“Men, women, rich and poor, in the cool hours
Shuffled their feet along the pavement white,
Companioned or alone; while many a light
Flared here and there from wealthy festivals,
And threw their moving shadows on the walls,
Or found them clustered in the corniced shade
Of some arched temple–door or dusky colonnade.”
KEATS, Lamia
“EcclesiaDeiinCorintho:laetum et ingens paradoxon.”
BENGEL, in 1 Cor. 1:2.
UNNOTICED as he had entered it—nay, even more unnoticed, for he was now alone—St. Paul left Athens. So little had this visit impressed him, that he only once alludes to it, and though from the Acrocorinthus he might often have beheld its famed Acropolis, he never felt the smallest inclination to enter it again. This was his only recorded experience of intercourse with the Gentile Pharisaism of a pompous philosophy. There was more hope of raging Jews, more hope of ignorant barbarians, more hope of degraded slaves, than of those who had become fools because in their own conceit they were exceptionally wise; who were alienated by a spiritual ignorance born of moral blindness; who, because conscience had lost its power over them, had become vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
He sailed to Corinth, the then capital of Southern Greece, which formed the Roman province of Achaia. The poverty of his condition, the desire to waste no time, the greatness of his own infirmities, render it nearly certain that he did not make his way over those forty miles of road which separate Athens from Corinth, and which would have led him through Eleusis and Megara, but that he sailed direct, in about five hours, across the Saronic bay, and dropped anchor under the low green hills and pine–woods of Cenchreæ. Thence he made his way on foot along the valley of Hexamili, a distance of some eight miles, to the city nestling under the huge mass of its rocky citadel. Under the shadow of that Acrocorinthus, which darkened alternately its double seas,1 it was destined that St. Paul should spend nearly two busy years of his eventful life.
It was not the ancient Corinth—the Corinth of Periander, or of Thucydides, or of Timoleon—that he was now entering, but Colonia Julia, or Laus Juli Corinthus, which had risen out of the desolate ruins of the older city. When the Hegemony had passed from Sparta and Athens, Corinth occupied their place, and as the leader of the Achæan league she was regarded as the light and glory of Greece. Flamininus, when the battle of Cynoscephalae had destroyed the hopes of Philip, proclaimed at Corinth the independence of Hellas.2 But when the city was taken by L. Mummius, B.C. 146, its inhabitants had been massacred, its treasures carried off to adorn the triumph of the conqueror, and the city itself devastated and destroyed. For a hundred years it lay in total ruin, and then Julius Cæsar, keenly alive to the beauty and importance of its position, and desiring to call attention to the goddess for whose worship it had been famous, and whose descendant he professed to be, rebuilt it from its foundations, and peopled it with a colony of veterans and freedmen.3
It sprang almost instantly into fame and wealth. Standing on the bridge of the double sea, its two harbours— Lechæum on the Corinthian and Cenchreæ on the Saronic Gulf—instantly attracted the commerce of the east and west. The Diolkos, or land–channel, over which ships could be dragged across the Isthmus, was in constant use, because it saved voyagers from the circumnavigation of the dreaded promontory of Malea.4 Jews with a keen eye to the profits of merchandise, Greeks attracted by the reputation of the site and the glory of the great Isthmian games, flocked to the protection of the Roman colony. The classic antiquities found amid the débrisof the conflagration, and the successful imitations to which they led, were among the earliest branches of the trade of the town. Splendid buildings, enriched with ancient pillars of marble and porphyry, and adorned with gold and silver, soon began to rise side by side with the wretched huts of wood and straw which sheltered the mass of the poorer population.5 Commerce became more and more active. Objects of luxury soon found their way to the marts, which were visited by every nation of the civilised world—Arabian balsam, Egyptian papyrus, Phœnician dates, Libyan ivory, Babylonian carpets, Cilician goats–hair, Lycaonian wool, Phrygian slaves. With riches came superficial refinement and literary tastes. The life of the wealthier inhabitants was marked by self–indulgence and intellectual restlessness, and the mass of the people, even down to the slaves, were more or less affected by the prevailing tendency. Corinth was the Vanity Fair of the Roman Empire, at once the London and the Paris of the first century after Christ.
