Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ
Date: 2023-10-16T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Apostles

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Title: Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ

Author: David Francis Bacon

Release date: October 16, 2023 [eBook #71888]

Language: English

Original publication: New Haven: L. H. Young, 1836

Credits: Richard Hulse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE APOSTLES OF JESUS CHRIST ***

Lives of the Apostles of Jesus Christ

Transcriber’s Notes

The cover image was provided by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Punctuation has been standardized.

Most of the non-common abbreviations used to save space in printing have been expanded to the non-abbreviated form for easier reading.

The text may show quotations within quotations, all set off by similar quote marks. The inner quotations have been changed to alternate quote marks for improved readability.

This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated with a Transcriber’s Note.

The symbol ‘‡’ indicates the description in parenthesis has been added to an illustration. This may be needed if there is no caption or if the caption does not describe the image adequately.

Transcriber’s Notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes are identified by ♦♠♥♣ symbols in the text and are shown immediately below the paragraph in which they appear.

Painted by Raphael.  Engᵈ by A. Daggett.

CHRIST’S CHARGE TO PETER.

Matthew XVI 18, 19

LIVES

OF

THE APOSTLES

OF

JESUS CHRIST.

NEW HAVEN: L. H. YOUNG.

1836.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1835,
By David Francis Bacon, Author,
in the office of the Clerk of the District Court of the District of Connecticut.

William Storer, Jr. Print
New-Haven, Ct

PREFACE.

The fair and just fulfilment of the promise made to the public, in the previous announcement of this work, would require that it should contain, simply, “a distinct, plain, historical narrative of the life of each of the apostles, illustrated by such aids as could be drawn from the works of various authors, of former ages, and of other countries, which hitherto, in the inaccessible forms of a dead or foreign tongue, have been too long covered from the eyes of thousands, who might be profited by their more open communication;――from these sources, as well as from the sacred record, to draw the materials of the narrative,――to throw occasionally the lights of historical, topographical, and scientific, as well as exegetical illustrations on the word of truth,――and from all, to learn how we may live, labor, and die, as did these first champions of Christ crucified.” A hope was also expressed by the author, that the facilities of his situation would enable him, by research among the long-hidden treasures of large and costly libraries, to bring forth, in direct illustration of this narrative, much of those treasures of scriptural knowledge, which, by their size and rarity, are beyond the reach and the means of a vast number of Biblical students, who would derive great advantage and pleasure from their perusal; and that even clergymen and students of theology, might find in this work many things, drawn from these valuable materials, that would make this a desirable book for them. Yet far from promising the combined results of all the labors of the learned on these subjects, the author then distinctly professed his main object to be, the collection and combination of such facts and illustrations as would make the work acceptable and interesting to readers of all classes,――to popular, as well as to learned readers; and he accordingly engaged to present all the contents of the book, clear and plain, even to those whose minds have not been accustomed to deep research in Biblical study.

With these objects constantly in view, the author has long been steadily and laboriously devoted to the preparation and composition of this book. In presenting this result of his labors, he is not conscious of having actually failed to comply with the general terms of his published engagement; yet the critical eyes of many among his readers will doubtless light upon parts of the work, which have been materially affected in their character by the very peculiar circumstances under which the labor has been undertaken and prosecuted; circumstances so very peculiar, that, in accordance with the universal custom of those who have completed such tasks, he is justified in referring to some important details of the history of the writing. The first summons to the task found him engrossed in pursuits as foreign to the investigations necessary for this work, as any department of knowledge that can be conceived; and though the study of critical and exegetical theology had, at a former period, been to him an object of regular attention, the invitation to this work seemed so uncongenial to his adopted pursuits, that he rejected it decidedly; nor was it until after repeated and urgent solicitations, that he consented to undertake it. But even then, so little aware was he of the inexhaustible richness of his noble subject, that he commenced his researches with oft-expressed doubts, whether it would admit of such ample disquisition as was hoped by the original proposer. How just those doubts were, may be best learned from the hurried and brief notice which many important points in this great theme have necessarily received within such narrow limits.

Begun under these unfavorable auspices, the work was an object of pursuit with him through a long period of time; nor did his investigations proceed far, before he was fully assured that it was vast, beyond his highest expectations; and from that time the difficulty has been, not to meet the expectation of a large book, but to bring these immense materials within this limited space. Growing thus in his hands, through months and years, his subject soon increased also in its interest to him, till in the progress of time and various other contemporaneous ♦occupations, it rose from the character of a task to that of a delightful, a dignified, and dignifying pursuit; and he was soon disposed to look on it not as a labor, but as a recreation from avocations less congenial to his taste. It called him first from the study of a profession, sickening and disgusting in many of its particulars; and was his frequent resource for enjoyment in many a season of repose. His attention was often distracted from it, by calls to diverse and opposite pursuits; by turns to the public labors and responsibilities of an editor and an instructor,――but in the midst of these it was his solace and refreshment, till at last it wholly drew him away from everything besides itself, and became for months his sole, constant, absorbing and exhausting occupation. Too often, indeed, were the pursuits with which it was at first varied and interchanged, the occasion of disturbances and anxieties that did anything but fit him for the comfortable pursuit of his noble task; yet these evils themselves became the means of inspiring him with a higher and purer regard for it, because they drove him to this as an only consolation. As was most eloquently and beautifully said by the evangelical George Horne, at the conclusion of a similar task,――“And now, could the author flatter himself, that anyone would take half the pleasure in reading the work, which he hath taken in writing it, he would not fear the loss of his labor.” Well would it be, both for the writer and his work, if he could truly add in the melodious sentence which Horne subjoins, that “the employment detached him from the bustle and hurry of life, and the noise of folly;”――that “vanity and vexation flew away for a season,――care and disquietude came not nigh his dwelling.”

♦ “occcupations” replaced with “occupations”

THE LIVES OF THE APOSTLES.

The word APOSTLE has been adopted into all the languages of Christendom, from the Greek, in which the earliest records of the Christian history are given to us. In that language, the corresponding word is derived from a verb which means “send,” so that the simplest primary meaning of the derivative is “one sent;” and in all the uses of the word this meaning is kept in view. Of its ordinary meanings, the most frequent was that of “a person employed at a distance to execute the commands, or exercise the authority, of the supreme power,” in which sense it was appropriated as the title of an embassador, a messenger, or a naval commander; and it is used to designate all these officers in the classic Grecian writers. In reference to its general, and probably not to any technical meaning, it was applied by Jesus Christ to those of his followers whom he chose as the objects of his most careful instruction, and as the inheritors of his power; whom thus indued, he sent into all the world, to preach the gospel to every creature. The use of the term in connection with this high and holy commission, did not give it such a character of peculiar sanctity or dignity, as to limit its application among Christians of the early ages, to the chosen ministers of Christ’s own appointment; but it is applied even in the writings of the New Testament, as well as by the Grecian and Latin fathers of the churches, to other persons of inferior rank, that might be included under its primary meaning. It was also extended, in the peculiar sense in which Christ first applied it, from the twelve to other eminent and successful preachers of the gospel who were contemporary with them, and to some of their successors.

[It will be noticed that, throughout this book, the text is, on many pages, broken by matters thrown in at the ends of paragraphs, in smaller type. The design is, that these notes, thus running through the body of the work, shall contain all such particulars as would too much break the thread of the story if made a part of the common text, and yet are of the highest importance as illustrations, explanations, and proofs of passages in the history. In many places, there will be need of references to history, antiquities, topography, and various collateral helps, to make the story understood. All these things are here given in minute type, proportioned to the minuteness of the investigations therein followed. Being separated in this way, they need be no hindrance to those who do not wish to learn the reasons and proofs of things, since all such can pass them by at once, and keep the thread of the narrative, in the larger type, unbroken.

This first note being a mere exegesis of a single word, is the least attractive of all to a common reader; and some, perhaps, will object to it as needlessly protracted into minute investigations of points not directly important to the narrative; and the writer may have been led beyond the necessity of the case, by the circumstance of his previous occupations having drawn his attention particularly to close etymological and lexicographical research in the Greek language; but he is consoled by the belief that there will be some among his readers who can appreciate and enjoy these minutiæ.]

Apostle.――The most distant theme, to which this word can be traced in Greek, is the verb Στελλω, stello, which enters into the composition of Αποστελλω, apostello, from which apostle is directly derived.

As to the primary meaning of Στελλω, there appears to be some difference of opinion among lexicographers. All the common lexicons give to the meaning “send” the first place, as the original sense from which all the others are formed, by different applications of the term. But a little examination into the history of the word, in its uses by the earlier Greeks, seems to give reason for a different arrangement of the meanings.

In searching for the original force of a Greek word, the first reference must, of course, be to the father of Grecian song and story. In Homer, this word, στελλω, is found in such a variety of connections, as to give the most desirable opportunities for reaching its primary meaning. Yet in none of these passages does it stand in such a relation to other words, as to require the meaning of “send.” Only a single passage in Homer has ever been supposed to justify the translation of the word in this sense, and even that is translated with equal force and justice, and far more in analogy with the usages of Homer, by the meaning of “equip,” or “prepare,” which is the idea expressed by it in all other passages where it is used by that author. (See Damm, sub voc.) This is the meaning which the learned Valckenaer gives as the true primary signification of this word, from which, in the revolutions of later usage, the secondary meanings have been derived. In this opinion I have been led to acquiesce, by the historical investigation of the earlier uses of the term, and by the consideration of the natural transition from the primary meaning of “fix,” “equip,” or “fit out,” to that of “send,” and other secondary meanings, all which occur only in the later authors. Pindar limits it like Homer. Herodotus never uses the word in the sense of “send,” but confines it to the meaning of “equip,” “furnish,” “clothe.” Æschylus gives it the meaning of “go,” but not of “send.” Sophocles and Euripides also exclude this application of the term.

This brief allusion to these early authorities will be sufficient, without a prolonged investigation, to show that the meaning of “send” was not, historically, the first signification. But a still more rational ground for this opinion is found in the natural order of transition in sense, which would be followed in the later applications of the word. It is perfectly easy to see how, from this primary meaning of “fix,” or “equip,” when applied to a person, in reference to an expedition or any distant object, would insensibly originate the meaning of “send;” since, in most cases, to equip or fix out an expedition or a messenger, is to commission and send one. In this way, all the secondary meanings flow naturally from this common theme, but if the order should be inverted in respect to any one of them, the beautiful harmony of derivation would be lost at once. There is no other of the meanings of στελλω which can be thus taken as the natural source of all the rest, and shown to originate them in its various secondary applications. The meanings of “array,” “dress,” “adorn,” “take in,” &c., are all deducible from the original idea conveyed by στελλω, and are, like “send,” equally incapable of taking the rank of the primary meaning.

In tracing the minute and distant etymology of this word, it is worth noticing that the first element in στελλω is the sound st, which is at once recognized by oriental scholars as identical with the Sanscrit and Persian root st, bearing in those and in many combinations in the various languages of their stock, the idea of “fixity.” This idea is prominent in the primary meaning of στελλω given by Passow, who, in his Greek lexicon, (almost the only classical one that properly classifies and deduces the meanings of words,) gives the German word stellen as the original ground-meaning of the term before us. This is best expressed in English by “fix,” in all its vagueness of meaning, from which, in the progress of use, are deduced the various secondary senses in which στελλω is used, which here follow in order:

1. Equip, Fit out, Arrange, Prepare. In this sense it is applied to armaments, both to hosts and to individuals, and thus in reference to warlike preparations expresses nearly the idea of “Arm.” This is, it seems to me, the meaning of the word in the verse of Homer already alluded to. The passage is in the Iliad xii. 325, where Sarpedon is addressing Glaucus, and says, “If we could hope, my friend, after escaping this contest, to shun forever old age and death, I would neither myself fight among the foremost, nor prepare you for the glorious strife.” (Or as Heyne more freely renders it, hortarer, “urge,” or “incite.”) The inappropriateness of the meaning “send,” given in this place by Clark, (mitterem) and one of the scholiasts, (πεμποιμι) consists in the fact, that the hero speaking was himself to accompany or rather lead his friend into the deadly struggle, and of course could not be properly said to send him, if he went with him or before him. It was the partial consideration of this circumstance, no doubt, which led the same scholiast to offer as an additional probable meaning, that of “prepare,” “make ready,” (παρασκευαζοιμι,) as though he had some misgiving about the propriety of his first translation. For a full account of these renderings, see Heyne in loc. and Stephens’s Thesaurus sub voc. In the latter also, under the second paragraph of Στελλω, are given numerous other passages illustrating this usage, in passive and middle as well as active forms, both from Homer and later writers. In Passow’s Griechisch Wörterbuch, other useful references are given sub voc.; and in Damm is found the best account of its uses in Homer.

2. In the applications of the word in this first meaning, the idea of equipment or preparation was always immediately followed by that of future action, for the very notion of equipment or preparation implies some departure or undertaking immediately subsequent. In the transitive sense, when the subject of the verb is the instrument of preparing another person for the distant purpose, there immediately arises the signification of “send,” constituting the second branch of definition, which has been so unfortunately mistaken for the root, by all the common lexicographers. In the reflexive sense, when the subject prepares himself for the expected action, in the same manner originates, at once, the meaning “go,” which is found, therefore, the prominent secondary sense of the middle voice, and also of the active, when, as is frequent in Greek verbs, that voice assumes a reflexive force. The origin of these two definitions, apparently so incongruous with the rest and with each other, is thus made consistent and clear; and the identity of origin here shown, justifies the arrangement of them both together in this manner.

The tracing out of the other meanings of this word from the ground-meaning, would be abundantly interesting to many; but all that can be here allowed, is the discussion of precedence between the first two, here given. Those who desire to pursue the research, have most able guides in the great German lexicographers, whose materials have been useful in illustrating what is here given. For abundant references illustrating these various meanings, see H. Stephens’s Thesaurus, Scapula’s, Damm’s, Schneider’s, Passow’s, Donnegan’s, Porti’s, and Jones’s Lexicons.

The simple verb στελλω, thus superabundantly illustrated, among its numerous combinations with other words, is compounded with the preposition απο, (apo,) making the verb Αποστελλω, (apostello.) This preposition having the force of “away,” “from,” when united with a verb, generally adds to it the idea of motion off from some object. Thus αποστελλω acquires by this addition the sense of “away,” which however only gives precision and force to the meaning “send,” which belongs to the simple verb. By prefixing this preposition, the verb is always confined to the definition “send,” and the compound never bears any other of the definitions of στελλω but this. The simple verb without the prefix expresses the idea of “send” only in certain peculiar relations with other words, while the compound, limited and aided by the preposition, always implies action directed “away from” the agent to a distance, and thus conveys the primary idea of “send,” so invariably, that it is used in no passage in which this word will not express its meaning. From this compound verb thus defined, is directly formed the substantive which is the true object and end of this protracted research.

Αποστολος, (Apostolos) is derived from the preceding verb by changing the penult vowel Ε into Ο, and displacing the termination of the verb by that of the noun. The change of the penult vowel is described in the grammars as caused by its being derived from the perfect middle, which has this peculiarity in its penult. The noun preserves in all its uses the uniform sense of the verb from which it is derived, and in every instance maintains the primary idea of “a person or thing sent.” It was often used adjectively with a termination varying according to the gender of the substantive to which it referred. In this way it seems to have been used by Herodotus, who gives it the termination corresponding to the neuter, when the substantive to which it refers is in that gender. (See Porti Dictionarium Ionicum Græco Latinum.) Herodotus is the earliest author in whom I am able to discover the word, for Homer never uses the word at all, nor does any author, as far as I know, previous to the father of history. Though always preserving the primary idea of the word, he varies its meaning considerably, according as he applies it to a person or a thing. With the neuter termination αποστολον, (apostoloN,) referring to the substantive πλοιον, (ploion,) it means a “vessel sent” from place to place. In Plato, (Epistle 7,) it occurs in this connection with the substantive πλοιον expressed, which in Herodotus is only implied. For an exposition of this use of the term, see H. Stephens’s Thesaurus, (sub voc. αποστολος.) With the masculine termination, Herodotus, applying it to persons, uses it first in the sense of “messenger,” “embassador,” or “herald,” in Clio, 21, where relating that Halyattes, king of Lydia, sent a herald (κηρυξ,) to treat for a truce with the Milesians, he mentions his arrival under this synonymous term. “So the messenger (αποστολος, apostolos,) came to Miletus.” (Ὁ μεν δη αποστολος ες την Μιλητον ἦν.) In Terpsichore, 38, he uses the same term. “Aristagoras the Milesian went to Lacedæmon by ship, as embassador (or delegate) from the assembly of Ionic tyrants,” (Αποστολος εγινετο.) These two passages are the earliest Greek in which I can find this word, and it is worth noticing here, that the word in the masculine form was distinctly applied to persons, in the sense given as the primary one in the text of this book. But, still maintaining in its uses the general idea of “sent,” it was not confined, in the ever-changing usage of the flexible Greeks, to individual persons alone. In reference to its expression of the idea of “distant destination,” it was applied by later writers to naval expeditions, and in the speeches of Demosthenes, who frequently uses the word, it is entirely confined to the meaning of a “warlike expedition, fitted out and sent by sea to a distant contest.” (References to numerous passages in Demosthenes, where this term is used, may be found in Stephens’s Thesaurus, on the word.) From the fleet itself, the term was finally transferred to the naval commander sent out with it, so that in this connection it became equivalent to the modern title of “Admiral.”

Besides these political and military uses of the word, it also acquired in the later Greek a technical meaning as a legal term, and in the law-writers of the Byzantine school, it is equivalent to “letters of appeal” from the decision of a lower tribunal to a higher one. But this, as well as the two previous meanings, must be considered as mere technical and temporary usages, while the original sense of “messenger,” “herald,” “embassador,” remained in constant force long after the word had received the peculiar application which is the great object of this long investigation. Yet various as are these meanings, it should be noticed that all those which refer to persons, have this one common idea, that of “one sent to a distance to execute the commands of a higher power.” This sense is likewise preserved in that sacred meaning, which the previous inquiry has now somewhat prepared the reader as well as the writer to appreciate in its true force.

The earliest passage in the sacred records of Christianity, in which the word apostle is used, is the second verse of the tenth chapter of Matthew, where the distinct nomination of the twelve chief disciples is first mentioned. They are here called apostles, and as the term is used in connection with their being sent out on their first mission, it seems plain that the application of the name had a direct reference to this primary signification. The word, indeed, which Jesus uses in the sixteenth verse, (when he says ‘Behold! I SEND you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves,’) is αποστελλω, (apostello), and when in the fifth verse, Matthew, after enumerating and naming the apostles, says “These twelve Jesus sent forth,” the past tense of the same verb is used, (απεστειλεν, apesteilen.) Mark also, in his third chapter, relating the appointment and commissioning of the twelve, uses this verb, in verse 14. “And he appointed twelve, that they might be with him, and that he might SEND them forth to preach,” (αποστελλη, apostellé.) Luke merely mentions the name apostle, in giving the list of the twelve, in chapter 6, verse 13; and in chapter 9, verse 2, gives the verb in the same way as Matthew. The term certainly is of rare occurrence in all the gospels; those persons who are thus designated being commonly mentioned under the general title of disciple or learner, (μαθητης,) and when it is necessary to separate them from the rest of Christ’s followers, they are designated from their number “the twelve.” John never uses it in this sense, nor does Mark in giving the list, though he does in vi. 30, and the only occasion on which it is applied to the twelve by Matthew, is that of their being sent forth on their brief experimental mission through the land of Israel, to announce the approach of the Messiah’s reign. The simple reason, for this remarkable exclusion of the term from common use in the gospel story, is that only on that one occasion just mentioned, did they assume the character of apostles, or persons sent forth by a superior. This circumstance shows a beautiful justness and accuracy in the use of words by the gospel writers, who in this matter, at least, seem to have fully apprehended the true etymological force of the noble language in which they wrote. The twelve, during the whole life of Jesus, were never sent forth to proclaim their Lord’s coming, except once; but until the Ascension, they were simple learners, or disciples, (μαθηται, mathetai,) and not apostles or messengers, who had so completely learned the will of God as to be qualified to teach it to others. But immediately after the final departure of Jesus, the sacred narrative gives them the title of apostles with much uniformity, because they had now, by their ascending Lord, been solemnly commissioned in his last words, and sent forth as messengers and embassadors to “all nations.” A common reader of the New Testament must notice that, in the Acts of the Apostles, this title is the most usual one given to the chosen twelve, though even there, an occasional use is made of the collective term taken from the idea of their number. It deserves notice, however, that Luke, the author of the Acts, even in his gospel, uses this name more frequently than any other of the evangelists; and his individual preference for this word may, perhaps, have had some influence in producing its very frequent use in the second part of his narrative, though the whole number of times when it is used in his gospel is only six, whereas in Acts it occurs twenty-seven times. So that on the whole it would seem clear, that the change from the common use of the term “DISCIPLE,” in the gospels, to that of “APOSTLE,” in the history of their acts after the ascension, was made in reference to the corresponding change in the character and duties of the persons thus named.

The lexicography of the word αποστολος, (apostolos,) I arrange as follows, after a full comparison and investigation of all the standard authorities.

The primary idea or ground-meaning which runs through all the secondary significations, and is distinctly recognizable in all their various applications, is as has already been remarked, that of “one sent forth,” referring either to persons or things, but more commonly to persons. These secondary meanings being all directly derived from the ground-stock, and not by a repetition of transformations in sense, it is hard to settle any order of precedence among them; which might be easily done if a distinct gradation could be traced, as in the definition of most words. I have chosen to follow what seems to be the historical order of application, as already traced, although several very high authorities give a different arrangement.

I. A messenger, herald, embassador; a person sent with a message. This is the use made of the term by Herodotus, above quoted, and being thus historically the earliest, as well as flowing naturally from the ground-meaning, may therefore justly hold the first place. And when other variable meanings had been lost in the revolutions of usage, this retained its place, being applied to many different persons whose offices included the idea of being sent abroad by commission from a higher power. Under this meaning is most justly included that peculiar Christian use of the word, which is the object of this investigation, and under this head therefore I rank all the New Testament usages of αποστολος. 1. It is used in the simple sense here given, with the first primary idea conveyed by the term. There is no Greek sentence extant which refers so forcibly to the ground-meaning as that in John’s gospel, xiii. 16; where the words in the common English translation are “he that is sent,” though in the original Greek the word is αποστολος, which might be more justly translated “messenger,” in order to make a difference in English corresponding to that in Greek, between αποστολος and πεμψας, (pempsas,) without giving the same word “send” for two different words in Greek. Still the common translation gives the true meaning of each word, though not so simply and gracefully just, as it might be if the difference of terms in the two members of the sentence was kept up in English. In this same general sense of “messenger,” or “any person sent,” it is used in 2 Corinthians viii. 23, (in common English translation “messenger,”) and in Philippians ii. 25, (common translation “messenger.”) 2. It is used to designate persons directly sent by God to men, and in this sense is frequently given to us in connection with “prophet,” as in Luke xi. 49; Ephesians iii. 5; Revelation xviii. 20. In this sense also it is applied to Jesus, in Hebrews iii. 1, 3. It is used as the title of several classes of persons, employed by Jesus in propagating the gospel. These are [1] the twelve chief disciples, commonly distinguished above all others but one, by this name. Matthew x. 2; Mark vi. 30; Luke vi. 13; ix. 10; xxii. 14; Acts i. 26; and in other places too numerous to be mentioned here, but to which a good concordance will direct any curious investigator. [2] Paul, as the great messenger of truth to the Gentiles, so called in many passages; and with him Barnabas is also distinctly included under this term, in Acts xiv. 4, 14; and xv. 33. (Griesbach however, has changed this last passage from the common reading. See his editions.) [3] Other persons, not of great eminence or fame; as Andronicus and Junius, Paul’s assistants, Romans xvi. 7; the companions of Titus in collecting the contributions of the churches, 2 Corinthians viii. 23; and perhaps also Epaphroditus, Philippians ii. 25. This seems to be as clear an arrangement of the New Testament lexicography of the term as can be given, on a comparison of high authorities. Those who can refer to Wahl, Bretschneider, Parkhurst and Schleusner, will find that I have not servilely followed either, but have adopted some things from all.

The extensions and variations of the New Testament usage of the word, among the Grecian and Latin Christian Fathers, were, 1, the application of it to the seventy disciples whose mission is narrated by Luke, x. 29. These are repeatedly called apostles. 2. The companions of Paul and others are frequently honored by this title. Timothy and Mark are called apostles, and many later ministers also, as may be seen by the authorities at the end of Cave’s Introduction to his Lives of the Apostles.

In application to persons, it is used by Athenian writers as a name for the commander of a naval expedition, (See Demosthenes as quoted by Stephens,) but this seems to have come by transferring to the man, the name of the expedition which he commanded, so that this cannot be derived from the definition which is here placed first. This term in the later Greek is also applied to the “bride-man,” or bridegroom’s friend, who on wedding festivals was sent to conduct the bride from her father’s house to her husband’s. (Phavorinus quoted by Witsius in Vita Pauli.) This however is a very unusual sense, which I can find on no other authority than that here given. None of the lexicons contain it.

II. The definition which occupies the first place in most of the arrangements of this word in the common Greek lexicons, is that of a “naval expedition,” “apparatus classium,” “fleet.” There appears, however, to be no good reason for this order, but there is historical argument, at least, as well as analogy, for putting those meanings which refer to persons, before those which refer to things. This meaning, as far as I can learn, seems to be confined to Demosthenes, and there is nothing to make us suppose that it is anterior in use to the simple permanent sense which is here given first. Hesychius gives us only the meaning of “the commander of a fleet,” which may indeed be derivable from this sense rather than the preceding personal uses, though it seems to me not impossible that the name was transferred from the commander to the object of his command, thus making the personal meanings prior to those of inanimate things. The adjective use of the word in Herodotus and Plato, however, makes it certain that in that way it was early applied to a single vessel, and the transition to its substantive use for a whole fleet is natural enough.

The legal use of it for “letters of appeal,” (literae dimissoriae,) of course comes under the head of the later usages in application to things, and is the last modification of meaning which the word underwent before the extinction of the ancient Greek language.

The corresponding Hebrew word, and that which was, no doubt, used by Christ in his discourse to his apostles, was שלוּח or שליח (sheluh, or shelih,) whose primary meaning, like that of the Greek word, is “one sent,” and is derived from the passive Kal, participle of the verb שלח meaning “he sent,” This word is often used in the Old Testament, and is usually translated in the Alexandrian Greek version, by the word αποστολος. A remarkable instance occurs in 1 Kings xiv. 6; where the prophet Ahijah, speaking to the wife of Jeroboam, says, אליך אנכי שלוח “to thee am I sent;” the Alexandrian version gives the noun αποστολος, so as to make it literally “to thee I am an apostle,” or “messenger,” or truly, in the just and primary sense of this Greek word, “to thee I am sent.” This passage is a valuable illustration of the use of the same Greek word in John xiii. 16; as above quoted.

The Hebrews had another word also, which they used in the sense of an apostle or messenger. This was מלאך (mal ak,) derived from a verb which means “send,” so that the primary meaning of this also is “one sent.” It was commonly appropriated to angels, but was sometimes a title of prophets and priests. (Haggai i. 19; Malachi ii. 7.) It was on the whole the more dignified term of the two, as the former was never applied to angels, but was restricted to men. The two terms are very fairly represented by the two Greek words αποστολος and αγγελος, in English “apostle” and “angel,” the latter, like its corresponding Hebrew term, being sometimes applied to the human servants of God, as in John’s address to the seven churches.

The scope of the term, as used in the title of this book, is limited to the twelve chosen disciples of Jesus Christ, and those few of their most eminent associates, who are designated by the same word in the writings of the early Christians. These persons fall under two natural divisions, which will be followed in the arrangement of their lives in this work. These are, first, the TWELVE, or Peter and his companions; and second, Paul and his companions, including also some to whom the name apostle is not given by the New Testament writers, but who were so intimate with this great preacher of Christ, and so eminent by their own labors, that they may be very properly ranked with him, in the history of the first preachers of Christianity.

The persons whose lives are given in this book are,

I. The Galilean apostles, namely,

Simon Peter, and Andrew his brother,

James, and John, the sons of Zebedee,

Philip, and Bartholomew,

Matthew, and Thomas,

James, the son of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes,

Jude, the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, in whose place was afterwards chosen by the apostles, Matthias.

II. The Hellenist apostles, namely, Paul and Barnabas, with whom are included their companions, Mark and Luke, the evangelists.

These two classes of Apostles are distinguished from each other, mainly, by the circumstances of the appointment of each; the former being all directly appointed by Jesus himself, (excepting Matthias, who took the forfeited commission of Judas Iscariot,) while the latter were summoned to the duties of the apostleship after the ascension of Christ; so that they, however highly equipped for the labors of the office, had never enjoyed his personal instructions; and however well-assured of the divine summons to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, theirs was not a distinct personal and bodily commission, formally given to them, and repeatedly enforced and renewed, as it was to the chosen ones of Christ’s own appointment. These later apostles, too, with hardly one exception, were foreign Jews, born and brought up beyond the bounds of the land of Israel, while the twelve were all Galileans, whose homes were within the holy precincts of their fathers’ ancient heritage. Yet if the extent of their labors be regarded, the later commissioned must rank far above the twelve. Almost two thirds of the New Testament were written by Paul and his companions; and before one of those commissioned by Jesus to go into all the world on their great errand, had ever gone beyond the boundary of Palestine, Paul, accompanied either by Barnabas, Mark, Silas, or Luke, had gone over Syria and Asia, traversed the sea into Greece, Macedonia, and Illyria, bringing the knowledge of the word of truth to tens of thousands, who would never have heard of it, if they had been made to wait for its communication by the twelve. This he did through constant toils, dangers and sufferings, which as far transcended all which the Galilean Apostles had endured, as the mighty results of his labors did the immediate effects of theirs. And afterwards, while they were struggling with the paltry and vexatious, though not very dangerous tyranny of the Sanhedrim, within the walls of Jerusalem, Paul was uttering the solemn truths of his high commission before governors and a king, making them to tremble with doubt and awe at his words; and, at last, bearing, first of all, the name of Jesus to the capital of the world, he sounded the call of the gospel at the gates of Cæsar. The Galilean apostles were indued with no natural advantages for communicating freely with foreigners; their language, habits, customs and modes of instruction, were all hindrances in the way of a rapid and successful progress in such a labor, and they with great willingness gave up this vast field to the Hellenist preachers, while they occupied themselves, for the most part, with the still immense labor which their Lord had himself begun. For all the subtleties and mysticisms of their solemn foes, they were abundantly provided; the whole training, which they had received, under the personal instruction of their master, had fitted them mainly for this very warfare; and they had seen him, times without number, sweep away all these refuges of lies. But, with the polished and truly learned philosophers of Athens, or the majestic lords of Rome, they would have felt the want of that minute knowledge of the characters and manners of both Greeks and Romans, with which Paul was so familiar, by the circumstances of his birth and education, in a city highly favored by Roman laws and Grecian philosophy. Thus was it wisely ordained, for the complete foundation and rapid extension of the gospel cause, that for each great field of labor there should be a distinct set of men, each peculiarly well fitted for their own department of the mighty work. And by such divinely sagacious appointments, the certain and resistless advance of the faith of Christ was so secured, and so wonderfully extended beyond the deepest knowledge, and above the brightest hopes of its chief apostles, that at this distant day, in this distant land, far beyond the view even of the prophetic eye of that age, millions of a race unknown to them, place their names above all others, but one, on earth and in heaven; and to spread the knowledge of the minute details of their toils and triumphs, the laborious scholar should search the recorded learning of eighteen hundred years, and bring forth the fruits in the story of their lives.

With such limitations and expansions of the term, then, this book attempts to give the history of the lives of the apostles. Of some who are thus designated, little else than their names being known, they can have no claim for a large space on these pages; while to a few, whose actions determined the destiny of millions, and mainly effected the establishment of the Christian faith, the far greater part of the work will be given.

The MATERIALS of this work should be found in all that has been written on the subject of New Testament history, since the scriptural canon was completed. But “who is sufficient for these things?” A long life might find abundant employment in searching a thousand libraries, and compiling from a hundred thousand volumes, the facts and illustrations of this immense and noble subject; and then the best energies of another long life would be needed to bring the mighty masses into form, and give them in a narrative for the mind of the unlearned. What, then, is here attempted, as a substitute for this immensity? To give a clear distinct narrative of each apostle’s life, with such illustrations of the character of the era, and the scene in which the incidents occurred, and such explanations of the terms in which they are recorded, as may, consistently with the limits of this work, be drawn from the labors of the learned of ancient and modern times, which are within the writer’s reach. Various and numerous are the books that swell the list of faithful and honest references; many and weighty the volumes that have been turned over, in the long course of research; ancient and venerable the dust, which has been shaken into suffocating clouds about the searcher’s head, and have obscured his vision, as he dragged many a forgotten folio from the slumber of ages, to array the modern plunderer in the shreds and patches of antique lore. Histories, travels, geographies, maps, commentaries, criticisms, introductions, and lexicons, have been “daily and nightly turned in the hand;” and of this labor some fruit is offered on every page. But the unstained source of sacred history! the pure well-spring, at which the wearied searcher always refreshed himself, after unrequited toils, through dry masses of erudition, was the simple story of the Apostles and Evangelists, told by themselves. In this same simple story, indeed, were found the points on which the longest labor was required; yet these, at best only illustrated, not improved, by all the labors of the learned of various ages, were the materials of the work. These are the preparations of months and years; the execution must decide on their real value,――and that is yet to come.

A list of the various works which have furnished the materials for this book might be proper here; but in order to insure its completeness and accuracy, it is deferred to the end of the volume.

A view of the world, as it was at the when the apostles began the work of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, may be convenient to remind some readers, and necessary to inform others, in what way its political organization operated to aid or hinder the progress of the faith. The peculiarities of the government of the regions of civilization, were closely involved in the results of this religious revolution, and may be considered as having been, on the whole, most desirably disposed for the triumphant establishment of the dominion of Christ.

From the shores of the Atlantic to the banks of the Euphrates, the sway of the Roman Caesar was acknowledged, by the millions of Western and Southern Europe, Northern Africa and South-western Asia. The strong grasp of warlike power was a bond which held together in peace many nations, who, but for that constraint, would, as their previous and subsequent history shows, have been arrayed against each other, in contests, destructive alike of the happiness of the contending parties and the comfort of their neighbors. The mighty force of Roman genius had overcome the thousand barriers which nature and art had reared between the different nations of the three continents in which it ruled, and the passage from one end of that vast empire to the other, was without any hindrance to those who traveled on errands of peace. The bloody strife which once distracted the tribes of Gaul, Germany and Britain, had rendered those grand sections of Europe impassable, and shut up each paltry tribe within a narrow boundary, which could never be crossed but with fire and sword. The deadly and furious contests among the nations of South-western Asia and South-eastern Europe, had long discouraged the philosophical and commercial enterprise, once of old so rife and free among them, and offered a serious hindrance to the traveler, whether journeying for information or trade; thus greatly checking the spread of knowledge, and limiting each nation, in a great measure, to its own resources in science and art. The Roman conquest, burying in one wide tomb all the jealousies and strifes of aspiring national ambition, thus put an end at once to all these causes of separation; it brought long-divided nations into close union and acquaintance, and produced a more extensive and equal diffusion of knowledge, as well as greater facilities for commercial intercourse, than had ever been enjoyed before. The rapid result of the conquerors’ policy was the consolidation of the various nations of that vast empire into one people,――peaceful, prosperous, and for the most part protected in their personal and domestic rights. The savage was tamed, the wanderers were reclaimed from the forest, which fell before the march of civilization, or from the desert, which soon rejoiced and blossomed under the mighty beneficence of Roman power.

The fierce Gaul forsook his savage hut and dress together, robing himself in the graceful toga of the Roman citizen, or the light tunic of the colonial cultivator, and reared his solid and lofty dwelling in clustering cities or villages, whose deep laid foundations yet endure, in lasting testimony of the nature of Roman conquest and civilization. Under his Roman rulers and patrons, he raised piles of art, unequaled in grandeur, beauty and durability, by any similar works in the world. Aqueducts and theaters, still only in incipient ruin, proclaim, in their slow decay, the greatness of those who reared them, in a land so lately savage.

The Pont du gard, at Nismes, and the amphitheaters, temples, arches, gates, baths, bridges, and mausolea, which still adorn that city and Arles, Vienne, Rheims, Besancon, Autun and Metz, are the instances, to which I direct those whose knowledge of antiquity is not sufficient to suggest these splendid remains. Almost any well-written book of travels in France will give the striking details of their present condition. Malte-Brun also slightly alludes to them, and may be consulted by those who wish to learn more of the proofs of my assertion than this brief notice can give.

The warlike Numidian and the wild Mauritanian, under the same iron instruction, had long ago learned to robe their primitive half-nakedness in the decent garments of civilized man. Even the distant Getulian found the high range of Atlas no sure barrier, against the wave of triumphant arms and arts, which rolled resistlessly over him, and spent itself only on the pathless sands of wide Sahara. So far did that all-subduing genius spread its work, and so deeply did it make its marks, beyond the most distant and impervious boundary of modern civilization, that the latest march of discovery has found far older adventurers before it, even in the great desert; and within a dozen years, European travelers have brought to our knowledge walls and inscriptions, which, after mouldering unknown in the dry, lonely waste, for ages, at last met the astonished eyes of these gazers, with the still striking witness of Roman power.

The travels of Denham and Clapperton across the desert, from Tripoli to Bornou,――of Ritchie and Lyon, to Fezzan,――of Horneman and others, will abundantly illustrate this passage.

Egypt, already twice classic, and renowned through two mighty and distant series of ages, renewed her fading glories under new conquerors, no less worthy to possess and adorn the land of the Pharaohs, than were the Ptolemies. In that ancient home of art, the new conquerors achieved works, inferior indeed to the still lasting monuments of earlier greatness, but no less effectual in securing the ornament and defense of the land. With a warlike genius far surpassing the most triumphant energy of former rulers, the legionaries of Rome made the valley of the Nile, from its mouth to the eighth cataract, safe and wealthy. The desert wanderers, whose hordes had once overwhelmed the throne of the Pharaohs, and baffled the revenge of the Macedonian monarchs, were now crushed, curbed, or driven into the wilds; while the peaceful tiller of the ground, secure against their lawless attacks, brought his rich harvests to a fair and certain market, through the ports and million ships of the Mediterranean, to the gate of his noble conquerors, within the capital of the world.

The grinding tyranny of the cruel despots of Pontus, Armenia and Syria, had, one after another, been swept away before the republican hosts of Sylla, Lucullus and Pompey; and the remorseless, stupid selfishness that has always characterized oriental despotism, even to this day, had been followed by the mild and generous exercise of that almost omnipotent sway, which the condition of the people, in most cases, showed to have been administered, in the main, for the good of its subjects.

The case of Verres will perhaps rise to the minds of some of my readers, as opposed to this favorable view of Roman government; but the whole account of this and similar tyranny shows that such cases were looked on as most remarkable enormities, and they are recorded and noticed in such terms of abhorrence, as to justify us in quoting with peculiar force, the maxim, “Exceptio probat regulam.”

Towards the farthest eastern boundary of the empire, the Parthian, fighting as he fled, held out against the advance of the western conquerors, in a harassing and harassed independence. The mountains and forests of central Europe, and of North Britain, too, were still manfully defended by their savage owners; yet, when they at last met the iron hosts of Germanicus, Trajan, and Agricola, they, in their turn, fell under the last triumphs of the Roman eagle. But the peace and prosperity of the empire, and even of provinces near the scene, were not moved by these disturbances. And thus, in a longitudinal line of four thousand miles, and within a circuit of ten thousand, the energies of Roman genius had hushed all wars, and stilled the nations into a long, unbroken peace, which secured the universal good. So nearly true was the lyric description, given by Milton, of the universal peace which attended the coming of the Messiah:

“No war or battle sound,

Was heard the world around;

The idle spear and shield were high uphung;

The hooked chariot stood,

Unstained with hostile blood,

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;

And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovran lord was by.”

The efforts of the conquerors did not cease with the mere military subjugation of a country, but were extended far beyond the extinction of the hostile force. The Roman soldier was not a mere fighter, nor were his labors, out of the conflict, confined to the erection of military works only. The stern discipline, which made his arms triumphant in the day of battle, had also taught him cheerfully to exchange those triumphant arms for the tools of peaceful labor, that he might insure the solid permanency of his conquests, by the perfection of such works as would make tranquillity desirable to the conquered, and soothe them to repose under a dominion which so effectually secured their good. Roads, that have made Roman ways proverbial, and which the perfection of modern art has never equaled in more than one or two instances, reached from the capital to the farthest bounds of the empire. Seas, long dangerous and almost impassable for the trader and enterprising voyager, were swept of every piratical vessel; and the most distant channels of the Aegean and Levant, where the corsair long ruled triumphant, both before and since, became as safe as the porches of the capitol. Regions, to which nature had furnished the indispensable gift of water, neither in abundance nor purity, were soon blessed with artificial rivers, flowing over mighty arches, that will crumble only with the pyramids. In the dry places of Africa and Asia, as well as in distant Gaul, mighty aqueducts and gushing fountains refreshed the feverish traveler, and gave reality to the poetical prophecy, that

“In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.”

Roads.――I was at first disposed to make some few exceptions to this sweeping commendation of the excellence of Roman roads, by referring simply to my general impressions of the comparative perfection of these and modern works of the same character; but on revising the facts by an examination of authorities, I have been led to strike out the exceptions. Napoleon’s great road over the Simplon, the great northern road from London to Edinburgh, and some similar works in Austria, seemed, before comparison, in extent, durability, and in their triumphs over nature, to equal, if not surpass, the famed Roman WAYS; but a reference to the minute descriptions of these mighty works, sets the ancient far above the modern art. The Via Appia, “regina viarum,” (Papinius Statius in Surrentino Pollii,) stretching three hundred and seventy miles from Rome to the bounds of Italy, built of squared stone, as hard as flints, and brought from a great distance, so laid together that for miles they seemed but a single stone, and so solidly fixed, that at this day, the road is as entire in many places as when first made,――the Via Flaminia, built in the same solid manner,――the Via Aemilia, five hundred and twenty-seven miles long,――the Via Portuensis, with its enormous double cause-way,――the vaulted roads of Puzzuoli and Baiae, hewn half a league through the solid rock, and the thousand remains of similar and contemporaneous works in various parts of the world, where some are in use even to this day, as far better than any modern highway,――all these are enough to show the inquirer, that the commendation given to these works in the text, is not over-wrought nor unmerited. The minute details of the construction of these extraordinary works, with many other interesting particulars, may be much more fully learned in Rees’s Cyclopædia, Articles Way, Via, Road, Appian, &c.

Aqueducts.――The common authorities on this subject, refer to none of these mighty Roman works, except those around the city of Rome itself. Those of Nismes and Metz, in Gaul, and that of Segovia, in Spain, are sometimes mentioned; but the reader would be led to suppose, that other portions of the Roman empire were not blessed with these noble works. Rees’s Cyclopædia is very full on this head, in respect to the aqueducts of the great city itself, but conveys the impression that they were not known in many distant parts of the empire. Montfaucon gives no more satisfactory information on the subject. But a reference to books of travels or topography, which describe the remains of Roman art in its ancient provinces in Africa and Asia, will at once give a vivid impression of the extent and frequency of these works. Shaw’s travels in northern Africa, give accounts of aqueducts, cisterns, fountains, and reservoirs, along through all the ancient Roman dominions in that region. The Modern Traveler (by Conder) will give abundant accounts of the remains of these works, in this and various other countries alluded to in the text; and some of them, still so perfect, as to serve the common uses of the inhabitants to this day.

All these mighty influences, working for the peace and comfort of mankind, and so favorable to the spread of religious knowledge, had been further secured by the triumphant and firm establishment of the throne of the Caesars. Under the fitful sway of the capricious democracy of Rome, conquest had indeed steadily stretched east, west, north and south, alike over barbarian and Greek, through the wilderness and the city. A long line of illustrious consuls, such as Marcellus, the Scipios, Aemilius, Marius, Sylla, Lucullus and Pompey, had, during the last two centuries of the republic, added triumph to triumph, in bright succession, thronging the streets of the seven-hilled city with captive kings, and more than quadrupling her dominion. But while the corruption of conquest was fast preparing the dissipated people to make a willing exchange of their political privileges, for “bread and amusements;” the enlightened portion of the citizens were getting tired of the distracting and often bloody changes of popular favoritism, and were ready to receive as a welcome deliverer, any man who could give them a calm and rational despotism, in place of the remorseless and ferocious tyranny of a brutal mob. In this turn of the world’s destiny, there arose one, in all points equal to the task of sealing both justice and peace to the vanquished nations, by wringing from the hands of a haughty people, the same political power which they had caused so many to give up to their unsparing gripe. He was one who, while, to common eyes, he seemed devoting the flower of his youth and the strength of his manhood to idleness and debauchery, was learning such wisdom as could never have been learned in the lessons of the sage,――wisdom in the characters, the capabilities, the corruption and venality of his plebeian sovrans. And yet he was not one who scorned the lessons of the learned, nor turned away from the records of others’ knowledge. In the schools of Rhodes, he sat a patient student of the art and science of the orator, and searched deeply into the stored treasures of Grecian philosophy. Resplendent in arms as in arts, he devoted to swift and deserved destruction the pirates of the Aegean, while yet only a raw student; and with the same energy and rapidity, in Rome, attained the peaceful triumphs of the eloquence which had so long been his study. The flight of years passed over him, alike victorious in the factious strife of the capital, and in the deadly struggle with the Celtic savages of North-western Europe. Ruling long-conquered Spain in peace, and subjugating still barbarous Gaul, he showed the same ascendent genius which made the greatest minds of Rome his willing and despised tools, and crushed them when they at last dreamed of independence or resistance. In the art military, supreme and unconquered, whether met by the desperate savage of the forest or desert, or by the veteran legions of republican Rome,――in the arts of intrigue, more than a match for the subtlest deceivers of a jealous democracy,――as an orator, winning the hearts and turning the thoughts of those who were the hearers of Cicero,――as a writer, unmatched even in that Ciceronian age, for strength and flowing ease, though writing in a camp, amid the fatigues of a savage warfare,――in all the accomplishments that adorn and soften, and in all the manly exercises that ennoble and strengthen, alike complete,――in battle, in storm, on the ocean and on land, in the collected fury of the charge, and the sudden shock of the surprise, always dauntless and cool, showing a courage never shaken, though so often tried,――to his friends kind and generous,――to his vanquished foes, without exception, merciful and forgiving,――beloved by the former, respected by the latter, and adored by the people,――a scholar, an astronomer, a poet, a wit, a gallant, an orator, a statesman, a warrior, a governor, a monarch,――his vast and various attainments, so wonderful in that wonderful age, have secured to him, from the great of his own and all following ages, the undeniable name of THE MOST PERFECT CHARACTER OF ALL ANTIQUITY. Such a man was CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR. He saved the people from themselves; he freed them from their own tyranny, and ended forever, in Rome, the power of the populace to meddle with the disposal of the great interests of the consolidated nations of the empire. It was necessary that it should be so. The empire was too vast for an ignorant and stupid democracy to govern. The safety and comfort of the world required a better rule; and never was any man, in the course of Providence, more wonderfully prepared as the instrument of a mighty work, than was Julius Caesar, as the founder of a power which was to last till the fall of Rome. For the accomplishment of this wonderful purpose, every one of his countless excellences seems to have done something; and nothing less than he, could have thus achieved a task, which prepared the way for the advance of a power, that was to outlast his throne and the Eternal city. Under the controlling influence of his genius, the world was so calmed, subjugated and arranged, that the gates of all nations were opened for the peaceful entrance of the preachers of the gospel. So solidly did he lay the foundation of his dominion, that even his own murder, by the objects of his undeserved clemency, made not the slightest change in the fate of Rome; for the paltry intrigues and fights of a few years ended in placing the power, which Caesar had won, in the hands of his heir and namesake, whose most glorious triumphs were but straws on the mighty stream of events, which Julius had set in motion.

Caesar.――Those who are accustomed merely to the common cant of many would-be philanthropists, about the destruction of the liberties of Rome, and the bloody-minded atrocity of their destroyer, will doubtless feel shocked at the favorable view taken of his character, above. The truth is, there was no liberty in Rome for Caesar to destroy; the question of political freedom having been long before settled in the triumphant ascendency of faction, the only choice was between one tyrant and ten thousand. No one can question that Caesar was the fair choice of the great mass of the people. They were always on his side, in opposition to the aristocracy, who sought his ruin because they considered him dangerous to their privileges, and their liberty (to tyrannize;) and their fears were grounded on the very circumstance that the vast majority of the people were for him. This was the condition of parties until Caesar’s death, and long after, to the time of the final triumph of Octavius. Not one of Caesar’s friends among the people ever became his enemy, or considered him as having betrayed their affection by his assumptions of power. Those who murdered him, and plunged the world from a happy, universal peace, into the devastating horrors of a wide spread and protracted civil war, were not the patriotic avengers of an oppressed people; they were the jealous supporters of a haughty aristocracy, who saw their powers and dignity diminished, in being shared with vast numbers of the lower orders, added to the senate by Caesar, whose steady determination to humble them they saw in his refusal to pay them homage by rising, when the hereditary aristocracy of Rome took their seats in senate. It was to redeem the failing powers of their privileged order, that these aristocratic assassins murdered the man, whose mercy had triumphed over his prudence, in sparing the forfeited lives of these hereditary, dangerous foes of popular rights. Nor could they for a moment blind the people to the nature and object of their action; for as soon as the murder had been committed, the universal cry for justice, which rose at once from the whole mass of the people, indignant at the butchery of their friend, drove the gang of conspirators from Rome and from Italy, which they were never permitted again to enter. Those who thronged to the standards of the heir and friend of Caesar, were the hosts of democracy, who never rested till they had crushed and exterminated the miserable faction of aristocrats, who had hoped to triumph over the mass of the people, by the death of the people’s great friend. Now if the people of Rome chose to give up their whole power, and the disposal of their political affairs, into the hands of a great, a talented, a generous and heroic man, like Caesar, who had so effectually vindicated and secured their freedom against the claims of a domineering aristocracy, and if they afterwards remained so well satisfied with the use which he made of this power, as never to make the slightest effort, nor on any occasion to express the least wish, to resume it, I would like to know who had any business to hinder the sovran people from so doing, or what blame can in any way be laid to Caesar’s charge, for accepting, and for nobly and generously using the power so freely and heartily given up to him.

The protracted detail of his mental and physical greatness, given in the sketch of his character above, would need for its full defense and illustration, the mention of such numerous particulars, that I must be content with challenging any doubter, to a reference to the record of the actions of his life, and such a reference will abundantly confirm every particular of the description. The steady and unanimous decision of the learned and the truly great of different ages, since his time, is enough to show his solid claims to the highest praise here given. Passing over the glory so uniformly yielded to him by the learned and eloquent of ancient days, we have among moderns the disinterested opinions of such men as the immortal Lord Verulam, from whom came the sentence given above, pronouncing him “the most perfect character of all antiquity;” a sentiment which, probably, no man of minute historical knowledge ever read, without a hearty acquiescence. This opinion has been quoted with approbation by our own greatest statesman, Alexander Hamilton, than whom none knew better how to appreciate real greatness. Lord Byron (Note 47 on Canto IV. of Childe Harold,) also quotes this sentence approvingly, and in the same passage gives a most interesting view of Caesar’s versatile genius and varied accomplishments, entering more fully into some particulars than that here given. The sentence of the Roman historian, Suetonius, (Jure caesus existimetur,) seems to me to refer, not to the moral fitness or actual right of his murder, but to the common law or ancient usage of Rome, by which any person of great influence, who was considered powerful enough to be dangerous to the ascendency of the patrician rank, or to the established order of things in any way, might be killed by any self-constituted executioner, even though the person thus murdered on bare suspicion of a liability to become dangerous, should really be innocent of the charge of aspiring to supreme power. (“Melium jure caesum pronuntiavit, etiam si regni crimine insons fuerit.” Livy book iv. chapter 48.) The idea, that such an abominable outrage on the claim of an innocent man to his own life, could ever be seriously defended as morally right, is too palpably preposterous to bear a consideration. Such a principle of policy must have originated in a republicanism, somewhat similar to that which sanctions those exertions of democratic power, which have lately become famous under the name of Lynch law. It was a principle which in Rome enabled the patrician order to secure the destruction of any popular man of genius and intelligence, who, being able, might become willing to effect a revolution which would humble the power of the patrician aristocracy. The murder of the Gracchi, also, may be taken as a fair manifestation of the way in which the aristocracy were disposed to check the spirit of reform.

The work of Caesar, then, was twofold, like the tyranny which he was to subvert; and well did he achieve both objects of his mighty efforts. Having first brought down the pride and the power of an overbearing aristocracy, he next, by the force of the same dominant genius, wrested the ill-wielded dominion from the unsteady hands of the fickle democracy, making them willingly subservient to the great purpose of their own subjugation, and acquiescent in the generous sway of one, whom a sort of political instinct taught them to fix on, as the man destined to rule them.

Thus were the complicated and contradictory principles of Roman government exchanged for the simplicity of monarchical rule; an exchange most desirable for the peace and security of the subjects of the government. The empire was no longer shaken with the constant vacillations of supremacy from the aristocracy to the democracy, and from the democracy to the demagogues, alternately their tyrants and their slaves. The solitary tyranny of an emperor was occasionally found terrible in some of its details, but the worst of these could never outgo the republican cruelties of Marius and Sylla, and there was, at least, this one advantage on the side of those suffering under the monarchical tyranny, which would not be available in the case of the victims of mob-despotism. This was the ease with which a single stroke with a well-aimed dagger could remove the evil at once, and secure some chance of a change for the better, as was the case with Caligula, Nero, and Domitian; and though the advantages of the change were much more manifest in the two latter cases than in the former, yet, even in that, the relief experienced was worth the effort. But a whole tyrannical populace could not be so easily and summarily disposed of; and those who suffered by such despotism, could only wait till the horrible butcheries of civil strife, or the wasting carnage of foreign warfare, had used up the energies and the superfluous blood of the populace, and swept the flower of the democracy, by legions, to a wide and quiet grave. The remedy of the evil was therefore much slower, and more undesirable in its operation, in this case, than in the other; while the evil itself was actually more widely injurious. For, on the one hand, what imperial tyrant ever sacrificed so many victims in Rome, or produced such wide-wasting ruin, as either of those republican chiefs, Marius and Sylla? And on the other hand, when, in the most glorious and peaceful days of the aristocratic or democratic sway, did military glory, literature, science, art, commerce, and the whole common weal, so flourish and advance, as under the imperial Augustus, the sage Vespasian and the amiable Titus, the heroic Trajan, the polished Adrian, or the wise and philosophic Antonines? Never did Rome wear the aspect of a truly majestic city, till the imperial pride of her long line of Caesars had filled her with the temples, amphitheaters, circuses, aqueducts, baths, triumphal columns and arches, which to this day perpetuate the solid glory of the founders, and make her the wonder of the world, while not one surviving great work of art claims a republican for its author.

To such a glory did the Caesars raise her, and from such a splendor did she fade, as now.

“Such is the moral of all human tales;

’Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,――

First freedom, and then glory――when that fails,

Wealth, vice, corruption,――barbarism at last,

And history, with all her volumes vast,

Hath but one page.”

An allusion to such a man, in such a book as this, could not be justified, but on this satisfactory ground;――that the changes which he wrought in the Roman government, and the conquests by which he spread and secured the influence of Roman civilization, seem to have done more than any other political action could do, to effect the general diffusion, and the perpetuity of the Christian faith. A glance at these great events, in this light, will show to us the first imperial Caesar, as Christ’s most mighty precursor, unwittingly preparing the way for the advance of the Messiah,――a bloody and all-crushing warrior, opening the path for the equally resistless triumphs of the Prince of Peace. Even this striking characteristic, of cool and unscrupulous ambition, became a most glorious means for the production of this strange result. This same moral obtuseness, too, about the right of conquest, so heinous in the light of modern ethics, but so blameless, and even praise-worthy in the eyes of the good and great of Caesar’s days, shows us how low was the world’s standard of right before the coming of Christ; and yet this insensibility became, in the hands of the God who causes the wrath of man to praise him, a doubly powerful means of spreading that faith, whose essence is love to man.

Look over the world, then, as it was before the Roman conquest, and see the difficulties, both physical and moral, that would have attended the universal diffusion of a new and peaceful religious faith. Barbarous nations, all over the three continents, warring with each other, and with the failing outworks of civilization,――besotted tyranny, wearing out the energies of its subjects, by selfish and all-grasping folly,――sea and land swarming with marauders, and every wheel of science and commerce rolling backward or breaking down. Such was the seemingly resistless course of events, when the star of Roman fortune rose on the world, under whose influence, at once destructive and benign, the advancing hosts of barbarity were checked and overthrown, and their triumphs stayed for five hundred years; the elegance of Grecian refinement was transplanted from the unworthy land of its birth, to Italian soil, and the most ancient tracks of commerce, as well as many new ones, were made as safe as they are at this peaceful day. The mighty Caesar, last of all, casting down all thrones but his, and laying the deep basis of its lasting dominion in the solid good of millions, filled up the valleys, leveled the mountains, and smoothed the plains, for the march of that monarch, whose kingdom is without end.

The connection of such a political change with the success of the Christian enterprise, and with the perfect development and triumph of our peaceful faith, depends on the simple truth, that Christianity always flourishes best in the most highly civilized communities, and can never be so developed as to do full justice to its capabilities, in any state of society, short of the highest point of civilization. It never has been received, and held uncorrupt, by mere savages or wanderers; and it never can be. Thus and therefore it was, that wherever Roman conquest spread, and secured the lasting triumphs of civilization, thither Christianity followed, and flourished, as on a congenial soil, till at last not one land was left in the whole empire, where the eagle and the dove did not spread their wings in harmonious triumph. In all these lands, where Roman civilization prepared the way, Christian churches rose, and gathered within them the noble and the refined, as well as the humble and the poor. Spain, Gaul, Britain and Africa, as well as the ancient homes of knowledge, Egypt, Greece and Asia, are instances of this kind. And in every one of these, the reign of the true faith became coeval with civilization, yielding in some instances, it is true, on the advance of modern barbarism, but only when the Arabian prophet made them bow before his sword. Yet while within the pale of Roman conquest, Christianity supplanted polytheism, beyond that wide circle, heathenism remained long undisturbed, till the victorious march of the barbarian conquerors, over the empire of the Caesars, secured the extension of the gospel to them also;――the vanquished, in one sense, triumphing in turn over the victors, by making them the submissive subjects of Roman civilization, language, and religion;――so that, for the first five hundred years of the Christian era, the dominion of the Caesars was the most efficient earthly instrument for the extension of the faith. The persecution which the followers of the new faith occasionally suffered, were the results of aberrations from the general principles of tolerance, which characterized the religious policy of the empire; and after a few such acts of insane cruelty, the natural course of reaction brought the persecuted religion into fast increasing and finally universal favor.

If the religion, thus widely and lastingly diffused, was corrupted from the simplicity of the truth as it was in Jesus, this corruption is to be charged, not against the Romans, but against the unworthy successors of the apostles and ancient fathers, who sought to make the severe beauty of the naked truth more acceptable to the heathenish fancies of the people, by robing it in the borrowed finery of mythology. Yet, though thus humiliated in its triumph, the victory of Christianity over that complex and dazzling religion, was most complete. The faith to which Italians and Greeks had been devoted for ages,――which had drawn its first and noblest principles from the mysterious sources of the antique Etruscan, Egyptian and Phoenician, and had enriched its dark and boundless plan with all that the varied superstitions of every conquered people could furnish,――the faith which had rooted itself so deeply in the poetry, the patriotism, and the language of the Roman, and had so twined itself with every scene of his nation’s glory, from the days of Romulus,――now gave way before the simple word of the carpenter of Nazareth, and was so torn up and swept away from its strong holds, that the very places which through twenty generations its triumphs had hallowed, were now turned into shrines for the worship of the God of despised Judah. So utterly was the Olympian Jove unseated, and cast down from his long-dreaded throne, that his name passed away forever from the worship of mankind, and has never been recalled, but with contempt. He, and all his motley train of gods and goddesses, are remembered no more with reverence, but vanishing from even the knowledge of the mass of the people, are

“Gone glimmering through the dream of things that were,”――

“A school-boy’s tale.”

Every ancient device for the perpetuation of the long established faith, disappeared in the advancing light of the gospel. Temples, statues, oracles, festivals, and all the solemn paraphernalia of superstition, were swept to oblivion, or, changing their names only, were made the instruments of recommending the new faith to the eyes of the common people. But, however the pliant spirit of the degenerate successors of the early fathers might bend to the vulgar superstitions of the day, the establishment of the Christian religion, upon the ruins of Roman heathenism, was effected with a completeness that left not a name to live behind them, nor the vestige of a form, to keep alive in the minds of the people, the memory of the ancient religion. The words applied by our great poet to the time of Christ’s birth, have something more than poetical force, as a description of the absolute extermination of these superstitions, both public and domestic, on the final triumph of Christianity:

“The oracles are dumb;

No voice or hideous hum

Rolls through the arched roof in words deceiving.

Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.

No nightly trance or breathed spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.”

“In consecrated earth

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;

In urns and altars round,

A drear and dying sound,

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.”

Thus were the mighty labors of human ambition made subservient to the still greater achievements of divine benevolence; thus did the unholy triumphs of the hosts of heathenism become, in the hands of the All-wise, the surest means of spreading the holy and peace-making truths of Christianity, to the ends of the earth,――otherwise unapproachable without a miracle. The dominion which thus grew upon and over the vast empire of Rome, though growing with her growth and strengthening with her strength, sunk not with her weakness, but, stretching abroad fresh branches, whose leaves were for the healing of nations then unknown, showed its divine origin by its immortality; while, alas! its human modifications betrayed themselves in its diminished grace and ill-preserved symmetry. Yet in spite of these, rather than by means of them, it rose still mightier above the ruins of the empire, under whose shadow it had grown, till, at last, supplanting Roman and Goth alike, it fixed its roots on the seven hills of the Eternal city; where, thenceforth, for hundreds of years, the head of Christendom, ruling with a power more absolute than her imperial sway, saw more than the Roman world beneath him. Even to this day, vast and countless “regions, Caesar never knew,” own him of Rome as “the center of unity;” and lands

“farther west

Than the Greek’s islands of the blest,”

and farther east than the long unpassed bounds of Roman conquest, turn, with an adoration and awe immeasurably greater than the most exalted of the apotheosized Caesars ever received, to him who claims the name of the successor of the poor fisherman of Galilee.

Such, and so vast, was the revolution, to the achievement of which, the lives and deeds of the apostles most essentially contributed,――a revolution which, even if looked on as the result of mere human effort, must appear the most wonderful ever effected by such humble human means, as these narratives will show to have been used. The character of the men first chosen by the founder of the faith, as the instruments of spreading the lasting conquests of his gospel,――their birth, their country, their provincial peculiarities,――all marked them as most unlikely persons to undertake the overthrow of the religious prejudices even of their own countrymen; and still less groundless must have been the hope that any of Jewish race, however well taught in the wisdom of the world, could so far overcome the universal feeling of dislike, with which this peculiar nation were regarded, as to bring the learned, the powerful and the great of Rome and Greece, and of Eastern lands, to own a low-born Galilean workman as their guide to truth,――the author of their hopes of life eternal. Yet went they forth even to this task, whose achievement was so far beyond the range of human hopes; and with a zeal as far above the inspiration of human ambition, they gave their energies and their lives to this desperate commission. Without a hope of an earthly triumph or an earthly reward,――without even a prospect of a peaceful death or an honored grave, while they lived, they spent their strength fearlessly for him who SENT them forth; and when they died, their last breath went out in triumph at the near prospect of their lasting gain.

In giving the lives of these men, many incidents will require notice, in which no individual apostle was concerned alone, but the whole company to which he belonged. In each class of the apostles, these incidents will be given under the head of the principal person in that class, whose life is placed before the rest. Thus, those matters in which all the twelve had a common interest, and in which no particular apostle is named, will find a place in the life of Peter, their great leader; and among the later apostles, the distinct pre-eminence of Paul will, of course, cause all matters of common interest to be absorbed in his life, while of his companions nothing farther need be recorded, than those things which immediately concern them.

I. THE GALILEAN APOSTLES.

SIMON CEPHAS,
COMMONLY CALLED SIMON PETER.

HIS APOSTOLIC RANK.

The order in which the names of the apostles are arranged in this book, can make little difference in the interest which their history will excite in the reader’s mind, nor can such an arrangement, of itself, do much to affect his opinion of their comparative merits; yet to their biographer, it becomes a matter of some importance, as well as interest, to show not only authority, but reason, for the order in which he ranks them.

Sufficient authority for placing Simon Cephas first, is found in the three lists of the apostles given respectively by Matthew, Mark and Luke, which, though differing as to their arrangement in some particulars, entirely agree in giving to this apostle the precedence of all. But it would by no means become the earnest and faithful searcher into sacred history, to rest satisfied with a bare reference to the unerring word, on a point of so much interest. So far from it, the strictest reverence for the sacred record both allows and urges the inquiry, as to what were the circumstances of Peter’s life and character, that led the three evangelists thus unanimously and decidedly to place him at the head of the sacred band, on all whom, in common, rested the commissioned power of doing the marvelous works of Jesus, and spreading his gospel in all the world. Was this preference the result of mere incidental circumstances, such as age, prior calling, &c.? Or, does it mark a pre-eminence of character or qualifications, entitling him to lead and rule the apostolic company in the name of Christ, as the commissioned chief of the faithful?

The reason of this preference, as far as connected with his character, will of course be best shown in the incidents of his life and conduct, as detailed in this narrative. But even here much may be brought forward to throw light on the ground of Peter’s rank, as first of the apostles. It is no more than fair to remark, however, that some points of this inquiry have been very deeply, and at the same time, very unnecessarily involved in the disputes between Protestants and Papists, respecting the original supremacy of the church of Rome, as supposed to have been founded or ruled by this chief apostle.

Of the many suppositions which might be made to account for Peter’s priority of station on the apostolic list, it may be enough to notice the following: That he was by birth the oldest of the twelve. This assertion, however boldly made by some, rests entirely on conjecture, as we have no certain information on this point, either from the New Testament or any ancient writer of indisputable credit. Those of the early Christian writers who allude to this matter, are quite contradictory in their statements, some supposing Peter to be the oldest of the apostles, and some supposing Andrew to be older than his brother;――a discrepancy that may well entitle us to conclude that they had no certain information about the matter. The weight of testimony, however, seems rather against the assertion that Peter was the oldest, inasmuch as the earliest writer who alludes at all to the subject, very decidedly pronounces Andrew to have been the older brother. Enough, then, is known, to prevent our relying on his seniority as the true ground of his precedence. Still this point must be considered as entirely doubtful; so doubtful that it cannot be considered as proof, in the argument.

The oldest Christian writer, who refers in any way to the comparative age of Peter, is Epiphanius, bishop of Cyprus, as early as A. D. 368. In his great work against heresies, (book ii. vol. 1, heresy 51,) in narrating the call of Andrew and Peter, he says, “The meeting (with Jesus) happened first to Andrew, Peter being less than him in age,” (μικροτερου οντος τω χρονῳ της ἡλικιας.) “But afterwards, when their complete forsaking of all earthly things is mentioned, Peter takes precedence, since God, who sees the turn of all characters, and knows who is fit for the highest places, chose Peter as the chief leader (αρχηγον) of his disciples.” This, certainly, is a very distinct assertion of Peter’s juniority, and is plainly meant to give the idea that Peter’s high rank among the apostles was due to a superiority of talent, which put him above those who were older.

In favor of the assertion that Peter was older than Andrew, the earliest authority that has ever been cited, is John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, about A. D. 400. This Father, in his homily on Matthew xvii. 27, (Homily 59,) says that Peter was a “first-born son,” (πρωτοτοκος.) In this passage, he is speaking of the tribute paid by Jesus and Peter for the expenses of the temple. He supposes that this tribute was the redemption-money due from the first-born sons of the Jews, for their exemption from the duties of the priesthood. But the account of this tax, in Numbers iii. 44‒51, shows that this was a tax of five shekels apiece, while that spoken of by Matthew, is called the didrachmon, a Greek coin equivalent to a half-shekel. Now the half-shekel tax was that paid by every Jew above the age of twenty years, for the expenses of the temple service, as is fully described in Exodus xxx. 12‒16; xxxviii. 26. Josephus also mentions this half-shekel tax, as due from every Jew, for the service of the temple. (See Hammond on Matthew xvii. 24.) Chrysostom is therefore wholly in the wrong, about the nature of the tax paid by Jesus and Peter; (verse 27, “give it for me and thee,”) and the reason which he gives for the payment, (namely, that they were both first-born sons,) being disproved, his belief of Peter’s seniority is shown to be based on an error, and therefore entitled to no credit whatever; more particularly, when opposed to the older authority of Epiphanius.

Lardner, in support of the opinion that Peter was the oldest, quotes also Cassian and Bede; but it is most manifest that a bare assertion of two writers, who lived, one of them 424, and the other 700 years after Christ,――an assertion unsupported by any proof whatever, cannot be received as evidence in the case. The most natural conjecture of any one who was accounting for the eminence of Peter, would be that he was older than the brother of whom he takes precedence so uniformly; and it is no more than just to conclude, therefore, that the ground of this notion was but a mere guess. But in the case of Epiphanius, besides the respect due to the early authority, it is important to observe, that he could have no motive for inventing the notion of Andrew’s seniority, since the uniform prominence of Peter would most naturally suggest the idea that he was the oldest. It is fair to conclude, then, that an opinion, so unlikely to be adopted without special proof, must have had the authority of uniform early tradition; for Epiphanius mentions it as if it were a universally admitted fact; nor does he seem to me to have invented the notion of Andrew’s seniority, to account for his being first known to Jesus, though he mentions these two circumstances in their natural connection. Yet Lampius, in his notes on John i. supposing that Epiphanius arranged the facts on the principle “post hoc, ergo, propter hoc,” has rejected this Father’s declaration of Andrew’s seniority, as a mere invention, to account for this apostle’s prior acquaintance with Jesus. The reader may judge between them.

Lardner, moreover, informs us that Jerome maintains the opinion, that Peter was preferred before the other apostles on account of his age. But a reference to the original passage, shows that the comparison was only between Peter and John, and not between Peter and the rest of the apostles. Speaking of Peter as the constituted head of the church, he says that was done to avoid dissensions, (ut schismatis tollatur occasio.) The question might then arise, why was not John chosen first, being so pure and free from connections that might interfere with apostolic duties? (Cur non Johannes electus est virgo? Aetati delatum est, quia Petrus senior erat; ne adhuc adolescens ac pene puer progressae aetatis hominibus praeferretur.) “It was out of regard to age, because Peter was older (than John;) nor could one who was yet immature, and little more than a boy, be preferred to a man of mature age.” The passage evidently does not touch the question of Peter’s being the oldest of all, nor does it contradict, in any way, the opinion that Andrew was older, as all which Jerome says is, merely, that Peter was older than John,――an opinion unquestionably accordant with the general voice of all ancient Christian tradition.

The character of Epiphanius, however, it must be acknowledged, is so low for judgment and accuracy, that his word is not of itself sufficient to establish any very doubtful fact, as certain. Yet in this case, there is no temptation to pervert facts on a point of so little interest or importance, and one on which no prejudice could govern his decision. We may therefore give him, in this matter, about all the credit due to his antiquity. Still, there is much more satisfactory proof of Peter’s not being the oldest apostle, founded on various circumstances of apostolic history, which will be referred to in their places.

Nor can priority of calling be offered as the reason of this apparent superiority; for the minute record given by the evangelist John, makes it undeniable that Andrew became acquainted with Jesus before Peter, and that the eminent disciple was afterwards first made known to Jesus, by means of his less highly honored brother.

The only reasonable supposition left, then, is, that there was an intentional preference of Simon Cephas, on the score of eminence for genius, zeal, knowledge, prudence, or some other quality which fitted him for taking the lead of the chief ministers of the Messiah. The word “first,” which accompanies his name in Matthew’s list, certainly appears, in the view of some, to have some force above the mere tautological expression of a fact so very self-evident from the collocation, as that he was first on the list. The Bible shows not an instance of a list begun in that way, with this emphatic word so vainly and unmeaningly applied. The analogies of expression in all languages, ancient and modern, would be very apt to lead a common reader to think that the numeral adjective thus prefixed, was meant to give the idea that Simon Peter was put first for some better reason than mere accident. Any person, in giving a list of twelve eminent men, all devoted to a common pursuit, and laboring in one great cause, whose progress he was attempting to record, would, in arranging them, if he disregarded the circumstances of seniority, &c., very naturally give them place according to their importance in reference to the great subject before him. If, as in the present case, three different persons should, in the course of such a work, make out such a list, an individual difference of opinion about a matter of mere personal preference, like this, might produce variations in the minor particulars; but where all three united in giving to one and the same person, the first and most honorable place, the ordinary presumption would unavoidably be, that the prior rank of the person thus distinguished, was considered, by them at least, at the time when they wrote, as decidedly and indisputably established. The determination of a point so trifling being without any influence on matters of faith and doctrine, each evangelist might, without detriment to the sanctity and authority of the record which he bears, be left to follow his own private opinion of the most proper principle of arrangement to be followed in enumerating the apostles. Thus, while it is noticeable that the whole twelve were disposed in six pairs by each of the evangelists, yet the order and succession of these is somewhat changed, by different circumstances directing the choice of each writer. Matthew modestly puts himself after Thomas, with whom he seems by all the gospel lists, to have some close connection; but Mark and Luke combine to give Matthew the precedence, and invert the order in which, through unobtrusiveness, he had, as it would seem, robbed true merit of its due superiority. And yet these points of precedence were so little looked to, that in the first chapter of Acts, Luke makes a new arrangement of these names, advancing Thomas to the precedency, not only of Matthew, but of Bartholomew, who, in all other places where their names are given, is mentioned before him. So also Matthew prefers to mention the brothers together, and gives Andrew a place immediately after Peter, although, in so many places after, he speaks of Peter, James and John together, as most highly distinguished by Christ, and favored by opportunities of beholding him and his works, on occasions when other eyes were shut out. Mark, on the contrary, gives these names with more strict reference to distinction of rank, and mentions the favored trio together, first of all, making the affinities of birth of less consequence than the share of favor enjoyed by each with the Messiah. Luke, in his gospel, follows Matthew’s arrangement of the brothers, but in the first chapter of Acts puts the three great apostles first, separating Andrew from his brother, and mentioning him after the sons of Zebedee. These changes of arrangement, while they show of how little vital importance the order of names was considered, yet, by the uniform preservation of Peter in the first rank, prove that the exalted pre-eminence of Peter was so universally known and acknowledged, that whatever difference of opinion writers might entertain respecting more obscure persons,――as to him, no inversion of order could be permitted.

How far Peter was by this pre-eminence endowed with any supremacy over the other apostles, may of course be best shown in those places of his history, which appear either to maintain or question this position.

That Simon Cephas, or Peter, then, was the first or chief of the apostles, appears from the uniform precedence with which his name is honored on all occasions in the Scriptures, where the order in which names are mentioned could be made to depend on rank,――by the universal testimony of the Fathers, and by the general impressions entertained on this point throughout the Christian world, in all ages since his time.

HIS BIRTH.

From two separate passages in the gospels, we learn that the name of the father of Simon Peter was Jonah, but beyond this we have no direct information as to his family. From the terms in which Peter is frequently mentioned along with the other apostles, we infer, however, that he must have been from the lowest order of society, which also appears from the business to which he devoted his life, before he received the summons that sent him forth to the world, on a far higher errand. Of such a humble family, he was born at Bethsaida, in Galilee, on or near the shore of the sea of Galilee, otherwise called lake Tiberias, or Gennesaret. Upon this lake he seems to have followed his laborious and dangerous livelihood, which very probably, in accordance with the hereditary succession of trades, common among the Jews, was the occupation of his father and ancestors before him. Of the time of his birth no certain information can be had, as those who were able to inform us, were not disposed to set so high a value upon ages and dates, as the writers and readers of later times. The most reasonable conjecture as to his age, is, that he was about the same age with Jesus Christ; which rests on the circumstances of his being married at the period when he was first called by Christ,――his being made the object of such high confidence and honor by his Master, and the eminent standing which he seems to have maintained, from the first, among the apostles. Still there is nothing in all these circumstances, that is irreconcilable with the supposition that he was younger than Christ; and if any reader prefers to suppose the period of his birth so much later, there is no important point in his history or character that will be affected by such a change of dates.

Bethsaida.――The name of this place occurs in several passages of gospel history, as connected with the scenes of the life of Jesus. (Matthew xi. 21; Mark vi. 45, viii. 22‒26; Luke ix. 10, x. 13; John i. 45, xii. 21.) The name likewise occurs in the writings of Josephus, who describes Bethsaida, and mentions some circumstances of its history. The common impression among the New Testament commentators has been, that the Bethsaida which is so often mentioned in the gospels, was on the western shore of lake Gennesaret, near the other cities which were the scenes of important events in the life of Jesus. Yet Josephus distinctly implies that Bethsaida was situated on the eastern shore of the lake, as he says that it was built by Philip the tetrarch, in Lower Gaulonitis, (Jewish war, book ii. chapter 9, section 1,) which was on the eastern side of the Jordan and the lake, though not in Peraea, as Lightfoot rather hastily assumes; for Peraea, though by its derivation (from περαν, peran, “beyond,”) meaning simply “what was beyond” the river, yet was, in the geography of Palestine, applied to only that portion of the country east of Jordan, which extends from Moab on the south, northward, to Pella, on the Jabbok. (Josephus, Jewish war, book iii. chapter 3, section 3.) Another point in which the account given by Josephus differs from that in the gospels, is, that while Josephus places Bethsaida in Gaulonitis, John (xii. 21,) speaks of it distinctly as a city of Galilee, and Peter, as well as others born in Bethsaida, is called a Galilean. These two apparent disagreements have led many eminent writers to conclude that there were on and near the lake, two wholly different places bearing the name of Bethsaida. Schleusner, Bretschneider, Fischer, Pococke, Reland, Michaelis, Kuinoel, Rosenmueller, and others, have maintained this opinion with many arguments. But Lightfoot, Cave, Calmet, Baillet, Macknight, Wells, and others, have decided that these differences can be perfectly reconciled, and all the circumstances related in the gospels, made to agree with Josephus’s account of the situation of Bethsaida.

TIBERIAS AND THE SEA OF GALILEE.
Mark i. 16. John vi. 1.

The first passage in which Josephus mentions this place, is in his Jewish Antiquities, book xviii. chapter 2, section 1. “And he, (Philip) having granted to the village of Bethsaida, near the lake of Gennesaret, the rank of a city, by increasing its population, and giving it importance in other ways, called it by the name of Julia, the daughter of Caesar,” (Augustus.) In his History of the Jewish War, book ii. chapter 9, section 1, he also alludes to it in a similar connection. Speaking, as in the former passage, of the cities built by Herod and Philip in their tetrarchies, he says, “The latter built Julias, in Lower Gaulanitis.” In the same history, book iii. chapter 9, section 7, describing the course of the Jordan, he alludes to this city. “Passing on (from lake Semechonitis,) one hundred and twenty furlongs farther, to the city Julias, it flows through the middle of lake Gennesar.” In this passage I translate the preposition μετα (meta,) by the English “to,” though Hudson expresses it in Latin by “post,” and Macknight by the English “behind.” Lightfoot very freely renders it “ante,” but with all these great authorities against me, I have the consolation of finding my translation supported by the antique English version of the quaint Thomas Lodge, who distinctly expresses the preposition in this passage by “unto.” This translation of the word is in strict accordance with the rule that this Greek preposition, when it comes before the accusative after a verb of motion, has the force of “to,” or “against.” (See Jones’s Lexicon, sub voc. μετα; also Hederici Lexicon.) But in reference to places, it never has the meaning of “behind,” given to it by Macknight, nor of “post,” in Latin, as in Hudson’s translation, still less of “ante,” as Lightfoot very queerly expresses it. The passage, then, simply means that the Jordan, after passing out of lake Semechonitis, flows one hundred and twenty furlongs to the city of Julias or Bethsaida, (not behind it, nor before it,) and there enters lake Gennesar, the whole expressing as clearly as may be, that Julias stood on the river just where it widens into the lake. That Julias stood on the Jordan, and not on the lake, though near it, is made further manifest, by a remark made by Josephus, in his memoirs of his own life. He, when holding a military command in the region around the lake, during the war against the Romans, on one occasion, sent against the enemy a detachment of soldiers, who “encamped near the river Jordan, about a furlong from Julias.” (Life of Josephus, section 72.)

It should be remarked, moreover, that, at the same time when Philip enlarged Bethsaida, in this manner, and gave it the name of Julia, the daughter of Augustus Caesar, his brother Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, with a similar ambition to exalt his own glory, and secure the favor of the imperial family, rebuilt a city in his dominions, named Betharamphtha, to which he gave the name Julias also; but in honor, not of the daughter, but of the wife of Augustus, who bore the family name, Julia, which passed from her to her daughter. This multiplication of namesake towns, has only created new confusion for us; for the learned Lightfoot, in his Chorographic century on Matthew, has unfortunately taken this for the Julias which stood on the Jordan, at its entrance into the lake, and accordingly applies to Julias-Betharamphtha, the last two quotations from Josephus, given above, which I have applied to Julias-Bethsaida. But it would seem as if this most profound Biblical scholar was certainly in the wrong here; since Julias-Betharamphtha must have been built by Herod Antipas within his own dominions, that is, in Galilee proper, or Peraea proper, as already bounded; and Josephus expressly says that this Julias was in Peraea; yet Lightfoot, in his rude little wood-cut map, (Horae Hebraica et Talmudicae in Marci, Decas Chorographica chapter v.) has put this in Gaulanitis, far north of its true place, at the influx of the Jordan into the lake, (“ad ipsissimum influxum Jordanis in lacum Gennesariticum,”) and Julias-Bethsaida, also in Gaulanitis, some miles lower down, at the south-east corner of the lake, a position adopted by no other writer that I know of. This peculiarity in Lightfoot’s views, I have thus stated at length, that those who may refer to his Horae for more light, might not suppose a confusion in my statement, which does not exist; for since the Julias-Betharamphtha of Herod could not have been in Gaulanitis, but in Peraea, the Julias at the influx of the Jordan into the lake, must have been the Bethsaida embellished by Philip, tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis, (Luke iii. 1,) which included Gaulanitis, Batanea, &c. east of Jordan and the lake, and north of Peraea proper. The substance of Josephus’s information on this point, is, therefore, that Bethsaida stood on the eastern side of the Jordan, just where it enters lake Gennesar, or Gennesaret, (otherwise called lake Tiberias and the sea of Galilee,)――that it stood in the province of Gaulanitis, within the dominions of Philip, son of Herod the Great, and tetrarch of all that portion of Palestine which lies north of Peraea, on the east of Jordan, and the lake, as well as of the region north of Galilee, his tetrarchy forming a sort of crescent,――that this prince, having enlarged and embellished Bethsaida, raised it from a village to the rank of a city, by the name of Julias, in honor of Julia, daughter of Augustus Caesar. This was done during the reign of Augustus, (Josephus, in Jewish Antiquities book i. chapter 2, section 1,) and of course long before Jesus Christ began his labors, though after his birth, because it was after the death of Herod the Great.

The question now is, whether the Bethsaida mentioned by the evangelists is by them so described as to be in any way inconsistent with the account given by Josephus, of the place to which he gives that name. The first difficulty which has presented itself to the critical commentators, on this point, is the fact, that the Bethsaida of the gospels is declared in them to have been a city of Galilee, (John xii. 21,) and those who were born and brought up in it are called Galileans, (Mark xiv. 70, Luke xxii. 59, Acts i. 7, ii. 7.) Yet Josephus expressly tells us, that Bethsaida was in Gaulanitis, which was not in Galilee, as he bounds it, but was beyond its eastern boundary, on the eastern side of the river and lake. (Jewish war, book xviii. chapter 2, section 1.) This is therefore considered by many, as a diversity between the two accounts, which must make it impossible to apply them both to the same place. But there is no necessity for such a conclusion. The different application of the term Galilee, in the two books, must be noticed, in order to avoid confusion. Josephus is very exact in the use of names of places and regions, defining geographical positions and boundaries with a particularity truly admirable. Thus, in mentioning the political divisions of Palestine, he gives the precise limits of each, and uses their names, not in the loose, popular way, but only in his own accurate sense. But the gospel writers are characterized by no such minute particularity, in the use of names, which they generally apply in the popular, rather than the exact sense. Thus, in this case, they use the term Galilee, in what seems to have been its common meaning in Judea, as a name for all the region north of Samaria and Peraea, on both sides of the Jordan, including, of course, Gaulanitis and all the dominions of Philip. The difference between them and Josephus, on this point, is very satisfactorily shown in another passage. In Acts v. 37, Gamaliel, speaking of several persons who had at different times disturbed the peace of the nation, mentions one Judas, the Galilean, as a famous rebel. Now this same person is very particularly described by Josephus, (Jewis Antiquities book xv. chapter 1, section 1,) in such a manner that there can be no doubt of his identity with the previous description. Yet Josephus calls him distinctly, Judas the Gaulanite, and only once Judas the Galilean; showing him to have been from the city of Gamala, in the country east of Jordan and the lake; so that the conclusion is unavoidable, that the term Galilee is used in a much wider sense in the New Testament than in Josephus, being applied indiscriminately to the region on both sides of the lake. The people of southern Palestine called the whole northern section Galilee, and all its inhabitants, Galileans, without attending to the nicer political and geographical distinctions; just as the inhabitants of the southern section of the United States, high and low, call every stranger a Yankee, who is from any part of the country north of Mason and Dixon’s line, though well-informed people perfectly well know, that the classic and not despicable name of Yankee belongs fairly and truly to the ingenious sons of New England alone, who have made their long-established sectional title so synonymous with acuteness and energy, that whenever an enterprising northerner pushes his way southward, he shares in the honors of this gentile appellative. Just in the same vague and careless way, did the Jews apply the name Galilean to all the energetic, active northerners, who made themselves known in Jerusalem, either by their presence or their fame; and thus both Judas of Gaulanitis, and those apostles who were from the eastern side of the river, were called Galileans, as well as those on the west, in Galilee proper. Besides, in the case of Bethsaida, which was immediately on the line between Galilee and Gaulanitis, it was still more natural to refer it to the larger section on the west, with many of whose cities it was closely connected.

Besides, that the Jews considered Galilee as extending beyond Jordan, is most undeniably clear from Isaiah ix. 1, where the prophet plainly speaks of “Galilee of the nations, as being by the side of the sea, beyond Jordan.” This was the ancient Jewish idea of the country designated by this name, and the idea of limiting it to the west of Jordan, was a mere late term introduced by the Romans, and apparently never used by the Jews of the gospel times, except when speaking of the political divisions of Palestine. The name Gaulanitis, which is the proper term for the province in which Bethsaida was, never occurs in the bible. Kuinoel, Rosenmueller, &c. give a different view, however, of “beyond Jordan,” on Matthew iv. 15.

But a still more important difficulty has been suggested, in reference to the identity of the place described by Josephus, with that mentioned in the gospels. This is, the fact that in the gospels it is spoken of in such a connection, as would seem to require its location on the western side. A common, but very idle argument, in favor of this supposition, is, that Bethsaida is mentioned frequently along with Capernaum and other cities of Galilee proper, in such immediate connection as to make it probable that it was on the same side of the river and lake with them. But places separated merely by a river, or at most by a narrow lake, whose greatest breadth was only five miles, could not be considered distant from each other, and would very naturally be spoken of as near neighbors. The most weighty argument, however, rests on a passage in Mark vi. 45, where it is said that Jesus constrained his disciples to “get into a vessel, to go before him to the other side unto Bethsaida,” after the five thousand had been fed. Now the parallel passage in John vi. 17, says that they, following this direction, “went over the sea towards Capernaum,” and that when they reached the shore, “they came into the land of Gennesaret,” both which are understood to be on the western side. But on the other hand, we are distinctly told, by Luke, (ix. 10,) that the five thousand were fed in “a desert place, belonging to (or near) the city which is called Bethsaida.” On connecting these two passages, therefore, (in John and Mark,) according to the common version, the disciples sailed from Bethsaida on one side, to Bethsaida on the other, a construction which has been actually adopted by those who maintain the existence of two cities of the same name on different sides of the lake. But what common reader is willing to believe, that in this passage Luke refers to a place totally different from the one meant in all other passages where the name occurs, and more particularly in the very next chapter, (x. 13,) where he speaks of the Bethsaida which had been frequented before by Jesus, without a word of explanation to show that it was a different place? But in the expression, “to go before him to the other side, TO Bethsaida,” the word “TO” may be shown, by a reference to the Greek, to convey an erroneous idea of the situation of the places. The preposition προς, (pros,) may have, not merely the sense of to, with the idea of motion towards a place, but in some passages even of Mark’s gospel, may be most justly translated “near,” or “before,” (as in ii. 2, “not even about” or “before” the door, and in xi. 4, “tied by” or before “the door.”) This is the meaning which seems to be justified by the collocation here, and the meaning in which I am happy to find myself supported by the acute and accurate Wahl, in his Clavis Novi Testamenti under προς, which he translates in this passage by the Latin juxta, prope ad; and the German bey, that is, “by,” “near to,” a meaning supported by the passage in Herodotus, to which he refers, as well as by those from Mark himself, which are given above, from Schleusner’s references under this word, (definition 7.) Scott, in order to reconcile the difficulties which he saw in the common version, has, in his marginal references, suggested the meaning of “over against,” a rendering, which undoubtedly expresses correctly the relations of objects in this place, and one, perhaps, not wholly inconsistent with Schleusner’s 7th definition, which is in Latin ante, or “before;” since what was before Bethsaida, as one looked from that place across the river, was certainly opposite to that city. I had thought of this meaning as a desirable one in this passage, but had rejected it, before I saw it in Scott, for the reason, that I could not find this exact meaning in any lexicon, nor was there any other passage in Greek, in which this could be distinctly recognized as the proper one. The propriety of the term, however, is also noticed, in the note on this passage in the great French Bible, with commentaries, harmonies, &c. (Sainte Bible en Latin et Francois avec des notes, &c. Vol. xiv. p. 263, note,) where it is expressed by “l’autre cote du lac, vis-a-vis Bethsaide: c. a. d. sur le bord occidental opposé a la ville Bethsaide que etait sur le bord oriental,” a meaning undoubtedly geographically correct, but not grammatically exact, and I therefore prefer to take “near,” as the sense which both reconciles the geographical difficulties, and accords with the established principles of lexicography.

After all, the sense “to” is not needed in this passage, to direct the action of the verb of motion (προαγειν, proagein, “go before,”) to its proper object, since that is previously done by the former preposition and substantive, εις το περαν, (eis to peran.) That is, when we read “Jesus constrained his disciples to go before him,” and the question arises in regard to the object towards which the action is directed, “Whither did he constrain them to go before him?” the answer is in the words immediately succeeding, εις το περαν, “to the other side,” and in these words the action is complete; but the mere general direction, “to the other side,” was too vague of itself, and required some limitation to avoid error; for the place to which they commonly directed their course westward, over the lake, was Capernaum, the home of Jesus, and thither they might on this occasion be naturally expected to go, as we should have concluded they did, if nothing farther was said; therefore, to fix the point of their destination, we are told, in answer to the query, “To what part of the western shore were they directed to go?” “To that part which was near or opposite to Bethsaida.” The objection which may arise, that a place on the western side could not be very near to Bethsaida on the east, is answered by the fact that this city was separated from the western shore, not by the whole breadth of the lake, but simply by the little stream of Jordan, here not more than twenty yards wide, so that a place on the opposite side might still be very near the city. And this is what shows the topographical justness of the term, “over against,” given by Scott, and the French commentator, since a place not directly across or opposite, but down the western shore, in a south-westerly direction, as Capernaum was, would not be very near Bethsaida, nor much less than five miles off. Thus is shown a beautiful mutual illustration of the literal and the liberal translations of the word.

Macknight ably answers another argument, which has been offered to defend the location of Bethsaida on the western shore, founded on John vi. 23. “There came other boats from Tiberias, nigh unto the place where they did eat bread,” as if Tiberias had been near the desert of Bethsaida, and consequently near Bethsaida itself. “But,” as Macknight remarks, “the original, rightly pointed, imports only, that boats from Tiberias came into some creek or bay, nigh unto the place where they did eat bread.” Besides, it should be remembered that the object of those who came in the boats, was to find Jesus, whom they expected to find “nigh the place where they ate bread,” as the context shows; so that these words refer to their destination, and not to the place from which they came. Tiberias was down the lake, at the south-western corner of it, and I know of no geographer who has put Bethsaida more than half way down, even on the western shore. The difference, therefore, between the distance to Bethsaida on the west and to Bethsaida on the east, could not be at most above a mile or two, a matter not to be appreciated in a voyage of sixteen miles, from Tiberias, which cannot be said to be near Bethsaida, in any position of the latter that has ever been thought of. This objection, of course, is not offered at all, by those who suppose two Bethsaidas mentioned in the gospels, and grant that the passage in Luke ix. 10, refers to the eastern one, where they suppose the place of eating bread to have been; but others, who have imagined only one Bethsaida, and that on the western side, have proposed this argument; and to such the reply is directed.

For all these reasons, topographical, historical and grammatical, the conclusion of the whole matter is――that there was but one Bethsaida, the same place being meant by that name in all passages in the gospels and in Josephus――that this place stood within the verge of Lower Gaulanitis, on the bank of the Jordan, just where it passes into the lake――that it was in the dominions of Philip the tetrarch, at the time when it is mentioned in the gospels, and afterwards was included in the kingdom of Agrippa――that its original Hebrew name, (from בית beth, “house,” and צדה, tsedah, “hunting, or fishing,” “a house of fishing,” no doubt so called from the common pursuit of its inhabitants,) was changed by Philip into Julias, by which name it was known to Greeks and Romans.

By this view, we avoid the undesirable notion, that there are two totally different places mentioned in two succeeding chapters of the same gospel, without a word of explanation to inform us of the difference, as is usual in cases of local synonyms in the New Testament; and that Josephus describes a place of this name, without the slightest hint of the remarkable fact, that there was another place of the same name, not half a mile off, directly across the Jordan, in full view of it.

The discussion of the point has been necessarily protracted to a somewhat tedious length; but if fewer words would have expressed the truth and the reasons for it, it should have been briefer; and probably there is no reader who has endeavored to satisfy himself on the position of Bethsaida, in his own biblical studies, that will not feel some gratitude for what light this note may give, on a point where all common aids and authorities are in such monstrous confusion.

For the various opinions and statements on this difficult point, see Schleusner’s, Bretschneider’s and Wahl’s Lexicons, Lightfoot’s Chorographic century and decade, Wetstein’s New Testament commentary on Matthew iv. 12, Kuinoel, Rosenmueller, Fritzsche, Macknight, &c. On the passages where the name occurs, also the French Commentary above quoted,――more especially in Vol. III. Remarques sur le carte geographique section 7, p. 357. Paulus’s “commentar ueber das neue Testament,” 2d edition, Vol. II. pp. 336‒342. Topographische Erlaeuterungen.

Lake Gennesaret.――This body of water, bearing in the gospels the various names of “the sea of Tiberias,” and “the sea of Galilee,” as well as “the lake of Gennesaret,” is formed like one or two other smaller ones north of it, by a widening of the Jordan, which flows in at the northern end, and passing through the middle, goes out at the southern end. On the western side, it was bounded by Galilee proper, and on the east was the lower division of that portion of Iturea, which was called Gaulanitis by the Greeks and Romans, from the ancient city of Golan, (Deuteronomy iv. 43; Joshua xx. 8, &c.) which stood within its limits. Pliny (book I. chapter 15,) well describes the situation and character of the lake. “Where the shape of the valley first allows it, the Jordan pours itself into a lake which is most commonly called Genesara, sixteen (Roman) miles long, and six broad. It is surrounded by pleasant towns; on the east, it has Julias (Bethsaida) and Hippus; on the south, Tarichea, by which name some call the lake also; on the west, Tiberias with its warm springs.” Josephus also gives a very clear and ample description. (Jewish War, book 3, chapter 9, section 7.) “Lake Gennesar takes its name from the country adjoining it. It is forty furlongs (about five or six miles) in width, and one hundred and forty (seventeen or eighteen miles) in length; yet the water is sweet, and very desirable to drink; for it has its fountain clear from swampy thickness, and is therefore quite pure, being bounded on all sides by a beach, and a sandy shore. It is moreover of a pleasant temperature to drink, being warmer than that of a river or a spring, on the one hand, but colder than that which stands always expanded over a lake. In coldness, indeed, it is not inferior to snow, when it has been exposed to the air all night, as is the custom with the people of that region. In it there are some kinds of fish, different both in appearance and taste from those in other places. The Jordan cuts through the middle of it.” He then gives a description of the course of the Jordan, ending with the remark quoted in the former note, that it enters the lake at the city of Julias. He then describes, in glowing terms, the richness and beauty of the country around, from which the lake takes its name,――a description too long to be given here; but the studious reader may find it in section eighth of the book and chapter above referred to. The Rabbinical writers too, often refer to the pre-eminent beauty and fertility of this delightful region, as is shown in several passages quoted by Lightfoot in his Centuria Chorographica, chapter 79. The derivation of the name there given from the Rabbins, is גני סרים, ginne sarim, “the gardens of the princes.” Thence the name genne-sar. They say it was within the lands of the tribe of Naphtali; it must therefore have been on the western side of the lake, which appears also from the fact that it was near Tiberias, as we are told on the same authority. It is not mentioned in the Old Testament under this name, but the Rabbins assure us that the place called Cinnereth, in Joshua xx. 35; Chinneroth in xi. 2, is the same; and this lake is mentioned in xiii. 27, under the name of “the sea of Chinnereth,”――“the sea of Chinneroth,” in xii. 3, &c.

The best description of the scenery, and present aspect of the lake, which I can find, is the following from Conder’s Modern Traveler, Vol. 1. (Palestine) a work made up with great care from the observations of a great number of intelligent travelers.

“The mountains on the east of Lake Tiberias, come close to its shore, and the country on that side has not a very agreeable aspect; on the west, it has the plain of Tiberias, the high ground of the plain of Hutin, or Hottein, the plain of Gennesaret, and the foot of those hills by which you ascend to the high mountain of Saphet. To the north and south it has a plain country, or valley. There is a current throughout the whole breadth of the lake, even to the shore; and the passage of the Jordan through it, is discernible by the smoothness of the surface in that part. Various travelers have given a very different account of its general aspect. According to Captain Mangles, the land about it has no striking features, and the scenery is altogether devoid of character. ‘It appeared,’ he says, ‘to particular disadvantage to us, after those beautiful lakes we had seen in Switzerland; but it becomes a very interesting object, when you consider the frequent allusions to it in the gospel narrative.’ Dr. Clarke, on the contrary, speaks of the uncommon grandeur of this memorable scenery. ‘The lake of Gennesaret,’ he says, ‘is surrounded by objects well calculated to highten the solemn impression,’ made by such recollections, and ‘affords one of the most striking prospects in the Holy Land. Speaking of it comparatively, it may be described as longer and finer than any of our Cumberland and Westmoreland lakes, although perhaps inferior to Loch Lomond. It does not possess the vastness of the Lake of Geneva, although it much resembles it in certain points of view. In picturesque beauty, it comes nearest to the Lake of Locarno, in Italy, although it is destitute of any thing similar to the islands by which that majestic piece of water is adorned. It is inferior in magnitude, and in the hight of its surrounding mountains, to the Lake Asphaltites.’ Mr. Buckingham may perhaps be considered as having given the most accurate account, and one which reconciles, in some degree, the different statements above cited, when, speaking of the lake as seen from Tel Hoom, he says, ‘that its appearance is grand, but that the barren aspect of the mountains on each side, and the total absence of wood, give a cast of dulness to the picture; this is increased to melancholy, by the dead calm of its waters, and the silence which reigns throughout its whole extent, where not a boat or vessel of any kind is to be found.’

“Among the pebbles on the shore, Dr. Clarke found pieces of a porous rock, resembling toad-stone, its cavities filled with zeolite. Native gold is said to have been found here formerly. ‘We noticed,’ he says, ‘an appearance of this kind; but, on account of its trivial nature, neglected to pay proper attention to it. The water was as clear as the purest crystal; sweet, cool, and most refreshing. Swimming to a considerable distance from the shore, we found it so limpid that we could discern the bottom covered with shining pebbles. Among these stones was a beautiful, but very diminutive, kind of shell; a nondescript species of Buccinum, which we have called Buccinum Galilæum. We amused ourselves by diving for specimens; and the very circumstance of discerning such small objects beneath the surface, may prove the high transparency of the water.’ The situation of the lake, lying as it were in a deep basin between the hills which enclose it on all sides, excepting only the narrow entrance and outlets of the Jordan, at either end, protects its waters from long-continued tempests. Its surface is in general as smooth as that of the Dead Sea; but the same local features render it occasionally subject to whirlwinds, squalls, and sudden gusts from the mountains, of short duration, especially when the strong current formed by the Jordan, is opposed by a wind of this description, from the south-east; sweeping from the mountains with the force of a hurricane, it may easily be conceived that a boisterous sea must be instantly raised, which the small vessels of the country would be unable to resist. A storm of this description is plainly denoted by the language of the evangelist, in recounting one of our Lord’s miracles. ‘There came down a storm of wind on the lake, and they were filled with water, and were in jeopardy.... Then he arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water; and they ceased, and there was a calm.’ (Luke viii. 23, 24.)”

The question of Peter’s being the oldest son of his father has been already alluded to, and decided by the most ancient authority, in favor of the opinion, that he was younger than Andrew. There surely is nothing unparalleled or remarkable in the fact, that the younger brother should so transcend the elder in ability and eminence; since Scripture history furnishes us with similar instances in Jacob, Judah and Joseph, Moses, David, and many others throughout the history of the Jews, although that nation generally regarded the rights of primogeniture with high reverence and respect.

HIS INTRODUCTION TO JESUS.

The earliest passage in the life of Peter, of which any record can be found, is given in the first chapter of John’s Gospel. In this, it appears that Peter and Andrew were at Bethabara, a place on the eastern bank of the Jordan, more than twenty miles south of their home at Bethsaida, and that they had probably left their business for a time, and gone thither, for the sake of hearing and seeing John the Baptist, who was then preaching at that place, and baptizing the penitent in the Jordan. This great forerunner of the Messiah, had already, by his strange habits of life, by his fiery eloquence, by his violent and fearless zeal in denouncing the spirit of the times, attracted the attention of the people, of all classes, in various and distant parts of Palestine; and not merely of the vulgar and unenlightened portion of society, who are so much more susceptible to false impressions in such cases, but even of the well taught followers of the two great learned sects of the Jewish faith, whose members flocked to hear his bold and bitter condemnation of their precepts and practices. So widely had his fame spread, and so important were the results of his doctrine considered, that a deputation of priests and Levites was sent to him, from Jerusalem, (probably from the Sanhedrim, or grand civil and religious council,) to inquire into his character and pretensions. No doubt a particular interest was felt in this inquiry, from the fact that there was a general expectation abroad at that time, that the long-desired restorer of Israel was soon to appear; or, as expressed by Luke, there were many “who waited for the consolation of Israel,” and “who in Jerusalem looked for redemption.” Luke also expressly tells us, that the expectations of the multitude were strongly excited, and that all men mused in their hearts whether he were the Christ or not. In the midst of this general notion, so flattering, and so tempting to an ambitious man, John vindicates his honesty and sincerity, by distinctly declaring to the multitude, as well as to the deputation, that he was not the Christ, and claimed for himself only the comparatively humble name and honors of the preparer of the way for the true king of Israel. This distinct disavowal, accompanied by the solemn declaration, that the true Messiah stood at that moment among them, though unknown in his real character, must have aggravated public curiosity to the highest pitch, and caused the people to await, with the most intense anxiety, the nomination of this mysterious king, which John was expected to make. Need we wonder, then, at the alacrity and determination with which the two disciples of John, who heard this announcement, followed the footsteps of Jesus, with the object of finding the dwelling place of the Messiah, or at the deep reverence with which they accosted him, giving him at once the highest term of honor which a Jew could confer on the wise and good,――“Rabbi,” or master? Nor is it surprising that Andrew, after the first day’s conversation with Jesus, should instantly seek out his beloved and zealous brother, and tell him the joyful and exciting news, that they had found the Messiah. The mention of this fact was enough for Simon, and he suffered himself to be brought at once to Jesus. The salutation with which the Redeemer greeted the man who was to be the leader of his consecrated host, was strikingly prophetical and full of meaning. His first words were the annunciation of his individual and family name, (no miracle, but an allusion to the hidden meaning of his name,) and the application of a new one, by which he was afterwards to be distinguished from the many who bore his common name. All these names have a deeply curious and interesting meaning. Translating them all from their original Aramaic forms, the salutation will be, “Thou art a hearer, the son of divine grace――thou shalt be called a rock.” The first of these names (hearer) was a common title in use among the Jews, to distinguish those who had just offered themselves to the learned, as desiring wisdom in the law; and the second was applied to those who, having past the first probationary stage of instruction, were ranked as the approved and improving disciples of the law, under the hopeful title of the “sons of divine grace.” The third, which became afterwards the distinctive individual name of this apostle, was given, no doubt, in reference to the peculiar excellences of his natural genius, which seems to be thereby characterized as firm, unimpressible by difficulty, and affording fit materials for the foundation of a mighty and lasting superstructure.

The name Simon, שמונ was a common abridgment of Simeon, שמעונ which means a hearer, and was a term applied technically as here mentioned. (For proofs and illustrations, see Poole’s Synopsis and Lightfoot.) The technical meaning of the name Jonah, given in the text, is that given by Grotius and Drusius, but Lightfoot rejects this interpretation, because the name Jonah is not fairly derived from יוחנא (which is the name corresponding to John,) but is the same with that of the old prophet so named, and he is probably right in therefore rejecting this whimsical etymology and definition.

With this important event of the introduction of Simon to Jesus, and the application of his new and characteristic name, the life of Peter, as a follower of Christ, may be fairly said to have begun; and from this arises a simple division of the subject, into the two great natural portions of his life; first, in his state of pupilage and instruction under the prayerful, personal care of his devoted Master, during his earthly stay; and second, of his labors in the cause of his murdered and risen Lord, as his preacher and successor. These two portions of his life may be properly denominated his discipleship and his apostleship; or perhaps still better, Peter the learner, and Peter the teacher.

THE FORDS OF THE JORDAN.

I. PETER’S DISCIPLESHIP;
OR,
PETER THE LEARNER AND FOLLOWER.

After his first interview with Christ, Peter seems to have returned to his usual business, toiling for his support, without any idea whatever of the manner in which his destiny was connected with the wonderful being to whom he had been thus introduced. We may justly suppose, indeed, that being convinced by the testimony of John, his first religious teacher and his baptizer, and by personal conversation with Jesus, of his being the Messiah, that he afterwards often came to him, (as his home was near the Savior’s,) and heard him, and saw some of the miracles done by him. “We may take it for granted,” as Lardner does, “that they were present at the miracle at Cana of Galilee, it being expressly said that Jesus and his disciples were invited to the marriage solemnity in that place, as described in the second chapter of John’s gospel. It is also said in the same chapter, ‘this beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him;’ that is, were confirmed in the persuasion that he was the Messiah.” And among the disciples of Jesus, Simon and his brother were evidently numbered, from the time when they received their first introduction to him, and were admitted to the honors of an intimate acquaintance. The formal manner in which Jesus saluted Simon, seems to imply his adoption, or nomination at least, as a disciple, by referring to the remarkable coincidence of meaning between his name and the character of a hopeful learner in the school of divine knowledge. Still the two brothers had plainly received no appointment which produced any essential change in their general habits and plans of life, for they still followed their previous calling, quietly and unpretendingly, without seeming to suppose, that the new honors attained by them had in any way exempted them from the necessity of earning their daily bread by the sweat of their brow. To this they devoted themselves, laboring along the same sea of Galilee, whose waters and shores were the witnesses of so many remarkable scenes of the life of Christ. Yet their business was not of such a character as to prevent their enjoying occasional interviews with their divine master, whose residence by the lake, and walks along its shores, must have afforded frequent opportunities for cultivating or renewing an acquaintance with those engaged on its waters. There is nothing in the gospel story inconsistent with the belief, that Jesus met his disciples, who were thus occupied, on more occasions than one; and had it been the Bible plan to record all the most interesting details of his earthly life, many instructive accounts might, no doubt, have been given of the interviews enjoyed by him and his destined messengers of grace to the world. But the multiplication of such narratives, however interesting the idea of them may now seem, would have added no essential doctrine to our knowledge, even if they had been so multiplied as that, in the paradoxical language of John, the whole world could not contain them; and the necessary result of such an increased number of records, would have been a diminished valuation of each. As it is, the scripture historical canon secures our high regard and diligent attention, and its careful examination, by the very circumstance of its brevity, and the wide chasms of the narrative;――like the mysterious volumes of the Cumaean Sybil, the value of the few is no less than that of the many, the price of each increasing in proportion as the number of the whole diminishes. Thus in regard to this interesting interval of Peter’s life, we are left to the indulgence of reasonable conjecture, such as has been here mentioned.

The next direct account given in the Bible, of any event immediately concerning him, is found in all the first three gospels. It is thought by some, that his father Jonah was now dead; for there is no mention of him, as of Zebedee, when his two sons were called. This however is only a mere conjecture, and has no more certainty than that he had found it convenient to make his home elsewhere, or was now so old as to be prevented from sharing in this laborious and perilous occupation, or that he had always obtained his livelihood in some other way; though the last supposition is much less accordant with the well-known hereditary succession of trades, which was sanctioned by almost universal custom throughout their nation. However, it appears that if still alive, their connection with him was not such as to hinder them a moment in renouncing at once all their former engagements and responsibilities, at the summons of Christ. Jesus was at this time residing at Capernaum, which is said by Matthew to be by the sea-coast, better translated “shore of the lake;” for it is not on the coast of the Mediterranean, as our modern use of these terms would lead us to suppose, but on the shore of the small inland lake Tiberias, or sea of Galilee, as it was called by the Jews, who, with their limited notions of geography, did not draw the nice distinctions between large and small bodies of water, which the more extended knowledge of some other nations of antiquity taught them to make. Capernaum was but a few miles from Bethsaida, on the other side of the lake, and its nearness would often bring Jesus in his walks, by the places where these fishermen were occupied, in whichever of the two places they at that time resided. On one of these walks he seems to have given the final summons, which called the first four of the twelve from their humble labors to the high commission of converting the world.

Capernaum.――Though no one has ever supposed that there were two places bearing this name, yet about its locality, as about many other points of sacred topography, we find that “doctors disagree,” though in this case without any good reason; for the scriptural accounts, though so seldom minute on the situations of places, here give us all the particulars of its position, as fully as is desirable or possible. Matthew, (iv. 13,) tells us, that Capernaum was upon “the shore of the lake, on the boundaries of Zebulon and Naphtali.” A reference to the history of the division of territory among these tribes, (Joshua xix.) shows that their possessions did not reach the other side of the water, but were bounded on the east by Jordan and the lake, as is fully represented in all the maps of Palestine. Thus, it is made manifest, that Capernaum must have stood on the western shore of the lake, where the lands of Zebulon and Naphtali bordered on each other. Though this boundary line cannot be very accurately determined, we can still obtain such an approximation, as will enable us to fix the position of Capernaum on the northern end of the western side of the lake, where most of the maps agree in placing it; yet some have very strangely put it on the eastern side. The maps in the French bible, before quoted, have set it down at the mouth of the Jordan, in the exact place where Josephus has so particularly described Bethsaida as placed. Lightfoot has placed it on the west, but near the southern end; and all the common maps differ considerably as to its precise situation, of which indeed we can only give a vague conjecture, except that it must have been near the northern end. Conder (Modern Traveler, Palestine,) gives the following account of modern researches after its site, among the ruins of various cities near the lake.

“With regard to Chorazin, Pococke says, that he could find nothing like the name, except at a village called Gerasi, which is among the hills west of the village called Telhoue, in the plain of Gennesaret. Dr. Richardson, in passing through this plain, inquired of the natives whether they knew such a place as Capernaum? They immediately rejoined, ‘Cavernahum wa Chorasi, they are quite near, but in ruins.’ This evidence sufficiently fixes the proximity of Chorazin to Capernaum, in opposition to the opinion that it was on the east side of the lake; and it is probable that the Gerasi of Pococke is the same place, the orthography only being varied, as Dr. Richardson’s Chorasi.”

HIS CALL.

In giving the minute details, we find that Luke has varied widely from Matthew and Mark, in many particulars. Taking the accounts found in each gospel separately, we make out the following three distinct stories.

1. Matthew, in his fourth chapter, says that Jesus, after leaving Nazareth, came and dwelt at Capernaum, where he began the great work for which he came into the world,――preaching repentance and making known the near approach of the reign of heaven on earth. In pursuance of this great object, it would seem that he went forth from the city which he made his home, and walked by the sea of Galilee, not for the sake of merely refreshing his body with the fresh air of that broad water, when languid with the confinement and closeness of the town, but with the higher object of forwarding his vast enterprise. On this walk he saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew, casting their net, or rather seine, into the sea; for they were fishermen by trade, and not merely occupied in this as an occasional employment, by way of diversion in the intervals of higher business. Jesus directly addressed them in a tone of unqualified command, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” And they, without questioning his authority or his purpose, immediately left their business at its most interesting and exciting part, (just at the drawing of the net,) and followed him, as it here seems at once, through Galilee, on his pilgrimage of mercy and love. Matthew gives no other particulars whatever, connected with the call of these two brothers; and had we been left to obtain the whole gospel-history from him alone, we should have supposed that, before this, Peter had no acquaintance, of a personal character at least, with Jesus; and that the call was made merely in a private way, without the presence of any other than ordinary accidental witnesses. From Matthew we hear nothing further respecting Peter, until his name is mentioned in the apostolic list, in the tenth chapter, except the mention in chapter eighth, of the illness of his mother in-law at his house. But the other gospel-writers give us many interesting and important particulars in addition, which throw new light on the previous circumstances, the manner and the consequences of the call.

2. Mark, in his first chapter, makes it appear as if, immediately after the temptation of Christ, and before his entrance into Capernaum, he met and summoned the two pairs of brothers, of which call the immediate circumstances are given there, in words which are a very literal transcript of those of Matthew, with hardly the slightest addition. But the events which followed the summons are given in such a manner, as to convey an impression quite different from that made by Matthew’s brief and simple narrative. After the call, they, both Jesus and his four disciples, entered into Capernaum, of which place Mark has before made no mention; and going at once into the synagogue, Jesus preached, and confirmed the wonderful authority with which he spoke, before the face of the people, by the striking cure of a demoniac. From the synagogue he went to the house of Simon and Andrew, by which it appears that they already resided in Capernaum. Here a new occasion was given for the display of the power and benevolence of the Messiah, in the case of Simon’s mother-in-law, who, laboring under an attack of fever, was instantly entirely relieved, upon the word of Jesus. This event is given by Matthew in a totally different connection. Very early in the next morning, Jesus retired to a neighboring solitude, to enjoy himself in meditation apart from the busy scenes of the sabbath, in which the fame of his power had involved him the evening before. To this place, Simon and those with him, no doubt his brother and the sons of Zebedee merely, (already it would seem so well acquainted with their great master as to know his haunts,) followed him, to make known to him the earnest wish of the admiring people for his presence among them. Jesus then went out with them through the villages of Galilee, in the earnest performance of the work for which he came. It is not till this place, in the story of the leper healed, that the statements of Matthew and Mark again meet and coincide. Mark evidently makes significant additions to the narrative, and gives us a much more definite and decided notion of the situation and conduct of those concerned in this interesting transaction.

3. Luke has given us a view of the circumstances, very different, both in order and number, as well as character, from those of the former writers. His account of the first call of the disciples, seems to amount to this; giving the events in the order in which he places them in his fourth and fifth chapters. The first mention which is here made of Simon, is in the end of the fourth chapter, where his name is barely mentioned in connection with the account of the cure of his mother-in-law, which is brought in without any previous allusion to any disciple, but is placed in other respects, in the same connection as in Mark’s narrative. After a full account of this case, which is given with the more minuteness, probably from the circumstance that this writer was himself a physician, he goes on to relate the particulars of Simon’s call, in the beginning of the fourth chapter, as if it was a subsequent event. The general impression from the two preceding narratives, would naturally be, that Jesus went out on his walk by the shore of the lake, by himself, without any extraordinary attendance. But it now appears, that as he stood on the shore, he was beset by an eager multitude, begging to hear from him the word of God. On this, casting his eyes about for some convenient place to address them, he noticed two fishing vessels drawn up near him by the shore, and the owners disembarked from them, engaged in washing their nets. He then first spoke to Simon, after going on board of his boat, to beg him to push off again a little from the land, and his request being granted, he sat down, and from his seat in the boat, taught the multitude gathered on the shore. After the conclusion of his discourse, perhaps partly, or in some small measure, with the design of properly impressing his hearers by a miracle, with the idea of his authority to assume the high bearing which so characterized his instructions, and which excited so much astonishment among them, he urged Simon to push out still further into deep water, and to open his nets for a draught. Simon, evidently already so favorably impressed respecting his visitor, as to feel disposed to obey and gratify him, did according to the request, remarking, however, that as he had toiled all night without catching any thing, he opened his net again only out of respect to his Divine Master, and not because, after so many fruitless endeavors, so long continued, it was reasonable to hope for the least success. Upon drawing in the net, it was found to be filled with so vast a number of fishes, that having been used before its previous rents had been entirely mended, it broke with the unusual weight. They then made known the difficulty to their friends, the sons of Zebedee, who were in the other boat, and were obliged to share their burden between the two vessels, which were both so overloaded with the fishes as to be in danger of sinking. At this event, so unexpected and overwhelming, Simon was seized with mingled admiration and awe; and reverently besought Jesus to depart from a sinful man, so unworthy as he was to be a subject of benevolent attention from one so mighty and good. As might be expected, not only Peter, but also his companions,――the sons of Zebedee,――were struck with a miracle so peculiarly impressive to them, because it was an event connected with their daily business, and yet utterly out of the common course of things. But Jesus soothed their awe and terror into interest and attachment, by telling Simon that henceforth he should find far nobler employment in taking men.

4. John takes no notice whatever of this scene by the lake of Galilee, but gives us, what is not found in the first three gospels, an interesting account, already quoted, of the first introduction of Peter to Christ, not choosing to incumber his pages with a new repetition or variation of the story of his direct call.

The office of an apostolic historian becomes at once most arduous and most important, and the usefulness of his labors is most fully shown in such passages as this, where the task of weaving the various threads and scraps of sacred history in one even and uniform text, is one to which few readers, taking the parts detailed in the ordinary way, are competent, and which requires for its satisfactory achievement, more aids from the long accumulated labors of the learned of past ages, than are within the reach of any but a favored few. To pass back and forth from gospel to gospel, in the search after order and consistency,――to bring the lights of other history to clear up the obscurities, and show that which fills up the deficiencies of the gospel story,――to add the helps of ancient and modern travelers in tracing the topography of the Bible,――to find in lexicons, commentaries, criticisms and interpretations, the true and full force of every word of those passages in which an important fact is expressed,――these are a few of the writer’s duties in giving to common readers the results of the mental efforts of the theologians of this and past ages, whose humble copyist and translator he is. Often aiming, however, at an effort somewhat higher than that of giving the opinions and thoughts of others, he offers his own account and arrangement of the subject, in preference to those of the learned, as being free from such considerations as are involved in technicalities above the appreciation of ordinary readers, and as standing in a connected narrative form, while the information on these points, found in the works of eminent biblical scholars, is mostly in detached fragments, which, however complete to the student, require much explanation and illustration, to make them useful or interesting to the majority of readers. Thus in this case, having given the three different accounts above, he next proceeds to arrange them into such a narrative as will be consistent with each, and contain all the facts. In the discussion of particular points, reference can be properly made to the authority of others, where necessary to explain or support.

Taking up the apostolic history, then, where it is left by John, as referred to above, and taking the facts from each gospel in what seems to be its proper place and time; the three narratives are thus combined into one whole, with the addition of such circumstances as may be inferred by way of explanation, though not directly stated.

Leaving Nazareth, Jesus had come to Capernaum, at the northwestern end of the lake, and there made his home. About this time, perhaps on occasion of his marriage, Simon had left Bethsaida, the city of his birth, and now dwelt in Capernaum, probably on account of his wife being of that place, and he may have gone into the possession of a house, inherited by his marriage, which supposition would agree with the circumstance of the residence of his wife’s mother in her married daughter’s family, which would not be so easily explainable on the supposition that she had also sons to inherit their father’s property, and furnish a home to their mother. It has also been suggested, that he probably removed to Capernaum after his introduction to Christ, in order to enjoy his instructions more conveniently, being near him. This motive would no doubt have had some weight. Here the two brothers dwelt together in one house, which makes it almost certain that Andrew was unmarried, for the peculiarity of eastern manners would hardly have permitted the existence of two families, two husbands, two wives in the same domestic circle. Making this place the center of their business, they industriously devoted themselves to honest labor, extending their fishing operations over the lake, on which they toiled night and day. It seems that the house of Simon and Andrew was Jesus’s regular place of abode while in Capernaum, of which supposition the manifest proofs occur in the course of the narrative. Thus when Jesus came out of the synagogue, he went to Simon’s house,――remained there as at a home, during the day, and there received the visits of the immense throng of people who brought their sick friends to him; all which he would certainly have been disposed to do at his proper residence, rather than where he was a mere occasional ♦visitor. He is also elsewhere mentioned, as going into Peter’s house in such a familiar and habitual kind of way, as to make the inference very obvious, that it was his home. On these terms of close domestic intimacy, did Jesus remain with these favored disciples for more than a year, during which time he continued to reside at Capernaum. He must have resided in some other house, however, on his first arrival in Capernaum, because, in the incident which is next given here, his conduct was evidently that of a person much less intimately acquainted with Simon than a fellow-lodger would be. The circumstances of the call evidently show, that Peter, although acquainted with Christ previously, in the way mentioned by John, had by no means become his intimate, daily companion. We learn from Luke, that Jesus, walking forth from Capernaum, along the lake, saw two boats standing by the lake, but the fishers having gone out of them, were engaged in putting their nets and other fishing tackle in order. As on his walk the populace had thronged about him, from curiosity and interest, and were annoying him with requests, he sought a partial refuge from their friendly attacks, on board of Simon’s boat, which was at hand, and begging him to push out a little from the land, he immediately made the boat his pulpit, in preaching to the throng on shore, sitting down and teaching the people out of the boat. When he had left off speaking, he said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” And Simon answered, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net.” As soon as they did so, they took into the net a great multitude of fishes, and the net broke. They then beckoned to their partners, who were in the other vessel, that they should come and help them. And they came and filled both vessels, so that they began to sink. When Simon saw what was the result, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For both he, and they that were with him, Andrew, James and John, were astonished at the draught of fishes they had taken. But Jesus said to Simon, “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men;” and then gave both to him and his brother a distinct call, “Follow me――come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” And as soon as they had brought their ships to land, they forsook their nets, ships and all, and followed him, not back into Capernaum, but over all Galilee, while he preached to wondering thousands the gospel of peace, and set forth to them his high claims to their attention and obedience, by healing all the diseased which his great fame induced them to bring in such multitudes. This was, after all, the true object of his calling his disciples to follow him in that manner. Can we suppose that he would come out of Capernaum, in the morning, and finding there his acquaintances about their honest business, would call on them, in that unaccountable manner, to follow him back into their home, to which they would of course, naturally enough, have gone of their own accord, without any divine call, for a simple act of necessity? It was evidently with a view to initiate them, at once, into the knowledge of the labors to which he had called them, and to give them an insight into the nature of the trials and difficulties which they must encounter in his service. In short, it was to enter them on their apprenticeship to the mysteries of their new and holy vocation. On this pilgrimage through Galilee, then, he must have been accompanied by his four newly chosen helpers, who thus were daily and hourly witnesses of his words and actions, as recorded by all the first three evangelists. (Matthew chapters iv.‒viii. Mark, chapters i.‒iii. &c. Luke, chapters v.‒vi.)

♦ “visiter” replaced with “visitor”

The accounts which Matthew and Mark give of this call, have seemed so strikingly different from that of Luke, that Calmet, Thoynard, Macknight, Hug, Michaelis, Eichhorn, Marsh, Paulus, (and perhaps some others,) have considered Luke’s story in v. 1‒11, as referring to a totally distinct event. See Calmet’s, Thoynard’s, Macknight’s, Michaelis’s, and Vater’s harmonies, in loc. Also Eichhorn’s introduction, 1. § 58, V. II.,――Marsh’s dissertation on the origin of the three gospels, in table of coincident passages,――Paulus’s “Commentar weber das Neue Testament.” 1 Theil xxiii. Abschnitt; compare xix. Abschnitt,――Hug’s “Einleitung in das Neue Testament,” Vol. II. § 40. “Erste auswanderung, Lucas, iii.,” compare Mark.

These great authorities would do much to support any arrangement of gospel events, but the still larger number of equally high authorities on the other side, justifies my boldness in attempting to find a harmony, where these great men could see none. Lightfoot, Le Clerc, Arnauld, Newcome, with all his subsequent editors, and Thirlwall, in their harmonies, agree in making all three evangelists refer to the same event. Grotius, Hammond, Wetstein, Scott, Clarke, Kuinoel, and Rosenmueller, in their several commentaries in loco,――also Stackhouse in his history of the Bible, and Horne in his introduction, with many others, all take the view which I have presented in the text, and may be consulted by those who wish for reasons at greater length than my limits will allow.

“Peter and Andrew dwell together in one house.”――This appears from Mark i. 29, where it is said that, after the call of the brothers by Jesus, “they entered the house of Simon and Andrew.”

“Sat down and taught the people out of the ship,” verse 3. This was a convenient position, adopted by Jesus on another occasion also. Matthew xiii. 2. Mark iv. 1.

“Launch out.”――Luke v. 4. Επαναγαγε, (Epanagage,) the same word which occurs in verse 3, there translated in the common English version, “thrust out.” It was, probably, a regular nautical term for this backward movement, though in the classic Greek, Εξαναγειν, (exanagein,) was the form always used to express this idea, insomuch that it seems to have been the established technical term. Perhaps Luke may have intended this term originally, which might have been corrupted by some early copyist into this word, which is in no other place used with this meaning.――“Let down,” (Χαλασατε, khalasate, in the plural; the former verb singular.) More literally, “loosen,” which is the primary signification of the verb, and would be the proper one, since the operation of preparing the net to take the fish, consisted in loosening the ropes and other tackle, which, of course, were drawn tight, when the net was not in use, closing its mouth. “Master, we have toiled,” &c. verse 5. The word Επιστατα, (Epistata,) here translated Master, is remarkable, as never occurring in the Testament, except in this gospel. Grotius remarks, (in loc.) that doubtless Luke, (the most finished and correct Greek scholar of all the sacred writers,) considered this term as a more faithful translation of the Hebrew רבי, (Rabbi,) than the common expressions of the other evangelists, Κυριε, (Kurie, Lord,) and διδασκαλε, (didaskale, teacher.) It was a moderate, though dignified title, between these two in its character, rather lower than “Lord,” and rather higher than “Teacher.” It is used in the Alexandrian version, as the proper term for a “steward,” a “military commander,” &c. (See Grotius theol. op. Vol. II. p. 372; or Poole’s Synopsis on this passage.) “Toiled all night.” This was the best time for taking the fish, as is well known to those who follow fishing for a living.

On this journey, they saw some of his most remarkable miracles, such as the healing of the leper, the paralytic, the man with the withered hand, and others of which the details are not given. It was also during this time, that the sermon on the mount was delivered, which was particularly addressed to his disciples, and was plainly meant for their instruction, in the conduct proper in them as the founders of the gospel faith. Besides passing through many cities on the nearer side, he also crossed over the lake, and visited the rude people of those wild districts. The journey was, therefore, a very long one, and must have occupied several weeks. After he had sufficiently acquainted them with the nature of the duties to which he had consecrated them, and had abundantly impressed them with the high powers which he possessed, and of which they were to be the partakers, he came back to Capernaum, and there entered into the house of Simon, which he seems henceforth to have made his home while in that city. They found, that, during their absence, the mother-in-law of Simon had been taken ill, and was then suffering under the heat of a violent fever. Jesus at once, with a word, pronounced her cure, and immediately the fever left her so perfectly healed, that she arose from her sick bed, and proceeded to welcome their return, by her grateful efforts to make their home comfortable to them, after their tiresome pilgrimage.

“Immediately the fever left her.”――Matthew viii. 15: Mark i. 31: Luke iv. 39. It may seem quite idle to conjecture the specific character of this fever; but it seems to me a very justifiable guess, that it was a true intermittent, or fever and ague, arising from the marsh influences, which must have been very strong in such a place as Capernaum,――situated as it was, on the low margin of a large fresh water lake, and with all the morbific agencies of such an unhealthy site, increased by the heat of that climate. The immediate termination of the fever, under these circumstances, was an abundant evidence of the divine power of Christ’s word, over the evil agencies, which mar the health and happiness of mankind.

During some time after this, Peter does not seem to have left his home for any long period at once, until Christ’s long journeys to Judea and Jerusalem, but no doubt accompanied Jesus on all his excursions through Galilee, besides the first, of which the history has been here given. It would be hard, and exceedingly unsatisfactory, however, to attempt to draw out from the short, scattered incidents which fill the interesting records of the gospels, any very distinct, detailed narrative of these various journeys. The chronology and order of most of these events, is still left much in the dark, and most of the pains taken to bring out the truth to the light, have only raised the greater dust to blind the eyes of the eager investigator. To pretend to roll all these clouds away at once, and open to common eyes a clear view of facts, which have so long confused the minds of some of the wisest and best of almost every Christian age, and too often, alas! in turn, been confused by them,――such an effort, however well meant, could only win for its author the contempt of the learned, and the perplexed dissatisfaction of common readers. But one very simple, and comparatively easy task, is plainly before the writer, and to that he willingly devotes himself for the present. This task is, that of separating and disposing, in what may seem their natural order, with suitable illustration and explanation, those few facts contained in the gospels, relating distinctly to this apostle. These facts, accordingly, here follow.

HIS FIRST MISSION.

The next affair in which Peter is mentioned, by either evangelist, is the final enrolling of the twelve peculiar disciples, to whom Jesus gave the name of apostles. In their proper place have already been mentioned, both the meaning of this title and the rank of Peter on the list; and it need here only be remarked, that Peter went forth with the rest, on this their first and experimental mission. All the first three gospels contain this account; but Matthew enters most fully into the charge of Jesus, in giving them their first commission. In his tenth chapter, this charge is given with such particularity, that a mere reference of the reader to that place will be sufficient, without any need of explanation here. After these minute directions for their behavior, they departed, as Mark and Luke record, and went through the towns, preaching the gospel, that men should repent. And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them. How far their journey extended, cannot be positively determined, but there is no probability that they went beyond the limits of Galilee. Divided as they were into couples, and each pair taking a different route, a large space must have been gone over in this mission, however brief the time can be supposed to have been. As to the exact time occupied, we are, indeed, as uncertain as in respect to the distance to which they traveled; but from the few incidents placed by Mark and Luke between their departure and return, it could hardly have been more than a few weeks, probably only a few days. The only affair mentioned by either evangelist, between their departure and return, is, the notice taken by Herod of the actions of Jesus, to whom his attention was drawn by his resemblance to John the Baptist. They then say, that the apostles, when they were returned, gathered themselves together to Jesus, and told him all things,――both what they had done and what they had taught. As this report was received by Jesus, without any comment that is recorded, it is fair to conclude, that their manner of preaching, and the success of their labors, had been such as to deserve his approbation. In this mission, there is nothing particularly commemorated with respect to Peter’s conduct; but no doubt the same fiery zeal which distinguished him afterwards, on so many occasions, made him foremost in this his earliest apostolic labor. His rank, as chief apostle, too, probably gave him some prominent part in the mission, and his field of operations must have been more important and extensive than that of the inferior apostles, and his success proportionably greater.

It is deserving of notice, that on this first mission, Jesus seems to have arranged the twelve in pairs, in which order he probably sent them forth, as he certainly did the seventy disciples, described in Luke x. 1. The object of this arrangement, was no doubt to secure them that mutual support which was so desirable for men, so unaccustomed to the high duties on which they were now dispatched.

Their destination, also, deserves attention. The direction of Jesus was, that they should avoid the way of the heathen, and the cities of the Samaritans, who were but little better, and should go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This expression was quoted, probably, from those numerous passages in the prophets, where this term is applied to the Israelites, as in Jeremiah l. 6, Isaiah liii. 6, Ezekiel xxxiv. 6, &c., and was used with peculiar force, in reference to the condition of those to whom Jesus sent his apostles. It seems to me, as if he, by this peculiar term, meant to limit them to the provinces of Galilee, where the state and character of the Jews was such as eminently to justify this melancholy appellative. The particulars of their condition will be elsewhere shown. They were expressly bounded on one side, from passing into the heathen territory, and on the other from entering the cities of the Samaritans, who dwelt between Galilee and Judea proper, so that a literal obedience of these instructions, would have confined them entirely to Galilee, their native land. Macknight also takes this view. The reasons of this limitation, are abundant and obvious. The peculiarly abandoned moral condition of that outcast section of Palestine,――the perfect familiarity which the apostles must have felt with the people of their own region, whose peculiarities of language and habits they themselves shared so perfectly as to be unfitted for a successful outset among the Jews of the south, without more experience out of Galilee,――the shortness of the time, which seems to have been taken up in this mission,――the circumstance that Jesus sent them to proclaim that “the kingdom of heaven was at hand,” that is, that the Messiah was approaching, which he did in order to arouse the attention of the people to himself, when he should go to them, (compare Luke x. 1,) thus making them his forerunners; and the fact, that the places to which he actually did go with them, on their return, were all in Galilee, (Matthew xi., xix. 1, Mark vi. 7, x. 1, Luke ix. 1‒51,) all serve to show that this first mission of the apostles, was limited entirely to the Jewish population of Galilee. His promise to them also in Matthew x. 2, 3, “you shall not finish the cities of Israel, before the son of man come,” seems to me to mean simply, that there would be no occasion for them to extend their labors to the Gentile cities of Galilee, or to the Samaritans; because, before they could finish their specially allotted field of survey, he himself would be ready to follow them, and confirm their labors. This was mentioned to them in connection with the prediction of persecutions which they would meet, as an encouragement. For various other explanations of this last passage, see Poole’s Synopsis, Rosenmueller, Wetstein, Macknight, Le Sainte Bible avec notes, &c. in loc. But Kuinoel, who quotes on his side Beza, Bolten, and others, supports the view, which an unassisted consideration induced me to suggest.

“Anointed with oil.” Mark vi. 13. The same expression occurs in James v. 14, and needs explanation from its connection with a peculiar rite of the Romish church,――extreme unction, from which it differs, however, inasmuch as it was always a hopeful operation, intended to aid the patient, and secure his recovery, while the Romish ceremony is always performed in case of complete despair of life, only with a view to prepare the patient, by this mummery, for certain death. The operation mentioned as so successfully performed by the apostles, for the cure of diseases, was undoubtedly a simple remedial process, previously in long-established use among the Hebrews, as clearly appears by the numerous authorities quoted by Lightfoot, Wetstein, and Paulus, from Rabbinical Greek and Arabic sources; yet Beza and others, quoted in Poole’s Synopsis, as well as Rosenmueller, suggest some symbolical force in the ceremony, for which see those works in loc. See also Kuinoel, and Bloomfield who gives numerous references. See also Marlorat’s Bibliotheca expositionum, Stackhouse’s History of the Bible, Whitby, &c.

THE SCENES ON THE LAKE.

After receiving the report of his apostles’ labors, Jesus said to them, “Come ye yourselves apart into a retired place, and rest awhile:” for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. And he took them and went privately by ship aside, into a lonely place, near the city called Bethsaida. And the people saw him departing, and many knew him, and went on foot to the place, out of all the country, and outwent them, and came together to him as soon as he reached there. And he received them, and spoke unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that had need of healing. It was on this occasion that he performed the miracle of feeding the multitude with five loaves and two fishes. So great was the impression made on their minds by this extraordinary act of benevolence and power, that he thought it best, in order to avoid the hindrance of his great task, by any popular commotion in his favor, to go away in such a manner as to be effectually beyond their reach for the time.――With this view he constrained his disciples to get into the ship, and go before him to the other side of the lake, opposite to Bethsaida, where they then were; while he sent away the people. After sending the multitude away, he went up into a mountain, apart, to pray. And after night fall, the vessel was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the land. Thence he saw them toiling with rowing, (for the wind was contrary to them, and the ship tossed in the waves:) and about three or four o’clock in the morning, he comes to them, walking on the sea, and appeared as if about to pass unconcernedly by them. But when they saw him walking upon the sea. they supposed it to have been a spirit, and they all cried out, “It is a spirit;” for they all saw him, and were alarmed; and immediately he spoke to them, and said “Be comforted; it is I; be not afraid.” And Peter, foremost in zeal on this occasion, as at almost all times, said to him, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come to thee upon the water.” And he said, “Come.” And when Peter had come down out of the vessel, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, “Lord, save me.” And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him; and said to him, “O thou of little faith! wherefore didst thou doubt?” And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased; and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered. And all they that were in the vessel came and worshiped him, saying, “Of a truth, thou art the Son of God.” This amazement and reverence was certainly very tardily acknowledged by them, after all the wonders they had seen wrought by him; but they considered not the miracle of the loaves, the most recent of all, which happened but a few hours before. For this thoughtlessness, in a matter so striking and weighty, Jesus himself afterwards rebuked them, referring both to this miracle of feeding the five thousand, and to a subsequent similar one. However, the various great actions of a similar character, thus repeated before them, seem at last to have had a proper effect, since, on an occasion not long after, they boldly and clearly made their profession of faith in Jesus, as the Christ.

“A lonely place.”――The word desert, which is the adjective given in this passage, in the common English version, (Matthew xiv. 13, 15, Mark vi. 31, 32, 35, Luke ix. 10, 12,) does not convey to the reader, the true idea of the character of the place. The Greek word Ερημος (eremos) does not in the passages just quoted, mean “desert,” in our modern sense of that English word, which always conveys the idea of “desolation,” “wildness” and “barrenness,” as well as “solitude.” But the Greek word by no means implied these darker characteristics. The primary, uniform idea of the word is, “lonely,” “solitary,” and so little does it imply “barrenness,” that it is applied to lands, rich, fertile and pleasant, a connection, of course, perfectly inconsistent with our ideas of a desert place. Schleusner gives the idea very fairly under Ερημια, (eremia,) a derivative of this word. “Notat locum aliquem vel tractum terrae, non tam incultum et horridum, quam minus habitabilem,――solitudinem,――locum vacuum quidem ab hominibus, pascuis tamen et agris abundantem, et arboribus obsitum.” “It means a place or tract of land, not so much uncultivated and wild, as it does one thinly inhabited,――a solitude, a place empty of men indeed, yet rich in pastures and fields, and planted with trees.” But after giving this very clear and satisfactory account of the derivative, he immediately after gives to the primitive itself, the primary meaning “desertus, desolatus, vastus, devastatus,” and refers to passages where the word is applied to ruined cities; but in every one of those passages, the true idea is that above given as the meaning, “stripped of inhabitants,” and not “desolated” or “laid waste.” Hedericus gives this as the first meaning, “desertus, solus, solitarius, inhabitatus.” Schneider also fully expresses it, in German, by “einsam,” (lonely, solitary,) in which he is followed by Passow, his improver, and by Donnegan, his English translator. Jones and Pickering, also give it thus. Bretschneider and Wahl, in their New Testament Lexicons, have given a just and proper classification of the meanings. The word “desert” came into our English translation, by the minute verbal adherence of the translators to the Vulgate or Latin version, where the word is expressed by “desertum” probably enough because desertus, in Latin, does not mean desert in English, nor any thing like it, but simply “lonely,” “uninhabited;”――in short, it has the force of the English participle, “deserted,” and not of the adjective “desert,” which has probably acquired its modern meaning, and lost its old one, since our common translation was made; thus making one instance, among ten thousand others, of the imperfection of this ancient translation, which was, at best, but a servile English rendering of the Vulgate. Campbell, in his four gospels, has repeated this passage, without correcting the error, though Hammond, long before, in his just and beautiful paraphrase, (on Matthew xiv. 13,) had corrected it by the expression, “a place not inhabited.” Charles Thomson, in his version, has overlooked the error in Matthew xiv. 13, 15, but has corrected it in Mark vi. 31, &c., and in Luke ix. 10; expressing it by “solitary.” The remark of the apostles to Jesus, “This place is lonely,” does not require the idea of a barren or wild place; it was enough that it was far from any village, and had not inhabitants enough to furnish food for five thousand men; as in 2 Corinthians xi. 26, it is used in opposition to “city,” in the sense of “the country.”

HIS DECLARATION OF CHRIST’S DIVINITY.

Journeying on northward, Jesus came into the neighborhood of ♦Caesarea Philippi, and while he was there in some solitary place, praying alone with his select disciples, at the conclusion of his prayer, he asked them, “Who do men say that I, the son of man, am?” And they answered him, “Some say that thou art John the Baptist:” Herod, in particular, we know, had this notion; “some, that thou art Elijah, and others that thou art Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, that is risen again.” So peculiar was his doctrine, and so far removed was he, both in impressive eloquence and in original views, from the degeneracy and servility of that age, that the universal sentiment was, that one of the bold, pure “spirits of the fervent days of old,” had come back to call Judah from foreign servitude, to the long remembered glories of the reigns of David and Solomon. But his chosen ones, who had by repeated instruction, as well as long acquaintance, better learned their Master, though still far from appreciating his true character and designs, had yet a higher and juster idea of him, than the unenlightened multitudes who had been amazed by his deeds. To draw from them the distinct acknowledgment of their belief in him, Jesus at last plainly asked his disciples, “But who do ye say that I am?” Simon Peter, in his usual character as spokesman, replied for the whole band, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus, recognizing in this prompt answer, the fiery and devoted spirit that would follow the great work of redemption through life, and at last to death, replied to the zealous speaker in terms of marked and exalted honor, prophesying at the same time the high part which he would act in spreading and strengthening the kingdom of his Master: “Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed this unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that thou art a ROCK, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven.” In such high terms was the chief apostle distinguished, and thus did his Master peculiarly commission him above the rest, for the high office, to which all the energies of his remaining life were to be devoted.

♦ “Cesarea” replaced with “Caesarea”

Who do men say that I am.――The common English translation, here makes a gross grammatical blunder, putting the relative in the objective case,――“Whom do men say,” &c. (Matthew xvi. 13‒15.) It is evident that on inverting the order, putting the relative last instead of first, it will be in the nominative,――“Men say that I am who?” making, in short, a nominative after the verb, though it here comes before it by the inversion which the relative requires. Here again the blunder may be traced to a heedless copying of the Vulgate. In Latin, as in Greek, the relative is given in the accusative, and very properly, because it is followed by the infinitive. “Quem dicunt homines esse Filium hominis?” which literally is, “Whom do men say the son of man to be?”――a very correct form of expression; but the blunder of our translators was, in preserving the accusative, while they changed the verb, from the infinitive to the finite form; for “whom” cannot be governed by “say.” Hammond has passed over the blunder; but Campbell, Thomson, and Webster, have corrected it.

Son of Man.――This expression has acquired a peculiarly exalted sense in our minds, in consequence of its repeated application to Jesus Christ, and its limitation to him, in the New Testament. But in those days it had no meaning by which it could be considered expressive of any peculiar characteristic of the Savior, being a mere general emphatic expression for the common word “man,” used in solemn address or poetical expressions. Both in the Old and New Testament it is many times applied to men in general, and to particular individuals, in such a way as to show that it was only an elegant periphrasis for the common term, without implying any peculiar importance in the person thus designated, or referring to any peculiar circumstance as justifying this appellative in that case. Any concordance will show how commonly the word occurred in this connection. The diligent Butterworth enumerates eighty-nine times in which this word is applied to Ezekiel, in whose book of prophecy it occurs oftener than in any other book in the Bible. It is also applied to Daniel, in the address of the angel to him, as to Ezekiel; and in consideration of the vastly more frequent occurrence of the expression in the writers after the captivity, and its exclusive use by them as a formula of solemn address, it has been commonly considered as having been brought into this usage among the Hebrews, from the dialects of Chaldea and Syria, where it was much more common. In Syriac, more particularly, the simple expression, “man,” is entirely banished from use by this solemn periphrasis, (bar-nosh,) “SON OF MAN,” which every where takes the place of the original direct form. It should be noticed also, that in every place in the Old Testament where this expression (“son of man”) occurs, before Ezekiel, the former part of the sentence invariably contains the direct form of expression, (“man,”) and this periphrasis is given in the latter part of every such sentence, for the sake of a poetical repetition of the same idea in a slightly different form. Take, for instance, Psalm viii. 4, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?” And exactly so in every other passage anterior to Ezekiel, as Numbers xxiii. 19, Job xxv. 16, xxxv. 8, Isaiah li. 12, lvi. 2, and several other passages, to which any good concordance will direct the reader.

The New Testament writers too, apply this expression in other ways than as a name of Jesus Christ. It is given as a mere periphrasis, entirely synonymous with “man,” in a general or abstract sense, without reference to any particular individual, in Mark iii. 28, (compare Matthew xii. 13, where the simple expression “men” is given,) Hebrews ii. 6, (a mere translation of Psalm viii. 4,) Ephesians iii. 5, Revelation i. 13, xiv. 14. In the peculiar emphatic limitation to which this note refers, it is applied by Jesus Christ to himself about eighty times in the gospels, but is never used by any other person in the New Testament, as a name of the Savior, except by Stephen, in Acts, vii. 56. It never occurs in this sense in the apostolic epistles. (Bretschneider.) For this use of the word, I should not think it necessary to seek any mystical or important reason, as so many have done, nor can I see that in its application to Jesus, it has any very direct reference to the circumstance of his having, though divine, put on a human nature, but simply a nobly modest and strikingly emphatic form of expression used by him, in speaking of his own exalted character and mighty plans, and partly to avoid the too frequent repetition of the personal pronoun. It is at once evident that this indirect form, in the third person, is both more dignified and modest in solemn address, than the use of the first person singular of the pronoun. Exactly similar to this are many forms of circumlocution with which we are familiar. The presiding officer of any great deliberative assembly, for instance, in announcing his own decision on points of order, by a similar periphrasis, says “The chair decides,” &c. In fashionable forms of intercourse, such instances are still more frequent. In many books, where the writer has occasion to speak of himself, he speaks in the third person, “the author,” &c.; as in an instance close at hand, in this book it will be noticed, that where it is necessary for me to allude to myself in the text of the work, which, of course, is more elevated in its tone than the notes, I speak, according to standard forms of scriptorial propriety, in the third person, as “the author,” &c.; while here, in these small discussions, which break in on the more dignified narrative, I find it at once more convenient and proper, to use the more familiar and simple forms of ♦expression.

♦ “expresssion” replaced with “expression”

This periphrasis (“son of”) is not peculiar to oriental languages, as every Greek scholar knows, who is familiar with Homer’s common expression υιες Αχαιων, (uies Akhaion,) “sons of Grecians,” instead of “Grecians” simply, which by a striking coincidence, occurs in Joel xiii. 6, in the same sense. Other instances might be needlessly ♦multiplied.

♦ “multipled” replaced with “multiplied”

Thou art a Rock, &c.――This is the just translation of Peter’s name, and the force of the declaration is best understood by this rendering. As it stands in the original, it is “Thou art Πετρος, (Petros, ‘a rock,’) and on this Πετρα (Petra, ‘a rock’) I will build my church,”――a play on the words so palpable, that great injustice is done to its force by a common tame, unexplained translation. The variation of the words in the Greek, from the masculine to the feminine termination, makes no difference in the expression. In the Greek Testament, the feminine πετρα (petra) is the only form of the word used as the common noun for “rock,” but the masculine πετρος (petros) is used in the most finished classic writers of the ancient Greek, of the Ionic, Doric and Attic, as Homer, Herodotus, Pindar, Xenophon, and, in the later order of writers, Diodorus Siculus.

H. Stephens gives the masculine form as the primitive, but Schneider derives it from the feminine.

After this distinct profession of faith in him, by his disciples, through Peter, Jesus particularly and solemnly charged them all, that they should not, then, assert their belief to others, lest they should thereby be drawn into useless and unfortunate contests about their Master, with those who entertained a very different opinion of him. For Jesus knew that his disciples, shackled and possessed as they were with their fantasies about the earthly reign of a Messiah, were not, as yet, sufficiently prepared to preach this doctrine: and wisely foresaw that the mass of the Jewish people would either put no faith at all in such an announcement, or that the ill disposed and ambitious would abuse it, to the purposes of effecting a political revolution, by raising a rebellion against the Roman rulers of Palestine, and oversetting foreign power. He had, it is true, already sent forth his twelve apostles, to preach the coming of the kingdom, (Matthew x. 7,) but that was only to the effect that the time of the Messiah’s reign was nigh,――that the lives and hearts of all must be changed,――all which the apostles might well preach, without pretending to announce who the Messiah was.

HIS AMBITIOUS HOPES AND THEIR HUMILIATION.

This avowal of Peter’s belief that Jesus was the Messiah, to which the other apostles gave their assent, silent or loud, was so clear and hearty, that Jesus plainly perceived their persuasion of his divine authority to be so strong, that they might now bear a decisive and open explanation of those things which he had hitherto rather darkly and dimly hinted at, respecting his own death. He also at this time, brought out the full truth the more clearly as to the miseries which hung over him, and his expected death, with the view the more effectually to overthrow those false notions which they had preconceived of earthly happiness and triumph, to be expected in the Messiah’s kingdom; and with the view, also, of preparing them for the events which must shortly happen; lest, after they saw him nailed to the cross, they should all at once lose their high hopes, and utterly give him up. He knew too, that he had such influence with his disciples, that if their minds were shocked, and their faith in him shaken, at first, by such a painful disclosure, he could soon bring them back to a proper confidence in him. Accordingly, from this time, he began distinctly to set forth to them, how he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. There is much room for reasonable doubt, as to the manner in which those who heard this declaration of Christ, understood it at the time. As to the former part of it, namely, that he would be ill-treated by the great men of the Jewish nation, both by those ruling in the civil and religious government, it was too plain for any one to put any but the right meaning upon it. But the promise that he should, after this horrible fate, rise again from the dead on the third day, did not, as it is evident, by any means convey to them the meaning which all who read it now, are able to find in it. Nothing can be more plain to a careful reader of the gospels, than that his disciples and friends had not the slightest expectation that he would ever appear to them after his cruel death; and the mingled horror and dread with which the first news of that event was received by them, shows them to have been utterly unprepared for it. It required repeated positive demonstration, on his part, to assure them that he was truly alive among them, in his own form and character. The question then is――what meaning had they all along given to the numerous declarations uttered by him to them, apparently foretelling this, in the distinct terms, of which the above passage is a specimen? Had they understood it as we do, and yet so absolutely disbelieved it, that they put no faith in the event itself, when it had so palpably occurred? And had they, for months and years, followed over Palestine, through labors, and troubles, and dangers, a man, who, as they supposed, was boldly endeavoring to saddle their credulity with a burden too monstrous for even them to bear? They must, from the nature of their connection with him, have put the most unlimited confidence in him, and could not thus devotedly have given themselves up to a man whom they believed or suspected to be constantly uttering to them a falsehood so extravagant and improbable. They must, then, have put some meaning on it, different from that which our clearer light enables us to see in it; and that meaning, no doubt, they honestly and firmly believed, until the progress of events showed them the power of the prophecy in its wonderful and literal fulfilment. They may have misunderstood it in his life time, in this way: the universal character of the language of the children of Shem, seems to be a remarkable proneness to figurative expressions, and the more abstract the ideas which the speaker wishes to convey, the more strikingly material are the figures he uses, and the more poetical the language in which he conveys them. Teachers of morals and religion, most especially, have, among those nations of the east, been always distinguished for their highly figurative expressions, and none abound more richly in them than the writers of the Old and New Testament. So peculiarly effective, for his great purposes, did Jesus Christ, in particular, find this variety of eloquence, that it is distinctly said of him, that he seldom or never spoke to the people without a parable, which he was often obliged to expound more in detail, to his chosen followers, when apart with them. This style of esoteric and exoteric instruction, had early taught his disciples to look into his most ordinary expressions for a hidden meaning; and what can be more likely than that often, when left to their own conjectures, they, for a time, at least, overleaped the simple literal truth, into a fog of figurative interpretations, as too many of their very modern successors have often done, to their own and others’ misfortune. We certainly know that, in regard to those very expressions about raising the dead, there was a very earnest inquiry among the three chief apostles, some time after, as will be mentioned in place, showing that it never seemed possible to them that their Lord, mighty as he had showed himself, could ever mean to say to them, that, when his bitter foes had crowned his life of toil and cares with a bloody and cruel exit, he――even He, could dare to promise them, that he would break through that iron seal, which, when once set upon the energies of man, neither goodness, nor valor, nor knowledge, nor love, had ever loosened, but which, since the first dead yielded his breath, not the mightiest prophet, nor the most inspired, could ever break through for himself. The figure of death and resurrection, has often been made a striking image of many moral changes;――of some one of which, the hearers of Jesus probably first interpreted it. In connection with what he had previously said, nothing could seem more natural to them, than that he, by this peculiarly strong metaphor, wished to remind them that, even after his death, by the envious and cruel hands of Jewish magistrates, over but a few days, his name, the ever fresh influence of his bright and holy example――the undying powers of his breathing and burning words, should still live with them, and with them triumph after the momentary struggles of the enemies of the truth.

The manner, also, in which Simon Peter received this communication, shows that he could not have anticipated so glorious and dazzling a result of such horrible evils: for, however literally he may have taken the prophecy of Christ’s cruel death, he used all his powers to dissuade his adored master from exposing himself to a fate so dark and dreadful,――so sadly destructive of all the new-born hopes of his chosen followers, and from which the conclusion of the prophecy seemed to offer no clear or certain mode of escape. Never before, had Jesus spoken in such plain and decided terms, about the prospect of his own terrible death. Peter, whose heart had just been lifted up to the skies with joy and hope, in the prospect of the glorious triumphs to be achieved by his Lord through his means, and whose thoughts were even then dwelling on the honors, the power, the fame, which were to accrue to him for his share in the splendid work,――was shocked beyond measure, at the strange and seemingly contradictory view of the results, now taken by his great leader. With the confident familiarity to which their mutual love and intimacy entitled him, in some measure, he laid his hand expostulatingly upon him, and drew him partly aside, to urge him privately to forget thoughts of despondency, so unworthy of the great enterprise of Israel’s restoration, to which they had all so manfully pledged themselves as his supporters. We may presume, that he, in a tone of encouragement, endeavored to show him how impossible it would be for the dignitaries of Jerusalem to withstand the tide of popularity which had already set so strongly in favor of Jesus; that so far from looking upon himself as in danger of a death so infamous, from the Sanhedrim, he might, at the head of the hosts of his zealous Galileans, march as a conqueror to Jerusalem, and thence give laws from the throne of his father David, to all the wide territories of that far-ruling king. Such dreams of earthly glory seemed to have filled the soul of Peter at that time; and we cannot wonder, then, that every ambitious feeling within him recoiled at the gloomy announcement, that the idol of his hopes was to end his days of unrequited toil, by a death so infamous as that of the cross. “Be it far from thee, Lord,” “God forbid,” “Do not say so,” “Do not thus damp our courage and high hopes,” “This must not happen to thee.”――Jesus, on hearing these words of ill-timed rebuke, which showed how miserably his chief follower had been infatuated and misled, by his foolish and carnal ambition, turned away indignantly from the low and degraded motives, by which Peter sought to bend him from his holy purposes. Not looking upon him, but upon the other disciples, who had kept their feelings of regret and disappointment to themselves, he, in the most energetic terms, expressed his abhorrence of such notions, by his language to the speaker. “Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art a scandal to me; for thou savorest not the things which be of God, but the things which be of men. In these fervent aspirations after eminence, I recognize none of the pure devotion to the good of man, which is the sure test of the love of God; but the selfish desire for transient, paltry distinction, which characterizes the vulgar ambition of common men, enduring no toil or pain, but in the hope of a more than equal earthly reward speedily accruing.” After this stern reply, which must have strongly impressed them all with the nature of the mistake of which they had been guilty, he addressed them still further, in continuation of the same design, of correcting their false notion of the earthly advantages to be expected by his companions in toil. He immediately gave them a most untempting picture of the character and conduct of him, who could be accepted as a fit fellow-worker with Jesus. “If any one wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and let him take up his cross, (as if we should say, let him come with his halter around his neck, and with the gibbet on his shoulder,) and follow me. For whosoever shall save his life for my sake, shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels; and THEN, he shall reward every man according to his works.” “I solemnly tell you, there are some standing here who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”――“In vain would you, in pursuit of your idle dreams of earthly glory, yield up all the powers of your soul, and spend your life for an object so worthless. After all, what is there in all the world, if you should have the whole at your disposal――what, for the momentary enjoyment of which, you can calmly pay down your soul as the price? Seek not, then, for rewards so unworthy of the energies which I have recognized in you, and have devoted to far nobler purposes. Higher honors will crown your toils and sufferings, in my service;――nobler prizes are seen near, with the eye of faith. Speedily will the frail monuments of this world’s wonders crumble, and the memory of its greatnesses pass away; but over the ruins of kingdoms, the coming of the Man to whom you have joined yourselves is sure, and in that triumphant advent, you shall find the imperishable requital of your faithful and zealous works. And of the nature and aspect of the glories which I now so dimly shadow in words, some of those who now hear me shall soon be the living witnesses, as of a foretaste of rewards, whose full enjoyment can be yours, only after the weariness and misery of this poor life are all passed. Years of toil, dangers, pain, and sorrow,――lives passed in contempt and disgrace,――deaths of ignominy, of unpitied anguish, and lingering torture, must be your passage to the joys of which I speak; while the earthly honors which you now covet, shall for ages continue to be the prize of the base, the cruel, and the foolish, from whom you vainly hope to snatch them.”

THE TRANSFIGURATION.

The mysterious promise thus made by Jesus, of a new and peculiar exhibition of himself, to some of his chosen ones, he soon sought an occasion of executing. About six or eight days after this remarkable conversation, he took Peter, and the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, and went with them up into a high mountain, apart by themselves. As to the name and place of this mountain, a matter of some interest certainly, there have been two opinions among those who have attempted to illustrate the topography of the gospels. The phrase, “a high mountain,” has instantly brought to the thoughts of most learned readers, Mount Tabor, famous for several great events in Bible history, which they have instantly adopted, without considering the place in which the previous account had left Jesus, which was Caesarea Philippi; hereafter described as in the farthest northern part of Galilee. Now, Mount Tabor, however desirable in other particulars, as the scene of a great event in the life of Jesus, was full seventy miles south of the place where Jesus had the conversation with his disciples, which led to the remarkable display which followed a few days after, on the mountain. It is true, that the intervening period of a week, was sufficient to enable him to travel this distance with ease; but the difficulty is, to assign some possible necessity or occasion for such a journey. Certainly, he needed not to have gone thus far to find a mountain, for Caesarea Philippi itself stands by the base of Paneas, which is a part of the great Syrian range of Antilibanus. This great mountain, or mountain chain, rises directly behind the city, and parts of it are so high above the peak of Tabor, or any other mountain in Palestine, as to be covered with snow, even in that warm country. The original readers of the gospel story, were dwellers in Palestine, and must have been, for the most part, well acquainted with the character of the places which were the scenes of the incidents, and could hardly have been ignorant of the fact, that this splendid city, so famous as the monument of royal vanity and munificence, was near the northern end of Palestine, and of course, must have been known even by those who had never seen it, nor heard it particularly described, to be very near the great Syrian mountains; so near too, as to be very high elevated above the cities of the southern country, since not far from the city gushed out the most distant sources of the rapid Jordan. But another difficulty, in respect to this journey of seventy miles to Tabor, is, that while the gospels give no account of it, it is even contradicted by Mark’s statement, that after departing from the mountain, he passed through Galilee, and came to Capernaum, which is between Tabor and Caesarea Philippi, twenty or thirty miles from the former, and forty or fifty from the latter. Now, that Jesus Christ spared no exertion of body or mind, in “going about doing good,” no one can doubt; but that he would spend the strength devoted to useful purposes, in traveling from one end of Galilee to the other, for no greater good than to ascend a particular mountain, and then to travel thirty miles back on the same route, is a most unnecessary tax upon our faith. But here, close to Caesarea Philippi, was the mighty range of Antilibanus, known in Hebrew poetry by the name of Hermon in this part; and He, whose presence made all places holy, could not have chosen, among all the mountains of Palestine, one which nature had better fitted to impress the beholder who stood on the summit, with ideas of the vast and sublime. Modern travelers assure us that, from the peaks behind the city, the view of the lower mountains to the south,――of the plain through which the young Jordan flows, soon spreading out into the broad sheet of lake Houle, (Samachonitis lacus,) and of the country, almost to lake Tiberias, is most magnificent. The precise peak which was the scene of the event here related, it is impossible to conjecture. It may have been any one of three which are prominent: either the castle hill, or, farther off and much higher, Mount Bostra, once the site of a city, or farther still, and highest of all, Merura Jubba, which is but a few hours walk from the city. The general impression of the vulgar, however, and of those who take the traditions of the vulgar and the ignorant, without examination, has been, that Tabor was the scene of the event, so that, at this day, it is known among the stupid Christians of Palestine, by the name of the Mount of the Transfiguration. So idly are these foolish local traditions received, that this falsehood, so palpable on inspection, has been quietly handed down from traveler to traveler, ever since the crusades, when hundreds of these and similar localities, were hunted up so hastily, and by persons so ill-qualified for the search, that more modern investigators may be pardoned for treating with so little consideration the voice of such antiquity, when it is found opposed to a rational and consistent understanding of the gospel story. When the question was first asked, “Where is the mount of the transfiguration?” there were enough persons interested to reply, “Mount Tabor.” No reason was probably asked for the decision, and none was given; but as the scene was acted on a high mountain in Galilee, and as Tabor answered perfectly to this very simple description, and was moreover interesting on many other accounts, both historical and natural, it was adopted for the transfiguration without any discussion whatever, among those on the spot. Still, to learned and diligent readers of the gospels, the ♦inconsistencies of such a belief have been so obvious, that many great theologians have decided, for the reasons here given, that the transfiguration must have taken place on some part of Mount Paneas, as it was called by the Greeks and Romans, known among the Jews, however, from the earliest times, by the far older name of Mount Hermon. On the determination of this point, more words have been expended than some may deem the matter to deserve; but among the various objects of the modern historian of Bible times, none is more important or interesting, ♠than that of settling the often disputed topography of the sacred narrative; and as the ground here taken differs so widely from the almost universally received opinion, the minute reasons were loudly called for, in justification of the author’s boldness. The ancient blunders here detected, and shown to be based only upon a guess, is a very fair specimen of the way in which, in the moral as in the natural sciences, “they all copy from one another,” without taking pains to look into the truth of small matters. And it seems to show, moreover, how, when men of patient and zealous accuracy, have taken the greatest pains to expose and correct so causeless an error, common readers and writers too, will carelessly and lazily slip back into the old blunder, thus making the counsels of the learned of no effect, and loving darkness rather than light, error rather than exactness, because they are too shiftless to find a good reason for what is laid down before them as truth. But so it is. It is, and always has been, and always will be, so much easier for men to swallow whole, or reject whole, the propositions made to them, that the vast majority had much rather believe on other people’s testimony, than go through the harassing and tiresome task, of looking up the proofs for themselves. In this very instance, this important topographical blunder was fully exposed and corrected a century and a half ago, by Lightfoot, the greatest Hebrew scholar that ever lived; and we see how much wiser the world is for his pains.

♦ “inconsistences” replaced with “inconsistencies”

♠ duplicate word “than” removed

Caesarea Philippi.――This city stood where all the common maps place it, in the farthest northern part of Palestine, just at the foot of the mountains, and near the fountain head of the Jordan. The name by which it is called in the gospels, is another instance, like Julias Bethsaida, of a compliment paid by the servile kings, of the divisions of Palestine, to their imperial masters, who had given, and who at any time could take away, crown and kingdom from them. The most ancient name by which this place is known to have been mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures, is Lasha, in Genesis x. 19, afterwards variously modified into Leshem, (Joshua xix. 47,) and Laish, (Judges xviii. 7: xiv. 29,) a name somewhat like the former in sound, though totally different in meaning, (לשם leshem, “a precious stone,” and ליש laish, “a lion,”) undoubtedly all three being from the same root, but variously modified in the changing pronunciations of different ages and tribes. In the earliest passage, (Genesis x. 19,) it is clearly described as on the farthest northern limit of the land of Canaan, and afterwards, being conquered long after most of the cities of that region, by the tribe of Dan, and receiving the name of this tribe, as an addition to its former one, it became proverbially known under the name of Dan, as the farthest northern point of the land of Israel, as Beersheba was the southern one. It did not, however, lose its early Canaanitish name till long after, for, in Isaiah x. 30, it is spoken of under the name of Laish, as the most distant part of Israel, to which the cry of the distressed could reach. It is also mentioned under its later name of Dan, in Genesis xiv. 14, and Deuteronomy xxxiv. 1, where it is given by the writer, or some copyist, in anticipation of the subsequent account of its acquiring this name after the conquest. Josephus also mentions it, under this name, in Antiquities book i. chapter 10, and book viii. chapter 8, section 4, in both which places he speaks of it as standing at one of the sources of the Jordan, from which circumstance, no doubt, the latter part of the river’s name is derived. After the overthrow of the Israelitish power in that region, it fell into the hands of new possessors, and under the Greeks and Romans, went by the name of Panias, (Josephus and Ptolemy,) or Paneas, (Josephus and Pliny,) which name, according to Ptolemy, it had under the Phoenicians. This name, supposed to have been taken from the Phoenician name of the mountain near, Josephus gives to it, in all the later periods of his history, until he speaks of the occasion on which it received a new change of name.

Its commanding and remarkable position, on the extremity of Palestine, made it a frontier post of some importance; and it was therefore a desirable addition to the dominions of Herod the Great, who received it from his royal patron, Augustus Caesar, along with its adjacent region between Galilee and Trachonitis, after the death of Zenodorus, its former possessor. (Josephus Antiquities book xv. chapter 10, section 3.) Herod the Great, out of gratitude for this princely addition to his dominions, at a time when attempts were made to deprive him of his imperial master’s favor, raised near this city, a noble monument to Augustus. (Josephus as above quoted.) “He built a monument to him, of white marble, in the land of Zenodorus, near Panium. There is a beautiful cave in the mountain, and beneath it there is a chasm in the earth, rugged, and of immense depth, full of still water, and over it hangs a vast mountain; and under the cave rise the springs of the Jordan. This place, already very famous, he adorned with the temple which he consecrated to Caesar.” A lofty temple of white marble, on such a high spot, contrasted with the dark rocks of the mountain and cave around, must have been a splendid object in the distance, and a place of frequent resort.

This city, along with the adjacent provinces, after the death of the first Herod, was given to his son Philip, made tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis. This prince, out of gratitude to the royal donor, at the same time when he rebuilt and repaired Bethsaida, as already mentioned, “also embellished Paneas, at the fountains of the Jordan, and gave it the name of Caesarea.” (Josephus Antiquities book xviii. chapter 2, section 1, also Jewish War, book ii. chapter 9, section 1,) and to distinguish it from other Caesareas, hereafter to be mentioned, it was called from the name of its royal builder, Caesarea Philippi, that is, “the Caesarea of Philip.” By this name it was most commonly known in the time of Christ; but it did not answer the end of perpetuating the name of its builder and his patron, for it shortly afterwards recovered its former name, Paneas, which, probably, never went wholly out of use. As late as the time of Pliny, (about A. D. 70,) Paneas was a part of the name of Caesarea. Fons Paneas, qui cognomen dedit Caesareae, “the fountain Paneas, which gave to Caesarea a surname.” (Pliny Natural History book v. chapter 15,) which shows, that at that time, the name Paneas was one, by which even foreign geographers recognized this city, in spite of the imperial dignity of its new title. Eusebius, (about A. D. 315,) speaks of “Caesarea Philippi, which the Phoenicians call Paneas, at the foot of mount Panium.” (Φιλιππου Καισαρεια ἡν Πανεαδα Θοινικες προσαγορευσι, &c. Church History book vii. chapter 17.) Jerome, (about A. D. 392,) never mentions the name Caesarea Philippi, as belonging to this city, except in commenting on Matthew xvi. 13, where he finds it necessary to explain this name, as an antiquated term, then out of use. Caesaream Philippi, quae NUNC dicitur Paneas, “Caesarea Philippi, which is now called Paneas;” and in all the other places where he has occasion to mention the place, he gives it only the name of Paneas. Thus, in commenting on Amos viii. 14, he says, “Dan, on the boundary of the Jewish territory, where now is Paneas.” And on Jeremiah iv. 15,――“The tribe Dan, near mount Lebanon, and the city which is now called Paneas,” &c.――See also commentary on Daniel xiii. 16.

After the death of Philip, this city, along with the rest of his dominions, was presented by Cains Caligula to Agrippa, who added still farther to the improvements made by Philip, more particularly ornamenting the Panium, or famous source of the Jordan, near the city, as Josephus testifies. (Jewish War, book iii. chapter 9, section 7.) “The natural beauty of the Panium, moreover, was still more highly adorned (προσεξησκηται) with royal magnificence, being embellished by the wealth of Agrippa.” This king also attempted to perpetuate the name of one of his imperial patrons, in connection with the city, calling it Neronias, in honor of one who is well enough known without this aid. (Josephus Antiquities book xx. chapter 8, section 3.) The perfectly transient character of this idle appellation, is abundantly shown from the preceding copious quotations.

The city, now called Banias, (not Belinas, as Wahl erroneously says,) has been visited and examined in modern times by several travelers, of whom, none has described it more minutely than Burckhardt. His account of the mountains around the city, so finely illustrates my description of the scene of the transfiguration, that I extract largely from it here. In order to appreciate the description fully, it must be understood that Heish is now the general Arabic name for the mountain chain, which was by ancient authors variously called Lebanon, Libanus, Anti-Libanus, Hermon, and Panium; for all these names have been given to the mountain-range, on whose slope Caesarea Philippi, or Paneas, stood.

“The district of Banias is classic ground; it is the ancient Caesarea Philippi; the lake Houle, is the Lacus Samachonitis. Immediately after my arrival, I took a man of the village to shew me the way to the ruined castle of Banias, which bears East by South from it. It stands on the top of a mountain, which forms part of the mountain of Heish, at an hour and a quarter from Banias; it is now in complete ruins, but was once a very strong fortress. Its whole circumference is twenty-five minutes. It is surrounded by a wall ten feet thick, flanked with numerous round towers, built with equal blocks of stone, each about two feet square. The keep, or citadel, seems to have been on the highest summit, on the eastern side, where the walls are stronger than on the lower, or western side. The view from thence over the Houle and a part of its lake, the Djebel Safad, and the barren Heish, is magnificent. On the western side, within the precincts of the castle, are ruins of many private habitations. At both the western corners, runs a succession of dark, strongly built, low apartments, like cells, vaulted, and with small narrow loop holes, as if for musquetry. On this side also, is a well more than twenty feet square, walled in, with a vaulted roof at least twenty-five feet high; the well was, even in this dry season, full of water: there are three others in the castle. There are many apartments and recesses in the castle, which could only be exactly described by a plan of the whole building. It seems to have been erected during the period of the crusades, and must certainly have been a very strong hold to those who possessed it. I could discover no traces of a road or paved way leading up the mountain to it. In winter time, the shepherds of the Felahs of the Heish, who encamp upon the mountains, pass the night in the castle with their cattle.

“Banias is situated at the foot of the Heish, in the plain, which in the immediate vicinity of Banias is not called Ard Houle, but Ard Banias. It contains about one hundred and fifty houses, inhabited mostly by Turks: there are also Greeks, Druses, and Enzairie. It belongs to Hasbeya, whose Emir nominates the Sheikh. On the north-east side of the village, is the source of the river of Banias, which empties itself into the Jordan at the distance of an hour and a half, in the plain below. Over the source is a perpendicular rock, in which several niches have been cut to receive statues. The largest niche is above a spacious cavern, under which the river rises. This niche is six feet broad and as much in depth, and has a smaller niche in the bottom of it. Immediately above it, in the perpendicular face of the rock, is another niche, adorned with pilasters, supporting a shell ornament.

“Round the source of the river are a number of hewn stones. The stream flows on the north side of the village, where is a well built bridge, and some remains of the ancient town, the principal part of which seems, however, to have been on the opposite side of the river, where the ruins extend for a quarter of an hour from the bridge. No walls remain, but great quantities of stones and architectural fragments are scattered about.

