“Come, let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vines flourish.”—CANT. 7:12.
THE significant silence as to any public sympathy for Barnabas and Mark, together with the prominent mention of it in the case of Paul, seems to show that the Church of Antioch in general considered that St. Paul was in the right. Another indication of the same fact is that Silas consented to become his companion. Hitherto Silas had been so closely identified with the Church of Jerusalem that he had been one of the emissaries chosen to confirm the genuineness of the circular letter, and in the last notice of him which occurs in Scripture we find him still in the company of St. Peter, who sends him from Babylon with a letter to some of the very Churches which he had visited with St. Paul.1 His adhesion to the principles of St. Paul, in spite of the close bonds which united him with the Jewish Christians, is a sufficient proof that he was a man of large nature; and as a recognised prophet of Jerusalem and Antioch, his companionship went far to fill up the void left in the mission by the departure of Barnabas. His name Silvanus,2 and the fact that he, too, seems to have been a Roman citizen,3 may perhaps show that he had some connexion with the Gentile world, to which, therefore, he would be a more acceptable Evangelist. In every respect it was a happy Providence which provided St. Paul with so valuable a companion. And as they started on a second great journey, carrying with them the hopes and fortunes of Christianity, they were specially commended by the brethren to the grace of God.
St. Paul’s first object was to confirm the Churches which he had already founded. Such a confirmation of proselytes was an ordinary Jewish conception,4 and after the vacillations of opinion which had occurred even at Antioch, Paul would be naturally anxious to know whether the infant communities continued to prosper, though they were harassed by persecutions from without, and liable to perversion from within. Accordingly he began his mission by visiting the Churches of Syria and Cilicia. It is probable that he passed along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Issus, and through the Syrian and Amanid Gates to the towns of Alexandria and Issus.5 There the road turned westward, and led through Mopsuestia and Adana to Tarsus. From Tarsus three routes were open to him—one running along the shore of the Mediterranean to the Cilician Seleucia, and then turning inland through the Lycaonian Laranda to Derbe; the other a narrow and unfrequented path through the mountains of Isauria; the third, which in all probability he chose as the safest, the most frequented, and the most expeditious, through the famous Cilician Gates,6 which led direct to Tyana, and then turning south–westward ran to Cybistra, and so to Derbe, along the southern shore of Lake Ak Ghieul.7 And if, indeed, Paul and Silas took this route and passed through the narrow gorge under its frowning cliffs of limestone, clothed here and there with pine and cedar, which to the Crusaders presented an appearance so terrible that they christened it the Gates of Judas, how far must they have been from imagining, in their wildest dreams, that their footsteps—the footsteps of two obscure and persecuted Jews—would lead to the traversing of that pass centuries afterwards by kings and their armies. How
THE COUNTRY ROUND TARSAS.
little did they dream that those warriors, representing the haughtiest chivalry of Europe, would hold the name of Jews in utter execration, but would be sworn to rescue the traditional tomb of that Christ whom they acknowledged as their Saviour, from the hands of a mighty people who also recognised Him as a Prophet, though they did not believe Him to be Divine!
Whatever road was taken by Paul and Silas, they must have been their own messengers, and announced their own arrival. And we can well imagine the surprise, the emotion, the delight of the Christians in the little Isauric town, when they suddenly recognised the well–known figure of the missionary, who, arriving in the opposite direction, with the wounds of the cruel stonings fresh upon him, had first taught them the faith of Christ. Can we not also imagine the uneasiness which, during this visitation of the Churches which he loved so well, must often have invaded the heart of Paul, when almost the first question with which he must have been greeted on all sides would be, “And where is Barnabas?” For Barnabas was a man born to be respected and loved; and since Silas—great as may have been his gifts of utterance, and high as were his credentials8—would come among them as a perfect stranger, whom they could not welcome with equal heartiness, we may be sure that if Paul erred in that sad dissension, he must have been reminded of it, and have had cause to regret it at every turn.
