirit was not yet given. The plain meaning, however, of the words
of the Acts is that it was to the city of Samaria, the capital city,
that Philip went; and it is most likely that to the capital city a
character like Simon would have resorted, and not to any smaller town,
as affording him the largest field for the exercise of his peculiar
talents, just as afterwards we shall find, in the course of his
history, that he resorted to the capital of the world, Rome itself, as
the scene most effectual for his purposes.[142]
[142] Samaria, the capital, was at this period called by the
Romans Sebaste. Herod the Great rebuilt it in honour of the
emperors, and erected a splendid temple there, which he
inaugurated with games and gladiatorial shows. It was a suitable
spot for the peculiar talents of a man like Simon Magus, as in
turn it would have been specially repugnant for every reason to a
strict Jew. But a Divine instinct was leading Philip on to the
revelation of God's purposes of love and mercy. See Joseph.,
_Antiqq._, XV., viii., 5; Stanley's _Sinai and Palestine_, p.
245.
III. St. Philip went down, then, to Samaria and preached Christ there,
and in Samaria he came across the first of those subtle opponents with
whom the gospel has ever had to struggle,--men who did not directly
oppose the truth, but who corrupted its pure morality and its simple
faith by a human admixture, which turned its salutary doctrines into a
deadly poison. Philip came to Samaria, and there he found the
Samaritans carried away with the teaching and actions of Simon. The
preaching of the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, and the exercise of true
miraculous power, converted the Samaritans, and were sufficient to
work intellectual conviction even in the case of the Magician. All the
Samaritans, Simon included, believed and were baptized. This is the
introduction upon the stage of history of Simon Magus, whom the
earliest Church writers, such as Hegesippus, the father of Church
history, who was born close upon the time of St. John, and flourished
about the middle of the second century, and his contemporary Justin
Martyr, describe as the first of those gnostic heretics who did so
much in the second and third centuries to corrupt the gospel both in
faith and practice. The writings of the second and third centuries are
full of the achievements and evil deeds of this man Simon, which
indeed are related by some writers with so much detail as to form a
very considerable romance. Here, then, we find a corroborative piece
of evidence as to the early date of the composition of the Acts of the
Apostles. Had the Acts been written in the second century, it would
have given us some traces of the second-century tradition about Simon
Magus; but having been written at a very early period, upon the
termination of St. Paul's first imprisonment, it gives us simply the
statement about Simon Magus as St. Luke and St. Paul had heard it
from the mouth of Philip the Evangelist. St. Luke tells us nothing
more, simply because he had no more to tell about this first of the
celebrated heretics. When we come to the second century Simon's story
is told with much more embellishment. The main outlines are, however,
doubtless correct. All Christian writers agree in setting forth that
after the reproof which, as we shall see, Simon Peter the Apostle
bestowed upon the magician, he became a determined opponent of the
Apostles, especially of St. Peter, whose work he endeavoured
everywhere to oppose and defeat. With this end in view he went to
Rome, as Justin Martyr says, in the reign of Claudius Cæsar, and as
other writers say, in the time of Nero.
