PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XII.  A LESSON OF GUIDANCE
F. B. Meyer

Through regions rich in flowers and natural beauty Paul and Silas traversed Syria and Cilicia, confirming the infant churches, which probably owed their existence to Paul's earliest efforts. So through the Cilician Gates to Tarsus, his native city. But there was no welcome for him there. Probably the old home was either broken up or for ever shut against him; and the two companions in travel threaded the defile in the mountains behind Tarsus, which led them up to the central plain with its volcanic deposits and biting winds. After some days' toilsome journey they came to Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium, so tragically associated with the former journey.

What a welcome Paul would receive! How many inquiries would be made after Barnabas! How much to tell and hear! There was, however, a special burden on the Apostle's heart. On the occasion of his previous visit his attention had been arrested by a mere lad, who had been strongly attracted to him, watching with a lad's enthusiastic devotion his teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, and patience, and perhaps mingling with the little group that stood around him when he sank beneath the stones of those who a few days before had offered him worship. He asked for Timothy, and was glad to learn that he had not been faithless to the teachings and training of the godly women who had watched over his opening character, and instructed him in the Holy Scriptures. It would seem that the whole family was more or less closely associated with the infant church-life; so much so that, though the mother was a Jewess, she had not urged her son's compliance with the initial Jewish rite. It had therefore remained in abeyance, according to the broad and liberal views which Paul inculcated.

All the reports about Timothy were favourable. He was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium. The more Paul knew of him the more he was attracted to him, and finally proposed that he should accompany him on his travels as his own son in the faith. He administered the rite of circumcision, not because he deemed it obligatory, but as a matter of convenience, that there might be no obstacle to the admission of his young assistant to Jewish synagogues.

A simple ordination service was then held, in which Timothy was solemnly set apart for his great work. The elders gathered round and laid their hands on his bowed head, and prayed. In answer to their believing intercession, he received the gift of sacred speech; and Paul, in after years, reminds him to stir up the gift that was in him through the laying on of his own hands and of those of the presbytery.

Thus the Spirit of Jesus led his servant to call new labourers into the harvest field and endow them with special qualifications for their work. It appears, indeed, that Paul had remarkable power in these directions; for, in his Epistle to the Galatians, he expressly refers to his having ministered to them the Holy Spirit by faith; and when he laid his hands on the twelve disciples at Ephesus, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spake with tongues and prophesied. In the old time it seems to have been possible for men of God to receive for others, and transmit to them, by faith, spiritual gifts, adapting them better for their lifework. But this was altogether distinct from any mechanical communication of sacramental grace, and was the peculiar prerogative of those who were themselves richly endued with the Spirit of Jesus.
_____________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XII.  A LESSON OF GUIDANCE
F. B. Meyer

Leaving Lystra, Paul and his companions visited the churches in the highland region of Phrygia and Galatia, everywhere distributing the letter of James. They next essayed to go into the populous and influential cities of Asia Minor, such as Colossae, Laodicaea, and Ephesus. What could they do better than bear the light of the Gospel to those teeming multitudes who sat in darkness and the shadow of death? Yet it was not to be: "They were forbidden of the Holy Spirit to speak the Word in Asia." In after years Paul would do some of the greatest work of his life in that very region; but just now the door was closed against him by the Holy Spirit. The time was not yet ripe for the attack on these apparently impregnable bastions of the kingdom of Satan. Apollos must come there for pioneer work. Paul and Barnabas are needed yet more urgently elsewhere, and must receive further training before undertaking this responsible and arduous task.

The travellers therefore took a northern route, with the intention of entering the important province of Bithynia, lying along the shores of the Black Sea; but when they came to a point in the great Roman road, opposite Mysia, and were attempting to go out of Asia Minor into Bithynia, the spirit of Jesus suffered them not.