It was into the midst of this mongrel and heterogeneous population of Greek adventurers and Roman bourgeois, with a tainting infusion of Phœnicians—this mass of Jews, ex–soldiers, philosophers, merchants, sailors, freedmen,6 slaves, tradespeople, hucksters, and agents of every form of vice—a colony “without aristocracy, without traditions, without well–established citizens”—that the toilworn Jewish wanderer made his way. He entered it as he had entered Athens—a stricken and lonely worker; but here he was lost even more entirely in the low and careless crowd. Yet this was the city from which and to whose inhabitants he was to write those memorable letters which were to influence the latest history of the world. How little we understand what is going on around us! How little did the wealthy magnates of Corinth suspect that the main historic significance of their city during this epoch would be centred in the disputes conducted in a petty synagogue, and the thoughts written in a tent–maker’s cell by that bent and weary Jew, so solitary and so wretched, so stained with the dust of travel, so worn with the attacks of sickness and persecution! How true it is that the living world often knows nothing of its greatest men!
For when we turn to the Epistles to the Thessalonians and Corinthians, and trace the emotions which during this period agitated the mind of the Apostle, we find him still suffering from weakness7 and anxiety, from outward opposition and inward agonies. He reminds the Thessalonians that he had prepared them for his tribulations and their own, and speaks touchingly of the comfort which he had received from the news of their faith in the midst of his afflictions.8 Had he possessed the modern temperament he might often have been helped to peace and calm as he climbed the steep Acrocorinthus and gazed from its lofty summit on the two seas studded with the white sails of many lands, or watched the glow of sunset bathing in its soft lustre the widespread pageant of islands and mountains, and groves of cypress and pine. But all his interest lay in those crowded streets where his Lord had much people, and in the varied human surroundings of his daily life. How deeply he was impressed by these may be seen in the Corinthian Epistles. His illustrations are there chiefly drawn from Gentile customs—the wild–beast fights,9 which Athens would never admit while she had an Altar to Pity; the lovely stadium, in which he had looked with sympathy on the grace and strength and swiftness of many a youthful athlete; the race10 and the boxing–matches,11 the insulting vanity of Roman triumph,12 the long hair of effeminate dandies,13 the tribunal of the Proconsul,14 the shows of the theatre,15 the fading garland of Isthmian pine.16
But there was one characteristic of heathen life which would come home to him at Corinth with overwhelming force, and fill his pure soul with infinite pain. It was the gross immorality of a city conspicuous for its depravity even amid the depraved cities of a dying heathenism.17 Its very name had become a synonym for reckless debauchery. This abysmal profligacy of Corinth was due partly to the influx of sailors, who made it a trysting–place for the vices of every land, and partly to the vast numerical superiority of the slaves, of which, two centuries later, the city was said to contain many myriads.18 And so far from acting as a check upon this headlong immorality, religion had there taken under its immediate protection the very pollutions which it was its highest function to suppress. A thousand Hierodouloi were consecrated to the service of Impurity in the infamous Temple of Aphrodite Pandemos. The Lais of old days, whose tomb at Corinth had been marked by a sphinx with a human head between her claws, had many shameless and rapacious representatives. East and west mingled their dregs of foulness in the new Gomorrah of classic culture,19 and the orgies of the Paphian goddess were as notorious as those of Isis or of Asherah. It was from this city and amid its abandoned proletariate that the Apostle dictated his frightful sketch of Paganism.20 It was to the converts of this city that he addressed most frequently, and with most solemn warning and burning indignation, his stern prohibitions of sensual crime.21 It was to converts drawn from the reeking haunts of its slaves and artisans that he writes that they too had once been sunk in the lowest depths of sin and shame.22 It is of this city that we hear the sorrowful admission that in the world of heathendom a pure life and an honest life was a thing well–nigh unknown.23 All sins are bound together by subtle links of affinity. Impurity was by no means the only vice for which Corinth was notorious. It was a city of drunkards;24 it was a city of extortioners and cheats. But the worse the city, the deeper was the need for his labours, and the greater was the probability that many in it would be yearning for delivery from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