“I went to see the ruins of the ancient city of Bostra, of which the people spoke much. Bostra must not be confounded with Boszra, in the Haouran; both places are mentioned in the Books of Moses. The way to the ruins lies for an hour and a half in the road by which I came from Rasheyat-el-Fukhar, it then ascends for three quarters of an hour a steep mountain to the right, on the top of which is the city; it is divided into two parts, the largest being upon the very summit, the smaller at ten minutes walk lower down, and resembling a suburb to the upper part. Traces are still visible of a paved way that had connected the two divisions. There is scarcely any thing in the ruins worth notice; they consist of the foundations of private habitations, built of moderate sized square stones. The lower city is about twelve minutes walk in circumference; a part of the four walls of one building only remains entire; in the midst of the ruins was a well, at this time dried up. The circuit of the upper city may be about twenty minutes; in it are the remains of several buildings. In the highest part is a heap of wrought stones, of larger dimensions than the rest, which seem to indicate that some public building had once stood on the spot. There are several columns of one foot, and of one foot and a half in diameter. In two different places, a short column was standing in the centre of a round paved area of about ten feet in diameter. There is likewise a deep well, walled in, but now dry.

“The country around these ruins is very capable of cultivation. Near the lower city are groups of olive trees.

“I descended the mountain in the direction towards the source of the Jordan, and passed, at the foot of it, the miserable village of Kerwaya. Behind the mountain of Bostra is another, still higher, called Djebel Meroura Djoubba.” [Burckhardt’s Syria, pp. 37‒42.]

From Conder’s Modern Traveler I also draw a sketch of other travelers’ observations on the place and the surrounding country.

“Burckhardt, in coming from Damascus, pursued the more direct route taken by the caravans, which crosses the Jordan at Jacob’s Bridge. Captains Irby and Mangles left this road at Khan Sasa, and passed to the westward for Panias, thus striking between the road to Acre, and that by Raschia and Hasbeya. The first part of the road from Sasa, led through a fine plain, watered by a pretty, winding rivulet, with numerous tributary streams, and many old ruined mills. It then ascended over a very rugged and rocky soil, quite destitute of vegetation, having in some places traces of an ancient paved way, ‘probably the Roman road from Damascus to Caesarea Philippi.’ The higher part of Djebel Sheikh was seen on the right. The road became less stony, and the shrubs increased in number, size and beauty, as they descended into a rich little plain, at the immediate foot of the mountain. ‘From this plain,’ continues captain M., ‘we ascended, and, after passing a very small village, saw on our left, close to us, a very picturesque lake, apparently perfectly circular, of little more than a mile in circumference, surrounded on all sides by sloping hills, richly wooded. On quitting Phiala, at but a short distance from it, we crossed a stream which discharges into the larger one which we first saw: the latter we followed for a considerable distance; and then, mounting a hill to the south-west, had in view the great Saracenic castle, near Panias, the town of that name, and the plain of the Jordan, as far as the Lake Houle, with the mountains on the other side of the plain, forming altogether a fine coup d’œil. As we descended towards Panias, we found the country extremely beautiful. Great quantities of wild flowers, and a variety of shrubs, just budding, together with the richness of the verdure, grass, corn and beans, showed us, all at once, the beauties of spring, (February 24,) and conducted us into a climate quite different from Damascus. In the evening we entered Panias, crossing a causeway constructed over the rivulet, which flows from the foot of Djebel Sheikh. The river here rushes over great rocks in a very picturesque manner, its banks being covered with shrubs and the ruins of ancient walls.’

“Panias, afterwards called Caesarea Philippi, has resumed its ancient name. The present town of Banias is small. Seetzen describes it as a little hamlet of about twenty miserable huts, inhabited by Mahomedans. The ‘Castle of Banias’ is situated on the summit of a lofty mountain: it was built, Seetzen says, without giving his authority, in the time of the caliphs.” [Modern Traveler Vol. I. pp. 353‒6.]

The distance, in time, from Mount Tabor to Caesarea Philippi, may be conceived from the account given by Ebn Haukal, an Arabian geographer and traveler of the tenth century. He says “from Tibertheh (Tiberias, which is near Tabor) to Sur, (Tyre,) is one day’s journey; and from that to Banias, (Paneas,) is two day’s easy journey.” [Sir W. Ouseley’s translation of Ebn Haukal’s Geography, pp. 48, 49.]

This was an occasion on which Christ did not choose to display his glories to the eyes of the ignorant and impertinent mobs that usually thronged his path, drawn together as they were, by idle curiosity, by selfish wishes for relief from various diseases, or by the determination to profit by the mischief, which almost always results from such a promiscuous assemblage. It may be fairly considered a moral impossibility, for such disorderly and spontaneous assemblies to meet, without more evils resulting, than can possibly be counterbalanced by the good done to the assembly as a whole, whatever it may be to individuals. So, at least, Jesus Christ seems always to have thought, for he never encouraged such gatherings, and took every desirable opportunity of getting rid of them, without injury to themselves, or of withdrawing himself quietly from them, as the easiest way of dispersing them; knowing how utterly hopeless must be the attempt to do any great good among such a set of idlers, compared with what he might do by private and special intercourse with individuals. It is worthy of note, that Matthew and all whose calls are described, were about their business. Thus, on an occasion already mentioned, when Jesus was walking by the sea of Galilee, with the simple object of doing most good, he did not seek among the multitude that was following him, for the devoted laborers whom he might call to the great work of drawing in men to the knowledge of the truth as revealed in him. No: he turned from all the zealous loungers who had left their business, if they had any, to drag about after the wonderful man who had attracted general attention by his great and good deeds. He dispatched them as fast as possible with a few words of instruction and exhortation; for though he did not seek these undesirable occasions, yet he would have been as much wanting in benevolence as in wisdom, if, when all the evils of such a throng had occurred by the meeting, he had not hastened to offer the speediest antidote to the mischief, and the best compensation for the loss of time to the company, by giving them such words of counsel, reproof, correction or encouragement, as, even when cast like bread upon the waters, or seed by the way side, might yet perchance, or by grace, “be found after many days,” returning to the hands of the giver, in gratitude, by springing up and bearing some fruit to the praise and glory of God. Having thus sent off the throng, he addressed himself to the honest men whom he had found quietly following their daily employments, and immediately performed with them there, and, as is evident, mainly for their benefit, a most remarkable miracle; and when they had been thus impressed with his power and wisdom, summoned them to his aid in converting the world; sagely and truly judging, that those who had been faithful in few things, would be the best rulers over many things,――that they who had steadily and faithfully worked at their proper business, had the best talent and disposition for laboring in a cause which needed so much patient industry and steady application in its devotees. These were the men whom he hoped to make by his instructions, the successful founders of the Christian faith; and these were the very men whom, out of thousands who longed for the honors of his notice, he now chose as the objects of his special instruction and commission, and called them apart to view the display of the most wonderful mystery of his life.

Among these three favored ones, we see Peter included, and his name, as usual, first of all. By this it appears, that, however great his late unfortunate misapprehension of the character and office of Christ, and however he may have deserved the harsh rebuff with which his forward but well meant remonstrance was met; still he was so far from having lost his Master’s favor on this account, that he yet held the highest place in the favor of Jesus, who had been moved by the exposure of his favorite’s ignorance, only to new efforts to give him a just and clear view of the important truths in which he was most deficient; for after all, there was nothing very surprising in Peter’s mistake. In pursuance of this design, he took these three, Peter, James and John, with him, up into the high mountain peaks of Hermon, from which their eyes might glance far south over the land of Israel――the land of their fathers for ages on ages, stretching away before them for a vast distance, and fancy could easily extend the view. In this land, so holy in the recollections of the past, so sad to the contemplation of the present, were to begin their mighty labors. Here, too, bright and early, one of the three was to end his; while his brother and friend were to spread their common Master’s dominion over thousands and millions who had never yet heard of that land, or its ancient faith. Jesus Christ always sought the lonely tops of mountains, with a peculiar zest, in his seasons of retirement, as well as for the most impressive displays of his eloquence, or his miraculous power. The obvious reasons were the advantages of perfect solitude and security against sudden intrusion;――the free, pure air of the near heaven, and the broad light of the immense prospect, were powerful means of lifting the soul to a state of moral sublimity, equal to the impressions of physical grandeur, made by the objects around. Their most holy historical associations, moreover, were connected with the tops of high mountains, removed from which, the most awful scenes of ancient miracle would, to the fancy of the dweller of mountainous Palestine, have seemed stripped of their most imposing aids. Sinai, Horeb, Moriah, Zion, Ebal, Gerizim and Tabor, were the classic ground of Hebrew history, and to the fiery mind of the imaginative Israelite, their high tops seemed to tower in a religious ♦sublimity, as striking and as lasting as their physical elevation. From these lofty peaks, so much nearer to the dwelling place of God, his soul took a higher flight than did ever the fancy of the Greek, from the classic tops of Parnassus, Pelion, Ida, or the skyish head of blue Olympus; and the three humble gazers, who now stood waiting there with their divine Master, felt, no doubt, their devotion proportionally exalted with their situation, by such associations. It was the same spirit, that, throughout the ancient world, led the earliest religionists to avail themselves of these physical advantages, as they did in their mountain worship, and with a success just in proportion as the purity and sincerity of their worship, and the high character of its object, corresponded with the lofty grandeur of the place.

♦ “snblimity” replaced with “sublimity”

“Not vainly did the early Persian make

His altar the high places, and the peak

Of earth-o’er-gazing mountains, there to seek

The spirit, in whose honor shrines are weak,

Upreared of human hands. Come and compare

Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,

With nature’s realms of worship, earth and air;

Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer.”

In such a scene, and inspired by such sympathies, were the chosen three, on this occasion. The bare details, as given in the three gospels, make it evident that the scene took place in the night, as will be shown in the course of the narrative; and this was in accordance also with Christ’s usual custom of choosing the night, as the season of solitary meditation and prayer. (Matthew xiv. 23.) Having reached the top, he engaged himself and them in prayer. How solemn――how awful the scene! The Savior of all, afar from the abodes of men, from the sound and sight of human cares and sins, alone with his chosen three, on the vast mountains, with the world as far beneath their eyes as its thoughts were below their minds;――in the silence of the night, with the lights of the city and villages faintly gleaming in the distance on the lower hills and the plain,――with no sound near them but the murmuring of the night wind about the rocks,――with the dark canopy of gathering clouds above them,――Jesus prayed. His voice went up from this high altar of earth’s wide temple to the throne of his Father, to whom he commended in words of supplication, those who were to labor for him when his earthly work should cease. We may well suppose that the substance of his prayer was, that their thoughts, before so groveling, and now so devotedly clinging to visions of earthly dominion and personal aggrandizement, might “leave all meaner things, to low ambition and the pride of kings,” and might rise, as on that high peak, from earth towards heaven, to the just sense of the far higher efforts and honors to which they were destined. With their thoughts and feelings thus kindled with the holy associations of the hour, the place and the person, their souls must have risen with his in that solemn and earnest supplication, and their prayers for new devotion and exaltation of spirit must have been almost equally ardent. Probably some hours were passed in this employment, varied perhaps by the eloquent and pointed instructions given by Jesus, to prepare these chiefs of the apostolic band, for the full understanding of the nature of his mission and theirs. How vastly important to their success in their labors, and to their everlasting happiness, must these prayers and instructions have been! The three hearers, we may presume, gave for a long time the most devoted attention which a scene so impressive could awaken; but yet they were men, and weary ones too, for they had come a considerable distance up a very steep way, and it was now late at night,――no doubt long past their bed-time. The exercise which their journey to the spot had given them, was of a kind for which their previous habits of life had quite unfitted them. They were all fishermen, and had dwelt all their lives in the low flat country on the shores of lake Tiberias and the valley of the Jordan, where they had nothing to do with climbing hills. And though their constant habits of hard labor must have made them stout men in their vocation, yet we all know that the muscles called into action by the management of the boat and net, are very different from those which support and advance a man in ascending acclivities. Every one that has noticed the sturdy arms and slender legs of most sailors, has had the practical proof, that a man may work all his life at pulling the seine and drag-net, hauling the ropes of a vessel, and tugging at the oar, without being thereby, in the slightest degree, fitted for labors of a different character. The work of toiling up a very high, steep mountain, then, was such as all their previous habits of life had wholly unfitted them for, and their over-stretched limbs and bodies must have been both sore and weary, so that when they came to a resting place, they very naturally were disposed to repose, and must have felt drowsy. In short, they fell asleep; and that too, as it would appear, in the midst of the prayers and counsels of their adorable Lord. And yet who, that considers all the reasons above given, can wonder? for it is very possible for a man to feel the highest interest in a subject offered to his consideration,――an interest, too, which may for a long time enable a zealous mind to triumph over bodily incapacity,――yet there is a point beyond which the most intense energy of mind cannot drag the sinking body, when fatigue has drained its strength, which nothing but sleep can renew. Men, when thus worn down, will sleep in the midst of a storm, or on the eve of certain death. In such a state were the bodies of the companions of Jesus, and thus wearied, they slept long, in spite of the storm which is supposed by many to have arisen, and to have been the immediate cause of some of the striking appearances which followed. It is said by many standard commentators, that the fairest account of such of the incidents as are connected with natural objects, is, that a tremendous thunder-storm came down upon the mountain while they were asleep, and that a loud peal bursting from this, was the immediate cause of their awaking. All the details that are given, certainly justify the supposition. They are described as suddenly starting from their sleep, in such a manner as would naturally follow only from a loud noise violently arousing the slumbering senses. Awakened thus by a peal of thunder, the first sight that struck their amazed eyes, was their Master, resplendent through the darkness of night and storm, with a brilliant light, that so shone upon him and covered him, as to change his whole aspect to a degree of glory indescribable. To add to their amazement and dread, they saw that he was not alone, but two mysterious and spiritual personages, announced to them as Moses and Elijah, were now his companions, having found means to join him, though high on the mighty rock, alone and in darkness, so inaccessible to human approach. These two ancient servants of God now appeared by his beloved Son, whose labors, and doctrines and triumphs were so far to transcend theirs, and in the hearing of the three apostles, uttered solemn words of prophecy about his approaching death, and triumph over death. The two sons of Zebedee were so startled as to be speechless, but the boldness and the talkativeness of Peter, always so pre-eminent, enabled him, even here, to speak his deep awe and reverence. Yet confused with half-awakened sleep, and stunned by the bursting thunder, he spoke as a man thus suddenly awaked naturally speaks, scarcely separating the thoughts of his dream, from the objects that met his opening eye. He said “Lord, it is good for us to be here; and if thou wilt, let us make three tabernacles, (or resting places;) one for thee, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” These things he said before his confused thoughts could fully arrange themselves into words proper to express his feelings of awe, and he, half dreaming still, hardly knew what he said. But as he uttered these words, the dark cloud above them suddenly descended upon the mountain’s head, inwrapping and overshadowing them, and amid the flash of lightnings and the roar of thunders, given out in the concussion, they distinguished, in no human voice, these awful words, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” Who can wonder that a phenomenon so tremendous, both morally and physically, overwhelmed their senses, and, that alarmed beyond measure, they fell again on their faces to the earth, so astonished that they did not dare to rise or look up, until Jesus came to them and reassured them with his friendly touch, saying “Arise and be not afraid.” And lifting up their eyes, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves. The whole object of their retirement to this solitude being now accomplished, they prepared to return to those whom they had left to wonder at their strange absence. It was now probably about morning; the storm was passed,――the clouds had vanished,――the thunder was hushed, and the cheerful sun now shone on mountain and plain, illuminating their downward path towards the city, and inspiring their hearts with the joyous emotions suited to their enlarged views of their Lord’s kingdom, and their own duties. As they went down, Jesus charged them to tell no man what things they had seen, till he, the son of man, rose from the dead. And they kept it close, and told no man in those days any of those things which they had seen. But they questioned much with one another what the rising from the dead should mean. So that it appears, that after all the repeated assurances Jesus had given them of the certainty of this event, they had never put any clear and definite meaning upon his words, and were still totally in the dark as to their essential import. This proof of their continued ignorance serves to confirm the view already taken of the way in which they understood, or rather misunderstood, the previous warning of the same event, in connection with his charge and rebuke of Peter. In connection also with what they had seen on the mountain, and the injunction of secrecy, another question arose, why they could not be allowed to speak freely on the subject. “For if they had now distinctly seen the prophet Elijah returned from the other world, as it appeared, why could they not properly announce publicly, so important and desirable an event? Else, why did the Jewish teachers say that Elijah must first come before the Messiah? And why, then, should they not freely offer their testimony of his presence with Jesus on this occasion, as the most satisfactory proof of his Messiahship?” The answer of Jesus very clearly informed them that they were not to consider this vision as having any direct connection with the prophecy respecting Elijah’s re-appearance, to precede and aid the true Messiah in the establishment of the ancient Jewish dominion; but that all that was intended in that prophecy had been fully brought to pass in the coming of John the Baptist, who, in the spirit and power of Elijah, had already run his bright but brief course as the Messiah’s precursor. With such interesting conversation they continued their course in returning towards the city. The way in which Luke here expresses the circumstances of the time of their return, is the last and most satisfactory proof to be offered of the fact, that their visit to the mountain had been in the night. His words are, “And it came to pass that on the next day, when they came down from the mountain, a large multitude met them,” &c. This shows that they did not go and return the same day, between sunrise and sunset; and the only reasonable supposition left to agree with the other circumstances, is, that they went at evening, and returned early in the morning of the next day. After their descent, they found that the remaining disciples had been making an unsuccessful attempt to relieve a lunatic person, who was relieved, however, at a word, as soon as brought to Jesus himself. They continued no very long time in this part of Galilee, after these events, but journeyed slowly southwards, towards the part which Jesus had formerly made his home. This journey was made by him with particular care to avoid public notice, and it is particularly expressed by Mark that he went on this homeward journey through by-ways or less public roads than usual. For as he went, he renewed the sad warning, that he was in constant danger of being given up into the hands of the wicked men, who feeling reproved and annoyed by his life and doctrine, earnestly desired his death; and that soon their malice would be for a time successful, but that after they had done their worst, he should at last triumph over them. Still this assurance, obvious as its meaning may now seem to us, was not understood by them, and though they puzzled themselves extremely about it, they evidently considered their ignorance as of a somewhat justly blamable nature, for they dared not ask for a new explanation. This passage still farther shows, how far they must have been from rightly appreciating his first declaration on this subject. Having followed the less direct routes, for these reasons, he came, (doing much good on the journey, no doubt, in a quiet and unnoticed way, as we know he always did,) to Capernaum, which he still regarded as his home; and here again, as formerly, went directly to the house of Simon Peter, which he is represented as entering on his first arrival in the city, in such a way as to show that there was his dwelling, and a welcome entertainment. Indeed we know of no other friend whom he had in Capernaum, with whom he was on such terms of intimacy, and we cannot suppose that he kept house by himself,――for his relations had never yet removed from Nazareth.

Of the scenes of the transfiguration, so great a variety of opinions have been entertained, that it would be impossible for me to discuss the various views within my narrow limits. The old speculations on the subject are very fully given in Poole’s Synopsis, and the modern ones by Kuinoel, who mentions a vast number of German writers, of whom few of us have ever seen even the names elsewhere.

The view which I have taken is not peculiar to me, but is supported by many high authorities, and is in accordance with what seemed to me the simplest and fairest construction which could be put upon the facts, after a very full and minute consideration of the various circumstances, chronologically, topographically and grammatically. It should be noticed that my arrangement of the facts in reference to the time of day, is this. Jesus and the three disciples ascended the mountain in the evening, about sunset, remained there all night during a thunder-storm, and returned the next morning.

THE TRIBUTE MONEY.

On the occasion of his return and entrance into Peter’s house, a new instance occurred both of his wisdom and his special regard for this apostle. Some of those who went about legally authorized to collect the tax due from all conforming Jews, to defray the expenses of the temple-worship at Jerusalem, appear to have been waiting for Christ’s return from this journey, to call on him for his share, if he were willing to pay it as a good Jew. They seem to have had some doubts, however, as to the manner in which so eminent a teacher would receive a call to pay those taxes, from which he might perhaps deem himself exempted by his religious rank, more especially as he had frequently denounced, in the most unmeasured terms, all those concerned in the administration of the religious affairs of the Jewish nation. As soon as he had returned, therefore, they took the precaution to make the inquiry of Peter, as the well-known intimate of Jesus, “Doth not your Master pay tribute?” Peter, knowing well the steady, open reverence which Jesus always manifested for all the established usages of his country, readily and unhesitatingly answered “Yes.” And when he was come into the house, and was upon the point of proposing the matter to him, Jesus anticipated him, saying, “How thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of the children of others?” Peter says, “From others’ children.” Jesus says again to him, “Then are the children free.” That is: “If, when the kings and rulers of the nations gather their taxes, for the support of their royal state and authority, they pass over their own children untaxed, as a thing of course, then I, the son of that God who is the eternal king of Israel, am fairly exempt from the payment of the sum due from other Jews, for the support of the ceremonials of my Father’s temple in Jerusalem.” Still he did not choose to avail himself of this honorable pretext, but went on to tell Simon, “Nevertheless, lest we should give needless occasion for offense, we will pay what they exact; and for this purpose, go thou to the sea, and take up the fish that comes up first; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money; take that and give it them for me and thee.”

Anticipated him.――This word I substitute in the place of “prevented” which is the expression used in our common English Bible, and which in the changes of modern usage has entirely lost the signification which it had when the translators applied it to this passage. The Greek word here is προεφθασεν, (proephthasen,) and literally means “forespake” or “spake before” him. This was the idea which the English translators wished to express by the word “prevented,” whose true original meaning is “anticipated,” or “was beforehand with him,” being in Latin compounded of the words prae, “before,” and venio, “come.” Among the numerous conveniences of Webster’s improved edition of the Bible, for popular use, is the fact that in this and similar passages he has altered the obsolete expression, and changed it for a modern one, which is just and faithful to the original idea. In this passage I find he has very properly given the word above suggested, without my knowledge of the coincidence.

Of the children of others.――This expression too is a variation from the common English translation, which here expresses itself so vaguely, that a common reader can get no just idea whatever of the passage, and is utterly unable to find the point of the allusion. The Greek word is αλλοτριων, (allotrion,) which is simply the genitive plural of an adjective, which means “of, or belonging to others,” and is secondarily applied also to “strangers, foreigners,” &c., as persons “belonging to other lands;” but the primary meaning is absolutely necessary to be given here, in order to do justice to the sense, since the idea is not that they take tribute money of foreigners rather than of their own subjects; but of their subjects rather than of their own children, who are to enjoy the benefit of the taxation.

A piece of money.――The term thus vaguely rendered, is in Greek στατηρ, (stater,) which was a coin of definite value, being worth among the Jews about four attic drachms, and exactly equivalent to their shekel, a little more than half a dollar of federal money. The tax here paid was the half-shekel tax, due from every Jew for the service of the temple, so that the “piece of money,” being one shekel, was just sufficient to pay for both Jesus and Peter. The word translated “the tribute money” (in verse 24) is equally definite in the Greek,――διδραχμον, (didrachmon,) equivalent to the Jewish half-shekel, and being itself worth half a stater. The stater, however, as a name for Attic and Byzantine gold coins, was equivalent to twenty or thirty times the value of the shekel. (See Stephens’s Thesaurus, Donnegan’s, Jones’s and Pickering’s Lexicons.) On this passage see Hammond’s Annotations, which are here quite full on values. See too, Lightfoot’s Horae Hebraica on Matthew xvii. 25. Macknight’s Paraphrase, Poole and Kuinoel, for a very full account of the matter. Also my note on page 32.

There have been two different accounts of this little circumstance among commentators, some considering the tribute money to have been a Roman tax, and others taking the ground which I do, that it was the Jewish tax for the expenses of the temple-worship. The reasons may be found at great length, in some of the authorities just quoted; and it may be remarked that the point of the allusion in Jesus’s question to Peter, is all lost on the supposition of a Roman tax; for how could Jesus claim exemption as a son of the Roman emperor, as he justly could from the Jewish tax for the service of the heavenly king, his Father? The correspondence of values too, with the half-shekel tax, is another reason for adopting that view; nor is there any objection to it, except the circumstance, that the time at which this tax is supposed to have been demanded, does not agree with that to which the collection of the temple-tax was limited. (Exodus xxx. 13, and Lightfoot on Matthew xvii. 24.)

THE QUESTION OF SUPERIORITY.

Soon after the last mentioned event, there arose a discussion among the apostles, as to who should have the highest rank in the administration of the government of the Messiah’s kingdom, when it should be finally triumphantly established. The question shows how pitiably deficient they still were, in a proper understanding of the nature of the cause to which they were devoted; but the details of this circumstance may be deferred to a more appropriate place, under the lives of the persons, who, by their claims, afterwards originated a similar discussion, in connection with which this may be most properly mentioned. However, it cannot be amiss to remark here, that the very fact of such a discussion having arisen, shows, that no one supposed that, from the peculiar distinctions already conferred on Peter, he was entitled to the assumption of anything like power over the rest of the twelve, or that anything else than a peculiar regard of Christ for him, and a confidence in his zeal and ability to advance the great cause, was expressed in his late honorable and affectionate declaration to him. The occurrence of this discussion is also a high and satisfactory proof of Peter’s modest and unassuming disposition; for had he maintained among the apostles the authority and rank which his Master’s decided preference might seem to warrant, these high pretensions of the sons of Zebedee would not have been thus put forward against one so secure in Christ’s favor by high talents, and long habits of close intimacy.

THE RULE OF BROTHERLY FORBEARANCE.

The next occasion on which the name of Peter is mentioned in the gospels, is his asking Jesus, “how many times he should forgive an offending brother? If the brother should repeat the offense seven times, should he each time accord him the forgiveness asked?” This question was suggested to Peter’s mind, by the rules which Christ had just been giving his disciples, for the preservation of harmony, and for the redress of mutual grievances among them. His charge to them on this subject, injoined the repeated exercise of forbearance towards a brother who had trespassed, and urged the surrender of every imagined right of private redress, to the authority and sanction of the common assembly of the apostles. The absolute necessity of some such rule, for the very existence of the apostles’ union, was plain enough. They were men, with all the passions and frailties of common, uneducated men, and with all the peculiar, fervid energy, which characterizes the physiology of the races of south-western Asia. From the constant attrition of such materials, no doubt individually discordant in temperament and constitution, how could it be hoped, that in the common course of things, there would not arise frequent bursts of human passion, to mar or hinder the divine work which brought them together? With a most wise providence for these liabilities to disagreement, Jesus had just arranged a principle of reference and quiet decision, in all cases of dispute in which the bond of Christian fellowship would be strained or broken. His charge to them, all and each, was this: “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother; but if he will not hear thee, take with thee on thy second call, one or two more, that, according to the standard forms of the Mosaic law, by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall refuse to hear them, tell it at last to the common assembly of the apostles; and after they have given their decision in favor of the justice of the complaint and demand, if he still maintain his enmity and wrong against thee, thou art no longer held by the apostolic pledge to treat him with brotherly regard; but having slighted all friendly advice, and the common sentiment of the brethren, he has lost the privilege of their fellowship, and must be to thee as one of the low world around him――a heathen and an outcast Jew.” On this occasion, also, he renewed to them all, the commission to bind and loose, which he had before particularly delivered only to Peter. As he had, in speaking of the treatment, made abundant requisitions for the exercise of forbearance, without mentioning the proper limit to these acts of forgiveness, Peter now put his question: “If my brother sin against me seven times, and as often make the reparation which I may honestly ask, shall I continue to forgive him?” That is, “Shall I not seem, by these repeated acts of forbearance, at last to be offering him inducements to offend against one so placable? And if these transgressions are thus enormously multiplied, will it not be right that I should withhold the kind consideration which is made of so little account?” The answer of Jesus is, “I say to thee, not merely till seven times, but till seventy times seven.” That is, “To your forbearance towards an erring and returning Christian brother, there should be no limit but his own obstinate adhesion to his error. In coming out from the world to follow me, you have given up your natural rights to avenge, either legally or personally, those injuries which pass the bounds of common forbearance. The preservation of perfect harmony in the new community to which you have joined yourself, is of so much importance to the triumphant advancement of our cause, as to require justly all these sacrifices of personal ill-will.” With his usual readiness in securing an abiding remembrance of his great leading rules of action, Jesus, on this occasion, concluded the subject with illustrating the principle, by a beautiful parable or story; a mode of instruction, far more impressive to the glowing imagination of the oriental, than of the more calculating genius of colder races.

This inquiry may have been suggested to Peter by a remark made by Christ, which is not given by Matthew as by Luke, (xvii. 4.) “If he sin against thee seven times in a day, and seven times turn again, &c. thou shalt forgive him.” So Maldorat suggests, but it is certainly very hard to bring these two accounts to a minute harmony, and I should much prefer to consider Luke as having given a general statement of Christ’s doctrine, without referring to the occasion or circumstances, while Matthew has given a more distinct account of the whole matter. The discrepancy between the two accounts has seemed so great, that the French harmonists, Newcome, LeClerc, Macknight, Thirlwall, and Bloomfield, consider them as referring to totally different occasions,――that in Matthew occurring in Capernaum, but that in Luke, after his journey to Jerusalem to the feast of the tabernacles. But the utter absence of all chronological order in the greater part of Luke’s gospel, is enough to make us suspect, that the event he alludes to may coincide with that of Matthew’s story, since the amount of the precept, and the general form of expression, is the same in both cases. This is the view taken by Rosenmueller, Kuinoel, Vater, Clarke, Paulus, and which seems to be further justified by the consideration, that the repetition of the precept must have been entirely unnecessary, after having been so clearly laid down, and so fully re-examined in answer to Peter’s inquiry, as given by Matthew.

Seven times.――This number was a general expression among the Hebrews for a frequent repetition, and was perfectly vague and indefinite as to the number of repetitions, as is shown in many instances in the Bible where it occurs. Seventy times seven, was another expression of the recurrences carried to a superlative number, and is also a standard Hebraism, (as in Genesis iv. 24.) See Poole, Lightfoot, Clarke, Scott, and other commentators, for Rabbinical illustrations of these phrases.

A heathen and an outcast.――This latter expression I have chosen, as giving best the full force of the name publican, which designated a class of men among the Jews, who were considered by all around them as having renounced national pride, honor and religion, for the base purpose of worldly gain; serving under the Roman government as tax-gatherers, that is, hiring the taxes of a district, which they took by paying the government a definite sum, calculating to make a rich profit on the bargain by systematic extortion and oppression. The name, therefore, was nearly synonymous with the modern word renegade,――one who, for base motives, has renounced the creed and customs of his fathers.

THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.

The occurrence which occasioned this discussion, took place at Capernaum, where Jesus seems to have resided with his apostles for some time after his northern tour to Caesarea Philippi, giving them, as opportunity suggested, a great number and variety of practical instructions. At length he started with them, on his last journey to Jerusalem, the only one which is recorded by the first three evangelists, although John gives us accounts of three previous visits to the Jewish capital. On this journey, while he was passing on to Jerusalem, by a somewhat circuitous course, through that portion of Judea which lies east of the Jordan, he had taken occasion to remark, (in connection with the disappointment of the rich young man, who could not give up his wealth for the sake of the gospel,) how hard it was for those that had riches, and put their trust in them, to join heartily in the promotion of the cause of Christ, or share in the honors of its success. Peter, then, speaking for himself and the faithful few who had followed Jesus thus far through many trials, to the risk and loss of much worldly profit, reminded Jesus of what they had given up for his sake. “Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee. What shall we have therefore?” The solemn and generous assurance of Jesus, in reply, was, that those who had followed him thus, should, in the final establishment of his kingdom, when he should receive the glories of his triumph, share in the highest gifts which he, conqueror of all, could bestow. Then, those who had forsaken kindred and lands for his sake, should find all these sacrifices made up to them, in the enjoyment of rewards incalculably beyond those earthly comforts in value.

This conversation took place, just about as they were passing the Jordan, into the western section of Judea, near the spot where Joshua and the Israelitish host of old passed over to the conquest of Canaan. A little before they reached Jericho, Jesus took a private opportunity to renew to the twelve his oft repeated warning of the awful events, now soon to happen after his entry into Jerusalem. “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man shall be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death. And they shall deliver him to the heathen, to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him; and the third day, he shall rise again.” Yet, distinct as was this declaration, and full as the prediction was in these shocking particulars, Luke assures us, that “they understood none of these things; and this saying was hid from them; neither knew they the things which were spoken.” Now, we cannot easily suppose that they believed that he, to whom they had so heartily and confidently devoted their lives and fortunes, was trying their feelings by an unnecessary fiction, so painful in its details. The only just supposition which we can make, then, is that they explained all these predictions to themselves, in a way best accordant with their own notions of the kingdom which the Messiah was to found, and on the hope of whose success they had staked all. The account of his betrayal, ill-treatment, and disgraceful death, they could not literally interpret, as the real doom which awaited their glorious and mighty Lord; it could only mean, to them, that for a brief space, the foes of the Son of God were to gain a seeming triumph over the hosts that were to march against Jerusalem, to seat him on the throne of David. The traitorous heads of the Jewish faith, the members of the great Sanhedrim, the hypocritical Pharisees, and the lying, avaricious lawyers, would, through cowardice, selfishness, envy, jealousy, or some other meanness, basely conspire to support their compound tyranny, by attempting to crush the head of the new faith, with the help of their Roman masters, whom they would summon to the aid of their falling power. This unpatriotic and treacherous effort would for a time seem to be perfectly successful, but only long enough for the traitors to fill up the measure of their iniquities. Then, vain would be the combined efforts of priest and soldier,――of Jewish and of Roman power. Rising upon them, like life from the dead, the Son of God should burst forth in the might of his Father,――he should be revealed from heaven with ten thousand angels, and recalling his scattered friends, who might have been for a moment borne down before the iron hosts of Rome, he should sweep every foreign master, and every domestic religious tyrant, from Israel’s heritage, setting up a throne, whose sway should spread to the uttermost parts of the earth, displacing even the deep-rooted hold of Roman power. What then, would be the fate of the faithful Galileans, who, though few and feeble, had stood by him through evil and good report, risking all on his success? When the grinding tyranny of the old Sanhedrim had been overthrown, and chief priests, scribes, Pharisees, lawyers, and all, displaced from the administration, the chosen ones of his own early adoption, his countrymen, and intimate companions for years, would be rewarded, sitting on twelve thrones, judging the ransomed and victorious twelve tribes of Israel. Could they doubt their Lord’s ability for this glorious, this miraculous ♦achievement? Had they not seen him maintain his claim for authority over the elements, over diseases, over the dark agencies of the demoniac powers, and over the mighty bonds of death itself? And could not the same power achieve the still less wonderful victory over the opposition of these unworthy foes? It was natural, then, that, with the long cherished hopes of these dazzling triumphs in their minds, the twelve apostles, though so often and so fully warned of approaching evils, should thus unsuspectingly persist in their mistake, giving every terrible word of Jesus such a turn as would best confirm their baseless hopes. Even Peter, already sternly rebuked for his forward effort to exalt the ambition of Jesus, above even the temporary disgrace which he seemed to foreordain for himself,――and so favored with the private instructions and counsels of his master, thus erred,――even James and John, also sharers in the high confidence and favor of Jesus, though thus favored and taught, were immediately after brought under his deserved censure for their presumptuous claims for the ascendency, which so moved the wrath of the jealous apostles, who were all alike involved in this monstrous and palpable misconception. Nor yet can we justly wonder at the infatuation to which they were thus blindly given up, knowing as we do, that, in countless instances, similar error has been committed on similar subjects, by men similarly influenced. What Biblical commentary, interpretation, introduction, harmony, or criticism, from the earliest Christian or Rabbinic fathers, to the theological schemer of the latest octavo, does not bear sad witness on its pages, to the wonderful infatuation which can force upon the plainest and clearest declaration, a version elaborately figurative or painfully literal, just as may most comfortably cherish and confirm a doctrine, or notion, or prejudice, which the writer would fain “add to the things which are written in the book?” Can it be reasonably hoped, then, that this untaught effort to draw out the historical truth of the gospel, will be an exception to this harshly true judgment on the good, the learned, and the critical of past ages?

♦ “achievment” replaced with “achievement”

THE ENTRY INTO THE CITY.

With these fruitless admonitions to his followers, Jesus passed on through Jericho to Bethphage, on the verge of the holy city. Here, the enthusiastic and triumphant rejoicings, which the presence of their Master called forth, from the multitudes who were then swarming to Jerusalem from all parts of Palestine, must have lifted up the hearts of the apostles, with high assurance of the nearness of the honors for which they had so long looked and waited. Their irrepressible joy and exultation burst out in songs of triumph, as Jesus, after the manner of the ancient judges of Israel, rode into the royal seat of his fathers. And as he went down the descent of the Mount of Olives, to go into the city, the whole train of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God, with a loud voice, for all the mighty works that they had seen; saying, “Blessed be the King of Israel, that cometh in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven! Glory in the highest! Blessed be the kingdom of our father David! Hosanna!” These acclamations were raised by the disciples, and heartily joined in by the multitudes who knew his wonderful works, and more especially those who were acquainted with the very recent miracle of raising Lazarus. A great sensation of wonder was created throughout the city, by such a burst of shouts from a multitude, sweeping in a long, imposing train, with palm branches in their hands, down the mountain, on which they could have been seen all over Jerusalem. As he entered the gates, all the city was moved to say, “Who is this?” And the rejoicing multitude said, “This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth in Galilee.” What scorn did not this reply awaken in many of the haughty aristocrats of Jerusalem, to learn that all this solemn parade had been got up for no better purpose than merely to honor a dweller of that outcast region of mongrels, Galilee! And of all places, that this prophet, so called, should have come from Nazareth! A prophet from Galilee, indeed! Was it from this half-heathen district, that the favored inhabitants of the capital of Judaism were to receive a teacher of religion? Were the strict faith, and the rigid observances of their learned and devout, to be displaced by the presumptuous reformations of a self-taught prophet, from such a country? Swelling with these feelings, the Pharisees could not repress a remonstrance with Jesus, against these noisy proceedings. But he, evidently affected with pleasure at the honest tribute thus wrung out in spite of sectional feeling, forcibly asserted the propriety and justice of this free offering of praise. “I tell you, that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.”

With palm-branches in their hands.――This tree, the emblem of joy and triumph in every part of the world where it is known, was the more readily adopted on this occasion, by those who thronged to swell the triumphal train of Jesus of Nazareth, because the palm grew along the way-side where they passed, and the whole mount was hardly less rich in this than in the far famed olive from which it drew its name. A proof of the abundance of the palm-trees on Olivet is found in the name of the village of Bethany, בית חיני, (beth-hene,) “house of dates,” which shows that the tree which bore this fruit must have been plentiful there. The people, as they passed on with Jesus from this village whence he started to enter the city, would therefore find this token of triumph hanging over their heads, and shading their path every where within reach, and the emotions of joy at their approach to the city of God in the company of this good and mighty prophet, prompted them at once to use the expressive emblems which hung so near at hand; and which were alike within the reach of those who journeyed with Jesus, and those who came forth from the city to meet and escort him in. The presence of these triumphal signs would, of course, remind them at once of the feast of the tabernacles, the day on which, in obedience to the Mosaic statute, all the dwellers of the city were accustomed to go forth to the mount, and bring home these branches with songs of joy. (Leviticus xxiii. 40, Nehemiah viii. 15, 16.) The remembrance of this festival at once recalled also the beautifully appropriate words of the noble national and religious hymn, which they always chanted in praise of the God of their fathers on that day, (see Kuinoel, Rosenmueller, Wolf, &c.) and which was so peculiarly applicable to him who now “came in the name of the Lord,” to honor and to bless his people. (Psalm cxviii. 26.)

The descent of the Mount of Olives.――To imagine this scene, with something of the force of reality, it must be remembered that the Mount of Olives, so often mentioned in the scenes of Christ’s life, rose on the eastern side of Jerusalem beyond the valley of the Kedron, whose little stream flowed between this mountain and Mount Moriah, on which the temple stood. Mount Olivet was much higher than any part of the city within the walls, and the most commanding and satisfactory view of the holy city which modern travelers and draughtsmen have been able to present to us in a picture, is that from the more than classic summit of this mountain. The great northern road passing through Jericho, approaches Jerusalem on its north-eastern side, and comes directly over the top of Olivet, and as it mounts the ridge, it brings the holy city in all its glory, directly on the traveler’s view.

Hosanna.――This also is an expression taken from the same festal hymn, (Psalm cxviii. 25,) הושיעה־נא (hoshia-na) a pure Hebrew expression, as Drusius shows, and not Syriac, (See Poole’s Synopsis on Matthew xxi. 9,) but corrupted in the vulgar pronunciation of this frequently repeated hymn, into Hosanna. The meaning of the Hebrew is “save him” or “be gracious to him,” that is in connection with the words which follow in the gospel story, “Be gracious, O Lord, to the son of David.” This is the same Hebrew phrase which, in the psalm above quoted, (verse 25,) is translated “Save now.” The whole expression was somewhat like the English “God save the king,” in its import.

Nazareth.――This city, in particular, had an odious name, for the general low character of its inhabitants. The passage in John i. 46, shows in what estimation this city and its inhabitants were held, by their own neighbors in Galilee; and the great scorn with which all Galileans were regarded by the Jews, must have redoubled their contempt of this poor village, so despised even by the despicable. The consequence was that the Nazarenes acquired so low a character, that the name became a sort of byword for what was mean and foolish. (See Kuinoel on Matthew ii. 23, John i. 46. Also Rosenmueller on the former passage and Bloomfield on the latter.)

Galilee.――In order to appreciate fully, the scorn and suspicion with which the Galileans were regarded by the citizens of Jerusalem, a complete view of their sectional peculiarities would be necessary. Such a view will hereafter be given in connection with a passage which more directly refers to those peculiarities, and more especially requires illustration and explanation.

THE BLIGHTING OF THE FIG-TREE.

Having thus, by his public and triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, defied and provoked the spite of the higher orders, while he secured an attentive hearing from the common people, when he should wish to teach them,――Jesus retired at evening, for the sake of quiet and comfort, to the house of his friends, Lazarus, Mary and Martha, at Bethany, in the suburbs. The next morning, as he was on his way with his disciples, coming back from this place to Jerusalem, hungry with the fatigues of his long walk, he came to a fig-tree, near the path, hoping to find fruit for his refreshment, as it seemed from a distance flourishing with abundance of leaves, and was then near the season of bearing. But when he came near, he found nothing but leaves on it, for it was somewhat backward, and its time of producing figs was not yet. And Jesus, seizing the opportunity of this disappointment to impress his disciples with his power, personifying the tree, denounced destruction against it. “May no man eat fruit of thee hereafter, forever.” And his disciples heard it. They returned to Bethany, as usual, that evening, to pass the night,――but as they passed, probably after dark, they took no notice of the fig-tree. But the next morning, as they went back to the city, they saw that it had dried up from the roots. Simon Peter, always ready to notice the instances of his Master’s power, called out in surprise to Jesus, to witness the effect of his malediction upon its object. “Master, behold, the fig-tree which thou didst curse, is withered away.” Jesus noticing their amazement at the apparent effect of his words, in so small a matter, took occasion to turn their attention to other and higher objects of faith, on which they might exert their zeal in a spirit, not of withering denunciation and destroying wrath, such as they had seen so tremendously efficient in this case, but in the spirit of love and forgiveness, as well as of the holy energy that could overthrow and overcome difficulties, not less than to uproot Mount Olivet from its everlasting base and hurl it into the sea.

THE DISCUSSIONS WITH THE SECTARIES.

The disciples steadily remained the diligent and constant attendants of their heavenly teacher, in his long and frequent seasons of instruction in the temple, where he boldly met the often renewed attacks of his various adversaries, whether Herodians, scribes, Pharisees or Sadducees, and in spite of their long-trained subtleties, beat them out and out, with the very weapons at which they thought themselves so handy. The display of genius, of taste, of learning, of ready and sarcastic wit, and of heart-searching acuteness, was so amazing and super-human, that these few days of open discussion established his divinely intellectual superiority over all the elaborate science of his accomplished opponents, and at the same time secured the fulfilment of his destiny, by the spite and hatred which their repeated public defeats excited in them. Imagine their rage. Exposed thus before the people, by whom they had hitherto been regarded as the sole depositaries of learning, and adored as the fountains of right, they saw all their honors and power, to which they had devoted the intense study of their whole lives, snatched coolly and easily from them, by a nameless, untaught pretender, who was able to hold them up, baffled and disgraced, for the amusement of the jeering multitude. Here was ground enough for hatred;――the hatred of conceited and intolerant false learning, against the discerning soul that had stripped and humbled it;――the hatred of confident ambition against the heroic energy which had discomfited it, and was doing much to free a long enslaved people from the yoke which formal hypocrisy and empty parade had long laid on them. And again, the intolerable thought that all this heavy disgrace had been brought on the learned body of Judaism by a Galilean! a mere carpenter of the lowest orders, who had come up to Jerusalem followed by a select train of rude fishermen and outcast publicans;――and who, not being able to command a single night’s lodging in the city, was in the habit of boarding and lodging in a paltry suburb, on the charity of some personal friends, from which place he quietly walked in for the distance of two miles every morning, to triumph over the palace-lodged heads of the Jewish faith. From such a man, thus humbly and even pitiably circumstanced, such an invasion and overthrow could not be endured; and his ruin was rendered doubly easy by his very insignificance, which now constituted the chief disgrace of their defeat. Never was cause more closely followed by its effect, than this insulted dignity was by its cruel vengeance.

THE PROPHECY OF THE TEMPLE’S RUIN.

In preparing his disciples for the great events which were to take place in a few years, and which were to have a great influence on their labors, Jesus foretold to them the destruction of the temple. As he was passing out through the mighty gates of the temple on some occasion with his disciples, one of them, admiring the gorgeous beauty of the architecture and the materials, with all the devotion of a Jew now visiting it for the first time, said to him, “Master, see! what stones and what buildings!” To him, Jesus replied with the awful prophecy, most shocking to the national pride and religious associations of every Israelite,――that ere long, upon that glorious pile should fall a ruin so complete, that not one of those splendid stones should be left upon another. These words must have made a strong impression of wonder on all who heard them; but no farther details of the prophecy were given to the disciples at large. Not long afterwards, however, as he sat musingly by himself, in his favorite retirement, half-way up the Mount of Olives, over against the temple, the four most loved and honored of the twelve, Peter, James, John and Andrew, came to him, and asked him privately, to tell them when these things should be, and by what omen they should know the approach of the great and woful ruin. Sitting there, they had a full view of the enormous pile which rose in immense masses very near them, on the verge of mount Moriah, and was even terraced up, from the side of the slope, presenting a vast wall, rising from the depths of the deep ravine of Kedron, which separated the temple from mount Olivet, where they were. It was morning when the conversation took place, as we may fairly guess, for this spot lay on the daily walk to Bethany, where he lodged;――the broad walls, high towers, and pillars of the temple, were doubtless illuminated by the full splendors of the morning sun of Palestine; for Olivet was directly east of Jerusalem, and as they sat looking westward towards the temple, with the sun behind them, the rays, leaving their faces in the shade, would shine full and bright on all which crowned the highth beyond. It was at such a time, as the Jewish historian assures us, that the temple was seen in its fullest grandeur and sublimity; for the light, falling on the vast roofs, which were sheeted and spiked with pure gold, brightly polished, and upon the turrets and pinnacles which glittered with the same precious metal, was reflected to the eye of the gazer with an insupportable brilliancy, from the million bright surfaces and shining points which covered it. Here, then, sat Jesus and his four adoring chosen ones, with this splendid sight before them crowning the mountain, now made doubly dazzling by contrast with the deep gloom of the dark glen below, which separated them from it. There it was, that, with all this brightness and glory and beauty before them, Jesus solemnly foretold in detail the awful, total ruin which was to sweep it all away, within the short lives of those who heard him. Well might such words sink deep into their hearts,――words coming from lips whose perfect and divine truth they could not doubt, though the things now foretold must have gone wofully against all the dreams of glory, in which they had made that sacred pile the scene of the future triumphs of the faith and followers of Christ. This sublime prophecy, which need not here be repeated or descanted upon, is given at great length by all the first three evangelists, and is found in Matthew xxiv. Mark xiii. and Luke xxi.

The view of the temple.――I can find no description by any writer, ancient or modern, which gives so clear an account of the original shape of Mount Moriah, and of the modifications it underwent to fit it to support the temple, as that given by Josephus. (Jewish War, book V. chapter v.) In speaking of the original founding of the temple by Solomon, (Antiquities book VIII. chapter iii. section 2,) he says, “The king laid the foundations of the temple in the very depths, (at the bottom of the descent,) using stones of a firm structure, and able to hold out against the attacks of time, so that growing into a union, as it were, with the ground, they might be the basis and support of the pile that was to be reared above, and through their strength below, easily bear the vast mass of the great superstructure, and the immense weight of ornament also; for the weight of those things which were contrived for beauty and magnificence was not less than that of the materials which contributed to the highth and lateral dimension.” In the full description which he afterwards gives in the place first quoted, of the later temple as perfected by Herod, which is the building to which the account in the text refers, he enters more fully into the mode of shaping the ground to the temple. “The temple was founded upon a steep hill, but in the first beginning of the structure there was scarcely flat ground enough on the top for the sanctuary and the altar, for it was abrupt and precipitous all around. And king Solomon, when he built the sanctuary, having walled it out on the eastern side, (εκτειχισαντος, that is, ‘having built out a wall on that side’ for a terrace,) then reared upon the terraced earth a colonnade; but on the other sides the sanctuary was naked,――(that is, the wall was unsupported and unornamented by colonnades as it was on the east.) But in the course of ages, the people all the while beating down the terraced earth with their footsteps, the hill thus growing flat, was made broader on the top; and having taken down the wall on the north, they gained considerable ground which was afterwards inclosed within the outer court of the temple. Finally, having walled the hill entirely around with three terraces, and having advanced the work far beyond any hope that could have been reasonably entertained at first, spending on it long ages, and all the sacred treasures accumulated from the offerings sent to God from the ends of the world, they reared around it, both the upper courts and the lower temple, walling the latter up, in the lowest part, from a depth of three hundred cubits, (450 feet,) and in some places more. And yet the whole depth of the foundations did not show itself, because they had greatly filled up the ravines, with a view to bring them to a level with the streets of the city. The stones of this work were of the size of forty cubits, (60 feet,) for the profusion of means and the lavish zeal of the people advanced the improvements of the temple beyond account; and a perfection far above all hope was thus attained by perseverance and time.

“And well worthy of these foundations were the works which stood upon them. For all the colonnades were double, consisting of pillars twenty-five cubits (40 feet) in highth, each of a single stone of the whitest marble, and were roofed with fretwork of cedar. The natural beauty of these, their high polish and exquisite proportion, presented a most glorious show; but their surface was not marked by the superfluous embellishments of painting and carving. The colonnades were thirty cubits broad, (that is, forty-five feet from the front of the columns to the wall behind them;) while their whole circuit embraced a range of six stadia, (more than three-quarters of a mile!) including the castle of Antonia. And the whole hypethrum (ὑπαιθρον, the floor of the courts or inclosures of the temple, which was exposed to the open air, there being no roof above it) was variegated by the stones of all colors with which it was laid,” (making a Mosaic pavement.) Section 1.

“The outside of the temple too, lacked nothing that could strike or dazzle the mind and eye. For it was on all sides overlaid with massy plates of gold, so that in the first light of the rising sun, IT SHOT FORTH A MOST FIERY SPLENDOR, which turned away the eyes of those who compelled themselves (mid. βιαζομενους) to gaze on it, as from the rays of the sun itself. To strangers, moreover, who were coming towards it, it shone from afar like a complete mountain of snow: for where it was not covered with gold it was most dazzlingly white, and above on the roof it had golden spikes, sharpened to keep the birds from lighting on it. And some of the stones of the building were forty-five cubits long, five high, and six broad;”――(or sixty-seven feet long, seven and a half high, and nine broad.) Section 6.

“The Antonia was placed at the angle made by the meeting of two colonnades of the outer temple, the western and the northern. It was built upon a rock, fifty cubits high, and precipitous on all sides. It was the work of king Herod, in which, most of all, he showed himself a man of exalted conceptions.” Section 8.

In speaking of Solomon’s foundation, he also says, (Antiquities book VIII. chapter iii. section 9,)

“But he made the outside of the temple wonderful beyond account, both in description and to sight. For having piled up huge terraces, from which, on account of their immense depth, it was hardly possible to look down, and reared them to the highth of four hundred cubits, (six hundred feet!) he made them on the same level with the hill’s top on which the shrine (ναος) was built, and thus the open floor of the temple (ἱερον, or the outer court’s inclosure) was level with the shrine.”

I have drawn thus largely from the rich descriptions of this noble and faithful describer of the old glories of the Holy Land, because this very literal translation gives the exact naked detail of the temple’s aspect, in language as gorgeous as the most high-wrought in which it could be presented in a mere fancy picture of the same scene; and because it will prove that my conception of its glory, as it appeared to Christ and the four disciples who “sat over against it upon the Mount of Olives,” is not overdrawn, since it is thus supported by the blameless and invaluable testimony of him who saw all this splendor in its most splendid day, and afterwards in its unequaled beauty and with all its polished gold and marble, shining and sinking amid the flames, which swept it utterly away from his saddening eyes forever, to a ruin the most absolute and irretrievable that ever fell upon the works of man.

This was the temple on which the sons of Jonah and Zebedee gazed, with the awful denunciation of its utter ruin falling from their Lord’s lips, and such was the desolation to which those terrible words devoted it. This full description of its location shows the manner in which its terraced foundations descended with their vast fronts, six hundred feet into the valley of Kedron, over which they looked. To give as clear an idea of the place where they sat, and its relations to the rest of the scene, I extract from Conder’s Modern Traveler the following description of Mount Olivet.

“The Mount of Olives forms part of a ridge of limestone hills, extending to the north and the south-west. Pococke describes it as having four summits. On the lowest and most northerly of these, which, he tells us, is called Sulman Tashy, the stone of Solomon, there is a large domed sepulcher, and several other Mohammedan tombs. The ascent to this point, which is to the north-east of the city, he describes as very gradual, through pleasant corn-fields planted with olive-trees. The second summit is that which overlooks the city: the path to it rises from the ruined gardens of Gethsemane, which occupy part of the valley. About half way up the ascent is a ruined monastery, built, as the monks tell us, on the spot where the Savior wept over Jerusalem. From this point the spectator enjoys, perhaps, the best view of the Holy City. (Here Jesus sat, in our scene.)

“The valley of Jehoshaphat, which lies between this mountain and the hills on which Jerusalem is built, is still used as a burial-place by the modern Jews, as it was by their ancestors. It is, generally speaking, a rocky flat, with a few patches of earth here and there, about half a mile in breadth from the Kedron to the foot of Mount Olivet, and nearly of the same length from Siloa to the garden of Gethsemane. The Jews have a tradition, evidently founded on taking literally the passage Joel iii. 12, that this narrow valley will be the scene of the final judgment. The prophet Jeremiah evidently refers to the same valley under the name of the valley of the Son of Hinnom, or the valley of Tophet, the situation being clearly marked as being by the entry of the east gate. (Jeremiah xix. 2, 6.) Pococke places the valley of Hinnom to the south of Jerusalem, but thinks it might include part of that to the east. It formed part of the bounds between the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, (Joshua xv. 8. xviii. 16,) but the description is somewhat obscure.” [Modern Traveler Palestine, pp. 168, 172.]

MOUNT MORIAH.

THE LAST SUPPER.

Meanwhile the offended and provoked dignitaries of Judaism were fast making arrangements to crush the daring innovator, who had done so much to bring their learning and their power into contempt. Some of the most fiery spirits among them, were for defying all risks, by seizing the Nazarene openly, in the midst of his audacious denunciations of the higher orders; and the attempt was made to execute this act of arbitrary power; but the mere hirelings sent upon the errand, were too much awed by the unequaled majesty of the man, and by the strong attachment of the people to him, to be willing to execute their commission. But there were old heads among them, that could contrive safer and surer ways of meeting the evil. By them it was finally determined to seize Jesus when alone or unattended by the throngs which usually encompassed him,――to hurry him at once secretly through the forms of law necessary for his commitment, and then to put him immediately into the hands of the Roman governor, as a condemned rioter and rebel, who would be obliged to order his execution in such a way as that no popular excitement would rescue the victim from the grasp of the soldiery. This was the plan which they were now arranging, and which they were prepared to execute before the close of the passover, if they could get intelligence of his motions. These fatal schemes of hate could not have been unknown to Jesus; yet the knowledge of them made no difference in his bold devotion to the cause for which he came into the world. Anxious to improve the few fast fleeting hours that remained before the time of his sufferings should come on, and desirous to join as a Jew in this great national festival, by keeping it in form with his disciples, he directed his two most confidential apostles, Peter and John, to get ready the entertainment for them in the city, by an arrangement made with a man already expecting to receive them. This commission they faithfully executed, and Jesus accordingly ate with his disciples the feast of the first day of the passover, in Jerusalem, with those who sought his life so near him. After the supper was over, he determined to use the brief remnant of time for the purpose of uprooting that low feeling of jealous ambition which had already made so much trouble among them, in their anxious discussions as to who should be accounted the greatest, and should rank as the ruler of the twelve. To impress the right view upon their minds most effectually, he chose the oriental mode of a ceremony which should strike their senses, and thus secure a regard and remembrance for his words which they might fail in attaining if they were delivered in the simple manner of trite and oft spoken oral truisms. He therefore rose after supper, and leaving his place at the head of the table, he laid aside his upper garments, which, though appropriate and becoming him as a teacher in his hours of public instruction, or social communion, were yet inconvenient in any active exertion which needed the free use of the limbs. Being thus disrobed, he took the position and character of a menial upon him, and girding himself with a towel, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet in it, wiping them with his towel. He accordingly comes to Simon Peter, in the discharge of his servile office; but Peter, whose ideas of the majesty and ripening honors of his Master were shocked at this extraordinary action, positively refused to be even the passive instrument of such an indignity to one so great and good,――first inquiring “Lord, dost thou wash my feet?” Jesus in answer said to him, “What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” That is, “this apparently degrading act has a hidden, useful meaning, at this moment beyond your comprehension, but which you will learn in due time.” Peter, however, notwithstanding this plain and decided expression of Christ’s wise determination to go through this painful ceremony, for the instruction of those who so unwillingly submitted to see him thus degraded,――still led on by the fiery ardor of his own headlong genius,――manfully persisted in his refusal, and expressed himself in the most positive terms possible, saying to Jesus, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” This solemn remonstrance had the effect of checking Peter’s too forward reverence, and in a tone of deeper submission to the wise will of his Master, he yielded, replying however, “Lord, wash not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” Since so low an office was to be performed by one so venerated, he would not have the favor of his blessed touch confined to the baser limbs, but desired that the nobler parts of the body should share in the holy ablution. But the high purpose of Jesus could not accommodate itself to the whims of his zealous disciple; for his very object was to take the humblest attitude before them, by performing those personal offices which were usually committed to slaves. He therefore told Peter, “He that is washed needs not save to wash his feet, but is clean in every part;”――a very familiar and expressive illustration, alluding to the circumstance that those who have been to a bath and there washed themselves, will on their return find themselves wholly clean, except such dust as may cling to their feet as they have passed through the streets on their return. And any one may feel the force of the beautiful figure, who has ever gone into the water for the purposes of cleanliness and refreshment, on a warm summer’s day in this country, and has found by experience that after all possible ablution, on coming out and dressing himself, his wet feet in contact with the ground have become loaded with dirt which demands new diligence to remove it; and as all who have tried it know, it requires many ingenious efforts to return with feet as clean as they came to the washing; and in spite of all, after the return, an inspection may forcibly illustrate the truth, that “he that is washed, though he is clean in every part, yet needs to wash his feet.” Such was the figure with which Jesus expressed to his simple-minded and unlettered disciples, the important truth, that since they had been already washed, (baptized by John or himself,) if that washing had been effectual, they could need the repurification only of their feet――the cleansing away of such of the world’s impure thoughts and feelings as had clung to them in their journeyings through it. So, after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments and sat down again, he said to them, “Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord; and ye say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you this as an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Truly the servant is not greater than his lord, neither is he that is sent greater than him that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”――A charge so clear and simple, and so full, that it needs not a word of comment to show any reader the full force of this touching ceremony.

Shortly after, in the same place and during the same meeting, Jesus speaking to them of his near departure, affectionately and sadly said, “Little children, but a little while longer am I with you. Ye shall seek me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘whither I go, ye cannot come,’――so now I say to you.” To this Simon Peter soon after replied by asking him, “Lord whither goest thou?” Jesus answered him, “Whither I go thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards.” Peter, perhaps beginning to perceive the mournful meaning of this declaration, replied, still urging, “Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake.” Jesus answered, “Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? I tell thee assuredly, the cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice.”――Soon after, at the same time and place, noticing the confident assurance of this chief disciple, Jesus again warned him of his danger and his coming fall. “Simon! Simon! behold, Satan has desired to have you (all) that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee (especially) that thy faith fail not; and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” Never before had higher and more distinctive favor been conferred on this chief apostle, than by this sad prophecy of danger, weakness and sin, on which he was to fall, for a time, to his deep disgrace; but on him alone, when rescued from ruin by his Master’s peculiar prayers, was to rest the task of strengthening his brethren. But his Master’s kind warning was for the present lost on his immovable self-esteem; he repeated his former assurance of perfect devotion through every danger, “Lord, I am ready to go with thee into prison and to death.” Where was affectionate and heroic devotion ever more affectingly and determinedly expressed? What heart of common man would not have leaped to meet such love and fidelity? But He, with an eye still clear and piercing, in spite of the tears with which affection might dim it, saw through the veil that would have blinded the sharpest human judgment, and coldly met these protestations of burning zeal with the chilling prediction again uttered, “I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.” Then making a sudden transition, to hint to them the nature of the dangers which would soon try their souls, he suddenly reverted to their former security. “When I sent you forth without purse, or scrip, or shoes, did ye need any thing?” And they said “Nothing.” Then said he to them “But now, let him that has a purse, take it, and likewise his scrip; and let him that has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.” They had hitherto, in their wanderings, every where found friends to support and protect them; but now the world was at war with them, and they must look to their own resources both for supplying their wants and guarding their lives. His disciples readily apprehending some need of personal defense, at once bestirred themselves and mustered what arms they could on the spot, and told him that they had two swords among them, and of these it appears that one was in the hands of Peter. It was natural enough that among the disciples these few arms were found, for they were all Galileans, who, as Josephus tells us, were very pugnacious in their habits; and even the followers of Christ, notwithstanding their peaceful calling, had not entirely laid aside their former weapons of violence, which were the more needed by them, as the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem was made very dangerous by robbers, who lay in wait for the defenseless traveler wherever the nature of the ground favored such an attack. Of this character was that part of the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, alluded to in the parable of the wounded traveler and the good Samaritan,――a region so wild and rocky that it has always been dangerous, for the same reasons, even to this day; of which a sad instance occurred but a few years ago, in the case of an eminent English traveler, who going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among thieves and was wounded near the same spot mentioned by Christ, in spite of the defenses with which he was provided. It was in reference to such dangers as these, that two of his disciples had provided themselves with hostile weapons, and Peter may have been instigated to carry his sword into such a peaceful feast, by the suspicion that the danger from the chief priests, to which Christ had often alluded, might more particularly threaten them while they were in the city by themselves, without the safeguard of their numerous friends in the multitude. The answer of Jesus to this report of their means of resistance was not in a tone to excite them to the very zealous use of them. He simply said, “It is enough,” a phrase which was meant to quiet them, by expressing his little regard for such a defense as they were able to offer to him, with this contemptible armament.

Some have conjectured that this washing of feet (page 97) was a usual rite at the Paschal feast. So Scaliger, Beza, Baronius, Casaubon and other learned men have thought. (See Poole’s Synopsis, on John xiii. 5.) But Buxtorf has clearly shown the falsity of their reasons, and Lightfoot has also proved that it was a perfectly unusual thing, and that there is no passage in all the Rabbinical writings which refers to it as a custom. It is manifest indeed, to a common reader, that the whole peculiar force of this ablution, in this instance, consisted in its being an entirely unusual act; and all its beautiful aptness as an illustration of the meaning of Jesus,――that they should cease their ambitious strife for precedence,――is lost in making it anything else than a perfectly new and original ceremony, whose impressiveness mainly consisted in its singularity. Lightfoot also illustrates the design of Jesus still farther, by several interesting passages from the Talmudists, showing in what way the ablution would be regarded by his disciples, who like other Jews would look upon it as a most degraded action, never to be performed except by inferiors to superiors. These Talmudic authorities declare, that “Among the duties to be performed by the wife to her husband, this was one,――that she should wash his face, his hands and his feet.” (Maimonides on the duties of women.) The same office was due from a son to his father,――from a slave to his master, as his references show; but he says he can find no precept that a disciple should perform such a duty to his teacher, unless it be included in this, “The teacher should be more honored by his scholar than a father.”

He also shows that the feet were never washed separately, with any idea of legal purification,――though the Pharisees washed their hands separately with this view, and the priests washed their hands and feet both, as a form of purification, but never the feet alone. And he very justly remarks upon all this testimony, that “the farther this action of Christ recedes from common custom, the higher its fitness for their instruction,――being performed not merely for an example but for a precept.” (Lightfoot’s Horae Hebraica in Gospel of John xiii. 5.)

Laid aside his garments.――The simple dress of the races of western Asia, is always distinguishable into two parts or sets of garments,――an inner, which covered more or less of the body, fitting it tightly, but not reaching far over the legs or arms, and consisted either of a single cloth folded around the loins, or a tunic fastened with a girdle; sometimes also a covering for the thighs was subjoined, making something like the rudiment of a pair of breeches. (See Jahn Archaeologia Biblica § 120.) These were the permanent parts of the dress, and were always required to be kept on the body, by the common rules of decency. But the second division of the garments, (“superindumenta,” Jahn,) thrown loosely over the inner ones, might be laid aside, on any occasion, when active exertion required the most unconstrained motion of the limbs. One of these was a simple oblong, broad piece of cloth, of various dimensions, but generally about three yards long, and two broad, which was wrapped around the body like a mantle, the two upper corners being drawn over the shoulders in front, and the rest hanging down the back, and falling around the front of the body, without any fastenings but the folding of the upper corners. This garment was called by the Hebrews שמלה or שלמה, (simlah or salmah,) and sometimes בגד; (begedh;)――by the Greeks, ἱματιον. (himation.) Jahn Archaeologia Biblica. This is the garment which is always meant by this Greek word in the New Testament, when used in the singular number,――translated “cloak” in the common English version, as in the passage in the text above, where Jesus exhorts him that has no sword to sell his cloak and buy one. When this Greek word occurs in the plural, (ἱματια, himatia,) it is translated “garments,” and it is noticeable that in most cases where it occurs, the sense actually requires that it should be understood only of the outer dress, to which I have referred it. As in Matthew xxi. 8, where it is said that the people spread their garments in the way,――of course only their outer ones, which were loose and easily thrown off, without indecent exposure. So in Mark xi. 7, 8: Luke xix. 35. There is no need then, of supposing, as Origen does, that Jesus took off all his clothes, or was naked, in the modern sense of the term. A variety of other outer garments in common use both among the early and the later Jews, are described minutely by Jahn in his Archaeologia Biblica, § 122. I shall have occasion to describe some of these, in illustration of other passages.

My exegesis on the passage “He that is washed, needs not,” &c. may strike some as rather bold in its illustration, yet if great authorities are necessary to support the view I have taken, I can refer at once to a legion of commentators, both ancient and modern, who all offer the same general explanation, though not exactly the same illustration. Poole’s Synopsis is rich in references to such. Among these, Vatablus remarks on the need of washing the feet of one already washed, “scil. viae causa.” Medonachus says of the feet, “quos calcata terra iterum inquinat.” Hammond says, “he that hath been initiated, and entered into Christ, &c. is whole clean, and hath no need to be so washed again, all over. All that is needful to him is the daily ministering of the word and grace of Christ, to cleanse and wash off the frailties, and imperfections, and lapses of our weak nature, those feet of the soul.” Grotius says, “Hoc tantum opus ei est, ut ab iis se purget quae ex occasione nascuntur. Similitudo sumpta ab his qui a balneo nudis pedibus abeunt.” Besides these and many others largely quoted by Poole, Lampius also (in commentary in Gospel of John) goes very fully into the same view, and quotes many others in illustration. Wolfius (in Cur. Philology) gives various illustrations, differing in no important particular, that I can see, from each other, nor from that of Kuinoel, who calls them “contortas expositiones,” but gives one which is the same in almost every part, but is more fully illustrated in detail, by reference to the usage of the ancients, of going to the bath before coming to a feast, which the disciples no doubt had done, and made themselves clean in all parts except their feet, which had become dirtied on the way from the bath. This is the same view which Wolf also quotes approvingly from Elsner. Wetstein is also on this point, as on all others, abundantly rich in illustrations from classic usage, to which he refers in a great number of quotations from Lucian, Herodotus, Plato, Terence and Plutarch.

Sift you as wheat.――The word σινιαζω (siniazo) refers to the process of winnowing the wheat after threshing, rather than sifting in the common application of the term, which is to the operation of separating the flour from the bran. In oriental agriculture the operation of winnowing is performed without any machinery, by simply taking up the threshed wheat in a large shovel, and shaking it in such a way that the grain may fall out into a place prepared on the ground, while the wind blows away the chaff. The whole operation is well described in the fragments appended to Taylor’s editions of Calmet’s dictionary, (Hund. i. No. 48, in Vol. III.) and is there illustrated by a plate. The phrase then, was highly expressive of a thorough trial of character, or of utter ruin, by violent and overwhelming misfortune, and as such is often used in the Old Testament. As in Jeremiah xv. 7. “I will fan them with a fan,” &c. Also in li. 3. In Psalm cxxxix. 2. “Thou winnowest my path,” &c.; compare translation “Thou compassest my path.” The same figure is effectively used by John the Baptist, in Matthew iii. 12, and Luke iii. 17.

Galilean pugnacity.――Josephus, who was very familiar with the Galileans by his military service among them, thus characterizes them. “The Galileans are fighters even from infancy, and are every where numerous, nor are they capable of fear.” Jewish War, book III. chapter iii. section 2.

From Jerusalem to Jericho.――The English traveler here referred to, is Sir Frederic Henniker, who in the year 1820, met with this calamity, which he thus describes in his travels, pp. 284‒289.

“The route is over hills, rocky, barren and uninteresting; we arrived at a fountain, and here my two attendants paused to refresh themselves; the day was so hot that I was anxious to finish the journey, and hurried forwards. A ruined building situated on the summit of a hill was now within sight, and I urged my horse towards it; the janissary galloped by me, and making signs for me not to precede him, he rode into and round the building, and then motioned me to advance. We next came to a hill, through the very apex of which has been cut a passage, the rocks overhanging it on either side. Quaresmius, (book vi. chapter 2.) quoting Brocardus, 200 years past, mentions that there is a place horrible to the eye, and full of danger, called Abdomin, which signifies blood; where he, descending from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among thieves. I was in the act of passing through this ditch, when a bullet whizzed by, close to my head; I saw no one, and had scarcely time to think, when another was fired some distance in advance. I could yet see no one,――the janissary was beneath the brow of the hill, in his descent; I looked back, but my servant was not yet within sight. I looked up, and within a few inches of my head were three muskets, and three men taking aim at me. Escape or resistance were alike impossible. I got off my horse. Eight men jumped down from the rocks, and commenced a scramble for me; I observed also a party running towards Nicholai. At this moment the janissary galloped in among us with his sword drawn.

“A sudden panic seized the janissary; he cried on the name of the Prophet, and galloped away. As he passed, I caught at a rope hanging from his saddle. I had hoped to leap upon his horse, but found myself unable;――my feet were dreadfully lacerated by the honey-combed rocks――nature would support me no longer――I fell, but still clung to the rope. In this manner I was drawn some few yards, till, bleeding from my ancle to my shoulder, I resigned myself to my fate. As soon as I stood up, one of my pursuers took aim at me, but the other casually advancing between us, prevented his firing; he then ran up, and with his sword, aimed such a blow as would not have required a second; his companion prevented its full effect, so that it merely cut my ear in halves, and laid open one side of my face; they then stripped me naked.

“It was now past mid-day, and burning hot; I bled profusely,――and two vultures, whose business it is to consume corpses, were hovering over me. I should scarcely have had strength to resist, had they chosen to attack me. At length we arrived about 3 P. M. at Jericho.――My servant was unable to lift me to the ground; the janissary was lighting his pipe, and the soldiers were making preparations to pursue the robbers; not one person would assist a half-dead Christian. After some minutes a few Arabs came up and placed me by the side of the horse-pond, just so that I could not dip my finger into the water. This pool is resorted to by every one in search of water, and that employment falls exclusively upon females;――they surrounded me, and seemed so earnest in their sorrow, that, notwithstanding their veils, I almost felt pleasure at my wound. One of them in particular held her pitcher to my lips, till she was sent away by the Chous;――I called her, she returned, and was sent away again; and the third time she was turned out of the yard. She wore a red veil, (the sign of not being married,) and therefore there was something unpardonable in her attention to any man, especially to a Christian; she however returned with her mother, and brought me some milk. I believe that Mungo Park, on some dangerous occasion during his travels, received considerable assistance from the compassionate sex.”

THE SCENES OF GETHSEMANE.

After much more conversation and prayer with his disciples in the supper-room, and having sung the hymn of praise which usually concluded the passover feast among the Jews, Jesus went with them out west of the city, over the brook Kedron, at the foot of the Olive mount, where there was a garden, called Gethsemane, to which he had often resorted with his disciples, it being retired as well as pleasant. While they were on the way, a new occasion happened of showing Peter’s self-confidence, which Jesus again rebuked with the prediction that it would too soon fail him. He was telling them all, that events would soon happen that would overthrow their present confidence in him, and significantly quoted to them the appropriate passage in Zechariah xiii. 7. “I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.” Peter, glad of a new opportunity to assert his steadfast adherence to his Master, again assured him that, though all should be offended, or lose their confidence in him, yet would not he; but though alone, would always maintain his present devotion to him. The third time did Jesus reply in the circumstantial prediction of his near and certain fall. “This day, even this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.” This repeated distrustful and reproachful denunciation, became, at last, too much for Peter’s warm temper; and in a burst of offended zeal, he declared the more vehemently, “If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise.” To this solemn protestation against the thought of defection, all the other apostles present gave their word of hearty assent.

VALLEY OF THE BROOK KEDRON
between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives.
John xviii. 1.

They now reached the garden, and when they had entered it, Jesus spoke to all the disciples present, except his three chosen ones, saying, “Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.” He retired accordingly into some recess of the garden, with Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, James and John; and as soon as he was alone with them, begun to give utterance to feelings of deep distress and depression of spirits. Leaving them, with the express injunction to keep awake and wait for him, he went for a short time still farther, and there, in secret and awful woe, that wrung from his bowed head the dark sweat of an unutterable agony, yet in submission to God, he prayed that the horrible suffering and death to which he had been so sternly devoted, might not light on him. Returning to the three appointed watchers, he found them asleep! Even as amid the lonely majesty of Mount Hermon, human weakness had borne down the willing spirit in spite of the sublime character of the place and the persons before them; so here, not the groans of that beloved suffering Lord, for whom they had just expressed such deep regard, could keep their sleepy eyes open, when they were thus exhausted with a long day’s agitating incidents, and were rendered still more dull and stupid by the chilliness of the evening air, as well as the lateness of the hour of the night; for it was near ten o’clock. At this sad instance of the inability of their minds to overcome the frailties of the body, after all their fine protestations of love and zeal, he mildly and mournfully remonstrates with Peter in particular, who had been so far before the rest in expressing a peculiar interest in his Master. And he said to Peter, “Simon! sleepest thou? What! could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Well might he question thus the constancy of the fiery zeal which had so lately inspired Peter to those expressions of violent attachment. What! could not all that warm devotion, that high pride of purpose, sustain his spirit against the effects of fatigue and cold on his body? But they had, we may suppose, crept into some shelter from the cold night air, where they unconsciously forgot themselves. After having half-roused them with this fruitless appeal, he left them, and again passed through another dreadful struggle between his human and divine nature. The same strong entreaty,――the same mournful submission,――were expressed as before, in that moment of solitary agony, till again he burst away from the insupportable strife of soul, and came to see if yet sympathy in his sorrows could keep his sleepy disciples awake. But no; the gentle rousing he had before given them had hardly broken their slumbers. For a few moments the voice of their Master, in tones deep and mournful with sorrow, might have recalled them to some sense of shame for their heedless stupidity; and for a short time their wounded pride moved them to an effort of self-control. A few mutual expostulations in a sleepy tone, would pass between them;――an effort at conversation perhaps, about the incidents of the day, and the prospect of coming danger which their Master seemed to hint;――some wonderings probably, as to what could thus lead him apart to dark and lonely devotion;――very likely too, some complaint about the cold;――a shiver――a sneeze,――then a movement to a warmer attitude, and a wrapping closer in mantles;――then the conversation languishing, replies coming slower and duller, the attitude meanwhile declining from the perpendicular to the horizontal, till at last the most wakeful waits in vain for an answer to one of his drowsy remarks, and finds himself speaking to deaf ears; and finally overcome with impatience at them and himself, he sinks down into his former deep repose, with a half-murmured reproach to his companions on his lips. In short, as every one knows who has passed through such efforts, three sleepy men will hardly keep awake the better for each other’s company; but so far from it, on the contrary, the force of sympathy will increase the difficulty, and the very sound of drowsy voices will serve to lull all the sooner into slumber. In the case of the apostles too, who were mostly men accustomed to an active life, and who were in the habit of going to bed as soon as it was night, whenever their business allowed them to rest, all their modes of life served to hasten the slumbers of men so little inured to self-control of any kind. These lengthy reasons may serve to excite some considerate sympathy for the weakness of the apostles, and may serve as an apology for their repeated drowsiness on solemn occasions; for a first thought on the subject might suggest to a common man, the irreverent notion, that those who could slumber at the transfiguration of the Son of God on Mount Hermon, and at his agony in Gethsemane, must be very sleepy fellows. On this occasion these causes were sufficient to enchain their senses, in spite of the repeated exhortations of Jesus, for on his coming to them the second time, and saying in a warning voice, “Rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation; why sleep ye?” they wist not what to answer him, for their eyes were very heavy, and they slept for sorrow. Still again he retired about a stone’s throw from them, as before, and there, prone on the ground, he renewed the strife with his feelings. Alone and unsympathized with by his friends, did the Redeemer of men endure the agonies of that hour, yet not wholly alone nor unsupported; for as Luke assures us, there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. At last the long struggle ceased. Distant voices coming over the glen through the stillness of the night, and the glare of torches flashing from the waters of the Kedron through the shades of the garden, gave him notice that those were near who came to drag him to a shameful death. Yet the repugnance of nature with which his late strife had been so dreadful, was now so overcome that he shrank not from the ♦approaching death, but calmly walked to meet it. Coming forward to his sleeping disciples, he said to them, “Sleep on now and take your rest; behold, the time is at hand when the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going.” The rush of the armed bands of the temple guards followed his words, and when the apostles sprung to their feet, their drowsiness was most effectually driven off by the appalling sight of a crowd of fierce men, filling the garden and surrounding them. As soon as the villainous leaders of the throng could overcome the reverence which even the lowest of their followers had for the majestic person of the Savior, they brought them up to the charge, and a retainer of the high priest, by name Malchus, with the forward officiousness of an insolent menial, laid hold of Jesus. Now was the time for Galilean spunk to show itself. The disciples around instantly asked, “Lord, shall we smite with the sword?” But without waiting for an answer, Peter, though amazed by this sudden and frightful attack, as soon as he saw the body of his adored Master profaned by the rude hands of base hirelings, foremost in action as in word, regardless of numbers, leaped on the assailants with drawn sword, and with a movement too quick to be shunned, he gave the foremost a blow, which, if the darkness had not prevented, might have been fatal. As it was, there could not have been a more narrow escape, for the sword lighting on the head of the priest’s zealous servant, just grazed his temple and cut off his ear. But this display of courage was after all, fruitless; for he was surrounded by a great body of men, armed in the expectation of this very kind of resistance; and in addition to this, the remonstrance of Jesus must have been sufficient to damp the most fiery valor. He said to his zealous and fierce defender, “Put up thy sword again into its sheath, for they that take the sword shall perish by the sword. The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink? Thinkest thou that if I should now pray to my Father, he would not instantly send me twelve legions of angels at a word? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must be thus?” Having thus stopped the ineffectual and dangerous opposition of his few followers, he quietly gave himself up to his captors, interceding however for his poor, friendless and unprotected disciples. “I am Jesus of Nazareth: if therefore you seek me, let these go their way.” This he said as it were in reference to a literal and corporeal fulfilment of the words which he had used in his last prayer with his disciples,――“Of them whom thou gavest me I lost none.” The disciples after receiving from Jesus such a special command to abstain from resistance, and perceiving how utterly desperate was the condition of affairs, without waiting the decision of the question, all forsaking him, fled; and favored by darkness and their familiar knowledge of the grounds, they all escaped in various directions.

♦ “ap-approaching” replaced with “approaching”

Gethsemane.――This place has already been alluded to in the description of Mount Olivet. [Note on p. 96.] From the same source I extract a further brief notice of the present aspect of this most holy ground. “Proceeding along the valley of Kedron, at the foot of Mount Olivet, is the garden of Gethsemane: an even plat of ground, not above fifty-seven yards square, where are shown some old olive trees, supposed to identify the spot to which our Lord was wont to repair. John xviii. 1, 2.” [Modern Traveler, Palestine, p. 156.] It is also remarked by Dr. Richardson, [p. 78 of the same work,] that “the gardens of Gethsemane are still in the sort of a ruined cultivation; the fences are broken down, and the olive trees decaying, as if the hand that dressed and fed them was withdrawn.”

The etymology and meaning of the name Gethsemane, is given by Lightfoot, (Centuria Chorographica in Matthew, chapter 41.) The name is derived from the product of the tree which was so abundantly raised there, and which gave name also to the mountain. Gethsemane is compounded of גת, “a press,” and שמנא, “olive oil,”――“an oil-press;” because the oil was pressed out and manufactured on the spot where the olive was raised.

Ten o’clock.――This I conclude to have been about the time, because (in Matthew xxvi. 20) it is said that it was evening already, (that is, about 6 o’clock,) when Jesus sat down to supper with his disciples, and allowing time on the one hand for the events at the supper-table and on the walk, as well as those in the garden,――and on the other hand for those which took place before midnight, (cock crowing,) we must fix the time as I have above.

The glare of torches.――John (xviii. 3.) is the only evangelist who brings in this highly picturesque circumstance of the equipment of the band with the means of searching the dark shades and bowers of the garden.

HIS THREE-FOLD DENIAL.

Peter, however, had he not so soon forgot his zealous attachment to Jesus, as to leave him in such hands, without farther knowledge of his fate; but as soon as he was satisfied that the pursuit of the disciples was given up, he, in company with John, followed the band of officers at safe distance, and ascertained whither they were carrying the captive. After they had seen the train proceed to the palace of the high priest, they proceeded directly to the same place. Here John, being known to the high priest, and having friends in the family, went boldly in, feeling secure by his friendship in that quarter, against any danger in consequence of his connection with Jesus. Being known to the servant girl who kept the door, as a friend of the family, he got in without difficulty, and had also influence enough to get leave to introduce Peter, as a friend of his who had some curiosity to see what was going on. Peter, who had stood without the door waiting for the result of John’s maneuver, was now brought into the palace, and walked boldly into the hall where the examination of Jesus was going on, hoping to escape entirely unnoticed by keeping in the dimly lighted parts of the hall, by which he would be secure, at the same time that he would the better see what was going on near the lights. Standing thus out of the way in the back part of the room, he might have witnessed the whole without incurring the notice of anybody. But the servants and others, who had been out over the damp valley of the Kedron after Jesus, feeling chilled with the walk, (for the long nights of that season are in Jerusalem frequently in strong contrast with the warmth of mid-day,) made up a good fire of coal in the back part of the hall, where they stood looking on. Peter himself being, too, no doubt thoroughly chilled with his long exposure to the cold night air, very naturally and unreflectingly came forward to the fire, where he sat down and warmed himself among the servants and soldiers. The bright light of the coals shining directly on his anxious face, those who stood by, noticing a stranger taking such interest in the proceedings, began to scrutinize him more narrowly. At last, the servant girl who had let him in at the door, with the inquisitive curiosity so peculiarly strong in her sex, knowing that he had come in with John as his particular acquaintance, and concluding that he was like him associated with Jesus, boldly said to him, “Thou also art one of this man’s disciples.” But Peter, like a true Galilean, as ready to lie as to fight, thinking only of the danger of the recognition, at once denied him, forgetting the lately offensive prediction, in his sudden alarm. He said before them all, “Woman, I am not!――I know him not; neither do I understand what thou sayest.” This bold and downright denial silenced the forward impertinence of the girl, and for a time may have quieted the suspicions of those around. Peter, however, startled by this sudden attack, all at once perceived the danger into which he had unthinkingly thrust himself, and drawing back from his prominent station before the fire, which had made him so unfortunately conspicuous, went out into the porch of the building, notwithstanding the cold night air, preferring the discomfort of the exposure, to the danger of his late position. As he walked there in the open air, he heard the note of the cock sounding clear, through the stillness of midnight, announcing the beginning of the third watch. The sound had a sad import to him, and must have recalled to his mind some thought of his master’s warning; but before it could have made much impression, it was instantly banished altogether from his mind, by a new alarm from the inquisitiveness of some of the retainers of the palace, who, seeing a stranger lurking in a covert manner about the building at that time of night, very naturally felt suspicious enough of him to examine his appearance narrowly. Among those who came about him, was another of those pert damsels who seem to have been very numerous and forward about the house of the head of the Jewish faith. She, after a satisfactory inspection of the suspicious person, very promptly informed those that were there also about him, “This fellow also was with Jesus of Nazareth.” Peter’s patience being at last worn out with the pertinacious annoyances of these spiteful lasses, not only flatly contradicted the positive assertion of the girl, but backed his words with an oath, which seems to have had the decisive effect of hushing his female accusers entirely, and he considered himself to have turned off suspicion for a time so effectually, that, after cooling himself sufficiently in the porch, being distracted with anxiety about the probable fate of his beloved Master, he at last ventured again into the great hall of the palace, where the examination of Jesus was still going on. Here he remained a deeply interested spectator and auditor for about an hour, without being disturbed, when some of the bystanders who were not so much interested in the affair before them as to be prevented by it from looking about them, had their attention again drawn to the stranger who had been an object of such suspicion. There were probably more than one that recognized the active and zealous follower of the Nazarene, as Peter had been in such constant attendance on him throughout his whole stay in Jerusalem. But no one seems to have cared to provoke an irascible Galilean by an accusation which he might resent in the characteristic manner of his countrymen; till another of the servants of the high priest, a relation of Malchus, whose ear Peter had cut off, after looking well at him, and being provoked at the impudence of such a vagabond in thrusting himself into the home of the very man whom he had so shockingly mutilated and so nearly murdered, determined to bring the offender to punishment, and speaking to his fellow-servants, he indignantly and confidently affirmed, “This fellow also was with him, for he is a Galilean.” And turning to Peter, whom he had seen in Gethsemane, when engaged at the time of the capture of Jesus, he imperiously asked him, “Did I not see thee in the garden with him?” And others, joining in the charge, said decidedly to him, “Surely thou art one of them also: for thy very speech, thy accent, unquestionably, betrays thee to be a Galilean.” Peter began at last to see that his situation was growing quite desperate, and finding that his distress about his Lord had brought him within a chance of the same fate, determined to extricate himself by as unscrupulously using his tongue in his own defense as he had before used his sword for his Master. Besides, he had already told two flat lies within about three hours, and it was not for a Galilean in such a pass to hesitate about one more, even though seconded by a perjury. For he then began to curse and to swear, saying, “Man, I know not what thou sayest.――I know not the man of whom ye speak.” And immediately, while he was yet speaking, the cock crew the second time. At that moment, the Lord turned and looked upon Peter, and at the same sound the conscience-stricken disciple turning towards his Lord, met that glance. And what a look! He who cannot imagine it for himself, cannot conceive it from the ideal picture of another; but its effect was sufficiently dramatic to impress the least picturesque imagination. As the Lord turned and looked upon him, Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the cock shall crow twice this night, thou shalt deny me thrice.” And thinking thereon, he went out, and wept bitterly. Tears of rebuked conceit,――of self-humbled pride, over fallen glory and sullied honor,――flowed down his manly cheeks. Where was now the fiery spirit once in word so ready to brave death, with all the low malice of base foes, for the sake of Jesus? Where was that unshaken steadiness, that dauntless energy that once won him from the lips of his Master, when first his searching eye fell on him, the name of the ROCK,――that name by which again he had been consecrated as the mighty foundation-ROCK of the church of God? Was this the chief of the apostles?――the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven?――binding and loosing on earth what should be bound or loosed in heaven? Where were the brave, high hopes of earthly glory to be won under the warlike banners of his kingly Master? Where was that Master and Lord? The hands of the rude were now laid on him, in insult and abuse,――his glories broken and faded,――his power vain for his own rescue from sufferings vastly greater than those so often relieved by him in others,――his followers dispirited and scattered,――disowning and casting out as evil the name they had so long adored. The haughty lords of Judaism were now exulting in their cruel victory, re-established in their dignity, and strengthened in their tyranny by this long-wished triumph over their deadly foe. He wept for bright hopes dimmed,――for crushed ambition,――but more than all, for broken faith,――for trampled truth,――and for the three-fold and perjured denial of his betrayed and forsaken Lord. Well might he weep――

“There’s bliss in tears,

When he who sheds them inly feels

Some lingering stain of early years

Effaced by every drop that steals.

The fruitless showers of worldly woe

Fall dark to earth and never rise;

But tears that from repentance flow,

In bright exhalement reach the skies.”

The soldiers, &c.――It has been supposed by some that this armed force was a part of the Roman garrison which was always kept in Castle Antonia, close by the temple; (see note on page 95;) but there is nothing in the expressions of either of the evangelists which should lead us to think so; on the contrary, their statement most distinctly specifies, that those concerned in the arrest were from a totally different quarter. Matthew (xxvi. 47) describes them as “a great throng, with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.” The whole expression implies a sort of half-mob of low fellows, servants and followers of the members of the Sanhedrim, accompanying the ordinary temple-guard, which was a mere band of Levite peace-officers under the priests, whose business it was to keep order in the courts of the temple――a duty hardly more honorable than that of a sweeper or “doorkeeper in the house of the Lord,” from which office, indeed, it was probably not distinct. These watchmen and porters, for they were no better, were allowed by the Roman government of the city and kingdom, a kind of contemptuous favor in bearing swords to defend from profane intrusion their holy shrine, which Gentile soldiers could not approach as guards, without violating the sanctity of the place. Such a body as these men and their chance associates, are therefore well and properly described by Matthew, as a “throng with swords and clubs;” but what intelligent man would ever have thought of characterizing in this way, a regular detachment of the stately and well-armed legion which maintained the dignity and power of the Roman governor of Judea? Mark (xiv. 43) uses precisely the same expression as Matthew, to describe them: Luke (xxii. 52) represents Jesus as speaking to “the chief priests and captains of the temple and the elders, who had come against him, saying, ‘Have you come out as against a thief, with swords and clubs?’” John (xviii. 3) speaks of the band as made up in part of the servants of “the chief priests and Pharisees,” &c. So that the whole matter, unquestionably, was managed and executed entirely by the Jews; and the progress of the story shows that they did not call in the aid of the heathen secular power, until the last bloody act required a consummation which the ordinances of Rome forbade to the Jews, and then only did they summon the aid of the governor’s military force. Indeed, they were too careful in preserving their few peculiar secular privileges still left, to give up the smallest power of tyrannizing, permitted by their Roman lords.

The long nights in contrast with the heat of the day.――It should be remembered, that according to a just calculation, these events happened in the month of March, when the air of Palestine is uncomfortably cold. Conder, in his valuable topographical compilation, says, “during the months of May, June, July and August, the sky is for the most part cloudless; but during the night, the earth is moistened with a copious dew. Sultry days are not unfrequently succeeded by intensely cold nights. To these sudden vicissitudes, references are made in the Old Testament. Genesis xxxi. 40: Psalm cxxi. 6.” [Modern Traveler, Palestine, p. 14.]

The cold season, (קור Qor,) immediately following the true winter, (חרפ Hhoreph,) took in the latter part of the Hebrew month Shebeth, the whole of Adar, and the former half of Nisan; that is in modern divisions of time,――from the beginning of February to the beginning of April, according to the Calendarium Palestinae, in the Critica Biblica, Vol. III: but according to Jahn, (Archaeologia Biblica § 21,) from the middle of February to the middle of April, the two estimates varying with the different views about the dates of the ancient Hebrew months.

Galilean, ready to lie as to fight.――This may strike some, as rather too harsh a sentence to pass upon the general character of a whole people, but I believe I am borne out in this seeming abuse, by the steady testimony of most authorities to which I can readily refer. Josephus, whom I have already quoted in witness of their pugnacity, (on page 102,) seems to have been so well pleased with this trait, and also with their “industry and activity,” which he so highly commends in them, as well as the richness of the natural resources of the country, all which characteristics, both of the people and the region, he made so highly available in their defense during the war with the Romans, that he does not think it worth while to criticise their morals, to which, indeed, the season of a bloody war gives a sort of license, that made such defects less prominent, being apparently rather characteristic of the times than the people. But there is great abundance of condemnatory testimony, which shows that the Galileans bore as bad a character among their neighbors, as my severest remark could imply. Numerous passages in the gospels and Acts show this so plainly, as to convey this general impression against them very decidedly. Kuinoel (on Matthew ii. 23) speaks strongly of their proverbially low moral character. “All the Galileans were so despised by the dwellers of Jerusalem and Judea, that when they wished to characterize a man as a low and outcast wretch, they called him a Galilean.” On other passages also, (as on John vii. 52, and Matthew iv. 17,) he repeats this intellectual and moral condemnation in similar terms. Beza and Grotius also, in commenting on these passages, speak of Galilee as “contempta regio.” Rosenmueller also, (on John vii. 52,) says “Nullus, aiunt, Galilaeus unquam a Deo donatus est spiritu prophetico: gens est Deo despecta.” That is, “It was a saying among them, that no Galilean was ever indued with a spirit of prophecy: they are a people despised by God.” I might quote at great length from many commentators to the same effect, but these will serve as a specimen. It should be remarked, however, that the Galileans, though they might be worse than most Jews in their general character, were not very peculiar in their neglect of truth; for from the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to the present moment, the Asiatic races, generally, have been infamous for falsehood, and there are many modern travelers who are ready to testify that an Oriental, generally, when asked an indifferent question, will tell a lie at a venture, unless he sees some special personal advantage likely to result to him from telling the truth.

Yet in minute legal observances, the Galileans were, for the most part, much more rigid in interpreting and following the law of Moses, than the inhabitants of Judea, as is abundantly shown by Lightfoot in his numerous Talmudic quotations, (Centuria Chorographica chapter 86,) where the comparison is, on many accounts, highly favorable to such of the Galileans as pretended to observe and follow the Jewish law at all.

Thy accent betrays thee.――Lightfoot is very rich in happy illustrations of this passage, (Centuria Chorographica chapter 87.) He has drawn very largely here from the Talmudic writers, who are quite amusing in the instances which they give of the dialectic differences between the Galileans and the Judeans. Several of the puns which they give, would not be accounted dull even in modern times, and indeed, the Galilean brogue seems to have been as well marked, and to have given occasion for nearly as much wit as that of Ireland. The Galileans, thus marked by dialect as well as by manners, held about the same place in the estimation of the pure Judean race, as the modern Irish do among those of Saxon-English tongue and blood; and we cannot better conceive of the scorn excited in the refined Jews by the idea of a Galilean prophet with his simple disciples, than by imagining the sort of impression that would be made, by a raw Irishman attempting the foundation of a new sect in London or Boston, with a dozen rough and uneducated workmen for his preachers and main supporters.

The bright light of the fire shining on his face, &c.――This incident is taken from Luke xxii. 56, where the expression in the common version is, “a certain maid saw him as he sat by the fire.” But in the original Greek this last word is φῶς, (phos,) which means “light,” and not “fire;” and it is translated here in this peculiar manner, because it evidently refers to the light of the fire, from its connection with the preceding verse, where it is said that “Peter sat down among them ‘before’ the fire which they had kindled;” the word fire in this passage being in the Greek πυρ, (pur,) which is never translated otherwise. But the unusual translation of the word φῶς, by “fire” in the other verse, though it gives a just idea of Peter’s position, makes a common reader lose sight of the prominent reason of his detection, which was, that the “light of the fire” shone on his face.

In speaking of Peter’s fall and its attendant circumstances, Lampius (in Gospel of John xviii. 17,) seems to be most especially scandalized by the means through which Peter’s ruin was effected. “Sed ab ancilla Cepham vinci, dedecus ejus auget. Quanta inconstantia! Qui in armatos ordines paulo ante irruperat nunc ad vocem levis mulierculae tremit. Si Adamo probrosum, quod a femina conjuge seductus erat, non minus Petro, quod ab ancilla.” That is, “But that Cephas should have been overcome by a girl, increases his disgrace. How great the change! He who, but a little before, had charged an armed host, now trembled at the voice of a silly woman. If it was a shame to Adam, that he had been seduced by his wife, it was no less so to Peter, that he was by a girl.”

The cock crew.――By this circumstance, the time of the denial in all its parts is well ascertained. The first cock-crowing after the first denial marked the hour of midnight, and the second cock-crowing announced the first dawn of day. As Lampius says, “Altera haec erat αλεκτροφῶνια, praenuncia lucis, non tantum in terra, sed et in corde Petri, tenebris spississimis obsepto, mox iterum oriturae.” “This was the second cock-crowing, the herald of light, soon to rise again, not only on earth, but also in the heart of Peter, now overspread with the thickest darkness.”

And thinking thereon, he wept.――This expression is taken from Mark xiv. 72, and accords with our common translation, though very different from many others that have been proposed. The word thus variously rendered, is in the original Greek, επιβαλων, (epibalon,) and bears a great variety of definitions which can be determined only by its connections, in the passages where it occurs. Campbell says, “There are not many words in scripture which have undergone more interpretations than this term;” and truly the array of totally diverse renderings, each ably supported by many of the most learned Biblical scholars that ever lived, is truly appalling to the investigator. (1.) Those who support the common English translation are Kypke, Wetstein, Campbell and Bloomfield, and others quoted by the latter.――(2.) Another translation which has been ably defended is, “he began to weep.” This is the expression in the common German translation, (Martin Luther’s,) “ER HOB AN ZU WEINEN.” It is also the version of the Vulgate, (“Coepit flere,”) the Syriac, Gothic, Persian, and Armenian translations, as Kuinoel and Heinsius observe, who also maintain this rendering.――(3.) Another is, “He proceeded to weep,” (“Addens flevit.”) which is that of Grotius, LeClerc, Simon, Petavius and others.――(4.) Another is, “covering his head, he wept.” This seems to have begun with Theophylact, who has been followed by a great number, among whom Salmasius, Wolf, Suicer, Macknight, and Krebs, are the most prominent.――(5.) Another is, “rushing out, he wept.” This is maintained by Beza, Rosenmueller, Schleusner, Bretschneider and Wahl.――(6.) Another is, “Having looked at him,” (Jesus,) “he wept.” This is the version of Hammond and Palairet.――“Who shall decide when” so many “doctors disagree?” I should feel safest in leaving the reader, as Parkhurst does, to “consider and judge” for himself; but in defense of my own rendering, I would simply observe, that the common English version is that which is most in accordance with the rules of grammar, and is best supported by classic usage, while the second and third are justly objected to by Bloomfield and Campbell as ungrammatical, and unsupported by truly parallel passages, notwithstanding the array of classical quotations by Bp. ♦Bloomfield and others; and the fourth and fifth equally deserve rejection for the very tame and cold expression which they make of it, the fourth also being ungrammatical like the second and third. The sixth definition also may be rejected on grammatical grounds, as well as for lack of authorities and classic usage to support such an elliptical translation.――For long and numerous discussions of all these points, see any or every one of the writers whose names I have cited in this note.

♦ “Blomfield” replaced with “Bloomfield”

CHRIST’S CRUCIFIXION.

From that moment we hear no more of the humbled apostle, till after the fatal consummation of his Redeemer’s sufferings. Yet he must have been a beholder of that awful scene. When the multitude of men and women followed the cross-bearing Redeemer down the vale of Calvary, mourning with tears and groans, Peter could not have sought to indulge in solitary grief. And since the son of Zebedee stood by the cross during the whole agony of Jesus, the other apostles probably had no more cause of fear than John, and Peter also might have stood near, among the crowd, without any danger of being further molested by those whom he had offended, since they now looked on their triumph as too complete to need any minor acts of vengeance, to consummate it over the fragments of the broken Nazarene sect. Still, it was in silent sorrow and horror that he gazed on this sight of woe, and the deep despair which now overwhelmed his bright dreams of glory was no longer uttered in the violent expressions to which his loquacious genius prompted him. He now had time and reason enough to apprehend the painfully literal meaning of the oft-repeated predictions of Christ about these sad events――predictions which once were so wildly unheeded or perversely misconstrued as best suited the ambitious disciples’ hopes of power, which was to be set up over all the civil, religious, and military tyrants of Palestine, and of which they were to be the chief partakers. These hopes all went out with the last breath of their crucified Lord, and when they turned away from that scene of hopeless woe, after taking a last look of the face that had so long been the source of light and truth to them, now fixed and ghastly in the last struggle of a horrible death, they must have felt that the delusive dream of years was now broken, and that they were but forlorn and desperate outcasts in the land which their proud thoughts once aspired to rule. What despairing anguish must have been theirs, as climbing the hillside with sad and slow steps, they looked back from its top down upon the cross, that might still be seen in the dark valley, though dim with the shades of falling night! Their Lord, their teacher, their guide, their friend,――hung there between the heavens and the earth, among thieves, the victim of triumphant tyranny; and they, owing their safety only to the contemptuous forbearance of his murderers, must now, strangers in a strange land, seek a home among those who scorned them.

The VALE of Calvary.――This expression will no doubt excite vast surprise in the minds of many readers, who have all their lives heard and talked of Mount Calvary, without once taking the pains to find out whether there ever was any such place. Such persons will, no doubt, find their amazement still farther increased, on learning that no Mount Calvary is mentioned in any part of the Bible, nor in any ancient author.

The whole account given of this name in the Bible, is in Luke xxiii. 33, where in the common translation it is said that Christ was crucified in “the place called Calvary.” In the parallel passages in the other gospels, the Hebrew name only is given, Golgotha, which means simply “a skull.” (Matthew xxvii. 33: Mark xv. 22: John xix. 17.) This particular place does not seem to be named and designated in any part of the Old Testament, but a very clear idea of its general situation can be obtained, from the consideration of the fact, that there was a place beyond the walls of Jerusalem, where all the dead were buried, and whither all the carcasses of slain animals were carried and left to moulder. This was that part of the valley of the Kedron which was called the valley of Tophet, or the vale of the son of Hinnom. This is often alluded to as the place of dead bodies. (Jeremiah vii. 32, &c.) Besides, all reason and analogy utterly forbid the supposition, that dead carcasses would be piled up on a “mount” or hill, to rot and send their effluvia all over the city in every favorable wind; while on the other hand, a deep valley like that of Hinnom would be a most proper place for carrying such offensive matters. Josephus, in his description of the temple, very particularly notices the fact, that all the blood and filth which flowed from the numerous sacrifices, was conveyed by a subterraneous channel or drain to this very valley.

THE RESURRECTION.

With such feelings they returned to Jerusalem, where the eleven, who were all Galileans, found places of abode with those of Christ’s followers who were dwellers in the city. Here they passed the Sabbath heavily and sorrowfully, no doubt, and their thoughts must now have reverted to their former business, to which it now became each one of them to return, since he who had called them from their avocations could now no more send them forth on his errands of love. On the day after the sabbath, while such thoughts and feelings must still have distressed them, almost as soon as they had risen, some of them received a sudden and surprising call from several of the alarmed women, who having faithfully ministered to all the necessities of Jesus during his life, had been preparing to do the last sad offices to his dead body. The strange story brought by these was, that having gone early in the morning to the sepulcher, in the vale of Calvary, with this great object, they had been horror-struck to find the place in which the body had been deposited on sabbath eve, now empty, notwithstanding the double security of the enormous rock which had closed the mouth of the cave, and the stout guard of Roman soldiers who were posted there by request of the Jews, to prevent expected imposition. On hearing this strange story, Peter and John, followed by Mary of Magdala, started at once for the sepulcher. As they made all possible haste, the youth of John enabled him to reach the place before his older companion; but Peter arrived very soon after him, and, outdoing his companion now in prompt and diligent examination, as he had before been outdone in bodily speed, he immediately made a much more thorough search of the spot, than John in his hurry and alarm had thought of. He had contented himself with looking down into the sepulcher, and having distinctly seen the linen clothes lying empty and alone, he went not in. But when Simon Peter came following him, he went into the sepulcher and saw the linen clothes lie; and the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the other clothes, but folded up carefully in a place by itself. Having thus made a thorough search, as this shows, into every nook and corner, he satisfied himself perfectly that the body had in some way or other been actually removed, and on his reporting this to his companion, he also came down into the cave, and made a similar examination, with the same result. The only conclusion to which these appearances brought their minds, was that some person, probably with the design of further insult and injury, had thus rifled the tomb, and dragged the naked body from its funeral vestments. For, as yet, they understood not the scripture, nor the words of Christ himself, that he must rise from the dead. The two disciples, therefore, overwhelmed with new distress, went away again to their own temporary home, to consult with the rest of the disciples, leaving Mary behind them, lingering in tears about the tomb.

Some time after their return, but before they had been able to explain these strange appearances, Mary followed them home, and as soon as she found them, added to their amazement immensely, by a surprising story of her actually having seen Jesus himself, alive, in bodily form, who had conversed with her, and had distinctly charged her to tell his disciples, and Peter especially, that he would go before them into Galilee, where he would meet them. When she came and told them this, they were mourning and weeping. But when they had heard that he was alive, though the story was confirmed with such a minute detail of attendant circumstances, and though assured by her that she had personally seen him, they yet believed not. So dark were their minds about even the possibility of his resurrection, that afterwards, when two of their own number, who had gone about seven miles into the country, to Emmaus, returned in great haste to Jerusalem, and told the disciples that they too had seen Jesus, and had a long talk with him, they would not believe even this additional proof, but supposed that they, in their credulous expectation, had suffered themselves to be imposed on by some one resembling Jesus in person, who chose to amuse himself by making them believe so palpable a falsehood. Yet some of them, even then, suffering their longing hopes to get the better of their prudent scepticism, were beginning to express their conviction of the fact, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared unto Simon.” Of this last-mentioned appearance, no farther particulars are any where given, though it is barely mentioned in 1 Corinthians xv. 5. and it is impossible to give any certain account of the circumstances. While assembled at their evening meal, and thus discussing the various strange stories brought to their ears in such quick succession, after they had fastened the doors for security against interruption from the Jews, all at once, without any previous notice, Jesus himself appeared standing in the midst, and said, “Peace be unto you.” They seeing the mysterious object of their conversation, so strangely and suddenly present among them, while they were just discussing the possibility of his existence, were much frightened, and in the alarm of the moment supposed that they were beholding a disembodied spirit. But he soon calmed their terrors, and changed their fear into firm and joyful assurance, that he was indeed the same whom they had so long known, and to prove that the body now before them was the same which they had two days before seen fastened expiring to the cross, he showed them his hands, his feet, and his side, with the very marks which the spear and nails had made in them. And while they yet could not soberly believe for joy, and stood wondering, he, to show them that his body still performed the functions of life, and required the same support as theirs, asked them for a share of the food on the table, and taking some from their hands, he ate it before them. He then upbraided them with their unbelief and stupidity in not believing those who had seen him after he was risen from the dead. He recalled to their minds his former repeated warnings of these very events, literally as they had been brought to pass. He said to them, “These are the words which I spake to you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.” Then opened he their understandings, that they might understand the scriptures. Then it was, that at last burst upon them the light so long shut out; they knew their own past blindness, and they saw in the clear distinctness of reality, all his repeated predictions of his humiliation, suffering, death, resurrection, and of their cowardice and desertion, brought before them in one glance, and made perfectly consistent with each other and with the result. So that, amid the rejoicings of new hope born from utter despair, at the same time expired their vain and idle notion of earthly glory and power under his reign. Their Master had passed through all this anguish and disgrace, and come back to them from the grave; yet, though thus vindicating his boundless power, he did not pretend to use the least portion of it in avenging on his foes all the cruelties which he had suffered from their hands. They could not hope, then, for a better fate, surely, than his; they were to expect only similar labors, rewarded with similar sufferings and death.

THE MEETING ON THE LAKE.

After this meeting with him, they saw him again repeatedly, but no incident, relating particularly to the subject of this memoir, occurred on either of these occasions, except at the scene on lake Tiberias, so fully and graphically given by John, in the last chapter of his gospel. It seems that at that time, the disciples had, in accordance with the earliest command of Jesus after his resurrection, gone into Galilee to meet him there. The particular spot where this incident took place was probably near Capernaum and Bethsaida, among their old familiar haunts. Peter at this time residing at his home in Capernaum, it would seem, very naturally, while waiting for the visit which Christ had promised them, sought to pass the time as pleasantly as possible in his old business, from which he had once been called to draw men into the grasp of the gospel. With him at this time, were Thomas, or Didymus, and Nathanael, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples, whether of the eleven or not, is not known. On his telling them that he was going out a fishing, they, allured also by old habits and a desire to amuse themselves in a useful way, declared that they also would go with him. They went forth accordingly, and taking the fishing-boat, pushed off in the evening as usual, the night being altogether the best time for catching the fish, because the lake not then being constantly disturbed by passing vessels, the fish are less disposed to keep themselves in the depths of the waters, but feeling bolder in the stillness, rise to the surface within reach of the watchful fisherman. But on this occasion, from something peculiar in the state of the air or water, the fish did not come within the range of the net; and that night they caught nothing. Having given up the fruitless effort, they were towards morning heavily working in towards the shore, and were about a hundred yards from it, when they noticed some person who stood on the land; but in the gray light of morning his person could not be distinguished. This man called to them in a friendly voice, as soon as they came within hailing distance, crying out in a free and familiar way, “Boys! have you anything to eat?” To which they answered “No.” The unknown friend then called to them in a confident tone, telling them to cast the net on the right side of the ship, and they should find plenty. They cast accordingly, and on closing and drawing the net, were not able to pull it in, for the weight of the fishes taken in it. In a moment flashed on the ready mind of John, the remembrance of the former similar prodigy wrought at the word of Jesus near the same spot, and he immediately recognized in the benevolent stranger, his Lord. Turning to Simon, therefore, who had been too busy tugging at the net to think of the meaning of the miracle, he said to him, “It is the Lord.” Conviction burst on him with equal certainty as on his companion, and giving way to his natural headlong promptitude in action, he leaped at once into the water, after girding his great coat around him, and by partly swimming and partly wading through the shallows, he soon reached the shore, where his loved and long-expected Master was. At the same time, with as little delay as possible, the rest of them, leaving their large vessel probably on account of the shallows along that part of the coast, came ashore in a little skiff, dragging the full net behind them. In this they showed their considerate prudence, for had they all in the first transport of impatience followed Peter, and left boat and net together at that critical moment, the net would have loosened and the fishes have escaped; thus making the kind miracle of no effect by their carelessness. As soon as they were come to land they saw Jesus placed composedly by a fire of coals which he had made, and on which he had designed to cook for their common entertainment, some fish previously caught, dished with some bread. Jesus without ceremony ordered them to come and bring some of the fish they had just caught. Simon Peter now mindful of his late heedless desertion of his comrades in the midst of their worst labor, stepped forward zealously, and, unassisted, dragged the heavy net out of the water; and though on opening it they found one hundred and fifty-three large fishes in it, notwithstanding the weight, the net was not broken. When they had obeyed his command, and supplied the place of the fish already cooked on the fire by fresh ones from the net, Jesus in a kind and hearty tone invited them to come and breakfast with him on what he had prepared. The disciples, notwithstanding the readiness with which they had come ashore to their Master, still seem to have felt somewhat shy; not, however, because they had any solid doubt as to his really being the person they had supposed him, for no man durst say to him “who art thou?” knowing him to be the Lord. Perhaps it was not yet full day-light, which may account for their shyness and want of readiness in accepting his invitation. But Jesus, in order fully to assure them, comes and takes bread, and puts it into their hands, with a share of fish likewise to each. They now took hold heartily, and without scruple sat down around the fire to breakfast with him. So when they had done breakfast, as men are usually best disposed to be social after eating, he on this occasion addressed himself to Peter in words of reproof, warning and commission. He first inquired of him, “Simon, son of Jonah, lovest thou me more than these?” To this Peter readily replied, “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.” Jesus then said to him, “Feed my lambs.” Peter had learned some humility by his late fall from truth and courage. Before, he had boldly professed a regard for Christ, altogether surpassing in extent and permanency the affection which the other disciples felt for him, and had, in the fullness of his self-sufficiency, declared that though all the rest should forsake him, yet would he abide by him, and follow him even to prison and to death. But now that high self-confidence had received a sad fall, and the remembrance of his late disgraceful conduct was too fresh in his mind to allow him any more to assume that tone of presumption. He therefore modestly confined his expression of attachment to the simple and humble reference to the all-knowing heart of his Divine Master, to which he solemnly and affectingly appealed as his faithful witness in this assertion of new and entire devotion to him, whom he had once so weakly denied and deserted. No more high-toned boastings――no more arrogant assertion of superior pretensions to fidelity and firmness; but a humble, submissive, beseeching utterance of devoted love, that sought no comparisons to enhance its merit, but in lowly confidence appealed to the searcher of hearts as the undeceivable testifier of his honesty and truth. Nor was his deep and renewed affection, thus expressed, disregarded; but Jesus accepting his purified self-sacrifice, at once in the same words both offered him the consoling pledge of his restoration to grace, and again charged him with the high commission, which, while it proved his Lord’s confidence, gave him the means of showing to all mankind the sincerity and permanency of his change of heart. From the words of the Messiah’s reply, he learned that the solid proof of his deserved restoration should be seen in his devotion to the work which that Messiah had begun; that by guiding, guarding and feeding the young and tender of Christ’s flock, when left again without their Master, he might set forth his new love. Already had Jesus, before that sad trial of their souls, in his parting, warning words to his near and dear ones, told them, “If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love. Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” And here, in practical comment on that former precept, did he give his restored apostle this test of unchanged love. So harmoniously and beautifully does the sacred record make precept answer and accord with precept. In the minute detail of mere common incident, we may wander and stagger bewildered among insignificant differences and difficulties; but the rule of action, the guide of life, leads steadily and clearly through every maze, uneffaced by the changes of order, time and place.

“Boys.”――The Greek word here (παιδια paidia) has a neuter termination, and is applicable to persons of both sexes, like the English word “children,” which is here given in the common version. But Jerome’s Latin translation (the Vulgate) gives “pueri,” “boys,” as the just meaning in this place, and I have preferred it, as more in accordance with our usual forms of familiar address in such cases, than the one given in the common English version.

Great coat.――This I consider as giving a better idea of the garment called in the Greek επενδυτην, (ependuten,) which is derived from a verb which means “putting on over another garment,” and is of course described with more justice to the original by the English “great-coat,” or “over-coat,” than by “fisher’s coat,” as in the common translation. I suppose it was a rough outer dress designed as a protection against rain and spray, and which he put on in such a way, that he might wade in it without the inconvenience of its hanging about his legs. It must have been a sort of “over all,” that he had pulled off while at work, and put on to wade in the water; for the verb διαζωννυμι (diazonnumi) has also that meaning as well as “gird about,” and his object in thus “putting on his over alls” may have been to keep himself dry, by covering both his legs and body from the water; for it may have come down over the legs like a sort of outside trowsers, and being tied tight, would make a very comfortable protection against cold water. See Poole and Kuinoel on this passage, John xxi. 7.

Luther in his German translation has very queerly expressed this word, “GUERTETE ER DAS HEMDE UM SICH,” “he girt his shirt about him;” being led into this error probably, by taking the following sentence in too strong a sense, concluding that he was perfectly naked. But I have already alluded (note on page 101) to the peculiar force of this word in the Bible, nor can it mean anything but that he was without his outer garments; and it implies no more indecent exposure than in the case of Christ, when laying aside his garments to wash his disciples’ feet. Besides, I have shown that the etymology of επενδυτης (ependutes) will not allow any meaning to it, but that of an “outer garment” worn over other clothes.

A little skiff.――The Greek word here is πλοιαριον, (ploiarion,) and means “a small boat,” and is the diminution of πλοιον, (ploion,) the word used in the third verse of the same chapter, as the name of the larger vessel in which they sailed, and which probably drew too much water to come close to the shore in this part of the lake, where it was probably shallow, so as to make it necessary for them to haul the net ashore with this little skiff, which seems to have been a sort of drag-boat to the larger vessel, kept for landing in such places.

“Come and BREAKFAST.”――This is certainly a vast improvement on the common English version, which here gives the word “dine.” For it must strike an ordinary reader as a very early dinner at that time of the morning, (John xix. 4,) and what settles the question is, that the Greek word here is αριστησατε, (aristesate,) which primarily and almost always was applied only to the eating of the earliest meal, or breakfast, being derived from αριστον, “breakfast,” the first meal in the day, according to Homer and Xenophon.

Many other unrecorded words of wisdom and love must have been spoken at this time, in the course of which Jesus again took occasion to put this meaning and moving question, “Simon, son of Jonah, lovest thou me?” The first answer of Peter had sufficiently shown, that he had no more of that disposition to claim a merit superior to his fellow disciples, and Jesus did not again urge upon him a comparison with them, but merely renewed the inquiry in a simple, absolute form. Again Peter earnestly expressed his love, with the same appeal to Christ’s own knowledge of his heart for the testimony of his loyalty, “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.” He saith to him, “Feed my sheep.” If thou lovest me, show that love, by supplying the place of my earthly care, to those whom I love. Love and feed those for whom I have bled and died.――What could be more simple and clear than this question? What more earnest and honest than the answer? What more abiding than the impression made by this charge? Yet did not the far-seeing Savior desist from trying his disciple with these questions. Once more was it solemnly repeated, “Simon, son of Jonah, lovest thou me?” Peter was grieved that he asked him the third time, “lovest thou me?” He saw at last the reproachful meaning of the inquiry. Three times had this same apostle, by his false-hearted denial, renounced all love and interest in his Master, and three times did that injured and forgiving Master call upon him to pledge again his forfeited faith and affection. He thus pointed out the past weakness of Peter, and showed the means of maintaining and insuring future fidelity. Peter again still more movingly avowed his honest attachment, half remonstrating at this repetition of the question by one who must already know the heart of the answerer too fully for words to inform him anew.――“Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” He now passed on to a new prediction of his future fortunes, in the service to which he had in these words devoted him, making known to him the earthly reward which his services would at last receive. “I solemnly say to thee, when thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” This he said, to signify to him by what sort of death he should glorify God. That is, he in these words plainly foretold to him that he should, through all his toils and dangers in his Master’s service, survive to old age; and he also alludes to the loss of free agency in his own movements; but the circumstances are so darkly alluded to, that the particular mode of his death could never be made to appear clearly from the prediction. The particular meaning of the expressions of this prophecy, can of course be best shown in connection with the circumstances of his death, as far as they are known; and to that part of his history the explanations are deferred.

After this solemn prediction, he said to him, “Follow me.” This command seems not to have any connection, as some have supposed, with the preceding words of Jesus referring to his future destiny, but to be a mere direction to follow him on his return from the lake, either back to Capernaum, or to the mountain appointed for his meeting with the great body of his disciples. From what comes after this in the context, indeed, this would seem to be a fair construction; for it is perfectly plain that as Christ said these words, he turned and walked away; and that not only Peter followed at the direction of Christ, but also John of his own accord,――and it is perfectly natural to suppose that the greater part of the disciples would choose to walk after Jesus, when they had met under such delightful and unexpected circumstances; only leaving somebody to take care of the boats and fish. Peter following his Lord as he was commanded, turned around to see who was next to him, and seeing John, was instantly seized with a desire to know the future fortunes of this apostle, who shared with him the highest confidence of his Master, and was even before him in his personal affections. He accordingly asked, “Lord, and what shall this man do?” or more properly, “What shall become of this man?” But the answer of Jesus was not at all calculated to satisfy his curiosity, though it seemed, in checking his inquiries, to intimate darkly, that this young apostle would outlive him, and be a witness of the events which had been predicted in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem, and the second coming of Christ in judgment on his foes of the Jewish nation. This interesting scene here abruptly closes,――the Savior and his followers passing off this spot to the places where he remained with them during the rest of the few days of his appearance after his resurrection.

The mountain appointed for his meeting, &c.――It would be hard to settle the locality of this mountain with so few data as we have, but a guess or two may be worth offering. Grotius concludes it to have been Mount Tabor, “where,” as he says, “Jesus formerly gave the three a taste of his majesty;” but I have fully shown, on much better authority, that Tabor was not the mount of the transfiguration; nor can we value highly the fact, that “habet veteris famae auctoritatem,” for we have abundant reason to think that in such matters, “the authority of ancient tradition” is not worth much.

There are better reasons, however, for believing Tabor to have been the mountain in Galilee, where Christ met his disciples. These are, the fact that it was near the lake where he seems to have been just before, and was in the direction of some of his former places of resort, and was near the homes of his disciples. None of the objections that I brought against its being the mount of the transfiguration, can bear against this supposition, but on similar grounds I now agree with the common notion.

Paulus suggests Mount Carmel, as a very convenient place for such a meeting of so many persons who wished to assemble unseen, it being full of caverns, in which they might assemble out of view; while Tabor is wholly open (GANZ OFFEN) and exposed to view; for it is evident that all the exhibitions of Christ to his disciples after his resurrection, were very secret. For this reason Rosenmueller remarks, that Jesus probably appointed some mountain which was lonely and destitute of inhabitants, for the meeting. But Tabor is, I should think, sufficiently retired for the privacy which was so desirable, and certainly is capable of accommodating a great number of persons on its top, so that they could not be seen from below. The objection to Carmel is, that it was a great distance off, on the sea coast, and should therefore be rejected for the same reasons which caused us to reject Tabor for the transfiguration.

THE ASCENSION.

The only one of his other interviews with them, to which we can follow them, is the last, when he stood with them at Bethany, on the eastern slope of Mount Olivet, about a mile from Jerusalem, where he passed away from their eyes to the glory now consummated by the complete events of his life and death. Being there with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promised Comforter from the Father, of which he had so often spoken to them. “For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” Herein he expressed a beautiful figure, powerfully impressive to them, though to most common perceptions perhaps, not so obvious. In the beginning of those bright revelations of the truth which had been made to that age, John, the herald and precursor of a greater preacher, had made a bold, rough outset in the great work of evangelization. The simple, striking truths which he brought forward, were forcibly expressed in the ceremony which he introduced as the sign of conversion; as the defilements of the body were washed away in the water, so were the deeper pollutions of the soul removed by the inward cleansing effected by the change which followed the full knowledge and feeling of the truth. The gross and tangible liquid which he made the sign of conversion, was also an emblem of the rude and palpable character of the truths which he preached; so too, the final token which the apostles of Jesus, when at last perfectly taught and equipped, should receive as the consecrated and regenerated leaders of the gospel host, was revealed in a form and in a substance as uncontrollably and incalculably above the heavy water, as their knowledge, and faith, and hope were greater than the dim foreshadowing given by the baptist, of good things to come. Water is a heavy fluid, capable of being seen, touched, tasted, weighed and poured; it has all the grosser and more palpable properties of matter. But the air is, even to us, and seemed more particularly to the ancients, beyond the apprehension of most of the senses, by which the properties of bodies are made known to man. We cannot see it, or at least are not commonly conscious of its visibility; yet we feel its power to terrify, and to comfort, and see the evidences of its might in the ruins of many of the works of man and of nature, which oppose its movements. The sources of its power too, seem to a common eye, to be within itself, and when it rises in storms and whirlwind, its motions seem like the capricious volitions of a sentient principle within it. But water, whenever it moves, seems only the inanimate mass which other agents put in motion. The awful dash of the cataract is but the continued fall of a heavy body impelled by gravity, and even “when the myriad voices of ocean roar,” the mighty cause of the storm is the unseen power of the air, which shows its superiority in the scale of substances, by setting in terrible and overwhelming motion the boundless deep, that, but for this viewless and resistless agency, would forever rest, a level plain, without a wrinkle on its face. To the hearers of Christ more particularly, the air in its motions, was a most mysterious agency,――a connecting link between powers material and visible, and those too subtle for any thing but pure thought to lay hold of. “The wind blew where it would, and they heard the sound thereof, but could not tell whence it came or whither it went.” They might know that it blew from the north toward the south, or from the east toward the west, or the reverse of these; but the direction from which it came could not point out to them the place where it first arose, in its unseen power, to pass over the earth,――a source of ceaseless wonder, to the learned and unlearned alike. This was the mighty and mysterious agency which Jesus Christ now chose as a fit emblem to represent in language, to his apostles, that power from on high so often promised. Yet clear as was this image, and often as he had warned them of the nature of the duties for which this power was to fit them,――in spite of all the deep humiliation which their proud earthly hopes had lately suffered, there were still in their hearts, deep-rooted longings after the restoration of the ancient dominion of Israel, in which they once firmly expected to share. So their question on hearing this charge and renewed promise of power hitherto unknown, was, “Lord, wilt thou not at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Would not this be a satisfactory completion of that triumph just achieved over the grave, to which the vain malice of his foes had sent him? Could his power to do it be now be doubted? Why then, should he hesitate at what all so earnestly and confidently hoped? But Jesus was not to be called down from heaven to earth on such errands, nor detained from higher glories by such prayers. He knew that this last foolish fancy of earthly dominion was to pass away from their minds forever, as soon as they had seen the event for which he had now assembled them. He merely said to them, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has appointed, according to his own judgment.” Jesus knew that, though the minds of his disciples were not then sufficiently prepared to apprehend the nature of his heavenly kingdom, yet they, after his departure, becoming better instructed and illuminated by a clearer light of knowledge, would of their own accord, lay aside that preconceived notion about his earthly reign, and would then become fully impressed with those things of which he had long before warned them, while they were still in the enjoyment of his daily teachings. Being now about to bid them farewell,――lest by entirely cutting off their present hope, he might for a time overwhelm them,――he so moderated his answer, as not to extinguish utterly all hope of the kingdom expected by them, nor yet give them reason to think that such a dominion as they hoped for, was to be established. He therefore, to their inquiries whether he would at that time restore the ancient kingdom of Israel, replied that it was not for them to know the times which the Father had reserved in his own counsels, for the completion of that event. But he went on to inform them of something which was for them to know. “You shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost shall have come upon you; and you shall be witnesses of these things for me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and even to the farthest parts of the earth.” And when he had spoken these things, he was taken away from them as they were looking at him, for a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked earnestly towards heaven, as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, and said, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven.” They now understood that they had parted from their loved Master forever, in earthly form; yet the consolations afforded by this last promise of the attendant spirits, were neither few nor small. To bring about that bright return, in whose glories they were to share, was the great task to which they devoted their lives; and they went back to Jerusalem, sorrowful indeed for the removal of their great guide and friend, but not sorrowing as those who have no hope.

To Bethany.――This place was on the Mount of Olives, probably near its summit, and perhaps within sight of Jerusalem. See notes on pp. 90 and 95.

Here ceased their course of instruction under their Divine Master; laying down their character as Disciples, they now took up the higher dignity, responsibility and labors of Apostles. Here too ceases the record of “Peter’s discipleship;”――no longer a learner and follower of any one on earth, he is exalted to the new duties and dangers of the Apostleship, of which the still more interesting story here begins; and he must henceforth bear the new character and title of “Peter the teacher and leader.”

II. PETER’S APOSTLESHIP;
OR
PETER THE TEACHER AND LEADER.

THE PENTECOST.

After the ascension, all the apostles seem to have removed their families and business from Galilee, and to have made Jerusalem their permanent abode. From this time no more mention is made of any part of Galilee as the home of Peter or his friends; and even the lake, with its cities, so long hallowed by the presence and the deeds of the son of man, was thenceforth entirely left to the low and vulgar pursuits which the dwellers of that region had formerly followed upon it, without disturbance from the preaching and the miracles of the Nazarene. The apostles finding themselves in Jerusalem the object of odious, or at best of contemptuous notice from the great body of the citizens, being known as Galileans and as followers of the crucified Jesus, therefore settled themselves in such a manner as would best secure their comfortable and social subsistence. When they came back to the city from Galilee, (having parted from their Master on the Olive mount, about a mile off,) they went up into a chamber in a private house, where all the eleven passed the whole time, together with their wives, and the women who had followed Jesus, and with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brethren. These all continued with one accord in this place, with prayer and supplication, at the same time no doubt comforting and instructing one another in those things, of which a knowledge would be requisite or convenient for the successful prosecution of their great enterprise, on which they were soon to embark. In the course of these devout and studious pursuits, the circumstances and number of those enrolled by Christ in the apostolic band, became naturally a subject of consideration and discussion, and they were particularly led to notice the gap made among them, by the sad and disgraceful defection of Judas Iscariot. This deficiency the Savior had not thought of sufficient importance to need to be filled by a nomination made by him, during the brief period of his stay among them after his resurrection, when far more weighty matters called his attention. It was their wish however, to complete their number as originally constituted by their Master, and in reference to the immediate execution of this pious and wise purpose, Peter, as their leader, forcibly and eloquently addressed them, when not less than one hundred and twenty were assembled. The details of his speech, and the conclusion of the business, are deferred to the account of the lives of those persons who were the subjects of the transaction. In mentioning it now, it is only worth while to notice, that Peter here stands most distinctly and decidedly forward, as the director of the whole affair, and such was his weight in the management of a matter so important, that his words seem to have had the force of law; for without further discussion, commending the decision to God in prayer, they adopted the action suggested by him, and filled the vacancy with the person apparently designated by God. In the faithful and steady confidence that they were soon to receive, according to the promise of their risen Lord, some new and remarkable gift from above, which was to be to them at once the seal of their divine commission, and their most important equipment for their new duties, the apostles waited in Jerusalem until the great Jewish feast of the pentecost. This feast is so named from a Greek word meaning “fiftieth,” because it always came on the fiftieth day after the day of the passover feast. Jesus had finally disappeared from his disciples about forty days after his resurrection,――that is forty-two days after the great day of the passover, which will leave just one week for the time which passed between the ascension and the day of pentecost. These seven days the apostolic assembly had passed in such pursuits as might form the best preparation for the great event they were expecting. Assembled in their sacred chamber, they occupied themselves in prayer and exhortation. At length the great feast arrived, on which the Jews, according to the special command of Moses, commemorated the day, on which of old God gave the law to their fathers, on Mount Sinai, amid thunder and lightning. On this festal occasion, great numbers of Jews who had settled in different remote parts of the world, were in the habit of coming back to their father-land, and their holy city, to renew their devotion in the one great temple of their ancient faith, there to offer up the sacrifices of gratitude to their fathers’ God, who had prospered them even in strange lands among the heathen. The Jews were then, as now, a wandering, colonizing people wherever they went, yet remained perfectly distinct in manners, dress and religion, never mixing in marriage with the people among whom they dwelt, but every where bringing up a true Israelitish race, to worship the God of Abraham with a pure religion, uncontaminated by the idolatries around them. There was hardly any part of the world, where Roman conquest had planted its golden eagles, to which Jewish mercantile enterprise did not also push its adventurous way, in the steady pursuit of gainful traffic. The three grand divisions of the world swarmed with these faithful followers of the true law of God, and from the remotest regions, each year, gathered a fresh host of pilgrims, who came from afar, many for the first time, to worship the God of their fathers in their fathers’ land. Amid this fast gathering throng, the feeble band of the apostles, unknown and unnoticed, were assembled in their usual place of meeting, and employed in their usual devout occupations. Not merely the twelve, but all the friends of Christ in Jerusalem, to the number of one hundred and twenty, were here awaiting, in prayer, the long promised Comforter from the Father. All of a sudden, the sound of a mighty wind, rushing upon the building, roared around them, and filled the apartments with its appalling noise, rousing them from the religious quiet to which they had given themselves up. Nor were their ears alone made sensible of the approach of some strange event. In the midst of the gathering gloom which the wind-driven clouds naturally spread over all, flashes of light were seen by them, and lambent flames playing around, lighted at last upon them. At once the anxious prayers with which they had awaited the coming of the Comforter, were hushed: they needed no longer to urge the fulfilment of their Master’s word; for in the awful rush of that mighty wind, they recognized the voice they had so long expected, and in that solemn sound, they knew the tone of the promised Spirit. The approach of that feast-day must have raised their expectations of this promised visitation to the highest pitch. They knew that this great national festival was celebrated in commemoration of the giving of the old law on Mount Sinai to their fathers, through Moses, and that no occasion could be more appropriate or impressive for the full revelation of the perfect law which the last restorer of Israel had come to teach and proclaim. The ancient law had been given on Sinai, in storm and thunder and fire; when therefore, they heard the roar of the mighty wind about them, the firm conviction of the approach of their new revelation must have possessed their minds at once. They saw too, the dazzling flash of flame among them, and perceived, with awe, strange masses of light, in the shape of tongues, settling with a tremulous motion on the head of each of them. The tempest and the fire were the symbols of God’s presence on Sinai of old, and from the same signs joined with these new phenomena, they now learned that the aid of God was thus given to equip them with the powers and energies needful for their success in the wider publication of the doctrine of Christ. With these tokens of a divine presence around them, their feelings and thoughts were raised to the highest pitch of joy and exultation; and being conscious of a new impulse working in them, they were seized with a sacred glow of enthusiasm, so that they gave utterance to these new emotions in words as new to them as their sensations, and spoke in different languages, praising God for this glorious fulfilment of his promise, as this holy influence inspired them.

An upper room.――The location of this chamber has been the subject of a vast quantity of learned discussion, a complete view of which would far exceed my limits. The great point mooted has been, whether this place was in a private house or in the temple. The passage in Luke xxiv. 53, where it is said that the apostles “were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God,” has led many to suppose that the same writer, in this continuation of the gospel story, must have had reference to some part of the temple, in speaking of the upper room as the place of their abode. In the Acts ii. 46, also, he has made a similar remark, which I can best explain when that part of the story is given. The learned Krebsius (Observationes in Novvm Testamentvm e Flavio Iosepho, pp. 162‒164) has given a fine argument, most elegantly elaborated with quotations from Josephus, in which he makes it apparently quite certain from the grammatical construction, and from the correspondence of terms with Josephus’s description of the temple, that this upper room must have been there. It is true, that Josephus mentions particularly a division of the inner temple, on the upper side of it, under the name of ὑπερῳον, (hyperoon,) which is the word used by Luke in this passage, but Krebsius in attempting to prove this to be a place in which the disciples might be constantly assembled, has made several errors in the plan of the later temple, which I have not time to point out, since there are other proofs of the impossibility of their meeting there, which will take up all the space I can bestow on the subject. Krebsius has furthermore overlooked entirely the following part of the text in Acts i. 13, where it is said, that when they returned to Jerusalem, “they went up into an upper room where they had been staying,” in Greek, οὑ ησαν καταμενοντες, (hou esan katamenontes,) commonly translated “they abode.” The true force of this use of the present participle with the verb of existence is repeated action, as is frequently true of the imperfect of that verb in such combinations. Kuinoel justly gives it this force,――“ubi commorari sive convenire solebant.” But the decisive proof against the notion that this room was in the temple, is this. In specifying the persons there assembled, it is said, (Acts i. 14,) that the disciples were assembled there with the women of the company. Now it is most distinctly specified in all descriptions of the temple, that the women were always limited to one particular division of the temple, called the “women’s court.” Josephus is very particular in specifying this important fact in the arrangements of the temple. (Jewish War, V. 5. 2.) “A place on this part of the temple specially devoted to the religious use of the women, being entirely separated from the rest by a wall, it was necessary that there should be another entrance to this. * * * There were on the other sides of this place two gates, one on the north and one on the south, through which the court of the women was entered; for women were not allowed to enter through any others.” (Also V. 5, 6.) “But women, even when pure, were not allowed to pass within the limit before mentioned.” This makes it evident beyond all doubt, that women could never be allowed to assemble with men in this upper chamber within the forbidden precincts, to which indeed it was impossible for them to have access, entering the temple through two private doors, and using only one court, which was cut off by an impenetrable wall, from all communication with any other part of the sacred inclosure.

This seems to me an argument abundantly sufficient to upset all that has ever been said in favor of the location of this upper apartment within the temple; and my only wonder is, that so many learned critics should have perplexed themselves and others with various notions about the matter, when this single fact is so perfectly conclusive.

The upper room, then, must have been in some private house, belonging to some wealthy friend of Christ, who gladly received the apostles within his walls. Every Jewish house had in its upper story a large room of this sort, which served as a dining-room, (Mark xiv. 15: Luke xxii. 12,) a parlor, or an oratory for private or social worship. (See Bloomfield’s Annotations, Acts i. 13.) Some have very foolishly supposed this to have been the house of Simon the leper, (Matthew xxvi. 6,) but his house was in Bethany, and therefore by no means answers the description of their entering it after their return to Jerusalem from Bethany. Others, with more probability, the house of Nicodemus, the wealthy Pharisee; but the most reasonable supposition, perhaps, is that of Beza, who concludes this to have been the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, which we know to have been afterwards used as a place of religious assembly. (Acts xii. 12.) Others have also, with some reason, suggested that this was no doubt the same “upper room furnished,” in which Jesus had eaten the last supper with his disciples. These two last suppositions are not inconsistent with each other.

Tongues of fire.――This is a classic Hebrew expression for “a lambent flame,” and is the same used by Isaiah, (v. 24,) where the Hebrew is לשון אש (leshon esh,) “a tongue of fire;”――commonly translated, simply “fire.” In that passage there seems to be a sort of poetical reference to the tongue, as an organ used in devouring food, (“as the tongue of fire devoureth the stubble,”) but there is abundant reason to believe that the expression was originally deduced from the natural similitude of a rising flame to a tongue, being pointed and flexible, as well as waving in its outlines, and playing about with a motion like that of licking, whence the Latin expression of “a lambent flame,”――from lambo, “lick.” Wetstein aptly observes, that a flame of fire, in the form of a divided tongue, was a sign of the gift of tongues, corresponding to the Latin expression bilinguis, and the Greek διγλωσος, (diglossos,) “two-tongued,” as applied to persons skilled in a plurality of languages. He also with his usual classic richness, gives a splendid series of quotations illustrative of this idea of a lambent flame denoting the presence of divine favor, or inspiration imparted to the person about whom the symbol appeared. Bloomfield copies these quotations, and also draws illustrations in point, from other sources.

My own opinion of the nature of this whole phenomenon is that of Michaelis, Rosenmueller, Paulus and Kuinoel,――that a tremendous tempest actually descended at the time, bringing down clouds highly charged with electricity, which was not discharged in the usual mode, by thunder and lightning, but quietly streamed from the air to the earth, and wherever it passed from the air upon any tolerable conductor, it made itself manifest in the darkness occasioned by the thick clouds, in the form of those pencils of rays, with which every one is familiar who has seen electrical experiments in a dark room; and which are well described by the expression, “cloven tongues of fire.” The temple itself being covered and spiked with gold, the best of all conductors, would quietly draw off a vast quantity of electricity, which, passing through the building, would thus manifest itself on those within the chambers of the temple, if we may suppose the apostles to have been there assembled. These appearances are very common in peculiar electrical conditions of the air, and there are many of my readers, no doubt, who have seen them. At sea, they are often seen at night on the ends of the masts and yards, and are well known to sailors by the name which the Portuguese give them, “corpos santos,”――“holy bodies,”――connecting them with some popish superstitions. A reference to the large quotations given by Wetstein and Bloomfield, will show that this display at the pentecost is not the only occasion on which these electric phenomena were connected with spiritual mysteries. No one would have the slightest hesitation in explaining these passages in other credible historians, by this physical view; and I know no rule in logic or common sense,――no religious doctrine or theological principle, which compels me to explain two precisely similar phenomena of this character, in two totally different ways, because one of them is found in a heathen history, and the other in a sacred and inspired record. The vehicle thus chosen was not unworthy of making the peculiar manifestation of the presence of God, and of the outpouring of his spirit;――nor was it an unprecedented mode of his display. The awful thunder which shook old Sinai, and the lightnings which dazzled the eyes of the amazed Israelites, were real thunder and lightning, nor will an honest and reverent interpretation of the sacred text allow us to pronounce them acoustical and optical delusions. If they were real thunder and lightning, they were electrical discharges, and cannot be conceived of in any other way. Why should we hesitate at the notion that He who “holds the winds in the hollow of his hand,” and “makes a way for the lightning of thunder,” should use these same awful instruments as the symbols of his presence, to strike awe into the hearts of men, making the physical the token of the moral power; and accomplishing the deep prophetic meaning of the solemn words of the Psalmist, “He walks upon the wings of the wind――he makes the winds his messengers――the lightnings his ministers.” For this is the just translation of Psalm civ. 4. See Lowth, Clarke, Whitby, Calmet, Thomson, &c. But Jaspis, Bloomfield, Stuart, &c., support the common version.

Were all assembled, &c.――It has been questioned whether this term, “all,” refers to the one hundred and twenty, or merely to the apostles, who are the persons mentioned in the preceding verse, (Acts i. 26, ii. 1,) and to whom it might be grammatically limited. There is nothing to hinder the supposition that all the brethren were present, and Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine and other ancient fathers, confirm this view. The place in which they met, need not, of course, be the same where the events of the preceding chapter occurred, but was very likely some one of the thirty apartments, (οικοι, oikoi, Josephus, Antiquities, viii. 3. 2,) which surrounded the inner court of the temple, where the apostles might very properly assemble at the third hour, which was the hour of morning prayer, and which is shown in verse 15, to have been the time of this occurrence. Besides, it is hard to conceive of this vast concourse of persons (verse 41,) as occurring in any other place than the temple, in whose vast and thronged courts it might easily happen, for Josephus says “that the apartments around the courts opened into each other,” ησαν δια αλληλων, “and there were entrances to them on both sides, from the gate of the temple,” thus affording a ready access on any sudden noise attracting attention towards them.

Foreign Jews staying in Jerusalem.――The phrase “dwelling,” (Acts ii. 5,) in the Greek κατοικουντες, (katoikountes,) does not necessarily imply a fixed residence, as Wolf and others try to make it appear, but is used in the LXX. in the sense of temporary residence; and seems here to be applied to foreign Jews, who chose to remain there, from the passover to the pentecost, but whose home was not in Jerusalem; for the context speaks of them as dwellers in Mesopotamia, &c. (verse 9.) A distinction is also made between two sorts of Jews among those who had come from Rome,――the Jews by birth and the proselytes, (verse 10,) showing that the Mosaic faith was flourishing, and making converts from the Gentiles there.

PETER’S SERMON.

This wonderful event took place in the chamber of the temple, which they had used as a place of worship ever since their Lord’s departure. As the whole temple was now constantly thronged with worshipers, who were making their offerings on this great feast day, this room in which the followers of Jesus were devoutly employed, must, as well as all the others, have been visited by new comers: for the mere prior occupation of the room by the disciples, could not entitle them to exclude from a public place of that kind any person who might choose to enter. The multitude of devotees who filled all parts of the temple, soon heard of what was going on in this apartment, and came together to see and hear for themselves. When the inquiring crowds reached the spot, they found the followers of Christ breaking out in loud expressions of praise to God, and of exhortation, each in such a language as best suited his powers of expression, not confining themselves to the Hebrew, which in all places of public worship, and especially in Jerusalem on the great festivals, was the only language of devotion. Among the crowds that thronged to the place of this strange occurrence, were Jews from many distant regions, whose language or dialects were as widely various as the national names which they bore. Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites,――those who dwelt in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt and Africa, and some even from distant Rome, were all among those who heard the spirit-moving language of the disciples. Some of the more scrupulous among these foreign Jews, were probably, notwithstanding their amazement, somewhat offended at this profanation of worship, in the public use of these heathen languages for the purposes of devotion; and with a mixture of wonder and displeasure they asked, “Are not all these men who are talking in these various languages, Galileans? How then are they able to show such an immense diversity of expression, so that all of us, even those from the most distant countries, hear them in our various languages, setting forth the praises of God?” And they were all surprised and perplexed, and said one to another, “What will this come to?” But to some who were present, the whole proceeding was so little impressive, and had so little appearance of anything miraculous, that they were moved only to expressions of contempt, and said, in a tone of ridicule, “These men are drunk on sweet wine.” This seems to show that to them there was no conclusive evidence of Divine agency in this speaking in various languages; and they, no doubt, supposed that among these Galileans were foreigners also from many other parts of the world, who, mingling with Christ’s disciples, had joined in their devotions, and caught their enthusiasm. Seeing this assembly thus made up, now occupied in speaking violently and confusedly in these various languages, they at once concluded that they were under the influence of some artificial exhilarant, and supposed that during this great festal occasion they had been betrayed into some unseasonable jollity, and were now under the excitement of hard drinking. Such as took this cool view of the matter, therefore, immediately explained the whole by charging the excited speakers with drunkenness. But Peter, on hearing this scandalous charge, rose up, as the leader and defender of these objects of public notice, and repelled the contemptuous suggestion that he and his companions had been abusing the occasion of rational religious enjoyment, to the purposes of intemperate and riotous merriment. Calling on all present for their attention, both foreign Jews and those settled in Jerusalem, he told them that the violent emotions which had excited their surprise could not be caused by wine, as it was then but nine o’clock in the morning, and as they well knew, it was contrary to all common habits of life to suppose that before that early hour, these men could have been exposed to any such temptation. They knew that the universal fashion of the devout Jews was to take no food whatever on the great days of public worship, until after their return from morning prayers in the temple. How then could these men, thus devoutly occupied since rising, have found opportunity to indulge in intoxicating drinks?

Peter then proceeded to refer them for a more just explanation of this strange occurrence, to the long recorded testimonies of the ancient prophets, which most distinctly announced such powerful displays of religious zeal and knowledge, as about to happen in those later days, of which the present moment seemed the beginning. He quoted to them a passage from Joel, which pointedly set forth these and many other wonders with the distinctness of reality, and showed them how all these striking words were connected with the fate of that Jesus whom they had so lately sacrificed. He now, for the first time, publicly declared to them, that this Jesus, whom they had vainly subjected to a disgraceful death, had by the power of God been raised from the grave to a glorious and immortal life. Of this fact he assured them that all the disciples were the witnesses, having seen him with their own eyes after his return to life. He now showed them in what manner the resurrection of Jesus might be explained and illustrated by the words of David, and how the psalm itself might be made to appear in a new light, by interpreting it in accordance with these recent events. He concluded this high-toned and forcible appeal to scripture and to fact, by calling them imperatively to learn and believe. “Let all the house of Israel know, then, that God has made this Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” This declaration, thus solemnly made and powerfully supported, in connection with the surprising circumstances which had just occurred, had a most striking and convincing effect on the hearers, and almost the whole multitude giving way to their feelings of awe and compunction, being stung with the remembrance of the share they had had in the murder of Jesus, cried out, as with one voice, “Brethren, what shall we do?” Peter’s instant reply was, “Change your mind, and be each one of you baptized to the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” That same divine influence, whose in-workings had just been so wonderfully displayed before their eyes, was now promised to them, as the seal of Christ’s acceptance of the offer of themselves in the preliminary sign of baptism. To them and to their children, upon whom, fifty days before, they had solemnly invoked the curse of the murdered Redeemer’s blood, was this benignant promise of pardoning love now made; and not only to them, but to all, however far off in place or in feeling, whom their common Lord and God should call to him. Inspired with the glorious prospect of success now opening to him, and moved to new earnestness by their devout and alarmed attention, Peter zealously went on, and spoke to them many other words, of which the sacred historian has given us only the brief but powerful concluding exhortation,――“Suffer yourselves to be saved from this perverse generation,”――from those who had involved themselves and their race in the evils resulting to them from their wicked rejection of the truth offered by Jesus. The whole Jewish nation stood at that time charged with the guilt of rejecting the Messiah; nor could any individual be cleared from his share of responsibility for the crime, except by coming out and distinctly professing his faith in Christ.

THE CHURCH’S INCREASE.

The success which followed Peter’s first effort in preaching the gospel of his murdered and risen Lord, was most cheering. Those who heard him on this occasion, gladly receiving his words, were baptized, and on that same day converts to the number of three thousand were added to the disciples. How must these glorious results, and all the events of the day, have lifted up the hearts of the apostles, and moved them to new and still bolder efforts in their great cause! They now knew and felt the true force of their Master’s promise, that they should “be indued with power from on high;” for what less than such power could in one day have wrought such a change in the hearts of the haughty Jews, as to make them submissive hearers of the followers of the lately crucified Nazarene, and bring over such immense numbers of converts to the new faith, as to swell the small and feeble band of disciples to more than twenty times its former size? Nor did the impression made on this multitude prove to be a mere transient excitement; for we are assured that “they held steadily to the doctrine taught by the apostles, and kept company with them in all their daily religious duties and social enjoyments.” So permanent and complete was this change, as to cause universal astonishment among those who had not been made the subjects of it; and the number of those who heard the amazing story, must have been so much the greater at that time, as there was then at Jerusalem so large an assemblage of Jews from almost every part of the civilized world. On this account, it seems to have been most wisely ordered that this first public preaching of the Christian faith, and this great manifestation of its power over the hearts of men, should take place on this festal occasion, when its influence might at once more widely and quickly spread than by any other human means. The foreign Jews then at Jerusalem, being witnesses of these wonderful things, would not fail, on their return home, to give the whole affair a prominent place in their account of their pilgrimage, when they recounted their various adventures and observations to their inquiring friends. Among these visitors, too, were probably some who were themselves on this occasion converted to the new faith, and each one of these would be a sort of missionary, preaching Christ crucified to his countrymen in his distant home, and telling them of a way to God, which their fathers had not known. The many miracles wrought by the apostles, as signs of their authority, served to swell the fame of the Christian cause, and added new incidents to the fast-traveling and far-spreading story, which, wherever it went, prepared the people to hear the apostles with interest and respect, when, in obedience to their Lord’s last charge, they should go forth to distant lands, preaching the gospel.

PETER’S PROMINENCE.

This vast addition to the assembly of the disciples at Jerusalem, made it necessary for the apostles to complete some farther arrangements, to suit their enlarged circumstances; and at this period the first church of Christ in the world seems to have so far perfected its organization as to answer very nearly to the modern idea of a permanent religious community. The church of Jerusalem was an individual worshiping assembly, that at this time met daily for prayer and exhortation, with twelve ministers who officiated as occasion needed, without any order of service, as far as we know, except such as depended on their individual weight of character, their natural abilities or their knowledge of the doctrines of their Lord. Among these, the three most favored by Christ’s private instructions would have a natural pre-eminence, and above all, he who had been especially named as the rock on which the church should be built, and as the keeper of the keys of the kingdom, and had been solemnly and repeatedly commissioned as the pastor and leader of the flock, would now maintain an undisputed pre-eminence, unless he should by some actual misconduct prove himself unworthy of the rank. Such a pre-eminence it is unquestionable that Peter always did maintain among the apostles; and so decidedly too, that on every occasion when any thing was to be said or done by them as a body, Peter invariably stands out alone, as the undisputed representative and head of the whole community. Indeed the whole history of the apostles, after the ascension, gives but a single instance in which the words of any one of the twelve besides Peter are recorded, or where any one of them, except in that single case, is named as having said any thing whatever. On every occasion of this sort, the matters referred to were no more the concern of Peter than of any other of the twelve, yet they all seem to have been perfectly satisfied with quietly giving up the expression of their views to him. One instance, indeed, occurs, in which some persons attempted to blame his conduct when on a private mission, but even then his explanation of his behavior hushed all complaint. Often, when he was publicly engaged in the company of John, the most beloved of Jesus, and his faithful witness, it would seem that if there was any assumption by Peter of more than due importance, this distinguished son of Zebedee or his equally honored brother would have taken such a share in speaking and doing, as would have secured them an equal prominence. But no such low jealousies ever appear to have arisen among the apostles; not one seems to have had a thought about making himself an object of public notice, but their common and unanimous care was to advance their great Master’s cause, without reference to individual distinctions. Peter’s natural force of character and high place in his Master’s confidence, justified the ascendency which he on all public occasions claimed as his indisputable right, in which the rest acquiesced without a murmur.

THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.

In the constitution of the first church of Christ, there seems to have been no other noticeable peculiarity, than the number of its ministers, and even this in reality amounted to nothing; for the decided pre-eminence and superior qualifications of Peter were such as, in effect, to make him the sole pastor and preacher for a long time, while the other apostles do not seem to have performed any duty much higher than that of mere assistants to him, or exhorters, and perhaps teachers. Still, not a day could pass when every one of them would not be required to labor in some way for the gospel; and indeed the sacred historian uniformly speaks of them in the plural number, as laboring together and alike in the common cause. Thus they went on quietly and humbly laboring, with a pure zeal which was as indifferent to fame and earthly honor, as to the acquisition or preservation of earthly wealth. They are said to have held all things common, which is to be understood, however, not as implying literally that the rich renounced all individual right to what they owned, but that they stood ready to provide for the needy to the full extent of their property, and in that sense, all these pecuniary resources were made as common as if they were formally thrown into one public stock, out of which every man drew as suited his own needs. To an ordinary reader, this passage, taken by itself, might seem to convey fully the latter meaning; but a reference to other passages, and to the whole history of the primitive Christians, shows clearly, that a real and literal community of goods was totally unknown to them, but that in the bold and free language of the age and country, they are said to have “had all things in common,” just as among us, a man may say to his friend, “My house is yours;――consider every thing I have as your own property;” and yet no one would ever construe this into a surrender of his individual rights of possession. So the wealthy converts to the Christian faith sold their estates and goods, as occasion required, for the sake of having ready money to relieve the wants of those who had no means of support. Thus provided for, the apostles steadily pursued their great work, passing the greater part of every day in the temple; but taking their food at home, they ate what was so freely and generously provided, with thankful and unanxious hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. In these happy and useful employments they continued, every day finding new sources of enjoyment and new encouragement, in the accession of redeemed ones to their blessed community.

Taking their food at home.――This is my interpretation of κλωντες κατ’ οἶκον αρτον, (klontes kat’ oikon arton.) Acts ii. 46, commonly translated “breaking bread from house to house,” a version which is still supported by many names of high authority; but the attendant circumstances here seem to justify this variation from them. A reference to the passage will show that the historian is speaking of their regular unanimous attendance in the temple, and says, “they attended every day with one accord in the temple,” that is, during the regular hours of daily worship, but as they would not suffer untimely devotion to interfere with their reasonable conveniences, he adds, “they broke bread,” (a Hebraistic form of expression for simply “taking food,”) “at home, and partook of their food in humility and thankfulness.” This seems to me, to require a sort of opposition in sense between ἱερον, (hieron,) “temple,” and οικος, (oikos,) “house” or “home,” for it seems as if the writer of the Acts wished in these few words, to give a complete account of the manner in which they occupied themselves, devoting all their time to public devotion in the temple except that, as was most seemly, they returned to their houses to take their ♦necessary food, which they did humbly and joyfully. But the distributive force which some wish to put upon κατ’ οἶκον, by translating it “from house to house,” is one which does not seem to be required at all by any thing in the connection, and one which needs a vast deal of speculation and explanation to make it appear why they should go “from house to house,” about so simple a matter of fact as that of eating their victuals, which every man could certainly do to best advantage at one steady boarding-place. That the expression, κατ’ οἶκον, most commonly means “at home,” is abundantly proved by standard common Greek usage, as shown in the best Lexicons. But κατα, in connexion with a singular noun, has the distributive force only when the noun itself is of such a character and connection in the sentence as to require this meaning. Thus κατα μηνα, would hardly ever be suspected of any other meaning than “monthly,” or “every month,” or “from month to month;”――so κατα πολεις means “from city to city,” but the singular κατα πολιν, almost uniformly means “in a city,” without any distributive application, except where the other words in the sentence imply this idea. (Acts xv. 21: xx. 23.) But here the simple common meaning of the preposition κατα, when governing the accusative, (that is, the meaning of “at” or “in” a place,) is not merely allowed, but required by the other words in the connection, in order to give a meaning which requires no other explanation, and which corresponds to the word “temple” in the other clause; for the whole account seems to require an opposition in these words, as describing the two places where the disciples passed their time.

♦ “neeessary” replaced with “necessary”

There are great names, however, opposed to this view, which seem enough to overpower almost any testimony that can be brought in defense of an interpretation which they reject. Among these are Kuinoel, Rosenmueller, Ernesti, and Bloomfield, whose very names will perhaps weigh more with many, than the hasty statement of the contrary view which I am able here to give. Yet I am not wholly without the support of high authorities; for De Dieu, Bengel, Heinrichs, Hammond, and Oecumenius, reject the distributive sense here.

THE CURE OF THE CRIPPLE.

In the course of these regular religious observances, about the same time or soon after the events just recorded, Peter and John went up to the temple to pray, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the usual hour for the second public prayers. As they went in at the outer gate of the temple, which being made of polished Corinthian brass, was for its splendor called the Beautiful, their attention was called to one of the objects of pity which were so common on those great days of assembly, about the common places of resort. A man, who, by universal testimony, had been a cripple from his birth, was lying in a helpless attitude at this public entrance, in order to excite the compassion of the crowds who were constantly passing into the temple, and were in that place so much under the influence of religious feeling as to be easily moved by pity to exercise so prominent a religious duty as charity to the distressed. This man seeing Peter and John passing in, asked aims of them in his usual way. They both instantly turned their eyes towards him, and looking earnestly on him, Peter said, “Look on us.” The cripple, supposing from their manner that they were about to give something to him, accordingly yielded them his interested attention. Peter then said to him, “Silver and gold have I none, but I give thee what I have; in the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, rise up and walk.” As he said this, he took hold of the lame man and raised him; and he at once was able to support himself erect. Leaping up in the consciousness of strength, he stood and walked with them into the temple, expressing thankfulness and joy as he went, both by motions and words. The attention of the worshiping assembly in the great courts of the temple was at once directed to this strange circumstance; for all who had passed in at the gate, recognized this vivacious companion of the two apostles, as the man who had all his life been a cripple, without the power of voluntary locomotion, and they were utterly amazed at his present altered condition and actions. As the recovered cripple, leaning on Peter and John, still half doubting his new strength, accompanied them on to the porch of Solomon, the whole multitude ran after them thither, still in the greatest astonishment. All eyes were at once turned to the two wonderful men who had caused this miraculous change, and the astonishment which this deed had inspired must have been mingled with awe and reverence. Here surely was an occasion to test the honesty and sincerity of these followers of Christ, when they saw the whole people thus unhesitatingly giving to them the divine honor of this miraculous cure. What an opportunity for a calculating ambition to secure power, favor, and renown! Yet, with all these golden chances placed temptingly within their reach, they, so lately longing for the honors of an earthly dominion, but now changed by the inworkings of a purer spirit and a holier zeal, turned calmly and firmly to the people, utterly disclaiming the honor and glory of the deed, but rendering all the praise to their crucified Lord. Peter, ever ready with eloquent words, immediately addressed the awe-struck throngs who listened in silence to his inspired language, and distinctly declared the merit of this action to belong not to him and his companion, but to “that same Jesus, whom they, but a short time before, had rejected and put to death as an impostor.” He then went on to charge them boldly with the guilt of this murder, and summing up the evidences and consequences of their crime, he called on them to repent, and yield to this slain and risen Jesus the honors due to the Messiah. It was his name which, through faith in his name, had made this lame man strong, and restored him to all his bodily energies, in the presence of them all. That name, too, would be equally powerful to save them through faith, if they would turn to him, the prophet foretold by Moses, by Samuel, and all the prophets that followed them, as the restorer and leader of Israel, and through whom, as was promised to Abraham, all the families of the earth should be blest. But first of all to them, the favored children of Abraham, did God send his prophet-son, to bless them in turning away every one of them from their iniquities.

The beautiful gate.――The learned Lightfoot has brought much deep research to bear on this point, as to the position of this gate and the true meaning of its name; yet he is obliged to announce the dubious result in the expressive words, “In bivio hic stamus,” (“we here stand at a fork of the road.”) The main difficulty consists in the ambiguous character of the word translated “beautiful,” in Greek, Ὡραιαν, (horaian,) which may have the sense of “splendid,” “beautiful,” or, in better keeping with its root, Ὡρα, (hora,) “time,” it may be made to mean the “gate of time.” Now, what favors the latter derivation and translation, is the fact that there actually was, as appears from the Rabbinical writings, a gate called Hhuldah, (חולדה) probably derived from חלד (hheledh) “age,” “time,” “life,”――from the Arabic root خلد (khaladh) “endure,” “last,” so that it may mean “lasting or permanent.” There were two gates of this name distinguished by the terms greater and smaller, both opening into the court of the Gentiles from the great southern porch or colonnade, called the Royal colonnade. Through these, the common way from Jerusalem and from Zion led into the temple, and through these would be the natural entrance of the apostles into it. This great royal porch, also, where such vast numbers were passing, and which afforded a convenient shelter from the weather, would be a convenient place for a cripple to post himself in.

There was, however, another gate, to which the epithet “beautiful” might with eminent justice be applied. This is thus described by Josephus. (Jewish War. book V. chapter 5, section 3.) “Of the gates, nine were overlaid with gold and silver,――* * * but there was one on the outside of the temple, made of Corinthian brass, which far outshone the plated and gilded ones.” This is the gate to which the passage is commonly supposed to refer, and which I have mentioned as the true one in the text, without feeling at all decided on the subject, however; for I certainly do think the testimony favors the gate Huldah, and the primary sense of the word Ὡραια seems to be best consulted by such a construction.

The porch of Solomon.――Στοα Σολομωνος, (stoa Solomonos.) This was the name commonly applied to the great eastern colonnade of the temple, which ran along on the top of the vast terrace which made the gigantic rampart of Mount Moriah, rising from the depth of six hundred feet out of the valley of the Kedron. (See note on page 94.) The Greek word, στοα, (stoa,) commonly translated “porch,” does not necessarily imply an entrance to a building, as is generally true of our modern porches, but was a general name for a “colonnade,” which is a much better expression for its meaning, and would always convey a correct notion of it; for its primary and universal idea is that of a row of columns running along the side of a building, and leaving a broad open space between them and the wall, often so wide as to make room for a vast assemblage of people beneath the ceiling of the architrave. That this was the case in this STOA, appears from Josephus’ description given in my note on page 95, section 1. The stoa might be so placed as to be perfectly inaccessible from without, and thus lose all claim to the name of porch, with the idea of an entrance-way. This was exactly the situation and construction of Solomon’s stoa, which answers much better to our idea of a gallery, than of a porch. (See Donnegan, sub voc.)

It took the name of Solomon, from the fact that when the great temple of that magnificent king was burned and torn down by the Chaldeans, this eastern terrace, as originally constructed by him, was too vast, and too deeply based, to be easily made the subject of such a destroying visitation, and consequently was by necessity left a lasting monument of the strength and grandeur of the temple which had stood upon it. When the second temple was rebuilt, this vast terrace of course became again the great eastern foundation of the sacred pile, but received important additions to itself, being strengthened by higher and broader walls, and new accessions of mounded earth; while over its long trampled and profaned pavement, now beautified and renewed with splendid Mosaic, rose the mighty range of gigantic snow-white marble columns, which gave it the name and character of a STOA or colonnade, and filled the country for a vast distance with the glory of its pure brightness. (See note on page 95. See also Lightfoot, Disquisit. Chor. cap. vi. § 2.) Josephus further describes it, explaining the very name which Luke uses. “And this was a colonnade of the outer temple, standing over the verge of a deep valley, on walls four hundred cubits in highth, built of hewn stones perfectly white,――the length of each stone being twenty cubits, and the highth six. It was the work of Solomon, who first built the whole temple.” (Josephus, Antiquities, XX. viii. 7.)

THE FIRST SEIZURE OF THE APOSTLES.

While the apostles were thus occupied in speaking words of wisdom to the attentive people, they were suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the guards of the temple, who, under the command of their captain, came up to the apostles, and seizing them in the midst of their discourse, dragged them away to prison, where they were shut up, for examination on the next day, before the civil and ecclesiastical court of the Jews. This act of violence was committed by order of the priests who had the care of the temple, more immediately instigated by the Sadducees, who were present with the priests and guards when the arrest was made. The reason why this sect, in general not active in persecuting Jesus and his followers, were now provoked to this act of unusual hostility, was, that the apostles were now preaching a doctrine directly opposed to the main principles of Sadducism. The assertion that Jesus had actually risen from the dead, so boldly made by the apostles, must, if the people believed it, entirely overthrow their confidence in the Sadducees, who absolutely denied the existence of a spirit, and the possibility of a resurrection of the dead. It was now evening, and the apostles being thus dragged away abruptly, in the midst of their discourse, the people were obliged to disperse for the night, without hearing all that the speakers had intended to say; yet even the fragment of discourse which they had heard, was not without a mighty effect. So convincing and moving were these few words of Peter, and so satisfactory was the evidence of the miracle, that almost the whole multitude of hearers and beholders seems to have come over in a mass to the faith of Christ; for converts to the astonishing number of five thousand are mentioned by the sacred historian, who all professed their belief in Jesus, as the resurrection and the life, and the healing.

The guards of the temple, &c.――This was the same set of men above described, as made up of the Levite porters and watchmen of the temple. See note on page 111. Also Lightfoot Horae Hebraica in Acts iv. 1.――Rosenmueller, ibid. and Kuinoel. But Hammond has made the mistake of supposing this to be a detachment of the Roman garrison.

THEIR FIRST TRIAL.

The next morning the high court of the Jewish nation, having the absolute control of all religious matters, was called together to decide upon the fate of the apostles, and probably also of the lame man whom they had cured. This great court was the same whose members had, by unwearied exertions, succeeded a few weeks before, in bringing about the death of Jesus, and were therefore little disposed to show mercy to any who were trying to perpetuate his name, or the innovations which he had attempted against the high authority of the ecclesiastical rulers of the nation. Of these, the principal were Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests, with John and Alexander, and many others, who were entitled to a place in the council, by relationship to the high priests. Besides these, there were the rulers and elders of the people, and the scribes, who had been so active in the condemnation of Jesus. These all having arrayed themselves for judgment, the apostles and their poor healed cripple were brought in before them, and sternly questioned, by what power and by what name they had done the thing for which they had been summoned before the court. They stood charged with having arrogated to themselves the high character and office of teachers, and what was worse, reformers, of the national religion,――of that religion which had been, of old, received straight from God by the holy prophets, and which the wisdom of long-following ages had secured in sanctity and purity, by entrusting it to the watchful guardianship of the most learned and venerable of a hereditary order of priests and scholars. And who were they that now proposed to take into their hands the religion given by Moses and the prophets, and to offer to the people a new dispensation? Were they deep and critical scholars in the law, the prophets, the history of the faith, or the stored wisdom of the ancient teachers of the law? No; they were a set of rude, ill-taught men, who had left their honest but low employments in their miserable province, and had come down to Jerusalem with their Master, on the likely enterprise of overturning the established order of things in church and state, and erecting in its place an administration which should be managed by the Nazarene and his company of Galileans. In this seditious attempt their Master had been arrested and punished with death, and they whose lives were spared by the mere clemency of their offended lords, were now so little grateful for this mercy, and so little awed by this example of justice, that they had been publicly haranguing the people in the temple, and imposing on them with a show of miracles, all with the view of raising again those disturbances which their Master had before excited, but too successfully, by the same means, until his death. In this light would the two apostles stand before their stern and angry judges, as soon as they were recognized as the followers of Jesus. And how did they maintain their ground before this awful tribunal? Peter had, only a few weeks before, absolutely denied all connection and acquaintance with Jesus, when questioned by the mere menials in attendance on his Master’s trial. And on this solemn occasion, tenfold more appalling, did that once false disciple find in his present circumstances, consolations to raise him above his former weakness? Peter was now changed; and he stood up boldly before his overbearing foes, to meet their tyranny by a dauntless assertion of his rights and of the truth of what he had preached. Freshly indued with a courage from on high, and full of that divine influence so lately shed abroad, he and his modest yet firm companion, replied to the haughty inquiries of his judges, by naming as the source of their power, and as their sanction in their work, the venerated name of their crucified Master. “Princes of the people and elders of Israel, if we to-day are called to account for this good deed which we have done to this poor man, and are to say in whose name this man has been cured; be it known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that in the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, whom you crucified, and whom God raised from the dead, this man now stands before you, made sound and strong. This crucified Jesus is the stone which, though rejected by you builders, has become the chief corner stone; and in no other name is there salvation, (or healing;) for there is no other name given under heaven, among men, by which any can be saved,” (or healed.) When the judges saw the free-spoken manner of Peter and John, observing that they were unlearned men, of the lower orders, they were surprised; and noticing them more particularly, they recognized them as the immediate personal followers of Jesus, remembering now that they had often seen them in his company. This recognition made them the more desirous to put a stop to their miracles and preaching. Yet there stood the man with them, whom they had healed, and with this palpable evidence before their eyes, how could the members of the Sanhedrim justify themselves to the people, for any act of positive violence against these men? These high dignitaries were a good deal perplexed, and sending the apostles out of the court, they deliberated with one another, and inquired, “What can we do with these men? For there is a general impression that they have done a great miracle, among all who are now in Jerusalem, both citizens and strangers, and we cannot disprove it. Still we cannot let these things go on so, nor suffer this heresy to spread any further among the people; and we will therefore charge them threateningly to use the name of Jesus no more to the people.” Having come to this conclusion, they summoned the prisoners once more into the court, and gave them a strict command, never to teach any more nor utter a word in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John, undismayed by the authority of their great judges, boldly avowed their unshaken resolution to proceed as they had begun. “We appeal to you, to say if it is right in the sight of God to obey you rather than God. For we cannot but speak what we have seen and heard?” The judges being able to bring these stubborn heretics to no terms at all, after having threatened them still further, were obliged to let them go unpunished, not being able to make out any plea against them, that would make it safe to injure them, while the popular voice was so loud in their favor, on account of the miracle. For the man whom they had so suddenly healed, being more than forty years old, and having been lame from his birth, no one could pretend to say that such a lameness could be cured by any sudden impression made on his imagination.

Salvation, (or healing.)――The Greek word here in the original, Σωτηρια, (Soteria,) is entirely dubious in its meaning, conveying one or the other of these two ideas according to the sense of the connection; and here the general meaning of the passage is such, that either meaning is perfectly allowable, and equally appropriate to the context. This ambiguity in the substantive is caused by the same variety of meaning in the verb which is the root, Σαω, (Sao,) whose primary idea admits of its application either to the act of saving from ruin and death, or of relieving any bodily evil, that is, of healing. In this latter sense it is frequently used in the New Testament, as in Matthew ix. 21, 22. commonly translated “made whole.” Also, Mark v. 28, 33: vi. 56: x. 52. In Luke vii. 50, and in viii. 48, the same expression occurs, both passages being exactly alike in Greek; but the common translation has varied the interpretation in the two places, to suit the circumstances,――in the former, “saved thee,” and in the latter, “made thee whole.” In this passage also, Acts iv. 12, the word is exactly the same as that used in verse 9, where the common translation gives “made whole.” The close connection therefore between these two verses would seem to require the same meaning in the word thus used, and hence I should feel justified in preferring this rendering; but the general power of the verb makes it very probable that in this second use of it here, there was a sort of intentional equivoque in the writer and speaker, giving force to the expression, by the play on the meaning afforded by the present peculiar circumstances.

THEIR RENEWED ZEAL.

The apostles, as soon as they were released from this unjust confinement, went directly to their own companions, and reported all that the high priests and elders had said to them. And when the disciples heard of the threats which these tyrannical hierarchs had laid on their persecuted brethren, with one mind they raised a voice to God in a prayer of unequalled beauty and power, in which they called upon the Lord, as the God who had made heaven, and earth, and sea, and all in them, to look down upon them, thus endangered by their devotion to his cause, and to give them all boldness of speech in preaching his word; and to vindicate their authority still further, by stretching out his hand to heal, and by signs and miracles. No sooner had they uttered their prayer than they received new assurance of the help of God, and had new evidence of a divine influence. “The place where they were assembled was shaken, and they were all filled again with the Holy Spirit, and spake the word of God with renewed boldness.” This first attack upon them, by their persecutors, so far from dispiriting or disuniting them, gave them redoubled courage, and bound them together still with the ties of a common danger and a common helper. “All those who believed were of one heart and one soul,” and were so perfectly devoted to each others’ good, that “none of them said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but held them as the common support of all.” And in spite of the repeated denunciations of the Sadducees and the Sanhedrim, the apostles, with great power and effect, bore witness of the resurrection of their Lord; and the result of their preaching was, that they were all in the highest favor with the people. Neither was any one of them suffered to want any comfort or convenience of life; for many that owned houses and lands at a distance, turned them into ready money by selling them, and brought the money thus obtained, to the apostles, with whom they deposited it in trust, for distribution among the needy, according to their circumstances. This was done more particularly by the foreign Jews, many of whom were converted at the pentecost, when, being gathered from all parts, they heard for the first time of the Messiah, from the mouths of his apostles, and saw their words supported by such wonders. Among these was a native of Cyprus, by name Joseph, a Levite, who so distinguished himself by his labors of love among them, and gave such promise of excellence as a teacher of the new faith which he had adopted, that the apostles honored him with a new name, by which he was ever after known, instead of his previous one. They called him Barnabas, which means “the son of exhortation,” no doubt referring to those talents which he afterwards displayed as an eminent and successful minister of the gospel.