From Derbe once more they passed to Lystra. Only one incident of their visit is told us, but it happily affected all the future of the great Apostle. In his former visit he had converted the young Timotheus, and it was in the house of the boy’s mother Eunice,9 and his grandmother Lois, that he and Silas were probably received. These two pious women were Jewesses who had now accepted the Christian faith. The marriage of Eunice with a Greek,10 and the non–circumcision of her son, indicate an absence of strict Judaism which, since it was not inconsistent with “unfeigned faith,” must have made them more ready to receive the Gospel; and Paul himself bears witness to their earnest sincerity, and to the careful training in the Scriptures which they had given to their child.
We are led to suppose that Eunice was a widow, and if so she showed a beautiful spirit of self–sacrifice in parting with her only son. The youthful Timothy is one of the best known and most lovable of that little circle of companions and followers—chiefly Gentile converts—who are henceforth associated with the wanderings of St. Paul. Of the many whom Paul loved, none were dearer to him than the young disciple of Lystra. Himself without wife or child, he adopted Timothy, and regarded him as a son in all affectionate nearness. “To Timothy, my son;” “my true son in the faith”—such are the terms in which he addresses him;11 and he reminds the Philippians how well they knew “that, as a son with a father, he had slaved with him for the Gospel.”12 And slight as are the touches which enable us to realise the character of the young Lystrenian, they are all wonderfully graphic and consistent. He was so blameless in character that both in his native Lystra and in Iconium the brethren bore warm and willing testimony to his worth.13 In spite of a shyness and timidity which were increased by his youthfulness,14 he was so entirely united in heart and soul with the Apostle that among his numerous friends and companions he found no one so genuine, so entirely unselfish, so sincerely devoted to the furtherance of the cause of Christ.15 He was, in fact, more than any other the alteregoof the Apostle. Their knowledge of each other was mutual;16 and one whose yearning and often lacerated heart had such deep need of a kindred spirit on which to lean for sympathy, and whose distressing infirmities rendered necessary to him the personal services of some affectionate companion, must have regarded the devoted tenderness of Timothy as a special gift of God to save him from being crushed by overmuch sorrow. And yet, much as Paul loved him, he loved his Churches more; and if any Church needs warning or guidance, or Paul himself desires to know how it prospers, Timothy is required to overcome his shrinking modesty,17 to console the persecuted Churches of Macedonia,18 or face the conceited turbulence of Corinth,19 or to be the overseer of the Church of Ephesus,20 with its many troubles from without and from within. In fact, no name is so closely associated with St. Paul’s as that of Timothy. Not only were two Epistles addressed to him, but he is associated with St. Paul in the superscription of five;21 he was with the Apostle during great part of his second missionary journey;22 he was with him at Ephesus;23 he accompanied him in his last voyage to Jerusalem;24 he helped to comfort his first imprisonment at Rome;25 he is urged, in the Second Epistle addressed to him, to hasten from Ephesus, to bring with him the cloak, books, and parchments which St. Paul had left with Carpus at Troas, and to join him in his second imprisonment before it is too late to see him alive.26 Some sixteen years had elapsed between the days when Paul took Timothy as his companion at Lystra,27 and the days when, in the weary desolation of his imprisoned age, he writes once more to this beloved disciple.28 Yet even at this latter date St. Paul addresses him as though he were the same youth who had first accompanied him to the hallowed work. “To him,” says Hausrath, “as to the Christian Achilles, the Timotheus–legend attributes eternal youth;” this being, according to the writer, one of the signs that the two pastoral Epistles addressed to Timothy were the work of a writer in the second century.29 But surely it is obvious that if Timothy, when St. Paul first won him over to the faith of Christ, was not more than sixteen or seventeen years old, he would be still far short of the prime of life when the Second Epistle was addressed to him; and that, even if he were older, there is no more familiar experience than an old man’s momentary forget–fulness that those whom he has known as boys have grown up to full manhood.30
This was the youth whose companionship Paul now secured. Young as he was, the quick eye of Paul saw in him the spirit of loving and fearful duty—read the indications of one of those simple, faithful natures which combine the glow of courage with the bloom of modesty. When Jesus had sent forth His disciples He had sent them forth two and two; but this was only in their own native land. It was a very different thing to travel in all weathers, through the blinding dust and burning heat of the plains of Lycaonia, and over the black volcanic crags and shelterless mountain ranges of Asia. He had suffered from the departure of Mark in Pisidia, and henceforth we never find him without at least two associates—at this time Silas and Timothy; afterwards Titus and Timothy in Macedonia and Achaia, and Luke and Aristarchus in his journey to Rome.
