V.

_APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA._

"For yourselves, brethren, know our entering in unto you, that it

hath not been found vain: but having suffered before, and been

shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we waxed bold in our

God to speak unto you the gospel of God in much conflict. For our

exhortation _is_ not of error, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile: but

even as we have been approved of God to be intrusted with the

gospel, so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God which proveth our

hearts. For neither at any time were we found using words of

flattery, as ye know, nor a cloke of covetousness, God is witness;

nor seeking glory of men, neither from you, nor from others, when we

might have been burdensome, as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle

in the midst of you, as when a nurse cherisheth her own children:

even so, being affectionately desirous of you, we were well pleased

to impart unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own

souls, because ye were become very dear to us. 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.

Ye are witnesses, and God _also_, how holily and righteously and

unblameably we behaved ourselves toward you that believe: as ye know

how we _dealt_ with each one of you, as a father with his own

children, exhorting you, and encouraging _you_, and testifying, to

the end that ye should walk worthily of God, who calleth you into

His own kingdom and glory."--1 THESS. ii. 1-12 (R.V.).

Our first impression, as we read these verses, is that they contain

little that is new. They simply expand the statement of ch. i., ver.

5: "Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but in power, and in

the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; even as ye know what manner of

men we showed ourselves toward you for your sake." But if their

substance is the same, their tone is very different. It is obvious at

a glance that the Apostle has a definite purpose in view in appealing

so pointedly as he does here to facts with which his readers were

familiar. The truth is, he is standing upon his defence. Unless it

were so, he would not think of writing, as he does in ver. 5, that he

had never had recourse to flattery, nor sought to make gain out of his

apostleship; nor as he does in ver. 10, that God knows the entire

purity of his life among them. Although he does not name them, it is

quite plain that he was already suffering from those enemies who never

ceased to vex him while he lived. As we learn afterwards, these

enemies were the Jews. When they had opportunity, they used open

violence; they roused the Gentile mob against him; they had him

scourged and stoned. When his body was out of their reach, they

assailed him through his character and affections. They crept into the

churches which his love and zeal had gathered here and there, and

scattered injurious suspicions against him among his disciples. He was

not, they hinted, all that he seemed to be. They could tell stories

about his early days, and advised those who did not know him so well

to be on their guard. Evangelising paid him quite as well as harder

work, and his paltry ambition was gratified by lording it over his

ignorant converts. Such messengers of Satan had apparently made their

appearance in Thessalonica since Paul left, and this chapter is his

reply to their insinuations.

There is something exquisitely painful in the situation thus created.

It would have been like a sword piercing the Apostle's heart, had his

enemies succeeded in their attempt to breed distrust in the

Thessalonians toward him. He could not have borne to think that those

whom he loved so utterly should entertain the faintest suspicion of

the integrity of his love. But happily he is spared that pain. He

writes, indeed, as one who has felt the indignity of the charges

brought against him, but with the frankness and heartiness of a man

who is confident that his defence will be well received. From baseless

insinuations he can appeal to facts which are well known to all. From

the false character in which he has been dressed by his adversaries he

can appeal to the true, in which he lived and moved familiarly among

them.

The first point in his favour is found in the circumstances under

which he had preached the gospel in Thessalonica. Had he been an

insincere man, with bye ends of his own to serve, he would never have

faced the career of an apostle. He had been scourged and put in the

stocks at Philippi; and when he left that city for Thessalonica, he

brought his troubles with him. Here also he had much conflict; he was

beset on every hand with difficulties; it was only in the strength of

God that he had courage to preach at all. You yourselves, he says,

know that; and how, in spite of that, our coming to you was not vain,

but full of power; surely it needs no more to prove the

disinterestedness of our mission.

From this point onward, the apology falls into two parts, a negative

and a positive: the Apostle tells us what his gospel and the

proclamation of it are not; and then he tells us what, at

Thessalonica, it had been.

In the first place, it is not of error. It does not rest on mistakes,

or imaginations, or cunningly devised fables; in the fullest sense it

is the truth. It would have taken the heart out of the Apostle, and

made him incapable of braving anything for its sake, had he been in

doubt of this. If the gospel were a device of man, then men might take

liberties with it, handle it deceitfully, make their own account out

of it; but resting as it does on facts and truth, it demands honest

dealing in all its ministers. Paul claims here a character in

agreement with the dispensation which he serves: can a minister of the

truth, he asks, be other than a true man?