Raised a voice.――This is literal; and can mean nothing more than the common modern expression, “unite in prayer,” with which it is perfectly synonymous. The judicious Bloomfield (Annotations in Acts iv. 24,) observes, “We cannot rationally suppose that this prefatory address was (as some conjecture) not pronounced extempore, but a pre-composed form of prayer, since the words advert to circumstances not known until that very time; as, for instance, the threatenings of the Sanhedrim, (verse 29,) of which they had been but just then informed; and the words ἀκουσαντες ὁμοθυμαδον ῃραν φωνην will not allow us to imagine any interval between the report of Peter and John, and the prayer.” Kuinoel’s view is precisely the same.

Were in the highest favor with the people.――Very different from the common translation, “great grace was upon them all.” But the Greek word, Χαρις, (Kharis,) like the Latin gratia, (in the Vulgate,) means primarily “favor;” and the only question is, whether it refers to the favor of God or of man. Beza, Whitby, Doddridge, &c. prefer the former, but Kuinoel justly argues from a comparison of the parallel passages, (ii. 47, and iv. 34,) that it refers to their increasing influence on the attention and regard of the people, which was indeed the great object of all their preaching and miracles. Grotius, Rosenmueller, Bloomfield and others, also support this view.

Deposited in trust.――This is a free, but just version of ετιθουν παρα τους ποδας, (etithoun para tous podas,) Acts iv. 35, literally and faithfully rendered in the common translation by “laid at the feet;” but this was an expression very common not only in Hebrew, but in Greek and Latin usage, for the idea of “deposit in trust;” as is shown by Rosenmueller’s apt quotations from Cicero, “ante pedes praetoris in foro expensum est auri pondo centum,” Defence of Flaccus, chapter 28; and from Heliodorus, παντα τα εαυτου τιθεναι παρα τους ποδας βασιλεως. But Kuinoel seems not to think of these, and quotes it as a mere Hebraism.

Barnabas, son of exhortation.――This is the translation of this name, which seems best authorized. A fuller account of it will be given in the life of Barnabas.

ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA.

The great praise and universal gratitude which followed Barnabas, for this noble and self-denying act of pure generosity, was soon after the occasion of a most shameful piece of imposition, ending in an awful expression of divine vengeance. Led by the hope of cheaply winning the same praise and honor which Barnabas had acquired by his simple-minded liberality, a man named Ananias, with the knowledge and aid of his wife Sapphira, having sold a piece of land, brought only a part of the price to the apostles, and deposited it in the general charity-fund, alleging at the same time, that this was the whole amount obtained for the land. But Peter, having reason to believe that this was only a part of the price, immediately questioned Ananias sternly on this point, charging him directly with the crime of lying to God. He remarked to him that the land was certainly his own, and no one could question his right to do just as he pleased with that, or the money obtained for it; since he was under no obligation to give it away to the poor of the church. But since he had of his own accord attempted to get a reputation for generosity, by a base and avaricious act of falsehood, he had incurred the wrath of an insulted God. No sooner had Ananias heard this awful denunciation, than, struck with the vengeance he had brought on himself, he fell lifeless before them, and was carried out to the burial by the attendants. His wife soon after coming in, not having heard of what had happened, boldly maintained her husband’s assertion, and repeated the lie most distinctly to Peter. He then declared his knowledge of her guilt, and made known to her the fate of her husband, which she was doomed to share. The words had hardly left his lips, when they were confirmed by her instant death, and she was at once carried out and laid with her husband. The effect of these shocking events on the minds of the members of the church generally, was very salutary; exhibiting to them the awful consequences of such deliberate and hardened sin.

Attendants.――The common English translation here gives the expression, “young men,” which is the primary meaning of the Greek νεανισκοι, (neaniskoi,) and is quite unobjectionable; but the connection here seems to justify and require its secondary use in application to “servants,” “attendants,” &c. This interpretation has the authority of the learned Mosheim, who considers the persons here mentioned, to have been regularly appointed officers, who performed the necessary duties about the assemblies of the disciples, and executed all the commands of the apostles. He says, “unless you suppose these young men to have been of this sort, it is hard to understand why they alone instantly rose up and carried out the bodies of Ananias and his wife, and buried them. But if you suppose them to have been men discharging an official duty in the public assembly, you see a reason why, even without orders, they took that sad duty upon themselves. And that there were public servants of this sort in the first Christian church, no one certainly can doubt, who will imagine for himself either its circumstances or the form of the assemblies of that age. For instance, there were the places of meeting to be cleaned,――the seats and tables to be arranged,――the sacred books to be brought and carried away,――the dishes to be set out and cleared off,――in short, there were many things to be done which absolutely required particular men.” (Mosheim, Commentary de rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum, p. 114, b.) This passage is quoted by Kuinoel, and is so clear in its representation of the circumstance, as to justify me in translating it entire.

THE INCREASING FAME OF THE APOSTLES.

The apostles, daily supported anew by fresh tokens of divine aid, went on in their labors among the people, encouraged by their increasing attention and favor. So deep was the impression of awe made by the late occurrence, that none of the rest of the church dared to mingle familiarly with the apostles, who now seemed to be indued with the power of calling down the vengeance of God at will, and appeared to be persons too high and awful for common men to be familiar with. Yet the number of the church members, both men and women, continued to enlarge, and the attendance of the people to increase, so that there was no place which would accommodate the vast crowd of hearers and beholders, except the great porch of Solomon, already described, where the apostles daily met the church and the people, to teach and strengthen them, and to work the cures which their Master had so often wrought. So high was the reputation of the apostles, and so numerous were those who came to solicit the favor of their healing power, for themselves or friends, that all could not get access to them even in the vast court of the temple which they occupied, insomuch that they brought the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, along the path which the apostles were expected to pass, that at least the shadow of Peter, passing by, might overshadow some of them. Nor was this wonderful fame and admiration confined to Jerusalem; for as the news was spread abroad by the pilgrims returning from the pentecost, there came also a multitude out of the cities round about Jerusalem, bringing sick folks and those who were affected by evil spirits, and they were healed, every one.

Mingle familiarly with them.――Commonly translated, “join himself to them,” which conveys a totally erroneous idea, since all their efforts were given to this end, of making as many as possible “join themselves to them.” The context (verse 14,) shows that their numbers were largely increased by such additions. “Yet no one of the common members (οἱ λοιποι) dared mingle familiarly (κολλασθαι) with them; but the people held them in great reverence.” Acts v. 13.

Met the church and people.――This distinction may not seem very obvious in a common reading of the Acts, but in v. 11, it is very clearly drawn. “Great fear was upon the whole church and on all the hearers of these things.” And throughout the chapter, a nice discrimination is made between ὁ λαος, (ho laos,) “the people,” or “the congregation,” and ἡ εκκλησια, (he ekklesia,) “the church.” See Kuinoel in v. 13, 14.

The shadow of Peter.――This is one of a vast number of passages which show that high and perfectly commanding pre-eminence of this apostolic chief. The people evidently considered Peter as concentrating all the divine and miraculous power in his own person, and had no idea at all of obtaining benefit from anything that the minor apostles could do. In him, alone, they saw the manifestations of divine power and authority;――he spoke and preached and healed, and judged and doomed, while the rest had nothing to do but assent and aid. Peter, then, was THE great pastor of the church, and it is every way desirable that over-zealous Protestants would find some better reason for opposing so palpable a fact, than simply that Papists support it.

THEIR SECOND SEIZURE AND TRIAL.

The triumphant progress of the new sect, however, was not unnoticed by those who had already taken so decided a stand against it. The Sadducees, who had so lately come out against them, were not yet disposed to leave the apostles to enjoy their boldness with impunity. The high priest Annas, who had always been the determined enemy of Christ, belonging to the Sadducean sect, was easily led to employ all his authority with his brethren, against the apostles. He at last, provoked beyond endurance at their steady and unflinching contempt of the repeated solemn injunction of the Sanhedrim, whose president and agent he was, rose up in all his anger and power, and, backed by his friends, seized the apostles and put them into the common jail, as inveterate disturbers of the peace of the city, and of the religious order of the temple. This commitment was intended to be merely temporary, and was to last only until a convenient time could be found for bringing them to trial, when the crowd of strangers should have retired from the city to their homes, and the excitement attendant on the preaching and miracles of the apostles should have subsided, so that the ordinary course of law might go on safely, even against these popular favorites, and they might be brought at last to the same fate as their Master. After the achievment of this project, “a consummation most devoutly to be wished” by every friend of the established order of things, the sect which was now making such rapid advances would fall powerless and lifeless, when its great heads were thus quietly lopped off. This seems to have been their well-arranged plan,――but it was destined to be spoiled in a way unlooked for; and this first step in it was to be made the means of a new triumph to the persecuted subjects of it. That very night, the prison doors were opened by a messenger of God, by whom the apostles were brought out of their confinement, and told, “Go, stand and speak in the temple, to the people, all the words of this life.” According to this divine command, they went into the temple and taught, early in the morning, probably before their luxurious tyrants had left their lazy pillows. While the apostles were thus coolly following their daily labors of mercy in the temple, the high priest and his train called the council together, and the whole senate of all the children of Israel, and having deliberately arrayed themselves in the forms of law, they ordered the imprisoned heretics to be brought forthwith into the awful presence of this grand council and senate of the Jewish nation and faith. The officers, of course, as in duty bound, went to execute the order, but soon returned to report the important deficiency of the persons most needed to complete the solemn preparation for the trial. Their report was simply, “The prison truly we found shut with all safety, and the keepers standing without, before the doors; but when we had opened, we found no man within.” Here was a non-plus, indeed; all proceedings were brought to a stand at once; and “when the high priest and the chief officer of the temple, and the chief priests heard these things, they doubted of them, whereunto they would grow.” But these eminent dignitaries were not left long to perplex their sage heads about the unworthy objects of their tender solicitude; for some faithful sycophant, rejoicing in such a glorious opportunity to serve the powers that were, came running to tell them, “Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people.” This very simple but valuable piece of information relieved the grave judges very happily from their unfortunate quandary; and without further delay, a detachment of officers was sent to bring these unaccountable runaways to account. But as it appeared that the criminals were now in the midst of a vast assemblage of their friends, who were too perfectly devoted to them to suffer them to receive any violence, it was agreed to manage the thing as quietly and easily as might be, and to coax them away if possible to the tribunal. To insure the still and effectual performance of this order, the captain of the temple himself went with the officers, and quietly drew the apostles away, with their own consent, and without any violence; for the minions of the law knew perfectly well that the least show of injury towards these righteous men, would insure to those who attempted it, broken heads and bones, from the justly provoked people, whose deserved indignation would soon make the very stones to rise in mutiny for the defence of their beloved teachers and benefactors. The apostles themselves, however, showed no unwillingness whatever to appear before their bitter persecutors again, and presented themselves accordingly, with bold unflinching fronts, before the bar of the Sanhedrim. When they were fairly set before the council, the high priest, turning his lately perplexed face into “a look of austere dignity,” asked them, “Did we not particularly charge you, that you should not teach in his name? And now, indeed, in open contempt of our authority, you have filled all Jerusalem with your doctrine, and mean to bring this man’s blood upon us?” They, the high priest and his supporters, had, at no small pains and trouble, effected the death of Jesus, and had naturally hoped that there would be an end of him; but here now were his disciples constantly using his name to the excitable populace in their daily teachings, thus keeping alive the memory of these painful incidents which it was so desirable to forget, and slowly plotting the means of avenging upon the Sanhedrim the death of their Master. To this sort of address, Peter and all the other apostles, who now shared the fate of their two distinguished friends, replied, even as had been said on the previous summons, “We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you slew and hanged on a tree: him now has God uplifted to sit beside his own right hand, to be a Prince and a Savior, to give to Israel a change of heart and views, and remission of sins. And we are his witnesses of these things, and what is far more, so also is the Holy Spirit, which God has given to those who obey him, as the reward and the sign of their obedience.” This bold and solemn speech, breathing nothing but resistance against all hindrances, and steady persistance in their course,――and denouncing, too, as murderers, the judges, while it exalted their victim to honors the highest in the universe, was not at all calculated to conciliate the friendly regard of the hearers of it, but roused them to the most violent and deadly hate. Deeply wounded and insulted as they were, they determined to try remonstrance no longer; but in spite of the danger of popular ferment, to silence these audacious bravers of their authority, in death. While they were on the point of pronouncing this cruel decision, the proceedings were stayed by Gamaliel, a man of vast learning and influence, an eminent Pharisee of great popularity, and beyond all the men of that age, in knowledge of the law of Moses and of Hebrew literature. This great man, rising up in the midst of their wrathful resolutions, moved to suspend the decision for a few minutes, and to withdraw the prisoners from the bar, until the court could form their opinions by deliberating with more freedom than they could in the presence of the subjects of the trial. As soon as the apostles were put out of the court, Gamaliel addressed them, prompted by a noble humanity, as well as by a deep knowledge of human nature, and acting in accordance, also, with the general principles of the Pharisees, who were very averse to cruelty and bloodshed, and were generally disposed to punish even criminals in the mildest ways. Possibly, too, he might have been affected by some jealousy of the forwardness of the rival sect. His words were these: “Men of Israel! take care what you do to these men. For you know that, not long ago, rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody, and gathered a gang about him, to the number of four hundred. But as soon as the attention of our Roman masters was drawn to his outrageous doings, they put him entirely down at once, killing him and breaking up his band, by slaughter and banishment; so that without any trouble or exertion on our part, all this sedition was brought to nought. And when, after him, Judas the Galilean raised a great party about him, in the days of the taxing, this rebellion against the government met with the same inevitable fate, from the resistless soldiery of Rome; and all this was done without any need of interference from us. And now, with these remarkable instances in view, I warn you to let these men alone, and leave them to determine their fate by their own future conduct. For if, in all their active efforts of seeming benevolence, they have been prompted by any base ambition to head a faction, which may raise them to the supreme power in religious and political affairs, and by a revengeful wish to punish those concerned in the death of their Master;――if, in short, their plan or their work is a mere contrivance of men, it will come to nought of itself, without your interference, as did the two miserable riots which I have just mentioned. But if, inspired by a holier principle of action, they are laboring with pure love of their converts; if all these wonderful cures which you consider mere tricks and impostures, shall prove to be true miracles, wrought by the hand of God, and if their plan be of God,――you cannot overthrow it; and do you look to it, sirs, that you do not find yourselves at last fighting against God.” This noble and sensible speech, aided by the high rank and great weight of character which belonged to the speaker, instantly hushed all the lately outrageous proposals which had been made against the prisoners. If there were any in the council who did not feel satisfied with his reasoning, they were wise enough to acquiesce, with at least the appearance of content. They knew too well, that Gamaliel, supported by his unbounded popularity with the whole nation, and his eminently exalted character for justice and virtue, was abundantly able to put down every appearance of opposition, and set the apostles free, in spite of high priest and Sadducees. Adopting his resolution, therefore, they called in the apostles, and having vented their paltry malice by beating them, and having exposed themselves to new contempt by repeating their oft-despised command, that the apostles should not speak in the name of Jesus, they let them go, being fully assured that the first use the apostles would make of their freedom would be to break this idle injunction. For they went out of the judgment-hall, rejoicing that they were honored by suffering this shameful treatment in their Master’s name. They now recalled to mind his early words of encouragement, which he had given them in a wise determination to prepare them for evils of which they had then so little notion. The passage from the sermon on the mount was particularly appropriate to their present circumstances. “Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my name’s sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets who were before you.” Comforted by such words as these, they returned to their labors as before, and daily, in the temple, and moreover in private houses, ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus Christ, in the very face of the express prohibition of their thwarted persecutors.

Messenger.――This is a fair and literal interpretation of αγγελος, (angelos,) and one justifiable in every place where it occurs in the Bible. Wherever it is applied to a supernatural being sent from God, the connection will abundantly explain the term, without rendering it by a different word. Thus I have chosen to do, and to leave each reader to judge for himself, from the other attendant circumstances, of the character of the messenger. See Kuinoel in loc.

All the words of this life.――I here follow the common translation, though Kuinoel and most interpreters consider this as a hypallage, and transpose it into “all these words of life.” But it does not seem necessary to take such a liberty with the expression, since the common version conveys a clear idea. “The words of this life” evidently can mean only the words of that life which they had before preached, in accordance with their commission; that is, of life from the dead, as manifested in the resurrection of Jesus, which was in itself the pledge and promise of life and bliss eternal, to all who should hear and believe these “words.” This view is supported by Storr, and a similar one is advanced by Rosenmueller, in preference to any hypallage.

Change of heart.――I have in general given this translation of Μετανοειτε, (Metanoeite,) as more minutely faithful to the etymology of the word, and also accordant with popular religious forms of expression; though the common translation is unobjectionable.

Deeply wounded.――In the Greek, διεπριοντο, (dieprionto,) from διαπριω, “to saw through;” in the passive, of course, “to be sawn through,” or figuratively, “deeply wounded in the moral feelings.” This is the commonly translated, “cut to the heart,” which I have adopted, with such a variation of the words as will assimilate it most nearly to common modern forms of expression. But Kuinoel prefers the peculiar force of the middle voice, (where this word can be made, owing to the identity of the imperfect tenses of the two voices,) given by Hesychius, “to gnash the teeth,” doubtless taken from the similarity of sound between “sawing,” and “grating the teeth.” This sense being also highly appropriate here, to men in a rage, makes the passage perfectly ambiguous, and accordingly great authorities divide on the point. In such cases, it seems to me perfectly fair to consider the phrase as originally intended for an equivoque. Luke was Grecian enough, doubtless, to know the two meanings of this form, and must have been very careless if he did not think of it as he wrote it down; but either meaning is powerfully expressive of the idea here, and why should he reject or explain it? It is rather an advantage and a charm than otherwise, in a language, to possess this ambiguity, making occasionally a richly expressive play of meanings. It seems, however, more in accordance with Luke’s ordinary expressions, to prefer the passive sense, as in Acts vii. 54, ταις καρδιαις (“to their hearts”) is added, there, of course, requiring the passive. For similar forms of expression, see Luke ii. 35: Acts ii. 37.――Consult Bretschneider in loc. In favor of the passive sense, see Bloomfield, Rosenmueller, Wolf, Hammond and Gataker. On the middle sense, Kuinoel, Beza and Wetstein.

Gamaliel.――I shall give a full account of this venerable sage, in the beginning of the life of Paul.

In the temple and in private houses.――Acts vi. 42. In the Greek, κατ’ οἶκον, (kat’ oikon,) the same expression as in ii. 46, alluded to in my note on pages 139, 140. Here too occurs precisely the same connection with ἐν τῳ ἱερῳ, (en to hiero,) with the same sense of opposition in place, there alluded to. The indefinite sense, then, rather than the distributive, is proper here as there, showing that they preached and taught not only in their great place of assembly, under the eastern colonnade of the temple, (v. 12,) but also in private houses, that is, at their home, or those of their friends. The expression “from house to house,” however, is much less objectionable here, because in this passage it can give only an indefinite idea of place, without any particular idea of rotation; but in the other passage, in connection with “the taking of food,” it makes an erroneous impression of their mode of life, which the text is meant to describe.

THE APPOINTMENT OF DEACONS.

The successful progress of their labors had now gathered around them a great church, numbering among its members a vast throng both of Hebrew and of foreign Jews. The apostles being devoted wholly to their high duties of prayer and preaching, were unable to superintend particularly the daily distribution of the means of support to the needy, out of the charity-fund which had been gathered from the generous contributions of the wealthy members of the church. Among the foreign Jews who had joined the fraternity of the disciples, were many of those who, by education, language and manners, though not by race or religion, were Greeks. These, with the proselytes, being fewer than those who adhered to the genuine manners and language of Palestine, had comparatively little weight in the administration of the affairs of the church, and had no hand in the distribution to the church poor. Being a minority, and being moreover looked on with invidious eyes by the genuine Hebrews, as a sort of half renegades, they were overlooked and put back, in the daily ministration to the needy, and to such a degree, that even the helpless widows among them were absolutely suffering through this neglect. The natural consequence was, that murmurs and open complaints arose among them, at this shameful and unbrotherly partiality. As soon as the report of the difficulty reached the ears of the twelve, they immediately called a full church-meeting, and laid the matter before it in these words. “It is not proper that we should leave the preaching of the word of God, to wait on tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven reputable men, full of a holy spirit and of wisdom, whom we may intrust with this business; while we continue to give our time up wholly to prayer and the ministry of the word.” This wise plan pleased all parties, and the church proceeded to elect the proper persons for the charge. To soothe the feelings of the Hellenists, the whole seven were chosen from their number, as the names (which are all Greek) fully show. This makes it probable that there were already persons appointed from among the Hebrews, who had administered these charities from the beginning, and whose partial management of these matters had given offense to those whom they slighted. The seven Hellenists now chosen to this office, were Stephen, resplendent in spiritual and intellectual endowments; Philip, also highly distinguished afterwards by his successful preaching; Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch; by which last circumstance, (as well as by the case of Barnabas,) is shown the fact that some Hellenist converts, from a distance, had settled at Jerusalem, and permanently joined the followers of Christ. These seven being formally elected by the church, were brought in before the apostles, for approval and confirmation. And after they had prayed, they laid their hands on them, in token of imparting to them the blessing and the power of that divine influence which had inspired its previous possessors to deeds so energetic and triumphant. The efficiency of this prayer and benediction, in calling down divine grace on the heads thus touched by the hands of the apostles, was afterwards most remarkably demonstrated in the case of two of the seven, and in the case of the first of them, almost immediately.

Greeks.――The original word here is not Ἑλληνες, (Hellenes,) but Ἑλληνιστοι, (Hellenistoi,) which means not Grecians, but Grecizers; that is, those who imitated Grecian language or customs.

Genuine Hebrews.――By these are meant those who used the Hebrew language still in their synagogues, as the only sacred tongue, and looked with much scorn on the Hellenists, that is, those foreign Jews, who, from birth or residence in other lands, had learned the Greek as their sole language in common life, and were thus obliged to use the Greek translation, in order to understand the scriptures. This matter will have a fuller discussion in another place. Lightfoot has brought a most amazing quantity of learned and valuable illustration of this difference, from Talmudic literature. (Horae Hebraica et Talmudicae in Acts vi. 1.)

CHRIST’S FIRST MARTYR.

Stephen, after thus being set apart for the service of the church, though faithfully discharging the peculiar duties to which he was called, did not confine his labors to the mere administration of the public charities. The word of God had now so spread, under the ministry of the apostles, that the number of the disciples in Jerusalem was greatly enlarged, and that not merely from the lower and ignorant orders; but a great number of the priests, who, in their daily service in the temple, had been frequently unintentional hearers of the word preached in its courts, now professed themselves the submissive friends of the new faith. This remarkable increase excited public attention more and more, and required redoubled exertions to meet the increasing call for instruction. Stephen, therefore, immediately entered boldly and heartily on this good work; and, inspired by a pure faith, and the confidence of help from above, he wrought among the people such miracles as had hitherto followed only the ministry of the apostles. The bold actions of this new champion did not fail to excite the wrath of the enemies of the cause of Christ; but as the late decision of the Sanhedrim had been against any further immediate resort to violent measures, his opponents confined themselves to the forms of verbal debate for a while. As Stephen was one of those Jews who had adopted the Greek language and habits, and probably directed his labors more particularly to that class of persons, he soon became peculiarly obnoxious to those Hellenist Jews who still held out against the new doctrine. Of the numerous congregations of foreign Jews that filled Jerusalem, five in particular are mentioned as distinguishing themselves by this opposition,――that of the freed-men, or captive Jews once slaves in Rome, and their descendants,――that of the Cyrenians,――of the Alexandrians,――the Cilicians and the Asians. Some of the more zealous in all these congregations came out to meet Stephen in debate, with the polished points of Grecian logic which their acquaintance with that language enabled them to use against him. But not all the combined powers of sacred and profane literature availed any thing against their learned and inspired opponent. Prepared beforehand, thoroughly, in all sorts of wisdom, and borne on resistlessly, moreover, by that divine influence whose movements they could see but could not understand, he foiled them completely at all their own weapons, and exposed them, in their low bigotry and stupidity, baffled and silenced by his single voice. But among all the refinements and elegances with which their classical knowledge had made them acquainted, they had failed to learn that noblest effort of the rhetorical art, which is to know how to bear a fair defeat in open debate, gracefully. These low-minded, half-renegade bigots, burning with brutal rage for this defeat, which their base behavior made more disgraceful, determined to find a means of punishing him, which no logic nor rhetoric could resist. They found men base enough for their vile purposes, and instructed them to testify that they had heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God. On the strength of this heinous charge, they made out to rouse some of the people, as well as the elders and the scribes, to a similar hostile feeling; and coming upon him with a throng of these, they seized him and dragged him away to the Sanhedrim, to undergo the form of a trial. They then brought forward their perjured witnesses, who testified only in vague terms of abuse, “This man ceases not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus, the Nazarene, will destroy this place, and will do away with the customs which Moses delivered to us.” This was, after all, a kind of accusation which brought him more particularly under the invidious notice of the Pharisees, whose leader had lately so decidedly befriended the apostles; for that sect guarded with the most jealous care all the minute details of their religion, and were ever ready to punish, as a traitor to the national faith and honor, any one who spoke slightingly, or even doubtingly, of the perpetuity of the law of Moses, and its hallowed shrine. Perhaps there was no one of all the sayings of Jesus himself, which had given deeper offense than his remark about destroying the temple and re-building it in three days, which his silly hearers took up seriously, and construed into a serious, blasphemous insult of the chief glory of the Jewish name, and bore it in mind so bitterly, as to throw it back on him, in his last agonies on the cross. Such a saying, therefore, when laid to the charge of Stephen, could not but rouse the worst feelings against him, in the hearts of all his judges. But he, calm and undisturbed amid the terrors of this trial, as he had been in the fury of the dispute, bore such an aspect of composure, that all who sat in the council were struck with his angelic look. The high priest, however, having heard the accusation, solemnly called on the prisoner to say “whether these things were so.” Stephen then, with a determination to meet the charge by a complete exhibition of his views of the character and objects of the Jewish faith, ran over the general history of its rise and progress, and of the opinions which its founders and upholders had expressed concerning the importance and the perpetuity of those types and forms, and of the glorious temple which was their chief seat, when compared with the revelation to be expected through the prophet promised to them by God and foretold by Moses. Warming as he went on, he quoted the poetical words of Isaiah, on the dwelling-place of the Almighty, as not being confined to the narrow bounds of the building which was to them an object of such idolatrous reverence, as the sole place of Jehovah’s abode, but as being high in the heavens, whence his power and love spread their boundless grasp over sea and land, and all nations that dwelt beneath his throne. As the words of the prophet of the fire-touched lips rolled from the voice of Stephen, they kindled his soul into an ecstacy of holy wrath; and in open scorn of their mean cruelty, he broke away from the plan of his discourse, bursting out into burning expressions of reproach and denunciation, which carried their rage away beyond all bounds of reason. Conscious of their physical power to avenge the insult, the mob instantly rose up, and hurried him away from the court, without regard to the forms of law; and taking him without the city, they stoned him to death, while he invoked on them, not the wrath, but the mercy of their common God. In such prayers, gloriously crowning such labors and sufferings, he fell asleep, commending his spirit to the hands of that Lord and Savior, whom it was his exalted honor to follow, first of all, through the bitter agonies of a bloody death.

THE PERSECUTION.

Among the nameless herd of Stephen’s murderers and disputants, there was one only whose name has been preserved from the impenetrable oblivion which hides their infamy. And that name now is brought to the mind of every Christian reader, without one emotion of indignation or contempt, for its connection with this bloody murder. That man is now known to hundreds of millions, and has been for centuries known to millions of millions, as the bright leader of the hosts of the ransomed, and the faithful martyr who sealed with his blood the witness which this proto-martyr bore beneath the messengers of death to which his voice had doomed him. In the synagogue of the Cilicians, which was so active in the attack on Stephen, was a young man, who was not behind the oldest and the fiercest, in the steady, unrelenting hate which he bore to this devouring heresy. He gave his voice amid the clamors of the mob, to swell the cry for the death of the heretic; and when the stout murderers hurled the deadly missiles on the martyr’s naked head, it was he who took charge of the loose garments which they had thrown off, that they might use their limbs with greater freedom. Neither the sight of the saintly martyr, kneeling unresistingly to meet his bloody death, nor the sound of his voice, rising in the broken tones of the death-agony, in prayer for his murderers, could move the deep hate of this young zealot, to the least relenting; but the whole scene only led him to follow this example of merciless persecution, which he here viewed with such deep delight. Abundant opportunities for the exercise of this persecuting spirit soon occurred. In connection with the charge against Stephen, which, however unfounded, brought him to this illegal death, there was a general and systematic disturbance raised by the same persons, against the church in Jerusalem, more particularly directed, as it would seem, against the Hellenist members, who were involved, by general suspicion, in the same crime for which Stephen, their eminent brother, had suffered. Saul now distinguished himself at once above all others, by the active share which he took in this persecution. Raging against the faithful companions of the martyred Stephen, he, with the most inquisitorial zeal, sought them out, even in their own quiet dwellings, and violating the sanctity of home, he dragged out the inmates to prison, visiting even on helpless women the crime of believing as their consciences prompted, and without regard to delicacy or decency, shutting them up in the public dungeons. As soon as the storm began to burst on the new converts, those who were in any special danger of attack very properly sought safety in flight from the city, in accordance with the wise and merciful injunction laid upon the apostles by their Lord, when he first sent them forth as sheep in the midst of wolves,――“When they persecute you in one city, flee into another.” The consequences of this dispersion, however, were such as to turn the foolish rage of the persecutors to the solid advantage of the cause of Christ, and to show in what a variety of ways God can cause the wrath of man to praise him. For all those who were thus driven out of their peaceful homes, became missionaries of the word of truth, among the people of the various cities and countries through which they were scattered. All those of whose wanderings we have any account, seem to have journeyed northward and north-westward, probably all of them foreign Jews, who naturally returned home when driven out of Jerusalem. Some of these went, in this way, to the Phoenician coast, to Antioch, and to Cyprus, all laboring to extend the knowledge of that truth for which they were willing sufferers. But of all those who went forth on this forced mission, none appear to have been more successful than Philip, who stood next to the martyred Stephen on the list of the seven Hellenist servants of the church, and who appears to have been second not even to his great fellow-servant in ability and energy. His home was in Caesarea, on the sea-coast; but he had higher objects than merely to take refuge in his own domestic circle; for instead of thus indulging his feelings of natural affection, he also turned his course northward, and made his first sojourn in the city of Samaria, where he immediately began to preach Christ to them, as the common Messiah, so long desired by Samaritans as well as Jews. Here, the people being ruled by no tyrannical sectaries, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the various orders of ecclesiastical power in Jerusalem, were left entirely to follow the impulse of their better feelings towards the truth, without the fear of any inquisition into their movements. Under these happy circumstances of religious freedom, they all with one accord gave heed to the preaching of Philip, hearing and seeing the wonderful works of kindness which he did. For foul spirits, which, possessing many sufferers, had long wasted their bodies and deranged their minds, now at the word of this preacher of Christ, came out of many of them, crying with a loud voice in attestation of the irresistible power which had overcome them. Many also that were affected with palsies and that were lame, were healed in the same miraculous manner; so that, in consequence of this removal of so many bodily and spiritual evils, there was great joy in the city, at the arrival of this messenger of mercy. But before the coming of Philip, the people of Samaria had been the subjects of arts of a somewhat different kind, from a man who could claim for his works none of the holy character of disinterested humanity, which belonged to those of the preacher of Christ. This was one Simon, a man who, by the use of some magical tricks, had so imposed upon the simple-minded citizens, that they were profoundly impressed with the notion, which he was anxious to make them believe, namely, that he was a great man. To him they all, both young and old, paid the deepest reverence, in consequence of the triumphant ability displayed by him in the arts of sorcery; and so low were their notions of the nature of miraculous agency, that they concluded that the tricks which he played were tokens of divine interposition in his favor, and universally allowed that he was himself a personification of the mighty power of God. But when Philip came among them, and exhibited the genuine workings of the holy spirit of God, they immediately saw how much they had been mistaken in their previous estimate of its operations, and changed their degraded notions, for a more just appreciation of its character. On hearing the word of truth so fully revealed and supported, they believed in the new view which he gave them of the kingdom of God on earth, and in the name of Jesus Christ; and were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself, overwhelmed with the evidences of a higher power than any that he knew, confessed the fallacy of his own tricks, and submissively owned the power of God as manifested in the words and deeds of Philip, with whom he now remained, a humble and wondering observer of the miracles and signs wrought by him.

THE VISIT TO SAMARIA.

In the mean time, the apostles had remained at Jerusalem, apparently not directly affected by the persecution against Stephen and his friends, or at least not disturbed by it so as to be prevented from remaining at their original post, in the discharge of duty. For, a true regard for the instructions long ago given them by their Master, would have required them to leave Jerusalem, if the opposition to their preaching became so settled and extensive as to prevent them from advancing the cause of Christ there, more rapidly than they might in other places. The spirit with which they had been taught to meet tyrannical opposition, was not one of idle bravado or useless pertinacity, but of deliberate and calculating steadiness in their plan, which knew when to prudently give way, as well as when to boldly withstand. It is therefore fair to conclude, that the persecution here referred to, was so limited as not to be directed against the apostles themselves, nor to hinder their useful labors. If any of them had been imprisoned during this persecution, certainly the rest would have been blamable for not escaping; but the fact that they remained perfectly free, appears from their leaving the city without delay, on the occasion which now required their presence and assistance elsewhere. For as soon as they heard of the preaching of Philip at Samaria, and of the willingness with which the Samaritans had received and believed the first communications of the word, they immediately sent to them Peter and John, who, as the chief teachers of the doctrines of Christ, might give the new converts a fuller preparation for their duties in their calling, than could be expected from one so lately commissioned as the zealous preacher who had first awakened them. These two great apostles, having come down to Samaria, prayed for the believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit; for this heavenly gift had not yet been imparted to them; the only sign of their acceptance into the new faith having been their baptism by the hands of Philip, who does not seem to have been empowered to indue others with the same divine spirit which he had so abundantly received on himself. But the apostles laying their hands on them, as they had before done with such powerful effect on Stephen, Philip and their fellow-servants, now also inspired these second fruits with the same divine energy, which was instantly made manifest in them, by the usual signs. As soon as Simon saw the display of the new powers, with which those were suddenly gifted who had been made the subjects of this simple ceremony, he immediately concluded that he had at last found out the means of acquiring those miraculous powers at which he had been so deeply amazed, and which he thought he could make vastly profitable to himself in his business, as a very decided improvement upon his old tricks. Thinking only of the motive which always moved his mind to the bestowment of such favors, he immediately took out the money he had gained by his impositions on the people, and offered the apostles a handsome share of it, if they would simply give him the valuable privilege of conferring this divine agency on all upon whom he should lay his hands, in the same manner as they. But his mercenary hopes were soon blasted by the indignant terms in which Peter rejected his insulting proposal. “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God could be bought with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter; for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Change thy mind, therefore, from this wickedness of thine, and ask God, if indeed there is any possibility, that the iniquity of thy heart may be forgiven thee; for I see that thou art still full of the bitterness of thy former poisons, and bound fast in the chains of thy old iniquities.” Simon, hushed and overawed in his impertinent offers by this stern rebuke, sunk into a penitent tone again, and begged of them that they would pray for him, that the doom to perish with his money, as declared by Peter, might not fall on him. Of the depth and sincerity of his penitence, no good testimony is left us; but his submissive conduct, at best, seems to have been rather the result of a personal awe of the apostles, as his superiors in supernatural powers, than prompted by any true regard for their pure faith, or any just appreciation of their character and motives. The apostles, however, waited no longer to enlighten the mind of one so dark in his views of the divine agency; but after they had borne witness to the truth of Philip’s words and doctrines by their own preaching, they returned to Jerusalem, proclaiming the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans, on the way. Philip also, having had his labors thus triumphantly crowned by the ministrations of the apostles, left Samaria, and turned his course southwards, towards Gaza, under the impulse and guidance of a divine spirit. On this journey, occurred his most interesting adventure with the lord high treasurer of the Ethiopian queen, after which Philip was found at Ashdod, on the sea, from which place, journeying northwards again, he went preaching through all the towns on the coast, till he arrived at his home, at Caesarea.

JAFFA――JOPPA.

THE BEGINNING OF PEACE.

Soon after the return of the apostles to Jerusalem, an event occurred, which had a more mighty influence on the progress of the Christian religion than any other that had occurred since the ascension of Jesus. The members of the church who still withstood the storm of persecution in the city, were struck with no small amazement by the sudden appearance, before them, of Saul of Tarsus, the most bloody persecutor of their Hellenist brethren, who, having exhausted the opportunities for the gratification of his spite against them in Jerusalem, had gone to Damascus, to seize such as there supposed themselves safe in following the new faith. This man, yet stained, as it were, with the blood of Stephen, now presented himself to them as a convert to the gospel, prepared to join them as a brother. The whole affair seemed to bear so decidedly the aspect of a palpable imposition, that they altogether refused to have any thing to do with him, and suspected the whole to be a deep-laid snare, on the part of this bloody foe of the gospel, who now appeared to be seeking, by false professions, to get into their confidence, that he might have the means of betraying them to utter ruin. But Barnabas, who was better acquainted with Saul, detailed to the church all the wonderful circumstances so fully, that they no longer hesitated to receive him as a brother and fellow-laborer. This remarkable conversion was of vast benefit to the cause of the gospel, not only by bringing to its aid the services of a laborer so competent, but also by removing from among its adversaries one who had been a leader and a contriver of every plot of mischief. As soon as he left the ranks of the foe, the vindictive persecution, which had raged ever since the death of Stephen, ceased, as though it had lost its great author and main support, by the defection of Saul of Tarsus. Indeed, the last act of this persecution, which is recorded, was directed against this very man, who had once been a leader in it, and drove him out of the city which had been the scene of his cruelties. Therefore, the churches had rest throughout all Judea, and Galilee, and Samaria, strengthening and advancing in piety, and filled with the impulses of the Holy Spirit. This opportunity of quiet seemed peculiarly favorable for a minute survey of the condition of these scattered churches, most of which had grown up without any direct agency of the apostles, and therefore needed their attention at this critical period.

THE SURVEY OF THE CHURCHES.

The most proper person for this responsible charge, was the great leader of the apostolic band; and Peter, therefore, taking the task readily upon himself, went through all the churches, to give them the advantages of the minute personal ministry of a chief apostle, who might organize them, and instruct the disciples in their peculiar duties as members of a new religious community. On this tour of duty, passing down from the interior towards the sea-coast, he came to Lydda, about forty or fifty miles from Jerusalem, and about twelve from the sea. Here there was a company of the faithful, whom he visited, to instruct them anew, and to enlarge their numbers, by his preaching and miracles. A particular case is recorded as having occurred here, which displayed both the compassion of Peter and his divine power to heal and strengthen. Among the friends of Christ whom he visited here, was an invalid, whose name, Aeneas, shows him to have been a Hellenist. This man had for the long period of eight years been deprived of the use of his limbs, by a palsy, which, during that tedious interval, confined him to his bed. Peter, on seeing him, said, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals thee. Arise, and make thy bed for thyself.” The command to spread and smooth the couch, which he now quitted in health, was given, that he might show and feel, at once, how fully strength was restored to his hands as well as his feet. This miracle soon became known, not only to the citizens of Lydda, but also to the people inhabiting the extensive and fertile plain of Sharon, which stretched to the northward of Lydda, along the coast, from Joppa to Caesarea, bounded on the west by the highlands of Samaria. The effect of this display of power and benevolence, was such, on their minds, that, without exception, they professed their faith in Christ.

Lydda.――This was a place of far more importance and fame, than would be supposed from the brief mention of its name in the apostolic narrative. It is often mentioned in the writings of the Rabbins, under the name of לוד (Ludh,) its original Hebrew name, and was long the seat of a great college of Jewish law and theology, which at this very period of Peter’s visit was in its most flourishing state. This appears from the fact that Rabbi Akiba, who raised the school to its greatest eminence, was contemporary with the great Rabban Gamaliel, who bears an important part in the events of the apostolic history. (The data of this chronological inference I find in Lightfoot.) It is easy to see, then, why so important a seat of Jewish theology should have been thought deserving of the particular notice and protracted stay of Peter, who labored with remarkable earnestness and effect here, inspired by the consciousness of the lasting and extensive good, that would result from an impression made on this fountain of religious knowledge. The members of the college, however, did not all, probably, profess themselves followers of Christ.

It is also described as possessing some importance in addition to its literary privileges. Josephus (Antiquities XX. vi. 3.) mentions “Lydda” as “a village not inferior to a city in greatness.” Its importance was, no doubt, in a great measure derived from the remarkably rich agricultural district which surrounded it. This was the plain of Sharon, so celebrated in the Hebrew scriptures for its fruitful fields and rich pastures,――its roses and its flocks. (Solomon’s Song ii. 1: Isaiah xxxiii. 9: xxxv. 2: lxv. 10: 1 Chronicles xxvii. 29.) “All this country is described by Pococke as very rich soil, throwing up a great quantity of herbage; among which he specifies chardons, rue, fennel, and the striped thistle, ‘probably on this account called the holy thistle.’ A great variety of anemonies, he was told, grow in the neighborhood. ‘I saw likewise,’ he adds, ‘many tulips growing wild in the fields (in March;) and any one who considers how beautiful those flowers are to the eye, would be apt to conjecture that these are the lilies to which Solomon, in all his glory, was not to be compared.’”――[Modern Traveler, p. 57.] Its distance from Jerusalem is ascertained, by Lightfoot, to be one day’s journey, as it is stated with some circumlocution in the Mishna. It was destroyed, as Josephus relates, by Cestius Gallus, the Roman general, who marched his army through that region, in the beginning of the war, which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem. Under the peaceful times of the later Roman sway in Palestine, it was rebuilt, and called Diospolis. But like many other such instances, it has lost its temporary heathen name, and is now called by its old scripture appellation, Ludd. Travelers describe it as now a poor village, though the stones to be seen in the modern buildings show that it has been a place of great consequence.

The New Testament name Lydda, (Λυδδα,) by which Josephus also mentions it, is only so much changed from the Hebrew Ludh, as was necessary to accommodate it to the regular forms and inflexions of the Greek language. Lightfoot well refutes the blunder of many modern geographers who make the two names refer to different places. This learned author is remarkably full in the description of this place, and is very rich in references to the numerous allusions which are made to it in the Talmudic writings. See his Centuria Chorographica, (Chapter 16,) prefixed to Horae Hebraica et Talmudicae in Matthew.

Aeneas.――This name is unquestionably Greek, which seems to show the man to have been a Hellenist; and that he was already a believer in Christ, would appear from the fact of Peter’s finding him among the brethren there.

THE VISIT TO JOPPA.

Hardly had this instance of divine favor occurred in Lydda, when a new occasion for a similar effort presented itself, in the neighboring seaport town of Joppa. A female disciple of the faith of Christ, in that city, by name Tabitha, or in the Greek, Dorcas, (both names meaning Gazelle,) had distinguished herself and honored her religious profession, by the generous and charitable deeds which constantly employed her hands. This lady, so respected by all, and so loved by the poor, who gave witness to her goodness,――such an honor to the religious community which she had joined,――seemed to have so nobly done her part in life, that the order of Providence had apparently called her to rest from these labors, in that sleep from which no piety nor usefulness can save or recall their possessor. After a few days of illness, she died, and was, after the usual funeral ablutions, laid in an upper chamber, to await the burial. In the midst of the universal grief for this sad loss, the members of the church at Joppa, knowing that Peter was in Lydda, within a few hours’ journey, sent two messengers to him, to beg his presence among them, as some consolation in their distress. Peter, on hearing of this occasion for his presence, with great readiness accompanied the messengers back, and on arriving at Joppa, went straight to the house of mourning. He was immediately led into the chamber, where he found a most affecting testimony to the nature of the loss which the afflicted community had suffered. Around the dead, stood the widows who, in their friendlessness, had been relieved by the sympathy of Dorcas, now pouring their tears and uttering their lamentations over her, and showing that even the garments which they wore were the work of her industrious hand,――that hand which, once so untiring in these labors of love, was now cold and motionless in death. From that resistless doom, what mortal voice could ever recall even one so amiable and useful? But, while they were sorrowing thus, Peter ordered them all to leave him alone with the dead; and when all witnesses were removed, he kneeled and prayed. The words of that prayer are not recorded; and it is only by its successful efficiency that we know it to have been that fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man, which availeth much. It was such a prayer as, of old, the son of Shaphat offered over the dead child of the Shunamite, when alone with him; and its effect was not less mighty. Rising at length, and turning towards the body, he said “Tabitha, arise!” Awaking from the unbreathing sleep of death, as from a light slumber of an hour, she opened her eyes, and when she saw the majestic man of God alone, and herself robed for the tomb, she sat up and gazed in amazement. Peter, then, giving her his hand, lifted her from the funeral couch, and calling in the brethren and the widows; he presented her to their astonished eyes, alive. Their overwhelming joy and wonder, we are left to imagine. The story, when made known through the city, brought many to acknowledge the truth of that religion whose minister could work such wonders; and many believed in Christ. The field of labor which now opened to Peter in this place, seemed so wide that he did not continue his journey any further at that time, but took up his abode, for several days, in Joppa, lodging in the house of Simon, a tanner, whose house stood by the sea, near the water.

Joppa, now called Jaffa.――This was from very early times a place of great importance, from the circumstance of its being the nearest seaport to Jerusalem. It is mentioned in reference to this particular of its situation, in 2 Chronicles ii. 17, where it is specified (in Hebrew יפו Japho) as the port to which the cedar timber from Lebanon should be floated down in rafts, to be conveyed to Jerusalem for building the temple. It stood within the territories of the tribe of Dan, according to Joshua xix. 46, and lies about East-North-east from Jerusalem. Strabo, (xvi.) in describing it, refers to it as the scene of the ancient Grecian fable of Andromeda rescued from the sea-monster by Perseus. He describes its site as “quite elevated,――so much so, indeed, that it was a common saying that Jerusalem might be seen from the place; the inhabitants of which city use it as their seaport, in all their maritime intercourse.” Josephus mentions that it was added to the dominions of Herod the Great by Augustus. Its present appearance is thus described by travelers.

“It is situated in latitude 32 degrees 2 minutes North, and longitude 34 degrees 53 minutes East, and is forty miles West of Jerusalem. Its situation, as the nearest port to the Holy City, has been the chief cause of its importance. As a station for vessels, according ♦to Dr. Clarke, its harbor is one of the worst in the Mediterranean. Ships generally anchor about a mile from the town, to avoid the shoals and rocks of the place. The badness of the harbor is mentioned, indeed, by Josephus. (Josephus, Antiquities, book xv. chapter 9.) * * * The road is protected by a castle built on a rock, and there are some storehouses and magazines on the sea-side. The coast is low, but little elevated above the level of the sea; but the town occupies an eminence, in the form of a sugar-loaf, with a citadel on the summit. The bottom of the hill is surrounded with a wall twelve or fourteen feet high, and two or three feet thick. * * * There are no antiquities in Jaffa: the place would seem to be too old to have any――to have outlived all that once rendered it interesting. The inhabitants are estimated at between four and five thousand souls, of whom the greater part are Turks and Arabs; the Christians are stated to be about six hundred, consisting of Roman Catholics, Greeks, Maronites, and Armenians.” [Modern Traveler, Palestine, pp. 41, 42.]

♦ “io” replaced with “to”

Dorcas.――This is the Greek translation of the old Hebrew צבי (Tsebi,) in the Aramaic dialect of that age, changed into תביתא (Tabitha,) in English, “gazelle,” a beautiful animal of the antelope kind, often mentioned in descriptions of the deserts of south-western Asia, in which it roams; and not unfrequently the subject of poetical allusion. The species to which it is commonly supposed to belong, is the Antilopa Dorcas of Prof. Pallas, who named it on the supposition that it was identical with this animal, called by the Greeks, Δορκας, (Dorkas,) from Δερκο, (Derko,) “to look,” from the peculiar brightness of “its soft black eye.”

THE CALL TO THE HEATHEN.

The apostles had now, with great zeal and efficiency, preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to the worshipers of the true God, beginning at Jerusalem, and spreading the triumphs of his name to the bounds of the land of Israel. But in all their devotion to their Master’s work, they had never had a thought of breaking over the bounds of the faith of their fathers, or of making their doctrine anything else than a mere completion or accompaniment to the law of Moses; nor did they imagine that they were ever to extend the blessings of the gospel to any who did not bow down to all the tedious rituals of the ancient covenant. The true power of their Lord’s parting command, “Go and teach all nations,” they had never felt; and even now, their great chief supposed that the change of heart and remission of sins, which he was commissioned to preach, were for none but the devout adherents of the Jewish faith. A new and signal call was needed, to bring the apostles to a full sense of their enlarged duties; and it is among the highest honors vouchsafed to Peter, that he was the person chosen to receive this new view of the boundless field now opened for the battles and triumphs of the cross. To him, as the head and representative of the whole band of the apostles, was now spread out, in all its moral vastness and its physical immensity, the coming dominion of that faith, whose little seed he was now cherishing, with but a humble hope; but whose stately trunk and giant branches were, from that small and low beginning, to stretch, in a mighty growth, over lands, and worlds, to him unknown. Thus far he had labored with a high and holy zeal, in a cause whose vastness he had never appreciated,――every moment building up, unwittingly, a name for himself, which should outlast all the glories of the ancient covenant; and securing for his Master a dominion which the religion of Moses could never have reached. He had never had an idea, that he with his companions was founding and spreading a new religion;――to purify the religion of the law and the prophets, and to rescue it from the confusion and pollutions of warring sectaries, was all that they had thought of; yet with this end in view, they had been securing the attainment of one so far above and beyond, that a full and sudden view of the consequences of their humble deeds, would have appalled them. But though the mighty plan had never been whispered nor dreamed of, on earth,――though it was too immense for its simple agents to endure its full revelation at once,――its certain accomplishment had been ordained in heaven, and its endless details were to be fully learned only in its triumphant progress through uncounted ages. But, limited as was the view which the apostles then had of the high destiny of the cause to which they had devoted themselves, it was yet greatly extended from the low-born notions with which they had first followed the steps of their Master. They now no longer entertained the vagary of a worldly triumph and a worldly reward; they had left that on the mount where their Lord parted from them, and they were now prayerfully laboring for the establishment of a pure spiritual kingdom in the hearts of the righteous. To give them a just idea of the exalted freedom to which the gospel brought its sons, and to open their hearts to a Christian fellowship, as wide as the whole human family, God now gave the apostolic leader an unquestionable call to tell to the world the glad tidings of salvation, for all men, through a new and living way, by change of heart and remission of sins. The incidents which led to this revelation are thus detailed.

The peace and good order of Palestine were now secured by several legions, whose different divisions, larger or smaller according to circumstances, were quartered in all the strong or important places in the country, to repress disorders, and enforce the authority of the civil power, when necessary. Besides this ordinary peace-establishment of the province, there was a cohort which took its name from the circumstance that it had been levied in Italy,――a distinction, now so rare, in consequence of the introduction of foreign mercenaries into the imperial hosts, as to become the occasion of an honorable eminence, which was signified by the title here given, showing that this division of the Roman armies was made up of the sons of that soil which had so long sent forth the conquerors of the world. Of all the variety of service required of the different detachments of the army, in the province which it guarded, by far the most honorable was that of being stationed next the person of the governor of the province, to maintain the military dignity of his vice-imperial court, and defend his representative majesty. Caesarea, on the sea-shore, was now the seat of the Roman government of Palestine; and here, in attendance on the person of the governor, was this aforesaid Italian cohort, at the head of a company in which, was a centurion named Cornelius. Though nothing is given respecting his birth and family but this single name, a very slight knowledge of Roman history and antiquities enables the historian to decide, that he was descended from a noble race of patricians, which had produced several of the most illustrious families of the imperial city. Eminent by this high birth and military rank, he must have been favored with an education worthy of his family and station. It is therefore allowable to conclude, that he was an intelligent and well-informed gentleman, whom years of foreign service, in the armies of his country must have improved by the combined advantages of a traveler and a disciplined warrior. Of his moral and religious character such an account is given, as proves that his principles, probably implanted in early life, had been of such firmness as to withstand the numerous temptations of a soldier’s life, and to secure him in a course of most uncommon rectitude in his duties towards God and towards man. In the merciful exercise of his power over the people whose safety and quiet he came to maintain, and, moreover, in the generous use of his pecuniary advantages, he passed his blameless life; and the high motive of this noble conduct, is discovered in the steady, pure devotion, in which he employed many hours of daily retirement, and in which he caused his whole family publicly to join, on proper occasions. Thus is he briefly and strongly characterized by the sacred historian: “devout, and fearing God with all his house; giving much alms, and praying to God always.”

Noble race of patricians.――The gens Cornelia, or “Cornelian race,” was unequaled in Rome for the great number of noble families sprung from its stock. The Scipios, the Sullas, the Dolabellas, the Cinnas, the Lentuli, the Cethegi, the Cossi, and many other illustrious branches of this great race, are conspicuous in Roman history; and the Fasti Consulares, record more than sixty of the Cornelian race, who had borne the consular dignity previous to the apostolic era. This is always a family name, and Ainsworth very grossly errs in calling it “the praenomen of several Romans.” Every Roman name of the middle and later ages of the commonwealth, had at least three parts, which were the praenomen, marking the individual,――the nomen marking the gens, (“race,” “stock,”) and the cognomen, marking the family or division of that great stock. Thus in the name “Publius Cornelius Scipio,” the last word shows that the person belonged to the Scipio family, which by the second word is seen to be of the great Cornelian stock, while the first shows that this member of the family was distinguished from his relations, by the name of Publius. (See Adams’s Roman Antiquities, on Names.) Wherever this name, Cornelius, occurs, if the whole appellation of the man is given, this comes in the middle, as the nomen, marking the race; as is the case with every one of those quoted by Ainsworth, in his blundering account of the word. See also Sallust, (The Catilinarian Conspiracy, 47, 55,) in defense of this peculiar limitation of the word to the gens. Not a single instance can be brought of its application to any person not of this noble patrician race, or of its use as a mere individual appellation. I am therefore authorized in concluding that this Cornelius mentioned in the Acts was related to this line of high nobility. It might, perhaps, be conjectured, that he had borrowed this name from that noble race, from having once been in the service of some one of its families, as was common in the case of freedmen, after they had received their liberty; but this supposition is not allowable; for he is expressly particularized as belonging to an Italian division of the army, which fact excludes the idea of that foreign origin which would belong to a slave. The Jews having but one name for each man, seldom gave all of a Roman’s name, unless of a very eminent man, as Pontius Pilate, Sergius Paulus, and other official characters; but selecting any one of the three parts which might be most convenient, they made that the sole appellative, whether praenomen, nomen, or cognomen. As in Luke ii. 2: Acts xxiii. 24: xxv. 1: xxvii. 1: xxviii. 7, &c.

JERUSALEM,
from the Latin Convent.
Luke xxi. 24.

The Italian cohort.――The word Σπειρα (Speira) I translate “cohort,” rather than “legion,” as the older commentators did. Jerome translates it “cohortem,” and he must have known the exact technical force of the Greek word, and to what Latin military term it corresponded, from his living in the time when these terms must have been in frequent use. Those who prefer to translate it “legion,” are misled by the circumstance, that Tacitus and other writers on Roman affairs, mention a legion which had the distinctive appellation of “the Italian Legion;” while it has been supposed that these ancient authors make no mention of an Italian cohort. But the deeply learned Wetstein, with his usual vast classical research, has shown several such passages, in Arrian and others, in which mention is made of an Italian cohort; and in Gruter’s inscriptions, quoted by Kuinoel, there is an account of “a volunteer cohort of Italian soldiers in Syria;” and Palestine was at this time included with Syria, under the presidency of Petronius. This inscription, too, justifies my remark as to the high character of those who served in this corps. “Cohors militum Italicorum voluntaria” seems to imply a body of soldiers of a higher character than the ordinary mercenary mass of the army, being probably made up of volunteers from respectable families of Italy, who chose to enlarge their knowledge of the world by foreign military service, in this very honorable station of life-guard to the Roman governor, as Doddridge and others suppose this to have been. (See Doddridge on this passage; also C. G. Schwartz in Wolff, Cur. Philology in loc.) It is considered also as fairly proved that the “Italian legion” was not formed till a much later period; so that it is rendered in the highest degree probable and unquestionable, that this was a cohort, and, as Schwartz and Doddridge prove, not a mere ordinary cohort, making the tenth part of a common legion of 4200, but a distinct and independent corps, attached to no legion, and devoted to the exclusive honorable service above mentioned. (See Bloomfield, Kuinoel, Rosenmueller, &c.)

Devout.――Some have tried hard to make out that Cornelius was what they call “a proselyte of the gate;” that is, one who, though not circumcised, nor conforming to the rituals generally, yet was an observer of the moral law. But Lardner very fully shows that there were not two sorts of proselytes; all who bore that name fully conforming to the Jewish rituals, but still called “strangers,” &c.; because, though admitted to all the religious privileges of the covenant, they were excluded from the civil and political privileges of Jews, and could not be freeholders. Cornelius must then have been a mere Gentile. (See Lardner in his life of Peter; also Kuinoel and Bloomfield.)

Caesarea.――This is another of those cities enlarged or rebuilt by the princes of the Herodian line, and honored with the names of the imperial family. This city stood on the sea-shore, about 30 miles north of Joppa; and (Modern Traveler) 62 north-north-west from Jerusalem. (600 stadia Josephus.) It has been idly conjectured by the Rabbinical writers, that this was the same with Ekron, of the Old Testament, Zephaniah ii. 4; while the Arabic version gives it as Hazor, Joshua xi. 1,――both with about equal probability. The earliest name by which it can be certainly recognized, is Apollonia, which it bore when it passed from the Syro-Grecians to the Maccabean princes. Its common name, in the time of Herod the Great, was πυργος Στρατωνος, turris Stratonis, “Straton’s castle,” from the name of a Greek pirate who had built a strong hold here. Herod the Great made it the most splendid city in his dominions, and even in all the eastern part of the Roman empire; and in honor of Augustus Caesar, called it Caesarea Augusta. It was sometimes called Caesarea Palestinae, to distinguish it from Caesarea Philippi; for Palestine was then a name limited to the southern part of the coast of the Holy Land, and was bounded on the north by Phoenicia. This city was the capital of the whole Holy Land throughout the period of the later Herodian and Roman sway.

To this man was sent the first heavenly call, which ended in bringing in the Gentiles to the knowledge of the truth revealed by Jesus. After having fasted all day, he was employed in his regular devotions, at the usual hour of prayer, (three o’clock in the afternoon,) when his senses were overwhelmed by a vision, in which he had a distinct view of a messenger of God, in shining garments, coming to him; and heard him call him by his name, “Cornelius!” Looking at him as steadily as he was able in his great alarm, Cornelius asked, “What is it, Lord?” The heavenly visitant replied, in words of consolation and high praise, “Thy prayers and thy alms have come up in remembrance before God. And now send men to Joppa, and call for a man named Simon Peter, lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea-side. He, when he comes, shall tell thee what it is right that thou shouldst do.” When the surprising messenger had given this charge, he departed; and Cornelius, without delay, went to fulfil the minute directions he had received. He called two of his domestics, and a devout soldier of the detachment then on duty near him, and having related to them all that he had just seen and heard, he sent them to Joppa, to invite Peter according to the order. The distance between the two places is about thirty-five miles, and being too great to be easily traveled in one day, they journeyed thither during a part of two days, starting immediately when they received the command, though late in the afternoon. While they were continuing their journey, the next day, and were now near to the city of Joppa, Peter, without any idea of the important task to which he was soon to be summoned, went up, as usual, to the Alijah, or place of prayer, upon the house-top, at about twelve o’clock, mid-day. Having, according to the usual custom of the Jews, fasted for many hours, for the sake of keeping the mind clear from the effects of gross food on the body, and at length becoming sensible that he had pushed himself to the utmost limits of safe abstinence, he wished for food, and ordered his dinner. While the servants were preparing it, he continued above, in the place of prayer, where, enfeebled by fasting, and over-wrought by mental effort, he fell into a state of spiritual excitement, in which the mind is most susceptible of strong impressions of things beyond the reach of sense. In this condition, there appeared to him a singular vision, which subsequent events soon enabled him fully to interpret. It seemed to him that a great sheet was let down from the sky, to which it was fastened by the four corners, containing on its vast surface all sorts of animals that were forbidden as food by the Mosaic law. While the apostle gazed upon this vast variety of animals, which education had taught him to consider unclean, there came a voice to him, calling him by name, and commanding him to arise, kill, and eat. All his prejudices and early religious impressions were roused by such a proposal; and, resisting the invisible speaker as the agent of temptation to him in his bodily exhaustion, he replied, in all the pride of a scrupulous and unpolluted Jew, “By no means, Lord, because I have never eaten anything improper or unclean.” The mysterious voice again said, “What God hath cleansed, do not thou consider improper.” This impressive scene having been twice repeated, the whole was withdrawn back into heaven. This remarkable vision immediately called out all the energies of Peter’s mind, in its explanation. But before he had time to decide for himself what was meant by it, the messengers of Caesarea had inquired out the house of Simon, and, coming to the outside door, they called to learn whether Simon, who was surnamed Peter, lodged there. And while the mind of Peter was still intently occupied with the vision, he received an intimation from the unerring spirit, that his presence was required elsewhere. “Behold! three men are seeking thee, but rise up and go with them, without hesitation; for I have sent them.” Thus urged and encouraged, Peter went directly down to the men sent by Cornelius, and said, “Behold! I am he whom ye seek. What is your object in coming here?” They at once unfolded their errand. “Cornelius, a centurion, a just man, fearing God, and of good repute among all the Jews, was instructed by a holy messenger, to send for thee to his house, that he may hear something from thee.” Peter, already instructed as to the proper reception of the invitation, asked them in, and hospitably entertained them till the next day, improving the delay, no doubt, by learning as many of the circumstances of the case as they could give him. The news of this remarkable call was also made known to the brethren of the church in Joppa, some of whom were so highly interested in what they heard that evening, that they resolved to accompany Peter the next day, with the messengers, to see and hear for themselves the details of a business which promised to result so fairly in the glory of Christ’s name, and the wide enlargement of his kingdom. On the next day, the whole party set out together, and reached Caesarea, the second day of their journey; and going straight to the house of Cornelius, they found quite a large company there, awaiting their arrival. For Cornelius, expecting them, had invited his relations and his intimate friends, to hear the extraordinary communications which had been promised him, from his visitor. The kindred here alluded to were, perhaps, those of his wife, whom, according to a very common usage, he may have married in the place where he was stationed; for it is hardly probable that a Roman captain from Italy could have had any of his own blood relations about him, unless, perhaps, some of them might have enlisted with him, and now been serving with him on this honorable post. His near friends, who completed the assembly, were probably such of his brother officers as he knew to possess kindred tastes with himself, and to take an interest in religious matters. Such was the meeting that Peter found sitting in expectation of his coming; and so high were the ideas which Cornelius had formed of the character of his visitor, that, as soon as he met him on his entrance into the house, he fell down at his feet, and paid him reverence as a superior being;――an act of abasement towards the inhabitant of a conquered country, most rare and remarkable in a Roman officer, and one to which nothing but a notion of supernatural excellence could ever have brought him, since this was a position assumed not even by those who approached the emperor himself. Peter, however, had no desire to be made the object of a reverence so nearly resembling idolatry. Raising up the prostrate Roman, he said, “Stand up: for I myself am also a man.” Entering into familiar discourse with him, he now advanced into the house, and going with him to the great room, he there found a numerous company. He addressed them in these words: “You know how unlawful it is for a Jew to be familiar, or even to visit, with one of another nation; but God has taught me to call no man vulgar or unclean. Wherefore, I came at your summons, without hesitation. Now, then, I ask with what design have you sent for me?” And Cornelius said, “Four days ago, I was fasting till this hour; and at the ninth hour I was praying in my house;” and so having gone on to narrate all the circumstances of his vision, as given above, concluded in these words, “For this reason I sent for thee, and thou hast done well in coming, for we are all here, before God, to hear what has been imparted to thee, from God.” And Peter began solemnly to speak, and said, “Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but that in every nation, he that fears him and does what is right, is approved by him.” With this solemn profession of a new view of this important principle of universal religion, as a beginning, he went on to satisfy their high expectations, by setting forth to them the sum and substance of the gospel doctrine, of whose rise and progress they had already, by report, heard a vague and partial account. The great and solemn truth which the Spirit had summoned him to proclaim, was that Jesus Christ the crucified was ordained by God the judge of both living and dead, and that through him, as all the prophets testified, every one that believed should have remission of sins. Of his resurrection from the dead, Peter declared himself the witness, as well as of his labors of good will towards man, when, anointed with the Spirit of God, he went about doing good. Thus did Peter discourse, excited by the novel and divinely appointed occasion, till the same divine influence that moved his heart and tongue was poured out on his charmed hearers, and they forthwith manifested the signs of change of heart and devout faith in Christ, as the Son of God and the judge of the world; and made known the delight of their new sensations, in words of miraculous power. At this display of the equal and impartial grace of God, the Jewish church-members from Joppa, who had accompanied Peter to Caesarea, were greatly amazed, having never before imagined it possible for the influences of the divine spirit to be imparted to any who had not devoutly conformed to all the rituals of the holy law of old given by God to Moses, whose high authority was attested amid the smoke and flame and thunder of Sinai. And what change was this? In the face of this awful sanction, these believing followers of Moses and Christ saw the outward signs of the inward action of that Spirit which they had been accustomed to acknowledge as divine, now moving with the same holy energy the souls and voices of those born and bred among the heathen, without the consecrating aid of one of those forms of purification, by which Moses had ordained their preparation for the enjoyment of the blessings of God’s holy covenant with his own peculiar people. Moved by that same mysterious and holy influence, the Gentile warriors of Rome now lifted up their voices in praise of the God of Israel and of Abraham,――doubtless too, their God and Father, though Abraham were ignorant of them, and Israel acknowledged them not; since through his son Jesus a new covenant had been sealed in blood, opening and securing the blessings of that merciful and faithful promise to all nations. On Jehovah they now called as their Father and Redeemer, whose name was from everlasting,――known and worshiped long ere Abraham lived. Never before had the great partition-wall between Jews and Gentiles been thus broken down, nor had the noble and equal freedom of the new covenant ever yet been so truly and fully made known. And who was he that had thus boldly trampled on the legal usages of the ancient Mosaic covenant, as consecrated by the reverence of ages, and had imparted the holy signs of the Christian faith to men shut out from the mysteries of the inner courts of the house of God? It was not a presumptuous or unauthorized man, nor one thoughtless of the vastly important consequences of the act. It was the constituted leader of the apostolic band, who now, in direct execution of his solemn commission received from his Master, and in the literal fulfilment of the prophetic charge given therewith at the base of distant Hermon, opened the gates of the kingdom of heaven to all nations. Bearing the keys of the kingdom of God on earth, he now, in the set time of divine appointment, at the call of his Master in heaven, so signally given to him both directly and indirectly, unlocked the long-closed door, and with a voice of heavenly charity, bade the waiting Gentiles enter. This was the mighty commission with which Jesus had so prophetically honored this chief disciple at Caesarea Philippi, and here, at Caesarea Augusta, was achieved the glorious fulfilment of this before mysterious announcement;――Simon Peter now, in the accomplishment of that divinely appointed task, became the Rock, on which the church of Christ was, through the course of ages, reared; and in this act, the first stone of its broad Gentile foundation was laid.

On duty about him.――This phrase is the just translation of the technical term προσκαρτερουντων, (proskarterounton,) according to Price, Kuinoel, Bloomfield, &c.

Of all the honors with which his apostolic career was marked, there is none which equals this,――the revolutionizing of the whole gospel plan as before understood and advanced by its devotees,――the enlargement of its scope beyond the widest range of any merely Jewish charity,――and the disenthralment of its subjects from the antique formality and cumbrous ritual of the Jewish worship. And of all the events which the apostolic history records, there is none which, in its far-reaching and long-lasting effects, can match the opening of Christ’s kingdom to the Gentiles. What would have been the rate of its advancement under the management of those, who, like the apostles hitherto, looked on it as a mere improvement and spiritualization of the old Mosaic form, to which it was, in their view, only an appendage, and not a substitute? Think of what chances there were of its extension under such views to those far western lands where, ages ago, it reached with its benign influences the old Teutonic hordes from whom we draw our race;――or of what possibility there was of ever bringing under the intolerable yoke of Jewish forms, the hundreds of millions who now, out of so many lands and kindreds and tongues, bear the light yoke, and own the simpler faith of Jesus, confessing him Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Yet hitherto, so far from seeing these things in their true light, all the followers of Christ had, notwithstanding his broad and open commission to them, steadily persisted in the notion, that the observance of the regulations laid down by Moses for proselytes to his faith, was equally essential for a full conversion to the faith of Christ. And now too, it required a new and distinctly repeated summons from above, to bring even the great chief of the apostles to the just sense of the freedom of the gospel, and to the practical belief that God was no respecter of persons. But the whole progress of the event, with all its miraculous attestations, left so little doubt of the nature of the change, that Peter, after the manifestation of a holy spirit in the hearts and voices of the Gentile converts, triumphantly appealed to the Jewish brethren who had accompanied him from Joppa, and asked them, “Can any one forbid the water for the baptizing of these, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?” Taking the unanimous suffrage of their silence to his challenge, as a full consent, he gave directions that the believing Romans should be baptized in the name of the Lord, as Jesus in his parting charge had constituted that ordinance for the seal of redemption to every creature, in all the nations to whom the gospel should be preached. Having thus formally enrolled the first Gentile converts, as the free and complete partakers of the blessings of the new covenant, he stayed among them several days, at their request, strengthening their faith, and enlarging their knowledge by his pastoral instruction; which he deemed a task of sufficient importance to detain him, for a while, from his circuit among the new converts, scattered about in other places throughout Palestine, and from any immediate return to his friends and converts at Joppa, where this call had found him.

Meanwhile, this mighty innovation on the established order of sacred things could not be long unknown beyond the cities of Caesarea and Joppa, but was soon announced by the varied voice of rumor to the amazed apostles and brethren at Jerusalem. The impression made on them by this vague report of their great leader’s proceedings, was most decidedly unfavorable; and there seem to have been not a few who regarded this unprecedented act of Peter as a downright abuse of the dignity and authority with which the special commission of his Master had invested him. Doubtless, in that little religious community, as in every other association of men ever gathered, there were already many human jealousies springing up like roots of bitterness, which needed but such an occasion as this, to manifest themselves in decided censure of the man, whose remarkable exaltation over them might seem like a stigma on the capacities or merits of those to whom he was preferred. Those in whose hearts such feelings had been rankling, now found a great occasion for the display of their religious zeal, in this bold movement of their constituted leader, who herein seemed to have presumed on his distinction and priority, to act in a matter of the very highest importance, without the slightest reference to the feelings and opinions of those, who had been with him chosen for the great work of spreading the gospel to all nations. And so much of free opinion and expression was there among them, that this act of the chief apostle called forth complaints both deep and loud, from his brethren, against this open and unexplained violation of the holy ordinances of that ancient law, which was still to them and him the seal and sign of salvation. Peter, at length, after completing his apostolic circuit among the churches, of which no farther account is given to us, returned to Jerusalem to meet these murmurs with the bold and clear declaration of the truth. As soon as he arrived, the grumblers burst out on him with open complaints of his offensive violations of the strict religious exclusiveness of demeanor, which became a son of Israel professing the pure reformed faith of Jesus. The unhesitating boldness with which this charge of a breach of order was made against Peter by the sticklers for circumcision, is a valuable and interesting proof, that all his authority and dignity among them, did not amount to anything like a supremacy; and that whatever he might bind or loose on earth for the high sanction of heaven, he could neither bind the tongues and opinions, nor loose the consciences of these sturdy and free-spoken brethren. Nor does Peter seem to have had the least idea of claiming any exemption from their critical review of his actions; but straightway addressed himself respectfully to them, in a faithful detail of his conduct, and the reasons of it. He distinctly recounted to them the clear and decided call which he considered himself to have received from heaven, by which he was summoned as the spiritual guide of the inquiring Gentiles. And after the honest recital of the whole series of incidents, and of the crowning act of the whole, the imparting to them the outward sign of inward washing from their sins, he boldly appealed to the judgments of his accusers, to say whether, in the face of such a sanction, they would have had him do otherwise. “When the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning, then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said,” (when parting from us, on the top of Olivet, to rise to the bosom of his father, prophetically announcing a new and holy consecration and endowment for our work,) “John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.” This peculiar gift thus solemnly announced, we had indeed received at the pentecost, and its outward signs we had thereby learned infallibly by our own experience; and even so, at Caesarea, I recognized in those Gentiles the same tokens by which I knew the workings of divine grace in myself and you. “Forasmuch, then, as God gave them the like gift as to us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, what was I, that I should withstand God?”――This clear and unanswerable appeal silenced the clamors of the bold assertors of the inviolability of Mosaic forms; and when they heard these things, they held their peace, and, softened from their harsh spirit of rebuke, they, in a noble feeling of truly Christian triumph, forgot all their late exclusiveness, in a pure joy for the new and vast extension of the dominion of Christ, secured by this act, whose important consequences they were not slow in perceiving. They praised God for such a beginning of mighty results, and laying aside, in this moment of exultation, every feeling of narrow Jewish bigotry, they acknowledged that “to the Gentiles also, God had granted repentance unto life.”

HEROD AGRIPPA.

At this time, the monarch of the Roman world was Caius Caesar, commonly known by his surname, Caligula. Among the first acts of a reign, whose outset was deservedly popular for its numerous manifestations of prudence and benevolence, forming a strange contrast with subsequent tyranny and folly, was the advancement of a tried and faithful friend, to the regal honors and power which his birth entitled him to claim, and from which the neglectful indifference at first, and afterwards the revengeful spite of the preceding Caesar, Tiberius, had long excluded him. This was Herod Agrippa, grandson of that great Herod, who, by the force of his own exalted genius, and by the favor of the imperial Augustus, rose from the place of a friendless foreign adventurer, to the kingly sway of all Palestine. This extensive power he exercised in a manner which was, on the whole, ultimately advantageous to his subjects; but his whole reign, and the later years of it more particularly, were marked by cruelties the most infamous, to which he was led by almost insane fits of the most causeless jealousy. On none of the subjects of his power, did this tyrannical fury fall with such frequent and dreadful visitations, as on his own family; and it was there, that, in his alternate fits of fury and remorse, he was made the avenger of his own victims. Among these numerous domestic cruelties, one of the earliest, and the most distressing, was the murder of the amiable Mariamne, the daughter of the last remnants of the Asmonaean line,――

“Herself the solitary scion left

Of a time-honored race,”

which Herod’s remorseless policy had exterminated. Her he made his wife, and after a few years sacrificed her to some wild freak of jealousy, only to reap long years of agonizing remorse for the hasty act, when a cooler search had shown, too late, her stainless innocence. But a passionate despot never yet learned wisdom by being made to feel the recoil of his own folly; and in the course of later years this cruelty was equalled, and almost outdone, by a similar act, committed by him on those whom her memory should have saved, if anything could. The innocent and unfortunate Mariamne left him two sons, then mere children, whom the miserable, repentant tyrant, cherished and reared with an affectionate care, which might almost have seemed a partial atonement for the injuries of their murdered mother. After some years passed in obtaining a foreign education at the imperial court of Rome, these two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, returned at their father’s summons, to his court, where their noble qualities, their eloquence and manly accomplishments, as well as the interest excited by their mother’s fate, drew on them the favorable and admiring regard of the whole people. But all that made them admirable and amiable to others, was as powerless as the memory of their mother, to save them from the fury of the suspicious tyrant. Those whose interests could be benefited by such a course, soon found means to make them objects of jealousy and terror to him, and ere long involved them in a groundless accusation of conspiring against his dominion and life. The uneasiness excited in Herod by their great popularity and their commanding talents, led him to believe this charge; and the miserable old tyrant, driven from fear to jealousy, and from jealousy to fury, at last crowned his own wretchedness and their wrongs, by strangling them both, after an imprisonment of so great a length as to take away from his crime even the shadowy excuse of hastiness. This was one of the last acts of a bloody life; but ere he died, returning tenderness towards the unfortunate race of Mariamne, led him to spare and cherish the infant children of Aristobulus, the younger of the two, who left three sons and two daughters to the tender mercies of his cruel father. One of these was the person who is concerned in the next event of Peter’s life, and whose situation and conduct in reference to that affair, was such as to justify this prolonged episode. He received in infancy the name of Agrippa, out of compliment to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the favorite and minister of Augustus Caesar, and the steady friend of the great Herod. This name was exclusively borne by this son of Aristobulus in childhood, nor was it ever displaced by any other, except by some of the Jews, who, out of compliment to the restoration of the Herodian line of kings, in place of the Roman sub-governors, gave him the name of his royal grandfather, so that he is mentioned only by the name of Herod in the story of the Acts of the Apostles; but the Romans and Greeks seem to have known him only by his proper name of Agrippa. The tardy repentance of his grandfather did not extend to any important permanent provision for the children of Aristobulus; but on his death a few years after, they were left with the great majority of the numerous progeny of Herod, to the precarious fortunes of dependent princes. The young Agrippa having married his own cousin, Cypros, the daughter of a daughter of Herod and Mariamne, sailed to Rome, where he remained for several years, a sort of beggar about the court of Tiberius Caesar, through whose favor he hoped for an advancement to some one of the thrones in Palestine, which seemed to be prizes for any of Herod’s numerous descendents who could best secure the imperial favor, and depress the possessors in the Caesar’s opinion. Passing at Rome and elsewhere through a romantic variety of fortune, this adventurer was at last lucky in securing to himself the most friendly regard of Caius Caesar, then the expected successor of the reigning emperor. This afterwards proved the basis of his fortunes, which for a while, however, were darkened by the consequences of an imprudent remark made to Caius, expressive of a wish for the death of Tiberias, which was reported to the jealous tyrant by a listening slave, and finally caused the speaker’s close imprisonment during the rest of the emperor’s life. The death of Tiberius, followed by the accession of Caius Caesar to the throne, raised Agrippa from his chains to freedom, and to the most intimate favor of the new monarch. The tetrarchy of Iturea and Trachonitis, then vacant by the death of Philip, was immediately conferred on him; and soon after, Herod Antipas having been exiled, his territories, Galilee and Peraea, were added to the former dominions of Herod Agrippa, and with them was granted to him the title of king, which had never yet been given to any of the descendents of Herod the Great. In this state were the governments of these countries at the time of the events last narrated; but Herod Agrippa, often visiting Rome, left all Palestine in the hands of Publius Petronius, the just and benevolent Roman president of Syria. In this state, affairs remained during all the short reign of Caius Caligula Caesar, who, after four years mostly characterized by folly, vice and cruelty, ended his days by the daggers of assassins. But this great event proved no check to the flourishing fortunes of his favorite, king Herod Agrippa; who, in the course of the events which ended in placing Claudius on the throne, so distinguished himself in the preliminary negociations between the new emperor and the senate, sharing as he did the confidence and regard of both parties, that he was justly considered by all, as the most active means of effecting the comfortable settlement of their difficulties; and he was therefore deemed well deserving of the highest rewards. Accordingly, the first act of Claudius’s government, like the first of Caligula’s, was the presentation of a new kingdom to this favorite of fortune,――Judea being now added to the other countries in his possession, and thus bringing all Palestine into one noble kingdom, beneath his extensive sway. With a dominion comprising all that the policy of his grandfather had been able to attain during a long and active life, he now found himself, at the age of fifty-one, one of the most extraordinary instances of romantic fortune that had ever occurred; and anxious to enjoy something of the solid pleasure of visiting and governing his great and flourishing kingdom, he set sail from Rome, which had been so long to him the scene of such varied fortune, such calamitous poverty and tedious imprisonment,――and now proceeded as the proud king of Palestine, going home in triumph to the throne of his ancestor, supported by the most boundless pledges of imperial favor. The emperor Claudius, though regretting exceedingly the departure of the tried friend whom he had so much reason to love and cherish, yet would not detain him from a happiness so noble and desirable, as that of arranging and ruling his consolidated dominion. Even his departure, however, was made the occasion of new marks of imperial favor; for Claudius gave him letters by which all Roman governors were bound to acknowledge and support him as the rightful sovereign of Palestine. He arrived in Palestine shortly after, and just before the passover, made his appearance in Jerusalem, where he was received with joy and hope by the expecting people, who hailed with open hearts a king whose interests would be identified with theirs, and with the glory of the Jewish name. His high and royal race,――his own personal misfortunes and the unhappy fate of his early-murdered father, as well as his descent from the lamented Mariamne,――his well-known amiability of character, and his regard for the holy Jewish faith, which he had shown by exerting and even risking all his favor with Caligula to prevent, in co-operation with the amiable Petronius, the profanation of the temple as proposed by the erection of the emperor’s statue within it,――all served to throw a most attractive interest around him, and to excite brilliant hopes, which his first acts immediately more than justified. The temple, though now so resplendent with the highest ♦achievements of art, and though so vast in its foundations and dimensions, was still considered as having some deficiencies, so great, that nothing but royal munificence could supply them. The Jews therefore seized the fortunate occasion of the accession of their new and amiable monarch to his throne, to obtain the perfection of a work on which the hearts of the people were so much set, and the completion of which would so highly advance the monarch in the popular favor. The king at once benignantly heard their request, and gladly availing himself of this opportunity to gratify his subjects, and secure a regard from them which might some day be an advantage to him, immediately ordered the great work to proceed at his expense. The satisfaction of the people and the Sanhedrim was now at the highest pitch; and, ♠emboldened by these displays of royal favor, some of the sage plotters among them hoped to obtain from him a favorable hearing on a matter which they deemed of still deeper importance to their religion, and in which his support was equally indispensable. This matter brings back the forsaken narrative to consideration.

♦ “achievments” replaced with “achievements”

♠ “emboldenened” replaced with “emboldened”

Herod Agrippa.――All the interesting details of this richly romantic life, are given in a most delightful style by Josephus. (Antiquities, XVIII. v. 3,‒viii. 9. and XIX. i‒ix.) The same is more concisely given by the same author in another place. (Jewish War, II. ix. 5,‒xi. 6.) The prominent events of Petronius’s administration, are also given in the former.

THE PEACEFUL PROGRESS OF THE FAITH.

The apostles, after the great events last narrated, gave themselves with new zeal to the work which was now so vastly extended by the opening of the wide field of the Gentiles. Others of the refugees from the popular rage, at the time of Stephen’s murder, had gone even beyond the boundaries of Palestine, bringing into the sphere of apostolic operations a great number of interesting subjects, before unthought of. Some of the bold, free workers, who had heard of the late changes in the views of the apostles, respecting the characters of those for whom the gospel was designed, now no longer limited their efforts of love to the children of the stock of Abraham, but proclaimed the faith of Jesus to those who had before never heard his name. The gospel was thus carried into Syria and Cyprus, and thence rapidly spread into many other countries, where Macedonian conquest and Hellenic colonization had made the Greek the language of cities, courts, commerce, and, to a great extent, of literature. The great city of Antioch soon became a sort of metropolis of the numerous churches, which sprang up in that region, beyond the immediate reach of Jerusalem, now the common home of the apostles, and the center of the Christian, as of the Jewish faith. Grecians as well as Jews, in this new march of the gospel, were made sharers in its blessings; and the multiplication of converts among them was so rapid as to give a new importance, at once, to this sort of Christians. The communication of these events to the apostles at Jerusalem, called for some systematic action on their part, to confirm and complete the good work thus begun by the random and occasional efforts of mere wandering fugitives from persecution. They accordingly selected persons especially fitted for this field of labor, and despatched them to Antioch, to fulfil the duties imposed on the apostles in ♦reference to this new opening. The details of the operations of these new laborers, will be given in their lives hereafter.

♦ “refereuce” replaced with “reference”

In performing the various offices required in their domestic and foreign fields of labor, now daily multiplying, Peter and his associates had continued for several years steadily occupied, but achieving no particular action that has received notice in the history of their acts; so that the most of this part of their lives remains a blank to the modern investigator. All that is known is, that between the churches of Syria and Palestine there was established a frequent friendly intercourse, more particularly between the metropolitan churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. From the former went forth preachers to instruct and confirm the new and untaught converts of the latter, who had been so lately strangers to God’s covenant of promise with his people; while from the thriving and benevolent disciples of Antioch were sent back, in grateful recompense, the free offerings of such aid as the prevalence of a general dearth made necessary for the support of their poor and friendless brethren in Jerusalem; and the very men who had been first sent to Antioch with the commission to build up and strengthen that infant church, now returned to the mother church at Jerusalem, with the generous relief which gratitude prompted these new sons to render to the authors of their faith.

ROMAN TOLERANCE.

These events and the occasion of them occurred in the reign of Claudius Caesar, as Luke particularly records,――thus marking the lapse of time during the unregistered period of the apostolic acts; which is also confirmed by the circumstances of Herod Agrippa’s reign, mentioned immediately after, as occurring “about that time;” for, as has been specified above, Herod Agrippa did not rule Judea till the reign of Claudius. The crucifixion of Jesus occurred three years before the death of Tiberius; and as the whole four years of the reign of Caligula was passed over in this space, it could not have been less than ten years after the crucifixion, when these events took place. This calculation allows time for such an advance of the apostolic enterprise, as would, under their devoted energy, make the sect most formidable to those who regarded its success as likely to shake the security of the established order of religious things, by impairing the popular reverence for the regularly constituted heads of Judaism. Such had been its progress, and such was the impression made by its advance. There could no longer be any doubt as to the prospect of its final ascendency, if it was quietly left to prosper under the steady and devoted labors of its apostles, with all the advantages of the re-action which had taken place from the former cruel persecution which they had suffered. For several years the government of Palestine had been in such hands that the Sanhedrim had few advantages for securing the aid of the secular power, in consummating their exterminating plans against the growing heresy. Not long after the time of Pilate, the government of Judea had been committed by the emperor to Publius Petronius, the president of Syria, a man who, on the valuable testimony of Josephus, appears to have been of the most amiable and upright character,――wholly devoted to the promotion of the real interests of the people whom he ruled. On several occasions, he distinguished himself by his tenderness towards the peculiarly delicate religious feelings of the Jews, and once even risked and incurred the wrath of the vindictive Caligula, by disobeying his commands to profane the temple at Jerusalem by the erection of that emperor’s statue within its holy courts,――a violation of the purity of the place which had been suggested to his tyrannical caprice by the spiteful hint of Apion, of Alexandria. But though Petronius, in this matter, showed a disposition to incur every hazard to spare the national and devotional feelings of the Jews so awful an infliction, there is nothing in his conduct which would lead us to suppose that he would sacrifice justice to the gratification of the persecuting malice of the Jews, any more than to the imperious tyranny of Caligula. The fairest conclusion from the events of his administration, is, that he regulated his behavior uniformly by his own sense of justice, with hardly any reference to the wild impulses, either of popular or imperial tyranny. A noble personification of independent and invincible justice; but one not beyond the range of the moral conceptions of a Roman, even under the corrupt and corrupting rule of the Caesars;――for thus wrote the great moral poet of the Augustan age, though breathing the enervating air of a servile court, and living on the favor of a monarch who exacted from his courtiers a reverence truly idolatrous:

Justum et tenacem propositi virum,

Non civium ardor prava jubentium,

Non vultus instantis tyranni

Mente quatit solida. * * *

The moral energy of the Roman character made the exemplifications of this fair ideal not uncommon, even in these latter days of Roman glory. There were some like Petronius, who gave life and reality to this poetical conception of Horace,――“A man just and resolute, unshaken from his firm purpose alike by the wild impulses of popular rage, and by the frown of an overbearing tyrant.” And these were among the chief blessings of the Roman sway, to those lands in which it ruled,――that the great interests of the country were not subjected to the blind movements of a perverse public opinion, changing with each year, and frustrating every good which required a steady policy for its accomplishment,――that the majority of the people were not allowed to tyrannize over the minority, nor the minority over the majority;――and that a mighty power amenable to neither, but whose interest and glory would always coincide with the good of the whole, held over all a dominion unchecked by the demands of popular caprice. But, alas! for the imperfections of all human systems;――among the curses of that Roman sway, must be numbered its liability to fall from the hands of the wise and amiable, into those of the stupid and brutal; changes which but too often occurred,――overturning, by the mismanagement of a moment, the results of years of benevolent and prudent policy. And in this very case, all the benefits of Petronius’s equitable and considerate rule, were utterly neutralized and annihilated by the foolishness or brutality of his successors, till the provoked irritability of the nation at last broke out with a fierceness that for a time overcame the securities even of Roman dominion, and was finally quieted only in the utter ruin of the whole Jewish nation. But during the period of several years following the exit of Pilate, its beneficial energy was felt in the quiet tolerance of religious opinion, which he enforced on all, and which was most highly advantageous to the progress of the doctrine of Christ. To this circumstance may justly be referred that remarkable repose enjoyed by the apostles and their followers from all the interference with their labors by the Roman government. The death of Jesus Christ himself, indeed, was the only act in which the civil power had interfered at all! for the murder of Stephen was a mere freak of mob-violence, a mere Lynch-law proceeding, which the Roman governor would not have sanctioned, if it had been brought under his cognizance,――being done as it was, so directly in the face of those principles of religious tolerance which the policy of the empire enforced every where, excepting cases in which sedition and rebellion against their dominion was combined with religious zealotism, like the instances of the Gaulanitish Judas, Theudas, and others. Even Jesus himself, was thus accused by the Jews, and was condemned by Pilate for his alleged endeavors to excite a revolt against Caesar, and opposing the payment of the Roman taxes,――as is shown by the statement of all the evangelists, and more particularly by Pilate’s inscription on the cross. The persecution which followed the murder of Stephen was not carried on under the sanction of the Roman government, nor yet was it against their authority; for they permitted to the Sanhedrim the punishment of most minor offences, so long as they did not go beyond imprisonment, scourging, banishment, &c. But the punishment of death was entirely reserved to the civil and military power; and if the Jewish magnates had ever formally transgressed this limitation, they would have been instantly punished for it, as a treasonable assumption of that supreme power which their conquerors were determined to guard with the most watchful jealousy. The Sanhedrim, being thus restricted in their means of vengeance, were driven to the low expedient of stirring up the lawless mob to the execution of these deeds of desperate violence, which their religious rulers could wink at, and yet were prepared to disown, when questioned by the Romans, as mere popular ferments, over which they had no control whatever. So they managed with Stephen; for his murder was no doubt preconcerted among the chief men, who caused the formal preamble of a trial, with the design of provoking the mob, in some way, to this act; in which scheme they were too much favored by the fiery spirit of the martyr himself, who had not patience enough with their bigotry, to conceal his abhorrence of it. Their subsequent systematic and avowed acts of violence, it should be observed, were all kept strictly within the well-defined limits of their penal jurisdiction; for there is no evidence whatever that any of the persecuted Hellenists ever suffered death by the condemnation of the Sanhedrim, or by the sentence of a Roman tribunal. The progress of these events, however, showed that this irritating and harassing system of whippings, imprisonments and banishments, had a tendency rather to excite the energies of these devoted heretics, than to check or crush their spirit of innovation and denunciation. Among the numerous instances of malignant assault on the personal rights of these sufferers, and the cruel violation of the delicacy due to the weaker sex, there must have been, also, many occasions in which the ever-varying feelings of the public would be moved to deep sympathy with sufferers who bore, so steadily and heroically, punishments manifestly disproportioned to the offense with which they were charged,――a sympathy which might finally rise to a high and resistless indignation against their remorseless oppressors. It is probable, therefore, that this persecution was at last allayed by other causes than the mere defection of its most zealous agent. The conviction must have been forced on the minds of the persecutors, that this system, with all its paltry and vexatious details, must be given up, or exchanged for one whose operations should be so vast and sweeping in its desolating vengeance, as to overawe and appal, rather than awaken zeal in the objects of the punishment, or sympathy in the beholders. The latter alternative, however, was too hopeless, under the steady, benignant sway of Petronius, to be calculated upon, until a change should take place which should give the country a ruler of less independent and scrupulous character, and more disposed to sacrifice his own moral sense to the attainment of favor with the most important subjects of his government. Until that desirable end should be attained, in the course of the frequent changes of the imperial succession, it seemed best to let matters take their own course; and they accordingly dropped all active proceedings, leaving the new sect to progress as it might, with the impulse gained from the re-action consequent on this late unfortunate excitement against it. But they still kept a watchful eye on their proceedings, though with hands for a while powerless; and treasured up accumulating vengeance through tedious years, for the day when the progress of political changes should bring the secular power beneath their influence, and make it subservient to their purpose of dreadful retribution. That day had now fully come.

PETER’S THREATENED MARTYRDOM.

The long expected favorite and friend of the Jewish people, having been thus hailed sovereign by their grateful voices, and having strengthened his throne and influence by his opening acts of liberality and devotion to the national faith, now entered upon a reign which presented only the portents of a course most auspicious to his own fame and his people’s good. Uniting in his person the claims of the Herodian and Asmonaean lines,――with the blood of the heroic Maccabees in his veins,――crowned by the imperial lord of the civilized world, whose boundless power was pledged in his support, by the obligations of an intimate personal friendship, and of a sincere gratitude for the attainment of the throne of the Caesars through his prompt and steady exertions,――received with universal joy and hope by all the dwellers of the consolidated kingdoms of his dominion, which had been long thriving under the mild and equitable administration of a prudent governor,――there seemed nothing wanting to complete the happy auspices of a glorious reign, under which the ancient honors of Israel should be more than retrieved from the decline of ages. Yet what avails the bright array of happily conspiring circumstances, to prince or people, against the awful majesty of divine truth, or the pure, simple energy of human devotion? Within the obscurer corners of his vast territories, creeping for room under the outermost colonnades of that mighty temple whose glories he had pledged himself to renew,――wandering like outcasts from place to place,――seeking supporters only among the unintellectual mass of the people,――were a set of men of whom he probably had not heard until he entered his own dominions. They were now suggested to his notice for the first time, by the decided voice of censure from the devout and learned guardians of the purity of the law of God, who invoked the aid of his sovran power, to check and utterly uproot this heresy, which the unseasonable tolerance of Roman government had too long shielded from the just visitations of judicial vengeance. Nor did the royal Agrippa hesitate to gratify, in this slight and reasonable matter, the express wishes of the reverend heads of the Jewish faith and law. Ah! how little did he think, that in that trifling movement was bound up the destiny of ages, and that its results would send his name――though then so loved and honored――like Pharaoh’s, down to all time, a theme of religious horror and holy hatred, to the unnumbered millions of a thousand races, and lands then unknown;――an awful doom, from which one act of benign protection, or of prudent kindness, to that feeble band of hated, outcast innovators, might have retrieved his fame, and canonized it in the faithful memory of the just, till the glory of the old patriarchs and prophets should grow dim. But, without one thought of consequences, a prophetic revelation of which would so have appalled him, he unhesitatingly stretched out his arm in vindictive cruelty over the church of Christ, for the gratification of those whose praise was to him more than the favor of God. Singling out first the person whom momentary circumstances might render most prominent or obnoxious to censure, he at once doomed to a bloody death the elder son of Zebedee, the second of the great apostolic THREE. No sooner was this cruel sentence executed, than, with a most remarkable steadiness in the execution of his bloody plan, he followed up this action, so pleasing to the Jews, by another similar movement. Peter, the active leader of the heretical host, ever foremost in braving the authority of the constituted teachers of the law, and in exciting commotion and dissatisfaction among the commonalty, was now seized by a military force, too strong to fear any resistance from popular movements, which had so much deterred the Sanhedrim. This occurred during the week of the passover; and such was king Agrippa’s profound regard for all things connected with his national religion, that he would not violate the sanctity of this holy festival by the execution of a criminal, however deserving of vengeance he might seem in that instance. The fate of Peter being thus delayed, he was therefore committed to prison, (probably in castle Antonia,) and to prevent all possibility of his finding means to escape prepared ruin again, he was confined to the charge of sixteen Roman soldiers, divided into four sets, of four men each, who were to keep him under constant supervision day and night, by taking turns, each set an equal time; and according to the established principles of the Roman military discipline, with the perfect understanding that if, on the conclusion of the passover, the prisoner was not forthcoming, the guards should answer the failure with their lives. These decided and careful arrangements being made, the king, with his gratified friends in the Sanhedrim and among the rabble, gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the great national festival, with a peculiar zest, hightened by the near prospect of the utter overthrow of the advancing heresy, by the sweeping blow that robbed them of their two great leaders, and more especially of him who had been so active in mischievous attempts to perpetuate the memory of the original founder of the sect, and to frustrate the good effect of his bloody execution, by giving out that the crucified Jesus still lived, and would yet come in vengeance on his murderers. While such triumphant reflections swelled the festal enjoyments of the powerful foes of Christ, the unhappy company of his persecuted disciples passed through this anniversary-week with the most mournful reminiscences and anticipations. Ten years before, in unutterable agony and despair, they had parted, as they then supposed forever, with their beloved Lord; and now, after years of devotion to the work for which he had commissioned them, they were called to renew the deep sorrows of that parting, in the removal of those who had been foremost among them in the great work, cheering them and leading them on through toil and peril, with a spirit truly holy, and with a fearless energy, kindred with that of their divine Lord. Of these two divinely appointed chiefs, one had already poured out his blood beneath the executioner’s sword, and the other, their great leader, the Rock of the church, was now only waiting the speedy close of the festal week, to crown his glorious course, and his enemies’ cruel policy, by the same bloody doom; meanwhile held in the safe keeping of an ever-watchful Roman guard, forbidding even the wildest hope of escape. Yet why should they wholly despair? On that passover, ten years before, how far more gloomy and hopeless the glance they threw on the cross of their Lord! Yet from that doubly hopeless darkness, what glorious light sprang up to them? And was the hand that then broke through the bands of death and the gates of Hades, now so shortened that it could not sever the vile chains of paltry tyranny which confined this faithful apostle, nor open wide the guarded gates of his castle prison? Surely there was still hope for faith which had been taught such lessons of undoubting trust in God. Nor were they thoughtless of the firm support and high consolations which their experience afforded. In prayer intense and unceasing, they poured out their souls in sympathetic grief and supplication, for the relief of their great elder brother from his deadly peril; and in sorrowful entreaty the whole church continued day and night, for the safety of Peter.

Castle Antonia.――For Josephus’s account of the position and erection of this work, see my note on page 95, (section 8.) There has been much speculation about the place of the prison to which Peter was committed. The sacred text (Acts xii. 10,) makes it plain that it was without the city itself, since after leaving the prison it was still necessary to enter the city by “the iron gate.” Walch, Kuinoel and Bloomfield adopt the view that it was in one of the towers or castles that fortified the walls. Wolf and others object to the view that it was without the walls; because, as Wolf says, it was not customary to have public prisons outside of the cities, since the prisoners might in that case be sometimes rescued by a bold assault from some hardy band of comrades, &c. But this objection is worth nothing against castle Antonia, which, though it stood entirely separated from the rest of the city, was vastly strong, and by its position as well as fortification, impregnable to any common force;――a circumstance which would at once suggest and recommend it as a secure place for one who, like Peter, had escaped once from the common prison. There was always a Roman garrison in Antonia. (Josephus, Jewish War, V. v. 8.)

In the steady contemplation of the nearness of his bloody doom, the great apostle remained throughout the passover, shut off from all the consolations of fraternal sympathy, and awaiting the end of the few hours which were still allotted by the religious scruples of his mighty sovran. In his high and towering prison in Castle Antonia, parted only by a deep, broad rift in the precipitous rocks, from the great terraces of the temple itself, from whose thronged courts now rung the thanksgiving songs of a rejoicing nation, he heard them, sending up in thousands of voices the praise of their fathers’ God, who still remembered Israel in mercy, renewing their ancient glories under the bright and peaceful dominion of their new-crowned king. And with the anthems of praise to God which sounded along the courts and porches of the temple, were no doubt heard, too, the thanks of many a grateful Hebrew for the goodness of the generous king, who had pledged his royal word to complete the noble plan of that holy pile, as suited the splendid conceptions of the founder. And this was the king whose decree had doomed that lonely and desolate prisoner in the castle, to a bloody and shameful death,――as a crowning offering at the close of the great festival; and how few among that vast throng, before whose eyes he was to yield his life, would repine at the sentence that dealt exterminating vengeance on the obstinately heretical preacher of the crucified Nazarene’s faith! Well might such dark visions of threatening ruin appal a heart whose enthusiasm had caught its flame from the unholy fires of worldly ambition, or devoted its energies to the low purpose of human ascendency. And truly sad would have been the lonely thoughts of this very apostle, if this doom had found him in the spirit which first moved him to devote himself to the cause which now required the sacrifice of life. But higher hopes and feelings had inspired his devoted exertions for ten years, and higher far, the consolations which now sustained him in his friendless desolation. This very fate, he had long been accustomed to regard as the earthly meed of his labors; and he had too often been threatened with it, to be overwhelmed by its near prospect. Vain, then, were all solemn details of that awful sentence, to strike terror into his fixed soul,――vain the dark sureties of the high, steep rock, the massive, lofty walls, the iron gates, the ever-watchful Roman guards, the fetters and manacles, to control or check the

“Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!――

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,

For there thy habitation is the heart.”

Thus sublimely calm, sat Peter in his prison, waiting for death. Day after day, all day long, the joyous feast went on beneath him:――the offering, the prayer and the hymn varying the mighty course, from the earliest morning supplication to the great evening sacrifice. Up rolled the glorious symphony of the Levites’ thousand horns, and the choral harmony of their chanting voices,――up rolled the clouds of precious incense to the skiey throne of Israel’s God,――and with this music and fragrance, up rolled the prayers of Israel’s worshiping children; but though the glorious sound and odor fell delightfully on the senses of the lonely captive, as they passed upwards by his high prison-tower, no voice of mercy came from below, to cheer him in his desolation. But from above, from the heaven to which all these prayer-bearing floods of incense and harmony ascended, came down divine consolation and miraculous delivery to this poor, despised prisoner, with a power and a witness that not all the solemn pomp of the passover ceremony could summon in reply to its costly offerings. The feeble band of sorrowing Nazarenes, from their little chamber, were lifting unceasing voices of supplication for their brother, in his desperate prospects, which entered with his solitary prayer into the ears of the God of Hosts, while the ostentatious worship of king Agrippa and his reverend supporters, only brought back shame and woful ruin on their impious supplications for the divine sanction to their bloody plans of persecution. At last the solemn passover-rites of “the last great day of the feast” were ended;――the sacrifice, the incense and the song, rose no more from the sanctuary,――the fires on the altars went out, the hum and the roar of worshiping voices was hushed, and the departing throngs poured through the “ETERNAL” and the “BEAUTIFUL” gates, till at last the courts and porches of the temple were empty through all their vast extent, and hushed in a silence, deep as the ruinous oblivion to which the voice of their God had doomed them shortly to pass; and all was still, save where the footfall of the passing priest echoed along the empty colonnades, as he hurried over the vast pavements into the dormitories of the inner temple; or where the mighty gates thundered awfully as they swung heavily together under the strong hands of the weary Levites, and sent their long reverberations among the walls. Even these closing sounds soon ceased also; the Levite watchmen took their stand on the towers of the temple, and paced their nightly rounds along the flat roofs, guarding with careful eyes their holy shrine, lest the impious should, under cover of night, again profane it, (as the Samaritans had secretly done a few years before.) And on the neighboring castle of Antonia, the Roman garrison, too, had set their nightly watch, and the iron warriors slumbered, each in his turn, till the round of duty should summon him to relieve guard. Within the dungeon keep of the castle, was still safely held the weighty trust that was to be answered for, on peril of life; and all arrangements were made which so great a responsibility seemed to require. The prisoner already somewhat notorious for making unaccountable escapes from guarded dungeons, was secured with a particularity, quite complimentary to his dexterity as a jail-breaker. The quaternion on duty was divided into two portions; each half being so disposed and posted as to effect the most complete supervision of which the place was capable,――two men keeping watch outside of the well-bolted door of the cell, and two within, who, not limited to the charge of merely keeping their eyes on the prisoner, had him fastened to their bodies, by a chain on each side. In this neighborly proximity to his rough companions, Peter was in the habit of passing the night; but in the day-time was freed from one of these chains, remaining attached to only one soldier. (This arrangement was in accordance with the standard mode of guarding important state-prisoners among the Romans.) Matters being thus accommodated, and the watch being set for the next three hours, Peter’s two fast companions, finding him but indifferent company, no doubt, notwithstanding his sociable position, soon grew quite dull in the very tame employment of seeing that he did not run away with them; for as to getting away from them, the idea could have no place at all in the supposition. These sturdy old veterans had probably, though Gentiles, conformed so far to Judaical rituals as to share in the comfortable festivities of this great religious occasion, and could not have suffered any heathenish prejudices to prevent them from a hearty participation in the joyous draughts of the wine, which as usual did its part to enliven the hearts and countenances of all those who passed the feast-day in Jerusalem. The passover coming so many months after the vintage too, the fermentation of a long season must have considerably energized “the pure juice of the grape,” so that its exhilarant and narcotic powers could have been by no means feeble; and if the change thus wrought by time and its own inherent powers, at all corresponds to that which takes places in cider in this country under the same circumstances, the latter power must have so far predominated, as to leave them rather below than above the ordinary standard of vivacity, and induce that sort of apathetic indifference to consequences, which is far from appropriate in a soldier on duty over an important trust. Be that as it may, Peter’s two room-mates soon gave themselves quietly up to slumber. If any scruple arose in their heavy heads as to the risk they ran in case of his escape, that was soon soothed by the consideration of the vast number of impassable securities upon the prisoner. They might well reason with themselves, “If this sharp Galilean can manage to break his chains without waking us, and burst open this stout door in spite of bars, without rousing the sentinels who are posted against it on the outside, and make his way unseen and unchecked through all the gates and guards of Castle Antonia――why, let him. But there’s no use in our losing a night’s rest by any uneasiness about such a chance.” So stretching themselves out, they soon fell into a sound sleep, none the less pleasant for their lying in such close quarters; for it is natural to imagine, that in a chilly March night in Jerusalem, stowing three in a bed was no uncomfortable arrangement. Circumstanced as he was, Peter had nothing to do but conform to their example, for the nature of his attachment to them was such, that he had no room for the indulgence of his own fancies about his position; and he also lay down to repose. He slept. The sickening and feverish confinement of his close dungeon had not yet so broken his firm and vigorous frame, nor so drained its energies, as to hinder the placid enjoyment of repose; nor did the certainty of a cruel and shameful death, to which he was within a few hours to be dragged, before the eyes of a scoffing rabble, move his high spirit from its self-possession:――

“And still he slumbered

While in ‘decree, his hours’ were numbered.”

He slept. And from that dark prison-bed what visions could beguile his slumbering thoughts? Did fancy bear them back against the tide of time, to the humble, peaceful home of his early days,――to the varied scenes of the lake whereon he loved to dwell, and along whose changeful waters he had learned so many lessons of immortal faith and untrembling hope in his Lord? Amid the stormy roar of its dark waters, the voice of that Lord once called him to tempt the raging deep with his steady foot, and when his feeble faith, before untried, failed him in the terrors of the effort, His supporting hand recalled him to strength and safety. And had that lesson of faith and hope been so poorly learned, that in this dark hour he could draw no consolation from such remembrances? No. He could even now find that consolation, and he did. In the midst of this “sea of troubles,” he felt the same mighty arm now upholding him, that bore him above the waters, “when the blue wave rolled nightly on deep Galilee.” Again he had stood by those waters, swelling brightly in the fresh morning breeze, with his risen Lord beside him, and received the solemn commission, oft-renewed, to feed the flock that was so soon to lose the earthly presence of its great Shepherd. In the steady and dauntless execution of that parting commission, he had in the course of long years gone on in the face of death,――“feeding the lambs” of Christ’s gathering, and calling vast numbers to the fold; and for the faithful adherence to that command, he now sat waiting the fulfilment of the doom that was to cut him down in the midst of life and in the fullness of his vigor. Yet the nearness of this sad reward of his labors, seemingly offering so dreadful an interpretation of the mystical prophecy that accompanied that charge, moved him to no desperation or distress, and still he calmly slept, with as little agitation and dread as at the transfiguration, and at the agony of the crucifixion eve; nor did that compunction for heedless inattention, that then hung upon his slumbering senses, now disturb him in the least. It is really worth noticing, in justice to Peter, that his sleepiness, of which so many curious instances are presented in the sacred narrative, was not of the criminally selfish kind that might be supposed on a partial view. If he slept during his Master’s prayers on Mount Hermon, and in Gethsemane, he slept too in his own condemned cell; and if in his bodily infirmity he had forgotten to watch and pray when death threatened his Lord, he was now equally indifferent to his own impending destruction. He was, evidently, a man of independent and regular habits. Brought up a hard-working man, he had all his life been accustomed to repose whenever he was at leisure, if he needed it; and now too, though the “heathen might rage, and the people imagine a vain thing,――though the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers took counsel together” against him, and doomed him to a cruel death,――in spite of all these, Peter would sleep when he was sleepy. Not the royal Agrippa could sleep sounder on his pavilioned couch of purple. In the calm confidence of one steadily fixed in a high course, and perfectly prepared for every and any result, the chained apostle gave himself coolly to his natural rest, without borrowing any trouble from the thought, that in the morning the bloody sword was to lay him in “the sleep that knows no earthly waking.” So slept the Athenian sage, on the eve of his martyrdom to the cause of clearly and boldly spoken truth,――a sleep that so moved the wonder of his agonizing disciples, at the power of a good conscience and a practical philosophy to sustain the soul against the horrors of such distress; but a sleep not sounder nor sweeter than that of the poor Galilean outcast, who, though not knowing even the name of philosophy, had a consolation far higher, in the faith that his martyred Lord had taught him in so many experimental instructions. That faith, learned by the painful conviction of his own weakness, and implanted in him by many a fall when over confident in his own strength, was now his stay and comfort, so that he might say to his soul, “Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the help of my countenance and my God.” Nor did that hope prove groundless. From him in whom he trusted, came a messenger of deliverance; and from the depths of a danger the most appalling and threatening, he was soon brought, to serve that helping-God through many faithful years, feeding the flock till, in his old age, “another should gird him, and carry him whither he would not.” He who had prayed for him in the revelation of his peculiar glories on Mount Hermon, and had so highly consecrated him to the great cause, had yet greater things for him to do; and to new works of love and glory he now called him, from the castle-prison of his royal persecutor.

Ten years.――This piece of chronology is thus settled. Jesus Christ, according to all common calculation, was crucified as early as the twentieth year of the reign of Tiberius. Irenaeus maintains that it was in the fifteenth of that reign. Eusebius and Epiphanius fix it in the eighteenth, or, according to Petavius’s explanation of their meaning, in the seventeenth of his actual reign. Tertullian, Julius Africanus, Jerome, and Augustin, put it in the sixteenth. Roger Bacon, Paulus Burgensis, and Tostatus, also support this date, on the ground of an astronomical calculation of the course of the moon, fixing the time when the passover must have occurred, so as to accord with the requirement of the Mosaic law, that it should be celebrated on a new moon. But Kepler has abundantly shown the fallacy of this calculation. Antony Pagus, also, though rejecting this astronomical basis, adheres to the opinion of Tertullian, Jerome, &c. Baronius fixes it in the nineteenth of Tiberius. Pearson, L. Cappel, Spanheim, and Witsius, with the majority of the moderns, in the twentieth of Tiberius. So that the unanimous result of all these great authorities, places it as early as this last mentioned year. A full and highly satisfactory view of all these chronological points and opinions, is given by the deeply learned Antony Pagus, in his great “Critical Historico-Chronological Review of Baronii.” Saecul. I. Ann. Per. Gr.‒Rom. 5525. ¶ 3‒13.

Now, from Josephus it is perfectly evident that Agrippa did not leave Rome until some time after the beginning of the reign of Claudius, and it is probable not before the close of the first year. Counting backwards through the four years of Caligula, this makes five years after the death of Tiberius, and eight on the latest calculation from the death of Christ; while according to the higher and earlier authority, it amounts to nine, ten, eleven, or to twelve years from the crucifixion to Agrippa’s arrival in Judea. And moreover, it is not probable that the persecution referred to occurred immediately on his arrival. Indeed, from the close way in which Luke connects Agrippa’s death with the preceding events, it would seem as if he would fix his “going down from Jerusalem to Caesarea,” and his death at the latter place, very soon after the escape of Peter. This of course being in the end of Claudius’s third year, brings the events above, down to the eleventh or twelfth from the crucifixion, even according to the latest conjecture as to the date of that event. Probably, however, the connection of the two events was not as close as a common reading of the Acts would lead one to suppose.

So also Lardner, in his Life of Peter, says, “The death of Herod Agrippa happened before the end of that year,” in which he escaped. (Lardner’s Works 4to. Vol. III. p. 402, bottom.)

Natalis Alexander fixes Peter’s escape in the second year of Claudius, and the forty-fourth from Christ’s birth, which is, according to his computation, the tenth from his death. (Church History, Saec. I. Cap. vi.)

A chain on each side.――That this was a common mode of fastening such prisoners among the Romans, appears from the authorities referred to by Wolf, (Cur. Philology in Acts xii. 6,) Kuinoel and Rosenmueller, (quoting from Walch,) and Bloomfield, all in loc.

Quaternion.――That is, a band of four. See Bloomfield in defense of my mode of disposing them about the prison,――also Rosenmueller, &c. Wolf quotes appositely from Polybius; but Kuinoel is richest of all in quotations and illustrations. (Acts xii. 4, 5.)

THE DELIVERANCE.

Peter was now quietly sleeping between his two guards, when his rest was suddenly broken by a smart blow on the side, too energetically given to be mistaken for an accidental knock from the elbow of one of his heavy bed-fellows. Rousing his senses, and opening his eyes, he was startled by a most remarkable light shining throughout his dungeon, which his last waking glance had left in utter darkness. In this unaccountable illumination, he saw standing before him and bending over him, a form in which he could recognize only the divine messenger of deliverance. The shock of such a surprise must have been overwhelming;――to be waked from a sound sleep by an appearance so utterly unearthly, might have struck horror into the stoutest heart; but Peter seems to have suffered no such emotion to hinder his attendance to the heavenly call. The apparition, before he could exercise thought enough to sit up of himself, had raised him up from his bed, and that without the slightest alarm to his still slumbering keepers,――for “immediately the chains fell from his hands,”――a motion which by the rattling of the falling irons should have aroused the sleepers if any sound could have impressed their senses. The impulse of the now unmanacled captive might have been to spring forth his dungeon without the slightest delay, but his deliverer’s next command forbade any such unnecessary haste. His first words were, “Gird thyself; and tie on thy sandals.” Before laying himself down, he had, as usual, thrown off his outer garments and loosened his girdle, so that his under dress need not so much confine him in sleep as to prevent that perfect relaxation which is necessary for comfortable repose. Just as now-a-days, a man in taking up such a lodging as often falls to a traveler’s lot, will seldom do more than pull off his coat and boots, as Peter did, and perhaps unbutton his waist-band and suspenders, so that on a sudden alarm from his rest, the first direction would very properly be, to “gird himself,” (button his trowsers,) “and tie on his sandals,” (put on his shoes or boots.) The next direction given to Peter, also, “Cast thy garment about thee,” (put on thy coat,) would be equally appropriate. The meaning of all this particularity and deliberation was, no doubt, that there was no need whatever of hurry or slyness about the escape. It was not to be considered a mere smart trick of jail-breaking, by which Peter was to crawl out of his dungeon in such a hurry as to leave his coat and shoes behind him, but a truly miraculous providence insuring his deliverance with a completeness and certainty that allowed him to take every thing that belonged to him. Having now perfectly accoutred himself in his ordinary style, Peter immediately obeyed the next order of his deliverer,――“Follow me.” Leaving his two bed-fellows and room-mates sleeping hard, without the slightest idea of the evacuation of the premises which was so deliberately going on, to their great detriment, Peter now passed out through the open door, following the divine messenger in a state of mind altogether indescribable, but still with just sense enough to obey the directions which thus led him on to blissful freedom. The whole scene bore so perfectly the character of one of those enchanting dreams of liberty with which painful hope often cheats the willing senses of the poor captive in slumber, that he might well and wisely doubt the reality of an appearance so tempting, and which his wishes would so readily suggest to his forgetful spirit. But passing on with his conductor, he moved between the sentinels posted at the doors, who were also equally unaware of the movement going on so boldly under their noses, or rather over them, for they, too, were faster bound in slumber than their prisoner had been in his chains; and he now stepped over their outstretched bodies as they lay before the entrances. These soldiers, too, evidently looked upon their duty as a sort of sinecure, rationally concluding that their two stout comrades on the inside were rather more than a match for the fettered and manacled captive, and that if he should be at all obstreperous, or even uneasy, the noise would soon enough awake them from their nap. And thus excessive precaution is very apt to overshoot itself, each part of the arrangement relying too much on the security of all the rest. The two passengers soon reached the great iron gate of the castle, through which they must pass in order to enter the city. But all the seeming difficulties of this passage vanished as soon as they approached it. The gate swung its enormous mass of metal self-moving through the air, and the half-entranced Peter went on beneath the vacant portal, and now stood without the castle, once more a free man in the fresh, pure air. The difficulties and dangers were not all over yet, however. During all the great feast-days, when large assemblies of people were gathered at Jerusalem from various quarters, to guard against the danger of riots and insurrection in these motley throngs,――the armed Roman force on duty, as Josephus relates, was doubled and tripled, occupying several new posts around the temple, and, as the same historian particularly mentions, on the approaches of castle Antonia, where its foundations descended towards the terraces of the temple, and gave access to the colonnades of the temple. On all these places the guard must have been under arms during this passover, and even at night the sentries would be stationed at all the important posts, as a reasonable security against the numerous strangers of a dubious character, who now thronged the city throughout. Yet all these peculiar precautions, which, at this time, presented so many additional difficulties to the escaping apostle, hindered him not in the least. Entering the city, he followed the footsteps of his blessed guide, unchecked, till they had passed on through the first street, when all at once, without sign or word of farewell, the mysterious deliverer vanished, leaving Peter alone in the silent city, but free and safe. Then flashed upon his mind the conviction of the true character of the apparition. The departure of his guide leaving him to seek his own way, his senses were, by the necessity of this self-direction, recalled from the state of stupefaction, in which he had mechanically followed on from the prison. With the first burst of reflection, he broke out in the exclamation, “Now I know of a truth, that the Lord has sent forth his messenger, and has rescued me out of the hand of Herod, in spite of all the expectation of the Jewish people.” Refreshed and encouraged by this impression, he now used his thoroughly awakened senses to find his exact situation, and after looking about him, he made his way through the dark streets to a place where he knew he should find those whose despairing hearts would be inexpressibly rejoiced by the news of his deliverance. This was the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where the disciples were accustomed to assemble. Going up to the gate-way, he rapped on the door, and at once aroused those within; for in their sleepless distress for the imprisoned apostle, several of the brethren had given up all thoughts of sleep, and, as Peter had suspected, were now watching in prayer within this house. The noise of a visitant at this unseasonable hour of the night, immediately brought to the door a lively damsel, named Rhoda; who, according to the Jewish custom of employing females in this capacity, acted as portress of the mansion of Mary. Prudently requiring some account of the person who made this late call, before she opened the door of the persecuted Christians to an unknown and perhaps an ill-disposed character, she was struck with almost frantic joy at hearing the well-known voice of the much mourned Peter, craving admittance. In the highth of her thoughtless gladness, she ran off at once to make known the delightful fact to the disciples in the house, without even seeming to think of the desirableness of admitting the apostle, perhaps because she very naturally wanted to tell such pleasant news first herself. Bursting into the room where the disciples were at prayer for their lamented leader, whom they supposed to be then fast bound for death in the dungeon of Antonia, she communicated the joyful fact, that “Peter was before the gate.” A declaration so extravagantly improbable, at once suggested the idea of her having lost her wits through her affectionate sorrow for the sufferings and anticipated death of the great apostle, and they therefore replied, “Thou art crazy.” Rhoda, somewhat excited by such a provoking expression of incredulity, loudly repeated her slighted piece of good news, and so gravely maintained the truth of it, that some of the more superstitious at last began to think there must be something in it, and seriously suggested, that it must be a supernatural messenger come to give them notice of his certain doom,――“It is his guardian angel.” Peter, however, was all this while standing outside during this grave debate about his real entity, and shivering with the cold of a chilly March night, grew quite impatient at the girl’s inconsiderate folly, and knocked away with might and main, making a noise of most unspiritual character, till at last the disciples determined to cut short the debate by an actual observation; so opening the door to the shivering apostle, the light brought his material existence to a certainty beyond all doubt. Their amazement and joy was bursting forth with a vivacity which quite made up for their previous incredulity; when the apostle, making a hushing sign with his hand,――and with a reasonable fear, too, no doubt, that their obstreperous congratulations might be heard in other houses around, so as to alarm the neighbors and bring out some spiteful Jews, who would procure his detection and recapture,――having obtained silence, went on to give them a full account of his being brought out of prison by the Lord, and after finishing his wonderful story, said to them, “Tell these things to James and the brethren.” From this it would seem that the apostles were all somewhere else, probably having found that a temporary concealment was expedient for their safety, but were still not far from the city. His own personal danger was of so imminent a character, however, that Jerusalem could not be a safe place for him during the search that would be immediately instituted after him by his disappointed and enraged persecutors. It was quite worth while, therefore, for him to use the remaining darkness of the night to complete his escape; and without staying to enjoy their outflowing sympathies, he bade them a hasty farewell, and, as the historian briefly says, went to ANOTHER PLACE. Where this “other place” was, he does not pretend to tell or know, and the only certain inference to be drawn from the circumstance is, that it was beyond the reach or knowledge of the mighty and far-ruling king, who had taken such particular pains to secure Peter’s death. The probabilities as to the real place of his retirement will, however, be given, as soon as the sequel of events in Jerusalem has been narrated, as far as concerns the discovery of his escape.

Bright light.――Some commentators have attempted to make out an explanation of this phenomenon, by referring the whole affair to the effects of a sudden flash and stroke of lightning, falling on the castle, and striking all the keepers senseless,――melting Peter’s chains, and illuminating the place, so that Peter, unhurt amid the general crash, saw this opportunity for escaping, and stepping over their prostrate bodies, made his way out of the prison, and was out of sight before they came to. The most important objection to this ingenious speculation is, that it directly contradicts every verse in Luke’s account of the escape, as well as the general spirit of the narrative. Another weighty reason is, that the whole series of natural causes and effects, proposed as a substitute for the simple meaning, is brought together in such forced and uncommon coincidences, as to require a much greater effort of faith and credulity for its belief, than the miraculous view, which it quite transcends in incredibility. The introduction of explanations of miracles by natural phenomena, is justifiable only so far as these may illustrate the accompaniments of the event, by showing the mode in which those things which are actually mentioned as physical results, operated in producing the impressions described. Thus, when thunder and lightning are mentioned in connection with miraculous events, they are to be considered as real electrical discharges, made to accompany and manifest the presence of God; and where lambent flames are described as appearing in a storm, they, like the corpos santos, are plainly also results of electrical discharges. So too, when mighty winds are mentioned, they are most honestly taken to be real winds, and not deceptive sounds or impressions; and when a cloud is mentioned, it is but fair to consider it a real cloud, made up, like all other clouds, of vapor, and not a mere non-entity, or a delusion existing only in the minds of those who are mentioned as beholding it. But where nothing of this kind is spoken of, and where a distinct personal presence is plainly declared, the attempt to substitute a physical accident for such an apparition, is a direct attack on the honesty of the statement. Such attempts, too, are devoid of the benefits of such illustrations as I have alluded to as desirable; they bring in a new set of difficulties with them, without removing any of those previously obstructing the interpretation of the facts. In this case, the only circumstance which could be reasonably made to agree with the idea of lightning, is the mention of the bright light; while throughout the whole account, the presence of a supernaturally mysterious person, acting and speaking, is perfectly unquestionable. The violation of all probability, shown in this forced explanation, will serve as a fair instance of the mode in which many modern German critics are in the habit of distorting the simple, manifest sense of the sacred writers, for the sake of dispensing with all supernatural occurrences. (See Kuinoel for an enlarged view and discussion of this opinion. Other views of the nature of the phenomenon are also given by him, and by Rosenmueller, on Acts xii. 7.)

Morning dawned at last upon the towers and temple-columns of the Holy City. On the gold-sheeted roofs and snowy-pillared colonnades of the house of God, the sunlight poured with a splendor hardly more glorious than the insupportable brilliancy that was sent back from their dazzling surfaces, streaming like a new morning upon the objects around, whose nearer sides would otherwise have been left in shade by the eastern rays. Castle Antonia shared in this general illumination, and at the first blaze of sunrise, the order of Roman service announced the moment for relieving guard. The bustle of the movement of the new sentries towards their stands, must at last have reached the ears of Peter’s forsaken companions. Their first waking thoughts would of course be on their responsible charge, and they now became for the first time aware of the important deficiency. In vain did their heavy eyes, at first winking with sleepiness, but now wide open with amazement, search the dim vacancy for their eloped bed-fellow. The most inquisitive glance fell only on the blank space between them, scarcely blanker than the forlorn visages of the poor keepers, who saw in this disappearance the seal of their certain death, for having let the prisoner escape. But they had not much time to consider their misfortune, or condole upon it; for the change of sentries now brought to the door the quaternion whose turn on duty came next. With a miserable grace did the unhappy occupants of the cell show themselves at the open door, with the empty chains and fetters dangling at their sides, from which their late companion had so curiously slipped. Most uncomfortable must have been the aspect of things to the two sentinels who had been keeping their steady watch outside of the door, and who shared equally with the inside keepers, in the undesirable responsibilities of this accident. There stood their comrades with the useless chains displayed in their original attachments; but, amazing! what in the world had they done with the prisoner? The ludicrous distress and commotion resulting from this unpleasant revelation, was evidently well appreciated even by the sacred historian, whose brief but pithy expression is not without a latent comic force. “There was no small stir among the soldiers to know what was become of Peter.” A general search into all the holes and corners of the dungeon, of course, ensued; and the castle was no doubt ransacked from top to bottom for the runaway, whose escape from its massive gates seemed still impossible. But not even his cloak and sandals, which he had laid beside him at the last change of guards,――not a shred, not a thread had been left to hint at the mode of his abstraction. Yet this was so bad a story for the ears of the royal Agrippa, that it would not do to give up the search while any chance whatever remained. But all rummaging was perfectly fruitless; and with sorrowful hearts, they now went with their report to the vindictive king, to acknowledge that most unpardonable crime in Roman soldiers,――to have slept on their posts, so that a prisoner of state had escaped on the eve of execution.

Baronius, (Church Annuals, 44, § 8,) speaking of Peter’s escape from his chains, favors us with a solemn statement of the important and interesting circumstance, deriving the proofs from Metaphrastes, (that prince of papistical liars, and grand source of Romish apostolical fables,) that these very chains of Peter are still preserved at Rome, among other venerable relics of equal authenticity; having been faithfully preserved, and at last found after the lapse of four hundred years. The veritable history of this miraculous preservation, as given by the inventive Metaphrastes, is, that the said chains happened to fall into the hands of one of Agrippa’s servants who was a believer in Christ, and so were handed down for four centuries, and at last brought to light. It is lamentable that the list of the various persons through whose hands they passed, is not given, though second in importance only to the authentic record of the papal succession. This impudent and paltry falsehood will serve as a fair specimen of a vast quantity of such stuff, which litters up the pages of even the sober ecclesiastical histories of many papistical writers. The only wonderful thing to me about this story is, that Cave has not given it a place in his Lives of the Apostles, which are made up with so great a portion of similar trash.

Baronius, in connection with this passage, suggests the castle of Antonia as the most probable place of Peter’s confinement. “Juxta templum fortasse in ea munitissima turri quae dicebatur Antonia.” (Baronius, Church Annuals, C. 44, § 5.) A conjecture which certainly adds some weight to my own supposition to that effect; although I did not discover the coincidence in time to mention it in my note on page 194.

Meanwhile, with the early day, up rose the royal Agrippa from his purple couch, to seize the first moment after the close of the passover for the consummation of the doom of the wretched Galilean, who, by the royal decree, must now yield the life already too many days spared, out of delicate scruple about the inviolate purity of that holy week. Up rose also the saintly princes of the Judaic law, coming forth in their solemn trains and broad phylacteries, to grace this most religious occasion with their reverend presence, out of respectful gratitude to their great sovran for his considerate disposition to accord the sanction of his absolute secular power to their religious sentence. Expectation stood on tiptoe for the comfortable spectacle of the streaming life-blood of this stubborn leader of the Nazarene heresy, and nothing was wanting to the completion of the ceremony, but the criminal himself. That “desideratum, so much to be desired,” was, however, not so easily supplied; for the entrance of the delinquent sentinels now presented the non-est-inventus return to the solemn summons for the body of their prisoner. Confusion thrice confounded now fell on the faces that were just shining with anticipated triumph over their hated foe, while secret, scornful joy illuminated the countenances of the oppressed friends of Jesus. But on the devoted minions of the baffled king, did his disappointed vengeance fall most cruelly; in his paroxysm of vexation, and for an event wholly beyond their control they now suffered an undeserved death; making so tragical a catastrophe to a story otherwise decidedly comical, that the reader can only comfort himself with the belief that they were a set of insolent reprobates who had insulted the distresses of their frequent victims, and would have rejoiced in the bloody execution of the apostle.

King Herod Agrippa, after this miserable failure in his attempt to “please the Jews,” does not seem to have made a very long stay in Jerusalem. Before his departure, however, to secure his own solid glory and his kingdom’s safety, as well as the favor of his subjects, he not only continued the repairs of the temple, but instituted such improvements in the fortifications of the city, as, if ever completed, would have made it utterly impregnable even to a Roman force; so that the emperor’s jealousy soon compelled him to abandon this work; and soon after he left Jerusalem, and went down to Caesarea Augusta, on the sea-coast, long the seat of government of Palestine, and a more agreeable place for the operations of a Gentile court and administration, (for such Agrippa’s must have been from his Roman residence,) than the punctilious religious capital of Judea. But he was not allowed to remain much longer on the earth, to hinder the progress of the truth, by acts of tyranny in subservience to the base purposes of winning the favor of his more powerful subjects. The hand of God was laid destroyingly on him, in the midst of what seemed the full fruition of that popular adulation for which he had lived,――in which he now died. Arrayed in a splendid and massy robe of polished silver, he seated himself on the throne erected by his grandfather Herod, in the great Herodian theater at Caesarea, early in the morning of the day which was appointed for the celebration of the great festal games, in honor of his royal patron, Claudius Caesar. On this occasion, to crown his kingly triumph, the embassadors of the great commercial Phoenician cities, Tyre and Sidon, appeared before him to receive his condescending answer to their submissive requests for the re-establishment of a friendly intercourse between his dominions and theirs,――the agricultural products of the former being quite essential to the thriving trade of the latter. Agrippa’s reply was now publicly given to them, in which he graciously granted all their requests, in such a tone of eloquent benignity, that the admiring assembly expressed their approbation in shouts of praise, and at last some bold adulators catching the idea from the rays of dazzling light which flashed from the polished surfaces of his metallic robe, and threw a sort of glory over and around him, cried out, in impious exclamation, “It is the voice of a God, and not of a man.” So little taste had the foolish king, that he did not check this pitiful outbreak of silly blasphemy; but sat swallowing it all, in the most unmoved self-satisfaction. But in the midst of this profane glory, he was called to an account for which it ill prepared him. In the expressive though figurative language of Luke,――“immediately the messenger of the Lord struck him, because he gave not the glory to God.” The Jewish historian, too, in a similar manner assigns the reason. “The king did not rebuke the flatterers, nor refuse their impious adulation. Shortly after he was seized with a pain in the belly, dreadfully violent from the beginning. Turning to his friends he said, ‘Behold! I, your god, am now appointed to end my life,――the decree of fate having at once falsified the voices that but just now were uttering lies about me; and I, who have been called immortal by you, am now carried off dying.’ While he uttered these words he was tortured by the increasing violence of his pain, and was accordingly carried back to his palace. After five days of intense anguish, he died, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and in the seventh of his reign; having reigned four years under Caius Caesar, and three under Claudius.” Thus ended the days of the conscience-stricken tyrant, while the glorious gospel cause which he had so vainly thought to check and overthrow, now, in the words of Luke, “grew and was multiplied;” the spiteful Jews having lost the right arm of their persecuting authority, in the death of their king, and all Palestine now passing again under the direct Roman rule, whose tolerant principles became once more the great protection of the followers of Jesus.

Agrippa’s death.――My combination of the two different accounts given by Luke and Josephus of this event, I believe accords with the best authorities; nor am I disposed, as Michaelis is, to reject Josephus’s statement as irreconcilable with that in the Acts, though deficient in some particulars, which are given in the latter, and though not rightly apprehending fully the motives and immediate occasions of many things which he mentions. In the same way, too, several minor circumstances are omitted in Luke, which can be brought in from Josephus so as to give a much more vivid idea of the whole event, than can be learned from the Acts alone. (See Michaelis’s introduction to the New Testament,――on Luke. Also Wolf and Kuinoel.)

PETER’S PLACE OF REFUGE.

Luke, in mentioning the departure of Peter from Jerusalem after his escape from prison by night, merely says, “And going out, he went to another place.” The vague, uncertain manner in which this circumstance is mentioned, seems to imply that the writer really knew nothing about this “other place.” It was not a point essential to the integrity of the narrative, though interesting to all the readers of the history, since the most trifling particulars about the chief apostle might well be supposed desirable to be known. But though if it had been known, it would have been well worth recording, it was too trifling a matter to deserve any investigation, if it had not been mentioned to Luke by those from whom he received the accounts which he gives of Peter; and since he is uniformly particular in mentioning even these smaller details, when they fall in the way of his narrative, it is but fair to conclude that in this instance he would have satisfied the natural and reasonable curiosity of his readers, if he had had the means of doing so. There could have been no motive when he wrote, for concealing the fact, and he could have expressed the whole truth in as few words as he has given to show his own ignorance of the point. From the nature of the apostle’s motives in departing from Jerusalem, it must have been at that time desirable to have his place of refuge known to as few as possible; and the fact, at that time unknown, would, after the motive for concealment had disappeared, be of too little interest to be very carefully inquired after by those to whom it was not obvious. In this way it happened, that this circumstance was never revealed to Luke, who not being among the disciples at Jerusalem, would not be in the way of readily hearing of it, and in writing the story would not think it worth inquiring for. But one thing seems morally certain; if Peter had taken refuge in any important place or well known city, it must have been far more likely to have been afterwards a fact sufficiently notorious to have come within the knowledge of his historian; but as the most likely place for a secret retirement would have been some obscure region, this would increase the chances of its remaining subsequently unknown. This consideration is of some importance in settling a few negative facts in relation to various conjectures which have at different times been offered on the place of Peter’s refuge.

Among these, the most idle and unfounded is, that on leaving Jerusalem he went to Caesarea. What could have suggested this queer fancy to its author, it is hard to say; but it certainly implies the most senseless folly in Peter, when seeking a hiding place from the persecution of king Herod Agrippa, to go directly to the capital of his dominions, where he might be expected to reside for the greater part of the time, and whither he actually did go, immediately after his disappointment about this very apostle. It was jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire, to go thus away from among numerous friends who might have found a barely possible safety for him in Jerusalem, and to seek a refuge in Caesarea where there were but very few friends of the apostles, and where he would be in constant danger of discovery from the numerous minions of the king, who thronged all parts of that royal city, and from the great number of Greeks, Romans and Syrians, making up the majority of the population, who hated the very sight of a Jew, and would have taken vast pleasure in gratifying their spite, and at the same time gaining high favor with the king by hunting out and giving up to wrath an obscure heretic of that hated race. It would not have been at all accordant with the serpent-wisdom enjoined on the apostle, to have run his head thus into the lion’s mouth, by seeking a quiet and safe dwelling-place beneath the very nose of his powerful persecutor.

Another conjecture vastly less absurd, but still not highly probable, is, that Antioch was the “other place” to which Peter went from Jerusalem; but an objection of great force against this, is that already alluded to above, in reference to the ineligibility of a great city as a place of concealment; and in this instance is superadded the difficulty of his immediately making this long journey over the whole extent of Agrippa’s dominions, northward, at such a time, when the king’s officers would be every where put on the alert for him, more particularly in the direction of his old home in Galilee, which would be in the nearest way to Antioch. His most politic movement, therefore, would be to take some shorter course out of Palestine. Moreover, in this case, there is a particular reason why Luke would have mentioned the name of Antioch if that had been the place. What the proof of this reason is, can be best shown in his life; but the bare statement of the fact may be sufficient for the present,――that he was himself a citizen of that place, and could not have been ignorant or negligent of the circumstance of this visit, if it had occurred.

It has been suggested by others that the expression, “to another place,” does not imply a departure from Jerusalem, but is perfectly reconcilable with the supposition that Peter remained concealed in some safe and unknown part of the city. This view would very unobjectionably accord with the vagueness of the passage,――since if merely another part of Jerusalem was meant, no name could be expected to describe it. But it would certainly seem like a presumptuous rashness in Peter, to risk in so idle a manner the freedom which he owed to a miraculous interposition; for the circumstance of such an interposition could not be intended to justify him in dispensing with a single precaution which would be proper and necessary after an escape in any other mode. Such is not the course of divine dealings, whether miraculous or ordinary; and in a religious as well as an economical view, the force and truth of Poor Richard’s saying is undoubted,――“God helps them who help themselves;” nor is his helping them any reason why they should cease to help themselves. Peter’s natural impulse, as well as a considerate prudence, then, would lead him to immediate exertions to keep the freedom so wonderfully obtained, and such an impulse and such a consideration would at once teach him that the city was no place for him, at a time when the most desperately diligent search might be expected. For as soon as his escape was discovered, Luke says, that the king “sought most earnestly for him,” and in a search thus characterized, inspired too by the most furious rage at the disappointment, hardly a hole or corner of Jerusalem could have been left unransacked; so that this preservation of the apostle from pursuers so determined, would have required a continual series of miracles, fully as wonderful as that which effected his deliverance from castle Antonia. His most proper and reasonable course would then have been directly eastward from Jerusalem,――a route which would give him the shortest exit from the territories of Herod Agrippa, leading him directly into Arabia, a region that was, in another great instance hereafter mentioned, a place of comfortable and undisturbed refuge for a person similarly circumstanced. A journey of fifty or sixty miles through an unfrequented and lonely country, would put him entirely beyond pursuit; and the character of the route would make it exceedingly difficult to trace his flight, as the nature of the country would facilitate his concealment, while its proximity to Jerusalem would make his return after the removal of the danger by the death of Agrippa, as easy as his flight thither in the first place.

At Jerusalem.――This notion I find nowhere but in Lardner, who approves it, quoting Lenfant. [Lardner, History of the Apostles and Evangelists, Life of Peter.]

Another series of papistical fables carries him on his supposed tour on the coast, beyond Caesarea, and, uniting two theories, makes him visit Antioch also; and finally extends his pilgrimage into the central and northern parts of Asia Minor. This fabulous legend, though different in its character from the preceding accounts, because it impudently attempts to pass off a bald invention as an authentic history, while those are only offered honestly as probable conjectures, yet may be worthy of a place here, because it is necessary in giving a complete view of all the stories which have been received, to present dishonest inventions as well as justifiable speculations. The clearest fabulous account given of his journey thither, is, that parting from Jerusalem as above-mentioned, he directed his way westwards toward the sea-coast of Palestine, first to Caesarea Stratonis, (or Augusta,) where he constituted one of the presbyters who attended him from Jerusalem, bishop of the church founded there by him on his visit;――that leaving Caesarea he went northwards along the coast into Phoenicia, arriving at the city of Sidon;――that there he performed many cures and also appointed a bishop; next to Berytus, (now Beyroot,) in Syria, and there also appointed a bishop. Going on through Syria, along the coast of the Mediterranean, they bring him next, in his curiously detailed track, to Biblys, then to the Phoenician Tripoli, to Orthosia, to Antandros, to the island of Aradus, near the coast, to Balaenas, to Panta, to Laodicea, and at last to Antioch,――planting churches in all these hard-named towns on the way, and sowing bishops, as before, by handfulls, as well as performing vast quantities of miracles. The story of Peter’s journey goes on to say, that after leaving Antioch he went into Cappadocia, and stayed some time in Tyana, a city of that province. Proceeding westward thence, he came to Ancyra, in Galatia, where he raised a dead person, baptized believers, and instituted a church, over which he ordained a bishop. Thence northward, into Pontus, where he visited the cities of Sinope and Amasea, on the coast of the Euxine sea. Then turning eastward into Paphlagonia, stopped at Gangra and Claudiopolis; next into Bithynia, to the cities of Nicomedia and Nicaea; and thence returned directly to Antioch, whence he shortly afterwards went to Jerusalem.

This ingenious piece of apostolic romance is due to the same veracious Metaphrastes, above quoted. I have derived it from him through Caesar Baronius, who gives it in his Annales Ecclesiastici. (44, § 10, 11.) The great annalist approves and adopts it, however, only as far as it describes the journey of Peter to Antioch; and there he leaves the narrative of Metaphrastes, and instead of taking Peter on his long tour through Asia Minor and back to Jerusalem, as just described, carries him off upon a far different route, achieving the great journey westward, which accords with the view taken by the vast majority of the old ecclesiastical writers, and which is next given here. Metaphrastes also maintains this view, indeed, but supposes and invents all the events just narrated, as intermediate occurrences, between Peter’s escape and his great journey, and begins the account of this latter, after his return from his Asian circuit.

To connect all this long pilgrimage with the story given in the sacred record, the sage Baronius makes the ingenious suggestion, that this was the occult reason why Agrippa was wroth with those of Tyre and Sidon; namely, that Peter had gone through their country when a fugitive from the royal vengeance, and had been favorably received by the Tyrians and Sidonians, who should have seized him as a runaway from justice, and sent him back to Agrippa. This acute guess, he thinks, will show a reason also for the otherwise unaccountable fact, that Luke should mention this quarrel between Agrippa and those cities, in connection with the events of Peter’s escape and Agrippa’s death. For the great cardinal does not seem to appreciate the circumstance of its close relation to the latter event, in presenting the occasion of the reconciliation between the king and the offending cities, on which the king made his speech to the people, and received the impious tribute of praise, which was followed by his death;――the whole constituting a relation sufficiently close between the two events, to justify the connection in Luke.

THE FIRST VISIT TO ROME.

But the view of this passage in Peter’s history, which was long adopted universally by those who took the pains to ask about this “other place,” mentioned by Luke, and the view which involves the most important relations to other far greater questions, is, that Rome was the chief apostle’s refuge from the Agrippine persecution, and that in the imperial city he now laid the deep foundations of the church universal. On this point some of the greatest champions of papistry have expended vast labor, to establish a circumstance so convenient for the support of the dogma of the divinely appointed supremacy of the Romish church, since the belief of this early visit of Peter would afford a very convenient basis for the very early apostolical foundation of the Roman see. But though this notion of his refuge has received the support of a vast number of great names from the very early periods of Christian literature, and though for a long period this view was considered indubitable, from the sanction of ancient authorities, there is not one of the various conjectures offered which is so easily overthrown on examination, from the manner in which it is connected with other notions most palpably false and baseless. The old papistical notion was, that Peter at this time visited Rome, founded the church there, and presided over it, as bishop, twenty-five years, but occasionally visiting the east. As respects the minute details of this journey to Rome, the papist historians are by no means agreed, few of them having put any value upon the particulars of such an itinerary, until those periods when such fables were sought after by common readers with more avidity. But there is at least one hard-conscienced narrator, who undertakes to go over all the steps of the apostle on the road to the eternal city, and from his narrative are brought these circumstances. The companions assigned him by this romance, on his journey, were the evangelist Mark, Appollinaris, afterwards, as the story goes, appointed by him bishop of Ravenna, in Italy; Martial, afterwards a missionary in Gaul, and Rufus, bishop of Capua, in Italy. Pancratius, of Tauromenius, and Marcian, of Syracuse, in Sicily, had been sent on by Peter to that island, while he was yet staying at Antioch, but on his voyage he landed there and made them his companions also. His great route is said to have led him to Troy, on the northern part of the Asian coast of the Aegean sea, whence they seem to have made him cross to the eastern port of Corinth. At this great city of Greece, they bring him into the company of Paul and Silas, who were sent thither, to be sure, on a mission, but evidently at a different time, a circumstance which, among many others, helps to show the bungling manner in which the story is made up. From Corinth they carry him next to Syracuse, as just mentioned. Thence to Neapolis, (Naples,) in Campania, where, as the monkish legend says, this chief of the apostles celebrated with his companions a mass, for the safe progress of his voyage to Italy. Having now reached Italy, he is made the subject of a new fable for the benefit of every city along the coast, and is accordingly said to have touched at Liburnum, (Livorno, Leghorn,) being driven thither by stress of weather, and thence to Pisa, near by, where he offered up another mass for his preservation, as is still maintained in local fables; but the general Romish legend does not so favor these places, but brings the apostle, without any more marine delay or difficulty, directly over land from Naples to Rome; and on this route again, one lie suggesting another, a local superstition commemorates the veritable circumstances, that he made this land-journey from Naples to Rome, on foot; and on the way stopped at the house of a Galilean countryman of his own, named Mark, in a town called Atina, of which the said Mark was afterwards made bishop.

Respecting these minute accounts of Peter’s stopping-places on this apocryphal journey, Baronius says, “Nobilia in iis remanserunt antiquitatis vestigia, sed traditiones potius quam scriptura firmata.” “There are in those places some noble remains of this ancient history, but rather traditions than well assured written accounts.” The part of the route from Antioch to Sicily he takes on the authority of the imaginative Metaphrastes; but the rest is made up from different local superstitions of a very modern date, not one of which can be traced farther back than the time when every fable of this sort had a high pecuniary value to the inventors, in bringing crowds of money-giving pilgrims to the spot which had been hallowed by the footsteps of the chief apostle. Even the devout Baronius, however, is obliged to confess at the end of this story, “Sed de rebus tam antiquis et incertis, quid potissimum affirmare debeamus, non satis constat.”――“But as to matters so ancient and uncertain, it is not sufficiently well established what opinion we may most safely pronounce.”

As to the early part of the route, speaking of the account given by Metaphrastes of Peter’s having on his way through Troy ordained Cornelius, the centurion, bishop of that place, Baronius objects to the truth of this statement, the assertion that Cornelius had been previously ordained bishop of Caesarea, where he was converted. A very valuable refutation of one fable by another as utterly unfounded.

Respecting the causes of this great journey of the apostle to the capital of the world, the opinions even of papist writers are as various as they are about the route honored by his passage. Some suppose his motive to have been merely a desire for a refuge from the persecution of Agrippa;――a most unlikely resort, however, for nothing could be more easy than his detection in passing over such a route, especially by sea, where every vessel could be so easily searched at the command of Agrippa, whose influence extended far beyond his own territory, supported as he was, by the unbounded possession of the imperial Caesar’s favor, which would also make the seizure of the fugitive within the great city itself, a very easy thing. Others, however, do not consider this journey as connected in any way with his flight from Agrippa, (for many suppose it to have been made after the death of that king,) and find the motive for such an effort in the vast importance of the field opened for his labors in the great capital of the world, where were so many strong holds of error to be assaulted, and from which an influence so wide and effectual might be exerted through numerous channels of communication to all parts of the world. Others have sought a reason of more definite and limited character, and with vast pains have invented and compiled a fable of most absurdly amusing character, to make an object for Peter’s labors in the distant capital. The story which has the greatest number of supporters, is one connected with Simon Magus, mentioned in the sacred record, in the account of the labors of Philip in Samaria, and the visit of Peter and John to that place. The fable begins with the assertion that this magician had returned to his former tricks after his insincere conformity to the Christian faith, and had devoted himself with new energy to the easy work of popular deception, adding to his former evil motives, that of deadly spite against the faith to which he appeared so friendly, at the time when the sacred narrative speaks of him last. In order to find a field sufficiently ample for his enlarged plans, he went to Rome, and there, in the reign of Claudius Caesar, attained a vast renown by his magical tricks, so that he was even esteemed a god, and was even so pronounced by a solemn decree of the Roman senate, confirmed by Claudius himself, who was perfectly carried away with the delusion, which seems thus to have involved the highest and the lowest alike. The fable proceeds to introduce Peter on the scene, by the circumstance of his being called by a divine vision to go to Rome and war against this great impostor, thus advancing in his impious supremacy, who had already in Samaria been made to acknowledge the miraculous efficacy of the apostolic word. Peter thus brought to Rome by the hand of God, publicly preached abroad the doctrine of salvation, and meeting the arch-magician himself, with the same divine weapons whose efficacy he had before experienced, overcame him utterly, and drove him in confusion and disgrace from the city. Nor were the blessings that resulted to Rome from this visit of Peter, of a merely spiritual kind. So specially favored with the divine presence and blessing were all places where this great apostle happened to be, that even their temporal interests shared in the advantages of the divine influence that every where followed him. To this cause, therefore, are gravely referred by papistical commentators, the remarkable success which, according to heathen historians, attended the Roman arms in different parts of the world during the second year of Claudius, to which date this fabulous visit is unanimously referred by all who pretend to believe in its occurrence.

Importance of the field of labor.――This is the view taken by Leo, (in sermon 1, in nat. apost. quoted by Baronius, Annales 44, § 26.) “When the twelve apostles, after receiving from the Holy Spirit the power of speaking all languages,” (an assertion, by the way, no where found in the sacred record,) “had undertaken the labor of imbuing the world with the gospel, dividing its several portions among themselves; the most blessed Peter, the chief of the apostolic order was appointed to the capital of the Roman empire, so that the light of truth which was revealed for the salvation of all nations, might from the very head, diffuse itself with the more power through the whole body of the world. For, what country had not some citizens in this city? Or what nation anywhere, could be ignorant of anything which Rome had been taught? Here were philosophical dogmas to be put down――vanities of worldly wisdom to be weakened――idol-worship to be overthrown,”――&c. “To this city therefore, thou, most blessed apostle Peter! didst not fear to come, and (sharing thy glory with the apostle Paul, there occupied with the arrangement of other churches,) didst enter that forest of raging beasts, and didst pass upon that ocean of boisterous depths, with more firmness than when thou walkedst on the sea. Nor didst thou fear Rome, the mistress of the world, though thou didst once, in the house of Caiaphas, dread the servant maid of the priest. Not because the power of Claudius, or the cruelty of Nero, were less dreadful than the judgment of Pilate, or the rage of the Jews; but because the power of love now overcame the occasion of fear, since thy regard for the salvation of souls would not suffer thee to yield to terror. * * * The miraculous signs, gifts of grace, and trials of virtue, which had already been so multiplied to thee, now increased thy boldness. Already hadst thou taught those nations of the circumcision who believed. Already hadst thou filled Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia with the gospel; and now, without a doubt of the advance of the work, or of the certainty of thy own fate, thou didst plant the trophy of the cross of Christ upon the towers of Rome.” Arnobius is also quoted by Baronius to similar effect.

Simon Magus.――This fable has received a wonderfully wide circulation, and long maintained a place among the credible accounts of early Christian history, probably from the circumstance of its taking its origin from so early a source. Justin Martyr, who flourished from the year 140 and afterwards, in his apology for the Christian religion, addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius, says, “Simon, a Samaritan, born in a village named Gitthon, in the time of Claudius Caesar, was received as a god in your imperial city of Rome, and honored with a statue, like other gods, on account of his magical powers there exhibited by the aid of demons; and this statue was set up in the river Tiber, between two bridges, and had this Latin inscription, Simoni deo sancto. Him too, all the Samaritans worship, and a few of other nations, acknowledging him as the highest god, (πρωτον θεον.) They also worship a certain Helena, who at that time followed him about,” &c. &c. &c. with more dirty trash besides, than I can find room for. And in another passage of the same work, he alludes to the same circumstances. “In your city, the mistress of the world, in the time of Claudius Caesar, Simon Magus struck the Roman senate and people with such admiration of himself, that he was ranked among the gods, and was honored with a statue.” Irenaeus, who flourished about the year 180, also gives this story with hardly any variation from Justin. Tertullian, about A. D. 200, repeats the same, with the addition of the circumstance, that not satisfied with the honors paid to himself, he caused the people to debase themselves still further, by paying divine honors to a woman called (by Tertullian) Larentina, who was exalted by them to a rank with the goddesses of the ancient mythology, though the good father gives her but a bad name. Eusebius, also, about A. D. 320, refers to the testimonies of Justin and Irenaeus, and adds some strange particulars about a sect, existing in his time, the members of which were said to acknowledge this Simon as the author of their faith, whom they worshiped along with this woman Helena, falling prostrate before the pictures of both of them, with incense and sacrifices and libations to them, with other rites, unutterably and unwritably bad. (See Eusebius, Church History, II. 13.)

In the three former writers, Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian, this absurd story stands by itself, and has no connection with the life of Peter; but Eusebius goes on to commemorate the circumstance, previously unrecorded, that Peter went to Rome for the express purpose of putting down this blasphemous wretch, as specified above, in the text of my narrative, from this author. (Eusebius, Church History, II. 14.)

Now all this fine series of accounts, though seeming to bear such an overwhelming weight of testimony in favor of the truth and reality of Simon Magus’s visit to Rome, is proved to be originally based on an absolute falsehood; and the nature of this falsehood is thus exposed. In the year 1574, during the pontificate of Pope Gregory XIII., there was an excavation made for some indifferent purpose in Rome, on the very island in the Tiber, so particularly described by Justin, as lying in the center of the river between two bridges, each of which rested an abutment on it, and ran from it to the opposite shores. In the progress of this excavation, the workmen, as is very common in that vast city of buried ruins, turned up, among other remains of antiquity, the remnant of a statue with its pedestal, which had evidently once stood erect upon the spot. Upon the pedestal was an inscription most distinctly legible, in these words: Semoni sango deo fidio sacrum――Sex Pompeius s. p. f. col. mussianus――quinquennalis decur. bidentalis――donum dedit. (This was in four lines, each line ending where the blank spaces are marked in the copy.) In order to understand this sentence, it must be known, that the Romans, among the innumerable objects of worship in their complicated religion, had a peculiar set of deities which they called Semones. A Semo was a kind of inferior god, of an earthly character and office, so low as to unfit him for a place among the great gods of heaven, Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, &c., and was accordingly confined in his residence entirely to the earth; where the Semones received high honors and devout worship, and were commemorated in many places, both in city and country, by statues, before which the passer might pay his worship, if devoutly disposed. These statues were often of a votive character, erected by wealthy or distinguished persons for fancied aid, received from some one of these Semones, in some particular season of distress, or for general prosperity. This was evidently the object of the statue in question. Priapus, Hipporea, Vertumnus, and such minor gods were included under the general title of Semones; and among them was also ranked a Sabine divinity, named Sangus or Sancus, who is, by some writers, considered as corresponding in character to the Hercules of the Greeks. Sangus or Sancus is often alluded to in the Roman classics. Propertius (book 4) has a verse referring to him as a Sabine deity. “Sic Sancum Tatiae composuere Cures.” Ovid also, “Quaerebam Nonas Sanco fidio ne referrem.” As to this providentially recovered remnant of antiquity, therefore, there can be no doubt that it was a votive monument, erected by Sextus Pompey to Sangus the Semo, for some reason not very clearly expressed.

Baronius tells also that he had seen a stone similarly inscribed. “SANGO SANCTO SEMON.――DEO FIDIO SACRUM――DECURIO SACERDOTUM BIDENTALIUM――RECIPERATIS VECTIGALIBUS.” That is, “Sacred to Sangus, the holy Semo, the god Fidius,――a decury (company of ten) of the priests of the Bidental sacrifices have raised this in gratitude for their recovered incomes.” Dionysius Halicarnassaeus is also quoted by Baronius as referring to the worship of the Semo, Sangus; and from him and various other ancient writers, it appears that vows and sacrifices were offered to this Sangus, for a safe journey and happy return from a distance.

From a consideration of all the circumstances of this remarkable discovery, and from the palpable evidence afforded by the inherent absurdity of the story told by Justin Martyr and his copyists, the conclusion is justifiable and irresistible, that Justin himself, being a native of Syria, and having read the story of Simon Magus in the Acts, where it is recorded that he was profoundly reverenced by the Samaritans, and was silenced and rebuked by Peter when he visited that place,――with all this story fresh in his mind, (for he was but a new convert to Christianity,) came to Rome, and going through that city, an ignorant foreigner, without any knowledge of the religion, or superstitions, or deities, and with but an indifferent acquaintance with their language, came along this bridge over the Tiber to the island, where had been erected this votive statue to Semo Sangus; and looking at the inscription in the way that might be expected of one to whom the language and religion were strange, he was struck at once with the name Semon, as so much resembling the well-known eastern name Simon, and began speculating at once, about what person of that name could ever have come from the east to Rome, and there received the honors of a god. Justin’s want of familiarity with the language of the Romans, would prevent his obtaining any satisfactory information on the subject from the passers-by; and if he attempted to question them about it, he would be very apt to interpret their imperfect communications in such a way as suited the notion he had taken up. If he asked his Christian brethren about the matter, their very low character for general intelligence, the circumstance that those with whom he was most familiar, must have been of eastern origin, and as ignorant as he of the minute peculiarities of the Roman religion, and their common disposition to wilfully pervert the truth, and invent fables for the sake of a good story connected with their own faith, (of which we have evidences vastly numerous, and sadly powerful in the multitude of such legends that have come down from the Christians of those times,) would all conspire to help the invention and completion of the foolish and unfounded notion, that this statue here erected Semoni Sanco Deo, was the same as Simoni Deo Sancto, that is, “to the holy god Simon;” and as it was always necessary to the introduction of a new god among those at Rome, that the Senate should pass a solemn act and decree to that effect, which should be confirmed by the approbation of the emperor, it would at once occur to his own imaginative mind, or to the inventions of his fabricating informers, that Simon must of course have received such a decree from the senate and Caesar. This necessarily also implied vast renown, and extensive favor with all the Romans, which he must have acquired, to be sure, by his magical tricks, aided by the demoniac powers; and so all the foolish particulars of the story would be made out as fast as wanted. The paltry fable also appended to this by all the Fathers who give the former story, to the effect, that some woman closely connected with him, was worshiped along with him, variously named Helena, Selena and Larentina, has no doubt a similarly baseless origin; but is harder to trace to its beginnings, because it was not connected with an assertion, capable of direct ocular, as well as historical, refutation, as that about Simon’s statue most fortunately was. The second name, Selena, given by Irenaeus, is exactly the Greek word for the moon, which was often worshiped under its appropriate name; and this tale may have been caught up from some connection between such a ceremony and the worship of some of the Semones,――all the elegant details of her life and character being invented to suit the fancies of the reverend fathers. The story, that she had followed Simon to Rome from the Phoenician cities, Tyre and Sidon, suggests to my mind at this moment, that there may have been a connection between this and some old story of the importation of a piece of idolatry from that region, so famed for the worship of the

“mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven’s queen and mother both.”

But this trash is not worth the time and paper I am spending upon it, since the main part of the story, concerning Simon Magus as having ever been seen or heard of in Rome, by senate, prince or people, in the days of Claudius, is shown, beyond all reasonable question, to be utterly false, and based on a stupid blunder of Justin Martyr, who did not know Latin enough to tell the difference between sanco and sancto, nor between Semoni and Simoni. And after all, this is but a fair specimen of Justin Martyr’s usual blundering way, of which his few pages present other instances for the inquiring reader to stumble over and bewilder himself upon. Take, for example, the gross confusion of names and dates which he makes in a passage which accidentally meets my eye, on a page near that from which the above extract is taken. In attempting to give an account of the way in which the Hebrew Bible was first translated into Greek, he says that Ptolemy, king of Egypt, sent to Herod, king of the Jews, for a copy of the Bible. But when or where does any history, sacred or profane, give any account whatever of any Ptolemy, king of Egypt, who was cotemporary with either of the Herods? The last of the Ptolemies was killed, while a boy, in the Egyptian war with Julius Caesar, before Herod had himself attained to manhood, or had the most distant thought of the throne of Palestine. The Ptolemy who is said to have procured the Greek translation of the Bible, however, lived about three hundred years before the first Herod. It is lamentable to think that such is the character of the earliest Christian father who has left works of any magnitude. Who can wonder that Apologies for the Christian religion, full of such gross blunders, should have failed to secure the belief, or move the attention of either of the Antonines, to whom they were addressed,――the Philosophic, or the Pious? And by a writer who pretended to tell the wisest of the Caesars, that in his imperial city, had been worshiped, from the days of Claudius, a miserable Samaritan impostor, who, an outcast from his own outcast land, had in Rome, by a solemn senatorial and imperial decree, been exalted to the highest god-ship, and that the evidence of this fact was found in a statue which that emperor well knew to be dedicated to the most ancient deities of Etruscan origin, worshiped there ever since the days of Numa Pompilius, but which this Syrian Christian had blunderingly supposed to commemorate a man who had never been heard of out of Samaria, except among Christians. And as for such martyrs, if there is any truth whatever in the story that his foolish head was cut off by the second Antonine, the only pity is, it was not done a little sooner, so as to have kept the Christian world from the long belief of all this folly about an invention so idle, and saved me the trouble of exposing it.

The fullest account ever given of this fable and all its progress, is found in the Annales Ecclesiastici of Caesar Baronius, (A. C. 44. § 51‒59.) who, after furnishing the most ample references to sacred and profane authorities, which palpably demonstrate the falsity of the story, returns with all the solemn bigotry of a papist, to the solemn conviction that the fathers and the saints who tell the story, must have had some very good reason for believing it.

The other copyists of Justin hardly deserve any notice; but it is interesting and instructive to observe how, in the progress of fabulous invention, one lie is pinned on to the tail of another, to form a glorious chain of historical sequences, for some distant ecclesiastical annalist to hang his servile faith upon. Eusebius, for instance, enlarges the stories of Justin and Irenaeus, by an addition of his own,――that in his day there existed a sect which acknowledged this same Simon as God, and worshiped him and Helena or Selena, with some mysteriously wicked rites. Now all that his story amounts to, is, that in his time there was a sect called by a name resembling that of Simon, how nearly like it, no one knows; but that by his own account their worship was of a secret character, so that he could, of course, know nothing certainly. But this is enough for him to add, as a solemn confirmation of a story now known to have been founded in falsehood. From this beginning, Eusebius goes on to say that Peter went to Rome in the second year of Claudius, to war against this Simon Magus, who never went there; so that we know how much this whole tale is worth by looking into the circumstance which constitutes its essential foundation. The idea of Peter’s visit to Rome at that time, is no where given before Eusebius, except in some part of the Clementina, a long series of most unmitigated falsehoods, forged in the name of Clemens Romanus, without any certain date, but commonly supposed to have been made up of the continued contributions of several impudent liars, during different portions of the second, third and fourth centuries.

Creuzer also, in his deep and extensive researches into the religions of antiquity, in giving a “view of some of the older Italian nations,” speaks of “Sancus Semo.” He quotes Augustin (De civitate Dei. XVIII. 19,) as authority for the opinion that he was an ancient king, deified. He also alludes to the passage in Ovid, (quoted above by Baronius,) where he is connected with Hercules, and alluded to under three titles, as Semo, Sancus and Fidius. (Ovid, Fasti, VI. 213, et seq.) But the learned Creuzer does not seem to have any correct notion of the character of the Semones, as a distinct order of inferior deities;――a fact perfectly certain as given above, for which abundant authority is found in Varro, (de Mystag.) as quoted by Fulgentius and Baronius. From Creuzer I also notice, in an accidental immediate connection with Semo Sancus, the fact that the worship of the moon (Luna) was also of Sabine origin; and being introduced along with that of Sancus, by Numa, may have had some relation to that Semo, and may have concurred in originating the notion of the fathers about the woman Selena or Helena, as worshiped along with Simon. He also just barely alludes to the fact that Justin and Irenaeus have confounded this Semo Sancus with Simon Magus. (See Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der alter Voelker, II. Theil. pp. 964‒965.)

The next conclusion authorized by those who support this fable is, that Peter, after achieving this great work of vanquishing the impostor Simon, proceeded to preach the gospel generally; yet not at first to the hereditary citizens of imperial Rome, nor to any of the Gentiles, but to his own countrymen the Jews, great numbers of whom then made their permanent abode in the great city. These foreigners, at that time, were limited in Rome to a peculiar section of the suburbs, and hardly dwelt within the walls of the city itself;――an allotment corresponding with similar limitations existing in some of the modern cities of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, and even in London, though there, only in accordance with long usage, and with actual convenience, but not with any existing law. The quarter of Rome in which the Jews dwelt in the days of Claudius, was west of the central section of the city, beyond the Tiber; and to this suburban portion, the story supposes the residence and labors of Peter to have been at first confined. But after a time, the fame of this mighty preacher of a new faith spread beyond, from this despised foreign portion of the environs, across the Tiber, over the seven hills themselves, and even into the halls of the patrician lords of Rome. Such an extension of fame, indeed, seems quite necessary to make these two parts of this likely story hang together at all; for it is hard to see how a stranger, from a distant eastern land, could thus appear suddenly among them, and overturn, with a defeat so total and signal, the pretensions of one who had lately been exalted by the opinions of an adoring people to the character of a god, and had even received the solemn national sanction of this exaltation by a formal decree of the senate of Rome, confirmed by the absolute voice of the Caesar himself; and after such a victory, over such a person, be left long unnoticed in an obscure suburb. In accordance, therefore, with this reasonable notion, it is recorded in the continuation of the story, that when Peter, preaching at Rome, grew famous among the Gentiles, he was no longer allowed to occupy himself wholly among the Jews, but was thereafter taken by Pudens, a senator who believed in Christ, into his own house, on the Viminal Mount, one of the seven hills, but near the Jewish suburb. In the neighborhood of this house, as the legend relates, was afterwards erected a monument, called “the Shepherd’s,”――a name which serves to identify this important locality to the modern Romans to this day. Being thus established in these lordly patrician quarters, the poor Galilean fisherman might well have thought himself blessed, in such a pleasant change from the uncomfortable lodgings with which the royal Agrippa had lately accommodated him, and from which he had made so willing an exit. But the legend does the faithful and devoted apostle the justice, to represent him as by no means moved by these luxurious circumstances, to the least forgetfulness of the high commission which was to be followed through all sorts of self-denial,――no less that which drew him from the soft and soul-relaxing enjoyments of a patrician palace, than that which led him to renounce the simple, hard-earned profits of a fisherman, on the changeful sea of Gennesaret, or to calmly meet the threats, the stripes, the chains, and the condemned cell, with which the enmity of the Jewish magistrates had steadily striven to quench his fiery and energetic spirit. He is described as steadily laboring in the cause of the gospel among the Gentiles as well as the Jews, and with such success during the whole of the first year of his stay, that in the beginning of the following year he is said by papist writers to have solemnly and formally founded the church of Rome. This important fictitious event is dated with the most exact particularity, on the fifteenth of February, in the forty-third year of Christ, and the third year of the reign of the emperor Claudius. The empty, unmeaning pomposity of this announcement is a sufficient evidence of its fictitious character. According to the story itself, here Peter had been preaching nearly a whole year at Rome; and if preaching, having a regular congregation, of course, and performing the usual accompaniments of preaching, as baptism, &c. Now there is not in the whole apostolic history the least account, nor the shadow of a hint, of any such ceremony as the founding of a church, distinct from the mere gathering of an assembly of believing listeners, who acknowledged their faith in Jesus by profession and by the sacraments. The organization of this religious assembly might indeed be made more perfect at one time than at another; as for instance, a new church, which during an apostle’s stay with it and preaching to it, had been abundantly well governed by the simple guidance of his wise, fatherly care, would, on his departure, need some more regular, permanent provision for its government, lest among those who were all religious co-equals, there should arise disputes which would require a regularly constituted authority to allay them. The apostle might, therefore, in such advanced requirements of the church, ordain elders, and so on; but such an appendix could not, with the slightest regard to common sense or the rules of honest interpretation of language, be said to constitute the founding of a church. The very phrase of ordaining elders in a church, palpably implies and requires the previous distinct, complete existence of the church. In fact the entity of a church implies nothing more than a regular assembly of believers, with an authorized ministry; and if Peter had been preaching several months to the Jews of the trans-Tiberine suburb, or to the Romans of the Viminal mount, there must have been in one or both of those places, a church, to all intents, purposes, definitions and etymologies of a church. So that for him, almost a year after, to proceed to found a church in Rome, was the most idle work of supererogation in the world. And all the pompous statements of papist writers about any such formality, and all the quotations that might be brought out of the fathers in its support, from Clement downwards, could not relieve the assertion of one particle of its palpable, self-evident absurdity. But the fable proceeds in the account of this important movement, dating the apostolic reign of Peter from this very occasion, as above fixed, and running over various imaginary acts of his, during the tedious seven years for which the story ties him down to this one spot. Among many other unfounded matters, is specified the assertion, that from this city during the first year of his episcopate, he wrote his first epistle, which he addressed to the believers in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,――the countries which are enumerated as visited by him in his fictitious tour. This opinion is grounded on the circumstance of its being dated from Babylon, which several later fathers understood as a term spiritually applied to Rome; but in the proper place this notion will be fully discussed, and the true origin of the epistle more satisfactorily given. Another important event in the history of the scriptures,――the writing of the gospel of Mark,――is also commonly connected with this part of Peter’s life, by the papist historians; but this event, with an account of the nature of this supposed connection, and the discussion of all points in this subject, can be better shown in the life of that evangelist; and to that it is therefore deferred. These matters and several others as little in place, seem to be introduced into this part of Peter’s life, mainly for the sake of giving him something particular to do, during his somewhat tedious stay in Rome, where they make him remain seven years after his first journey thither; and give him here the character, office and title of bishop,――a piece of nomenclature perfectly unscriptural and absurd, because no apostle, in the New Testament, is ever called a bishop; but on the contrary, the office was evidently created to provide a substitute for an apostle,――a person who might perform the pastoral duties to the church, in the absence of its apostolic founder, overseeing and managing all its affairs in his stead, to report to him at his visitations, or in reply to his epistolary charges. To call an apostle a bishop, therefore, implies the absurdity of calling a superior officer by the title of his inferior,――as to call a captain, lieutenant, or a general-in-chief, colonel, or even as to call a bishop, deacon. During the life-time of the apostles, “bishop” was only a secondary title, and it was not till the death of all those commissioned by Christ, that this became the supreme officer in all churches. But the papists not appreciating any difficulty of this kind, go on crowning one absurdity with another, which claims, however, the additional merit of being amusing in its folly. This is the minute particularization of the shape, stuff, accoutrements and so on, of the chair in which bishop Peter sat at Rome in his episcopal character. This identical wooden chair in which his apostolical body was seated when he was exerting the functions of his bishopric, is still, according to the same high papal authorities which maintain the fact of his ever having been bishop, preserved in the Basilica of the Vatican, at Rome, and is even now, on certain high occasions, brought out from its holy storehouse to bless with its presence the eyes of the adoring people. This chair is kept covered with a linen veil, among the various similar treasures of the Vatican, and has been eminent for the vast numbers of great miracles wrought by its presence. As a preliminary step, however, to a real faith in the efficacy of this old piece of furniture, it is necessary that those who hear the stories should believe that Peter was ever at Rome, to sit in this or any other chair there. It is observed, however, in connection with this lumbering article, in the papist histories, that on taking possession of this chair, as bishop of Rome, Peter resigned the bishopric of Antioch, committing that see to the charge of Euodius, it having been the original diocese of this chief apostle,――a story about as true, as that any apostle was ever bishop any where. The apostles were missionaries, for the most part, preaching the word of God from place to place, appointing bishops to govern and manage the churches in their absence, and after their final departure, as their successors and substitutes; but no apostle is, on any occasion whatever, called a bishop in any part of the New Testament, or by any early writer. The most important objection, however, to all this absurd account of Peter, as bishop of Rome, is the fact uniformly attested by those early fathers, who allude to his having ever visited that city, that having founded the church there, he appointed Linus the FIRST BISHOP,――a statement in exact accordance with the view here given of the office of a bishop, and of the mode in which the apostles constituted that office in the churches founded and visited by them.

