_THE FIRST GENTILE CONVERT._
"Now there was a certain man in Cæsarea, Cornelius by name, a
centurion of the band called the Italian band, a devout man, and
one that feared God with all his house, who gave much alms to the
people, and prayed to God alway. He saw in a vision openly, as it
were about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of God coming in
unto him, and saying to him, Cornelius. And he, fastening his
eyes upon him, and being affrighted, said, What is it, Lord? And
he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are gone up for a
memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa, and fetch one
Simon, who is surnamed Peter: he lodgeth with one Simon a tanner,
whose house is by the sea side."--ACTS x. 1-6.
We have now arrived at another crisis in the history of the early
Church of Christ. The Day of Pentecost, the conversion of Saul of
Tarsus, the call of Cornelius, and the foundation of the Gentile
Church of Antioch are, if we are to pick and choose amid the events
related by St. Luke, the turning-points of the earliest ecclesiastical
history. The conversion of St. Paul is placed by St. Luke before the
conversion of Cornelius, and is closely connected with it. Let us then
inquire by what events St. Luke unites the two. German commentators of
the modern school, who are nothing unless they are original, have not
been willing to allow that St. Luke's narrative is continuous. They
have assigned various dates to the conversion of Cornelius. Some have
made it precede the conversion of St. Paul, others have fixed it to
the time of Paul's sojourn in Arabia, and so on, without any other
solid reasons than what their own fancies suggest. I prefer, however,
to think that St. Luke's narrative follows the great broad outlines of
the Christian story, and sets forth the events of the time in a
divinely ordered sequence. At any rate I prefer to follow the course
of events as the narrative suggests them, till I see some good reason
to think otherwise. I do not think that the mere fact that the sacred
writer states events in a certain order is a sufficient reason to
think that the true order must have been quite a different one. Taking
them in this light they yield themselves very naturally to the work of
an expositor. Let us reflect then upon that sequence as here set forth
for us.
Saul of Tarsus went up to Jerusalem to confer with St. Peter, who had
been hitherto the leading spirit of the apostolic conclave. He
laboured in Jerusalem among the Hellenistic synagogues for some
fifteen days. A conspiracy was then formed against his life. The Lord,
ever watchful over His chosen servant, warned him to depart from
Jerusalem, indicating to him as he prayed in the Temple the scope and
sphere of his future work, saying, "Depart: for I will send thee forth
far hence unto the Gentiles" (see Acts xxii. 21). The Christians of
Jerusalem, having learned the designs of his enemies, conveyed Saul to
Cæsarea, the chief Roman port of Palestine, whence they despatched him
to Cilicia, his native province, where he laboured in obscurity and
quietness for some time. St. Peter may have been one of the rescue
party who saved Saul from the hands of his enemies escorting him to
Cæsarea, and this circumstance may have led him to the western
district of the country. At any rate we find him soon after labouring
in Western Palestine at some distance from Jerusalem. Philip the
Evangelist had been over the same ground a short time previously, and
St. Peter may have been sent forth by the mother Church to supervise
his work and confer that formal imposition of hands which from the
beginning has formed the completion of baptism, and seems to have been
reserved to the Apostles or their immediate delegates. Peter's visit
to Western Palestine, to Lydda and Sharon and Joppa, may have been
just like the visit he had paid some time previously, in company with
St. John, to the city of Samaria, when he came for the first time in
contact with Simon Magus. St. Luke gives us here a note of time
helping us to fix approximately the date of the formal admission of
Cornelius and the Gentiles into the Church. He mentions that the
Churches then enjoyed peace and quietness all through Palestine,
enabling St. Peter to go upon his work of preaching and supervision.
It may perhaps strike some persons that this temporary peace must have
been attained through the conversion of Saul, the most active
persecutor. But that event had happened more than two years before, in
the spring of 37 A.D., and, far from diminishing, would probably have
rather intensified the hostility of the Jewish hierarchy. It was now
the autumn of the year 39, and a bitter spirit still lingered at
Jerusalem, as Saul himself and the whole Church had just proved.
External authorities, Jewish and Roman history, here step in to
illustrate and confirm the sacred narrative.
