After this unhappy dispute, the two great apostles of the Gentiles
separated; and while Barnabas, accompanied by his favorite nephew,
pursued the former route to Cyprus, his native island, Paul took a
different direction, by land, north and west. In selecting a companion
for a journey which he had considered as urgently requiring such
blameless rectitude and firmness of resolution, he had set his heart
upon Silas, the efficient Hellenist deputy from Jerusalem, whose
character had been fully tested and developed during his stay in
Antioch, where he had been so active in the exercise of those talents,
as a preacher, which had gained for him the title of “prophet” before
his departure from Jerusalem. Paul, during his apostolic association
with him, had laid the foundation of a very intimate friendship; and
being thus attached to him by motives of affection and respect, he
now selected him as the companion of his missionary toils. Bidding the
church of Antioch farewell, and being commended by them to the favor
of God, he departed,――not by water, but through the cities of Syria, by
land,――whence turning westward, he passed through the Syrian gates into
Cilicia; in all these places strengthening the churches already planted,
by making large additions to them from the Gentiles around them.
Journeying northwest from Cilicia, he came by the Cilician gates of
Taurus, to his old scenes of labor and suffering, in Lycaonia, at Derbe
and Lystra, where he proceeded in the task of renewing and completing
the good work which he had himself begun on his former tour with
Barnabas; with whom he might now doubtless have effected vastly more
good, and whose absence must have been deeply regretted by those who
owed their hopes of salvation to the united prayers and labors of him
and Paul. Among those who had been converted here by the apostles on
their first mission, was a half-bred Jew, by name Timotheus, his father
having been a Greek who married Eunice, a Jewess, and had maintained a
high character among his countrymen in that region, both in Lystra and
Iconium. Under the early and careful instructions of his pious mother,
who had herself received a superior religious education under her own
mother Lois, Timothy had acquired a most uncommon familiarity with
the Scriptures, which were able to make him wise unto salvation; and
that he had learned them and appreciated their meaning in a much more
spiritual and exalted sense than most Jews, appears from the fact, that
notwithstanding his early regard for the law as well as the prophets,
he had never complied with the Mosaic rite of circumcision,――perhaps
because his father may have been prejudiced against the infliction of
such a sign upon his child. Paul becoming acquainted with Timothy,
and seeing in the young man the germ of those talents which were
afterwards so eminent in the gospel cause, determined to train him to
be an assistant and associate with him in the apostolic ministry,――and
in order to make him so far conform to all the rites of the ancient
covenant, as would fit him for an acceptable ministry among the Jews as
well as the Gentiles, he had him circumcised; and he was induced still
farther to this step of conformity, by the consideration of the effect
it would have on the Jews in that immediate neighborhood, who were
already very suspicious that Paul was in reality aiming at the utter
overthrow and extinction of all the Mosaic usages, and was secretly
doing all that he could to bring them into contempt and disuse. Having
made this sacrifice to the prejudices of his countrymen, he now
considered Timothy as completely fitted for usefulness in the apostolic
ministry, and henceforth made him his constant companion for years.