The date of the foundation.――All this is announced with the most elaborate solemnity, in all the older papist writers, because on this point of the foundation of the Roman church by Peter, they were long in the habit of basing the whole right and title of the bishop of Rome, as Peter’s successor, to the supremacy of the church universal. The great authorities, quoted by them in support of this exact account of the whole affair, with all its dates, even to the month and day, are the bulls of some of the popes, enforcing the celebration of that day throughout all the churches under the Romish see, and the forms of prayer in which this occasion is commemorated even to this day. Moreover, a particular form is quoted from some of the old rituals of the church, not now in use, in which the ancient mode of celebrating this event, in prayer and thanksgiving, is verbally given. “Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui ineffabili sacramento, apostolo tuo Petro principatum Romae urbis tribuisti, unde se evangelica veritas per tota mundi regna diffunderet: praesta quaesumus, ut quod in orbem terrarum ejus praedicatione manavit, universitas Christiana devotione sequatur.”――“Almighty, eternal God, who by an ineffable consecration, didst give to thy apostle Peter the dominion of the city of Rome, that thence the gospel truth might diffuse itself throughout all the kingdoms of the world: grant, we pray, that what has flowed into the whole circuit of the earth by his preaching, all Christendom may devoutly follow.”――A prayer so melodiously expressed, and in such beautiful Latin, that it is a great pity it should have been a mere trick, to spread and perpetuate a downright, baseless lie, which had no other object than the extension of the gloomy, soul-darkening tyranny of the papal sway. Other forms of prayer, for private occasions, are also mentioned by Baronius, as commemorating the foundation of the church of Rome by Peter; and all these, as well as the former, being fixed for the fifteenth of February, as above quoted. Those records of fables, also, the old Roman martyrologies, are cited for evidence. The later Latin fathers add their testimony, and even the devout Augustin (sermons 15, 16, de sanct, &c.) is quoted in support of it. Baronius gives all these evidences, (Annales, 45, § 1,) and goes on to earn the cardinal’s hat, which finally rewarded his zealous efforts, by maintaining the unity and universality of this apostolic foundation, and the absolute supremacy consequently appertaining to the succession of Peter in the Roman see.

Peter’s chair.――This fable (page 225) is from Baronius, who wrote about 1580; but alas! modern accidental discoveries make dreadful havoc with papistical antiquities, and have done as much to correct the mistake in this matter, as in Justin’s blunder about Simon Magus. I had transcribed Baronius’s story into the text as above without knowing of the fact, till a glance at the investigations of the sagacious Bower gave me the information which I here extract from him.

“They had, as they thought, till the year 1662, a pregnant proof, not only of St. Peter’s erecting their chair, but of his sitting in it himself; for till that year, the very chair, on which they believed, or would make others believe, he had sat, was shown and exposed to public adoration on the 18th of January, the festival of the said chair. But while it was cleaning, in order to be set up in some conspicuous place of the Vatican, the twelve labors of Hercules unluckily appeared engraved on it. ‘Our worship, however,’ says Giacomo Bartolini, who was present at this discovery, and relates it, ‘was not misplaced, since it was not to the wood we paid it, but to the prince of the apostles, St. Peter.’ An author of no mean character, unwilling to give up the holy chair, even after this discovery, as having a place and a peculiar solemnity among the other saints, has attempted to explain the labors of Hercules in a mystical sense, as emblems representing the future exploits of the popes. (Luchesini catedra restituita a S. Pietro.) But the ridiculous and distorted conceits of that writer are not worthy our notice, though by Clement X. they were judged not unworthy of a reward.” (Bower’s Lives of the Popes, Vol. I. p. 7, 4to. ed. 1749.)

The next noticeable thing that Peter is made to do at Rome, is the sending out of his disciples from Rome to act as missionaries and bishops in the various wide divisions of the Roman empire, westward from the capital, which were yet wholly unoccupied by the preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In his supposed character of keeper of the great flock of Christ, having now fully established the Roman see, he turned his eyes to those distant regions, and considering their religious wants and utter spiritual destitution, sent into them several disciples whom he is supposed to have qualified for such labors by his own minute personal instructions. Thus, as rays from the sun, and as streams from the fountain, did the Christian faith go forth through these from the see of Peter, and spread far and wide throughout the world. So say the imaginative papist historians, whose fancy not resting satisfied with merely naming the regions to which these new missionaries were now sent, goes on with a catalogue of the persons, and of the places where they became finally established in their bishoprics. But it would be honoring such fables too much, to record the long string of names which are in the papist annals, given to designate the missionaries thus sent out, and the particular places to which they were sent. It is enough to notice that the sum of the whole story is, that preachers of the gospel were thus sent not only into the western regions alluded to, but into many cities of Italy and Sicily. In Gaul, Spain and Germany, many are said to have been certainly established; and to extend the fable as far as possible, it is even hinted that Britain received the gospel through the preaching of some of these missionaries of Peter; but this distant circumstance is stated rather as a conjecture, while the rest are minutely and seriously given, in all the grave details of persons and places.

In various works of this character, Peter is said by the propagators of this fable to have passed seven years at Rome, during all which time he is not supposed to have gone beyond the bounds of the city. The occasion of his departure at the end of this long period, as stated by the fabulous records from which the whole story is drawn, was the great edict of Claudius Caesar, banishing all Jews from Rome, among whom Peter must of course have been included. This imperial sentence of general banishment, is not only alluded to in the Acts of the Apostles, but is particularly specified in the Roman and Jewish historians of those times; from which its exact date is ascertained to have been the ninth year of the reign of Claudius, from which, as Peter is supposed to have gone to Rome in the second year of that reign, the intervening time must have been, as above stated, seven years. The particulars of this general banishment, its motives and results, will be better given in that part of this work where important points in authentic true history are connected with the event. Under these circumstances, however, the great first bishop of Rome is supposed to have left this now consecrated capital of Christendom, and traveled off eastward, along with the general throng of Jewish fugitives. Some of the papist commentators on this story are nevertheless, so much scandalized at the thought of Peter’s running away in this seemingly undignified manner, (though this is in fact the part of the story which is most consistent with the real truth, since no apostle was ever taught to consider it beneath his dignity to get out of danger,) that they therefore strive to make it appear that he still stayed in Rome, in spite of the imperial edict, and boldly preached the gospel, without reference to danger, until, soon after, it became necessary for him to go to the east on important business. The majority, however, are agreed that he did remove from Rome along with the rest of the Jews, though while he remained there, he is supposed to have kept up the apostolic dignity by preaching at all risks. His journey eastward is made out in rather a circuitous manner, probably for no better reason than to make their stories as long as possible; and therefore it is enough to say, that he is carried by the continuation of the fable, from Rome first into Africa, where he erected a church at Carthage, over which he ordained Crescens, one of his Roman disciples, as bishop. Proceeding next along the northern coast of the continent, he is brought to Alexandria, where, of course, he founds a church, leaving the evangelist Mark in it, as bishop; and passing up the Nile to Thebes, constitutes Rufus there, in the same capacity. Thence the fabulous chroniclers carry him at once to Jerusalem; and here ends this tedious string of details, the story being now resumed from the clear and honest record of the sacred historian, to the great refreshment of the writer as well as the reader, after dealing so long in what is utterly unalloyed falsehood.

Peter, bishop of Rome.――The great question of his having ever visited this city, has two separate and distinct parts, resting on totally different grounds, since they refer to two widely distant periods of time; but that part which refers to his early visit, being connected with this portion of the history, I proceed in this place to the full examination of all the evidences, which have ever been brought in support of both divisions of this great subject in papal dogmatic history, from the supposed records of this event in the writings of the early Christian Fathers. On this head, instead of myself entering into a course of investigations among these writers, which my very slight acquaintance with their works would make exceedingly laborious to me, and probably very incomplete after all, I here avail myself of the learned and industrious research of my friend, the Rev. Dr. Murdock, widely and honorably known as the Translator and Annotator of Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History. Through his kindness, I am allowed the free use of a long series of instructive lectures, formerly delivered by him as a professor of Ecclesiastical History, which having been subsequently modified to suit a popular audience, will bring the whole of this learned matter, with the fullest details of the argument, in a form perfectly intelligible and acceptable to my readers.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE EARLY FATHERS.

In the latter part of the first century, Clement, bishop of Rome, (Epistle I. to Corinth, § 5,) speaks of Paul and Peter as persecuted, and dying as martyrs. But he does not say when, or where. In the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr speaks of Simon Magus, his magic and his deification, at Rome; but makes no mention of Peter’s going to Rome, to combat him. Nor does any other father, so far as I know, till after A. D. 300. About twenty years after Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, (bishop of Lyons,) wrote his five books against the heretics; in which he confutes them, by the testimony of those churches which were said to have been founded immediately by the apostles. The following extract from him will fully illustrate that mode of reasoning, and also show us what Irenaeus knew of Peter’s being at Rome. He says: “The doctrine preached to all the world by the apostles, is now found in the church;――as all may see if they are willing to learn; and we are able to name the persons whom the apostles constituted the bishops of the churches, and their successors down to our times; who have never taught or known any such doctrine as the heretics advance. Now if the apostles had been acquainted with [certain] recondite mysteries, which they taught privately, and only to such as were the most perfect, they would certainly have taught them to those men to whom they committed the care of the churches; for they required them to be very perfect and blameless in all things, whom they made their successors and substitutes in office;――because, if they conducted aright, great advantage would result; but if they should go wrong, immense evils would ensue. But, as it would be tedious, in the present work, to enumerate the successions in all the churches, I will mention but one, viz. the greatest, most ancient, and well-known by all, the church founded and established at Rome, by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul. The faith of this church was the result of apostolic teaching, and the same as was every where preached; and it has come down to us through a succession of bishops; and by this example we confound all those who, in any manner, either from selfish views and vain glory, or from blindness to truth and erroneous belief, hold forth false doctrine. For with this church, on account of its superior pre-eminence, every other church,――that is, the true believers every where,――must agree; because, in it has ever been preserved the doctrine derived immediately from the apostles, and which was every where propagated. The blessed apostles having founded and instructed this church, committed the episcopacy of it to Linus; who is mentioned by Paul in his epistle to Timothy. Anacletus succeeded Linus; and after him, the third bishop from the apostles, was Clement, who saw the apostles themselves, and conferred with them, while their preaching and instruction was still sounding in his ears.” Irenaeus then enumerates the succeeding bishops, down to Eleutherius, “who,” he says, “is now the twelfth bishop from the apostles.” In the preceding section, Irenaeus tells us that Matthew wrote his gospel “while Peter and Paul were preaching, and founding the church at Rome.”

Here is full and explicit testimony, that Paul and Peter, unitedly, preached and founded the church at Rome; and that they constituted Linus the first bishop there. The language excludes both Peter and Paul,――and excludes both equally, from the episcopal chair at Rome. “They committed the episcopacy to Linus;” who was the first bishop, as Clement was the third, and Eleutherius the twelfth. Contemporary with Irenaeus was Dionysius, bishop of Corinth. In reply to a monitory letter from the Romish church, of which Eusebius (Church History, II. 25,) has preserved an extract, Dionysius says: “By this your excellent admonition, you have united in one the planting, by Peter and Paul, of the Romans and Corinthians. For both of them coming to our Corinth, planted and instructed us;――and in like manner, going to Italy together,――after teaching there, they suffered martyrdom at the same time.” From this testimony we may learn how and when Peter went to Rome; as well as what relation he sustained to the church there. He and Paul came to Corinth together; and when they had regulated and instructed that church, they went on together to Italy, and did the same things at Rome as before at Corinth. Now this, if true, must have been after the captivity of Paul at Rome, mentioned in the book of Acts. For Paul never went directly from Corinth to Rome before that captivity, since he never was at Rome before he was carried there a prisoner, in the year A. D. 62. But, if released in the year 64, he might have visited Corinth afterwards, with Peter, and then have traveled with him to Rome. To the church of Rome, Peter and Paul sustained the same relation; and that was the same as they had sustained to the church of Corinth, viz. that of apostolic teachers and founders,――not that of ORDINARY BISHOPS. That is, Peter was no more the bishop of Rome than Paul was; and neither of them, any more the bishop of Rome than both were bishops of Corinth. Dionysius likewise, here affirms, that Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom “at the same time;” and probably at Rome, where they last taught. That Rome was the place is proved by Caius, a Romish ecclesiastic, about A. D. 200, as quoted by Eusebius, (Church History, II. 25.) “I am able,” says he, “to show the trophies [the sepulchers] of the apostles. For if you will go to the Vatican, or along the Via Ostia, you will find the trophies of those who established this church.”

The next father, Clement of Alexandria, (about A. D. 200,) reports it as tradition, that Mark wrote his gospel at Rome, while Peter was preaching there. (Eusebius, Church History, VI. 14.) In the forepart of the third century, lived Tertullian, a fervid and learned writer. He assailed the heretics with the same argument as Irenaeus did. “Run over,” says he, “the apostolic churches, in which the chairs of apostles still preside in their places, and in which the autographs of their epistles are still read. If you are near to Italy, you have Rome, a witness for us; and how blessed a church is that on which apostles poured out their whole doctrine, together with their blood! where Peter equaled our Lord in his mode of suffering; and where Paul was crowned, with the exit of John the Baptist.” (De praescriptione haereticorum c. 36.) In another work he says: “Let us see what the Romans hold forth; to whom Peter and Paul imparted the gospel sealed with their own blood.” (adversus Marcion, IV. c. 5.) Again he says: “Neither is there a disparity between those whom John baptized in the Jordan, and Peter in the Tiber.” (de Baptismo.) He moreover testifies that Peter suffered in the reign of Nero, (Scorpiac. c. 15,) and that this apostle ordained Clement bishop of Rome. (Praescriptione c. 32.) In the middle of the third century, Cyprian of Carthage, writing to the bishop of Rome, (Epistle 55, to Cornelius) calls the church of Rome “the principal church;” and that where “Peter’s chair” was;――and “whose faith was derived from apostolic preaching.” In the end of the third century or the beginning of the fourth, Lactantius (Divine Institutes, IV. c. 21,) speaks of “Peter and Paul” as having wrought miracles, and uttered predictions at Rome; and describes their prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem. And in his work on the Deaths of Persecutors, (chapter 2,) he says: “During the reign of Nero, Peter came to Rome; and having wrought several miracles by the power of God, which rested on him, he converted many to righteousness, and erected a faithful and abiding temple for God. This became known to Nero, who, learning that multitudes, not only at Rome but in all other places, were abandoning idolatry and embracing the new religion, and being hurried on to all sorts of cruelty by his brutal tyranny, set himself, the first of all, to destroy this religion, and to persecute the servants of God. So he ordered Peter to be crucified and Paul to be beheaded.” I have now detailed every important testimony which I could find in the genuine works of the fathers, in the three first centuries. The witnesses agree very well; and they relate nothing but what may be true. They make Peter and Paul to go from Corinth to Rome, in company, during the reign of Nero; and after preaching and strengthening the church at Rome, and ordaining Linus to be its first bishop,――both suffering martyrdom at Rome on the same day; Peter being crucified and Paul decapitated. There is no representation of Peter’s being any more bishop of Rome than Paul was;――and Irenaeus in particular, expressly makes Linus the first bishop, and to be ordained by the two apostles.

We now come to Eusebius, who wrote about A. D. 325. He quotes most of the fathers above cited, but departs widely from them, in regard to the time, and the occasion, of Peter’s going to Rome. He says it was in the reign of Claudius;――and for the purpose of opposing Simon Magus, (as the Clementine novels represented the matter.) Yet he does not make Peter to be bishop of Rome. The subsequent writers of the fourth and following centuries, agree with Eusebius as to the time and the occasion of Peter’s going to Rome; and most of them make Peter to be the first bishop of Rome. According to them, Peter remained in Judea only about four years after the ascension; then he was bishop of Antioch seven years, and in the second year of Claudius, A. D. 43, removed his chair to Rome, where he was bishop for twenty-five years, or until his death, A. D. 68. And this is the account generally given by the papists, quite down to the present times.

OBJECTIONS TO THE TRADITIONARY HISTORY OF PETER.

1. So far as the later fathers contradict those of the three first centuries, they ought to be rejected; because, they could not have so good means of information. Oral tradition must, in three centuries, have become worthless, compared with what it was in the second and third centuries;――and written testimony, which could be relied on, they had none, except that of the early fathers. Besides, we have seen how these later fathers were led astray. They believed the fable of Simon Magus’s legerdemain at Rome, and his deification there. They read the Clementine fictions, and supposed them to be novels founded on facts. In their eulogies of Peter, they were fond of relating marvelous and affecting stories about him, and therefore too readily admitted fabulous traditions. And lastly, the bishops of Rome and their numerous adherents had a direct and an immense interest depending on this traditional history;――for by it alone, they made out their succession to the chair of Peter, and the legitimacy of their ghostly power.

2. The later fathers invalidate their own testimony, by stating what is incredible, and what neither they nor their modern adherents can satisfactorily explain. They state that Linus succeeded Peter, for about twelve years; then followed Cletus or Anacletus, for about twelve years more; and then succeeded Clement. And yet they tell us, all the three were ordained by the hands of Peter. How could this be? Did Peter ordain three successive bishops, after he was dead?――or did he resign his office to these bishops, and retire to a private station, more than twenty-five years before his crucifixion? No, says Epiphanius, (Against Heresies, 27,) and after him most of the modern papists; (Nat. Alex. H. E. saecul. I. Diss. XIII. Burius, &c.) but Peter being often absent from Rome, and having a vast weight of cares, had assistant bishops; and Linus and Cletus were not the successors but the assistants of Peter. But Irenaeus, Eusebius, Jerome, and all the authorized catalogues of popes, explicitly make Linus and Cletus to be successors to Peter. Besides, why did Peter need an assistant any more than the succeeding pontiffs? And what age since has ever witnessed an assistant pope at Rome? A more plausible solution (but which the papists cannot admit) is given by Rufinus. (Preface to Clementine Recognitions) “As I understand it,” says he, “Linus and Cletus were the bishops of Rome in Peter’s life-time; so that they performed the episcopal functions, and he, those of an apostle. And, in this way the whole may be true,” says Rufinus. Granted, if this were the only objection; and if it could be made out that Peter went to Rome full twenty-four years before his martyrdom. But supposing it true, how can the successors of Linus and Cletus, the bishops, be successors of Peter, the apostle.

3. Peter removed his chair to Rome, (say the later fathers and most of the Catholics,) in the second year of Claudius, that is, A. D. 43; and he resided there twenty-four years, or till his death. But we have the best proof,――that of holy writ,――that Peter was resident at Jerusalem, as late as the year A. D. 44; when king Agrippa seized him there, and imprisoned him, with intent to kill him. (Acts xii. 3‒19.) And we have similar proof that he was still there in the year 51; when he deliberated and acted with the other apostles and brethren of Jerusalem, on the question of obliging Gentiles to observe the law of Moses. (Acts xv. 7, &c.; Galatians ii. 1‒9.) And, moreover, some time after this, as Paul tells us, (Galatians ii. 11‒14,) he came to Antioch, in Syria, and there dissembled about eating with the Gentiles. The common reply of the Catholics is, that Peter often made long journeys; and he might happen to be at Jerusalem, and at Antioch, at these times. But this solution is rejected by the more candid Romanists themselves, who agree with the early fathers, asserting that Peter first went to Rome in the reign of Nero. (See Pagi Critique of Baronius’s Annale, 43.)

4. Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans in the year 59, as is supposed. And from this epistle it is almost certain, Peter was not then at Rome; and highly probable he had never been there. Throughout the epistle, Peter’s name is not even mentioned; nor is that of Linus or Cletus, his supposed assistants, who always, it is said, supplied his place when he was absent. Indeed, so far as can be gathered from Paul’s epistle, the Romish Christians appear not to have had, at that time nor previously, any bishop or any ecclesiastical head. The epistle is addressed “To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints.” (Romans i. 7.) It exhorts them to obey magistrates;――but not to reverence and obey their spiritual rulers. (Romans xiii. 1, &c.) It inculcates on them all, the duty of living in harmony,――of being modest and humble,――of using their different gifts for the common good; (Romans xii. 3, &c.;) but gives no intimation that they were amenable to any ecclesiastical authorities. It gives them rules for conducting their disciplinary acts, as a popular body, (Romans xiv. 1, &c.,) but does not refer to any regulations given them by St. Peter and his assistants. It contains salutations to near thirty persons, male and female, whom Paul knew personally, or by hearsay, (chapter xvi.) but neither Peter, nor Linus, nor Cletus is of the number; nor is any one spoken of as bishop, or elder, or pastor, or as clothed with any ecclesiastical authority. Priscilla and Aquila, and several others whom he had known in Greece or Asia, are named; and seem to be the leading persons in the church. Indeed, it would seem that no apostle had, as yet, ever been at Rome. Paul says he had “had a great desire, for many years,” to visit them, and he intended to do so as soon as possible. (Romans xv. 23.) And he tells them why he longed to see them, that he might impart to them “some spiritual gifts;”――that is, some of those miraculous gifts, which none but apostles could confer. (Romans i. 11.) I may add, that Paul gives them a whole system of divinity in this epistle; and crowds more theology into it, than into any other he ever wrote;――as if he considered this church as needing fundamental instruction in the gospel, more than any other. Now, how could all this be, if Peter had been there fifteen years, with an assistant bishop to aid him; and had completely organized, and regulated, and instructed this central church of all Christendom? What Catholic bishop, at the present day, would dare to address the church of Rome without once naming his liege lord, the pope; and would give them a whole system of theology, and numerous rules and regulations for their private conduct and for their public discipline, without even an intimation that they had any spiritual guides and rulers, to whom they were accountable?

5. Three years after this epistle was written, (that is, A. D. 62,) Paul arrived at Rome, and was there detained a prisoner for two years, or until A. D. 64. Now let us see if we can find Peter there, at or during this period. When it was known at Rome that Paul was approaching the city, the Christians there went twenty miles to meet him, and escort him;――so eager were they to see an apostle of Jesus Christ. Three days after his arrival, “Paul called the chief of the Jews together,” to have conversation with them. They had heard nothing against him, and they were glad to see him,――for they wished to hear more about the Christian sect; “for,” said they, “as concerning this sect, we know that it is every where spoken against;” and “we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest.” (Acts xxviii. 22.) They appointed him a day, when they all assembled for the purpose, and he addressed them “from morning till evening.” Now could Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, have been near twenty years bishop of Rome, and so full of business as to employ an assistant bishop, and yet the Jews there be so ignorant of Christianity, and so glad to meet with one who could satisfy their curiosity to learn something about it? Moreover, Paul now continued to preach the gospel in “his own hired house,” at Rome, for two years; (Acts xxviii. 30, 31;) and it would seem, was very successful. During this time he wrote his epistles to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and perhaps, that to the Hebrews. In these epistles he often speaks of his success in making converts, and of the brethren who labored with him;――but he does not once even name Peter, or Linus, or Cletus,――or intimate, at all, that there was a cathedral church at Rome, with an apostle or any bishop at its head. He sends numerous salutations from individuals whom he names, and from little companies of Christians in their houses,――but no salutations from Peter, or from any bishop, or other officer of the church there. The Catholics tell us, Peter might happen to be absent during this period. What! absent two whole years! and his assistant bishop also? Very negligent shepherds! But where was the church all this time,――the enlightened Christian community, and the elders and deacons, who governed and instructed it, from Sabbath to Sabbath? Were all these, too, gone a journey? No: it is manifest Paul was now the only regular preacher of the gospel at Rome: and he was breaking up fallow ground, that had never before been cultivated, and sown, and made to bear fruit.

[This closes the learned argument on the testimonies of the Fathers, extracted from Dr. Murdock’s manuscripts.]

Lardner also gives a sort of abstract of the passages in the fathers, which refer to this subject, but not near so full, nor so just to the original passages, as that of Dr. Murdock, although he refers to a few authors not alluded to here, whose testimony, however, amounts to little or nothing. Lardner’s disposition to believe all these long-established Roman fables, seems very great, and, on these points, his critical accuracy appears to fail in maintaining its general character. However, in the simple passage from Clemens Romanus, referred to above, he is very full, not only translating the whole passage relating to Peter and Paul, but entering into a very elaborate discussion of the views taken of it; but after all he fails so utterly in rearing an historical argument on this slender basis, that I cannot feel called on to do anything more than barely refer the critical reader to the passage in his life of Peter, (VII.)

Bower has given numerous quotations, too, from these sources, but nothing not contained in the abstract above, of which a great merit is, that it gives all the passages in full, in a faithful and highly expressive translation. (See Bower’s Lives of the Popes. “Peter.”)

THE COUNCIL OF THE APOSTLES AT JERUSALEM.

The last circumstance of Peter’s life and actions, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, is one so deeply involved also in the conduct of others of the holy band, that the history of the whole affair can be best given in connection with their lives; more especially as the immediate occasion of it arose under the labors of these other persons. All the statement which is here necessary to introduce the part which Peter took in the sayings and doings on this occasion, is simply as follows. Paul and Barnabas, having returned to Antioch from their first great mission from that city, throughout almost the whole circuit of Asia Minor, were, soon after their arrival in that city, involved in a vexatious dispute with a set of persons, who, having come down from Jerusalem, had undertaken to give the Syrian Christians more careful instructions in the minutiae of religious duty, than they had received from those who had originally effected their conversion. These new teachers being directly from that holy city, which, having been the great scene of the instructions and sufferings of Jesus Christ, and still being the seat of the apostolic college, was regarded by all, as the true source of religious light, to Christians as well as Jews, throughout the world, therefore made no small commotion in the church of Antioch, when they began to inculcate, as essential to salvation, a full conformity to all the minute ritual observances of the Mosaic law. The church of Antioch, having been planted and taught by men of a more catholic spirit, had gathered within itself a large number of heathen from that Gentile city, who, led by their convictions of the truth and spirituality of the Christian faith, had renounced entirely all the idolatries in which they had been brought up, giving themselves, as it would seem, with honest resolution, to a life of such moral purity, as they considered alone essential to the maintenance of their new religious character. Still, they had never supposed, that in renouncing their idolatrous superstitions, they had bound themselves to throw off also those customs of their country, which could have no connection with moral purity of conduct, and had therefore still remained in national peculiarities, Gentiles; though in creed, and religious practice, Christians. In this course they had been encouraged by the liberal and enlarged views of their religious instructors, who had never once hinted at the necessity of imposing upon Gentile Christians the burden of the Jewish law, which all the impressions of education and previous habits of life would have made quite intolerable. The wisdom of this enlightened spirit was seen in the great accessions of Gentiles, who, being convinced of the necessity of a moral change, were not met by any ceremonial impediments to the full adoption of a pure religion. Paul and Barnabas were, therefore, not a little troubled with this new difficulty, brought in by these Jewish teachers, who, being fresh from the fountain of religious knowledge, claimed great authority in reference to all delicate points of this nature. At last, after long and violent disputes between these old-school and new-school theologians, it was resolved to refer the whole matter to the twelve apostles themselves, at Jerusalem, who might well be supposed qualified to say what they considered to be the essential doctrines and observances of Christianity. Paul and Barnabas, therefore, with some of the rest engaged in the discussion, went up to Jerusalem as a delegation, for this purpose, and presented the whole difficulty to the consideration of the apostles. So little settled, after all, were the views and feelings of these first preachers of Christianity about the degree of freedom to be enjoyed by the numerous Gentile converts, that all the Jewish prejudices of many of them burst out at once, and high ground was taken against any dispensation in favor of Gentile prejudices. After a long discussion, in full assembly of both apostles and church-officers, Peter arose in the midst of the debate, taking the superiority to which his peculiar commission and his long precedence among them entitled him, and in a tone of dignified decision addressed them. He reminded them, in the first place, of that unquestionable call by which God had chosen him from among all the apostles, to proclaim to the heathen the word of the gospel, and of that solemn sign by which God had attested the completeness of their conversion, knowing, as he did, the hearts of all his creatures. The signs of the Holy Spirit having been imparted to the heathen converts with the same perfection of regenerating influence that had been manifested in those of the Jewish faith who had believed, it was manifestly challenging the testimony of God himself, to try to put on them the irksome yoke of the tedious Mosaic ritual, a yoke which not even the Jewish disciples, nor their fathers before them, had been able to bear in all the appointed strictness of its observances; and much less, then, could they expect a burden so intolerable, to be supported by those to whom it had none of the sanctions of national and educational prejudice, which so much assisted its dominion over the feelings of the Jews. And all the disciples, even those of Jewish race, must be perfectly satisfied that their whole reliance for salvation should be, not on any legal conformity, but on that common favor of their Lord, Jesus Christ, in which the Gentile converts also trusted.

Challenge the testimony of God.――This is the substance of Kuinoel’s ideas of the force of this passage, (Acts xv. 10.) πειραζετε τον θεον, (peirazete ton Theon.) His words are, “Tentare Deum dicuntur, qui veritatem, omnipotentiam, omniscientiam, etc. Dei in dubium vocare, vel nova divinae potentiae ac voluntatis documenta desiderant, adeoque Deo obnituntur.”――“Those are said to tempt God who call in question God’s truth, omnipotence, omniscience, &c., or demand new evidences of the divine power or will, and thus strive against God.” He quotes Pott and Schleusner in support of this view of the passage. Rosenmueller and Bloomfield take the same view, as well as many others quoted by the latter and by Poole. Bloomfield is very full on the whole of Peter’s speech, and on all the discussion, with the occasions of it.

Chose me.――This passage has been the subject of much discussion, but I have given a free translation which disagrees with no one of the views of its literal force. The fairest opinion of the matter is, that the expression εξελεξατο εν ημιν, is a Hebraism. (See Vorstius and others quoted by Bloomfield.)

This logically clear statement of whole difficulty, supported by the decisive authority of the chief of the apostles, most effectually hushed all discussion at once; and the whole assembly kept silence, while Paul and Barnabas recounted the extent and success of their labors. After they had finished, James, as the leader of the Mosaic faction, arose and expressed his own perfect acquiescence in the decision of Simon Peter, and proposed an arrangement for a dispensation in favor of the Gentile converts, perfectly satisfactory to all. This conclusion, establishing the correctness of the tolerant and accommodating views of the chief apostle, ended the business in a prudent manner, the details of which will be given in the lives of those more immediately concerned in the results; and though so abrupt a conclusion may be undesirable here, it will be only robbing Peter to pay Paul.

ANTIOCH, IN SYRIA. Acts xi. 26.

PETER’S VISIT TO ANTIOCH.

The historian of the Acts of the Apostles, after the narration of the preceding occurrence, makes no farther allusion to Peter; devoting himself wholly to the account of the far more extensive labors of Paul and his companions, so that for the remaining records of Peter’s life, reference must be had to other sources. These sources, however, are but few, and the results of investigations into them must be very brief.

From some passages in the first part of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, in which he gives an account of his previous intercourse with the twelve apostles, having mentioned his own visit to Jerusalem and its results, as just described above, he speaks of Peter as coming down to Antioch, soon after, where his conduct, in some particulars, was such as to meet the very decided reprehension of Paul. On his first arrival in that Gentile city, Peter, in accordance with the liberal views taught him by the revelation at Joppa and Caesarea, mingled, without scruple, among all classes of believers in Christ, claiming their hospitalities and all the pleasures of social intercourse, making no distinction between those of Jewish and of heathen origin. But in a short time, a company of persons came down from Jerusalem, sent particularly by James, no doubt with a reference to some especial observations on the behavior of the chief apostle, to see how it accorded with the Jerusalem standard of demeanor towards those, whom, by the Mosaic law, he must consider improper persons for the familiar intercourse of a Jew. Peter, probably knowing that they were disposed to notice his conduct critically on these matters of ceremonial punctilio, prudently determined to quiet these censors by avoiding all occasion for any collision with their prejudices. Before their arrival, he had mingled freely with the Grecian and Syrian members of the Christian community, eating with them, and conforming to their customs as far as was convenient for unrestrained social intercourse. But he now withdrew himself from their society, and kept himself much more retired than when free from critical observation. The sharp-eyed Paul, on noticing this sudden change in Peter’s habits, immediately attacked him with his characteristic boldness, charging him with unworthy dissimulation, in thus accommodating his behavior to the whims of these sticklers for Judaical strictness of manners. The common supposition has been, that Peter was here wholly in the wrong, and Paul wholly in the right: a conclusion by no means justified by what is known of the facts, and of the characters of the persons concerned. Peter was a much older man than Paul, and much more disposed by his cooler blood, to prudent and careful measures. His long personal intercourse with Jesus himself, also gave him a great advantage over Paul, in judging of what would be the conduct in such a case most conformable to the spirit of his divine Master; nor was his behavior marked by anything discordant with real honesty. The precept of Christ was, “Be wise as serpents;” and a mere desire to avoid offending an over-scrupulous brother in a trifling matter, implied no more wariness than that divine maxim inculcated, and was, moreover, in the spirit of what Paul himself enjoined in very similar cases, in advising to avoid “offending a brother by eating meat which had been offered in sacrifice to idols.” There is no scriptural authority to favor the opinion that Peter ever acknowledged he was wrong; for all that Paul says is――“I rebuked him,”――but he does not say what effect it had on one who was an older and wiser man than his reprover, and quite as likely to be guided by the spirit of truth. It is probable, however, that Peter had something to say for himself; since it is quite discordant with all common ideas, to suppose that a great apostle would, in the face of those who looked up to him as a source of eternal truth, act a part which implied an unjustifiable practical falsehood. After all, the difference seems to have been on a point of very trifling importance, connected merely with the ceremonials of familiar intercourse, between individuals of nations widely different in manners, habits, prejudices, and the whole tenor of their feelings, as far as country, language and education, would affect them; and a fair consideration of the whole difficulty, by modern ethical standards, will do much to justify Peter in a course designed to avoid unnecessary occasions of quarrel, until the slow operations of time should have worn away all these national prejudices,――the rigid sticklers quietly accommodating themselves to the neglect of ceremonies, which experience would prove perfectly impracticable among those professing the free faith of Christ.

HIS RESIDENCE IN BABYLON.

The first epistle of Peter contains at the close a general salutation from the church in Babylon, to the Christians of Asia Minor, to whom it was addressed. From this, the unquestioned inference is, that Peter was in that city when he wrote. The only point mooted is, whether the place meant by this name was Babylon on the Euphrates, or some other city commonly designated by that name. The most irrational conjecture on the subject, and yet the one which has found most supporters, is, that this name is there used in a spiritual or metaphorical sense for Rome, whose conquests, wide dominion, idolatries, and tyranny over the worshipers of the true God, were considered as assimilating it to the ancient capital of the eastern world. But, in reference to such an unparalleled instance of useless allegory, in a sober message from one church to a number of others, serving as a convenient date for a letter, it should be remembered that at that time there were at least two distinct, important places, bearing the name of Babylon,――so well known throughout the east, that the simple mention of the name would at once suggest to a common reader, one of these as the place seriously meant. One of these was that which stood on the site of the ancient Chaldean Babylon, a place of great resort to the Jews, finally becoming to them, after the destruction of Jerusalem, a great city of refuge, and one of the two great capitals of the Hebrew faith, sharing only with Tiberias the honors of its literary and religious pre-eminence. Even before that, however, as early as the time of Peter, it was a city of great importance and interest in a religious point of view, offering a most ample and desirable field for the labors of the chief apostle, now advancing in years, and whose whole genius, feelings, religious education and national peculiarities, qualified him as eminently for this oriental scene of labor, as those of Paul fitted him for the triumphant advancement of the Christian faith among the polished and energetic races of the mighty west. Here, then, it seems reasonable and pleasant to imagine, that in this glorious “clime of the east,”――away from the bloody strife between tyranny and faction, that distracted and desolated the once blessed land of Israel’s heritage, during the brief delay of its awful doom,――among the scenes of that ancient captivity, in which the mourning sons of Zion had drawn high consolation and lasting support from the same word of prophecy, which the march of time in its solemn fulfilments had since made the faithful history of God’s believing people,――here the chief apostle calmly passed the slow decline of his lengthened years. High associations of historical and religious interest gave all around him a holy character. He sat amid the ruins of empires, the scattered wrecks of ages,――still in their dreary desolation attesting the surety of the word of God. From the lonely waste, mounded with the dust of twenty-three centuries, came the solemn witness of the truth of the Hebrew seers, who sung, over the highest glories of that plain in its brightest days, the long-foredoomed ruin that at last overswept it with such blighting desolation. Here, mighty visions of the destiny of worlds, the rise and fall of empire, rose on the view of Daniel and Ezekiel, whose prophetic scope, on this vast stage of dominion, expanded far beyond the narrow limits that bounded all the future in the eyes of the sublimest of those prophets, whose whole ideas of what was great were taken from the little world of Palestine. Like them, too, the apostolic chief lifted his aged eyes above the paltry commotions and troubles of his own land and times, and glanced far over all, to the scenes of distant ages,――to the broad view of the spiritual consummation of events,――to the final triumphs of a true and pure faith,――to the achievement of the world’s destiny.

Babylon.――The great Sir John David Michaelis enters with the most satisfactory fullness into the discussion of this locality;――with more fullness, indeed, than my crowded limits will allow me to do justice to; so that I must refer my reader to his Introduction to the New Testament, (chapter xxvii. § 4, 5,) where ample statements may be found by those who wish to satisfy themselves of the justice of my conclusion about the place from which this epistle was written. He very ably exposes the extraordinary absurdity of the opinion that this date was given in a mystical sense, at a time when the ancient Babylon, on the Euphrates, was still in existence, as well as a city on the Tigris, Seleucia, to which the name of modern Babylon was given. And he might have added, that there was still another of this name in Egypt, not far from the great Memphis, which has, by Pearson and others, been earnestly defended as the Babylon from which Peter wrote. Michaelis observes, that through some mistake it has been supposed, that the ancient Babylon, in the time of Peter, was no longer in being; and it is true that in comparison with its original splendor, it might be called, even in the first century, a desolated city; yet it was not wholly a heap of ruins, nor destitute of inhabitants. This appears from the account which Strabo, who lived in the time of Tiberius, has given of it. This great geographer compares Babylon to Seleucia, saying, “At present Babylon is not so great as Seleucia,” which was then the capital of the Parthian empire, and, according to Pliny, contained six hundred thousand inhabitants. The acute Michaelis humorously remarks, that “to conclude that Babylon, whence Peter dates his epistle, could not have been the ancient Babylon, because this city was in a state of decay, and thence to argue that Peter used the word mystically, to denote Rome, is about the same as if, on the receipt of a letter dated from Ghent or Antwerp, in which mention was made of a Christian community there, I concluded that because these cities are no longer what they were in the sixteenth century, the writer of the epistle meant a spiritual Ghent or Antwerp, and that the epistle was really written from Amsterdam.” And in the next section he gives a similar illustration of this amusing absurdity, equally apt and happy, drawn in the same manner from modern places about him, (for Goettingen was the residence of the immortal professor.) “The plain language of epistolary writing does not admit of figures of poetry; and though it would be very allowable in a poem, written in honor of Goettingen, to style it another Athens, yet if a professor of this university should, in a letter written from Goettingen, date it Athens, it would be a greater piece of pedantry than any learned man was ever yet guilty of. In like manner, though a figurative use of the word Babylon is not unsuitable to the animated and poetical language of the Apocalypse, yet in a plain and unadorned epistle, Peter would hardly have called the place whence he wrote, by any other appellation than that which literally and properly belonged to it.” (Michaelis, Introduction to the New Testament, Marsh’s translation, chapter xxvii. § 4, 5.)

The most zealous defender of this mere popish notion of a mystical Babylon, is, alas! a Protestant. The best argument ever made out in its defense, is that by Lardner, who in his account of Peter’s epistles, (History of the Apostles and Evangelists, chapter xix. § 3,) does his utmost to maintain the mystical sense, and may be well referred to as giving the best possible defense of this view. But the course of Lardner’s great work having led him, on all occasions, to make the most of the testimonies of the fathers, in connection with the establishment of the credibility of the gospel history, he seems to have been unable to shake off this reverence of every thing which came on authority as old as Augustin; and his critical judgment on the traditionary history of Christianity is therefore worth very little. Any one who wishes to see all his truly elaborate and learned arguments fairly met, may find this done by a mind of far greater originality, critical acuteness and biblical knowledge, (if not equal in acquaintance with the fathers,) and by a far sounder judgment, in Michaelis, as above quoted, who has put an end to all dispute on these points, by his presentation of the truth. So well settled is this ground now, that we find in the theology of Romish writers most satisfactory refutations of an error, so convenient for the support of Romish supremacy. The learned Hug (pronounced very nearly like “Hookh;” U sounded as in bull, and G strongly aspirated) may here be referred to for the latest defense of the common sense view. (Introduction vol. II. § 165.) In answer to the notion of an Egyptian Babylon, he gives us help not to be found in Michaelis, who makes no mention of this view. Lardner also quotes from Strabo what sufficiently shows, that this Babylon was no town of importance, but a mere military station for one of the three Roman legions which guarded Egypt.

The only other place that could in any way be proposed as the Babylon of Peter, is Seleucia on the Tigris; but Michaelis has abundantly shown that though in poetical usage in that age, and in common usage afterwards, this city was called Babylon, yet in Peter’s time, grave prose statements would imply the ancient city and not this. He also quotes a highly illustrative passage from Josephus, in defense of his views; and which is of so much the more importance because Josephus was a historian who lived in the same age with Peter, and the passage itself relates to an event which took place thirty-six years before the Christian era; namely, “the delivery of Hyrcanus, the Jewish high priest, from imprisonment, with permission to reside in Babylon, where there was a considerable number of Jews.” (Josephus, Antiquities, XV. ii. 2.) Josephus adds, that “both the Jews in Babylon and all who dwelt in that country, respected Hyrcanus as high priest and king.” That this was the ancient Babylon and not Seleucia, appears from the fact, that wherever else he mentions the latter city, he calls it Seleucia.

Wetstein’s supposition that Peter meant the province of Babylon, being suggested only by the belief that the ancient Babylon did not then exist, is, of course, rendered entirely unnecessary by the proof of its existence.

Besides the great names mentioned above, as authorities for the view which I have taken, I may refer also to Beza, Lightfoot, Basnage, Beausobre, and even Cave, in spite of his love of Romish fables.

To give a complete account of all the views of the passage referring to Babylon, (1 Peter v. 13,) I should also mention that of Pott, (on the cath. epist.,) mentioned by Hug. This is that by the phrase in the Greek, ἡ εν Βαβυλωνι συνεκλεκτη, is meant “the woman chosen with him in Babylon,” that is, Peter’s wife; as if he wished to say, “my wife, who is in Babylon, salutes you;” and Pott concludes that the apostle himself was somewhere else at the time. For the answer to this notion, I refer the critical to Hug. This same notion had been before advanced by Mill, Wall, and Heumann, and refuted by Lardner. (Supp. xix. 5.)

HIS FIRST EPISTLE.

Inspired by such associations and remembrances, and by the spirit of simple truth and sincerity, Peter wrote his first epistle, which he directed to his Jewish brethren in several sections of Asia Minor, who had probably been brought under his ministry only in Jerusalem, on their visits there in attendance on the great annual feasts, which in all years, as in that of the Pentecost on which the Spirit was outpoured, came up to the Holy city to worship; for there is no proof whatever, that Peter ever visited those countries to which he sent this letter. The character of the evidence offered, has been already mentioned. These believers in Christ had, during their annual visits to Jerusalem for many years, been in the habit of seeing there this venerable apostolic chief, and of hearing from his lips the gospel truth. But the changes of events having made it necessary for him to depart from Jerusalem to the peaceful lands of the east, the annual visitors of the Holy city from the west, no longer enjoyed the presence and the spoken words of this greatest teacher. To console them for this loss, and to supply that spiritual instruction which seemed most needful to them in their immediate circumstances, he now wrote to them this epistle; the main purport of which seems to be, to inspire them with courage and consolation, under some weight of general suffering, then endured by them or impending over them. Indeed, the whole scope of the epistle bears most manifestly on this one particular point,――the preparation of its readers, the Christian communities of Asia Minor, for heavy sufferings. It is not, to be sure, without many moral instructions, valuable in a mere general bearing, but all therein given have a peculiar force in reference to the solemn preparation for the endurance of calamities, soon to fall on them. The earnest exhortations which it contains, urging them to maintain a pure conscience, to refute the calumnies of time by innocence,――to show respect for the magistracy,――to unite in so much the greater love and fidelity,――with many others, are all evidently intended to provide them with the virtues which would sustain them under the fearful doom then threatening them. In the pursuance of the same great design, the apostle calls their attention with peculiar earnestness to the bright example of Jesus Christ, whose behavior in suffering was now held up to them as a model and guide in their afflictions. With this noble pattern in view, the apostle calls on them to go on in their blameless way, in spite of all that affliction might throw in the path of duty.

No proof that he ever visited them.――The learned Hug, truly catholic (but not papistical) in his views of these points, though connected with the Roman church, has honestly taken his stand against the foolish inventions on which so much time has been spent above. He says, “Peter had not seen the Asiatic provinces; they were situated in the circuit of Paul’s department, who had traveled through them, instructed them, and even at a distance, and in prison, did not lose sight of them.” (As witness his epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians, all which are comprehended within the circle to which Peter wrote.) “He was acquainted with their mode of life, foibles, virtues and imperfections; their whole condition, and the manner in which they ought to be treated.” The learned writer, however, does not seem to have fully appreciated Peter’s numerous and continual opportunities for personal communications with these converts at Jerusalem. In the brief allusion made in Acts ii. 9, 10, to the foreign Jews visiting Jerusalem at the pentecost, three of the very countries to which Peter writes, “Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,” are commemorated with other neighboring regions, “Phrygia and Pamphylia.” Hug goes on, however, to trace several striking and interesting coincidences between this epistle and those of Paul to the Ephesians, to the Colossians and to Timothy, all which were directed to this region. (Hug’s introduction to New Testament, volume II. § 160.) He observes that “Peter is so far from denying his acquaintance with the epistles of Paul, that he even in express terms refers his readers to these compositions of his ‘beloved brother,’ (2 Peter iii. 15.) and recommends them to them.” Hug, also, in the succeeding section, (§ 161,) points out some still more remarkable coincidences between this and the epistle of James, which, in several passages, are exactly uniform. As 1 Peter i. 6, 7, and James i. 2:――1 Peter i. 24, and James i. 10:――1 Peter v. 5, 6, and James iv. 6‒10.

Asia.――It must be understood that there are three totally distinct applications of this name; and without a remembrance of the fact, the whole subject will be in an inextricable confusion. In modern geography, as is well known, it is applied to all that part of the eastern continent which is bounded west by Europe and Africa, and south by the Indian ocean. It is also applied sometimes under the limitation of “Minor,” or “Lesser,” to that part of Great Asia, which lies between the Mediterranean and the Black sea. But in this passage it is not used in either of these extended senses. It is confined to that very narrow section of the eastern coast of the Aegean sea, which stretches from the Caicus to the Meander, including but a few miles of territory inland, in which were the seven cities to which John wrote in the Apocalypse. The same tract also bore the name of Maeonia. Asia Minor, in the modern sense of the term, is also frequently alluded to in Acts, but no where else in the New Testament unless we adopt Griesbach’s reading of Romans xvi. 5, (Asia instead of Achaia.)

In the outset of his address, he greets them as “strangers” in all the various lands throughout which they were “scattered,”――bearing every where the stamp of a peculiar people, foreign in manners, principles and in conduct, to the indigenous races of the regions in which they had made their home, yet sharing, at the same time, the sorrows and the glories of the doomed nation from which they drew their origin,――a chosen, an “elect” order of people, prepared in the counsels of God for a high and holy destiny, by the consecrating influence of a spirit of truth. Pointing them to that hope of an unchanging, undefiled, unfading heritage in the heavens, above the temporary sorrows of the earth, he teaches them to find in that, the consolation needful in their various trials. These trials, in various parts of his work, he speaks of as inevitable and dreadful,――yet appointed by the decrees of God himself as a fiery test, beginning its judgments, indeed, in his own household, but ending in a vastly more awful doom on those who had not the support and safety of obedience to his warning word of truth. All these things are said by way of premonition, to put them on their guard against the onset of approaching evil, lest they should think it strange that a dispensation so cruel should visit them; when, in reality, it was an occasion for joy, that they should thus be made, in suffering, partakers of the glory of Christ, won in like manner. He moreover warns them to keep a constant watch over their conduct, to be prudent and careful, because “the accusing prosecutor” was constantly prowling around them, seeking to attack some one of them with his devouring accusations. Him they were to meet, with a solid adherence to the faith, knowing as they did, that the responsibilities of their religious profession were not confined within the narrow circle of their own sectional limits, but were shared with their brethren in the faith throughout almost the whole world.

From all these particulars the conclusion is inevitable, that there was in the condition of the Christians to whom he wrote, a most remarkable crisis just occurring,――one too of no limited or local character; and that throughout Asia Minor and the whole empire, a trying time of universal trouble was immediately beginning with all who owned the faith of Jesus. The widely extended character of the evil, necessarily implies its emanation from the supreme power of the empire, which, bounded by no provincial limits, would sweep through the world in desolating fury on the righteous sufferers; nor is there any event recorded in the history of those ages, which could thus have affected the Christian communities, except the first Christian persecution, in which Nero, with wanton malice, set the example of cruel, unfounded accusation, that soon spread throughout his whole empire, bringing suffering and death to thousands of faithful believers.

Accusing prosecutor.――The view which Hug takes of the scope of the epistle, throws new light on the true meaning of this passage, and abundantly justifies this new translation, though none of the great New Testament lexicographers support it. The primary, simple senses of the words also, help to justify the usage, as well as their similar force in other passages. A reference to any lexicon will show that elsewhere, these words bear a meaning accordant with this version. The first noun never occurs in the New Testament except in a legal sense. The Greek is Ὁ αντιδικος ὑμων διαβολος, (1 Peter v. 8,) in which the last word (diabolos) need not be construed as a substantive expression, but may be made an adjective, belonging to the second word, (antidikos.) The last word, under these circumstances, need not necessarily mean “the devil,” in any sense; but referring directly to the simple sense of its primitive, must be made to mean “calumniating,” “slanderous,” “accusing,”――and in connection with the technical, legal term, αντιδικος, (whose primary, etymological sense is uniformly a legal one, “the plaintiff or prosecutor in a suit at law,”) can mean only “the calumniating (or accusing) prosecutor.” The common writers on the epistle, being utterly ignorant of its general scope, have failed to apprehend the true force of this expression; but the clear, critical judgment of Rosenmueller, (though he also was without the advantage of a knowledge of its history,) led him at once to see the greater justice of the view here given; and he accordingly adopts it, yet not with the definite, technical application of terms justly belonging to the passage. He refers vaguely to others who have taken this view, but does not give names.

The time when this epistle was written is very variously fixed by the different writers to whom I have above referred. Lardner dating it at Rome, concludes that the time was between A. D. 63 and 65, because he thinks that Peter could not have arrived at Rome earlier. This inference depends entirely on what he does not prove,――the assertion that by Babylon, in the date, is meant Rome. The proofs of its being another place, which I have given above, will therefore require that it should have been written before that time, if Peter did then go to Rome. And Michaelis seems to ground upon this notion his belief, that it “was written either not long before, or not long after, the year 60.” But the nobly impartial Hug comes to our aid again, with the sentence, which, though bearing against a fiction most desirable for his church, he unhesitatingly passes on its date. From his admirable detail of the contents and design of the epistle, he makes it evident that it was written (from Babylon) some years after the time when Peter is commonly said to have gone to Rome, never to return. This is the opinion which I have necessarily adopted, after taking his view of the design of the epistle.

Another series of passages in this epistle refers to the remarkable fact, that the Christians were at that time suffering under an accusation that they were “evil-doers,” malefactors, criminals liable to the vengeance of the law; and that this accusation was so general, that the name, Christian, was already a term denoting a criminal directly liable to this legal vengeance. This certainly was a state of things hitherto totally unparalleled in the history of the followers of Christ. In all the accounts previously given of the nature of the attacks made on them by their enemies, it is made to appear that no accusation whatever was sustained or even brought against them, in reference to moral or legal offences; but they were always presented in the light of mere religious dissenters and sectaries. At Corinth, the independent and equitable Gallio dismissed them from the judgment-seat, with the upright decision that they were chargeable with no crime whatever. Felix and Festus, with king Agrippa II., also, alike esteemed the whole procedure against Paul as a mere theological or religious affair, relating to doctrines and not to moral actions. At Ephesus, even one of the high officers of the city did not hesitate to declare, in the face of a mob raging against Paul and his companions, that they were innocent of all crime. And even as late as the seventh year of Nero, the name of Christian had so little of an odious or criminal character, that Agrippa II. did not disdain to declare himself almost persuaded to assume the name and character. And the whole course of their history abundantly shows, that so far from the idea of attacking the Christian brotherhood in a mass, as guilty of legal offenses, and making their very name nearly synonymous with criminal, no trace whatever of such an attack appears, until three years after the last mentioned date, when Nero charged the Christians, as a sect, with his own atrocious crime, the dreadful devastation by fire of his own capital; and on this ground, every where instituted a cruel persecution against them. In connection with this procedure, the Christians are first mentioned in Roman history, as a new and peculiar class of people, called Christiani, from their founder, Christus; and in reference to this matter, abusive charges are brought against them.

Evil doers.――These passages are in ii. 12, iii. 16, iv. 15, where the word in Greek is κακοποιοι, (kakopoioi,) which means a malefactor, as is shown in John xviii. 30, where the whole point of the remark consists in the fact, that the person spoken of was considered an actual violator of known law; so that the word is evidently limited throughout, to those who were criminals in the eye of the law.

The name Christian denoting a criminal.――This is manifest from iv. 16, where they are exhorted to suffer for this alone, and to give no occasion whatever for any other criminal accusation.

BETHLEHEM, AT NIGHT.

A third characteristic of the circumstances of those to whom this epistle is addressed, is, that they were obliged to be constantly on their guard against accusations, which would expose them to capital punishment. They were objects of scorn and obloquy, and were to expect to be dragged to trial as thieves, murderers, and as wretches conspiring secretly against the public peace and safety; and to all this they were liable in their character as Christians. The apostle, therefore, in deep solicitude for the dreadful condition and liabilities of his friends, warns those who, in spite of innocence, are thus made to suffer, to consider all their afflictions as in accordance with the wise will of God, and, in an upright course of conduct, to commit the keeping of their souls to him, as a faithful guardian, who would not allow the permanent injury of the souls which he had created. Now, not even a conjecture can be made, much less, any historical proof be brought, that beyond Palestine any person had ever yet been made to suffer death on the score of religion, or of any stigma attaching to that sect, before the time when Nero involved them in the cruel charge just mentioned. The date of the first instances of such persecutions was the eleventh year of the reign of Nero, under the consulships of Caius Lecanius Bassus, and Marcus Licinius Crassus, according to the Roman annals. The commencement of the burning of Rome, which was the occasion of this first attack on the Christians, was in the last part of the month of July; but the persecution did not begin immediately. After various contrivances to avert the indignation of the people from their imperial destroyer, the Christians were seized as a proper expiatory sacrifice, the choice being favored by the general dislike with which they were regarded. This attack being deferred for some time after the burning, could not have occurred till late in that year. The epistle cannot have been written before its occurrence, nor indeed until some time afterwards; because a few months must be allowed for the account of it to spread to the provinces of Asia, and it must have been still later when the news of the difficulty could reach the apostle, so as to enable him to appreciate the danger of those Christians who were under the dominion of the Romans. It is evident, then, that the epistle was not written in the same year in which the burning occurred; but in the subsequent one, the twelfth of Nero’s reign, and the sixty-fifth of the Christian era. By that time the condition and prospects of the Christians throughout the empire were such as to excite the deepest solicitude in the great apostle, who, though himself residing in the great Parthian empire, removed from all danger of injury from the Roman emperor, was by no means disposed to forget the high claims the sufferers had on him for counsel and consolation. This dreadful event was the most important which had ever yet befallen the Christians, and there would certainly be just occasion for surprise, if it had called forth no consolatory testimony from the founders of the faith, and if no trace of it could be found in the apostolic records.

Committing the keeping of their souls to God.――This view of the design of the epistle gives new force to this passage, (iv. 19.)

First mentioned in Roman history.――This is by Tacitus, (Annals xv. 44,) who thus speaks of them:――“Nero condendae urbis novae et cognomento suo appellandae gloriam quaerere, et sic jussum incendium credebatur. Ergo abolendo rumori subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis poenis affecit, quos per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat,” &c.――“It was believed that Nero, desirous of building the city anew, and of calling it by his surname, had thus caused its burning. To get rid of this general impression, therefore, he brought under this accusation, and visited with the most exquisite punishments, a set of persons, hateful for their crimes, commonly called Christians. The name was derived from Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was seized and punished by Pontius Pilate, the procurator. The ruinous superstition, though checked for a while, broke out again, not only in Judea, the source of the evil, but also in the city, (Rome.) Therefore those who professed it were first seized, and then, on their confession, a great number of others were convicted, not so much on the charge of the arson, as on account of the universal hatred which existed against them. And their deaths were made amusing exhibitions, as, being covered with the skins of wild beasts, they were torn to pieces by dogs, or were nailed to crosses, or, being daubed with combustible stuff, were burned by way of light, in the darkness, after the close of day. Nero opened his own gardens for the show, and mingled with the lowest part of the throng, on the occasion.” (The description of the cruel manner in which they were burned, may serve as a forcible illustration of the meaning of “the fiery trial,” to which Peter alludes, iv. 12.) By Suetonius, also, they are briefly mentioned. (Nero, chapter 15.) “Afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae.”――“The Christians, a sort of men of a new and pernicious (evil doing) superstition, were visited with punishments.”

That this Neronian persecution was as extensive as is here made to appear, is proved by Lardner and Hug. The former in particular, gives several very interesting evidences, in his “Heathen testimonies,” especially the remarkable inscription referring to this persecution, found in Portugal. (Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, chapter iii.)

From the uniform tone in which the apostle alludes to the danger as threatening only his readers, without the slightest allusion to the circumstance of his being involved in the difficulty, is drawn another important confirmation of the locality of the epistle. He uniformly uses the second person when referring to trials, but if he himself had then been so situated as to share in the calamity for which he strove to prepare them, he would have been very apt to have expressed his own feelings in view of the common evil. Paul, in those epistles which were written under circumstances of personal distress, is very full of warm expressions of the state of mind in which he met his trials; nor was there in Peter any lack of the fervid energy that would burst forth in similarly eloquent sympathy, on the like occasions. But from Babylon, beyond the bounds of Roman sway, he looked on their sufferings only with that pure sympathy which his regard for his brethren would excite; and it is not to be wondered, then, that he uses the second person merely, in speaking of their distresses. The bearer of this epistle to the distressed Christians of Asia Minor, is named Silvanus, generally supposed to be the same with Silvanus or Silas, mentioned in Paul’s epistles, and in the Acts, as the companion of Paul in his journeys through some of those provinces to which Peter now wrote. There is great probability in this conjecture, nor is there anything that contradicts it in the slightest degree; and it may therefore be considered as true. Some other great object may at this time have required his presence among them, or he may have been then passing on his journey to rejoin Paul, thus executing this commission incidentally.

This view of the scope and contents of this epistle is taken from Hug, who seems to have originated it. At least I can find nothing of it in any other author whom I have consulted. Michaelis, for instance, though evidently apprehending the general tendency of the epistle, and its design to prepare its readers for the coming of some dreadful calamity, was not led thereby to the just apprehension of the historical circumstances therewith connected. (Hug, II. §§ 162‒165.――Michaelis Vol. IV. chapter xxvii. §§ 1‒7.)

THE SECOND EPISTLE.

After writing the former epistle to the Christians of Asia Minor, Peter probably continued to reside in Babylon, since no occurrence is mentioned which could draw him away, in his old age, from the retired but important field of labor to which he had previously confined himself. Still exercising a paternal watchfulness, however, over his distant disciples, his solicitude before long again excited him to address them in reference to their spiritual difficulties and necessities. The apprehensions expressed in the former epistle, respecting their maintenance of a pure faith in their complicated trials, had in the mean time proved well-grounded. During the distracting calamities of Nero’s persecution, false teachers had arisen, who had, by degrees, brought in pernicious heresies among them, affecting the very foundations of the faith, and ending in the most ruinous consequences to the belief and practice of some. This second epistle he wrote, therefore, to stir up those who were still pure in heart, to the remembrance of the true doctrines of Christianity, as taught by the apostles; and to warn them against the heretical notions that had so fatally spread among them. Of the errors complained of, the most important seems to have been the denial of the judgment, which had been prophesied so long. Solemnly re-assuring them of the certainty of that awful series of events, he exhorted them to the steady maintenance of such a holy conduct and godly life, as would fit them to meet the great change which he so sublimely pictured, whenever and however it should occur; and closed with a most solemn charge to beware lest they also should be led away by the error of the wicked, so as to fall from their former steadfast adherence to the truth. In the former part of the epistle he alluded affectingly to the nearness of his own end, as an especial reason for his urgency with those from whom he was so soon to be parted. “I think it meet as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up to the remembrance of these things, knowing as I do that the putting off of my tabernacle is very near, according to what our Lord Jesus Christ made known to me.” This is an allusion to the prophecy of his Master at the meeting on the lake, after the resurrection, described in the last chapter of John’s gospel. “Therefore,” writes the aged apostle, “I will be urgent that you, after my departure, may always hold these things in your memory.” All which seems to imply an anticipated death, of which he was reminded by the course of natural decay, and by the remembrance of the parting prophecy of his Master, and not by anything very imminently dangerous or threatening in his external circumstances, at the time of writing. This was the last important work of his adventurous and devoted life; and his allusions to the solemn scenes of future judgment were therefore most solemnly appropriate. Those to whom he wrote could expect to see his face no more, and his whole epistle is in a strain accordant with these circumstances, dwelling particularly on the awful realities of a coming day of doom.

The first epistle of Peter has always been received as authentic, ever since the apostolic writings were first collected, nor has there ever been a single doubt expressed by any theologian, that it was what it pretended to be; but in regard to the epistle just mentioned as his second, and now commonly so received, there has been as much earnest discussion as concerning any other book in the sacred canon, excepting, perhaps, the epistle to the Hebrews and John’s Revelation. The weight of historical testimony is certainly rather against its authenticity, since all the early Fathers who explicitly mention it, speak of it as a work of very doubtful character. In the first list of the sacred writings that is recorded, this is not put among those generally acknowledged as of divine authority, but among those whose truth was disputed. Still, quotations from it are found in the writings of the Fathers, in the first, second and third centuries, by whom it is mentioned approvingly, although not specified as inspired or of divine authority. But even as late as the end of the fourth century there were still many who denied it to be Peter’s, on account of supposed differences of style observable between this and the former epistle, which was acknowledged to be his. The Syrian Christians continued to reject it from their canon for some time after; for in the old Syriac version, executed before A. D. 100, this alone, of all books supposed to have been written before that translation that are now considered a part of the New Testament, is not contained, though it was regarded by many among them as a good book, and is quoted in the writings of one of the Syrian Fathers, with respect. After this period, however, these objections were soon forgotten, and from the fifth century downwards, it has been universally adopted into the authentic canon, and regarded with that reverence which its internal evidences of truth and genuineness so amply justify. Indeed, it is on its internal evidence, almost entirely, that its great defense must be founded,――since the historical testimonies, (by common confession of theologians,) will not afford that satisfaction to the investigator, which is desirable on subjects of this nature; and though ancient usage and its long-established possession of a place in the inspired code may be called up in its support, still there will be occasion for the aid of internal reasons, to maintain a positive decision as to its authenticity. And this sort of evidence, an examination by the rigid standards of modern critical theology proves abundantly sufficient for the effort to which it is summoned; for though it has been said, that since the ancients themselves were in doubt, the moderns cannot expect to arrive at certainty, because it is impossible to get more historical information on the subject, in the nineteenth century, than ecclesiastical writers had within reach in the third and fourth centuries; still, when the question of the authenticity of the work is to be decided by an examination of its contents, the means of ascertaining the truth are by no means proportioned to the antiquity of the criticism. In the early ages of Christianity, the science of faithfully investigating truth hardly had an existence; and such has been the progress of improvement in this department of knowledge, under the labors of modern theologians, that the writers of the nineteenth century may justly be considered as possessed of far more extensive and certain means of settling the character of this epistle by internal evidence, than were within the knowledge of those Christian fathers who lived fourteen hundred years ago. The great objection against the epistle in the fourth century, was an alleged dissimilarity of style between this and the former epistle. Now, there can be no doubt whatever that modern Biblical scholars have vastly greater means for judging of a rhetorical question of this kind, than the Christian fathers of the fourth century, of whom those who were Grecians were really less scientifically acquainted with their own language, and no more qualified for a comparison of this kind, than those who live in an age when the principles of criticism are so much better understood. With all these superior lights, the results of the most accurate modern investigations have been decidedly favorable to the authenticity of the second epistle ascribed to Peter, and the most rigid comparisons of its style with that of the former, have brought out proofs triumphantly satisfactory of its identity of origin with that,――proofs so much the more unquestionable, as they are borrowed from coincidences which must have been entirely natural and incidental, and not the result of any deliberate collusion.

This account of the second epistle is also taken from Hug and Michaelis, to whom, with Lardner, reference may be made for the details of all the arguments for and against its authenticity.

As to the place and time of writing this epistle, it seems quite probable that it was written where the former one was, since there is no account or hint whatever of any change in Peter’s external circumstances; and that it was written some months after it, is unquestionable, since its whole tenor requires such a period to have intervened, as would allow the first to reach them and be read by them, and also for the apostle to learn in the course of time the effects ultimately produced by it, and to hear of the rise of new difficulties, requiring new apostolical interference and counsel. The first seems to have been directed mainly to those who were complete Jews, by birth or by proselytism, as appears from the terms in which he repeatedly addresses them in it; but the sort of errors complained of in this epistle seem to have been so exclusively characteristic of Gentile converts, that it must have been written more particularly with reference to difficulties in that part of the religious communities of those regions. He condemns and refutes certain heretics who rejected some of the fundamental truths of the Mosaic law,――errors which no well-trained Jew could ever be supposed to make, but which in motley assemblages of different races, like the Christian churches, might naturally enough arise among those Gentiles, who felt impatient at the inferiority in which they seemed implicated by their ignorance of the doctrines of the Jewish theology, in which their circumcised brethren were so fully versed. It seems to have been more especially aimed at the rising sect of the Gnostics, who are known to have been heretical on some of the very points here alluded to. Its great similarity, in some passages, to the epistle of Jude, will make it the subject of allusion again in the life of that apostle.

HIS DEATH.

Henceforth the writings of the New Testament are entirely silent as to the chief apostle. Not a hint is given of the few remaining actions of his life, nor of the mode, place, or time of his death; and all these concluding points have been left to be settled by conjecture, or by tradition as baseless. The only passage which has been supposed to give any hint of the manner of his death, is that in the last chapter of John’s gospel. “Jesus says to him――‘I most solemnly tell thee, when thou wast young, thou didst gird thyself and walk whither thou wouldst; but when thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldst not.’ This he said, to make known by what sort of death he should glorify God.” It has been commonly said that this is a distinct and unquestionable prophecy that he should in his old age be crucified,――the expression, “another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldst not,” referring to his being bound to the cross and borne away to execution, since this was the only sort of death by which an apostle could be said, with much propriety or force, to glorify God. And the long-established authority of tradition coinciding with this view, or rather, suggesting it, no very minute examination into the sense of the passage has ever been made. But the words themselves are by no means decisive. Take a common reader, who has never heard that Peter was crucified, and it would be hard for him to make out such a circumstance from the bare prophecy as given by John. Indeed, such unbiased impressions of the sense of the passage will go far to justify the conclusion that the words imply nothing but that Peter was destined to pass a long life in the service of his Master,――that he should after having worn out his bodily and mental energies in his devoted exertions, attain such an extreme decrepid old age as to lose the power of voluntary motion, and die thus,――at least without necessarily implying any bloody martyrdom. Will it be said that by such a quiet death he could not be considered as glorifying God? The objection surely is founded in a misapprehension of the nature of those demonstrations of devotion, by which the glory of God is most effectually secured. There are other modes of martyrdom than the dungeon, the sword, the axe, the flame, and the stone; and in all ages since Peter, there have been thousands of martyrs who have, by lives steadily and quietly devoted to the cause of truth, no less glorified God, than those who were rapt to heaven in flame, in blood, and in tortures inflicted by a malignant persecution. Was not God truly glorified in the deaths of the aged Xavier, and Eliot, and Swartz, or the bright, early exits of Brainerd, Mills, Martyn, Parsons, Fisk, and hundreds whom the apostolic spirit of modern missions has sent forth to labors as devoted, and to deaths as glorious to God, as those of any who swell the deified lists of the ancient martyrologies? The whole notion of a bloody martyrdom as an essential termination to the life of a saint, grew out of a papistical superstition; nor need the enlightened minds of those who can better appreciate the manner in which God’s highest glory is secured by the lives and deaths of his servants, seek any such superfluous aids to crown the mighty course of the great apostolic chief, whose solid claims to the name and honors of Martyr rest on higher grounds than so insignificant an accident as the manner of his death. All those writers who pretend to particularize the mode of his departure, connect it also with the utterly impossible fiction of his residence at Rome, on which enough has been already said. Who will undertake to say, out of such a mass of matters, what is truth and what is falsehood? And if the views above given, on the high authority of the latest writers of even the Romish church, are of any value for any purpose whatever, they are perfectly decisive against the notion of Peter’s martyrdom at Rome, in the persecution under Nero, since Peter was then in Babylon, far beyond the vengeance of the Caesar; nor was he so foolish as ever after to have trusted himself in the reach of a perfectly unnecessary danger. The command of Christ was, “When you are persecuted in one city, flee into another,”――the necessary and unquestionable inference from which, was, that when out of the reach of persecution they should not wilfully go into it. This is a simple principle of Christian action, with which papist fable-mongers were totally unacquainted, and they thereby afford the most satisfactory proof of the utter falsity of the actions and motives which they ascribe to the apostles. One of these stories thus disproved is connected with another adventure with that useful character, Simon Magus, who, as the tale runs, after being first vanquished so thoroughly by Peter in the reign of Claudius, returned to Rome, in the reign of Nero, and made such progress again in his magical tricks, as to rise into the highest favor with this emperor, as he had with the former. This of course required a new effort from Peter, which ended in the disgrace and death of the magician, who, attempting to fly through the air in the presence of the emperor and people in the theater, was by the prayer of Peter caused to fall from his aspiring course, to the ground, by which he was so much injured as to die soon after. The emperor being provoked at the loss of his favorite, turned all his wrath against the apostle who had been directly instrumental in his ruin, and imprisoned him with the design of executing him as soon as might be convenient. While in these circumstances, or as others say, before he was imprisoned, he was earnestly exhorted by the disciples in Rome, to make his escape. He accordingly, though very desirous of being killed, (a most abominably irreligious wish, by the way,) began to move off, one dark night; but had hardly got beyond the walls of the city,――indeed he was just passing out of the gate-way,――when, whom should he meet but Jesus Christ himself, coming towards Rome. Peter asked, with some reasonable surprise, “Lord! where are you going?” Christ answered, “I am coming to Rome, to be crucified again.” Peter at once took this as a hint that he ought to have stayed, and that Christ meant to be crucified again in the crucifixion of his apostle. He accordingly turned right about, and went back into the city, where, having given to the wondering brethren an account of the reasons of his return, he was immediately seized, and was crucified, to the glory of God. Now it is a sufficient answer to this or any similar fable, to judge the blasphemous inventor out of his own mouth, and out of the instructions given by Christ himself to his servants, for their conduct, in all cases where they were threatened with persecution, as above quoted.

Referring to his being bound to the cross.――Tertullian seems to have first suggested this rather whimsical interpretation:――“Tunc Petrus ab altero cingitur, quum cruci adstringitur.” (Tertullian, Scorpiace, 15.) There seems to be more rhyme than reason in the sentence, however.

The rejection of this forced interpretation is by no means a new notion. The critical Tremellius long ago maintained that the verse had no reference whatever to a prophecy of Peter’s crucifixion, though he probably had no idea of denying that Peter did actually die by crucifixion. Among more modern commentators too, the prince of critics, Kuinoel, with whom are quoted Semler, Gurlitt and Schott, utterly deny that a fair construction of the original will allow any prophetical idea to be based on it. The critical testimony of these great commentators on the true and just force of the words, is of the very highest value; because all received the tale of Peter’s crucifixion as true, having never examined the authority of the tradition, and not one of them pretended to deny that he really was crucified. But in spite of this pre-conceived erroneous historical notion, their nice sense of what was grammatically and critically just, would not allow them to pervert the passage to the support of this long-established view; and they therefore pronounce it as merely expressive of the helplessness and imbecility of extreme old age, with which they make every word coincide. But Bloomfield, entirely carried away with the tide of antique authorities, is “surprised that so many recent commentators should deny that crucifixion is here alluded to, though they acknowledge that Peter suffered crucifixion.” Now this last circumstance might well occasion surprise, as it certainly did in me, when I found what mighty names had so disinterestedly supported the interpretation which I had with fear and trembling adopted, in obedience to my own long-established, unaided convictions; but my surprise was of a decidedly agreeable sort.

The inventors of fables go on to give us the minute particulars of Peter’s death, and especially note the circumstance that he was crucified with his head downwards and his feet uppermost, he himself having desired that it might be done in that manner, because he thought himself unworthy to be crucified as his Master was. This was a mode sometimes adopted by the Romans, as an additional pain and ignominy. But Peter must have been singularly accommodating to his persecutors, to have suggested this improvement upon his tortures to his malignant murderers; and must have manifested a spirit more accordant with that of a savage defying his enemies to increase his agonies, than with that of the mild, submissive Jesus. And such has been the evident absurdity of the story, that many of the most ardent receivers of fables have rejected this circumstance as improbable, more especially as it is not found among the earliest stories of his crucifixion, but evidently seems to have been appended among later improvements.

PETER’S MARTYRDOM.

The only authority which can be esteemed worthy of consideration on this point, is that of Clemens Romanus, who, in the latter part of the first century, (about the year 70, or as others say, 96,) in his epistle to the Corinthians, uses these words respecting Peter:――“Peter, on account of unrighteous hatred, underwent not one, or two, but many labors, and having thus borne his testimony, departed to the place of glory, which was his due,”――(ὁυτως μαρτυρησας επορευθη εις τον οφειλομενον τοπον δοξης.) Now it is by no means certain that the prominent word (marturesas) necessarily means “bearing testimony by death,” or martyrdom in the modern sense. The primary sense of this verb is merely “to witness,” in which simple meaning alone, it is used in the New Testament; nor can any passage in the sacred writings be shown, in which this verb means “to bear witness to any cause, by death.” This was a technical sense, (if I may so name it,) which the word at last acquired among the Fathers, when they were speaking of those who bore witness to the truth of the gospel of Christ by their blood; and it was a meaning which at last nearly excluded all the true original senses of the verb, limiting it mainly to the notion of a death by persecution for the sake of Christ. Thence our English words, martyr and martyrdom. But that Clement by this use of the word, in this connection, meant to convey the idea of Peter’s having been killed for the sake of Christ, is an opinion utterly incapable of proof, and moreover rendered improbable by the words joined to it in the passage. The sentence is, “Peter underwent many labors, and having thus borne witness” to the gospel truth, “went to the place of glory which he deserved.” Now the adverb “thus,” (ὁυτως,) seems to me most distinctly to show what was the nature of this testimony, and the manner also in which he bore it. It points out more plainly than any other words could, the fact that his testimony to the truth of the gospel was borne in the zealous labors of a devoted life, and not by the agonies of a bloody death. There is not in the whole context, nor in all the writings of Clement, any hint whatever that Peter was killed for the sake of the gospel; and we are therefore required by every sound rule of interpretation, to stick to the primary sense of the verb, in this passage. Lardner most decidedly mis-translates it in the text of his work, so that any common reader would be grossly deceived as to the expression in the original of Clement,――“Peter underwent many labors, till at last being martyred, he went,” &c. The Greek word, ὁυτως, (houtos,) means always, “in this manner,” “thus,” “so,” and is not a mere expletive, like the English phrase, “and so,” which is a mere form of transition from one part of the narrative to the other.

In the similar passage of Clemens which refers to Paul, there is something in the connection which may seem to favor the conclusion that he understood Paul to have been put to death by the Roman officers. His words are,――“and after having borne his testimony before governors, he was thus sent out of the world,” &c. Here the word “thus,” coming after the participle, may perhaps be considered, in view also of its other connections, as implying his removal from the world by a violent death, in consequence of the testimony borne by him before the governors. This however, will bear some dispute, and will have a fuller discussion elsewhere.

But in respect to the passage which refers to Peter, the burden of proof may fairly be said to lie on those who maintain the old opinion. Here the word is shown to have, in the New Testament, no such application to death as it has since acquired; and the question is whether Clemens Romanus, a man himself of the apostolic age, who lived and perhaps wrote, before the canon was completed, had already learned to give a new meaning to a verb, before so simple and unlimited in its applications. No person can pretend to trace this meaning to within a century of the Clementine age, nor does Suicer refer to any one who knew of such use before Clement of Alexandria (See his Thesaurus; Μαρτυρ.) Clement himself uses it in the same epistle (§ xvii.) in its unquestionable primary sense, speaking of Abraham as having received an honorable testimony,――(εμαρτυρηθη;) for who will say that Abraham was martyred, in the modern sense? The fact too that Clement nowhere else gives the least glimmer of a hint that Peter died any where but in his bed, fixes the position here taken, beyond all possibility of attack, except by its being shown that he uses this verb somewhere else, with the sense of death unquestionably attached to it.

There is no other early writer who can be said to speak of the manner of Peter’s death, before Dionysius of Corinth, who says that “Peter and Paul having taught in Italy together, bore their testimony” (by death, if you please,) “about the same time.” An argument might here also be sustained on the word εμαρτυρησαν, (emarturesan,) but the evidence of Dionysius, mixed as it is with a demonstrated fable, is not worth a verbal criticism. The same may be said of Tertullian and the rest of the later Fathers, as given in the note on pages 228‒233.

An examination of the word Μαρτυρ, in Suicer’s Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus, will show the critical, that even in later times, this word did not necessarily imply “one who bore his testimony to the truth at the sacrifice of life.” Even Chrysostom, in whose time the peculiar limitation of the term might be supposed to be very well established, uses the word in such applications as to show that its original force was not wholly lost. By Athanasius too, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego are styled martyrs. Gregory Nazianzen also speaks of “living martyrs.” (ζωντες μαρτυρες.) Theophylact calls the apostle John a martyr, though he declares him to have passed through the hands of his persecutors unhurt, and to have died by the course of nature. Clemens Alexandrinus has similar uses of the term; and the Apostolical Constitutions, of doubtful date, but much later than the first century, also give it in such applications. Suicer distinctly specifies several classes of persons, not martyrs in the modern sense, to whom the Greek word is nevertheless applied in the writings of even the later Fathers; as “those who testified the truth of the gospel of Christ, at the peril of life merely, without the loss of it,”――“those who obeyed the requirements of the gospel, by restraining passion,” &c. In some of these instances however, it is palpable that the application of the word to such persons is secondary, and made in rather a poetical way, with a reference to the more common meaning of loss of life for the sake of Christ, since there is always implied a testimony at the risk or loss of something; still the power of these instances to render doubtful the meaning of the term, is unquestionable. (See Suicer’s Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus, Μαρτυρ, III. 2, 5, 6.)

Perhaps it is hardly worth while to dismiss these fables altogether, without first alluding to the rather ancient one, first given by Clemens Alexandrinus. (Stromata, 7. p. 736.) and copied verbatim by Eusebius, (Church History, III. 30.) Both the reverend Fathers however, introduce the story as a tradition, a mere on dit, prefacing it with the expressive phrase, “They say,” &c. (Φασι.) “The blessed Peter seeing his wife led to death, was pleased with the honor of her being thus called by God to return home, and thus addressed her in words of exhortation and consolation, calling her by name,――‘O woman! remember the Lord.’” The story comes up from the hands of tradition rather too late however, to be entitled to any credit whatever, being recorded by Clemens Alexandrinus, full 200 years after Christ. It was probably invented in the times when it was thought worth while to cherish the spirit of voluntary martyrdom, among even the female sex; for which purpose instances were sought out or invented respecting those of the apostolic days. That Peter had a wife is perfectly true; and it is also probable that she accompanied him about on his travels, as would appear from a passage in Paul’s writings; (1 Corinthians ix. 5;) but beyond this, nothing is known of her life or death. Similar fables might be endlessly multiplied from papistical sources; more especially from the Clementine novels, and the apostolical romances of Abdias Babylonius; but the object of the present work is true history, and it would require a whole volume like this to give all the details of Christian mythology.

In justification of the certainty with which sentence is pronounced against the whole story of Peter’s ever having gone to Rome, it is only necessary to refer to the decisive argument on pages 228‒233, in which the whole array of ancient evidence on the point, is given by Dr. Murdock. If the support of great names is needed, those of Scaliger, Salmasius, Spanheim, and Bower, all mighty minds in criticism, are enough to justify the boldness of the opinion, that Peter never went west of the Hellespont, and probably never embarked on the Mediterranean. In conclusion of the whole refutation of this long-established error, the matter cannot be more fairly presented, than in the words with which the critical and learned Bower opens his Lives of the Popes:

“To avoid being imposed upon, we ought to treat tradition as we do a notorious and known liar, to whom we give no credit unless what he says is confirmed to us by some person of undoubted veracity. If it is affirmed by him alone, we can at most but suspend our belief, not rejecting it as false, because a liar may sometimes speak truth; but we cannot, upon his bare authority, admit it as true. Now that St. Peter was at Rome, that he was bishop of Rome, we are told by tradition alone, which, at the same time tells us of so many strange circumstances attending his coming to that metropolis, his staying in it, his withdrawing from it, &c., that in the opinion of every unprejudiced man, the whole must savor strongly of romance. Thus we are told that St. Peter went to Rome chiefly to oppose Simon, the celebrated magician; that at their first interview, at which Nero himself was present, he flew up into the air, in the sight of the emperor and the whole city; but that the devil, who had thus raised him, struck with dread and terror at the name of Jesus, whom the apostle invoked, let him fall to the ground, by which fall he broke his legs. Should you question the truth of this tradition at Rome, they would show you the prints of St. Peter’s knees in the stone, on which he kneeled on this occasion, and another stone still dyed with the blood of the magician. (This account seems to have been borrowed from Suetonius, who speaks of a person that, in the public sports, undertook to fly, in the presence of the emperor Nero; but on his first attempt, fell to the ground; by which fall his blood sprung out with such violence that it reached the emperor’s canopy.)

“The Romans, as we are told, highly incensed against him for thus maiming and bringing to disgrace one to whom they paid divine honors, vowed his destruction; whereupon the apostle thought it advisable to retire for a while from the city, and had already reached the gate, when to his great surprise, he met our Savior coming in, as he went out, who, upon St. Peter’s asking him where he was going, returned this answer: ‘I am going to Rome, to be crucified anew;’ which, as St. Peter understood it, was upbraiding him with his flight; whereupon he turned back, and was soon after seized by the provoked Romans, and, by an order from the emperor, crucified.”

Nor do the fables about Peter, by the inveterate papists, cease with his death. In regard to the place of his tomb, a new story was needed, and it is accordingly given with the usual particularity. It is said that he was buried at Rome in the Vatican plain, in the district beyond the Tiber, in which he was said to have first preached among the Jews, and where stood the great circus of Nero, in which the apostle is said to have been crucified. Over this bloody spot, a church was afterwards raised, by Constantine the Great, who chose for its site part of the ground that had been occupied by the circus, and the spaces where the temples of Mars and Apollo had stood. The church, though of no great architectural beauty, was a building of great magnitude, being three hundred feet long, and more than one hundred and fifty feet wide. This building stood nearly twelve hundred years, when becoming ruinous in spite of all repairs, it was removed to give place to the present cathedral church of St. Peter, now the most immense and magnificent building in the world,――not too much praised in the graphic verse in which the pilgrim-poet sets it beyond all comparison with the greatest piles of ancient or modern art:

“But lo! the dome! the vast and wondrous dome,

To which Diana’s marvel was a cell;――

Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb.――

I have beheld the Ephesians’ miracle,

Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell

The hyena and the jackall in their shade.

I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swell

Their glittering mass in the sun, and have surveyed

Its sanctuary, while the usurping Moslem prayed.

“But thou, of temples old, or altars new,

Standest alone, with nothing like to thee.

Worthiest of God, the holy and the true!

Since Zion’s desolation, when that He

Forsook his former city, what could be

Of earthly structures in his honor piled,

Of a sublimer aspect?”――

Within the most holy place of this vast sanctuary,――beneath the very center of that wonderful dome, which rises in such unequaled vastness above it, redounding far more to the glory of the man who reared it, than of the God whose altar it covers,――in the vaulted crypt which lies below the pavement, is a shrine, before which a hundred lamps are constantly burning, and over which the prayers of thousands are daily rising. This is called the tomb of the saint to whom the whole pile is dedicated, and from whom the great high priest of that temple draws his claim to the keys of the kingdom of heaven, with the power to bind and loose, and the assurance of heaven’s sanction on his decrees. But what a contrast is all this “pride, pomp and circumstance,” to the bare purity of the faith and character of the simple man whose life and conduct are recorded on these pages! If any thing whatever may be drawn as a well-authorized conclusion from the details that have been given of his actions and motives, it is that Simon Peter was a “plain, blunt” man, laboring devotedly for the object to which he had been called by Jesus, and with no other view whatever, than the advancement of the kingdom of his Master,――the inculcation of a pure spiritual faith, which should seek no support, nor the slightest aid, from the circumstances which charm the eye and ear, and win the soul through the mere delight impressed upon the senses, as the idolatrous priests who now claim his name and ashes, maintain their dominion in the hearts of millions of worse than pagan worshipers. His whole life and labors were pointed at the very extirpation of forms and ceremonies,――the erection of a pure, rational, spiritual dominion in the hearts of mankind, so that the blessings of a glorious faith, which for two thousand years before had been confined to the limits of a ceremonial system, might now, disenthralled from all the bonds of sense, and exalted above the details of tedious forms, of natural distinctions, and of antique rituals,――spread over a field as wide as humanity. For this he lived and toiled, and in the clear hope of a triumphant fulfilment of that plan, he died. And if, from his forgotten, unknown grave, among the ashes of the Chaldean Babylon, and from the holy rest which is for the blessed, the now glorified apostle could be called to the renewal of breathing, earthly life, and see the results of his energetic, simple-minded devotion,――what wonder, what joy, what grief, what glory, what shame, would not the revelation of these mighty changes move within him! The simple, pure gospel which he had preached in humble, faithful obedience to the divine command, without a thought of glory or reward, now exalted in the idolatrous reverence of hundreds of millions,――but where appreciated in its simplicity and truth? The cross on which his Master was doomed to ignominy, now exalted as the sign of salvation, and the seal of God’s love to the world!――(a spectacle as strange to a Roman or Jewish eye, as to a modern would be the gallows, similarly consecrated,) but who burning with that devotion which led him of old to bear that shameful burden? His own humble name raised to a place above the brightest of Roman, of Grecian, of Hebrew, or Chaldean story! but made, alas! the supporter of a tyranny over souls, far more grinding and remorseless than any which he labored to overthrow. The fabled spot of his grave, housed in a temple to which the noblest shrine of ancient heathenism “was but a cell!” but in which are celebrated, under the sanction of his sainted name, the rites of an idolatry, than which that of Rome, or Greece, or Egypt would seem more spiritual,――and of tedious, unmeaning ceremonies, compared with which the whole formalities of the Levitical ritual might be pronounced simple and practical!

These would be the first sights that would meet the eye of the disentombed apostle, if he should rise over the spot which claims the honors of his martyr-tomb, and the consecration of his commission. How mournfully would he turn from all the mighty honors of that idolatrous worship,――from the deified glories of that sublimest of shrines that ever rose over the earth! How earnestly would he long for the high temple of one humble, pure heart, that knew and felt the simplicity of the truth as it was in Jesus! How joyfully would he hail the manifestations of that active evangelizing spirit that consecrated and fitted him for his great missionary enterprise! His amazed and grieved soul would doubtless here and there feel its new view rewarded, in the sight of much that was accordant with the holy feeling that inspired the apostolic band. All over Christendom, might he find scattered the occasional lights of a purer devotion, and on many lands he would see the truth pouring, in something of the clear splendor for which he hoped and labored. But of the countless souls that owned Jesus as Lord and Savior, millions on millions,――and vast numbers too, even in the lands of a reformed faith,――would be found still clinging to the vain support of forms, and names, and observances,――and but a few, a precious few, who had learned what that means――“I will have mercy and not sacrifice”――works and not words,――deeds and not creeds,――high, simple, active, energetic, enterprising devotion, and not cloistered reverence,――chanceled worship,――or soul-wearying rituals. Would not the apostle, sickened with the revelations of such a resurrection, and more appalled than delighted, call on the power that brought him up from the peaceful rest of the blessed, to give him again the calm repose of those who die in the Lord, rather than the idolatrous honors of such an apotheosis, or the strange sight of the results of such an evangelization?――“Let me enter again the gates of Hades, but not the portals of these temples of superstition. Let me lie down with the souls of the humble, but not in the shrine of this heathenish pile. Leave me once more to rest from my labors, with my works still following; and call me not from this repose till the labors I left on earth unachieved, have been better done. We did not follow these cunningly-devised fables, when we made known to men the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the simple eye-witness story of his majesty. We had a surer word of prophecy; and well would it have been, if these had turned their wandering eyes to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, and kept that steady beacon in view, through the stormy gloom of ages, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in their hearts. These are not the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, for which we looked, according to God’s promise. Those must the faithful still look for, believing that Jehovah, with whom a thousand years are as one day, is not slack concerning his promise, but desires all to come to repentance, and will come himself at last in the achievment of our labors. Then call me.”

What a life was this! Its early recorded events found him a poor fisherman, in a rude, despised province, toiling day by day in a low, laborious business,――living with hardly a hope above the beasts that perish. By the side of that lake, one morning, walked a stranger, who, with mild words but wondrous deeds, called the poor fisherman to leave all, and follow him. Won by the commanding promise of the call, he obeyed, and followed that new Master, with high hopes of earthly glory for a while, which at last were darkened and crushed in the gradual developments of a far deeper plan than his rude mind could at first have appreciated. But still he followed him, through toils and sorrows, through revelations and trials, at last to the sight of his bloody cross; and followed him, still unchanged in heart, basely and almost hopelessly wicked. The fairest trial of his virtue proved him after all, lazy, bloody-minded, but cowardly,――lying, and utterly faithless in the promise of new life from the grave. But a change came over him. He, so lately a cowardly disowner of his Master’s name, now, with a courageous martyr-spirit dared the wrath of the awful magnates of his nation, in attesting his faith in Christ. Once a fierce, brawling, ear-cutting Galilean,――henceforth he lived an unresisting subject of abuse, stripes, bonds, imprisonment and threatened death. When was there ever such a triumph of grace in the heart of man? The conversion of Paul himself could not be compared with it, as a moral miracle. The apostle of Tarsus was a refined, well-educated man, brought up in the great college of the Jewish law, theology and literature, and not wholly unacquainted with the Grecian writers. The power of a high spiritual faith over such a mind, however steeled by prejudice, was not so wonderful as its renovating, refining and elevating influence on the rude fisherman of Bethsaida. Paul was a man of considerable natural genius, and he shows it on every page of his writings; but in Peter there are seen few evidences of a mind naturally exalted, and the whole tenor of his words and actions seems to imply a character of sound common sense, and great energy, but of perceptions and powers of expression, great, not so much by inborn genius, as by the impulse of a higher spirit within him, gradually bringing him to the possession of new faculties,――intellectual as well as moral. This was the spirit which raised him from the humble task of a fisherman, to that of drawing men and nations within the compass of the gospel, and to a glory which not all the gods of ancient superstition ever attained.

Most empty honors! Why hew down the marble mountains, and rear them into walls as massive and as lasting? Why raise the solemn arches and the lofty towers to overtop the everlasting hills with their heavenward heads? Or lift the skiey dome into the middle heaven, almost outswelling the blue vault itself? Why task the soul of art for new creations to line the long-drawn aisles, and gem the fretted roof? There is a glory that shall outlast all

“The cloud-capped towers,――the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples,――the great globe itself,――

Yea all which it inherit;”

――a glory far beyond the brightest things of earth in its brightest day; for “they that be wise shall shine as the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars, for ever and ever.” Yet in this the apostle rejoices not;――not that adoring millions lift his name in prayers, and thanksgivings, and songs, and incense, from the noblest piles of man’s creation, to the glory of a God,――not even that over all the earth, in all ages, till the perpetual hills shall bow with time,――till “eternity grows gray,” the pure in heart will yield him the highest human honors of the faith, on which nations, continents and worlds hang their hopes of salvation;――he “rejoices not that the spirits” of angels or men “are subject to him,――but that HIS NAME IS WRITTEN IN HEAVEN.”

ANDREW.

HIS AUTHENTIC HISTORY.

The name of this apostle is here brought in directly after his eminent brother, in accordance with the lists of the apostles given by Matthew and Luke, in their gospels, where they seem to dispose them all in pairs; and very naturally, in this case, prefer family affinity as a principle of arrangement, putting together in this and the following instances, those who were sons of the same father. The most eminent son of Jonah, deservedly taking the highest place on all the lists, his brother might very properly so far share in the honors of this distinction, as to be mentioned along with him, without any necessary implication of the possession of any of that moral and intellectual superiority, on which Peter’s claim to the first place was grounded. These seem, at least, to have been sufficient reasons for Matthew, in arranging the apostles, and for Luke in his gospel; while in his history of the Acts of the Apostles he followed a different plan, putting Andrew fourth on the list, and giving the sons of Zebedee a place before him, as Mark did also. The uniform manner in which James and John are mentioned along with Peter on great occasions, to the total neglect of Andrew, seems to imply that this apostle was quite behind his brother in those excellences which fitted him for the leading place in the great Christian enterprise; since it is most reasonable to believe that, if he had possessed faculties of such a high order, he would have been readily selected to enjoy with him the peculiar privileges of a most intimate personal intercourse with Jesus, and to share the high honors of his peculiar revelations of glory and power.

The question of the relative age of the two sons of Jonah, has been already settled in the beginning of the life of Peter; and in the same part of the work have also been given all the particulars about their family, rank, residence, and occupation, which are desirable for the illustration of the lives and characters of both. So too, throughout the whole of the sacred narrative, everything that could concern Andrew has been abundantly expressed and commented on, in the life of Peter. The occasions on which the name of this apostle is mentioned in the New Testament, indeed, except in the bare enumeration of the twelve, are only three,――his first introduction to Jesus,――his actual call,――and the circumstance of his being present with his brother and the sons of Zebedee, at the scene on the mount of Olives, when Christ foretold the utter ruin of the temple. Of these three scenes, in the first only did he perform such a part, as to receive any other than a bare mention in the gospel history; nor even in that solitary circumstance does his conduct seem to have been of much importance, except as leading his brother to the knowledge of Jesus. From this circumstance, however, of his being specified as the first of all the twelve who had a personal acquaintance with Jesus, he has been honored by many writers with the distinguishing title of “THE FIRST CALLED,” although others have claimed the dignity of this appellation for another apostle, in whose life the particular reasons for such a claim will be mentioned.

The first called.――In Greek πρωτοκλητος, (protokletos,) by which name he is called by Nicephorus Callistus, (Church History, II. 39,) and by several of the Greek Fathers, as quoted by Cangius, (Gloss. in voc.) Suicer, however, makes no reference whatever to this term.

From the minute narrative of the circumstances of the call, given by John in the first chapter of his gospel, it appears, that Andrew, excited by the fame of the great Baptizer, had left his home at Bethsaida, and gone to Bethabara, (on the same side of the Jordan, but farther south,) where the solemn and ardent appeals of the bold herald of inspiration so far equalled the expectation awakened by rumor, that, along with vast multitudes who seem to have made but an indifferent progress in religious knowledge, though brought to the repentance and confession of their sins, he was baptized in the Jordan, and was also attached to the person of the great preacher in a peculiar manner, as it would seem, aiming at a still more advanced state of indoctrination, than ordinary converts could be expected to attain. While in this diligent personal attendance on his new Master, he was one day standing with him upon the banks of the Jordan, the great scene of the mystic sacrament, listening to the incidental instructions which fell from the lips of the holy man, in company with another disciple, his countryman and friend. In the midst of the conversation, perhaps, while discoursing upon the deep question then in agitation, about the advent of the Messiah, suddenly the great preacher exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God!” The two disciples at once turned their eyes towards the person thus solemnly designated as the Messiah, and saw walking by them, a stranger, whose demeanor was such as to mark him for the object of the Baptizer’s apostrophe. With one accord, the two hearers at once left the teacher, who had now referred them to a higher source of truth and purity, and both followed together the footsteps of the wonderful stranger, of whose real character they knew nothing, though their curiosity must have been most highly excited, by the solemn mystery of the words in which his greatness was announced. As they hurried after him, the sound of their hasty feet fell on the ear of the retiring stranger, who, turning towards his inquiring pursuers, mildly met their curious glances with the question, “Whom seek ye?”――thus giving them an opportunity to state their wishes for his acquaintance. They eagerly answered by the question, implying their desire for a permanent knowledge of him,――“Rabbi! (Master,) where dwellest thou?” He kindly answered them with a polite invitation to accompany him to his lodgings; for there is no reason to believe that they went with him to his permanent home in Capernaum or Nazareth; since Jesus was probably then staying at some place near the scene of the baptism. Being hospitably and familiarly entertained by Jesus, as his intimate friends, it being then four o’clock in the afternoon, they remained with him till the next day, enjoying a direct personal intercourse, which gave them the best opportunities for learning his character and his power to impart to them the high instructions which they were prepared to expect, by the solemn annunciation of the great Baptizer; and at the same time it shows their own earnestness and zeal for acquiring a knowledge of the Messiah, as well as his benignant familiarity in thus receiving them immediately into such a domestication with him. After this protracted interview with Jesus, Andrew seems to have attained the most perfect conviction that his newly adopted teacher was all that he had been declared to be; and in the eagerness of a warm fraternal affection, he immediately sought his dear brother Simon, and exultingly announced to him the great results of his yesterday’s introduction to the wonderful man;――“We have found the Messiah!” Such a declaration, made with the confidence of one who knew by personal experience, at once secured the attention of the no less ardent Simon, and he accordingly gave himself up to the guidance of the confident Andrew, who led him directly to Jesus, anxious that his beloved brother should also share in the high favor of the Messiah’s friendship and instruction. This is the most remarkable recorded circumstance of Andrew’s life; and on his ready adherence to Jesus, and the circumstance that he, first of all the disciples, declared him to be the Messiah, may be founded a just claim for a most honorable distinction of Andrew.

Bethabara.――Some of the later critics seem disposed to reject this now common reading, and to adopt in its place that of Bethany, which is supported by such a number of old manuscripts and versions, as to offer a strong defense against the word at present established. Both the Syriac versions, the Arabic, Aethiopic, the Vulgate, and the Saxon, give “Bethany;” and Origen, from whom the other reading seems to have arisen, confesses that the previously established word was Bethany, which he, with about as much sense of justice and propriety as could be expected from even the most judicious of the Fathers, rejected for the unauthorized Bethabara, on the simple ground that there is such a place on the Jordan, mentioned in Judges vii. 24,――while Bethany is elsewhere in the gospels described as close to Jerusalem, on the mount of Olives; the venerable Father never apprehending the probability of two different places bearing the same name, nor referring to the etymology of Bethany, which is בית אניה (beth anyah,) “the house (or place) of a boat,” equivalent to a “ferry.” (Origen on John, quoted by Wolf.) Chrysostom and Epiphanius are also quoted by Lampe, as defending this perversion on similar grounds. Heracleon, Nonnus and Beza are referred to in defense of Bethany; and among moderns, Mill, Simon and others, are quoted by Wolf on the same side. Campbell and Bloomfield also defend this view. Scultetus, Grotius and Casaubon, argue in favor of Bethabara. Lightfoot makes a long argument to prove that Bethany, the true reading, means not any village or particular spot of that name, but the province or tract, called ♦Batanea, lying beyond the Jordan, in the northern part of its course,――a conjecture hardly supported by the structure of the word, nor by the opinion of any other writer. This Bethany beyond the Jordan, seems to have been thus particularized as to position, in order to distinguish it from the place of the same name near Jerusalem. Its exact situation cannot now be ascertained; but it was commonly placed about fifteen or twenty miles south of Lake Gennesaret.

♦ “Batanaea” replaced with “Batanea”

Lamb of God.――This expression has been the subject of much discussion, and has been amply illustrated by the labors of learned commentators. Whether John the Baptizer expected Jesus to atone for the sins of the world, by death, has been a question ably argued by Kuinoel and Gabler against, and by Lampe, Wolf, and Bloomfield, for the idea of an implied sacrifice and expiation. The latter writer in particular, is very full and candid: Wolf also gives a great number of references, and to these authors the critical must resort for the minutiae of a discussion, too heavy and protracted for this work. (See the above authors on John i. 29.)

After narrating the particulars of his call, in which he was merely a companion of his brother, and after specifying the circumstance of his being present at the prophecy of the temple’s destruction, the New Testament history takes not the slightest notice of any action of Andrew’s life; nor is he even mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, except in the mere list of their names in the first chapter. For anything further, reference must be made to that most dubious of historical materials, the tradition of the Fathers; and the most reasonable opinion that can be pronounced upon all the rest of Andrew’s life is, that nothing whatever is known about it. He probably remained all his life in Palestine, quietly and humbly devoting himself to the trials and labors of the apostolic life, without reference to the production of any great admiration of his actions, or to the perpetuation of his fame. Being older than Peter, he probably died before him, and perhaps before the last great war of the Jews with the Romans, ending in the destruction of Jerusalem, which compelled the Christians to leave the city. He may, however, have gone eastward with his brother, and passed the last years of his life in Babylon.

HIS FABULOUS HISTORY.

But such a simple conclusion to this apostle’s life would by no means answer the purposes of the ancient writers on these matters; and accordingly the inquirer into apostolic history is presented with a long, long talk of Andrew’s journey into Europe, through Greece and Thrace, where he is said to have founded many churches, undergone many labors, and performed many miracles,――and at last to have been crucified in a city of Greece. The brief, but decided condemnation of all this imposition, however, is found in its absolute destitution of proof, or of truly ancient authority. Not the most antique particular of this tedious falsehood can be traced back to a date within two hundred years of the time of the pretended journey; and the whole story from beginning to end, was undoubtedly made up to answer the demands of a credulous age, when, after the triumphant diffusion of Christianity throughout the Roman empire, curiosity began to be greatly awakened about the founders of the faith,――a curiosity too great to be satisfied with the meager statements of the records of truth. Moreover, every province of Christendom, following the example of the metropolis, soon began to claim some one of the apostolic band, as having first preached the gospel in its territories; and to substantiate these claims, it was necessary to produce a record corresponding to the legend which at first floated about only in the mouths of the inventors and propagators. Accordingly, apocryphal gospels and histories were manufactured in vast numbers, to meet this new demand, detailing long series of apostolic labors and journeys, and commemorating martyrdoms in every civilized country under heaven, from Britain to India. Among these, the Grecian provinces must needs come in for their share of apostolic honor; and Andrew was therefore given up to them, as a founder and martyr. The numerous particulars of fictitious miracles and persecutions might be amusing, but cannot deserve a place in this work, to the exclusion of serious matters of fact. A cursory view of the fables, however, may be allowed, even by these contracted limits.

The earliest story about Andrew is, that he was sent to Scythia first, when the apostles divided the world into provinces of duty. His route is said to have been through Greece, Epirus, and then directly northward into Scythia. Another later writer however, makes a different track for him, leading from Palestine into Asia Minor, through Cappadocia, Galatia and Bithynia;――thence north through the country of the cannibals and to the wild wastes of Scythia;――thence south along the northern, western and southern shores of the Black sea, to Byzantium, (now Constantinople,) and after some time, through Thrace, southwestwards into Macedonia, Thessaly, and Achaia, in which last, his life and labors are said to have ended. By the same author, he is also in another passage said to have been driven from Byzantium by threats of the persecution, and therefore to have crossed over the Black sea to city of Argyropolis, on its southern coast, where he preached two years, and constituted Stachys bishop of a church which he there founded; and thence to Sinope in Paphlagonia. It is said by others that, on his great northern journey, he went not only into Scythia but into Sogdiana, (now Tartary,) and even to the Sacae, (near the borders of Thibet,) and to India.

The earliest mention made of the apostle Andrew, by any writer whatever, after the evangelists, is by Origen, (about A. D. 230 or 240,) who speaks of him as having been sent to the Scythians. (Commentary on Genesis, 1. 3.) The passage is preserved only in the Latin translation of his writings, the original Greek of that part having been lost. The date of the original however, is too late to deserve any credit. A story making its first appearance nearly two centuries after the occurrence which it commemorates, with no reference to authorities, is but poor evidence. Eusebius (Church History, III. 1.) mentions barely the same circumstance as Origen, (A. D. 315.) Gregory Nazianzen (orat. in Ar.) is the first who says that Andrew went to Greece. (A. D. 370.) Chrysostom also (Homily on xii. apostles) mentions this. (A. D. 398.) Jerom (Script. Ecc.) quotes Sophronius, as saying that Andrew went also to the Sogdians and Sacans. (A. D. 397.)

Augustin (the faith against Manichaeanism) is the first who brings in very much from tradition, respecting Andrew; and his stories are so numerous and entertaining in their particulars, as to show that before his time, fiction had been most busily at work with the apostles;――but the details are all of such a character as not to deserve the slightest credit. The era of his writings moreover, is so late, (A. D. 395,) that he along with his contemporaries, Jerom and Chrysostom, may be condemned as receivers of late traditions, and corrupters of the purity of historical as well as sacred truth.

But the later writers go beyond these unsatisfactory generalities, and enter into the most entertaining particulars, making out very interesting and romantic stories. The monkish apostolical novelists, of the fifth century and later, have given a great number of stories about Andrew, inconsistent with the earlier accounts, with each other, and with common sense. Indeed there is no great reason to think that they were meant to be believed, but written very honestly as fictitious compositions, to gratify the taste of the antique novel-readers. There is therefore, really, no more obligation resting on the biographer of the apostles to copy these fables, than on the historian of Scotland to transcribe the details of the romances of Scott, Porter and others, though a mere allusion to them might occasionally be proper. The most serious and the least absurd of these fictions, is one which narrates that, after having received the grace of the Holy Spirit by the gift of fiery tongues, he was sent to the Gentiles with an allotted field of duty. This was to go through Asia Minor, more especially the northern parts, Cappadocia, Galatia and Bithynia. Having traversed these and other countries as above stated, he settled in Achaia. Where, as in the other provinces, during a stay of many years, he preached divine discourses, and glorified the name of Christ by wonderful signs and prodigies. At length he was seized by Aegeas, the Roman proconsul of that province, and by him crucified, on the charge of having converted to Christianity, Maximilla, the wife, and Stratocles, the brother of the proconsul, so that they had learned to abhor that ruler’s wickedness.

This story is from Nicephorus Callistus, a monk of the early part of the fourteenth century. (See Lardner, Credibility of Gospel History chapter 165.) He wrote an ecclesiastical history of the period from the birth of Christ to the year 610, in which he has given a vast number of utterly fabulous stories, adopting all the fictions of earlier historians, and adding, as it would seem, some new ones. His ignorance and folly are so great, however, that he is not considered as any authority, even by the Papist writers; for on this very story of Andrew, even the credulous Baronius says, “Sed fide nutant haec, ob apertum mendacium de Zeuzippo tyranno,” &c. “These things are unworthy of credit, on account of the manifest lie about king Zeuzippus, because there was no king in Thrace at that time, the province being quietly ruled by a Roman president.” (Baronius, Annals, 44. § 31.) The story itself is in Nicephorus, Church History, II. 39.

One of the longest of these novels contains a series of incidents, really drawn out with considerable interest, narrating mainly his supposed adventures in Achaia, without many of the particulars of his journey thither. It begins with simply announcing that, at the time of the general dispersion of the apostles on their missionary tours, Andrew began to preach in Achaia. but was soon after interrupted for a time by an angelic call, to go a great distance, to a city called Myrmidon, to help the apostle Matthew out of a scrape, that he had fallen into of himself, but could not get out of without help. Where in the world this place was, nobody can tell; for there is a great clashing among the saintly authorities, whether it was in Scythia or Ethiopia; and as the place is never mentioned by any body else, they have the dispute all in their own hands. But since the story says he went all the way by ship, from Achaia to the city, it would seem most likely to have been in that part of Scythia which touched the northeastern border of the Black sea. Having finished this business, as will be elsewhere told, he went back towards Achaia, and resumed the good works, but just begun, soon gathering around him a throng of disciples. Walking out with them one day, he met a blind man, who made the singular request that the apostle would not restore him to sight, though confessedly able, but simply give him some money, victuals and clothes. The acute Andrew straightway smelt a devil, (and a mighty silly one too,) in this queer speech, and declaring that these were not the words of the blind man himself, but of a devil who had possessed him, ordered the foolish demon to come out, and restored the man to sight, supplying him also with clothes from the backs of his disciples. The fame of this and other miracles spread far and fast, and the consequence was that the apostle had as many calls as a rising quack doctor. Every body that was in any sort of trouble or difficulty, came to him as a thing of course, to get a miracle done to suit the case exactly. A rich man who had lost a favorite slave, by death, had him raised to life by Andrew. A young lad whose mother had wrongfully accused him, before the proconsul, also called for help or advice;――Andrew went into court and raised a terrible earthquake, with thunder and lightning, whereby all present were knocked down to the ground, and the wicked woman killed. The proconsul, as soon as he could get up, became converted, with all who had shared in the tumble. The apostle still increasing in business, soon had a call to Sinope, to see a whole family who were in a very bad way,――the old gentleman, Cratinus by name, being quite sick with a fever,――his wife afflicted with a dreadful dropsy, and his son possessed with a devil. These were all healed, with sundry charges about their secret sins, and some particulars as to the mode of cure, not worth translating, since it reads better in Latin than in English. He then went on through Asia to the city of Nicaea, in Bithynia, where his arrival was hailed with a universal shout of joy from the whole community, who were terribly pestered with seven naughty devils, that had taken up their quarters among the tombs close to the highway, where they sat with a large supply of grave-stones constantly on hand, for no earthly purpose but to pelt decent people as they went by, and doing it with such a vengeance that they had killed several outright,――besides broken bones not counted. Andrew, after exacting from the inhabitants a promise to become Christians if he cleared out this nuisance, brought out the seven devils, in spite of themselves, in the shape of dogs, before all the city; and after he had made them a speech, (given in very bad Latin, in the story, as it stands,) the whole seven gave a general yelp and ran off in the wilderness according to Andrew’s direction. The inhabitants of course, were all baptized; and Callistus was left bishop over them. Going on from Nicaea, Andrew came next to Nicomedia, the capital, where he met a funeral procession coming out of the city. Andrew immediately raised the dead person,――the scene being evidently copied from that of the widow’s son raised at Nain, considerably enlarged with new particulars. Going out from Nicomedia, the apostle embarked on the Black sea, sailing to Byzantium. On the passage there was occasion for a new miracle,――a great storm arising, which was immediately stilled by the apostle. Going on from Byzantium through Thrace, he came among a horde of savages, who made a rush at him, with drawn swords. But Andrew making the sign of the cross at them, they all dropped their swords and fell flat. He then passed over them, and went on through Thrace into Macedonia.

This story is literally translated from one of the “apostolical stories” of a monk of the middle ages, who passed them off as true histories, written by Abdias, said to have been one of the seventy disciples sent out by Jesus, (Luke x. 1,) and to have been afterwards ordained bishop of Babylon, (by Simon Zelotes and Jude.) It is an imposition so palpable however, in its absurdities, that it has always been condemned by the best authorities, both Protestant and Papist: as Melancthon, Bellarmin, Scultetus, Rivetus, the ♦Magdeburg centuriators, Baronius, Chemnitius, Tillemont, Vossius, and Bayle, whose opinions and censures are most of them fully given in the preface to the work itself, by Johann Albert Fabricius, (Codex apocrypha of the New Testament, part 2.)

♦ “Magdeburgh” replaced with “Magdeburg”

Besides all these series of fictions on Andrew’s life, there are others, quoted as having been written in the same department. “The Passion of St. Andrew,” a quite late apocryphal story, professing to have been written by the elders and deacons of the churches of Achaia, was long extensively received by the Papists, as an authentic and valuable book, and is quoted by the eloquent and venerable Bernardus, with the most profound respect. It abounds in long, tedious speeches, as well as painfully absurd incidents. The “Menaei,” or Greek calendar of the saints, is also copious on this apostle, but is too modern to deserve any credit whatever. All the ancient fables and traditions were at last collected into a huge volume, by a Frenchman named Andrew de Saussay, who, in 1656, published at Paris, (in Latin,) a book, entitled “Andrew, brother of Simon Peter, or, Twelve Books on the Glory of Saint Andrew, the Apostle.” This book was afterwards abridged, or largely borrowed from, by John Florian Hammerschmid, in a treatise, (in Latin,) published at Prague, in 1699,――entitled “The Apostolic Cross-bearer, or, St. Andrew, the Apostle, described and set forth, in his life, death, martyrdom, miracles and discourses.”――Baillet’s Lives of the Saints, (in French,) also contains a full account of the most remarkable details of these fables. (Baillet, Vies de Saints, Vol. I. February 9th.)

By following these droll stories through all their details, the life of Andrew might easily be made longer than that of Peter; but the character of this work would be much degraded from its true historical dignity by such contents. The monkish novels and romances would undoubtedly make a very amusing, and in some senses, an instructive book; and a volume as large as this might be easily filled with these tales. But this extract will serve very well as a specimen of their general character. A single passage farther, may however be presented, giving a somewhat interesting fictitious account of his crucifixion.

After innumerable works of wonder, Andrew had come at last to Patras, a city in the northwestern part of Achaia, still known by that name, standing on the gulf of Lepanto, famous in modern Greek history as the scene of a desperate struggle with the Turks, during a long siege, in the war of Grecian independence. In this city, as the fable states, then resided the Roman proconsul of the province, whose name is variously given by different story-tellers; by some, Aegeas,――by others, Aegeates and Aegeatus, and by others, Egetes. The apostle was soon called on to visit his family, by a female servant, who had been converted by the preaching of one of Andrew’s disciples. She, coming to Andrew, fell at his feet, clasping them, and besought him in the name of the proconsul’s wife, Maximilla, her mistress, then very sick with a fever, to come to her house, that she might hear from him the gospel. The apostle went, therefore, and on entering the room found the proconsul in such an agony of despair about the sickness of his beloved wife, that he had at that moment drawn his sword to kill himself. Andrew immediately cried out, “Proconsul! do thyself no harm; but put up thy sword into its place, for the present. There will be a time for you to exercise it upon us, soon.” The ruler, without perceiving the point of the remark, gave way, in obedience to the word of the apostle. He then, drawing nigh the bed of the invalid, after some discourse, took hold of her hand, when she was immediately covered with a profuse sweat, the symptoms being all relieved and the fever broken up. As soon as the proconsul saw the wonderful change, he, in a spirit of liberal remuneration, which deserves the gratitude of the whole medical profession, ordered to be paid to the holy man the liberal fee of one hundred pieces of silver; but not appreciating this liberality, Andrew decidedly refused to receive any pay at all, not choosing to render such medical services with the view of any compensation, and would not so much as look at it,――exciting no small astonishment in the proconsul by such extraordinary disinterestedness. The apostle then leaving the palace, went on through the city, relieving the most miserable beggars lying in the dirt, with the same good will which he had shown in the family of the ruler. Passing on, he came to the water-side, and there finding a poor, wretched, dirty sailor, lying on the ground, covered with sores and vermin, cured him directly, lifted him up, and taking him into the water, close by, gave him a good washing, which at the same time served for both body and soul,――for the apostle at once making it answer for a baptism, pronounced him pure in the name of the Trinity. Soon after this occurrence, which gained him great fame, he was called to relieve a boy belonging to Stratocles, the brother of the proconsul, the apostle having been recommended to him as a curer of diseases, by Maximilla and her maid. The devil having been, of course, cast out of the boy, Stratocles believed, as did his brother’s wife, who was so desirous of hearing the apostle preach, that at last she took advantage of her husband’s absence in Macedonia, and had regular religious meetings in her husband’s great hall of state, where he held his courts,――quite an extraordinary liberty for any man’s wife to take with his affairs, behind his back. It happened at last, that the unsuspecting gentleman suddenly returned, when his wife had not expected him, and would have immediately burst into the room, then thronged with a great number of all sorts of people; but Andrew, foreseeing what was about to happen, managed, by a queer kind of miracle, to make it convenient for him to go somewhere else for a while, until every one of the audience having been made invisible with the sign of the cross, by Andrew, sneaked off unseen; so that the deceived proconsul, when he came in, never suspected what tricks had been played on him. Maximilla, being now prevented by her husband’s return from having any more meetings in his house, afterwards resorted to the apostle’s lodgings, where the Christians constantly met to hear him,――and became at last so assiduous in her attendance by day and by night, that her husband began to grow uneasy about her unseasonable absences, because he had no sort of pleasure with her since she had been so given up to her mysterious occupations, away from him almost constantly. He accordingly began to investigate the difficulty, and finding that it was the work of Andrew, who had been teaching the lady a new religion, which wholly absorbed her in devotion, to the exclusion of all enjoyment with her family, sent for him, and commanded him to take his choice between renouncing his troublesome faith, and crucifixion. But the apostle indignantly and intrepidly declared his readiness to maintain the doctrine of Jesus Christ, through all peril, and even to death, and then went on to give the sum and substance of his creed. The unyielding proconsul however, put him in prison immediately, where Andrew occupied himself all night in exhorting his disciples to stand fast in the faith. Being brought the next day before the proconsul’s tribunal, he renewed his refusal to sacrifice to idols, and was therefore dragged away to the cross, after receiving twenty-one lashes. The proconsul, enraged at his pertinacity, ordered him to be bound to the cross, instead of being nailed in the usual way;――(a very agreeable exchange, it would seem, for any one would rather have his hands and feet tied with a cord to a cross, than be nailed to it; and it is hard to see how this could operate to increase his torture, otherwise than by keeping him there till he starved to death.) On coming in sight of the cross, he burst out into an eloquent strain of joy and exultation, while yet at some distance,――exclaiming as they bore him along, “Hail! O cross! consecrated by the body of Christ, and adorned with the pearls of his precious limbs! I come to thee confident and rejoicing, and do thou receive, with exultation, the disciple of him who once hung on thee, since I have long been thy lover and have longed to embrace thee. Hail! O cross! that now art satisfied, though long wearied with waiting for me. O good cross! that hast acquired grace and beauty from the limbs of the Lord! long-desired and dearly loved! sought without ceasing, and long foreseen with wishful mind! take me from men and give me back to my Master, that by thee He may receive me, who by thee has redeemed me.” After this personifying address to the inanimate wood, he gave himself up to the executioners, who stripped him, and bound his hands and feet as had been directed, thus suspending him on the cross. Around the place of execution stood a vast throng of sympathizing beholders, numbering not less than twenty thousand persons, to whom the apostle, unmoved by the horrors which so distressed them, now coolly addressed them in the words of life, though himself on the verge of death. For two days and nights, in this situation, in fasting and agony, he yet continued without a moment’s cessation to exhort the multitude who were constantly thronging to the strange sight; till at last, on the third day, the whole city, moved beyond all control, by the miracle of energy and endurance, rushed in one mass to the proconsul, and demanded the liberation of the God-sustained apostle. The ferocious tyrant, overawed by the solemn power of the demand, coming from such an excited multitude, at last yielded; and to the great joy of the people, went out to the cross to release the holy sufferer, at the sight of whose enraptured triumph over pain and terror, the hard-hearted tyrant himself melted, and in sorrow and penitence he drew near the cross to exercise his new-born mercy. But Andrew, already on the eve of a martyr’s triumph, would not bear to be snatched back from such glories so nearly attained; and in earnest remonstrance cried out, praying, “O Lord Jesus Christ! do not suffer thy servant, who for thy name’s sake hangs on the cross, to be thus freed,――nor let me, O merciful God! when now clinging to thy mysteries, be given up again to human conversations. But take thou me, my Master! whom I have loved,――whom I have known,――whom I hold,――whom I long to see,――in whom I am what I am. Let me die then, O Jesus, good and merciful.” And having said these things for so long a time,――praising God and rejoicing, he breathed out his soul, amid the tears and groans of all the beholders.

Here ends the tale of the fictitious Abdias Babylonius, of which this concluding abstract is another literal specimen, presenting its most effective part in the pathetic line, as the former does of its ludicrous portions. The story of Andrew is altogether the longest and best constructed, as well as the most interesting in the character of its incidents, of all contained in the book of the Pseudo-Abdias; and I have therefore been more liberal in extracts from this, because it would leave little occasion for any similar specimens under the lives of the rest of the apostles.

All this long story may, very possibly, have grown up from a beginning which was true; that is, there may have been another Andrew, who, in a later age of the early times of Christianity, may have gone over those regions as a missionary, and met with somewhat similar adventures; and who was afterwards confounded with the apostle Andrew. The Scotch, for some reason or other, formerly adopted Andrew as their national saint, and represent him on a cross of a peculiar shape, resembling the letter X, known in heraldry by the name of a saltier, and borne on the badges of the knights of the Scottish order of the Thistle, to this day. This idea of his cross, however, has originated since the beginning of the twelfth century, as I shall show by a passage from Bernardus.

The truly holy Bernard, (Abbot of Clairvaux, in France, A. D. 1112,) better worthy of the title of Saint than ninety-nine hundredths of all the canonized who lived before him, even from apostolic days,――has, among his splendid sermons, three most eloquent discourses, preached in his abbey church, on St. Andrew’s day, in which he alludes to the actions of this apostle, as recorded in the “Passion of St. Andrew,”――a book which he seems to quote as worthy of credit. In Latin of Ciceronian purity, he has given some noble specimens of a pulpit eloquence, rarely equalled in any modern language, and such as never blesses the ears of the hearers of these days. He begins his first discourse on this subject with saying, that in “celebrating the glorious triumphs of the blessed Andrew, they had that day been delighted with the words of grace, that proceeded out of his mouth;”――(doubtless in hearing the story of the crucifixion read from the fictitious book of the Passion of St. Andrew, which all supposed to be authentic.) “For there was no room for sorrow, where he himself was so intensely rejoiced. No one of us mourned for him in his sufferings, for no one dared to weep over him, while he was thus exulting. So that he might most appropriately say to us, what the cross-bearing Redeemer said to those who followed him with mourning,――‘Weep not for me; but weep for yourselves.’ And when the blessed Andrew himself was led to the cross, and the people, grieving for the unjust condemnation of the holy and just man, would have prevented his execution,――he, with the most urgent prayer, forbade them from depriving him of his crown of suffering. For ‘he desired indeed to be released, and to be with Christ,’――but on the cross; he desired to enter the kingdom,――but by the door. Even as he said to that loved form, ‘that by thee, he may receive me, who by thee has redeemed me.’ Therefore if we love him, we shall rejoice with him; not only because he was crowned, but because he was crucified.” (A bad, and unscriptural doctrine! for no apostle ever taught, or was taught, that it was worth while for any man to be crucified, when he could well help it.)

In his second sermon on the same subject, the animated Bernard remarks furthermore, in comment on the behavior of Andrew, when coming in sight of his cross,――“You have certainly heard how the blessed Andrew was stayed on the Lord, when he came to the place where the cross was made ready for him,――and how, by the spirit which he had received along with the other apostles, in the fiery tongues, he spoke truly fiery words. And so, seeing from afar the cross prepared, he did not turn pale, though mortal weakness might seem to demand it; his blood did not freeze,――his hair did not rise,――his voice did not cleave to his throat, (non stetere comae, aut vox faucibus haesit.) Out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth did speak; and the deep love which glowed in his heart, sent forth the words like burning sparks.” He then quotes the speech of Andrew to the cross, as above given, and proceeds: “I beseech you, brethren, say, is this a man who speaks thus? Is it not an angel, or some new creature? No: it is merely a ‘man of like passions with ourselves.’ For the very agony itself, in whose approach he thus rejoiced, proves him to have been ‘a man of passion.’ Whence, then, in man, this new exultation, and joy before unheard of? Whence, in man, a mind so spiritual,――a love so fervent,――a courage so strong? Far would it be from the apostle himself, to wish, that we should give the glory of such grace to him. It is the ‘perfect gift, coming down from the Father of Lights,’――from him, ‘who alone does wondrous things.’ It was, dearly beloved, plainly, ‘the spirit which helpeth our infirmities,’ by which was shed abroad in his heart, a love, strong as death,――yea, and stronger than death. Of which, O may we too be found partakers!”

The preacher then goes on with the practical application of the view of these sufferings, and the spirit that sustained them, to the circumstances of his hearers. After some discourse to this effect, he exhorts them to seek this spirit. “Seek it then, dearest! seek it without ceasing,――seek it without doubting;――in all your works invoke the aid of this spirit. For we also, my brethren, with the blessed Andrew, must needs take up our cross,――yea, with that Savior-Lord whom he followed. For, in this he rejoiced,――in this he exulted;――because not only for him, but with him, he would seem to die, and be planted, so ‘that suffering with him, he might also reign with him.’ With whom, that we may also be crucified, let us hear more attentively with the ears of our hearts, the voice of him who says, ‘He who will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’ As if he said, ‘Let him who desires me, despise himself: let him who would do my will, learn to break his own.’”

Bernard then draws a minute parallel, more curious than admirable, between the cross and the trials of life,――likening the four difficulties in the way of holiness, to the four ends of the cross; bodily fear being the foot-piece; open assaults and temptations, the right arm-piece; secret sins and trials, the left hand-piece; and spiritual pride, the head-piece. Or, as he briefly recapitulates, the four virtues attached to the four horns of the cross, are these:――continence, patience, prudence, and humility. A truly forcible figure, and one not without its effect, doubtless, on the hearers. This arrangement of the cross, moreover, seems to prove, that in the time of Bernard, the idle story about Andrew’s cross being shaped like the letter X, was entirely unknown; for it is evident that the whole point of the allusion here consists in the hearers supposing that Andrew was crucified on a cross of the common shape,――upright, with a transverse bar and head-piece.

In conclusion of all this fabulous detail, may be appropriately quoted the closing passage of the second discourse of Bernard, the spirit of which, though coming from a Papist, is not discordant with the noblest essential principles of truly catholic Christianity, seldom indeed, found so pure in the Romish church, as in this “Last of the Fathers,” as he has been justly styled. This, with all the passages above quoted, may be found by those who can enjoy the original, in his works. (Divi Bernardi Opera Omnia Joh. Picard. Antwerp, 1609, folio; columns 322‒333.)

So accordant are these words with the spirit which it becomes this work to inculcate, that I may well adopt them into the text, glad to hang a moral to the end of so much falsehood, though drawn from such a theme, that it seems like “gathering grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles.”

Bernard has in this part of his discourse been completing all the details of his parallel between the cross and the Christian’s life, and in this conclusion, thus crowns the simile, by exhorting his saintly hearers to cling, each to his own cross, in spite of all temptation to renounce it; that is, to persevere in daily crucifying their sins, by a pure deportment through life.

Happy the soul that glories and triumphs on this cross, if it only persevere, and do not let itself be cast down in its trials. Let every one then, who is on this cross, like the blessed Andrew, pray his Lord and Master, not to let him be taken down from it. For what is there which the malign adversary will not dare? what will he not impiously presume to try? For what he thought to do to the disciple by the hands of Aegeas, the same he once thought to do to the Master by the scornful tongues of the Jews. In each instance alike, however, driven by too late experience of his folly, he departed, vanquished and confounded. O may he in like manner depart from us, conquered by Him who triumphed over him by Himself, and by His disciple. May He cause, that we also may attain the same happy end, on the crosses which we have borne, each one in his own peculiar trials, for the glory of His name, “who is God over all, blessed forever.”

JAMES BOANERGES;
THE SON OF ZEBEDEE.

HIS RANK AND CHARACTER.

Whatever may have been the peculiar excellences of this apostle’s character, as recognized by the searching eye of Him who knew the hearts of all men, the early close of his high career has prevented the full development of energies, that might, in the course of a longer life, have been made as fruitful in works of wonder and praise, as those of the other members of the elect TRIO, his friend and his younger brother; and his later years, thus prolonged, might have left similar recorded testimonies of his apostolic zeal. Much too, that truly concerns his brief life, is swallowed up in the long narrative of the eminent chief of the twelve, whose superiority was on all occasions so distinctly marked by Jesus, that he never imparted to this apostle any exalted favor in which Peter did not also share, and in the record of which his name is not mentioned first. In the first call,――in the raising of the daughter of Jairus to life,――at the transfiguration,――and on the apostolic roll,――James is uniformly placed after Peter; and such too, was the superior activity and talkative disposition of Peter, that whenever and wherever there was anything to be said, he was always the first to say it,――cutting off the sons of Zebedee from the opportunity, if they had the disposition, to make themselves more prominent. Yet the sons of Zebedee are not entirely unnoticed in the apostolic history, and even the early-martyred James may be said to have a character quite decidedly marked, in those few passages in the sacred record, where facts concerning him are commemorated. In the apostolic list given by Mark, it is moreover mentioned, that he with his brother had received a name from Jesus Christ, which being given to them by him, doubtless with a decided reference to their characters, serves as a valuable means of ascertaining their leading traits. The name of “Boanerges,”――“sons of thunder,” seems to imply a degree of decided boldness, and a fiery energy, not exactly accordant with the usual opinions of the characters of the sons of Zebedee; but it is an expression in the most perfect harmony with the few details of the conduct of both, which are given in the New Testament.

Boanerges.――This word is one, whose composition and derivation, (as is the case with many other New Testament proper names,) have caused great discussion and difference of opinion among the learned. It occurs only in Mark iii. 17, where it is incidentally mentioned in the list of the apostles, as a new name given to the sons of Zebedee by Jesus. Those who are curious, can find all the discussion in any critical commentator on the passage. Poole’s Synopsis, in one heavy folio column and half of another, gives a complete view of all the facts and speculations concerning this matter, up to his time; the amount of all which, seems to be, that, as the word now stands, it very nearly sets all etymologies at defiance,――whether Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldee or Arabic,――since it is impossible to say how the word should be resolved into two parts, one of which should mean “sons,” and the other “thunder;” so that it is well for us we have Mark’s explanation of the name, since without it, the critics would probably have never found either “son” or “thunder” in the word. As to the reason of the name’s being appropriated to James and John, conjectures equally numerous and various may be found in the same learned work; but all equally unsatisfactory. Lampe also is very full on this point. (Prolegomena to a Johannine Theology cap. I. lib. ii. §§ 9‒15.

HIS FAMILY AND CALL.

Of the first introduction of this apostle to Jesus, it may be reasonably conjectured, that he formed an acquaintance with him at the same time with his brother John and the sons of Jonah, as already commemorated in the former lives, from the brief record in the first chapter of John’s gospel. After this, he and his brother, as well as Peter and Andrew, returned quietly to their honest business of fishing on the lake of Gennesaret, on whose shore, no doubt, was their home,――perhaps too, in Bethsaida or Capernaum, as their intimacy and fellowship with the sons of Jonah would seem to imply a vicinity of residence; though their common occupation might bring them frequently together in circumstances where friendly assistance was mutually needed; and the idea of their residence in some other of the numerous villages along the northern end of the lake, on either side, is not inconsistent with any circumstance specified in their history. In their occupation of fishing, they were accompanied by their father Zebedee, who it seems, was not so far advanced in years as to be unable to aid his sons in this very laborious and dangerous business; which makes it quite apparent that James and John being the sons of so active a man, must themselves have but just attained manhood, at the time when they are first mentioned. Respecting the character of this brisk old gentleman, unfortunately very few data indeed are preserved; and the vagueness of the impression made by his name, though so often repeated in connection with his sons, may be best conceived by reference to that deeply enigmatical question, with which grave persons of mature age are sometimes wont to puzzle the inquisitive minds of young aspirants after Biblical knowledge, “Who was the father of Zebedee’s children?”――a query which certainly implies a great deficiency of important facts, on which the curious learner could found a definite idea of this somewhat distinguished character. Indeed “the mother of Zebedee’s children” seems to posses in the minds of most readers of the gospels a much more prominent place than “the father of them;” for the simple occasion on which she presents herself to notice, is of such a nature as to show that she was the parent from whom the sons inherited at least one prominent trait,――that of high, aspiring ambition, with which, in them as well as in her, was joined a most decidedly comfortable degree of self-esteem, that would not allow them to suspect that other people could be at all behind them in appreciating those talents, which in their own opinion, and their fond mother’s, showed that they were “born to command.” Indeed it appears manifest, that there was much more “thunder” in her composition, than in her husband’s, and it is but fair to suppose, from the decided way in which she put herself forward in the family affairs, on at least one important occasion, without any pretension whatever on his part, to any right of interference or decision, that she must have been in the habit of having her own way in most matters;――a peculiar prominence in the domestic administration, very naturally resulting from the ♦circumstance, that her husband’s frequent long absences from home must have left the responsibilities of the family often upon her alone, and he, like a prudent man, on his return, may have valued domestic quiet above the maintenance of any very decided supremacy. If the supposition may be adopted, however, that Zebedee died soon after the call of his sons, the silence of the sacred record respecting him is easily accounted for, and the above conclusion as to his domestic management, may be considered unnecessarily derogatory to his dignity of character.

♦ “cirstance” replaced with “circumstance”

Sprung from such parents, and brought up by them on the shores and waters of Gennesaret, James had learned the humble business of his father, and was quietly devoting himself to the labors of a fisherman, probably never dreaming of an occasion that should ever call forth his slumbering energies in “thunder,” or hold up before his awakened ambition, the honors of a name that should outlast the wreck of kingdoms, and of the brightest glories of that age. But on the morning, when the sons of Jonah received the high call and commission to become “fishers of men,” James and his brother too,――at the solemn command, “Follow me,”――laid down their nets, and left the low labors and amusements of the fishing, to their father, who toiled on with his servants, while his sons went forth through Galilee, following him who had called them to a far higher vocation. No acts whatever are commemorated, as performed by them in this first pilgrimage; and it was not until after their return from the north of Galilee, and the beginning of their journey to Jerusalem, that the occasion arose, when their striking family trait of ambition was most remarkably brought out.

HIS AMBITIOUS CLAIMS.

Their intellectual and moral qualities being of a comparatively high order, had already attracted the very favorable attention of Jesus, during the first journey though Galilee; and they had already, on at least two occasions, received most distinguishing marks of his regard,――they alone of all the twelve, sharing in the honor of being present with Peter at the raising of the daughter of Jairus, and being still more highly favored by the view of the solemn events of the night of the transfiguration, amid the thunders of Hermon. On that occasion, the terrors of the scene overcame even their aspiring souls; and when the cloud burst over them, they both sunk to the earth, in speechless dread, along with Peter, too, who had previously manifested so much greater self-command than they, in daring to address in complaisant words the awful forms before them; while they remained silent with terror at a phenomenon for which their views of their Master’s character had but poorly prepared them. From all these prostrating terrors they had since, however, fully recovered, and were now completely restored to their former confidence in themselves, and were still rooted in their old views of the Messiah’s earthly glories,――in this particular, however, only sharing the common error of the whole twelve. In this state of mind, looking upon Jesus Christ only as an ambitious man, of powerful mind, vast knowledge, divine consecration, and miraculous gifts, which fitted him for the subversion of the Roman dominion, and the erection of a kingdom of his own,――their thoughts were all the while running on the division of the spoils and honors, which would be the reward of the chief followers of the conqueror; and in this state of mind, they were prepared to pervert all the declarations of Jesus, so as to make them harmonize with their own hopes and notions. While on this journey southward, to Jerusalem, after they had passed into the eastern sections of Judea, beyond the Jordan, Jesus was one day, in answer to an inquiry from Peter, promising his disciples a high reward for the sacrifices they had made in his service; and assuring them, that in return for houses or lands or relatives or friends, left for his name’s sake, they should all receive a return, a hundred-fold greater than the loss. Especially were their fancies struck by a vivid picture, which he presented to their minds, of the high rewards accruing to all the twelve, declaring that after the completion of the change which he was working, and when he had taken his own imperial throne, they should sit around him on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Here was a prospect, enough to satisfy the most aspiring ambition; but along with the hopes now awakened, arose also some queries about the preference of places in this throned triumph, which were not easily settled so as to satisfy all at once. In the proposed arrangement, it was perfectly evident, that of the whole circle of thrones, by far the most honorable locations would be those immediately on the right and left of the Messiah-king; and their low ambition set them at once contriving how to get these pre-eminent places for themselves. Of all the apostolic band, none could so fairly claim the right hand throne as Peter; already pronounced the Rock on which the church should be founded, and commissioned as the keeper of the keys of the kingdom. But Peter’s devotion to his Master seems to have been of too pure a character, to let him give any thought to the mere rewards of the victory, so long as he could feel sure of the full return of that burning affection to his Lord, with which his own ardent soul glowed; and he left it to others to settle points of precedency and the division of rewards. On no occasion throughout his whole life, is there recorded any evidence of the slightest disposition to claim the mere honors of a pre-eminence, though his superior force of character made the whole band instinctively look to him for guidance, on all times of trouble and danger, after the ascension. His modest, confiding, disinterested affection for his Master, indeed, was the main ground of all the high distinctions conferred on him so unsparingly by Jesus, who would have been very slow to honor thus, one who was disposed to grow proud or overbearing under the possession of these favors. But this very character of modesty and uncalculating affection, gave occasion also to the other disciples, to push themselves forward for a claim to those peculiar exaltations, which his indifference to personal advancement seemed to leave unoccupied, for the more ambitious to assume. In this instance, particularly, James and John were so far moved with the desire of the enviable distinction of this primacy, that they made it a matter of family consultation, and accordingly brought the case before their fondly ambitious mother, who instantly determined that the great object should be achieved before any one else could secure the chance for the place; and resolved to use her influence in favor of her darling sons. On the first favorable opportunity she therefore went with them to Jesus; and, as it would appear by the combination of the accounts of Matthew and Mark, both she and they presented the request at once and together,――James and John, however, prefacing the declaration of their exact purpose by a general petition for unlimited favor,――“Master, we would that thou shouldst do for us whatever we desire?” To this modest petition, Jesus replied by asking, “What would ye that I should grant?” They, with their mother, falling down at his feet in fawning, selfish worship, then urged their grand request:――“Grant,” said the ambitious Salome, “that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left, when thou reignest in thy glory.” Jesus, fully appreciating the miserable state of selfish ignorance which inspired the hope and the question, in order to show them their ignorance, and to make them express their minds more fully, assured them that they knew not the meaning of their own request, and asked them whether they were able to drink of the cup that he should drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that he should be baptized with? With unhesitating self-conceit, they answered, “We are able.” But Jesus replied in such a tone as to check all further solicitation of this kind from them, or from any other of his hearers. “Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with; but to sit on my right hand and on my left, is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared by my father.”――“The cup of sorrow, and suffering, and agony,――the baptism of spirit, fire, and blood,――of these you shall all drink in a solemn and mournful reality, which you are now far from conceiving; but the high places of the kingdom which I come to found, are not to be disposed of to those who think to forestall my personal favor; they are for the blessed of my father, who, in the time appointed in his own good pleasure, will give it to them, in the end of days.” The disappointed family of Zebedee retired, quite confounded with the rejection of their petition, and with the darkly told prophecy that accompanied it, dooming them to some mysterious fate of which they could form no idea whatever. The rest of the twelve, hearing of the ambitious attempt of the sons of Zebedee to secure the supremacy, by a secret movement, and by family influence, were moved with great indignation against the intriguing aspirants, and expressed their displeasure so decidedly, that Jesus called them around him, to improve this manifestation of folly and passion, to their advantage; and said, “You know that the nations are governed by princes and lords, and that none exercise authority over them but the great ones of the land. Now it shall not be so among you; but he who will be great among you, must be your servant; and he who shall be your chief, shall be the slave of all the rest. For even the Son of Man himself came not to make others his slaves, but to be himself a slave to many, and even to sacrifice his life in their service.”

Salome.――The reason for the supposition that this was really the name of the mother of James, consists in the comparison of two corresponding passages of Matthew and Mark. In Matthew xxvii. 56, it is said that among the women present at the crucifixion, were “Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.” In the parallel passage, Mark xv. 40, they are mentioned as “Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James and Joses, and Salome.” In Mark xvi. 1, Salome is also mentioned among those who went to the sepulcher. This is not proof positive, but it is reasonable ground for the supposition, more especially as Matthew never mentions Salome by name, but repeatedly speaks of “the mother of Zebedee’s children.”

If, as is probable then, Salome and the mother of Zebedee’s children were identical, it is also reasonable to suppose, as Lampe does, that Zebedee himself may have died soon after the time when the call of his sons took place. For Salome could hardly have left her husband and family, to go, as she did, with Jesus on his journeys, ministering to his necessities,――but if her husband was really dead, she would have but few ties to confine her at home, and would therefore very naturally be led, by her maternal affection, and anxiety for her sons, to accompany them in their wandering life. The supposition of Zebedee’s death is also justified by the circumstance, that John is spoken of in his own gospel, (John xix. 27,) as possessing a house of “his own,” which seems to imply the death of his father; since so young a man would hardly have acquired property, except by inheritance.

Thus he laid out before them all the indispensable qualities of the man who aspired to the dangerous, painful and unenviable primacy among them,――humility, meekness and laborious industry. But vain were all the earnest teachings of his divine spirit. Schemes and hopes of worldly eminence and imperial dominion, were too deeply rooted in their hearts, to be displaced by this oft-repeated view of the labors and trials of his service. Already, on a former occasion too, had he tried to impress them with the true spirit of the apostleship. When on the way to Capernaum, at the close of this journey through Galilee, they had disputed among themselves on the question, which of them should be the prime minister of their Messiah-king, when he had established his heavenly reign in all the dominions of his father David. On their meeting with him in the house at Capernaum, he brought up this point of difference. Setting a little child before them, (probably one of Peter’s children, as it was in his house,) and taking the little innocent into his arms, he assured them that unless they should become utterly changed in disposition and in hope, and become like that little child in simplicity of character, they should have no share whatever, in the glories of that kingdom, which was to them an object of so many ambitious aspirations. But neither this charge nor the repetition of it, could yet avail to work that necessary change in their feelings. Still they all lived on in vain and selfish hope, scheming for personal aggrandizement, till the progress of events bringing calamity and trial upon them, had purified their hearts, and fully fitted them for the duties of the great office to which they had so unthinkingly devoted themselves. Then indeed, did the aspiring James receive, in a deeper sense than he had ever dreamed of, the reward for which he now longed and begged;――drinking first of the cup of agony, and baptized first in blood, he ascended first to the place on the right hand of the Messiah in his eternal kingdom. But years of toil and sorrow, seen and felt, were his preparation for this glorious crown.

James has also been made the subject of a long series of fables, though the early termination of his apostolic career would seem to leave no room whatever, for the insertion of any very great journeys and labors upon the authentic history. But the Spaniards, in the general rage for claiming some apostle as a national patron saint, long ago got up the most absurd fiction, that James, the son of Zebedee, during the period intervening between Christ’s ascension and his own execution at Jerusalem, actually performed a voyage over the whole length of the Mediterranean, into Spain, where he remained several years, preaching, founding churches, and performing miracles, and returned to Jerusalem in time for the occurrence of the concluding event, as recorded in the twelfth chapter of Acts. This story probably originated in the same manner as that suggested to account for the fables about Andrew; that is,――that some preacher of Christianity, of this name, in a later age, actually did travel into Spain, there preaching the gospel, and founding churches; and that his name being deservedly remembered, was, in the progress of the corruptions of the truth, confounded with that of the apostle James, son of Zebedee,――this James being selected rather than the son of Alpheus, because the latter had already been established by tradition, as the hero of a story quite inconsistent with any Spanish journey, and being also less dignified by the Savior’s notice. Be that as it may, Saint James (Santo Jago) is to this day esteemed the patron saint of Spain, and his tomb is shown in Compostella, in that kingdom; for they will have it, that, after his decapitation by Herod Agrippa, his body was brought all the way over the sea, to Spain, and there buried in the scene of his toils and miracles. A Spanish order of knighthood, that of St. Jago de Compostella, takes its name from this notion.

The old romancer, Abdias Babylonius, who is so rich in stories about Andrew, has much to tell about James, and enters at great length into the details of his crucifixion; crowning the whole with the idle story, that when he was led to death, his accuser, Josiah, a Pharisee, suddenly repenting, begged his forgiveness and professed his faith in Christ,――for which he also was beheaded along with him, after being baptized by James in some water that was handed to him by the executioner, in a calabash. (Abdias Babylonius, History of the Apostolical Contest, IV. § 9.)

From the time of this event, there occurs no mention whatever of any act of James, until the commemoration of the occasion of his exit; and even this tragic circumstance is mentioned so briefly, that nothing can be learned but the mere fact and manner of his death. On the occasion fully described above, in the life of Peter, Herod Agrippa I. seized this apostle, and at once put him to death by the executioner’s sword. The particular grounds, on which this act of bloody cruelty was justified by the tyrant and his friends, are wholly unknown. Probably there was a pretence at a set accusation of some crime, which would make the act appear less atrocious at the time, than appears from Luke’s silence as to the grounds of the proceeding. The remarkable prominence of James, however, was enough to offer a motive to the popularity-seeking Agrippa, whose main object, being to “please the Jews,” led him to seize those who had most displeased them, by laboring for the advancement of the Nazarene heresy. And that this actually was his governing principle in selecting his victims, is made further apparent by the circumstance that Peter, the great chief of the band, was next marked for destruction. Though no particular acts of James are recorded as having made him prominently obnoxious to the Jews, yet there is every reason to believe, that the exalted ardor and now chastened ambition of this Son of Thunder, had made him often the bold assaulter of sophistry and hypocrisy,――a heroism which at once sealed his doom, and crowned him with the glory of THE APOSTOLIC PROTO-MARTYR.

JOHN;
THE SON OF ZEBEDEE.

HIS CHARACTER.

This other son of Zebedee and of “thunder,” whenever any description of the apostles has been given, has been by most religious writers generally characterized as a mild, amiable person, and is thus figured in strong contrast with the bold and often bitter spirit of Peter. The circumstance that he is described as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” has doubtless done much to cause the almost universal impression which has prevailed, as to the meekness of his disposition. But this is certainly without just reason; for there is no ground for supposing that any peculiar softness was essential to the formation of the character for which the Redeemer could feel a strong affection. On the contrary, the almost universal behavior of the apostolic band, seems to show that the natural characteristics which he marked as betraying in them the deeper qualities that would best fit them for his service, and qualify them as the sharers of his intimate instruction and affection, were more decidedly of the stern and fiery order, than of the meek and gentle. Nor is there any circumstance recorded of John, whether authentic or fabulous, that can justify the supposition that he was an exception to these general, natural characteristics of the apostles; but instances sufficiently numerous are given in the gospels, to make it clear, that he was not altogether the soft and gentle creature, that has been commonly presented as his true image.

It has been commonly supposed that he was the youngest of all the apostles; nor is there any reason to disbelieve an opinion harmonizing, as this does, with all that is recorded of him in the New Testament, as well as with the undivided voices of all tradition. That he was younger than James, may be reasonably concluded from the circumstance that he is always mentioned after him, though his importance in the history of the foundation of the Christian faith might seem to justify an inversion of this order; and in the life of James, it has already been represented as probable, that he too must have been quite young, being the son of a father who was still so much in the freshness of his vigor, as to endure the toils of a peculiarly laborious and dangerous business. On this point, also, the opinion even of tradition is entitled to some respect, on the ground taken by an author quoted in the life of Peter,――that though we consider tradition as a notorious liar, yet we may give some attention to its reports, because even a liar may sometimes speak the truth, where he has no object in deceiving us.

The youngest of the disciples.――All that can be said on this opinion is, that it is possible, and if the testimony of the Fathers were worth the slightest consideration on any historical question concerning the apostles, it might be called even probable; but no early writer alludes to his age at all, till Jerome, who very decidedly calls John, “the youngest of all the apostles.” Several later Fathers make the same assertion, but the voice of antiquity has already been shown to be worth very little, when it is not heard within three centuries of the events on which it offers its testimony. But at any rate the assertion of John’s juniority is not improbable.

A great deal of violent discussion has been lavished on the almost equally important question, whether John was ever married. The earliest established testimony on this point is that of Tertullian, who numbers John among those who had restrained themselves from matrimony for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Testimony as late as the third century, however, on an opinion which favored monastic views, is worth nothing. But on the strength of this, many Fathers have made great use of John, as an instance of celibacy, accordant with monastic principles. Epiphanius, Jerome and Augustin allude frequently to the circumstance, the latter Father in particular insisting that John was engaged to be married when he was called, but gave up the lady, to follow Jesus. Some ingenious modern theologians have even improved upon this so far as to maintain that the marriage of Cana in Galilee was that of John, but that he immediately left his wife after the miracle. (See Lampe, Prolegomena, I. i. 13, notes.)

HIS FAMILY AND BUSINESS.

The authentic history of the life of this apostle must also necessarily be very brief; most of the prominent incidents which concern him, having already been abundantly described in the preceding lives. But there are particulars which have not been so fully entered into, some of which concern this apostle exclusively, while in others he is mentioned only in conjunction with his brother and friends; and these may all, with great propriety, be more fully given in this life, since his eminence, his writings, and long protracted labors, make him a proper subject for a minute disquisition.

Being the son of Zebedee and Salome, as has already been mentioned in the life of his brother, he shared in the low fortunes and laborious life of a fisherman, on the lake of Gennesaret. This occupation indeed, did not necessarily imply the very lowest rank in society, as is evident from the fact that the Jews held no useful occupation to be beneath the dignity of a respectable person, or even a learned man. Still the nature of their business was such, as to render it improbable that they had adopted it with any other view than that of maintaining themselves by it, or of enlarging their property, though perhaps not of earning a support which they had no other means whatever of procuring. It has been said, that doubtless, there were many other inhabitants of the shores of the lake, who occasionally occupied themselves in fishing, and yet were by no means obliged to employ themselves constantly in that avocation. But the brief statement of circumstances in the gospels is enough to show that such an equipage of boats and nets, and such steady employment all night, were not indicative of anything else than a regular devotion of time to it, in the way of business. Yet that Zebedee was not a man in very low circumstances, as to property, is quite manifest from Mark’s statement, that when they were called, they left their father in the vessel, along with the “servants,” or workmen,――which implies that they carried on their fishing operations, on so extended a scale, as to have a number of men in their service, and probably had a vessel of considerable size, since it needed such a plurality of hands to manage it, and use the apparatus of the business to advantage; a circumstance in which their condition seems to have been somewhat superior to that of Peter and Andrew, of whom no such particulars are specified,――all accounts representing them as alone, in a small vessel, which they were able to manage of themselves. The possession of some family estate is also implied, in numerous incidental allusions in the gospels; as in the fact that their mother Salome was one of those women who followed Jesus and “ministered to him of their substance” or possessions. She is also specified among those women who brought precious spices for embalming the body of Jesus. John is also mentioned in his own gospel, as having a house of his own, in which he generously supported the mother of Jesus, as if he himself had been her son, throughout the remainder of her life; an act of friendly and pious kindness to which he would not have been competent, without the possession of some property in addition to the house.

HIS EDUCATION.

There is reason to suppose, that in accordance with the established principles of parental duty among the Jews, he had learned the rudiments of the knowledge of the Mosaic law; for a proverbial sentence of the religious teachers of the nation, ranked among the vilest of mankind, that Jew, who suffered a son to grow up without being educated in the first principles, at least, of his national religion. But that his knowledge, at the time when he first became a disciple of Jesus, extended beyond a barely respectable degree of information on religious matters, there is no ground for believing; and though there is nothing which directly contradicts the idea that he may have known the alphabet, or have made some trifling advances in literary knowledge,――yet the manner in which he, together with Peter, was spoken of by the proud members of the Sanhedrim, seems to imply that they did not pretend to any knowledge whatever of literature. And the terms in which both Jesus and his disciples are constantly alluded to by the learned scribes and Pharisees, seem to show that they were all considered as utterly destitute of literary education, though, by reason of that very ignorance, they were objects of the greatest wonder to all who saw their striking displays of a religious knowledge, utterly unaccountable by a reference to anything that was known of their means of arriving at such intellectual eminence. Indeed, there seems to have been a distinct design on the part of Christ, to select for his great purpose, men whose minds were wholly free from that pride of opinion and learned arrogance, almost inseparable from the constitutions of those who had been regularly trained in the subtleties of a slavish system of theology and law. He did not seek among the trained and drilled scholars of the formal routine of Jewish dogmatism, for the instruments of regenerating a people and a world,――but among the bold, active, and intelligent, yet uneducated Galileans, whose provincial peculiarities and rudeness, moreover, in a high degree incapacitated them from taking rank among the polished scholars of the Jewish capital. Thus was it, that on the followers of Christ, could never he put the stigma of mere theological disputants; and all the gifts of knowledge, and the graces of mental power, which they displayed under his divine teachings, were totally free from the slightest suspicion of any other than a miraculous origin. Some have, indeed, attempted to conjecture, from the alleged elegance of John’s style in his gospel and epistles, that he had early received a finished education, in some one of the provincial Jewish colleges; and have even gone so far as to suggest, that probably Jairus, “the ruler of the synagogue” in Capernaum, or more properly, “the head of the school of the law,” had been his instructor,――a guess of most remarkable profundity, but one that, besides lacking all sort of evidence or probability, is furthermore made totally unnecessary, by the indubitable fact, that no signs of any such perfection of style are noticeable in any of the writings of John, so as to require any elaborate hypothesis of this kind to explain them. The greatest probability is, that all his knowledge, both of Hebrew literature and the Greek language, was acquired after the beginning of his apostolic course.

HIS NAME.

The Jews were accustomed, like most of the ancient nations of the east, to confer upon their children significant names, which were made to refer to some circumstance connected with the person’s prospects, or the hopes of his parents respecting him. In their son’s name, probably Zebedee and Salome designed to express some idea auspicious of his progress and character in after life. The name “John,” is not only common in the New Testament, but also occurs in the Hebrew scriptures in the original form “Johanan,” which bears the happy signification of “the favor of Jehovah,” or, “favored by Jehovah.” They probably had this meaning in mind when they gave the name to him, and on that account preferred it to one of less hopeful religious character; but to suppose, as some commentators have, that in conferring it, they were indued with a prophetic spirit, which for the moment directed them to the choice of an appellation expressive of the high destiny of a chosen, favored herald of the grace of God, to Israel and to the Gentiles,――is a conjecture too absurdly wild to be entertained by a sober and discreet critic for a moment. Yet there are some, who, in the rage for finding a deep meaning in the simplest matters, interpret this simple, common name, as prophetically expressive of the beginning of the reign of grace, and of the abrogation of the formal law of Moses, first announced by John the Baptist, whose testimony was first fully recorded in the gospel of John the Apostle. Such idle speculations, however, serve no useful purpose, and only bring suspicion upon more rational investigations in the same department.

HIS CALL AND DISCIPLESHIP.

The first introduction of John to Jesus, appears to be distinctly, though modestly, described by himself, in the first chapter of his gospel, where he has evidently designated himself in the third person, as “the other disciple” of John the Baptist, who accompanied Andrew on his first visit to Jesus. After this introduction above narrated, he seems to have remained near the newly found Messiah for some days, being of course, included among those disciples who were present at the marriage in Cana. He appears to have returned, soon after, to his avocation on the lake, where he, for some time, appears to have followed the business in which he had been brought up, till the word of his already adopted Master came to summon him to the actual duties of the discipleship. On the journeys that followed this call, he was engaged in no act of importance, in which he was not also associated with those disciples, in whose lives these incidents have been already fully described. On one occasion however, a solitary instance is recorded by Luke, of a remark made by John, during a conversation which took place in Capernaum, after the return from the mission through Galilee, and not long before the great journey to Jerusalem. It seems to have been at the time when Jesus was inculcating a child-like simplicity, as an essential characteristic of his followers; and the remark of John is, both by Mark and Luke, prefaced with the words,――“and John answered and said,”――though no very clear connection can be traced between what he said and the preceding words of Jesus. The passage however is interesting, as showing that John was not always most discreet in his regard for the peculiar honors of his Master,――and in the case which he refers to, had in his restrictive zeal, quite gone beyond the rules of action, by which Jesus expected him to be guided. The remark of John on this occasion was,――“Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and we forbade him, because he followeth not with us.” This confession betrays a spirit still strongly under the influence of worldly feelings, manifesting a perfectly natural emotion of jealousy, at the thought of any intrusion, upon what he deemed the peculiar and exclusive privilege of himself and his eleven associates in the fellowship of Christ. The high commission of subduing the malign agencies of the demoniac powers, had been specially conferred on the elect twelve, when they first went forth on the apostolic errand. This divine power, John had supposed utterly above the reach of common men, and it was therefore with no small surprise, and moreover with some indignant jealousy, that he saw a nameless person, not enrolled in the sacred band, nor even pretending to follow in any part of their train, boldly and successfully using the name of Jesus Christ, as a charm to silence the powers of darkness, and to free the victims of their evil influences. This sort of feeling was not peculiar to John, but occurs wherever there arises a similar occasion to suggest it. It has been rife among the religious, as well as the worldly, in all ages; and not a month now passes when it is not openly manifested, marring by its low influences, the noblest schemes of Christian benevolence, as well as checking the advances of human ambition. So many there are who, though imbued in some degree with the high spirit of apostolic devotion, yet, when they have marked some great field of benevolence for their efforts, are apt to regard it as their own peculiar province, and are disposed to view any action in that department of exertion as an intrusion and an encroachment on their natural rights. This feeling is the worst characteristic of ultra-sectarianism,――a spirit which would “compass sea and land,” not merely “to gain one proselyte,” but also to hinder a religious rival from the attainment of a similar purpose,――a spirit which in its modes of manifestation, and in its results, is nearer to that of the demon it aspires to expel, than to that of Him in whose name it professes to work. But that such was not the spirit of Him who went about doing good, is seen in the mild, yet earnest reply with which he met the manifestation of this haughty and jealous exclusiveness in his beloved disciple. “Forbid him not; for there is no man who can do a miracle in my name, who will lightly speak evil of me. For he who is not against us is on our part.” And then referring to the previous train of his discourse, he went on to say,――“For he who shall give you a cup of water in my name, because you belong to Christ, I tell you, indeed, he shall not lose his reward.” So simple were the means of manifesting a true regard for Christ, and so moderate were the services which would constitute a claim to his remembrance, and to a participation in the rights of his ministry. If the act of kindness or of apostolic ministration had been done in his name, and had answered its good purpose, this was enough to show that he who performed it was such a friend as, so far from speaking evil of Jesus, would insure the best glory of his name, though he had not attached himself in manner and form to the train of regular disciples. Jesus Christ did not require a formal profession of regular discipleship, as essential to the right of doing good in his name, or to the surety of a high and pure reward. How many are there among his professed followers in these times, who are “able to receive this saying?” There are few indeed, who, hearing it on any authority but his, would not feel disposed to reject it, at once, as a grievous heresy. Yet such was, unquestionably, the spirit, the word, and the practice of Jesus. It was enough for him to know that the weight of human woe, which called him forth on his errand of mercy, was lightened; and that the spirit before darkened and bound down by the powers of evil, was now brought out into glorious light and freedom. Most earnestly did he declare this solemn principle of catholic communion; and most distinctly did he reiterate it in a varied form. The simplest act of kindness done to the commissioned of Christ, would, of itself, constitute a certain claim to his divine favor. But, on the other hand, the least wilful injury of one sent forth from him, would at once insure the ruin of the perpetrator.

Soon after this solemn inculcation of universal charity, Jesus began to prepare his disciples for their great journey to Jerusalem; and at last having completed his preliminary arrangements, he went on his way, sending forward messengers, (James and John, as it would seem,) to secure a comfortable stopping-place, at a Samaritan village which lay on his road. These select emissaries accordingly proceeded in the execution of their honorable commission, and entering the village, announced to the inhabitants the approach of the far-famed Galilean prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, who, being then on his way to attend the great annual feast in Jerusalem, would that night deign to honor their village with his divine presence;――all which appears to have been communicated by the two messengers, with a full sense of the importance of their commission, as well as of the dignity of him whose approach they announced. But the sturdy Samaritans had not yet forgotten the rigid principles of mutual exclusiveness, which had so long been maintained between them and the Jews, with all the combined bitterness of a national and a religious quarrel; and so they doggedly refused to open their doors in hospitality to one whose “face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.” At this manifestation of sectarian and sectional bitterness, the wrath of the messengers knew no bounds, and reporting their inhospitable and scornful rejection to Jesus, the two Boanerges, with a spirit quite literally accordant with their surname, inquired, “Lord! wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them as Elijah did?” The stern prophet of the days of Ahaziah, had called down fire from heaven to the destruction of two successive bands of the insolent myrmidons of the Samaritan king; and might not the wonder-doing Son of Man, with equal vindictiveness, commission his faithful followers to invoke the thunder on the inhospitable sectaries of the modern Samaritan race? But however this sort of summary justice might suit the wrathful piety of James and his “amiably gentle” brother, it was by Jesus deemed the offspring of a spirit too far from the forgiving benevolence of his gospel, to be passed by, unrebuked. He therefore turned reprovingly to these fierce “Sons of Thunder,” with the reply,――“Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” And thus silencing their forward, destructive zeal, he quietly turned aside from the inhospitable sectarians who had refused him admission, and found entertainment in another village, where the inhabitants were free from such notions of religious exclusiveness.

So idolatrous was the reference with which many of the Fathers and ancient theologians were accustomed to regard the apostles, that they would not allow that these chosen ones of Christ ever committed any sin whatever; at least, none after their calling to be disciples. Accordingly, the most ridiculous attempts have been made to justify or excuse the faults and errors of those apostles, who are mentioned in the New Testament as having committed any act contrary to the received standards of right. Among other circumstances, even Peter’s perjured denial of his Lord, has found stubborn defenders and apologists; and among the saintly commentators of both Papist and Protestant faiths, have been found some to stand up for the immaculate soundness of James and John, in this act of wicked and foolish zeal. Ambrose of Milan, in commenting on this passage, must needs maintain that their ferocity was in accordance with approved instances of a similar character in the Old Testament. “Nec discipuli peccant,” says he, “qui legem sequuntur;” and he then refers to the instance of extemporaneous vindictive justice in Phineas, as well as to that of Elijah, which was quoted by the sons of Zebedee themselves. He argues, that, since the apostles were indued with the same high privileges as the prophets, they were in this instance abundantly justified in appealing to such authority for similar acts of vengeance. He observes, moreover, that this presumption was still farther justified in them, by the name which they had received from Jesus; “being ‘sons of thunder,’ they might fairly suppose that fire would come down from heaven at their word.” But Lampe very properly remarks, that the prophets were clearly moved to these acts of wrathful justice, by the Holy Spirit, and thereby also, were justified in a vindictiveness, which might otherwise be pronounced cruel and bloody. The evidence of this spirit-guidance, those old prophets had, in the instantaneous fiery answer from heaven, to their denunciatory prayer; but on the other hand, in this case, the words of Jesus in reply to the Sons of Thunder, show that they were not actuated by a holy spirit, nor by the Holy Spirit, for he says to them, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of,”――which certainly implies that they were altogether mistaken in supposing that the spirit and power of Elijah rested on them, to authorize such wide-wasting and indiscriminate ruin of innocent and guilty,――women and children, as well as men, inhabiting the village; and he rebukes and condemns their conduct for the very reason that it was the result of an unholy and sinful spirit.

Yet, not only the Romish Ambrose, but also the Protestant Calvin, has, in his idolatrous reverence for the infallibility of the apostles, (an idolatry hardly less unchristian than the saint-worship against which he strove,) thought it necessary to condemn and rebuke Maldonado, as guilty of a detestable presumption, in declaring the sons of Zebedee to have been lifted up with a foolish arrogance. On the arguments by which Calvin justifies James and John, Lampe well remarks, that the great reformer uses a truly Jesuitical weapon, (propria vineta caedit Loyolita,) when he says that “they desired vengeance not for themselves, but for Christ; and were not led into error by any fault, but merely by ignorance of the spirit of the gospel and of Christ.” But was not this ignorance itself a sin, showing itself thus in the very face of all the oft-repeated admonitions of Jesus against this bloody spirit, even in his or any cause? and of all his inculcations of a universal rule of forbearance and forgiveness?

John is not mentioned again in the gospel history, until near the close of the Savior’s labors, when he was about to prepare his twelve chosen ones, for the great change which awaited their condition, by long and earnest instruction, and by prayer. In making the preliminary arrangements for this final meeting, John was sent along with Peter, to see that a place was provided for the entertainment. After this commission had been satisfactorily executed, they joined with Jesus and the rest of the twelve disciples in the Paschal feast, each taking a high place at the board, and John in particular reclining next to Jesus. As a testimony of the intimate affection between them, it is recorded by this apostle himself in his gospel, that during the feast he lay on Jesus’s breast,――a position which, though very awkward, and even impossible, in the modern style of conducting feasts in the sitting posture, was yet rendered both easy and natural, in the ancient mode, both Oriental and Roman, of reclining on couches around the table. Under these circumstances, those sharing the same part of the couch, whose feelings of affection led them most readily together,――such a position as that described by John, would occur very naturally and gracefully. It here, in connection with John’s own artless, but expressive sentence, mentioning himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved, presents to the least imaginative mind, a most beautifully striking picture of the state of feeling between the young disciple and his Lord,――showing how closely their spirits were drawn together, in an affection of the most sacred and interesting character, far surpassing the paternal and filial relation in the high and pure nature of the feeling, because wholly removed from the mere animalities and instincts that form and modify so much of all natural love. The regard between these two beings was by no means essentially dependent on any striking similarity of mind or feeling. John had very little of that mild and gentle temperament which so decidedly characterized the Redeemer;――he had none of that spirit of meekness and forgiveness which Jesus so often and earnestly inculcated; but a fierce, fiery, thundering zeal, arising from a temperament, ardent alike in anger and in love. Nor was such a character at all discordant with the generality of those for whom Jesus seemed to feel a decided preference. There is no one among the apostolic band, whether Galilean or Hellenistic, of whose characters any definite idea is given, that does not seem to be marked most decidedly by the fiercer and harsher traits. Yet like those of all children of nature, the same hearts seem to glow, upon occasion, as readily with affectionate as with wrathful feeling, both, in many instances, combining in their affection for Jesus. The whole gospel record, as far as the twelve disciples are concerned, is a most satisfactory comment on the characteristics ascribed by Josephus to the whole Galilean race,――“ardent and fierce.” And this was the very temperament which recommended them before all men in the world, for the great work of laying the deep foundations of the Christian faith, amid opposition, hatred, confusion, and blood. And among these wild, but ardent dispositions, did even the mild spirit of the Redeemer find much that was congenial to its frame, as well as its purposes; for in them, his searching eye recognized faculties which, turned from the base ends of worldly strife and low, brawling contest, might be exalted, by a mere modification, and not eradication, to the great works of divine benevolence. The same temperament that once led the ardent Galileans into selfish quarrels, under the regenerating influences of a holy spirit, might be trained to a high devoted self-sacrifice for the good of others; and the valor which once led them to disregard danger and death in spiteful enmity, could, after an assimilation to the spirit of Jesus, be made equally energetic in the dangerous labors of the cause of universal love. Such is most clearly the spirit of the Galilean disciples, as far as any character can be recognized in the brief, artless sketches, incidentally given of them in the New Testament history. Nor is there any good reason to mark John as an exception to these harsher attributes. The idea, now so very common, of his softness and amiability, seems to have grown almost entirely out of the circumstance, that he was “the disciple whom Jesus loved;” as if the high spirit of the Redeemer could feel no sympathy with such traits as bravery, fierce energy, or even aspiring ambition. Tempted originally by the great source of evil, yet without sin, he himself knew by what spiritual revolutions the impulses which once led only to evil, could be made the guides to truth and love, and could see, even in the worst manifestations of that fiery ardor, the disguised germ of a holy zeal, which, under his long, anxious, prayerful care and cultivation, would become a tree of life, bringing forth fruits of good for nations. Even in these low, depraved mortals, therefore, he could find much to love,――nor is the circumstance of his affectionate regard, in itself, any proof that John was deficient in the most striking characteristics of his countrymen; and that he was not so, there is proof positive and unquestionable in those details of his own and his brother’s conduct, already given.

At this Paschal feast, lying, as described, on the bosom of Jesus, he passed the parting hours in most intimate communion with his already doomed Lord. And so close was their proximity, and so peculiarly favored was he, by the confidential conversation of Jesus, that when all the disciples were moved with painful doubt and surprise at the mysterious annunciation that there was a traitor among them, Peter himself, trusting more to the opportunities of John than to his own, made a sign to him to put to his Master a question, to which he would be more likely to receive an answer than anybody else. The beloved disciple, therefore, looking up from the bosom of Jesus, into his face, with the confidence of familiar affection, asked him, “Who is it, Lord?” And to his eager inquiry, was vouchsafed at once a most unhesitating and satisfactory reply, marking out, in the most definite manner, the person intended by his former dark allusion.

After the scenes of Gethsemane, when the alarmed disciples fled from their captured Master, to avoid the same fate, John also shared in the race; but on becoming assured that no pursuit of the secondary members of the party was intended, he quietly walked back after the armed train, keeping, moreover, close to them, as appears by his arriving at the palace gate along with them, and entering with the rest. On his way, in the darkness, he fell in with his friend Peter, also anxiously following the train, to learn the fate of his Master. John now proved of great advantage to Peter; for, having some acquaintance with the high priest’s family, he might expect admission to the hall without difficulty. This incident is recorded only by John himself, in his gospel, where, in relating it, he refers to himself in the third person, as “another disciple,” according to his usual modest circumlocution. John, somehow or other, was well and favorably known to the high priest himself, for a very mysterious reason; but certainly the most unaccountable point in Bible history is this:――how could a faithful follower of the persecuted and hated Jesus, be thus familiar and friendly in the family of the most powerful and vindictive of the Jewish magnates? Nor can the difficulty be any way relieved, by supposing the expression, “another disciple” to refer to a person different from John; for all the disciples of Jesus would be equally unlikely persons for the intimacy of the Jewish high priest. Whatever might be the reason of this acquaintance, John was well-known throughout the family of the high priest, as a person high in favor and familiarity with that great dignitary; so that a single word from him to the portress, was sufficient to procure the admission of Peter also, who had stood without, not daring to enter as his brother apostle did, not having any warrant to do so on the ground of familiarity. Of the conduct of John during the trial of Jesus, or after it, no account whatever is given,――nor is he noticed in either of the gospels except his own, as present during any of these sad events; but by his story it appears, that, in the hour of darkness and horror, he stood by the cross of his beloved Lord, with those women who had been the constant servants of Jesus during life, and were now faithful, even through his death. Among these women was the mother of the Redeemer, who now stood in the most desolate agony, by the cross of her murdered son, without a home left in the world, or a person to whom she had a natural right to look for support. Just before the last agony, Jesus turned to the mournful group, and seeing his mother near the disciple whom he loved, he said, “Woman! behold thy son!” And then to John, “Behold thy mother!” The simple words were sufficient, without a gesture; for the nailed and motionless hands of Jesus could not point out to each, the person intended as the object of parental or filial regard. Nor was this commission, thus solemnly and affectingly given, neglected; for, as the same disciple himself assures us, “from that hour, he took her to his own house.” The highest token of affection and confidence that the Redeemer could confer, was this,――marking, as it did, a most pre-eminent regard, by committing to his charge a trust, that might with so much propriety have been committed to others of the twelve who were very nearly related to the mother of Jesus, being her own nephews, the sons of her sister. But so high was the confidence of Jesus in the sincerity of John’s affection, that he unhesitatingly committed to him this dearest earthly charge, trusting to his love for its keeping, rather than to the considerations of family, and of near relationship.

In the scenes of the resurrection, John is distinguished by the circumstance of his hurrying first, along with Peter, to the sepulcher, on hearing from the women the strange story of what had happened; and both hastening in the most intense anxiety to learn the nature of the occurrences which had so alarmed the women, the nimbleness of the youthful John soon carried him beyond Peter, and outstripping him in the anxious race, he came down to the sepulcher before him, and there stood, breathless, looking down into the place of the dead, in vain, for any trace of its late precious deposit. While he was thus glancing into the place, Peter came up, and with a much more considerate zeal, determined on a satisfactory search, and accordingly went down into the tomb himself, and narrowly searched all parts; and John, after his report, also then descended to assure himself that Peter had not been deceived by a too superficial examination of the inside. But having gone down into the tomb, and seen for himself the grave-clothes lying carefully rolled up, but no signs whatever of the body that had once occupied them, he also believed the report of the women, that the remains of Jesus had been stolen away in the night, probably by some ill-disposed persons, for an evil purpose, and perhaps to complete the bloody triumph of the Jews, by denying the body so honorable an interment as the wealthy Joseph had charitably given it. In distress and sorrowful doubt, therefore, he returned with Peter to his own house, without the slightest idea of the nature of the abstraction.