The Emperor Caius Caligula, who ascended the throne of the empire
about the time of Stephen's martyrdom, was a strange character. He was
wholly self-willed, madly impious, utterly careless of human life, as
indeed unregenerate mankind ever is. Christianity alone has taught the
precious value of the individual human soul the awful importance of
human life as the probation time for eternity, and has thereby
ameliorated the harshness of human laws, the sternness of human
rulers, ready to inflict capital punishment on any pretence
whatsoever. Caligula determined to establish the worship of himself
throughout the world. He had no opposition to dread from the pagans,
who were ready to adopt any creed or any cult, no matter how
degrading, which their rulers prescribed. Caligula knew, however, that
the Jews were more obstinate, because they alone were conscious that
they possessed a Divine revelation. He issued orders, therefore, to
Petronius, the Roman governor of Syria, Palestine, and the East, to
erect his statue in Jerusalem and to compel the Jews to offer
sacrifice thereto. Josephus tells us of the opposition which the Jews
offered to Caligula; how they abandoned their agricultural operations
and assembled in thousands at different points, desiring Petronius to
slay them at once, as they could never live if the Divine laws were so
violated. The whole energies of the nation were for months
concentrated on this one object, the repeal of the impious decree of
Caligula, which they at last attained through their own determination
and by the intervention of Herod Agrippa, who was then at Rome.[63]
It was during this awful period of uncertainty and opposition that the
infant Church enjoyed a brief period of repose and quiet growth,
because the whole nation from the high priest to the lowest beggar had
something else to think of than how to persecute a new sect that was
as yet rigorously scrupulous in observing the law of Moses. During
this period of repose from persecution St. Peter made his tour of
inspection "throughout all parts," Samaria, Galilee, Judæa,
terminating with Lydda, where he healed, or at least prayed for the
healing of, Æneas,[64] and with Joppa, where his prayer was followed
by the restoration of Tabitha or Dorcas, who has given a designation
now widely applied to the assistance which devout women can give to
their poorer sisters in Christ.
[63] See the whole story told at length in Josephus,
_Antiquities_, Book XVIII., ch. viii., 8, and in his _Wars_, Book
II., ch. x. This story, which is little known to Bible students,
is most interesting. It fully explains the repose from persecution
which the Church enjoyed at the time of the conversion of
Cornelius and helps us to fix its date. In the year 39 Petronius,
the prefect of Syria, received orders from the Emperor Caligula to
set up his statue as a god in the Temple. He advanced to fulfil
the Emperor's command with two legions and a number of auxiliary
troops, and came as far as Ptolemais, a maritime town of Galilee,
which is mentioned in Acts xxi. 7 as a place where St. Paul
visited a Church, of which we hear nothing else. The Jewish nation
met the prefect there in tens of thousands, entreating him to
desist or else to put them to immediate death. He halted his army
and appointed a further conference at Tiberias, where the people
met him and continued their entreaties for fifty days, though it
was seed-time and a famine might result from their neglect of the
spring operations. Petronius suspended his operations for the
time, and wrote back to the Emperor an account of the Jewish
opposition. Herod Agrippa too, who was then at Rome and in high
favour with the Emperor, lent his assistance, and obtained a
temporary respite for the Jews by a timely and expensive banquet
which he prepared for him. Towards the close of A.D. 40 Caligula,
however, determined to set out and personally compel the obedience
of the Jews. But his assassination in January 41 relieved their
apprehensions, and freed the world from Caligula's mad freaks.
During that period of anxiety, lasting fully a year and a half,
the Jews had neither time nor thought for the new sect, which was
opposed as strongly as themselves to the Emperor's impious
projects and whose members doubtless flung themselves as heartily
into the opposition. The Jews at Alexandria suffered at the same
time a terrible persecution, of which Philo and Josephus tell: see
Mommsen's _Provinces of the Roman Empire_, vol. ii., pp. 190-96
(Dickson's Translation). This is one of those incidental touches
which prove the wonderful accuracy of this book of the Acts. Dr.
Lightfoot has remarked (_Essays on Supernatural Religion_) that no
book of the Bible has so many points of contact with current
history and politics as the Acts, and can therefore be more easily
tested. This special case is an interesting illustration of the
learned bishop's view.
[64] Perhaps it is well to note that this is not the classical
word Æneas, which in Greek would be represented by Αἰνείας,
but a different name with a short _e_, and is written
in Greek Αἰνέασ. The latter is found in Thucydides and
Xenophon: see Meyer _in loco_.
We thus see how God by the secret guidance of His Spirit, shaping his
course by ways and roads known only to Himself, led St. Peter to the
house of Simon the tanner, where he abode many days waiting in
patience to know God's mind and will which were soon to be opened out
to him. We have now traced the line of events which connect the
conversion of Saul of Tarsus with that of Cornelius the centurion of
Cæsarea. Let us apply ourselves to the circumstances surrounding the
latter event, which is of such vital importance to us Gentile
Christians as having been the formal Divine proclamation to the Church
and to the world that the mystery which had been hid for ages was now
made manifest, and that the Gentiles were spiritually on an equality
with the Jews. The Church was now about to burst the bonds which had
restrained it for five years at least. We stand by the birth of
European Christendom and of modern civilisation. It is well, then,
that we should learn and inwardly digest every, even the slightest,
detail concerning such a transcendent and notable crisis. Let us take
them briefly one by one as the sacred narrative reports them.