Checked when they attempted to go to the West, they were now stopped as they sought to go to the North-East; and there was nothing for it but to keep straight on, until they came out at the terminus of the road, on the sea-coast, at the famous harbour of Troas, the ancient Troy. There they met with Luke, whose presence is thenceforth denoted by the significant personal pronoun we; and thence the man of Macedonia beckoned the little missionary band across the straits to set up the banner of Christ on the hitherto untouched continent of Europe.

What an extremely attractive title that is for the Holy Spirit! He is pre-eminently the Spirit of Jesus. When Jesus was glorified, He was given in Pentecostal fulness, and the chief aim of his mission and ministry is to glorify the Lord Jesus and gather together the members of his Body, fitting them for union with their Head. He is also the Comforter and Guide of the saints until the church is presented faultless to her Lord; as Eliezer conducted Rebekah to his master's son.

It is interesting to study the method of his guidance as it was extended towards these early heralds of the Cross. It consisted largely in prohibitions, when they attempted to take another course than the right. When they would turn to the left, to Asia, He stayed them; and when they sought to turn to the right, to Bithynia, again He stayed them. He shut all the doors along their route, and bolted them; so that they had no alternative but to go straight forward. In the absence of any prohibition, they were left to gather that they were treading the prepared path for which they had been created in Christ Jesus.
_____________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XII.  A LESSON OF GUIDANCE
F. B. Meyer

Whenever you are doubtful as to your course, submit your judgment absolutely to the Spirit of God, and ask Him to shut against you every door but the right one. Say, "Blessed Spirit, I cast on Thee the entire responsibility of closing against my steps any and every course which is not of God. Let me hear thy voice behind me whenever I turn to the right hand or the left. Put thine arrest on me. Do not suffer me."

In the meanwhile, continue along the path which you have been already treading. It lies in front of you; pursue it. Abide in the calling in which you were called. Keep on as you are, unless you are clearly told to do something else. Expect to have as clear a door out as you had in; and if there is no indication to the contrary, consider the absence of indication to be the indication of God's will that you are on his track.

The Spirit of Jesus waits to be to you, O pilgrim, what He was to Paul. Only be careful to obey his least prohibitions, and where, after believing prayer, there are no apparent hindrances, believe that you are on the way everlasting, and go forward with enlarged heart. "Teach me to do thy will, for Thou art my God: thy Spirit is good, lead me into the land of uprightness." Do not be surprised if the answer comes in closed doors. But when doors are shut right and left, an open road is sure to lead to Troas. There Luke awaits, and visions will point the way, where vast opportunities stand open, and faithful friends are waiting.

TO BE CONTINUED...
_______________________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XIII.  "YE PHILIPPIANS"
F. B. Meyer

(Philippians 4:15)

"These are the tones to brace and cheer
The lonely watcher of the fold,
When nights are dark, and foemen near,
When visions fade, and hearts are cold.

How timely then a comrade's song
Comes floating on the mountain air,
And bids thee yet be bold and strong,
Fancy may die, but Faith is there."
KEBLE

FOR A busy, footsore, heart-weary man, misunderstood and misrepresented, pursued by many anxieties and cares, there must be some place where the heated machinery can cool, and the soul unbend in the atmosphere of love and on the couch of tender sympathy. Even Jesus needed a Bethany. It is well when this is found within the precincts of Home; when the door which shuts out the rush and glare of life shuts us in to love and sympathy, and those tender ministries which are the peculiar province of a woman's life. How little does the great world realize the large share that woman's influence has had in nourishing the patience and courage of its noblest heroes! In the privacy of the domestic life will be found those tender hands that wash the stripes, pour in the oil, and enable the soldier again to take the field.
__________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XIII.  "YE PHILIPPIANS"
F. B. Meyer

To many, however, of the world's greatest benefactors, though they have stood in profound need of this tender sympathy, the home-life has been denied. Theirs has been a solitary and lonely lot; partly because of the exigencies of their position, and partly because it has been difficult to find, or reveal themselves to, a kindred soul. This was largely the case with Paul. A self-contained, strong, heroic soul, he resembles the lofty mountains of his native Tarsus, whose slopes are clad with rich verdure and vegetation, while their summits rear themselves in steep and solitary majesty. Few have been dowered with a tenderer, warmer disposition. The minute and particular greetings with which his Epistles close, the rain of hot tears in parting from his friends, his anguish of mind in having hurt those whom he was compelled to admonish and rebuke, his longing for companionship -- -are evidences of the genuineness and tenacity of his affection. But it was his appointed lot to have no settled dwelling-place -- no spot he could call Home.

