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Paul attracts the notice of

phers.

is noticed; but on account of two circumstances which occurred while he was there, and which, admitting each of different views, may not be regarded at first by all in that which seems to be the

correct one.

Preaching, in the first instance (as his custom was) to the Jews the Philoso- and devout Gentiles of the place, his discourses were so much noised abroad, as to attract the attention, not of the magistracy, but of the philosophical idlers. Idlers, I say, because at Athens these speculators formed a body of literary loungers, and presented in the porches and other places of public resort a whimsical scene of fashionable relaxation, of which the amusements and conceits were metaphysical and moral discussions. Surrounded by company like this, and possibly unable, from the variety and number of the questions addressed to him, to make his meaning understood, Paul was conducted-not as a criminal, for of this there is no intimation-but as the promulgator of a new system, to Mars' Hill, and was there His speech desired publicly to explain his views. His speech, accordingly, bears no marks of a defence, nor was it followed up either by acquittal or condemnation, by sentence from a court, or violence from the multitude. At his mention of a resurrection from the dead, the doctrine seems to have struck his audience as so monstrous and preposterous, that he could no longer proceed for the jests and witticisms which it occasioned. His speech is doubtless, therefore, only a part of what he intended to say to them, and what might thus have proved more generally effectual, had his auditors had ears to hear " him out.64 As St. Paul's examination has been most commonly represented in the light of a judicial proceeding, these remarks will not be useless, if, by determining more precisely the circumstances, they shall make his celebrated harangue appear more natural, and more fully adapted to the occasion. One consideration

at the

Areopagus.

The unknown

God.

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too should be borne in mind, that at Athens, the chief, if not the
only, persuasive which he chose to employ was eloquence-the very
weapon in the use of which the Athenians were most skilful. With
miracles he had confounded the people whose boast was
an image
that fell from heaven," and he now pleads for Christianity in the
city of Demosthenes.

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In the speech itself there is only one topic which will be noticed; it is the allusion to an altar erected to "the unknown God."

Some few, who have considered St. Paul's behaviour here as an eminent illustration of the character which he has given to himself, of being "all things to all men," have so far departed from the common acceptation of the passage, as to imagine that "the unknown God" was no one particular object of worship which the

64" Some mocked, and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter." This may be understood to imply a division of sentiment among the auditory; some mocking him, so as to render it im

possible for him to proceed; others, as Dionysius and Damaris, encouraging him, and telling him that they at least would continue to hear him.

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Athenians had adopted; but the true God, whom, he tells them, they ignorantly worshipped in the various characters of Jupiter, Apollo, &c. To Jehovah (they understood him to say) are justly due your worship and your altars. It is not your Jupiter who is the God, but the Being who made the heavens or Jupiter.65

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The objections to this interpretation are these: first, the apostle so expresses himself as clearly to denote that the words, "to God unknown, were inscribed on some altar; secondly, respectable testimonies have been found of the existence of such an altar; lastly, it is not in accordance with St. Paul's other addresses on the subject of idolatry,—his custom being to point out to the heathen, not that they were worshipping God under false names, but serving the 1 Cor. x. 20; devil.

It remains, therefore, to determine what particular God was meant by the inscription on the altar. On this point the remarks already made, on the occasion of the speech, may not a little help to guide inquiry. Nothing is more probable, than that the Athenians, the most inquisitive people on earth, should by this time have heard, and have taken some interest in the report, of a new God which the Christians were represented as proclaiming to the world.67 In their characteristic vivacity and eagerness for novelty, an altar might have been erected to him, before they had ascertained his name. On Paul's arrival, their very conversation with him would lead them to surmise that he was one of the promulgators of this new religion. Hence the eagerness with which he was brought before the public, led purposely perhaps by this very altar, which I would on that account be pointed out to him, and would form a natural topic for the opening of his speech.

It is scarcely necessary to add to these remarks, that the expression 68 "too superstitious," which is mistranslated, was meant, no doubt, as a compliment, and not as a reproach, by characterising the people as one who displayed a high sense of religion.

65 Pope's creed, as expressed in his Universal Prayer, was no other than this:

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Father of all, in every age,
In every clime, ador'd;
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, and Lord."

68 Βωμὸν ἐν ᾧ ἐπεγέγραπτο, Αγνώστω Θεῷ. 67 Christo ut Deo carmen dicunt, Plinii Epist. May not the remark, that Paul was a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached Jesus and the Resurrection, have arisen from his statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, in reply to some question put to him concerning the new God? The opening of his speech obviously falls in with this view. Having first declared him to be the same God who made the world, he was proceeding to speak of his manifestation in the flesh, H.

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1 Tim. iv. 1.

ST. PAUL AT CORINTH AND CENCHREA.

Acts xviii.

Foundation

of the

Corinth.

At Corinth the apostle made a longer sojourn than in any other Church of city during his journey. Here were written his Epistles to the Thessalonians; perhaps that also to the Galatians. Here, too, he probably received from Aquila and Priscilla the first intelligence of Christianity having been preached to the Romans. Here, lastly, he founded that Church, which, above all others, engaged his personal interest. In the minute internal regulations of this, more than of any other, he appears to have busied himself; and, accordingly, his Epistles to the Corinthians contain more information on the Church discipline of the apostolic age than any other part of the New Testament. Indeed, in some few instances, the points alluded to have so much the character of domestic detail, as scarcely to admit of illustration from the general history of the times.

Paul's observance of Jewish rites at Cenchrea.