I. I note, then, in the first place that the _time_ of this conversion
was wisely and providentially chosen. The time was just about eight
years after the Ascension and the foundation of the Church. Time
enough therefore had elapsed for Christianity to take root among the
Jews. This was most important. The gospel was first planted among the
Jews, took form and life and shape, gained its initial impulse and
direction among God's ancient people in order that the constitution,
the discipline, and the worship of the Church might be framed on the
ancient Jewish model and might be built up by men whose minds were
cast in a conservative mould. Not that we have the old law with its
wearisome and burdensome ritual perpetuated in the Christian Church.
That law was a yoke too heavy for man to bear. But, then, the highest
and best elements of the old Jewish system have been perpetuated in
the Church. There was in Judaism by God's own appointment a public
ministry, a threefold public ministry too, exercised by the high
priest, the priests, and the Levites. There is in Christianity a
threefold ministry exercised by bishops, presbyters or elders, and
deacons.[65] There were in Judaism public and consecrated sanctuaries,
fixed liturgies, public reading of God's Word, a service of choral
worship, hymns of joy and thanksgiving, the sacraments of Holy
Communion and baptism in a rudimentary shape; all these were
transferred from the old system that was passing away into the new
system that was taking its place. Had the Gentiles been admitted much
earlier all this might not have so easily happened. Men do not easily
change their habits. Habits, indeed, are chains which rivet
themselves year by year with ever-increasing power round our natures;
and the Jewish converts brought their habits of thought and worship
into the Church of Christ, establishing there those institutions of
prayer and worship, of sacramental communion and preaching which we
still enjoy. But we must observe, on the other hand, that, had the
Gentiles been admitted a little later, the Church might have assumed
too Jewish and Levitical an aspect. This pause of eight years, during
which Jews alone formed the Church, is another instance of those
delays of the Lord[66] which, whether they happen in public or in
private life, are always found in the long run to be wise, blessed,
and providential things, though for a time they may seem dark and
mysterious, according to that ancient strain of the Psalmist, "Wait on
the Lord, ... and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, upon
the Lord."[67]
[65] I do not intend to raise any disputed question as to Church
polity and government in this book, and so I may point out,
without compromising my own views in the least, that even a
Presbyterian may agree in this statement, as he may hold that his
own teaching elder or minister corresponds to the primitive
bishop, his ruling elders to the presbyters, and his own deacons
to the ancient deacons. Presbyterianism claims thus a threefold
ministry as well as Episcopacy.
[66] What a fine subject for historical study the delays of the
Lord would prove. The delay of the Incarnation till the world was
ready is a supreme instance of them. The delay of the triumph of
Christianity, of the break up of the Roman Empire, of the
Reformation so often attempted but never effected till the
invention of printing and the revival of learning,--these and
numerous other illustrations fling light upon the darkness which
still surrounds the Divine methods and dispensations amid which we
live.
[67] This and several other thoughts in this chapter will be found
worked out in a sermon of Bishop Jebb, a well-known preacher of
the last generation who is now almost forgotten. Yet he published
several volumes of sermons and other theological works, which had
no small influence in laying the foundations of the Oxford
movement. His sermons are full of matter, though not composed in a
modern style. This cannot be wondered at when we find from his
well-known correspondence with Alexander Knox that a single sermon
sometimes was the work of several months, if not even years. The
leisurely character of even busy lives in the opening years of
this century is strikingly illustrated by the correspondence
between these learned men. Bishop Jebb preached a sermon in 1804
on the well-known Vincentian rule of faith, "Quod semper, quod
ubique, etc." This sermon he elaborated till 1815, and then
published it. It played no small part in religious controversies
between 1815 and 1840, as a reference to the _Christian Observer_,
the _Christian Examiner_, and other religious periodicals of that
time will show.
