_THE EPHESIAN CHURCH AND ITS FOUNDATION._
"Paul, and with him Priscilla and Aquila, came to Ephesus, and he
left them here: but he himself entered into the synagogue, and
reasoned with the Jews. And when they asked him to abide a longer
time, he consented not; but taking his leave of them, and saying,
I will return again unto you, if God will, he set sail from
Ephesus.... Now a certain man named Apollos, an Alexandrian by
race, a learned man, came to Ephesus; and he was mighty in the
Scriptures. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord;
and being fervent in spirit, he spake and taught carefully the
things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John: and he
began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and
Aquila heard him, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him
the way of God more carefully."--ACTS xviii. 19-21, 24-26.
"And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul
having passed through the upper country, came to Ephesus."--ACTS
xix. 1.
Ephesus has been from very ancient times a distinguished city. It was
famous in the religious history of Asia Minor in times long prior to
the Christian Era. It was celebrated at the time of the Roman Empire
as the chief seat of the worship of Diana and of the magical practices
associated with that worship; and Ephesus became more celebrated still
in Christian times as the city where one of the great Œcumenical
Councils was held which served to determine the expression of the
Church's faith in her Divine Lord and Master. It must then be of great
interest to the Christian student to note the first beginnings of
such a vast transformation as that whereby a chief seat of pagan
idolatry was turned into a special stronghold of Christian orthodoxy.
Let us then devote this chapter to tracing the upgrowth of the
Ephesian Church, and to noting the lessons the modern Church may
derive therefrom.
St. Paul terminated his work in Corinth some time about the middle or
towards the close of the year 53 A.D. In the early summer of that year
Gallio came as proconsul to Achaia, and the Jewish riot was raised.
After a due interval, to show that he was not driven out by Jewish
machinations, St. Paul determined to return once more to Jerusalem and
Antioch, which he had left some four years at least before. He went
down therefore to Cenchreæ, the port of departure for passengers going
from Corinth to Ephesus, Asia Minor, and Syria. A Christian Church had
been established there by the exertions of St. Paul or some of his
Corinthian disciples. As soon as an early Christian was turned from
sin to righteousness, from the adoration of idols to the worship of
the true God, he began to try and do something for Him whose love and
grace he had experienced. It was no wonder that the Church then spread
rapidly when all its individual members were instinct with life, and
every one considered himself personally responsible to labour
diligently for God. The Church of Cenchreæ was elaborately organised.
It had not only its deacons, it had also its deaconesses, one of whom,
Phœbe, was specially kind and useful to St. Paul upon his visits to
that busy seaport, and is by him commended to the help and care of the
Roman Church (Rom. xvi. 1, 2).
From Cenchreæ St. Paul, Aquila, and Priscilla sailed for Ephesus,
where, as we have already hinted, it is most likely the latter pair
had some special business avocations which led them to stay at that
city. They may have been large manufacturers of tents, and have had a
branch establishment at Ephesus, which was then a great mercantile
emporium for that part of Asia Minor.
An incidental remark of the sacred writer "having shorn his head in
Cenchreæ, for he had a vow," has raised a controverted question. Some
refer this expression to Aquila, and I think with much the greater
probability. It was customary with the Jews at that time when in any
special danger to take a temporary Nazarite vow, binding themselves to
abstain from wine and from cutting their hair till a certain definite
period had elapsed. Then when the fixed date had arrived, the hair was
cut off and preserved till it could be burned in the fire of a
sacrifice offered up at Jerusalem upon the individual's next visit to
the Holy City. The grammatical order of the words naturally refer to
Aquila as the maker of this vow; but I cannot agree in one reason
urged for this latter theory. Some have argued that it was impossible
for Paul to have made this vow; that it would, in fact, have been a
return to the bondage of Judaism, which would have been utterly
inconsistent on his part. People who argue thus do not understand St.
Paul's position with respect to Jewish rites as being things utterly
unimportant, and, as such, things which a wise born Jew would do well
to observe in order to please his countrymen. If St. Paul made a vow
at Corinth it would have been simply an illustration of his own
principle, "To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order that I might gain
the Jews." But further, I must say that the taking of a vow, though
derived from Judaism, need not have necessarily appeared to St. Paul
and the men of his time a purely Jewish ceremony. Vows, in fact,
naturally passed over from Judaism to Christianity.[182] Vows, indeed,
of this peculiar character, and with this peculiar external sign of
long hair, are no longer customary amongst Christians; but surely
special vows cannot be said to have gone out of fashion, when we
consider the wide spread of the teetotal movement, with its vows
identical in one important element with that of the Nazarites! But
viewing the matter from a still wider standpoint, people, when
contending thus, forget what a large part the tradition of ancient
customs must have played in the life, manners, and customs of St.