In the next place, it is not of uncleanness; that is, it is not

prompted by any impure motive. The force of the word here must be

determined by the context; and we see that the impure motives

specially laid to the charge of Paul were avarice and ambition; or, to

use the words of the Apostle himself, covetousness, and the seeking of

honour from men. The first of these is so manifestly inconsistent with

any degree of spirituality that Paul writes instinctively "_a cloke_

of covetousness"; he did not make his apostolic labour a veil, under

cover of which he could gratify his love of gain. It is impossible to

exaggerate the subtle and clinging character of this vice. It owes its

strength to the fact that it can be so easily cloked. We seek money,

so we tell ourselves, not because we are covetous, but because it is a

power for all good purposes. Piety, charity, humanity, refinement,

art, science--it can minister to them all; but when we obtain it, it

is too easily hoarded, or spent in indulgence, display, and

conformity to the world. The pursuit of wealth, except in an utterly

materialised society, is always cloked by some ideal end to which it

is to minister; but how few there are in whose hands wealth is merely

an instrument for the furtherance of such ends. In many men the desire

for it is naked selfishness, an idolatry as undisguised as that of

Israel at Sinai. Yet all men feel how bad and mean it is to have the

heart set on money. All men see how base and incongruous it is to make

godliness a source of gain. All men see the peculiar ugliness of a

character which associates piety and avarice--of a Balaam, for

instance, a Gehazi, or an Ananias. It is not ministers of the gospel

only, but all to whom the credit of the gospel is entrusted, who have

to be on their guard here. Our enemies are entitled to question our

sincerity when we can be shown to be lovers of money. At Thessalonica,

as elsewhere, Paul had been at pains to make such calumny impossible.

Although entitled to claim support from the Church in accordance with

the law of Christ that they who preach the gospel should live by the

gospel, he had wrought night and day with his own hands that he might

not burden any of them. As a precaution, this self-denial was vain;

there can be no security against malice; but it gave him a triumphant

vindication when the charge of covetousness was actually made.

The other impure motive contemplated is ambition. Some modern students

of Paul's character--devil's advocates, no doubt--hint at this as his

most obvious fault. It was necessary for him, we are told, to be

first; to be the leader of a party; to have a following of his own.

But he disclaims ambition as explicitly as avarice. He never sought

glory from men, at Thessalonica or elsewhere. He used none of the arts

which obtain it. As apostles of Christ--he includes his friends--they

had, indeed, a rank of their own; the greatness of the Prince whom

they represented was reflected on them as His ambassadors; they might

have "stood upon their dignity,"[6] had they chosen to do so. Their

very self-denial in the matter of money formed a new temptation for

them here. They might well feel that their disinterested service of

the Thessalonians entitled them to a spiritual pre-eminence; and

indeed there is no pride like that which bases on ascetic austerities

the claim to direct with authority the life and conduct of others.

Paul escaped this snare. He did not compensate himself for renouncing

gain, with any lordship over souls. In all things he was the servant

of those to whom he preached.

And as his motives were pure, so were the means he used. His

exhortation was not in guile. He did not manipulate his message; he

was never found using words of flattery. The gospel was not his own to

do what he pleased with: it was God's; God had approved him so far as

to entrust it to him; yet every moment, in the discharge of his trust,

that same God was proving his heart still, so that false dealing was

impossible. He did not make his message other than it was; he did not

hide any part of the counsel of God; he did not inveigle the

Thessalonians by any false pretences into responsibilities which would

not have been accepted could they have been foreseen.

All these denials--not of error, not of uncleanness, not of guile; not

pleasing men, not using words of flattery, not cloking over

covetousness--all these denials presuppose the contrary affirmations.

Paul does not indulge in boasting but on compulsion; he would never

have sought to justify himself, unless he had first been accused. And

now, over against this picture, drawn by his enemies, let us look at

the true likeness which is held up before God and man.

Instead of selfishness there is love, and nothing but love. We are all

familiar with the great passage in the epistle to the Philippians

where the Apostle depicts the mind which was in Christ Jesus. The

contrast in that passage between the disposition which grasps at

eminence and that which makes itself of no reputation, between

ἁρπαγμὸς and κένωσις, is reproduced here. Paul had learned of

Christ; and instead of seeking in his apostolic work opportunities for

self-exaltation, he shrank from no service imposed by love. "We were

gentle in the midst of you, as when a nurse cherisheth her own

children." "Her own" is to be emphasised. The tenderness of the

Apostle was that of a mother warming her babe at her breast. Most of

the ancient authorities, the R.V. tells us in the margin, read "We

were _babes_ (νήπιοι) in the midst of you." If this were correct,

the thought would be that Paul stooped to the level of these infant

disciples, speaking to them, as it were, in the language of childhood,

and accommodating himself to their immaturity. But though this is

appropriate enough, the word νήπιοι is not proper to express it.[7]

Gentleness is really what is meant. But his love went further than

this in its yearning over the Thessalonians. He had been accused of

seeking gain and glory when he came among them; but his sole desire

had been not to get but to give. As his stay was prolonged, the

disciples became very dear to their teachers; "we were well pleased to

impart unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls."

