'And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their
voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us
in the likeness of men. 12. And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and
Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker. 13. Then the priest
of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto
the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people. 14. Which
when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of, they rent their
clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out. 15. And saying, Sirs,
why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and
preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living
God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are
therein: 16. Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their
own ways. 17. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that
he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons,
filling our hearts with food and gladness. 18. And with these sayings
scarce restrained they the people, that they had not done sacrifice
unto them. 19. And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and
Iconium, who persuaded the people, and, having stoned Paul, drew him
out of the city, supposing he had been dead. 20. Howbeit, as the
disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city:
and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe. 21. And when they
had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they
returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch. 22. Confirming
the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the
faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom
of God.'--ACTS xiv. 11-22.
The scene at Lystra offers a striking instance of the impossibility of
eliminating the miraculous element from this book. The cure of a lame
man is the starting-point of the whole story. Without it the rest is
motiveless and inexplicable. There can be no explosion without a train
and a fuse. The miracle, and the miracle only, supplies these. We may
choose between believing and disbelieving it, but the rejection of the
supernatural does not make this book easier to accept, but utterly
chaotic.
I. We have, first, the burst of excited wonder which floods the crowd
with the conviction that the two Apostles are incarnations of deities.
It is difficult to grasp the indications of locality in the story, but
probably the miracle was wrought in some crowded place, perhaps the
forum. At all events, it was in full view of 'the multitudes,' and they
were mostly of the lower orders, as their speaking in 'the speech of
Lycaonia' suggests.
This half-barbarous crowd had the ancient faith in the gods unweakened,
and the legends, which had become dim to pure Greek and Roman, some of
which had originated in their immediate neighbourhood, still found full
credence among them. A Jew's first thought on seeing a miracle was, 'by
the prince of the devils'; an average Greek's or Roman's was 'sorcery';
these simple people's, like many barbarous tribes to which white men
have gone with the marvels of modern science, was 'the gods have come
down'; our modern superior person's, on reading of one, is
'hallucination,' or 'a mistake of an excited imagination.' Perhaps the
cry of the multitudes at Lystra gets nearer the heart of the thing than
those others. For the miracle is a witness of present divine power, and
though the worker of it is not an incarnation of divinity, 'God _is_
with him.'
But that joyful conviction, which shot through the crowd, reveals how
deep lies the longing for the manifestation of divinity in the form of
humanity, and how natural it is to believe that, if there is a divine
being, he is sure to draw near to us poor men, and that in our own
likeness. Then is the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation but one
more of the many reachings out of the heart to paint a fair picture of
the fulfilment of its longings? Well, since it is the only such that is
alleged to have taken place in historic times, and the only one that
comes with any body of historic evidence, and the only one that brings
with it transforming power, and since to believe in a God, and also to
believe that He has never broken the awful silence, nor done anything
to fulfil a craving which He has set in men's hearts, is absurd, it is
reasonable to answer, No. 'The gods are come down in the likeness of
men' is a wistful confession of need, and a dim hope of its supply.
'The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us' is the supply.
Barnabas was the older man, and his very silence suggested his superior
dignity. So he was taken for Jupiter (Zeus in the Greek), and the
younger man for his inferior, Mercury (Hermes in the Greek), 'the
messenger of the gods.' Clearly the two missionaries did not understand
what the multitudes were shouting in their 'barbarous' language, or
they would have intervened. Perhaps they had left the spot before the
excitement rose to its height, for they knew nothing of the
preparations for the sacrifice till they '_heard_ of it, and then they
'sprang forth,' which implies that they were within some place,
possibly their lodging.
If we could be sure what 'gates' are meant in verse 13, the course of
events would be plainer. Were they those of the city, in which case the
priest and procession would be coming from the temple outside the
walls? or those of the temple itself? or those of the Apostles'
lodging? Opinions differ, and the material for deciding is lacking. At
all events, whether from sharing in the crowd's enthusiasm, or with an
eye to the reputation of his shrine, the priest hurriedly procured oxen
for a sacrifice, which one reading of the text specifies as an
'additional' offering--that is, over and above the statutory
sacrifices. Is it a sign of haste that the 'garlands,' which should
have been twined round the oxen's horns, are mentioned separately? If
so, we get a lively picture of the exultant hurry of the crowd.
II. The Apostles are as deeply moved as the multitude is, but by what
different emotions! The horror of idolatry, which was their inheritance
from a hundred generations, flamed up at the thought of themselves
being made objects of worship. They had met many different sorts of
receptions on this journey, but never before anything like this.
Opposition and threats left them calm, but this stirred them to the
depths. 'Scoff at us, fight with us, maltreat us, and we will endure;
but do not make gods of us.' I do not know that their 'successors' have
always felt exactly so.
In verse 14 Barnabas is named first, contrary to the order prevailing
since Paphos, the reason being that the crowd thought him the superior.