"Yes, without cheer of sister or of daughter;
Yes, without stay of father or of son;
Lone on the land and homeless on the water,
Pass I in patience till the work be done."

Yet the Apostle had marvellous powers of attracting men and women to himself. We have seen how he threw the mantle of his magnetic influence over Silas and Timothy; and the Galatians were ready to give him their eyes. But he was now to win a group of friends who would never cease to love him whilst life lasted; whoever else was alienated and weary, they would be true; whatever trouble threatened to engulf him, it would only elicit their more profuse ministrations; and Philippi was to become to him the one bright sunny spot in all the earth, more than Tarsus which had disowned him, more than Jerusalem which would cast him out, and next to the "far better" of Paradise.

"Hearts I have won of sister or of brother,
Quick on the earth or hidden in the sod.
Lo, every heart awaiteth me, another
Friend in the blameless family of God."

_______________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XIII.  "YE PHILIPPIANS"
F. B. Meyer

LUKE.

The beloved physician seems to have met him first at Troas. This could hardly have been by prearrangement, as the Apostle found himself, so to speak, forced to take his journey to that ancient seaport, famous for its traditional interest as the scene of the Siege of Troy, and thriving on its mercantile relations with East and West. All the northern provinces of Asia Minor sent their produce thither for shipment to Macedonia and Greece, and there the merchants of the West, men of Macedonia, would bring their freights in exchange. It is conjectured that Luke, himself a native of Philippi, had followed in the wake of commerce to pursue his profession as a physician to his countrymen. Paul's temporary sojourn in the crowded ghetto may have induced a return of the acute disease from which he had suffered in Galatia, or he may have been laid low by malarial fever, to deal with which the nearest available physician was summoned, and this was Luke. In any case, here the two men met; and here in all likelihood the servant of God won his medical attendant for the Saviour. In the enthusiasm of an ardent attachment the new disciple elected to become his fellow-traveller, so as to be able at all times to minister to the much-suffering and frail tenement of his friend's dauntless and vehement spirit.

He is immediately taken into the closest confidence; forms one of the little group to whom one morning Paul tells of the vision of the man of Macedonia; helps to formulate the conclusion, in which Silas and Timothy and he agreed, that the Apostle's path lay across the blue waters of the Aegean, dancing and sparkling in the morning light; goes forth to seek a passage in one of the many craft that lay at the wharves; and records with manifest love of the sea and knowledge of the land the successive stages of their voyage and journey to Philippi.

How dear he became to the Apostle, and how tenaciously he clung to his charge, is clear from two expressions penned, the one from the hired house of the first Roman imprisonment, the other from the chill prison cell of the second. "Luke, the beloved physician"; "only Luke is with me" (Colossians 4:14; 2 Timothy 4:11).


LYDIA.

She was probably a widow; a woman of considerable business capacity, with energy enough to leave her native city of Thyatira, and cross the sea to establish herself in Philippi as agent for the sale of the purple-dyed garments for which her native town was famous. The word indicates that she disposed of the finest class of wares; and she must have possessed a considerable amount of capital to be able to deal in such expensive articles. She was withal an eager seeker after God. The Jewish community at Philippi, being too small and poor to have a synagogue of its own, was obliged to meet by the riverside in an enclosure or garden screened from public observation. But thither she repaired as the Sabbath came round, with members of her household, listening to the Jewish Scriptures, and seeking after God, if haply she might find Him, not realizing that He was not far from every one of them.
_______________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XIII.  "YE PHILIPPIANS"
F. B. Meyer