Paul. All his early life he was a strict Pharisaic Jew, and down to
the end of life his early training must have largely modified his
habits. To take but one instance, pork was the common and favourite
food of the Romans at this period. Now I am sure that St. Paul would
have vigorously resisted all attempts to prevent the Gentile
Christians eating bacon or ham; but I should not be in the least
surprised if St. Paul, trained in Pharisaic habits, never once touched
a food he had been taught to abhor from his earliest youth. Life is a
continuous thing, and the memories of the past are very powerful. We
can to this day trace among ourselves many customs and traditions
dating back to the times antecedent to the Reformation, and much
farther. The fires still lighted on St. John's Eve throughout Ireland,
and once customary in Scotland, are survivals of the times of
Druidical paganism in these islands. The ceremonies and social customs
of Shrove Tuesday and Hallow E'en are survivals of the rude mirth of
our pre-Reformation forefathers, on the nights before a celebrated
fast, Ash Wednesday, in one case, before a celebrated feast, All
Saints' Day, in the other. Or perhaps I may take another instance more
closely analogous still which every reader can verify for himself. The
use of the Church of England has to this day a curious instance of the
power of tradition as opposed to written law. There is a general
rubric placed in the Book of Common Prayer before the first Lord's
Prayer. It runs as follows: "Then the minister shall kneel and say the
Lord's Prayer with an audible voice; the people also kneeling and
repeating it with him, both here, and wheresoever else it is used in
Divine Service." This rubric plainly prescribes that clergy and people
shall always say the Lord's Prayer conjointly. And yet, let my readers
go into any church of the Anglican Communion on Sunday next, I care
not what the tone of its theological thought, and observe the first
Lord's Prayer used at the beginning of the Communion Service. They
will find that this general rubric is universally neglected, and the
celebrating priest says the opening Lord's Prayer by himself with no
voice of the people raised to accompany him. Now whence comes this
universal fact? It is simply an illustration of the strength of
tradition. It is a survival of the practice before the Reformation
handed down by tradition to the present time, and over-riding a
positive and written law. In the days before the Reformation, as in
the Roman Catholic Church of the present day, the opening Dominical or
Lord's Prayer in the Mass was said by the priest alone. When the
service was translated into English the old custom still prevailed,
and has lasted to the present day.[183] This was only human nature,
which abhors unnecessary changes, and is intensely conservative of
every practice which is linked with the fond memories of the past.
This human nature was found strong in St. Paul, as in other men, and
it would have argued no moral or spiritual weakness, no desire to play
fast and loose with gospel liberties, had he, instead of Aquila,
resorted to the old Jewish practice and bound himself by a vow in
connexion with some special blessing which he had received, or some
special danger he had incurred. When we are studying the Acts we must
never forget that Judaism gave the tone and form, the whole outer
framework to Christianity, even as England gave the outward shape and
form to the constitutions of the United States and her own numberless
colonies throughout the world. St. Paul did not invent a brand new
religion, as some people think; he changed as little as possible, so
that his own practice and worship must have been to mere pagan eyes
exactly the same as that of the Jews, as indeed we might conclude
beforehand from the fact that the Roman authorities seem to have
viewed the Christians as a mere Jewish sect down to the close of the
second century.[184]
[182] Jeremy Taylor, in his _Holy Living_, in his chapter on
Prayer, has some wise remarks on vows. He includes them under the
head of Prayer: "A vow to God is an act of prayer and a great
degree and instance of opportunity, and an increase of duty by
some new uncommanded instance, or some more eminent degree of duty
or frequency of action, or earnestness of spirit in the same. And
because it hath pleased God in all ages of the world to admit of
intercourse with His servants in the matter of vows, it is not ill
advice that we make vows to God in those cases in which we have
great need or great danger." He then proceeds to lay down rules
and cautions for making vows.
[183] See Procter on the Common Prayer, p. 212; Canon Evan Daniel
on the Prayer Book, pp. 87 and 300.
[184] See on this subject of the confusion of Christianity with
Judaism by the Romans, Wieseler's _Die Christenverfolgungen der
Cäsaren_, pp. 1-10.
I. Let us now take a rapid survey of the extensive journey which our
book disposes of in very concise fashion. St. Paul and his companions,
Aquila and Priscilla, Timothy and Silas, sailed from Cenchreæ to
Ephesus, which city up to this seems to have been untouched by
Christian influences. St. Paul, in the earlier portion of his second
tour, had been prohibited by the Holy Spirit from preaching in
Ephesus, or in any portion of the provinces of Asia or Bithynia.