In such a place it was more than ever necessary that St. Paul should not only set an example absolutely blameless, but that he should even abstain from things which were perfectly admissible, if they should furnish a handle to the enemies of Christ. And therefore, lest these covetous shopkeepers and traders should be able to charge him with seeking his own gain, he determined to accept nothing at their hands. There seemed to be a fair chance that he would be able to earn his bread by tent–making in a port so universally frequented, In this respect he was unusually fortunate. He found a Jew of Pontus, named Aquila,25 who worked at this trade with his wife Priscilla. As nothing is said either of their baptism or their conversion, it is probable that they were already Christians, and Paul formed with them a lifelong friendship, to which he owed many happy hours. This excellent couple were at present living in Corinth in consequence of the decree of Claudius, expelling all Jews from Rome.26 Tyrannous as the measure was, it soon became a dead letter, and probably caused but little inconvenience to these exiles, because the nature of their trade seems to have made it desirable for them to move from place to place. At Corinth, as subsequently at Ephesus, Paul worked in their employ, and shared in their profits. Those profits, unhappily, were scanty. It was a time of general pressure, and though the Apostle toiled night and day, all his exertions were unable to keep the wolf from the door.27 He knew what it was to suffer, even from the pangs of hunger, but not even when he was thus starving would he accept assistance from his Achaian converts. He had come to an absolute determination that, while willing to receive necessary aid from churches which loved him, and which he loved, he would forego at Corinth the support which he considered to be the plain right of an Apostle, lest any should say that he too, like the mass of traffickers around him, did but seek his own gain.28 Contentedly, therefore—nay, even gladly, did he become a fellow–labourer with the worthy pair who were both compatriots and brethren; and even when he was working hardest, he could still be giving instruction to all who sought him. But now, as ever, the rest of the Sabbath furnished him with his chief opportunity. On that day he was always to be found in the Jewish synagogue, and his weekly discourses produced a deep impression both on Jews and Greeks.
But when the period of his solitude was ended by the arrival of Silas from Berœa, and Timotheus from Thessalonica, he was enabled to employ a yet more intense activity. Not only did he find their presence a support, but they also cheered him by favourable intelligence, and brought him a contribution from the Philippians,29 which alleviated his most pressing needs. Accordingly, their arrival was followed by a fresh outburst of missionary zeal, and he bore witness with a yet more impassioned earnestness to bis Master’s cause.30 At this period his preaching was mainly addressed to the Jews, and the one object of it was to prove from Scripture the Messiahship of Jesus.31 But with them he made no further progress. Crispus, indeed, the governor of the synagogue, bad been converted with all his house; and—perhaps during the absence of his companions—Paul abandoned his usual rule by baptising him with his own hands.32 But, as a body, the Jews met him with an opposition which at last found expression in the sort of language of which the Talmud furnishes some terrible specimens.33 No further object could be served by endeavouring to convince them, and at last he shook off the dust of his garments, and calling them to witness that he was innocent of their blood,34 he announced that from that day forth he should preach only to the Gentiles.