On one memorable Sabbath, when only women were present, four strangers, Jews, appeared in the little circle, "sat down, and spake unto the women that were come together." This was the first Gospel sermon in Europe. And it is somewhat remarkable that it was addressed to a handful of women in the open-air. Lydia was the first of a great succession of holy women, who have welcomed the Lord Jesus as their Sovereign and Spouse. And the open-air has been the scene of the greatest victories of the Cross. The result of that morning service was Lydia's conversion; whether she received the Apostle's message of the crucified and living Lord at once or gradually, is not clear -- most likely her heart opened as a flower to the sun; but the result was that she, with her entire household, came over to believe in Jesus, whom Paul preached, and she felt as sure about her own conversion as she was eager for Paul to come and abide in her house: "If ye have judged me to be faithful unto the Lord, come into my house and abide there." It was a blessed change, which led to far-reaching consequences in her own life, and in Paul's. She must have been a woman of considerable determination and perseverance, to have overcome Paul's reluctance to be dependent on any of his converts. "What is my reward then?" he asks on one occasion. "That, when I preach the Gospel, I may make the Gospel without charge It were good for me rather to die, than that any man should make my glorying void." He would bear anything rather than risk the imputation of the suspicion that he was making profit out of the Gospel. Rather than this he wrought day and night, that he might be chargeable to none; and with his own hands ministered unto his own necessities and to those that were with him. But Lydia was able to override all his objections -- "She constrained us," is Luke's reflection as he reviews the scene. So the four companions in travel found asylum and entertainment in her hospitable home.

How much this large-hearted and resolute woman did in after days, it is impossible now to decipher from the record of the past. We know of four separate occasions in which the Philippian church sent supplies to their beloved founder and teacher (2 Corinthians 11:9; Philippians 4:10-18 ). And this was very probably due to Lydia's foresight and generosity. No other church performed so large a ministry, because no other church could perform it. As Paul intimates, they were for the most part in deep poverty. And it is probable that the Philippians would have been as paralysed as the rest had it not been for Lydia and her household, who throve on the proceeds of their trade. It has even been surmised that Paul owed much of the comfort of after days, when he spent two years in the Palace of Caesarea waiting for his trial, and two more years in his hired house at Rome, to the same source; and it may have been some inkling of the well-to-do friend who held Paul dear, that induced Felix to keep him in bonds.

A statement gained credence in the early church that Paul and Lydia were wed, but there is no foundation whatever for this in Scripture; and the probabilities against it are overwhelming. The whole argument of 1 Corinthians 7, 9 may be adduced to show that the stories of Lydia and Thekla are alike inadmissible. We are rather inclined, therefore, to think of Lydia as a noble, truehearted, and devoted friend of the Apostle, who counted it her privilege as well as her joy that he should reap temporal benefits in return for the spiritual blessings which he had so richly sown in her heart; and her reward will be one day to hear from the Master's lips that in making the burdens of his servant lighter she had been ministering to Himself, and that having received an Apostle in the name of an Apostle, she must have an Apostle's reward.
______________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XIII.  "YE PHILIPPIANS"
F. B. Meyer

MINOR CHARACTERS

Are cast on the canvas, drawn from life, and filling up the picture. The hysterical girl, demon-possessed, who marked and followed the evangelists, designating them slaves of the Most High God, who proclaimed the way of salvation. The syndicate of owners who fattened on the proceeds of her divination, as she showed miners where to find the gold, girls the day to wed, merchants the period to set forth their ventures; and who were correspondingly chagrined when Paul's challenge to the spirit emancipated his wretched victim and ended their hopes of further gain. The Roman magistrates, who strangely forgot the high traditions of their office, were swept off their feet by the urgency of the rabble, and, without going through even the formality of a trial, tore the clothes off the backs of the accused with their own hands, and laid "many stripes upon them," uncondemned, being Romans. Looking back on the way these petty officials treated him, Paul recalls how much he suffered and how shamefully he was entreated (1 Thessalonians 2:2). There was also Silas, who well justified Paul's choice of him, for he showed himself well able to bear shame and suffering for Jesus. It was good that Mark was not there! How would he have stood it? But from these our thought turns to the third principal actor in this scene, the story of whose conversion has shed the light of unspeakable comfort into myriads of broken hearts.