It may surprise us that the first step he took was to circumcise Timothy; and that since the rite might be performed by any Israelite, he did it with his own hands.31 We have, indeed, seen that he was in all probability driven to circumcise the Gentile Titus; but we are not told of any pressure put upon him to perform the same rite for Timothy, who, though the son of a Jewess, had grown up without it. Nothing is more certain than that, in St. Paul’s opinion, circumcision was valueless. His conduct, therefore, can only be regarded as a second concession to, or rather a prevention and anticipation of, prejudices so strong that they might otherwise have rendered his work impossible. St. Luke says that it was done “on account of the Jews in those regions; for they all knew that his father was a Greek.” Now, if this was generally known, whereas it was not so widely known that his mother was a Jewess, St. Paul felt that Timothy would everywhere be looked upon as an uncircumcised Gentile, and as such no Jew would eat with him, and it would be hopeless to attempt to employ him as a preacher of the Messiah in the synagogues, which they always visited as the beginning of their labours. If, on the other hand, it were known that he was by birth a Jewish boy—since the rule was that nationality went by the mother’s side32—an uncircumcised Jew would be in every Ghetto an object of execration. If, then, Timothy was to be ordained to the work of the ministry, his circumcision was indispensable to his usefulness, and his Jewish parentage was sufficient to deprive the act of the dangerous significance which might much more easily be attached to it in the case of Titus. Obviously, too, it was better that Paul should do it spontaneously than that it should receive a factitious importance by being once more extorted from him in spite of protest. He did it, not in order to please himself, but that he might condescend to the infirmities of the weak.33
The circumcision was followed by a formal ordination. The whole Church was assembled; the youth made the public profession of his faith;34 the elders and Paul himself solemnly laid their hands upon his head;35 the prophetic voices which had marked him out for a great work36 were confirmed by those who now charged him with the high duties which lay before him, and at the same time warned him of the dangers which those duties involved;37 the grace of the Holy Spirit descended like a flame into his heart,38 and the gentle boy of Lystra was henceforth the consecrated companion of toils and wanderings, of which the issue was the destined conversion of the world.
The mission opened with every circumstance of encouragement. The threefold cord of this ministry was not quickly broken. At each city which they visited they announced the decisions arrived at by the Apostles and elders at Jerusalem,39 and the Churches were strengthened in the faith, and grew in numbers daily.
In this way they traversed “the Phrygian and Galatian district.”40 There has been much speculation as to the towns of Phrygia at which they rested, but in the absolute silence of St. Luke, and in the extreme looseness of the term “Phrygian,” we cannot be sure that St. Paul preached in a single town of the region which is usually included under that term. That he did not found any church seems clear from the absence of allusion to any Phrygian community in the New Testament. The conjecture that he travelled on this occasion to the far distant Colossæ is most improbable, even if it be not excluded by the obvious inference from his own language.41 All that we can reasonably suppose is that after leaving Iconium he proceeded to Antioch in Pisidia— since there could be no reason why he should neglect to confirm the Church which he had founded there—and then crossed the ridge of the Paroreia to Philomelium, from which it would have been possible for him either to take the main road to the great Phrygian town of Synnada, and then turn north–eastwards to Pessinus, or else to enter Galatia by a shorter and less frequented route which did not run through any Phrygian town of the slightest importance. It does not seem to have been any part of St. Paul’s plan to evangelise Phrygia. Perhaps he may have originally intended to make his way by the road through Apamea, to Colossæ and Laodicea, and to go down the valley of the Mæander to Ephesus. But if so, this intention was hindered by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.42 Such providential hindrances to a course which seemed so obvious may well have been mysterious to St. Paul; but they appear less so to us when, viewing them in the light of history, we see that otherwise the Epistle to the Galatians might never have been written, and that thus the whole course of Christian theology might have been entirely changed.
Of any work in Phrygia, therefore, there was nothing to narrate;43 but we may well deplore St. Luke’s non–acquaintance with the details of that visit to Galatia, which were deeply interesting and important, and of which we are now left to discover the incidents by piecing the fragmentary notices and allusions of the Epistle.