The next account of John is in that interesting scene, described in the last chapter of his own gospel, on the lake of Galilee, where Jesus met the seven disciples who went on the fishing excursion by night, as already detailed in the life of Simon Peter, who was the first to propose the thing, and who, in the scenes of the morning, acted the most conspicuous part. The only passage which immediately concerns John, is the concluding one, where the prophecy of Jesus is recorded respecting the future destiny of this beloved disciple. Peter, having heard his Master’s prophecy of the mode in which he should conclude his life, hoping to pry still farther into futurity, asked what would be the fate of John also. “Lord, what shall this man do?” which Jesus replied, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?”――an answer evidently meant to check his curiosity, without gratifying it in the least; as John himself, remarking on the fact, that this saying originated an unfounded story, that Jesus had promised him that he should never die,――says that Jesus never specified any such thing, but merely said those few unsatisfactory words in reply to Peter. The words, “till I come,” referred simply to the time when Christ should come in judgment on Jerusalem, for that unquestionably was the “coming,” of which he had so often warned them, as an event for which they must be prepared; and it was partly from a misinterpretation of these words, by applying them to the final judgment, that the idle notion of John’s immortality arose. John probably surviving the other apostles many years, and living to a very great age, the second generation of Christians conceived the idea of interpreting this remark of Jesus as a prophecy that his beloved disciple should never die. And John, in his gospel, knowing that this erroneous opinion was prevalent, took pains to specify the exact words of Jesus, showing that they implied no direct prophecy whatever, nor in any way alluded to the possibility of his immortality. After the ascension, John is mentioned along with the rest who were in the upper room, and is otherwise particularized on several occasions, in the Acts of the Apostles. He was the companion of Peter in the temple, at the healing of the lame man, and was evidently considered by the chief apostle, a sharer in the honors of the miracle; nor were the Sanhedrim disposed to deem him otherwise than criminally responsible for the act, but doomed him, along with Peter, to the dungeon. He is also honorably distinguished by being deputed with Peter to visit the new church in Samaria, where he united with him in imparting the confirming seal of the spirit to the new converts,――and on the journey back to Jerusalem, preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.

From this time no mention whatever is made of John in the Acts of the Apostles; and the few remaining facts concerning him, which can be derived from the New Testament, are such only as occur incidentally in the epistolary writings of the apostles. Paul makes a single allusion to him, in his epistle to the Galatians, where, speaking of his reception by the apostles on his second visit to Jerusalem, he mentions James, Cephas and John, as “pillars” in the church, and says that they all gave him the right hand of fellowship. This little incidental allusion, though so brief, is worth recording, since it shows that John still resided in Jerusalem, and there still maintained his eminence and his usefulness, standing like a pillar, with Cephas and James, rising high above the many, and upholding the bright fabric of a pure faith. This is the only mention ever made of him in the epistles of Paul, nor do any of the remaining writings of the New Testament contain any notice whatever of John, except those which bear his own name. But as these must all be referred to a later period, they may be left unnoticed until some account has been given of the intervening portions of his long life. Here then the course of investigation must leave the sure path of scripture testimony, and lead on through the mazy windings of traditionary history, among the baseless records of the Fathers.

Pillars.――This was an expressive figurative appellation, taken no doubt, with direct allusion to the noble white columns of the porches of the temple, subserving in so high a degree the purposes both of use and ornament. The term implies with great force, an exalted excellence in these three main supporters of the first Christian church, and besides expressing the idea of those eminent virtues which belonged to them in common with other distinguished teachers of religion, it is thought by Lampe, that there is implied in this connection, something peculiarly appropriate to these apostles. Among the uses to which columns were applied by Egyptians, Jews, Greeks and Romans, was that of bearing inscriptions connected with public ordinances of state or religion, and of commemorating facts in science for the knowledge of other generations. To this use, allusion seems to be made in Proverbs ix. 1. “Wisdom has built her house,――she has engraved her seven pillars.” And in Revelation iii. 12, a still more unquestionable reference is made to the same circumstance. “Him that overcomes, will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from God,――and my own new name;”――a passage which Grotius illustrates by a reference to this very use of pillars for inscriptions. It is in connection with this idea, that Lampe considers the term as peculiarly expressive in its application to “James, Cephas and John,” since from them, in common with all the apostles, proceeded the oracles of Christian truth, and those principles of doctrine and practice, which were acknowledged as the rule of faith, by the churches of the new covenant. To these three, moreover, belonged some peculiar attributes of this character, since they distinguished themselves above the most of the twelve, by their written epistolary charges, as well as by the general pre-eminence accorded to them by common consent, leaving to them the utterance of those apostolic opinions, which went forth from Jerusalem as law for the Christian churches.

Lampe quotes on this point Vitringa, (Sacred Observations, I. iii. 7,) Suicer, (Church Thesaurus voc. στυλος,) and Gataker, (Cinnus, ii. 20.) He refers also to Jerome, commenting on Galatians ii. 9; who there alludes to the fact that John, one of the “pillars,” in his Revelation, introduces the Savior speaking as above quoted. (Revelation iii. 12.)

THE RESULTS OF TRADITION.

Probably there are few results of historical investigation, that will make a more decided impression of disappointment on the mind of a common reader, than the sentence, which a rigid examination compels the writer to pass, with almost uniform condemnatory severity, on all apostolic stories which are not sanctioned by the word of inspiration. There is a universal curiosity, natural, and not uncommendable, felt by all the believers and hearers of the faith which the apostles preached, to know something more about these noble first witnesses of the truth, than the bare broken and unconnected details which the gospel, and the apostolic acts can furnish. At this day, the most trifling circumstances connected with them,――their actions, their dwelling-places, their lives or their deaths, have a value vastly above what could ever have been appreciated by those of their own time, who acted, dwelt, lived, and died with them,――a value increasing through the course of ages, in a regular progression, rising as it removes from the objects to which it refers. But the very course of this progression implies a diminution of the means of obtaining the desired information, proportioned to the increase of the demand for it;――and along with this condition of things, the all-pervading and ever-active spirit of invention comes in, to quench, with deep draughts of delightful falsehood, the honest thirst for literal truth. The misfortune of this constitution of circumstances, being that the want is not felt till the means of supplying it are irrecoverably gone, puts the investigation of the minutiae of all antiquity, sacred or profane, upon a very uncertain ground, and requires the most critical test for every assertion, offered to satisfy a curiosity which, for the sake of the pleasure thus derived, feels interested in deceiving itself; for

“Doubtless the pleasure is as great

Of being cheated as to cheat.”

Even the spirit of deep curiosity which beguiles the historical inquirer into a love of the fabulous and unfounded tales of tradition, though specifically more elevated by its intellectual character, is yet generically the same with the spirit of superstitious credulity, that leads the miserable Papist to bow down with idolatrous worship before the ridiculous trash, called relics, which are presented to him by the consecrated impostors who minister to him in holy things; and the feeling of indignant horror with which he repulses the Protestant zeal, that would rob his spirit of the comfortable support afforded by the possession of an apostolical toe-nail, a lock of a saint’s hair, or by the sight of the Savior’s handkerchief, or of a drop of his blood,――is all perfectly kindred to that indignant regret with which even a reformed reader regards all these critical assaults upon agreeable historical delusions,――and to that stubborn attachment with which he often clings to antique falsehood. Yet the pure consolations of the truth, known by research and judgment, are so far above these baser enjoyments, that the exchange of fiction, for historical knowledge, though merely of a negative kind, becomes most desirable even to an uncritical mind.

The sweeping sentence of condemnation against all traditionary stories, may, however, be subjected to some decided exceptions in the case of John, who, living much longer than any other of the apostles, would thus be much more widely and lastingly known than they, to the Christians of the first and second generations after the immediate contemporaries of the twelve. On this account the stories about John come with much higher traditionary authority, than those which pretend to give accounts of any other apostle; and this view is still further confirmed by the character of most of the stories themselves; which are certainly much less absurd and vastly more probable in their appearance, than the great mass of apostolic traditions. Indeed, in respect to this apostle, may be said, what can not be said of any other, that some tolerably well-authorized, and a very few decidedly authentic, statements of his later life, may be derived from passages in the genuine writings of the early Fathers.

HIS JUDAICAL OBSERVANCES.

The first point in John’s history, on which the authentic testimony of the Fathers is offered to illustrate his life, after the Acts of the Apostles cease to mention him, is, that during the difficulties between the weak-minded, Judaizing Christians, and those of a freer spirit who advocated an open communion with those Gentile brethren that did not conform to the Mosaic ritual, he, with Peter, and more particularly with James, joined in recommending a compromise with the inveterate prejudices of the Jewish believers; and to the end of his life, though constantly brought in contact with Gentiles, he himself still continued, in all legal and ritual observances, a Jew. A striking and probable instance of this adherence to Judaism, is given in the circumstance, that he always kept the fourteenth day of March as holy time, in conformity with one of the most common of the religious usages in which he had been brought up; and the respect with which he regarded this observance is strongly expressed in the fact that he countenanced and encouraged it, also, in his disciples, some of whom preserving it throughout life as he did, brought down the notice of the occurrence to those days when the extinction of almost all the Judaical part of primitive Christianity made such a peculiarity very remarkable. This, though a small, is a highly valuable incident in the history of John, containing a proof of the strong affection which he always retained for the religion of his fathers,――a feeling which deserves the highest commendation, accompanied as it was, by a most catholic spirit towards those Gentile Christians who could not bear a yoke, which education and long habit alone made more tolerable to him.

With Peter and James.――The authority for this is Irenaeus, (A. D. 150‒170,) who says, “Those apostles who were with James, permitted the Gentiles indeed to act freely, leaving us to the spirit of God. They themselves, too, knowing the same God, persevered in their ancient observances. * * * Thus the apostles whom the Lord made witnesses of his whole conduct and his whole teaching, (for every where are found standing together with him, Peter, James and John,) religiously devoted themselves to the observance of the law, which is by Moses, thus acknowledging both [the law and the spirit] to be from one and the same God.” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies.)

Fourteenth day of March.――This refers to the practice of observing the feast of the resurrection of Christ, on the fourteenth day of March, corresponding with the passover of the Jews,――a custom long kept up in the eastern churches, instead of always keeping it on Sunday. The authority for the statement is found in two ancient writers; both of whom are quoted by Eusebius. (Church History, V. 24.) He first quotes Polycrates, (towards the end of the second century,) as writing to Victor, bishop of Rome, in defense of the adherence of the eastern churches to the practice of their fathers, in keeping the passover, or Easter, on the fourteenth day of the month, without regard to the day of the week on which it occurred, though the great majority of the Christian churches throughout the world, by common consent, always celebrated this resurrection feast on the Lord’s day, or Sunday. Polycrates, in defense of the oriental practice of his flock and friends, so accordant with early Jewish prejudices, quotes the example of the Apostle John, who, he says, died at Ephesus, where he (Polycrates) was bishop. He says, that John, as well as his brother-apostle, Philip, and Polycarp his disciple, “all observed Easter on the fourteenth day of the month, never varying from that day, at all.” Eusebius (ibid.) quotes also Irenaeus, writing to the same bishop Victor, against his attempt to force the eastern churches into the adoption of the practice of the Roman church, in celebrating Easter always on a Sunday, instead of uniformly on the fourteenth day of the month, so as to correspond with the Jewish passover. Irenaeus, in defense of the old eastern custom, tells of the practice of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, a disciple of John. Polycarp, coming to Rome in the days of bishop Anicetus, (A. D. 151‒160,) though earnestly exhorted by that bishop to renounce the eastern mode of celebrating Easter always on the fourteenth, like the Jewish passover, steadily refused to change; giving as a reason, the fact that John, the disciple of Jesus, and others of the apostles, whom he had intimately known, had always followed the eastern mode.

This latter authority, fairly derived from a person who had been the intimate friend of John himself, may be pronounced entitled to the highest respect, and quite clearly establishes this little circumstance, which is valuable only as showing John’s pertinacious adherence to Jewish forms, to the end of his life.

Socrates, an ecclesiastical historian, (A. D. 439,) alludes to the circumstance, that those who observed Easter on the fourteenth, referred to the authority of the Apostle John, as received by tradition.

THE DEPARTURE FROM JERUSALEM.

Some vain attempts have been made to ascertain the time at which the apostle John left Jerusalem; but it becomes an honest investigator to confess, here, the absolute want of all testimony, and the total absence of such evidence as can afford reasonable ground even for conjecture. All that can be said, is, that there is no account of his having left the city before the Jewish war; and there is some reason, therefore, to suppose that he remained there till driven thence by the first great alarm occasioned by the unsuccessful attack from Cestius Gallus. This Roman general, in the beginning of the Jewish war, (A. D. 66,) advanced to Jerusalem, and began a siege, which, however, he soon raised, without any good reason; and suffering a fine opportunity of ending the war at once, thus to pass by, unimproved, he marched off, though in reality the inhabitants were then but poorly provided with means to resist him. His retreat, however, gave them a chance to prepare themselves very completely for the desperate struggle which, as they could see, was completely begun, and from which there could now be no retraction. This interval of repose, after such a terrible premonition, also gave opportunity to the Christians to withdraw from the city, on which, as they most plainly saw, the awful ruin foretold by their Lord, was now about to fall. Cestius ♦Gallus, taking his stand on the hills around the city, had planted the Roman eagle-standards on the highths of Zophim, on the north, where he fortified his camp, and thence pushed the assault against Bezetha, or the upper part of the city. These were signs which the apostles of Jesus, who had heard his prophecy of the city’s ruin, could not misunderstand. Here was now “the abomination of desolation, standing in the holy place where it ought not;” and as Matthew records the words of Jesus, this was one great sign of coming ruin. “When they should see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, they were to know that the desolation thereof was nigh;” for so Luke records the warning. “Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them who are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in other countries enter into it. For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.” The apostles, therefore, reading in all these signs the literal fulfilment of the prophetic warning of their Lord, gathered around them the flock of the faithful; and turning their faces to the mountains of the northwest, to seek refuge beyond the Jordan,――

――“Their backs they turned

On those proud towers, to swift destruction doomed.”

Nor were they alone; for as the Jewish historian, who was an eye-witness of the sad events of those times, records, “many of the respectable persons among the Jews, after the alarming attack of Cestius, left the city, like passengers from a sinking ship.” And this fruitless attack of the Romans, he considers to have been so arranged by a divine decree, to make the final ruin fall with the more certainty on the truly guilty.

♦ “Gallas” replaced with “Gallus” for consistency

THE REFUGE IN PELLA.

A tradition, entitled to more than usual respect, from its serious and reasonable air, commemorates the circumstance that the Christians, on leaving Jerusalem, took refuge in the city of Pella, which stood on a small western branch of the Jordan, about sixty miles north-west from Jerusalem, among the mountains of Gilead. The locality on some accounts is a probable one, for it is distant from Jerusalem and beyond Judea, as the Savior directed them to flee; and being also on the mountains, answers very well to the other particulars of his warning. But there are some reasons which would make it an undesirable place of refuge, for a very long time, to those who fled from scenes of war and commotion, for the sake of enjoying peace and safety. That part of Galilee which formed the adjacent territory on the north of Pella, a few months after, became the scene of a devastating war. The city of Gamala, not above twenty miles off, was besieged by Vespasian, the general of the Roman invading army, (afterwards emperor,) and was taken after a most obstinate and bloody contest, the effect of which must have been felt throughout the country around, making it any thing but a comfortable place of refuge, to those who sought peace. The presence of hostile armies in the region near, must have been a source of great trouble and distress to the inhabitants of Pella, so that those who fled from Jerusalem to that place, would, in less than a year, find that they had made no very agreeable exchange. These bloody commotions however, did not begin immediately, and it was not till nearly one year after the flight of the Christians from Jerusalem, that the war was brought into the neighborhood of Pella; for Josephus fixes the retreat of Cestius Gallus on the twelfth of November, in the twelfth year of Nero’s reign, (A. D. 66,) and the taking of Gamala, on the twenty-third of October, in the following year, after one month’s siege. There was then a period of several months, during which this region was quiet, and would therefore afford a temporary refuge to the fugitives from Jerusalem; but for a permanent home they would feel obliged to look not merely beyond Judea, but out of Palestine. Being in Pella, so near the borders of Arabia, which often afforded a refuge to the oppressed in its desert-girdled homes, the greater portion would naturally move off in that direction, and many too, probably extend their journey eastward into Mesopotamia, settling at last in Babylon, already becoming a new dwelling-place for both Jews and Christians, among whom, as has been recorded in a former part of this work, the Apostle Peter had made his home, where he probably remained for the rest of his life, and also died there. Respecting the movements of the Apostle John in this general flight, nothing certain can be affirmed; but all probability would, without any other evidence, suggest that he followed the course of the majority of those who were under his pastoral charge; and as their way led eastward, he would be disposed to take that route also. And here the floating fragments of ancient tradition may be cited, for what they are worth, in defense of a view which is also justified by natural probabilities.

THE JOURNEY EASTWARD.

The earliest testimony on this point does not appear, however, until near the close of the fourth century; when it arises in the form of a vague notion, that John had once preached to the Parthians, and that his first epistle was particularly addressed to them. From a few such remnants of history as this, it has been considered extremely probable, by some, that John passed many years, or even a great part of his life, in the regions east of the Euphrates, within the bounds of the great Parthian empire, where a vast number of his refugee countrymen had settled after the destruction of Jerusalem, enjoying peace and prosperity, partly forgetting their national calamities, in building themselves up almost into a new people, beyond the bounds of the Roman empire. These would afford to him an extensive and congenial field of labor; they were his countrymen, speaking his own language, and to them he was allied by the sympathies of a common misfortune and a common refuge. Abundant proof has already been offered, to show that in this region was the home of Peter, during the same period; and probabilities are strongly in favor of the supposition, that the other apostles followed him thither, making Babylon the new apostolic capital of the eastern churches, as Jerusalem had been the old one. From that city, as a center, the apostles would naturally extend their occasional labors into the countries eastward, as far as their Jewish brethren had spread their refugee settlements; for beyond the Roman limits, Christianity seems to have made no progress whatever among the Gentiles, in the time of the apostles; and if there had been no other difficulties, the great difference of language and manners, and the savage condition of most of the races around them, would have led them to confine their labors wholly to those of their own nation, who inhabited the country watered by the Euphrates and its branches; or still farther east, to lands where the Jews seem to have spread themselves to the banks of the Indus, and perhaps within the modern boundaries of India. Some wild traditionary accounts, of no great authority, even offer reports, that the Apostle John preached in India; and some of the Jesuit missionaries have supposed that they had detected such traditions among the tribes of that region, among whom they labored. All that can be said of these accounts is, that they accord with a reasonable supposition, which is made probable by other circumstances; but traditions of such a standing cannot be said to prove anything.

Parthia.――The earliest trace of this story is in the writings of Augustin, (A. D. 398,) who quotes the first epistle of John as “the epistle to the Parthians,” from which it appears that this was a common name for that epistle, in the times of Augustin. Athanasius is also quoted by Bede, as calling it by the same name. If he wrote to the Parthians in that familiar way, it would seem probable that he had been among them, and many writers have therefore adopted this view. Among these, the learned Mill (Prolegomena in New Testament § 150) expresses his opinion very fully, that John passed the greater part of his life among the Parthians, and the believers near them. Lampe (Prolegomena to a Johannine Theology, Lib. I. cap. iii. § 12, note) allows the probability of such a visit, but strives to fix its date long before the destruction of Jerusalem; yet offers no good reason for such a notion.

India.――The story of the Jesuit missionaries is given by Baronius, (Annals 44. § 30.) The story is, that letters from some of these missionaries, in 1555, give an account of their finding such a tradition, among an East Indian nation, called the Bassoras, who told them that the apostle John once preached the gospel in that region. No further particulars are given; but this is enough to enable us to judge of the value of a story, dating fifteen centuries from the event which it commemorates.

HIS RESIDENCE IN ASIA.

The great mass of ancient stories about this apostle, take no notice at all of his residence in the far eastern regions, on and beyond the Euphrates, but make mention of the countries inhabited by Greeks and Romans, as the scenes of the greater part of his long life, after the destruction of Jerusalem. The palpable reason of the character of these traditions, no doubt, is, that they all come from the very regions which they commemorate as the home of John; and the authors of the stories being interested only to secure for their own region the honor of an apostolic visit, cared nothing about the similar glory of countries far eastward, with which they had no connection whatever, and of which they knew nothing. That region which is most particularly pointed out as the great scene of John’s life and labors, is Asia, in the original, limited sense of the term, which includes only a small portion of the eastern border of the Aegean sea, as already described in the life of Peter. The most important place in this Little Asia, was Ephesus; and in this famous city the apostle John is said to have spent the latter part of his life, after the great dispersion from Palestine.

The motives of John’s visit to Ephesus, are variously given by different writers, both ancient and modern. All refer the primary impulse to the Holy Spirit, which was the constant and unerring guide of all the apostles in their movements abroad on the great mission of their Master. The divine presence of their Lord himself, too, was ever with them to support and encourage, in their most distant wanderings, even as he promised at parting,――“Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” But historical investigation may very properly proceed with the inquiry into the real occasion which led him, under that divine guidance, to this distant city, among a people who were mostly foreign to him in language, habits and feelings, even though many of them owned the faith of Christ, and reverenced the apostle of his word. It is said, but not proved, that a division of the great fields of labor was made by the apostles among themselves, about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem; and that, when Andrew took Scythia, and others their sections of duty, Asia was assigned to John, who passed the rest of his life there accordingly. This field had already, indeed, been gone over by Paul and his companions, and already at Ephesus itself had a church been gathered, which was now flourishing under the pastoral care of Timothy, who had been instructed and commissioned for this very field, by Paul himself. But these circumstances, so far from deterring the apostle John from presenting himself on a field of labor already so nobly entered, are supposed rather to have operated as incitements to draw him into a place where so solid a foundation had been laid for a complete fabric. As a center of missionary action, indeed, Ephesus certainly did possess many local advantages of a high order. The metropolis of all Asia Minor,――a noble emporium for the productions of that great section of the eastern continent, on whose farthest western shore it stood,――and a grand center for the traffic of the great Mediterranean sea, whose waters rolled from that haven over the mighty shores of three continents, bearing, wherever they flowed, the ships of Ephesus,――this port offered the most ready and desirable means of intercourse with all the commercial cities of the world, from Tyre, or Alexandria, or Sinope, to the pillars of Hercules, and gave the quickest and surest access to the gates of Rome itself. Its widely extended commerce, of course, drew around its gates a constant throng of people from many distant parts of the world, a few of whom, if imbued with the gospel, would thus become the missionaries of the word of truth to millions, where the name of Jesus was before unknown. And since, after the death of all the other apostles, John survived alone, so long, it was desirable for all the Christian churches in the world, that the only living minister of the word who had been instructed from the lips of Jesus himself, should reside in some such place, where he might so easily be visited by all, and whence his instructions might quickly go forth to all. His inspired counsels, and his wonder-working prayers, might be sought for all who needed them, and his apostolic ordinances might be heard and obeyed, almost at once, by the most distant churches. But the circumstance, which more especially might lead the wanderer from the ruined city and homes of his fathers, to Ephesus, was the great gathering of Jews at this spot, who of course thus presented to the Jewish apostle an ample field for exertions, for which his natural and acquired endowments best fitted him.

In the account given in the Acts of the Apostles of Paul’s visit to Ephesus, particular mention is made of a synagogue there, in which he preached and disputed daily, for a long period, with great effect. Yet Paul’s labors had by no means attained such complete success among the Jews there, as to make it unnecessary for another apostle to labor in the ministry of the circumcision, in that same place; for it is especially mentioned that Paul, after three months’ active exertion in setting forth the truth in the synagogues, was induced by the consideration of the peculiar difficulties which beset him, among these proud and stubborn adherents of the old Mosaic system, to withdraw himself from among them; and during the remainder of his two years’ stay, he devoted himself, for the most part, to the instruction of the willing Greeks, who opened the schools of philosophy for his teachings, with far more willingness than the Jews did their house of religious assembly. And it appears that the greater part of his converts were rather among the Greeks than the Jews; for in the great commotions that followed, the attack upon the preachers of Christianity was made entirely by a heathen mob, in which no Israelite seems to have had any hand whatever; so that Paul had evidently made but little impression, comparatively, on the latter class. Among the Jews then, there was still a wide field open for the labors of one, consecrated, more especially, for the ministry of the circumcision. The circumstances of the times, also, presented many advantages for a successful assault upon the religious prejudices of his countrymen. The great Center of Unity for the race of Israel throughout the world, had now fallen into an irretrievable oblivion, under the fire and sword of the invader. The glories of the ancient covenant seemed to have passed away forever; and in the high devotion of the Jew, a blank was now left, by the destruction of the only temple of his ancient faith, which nothing else on earth could fill. Henceforth he might be trained to look for a spiritual temple,――a city eternal in the heavens, whose lasting foundations were laid by no mortal hand, for the heathen to sweep away in unholy triumph; but whose builder and maker was God. Thus prepared, by the mournful consummation of their country’s utter ruin, for the reception of a pure faith, the condition of the disconsolate Jews must have appeared in the highest degree interesting to the solitary surviving apostle of Jesus; and he would naturally devote the remnant of his days to that portion of the world where he might make the deepest impression on them, and where his influence might spread widest to the scattered members of a people, then as now, eminently commercial.

Under these peculiarly interesting circumstances, the Apostle John is supposed to have arrived at Ephesus, where Timothy, still holding the episcopal chair in which he had been placed by the Apostle Paul, must have hailed with great delight the arrival of the venerable John, from whose instructions and counsels, he might hope to derive advantages so much the more welcome, since the sword of the heathen persecution had removed his original apostolic teacher from the world. John must have been, at the time of his journey to Ephesus, considerably advanced in life. His precise age, and the date of his arrival, are altogether unknown, nor are there any fixed points on which the most critical and ingenious historical investigation can base any certain conclusion whatever, as to these interesting matters. Various and widely different have been the conclusions on these points;――some fixing his journey to Ephesus in the reign of Claudius, long before the destruction of Jerusalem, and even before the council on the question of the circumcision. The true character of this tale can be best appreciated by a reference to another circumstance, which is gravely appended to it by its narrators;――which is, that he was accompanied on this tour by the Virgin Mary, and that she lived there with him for a long time. This journey too, is thus made to precede the journey of Paul to Ephesus, by many years, and yet no account whatever is given of the reasons of the profound silence observed in the Acts of the Apostles, on an event so important to the history of the propagation of the gospel, nor why John could have lived so long at Ephesus, and yet have effected so little, that when Paul came to the same place, the very name of Christ was new there. But such stories are not worth refuting, standing as they do, self-convicted falsehoods. Others however, are more reasonable, and date this journey in the year of the destruction of Jerusalem, supposing that Ephesus was the first place of refuge to which the apostle went. But this conjecture is totally destitute of all ancient authority, and is inconsistent with the very reasonable supposition adopted above,――that he, in the flight from Jerusalem, first journeyed eastward, following the general current of the fugitives, towards the Euphrates. Where there is such a total want of all data, any fixed decision is out of the question; but it is very reasonable to suppose that John’s final departure from the east did not take place till some years after this date; probably not until the reign of Domitian. (A. D. 81 or 82.) He had lived in Babylon therefore, till he had seen most of his brethren and friends pass away from his eyes. The venerable Peter had sunk into the grave, and had been followed by the rest of the apostolic band, until the youngest apostle, now grown old, found himself standing alone in the midst of a new generation, like one of the solitary columns of desolate Babylon, among the low dwelling places of its refugee inhabitants. But among the hourly crumbling heaps of that ruined city, and the fast-darkening regions of that half-savage dominion, there was each year less and less around him, on which his precious labor could be advantageously expended. Christianity never seizes readily on the energies of a broken or degenerating people, nor does it flourish where the influences of civilization are losing their hold. Its exalted and exalting genius rather takes the spirits that are already on the wing for an upward course, and rises with them, giving new energy to the ascending movement. It may exert its elevating influence too, on the yet wild spirit of the uncivilized, and give, in the new conceptions of a pure faith and a high destiny, the first impulse to the advance of man towards refinement, in knowledge, and art, and freedom; but its very existence among them is dependent on this forward and upward movement,――and the beginning of its mortal decay dates from the cessation of the developments of the intellectual and physical resources of the race on which it operates. Among the subjects of the Parthian empire, this downward movement was already fully decided; and they were fast losing those refinements of feeling and thought on which the new faith could best fasten its spiritual and inspiring influences; they therefore soon became but hopeless objects of missionary exertion, when compared with the active and enterprising inhabitants of the still improving regions of the west. “Westward” then, “the star” of Christianity as “of empire, took its way;” and the last of the apostles was but following, not leading, the march of his Lord’s advancing dominion, when he shook off the dust of the darkening eastern lands from his feet, forever; turning his aged face towards the setting sun, to find in his latter days, a new home and a foreign grave among the children of his brethren; and to rejoice his old eyes with the glorious sight of what God had done for the churches, among the flourishing cities of the west, that were still advancing under Grecian art and Roman sway.

Ephesus.――On the importance of this place, as an apostolic station, the Magdeburg Centuriators are eloquent; and such is the classic elegance of the Latin in which these moderns have expressed themselves, that the passage is worth giving entire, for the sake of those who can enjoy the beauty of the original. “Considera mirabile Dei consilium. Joannes in Ephesum ad littus maris Aegei collocatus est: ut inde, quasi e specula, retro suam Asiam videret, suaque fragrantia repleret: ante se vero Graeciam, totamque Europam haberet; ut inde, tanquam tuba Domini sonora, etiam ultra-marinos populos suis concionibus ac scriptis inclamaret et invitaret ad Christum; presertim, cum ibi fuerit admodum commodus portus, plurimique mercatores ac homines peregrini ea loca adierint.” The beauty of such a sentence is altogether beyond the force of English, and the elegant paronomasia which repeatedly occurs in it, increasing the power of the original expression to charm the ear and mind, is totally lost in a translation, but the meanings of the sentences may be given for the benefit of those readers to whom the Latin is not familiar.――“Regard the wonderful providence of God. John was stationed at Ephesus, on the shore of the Aegean sea; so that there, as in a mirror, he might behold his peculiar province, Asia, behind him, and might fill it with the incense of his prayers: before him too, he had Greece and all Europe; so that there, as with the far-sounding trumpet of the Lord, he might summon and invite to Christ, by his sermons and writings, even the nations beyond the sea, by the circumstance that there, was a most spacious haven, and that vast numbers of traders and travelers thronged to the place.”

Chrysostom speaks also of the importance of Ephesus as an apostolic station, alluding to it as a strong hold of heathen philosophy; but there is no reason to think that John ever distinguished himself by any assaults upon systems with which he was not, and could never have been sufficiently acquainted to enable him to attack them; for in order to meet an evil, it is necessary to understand it thoroughly. There is no hint of an acquaintance with philosophy in any part of his writings, nor does any historian speak of his making converts among them. Chrysostom’s words are,――“He fixed himself also in Asia, where anciently all the sects of Grecian philosophy cultivated their sciences. There he flashed out in the midst of the foe, clearing away their darkness, and storming the very citadel of demons. And with this design he went to this place, so well suited to one who would work such wonders.” (Homily 1, on John.)

The idea of John’s visit to Ephesus, where Timothy was already settled over the church as bishop, has made a great deal of trouble to those who stupidly confound the office of an apostle with that of a bishop, and are always degrading an apostle into a mere church-officer. Such blunderers of course, are put to a vast deal of pains to make out how Timothy could manage to keep possession of his bishopric, with the Apostle John in the same town with him; for they seem to think that a bishop, like the flag-officer on a naval station, can hold the command of the post not a moment after a senior officer appears in sight; but that then down comes the broad blue pennon to be sure, and never is hoisted again till the greater officer is off beyond the horizon. But no such idle arrangements of mere etiquette were ever suffered to mar the noble and useful simplicity of the primitive church government, in the least. The presence of an apostle in the same town with a bishop, could no more interfere with the regular function of the latter, than the presence of a diocesan bishop in any city of his diocese, excludes the rector of the church there, from his pastoral charge. The sacred duties of Timothy were those of the pastoral care of a single church,――a sort of charge that no apostle ever assumed out of Jerusalem; but John’s apostolic duties led him to exercise a general supervision over a great number of churches. All those in Little Asia would claim his care alike, and the most distant would look to him for counsel; while that in Ephesus, having been so well established by Paul, and being blessed by the pastoral care of Timothy, who had been instructed and commissioned for that very place and duty, by him, would really stand in very little need of any direct attention from John. Yet among his Jewish brethren he would still find much occasion for his missionary labor, even in that city; and this was the sort of duty which was most appropriate to his apostolic character; for the apostles were missionaries and not bishops.

Others pretend to say, however, that Timothy was dead when John arrived, and that John succeeded him in the bishopric,――a mere invention to get rid of the difficulty, and proved to be such by the assertion that the apostle was a bishop, and rendered suspicious also by the circumstance of Timothy being so young a man.

The fable of the Virgin Mary’s journey, in company with John, to Ephesus, has been very gravely supported by Baronius, (Annals, 44, § 29,) who makes it happen in the second year of the reign of Claudius, and quotes as his authority a groundless statement, drawn from a mis-translation of a synodical epistle from the council of Ephesus to the clergy at Constantinople, containing a spurious passage which alludes to this story, condemning the Nestorians as heretics, for rejecting the tale. There are, and have long been, however, a vast number of truly discreet and learned Romanists, who have scorned to receive such contemptible and useless inventions. Among these, the learned Antony Pagus, in his Historico-Chronological Review of Baronius, has utterly refuted the whole story, showing the spurious character of the passage quoted in its support. (Pagus, Critica Baronius Annals, 42. § 3.) Lampe quotes moreover, the Abbot Facditius, the Trevoltian collectors and Combefisius, as also refuting the fable. Among the Protestant critics, Rivetus and Basnage have discussed the same point.

Of the incidents of John’s life at Ephesus, no well authorized account whatever can be given. Yet on this part of apostolic history the Fathers are uncommonly rich in details, which are interesting, and some of which present no improbability on examination; but their worst character is, that they do not make their appearance until above one hundred years after the date of the incidents which they commemorate, and refer to no authority but loose and floating tradition. In respect to these, too, occurs exactly the same difficulty which has already been specified in connection with the traditionary history of Peter,――that the same early writers, who record as true these stories which are so probable and reasonable in their character, also present in the same grave manner other stories, which do bear, with them, on their very faces, the evidence of their utter falsehood, in their palpable and monstrous absurdity. Among the possible and probable incidents of John’s life, narrated by the Fathers, are a journey to Jerusalem, and one also to Rome,――but of these there is no certainty, nor any acceptable evidence. These long journeys, too, are wholly without any sufficient assigned object, which would induce so old a man to leave his quiet and useful residence at Ephesus, to travel hundreds and thousands of miles. The churches of both Rome and Jerusalem were under well organized governments, which were perfectly competent to the administration of their own affairs, without the presence of an apostle; or, if they needed his counsel in an emergency, he could communicate his opinions to them with great certainty, by message, and with far more quickness and ease, than by a journey to them. Such an occasion for a direct call on him, however, could but very rarely occur,――nor would so unimportant an event as the death of one bishop and the installation of another, ever induce him to take a journey to sanction a mere formality by his presence. His help certainly was not needed by any church out of his own little Asian circle, in the selection of proper persons to fill vacant offices of government or instruction. They knew best their own wants, and the abilities of their own members to exercise any official duty to which they might be called; while John, a perfect stranger to most of them, would feel neither disposed nor qualified for meddling with any part of the internal policy of other churches. But the principal condemnation of the statement of his journey to Rome is contained in the foolish story connected with it, by its earliest narrator,――that on his arrival there, he was, by order of the emperor Domitian, thrown into a vessel full of hot oil; but, so far from receiving the slightest injury from such a frying, he came out of this greasy place of torture, quite improved in every respect by the immersion; and, as the story goes, arose from it perfumed like an athleta anointed for the combat. There are very great variations, however, in the different narrations of this affair; some representing the event as having occurred in Ephesus, under the orders of the proconsul of Asia, and not in Rome, under the emperor, as the earlier form of the fable states. Among the statements which fix the scene of this miracle in Rome, too, there is a very important chronological difference,――some dating it under the emperor Nero, which would carry it back as early as the time of Peter’s fabled martyrdom, and implies a total contradiction of all established opinions on his prolonged residence in the east. In short, the whole story is so completely covered over with gross blunders and contradictions about times and places, that it can not receive any place among the details of serious and well-authorized history.

Thrown into a vessel of oil.――This greasy story has a tolerably respectable antiquity, going farther back with its authorities than any other fable in the Christian mythology, except Justin Martyr’s story about Simon Magus. The earliest authority for this is Tertullian, (A. D. 200,) who says that “at Rome, the Apostle John, having been immersed in hot oil, suffered no harm at all from it.” (De Praescriptionibus adversus Haereticos, c. 36.) “In oleum igneum immersus nihil passus est.” But for nearly two hundred years after, no one of the Fathers refers to this fable. Jerome (A. D. 397.) is the next of any certain date, and speaks of it in two passages. In the first (Against Jovinianus I. 14,) he quotes Tertullian as authority, but bunglingly says, that “he was thrown into the kettle by order of Nero,”――a most palpable error, not sanctioned by Tertullian. In the second passage, (Commentary on Matthew xx. 23,) he furthermore refers in general terms to “ecclesiastical histories, in which it was said that John, on account of his testimony concerning Christ, was thrown into a kettle of boiling oil, and came out thence like an athleta, to win the crown of Christ.” From these two sources, the other narrators of the story have drawn it. Of the modern critics and historians, besides the great herd of Papists, several Protestants are quoted by Lampe, as strenuously defending it; and several of the greatest, who do not absolutely receive it as true, yet do not presume to decide against it; as the Magdeburg Centuriators, (Century 1, lib. 2. c. 10,) who however declare it very doubtful indeed, “rem incertissimam;”――Ittig, Le Clerc and Mosheim taking the same ground. But Meisner, Cellarius, Dodwell, Spanheim, Heumann and others, overthrow it utterly, as a baseless fable. They argue against it first, from the bad character of its only ancient witness. Tertullian is well known as most miserably credulous, and fond of catching up these idle tales; and even the devoutly credulous Baronius condemns him in the most unmeasured terms for his greedy and undiscriminating love of falsehood. Secondly, they object the profound silence of all the Fathers of the second, third and fourth centuries, excepting him and Jerome; whereas, if such a remarkable incident were of any authority whatever, those numerous occasions on which they refer to the banishment of John to Patmos, which Tertullian connects so closely with this story, would suggest and require a notice of the causes and attendant circumstances of that banishment, as stated by him. How could those eloquent writers, who seem to dwell with so much delight on the noble trials and triumphs of the apostles, pass over this wonderful peril and miraculous deliverance? Why did Irenaeus, so studious in extolling the glory of John, forget to specify an incident implying at once such a courageous spirit of martyrdom in this apostle, and such a peculiar favor of God, in thus wonderfully preserving him? Hippolytus and Sulpitius Severus too, are silent; and more than all, Eusebius, so diligent in scraping together all that can heap up the martyr-glories of the apostles, and more particularly of John himself, is here utterly without a word on this interesting event. Origen, too, dwelling on the modes in which the two sons of Zebedee drank the cup of Jesus, as he prophesied, makes no use of this valuable illustration.

On the origin of this fable, Lampe mentions a very ingenious conjecture, that some such act of cruelty may have been meditated or threatened, but afterwards given up; and that thence the story became accidentally so perverted as to make what was merely designed, appear to have been partly put in execution.

In this decided condemnation of the venerable Tertullian, I am justified by the example of Lampe, whose reverence for the authority of the Fathers is much greater than that of most theologians of later days. He refers to him in these terms: “Tertullianus, cujus credulitas, in arripiendis futilibus narratiunculis alias non ignota est.”――“Whose credulity in catching up idle tales is well known in other instances.” Haenlein also calls him “der leichtglaubige Tertullian,”――“the credulous Tertullian.” (Haenlein’s Einleitung in Neuen Testamentes vol. III. p. 166.)

This miraculous event procured the highly-favored John, by this extreme unction, all the advantages with none of the disadvantages of martyrdom; for in consequence of this peril he has received among the Fathers the name of a “living martyr.” (ζοων μαρτυρ) Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Theophylact and others, quoted by Suicer, [sub voc. μαρτυρ,] apply this term to him. “He had the mind though not the fate of a martyr.” “Non defuit animus martyrio,” &c. [Jerome and Cyprian.] Through ignorance of the meaning of the word μαρτυρ, in this peculiar application to John, the learned Haenlein seems to me to have fallen into an error on the opinion of these Fathers about his mode of death. In speaking of the general testimony as to the quiet death of this apostle, Haenlein says: “But Chrysostom, only in one ambiguous passage, (Homily 63 in Matthew) and his follower Theophylact, number the Apostle John among the martyrs.” [Haenlein’s Einleitung in Neuen Testamentes vol. III. chap. vi. § 1, p. 168.] The fact is, that not only these two, but several other Fathers, use the term in application to John, and they all do it without any implication of an actual, fatal martyrdom; as may be seen by a reference to Suicer, sub voc.

So little reverence have the critical, even among the Romanists, for any of these old stories about John’s adventures, that the sagacious Abbot Facditius (quoted by Lampe) quite turns these matters into a jest. Coupling this story with the one about John’s chaste celibacy, (as supported by the monachists,) he says, in reference to the latter, that if John made out to preserve his chastity uncontaminated among such a people as the Jews were, in that most corrupt age, he should consider it a greater miracle than if John had come safe out of the kettle of boiling oil; but on the reverend Abbot’s sentiment, perhaps many will remark with Lampe,――“quod pronuntiatum tamen nimis audax est.”――“It is rather too bold to pronounce such an opinion.” Nevertheless, such a termination of life would be so much in accordance with the standard mode of dispatching an apostle, that they would never have taken him out of the oil-kettle, except for the necessity of sending him to Patmos, and dragging him on through multitudes of odd adventures yet to come. So we might then have had the satisfaction of winding up his story, in the literal and happy application of the words of a certain venerable poetical formula for the conclusion of a nursery tale, which here makes not only rhyme but reason,――

HIS BANISHMENT.

This fable of his journey to Rome is by all its propagators connected with the well-authorized incident of his banishment to Patmos. This event, given on the high evidence of the Revelation which bears his name, is by all the best and most ancient authorities, referred to the period of the reign of Domitian. The precise year is as much beyond any means of investigation, as most other exact dates in his and all the other apostles’ history. From the terms in which the ancient writers commemorate the event, it is known, with tolerable certainty, to have occurred towards the close of the reign of Domitian, though none of the early Fathers specify the year. The first who pretend to fix the date, refer it to the fourteenth year of that emperor, and the most critical among the moderns fix it as late; and some even in the fifteenth or last year of his reign; since that persecution of the Christians, during which John seems to have been banished, may be fairly presumed, from the known circumstances as recorded in history, to have been the last great series of tyrannical acts committed by this remarkably wicked monarch. It certainly appears, from distinct assertions in the credible records of ecclesiastical history, that there was a great persecution begun about this time by Domitian, against the Christians; but there is no reasonable doubt that the extent and vindictiveness of it has been very much overrated, in the rage among the later Fathers, for multiplying the sufferings of the early Christians far beyond the truth. The first Christian writers who allude to this persecution very particularly, specify its character as far less aggravated than that of Nero, of which they declare it to have been but a shadow,――and the persecutor himself but a mere fraction of Nero in cruelty. There is not a single authenticated instance of any person’s having suffered death in this persecution; all the creditable historians who describe it, most particularly demonstrate that the whole range of punishments inflicted on the subjects of it, was confined to banishment merely. Another reason for supposing that this attack on the Christians was very moderate in its character, is the important negative fact, that not one heathen historian makes the slightest mention of any trouble with the new sect, during that bloody reign; although such repeated, vivid accounts are given of the dreadful persecution waged by Nero, as related above, in the Life of Peter. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that there were no great cruelties practised on them; but that many of them, who had become obnoxious to the tyrant and his minions, were quietly put out of the way, that they might occasion no more trouble,――being sent from Rome and some of the principal cities, into banishment, along with many others whose removal was considered desirable by the rulers of Rome or the provinces; so that the Christians, suffering with many others, and some of high rank and character, a punishment of no very cruel nature, were not distinguished by common narrators, from the general mass of the banished; but were noticed more particularly by the writers of their own order, who thus specified circumstances that otherwise would not have been made known. Among those driven out from Ephesus at this time, John was included, probably on no special accusation otherwise than that of being prominent as the last survivor of the original founders, among these members of the new faith, who by their pure lives were a constant reproach to the open vices of the proud heathen around them; and by their refusal to conform to idolatrous observances, exposed themselves to the charge of non-conformity to the established religion of the state,――an offence of the highest order even among the Romans, whose tolerance of new religions was at length limited by the requisition, that no doctrine whatever should be allowed to aim directly at the overthrow of the settled order of things. When, therefore, it began to be apprehended that the religion of Jesus would, in its progress, overcome the securities of the ancient worship of the Olympian gods, those who felt their interests immediately connected with the system of idolatry, in their alarmed zeal for its support, made use of the worst specimens of imperial tyranny to check the advancing evil.

PATMOS.

The place chosen for his banishment was a dreary desert island in the Aegean sea, called Patmos. It is situated among that cluster of islands, called the Sporades, about twenty miles from the Asian coast, and thirty or forty southwest of Ephesus. It is at this day known by the observation of travelers, to be a most remarkably desolate place, showing hardly anything but bare rocks, on which a few poor inhabitants make but a wretched subsistence. In this insulated desert the aged apostle was doomed to pass the lonely months, far away from the enjoyments of Christian communion and social intercourse, so dear to him, as the last earthly consolation of his life. Yet to him, his residence at Ephesus was but a place of exile. Far away were the scenes of his youth and the graves of his fathers. “The shore whereon he loved to dwell,”――the lake on whose waters he had so often sported or labored in the freshness of early years, were still the same as ever, and others now labored there, as he had done ere he was called to a higher work. But the homes of his childhood knew him no more forever, and rejoiced now in the light of the countenances of strangers, or lay in blackening desolation beneath the brand of a wasting invasion. The waters and the mountains were there still,――they are there now; but that which to him constituted all their reality was gone then, as utterly as now. The ardent friends, the dear brother, the faithful father, the fondly ambitious and loving mother,――who made up his little world of life, and joy, and hope,――where were they? All were gone; even his own former self was gone too, and the joys, the hopes, the thoughts, the views of those early days, were buried as deeply as the friends of his youth, and far more irrevocably than they. Cut off thus utterly from all that once excited the earthly and merely human emotions within him, the whole world was alike a desert or a home, according as he found in it communion with God, and work for his remaining energies, in the cause of Christ. Wherever he went, he bore about with him his resources of enjoyment,――his home was within himself; the friends of his youth and manhood were still before him in the ever fresh images of their glorious examples; the brother of his heart was near him always, and nearest now, when the persecutions of imperial tyranny seemed to draw him towards a sympathetic participation in the pains and the glories of that bloody death. The Lord of his life, the author of his hopes, the guide of his youth, the cherisher of his spirit, was over and around him ever, with the consolations of his promised presence,――“with him always, even to the end of the world.”

THE APOCALYPSE.

The Revelation of John the Divine opens with a moving and splendid view of these circumstances. Being, as it is recorded, in the isle that is called Patmos, for preaching the word of God, and for bearing witness of Jesus Christ, he was in his lonely banishment, one Lord’s day, sitting wrapped in a holy spiritual contemplation, when he heard behind him a great voice, as of a trumpet, which broke upon his startled ear with a most solemnly grand annunciation of the presence of one whose being was the source and end of all things. As the amazed apostle turned to see the person from whom came such portentous words, there met his eye a vision so dazzling, yet appalling in its beauty and splendor, amid the bare, dark rocks around, that he fell to the earth without life, and lay motionless until the heavenly being, whose awful glories had so overwhelmed him, recalled him to his most vivid energies, by the touch of his life-giving hand. In the lightning-splendors of that countenance, far outshining the glories of Sinai, reflected from the face of Moses, the trembling eye of the apostolic seer recognized the lineaments of one whom he had known in other days, and upon whose bosom he had hung in the warm affection of youth. Even the eye which now flashed such rays, he knew to be that which had once been turned on him in the aspect of familiar love; nor did its glance now bear a strange or forbidding expression. The trumpet-tones of the voice, which of old, on Hermon, roused him from the stupor into which he fell at the sight of the foretaste of these very glories, now recalled him to life in the same encouraging words, “Be not afraid.” The crucified and ascended Jesus, living, though once dead, now called on his beloved apostle to record the revelations which should soon burst upon his eyes and ears; that the churches that had lately been under his immediate attention, might learn the approach of events which most nearly concerned the advance of their faith. First, therefore, addressing an epistolary charge to each of the seven churches, he called them to a severe account for their various errors, and gave to each such consolations and promises as were suited to its peculiar circumstances. Then dropping these individualizing exhortations, he leaves all the details of the past, and the minutiae of the state of the seven churches, for a glance over the events of coming ages, and the revolutions of empires and of worlds. The full explanation of the scenes which follow, is altogether beyond the range of a mere apostolic historian, and would require such ability and learning in the writer,――such a length of time for their application to this matter, and such an expanse of paper for their full expression, as are altogether out of the question in this case. Some few points in this remarkable writing, however, fall within the proper notice of the apostle’s biographer, and some questions on the scope of the Apocalypse itself, as well as on the history of it, as a part of the sacred canon, will therefore be here discussed.

The minute history of the apostolic writings,――the discussion of their particular scope and tenor,――and the evidences of their inspiration and authenticity,――are topics, which fall for the most part under a distinct and independent department of Christian theology, the common details of which are alone sufficient to fill many volumes; and are of course altogether beyond the compass of a work, whose main object is limited to a merely historical branch of religious knowledge. Still, such inquiries into these deeper points, as truly concern the personal history of the apostles, are proper subjects of attention, even here. The life of no literary or scientific man is complete, which does not give such an account of his writings as will show under what circumstances,――with what design,――for what persons,――and at what time, they were written. But a minute criticism of their style, or illustrations of their meaning, or a detail of all the objections which have been made to them, might fairly be pronounced improper intrusions upon the course of the narrative. With the danger of such an extension of these investigations, in view, this work here takes up those points in the history of John’s writings, that seem to fall under the general rule in making up a personal and literary biography.

In the case of this particular writing, moreover, the difficulties of an enlarged discussion are so numerous and complicated, as to offer an especial reason to the apostolic historian, for avoiding the almost endless details of questions that have agitated the greatest minds in Christendom, for the last four hundred years. And the decision of the most learned and sagacious of modern critics, pronounces the Apocalypse of John to be “the most difficult and doubtful book of the New Testament.”

The points proper for inquiry in connection with a history of the life of John, may be best arranged in the form of questions with their answers severally following.

I. Did the Apostle John write the Apocalypse?

Many will doubtless feel disposed to question the propriety of thus bringing out, in a popular book, inquiries which have hitherto, by a sort of common consent, been confined to learned works, and wholly excluded from such as are intended to convey religious knowledge to ordinary readers. The principle has been sometimes distinctly specified and maintained, that some established truths in exegetical theology, must needs be always kept among the arcana of religious knowledge, for the eyes and ears of the learned few, to whom “it is given to know these mysteries;” “but that to them that are without,” they are ever to remain unknown. This principle is often acted on by the theologians of Germany and England, so that a distinct line seems to be drawn between an exoteric and an esoteric doctrine,――a public and a private belief,――the latter being the literal truth, while the former is such a view of things, as suits the common religious prejudices of the mass of hearers and readers. But such is not the free spirit of true Protestantism; nor is any deceitful doctrine of “accommodation” accordant with the open, single-minded honesty of apostolic teachings. Taking from the persons who are the subjects of this history, something of their simple freedom of word and action, for the reader’s benefit, several questions will be boldly asked, and as boldly answered, on the authorship, the scope, and character of the Apocalypse. And first, on the present personal question in hand, a spirit of tolerant regard for opinions discordant with those of some readers, perhaps may be best learned, by observing into what uncertainties the minds of the greatest and most devout of theologians, and of the mighty founders of the Protestant faith, have been led on this very point.

The great Michaelis (Introduction to the New Testament, vol. IV. c. xxxiii. § 1.) apologizes for his own doubts on the Apocalypse, justifying himself by the similar uncertainty of the immortal Luther; and the remarks of Michaelis upon the character of the persons to whom Luther thus boldly published his doubts, will be abundantly sufficient to justify the discussion of such darkly deep matters, to the readers of the Lives of the Apostles.

Not only Martin Luther as here quoted by Michaelis, but the other great reformers of that age, John Calvin and Ulric Zwingle, boldly expressed their doubts on this book, which more modern speculators have made so miraculously accordant with anti-papal notions. Their learned cotemporary, Erasmus, also, and the critical Joseph Scaliger, with other great names of past ages, have contributed their doubts, to add a new mark of suspicion to the Apocalypse.

“As it is not improbable that this cautious method of proceeding will give offense to some of my readers, I must plead in my behalf the example of Luther, who thought and acted precisely in the same manner. His sentiments on this subject are delivered, not in an occasional dissertation on the Apocalypse, but in the preface to his German translation of it, a translation designed not merely for the learned, but for the illiterate, and even for children. In the preface prefixed to that edition, which was printed in 1522, he expressed himself in very strong terms. In this preface he says: ‘In this book of the Revelation of St. John, I leave it to every person to judge for himself: I will bind no man to my opinion; I say only what I feel. Not one thing only fails in this book; so that I hold it neither for apostolical, nor prophetical. First and chiefly, the apostles do not prophesy in visions, but in clear and plain words, as St. Peter, St. Paul, and Christ in the gospel do. It is moreover the apostle’s duty to speak of Christ and his actions in a simple way, not in figures and visions. Also no prophet of the Old Testament, much less of the New, has so treated throughout his whole book of nothing but visions: so that I put it almost in the same rank with the fourth book of Esdras, and cannot any way find that it was dictated by the Holy Ghost. Lastly, let every one think of it what his own spirit suggests. My spirit can make nothing out of this book; and I have reason enough not to esteem it highly, since Christ is not taught in it, which an apostle is above all things bound to do, as he says, (Acts i.) Ye are my witnesses. Therefore I abide by the books which teach Christ clearly and purely.’

“But in that which he printed in 1534, he used milder and less decisive expressions. In the preface to this later edition, he divides prophecies into three classes, the third of which contains visions, without explanations of them; and of these he says: ‘As long as a prophecy remains unexplained and has no determinate interpretation, it is a hidden silent prophecy, and is destitute of the advantages which it ought to afford to Christians. This has hitherto happened to the Apocalypse: for though many have made the attempt, no one to the present day, has brought any thing certain out of it, but several have made incoherent stuff out of their own brain. On account of these uncertain interpretations, and hidden senses, we have hitherto left it to itself, especially since some of the ancient Fathers believed that it was not written by the apostle, as is related in Lib. III. Church History. In this uncertainty we, for our part, still let it remain: but do not prevent others from taking it to be the work of St. John the apostle, if they choose. And because I should be glad to see a certain interpretation of it, I will afford to other and higher spirits occasion to reflect.’

“Still however, he declared he was not convinced that the Apocalypse was canonical, and recommended the interpretation of it to those who were more enlightened than himself. If Luther then, the author of our reformation, thought and acted in this manner, and the divines of the last two centuries still continued, without the charge of heresy, to print Luther’s preface to the Apocalypse, in the editions of the German Bible of which they had the superintendence, surely no one of the present age ought to censure a writer for the avowal of similar doubts. Should it be objected that what was excusable in Luther would be inexcusable in a modern divine, since more light has been thrown on the subject than there had been in the sixteenth century, I would ask in what this light consists. If it consists in newly discovered testimonies of the ancients, they are rather unfavorable to the cause; for the canon of the Syrian church, which was not known in Europe when Luther wrote, decides against it. On the other hand, if this light consists in a more clear and determinate explanation of the prophecies contained in the Apocalypse, which later commentators have been able to make out, by the aid of history, I would venture to appeal to a synod of the latest and most zealous interpreters of it, such as Vitringa, Lange, Oporin, Heumann, and Bengel, names which are free from all suspicion; and I have not the least doubt, that at every interpretation which I pronounced unsatisfactory, I should have at least three voices out of the five in my favor. At all events they would never be unanimous against me, in the places where I declared that I was unable to perceive the new light, which is supposed to have been thrown on the subject since the time of Luther.

“I admit that Luther uses too harsh expressions, where he speaks of the epistle of St. James, though in a preface not designed for Christians of every denomination: but his opinion of the Apocalypse is delivered in terms of the utmost diffidence, which are well worthy of imitation. And this is so much the more laudable, as the Apocalypse is a book, which Luther’s opposition to the church of Rome must have rendered highly acceptable to him, unless he had thought impartially, and had refused to sacrifice his own doubts to polemical considerations.”

To pretend to decide with certainty on a point, which Martin Luther boldly denied, and which John David Michaelis modestly doubted, implies neither superior knowledge of the truth, nor a more holy reverence for it; but rather marks a mere presumptuous self-confidence, and an ignorant bigotry, arising from the prejudices of education. Yet from the deep researches of the latter of these writers, and of other exegetical theologians since, much may be drawn to support the view taken in the text of this Life of John, which is accordant with the common notion of its authorship. The quotation just given, however, is valuable as inculcating the propriety of hesitation and moderation in pronouncing upon results.

The testimony of the Fathers, on the authenticity of the Apocalypse as a work of John, the apostle, may be very briefly alluded to here. The full details of this important evidence may be found by the scholar in J. D. Michaelis’s Introduction to the New Testament (Vol. IV. c. xxxiii. § 2.) Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament (Vol. II. § 176.) Lardner’s Credibility of Gospel History (Supplement, chapter 22.) Fabricii Bibliotheca Graeca. (Harles’s 4to. edition with Keil’s, Kuinoel’s, Gurlitt’s, and Heyne’s notes, vol. IV. pp. 786‒795, corresponding to vol. III. pp. 146‒149, of the first edition.) Lampe, Prolegomena to a Johannine Theology.

Justin Martyr (A. D. 140,) is the first who mentions this book. He says, “A man among us, named John, one of the apostles of Christ, has, in a revelation which was made to him, prophesied,” &c. Melito (A. D. 177.) is quoted by Eusebius and by Jerome, as having written a treatise on the Revelation. He was bishop of Sardis, one of the seven churches, and his testimony would be therefore highly valuable, if it were certain whether he wrote for or against the authenticity of the work. Probably he was for it, since he calls it “the Apocalypse of John,” in the title of his treatise, and the silence of Eusebius about the opinion of Melito may fairly be construed as showing that he did not write against it. Irenaeus, (A. D. 178,) who in his younger days was acquainted with Polycarp, the disciple and personal friend of John, often quotes this book as “the Revelation of John, the disciple of the Lord.” And in another place, he says, “It was seen not long ago, almost in our own age, at the end of the reign of Domitian.” This is the most direct and valuable kind of testimony which the writings of the Fathers can furnish on any point in apostolic history; for Irenaeus here speaks from personal knowledge, and, as will be hereafter shown, throws great light on the darkest passage in the Apocalypse, by what he had heard from those persons who had seen John himself, face to face, and who heard these things from his own lips. Theophilus of Antioch, (A. D. 181,)――Clemens of Alexandria, (A. D. 194,――Tertullian of Carthage, (A. D. 200,)――Apollonius of Ephesus, (A. D. 211,)――Hippolytus of Italy, (A. D. 220,)――Origen of Alexandria and Caesarea, (A. D. 230,)――all received and quoted it as a work of John the apostle, and some testify very fully as to the character of the evidence of its authenticity, received from their predecessors and from the contemporaries of John.

But from about the middle of the third century, it fell under great suspicion of being the production of some person different from the apostle John. Having been quoted by Cerinthus and his disciples, (a set of Gnostical heretics, in the first century,) in support of their views, it was, by some of their opponents, pronounced to be a fabrication of Cerinthus himself. At this later period, however, it suffered a much more general condemnation; but though denied by some to be an apostolic work, it was still almost universally granted to be inspired. Dionysius of Alexandria, (A. D. 250,) in a book against the Millenarians, who rested their notions upon the millenial passages of this revelation, has endeavored to make the Apocalypse useless to them in support of their heresy. This he has done by referring to the authority of some of his predecessors, who rejected it on account of its maintaining Cerinthian doctrines. This objection however, has been ably refuted by modern writers, especially by Michaelis and Hug, both of whom, distinctly show that there are many passages in the Revelation, so perfectly opposite to the doctrines of Cerinthus, that he could never have written the book, although he may have been willing to quote from it such passages as accorded with his notions about a sensual millenium,――as he could in this way meet those, who did take the book for an inspired writing.

Dionysius himself, however, does not pretend to adopt this view of the authorship of it, but rather thinks that it was the work of John the presbyter, who lived in Ephesus in the age of John the apostle, and had probably been confounded with him by the early Fathers. This John is certainly spoken of by Papias, (A. D. 120,) who knew personally both him and the apostle; but Papias has left nothing on the Apocalypse, as the work of either of them. (The substance of the whole argument of Dionysius is very elaborately given and reviewed, by both Michaelis and Hug.) After this bold attack, the apostolic character of the work seems to have received much injury among most of the eastern Fathers, and was generally rejected by both the Syrian and Greek churches, having no place in their New Testament canon. Eusebius, (A. D. 315,) who gives the first list of the writings of the New Testament, that is known, divides all books which had ever been offered as apostolical, into three classes,――the universally acknowledged, (ὁμολογουμενα homologoumena,)――the disputed, (αντιλεγομενα antilegomena,)――and the spurious, (νοθα notha.) In the first class, he puts all now received into the New Testament, except the epistle to the Hebrews, the epistles of James and Jude, the second of Peter, the second and third of John, and the Revelation. These exceptions he puts into the second, or disputed class, along with sundry writings now universally considered apocryphal. Eusebius says also, “It is likely that the Revelation was seen by John the presbyter, if not by John the apostle.”――Cyril of Jerusalem, (A. D. 348,) in his catalogue of the Scriptures, does not allow this a place. Epiphanius of Salamis, in Cyprus, (A. D. 368,) though himself receiving it as of apostolic origin, acknowledged that others in his time rejected it. The council of Laodicea, (A. D. 363,) sitting in the seat of one of the seven churches, did not give the Revelation a place among the sacred writings of the New Testament, though their list includes all others now received. Gregory, of Nazianzus, in Cappadocia, (A. D. 370,) gives a catalogue of the canonical scriptures, but excludes the Revelation. Amphilochius, of Iconium, in Lycaonia, (A. D. 370,) in mentioning the canonical scriptures, says, “The Revelation of John is approved by some; but many say it is spurious.” The scriptural canon of the Syrian churches rejects it, even as given by Ebed Jesu, in 1285; nor was it in the ancient Syriac version completed during the first century; but the reason for this may be, that the Revelation was not then promulgated.――Jerome of Rome, (A. D. 396,) receives it, as do all the Latin Fathers; but he says, “the Greek churches reject it.”――Chrysostom (A. D. 398,) never quotes it, and is not supposed to have received it. Augustin, of Africa, (A. D. 395,) receives it, but says that it was not received by all in his time. Theodoret, (A. D. 423,) of Syria, and all the ecclesiastics of that country, reject it also.

The result of all this evidence is, as will be observed by glancing over the dates of the Fathers quoted, that, until the year 250, no writer can be found who scrupled to receive the Apocalypse as the genuine work of John the apostle,――that the further back the Fathers are, the more explicit and satisfactory is their testimony in its favor,――and that the fullest of all, is that of Irenaeus, who had his information from Polycarp, the most intimate and beloved disciple of John himself. Now, where the evidence is not of the ordinary cumulative character, growing weighty, like a snowball, the farther it travels from its original starting-place, but as here, is strongest at the source,――it may justly be pronounced highly valuable, and an eminent exception to the usual character of such historical proofs, which, as has been plentifully shown already in this book, are too apt to come “but-end first,” as the investigator travels from the last to the first. It will be observed also, by a glance at the places where these Fathers flourished, that all those who rejected the Apocalypse belonged to the EASTERN section of the churches, including both the Greeks and the Syrians, while the WESTERN churches, both the Europeans and Latino-Africans, adopted the Apocalypse as an apostolic writing. This is not so fortunate a concurrence as that of the dates, since the easterns certainly had better means of investigating such a point than the westerns. A reason may be suggested for this, in the circumstance, that the Cerinthians and other heretics, who were the occasion of the first rejection of the Apocalypse, annoyed only the eastern churches, and thus originated the mischief only among them. Lampe, Michaelis and others, indeed, quote Caius of Rome, as a solitary exception to this geographical distribution of the difficulty, but Paulus and Hug have shown that the passage in Caius, to which they refer, has been misapprehended, as the scholar may see by a reference to Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament, vol. II. pp. 647‒650, [Wait’s translation,] pp. 593‒596, [original.] There is something in Jerome too, which implies that some of the Latins, in his time, were beginning to follow the Greek fashion of rejecting this book, but he scouts this new notion, and says he shall stick to the old standard canon.

The internal evidence is also so minutely protracted in its character, that only a bare allusion to it can be here permitted, and reference to higher and deeper sources of information, on such an exegetical point, may be made for the benefit of the scholar. Lampe, Wolf, Michaelis, Mill, Eichhorn and others, quoted by Fabricius, [Bibliotheca Graeca, vol. IV. p. 795, note 46.] Hug and his English translator, Dr. Wait, are also full on this point.

This evidence consists for the most part in a comparison of passages in this book with similar ones in the other writings of John, more especially his gospel. Wetstein, in particular, has brought together many such parallelisms, some of which are so striking in the peculiar expressions of John, and yet so merely accidental in their character, as to afford most satisfactory evidence to the nicest critics, of the identity of authorship. A table of these coincidences is given from Wetstein, by Wait, Hug’s translator, (p. 636, note.) Yet on this very point,――the style,――the most serious objection to the Apocalypse, as a work of the author of John’s gospel, has always been founded;――the rude, wild, thundering sublimity of the vision of Patmos, presenting such a striking contrast with the soft, love-teaching, and beseeching style of the gospel and the epistles of John. But such objectors have forgotten or overlooked the immense difference between the circumstances under which these works were suggested and composed. Their period, their scene, their subject, their object, were all widely removed from each other, and a thoughtful examination will show, that writings of such widely various scope and tendency could not well have less striking differences, than those observable between this and the other writings of John. In such a change of circumstances, the structure of sentences, the choice of words, and the figures of speech, could hardly be expected to show the slightest similarity between works, thus different in design, though by the same author. But in the minuter peculiarities of language, certain favorite expressions of the author,――particular associations of words, such as a forger could never hit upon in that uninventive age,――certain personal views and sentiments on trifling points, occasionally modifying the verbal forms of ideas――these and a multitude of other characteristics, making up that collection of abstractions which is called an author’s style,――all quite beyond the reach of an imitator, but presenting the most valuable and honest tests to the laborious critic,――constitute a series of proofs in this case, which none can fully appreciate but the investigators and students themselves.

II. With what design was the Apocalypse written?

There is no part of the Bible which has been the subject of so much perversion, or on which the minds of the great mass of Christian readers have been suffered to fall into such gross errors, as the Apocalypse. This is the opinion of all the great exegetical theologians of this age, who have examined the scope of the work most attentively; and from the time of Martin Luther till this moment, the opinions of the learned have for the most part been totally different from those which have made up the popular sentiment,――none or few, caring to give the world the benefit of the simple truth, which might be ill received by those who loved darkness rather than light; and those who knew the truth, have generally preferred to keep the quiet enjoyment of it to themselves. This certainly is much to be regretted; for in consequence of this culpable negligence of the duty of making religious knowledge available for the good of the whole, this particular apostolic writing has been the occasion of the most miserable and scandalous delusions among the majority even of the more intelligent order of Bible readers,――delusions, which, affecting no point whatever in creeds and confessions of faith, those bulwarks of sects, have been suffered to rage and spread their debasing error, without subjecting those who thus indulged their foolish fancies, to the terrors of ecclesiastical censure. The Revelation of John has, accordingly, for the last century or two, been made a licensed subject for the indulgence of idle fancies, and used as a grand storehouse for every “filthy dreamer” to draw upon, for the scriptural prophetical supports of his particular notions of “the signs of the times,” and for the warrant of his special denunciations of divine wrath and coming ruin, against any system that might happen to be particularly abominable in his religious eyes. Thus, a most baseless delusion has been long suffered to pervade the minds of common readers, respecting the general scope of the Apocalypse, perverting the latter parts of it into a prophecy of the rise, triumph and downfall of the Romish papal tyranny; while in respect to the minor details, every schemer has been left to satisfy himself, as his private fancy or sectarian zeal might direct him. Now, not only is all this ranting trash directly opposed to the clear, natural and simple explanations, given by those very persons among the earliest Christian writers, who had John’s own private personal testimony as to his real meaning, in the dark passages which have in modern times been made the subject of such idle, fanciful interpretations; but they are so palpably inconsistent both with the general scope and the minute details of the writing itself, that even without the support of this most incontrovertible evidence of the earliest Christian antiquity, the falsehood of the idea of any anti-papal prophecy can be most triumphantly and unanswerably settled; and this has been repeatedly done, in every variety of manner, by the learned labors of all the sagest of the orthodox theologians of Germany, Holland, France and England, for the last three hundred years. A most absurd notion seems to be prevalent, that the idea of a rational historical interpretation of the Apocalypse, is one of the wicked results of that most horrible of abstract monsters, “German neology;” and the dreadful name of Eichhorn is straightway referred to, as the source of this common sense view. But Eichhorn and all those of the modern German schools of theology, who have taken up this notion, so far from originating the view or aspiring to claim it as their invention, were but quietly following the standard authorities which had been steadily accumulating on this point for sixteen hundred years; and instead of being the result of neology or of anything new, it was as old as the time of Irenaeus. The testimony of all the early writers on this point, is uniform and explicit; and they all, without a solitary exception, explain the great mass of the bold expressions in it, about coming ruin on the enemies of the pure faith of Christ, as a distinct, direct prophecy of the downfall of imperial Rome, as the great heathen foe of the saints. There was among them no very minute account of the manner in which the poetical details of the prophecy was to be fulfilled; but the general meaning of the whole was considered to be so marked, dated, and individualized, that to have denied this manifest interpretation in their presence, must have seemed an absurdity not less than to have denied the authentic history of past ages. Not all, nor most of the Christian Fathers however, have noticed the design and character of the Apocalypse, even among those of the western churches; while the scepticism of the Greek and Syrian Fathers, after the third century, about the authenticity of the work, has deprived the world of the great advantage which their superior acquaintance with the original language of the writing, with its peculiarly oriental style, allusions and quotations, would have enabled them to afford in the faithful interpretation of the predictions. From the very first, however, there were difficulties among the different sects, about the allegorical and literal interpretations of the expressions which referred to the final triumph of the followers of Christ; some interpreting those passages as describing an actual personal reign of Christ on earth, and a real worldly triumph of his followers, during a thousand years, all which was to happen shortly;――and from this notion of a Chiliasm, or a Millennium, arose a peculiar sect of heretics, famous in early ecclesiastical history, during the two first centuries, under the name of Chiliasts or ♦Millenarians,――the Greek or the Latin appellative being used, according as the persons thus designated or those designating them, were of eastern or western stock. Cerinthus and his followers so far improved this worldly view of the subject, as to inculcate the notion that the faithful, during that triumph, were to be further rewarded, by the full fruition of all bodily and sensual pleasures, and particularly that the whole thousand years were to be passed in nuptial enjoyments. But these foolish vagaries soon passed away, nor did they, even in the times when they prevailed, affect the standard interpretation of the general historical relations of the prophecy.

♦ “Millennarians” replaced with “Millenarians”

It was not until a late age of modern times, that any one pretended to apply the denunciations of ruin, with which the Apocalypse abounds, to any object but heathen, IMPERIAL Rome, or to the pagan system generally, as personified or concentrated in the existence of that city. During the middle ages, the Franciscans, an order of monks, fell under the displeasure of the papal power; and being visited with the censures of the head of the Romish church, retorted, by denouncing him as an Anti-Christ, and directly set all their wits to work to annoy him in various ways, by tongue and pen. In the course of this furious controversy, some of them turned their attention to the prophecies respecting Rome, which were found in the Apocalypse, then received as an inspired book by all the adherents of the church of Rome; and searching into the denunciations of ruin on the Babylon of the seven hills, immediately saw by what a slight perversion of expressions, they could apply all this dreadful language to their great foe. This they did accordingly, with all the spite which had suggested it; and in consequence of this beginning, the Apocalypse thenceforward became the great storehouse of scriptural abuse of the Pope, to all who happened to quarrel with him. This continued the fashion, down to the time of the Reformation; but the bold Luther and his coadjutors, scorned the thought of a scurrilous aid, drawn from such a source, and with a noble honesty not only refused to adopt this construction, but even did much to throw suspicion on the character of the book itself. Luther however, had not the genius suited to minute historical and critical observations; and his condemnation of it therefore, though showing his own honest confidence in his mighty cause, to be too high to allow him to use a dishonest aid, yet does not affect the results to which a more deliberate examination has led those who were as honest as he, and much better critics. This however, was the state in which the early reformers left the interpretation of the Apocalypse. But in later times, a set of spitefully zealous Protestants, headed by Napier, Mede, and bishop Newton, took up the Revelation of John, as a complete anticipative history of the triumphs, the cruelties and the coming ruin of the Papal tyranny. These were followed by a servile herd of commentators and sermonizers, who went on with all the elaborate details of this interpretation, even to the precise meaning of the teeth and tails of the prophetical locusts. These views were occasionally varied by others tracing the whole history of the world in these few chapters, and finding the conquests of the Huns, the Saracens, the Turks, &c. all delineated with most amazing particularity.

But while these idle fancies were amusing the heads of men, who showed more sense in other things, the great current of Biblical knowledge had been flowing on very uniformly in the old course of rational interpretation, and the genius of modern criticism had already been doing much to perfect the explanation of passages on which the wisdom of the Fathers had never pretended to throw light. Of all critics who ever took up the Apocalypse in a rational way, none ever saw so clearly its real force and application as Hugo Grotius; and to him belongs the praise of having been the first of the moderns to apprehend and expose the truth of this sublimest of apostolic records. This mighty champion of Protestant evangelical theology, with that genius which was so resplendent in all his illustrations of Divine things as well as of human law, distinctly pointed out the three grand divisions of the prophetical plan of the work. “The visions as far as to the end of the eleventh chapter, describe the affairs of the Jews; then, as far as to the end of the twentieth chapter, the affairs of the Romans; and thence to the end, the most flourishing state of the Christian church.” Later theologians, following the great plan of explanation thus marked out, have still farther perfected it, and penetrated still deeper into the mysteries of the whole. They have shown that the two cities, Rome and Jerusalem, whose fate constitutes the most considerable portions of the Apocalypse, are mentioned only as the seats of two religions whose fall is foretold; and that the third city, the New Jerusalem, whose triumphant heavenly building is described in the end, after the downfall of the former two, is the religion of Christ. Of these three cities, the first is called Sodom; but it is easy to see that this name of sin and ruin is only used to designate another devoted by the wrath of God to a similar destruction. Indeed, the sacred writer himself explains that this is only a metaphorical or spiritual use of the term,――“which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt;”――and to set its locality beyond all possibility of doubt, it is furthermore described as the city “where also our Lord was crucified.” It is also called the “Holy city,” and in it was the temple. Within, have been slain two faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ; these are the two Jameses,――the great apostolic proto-martyrs; James the son of Zebedee, killed by Herod Agrippa, and James the brother of our Lord, the son of Alpheus, killed by order of the high priest, in the reign of Nero, as described in the lives of those apostles. The ruin of the city is therefore sealed. The second described, is called Babylon; but that Chaldean city had fallen to the dust of its plain, centuries before; and this city, on the other hand, stood on seven hills, and it was, at the moment when the apostle wrote, the seat of “the kingdom of the kingdoms of the earth,” the capital of the nations of the world,――expressions which distinctly mark it to be imperial Rome. The seven angels pour out the seven vials of wrath on this Babylon, and the awful ruin of this mighty city is completed.

To give repetition and variety to this grand view of the downfall of these two dominant religions, and to present these grand objects of the Apocalypse in new relations to futurity, which could not be fully expressed under the original figures of the cities which were the capital seats of each, they are each again presented under the poetical image of a female, whose actions and features describe the fate of these two systems, and their upholders. First, immediately after the account of the city which is called Sodom, a female is described as appearing in the heavens, in a most peculiar array of glory, clothed in the sun’s rays, with the moon beneath her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. This woman, thus splendidly arrayed, and exalted to the skies, represents the ancient covenant, crowned with all the old and holy honors of the twelve tribes of Israel. A huge red dragon (the image under which Daniel anciently represented idolatry) rises in the heavens, sweeping away the third part of the stars, and characterized by seven heads and ten horns, (thus identified with a subsequent metaphor representing imperial Rome;)――he rages to devour the offspring to which the woman is about to give existence. The child is born destined to rule all nations with a rod of iron,――and is caught up to the throne of God, while the mother flees from the rage of the dragon into the wilderness, where she is to wander for ages, till the time decreed by God for her return. Thus, when from the ancient covenant had sprung forth the new revelation of truth in Jesus, it was driven by the rage of heathenism from its seat of glory, to wander in loneliness, unheeded save by God, till the far distant day of its blissful re-union with its heavenly offspring, which is, under the favor of God, advancing to a firm and lasting dominion over the nations. Even in her retirement, she is followed by the persecutions of the dragon, now cast down from higher glories; but his fury is lost,――she is protected by the earth, (sheltered by the Parthian empire;) yet the dragon still persecutes those of her children who believe in Christ, and are yet within his power; (Jews and Christians persecuted in Rome, by Nero and Domitian.)

Again, after the punishment and destruction of imperial Babylon have been described, a second female appears, not in heaven, like the first, but in an earthly wilderness, splendidly attired, but not with the heavenly glories of the sun, moon and stars. Purple and scarlet robes are her covering, marking an imperial honor; and gold, silver, and all earthly gems, adorn her,――showing only worldly greatness. In her hand is the golden cup of sins and abominations, and she is designated beyond all possibility of mistake, by the words, “Mystery, Babylon the Great.” This refers to the fact, that Rome had another name which was kept a profound secret, known only to the priests, and on the preservation of which religious “mystery,” the fortunes of the empire were supposed to depend. The second name also identifies her with the city before described as “Babylon.” She sits on a scarlet beast, with seven heads and ten horns. The former are afterwards minutely explained, by the apostle himself, in the same chapter, as the seven hills on which she sits; they are also seven kings, that is, it would seem, seven periods of empire, of which five are past, one now is, and one brief one is yet to come, and the bloody beast itself――the religion of heathenism――is another. The ten horns are the ten kings or sovrans who never received any lasting dominion, but merely held the sway one after another, a brief hour, with the beast, or spirit of heathenism. These, in short, are the ten emperors of Rome before the days of the Apocalypse;――Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian and Titus. These had all reigned, each his hour, giving his power to the support of heathenism, and thus warring against the faith of the true believers. Still, though reigning over the imperial city, they shall hate her, and make her desolate; strip her of her costly attire, and burn her with fire. How well expressed here the tyranny, of the worst of the Caesars, plundering the state, banishing the citizens, and, in the case of Nero, “burning her with fire!”

Who can mistake the gorgeously awful picture? It is heathen, imperial Rome, desolating and desolated, at that moment suffering under the tyrannic sway of him whom the apostle cannot yet number with the gloomy TEN, that have passed away to the tomb of ages gone. It is the mystic Babylon, drunk with the blood of the faithful witnesses of Christ, and triumphing in the agonies of his saints, “butchered to make a Roman holiday!” No wonder that the amazement of the apostolic seer should deepen into horror, and highten to indignation. Through her tyranny his brethren had been slaughtered, or driven out from among men, like beasts; and by that same tyranny he himself was now doomed to a lonely exile from friends and apostolic duties, on that wild heap of barren rocks. Well might he burst out in prophetic denunciation of her ruin, and rejoice in the awful doom, which the angels of God sung over her; and listen exultingly to the final wail over her distant fall, rolling up from futurity, in the coming day of the Gothic and Hunnish ravagers, when she should be “the desolator desolate, the victor overthrown.”

As there are three mystically named cities――Sodom, Babylon, and the New Jerusalem; so there are three metaphoric females,――the star-crowned woman in heaven, the bloody harlot on the beast in the wilderness, and the bride, the Lamb’s wife. A peculiar fate befalls each of the three pairs. The spiritual Sodom falls under a temporary ruin, trodden under foot by the Gentiles, forty-two mystic months; and the star-crowned daughter of Zion wanders desolate in the wilderness of the world, for twelve hundred and sixty days, till the hand of her God shall restore her to grace and glory. The great Babylon of the seven hills, falls under a doom of far darker, and of irrevocable desolation,――like the dashing roar of the sinking rock thrown into the sea, she is thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. And such too, is the doom of the fierce scarlet rider of the beast,――“Rejoice over her, O heaven! and ye holy apostles and prophets! for God has avenged you on her.” But beyond all this awful ruin appears a vision of contrasting, splendid beauty.

“The first two acts already past,

The third shall close the drama with the day;――

Time’s noblest offspring is the last.”

The shouts of vindictive triumph over the dreadful downfall of the bloody city, now soften and sweeten into the songs of joy and praise, while the New Jerusalem, the church of God and Christ, comes down from the heavens in a solemn, glorious mass of living splendor, to bless the earth with its holy presence. In this last great scene, also, there is a female, the third of the mystic series; not like her of the twelve stars, now wandering like a widow disconsolate, in the wilderness;――not like her of the jeweled, scarlet and purple robes, cast down from her lofty seat, like an abandoned harlot, now desolate in ashes, from which her smoke rises up forever and ever;――but it is one, all holy, happy, pure, coming down stainless from the throne of God,――a bride, crowned with the glory of God, adorned for her husband,――the One slain from the foundation of the world. He through the opening heavens, too, has come forth before her, the Word of God, the Faithful and the True,――known by his bloody vesture, stained, not in the gore of slaughtered victims, but in the pure blood poured forth by himself, for the world, from its foundation. Yet now he rode forth on his white horse, as a warrior-king, dealing judgment upon the world with the sword of wrath,――with the sceptre of iron. Behind him rode the armies of heaven,――the hallowed hosts of the chosen of God,――like their leader, on white horses, but not like him, in crimson vesture; their garments are white and clean; by a miracle of purification, they are washed and made white in blood. This mighty leader, with these bright armies, now returns from the conquests to which he rode forth from heaven so gloriously. The kings and the hosts of the earth have arrayed themselves in vain against him;――the mighty imperial monster, in all the vastness of his wide dominion,――the false prophets of heathenism, combining their vile deceptions with his power, are vanquished, crushed with all their miserable slaves, whose flesh now fills and fattens the eagles, the vultures, and the ravens. The spirit of heathenism is crushed; the dragon, the monster of idolatry, is chained, and sunk into the bottomless pit,――yet not for ever. After a course of ages,――a mystic thousand years,――he slowly rises, and winding with serpent cunning among the nations, he deceives them again; till at last, lifting his head over the world, he gathers each idolatrous and barbarous host together, from the whole breadth of the earth, encompassing and assaulting the camp of the saints; but while they hope for the ruin of the faithful, fire comes down from God, and devours them. The accusing deceiver,――the genius of idolatry and superstition,――is at last seized and bound again; but not for a mere temporary imprisonment. With the spirit of deception and imposture, he is cast into a sea of fire, where both are held in unchanging torment, day and night, forever. But one last, awful scene remains; and that is one, that in sublimity, and vastness, and overwhelming horror, as far outgoes the highest effort of any genius of human poetry, as the boundless expanse of the sky excels the mightiest work of man. “A great white throne is fixed, and One sits on it, from whose face heaven and earth flee away, and no place is found for them.” “The dead, small and great, stand before God; they are judged and doomed, as they rise from the sea and from the land,――from Hades, and from every place of death.” Over all, rises the new heaven and the new earth, to which now comes down the city of God,――the church of Christ,――into which the victorious, the redeemed, and the faithful enter. The Conqueror and his armies march into the bridal city of the twelve jewelled gates, on whose twelve foundation-stones are written the names of the mighty founders, the twelve apostles of the slain one. The glories of that last, heavenly, and truly eternal city, are told, and the mighty course of prophecy ceases. The three great series of events are announced; the endless triumphs of the faithful are achieved.

III. What is the style of the Apocalypse?

This inquiry refers to the language, spirit and rhetorical structure of the writing, to its rank as an effort of composition, and to its peculiarities as expressive of the personal character and feelings of its inspired writer. The previous inquiry has been answered in such a way as to illustrate the points involved in the present one; and a recapitulation of the simple results of that inquiry, will best present the facts necessary for a satisfactory reply to some points of this.

First, the Apocalypse is a prophecy, in the common understanding of the term; but is not limited, as in the ordinary sense of that word, to a mere declaration of futurity; it embraces in its plan the events of the past, and with a glance like that of the Eternal, sweeps over that which has been and that which is to be, as though both were now; and in its solemn course through ages, past, present, and future, it bears the record of faithful history, as well as of glorious prophecy.

Second, the Apocalypse is poetry, in the highest and justest sense of the word. All prophecy is poetry. The sublimity of such thoughts can not be expressed in the plain unbroken detail of a prose narrative; and even when the events of past history are combined in one harmonious series with wide views of the future, they too rise from the dull unpictured record of a mere narrator, and share in the elevation of the mighty whole. The spirit of the writer, replete, not with mere particulars, but with vivid images, seeks language that paints, “thoughts that breathe, and words that burn;” and thus the writing that flows forth is poetry,――the imaginative expression of deep, high feeling――swelling where the occasion moves the writer, into the energy of passion, whether dark or holy.

The character of the Apocalypse, as affected by the passionate feelings of the writer, is also a point which has been illustrated by foregoing historical statements of his situation and condition at the time of the Revelation. He was the victim of an unjust and cruel sentence, deprived of all the sweet earthly solaces of his advanced age, and left on a desert rock,――useless to the cause of Christ and beyond even the knowledge of its progress. The mournful sound of sweeping winds and dashing waves, alone broke the dreary silence of his loneliness, and awaking sensations only of a melancholy order, sent back his thoughts into the sadder remembrances of the past, and called up also many of the sterner emotions against those who had been the occasions of the past and present calamities which grieved him. The very outset is in such a tone as these circumstances would naturally inspire. A deep, holy indignation breaks forth in the solemn annunciation of himself, as their “brother and companion in tribulation.” Sadness is the prominent sentiment expressed in all the addresses to the churches; and in the prelude to the great Apocalypse, while the ceremonies of opening the book which contains it are going on, the strong predominant emotion of the writer is again betrayed in the vision of “the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they bore;” and the solemnly mournful cry which they send up to him for whom they died, expresses the deep and bitter feeling of the writer towards the murderers,――“How long, O Lord! holy and true! dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” The apostle was thinking of the martyrs of Jerusalem and Rome,――of those who fell under the persecutions of the high priests, of Agrippa, and of Nero. And when the seven seals are broken, and the true revelation, of which this ceremony was only a poetical prelude, actually begins, the first great view presents the bloody scenes of that once Holy city, which now, by its cruelties against the cause which is to him as his life,――by the remorseless murder of those who are near and dear to him,――has lost all its ancient dominion over the affections and the hopes of the last apostle and all the followers of Christ.

Again the mournful tragedies of earlier apostolic days pass before him. Again he sees his noble brother bearing his bold witness of Jesus; and with him that other apostle, who in works and fate as much resembled the first, as in name. Their blood pouring out on the earth, rises to heaven, but not sooner than their spirits,――whence their loud witness calls down woful ruin on the blood-defiled city of the temple. And when that ruin falls, no regret checks the exulting tone of the thanksgiving. All that made those places holy and dear, is gone;――God dwells there no more; “the temple of God is opened in heaven, and there is seen in his temple the ark of his covenant,” and all heaven swells the jubilee over the destruction of Jerusalem. And after this, when the apostle’s view moved forward from the past to the future, and his eye rested on the crimes and the destiny of heathen Rome, the bitter remembrance of her cruelties towards his brethren, lifted his soul to high indignation, and he burst forth on her in the inspired wrath of a Son of Thunder;――

“Every burning word he spoke,

Full of rage, and full of grief.

“Rome shall perish; write that word

In the blood that she has spilt.

Rome shall perish,――fall abhorred,――

Deep in ruin as in guilt.”

In respect to the learning displayed in the Apocalypse, some most remarkable facts are observable. Apart from the very copious matters borrowed from the canonical writings of the Old Testament, from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and other prophets, from which, as any reader can see, some of the most splendid imagery has been taken almost verbatim,――it is undeniable, that John has drawn very largely from a famous apocryphal Hebrew writing, called the Book of Enoch, which Jude has also quoted in his epistle; and in his life it will be more fully described. The vision of seven stars, explained to be angels,――of the pair of balances in the hand of the horseman, after the opening of the third seal,――the river and tree of life,――the souls under the altar, crying for vengeance,――the angel measuring the city,――the thousand years of peace and holiness,――are all found vividly expressed in that ancient book, and had manifestly been made familiar to John by reading. In other ancient apocryphal books, are noticed some other striking and literal coincidences with the Apocalypse. The early Rabbinical writings are also rich in such parallel passages. The name of the Conqueror, “which no one knows but himself,”――the rainbow stretched around the throne of God,――the fiery scepter,――the seven angels,――the sapphire throne,――the cherubic four beasts, six-winged, and crying Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts,――the crowns of gold on the heads of the saints, which they cast before the throne,――the book with seven seals,――the souls under the altar,――the silence in heaven,――the Abaddon,――the child caught up to God,――Satan, as the accuser of the saints, day and night before God,――the angel of the waters,――the hail of great weight,――the second death,――the new heaven and earth,――the twelve-gated city of precious stones,――and Rome, under the name of “Great Babylon,”――are all found in the old Jewish writings, in such distinctness as to make it palpable that John was deeply learned in Hebrew literature, both sacred and traditional.

Yet all these are but the forms of expression, not of thought. The apostle used them, because long, constant familiarity with the writings in which such imagery abounded, made these sentences the most natural and ready vehicles of inspired emotions. The tame and often tedious details of those old human inventions, had no influence in moulding the grand conceptions of the glorious revelation. This had a deeper, a higher, a holier source, in the spirit of eternal truth,――the mighty suggestions of the time-over-sweeping spirit of prophecy,――the same that moved the fiery lips of those denouncers of the ancient Babylon, whose writings also had been deeply known to him by years of study, and had furnished also a share of consecrated expressions. That spirit he had caught during his long eastern residence in the very scene of their prophecy and its awful fulfilment. If this notion of his dwelling for a time with Peter in Babylon is well founded, as it has been above narrated, it is at once suggested also, that in that Chaldean city,――then the capital seat of all Hebrew learning, and for ages the fount of light to the votaries of Judaism,――he had, during the years of his stay, been led to the deep study and the vast knowledge of that amazing range of Talmudical and Cabbalistical learning, which is displayed in every part of the Apocalypse. But how different all these resources in knowledge, from the mighty production that seemed to flow from them! How far are even the sublimest conceptions of the ancient prophets, in their unconnected bursts and fragments of inspiration, from the harmonious plan, the comprehensive range, and the faultless dramatic unity, or rather tri-unity, of this most perfect of historical views, and of poetical conceptions!

All these coincidences, with a vast number of other learned references, highly illustrative of the character of the Apocalypse, as enriched with Oriental imagery, may be found in Wait’s very copious notes on Hug’s Introduction.

There are many things in this view of the Apocalypse which will occasion surprise to many readers, but to none who are familiar with the views of the standard orthodox writers on this department of Biblical literature. The view taken in the text of this work, corresponds in its grand outlines, to the high authorities there named; though in the minute details, it follows none exactly. Some interpretations of particular passages are found no where else; but these occasional peculiarities cannot affect the general character of the view; and it will certainly be found accordant with that universally received among the Biblical scholars of Germany and England, belonging to the Romish, the Lutheran, the Anglican, and Wesleyan churches. The authority most closely followed, is Dr. Hug, Roman Catholic professor of theology in an Austrian university, further explained by his translator, Dr. D. G. Wait, of the church of England, more distinguished in Biblical and oriental literature, probably, than any other of the numerous learned living divines of that church. These views are also found in the commentary of that splendid orientalist, Dr. Adam Clarke, a work which, fortunately for the world, is fast taking the place of the numerous lumbering, prosing quartos that have too long met the mind of the common Bible reader with mere masses of dogmatic theology, where he needs the help of simple, clear interpretation and illustration, which has been drawn by the truly learned, from a minute knowledge of the language and critical history of the sacred writings. This noble work, as far as I know, is the first which took the honest ground of the ancient interpretation of the Apocalypse, with common readers, and constitutes a noble monument to the praise of the good and learned man, who first threw light for such readers on the most sublime book in the sacred canon, and among all the writings ever penned by man,――a book which ignorant visionaries had too long been suffered to overcloud and perplex for those who need the guidance of the learned in the interpretation of the “many things hard to be understood” in the volume of truth. The first book of a popular character, ever issued from the American press, explaining the Apocalypse according to the standard mode, is a treatise on the Millennium, by the learned Professor Bush, of the New York University, in which he adopts the grand outlines of the plan above detailed, though I have not had the opportunity of ascertaining how it is, in the minor details.

In reference to the tone assumed in some passages of the statement in the text, perhaps it may be thought that more freedom has been used in characterizing opposite views, than is accordant with the principles of “moderation and hesitation,” proposed in comment upon Luther and Michaelis. But where, in the denunciation of popular error, a reference to the motive of the inculcators of it would serve to expose most readily its nature, such a freedom of pen has been fearlessly adopted; and severity of language on these occasions is justified by the consideration of the character of the delusion which is to be overthrown. The statements too, which are the occasion and the support of these condemnations of vulgar notions, are drawn not from the mere conceptions of the writer of this book, but from the unanswerable authorities of the great standards of Biblical interpretation. The opportunity of research on this point has been too limited to allow anything like an enumeration of all the great names who support this view; but references enough have already been made, to show that an irresistible weight of orthodox sentiment has decided in favor of these views as above given.

Some of the minute details, particularly those not authorized by learned men, who have already so nearly perfected the standard view, may fall under the censure of the critical, as fanciful, like those so freely condemned before; but they were written down because it seemed that there was, in those cases, a wonderfully minute correspondence between these passages and events in the life of John, not commonly noticed. The greater part of this view, however, may be found almost verbatim in Wait’s translation of Hug’s Introduction.

The most satisfactory evidence of the meaning of the great mystery of the Apocalypse, is in the true interpretation of “the number of the beast,” the mystic 666. In the Greek and oriental languages, the letters are used to represent numbers, and thence arose in mystic writings a mode of representing a name by any number, which would be made up by adding together the numbers for which its letters stood; and so any number thus mystically given may be resolved into a name, by taking any word whose letters when added together will make up that sum. Now the word Latinus, (Λατεινος,) meaning the Latin or Roman empire, (for the names are synonymous,) is made up of Greek letters representing the numbers whose sum is 666. Thus Λ-30, α-1, τ-300, ε-5, ι-10, ν-50, ο-70, ς-200――all which, added up, make just 666. What confirms this view is, that Irenaeus says, “John himself told those who saw him face to face, that this was what he meant by the number;” and Irenaeus assures us that he himself heard this from the personal acquaintances of John. (See Wait’s note. Translation of Hug’s Introduction II. 626‒629, note.)

HIS LAST RESIDENCE IN EPHESUS.

The date of John’s return from Patmos is capable of more exact proof than any other point in the chronology of his later years. The death of Domitian, who fell at last under the daggers of his own previous friends, now driven to this measure by their danger from his murderous tyranny, happened in the sixteenth of his own reign, (A. D. 96.) On the happy ♦consummation of this desirable revolution, Cocceius Nerva, who had himself suffered banishment under the suspicious tyranny of Domitian, was now recalled from his exile, to the throne of the Caesars; and mindful of his own late calamity, he commenced his just and blameless reign by an auspicious act of clemency, restoring to their country and home all who had been banished by the late emperor. Among these, John was doubtless included; for the decree was so comprehensive that he could hardly have been excluded from the benefit of its provisions; and to give this view the strongest confirmation, it is specified by the heathen historians of Rome, that this senatorial decree of general recall did not except even those who had been found guilty of religious offenses. Christian writers also, of a respectable antiquity, state distinctly that the apostle John was recalled from Patmos by this decree of Nerva. Some of the early ecclesiastical historians, indeed, have pretended that this persecution against the Christians was suspended by Domitian himself, on some occasion of repentance; but critical examination and a comparison of higher authorities, both sacred and profane, have disproved the notion. The data above-mentioned, therefore, fix the return of John from banishment, in the first year of Nerva, which, according to the most approved chronology, corresponds with A. D. 96. This date is useful also, in affording ground for a reasonable conjecture respecting the comparative age of John. He could not have been near as old as Jesus Christ, since the attainment of the age of ninety-six must imply an extreme of infirmity necessarily accompanying it, unless a miracle of most unparalleled character is supposed; and no one can venture to require belief in a pretended miracle, of which no sacred record bears testimony. If he was, on his return from Patmos, as well as during his residence there, able to produce writings of such power and such clear expression, as those which are generally attributed to these periods, it seems reasonable to suppose that he was many years younger than Jesus Christ. The common Christian era, also, fixing the birth of Christ some years too late, this circumstance will require a still larger subtraction from this number, for the age of John.

♦ “consummamation” replaced with “consummation”

HIS GOSPEL.

The united testimony of early writers who allude to this matter, is that John wrote his gospel, long after the completion and circulation of the writings of the three first evangelists. Some early testimony on the subject dates from the end of the second century, and specifies that John, observing that in the other gospels, those things were copiously related which concern the humanity of Christ, wrote a spiritual gospel, at the earnest solicitations of his friends and disciples, to explain in more full detail, the divinity of Christ. This account is certainly accordant with what is observable of the structure and tendency of this gospel; but much earlier testimony than this, distinctly declares that John’s design in writing, was to attack certain heresies on the same point specified in the former statement. The Nicolaitans and the followers of Cerinthus, in particular, who were both Gnostical sects, are mentioned as having become obnoxious to the purity of the truth, by inculcating notions which directly attacked the true divinity and real Messiahship of Jesus. The earliest heresy that is known to have arisen in the Christian churches, is that of the Gnostics, who, though divided among themselves by some minor distinctions, yet all agreed in certain grand errors, against which this gospel appears to have been particularly directed. The great system of mystical philosophy from which all these errors sprung, did not derive its origin from Christianity, but existed in the east long before the time of Christ; yet after the wide diffusion of his doctrines, many who had been previously imbued with this oriental mysticism, became converts to the new faith. But not rightly apprehending the simplicity of the faith which they had partially adopted, they soon began to contaminate its purity by the addition of strange doctrines, drawn from their philosophy, which were totally inconsistent with the great revelations made by Christ to his apostles. The prime suggestion of the mischief, and one, alas! which has not at this moment ceased to distract the churches of Christ, was a set of speculations, introduced “to account for the origin and existence of evil in the world,”――which seemed to them inconsistent with the perfect work of an all-wise and benevolent being. Overleaping all those minor grounds of dispute which are now occupying the attention of modern controversialists, they attacked the very basis of religious truth, and adopted the notion that the world was not created by the supreme God himself, but by a being of inferior rank, called by them the Demiurgus, whom they considered deficient in benevolence and in wisdom, and as thus being the occasion of the evil so manifest in the works of his hands. This Demiurgus they considered identical with the God of the Jews, as revealed in the Old Testament. Between him and the Supreme Deity, they placed an order of beings, to which they assigned the names of the “Only-begotten,” “the Word,” “the Light,” “the Life,” &c.; and among these superior beings, was Christ,――a distinct existence from Jesus, whom they declared a mere man, the son of Mary; but acquiring a divine character by being united at his baptism to the Divinity, Christ, who departed from him at his death. Most of the Gnostics utterly rejected the law of Moses; but Cerinthus is said to have respected some parts of it.

A full account of the prominent characteristics of the Gnostical system may be found in Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, illustrated by valuable annotations in Dr. Murdock’s translation of that work. The scholar will also find an elaborate account of this, with other Oriental mysticisms, in Beausobre’s Histoire de Manichee et du Manicheisme. J. D. Michaelis, in his introduction to the New Testament, (vol. III. c. ii. § 5,) is also copious on these tenets, in his account of John’s gospel. He refers also to Walch’s History of Heretics. Hug’s Introduction also gives a very full account of the peculiarities of Cerinthus, as connected with the scope of this gospel. Introduction vol. II. §§ 49‒53, [of the original,] §§ 48‒52, [Wait’s translation.]

In connection with John’s living at Ephesus, a story became afterwards current about his meeting him on one occasion and openly expressing a personal abhorrence of him. “Irenaeus [Against Heresies, III. c. 4. p. 140,] states from Polycarp, that John once going into a bath at Ephesus, discovered Cerinthus, the heretic, there; and leaping out of the bath he hastened away, saying he was afraid lest the building should fall on him, and crush him along with the heretic.” Conyers Middleton, in his Miscellaneous works, has attacked this story, in a treatise upon this express point. (This is in the edition of his works in four or five volumes, quarto; but I cannot quote the volume, because it is not now at hand.) Lardner also discusses it. (Vol. I. p. 325, vol. II. p. 555, 4to. edition.)

There can be no better human authority on any subject connected with the life of John, than that of Irenaeus of Lyons, [A. D. 160,] who had in his youth lived in Asia, where he was personally acquainted with Polycarp, the disciple and intimate friend of John, the apostle. His words are, “John, the disciple of the Lord, wishing by the publication of his gospel to remove that error which had been sown among men, by Cerinthus, and much earlier, by those called Nicolaitans, who are a fragment of science, (or the Gnosis,) falsely so called;――and that he might both confound them, and convince them that there is but one God, who made all things by his word, and not, as they say, one who was the Creator, and another who was the Father of our Lord.” (Heresies, lib. III. c. xi.) In another passage he says,――“As John the disciple of the Lord confirms, saying, ‘But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that believing, you may have eternal life in his name,’――guarding against these blasphemous notions, which divide the Lord, as far as they can, by saying that he was made of two different substances.” (Heresies, lib. III. c. xvi.) Michaelis, in his Introduction on John, discusses this passage, and illustrates its true application.

It appears well established by respectable historical testimony, that Cerinthus was contemporary with John at Ephesus, and that he had already made alarming progress in the diffusion of these and other peculiar errors, during the life of the apostle. John therefore, now in the decline of life, on the verge of the grave, would wish to bear his inspired testimony against the advancing heresy; and the occasion, scope, and object of his gospel are very clearly illustrated by a reference to these circumstances. The peculiar use of terms, more particularly in the first part,――terms which have caused so much perplexity and controversy among those who knew nothing about the peculiar technical significations of these mystical phrases, as they were limited by the philosophical application of them in the system of the Gnostics,――is thus shown in a historical light, highly valuable in preventing a mis-interpretation among common readers. This view of the great design of John’s gospel, will be found to coincide exactly with the results of a minute examination of almost all parts of it, and gives new force to many passages, by revealing the particular error at which they were aimed. The details of these coincidences cannot be given here, but have been most satisfactorily traced out, at great length, by the labors of the great modern exegetical theologians, who have occupied volumes with the elucidation of these points. The whole gospel indeed, is not so absorbed in the unity of this plan, as to neglect occasions for supplying general historical deficiences in the narratives of the preceding evangelists. An account is thus given of two journeys to Jerusalem, of which no mention had ever been made in former records, while hardly any notice whatever is taken of the incidents of the wanderings in Galilee, which occupy so large a portion of former narratives,――except so far as they are connected with those instructions of Christ which accord with the great object of this gospel. The scene of the great part of John’s narrative is laid in Judea, more particularly in and about Jerusalem; and on the parting instructions given by Christ to his disciples, just before his crucifixion, he is very full; yet, even in those, he seizes hold mainly of those things which fall most directly within the scope of his work. But throughout the whole, the grand object is seen to be, the presentation of Jesus as the Messiah, the son of the living, eternal God, containing within himself the Life, the Light, the Only-begotten, the Word, and all the personified excellences, to which the Gnostics had, in their mystic idealism, given a separate existence. It thus differs from all the former gospels, in the circumstance, that its great object and its general character is not historical, but dogmatical,――not universal in its direction and tendency, but aimed at the establishment of particular doctrines, and the subversion of particular errors.

Another class of sectaries, against whose errors John wrote in this gospel, were the Sabians, or disciples of John the Baptist;――for some of those who had followed him during his preaching, did not afterwards turn to the greater Teacher and Prophet, whom he pointed out as the one of whom he was the forerunner; and these disciples of the great Baptizer, after his death, taking the pure doctrines which he taught, as a basis, made up a peculiar religious system, by large additions from the same Oriental mysteries from which the Gnostics had drawn their remarkable principles. They acknowledged Jesus Christ as a being of high order, and designate him in their religious books as the “Disciple of Life;” while John the Baptist, himself somewhat inferior, is called the “Apostle of Light,”――and is said to have received his peculiar glorified transfiguration, from a body of flesh to a body of light, from Jesus at the time of his baptism in the Jordan; and yet is represented as distinguished from the “Disciple of Life,” by possessing this peculiar attribute of Light.

This mystical error is distinctly characterized in the first chapter of this gospel, and is there met by the direct assertions, that in Jesus Christ, the Word, and the God, was not only life, but that the LIFE itself was the LIGHT of men;――and that John the Baptist “was not the Light, but was only sent to bear witness of the Light;” and again, with all the tautological earnestness of an old man, the aged writer repeats the assertion that “this was the true Light, which enlightens every man that comes into the world.” Against these same sectaries, the greater part of the first chapter is directed distinctly, and the whole tendency of the work throughout, is in a marked manner opposed to their views. With them too, John had had a local connection, by his residence in Ephesus, where, as it is distinctly specified in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul had found the peculiar disciples of John the Baptist long before, on his first visit to that city; and had successfully preached to some of them, the religion of Christ, which before was a strange and new thing to them. The whole tendency and scope of this gospel, indeed, as directed against these two prominent classes of heretics, both Gnostics and Sabians, are fully and distinctly summed up in the conclusion of the twentieth chapter;――“These things are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that in believing on him, ye might have LIFE through his name.”

As to the place where this gospel was written, there is a very decided difference of opinion among high authorities, both ancient and modern,――some affirming it to have been composed in Patmos, during his exile, and others in Ephesus, before or after his banishment. The best authority, however, seems to decide in favor of Ephesus, as the place; and this view seems to be most generally adopted in modern times. Even those who suppose it to have been written in Patmos, however, grant that it was first given to the Christian world in Ephesus,――the weight of early authority being very decided on this latter point. This distinction between the place of composition and the place of publication, is certainly very reasonable on some accounts, and is supported by ancient authorities of dubious date; but there are important objections to the idea of the composition of both this and the Apocalypse, in the same place, during about one year, which was the period of his exile. There seem to be many things in the style of the gospel which would show it to be a work written at a different period, and under different circumstances from the Apocalypse; and some Biblical critics, of high standing, have thought that the gospel bore marks in its style, which characterized it as a production of a much older man than the author of the energetic, and almost furious denunciations of the Apocalypse, must have been. In this case, where ancient authority is so little decisive, it is but fair to leave the point to be determined by evidence thus connected with the date, and drawn from the internal character of the composition itself,――a sort of evidence, on which the latest moderns are far more capable of deciding than the most ancient, and the sagest of the Fathers. The date itself is of course inseparably connected with the determination of the place, and like that, must be pronounced very uncertain. The greatest probability about both these points is, that it was written at Ephesus, after his return from Patmos; for the idea of its being produced before his banishment, during his first residence in Asia, has long ago been exploded; nor is there any late writer of authority on these points, who pretends to support this unfounded notion.

HIS FIRST EPISTLE.

All that has been said on the character and the objects of the gospel, may be exactly applied to this very similar production. So completely does it resemble John’s gospel, in style, language, doctrines and tendencies, that even a superficial reader might be ready to pronounce, on a common examination, that they were written in the same circumstances and with the same object. This has been the conclusion at which the most learned critics have arrived, after a full investigation of the peculiarities of both, throughout; and the standard opinion now is, that they were both written at the same time and for the same persons. Some reasons have been given by high critical authority, for supposing that they were both written at Patmos, and sent together to Ephesus,――the epistle serving as a preface, dedication, and accompaniment of the gospel, to those for whom it was intended, and commending the prominent points in it to their particular attention. This beautiful and satisfactory view of the object and occasion of the epistle, may certainly be adopted with great propriety and justice; but in regard to the places of its composition and direction, a different view is much more probable, as well as more consistent with the notion, already presented above, of the date and place of the gospel. It is very reasonable to suppose that the epistle was written some years after John’s return to Ephesus,――that it was intended, (along with the gospel, for the churches of Asia generally, to whom John hoped to make an apostolic pastoral visit, shortly,) to confirm them in the faith, as he announces in the conclusion. There is not a single circumstance in gospel or epistle, which should lead any one to believe that they were directed to Ephesus in particular. On the contrary, the total absence of anything like a personal or local direction to the epistle, shows the justice of its common title, that it is a “general epistle,” a circular, in short, to all the churches under his special apostolic supervision,――for whose particular dangers, errors and necessities, he had written the gospel just sent forth, and to whom he now minutely commended that work, in the very opening words of his letter, referring as palpably and undeniably to his gospel, as any words can express. “Of that which ‘was from the beginning, of the Word,’ which I have heard, which I have seen with my eyes, which I have looked upon, which my hands have handled,――of the Word of Life” &c.; particularizing with all the minute verbosity of old age, his exact knowledge of the facts which he gives in his gospel, assuring them thus of the accuracy of his descriptions. The question concerns his reputation for fidelity as a historian; and it is easy to see therefore, why he should labor thus to impress on his readers his important personal advantages for knowing exactly all the facts he treats of, and all the doctrines which he gives at such length in the discourses of Christ. Again and again he says, “I write,” and “I have written,” recapitulating the sum of the doctrines which he has designed to inculcate; and he particularizes still farther that he has written to all classes and ages, from the oldest to the youngest, intending his gospel for the benefit of all. “I have written to you, fathers,”――“unto you, young men,”――“unto you, little children,” &c. What else can this imply, than a dedication of the work concerning “the WORD,” to all stations and ages,――to the whole of the Christian communities, to whom he commits and recommends his writings;――as he writes “to the fathers――because they know him who was from the beginning,”――in the same way “to the young men, because they are constant, and the Word of God dwells in them,” and “that the doctrine they have received may remain unchangeable in them,” and “on account of THOSE WHO WOULD SEDUCE THEM.” He recapitulates all the leading doctrines of his gospel,――the Messiahship, and the Divinity of Jesus,――his Unity, and identity with the divine abstractions of the Gnostic theology. Here too, he inculcates and renewedly urges the great feeling of Christian brotherly love, which so decidedly characterizes the discourses of Jesus, as reported in his gospel. So perfect was the connection of origin and design, between the gospel and this accompanying letter, that they were anciently placed together, the epistle immediately following the gospel; as is indubitably proved by certain marks in ancient manuscripts.

It was mentioned, in connection with a former part of John’s life, that this epistle is quoted by Augustin and others, under the title of the epistle to the Parthians. It seems very probable that this may have been also addressed to those churches in the east, about Babylon, which had certainly suffered much under the attacks of these same mystical heretics. It is explained, however, by some, that this was an accidental corruption in the copying of the Greek.――The second epistle was quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus, under the title of “the epistle to the virgins,” προς παρθενους, which, as some of the modern critics say, must have been accidentally changed to παρθους, by dropping some of the syllables, and afterwards transferred to the first (!) as more appropriate;――a perfectly unauthorized conjecture, and directly in the face of all rules of criticism.

THE SECOND AND THIRD EPISTLES.

These are both evidently private letters from John to two of his intimate personal friends, of whose circumstances nothing whatever being known, except what is therein contained, the notice of these brief writings must necessarily be brief also. They are both honorably referred to, as entertainers of the servants of Jesus Christ as they travel from place to place, and seem to have been residents in some of the Asian cities within John’s apostolic circuit, and probably received him kindly and reverently into their houses on his tours of duty; and them he was about to visit again shortly. The second epistle is directed to a Christian female, who, being designated by the very honorable title of “lady,” was evidently a person of rank; and from the remark towards the conclusion, about the proper objects of her hospitality, it is plain that she must have been also a person of some property. Mention is made of her children as also objects of warm affection to the aged apostle; and as no other member of her family is noticed, it is reasonable to conclude that she was a widow. The contents of this short letter are a mere transcript, almost verbatim, of some important points in the first, inculcating Christian love, and watchfulness against deceivers;――(no doubt the Gnostical heretics,――the Cerinthians and Nicolaitans.) He apologizes for the shortness of the letter, by saying that he hopes shortly to visit her; and ends by communicating the affectionate greetings of her sister’s children, then residents in Ephesus, or whatever city was then the home of John. The third epistle is directed to Gaius, (that is, Caius, a Roman name,) whose hospitality is commemorated with great particularity and gratitude in behalf of Christian strangers, probably preachers, traveling in his region. Another person, named Diotrephes, (a Greek by name, and probably one of the partizans of Cerinthus,) is mentioned as maintaining a very different character, who, so far from receiving the ministers of the gospel sent by the apostle, had even excluded from Christian fellowship those who did exercise this hospitality to the messengers of the apostle. John speaks threateningly of him, and closes with the same apology for the shortness of the letter, as in the former. There are several persons, named Gaius, or Caius, mentioned in apostolic history; but there is no reason to suppose that any of them was identified with this man.

For these lucid views of the objects of all these epistles, I am mainly indebted to Hug’s Introduction, to whom belongs the merit of expressing them in this distinctness, though others before him have not been far from apprehending their simple force. Michaelis, for instance, is very satisfactory, and much more full on some points. In respect to the place whence they were written, Hug appears to be wholly in the wrong, in referring them to Patmos, just before John’s return. Not the least glimmer of a reason appears, why all the writings of John should be huddled together in his exile. I can make nothing whatever of the learned commentator’s reason about the deficiency of “pen, ink and paper,” (mentioned in Epistle ii. 12, and iii. 13.) as showing that John must still have been in “that miserable place,” Patmos. The idea seems to require a great perversion of simple words, which do not seem to be capable of any other sense than that adopted in the above account.

THE TRADITIONS OF HIS LIFE IN EPHESUS.

To this period of his life, are referred those stories of his miracles and actions, with which the ancient fictitious apostolic narratives are so crowded,――John being the subject of more ancient traditions than any other apostle. Some of those are so respectable and reasonable in their character, as to deserve a place here, although none of them are of such antiquity as to deserve any confidence, on points where fiction has often been so busy. The first which follows, is altogether the most ancient of all apostolic stories, which are not in the New Testament; and even if it is a work of fiction, it has such merits as a mere tale, that it would be injustice to the readers of this book, not to give them the whole story, from the most ancient and best authorized record.

It is related that John, after returning from banishment, was often called to the neighboring churches to organize them, or to heal divisions, and to ordain elders. On one occasion, after ordaining a bishop, he committed to his particular care and instruction a fine young man, whom he saw in the congregation, charging the bishop, before the whole church, to be faithful to him. The bishop accordingly took the young man into his house, watched over him, and instructed him, and at length baptized him. After this, viewing the young man as a confirmed Christian, the bishop relaxed his watchfulness, and allowed the youth greater liberties. He soon got into bad company, in which his talents made him conspicuous, and proceeding from one step to another, he finally became the leader of a band of robbers. In this state of things, John came to visit the church, and presently called upon the bishop to bring forward his charge. The bishop replied that he was dead,――dead to God;――and was now in the mountains, a captain of banditti. John ordered a horse to be brought immediately to the church door, and a guide to attend him; and mounting, he rode full speed in search of the gang. He soon fell in with some of them, who seized him, to be carried to their head quarters. John told them that this was just what he wanted, for he came on purpose to see their captain. As they drew near, the captain stood ready to receive them; but on seeing John, he drew back, and began to make off. John pursued with all the speed his aged limbs would permit, crying out, “My son, why do you run from your own father, who is unarmed and aged? Pity me, my son, and do not fear. There is yet hope of your life. I will intercede for you; and, if necessary, will cheerfully suffer death for you, as the Lord did for us. Stop,――believe what I say; Christ hath sent me.” The young man stopped, looked on the ground, and then throwing down his arms, came trembling, and with sobs and tears, begged for pardon. The apostle assured him of the forgiveness of Christ; and conducting him back to the church, there fasted and prayed with him, and at length procured his absolution.

Another story, far less probable, is related in the ancient martyrologies, and by the counterfeit Abdias. Craton, a philosopher, to make a display of contempt for riches, had persuaded two wealthy young men, his followers, to invest all their property in two very costly pearls; and then, in the presence of a multitude, to break them, and pound them to dust. John happening to pass by, at the close of the transaction, censured this destruction of property, which might better have been given in alms to the poor. Craton told him, if he thought so, he might miraculously restore the dust to solid pearls again, and have them for charitable purposes. The apostle gathered up the particles, and holding them in his hand, prayed fervently, that they might become solid pearls, and when the people said “Amen,” it took place. By this miracle, Craton, and all his followers, were converted to Christianity; and the two young men took back the pearls, sold them, and then distributed the avails in charity. Influenced by this example, two other young men of distinction, Atticus and Eugenius, sold their estates, and distributed the avails among the poor. For a time, they followed the apostle, and possessed the power of working miracles. But, one day, being at Pergamus, and seeing some well-dressed young men, glittering in their costly array, they began to regret that they had sold all their property, and deprived themselves of the means of making a figure in the world. John read in their countenances and behavior the state of their minds; and after drawing from them an avowal of their regret, he bid them bring him each a bundle of straight rods, and a parcel of smooth stones from the sea shore. They did so,――and the apostle, after converting the rods into gold, and the stones into pearls, bid them take them, and sell them, and redeem their alienated estates, if they chose. At the same time, he plainly warned them, that the consequence would be the eternal loss of their souls. While he continued his long and pungent discourse, a funeral procession came along. John now prayed, and raised the dead man to life. The resuscitated person began to describe the invisible world, and so graphically painted to Atticus and Eugenius the greatness of their loss, that they were melted into contrition. The apostle ordered them to do penance thirty days,――till the golden rods should become wood, and the pearls become stones. They did so, and were afterwards very distinguished saints.

Another story, of about equal merit, is told by the same authority. While John continued his successful ministry at Ephesus, the idolaters there, in a tumult, dragged him to the temple of Diana, and insisted on his sacrificing to the idol. He warned all to come out of the temple, and then, by prayer, caused it to fall to the ground, and become a heap of ruins. Then, addressing the pagans on the spot, he converted twelve thousand of them in one day. But Aristodemus, the pagan high priest, could not be convinced, till John had drunken poison without harm, by which two malefactors were killed instantly, and also raised the malefactors to life. This resuscitation he rendered the more convincing to Aristodemus, by making him the instrument of it. The apostle pulled off his tunic, and gave it to Aristodemus. “And what is this for?” said the high priest. “To cure you of your infidelity,” was the reply. “But how is your tunic to cure me of infidelity?” “Go,” said the apostle, “and spread it upon the dead bodies, and say: ‘The apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ hath sent me to resuscitate you, in his name, that all may know, that life and death are the servants of Jesus Christ, my Lord.’” By this miracle the high priest was fully convinced; and afterwards convinced the proconsul. Both of them were baptized,――and persecution, from that time, ceased. They also built the church dedicated to St. John, at Ephesus.

For this series of fables I am indebted again to the kindness of Dr. Murdock, in whose manuscript lectures they are so well translated from the original romances, as to make it unnecessary for me to repeat the labor of making a new version from the Latin. The sight of the results of abler efforts directly before me, offers a temptation to exonerate myself from a tedious and unsatisfactory effort, which is too great to be resisted, while researches into historical truth have a much more urgent claim for time and exertion.

The only one of all these fables that occurs in the writings of the Fathers, is the first, which may be pronounced a tolerably respectable and ancient story. It is narrated by Clemens Alexandrinus, (about A. D. 200.) The story is copied from Clemens Alexandrinus by Eusebius, from whom we receive it, the original work of Clemens being now lost. Chrysostom also gives an abridgement of the tale. (I. Paraenes ad Theodosius) Anastasius Sinaita, Simeon Metaphrastes, Nicephorus Callistus, the Pseudo-Abdias, and the whole herd of monkish liars, give the story almost verbatim from Clemens; for it is so full in his account as to need no embellishment to make it a good story. Indeed its completeness in all these interesting details, is one of the most suspicious circumstances about it; in short, it is almost too good a story to be true. Those who wish to see all the evidence for and against its authenticity, may find it thoroughly examined in Lampe’s Prolegomena to a Johannine Theology (I. v. 4‒10.) It is, on the whole, the best authorized of all the stories about the apostles, which are given by the Fathers, and may reasonably be considered to have been true in the essential parts, though the minute details of the conversations, &c., are probably embellishments worked in by Clemens Alexandrinus, or his informants.

The rest of these stories are, most unquestionably, all unmitigated falsehoods; nor does any body pretend to find the slightest authority for a solitary particular of them. They are found no where but in the novels of the Pseudo-Abdias, and the martyrologies. (Abdiae Babyloniae episcopi et Apostolorum discipuli de Historia, lib. V., St. John.)

HIS DEATH.

Respecting the close of his life, all antiquity is agreed that it was not terminated by martyrdom, nor by any violent death whatever, but by a calm and peaceful departure in the course of nature, at a very great age. The precise number of years to which he attained can not be known, because no writer who lived within five hundred years of his time has pretended to specify his exact age. It is merely mentioned on very respectable ancient authority, that he survived to the beginning of the reign of Trajan. This noblest of the successors of Julius, began his splendid reign in A. D. 98, according to the most approved chronology; so that if John did not outlive even the first year of Trajan, his death is brought very near the close of the first century; and from what has been reasonably conjectured about his age, compared with that of his Lord, it may be supposed that he attained upwards of eighty years,――a supposition which agrees well enough with the statement of some of the Fathers, that he died worn out with old age.

Jerome has a great deal to say also, about the age of John at the time when he was called, arguing that he must have been a mere boy at the time, because tradition asserts that he lived till the reign of Trajan. Lampe very justly objects, however, that this proof amounts to nothing, if we accept another common tradition, that he lived to the age of 100 years; which, if we count back a century from the reign of Trajan, would require him to have attained mature age at the time of the call. Neither tradition however, is worth much. Our old friend Baronius, too, comes in to enlighten the investigation of John’s age, by what he considers indubitable evidence. He says that John was in his twenty-second year when he was called, and passing three years with Christ, must have been twenty-five years old at the time of the crucifixion; “because,” says the sagacious Baronius, “he was then initiated into the priesthood.” An assertion which Lampe with indignant surprise stigmatizes as showing “remarkable boldness,” (insignis audacia,) because it contains two very gross errors,――first in pretending that John was ever made a priest, (sacerdos,) and secondly in confounding the age required of the Levites with that of the priests when initiated. For Baronius’s argument resting wholly on the very strange and unfounded notion, that John was made a priest, is furthermore supported on the idea that the prescribed age for entering the priesthood was twenty-five years; but in reality, the age thus required was thirty years, so that if the other part of this idle story was true, this would be enough to overthrow the conclusion. Lampe also alludes to the absurd idea of the painters, in representing John as a young man, even while writing his gospel; while in reality all writers agree that that work was written by him in his old age. This idea of his perpetual youth, once led into a blunder some foolish Benedictine monks, who found in Constantinople an antique agate intaglio, representing a young man with a cornucopia, and an eagle, and with a figure of victory placing a crown on his head. This struck their monkish fancies at once, as an unquestionable portrait of John, sent to their hands by a miraculous preservation. Examination however, has shown it to be a representation of the apotheosis of Germanicus.

But even here, the monkish inventors have found room for new fables; and though the great weight of all ancient testimony deprives them of the opportunity to enter into the horrible details of a bloody and agonizing death, they can not refuse themselves the pleasure of some tedious absurdities, about the manner of his death and burial, which are barely worth a partial sketch, to show how determined the apostolic novelists are to follow their heroes to the very last, with the glories of a fancifully miraculous departure.

The circumstances of his death are described in the martyrologies, and by Abdias, in this manner. He had a vision acquainting him with his approaching exit, five days before it happened. On a Lord’s-day morning, he went to the great church at Ephesus, bearing his name, and there performed public worship as usual, at day-break. About the middle of the forenoon, he ordered a deacon, and some grave diggers, with their tools, to accompany him to the burying ground. He then set them to digging his grave, while he, after ordering the multitude to depart, spent the time in prayer. He once looked into the grave, and bid them dig it deeper. When it was finished, he took off his outer garment, and spread it in the grave. Then, standing over it, he made a speech to those present, (which is not worth repeating,) then gave thanks to God for the arrival of the time of his release,――and placing himself in the grave, and wrapping himself up, he instantly expired. The grave was filled up; and afterwards miracles took place at it, and a kind of manna issued from it, which possessed great virtues.

There is no need, however, of such fables, to crown with the false honors of a vain prodigy, the calmly glorious end of the “Last of the Apostles.” It is enough for the Christian to know, that, with the long, bright course of almost a century behind him, and with the mighty works of his later years around him, John closed the solemn apostolic drama, bearing with him in his late departure the last light of inspiration, and the last personal “testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy.” Blessed in his works thus following him, he died in the Lord, and now rests from his labors on the breast of that loved friend, who cherished so tenderly the youthful Son of Thunder;――on the bosom of his Redeemer and his Lord,――

“The bosom of his Father and his God.”

PHILIP.

In all the three gospel lists, this apostle is placed fifth in order, the variations in the arrangements of the preceding making no difference in his position. In the first chapter of Acts, however, a different arrangement is made of his name, as will be hereafter mentioned. The mere mention of his name on the list, is all the notice taken of him by either of the three first evangelists, and it is only in the gospel of John, that the slightest additional circumstance can be learned about him. From this authority it is ascertained that he was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter, and probably also the home or frequent visiting-place of the sons of Zebedee, by the younger of whom he is so particularly commemorated. Immediately after the narration of the introduction of Andrew, John and Peter, to Jesus, in the first chapter of this gospel, it is said that Jesus next proceeded from Bethabara into Galilee, and there finds Philip; but the particular place is not mentioned, though Bethsaida being immediately after mentioned as his home, very probably was the place of the meeting. Andrew and Peter, on their return home, had doubtless had no small talk among their acquaintances, about the wonderful person announced as the Messiah, to whom they had been introduced, and had thus satisfied themselves that he was really the divine character he was said to be. Philip too, must have heard of him in this way, before he saw him; so that when Jesus met him, he was prepared at once to receive the call which Jesus immediately gave him,――“Follow me.” From the circumstance that he was the first person who was summoned by Jesus, in this particular formula of invitation to the discipleship, some writers have, not without reason, claimed for Philip the name and honors of the Protoclete, or “first-called;” though Andrew has commonly been considered as best entitled to this dignity, from his being the first mentioned by name, as actually becoming acquainted with Jesus. Philip was so devoutly engaged, at once, in the cause of his new Master, that he, like Andrew, immediately sought out others to share the blessings of the discipleship; and soon after meeting one of his friends, Nathanael, he expressed the ardor of his faith in his new teacher, by the words in which he invited him to join in this honorable fellowship,――“We have found him of whom Moses, in the law, and all the prophets did write,――Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” The result of this application will be related in the life of the person most immediately concerned. After this, no notice whatever is taken of Philip except where incidental remarks made by him in the conversations of Jesus, are recorded by John. Thus, at the feeding of the five thousand, upon Jesus’s asking whether they had the means of procuring food for the multitude, Philip answered, that “two hundred pence would not buy enough for them, that every one might take a little,”――thus showing himself not at all prepared by his previous faith in Jesus, for the great miracle which was about to happen; though Jesus had asked the question, as John says, with the actual design of trying the extent of his confidence in him. He is afterwards mentioned in the last conversations of Jesus, as saying to him, “Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us,”――here too, betraying also a most unfortunate deficiency, both of faith and knowledge, and implying also a vain desire to gratify his eyes with still more miraculous displays of the divine power of his Master; though, even in this respect, he probably was no worse off than all the rest of the disciples, before the resurrection of Jesus.

Protoclete.――Hammond claims this peculiar honor for Philip, with great zeal. (See his notes on John i. 43.)

Of his apostleship not one word is recorded in the New Testament, for he is no where mentioned in the Acts, except as being one of the apostles assembled in the upper chamber after the ascension; nor do the epistles contain the slightest allusion to him. Some of the most ancient authorities among the Fathers, however, are distinct in their mention of some circumstances of his later life; but all these accounts are involved in total discredit, by the fact that they make him identical with Philip the deacon, whose active and zealous labors in Samaria, and along the coast of Palestine, from Gaza, through Ashdod to Caesarea, his home, are minutely related in the Acts, and have been already alluded to, in that part of the life of Peter which is connected with these incidents. It has always been supposed, with much reason, in modern times, that the offices of an apostle and a deacon were so totally distinct and different, that they could never both be borne by one and the same person; but the Fathers, even the very ancient ones, seem to have had not the slightest idea of any such incompatibility; and therefore uniformly speak of Philip the apostle, as the same person with Philip, one of the seven deacons, who is mentioned by Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, as having lived at Caesarea, in Palestine, with his daughters, who were virgins and prophetesses. Testimony more distinct than this, can no where be found, among all the Fathers, on any point whatever; and very little that is more ancient. Yet how does it accord with the notions of those who revere these very Fathers as almost immaculate in truth, and in all intellectual, as well as moral excellence? What is the evidence of these boasted Fathers worth, on any point in controversy about apostolic church government, or doctrine, or criticism, if the modern notion of the incompatibility of the two offices of apostle and deacon is correct?

The testimony of the Fathers on this point, is simply this. Eusebius (Church History, III. 31,) quotes Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, who, in his letter to Victor, bishop of Rome, (written A. D. 195, or 196,) makes mention of Philip in these exact words: “Philip, who was one of the twelve apostles, died in Hierapolis;” (in Phrygia;) “and so did two of his daughters, who had grown old in virginity. And another of his daughters, after having passed her life under the influence of the Holy Spirit, was buried at Ephesus.” This certainly is a most perfect identification of Philip the apostle with Philip the deacon; for it is this latter person who is particularly mentioned in Acts, xxi. 8, 9, as “having four daughters who did prophesy.” He is there especially designated as “Philip the evangelist, one of the seven,” while Polycrates expressly declares, that this same person “was one of the twelve.” Eusebius also, in the preceding chapter, quotes Clemens Alexandrinus as mentioning Philip among those apostles who were married, because he is mentioned as having had daughters; and Clemens even adds that these were afterwards married, which directly contradicts the previous statement of Polycrates, that three of them died virgins, in old age. Yet Eusebius quotes all this stuff, with approbation.

Papias, (A. D. 140,) bishop of Hierapolis, the very place of the death and burial of Philip, is represented by Eusebius as having been well acquainted with the daughters of Philip, mentioned in Acts, as the virgin prophetesses. Papias says that he himself “heard these ladies say that their father once raised a dead person to life, in their time.” But it deserves notice, that Papias, the very best authority on this subject, is no where quoted as calling this Philip “an apostle;” though Eusebius, on his own authority, gives this name to the Philip of whom Papias speaks. It is therefore reasonable to conclude, that this blunder, betraying such a want of familiarity with the New Testament history, originated after the time of Papias, whose intimate acquaintance with Philip’s family would have enabled him to say, at once, that this was the deacon, and not the apostle; though it is not probable that he was any less deplorably ignorant of the scriptures than most of the Fathers were.

Now what can be said of the testimony of the Fathers on points where they can not refer, either to their own personal observation, or to informants who have seen and heard what they testify? The only way in which they can be shielded from the reproach of a gross blunder and a disgraceful ignorance of the New Testament, is, that they were right in identifying these two Philips, and that modern theologians are wrong in making the distinction. On this dilemma I will not pretend to decide; for though so little reverence for the judgment and information of the Fathers has been shown in this book, there does seem to me to be some reason for hesitation on this point, where the Fathers ought to have been as well informed as any body. They must have known surely, whether, according to the notions of those primitive ages of Christianity, there was any incompatibility between the apostleship and the deaconship! If their testimony is worth anything on such points, it ought to weigh so much on this, as to cause a doubt whether they are not right, and the moderns wrong. However, barely suggesting this query, without attempting a decision, as Luther says, “I will afford to other and higher spirits, occasion to reflect.”

This is all the satisfaction that the brief records of the inspired or uninspired historians of Christianity can give the inquirer, on the life of this apostle;――so unequal were the labors of the first ministers of Christ, and their claims for notice. Philip, no doubt, served the purpose for which he was called, faithfully; but in these brief sketches, there are no traces of any genius of a high character, that could distinguish him above the thousands that are forgotten, but whose labors, like those of the minutest animals in a mole-hill, contribute an indispensable portion to the completion of the mass, in whose mighty structure all their individual efforts are swallowed up forever.

And though the ancient Polycrates may have blundered grievously, in respect to the apostle’s personal identity, his hope of the glorious resurrection of those whom he supposed to have died in Asia will doubtless be equally well rewarded, if, to the amazement of the Fathers, the apostle Philip should rise at last from the dust of Babylon, or the ashes of Jerusalem, while his namesake, the evangelist, shall burst from his tomb in Hierapolis. “For,” as Polycrates truly says, “in Asia, some great lights have gone down, which shall rise again on that day of the Lord’s approach, when he shall come from the heavens in glory, and shall raise up all his saints;――Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who sleeps at Hierapolis, with his venerable virgin daughters,――John, who lay in the bosom of the Lord, and who is laid at Ephesus,――Polycarp, at Smyrna,――Thraseas, at Eumenia,――Sagaris, at Laodicea,――Papirius and Melito, at Sardis――all await the visitation of the Lord from the heavens, in which he shall raise them from the dead.”

NATHANAEL, BAR-THOLOMEW.

HIS NAME AND CALL.

In respect to this apostle, there occurs a primary question about his name, which is given so differently in different sacred authorities, as to induce a strong suspicion that the two names refer to two totally distinct persons. The reasons for applying the two words, Nathanael and Bartholomew, to the same person, are the circumstances,――that none of the three first evangelists mention any person named Nathanael, and that John never mentions the name Bartholomew,――that Bartholomew and Nathanael are each mentioned on these different authorities, among the chosen disciples of Jesus,――that Bartholomew is mentioned by the three first evangelists, on all the lists, directly after Philip, who is by John represented as his intimate friend,――and that Bartholomew is not an individual name, but a word showing parentage merely,――the first syllable being often prefixed to Syriac names, for this purpose; and Bar-Tholomew means the “son of Tholomew,” or “Tholomai;” just as Bar-Jonah means the “son of Jonah;” nor was the former any more in reality the personal, individual name of Nathanael, than the latter was of Peter; but some circumstance may have occurred to make it, in this instance, often take the place of the true individual name.

A few very brief notices are given of this apostle by John, who alone alludes to him, otherwise than by a bare mention on the list. It is mentioned in his gospel that Nathanael was of Cana, in Galilee, a town which stood about half-way between lake Gennesaret and the Mediterranean sea; but the circumstances of his call seem to show that he was then with Philip, probably at or near Bethsaida. Philip, after being summoned by Jesus to the discipleship, immediately sought to bring his friend Nathanael into an enjoyment of the honors of a personal intercourse with Jesus, and invited him to become a follower of the Messiah, foretold by Moses and the prophets, who had now appeared, as Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. On hearing of that mean place, as the home of the promised King of Israel, Nathanael, with great scorn, replied, in inquiry, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” To this sneering question, Philip answered by the simple proposition, “Come and see;”――wisely judging that no argument could answer his friend’s prejudice so well as an actual observation of the character and aspect of the Nazarene himself. Nathanael, accordingly, persuaded by the earnestness of his friend, came along with him, perhaps, partly to gratify him, but, no doubt, with his curiosity somewhat moved to know what could have thus brought Philip into this devout regard for a citizen of that dirty little town; and he therefore readily accompanied him to see what sort of prophet could come out of Nazareth.

The words with which Jesus greeted Nathanael, even before he had been personally introduced, or was prepared for any salutation, are the most exalted testimonial of his character that could be conceived, and show at once his very eminent qualifications for the high honors of the apostleship. When Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, he said, “Behold a true son of Israel, in whom is no guile!”――manifesting at once a confidential and intimate knowledge of his whole character, in thus pronouncing with such ready decision, this high and uncommon tribute of praise upon him, as soon as he appeared before him. Nathanael, quite surprised at this remarkable compliment from one whom he had never seen until that moment, and whom he supposed to be equally ignorant of him, replied with the inquiry, “Whence knowest thou me?” Jesus answered, “Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee.” The fig-trees of Palestine, presenting a wide, leafy cover, and a delightful shade, were often used in the warm season as places of retirement, either in company, for conversation, or in solitude, for meditation and prayer, as is shown in numerous passages of the Rabbinical writings; and it was, doubtless, in one of these occupations that Nathanael was engaged, removed, as he supposed, from all observation, at the time to which Jesus referred. But the eye that could pierce the stormy shades of night on the boisterous waves of Galilee, and that could search the hearts of all men, could also penetrate the thick, leafy veil of the fig-tree, and observe the most secret actions of this guileless Israelite, when he supposed the whole world to be shut out, and gave himself to the undisguised enjoyment of his thoughts, feelings, and actions, without restraint. Nathanael, struck with sudden but absolute conviction, at this amazing display of knowledge, gave up all his proud scruples against the despised Nazarene, and adoringly exclaimed, “Rabbi! thou art the Son of God,――thou art the King of Israel.” Jesus, recognizing with pleasure the ready faith of this pure-minded disciple, replied, “Because I said unto thee, ‘I saw thee under the fig-tree,’――believest thou? Thou shalt see yet greater things than these.” Then turning to Philip as well as to Nathanael, he says to them both, “I solemnly assure you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

On the day but one after this occurrence, as John records, Jesus was in Cana of Galilee, the residence of Nathanael, and was present at a wedding which took place there. From the circumstance that the mother of Jesus was there also, it would seem likely that it was the marriage of some of their family friends; otherwise the conjecture might seem allowable, that the presence of Jesus and his disciples on this occasion, was in some way connected with the introduction of Nathanael to Jesus; and that this new disciple may have been some way concerned in this interesting event. The manner in which the occurrence is announced,――it being next specified, that two days after the occurrences recorded in the end of the first chapter, Jesus was present at a marriage in Cana of Galilee,――would seem to imply very fairly, that Jesus had been in some other place immediately before; and it is probable therefore, that he accompanied Nathanael home from Bethsaida, or whatever place was the scene of his calling to the discipleship, along with Philip. The terms of the statement are not, however, absolutely incompatible with the idea of this first introduction of these two disciples to Jesus, in Cana itself, which may have been the part of Galilee into which Jesus is said to have gone forth, after leaving Bethabara; although, the reasons above given make it probable that Bethsaida was the scene. After this first incident, no mention whatever is made of Nathanael, either under his proper name, or his paternal appellation, except that when the twelve were sent forth in pairs, he was sent with his friend Philip, that those who had been summoned to the work together, might now go forth laboring together in this high commission. One solitary incident is also commemorated by John, in which this apostle was concerned, namely, the meeting on the lake of Gennesaret, after the resurrection, where his name is mentioned among those who went out on the fishing excursion with Peter. His friend Philip is not there mentioned, but may have been one of the “two disciples,” who are included without their names being given. From this trifling circumstance, some have concluded that Nathanael was a fisherman by trade, as well as the other four who are mentioned with him; and certainly the conjecture is reasonable, and not improbable, except from the circumstance, that his residence was at Cana, which is commonly understood to have been an inland town, and too far from the water, for any of its inhabitants to follow fishing as a business. Other idle conjectures about his occupation and rank might be multiplied from most anciently and venerably foolish authorities; but let the dust of ages sleep on the prosy guesses of the Gregories, of Chrysostom, Augustin, and their reverential copyists in modern times. There is too much need of room in this book, for the detail and discussion of truth, to allow paper to be wasted on baseless conjectures, or impudent falsehoods.

HIS APOSTLESHIP.

There is a dim relic of a story, of quite ancient date, that after the dispersion of the apostles, he went to Arabia, and preached there till his death. This is highly probable, because it is well known that many of the Jews, more particularly after the destruction of Jerusalem, settled along the eastern coasts of the Red sea, where they were continued for centuries. Nothing can be more reasonable then, than to suppose that after the wasting fury of invasion had desolated the city and the land of their fathers, many of the Christian Jews too, went forth to seek a new home in the peaceful regions of Arabia Felix; and that with them also went forth this true Israelite without guile, to devote the rest of his life to apostolic labors, in that distant country, where those of his wandering brethren, who had believed in Christ, would so much need the support and counsel of one of the divinely commissioned ministers of the gospel. Those Israelites too, who still continued unbelievers, would present objects of importance, in the view of the apostle. All the visible glories of the ancient covenant had departed; and in that distant land, with so little of the chilling influence of the dogmatical teachers of the law around them, they would be the more readily led to the just appreciation of a spiritual faith, and a simple creed.

All the testimony which antiquity affords on this point, is simply this:――Eusebius (Church History, V. 10,) says, in giving the life of Pantaenus of Alexandria, (who lived about A. D. 180,) that this enterprising Christian philosopher penetrated, in his researches and travels, as far as to the inhabitants of India. It has been shown by Tillemont, Asseman and Michaelis, that this term, in this connection, means Arabia Felix, one part of whose inhabitants were called Indians, by the Hebrews, the Syrians and the early ecclesiastical historians. Eusebius relates that Pantaenus there found the gospel of Matthew, in Hebrew, and that the tradition among these people was, that Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, had formerly preached there, and left this gospel among them. This tradition being only a hundred years old when Pantaenus heard it, ranks among those of rather respectable character.

The tradition certainly appears authentic, and is a very interesting and valuable fragment of early Christian history, giving a trace of the progress of the gospel, which otherwise would never have been recognized,――besides the satisfaction of such a reasonable story about an apostle of whom the inspired narrative records so little, although he is represented in such an interesting light, by the account of his introduction to Jesus. Here he learned the meaning of the solemn prophecy with which Jesus crowned that noble profession of faith. Here he saw, no doubt, yet greater tokens of the power of Christ, than in the deep knowledge of hidden things then displayed. And here, resting at last from his labors, he departed to the full view of the glories there foretold,――to “see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

MATTHEW.

HIS RANK AND NAME.

In his own gospel, Matthew is not ranked immediately after the preceding apostle, but numbers himself eighth on the list, and after his associate, Thomas; but all the other lists agree in giving this apostle a place immediately after Nathanael. The testimony of others in regard to his rank has therefore been adopted, in preference to his own, which was evidently influenced by a too modest estimation of himself.

In connection with this apostle, as in other instances, there is a serious question about his name and individual identity, arising from the different appellations under which he is mentioned in different parts of the sacred record. In his own gospel, he is referred to by no other name than his common one; but by Mark and Luke, the circumstances of his call are narrated, with the details almost precisely similar to those recorded of the same occurrence by himself, and yet the person thus called, (in the same form of words used in summoning the other apostles,) is named Levi, the son of Alpheus; though Mark and Luke record Matthew by his common name among the twelve, in the list of names. Some have thought that the circumstance of their mentioning Matthew in this manner, without referring at all to his identity with the person named Levi, proves that they too had no idea that the former name was applied to the same person as the latter, and on the contrary, were detailing the call of some other disciple,――perhaps Jude, who also is called by the similar name, Lebbeus, and is known to have been the son of Alpheus. This view is not improbable, and is so well supported by coinciding circumstances, as to throw great uncertainty over the whole matter; though not entirely to set aside the probabilities arising from the almost perfect similarity between Matthew’s call, as related by himself, and the call of Levi, the son of Alpheus, as given in the other gospels.

On the question of Matthew’s identity with Levi, Michaelis is full. (Introduction, III. iv. 1.) Fabricius (Bibliotheca Graeca, IV. vii. 2,) discusses the question quite at length, and his annotators give abundance of references to authors, in detail, in addition, to those mentioned by himself, in the text.

HIS CALL.

The circumstances of his call, as narrated by himself, are represented as occurring at or near Capernaum. “Jesus, passing out of the city, saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom, and he said to him,――‘Follow me.’ And he arose, and followed him.” This account shows Matthew’s occupation, which is also known from the title of “the tax-gatherer,” annexed to his name, in his own list of the apostles. This was an occupation which, though unquestionably a source of great profit to those employed in it, and consequently as much sought after as such offices are in these days, and in this country, was always connected with a great deal of popular odium, from the relation in which they stood to the people, in this profitable business. The class of collectors to which Matthew belonged, in particular, being the mere toll-gatherers, sitting to collect the money, penny by penny, from the unwilling people, whose national pride was every moment wounded by the degrading foreign exactions of the Romans, suffered under a peculiar ignominy, and were supposed to have renounced all patriotism and honor, in stooping, for the base purposes of pecuniary gain, to act as instruments of such a galling form of servitude, and were therefore visited with a universal popular hatred and scorn. A class of men thus deprived of all character for honor and delicacy of feeling, would naturally grow hardened, beyond all sense of shame; and this added to the usual official impudence which characterizes all mean persons, holding a place which gives them the power to annoy others, the despised publicans would generally repay this spite, on every occasion, which could enable them to be vexatious to those who came in contact with them. Yet out of this hated class, Jesus did not disdain to take at least one,――perhaps more,――of those whom he chose for the express purpose of building up a pure faith, and of evangelizing the world. No doubt, before the occasion of this call, Matthew had been a frequent hearer of the words of truth which fell from the divinely eloquent lips of the Redeemer,――words that had not been without a purifying and exalting effect on the heart of the publican, though long so degraded by daily and hourly familiarity with meanness and vice. And so weaned was his soul from the love of the gainful pursuit to which he had been devoted, that at the first call from Jesus, he arose from the place of toll-gathering, and followed his summoner, to a duty for which his previous occupation had but poorly prepared him. With such satisfaction did he renounce his old vocation, for the discipleship of the Nazarene, that he made it a great occasion of rejoicing, and celebrated the day as a festival, calling in all his old friends as well as his new ones, to share in the hospitable entertainment which he spread for all who could join with him in the social circle. Nor did the holy Redeemer despise the rough and indiscriminate company to which the grateful joy of Matthew had invited him; but rejoicing in an opportunity to do good to a class of people so seldom brought under the means of grace, he unhesitatingly sat down to the entertainment with his disciples,――Savior and sinners, toll-gatherers and apostles, all thronging in one motley group, around the festive board. What a sight was this for the eyes of the proud Pharisees who were spitefully watching the conduct of the man who had lately taken upon himself the exalted character of a teacher, and a reformer of the law! Passing into the house with the throng who entered at the open doors of the hospitable Matthew,――they saw the much glorified prophet of Nazareth, sitting at the social table along with a parcel of low custom-house collectors, toll-gatherers, tide-waiters and cheats, one of whose honorable fraternity he had just adopted into the goodly fellowship of his disciples, and was now eating and drinking with these outcast villains, without repelling the familiar merriment even of the lowest of them. At this spectacle, so degrading to such a dignity as they considered most becoming in one who aspired to be a teacher of morals and religion, the scribes and Pharisees sneeringly asked the disciples of Jesus,――“Why eateth your Master with tax-gatherers and sinners?” Jesus, hearing the malicious inquiry, answered it in such a tone of irony as best suited its impertinence. “They that are whole, need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what this means,――‘I will have mercy, rather than sacrifice;’ for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

HIS GOSPEL.

After the history of his call, not one circumstance is related respecting him, either in the gospels, the Acts or the epistles. In his own gospel, he makes not the slightest allusion to anything either said or done by himself; nor does his name anywhere occur except in the apostolic lists. Even the Fathers are silent as to any other important circumstances of his life, and it is only in the noble record which he has left of the life of Christ, in the gospel which bears his name, that any monument of his actions and character can now be found. Yet this solitary remaining effort of his genius is of such importance in the history of revealed religion, that hardly the most eminent of the apostles is so often brought to mind, as the evangelist, whose clear, simple, but impressive testimony to the words and deeds of his Lord, now stands at the head of the sacred canon.

On the history of this portion of the Christian scriptures, the testimony of the Fathers, from very early times, is very decided in maintaining the fact, that it was written in the vernacular language of Palestine. The very earliest testimony on this point, dating within seventy-five years of the time of Matthew himself, expressly declares that Matthew wrote his gospel in the Hebrew language; and that each one interpreted it for himself as he could. It is also said on somewhat early authority, that he wrote his gospel when about to depart from Palestine, that those whom he left behind him might have an authentic record of the facts in the life of Christ. So that by these and a great number of other testimonies, uniformly to the same effect, the point seems well established that Matthew wrote in Hebrew; and that what is now extant as his gospel, is only a translation into Greek, made in some later age, by some person unknown.

I. In what language did Matthew write his Gospel?

In mentioning the Hebrew as the original language of the gospel of Matthew, it should be noticed, that the dialect spoken by the Jews of the time of Christ and his apostles, was by no means the language in which the Old Testament was written, and which is commonly meant by this name at present. The true ancient Hebrew had long before become a dead language, as truly so as it is now, and as much unknown to the mass of the people, as the Latin is in Italy, or the Anglo-Saxon in England. Yet the language was still called “the Hebrew,” as appears from several passages in the New Testament, where the Hebrew is spoken of as the vernacular language of the Jews of Palestine. It seems proper therefore, to designate the later Hebrew by the same name which is applied to it by those who spoke it, and this is still among modern writers the term used for it; but of late, some, especially Hug and his commentator, Wait, have introduced the name “Aramaic,” as a distinctive title of this dialect, deriving this term from Aram, the original name of Syria, and the regions around, in all which was spoken in the time of Christ, this or a similar dialect. This term however, is quite unnecessary; and I therefore prefer to use here the common name, as above limited, because it is the one used in the New Testament, and is the one in familiar use, not only with common readers, but, as far as I know, with the majority of Biblical critics.

Though the evidence that Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew, is apparently of the most uniform, weighty and decisive character, there have been many among the learned, within the three last centuries, who have denied it, and have brought the best of their learning and ability to prove that the Greek gospel of Matthew, which is now in the New Testament, is the original production of his pen; and so skilfully has this modern view been maintained, that this has already been made one of the most doubtful questions in the history of the canon. In Germany more particularly, (but not entirely,) this notion has, during the last century, been strongly supported by many who do not like the idea, that we are in possession only of a translation of this most important record of sacred history, and that the original is now lost forever. Those who have more particularly distinguished themselves on this side of the controversy, are Maius, Schroeder, Masch and Hug, but the great majority of critics still support the old view.

The earliest evidence for the Hebrew original of Matthew’s gospel, is Papias of Hierapolis, (as early as A. D. 140,) not long after the times of the apostles, and acquainted with many who knew them personally. Eusebius (Church History, III. 39,) quotes the words of Papias, (of which the original is now lost,) which are exactly translated here:――“Matthew therefore wrote the divine words in the Hebrew language; and every one translated them as he could.” By which it appears that in the time of Papias there was no universally acknowledged translation of Matthew’s gospel; but that every one was still left to his own private discretion, in giving the meaning in Greek from the original Hebrew. The value of Papias’s testimony on any point connected with the history of the apostles, may be best learned from his own simple and honest account of his opportunities and efforts to inquire into their history; (as recorded by Eusebius in a former part of the same chapter.) “If any person who had ever been acquainted with the elders, came into my company, I inquired of them the words of the elders;――what Andrew and Peter said?――what Thomas, and James, and John, and Matthew, and the other disciples of the Lord used to say?”――All this shows an inquiring, zealous mind, faithful in particulars, and ready in improving opportunities for acquiring historical knowledge. Yet because in another part of the works of Eusebius, he is characterized as rather enthusiastic, and very weak in judgment, more particularly in respect to doctrines, some moderns have attempted to set aside his testimony, as worth nothing on this simple historical point, the decision of which, from the direct personal witness of those who had seen Matthew and read his original gospel, needed no more judgment than for a man to remember his own name. The argument offered to discredit Papias, is this:――“He believed in a bodily reign of the Messiah on the earth, during the whole period of the millennium, and for this and some similar errors, is pronounced by Eusebius, ‘a man of very weak judgment,’――(πανυ σμικρος τον νουν.) Therefore, he could not have known in what language Matthew wrote.” The objection certainly is worth something against a man who made such errors as Papias, in questions where any nice discrimination is necessary, but in a simple effort of a ready memory, he is as good a witness as though he had the discrimination of a modern skeptical critic. (In Michaelis’s Introduction to the New Testament, vol. III. c. iv. § 4, is a full discussion of Papias’s character and testimony, and the objections to them.)

The second witness is Irenaeus, (A. D. 160,) who, however, coupling his testimony with a demonstrated falsehood, destroys the value which might be otherwise put upon a statement so ancient as his. His words are quoted by Eusebius, (Church History, V. 8.) “Matthew published among the Hebrews his gospel, written in their own language, (τῃ ιδιᾳ αυτων διαλεκτῳ,) while Peter and Paul were preaching Christ at Rome, and laying the foundations of the church.” This latter circumstance is no great help to the story, after what has been proved on this point in the notes on Peter’s life; but the critics do not pretend to attack it on this ground. They urge against it, that as Irenaeus had a great regard for Papias, and took some facts on his word, he probably took this also from him, with no other authority,――a guess, which only wants proof, to make it a very tolerable argument. Let Irenaeus go for what he is worth; there are enough without him.

The third witness is Pantaenus of Alexandria, already quoted in the note on Nathanael’s life, (p. 363,) as having found this Hebrew gospel still in use, in that language, among the Jews of Arabia-Felix, towards the end of the second century.

The fourth witness is Origen, (A. D. 230,) whose words on this point are preserved only in a quotation made by Eusebius, (Church History, VI. 25,) who thus gives them from Origen’s commentary on Matthew. “As I have learned by tradition concerning the four gospels, which alone are received without dispute by the church of God under heaven: the first was written by Matthew, once a tax-gatherer, afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for the benefit of the Jewish converts, having composed it in the Hebrew language, &c.” The term, “tradition,” (παραδοσις,) here evidently means something more than floating, unauthorized information, coming merely by vague hearsay; for to this source only he refers all his knowledge of the fact, that “the gospel was written by Matthew;” so that, in fact, we have as good authority in this place, for believing that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, as we have that he wrote at all. The other circumstances specified, also show clearly, that he did not derive all his information on this point from Papias, as some have urged; because this account gives facts which that earlier Father did not mention,――as that it was written first, and that it was intended for the benefit of the Jewish converts.

Later authorities, such as Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and others, might be quoted in detail, to the same effect; but this general statement is sufficient for this place. The scholar of course, will refer to the works on critical theology for detailed abstracts of these, as well as the former writers. Michaelis is very full, both in extracts and discussions. Hug also gives a minute account of the evidence, with the view of refuting it.

The testimony of Jerome [A. D. 395,] is however, so full and explicit, and so valuable from his character as a Hebrew scholar, that it may well be esteemed of higher importance to the question, than that of some earlier writers. His words are,――“Matthew composed his gospel in Hebrew letters and words, but it is not very well known who afterwards translated it. Moreover, the very Hebrew original itself is preserved even to this day, in the library at Caesarea, which the martyr Pamphilus, most industriously collected. I also had the opportunity of copying [describendi] this book by means of the Nazareans in Beroea, a city of Syria, who use this book.” [Jerome De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis. Vita Matthew.] Another passage from the same author is valuable testimony to the same purpose,――“Matthew wrote his gospel in the Hebrew language, principally for the sake of those Jews who believed in Jesus.”

Now these testimonies, though coming from an authority so late, are of the highest value when his means of learning the truth are considered. By his own statement it appears that he had actually seen and examined the original Hebrew gospel of Matthew, or what was considered to be such, as preserved in the valuable collections of ♦Pamphilus, at a place within the region for which it was first written. It has been urged that Jerome confounded the “gospel according to the Hebrews,” an apocryphal book, with the true original of Matthew. But this is disproved, from the circumstance that Jerome himself translated this apocryphal gospel from the Hebrew into Latin, while he says that the translator of Matthew was unknown.

♦ “Pamphilius” replaced with “Pamphilus”

In addition to these authorities from the Fathers, may be quoted the statements appended to the ancient Syriac and Arabic versions, which distinctly declare that Matthew wrote in Hebrew. This was also the opinion of all the learned Syrians.

The great argument with which all this evidence is met, (besides discrediting the witnesses,) is that Matthew ought to have written in Greek, and therefore did. (Matthaeus Graece scribere debuit. Schubert. Diss. § 24.) This sounds very strangely; that, without any direct ancient testimony to support the assertion, but a great number of distinct assertions against it from the very earliest Fathers, moderns should now pronounce themselves better judges of what Matthew ought to do, than those who were so near to his time, and were so well acquainted with his design, and all the circumstances under which it was executed. Yet, strangely as it sounds, an argument of even this presumptuous aspect, demands the most respectful consideration, more especially from those who have had frequent occasion, on other points, to notice the very contemptible character of the “testimony of the Fathers.” It should be noticed however, that, in this case, the argument does not rest on a mere floating tradition, like many other mooted points in early Christian history, but in most of the witnesses, is referred to direct personal knowledge of the facts, and, in some cases, to actual inspection of the original.

It is proper to notice the reasons for thinking that Matthew ought to have written in Greek, which have influenced such minds as those of Erasmus, Beza, Ittig, Leusden, Spanheim, LeClerc, Semler, Hug and others, and which have had a decisive weight with such wonderfully deep Hebrew scholars, as Wagenseil, Lightfoot, John Henry Michaelis, and Reland. The amount of the argument is, mainly, that the Greek was then so widely and commonly spoken even in Palestine, as to be the most desirable language for the evangelist to use in preserving for the benefit of his own countrymen, the record of the life of Christ. The particulars of the highly elaborate and learned arguments, on which this assertion has been rested, have filled volumes, nor can even an abstract be allowed here; but a simple reference to common facts will do something to show to common readers, the prominent objections to the notion of a Greek original. It is perfectly agreed that the Hebrew was the ordinary language spoken by Christ, in his teachings, and in all his usual intercourse with the people around him. That this language was that in which the Jews also commonly wrote and read at that time, as far as they were able to do either, in any language, is equally plain. In spite of all that Grecian and Roman conquests could do, the Jews were still a distinct and peculiar people; nor is there any reason whatever to suppose that they were any less so in language, than they were in dress, manners, and general character. He, therefore, who desired to write anything for the benefit of the Jews, as a nation, would insure it altogether the best attention from them, if it came in a form most accordant with their national feelings. They would naturally be the first persons whose salvation would be an object to the apostolic writers, as to the apostolic preachers, and the feelings of the writer himself, being in some degree influenced by love of his own countrymen, he would aim first at the direct spiritual benefit of those who were his kindred according to the flesh. Among all the historical writings of the New Testament, that there should be not one originally composed in the language of the people among whom the Savior arose, with whom he lived, talked and labored, and for whom he died, would be very strange. The fact that a gospel in the Hebrew language was considered absolutely indispensable for the benefit of the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, is rendered perfectly incontestable by the circumstance that those apocryphal gospels which were in common use among the heretical denominations of that region, were all in Hebrew; and the common argument, that the Hebrew gospel spoken of by the Fathers was translated into Hebrew from Matthew’s Greek, is itself an evidence that it was absolutely indispensable that the Jews should be addressed in writing, in that language alone. The objection, that the Hebrew original of Matthew was lost so soon, is easily answered by the fact, that the Jews were, in the course of the few first centuries, driven out of the land of their Fathers so completely, as to destroy the occasion for any such gospel in their language; for wherever they went, they soon made the dialect of the country in which they lived, their only medium of communication, written or spoken.

Fabricius may be advantageously consulted by the scholar for a condensed view of the question of the original language of Matthew’s gospel, and his references to authorities, ancient and modern, are numerous and valuable, besides those appended by his editors.――The most complete argument ever made out in defense of a Greek original, is that by Hug, in his Introduction, whose history of the progress of Grecian influence and language in Syria and Palestine, is both interesting and valuable on its own account, though made the inefficient instrument of supporting an error. He is very ably met by his English translator, Wait, in the introduction to the first volume. A very strong defense of a Greek original of Matthew, is also found in a little quarto pamphlet, containing a thesis of a Goettingen student, on taking his degree in theology, in 1810. (Diss. Crit. Exeg. in serm. Matt. &c. Auct. Frid. Gul. Schubert.)

II. What were the Materials of Matthew’s Gospel?

This point has been made the subject of more discussion and speculation, within the last fifty years, among the critical and exegetical theologians of Europe, than any other subject connected with the New Testament. Those who wish to see the interesting details of the modes of explaining the coincidences between the three first evangelists, may find much on this subject in Michaelis’s Introduction to the New Testament, and especially in the translation by Bishop Marsh, who, in his notes on Vol. III. of Michaelis, has, after a very full discussion of all previous views of the origin of the gospels, gone on to build one of the most ingenious speculations on this point that was ever conceived on any subject, but which, in its very complicated structure, will present a most insuperable objection to its adoption by the vast majority of even his critical readers; and accordingly, though he has received universal praise for the great learning and ingenuity displayed in its formation, he has found few supporters,――perhaps none. His views are fully examined and fairly discussed, by the anonymous English translator of Dr. F. Schleiermacher’s Commentary on Luke, in an introductory history of all the German speculations on this subject with which he has prefaced that work. The historical sketch there given of the progress of opinion on the sources and materials of the three first gospels, is probably the most complete account of the whole matter that is accessible in English, and displays a very minute acquaintance with the German theologians. Hug is also very full on this subject, and also discusses the views of Marsh and Michaelis. Hug’s translator, Dr. Wait, has given, in an introduction to the first volume, a very interesting account of these critical controversies, and has large references to many German writers not referred to by his author. Bertholdt and Bolten, in particular, are amply quoted and disputed by Wait. Bloomfield also, in the prefaces to the first and second volumes of his critical Annotations on the New Testament, gives much on the subject that can hardly be found any where else by a mere English reader. Large references might be made to the works of the original German writers; but it would require a very protracted statement, and would be useless to nearly all readers, because those to whom these rare and deep treasures of sacred knowledge are accessible, are doubtless better able to give an account of them than I am. It may be worth while to mention, however, that of all those statements of the facts on this subject with which I am acquainted, none gives a more satisfactory view, than a little Latin monograph, in a quarto of eighty pages, written by H. W. Halfeld, (a Goettingen theological student, and a pupil of Eichhorn, for whose views he has a great partiality,) for the Royal premium. Its title is, “Commentatio de origine quatuor evangeliorum, et de eorum canonica auctoritate.” (Goettingen, 1796.) The Bibliotheca Graeca of Fabricius, (Harles’s edition with notes,) contains, in the chapters on the gospels, very rich references to the learned authors on these points. Lardner, in his History of the Apostles and Evangelists, takes a learned view of the question, “whether either of the three evangelists had seen the others’ writings.” This he gives after the lives of all four of the evangelists, and it may be referred to for a very full abstract of all the old opinions upon the question. Few of these points have any claim for a discussion in this book, but some things may very properly be alluded to, in the lives of the other evangelists, where a reference to their resemblances and common sources, will be essential to the completeness of the narrative.

III. At what time did Matthew write his gospel?

This is a question on which the records of antiquity afford no light, that can be trusted; and it is therefore left to be settled entirely by internal evidence. There are indeed ancient stories, that he wrote it nine years after the ascension,――that he wrote it fifteen years after that event,――that he wrote it while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome,――or when he was about leaving Palestine, &c., all which are about equally valuable. The results of the examinations of modern writers, who have labored to ascertain the date, have been exceedingly various, and only probabilities can be stated on this most interesting point of gospel history. The most probable conjecture on this point is one based on the character of certain passages in Christ’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, which by their vividness in the evangelist’s record, may be fairly presumed to have been written down when the crisis in Jewish affairs was highest, and most interesting; and when the perilous condition of the innocent Christians must have been a matter of the deepest solicitude to the apostles,――so much as to deserve a particular provision, by a written testimony of the impending ruin. A reference made also to a certain historical fact in Christ’s prophecy, which is known on the testimony of Josephus, the Jewish historian, to have happened about this time, affords another important ground for fixing the date. This is the murder of Zachariah, the son of Barachiah, whom the Jews slew between the temple and the altar. He relates that the ferocious banditti, who had possessed themselves of the strong places of the city, tyrannized over the wretched inhabitants, executing the most bloody murders daily, among them, and killing, upon the most unfounded accusations, the noblest citizens. Among those thus sacrificed by these bloody tyrants, Josephus very minutely narrates the murder of Zachariah, the son of Baruch, or Baruchus, a man of one of the first families, and of great wealth. His independence of character and freedom of speech, denouncing the base tyranny under which the city groaned, soon made him an object of mortal hatred, to the military rulers; and his wealth also constituted an important incitement to his destruction. He was therefore seized, and on the baseless charge of plotting to betray the city into the hands of Vespasian and the Romans, was brought to a trial before a tribunal constituted by themselves, from the elders of the people, in the temple, which they had profaned by making it their strong hold. The righteous Zachariah, knowing that his doom was irrevocably sealed, determined not to lay aside his freedom of speech, even in this desperate pass; and when brought by his iniquitous accusers before the elders who constituted the tribunal, in all the eloquent energy of despair, after refuting the idle accusations against him, in few words, he turned upon his accusers in just indignation, and burst out into the most bitter denunciations of their wickedness and cruelty, mingling with these complaints, lamentations over the desolate and miserable condition of his ruined country. The ferocious Zealots, excited to madness by his dauntless spirit of resistance, instantly drew their swords, and threateningly called out to the judges to condemn him at once. But even the instruments of their power, were too much moved by the heroic innocence of the prisoner, to consent to this unjust doom; and, in spite of these threats, acquitted him at once. The Zealots then burst out, at once, into fury against the judges, and rushed upon them to punish their temerity, in declaring themselves willing to die with him, rather than unjustly pronounce sentence upon him. Two of the fiercest of the ruffians, seizing Zachariah, slew him in the middle of the temple, insulting his last agonies, and immediately hurled his warm corpse over the terrace of the temple, into the depths of the valley below.

This was, most evidently, the horrible murder, to which Jesus referred in his prophecy. Performed thus, just on the eve of the last, utter ruin of the temple and the city, it is the only act that could be characterized as the crowning iniquity of all the blood unrighteously shed, from the earliest time downwards. It has sometimes been supposed by those ignorant of this remarkable event, that the Zachariah here referred to, was Zachariah, son of Jehoiada, who in the reign of Joash, king of Judah, was stoned by the people, at the command of the king, in the outer court of the temple. But there are several circumstances connected with that event, which render it impossible to interpret the words of Jesus as referring merely to that, although some of the coincidences are truly amazing. That Zachariah was the son of Jehoiada,――this was the son of Baruch or Barachiah;――that Zachariah was slain in the outer court,――this was slain “in the midst of the temple,”――that is, “between the temple and the altar.” Besides, Jesus evidently speaks of this Zachariah as a person yet to come. “Behold, I send to you prophets, and wise men, and writers; and some of them you shall kill and crucify; and some of them you shall scourge and persecute; that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah, the son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. All these things shall come upon this generation.” It is true that here, the writer, in recording the prophecy, now referring to its fulfilment, turns to the Jews, charging it upon them as a crime already past, when he writes, though not at the time when the Savior spoke; and it is therefore, by a bold change of tense, that he represents Jesus speaking of a future event, as past. But the whole point of the discourse plainly refers to future crimes, as well as to future punishment. The multitude who heard him, indeed, no doubt considered him as pointing, in this particular mention of names, only to a past event; and notwithstanding the difference of minor circumstances, probably interpreted his words as referring to the Zachariah mentioned in 2 Chronicles, who was stoned for his open rebukes of the sins of king and people;――a conclusion moreover, justified by the previous words of Jesus. He had just been denouncing upon them the sin of their fathers, as the murderers of the prophets, whose tombs they were now so ostentatiously building; and if this wonderful accomplishment of his latter words had not taken place, it might reasonably be supposed, that he spoke of these future crimes only to show that their conduct would soon justify his imputation to them of their fathers’ guilt; that they would, during that same generation, murder similar persons, sent to them on similar divine errands, and thus become sharers in the crime of their fathers, who slew Zachariah, the son of Jehoiada, in the outer temple. But here now is the testimony of the impartial Josephus, a Jew,――himself a contemporary learner of all these events, and an eye-witness of some of them,――who, without any bias in favor of Christ, but rather some prejudice against him,――in this case too, without the knowledge of any such prophecy spoken or recorded,――gives a clear, definite statement of the outrageous murder of Zachariah, the son of Baruch or Barachiah, who, as he says, exactly, was “slain in the middle of the temple,”――that is, half-way “between the temple-courts and the altar.” He mentions it too, as the last bloody murder of a righteous man, for proclaiming the guilt of the wicked people; and it therefore very exactly corresponds to the idea of the crime, which was “to fill up the measure of their iniquities.” This event, thus proved to be the accomplishment of the prophecy of Jesus, and being shown moreover, to have been expressed in this peculiar form, with a reference to the recent occurrence of the murder alluded to,――is therefore a most valuable means of ascertaining the date of this gospel. Josephus dates the murder of Zachariah in the month of October, in the thirteenth year of the reign of Nero, which corresponds to A. D. 66. The Apostle Matthew then, must have written after this time; and it must be settled by other passages, how long after, he recorded the prophecy.

The passage containing the prophecy of ♦the death of Zachariah, is in Matthew xxiii. 35; and that of “the abomination of desolation,” is in xxiv. 15.

♦ remove duplicated word “the”

This interesting event is recorded by Josephus; (History of Jewish War, IV. v. 4;) and is one of the numerous instances which show the vast benefit which the Christian student of the New Testament may derive from the interesting and exact accounts of this Jewish historian.

Another remarkable passage occurring in the prophecy of Jesus to his disciples, respecting the ruin of the temple, recorded by Matthew immediately after the discourse to the multitude, just given, affords reasonable ground for ascertaining this point in the history of this gospel. When Jesus was solemnly forewarning Peter, Andrew, James and John, of the utter ruin of the temple and city, he mentioned to them, at their request, certain signs, by which they might know the near approach of the coming judgment upon their country, and might thus escape the ruin to which the guilty were doomed. After many sad predictions of personal suffering, which must befall them in his service, he distinctly announced to them a particular event, by the occurrence of which they might know that “the end was come,” and might then, at the warning, flee from the danger to a place of safety. “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, (whoso READETH, let him understand,) then let them that are in Judea flee to the mountains.” This parenthetical expression is evidently thrown in by Matthew, as a warning to his readers, of an event which it behoved them to notice, as the token of a danger which they must escape. The expression was entirely local and occasional, in its character, and could never have been made a part of the discourse by Jesus; but the writer himself, directing his thoughts at that moment to the circumstances of the time, called the attention of his Christian countrymen to the warning of Jesus, as something which they must understand and act upon immediately. The inquiry then arises as to the meaning of the expression used by Jesus in his prophecy. “The abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, as standing in the holy place,” unquestionably refers to the horrible violation of the sanctity of the holy places of the temple, by the banditti, styling themselves “Zealots for their country,” who, taking possession of the sanctuary, called in the savage Idumeans, a heathen people, who not only profaned the temple, by their unholy presence, but defiled it with various excesses, committing there a horrible massacre, and flooding its pavements with blood. This was the abomination to which both Daniel and Matthew referred, and which the latter had in mind when he mentioned it to his brethren to whom he wrote, as the sign which they in reading should understand, and upon the warning, flee to the mountains. These horrible polluting excesses are the only events recorded in the history of the times, which can with such certainty and justice be pronounced the sad omens, to which Jesus and his evangelist referred. They are known to have occurred just before the death of Zachariah; and therefore also show this gospel to have been written after the date above fixed for that event. That it must have been written before the last siege of Jerusalem, is furthermore manifest from the fact, that, in order to have the effect of a warning, it must have been sent to those in danger before the avenues of escape from danger were closed up, as they certainly were after Titus had fully encompassed Jerusalem with his armies, and after the ferocious Jewish tyrants had made it certain death for any one to attempt to pass from Jerusalem to the Roman camp. To have answered the purpose for which it was intended, then, it must have been written at some period between the murder of Zachariah, which was in the winter of the year 66, and the march of Titus from Galilee to Jerusalem, before which place he pitched his camp in the month of March, in A. D. 70. The precise point of time in these three years it is impossible to fix; but it was, very probably, within a short time after the commission of the bloody crimes to which he refers; perhaps in the beginning of the year 67.

This view of these passages and the circumstances to which they refer, with all the arguments which support the inferences drawn from them, may be found in Hug’s Introduction, (Vol. II. §4.) He dates Matthew’s gospel much later than most writers do; it being commonly supposed to have been written in the year 41, or in the year 61. Michaelis makes an attempt to reconcile these conjectures, by supposing that it was written in Hebrew by Matthew, in A. D. 41, and translated in 61. But this is a mere guess, for which he does not pretend to assign a reason, and only says that he “can see no impropriety in supposing so.” (Introduction, III. iv. 1, 2.)

Eichhorn suggests, that a reason for concluding that Matthew wrote his gospel a long time after the events which he relates, is implied in the expression used in chap. xxvii. 8, and xxviii. 15. “It is so called, to this day,”――“It is commonly reported, to this day,”――are expressions which, to any reader, convey the idea of many years intervening between the incidents and the time of their narration. In xxvii. 15, also, the explanation which he gives of the custom of releasing a prisoner to the Jews on the feast-day, implies that the custom had been so long out of date, as to be probably forgotten by most of his readers, unless their memories were refreshed by this distinct explanation.