There he successfully deceived the people for some time. We have early
notices of his success in the Imperial city. Justin Martyr is a writer
who came close upon the apostolic age. He wrote an Apology for the
Christians, which we may safely assign to some year about 150 A.D. At
that time he was a man in middle life, whose elder contemporaries must
have been well acquainted with the history and traditions of the
previous century. In that first Apology Justin gives us many
particulars about Christianity and the early Church, and he tells us,
concerning Simon Magus, that his teaching at Rome was so successful in
leading the Roman people astray that they erected a statue in his
honour, between the two bridges. It is a curious fact, and one, too,
which confirms the accuracy of Justin, that in the year 1574 there was
dug up on the very spot indicated by Justin, the island in the Tiber,
a statue bearing the inscription described by Justin, "Semoni Sanco
Deo Fidio." Critics, indeed, are now pretty generally agreed that
this statue was the one seen by Justin, but that it was originally
erected in honour of a Sabine deity, and not of the arch-heretic as
the Apologist supposed; though there are some who think that the
appeal of Justin to a statue placed before men's eyes, and about which
many at Rome must have known all the facts, could not have been made
on such mistaken grounds. It is not altogether safe to build theories
or offer explanations based on our ignorance, and opposed to the
plain, distinct statements of a writer like Justin, who was a
contemporary with the events of which he speaks. It seems indeed a
plausible explanation to say that Justin Martyr mistook the name of a
Sabine deity for that of an Eastern heretic. But there may have been
two statues and two inscriptions on the island, one to the heretic,
another to the ancient Sabine god. Later writers of the second and
third centuries improved upon Justin's story, and entered into great
details of the struggles between Simon and the two Apostles, St. Peter
and St. Paul, terminating in the death of the magician when attempting
to fly up to heaven in the presence of the Emperor Nero. His death did
not, however, put an end to his influence. The evil which he did and
taught lived long afterwards. His followers continued his teaching and
proved themselves active opponents of the truth, seducing many
proselytes by the apparent depth and subtlety of their views. Such is
the history of Simon Magus as it is told in Church history, but we are
now concerned simply with the statements put forward in the passage
before us.[143] There Simon appears as a teacher who led the
Samaritans captive by his sorcery, which he used as the basis of his
claim to be recognised as "that power of God which is called Great."
Magic and sorcery have always more or less prevailed, and do still
prevail, in the Eastern world, and have ever been used in opposition
to the gospel of Christ, just as the same practices, under the name of
Spiritualism, have shown themselves hostile to Christianity in Western
Europe and in America. The tales of modern travellers in India and the
East, respecting the wondrous performances of Indian jugglers, remind
us strongly of the deeds of Jannes and Jambres who withstood Moses,
and illustrate the sorcery which Simon Magus used for the deception of
the Samaritans. The Jews, indeed, were everywhere celebrated at this
period for their skill in magical incantations--a well-known fact, of
which we find corroborative evidence in the Acts. Bar-Jesus, the
sorcerer who strove to turn the proconsul of Cyprus from the faith,
was a Jew (Acts xiii. 6-12). In the nineteenth chapter we find the
seven sons of Sceva, the Jewish priest, exercising the same trade of
sorcery; while, as is well known from references in the classical
writers, the Jews at Rome were famous for the same practices.
[143] The story of the quarrels between Simon Magus and St. Peter
has been used by the Tübingen school of critics in Germany to
support their theory of a fundamental opposition between St. Paul
and St. Peter. See Dr. Salmon's _Introduction_, chap. xix., for a
full statement of this strange view.
These statements of writers sacred and secular alike have been
confirmed in the present age. There has been a marvellous discovery of
ancient documents in Egypt within the last twelve or fifteen years,
which were purchased by the Austrian government and duly transferred
to Vienna, where they have been investigated. They are usually called
the Fayûm Manuscripts.[144] They contain some of the oldest documents
now existing, and embrace among them large quantities of magical
writings, with the Hebrew formulæ used by the Jewish sorcerers when
working their pretended miracles. So wondrously does modern discovery
confirm the statements and details of the New Testament!
[144] See about the Fayûm MSS. and their contents a series of
articles in the Records of the _Contemporary Review_ from December
1884, and in the _Expositor_ for 1885 and 1888. These Fayûm
documents go back to the remotest times, one of them being dated
so long ago as 1200 B.C. It is very curious that this
extraordinary discovery has been apparently overlooked by the
great majority of English learned societies.