We may suppose that on finding it impossible to preach at this time in the great cities of Lydian Asia,44 St. Paul and his companions next determined to make their way to the numerous Jewish communities on the shores of the Euxine. They seem to have had no intention to preach among a people so new to them, and apparently so little promising, as the Galatians. But God had other designs for them; they were detained in Galatia, and their stay was attended with very memorable results.
St. Luke, who uses the ordinary geographical term, must undoubtedly have meant by the term Galatia that central district of the Asian peninsula45 which was inhabited by a people known to the ancient world under the names of Celts, Galatians, Gauls, and more recently) Gallo–Greeks. Their history was briefly this. When the vast tide of Aryan migration began to set to the westward from the valleys of the Oxus and the plains of Turkestan, the Celtic family was among the earliest that streamed away from their native seats.46 They gradually occupied a great part of the centre and west of Europe, and various tribes of the family were swept hither and thither by different currents, as they met with special obstacles to their unimpeded progress. One of their Brennuses,47 four centuries before the Christian era, inflicted on Rome its deepest humiliation. Another, one hundred and eleven years later,48 filled Northern Greece with terror and rapine, and when his hordes were driven back by the storms and portents which seconded the determined stand of the Greeks at Delphi, they joined another body under Leonnorius and Lutarius,49 struggled across the Hellespont in the best way they could, and triumphantly established themselves in the western regions of Asia Minor. But their exactions soon roused an opposition which led to an effectual curbing of their power, and they were gradually confined in the central region which is partly traversed by the valleys of the Sangarius and the Halys. Here we find them in three tribes, of which each had its own capital. Bordering on Phrygia were the Tolistobogii, with their capital Pessinus; in the centre the Tectosages, with their capital Ancyra; and to the eastward, bordering on Pontus, were the Trocmi, with their capital Tavium.50 Originally the three tribes were each divided into four tetrarchies, but at length they were united (B.C. 65) under Deiotarus, tetrarch of the Tolistobogii, the Egbert of Galatian history.51 The Romans under Cn. Manlius Vulso had conquered them in B.C. 189,52 but had left them nominally independent; and in B.C. 36 Mark Antony made Amyntas king. On his death, in B.C. 25, Galatia was joined to Lycaonia and part of Pisidia, and made a Roman province; and since it was one of the Imperial provinces, it was governed by a Propraetor. This was its political condition when Paul entered Pessinus, which, though one of the capitals, lies on the extreme frontier, and at that time called itself Sebaste of the Tolistobogii.53
The providential cause which led to St. Paul’s stay in the country was, as he himself tells us, a severe attack of illness: and the manner in which he alludes to it gives us reason to infer that it was a fresh access of agony from that “stake in the flesh” which I believe to have been acute ophthalmia, accompanied, as it often is, by violent cerebral disturbance.54 In his letter to his Galatian converts he makes a touching appeal, which in modern phraseology might run as follows:55—“Become as I am, brethren, I beseech you” (i.e., free from the yoke of external and useless ordinances), “for I, too, made myself as you are.56 Jew that I was, I placed myself on the level of you Gentiles, and now I want you to stand with me on that same level, instead of trying to make yourselves Jews. I do not wish to speak by way of complaint about you. You never did me any personal wrong.57 Nay, you know that when I preached the Gospel among you, on my first visit, it was in consequence of an attack of sickness, which detained me in the midst of a journey; you could not, therefore, feel any gratitude to me as though I had come with the express purpose of preaching to you; and besides, at that time weak, agonised with pain, liable to fits of delirium, with my eyes red and ulcerated by that disease by which it pleases God to let Satan buffet me, you might well have been tempted to regard me as a deplorable object. My whole appearance must have been a trial to you—a temptation to you to reject me. But you did not; you were very kind to me. You might have treated me with contemptuous indifference;58 you might have regarded me with positive loathing;59 but instead of this you honoured, you loved me, you received me as though I were an angel— nay, even as though I were the Lord of angels, as though I were even He whom I preached unto you. How glad you were to see me! How eagerly you congratulated yourselves and me on the blessed accident—nay, rather, on the blessed providence of God, which had detained me amongst you!60 So generous, so affectionate were you towards me, that I bear you witness that to aid me as I sat in misery in the darkened rooms, unable to bear even a ray of light without excruciating pain, you would, if that could have helped me, have plucked out your eyes and given them to me.”61