THE GAOLER.

A rough, coarse man, probably! What else could be expected from one who had spent his early days in the Roman army, and his later ones amid the hardening and brutalizing experiences of a provincial Roman prison? When superiors did not scruple to act in defiance of law and decency, their subordinate could hardly be expected to be too particular. Barbarous usage would certainly be meted out by his hands to the two Jews, about whom he had received the significant hint that he was to keep them safely. The inner prison was a dark underground hole beneath his house (Acts 16:34, R.V.); into this he thrust them; they would probably lie extended on the bare damp ground, their bleeding backs in contact with the soil, and their legs stretched to such an extent by the stocks as to almost dislocate their hips.
_____________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XIII.  "YE PHILIPPIANS"
F. B. Meyer

By midnight the two prisoners became so happy that they could no longer contain themselves, and began to sing, chanting the grand old Hebrew Psalms, and in the intervals praying. No doubt they were in the best of company, and found their souls over/lowing with exuberant joy. "Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name." It was an unwonted sound to the prisoners who stood or lay around in the pitch dark, their chains stapled to the walls -- not one of them thought of sleep; "the prisoners," we are told, "were listening."

An earthquake broke in on the singing, the doors flew open, and the staples left their places. The gaoler being roused from sleep came into the prison yard, and found the doors open. As Paul and Silas caught sight of him standing against the glimmering starlight, to their horror they saw him draw his sword and prepare to kill himself rather than face an ignominious death for his infidelity to his charge. With a loud voice Paul arrested and reassured him; then the call for the light, the springing into the cell, the trembling limbs, the courtesy that led them out, the inquiry for salvation, the answer of peace, the motley midnight audience which gathered around the two servants of God, the loving tendance of their wounds, the baptism, the hastily-prepared food, the glad rejoicing of the transformed believer and of all his believing house. One event crowding on the heels of another, and making a swift glad series of golden links which bound the gaoler ever after to his Saviour and to Paul.

He doubtless became one of the members of the Philippian church, a community of singular purity and loveliness, to whom the Apostle wrote his tenderest words without a syllable of rebuke. He could only thank God upon every remembrance of them, and in every supplication for them made request with joy. They were beloved and longed for, his joy and crown. He longed after them all in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus. They were his Bethany, his Zarephath, his Well of Bethlehem.
____________________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XIV.  FROM PHILIPPI TO ATHENS
F. B. Meyer

(Acts 17, 18 )

"Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the Highest
Cannot confound nor doubt Him, nor deny:
Yea, with one voice, O world, tho' thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.'
F. W. H. MYERS

LEAVING Luke at Philippi, Paul and his companions travelled through Amphipolis and Apollonia to THESSALONICA, a name which lives for ever in the inscriptions of his two earliest epistles. The modern town is known as Saloniki. It may be that Paul was specially attracted to this city because of the synagogue and a weekly Jewish service there, in which he could prosecute his favourite work of opening and alleging from the Hebrew Scriptures that the Messiah must suffer, and that He had appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He did this for three Sabbath days, maintaining himself and his friends by the work of his own hands, and lodging with one Jason, who afterwards became a devoted disciple and follower (Romans 16:21).

At the end of that period the strong feeling raised among the Jews made it unwise to continue in the synagogue: he therefore removed his conferences to some neutral ground. How long he remained there we cannot tell; but it must have been long enough to give time for the formation of a healthy and vigorous church, towards which the Apostle bore himself with the gentleness of a nurse, and the encouragement of a father. There was something about these Macedonian converts which was immensely attractive to him. In after days he speaks of them as his joy and crown; and says that he was so affectionately desirous for their growth in grace, that he would gladly have sacrificed his own life to promote it. They were very poor, and he wrought day and night with his own hands, even to travail, that he might not be burdensome to them; but they were rich in faith, and love, and hope (1 Thessalonians 2:6, 1 Thessalonians 2:7, 1 Thessalonians 2:11, 1 Thessalonians 2:19).