It is not necessary now to discuss the question whether the
achievements of sorcery and magic, either ancient or modern, have any
reality about them, or are a mere clever development of sleight of
hand, though we incline to the view which admits a certain amount of
reality about the wonders performed, else how shall we account for the
doings of the Egyptian magicians, the denunciations of sorcery and
witchcraft contained in the Bible, as well as in many statements in
the New Testament? A dry and cold age of materialism, without life and
fire and enthusiasm, like the last century, was inclined to explain
away such statements of the Scriptures. But man has now learned to be
more distrustful of himself and the extent of his discoveries. We know
so little of the spirit world, and have seen of late such strange
psychological manifestations in connection with hypnotism, that the
wise man will hold his judgment in suspense, and not hastily conclude,
with the men of the eighteenth century, that possession with devils
was only another name for insanity, and that the deeds of sorcerers
were displays of mere unassisted human skill and subtlety.[145] As it
was with the Jews, so was it with the Samaritans. They were indeed
bitterly separated the one from the other, but their hopes, ideas, and
faith were fundamentally alike. The relations between the Samaritans
and the Jews were at the period of which we treat very like those which
exist between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ulster,--professing
different forms of the same faith, yet regarding one another with
bitterer feelings than if far more widely separated. So it was with
the Jews and Samaritans; but the existing hostility did not change
nature and its essential tendencies, and therefore as the Jews
practised sorcery, so did Simon, who was a native of Samaria; and with
his sorcery he ministered to the Messianic expectation which
flourished among the Samaritans equally as among the Jews. The
Samaritan woman testified to this in her conversation with our Lord,
and as she was a woman of a low position and of a sinful character,
her language proves that her ideas must have had a wide currency among
the Samaritan people. "The woman saith unto Him, I know that Messiah
cometh, which is called Christ: when He is come, He will declare unto
us all things." Simon took advantage of this expectation, and gave
himself out to be "that power of God which is called Great;"
testifying by his assertion to the craving which existed all through
the Jewish world for the appearance of the long-expected deliverer, a
craving which we again find manifesting itself in the many political
pretenders who sprang up in the regions of more orthodox Judaism, as
Josephus amply shows. The world, in fact, and specially the world
which had been affected with Jewish ideas and Jewish thought, was
longing for a deeper teaching and for a profounder spiritual life than
it had as yet known. It was athirst for God, yea, even for the living
God; and when it could find nothing better, it turned aside and strove
to quench the soul's desires at the impure fountains which magic and
sorcery supplied.
[145] Moll's work on hypnotism, which we have already several
times quoted, admits the reality of Eastern magic, accounting for
the mango trick which Indian jugglers perform, and which every
Indian resident has seen, on the ground that even vegetables can
be hypnotised. It may be hard for us to admit it, but such books
compel us to allow that there may be more in heaven and earth than
is dreamt of in our philosophy. The presence of the grand heathen
temple at Sebaste or Samaria would have made it the fitter scene
for Simon's magical incantations. Magic and Paganism always
flourished side by side, as we see at Ephesus.
IV. Philip the Evangelist came with his teaching into a society which
acknowledged Simon as its guide, and his miracles at once struck the
minds of the beholders. They were miracles worked, like the Master's,
without any secret preparations, without the incense, the
incantations, the muttered formulæ which accompanied the lying wonders
of the magician. They formed a contrast in another direction too,--no
money was demanded, no personal aims or low objects were served; the
thorough unselfishness of the evangelist was manifest. Then, too, the
teaching which accompanied the miracles was their best evidence. It
was a teaching of righteousness, of holy living, of charity, of
humility; it was transparently unworldly. It was not like Simon's,
which gave out that he himself was some great one, and treated of
himself alone; but it dealt with "the kingdom of God and the name of
Jesus Christ;" and the teaching and the miracles, testifying the one
to the other, came home to the hearts of the people, leading them
captive to the foot of the Cross. It has often been a debated
question whether miracles alone are a sufficient evidence of the
truth of a doctrine, or whether the doctrine needs to be compared with
the miracles to see if its character be worthy of the Deity. The
teaching of the New Testament seems to be plainly this, that miracles,
in themselves, are not a sufficient evidence. Our Lord warns His
disciples that deceivers shall one day come working mighty signs and
wonders, so as to lead astray, if it be possible, even the very elect;
and He exhorts His disciples to be on their guard against them. But
while miracles alone are no sufficient evidence of the truth of a
doctrine, they were a very needful assistance to the doctrines of the
gospel in the age and country when and where Christianity took its
rise. Whether the sorcery and magic and wonders of Simon, and the
other false teachers against whom the Apostles had to contend, were
true or false, genuine or mere tricks, still they would have given the
false teachers a great advantage over the preachers of the gospel, had
the latter not been armed with real divine supernatural power which
enabled them, as occasion required, to fling the magical performances
completely into the shade. The miraculous operations of the Apostles
seem to have been restricted in the same way as Christ restricted the
working of His own supernatural power. The Apostles never worked
miracles for the relief of themselves or of their friends and
associates. St. Paul was detained through infirmity of the flesh in
Galatia, and that infirmity led him to preach the gospel to the
Galatian Celts. He did not, perhaps he could not, employ his
miraculous power to cure himself, just as our Lord refused to use His
miraculous power to turn stones into bread. St. Paul depended upon
human skill and love for his cure, using probably for that purpose
the medical knowledge and assistance of St. Luke, whom we find
shortly afterwards in his company.[146] Miraculous power was bestowed
upon the first Christian teachers, not for the purposes of display or
of selfish gratification, but simply for the sake of God's kingdom and
man's salvation.