Already he had converted some Gentiles of humble and probably of slavish origin, the first among these being the household of Stephanas.35 With Crispus and these faithful converts, he migrated from the synagogue to a room close by, which was placed at his disposal by a proselyte of the name of Justus.36 In this room he continued to preach for many months. The entire numbers of the Corinthian converts were probably small—to be counted rather by scores than by hundreds. This is certain, because otherwise they could not have met in a single room in the small houses of the ancients, nor could they have been all present at common meals. The minute regulations about married women, widows, and virgins seem to show that the female element of the little congregation was large in proportion to the men, and it was even necessary to lay down the rule that women were not to teach or preach among them, though Priscilla and Phœbe had been conspicuous for their services.37 And yet, small as was the congregation, low as was the position of most of them, vile as had been the antecedents of some, the method and the topics of the Apostle’s preaching had been adopted with much anxiety. He was by no means at home among these eager, intellectual, disputatious, rhetoric–loving, sophisticated Greeks. They had none of the frank simplicity of his Thessalonians, none of the tender sympathy of his Philippians, none of the emotional susceptibility of his Galatian converts. They were more like the scoffing and self–satisfied Athenians. At Athens he had adopted a poetic and finished style, and it had almost wholly failed to make any deep impression. At Corinth, accordingly, he adopted a wholly different method. Ill and timid, and so nervous that he sometimes trembled while addressing them38— conscious that his bodily presence was mean in the judgment of these connoisseurs in beauty, and his speech contemptible in the estimation of these judges of eloquence39—thinking, too, that he had little in the way of earthly endowment, unless it were in his infirmities,40 he yet deliberately decided not to avoid, as he had done at Athens, the topic of the Cross.41 From Corinth he could see the snowy summits of Parnassus and Helicon; but he determined never again to adorn his teaching with poetic quotations or persuasive words of human wisdom,42 but to trust solely to the simple and unadorned grandeur of his message, and to the outpouring of the Spirit by which he was sure that it would be accompanied. There was, indeed, a wisdom in his words, but it was not the wisdom of this world, nor the kind of wisdom after which the Greeks sought. It was a spiritual wisdom of which he could merely reveal to them the elements—not strong meat for the perfect, but milk as for babes in Christ. He aimed at nothing but the clear, simple enunciation of the doctrine of Christ crucified.43 But what was lacking in formal syllogism or powerful declamation was more than supplied by power from on high. Paul had determined that, if converts were won, they should be won, not by human eloquence, but by Divine love. Nor was he disappointed in thus trusting in God alone. Amid all the sufferings which marked his stay among the Achaians, he appeals to their personal knowledge that, whatever they may have thought or said among themselves about the weakness of his words, they could not at least deny the “signs, and wonders, and powers”44 which, by the aid of the Spirit, were conspicuous in his acts. They must have recalled many a scene in which, under the humble roof of Justus, the fountains of the great deep of religious feeling were broken up, the strange accents of “the tongues” echoed through the thrilled assembly, and deeds were wrought which showed to that little gathering of believers that a Power higher than that of man was visibly at work to convince and comfort them. And thus many Corinthians— the Gentiles largely exceeding the Jews in number—were admitted by baptism into the Church.45 The majority of them were of the lowest rank, yet they could number among them some of the wealthier inhabitants, such as Gaius, and perhaps Chloe, and even Erastus, the chamberlain of the city. Nor was it in Corinth only that Christians began to be converted. Paul, like Wesley, “regarded all the world as his parish,” and it is little likely that his restless zeal would have made him stay for nearly two years within the city walls. We know that there was a church at Cenchreæ, whose deaconess afterwards “carried under the folds of her robe the whole future of Christian theology;”46 and saints were scattered in small communities throughout all Achaia.47
And yet, though God was thus giving the increase, it must have required no small courage in such a city to preach such a doctrine, and the very vicinity of the synagogue to the house of Justus must have caused frequent and painful collisions between the Jews and the little Christian community. Among all the sorrows to which St. Paul alludes whenever he refers to this long stay at Corinth, there is none that finds more bitter expression than his complaint of his fellow–countrymen. He speaks of them to the Thessalonians in words of unusual exasperation, saying that they pleased not God, and were contrary to all men, and that by their attempts to hinder the preaching to the Gentiles of the Christ whom they had murdered, they had now filled up the measure of their sins.48 The rupture was open and decisive. If they had excommunicated him, and he was filled with such anger and despair when he thought of them, it is certain that the struggle between them must have been a constant source of anxiety and peril. This might even have ended in Paul’s withdrawal to new fields of labour in utter despondency but for the support which again, as often at his utmost need, he received from a heavenly vision. The Lord whom he had seen on the road to Damascus appeared to him at night, and said to him: “Fear not, but speak, and hold not thy peace; for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee; for I have much people in this city.”