IV. With what special design was this Gospel written?

The circumstances of the times, as alluded to under the last inquiry, afford much light on the immediate object which Matthew had in view, in writing his gospel. It is true, that common readers of the Bible seldom think of it as anything else than a mere complete revelation made to all men, to lead them in the way of truth and salvation; and few are prepared for an inquiry which shall take each portion of the scriptures by itself, and follow it through all its individual history, to the very source,――searching even into the immediate and temporary purpose of the inspired writers. Indeed, very many never think or know, that the historical portions of the New Testament were written with any other design than to furnish to believers in Christ, through all ages, in all countries, a complete and distinct narrative of the events of the history of the foundation of their religion. But such a notion is perfectly discordant, not only with the reasonable results of an accurate examination of these writings, in all their parts, but with the uniform and decided testimony of all the Fathers of the Christian church, who may be safely taken as important and trusty witnesses of the notions prevalent in their times, about the scope and original design of the apostolic records. And though, as to the minute particulars of the history of the sacred canon, their testimony is worth little, yet on the general question, whether the apostles wrote with only a universal reference, or also with some special design connected with their own age and times,――the Fathers are as good authority as any writers that ever lived could be, on the opinions generally prevalent in their own day. In this particular case, however, very little reference can be made to external historical evidence, on the scope of Matthew’s gospel; because very few notices indeed, are found, of its immediate object, among the works of the early writers. But a view of the circumstances of the times, before referred to, will illustrate many things connected with the plan of the work, and show a peculiar force in many passages, that would otherwise be little appreciated.

It appears on the unimpeachable testimony of the historians of those very times, of Josephus, who was a Jew, and of Tacitus and Suetonius, who were Romans, that both before and during the civil disturbances that ended in the destruction of Jerusalem, there was a general impression among the Jews, that their long-foretold Savior and national restorer, the Messiah-king, would soon appear; and in the power of God, lead them on to a certain triumph over the seemingly invincible hosts, which even the boundless strength of Rome could send against them. In the expectation of the establishment of his glorious dominion, under which Israel should more than renew the honors and the power of David and Solomon, they, without fear of the appalling consequences of their temerity, entered upon the hopeless struggle for independence; and according to the testimony of the above-mentioned historians, this prevalent notion did much, not only to incite them to the contest, but also to sustain their resolution under the awful calamities which followed. The revolt thus fully begun, drew the whole nation together into a perfect union of feeling and interest; all sharing in the popular fanaticism, became Jews again, whereby the Christian faith must have lost not a few of its professors.

In these circumstances, and while such notions were prevalent, Matthew wrote his sketch of the life, teachings and miracles of Jesus; and throughout the whole of his narrative makes constant references, where the connection can suggest, to such passages in the ancient holy books of the Hebrews, as were commonly supposed to describe the character and destiny of the Messiah. Tracing out in all these lineaments of ancient prophecy, the complete picture of the Restorer of Israel, he thus proved, by a comparison with the actual life of Jesus of Nazareth, that this was the person, whose course throughout, had been predicted by the ancient prophets. In this way, he directly attacked the groundless hopes, which the fanatical rebels had excited, showing, as he did, that he for whom they looked as the Deliverer of Israel from bondage, had already come, and devoted his life to the disenthralment and salvation of his people from their sins. A distinct and satisfactory proof, carried on through a chain of historical evidence to this effect, would answer the purpose as fully as the written truth could do, of overthrowing the baseless imposition with which the impudent Zealots were beguiling the hopes of a credulous people, and leading them on, willingly deceived, to their utter ruin. In this book, containing a clear prediction of the destruction of the temple and Holy city, and of the whole religious and civil organization of the Jewish nation, many would find the revealed truth, making them wise in the way of salvation, though, for a time, all efforts might seem in vain; for the literal fulfilment of these solemn prophecies thus previously recorded, afterwards ensuing, the truth of the doctrines of a spiritual faith connected with these words of prediction, would be strongly impressed on those whom the consummation of their country’s ruin should lead to a consideration of the errors in which they had been long led astray. These prophecies promised, too, that after all these schemes of worldly triumph for the name and race of Israel, had sadly terminated in the utter, irretrievable ruin of temple and city,――and when the cessation of festivals, and the taking away of the daily sacrifice, had left the Jew so few material and formal objects, to hang his faith and hopes on,――the wandering ones should turn to the pure spiritual truths, which would prove the best consolation in their hopeless condition, and own, in vast numbers, the name and faith of him, whose sorrowful life and sad death were but too mournful a type of the coming woes of those who rejected him. Acknowledging the despised and crucified Nazarene as the true prophet and the long-foretold Messiah-king of afflicted Judah, the heart-broken, wandering sons of Israel, should join themselves to that oft-preached heavenly kingdom of virtue and truth, whose only entrance was through repentance and humility. Hence those numerous quotations from the Prophets, and from the Psalms, which are so abundant in Matthew, and by which, even a common reader is able to distinguish the peculiar, definite object that this writer has in view:――to show to the Jews, by a minute detail, and a frequent comparison, that the actions of Jesus, even in the most trifling incidents, corresponded with those passages of the ancient scriptures, which foreshadowed the Messiah. In this particular, his gospel is clearly distinguished from the others, which are for the most part deficient in this distinct unity of design; and where they refer to the grand object of representing Jesus as the Messiah,――the Son of God,――they do it in other modes, which show that it was for more general purposes, and directed to the conversion of Gentiles rather than Jews. This is the case with John, who plainly makes this an essential object in his grand scheme; but he combines the establishment of this great truth, with the more immediate occasions of subverting error and checking the progress of heretical opinions that aimed to detract from the divine prerogatives of Jesus. But John deals very little in those pointed and apt references to the testimony of the Hebrew scriptures, which so distinguish the writings of Matthew; he evidently apprehends that those to whom he writes, will be less affected by appeals of that kind, than by proofs drawn from his actions and discourses, and by the testimony of the great, the good, and the inspired, among those who saw and heard him. The work of Matthew was, on the other hand, plainly designed to bring to the faith of Jesus, those who were already fully and correctly instructed in all that related to the divinely exalted character of the Messiah, and only needed proof that the person proposed to them as the Redeemer thus foretold, was in all particulars such as the unerring word of ancient prophecy required. Besides this object of converting the unbelieving Jews, its tendency was also manifestly to strengthen and preserve those who were already professors of the faith of Jesus; and such, through all ages, has been its mighty scope, enlightening the nations with the clearest historical testimony ever borne to the whole life and actions of Jesus Christ, and rejoicing the millions of the faithful with the plainest record of the events that secured their salvation.

Beyond the history of this gospel, the Fathers have hardly given the least account, either fanciful or real, of the succeeding life of Matthew. A fragment of tradition, of no very ancient date, specifies that he wrote his gospel when he was about to leave Palestine to go to other lands; but neither the region nor the period is mentioned. Probably, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, he followed the eastward course of the Jewish Christians; but beyond this, even conjecture is lost. But where all historical grounds fail, monkish invention comes in with its tedious details of fabulous nonsense; and in this case, as in others already alluded to, the writings of the monks of the fourteenth century, produce long accounts of Matthew’s labors in Ethiopia, where he is carried through a long series of fabled miracles, to the usual crowning glory of martyrdom.

Ethiopia.――The earliest testimony on this point by any ecclesiastical history, is that of Socrates, (A. D. 425,) a Greek writer, who says only, that “when the apostles divided the heathen world, by lot, among themselves,――to Matthew was allotted Ethiopia.” This is commonly supposed to mean Nubia, or the country directly south of Egypt. The other Fathers of the fifth and following centuries, generally assign him the same country; but it is quite uncertain what region is designated by this name. Ethiopia was a name applied by the Greeks to such a variety of regions, that it is quite in vain to define the particular one meant, without more information about the locality.

But no such idle inventions can add anything to the interest which this apostolic writer has secured for himself by his noble Christian record. Not even an authentic history of miracles and martyrdom, could increase his enduring greatness. The tax-gatherer of Galilee has left a monument, on which cluster the combined honors of a literary and a holy fame,――a monument which insures him a wider, more lasting, and far higher glory, than the noblest ♦achievements of the Grecian or the Latin writers, in his or any age could acquire for them. Not Herodotus nor Livy,――not Demosthenes nor Cicero,――not Homer nor Virgil,――can find a reader to whom the despised Matthew’s simple work is not familiar; nor did the highest hope or the proudest conception of the brilliant Horace, when exulting in the extent and durability of his fame, equal the boundless and eternal range of Matthew’s honors. What would Horace have said, if he had been told that among the most despised of these superstitious and barbarian Jews, whom his own writings show to have been proverbially scorned, would arise one, within thirty or forty years, who, degraded by his avocation, even below his own countrymen’s standard of respectability, would, by a simple record in humble prose, in an uncultivated and soon-forgotten dialect, “complete a monument more enduring than brass,――more lofty than the pyramids,――outlasting all the storms of revolution and of disaster,――all the course of ages and the flight of time?” Yet such was the result of the unpretending effort of Matthew; and it is not the least among the miracles of the religion whose foundation he commemorated and secured, that such a wonder in fame should have been achieved by it.

♦ “achievments” replaced with “achievements”

THOMAS, DIDYMUS.

The second name of this apostle is only the Greek translation of the former, which is the Syriac and Hebrew word for a “twin-brother,” from which, therefore, one important circumstance may be safely inferred about the birth of Thomas, though unfortunately, beyond this, antiquity bears no record whatever of his circumstances previous to his admission into the apostolic fraternity.

Nor is the authentic history of the apostles, much more satisfactory in respect to subsequent parts of Thomas’s history. A very few brief but striking incidents, in which he was particularly engaged, are specified by John alone, who seems to have been disposed to supply, by his gospel, some characteristic account of several of the apostles, who had been noticed only by name, in the writings of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Those in particular who receive this peculiar notice from him, are Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, Thomas, and John himself,――of all whom, as well as of Peter, are thus learned some interesting matters, which, though apparently so trivial, do much towards giving a distinct impression of some of the leading traits in their characters. Among those facts thus preserved respecting Thomas, however, there is not one which gives any account of his parentage, rank in life, or previous occupation; nor do any other authentic sources bring any more facts to view on these points. The only conclusion presented even by conjecture, about his early history, is, that he was a publican, like Matthew,――a notion which is found in some of the Fathers,――grounded, no doubt, altogether on the circumstance, that in all the gospel lists, he is paired with Matthew, as though there were some close connection between them. This is only a conjecture, and one with even a more insignificant basis than most trifling speculations of this sort, and therefore deserving no regard whatever. Of the three incidents commemorated by John, two at least, are such as to present Thomas in a light by no means advantageous to his character as a ready and zealous believer in Jesus; but on both these occasions he is represented as expressing opinions which prove him to have been very slow, not only in believing, but in comprehending spiritual truths. The first incident is that mentioned by John in his account of the death of Lazarus, where he describes the effect produced on the disciples by the news of the decease of their friend, and by the declaration made at the same time by Jesus, of his intention to go into Judea again, in spite of all the mortal dangers to which he was there exposed by the hatred of the Jews, who, enraged at his open declarations of his divine character and origin, were determined to punish with death, one who advanced claims which they pronounced absolutely blasphemous. This mortal hatred they had so openly expressed, that Jesus himself had thought it best to retire awhile from that region, and to avoid exposing himself to the fatal effects of such malice, until the other great duties of his earthly mission had been executed, so as to enable him, at last, to proceed to the bloody fulfilment of his mighty task, with the assurance that he had finished the work which his Father gave him to do.

But in spite of the pressing remonstrances of his disciples, Jesus expressed his firm resolution to go, in the face of all mortal dangers, into Judea, there to complete the divine work which he had only begun. Thomas, finding his Master determined to rush into the danger, which, by once retreating from it for a time, he had acknowledged to be imminent, resolved not to let him go on, alone; and turning to his fellow-disciples, said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” The proposal, thus decidedly made, shows a noble resolution in Thomas, to share all the fortunes of him to whom he had joined himself, and presents his character in a far more favorable light than the other passages in which his conduct is commemorated. While the rest were fearfully expostulating on the peril of the journey, he boldly proposed to his companions to follow unhesitatingly the footsteps of their Master, whithersoever he might go,――thus evincing a spirit of far more exalted devotion to the cause.

The view here taken differs from the common interpretation of the passage, but it is the view which has seemed best supported by the whole tenor of the context, as may be decided by a reference to the passage in its place, (John xi. 16.) The evidence on both views can not be better presented than in Bloomfield’s note on this passage, which is here extracted entire.

“Here again the commentators differ in opinion. Some, as Grotius, Poole, Hammond, Whitby, and others, apply the αὐτου to Lazarus, and take it as equivalent to ‘let us go and die together with him.’ But it is objected by Maldonati and Lampe, that Lazarus was already dead; and die like him they could not, because a violent death was the one in Thomas’s contemplation. But these arguments seem inconclusive. It may with more justice be objected that the sense seems scarcely natural. I prefer, with many ancient and modern interpreters, to refer the αὐτου to Jesus, ‘let us go and die with him.’ Maldonati and Doddridge regard the words as indicative of the most affectionate attachment to our Lord’s person. But this is going into the other extreme. It seems prudent to hold a middle course, with Calvin, Tarnovius, Lyser, Bucer, Lampe, and (as it should appear) Tittman. Thomas could not dismiss the idea of the imminent danger to which both Jesus and they would be exposed, by going into Judea; and, with characteristic bluntness, and some portion of ill humor, (though with substantial attachment to his Master’s person,) he exclaims: ‘Since our Master will expose himself to such imminent, and, as it seems, unnecessary danger, let us accompany him, if it be only to share his fate.’ Thus there is no occasion, with Markland and Forster, apud Bowyer, to read the words interrogatively.” (Bloomfield’s Annotations, vol. III. p. 426, 427.)

In John’s minute account of the parting discourses of Christ at the Last Supper, it is mentioned, that Jesus after speaking of his departure, as very near, in order to comfort his disciples, told them, he was going “to prepare a place for them, in his Father’s house, where were many mansions.” Assuring them of his speedy return to bring them to these mansions of rest, he said to them, “Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” But so lost, for the time, were all these words of instruction and counsel, that not one of his followers seems to have rightly apprehended the force of this remark; and Thomas was probably only expressing the general doubt, when he replied to Jesus, in much perplexity at the language, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” Jesus replied, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father but by me.” But equally vain was this new illustration of the truth. The remark which Philip next made, begging that they might have their curiosity gratified by a sight of the Father, shows how idly they were all still dreaming of a worldly, tangible and visible kingdom, and how uniformly they perverted all the plain declarations of Jesus, to a correspondence with their own pre-conceived, deep-rooted notions. Nor was this miserable error removed, till the descent of that Spirit of Truth, which their long-suffering and ever watchful Lord invoked, to teach their still darkened souls the things which they would not now see, and to bring to their remembrance all which they now so little heeded.

The remaining incident respecting this apostle, which is recorded by John, further illustrates the state of mind in which each new revelation of the divine power and character of Jesus, found his disciples. None of them expected his resurrection;――none would really believe it, until they had seen him with their own eyes. Thomas therefore showed no remarkable skepticism, when, hearing from the others, that one evening, when he was not present, Jesus had actually appeared alive among them, he declared his absolute unbelief,――protesting, that far from suffering himself to be as lightly deceived as they had been, he would give no credit to any evidence but that of the most unquestionable character,――that of seeing and touching those bloody marks which would characterize, beyond all possibility of mistake, the crucified body of Jesus. “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.” After eight days, the disciples were again assembled, and on this occasion Thomas was with them. While they were sitting, as usual, with doors closed for fear of the Jews, Jesus again, in the same sudden and mysterious manner as before, appeared all at once in the midst, with his solemn salutation, “Peace be with you!” Turning at once to the unbelieving disciple, whose amazed eyes now for the first time fell on the body of his risen Lord, he said to him, “Thomas! Put thy finger here, and see my hands; and put thy hand here, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing.” The stubbornly skeptical disciple was melted at the sight of these mournful tokens of his Redeemer’s dying agonies, and in a burst of new exalted devotion, he exclaimed, “My Lord! and my God!” The pierced hands and side showed beyond all question the body of his “Lord;” and the spirit that could, of itself, from such a death, return to perfect life, could be nothing else than “God.” The reply of Jesus to this expression of faith and devotion, contained a deep reproach to this slow-believing disciple, who would take no evidence whatever of the accomplishment of his Master’s dying words, except the sight of every tangible thing that could identify his person. “Thomas! because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they, who though not seeing, yet believe.”

“Put thy finger here.”――This phrase seems to express the graphic force of the original, much more justly than the common translation. The adverb of place, ὧδε, gives the idea of the very place where the wounds had been made, and brings to the reader’s mind the attitude and gesture of Jesus, with great distinctness. The adverb “here,” refers to the print of the nails; and Jesus holds out his hand to Thomas, as he says these words, telling him to put his finger into the wound.

Not seeing, yet believe.――This is the form of expression best justified by the indefiniteness of the Greek aorists, whose very name implies this unlimitedness in respect to time. The limitation to the past, implied in the common translation, is by no means required by the original; but it is left so vague, that the action may be referred to the present and the future also.

Beyond this, the writings of the New Testament give not the least account of Thomas; and his subsequent history can only be uncertainly traced in the dim and dark stories of tradition, or in the contradictory records of the Fathers. Different accounts state that he preached the gospel in Parthia,――Media,――Persia,――Ethiopia,――and at last, India. A great range of territories is thus spread out before the investigator, but the traces of the apostle’s course and labors are both few and doubtful. Those of the Fathers who mention his journeys into these countries, give no particulars whatever of his labors; and all that is now believed respecting these things, is derived from other, and perhaps still more uncertain sources.

India is constantly asserted by the Fathers, from the beginning of the third century, to have very early received the gospel, and this apostle is named as the person through whom this evangelization was effected; but this evidence alone would be entitled to very little consideration, except from the circumstance, that from an early period, to this day, there has existed in India, a large body of Christians, who give themselves the name of “St. Thomas’s Christians,” of whose antiquity proofs are found in the testimony, both of very ancient and very modern travelers. They still retain many traditions of the person whom they claim as their founder,――of his place of landing,――the towns he visited,――the churches he planted,――his places of residence and his retreats for private devotion,――the very spot of his martyrdom, and his grave. A tradition, however, floating down unwritten for fifteen centuries, can not be received as very good evidence; and the more minute such stories are in particulars, the more suspicious they are in their character for truth. But in respect to the substance of this, it may well be said, that it is by no means improbable, and is in the highest degree consistent with the views, already taken, in former parts of this work, of the eastward course of the apostles after the destruction of Jerusalem. The great body of them, taking refuge at Babylon, within the limits of the great Parthian empire, the more adventurous might follow the commercial routes still farther eastward, to the mild and generally peaceful nations of distant India, whose character for civilization and partial refinement was such as to present many facilities for the introduction and wide diffusion of the gospel among them. These views, in connection with the great amount of respectable evidence from various other sources, make the whole outline of the story of Thomas’s labors in India very possible, and even highly probable.

The earliest evidence among the Fathers that has ever been quoted on this point, is that of Pantaenus, of Alexandria, whose visit to what was then called India, has been mentioned above; (page 363;) but as has there been observed, the investigations of Michaelis and others, have made it probable that Arabia-Felix was the country there intended by that name. The first distinct mention made of any eastward movement of Thomas, that can be found, is by Origen, who is quoted by Eusebius, (Church History, III. 1,) as testifying, that when the apostles separated to go into all the world, and preach the gospel, Parthia was assigned to Thomas; and Origen is represented as appealing to the common tradition, for the proof of this particular fact. Jerome speaks of Thomas, as preaching the gospel in Media and Persia. In another passage he specifies India, as his field; and in this he is followed by most of the later writers,――Ambrose, Nicephorus, Baronius, Natalis, &c. Chrysostom (Oration on the 12 Apostles) says that Thomas preached the gospel in Ethiopia. As the geography of all these good Fathers seems to have been somewhat confused, all these accounts may be considered very consistent with each other. Media and Persia were both in the Parthian Empire; and all very distant countries, east and south, were, by the Greeks, vaguely denominated India and Ethiopia; just ♦as all the northern unknown regions were generally called Scythia.

♦ removed duplicate “as”

Natalis Alexander (Church History, IV. p. 32,) sums up all these accounts by saying, that Thomas preached the gospel to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Brachmans, Indians, and the other neighboring nations, subject to the empire of the Parthians. He quotes as his authorities, besides the above-mentioned Fathers, Sophronius, (A. D. 390,) Gregory Nazianzen, (A. D. 370,) Ambrose, (370,) Gaudentius, (A. D. 387.) The author of the imperfect work on Matthew, (A. D. 560,) says, that Thomas found in his travels, the three Magi, who adored the infant Jesus, and having baptized them, associated them with him, in his apostolic labors. Theodoret, (A. D. 423,) Gaudentius, Asterius, (A. D. 320,) and others, declare Thomas to have died by martyrdom. Sophronius (390,) testifies that Thomas died at Calamina, in India. This Calamina is now called Malipur, and in commemoration of a tradition, preserved, as we are told, on the spot, to this effect, the Portuguese, when they set up their dominion in India, gave it the name of the city of St. Thomas. The story reported by the Portuguese travelers and historians is, that there was a tradition current among the people of the place, that Thomas was there martyred, by being thrust through with a lance. (Natalis Alexander, Church History, vol. IV. pp. 32, 33.)

A new weight of testimony has been added to all this, by the statements of Dr. Claudius Buchanan, who, in modern times, has traced out all these traditions on the spot referred to, and has given a very full account of the “Christians of St. Thomas,” in his “Christian researches in India.”

On this evidence, may be founded a rational belief, though not an absolute certainty, that Thomas actually did preach the gospel in distant eastern countries, and there met with such success as to leave the lasting tokens of his labors, to preserve through a course of ages, in united glory, his own name and that of his Master. In obedience to His last earthly command, he went to teach “nations unknown to Caesar,” proclaiming to them the message of divine love,――solitary, and unsupported, save by the presence of Him, who had promised to “be with him always, EVEN TO THE END OF THE WORLD.”

JAMES, THE LITTLE;
THE SON OF ALPHEUS.

HIS NAME.

It will be observed, no doubt, by all readers, that the most important inquiry suggested in the outset of the most of these apostolic biographies, is about the name and personal identification of the individual subject of each life. This difficulty is connected with peculiarities of those ancient times and half-refined nations, that may not, perhaps, be very readily appreciated by those who have been accustomed only to the definite nomenclature of families and individuals, which is universally adopted among civilized nations at the present day. With all the refined nations of European race, the last part of a person’s name marks his family, and is supposed to have been borne by his father, and by his ancestors, from the time when family names were first adopted. The former part of his name, with equal definiteness, marks the individual; and generally remains fixed from the time when he first received his name. Whenever any change takes place in any part of his appellation, it is generally done in such a formal and permanent mode, as never to make any occasion for confusion in respect to the individual, among those concerned with him. But no such decisive limitation of names to persons, prevailed among even the most refined nations of the apostolic age. The name given to a child at birth, indeed, was very uniformly retained through life; but as to the other parts of his appellation, it was taken, according to circumstances, chance or caprice, from the common name of his father,――from some personal peculiarity,――from his business,――from his general character,――or from some particular incident in his life. The name thus acquired, to distinguish him ♦from others bearing his former name, was used either in connection with that, or without; and sometimes two or more such distinctive appellations belonged to the same man, all or any of which were used together with the former, or separate from it, without any definite rule of application. To those acquainted with the individual so variously named, and contemporary with him, no confusion was made by this multiplicity of words; and when anything was recorded respecting him, it was done with the perfect assurance, that all who then knew him, would find no difficulty in respect to his personal identity, however he might he mentioned. But in later ages, when the personal knowledge of all these individual distinctions has been entirely lost, great difficulties necessarily arise on these points,――difficulties which, after tasking historical and philological criticism to the highest efforts, in order to settle the facts, are, for the most part, left in absolute uncertainty. Thus, in respect to the twelve apostles, it will be noticed, that this confusion of names throws great doubt over many important questions. Among some of them, too, these difficulties are partly owing to other causes. Their names were originally given to them, in the peculiar language of Palestine; and in the extension of their labors and fame, to people of different languages, of a very opposite character, their names were forced to undergo new distortions, by being variously translated, or changed in termination; and many of the original Hebrew sounds, in consequence of being altogether unpronounceable by Greeks and Romans, were variously exchanged for softer and smoother ones, which, in their dissimilar forms, would lose almost all perceptible traces of identity with each other, or with the original word.

♦ replace word omitted from text “from”

These difficulties are in no case quite so prominent and serious as in regard to the apostle who is the subject of this particular biography. Bearing the same name with the elder son of Zebedee, he was of course necessarily designated by some additional title, to distinguish him from the other great apostle James. This title was not always the same, nor was it uniform in its principle of selection. On all the apostolic lists, he is designated by a reference to the name of his father, as is the first James. As the person first mentioned by this name is called James, the son of Zebedee, the second is called James, the son of Alpheus; nor is there, in the enumeration of the apostles by Matthew, Mark or Luke, any reference to another distinctive appellation of this James. But in one passage of Mark’s account of the crucifixion, it is mentioned, that among the women present, was Mary the mother of James the Little, and of Joses. In what sense this word little is applied,――whether of age, size, or dignity,――it is utterly impossible to ascertain at this day; for the original word is known to have been applied to persons, in every one of these senses, even in the New Testament. But, however this may be, a serious question arises, whether this James the Little was actually the same person as the James, called, on the apostolic lists, the son of Alpheus. In the corresponding passage in John’s gospel, this same Mary is called Mary the wife of Clopas; and by Matthew and Mark, the same James is mentioned as the brother of Joses, Juda, and Simon. In the apostolic lists given by Luke, both in his gospel, and in the Acts of the Apostles, Juda is also called “the brother of James;” and in his brief general epistle, the same apostle calls himself “the brother of James.” In the beginning of the epistle to the Galatians, Paul, describing his own reception at Jerusalem, calls him “James, the brother of our Lord;” and by Matthew and Mark, he, with his brothers, Joses, Juda and Simon, is also called the brother of Jesus. From all these seemingly opposite and irreconcilable statements, arise three inquiries, which can, it is believed, be so answered, as to attribute to the subject of this article every one of the circumstances connected with James, in these different stories.

James, the Little.――This adjective is here applied to him in the positive degree, because it is so in the original Greek, [Ιακωβος ὁ μικρος, Mark xv. 40,] and this expression too, is in accordance with English forms of expression. The comparative form, “James, the Less,” seems to have originated in the Latin Vulgate, “Jacobus Minor,” which may be well enough in that language; but in English, there is no reason why the original word should not be literally and faithfully expressed. The Greek original of Mark, calls him “James, the Little,” which implies simply, that he was a little man; whether little in size, or age, or dignity, every one is left to guess for himself;――but it is more accordant with usage, in respect to such nicknames, in those times, to suppose that he was a short man, and was thus named to distinguish him from the son of Zebedee, who was probably taller. The term thus applied by Mark, would be understood by all to whom he wrote, and implied no disparagement to his mental eminence. But the term applied, in the sense of a smaller dignity, is so slighting to the character of James, who to the last day of his life, maintained, according to both Christian and Jewish history, the most exalted fame for religion and intellectual worth,――that it must have struck all who heard it thus used, as a term altogether unjust to his true eminence. His weight of character in the councils of the apostles, soon after the ascension, and the manner in which he is alluded to in the accounts of his death, make it very improbable that he was younger than the other James.

First: Was James the son of Alpheus the same person as James the son of Clopas? The main argument for the identification of these names, rests upon the similarity of the consonants in the original Hebrew word which represents them both, and which, according to the fancy of a writer, might be represented in Greek, either by the letters of Alpheus or of Clopas. This proof, of course, can be fully appreciated only by those who are familiar with the power of the letters of the oriental languages, and know the variety of modes in which they are frequently given in the Greek, and other European languages. The convertibility of certain harsh sounds of the dialects of southwestern Asia, into either hard consonants, or smooth vowel utterances, is sufficiently well-known to Biblical scholars, to make the change here supposed appear perfectly probable and natural to them. It will be observed by common readers, that all the consonants in the two words are exactly the same, except that Clopas has a hard C, or K, in the beginning, and that Alpheus has the letter P aspirated by an H, following it. Now, both of these differences can, by a reference to the original Hebrew word, be shown to be only the results of the different modes of expressing the same Hebrew letters; and the words thus expressed may, by the established rules of etymology, be referred to the same oriental root. These two names, then, Alpheus and Clopas, may be safely assigned to the same person; and Mary the wife of Clopas and the mother of James the Little, and of Joses, was, no doubt, the mother of him who is called “James the son of Alpheus.”

Clopas and Alpheus.――It should be noticed, that in the common translation of the New Testament, the former of these two words is very unjustifiably expressed by Cleophas, whereas the original (John xix. 25,) is simply Κλωπας. (Clopas.) This is a totally different name from Cleopas, (Luke xxiv. 18, Κλεοπας,) which is probably Greek in its origin, and abridged from Cleopater, (Κλεοπατρος,) just as Antipas from Antipater, and many other similar instances, in which the Hellenizing Jews abridged the terminations of Greek and Roman words, to suit the genius of the Hebrew tongue. But Clopas, being very differently spelt in the Greek, must be traced to another source; and the circumstances which connect it with the name Alpheus, suggesting that, like that, it might have a Hebrew origin, directs the inquirer to the original form of that word. The Hebrew חלפא (HHALPHA) may be taken as the word from which both are derived; each being such an expression of the original, as the different writers might choose for its fair representation. The first letter in the word, ח, (hhaith,) has in Hebrew two entirely distinct sounds; one a strong guttural H, and the other a deeply aspirated KH. These are represented in Arabic by two different letters, but in Hebrew, a single character is used to designate both; consequently the names which contain this letter, may be represented in Greek and other languages, by two different letters, according as they were pronounced; and where the original word which contained it, was sounded differently, by different persons, under different circumstances, varying its pronunciation with the times and the fashion, even in the same word, it would be differently expressed in Greek. Any person familiar with the peculiar changes made in those Old Testament names which are quoted in the New, will easily apprehend the possibility of such a variation in this. Thus, in Stephen’s speech, (Acts vii.) Haran is called Charran; and other changes of the same sort occur in the same chapter. The name Anna, (Luke ii. 36,) is the same with Hannah, (1 Samuel i. 2,) which in the Hebrew has this same strongly aspirated H, that begins the word in question,――and the same too, which in Acts vii. 2, 4, is changed into the strong Greek Ch; while all its harshness is lost, and the whole aspiration removed, in Anna. These instances, taken out of many similar ones, may justify to common readers, the seemingly great change of letters in the beginning of Alpheus and Clopas. The other changes of vowels are of no account, since in the oriental languages particularly, these are not fixed parts of the word, but mere modes of uttering the consonants, and vary throughout the verbs and nouns, in almost every inflexion these parts of speech undergo. These therefore, are not considered radical or essential parts of the word, and are never taken into consideration in tracing a word from one language to another,――the consonants being the fixed parts on which etymology depends. The change also from the aspirate Ph, to the smooth mute P, is also so very common in the oriental languages, and even in the Greek, that it need not be regarded in identifying the word.

Taking into consideration then, the striking and perfect affinities of the two words, and adding to these the great body of presumptive proofs, drawn from the other circumstances that show or suggest the identity of persons,――and noticing moreover, the circumstance, that while Matthew, Mark, and Luke speak of Alpheus, they never speak of Clopas,――and that John, who alone uses the name Clopas, never mentions Alpheus,――it seems very reasonable to adopt the conclusion, that the last evangelist means the same person as the former.

Second: Was James the son of Alpheus the same person as “James, the brother of our Lord?” An affirmative answer to this question seems to be required by the fact, that Mary the wife of Clopas is named as the mother of James and Joses; and elsewhere, James and Joses, and Juda and Simon, are called the brothers of Jesus. It should be understood that the word “brother” is used in the scriptures often, to imply a relationship much less close than that of the children of the same father and mother. “Cousins” are called “brothers” in more cases than one, and the oriental mode of maintaining family relationship closely through several generations, made it very common to consider those who were the children of brothers, as being themselves brothers; and to those familiar with this extension of the term, it would not necessarily imply anything more. In the case alluded to, all those to whom the narratives and other statements containing the expression, “James the brother of our Lord,” were first addressed, being well acquainted with the precise nature of this relationship, would find no difficulty whatever in such a use of words. The nature of his relationship to Jesus seems to have been that of cousin, whether by the father’s side or mother’s, is very doubtful. By John indeed, Mary the wife of Clopas is called the sister of the mother of Jesus; but it will seem reasonable enough to suppose,――since two sisters, daughters of the same parents, could hardly bear the same name,――that Mary the mother of James, must have been only the sister-in-law of the mother of Jesus, either the wife of her brother, or the sister of her husband; or, in perfect conformity with this use of the term “sister,” she may have been only a cousin or some such relation.

The third question which has been originated from these various statements,――whether James, the brother of Jesus and the author of the epistle, was an APOSTLE,――must, of course, be answered in the affirmative, if the two former points have been correctly settled.

All the opinions on these points are fully given and discussed by Michaelis, in his Introduction to the epistle of James. He states five different suppositions which have been advanced respecting the relationship borne to Jesus by those who are in the New Testament called his brothers. 1. That they were the sons of Joseph, by a former wife. 2. That they were the sons of Joseph, by Mary the mother of Jesus. 3. That they were the sons of Joseph by the widow of a brother, to whom he was obliged to raise up children according to the laws of Moses. 4. That this deceased brother of Joseph, to whom the laws required him to raise up issue, was Alpheus. 5. That they were brothers of Christ, not in the strict sense of the word, but in a more lax sense, namely, in that of cousin, or relation in general, agreeably to the usage of this word in the Hebrew language. (Genesis xiv. 16: xiii. 8: xxix. 12, 15: 2 Samuel xix. 13: Numbers viii. 26: xvi. 10: Nehemiah iii. 1.) This opinion which has been here adopted, was first advanced by Jerome, and has been very generally received since his time; though the first of the five was supported by the most ancient of the Fathers. Michaelis very clearly refutes all, except the first and the fifth, between which he does not decide; mentioning, however, that though he had been early taught to respect the latter, as the right one, he had since become more favorable to the first.

The earliest statement made concerning these relations of Jesus, is by John, who, in giving an account of the visit made by Jesus to Jerusalem, at the feast of the tabernacles, mentions, that the brethren of Jesus did not believe in him, but, in a rather sneering tone, urged him to go up to the feast, and display himself, that the disciples who had formerly there followed him, might have an opportunity to confirm their faith by the sight of some new miracle done by him. Speaking to him in a very decidedly commanding tone, they said, “Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that does anything in secret, while he himself seeks to be widely known; if thou do these things, show thyself to the world.” The whole tenor of this speech shows a spirit certainly very far from a just appreciation of the character of their divine brother; and the base, sordid motives, which they impute to him as ruling principles of action, were little less than insults to the pure, high spirit, which lifted him so far above their comprehension. The reply which Jesus made to their taunting address, contained a decided rebuke of their presumption in thus attacking his motives. “My time is not yet come, but yours is always ready. The world can not hate you, but me it hates, because I testify of it that its works are evil. Go ye up to this feast; but I am not going yet; for my time is not yet fully come.” They might always go where mere inclination directed them, nor was there any occasion to refer to any higher object. But a mighty scheme was connected with his movements, to which he directed every action. In his great work, he had already exposed himself to the hatred of the wicked, and his movements were now checked by a regard to the proper time for exposing himself to it; and when that time should come, he would unhesitatingly meet the results.

By a passage in Mark’s gospel, it appears also, that at the first beginning of the ministry of Jesus, his relations generally were so little prepared for a full revelation of the character and destiny of him with whom they had long lived so familiarly as a brother and an intimate, that they viewed with the most disagreeable surprise and astonishment, his remarkable proceedings, in going from place to place with his disciples,――neglecting the business to which he had been educated, and deserting his family friends,――preaching to vast throngs of wondering people, and performing strange works of kindness to those who seemed to have no sort of claim on his attention. Distressed at these strange actions, they could form no conclusion about his conduct that seemed so reasonable and charitable, as that he was beside himself, and needed to be confined, to prevent him from doing mischief to himself and others, by his seemingly extravagant and distracted conduct. “And they came out to lay hold on him, for they said ‘He is beside himself.’” With this very purpose, as it seems, his brothers and family relations had come to urge and persuade him back to their home if possible, and stood without, utterly unable to get near him, on account of the throngs of hearers and beholders that had beset him. They were therefore obliged to send him word, begging him to stop his discourse and come out to them, because they wanted to see him. The request was therefore passed along from mouth to mouth, in the crowd, till at last those who sat next to Jesus communicated the message to him,――“Behold thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.” Jesus fully apprehending the nature of the business on which their ill-discerning regard had brought them thither, only suspended the train of his discourse to make such a remark as would impress all with the just idea of the value which he set upon earthly affections, which were liable to operate as hindrances to him in the great work to which he had been devoted; and to convince them how much higher and stronger was the place in his affections held by those who had joined themselves to him for life and for death, to promote the cause of God, and to do with him the will of his Father in heaven,――in the striking language of inquiry, he said, “Who is my mother or my brethren?” Then looking with an expression of deep affection around, on those who sat near him, he said, “Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister and mother.” It appears by this remark, as well as by another passage, that he had not only brothers, but sisters, who lived at Nazareth at that time, and were well known as his relations. No mention however is any where made of his father; so that it would appear that Joseph was now dead.

This remarkable faithlessness on the part of the brothers of Jesus, may be thought to present an insuperable difficulty in the way of the supposition that any of them could have been numbered with the apostles. But great as seems to have been their error, it hardly exceeded many that were made by his most select followers, even to the time of his ascension. All the apostles may be considered to have been in a great measure unbelievers, until the descent of the Holy Spirit,――for until that time, on no occasion did one of them manifest a true faith in the words of Jesus. Times almost without number, did he declare to them that he should rise from the dead; but notwithstanding this assertion was so often made to them in the most distinct and solemn manner, not one of them put the slightest confidence in his words, or believed that he would ever appear to them again after his crucifixion. Not even the story of his resurrection, repeatedly and solemnly attested by the women and others, could overcome their faithlessness; so that when the risen Lord, whose words they had so little heeded, came into their presence, moved with a just and holy anger, “he upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not those who had seen him after he was risen.” So that his brothers at this early period, can not be considered any worse off than the rest of those who knew and loved him best; and if any are disposed to oppose the view that his brethren were apostles, by quoting the words of John, that “neither did his brethren believe in him,” a triumphant retort may be found in the fact, that NEITHER DID HIS APOSTLES BELIEVE IN HIM.

There were, however, other “brothers” of Jesus, besides those who were apostles. By Matthew and Mark is also mentioned Joses, who is nowhere mentioned as an apostle; and there may have been others still, whose names are not given; for, in the account given, in the first chapter of Acts, it is recorded that, besides all the eleven apostles, there were also assembled in the upper room, Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brethren. It is very likely, that Jesus may have had several other cousins, who followed his fortunes, though they were not considered by him, qualified to rank among his chosen apostles. But a very prominent objection to the notion that they were the children of his mother, with whom they are mentioned in such close connection,――is, that when Jesus was on the cross, he commended her to the care of John, his beloved disciple, as though she were destitute of any immediate natural protector; and certainly, if she had at that time several sons living, who were full-grown, she could not have needed to be intrusted thus to the kindness of one who claimed no relationship whatever to her; but would, of course, have been secure of a home, and a comfortable support, so long as her sons could have worked for her. These also may have been those brethren who did not believe in him, and who considered him beside himself, though there seems no good reason to except any of those who are mentioned by Matthew and Mark, as his brethren,――James, Juda, Joses and Simon.

Beyond these allusions to him, in connection with others, the gospels take no notice whatever of this apostle; and it is only in the Acts of the Apostles, and some of the epistles of Paul, that he is mentioned with any great distinctness. In all those passages in the apostolic writings where he is referred to, he is presented as a person of high standing and great importance, and his opinions are given in such a manner as to convey the impression that they had great weight in the regulation of the apostolic doings. This is particularly evident in the only passage of the Acts of the Apostles where his words are given, which is in the account of the consultation at Jerusalem about the great question of communion between the circumcised and uncircumcised. On this occasion, James is mentioned in such a way as to make it evident that he was considered the most prominent among those who were zealous for the preservation of the Mosaic forms, and to have been by all such, regarded in the light of a leader, since his decision seems to have been esteemed by them as a sort of law; and the perfect acquiescence of even the most troublesome in the course which he recommended, is a proof of his predominant influence. The tone and style of the address itself, also imply that the speaker thought he had good reason to believe that others were looking to him in particular, for the decision which should regulate their opinions on this doubtful question. After Simon Peter, as the great chief of the apostles, had first expressed his opinion on the question under discussion, and had referred to his own inspired divine revelations of the will of God in respect to the Gentiles, Paul and Barnabas next gave a full account of their operations, and of the signs and wonders with which God had followed their labors.

After the full exposition made by Paul and Barnabas, of all their conduct, James arose to make his reply in behalf of the close adherents of Mosaic forms, and said, “Men and brethren! listen to me. Simeon has set forth in what manner God did first condescend to take from the heathen a people for his name. And with this, all the words of the prophets harmonize, as it is written, ‘After these things I will turn back, and will rebuild the fallen tabernacle of David; I will both rebuild its ruins and erect it again, IN ORDER THAT THE REST OF MANKIND may seek out the Lord, together with all the heathen who are called by my name, saith the Lord who made all things.’ ‘Well known to God are all his works from eternity.’ So I think that we ought not to make trouble for those who have turned from the heathen, to God; but that we should direct them to refrain from things that have been offered unto idols, and from fornication, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. For Moses has, from ancient generations, in these cities, those who make him known,――his law being read every sabbath day.” This opinion, formed and delivered in a truly Christian spirit of compromise, seems to have had the effect of a permanent decision; and the great leader of the rigid Judaizers, having thus renounced all opposition to the adoption of the converted heathen into full and open Christian communion, though without the seals of the Mosaic covenant,――all those who had originated this vexatious question, ceased their attempts to distract the harmony of the apostles; and the united opinions of the great apostolic chief, who had first opened the gates of Christ’s kingdom to the heathen, and of the eminent defender of Mosaic forms, so silenced all discussion, that thenceforth these opinions, thus fully expressed, became the common law of the Christian churches, throughout the world, in all ages.

This address of James (Acts xv. 13‒21.) may justly be pronounced the most obscure passage of all that can be found in the New Testament, of equal length,――almost every verse in it containing some point, which has been made the subject of some dispute. Schoettgen (quoted by Bloomfield,) thus analyzes this discourse:――“It consists of three parts;――the Exordium, (verse 13,) in which the speaker uses a form of expression calculated to secure the good-will of his auditors;――the Statement, (verses 16‒18,) containing also a confirmation of it from the prophets, and the reason;――the Proposition, (verses 19‒20,) that the Gentiles are not to be compelled to Judaism, but are only to abstain from certain things particularly offensive to the spirit of the Mosaic institutions.”

Simeon. (verse 14.) This peculiar form of Peter’s first name, has led some to suppose that he could not be the person meant, since he is mentioned in all other narratives by the name of Simon. Wolf imagines that Simon Zelotes must have been the person thus distinguished, though all the difficulties are the same in his case as in Peter’s. But Simeon (Συμεων) and Simon are the same name, the latter being only an abridged form, better suited to the inflections of the Greek than the former.――This preference of the full Hebrew form was doubtless meant to be characteristic of James, who seems to have been in general very zealous for ancient Jewish usages in all things.

Has condescended to take. Common translation: “did visit them to take,” &c. This much clearer translation is justified by the meaning which Bretschneider has given to επισκεπτομαι, benigne voluit, &c., for which he quotes the Greek of the Alexandrian version.

Harmonize. (verse 15.) The original (συμφωνοῦσιν) refers in the same manner as this word does to the primary idea of accordance in sound, (symphony,) and thence by a metonymy is applied to agreement in general. The passage of prophecy is quoted by James from Amos ix. 11, 12, and accords, in the construction which he puts upon it, much better with the Alexandrian Greek version, than with the original Hebrew or the common translations. The prophet (as Kuinoel observes) is describing the felicity of the golden age, and declares that the Jews will subdue their enemies and all nations, and that all will worship Jehovah. Now this, James accomodates to the present purpose, and applies to the propagation of the gospel among the Gentiles, and their reception into the Christian community. (See Rosenmueller, Acts, xv. 17, for a very full exegesis of this passage.)

Well known to God are all his works. These words have been made the subject of a great deal of inquiry among commentators, who have found some difficulties in ascertaining their connection with the preceding part of the discourse. Various new and unauthorized renderings of the words have been proposed, but have been generally rejected. It seems to me that the force of the passage is considerably illustrated by throwing the whole emphasis of the sentence upon the word “all,”――“Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of ages.” James is arguing on the equal and impartial grace of God, as extended not only to the Jews, but also to the Gentiles;――not to one nation merely, but to all his creatures. “Thus saith the Lord who makes (or does) all things.” The original Hebrew of the prophecy indeed, does not contain this, but that is itself a circumstance which shows that James had a particular object in this ♦accommodation of the words to this form and purpose.

♦ “accomodation” replaced with “accommodation”

So I think, &c. (verse 19.) Hammond and others have attempted to find in the original of this verb (κρινω) a peculiar force, implying that James announced his decision with a kind of judicial emphasis, in the character of “Bishop of Jerusalem.” The groundlessness of this translation is shown by Bloomfield’s numerous references to classical authority for the simple meaning of “think.” The difficulties in the twentieth verse are so numerous and weighty, and have been made the subject of such protracted and minute discussions by all the great commentators, that it would be vain to attempt any account of them here.

The great eminence of James among the apostles is very fully shown in several incidental allusions made to him in other passages of the apostolic writings. Thus when Peter, after his miraculous release from prison, came to the house of Mary the mother of John Mark, he, at departing from the Christians there assembled, told them to tell James and the brethren; implying, of course, that James was altogether the most prominent person among them, and might justly be considered chief apostle in the absence of Peter; and that to him any message intended for all, might be appropriately first addressed. In the same way did the angel, at the resurrection of Jesus, distinguish Peter among all the apostles, mentioning him alone by name, as the individual person to whom the divine message was to be delivered.

But no where is his eminence among the apostles so strongly marked, as in Paul’s account of his own visits to Jerusalem, and the incidents connected with them. He there mentions “James, the brother of our Lord,” in such terms as to show that he must have been one of the apostles; thus adding a valuable confirmation to the testimony above adduced in favor of this very point, that James, the brother of Jesus, was an apostle. Paul’s words are, “Other of the apostles, (besides Peter,) saw I none, except James, the Lord’s brother;” an expression which all analogy requires to be construed into a clear assertion that this James was an apostle. In speaking of his second visit, fourteen years after, Paul also bears a noble testimony to the eminence of James, and, what is remarkable, gives him the very first place among those three whom he mentions by name. He says, “When James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship.” This very peculiar arrangement of these three great names, has seemed so strange to the more stubborn Papists, that they can not believe that the Cephas here mentioned in the second place, is their great idol, Peter; and many of them have maintained, in long arguments, that he was not Peter,――a notion which might seem plausible at first glance, from the circumstance, that throughout his whole narrative, Paul has been speaking of Peter by the common Greek form of his surname, while in this particular passage, he uses the original Hebrew word, Cephas. But this verbal change is of no consequence whatever, except as showing that in this connection there was something which suggested a preference of the Hebrew name, while mentioning him along with the two other great apostolic chiefs, James and John. And even this very peculiar promotion of James to the first place, is easily explained by a consideration of the subject in connection with which these personages are mentioned. James was unquestionably the great leader of the sticklers for Mosaic forms; and he is therefore the most important person to be quoted in reference to Paul’s reception, while the dissensions about circumcision were raging. Peter, on the other hand, being himself the great champion of open Gentile communion, from his having been himself the first of all men to bring them under the gospel, was, of course, understood to be a favorer of Paul’s views, of the noble catholic extension of Christianity; and his name was therefore of really less importance in Paul’s statement, than the name of James, who was everywhere known as the head of the circumcision party, and being mentioned as having shown such respect to Paul, would make it evident that the two Hellenist apostles were taken into favor by all parties, and heartily commended to the great work of evangelizing the heathen.

The especially watchful zeal of James, for the preservation of Mosaic forms, is very distinctly implied in another passage of the same epistle. He had, in a nobly considerate spirit of compromise, agreed that it was best to receive all the Gentile converts as Christian brethren, though they conformed only very partially to the Mosaic institutions. It was perfectly a matter of common sense, to every reasonable man, that the progress of the gospel would be greatly hindered, and almost brought to a stand, among the heathen, if a minute adherence to all the corporeal observances of the Levitical code, were required for Christian communion; and James, though profoundly reverencing all the requirements of his national religion, was too wise to think of imposing all these rituals upon those whose whole habits would be at war with the observance of them, though in heart and in life they might be fully fitted to appreciate and enjoy the blessings of Christ’s spiritual covenant. He therefore distinctly expressed his accordance with Peter, in these general principles of Christian policy, yet, as subsequent events show, he was by no means disposed to go to all lengths with the more zealous chief of the apostles, in his readiness to renounce, in his own person, all the peculiarities of Jewish habits; and seems to have still maintained the opinion, that the original, pure Hebrew apostles, should live in the most scrupulous observance of their religious exclusiveness, towards those whom the Levitical law would pronounce unclean, and too much polluted with various defilements, to be the familiar associates of a truly religious Jew. This sentiment of James appears to have been well known to Peter, who, conscious of the peculiar rigidity of his great apostolic associate, on these points, wisely sought to avoid all occasions of needlessly exciting complaints and dissensions among the chief ministers of the word of truth. For this reason, as has already been narrated in his life, when he was at Antioch, though during the first part of his residence there, he had, without the slightest scruple, gone familiarly and frequently into the company of the unbelieving Gentiles, eating and drinking with them, without regard to any liability to corporeal pollutions, that were against the rules of Levitical purity,――yet when some persons came down from ♦Jerusalem, from James, he entirely withdrew himself, all at once, within the strict bounds of Mosaic observances. Perhaps these visitors from James had been specially instructed by him to note the demeanor of Peter, and to see whether, in his zeal for removing all obstruction out of the way of the Gentile converts, he might not forget what was due to his own character as a descendant of Abraham, and a disciple of him who so faithfully fulfilled all the righteousness of the law. However this might be, Peter’s actions plainly expressed some dread of offending James, and those who came from him; else he certainly would not have refrained, in this remarkable manner, from a course of conduct, which he had before followed unhesitatingly, as though he had not the slightest doubt of its perfect moral propriety; and the conclusion is reasonable, that he now changed his demeanor, only from views of expediency, and a regard to the jealous sensitiveness of his great associate, on points of Levitical law.

♦ “Jerasalem” replaced with “Jerusalem”

HIS APOSTOLIC OFFICE.

From these and other passages, implying a great eminence of James in the direction of the plans of evangelization, it is evident, that, in the absence of Peter, he must have been the most important person among the apostles at Jerusalem; and after the permanent removal of the commissioned apostolic chief, to other and wider fields of action, his rank, as principal person among all the ministers of Christ in Jerusalem, must have been very decidedly established. From this circumstance has originated the notion that he was “bishop of Jerusalem;” and this is the title with which the later Fathers have attempted to decorate him,――as if any honor whatever could be conferred on an apostle, by giving him the title of a set of inferior ministers appointed by the original commissioned preachers of Christ, to be merely their substitutes in the instruction and management of those numerous churches which could not be blessed by the presence of an apostle, and to be their successors in the supreme earthly administration of the affairs of the Christian community, when the great founders had all been removed from their labors, to their rest. How nearly the duties performed by James corresponded to the modern episcopal function, it is utterly impossible to say, for the simple reason that not the slightest record of his actions is left, to which references can be made, on this interesting question. That he was the most eminent of the apostles resident at Jerusalem, is quite clear; and that by him, under these circumstances, were performed the great proportion of the pastoral duties among the believers in that city, may be most justly supposed; and his influence over Christian converts would by no means be limited by the walls of the Holy city. In his apostolic functions, he, of course, became known to all resorting to that place; and his faithful and eminent ministry in the capital of the Jewish religion would extend not only his fame, but the circle of his personal acquaintances, throughout all parts of the world, from which pilgrims came to the great annual festivals in Jerusalem. His immense apostolic diocese, therefore, could not be very easily bounded, nor was it defined with any exactness, to prevent it from running into the limits of those divisions of the fields of duty, in which Peter, Paul, John and others, had been more especially laboring. His influence among the Jews in general, (whether believers in Christ or not,) would, from various accounts, appear to have been greater than that of any other apostle; and this, combined with the circumstances of his location, would seem to entitle him very fairly to the rank and character of the apostle of the “Dispersion.” This was a term transferred from the abstract to the concrete sense, and was applied in a collective meaning to the great body of Jews in all parts of the world, through which they were scattered by chance, choice, or necessity.

Bishop of Jerusalem. The first application of this title to James, that appears on record, is in Eusebius, who quotes the still older authority of Clemens Alexandrinus. (Church History, II. 1.) The words of Eusebius are, “Then James, who was called the brother of our Lord, because he was the son of Joseph, and whom, on account of his eminent virtue, those of ancient times surnamed the Just, is said to have first held the chair of the bishopric of Jerusalem. Clemens, in the sixth book of his Institutes, distinctly confirms this. For he says that ‘after the Saviour’s ascension, although the Lord had given to Peter, James, and John, a rank before all the rest, yet they did not therefore contend among themselves for the first distinction, but chose James the Just, to be bishop of Jerusalem.’ And the same writer, in the seventh book of the same work, says these things of him, besides: ‘To James the Just, and John, and Peter, did the Lord, after the resurrection, grant the knowledge, [the gnosis, or knowledge of mysteries,] and these imparted it to the other disciples.’”

In judging of the combined testimony of these two ancient writers, it should be observed that it is not by any means so ancient and direct as that of Polycrates, on the identity of Philip the apostle, and Philip the deacon, which these very Fathers quote with assent. Nor can their opinion be worth any more in this case than in the other. On no point, where a knowledge of the New Testament, and a sound judgment are the only guides, can the testimony of the Fathers be considered of any value whatever; for the most learned of them betray a disgraceful ignorance of the Bible in their writings; nor can the most acute of them compare, for sense and judgment, with the most ordinary of modern commentators. The whole course of Patristic theology affords abundant instances of the very low powers of these writers, for the discrimination of truth and falsehood. The science of historical criticism had no existence among them――nor indeed is there any reason why they should be considered persons of any historical authority, except so far as they can refer directly to the original sources, and to the persons immediately concerned in the events which they record. On all matters of less unexceptionable authority, where their testimony does not happen to contradict known truth or common sense, all that can be said in their favor, is, that the thing thus reported is not improbable; but all supplements to the accounts given in the New Testament, unless they refer directly to eye-witnesses, may be pronounced very suspicious and wholly uncertain. In this case, Eusebius’s opinion that James, the brother of our Lord was the son of Joseph, is worth no more than that of the latest commentator; because he had no more historical aids than the writers of these days. Nor is the story of Clemens, that James was bishop of Jerusalem, worth any more; because he does not refer to any historical evidence.

HIS EPISTLE.

Noticing some peculiar circumstances in the condition of his countrymen, throughout this wide dispersion, the apostle addressed to them a written exhortation, suited to their spiritual necessities. In the opening, he announces himself simply by the title of “James, the servant of Jesus Christ,” not choosing to ground any claim for their respect or obedience on the accidents of birth or relationship, but on the mere character of one devoted to the cause of Christ for life and for death,――and entitled, by the peculiar commission of his Lord, to teach and direct his followers in his name. In consequence of this omission of the circumstance of relationship, a query has been even raised whether the author of this epistle could really be the same person as the brother of Jesus. But a trifle of this kind can never be allowed to have any weight in the decision of such a question. He directs himself, in general terms, to all the objects of his extended apostolic charge;――“to the twelve tribes that are in the Dispersion.”

A brief review of the contents of the epistle will furnish the best means of ascertaining its scope and immediate object, and will also afford just ground for tracing the connection, between the design of the apostle and the remarkable events in the history of those times, which are recorded by the other writers of that age. He first urges them to persevere in faith, without wavering or sinking under all the peculiar difficulties then pressing on them; and refers them to God as the source of that wisdom which they need for their direction. From him alone, all good proceeds; but no sin, nor temptations to sin. The cause of that, lies in man himself: let him not then blasphemously ascribe his evil dispositions nor the occasions of their development, to God; but seeking wisdom and strength from above, let him resist the tempter:――blessed is the man that thus endures and withstands the trial. He next points out to them the utter worthlessness of all the distinctions of rank and wealth among those professing the faith of Jesus. Such base respect of persons on the score of accidental worldly advantages, is denounced, as being foreign to the spirit of Christianity. True religion requires something more than a profession of faith; its substance and its signs are the energetic and constant practice of virtuous actions, and it allows no dispensations or excuses to any one. He next dwells especially on the high responsibilities of those who assume the office of teaching. The tongue requires a most watchful restraint, lest passion or haste pervert the advantages of eminence and influence, into the base instruments of human wrath. The true manifestations of religious knowledge and zeal, must be in a spirit of gentleness, forbearance, and love,――not in the expressions of hatred, nor in cursing. But of this pure, heavenly spirit, their late conduct had shown them to be lamentably destitute. Strifes, tumults, and bitter denunciations, had betrayed their un-Christian character. They needed therefore, to humbly seek this meek spirit from God, and not proudly to assume the prerogatives of judgment and condemnation, which belonged to Him alone. His condemnation was indeed about to fall on their country. With most peculiar ruin would it light on those now reveling in their ill-gotten riches, and rejoicing in the vain hope of a perpetual prosperity. But let the faithful persevere, cheered by the memory of the bright examples of the suffering pious of other days, and by the hope of the coming of their Lord, whose appearance in glory and judgment, would soon crown their fervent prayers. Meanwhile, supported by this assurance, let them continue in a virtuous course, watching even their words, visiting the sick in charity and mercy, and all exhorting and instructing each other in the right way.

The peculiar difficulties of the times here referred to, are――a state of bloody intestine commotion, disturbing the peace of society, and desolating the land with hatred, contention and murder;――a great inequality of condition, in respect to property,――some amassing vast wealth by extortion, and abusing the powers and privileges thereby afforded, to the purposes of tyranny,――condemning and killing the just;――a perversion of laws for the gratification of private spite;――and everywhere a great occasion for good men to exercise patience and faith, relying upon God alone, for the relief of the community from its desperate calamities. But a prospect was already presented of a consummation of these distracting troubles, in the utter ruin of the wicked; a change in the condition of things was about to occur, which would bring poverty and distress upon the haughty oppressors, who had heaped treasure together only for the last days. The brethren therefore, had but a little time to wait for the coming of the Lord. Both of these two latter expressions point very clearly at the destruction of Jerusalem,――for this is the uniform reference which these terms had, in those days, among the Christians. Jesus had promised his chosen disciples, that their generation should not pass away, till all those awful calamities which he denounced on the Jewish state, should be fulfilled; and for this event all his suffering followers were now looking, as the seal of the truth of Christ’s word. Searching in the history of the times, a few years previous to that final desolation, it is found in the testimony of impartial writers, that these were the too faithful details of the evils which then raged in Palestine. “For, under Felix, and again under Portius Festus, desperate patriots marched through the country, in whole bodies, and forcibly tore away with them the inhabitants of open places, and if they would not follow them, set fire to the villages, and enacted bloody scenes. They even made their appearance in the capital and at the feasts, where they mixed among the crowd of people, and committed many secret assassinations with concealed weapons. As to that which regards the external circumstances and the civil condition of the Jews and Jewish Christians, they were far from being agreeable. The praetors, under all manner of pretexts, made extortions, and abused their legal authority for the sake of enriching themselves; a person was obliged to purchase with money his liberation from their prisons, as well as his safety and his rights; he might even purchase a license to commit crimes. In this state, under these circumstances, and in this degree of civil disorder, the author might probably have regarded his countrymen; for, although he wrote to the whole world, yet his native land passed more immediately before his eyes.”

For the sources, and for the minuter proofs and illustrations of these views, see Hug’s Introduction, as translated by Wait, Vol. II. §§ 148‒159.

In the immediate consideration of all these present iniquities and coming desolations, he wrote to prepare the believing Jews, in Palestine more particularly, but also throughout the world, for the overwhelming consummation of their nation’s destiny. Terrible as would be this doom, to the wicked, and mournful as would be these national desolations, to all, the righteous should find consolations in the peaceful establishment of the spiritual kingdom of their Lord, over the ruins of the dominion of his murderers,――of those who had “condemned and killed the just One, though he did not resist them.” But in all these awful signs, should the faithful see the forewarned coming of the Son of Man; and as he himself told his chosen apostles, “then should they lift up their heads; for their redemption drew nigh.”

Besides these external troubles, there were others of a different character, arising and existing solely among those who professed the religion of Christ. The instructions given by Paul, in reference to the absolute necessity of faith, and the insufficiency of a mere formal routine of religious duties, had been most grossly perverted into a warrant for the all-sufficiency of a mere belief, as the means of salvation;――an error by no means limited in its mischievous existence, to the days of the apostles, but so comfortable to the minds of mere religious formalists, in all ages of Christianity, that a new revelation, like that here made by James, though directly repeated through every century of the Christian era, would be equally vain, for the prevention or the remedy of this never-dying heresy. All the words of James on the subject of faith and works, are evidently aimed at the refutation of those who had taken advantage of the opinions which Paul had expressed, on the same subjects; but which were expressed with a totally different reference, being stated not generally nor abstractly, but in application to some particular dogmatic errors. James, after distinctly condemning the “unlearned and unstable, who thus wrested to their own destruction the things hard to be understood in the writings of Paul,” next attacks certain persons who, without being authorized or qualified, had assumed the station and responsibility of religious teachers. Many persons taking up the office of instructors in this manner, had caused great confusion, by using their hasty tongues, in mere polemic and denunciatory discourse, condemning and cursing, in unmeasured terms, those who differed from them in opinion. These he rebukes, as thus “giving occasion for offense and error to all;” and sets forth the character of that true wisdom which comes from above, and which is peaceable, “sowing the fruit of righteousness in peace.”

Many teachers. In order to understand this reference, it should be noticed that the word masters in the common translation of chap. iii. verse 1, of this epistle, is not to be taken in the common modern sense, but in that of “religious teachers.” The original is not Κυριοι (Kurioi,) “Lords,” “Masters,”――but διδασκαλοι (didaskaloi,) “teachers.” The translators probably intended it only in the latter sense; for the word “Master” really has that meaning in such connections, in good authors of that age; and even at this day, in England, the same usage of the word is very common, though almost unknown in this country, except in technical phrases.

HIS DEATH.

The epistle was probably the last great act of his life. No record, indeed, of any of his labors, except this living instance, exists of his later years; but there is certain ground for supposing that his residence in Jerusalem was characterized by a steady course of apostolic labors, in the original sphere of action, to which the twelve had first confined themselves for many years. When, by the special calls of God, in providences and in revelations, one and another of the apostles had been summoned to new and distant fields, east, west, north and south, “preaching repentance and remission of sins, in his name, among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem,” and bearing witness of his works, thence, “through Judea, and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth,” there was still needed one, who, highly “indued with power from on high,” might remain in that city to which all the sons of Israel, throughout the world, looked as the fountain of religious light. There too was the scene of the first great triumphs of the Christian faith, as well as of the chief toils, the trials, and the death of the great founder himself. All these circumstances rendered Jerusalem still an important post to the apostles; and they therefore left on that station the apostle, whose steady courage in the cause of Christ, and blameless yet jealous conformity to the law of Moses, fitted him at once for the bold maintenance of his Master’s commission, and for the successful advancement of the gospel among the faithful believers of the ancient covenant. Thus James continued at Jerusalem throughout his life, being kept at this important station, perhaps on account of his age, as well as for his fitness in other respects; as there is some reason to think that he was older than those more active apostles who assumed the foreign departments of the work. His great weight of character, as evinced in the council of the apostles, and by the fear which Peter showed of offending him, very naturally gives the idea of a greater age than that of the other apostles; and this notion is furthermore confirmed by the circumstance that the brethren of Jesus, among whom this apostle was certainly included, are mentioned as assuming an authority over their divine relation, and claiming a right to control and direct his motions, which could never have been assumed, according to the established order of Jewish families, unless they had been older than he. It is therefore a rational supposition, that James was one of the oldest, perhaps the oldest, of the apostles; and at any rate he appears to have been more advanced in life than any of those who are characterized with sufficient distinctness to offer the means of conjecture on this point.

From the high charge of this great central apostolic station, in which he had, through a course of more than twenty-five years, accumulated the ripe honors of a “righteous” name upon his hoary head, James was now called to end a career, which so much resembled that of the ancient prophets, by a death equally assimilated to the bloody fate to which so many of them had been doomed by the subjects of their reproofs. The fact and circumstances of his death are given on an authority so blameless and disinterested as not to admit of dispute; nor is there any thing in the narrative which can throw the slightest suspicion upon it. The eminent Jewish historian, Josephus, himself a resident in Jerusalem at that time, and an eye-witness of these events, and acquainted by sight and fame, at least, with James, has given a clear account of the execution of this apostle, which can best evince its own merit by being given entire.

The account which Josephus has given, shows that the death of James, must have happened during Paul’s imprisonment, and is delivered in the following words:――“The emperor, being informed of the death of Festus, sent Albinus to be prefect of Judea. But the younger Ananus, who, as we said before, was made high priest, was haughty in his behavior, and very ambitious. He was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who, as we have also observed before, are above all other Jews severe in their judicial sentences. This then being the temper of Ananus, he, thinking he had a convenient opportunity, because Festus was dead, and Albinus was not yet arrived, called a council, and brought before it James, brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, with several others, where they were accused of being transgressors of the law, and stoned to death. But the most moderate men of the city, who were also the most learned in the laws, were offended at this proceeding. They sent therefore privately to the king, and entreated him to give orders to Ananus to abstain from such conduct in future. And some went to meet Albinus, who was coming from Alexandria, and represented to him, that Ananus had no right to call a council without his permission. Albinus, approving of what they said, wrote a very severe letter to Ananus, threatening to punish him for what he had done. And king Agrippa took away from him the priesthood, after he had possessed it three months, and appointed in his stead Jesus, the son of Damnaeus.” From this account of Josephus we learn, that James, notwithstanding he was a Christian, was so far from being an object of hatred to the Jews, that he was rather beloved and respected. At least his death excited very different sensations from that of the first James; and the Sadducean high priest, at whose instigation he suffered, was punished for his offense by the loss of his office.

This translation is taken from Marsh’s Michaelis, (Introduction, Vol. IV. pp. 287, 288.) The original is in the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus. (XX. ix. 1.)

This however, is not the statement which the early Christian writers give of the death of James the Just; but from the oldest historian of the church, is derived another narrative, so highly decorated with minute particulars, that while it is made very much more interesting than the concise and simple account given by Josephus, it is at the same time rendered altogether suspicious by the very circumstance of its interesting minuteness. Josephus had no temptation whatever to pervert the statement. He gives it in terms strongly condemnatory of the whole transaction; but the Christian writers, as they have shown in other such instances, are too often disposed to sacrifice truth, for the sake of making a story whose incidents harmonize best with their notions of a desirable martyrdom. The story however, deserves a place here, both for the sake of a fair comparison, and on account of its own interesting character.

“James, the brother of our Lord, surnamed the Just, was holy from his mother’s womb. He drank neither wine, nor strong drink; nor ate any creature wherein was life. There never came a razor upon his beard;――he anointed not himself with oil, neither did he use a bath. To him only it was lawful to enter into the holy of holies. He wore no woolen, but only linen garments; and entered the temple alone, where he was seen upon his knees, supplicating for the forgiveness of the people, till his knees became hard, and covered with a callus, like those of a camel. On account of his eminent righteousness, he was called the Just, and Oblias, which signifies ‘the people’s fortress.’ Then, after describing the divisions among the people respecting Christianity, the account states, that all the leading men among the Scribes and Pharisees, came to James, and entreated him to stand up on the battlements of the temple, and persuade the people assembled at the passover, to have juster notions concerning Jesus; and that, when thus mounted on the battlements, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Why do ye question me about Jesus, the Son of Man? He even sits in heaven, at the right hand of great power, and will come in the clouds of heaven.’ With this declaration, many were satisfied, and cried ‘Hosanna to the Son of David.’ But the unbelieving Scribes and Pharisees, mortified at what they had done, produced a riot; for they consulted together, and then cried out, ‘Oh! oh! even the Just one is himself deceived.’ They went up, therefore, and cast down the Just, and said among themselves, ‘Let us stone James the Just.’ And they began to stone him, for he did not die with his fall; but turning, he kneeled, saying, ‘I entreat, O Lord God the Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ And while they were stoning him, one of the priests, of the sons of Rahab, spoken of by Jeremiah the prophet, cried out, ‘Cease; what do ye? Justus prays for us.’ But a certain one among them, a fuller, took a lever, such as he had used to squeeze garments, and smote Justus on the head. Thus he suffered martyrdom; and they buried him in that place, and his grave-stone yet remains near the temple.”

This story is from Hegesippus, as quoted by Eusebius, to whom alone we owe its preservation,――the works of the original author being all lost, except such fragments, accidentally quoted by other writers. The translation I have taken from the MS. of the Rev. Dr. Murdock, to whose research I am already so much indebted in similar instances.

The comments of Michaelis on these two testimonies, may be appropriately subjoined. (Introduction, Vol. IV. pp. 288, 291. Marsh’s translation.)

“The account given by Hegesippus, contains an intermixture of truth and fable; and in some material points contradicts the relation of Josephus, to ♦which no objection can be made. It confirms however the assertion, that James was in great repute among the Jews, even among those who did not believe in Christ; and that they paid him much greater deference than we might suppose they would have shown to a Christian bishop, and a brother of Christ, whom they had crucified. Many parts of the preceding account are undoubtedly fabulous, especially that part which relates to the request of the Jews, that James would openly declare from the battlements of the temple, that Jesus was not the Messiah. Indeed, if this were true, it would not redound to his honor; for it would imply that he had acted with duplicity, and not taken a decided part in favor of Christianity, or the Jews could never have thought of making such a request. But that a person, who was the head of the church in Jerusalem, should have acted such a double part as to leave it undecided what party he had embraced, and that too for thirty years after the ascension, is in itself almost incredible. It is inconsistent likewise with the relation of Josephus, and is virtually contradicted both by Paul and by Luke, who always speak of him with the utmost respect, and have no where given the smallest hint, that he concealed the principal doctrines of the Christian religion.”

♦ “whieh” replaced with “which”

Thus gloriously ended the steady, bright career of “the second apostolic martyr.” Honored, even by the despisers of the faith and haters of the name of Christ, with the exalted title of “THE JUST,” he added the solemn witness of his blood, to that of his divine brother and Lord, and to that of his young apostolic brother, whose name and fate were equally like his,――a testimony which sealed anew the truth of his own record against the sins of the oppressors, published in his last great earthly work:――“Ye have condemned and killed the JUST; yet he doth not resist you.”

SIMON ZELOTES.

HIS NAME.

The ever-recurring difficulty about the distinctive appellations of the apostles, forms the most prominent point of inquiry in the life of this person, otherwise so little known as to afford hardly a single topic for the apostolic historian. The dispute here indeed involves no question about personal identity, but merely refers to the coincidence of signification between the two different words by which he is designated in the apostolic lists, to distinguish him from the illustrious chief of the twelve, who bore the same name with him. Matthew and Mark in giving the names of the apostles,――the only occasion on which they name him,――call him “Simon the Cananite;” but Luke, in a similar notice, mentions him as “Simon Zelotes;” and the question then arises, whether these two distinctive appellations have not a common origin. In the vernacular language of Palestine, the word from which Cananite is derived, has a meaning identical with that of the root of the Greek word Zelotes; and hence it is most rationally concluded, that the latter is a translation of the former,――Luke, who wrote entirely for Greeks, choosing to translate into their language a term whose original force could be apprehended only by those acquainted with the local circumstances with which it was connected. The name Zelotes, which may be faithfully translated by its English derivative, Zealot, has a meaning deeply involved in some of the most bloody scenes in the history of the Jews, in the apostolic age. This name, or rather its Hebrew original, was assumed by a set of ferocious desperadoes, who, under the honorable pretense of a holy zeal for their country and religion, set all law at defiance, and constituting themselves at once the judges and the executors of right, they went through the land waging war against the Romans, and all who peacefully submitted to that foreign sway. This sect, however, did not arise by this name until many years after the death of Jesus, and there is no good reason to suppose that Simon derived his surname from any connection with the bloody Zealots who did their utmost to increase the last agonies of their distracted country, but from a more holy zeal displayed in a more righteous manner. It may have been simply characteristic of his general conduct, or it may have referred to some particular occasion in which he decidedly evinced this trait of zeal in a righteous cause.

The Cananite.――In respect to this name, a most absurd and unjustifiable blunder has stood in all the common versions of it, which deserves notice. This is the representation of the word in the form, “Canaanite,” which is a gross perversion of the original. The Greek word is Κανανιτης, (Kananites,) a totally different word from that which is used both in the New Testament, and in the Alexandrian version of the Old, to express the Hebrew term for an inhabitant of Canaan. The name of the land of Canaan is always expressed by the aspirated form, Χανααν, which in the Latin and all modern versions is very properly expressed by “Chanaan.” In Matthew xv. 22, where the Canaanitish woman is spoken of, the original is Χαναναια, (Chananaia,) nor is there any passage in which the name of an inhabitant of Canaan is expressed by the form Κανανιτης, (Cananites,) with the smooth K, and the single A. Yet the Latin ecclesiastic writers, and even the usually accurate Natalis Alexander, express this apostle’s name as “Simon Chananaeus,” which is the word for “Canaanite.”

The true force and derivation of the word is this. The name assumed in the language of Palestine by the ferocious sect above mentioned, was derived from the Hebrew primitive קנא (Qana or Kana,) and thence the name קנני (Kanani) was very fairly expressed, according to the forms and terminations of the Greek, by Κανανιτης, (Kananites.) The Hebrew root is a verb which means “to be zealous,” and the name derived from it of course means, “one who is zealous,” of which the just Greek translation is the word Ζηλωτης, (Zelotes,) the very name by which Luke represents it in this instance. (Luke vi. 15; Acts i. 13.) One of these names is, in short, a mere translation of the other,――nor is there any way of evading this construction, except by supposing that Luke was mistaken in supposing that Simon was called “the Zealot,” being deceived by the resemblance of the name “Cananites” to the Hebrew name of that sect. But no believer in the inspiration of the gospel can allow this supposition. Equally unfounded, and inconsistent with Luke’s translation, is the notion that the name Cananite is derived from Cana the village of Galilee, famous as the scene of Christ’s first miracle.

The account given in the Life of Matthew shows the character of this sect, as it existed in the last days of the Jewish state. Josephus describes them very fully in his history of the Jewish War, (iv. 3.) Simon probably received this name, however, not from any connection with a sect which arose long after the death of Christ, but from something in his own character which showed a great zeal for the cause which he had espoused.

HIS HISTORY.

No very direct statement as to his parentage is made in the New Testament; but one or two incidental allusions to some circumstances connected with it, afford ground for a reasonable conclusion on this point. In the enumeration which Matthew and Mark give of the four brothers of Jesus, in the discourse of the offended citizens of Nazareth, Simon is mentioned along with James, Juda and Joses. It is worthy of notice, also, that on all the apostolic lists, Simon the apostle is mentioned between the brothers James and Juda; an arrangement that can not be accounted for, except by supposing that he was also the brother of James. The reason why Juda is distinctly specified as the brother of James, while Simon is mentioned without reference to any such relationship, is, doubtless, that the latter was so well known by the appellation of the Zealot, that there was no need of specifying his relations, to distinguish him from Simon Peter. These two circumstances, incidentally mentioned, may be considered as justifying the supposition, that Simon Zelotes was the same person as Simon the brother of Jesus. In this manner, all the old writers have understood the connection; and though such use is no authority, it is worth mentioning that the monkish chroniclers always consider Simon Zelotes as the brother of Juda; and they associate these two, as wandering together in eastern countries, to preach the gospel in Persia and Mesopotamia. Others carry him into much more improbable wanderings. Egypt and Northern Africa, and even Britain, are mentioned as the scenes of his apostolic labors, in the ingenious narratives of those who undertook to supply almost every one of the nations of the eastern continent with an apostolic patron saint. All this is very poor consolation for the general dearth of facts in relation to this apostle; and the searcher for historical truth will not be so well satisfied with the tedious tales of monkish romance, as with the decided and unquestionable assurance, that the whole history of this apostle, from beginning to end, is perfectly unknown, and that not one action of his life has been preserved from the darkness of an utterly impenetrable oblivion.

JUDA.

HIS NAME.

The number of instances, among the men of the apostolic age, of two persons bearing the same name, is very curious, and seems to show a great poverty of appellatives among their parents. Among the twelve there are two Simons, two Jameses, and two Judases; and including those whose labors were any way connected with theirs, there are three Johns, (the Baptist, the Apostle, and John Mark,) and two Philips, besides other minor coincidences. The confusion which this repetition of names causes among common readers, is truly undesirable; and it requires attention for them to avoid error. In the case of this apostle, indeed, the occasion of error is obviated for the most part, by a slight change in the termination; his name being generally written Juda, (in modern versions, Jude,) while the wretched traitor who bears the same name, preserves the common form terminating in S, which is also the form in which Luke and John express this apostle’s name. A more serious difficulty occurs, however, in a diversity noticed between the account given by the two first evangelists, and the forms in which his name is expressed in the writings of Luke and John, and in the introduction to his own epistle. Matthew and Mark, in giving the names of the apostles, mention in the tenth place, the name of Thaddeus, to whom the former evangelist also gives the name of Lebbeus. They give him a place before Simon Zelotes, and immediately after James, the son of Alpheus. Luke gives the tenth place to Simon Zelotes, in both his lists, and after him mentions “Judas, the brother of James”; and John speaks of “Judas, (not Iscariot,”) among the chosen disciples. Juda, in his epistle also, announces himself as “the brother of James.” From all these circumstances it would seem to be very fairly inferred, that Judas, or Juda, the brother of James, and Lebbeus or Thaddeus, were all only different names of the same apostle. But this view is by no means universally received, and some have been found bold enough to declare, that these two sets of names referred to different persons, both of whom were at different times numbered among the twelve apostles, and were received or excluded from the list by Jesus, from some various circumstances, now unknown;――or were perhaps considered such by one evangelist or another, according to the notions and individual preferences of each writer. But such a view is so opposed to the established impressions of the uniform and fixed character of the apostolic list, and of the consistency of different parts of the sacred record, that it may very justly be rejected without the trouble of a discussion.

Another inquiry still, concerning this apostle, is, whether he is the same as that Judas who is mentioned along with James, Joses and Simon, as the brother of Jesus. All the important points involved in this question, have been already fully discussed in the life of James, the Little; and if the conclusion of that argument is correct, the irresistible consequence is, that the apostle Jude was also one of these relatives of Jesus. The absurdity of the view of his being a different person, can not be better exposed than by a simple statement of its assertions. It requires the reader to believe that there was a Judas, and a James, brothers and apostles; and another Judas and another James, also brothers, and brothers of Jesus, but not apostles; and that these are all mentioned in the New Testament without anything like a satisfactory explanation of the reality and distinctness of this remarkable duplicate of brotherhoods. Add to this, moreover, the circumstance that Juda, the author of the epistle, specifies himself as “the brother of James,” as though that were sufficient to prevent his being confounded with any other Judas or Juda in this world;――a specification totally useless, if there was another Judas, the brother of another James, all eminent as Christian teachers.

There is still another question connected with his simple entity and identity. Ancient traditions make mention of a Thaddeus, who first preached the gospel in the interior of Syria; and the question is, whether he is the same person as the apostle Juda, who is called Thaddeus by Matthew and Mark. The great majority of ancient writers, more especially the Syrians, consider the missionary Thaddeus not as one of the twelve apostles, but as one of the seventy disciples, sent out by Jesus in the same way as the select twelve. Another confirmation of the view that he was a different person from the apostle Jude, is found in the circumstance, that the epistle which bears the name of the latter, was not for several centuries received by the Syrian churches, though generally adopted throughout all Christendom, as an inspired apostolic writing. But surely, if their national evangelizer had been identical with the apostle Jude who wrote that epistle, they would have been the first to acknowledge its authenticity and authority, and to receive it into their scriptural canon.

So perfectly destitute are the gospel and apostolic history, of the slightest account of this apostle’s life and actions, that his whole biography may be considered completed in the mere settlement of his name and identity. The only word that has been preserved as coming from his lips, is recorded in John’s account of the parting discourses of Jesus to his disciples, on the eve of his crucifixion. Jesus was promising them that the love of God should be the sign and the reward of him who faithfully kept his commandments,――“He that holds and keeps my commandments, is the man that loves me; and he that loves me shall be loved by my Father; and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” These words constituted the occasion of the remark of Judas, thus recorded by John. “Judas (not Iscariot) says to him, ‘Lord! how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself to us as thou dost not to the world?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him.’” A natural inquiry, aptly and happily suggested, and most clearly and satisfactorily answered, in the plain but illustrative words of the divine teacher! Would that the honest inquirer after the true, simple meaning of the words of God, might have his painful researches through the wisdom of ages, as well rewarded as did the favored hearers of Jesus! And would that the trying efforts of critical thought might end in a result so brilliant and so cheering!

HIS EPISTLE.

The solitary monument and testimony of his apostolic labors, are found in that brief, but strongly characterized and peculiar writing, which bears his name, and forms the last portion, but one, of the modern scriptural canon. Short as it is, and obscure too, by the numerous references it contains, to local and temporary circumstances, there is much expressed in this little portion of the apostolic writings, which is highly interesting to the inquirer into the darker portions of the earliest Christian history.

Several very remarkable circumstances in this epistle, have, from the earliest ages of Christian theology, excited great inquiry among writers, and in many cases have not only led commentators and critics to pronounce the work very suspicious in its character, but even absolutely to condemn it as unworthy of a place in the sacred canon. One of these circumstances is, that the writer quotes apocryphal books of a mystical and superstitious character, that have never been received by Christians or Jews, as possessing any divine authority, nor as entitled to any regard whatever in religious matters. At least two distinct quotations from these confessedly fictitious writings, are found in this brief epistle. The first is from the book of Enoch, which has been preserved even to the present day, in the Ethiopic translation; the original Hebrew having been irrecoverably lost. Some of the highest authorities in orthodoxy and in learning have pronounced the original to have been a very ancient writing;――a forgery, indeed, since it professed to be the writing of Enoch himself,――but made up in the earliest ages of Rabbinical literature, after the Old Testament canon was completed, but before any portion of the New Testament was written,――probably some years before the Christian era, though the means of ascertaining its exact date are wanting. Another quotation, equally remarkable, occurs in this epistle, without any mention being made, however, of the exact source from which the passage has been drawn; and the point is at present a subject of dispute,――as references have been made by different authorities, ancient and modern, to different apocryphal Jewish books, which contain similar passages. But the most valuable authorities, both ancient and modern, decide it to be a work now universally allowed to be apocryphal,――“the Ascension of Moses,” which is directly quoted as authority on a subject altogether removed from human knowledge, and on which no testimony could be of any value, except it were derived directly and solely from the sources of inspiration. The consequence of these references to these two doubtful authorities, is, that many of the critical examiners of this epistle, in all ages, have felt themselves justified in condemning it.

Tertullian (A. D. 200) is the earliest writer who has distinctly quoted this epistle. He refers to it in connection with the quotation from the book of Enoch. “Hence it is that Enoch is quoted by the apostle Jude.” (De cultu feminarum, 3.) Clement of Alexandria also repeatedly quotes the epistle of Jude as an apostolic writing. Origen (A. D. 230,) very clearly expresses his opinion in favor of this epistle as the production of Jude, the brother of Jesus. In his commentary on Matthew xiii. 55, where James, Simon and Jude are mentioned, he says, “Jude wrote an epistle, of few lines indeed, but full of powerful words of heavenly grace, who, at the beginning says, ‘Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and the brother of James.’” Origen thought everything connected with this epistle, of such high authority, that he considered the apocryphal book of “the Ascension of Moses,” a work of authority, because it had been quoted by Jude, (verse 9.) He confesses however, that there were some who doubted the authenticity of the epistle of Jude; and that this was the fact, appears still more distinctly from the account of the apostolic writings, given by Eusebius, (A. D. 320,) who sets it down among the disputed writings. The ancient Syriac version (executed before A. D. 100,) rejects this as well as the second of Peter, and the second and third of John. After the fourth century all these became universally established in the Greek and Latin churches. The great Michaelis however, utterly condemns it as probably a forgery. (Introduction, IV. xxix. 5.)

The clearest statement of the character of this reference to the book of Enoch, is given by Hug’s translator, Dr. Wait. (Introduction. Vol. II. p. 618, note.)

“This manifestly appears to have been the reason why Jude cited apocryphal works in his epistle, viz. for the sake of refuting their own assertions from those productions, which, like the rest of their nation, they most probably respected. For this purpose the book of Enoch was peculiarly calculated, since in the midst of all its ineptiae and absurdities, this point, and the orders of the spiritual world, are strongly urged and discussed in it. It is irrelevant to the inquiry, how much of the present book existed at this time, for that it was framed by different writers, and at different periods, no critic can deny; yet that this was the leading character of the work, and that these were the prominent dogmata of those parts which were then in existence, we have every presumptive evidence. The Hebrew names of angels, &c., such as the Ophanim, plainly indicate it to have been a translation from some lost Jewish original, which was doubtless known both to Peter and to Jude; nor can the unprejudiced examiner of these epistles well hesitate to acknowledge Hug’s explanation of them to be the most correct and the most reasonable.”

The whole defense of the epistle against these imputations, may be grounded upon the supposition, that the apostle was writing against a peculiar class of heretics, who did acknowledge these apocryphal books to be of divine authority, and to whom he might quote these with a view to show, that even by their own standards of truth, their errors of doctrine and life must be condemned. The sect of the Gnostics has been already mentioned in the life of John, as being the first ever known to have perverted the purity of Christian doctrine, by heresy. These heretics certainly are not very fully described in those few passages of this short epistle that are directed at the errors of doctrine; but the character of those errors which Jude denounces, is accordant with what is known of some of the prominent peculiarities of the Gnostics. But whatever may have been the particular character of these heretics, it is evident that they must, like the great majority of the Jews in those days, have acknowledged the divine authority of these ancient apocryphal writings; and the apostle was therefore right in making use of quotations from these works, to refute their very remarkable errors. The evils which he denounced, however, were not merely of a speculative character; but he more especially condemns their gross immoralities, as a scandal and an outrage on the purity of the Christian assemblies with which they still associated. In all those passages where these vices are referred to, it will be observed that both immoralities and doctrinal errors are included in one common condemnation, which shows that both were inseparably connected in the conduct of those heretics whom the writer condemns. This circumstance also does much to identify them with some of the Gnostical sects before alluded to,――more especially with the Nicolaitans, as they are called by John in the beginning of the Apocalypse, where he is addressing the church of Pergamos. In respect to this very remarkable peculiarity of a vicious and abominable life, combined with speculative errors, the ancient Christian writers very fully describe the Nicolaitans; and their accounts are so unanimous, and their accusations so definite, that it is just and reasonable to consider this epistle as directed particularly against them.

Nicolaitans.――An allusion has already been made to this sect in the life of John, but they deserve a distinct reference here also, as they are so distinctly mentioned in Jude’s epistle. The explanation of the name which in the former passage (page 343,) was crowded out by other matters prolonging that part of the work beyond its due limits, may here be given most satisfactorily, in the words of the learned Dr. Hug. (Introduction, Vol. II. note, § 182, original, § 174, translation.)

“The arguments of those who decide them to have been the Nicolaitans, according to my opinion, are at present the following:――John in the Apocalypse describes the Nicolaitans nearly as the heretics are here represented to us, with the same comparison, and with the same vices; persons who exercise the arts of Balaam, who taught Balak to ensnare the children of Israel, and to induce them to partake of idolatrous sacrifices, and to fornicate, (Acts ii. 14: Jude 2: 2 Peter ii. 15.) Even בלעם according to its derivation, is equivalent to Νίκολαος. They also certainly denied the Lord’s creation and government of the world. Alterum quidem fabricatorem, alium autem Patrem Domini ... et eam conditionem, quae est secundum nos non a primo Deo factam, sed a Virtute aliqua valde deorsum subjecta. (Irenaeus L. iii. c. 11.) If now all corporeal and material existence has its origin from the Creator of the world, who is a very imperfect and gross spirit, it flows naturally from this notion, that they could not admit a corporeal resuscitation by the agency of the Supreme Being, or by the agency of Jesus, in a universal day of judgment. With respect to the spiritual world, they also actually taught such absurdities, that it must be said of them δοξας βλασφημοῦσι; for they supposed, Aeones quosdam turpitudinis natos; et complexus, et permixtiones execrabiles, et obscaenas. (Tertullianus in append. ad Lib. de praescript. c. 46.) But, as to their excesses and abominable mode of life, the accounts of the ancients are so unanimous, and the accusations are so constituted, that the two apostolic epistles may have most pertinently referred to them.”

The passage from Irenaeus relating to this sect, (quoted on page 343,) contains a remarkable Latin word, “vulsio,” not found in any other author, and not explained at all, in the common dictionaries. That miserable, unsatisfactory mass of words, Ainsworth’s Thesaurus, does not contain it, and I was left to infer the meaning from the theme, vello, and it was therefore translated “fragment,”――a meaning not inconsistent with its true sense. Since that was printed, a learned friend, to whom the difficulty was mentioned, on searching for the word in better dictionaries, found it in Gesner’s Thesaurus, distinctly quoted from the very passage, with a very satisfactory explanation of its exact meaning. Gesner’s account of it is as follows: “Vulsio, Irenaeus, iii. 11. Nicolaitae sunt vulsio ejus. i. e. surculus inde enatus, et revulsus, stolo, ἀπὀρρώξ. Secta una ex altera velut pullulavit.” The meaning therefore is a “sucker,” “a shoot or scion, springing out of the root or side of the stock,” and the expression in this passage may therefore be translated, “The Nicolaitans are a slip or sprig of the old stock of the Gnosis.” And as Gesner happily explains it, “One sect, as it were, sprouted up from another.”

The word “scientia” in this wretched Latin translation, is quoted along with the adjacent words from Paul’s second epistle to Timothy, (vi. 20.) where he is warning him against the delusions of the Gnostics, and speaks of “the dogmas of the Gnosis,” (γνωσις,) translated “science,” but the word is evidently technical in this passage. Irenaeus no doubt quoted it in the Greek, but his ignorant translator, not perceiving the peculiar force of the word, translated it “scientia,” losing all the sense of the expression. The common translations of the Bible have done the same, in the passage in 2 Timothy vi. 20.

Another circumstance in this epistle which has attracted a critical notice, and which has occasioned its condemnation by some, is the remarkable coincidence both of sense and words between it and the second chapter of the second epistle of Peter. There are probably few diligent readers of the New Testament to whom this has not been a subject of curious remark, as several verses in one, seem a mere transcript of corresponding passages in the other. Various conjectures have been made to account for this resemblance in matter and in words,――some supposing Jude to have written first, and concluding that Peter, writing to the same persons, made references in this manner to the substance of what they had already learned from another apostle,――and others supposing that Peter wrote first, and that Jude followed, and amplified a portion of the epistle which had already lightly touched in some parts only upon the particular errors which the latter writer wished more especially to refute and condemn. This coincidence is nevertheless no more a ground for rejecting one or the other of the two writings, than the far more perfect parallelisms between the gospels are a reason for concluding that only one of them can be an authorized document. Both the apostles were evidently denouncing the same errors and condemning the same vices, and nothing was more natural than that this similarity of purpose should produce a proportional similarity of language. Either of the above suppositions is consistent with the character of the writings;――Peter may have written first, and Jude may have taken a portion of that epistle as furnishing hints for a more protracted view of these particular points; or, on the supposition that Jude wrote first, Peter may have thought it worth while only to refer generally, and not to dwell very particularly on those points which his fellow-apostle had already so fully and powerfully treated.

The particular churches to which this epistle was addressed, are utterly unknown; nor do modern writers pretend to find any means of detecting the places to which it was addressed in any peculiar passage, except so far as the chief seats of the heretics, against whom he wrote, are supposed to be known. Asia Minor, Syria and the East, were the regions to which the Gnostical errors were mostly confined; and in the former country more especially they were objects of attention, to the ministers of truth, during the apostolic age and in succeeding times. It was probably intended for the same persons to whom Peter wrote; and what has been said on the direction of his two epistles, will illustrate the immediate design of this also.

Its date is involved in the same uncertainty that covers all points in its own history and that of its author; the prominent difficulty being its great brevity, in consequence of which it offers but few characteristics of any kind, for the decision of doubtful points; and the life and works of Juda must therefore be set down among those matters, in which the indifference of those who could once have preserved historical truth for the eyes of posterity, has left even the research of modern criticism, not one hook to hang a guess upon.

JUDAS ISCARIOT.

This name doubtless strikes the eye of the Christian reader, as almost a stain to the fair page of apostolic history, and a dishonor to the noble list of the holy, with whom the traitor was associated. But he who knew the hearts of all men from the beginning, even before their actions had developed and displayed their characters, chose this man among those whom he first sent forth on the message of coming grace; and all the gospel records bear the name of the traitor along with those who were faithful even unto death; nor does it behove the unconsecrated historian to affect, about the arrangement of this name, a delicacy which the gospel writers did not manifest.

Of his birth, his home, his occupation, his call, and his previous character, the sacred writers bear no testimony; and all which the inventive genius of modern criticism has been able to present in respect to any of these circumstances, is drawn from no more certain source than the various proposed etymologies and significations of his name. But the plausibility which is worn by each one of these numerous derivations, is of itself a sufficient proof of the little dependence which can be placed upon any conclusion so lightly founded. The inquirer is therefore safest in following merely the reasonable conjecture, that his previous character had been respectable, not manifesting to the world at least, any baseness which would make him an infamous associate. For though the Savior in selecting the chief ministers of his gospel, did not take them from the wealthy, the high-born, the refined, or the learned; and though he did not scruple even to take those of a low and degraded occupation, his choice would nevertheless entirely exclude those who were in any way marked by previous character, as more immoral than the generality of the people among whom they lived. In short, it is very reasonable to suppose; that Judas Iscariot was a respectable man, probably with a character as good as most of his neighbors had, though he may have been considered by some of his acquaintance, as a close, sharp man in money matters; for this is a character most unquestionably fixed on him in those few and brief allusions which are made to him in the gospel narratives. Whatever may have been the business to which he had been devoted during his previous life, he had probably acquired a good reputation for honesty, as well as for careful management of property; for he is on two occasions distinctly specified as the treasurer and steward of the little company or family of Jesus;――an office for which he would not have been selected, unless he had maintained such a character as that above imputed to him. Even after his admission into the fraternity, he still betrayed his strong acquisitiveness, in a manner that will be fully exhibited in the history of the occurrence in which it was most remarkably developed.

Iscariot.――The present form of this word appears from the testimony of Beza, to be different from the original one, which, in his oldest copy of the New Testament, was given without the I in the beginning, simply; Σκαρίωτης; (Scariotes;) and this is confirmed by the very ancient Syriac version, which expresses it by (Sekaryuta.) Origen also, the oldest of the Christian commentators, (A. D. 230,) gives the word without the initial vowel, “Scariot.” It is most reasonable therefore to conclude that the name was originally Scariot, and that the I was prefixed, for the sake of the easier pronunciation of the two initial consonants; for some languages are so smoothly constructed, that they do not allow even S to precede a mute, without a vowel before. Just as the Turks, in taking up the names of Greek towns, change Scopia into Iscopia, &c. The French too, change the Latin Spiritus into Esprit, as do the Spaniards into Espiritu; and similar instances are numerous.

The very learned Matthew Poole, in his Synopsis Criticorum, (Matthew x. 4,) gives a very full view of the various interpretations of this name. Six distinct etymologies and significations of this word have been proposed, most of which appear so plausible, that it may seem hard to decide on their comparative probabilities. That which is best justified by the easy transition from the theme, and by the aptness of the signification to the circumstances of the person, is the First, proposed by an anonymous author, quoted in the Parallels of Junius, and adopted by Poole. This is the derivation from the Syriac (sekharyut,) “a bag,” or “purse;” root cognate with the Hebrew סכר (sakhar.) No. 1, Gibbs’s Hebrew Lexicon, and סגר (sagar,) Syrian & Arabic id. The word thus derived must mean the “bag-man,” the “purser,” which is a most happy illustration of John’s account of the office of Judas, (xii. 6: xiii. 29.) It is, in short, a name descriptive of his peculiar duty in receiving the money of the common stock of Christ and his apostles, buying the necessary provisions, administering their common charities to the poor, and managing all their pecuniary affairs,――performing all the duties of that officer who in English is called a “steward.” Judas Iscariot, or rather “Scariot,” means therefore “Judas the STEWARD.”

The second derivation proposed is that of Junius, (Parall.) who refers it to a sense descriptive of his fate. The Syriac, Hebrew, and Arabic root, סכר (sakar,) has in the first of these languages, the secondary signification of “strangle,” and the personal substantive derived from it, might therefore mean, “one who was strangled.” Lightfoot says that if this theme is to be adopted, he should prefer to trace the name to the word אשכרא which with the Rabbinical writers is used in reference to the same primitive, in the meaning of “strangulation.” But both these, even without regarding the great aptness of the first definition above given, may be condemned on their own demerits; because, they suppose either that this name was applied to him, only after his death,――an exceedingly unnatural view,――or (what is vastly more absurd) that he was thus named during his life-time, by a prophetical anticipation, that he would die by the halter!!! It is not very uncommon, to be sure, for such charitable prophetic inferences to be drawn respecting the character and destiny of the graceless, and the point of some vulgar proverbs consists in this very allusion, but the utmost stretch of such predictions never goes to the degree of fixing upon the hopeful candidate for the gallows, a surname drawn from this comfortable anticipation of his destiny. Besides, it is hard to believe that a man wearing thus, as it were, a halter around his neck, would have been called by Jesus into the goodly fellowship of the apostles; for though neither rank, nor wealth, nor education, nor refinement were requisites for admission, yet a tolerable good moral character may be fairly presumed to have been an indispensable qualification.

The third derivation is of such a complicated and far-fetched character, that it bears its condemnation on its own face. It is that of the learned Tremellius, who attempts to analyze Iscariot into שכר (seker,) “wages,” “reward,” and נטה (natah,) “turn away,” alluding to the fact that for money he revolted from his Master. This, besides its other difficulties, supposes that the name was conferred after his death; whereas he must certainly have needed during his life, some appellative to distinguish him from Judas the brother of James.

The fourth is that of Grotius and Erasmus, who derive it from איש יששכר (Ish Issachar,) “a man of Issachar,”――supposing the name to designate his tribe, just as the same phrase occurs in Judges x. 1. But all these distinctions of origin from the ten tribes must have been utterly lost in the time of Christ; nor does any instance occur of a Jew of the apostolic age being named from his supposed tribe.

The fifth is the one suggested and adopted by Lightfoot. In the Talmudic Hebrew, the word סקורטיא (sekurti,)――also written with an initial א (aleph) and pronounced Iscurti,――has the meaning of “leather apron;” and this great Hebraician proposes therefore, to translate the name, “Judas with the leather apron;” and suggests some aptness in such a personal appendage, because in such aprons they had pockets or bags in which money, &c. might be carried. The whole derivation, however, is forced and far-fetched,――doing great violence to the present form of the word, and is altogether unworthy of the genius of its inventor, who is usually very acute in etymologies.

The sixth is that of Beza, Piscator and Hammond, who make it איש־קריות (Ish-Qerioth or Kerioth,) “a man of Kerioth,” a city of Judah. (Joshua xv. 25.) Beza says that a very ancient MS. of the Greek New Testament, in his possession, (above referred to,) in all the five passages in John, where Judas is mentioned, has this surname written απο Καριωτου. (apo Cariotou,) “Judas of Kerioth.” Lucas Brugensis observes, that this form of expression is used in Ezra ii. 22, 23, where the “men of Anathoth,” &c. are spoken of; but there is no parallelism whatever between the two cases; because in the passage quoted it is a mere general designation of the inhabitants of a place,――nor can any passage be shown in which it is thus appended to a man’s name, by way of surname. The peculiarity of Beza’s MS. is therefore undoubtedly an unauthorized perversion by some ancient copyist; for it is not found on any other ancient authority.

The motives which led such a man to join himself to the followers of the self-denying Nazarene, of course could not have been of a very high order; yet probably were about as praiseworthy as those of any of the followers of Jesus. Not one of the chosen disciples of Jesus is mentioned in the solemnly faithful narrative of the evangelists, as inspired by a self-denying principle of action. Wherever an occasion appeared on which their true motives and feelings could be displayed, they all without exception, manifested the most sordid selfishness, and seemed inspired by no idea whatever but that of worldly honors, triumphs, and rewards to be won in his service! Peter, indeed, is not very distinctly specified as betraying any remarkable regard for his own individual interest, and on several occasions manifested, certainly by starts, much of a true self-sacrificing devotion to his Master; yet his great views in following Jesus were unquestionably of an ambitious order, and his noblest conception was that of a worldly triumph of a Messiah, in which the chosen ones were to have a share proportioned no doubt to their exertions for its attainment. The two Boanerges betrayed the most determined selfishness, in scheming for a lion’s share in the spoils of victory; and the whole body of the disciples, on more than one occasion, quarreled among themselves about the first places in Christ’s kingdom. Judas therefore, was not greatly worse than his fellow-disciples,――no matter how bad may have been his motives; and probably at the beginning maintained a respectable stand among them, unless occasion might have betrayed to them the fact, that he was mean in money matters. But he, after espousing the fortunes of Jesus, doubtless went on scheming for his own advancement, just as the rest did for theirs, except that probably, when those of more liberal conceptions were contriving great schemes for the attainment of power, honor, fame, titles, and glory, both military and civil, his penny-saving soul was reveling in golden dreams, and his thoughts running delightedly over the prospects of vast gain to be reaped in the confiscation of the property of the wealthy Pharisees and lawyers, that would ensue immediately on the establishment of the empire of the Nazarene and his Galileans. While the great James and his amiable brother were quarreling with the rest of the fraternity about the premierships,――the highest administration of spiritual and temporal power,――the discreetly calculating Iscariot was doubtless expecting the fair results of a regular course of promotion, from the office of bag-carrier to the strolling company of Galileans, to the stately honors and immense emoluments of lord high-treasurer of the new kingdom of Israel; his advancement naturally taking place in the line in which he had made his first beginning in the service of his Lord, he might well expect that in those very particulars where he had shown himself faithful in few things, he would be made ruler over many things, when he should enter into the joy of his Lord,――sharing the honors and profits of His exaltation, as he had borne his part in the toils and anxieties of his humble fortunes. The careful management of his little stewardship, “bearing the bag, and what was put therein,” and “buying those things that were necessary” for all the wants of the brotherhood of Jesus,――was a service of no small importance and merit, and certainly would deserve a consideration at the hands of his Master. Such a trust also, certainly implied a great confidence of Jesus in his honesty and discretion in money matters, and shows not only the blamelessness of his character in those particulars, but the peculiar turn of his genius, in being selected, out of the whole twelve, for this very responsible and somewhat troublesome function.

Yet the eyes of the Redeemer were by no means closed to the baser inclinations of this much-trusted disciple. He knew (for what did he not know?) how short was the step from the steady adherence to the practice of a particular virtue, to the most scandalous breach of honor in that same line of action,――how slight, and easy, and natural was the perversion of a truly mean soul, or even one of respectable and honorable purposes, from the honest pursuit of gain, to the absolute disregard of every circumstance but personal advantage, and safety from the punishment of crime,――a change insensibly resulting from the total absorption of the soul in one solitary object and aim; for in all such cases, the honesty is not the purpose; it is only an incidental principle, occasionally called in to regulate the modes and means of the grand acquisition;――but gain is the great end and essence of such a life, and the forgetfulness of every other motive, when occasion suggests, is neither unnatural nor surprising. With all this and vastly more knowledge, Jesus was well able to discriminate the different states of mind in which the course of his discipleship found this calculating follower. He doubtless traced from day to day, and from week to week, and from month to month, as well as from year to year of his weary pilgrimage, the changes of zeal, resolution and hope, into distaste and despair, as the day of anticipated reward for these sacrifices seemed farther and farther removed, by the progress of events. The knowledge too, of the manner in which these depraved propensities would at last develope themselves, is distinctly expressed in the remark which he made in reply to Peter’s declaration of the fidelity and devotion of himself and his fellow disciples, just after the miracle of feeding the five thousand by the lake, when some renounced the service of Christ, disgusted with the revelations which he there made to them of the spiritual nature of his kingdom, and its rewards, and of the difficult and disagreeable requisites for his discipleship. Jesus seeing the sad defection of the worldly, turned to the twelve and said, “Will ye also go away?” Simon Peter, with ever ready zeal replied, “Lord! to whom shall we go but unto thee? For thou only hast the words of eternal life.” Jesus answered them, “Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is an accuser?” This reply, as John in recording it remarks, alluded to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon; for he it was that was to betray him, though he was one of the twelve. He well knew that on no ear would these revelations of the pure spiritualism of his kingdom, and of the self-denying character of his service, fall more disagreeably than on that of the money-loving steward of the apostolic family, whose hopes would be most wofully disappointed by the uncomfortable prospects of recompense, and whose thoughts would be henceforth contriving the means of extricating himself from all share in this hopeless enterprise. Still he did not, like those mal-contents who were not numbered among the twelve, openly renounce his discipleship, and return to the business which he had left for the deceptive prospect of a profitable reward. He found himself too deeply committed to do this with advantage, and he therefore discontentedly continued to follow his great summoner, until an opportunity should occur of leaving this undesirable service, with a chance of some immediate profit in the exchange. Nor did he yet, probably, despair entirely of some more hopeful scheme of revolution than was now held up to view. He might occasionally have been led to hope, that these gloomy announcements were but a trial of the constancy of the chosen, and that all things would yet turn out as their high expectations had planned. In the occasional remarks of Jesus, there was also much, which an unspiritual and sordid hearer, might very naturally construe into a more comfortable accomplishment of his views, and in which such a one would think he found the distinct expression of the real purposes of Jesus in reference to the reward of his disciples. Such an instance, was the reply made to Peter when he reminded his Master of the great pecuniary sacrifices which they had all made in his service: “Lo! we have left all, and followed thee.” The assurances contained in the reply of Jesus, that among other things, those who had left houses and lands for his sake, should receive a hundred fold more in the day of his triumph, must have favorably impressed the baser-minded, with some idea of a real, solid return for the seemingly unprofitable investment which they had made in his scheme. Or, on the other hand, if the faith and hope of Iscariot in the word of Jesus were already too far gone to be recalled to life by any cheering promises, these sayings may have only served to increase his indifference, or to deepen it into downright hatred, at what he would regard as a new deceit, designed to keep up the sinking spirits of those, who had begun to apprehend the desperate character of the enterprise in which they had involved themselves. If his feelings had then reached this point of desperation, the effect of this renewal of promises, which he might construe into a support of his original views of the nature of the rewards accruing to the followers of Christ, on the establishment of his kingdom, would only excite and strengthen a deep rooted spite against his once-adored Lord, and his malice, working in secret over the disappointment, would at last be ready to rise on some convenient occasion into active revenge.

An accuser.――This is the true primary force of διαβολος (diabolos) in this passage. (John vi. 70.) This word is never applied to any individual in the sense of “devil,” except to Satan himself; but wherever it occurs as a common substantive appellation, descriptive of character, pointedly refers to its primary signification of “accuser,” “calumniator,” “informer,” &c., the root of it being διαβαλλω, which means “to accuse,” “to calumniate;” and when applied to Satan, it still preserves this sense,――though it then has the force of a proper name; since שטן (Satan,) in Hebrew, means primarily “accuser” but acquires the force of a proper name, in its ordinary use. Grotius however, suggests that in this passage, the word truly corresponds to the Hebrew צר (tsar,) the word which is applied to Haman, (Esther vii. 6. viii. 1.) and has here the general force of “accuser,” “enemy,” &c. The context here (verse 71,) shows that John referred to this sense, and that Christ applied it to Judas prophetically,――thus showing his knowledge of the fact, that this apostle would “accuse” him, and “inform” against him, before the Sanhedrim. Not only Grotius, but Vatablus, Erasmus, Lucas Brugensis, and others, maintain this rendering.

This occasion, before long, presented itself. The successful labors of Jesus, in Jerusalem, had raised up against him a combination of foes of the most determined and dangerously hostile character. The great dignitaries of the nation, uniting in one body all the legal, literary and religions honors and influence of the Hebrew name, and strengthened too by the weight of the vast wealth belonging to them and their immediate supporters, as well as by the exaltation of high office and ancient family, had at last resolved to use all this immense power, (if less could not effect it,) for the ruin of the bold, eloquent man, who, without one of all the privileges which were the sources and supports of their power, had shaken their ancient dominion to its foundation by his simple words, and almost overthrown all their power over the people, whose eyes were now beginning to be opened to the mystery of “how little wisdom it took, to govern them!” Self-preservation seemed to require an instantaneous and energetic action against the bold Reformer; and they were not the men to scruple about the means or mode of satisfying both revenge and ambition by his destruction. This state of feeling among the aristocracy could not have been unknown to Iscariot. He had doubtless watched its gradual developments, from day to day, during the displays in the temple; and as defeat followed defeat in the strife of mind, he had abundant opportunity to see the hostile feeling of the baffled and mortified Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes and lawyers, mounting to the highest pitch of indignation, and furnishing him with the long-desired occasion of making up for his own disappointment in his great plans for the recompense of his sacrifices, in the cause of Jesus. He saw that there was no chance whatever for the triumphant establishment of that kingdom in whose honors he had expected to share. All the opportunities and means for effecting this result, Jesus was evidently determined to throw away, nor could anything ever move him to such an effort as was desirable for the gratification of the ambition of his disciples. The more splendid and tempting the occasions for founding a temporal dominion, the more resolutely did he seem to disappoint the golden hopes of his followers; and, proceeding thus, was only exposing himself and them to danger, without making any provision for their safety or escape. And where was to be the reward of Iscariot’s long services in the management of the stewardship of the apostolic fraternity? Had he not left his business, to follow them about, laboring in their behalf, managing their affairs, procuring the means of subsistence for them, and exercising a responsibility which none else was so competent to assume? And what recompense had he received? None, but the almost hopeless ruin of his fortunes in a desperate cause. That such were the feelings and reflections which his circumstances would naturally suggest, is very evident. The signs of the alienation of his affections from Jesus, are also seen in the little incident recorded by all the evangelists, of the anointing of his feet by Mary. She, in deep gratitude to the adored Lord who had restored to life her beloved brother, brought, as the offering of her fervent love, the box of precious ointment of spikenard, and poured it over his feet, anointing them, and wiping them with her hair, so that the whole house was filled with the fragrance. This beautiful instance of an ardent devotion, that would sacrifice everything for its object, awakened no corresponding feeling in the narrow soul of Iscariot; but seizing this occasion for the manifestation of his inborn meanness, and his growing spite against his Master, he indignantly exclaimed, (veiling his true motive, however, under the appearance of charitable regard for the poor,) “To what purpose is this waste? Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?” So specious was this honorable pretense for blaming what seemed the inconsiderate and extravagant devotion of Mary, that others of the disciples joined in the indignant remonstrance against this useless squandering of property, which might be converted to the valuable purpose of ministering to the necessities of the poor, many of whose hearts might have been gladdened by a well-regulated expenditure of the price of this costly offering, which was now irrecoverably lost. But honorable as may have been the motives of those who joined with Iscariot in this protest, the apostle John most distinctly insists that he was moved by a far baser consideration. “This he said, NOT because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and kept the coffer, and carried what was cast into it.” This is a most distinct exposition of a piece of villainy in the traitor, that would have remained unknown, but for the record which John gives of this transaction. It is here declared in plain terms, that Iscariot had grossly betrayed the pecuniary trust which had been committed to him on the score of his previous honesty, and had been guilty of downright peculation,――converting to his own private purposes, the money which had been deposited with him as the treasurer and steward of the whole company of the disciples. He had probably made up his mind to this rascally abuse of trust, on the ground that he was justified in thus balancing what he had lost by his connection with Jesus; and supposed, no doubt, that the ruin of all those whom he was thus cheating, would be effectually secured before the act could be found out. What renders this crime doubly abominable, is, that it was robbing the poor of the generous contributions which, by the kindness of Jesus, had been appropriated to their use, out of this little common stock; for it seems that Iscariot was the minister of the common charities of the brotherhood, as well as the provider of such things as were necessary for their subsistence, and the steward of the common property. With the pollution of this base crime upon his soul, before stirred up to spite and disgust by disappointed ambition, he was now so dead to honor and decency, that he was abundantly prepared for the commission of the crowning act of villainy. The words in which Jesus rebuked his specious concern for the economical administration of the money in charity, was also in a tone that he might construe into a new ground of offense, implying, as it did, that his zeal had some motive far removed from a true affection for that Master, whose life was in hourly peril, and might any moment be so sacrificed by his foes, that the honorable forms of preparation for the burial might be denied; and being thus already devoted to death, he might well accept this costly offering of pure devotion, as the mournful unction for the grave. In these sadly prophetic words, Judas may have found the immediate suggestion of his act of sordid treachery; and incited, moreover, by the repulse which his remonstrance had received, he seems to have gone directly about the perpetration of the crime.

The nature and immediate object of this plot may not be perfectly comprehended, without considering minutely the relations in which Jesus stood to the Jewish Sanhedrim, and the means he had of resisting or evading their efforts for the consummation of their schemes and hopes against him. Jesus of Nazareth was, to the chief priests, scribes and Pharisees, a dangerous foe. He had, during his visits to Jerusalem, in his repeated encounters with them in the courts of the temple, and all public places of assembly, struck at the very foundation of all their authority and power over the people. The Jewish hierarchy was supported by the sway of the Romans, indeed, but only because it was in accordance with their universal policy of tolerance, to preserve the previously established order of things, in all countries which they conquered, so long as such a preservation was desired by the people; but no longer than it was perfectly accordant with the feelings of the majority. The Sanhedrim and their dependents therefore knew perfectly well that their establishment could receive no support from the Roman government, after they had lost their dominion over the affections of the people; and were therefore very ready to perceive, that if they were to be thus confounded and set at nought, in spite of learning and dignity, by a poor Galilean, and even their gravest and most puzzling attacks upon his wisdom and prudence, turned into an absolute jest against them,――it was quite clear that the amused and delighted multitude would soon cease to regard the authority and opinions of their venerable religious and legal rulers, whose subtleties were so easily foiled by one of the common, uneducated mass. But the very circumstances which effected and constituted the evil, were also the grand obstacles to the removal of it. Jesus was by these means seated firmly in the love and reverence of the people,――and of the vast numbers of strangers then in Jerusalem at the feast, there were very many who would have their feelings strongly excited in his favor, by the circumstance that they, as well as he, were Galileans, and would therefore be very apt to make common cause with him in case of any violent attack. All these obstacles required management; and after having been very many times foiled in their attempts to seize him, by the resolute determination of the thousands by whom he was always encircled, to defend him, they found that they must contrive some way to get hold of him when he was without the defenses of this admiring host. This could be done, of course, only by following him to his secret haunts, and coming quietly upon him before the multitude could assemble to his aid. But his movements were altogether beyond their notice. No armed band could follow him about, as he went from the city to the country in his daily and nightly walks. They needed some spy who could watch his private movements when unattended, save by the little band of the twelve, and give notice of the favorable moment for a seizure, when the time, the place, and the circumstances, would all conspire to prevent a rescue. Thus taken, he might be safely lodged in some of the impregnable fortresses of the temple and city, so as to defy the momentary burst of popular rage, on finding that their idol had been taken away. They knew too, the fickle character of the commonalty, well enough to feel certain, that when the tide of condemnation was once strongly set against the Nazarene, the lip-worship of “Hosannas” could be easily turned, by a little management, into the ferocious yell of deadly denunciation. The mass of the people are always essentially the same in their modes of action. Mobs were then managed by the same rules as now, and demagogues were equally well versed in the tricks of their trade. Besides, when Jesus had once been formally indicted and presented before the secular tribunal of the Roman governor, as a rioter and seditious person, no thought of a rescue from the military force could be thought of; and however unwilling Pilate might be to minister to the wishes of the Jews, in an act of unnecessary cruelty, he could not resist a call thus solemnly made to him, in the character of preserver of the Roman sway, though he would probably have rejected entirely any proposition to seize Jesus by a military force, in open day, in the midst of the multitude, so as to create a troublesome and bloody tumult, by such an imprudent act. In the full consideration of all these difficulties, the Jewish dignitaries were sitting in conclave, contriving means to effect the settlement of their troubles, by the complete removal of him who was unquestionably the cause of all. At once their anxious deliberations were happily interrupted by the entrance of the trusted steward of the company of Jesus, who changed all their doubts and distant hopes into absolute certainty, by offering, for a reasonable consideration, to give up Jesus into their hands, a prisoner, without any disturbance or riot. How much delay and debate there was about terms, it would be hard to say; but after all, the bargain made, does not seem to have been greatly to the credit of the liberality of the Sanhedrim, or the sharpness of Judas. Thirty of the largest pieces of silver then coined, would make but a poor price for such an extraordinary service, even making all allowance for a scarcity of money in those times. And taking into account the wealth and rank of those concerned, as well as the importance of the object, it is fair to pronounce them a very mean set of fellows. But Judas especially seems to forfeit almost all right to the character given him of acuteness in money matters; and it is only by supposing him to be quite carried out of his usual prudence, by his woful abandonment to crime, that so poor a bargain can be made consistent with the otherwise reasonable view of his character.

Thirty pieces of silver.――The value of these pieces is seemingly as vaguely expressed in the original as in the translation; but a reference to Hebrew usages throws some light on the question of definition. The common Hebrew coin thus expressed was the shekel,――equivalent to the Greek didrachmon, and worth about sixteen cents. In Hebrew the expression, thirty “shekels of silver,” was not always written out in full; but the name of the coin being omitted, the expression was always equally definite, because no other coin was ever left thus to be implied. Just so in English, the phrase, “a million of money,” is perfectly well understood here, to mean “a million of dollars;” while in England, the current coin of that country would make the expression mean so many pounds. In the same manner, to say, in this country, that any thing or any man is worth “thousands,” always conveys, with perfect definiteness, the idea of “dollars;” and in every other country the same expression would imply a particular coin. Thirty pieces of silver, each of which was worth sixteen cents, would amount only to four dollars and eighty cents, which are just one pound sterling. A small price for the great Jewish Sanhedrim to pay for the ruin of their most dangerous foe! Yet for this little sum, the Savior of the world was bought and sold!

Having thus settled this business, the cheaply-purchased traitor returned to the unsuspecting fellowship of the apostles, mingling with them, as he supposed, without the slightest suspicion on the part of any one, respecting the horrible treachery which he had contrived for the bloody ruin of his Lord. But there was an eye, whose power he had never learned, though dwelling beneath its gaze for years,――an eye, which saw the vainly hidden results of his treachery, even as for years it had scanned the base motives which governed him. Yet no word of reproach or denunciation broke forth from the lips of the betrayed One; the progress of crime was suffered unresistedly to bear him onward to the mournfully necessary fulfilment of his destiny. Judas meanwhile, from day to day, waited and watched for the most desirable opportunity of meeting his engagements with his priestly employers. The first day of the feast of unleavened bread having arrived, Jesus sat down at evening to eat the Paschal lamb with his twelve disciples, alone. The whole twelve were there without one exception,――and among those who reclined around the table, sharing in the social delights of the entertainment which celebrated the beginning of the grand national festival, was the dark-souled accuser also, like Satan among the sons of God. Even here, amid the general joyous hilarity, his great scheme of villainy formed the grand theme of his meditations,――and while the rest were entering fully into the natural enjoyments of the occasion, he was brooding over the best means of executing his plans. During the supper, after the performance of the impressive ceremony of washing their feet, Jesus made a sudden transition from the comments with which he was illustrating it; and, in a tone of deep and sorrowful emotion, suddenly exclaimed, “I solemnly assure you, that one of you will betray me.” This surprising assertion, so emphatically made, excited the most distressful sensations among the little assembly;――all enjoyment was at an end; and grieved by the imputation, in which all seemed included until the individual was pointed out, they each earnestly inquired, “Lord, is it I?” As they sat thus looking in the most painful doubt around their lately cheerful circle, the disciple who held the place of honor and affection at the table, at the request of Peter, whose position gave him less advantage for familiar and private conversation,――plainly asked of Jesus, “Who is it, Lord?” Jesus, to make his reply as deliberate and impressive as possible, said, “It is he to whom I shall give a sop when I have dipped it.” The design of all this circumlocution in pointing out the criminal, was, to mark the enormity of the offense. “He that eateth bread with me, hath lifted up his heel against me.” It was his familiar friend, his chosen companion, enjoying with him at that moment the most intimate social pleasures of the entertainment, and occupying one of the places nearest to him, at the board. As he promised, after dipping the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, who, receiving it, was moved to no change in his dark purpose; but with a new Satanic spirit, resolved immediately to execute his plan, in spite of this open exposure, which, he might think, was meant to shame him from his baseness. Jesus, with an eye still fixed on his most secret inward movements, said to him, “What thou doest, do quickly.” Judas, utterly lost to repentance and to shame, coolly obeyed the direction, as if it had been an ordinary command, in the way of his official duty, and went out at the words of Jesus. All this, however, was perfectly without meaning, to the wondering disciples, who, not yet recovered from their surprise at the very extraordinary announcement which they had just heard of the expected treachery, could not suppose that this quiet movement could have anything to do with the occurrence which preceded it; but concluded that Judas was going about the business necessary for the preparation of the next day’s festal entertainment,――or that he was following the directions of Jesus about the charity to be administered to the poor out of the funds in his keeping, in accordance with the commendable Hebrew usage of remembering the poor on great occasions of enjoyment,――a custom to which, perhaps, the previous words of Judas, when he rebuked the waste of the ointment by Mary, had some especial reference, since at that particular time, money was actually needed for bestowment in alms to the poor. Judas, after leaving the place where the declaration of Jesus had made him an object of such suspicion and dislike, went, under the influence of that evil spirit, to whose direction he was now abandoned, directly to the chief priests, (who were anxiously waiting the fulfilment of his promise,) and made known to them that the time was now come. The band of watchmen and servants, with their swords and cudgels, were accordingly mustered and put under the guidance of Judas, who, well knowing the place to which Jesus would of course go from the feast, conducted his band of low assistants across the brook Kedron, to the garden of Gethsemane. On the way he arranged with them the sign by which they should recognize, in spite of the darkness and confusion, the person whose capture was the grand object of this expedition. “The man whom I shall kiss is he: seize him.” Entering the garden, at length, he led them straight to the spot which his intimate familiarity with Jesus enabled him to know, as his favorite retreat. Going up to him with the air of friendly confidence, he saluted him, as if rejoiced to find him, even after this brief absence,――another instance of the very close intimacy which had existed between the traitor and the betrayed. Jesus submitted to this hollow show, without any attempt to repulse the movement which marked him for destruction, only saying, in mild but expressive reproach,――“Judas! Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?” Without more delay he announced himself in plain terms, to those who came to seize him; thus showing how little need there was of artful contrivance in taking one who did not seek to escape. “If ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, I am he.” The simple majesty with which these words were uttered, was such as to overawe even the low officials; and it was not till he himself had again distinctly reminded them of their object, that they could execute their errand. So vain was the arrangement of signals, which had been studiously made by the careful traitor.

No further mention is made of Iscariot after the scene of his treachery, until the next morning, when Jesus had been condemned by the high court of the Sanhedrim, and dragged away to undergo punishment from the secular power. The sun of another day had risen on his crime; and after a very brief interval, he now had time for cool meditation on the nature and consequences of his act. Spite and avarice had both now received their full gratification. The thirty pieces of silver were his, and the Master whose instructions he had hated for their purity and spirituality, because they had made known to him the vileness of his own character and motives, was now in the hands of those who were impelled, by the darkest passions, to secure his destruction. But after all, now came the thought, and inquiry, ‘what had the pure and holy Jesus done, to deserve this reward at his hands?’ He had called him from the sordid pursuits of a common life, to the high task of aiding in the regeneration of Israel. He had taught him, labored with him, prayed for him, trusted him as a near and worthy friend, making him the steward of all the earthly possessions of his apostolic family, and the organ of his ministrations of charity to the poor. All this he had done without the prospect of a reward, surely. And why? To make him an instrument, not of the base purposes of a low ambition;――not to acquire by this means the sordid and bloody honors of a conqueror,――but to effect the moral and spiritual emancipation of a people, suffering far less under the evils of a foreign sway, than under the debasing dominion of folly and sin. And was this an occasion to arm against him the darker feelings of his trusted and loved companions?――to turn the instruments of his mercy into weapons of death? Ought the mere disappointment of a worldly-minded spirit, that was ever clinging to the love of material things, and that would not learn the solemn truth of the spiritual character of the Messiah’s reign, now to cause it to vent its regrets at its own errors, in a traitorous attack upon the life of him who had called it to a purpose whose glories and rewards it could not appreciate? These and other mournful thoughts would naturally rise to the repentant traitor’s mind, in the awful revulsion of feeling which that morning brought with it. But repentance is not atonement; nor can any change of feeling in the mind of the sinner, after the perpetration of the sinful act, avail anything for the removal or expiation of the evil consequences of it. So vain and unprofitable, both to the injurer and the injured, are the tears of remorse! And herein lay the difference between the repentance of Judas and of Peter. The sin of Peter affected no one but himself, and was criminal only as the manifestation of a base, selfish spirit of deceit, that fell from truth through a vain-glorious confidence,――and the effusion of his gushing tears might prove the means of washing away the pollution of such an offense from his soul. But the sin of Judas had wrought a work of crime whose evil could not be affected by any tardy change of feeling in him. Peter’s repentance came too late indeed, to exonerate him from guilt; because all repentance is too late for such a purpose, when it comes after the commission of the sin. The repentance of an evil purpose, coming in time to prevent the execution of the act, is indeed available for good; but both Peter and Judas came to the sense of the heinousness of sin, only after its commission. Peter however, had no evil to repair for others,――while Judas saw the bloody sequel of his guilt, coming with most irrevocable certainty upon the blameless One whom he had betrayed. Overwhelmed with vain regrets, he took the now hateful, though once-desired price of his villainy, and seeking the presence of his purchasers, held out to them the money, with the useless confession of the guilt, which was too accordant with their schemes and hopes, for them to think of redeeming him from its consequences. The words of his confession were, “I have sinned, in betraying innocent blood.” This late protestation was received by the proud priests, with as much regard as might have been expected from exulting tyranny, when in the enjoyment of the grand object of its efforts. With a cold sneer they replied, “What is that to us? See thou to that!” Maddened with the immovable and remorseless determination of the haughty condemners of the just, he flung down the price of his infamy and woe, upon the floor of the temple, and rushed out of their presence, to seal his crimes and eternal misery by the act that put him for ever beyond the power of redemption. Seeking a place removed from the observation of men, he hurried out of the city, and contriving the fatal means of death for himself, before the bloody doom of him whom he betrayed had been fulfilled, the wretched man saved his eyes the renewed horrors of the sight of the crucifixion, by closing them in the sleep which earthly sights can not disturb. But even in the mode of his death, new circumstances of horror occurred. Swinging himself into the air, by falling from a highth, as the cord tightened around his neck, checking his descent, the weight of his body produced the rupture of his abdomen, and his bowels bursting through, made him, as he swung stiffening and convulsed in the agonies of this doubly horrid death, a disgusting and appalling spectacle,――a monument of the vengeance of God on the traitor, and a shocking witness of his own remorse and self-condemnation.

A very striking difference is noticeable between the account given by Matthew of the death of Judas, and that given by Luke in the speech of Peter, Acts i. 18, 19. The various modes of reconciling these difficulties are found in the ordinary commentaries. In respect to a single expression in Acts i. 18, there is an ingenious conjecture offered by Granville Penn, in a very interesting and learned article in the first volume of the transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, which may very properly be mentioned here, on account of its originality and plausibility, and because it is found only in an expensive work, hardly ever seen in this country. Mr. Penn’s view is, that “the word ελακησε (elakese,) in Acts i. 18, is only an inflection of the Latin verb, laqueo, (to halter or strangle,) rendered insititious in the Hellenistic Greek, under the form λακεω.” He enters into a very elaborate argument, which can not be given here, but an extract may be transcribed, in order to enable the learned to apprehend the nature and force of his views. (Translated by R. S. Lit. Vol. I. P. 2, pp. 51, 52.)

“Those who have been in the southern countries of Europe know, that the operation in question, as exercised on a criminal, is performed with a great length of cord, with which the criminal is precipitated from a high beam, and is thus violently laqueated, or snared in a noose, mid-way――medius or in medio; μεσος, and medius, referring to place as well as to person; as, μεσος ὑμων ἑστηκεν. (John i. 26.) ‘Considit scopulo medius――――’ (Virgil, Georgics, iv. 436.) ‘―――― medius prorumpit in hostes.’ (Aeneid, x. 379.)

“Erasmus distinctly perceived this sense in the words πρηνης γενομενος, although he did not discern it in the word ελακησε, which confirms it: ‘πρηνης Graecis dicitur, qui vultu est in terram dejecto: expressit autem gestum et habitum LAQUEO PRAEFOCATI; alioquin, ex hoc sane loco non poterat intelligi, quod Judas suspenderit se,’ (in loc.) And so Augustine also had understood those words, as he shows in his Recit. in Act. Apostol. l. i. col. 474. ‘et collem sibi alligavit, et dejectus in faciem,’ &c. Hence one MS., cited by Sabatier, for πρηνης γενομενος, reads αποκρεμαμένος; and Jerom, in his new vulgate, has substituted suspensus for the pronus factus of the old Latin version, which our old English version of 1542 accordingly renders, and when he was hanged.

“That which follows, and which evidently determined the vulgar interpretation of ελακησε――εξεχυνθη παντα τα σπλαγχνα αυτου, all his bowels gushed out――states a natural and probable effect produced, by the sudden interruption in the fall and violent capture in the noose, in a frame of great corpulency and distension, such as Christian antiquity has recorded that of the traitor to have been; so that a term to express rupture would have been altogether unnecessary, and it is therefore equally unnecessary to seek for it in the verb ελακησε. Had the historian intended to express disruption, we may justly presume that he would have said, as he had already said in his gospel, v. 6, διερρηγνυτο, or xxiii. 45, εσχισθη μεσος: it is difficult to conceive, that he would here have traveled into the language of ancient Greek poetry for a word to express a common idea, when he had common terms at hand and in practice; but he used the Roman laqueo, λακεω, to mark the infamy of the death.

“(Πρησθεις επι τοσουτον την σαρκα, ὡστε μη δυνασθαι δειλθειν. Papias, from Routh's Reliquiæ Sacræ tom. I. p. 9. and Oecumenius, thus rendered by Zegers, Critici Sacri, Acts i. 18, in tantum enim corpore inflatus est ut progredi non posset. The tale transmitted by those writers of the first and tenth centuries, that Judas was crushed to death by a chariot proceeding rapidly, from which his unwieldiness rendered him unable to escape, merits no further attention, after the authenticated descriptions of the traitor’s death which we have here investigated, than to suggest a possibility that the place where the suicide was committed might have overhung a public way, and that the body falling by its weight might have been traversed, after death, by a passing chariot;――from whence might have arisen the tales transmitted successively by those writers; the first of whom, being an inhabitant of Asia Minor, and therefore far removed from the theater of Jerusalem, and being also (as Eusebius witnesses, iii. 39,) a man of a very weak mind――σφοδρα μκρος τον νουν――was liable to be deceived by false accounts.)

“The words of St. Peter, in the Hellenistic version of St. Luke, will therefore import, praeceps in ora fusus, laqueavit (i. e. implicuit se laqueo) medius; (i. e. in medio, inter trabem et terram;) et effusa sunt omnia viscera ejus――throwing himself headlong, he caught mid-way in the noose, and all his bowels gushed out. And thus the two reporters of the suicide, from whose respective relations charges of disagreement, and even of contradiction, have been drawn in consequence of mistaking an insititious Latin word for a genuine Greek word of corresponding elements, are found, by tracing that insititious word to its true origin, to report identically the same fact; the one by a single term, the other by a periphrasis.”

Such was the end of the twelfth of Jesus Christ’s chosen ones. To such an end was the intimate friend, the trusted steward, the festal companion of the Savior, brought by the impulse of some not very unnatural feelings, excited by occasion, into extraordinary action. The universal and intense horror which the relation of his crime now invariably awakens, is by no means favorable to a just and fair appreciation of his sin and its motives, nor to such an honest consideration of his course from rectitude to guilt, as is most desirable for the application of the whole story to the moral improvement of its readers. Originally not an infamous man, he was numbered among the twelve as a person of respectable character, and long held among his fellow-disciples a responsible station, which is itself a testimony of his unblemished reputation. He was sent forth with them, as one of the heralds of salvation to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He shared with them the counsels, the instructions, and the prayers of Jesus. If he was stupid in apprehending, and unspiritual in conceiving the truths of the gospel, so were they. If he was an unbeliever in the resurrection of Jesus, so were they; and had he survived till the accomplishment of that prophecy, he could not have been slower in receiving the evidence of the event, than they. As it was, he died in his unbelief; while they lived to feel the glorious removal of all their doubts, the purification of all their gross conceptions, and the effusion of that spirit of truth, through which, by the grace of God alone, they afterwards were what they were. Without a merit, in faith, beyond Judas, they maintained their dim and doubtful adherence to the truth, only by their nearer approximation to moral perfection; and by their nobler freedom from the pollution of sordid and spiteful feeling. Through passion alone he fell, a victim, not to a want of faith merely,――for therein, the rest could hardly claim a superiority,――but to the radical deficiency of true love for Jesus, of that “charity which never faileth,” but “endureth to the end.” It was their simple, devoted affection, which, through all their ignorance, their grossness of conception, and their faithlessness in his word, made them still cling to his name and his grave, till the full revelations of his resurrection and ascension had displaced their doubts by the most glorious certainties, and given their faith an eternal assurance. The great cause of the awful ruin of Judas Iscariot, then, was the fact, that he did not LOVE Jesus. Herein was his grand distinction from all the rest; for though their regard was mingled with so much that was base, there was plainly, in all of them, a solid foundation of true, deep affection. The most ambitious and skeptical of them, gave the most unquestionable proofs of this. Peter, John, both the Jameses, and others, are instances of the mode in which these seemingly opposite feelings were combined. But Judas was without this great refining and elevating principle, which so redeemed the most sordid feelings of his fellows. It was not merely for the love of money that he was led into this horrid crime. The love of four dollars and eighty cents! Who can believe that this was the sole motive? It was rather that his sordidness and selfishness, and ambition, if he had any, lacked this single, purifying emotion, which redeemed their characters. Is there not, in this reflection, a moral which each Christian reader can improve to his own use? For the lack of the love of Jesus alone, Judas fell from his high estate, to an infamy as immortal as their fame. Wherever, through all ages, the high heroic energy of Peter, the ready faith of Andrew, the martyr-fire of James Boanerges, the soul-absorbing love of John, the willing obedience of Philip, the guileless purity of Nathanael, the recorded truth of Matthew, the slow but deep devotion of Thomas, the blameless righteousness of James the Just, the appellative zeal of Simon, and the earnest warning eloquence of Jude, are all commemorated in honor and bright renown,――the murderous, sordid spite of Iscariot, will insure him an equally lasting proverbial shame. Truly, “THE SIN OF JUDAS IS WRITTEN WITH A PEN OF IRON ON A TABLET OF MARBLE.”

MATTHIAS.

The events which concern this person’s connection with the apostolic company, are briefly these. Soon after the ascension of Jesus, the eleven disciples being assembled in their “upper room,” with a large company of believers, making in all, together, a meeting of one hundred and twenty, Peter arose and presented to their consideration, the propriety and importance of filling, in the apostolic college, the vacancy caused by the sad defection of Judas Iscariot. Beginning with what seems to be an apt allusion to the words of David concerning Ahithophel,――(a quotation very naturally suggested by the striking similarity between the fate of that ancient traitor, and that of the base Iscariot,) he referred to the peculiarly horrid circumstances of the death of this revolted apostle, and also applied to these occurrences the words of the same Psalmist concerning those upon whom he invoked the wrath of God, in words which might with remarkable emphasis be made descriptive of the ruin of Judas. “Let his habitation be desolate,” and “let another take his office.” Applying this last quotation more particularly to the exigency of their circumstances, he pronounced it to be in accordance with the will of God that they should immediately proceed to select a person to “take the office” of Judas. He declared it an essential requisite for this office, moreover, that the person should be one of those who, though not numbered with the select twelve, had been among the intimate companions of Jesus, and had enjoyed the honors and privileges of a familiar discipleship, so that they could always testify of his great miracles and divine instructions, from their own personal knowledge as eye-witnesses of his actions, from the beginning of his divine career at his baptism by John, to the time of his ascension.

Agreeably to this counsel of the apostolic chief, the whole company of the disciples selected two persons from those who had been witnesses of the great actions of Christ, and nominated them to the apostles, as equally well qualified for the vacant office. To decide the question with perfect impartiality, it was resolved, in conformity with the common ancient practice in such cases, to leave the point between these two candidates to be settled by lot; and to give this mode of decision a solemnity proportioned to the importance of the occasion, they first invoked, in prayer, the aid of God in the appointment of a person best qualified for his service. They then drew the lots of the two candidates, and Matthias being thus selected, was thenceforth enrolled with the eleven apostles.

Of his previous history nothing whatever is known, except that, according to what is implied in the address of Peter, he must have been, from the beginning of Christ’s career to his ascension, one of his constant attendants and hearers. Some have conjectured that he was one of the seventy, sent forth by Jesus as apostles, in the same manner as the twelve had gone; and there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition; but still it is a conjecture merely, without any fact to support it. The New Testament is perfectly silent with respect to both his previous and his subsequent life, and not a fact can be recorded respecting him. Yet the productive imaginations of the martyrologists of the Roman and Greek churches, have carried him through a protracted series of adventures, during his alleged preaching of the gospel, first in Judea, and then in Ethiopia. They also pretend that he was martyred, though as to the precise mode there is some difference in the stories,――some relating that he was crucified, and others, that he was first stoned and then dispatched by a blow on the head with an axe. But all these are condemned by the discreet writers even of the Romish church, and the whole life of Matthias must be included among those many mysteries which can never be in any way brought to light by the most devoted and untiring researches of the Apostolic historian; and this dim and unsatisfactory trace of his life may well conclude the first grand division of a work, in which the reader will expect to find so much curious detail of matters commonly unknown, but which no research nor learning can furnish, for the prevention of his disappointment.

II. THE HELLENIST APOSTLES.

SAUL,
AFTERWARDS NAMED PAUL.

HIS COUNTRY.

On the farthest north-eastern part of the Mediterranean sea, where its waters are bounded by the great angle made by the meeting of the Syrian coast with the Asian, there is a peculiarity in the course of the mountain ranges, which deserves notice in a view of the countries of that region, modifying as it does, all their most prominent characteristics. The great chain of Taurus, which can be traced far eastward in the branching ranges of Singara, Masius and Niphates, running connectedly also into the distant peaks of mighty Ararat, here sends off a spur to the shore of the Mediterranean, which under the name of Mount Amanus meets its waters, just at their great north-eastern angle in the ancient gulf of Issus, now called the gulf of Scanderoon. Besides this connection with the mountain chains of Mesopotamia and Armenia on the northeast, from the south the great Syrian Lebanon, running very nearly parallel with the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, at the Issic angle, joins this common center of convergence, so insensibly losing its individual character in the Asian ridge, that by many writers, Mount Amanus itself is considered only a regular continuation of Lebanon. These, however, are as distinct as any of the chains here uniting, and the true Libanic mountains cease just at this grand natural division of Syria from the northern coast of the Mediterranean. A characteristic of the Syrian mountains is nevertheless prominent in the northern chain. They all take a general course parallel with the coast and very near it, occasionally sending out lateral ridges which mark the projections of the shore with high promontories. Of these, however, there are much fewer on the southern coast of Asia Minor; and the western ridge of Taurus, after parting from the grand angle of convergence, runs exactly parallel to the margin of the sea, in most parts about seven miles distant. The country thus fenced off by Taurus, along the southern coast of Asia Minor, is very distinctly characterized by these circumstances connected with its orography, and is in a very peculiar manner bounded and inclosed from the rest of the continent, by these natural features. The great mountain barrier of Taurus, as above described, stretches along the north, forming a mighty wall, which is at each end met at right angles by a lateral ridge, of which the eastern is Amanus, descending within a few rods of the water, while the western is the true termination of Taurus in that direction,――the mountains here making a grand curve from west to south, and stretching out into the sea, in a bold promontory, which definitely marks the farthest western limit of the long, narrow section, thus remarkably enclosed. This simple natural division, in the apostolic age, contained two principal artificial sub-divisions. On the west, was the province of Pamphylia, occupying about one fourth of the coast;――and on the east, the rest of the territory constituted the province of Cilicia, far-famed as the land of the birth of that great apostle of the Gentiles, whose life is the theme of these pages.

Cilicia,――opening on the west into Pamphylia,――is elsewhere inclosed in mountain barriers, impenetrable and impassable, except in two or three points, which are the only places in which it is accessible by land, though widely exposed, on the sea, by its long open coast. Of these two adits, the most important, and the one through which the vast proportion of its commercial intercourse with the world, by land, has always been carried on, is the eastern, which is just at the oft-mentioned great angle of the Mediterranean, where the mountains descend almost to the waters of the gulf of Issus. Mount Amanus, coming from the north-east, and stretching along the eastern boundary of Cilicia an impassable barrier, here advances to the shore; but just before its base reaches the water, it abruptly terminates, leaving between the high rocks and the sea a narrow space, which is capable of being completely commanded and defended from the mountains which thus guard it; and forming the only land passage out of Cilicia to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, it was thence anciently called “the gates of Syria.” Through these “gates,” has always passed all the traveling by land between Asia Minor and Palestine; and it is therefore an important point in the most celebrated route in apostolic history. The other main opening in the mountain walls of this region, is the passage through the Taurus, made by the course of the Sarus, the largest river of the province, which breaks through the northern ridge, in a defile that is called “the gates of Cilicia.”

The boundaries of Cilicia are then,――on the north, mountainous Cappadocia, perfectly cut off by the impenetrable chain of Taurus, except the narrow pass through “the gates of Cilicia;”――on the east, equally well guarded by Mount Amanus, Northern Syria, the only land passages being through the famed “Syrian gates,” and another defile north of the coast, toward the Euphrates;――on the south, stretches the long margin of the sea, which in the western two-thirds of the coast takes the name of “the Cilician strait,” because it here flows between the mainland and the great island of Cyprus, which lies off the shore, always in sight, being less than thirty miles distant, the eastern third of the coast being bounded by the waters of the gulf of Issus;――and on the west Cilicia ends in the rough highlands of Pamphylia. The territory itself is distinguished by natural features, into two divisions,――Rocky Cilicia and “Level Cilicia,”――the former occupying the western third, and the latter the eastern part,――each district being abundantly well described by the term applied to it. Within the latter, lay the opening scenes of the apostle’s life.

Thus peculiarly guarded, and shut off from the world, it might be expected that this remarkable region would nourish, on the narrow plains of its fertile shores, and the vast rough mountains of its gigantic barriers, a race strongly marked in mental, as in physical characteristics. In all parts of the world, the philosophical observer may notice a relation borne by man to the soil on which he lives, and to the air which he breathes,――hardly less striking than the dependence of the inferior orders of created things, on the material objects which surround them. Man is an animal, and his natural history displays as many curious correspondences between his varying peculiarities and the locality which he inhabits, as can be observed between the physical constitution of inferior creatures, and the similar circumstances which affect them. The inhabitants of a wild, broken region, which rises into mighty inland mountains, or sends its cliffs and vallies into a vast sea, are, in all ages and climes, characterized by a peculiar energy and quickness of mind, which often marks them in history as the prominent actors in events of the highest importance to mankind in all the world. Even the dwellers of the cities of such regions, share in that peculiar vivacity of their countrymen, which is especially imbibed in the air of the mountains; and carry through all the world, till new local influences have again subjected them, the original characteristics of the land of their birth. The restless activity and dauntless spirit of Saul, present a striking instance of this relation of scenery to character. The ever-rolling waters of the tideless sea on one side presenting a boundless view, and on the other the blue mountains rearing a mighty barrier to the vision,――the thousand streams thence rolling to the former,――the white sands of the long plains, gemmed with the green of shaded fountains, as well as the active movements of a busy population, all living under these same inspiring influences,――would each have their effect on the soul of the young Cilician as he grew up in the midst of these modifying circumstances.

Along these shores, from the earliest period of Hellenic colonization, Grecian enterprise had planted its busy centers of civilization. On each favorable site, where agriculture or commerce could thrive, cities grew up in the midst of prosperous colonies, in which wealth and power in their rapid advance brought in the lights of science, art, literature, and all the refinements and elegances which Grecian colonization made the invariable accompaniments of its march,――adorning its solid triumphs with the graceful polish of all that could exalt the enjoyment of prosperity. Issus, Mopsuestia, Anchialus, Selinus and others, were among the early seats of Grecian refinement; and the more modern efforts of the Syro-Macedonian sway, had blessed Cilicia with the fruits of royal munificence, in such cities as Cragic Antioch, Seleucia the Rocky, and Arsinoe; and in still later times, the ever-active and wide-spreading beneficence of Roman dominion, had still farther multiplied the peaceful triumphs and trophies of civilization, by here raising or renewing cities, of which Baiae, Germanicia and Pompeiopolis are only a specimen. But of all these monuments of ancient or later refinement, there was none of higher antiquity or fame than Tarsus, the city where was born this illustrious apostle, whose life was so greatly instrumental in the triumphs of Christianity.

Tarsus stands north of the point of a wide indentation of the coast of Cilicia, forming a very open bay, into which, a few miles south, flow the waters of the classic Cydnus, a narrow stream which runs a brief course from the barrier of Taurus, directly southward to the sea. The river’s mouth forms a spacious and convenient harbor, to which the light vessels of ancient commerce all easily found safe and ready access, though most of the floating piles in which the productions of the world are now transported, might find such a harbor altogether inaccessible to their heavier burden.

Ammianus Marcellinus, the elegant historian of the decline of the Roman empire, speaks in high descriptive terms, both of the province, and the city which makes it eminent in Christian history. In narrating important events here performed during the times whose history he records, he alludes to the character of the region in a preliminary description. “After surmounting the peaks of Taurus, which towards the east rise into higher elevation, Cilicia spreads out before the observer, in far stretching areas,――a land, rich in all good things. To its right (that is the west, as the observer looks south from the summits of Taurus) is joined Isauria,――in equal degree verdant with palms and many fruits, and intersected by the navigable river Calycadnus. This, besides many towns, has two cities,――Seleucia, the work of Seleucus Nicator of Syria, and Claudiopolis, a colony founded by Claudius Caesar. Isauria however, once exceedingly powerful, has formerly been desolated for a destructive rebellion, and therefore shows but very few traces of its ancient splendor. But Cilicia, which rejoices in the river Cydnus, is ennobled by Tarsus, a splendid city,――by Anazarbus, and by Mopsuestia, the dwelling-place of that Mopsus, who accompanied the Argonauts. These two provinces (Isauria or ‘Cilicia the Rocky,’ and Cilicia proper or ‘level’) being formerly connected with hordes of plunderers in a piratical war, were subjugated by the proconsul Servilius, and made tributary. And these regions, placed, as it were, on a long tongue of land, are separated from the eastern world by Mount Amanus.”

This account by Ammianus Marcellinus is found in book XIV. of his history, (p. 19, edited by Vales.)

The native land of Saul was classic ground. Within the limits of Cilicia, were laid the scenes of some of the most splendid passages in early Grecian fable; and here too, were acted some of the grandest events in authentic history, both Greek and Roman. The very city of his birth, Tarsus, is said to have been founded by Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danae, famed for his exploit at another place on the shore of this part of the Mediterranean. More authentic history however, refers its earliest foundation to Sardanapalus, king of Assyria, who built Tarsus and Anchialus in Cilicia, nine hundred years before Christ. Its origin is by others ascribed to Triptolemus with an Argive colony, who is represented on some medals as the founder. These two stories may be made consistent with each other, on the supposition that the same place was successively the scene of the civilizing influence of each of these attributed founders. So too, may be taken, the legend which Ammianus Marcellinus records and approves,――that it was founded by Sandan, a wealthy and eminent person from Ethiopia, who at some early period not specified, is said to have built Tarsus. It was however, at the earliest period that is definitely mentioned, subject to the Assyrian empire; and afterwards fell under the dominion of each of the sovranties which succeeded it, passing into the hands of the Persian and of Alexander, as each in turn assumed the lordship of the eastern world. While under the Persian sway, it is commemorated by Xenophon as having been honored by the presence of the younger Cyrus, when on his march through Asia to wrest the empire from his brother. On this occasion, he entered this region through the northern “gates of Cilicia,” and passed out through the “gates of Syria,” a passage which is, in connection with this event, very minutely described by the elegant historian of that famous expedition.

Sardanapalus.――The fact of the foundation both of Tarsus and Anchialus by this splendid but unfortunately extravagant monarch, the last of his line, is commemorated by Arrian, who refers to the high authority of an inscription which records the event.

“Anchialus is said to have been founded by the king of Assyria, Sardanapalus. The fortifications, in their magnitude and extent, still, in Arrian’s time, bore the character of greatness, which the Assyrians appear singularly to have affected in works of the kind. A monument, representing Sardanapalus, was found there, warranted by an inscription in Assyrian characters, of course in the old Assyrian language, which the Greeks, whether well or ill, interpreted thus: ‘Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, in one day founded Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play: all other human joys are not worth a fillip.’ Supposing this version nearly exact, (for Arrian says it was not quite so,) whether the purpose has not been to invite to civil order a people disposed to turbulence, rather than to recommend immoderate luxury, may perhaps reasonably be questioned. What, indeed, could be the object of a king of Assyria in founding such towns in a country so distant from his capital, and so divided from it by an immense extent of sandy desert and lofty mountains, and, still more, how the inhabitants could be at once in circumstances to abandon themselves to the intemperate joys which their prince has been supposed to have recommended, is not obvious; but it may deserve observation that, in that line of coast, the southern of Lesser Asia, ruins of cities, evidently of an age after Alexander, yet barely named in history, at this day astonish the adventurous traveler by their magnificence and elegance.” (Mitford’s Greece, Vol. IX. pp. 311, 312.)

Over the same route passed the conquering armies of the great Alexander. At Issus, within the boundaries of Cilicia, he met, in their mightiest array, the vast hosts of Darius, whom here vanquishing, he thus decided the destiny of the world. Before this great battle, halting to repose at Tarsus, he almost met his death, by imprudently bathing in the classic Cydnus, whose waters were famed for their extreme coldness. By a remarkable coincidence, the next conqueror of the world, Julius Caesar, also rested at Tarsus for some days before his great triumphs in Asia Minor. Cilicia had in the interval between these two visits passed from the Macedonian to the Roman dominion, being made a Roman province by Pompey, about sixty years before Christ, at the time when all the kingdoms of Asia and Syria were subjugated. After this it was visited by Cicero, at the time of his triumphs over the cities of eastern Cilicia; and its classic stream is still farther celebrated in immortal verse and prose, as the scene where Marcus Antony met Cleopatra for the first time. It was the Cydnus, down which she sailed in her splendid galley, to meet the conqueror, who for her afterwards lost the empire of the world. During all the civil wars which desolated the Roman empire through a long course of years in that age, Tarsus steadily adhered to the house of Caesar, first to the great Julius and afterwards to Augustus. So remarkable was its attachment and devotion to the cause of Julius, that when the assassin Cassius marched through Asia into Syria to secure the dominion of the eastern world, he laid siege to Tarsus, and having taken it, laid it waste with the most destructive vengeance for its adherence to the fortunes of his murdered lord; and such were its sufferings under these and subsequent calamities in the same cause, that when Augustus was at last established in the undivided empire of the world, he felt himself bound in honor and gratitude, to bestow on the faithful citizens of Tarsus the most remarkable favors. The city, having at the request of its inhabitants received the new name of Juliopolis, as a testimony of their devotion to the memory of their murdered patron, was lavishly honored with almost every privilege which the imperial Augustus could bestow on these most faithful adherents of his family. From the terms in which his acts of generosity to them are recorded, it has been inferred,――though not therein positively stated,――that he conferred on it the rank and title of a Roman colony, or free city, which must have given all its inhabitants the exalted privileges of Roman citizens. This assertion has been disputed however, and forms one of the most interesting topics in the life of the great apostle, involving the inquiry as to the mode in which he obtained that inviolable privilege, which, on more than one occasion, snatched him from the clutches of tyrannical persecutors. Whether he held this privilege in common with all the citizens of Tarsus, or inherited it as a peculiar honor of his own family, is a question yet to be decided. But whatever may have been the precise extent of the municipal favors enjoyed by Tarsus, it is certain that it was an object of peculiar favor to the imperial Caesars during a long succession of years, not only before but after the apostle’s time, being crowned with repeated acts of munificence by Augustus, Adrian, Caracalla and Heliogabalus, so that through many centuries it was the most favored city in the eastern division of the Roman empire.

The history of Cilicia since the apostolic age, is briefly this: It remained attached to the eastern division of the Roman empire, until about A. D. 800, when it first fell under the Muhammedan sway, being made part of the dominion of the Califs by Haroun Al Rashid. In the thirteenth century it reverted to a Christian government, constituting a province of the Armenian kingdom of Leo. About A. D. 1400, it fell under the sway of Bajazet II., Sultan of the Ottoman empire, and is at present included in that empire,――most of it in a single Turkish pashalic, under the name of Adana.

Roman citizens.――Witsius very fully discusses this point, as follows. (Witsius on the Life of Paul § 1. ¶ V.)

“It is remarkable that though he was of Tarsus, he should say that he was a Roman citizen, and that too by the right of birth: Acts xxii. 28. There has been some discussion whether he enjoyed that privilege in common with all the Tarsans, or whether it was peculiar to his family. Most interpreters firmly hold the former opinion. Beza remarks, ‘that he calls himself a Roman, not by country, but by right of citizenship; since Tarsus had the privileges of a Roman colony.’ He adds, ‘Mark Antony, the triumvir, presented the Tarsans with the rights of citizens of Rome.’ Others, without number, bear the same testimony. Baronius goes still farther,――contending that ‘Tarsus obtained from the Romans, the municipal right,’ that is, the privileges of free-born citizens of Rome; understanding Paul’s expression in Acts xxi. 39, to mean that he was a municeps of Tarsus, or a Tarsan with the freedom of the city of Rome. Now the municipal towns, or free cities, had rights superior to those of mere colonies; for the free-citizens were not only called Roman citizens as the colonists were, but also, as Ulpian records, could share in all the honors and offices of Rome. Moreover, the colonies had to live under the laws of the Romans, while the municipal towns were allowed to act according their own ancient laws, and country usages. To account for the distinction enjoyed by Tarsus, in being called a ‘municipium of Romans,’ the citizens are said to have merited that honor, for having in the civil wars attached themselves first to Julius Caesar, and afterwards to Octavius, in whose cause they suffered much. For so attached was this city to the side of Caesar, that, as Dion Cassius records, their asked to have their name changed from Tarsus to Juliopolis, in memory of Julius and in token of good will to Augustus; and for that reason they were presented with the rights of a colony or a municipium, and this general opinion is strengthened by the high testimony of Pliny and Appian. On the other hand Heinsius and Grotius strongly urge that these things have been too hastily asserted by the learned; for scarcely a passage can be found in the ancient writers, where Tarsus is called a colony, or even a municipium. ‘And how could it be a colony,’ asks Heinsius, ‘when writers on Roman law acknowledge but two in Cilicia? Ulpian (Liber I. De censibus) says of the Roman colonies in Asia Minor, “there is in Bithynia the colony of Apamea,――in Pontus, Sinope,――in Cilicia there are Selinus and Trajanopolis.” But why does he pass over Tarsus or Juliopolis, if that had place among them?’ Baronius proves it to have been a municipium, only from the Latin version of Acts, where that word is used; though the term in the original Greek (πολιτης) means nothing more than the common word, citizen, (as it is rendered in the English version.) Pliny also calls Tarsus not a colony, nor a municipium, but a free city. (libera urbs.) Book V. chap xxvii. Appian in the first book of the civil wars, says that Antony granted to the Tarsans freedom, but says nothing of the rights of a municipium, or colony. Wherefore Grotius thinks that the only point established is, that some one of the ancestors of Paul, in the civil wars between Augustus Caesar, and Brutus and Cassius, and perhaps those between this Caesar and Antony, received the grant of the privileges of a Roman citizen. Whence he concludes that Paul must have been of an opulent family. These opinions of Grotius have received the approval of other eminent commentators. These notions however, must be rejected as unsatisfactory; because, though some writers have but slightly alluded to Tarsus as a free city, yet Dio Chrysostom, (in Tarsica posteriore,) has enlarged upon it in a tone of high declamation. ‘Yours, men of Tarsus, was the fortune to be first in this nation,――not only because you dwell in the greatest city of Cilicia, and one which was a metropolis from the beginning,――but also because the second Caesar was remarkably well-disposed and gracious towards you. For, the misfortunes which befell the city in his cause, deservedly secured to you his kind regard, and led him to make his benefits to you as conspicuous as the calamities brought upon you for his sake. Therefore did Augustus confer on you everything that a man could on friends and companions, with a view to outdo those who had shown him so great good-will,――your land, laws, honors, the right of the river and of the neighboring sea.’ On which words Heinsius observes in comment, that by land is doubtless meant that he secured to them their own territory, free and undisturbed. By laws are meant such as relate to the liberty usually granted to free towns. Honor plainly refers to the right of citizenship, as the most exalted he could offer. The point then seems to be established, if this interpretation holds good, and it is evidently a rational one. For when he had made up his mind to grant high favors to a city, in return for such great merits, why, when it was in his power, should Augustus fail to grant it the rights of Roman citizenship, which certainly had been often granted to other cities on much slighter grounds? It would be strange indeed, if among the exalted honors which Dio proclaims, that should not have been included. This appears to be the drift, not only of Dio’s remarks, but also of Paul’s, who offers no other proof of his being a Roman citizen, than that he was a Tarsan, and says nothing of it as a special immunity of his own family, although some such explanation would otherwise have been necessary to gain credit to his assertion. Whence it is concluded that it would be rash to pretend, contrary to all historical testimony, any peculiar merits of the ancestors of Paul, towards the Romans, which caused so great an honor to be conferred on a Jewish family.”

But from all these ample and grandiloquent statements of Dio Chrysostom, it by no means follows that Tarsus had the privilege of Roman citizenship; and the conclusion of the learned Witsius seems highly illogical. The very fact, that while Dio was panegyrizing Tarsus in these high terms, and recounting all the favors which imperial beneficence had showered upon it, he yet did not mention among these minutiae, the privilege of citizenship, is quite conclusive against this view; for he would not, when thus seeking for all the particulars of its eminence, have omitted the greatest honor and advantage which could be conferred on any city by a Roman emperor, nor have left it vaguely to be inferred. Besides, there are passages in the Acts of the Apostles which seem to be opposed to the view, that Tarsus was thus privileged. In Acts xxi. 39, Paul is represented as distinctly stating to the tribune, that he was “a citizen of Tarsus;” yet in xxii. 24, 25, it is said, that the tribune was about proceeding, without scruple, to punish Paul with stripes, and was very much surprised indeed, to learn that he was a Roman citizen, and evidently had no idea that a citizen of Tarsus was, as a matter of course, endowed with Roman citizenship;――a fact, however, with which a high Roman officer must have been acquainted, for there were few cities thus privileged, and Tarsus was a very eminent city in a province adjoining Palestine, and not far from the capital of Judea. And the subsequent passages of chap. xxii. represent him as very slow indeed to believe it, after Paul’s distinct assertion.

Hemsen is very clear and satisfactory on this point, and presents the argument in a fair light. See his note in his “Apostel Paulus” on pp. 1, 2. He refers also to a work not otherwise known here;――John Ortwin Westenberg’s “Dissert. de jurisp. Paul. Apost.” Kuinoel in Act. Apost. xvi. 37. discusses the question of citizenship.

“It ought not to seem very strange, that the ancestors of Paul should have settled in Cilicia, rather than in the land of Israel. For although Cyrus gave the whole people of God an opportunity of returning to their own country, yet many from each tribe preferred the new country, in which they had been born and bred, to the old one, of which they had lost the remembrance. Hence an immense multitude of Jews might be found in almost all the dominions of the Persians, Greeks, Romans and Parthians; as alluded to in Acts ii. 9, 10. But there were also other occasions and causes for the dispersion of the Jews. Ptolemy, the Macedonian king of Egypt, having taken Jerusalem from the Syro-Macedonians, led away many from the hill-country of Judea, from Samaria and Mount Gerizim, into Egypt, where he made them settle; and after he had given them at Alexandria the rights of citizens in equal privilege with the Macedonians, not a few of the rest, of their own accord, moved into Egypt, allured partly by the richness of the land, and partly by the good will that Ptolemy had shown towards their nation. Afterwards, Antiochus the Great, the Macedonian king of Syria, about the thirtieth year of his reign, two hundred years before the Christian era, brought out two thousand Jewish families from Babylonia, whom he sent into Phrygia and Lydia with the most ample privileges, that they might hold to their duty the minds of the Greeks, who were then inclining to revolt from his sway. These were from Asia Minor, spread abroad over the surrounding countries, between the Mediterranean sea, the Euphrates and Mount Amanus, on the frontiers of Cilicia. Besides, others afterwards, to escape the cruelty of Antiochus Epiphanes, betook themselves to foreign lands, where, finding themselves well settled, they and their descendants remained. Moreover, many, as Philo testifies, for the sake of trade, or other advantages, of their own accord left the land of Israel for foreign countries: whence almost the whole world was filled with colonies of Jews, as we see in the directions of some of the general epistles, (James i. 1: 1 Peter i. 1.) Thus also Tarsus had its share of Jewish inhabitants, among whom were the family of Paul.” (Witsius in Vita Pauli, § 1. ¶ v.)

Nor were the solid honors of this great Asian city, limited to the mere favors of imperial patronage. Founded, or early enlarged by the colonial enterprise of the most refined people of ancient times, Tarsus, from its first beginning, shared in the glories of Helleno-Asian civilization, under which philosophy, art, taste, commerce, and warlike power attained in these colonies a highth before unequalled, while Greece, the mother country, was still far back in the march of improvement. In the Asian colonies arose the first schools of philosophy, and there is hardly a city on the eastern coast of the Aegean, but is consecrated by some glorious association with the name of some Father of Grecian science. Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximander, and many others of the earliest philosophers, all flourished in these Asian colonies; and on the Mediterranean coast, within Cilicia itself, were the home and schools of Aratus and the stoic Chrysippus. The city of Tarsus is commemorated by Strabo as having in very early times attained great eminence in philosophy and in all sorts of learning, so that “in science and art it surpassed the fame even of Athens and Alexandria; and the citizens of Tarsus themselves were distinguished for individual excellence in these elevated pursuits. So great was the zeal of the men of that place for philosophy, and for the rest of the circle of sciences, that they excelled both Athens and Alexandria, and every other place which can be mentioned, where there are schools and lectures of philosophers.” Not borrowing the philosophic glory of their city merely from the numbers of strangers who resorted thither to enjoy the advantages of instruction there afforded, as is almost universally the case in all the great seats of modern learning; but entering themselves with zeal and enjoyment into their schools of science, they made the name of Tarsus famous throughout the civilized world, for the cultivation of knowledge and taste. Even to this day the stranger pauses with admiration among the still splendid ruins of this ancient city, and finds in her arches, columns and walls, and in her chance-buried medals, the solid testimonies of her early glories in art, taste and wealth. Well then might the great apostle recur with patriotic pride to the glories of the city where he was born and educated, challenging the regard of his military hearers for his native place, by the sententious allusion to it, as “NO MEAN CITY.”

“It appears on the testimony of Paul, (Acts xxi. 39,) that Tarsus was a city of no little note, and it is described by other writers as the most illustrious city of all Cilicia; so much so indeed, that the Tarsans traced their origin to Ionians and Argives, and a rank superior even to these;――referring their antiquity of origin not merely to heroes, but even to demi-gods. It was truly exalted, not only by its antiquity, situation, population and thriving trade, but by the nobler pursuits of science and literature, which so flourished there, that according to Strabo it was worthy to be ranked with Athens and Alexandria; and we know that Rome itself owed its most celebrated professors to Tarsus.” (Witsius. § 1, ¶ iv.)

The testimony of Strabo is found in his Geography, book XIV. Cellarius (Geog. Ant.) is very full on the geography of Cilicia, and may be advantageously consulted. Conder’s Modern Traveler (Syria and Asia Minor 2.) gives a very full account of its ancient history, its present condition, and its topography.

The present appearance of this ancient city must be a matter of great interest to the reader of apostolic history; and it can not be more clearly given than in the simple narrative of the enterprising Burckhardt, who wrote his journal on the very spot which he describes. (Life of Burckhardt, prefixed to his travels in Nubia, pp. xv. xvi.)

“The road from our anchoring place to Tarsus crosses the above-mentioned plain in an easterly direction: we passed several small rivulets which empty themselves into the sea, and which, to judge from the size of their beds, swell in the rainy season to considerable torrents. We had rode about an hour, when I saw at half an hour’s distance to the north of our route, the ruins of a large castle, upon a hill of a regular shape in the plain; half an hour further towards Tarsus, at an equal distance from our road, upon a second tumulus, were ruins resembling the former; a third insulated hillock, close to which we passed midway of our route, was over-grown with grass, without any ruins or traces of them. I did not see in the whole plain any other elevations of ground but the three just mentioned. Not far from the first ruins, stands in the plain an insulated column. Large groups of trees show from afar the site of Tarsus. We passed a small river before we entered the town, larger than those we had met on the road. The western outer gate of the town, through which we entered, is of ancient structure; it is a fine arch, the interior vault of which is in perfect preservation: on the outside are some remains of a sculptured frieze. I did not see any inscriptions. To the right and left of this gateway are seen the ancient ruined walls of the city, which extended in this direction farther than the town at present does. From the outer gateway, it is about four hundred paces to the modern entrance of the city; the intermediate ground is filled up by a burying ground on one side of the road, and several gardens with some miserable huts on the other. * * * * The little I saw of Tarsus did not allow me to estimate its extent; the streets through which I passed were all built of wood, and badly; some well furnished bazars, and a large and handsome mosque in the vicinity of the Khan, make up the whole register of curiosities which I am able to relate of Tarsus. Upon several maps Tarsus is marked as a sea town: this is incorrect; the sea is above three miles distant from it. On our return home, we started in a south-west direction, and passed, after two hours and a half’s march, Casal, a large village, half a mile distant from the sea-shore, called the Port of Tarsus, because vessels freighted for Tarsus usually come to anchor in its neighborhood. From thence turning towards the west, we arrived at our ship at the end of two hours. The merchants of Tarsus trade principally with the Syrian coast and Cyprus: imperial ships arrive there from time to time, to load grain. The land trade is of very little consequence, as the caravans from Smyrna arrive very seldom. There is no land communication at all between Tarsus and Aleppo, which is at ten journeys (caravan traveling) distant from it. The road has been rendered unsafe, especially in later times, by the depredations of Kutshuk Ali, a savage rebel, who has established himself in the mountains to the north of Alexandretta. Tarsus is governed by an Aga, who I have reason to believe is almost independent. The French have an agent there, who is a rich Greek merchant.”

A fine instance of the value of the testimony of the Fathers on points where knowledge of the Scriptures is involved, is found in the story by Jerome, who says that “Paul was born at Gischali, a city of Judea,” (in Galilee,) “and that while he was a child, his parents, in the time of the laying waste of their country by the Romans, removed to Tarsus, in Cilicia.” And yet this most learned of the Fathers, the translator of the whole Bible into Latin, did not know, it seems, that Paul himself most distinctly states in his speech to the Jewish mob, (Acts xxii. 3,) that he was “born in Cilicia,” as the common translation has it;――in Greek, γεγενημενος εν Κιλικια,――words which so far from allowing any such assertion as Jerome makes, even imply that Paul, with Tristram Shandy-like particularity, would specify that he was “begotten in Cilicia.” Jerome’s ridiculous blunder, Witsius, after exposing its inconsistency with Jewish history, indignantly condemns, as “a most shameful falsehood,” (putidissima fabula,) which is as hard a name as has been applied to anything in this book.

But if this blunder is so shameful in Jerome, what shall be said of the learned Fabricius, who (Bibliotheca Graeca, IV. p. 795,) copies this story from Jerome as authentic history, without a note of comment, and without being aware that it most positively contradicts the direct assertion of Paul? And this blunder too is passed over by all the great critical commentators of Fabricius, in Harles’s great edition. Keil, Kuinoel, Harles, Gurlitt, and others equally great, who revised all this, are involved in the discredit of the blunder. “Non omnes omnia.”

HIS GRECIAN LEARNING.

In this splendid seat of knowledge, Saul was born of purely Jewish parents. “A Hebrew of the Hebrews,” he enjoyed from his earliest infancy that minute religious instruction, which every Israelite was in conscience bound to give his children; and with a minuteness and attention so much the more careful, as a residence in a foreign land, far away from the consecrated soil of Palestine and the Holy city of his faith, might increase the liabilities of his children to forget or neglect a religion of which they saw so few visible tokens around them, to keep alive their devotion. Yet, though thus strictly educated in the religion of his fathers, Saul was by no means cut off by this circumstance from the enjoyment of many of the advantages in profaner knowledge, afforded in such an eminent degree by Tarsus; but must, almost without an effort, have daily imbibed into his ready and ever active mind, much of the refining influence of Grecian philosophy. There is no proof, indeed, that he ever formally entered the schools of heathen science; such a supposition, is, perhaps, inconsistent with the idea of his principles of rigid Judaism, and is rendered rather improbable by the great want of Grecian elegance and accuracy in his writings; which are so decidedly characterized by an unrhetorical style, and by irregular logic, that they never could have been the production of a scholar, in the most eminent philosophical institutions of Asia. But a mere birth and residence in such a city, and the incidental but constant familiarity with those so absorbed in these pursuits, as very many of his fellow-citizens were, would have the unavoidable effect of familiarizing him also with the great subjects of conversation, and the grand objects of pursuit, so as ever after to prove an advantage to him in his intercourse with the refined and educated among the Greeks and Romans. The knowledge thus acquired, too, is ever found to be of the most readily available kind, always suggesting itself upon occasions when needed, according to the simple principle of association, and thus more easily applied to ordinary use than that which is more regularly attained, and is arranged in the mind only according to formal systems. Thus was it, with most evident wisdom, ordained by God, that in this great seat of heathen learning, that apostle should be born, who was to be the first messenger of grace to the Grecian world, and whose words of warning, even Rome should one day hear and believe.

HIS FAMILY AND BIRTH.

The parents of Saul were Jews, and his father at least, was of the tribe of Benjamin. In some of those numerous emigrations from Judea which took place either by compulsion or by the voluntary enterprise of the people, at various times after the Assyrian conquest, the ancestors of Saul had left their father-land, for the fertile plains of Cilicia, where, under the patronizing government of some of the Syro-Macedonian kings, they found a much more profitable home than in the comparatively uncommercial land of Israel. On some one of these occasions, probably during the emigration under Antiochus the Great, the ancestors of Saul had settled in Tarsus, and during the period intervening between this emigration and the birth of Saul, the family seems to have maintained or acquired a very respectable rank, and some property. From the distinct information which we have that Saul was a free-born Roman citizen, it is manifest that his parents must also have possessed that right; for it has already been abundantly shown that it was not common to the citizens of Tarsus, but must have been a peculiar privilege of his family. After the subjugation of Cilicia, (sixty-two years before Christ,) when the province passed from the Syrian to the Roman sway, the family were in some way brought under the favorable notice of the new lords of the eastern world, and were honored with the high privilege of Roman citizenship, an honor which could not have been imparted to any one low either in birth or wealth. The precise nature of the service performed by them, that produced such a magnificent reward, it is impossible to determine; but that this must have been the reason, it is very natural to suppose. But whatever may have been the extent of the favors enjoyed by the parents of Saul, from the kindness of their heathen rulers, they were not thereby led to neglect the institutions of their fathers,――but even in a strange land, observed the Mosaic law with peculiar strictness; for Saul himself plainly asserts that his father was a Pharisee, and therefore he must have been bound by the rigid observances of that sect, to a blameless deportment, as far as the Mosaic law required. Born of such parents, the destined apostle at his birth was made the subject of the minute Mosaic rituals. “Circumcised the eighth day,” he then received the name of Saul, a name connected with some glorious and some mournful associations in the ancient Jewish history, and probably suggested to the parents on this occasion, by a reference to its signification, for Hebrew names were often thus applied, expressing some circumstance connected with the child; and in this name more particularly, some such meaning might be expected, since, historically, it must have been a word of rather evil omen. The original Hebrew means “desired,” “asked for,” and hence it has been rather fancifully, but not unreasonably conjectured that he was an oldest son, and particularly desired by his expecting parents, who were, like the whole Jewish race, very earnest to have a son to perpetuate their name,――a wish however, by no means peculiar to the Israelites.

The name Saul is in Hebrew, שאול the regular noun from the passive Kal participle of שאל (sha-al and sha-el) “ask for,” “beg,” “request;” and the name therefore means “asked for,” or “requested,” which affords ground for Neander’s curious conjecture, above given.

Of the time of his birth nothing is definitely known, though it is stated by some ancient authority of very doubtful character, that he was born in the second year after Christ. All that can be said with any probability, is, that he was born several years after Christ; for at the time of the stoning of Stephen, (A. D. 34,) Saul was a “young man.”