More than in other cases, his teaching led them to anticipate the Advent of the Lord. The pressure of the anguish that lay sore upon them all may have made them peculiarly susceptible to those radiant visions of the Lord's return that filled the Apostle's thought. They even outran his teaching, and fell into the error of supposing that that day had already come -- an error which the Apostle by a second epistle hastened to correct. It was a great joy, however, to that harassed heart to realize that, amid the furious opposition of man, God was working with him, and accompanying his words with the demonstration of his Spirit. He recalls, with lively satisfaction, that the Gospel came to them in power and the Holy Ghost; so that they became ensamples to all that believed in Macedonia and Achaia, and the Word of God sounded forth from them in clarion notes (1 Thessalonians 4; 2 Thessalonians 2).
______________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XIV.  FROM PHILIPPI TO ATHENS
F. B. Meyer

Some months must have been occupied in this blessed ministry; the strain on the Apostle was evidently greatly lessened by the gifts which came from Philippi, relieving him from the necessity of manual toil (Philippians 4:16).

At last, however, Thessalonica was closed against them. Paul and Silas were compelled to flee by night before the anger of the populace, incited by the Jews. The accusation laid against them was a strange one, considering the quarter from which it emanated. It was suspicious that Jews should be so eager to maintain the integrity of the Roman Empire, in opposition to the claims of the other King, one Jesus. But "any stick will do to beat a dog with"; and the Jews were not scrupulous about the means they employed, if only they could rid themselves of their powerful rival, who was probably thinning the crowd of Gentile devotees that gathered in their synagogue.

Fifty miles of night-journey brought them to BERCEA; and there for a brief space they had respite, as the Jews were less bigoted, and more willing to search the Scriptures, to discover for themselves the reasonableness or otherwise of Paul's views. But his heart yearned for the beloved brethren whom he had left to stem the strong tide of hatred which his teaching had evoked; and more than once he would have returned had it not been for the fear of implicating Jason and others, who appear to have been bound over to prevent him from setting his foot again in Thessalonica. This was in his mind when he said Satan hindered him (1 Thessalonians 2:18 ).

The project of Paul's return to Thessalonica was, however, rendered quite impossible by the rising of another storm, caused by Jewish emissaries from that city, who pursued his steps with relentless hate. There was at last no help for it but to leave Silas and Timothy in Beroea, to see what further could be done to keep the pathway to the rear open, and to hurry down to the harbour to take the first boat that was sailing. This happened to be for Athens. Those that conducted him hurried him on board, and we can imagine him standing on deck, and watching wistfully the receding heights of Mount Olympus slowly fading from view: behind, the dearest, truest friends he had ever known; before, what?
__________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XIV.  FROM PHILIPPI TO ATHENS
F. B. Meyer

ATHENS.

The messengers hastened back to Bercea, bearing the charge of the lonely Lion-heart, that Silas and Timothy should come to him with all speed. While he waited for them and hoped they would assure him that he might return to the infant communities he had founded, he passed through the streets of Athens, surveying the monuments of their religion. On every side were the achievements of human genius. Temples which a Phidias had designed; statues which a Praxiteles had wrought. But Greece was living Greece no more. Her political glory had passed away a century and a half before, when she had fallen before Rome's all-subduing might. She prided herself still on her heroic traditions, and her custodianship of the greatest monuments of that or any epoch of human history. But it was the afterglow of sunset.