But at last the contest between the Jews and the Christians came to a head. The Proconsul of Achaia49 ended his term of office, and the Proconsul appointed by the emperor was Marcus Annæus Novatus, who, having been adopted by the friendly rhetorician Lucius Junius Gallio, had taken the name of Lucius Junius Annæus Gallio, by which he is generally known. Very different was the estimate of Gallio by his contemporaries from the mistaken one which has made his name proverbial for indifferentism in the Christian world. To the friends among whom he habitually moved he was the most genial, the most loveable of men. The brother of Seneca, and the uncle of Lucan, he was the most universally popular member of that distinguished family. He was pre–eminently endowed with that light and sweetness which are signs of the utmost refinement, and “the sweet Gallio” is the epithet by which he alone of the ancients is constantly designated.50 “No mortal man is so sweet to any single person as he is to all mankind,”51 wrote Seneca of him. “Even those who love my brother Gallio to the very utmost of their power yet do not love him enough,”52 he says in another place. He was the very flower of pagan courtesy and pagan culture—a Roman with all a Roman’s dignity53 and seriousness, and yet with all the grace and versatility of a polished Greek.54
Such was the man on whose decision the fortunes of Paul were to depend. Whoever the former Proconsul had been, he had not been one with whom the Jews could venture to trifle, nor had they once attempted to get rid of their opponent by handing him over to the secular arm. But now that a new Proconsul had arrived, who was perhaps unfamiliar with the duties of his office, and whose desire for popularity at the beginning of his government might have made him complaisant to prosperous Jews, they thought that they could with impunity excite a tumult. They rose in a body, seized Paul, and dragged him before the tesselated pavement on which was set the curule chair of the Proconsul. It was evident that they had presumed on his probable inexperience, and on his reputation for mildness; and, with all the turbulent clamour of their race, they charged Paul with “persuading men to worship God contrary to the Law.” Though Claudius had expelled them from Rome, their religion was a religio licita—i.e., it was licensed by the State; but the religion of “this fellow,” they urged, though it might pass itself off under the name of Judaism, was not Judaism at all—it was a spurious counterfeit of Judaism, which had become a religioillicitaby running counter to its Mosaic Law.55 Such was the charge urged by a hubbub of voices, and, as soon as it had become intelligible, Paul was on the point of making his defence. But Gallio was not going to trouble himself by listening to any defence. He took no notice whatever of Paul, and, disregarding him as completely as though he had been non–existent, replied to the Jews by a contemptuous dismissal of them and their charge. With a thorough knowledge of, and respect for, the established laws, but with a genuinely Roman indifference for conciliatory language, and a more than Roman haughtiness of demeanour towards a people whom, like his brother, he probably despised and detested, he stopped the proceedings with the remark that their accusation against St. Paul, as a violator of any law, Mosaic or otherwise, which he could recognise, was utterly baseless. “Had this been a matter of civil wrong or moral outrage56 it would have been but right for me to put up with you, and listen to these charges of yours; but if it be a number of questions57 about an opinion, and about mere names, and yourlaw, see to it yourselves; for a judge of these matters I do not choose to be.” Having thus, as we should say, quashed the indictment, “my Lord Gallio” ordered his lictors to clear the court. We may be sure they made short work of ejecting the frustrated but muttering mob, on whose disappointed malignity, if his countenance at all reflected the feelings expressed by his words, he must have been looking down from his lofty tribunal with undisguised contempt.58 It took the Romans nearly two centuries to learn that Christianity was something infinitely more important than the Jewish sect which they mistook it to be. It would have been better for them and for the world if they had tried to get rid of this disdain, and to learn wherein lay the secret power of a religion which they could neither eradicate nor suppress. But while we regret this unphilosophic disregard, let us at least do justice to Roman impartiality. In Gallio, in Lysias, in Felix, in Festus, in the centurion Julius, even in Pilate,59 different as were their degrees of rectitude, we cannot but admire the trained judicial insight with which they at once saw through the subterranean injustice and virulent animosity of the Jews in bringing false charges against innocent men. Deep as was his ignorance of the issues which were at stake, the conduct of Gallio was in accordance with the strictest justice when “he drave them from his judgment–seat.”