Nothing is more natural than that the traversing of vast distances over the burning plains and freezing mountain passes of Asia Minor—the constant changes of climate, the severe bodily fatigue, the storms of fine and blinding dust, the bites and stings of insects, the coarseness and seantness of daily fare—should have brought on a return of his malady to one whose health was so shattered as that of Paul. And doubtless it was the anguish and despair arising from the contemplation of his own heartrending condition, which added to his teaching that intensity, that victorious earnestness, which made it so all–prevailing with the warm–hearted Gauls.62 If they were ready to receive him as Christ Jesus, it was because Christ Jesus was the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all his teaching to them. And hence, in his appeal to their sense of shame, he uses one of his own inimitably picturesque words to say, “Senseless Galatians, what evil eye bewitched you?63 before whose eyes, to avert them from such evil glances, I painted as it were visibly and large the picture of Jesus Christ crucified.”64
But the zealous readiness of the Galatians, their impulsive affection, the demonstrative delight with which they accepted the new teaching, was not solely due to the pity which mingled with the admiration inspired by the new teacher. It may have been due, in some small measure, to the affinities presented by the new religion to the loftiest and noblest parts of their old beliefs; and at any rate, being naturally of a religious turn of mind,65 they may have been in the first instance attracted by the hearing of a doctrine which promised atonement in consequence of a shedding of blood. But far more than this, the quick conversion of the Galatians was due to the mighty outpouring of the Spirit which followed Paul’s preaching, and to the new powers66 which were wrought in his converts by their admission into the Church. But while these were the results among the truer converts, there must have also been many whose ready adhesion was due to that quick restlessness, that eager longing for change, which characterised them,67 as it characterised the kindred family of Greeks with which they were at this time largely mingled. It was the too quick springing of the good seed on poor and shallow soil; it was the sudden flaming of fire among natures as light, as brittle, as inflammable as straw. The modification of an old religion, the hearty adoption of a new one, the combination of an antique worship with one which was absolutely recent, and as unlike it as is possible to conceive, had already been illustrated in Galatian history. As Celts they had brought with them into Asia their old Druidism, with its haughty priestcraft, and cruel expiations.68 Yet they had already incorporated with this the wild nature–worship of Agdistis or Cybele, the mother of the gods. They believed that the black stone which had fallen from heaven was her image, and for centuries after it had been carried off to Rome69 they continued to revere her venerable temple, to give alms to her raving eunuchs, to tell of the vengeance which she had inflicted on the hapless Atys, and to regard the pine groves of Dindymus with awe.70 But yet, while this Phrygian cult was flourishing at Pessinus, and commanding the services of its hosts of mutilated priests, and while at Tavium the main object of worship was a colossal bronze Zeus of the ordinary Greek type,71 at Ancyra, on the other hand, was established the Roman deification of the Emperor Augustus, to whom a temple of white marble, still existing in ruins, had been built by the common contributions of Asia.72 Paul must have seen, still fresh and unbroken, the celebrated Monumentum Ancyranum, the will of Augustus engraved on the marble of the temple, and copied from the inscription set up by his own command upon bronze tablets in front of his mausoleum; but while he may have glanced at it with interest, and read with still deeper pleasure on one of the pillars the decree in which the Emperor had rewarded the friendliness of the Jews by a grant of religious immunity,73 he must have thought with some pity and indignation of the frivolity of spirit which could thus readily combine the oldest and the newest of idolatrous aberrations—the sincere and savage orgies of Dindymene with the debasing flattery of an astute intriguer—the passionate abandonment to maddening religious impulse, and the calculating adoration of political success. In point of fact, the three capitals of the three tribes furnished data for an epitome of their history, and of their character. In passing from Pessinus to Ancyra and Tavium the Apostle saw specimens of cults curiously obsolete side by side with others which were ridiculously new. He passed from Phrygian nature–worship through Greek mythology to Roman conventionalism. He could not but have regarded this as a bad sign, and he would have seen a sad illustration of the poorer qualities which led to his own enthusiastic reception, if he could have read the description in a Greek rhetorician long afterwards of the Galatians being so eager to seize upon what was new, that if they did but get a glimpse of the cloak of a philosopher, they caught hold of and clung to it at once, as steel filings do to a magnet.74 In fact, as he had bitter cause to learn afterwards, the religious views of the Gauls were more or less a reflex of the impressions of the moment, and their favourite sentiments the echo of the language used by the last comer. But on his first visit their faults all seemed to be in the background. Their tendencies to revelries and rivalries, to drunkenness and avarice, to vanity and boasting, to cabals and fits of rage, were in abeyance,75—checked if not mastered by the powerful influence of their new faith, and in some instances, we may hope, cured altogether by the grace of the Holy Spirit of God. All that he saw was their eagerness and affection, their absence of prejudice, and willingness to learn—all that vivacity and warmheartedness which were redeeming points in their Celtic character.76
How long he was detained among them by his illness we are not told, but it was long enough to found several churches, one perhaps in each of the three capitals, and it may be in some of the minor towns. His success was clearly among the Gauls; and in the absence of all personal salutations in his Epistle, we cannot tell whether any of the aboriginal Phrygians, or Greek settlers, or of the Roman governing class, embraced the faith. But though he is avowedly writing to those who had been Gentiles and idolators,77 there must have been a considerable number of converts from the large Jewish population78 which had been attracted to Galatia by its fertility, its thriving commerce, and the privileges which secured them the free exercise of their religion. These Jews, and their visitors from Jerusalem, as we shall see hereafter, proved to be a dangerous element in the infant Church.
The success of this unintended mission may have detained St. Paul for a little time even after his convalescence; and as he retraced his journey from Tavium to Pessinus he would have had the opportunity which he always desired of confirming his recent converts in the faith. From Pessinus the missionaries went towards Mysia, and laid their plans to pass on to the numerous and wealthy cities of western Bithynia, at that time a senatorial province. But once more their plans, in some way unknown to us, were divinely overruled. The “Spirit of Jesus”79 did not suffer them to enter a country which was destined indeed to be early converted, but not by them, and which plays a prominent part in the history of early Christianity.80 Once more divinely thwarted in the fulfilment of their designs, they made no attempt to preach in Mysia,81 which in its bleak and thinly populated uplands offered but few opportunities for evangelisation, but pressed on directly to Troas, where an event awaited them of immense importance, which was sufficient to explain the purpose of Him who had shaped the ends which they themselves had so differently rough–hewn.
From the slopes of Ida,82 Paul and Silvanus with their young attendant descended the ravine which separated the mountain from the port and colony. They were on classic ground. Every step they took revealed scenes to which the best and brightest poetry of Greece had given an immortal interest. As they emerged from the pine groves of the many–fountained hill, with its exquisite legend of Œnone and her love, they saw beneath them the
“Ringing plains of windy Troy,”
where the great heroes of early legend had so often
“Drunk delight of battle with their peers.”
But if they had ever heard of
“The face that launched a thousand ships,
And sacked the topmost towers of Ilion,”
or looked with any interest on the Simois and the Scamander, and the huge barrows of Ajax and Achilles, they do not allude to them. Their minds were full of other thoughts.
The town at which they now arrived had been founded by the successors of Alexander, and had been elevated into a colony with the Jus Italicum. This privilege had been granted to the inhabitants solely because of the romantic interest which the Romans took in the legendary cradle of their greatness, an interest which almost induced Constantine to fix there, instead of at Byzantium, the capital of the Eastern Empire. Of any preaching in Alexandria Troas nothing is told us. On three separate occasions at least St. Paul visited it.83 It was there that Carpus lived, who was probably his host, and he found it a place peculiarly adapted for the favourable reception of the Gospel.84 On this occasion, however, his stay was very short,85 because he was divinely commanded to other work.