Corinth may be considered as the boundary of this apostolical journey, and the last regular scene of Paul's labours for the present. For, although we hear of him afterwards at Cenchrea, and again at Ephesus, his pause at the former place was only to perform a ceremony which he went through as a Jewish Christian; at the latter, to convey to the Asiatic continent Aquila and Priscilla. Cenchrea has, however, been particularized, together with Corinth, in order to remind the reader that St. Paul here exhibited a striking illustration of the general principle which guided the primitive Church, in regard to the observance of foreign rites and rules by its members. As a member of the Jewish society, about to visit his own people, and not as a Christian, or as performing any duty to God as such, St. Paul on this occasion observed a form wholly Jewish. On the same principle he anxiously hastened to be present at Jerusalem by the approaching festival, whilst he was insisting on the sinfulness of the Gentile convert, who should add to the Christian appointments the obligations of the Jewish law. Thus, too, he circumcised Timothy, because his father was a Jew; but, although he was in the very seat and centre of Jewish prejudice, in Jerusalem, and even while the question was hotly agitated, he refused to allow Titus, the Gentile convert, to be circumcised.

CHAPTER VI.

ST. PAUL'S THIRD APOSTOLICAL JOURNEY.

From A.D. 55-60.

ROUTE.

Galatia; Phrygia; Ephesus; Asia; Ephesus again; Troas; Macedonia; Greece; Acts xviii. Corinth; Macedonia again; Philippi; Troas again; Assos; Mitylene; Chios; Samos; 23; Trogyllium; Miletus, (in Asia;) Coos; Rhodes; Patara, (in Lycia;) Tyre; Ptolemais; xix.to xxi. 15. Cæsarea; Jerusalem.

Ephesus.

Or those places through which the route of the apostle in his Paul at third official journey is marked, Ephesus was the principal scene of his labours. In his return from Greece to Palestine, he had touched at Ephesus, and there left Aquila and Priscilla, with a promise that he would himself soon visit them. This promise he now fulfilled. Passing through Galatia and Phrygia, he made Ephesus, for the third time, his chief station in Asia, as on former occasions he had chosen Corinth in Greece. It was here, then, that all who dwelt in Asia, both Jews and Greeks, first heard the word from him. Among these may be numbered Epaphras, who not only became his Col. i. 7. convert, but probably his missionary to the neighbouring Colossians. Of all the incidents, however, which mark Paul's residence at Ephesus, the most interesting, perhaps, is his meeting with certain disciples of John the Baptist.

ST. PAUL AND THE DISCIPLES OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

No mention is made by any of the Evangelists of the disciples of John the Baptist, subsequently to their master's imprisonment and death. Probably the greater part of them became followers of Jesus; having been indeed called and instructed by John to this very end. Some notice of this transfer might have been intended in the formal embassy on which he sent them to our Saviour, when he found his own removal from them likely to be at hand."9 But before it actually took place, some might have quitted Palestine ; and thus, although convinced by the preaching of Christ's forerunner, might have had no opportunity of attaching themselves either to Him or to the disciples of Him whose way their master had prepared. Such might have been the case with those, who, about

00 Matt. xi. 2. See Appendix [F.]

Acts xviii. 24.

twelve in number, were found by Paul at Ephesus. Apollos, one similarly circumstanced, had, before the apostle's arrival, received baptism from Aquila and Priscilla; and had already, from his eloquence and knowledge of the Scriptures, become eminently serviceable to the Christian cause in Achaia. As Apollos is said to have been of Alexandria, these others also might have come from the same place. Even so, their total ignorance of all that had occurred Acts xix. 2. at Jerusalem during an interval of more than twenty years, on a subject which so nearly concerned them as the descent of the Holy Ghost, and the preaching and baptizing of the apostles; and this, too, notwithstanding their manifest expectation of the events, strongly confirms the remark formerly made, on the extreme tardiness with which intelligence of the several stages of the new dispensation was communicated, even between places the most connected by frequent intercourse. Between Alexandria and Jerusalem there was at this time nearly as much intercourse, as between the holy city and the remote parts of Judæa itself; and the Passover, at least, was yearly attended by numbers, with, perhaps, a more scrupulous punctuality than by the Jews who were resident in their native country.

Difference between the

The rebaptism of these disciples of John the Baptist, first by Baptisms of Aquila and Priscilla, and, in a second instance, by St. Paul, suggests an inquiry into the difference between the baptism of John and that of Paul; which again leads us to ask, what was the difference between this last and that of Jesus Christ himself.

John and

Paul.

Matt. iii. 11;

Mark i. 8;

John i. 33.

John baptized with water only; that is, there was no inward grace bestowed on the disciple through the ceremony. Baptism was only a sign of admission into the temporary society over which he presided; and as such, a pledge also that the initiated would conform to the rule of that society, repentance.

But, while John baptized, he pointed to the coming of Jesus, as of one who should "baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire; meaning, that his baptism should be performed, with water indeed, but not with water only-that the immersion and sprinkling should not be merely the sign of admission into a society, or the pledge of conformity with rules, but the appointed means for imparting the Holy Spirit. It was really then a baptizing with the Holy Ghost, rather than with water; for the same reason as we should say, that he who was sent by the prophet to wash in Jordan was cured, not by the washing, but by the secret grace attached to it; or again, that it was not the clay on the blind man's eyes which restored him to sight, but the virtue which went forth from Jesus with the act of putting it on.

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"With the Holy Ghost,' says St. John, therefore, "He shall Luke iii. i6, baptize, and with fire;" that is, with the Holy Ghost, whose emblem and attesting sign shall be fire. He speaks of the flame which descended on the day of Pentecost, in proof of the true invisible descent of the Holy Ghost.

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