But the scene did not end here. The volatile Greeks,60 though they had not dared to interfere until the decision of the Proconsul had been announced, were now keenly delighted to see how completely the malice of the Jews had been foiled; and since the highest authority had pronounced the charge against St. Paul to be frivolous, they seized the opportunity of executing a little Lynch law. The ringleader of the Jewish faction had been a certain Sosthenes, who may have succeeded Crispus in the function of Ruler of the Synagogue, and whose zeal may have been all the more violently stimulated by the defection of his predecessor.61 Whether the Corinthians knew that St. Paul was a Roman citizen or not, they must at least have been aware that he had separated from the synagogue, and that many Gentiles espoused his views. They thought it intolerable that Jews should try to trump up charges against one who in some measure belonged to themselves. The opportunity to show these Jews what they thought of them, and give them a lesson as to the way in which they should behave in the future, was too tempting. Accordingly they seized Sosthenes, and gave him a beating in the actual basilica in front of the tribunal, and under the very eyes of the Proconsul. An ancient gloss says that he pretended not to see what they were doing,62 but the text implies that he looked on at the entire proceeding with unfeigned indifference. So long as they were not guilty of any serious infraction of the peace, it was nothing to him how they amused themselves. He had been familiar with similar disturbances in Rome. The Jews were everywhere a turbulent, fanatical race. What was it to him if the Greek gaminsliked to inflict a little richly–deserved castigation? It would be so much the better if they taught this Sosthenes and any number more of these Jews a severe lesson. They would be more likely (he thought) to keep order in future, and less likely to trouble him again with their meanness and their malevolence, their riots and their rancours.63
There is one thing that we cannot but deeply regret. It is that Gallio’s impatient sense of justice has deprived us of another speech by St. Paul which, delivered under such circumstances, and before such a judge, would have been of the deepest interest. But Gallio dismissed the whole scene from his mind as supremely unimportant. Had he ever thought it worth alluding to, in any letter to his brother Seneca, it would have been in some such terms as these:— “I had scarcely arrived when the Jews tried to play on my inexperience by dragging before me one Paulus, who seems to be an adherent of Chrestus, or Christus, of whom we heard something at Rome. I was not going to be troubled with their malefic superstitions, and ordered them to be turned out. The Greeks accordingly, who were favourable to Paulus, beat one of the Jews in revenge for their malice. You would have smiled, if you had been present, at these follies of the turba forensis. Sed haec hactenus.”
But the superficiality which judges only by externals always brings its own retribution. It adores the mortal and scorns the divinity; it welcomes the impostor and turns the angel from its door. It forms its judgment on trivial accidents, and ignores eternal realities. The haughty, distinguished, and cultivated Gallio, brother of Seneca, Proconsul of Achaia, the most popular man and the most eminent littérateur of his day, would have been to the last degree amazed had any–one told him that so paltry an occurrence would be for ever recorded in history; that it would be the only scene in his life in which posterity would feel a moment’s interest; that he would owe to it any immortality he possesses; that he would for all time be mainly judged of by the glimpse we get of him on that particular morning; that he had flung away the greatest opportunity of his life when he closed the lips of the haggard Jewish prisoner whom his decision rescued from the clutches of his countrymen; that a correspondence between that Jew Shaûl, or Paulus, and his great brother Seneca, would be forged and would go down to posterity;64 that it would be believed for centuries that that wretched prisoner had converted the splendid philosopher to his own “execrable superstition,” and that Seneca had borrowed from him the finest sentiments of his writings; that for all future ages that bent, ophthalmic, nervous, unknown Jew, against whom all other Jews seemed for some inconceivably foolish reason to be so infuriated, would be regarded as transcendently more important than his deified Emperors and immortal Stoics; that the “parcel of questions” about a mere opinion, and names, and a matter of Jewish law, which he had so disdainfully refused to hear, should hereafter become the most prominent of all questions to the whole civilised world.
And Paul may have suspected many of these facts as little as “the sweet Gallio” did. Sick at heart with this fresh outrage, and perhaps musing sadly on the utterance of his Master that He came not to send peace on earth but a sword, he made his way back from the Bema of the great Proconsul to the little congregation in the room of Justus, or to his lodging in the squalid shop of Aquila and Priscilla.