St. Paul had now been labouring for many years among Syrians, Cilicians, and the mingled races of Asia Minor; but during that missionary activity he had been at Roman colonies like Antioch in Pisidia, and must have been thrown very frequently into the society of Greeks and Latins. He was himself a Roman citizen, and the constant allusions of his Epistles show that he, like St. Luke, must have been struck with admiration for the order, the discipline, the dignity, the reverence for law which characterised the Romans, and especially for the bravery, the determination, the hardy spirit of self–denial which actuated the Roman soldier.86 He tells us, later in his life, how frequently his thoughts had turned towards Rome itself,87 and as he brooded on the divinely indicated future of Christianity, we cannot doubt that while wandering round the then busy but now land–locked and desolate harbour of Troas, he had thrown many a wistful glance towards the hills of Imbros and Samothrace; and perhaps when on some clear evening the colossal peak of Athos was visible, it seemed like some vast angel who beckoned him to carry the good tidings to the west. The Spirit of Jesus had guided him hitherto in his journey, had prevented him from preaching in the old and famous cities of Asia, had forbidden him to enter Bithynia, had driven the stake deeper into his flesh, that he might preach the word among the Gauls. Anxiously must he have awaited further guidance;—and it came. In the night a Macedonian soldier88 stood before him, exhorting him with these words, “Cross over into Macedonia and help us.” When morning dawned Paul narrated the vision to his companions,89 “and immediately we sought,” says the narrator, who here, for the first time, appears as the companion of the Apostle, “to go forth into Macedonia, inferring that the Lord has called us to preach the Gospel to them.” With such brevity and simplicity is the incident related which of all others was the most important in introducing the Gospel of Christ to the most advanced and active races of the world, and among them to those races in whose hands its future destinies must inevitably rest.
The other incident of this visit to the Troas is the meeting of Paul with Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel. This meeting is indicated with profound modesty by the sudden use of the pronoun “we;” but even without this the vivid accuracy of detail in the narrative which immediately ensues, is in such striking contrast with the meagreness of much that has gone before, that we should have been driven to conjecture the presence of the writer on board the little vessel that now slipped its hawsers from one of the granite columns which we still see lying prostrate on the lonely shores of the harbour of Troas.
And this meeting was a happy one for Paul; for, of all the fellow–workers with whom he was thrown, Timotheus alone was dearer to him than Luke. From the appearance and disappearance of the first personal pronoun in the subsequent chapters of the Acts,90 we see that he accompanied St. Paul to Philippi, and rejoined him there some seven years afterwards, never again to part with him so long as we are able to pursue his history. How deeply St. Paul was attached to him appears in the title “the beloved physician;” how entire was his fidelity is seen in the touching notice, “Only Luke is with me.” He shared his journeys, his dangers, his shipwreck; he shared and cheered his long imprisonments, first at Cæsarea, then at Rome. More than all, he became the biographer of the Great Apostle, and to his allegiance, to his ability, to his accurate preservation of facts, is due nearly all that we know of one who laboured more abundantly than all the Apostles, and to whom, more than to any of them, the cause of Christ is indebted for its stability and its dissemination.
Of Luke himself, beyond what we learn of his movements and of his character from his own writings, we know but little. There is no reason to reject the unanimous tradition that he was by birth an Antiochene,91 and it is clear from St. Paul’s allusions that he was a Gentile convert, and that he had not been circumcised.92 That he was a close observer, a careful narrator, a man of cultivated intellect, and possessed of a good Greek style,93 we see from his two books; and they also reveal to us a character gentle and manly, sympathetic and self–denying. The incidental allusion of St. Paul shows us that he was a physician, and this allusion is singularly confirmed by his own turns of phrase. The rank of a physician in those days was not in any respect so high as now it is, and does not at all exclude the possibility that St. Luke may have been a freedman; but on this and all else which concerns him Scripture and tradition leave us entirely uninformed. That he was familiar with naval matters is strikingly shown in his account of the shipwreck, and it has even been conjectured that he exercised his art in the huge and crowded merchant vessels which were incessantly coasting from point to point of the Mediterranean.94 Two inferences, at any rate, arise from the way in which his name is introduced: one that he had already made the acquaintance of St. Paul, perhaps at Antioch; the other that, though he had some special connection with Philippi and Troas, his subsequent close attachment to the Apostle in his journeys and imprisonments may have arisen from a desire to give him the benefit of medical skill and attention in his frequent attacks of sickness.95 The lingering remains of that illness which prostrated St. Paul in Gralatia may have furnished the first reason why it became necessary for Luke to accompany him, and so to begin the fraternal companionship which must have been one of the richest blessings of a sorely troubled life.