That is the true standard of pastoral care. The Apostle lived up to it

always. "_Now_ we _live_," he writes in the next chapter, "if ye stand

fast in the Lord." "Ye are in our hearts," he cries to the

Corinthians, "to live together and to die together." He not only kept

back from them nothing of the whole purpose of God; he kept back no

part of himself. His daily toil, his toil by night, his prayers, his

preaching, his spiritual ardour, his very soul, were theirs. They knew

his labour and travail; they were witnesses, and God also, how holily

and righteously and unblamably he had behaved toward them.

As the Apostle recalls these recent memories, he dwells for a

moment on another aspect of his love. It had not only the tender

fondness of a mother's, but the educative wisdom of a father's. One

by one he dealt with the disciples--which is not the way to gain

glory--exhorting, encouraging, bearing solemn testimony to the truth

of God. And his end in all this, as they knew, was ideal and

spiritual, an end as remote as possible from any worldly interest of

his own; that they might walk worthily of God who was calling them

into His own kingdom and glory. How far from the rewards and

distinctions of the present must that man's mind be who sees, as Paul

saw steadily, the things that are invisible. If he who is blind to the

golden crown above his head grasps the muck rake tightly and clutches

eagerly all it brings within his reach, surely he whose eye is set

upon the crown must be superior alike to the gain and the glory of the

world. That, at least, is the claim which the Apostle makes here.

Nothing could be more incongruous than that a man to whom the visible

world was transitory and unreal, and the invisible kingdom of God real

and eternal, should be eager for money and applause, and forget the

high calling with which he himself was calling men in Christ. So far

the apology of the Apostle.

The practical application of this passage is different, according as

we look at it in detail, or as a whole. It exhibits to us, in the

charges brought against Paul, those vices which even bad men can see

to be rankly inconsistent with the Christian character. Covetousness

is the foremost. No matter how we cloke it--and we always cloke it

somehow--it is incurably un-Christian. Christ had no money. He never

wished to have any. The one perfect life that has been lived in this

world is the life of Him who owned nothing, and who left nothing but

the clothes he wore. Whoever names the name of Christ, and professes

to follow Him, must learn of Him indifference to gain. The mere

suspicion of avarice will discredit, and ought to discredit, the most

pious pretensions. The second vice I have spoken of as ambition. It is

the desire to use others for one's own exaltation, to make them the

stepping stones on which we rise to eminence, the ministers of our

vanity, the sphere for the display of our own abilities as leaders,

masters, organisers, preachers. To put ourselves in that relation to

others is to do an essentially un-Christian thing. A minister whose

congregation is the theatre on which he displays his talents or his

eloquence is not a Christian. A clever man, to whom the men and women

with whom he meets in society are merely specimens of human nature on

whom he can make shrewd observations, sharpening his wits on them as

on a grindstone, is not a Christian. A man of business, who looks at

the labourers whom he employs as only so many instruments for rearing

the fabric of his prosperity, is not a Christian. Everybody in the

world knows that; and such men, if they profess Christianity, give a

handle to slander, and bring disgrace on the religion which they wear

merely as a blind. True Christianity is love, and the nature of love

is not to take but to give. There is no limit to the Christian's

beneficence; he counts nothing his own; he gives his very soul with

every separate gift. He is as tender as the mother to her infant; as

wise, as manly, as earnest as the father with his growing boy.

Looked at as a whole this passage warns us against slander. It must

needs be that slander is spoken and believed; but woe to the man or

woman by whom it is either believed or spoken! None are good enough to

escape it. Christ was slandered; they called Him a glutton and a

drunkard, and said He was in league with the devil. Paul was

slandered; they said he was a very smart man, who looked well to his

own interest, and made dupes of simple people. The deliberate

wickedness of such falsehoods is diabolical, but it is not so very

rare. Numbers of people who would not invent such stories are glad to

hear them. They are not very particular whether they are true or

false; it pleases them to think that an evangelist, eminent in

profession, gets a royalty on hymn-books; or that a priest, famous for

devotion, was really no better than he should have been; or that a

preacher, whose words regenerated a whole church, sometimes despised

his audience, and talked nonsense impromptu. To sympathise with

detraction is to have the spirit of the devil, not of Christ. Be on

your guard against such sympathy; you are human, and therefore need

to. Never give utterance to a suspicious thought. Never repeat what

would discredit a man, if you have only heard it and are not sure it

is true; even if you are sure of its truth, be afraid of yourself if

it gives you any pleasure to think of it. Love thinketh no evil; love

rejoiceth not in iniquity.

[6] So Alford renders δυνάμενοι ἐν βάρει εἶναι.

[7] νήπιος always includes the idea of being undeveloped, unripe,

and has often a shade of censure in Paul.