[146] See Acts xvi. 6-10, compared with Gal. iv. 13.
And as it was with St. Paul so was it with his companions. Timothy was
exhorted to betake himself to human remedies to cure his physical
weakness, while when another apostolic man, Trophimus, was sick, he
was left behind by the Apostle at Miletus till he should get well (2
Tim. iv. 20). Miracles were for the sake of unbelievers, not of
believers, and for this purpose we cannot see how they could have been
done without, under the circumstances in which the gospel was launched
into the world. Man's nature had been so thoroughly corrupted, the
whole moral atmosphere had been so permeated with wickedness, the
whole moral tone of society had been so terribly lowered, that the
Apostles might have come preaching the purest morality, the most
Divine wisdom, and it would have fallen on ears so deaf, and eyes so
blind, and hearts so seared and hardened, that it would have had no
effect unless they had possessed miraculous power which, as occasion
demanded, served to call attention to their teaching. But when the
preliminary barriers had been broken down, and the miracles had
fulfilled their purpose, then the preaching of the kingdom of God and
the name of Jesus Christ did their work. Here again a thought comes
forward on which we have already said a little. The subject matter of
Philip's preaching is described in the fifth verse as Christ, "Philip
went down to the city of Samaria, and proclaimed unto them the
Christ," and then in the twelfth verse it is expanded for us into "the
kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ." These two subjects are
united. The kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ. The Apostles
taught no diluted form of Christianity. They preached the name of
Jesus Christ, and they also taught a Divine society which He had
established and which was to be the means of completing the work of
Christ in the world. Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles recognised
the great truth, that a mere preaching of a philosophical or religious
doctrine would have been of very little use in reforming the world.
They therefore preached a Church which should be the pillar and ground
of the truth, which should gather up, safeguard, and teach the truth
whose principles the Apostles set forth. To put it in plain language,
the Evangelist St. Philip must have taught the doctrine of a Church of
Jesus Christ as well as of a doctrine of Jesus Christ. Had the
doctrine of Jesus Christ been taught without and separate from the
doctrine of a Church, the doctrine of Christ's person and character
might have vanished, just as the doctrine of Plato or Aristotle or
that of any of the great ancient teachers vanished. But Jesus Christ
had come into the world to establish a Divine society, with ranks,
gradations, and orderly arrangements; He had come to establish a
kingdom, and they all knew then what a kingdom meant. For the Greek,
Roman, or Jewish mind, a kingdom meant more even than it does for us.
It meant in their conceptions a despotism where the king ordered and
did just what he liked. The Romans, in fact, abominated the name king,
and invented the term emperor instead, because for them the word king
connoted what it does not connote for us, the possession and exercise
of absolute power. Yet, for all this, the Apostles preached Christ as
a King and His society as a kingdom, because in that new society which
He had called into existence, the graces, the gifts, the offices of
the society are totally dependent upon and entirely subservient to
Jesus Christ alone.
How wondrously the life, the activity, the fervour and power of the
Church would have been changed had this truth been always recognised.
The Church of Jesus Christ, as regards its hidden secret life, is a
despotism. It depends upon Christ alone. It depends not upon the
State, not upon man, not upon wealth or position or earthly influences
of any kind: it depends upon Christ alone. The Church has often forgot
this secret of its strength. It has trusted in the arm of flesh, and
has relied upon human patronage and power, and then it has grown,
perhaps, in grandeur and importance as far as the world is concerned;
but, as it has grown in one direction, it has lost in the other, and
that the only direction worthy a Church's attention. The temptation to
rely on the help of the world alone has assailed the Church in various
ways. It assails individual Christians, it assails congregations, it
assails the Church at large. All of them, whether individuals,
congregations, or churches, are apt to imagine that power and
prosperity consist in wealth, or worldly position, or the number of
adherents, forgetting that Christ alone is the source of power to the
Church or to individual souls, and that where He is wanting, no matter
what may be the outward appearance, or the numerical increase or the
political influence, there indeed all true life has departed.
V. The results of Philip's teaching and work in Samaria were
threefold.
(1) The Samaritans believed Philip, and among the believers was Simon.
There are some people who teach faith and nothing else, and imagine
that if they lead men to exercise belief then the whole work of
Christianity is done. This incident at the very outset of the Church's
history supplies a warning against any such one-sided teaching. The
Samaritans believed, and so did Simon the Magician, who had for long
deceived them. The very same word is used here for the faith exercised
by the Samaritans and by Simon, as we find used to describe the belief
of the three thousand on the day of Pentecost, or of the Philippian
jailer who accepted St. Paul's teaching amid all the terror of the
earthquake and the opened prison. They were all intellectually
convinced and had all accepted the Christian faith as a great reality.
Intellectual faith in Christ is the basis on which a true living faith
which works by love is grounded. A faith of the heart which is not
based on a faith of the head is very much akin to a superstition. Of
course we know that there are people whose faith is deep-rooted and
fruitful who cannot state the grounds of their belief, but they are
well aware that others can thus state it, that their faith is capable
of being put into words and defended in argument. Intellectual faith
in Christianity must ever be regarded as a gift of the Holy Ghost,
according to that profound word of the Apostle, "No man can say, Jesus
is Lord, but in the Holy Ghost." But intellectual faith in the truth
and reality of Christ's mission may exist in a heart where there is no
sense of sin and of spiritual want, and then belief in Christ avails
nothing. There were cravings after righteousness and peace in
Samaritan bosoms, but there was none in one heart, at least, and that
heart was therefore unblessed. The results of St. Philip's work teach
us that faith is not everything in the Christian life.
(2) Again we find that another result was, that the Samaritans were
all baptized, including their arch-deceiver Simon. Philip, then, in
the course of his preaching of Christ, must have told them of Christ's
law of baptism. The preaching of the name of Jesus Christ and of the
kingdom of God must have included a due setting forth of His laws and
ordinances. We do no honour to Christ when we neglect any part of His
revelation. If God has revealed any doctrine or any practice or any
sacrament, it must be of the very greatest importance. The mere fact
of its revelation by Him makes it of importance, no matter how we, in
our short-sighted wisdom, may think otherwise. Philip set forth
therefore the whole counsel of God, and as the result all the
Samaritans were baptized, including Simon; but then again, as Simon's
case taught that faith by itself availed not to change the heart, so
Simon's case teaches that baptism, neither alone nor in conjunction
with intellectual faith, avails to convert the soul and purify the
character. God offers His graces and His blessings, faith and baptism,
but unless there be receptivity, unless there be consent of the will,
and a thirst of the soul and a longing of the heart after spiritual
things, the graces and gifts of the Spirit will be offered in vain.
(3) And then, lastly, the final and abiding result of Philip's work
was, there was great joy in that city. They rejoiced because their
souls had found the truth, which can alone satisfy the cravings of the
human heart and minister a joy which leaves no sting behind, but is a
joy pure and exhaustless. The joys of earth are always mixed, and the
more mixed the more unsatisfying. The joy of a Christian soul which
knows Christ and His preciousness, which has been delivered by Christ
from deceit and impurity and vice, as these Samaritans had, and which
feels and enjoys the new light thrown on life by Christ's revelations,
that joy is a surpassing one, ravishing the soul, satisfying the
intellect, purifying the life. There was great joy in that city, and
no wonder, for as the poet has well sung, contrasting the "world's gay
garish feast" with God's sacred consolations bestowed upon holy
souls,--
"Who, but a Christian, through all life
That blessing may prolong?
Who, through the world's sad day of strife,
Still chant his morning song?
"Such is Thy banquet, dearest Lord;
O give us grace, to cast
Our lot with Thine, to trust Thy word,
And keep our best till last."[147]
[147] _The Christian Year_, 2nd Sunday after Epiphany.