II. Again, the _place_ where the Church burst its Jewish shell and
emerged into full gospel freedom is noteworthy. It was at Cæsarea. It
is a great pity that people do not make more use of maps in their
study of Holy Scripture. Sunday evenings are often a dull time in
Christian households, and the bare mechanical reading of Scripture and
of good books often only makes them duller. How much livelier,
interesting, and instructive they would be were an attempt made to
trace the journeys of the apostles with a map, or to study the scenes
where they laboured--Jerusalem, Cæsarea, Damascus, Ephesus, Athens,
and Rome--with some of the helps which modern scholarship and
commercial enterprise now place within easy reach. I can speak thus
with the force of personal experience, for my own keen interest in
this book which I am expounding dates from the Sunday evenings of
boyhood thus spent, though without many of the aids which now lie
within the reach of all. This is essentially the modern method of
study, especially in matters historical. A modern investigator and
explorer of Bible sites and lands has well expressed this truth when
he said, "Topography is the foundation of history. If we are ever to
understand history, we must understand the places where that history
was transacted."[68] The celebrated historians the late Mr. Freeman
and Mr. Green worked a revolution in English historical methods by
teaching people that an indefatigable use of maps and a careful study
of the physical features of any country are absolutely needful for a
true conception of its history. In this respect at least secular
history and sacred history are alike. Without a careful study of the
map we cannot understand God's dealings with the Church of Christ, as
is manifest from the case of Cæsarea at which we have arrived. The
narratives of the Gospels and of the Acts will be confused,
unintelligible, unless we understand that there were two Cæsareas in
Palestine, one never mentioned in the Gospels, the other never
mentioned in the Acts. Cæsarea Philippi was a celebrated city of
North-eastern Palestine. It was when our Lord was within its borders
that St. Peter made his celebrated confession, "Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God," told of in St. Matthew xvi. 13-16. This is
the only Cæsarea of which we hear in the Gospels. It was an inland
town, built by the Herods in joint honour of themselves and of their
patrons the Emperors of Rome, and bore all the traces of its origin.
It was decorated with a splendid pagan temple, was a thoroughly pagan
town, and was therefore abhorred by every true Jew. There was another
Cæsarea, the great Roman port of Palestine and the capital, where the
Roman governors resided. It was situated in the borders of
Phœnicia, in a north-westerly direction from Jerusalem, with which
it was connected by a fine military road.[69] This Cæsarea had been
originally built by Herod the Great. He spent twelve years at this
undertaking, and succeeded in making it a splendid monument of the
magnificence of his conceptions. The seaboard of Palestine is totally
devoid to this day of safe harbours. Herod constructed a harbour at
vast expense. Let us hear the story of its foundation in the very
words of the Jewish historian. Josephus tells us that Herod, observing
"that Joppa and Dora are not fit for havens on account of the
impetuous south winds which beat upon them, which, rolling the sands
which come from the sea against the shores, do not admit of ships
lying in their station; but the merchants are generally there forced
to ride at their anchors in the sea itself. So Herod endeavoured to
rectify this inconvenience, and laid out such a compass toward the
land as might be sufficient for a haven, wherein the great ships might
lie in safety; and this he effected by letting down vast stones of
above fifty feet in length, not less than eighteen in breadth and nine
in depth, into twenty fathoms deep."[70] The Romans, when they took
possession of Palestine, adopted and developed Herod's plans, and
established Cæsarea on the coast as the permanent residence of the
procurator of Palestine. And it was a wise policy. The Romans, like
the English, had a genius for government. They fixed their provincial
capitals upon or near the sea-coast that their communications might be
ever kept open. Thus in our own case Calcutta, Bombay, Madras,
Capetown, Quebec, and Dublin are all seaport towns. And so in ancient
times Antioch, Alexandria, Tarsus, Ephesus, Marseilles, Corinth,
London, were all seaports and provincial Roman capitals as Cæsarea was
in Palestine. And it was a very wise policy. The Jews were a fierce,
bold, determined people when they revolted. If the seat of Roman rule
had been fixed at Jerusalem, a rebellion might completely cut off all
effective relief from the besieged garrison, which would never happen
at Cæsarea so long as the command of the sea was vested in the vast
navies which the Roman State possessed. Cæsarea was to a large extent
a Gentile city, though within some seventy miles of Jerusalem. It had
a considerable Jewish population with their attendant synagogues, but
the most prominent features were pagan temples, one of them serving
for a lighthouse and beacon for the ships which crowded its harbour,
together with a theatre and an amphitheatre, where scenes were daily
enacted from which every sincere Jew must have shrunk with horror.
Such was the place--a most fitting place, Gentile, pagan, idolatrous
to the very core and centre--where God chose to reveal Himself as
Father of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews, and showed Christ's
gospel as a light to lighten the Gentiles as well as the glory of His
people Israel.
[68] See Ramsay's _Historical Geography of Asia Minor_, pp. 51,
52.
[69] The most detailed account of Cæsarea-on-the-Sea, its ruins
and present state, will be found in the _Memoirs_ of the Survey of
Western Palestine, vol. ii., pp. 13-29. It is accompanied with
plans and maps, which show that ancient Roman Cæsarea was ten
times the size of the mediæval city which the Crusaders occupied.
Geikie's _The Holy Land and the Bible_, ch. iv., gives a very
interesting account of the ancient and modern state of Cæsarea.
[70] See Josephus, _Antiquities_, XV. ix. 6; _Wars of Jews_, I.
xxi. Mr. Lewin, in his _Life of St. Paul_, vol. ii., ch. iv.,
spends several pages in an elaborate discussion of the buildings
and plan of Cæsarea, to which it must here suffice to refer.
III. Then, again, the _person_ chosen as the channel of this
revelation is a striking character. He was "Cornelius by name, a
centurion of the band called the Italian band."[71] Here, then, we
note first of all that Cornelius was a Roman soldier. Let us pause
and reflect upon this. In no respect does the New Testament display
more clearly its Divine origin than in the manner in which it rises
superior to mere provincialism. There are no narrow national
prejudices about it like those which nowadays lead Englishmen to
despise other nations, or those which in ancient times led a
thorough-going Jew to look down with sovereign contempt on the Gentile
world as mere dogs and outcasts. The New Testament taught that all men
were equal and were brothers in blood, and thus laid the foundations
of those modern conceptions which have well-nigh swept slavery from
the face of civilised Christendom. The New Testament and its teaching
is the parent of that modern liberalism which now rules every circle,
no matter what its political designation. In no respect does this
universal catholic feeling of the New Testament display itself more
clearly than in the pictures it presents to us of Roman military men.
They are uniformly most favourable. Without one single exception the
pictures drawn for us of every centurion and soldier mentioned in the
books of the New Testament are bright with some element of good
shining out conspicuously by way of favourable contrast, when brought
side by side with the Jewish people, upon whom more abundant and more
blessed privileges had been in vain lavished. Let us just note a few
instances which will illustrate our view. The soldiers sought John's
baptism and humbly received John's penitential advice and direction
when priests and scribes rejected the Lord's messenger (Luke iii. 14).
A soldier and a centurion received Christ's commendation for the
exercise of a faith surpassing in its range and spiritual perception
any faith which the Master had found within the bounds and limits of
Israel according to the flesh. "Verily I have not found so great
faith, no, not in Israel," were Christ's almost wondering words as He
heard the confession of His God-like nature, His Divine power involved
in the centurion's prayer of humility, "I am not worthy that Thou
shouldest come under my roof: but only say the word, and my servant
shall be healed" (cf. Matt. viii. 5-13). So was it again with the
centurion to whom the details of our Lord's execution were committed.
He too is painted in a favourable light. He had an open mind, willing
to receive evidence. He received that evidence under the most
unfavourable conditions. His mind was convinced of our Lord's mission
and character, not by His triumphs, but by His apparent defeat. As the
victim of Jewish malice and prejudice yielded up the ghost and
committed His pure, unspotted soul to the hands of His heavenly
Father, then it was that, struck by the supernatural spirit of love
and gentleness and forgiveness--those great forces of Christianity
which never at any other time or in any other age have had their full
and fair play--the centurion yielded the assent of his affections and
of his intellect to the Divine mission of the suffering Saviour, and
cried, "Truly this man was the Son of God" (Matt. xxvii. 54). So it
was again with Julius the centurion, who courteously entreated St.
Paul on his voyage as a prisoner to Rome (Acts xxvii. 3); and so again
it was with Cornelius the centurion, of the band called the Italian
band.
[71] Cornelius was a centurion of the Italian band. This is
another of the accidental coincidences which attest the
genuineness of the Acts. The Roman army was divided into two broad
divisions, the legions and the auxiliary forces. Now the legions
were never permanently quartered in Palestine till the great war
which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem, which began in A.D.
66 and ended in A.D. 70. A legion was then for the first time
stationed with a fixed camp upon the site of the Holy City: see
Mommsen's _Roman Provinces_, ii. 218. The auxiliary forces were a
kind of militia raised upon the spot. Palestine was made a
province of the second rank in A.D. 6, and from that time to the
year 66 was garrisoned, like all second-rank provinces,
exclusively by auxiliary troops, the headquarters of which were at
Cæsarea. These auxiliaries, recruited amongst the Samaritans and
Syrian Greeks, numbered one ala and five cohorts, about three
thousand men: see Mommsen, _loc. cit._, p. 186. It would not have
been prudent, however, to have a garrison in Palestine exclusively
composed of troops locally recruited, even though restricted to
Samaritans and Syrians, just as no prudent English government
would garrison Ireland with a militia drawn from Ulster Orangemen
alone. The Roman Government therefore mingled with the garrison of
Cæsarea an auxiliary cohort composed of Italians. There were
thirty-two Italian auxiliary cohorts which were thus used as a
salutary precaution against treachery on the part of the local
militia. See, on this interesting point, Marquardt, _L'
Organisation Militaire chez les Romains_, p. 189 (French Edition),
where this learned German writer often quotes the Acts of the
Apostles to illustrate the military arrangements in Palestine
during the first sixty years of the first century. Such was the
military organisation of Palestine from _A.D._ 6 to 66. After that
period Palestine was ruled in the sternest military manner, and
treated like a border province subject to martial law with
legionaries scattered all over it. Now if the Acts were written in
the beginning of the second century, a writer would almost
certainly have missed the correct description of the troops
stationed at Cæsarea as St. Luke gives it in this passage. See
also the article "Exercitus" in the new edition of Smith's
_Dictionary of Roman and Greek Antiquities_; Mommsen, on the Roman
Legions, in _Ephemeris Epigraphica_, vol. v. and Pfitzner,
_Geschichte der Römischen Kaiserlegionen_.
Now how comes this to pass? What a striking evidence of the workings
and presence of the Divine Spirit in the writers of our sacred books
we may find in this fact! The Roman soldiers were of course the
symbols to a patriotic Jew of a hated foreign sway, of an idolatrous
jurisdiction and rule. A Jew uninfluenced by supernatural grace and
unguided by Divine inspiration would never have drawn such pictures of
Roman centurions as the New Testament has handed down to us. The
pictures, indeed, drawn by the opposition press of any country is not
generally a favourable one when dealing with the persons and officials
of the dominant party. But the apostles--Jews though they were of
narrow, provincial, prejudiced Galilee--had drunk deep of the spirit
of the new religion. They recognised that Jesus Christ, the King of
the kingdom of heaven, cared nothing about what form of government
men lived under. They knew that Christ ignored all differences of
climate, age, sex, nationality, or employment. They felt that the only
distinctions recognised in Christ's kingdom were spiritual
distinctions, and therefore they recognised the soul of goodness
wherever found. They welcomed the honest and true heart, no matter
beneath what skin it beat, and found therefore in many of these Roman
soldiers some of the ablest, the most devoted, and the most effective
servants and teachers of the Cross of Jesus Christ. Verily the
universal and catholic principles of the new religion which found
their first formal proclamation in the age of Cornelius met with an
ample vindication and a full reward in the trophies won and the
converts gained from such an unpromising source as the ranks of the
Roman army. This seems to me one reason for the favourable notices of
the Roman soldiers in the New Testament. The Divine Spirit wished to
impress upon mankind that birth, position, or employment have no
influence upon a man's state in God's sight, and to prove by a number
of typical examples that spiritual conditions and excellence alone
avail to find favour with the Almighty.
Another reason, however, may be found for this fact. The Scriptures
never make light of discipline or training. "Train up a child in the
way he should go" is a Divine precept. St. Paul, in his Pastoral
Epistles, lays down as one great qualification for a bishop that he
should have this power of exercising discipline and rule at home as
well as abroad: "For if he knoweth not how to rule his own house, how
shall he take care of the Church of God?" (1 Tim. iii. 5). By
discipline, the discipline of Egypt and the wilderness, did God
prepare His people for Canaan. By the discipline of captivity and
dispersion, by the discipline of Greek philosophy spreading novel
intellectual ideas, by the discipline of Roman dominion executing
mighty public works, carrying roads and intercommunication to the
remotest and most barbarous nations, did God prepare the world for the
revelation of His Son. By the discipline of life, by joy and sorrow,
by strife and suffering, by parting and by loss, does God still
prepare His faithful ones for the beatific vision of eternal beauty,
for the rest and joy of everlasting peace. And discipline worked out
its usual results on these military men, even though it was only an
imperfect and pagan discipline which these Roman soldiers received.
Let us note carefully how this was. The world of unregenerate man at
the time of our Lord's appearance had become utterly selfish.
Discipline of every kind had been flung off. Self-restraint was
practically unknown, and the devil and his works flourished in every
circle, bringing forth the fruits of wickedness, uncleanness, and
impurity in every direction. The army was the only place or region
where in those times any kind of discipline or self-restraint was
practised. For no army can permit--even if it be an army of
atheists--profligacy and drunkenness to rage, flaunting themselves
beneath the very eye of the sun. And as the spiritual result we find
that this small measure of pagan discipline acted as a preparation for
Christianity, and became under the Divine guidance the means of
fitting men like Cornelius of Cæsarea for the reception of the gospel
message of purity and peace.[72]
[72] "The Roman camps were also the best training-schools for the
old-fashioned virtues of faithfulness, straightforwardness, and
hardihood; and in them were to be found the best types of the old
Roman character, which, as moralists complained, were to be found
elsewhere no more. If the funds of a country town had fallen into
disorder, or uprightness was needed for a special post, the
curator chosen by the Government was often an old soldier, who had
long been tried and trusted; and early Christian history throws,
incidentally, a favourable light upon the moral qualities of the
Roman officer. These qualities were mainly formed by thoroughness
of work and discipline."--W. W. CAPES, _The Early Empire_, p.
210.
But we observe that Cornelius the centurion had one special feature
which made him peculiarly fitted to be God's instrument for opening
the Christian faith to the Gentile world. The choice of Cornelius is
marked by all that skill and prudence, that careful adaptation of
means to ends which the Divine workmanship, whether in nature or in
grace, ever displays. There were many Roman centurions stationed at
Cæsarea, yet none was chosen save Cornelius, and that because he was
"a devout man who feared God with all his house, praying to God
always, and giving much alms to the people." He feared Jehovah, he
fasted, prayed, observed Jewish hours of devotion. His habits were
much more those of a devout Jew than of a pagan soldier. He was
popular with the Jewish people therefore, like another centurion of
whom it was said by the Jewish officials themselves "he loveth our
nation and hath built us a synagogue." The selection of Cornelius as
the leader and firstfruits of the Gentiles unto God was eminently
prudent and wise. God when He is working out His plans chooses His
instruments carefully and skilfully. He leaves nothing to chance. He
does nothing imperfectly. Work done by God will repay the keenest
scrutiny, the closest study, for it is the model of what every man's
work in life ought as far as possible to be--earnest, wise, complete,
perfect.
IV. Again, looking at the whole passage we perceive therein
illustrations of two important laws of the Divine life. We recognise
in the case of Cornelius the working of that great principle of the
kingdom of God often enunciated by the great Master: "To him that hath
shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly," "If any man will
do His will, he shall know of the doctrine"; or, to put it in other
language, that God always bestows more grace upon the man who
diligently uses and improves the grace which he already possesses; a
principle which indeed we see constantly exemplified in things
pertaining to this world as well as in matters belonging to the
spiritual life. Thus it was with Cornelius. He was what was called
among the Jews a proselyte of the gate. These proselytes were very
numerous. They were a kind of fringe hanging upon the outskirts of the
Jewish people. They were admirers of Jewish ideas, doctrines, and
practices, but they were not incorporated with the Jewish nation nor
bound by all their laws and ceremonial restraints. The Levitical Law
was not imposed upon them because they were not circumcised. They were
merely bound to worship the true God and observe certain moral
precepts said to have been delivered to Noah.[73] Such was Cornelius
whom the providence of God had led from Italy to Cæsarea for this very
purpose, to fulfil His purposes of mercy towards the Gentile world.
His residence there had taught him the truth and beauty of the pure
worship of Jehovah rendered by the Jews. He had learned too, not only
that God is, but that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek
Him. Cornelius had set himself, therefore, to the diligent discharge
of all the duties of religion so far as he knew them. He was earnest
and diligent in prayer, for he recognised himself as dependent upon an
invisible God. He was liberal in alms, for he desired to show forth
his gratitude, for mercies daily received. And acting thus he met with
the divinely appointed reward. Cornelius is favoured with a fuller
revelation and a clearer guidance by the angel's mouth, who tells him
to send and summon Peter from Joppa for this very purpose. What an
eminently practical lesson we may learn from God's dealings with this
earliest Gentile convert! We learn from the Divine dealings with
Cornelius that whosoever diligently improves the lower spiritual
advantages which he possesses shall soon be admitted to higher and
fuller blessings.
[73] See the article on "Proselytes" in Schaft's _Encyclopædia of
Theology_.