HIS TRADE.

There was an ancient Jewish proverb,――often quoted with great respect in the Rabbinical writings,――“He that does not teach his son a trade, trains him to steal.” In conformity with this respectable adage, every Jewish boy, high or low, was invariably taught some mechanical trade, as an essential part of his education, without any regard to the wealth of his family, or to his prospect of an easy life, without the necessity of labor. The consequence of this was, that even the dignified teachers of the law generally conjoined the practice of some mechanical business, with the refined studies to which they devoted the most of their time, and the surnames of some of the most eminent of the Rabbins are derived from the trades which they thus followed in the intervals of study, for a livelihood or for mental relaxation. The advantages of such a variation from intense mental labor to active and steady bodily exercise, are too obvious, both as concerns the benefit of the body and the mind, to need any elucidation; but it is a happy coincidence, worth noticing, that, the better principles of what is now called “Manual Labor Instruction,” are herein fully carried out, and sanctioned by the authority and example of some of the most illustrious of those ancient Hebrew scholars, whose mighty labors in sacred lore, are still a monument of the wisdom of a plan of education, which combines bodily activity and exertion with the full development of the powers of thought. The labors of such men still remain the wonder of later days, and form in themselves, subjects for the excursive and penetrating range of some of the greatest minds of modern times, throwing more light on the minute signification and local application of scripture, than all that has been done in any other field of illustrative research.

“In the education of their son, the parents of Saul thought it their duty according to the fashion of their nation, not only to train his mind in the higher pursuits of a liberal education, but also to accustom his hands to some useful trade. As we learn from Acts xviii. 3, ‘he was by trade a tent-maker,’ occupying the intervals of his study-hours with that kind of work. For it is well established that this was the usual habit of the most eminent Jewish scholars, who adopted it as much for the sake of avoiding sloth and idleness, as with a view to provide for their own support. The Jews used to sum up the duties of parents in a sort of proverb, that ‘they should circumcise their son, redeem him, (Leviticus chapter xxvii.) teach him the law and a trade, and look out a wife for him.’ And indeed the importance of some business of this kind was so much felt, that a saying is recorded of one of the most eminent of their Rabbins, that ‘he who neglects to teach his son a trade, does the same as to bring him up to be a thief.’ Hence it is that the wisest Hebrews held it an honor to take their surnames from their trades; as Rabbins Nahum and Meir, the scriveners or book writers,” (a business corresponding to that of printers in these times,) “Rabbi Johanan the shoemaker, Rabbi Juda the baker, and Rabbi Jose the currier or tanner. How trifling then is the sneer of some scoffers who have said that Paul was nothing but a stitcher of skins, and thence conclude that he was a man of the lowest class of the populace.” (Witsius § I. ¶ 12.)

The trade which the parents of Saul selected for their son, is described in the sacred apostolic history as that of a “tent-maker.” A reference to the local history of his native province throws great light on this account. In the wild mountains of Cilicia, which everywhere begin to rise from the plains, at a distance of seven or eight miles from the coast, anciently ranged a peculiar species of long-haired goats, so well known by name throughout the Grecian world, for their rough and shaggy aspect, that the name of “Cilician goat” became a proverbial expression, to signify a rough, ill-bred fellow, and occurs in this sense in the classic writers. From the hair of these, the Cilicians manufactured a thick, coarse cloth,――somewhat resembling the similar product of the camel’s hair,――which, from the country where the cloth was made, and where the raw material was produced, was called cilicium or cilicia, and under this name it is very often mentioned, both by Grecian and Roman authors. The peculiar strength and incorruptibility of this cloth was so well known, that it was considered as one of the most desirable articles for several very important purposes, both in war and navigation, being the best material for the sails of vessels, as well as for military tents. But it was principally used by the Nomadic Arabs of the neighboring deserts of Syria, who, ranging from Amanus and the sea, to the Euphrates, and beyond, found the tents manufactured from this stout cloth, so durable and convenient, that they depended on the Cilicians to furnish them with the material of their moveable homes; and over all the east, the cilicium was in great demand, for shepherd’s tents. A passage from Pliny forms a splendid illustration of this interesting little point. “The wandering tribes, (Nomades,) and the tribes who plunder the Chaldeans, are bordered by Scenites, (tent-dwellers,) who are themselves also wanderers, but take their name from their tents, which they raise of Cilician cloth, wherever inclination leads them.” This was therefore an article of national industry among the Cilicians, and afforded in its manufacture, profitable employment to a great number of workmen, who were occupied, not in large establishments like the great manufactories of modern European nations, but, according to the invariable mode in eastern countries, each one by himself, or at most with one or two companions. Saul, however, seems to have been occupied only with the concluding part of the manufacture, which was the making up of the cloth into the articles for which it was so well fitted by its strength, closeness and durability. He was a maker of tents of Cilician camlet, or goat’s-hair cloth,――a business which, in its character and implements, more resembled that of a sail-maker than any other common trade in this country. The details of the work must have consisted in cutting the camlet of the shape required for each part of the tent, and sewing it together into the large pieces, which were then ready to be transported, and to form, when hung on tent-poles, the habitations of the desert-wanderers.

This illustration of Saul’s trade is from Hug’s Introduction, Vol. II. note on § 85, pp. 328, 329, original, § 80, pp. 335, 336, translation. On the manufacture of this cloth, see Gloss. Basil, sub voc. Κιλικιος τραγος, &c. “Cilician goat,――a rough fellow;――for there are such goats in Cilicia; whence also, things made of their hair are called cilicia.” He quotes also Hesychius, Suidas, and Salmasius in Solinum, p. 347. As to the use of the cloths in war and navigation, he refers to Vegetius, De re milit. IV. 6, and Servius in Georgica III. 312.――The passage in Pliny, showing their use by the Nomadic tribes of Syria and Mesopotamia for shepherd’s tents, is in his Natural History, VI. 28. “Nomadas infestatoresque Chaldaeorum, Scenitae claudunt, et ipsi vagi, sed a tabernaculis cognominati quae ciliciis metantur, ubi libuit.” The reading of this passage which I have adopted is from the Leyden Hackian edition of Pliny, which differs slightly from that followed by Hug, as the critical will perceive. Hemsen quotes this note almost verbatim from Hug. (Hemsen’s “Apostel Paulus,” page 4.)

The particular species or variety of goat, which is thus described as anciently inhabiting the mountains of Cilicia, can not now be distinctly ascertained, because no scientific traveler has ever made observations on the animals of that region, owing to the many difficulties in the way of any exploration of Asia Minor, under the barbarous Ottoman sway. Neither Griffith’s Cuvier nor Turton’s Linnaeus contains any reference to Cilicia, as inhabited by any species or variety of the genus Capra. The nearest approach to certainty, that can be made with so few data, is the reasonable conjecture that the Cilician goat was a variety of the species Capra Aegagrus, to which the common domestic goat belongs, and which includes several remarkable varieties,――at least six being well ascertained. There are few of my readers, probably, who are not familiar with the descriptions and pictures of the famous Angora goat, which is one of these varieties, and is well-known for its long, soft, silky hair, which is to this day used in the manufacture of a sort of camlet, in the place where it is found, which is Angora and the region around it, from the Halys to the Sangarius. This tract of country is in Asia Minor, only three or four hundred miles north of Cilicia, and therefore at once suggests the probability of the Cilician goat being something very much like the Angora goat. (See Modern Traveler, III. p. 339.) On the other side of Cilicia also, in Syria, there is an equally remarkable variety of the goat, with similar long, silky hair, used for the same manufacture. Now Cilicia, being directly on the shortest route from Angora to Syria, and half-way between both, might very naturally be supposed to have another variety of the Capra Aegagrus, between the Angoran and the Syrian variety, and resembling both in the common characteristic of long shaggy or silky hair; and there can be no reasonable doubt that future scientific observation will show that the Cilician goat forms another well-marked variety of this widely diffused species, which, wherever it inhabits the mountains of the warm regions of Asia, always furnishes this beautiful product, of which we have another splendid and familiar specimen in the Tibet and Cashmere goats, whose fleeces are worth more than their weight in gold. The hair of the Syrian and Cilician goats, however, is of a much coarser character, producing a much coarser and stouter fibre for the cloth.

On the subject of Paul’s trade, the learned and usually accurate Michaelis was led into a very great error, by taking up too hastily a conjecture founded on a misapprehension of the meaning given by Julius Pollux, in his Onomasticon, on the word σκηνοποιος (skenopoios,) which is the word used in Acts xiii. 3, to designate the trade of Saul and Aquilas. Pollux mentions that in the language of the old Grecian comedy, σκηνοποιος was equivalent to μηχανοποιος, (mechanopoios,) which Michaelis very erroneously takes in the sense of “a maker of mechanical instruments,” and this he therefore maintains to have been the trade of Saul and Aquilas. But it is capable of the most satisfactory proof, that Julius Pollux used the words here merely in the technical sense of theatrical preparation,――the first meaning simply “a scene-maker,” and the second “a constructor of theatrical machinery,”――both terms, of course, naturally applied to the same artist. (Michaelis, Introduction, IV. xxiii. 2. pp. 183‒186. Marsh’s translation.――Hug, II. § 85, original; § 80, translation.)

The Fathers also made similar blunders about the nature of Saul’s trade. They call him σκυτοτομος, (skutotomos,) “a skin-cutter,” as well as σκηνορραφος, “a tent-maker.” This was because they were entirely ignorant of the material used for the manufacture of tents; for, living themselves in the civilized regions of Greece, Italy, &c. they knew nothing of the habitations of the Nomadic tent-dwellers. Chrysostom in particular, calls him “one who worked in skins.”

Fabricius gives some valuable illustrations of this point. (Bibliotheca Graeca, IV. p. 795, bb.) He quotes Cotelerius, (ad. Apost. Const. II. 63,) Erasmus, &c. (ad Acts xviii. 3,) and Schurzfleisch, (in diss. de Paulo, &c.) who brings sundry passages from Dio Chrysostom and Libanius, to prove that there were many in Cilicia who worked in leather, as he says; in support of which he quotes Martial, (epigraph xiv. 114,) alluding to “udones cilicii,” or “cilician cloaks,” (used to keep off rain, as water-proof,)――not knowing that this word, cilicium, was the name of a very close and stout cloth, from the goat’s hair, equally valuable as a covering for a single person, and for the habitation of a whole family. In short, Martial’s passage shows that the Cilician camlet was used like the modern camlet,――for cloaks. Fabricius himself seems to make no account of this leather notion of Schurzfleisch; for immediately after, he states (what I can not find on any other authority) that “even at this day, as late books of travels testify, variegated cloths are exported from Cilicia.” This is certainly true of Angora in Asia Minor, north-west of Cilicia, (Modern Traveler, III. p. 339,) and may be true of Cilicia itself. Fabricius notices 2 Corinthians v. 1: and xii. 9, as containing figures drawn from Saul’s trade.

HIS EDUCATION.

But this was not destined to be the most important occupation of Saul’s life. Even his parents had nobler objects in view for him, and evidently devoted him to this handicraft, only in conformity with those ancient Jewish usages which had the force of law on every true Israelite, whether rich or poor; and accordingly he was sent, while yet in his youth, away from his home in Tarsus, to Jerusalem, the fountain of religious and legal knowledge to all the race of Judah and Benjamin, throughout the world. To what extent his general education had been carried in Tarsus, is little known; but he had acquired that fluency in the Greek, which is displayed in his writings, though contaminated with many of the provincialisms of Cilicia, and more especially with the barbarisms of Hebrew usage. Living in daily intercourse, both in the way of business and friendship, with the active Grecians of that thriving city, and led, no doubt, by his own intellectual character and tastes, to the occasional cultivation of those classics which were the delight of his Gentile acquaintances, he acquired a readiness and power in the use of the Greek language, and a familiarity with the favorite writers of the Asian Hellenes, that in the providence of God most eminently fitted him for the sphere to which he was afterwards devoted, and was the true ground of his wonderful acceptability to the highly literary people among whom his greatest and most successful labors were performed, and to whom all of his epistles, but two, were written. All these writings show proofs of such an acquaintance with Greek, as is here inferred from his opportunities in education. His well-known quotations also from Menander and Epimenides, and more especially his happy impromptu reference in his discourse at Athens, to the line from his own fellow-Cilician, Aratus, are instances of a very great familiarity with the classics, and are thrown out in such an unstudied, off-hand way, as to imply a ready knowledge of these writers. But all these were, no doubt, learned in the mere occasional manner already alluded to in connection with the reputation and literary character of Tarsus. He was devoted by all the considerations of ancestral pride and religious zeal to the study of “a classic, the best the world has ever seen,――the noblest that has ever honored and dignified the language of mortals.”

HIS REMOVAL TO JERUSALEM.

Strabo, in speaking of the remarkable literary and philosophical zeal of the refined inhabitants of Tarsus, says that “after having well laid the foundations of literature and science in their own schools at home, it was usual for them to resort to those in other places, in order to zealously pursue the cultivation of their minds still further,” by the varied modes and opportunities presented in different schools throughout the Hellenic world,――a noble spirit of literary enterprise, accordant with the practice of the most ancient philosophers, and like the course also pursued by the modern German scholars, many of whom go from one university to another, to enjoy the peculiar advantages afforded by each in some particular department. It was therefore, only in a noble emulation of the example of his heathen fellow-townsmen, in the pursuit of profane knowledge, that Saul left the city of his birth and his father’s house, to seek a deeper knowledge of the sacred sources of Hebrew learning, in the capital of the faith. This removal to so great a distance, for such a purpose, evidently implies the possession of considerable wealth in the family of Saul; for a literary sojourn of that kind, in a great city, could not but be attended with very considerable expense as well as trouble.

HIS TEACHER.

Saul having been thus endowed with a liberal education at home, and with the principles of the Jewish faith, as far as his age would allow,――went up to Jerusalem to enjoy the instruction of Gamaliel. There is every reason to believe that this was Gamaliel the elder, grandson of Hillel, and son of Simeon, (probably the same, who, in his old age, took the child Jesus in his arms,) and father of another Simeon, in whose time the temple was destroyed; for the Rabbinical writings give a minute account of him, as connected with all these persons. This Gamaliel succeeded his ancestors in the rank which was then esteemed the highest; this was the office of “head of the college,” otherwise called “Prince of the Jewish senate.” Out of respect to this most eminent Father of Hebrew learning, as it is recorded, Onkelos, the renowned Chaldee paraphrast, burned at his funeral, seventy pounds of incense, in honor to the high rank and learning of the deceased. This eminent teacher was at first not ill-disposed towards the apostles, who, he thought, ought to be left to their own fate; being led to this moderate and reasonable course, perhaps, by the circumstance that the Sadducees, whom he hated, were most active in their persecution. The sound sense and humane wisdom that mark his sagely eloquent opinion, so wonderful in that bloody time, have justly secured him the admiration and respect of all Christian readers of the record; and not without regret would they learn, that the after doings of his life, unrecorded by the sacred historian, yet on the testimony of others, bear witness against him as having changed from this wise principle of action. If there is any ground for the story which Maimonides tells, it would seem, that when Gamaliel saw the new heretical sect multiplying in his own days, and drawing away the Israelites from the Mosaic forms, he, together with the Senate, whose President he was, gave his utmost endeavors to crush the followers of Christ, and composed a form of prayer, by which God was besought to exterminate these heretics; which was to be connected to the usual forms of prayer in the Jewish liturgy. This story of Maimonides, if it is adopted as true, on so slight grounds, may be reconciled with the account given by Luke, in two ways. First, Gamaliel may have thought that the apostles and their successors, although heretics, were not to be put down by human force, or by the contrivances of human ingenuity, but that the whole matter should be left to the hidden providence of God, and that their extermination should be obtained from God by prayers. Or, second,――to make a more simple and rational supposition,――he may have been so struck by the boldness of the apostles, and by the evidence of the miracle performed by them, as to express a milder opinion on them at that particular moment; but afterwards may have formed a harsher judgment, when, contrary to all expectation, he saw the wonderful growth of Christianity, and heard with wrath and uncontrollable indignation, the stern rebuke of Stephen. But these loose relics of tradition, offered on such very suspicious authority as that of a Jew of the ages when Christianity had become so odious to Judaism by its triumphs, may without hesitation be rejected as wholly inconsistent with the noble spirit of Gamaliel, as expressed in the clear, impartial account of Luke; and both of the suppositions here offered by others, to reconcile sacred truth with mere falsehood, are thus rendered entirely unnecessary.

At the feet of this Gamaliel, then, was Saul brought up. (Acts xxii. 3.) It has been observed on this passage, by learned commentators, that this expression refers to the fashion followed by students, of sitting and lying down on the ground or on mats, at the feet of their teacher, who sat by himself on a higher place. And indeed so many are the traces of this fashion among the recorded labors of the Hebrews, that it does not seem possible to call it in question. The labors of Scaliger in his “Elenchus Trihaeresii,” have brought to light many illustrations of the point; besides which another is offered in a well-known passage from פרקי אבות Pirke Aboth, or “Fragments of the Fathers.” Speaking of the wise, it is said, “Make thyself dusty in the dust of their feet,”――הוי מתאבק בעפר רגליהם――meaning that the young student is to be a diligent hearer at the feet of the wise;――thus raising a truly “learned dust,” if the figure may be so minutely carried out. The same thing is farther illustrated by a passage which Buxtorf has given in his Lexicon of the Talmud, in the portion entitled ברכית (Berachoth,) מנעו בניכם מן ההגיון והושיבום בין ברכי תלמידי חכמים “Take away your sons from the study of the Bible, and make them sit between the knees of the disciples of the wise;” which is equivalent to a recommendation of oral, as superior to written instruction. The same principle, of varying the mode in which the mind receives knowledge, is recognized in modern systems of education, with a view to avoid the self-conceit and intolerant pride which solitary study is apt to engender, as well as because, from the living voice of the teacher, the young scholar learns in that practical, simple mode which is most valuable and efficient, as it is that, in which alone all his knowledge of the living and speaking world must be obtained. It should be observed, however, that Buxtorf seems to have understood this passage rather differently from Witsius, whose construction is followed in the translation given above. Buxtorf, following the ordinary meaning of הגיבן (HEG-YON,) seems to prefer the sense of “meditation.” He rejects the common translation――“study of the Bible,” as altogether irreligious. “In hoc sensu, praeceptum impium est.” He says that other Glosses of the passage give it the meaning of “boyish talk,” (garritu puerorum.) But this is a sense perfectly contradictory to all usage of the word, and was evidently invented only to avoid the seemingly irreligious character of the literal version. But why may not all difficulties be removed by a reference to the primary signification, which is “solitary meditation,” in opposition to “instruction by others?”

We have in the gospel history itself, also, the instance of Mary. (Luke x. 39.) The passage in Mark iii. 32, “The multitude sat down around him,” farther illustrates this usage. There is an old Hebrew tradition, mentioned with great reverence by Maimonides, to this effect. “From the days of Moses down to Rabban Gamaliel, they always studied the law, standing; but after Rabban Gamaliel was dead, weakness descended on the world, and they studied the law, sitting.” (Witsius.)

HIS JEWISH OPINIONS.

Jerusalem was the seat of what may be called the great Jewish University. The Rabbins or teachers, united in themselves, not merely the sources of Biblical and theological learning, but also the whole system of instruction in that civil law, by which their nation were still allowed to be governed, with only some slight exceptions as to the right of punishment. There was no distinction, in short, between the professions of divinity and law, the Rabbins being teachers of the whole Mosaic system, and those who entered on a course of study under them, aiming at the knowledge of both those departments of learning, which, throughout the western nations, are now kept, for the most part, entirely distinct. Saul was therefore a student both of theology and law, and entered himself as a hearer of the lectures of one, who may, in modern phrase, be styled the most eminent professor in the great Hebrew university of Jerusalem. From him he learned the law and the Jewish traditional doctrines, as illustrated and perfected by the Fathers of the ♦Pharisaic order. His steady energy and resolute activity were here all made available to the very complete attainment of the mysteries of knowledge; and the success with which he prosecuted his studies may be best appreciated by a minute examination of his writings, which everywhere exhibit indubitable marks of a deep and critical knowledge of all the details of Jewish theology and law. He shows himself to have been deeply versed in all the standard modes of explaining the Scriptures among the Hebrews,――by allegory,――typology, accommodation and tradition. Yet though thus ardently drinking the streams of Biblical knowledge from this great fountain-head, he seems to have been very far from imbibing the mild and merciful spirit of his great teacher, as it had been so eminently displayed in his sage decision on the trial of the apostles. The acquisition of knowledge, even under such an instructor, was, in Saul, attended with the somewhat common evils to which a young mind rapidly advanced in dogmatical learning, is naturally liable,――a bitter, denunciatory intolerance of any opinions contrary to his own,――a spiteful feeling towards all doctrinal opponents, and a disposition to punish speculative errors as actual crimes. All these common faults were very remarkably developed in Saul, by that uncommon harshness and fierceness by which he was so strongly characterized; and his worst feelings broke out with all their fury against the rising heretics, who, without any regular education, were assuming the office of religious teachers, and were understood to be seducing the people from their allegiance and due respect to the qualified scholars of the law. The occasion on which these dark religious passions first exhibited themselves in decided action against the Christians, was the murder of Stephen, of which the details have already been fully given in that part of the Life of Peter which is connected with it. Of those who engaged in the previous disputes with the proto-martyr, the members of the Cilician synagogue are mentioned among others; and with these Saul would very naturally be numbered; for, residing at a great distance from his native province, he would with pleasure seek the company of those residents in Jerusalem who were from Cilicia, and join with them in the study of the law and the weekly worship of God. What part he took in these animated and angry discussions, is not known; but his well-known power in argument affords good reason for believing, that the eloquence and logical acuteness which he afterwards displayed in the cause of Christ, were now made use of, against the ablest defenders of that same cause. His fierce spirit, no doubt, rose with the rest in that burst of indignation against the martyr, who fearlessly stood up before the council, pouring out a flood of invective against the unjust destroyers of the holy prophets of God; and when they all rushed upon the preacher of righteousness, and dragged him away from the tribunal to the place of execution, Saul also was consenting to his death; and when the blood of the martyr was shed, he stood by, approving the deed, and kept the clothes of them who slew him.

♦ “Pharasaic” replaced with “Pharisaic”

HIS PERSECUTING CHARACTER.

The very active share which Saul took in this and the subsequent cruelties of a similar nature, is in itself a decided though terrible proof of that remarkable independence of character, which was so distinctly displayed in the greatest events of his apostolic career. Saul was no slave to the opinions of others; nor did he take up his active persecuting course on the mere dictation of higher authority. On the contrary, his whole behavior towards the followers of Jesus was directly opposed to the policy so distinctly urged and so efficiently maintained, in at least one instance, by his great teacher, Gamaliel, whose precepts and example on this subject must have influenced his bold young disciple, if any authority could have had such an effect on him. From Gamaliel and his disciples, Saul must have received his earliest impressions of the character of Christ and his doctrines; for it is altogether probable that he did not reach Jerusalem until some time after the ascension of Christ, and there is therefore no reason to suppose that he himself had ever heard or seen him. Nevertheless, brought up in the school of the greatest of the Pharisees, he would receive from all his teachers and associates, an impression decidedly unfavorable, of the Christian sect; though the uniform mildness of the Pharisees, as to vindictive measures, would temper the principles of action recommended in regard to the course of conduct to be adopted towards them. The rapid advance of the new sect, however, soon brought them more and more under the invidious notice of the Pharisees, who in the life-time of Jesus had been the most determined opposers of him and his doctrines; and the attention of Saul would therefore be constantly directed to the preparation for contest with them.

Stephen’s murder seems to have unlocked all the persecuting spirit of Saul. He immediately laid his hand to the work of persecuting the friends of Jesus, with a fury that could not be allayed by a single act. Nor was he satisfied with merely keeping a watchful eye on everything that was openly done by them; but under authority from the Sanhedrim, breaking into the retirement of their homes, to hunt them out for destruction, he had them thrown into prison, and scourged in the synagogues, and threatened even with death; by all which cruelties he so overcame the spirit of many of them, that they were forced to renounce the faith which they had adopted, and blaspheme the name of Christ in public recantations. This furious persecution soon drove them from Jerusalem in great numbers, to other cities. Samaria, as well as the distant parts of Judea, are mentioned as their places of refuge, and not a few fled beyond the bounds of Palestine into the cities of Syria. But even these distant exiles were not, by their flight into far countries, removed from the effects of the burning zeal of their persecutor. Longing for an opportunity to give a still wider range to his cruelties, he went to the great council, and begged of them such a commission as would authorize him to pursue his vindictive measures wherever the sanction of their name could support such actions. Among the probable inducements to this selection of a foreign field for his unrighteous work, may be reasonably placed, the circumstance that Damascus was at this time under the government of Aretas, an Arabian prince, into whose hands it fell for a short time, during which the equitable principles of Roman tolerance no longer operated as a check on the murderous spite of the Jews; for the new ruler, anxious to secure his dominion by ingratiating himself with the subjects of it, would not be disposed to neglect any opportunity for pleasing so powerful and influential a portion of the population of Damascus as the Jews were,――who lived there in such numbers, that in some disturbances which arose a few years after, between them and the other inhabitants, ten thousand Jews were slain unarmed, while in the public baths, enjoying themselves after the fatigues of the day, without any expectation of violence. So large a Jewish population would be secure of the support of Aretas in any favorite measure. Saul, well knowing these circumstances, must have been greatly influenced by this motive, to seek a commission to labor in a field where the firm tolerance of Roman sway was displaced by the baser rule of a petty prince, whose weakness rendered him subservient to the tyrannical wishes of his subjects. In Jerusalem the Roman government would not suffer anything like a systematic destruction of its subjects, nor authorize the taking of life by any religious tribunal, though it might pass over, unpunished, a solitary act of mob violence, like the murder of Stephen. It is perfectly incontestable therefore, that the persecution in Jerusalem could not have extended to the repeated destruction of life, and that passage in Paul’s discourse to Agrippa; which has been supposed to prove a plurality of capital punishments, has accordingly been construed in a more limited sense, by the ablest modern commentators.

Kuinoel on Acts xxv. 1, 10, maintains this fully, and quotes other authorities.

“It seems to some a strange business, that Paul should have had the Christians whipped through the synagogues. Why, in a house consecrated to prayer and religion, were sentences of a criminal court passed, and the punishment executed on the criminal? This difficulty seemed so great, even to the learned and judicious Beza, that in the face of the testimony of all manuscripts, he would have us suspect the genuineness of the passage in Matthew x. 17, where Christ uses the same expression. Such a liberty as he would thus take with the sacred text, is of course against all modern rules of sacred criticism. For what should we do then with Matthew xxiii. 34, where the same passage occurs again? Grotius, to explain the difficulty, would have the word synagogues understood, not in the sense of houses of prayer, but of civil courts of justice; since such a meaning may be drawn from the etymology of the Greek word thus translated. (συναγωγη, a gathering together, or assembling for any purpose.) But that too is a forced construction, for no instance can be brought out of the New Testament, where the word is used in that sense, or any other than the common one. What then? We cannot be allowed to set up the speculations which we have contrived to agree with our own notions, against accounts given in so full and clear a manner. Suppose, for a moment, that we could find no traces of the custom of scourging in the synagogues, in other writers; ought that to be considered doubtful, which is thus stated by Christ and Paul, in the plainest terms, as a fact commonly and perfectly well known in their time? Nor is there any reason why scourging in the synagogues should seem so unaccountable to us, since it was a grade of discipline less than excommunication, and less disgraceful. For it is made to appear that some of the most eminent of the wise, when they broke the law, were thus punished,――not even excepting the head of the Senate, nor the high priest himself.” (Witsius, § 1, ¶ xix.‒xxi.) Witsius illustrates it still farther, by the stories which follow.

“But there are instances of flagellation in synagogues found in other accounts. Grotius himself quotes from Epiphanius, that a certain Jew who wished to revolt to Christianity, was whipped in the synagogue. The story is to the following purport. ‘A man, named Joseph, a messenger of the Jewish patriarch, went into Cilicia by order of the patriarch, to collect the tithes and first-fruits from the Jews of that province; and while on his tour of duty, lodged in a house near a Christian church. Having, by means of this, become acquainted with the pastor, he privately begs the loan of the book of the gospels, and reads it. But the Jews, getting wind of this, were so enraged against him, that on a sudden they made an assault on the house, and caught Joseph in the very act of reading the gospels. Snatching the book out of his hands, they knocked him down, and crying out against him with all sorts of abuse, they led him away to the synagogue, where they whipped him with rods.’

“Very much like this is the more modern story which Uriel Acosta tells of himself, in a little book, entitled ‘the Pattern of Human Life.’ The thing took place in Amsterdam, about the year 1630. It seems this Uriel Acosta was a Jew by birth, but being a sort of Epicurean philosopher, had some rather heretical notions about most of the articles of the Jewish creed; and on this charge, being called to account by the rulers of the synagogue, stood on his trial. In the end of it, a paper was read to him, in which it was specified that he must come into the synagogue, clothed in a mourning garment, holding a black wax-light in his hand, and should utter openly before the congregation a certain form of words prescribed by them, in which the offenses he had committed were magnified beyond measure. After this, that he should be flogged with a cowskin or strap, publicly, in the synagogue, and then should lay himself down flat on the threshhold of the synagogue, that all might walk over him. How thoroughly this sentence was executed, is best learned from his own amusing and candid story, which are given in the very words, as literally as they can be translated. ‘I entered the synagogue, which was full of men and women, (for they had crammed in together to see the show,) and when it was time, I mounted the wooden platform, which was placed in the midst of the synagogue for convenience in preaching, and with a loud voice read the writing drawn up by them, in which was a confession that I really deserved to die a thousand times for what I had done; namely, for my breaches of the sabbath, and for my abandonment of the faith, which I had broken so far as even by my words to hinder others from embracing Judaism, &c. After I had got through with the reading, I came down from the platform, and the right reverend ruler of the synagogue drew near to me, and whispered in my ear that I must turn aside to a certain corner of the synagogue. Accordingly, I went to the corner, and the porter told me to strip. I then stripped my body as low as my waist,――bound a handkerchief about my head,――took off my shoes, and raised my arms, holding fast with my hands to a sort of post. The porter of the synagogue, or sexton, then came up, and with a bandage tied up my hands to the post. When things had been thus arranged, the clerk drew near, and taking the cowskin, struck my sides with thirty-nine blows, according to the tradition; while in the mean time a psalm was chanted. After this was over, the preacher approached, and absolved me from excommunication; and thus was the gate of heaven opened to me, which before was shut against me with the strongest bars, keeping me entirely out. I next put on my clothes, went to the threshhold of the synagogue and laid myself down on it, while the porter held up my head. Then all who came down, stepped over me, boys as well as old men, lifting up one foot and stepping over the lower part of my legs. When the last had passed out, I got up, and being covered with dust by him who helped me, went home.’ This story, though rather tediously minute in its disgusting particulars, it was yet thought worth while to copy, because this comparatively modern scene seemed to give, to the life, the old fashion of ‘scourging in the synagogues.’”

HIS JOURNEY TO DAMASCUS.

Thus equipped with the high commission and letters of the supreme court of the Jewish nation, Saul, breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went on his way to Damascus, where the sanction of his superiors would have the force of despotic law, against the destined victims of his cruelty. The distance from Jerusalem to this great Syrian city, can not be less than 250 or 300 miles, and the journey must therefore have occupied as many as ten or twelve days, according to the usual rate of traveling in those countries. On this long journey therefore, Saul had much season for reflection. There were indeed several persons in his company, but probably they were only persons of an inferior order, and merely the attendants necessary for his safety and speed in traveling. Among these therefore, he would not be likely to find any person with whom he could maintain any sympathy which could enable them to hold much conversation together, and he must therefore have been left through most of the time to the solitary enjoyment of his own thoughts. In the midst of the peculiar fatigues of an eastern journey, he must have had many seasons of bodily exhaustion and consequent mental depression, when the fire of his unholy and exterminating zeal would grow languid, and the painful doubts which always come in at such dark seasons, to chill the hopes of every great mind,――no matter what may be the character of the enterprise,――must have had the occasional effect of exciting repentant feelings in him. Why had he left the high and sacred pursuits of a literary and religious life, in the refined capital of Judaism, to endure the fatigues of a long journey over rugged mountains and sandy deserts, through rivers and under a burning sun, to a distant city, in a strange land, among those who were perfect strangers to him? It was for the sole object of carrying misery and anguish among those whose only crime was the belief of a doctrine which he hated, because it warred against that solemn system of forms and traditions to which he so zealously clung, with all the energy that early and inbred prejudice could inspire. But in these seasons of weariness and depression, would now occasionally arise some chilling doubt about the certain rectitude of the stern course which he had been pursuing, in a heat that seldom allowed him time for reflection on its possible character and tendency. Might not that faith against which he was warring with such devotedness, be true?――that faith which, amid blood and dying agonies, the martyr Stephen had witnessed with his very last breath? At these times of doubt and despondency would perhaps arise the remembrance of that horrible scene, when he had set by, a calm spectator, drinking in with delight the agonies of the martyr, and learning from the ferocity of the murderers, new lessons of cruelty. to be put in practice against others who should thus adhere to the faith of Christ. No doubt too, an occasional shudder of gloom and remorse for such acts would creep over him in the chill of evening, or in the heats of noon-day, and darken all his schemes of active vengeance against the brethren. But still he journeyed northward, and each hour brought him nearer the scene of long-planned cruelty. On the last day of his wearisome journey, he at length drew near the city, just at noon; and from the terms in which his situation is described, it is not unreasonable to conclude that he was just coming in sight of Damascus, when the event happened which revolutionized his purposes, hopes, character, soul, and his whole existence through eternity,――an event connected with the salvation of millions that no man can yet number.

DAMASCUS.

Descending from the north-eastern slope of Hermon, over whose mighty range his last day’s journey had conducted him, Saul came along the course of the Abana, to the last hill which overlooks the distant city. Here Damascus bursts upon the traveler’s view, in the midst of a mighty plain, embosomed in gardens, and orchards, and groves, which, with the long-known and still bright streams of Abana and Pharphar, and the golden flood of the Chrysorrhoas, give the spot the name of “one of the four paradises.” So lovely and charming is the sight which this fair city has in all ages presented to the traveler’s view, that the Turks relate that their prophet, coming near Damascus, took his station on the mountain Salehiyeh, on the west of the hill-girt plain in which the city stands; and as he thence viewed the glorious and beautiful spot, encompassed with gardens for thirty miles, and thickly set with domes and steeples, over which the eye glances as far as it can reach,――considering the ravishing beauty of the place, he would not tempt his frailty by entering into it, but instantly turned away with this reflection: that there was but one paradise designed for man, and for his part, he was resolved not to take his, in this world. And though there is not the slightest foundation for such a story, because the prophet never came near to Damascus, nor had an opportunity of entering into it, yet the conspiring testimony of modern travelers justifies the fable, in the impression it conveys of the surpassing loveliness of the view from this very spot,――called the Arch of Victory, from an unfinished mass of stonework which here crowns the mountain’s top. This spot has been marked by a worthless tradition, as the scene of Saul’s conversion; and the locality is made barely probable, by the much better authority of the circumstance, that it accords with the sacred narrative, in being on the road from Jerusalem, and “nigh unto the city.”

“Damascus is a very ancient city, which the oldest records and traditions show by their accordant testimony to have been founded by Uz, the son of Aram, and grandson of Shem. It was the capital or mother city of that Syria which is distinguished by the name of Aram Dammesek or Damascene Syria, lying between Libanus and Anti-Libanus. The city stands at the base of Mount Hermon, from which descend the famous streams of Abana and Pharphar; the latter washing the walls of the city, while the former cuts it through the middle. It was a very populous, delightful, and wealthy place; but as in the course of its existence it had suffered a variety of fortune, so it had often changed masters. To pass over its earlier history, we will only observe, that before the Christian era, on the defeat of Tigranes, the Armenian monarch, it was yielded to the Romans, being taken by the armies of Pompey. In the time of Paul, as we are told in ♦2 Corinthians xi. 32, it was held under the (temporary) sway of Aretas, a king of the Arabians, father-in-law of Herod the tetrarch. It had then a large Jewish population, as we may gather from the fact, that in the reign of Nero, 10,000 of that nation were slaughtered, unarmed, and in the public baths by the Damascenes, as Josephus records in his history of the Jewish War, II. Book, chapter 25. Among the Jews of Damascus, also, were a considerable number of Christians, and it was raging for the destruction of these, that Saul, furnished with the letters and commission of the Jewish high priest, now flew like a hawk upon the doves.” (Witsius, § 2, ¶ 1.)

♦ “2” omitted in the original text.

The sacred narrative gives no particulars of the other circumstances connected with this remarkable event, in either of the three statements presented in different parts of the book of Acts. All that is commemorated, is that at mid-day, as Saul with his company drew near to Damascus, he saw a light exceeding the sun in brightness, which flashed upon them from heaven, and struck them all to the earth. And while they were all fallen to the ground, Saul alone heard a voice speaking to him in the Hebrew tongue, and saying, “Saul! Saul! Why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against thorns.” To this, Saul asked in reply, “Who art thou, Lord?” The answer was, “I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom thou persecutest.” Saul, trembling and astonished, replied, “Lord, what wilt thou that I should do?” And the voice said, “Rise and stand upon thy feet, and go into the city; there thou shalt be told what to do, since for this purpose I have appeared to thee, to make use of thee as a minister and a witness, both of what thou hast seen and of what I will cause thee to see,――choosing thee out of the people, and of the heathen nations to whom I now SEND thee,――to open their eyes,――to turn them from darkness to light, and from the dominion of Satan unto God, that they may receive remission of sins, and an inheritance among them that are sanctified, by faith in me.”

These words are given thus fully only in Saul’s own account of his conversion, in his address to king Agrippa. (Acts xxvi. 14‒18.) The original Greek of verse 17, is most remarkably and expressively significant, containing, beyond all doubt, the formal commission of Saul as the “Apostle of the Gentiles.” The first word in that verse is translated in the common English version, “delivering;” whereas, the original, Εξαιρουμενος, means also “taking out,” “choosing;” and is clearly shown by Bretschneider, sub voc. in numerous references to the usages of the LXX., and by Kuinoel, in loc., to bear this latter meaning here. Rosenmueller and others however, have been led, by the circumstance that Hesychius gives the meaning of “rescue,” to prefer that. Rosenmueller’s remark, that the context demands this meaning, is however certainly unauthorized; for, on this same ground, Kuinoel bases the firmest support of the meaning of “choice.” The meaning of “rescue” was indeed the only one formerly received, but the lights of modern exegesis have added new distinctness and aptness to the passage, by the meaning adopted above. Beza, Piscator, Pagninus, Arias Montanus, Castalio, &c., as well as the oriental versions, are all quoted by Poole in defense of the common rendering, nor does he seem to know of the sense now received. But Saul was truly chosen, both “out of the people” of Israel, (because he was a Jew by birth and religion,) “and out of the heathen,” (because he was born and brought up among the Grecians, and therefore was taken out from among them, as a minister of grace to them,) and the whole passage is thus shown to be most beautifully just to the circumstances which so eminently fitted him for his Gentile apostleship. The Greek verb used in the conclusion of the passage, is the consecrating word, αποστελλω, (apostello,) and makes up the formula of his apostolic commission, which is there given in language worthy of the vast and eternal scope of the sense,――words fit to be spoken from heaven, in thunder, amid the flash of lightnings, that called the bloody-minded, bitter, maddened persecutor, to the peaceful, devoted, unshrinking testimony of the cause, against the friends of which he before breathed only threatenings and slaughter.

Εξαιρουμενος σε εκ τοῦ λαοῦ και τῶν ἐθνῶν, εις οὑς νῦν σε ΑΠΟΣΤΕΛΛΩ.

All this took place while the whole company of travelers were lying prostrate on the ground, stunned and almost senseless. Of all those present, however, Saul only heard these solemn words of warning, command, and prophecy, thus sent from heaven in thunder; for he himself afterwards, in narrating these awful events before the Jewish multitude, expressly declares “the men that were with me, saw the light, indeed, and were afraid; but they heard NOT the voice of him who spoke to me.” And though in the previous statement given by Luke, in the regular course of the narrative, it is said that “the men who journeyed with Saul were speechless,――hearing a voice, but seeing no man;” yet the two statements are clearly reconciled by the consideration of the different meanings of the word translated “voice” in both passages, but which the accompanying expressions sufficiently limit in the latter case only to the articulate sounds of a human voice, while in the former it is left in such terms as to mean merely a “sound,” as of thunder, or any thing else which can be supposed to agree best with the other circumstances. To them, therefore, it seemed only surprising, not miraculous; for they are not mentioned as being impressed, otherwise than by fear and amazement, while Saul, who alone heard the words, was moved thereby to a complete conversion. The whole circumstances, therefore, allow and require, in accordance with other similar passages, that the material phenomena which were made the instruments of this miraculous conversion, were, as they are described, first a flash of lightning, which struck the company to the earth, giving all a severe shock, but affecting Saul most of all, and, second, a peal of thunder, heard by all as such, except Saul, who distinguished in those awful, repeated sounds, the words of a heavenly voice, with which he held distinct converse, while his wondering companions thought him only muttering incoherently to himself, between the peals of thunder;――just as in the passage related by John, when Jesus called to God, “Father! glorify thy name;” and then there came a voice from heaven, saying, “I both have glorified it and will glorify it;” yet the people who then stood by, said, “It thundered,”――having no idea of the expressive utterance which was so distinctly heard by Jesus and his disciples. There is no account, indeed, in either case, of any thunder storm accompanying the events; but there is nothing in the incidents to forbid it; and the nature of the effects upon the company who heard and saw, can be reconciled only with the supposition of a burst of actual thunder and lightning, which God made the organ of his awful voice, speaking to Saul in words that called him from a course of sin and cruelty, to be a minister of grace, mercy and peace, to all whose destroying persecutor he had before been. The sequel of the effects, too, are such as would naturally follow these material agencies. The men who were least stunned, rose to their feet soon after the first shock; and when the awful scene was over, they bestirred themselves to lift up Saul, who was now found, not only speechless, but blind,――the eyes being so dazzled by such excess of light, that the nerve loses all its power, generally, forever. Saul being now raised from the ground, was led, helpless and thunder-struck, by his distressed attendants, into the city, which he had hoped to make the scene of his cruel persecutions, but which he now entered, more surely bound, than could have been the most wretched of his destined captives.

Kuinoel and Bloomfield will furnish the inquiring reader with the amusing details of the hypotheses, by which some of the moderns have attempted to explain away the whole of Saul’s conversion, into a mere remarkable succession of natural occurrences, without any miracle at all.

HIS STAY IN DAMASCUS.

Thus did the commissioned persecutor enter the ancient capital of Aram. But as they led him along the flowery ways into this Syrian paradise, how vain were its splendors, its beauties and its historic glories, to the eyes which had so long strained over the far horizon, to catch the first gleam of its white towers and rosy gardens, beyond the mountain-walls. In vain did Damascus invite the admiring gaze of the passing traveler, to those damask roses embowering and hedging his path, which take their name in modern times, from the gardens where they first bloomed under the hand of man. In vain did their fragrance woo his nobler sense to perceive their beauty of form and hue; in vain did the long line of palaces and towers and temples, still bright in the venerable splendor of the ancient Aramaic kings, rise in majesty before him. The eyes that had so often dwelt on these historical monuments, in the distant and brilliant fancies of studious youth, were now closed to the not less brilliant splendors of the reality; and through the ancient arches of those mighty gates, and along the crowded streets, amid the noise of bustling thousands, the commissioned minister of wrath now moved distressed, darkened, speechless and horror-struck,――marked, like the first murderer, (of whose crime that spot was the fabled scene,) by the hand of God. The hand of God was indeed on him, not in wrath, but in mercy, sealing his abused bodily vision for a short space, until his mental eyes, purified from the scales of prejudice and unholy zeal, should have become fitted for the perception of objects, whose beauty and glory should be the theme of his thoughts and words, through all his later days, and of his discourse to millions for whom his heart now felt no love, but for whose salvation he was destined to freely spend and offer up his life. Passing along the crowded ways of the great city, under the guidance of his attendants, he was at last led into the street, which for its regularity was called the “Straight Way,” and there was lodged in the house of a person named Judas,――remaining for three days in utter darkness, without the presence of a single friend, and without the glimmer of a hope that he should ever again see the light of day. Disconsolate and desolate, he passed the whole of this period in fasting, without one earthly object or call, to distract his attention from the solemn themes of his heavenly vision. He had all this long interval for reflection on the strange reversion of destiny pointed out by this indisputable decree, which summoned him from works of cruelty and destruction, to deeds of charity, kindness and devotion to those whose ruin he had lately sought with his whole heart. At the close of this season of lonely but blessed meditation, a new revelation of the commanding presence of the Deity was made to a humble and devout Christian of Damascus, named Ananias, known even among the Jews as a man of blameless character. To him, in a vision, the Lord appeared, and calling him by name, directed him most minutely to the house where Saul was lodging, and gave him the miraculous commission of restoring to sight that same Saul, now deprived of this sense by the visitation of God, but expecting its restoration by the hands of Ananias himself, who though yet unknown to him in the body, had been distinctly seen in a vision by the blind sufferer, as his healer, in the name of that Jesus who had met him in the way and smote him with this blindness, dazzling him with the excess of his unveiled heavenly glories. Ananias, yet appalled by the startling view of the bright messenger, and doubting the nature of the vision which summoned him to a duty so strangely inconsistent with the dreadful fame and character of the person named as the subject of his miraculous ministrations, hesitated to promise obedience, and parleyed with his summoner. “Lord! I have heard by many, of this man, how much evil he has done to thy saints at Jerusalem; and here, he has commission from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name.” The merciful Lord, not resenting the rational doubts of his devout but alarmed servant, replied in words of considerate explanation, renewing his charge, with assurances of the safe and hopeful accomplishment of his appointed task. “Go thy way: for he is a chosen instrument of mercy for me, to bear my name before nations and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how great things he must suffer for the sake of my name.” Ananias, no longer doubting, now went his way as directed, and finding Saul, clearly addressed him in terms of confidence and even of affection, recognizing him, on the testimony of the vision, as already a friend of those companions of Jesus, whom he had lately persecuted. He put his hands on him, in the usual form of invoking a blessing on any one, and said, “Brother Saul! the Lord Jesus, who appeared to thee in the way, as thou camest, has sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with a holy spirit.” And immediately there fell from the eyes of the blinded persecutor, something like scales, and he saw now, in bodily, real presence, him who had already been in form revealed to his spirit, in a vision. At the same moment, fell from his inward sense, the obscuring film of prejudice and bigotry. Renewed in mental vision, he saw with the clear eye of confiding faith and eternal hope, that Jesus, who in the full revelation of his vindictive majesty having dazzled and blinded him in his murderous career, now appeared to his purified sense, in the tempered rays and mild effulgence of redeeming grace. Changed too, in the whole frame of his mind, he felt no more the promptings of that dark spirit of cruelty, but, filled with a holy spirit, before unknown to him, he began a new existence, replete with the energies of a divine influence. No longer fasting in token of distress, he now ate, by way of thanksgiving for his joyful restoration, and was strengthened thereby for the great task which he had undertaken. He was now admitted to the fellowship of the disciples of Jesus, and remained many days among them as a brother, mingling in the most friendly intercourse with those very persons, against whom he came to wage exterminating ruin. Nor did he confine his actions in his new character to the privacies of Christian intercourse. Going immediately into the synagogues, he there publicly proclaimed his belief in Jesus Christ, and boldly maintained him to be the Son of God. Great was the amazement of all who heard him. The fame of Saul of Tarsus, as a ferocious and determined persecutor of all who professed the faith of Jesus, had already pervaded Palestine, and spread into Syria; and what did this strange display now mean? They saw him, whom they had thus known by his dreadful reputation as a hater and exterminator of the Nazarene doctrine, now preaching it in the schools of the Jewish law and the houses of worship for the adherents of Mosaic forms, and with great power persuading others to a similar renunciation of all opposition to the name of Jesus; and they said, “Is not this he who destroyed them that called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither, with the very purpose of taking them bound, to the Sanhedrim, for punishment?” But Saul, each day advancing in the knowledge and faith of the Christian doctrine, soon grew too strong in argument for the most skilful of the defenders of the Jewish faith; and utterly confounded them with his proofs that Jesus was the very Messiah. This triumphant course he followed for a long time; until, at last, the stubborn Jews, provoked to the highest degree by the defeats which they had suffered from this powerful disputant, lately their most zealous defender, took counsel to put him to death, as a renegade from the faith, of which he had been the trusted professor, as well as the commissioned minister of its vengeance on the heretics whose cause he had now espoused, and was defending, to the great injury and discredit of the Judaical order. In contriving the means of executing this scheme, they received the support and assistance of the government of the city,――Damascus being then held, not by the Romans, but by Aretas, a petty king of northern Arabia. The governor appointed by Aretas did not scruple to aid the Jews in their murderous project; but even himself, with a detachment of the city garrison, kept watch at the gates, to kill Saul at his first outgoing. But all their wicked plots were set at nought by a very simple contrivance. The Christian friends of Saul, hearing of the danger, determined to remove him from it at once; and accordingly, one night, put the destined apostle of the Gentiles in a basket; and through the window of some one of their houses, which adjoined the barriers of the city, they let him down outside of the wall, while the spiteful Jews, with the complaisant governor and his detachment of the city guard, were to no purpose watching the gates with unceasing resolution, to wreak their vengeance on this dangerous convert.

Michaelis alludes to the difficulties which have arisen about the possession of Damascus by Aretas, and concludes as follows:

“The force of these objections has been considerably weakened, in a dissertation published in 1755, ‘De ethnarcha Aretae Arabum regis Paulo insidiante,’ by J. G. Heyne, who has shown it to be highly probable, first, that Aretas, against whom the Romans, not long before the death of Tiberius, made a declaration of war, which they neglected to put in execution, took the opportunity of seizing Damascus, which had once belonged to his ancestors; an event omitted in Josephus, as forming no part of the Jewish history, and by the Roman historians as being a matter not flattering in itself, and belonging only to a distant province. Secondly, that Aretas was by religion a Jew,――a circumstance the more credible, when we reflect that Judaism had been widely propagated in that country, and that even kings in Arabia Felix had recognized the law of Moses. * * * And hence we may explain the reason why the Jews were permitted to exercise, in Damascus, persecutions still severer than those in Jerusalem, where the violence of their zeal was awed by the moderation of the Roman policy. Of this we find an example in the ninth chapter of the Acts, where Paul is sent by the high priest to Damascus, to exercise against the Christians, cruelties which the return of the Roman governor had checked in Judea. These accounts agree likewise with what is related in Josephus, that the number of Jews in Damascus amounted to ten thousand, and that almost all the women, even those whose husbands were heathens, were of the Jewish religion.” (Michaelis, Introduction, Vol. IV. Part I. c. ii. § 12.)

HIS RESIDENCE IN ARABIA.

On his escape from this murderous plot, Saul, having now received from God, who called him by his grace, the revelation of his Son, that he might preach him among the heathen, immediately resolved not to confer with any mortal, on the subject of his task, and therefore refrained from going up to Jerusalem, to visit those who were apostles before him. Turning his course southeastward, he found refuge from the rage of the Damascan Jews, in the solitudes of the eastern deserts, where, free alike from the persecutions and the corruptions of the city, he sought in meditation and lonely study, that diligent preparation which was necessary for the high ministry to which God had so remarkably called him. A long time was spent by him in this wise and profitable seclusion; but the exact period cannot be ascertained. It is only probable that more than a year was thus occupied; during which he was not a mere hermit, indeed, but at any rate, was a resident in a region destitute of most objects which would be apt to draw off his attention from study. That part of Arabia in which he took refuge, was not a mere desert, nor a wilderness, yet had very few towns, and those only of a small size, with hardly any inhabitants of such a character as to be attractive companions to Saul. After some time, changes having taken place in the government of Damascus, he was enabled to return thither with safety, the Jews being now checked in their persecuting cruelty by the re-establishment of the Roman dominion over that part of Syria. He did not remain there long; but having again displayed himself as a bold assertor of the faith of Jesus, he next set his face towards Jerusalem, on his return, to make known in the halls of those who had sent him forth to deeds of blood, that their commission had been reversed by the Father of all spirits, who had now not only summoned, but fully equipped, their destined minister of wrath, to be “a chosen instrument of mercy” to nations who had never yet heard of Israel’s God.

The different accounts given of these events, in Acts ix. 19‒25, and in Galatians i. 15‒24, as well as 2 Corinthians xi. 32‒33, have been united in very opposite ways by different commentators, and form the most perplexing passages in the life of Saul. The journey into Arabia, of which he speaks in Galatians i. 17, is supposed by most writers, to have been made during the time when Luke mentions him as occupied in and about Damascus; and it is said that he went thence into Arabia immediately after his conversion, before he had preached anywhere; and such writers maintain that the word “straightway,” or “immediately,” in Acts ix. 20, (ευθεως,) really means, that it was not until a long time after his conversion that he preached in the synagogues!! Into this remarkable opinion they have been led by the fact, that Saul himself says, (Galatians i. 16,) that when he was called by God to the apostleship, “immediately he conferred not with flesh and blood, nor went up to Jerusalem, but went into Arabia.” All this however, is evidently specified by him only in reference to the point that he did not derive his title to the apostleship from “those that were apostles before him,” nor from any human authority; and full justice is therefore done to his words, by applying them only to the fact, that he went to Arabia before he went to Jerusalem, without supposing them to mean that he left Damascus immediately after his baptism by Ananias. All the historical writers however, seem to take this latter view. Witsius, Cappel, Pearson, Lardner, Murdock, Hemsen, &c. place his journey to Arabia between his baptism and the time of his escape, and suppose that when he fled from Damascus, he went directly to Jerusalem. In the different arrangement which I make of these events, however, I find myself supported by most of the great exegetical writers, as Wolf, Kuinoel, and Bloomfield; and I can not better support this view than in the words of the latter.

Acts ix. 19. “ἐγένετο δὲ ὁ Σαῦλος. Paul (Galatians ♦i. 17,) relates that he, after his conversion, did not proceed to Jerusalem, but repaired to Arabia, and from thence returned to Damascus. Hence, according to the opinion of Pearson, in his Annales Paulini, p. 2. the words ἐγένετο δὲ ὁ Σαῦλος are to be separated from the preceding passage, and constitute a new story, in which is related what happened at Damascus after Saul’s return from Arabia. But the words ἱκαναὶ ἡμέραι may and ought to be referred to the whole time of Paul’s abode at Damascus, before he went into Arabia; and thus with the ἱκαναὶ ἡμέραι be numbered the ἡμέραι τινὲς mentioned at verse 19: for the sense of the words is this: ‘Saul, when he spent some days with the Damascene Christians, immediately taught in the synagogues. Now Luke entirely passes by Paul’s journey into Arabia. (Kuinoel.) Doddridge imagines that his going into Arabia, (to which, as he observes, Damascus now belonged,) was only making excursions from that city into the neighboring parts of the country, and perhaps taking a large circuit about it, which might be his employment between the time in which he began to preach in Damascus, and his quitting it after having been conquered by the Romans under Pompey.’ But in view of this subject I cannot agree with him. The country in the neighborhood of Damascus is not properly Arabia.”

♦ “1, 17” replaced with “i. 17”

22‒24. “ὡς δὲ ἐπληροῦντο――ἀνελεῖν αὐτόν. In 2 Corinthians xi. 32, we read that the Ethnarch of Aretas, king of Arabia, had placed a guard at the gates of Damascus, to seize Paul. Now it appears that Syria Damascene was, at the end of the Mithridatic war, reduced by Pompey to the Roman yoke. It has therefore been inquired how it could happen that Aretas should then have the government, and appoint an Ethnarch. That Aretas had, on account of the repudiation of his daughter by Herod Antipas, commenced hostilities against that monarch, and in the last year of Tiberius (A. D. 37,) had completely defeated his army, we learn from Josephus Antiquities, 18, 5, 1. seqq. Herod had, we find, signified this by letter to Tiberius, who, indignant at this audacity, (Josephus L. c.) gave orders to Vitellius, prefect of Syria, to declare war against Aretas, and take him alive, or send him his head. Vitellius made preparations for the war, but on receiving a message acquainting him with the death of Tiberius, he dismissed his troops into winter quarters. And thus Aretas was delivered from the danger. At the time, however, that Vitellius drew off his forces, Aretas invaded Syria, seized Damascus, and continued to occupy it, in spite of Tiberius’s stupid successor, Caligula. This is the opinion of most commentators, and among others, Wolf, Michaelis, and Eichhorn. But I have already shewn in the Prolegomena § de chronologia lib. 2, 3, that Aretas did not finally subdue Damascus until Vitellius had already departed from the province.” (Kuinoel.) (Bloomfield’s Annotations, Vol. IV. pp. 322‒324.)

HIS RETURN TO JERUSALEM.

Arriving in the city, whence only three years before he had set out, in a frame of mind so different from that in which he returned, and with a purpose so opposite to his present views and plans,――he immediately, with all the confidence of Christian faith, and ardent love for those to whom his religious sympathies now so closely fastened him, assayed to mingle in a familiar and friendly manner with the apostolic company, and offered himself to their Christian fellowship as a devout believer in Jesus. But they, already having too well known him in his previous character as the persecutor of their brethren, the aider and abettor in the murder of the heroic and innocent Stephen, and the greatest enemy of the faithful,――very decidedly repulsed his advances, as only a new trick to involve them in difficulties, that would make them liable to punishment which their prudence had before enabled them to escape. They therefore altogether refused to receive Saul; for “they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.” In this disagreeable condition,――cast out as a hypocrite, by the apostles of that faith, for which he had sacrificed all earthly prospects,――he was fortunately found by Barnabas, who being, like Saul, a Hellenist Jew, naturally felt some especial sympathy with one whose country was within a few miles of his own; and by this circumstance, being induced to notice the professed convert, soon recognized in him, the indubitable signs of a regenerated and sanctified spirit, and therefore brought him to the chief apostles, Peter, and James, the Lord’s brother; for with these alone did Saul commune, at this visit, as he himself distinctly testifies. Still avoiding the company of the great mass of the apostles and disciples, he confined himself almost wholly to the acquaintance of Peter, with whom he abode in close familiarity for fifteen days. In order to reconcile the narrative of Luke in the Acts, with the account given by Saul himself, in the first chapter of the epistle to the Galatians, it must be understood that the “apostles” spoken of by the former are only the two above-mentioned, and it was with these only that he “went in and out at Jerusalem,”――the other apostles being probably absent on some missionary duties among the new churches throughout Judea and Palestine. Imitating the spirit of the proto-martyr, whose death he had himself been instrumental in effecting, “he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Hellenists,” doubtless the very same persons among whom he himself had formerly been enrolled as an unshrinking opposer of that faith which he was now advocating. By them he was received with all that vindictive hate which might have been expected; and he was at once denounced as a vile renegade from the cause which in his best days he had maintained as the only right one. To show most satisfactorily that, though he might change, they had not done so, they directly resolved to punish the bold disowner of the faith of his fathers, and would soon have crowned him with the fate of Stephen, had not the disciples heard of the danger which threatened the life of their new brother, and provided for his escape by means not less efficient than those before used in his behalf, at Damascus. Before the plans for his destruction could be completed, they privately withdrew him from Jerusalem, and had him safely conducted down to Caesarea, on the coast, whence, with little delay, he was shipped for some of the northern parts of Syria, from which he found his way to Tarsus,――whether by land or sea, is unknown.

HIS VISIT TO TARSUS.

This return to his native city was probably the first visit which he had made to it, since the day when he departed from his father’s house, to go to Jerusalem as a student of Jewish theology. It must therefore have been the occasion of many interesting reflections and reminiscences. What changes had the events of that interval wrought in him,――in his faith, his hopes, his views, his purposes for life and for death! The objects which were then to him as idols,――the aims and ends of his being,――had now no place in his reverence or his affection; but in their stead was now placed a name and a theme, of which he could hardly have heard before he first left Tarsus,――and a cause whose triumph would be the overthrow of all those traditions of the Fathers, of which he had been taught to be so exceeding zealous. To this new cause he now devoted himself, and probably at this time labored “in the regions of Cilicia,” until a new apostolic summons called him to a distant field. He was yet “personally unknown to the churches of Judea, which were in Christ; and they had only heard, that he who persecuted them in times past, now preached the faith which once he destroyed; they therefore glorified God on his account.” The very beginnings of his apostolic duties were therefore in a foreign field, and not within the original premises of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, where indeed he was not even known but by fame, except to a few in Jerusalem. In this he showed the great scope and direction of his future labors,――among the Gentiles, not among the Jews; leaving the latter to the sole care of the original apostles, while he turned to a vast field for which they were in no way fitted, by nature, or by apostolic education, nor were destined in the great scheme of salvation.

HIS APOSTOLIC LABORS IN ANTIOCH.

During this retirement of Saul to his native home, the first great call of the Gentiles had been made through the summons of Simon Peter to Cornelius. There was manifest wisdom in this arrangement of events. Though the original apostles were plainly never intended, by providence, to labor to any great extent in the Gentile field, yet it was most manifestly proper that the first opening of this new field should be made by those directly and personally commissioned by Jesus himself, and who, from having enjoyed his bodily presence for so long a time, would be considered best qualified to judge of the propriety of a movement so novel and unprecedented in its character. The great apostolic chief was therefore made the first minister of grace to the Gentiles; and the violent opposition with which this innovation on Judaical sanctity was received by the more bigoted, could of course be much more efficiently met, and disarmed, by the apostle specially commissioned as the keeper of the keys of the heavenly kingdom, than by one who had been but lately a persecutor of the faithful, and who, by his birth and partial education in a Grecian city, had acquired such a familiarity with Gentile usages, as to be reasonably liable to suspicion, in regard to an innovation which so remarkably favored them. This great movement having been thus made by the highest Christian authority on earth,――and the controversy immediately resulting having been thus decided,――the way was now fully open for the complete extension of the gospel to the heathen, and Saul was therefore immediately called, in providence, from his retirement, to take up the work of evangelizing Syria, which had already been partially begun at Antioch, by some of the Hellenistic refugees from the persecution at the time of Stephen’s martyrdom. The apostles at Jerusalem, hearing of the success which attended these incidental efforts, dispatched their trusty brother Barnabas, to confirm the good work, under the direct commission of apostolic authority. He, having come to Antioch, rejoiced his heart with the sight of the success which had crowned the work of those who, in the midst of the personal distress of a malignant persecution, that had driven them from Jerusalem, had there sown a seed that was already bringing forth glorious fruits. Perceiving the immense importance of the field there opened, he immediately felt the want of some person of different qualifications from the original apostles, and one whose education and habits would fit him not only to labor among the professors of the Jewish faith, but also to communicate the doctrines of Christ to the Grecians. In this crisis he bethought himself of the wonderful young convert with whom he had become acquainted, under such remarkable circumstances, a few years before, in Jerusalem,――whose daring zeal and masterly learning had been so signally manifested among the Hellenists, with whom he had formerly been associated as an equally active persecutor. Inspired both by considerations of personal regard, and by wise convictions of the peculiar fitness of this zealous disciple for the field now opened in Syria, Barnabas immediately left his apostolic charge at Antioch, and went over to Tarsus, to invite Saul to this great labor. The journey was but a short one, the distance by water being not more than one hundred miles, and by land, around through the “Syrian gates,” about one hundred and fifty. He therefore soon arrived at Saul’s home, and found him ready and willing to undertake the proposed apostolic duty. They immediately returned together to Antioch, and earnestly devoted themselves to their interesting labors.

“Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, was built, according to some authors, by Antiochus Epiphanes; others affirm, by Seleucus Nicanor, the first king of Syria after Alexander the Great, in memory of his father Antiochus, and was the ‘royal seat of the kings of Syria.’ For power and dignity, Strabo, (lib. xvi. p. 517,) says it was not much inferior to Seleucia, or Alexandria. Josephus, (lib. iii. cap. 3,) says, it was the third great city of all that belonged to the Roman provinces. It was frequently called Antiochia Epidaphne, from its neighborhood to Daphne, a village where the temple of Daphne stood, to distinguish it from other fourteen of the same name mentioned by Stephanus de Urbibus, and by Eustathius in Dionysius p. 170; or as Appianus (in Syriacis,) and others, sixteen cities in Syria, and elsewhere, which bore that name. It was celebrated among the Jews for ‘Jus civitatis,’ which Seleucus Nicanor had given them in that city with the Grecians and Macedonians, and which, says Josephus, they still retain, Antiquities, lib. xii. cap. 13; and for the wars of the Maccabeans with those kings. Among Christians, for being the place where they first received that name, and where Saul and Barnabas began their apostolic labors together. In the flourishing times of the Roman empire, it was the ordinary residence of the prefect or governor of the eastern provinces, and also honored with the residence of many of the Roman emperors, especially of Verus and Valens, who spent here the greatest part of their time. It lay on both sides of the river Orontes, about twelve miles from the Mediterranean sea.” (Wells’s Geography New Testament――Whitby’s Table.) (J. M. Williams’s Notes on Pearson’s Annales Paulinae.)

Having arrived at Antioch, Saul gave himself, with Barnabas, zealously to the work for which he had been summoned, and labored among the people to good purpose, assembling the church and imparting to all that would hear, the knowledge of the Christian doctrine. Under these active exertions the professors of the faith of Jesus became so numerous and so generally known in Antioch, that the heathen inhabitants found it convenient to designate them by a distinct appellation, which they derived from the great founder and object of their religion,――calling them Christians, because the heathen inhabitants of Syria were not acquainted with the terms, “Nazarene” and “Galilean,” which had been applied to the followers of Christ by the Jews, partly from the places where they first appeared, and partly in opprobium for their low provincial origin.

The name now first created by the Syrians to distinguish the sect, is remarkable, because being derived from a Greek word, Christos, it has a Latin adjective termination, Christianus, and is therefore incontestably shown to have been applied by the Roman inhabitants of Antioch; for no Grecian would ever have been guilty of such a barbarism, in the derivation of one word from another in his own language. The proper Greek form of the derivation would have been Christicos, or Christenos, and the substantive would have been, not Christianity, but Christicism, or Christenism,――a word so awkward in sound, however, that it is very well for all Christendom, that the Roman barbarism took the place of the pure Greek termination. And since the Latin form of the first derivative has prevailed, and Christian thus been made the name of “a believer in Christ,” it is evident to any classical scholar, that Christianity is the only proper form of the substantive secondarily derived. For though the appending of a Latin termination upon a Greek word, as in the case of Christianus, was unquestionably a blunder and a barbarism in the first place, it yet can not compare, for absurdity, with the notion of deriving from this Latin form, the substantive Christianismus, with a Greek termination foolishly pinned to a Latin one,――a folly of which the French are nevertheless guilty. The error, of course, can not now be corrected in that language; but those who stupidly copy the barbarism from them, and try to introduce the monstrous word, ChristianISM, into English, deserve the reprobation of every man of taste.

“Before this they were called ‘disciples,’ as in this place――‘believers,’ Acts v. 14――‘men of the church,’ Acts xii. 1――‘men of the way,’ Acts ix. 2――‘the saints,’ Acts ix. 13――‘those that called on the name of Christ,’ verse 14――and by their enemies, Nazarenes and Galileans, and ‘men of the sect;’――but now, by the conversion of so many heathens, both in Caesarea and Antioch, the believing Jews and Gentiles being made all one church, this new name was given them, as more expressive of their common relation to their Master, Christ. Whitby slightly alludes to the prophecy, Isaiah lxv.” (J. M. Williams’s Notes on Pearson.)

While Saul was thus effectually laboring in Antioch, there came down to that city, from Jerusalem, certain persons, indued with the spirit of prophecy, among whom was one, named Agabus, who, under the influence of inspiration, made known that there would be a great famine throughout the world;――a prediction which was verified by the actual occurrence of this calamity in the days of Claudius Caesar, during whose reign,――as appears on the impartial testimony of the historians of those times, both Roman and Jewish,――the Roman empire suffered at different periods in all its parts, from the capital to Jerusalem,――and at this latter city, more especially, in the sixth year of Claudius, (A. D. 46,) as is testified by Josephus, who narrates very particularly some circumstances connected with the prevalence of this famine in Jerusalem. The disciples at Antioch, availing themselves of this information, determined to send relief to their brethren in Judea, before the famine should come on; and having contributed, each one according to his ability, they made Barnabas and Saul the messengers of their charity, who were accordingly dispatched to Jerusalem, on this noble errand. They remained in Jerusalem through the period of Agrippa’s attack upon the apostles by murdering James, and imprisoning Peter; but they do not seem to have been any way immediately concerned in these events; and when Peter had escaped, they returned to Antioch. How long they remained here, is not recorded; but the date of subsequent events seems to imply that it was a space of some years, during which they labored at Antioch in company with several other eminent prophets and teachers, of whom are mentioned Simeon, who had the Roman surname of Niger, Lucius, the Cyrenian, and Manaen, a foster-brother of Herod the tetrarch. During their common ministrations, at a season of fasting, they received a direction from the spirit of truth which guided them, to set apart Saul and Barnabas for the special work to which the Lord had called them. This work was of course understood to be that for which Saul in particular, had, at his conversion, been so remarkably commissioned,――“to open the eyes of the Gentiles,――to turn them from darkness to light, and from the dominion of Satan to God.” His brethren in the ministry therefore, understanding at once the nature and object of the summons, now specially consecrated both him and Barnabas for their missionary work; and after fasting and praying, they invoked on them the blessing of God, in the usual oriental form of laying their hands on them, and then bade them farewell.

“That this famine was felt chiefly in Judea may be conjectured with great reason from the nature of the context, for we find that the disciples are resolving to send relief to the elders in Judea; consequently they must have understood that those in Judea would suffer more than themselves. Josephus declared that this famine raged so much there, πολλῶν ὑπό ἐνδείας ἀναλωμάτων φθειρομένων, ‘so that many perished for want of victuals.’”

“‘Throughout the whole world,’ πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην, is first to be understood, orbis terrarum habitabilis: Demosthenes in Corona, Æschines contra Ctesiphon Scapula. Then the Roman and other empires were styled οικουμένη, ‘the world.’ Thus Isaiah xiv. 17, 26, the counsel of God against the empire of Babylon, is called his counsel, ἐπὶ τὴν ὅλην οἰκουμένην, ‘against all the earth.’――(Elsley, Whitby.) Accordingly Eusebius says of this famine, that it oppressed almost the whole empire. And as for the truth of the prophecy, this dearth is recorded by historians most averse to our religion, viz., by Suetonius in the life of Claudius, chapter 18, who informs us that it happened ‘ob assiduas sterilitates;’ and Dion Cassius History lib. lx. p. 146, that it was λιμὸς ἰσχυρὸς, ‘a very great famine.’ Whitby’s Annotations, Doddridge enumerates nine famines in various years, and parts of the empire, in the reign of Claudius; but the first was the most severe, and affected particularly Judea, and is that here meant.” (J. M. Williams’s notes on Pearson.)

HIS FIRST APOSTOLIC MISSION.

Going from Antioch directly eastward to the sea, they came to Seleucia, the nearest port, only twelve miles from Antioch, and there embarked for the island of Cyprus, the eastern end of which is not more than eighty miles from the coast of Syria. The circumstance that more particularly directed them first to this island, was probably that it was the native home of Barnabas, and with this region therefore he would feel so much acquainted as to know its peculiar wants, and the facilities which it afforded for the advancement of the Christian cause; and he would also know where he might look for the most favorable reception. Landing at Salamis, on the south-eastern part of the island, they first preached in the synagogues of the Jews, who were very numerous in Cyprus, and constituted so large a part of the population of the island, that some years afterwards they attempted to get complete possession of it, and were put down only by the massacre of many thousands. Directing their efforts first to these wandering sheep of the house of Israel, the apostles everywhere preached the gospel in the synagogues, never forsaking the Jews for the Gentiles, until they had been driven away by insult and injury, that thus the ruin of their nation might lie, not upon the apostles, but upon them only, for their rejection of the repeated offers of salvation. Here, it would seem, they were joined by John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, who was probably staying upon the island at that time, and who now accompanied them as an assistant in their apostolic ministry. Traversing the whole island from east to west, they came to Paphos, a splendid city near the western end, famed for the magnificent temple and lascivious worship of the Paphian Venus, a deity to whom all Cyprus was consecrated; and from it she derived one of her numerous appellatives, Cypris being a name under which she was frequently worshipped; and the females of the island generally, were so completely devoted to her service, not merely in temple-worship, but in life and manners, that throughout the world, the name Cyprian woman, even to this day, is but a polite expression for one abandoned to wantonness and pleasure. The worship of this lascivious goddess, the apostles now came to exterminate, and to plant in its stead the dominion of a faith, whose essence is purity of heart and action. At this place, preaching the gospel with openness, they soon attracted such general notice, that the report of their remarkable character soon reached the ears of the proconsul of Cyprus, then resident in Paphos. This great Roman governor, by name Sergius Paulus, was a man of intelligence and probity, and hearing of the apostles, soon summoned them to his presence, that he might have the satisfaction of hearing from them, in his own hall, a full exposition of the doctrine which they called the word of God. This they did with such energy and efficiency, that they won his attention and regard; and he was about to profess his faith in Jesus, when a new obstacle to the success of the gospel was presented in the conduct of one of those present at the discourse. This was an impostor, called Elymas,――a name which seems to be a Greek form of the Oriental “Alim” meaning “a magician,”――who had, by his tricks, gained a great renown throughout that region, and was received into high favor by the proconsul himself, with whom he was then staying. The rogue, apprehending the nature of the doctrines taught by the apostles to be no way agreeable to the schemes of self-advancement which he was so successfully pursuing, was not a little alarmed when he saw that they were taking hold of the mind of the proconsul, and therefore undertook to resist the preaching of the apostles; and attempted to argue the noble convert into a contempt of these new teachers. At this, Saul, (now first called Paul,) fixing his eyes on the miserable impostor, in a burst of inspired indignation, denounced on him an awful punishment for his resistance of the truth. “O, full of all guile and all tricks! son of the devil! enemy of all honesty! wilt thou not stop perverting the ways of the Lord? And now, lo! the hand of the Lord is on thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.” And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and turning around, he sought some persons to lead him by the hand. At the sight of this manifest and appalling miracle, thus following the denunciation of the apostle, the proconsul was so struck, that he no longer delayed for a moment his profession of faith in the religion whose power was thus attested, but believed in the doctrine of Jesus, as communicated by his apostles.

“Seleucia was a little north-west of Antioch, upon the Mediterranean sea, named from its founder, Seleucus.――Cyprus, so called from the flower of the Cypress-trees growing there.――Pliny, lib. xii. cap. 24.――Eustathius. In Dionysius p. 110. It was an island, having on the east the Syrian, on the west the Pamphylian, on the south the Phoenician, on the north the Cilician sea. It was celebrated among the heathens for its fertility as being sufficiently provided with all things within itself. Strabo, lib. xiv. 468, 469. It was very infamous for the worship of Venus, who had thence her name Κύπρις. It was memorable among the Jews as being an island in which they so much abounded; and among Christians for being the place where Joses, called Barnabas, had the land he sold, Acts iv. 36; and where Mnason, an old disciple, lived; Acts xxi. 16.――(Whitby’s Table.) Salamis was once a famous city of Cyprus, opposite to Seleucia, on the Syrian coast.――(Wells.) It was in the eastern part of Cyprus. It was famous among the Greek writers for the story of the Dragon killed by Chycreas, their king; and for the death of Anaxarchus, whom Nicocreon, the tyrant of that island, pounded to death with iron pestles.”――(Bochart, Canaan, lib. i. c. 2――Laert, lib. ix. p. 579.) Williams’s Pearson.

Proconsul.――The Greek title Ανθυπατος, was applied only to those governors of provinces who were invested with proconsular dignity. ‘And on the supposition that Cyprus was not a province of this description, it has been inferred that the title given to Sergius Paulus in this place, was a title that did not properly belong to him. A passage has indeed been quoted from Dion Cassius, (History of Rome, lib. liv. p. 523, edited by Hanoviae, 1690,) who, speaking of the governors of Cyprus and some other Roman provinces, applies to them the same title which is applied to Sergius Paulus. But, as Dion Cassius is speaking of several Roman provinces at the same time, one of which was certainly governed by a proconsul, it has been supposed, that for the sake of brevity, he used one term for all of them, whether it applied to all of them or not. That Cyprus, however, ought to be excluded, and that the title which he employed, as well as St. Luke, really did belong to the Roman governors of Cyprus, appears from the inscription on a coin belonging to Cyprus itself. It belonged to the people of that island as appears from the word ΚΥΠΡΙΩΝ on the reverse: and, though not struck while Sergius Paulus himself was governor, it was struck, as appears from the inscription on the reverse, in the time of Proclus, who was next to Sergius Paulus in the government of Cyprus. And, on this coin the same title ΑΝΘΥΠΑΤΟΣ, is given to Proclus, which St. Luke gives Sergius Paulus.’ (Bishop Marsh’s Lecture part v. pp. 85, 86.) That Cyprus was a proconsulate, is also evident ♦from an ancient inscription of Caligula’s reign, in which Aquius Scaura is called the proconsul of Cyprus. (Gruteri Corpus Inscriptionem, tom. i. part ii. p, cccix. No. 3, edited by Graevii Amsterdam, 1707.) Horne’s Introd.

♦ “lrom” replaced with “from”

HIS CHANGE OF NAME.

In connection with this first miracle of the apostle of Tarsus, it is mentioned by the historian of the Acts of the Apostles, that Saul thenceforth bore the name of Paul, and the reader is thence fairly led to suppose, that the name was taken from that of Sergius Paul, who is the most important personage concerned in the event; and being the first eminent man who is specified as having been converted by the apostle, seems therefore to deserve, in this case, the honor of conferring a new name on the wonder-working Saul. This coincidence between the name and the occasion, may be justly esteemed sufficient ground for assuming this as the true origin of the name by which the apostle was ever after designated,――which he applies to himself in his writings, and by which he is always mentioned throughout the Christian world, in all ages. With the name of “Saul of Tarsus,” there were too many evil associations already inseparably connected, in the minds of all the Jewish inhabitants of the east, and the troublesome character of those prevalent impressions having been perhaps particularly obvious to the apostle, during his first missionary tour, he seized this honorable occasion, to exchange it for one that had no such evil associations; and he was therefore afterwards known only by the name of PAUL.

Embarking at Paphos, the apostles, after doubling cape Acamas, the most western point of the island, sailed northwestward, towards the northern coast of Asia Minor,――and after a voyage of about two hundred miles, reached Perga, a city in Pamphylia. This place was not a sea-port, but stood on the west bank of the river Cestrus, about eight miles from the sea. It was there built by the Attalian kings of south-western Asia, and was by them made the most splendid city of Pamphylia. Near the town, and on a rising ground, was a very famous temple of Diana, to which every year resorted a grand religious assembly, to celebrate the worship of this great Asian goddess. In such a strong hold of heathenism, the apostles must have found much occasion for the preaching of the gospel; but the historian of their Acts gives no account of anything here said or done by them, and only mentions that at this place their companion, John Mark, gave up his ministration with them, and returned to Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas then went on without him, to the north, and proceeded, without any material delay, directly through Pamphylia, and over the ranges of Taurus, through Pisidia, into Phrygia Katakekaumene, where they made some stay at the city of Antioch, which was distinguished from the great capital of Syria bearing the same royal name, by being called “Antioch of Pisidia,” because, though really within the boundaries of Phrygia, it was often numbered among the cities of the province next south, near whose borders it stood, and was therefore associated with the towns of Pisidia by those who lived south and east of them. At this place the apostles probably arrived towards the last of the week, and reposing here on the sabbath, they went into the Jewish synagogue, along with the usual worshiping assembly, and took their seats quietly among the rest. After the regular service of the day (consisting of the reading of select portions of the law and the prophets) was over, the minister of the synagogue, according to custom, gave an invitation to the apostles to preach to the people, if they felt disposed to do so. It should be noticed, that in the Jewish synagogues, there was no regular person appointed to preach, the minister being only a sort of reader, who conducted the devotions of the meeting, and chanted the lessons from the Scriptures, as arranged for each sabbath. When these regular duties were over, the custom was to invite a discourse from any person disposed or qualified to address the people,――the whole being always thus conducted somewhat on the plan of a modern “conference meeting.” On this day, the minister, noticing two grave and intelligent-looking persons among the worshipers, joining devoutly in the service of God, and perceiving them to be of a higher order than most of the assembly, or perhaps having received a previous hint of the fact that they were well-qualified religious teachers, who had valuable doctrines to communicate to the people,――sent word to them, “Brethren! if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.” Paul then,――as usual, taking the precedence of Barnabas in speaking, on account of his own superior endowments as an orator,――addressed the meeting, beginning with the usual form of words, accompanied with a graceful gesticulation, beseeching their favor. “Men of Israel! and you that fear God! give your attention.” The two different classes of persons included in this formula, are evidently, first, those who were Jews by birth and education, and second, those devout Gentiles who reverenced the God of Israel and conformed to the law of Moses, worshiping with the Jews on the sabbath. Paul, in his sermon, which was of considerable length, began in the usual form of an apostolic discourse to the Jews, by recurring to the early Hebrew history, and running over the great leading events and persons mentioned in their sacred writings, that might be considered as preparing the way for the Messiah. Then, proceeding to the narration of the most important points in the history of the new dispensation, he applied all the quoted predictions of the inspired men of old, to the man Christ Jesus, whom they now preached. The substance of his discourse was, that in Jesus Christ were fully accomplished those splendid prophecies contained in the Psalms, concerning the future glories of the line of David; and more especially that by his attested resurrection he had fulfilled the words spoken by the Psalmist, of the triumphs of the “Holy One” over the grave and corruption. Paul thus concluded,――“Be it known to you therefore, brethren, that through this man is preached to you forgiveness of sins; and every one that believes in him is justified from all things, from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. Beware therefore, lest that come upon you which is spoken by the prophets,――‘See! you despisers! and wonder and be amazed; for I will do a work in your days, which you shall not believe, even if one should tell it to you.’” These denunciatory concluding words are from the prophet Habakkuk, where he is foretelling to the Israelites of his day, the devastating invasion of the Chaldeans; and the apostle in quoting them, aimed to impress his hearers with the certainty of similar evils to fall upon their nation,――evils so tremendous, that they might naturally disbelieve the warning, if it should give them the awful particulars of the coming ruin, but whose solemn truth they would, nevertheless, too soon learn in its actual accomplishment. These words being directed in a rather bitter tone of warning to the Jews in particular, that portion of the audience do not appear to have been much pleased with his address; but while the most of them were retiring from the synagogue, the Gentiles declared their high satisfaction with the discourse, and expressed an earnest desire that it might be repeated to them on the next sabbath,――a request with which ministers in these modern times are very rarely complimented by their congregations. After the meeting broke up, many of the audience were so loth to part with preachers of this extraordinary character, that they followed the apostles to their lodgings. These were mostly the religious proselytes from the heathen who worshiped with the Jews in the synagogue, but some even of the Jews were so well satisfied with what they had heard, that they also accompanied the throng that followed the apostles. Paul and Barnabas did not suffer this occasion to pass unimproved; but as they went along, discoursed to the company, exhorting them to stand fast in the grace of God. They continued in the city through the week, and meanwhile the fame of their doctrines and their eloquence extended so fast and so far, that when on the next sabbath they went to the synagogue to preach according to promise, almost the whole city came pouring in, along with them, to hear the word of God. But when the Jews, who had already been considerably displeased by the manner in which they had been addressed the last sabbath, saw the multitudes which were thronging to hear these new interlopers, they were filled with envy, and when Paul renewed his discourse, they openly disputed him,――denied his conclusions, and abused him, and his doctrine. Paul and Barnabas, justly indignant at this exhibition of meanness, that thus set itself against the progress of the truth among the Gentiles, from whom the Jews, not content with rejecting the gospel themselves, would also exclude the light of the word,――boldly declared to them――“It was necessary that the word of God should be first spoken to you; but since you have cast it off, and thus evince yourselves unworthy of everlasting life,――behold, we turn to the heathen. For thus did God command us, ‘I have set thee for a light to the heathen, that thou mightest be for their salvation, even to the uttermost part of the earth.’” And the heathen hearing this, rejoiced, and glorified the word of the Lord, and many of them believed, to their everlasting salvation. And the word of God was spread throughout that whole country; but the opposition of the Jews increasing in proportion to the progress of the faith of Christ, a great disturbance was raised against the apostles among the aristocracy of the city, who favored the Jews, and more especially among the women of high family, who were proselytes; and the result of the commotion was, that the apostles were driven out of the city. Paul and Barnabas, in conformity to the original injunction of Jesus to the twelve, shook off the dust of their feet, as an expressive testimony against them,――and turning eastward, came to another city, named Iconium, in Lycaonia, the most eastern province of Phrygia.

Lycaonia is a province of Asia Minor, accounted the southern part of Cappadocia, having Isauria on the west, Armenia Minor on the east, and Cilicia on the south. Its chief cities are all mentioned in this chapter xiv. viz., Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. They spake in the Lycaonian tongue, verse 10, which is generally understood to have been a corrupt Greek, intermingled with many Syriac words.――Horne’s Introduction.

Iconium was the capital of Lycaonia, and is mentioned by the Grecian and Roman writers, before and after the apostolic times, as a place of some importance; but nothing definite is known of its size and character. It appears, at any rate, from the apostolic record, that this flourishing city was one of the numerous centers of the Jewish population, that filled so much of Asia Minor; and here, according to their custom, the apostles made their first communication of the gospel, in the Jewish synagogue. Entering this place of worship, they spoke with such effect, that a great number both of Greeks and Jews were thoroughly convinced of the truth of the Christian doctrine, and professed their faith in Jesus. But, as usual, there was in Iconium a great residue of bigoted adherents to the Mosaic faith, who could appreciate neither the true scope of the ancient dispensation, nor the perfection of gospel truth; and a set of these fellows undertook to make trouble for the apostles, in the same way that it had been done at the Pisidian Antioch. Not having power or influence enough among themselves to effect any great mischief, they were obliged to resort to the expedient of exciting the ill-will of the Gentile inhabitants and rulers of the city, against the objects of their mischievous designs,――and in this instance were successful, inasmuch as “they made their minds disaffected against the brethren.” But in spite of all this opposition, thus powerfully manifested, “long time they abode there, speaking boldly in the Lord,” who did not fail to give them the ever-promised support of his presence, but “gave testimony to the word of his grace, and caused signs and miracles to be done by their hands.” The immediate effect of this bold maintenance of the truth was, that they soon made a strong impression on the feelings of the mass of the people, and created among them a disposition to defend the preachers of the word of heavenly grace, against the malice of their haters. The consequence of course was, that the whole city was directly divided into two great parties, one for and the other against the apostles. On one hand the supporters of the Jewish faction were bent upon driving out the innovators from the city, and on the other, the numerous audiences, who had been interested in the preaching of Paul and Barnabas, were perfectly determined to stand by the apostles at all hazards, and the whole city seems to have been on the eve of a regular battle about this difference. But it did not suit the apostles’ scheme to make use of such means for their own advancement or defence; and hearing that a grand crisis in affairs was approaching, in the opposition of the Jewish faction, they took the resolution of evading the difficulty, by withdrawing themselves quietly from the scene of commotion, in which there was but very little prospect of being useful, just then. The whole gang of their opponents, both Gentiles and Jews, rulers and commonalty, having turned out for the express purpose of executing popular vengeance on these odious agitators, by abusing and pelting them, the apostles, on getting notice of the scheme, moved off, before the mob could lay hands on them, and soon got beyond their reach, in other cities.

These fugitives from popular vengeance, after having so narrowly escaped being sacrificed to public opinion, turned their course southward, and stopped next on their adventurous route at the city of Lystra, also within Lycaonia, where they preached the gospel, and not only in the city and its immediate vicinity, but also throughout the whole surrounding region, and in the neighboring towns. In the progress of their labors in Lystra, they one day were preaching in the presence of a man who had been lame from his birth, being in exactly the same predicament with the cripple who was the subject of the first miracle of Peter and John, in the temple. This unfortunate auditor of Paul and Barnabas believed the word of truth which they preached; and as he sat among the rest, being noticed by the former apostle, was recognized as a true believer. Looking earnestly on him, Paul, without questioning him at all as to his faith, said to him at once, in a loud voice, “Rise, and stand on thy feet.” Instantly the man sprang up, and walked. When the people saw this amazing and palpable miracle, they cried out, in their Lycaonian dialect, “The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.” Struck with this notion, they immediately sought to designate the individual deities who had thus honored the city of Lystra with their presence; and at once recognized in the stately form, and solemn, silent majesty of Barnabas, the awful front of Jupiter, the Father of all the gods; and as for the lively, mercurial person attending upon him, and acting, on all occasions, as the spokesman, with such vivid, burning eloquence,――who could he be but the attendant and agent of Jupiter, Hermes, the god of eloquence and of travelers? Full of this conceit, and anxious to testify their devout sense of this condescension, the citizens bustled about, and with no small parade brought out a solemn sacrificial procession, with oxen and garlands, headed by the priests of Jupiter, and were proceeding to offer a sacrifice in solemn form to the divine personages who had thus veiled their dignity in human shape, when the apostles, horror-struck at this degrading exhibition of the idolatrous spirit against which they were warring, and without a single sensation of pride or gratitude for this great compliment done them, ran in among the people, rending their clothes in the significant and fantastic gesture of true Orientals, and cried out with great earnestness, “Sirs! what do you mean? We also are men of like constitutions with yourselves, and we preach to you with the express intent that you should turn from these follies to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them.――He, indeed, in times past, left all nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he left himself not wholly without witness of his being and goodness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” With these words of splendid eloquence and magnificent conception bursting from their lips in the inspiration of the moment,――the apostles, with no small ado, stopped the idolatrous folly of the Lystrans, who probably felt and looked very silly, when the mistake into which they had been drawn by a mere mob-cry, was shown to them. Indignant, not so much at themselves, who alone were truly blamable for the error, as against the persons who were the nobly innocent occasions of it,――they were in a state of feeling to overbalance this piece of extravagance by another,――much more wicked, because it was not mere nonsense, but downright cruelty. When, therefore, certain spiteful Jews came to Lystra from Antioch and Iconium, from which places they had been hunting, like hounds, on the track of the apostles, and told their abusive lies to the people about the character of these two strange travelers, the foolish Lystrans were easily persuaded to crown their absurdity by falling upon Paul, who seemed to be the person most active in the business. Having seized him, before he could slip out of their hands, as he usually did from his persecutors, they pelted him with such effect that he fell down as if dead; and they, with no small alacrity, dragged him out of the city as a mere carcase. But the mob had hardly dispersed, when he rose up, to the great wonder of the brethren who stood mourning about him, and went back with them into the city. The whole of this interesting series of events is a firm testimony to the honesty of the apostolic narrative, exhibiting, as it does, so fairly, the most natural, and at the same time, the most contemptible tendencies of the human character. Never was there given such a beautiful illustration of the value and moral force of public opinion! unless, perhaps, in the very similar case of Jesus, in Jerusalem:――“Hosanna,” to-day, and “Crucify him,” to-morrow. One moment, exalting the apostles to the name and honors of the highest of all the gods; the next, pelting them through the streets, and kicking them out of the city as a nuisance. The Bible is everywhere found to be just so bitterly true to human nature, and the whole world cannot furnish a story in which the character and moral value of popular movements are better exhibited than in the adventures of the apostles, as recorded by Luke.

Acts xiv. 12. “It has been inquired why the Lystrans suspected that Paul and Barnabas were Mercury and Jupiter? To this it may be answered, 1st. that the ancients supposed the gods especially visited those cities which were sacred to them. Now from verse 13, it appears that Jupiter was worshiped among these people; and that Mercury too was, there is no reason to doubt, considering how general his worship would be in so commercial a tract of Maritime Asia. (Gughling de Paulo Mercurio, p. 9, and Walch Spic. Antiquities, Lystra, p. 9.) How then was it that the priest of Mercury did not also appear? This would induce one rather to suppose that there was no temple to Mercury at Lystra. Probably the worship of that god was confined to the sea-coast; whereas Lystra was in the interior and mountainous country. 2. It appears from mythological history, that Jupiter was thought to generally descend on earth accompanied by Mercury. See Plautus, Amphitryon, 1, 1, 1. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8, 626, and Fasti, 5, 495. 3. It was a very common story, and no doubt, familiar to the Lystrans, that Jupiter and Mercury formerly traversed Phrygia together, and were received by Philemon and Baucis. (See Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8, 611, Gelpke in Symbol. ad Interp. Acts xiv. 12.) Mr. Harrington has yet more appositely observed, (in his Works, p. 330,) that this persuasion might gain the more easily on the minds of the Lycaonians, on account of the well-known fable of Jupiter and Mercury, who were said to have descended from heaven in human shape, and to have been entertained by Lycaon, from whom the Lycaonians received their name.

“But it has been further inquired why they took Barnabas for Jupiter, and Paul for Mercury. Chrysostom observes, (and after him Mr. Fleming, Christology Vol. II. p. 226,) that the heathens represented Jupiter as an old but vigorous man, of a noble and majestic aspect, and a large robust make, which therefore he supposes might be the form of Barnabas; whereas Mercury appeared young, little, and nimble, as Paul might probably do, since he was yet in his youth. A more probable reason, however, and indeed the true one, (as given by Luke,) is, that Paul was so named, because he was the leading speaker. Now it was well known that Mercury was the god of eloquence. So Horace, Carmen Saeculare, 1, 10, 1. Mercuri facunde nepos Atlantis Qui feros cultus hominum recentum Voce formasti cantus. Ovid, Fasti, 5, 688. Macrobius, Saturnalia, 8, 8. Hence he is called by Jamblichus, de Mysteriis, θεὸς ὁ των λόγων ἡγεμὼν, a passage exactly the counterpart to the present one, which we may render, ‘for he had led the discourse.’” (Bloomfield’s Annotations, New Testament, Vol. IV. c. xiv. § 12.)

“They called Paul Mercury, because he was the chief speaker,” verse 12. Mercury was the god of eloquence. Justin Martyr says Paul is λόγος ἑρμηνευτικὸς καὶ πάντων διδάσκαλος, the word; that is, the interpreter and teacher of all men. Apology ii. p. 67. Philo informs us that Mercury is called Hermes, ὡς Ἑρμηνέα καὶ προφήτην τῶν θειων, as being the interpreter and prophet of divine things, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica, Lib. iii. c. 2. He is called by Porphyry παραστατικὸς, the exhibitor or representor of reason and eloquence. Seneca says he was called Mercury, quia ratio penes illum est. De Beneficiis, Lib. iv. cap. 7.――Calmet, Whitby, Stackhouse.

All this pelting and outcry, however, made not the slightest impression on Paul and Barnabas, nor had the effect of deterring them from the work, which they had so unpropitiously carried on. Knowing, as they did, how popular violence always exhausts itself in its frenzy, they without hesitation immediately returned by the same route over which they had been just driven by such a succession of popular outrages. The day after Paul had been stoned and stunned by the people of Lystra, he left that city with Barnabas, and both directed their course eastward to Derbe, where they preached the gospel and taught many. Then turning directly back, they came again to Lystra, then to Iconium, and then to Antioch, in all of which cities they had just been so shamefully treated. In each of these places, they sought to strengthen the faith of the disciples, earnestly exhorting them to continue in the Christian course, and warning them that they must expect to attain the blessings of the heavenly kingdom, only through much trial and suffering. On this return journey they now formally constituted regular worshiping assemblies of Christians in all the places from which they had before been so tumultuously driven as to be prevented from perfecting their good work,――ordaining elders in every church thus constituted, and solemnly, with fasting and prayer, commending them to the Lord on whom they believed. Still keeping the same route on which they had come, they now turned southward into Pamphylia, and came again to Perga. From this place, they went down to Attalia, a great city south of Perga, on the coast of Pamphylia, founded by Attalus Philadelphus, king of Pergamus. At this port, they embarked for the coast of Syria, and soon arrived at Antioch, from which they had been commended to the favor of God, on this adventurous journey. On their arrival, the whole church was gathered to hear the story of their doings and sufferings, and to this eager assembly, the apostles then recounted all that happened to them in the providence of God, their labors, their trials, dangers, and hair-breadth escapes, and the crowning successes in which all these providences had resulted; and more especially did they set forth in what a signal manner, during this journey, the door of Christ’s kingdom had been opened to the Gentiles, after the rejection of the truth by the unbelieving Jews; and thus happily ended Paul’s first great apostolic mission.

Bishop Pearson here allots three years for these journeys of the apostles, viz. 45, 46, and 47, and something more. But Calmet, Tillemont, Dr. Lardner, Bishop Tomline, and Dr. Hales, allow two years for this purpose, viz. 45 and 46; which period corresponds with our Bible chronology. (Williams on Pearson.)

THE DISPUTES ON THE CIRCUMCISION.

The great apostle of the Gentiles now made Antioch his home, and resided there for many years, during which the church grew prosperously. But at last some persons came down from Jerusalem, to observe the progress which the new Gentile converts were making in the faith; and found, to their great horror, that all were going on their Christian course, in utter disregard of the ancient ordinances of the holy Mosaic covenant, neglecting altogether even that grand seal of salvation, which had been enjoined on Abraham and all the faithful who should share in the blessings of the promise made to him; they therefore took these backsliders and loose converts, to task, for their irregularities in this matter, and said to them, “Unless you be circumcised ♦according to the Mosaic usage, you can not be saved.” This denunciation of eternal ruin on the Gentile non-conformists, of course made a great commotion among the Antiochians, who had been so hopefully progressing in the pure, spiritual faith of Christ,――and were not prepared by any of the instructions which they had received from their apostolic teachers, for any such stiff subjection to tedious rituals. Nor were Paul and Barnabas slow in resisting this vile imposition upon those who were just rejoicing in the glorious light and freedom of the gospel; and they at once therefore, resolutely opposed the attempts of the bigoted Judaizers to bring them under the servitude of the yoke which not even the Jews themselves were able to bear. After much wrangling on this knotty point, it was determined to make a united reference of the whole question to the apostles and elders at Jerusalem, and that Paul and Barnabas should be the messengers of the Antiochian church, in this consultation. They accordingly set out, escorted beyond the city by the church; and passing first directly southward, along the Phoenician coast, they next turned inland through Samaria, everywhere visiting the churches on the route, and making known to them the joyful story of the conversions among the Gentiles of Asia Minor, which was news to the Christians of Palestine, and caused great congratulations among them, at these unexpected triumphs of their common faith. Arriving at Jerusalem, they there, for the first time, gave to the twelve apostles, a detailed account of their long Asian mission; and then brought forward the grand question under debate. As soon as this point was presented, all the obstinate Jewish prejudices of that portion of the church who were of the order of the Pharisees, were instantly aroused,――and with great earnestness they insisted “that it was necessary to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.” This first meeting however, adjourned without coming to any conclusion; and the apostles and elders were called together again to consider upon the matter. As soon as they were assembled they all fell to disputing with great violence, and, of course, with no decisive or profitable result; but at last the great apostolic chief rising up, ended the debate with a very clear statement of the results of his own personal experience of the divine guidance in this matter, and with brief but decisive eloquence hushed their clamors, that they might give Barnabas and Paul a chance to declare in what manner God had sanctioned their similar course. The two apostles of the Gentiles then narrated what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the heathen by them. Such was the decisive effect of their exposition of these matters of fact, that all debate was checked at once; and James himself, the great leader of the Judaical order, rose to express his perfect acquiescence in the decision of the apostolic chief and the Hellenists. His opinion was, that only so much conformity to the Mosaic institutions should be required of the Gentile converts, as they might without inconvenience submit to, out of respect to the old covenant, and such observances as were necessary for the moral purity of a professing Christian of any nation. The whole assembly concurred; and it was resolved to dispatch two select persons out of their own company, to accompany Paul and Barnabas to Antioch, and thus by their special commission, enforce the decision of the apostolic and presbyterial council. The decision of the council was therefore committed to writing, in a letter which bore high testimony to the zeal and courage of Barnabas and Paul, as “men who had hazarded their lives for the sake of the gospel,”――and it was announced as the inspired decision of the apostles, elders and brethren, that the Gentile converts should not be troubled with any greater burden than these necessary things:――“That you abstain from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication;” and if they should only keep themselves from these, they would do well. Jude and Silas were the envoys commissioned with the charge of this epistle, and accordingly accompanied Paul and Barnabas back to Antioch.

♦ “acccording” replaced with “according”

“Those who maintained this position were Jews, of the sect of the Pharisees, Acts, xv. 5, converted to Christianity, but still too zealous for the observance of the law; and their coming immediately from Judea might make it rather believed, that the necessity of circumcision, in order to salvation, was a tenet of the apostles. The Jews themselves indeed were of different opinions in this matter, even as to the admission of a man into their religion. For some of them would allow those of other nations who owned the true God, and practised moral duties, to live quietly among them, and even without circumcision, to be admitted into their religion; whilst others were decidedly opposed to any such thing. Thus Josephus tells us that when Izates, the son of Helen, queen of Adiabene, embraced the Jews’ religion, Ananias, who converted him, declared that he might do it without circumcision; but Eleazer, another eminent Jew, maintained, that it was a great impiety in such circumstances, to remain uncircumcised; and this difference of opinion continued among the Jewish Christian converts, some allowing Gentiles to become converts to Christianity, without submitting to circumcision and the Jewish law: whilst others contended that without circumcision, and the observance of the law, their profession of the Christian faith would not save them.” (Stackhouse from Whitby and Beausobre.)

“It is very evident, that this is the same journey to which the apostle alludes in Galatians ii. First, from the agreement of the history here and the apostle’s relation in the epistle, as that ‘he communicated to them the gospel, which he preached among the Gentiles,’ Galatians ii. 2. which he now did, Acts xv. 4. That circumcision was not then judged necessary to the Gentiles, verse 3, as we find, Acts xv. 24, ‘that, when they saw the gospel of uncircumcision was committed to him, they gave to him and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship,’ Galatians ii. 9, as they did here, sending their very decree with one consent to the Gentiles, ‘by the hands of Paul and Barnabas,’ Acts xv. 22, 25, who were received by the ‘whole church,’ verse 4. and styled beloved,’ verse 25.

“Secondly, it appears unlikely that the apostle, writing this epistle about nine years after this council, should make no mention of a thing so advantageous to a cause he is pleading here, and so proper to confute the pretenses of the adversaries he disputes against. And,

“Thirdly, James, Peter, and John, being all the apostles now present at the council, the mention of their consent to his doctrine and practice was all that was necessary to his purpose to be mentioned concerning that council, It is no objection to this opinion, that we find no mention, in Acts xv. of Titus’s being with him; for he is not mentioned in the whole of the Acts, during which interval the journey must have happened.” (Whitby.)

“The Council of Jerusalem was assembled in the fourteenth year after St. Paul’s conversion. For the apostle adverts to this same journey, and determinately specifies the time in Galatians ii. 1, 2. Grotius is of opinion that four years should be here written instead of fourteen; who, nevertheless, allows, that the one mentioned in Galatians, is this journey to the Council. But the reason is evident why the apostle should date these years from the epoch of his conversion, from the scope of the first and second chapters. He styles himself an apostle, not of men, neither by man, chap. i. 1: he declared that his gospel was not according to men, and that he neither received nor learned it from men, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ, verses 11, 12. And this he proves to the Galatians by his conversion, which was not unknown to them. He begins with his strict profession of the Jewish religion, according to the tenets of the Pharisees, which ended in a most violent persecution of the Christians. Then he goes on to show how God revealed his Son to him, and that immediately he conferred not with flesh and blood, he neither held communion with any man, neither did he go up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before him, by whom he could have been taught more fully the mind of God, ‘but went into Arabia,’ where he received the gospel by revelation; and he returned to Damascus, and preached the word of God to the confounding of the Jews: ‘Then after three years he went up to Jerusalem to see Peter.’ From all this it appears evident, that the epoch of these three years should commence at the time of his conversion. The same is to be said of the other epoch of the fourteen years. ‘Then, after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem,’ chap. ii. 1, because the scope of both is the same,――and they both date from the same period of time. The word επειτα does not connect this sentence with that of the three years, as if the beginning of these should be dated from the close of those, because there is another επειτα which comes between these two texts, viz. in verse 21, of chap. i. where he begins to relate his travels in Syria and Cilicia, but does not specify the period of time he remained in those regions; therefore no chronological connexion can have been intended by him. The apostle still following up his design, says επειτα and παλιν, but neither does επειτα refer to his stay in Syria and Cilicia,――nor παλιν to his second coming to Jerusalem: for he had been with a second collection to Jerusalem, then suffering from famine, accompanied by Barnabas, but not by Titus; and because he then saw none of the apostles, he omitted mentioning that journey, considering it quite foreign to his present purpose.” (Pearson, Annales, 49.)

PAUL’S QUARREL WITH PETER.

The whole company of envoys, both Barnabas and Paul, the original messengers of the Syrian church, and Jude and Silas, the deputies of the apostolic college, presented the complete results of the Jerusalem consultation before a fall meeting of the whole congregation of believers at Antioch, and read the epistle of the council to them. The sage and happy exhortations which it contained were not only respectfully but joyfully received; and in addition to the comfort of these, the first written words of Christian inspiration, the two envoys, Jude and Silas, also discoursed to the church, commenting at more length on the apostolic message of which they were the bearers, and confirmed their hearers in the faith. After remaining there for some time, Jude bade them farewell, and returned to his apostolic associates; but Silas was so much pleased with the opportunities thus afforded him of doing good among the Gentiles, of whom he himself also was one, as his name shows,――that he stayed in Antioch after the departure of Jude, and labored along with Paul and Barnabas, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also. This is commonly understood to be the time of Paul’s dissension with Peter, as mentioned in the epistle to the Galatians. The circumstances of this disagreeable occurrence have already been narrated and commented on, in the Life of Peter,――nor need anything additional be presented here in relation to Paul, except the observation, that his dispute with the chief apostle, and his harsh censure of his conduct, are very much in accordance with the impressions of his character, given in other passages of his life. He was evidently a man of violent and hasty passions; and is uniformly represented, both by his historian and by himself, as exceedingly bitter and harsh in his denunciations of all who differed from him on practical or speculative points, both before and after his calling to the apostleship; and this trait is manifested on such a variety of occasions, as to be very justly considered an inseparable peculiarity of his natural disposition and temperament. Doubtless there are many to whom it seems very strange, that the Apostle Paul should ever be spoken of as having been actually and truly angry, or ever having made an error in his conduct after his conversion; but there are instances enough to show that it was not a mere modest injustice to himself for him to tell the Lystran idolaters that he was a man of like passions with them,――but a plain matter of fact, made evident not only by his own noble and frank confession, but by many unfortunate instances throughout his recorded life. Yet there are a great many Protestants, who have been in the habit of making such a kind of idol or demi-god out of Paul, that they are as little prepared as the Lystrans to appreciate the human imperfections of his character; and if Paul himself could at this moment be made fully sensible of the dumb idolatrous reverence with which many of his modern and enlightened adorers regard him, he would be very apt to burst out in the same earnest and grieved tone, in which he checked the similar folly of the Lystrans,――“Sirs! why do ye these things? I also am a man of like passions with yourselves.”――“The spirit of divine truth which actuated me, and guided me in the way of light, by which I led others to life eternal, still did not make me anything more than a man,――a man in moral as in bodily weakness, nor exempt from liabilities to the accidents of passion, any more than to the pains of mortal disease. The Spirit that guided my pen in the record of eternal truth, and my tongue in the preaching of the word of salvation, did not exalt me above the errors, the failings and distresses of mortality; and I was still all my lifetime subject to the bondage of sin, groaning under that body of death, and longing for the day when I should pass away from the frailties and distresses of earth, to that state of being which alone is wholly sinless and pure.”

“From the opposition to St. Peter, which they suppose to be before the Council at Jerusalem, some would have it, that this Epistle to the Galatians was written before that Council; as if what was done before the Council could not be mentioned in a letter written after the Council. They also contend, that this journey, mentioned here by St. Paul, was not that wherein he and Barnabas went up to that Council to Jerusalem, but that mentioned Acts xi. 30; but this with as little ground as the former. The strongest reason they bring, is, that if this journey had been to the Council, and this letter after that Council, St. Paul would not certainly have omitted to have mentioned to the Galatians that decree. To which it is answered, 1. The mention of it was superfluous; for they had it already, see Acts xvi. 4. 2. The mention of it was impertinent to the design of St. Paul’s narrative here. For it is plain, that his aim, in what he relates here of himself, and his past actions, is to shew, that having received the gospel from Christ by immediate revelation, he had all along preached that, and nothing but that, everywhere; so that he could not be supposed to have preached circumcision, or by his carriage, to have shewn any subjection to the law; all the whole narrative following being to make good what he says, ♦chap. i. 11, ‘that the gospel which he preached was not accommodated to the humoring of men; nor did he seek to please the Jews (who were the men here meant) in what he taught.’ Taking this to be his aim, we shall find the whole account he gives of himself, from that verse 11 of chap. i., to the end of the second chapter, to be very ♠clear and easy, and very proper to invalidate the report of his preaching circumcision.” (Locke’s Paraphrase.)

♦ “ehap.” replaced with “chap.”

♠ “ctear” replaced with “clear”

“I conceive that this happened at the time here stated, because Paul intimates in Galatians ii. 11, that he was in Antioch when Peter came there; and Peter had never been to Antioch before Paul was in that city after the Council of Jerusalem; and besides the dissension between Paul and Barnabas, who was the intimate friend of Peter, appears to have originated here.” Pearson’s Annales Paul. (A. D. 50.)

A fine exhibition of a quibbling, wire-drawn argument, may be found in Baronius, (Annales, 51,) who is here put to his wits’ end to reconcile the blunt, “round, unvarnished tale,” in Paul’s own account, (in Galatians ii. 11‒14,) with the papistical absurdity of the moral infallibility of the apostles. He lays out an argument of five heavy folio pages to prove that, though Paul quarreled thus with Peter, yet neither of them was in the slightest degree to blame, &c. But the folly of explaining away the Scriptures in this manner, is not confined wholly to the bigoted, hireling historian of papal Rome; some of the boldest of protestants have, in the same manner, attempted to reconcile the statement of Paul with the vulgar notions of apostolic infallibility. Witsius (Vita Pauli, iv. 12,) expends a paragraph to show that neither of them was to blame; but following the usual course of anti-papist writers, he represents the great protestant idol, Paul, in altogether the most advantageous light, according to the perfectly proverbial peculiarity of the opponents of the church of Rome, who, in their apostolic distinctions, uniformly “rob Peter to pay Paul.”

PAUL’S QUARREL WITH BARNABAS.

The church of Antioch having thus made great advances under these very abundant and extraordinary instructions, the apostles began to turn their eyes again to a foreign field, and longed for a renewal of those adventurous labors from which they had now had so long a repose. Paul therefore proposed to Barnabas that they should go over their old ground again:――“Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city, where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they do.” To this frank and reasonable proposition, Barnabas readily agreed, and as it was desirable that they should have an assistant with them on this journey, he proposed that his nephew Mark should accompany them in this capacity as he had done on their former voyage. But Paul, remembering the manner in which he had forsaken them just as they were entering upon the arduous missionary fields of Asia Minor, refused to try again one who had once failed to do them the desired service, at a time when he was most needed. Yet Barnabas, being led, no doubt by his near relationship to the delinquent evangelist, to overlook this single deficiency, and perhaps, having good reason to think that he had now made up his mind to stick to them through thick and thin, through good and bad fortune, was disposed to give him another trial in the apostolic service, and therefore strongly urged Paul to accept of him as their common assistant in this new tour for which he was well fitted by his knowledge of the routes. Paul, however, no doubt irritated against Mark, for the wavering spirit already manifested by him at Perga, utterly refused to have anything to do with him after such a display of character, and wished to take some other person who had been tried in the good work with more satisfactory results as to his resolution and ability. Barnabas of course, was not at all pleased to have his sister’s son treated so slightingly, and refused to have any substitute whatever, insisting that Mark should go, while Paul was equally resolved that he should not. The conclusion of the whole matter was, that these two great apostles, the authorized messengers of God to the Gentiles, quarreled downright; and after a great deal of furious contention, they parted entirely from one another; and so bitter seems to have been the division between them that they are not known to have ever after been associated in apostolic labors, although they had been the most intimate friends and fellow-travelers for many years, standing by one another through evil and good report, through trials, perils, distresses and almost to death. A most lamentable exhibition of human ♦weakness marring the harmonious progress of the great scheme of evangelization! Yet it must be esteemed one of the most valuable facts relating to the apostles, that are recorded in the honest, simple, clear, and truly impartial narrative of Luke; because it reminds the Christian reader of a circumstance, that he might otherwise forget, in an undue reverence for the character of the apostles,――and that is, the circumstance that these consecrated ministers of the word of truth were, really and practically, in spite of their holiness, “men of like passions with ourselves,” and even in the arrangement of their apostolic duties, were liable to be governed by the impulses of human passion, which on a few occasions like this, acting in opposite directions in different persons at the same time, brought them into open collisions and disputes,――which, if men of their pure martyr-spirit, mostly too, under the guidance of a divine influence, could not avoid, nor could satisfactorily settle, neither may the unconsecrated historian of a later age presume to decide. Who was right and who was wrong in this difficulty, it is impossible to say; and each reader may judge for himself. It may be remarked, however, that Paul was no more likely to be right than Barnabas; he was a younger man, as it would appear from the circumstance that he is named after him in the apostolic epistle;――he was no more an apostle than Barnabas was; for both are thus named by Luke in his account of their first journey, and both were expressly called by a distinct revelation from the Holy Spirit to undertake the apostleship of the Gentiles together. Paul also is known to have quarreled with other persons, and especially with Peter himself, and that too without very just cause; and although Barnabas may have been influenced to partiality by his relationship to Mark, yet much also may be justly chargeable to Paul’s natural violence and bitterness of temper, which often led him into hasty acts, of which he afterwards repented, as he certainly did in this very case, after some time; for he repeatedly mentions Mark in his epistles in terms of regard, and what is most in point, declares him to be “profitable to him in the ministry.”

♦ “weaknes” replaced with “weakness”

Witsius remarks, (Vita Pauli, iv. 16,) that the ancient Christian writers ascribe the greatest part of the blame of this quarrel to Barnabas, whom they consider as having been unduly influenced by natural affection for his kindred according to the flesh. “But”, as Witsius rather too cautiously remarks, “it may well be doubted whether Paul’s natural violence of temper did not carry him somewhat beyond the bounds of right. The Greeks have not unwisely remarked――Ὁ Παυλος ἐζητει το δικαιον, ὁ Βαρναβας το Πιλανθροπον ‘Paul demanded what was just――Barnabas, what was charitable.’ It might have been well enough if Barnabas had yielded to the zeal of Paul; but it would not have been bad if Paul had persuaded himself to allow something to the feelings of that most mild and amiable man. Meanwhile, it deserves notice, that God so ordered this, that it turned out as much for the individual benefit of Mark, as for the general benefit of the church. For the kind partiality of Barnabas was of advantage to Mark, in preventing him from being utterly cast off from apostolic companionship, and forsaken as unworthy; while to the church, this separation was useful, since it was the means of confirming the faith of more of the churches in the same time.” (Witsius.)

“From hence we may learn, not only that these great lights in the Christian church were men of the like passions with us, but that God, upon this occasion, did most eminently illustrate the wisdom of his providence, by rendering the frailties of two such eminent servants instrumental to the benefit of his church, since both of them thenceforward employed their extraordinary industry and zeal singly and apart, which till then had been united, and confined to the same place.” (Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. 4.)

HIS SECOND APOSTOLIC MISSION.

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.

HIS WESTWARD JOURNEY.

With this accession to his company, Paul proceeded through the cities of that region which he had before visited, and communicated to them the decrees passed by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem, for the regulation of the deportment of professing Christians, in regard to the observance of Mosaic usages. They all, moreover, labored for the extension of the churches already founded, and thus caused them to be built up, so that they received fresh additions daily. Nor did Paul limit his apostolic labors to the mere confirmation of the work begun on his tour with Barnabas; but after traversing all his old fields of exertion, he extended his journey far north of his former route, through all Phrygia, and Galatia, a province which had never before been blessed with the presence of a Christian missionary,――and after laboring in his high vocation there, he was disposed to move west, to the Ionian or true Asian shore of the Aegean, but was checked by a direction which he could not resist; and passing northward of the true Asian cities, he came out of Phrygia into Mysia, the province that occupies the northwestern corner of all Asia Minor, bounded north by the Propontis and Hellespont, and west by the northern part of the Aegean,――the true Asia lying south of it, within the geographical division commonly named Lydia. Having entered Mysia, they were expecting to turn northeast into Bithynia, when again their own preferences and counsels were overruled by the same mysterious impulse as before, and they therefore continued their westward journey to the shore of the Hellespont and Aegean, arriving within the classic region of the Troad, at the modern city of Alexandria Troas, some miles south of that most glorious of all the scenes of Grecian poetical antiquity, where, thirteen hundred years before, “Troy was.” Here they rested for a brief space, and while they were undecided as to the course which they ought next to pursue, Paul had a remarkable vision, which gave a summons too distinct to be mistaken or doubted, to a field in which the most noble triumphs of the cross were destined to be won under his own personal ministration, and where through thousands of years the name of Christ should consecrate and re-exalt the land, over all whose hills, mountains, streams, valleys, and seas, then as now, clustered the rich associations of the most splendid antiquity that is marked in the records of the past, with the beautiful and the excellent in poetry, art, taste, literature, philosophy and moral exaltation. In the night, as Paul was slumbering at his stopping-place, in the Troad, there appeared to him a vision of a Macedonian, who seemed to cry out beseechingly to him――“Come over into Macedonia, and help us!” This voice of earnest prayer for the help of Christ, rolling over the wide Aegean, was enough to move the ardent spirit of Paul, and on waking he therefore summoned his companions to attend him in his voyage to this new field. He had been joined here by a new companion, as appears from the fact, that the historian of the Acts of the apostles now begins to speak in the first person, of the apostolic company, and it thence appears that besides Silas and Timotheus, Paul was now attended by Luke. Setting sail from Troas, as soon as they could get ready for this unexpected extension of their travels, the whole four were wafted by a fresh south-eastern breeze from the Asian coast, first to the large island of Samothrace; and on the second day, they came to Neapolis, a town on the coast of Macedonia, which is the seaport of the great city of Philippi.

HIS MISSION IN MACEDONIA.

They without delay proceeded to Philippi, the chief city of that part of Macedonia, taking its name from that sage monarch who laid the foundation of the Macedonian dominion over the Grecian world, and gave this city its importance and splendor, re-building it, and granting it the honors of his peculiar favor. Under the Roman conquest it had lost no part of its ancient importance, but had been endowed by Julius Caesar, in a special decree, with the high privileges of a Roman colony, and was in the apostolic age one of the greatest cities in that part of Europe. Here Paul and his companions staid for several days; and seeking on the sabbath, for some place where they could, in that heathen land, observe the worship, and celebrate the praises of the God of their fathers, they wandered forth from the great pagan city, and sat down, away from the unholy din of mirth and business, in a retired place on the banks of the little stream which ran by the town, being made up of numerous springs that rise at the foot of the hills north of it,――which gave it the name of Crenides, or “the city of springs;”――the common name of the town before its conquest by Philip. In such places, by the side of streams and other waters, the Jews were always accustomed to construct their places for social worship; and here, in this quiet place, a few Jewish residents of the city resorted for prayer, remembering the God of their fathers, though so far from his sanctuary. Those who thus kept up the worship of God in this place, are mentioned as being women only; for it may always be observed that it is among the softer sex that religion takes its deepest root, and among them a regard to its observances is always found, long after the indifference generated by a change of circumstances, or by the engrossing cares of business, has turned away the devotions of men. So was it in Philippi; while the sons of Judah had grown indifferent to those observances of their religion, which were inconvenient, by interfering with the daily arrangements of business intercourse with their heathen fellow-citizens, the daughters of Zion came still regularly together, to the place where prayer was wont to be made. Here the apostolic company met them, and preached to them the new word of grace, now revealed for all the scattered race of Israel, far and near,――and not for them only, but also for the Gentiles. Among these gentle auditors of the word of grace, now first proclaimed in Greece, was a Jewess, named Lydia, who had emigrated from Thyatira, in Lydian Asia, and now carried on in Philippi, a trade in the purple dye, for which the region from which she came was so famous, even from the time of Homer. While listening to the words of Paul, her heart was opened to the comprehension of the truth of the gospel, and she professed her faith in Jesus. Having been baptized with all her household, she was so moved with regard for those who had thus taught her the way of salvation, that she earnestly invited them to make her house their home. Complying with her benevolent and hospitable invitation, Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke, took up their abode in her house, and remained there throughout their whole stay in Philippi.

Such was the beginning of the propagation of the gospel in Greece,――such was the foundation of the first church ever planted east of the Hellespont; and thus did Europe first receive the doctrines of that faith, which now holds in all that mighty division of the world, a triumphant seat, and constitutes the universal religion of the nations that hold within themselves the sources of art, learning,――all the refinements of civilization,――and of the dominion of half the globe. Four pilgrims entered the city of Philippi, unknown, friendless, and scorned for their foreign, half-barbarian aspect. Strolling about from day to day, to find the means of executing their strange errand, they at last found a few Jewish women, sitting in a little retired place, on the banks of a nameless stream. To them they made known the message of salvation;――one of the women with her household believed the gospel, and professed the faith of Jesus;――and from this beginning did those glorious results advance, which in their progress have changed the face of Europe, revolutionized the course of empires, and modified the destiny of the world!

An incident soon occurred, however, which brought them into more public notice, though not in a very desirable manner. As they went out to the usual place of prayer on the bank of the stream, they at last were noticed by a poor bedeviled crazy girl, who, being deprived of reason, had been made a source of profit to a set of mercenary villains, who taking advantage of the common superstition of their countrymen about the supernatural endowments of such unfortunate persons, pretended that she was a Pythoness, indued by the Pythian Apollo with the spirit of prophecy; for not only at Delphi, on his famous tripod, but also throughout Greece, he was believed to inspire certain females to utter his oracles, concerning future events. The owners and managers of this poor girl therefore made a trade of her supposed soothsaying faculty, and found it a very profitable business, through the folly of the wise Greeks of Philippi. This poor girl had her crazy fancy struck by the appearance of the apostolic company, as they passed along the streets to their place of prayer, and following them, perceived, under the impulse of the strange influence that possessed her, the real character of Paul and his companions; and cried out after them, “These men are the servants of the most high God, who show us the way of salvation.” This she did daily for a long time, till at last, Paul, annoyed by this kind of proclamation thus made at his heels, turned about, and by a single command subdued the demoniac influence that possessed her, and restored her to the freedom of sense and thought. Of course she was now no longer the submissive instrument of the will of her mercenary managers, and it was with no small vexation that they found all chance of these easy gains was forever gone. In their rage against the authors of what they deemed their calamity, they caught Paul and Silas, as the foremost of the apostolic company, and dragging them into the forum or courthouse, where the magistrates were in session, they presented their prisoners as a downright nuisance: “These men, who are Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city; and teach customs which are not lawful for us to adopt nor observe, if we are to maintain the privileges of Roman citizens.” What the latter part of the accusation referred to, in particular, it is not easy to say, and probably there was no very definite specification made by the accusers; for the general prejudice against the Jews was such, that the mob raised a clamor against them at once; and the magistrates seeing in the apostles only some nameless foreign vagabonds, who having come into the city without any reasonable object in view were disturbing the peace of the inhabitants, had no hesitation whatever in ordering them to be punished in the most ignominious manner, and without any question or defense, conforming to the dictation of that universally divine and immaculate source of justice,――the voice of the people,――instantly had them stripped and flogged at the discretion of their persecutors. After having thus shamefully abused them, they did not dismiss them, but cast them into prison, and set their feet in the stocks.

“Philippi was a city of Macedonia, of moderate extent, and not far from the borders of Thrace. It was formerly called Crenides, from its ♦numerous springs, from which arises a small stream, mentioned Acts xvi. 13, though it is commonly omitted in the maps. The name of Philippi it received from Philip, father of Alexander, who enlarged it, and fortified it as a barrier town against the Thracians. Julius Caesar sent hither a Roman colony, as appears from the following inscription on a medal of this city, COL. IUL. AUG. PHIL. quoted in Vaillant Num. æn. imp. T. I. p. 160, and from Spon Misc. p. 173. See also Pliny, L. IV. c. ii. and the authors in Wolfii Curae, πρωτη της μεριδος της Μακεδονιας πολις, ‘the first city of that district of Macedonia:’ but in what sense the word πρωτη, or ‘first,’ is here to be taken, admits of some doubt. Paulus Æmilius had divided Macedonia into four districts, and that in which Philippi was situated, was called πρωτη, or the first district. But of this district, Philippi does not appear to be entitled, in any sense, to the name of πρωτη πολις. For if πρωτη be taken in the sense of ‘first in respect to place,’ this title belonged rather to Neapolis, which was the frontier town of Macedonia, towards Thrace, as appears from Acts xvii. 1. And, if taken in the sense of ‘first in respect to rank,’ it belonged rather to Amphipolis, which was the capital of this district of Macedonia, as appears from the following passage Livii History Lib. XLV. 29. Capita regionum, ubi concilia fierent, primae regionis Amphipolin, secundae Thessalonicen, &c. But the difficulty is not so great as it appears to be. For, though Amphipolis was made the capital of the first district of ♠Macedonia in the time of Paulus Æmilius, and therefore entitled to the name of πρωτη, it is not impossible that in a subsequent age, the preference was given to Philippi. Or even if Amphipolis still continued to be the capital of the district, or the seat of the Roman provincial government, yet the title πρωτη may have been claimed by the city of Philippi, though it were not the very first in point of rank. We meet with many instances of this kind, on the medals of the Greek cities, on which we find that more than one city of the same province, assumed the title of πρωτη. St. Luke, therefore, who spent a long time at Philippi, and was well acquainted with the customs of the place, gave this city the title which it claimed, and which, according to the custom of the Greek cities, was inscribed probably on its coins. Hence it appears that the proposal made by Pierce to alter πρωτη της μεριδος to πρωτη μεριδος, is unnecessary.” (Michaelis’s Introduction, Vol. IV. pp. 152‒154. Marsh’s translation.)

♦ “numerons” replaced with “numerous”

♠ “Macodonia” replaced with “Macedonia”

“‘Where prayer was wont to be made.’ xvi. 13. This proseuchae signifies an oratory, a place appointed for prayer; in heathen countries, they were erected in sequestered retreats, commonly on the banks of rivers (as here) or on the sea-shore. Josephus has preserved the decree of the city of Halicarnassus, permitting the Jews to erect oratories, part of which is in the following terms:――‘We ordain that the Jews, who are willing, both men and women, do observe the Sabbaths and perform sacred rites according to the Jewish law, and build proseuchae by the seaside, according to the custom of their country; and if any man, whether magistrate or private person, give them any hinderance or disturbance, he shall pay a fine to the city.’ (Josephus, Antiquities, lib. xiv, cap. 10.) (Al. 24.)

“Many commentators, viz. Grotius, Drs. Whitby, Doddridge, and Lardner, agree with Josephus, Philo, and Juvenal, that these places of worship were synonymous with synagogues. But Calmet, Prideaux, and Hammond, contend that they were nearly the same, yet there was a real difference between them; the synagogues were within the cities, while the proseuchae were without, in retired spots, particularly in heathen countries, by the river-side, with galleries or the shades of trees for their only shelter. Prideaux considers them to be of greater antiquity than the synagogues, and that they were formed by the Jews in open courts, that those who lived at a distance from Jerusalem might offer their private worship as in the open courts of the Temple or Tabernacle. In the synagogues, Prideaux observes, public worship was performed, and in the proseuchae private prayer was used to be made. It is highly probable that these proseuchae were the same which are called in the Old Testament ‘high places.’ (Hammond on Luke vi. 12, and Acts xvi. 13‒16. Calmet’s Dictionary voce proseucha. Prideaux’s Connec, part i. book iv. sub anno 444. vol. I. pp. 387‒390. edition 1720.) (Horne’s Introduction.)

“‘And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira.’ verse 14. It is a remarkable fact, that among the ruins of Thyatira, there is an inscription extant with the words ΟΙ ΒΑΦΕΙΣ, the dyers. Wheler’s Journey into Greece, vol. iii. p. 233. Spon, Miscellanea Eruditae Antiquitates, p. 113; from whence we learn that the art and trade of dyeing purple were carried on in that city.” (Horne’s Introduction.)

Here was fine business for the apostle and his companion! “Come over into Macedonia and help us!” Such were the words of deep agonizing entreaty, in which the beseeching Macedonian had, in the night-vision, summoned the great apostle of the Gentiles to this new field of evangelizing labor. Taking that summons for a divine command, he had obeyed it――had crossed the wide Aegean, and sought in this great city of Macedonia, the occasions and the means of “helping” the idolatrous citizens to a knowledge of the truth as it was in Jesus. Week after week they had been inoffensively toiling in the faithful effort to answer this Macedonian cry for help; and what was the result and the reward of all these exertions? For no crime whatever, and for no reason except that they had rescued a gentle and unfortunate spirit from a most degrading thraldom to demoniac agencies, and to men more vile and wicked than demons, they had been mobbed,――abused by a parcel of mercenary scoundrels,――stripped naked in the forum, and whipped there like thieves,――and at last thrown into the common jail among felons, with every additional injury that could be inflicted by their determined persecutors, being fettered so that they could not repose their sore and exhausted bodies. Was not here enough to try the patience of even an apostle? What man would not have burst out in furious vexation against the beguiling vision which had led them away into a foreign land, among those who were disposed to repay their assiduous “help,” by such treatment? Thus might Paul and Silas have expressed their vexation, if they had indeed been misled by a mere human enthusiasm; but they knew Him in whom they had trusted, and were well assured that He would not deceive them. So far from giving way to despondency and silence, they uplifted their voices in praise! Yes, praise to the God and Father of Jesus Christ, that he had accounted them worthy to suffer thus for the glory of his name. “At midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises to God, and the prisoners heard them.” In the dreary darkness,――inclosed between massive walls, and bound in weighty fetters, their spirits rose in prayer,――doubtless for those persecutors whom they came over to “help,” and not for themselves,――since their souls were already so surely stayed on God. To him they raised their voices in praise, for their own peace and joy in believing. Not yielding like those inspired by the mere impulses of human ambition or wild enthusiasm,――they passed the dreary night, not

“In silence or in fear.――

They shook the depths of the prison gloom,

With their hymns of lofty cheer.――

Amid the storm they sang,”

for He whom they thus invoked did not leave them in their heroic endurance, without a most convincing testimony that their prayers and their songs had come up in remembrance before him. In the midst of their joyous celebration of this persecution, while their wondering fellow-prisoners, waked from their sleep by this very unparalleled noise, were listening in amazement to this manifestation of the manner of spirit with which their new companions were disposed to meet their distresses,――a mighty earthquake shook the city, and heaved the whole prison-walls on their foundations, so that all the firmly barred doors were burst open, and, what was more remarkable, all the chains fell from the prisoners. The jailer waking up amidst this horrible crash, and seeing all the prison-doors open, supposed that the prisoners had all escaped; and knowing how utterly certain would be his ruin if his charge should thus be broken,――in a fit of vexation and despair, he drew his sword, and would have instantly killed himself, had not Paul, seeing through the darkness the frenzied actions of the wretched man, called out to him in a loud voice, clear and distinct amid the dreadful din, “Do thyself no harm, for we are all here.”

Hearing these consolatory words, the jailer called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, saying,――“Sirs! What must I do to be saved?” They replied――“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, with all thy house.” The jailer of course spoke of being saved merely from present danger,――and appalled by the shock of the earthquake, concluded at once that it had some connection with the prayers and songs of the two Jewish prisoners, whom he knew to have been unjustly punished and imprisoned. He supposed therefore, that from those who were the occasion of the awful occurrence, he might best learn the means of escaping its destructive consequences. But his alarmed inquiries were made instrumental in teaching him the way of escape from a peril of far greater magnitude, threatening his spirit with the eternal ruin that would fall at last on all the sinful opposers of the truth. The two imprisoned preachers then proclaimed to him the word of the Lord, and not only to him, but to all that were in his house. No sooner had the jailer thus learned, by their eloquent words, the real character and objects of his prisoners, than he immediately determined to make them all the atonement in his power, for the shameful treatment which they had received from his fellow-citizens. He took them that same hour of the night, and washed their stripes, and was baptized with all his house. Of course he could no longer suffer those who were the authors of his hopes of salvation, to lie any longer among felons; and he immediately brought them out of the jail into his own house, and gave them food, making it a sort of festal ♦occasion for himself and his whole family, who were all rejoicing with him in the knowledge of the gospel. When it was day the magistrates sent the officers of justice with a verbal order for the release of the two prisoners, of whose abominable usage they were now quite ashamed, after a night’s reflection, without the clamors of a mob to incite them; and perhaps also their repentance may have been promoted by the great earthquake during the night, for which the Greeks and Romans would, as usual, seek some moral occasion, looking on it of course, as a prodigy, expressive of the anger of the gods, who might be supposed perhaps, to be indignant at the flagrant injustice committed against these two friendless strangers. But however satisfactory this atonement might seem to the magistrates, Paul was by no means disposed to let them off so quietly, after using him and Silas in this outrageous manner, in absolute defiance of all forms of law and justice. To this permission thus given him to sneak off quietly, he therefore returned the indignant answer――“They have openly beaten us uncondemned, though we are Roman citizens, and they have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust us out so slily? No, indeed; but let them come themselves and fetch us out.” This was alarming news indeed, to the magistrates. Here they were found guilty of having violated “the sacred privilege of Roman citizenship!”――a privilege which always shielded its possessor from irregular tyranny, and required, throughout the Roman world, that he should never be subjected to punishment without the most open and formal investigation of the charge; a privilege too, whose violation would bring down on them the most remorseless vengeance of the imperial fountain of Roman power. So nothing would do, but they must submit to the uncomfortable necessity of bringing down their magisterial dignity, to the low business of visiting their poor, abused prisoners in the jail, and humbly apologizing for their own cruelty.

♦ “accasion” replaced with “occasion”

The magistrates of the great city of Philippi therefore came to the prison, and brought out their abused victims, respectfully requesting them to depart out of the city. The two prisoners accordingly consented to retire quietly from the city, without making any more trouble for their persecutors. Going first to the house of their kind hostess, Lydia, they saw the brethren who had believed the gospel there, during their apostolic ministrations, and having exhorted them, bade them farewell, and in company with their two companions, Timothy and Luke, left the city.

Turning southwestwards towards Greece proper, and keeping near the coast, they came next to Amphipolis, a Macedonian city on the river Strymon, near where it flows into the Strymonic gulf; but making no stay that is mentioned, they continued their journey in the same direction to Apollonia, an inland town on the river Chabrius, in the peninsula of Chalcidice; whence turning northwest they came next to Thessalonica, a large city at the head of the great Thermaic gulf. In this place was a synagogue of the Jews,――the first that they had found in their European travels; for in this thriving commercial place the Jews were, and always have been, in such large numbers, that they were abundantly able to keep their own house of worship and religious instruction, and had independence enough, as well as regard for the institutions of their fathers, to attend in large numbers weekly at this sanctuary. So zealous and successful indeed had they been in their devotion to their religion, that they had drawn into a profession of the faith of the God of Israel, a vast number of Greeks who attended worship with them; for such was the superior purity of the religion of the Jews, which regarded the one only living God, who was to be worshiped not in the debasing forms of statues, but in spirit and truth, that almost every place throughout the regions of Grecian civilization, in which the Jews had planted their little commercial settlements, and reared the houses of religious instruction, showed abundance of such instances as this, in which the bright intellectual spirit of the Greek readily appreciated the exalted character and the holy truth of the faith owned by the sons of Israel, and felt at once how far more suited to the conceptions of Hellenic genius was such a religion, than the degrading polytheism which the philosophy and poetry of a thousand years had striven in vain to redeem from its inherent absurdities. Among these intelligent but mixed congregations, Paul and his companions entered, and taking advantage of the freedom of religious discourse allowed to all by the order of a Jewish synagogue, they on three successive sabbaths reasoned with them out of the scriptures, on that great and all-absorbing point in the original apostolic theology,――that the Christ, the Messiah, so generally understood to be distinctly foretold in the Hebrew scriptures, was always described as destined to undergo great sufferings during his earthly career, and after a death of shame, was to rise from the grave;――and at last concluded with the crowning doctrine――“This Jesus, whom I preach to you, is this Christ.”

This glorious annunciation of a new and spiritual dispensation, was at once well received by a vast majority of the hearers――but more especially by the Greeks, whose conceptions of the religion which they had espoused, were far more rational and exalted than even the notions of the original Israelites, whose common ideas of a Redeemer being connected and mixed up, as their whole faith was, so much with what was merely national and patriotic in their feelings, had led them to disregard the necessarily spiritual nature of the new revelation expected, and had caused them almost universally to image the Messiah as a mere Jewish conqueror, who was to aim mainly at the restoration of the ancient dominion of long-humbled Judah. Therefore, while the Greeks readily and joyfully accepted this glorious completion of the faith whose beginnings they had learned under the old covenant,――the Jews for the most part scornfully rejected the revelation which presented to them as their Messiah, “a man of sorrows,”――a Galilean,――a Nazarene,――one without pomp or power; the grand achievment of whose earthly career was that most ignominious death on the cross. No: this was not the Messiah for whom they looked and longed, as the glorious restorer of Israel, and the bloody conqueror of the Gentiles; and it was therefore with the greatest indignation that they saw the great majority of those converts from heathenism, whom they had made with so much pains, now wholly carried away with the humbling doctrines of these new teachers. Thus “moved with envy,” the unbelieving Jews resorted to their usual expedient of stirring up a mob; and accordingly, certain low fellows of the baser sort among them, gathered a gang, and set the whole city on an uproar,――an effect which might seem surprising, from a cause apparently so trifling and inadequate, did not every month’s observation on similar occurrences, among people that call themselves the most enlightened and free on the globe, suffice to show every reader, that to “set a whole city in an uproar,” is the easiest thing in the world, and one more often done by “certain lewd fellows of the baser sort,” about the merest trifle, than in any other way. And here then again, is another of those fac-simile exhibitions of true human nature, with which the honest and self-evident story of Luke abounds; and in this particular instance what makes him so beautifully graphical and natural in his description of this manifestation of public opinion, is the fact that he himself was a spectator of the whole proceedings at Thessalonica,――and therefore gives an eye-witness story. The mob being thus gathered, immediately made a desperate assault on the house of Jason, where Paul and Silas were known to lodge, and sought to drag them out to the people. (One would think that this was a mere prophetic account of perfectly similar occurrences, that pass every month under the noses of modern Europeans.) Paul and Silas, however, had been wise enough to make off at the first alarm, and had found some place of concealment, beyond the reach of the mob. Provoked at not obtaining the prime object of the attack, the rascals then seized Jason and other Christians whom they found there, and dragged them before the magistrates, crying――“These that have turned the world upside down, have come hither also,――whom Jason has entertained; and they all do contrary to the statutes of Caesar, saying that there is another king,――one Jesus.” This communication of the mode in which the great mundane inversion had been effected by these four travelers and their new converts, excited no small commotion among all the inhabitants; for it amounted to a distinct charge of a treasonable conspiracy against the Roman government, and could not fail to bring down the most disagreeable consequences on the city, if it was made known, even though it should amount to nothing. However, the whole proceedings against Jason and his friends were conducted with a moderation truly commendable, and far above any mob-action in these enlightened times; for without any personal injury, they simply satisfied themselves with taking security of Jason and his companions, that they should keep the peace, and attempt nothing treasonable, and then quietly let them go. Who would expect any modern European mob to release their victims in this moderate and reasonable way?

“Amphipolis is a city of Macedonia, on the confines of Thrace, called so, as Thucydides informs us, (lib. iv. p. 321,) because the rivers encompassed it. Suidas and others place it in Thracia, giving it the name of the Nine Ways. It had the name likewise of Chrysopolis.” (Wells, Whitby.)

“Apollonia, a city of Macedonia, lying between Amphipolis and Thessalonica. Geographers affirm that there were fourteen cities, and two islands of that name. Stephanus reckons twenty-five.” (Whitby.)

Thessalonica, a large and populous city and sea-port of Macedonia, the capital of the four districts into which the Romans divided that country, after its conquest by Paulus Æmilius. It was situated on the Thermian Bay, and was anciently called Thermae; but, being rebuilt by Philip, the father of Alexander, after his victory over the Thessalians, it then received the name of Thessalonica.

“At the time of writing the Epistle to the Thessalonians, Thessalonica was the residence of the Proconsul who governed the province of Macedonia, and of the Quaestor who had the charge of the imperial revenues. Besides being the seat of government, this port carried on an extensive commerce, which caused a great influx of strangers from all quarters; so that Thessalonica was remarkable for the number, wealth, and learning of its inhabitants. The Jews were extremely numerous here. The modern name of this place is Salonichi; it is the chief port of modern Greece, and has a population of sixty thousand persons, twelve thousand of whom are Jews. According to Dr. Clarke, this place is the same now as it was then; a set of turbulent Jews constituted a very considerable part of its population; and when St. Paul came here from Philippi to preach the gospel to the Thessalonians, the Jews were numerous enough to ‘set all the city in an uproar.’” (Williams.)

After this specimen of popular excitement, it was too manifest that nothing could be done just then at Thessalonica by the apostolic ministers of Christ, and that very night therefore the brethren sent off Paul and Silas in the darkness, to Beroea, a city also in Macedonia, about fifty miles from Thessalonica, exactly west, being on the same parallel of latitude, standing on the south bank of the river Astroeus. Arriving there, they went into the synagogue of the Jews, who were here for the most part of a much better character than the mean Jews of the great trading city of Thessalonica, and being more independent and spiritual in their religious notions, were also much better prepared to appreciate the spiritual doctrines preached by Paul and Silas. They listened respectfully to the new preachers, and when the usual references were made to the standard passages in the Old Testament, universally supposed to describe the Messiah, they diligently examined the passages for themselves, and studied out their correspondence with the events in the life of Jesus, which were mentioned by his preachers as perfectly parallel with these distinct prophecies. The natural result of this nobly candid and rational examination of this great question was, that many of these fair-minded and considerate Jews of Beroea professed their perfect conviction that Jesus was the Christ, and had by the actions of his life fully answered and completed the prophetic types of the Messiah. Here, too, as in Thessalonica, the Greek proselytes to Judaism readily and heartily accepted the doctrines of Jesus. But the gospel messengers were not long allowed the enjoyment of this fine field of apostolic enterprise; for their spiteful foes in Thessalonica, hearing how things were going on in Beroea, took the pains and trouble to journey all the way to that place, for the express purpose of hunting out the preachers of Jesus by a new mob: and in this they were so successful, that the brethren, according to the established rules of Christian expediency, immediately sent away Paul to the south, because he seemed to be the grand object of the persecution; but Silas and Timothy being less obnoxious, still remained in Beroea.

“Beroea was a city of Macedonia; a great and populous city. Lucian de Asino, p. 639. D.” (Whitby.) It was situated to the west of Thessalonica, and not “south,” as Wells absurdly says, “almost directly on the way to Athens.”

HIS VISIT TO ATHENS.

Paul, thus obeying the command given by Jesus in his first charge to the original twelve, went on under the guidance of his Beroean brethren, according to his own request, by sea, to Athens, where he parted from them, giving them charge to tell Silas and Timothy to come on after him, as soon as their commission in Macedonia would allow. He then went about Athens, occupying the interval while he waited for them, in observations upon that most glorious of all earthly seats of art and taste. As he wandered on, an unheeded stranger, among the still splendid and beautiful, though then half-decaying works, which the combined devotion, pride and patriotism of the ancient Athenians had raised to their gods, their country, and its heroes,――in the beautifully picturesque yet simple expression of the apostolic historian, “Paul saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” How many splendid associations does it call up before the mental eye of the classical scholar who reads it? As the apostle wandered along among these thousand works of art, still so hallowed in the fond regard of the scholar, the antiquarian, the man of taste, the poet, and the patriot, his spirit was moved within him, when he every where saw how the whole city was given to idolatry. Not a spot but had its altar; every grove was consecrated to its peculiar nymphs, its Dryads and its Fauns; every stream and fountain had the votive marble for its own bright Naiad;――along the plain rose the splendid colonnades of the yet mighty temples of Jupiter, and all the Olympian gods; and above all, on the high Acropolis, the noble Parthenon rose over the glorious city, proclaiming to the eye of the distant traveler, the honors of the virgin goddess of wisdom, of taste and philosophic virtue, whose name crowned the city, of which she, was throughout all the reign of Polytheism, the guardian deity.

These splendid but mournful testimonies of the misplaced energies of that inborn spirit of devotion, which, all over the world in all times, moves the heart of man to the worship of that Eternal power of whose existence he is ever conscious, touched the spirit of Paul with other emotions than those of delight and admiration. The eye of the citizen of classical and splendid Tarsus, was not indeed blind to the beauties of these works of art, whose fame was spread throughout the civilized world, and with whose historic and poetic glories his eye and ear had long been made familiar; but over them all was cast a moral and spiritual gloom which darkened all these high and rich remembrances, otherwise so bright. Under the impulse of such feelings, he immediately sought occasion to make an attack on this dominant spirit of idolatry. He accordingly, in his usual theater of exertion,――the Jewish synagogue,――freely made known the new revelation of the truth in Jesus, both to the Jews, and to those Gentiles who reverenced the God of Israel, and listened to religious instruction in the Jewish house of worship. With such effect did he proclaim the truth, and with such fervid, striking oratory, that the Athenians, always admirers and cultivators of eloquence, soon had their attention very generally drawn to the foreign teacher, who was publishing these very extraordinary doctrines, in a style of eloquence so peculiar and irregular. The consequence was, that his audiences were soon extended beyond the regular attendants on the Jewish synagogue worship, and many of the philosophic sages of the Athenian schools sat listening to the apostle of Jesus. They soon undertook to encounter him in argument; and Paul now resorting to that most classic ground, the Athenian forum, or Agora, was not slow to meet them. On the spot where Socrates once led the minds of his admiring hearers to the noble conceptions of moral truth, Paul now stood uttering to unaccustomed ears, the far more noble conceptions of a divine truth, that as far outwent the moral philosophy of “Athena’s wisest son,” as did the life, and death, and triumphs of the crucified Son of Man, the course and fate of the hemlock-drinker. Greatly surprised were his philosophical hearers, at these very remarkable doctrines, before unheard of in Greece, and various were the opinions and comments of the puzzled sages. Some of those of the Epicurean and Stoic schools, more particularly, had their pride and scorn quite moved at the seeming presumption of this fluent speaker, who without diffidence or doubt uttered his strange doctrines, though characterized by a style full of irregularities, and a dialect remarkably distinguished by barbarous provincialisms, and scornfully asked, “What does this rattling fellow mean?” Others, observing that he claimed such divine honors for Jesus, the founder of his faith, remarked, that “he seemed to be a preacher of foreign deities.” At last, determined to have their difficulties resolved by the very highest authority, they took him before the very ancient and venerable court of the Areopagus, which was the supreme council in all matters that concerned religion. Here they invited him to make a full communication of the distinctive articles of his new faith, because they felt an honest desire to have the particulars of a subject never before introduced to their notice; and a vast concourse stood by to hear that grand object of life to the news-hunting Athenians,――“A NEW THING.”

“With regard to the application of babbler, Eustathius gives two senses of the word σπερμολόγος. 1. The Attics called those σπερμολόγοι who conversed in the market, and places of merchandise. (In Odys. B. ad finem.) And Paul was disputing with those he met in the market-place. 2. It is used of those who, from some false opinions, boasted unreasonably of their learning. (Idem.) Œcumenius says, a little bird that gathered up the seeds scattered in the market-place, was called σπερμολόγος; in this etymology, Suidas, Phavorinus, the scholiast upon Aristophanes de Avibus, p. 569, and almost all grammarians agree. (Cave’s Lives of the Apostles.) (Whitby’s Annotations.)

“18. σπερμολόγος. This word is properly used of those little insignificant birds which support a precarious existence by picking up seeds scattered by the sower, or left above ground after the soil has been harrowed. See Maximus of Tyre, Dissertations, 13, p. 133., Harpocrates, Aristophanes Av. 232., and the Scholiast, and Plutarch, T. 5, 50, edited by Reiske. It was metaphorically applied also to paupers who prowled about the market place, and lived by picking up any thing which might be dropped by buyers and sellers; and likewise to persons who gleaned in the corn fields. See Eustathius on Homer’s Odyssey ε 241. Hence it was at length applied to all persons of mean condition, who, as we say, “live on their wits.” Thus it is explained by Harpocrates εὐτελὴς, mean and contemptible. And so Philo 1021 c. χρησάμενος――δούλῳ σπερμολόγῳ περιτρίμματι.” (Bloomfield’s Annotations, Acts xvii. 18.)

“The Areopagus was a place in Athens, where the senate usually assembled and took its name (as some think) from Ἄρης which is the same as Mars, the god of war, who was the first person tried here, for having killed Apollo’s son. Others think that, because ἄρης sometimes signifies fighting, murder, or violence of any kind, and that παγὸς is properly a rock, or rising hill, it therefore seems to denote a court situated upon an eminence, (as the Areopagus was,) where causes of murder, &c. were tried. This court at present is out of the city, but in former times it stood almost in the middle of it. Its foundations, which are still standing, are built with square stones of prodigious size, in the form of a semi-circle, and support a terrace or platform, of about a hundred and forty paces, which was the court where this senate was held. In the midst of it, there was a tribunal cut in a rock, and all about were seats also of stone, where the senate heard causes in the open air, without any covering, and (as some say) in the night time, that they might not be moved to compassion at the sight of any criminal that was brought before them. This judicature was held in such high esteem for its uprightness, that when the Roman proconsuls ruled there, it was a very common thing for them to refer difficult causes to the judgment of the Areopagites. After the loss of their liberty, however, the authority of the senate declined, so that in the apostles’ times, the Areopagus was not so much a court of judicature as a common rendezvous, where all curious and inquisitive persons, who spent their time in nothing else, but either in hearing or telling some new thing, were accustomed to meet, Acts xvii. 21. Notwithstanding, they appeared still to have retained the privilege of canonizing all gods that were allowed public worship; and therefore St. Paul was brought before them as an assertor and preacher of a Deity, whom they had not yet admitted among them. It does not appear that he was brought before them as a criminal, but merely as a man who had a new worship to propose to a people religious above all others, but who took care that no strange worship should be received on a footing of a tolerated religion, till it had the approbation of a court appointed to judge such matters. The address of the court to St. Paul, ‘May we know what this doctrine is whereof thou speakest?’ implies rather a request to a teacher, than an interrogatory to a criminal; and accordingly his reply has not the least air of an apology, suiting a person accused, but is one continued information of important truths, such as it became a teacher or benefactor, rather than a person arraigned for crime, to give. He was therefore neither acquitted nor condemned, and dismissed as a man coram non judice. We are indeed told, that when they heard of ‘the resurrection of the dead,’ some mocked, and others said, ‘We will hear thee again of this matter,’ putting off the audience to an indefinite time; so that nothing was left him but to depart.” (Calmet’s Commentary. Beausobre’s and Hammond’s Annotations, and Warburton’s Divine Legation.)

The Areopagus, or Mars Hill; with the Temple of Theseus, Athens.
Acts xvii. 22.

“That Athens was wholly enslaved to idolatry, has been abundantly proved by our philological illustrators, especially the indefatigable Wetstein, from Pausanias Attic. 1, 24: Strabo 10. p. 472, c: Lucian, t. 1. Prometheus p. 180: Livy 45, 27. So also Pausanias in Attic. c. 18, 24. (cited by Pearce and Doddridge,) who tells us, that Athens had more images than all the rest of Greece; and Petronius Satyricon c. 17, who humorously says, ‘It was easier to find a god than a man there.’” (Bloomfield Annotations.)

“καὶ ἐν τῆ ἀγορᾶ. Of the market-places at Athens, of which there were many, the most celebrated were the Old and the New Forum. The former was in the Ceramicus, a very ample space, part within, and part without the city. See Meursius, dissertatione de Ceramico Gemino, § 46. and Potter’s Archaeology 1, 8. p. 30. The latter was outside of the Ceramicus, in a place called Eretria. See Meursius, Ath. Attic. l. 1. c. 6. And this seems to be the one here meant. For no forum, except the Ceramicus and the Eretriacum, was called, absolutely, ἄγορα, but had a name to denote which was meant, as Areopagiticum, Hippodamium, Piraeum, &c. In process of time, and at the period when Paul was at Athens, the forum was transferred from the Ceramicus into the Eretria; a change which, indeed, had been introduced in the time of Augustus; and that this was the most frequented part of the city, we learn from Strabo 10. p. 447. Besides, the Eretriac forum was situated before the στοὰ, or portico, in which the Stoics, of whom mention is just after made, used to hold their public discourses. It was moreover called κύκλος, from its round form.”

“Ἄρειον πάγον, Mars’ Hill. Πάγος signifies properly a high situation. This was a hill opposite to that of the citadel on the west; as we learn from Herodias 8, 52. [See the passages produced supra, to which I add Livy 26, 44. Tumulum quem Mercurii vocant. Editor.] It was so called, either because it had been consecrated to Mars (as the Campus Martius at Rome,) or because (as ♦Pausanias relates, Att. C. 28,) Mars, when he had slain Halyrrothius, son of Neptune, was the first who there pleaded a capital cause, which took place before the twelve gods. The judges used to sit by night, and sub dio; and whatever was done was kept very secret. [whence the proverb Ἀρεοπαγίτου σιωπηλότερος, to which may be compared ours, ‘as grave as a Judge.’ Editor.] They gave their judgment, not viva voce, but in writing. Nor were any admitted into the number of Areopagists but persons of noble birth, of unspotted morality, and eminent for justice and equity. See more in Meursius de Areopago.” (Kuinoel.) (Bloomfield Annotations.)

♦ “Pausanius” replaced with “Pausanias”

Paul taking his stand there, in that splendid scene, uttered in a bold tone and in his noblest style, the great truths which he was divinely consecrated to reveal. Never yet had Athens, in her most glorious state, heard a discourse which, for solemn beauty and lofty eloquence, could equal this brief declaration of the providence of God in the religion of his creatures. Never did the world see an orator in a sublimer scene, or in one that could awaken higher emotions in those who heard, or him who spoke. He stood on the hill of Mars, with Athens beneath and around him, and the mighty Acropolis rising with its “tiara of proud towers,” walls and temples, on the west,――bounding and crowning the view in that direction;――to the north-east lay the forum, the late scene of his discussions, and beyond lay the philosophic Academia, around and through which rolled the flowery Cephisus. Before him sat the most august and ancient court in the Grecian world, waiting for the revelation of his solemn commission respecting the new deities which he was expected to propose as an addition to their polytheistic list;――around him were the sages of the Athenian schools, listening in grave but curious attention, for the new things which the eastern stranger had brought to their ears. The apostle raised his eyes to all the monuments of Athenian devotion which met the view on every side. Before him on the high Acropolis was the mighty temple of the Athenian Minerva; on the plain beyond was the splendid shrine of the Olympian Jove; on his right was the temple of Theseus, the deified ancient king of Attica, who laid the first foundation of her glories; and near were the new piles which the later Grecian adulation had consecrated to the worship of her foreign conquerors――to the deified Caesars. Beginning in that tone of dignified politeness, which always characterized his address towards the great ones of earth, he won their hearts and their attention by a courteously complimentary allusion to the devout though misguided zeal, whose solid tokens everywhere surrounded him. “Ye men of Athens! I see in all places that you are VERY RELIGIOUS. For passing along and gazing at the shrines of your devotion, I found an altar on which was written,――‘To the unknown God;’――Him therefore, whom, not knowing, you worship, I preach to you.” The rest of this splendid, though brief discourse, need not be repeated, because it is given with tolerable fidelity in the common English translation; but it deserves notice how readily and completely, on all occasions, Paul accommodated himself to the circumstances of his hearers. His style on this occasion is remarkably protracted and rounded in its periods, highly cumulative in structure, and harmonious in its almost rhythmical flow;――the whole bearing the character which was best suited to the fancy and fashion of the Athenians,――though still very decidedly marked by the peculiarities of his eastern origin. Here too, he gave them a favorable impression of his knowledge of the Grecian classics, by his apt and happy quotation from Aratus, the philosophical poet of his native province, Cilicia. “For we also are his offspring.”

Very religious.――This is unquestionably the just meaning of xvii. 22. See Bloomfield and all the standard commentators. “Too superstitions” is insulting.

“‘To the Unknown God.’ (xvii. 23.)――It is very evident from the testimony of Laertius, that the Athenians had altars in their public places, inscribed to unknown gods or demons. He informs us, that when Athens was visited with a great plague, the inhabitants invited Epimenides the philosopher, to lustrate their city. The method adopted by him was to carry several sheep to the Areopagus; whence they were left to wander as they pleased, under the observation of persons sent to attend them. As each sheep lay down, it was sacrificed on the spot to the propitious god; (In vita Epimenides lib. xi.) and as the Athenians were ignorant of what god was propitious, they erected an altar with this inscription, ♦ΘΕΟΙΣ ΑΣΙΑΣ, ΚΑΙ ΕΥΡΩΠΗΣ, ΚΑΙ ΛΙΒΗΥΣ, ΘΕΩ ΑΓΝΩΣΤΩ ΚΑΙ ΞΕΝΩ:――To the gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to the strange and unknown god.

♦ “AΙΒΗΥΣ” replaced with “ΛΙΒΗΥΣ” and
“KΛI” replaced with “ΚΑΙ”

“On the architrave of a Doric portico at Athens, which was standing when that city was visited about sixty years since, by Dr. Chandler and Mr. Stuart, is a Greek inscription to the following purport:――‘The people’ [of Athens have erected this fabric] ‘with the donations to Minerva Archegetia,’ [or the conductress,] ‘by the god Caius Julius Caesar and his son the god Augustus, when Nicias was Archon.’ Over the middle of the pediment was a statue of Lucius Caesar, with this inscription:――‘The people’ [honor] ‘Lucius Caesar, the son of the Emperor Augustus Caesar, the son of the god.’ There was also a statue to Julia, the daughter to Augustus, and the mother of Lucius, thus inscribed:――‘The Senate of the Areopagus, and the Senate of the Six Hundred’ [dedicate this statue to] ‘the goddess Julia, Augusta, Provident.’ These public memorials supply an additional proof of the correctness of Paul’s observations on the Athenians, that they were too much addicted to the adoption of objects for worship and devotion.” (Hammond’s Annotations of Cave’s Lives of the Apostles, Horne’s Introduction.)

As he concluded however, with the solemn declaration of the great foundation-truth of Christianity,――that God had raised Jesus from the dead,――there was a very general burst of contempt from the more scornful portion of his audience, at the idea of anything so utterly against all human probability. Of the immortality of the soul, the divinest of their own philosophers had reasoned,――and it was by most of the Athenian sects, considered on the whole, tolerably well established; but the notion of the actual revivification of the perished body,――the recall of the scattered dust and ashes, to the same breathing, moving, acting, thinking form, which for ages had ceased to be,――all amounted to a degree of improbable absurdity,――that not the wildest Grecian speculator had ever dreamed of. So the proud Epicureans and Stoics turned sneeringly away from the barbarian stranger who had come so far to try their credulity with such a tale; and thus they for ever lost the opportunity to learn from this new-opened fountain of truth, a wisdom that the long researches of all the Athenian schools had never reached and could never reach, without the light of this truly divine eastern source, which they now so thoughtlessly scorned. But there were some, more considerate, among the hearers of the apostle, who had learned that it is the most decided characteristic of a true philosopher, to reject nothing at first sight or hearing, though it may happen to be contrary to his own personal experience and learning; and these, weighing the matter with respectful doubt, told Paul――“We will hear thee again about this.” Without any further attempt to unfold the truth at that time, Paul departed from the Areopagus, and no more uplifted his voice on the high places of Athens, in testimony of that solemn revelation of the Son of Man from the dead,――the conviction of whose truth, in spite of all philosophic sneers, was destined to oversweep the whole of that world which they knew, and a new one beyond it, and to exalt the name of that despised wanderer to a fame compared with which that of Socrates should be small. Paul was however afterwards visited by several of those who heard him before the Areopagus; and after a free, conversational discussion of the whole subject, and a more familiar exhibition of the evidences of his remarkable assertions, professed their satisfaction with the arguments, and believed. Among these, even one of the judges of the august Areopagus owned himself a disciple of Jesus. Besides him is mentioned a woman named Damaris; and others not specified, are said to have believed.

“‘Dionysius the Areopagite.’ Acts xvii. 34.――Dionysius is said to have been bred at Athens in all the arts and sciences: at the age of twenty-five he went into Egypt to learn astronomy. At the time of our Savior’s death he was at Heliopolis, where, observing the darkness that attended the passion, he cried out thus:――‘That certainly, at that time, either God himself suffered, or was much concerned for somebody that did.’ Returning to Athens he became one of the senators of the Areopagus; he was converted by St. Paul, and by him appointed bishop of Athens. Having labored and suffered much for the holy cause, he became a martyr to the faith, being burnt to death at Athens, in the 93d year of Christ.” (Cave’s Lives of the Apostles. Stanhope on Epistles and Gospels. Calmet’s Dictionary.)

From the grave manner in which this story is told, the reader would naturally suppose that these great writers had some authority for these incidents; but in reality, everything that concerns Dionysius the Areopagite, is utterly unknown; and not one of these impudent inventions can be traced back further than the sixth century.

After this tolerably hopeful beginning of the gospel in Athens, Paul left that city, and went southwestward to Corinth, then the most splendid and flourishing city of all Greece, and the capital of the Roman province of Achaia. It was famous, beyond all the cities of the world, for its luxury and refinement,――and the name of “Corinthian” had, long before the time of Paul, gone forth as a proverbial expression for what was splendid in art, brilliant in invention, and elegant in vice.

Here first arose that sumptuous order of architecture that still perpetuates the proverbial elegance of the splendid city of its birth, and the gorgeously beautiful style of the rich Corinthian column, “waving its wanton wreath,”――may be taken as an aptly expressive emblem of the general moral and internal, as well as external characteristics of this last home of true Grecian art. Here longest tarried the taste, art and refinement, which so eminently marked the first glories of Greece, and when the triumphs of that ancient excellence were beginning to grow dim in its brighter early seats in Attica and in Ionian Asia, they flashed out with a most dazzling beauty in the splendid city of the Isthmus,――but alas!――in a splendor that was indeed only a passing flash,――a last brilliant gleam from this glorious spot, before the lamp of Hellenic glory in art, went out forever. In the day of the apostle’s visit however, it was in its most “high and palmy state,”――the queen of the Grecian world. It was glorious too, in the dearest recollections of the patriotic history of Greece; for here was the center of that last brilliant Achaian confederacy, which was cherished by the noble spirits of Aratus and Philopoemen; and here too was made the last stand against the all-crushing advance of the legions of Rome: and when it fell at last before that resistless conquering movement,――“great was the fall of it.” The burning of Corinth by Mummius, (B. C. 144, the year of the fall of Carthage,) is infamous above all the most barbarous acts of Roman conquest, for its melancholy destruction of the works of ancient art, with which it then abounded. But from the ashes of this mournful ruin, it rose soon after, under the splendid patronage of Roman dominion, to a new splendor, that equalled, or perhaps outwent the glories of its former perfection, which had been ripening from the day when, as recorded by old Homer, in the freshness of its early power, it sent forth its noble armaments to the siege of Troy, or set afloat the earliest warlike navy in the world, or was made, through a long course of centuries, the center of the most brilliant of Grecian festivals, in the celebration of the Isthmian games before its walls. The Roman conquerors, as if anxious to make to this ancient seat of Grecian splendor, a full atonement for the barbarous ruin with which they had overwhelmed it, now showered on it all the honors and favors in their power. It was rebuilt as a Roman colony,――endowed by the munificence of senates, consuls, and emperors, and made the capital of the Roman province of Achaia, until the dismemberment of the empire. Shining in its gaudy fetters, it became what it has been described to be in the apostolic age, and was then beyond all doubt the greatest Grecian city in Europe, if not in the world. Athens was then mouldering in more than incipient decay――“the ghost of its former self;” for even Cicero, long before this, describes it as presenting everywhere spectacles of the most lamentable ruin and decline; but Corinth was in the highth of its glory,――its luxury,――its vice,――its heathen wickedness,――and may therefore be justly esteemed the most important scene of labor into which apostolic enterprise had ever yet made its way, and to have been well worthy of the attention which it ever after received from him, to the very last of his life, being made the occasion and object of a larger and a more splendid portion of his epistolary labors, than all with which he ever favored any other place in the world; nor can this protracted notice of its condition and character be justly blamed for its intrusion on this hurried narrative.

“Corinth.――There is scarcely any one of the seats of ancient magnificence and luxury, that calls up more vivid and powerful associations, than are awakened by the name of this once opulent and powerful city. Corinth, ‘the prow and stern of Greece,’ the emporium of its commerce, the key and bulwark of the Peloponnesus, was proverbial for its wealth as early as the time of Homer. Its situation was so advantageous for the inexperienced navigation of early times, that it became of necessity the center of trade. The first naval battle on record was fought between Corinth and its colony Corcyra, about 657 B. C. ‘Syracuse, the ornament of Sicily, Corcyra, some time sovran of the seas, Ambracia in Epirus, and several other cities more or less flourishing, owe their origin to Corinth.’ (Travels of ♦Anacharsis, vol. III. c. 37.) Thucydides states, that the Corinthian ship-builders first produced galleys with three benches of oars. The circumnavigation of the peninsula was tedious and uncertain to a proverb; while at the Isthmus, not only their cargoes, but, if requisite, the smaller vessels might be transported from sea to sea. By its port of Cenchreae, it received the rich merchandise of Asia, and by that of Lechaeum, it maintained intercourse with Italy and Sicily. The Isthmian Games, by the concourse of people which they attracted at their celebration, contributed not a little to its immense opulence; and the prodigality of its merchants rendered the place so expensive, that it became a saying, ‘It is not for every one to go to Corinth.’ Even after its barbarous destruction by the Romans, it must have been an extremely magnificent city. Pausanias mentions in and near the city, a theater, an odeum, a stadium, and sixteen temples. That of Venus possessed above a thousand female slaves. ‘The women of Corinth are distinguished by their beauty; the men by their love of gain and pleasure. They ruin their health by convivial debauches, and love with them is only licentious passion. Venus is their principal deity.... The Corinthians, who performed such illustrious acts of valor in the Persian war, becoming enervated by pleasure, sunk under the yoke of the Argives; were obliged alternately to solicit the protection of the Lacedaemonians, the Athenians, and the Thebans; and are at length reduced to be only the wealthiest, the most effeminate, and the weakest state in Greece.’” (Anacharsis.) (Modern Traveler, pp. 160, 161.)

♦ “Anarchasis” replaced with “Anacharsis”

The Hebrew stranger, entering without despondency, this new scene of labor, passed on unnoticed, and looking about for those with whom he might be bold to communicate, on the score of national and religious sympathies, he found among those who like himself were strangers, a Jew, by name Aquilas, who with his wife Priscilla had lately arrived from Italy, whence they had just been driven by a vexatious decree of Claudius Caesar, which, on some groundless accusation, ordered all the Jews to depart from Rome. Aquilas, though lately a resident in Italy, was originally from Pontus in the northern part of Asia Minor, not very far from Paul’s native province; and this proximity of origin joined to another circumstance arising out of it, drew the strangers together, in this foreign city. In Pontus even at this day is carried on that same famous manufacture of camlet articles for which Cilicia was also distinguished and proverbial, and it is therefore perfectly reasonable to suppose that in that age also, this business was common in the same region, because the variety of goat which produces the material, has always been confined within those limits. Being of the same trade, then, and both of them friendless strangers, seeking employment and support, Paul and Aquilas fell into one another’s company and acquaintance, and getting work at the same time, they seem to have set up a kind of partnership in their trade, living together, and working in the same way, from day to day. This, of course, gave constant opportunity for the freest communication on all subjects of conversation; and Aquila would not be long in finding out the great object, which had led Paul away from his country and friends, to a place where his necessities drove him to the laborious exercise of an occupation, which a person of his rank and character could not originally have acquired with any intention of gaining his livelihood thereby. That this was the sole motive of his present application to his tedious business, is abundantly testified in the epistles, which he afterwards wrote to this same place; for he expressly says, that he “was chargeable to no man,” but “labored with his own hands.” Yet the diligent pursuit of this laborious avocation, did not prevent him from appearing on the sabbath, in the synagogue, as a teacher of divine things; nor would the noble principles of Jewish education permit any man to despise the stranger on account of his necessitous and apparently humble circumstances. His weekly ministry was therefore pursued without hindrance, and with success; for “he persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.” Among those who received the most eminent advantage from his apostolic labors, was his fellow-workman Aquilas, who with his wife Priscilla, here imbibed such a portion of Christian knowledge, as ever after made both him and her, highly useful as teachers of the new faith, to which they were at this time converted. It would seem, however, that Paul did not, during the first part of his ministrations, very openly and energetically proclaim the grand doctrine of the faith; for it was not till after the arrival of Silas and Timothy from Macedonia, that he “pressed on in the word, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.” As had usually been the case, whenever he had proclaimed this solemn truth to his own countrymen, he was met by the Corinthian Jews, for the most part, with a most determined and scornful opposition; so that renouncing their fellowship in the expressive gesture of an Oriental,――shaking his raiment,――he declared――“Your blood be on your own heads:――I am clean. Henceforth, I will go to the Gentiles.” Leaving their company, he then went into the house of a religious friend, close to the synagogue, and there took up his abode. But not all the Jews were involved in the condemnation of this rejection. On the contrary, one of the most eminent men among them, Crispus, either then or formerly the ruling elder of the synagogue, professed the faith of Jesus, notwithstanding its unpopularity. Along with him his whole family were baptized, and many other Corinthians received the word in the same manner. In addition to these nobly encouraging results of his devoted labors, his ardor in the cause of Jesus received a new impulse from a remarkable dream, in which the Lord appeared to him, uttering these words of high consolation,――“Fear not, but speak, and hold not thy peace; for I am with thee, and no one shall hurt thee. I have many people in this city.” Under the combined influence of both natural and supernatural encouragements, he therefore remained zealously laboring in Corinth, and made that city his residence, as Luke very particularly records, for a year and six months.

“xviii. 5. συνείχετο τῳ λόγω, &c. The common reading is πνεύματι. Now since συννέχεσθαι, among other significations, denotes angi, maerore corripi, (see Luke ♦xii. 50, and the note on Matthew ♦iv. 24,) many Commentators, as Hammond, Mill, and Wolf, explain, “angebatur Paulus animo, dum docebat Judaeos, Jesum esse Messiam;” viz. “since he could produce no effect among them.” And they compare verse 6. But this interpretation is at variance with the context.

♦ “12” replaced with “xii” and
“4” replaced with “iv” for consistency

“Now this verb also signifies to incite, urge; as in 2 Corinthians v. 14. Hence Beza, Pricaeus, and others, explain: ‘intus et apud se aestuebat prae zeli ardore;’ which interpretation I should admit, if there were not reason to suppose, from the authority of MSS. and Versions, that the true reading, (though the more difficult one,) is λύγῳ, of which the best interpretation, and that most suitable to the context, is the one found in the Vulgate ‘instabat verbo.’ For συνέχεσθαι denotes also to be held, occupied by anything; as in Sappho 17, 20. Herodotus 1, 17, 22. Aelian, Varia Historia, 14, 22. This ♦signification of the word being admitted, the sense will be: ‘When they had approached whom Paul (who knew that combined strength is most efficacious) had expected as his assistants in promulgating the Christian doctrine, and of whom, in so large and populous a city there was need, then he applied himself closely to the work of teaching.’ Kuinoel. (Bloomfield’s Annotations, p. 593.)

♦ “significaiion” replaced with “signification”

HIS EPISTLES WRITTEN FROM CORINTH.

The period of his residence in this city is made highly interesting and important in the history of the sacred canon, by the circumstance that here he wrote some of the first of those epistles to his various missionary charges, which constitute the most controverted and the most doctrinal portion of the New Testament. In treating of these writings, in the course of the narrative of his life, the very contracted limits now left to his biographer, will make it necessary to be much more brief in his literary history, than in that of those other apostles, whose writings have claimed and received so full a statement, under their respective lives. Nor is there so much occasion for the labors of the apostolic historian on this part of the history of the apostolic works, as on those already so fully treated; for while the history of the writings of Peter, John, Matthew, James and Jude, has so seldom been presented to the eyes of common readers, the writings of Paul, which have always been the great storehouse of Protestant dogmatism, have been discussed and amplified in their history, scope, character, and style, more fully than all the rest of the Bible, for common readers; but in the great majority of instances, proving such a comment on the sadly prophetical words of Peter on these very writings, that the apostolic historian may well and wisely dread to immerse himself in such a sea of difficulties as presents itself to view; and he therefore cautiously avoids any intermeddling with discussions which will possibly involve him in the condemnation pronounced by the great apostolic chief, on those “unlearned and unstable,” who even in his time had begun to “wrest to their own destruction, the things hard to be understood in the epistles of his beloved brother Paul;” a sentence which seems to have been wholly overlooked by the great herd of dogmatizing commentators, who, very often, without either the “learning” or the “stability,” which Peter thought requisite for the safe interpretation of the Pauline epistles, have rushed on to the task of vulgarizing these noble and honest writings, to suit the base purposes of some popular system of mystical words and complex doctrines. If then, the “unlearned and unstable” have been thus distinctly warned by the highest apostolic authority, against meddling with these obscure and peculiar writings; and since the whole history of didactic theology is so full of melancholy comments on the undesignedly prophetical force of Peter’s denunciation,――it is no more than prudent to decline the slightest interference with a subject, which has been on such authority declared to require the possession of so high a degree of learning and stability, for its safe and just treatment. The few things which may be safely stated, will merely concern the place, time and immediate occasion of the writing of each of these epistles.