It is not clear that the heart of the Apostle was stirred with classic memories or artistic appreciation. To him the city was simply full of idols; and the innumerable multitudes suggested the confused notions that prevailed of the unity and majesty of the Deity. He was greatly moved; and, not content with reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and proselytes, he went forth every day into the market-place to reason with whomsoever he met, urging all and sundry to turn from these vanities to worship the only God. It was his constant aim to be all things to all men; and at Athens he gave a conspicuous exhibition of his marvellous versatility. No ordinary Jew could have entered so thoroughly into the spirit of the place as the great Apostle did, or have excited sufficient interest among its philosophers to justify them calling a special assembly of the council of the Areopagus to hear a full statement of the new teaching he brought to their ears. The evangelist indicates that the opinions formed about Paul were diverse and not entirely complimentary. Some compared him to a bird picking up seeds, others to a seeker after novelty; and perhaps there was more of hostility than friendliness in their taking hold of him and bringing him before their highest religious tribunal.

It was the greatest audience Paul had ever addressed. Before him philosophers, pedants, lecturers, and students, accustomed to discuss the loftiest themes within the horizon of human thought, and to make distinctions to which the delicate refinement of the Greek language lent itself with marvellous subtlety. Epicureans were there to taste the flow of words, or criticise the style, the choice of images, the harmony of balanced sentences. Stoics, to study the theory of life, which this new theoriser, as he appeared, professed. For the whole crowd of Athenians and resident strangers were interested only in saying or hearing something new.
_______________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XIV.  FROM PHILIPPI TO ATHENS
F. B. Meyer

The address Paul gave on that occasion is quite unique. For its grace, intellectual sequence, grandeur of conception and range, stately march of eloquent words, it stands alone among the addresses recorded for us by the evangelist. It was probably the result of deep thought and prayer, or Paul had not so carefully passed it on to Luke, who was not then with him. It reveals the opulence of the Apostle's intellect and power of ready sympathy, which enabled him to adapt himself so easily to all sorts and conditions of men. We can only notice the contrasts between himself and his audience, that reveal themselves in almost every sentence. To them it was a new sensation, a shift in the kaleidoscope of religious thought; to him it was a matter of tremendous urgency, his spirit was pressed and provoked within him. They confessed their ignorance of the Unknown God, who lay behind the world and all things therein; Paul withdrew the vail and declared Him unto them. They supposed that the temples around were not unworthy of the Divine abode; he told them, as he remembered Stephen to have said years before, that nothing less than heaven's infinite dome could befit his supernal majesty, and that even this could not contain Him. They thought to propitiate the Deity with gifts; he insisted that He needed nothing at men's hands, and that their blessedness consisted in giving, not goats and calves, but broken hearts, contrite spirits, and empty, outstretched hands. They taught a dreary kind of Pantheism, as though God were no longer distinct from the matter of the world; he said that He was a Person, a Father to be sought after, as well as the atmosphere in which they lived, and moved, and had their being. It did not seem unbecoming for them to fashion the similitude of the Godhead in gold, and silver, and stone, graven by art and man's device; but he insisted that He was a Spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Some held the immortality of the soul, as Socrates had proclaimed it on that very spot, but they had no idea of the resurrection of the body; he, however, unhesitatingly affirmed that spirit would mate again with body, not only that there would be a literal resurrection, but that there had been one, and that a day was coming in which God would judge the world by the Man who died in mortal weakness, but whom He had raised from the dead.

At this mention of the resurrection, many in his audience began to mock. The Greek found the perfect fruition and glory of life in the present, and had no idea of a future which should involve the reanimation of the body. So Paul departed from among them with comparatively small results. Dionysius, a member of the august tribunal before which he had stood; a woman, Damaris, who was probably the result of his more general work in the city; and a few others, clave unto him, and believed. The Gospel attracted the simple-minded merchants and artisans of Macedonia more readily than the educated literati of Athens.

