_ST. PAUL IN MACEDONIA._
"The jailor called for lights, and sprang in, and, trembling for
fear, fell down before Paul and Silas, and said, Sirs, what must
I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus, and
thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house"--ACTS xvi. 29-31.
"When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came
to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: and Paul, as
his custom was, went in unto them, and for three Sabbath days
reasoned with them from the Scriptures.... And the brethren
immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night into Berœa: who
when they were come thither went into the synagogue of the
Jews."--ACTS xvii. 1, 2, 10.
Troas was at this time the termination of St. Paul's Asiatic travels.
He had passed diagonally right through Asia Minor, following the great
Roman roads which determined his line of march. From Troas he
proceeded to Philippi, and for exactly the same reason. All the great
roads formed under the emperors down to the time of Constantine the
Great led to Rome. When the seat of empire was moved to
Constantinople, all the Asiatic roads converged upon that city; but in
St. Paul's day Rome was the world's centre of attraction, and thither
the highways all tended. This fact explains St. Paul's movements. The
Egnatian Road was one of the great channels of communication
established for State purposes by Rome, and this road ran from
Neapolis, where St. Paul landed, through Philippi on to Dyrrachium, a
port on the Adriatic, whence the traveller took ship to Brundusium,
the modern Brindisi, and thence reached Rome. What a striking
commentary we find in this simple fact upon the words of St. Paul in
Galatians iv. 4: "When the fulness of the time came God sent forth His
Son." Roman dominion involved much suffering and war and bloodshed,
but it secured the network of communication, the internal peace, and
the steady, regular government which now covered Europe as well as
Asia, and thus for the first time in the world's history rendered the
diffusion of the gospel possible, as St. Paul's example here shows.
The voyage from Troas to Neapolis was taken by the Apostle after the
usual fashion of the time.[142] Neapolis was the port of Philippi,
whence it is distant some eight miles. Travellers from the East to
Rome always landed there, and then took the Egnatian Road which
started from Neapolis. If they were official persons they could use
the public postal service, post-houses being established at a distance
of six miles from one another, where relays of horses were kept at the
public expense, to carry persons travelling on the imperial
service.[143] Paul and Silas, Timothy and Luke, must, however, have
travelled on foot along the Egnatian Road from Neapolis to Philippi,
which was their first objective point, according to St. Paul's usual
policy, of attacking large and important centres of population, and
then leaving the sacred leaven to work out into the surrounding mass
of paganism. Philippi amply rewarded the wisdom of his plan, and the
Philippian Church became notable for its zeal, its faith, its
activity, among the Churches which owed their origin to the Apostle,
as we learn from the Epistles addressed to the Corinthians and to the
Philippians themselves a short time after the foundation of the
Philippian Church.
[142] Both Lewin and Conybeare and Howson in their _Lives of St.
Paul_ enter into great details about the scenery and other
circumstances of St. Paul's voyage from Troas to Neapolis, which
would be out of place in this commentary, even if space did allow
their insertion. Mr. Lewin's account is specially interesting, as
he gives the impressions made upon himself when going over the
ground. These writers all point out that St. Paul must have
travelled with a fair wind; Conybeare and Howson even try to
determine its exact direction, which they maintain was from the
southward. Otherwise he could not have made the passage in two
days, or followed the course actually taken. On a subsequent
occasion (Acts xx. 6) St. Paul took five days in sailing from
Philippi to Troas.
[143] Posts for the conveyance of intelligence were established by
Augustus (see Suetonius, _Aug._, 49). Gibbon, in the second
chapter of his _History_, has much information on this point. The
reader curious in such matters will find a learned account of the
Roman postal service in Godefroy's _Commentary on the Theodosian
Code_, vol. ii., p. 526, where he traces the system down from
Augustus to the year 400 A.D. It was somewhat similar to that
which now prevails in Russia. An interesting story is told
concerning Constantine the Great, which illustrates the system.
During the Diocletian persecution Constantine, whose leanings
towards Christianity were suspected, was residing in Asia Minor
with the Emperor Galerius, the determined enemy of Christianity.
Constantine knew that there was a plot against him, so, having
obtained the authority necessary to use the post, he fled secretly
one night, and as he rode along took fresh horses, and at the same
time brought the tired animals with him. When his enemies followed
him next day, they found the post stables empty, and their prey
escaped without any possibility of pursuit. See _Dict. Christ.
Biog._, vol. i., p. 526, Art. Constantinus I., and De Broglie,
_L'Église et L'Empire_, vol. i., p. 192.
Now let us look at the circumstances under which that foundation was
laid. To understand them we must go back upon the course of history.
Philippi was a city built by King Philip, the father of Alexander the
Great. After the conquest of Macedonia by the Romans, it became famous
as the scene of the great battle between Brutus and Cassius on the one
hand, and Mark Antony and Augustus on the other, which decided the
fate of the empire and influenced the course of the world's history as
few other battles have done. At the time of St. Paul's visit the
memory of that battle was fresh, and the outward and visible signs
thereof were to be seen on every side, as indeed some of them are
still to be seen, the triumphal arches, for instance, erected in
memory of the victory and the mound or rampart of earth raised by
Brutus to hinder the advance of the opposing forces.[144] But these
things had for the holy travellers a very slight interest, as their
hearts were set upon a mightier conflict and a nobler war far than any
ever before waged upon earth's surface. There is no mention made in
the sacred narrative of the memories connected with the place, and yet
St. Luke, as an honest writer setting down facts of which he had
formed an important part, lets slip some expressions which involve and
throw us back upon the history of the place for an explanation,
showing how impossible it is to grasp the full force and meaning of
the sacred writers unless we strive to read the Bible with the eyes of
the people who lived at the time and for whom it was written. St. Luke
calls Philippi "a city of Macedonia, the first of the district, a
colony." Now this means that in that time it was situated in the Roman
province of Macedonia, that it was either the capital of the division
of Macedonia, in which it was situated, Macedonia being subdivided
into four distinct divisions which were kept perfectly separate, or
else that it was the first city the traveller met upon entering
Macedonia from Asia, and further that it was a Roman colony, and thus
possessed peculiar privileges. When we read in the Bible of colonies
we must not understand the word in our modern sense. Colonies were
then simply transcripts of the original city whence they had come.
Roman colonies were miniatures or copies of Rome itself transplanted
into the provinces, and ruling as such amid the conquered races where
they were placed. They served a twofold purpose. They acted as
garrisons to restrain the turbulence of the neighbouring tribes; and
if we study Roman geography carefully we shall find that they were
always placed in neighbourhoods where their military importance is
plainly manifest; and further still, they were used as convenient
places to locate the veteran soldiers of Italy who had served their
time, where they were rewarded with grants of land, and were utilising
at the same time the skill and experience in military matters which
they had gained, for the general benefit of the State.
[144] The remains of this rampart still exist. They are described
in the _Mission Archéologique de Macédoine_, p. 103, carried out
under the direction of M. Leon Heuzey, by order of Napoleon III.,
and published at Paris between 1864 and 1876.
Augustus made Philippi into a colony, erecting a triumphal arch to
celebrate his victory over Brutus, and placing there a large
settlement of his veterans who secured for him this important outpost.
The colonies which were thus dispersed along the military frontier, as
we should put it in modern language, were specially privileged. All
the settlers were Roman citizens, and the government of the colony was
like that of the mother city itself, in the hands of two magistrates,
called in Greek Strategoi, or in Latin Prætors,[145] who ruled
according to the laws of the Twelve Tables and after Roman methods,
though perhaps all the neighbouring cities were still using their
ancient laws and customs handed down from times long prior to the
Roman Conquest. The details given us by St. Luke are in the strictest
accordance in all these respects with the facts which we know
independently concerning the history and political status of Philippi.
[145] The proper official title of the highest magistrates of a
colony was Duumviri. The colonies where a Greek spirit prevailed
did not like this title, and called themselves Prætors, or
Στρατηγοί, as in the case of Philippi. In exact accordance with
St. Luke's usage Cicero, a century earlier, tells us in one of his
Epistles, speaking of the vanity of Capua, which was thoroughly
Greek in spirit, and therefore very vain: "While in other colonies
the magistrates are called Duumviri, these wish themselves to be
styled Prætors," a weakness laughed at in Horace's _Satires_, lib.
i., v. 34-6. Dion Chrysostom, a Greek rhetorician of St. Paul's
day, mocks the Greeks for the same flashy spirit.
St. Paul and his companions arrived in Philippi in the early part of
the week. He was by this time a thoroughly experienced traveller. Five
years later, when writing his Second Epistle to Corinth, he tells us
that he had been already three times shipwrecked; so that, unless
peculiarly unfortunate, he must have already made extended and
repeated sea voyages, though up to the present we have only heard of
the journeys from Antioch to Cyprus, from Cyprus to Perga, and from
Attaleia back to Antioch.[146] A two days' voyage across the fresh and
rolling waters of the Mediterranean, following by a steep climb over
Mountain Pangæus which intervenes between Philippi and its port
Neapolis, made, however, a rest of a day or two very acceptable to the
Apostle and his friends. St. Paul never expected too much from his own
body, or from the bodies of his companions; and though he knew the
work of a world's salvation was pressing, yet he could take and enjoy
a well-earned holiday from time to time. There was nothing in St. Paul
of that eternal fussiness which we at times see in people of strong
imaginations but weak self-control, who, realising the awful amount of
woe and wickedness in the world, can never be at rest even for a
little. The men of God remained quiet therefore (ch. xvi. 12, 13) till
the Sabbath Day, when, after their usual custom, they sought out in
the early morning the Jewish place of worship, where St. Paul always
first proclaimed the gospel. The Jewish colony resident at Philippi
must have been a very small one. The Rabbinical rule was that where
ten wise men existed there a synagogue might be established.[147]
There cannot therefore have been ten learned, respectable, and
substantial Jews in Philippi competent to act as a local sanhedrin or
court. Where, however, the Jews could not establish a synagogue, they
did not live without any external expression of religion. They knew
how easily neglect of public worship is followed by practical atheism,
as we often see. Men may say indeed that God can be realised, and can
be worshipped anywhere,--a very great truth and a very precious one
for those who are unavoidably cut off from the public worship of the
Most High; but a truth which has no application to those who wilfully
cut themselves off from that worship which has the covenanted promise
of His presence. It is not a good sign for the young men of this
generation that so many of them utterly neglect public worship; for as
surely as men act so, then present neglect will be followed by a total
forgetfulness of the Eternal, and by a disregard of the laws which He
has established amongst men. The Jews at Philippi did not follow this
example; when they could not establish a synagogue they set apart an
oratory or Place of Prayer, whither they resorted on the Sabbath Day
to honour the God of their fathers, and to keep alive in their
children's hearts the memory of His laws and doings.[148]
[146] The common pronunciation of Attaleia, or as it is spelt in
the Authorised Version, Attalia, is with the ι short. The
"i" represents, however, the Greek diphthong ει, and is
long.
[147] See Dr. John Lightfoot's _Horæ Hebraicæ_ on Matt. iv. 23;
Works (London, 1684), vol. ii., pp. 132-34, for the Rabbinical
legislation on Synagogues and their erection.
[148] A local illustration of this typical Church history occurs
to me. Oliver Cromwell planted Ireland, especially the golden vale
of Tipperary, with his Puritan soldiers. They were strong
Nonconformists, and refused therefore after the Restoration to
worship according to the forms of the Established Church. Their
children after a generation or two almost universally fell into
the arms of the Church of Rome, and now many of the leading
members of the National League are Roman Catholic descendants of
Cromwell's Puritans, and display still the same vigorous qualities
which adorned their Protestant ancestors in the copious abuse they
pour upon the memory of the men from whom they are descended.
The original name of Philippi was Crenides, or Place of Streams.[149]
Beside one of these streams the Jews had placed their oratory, and
there St. Paul preached his first sermon in Europe and gained Lydia,
his first European convert, a Jewess by blood, a woman of Thyatira in
Asia Minor by birth, of Philippi in Macedonia by residence, and a dyer
in purple by trade.[150] The congregation of women assembled at that
oratory must have been a very small one. When Philippi did not afford
a sufficient Jewish population for the erection of a synagogue such as
was found among the smaller towns of Asia Minor, and such as we shall
in the course of the present tour find to have existed at towns and
cities of no great size in Greece and Macedonia, then we may be sure
that the female population, who assembled that Sabbath morning to pray
and listen to the Scriptures, must have been a small one. But St. Paul
and his companions had learned already one great secret of the true
evangelist's life. They never despised a congregation because of its
smallness. I have read somewhere in the writings of St. Francis de
Sales, Bishop of Geneva, a remark bearing on this point. De Sales was
an extreme Roman Catholic, and his mind was injured and his mental
views perverted in many respects by the peculiar training he thus
received. But still he was in many respects a very saintly man, and
his writings embody much that is good for every one. In one of his
letters which I have read he deals with this very point, and speaks of
the importance of small congregations, first, because they have no
tendency to feed the preacher's pride, but rather help to keep him
humble; and secondly, because some of the most effective and fruitful
sermons have been preached to extremely small congregations, two or
three persons at most, some one of whom has afterwards turned out to
be a most vigorous soldier of the Cross of Christ. The most effective
sermon perhaps that ever was preached was that delivered to Saul of
Tarsus when to him alone came the voice, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest
thou Me?" And here again, in the Philippian Oratory, the congregation
was but a small one, yet the Apostle despised it not. He and his
companions bent all their powers to the work, threw their whole hearts
into it, and as the result the Lord rewarded their earnest, thorough,
faithful service as He rewards such service in every department of
life's action. The Lord opened the heart of Lydia so that she attended
to the apostolic teaching, and she and all her household when duly
instructed became baptized disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.
[149] I am here reminded of a place with exactly the same name
which became as famous in the history of the Celtic Church as
Philippi did in that of the Macedonian Church. Fore, in the county
of Westmeath, means Place or Valley of Streams. It was celebrated
in the seventh century as a great missionary establishment, at the
head of which stood St. Fechin, a primitive Celtic missionary. His
oratory, cell, and ancient church are still to be seen. I have
described them in a paper contributed to the Journal of the
Society of Irish Antiquaries for this year (1892). A comparison of
St. Paul's missionary methods with those of St. Fechin would be
interesting. They are fully described in Colgan's _Acts of the
Irish Saints_.
[150] The guild of dyers at Thyatira is celebrated in the
inscriptions belonging to that city found in Bœckh's _Corpus
Inscriptionum Græcarum_.
This was an important incident in the history of the Philippian
Church, and was attended by far-reaching results. Lydia herself, like
so many others of God's most eminent saints, disappears at once and
for ever from the scene. But her conversion was a fruitful one. St.
Paul and his friends continued quietly but regularly working and
teaching at the oratory. Lydia would seem to have been a widow, and
must have been a woman of some position in the little community; for
she was able to entertain the Apostle and his company as soon as she
embraced the faith and felt its exceeding preciousness. When inviting
them, too, she uses the language of a woman independent of all other
control. "If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into
my house and abide there," are words with the tone of one who as a
widow owned no superior, and whose will was law within her own
household; as well as the language of a woman who felt that the gospel
she had embraced demanded and deserved the consecration to its service
of all her worldly possessions. Previously to this conversion St. Paul
had lived in hired lodgings, but now he moved to Lydia's residence,
abiding there, and thence regularly worshipping at the Jewish oratory.
The presence of these Jewish strangers soon attracted attention. Their
teaching too got noised abroad, exaggerated doubtless and distorted
after the manner of popular reports. And the crowd were ready to be
suspicious of all Eastern foreigners. The settlers in the colony of
Philippi belonged to the rural population of Italy, who, after the
manner of countrified folk of every generation, were a good way
behind, for good or ill, their city brethren. The excavations made at
Philippi have brought to light the fact that the colonists there were
worshippers of the primitive Italian rustic gods, specially of the god
Silvanus, eschewing the fashionable Greek deities, Jupiter, Juno,
Venus, Diana, Apollo, and such like. A temple of Silvanus was erected
at Philippi for the hardy Italian veterans, and numerous inscriptions
have been found and have been duly described by the French Mission in
Macedonia to which we have already referred, telling of the building
of the temple and of the persons who contributed towards it.[151]
These simple Western soldiers were easily prejudiced against the
Eastern strangers by reports spread concerning their doctrines, and
specially concerning the Jewish King, of whose kingdom they were the
heralds. Political considerations were at once raised. We can scarcely
now realise the suspicions which must have been roused against the
early preachers of Christianity by the very language they used. Their
sacramental language concerning the body and blood of Christ, the
language of Christian love and union which they used, designating
themselves brethren and sisters, caused for more than two centuries
the dissemination of the most frightful rumours concerning the
horrible nature of Christian love-feasts. They were accused of
cannibalism and of the most degraded and immoral practices; and when
we take up the Apologists of the second century, Justin Martyr and
such like, we shall find that the efforts of these men are largely
directed to the refutation of such dreadful charges.[152] And as it
was in morals so was it too in politics. The sacred and religious
language of the Christians caused them to be suspected of designs
hostile to the Roman Government. The apostles preached about a King
who ruled the kingdom of God. Now the Romans abhorred the very name
and title of king, which they associated with the cruel acts of the
early tyrants who reigned in the times of Rome's fabulous antiquity.
The hostility to the title was so great that, though the Roman people
endured a despotism much worse and crushing at the hands of the
Cæsars, they never would allow them to assume the title of kings, but
simply called them emperors, imperators or commanders of the army, a
name which to their ears connoted nothing savouring of the kingly
office, though for moderns the title of emperor expresses the kingly
office and much more. The colonists in Philippi, being Italians, would
feel these prejudices in their full force. Easterns indeed would have
had no objection to the title of king, as we see from the cry raised
by the mob of Jerusalem when they cried in reference to Christ's
claim, "We have no king but Cæsar." But the rough and rude Roman
veterans, when they heard vague reports of St. Paul's teaching to the
Jews who met at the oratory by the river-side, quite naturally mistook
the nature of his doctrine, and thought that he was simply a political
agitator organising a revolt against imperial authority.[153] An
incident which then occurred fanned the slumbering embers into a
flame. There was a female slave the property of some crafty men who by
her means traded on the simplicity of the colonists. She was possessed
with a spirit of divination. What the nature of this spirit was we
have not the means of now determining. Some would resolve it into mere
epilepsy, but such an explanation is not consistent with St. Paul's
action and words. He addressed the spirit, "I charge thee in the name
of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And the spirit, we are told, came
out that very hour. The simple fact is that psychology is at the best
a very obscure science, and the mysteries of the soul a very puzzling
region, even under the Christian Dispensation and surrounded by the
spiritual blessings of the kingdom of God. But paganism was the
kingdom of Satan, where he ruled with a power and freedom he no longer
enjoys, and we can form no conception of the frightful disturbances
Satanic agency may have raised amid the dark places of the human
spirit. Without attempting explanations therefore, which must be
insufficient, I am content to accept the statement of the sacred
writer, who was an eye-witness of the cure, that the spirit of
divination, the spirit of Python, as the original puts it, yielded
obedience to the invocation of the sacred Name which is above every
name, leaving the damsel's inner nature once more calm and at union
within itself. This was the signal for a riot. The slave owners
recognised that their hopes of gain had fled. They were not willing to
confess that these despised Jews possessed a power transcending far
that which dwelt in the human instrument who had served their covetous
purposes. They may have heard, it may be, of the tumults excited about
this same time by the Jews at Rome and of their expulsion from the
capital by the decree of the Emperor, so the owners of the slave-girl
and the mob of the city dragged the Apostles before the local Duumvirs
and accused them of like disturbances: "These men, being Jews, do
exceedingly trouble our city, and set forth customs which it is not
lawful for us to receive or to observe, being Romans." The accusation
was sufficient. No proof was demanded, no time for protest allowed.
The magistrates with their own hands dragged the clothes off the backs
of the Apostles, and they were flogged at once by the lictors or
sergeants, as our translation calls them, in attendance upon the
Duumvirs, who then despatched their victims to the common prison.
Here a question may be raised, Why did not St. Paul save himself by
protesting that he was a Roman citizen, as he did subsequently at
Jerusalem when he was about to be similarly treated? Several
explanations occur. The colonists were Italians and spoke Latin. St.
Paul spoke Hebrew and Greek, and though he may have known Latin too,
his Latin may not have been understood by these rough Roman soldiers.
The mob again was excited, and when a mob gets excited it is but very
little its members attend to an unfortunate prisoner's words. We know
too, not only from St. Paul's own words, but from the testimony of
Cicero himself, in his celebrated oration against Verres, that in
remote districts this claim was often disregarded, even when urged by
Italians, and much more when made by despised Jews. St. Paul tells us
in 2 Cor. xi. 25, that he received three Roman floggings
notwithstanding his Roman citizenship, and though the Philippian
magistrates were afraid when they heard next day of the illegal
violence of which they had been guilty, the mob, who could not be held
accountable, probably took right good care that St. Paul's protest
never reached the official ears to which it was addressed. These
considerations sufficiently account for the omission of any notice of
a protest on the Apostle's part. He simply had not the opportunity,
and then when the tumultuous scene was over Paul and Silas were
hurried off to the common dungeon, where they were secured in the
stocks and thrust into the innermost prison as notorious and
scandalous offenders.
[151] See Leon Heuzey's _Mission Archéologique de Macédoine_, p.
71 (Paris, 1864-76). One tablet found furnishes a list of
benefactions. One man gives a bronze statue of the deity, another
helps to roof the building. Another tablet gives a list of the
officials of the temple worship. Curiously enough among these
officials occur names well known to us from St. Paul's Epistles,
as Crescens, Secundus, Trophimus, Aristarchus, Pudens, Urbanus,
and Clemens: cf. the Philippian inscriptions in the _Corpus
Inscriptionum Latinarum_, vol. iii., par. i., pp. 120-28. Among
these rude Italian veterans, unspoilt by the glitter and vices of
Greek idolatry and civilisation, the Cross may have found out many
true soldiers of Jesus Christ: see Lewin's _St. Paul_, vol. i., p.
210. It is interesting to notice that a similar set of tablets
commemorating the benefactors of the temple of Diana at Ephesus
was discovered in the excavations made twenty years ago at that
place. The inscriptions are translated in the Appendix to Wood's
_Ephesus_.
[152] See, for instance, Justin Martyr's _First Apology_, ch.
xxix., _Second Apology_, ch. xii., and Athenagoras' _Apology_,
chs. xxxi.-xxxv. These passages will be found in Justin Martyr and
Athenagoras as translated in T. & T. Clark's Ante-Nicene Series,
pp. 32, 81, 415-19.
[153] This political prejudice against Christianity lasted into
the second century: see the _First Apology_ of Justin Martyr, ch.
xi.: "When you hear that we look for a kingdom, you suppose,
without making any inquiry, that we speak of a human kingdom;
whereas we speak of that which is with God, as appears also from
the confession of their faith made by those who are charged with
being Christians, though they know that death is the punishment
awarded to him who so confesses"; words which imply that in
Justin's day many had been martyred on mere political accusations.
No ill-treatment could, however, destroy that secret source of joy and
peace which St. Paul possessed in his loved Master's conscious
presence. "I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in
necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake," is his
own triumphant expression when looking back a few years later over the
way by which the Lord had led him, and therefore at midnight the
astonished prisoners heard the inner dungeon ringing with unwonted
songs of praise raised by the Jewish strangers. An earthquake, too,
lent its terrors to the strange scene, shaking the prison to its
foundations and loosing the staples to which the prisoners' chains
were fastened. The jailor, roused from sleep, and seeing the prison
doors opened wide, would have committed suicide were it not for Paul's
restraining and authoritative voice; and then the astonished official,
who must have heard the strange rumours to which the words of the
demoniac alluded--"These men are the servants of the Most High God,
which proclaim unto you the way of salvation"--rushed into the
presence of the Apostles crying out in words which have ever since
been famous, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" to which the equally
famous answer was given, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be
saved, thou and thy house." The jailor then took the Apostles, bathed
their bruised bodies, set food before them, gathered his household to
listen to the glad tidings, which they received so rapidly and grasped
so thoroughly that they were at once baptized and enabled to rejoice
with that deep spiritual joy which an experimental knowledge of God
always confers. The jailor, feeling for the first time in his life the
peace which passeth all understanding, realised the truth which St.
Augustine afterwards embodied in the immortal words: "Thou, O God,
hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find
rest in Thee."[154]
[154] Augustine's _Confessions_, i. 1.
Let us look for a little at the question of the jailor and the answer
of the Apostle. They are words very often used, and very often
misused. The jailor, when he rushed into St. Paul's presence crying
out "What must I do to be saved?" was certainly not the type of a
conscience-stricken sinner, convinced of his own sin and spiritual
danger, as men sometimes regard him. He was simply in a state of
fright and astonishment. He had heard that these Jewish prisoners
committed to him were preaching about some salvation which they had to
offer. The earthquake seemed to him the expression of some deity's
wrath at their harsh treatment, and so in his terror he desires to
know what he must do to be saved from this wrath. His words were
notable, but they were not Christian words, for he had yet much to
learn of the nature of sin and the nature of the salvation from it
which the Apostles were preaching. The Philippian jailor was a
specimen of those who are saved violently and by fear. Terror forced
him into communion with the Apostles, broke down the barriers which
hindered the approach of the Word, and then the power of the Holy
Ghost, working through St. Paul, effected the remainder, opening his
eyes to the true character of salvation and his own profound need of
it. St. Paul's words have been misunderstood. I have heard them
addressed to a Christian congregation and explained as meaning that
the jailor had nothing to do but just realise Christ Jesus as his
Saviour, whereupon he was perfect and complete so far as the spiritual
life was concerned; and then they were applied to the congregation
present as teaching that, as it was with the jailor, so was it with
all Christians; they have simply to believe as he did, and then they
have nothing more to do,--a kind of teaching which infallibly
produces antinomian results.[155] Such an explanation ignores the
fact that there is a great difference between the jailor, who was not
a Christian in any sense and knew nothing about Christ when he flung
himself at St. Paul's feet, and a Christian congregation, who know
about Christ and believe in Him. But this explanation is still more
erroneous. It misrepresents what St. Paul meant and what his hearers
understood him to mean. What did any ordinary Jew or any ordinary
pagan with whom St. Paul came in contact understand him to mean when
he said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved"? They
first had to ask him who Jesus Christ was, whence He had come, what He
had taught, what were the obligations of His religion. St. Paul had to
open out to them the nature of sin and salvation, and to explain the
obligation and blessing of the sacrament of baptism as well as the
necessity of bodily holiness and purity. The initial sacrament of
baptism must have held a foremost place in that midnight colloquy or
conference concerning Christian truth. St. Paul was not the man to
perform a rite of which his converts understood nothing, and to which
they could attach no meaning. "Believe on the Lord Jesus" involved
repentance and contrition and submission to Christian truth, and these
things involved the exposition of Christian truth, history, doctrines,
and duties.
[155] See more on this point in vol. i., pp. 134-37, where I have
given conclusive proofs of the misuse of this text from the
writers of the seventeenth century.
This text, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved," is
often quoted in one-sided and narrow teaching to show that man has
nothing to do to be saved. Of course in one sense this is perfectly
true. We can do nothing _meritoriously_ towards salvation; from first
to last our salvation is all of God's free grace; but then, viewing
the matter from the human side, we have much to do to be saved. We
have to repent, to seek God for ourselves, to realise Christ and His
laws in our life, to seek after that holiness without which no man
shall see the Lord. There were two different types of men who at
different times addressed practically the same inquiry to the
Apostles. They were both outside the Church, and they were both
seekers blindly after God. The Jews on the day of Pentecost said,
"Brethren, what shall we do?" and Peter replied, "Repent ye, and be
baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, unto the
remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost." Such was apostolic teaching to the Jews of Jerusalem. The
jailer demanded, "What must I do to be saved?" and St. Paul replied,
"Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved." Such was
apostolic teaching to an ignorant pagan at Philippi; more concise than
the Jerusalem answer, but meaning the same thing, and involving
precisely the same doctrines in the hands of such a great master of
the spiritual life as was the Apostle of the Gentiles.[156]
[156] Mr. Sadler, in his Commentary on the Acts, treating of this
passage has a long explanation identical in meaning with that
which we have above urged. He says, for instance, p. 314: "This
statement of the way of salvation is one of the most important in
the New Testament. It contains the seed of the whole body of
apostolic doctrine respecting salvation by Christ. When I say
apostolic, I mean the doctrine of SS. Peter and John, as well as
of St. Paul; for all being full of the Holy Ghost preached the
same. Few places have been more perverted in order to uphold a
heresy which, if St. Paul had been alive now, he would have
abhorred, and denounced as fatal to the whole revelation of the
Son of God, and that is antinomianism.... The Philippian jailor to
whom the words were first addressed had never in all probability
heard the name of Jesus Christ before.... 'Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ' then meant to him, 'Believe on Him whom we are now
about to set forth to thee.' And they there and then began to set
Him forth, for they spake unto him 'the word of the Lord.'... This
Word must have shown him how--on what principle--he could exercise
faith in Him so as to be saved. But did they call on him in his
then state to believe anything respecting the Church and the
sacraments of Christ? Unquestionably; for St. Paul would certainly
not baptize a man who was totally ignorant of the grace of union
with Christ which he would receive, and the obligations to serve
Christ which he would come under, by being baptized."
The remainder of the story is soon told. When the morning came there
came quiet reflection with it as far as the magistrates were
concerned. They became conscious of their illegal conduct, and they
sent their lictors to order the release of the Apostles. St. Paul now
stood upon his rights. His protest had been disregarded by the mob. He
now claimed his rights as a Roman citizen. "They have beaten us
publicly, uncondemned men, that are Romans, and have cast us into
prison; and do they now cast us out privily? Nay, verily; but let them
come themselves and bring us out." These are St. Paul's words, and
they are brave, and at the same time wise words. They were brave words
because it took a strong man to send back such an answer to
magistrates who had treated him so outrageously only the day before.
They were wise words, for they give us an apostle's interpretation of
our Lord's language in the Sermon upon the Mount concerning the
non-resistance of evil, and show us that in St. Paul's estimation
Christ's law did not bind a man to tolerate foul injustice. Such
toleration, in fact, is very wrong if it can be helped; because it is
simply an encouragement to the wicked doers to treat others in the
same scandalous manner. Toleration of outrage and injustice is unfair
and uncharitable towards others, if they can be lawfully redressed or
at least apologised for. It is a Christian man's duty to bring public
evil-doers and tyrants, instruments of unrighteousness like these
Duumvirs of Philippi, to their senses, not for his own sake, but in
order that he may prevent the exercise of similar cruelties against
the weaker brethren. We may be sure that the spirited action of St.
Paul, compelling these provincial magnates to humble themselves before
the despised strangers, must have had a very wholesome effect in
restraining them from similar violence during the rest of their term
of office.
Such was St. Paul's stay at Philippi. It lasted a considerable time,
and made its mark, as a flourishing Church was established there, to
which he addressed an Epistle when he lay the first time a captive at
Rome. This Epistle naturally forms a most interesting commentary on
the notices of the Philippian visit in the Acts of the Apostles, a
point which is worked out at large in Bishop Lightfoot's Commentary on
Philippians and in Paley's _Horæ Paulinæ_. The careful student of Holy
Writ will find that St. Paul's letter and St. Luke's narrative when
compared illuminate one another in a wondrous manner. We cannot afford
space to draw out this comparison in detail, and it is the less
necessary to do so as Dr. Lightfoot's writings are so generally
accessible. Let us, however, notice one point in this Epistle to the
Philippians, which was written about the same time (a few months
previously, in fact) as the Acts of the Apostles. It corroborates the
Acts as to the circumstances under which the Church of Philippi was
founded. St. Paul in the Epistle refers again and again to the
persecutions and afflictions of the Philippian Church, and implies
that he was a fellow-sufferer with them.[157] St. Paul dwells on this
in the beginning of the Epistle in words whose force cannot be
understood unless we grasp this fact. In the sixth verse of the first
chapter he expresses himself as, "Confident of this very thing, that
He which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of
Jesus Christ: even as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf
of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as, both in my
bonds and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are
partakers with me of grace." St. Paul speaks of the Philippians as
personally acquainted with chains and sufferings and prison-houses for
Christ's sake, and regards these things as a proof of God's grace
vouchsafed not only to the Apostle, but also to the Philippians; for
St. Paul was living at that high level when he could view bonds and
trials and persecutions as marks of the Divine love. In the
twenty-eighth verse of the same chapter he exhorts them to be in no
wise "affrighted by the adversaries," and in the next two describes
them as persons to whom "it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ,
not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer in His behalf: having
the same conflict which ye _saw_ in me, and now hear to be in me,"
words which can only refer to the violence and afflictions which they
witnessed as practised against himself, and which they were now
themselves suffering in turn. While to complete St. Paul's references
we notice that in an Epistle written some five years later than his
first visit to Philippi he expressly refers to the persecutions which
the Philippian Church in common with all the Macedonian Churches seems
to have suffered from the very beginning. In 2 Cor. viii. 1, 2, he
writes: "Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God
which hath been given in the Churches of Macedonia; how that _in much
proof of affliction_ the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty
abounded unto the riches of their liberality." Now all these passages
put together confirm for us what the Acts expressly affirms, that from
the very outset of their Christian career the Philippian Church had
endured the greatest trials, and experienced a fellowship in the
Apostle's sufferings. And surely we may see in the character of the
Philippian Epistle something eminently characteristic of this
experience! It has been remarked that the Philippian Epistle is the
only Epistle addressed to a Church in which there is no trace of blame
or reproof. Temptation and trial and chastisement had there worked
their appointed purpose. The Philippian Church had been baptized in
blood, and grounded in afflictions, and purified by the cleansing
fires of persecution, and consequently the tried Church gathered
itself closer to its Divine Lord, and was perfected above all others
in His likeness, and profited above all others in the Divine
life.[158]
[157] Bishop Lightfoot (_Philippians,_ p. 57) says: "St. Paul's
first visit to Philippi closed abruptly amid the storm of
persecution. It was not to be expected that where the life of the
teacher had been so seriously endangered, the scholars would
escape all penalties. The Apostle left behind him a legacy of
suffering to this newly born Church. This is not a mere
conjecture; the affliction of the Macedonian Christians, and of
the Philippians especially, are more than once mentioned in St.
Paul's Epistles (cf. 1 Thess. ii. 2). If it was their privilege to
believe in Christ, it was equally their privilege to suffer for
Him."
[158] Bishop Lightfoot, in his _Commentary on Philippians, l.c._,
dwells on this point: "The unwavering loyalty of his Philippian
converts is the constant solace of the Apostle in his manifold
trails, the one bright ray of happiness piercing the dark clouds
which gather ever thicker about the evening of his life. They are
his 'joy and crown, his brethren beloved and eagerly desired.'
From them alone he consents to receive alms for the relief of his
personal wants. To them alone he writes in language unclouded by
any shadow of displeasure or disappointment."
After the terrible experience of Philippi Paul and Silas passed on to
other towns of the same province of Macedonia. The Apostle, however,
when quitting Philippi to do the same evangelistic work, breaking up
the ground in other towns after the manner of a pioneer, did not leave
the Church of Philippi devoid of wisest pastoral care. It is most
likely, as Dr. Lightfoot points out in the Introduction to his
Commentary on Philippians, that St. Luke was left behind to
consolidate the work which had been thus begun by such a noble
company. Then Paul and Silas and Timotheus proceeded to Thessalonica,
one hundred miles west, the capital of the province, where the
proconsul resided, and where was a considerable Jewish population, as
we see, not only from the fact that a synagogue is expressly said to
have existed there, but also because the Jews were able to excite the
city pagan mob against the Apostles and drag them before the local
magistrates.[159] St. Paul at Philippi had for the first time
experienced a purely pagan persecution. He had indeed previously
suffered at the hands of the heathen at Lystra, but they were urged on
by the Jews. At Philippi he gained his first glimpse of that long
vista of purely Gentile persecution through which the Church had to
pass till Christianity seated itself in the person of Constantine on
the throne of the Cæsars. But as soon as he got to Thessalonica he
again experienced the undying hostility of his Jewish fellow-countrymen
using for their wicked purposes the baser portion of the city
rabble.[160] St. Paul remained three weeks in Thessalonica teaching
privately and publicly the gospel message, without experiencing any
Jewish opposition. It is an interesting fact that to this day St.
Paul's visit to Thessalonica is remembered, and in one of the local
mosques, which was formerly the Church of Sancta Sophia, a marble
pulpit is shown, said to have been the very one occupied by the
Apostle, while in the surrounding plains trees and groves are pointed
out as marking spots where he tarried for a time. The Jews were at
last, however, roused to opposition, possibly because of St. Paul's
success among the Gentiles, who received his doctrines with such
avidity that there believed "of the devout Greeks a great multitude,
and of the chief women not a few." In Thessalonica, as elsewhere, the
spirit of religious selfishness, desiring to have gospel promises and
a Messiah all to themselves, was the ruin of the Jewish people. The
Jews therefore, assisted by the pagans, assaulted the residence of
Jason, with whom St. Paul and his friends were staying. They missed
the Apostles themselves, but they seized Jason and some of the
apostolic band, or at least some of their converts whom they found in
Jason's house, and brought them before the town magistrates, who,
acting under the eye of the resident proconsul, did not lend
themselves to any irregular proceedings like the Philippian prætors. A
charge of treason was formally brought against the prisoners: "These
all act contrary to the decrees of Cæsar, saying that there is another
King, one Jesus"; in the words of which charge we get a glimpse of the
leading topic on which the Apostles insisted. Jesus Christ, the
crucified, risen, glorified King and Head of His people, was the great
subject of St. Paul's teaching as it struck the heathen. The
Thessalonian magistrates acted very fairly. They entered the charge
which was a serious one in the eye of Roman law. Bail was then taken
for the accused and they were set free. The Apostles, however, escaped
arrest, and the local brethren determined that they should incur no
danger; so while the accused remained to stand their trial, Paul and
Silas and Timotheus were despatched to Berœa, where they were for a
time welcomed, and free discussion permitted in the synagogue
concerning the truths taught by the Evangelists. After a time,
however, tidings having reached Thessalonica, agents were despatched
to Berœa, who stirring up the Jewish residents, St. Paul was
despatched in charge of some trusty messengers who guided the steps of
the hunted servant of God to the city of Athens. We see the physical
infirmities of St. Paul, the difficulties he had to contend with,
hinted at in the fourteenth and fifteenth verses of the seventeenth
chapter. "Then immediately the brethren sent forth Paul," and "They
that conducted Paul brought him to Athens," words which give us a
glimpse of his fearfully defective eyesight. His enemies might be
pressing upon him and danger might be imminent, but he could make no
unaided effort to save himself. He depended upon the kindly help of
others that he might escape his untiring foes and find his way to a
place of safety.
[159] Thessalonica is to this day the abode of a large Jewish
population. Tozer, in his _Highlands of Turkey_, vol. i., p. 146,
says: "Of the sixty thousand inhabitants of Salonica two-thirds
are Jews, the rest being Turks and Greeks.... From early times the
Hebrew race seem to have been attracted by the commercial
advantages of Salonica. Thus when St. Paul preached there he found
a considerable Jewish community.... A large number of the Salonica
Jews are rich merchants, and a great part of the wealth of the
place is in their hands." Mr. Lewin, in his _St. Paul_, vol. i.,
p. 222, gives a table of the distances all along St. Paul's route.
[160] Mr. Findlay, in a little work lately published, _The
Epistles of Paul the Apostle_, has many valuable observations on
the subject of the Jewish opposition experienced by the Apostle at
Thessalonica.
Thus ended St. Paul's first visit to Thessalonica so far as the Acts
of the Apostles is concerned; but we have interesting light thrown
upon it from an Epistle which St. Paul himself wrote to the
Thessalonians soon after his departure from amongst them. A comparison
of First Thessalonians with the text of the Acts will furnish the
careful student with much information concerning the circumstances of
that notable visit, just as we have seen that the text of the
Philippian Epistle throws light upon his doings at Philippi. The
Thessalonian Epistles are more helpful even than the Philippians in
this respect, because they were written only a few months after St.
Paul's visit to Thessalonica, while years elapsed, eight or ten at
least, before the Philippian Epistle was indited. First Thessalonians
shows us, for instance, that St. Paul's visit to Thessalonica lasted a
considerable time. In the Acts we read of his discussing in the
synagogue three Sabbath days, and then it would appear as if the riot
was raised which drove him to Berœa and Athens. The impression left
on our minds by St. Luke's narrative is that St. Paul's labours were
almost entirely concentrated upon the Jews in Thessalonica, and that
he bestowed very little attention indeed upon the pagans. The Epistle
corrects this impression. When we read the first chapter of First
Thessalonians we see that it was almost altogether a church of
converted idolaters, not of converted Jews. St. Paul speaks of the
Thessalonians as having turned from idols to serve the living God; he
refers to the instructions on various points like the resurrection,
the ascension, the second coming of Christ, which he had imparted,
and describes their faith and works as celebrated throughout all
Macedonia and Achaia. A large and flourishing church like that,
composed of former pagans, could not have been founded in the course
of three weeks, during which time St. Paul's attention was principally
bestowed on the Jewish residents. Then too, when we turn to
Philippians iv. 16, we find that St. Paul stayed long enough in
Thessalonica to receive no less than two remittances of money from the
brethren at Philippi to sustain himself and his brethren. His whole
attention too was not bestowed upon mission work; he spent his days
and nights in manual labour. In the ninth verse of the second chapter
of First Thessalonians he reminds them of the fact that he supported
himself in their city, "For ye remember, brethren, our labour and
travail: working night and day, that we might not burden any of you,
we preached unto you the gospel of God." When we realise these things
we shall feel that the Apostle must have spent at least a couple of
months in Thessalonica. It was perhaps his tremendous success among
the heathen which so stirred up the passions of the town mob as
enabled the Jews to instigate them to raise the riot, they themselves
keeping all the while in the background. St. Paul, in First
Thessalonians, describes the riots raised against the Christians as
being the immediate work of the pagans: "Ye, brethren, became
imitators of the Churches of God which are in Judæa in Christ Jesus.
For ye also suffered the same things of your own countrymen as they
did of the Jews"; a statement which is quite consistent with the
theory that the persecution was originally inspired by the Jews. But
we cannot further pursue this interesting line of inquiry which has
been thoroughly worked out by Mr. Lewin in vol. ii., ch. xi., by
Conybeare and Howson in ch. ix., and by Archdeacon Farrar, as well as
by Dr. Salmon in his _Introduction to the New Testament_, ch. xx. The
careful student will find in all these works most interesting light
reflected back upon the Acts from the apostolic letters, and will see
how thoroughly the Epistles, which were much the earlier documents,
confirm the independent account of St. Luke, writing at a subsequent
period.
Before we terminate this chapter we desire to call attention to one
other point where the investigations of modern travel have helped to
illustrate the genuineness of the Acts of the Apostles. It has been
the contention of the rationalistic party that the Acts was a
composition of the second century, worked up by a clever forger out of
the materials at his command. There are various lines of proof by
which this theory can be refuted, but none appeal so forcibly to
ordinary men as the minute accuracy which marks it when describing the
towns of Asia Minor and Macedonia. Macedonia is a notable case. We
have already pointed out how the Acts give their proper title to the
magistrates of Philippi and recognise its peculiar constitution as a
colony. Thessalonica forms an interesting contrast to Philippi.
Thessalonica was a free city, like Antioch in Syria, Tarsus, and
Athens, and therefore, though the residence of the proconsul who ruled
the province of Macedonia, was governed by its own ancient magistrates
and its own ancient laws, without any interference on the part of the
proconsul. St. Luke makes a marked distinction between Philippi and
Thessalonica. At Philippi the Apostles were brought before the
prætors, at Thessalonica they were brought before the politarchs,[161]
a title strange to classical antiquity, but which has been found upon
a triumphal arch which existed till a few years ago across the main
street of the modern city of Thessalonica. That arch has now
disappeared; but the fragments containing the inscription were
fortunately preserved and have been now placed in the British Museum,
where they form a precious relic proving the genuineness of the sacred
narrative.
[161] This case of Thessalonica is an interesting illustration of
Bishop Lightfoot's statement:--"The government of the Roman
provinces at this time was peculiarly dangerous ground for the
romance-writer to venture upon" (_Essays on Supernatural
Religion_, p. 291). If the Roman provinces were a dangerous ground
for a romance-writer, such as some critics would make the author
of the Acts, the government of the large Græco-Roman towns and
cities was still more dangerous, as scarcely any two successive
ones were alike. Thessalonica is a good instance of this. St. Luke
calls the magistrates politarchs, and the triumphal arch at
Thessalonica calls them politarchs; a title which seems to have
been a very rare one, as only one other instance of its occurrence
has been discovered. Monastir, in the north-west of Macedonia, is
an important town, and there an inscription belonging to the
ancient Deuriopus, twelve miles distant, was found more than
twenty years ago containing the same title, politarchs. Surely the
stones out of the walls of Thessalonica and of Monastir cry out in
defence of St. Luke's accuracy! See Mr. Tozer's _Highlands of
Turkey_, vol. i., p. 145, and vol. ii., p. 358, Append. B;
Bœckh's _Corp. Ins. Græc._, No. 1967; articles by the Abbé
Belley in the _Acad. des Inscript._, xxxviii., p. 125, and by Mr.
Vaux in the _Trans. of Roy. Soc. of Literature_, vol. viii., new
series.