In the first place, as to the order in which these works of Paul are arranged in the common New Testament canon, it should be observed that it has reference neither to date, subject, nor anything whatever in their character or object, except the very arbitrary circumstance of the rank and importance of the places and persons that were the original objects of their composition. The epistle to the Romans is always placed first, because the imperial city to which it was directed was beyond all question the greatest in the world. The epistles to the Corinthians are next, because that city was the nearest in rank and importance to Rome, of all those which were the objects of Paul’s epistolary attentions. The epistle to the Galatians is next, because it was directed to a great province, inferior indeed in importance, to the two great cities before mentioned, but vastly above any of the other places to which Paul wrote. The epistle to the Ephesians comes next, because Ephesus ranked far above any of the cities which follow. Philippi was supposed, by those who arranged the canon, greater than Colosse and Thessalonica, because it was thought to have been a capital city. Thus all those epistles which are addressed to whole churches, are placed first; and those which are addressed to individuals in the same manner, form a class by themselves; that to Timothy being placed first of these, because he was the most eminent of all the apostle’s assistants,――Titus being inferior to him in dignity, and Philemon, a person of no account at all, except from the bare circumstance, that he was accidentally the subject of Paul’s notice. The epistle to the Hebrews is last of all, because it is altogether peculiar in its character, addressed neither to churches, nor to an individual, but to a whole nation, being published and circulated for their general benefit. The circumstance also that it was long denied a place in the canon, and considered as a spurious writing, improperly attributed to Paul, probably caused it to be put last of all his writings, when in the course of time, it was at length allowed a place in the canon.

FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS.

That epistle which the great majority of all modern critics consider as the earliest of all those writings of Paul that are now preserved, is the first to the Thessalonians. It is directed to them from Paul, Silvanus, (or Silas,) and Timothy, which shows that it was written after Paul had been joined by these two brethren, which was not until some time after his arrival in Corinth. It appears by the second and third chapters, that the apostle, having been hindered by some evil agency of the wicked, from visiting Thessalonica, as he had earnestly desired to do, had been obliged to content himself with sending Timothy to the brethren there, to comfort them in their faith, and to inquire whether they yet stood fast in their first honorable profession; for he declares himself to have been anxious to know whether by some means the tempter might not have tempted them, and his labor have thus been in vain. But he now informs them how he has lately been greatly comforted by the good news brought from them by Timothy, who had assured the apostle of their faith and love, and that they had great remembrance of him always, desiring much to see him, as he them. Making known to them the great joy which these tidings had caused in him, he now affectionately re-assures them of his high and constant regard for them, and of his continued remembrance of them in his prayers. He then proceeds briefly to exhort them to a perseverance in the Christian course, in which they had made so fair an outset, urging upon them more especially, those virtues which were peculiarly rare among those with whom they were daily brought in contact,――purity of life, rigid honesty in business transactions, a charitable regard for the feelings of others, a quiet, peaceable, inoffensive deportment, and other minuter counsels, according to the peculiar circumstances of different persons among them. The greater portion of this brief letter, indeed, is taken up with these plain, practical matters, with no reference to any deep doctrinal subjects, the whole being thus evidently well-suited to the condition of believers who had but just begun the Christian course, and had been in no way prepared to appreciate any learned discussion of those obscure points which in later periods were the subject of so much controversy among some of Paul’s converts. Their dangers hitherto had also been mainly in the moral rather than in the doctrinal way, and the only error of mere belief, to which he makes reference, is one which has always been the occasion of a great deal of harmless folly among the ignorant and the weak minded in the Christian churches, from the apostolic age to this day. The evil however, was considered by the apostle of so much importance, that he thought it worth while to briefly expose its folly to the Thessalonians, and he accordingly discourses to them of the day of judgment, assuring them that those who might happen to be alive at the moment of Christ’s coming, would derive no peculiar advantage from that circumstance, because those who had died in Christ should rise first, and the survivors be then caught up to meet the Lord in the air. But as for “the times and the seasons,”――those endless themes for the discursive nonsense of the visionary, even to the present day and hour,――he assures them that there was no need at all that he should write to them, because they already well knew that the day of the Lord should come as a thief in the night, according to the words of Jesus himself. The only practical benefit which they could expect to derive then, from this part of their faith, was the conviction of the necessity of constantly bearing in mind the shortness and uncertainty of their earthly stay, and the importance of watchfulness and sobriety. After several sententious moral exhortations, he concludes with affectionate salutations, and with an earnest, solemn charge, that the letter should be read to all the brethren of the church.

It will be observed, that at the conclusion of the epistle is a statement that it was written from Athens,――an assertion perfectly absurd, and rendered evidently so by the statements contained in the epistle itself, as above shown. All the similar statements appended to his other epistles are equally unauthorized, and most of them equally false;――being written by some exceedingly foolish copyists, who were too stupid to understand the words which they transcribed. Yet these idle falsehoods are gravely given in all copies of the English translation, and are thus continually sent abroad to mislead common readers, many of whom, seeing them thus attached to the apostolic writings, suppose them to be also of inspired authority, and are deceived accordingly. And they probably will continue to be thus copied, in spite of their palpable and mischievous falsehood, until such a revolution in the moral sense of common people takes place, that they shall esteem a new negative truth more valuable and interesting, than an old, groundless blunder.

For some time after the writing of the first epistle to the Thessalonians, with these triumphs and other encouragements, Paul and his faithful helpers appear to have gone on steadily in their apostolic labors, with no special obstacle or difficulty, that is commemorated in the sacred record. But at last their old difficulties began to manifest themselves in the gradually awakened enmity of the Jews, who, though at his first distinct public ministrations they had expressed a decided and scornful opposition to the doctrine of a crucified Savior, yet suffered the new teachers to go on, without opposing them any farther than by scornful verbal hostility, blasphemy and abuse. But when they saw the despised heresy making such rapid advances, notwithstanding the contempt with which it was visited, they immediately determined to let it no longer take advantage of their inefficiency in resisting its progress. Of course, deprived themselves, of all political power, they had not the means of meeting the evil by physical violence, and they well knew that any attempt on their part to raise an illegal commotion against the strangers, would only bring down on the exciters of the disturbance, the whole vengeance of their Roman rulers, who were unsparing in their vengeance on those that undertook to defy the forms of their laws, for the sake of persecution, or any private ends; and least of all would a class of people so peculiar and so disliked as the Jews, be allowed to take any such treasonable steps, without insuring them a most dreadful punishment. These circumstances therefore compelled them to proceed, as usual, under the forms of law; and their first step against Paul therefore, was to apprehend him, and take him, as a violator of religious order, before the highest Roman tribunal,――that of the proconsul.

The proconsul of Achaia, holding his supreme seat of justice in Corinth, the capital of that Roman province, was Lucius Junius Gallio, a man well known to the readers of one of the classic Latin writers of that age,――Seneca,――as one of the most remarkable exemplifications of those noble virtues which were the great theme of this philosopher’s pen. Out of many beautiful illustrations which may be drawn from Roman and Jewish writers, to explain and amplify the honest and faithful apostolic history of Luke, there is none more striking and gratifying than the aid here drawn from this fine philosophical classic, on the character of the noble proconsul, who by his upright, wise, and clement decision, against the mean persecutors of Paul,――and by his indignant refusal to pervert and degrade his vice-regal power to the base ends of private abuse, has acquired the grateful regard and admiring respect of all Christian readers of apostolic history. The name of Lucius Junius Gallio, by which he is known to Roman writers as well as in apostolic history, was not his original family designation, and therefore gives the reader no idea of his interesting relationship to one of the finest moralists of the whole period of the Roman empire. His original family name was Marcus Annaeus Novatus Seneca,――which appellation he exchanged for his later one, on being adopted by Lucius Junius Gallio, a noble Roman, who being destitute of children, adopted, according to a very common custom of the imperial city, one of a family that had already given promise of a fine reward to those who should take its offspring as theirs. The famous philosopher before mentioned,――Lucius Annaeus Seneca,――was his own brother; both of them being the sons of Marcus Annaeus Seneca, a distinguished orator and rhetorician of the Augustan age. A strong and truly fraternal affection always continued to hold the two brothers together, even after they had been separated in name by the adoption of the older into the family of Gallio; and the philosopher often commemorates his noble brother, in terms of high respect; and dedicated to him one of the most perfect of those moral treatises which have immortalized the name of Seneca.

The philosopher Seneca, after having been for many years banished from Rome by Claudius, was at length recalled by that emperor in the ninth year of his reign, corresponding to A. D. 49. He was immediately made a senator, and was still further honored by being intrusted with the education of Domitius, the son of Agrippina, afterwards adopted by Claudius as heir to the throne, to which he succeeded on the emperor’s death, under the name of Nero, by which he has now become so infamous wherever the Roman name is known. Being thus elevated to authority and great influence with the emperor, Seneca made use of his power, to procure for his brother Gallio such official honors as his talents and character justly claimed. In the eleventh year of Claudius he was made consul, as is recorded in the Fasti Consulares; and was soon after sent into Greece, as proconsul of Achaia. Arriving at Corinth in the year 53, he was immediately addressed by the Jewish citizens of that place in behalf of their plot against Paul; for they naturally supposed that this would be the best time for the attempt to bend the new governor to their purposes, when he was just commencing his administration, and would be anxious to please the subjects of his power by his opening acts. But Gallio had no disposition to acquire popularity with any class of citizens, by any such abuse of power, and by his conduct on this occasion very fairly justifies the high character given him by his brother Seneca. When the Jews came dragging Paul before the proconsular tribunal, with the accusation――“This fellow persuades men to worship God in a manner contrary to the ritual,”――before Paul could open his mouth in reply, Gallio carelessly answered――“If it were a matter of crime or misdemeanor, ye Jews! it would be reasonable that I should bear with you; but if it be a question of words and names, and of your ritual, look ye to it; for I do not wish to be a judge of those things.” With this contemptuous reply, he cleared the court of them. The Jews thus found their fine scheme of abusing Paul under the sanction of the Roman tribunal, perfectly frustrated; nor was their calamity confined to this disappointment; for all the Greeks who were present at the trial,――indignant at the scandalous character of the proceeding,――took Sosthenes, the ruling elder of the synagogue, who had probably been most active in the persecution of Paul, as he was the regular legal chief of the Jews, and gave him a sound threshing in the court, before he could obey the orders of the Proconsul, and move off from the tribunal. Gallio was so far from being displeased at this very irregular and improper outbreak of public feeling, that he took no notice of the action whatever, though it was a shameful violation of the dignity of his tribunal; and it may therefore be reasonably concluded that he was very much provoked against the Jews, and was disposed to sympathize with Paul; otherwise he would have been apt to have punished the outrage of the Greeks upon Sosthenes.

“The name of this proconsul was Marcus Annaeus Novatus, but being adopted by Lucius Junius Gallio, he took the name of his adopted father; he was brother to the famous Seneca, tutor to Nero. That philosopher dedicated to Gallio his book, ‘De Vita Beata.’ The Roman historians concur in giving him the character of a sweet disposition, an enemy to all vice, and particularly a hater of flattery. He was twice made proconsul of Achaia, first by Claudius, and afterwards by Nero. As he was the sharer of his brother’s prosperity, so he was of his misfortunes, when he fell under Nero’s displeasure, and was at length put to death by the tyrant, as well as his brother.” (Calmet’s Commentary. Poole’s Annotations. Williams on Pearson.)

“In Acts xviii. 12‒16, we find Paul is brought before Gallio by the Jews, but this proconsul refused to judge any such matters, as not coming within his jurisdiction. The character for justice, impartiality, prudence, and mildness of disposition, which this passage gives to Gallio, is confirmed by Seneca, his brother, in these words:――Solebam tibi dicere, Gallionem fratrem meum (quem nemo non parum amat, etiam qui amare plus non potest,) alia vitia non nosse, hoc etiam, (i. e. adulationem,) odisse.――Nemo enim mortalium uni tam dulcis est, quam hic omnibus. Hoc quoque loco blanditiis tuis restitit, ut exclamares invenisse te inexpugnabilem virum adversus insidias, quas nemo non in sinum recipit. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Natural Questions, lib. iv. in preface, op. tom. iv. p. 267, edited by Bipont.) In our translation Gallio is styled the deputy, but the real Greek word is Ανθυπατευοντος, proconsul. The accuracy of Luke in this instance is very remarkable. In the partition of the provinces of the Roman empire, Macedonia and Achaia were assigned to the people and Senate of Rome. In the reign of Tiberius they were, at their own request, made over to the emperor. In the reign of Claudius, (A. U. C. 797. A. D. 44,) they were again restored to the Senate, after which time proconsuls were sent into this country. Nero afterwards made the Achaians a free people. The Senate therefore lost this province again. However, that they might not be sufferers, the emperor gave them the island of Sardinia, in the room of it. Vespasian made Achaia a province again. There is likewise a peculiar propriety in the name of the province of which Gallio was proconsul. The country subject to him was all Greece; but the proper name of the province among the Romans was Achaia, as appears from various passages of the Roman historians, and especially from the testimony of Pausanias. Καλουσι δε ουχ’ Ἑλλαδος, αλλα’ ♦Αχαιας ἡγεμονα οἱ Ῥωμαιοι διοτι εχειρωσαντο Ἑλληνας δε Αχαιων, τοτε του Ἑλληνικου προεστηκοτων. (Pausanias Description of Greece. lib. vii. p. 563. Lardner’s Works, 4to. vol. I. p. 19.)

♦ “Ααχιων” replaced with “Αχαιων”

“The words Γαλλίωνος δε ἀνθυπατεύοντος ought to be rendered, with Heumann, Walch, Antiquities, Corinth, p. 35., and Reichard, (as indeed is required by the context,) ‘when Gallio had been made Proconsul,’ or ‘on Gallio’s entering on the Proconsulship.’ (Kuinoel.) In the same sense it was also taken by Beza and Piscator; and this appears to be the true one. The Jews, it seems, waited for the arrival of a new Proconsul to make their request, as thinking that they should then be less likely to meet with a refusal.” (Bloomfield’s Annotations, Vol. IV. p. 600.)

“‘Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogues.’ verse 17. In the 8th verse we read that Crispus was the chief ruler of the synagogue in Corinth. And from this we may suppose that there were more than one synagogue in that city, or that there might be more than one ruler in the same synagogue; or that Crispus, after his conversion to Christianity, might have been succeeded by Sosthenes; but then we are at a loss to know who the people are that thus beat and misused him; the Greek printed copies tell us that they were the Gentiles; and those that read the text imagine, that when they perceived the neglect and disregard wherewith the proconsul received the Jews, they, to insult them more, fell upon the ruler of their synagogue, whether out of hatred to them, or friendship to St. Paul, it makes no matter. But others think, that Sosthenes, however head of the synagogue, was nevertheless the friend of St. Paul, and that the other Jews, seeing themselves slighted by Gallio, might vent their malice upon him; for they suppose that this was the same Sosthenes, whose name St. Paul, in the beginning of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, written about three years after this time, joins with his own. This opinion, however, was not universally received, since, in the time of Eusebius, it was thought the Sosthenes mentioned in the epistle was one of the seventy disciples, and, consequently, could not be the chief of the synagogue at Corinth, twenty years after the death of Jesus Christ.” (Beausobre’s Annotations. Calmet’s Commentary and Dictionary.)

“‘xviii. 17. ἐπιλαβόμενοι δὲ πάντες οἱ Ἕλληνες There is here some variation of reading, and no little question raised as to the true one; which consequently leaves the interpretation unsettled. Two ancient MSS. and versions omit οἱ Ἕλληνες, and others read οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι. As to the latter reading, it cannot be tolerated; for why should the Jews have beaten him? Neither is it likely that they would have taken such a liberty before so solemn a tribunal. The words οἱ Ἕλληνες are thought by many critics, as Grotius, Mill, Pierce, Bengel, and Kuinoel, to be derived from the margin, like the last. Now those were Gentiles (say they) who beat Sosthenes; and hence some one wrote οἱ Ἕλληνες. As to the reason for the beating, it was to make the Jews go away the faster; and to this they were actuated partly by their hatred towards the Jews, and partly by a desire to please the Procurator.’ But this appears to be pressing too much on the word ἀπήλασεν, which has by no means any such meaning. Besides, it is strange that the words Ἕλληνες should have crept into nearly all the MSS; even into so many early ones. And, supposing Ἕλληνες to be removed, what sense is to be given to παντες? None (I think) satisfactory, or agreeable to the style of the New Testament. It must therefore be retained: and then the sense of πάντες will be as follows: ‘all the Greeks, both Gentiles and Christians:’ which is so evident, that I am surprised the commentators should not have seen it. Some explain it of the Gentiles, and others of the Gentile Christians. Both indeed had reason to take umbrage at the intolerance and bitter animosity of the Jews. It is not likely that any should have joined in the beating, merely to please the Proconsul, who was not a man to be gratified by such a procedure. So that the gnomes brought forward by Grotius on the base assentatio of courtiers, are not here applicable.

“By ἔτυπτον is merely to be understood beating, or thumping him with their fists, as he passed along. Anything more than that, we cannot suppose they would have ventured upon, or the Proconsul have tolerated.”

“By τούτων, (verse 17,) we may, I think, understand both the accusation brought forward, and the cuffs which followed; to neither of which the Proconsul paid much attention; and this from disgust at the litigious conduct of the Jews; as also from the custom, mentioned by Pricaeus, of the Roman governors, to pass by any conduct which did not directly tend to degrade the dignity of the Roman name, or weaken its influence, in order that the yoke might be as easy as possible to the provincials.” (Bloomfield’s Annotations, Vol. IV. pp. 603‒605.)

CORINTH――CENCHREA.
Romans xvi. 1. Acts xviii. 18.

His character having been thus vindicated, and his safety thus assured him by the supreme civil authority, Paul resided for a long time in Corinth, steadily pursuing his apostolic work, without any direct hindrance or molestation from the Jews. There is no reason to suppose that he confined all his labor entirely to the city; on the contrary, it is quite certain, that the numerous smaller gospel fields throughout the adjacent country, must have attracted his attention, and it appears, from the commencement of his second epistle to the Corinthians, that many throughout all Achaia had received the gospel, and had been numbered among the saints. Corinth, however, remained the great center of his operations in Greece, and from this place he soon after directed another epistle to one of his apostolic charges in Macedonia,――the church of Thessalonica. Since his former epistle had been received by them, there had arisen a new occasion for his anxious attention to their spiritual condition, and in his second letter he alludes distinctly to the fact that there had been misrepresentations of his opinion, and seems to imply that a letter had been forged in his name, and presented to them, as containing a new and more complete account of the exact time of the expected coming of Christ, to which he had only vaguely alluded in the first. In the second chapter of his second epistle, he renews his warning against these delusions about the coming of Christ, alluding to the fact, that they had been deceived and disturbed by misstatements on this subject, and had been led into error, both by those who pretended to be inspired, and by those who attempted to show by prediction, that the coming of Christ was at hand, and also by the forged epistle pretending to contain Paul’s own more decisive opinions on the subject. He exhorts them to “let no man deceive them by any of these means.” He warns them moreover, against any that exalt themselves against the doctrines which he had taught them, and denounces all false and presumptuous teachers in very bitter terms. After various warnings against these and all disorderly persons among them, he refers to his own behavior while with them, as an example for them to follow, and reminds them how blamelessly and honestly he behaved himself. He did not presume on his apostolic office, to be an idler, or to eat any man’s bread for naught, but steadily worked with his own hands, lest he should be chargeable to any one of them; and this he did, not because his apostolic office did not empower him to live without manual labor, and to depend on those to whom he preached for his means of subsistence, but because he wished to make himself, and his fellow-laborers, Silas and Timothy, examples for their behavior after he was gone. Yet it seemed that, notwithstanding the pains he had taken to inculcate an honest and industrious course, several persons among them had assumed the office of teaching and reproving, and had considered themselves thereby excused from doing anything for their own support. In the conclusion, he refers them distinctly to his own signature and salutation, which authenticate every epistle which he writes, and without which, no letter was to be esteemed genuine. This he specifies, no doubt, for the sake of putting them on their guard against the repetition of any such deception as had been lately practised on them in his name.

HIS VOYAGE BACK TO THE EAST.

Soon after Paul had written his second epistle to the Thessalonians, he left Corinth, in the spring of A. D. 56, as it is commonly calculated, and after bidding the brethren farewell, journeyed back to Asia, from whose shores he had now been absent not less than three years. On his return journey, he was accompanied by his two acquaintances and fellow-laborers, Aquilas and Priscilla, who were now his most intimate friends, and henceforth were always esteemed among the important aids of the apostolic enterprise. Journeying eastward across the isthmus, they came to Cenchreae, the eastern port of Corinth, and at the head of the great Saronic gulf, about seven miles from the city itself. At this place Paul discharged himself of the obligation of a vow, which he had made some time before, in conformity with a common Jewish custom of thus giving force to their own sense of gratitude for the accomplishment of any desired object. He had vowed to let his hair grow until some unknown end was attained, and now, having seen the prayers which sanctioned that vow granted, he cut off his hair in token of the joyful completion of the enterprise on which he had thus solemnly and formally invoked the blessing of heaven. The actual purpose of this vow is not recorded,――but when the occasion on which he thus exonerated himself is considered, it seems most reasonable to suppose that now, embarking from the shores of Europe, after he had there passed so many years of very peculiar labor and trials, he was thus celebrating the prosperous and happy achievment of his first great western mission, and that this vow had been made for his safe return, when he first sailed from the eastern coast of the Aegean, at Alexandria Troas.

He sailed from Cenchreae to Ephesus, a great city of Ionic Asia, which had never been the scene of his apostolic labors, though he had traversed much of the country around it; for it will be remembered, that on his last journey through Asia Minor, when he had passed over Galatia and Phrygia, he was about to enter Asia Proper, but was hindered by a special impulse of the Spirit, which sent him in a different direction. But having thus achieved his great western enterprise, there was now no longer any more important commission to prevent him from gratifying his eyes with a sight of this very interesting region, and making here an experimental effort to diffuse the knowledge of the gospel through the numerous, wealthy, refined and populous cities of this, the most flourishing and civilized country in the world. He did not intend, however, to make anything more than a mere call at Ephesus; for the great object of his voyage from Europe was to return to Jerusalem and Syria, and give to his brethren, a full statement of all the interesting particulars of his long and remarkable mission in Macedonia and Greece. But he took occasion to vary this eastern route, so as to effect as much good as possible by the way; and therefore embarked first for Ephesus, where he landed with Aquilas and Priscilla, whom he left there, while he continued on his journey, southeastwards. He stopped with them however, a few days, with a view to open this new field of labor with them; and going into the synagogue, discoursed with the Jews. He was so well received by his hearers, that he was earnestly besought to prolong his stay among them; but he excused himself for his refusal of their kind invitation, by stating the great object which he had in view in leaving Europe at that particular time:――“I must by all means keep this coming feast at Jerusalem; but I will return to you,――God willing.” And bidding them farewell, he sailed away from Ephesus to Caesarea, on the coast of Palestine, where he landed. Thence he went up to Jerusalem, to salute the church. In this part of the history of Paul, Luke seems to be exceedingly brief; perhaps because he was not then with him, and had never received from him any account of this journey. There is therefore no way of ascertaining what was the particular motive or design of this visit. It would appear, however, from the very hurried manner in which the visit was noticed, that it was exceedingly brief, and his departure thence may, as Calvin conjectures, have been hastened by the circumstance, that possibly the business on which he went thither did not succeed according to his wishes. At any rate, there seems to have been something very mysterious about the whole matter, else there would not have been this very studied concealment of the motives and details of a journey, which he announced to the brethren of the church at Ephesus, as absolutely necessary for him to perform. This also may have been concealed for the same reason, which has been conjectured to have caused the visit to be so short, as would seem from the manner in which it is noticed. From Jerusalem he went down to Antioch, by what route is not specified,――but probably by way of Caesarea and the sea.

“xviii. 22. Caesarea. A town on the sea-coast. [See the note on p. 173.] Ἀναβὰς, ‘and having gone up.’ Whither? Some commentators, as Camerarius, De Dieu, Wolf, Calov., Heumann, Doddridge, Thaleman, Beck, and Kuinoel, refer it to Caesarea. But this requires the confirmation of examples. And we must take for granted that the city was built high above the port, (which is not likely,) or that the church was so situated; which would be extremely frigid. Neither is it certain that there was a church. Besides, how can the expression καταβαίνω be proper, as used of traveling from a seaport-town, like Caesarea, to Antioch? I therefore prefer the mode of interpretation adopted by some ancient and many modern commentators, as Beza, Grotius, Mor., Rosenmueller, Reichard, Schott, Heinrichs, and others, who supply εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα. This may indeed seem somewhat harsh; yet it must be remembered that not a few things are so in the New Testament; and ἀναβαίνω is there often used absolutely of going up to Jerusalem, and καταβαίνω of going from thence. Nor is this unexampled in the classical writers. Xenophon uses the word in the very same sense, of those going from Greece to the capital of Persia. See Anabasis 1, 1, 2. Hist. 2, 1. 9, 10. Anabasis 1, 4, 12. Hist. 4, 1, 2. 1, 5, 1. 1, 4, 2. and many other passages referred to by Sturz in his Lexicon Xenophon in voce. Besides, as the words εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα have just preceded, it is not very harsh to repeat them. Kuinoel, indeed, and some others, treat those words as not genuine; but their opinion rests on mere suspicion, unsupported by any proof.” (Bloomfield Annotations. Vol. IV. p. 607.)

From the very brief and general manner in which the incidents of this visit of Paul to the eastern continent are commemorated, the apostolic historian is left to gather nothing but the most naked circumstances, of the route pursued, and from the results, it is but fair to conclude that nothing of consequence happened to the apostle, as his duties consisted merely in a review and completion of the work he had gone over before. Luke evidently did not accompany Paul in this Asian journey, and he therefore only states the general direction of the apostle’s course, without a single particular. He says that Paul, after making ♦some stay in Antioch,――where, no doubt he greatly comforted the hearts of the brethren, by the glad tidings of the triumphs of Christ in Europe,――went in regular order over the regions of Galatia, and Phrygia, everywhere confirming the disciples. Beyond this, no incident whatever is preserved; yet here great amplification of the sacred record might be made, from the amusing narrative of that venerable monkish story-teller, who assumes the name of Abdias Babylonius. But from the specimens of his narrative already given, in the lives of Andrew and John, the reader will easily apprehend that they contain nothing which deserves to be intruded into the midst of the honest, authentic statements, of the original and genuine apostolic history; and all these with many other similar inventions are wholly dismissed from the life of Paul, of whose actions such ample records have been left in the writings of himself and his companions, that it is altogether more necessary for the biographer to condense into a modernized form, with proper illustrations, the materials presented on the authority of inspiration, than to prolong the narrative with tedious inventions. In this part of the apostolic history, all that Luke records is, that Paul, after the before-mentioned survey of the inland countries of Asia Minor, came down to the western shore, and visited Ephesus, according to the promise which ♠he had made them at his farewell, a few months before. Since that hasty visit made in passing, some events important to the gospel cause had happened among them. An Alexandrine Jew named Apollos, a man of great Biblical learning, (as many of the Jews of his native city were,) and indued also with eloquence,――came to Ephesus, and there soon distinguished himself as a religious teacher. Of the doctrines of Jesus Christ and his apostles, indeed, he had never heard; but he had somewhere been made acquainted with the peculiar reforming principles of his great forerunner, John the Baptist, and had been baptized, probably by some one of his disciples. With great fervor and power, he discoursed learnedly of the things of the Lord, in the synagogue at Ephesus, and of course, was brought under the notice of Aquilas and Priscilla, whom Paul had left to occupy that important field, while he was making his southeastern tour. They took pains to draw Apollos into their acquaintance, and found him, like every truly learned man, very ready to learn, even from those who were his inferiors in most departments of sacred knowledge. From them he heard with great interest and satisfaction, the peculiar and striking truths revealed in Jesus, and at once professing his faith in this new revelation, went forth again among the Jews, replenished with a higher learning and a diviner spirit. After teaching for some time in Ephesus, he was disposed to try his new powers in some other field; and proposing to journey into Achaia, his two Christian friends gave him letters of introduction and recommendation to the brethren of the church in Corinth. While he was there laboring with great efficiency in the gospel cause, Paul returning from his great apostolic survey of the inland and upper regions of Asia Minor, came to Ephesus. Entering on this work of perfecting and uniting the results of the various irregular efforts made by the different persons, who had before labored there, he found, among those who professed to hold the doctrines of a new revelation, about a dozen men, who knew very little of the great doctrines which Paul had been in the habit of preaching. One of his first questions to them, of course, was whether they had yet received that usual convincing sign of the Christian faith,――the Holy Spirit. To which they answered in some surprise, that they had not yet heard that there was any Holy Spirit;――thus evidently showing that they knew nothing about any such sign or its effects. Paul, in his turn considerably surprised, at this remarkable ignorance of a matter of such high importance, was naturally led to ask what kind of initiation they had received into the new dispensation; and learning from them, that they had only been baptized according to the baptism of John,――instantly assured them of the incompleteness of that revelation of the truth. “John truly baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people that they must believe on him that should come after him,――that is on Christ Jesus.” Hearing this, they consented to receive from the apostle of Jesus, the renewal of the sign of faith, which they had formerly known as the token of that partial revelation made by John; and they were therefore baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus,――a form of words which of course had never been pronounced over them before. Paul, then laying his hands on them, invoked the influence of the Holy Spirit, which was then immediately manifested, by the usual miraculous gifts which accompanied its effusion.

♦ removed duplicate word “some”

♠ removed duplicate word “he”

“xviii. 24. Apollos. A name contracted from Apollonius, (which is read in the Cod. Cant.) as Epaphras from Epaphroditus, and Artemas from Artemonius. Of this Apollonius, mention is also made in 1 Corinthians i. 12. iii. 5 seq. where Paul speaks of the labor he underwent in the instruction of the Corinthians. (1 Corinthians iv. 6. xvi. 12.) Γένει, by birth, i. e. country; as in 18, 2. The Jews of Alexandria were eminent for Biblical knowledge. That most celebrated city of Egypt abounded with men of learning, both Jews and Gentiles.” Kuinoel. (Bloomfield’s Annotations, Vol. IV. p. 608.)

“The Baptism of John is put, by synecdoche, for the whole of John’s ordinances. See the note on Matthew xxi. 25. (Kuinoel.) It is generally supposed that he had been baptized by John himself: but this must have been twenty years before; and it is not probable that during that time he should have acquired no knowledge of Christianity. It should rather seem that he had been baptized by one of John’s disciples; and perhaps not very long before the time here spoken of.” (Bloomfield’s Annotations, Vol. IV. p. 610.)

“With respect to the letters here mentioned, they were written for the purpose of encouraging Apollos, and recommending him to the brethren. This ancient ecclesiastical custom of writing letters of recommendation, (which seems to have originated in the necessary caution to be observed in times of persecution, and arose out of the interrupted and tardy intercourse which, owing to their great distance from each other, subsisted between the Christians,) has been well illustrated by a tract of Ferrarius de Epistolis Ecclesiasticis, referred to by Wolf.” (Bloomfield. Vol. IV. p. 611.)

“Ephesus was the metropolis of proconsular Asia. It was situated at the mouth of the river Cayster, on the shore of the Aegean sea, in that part anciently called Ionia, (but now Natolir,) and was particularly celebrated for the temple of Diana, which had been erected at the common expense of the inhabitants of Asia Proper, and was reputed one of the seven wonders of the world. In the time of Paul, this city abounded with orators and philosophers; and its inhabitants, in their gentile state, were celebrated for their idolatry and skill in magic, as well as for their luxury and lasciviousness. Ephesus is now under the dominion of the Turks, and is in a state of almost total ruin, being reduced to fifteen poor cottages, (not erected exactly on its original site,) and its once flourishing church is now diminished to three illiterate Greeks. (Revelation ii. 6.) In the time of the Romans, Ephesus was the metropolis of Asia. The temple of Diana is said to have been four hundred and twenty-five feet long, two hundred and twenty broad, and to have been supported by one hundred and twenty-seven pillars of marble, seventy feet high, whereof twenty-seven were most beautifully wrought, and all the rest polished. One Ctesiphon, a famous architect, planned it, and with so much art and curiosity, that it took two hundred years to finish it. It was set on fire seven times; once on the very same day that Socrates was poisoned, four hundred years before Christ.” (Horne’s Introduction. Whitby’s Table. Wells’s Geography. Williams on Pearson.)

After this successful effort to confirm and complete the conversions already effected, Paul went about his apostolic labors in the usual way,――going into the synagogue, and speaking boldly, disputing the antiquated sophistry of the Jews, and urging upon all, the doctrines of the new revelation. In this department of labor, he continued for the space of three months; but at the end of that time, he found that many obstacles were thrown in the way of the truth by the stubborn adherents of the established forms of old Judaism, who would not allow that the lowly Jesus was the Messiah for whom their nation had so long looked as the restorer of Israel. Leaving the hardened and obstinate Jews, he therefore, according to his old custom in such cases of the rejection of the gospel by them, withdrew from their society, and thenceforth went with those who had believed among the more candid Greeks, who, with a truly enlightened and philosophical spirit, held their minds open to the reception of new truths, even though they might not happen to accord with those which were sanctioned to them by the prejudices of education. After leaving the synagogue, his new place of preaching and religious instruction was the school of one Tyrannus,――doubtless one of those philosophical institutions with which every Grecian city abounded. This continued his field of exertion for two years, during which his fame became very widely established,――all the inhabitants of Ionic and Aeolic Asia, having heard of the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. Among the causes and effects of this general notoriety, was the circumstance, that many miraculous cures were wrought by the hands of Paul; and many began even to attach a divine regard to his person;――handkerchiefs being brought to the sick from his body, which, on application to those afflicted, either with bodily or mental diseases, produced a perfect cure. This matter becoming generally known and talked of, throughout Ephesus, became the occasion of a ludicrous accident, which occurred to some persons who entertained the mistaken notion, that this faculty of curing diseases was transferable, and might be exercised by anybody that had enterprise enough to take the business in hand, and say over the form of words that seemed to be so efficacious in the mouth of Paul. A set of conjurers of Jewish origin, the seven sons of Sceva, who went about professedly following the trade of casting out devils, straightway caught up this new improvement on their old tricks, (for so they esteemed the divinely miraculous power of the apostle,) and soon found an opportunity to experiment with this, which they considered a valuable addition to their old stock of impositions. So, calling over the miserable possessed subject of their foolish experiment, they said――“We exorcise you by Jesus, whom Paul preaches.” But the devil was not slow to perceive the difference between this second-hand, plagiaristic mode of operation, and the commanding tone of divine authority with which the demoniacal possessions were treated by the apostle of Jesus. He therefore quite turned their borrowed mummery into a jest, and cried out through the mouth of the possessed man,――“Jesus I know, and Paul I know:――but who are ye?” Under the impulse of the frolicsome, mischievous spirit, the man upon whom they were playing their conjuring tricks, jumped up at once, and fell upon these rash doctors with all his might, and with all the energy of a truly crazy demoniac, beat the whole seven, tore their clothes off from them, and threshed them to such effect, that they were glad to stop their mummery, and make off as fast as possible, but did not escape till they were naked and wounded. The affair of course, was soon very generally talked of, and the story made an impression, on the whole, decidedly favorable to the true source of that miraculous agency, which, when foolishly tampered with, had produced such appalling results. Many, among both Jews and Greeks, were thereby led to repentance and faith, and more particularly those who had been in the way of practising these arts of imposition. A very general alarm prevailed among all the conjurers, and many came and confessed the mean tricks by which they had hitherto maintained their reputation as controllers of the powers of the invisible world. Many who had also, at great expense of time and money, acquired the arts of imposition, brought the costly books in which were contained all the mysterious details of their magical mummery, and burned them publicly, without regard to their immense estimated pecuniary value, which was not less than nine thousand dollars. In short, the results of this apparently trifling occurrence, followed up by the zealous preaching of Paul, effected a vast amount of good, so that the word of God mightily grew and prevailed.

EPHESUS.――Ruins of the Temple of Diana.
Ephesians i. 1. Revelation ii. 1, 7.

“In Acts xx. 31, the apostle says, that for the space of three years he preached at Ephesus. Grotius and Whitby hold that these three years are to be reckoned from his first coming to Ephesus, xviii. 19; that he does not specify his being in any other city; and that when it is said here, ‘So that all Asia heard the word,’ xix. 40, it arose from the concourse that, on a religious account, continually assembled in that city. The Jews also, from different parts of Asia, were induced by commerce, or obliged by the courts of judicature, to frequent it. Other commentators contend that, as only two years, with three months in the synagogue, are here mentioned, the remaining three-quarters of a year were partly engaged in a progress through the neighboring provinces. (Elsley, from Lightfoot and Doddridge.)

“While he was at Ephesus, ‘God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul; so that from his body were brought unto the sick, handkerchiefs or aprons,’ &c. &c. Acts ♦xix. 11, 12. Σιμικίνθιον, aprons, is slightly changed from the Latin semicinctum, which workmen put before them when employed at their occupations, to keep their clothes from soiling. The difference which Theophylact and Oecumenius make between these and σουδάρια, is, that the latter are applied to the head, as a cap or veil, and the former to the hands as a handkerchief. ‘They carry them,’ says Oecumenius, ‘in their hands, to wipe off moisture from their face, as tears,’” &c. &c. (Calmet’s Commentary.)

♦ removed spurious “v.”

“‘And they counted the price of them, [the books,] and found it to be fifty thousand pieces of silver,’ verse 19――αργυριον is used generally in the Old Testament, LXX. for the shekel, in value about 2s. 6d., or the total 6250l. as Numbers vii. 85. Deuteronomy xxii. 19. 2 Kings xv. 20. Grotius. If it means the drachma, as more frequently used by the Greeks at 9d. each, the sum will be 1875l.” [$9000.] Doddridge. Elsley’s Annotations. (Williams on Pearson, pp. 53‒55.)

THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS.

There is hardly one of the writings of Paul, about the date of which there has been so much discussion, or so many opinions as this; but the results of all the elaborate investigations and argumentations of the learned, still leave this interesting chronological point in such doubt, that this must be pronounced about the most uncertain in date, of all the Pauline epistles. It may however, without any inconsistency with the historical narrative of the Acts, or with any passages in the other epistles, be safely referred to the period of this residence in Ephesus, probably to the later part of it. The epistle itself contains no reference whatever, direct or indirect, to the place in which he was occupied at the time of writing, and only bare probabilities can therefore be stated on it,――nor can any decisive objection be made to any one of six opinions which have been strongly urged. Some pronounce it very decidedly to have been the first of all the epistles written by Paul, and maintain that he wrote it soon after his first visit to them, at some time during the interval between Paul’s departure from Galatia, and his departure from Thessalonica. Others date it at the time of his imprisonment in Rome, according to the common subscription of the epistle. Against this last may, however, perhaps be urged his reproof to the Galatians, that they “were so soon removed from him that called them to the grace of Christ,”――an expression nevertheless, too vague to form any certain basis for a chronological conclusion. The great majority of critics refer it to the period of his stay in Ephesus,――a view which entirely accords with the idea, that it must have been written soon after Paul had preached to them; for on his last journey to Ephesus, he had passed through Galatia, as already narrated, confirming the churches. Some time had, no doubt, intervened since his preaching to them, sufficient at least to allow many heresies and difficulties to arise among them, and to pervert them from the purity of the truth, as taught to them by him. Certain false teachers had been among them since his departure, inculcating on all believers in Christ, the absolute necessity of a minute and rigid observance of Mosaic forms, for their salvation. They also directly attacked the apostolical character and authority of Paul,――declaring his opinion to be of no weight whatever, and to be opposed to that of the true original apostles of Jesus. These, Paul meets with great force in the very beginning of the epistle, entering at once into a particular account of the mode of his first entering the apostleship,――showing that it was not derived from the other apostles, but from the special commission of Christ himself, miraculously given. He also shows that he had, on this very question of Judaical rituals, conferred with the apostles at Jerusalem, and had received the sanction of their approbation in that course of open communion which he had before followed, on his own inspired authority, and had ever since maintained, in the face of what he deemed inconsistencies in the conduct of Peter. He then attacks the Galatians themselves, in very violent terms, for their perversion of that glorious freedom into which he had brought the Christian doctrine, and fills up the greater part of the epistle with reproofs of these errors.

His argument against the doctrines of the servile Judaizers is made up in his favorite mode of demonstration, by simile and metaphor, representing the Christian system under the form of the offspring of Abraham, and afterwards images the freedom of the true believers in Jesus, in the exalted privilege of the descendants of Sara, while those enslaved to forms are presented as analogous in their condition to the children of Hagar. He earnestly exhorts them, therefore, to stand fast in the freedom to which Christ has exalted them, and most emphatically condemns all observance of circumcision. Thus pointing out to them, the purely spiritual nature of that covenant, of which they were now the favored subjects, he urges them to a truly spiritual course of life, bidding them aim at the attainment of a perfect moral character, and makes the conclusion of the epistle eminently practical in its direction. He speaks of this epistle as being a testimony of the very particular interest which he feels in their spiritual prosperity, because, (what appears contrary to his practice,) he has written it with his own hand. To the very last, he is very bitter against those who are aiming to bring them back to the observance of circumcision, and denounces those as actuated only by a base desire to avoid that persecution which they might expect from the Jews, if they should reject the Mosaic ritual. Referring to the cross of Christ as his only glory, he movingly alludes to the marks of his conformity to that standard, bearing as he does in his own body, the scars of the wounds received from the scourges of his Philippian persecutors. He closes without any mention of personal salutations, and throughout the whole makes none of those specifications of names, with which most of his other epistles abound. In the opening salutation, he merely includes with himself those “brethren that are with him,” which seems to imply that they knew who those brethren were, in some other way,――perhaps, because he had but lately been among them with those same persons as his assistants in the ministry.

On this very doubtful point, I have taken the views adopted by Witsius, Louis Cappel, Pearson, Wall, Hug and Hemsen. The notion that it was written at Rome is supported by Theodoret, Lightfoot, and Paley,――of course making it a late epistle. On the contrary, Michaelis makes it the earliest of all, and dates it in the year 49, at some place on Paul’s route from Troas to Thessalonica. Marcion and Tertullian also supposed it to be one of the earliest epistles. Benson thinks it was written during Paul’s first residence in Corinth. Lenfant and Beausobre, followed by Lardner, conjecture it to have been written either at Corinth or at Ephesus, during his first visit, either in A. D. 52, or 53. Fabricius and Mill date it A. D. 58, at some place on Paul’s route to Jerusalem. Chrysostom and Theophylact, date it before the epistle to the Romans. Grotius thinks it was written about the same time. From all which, the reader will see the justice of my conclusion, that nothing at all is known with any certainty about the matter.

THE EPHESIAN MOB.

Paul having now been a resident in Ephesus for nearly three years, and having seen such glorious results of his labors, soon began to think of revisiting some of his former fields of missionary exertion, more especially those Grecian cities of Europe which had been such eventful scenes to him, but a few years previous. He designed to go over Macedonia and Achaia, and then to visit Jerusalem; and when communicating these plans to his friends at Ephesus, he remarked to them in conclusion――“And after that, I must also visit Rome.” He therefore sent before him into Macedonia, as the heralds of his approach, his former assistant, Timothy, and another helper not before mentioned, Erastus, who is afterwards mentioned as the treasurer of the city of Corinth. But Paul himself still waited in Asia for a short time, until some other preliminaries should be arranged for his removal. During this incidental delay arose the most terrible commotion that had ever yet been excited against him, and one which very nearly cost him his life.

It should be noticed that the conversion of so large a number of the heathen, through the preaching of Paul, had struck directly at the foundation of a very thriving business carried on in Ephesus, and connected with the continued prevalence and general popularity of that idolatrous worship, for which the city was so famous. Ephesus, as is well known, was the chief seat of the peculiar worship of that great Asian deity, who is now known, throughout all the world, where the apostolic history is read, by the name of “Diana of the Ephesians.” It is perfectly certain, however, that this deity had no real connection, either in character or in name, with that Roman goddess of the chase and of chastity, to whom the name Diana properly belongs. The true classic goddess Diana was a virgin, according to common stories, considered as the sister of Apollo, and was worshiped as the beautiful and youthful goddess of the chase, and of that virgin purity of which she was supposed to be an instance, though some stories present an exception to this part of her character. Upon her head, in most representations of her, was pictured a crescent, which was commonly supposed to show, that she was also the goddess of the moon; but a far more sagacious and rational supposition refers the first origin of this sign to a deeper meaning. But when the mythologies of different nations began to be compared and united, she was identified with the goddess of the moon, and with that Asian goddess who bore among the Greeks the name of Artemis, which is in fact the name given by Luke, as the title of the great goddess of the Ephesians. This Artemis, however, was a deity as diverse in form, character and attributes, from the classic Diana, as from any goddess in all the systems of ancient mythology; and they never need have been confounded, but for the perverse folly of those who were bent, in spite of all reason, to find in the divinities of the eastern polytheism, the perfect synonyms to the objects of western idolatry. The Asian and Ephesian goddess Artemis, had nothing whatever to do with hunting nor with chastity. She was not represented as young, nor beautiful, nor nimble, nor as the sister of Apollo, but as a vast gigantic monster, with a crown of towers, with lions crouching upon her shoulders, and a great array of pictured or sculptured eagles and tigers over her whole figure; and her figure was also strangely marked by a multitude of breasts in front. Under this monstrous figure, which evidently was no invention of the tasteful Greeks, but had originated in the debasing and grotesque idolatry of the orientals, Artemis of the Ephesians was worshiped as the goddess of the earth, of fertility, of cities, and as the universal principle of life and wealth. She was known among the Syrians by the name of Ashtaroth, and was among the early objects of Hebrew idolatry. When the Romans, in their all-absorbing tolerance of idolatry, began to introduce into Italy the worship of the eastern deities, this goddess was also added there, but not under the name of Diana. The classic scholar is familiar with the allusions to this deity, worshiped under the name of Cybele, Tellus and other such, and in all the later poets of Rome, she is a familiar object, as “the tower-crowned Cybele.” This was the goddess worshiped in many of the Grecian cities of Asia Minor, which, at their first colonization, had adopted this aboriginal goddess of those fertile regions, of whose fertility, civilization, agricultural and commercial wealth, she seemed the fit and appropriate personification. But in none of these Asian cities was she worshiped with such peculiar honors and glories as in Ephesus, the greatest city of Asia Minor. Here was worshiped a much cherished image of her, which was said to have fallen from heaven, called from that circumstance the Diopetos; which here was kept in that most splendid temple, which is even now proverbial as having been one of the wonders of the ancient world. Being thus the most famous seat of her worship, Ephesus also became the center of a great manufacture and trade in certain curious little images or shrines, representing this goddess, which were in great request, wherever her worship was regarded, being considered as the genuine and legitimate representatives, as well as representations of the Ephesian deity.

This explanation will account for the circumstances related by Luke, as ensuing in Ephesus, on the success of Paul’s labors among the heathen, to whose conversion his exertions had been wholly devoted during the two last years of his stay in Ephesus. In converting the Ephesians from heathenism, he was guilty of no ordinary crime. He directly attacked a great source of profit to a large number of artizans in the city, who derived their whole support from the manufacture of those little objects of idolatry, which, of course, became of no value to those who believed Paul’s doctrine,――that “those were no gods which were made with hands.” This new doctrine therefore, attracted very invidious notice from those who thus found their dearest interests very immediately and unfortunately affected, by the progress made by its preacher in turning away the hearts of Ephesians from their ancient reverence for the shrines of Artemis; and they therefore listened with great readiness to Demetrius, one of their number, when he proposed to remedy the difficulty. He showed them in a very clear, though brief address, that “the craft was in danger,”――that warning cry which so often bestirs the bigoted in defence of the object of their regard; and after hearing his artful address, they all, full of wrath, with one accord raised a great outcry, in the usual form of commendation of the established idolatry of their city,――“Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” This noise being heard by others, and of course attracting attention, every one who distinguished the words, by a sort of patriotic impulse, was driven to join in the cry, and presently the whole city was in an uproar;――a most desirable condition of things, of course, for those who wished to derive advantage from a popular commotion. All bawling this senseless cry, with about as much idea of the occasion of the disturbance as could be expected from such a mob, the huddling multitudes learning the general fact, that the grand object of the tumult was to do some mischief to the Christians, and looking about for some proper person to be made the subject of public opinion, fell upon Gaius and Aristarchus of Macedonia, two traveling companions of Paul, who happened to be in the way, and dragged them to the theater, whither the whole mob rushed at once, as to a desirable scene for any act of confusion and folly which they might choose to commit. Paul, with a lion-like spirit, caring naught for the mob, proposed to go in and make a speech to them, but his friends, with far more prudence and cool sense than he,――knowing that an assembly of the people, roaring some popular outcry, is no more a subject of reason than so many raging wild beasts,――prevented him from going into the theater, where he would no doubt have been torn to pieces, before he could have opened his mouth. Some of the great magistrates of Asia, too, who were friendly to him, hearing of his rash intentions, sent to him a very urgent request, that he would not venture himself among the mob. Meanwhile the outcry continued,――the theater being crowded full,――and the whole city constantly pouring out to see what was the matter, and every soul joining in the religious and patriotic shout, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” And so they went on, every one, of course, according to the universal and everlasting practice on such occasions, making all the noise he could, but not one, except the rascally silversmiths, knowing what upon earth they were all bawling there for. Still this ignorance of the object of the assembly kept nobody still; but all, with undiminished fervor, kept plying their lungs to swell the general roar. As it is described in the very graphic and picturesque language of Luke,――“Some cried one thing, and some, another; for the whole assembly was confused;――and the more knew not wherefore they were come together,”――which last circumstance is a very common difficulty in such assemblies, in all ages. At last, searching for some other persons as proper subjects to exercise their religious zeal upon, they looked about upon the Jews, who were always a suspected class among the heathen, and seized one Alexander, who seems to have been one of the Christian converts, for the Jews thrust him forward as a kind of scapegoat for themselves. Alexander made the usual signs soliciting their attention to his words; but as soon as the people understood that he was a Jew, they all drowned his voice with the general cry, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” and this they kept up steadily for two whole hours, as it were with one voice. Matters having come to this pass, the recorder of the city came forward, and having hushed the people,――who had some reverence for the lawful authorities, that fortunately were not responsible to them,――and made them a very sensible speech, reminding them that since no one doubted the reverence of the Ephesians for the goddess Artemis, and for the Diopetos, there surely was no occasion for all this disturbance to demonstrate a fact that every body knew. He told them that the men against whom they were raising this disturbance had neither robbed their temples nor blasphemed the goddess; so that if Demetrius and his fellow-craft had anything justly against these men, as having injured their business, they had their proper remedy at law. He hinted to them also that they were all liable to be called to account for this manifest breach of Roman law, and this defiance of the majesty of the Roman government;――a hint which brought most of them to their senses; for all who had anything to lose, dreaded the thought of giving occasion to the awfully remorseless government of the province, to fine them, as they certainly would be glad to do on any valid excuse. They all dispersed, therefore, with no more words.

“‘Silver shrines,’ verse 24. The heathens used to carry the images of their gods in procession from one city to another. This was done in a chariot which was solemnly consecrated for that employment, and by the Romans styled Thensa, that is, the chariot of their gods. But besides this, it was placed in a box or shrine, called Ferculum. Accordingly, when the Romans conferred divine honors on their great men, alive or dead, they had the Circen games, and in them the Thensa and Ferculum, the chariot and the shrine, bestowed on them; as it is related of Julius Caesar. This Ferculum among the Romans did not differ much from the Graecian Ναὸς, a little chapel, representing the form of a temple, with an image in it, which, being set upon an altar, or any other solemn place, having the doors opened, the image was seen by the spectators either in a standing or sitting posture. An old anonymous scholiast upon Aristotle’s Rhetoric, lib. i. c. 15, has these words: Ναοποιοὶ οἱ τοὺς ναοὺς ποιοῦσι, ἤτοι εἱκονοστάσια, τινα μικρὰ ξύλινα ἅ πωλοῦσι, observing the ναοι here to be εικονοστάσια, chaplets, with images in them, of wood, or metal, (as here of silver,) which they made and sold, as in verse 25, they are supposed to do. Athenaeus speaks of the καδισκος, ‘which,’ says he ‘is a vessel wherein they place their images of Jupiter.’ The learned Casaubon states, that ‘these images were put in cases, which were made like chapels. (Deipnos. lib. ii. p. 500.) So St. Chrysostom likens them to ‘little cases, or shrines.’ Dion says of the Roman ensign, that it was a little temple, and in it a golden eagle, (Ρωμαικ, lib. 40.) And in another place: ‘There was a little chapel of Juno, set upon a table.’ Ρωμαικ, lib. 39. This is the meaning of the tabernacle of Moloch, Acts vii. 43, where by the σκηνη, tabernacle, is meant the chaplet, a shrine of that false god. The same was also the סכות דנות the tabernacle of Benoth, or Venus.” Hammond’s Annotations. [Williams on Pearson, p. 55.]

Robbers of temples.――Think of the miserable absurdity of the common English translation in this passage, (Acts xix. 37,) where the original ἱεροσυλοι is expressed by “robbers of churches!” Now who ever thought of applying the English word “church,” to anything whatever but a “Christian assembly,” or “Christian place of assembly?” Why then is this phrase put in the mouth of a heathen officer addressing a heathen assembly about persons charged with violating the sanctity of heathen places of worship? Such a building as a church, (εκκλησια, ecclesia) devoted to the worship of the true God, was not known till more than a century after this time; and the Greek word ἱερον, (hieron,) which enters into the composition of the word in the sacred text, thus mistranslated, was never applied to a Christian place of worship.

FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS.

Paul’s residence in Ephesus is distinguished in his literary history, as the period in which he wrote that most eloquent and animated of his epistles,――“the first to the Corinthians.” It was written towards the close of his stay in Asia, about the time of the passover; according to established calculations, therefore, in the spring of the year of Christ 57. The more immediate occasion of his writing to the Corinthian Christians, was a letter which he had received from them, by the hands of Stephanas, Fortunatus and Achaicus. Paul had previously written to them an epistle, (now lost,) in which he gave them some directions about their deportment, which they did not fully understand, and of which they desired an explanation in their letter. Many of these questions, which this epistle of the Corinthians contained, are given by Paul, in connection with his own answers to them; and from this source it is learned that they concerned several points of expediency and propriety about matrimony. These are answered by Paul, very distinctly and fully; but much of his epistle is taken up with instructions and reproofs on many points not referred to in their inquiries. The Corinthian church was made up of two very opposite constituent parts, so unlike in their character, as to render exceedingly complicated the difficulties of bringing all under one system of faith and practice; and the apostolic founder was, at one time, obliged to combat heathen licentiousness, and at another, Jewish bigotry and formalism. The church also, having been too soon left without the presence of a fully competent head, had been very loosely filled up with a great variety of improper persons,――some hypocrites, and some profligates,――a difficulty not altogether peculiar to the Corinthian church, nor to those of the apostolic age. But there were certainly some very extraordinary irregularities in the conduct of their members, some of whom were in the habit of getting absolutely drunk at the sacramental table; and others were guilty of great sins in respect to general purity of life. Another peculiar difficulty, which had arisen in the church of Corinth, during Paul’s absence, was the formation of sects and parties, each claiming some one of the great Christian teachers as its head; some of them claiming Paul as their only apostolic authority; some again preferring the doctrines of Apollos, who had been laboring among them while Paul was in Ephesus; and others again, referred to Peter as the true apostolic chief, while they wholly denied to Paul any authority whatever, as an apostle. There had, indeed, arisen a separate party, strongly opposed to Paul, headed by a prominent person, who had done a great deal to pervert the truth, and to lessen the character of Paul in various ways, which are alluded to by Paul in many passages of his epistle, in a very indignant tone. Other difficulties are described by him, and various excesses are reproved, as a scandal to the Christian character; such as an incestuous marriage among their members,――lawsuits before heathen magistrates,――dissolute conformity to the licentious worship of the Corinthian goddess, whose temple was so infamous for its scandalous rites and thousand priestesses. Some of the Corinthian Christians had been in the habit of visiting this and other heathen temples, and of participating in the scenes of feasting, riot and debauchery, which were carried on there as a part of the regular forms of idolatrous worship.

The public worship of the Corinthian church had been disturbed also by various irregularities which Paul reprehends;――the abuse of the gift of tongues, and the affectation of an unusual dress in preaching, both by men and women. In the conclusion of his epistle he expatiates too, at great length, on the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, vehemently arguing against some Corinthian heretics, who had denied any but a spiritual existence beyond the grave. This argument may justly be pronounced the best specimen of Paul’s very peculiar style, reasoning as he does, with a kind of passion, and interrupting the regular series of logical demonstrations, by fiery bursts of enthusiasm, personal appeals, poetical quotations, illustrative similes, violent denunciations of error, and striking references to his own circumstances. All these nevertheless, point very directly and connectedly at the great object of the argument, and the whole train of reasoning swells and mounts, towards the conclusion, in a manner most remarkably effective, constituting one of the most sublime argumentative passages ever written. He then closes the epistle with some directions about the mode of collecting the contributions for the brethren in Jerusalem. He promises to visit them, and make a long stay among them, when he goes on his journey through Macedonia,――a route which, he assures them, he had now determined to take, as mentioned by Luke, in his account of the preliminary mission of Timothy and Erastus, before the time of the mob at Ephesus; but should not leave Ephesus until after Pentecost, because a great and effectual door was there opened to him, and there were many opposers. He speaks of Timothy as being then on the mission before mentioned, and exhorts them not to despise this young brother, if he should visit them, as they might expect. After several other personal references, he signs his ♦own name with a general salutation; and from the terms, in which he expresses this particular mark already alluded to in the second epistle to the Thessalonians, it is very reasonable to conclude, that he was not his own penman in any of these epistles, but used an amanuensis, authenticating the whole by his signature, with his own hand, only at the end; and this opinion of his method of carrying on his correspondence, is now commonly, perhaps universally, adopted by the learned.

♦ “ownn,ame” replaced with “own name”

“Chapter xvi. 10, 11. ‘Now, if Timotheus come, see that he may be with you without fear; for he worketh the work of the Lord, as I also do: let no man therefore despise him, but conduct him forth in peace, that he may come unto me, for I look for him with the brethren.’

“From the passage considered in the preceding number, it appears that Timothy was sent to Corinth, either with the epistle, or before it: ‘for this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus.’ From the passage now quoted, we infer that Timothy was not sent with the epistle; for had he been the bearer of the letter, or accompanied it, would St. Paul in that letter have said, ‘if Timothy come?’ Nor is the sequel consistent with the supposition of his carrying the letter; for if Timothy was with the apostle when he wrote the letter, could he say, as he does, ‘I look for him with the brethren?’ I conclude, therefore, that Timothy had left St. Paul to proceed upon his journey before the letter was written. Further, the passage before us seems to imply, that Timothy was not expected by St. Paul to arrive at Corinth, till after they had received the letter. He gives them directions in the letter how to treat him when he should arrive: ‘if he come,’ act towards him so and so. Lastly, the whole form of expression is more naturally applicable to the supposition of Timothy’s coming to Corinth, not directly from St. Paul, but from some other quarter; and that his instructions had been, when he should reach Corinth, to return. Now, how stands this matter in the history? Turn to the nineteenth chapter and twenty-first verse of the Acts, and you will find that Timothy did not, when sent from Ephesus, where he left St. Paul, and where the present epistle was written, proceed by a straight course to Corinth, but that he went round through Macedonia. This clears up everything; for, although Timothy was sent forth upon his journey before the letter was written, yet he might not reach Corinth till after the letter arrived there; and he would come to Corinth, when he did come, not directly from St. Paul, at Ephesus, but from some part of Macedonia. Here therefore is a circumstantial and critical agreement, and unquestionably without design; for neither of the two passages in the epistle mentions Timothy’s journey into Macedonia at all, though nothing but a circuit of that kind can explain and reconcile the expressions which the writer uses.” (Paley’s Horae Paulinae, 1 Corinthians No. IV.)

“Chapter v. 7, 8. ‘For even Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’

“Dr. Benson tells us, that from this passage, compared with chapter xvi. 8, it has been conjectured that this epistle was written about the time of the Jewish passover; and to me the conjecture appears to be very well founded. The passage to which Dr. Benson refers us, is this: ‘I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost.’ With this passage he ought to have joined another in the same context: ‘And it may be that I will abide, yea, and winter with you:’ for, from the two passages laid together, it follows that the epistle was written before Pentecost, yet after winter; which necessarily determines the date to the part of the year, within which the passover falls. It was written before Pentecost, because he says, ‘I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost.’ It was written after winter, because he tells them, ‘It may be that I may abide, yea, and winter with you.’ The winter which the apostle purposed to pass at Corinth, was undoubtedly the winter next ensuing to the date of the epistle; yet it was a winter subsequent to the ensuing Pentecost, because he did not intend to set forwards upon his journey till after the feast. The words, ‘let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,’ look very much like words suggested by the season; at least they have, upon that supposition, a force and significancy which do not belong to them upon any other; and it is not a little remarkable, that the hints casually dropped in the epistle, concerning particular parts of the year, should coincide with this supposition.” (Paley’s Horae Paulinae. 1 Corinthians. No. XII.)

SECOND VOYAGE TO EUROPE.

After the disturbances connected with the mob raised by Demetrius had wholly ceased, and public attention was no longer directed to the motions of the preachers of the Christian doctrine, Paul determined to execute the plan, which he had for some time contemplated, of going over his European fields of labor again, according to his universal and established custom of revisiting and confirming his work, within a moderately brief period after first opening the ground for evangelization. Assembling the disciples about him, he bade them farewell, and turning northward, came to Troas, whence, six or seven years before, he had set out on his first voyage to Macedonia. The plan of his journey, as he first arranged it, had been to sail from the shores of Asia Minor directly for Corinth. He had resolved however, not to go to that city, until the very disagreeable difficulties which had there arisen in the church, had been entirely removed, according to the directions given in the epistle which he had written to them from Ephesus; because he did not desire, after an absence of years, to visit them in such circumstances, when his Corinthian converts were divided among themselves, and against him,――and when his first duties would necessarily be those of a rigid censor. He therefore waited at Troas, with great impatience, for a message from them, announcing the settlement of all difficulties. This he expected to receive through Titus, a person now first mentioned in the apostle’s history. Waiting with great impatience for this beloved brother, he found no rest in his spirit, and though a door was evidently opened by the Lord for the preaching of the gospel in Troas, he had no spirit for the good work there; and desiring to be as near the great object of his anxieties as possible, he accordingly took leave of the brethren at Troas, and crossed the Aegean into Macedonia, by his former route. Here he remained in great distress of mind, until his soul was at last comforted by the long expected arrival of Titus. Luke only says, that he went over those parts and gave them much exhortation. But though his route is not given, his apostolic labors are known to have extended to the borders of Illyricum. At this time also, he made another important contribution to the list of the apostolic writings.

THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS.

There is no part of the New Testament canon, about the date of which all authorities are so well agreed, as on the place and time, at which Paul wrote his second epistle to the Corinthians. All authorities, ancient and modern, decide that it was written during the second visit of Paul to Macedonia; although as to the exact year in which this took place, they are not entirely unanimous. The passages in the epistle itself, which refer to Macedonia as the region in which the apostle then was, are so numerous indeed, that there can be no evasion of their evidence. A great topic of interest with him, at the time of writing this epistle, was the collecting of the contributions proposed for the relief of the Christian brethren in Jerusalem; and upon this he enlarges much, informing the Corinthians of the great progress he was making in Macedonia in this benevolent undertaking, and what high hopes he had entertained and expressed to the Macedonians, of the zeal and ability of those in Achaia, about the contributions. This matter had been noticed and arranged by him, in his former epistle to them, as already noticed, and he now proposed to send forward Titus and another person, (who is commonly supposed to be Luke,) to take charge of these funds, thus collected. He speaks of coming also himself, after a little time, and makes some allusions to the difficulties which had constituted the subject of the great part of his former epistle. Of their amendment in the particulars then so severely censured, he had received a full account through Titus, when that beloved brother came on from Corinth, to join Paul in Macedonia. Paul assures the Corinthians of the very great joy caused in him, by the good news of their moral and spiritual improvement, and renews his ardent protestations of deep affection for them. The incestuous person, whom they had excommunicated, in conformity with the denunciatory directions given in the former epistle, he now forgives; and as the offender has since appeared to be truly penitent, he now urges his restoration to the consolations of Christian fellowship, lest he should be swallowed up with too much sorrow. He defends his apostolic character for prudence and decision, against those who considered his change of plans about coming directly from Ephesus to Corinth, as an exhibition of lightness and unsettled purpose. His real object in this delay and change of purpose, as he tells them, was, that they might have time to profit by the reproofs contained in his former epistle, so that by the removal of the evils of which he so bitterly complained, he might finally be enabled to come to them, not in sorrow, nor in heaviness for their sins, but in joy for their reformation. This fervent hope had been fulfilled by the coming of Titus to Macedonia, for whom he had waited in vain, with so much anxiety at Troas, as the expected messenger of these tidings of their spiritual condition; and he was now therefore prepared to pass on to them from Macedonia, to which region he tells them he had gone from Troas, instead of to Corinth, because he had been disappointed about meeting Titus on the eastern side of the Aegean. With the exception of these things, the epistle is taken up with a very ample and eloquent exhibition of his true powers and office as an apostle; and in the course of this argument, so necessary for the re-establishment of his authority among those who had lately been disposed to contemn it, he makes many very interesting allusions to his own personal history. The date of the epistle is commonly supposed, and with good reason, to be A. D. 58, the fifth of Nero’s reign, and one year after the preceding epistle.

MILETUS. Acts xx. 15‒17.

“Chapter ii. 12, 13. ‘When I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened unto me of the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother; but taking my leave of them, I went from thence into Macedonia.’

“To establish a conformity between this passage and the history, nothing more is necessary to be presumed, than that St. Paul proceeded from Ephesus to Macedonia, upon the same course by which he came back from Macedonia to Ephesus, or rather to Miletus in the neighborhood of Ephesus; in other words, that, in his journey to the peninsula of Greece, he went and returned the same way. St. Paul is now in Macedonia, where he had lately arrived from Ephesus. Our quotation imports that in his journey he had stopped at Troas. Of this, the history says nothing, leaving us only the short account, ‘that Paul departed from Ephesus, for to go into Macedonia.’ But the history says, that in his return from Macedonia to Ephesus, ‘Paul sailed from Philippi to Troas; and that, when the disciples came together on the first day of the week, to break bread, Paul preached unto them all night; that from Troas he went by land to Assos; from Assos, taking ship and coasting along the front of Asia Minor, he came by Mitylene to Miletus.’ Which account proves, first, that Troas lay in the way by which St. Paul passed between Ephesus and Macedonia; secondly, that he had disciples there. In one journey between these two places, the epistle, and in another journey between the same places, the history makes him stop at this city. Of the first journey he is made to say, ‘that a door was in that city opened unto him of the Lord;’ in the second, we find disciples there collected around him, and the apostle exercising his ministry, with, what was even in him, more than ordinary zeal and labor. The epistle, therefore, is in this instance confirmed, if not by the terms, at least by the probability of the history; a species of confirmation by no means to be despised, because, as far as it reaches, it is evidently uncontrived.

“Grotius, I know, refers the arrival at Troas, to which the epistle alludes, to a different period, but I think very improbably; for nothing appears to me more certain, than that the meeting with Titus, which St. Paul expected at Troas, was the same meeting which took place in Macedonia, viz. upon Titus’s coming out of Greece. In the quotation before us, he tells the Corinthians, ‘When I came to Troas, I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus, my brother; but, taking my leave of them, I went from thence into Macedonia.’ Then in the seventh chapter he writes, ‘When we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears; nevertheless, God, that comforteth them that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus.’ These two passages plainly relate to the same journey of Titus, in meeting with whom St. Paul had been disappointed at Troas, and rejoiced in Macedonia. And amongst other reasons which fix the former passage to the coming of Titus out of Greece, is the consideration, that it was nothing to the Corinthians that St. Paul did not meet with Titus at Troas, were it not that he was to bring intelligence from Corinth. The mention of the disappointment in this place, upon any other supposition, is irrelative.” (Paley’s Horae Paulinae. 2 Corinthians No. VIII.)

SECOND JOURNEY TO CORINTH.

Among his companions in Macedonia, was Timothy, his ever zealous and affectionate assistant in the apostolic ministry, who had been sent thither before him to prepare the way, and had been laboring in that region ever since, as plainly appears from the fact, that he is joined with Paul in the opening address of the second epistle to the Corinthians,――a circumstance in itself sufficient to overthrow a very common supposition of the critics,――that Timothy returned to Asia; that Paul at that time “left him in Ephesus,” and at this time wrote his first epistle to Timothy from Macedonia. It is also most probable that Timothy was the personal companion of Paul, not only during the whole period of his second ministration in Macedonia, but also accompanied him from that province to Corinth; because Timothy is distinctly mentioned by Luke, among those who went with Paul from Macedonia to Asia, after his brief second residence in that city. No particulars whatever are given by Luke of the labors of Paul in Corinth. From his epistles, however, it is learned that he was at this time occupied in part, in receiving the contributions made throughout Achaia for the church of Jerusalem, to which city he was now preparing to go. The difficulties, of which so much mention had been made in his epistles, were now entirely removed, and his work there doubtless went on without any of that opposition which had arisen after his first departure. There is however, one very important fact in his literary history, which took place in Corinth, during his residence there.

THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.

From the very earliest period of apostolic labor, after the ascension, there appear to have been in Rome, some Jews who professed the faith of Jesus. Among the visitors in Jerusalem at the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit first descended, were some from Rome, who sharing in the gifts of that remarkable effusion, and returning to their home in the imperial city, would there in themselves constitute the rudiment of a Christian church. It is perfectly certain that they had never been blessed in their own city with the personal presence of an apostle and all their associated action as a Christian church, must therefore have been entirely the result of a voluntary organization, suggested by the natural desire to keep up and to spread the doctrines which they had first received in Jerusalem, under such remarkable circumstances. Yet the members of the church would not be merely those who were converted at the Pentecost; for there was a constant influx of Jews from all parts of the world to Rome, and among these there would naturally be some who had participated in the light of the gospel, now so widely diffused throughout the eastern section of the world. There is moreover distinct information of certain persons of high qualifications, as Christian teachers, who had at Rome labored in the cause of the gospel, and had no doubt been among the most efficient means of that advancement of the Roman church, which seems to be implied in the communication now first made to them by Paul. Aquilas and Priscilla, who had been the intimate friends of Paul at Corinth, and who had been already so active and distinguished as laborers in the gospel cause, both in that city and in Ephesus, had returned to Rome on the death of Claudius, when that emperor’s foolish decree of banishment, against the Jews, expired along with its author, in the year of Christ, 54. These, on re-establishing their residence in Rome, made their own house a place of assembly for a part of the Christians in the capital,――probably for such as resided in their own immediate neighborhood, while others sought different places, according as suited their convenience in this particular. Many other persons are mentioned by Paul at the close of this epistle, as having been active in the work of the gospel at Rome;――among whom Andronicus and Junias are particularly noticed with respect, as having highly distinguished themselves in apostolic labors. From all these evangelizing efforts, the church of Rome attained great importance, and was now in great need of the counsels and presence of an apostle, to confirm it, and impart to its members spiritual gifts. It had long been an object of attention and interest to Paul, and he had already expressed a determination to visit the imperial city, in the remarks which he made to the brethren at Ephesus, when he was making arrangements to go into Macedonia and Achaia. The way was afterwards opened for this visit, by a very peculiar providence, which he does not seem to have then anticipated; but while residing in Corinth, his attention being very particularly called to their spiritual condition, he could not wait till he should have an opportunity to see them personally, to counsel them; but wrote to them this very copious and elaborate epistle, which seems to have been the subject of more comment among dogmatic theologians, than almost any other portion of his writings, on account of its being supposed to furnish different polemic writers with the most important arguments for the peculiar dogmas of one or another, according to the fancy of each. It undoubtedly is the most doctrinal and didactic of all Paul’s epistles, alluding very little to local circumstances, which are the theme of so large a part of most of his writings, but attacking directly certain general errors entertained by the Jews, on the subject of justification, predestination, election, and many peculiar privileges which they attributed to themselves as the descendants of Abraham.

This epistle, like most of the rest, was written by an amanuensis, who is herein particularly named, as Tertius,――a word of Roman origin; but beyond this nothing else is known of him. It was carried to Rome by Phebe, an active female member of the church at Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, who happened to be journeying to Rome for some other purposes, and is earnestly recommended by Paul to the friendly regard of the church there.

RETURN TO ASIA.

After passing three months in Corinth, he took his departure from that city, on his pre-determined voyage to the east, the direction of which was somewhat changed by the information that the Jews of the place where he then was, were plotting some mischief against him, which he thought best to avoid by taking a different route from that before planned, which was a direct voyage to Syria. To escape the danger prepared for him by them, at his expected place of embarkation, he first turned northward by land, through Macedonia to Philippi, and thence sailed by the now familiar track over the Aegean to Troas. On this journey, he was accompanied by quite a retinue of apostolic assistants,――not only his faithful disciple and companion Timothy, but also Sosipater of Beroea, Aristarchus and Secundus of Thessalonica, Gaius, or Caius of Derbe, and Luke also, who now carries on the apostolic narrative in the first person, thus showing that he was himself a sharer in the adventures which he narrates. Besides these immediate companions, two brethren from Asia, Tychicus and Trophimus, took the direct route from Corinth to Troas, at which place they waited for the rest of the apostolic company, who took the circuitous route through Macedonia. The date of the departure of Paul is very exactly fixed by his companion Luke, who states that they left Philippi at the time of the passover, which was in the middle of March; and other circumstances have enabled modern critics to fix the occurrence in the year of Christ 59. After a five days’ voyage, arriving at Troas on Saturday, they made a stay of seven days in that place; and on the first day of the week, the Christians of that place having assembled for the communion usual on the Lord’s day, Paul preached to them: and as it was the last day of his stay, he grew very earnest in his discourse and protracted it very late, speaking two whole hours to the company, who were met in the great upper hall, where, in all Jewish houses, these festal entertainments and social meetings were always held. It was, of course, the evening, when the assembly met, for this was the usual time for a social party, and there were many lights in the room, which, with the number of people, must have made the air very warm, and had the not very surprising effect of causing drowsiness, in at least one of Paul’s hearers, a young man named ♦Eutychus, whose interest in what was said, could not keep his attention alive against the pressure of drowsiness. He fell asleep; and the occurrence must appear so very natural, (more particularly to any one, who has ever been so unfortunate as to be sleepy at an evening meeting, and knows what a painful sensation it is, though the drowsiness is wholly beyond the control of the reason,) that it can hardly be thought worth while to take pains, as some venerable commentators do, to suppose that the devil was very specially concerned in producing the sleep of Eutychus, and that the consequences which ensued, were an exhibition of divine wrath against the sleepy youth, for slumbering under the preaching of Paul. If the supposition holds equally good in all similar cases, the devil must be very busy on warm Sunday afternoons; and many a comfortable nap would be disturbed by unpleasant dreams, if the dozer could be made to think that his drowsiness was the particular work of the great adversary of souls, or that he was liable to suffer any such accident as Eutychus did, who, falling into a deeper sleep, and losing all muscular control and consciousness, sunk down from his seat, and slipping over the side of the gallery, in the third loft, fell into the court below, where he was taken up lifeless. But Paul hearing of the accident, stopped his discourse, and going down to the young man, fell on him and embraced him, saying, “Trouble not yourselves, for the life is in him.” And his words were verified by the result; for they soon brought him up alive, and were not a little comforted. Paul, certain of his recovery, did not suffer the accident to mar the enjoyment of the social farewell meeting; but going up and breaking bread with them all, talked with them a long time, passing the whole night in this pleasant way, and did not leave them till day-break, when he started to go by land over to Assos, about twenty-four miles south-east of Troas, on the Adramyttian gulf, which sets up between the north side of the island of Lesbos and the mainland. His companions, coming around by water, through the mouth of the gulf, took Paul on board at Assos, according to his plan; and then instead of turning back, and sailing out into the open sea, around the outside of Lesbos, ran up the gulf to the eastern end of the north coast of the island, where there is an other outlet to the gulf between the eastern shore of Lesbos and the continent. Sailing southward through this passage, after a course of between thirty and forty miles, they came to Mitylene, on the southeastern side of the island. Thence passing out of the strait, they sailed southwestwards, coming between Chios and the main-land, and arrived the next day at Trogyllium, at the southwest corner of Samos. Then turning their course towards the continent, they came in one day to Miletus, near the mouth of the ♠Meander, about forty miles south of Ephesus.

♦ “Entychus” replaced with “Eutychus”

♠ “Maeander” replaced with “Meander”

Landing here, and desiring much to see some of his Ephesian brethren before his departure to Jerusalem, he sent to the elders of the church in that city, and on their arrival poured out his whole soul to them in a parting address, which for pathetic earnestness and touching beauty, is certainly, beyond any doubt, the most splendid passage that all the records of ancient eloquence can furnish. No force can be added to it by a new version, nor can any recapitulation of its substance do justice to its beauty. At the close, took place a most affecting farewell. In the simple and forcible description of Luke, (who was himself present at the moving scene, seeing and hearing all he narrates,)――“When Paul had thus spoken, he kneeled down and prayed with them all.” The subjects of this prayer were the guardians of that little flock which he, amid perils and death, had gathered from the heathen waste of Ionic Asia, to the fold of Christ. When he left it last, the raging wolves of persecution and wrath,――the wild beasts of Ephesus,――were howling death and destruction to the devoted believers of Christ, and they were still environed with temptations and dangers, that threatened to overwhelm these feeble ones, left thus early without the fostering care of their apostolic shepherd. Passing on his way to the great scene of his coming trials, he could not venture among them to give them his parting counsels, and could now only intrust to their constituted guardians, this dear charge, with renewed exhortations to them to be faithful, as in the presence of their God, to those objects of his labors, his cares, his prayers, and his daily tears. Amid the sorrows of that long farewell, arose on the prophetic vision of the apostle some gloomy foreshadowings of future woes to fall on that Ephesian charge, and this deepened the melancholy feeling of his heart almost to agony. This no doubt was the burden of his last prayer, when with their elders, and for them, he kneeled down on the shore and sent up in earnest petition to God, that voice which they were doomed to hear no more forever.

Such passages as this in the life and words of Paul, constitute a noble addition to the reader’s idea of his character. They show how nobly were intermingled in the varied frame of his spirit, the affectionate, the soft, and the winning traits, with the high, the stern, and the bitter feelings that so often were called out by the unparalleled trials of his situation. They show ♦that he truly felt and acted out, to the life, that divine principle of Christian love which inspired the most eloquent effort of his pen;――and that he trusted not to the wonder-working powers that moved his lips, as with the eloquence of men and angels,――not to the martyr-spirit, that, sacrificing all earthly substance, devoted itself to the raging flames of persecution, in the cause of God,――not to the genius whose discursive glance searched all the mysteries of human and divine knowledge,――but to that pure, exalted and exalting spirit of ardent love for those for whom he lived like his Savior, and for whom he was ready to die like him, also. This was the inspiration of his words, his writings, and his actions,――the motive and spirit of his devotion,――the energy of his being. Wherever he went and whatever he did,――in spite of the frequent passionate outbreaks of his rougher nature, this honest, fervent, animated spirit of charity,――glowing not to inflame, but to melt,――softened the austerities of his character, and kindled in all who truly knew him, a deep and lasting affection for him, like that which was so strikingly manifested on this occasion. Who can wonder that to a man thus constituted, the lingering Ephesians still clung with such enthusiastic attachment? In the fervid action of that oriental clime, they fell on his neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he said,――that they should see his face no more. Still loth to take their last look at one so loved, they accompanied him to the ship, which bore him away from them, to perils, sufferings and chains.

♦ duplicate word “that” removed

“Assos was a sea-port town, situated on the south-west part of the province of Troas, and over against the island Lesbos. By land it is much nearer Troas than by sea, because of a promontory that runs a great way into the sea, and must be doubled to come to Assos, which was perhaps the reason that the apostle chose rather to walk it.” (Wells’s Geography and Calmet’s Commentary.)

MYTELENE. Acts xx. 14.

“Mitylene, (chapter xx. verse 14,) was one of the principal cities in the island of Lesbos, situated on a peninsula with a commodious haven on each side; the whole island was also called by that name, as well as Pentapolis, from the five cities in it, viz. Issa or Antissa, Pyrrhe, Eressos, Arisba, and Mitylene. It is at present called Metelin. The island is one of the largest in the Archipelago, and was renowned for the many eminent persons it produced; such as Sappho, the inventress of Sapphic verses,――Alcaeus, a famous lyric poet,――Pittacus, one of the seven wise men of Greece,――Theophrastus, the noble physician and philosopher,――and Arion, the celebrated musician. It is now in the possession of the Turks. As mentioned by St. Luke, it may be understood either the island or the city itself.” (Wells’s Geography and Whitby’s Table.)

“Chios, (verse 15,) was an island in the Archipelago, next to Lesbos, both as to situation and size. It lies over against Smyrna, and is not above four leagues distant from the Asiatic continent. Horace and Martial celebrate it for the wine and figs that it produced. It is now renowned for producing the best mastic in the world.

“Sir Paul Ricaut, in his ‘Present State of the Greek Church,’ tells us, that there is no place in the Turkish dominions where Christians enjoy more freedom in their religion and estates than in this island, to which they are entitled by an ancient capitulation made with Sultan Mahomet II.” (Wells’s Geography.)

“Samos, (verse 15,) was another island of the Archipelago, lying south-east of Chios, and about five miles from the Asiatic continent. It was famous among heathen writers for the worship of Juno; for one of the Sibyls called Sibylla Samiana; for Pherecydes, who foretold an earthquake that happened there, by drinking of the waters; and more especially for the birth of Pythagoras. It was formerly a free commonwealth; at present, the Turks have reduced it to a mean and depopulated condition; so that ever since the year 1676, no Turk has ventured to live on it on account of its being frequented by pirates, who carry all whom they take into captivity.” (Wells’s Geography and Whitby’s Table.)

“Trogyllium, (verse 15,) is a promontory at the foot of Mount Mycale, opposite to, and five miles from Samos: there was also a town there of the same name, mentioned by Pliny, Lib. v, c. 29. p. 295.” (Whitby’s Table.)

“Miletus, (verse 15,) a sea-port town on the continent of Asia Minor, and in the province of Caria, memorable for being the birth-place of Thales, one of the seven wise men of Greece, and father of the Ionic philosophy; of Anaximander, his scholar; Timotheus, the musician; and Anaximenes, the philosopher. It is called now, by the Turks, Melas; and not far distant from it is the true Meander.” (Whitby’s Table and Wells’s Geography.) [Williams on Pearson. pp. 66, 67.]

Tearing himself thus from the embraces of his Ephesian brethren, Paul sailed off to the southward, hurrying on to Jerusalem, in order to reach there if possible, before the Pentecost. After leaving Miletus, the apostolic company made a straight course to Coos, and then rounding the great northwestern angle of Asia Minor, turned eastwardly to Rhodes, and passing probably through the strait, between that island and the continent, landed at Patara, a town on the coast of Lycia, which was the destination of their first vessel. They therefore at this place engaged a passage in a vessel bound to Tyre, and holding on southeastward, came next in sight of Cyprus, which they passed, leaving it on the left, and then steering straight for the Syrian coast, landed at Tyre, where their vessel was to unlade; so that they were detained here for a whole week, which they passed in the company of some Christian brethren who constituted a church there. These Tyrian disciples hearing of Paul’s plan to visit Jerusalem, and knowing the dangers to which he would there be exposed by the deadly hate of the Jews, were very urgent with him against his journey; but he still resolutely held on his course, as soon as a passage could be procured, and bade them farewell, with prayer on the shore, to which the brethren accompanied him with their women and children. Standing off from the shore, they then sailed on south, to Ptolemais, where they spent a day with the Christians in that place, and then re-embarking, and passing round the promontory of Carmel, reached Caesarea, where their sea-voyage terminated. Here they passed several days in the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the seven deacons, who had four daughters that were prophetesses. While they were resting themselves in this truly religious family, from the fatigues of their long voyage, they were visited by Agabus, a prophet from Jerusalem,――the same who had formerly visited Antioch when Paul was there, and who had then foretold the coming famine, which threatened all the world. This remarkable man predicted to Paul the misfortunes which awaited him in Jerusalem. In the solemnly impressive dramatic action of the ancient prophets, he took Paul’s girdle, and binding his own hands with it, said――“Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘So shall the Jews at Jerusalem, bind the man that owns this girdle, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles.’” On hearing this melancholy announcement, all the companions of Paul and the Christians of Caesarea, united in beseeching Paul to give up his purpose of visiting Jerusalem. But he, resolute against all entreaty, declared himself ready not only to be bound, but to die in Jerusalem for the Lord Jesus. And when they found that he would not be persuaded, they all ceased to harass him with their supplications, and resigned him to Providence, saying,――“The will of the Lord be done.” They then all took carriages, and rode up to Jerusalem, accompanied by some brethren from Caesarea, and by Mnason, an old believer, formerly of Cyprus, but now of Jerusalem, who had engaged them as his guests in that city.

“Coos, (chapter xxi. verse 1,) an island in the Aegean or Icarian sea, near Mnydos and Cnidus, which had a city of the same name, from which Hippocrates, the celebrated physician, and Apelles, the famous painter, were called Coi. Here was a large temple of Aesculapius, and another of Juno. It abounded in rich wines, and is very often mentioned by the classic poets.” (Whitby’s Alphabetic Table.)

Witsius very absurdly defines the situation of this island by saying that it is “near Crete.”――“Coos, quae maris Mediterranei insula est prope Cretam.” It is in the Aegean sea properly, and not in the Mediterranean; and can not be less than one hundred and twenty miles from Crete, much farther off from it than is Rhodes,――the next island in Paul’s route, and there are many islands between Coos and Crete, so that the statement gives no just idea of the situation of the island. It would be as proper to say that Barbadoes is near Cuba, or the isle of Man near France.

“Rhodes, (verse 1,) an island, supposed to have taken its name απο των Ροδων from the many roses which were known to grow there. It lies south of the province of Caria, and it is accounted next to Cyprus and Lesbos, for its dignity among the Asiatic islands. It was remarkable among the ancients for the expertness of its inhabitants in navigation; for a college, in which the students were eminent for eloquence and mathematics; and for the clearness of its air, insomuch that there was not a day in which the sun did not shine upon it; and more especially celebrated for its prodigious statue of brass, consecrated especially to the sun, and called his Colossus. This statue was seventy cubits high, and every finger as large as an ordinary sized man, and as it stood astride over the mouth of the harbor, ships passed under its legs.” (Whitby’s Table and Wells’s Geography.) [Williams on Pearson, pp. 67, 68.]

LAST VISIT TO JERUSALEM.

Paul was now received in Jerusalem by the brethren with great joy, and going, on the day after his arrival, to see James, now the principal apostle resident in the Holy city, communicated to him and all the elders a full account of all his various labors. Having heard his very interesting communications, they were moved with gratitude to God for this triumph of his grace; but knowing as they did, with what rumors against Paul these events had been connected by common fame, they desired to arrange his introduction to the temple in such a manner, as would most effectually silence these prejudicial stories. The plan proposed by them was, that he should, in the company of four Jews of the Christian faith, who had a vow on them, go through with all the usual forms of purification prescribed under such circumstances for a Jew, on returning from the daily impurities to which he was exposed by a residence among the Gentiles, to a participation in the holy services of solemn worship in the temple. The apostles and elders, however, in recommending this course, declared to him, that they believed that the Gentiles ought not to be bound to the performance of the Jewish rituals, but should be exempt from all restrictions, except such as had formerly been decided on, by the council of Jerusalem. Paul, always devout and exact in the observance of the institutions of his national religion, followed their advice accordingly, and went on quietly and unpretendingly in the regular performance of the prescribed ceremonies, waiting for the termination of the seven days of purification, when the offering should be made for himself, and one for each of his companions, after which, they were all to be admitted of course, to the full honors of Mosaic purity, and the religious privileges of conforming Jews. But these ritual observances were not destined to save him from the calamities to which the hatred of his enemies had devoted him. Near the close of the seven days allotted by the Mosaic ritual for the purification of a regenerated Israelite, some of the Asian Jews, who had known Paul in his missionary journeys through their own country, and who had come to Jerusalem, to attend the festival, seeing their old enemy in the midst of the temple, against whose worship they had understood him to have been preaching to the Gentiles,――instantly raised a great outcry, and fell upon him, dragging him along, and shouting to the multitude around, “Men of Israel! help! This is the man, that every where teaches all men against the people, and the law, and this place; and he has furthermore, brought Greeks into the temple, and has polluted this holy place.” It seems they had seen Trophimus, one of his Gentile companions from Ephesus, with him in the city, and imagined also that Paul had brought him into the temple, within the sanctuary, whose entrance was expressly forbidden to all Gentiles, who were never allowed to pass beyond the outermost court. The sanctuary or court of the Jews could not be crossed by an uncircumcised Gentile, and the transgression of the holy limit was punished with death. Within this holy court, the scene now described took place; and as the whole sanctuary was then crowded with Jews, who had come from all parts of the world to attend the festival in Jerusalem, the outcry raised against Paul immediately drew thronging thousands around him. Hearing the complaint that he was a renegade Jew, who, in other countries, had used his utmost endeavors to throw contempt on his own nation, and to bring their holy worship into disrepute, and yet had now the impudence to show himself in the sanctuary, which he had thus blasphemed,――and had, moreover, even profaned it by introducing into the sacred precincts one of those Gentiles for whose company he had forsaken the fellowship of Israel,――they all joined in the rush upon him, and dragged him out of the temple, the gates of which were immediately shut by the Levites on duty, lest in the riot that was expected to ensue, the consecrated pavement should be polluted with the blood of the renegade. Not only those in the temple, but also all those in the city, were called out by the disturbance, and came running together to join in the mob against the profaner of the sanctuary, and Paul now seemed in a fair way to win the bloody crown of martyrdom.

The great noise made by the swarming multitudes who were gathering around Paul, soon reached the ears of the Roman garrison in castle Antonia, and the soldiers instantly hastened to tell the commanding officer, that “the whole city was in an uproar.” The tribune, Claudius Lysias, probably thinking of a rebellion against the Romans, instantly ordered a detachment of several companies under arms, and hurried down with them, in a few moments, to the scene of the riot. The mob meanwhile were ♦diligently occupied in beating Paul; but as soon as the military force made their way among the crowd, the rioters left off beating him, and fell back. The tribune coming near, and seeing Paul alone in the midst, who seemed to be the object and occasion of all the disturbance, without hesitation seized him, and putting him in chains, took him out of the throng. He then demanded what all this riot meant. To his inquiry, the whole mob replied with various accounts; some cried one thing and some another; and the tribune finding it utterly impossible to learn from the rioters who he was or what he had done, ordered him to be taken up to the castle. Castle Antonia stood at the northwestern angle of the temple, close by one of the great entrances to it, near which the riot seems to have taken place. To this, Paul was now taken, and was borne by the surrounding soldiers, to keep off the multitude, who were raging for his blood, like hungry wolves after the prey snatched from their jaws,――and they all pressed after him, shouting, “kill him!” In this way Paul was carried up the stairs which led to the high entrance of the castle, which of course the soldiers would not allow the multitude to mount; and when he had reached the top of the stairs, he was therefore perfectly protected from their violence, though perfectly well situated for speaking to them so as to be distinctly seen and heard. As they were taking him up the stairs, he begged the attention of the tribune, saying, “May I speak to thee?” The tribune hearing this, in some surprise asked, “Canst thou speak Greek? Art thou not that Egyptian that raised a sedition some time ago, and led away into the wilderness a band of four thousand cut-throats?” This alarming revolt had been but lately put down with great trouble, and was therefore fresh in the mind of Lysias, who had been concerned in quelling it, along with the whole Roman force in Palestine,――and from some of the outcries of the mob, he now took up the notion that Paul was the very ringleader of that revolt, and had now just returned from his place of refuge to make new trouble, and had been detected by the multitude in the temple. Paul answered the foolish accusation of the tribune, by saying, “I am a Jewish citizen of Tarsus, in Cilicia, which is no mean city; and I beg of thee, to let me speak to the people.” The tribune, quite glad to have his unpleasant suspicions removed, as an atonement for the unjust accusation immediately granted the permission as requested, and Paul therefore turned to the raging multitude, waving his hand in the usual gesture for requesting silence. The people, curious to hear his account of himself, listened accordingly, and he therefore uplifted his voice in a respectful request for their attention to his plea in his own behalf. “Men! Brethren! and Fathers! Hear ye my defence which I make to you!”

♦ “dilgently” replaced with “diligently”

Those words were spoken in the vernacular language of Palestine, the true Hebraistic dialect of Jerusalem, and the multitude were thereby immediately undeceived about his character, for they had been as much mistaken about him, as the tribune was, though their mistake was of a very opposite character; for they supposed him to be entirely Greek in his habits and language, if not in his origin; and the vast concourse was therefore hushed in profound silence, to hear his address made in the true Jewish language. Before this strange audience, Paul then stood up boldly, to declare his character, his views, and his apostolic commission. On the top of the lofty rampart of Castle Antonia,――with the dark iron forms of the Roman soldiery around him, guarding the staircase from top to bottom, against the raging mob,――and with the enormous mass of the congregated thousands of Jerusalem, and of the strangers who had come up to the festival, all straining their fierce eyes in wrath and hate upon him, as a convicted renegade,――one feeble, slender man, now stood, the object of the most painful attention to all,――yet, less moved with passion and anxiety than any one present. Thus stationed, he began, and gave to the curious multitude an interesting account of the incidents connected with that great change in his feelings and belief, which was the occasion of the present difficulty. After giving them a complete statement of these particulars, he was narrating the circumstance of a revelation made to him in the temple, while in a devotional trance there, on his first return to Jerusalem, after his conversion. In repeating the solemn commission there confirmed to him by the voice of God, he repeated the crowning sentence, with which the Lord removed his doubts about engaging in the work of preaching the gospel, when his hands were yet, as it were, red with the blood of the martyred faithful,――“And he said to me, ‘Go: for I will send thee far hence, unto the Gentiles.’” But when the listening multitude heard this clear declaration of his having considered himself authorized to communicate to the Gentiles those holy things which had been especially consigned by God to his peculiar people,――they took it as a clear confession of the charge of having desecrated and degraded his national religion, and all interrupted him with the ferocious cry, “Take him away from the earth! for such a fellow does not deserve to live.” The tribune, finding that this discussion was not likely to answer any good purpose, instantly put a stop to it, by dragging him into the castle, and gave directions that he should be examined by scourging, that they might make him confess truly who he was, and what he had done to make the people cry out so against him,――a very foolish way, it would seem, to find out the truth about an unknown and abused person, to flog him until he should tell a story that would please them. While the guard were binding him with thongs, before they laid on the scourge, Paul spoke to the centurion, who was superintending the operation, and said in a sententiously inquiring way, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a Roman citizen without legal condemnation?” This question put a stop to all proceedings at once. The centurion immediately dropped the thongs, and ran to the tribune, saying, “Take heed what thou doest, for this man is a Roman citizen.” The tribune then came to Paul, in much trepidation, and with great solemnity said――“Tell me truly, art thou a Roman citizen?” Paul distinctly declared, “Yes.”

Desirous to learn the mode in which the prisoner had obtained this most sacred and unimpeachable privilege, the tribune remarked of himself, that he had obtained this right by the payment of a large sum of money,――perhaps doubting whether a man of Paul’s poor aspect could have ever been able to buy it; to which Paul boldly replied――“But I was BORN free.” This clear declaration satisfied the tribune that he had involved himself in a very serious difficulty, by committing this illegal violence on a person thus entitled to all the privileges of a subject of law. All the subordinate agents also, were fully aware of the nature of the mistake, and all immediately let him alone. Lysias now kept Paul with great care in the castle, as a place of safety from his Jewish persecutors; and the next day, in order to have a full investigation of his character and the charges against him, he took him before the Sanhedrim, for examination. Paul there opened his defence in a very appropriate and self-vindicating style. “Men! Brethren! and Fathers! I have heretofore lived before God with a good conscience.” At these words, Ananias the high priest, provoked by Paul’s seeming assurance in thus vindicating himself, when under the accusation of the heads of the Jewish religion, commanded those that stood next to Paul to slap him on the mouth. Paul, indignant at the high-handed tyranny of this outrageous attack on him, answered in honest wrath――“God shall smite thee, thou whited wall! For dost thou command me to be smitten contrary to the law, when thou sittest as a judge over me?” The other by-standers, enraged at his boldness, asked him, “Revilest thou God’s high priest?” To which Paul, not having known the fact that Ananias then held that office, which he had so disgraced by his infamous conduct, replied――“I knew not, brethren, that he was the high priest; for it is written, thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.” Then, perceiving the mixed character of the council, he determined to avail himself of the mutual hatred of the two great sects, for his defense, by making his own persecution a kind of party question; and therefore called out to them――“I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. Of the hope of the resurrection of the dead, I am called in question.” These words had the expected effect. Instantly, all the violent party feeling between these two sects broke out in full force, and the whole council was divided and confused,――the scribes who belonged to the Pharisaic order, arising, and declaring, “We find no occasion of evil in this man. But if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him, let us not fight against God.” This last remark, of course, was throwing down the gauntlet at the opposite sect; for the Sadducees, denying absolutely the existence of either angel or spirit, could of course believe no part of Paul’s story about his vision and spiritual summons. They all therefore broke out against the Pharisees, who being thus involved, took Paul’s side very determinedly, and the party strife grew so hot that Paul was like to be torn in pieces between them. The tribune, seeing the pass to which matters had come, then ordered out the castle-guard, and took him by force, bringing him back to his former place of safety.

“The reason why St. Paul chose to speak in the Hebrew tongue, may be accounted for thus. There were at this time two sorts of Jews, some called by Chrysostom οἱ βαθεις Ἑβραιοι, profound Hebrews, who used no other language but the Hebrew, and would not admit the Greek Bible into their assemblies, but only the Hebrew, with the Jerusalem Targum and Paraphrase. The other sort spoke Greek, and used that translation of the scriptures; these were called Hellenists. This was a cause of great dissension among these two parties, even after they had embraced Christianity, (Acts vi. 1.) Of this latter sort was St. Paul, because he always made use of the Greek translation of the Bible in his writings, so that in this respect he might not be acceptable to the other party. Those of them who were converted to Christianity, were much prejudiced against him, (Acts xxi. 21,) which is given as a reason for his concealing his name in his Epistle to the Hebrews. And as for those who were not converted, they could not so much as endure him: and this is the reason which Chrysostom gives, why he preached to the Hellenists only. Acts ix. 28. Therefore, that he might avert the great displeasure which the Jews had conceived against him, he accosted them in their favorite language, and by his compliance in this respect, they were so far pacified as to give him audience.” (Hammond’s Annotations.) [Williams’s Pearson, p. 70.]

“Scourging was a method of examination used by Romans and other nations, to force such as were supposed guilty to confess what they had done, what were their motives, and who were accessory to the fact. Thus Tacitus tells us of Herennius Gallus, that he received several stripes, that it might be known for what price, and with what confederates, he had betrayed the Roman army. It is to be observed, however, that the Romans were punished in this wise, not by whips and scourges, but with rods only; and therefore it is that Cicero, in his oration pro Rabirio, speaking against Labienus, tells his audience that the Porcian law permitted a Roman to be whipped with rods, but he, like a good and merciful man, (speaking ironically,) had done it with scourges; and still further, neither by whips nor rods could a citizen of Rome be punished, until he were first adjudged to lose his privilege, to be uncitizened, and to be declared an enemy to the commonwealth, then he might be scourged or put to death. Cicero Oratio in Verres, says, ‘It is a foul fault for any praetor, &c. to bind a citizen of Rome; a piacular offense to scourge him; a kind of parricide to kill him: what shall I call the crucifying of such an one?’” (Williams’s notes on Pearson, pp. 70, 71.)

“Ananias, the son of Nebedaeus, was high priest at the time that Helena, queen of Adiabene, supplied the Jews with corn from Egypt, (Josephus Antiquities, lib. xx. c. 5. § 2,) during the famine which took place in the fourth year of Claudius, mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Acts. St. Paul, therefore, who took a journey to Jerusalem at that period, (Acts xv.) could not have been ignorant of the elevation of Ananias to that dignity. Soon after the holding of the first council, as it is called, at Jerusalem, Ananias was dispossessed of his office, in consequence of certain acts of violence between the Samaritans and the Jews, and sent prisoner to Rome, (Josephus, Antiquities, lib. xx. c. 6. § 2,) whence he was afterwards released and returned to Jerusalem. Now from that period he could not be called high priest, in the proper sense of the word, though Josephus (Antiquities, lib. xx. c. 9. § 2, and Jewish War lib. ii. c. 17. § 9,) has sometimes given him the title of αρχιερευς, taken in the more extensive meaning of a priest, who had a seat and voice in the Sanhedrim; αρχιερεις in the plural number is frequently used in the New Testament, when allusion is made to the Sanhedrim;) and Jonathan, though we are not acquainted with the circumstances of his elevation, had been raised, in the mean time, to the supreme dignity in the Jewish church. Between the death of Jonathan, who was murdered (Josephus Antiquities of the Jews lib. xx. c. 8. § 5,) by order of Felix, and the high priesthood of Ismael, who was invested with that office by Agrippa, (Josephus Antiquities lib. xx. c. 8. § 3,) elapsed an interval in which this dignity continued vacant. Now it happened precisely in this interval, that St. Paul was apprehended at Jerusalem; and, the Sanhedrim being destitute of a president, he undertook of his own authority the discharge of that office, which he executed with the greatest tyranny. (Josephus Antiquities lib. xx. c. 9. § 2.) It is possible therefore that St. Paul, who had been only a few days at Jerusalem, might be ignorant that Ananias, who had been dispossessed of the priesthood, had taken upon himself a trust to which he was not entitled. He might therefore very naturally exclaim, ‘I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest!’ Admitting him on the other hand to have been acquainted with the fact, the expression must be considered as an indirect reproof, and a tacit refusal to recognize usurped authority.” (Michaelis, Vol. I. pp. 51, 56.)

“The prediction of St. Paul, verse 3, ‘God shall smite thee, thou whited wall,’ was, according to Josephus, fulfilled in a short time. For when, in the government of Florus, his son Eleazar set himself at the head of a party of mutineers, who, having made themselves masters of the temple, would permit no sacrifices to be offered for the emperor; and being joined by a company of assassins, compelled persons of the best quality to fly for their safety and hide themselves in sinks and vaults;――Ananias and his brother Hezekias, were both drawn out of one of these places, and murdered, (Josephus Jewish War lib. ii. c. 17, 18,) though Dr. Lightfoot will have it that he perished at the siege of Jerusalem!” (Whitby’s Annotations.) [Williams on Pearson.]

During that night, the soul of Paul was comforted by a heavenly vision, in which the Lord exhorted him to maintain the same high spirit,――assuring him that as he had testified of him in Jerusalem, even so he should bear witness in Rome. His dangers in Jerusalem, however, were not yet over. The furious Jews, now cut off from all possibility of doing any violence to Paul, under the sanction of legal forms, determined to set all moderation aside, and forty of the most desperate bound themselves by a solemn oath, neither to eat nor drink, till they had slain Paul. In the arrangement of the mode in which their abominable vow should be performed, it was settled between them and the high-priest, that a request should be sent to the tribune to bring down Paul before the council once more, as if for the sake of putting some additional inquiries to him for their final and perfect satisfaction; and then, that these desperadoes should station themselves, where they could make a rush upon Paul, just as he was entering the council-hall, and kill him before the guard could bestir themselves in his defense, or seize the murderers; and even if some of them should be caught and punished, it never need be known, that the high priest was accessory to the assassination. But while they were arranging this hopeful piece of wickedness, they did not manage it so snugly as was necessary for the success of the plot; for it somehow or other got to the ears of Paul’s nephew,――a young man no where else mentioned in the New Testament, and of whose character and situation, nothing whatever is known. He, hearing of the plot, came instantly to his uncle, who sent him to communicate the tidings to the tribune. Lysias, on receiving this account of the utterly desperate character of the opposition to Paul, determined not to risk his prisoner’s life any longer in Jerusalem, even when guarded by the powerful defenses of castle Antonia. He dismissed the young man with the strongest injunctions, to observe the most profound secrecy, as to the fact of his having made this communication to him; and immediately made preparations to send off Paul, that very night, to Caesarea, designing to have him left there with the governor of the province, as a prisoner of state, and thus to rid himself of all responsibility about this very difficult and perilous business. He ordered two centurions to draw out a detachment, of such very remarkable strength, as shows the excess of his fears for Paul. Two hundred heavy-armed soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred lancers, were detached as a guard for Paul, and were all mounted for speed, to take him beyond the reach of the Jerusalem desperadoes, that very night. He gave to that portion of the detachment that was designed to go all the way to Caesarea, a letter to be delivered to Felix the governor, giving a fair and faithful account of all the circumstances connected with Paul’s imprisonment and perils in Jerusalem.

RETURN TO CAESAREA.

The strong mounted detachment, numbering four hundred and seventy full-armed Roman warriors, accordingly set out that night at nine o’clock, and moving silently off from the castle, which stood near one of the western gates of the city, passed out of Jerusalem unnoticed in the darkness, and galloped away to the north-west. After forty miles of hard riding, they reached Antipatris before day, and as all danger of pursuit from the Jerusalem assassins was out of the question there, the mounted infantry and the lancers returned to Jerusalem, leaving Paul however, the very respectable military attendance of the seventy horse-guards. With these, he journeyed to Caesarea, only about twenty-five miles off, where he was presented by the commander of the detachment to Felix, the Roman governor, who always resided in Caesarea, the capital of his province. The governor, on reading the letter and learning that Paul was of Cilicia, deferred giving his case a full hearing, until his accusers had also come; and committed him for safe keeping in the interval, to an apartment in the great palace, built by Herod the Great, the royal founder of Caesarea.

After a delay of five days, the high priest and the elders came down to Caesarea, to prosecute their charges against Paul before the governor. They brought with them, as their advocate, a speech-maker named Tertullus, whose name shows him to have been of Roman connections or education, and who, on account of his acquaintance with the Latin forms of oratory and law, was no doubt selected by Ananias and his coadjutors, as a person better qualified than themselves to maintain their cause with effect, before the governor. Tertullus accordingly opened the case, and when Paul had been confronted with his accusers, began with a very tedious string of formal compliments to Felix, and then set forth a complaint against Paul in very bitter and abusive terms, stating his offense to be, the attempt to profane the temple, for which the Jews would have convicted and punished him, if Lysias had not violently hindered, and put them to the trouble of bringing the whole business before the governor, though a matter exclusively concerning their religious law. To all his assertions the Jews testified.

This presentation of the accusation being made, Paul was then called on for his defense, which he thereupon delivered in a tone highly respectful to the governor, and maintained that he had been guilty of none of the troublesome and riotous conduct of which he was accused: but quietly, without any effort to make a commotion among the people anywhere, had come into the city on a visit, after many years absence, to bring alms and offerings; and that when he was seized by the Asian Jews in the temple, he was going blamelessly through the established ceremonies of purification. He complained also, that his original accusers, the Asian Jews, were not confronted with him, and challenged his present prosecutors to bring any evidence against him. Felix, after this hearing of the case, on the pretence of needing Lysias as a witness on the facts, deferred his decision, and left both accusers and accused to the enjoyment of the delays and “glorious uncertainties of the law.” Meanwhile he committed Paul to the charge of a centurion, with directions that he should be allowed all reasonable liberty, and should not be in any particular restricted from the freest intercourse with his friends. The imprisonment of Paul at Caesarea was merely nominal; and he must have passed his time both pleasantly and profitably, with the members of the church at Caesarea, with whom he had formerly been acquainted, especially with Philip and his family. Besides these, he was also favored with the company of several of his assistants, who had been the companions of his toils in Europe and Asia; and through them he could hold the freest correspondence with any of the numerous churches of his apostolic charge throughout the world. He resided here for two whole years at least, of Felix’s administration; and during that time, was more than once sent for by the governor, to hold conversations with him on the great objects of his life, in some of which he expressed himself so forcibly on righteousness, temperance and judgment to come, that the wicked governor,――at that moment sitting in the presence of the apostle with an adulterous paramour,――trembled at the view presented by Paul of the consequences of those sins for which Felix was so infamous. But his repentant tremors soon passed off, and he merely dismissed the apostle with the vague promise, that at some more convenient season he would send for him. He did indeed, often send for him after this; but the motive of these renewals of intercourse seems to have been of the basest order, for it is stated by the sacred historian, that his real object was to induce Paul to offer him a bribe, which he supposed could be easily raised by the contributions of his devoted friends. But the hope was vain. It was no part of Paul’s plan of action to hasten the decision of his movements by such means, and the consequence was, that Felix found so little occasion to befriend him, that when he went out of the office which he had uniformly disgraced by tyranny, rapine, and murder, he thought it, on the whole, worth while to gratify the late subjects of his hateful sway, by leaving Paul still a prisoner.

“This Drusilla was the youngest daughter of Herod Agrippa. (Josephus lib. xix. c. 9. in.) Josephus gives the following account of her marriage with Felix:――‘Agrippa, having received this present from Caesar, (viz. Claudius,) gave his sister Drusilla in marriage to the Azizus, king of the Emesenes, when he had consented to be circumcised. For Epiphanes, the son of king Antiochus, had broken the contract with her, by refusing to embrace the Jewish customs, although he had promised her father he would. But this marriage of Drusilla with Azizus was dissolved in a short time, after this manner. When Felix was procurator of Judaea, having had a sight of her, he was mightily taken with her; and indeed she was the most beautiful of her sex. He therefore sent to her Simon, a Jew of Cyprus, who was one of his friends, and pretended to magic, by whom he persuaded her to leave her husband, and marry him; promising to make her perfectly happy, if she did not disdain him. It was far from being a sufficient reason; but to avoid the envy of her sister Bernice, who was continually doing her ill offices, because of her beauty, she was induced to transgress the laws of her country, and marry Felix.’” (Lardner’s Credibility, 4to. Vol. I. p. 16, 17, edition, London, 1815.) [Williams on Pearson, p. 78.]

SYRACUSE. Acts xxviii. 12.

The successor of Felix in the government of Palestine, was Porcius Festus, a man whose administration is by no means characterized in the history of those times by a reputation for justice or prudence; yet in the case of Paul, his conduct seems to have been much more accordant with right and reason, than was that of the truly infamous Felix. Visiting the religious capital of the Jews soon after his first entrance into the province, he was there earnestly petitioned by the ever-spiteful foes of Paul, to cause this prisoner to be brought up to Jerusalem for trial, intending when Paul should enter the city, to execute their old plan of assassination, which had been formerly frustrated by the benevolent prudence and energy of Claudius Lysias. But Festus, perhaps having received some notification of this plot, from the friends of Paul, utterly refused to bring the prisoner to Jerusalem, but required the presence of the accusers in the proper seat of the supreme provincial administration of justice at Caesarea. After a ten days’ stay in Jerusalem, he returned to the civil capital, and with a commendable activity in his judicial proceedings, on the very next day after his arrival in Caesarea, summoned Paul and his accusers before him. The Jews of course, told their old story, and brought out against Paul many grievous complaints, which they could not prove. His only reply to all this accusation without testimony was――“Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor yet against Caesar, have I offended in any particular.” But Festus having been in some way influenced to favor the designs of the Jews, urged Paul to go up to Jerusalem, there to be tried by the supreme religious court of his own nation. Paul replied by a bold and distinct assertion of his rights, as a Roman citizen, before the tribunal of his liege lord and sovran: “I stand before Caesar’s judgment-seat, where I ought to be judged. To the Jews I have done no wrong, as thou very well knowest. If I am guilty of anything that deserves death, I refuse not to die; but if I have done none of these things of which they accuse me, no man can deliver me into their hands. I appeal to Caesar.” This solemn concluding formula put him at once far beyond the reach of all inferior tyranny; henceforth no governor in the world could direct the fate of the appellant Roman citizen, throwing before himself the adamantine aegis of Roman law. Festus himself, though evidently displeased at this turn of events, could not resist the course of law; but after a conference with this council, replied to Paul――“Dost thou appeal to Caesar? To Caesar shalt thou go.”

While Paul was still detained at Caesarea, after this final reference of his case to the highest judicial authority in the world, Festus was visited at Caesarea, by Herod Agrippa II. king of Iturea, Trachonitis, Abilene, and other northern regions of Palestine, the son of that Herod Agrippa whose character and actions were connected with the incidents of Peter’s life. He, passing through Judea with his sister Bernice, stopped at Caesarea, to pay their compliments to the new Roman governor. During their stay there, Festus, with a view to find rational entertainment for his royal guests, bethought himself of Paul’s case, as one that would be likely to interest them, connected as the prisoner’s fate seemed to be, with the religious and legal matters of that peculiar people to whom Agrippa himself belonged, and in the minutiae of whose law and theology he had been so well instructed, that his opinion on the case would be well worth having, to one as little acquainted with these matters as the heathen governor himself was. Festus therefore gave a very full account of the whole case to Agrippa, in terms that sufficiently well exhibited the perplexities in which he was involved, and in expressions which are strikingly and almost amusingly characteristic,――complaining as he does of the very abstruse and perplexing nature of the accusations brought by the Jews, as being “certain questions of their own religion, and of one Jesus, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.” Agrippa was so much interested in the case that he expressed a wish to hear the man in person; and Festus accordingly arranged that he should the next day be gratified with the hearing.

“‘King Agrippa and Bernice.’ Acts. xxv. 13. This Agrippa was the son of Herod Agrippa; St. Luke calls him king, which Josephus also does very often. (Antiquities lib. xx. c. viii. § 6, et passim.) But St. Luke does not suppose him to be king of Judaea, for all the judicial proceedings of that country relating to St. Paul, are transacted before Felix, and Festus his successor; besides, he says, that ‘Agrippa came to Caesarea to salute Festus,’ to compliment him on his arrival, &c. verse 1. When his father died, Claudius would have immediately put him in possession of his father’s dominions, but he was advised not to do so, on account of the son’s youth, then only seventeen; the emperor, therefore, ‘appointed Cuspius Fadus praefect of Judea and the whole kingdom, (Josephus Antiquities lib. xix. c. 9, ad fin.) who was succeeded by Tiberius, Alexander, Cumanus, Felix, and Festus, though these did not possess the province in the same extent that Fadus did.’ (Antiquities xx. Jewish War lib. ii.)

“Agrippa had, notwithstanding, at this time, considerable territories. ‘Herod, brother of king Agrippa the Great, died in the eighth year of the reign of Claudius. Claudius then gave his government to the young Agrippa.’ (Josephus Antiquities xx. p. 887.) This is the Agrippa mentioned in this twenty-fifth chapter. ‘The twelfth year of his reign being completed, Claudius gave to Agrippa the tetrarchy of Philip and Batanea, adding also Trachonitis with Abila. This had been the tetrarchy of Lysanias. But he took away from him Chalcis, after he had governed it four years.’ (Josephus Antiquities xx. p. 890, v. 25, &c.) ‘After this, he sent Felix, the brother of Pallas, to be procurator of Judea, Galilee, Samaria, and Peraea; and promoted Agrippa from Chalcis to a greater kingdom, giving him the tetrarchy which had been Philip’s. (This is Batanea, and Trachonitis, and Gaulonitis;) and he added, moreover, the kingdom of Lysanias, and the province that had been Varus’s.’ (Josephus War of the Jews lib. ii. c. 12. fin.) ‘Nero, in the first year of his reign, gave Agrippa a certain part of Galilee, ordering Tiberias and Tarichaea to be subject to him. He gave him also Julias, a city of Peraea, and fourteen towns in the neighborhood of it.’ (Antiquities xx. c. 7. § 4.) St. Luke is therefore fully justified in styling this Agrippa king at this time.” (Lardner’s Credibility, 4to. Vol. I. pp. 17, 18.) [Williams’s Pearson, p. 81, 82.]

On the next day, preparations were made for this audience, with a solemnity of display most honorable to the subject of it. The great hall of the palace was arrayed in grand order for the occasion, and, in due time, king Agrippa, with his royal sister, and the Roman governor, entered it with great pomp, followed by a train composed of all the great military and civil dignitaries of the vice-imperial court of Palestine. Before all this stately array, the apostolic prisoner was now set, and a solemn annunciation was made by Festus, of the circumstances of the prisoner’s previous accusation, trial, and appeal; all which were now summarily recapitulated in public, for the sake of form, although they had before been communicated in private, to Agrippa. The king, as the highest authority present, having graciously invited Paul to speak for himself, the apostle stretched forth his hand and began, in that respectful style of elaborately elegant compliment, which characterizes the exordiums of so many of his addresses to the great. After having, with most admirable skill, conciliated the attention and kind regard of the king, by expressing his happiness in being called to speak in his own defense before one so learned in Hebrew law, he went on; and in a speech which is well known for its noble eloquence, so resplendent, even through the disguise of a quaint translation, presented not merely his own case, but the claims of that revelation, for proclaiming which he was now a prisoner. So admirably did he conduct his whole plea, both for himself and the cause of Christ, that in spite of the sneer of Festus, Agrippa paid him the very highest compliment in his power, and pronounced him to be utterly guiltless of the charges. No part of this plea and its attendant discussions, needs to be recapitulated; but a single characteristic of Paul, which is most strikingly evinced, deserves especial notice. This is his profound regard for all the established forms of polite address. He is not satisfied with a mere respectful behavior towards his judges, but even distinguishes himself by a minute observance of all the customary phrases of politeness; nor does he suffer his courtly manner to be disturbed, even by the abrupt remark of Festus, accusing him of frenzy. In his reply, he styles his accuser “Most noble;” and yet every reader of Jewish history knows, and Paul knew, that this Festus, to whom he gave this honorable title, was one of the very wicked men of those wicked times. The instance shows then, that those who, from religious scruples, refuse to give the titles of established respect to those who are elevated in station, and reject all forms of genteel address, on the same ground, have certainly constructed their system of practical religion on a model wholly different from that by which the apostle’s demeanor was guided; and the whole impression made on a common reader, by Luke’s clear statement of Paul’s behavior before the most dignified and splendid audience that he ever addressed, must be, that he was complete in all the forms and observances of polite intercourse; and he must be considered, both according to the high standard of his refined and dignified hearers, and also by the universal standard of the refined of all ages,――not only a finished, eloquent orator, but a person of polished manners, delicate tact, ready compliment, and graceful, courtly address:――in short, A PERFECT GENTLEMAN.

VOYAGE TO ROME.

As Paul, however, had previously appealed to Caesar, his case was already removed from any inferior jurisdiction, and his hearing before Agrippa was intended only to gratify the king himself, and to cause the particulars of his complicated case to be more fully drawn out before his royal hearer, who was so accomplished in Hebrew law, that his opinion was very naturally desired by Festus; for, as the governor himself confessed, the technicalities and abstruse points involved in the charge, were altogether beyond the comprehension of a Roman judge, with a mere heathen education. The object, therefore, of obtaining a full statement of particulars, to be presented to his most august majesty, the emperor, being completely accomplished by this hearing of Paul before Agrippa,――there was now nothing to delay the reference of the case to Nero; and Paul was therefore consigned, along with other prisoners of state, to the care of a Roman officer, Julius, a centurion of the Augustan cohort. Taking passage at Caesarea, in an Adramyttian vessel, Julius sailed with his important charge from the shores of Palestine, late in the year 60. Following the usual cautious course of all ancient navigators,――along the shores, and from island to island, venturing across the open sea only with the fairest winds,――the vessel which bore the apostle on his first voyage to Italy, coasted along by Syria and Asia Minor. Of those Christian associates who accompanied Paul, none are known except Timothy, Luke, his graphically accurate historian, and Aristarchus of Thessalonica, the apostle’s long-known companion in travel. These, of course, were a source of great enjoyment to Paul on this tedious voyage, surrounded, as he was, otherwise, by strangers and heathen, by most of whom he must have been regarded in the light of a mere criminal, held in bonds for trial. He was, however, very fortunate in the character of the centurion to whose keeping he was entrusted, as is shown in more than one incident related by Luke. After one day’s sail, the vessel touching at Sidon, Julius here politely gave Paul permission to visit his Christian friends in that place,――thus conferring a great favor, both on the apostle and on the church of Sidon. Leaving this place, their course was next along the coast of Syria, and then eastwards, along the southern shore of Asia Minor, keeping in the Cilician strait between that province and the great island of Cyprus, on account of the violence of the southwesters. Coasting along by Pamphylia and Lycia, they next touched at Myra, a city in the latter province, where they were obliged to take passage in another vessel, bound from Alexandria to Italy. In this vessel, they also kept close to the coast, their course being still retarded by head winds, until they reached Cnidus, the farthest southeastern point of Asia Minor, and thence stretched across the Carpathian sea, to Crete, approaching it first at Cape Salmone, the most eastern point at the island, and then passing on to a place called “the Fair Haven,” near Lasea, probably one of the hundred cities of Crete, but mentioned in no other ancient writer. At this place, Paul, whose experience in former voyages was already considerable, having been twice ship-wrecked, had sagacity enough to see that any further navigation that season would be dangerous; for it was now the beginning of October, and the most dreadful tempests might be reasonably expected on the wintry sea, before they could reach the Italian coast. He warned the centurion accordingly, of the peril to which all their lives were exposed; but the owner and commander of the vessel, anxious to find a better place for wintering than this, persuaded Julius to risk the passage to the south side of the island, when they might find, in the port of Phoenix, a more convenient winter harbor. So, after the south wind had nearly died away, they attempted to take advantage of this apparent lull, and work their way, close to the shore along the south side of Crete; but presently they were caught by a tremendous Levanter, which carried them with great velocity away to the west, to the island of Clauda, which lies south of the west end of Crete. Here the danger of the ship’s breaking in pieces was so great, that having with much ado overhauled their boat, they undergirded the ship with cables, to keep it together,――a measure not unknown in modern navigation. Finding that they were in much danger of grounding among the quicksands on the coast of the island, they were glad to stand out to sea; and taking in all sail, scudded under bare poles for fourteen days, during a great part of which time, they saw neither sun, moon nor stars, the whole sky being constantly overcast with clouds, so that they knew nothing of their position. The wind of course carried them directly west, over what was then called the sea of Adria,――not what is now called the Adriatic gulf, but that part of the Mediterranean, which lies between Greece, Italy and Africa. In their desperation, the passengers threw over their own baggage, to lighten the ship; and they began to lose all hope of being saved from shipwreck. Paul, however, encouraged them by the narration of a dream, in which God had revealed to him that every one of them should escape; and they still kept their hopes alive to the fourteenth night, when the sailors, thinking that the long western course must have brought them near Sicily, or the main-land of Italy, which lay not far out of this direction, began to heave the lead, that they might avoid the shore; and at the first sounding, found but twenty fathoms, and at the next fifteen. Of course, the peril of grounding was imminent, and they therefore cast anchor, and waited for day. Knowing that they were now near some shore, the sailors determined to provide for their own safety, and accordingly undertook to let down the boat, to make their escape, and leave the passengers to provide for themselves. But Paul represented to the centurion the certainty of their destruction, if the ship should be left without any seamen to manage it; and the soldiers of the prisoners’ guard, determined not to be thus deserted, though they should all sink together, cut off the ropes by which the boat was held, and let it fell off. All being thus inevitably committed to one doom, Paul exhorted them to take food, and thus strengthen themselves for the effort to reach the shore. They did so accordingly, and then, as a last resort, flung out the wheat with which the ship was loaded, and at day-break, when land appeared, seeing a small creek, they made an effort to run the ship into it, weighing anchor and hoisting the mainsail; but knowing nothing of the ground, soon struck, and the overstrained ship was immediately broken by the waves, the bows being fast in the sandbank, while the stern was heaved by every surge. The soldiers, thinking first of their weighty charge, for whose escape they were to answer with their lives, advised to kill them all, lest they should swim ashore. But the more humane centurion forbade it, and gave directions that every man should provide for his own safety. They did so; and those that could not swim, clinging to the fragments of the wreck, the whole two hundred and seventy-six who were in the vessel, got safe to land.

“‘When sailing was now dangerous, because the fast was already past.’ verse 9. There is no question but that this is the great fast of expiation, Leviticus xvi. 29, the description of which we have in Isaiah lviii. under the name of a sabbath, verse 13. The precise time of this sabbatic fast is on the tenth day of the seventh month, Tizri, which falls on the same time very nearly with our September, the first day of Tizri on the seventh of that, and so the 10th of Tizri on the 16th of September, that is, thirteen days before our Michaelmas. This being premised, the apostle’s reasoning becomes clear; for it is precisely the same as though he should have said, because it was past the twentieth (the day Scaliger sets for the solemnization of the fast,) of September; it being observed by all sailors, that for some weeks before and after Michaelmas, there are on the sea sudden and frequent storms, (probably the equinoctial,) which have in modern times received the name of Michaelmas flaws, and must of course make sailing dangerous. Hesiod himself tells us, that at the going down of Pleiades, which was at the end of autumn, navigation was hazardous.” (Williams.)

“Undergirding the ship.’ verse 17. We learn from various passages in the Greek and Roman writers, that the ancients had recourse to this expedient, in order to save the ship from imminent danger; and this method has been used in modern times. The process of undergirding a ship is thus performed:――a stout cable is slipped under the vessel at the prow, which can be conducted to any part of the ship’s keel, and then fasten the two ends on the deck, to keep the planks from starting. An instance of this kind is mentioned in ‘Lord Anson’s Voyage round the World.’ Speaking of a Spanish man-of-war in a storm, the writer says, ‘They were obliged to throw overboard all their upper-deck guns, and take six turns of the cable round the ship, to prevent her opening.’ (p. 24, 4to. edition.) Bp. Pearce and Dr. Clarke, on Acts xxvii. 17. Two instances of undergirding the ship are noticed in the ‘Chevalier de Johnstone’s Memoirs of the Rebellion in 1745‒6, London, 1822, 8vo. pp. 421, 454.” (Williams’s notes on Pearson, p. 85.)

They now found that they had struck on the island of Melita, (now Malta,) which lies just south of Sicily, in the direct track in which the eastern gale must have blown them. The uncivilized inhabitants of this desolate spot received the shipwrecked voyagers with the kindest attention, and very considerately kindled a fire, to warm and dry them, after their long soaking in cold water. The dripping apostle took hold with the rest to make the fire blaze up, and gathered a bundle of dry sticks, for the purpose; but with them he unconsciously gathered a viper, which was sheltering itself among them from the cold, and roused by the heat of the fire, now crept out upon his hand. He, of course, as any other man would, gave a jerk, and shook it off, as soon as he saw it,――a very natural occurrence; but the superstitious barbarians thought this a perfect miracle, as they had before foolishly considered it a token of divine wrath; and having looked on him as an object of horror, and a wicked criminal, they now, with equal sense, adored him as a God.

Another incident of more truly miraculous character, occurred to Paul soon after, in the part of the island on which they were wrecked, which had the effect of gaining him a much more solid fame. The father of Publius, the Roman officer who governed the island, as the deputy of the praetor of Sicily, was at that time very sick of the dysentery; and Paul, going to see him, laid his hands on him and prayed,――thus effecting a complete recovery. This being known, other diseased persons were presented as the subjects of Paul’s miraculous powers, and the same cures following his words, he with his associates soon became the objects of a far more rational reverence than had been excited by the deliverance from the viper. The reverence too, was extended beyond mere empty honor. The shipwrecked apostolic company having lost all their baggage and provisions, were abundantly provided with everything that they needed, by the grateful contributions of the islanders;――and when, after a stay of three months, Paul and his companions departed, they were loaded with things necessary for the voyage.

PUTEOLI. Acts xxviii. 13, 14.

Sailing, on the return of spring, in another Alexandrine vessel, of the same very common name borne by that in which they were shipwrecked, they came next to Syracuse, on the east side of the island of Sicily, and after a stay of three days, turned through the Sicilian strait to Rhegium, on the main-land directly opposite the island. There Paul first saw the soil of Italy, but did not leave the vessel for his land journey, till they came, with a fresh south wind, to Puteoli, a port in the bay of Naples. Here they found Christians, who invited them to rest among them for a week; after which they journeyed along the coast, on the noble road of Pozzuoli and Baiae, for about a hundred miles, to Appius’s Forum, a village about eighteen miles from Rome. At this place, they were met by a number of brethren from the church of Rome; and having journeyed along the Appian way, to the Three Taverns,――a little stopping place a few miles from the city,――they were received by still another deputation of Roman Christians, come out to greet the great apostle, whose name had long been known among them, and whose counsels and revelations they had already enjoyed by his writings. This noble testimony of the esteem in which they held him, was a most joyful assurance to Paul, that, even on this foreign shore, a stranger and a prisoner, he had many near and dear friends; and his noble spirit, before probably depressed and melancholy, in the dark prospect of his approach to the awful seat of that remorseless imperial power that was to decide his doom, now rose to feelings of exultation and gratitude. Entering the vast imperial city, the prisoners were remanded by the centurion to the custody of Burrhus, the noble and influential praefect of the praetorian guard, who was, ex-officio, the keeper of all prisoners of state, brought from the provinces to Rome. Burrhus however, was as kind and accommodating to Paul as Julius had been, and allowed him to live by himself in a private house, with only a soldier as an attendant guard.

After three days, Paul invited to his lodgings the chief men of the Jewish faith, in Rome, and made known to them the circumstances under which he had been sent thither, and his present relations to the heads of their religion in Jerusalem. In reply, they merely stated that they had received no formal communications respecting him, from Jerusalem, nor had those of their brethren who had arrived from Judea spoken ill of him. They expressed also a great desire to hear from him the peculiar doctrine, for entertaining which he had been thus denounced, of which they professed to know nothing, but that there was a universal prejudice against it. A day was accordingly appointed for a full conference on these very important subjects,――and at the set time, Paul, with no small willingness, discoursed at great length on his views of the accomplishment of all the ancient prophecies respecting the Messiah, in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. His hearers were very much divided in opinion about these points, after his discourse was over,――some believing and some disbelieving. Leaving them to meditate on what he had said, Paul dismissed them with a warning quotation from Isaiah, against their prejudices, and sternly reminded them, that though they did reject the truth, the waiting Gentiles were prepared to embrace it, and should receive the word of God immediately. They then left him, and made his words a subject of much discussion among themselves; but the results are unrecorded. Paul having hired a house in Rome, made that city the scene of his active labors for two whole years, receiving all that called to inquire into religious truth, and proclaiming the doctrines of Christianity with the most unhesitating boldness and freedom; and no man in Rome could molest him in making known his belief to as many as chose to hear him; for it was not till many years after, that the Christians were denounced and persecuted by Nero.

HIS EPISTLES WRITTEN FROM ROME.

With these facts the noble narrative of Luke ceases entirely, and henceforth no means are left of ascertaining the events of Paul’s life, except in those incidental allusions which his subsequent writings make to his circumstances. Those epistles which are certainly known and universally agreed to have been written from Rome during this imprisonment, are those to the Philippians, the Ephesians, the Colossians, and to Philemon. There are passages in all these which imply that he was then near the close of his imprisonment, for he speaks with great confidence of being able to visit them shortly, and very particularly requests preparation to be made for his accommodation on his arrival.

There is good reason to think that the epistles to the Ephesians, to the Colossians, and to Philemon, were written about the same time and were sent together. This appears from the fact, that Tychicus is spoken of in both the two former, as sent by the apostle, to make known to them all his circumstances more fully, and is also implied as the bearer of both, while Onesimus, the bearer of the latter, is also mentioned in the epistle to the Colossians as accompanying Tychicus.

THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.

The most important question which has been raised concerning this epistle, regards the point, whether it was truly directed and sent by Paul, to the church in Ephesus, as the common reading distinctly specifies. Many eminent modern critics have maintained that it was originally sent to the church in Laodicea, and that the word Ephesus, in the direction and in the first verse, is a change made in later times, by those who felt interested to claim for this city the honor of an apostolic epistle. Others incline to the opinion, that it was directed to no particular church, but was sent as a circular to several churches in Asia Minor, among which were those of Ephesus and Laodicea, and that several copies were sent at the same time, each copy being differently directed. They suppose that when the epistles of Paul were first collected, that copy which was sent to Ephesus was the one adopted for this, and that the original manuscript being soon lost, all written trace of its original general direction disappeared also.

The prominent reason for this remarkable supposition, unsupported as it is by the authority of any ancient manuscript, is that Paul writes apparently with no local reference whatever to the circumstances of the Ephesians, among whom he had lived for three years, although his other epistles to places which he had visited are so full of personal and local matters; and that he speaks on the contrary as though he knew little of them except by hearsay. A reference to the particular details of the reasoning by which this opinion is supported, would altogether transcend the proper limits of this work; since even a summary of them fills a great many pages of those critical and exegetical works, to which these discussions properly belong; and all which can be stated here is the general result, that a great weight of authority favors the view that this was probably a circular epistle; but the whole argument in favor of either notion, rests on so slight a foundation, that it is not worth while to disturb the common impression for it.

The epistle certainly does not seem to dwell on any local difficulties, but enlarges eloquently upon general topics, showing the holy watchfulness of the apostle over the faith of his readers. He appears, nevertheless, to emphasize with remarkable force, the doctrines that Christ alone was the source and means of salvation, “the chief corner-stone,” and that in him all are united, both Jews and Gentiles, in one holy temple. There is something in many such passages, with which the epistle abounds, that seems peculiarly well fitted to the circumstances of mixed communities, made up of Jews and Gentiles, and as if the apostle wished to prevent the former from creating any distinctions in the church, in their own favor. Many passages in this epistle also, are very pointedly opposed to those heresies, which about that period were beginning to rise up in those regions, and were afterwards famous under the name of the Gnosis,――the first distinct sect that is known to have perverted the purity of Christian truth. Paul here aims with remarkable energy, to prove that salvation was to be attributed to Christ alone, and not to the intervention of any other superior beings, by whatever names they are called, whether principalities, or powers, or might or dominion, both in this world and the world to come,――in heavenly places as well as earthly. The apostle also is very full in the moral and practical part,――urging with great particularity the observance of those virtues which are the essentials of the Christian character, and specifying to each particular age, sex, rank and condition, its own peculiar duties.

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS.

In the first verse of the second chapter, the apostle expresses a peculiar anxiety for the spiritual safety of those Christians who have not seen his face in the flesh, among whom he appears to number the Colossians and Laodiceans. It seems quite evident that he had never been at Colosse; for though he traversed Phrygia, on two several occasions before this time, he is not said to have visited either Colosse or Laodicea;――but his route is so described, as to make it almost impossible for him to have taken either city directly in his way. This circumstance may account for the fact of his distinguishing in this manner a single city like Colosse, of no great size or importance; because as it appears from the general tenor of the epistle, certain peculiar errors had arisen among them, which were probably more dangerously rife, from the circumstance of their never having been blessed by the personal presence and labors of an apostle. The errors which he particularly attacks, seem to be those of the Judaizers, who were constantly insisting on the necessity of Mosaical observances, such as circumcision, sabbaths, abstinence from unclean meats, and other things of the same sort. He cautions them particularly against certain false doctrines, also referred to under the names of philosophy, vain deceit, the traditions of men, &c. which are commonly thought to refer to the errors of the Essenes, a Jewish sect characterised by Josephus in terms somewhat similar, and who are supposed to have introduced their ascetic and mystical doctrines into the Christian church, and to have formed one of the sources of the great system of Gnosticism, as afterwards perfected. The moral part of this epistle bears a very striking similarity, even in words, to the conclusion of that to the Ephesians,――a resemblance probably attributable in part, to the circumstance, that they were written about the same time. The circumstance that he has mentioned to the Colossians an epistle to be sent for by them from Laodicea, has given rise to a forged production, purporting to be this very epistle from Paul to the Laodiceans; but it is manifestly a mere brief rhapsody, collected from Paul’s other epistles, and has never for a moment imposed upon the critical. It has been supposed that the true epistle meant by Paul, is another, now lost, written by Paul to Laodicea; and the supposition is not unreasonable.

THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON.

This was merely a private letter from Paul to a person otherwise not known, but appearing, from the terms in which he is herein mentioned, to have been at some time or other associated with Paul in the gospel work; since he styles him “fellow-laborer.” He appears to have been a man of some property and generosity, because he had a house spacious enough to hold a worshiping assembly, who were freely accommodated by him; and he is likewise mentioned as hospitably entertaining traveling Christians. The possession of some wealth is also implied in the circumstance which is the occasion of this epistle. Like almost all Christians of that age who were able to do so, he owned at least one slave, by name Onesimus, who had run away from him to Rome, and there falling under the notice of Paul, was made the subject of his personal attentions, and was at last converted by him to the Christian faith. Paul now sends him back to his old master, with this letter, in which he narrates the circumstances connected with the flight and conversion of Onesimus, and then with great earnestness, yet with mildness, entreats Philemon to receive him now, not as a slave, but as a brother,――to forgive him his offenses, and restore him to favor. Paul himself offers to become personally responsible for all pecuniary loss experienced by Philemon in consequence of the absence of his servant in Rome, where he had been ministering to Paul; and the apostle gives ♦his own note of hand for any reasonable amount which Philemon may choose to claim. Throughout the whole, he speaks in great confidence of the ready compliance of Philemon with these requests, and evidently considers him a most intimate friend, loving and beloved. He also speaks with great confidence of his own speedy release from his bonds, and begs Philemon to prepare him a lodging; for he trusts that through his prayers, he shall shortly be given to him.

♦ duplicate word “his” removed

THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS.

That this was written after the others that were sent from Rome by Paul during this imprisonment, is proved by several circumstances. Luke was certainly with him when he wrote to the Colossians and to Philemon; but no mention whatever is made of him in the epistle to the Philippians, who would, nevertheless, feel as much interest in him as in Timothy or any companion of Paul; because he had resided in Philippi many years, and must have had many acquaintances there, who would expect some account of him, and some salutation from him. Paul, moreover, says, that he trusts to send Timothy shortly to them, because he has no man with him who is like minded, or who will care for their state;――a remark which, if Luke had been with him, he could not have made with any justice to that faithful and diligent associate, who was himself a personal acquaintance of the Philippians. There were some circumstances connected with the situation of Paul, as referred to in this epistle, which seem to imply a different date from those epistles just mentioned. His condition seems improved in many respects, although before not uncomfortable, and his expectations of release still more confident, though before so strong. He speaks also of a new and remarkable field in which his preaching had been successful, and that is, the palace of the imperial Caesar himself, among whose household attendants were many now numbered among the saints who sent salutations to Philippi. The terms in which he mentions his approaching release, are still more remarkable than those in the former epistles. He says――“Having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all,” &c. “that your rejoicing may be more abundant, by my coming to you again.” “I trust in the Lord that I shall myself also come shortly.”

The immediate occasion of this epistle was the return of Epaphroditus, the apostle or messenger of the Philippian church, by whom Paul now wrote this, as a grateful acknowledgment of their generosity in contributing to his support that money, of which Epaphroditus was the bearer. In the epistle, he also took occasion, after giving them an account of his life in Rome, to warn them against the errors of the Judaizers, whose doctrines were the occasion of so much difficulty in the Christian churches.

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

The release which Paul so confidently anticipated, probably happened shortly after the writing of the last epistle, and at this time, just before leaving Italy for another field of labor, it is commonly believed that he wrote his epistle to the Hebrews. Of the particular place, the time, the immediate object, and the persons who were the receivers of this epistle, nothing is with any certainty known; and the whole range of statements in standard works of exegetical and critical theology, on this writing, is the most appalling mass of vague speculations, unfounded conclusions and contradictory assertions, that presents itself to the historian of the apostolic works in any direction; and in respect to all these points, referring the critical to any or all of the thousand and one views, given in the learned and elaborate introductions and commentaries, which alone can with any justice so much as open the subject, the author excuses himself entirely from any discussion of this endless question, in the words used on one of these points, by one of the most learned, acute, ingenious and cautious critics of modern times. “Any thing further on this subject I am unable to determine, and candidly confess my ignorance as to the place where the epistle to the Hebrews was written. Nor do I envy any man who pretends to know more on this subject, unless he has discovered sources of intelligence, which have hitherto remained unknown. It is better to leave a question in a state of uncertainty, than, without foundation, to adopt an opinion which may lead to material errors.”

VOYAGE TO THE EAST.

On leaving Italy after this release, he seems to have directed his course eastward; but nothing whatever is known of his motions, except that from the epistle of Titus it is learned that he journeyed to Miletus, to Ephesus, to Troas, to Macedonia, to Crete and to Epirus,――and last of all, probably, to Rome. His first movements on his release were, doubtless, in conformity with his previous designs, as expressed in his epistles. He probably went first to Asia, visiting Ephesus, Miletus, Colosse, &c. On this voyage he might have left Titus in Crete, (as specified in his letter to that minister,) and on embarking for Macedonia, left Timothy at Ephesus, (as mentioned in the first epistle to him.) After visiting Philippi and other places in Macedonia, where he wrote to Timothy, he seems to have crossed over the country to the shore of the Ionian sea, to Nicopolis, whence he wrote to Titus, to come from Crete, and join him there. These two epistles, being of a merely personal character, containing instructions for the exercise of the apostolic functions of ordination, &c. in the absence of Paul, can not need any particular historical notice, being so simple in their object that they sufficiently explain themselves. Respecting that to Timothy, however, it may be specified that some of its peculiar expressions seem to be aimed at the rising heresy of the Jewish and Oriental mystics, who were then infecting the eastern churches with the first beginnings of that heresy which, under the name of the Gnosis, or science, (falsely so called,) soon after corrupted with its dogmas, a vast number in Asia Minor, Greece and Syria. The style and tenor of both of the epistles are so different from all Paul’s other writings, as to make it very evident that they were written at a different time, and under very different circumstances from the rest.

RETURN TO ROME.

The only real evidence of this movement of Paul is found in the tenor of certain passages in the second epistle to Timothy, which seem to show that it was written during the author’s imprisonment in Rome, but which cannot be connected with his former confinement there. In the former epistles written from Rome, Timothy was with Paul;――but this of course implies that he was absent. In them, Demas is declared to be with Paul;――in this he is mentioned as having forsaken him, and gone to Thessalonica. In the first epistle to Timothy, Mark was also with Paul, and joined in saluting the Colossians; in this, Timothy is instructed to bring him to Paul, because he is profitable to him in the ministry. In the fourth chapter, Paul says that “Erastus abode at Corinth;”――an expression which implies that Erastus abode in Corinth when Paul left it. But Paul took no journey from Corinth before his first imprisonment; for when he left that place for the last time before his journey to Jerusalem,――when he was seized and sent to Rome,――he was accompanied by Timothy; and there could therefore be no need of informing him of that fact. In the same passage of this epistle he also says, that he had left Trophimus sick at Miletus; but when Paul passed through Miletus, on that journey to Jerusalem, Trophimus certainly was not left behind at Miletus, but accompanied him to Jerusalem; for he was seen there with him by the Asian Jews. These two passages therefore, refer to a journey taken subsequent to Paul’s first imprisonment,――and the epistle which refers to them, and purports in other passages to have been written during an imprisonment in Rome, shows that he returned thither after his first imprisonment.

The most striking passage in this epistle also refers with great distinctness to his expectation of being very speedily removed from apostolic labors to an eternal apostolic reward. “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith: henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of life, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.” All these expressions are utterly at variance with those hopes of release and of the speedy renewal of his labors in an eastern field; and show very plainly that all the tasks to which he once looked forward were now completed, and that he could hope for no deliverance, but that which should call him from chains and toils to an eternal crown.

HIS DEATH.

The circumstance of his being again in Rome a prisoner, after having been once set free by the mandate of the emperor himself, after a full hearing, must at once require a reference to a state of things, in which Paul’s religious profession and evangelizing labors, before esteemed so blameless that no man in Rome forbade him to preach the gospel there,――had now, by a mighty revolution in opinions, become a crime, since for these, he was now held in bondage, without the possibility of escape from the threatened death. Such a change actually did occur in the latter part of the reign of Nero, when, as already related in the history of Peter’s first epistle, the whole power of the imperial government was turned against the Christians, as a sect, and they were convicted on that accusation alone, as deserving of death. The date of this revolution in the condition of the Christians, is fixed by Roman history in the sixty-fourth year of Christ; and the time when Paul was cast into chains the second time, must therefore be referred to this year. His actual death evidently did not take place at once, but was deferred long enough to allow of his writing to Timothy, and for him to make some arrangements therein, for a short continuance of his labors. The date which is commonly fixed as the time of his execution, is in the year of Christ 65; but in truth, nothing whatever is known about it, nor can even a probability be confidently affirmed on the subject. Being a Roman citizen, he could not die by a mode so infamous as that of the cross, but was beheaded, as a more honorable exit; and with this view, the testimony of most of the early Fathers, who particularize his death, distinctly accords.

Of the various fictions which the monkish story-tellers have invented to gratify the curiosity which Christian readers feel about other particulars of the apostle’s character, the following is an amusing specimen. “Paul, if we may believe Nicephorus, was of a low and small stature, somewhat stooping; his complexion fair; his countenance grave; his head small; his eyes sparkling; his nose high and bending; and his hair thick and dark, but mixed with gray. His constitution was weak, and often subject to distempers; but his mind was strong, and endued with a solid judgment, quick invention, and prompt memory, which were all improved by art, and the advantages of a liberal education. Besides the epistles which are owned to be genuine, several other writings are falsely ascribed to him: as an epistle to the Laodiceans, a third to the Thessalonians, a third to the Corinthians, a second to the Ephesians, his letter to Seneca, his Acts, his Revelation, his voyage to Thecla, and his Sermons.” (Cave’s Lives of the Apostles.)

But the honors and saintship of Paul are recorded, not in the vague and misty traces of bloody martyr-death, but in the far more glorious achievements of a heroic life. In these, are contained the essence of his greatness; to these, all the Gentile world owes its salvation; and on these, the modern historian, following the model of the sacred writers, dwells with far more minuteness and particularity, than on a dull mass of uncertain tradition.

JOSEPH BARNABAS.

Of this apostle, so few circumstances are known, that are not inseparably connected with the life of Paul, in which they have been already recorded, that only a very brief space can be occupied with the events of his distinct life. The first passage in which he is mentioned, is that in the fourth chapter of Acts, where he is specified as having distinguished himself among those who sold their lands, for the sake of appropriating the avails to the support of the Christian community. Introduced to the notice of the reader under these most honorable circumstances, he is there described as of the tribe of Levi, and yet a resident in the island of Cyprus, where he seems to have held the land which he sacrificed to the purposes of religious charity. This island was for a long time, before and after that period, inhabited by great numbers of wealthy Jews, and there was hardly any part of the world, where they were so powerful and so favored, as in Cyprus; so that even the sacred order of the Levites might well find inducements to leave that consecrated soil to which they were more especially attached by the peculiar ordinances of the Mosaic institutions, and seek on this beautiful and fertile island, a new home, and a new seat for the faith of their fathers. The occasion on which Joseph (for that was his original name) left Cyprus to visit Jerusalem, is not known; nor can it even be determined whether he was ever himself a personal hearer of Jesus. He may very possibly have been one of the foreign Jews present at the Pentecost, and may there have been first converted to the Christian faith. On his distinguishing himself among his new brethren, both by good words and generous deeds, he was honored by the apostles with the name of Barnabas, which is interpreted in Greek by words that may mean either “son of consolation,” or “son of exhortation.” The former sense, of course, would aptly refer to his generosity in comforting the poor apostolic community, by his pecuniary contributions, as just before mentioned; and this has induced many to prefer that meaning; but the majority of critical translators and commentators have been led, on a careful investigation both of the original Hebrew word and of the Greek translation of it, to prefer the meaning of “son of exhortation” or “instruction,” a meaning which certainly well accords with the subsequent distinction attained by him in his apostolic labors. Both senses may, however, have been referred to, with an intentional equivoque.

“Acts, chapter iv. verse 37. ὑπάρχοντος αὐτῳ ἀγροῦ He could not have sold that which was his paternal inheritance as a Levite; but this might perhaps be some legacy, or purchase of land in Judea, to which he might have a title till the next jubilee, or perhaps some land in Cyprus. (Doddridge.) That it was lawful for the Levites to buy land, we learn from the example of Jeremiah himself, who was of the tribe of Levi. See Jeremiah xxxii. 17. It is observed by Bp. Pearce, that those commentators who contend that this land must have belonged to his wife, because, according to the law mentioned in Numbers xviii. 20, 23 and 24, a Levite could have no inheritance in Israel, seem to have mistaken the sense of that law, ‘which,’ says he, ‘means only that the Levites, as a tribe, were not to have a share in the division of Canaan among the other tribes. This did not hinder any Levite from possessing lands in Judea, either by purchase or by gift, as well as in right of his wife. Josephus was a Levite, and a priest too; and yet in his Life, chapter 76, he speaks of lands which he had lying about Jerusalem, and in exchange of which, Vespasian gave him others, for his greater benefit and advantage. After all, I see no reason why we may not suppose that this land, which Barnabas had and sold, was not land in Judea; and if so, the words of the law, “no inheritance in Israel,” did not, however understood, affect their case. His land might have been in his own country, Cyprus, an island of no great distance from Judea; and he might have sold it at Jerusalem to some purchaser there; perhaps to one of his own countrymen.’” (Bloomfield’s Annotations, Vol. IV. pp. 147, 148.)

In all the other passages of the New Testament in which he is mentioned, he is associated with Paul, and every recorded act of his life has been already given in the life of his great associate. His first acquaintance with him on his return to Jerusalem after his conversion,――his mission to Antioch and labors there in conjunction with Paul, when he had brought him from Tarsus,――their visit to Jerusalem,――their return to Antioch,――their first great mission through Asia Minor――their visit to Jerusalem at the council, and their joint report,――their second return to Antioch,――their proposed association in a new mission,――their quarrel and separation,――have all been fully detailed; nor is there any authentic source from which any facts can be derived, as to the subsequent incidents of his life. All that is related of him in the Acts, is, that after his separation from Paul, he sailed to Cyprus; nor is any mention made, in any of the epistles, of his subsequent life. The time and place of his death are also unknown.

JOHN MARK.

Of the family and birth of this eminent apostolic associate, it is recorded in the New Testament, that his mother was named Mary, and had a house in Jerusalem, which was a regular place of religious assembly, for the Christians in that city; for Peter on his deliverance from prison, went directly thither, as though sure of finding there some of the brethren; and he actually did find a number of them assembled for prayer. Of the other connections of Mark, the interesting fact is recorded, that Mary, his mother, was the sister of Barnabas; and he was therefore by the maternal line, at least, of Levite descent. From the mode in which Mary is mentioned, it would seem that her husband was dead at that time; but nothing else can be inferred about the father of Mark. The first event in which he is distinctly mentioned as concerned, is the return of Paul and Barnabas from Jerusalem to Antioch, after Peter’s escape. These two apostles, on this occasion, are said to have “taken with them, John whose surname was Mark;” and he is afterwards mentioned under either of these names, or both together. The former was his original appellation; but being exceedingly common among the Jews, and being, moreover, borne by one of the apostles, it required another distinctive word to be joined with it. It is remarkable that a Roman, heathen appellation, was chosen for this purpose;――Marcus, which is the true form in the original, being a name of purely Latin origin, and one of the commonest praenomens among the Romans. It might have been the name of some person connected with the Roman government in Jerusalem, who had distinguished himself as a friend or patron of the family: but the conjecture is hardly worth offering.

After returning with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch, he was next called to accompany them as an assistant in their apostolic voyage through Cyprus and Asia Minor; but on their coming to Perga, in Pamphylia, he suddenly left them and returned to Jerusalem;――a change of purpose which was considered, by Paul at least, as resulting from a want of resolution, steadiness, or courage, and was the occasion of a very serious difficulty; for Mark having returned to Antioch afterwards, was taken by Barnabas, as a proper associate on the proposed mission over the former fields of labor; but Paul utterly rejected him, because he had already, on the same route, once deserted them, when they needed his services, and he therefore refused to go in his company again. This difference was the occasion of that unhappy contention, the incidents of which have already been particularly detailed in the Life of Paul. Mark however, being resolutely supported by his uncle, accompanied him to Cyprus; but of his next movement, as little is known as in respect to Barnabas. The next occasion on which his name is mentioned, is by Paul, in his epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, as being then with him in Rome; from which it appears, the great apostle had now for a long time been reconciled to him, and esteemed him as a valuable associate in the ministry. He is not mentioned in the epistle to the Philippians, which therefore makes it probable that he had then gone to the east. In the second epistle to Timothy, Paul requests that Mark may be sent to him, because he is profitable to him for the ministry; which is a most abundant testimony to his merits, and to the re-establishment of Paul’s confidence in his zeal, resolution, and ability. Whether he was actually sent to Rome as requested, does not appear;――but he is afterwards distinctly mentioned by Peter, in that epistle which he wrote from Babylon, as being then with him. The title of “son,” which Peter gives him, seems to imply a very near and familiar intimacy between them; and is probably connected with the circumstance of his being made the subject of the chief apostle’s particular religious instructions in his youth, in consequence of the frequent meetings of the brethren at the house of his mother, Mary. This passage is sufficient evidence that after Mark had finally left Rome, he journeyed eastward and joined Peter, his venerable first instructor, who, as has already been abundantly shown in his Life, was at this time in Babylon, whence, in the year 65, he wrote his first epistle.

“It is thought by Benson that Mark departed because his presence was required by the apostles for converting the Jews of Palestine. But why then should Paul have expressed indignation at his departure? The same objection will apply to the conjecture of others, that he departed on account of ill-health. The most probable opinion is that of Grotius, Wetstein, Bengel, Heumann, and others, that Mark was, at that time, somewhat averse to labors and dangers; this, indeed, is clear from the words, καὶ μὴ συνελθόντα αὐτοῖς εἰς τό ἔργον. Thus ἀφίστημι is used of defection in Luke viii. 13. 1 Timothy iv. 1. It should seem that Mark had now repented of his inconstancy; (and, as Bengel thinks, new ardor had been infused into him by the decree of the Synod at Jerusalem, and the free admission of the Gentiles;) and hence his kind-hearted and obliging relation Barnabas wished to take him as a companion of their present journey. But Paul, who had ‘no respect of persons,’ Galatians ii. 11, and thought that disposition rather than relationship should be consulted, distrusted the constancy of Mark, and was therefore unwilling to take him. This severity of Paul, however, rendered much service both to Mark and to the cause of Christianity. For Mark profited by the well-meant admonition, and was, for the future, more zealous and courageous; and the gospel, being preached in different places at the same time, was the more widely propagated. Nor were the bands of amity between Paul and Barnabas permanently separated by this disagreement. See 1 Corinthians ix. 6. Nay, Paul afterwards received Mark into his friendship. See Colossians iv. 10. 2 Timothy iv. 11. Philemon 23.” Kuinoel. (Bloomfield’s Annotations, Vol. IV. p. 504, 505.)

HIS GOSPEL.

The circumstance which makes this apostle more especially eminent, and makes him an object of interest to the Christian reader, is, that he is the author of an important portion of the historical sacred canon. Respecting the gospel of Mark, the testimony of some very early and valuable accounts given by the Fathers, is, that he wrote under the general direction and superintendence of his spiritual father, Peter; and from this early and uniform tradition, he accordingly bears the name of “Peter’s interpreter.” The very common story is also, that it was written in Rome, but this is not asserted on any early or trustworthy authority, and must be condemned, along with all those statements which pretend that the chief apostle ever was in Italy. Others affirm also, that it was published by him in Alexandria; but this story comes on too late authority to be highly esteemed. Taking as true, the very reasonable statement of the early Fathers, that when he wrote, he had the advantage of the personal assistance or superintendence of Peter, it is very fair to conclude, that Babylon was the place in which it was written, and that its date was about the same with that of the epistle of Peter, in which Mark is mentioned as being with him. Peter was then old; and Mark himself, doubtless too young to have been an intelligent hearer of Jesus, would feel the great importance of having a correct and well-authorized record prepared, to which the second generation of Christians might look for the sure testimonies of those divine words, whose spoken accounts were then floating in the parting breath of the few and venerable apostles, and in the memories of their favored hearers. As long as the apostles lived and preached, there was little or no need of a written gospel. All believers in Christ had been led to that faith by the living words of his inspired hearers and personal disciples. But when these were gone, other means would be wanted for the perpetuation of the authenticated truth; and to afford these means to the greatest possible number, and to those most especially in want of such a record, from the fact that they had never seen nor heard either Jesus or his personal disciples,――Mark chose the Greek as the proper language in which to make this communication to the world.

His gospel is so much like that of Matthew, containing hardly a single passage which is not given by that writer, that it has been very confidently believed by many theologians who suppose an early date to Matthew’s gospel, that Mark had that gospel before him when he wrote, and merely epitomized it. The verbal coincidences between the two gospels, in their present state, are so numerous and striking, that it has been considered impossible to account for them on any other supposition than this. But these and other questions have filled volumes, and have exercised the skill of critics for ages; nor can any justice be done them by a hasty abstract. It seems sufficient, however, to answer all queries about these verbal coincidences, without meddling with the question of prior date, by a reference to the fact that, during the whole period, intervening between the death of Christ, and the writing of the gospels, the apostles and first preachers had been proclaiming, week after week, and day after day, an oral or spoken gospel, in which they were constantly repeating before each other, and before different hearers, the narrative of the words and actions of Jesus. These accounts by this constant routine of repetition, would unavoidably assume a regular established form, which would at last be the standard account of the acts and words of the Savior. These, Mark, of course, adopted when he wrote, and the other evangelists doing the same, the coincidences mentioned would naturally result; and as different apostles, though speaking under the influence of inspiration, would yet make numerous slight variations in words, and in the minor circumstances expressed or suppressed, the different writers following one account or the other, would make the trifling variations also noticeable. The only peculiarity that can be noticed in Mark, is, that he very uniformly suppresses all those splendid testimonies to the merits and honors of Peter, with which the others abound,――a circumstance at once easily traceable to the fact that Peter himself was the immediate director of the work, and with that noble modesty, which always distinguished the great apostolic chief, would naturally avoid any allusion to matters which so highly exalted his own merits. Otherwise, the narrative of Mark can be characterized only as a plain statement of the incidents in the public life of Jesus, with very few of his discourses, and none of his words at so great length as in the other gospels; from which it is evident, that an account of his acts rather than his sermons,――of his doings rather than his sayings, is what he designed to give.

“Among all the quotations hitherto made from the writings of the most ancient Fathers, we find no mention made of Mark’s having published his gospel at Alexandria. This report, however, prevailed in the fourth century, as appears from what is related by Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Jerome. It is first mentioned by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, lib. ii. cap. 16. It appears from the word φασιν, that Eusebius mentions this only as a report; and what is immediately added in the same place, that the persons, whose severity of life and manners is described by Philo, were the converts which Mark made at Alexandria, is evidently false. Epiphanius, in his fifty-first Heresy, ch. vi. gives some account of it. According to his statement, Mark wrote his gospel in Rome, while Peter was teaching the Christian religion in that city; and after he had written it, he was sent by Peter into Egypt. A similar account is given by Jerome in his ‘Treatise on Illustrious Men,’ ch. viii. Lastly, the Coptic Christians of the present age consider Mark as the founder and first bishop of their church; and their Patriarch styles himself, ‘Unworthy servant of Jesus Christ, called by the grace of God, and by his gracious will appointed to his service, and to the see of the holy evangelist Mark.’ The Copts pretend likewise, that Mark was murdered by a band of robbers, near the lake Menzale; but if this account be true, he was hardly buried at Alexandria, and his tomb in that city must be one of the forgeries of early superstition.” (Michaelis, Vol. III. pp. 207‒209.)

That it is not wholly new to rank Mark among the apostles, is shown by the usages of the Fathers, who, in the application of terms, are authority, as far as they show the opinions prevalent in their times. Eusebius says, “that in the eighth year of Nero, Anianus, the first bishop of Alexandria after Mark, the apostle and ♦evangelist, took upon him the care of that church.” Πρωτος μετα Μαρκον τον αποστολον και ευαγγελιστην, της εν Αλεξανδρειᾳ παροίκιας, Ανιανος την λειτουργιαν διαδεχεται. Church History, I. 2. cap. 24. (Lardner’s Credibility of Gospel History, Vol. III. p. 176.)

♦ “avangelist” replaced with “evangelist”

Of the later movements of Mark, nothing is known with certainty. Being evidently younger than most of the original apostles, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he long survived them; but his field of labor is unknown. The common tradition among the Fathers, after the third century, is, that he went to Alexandria, and there founding a church, became bishop of it till his death;――but the statement is mixed up with so much that is palpably false, that it is not entitled to any credit.

LUKE.

Very little direct mention is made of this valuable contributor to the sacred canon, in any part of the New Testament; and those notices which seem to refer to him, are so vague, that they have been denied to have any connection with the evangelist. The name which is given in the title of his gospel is, in the original form, Lucas, a name undoubtedly of Latin origin, but shown by its final syllable to be a Hebrew-Greek corruption and abridgment of some pure Roman word; for it was customary for the New Testament writers to make these changes, to accord with their own forms of utterance. Lucas, therefore, is an abridgment of some one of two or three Roman words, either Lucius, Lucilius or Lucanus; and as the writers of that age were accustomed to write either the full or abridged form of any such name, indifferently, it seems allowable to recognize the Lucius mentioned in Acts and in the Epistle to the Romans, as the same person with the evangelist. From the manner in which this Lucius is mentioned in the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, it would seem that he was related to Paul by blood or marriage, since the apostle mentions him along with Jason and Sosipater, as his “kinsman.” In the beginning of the thirteenth chapter of Acts, Lucius is called “the Cyrenian,” whence his country may be inferred to have been the province of northern Africa, called Cyrene, long and early the seat of Grecian refinement, art, eloquence and philosophy, and immortalized by having given name to one of the sects of Grecian philosophers,――the Cyrenaic school, founded by Aristippus. Whether he was a Jew by birth, or a heathen, is not known, and has been much disputed. His birth and education in that seat of Grecian literature, may be reasonably considered as having contributed to that peculiar elegance of his language and style, which distinguishes him as the most correct of all the writers of the New Testament.

His relationship to Paul, (if it may be believed on so slight grounds,) was probably a reason for his accompanying him as he did through so large a portion of his travels and labors. He first speaks of himself as a companion of Paul, at the beginning of his first voyage to Europe, at Troas; and accompanies him to Philippi, where he seems to have parted from him, since, in describing the movements of the apostolic company, he no longer uses the pronoun “we.” He probably staid in or near Philippi several years, for he resumes the word, in describing Paul’s voyage from Philippi to Jerusalem. He was his companion as far as Caesarea, where he probably staid during Paul’s visit to Jerusalem; remained with him perhaps during his two years’ imprisonment in Caesarea, and was certainly his companion on his voyage to Rome. He remained with him there till a short time before his release; and is mentioned no more till Paul, in his last writing, the second epistle to Timothy, says, “Luke alone is with me.” Beyond this, not the slightest trace remains of his history. Nothing additional is known of him, except that he was a physician; for he is mentioned by Paul, in his Epistle to the Colossians, as “Luke, the beloved physician.” The miserable fiction of some of the papistical romances, that Luke was also a painter, and took portraits of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, &c. is almost too shamelessly impudent to be ever mentioned; yet the venerable Cave, the only writer who has heretofore given in full the Lives of the Apostles, refers to it, without daring to deny its truth!

(That Luke was also regarded by the Fathers as an apostle, is shown by the fact that, in the Synopsis ascribed to Athanasius, it is said, ‘that the gospel of Luke was dictated by the apostle Paul, and written and published by the blessed apostle and physician, Luke.’)

HIS WRITINGS.

But a far more valuable testimony of the character of Luke is found in those noble works which bear his name in the inspired canon. His gospel is characterized by remarkable distinctness of expression and clearness of conception, which, with that correctness of language by which it is distinguished above all the other books of the New Testament, conspire to make it the most easy to be understood of all the writings of the New Testament; and it has been the subject of less comment and criticism than any other of the sacred books. From the language which he uses in his preface, about those who had undertaken similar works before him, it would seem that though several unauthorized accounts of the life and discourses of Jesus were published before him, yet neither of the other gospels were known by him to have been written. He promises, by means of a thorough investigation of all facts to the sources, to give a more complete statement than had ever before been given to those for whom he wrote. Of the time when he wrote it, therefore, it seems fair to conclude, that it was before the other two; but a vast number of writers have thought differently, and many other explanations of his words have been offered. Of his immediate sources of information,――the place where he wrote, and the particular person to whom he addresses it, nothing is known with sufficient certainty to be worth recording.

Of the Acts of the Apostles, nothing need be said in respect to the contents and object, so clear and distinct is this beautiful piece of biography, in all particulars. Its date may be fixed with exactness at the end of the second year of Paul’s first imprisonment, which, according to common calculations, is A. D. 63. It may well become the modern apostolic historian, in closing with the mention of this writing his own prolonged yet hurried work, to acknowledge the excellence, the purity, and the richness of the source from which he has thus drawn so large a portion of the materials of the greatest of these Lives. Yet what can he add to the bright testimonies accumulated through long ages, to the honor and praise of this most noble of historic records? The learned of eighteen centuries have spent the best energies of noble minds, and long studious lives, in comment and in illustration of its clear, honest truth, and its graphic beauty; the humble, inquiring Christian reader, in every age too, has found, and in every age will find, in this, the only safe and faithful outline of the great events of the apostolic history. The most perfect and permanent impression, which a long course of laborious investigation and composition has left on the author’s mind, of the task which he now lays down, exhausted yet not disgusted, is, that beyond the apostolic history of Luke, nothing can be known with certainty of the great persons of whose acts he treats, except the disconnected and floating circumstances which may be gleaned by implication from the epistles; and so marked is the transition from the pure honesty of the sacred record, to the grossness of patristic fiction, that the truth is, even to a common eye, abundantly well characterized by its own excellence. On the passages of such a narrative, the lights of ♦criticism, of Biblical learning, and of contemporary history, may often be needed, to make the sometimes unconnected parts appear in their true historic relations. The writer who draws therefrom, too, the facts for a connected biography, may, in the amplifications of a modern style, perhaps more to the surprise than the admiration of his readers, quite protract the bare simplicity of the original record, “in many a winding bout of linked” wordiness, “long drawn out,”――but the modernizing extension and illustration, though it may bring small matters more prominently to the notice and perception of the reader, can never supply the place of the original,――to improve which, comment and illustration are alike vain. When will human learning and labor perfect the exposition and the illustration of the apostolic history? Its comments are written in the eternal hope of uncounted millions;――its illustrations can be fully read only in the destiny of ages. This record was the noble task of “the beloved physician;” in his own melodious language――“To give knowledge to the people, of salvation by remission of sins through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us,――to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,――to guide OUR feet in the way of peace!”

♦ “critiicism” replaced with “criticism”

♦ERRATA.

♦ All errata noted in this list has been corrected in the foregoing text.

- Page 7, line 32, for ‘Griechische’ read ‘Griechisch.’

- Page 9, line 7, for ‘verse 7,’ read ‘verse 2.’

- Page 10, line 22, for ‘15’, read ‘25.’

- Page ♦14, line 38, for ‘Indus,’ read ‘Euphrates.’

♦ “11” replaced with “14”

- Page 18, line 36, for ‘Pertuensis,’ read ‘Portuensis.’

- Page 25, line 36, for ‘dreams,’ read ‘dream.’

- Page 38, line 33, for ‘not,’ read ‘only once.’

- Page 45, line 17, delete ‘the number of’.

- Page 65, line 23, for ‘after,’ read ‘over;’
line 37 for ‘was,’ read ‘were.’

- Page 67, line 39, for ‘avert,’ read ’snatch.’

- Page 78, line 2, for ‘have,’ read ‘has;’
line 26, for ‘accounts,’ read ‘account.’

- Page 107, line 26, before ‘not,’ read ‘he.’

- Page 110, line 22, for ‘an hour,’ read ‘three hours.’

- Page 140, line 28, for ‘proposition,’ read ‘preposition.’

- Page 220, line 44, for ‘Or that,’ read ‘And by.’

- Page 224, line 20, after ‘sake,’ insert ‘of.’

- Page 225, line 25, for ‘of any,’ read ‘by any.’

- Page 242, line 28, for ‘Aegian,’ read ‘Aegean.’

- Page 249, line 34, for ‘as early as A. D. 200,’ read ‘before A. D. 100;’
line 35, after ‘books,’ read ‘supposed to have been written before that translation.’

- Page 262, line 15, for ‘inherits,’ read ‘inherit.’

- Page 288, line 25, for ‘second,’ read ‘third.’

- Page 312, line 27, for ‘or,’ read ‘and.’

- Page 508, transpose ‘Lois,’ in line 31, with ‘Eunice,’ in line 35.

- Page 522, line 24, for ‘Nereid,’ read ‘Naiad.’

- Page 45, line 9, before ‘baptizer,’ insert ‘his.’

- Page 10, line 61, in the second Hebrew word, the final letter should be not ה but ח.

The statement on page 339, respecting the exposition of the Apocalypse by Clarke, appears, on a more careful investigation, to represent his views rather too decidedly as favoring the ancient interpretation. His own notes are such as unquestionably support that interpretation; but he has so far conformed to popular prejudice, as to admit on his pages some very elaborate anti-papal explanations from an anonymous writer, (J. E. C.) which, however, he is very far from adopting as his own. The uniform expression made by his own clear and learned notes, must be decidedly favorable to the ancient interpretation, and the value of his noble work is vastly enhanced by this circumstance.

The view on pages 355 and 361, of the locality of Philip’s and Nathanael’s conversion, is undoubtedly erroneous. I overlooked the form of the expression――“The next day, Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip,” &c. This shows that he was still at Bethabara when he called both Philip and Nathanael.

MATERIALS.

In the narrative of the lives of the twelve, the author has been driven entirely to the labor of new research and composition, because the task of composing complete biographies of these personages had never before been undertaken on so large a scale. Cave’s Lives of the Apostles, the only work that has ever gone over that ground, is much more limited in object and extent than the task here undertaken, and afforded no aid whatever to the author of this work, in those biographies. Both the text and the notes of that part of the work are entirely new; nothing whatever, except a few acknowledged quotations, of those biographies, having ever appeared before on this subject. A list of the works which were resorted to in the prosecution of this new work, would fill many pages, and would answer no useful purpose, after the numerous references made to each source in connection with the passage which was thence derived. It is sufficient in justice to himself to say that all those references were made by the author himself; nor in one instance that can now be recollected, did he quote second-hand without acknowledging the intermediate source. In the second part of the work, the labor was in a field less completely occupied by previous labor. But throughout that part of the work also, the whole text of the narrative is original; and all the fruits of others’ research are, with hardly one exception, credited in the notes, both to the original, and to the medium through which they were derived. In this portion of the work, much labor has been saved, by making use of the very full illustrations given in the works of those who had preceded the author on the life of Paul, whose biography has frequently received the attention and labor of the learned.

The following have been most useful in this part of the work. “Hermanni Witsii Meletemata Leidensia, Part 1. Vita Pauli Apostoli.” 4to. Leidiae, 1703.――“Der Apostel Paulus. Von J. T. Hemsen.” 8vo. Goettingen, 1830.――“Pearson’s Annals of Paul, translated, with notes, by Jackson Muspratt Williams.” 12mo. Cambridge, 1827.――Much valuable matter contained in the two first, however, was excluded by want of room.

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Table of Contents

- Lives of the Apostles of Jesus Christ

- PREFACE.

- THE LIVES OF THE APOSTLES.

- I. THE GALILEAN APOSTLES.

- SIMON CEPHAS, COMMONLY CALLED SIMON PETER.

- I. PETER’S DISCIPLESHIP; OR, PETER THE LEARNER AND FOLLOWER.

- II. PETER’S APOSTLESHIP; OR PETER THE TEACHER AND LEADER.

- ANDREW.

- JAMES BOANERGES; THE SON OF ZEBEDEE.

- JOHN; THE SON OF ZEBEDEE.

- PHILIP.

- NATHANAEL, BAR-THOLOMEW.

- MATTHEW.

- THOMAS, DIDYMUS.

- JAMES, THE LITTLE; THE SON OF ALPHEUS.

- SIMON ZELOTES.

- JUDA.

- JUDAS ISCARIOT.

- MATTHIAS.

- II. THE HELLENIST APOSTLES.

- SAUL, AFTERWARDS NAMED PAUL.

- JOSEPH BARNABAS.

- JOHN MARK.

- LUKE.

- ♦ERRATA.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE