“Ergo latet ultimus dies ut observentur omnes dies.”— AUG.
AT some period during his stay in Corinth, and probably before his arrest by the Jews early in the year 53, or at the close of A.D. 52, an event had taken place of immense significance in the life of the Apostle and in the history of the Christian faith. He had written to the Thessalonians a letter which may possibly have been the first he wrote to any Christian church,1 and which certainly is the earliest of those that have come down to us. He had begun, therefore, that new form of activity which has produced effects so memorable to all generations of the Christian world.
We have already seen that Paul had left Timotheus in Macedonia, had been joined by him in Athens, and had once more parted from him, though with deep reluctance and at great self–sacrifice, because his heart yearned for his Thessalonian converts, and he had been twice prevented from carrying out his earnest desire to visit them once more. After doing all that he could to comfort and support them in their many trials, Timotheus had returned, in company with Silas, to Corinth, and doubtless there the Apostle had talked with them long and earnestly about the friends and brethren who had been won to Christ in the Macedonian city. There was deep cause for thankfulness in their general condition, but there was some need for advice and consolation. Paul could not send Timothy again. There was other work to be done. Other Churches required his own personal services. Nor could he spare the companions of his toils in the midst of a city which demanded his whole energy and strength. But since he could neither come to the Thessalonians himself, nor send them back his truest and dearest fellow–workers, he would at least write to them, and let his letter supply, as far as possible, the void created by his absence. It was a very happy Providence which inspired him with this thought. It would come quite naturally to him, because it had been a custom in all ages for Jewish communities to correspond with each other by means of travelling deputations, and because the prodigious development of intercourse between the chief cities of Italy, Greece, and Asia rendered it easy to send one or other of the brethren as the bearer of his missives. And epistolary correspondence was the very form which was of all others the best adapted to the Apostle’s individuality. It suited the impetuosity of emotion which could not have been fettered down to the composition of formal treatises. It could be taken up or dropped according to the necessities of the occasion or the feelings of the writer. It permitted of a freedom of expression which was far more intense and far more natural to the Apostle than the regular syllogisms and rounded periods of a book. It admitted something of the tenderness and something of the familiarity of personal intercourse. Into no other literary form could he have infused that intensity which made a Christian scholar truly say of him that he alone of writers seems to have written, not with fingers and pen and ink, but with his very heart, his very feelings, the unbared palpitations of his inmost being;2 which made Jerome say that in his writings the words were all so many thunders;3 which made Luther say that his expressions were like living creatures with hands and feet. The theological importance of this consideration is immense, and has, to the deep injury of the Church, been too much neglected. Theologians have treated the language of St. Paul as though he wrote every word with the accuracy of a dialectician, with the scrupulous precision of a school–man, with the rigid formality of a philosophic dogmatist. His Epistles as a whole, with their insoluble antinomies, resist this impossible and injurious method of dealing with them as absolutely as does the Sermon on the Mount. The epistolary form is eminently spontaneous, personal, flexible, emotional. A dictated epistle is like a conversation taken down in shorthand. In one word, it best enabled Paul to be himself, and to recall most vividly to the minds of his spiritual children the tender, suffering, inspired, desponding, terrible, impassioned, humble, uncompromising teacher, who had first won them to become imitators4 of himself and of the Lord, and to turn from hollow ritualisms or dead idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivereth us from the coming wrath.
And one cause of this vivid freshness of style which he imparted to his Epistles was the fact that they were, with few if any exceptions, not deeply premeditated, not scholastically regular, but that they came fresh and burning from the heart in all the passionate sincerity of its most immediate feelings. He would even write a letter in the glow of excited feeling, and then wait with intense anxiety for news of the manner of its reception, half regretting, or more than half regretting, that he had ever sent it.5 Had he written more formally he would never have moved as he has moved the heart of the world. Take away from the Epistles of St. Paul the traces of passion, the invective, the yearning affection, the wrathful denunciation, the bitter sarcasm, the distressful boasting, the rapid interrogatives, the affectionate entreaties, the frank colloquialisms, the personal details—those marks of his own personality on every page which have been ignorantly and absurdly characterised as intense egotism—and they would never have been, as they are, next to the Psalms of David, the dearest treasures of Christian devotion;—next to the four Gospels the most cherished text–books of Christian faith. We cannot but love a man whose absolute sincerity enables us to feel the very beatings of his heart; who knows not how to wear that mask of reticence and Pharisaism which enables others to use speech only to conceal their thoughts; who, if he smites under the fifth rib, will smite openly and without a deceitful kiss; who has fair blows but no precious balms that break the head; who has the feelings of a man, the language of a man, the love, the hate, the scorn, the indignation of a man; who is no envious cynic, no calumnious detractor, no ingenious polisher of plausible hypocrisies, no mechanical repeater of worn–out shibboleths, but who will, if need be, seize his pen with a burst of tears to speak out the very thing he thinks;6 who, in the accents of utter truthfulness alike to friend and to enemy, can argue, and denounce, and expose, and plead, and pity, and forgive; to whose triumphant faith and transcendent influence has been due in no small measure that fearless and glad enthusiasm which pervaded the life of the early Church.
And thus, when Timothy had told him all that he had observed among the brethren of Thessalonica, we may feel quite sure that, while his heart was full of fresh solicitude, he would write to guide and comfort them,7 and that many days would not elapse before he had dictated the opening words:—
“Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus to the Church8 of the Thessalonians in God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you, and peace [from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ9].”
This opening address is in itself an interesting illustration of St. Paul’s character. Though his letters are absolutely his own, yet with that shrinking from personal prominence which we often trace in him, he associates with himself in the introduction not only the dignified Silas,10 but even the youthful Timothy;11 and in these his earlier, though not in his later Epistles, constantly uses “we” for “I.” By “we” he does not mean to imply that the words are conjointly those of his two fellow–labourers, since he adopts the expression even when he can only be speaking of his individual self;12 but he is actuated by that sort of modesty, traceable in the language and literature of all nations, which dislikes the needlessly frequent prominence of the first personal pronoun.13 In his letters to all other Churches, except to the Philippians, to whom the designation was needless, he calls himself Paul an Apostle, but he does not use the title directly14 to the Thessalonians, because his claim to it in its more special sense had not yet been challenged by insidious Judaisers.15 In his five earlier Epistles he always addresses “the Church;” in his later Epistles “the Saints,” and the reason for this is not clear;16 but to all Churches alike he repeats this opening salutation, “Grace and peace.”17 It is a beautiful and remarkable blending of the salutations of the Jew and the Greek, the East and the West, with their predominant ideals of calm and brightness. The solemn greeting of the Jew was SHALÔM, “Peace be to you;” the lighter greeting of the Greek was χαίρειν, “Rejoice;” the Church of Christ—possessed of a joy that defied tribulation, heir to a Peace that passeth understanding—not only combined the two salutations, but infused into both a deeper and more spiritual significance.18
After this salutation19 he opens his letter with that expression of thankfulness on their behalf which he addresses even to the Corinthians, whose deeds were so sad a contrast to their ideal title of saints, and which is never wanting, except in the burning letter to the apostatising Galatians. So invariable is this characteristic of his mind and style that it has acquired a technical description, and German writers call it the Danksagung of the Epistles.20 It was no mere insincere compliment or rhetorical artifice. Those to whom he wrote, however much they might sink below their true ideal, were still converts, were a Church, were saints, were brethren. There might be weak, there might be false, there might be sinful members among them, but as a body they were washed and sanctified and justified, and the life of even those who were unworthy of their high vocation yet presented a favourable contrast to the lives of the heathen around them. But the expression of thankfulness on behalf of the Thessalonians is peculiarly full and earnest. It is an overflow of heartfelt gratitude, as indeed the special characteristic of the letter is its sweetness.21 St. Paul tells them that he is always giving thanks to God for them all, mentioning them in his prayers, filled with the ever–present memory of the activity of their faith, the energy of their love, the patience of their hope.22 He reminds them of the power and fulness and spiritual unction which had accompanied his preaching of the Gospel, and how they had become23 imitators24 of him and of Christ with such spiritual gladness in the midst of such deep affliction25 that they had become models to all the Churches of Northern and Southern Greece, and their faith had been as a trumpet–blast26 through all the Mediterranean coasts. So universally was their belief in God known and spread abroad, that there was no need for St. Paul or his companions to tell how they had worked at Thessalonica, because every one had heard of their conversion from idolatry to belief in the very and living God,27 and to the waiting for the return of that risen Saviour who delivereth us from the coming wrath.28
He appeals to them, therefore, as to unimpeachable witnesses of the earnestness of his visit to them, and of the boldness with which he had faced the dangers of Thessalonica, after such recent and painful experience of the outrages of Philippi. It has been evident, even through these opening sentences of thanksgiving, that there is in his words an undercurrent of allusion to some who would, if they could, have given a very different account of his conduct and motives.29 These appeals to their knowledge of the life and character and behaviour of Paul and his two fellow–missionaries would have been needless if they had never been impugned. But it is easy to understand that alike the Jews in their eagerness to win back the few members of the synagogue who had joined the brethren, and the Gentiles vexed at the silent rebuke against their own sins, would whisper calumnies about the new teachers, and try to infuse into others their own suspicions. The cities of that age swarmed with every kind and denomination of quack and impostor. Might not these three poor Jews—that silent and dignified elder, the shy, gentle youth, and the short enthusiast of mean aspect—might they not be only a new variety of the genus goês—like the wandering Galli and worshippers of Isis, or Chaldaei, or Mathematici, or priests of Mithras?30 Were they not a somewhat suspicious–looking trio? What was their secret object? Was it with sinister motives that they gathered into their communities these widows and maidens? Were they not surreptitiously trying to get hold of money? or might it not be their own exaltation at which they were aiming?—Now there were some charges and attacks which, in after days, as we shall see, filled Paul with bitter indignation; but insinuations of this nature he can afford to answer very calmly. Such calumnies were too preposterous to be harmful; such innuendos too malevolent to be believed. In order to disprove them he had but to appeal at once to notorious facts; and, indeed, no elaborate disproof was needed, for his Thessalonian friends knew, and God was witness,31 that there had been no deceit, no uncleanness, no base motives, no secret avarice, no desire to win favour, no fawning flattery in the exhortations of the missionaries. They had come, not for selfishness, but for sacrifice; not for glory, but to pour out their hearts’ tenderness, and spend their very lives for the sake of their converts,32 cherishing them as tenderly33 as a nursing mother fosters her children in her warm bosom,34 yet waiving their own rights, and taking nothing whatever from them, nor laying the smallest burden upon them.35 The brethren knew that while they were preaching they regarded their mission as a glorious privilege;36 and because their one desire was to please God, they endured and laboured37 night and day38 to win their own bread, setting blameless examples of holiness towards God, and righteousness towards men, and all the while exhorting their followers one by one39 to live lives worthy of God and of the kingdom of His Christ.40
And this was why, thank God, the Thessalonians had accepted their preaching for what it was—a divine and not a human message; and had borne suffering at the hands of their Gentile neighbours with the same exemplary courage as the Churches of Judæa, who in like manner had been persecuted by the Jews. And here Paul, as he so constantly does, “goesoffataword.” The mere incidental mention of Jews makes him digress to denounce them, writing as he did in the very heat of those conflicts which ended in his indignant withdrawal from their synagogue at Corinth, and recalling the manner in which these murderers of the Lord and of the Prophets,41 displeasing42 to God and the common enemies of man,43 chased him from city to city, and tried to prevent his mission to the Gentiles. And it is thus, he says, that they are always filling up the measure of guilt, and the wrath came upon them to the end—potentially overtook them—in that sudden consummation of their sins. Their very sin, he seems to say, in hindering the proclamation of the Gospel, was itself their punishment; their wrath against Christ was God’s wrath against them; their dementation would be, and was, their doom.44
And having been thus diverted by his feeling of indignation against them from the topic of self–defence— on which, indeed, nothing more was necessary to be said— he goes on to tell them that regarding them as his glory and joy and crown of boasting45 at the coming of Christ—feeling, in his absence from them, like a father bereaved of his children46—he had twice purposed to come to them, and had twice been hindered by Satan.47 He had, however, done the next best thing he could. He had parted from Timothy in Athens, and sent him to prevent them from succumbing48 to those fierce afflictions, of the certainty of which they had been faithfully forewarned; and to ascertain their faith, as shown by the dubious result of too definite temptations.49 When Timothy rejoined him at Corinth, the news which he had brought back was so reassuring—he was able to give so good an account of their faith, and love, and steadfastness, and affection—that it had cheered the Apostle in the midst of his own heavy afflictions, and been to him like a fresh spring of life. No thanks to God could be too hearty for this blessing, and it added intensity to his prayer that God would yet enable him to come and see them, and to perfect all deficiencies of their faith. He concludes this historic or personal section of his Epistle with the fervent prayer that God would deepen the spirit of love which already prevailed among them, and so enable them to stand before Him in blameless holiness at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.50
From these earnest and loving messages he turns to the practical part of his letter. He beseeches51 and exhorts them not to be stationary, but to advance more and more in that Christian course which he had marked out for them. And then he enters on those special injunctions which he knew to be most needful. First and foremost he puts the high virtue of purity. These converts had but recently been called out of a heathenism which looked very lightly on the sins of the flesh. The mastery over lifelong habits of corruption was not to be won in a day. They were still in danger of relapsing into sensual crime. It was necessary to remind them that, however small might be the censure which Gentiles attached to fornication,52 and even to yet darker and deadlier sins,53 they were in direct opposition to the command, and would immediately deserve the retribution of that God whose will was their sanctification, and who laid on them the duty, however difficult, of acquiring a secure and tranquil mastery over their body and its lusts.54 If then any one among them professed to despise these precepts as though they were merely those of the Apostle, he must now be reminded that he was thereby despising, not any human teacher, but God, who called them, not for uncleanliness, but in sanctification,55 and by giving them His Holy Spirit, not only deepened the duty, but also inspired them with the power to sanctify His Temple in their hearts.56
The next Christian virtue of which he speaks is brotherly love. He feels it unnecessary to do so,57 for God Himself had taught them both to recognise that duty and to put it in practice, not only towards the members of their own church, but towards all Macedonian Christians (vs. 9, 10).
Further, they should make it their ambition to be quiet,58 working with their own hands,59 and not to meddle with others, and not to rely on the assistance of others, but to present to the outer world a spectacle of honourable and active independence (vs. 11, 12).
And now, by these moral exhortations, by thus recalling them from over–eschatological excitement to the quiet fulfilment of the personal duties which lay nearest at hand, he has prepared the way for the removal of a serious doubt which had troubled some of them. Since he left them there had been deaths in the little community, and these deaths had been regarded by some of the survivors with a peculiar despondency. They had been taught again and again to hope for, to look unto, the coming of Christ. That blessed Presence was to be for them the solution of all perplexities, the righting of all wrongs, the consolation for all sufferings. What the hopes of the birth of the Messiah had been to the Jew, that the hope of His return with all His saints was to the early Christian. And it was natural that such a topic should be prominent in the addresses to a church which, from its very foundation, had been, and for years continued to be, peculiarly afflicted.60 What, then, was to be said about those who had died, and therefore had not seen the promise of Christ’s coming? What could be said of those whose life had ended like the common life of men—no wrongs righted, no miseries consoled? Had not they been beguiled of their promise, disappointed in their hope, deceived, even, as to the event on which they had fixed their faith? And if they, why not others? If the dead were thus frustrated in their expectation, why might not the living be? St. Paul has already given them the advice which would prevent them from brooding too much on that one uncertain moment of Christ’s coming. He has bidden them be pure, and loving, and diligent, and live their daily lives in simple honour and faithfulness. He would have eminently approved the quiet good sense of that president of the Puritan assembly, who, when a dense darkness came on, and some one proposed that they should adjourn because it might be the beginning of the Day of Judgment, proposed rather that candles should be lighted, because if it wasto be the Day of Judgment, they could not be found better employed than in the quiet transaction of duty. But Paul does not leave his converts in their perplexity about their departed friends. He tells them, in words which have comforted millions of mourners since, not to sorrow as those that have no hope,61 for that “if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which had been laid asleep by Jesus will God bring with Him.”62 He even enters into details. He tells them “by the word of the Lord”63 that death would practically make no difference whatever between the living and the dead, for that in the tremendous “NOW” of the Day of Judgment64 the Lord Himself should descend from heaven with a cry of summons, with the voice of the archangel,65 and with the trump of God,66 and that then the dead in Christ should rise first, and we who are alive and remain67 be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so be for ever with Him. “Wherefore,” he says, “comfort one another with these words.”68
But when should this be?—after what period, at what critical moment?69 That was a question which he need not answer, because they themselves knew precisely70 the only answer which could be given, which was that the day of the Lord should come as a thief in the night, overwhelming those that chose darkness with sudden destruction. But theywere not of the darkness, but children of light; so that, however suddenly it came, that day could not find them unprepared.71 For which purpose let them be sober and vigilant, like soldiers, armed with faith and love for a breastplate, and the hope of salvation for a helmet;72 since God had not appointed them for wrath, but to obtain salvation through Him who had died in order that they, whether in life or in death, might live with Him for ever.73 The Thessalonians are bidden to continue edifying and comforting one another with these words. Did none of them ask, “But what will become of the Jews? of the heathen? of the sinners and backsliders among ourselves?” Possibly they did. But here, and in the Romans, and in the Corinthians, St. Paul either did not anticipate such questions, or refused to answer them. Perhaps he had heard the admirable Hebrew apophthegm, “Learn to say, ‘I donotknow.’” This at least is certain, that with him the idea of the resurrection is so closely connected with that of faith, and hope, and moral regeneration, that when he speaks of it he will speak of it mainly, indeed all but exclusively, in connection with the resurrection of the saints.74
To the thoughts suggested by St. Paul’s treatment of this weighty topic we shall revert immediately. He ends the epistle with moral exhortations—all, doubtless, suggested by the needs of the Church—of extraordinary freshness, force, and beauty. There were traces of insubordination among them, and he bids them duly respect and love, for their work’s sake, the spiritual labourers and leaders of their community,75 and to be at peace among themselves. He further tells them—perhaps in these last verses especially addressing the presbyters—to warn those unruly brethren who would not obey. There was despondency at work among them, and he bids them “comfort the feeble–minded, take the weak by the hand, be patient towards all men.” They were to avoid all retaliations, and seek after all kindness76 (vs. 12–15). Then follow little arrow–flights of inestimably precious exhortation. Was depression stealing into their hearts? Let them meet it by remembering that God’s will for them in Christ Jesus was perpetual joy, unceasing prayer, universal thanksgiving. Had there been any collisions of practice, and differences of opinion, among the excited enthusiasts whose absorption in the expected return of Christ left them neither energy nor wish to do their daily duties, while it made them also set very little store by the calmer utterances of moral exhortation? Then, besides the exhortation to peace, and the noble general rule to avoid every kind of evil,77 he warns them that they should neither quench the Spirit nor despise prophesyings—that is, neither to stifle an impassioned inspiration nor to undervalue a calm address78—but to test all that was said to them, and hold fast what was good.79
Then, once more, with the affirmation that God’s faithfulness would grant the prayer, he prays that God would sanctify them wholly, and preserve their bodies, their wills and affections, their inmost souls,80 blamelessly till that coming of the Lord to which he has so often alluded. He asks their prayers for himself; bids them salute all the brethren with a holy kiss;81 adjures them by the Lord82 that his letter be read to the entire community; and so concludes with his usual ending, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.”83 These last three verses were probably written in his own hand.
It may easily be imagined with what rapture the arrival of such a letter would be hailed by a young, persecuted, and perplexed community; how many griefs it would console; how many doubts it would resolve; how much joy, and hope, and fresh enthusiasm it would inspire. It could not but have been delightful in any case to be comforted amid the storm of outward opposition, and to be inspirited amid the misgivings of inward faithlessness, by the words of the beloved teacher whose gospel had changed the whole current of their lives. It was much to feel that, though absent from them in person, he was present with them in heart,84 praying for them, yearning over them, himself cheered by the tidings of their constancy; but it was even more to receive words which would tend to heal the incipient disagreements of that small and loving, but inexperienced, and as yet but half–organised community, and to hear the divinely authoritative teaching which silenced their worst fears. And further than this, if the words of St. Paul shine so brightly to us through the indurated dust of our long familiarity, how must they have sparkled for them in their fresh originality, and with heaven’s own light shining on those oracular gems! “Having received the word inmuchafflictionwithjoyoftheHolyGhost;”—that was no mere artificial oxymoron, but an utterance which came from a new world, of which they were the happy lords. “Jesus which delivereth us from the coming wrath;”85 “God who called you unto His kingdom and glory;”86 “This is the will of God, even your sanctification;”87 “So shall we ever be with the Lord;”88 “Ye are all the children of the light and the children of the day;”89 “See that none render evil for evil unto any;”90 “Rejoice evermore.”91 What illimitable hopes, what holy obligations, what golden promises, what glorious responsibilities, what lofty ideals, what reaches of morality beyond any which their greatest writers had attained, what strange renovation of the whole spirit and meaning of life, lay hidden for them in those simple words!92 The brief Epistle brought home to them the glad truth that they could use, for their daily wear, that glory of thought which had only been attained by the fewest and greatest spirits of their nation at their rarest moments of inspiration; and therewith that grandeur of life which, in its perfect innocence towards God and man, was even to these unknown.
It is a remarkable fact that in this Epistle St. Paul alludes no less than four times to the coming of Christ, and uses, to describe it, the word parousia—“presence”—which also occurs in this sense in the second Epistle,93 but in only one other passage of all his other Epistles.94 Whether, after the erroneous conclusions which the Thessalonians drew from this letter, and the injurious effects which this incessant prominence of eschatology produced in their characters, he subsequently made it a less salient feature of his own teaching, we cannot tell. Certain, however, it is that the misinterpretation of his first letter, and the reprehensible excitement and restlessness which that misinterpretation produced,95 necessitated the writing of a second very shortly after he had received tidings of these results.96 It is equally certain that, from this time forward, the visible personal return of Christ and the nearness of the end, which are the predominant topics in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, sink into a far more subordinate topic of reference; and that, although St. Paul’s language in the letter was misunderstood, yet the misunderstanding was not a wilful but a perfectly natural one; and that in his later letters he anticipates his own death, rather than the second Advent, as his mode of meeting Christ. The divine and steady light of history first made clear to the Church that our Lord’s prophetic warnings as to His return applied primarily to the close of the Jewish dispensation, and the winding up of all the past, and the inauguration of the last great aeon of God’s dealings with mankind.