Important as the human eye of St. Paul may have viewed them, still the
Divine Guide of the Church saw that neither Asia nor Bithynia, with
all their magnificent cities, their accumulated wealth, and their
political position, were half so important as the cities and provinces
of Europe, viewed from the standpoint of the world's conversion. But
now the gospel has secured a substantial foothold in Europe, has taken
a firm grasp of that imperial race which then ruled the world, and so
the Apostle is permitted to visit Ephesus for the first time. He seems
to have then paid a mere passing visit to it, lasting perhaps while
the ship discharged the portion of her cargo destined for Ephesus. But
St. Paul never allowed time to hang heavy on his hands for want of
employment. He left Aquila and Priscilla engaged in their mercantile
transactions, and, entering himself into the principal synagogue,
proceeded to expound his views. These do not seem to have then aroused
any opposition; nay, the Jews even went so far as to desire him to
tarry longer and open out his doctrines at greater length. We may
conclude from this that St. Paul did not remain during this first
visit much beyond one Sabbath day. If he had bestowed a second Sabbath
day upon the Ephesian synagogue, his ideas and doctrines would have
been made so clear and manifest that the Jews would not have required
much further exposition in order to see their drift. St. Paul, after
promising a second visit to them, left his old friends and associates,
Aquila and his wife, with whom he had lived for nearly two years, at
Ephesus, and pushed on to Cæsarea, a town which he must have already
well known, and with which he was subsequently destined to make a long
and unpleasant acquaintanceship, arriving at Jerusalem in time
probably for the Feast of Tabernacles, which was celebrated on
September 16th, A.D. 53. Concerning the details of that visit we know
nothing. Four years at least must have elapsed since he had seen James
and the other venerated heads of the Mother Church. We can imagine
then how joyously he would have told them, how eagerly they would have
heard the glad story of the wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles
through the power of Jesus Christ. After a short sojourn at Jerusalem
St. Paul returned back to Cæsarea, and thence went on to Antioch, the
original seat of the Gentile mission for the propagation of the faith.
After refreshing himself with the kindly offices of fraternal
intercourse and conversation at this great Christian centre, where
broad liberal sentiment and wide Christian culture, free from any
narrow prejudices, must have infused a tone into society far more
agreeable to St. Paul than the unprogressive Judaising views which
flourished in Jerusalem, St. Paul then determined to set off upon his
third great tour, which must have begun at the earliest some time in
the spring of A.D. 54, as soon as the snows of winter had passed away
and the passes through the Taurus Range into the central regions of
Asia Minor had been opened. We know nothing more concerning the
extended journey he took on this occasion. He seems to have avoided
towns like Lystra and Derbe, and to have directed his march straight
to Galatia, where he had sufficient work to engage all his thought. We
have no mention of the names of the particular Churches where he
laboured. Ancyra, as it was then called, Angora as it is now named, in
all probability demanded St. Paul's attention. If he visited it, he
looked as the traveller does still upon the temple dedicated to the
deity of Augustus and of Rome, the ruins of which have attracted the
notice of every modern antiquary. Glad, however, as we should have
been to gratify our curiosity by details like these, we are obliged to
content ourselves with the information which St. Luke gives us, that
St. Paul "went through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, in order,
stablishing all the disciples," leaving us a speaking example of the
energising power, the invigorating effects, of a visitation such as
St. Paul now conducted, sustaining the weak, arousing the careless,
restraining the rash, guiding the whole body of the Church with the
counsels of sanctified wisdom and heavenly prudence. Then, after his
Phrygian and Galatian work was finished, St. Paul betook himself to a
field which he long since desired to occupy, and determined to fulfil
the promise made a year previously at least to his Jewish friends of
the Ephesian Synagogue.
II. Now we come to the foundation of the Ephesian Church some time in
the latter part of the year 54 A.D. Here it may strike some reader as
an extraordinary thing that more than twenty years after the
Crucifixion Ephesus was as yet totally untouched by the gospel, so
that the tidings of salvation were quite a novel sound in the great
Asiatic capital. People sometimes think of the primitive Church as
if, after the Day of Pentecost, every individual Christian rushed off
to preach in the most distant parts of the world, and that the whole
earth was evangelised straight off. They forget the teaching of Christ
about the gospel leaven, and leaven never works all on an heap as it
were; it is slow, regular, progressive in its operations. The
tradition, too, that the apostles did not leave Jerusalem till twelve
years after His ascension ought to be a sufficient corrective of this
false notion; and though this tradition may not have any considerable
historical basis, yet it shows that the primitive Church did not
cherish the very modern idea that enormous and immediate successes
followed upon the preaching of the gospel after Pentecost, and that
the conversion of vast populations at once occurred. The case was
exactly contrary. For many a long year nothing at all was done towards
the conversion of the Gentile world, and then for many another long
year the preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles entirely depended
upon St. Paul alone. He was the one evangelist of the Gentiles, and
therefore it is no wonder he should have said in 1 Cor. i. 17, "Christ
sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel." He was the one man
fitted to deal with the prejudices, the ignorance, the sensuality, the
grossness with which the Gentile world was overspread, and therefore
no other work, no matter how important, was to be allowed to interfere
with that one task which he alone could perform. This seems to me the
explanation of the question which might otherwise cause some
difficulty, how was it that the Ephesians, Jews and Gentiles alike,
inhabiting this distinguished city, were still in such dire ignorance
of the gospel message twenty years after the Ascension? Now let us
come to the story of the circumstances amid which Ephesian
Christianity took its rise. St. Paul, as we have already said, paid a
passing visit to Ephesus just a year before when going up to
Jerusalem, when he seems to have made a considerable impression in the
synagogue. He left behind him Aquila and Priscilla, who, with their
household, formed a small Christian congregation, meeting doubtless
for the celebration of the Lord's Supper in their own house while yet
frequenting the stated worship of the synagogue. This we conclude from
the following circumstance which is expressly mentioned in Acts xviii.