The remonstrance ascribed to both, but no doubt spoken by Paul,
contains nothing that any earnest monotheist, Jew or Gentile
philosopher, might not have said. The purpose of it was not to preach
Christ, but to stop the sacrifice. It is simply a vehemently earnest
protest against idolatry, and a proclamation of one living God. The
comparison with the speech in Athens is interesting, as showing Paul's
exquisite felicity in adapting his style to his audience. There is
nothing to the peasants of Lycaonia about poets, no argumentation about
the degradation of the idea of divinity by taking images as its
likeness, no wide view of the course of history, no glimpse of the
mystic thought that all creatures live and move in Him. All that might
suit the delicate ears of Athenians, but would have been wasted in
Lystra amidst the tumultuous crowd. But we have instead of these the
fearless assertion, flung in the face of the priest of Jupiter, that
idols are 'vanities,' as Paul had learned from Isaiah and Jeremiah; the
plain declaration of the one God, 'living,' and not like these
inanimate images; of His universal creative power; and the earnest
exhortation to turn to Him.
In verse 16 Paul meets an objection which rises in his mind as likely
to be springing in his hearers: 'If there is such a God, why have we
never heard of Him till now?' That is quite in Paul's manner. The
answer is undeveloped, as compared with the Athenian address or with
Romans i. But there is couched in verse 16 a tacit contrast between
'the generations gone by' and the present, which is drawn out in the
speech on Mars Hill: 'but _now_ commandeth all men everywhere to
repent,' and also a contrast between the 'nations' left to walk in
their own ways, and Israel to whom revelation had been made. The place
and the temper of the listeners did not admit of enlarging on such
matters.
But there was a plain fact, which was level to every peasant's
apprehension, and might strike home to the rustic crowd. God _had_ left
'the nations to walk in their own ways,' and yet not altogether. That
thought is wrought out in Romans i., and the difference between its
development there and here is instructive. Beneficence is the
sign-manual of heaven. The orderly sequence of the seasons, the rain
from heaven, the seat of the gods from which the two Apostles were
thought to have come down, the yearly miracle of harvest, and the
gladness that it brings--all these are witnesses to a living Person
moving the processes of the universe towards a beneficent end for man.
In spite of all modern impugners, it still remains true that the
phenomena of 'nature,' their continuity, their co-operation, and their
beneficent issues, demand the recognition of a Person with a loving
purpose moving them all. '_Thou_ crownest the year with Thy goodness;
and _Thy_ paths drop fatness.'
III. The malice of the Jews of Antioch is remarkable. Not content with
hounding the Apostles from that city, they came raging after them to
Lystra, where there does not appear to have been a synagogue, since we
hear only of their stirring up the 'multitudes.' The mantle of Saul had
fallen on them, and they were now 'persecuting' _him_ 'even unto
strange cities.'
No note is given of the time between the attempted sacrifice and the
accomplished stoning, but probably some space intervened. Persuading
the multitudes, however fickle they were, would take some time; and
indeed one ancient text of Acts has an expansion of the verse: 'They
persuaded the multitudes to depart from them [the Apostles], saying
that they spake nothing true, but lied in everything.'
No doubt some time elapsed, but few emotions are more transient than
such impure religious excitement as the crowd had felt, and the ebb is
as great as the flood, and the oozy bottom laid bare is foul. Popular
favourites in other departments have to experience the same fate--one
day, 'roses, roses, all the way'; the next, rotten eggs and curses.
Other folks than the ignorant peasants at Lystra have had devout
emotion surging over them and leaving them dry.
Who are 'they' who stoned Paul? Grammatically, the Jews, and probably
it was so. They hated him so much that they themselves began the
stoning; but no doubt the mob, which is always cruel, because it needs
strong excitement, lent willing hands. Did Paul remember Stephen, as
the stones came whizzing on him? It is an added touch of brutality that
they dragged the supposed corpse out of the city, with no gentle hands,
we may be sure. Perhaps it was flung down near the very temple 'before
the city,' where the priest that wanted to sacrifice was on duty.
The crowd, having wreaked their vengeance, melted away, but a handful
of brave disciples remained, standing round the bruised, unconscious
form, ready to lay it tenderly in some hastily dug grave. No previous
mention of disciples has been made. The narrative of Acts does not
profess to be complete, and the argument from its silence is precarious.
Luke shows no disposition to easy belief in miracles. He does not know
that Paul was dead; his medical skill familiarised him with protracted
states of unconsciousness; so all he vouches for is that Paul lay as if
dead on some rubbish heap 'without the camp,' and that, with courage
and persistence which were supernatural, whether his reviving was so or
not, the man thus sorely battered went back to the city, and next day
went on with his work, as if stoning was a trifle not to be taken
account of.
The Apostles turned at Derbe, and coming back on their outward route,
reached Antioch, encouraging the new disciples, who had now to be left
truly like shepherdless sheep among wolves. They did not encourage them
by making light of the dangers waiting them, but they plainly set
before them the law of the Kingdom, which they had seen exemplified in
Paul, that we must suffer if we would reign with the King. That 'we' in
verse 22 is evidently quoted from Paul, and touchingly shows how he
pointed to his own stoning as what they too must be prepared to suffer.
It is a thought frequently recurring in his letters. It remains true in
all ages, though the manner of suffering varies.