It may well have been that God led him through successive stages and
rewarded him under each. In distant Italy, when residing amid the
abounding superstitions of that country, conscience was the only
preacher, but there the sermons of that monitor were heard with
reverence and obeyed with diligence. Then God ordered the course of
his life so that public duty summoned him to a distant land. Cornelius
may have at the time counted his lot a hard one when despatched to
Palestine as a centurion, for it was a province where, from the nature
of the warfare there prevalent, there were abundant opportunities of
death by assassination at the hands of the Zealots, and but few
opportunities of distinction such as might be gained in border warfare
with foreign enemies. But the Lord was shaping his career, as He
shapes all our careers, with reference to our highest spiritual
purposes. He led Cornelius, therefore, to a land and to a town where
the pure worship of Jehovah was practised and the elevated morality
of Judaism prevailed. Here, then, were new opportunities placed within
the centurion's reach. And again the same spiritual diligence is
displayed, and again the same law of spiritual development and
enlarging blessing finds a place. Cornelius is devout and liberal and
God-fearing, and therefore a heavenly visitor directs his way to still
fuller light and grander revelations, and Cornelius the centurion of
the Italian band leads the Gentile hosts into the fulness of blessing,
the true land flowing with milk and honey, found only in the
dispensation of Jesus Christ and within the borders of the Church of
God. This was God's course of dealing with the Roman centurion, and it
is the course which the same loving dealings still pursues with human
souls truly desirous of Divine guidance. The Lord imparts one degree
of light and knowledge and grace, but withholds higher degrees till
full use has been made of the lower. He speaks to us at first in a
whisper; but if we reverently hearken, there is a gradual deepening of
the voice, till it is as audible in the crowd as it is in the
solitude, and we are continually visited with the messages of the
Eternal King.
Now cannot these ideas be easily applied to our own individual cases?
A young man, for instance, may be troubled with doubts and questions
concerning certain portions of the Christian faith. Some persons make
such doubts an excuse for plunging into scenes of riot and
dissipation, quenching the light which God has given them and making
certain their own spiritual destruction. The case of Cornelius points
out the true course which should in such a case be adopted. Men may be
troubled with doubts concerning certain doctrines of revelation. But
they have no doubt as to the dictates of conscience and the light
which natural religion sheds upon the paths of morals and of life.
Let them then use the light they have. Let them diligently practise
the will of God as it has been revealed. Let them be earnest in
prayer, pure and reverent in life, honest and upright in business, and
then in God's own time the doubts will vanish, the darkness will clear
away, and the ancient promises will be fulfilled, "Light is sown for
the righteous," "The path of the just shineth more and more unto the
perfect day," "In the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway
thereof there is no death."
But the example of Cornelius is of still wider application. The
position of Cornelius was not a favourable one for the development of
the religious life, and yet he rose superior to all its difficulties,
and became thus an eminent example to all believers. Men may complain
that they have but few spiritual advantages, and that their station in
life is thickly strewn with difficulties, hindering the practices and
duties of religion. To such persons we would say, compare yourselves
with Cornelius and the difficulties external and internal he had to
overcome. Servants, for instance, may labour under great apparent
disadvantages. Perhaps, if living in an irreligious family, they have
few opportunities for prayer, public or private. Men of business are
compelled to spend days and nights in the management of their affairs.
Persons of commanding intellect or of high station have their own
disadvantages, their own peculiar temptations, growing out of their
very prosperity. The case of Cornelius shows that each class can rise
superior to their peculiar difficulties and grow in the hidden life of
the soul, if they but imitate his example as he grew from grace to
grace, improving his scanty store till it grew into a fuller and
ampler one, till it expanded into all the glory of Christian
privilege, when Cornelius, like Peter, was enabled to rejoice in the
knowledge and love of a risen and glorified Redeemer.[74]
[74] I owe a great many of the devout thoughts dealing with the
latter portion of this subject to a volume of sermons preached by
the celebrated Golden Lecturer, the eloquent Henry Melville,
styled _Voices of the Christian Year_. Melville is now as a
preacher quite forgotten, and yet he deserves to be gratefully
remembered, for he was the first of the old Evangelical school to
break through the traditional repetition of commonplaces which
formed the main part of the preaching of the leading popular
orators of fifty years ago. From a preacher's point of view his
sermons will still repay study. His sermons, for instance, on the
less known characters of Scripture, will teach a young divine how
to extract edification and instruction out of most unpromising
materials, and to apply the essential principles of the Bible to
the changed circumstances of modern life. And assuredly this is
the real object of a pastor's preaching in a Christian
congregation, not the mere repetition of the first elements of
Christianity, but an application of its great principles, first
proclaimed in the language of the East, to the actions and lives
of the men of the West. Preaching of that kind need never be dull
and uninteresting.