So far as we know the Apostle never visited Athens again. He went sadly on his way to Corinth, his heart filled with a tumult of thoughts, anxiety for the infant churches behind him, yearning to see Timothy and Luke, questioning what reception he might receive amid the cultured and eloquent Corinthians; but more than ever determined not to know anything among them save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, while steadfastly abjuring all attempts at wisdom or grace of speech, lest the Cross of Christ should be made void.
__________________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XV.  "IN WEAKNESS AND FEAR"
F. B. Meyer

(1 Corinthians 2:3)

"Ay, for this Paul, a scorn and a despising,
Weak as you know him, and the wretch you see,-
Even in these eyes shall ye behold him rising,
Strength in infirmities and Christ in me."
F. W. H. MYERS

FIVE hours' sail across the Saronic Bay brought the Apostle to Cenchrea, the port of Corinth to the east; for this great and busy city commanded two waterways. Through her western port, Lechaeum, she was in communication with the Adriatic; and through her eastern port, Cenchrea, with the Aegean. The wares of the East thus passed through her to supply the omnivorous appetite of the metropolis, and vast crowds were attracted to her precincts for the purposes of trade. This commanding position thus gave her a quite unusual importance in the eye of the Apostle, ever eager to seize on any advantage which he could use for the Gospel of his Lord. To establish a strong Christian church there would be to cast seeds of Christian teaching on waters that would bear them east and west. Christian missionaries should be strategists, expending their strength where populations teem and rivers of world-wide influence have their rise.

But the Apostle entered the proud and beautiful city "in weakness, and fear, and much trembling." He could not forget the frigid contempt which he had encountered at Athens, and which was harder to bear than violent opposition. He may have been suffering from some aggravation of his habitual trouble, without Luke's presence to treat it; and he was profoundly conscious of being deficient in those gifts of learning and eloquence on which the Corinthians set such store. He knew that his speech and his preaching could never be in persuasive words of human wisdom, and it was his fixed determination to know nothing among them but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
______________________________________

[nChrist]

PAUL A SERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST
XV.  "IN WEAKNESS AND FEAR"
F. B. Meyer

There were many other difficulties to be encountered, which made his ministry in Corinth the more difficult, and his consequent success the more conspicuous.


1. THE NECESSITY FOR CONTINUAL MANUAL TOIL.

In his first Epistle to Corinth, he lays great emphasis on this. Always maintaining the right of those who preached the Gospel to live by the Gospel, he did not use it; but suffered all things rather than hinder its progress or influence. No chance should be given to the merchants and traders that thronged the city from all parts, prepared to sacrifice everything for purposes of gain, to allege that he was actuated by mercenary motives. He, therefore, resumed his trade of tent-making, and was thankful to come across two Christian Jews who had been flung on this shore by the decree of the Emperor, which expelled all Jews from Rome. Suetonius, the historian, tells us that this decree was due to tumults caused by one Chrestus, evidently referring to violent disputes in the Jewish community concerning the claims of Jesus to be the long-expected Messiah. With them, therefore, he abode and wrought, for they were of the same craft; and a friendship sprang up between him and Aquila, with his wife Priscilla, which was destined to have an important bearing on the spread of Christianity in the metropolis from which they had come, and in Ephesus, to which they would accompany their newly-made friend. Perhaps Paul was in their employ; but in any case work was short and wages scant, so that he was not unfrequently in actual want (2 Corinthians 11:9; 1 Corinthians 4:11-12).

How strange that the movement which was to give Corinth a greater fame than her games, or architecture, or eloquence, emanated from a poor shop in the Jewish ghetto, where a handful of fugitive Jews wrought at their trade, speaking amid their toils of Jesus of Nazareth, who had been crucified in weakness, but was living through the power of God. They also were weak with Him; but they were destined to live and reign with Him, over the hearts of men, through the power of God.


2. THE VIRULENT HATRED OF THE JEWS.

According to his usual practice, Paul betook himself every Sabbath to the synagogue, and reasoned, persuading the Jews and Greek proselytes that the conception of the Hebrew Scriptures was precisely that of a suffering and crucified Messiah. This went on for some weeks; but the measure of his labours was somewhat curtailed by the heavy drain of his daily toil. It was not till Timothy and Silas arrived, the one from Thessalonica, and the other from Bercea, bringing cheering news of the steadfastness of his converts, their hands full of generous benefactions, that he was able to give himself with more leisure and intensity to the cherished object of his life. "He was pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ" (Acts 18:5).
_______________________________________