26. Apollos, a Jew, born in Alexandria, and a learned man, as was
natural coming from that great centre of Greek and Oriental culture,
came to Ephesus. He had been baptized by some of John's disciples,
either at Alexandria or in Palestine. It may very possibly have been
at Alexandria. St. John's doctrines and followers may have spread to
Alexandria by that time, as we are expressly informed they had been
diffused as far as Ephesus (see ch. xix. 1-4). Apollos, when he came
to Ephesus, entered, like St. Paul, into the synagogue, and "spake and
taught carefully the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism
of John." He knew about Jesus Christ, but with an imperfect knowledge
such merely as John himself possessed. This man began to speak boldly
in the synagogue on the topic of the Messiah whom John had preached.
Aquila and Priscilla were present in the synagogue, heard the
disputant, recognised his earnestness and his defects, and then,
having taken him, expounded to him the way of God more fully,
initiating him into the full mysteries of the faith by baptism into
the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.[185] This incident has
an important bearing upon the foundation and development of the
Ephesian Church, but it hears more directly still upon the point on
which we have been dwelling. Apollos disputed in the synagogues where
Aquila and Priscilla heard him, so that they must have been regular
worshippers there notwithstanding their Christian profession and their
close intercourse with St. Paul for more than eighteen months. After a
little time further, Apollos desired to pass over to Greece. The
little Christian Church which met at Aquila's house told him of the
wonders they had seen and heard in Achaia and of the flourishing state
of the Church in Corinth. They gave him letters commendatory to that
Church, whither Apollos passed over, and rendered such valuable help
that his name a year or two later became one of the watchwords of
Corinthian party strife. The way was now prepared for St. Paul's great
mission to Ephesus, exceeding in length any mission he had hitherto
conducted, surpassing in its duration of three years the time spent
even at Corinth itself. His own brief visit of the year before, the
visit and work of the Alexandrian Jew, the quiet conversations, the
holy lives, the sanctified examples of Aquila and Priscilla, these had
done the preliminary work. They had roused expectation, provoked
discussion, developed thought. Everything was ready for the great
masterful teacher to step upon the ground and complete the work which
he had already so auspiciously begun.
[185] Meyer, in his Commentary on ch. xix. 5, enunciates the
following extraordinary theory about Apollos, which plainly shows
that, valuable as may be his textual criticism, his conception of
Christian doctrine and of Apostolic Church life is very defective:
"We may not infer from this passage that the disciples of John,
who passed over to Christianity, were uniformly re-baptized; for
in the case of the apostles who passed over from John to Jesus
this certainly did not take place; and even as regards Apollos the
common opinion that he was baptized by Aquila is purely arbitrary,
as in xviii. 26 his instruction in Christianity, and not his
baptism, is narrated." Again: "Apollos could dispense with
re-baptism, seeing that he, with his fervid spirit, following the
references of John to Christ, and the instruction of his teachers,
penetrated without any new baptismal consecration into the
pneumatic elements of life." Meyer evidently fails to grasp what
the sacrament of baptism was, as conceived by St. Paul, and uses
the most dangerous line of argument, that from silence, concluding
that, because there is no mention of the Christian baptism of
Apollos, therefore such a baptism never took place. But this is
not all. Meyer's theory cannot possibly explain why baptism was
necessary for Cornelius, though he enjoyed the gift of the Holy
Ghost, while it was not necessary for Apollos, "who penetrated
without any new baptismal consecration into the pneumatic element
of life." Meyer says, indeed, that in the whole New Testament
there is no example except in xix. 1-5 of the re-baptism of a
disciple of John. But then in the Acts and Epistles, where alone
we read of the administration of Christian baptism, there are only
two examples of the admission of John's disciples. In one case
twelve such were admitted, and they were all baptized by Paul's
own order. In the case of Apollos there is silence. Surely the
sounder conclusion is that Christian baptism was administered
there too, though nothing is said about it! As for the apostles
not being baptized with Christian baptism, the explanation is not
far to seek. Baptism is the reception of a disciple into covenant
with Christ through the medium of water. In the case of the
apostles this reception took place in person, and not through any
medium. In the apostles' case, too, there is another
consideration. Meyer's conclusion is simply one _e silentio_ even
in their case. We know not, however, everything that Christ did as
regards His apostles.
I do not propose to discuss the roads by which St. Paul may have
travelled through the province of Asia on this eventful visit, nor to
discuss the architectural features, or the geographical position of
the city of Ephesus. These things I shall leave to the writers who
have treated of St. Paul's life. I now confine myself to the notices
inserted by St. Luke concerning the Apostle's Ephesian work, and about
it I note that upon his arrival St. Paul came in contact with a small
congregation of the disciples of John the Baptist,[186] who had
hitherto escaped the notice of the small Church existing at Ephesus.
This need not excite our wonder. We are apt to think that because
Christianity is now such a dominant element in our own intellectual
and religious atmosphere it must always have been the same. Ephesus,
too, was then an immense city, with a large population of Jews, who
may have had many synagogues. These few disciples of John the Baptist
may have worshipped in a synagogue which never heard of the brief
visit of a Cilician Jew, a teacher named Saul of Tarsus, much less of
the quiet efforts of Aquila and Priscilla, the tentmakers, lately come
from Corinth. St. Paul, on his second visit, soon came in contact with
these men. He at once asked them a question which tested their
position and attainments in the Divine life, and sheds for us a vivid
light upon apostolic doctrine and practice. "Did ye receive the Holy
Ghost when ye believed?" is plainly an inquiry whether they had
enjoyed the blessing connected with the solemn imposition of hands,
from which has been derived the rite of confirmation, as I showed in
the previous volume. The disciples soon revealed the imperfect
character of their religion by their reply: "Nay, we did not so much
as hear whether the Holy Ghost was," words which led St. Paul to
demand what in that case was the nature of their baptism. "Into what
then were ye baptized?" and they said, "Into John's baptism."
[186] The movement instituted by St. John the Baptist was
perpetuated into the second century, and in some measure developed
into, or connected itself with, the sect subsequently called the
Hemerobaptists. The history of this movement from apostolic days
is elaborately traced by Bishop Lightfoot in his Essay on the
Essenes, contained in his _Colossians and Philemon_; see
especially pp. 400-407, to which we must refer the reader desirous
of more information. The Hemerobaptists are mentioned in the
_Clementine Recognitions_, i. 54, the _Clementine Homilies_, ii.
23, which date from about 200 A.D., and in the _Apostolic
Constitutions_, vi. 6, which may be put down as a century later.
This shows the continuity of the sect. There are still some
fragments of it existing in Babylonia, under the name of Mandeans:
see further the article "Sabians" in Smith's _Dict. Christ.
Biog._, iv. 569-73.
Now the simple explanation of the disciples' ignorance was that they
had been baptized with John's baptism, which had no reference to or
mention of the Holy Ghost. St. Paul, understanding them to be baptized
disciples, could not understand their ignorance of the personal
existence and present power of the Holy Ghost, till he learned from
them the nature of their baptism, and then his surprise ceased. But
then we must observe that the question of the Apostle astonished at
their defective state--"Into what then were ye baptized?"--implies
that, if baptized with Christian baptism, they would have known of the
existence of the Holy Ghost, and therefore further implies that the
baptismal formula into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
was of universal application among Christians; for surely if this
formula were not universally used by the Church, many Christians might
be in exactly the same position as these disciples of John, and never
have heard of the Holy Ghost![187] St. Paul, having expounded the
difference between the inchoate, imperfect, beginning knowledge, of
the Baptist, and the richer, fuller teaching of Jesus Christ, then
handed them over for further preparation to his assistants, by whom,
after due fasting and prayer, they were baptized,[188] and at once
presented to the Apostle for the imposition of hands; when the Holy
Ghost was vouchsafed in present effects, "they spake with tongues and
prophesied," as if to sanction in a special manner the decided action
taken by the Apostle on this occasion.
[187] See my remarks on this topic on pp. 141, 142 of my first
volume on Acts.
[188] See the _Didache_, or _Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_,
concerning the methods used in preparation for baptism.
The details concerning this affair, given to us by the sacred writer,
are most important. They set forth at greater length and with larger
fulness the methods ordinarily used by the Apostle than on other
similar occasions. The Philippian jailor was converted and baptized,
but we read nothing of the imposition of hands. Dionysius and Damaris,
Aquila and Priscilla, and many others at Athens and Corinth, were
converted, but there is no mention of either baptism or any other holy
rite. It might have been very possible to argue that the silence of
the writer implied utter contempt of the sacraments of the gospel and
the rite of confirmation on these occasions, were it not that we have
this detailed account of the manner in which St. Paul dealt with
half-instructed, unbaptized, and unconfirmed disciples of Christ
Jesus. They were instructed, baptized, and confirmed, and thus
introduced into the fulness of blessing, required by the discipline of
the Lord, as ministered by his faithful servant. If this were the
routine observed with those who had been taught "carefully the things
of Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John," how much more would it
have been the case with those rescued out of the pollutions of
paganism and called into the kingdom of light!
III. After this favourable beginning, and seeing the borders of the
infant Church extended by the union of these twelve disciples, St.
Paul, after his usual fashion, flung himself into work amongst the
Jews of Ephesus upon whom he had previously made a favourable
impression. He was well received for a time. He continued for three
months "reasoning and persuading as to the things concerning the
kingdom of God." But, as it was elsewhere, so was it at Ephesus, the
offence of the Cross told in the long run upon the worshippers of the
synagogue. The original Christian Church was Jewish. Aquila and
Priscilla, Apollos and Timothy, and the disciples of John the Baptist
would have excited no resentment in the minds of the Jews; but when
St. Paul began to open out the hope which lay for Gentiles as well as
for Jews in the gospel which he preached, then the objections of the
synagogue were multiplied, riots and disturbances became, as
elsewhere, matters of daily occurrence, and the opposition became at
last so bitter that, as at Corinth, so here again at Ephesus the
Apostle was obliged to separate his own followers, and gather them
into the school of one Tyrannus, a teacher of philosophy or rhetoric,
whom perhaps he had converted, where the blasphemous denunciations
against the Divine Way which he taught could no longer be heard.[189]
In this school or lecture-hall St. Paul continued labouring for more
than two years, bestowing upon the city of Ephesus a longer period of
continuous labour than he ever vouchsafed to any place else. We have
St. Paul's own statement as to his method of life at this period in
the address he subsequently delivered to the elders of Ephesus. The
Apostle pursued at Ephesus the same course which he adopted at Corinth
in one important direction at least. He supported himself and his
immediate companions, Timothy and Sosthenes, by his own labour, and
that we may presume for precisely the same reason at Ephesus as at
Corinth. He desired to cut off all occasion of accusation against
himself. Ephesus was a city devoted to commerce and to magic. It was
full of impostors too, many of them Jewish, who made gain out of the
names of angels and magical formulæ derived from the pretended wisdom
of Solomon handed down to them by secret succession, or derived to
them from contact with the lands of the far-distant East. St. Paul
determined, therefore, that he would give no opportunity of charging
him with trading upon the credulity of his followers, or working with
an eye to covetous or dishonest gains. "I coveted no man's silver or
gold or apparel. Ye yourselves know that these hands ministered unto
my necessities, and to them that were with me," is the description he
gave of the manner in which he discharged his apostolic office in
Ephesus, when addressing the elders of that city. We can thus trace
St. Paul labouring at his trade as a tentmaker for nearly a period of
five years, combining the time spent at Ephesus with that spent at
Corinth. Notwithstanding, however, the attention and energy which this
exercise of his trade demanded, he found time for enormous
evangelistic and pastoral work. In fact, we find St. Paul nowhere else
so much occupied with pastoral work as at Ephesus. Elsewhere we see
the devoted evangelist, rushing in with the pioneers, breaking down
all hindrances, heading the stormers to whom was committed the
fiercest struggle, the most deadly conflict, and then at once moving
into fresh conflicts, leaving the spoils of victory and the calmer
work of peaceful pastoral labours to others. But here in Ephesus we
see St. Paul's marvellous power of adaptation. He is at one hour a
clever artisan capable of gaining support sufficient for others as
well as for himself; then he is the skilful controversialist
"reasoning daily in the school of one Tyrannus"; and then he is the
indefatigable pastor of souls "teaching publicly, and from house to
house," and "ceasing not to admonish every one night and day with
tears."
[189] See pp. 32, 33 above for some remarks on this title, the
Way, used in the Acts for the Gospel Dispensation or the Christian
Church. Cf. also ch. ix. 2, xix. 23, xxii. 4, xxiv. 14, and the
expression the Way of Life in the _Didache_.
But this was not all, or nearly all, the burden the Apostle carried.
He had to be perpetually on the alert against Jewish plots. We hear
nothing directly of Jewish attempts on his life or liberty during the
period of just three years which he spent on this prolonged visit. We
might be sure, however, from our previous experience of the
synagogues, that he must have run no small danger in this direction;
but then when we turn to the same address we hear something of them.
He is recalling to the minds of the Ephesian elders the circumstances
of his life in their community from the beginning, and he therefore
appeals thus: "Ye yourselves know from the first day that I set foot
in Asia, after what manner I was with you all the time, serving the
Lord with all lowliness of mind, and with tears, _and with trials
which befell me with plots of the Jews_." Ephesus again was a great
field wherein he personally worked; it was also a great centre for
missionary operations which he superintended. It was the capital of
the province of Asia, the richest and most important of all the Roman
provinces, teeming with resources, abounding in highly civilised and
populous cities, connected with one another by an elaborate network of
admirably constructed roads. Ephesus was cut out by nature and by art
alike as a missionary centre whence the gospel should radiate out into
all the surrounding districts. And so it did. "All they which dwelt in
Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks," is the
testimony of St. Luke with respect to the wondrous progress of the
gospel, not in Ephesus alone, but also throughout all the province, a
statement which we find corroborated a little lower down in the same
nineteenth chapter by the independent testimony of Demetrius the
silversmith, who, when he was endeavouring to stir up his
fellow-craftsmen to active exertions in defence of their endangered
trade, says, "Ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, but almost
throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much
people." St. Paul's disciples laboured, too, in the other cities of
Asia, as Epaphras for instance in Colossæ. And St. Paul himself, we
may be certain, bestowed the gifts and blessings of his apostolic
office by visiting these local Churches, as far as he could
consistently with the pressing character of his engagements in
Ephesus.[190] But even the superintendence of vast missions throughout
the province of Asia did not exhaust the prodigious labours of St.
Paul. He perpetually bore about in his bosom anxious thoughts for the
welfare, trials, and sorrows of the numerous Churches he had
established in Europe and Asia alike. He was constant in prayers for
them, mentioning the individual members by name, and he was unwearied
in keeping up communications with them, either by verbal messages or
by written epistles, one specimen of which remains in the First
Epistle to the Corinthians, written to them from Ephesus, and showing
us the minute care, the comprehensive interest, the intense sympathy
which dwelt within his breast with regard to his distant converts all
the while that the work at Ephesus, controversial, evangelistic and
pastoral, to say nothing at all of his tentmaking, was making the most
tremendous demands on body and soul alike, and apparently absorbing
all his attention. It is only when we thus realise bit by bit what the
weak, delicate, emaciated Apostle must have been doing, that we are
able to grasp the full meaning of his own words to the Corinthians:
"Besides those things that are without, there is that which presseth
upon me daily, anxiety for all the Churches."
[190] Bishop Lightfoot, _Colossians_, Introd., p. 30, has some
good remarks bearing on this topic: "How or when the conversion of
the Colossians took place we have no direct information. Yet it
can hardly be wrong to connect the event with St. Paul's long
sojourn at Ephesus. Here he remained preaching for three whole
years. It is possible, indeed, that during this period he paid
short visits to other neighbouring cities of Asia; but if so, the
notices in the Acts oblige us to suppose these interruptions to
his residence in Ephesus to have been slight and infrequent. Yet,
though the Apostle himself was stationary in the capital, the
Apostolic influence and teaching spread far beyond the limits of
the city and its immediate neighbourhood. It was hardly an
exaggeration when Demetrius declared that 'almost throughout all
Asia this Paul had persuaded and turned away much people.' The
sacred historian himself uses equally strong language in
describing the effects of the Apostle's preaching: 'All they which
dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.'
In accordance with these notices the Apostle himself, in an
Epistle written during this sojourn, sends salutations to Corinth,
not from the Church of Ephesus specially, as might have been
anticipated, but from the 'Churches of Asia' generally (1 Cor.
xvi. 19). St. Luke, it should be observed, ascribes this
dissemination of the gospel not to journeys undertaken by the
Apostle, but to his preaching at Ephesus itself. Thither, as to
the metropolis of Western Asia, would flock crowds from all the
towns and villages far and near. Thence they would carry away,
each to his own neighbourhood, the spiritual treasure which they
had so unexpectedly found."
This lengthened period of intense activity of mind and body terminated
in an incident which illustrates the peculiar character of St. Paul's
Ephesian ministry. Ephesus was a town where the spiritual and moral
atmosphere simply reeked with the fumes, ideas, and practices of
Oriental paganism, of which magical incantations formed the
predominant feature. Magic prevailed all over the pagan world at this
time. In Rome, however, magical practices were always more or less
under the ban of public opinion, though at times resorted to even by
those whose office called upon them to suppress illegal actions. A
couple of years before the very time at which we have arrived, workers
in magic, among whom were included astrologers, or mathematicians, as
the Roman law called them, were banished from Rome simultaneously with
the Jews, who always enjoyed an unenviable notoriety for such occult
practices.[191] In Asia Minor and the East they flourished at this
time under the patronage of religion, and continued to flourish in all
the great cities down to Christian times. Christianity itself could
not wholly banish magic which retained its hold upon the
half-converted Christians who flocked into the Church in crowds during
the second half of the fourth century; and we learn from St.
Chrysostom himself, that when a young man he had a narrow escape for
his life owing to the continuance of magical practices in Antioch,
more than three hundred years after St. Paul.[192] It is no wonder
that when Diana's worship reigned supreme at Ephesus, magical
practices should also flourish there. If, however, there existed a
special development of the power of evil at Ephesus, God also bestowed
a special manifestation of Divine power in the person and ministry of
St. Paul, as St. Luke expressly declares: "God wrought special
miracles by the hands of Paul, insomuch that unto the sick were
carried away from his body handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases
departed from them, and the evil spirits departed from them." This
passage has been often found a stumbling-block by many persons. They
have thought that it has a certain legendary air about it, as they in
turn think that there is a certain air of legend about the similar
passage in Acts v. 12-16, which makes much the same statement about
St. Peter. When writing about this latter passage in my previous
volume, p. 230, I offered some suggestions which lessen, if they do
not quite take away, the difficulty; to these I shall now only refer
my readers. But I think we can see a local reason for the peculiar
development or manifestation of miraculous power through St. Paul. The
devil's seat was just then specially at Ephesus, so far as the great
province of Asia was concerned. The powers of evil had concentrated
all their force and all their wealth of external grandeur,
intellectual cleverness, and spiritual trickery in order to lead men
captive; and there God, in order that He might secure a more striking
victory for truth upon this magnificent stage, armed His faithful
servant with an extraordinary development of the good powers of the
world to come, enabling him to work special wonders in the sight of
the heathen. Can we not read an echo of the fearful struggle just then
waged in the metropolis of Asia in words addressed some years later to
the members of the same Church, "For our wrestling is not against
flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers,
against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts
of wickedness in the heavenly places"? We make a great mistake when we
think of the apostles as working miracles when and as they liked. At
times their evangelistic work seems to have been conducted without any
extraordinary manifestations, and then at other times, when the power
of Satan was specially put forth, God displayed His special strength,
enabling His servants to work wonders and signs in His Name. It was
much the same as in the Old Testament. The Old Testament miracles will
be found to cluster themselves round the deliverance of Israel out of
Egypt, and its Reformation at the hand of Elijah. So, too, the
recorded miracles of the apostles will be found to gather round St.
Peter's earlier work in Jerusalem, where Satan strove to counter-work
God's designs in one way, and St. Paul's ministry in Ephesus, where
Satan strove to counter-work them in another way. One incident at
Ephesus attracted special attention. There was a priestly family,
consisting of seven sons, belonging to the Jews at Ephesus. Their
father had occupied high position among the various courses which in
turn served the Temple, even as Zacharias, the father of the Baptist,
did. These men observed the power with which St. Paul dealt with human
spirits disordered by the powers of evil, using for that purpose the
sacred name of Jesus. They undertook to use the same sacred
invocation; but it proved, like the censers of Korah, Dathan and
Abiram, a strange fire kindled against their own souls. The man
possessed by the evil spirit recognised not their presumptuous
efforts, but attacked them, and did them serious bodily injury. This
circumstance spread the fame of the man of God wider and wider. The
power of magic and of the demons fell before him, even as the image of
Dagon fell before the Ark. Many of the nominal believers in
Christianity had still retained their magical practices as of yore,
even as nominal Christians retained them in the days of St.
Chrysostom. The reality of St. Paul's power, demonstrated by the awful
example of Sceva's sons, smote them in their inmost conscience. They
came, confessed their deeds, brought their magical books
together,[193] and gave the greatest proof of their honest
convictions; for they burned them in the sight of all, and counting
the price thereof found it fifty thousand pieces of silver, or more
than two thousand pounds of our money. "So mightily grew the word of
the Lord and prevailed" in the very chosen seat of the Ephesian Diana.
[191] I allude, of course, to the decree of Claudius against the
Jews in A.D. 52, to which Suetonius (_Claudius_, 25) and Dio
Cassius, lx. 6, refer; cf. Tacitus, _Annals_, xii. 52, and Lewin's
_Fasti Sacri_, A.D. 52.
[192] The story is an interesting one. It will be found in
Stephens' _Life of St. Chrysostom_, p. 61. The Emperor Valens had
discovered that some of his enemies had been endeavouring, through
magical contrivances something like table-rapping, to spell out
the name of his successor, and had succeeded so far that they had
found out the first part of the name as Theod, but the oracle
could tell nothing more. The jealous Emperor ordered every
prominent man with the names Theodore or Theodosius to be slain,
vainly thinking to kill his own successor. He also ordered every
one found with magical books in their possession to be at once
slain. Chrysostom and a friend were walking in A.D. 374 on the
banks of the Orontes when they saw a book floating down the
stream. They stretched forth and rescued it, when, seeing that it
was a magical book, they at once flung it back into the river, and
not a moment too soon, as just then a police officer on detective
duty appeared on the scene, from whom a moment earlier they could
not have escaped. St. Chrysostom always regarded this as one of
the great escapes of his life: see Art. "Chrysostom" in _Dict.
Christ. Biog._, vol. i., p. 520, and his own reference to the
escape in his 38th Homily on the Acts, translated in the Oxford
Library of the Fathers. Mr. Stephens, _l.c._, gives an account of
the magical rites and their ceremonial, which was doubtless much
the same in A.D. 374 as in A.D. 54, whence we take a brief
extract: "The twenty-four letters of the alphabet were arranged at
intervals round the rim of a kind of charger, which was placed on
a tripod consecrated by magic songs and frequent ceremonies. The
diviner, habited as a heathen priest, in linen robes, sandals, and
with a fillet wreathed about his head, chanted a hymn to Apollo,
the god of prophecy, while a ring in the centre of the charger was
slipped rapidly round a slender thread. The letters in front of
which the ring successively stopped indicated the character of the
oracle."
[193] The magical books thus consigned to the flames by the
Christian believers who practised magic were filled with figures
or characters technically called "Ephesian letters," Γράμματα
Ἐφέσια. These were mystic characters and strange
words which were engraven on the crown, zone, and feet of the
goddess. Clement of Alexandria discusses their use, and says the
Greeks were greatly addicted to them, in his _Stromata_, v. 8, as
translated in Clement's works, vol. ii., p. 247, in Clark's
Ante-Nicene Library. The same use of curious mystic words passed
over to the Manichæans and other secret sects of mediæval times.
See also Guhl's _Ephesiaca_, p. 94 (Berlin, 1843), where all the
authorities on this curious subject are collected together.
Conybeare and Howson, ch. xiv., give them from Guhl in a handy
shape. Great quantities of these "Ephesian letters" have been
found among the Fayûm Manuscripts discovered in Egypt, which
almost universally make a large use of the name Iao or Jehovah,
showing their contact with Judaism.