Διδακτικὸν, ἀνεξίκακον.—2 Tim. 2:24.
ST. LUKE passes over with the extremest brevity the second sojourn of St. Paul in Macedonia. The reason for his silence may have been that the period was not marked by any special events sufficiently prominent to find room in his pages. It was no part of his plan to dwell on the sources of inward sorrow which weighed so heavily upon the mind of St. Paul, or to detail the afflictions which formed the very groundwork of his ordinary life. It was the experience of St. Paul, more perhaps than that of any man who has ever lived—even if we select those who have made their lives a sacrifice to some great cause of God—that life was a tissue of minor trials, diversified by greater and heavier ones. But St. Luke—not to speak of the special purposes which seem to have guided his sketch—only gives us full accounts of the events which he personally witnessed,1 or of those which he regarded of capital importance, and about which he could obtain information which he knew to be trustworthy. It is one of the many indications of the scantiness of his biography that he does not even once mention a partner and fellow–worker of St. Paul so dear to him, so able, so energetic, and so deeply trusted as the Greek Titus, of whose activity and enthusiasm the Apostle made so much use in furthering the Offertory, and in the yet more delicate task of dealing with the Christian Corinthians at this most unsatisfactory crisis of their troubled history.
St. Luke accordingly, passing over the distress of mind and the outward persecution which St. Paul tells us he had at this time encountered, says nothing about the many agitations of which we are able from the Epistles to supply the outline. All that he tells us is that Paul passed through these regions, and encouraged them with much exhortation. He does not even mention the interesting circumstance that having preached during his second journey at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berœa, the capitals respectively of Macedonia Prima, Secunda, and Tertia, he now utilised the intentional postponement of his visit to Corinth by going through Macedonia Quarta as far as Illyricum. Whether he only went to the borders of Illyricum, or whether he entered it and reached as far as Dyrrachium, and even as Nicopolis, and whether by Illyricum is meant the Greek district or the Roman province2 that went by that name, we cannot tell; but at any rate St. Paul mentions this country as marking the circumference of the outermost circle of those missionary journeys of which Jerusalem was the centre.
That the Offertory greatly occupied his time and thoughts is clear from his own repeated allusions, and the prominence which he gives to this subject in the Epistles to the Corinthians. It must have been one of his trials to be perpetually pleading for pecuniary contributions, among little bodies of converts of whom the majority were not only plunged in poverty, but who had already made the most conspicuous sacrifices on behalf of their Christian faith. It was clear to him that this fact would be unscrupulously used as a handle against him. However careful and businesslike his arrangements might be—however strongly he might insist on having no personal share in the distribution, or even the treasurership of these funds— persons would not be wanting to whisper the base insinuation that Paul found his own account in them by means of accomplices, and that even the laborious diligence with which he worked day and night at his trade, and failed even thus to ward off the pains of want, was only the cloak for a deep–laid scheme of avarice and self–aggrandisement. It was still worse when these charges came from the emissaries of the very Church for the sake of whose poor he was facing this disagreeable work of begging.3 But never was there any man in this world—however innocent, however saintly—who has escaped malice and slander; indeed, the virulence of this malice and the persistency of this slander are often proportionate to the courage wherewith he confronts the baseness of the world. St. Paul did not profess to be indifferent to these stings of hatred and calumny; he made no secret of the agony which they caused him. He was, on the contrary, acutely sensible of their gross injustice, and of the hindrance which they caused to the great work of his life; and the irony and passion with which, on fitting occasions, he rebuts them is a measure of the suffering which they caused. But, as a rule, he left them unnoticed, and forgave those by whom they were perpetrated:—
“Assailed by slander and the tongue of strife,
His only answer was a blameless life;
And he that forged and he that flung the dart,
Had each a brother’s interest in his heart.”
For he was not the man to neglect a duty because it was disagreeable, or because his motives in undertaking it might be misinterpreted. And the motives by which he was actuated in this matter were peculiarly sacred. In the first place, the leading Apostles at Jerusalem had bound him by a special promise to take care of their poor, almost as a part of the hard–wrung compact by which their Church had consented to waive, in the case of Gentile converts, the full acceptance of legal obligations. In the second place, the need really existed, and was even urgent; and it was entirely in consonance with St. Paul’s own feelings to give them practical proof of that brotherly love which he regarded as the loftiest of Christian virtues. Then, further, in his early days, his ignorant zeal had inflicted on the Church of Jerusalem a deadly injury, and he would fain show the sincerity and agony of his repentance by doing all he could, again and again, to repair it. Lastly, he had a hope— sometimes strong and sometimes weak—that so striking a proof of disinterested generosity on the part of the Gentile Churches which he had founded would surely touch the hearts of the Pharisaic section of the mother Church, and if it could not cement the differences between the Christians of Judæa and Heathendom, would at least prevent the needless widening of the rift which separated them. At moments of deeper discouragement, writing from Corinth to Rome,4 while he recognises the ideal fitness of an effort on the part of Gentile Christians to show, by help in temporal matters, their sense of obligation for the spiritual blessings which had radiated to them from the Holy City, and while he looks on the contribution as a harvest gathering to prove to Jewish Christians the genuiness of the seed sown among the heathen, he yet has obvious misgivings about the spirit in which even this offering may be accepted, and most earnestly entreats the Romans not only to agonise with him in their prayers to God that he may be delivered from Jewish violence in Judæa, but also that the bounty of which he was the chief minister might be graciously received. It may be that by that time experiences of conflict with the Judaisers in Corinth may have somewhat damped the fervour of his hopes; for before his arrival there,5 he gives expression to glowing anticipations that their charitable gifts would not only relieve undeserved distress, but would be a proof of sincere allegiance to the Gospel of Christ, and would call forth deep thankfulness to God.6 Alas! those glowing anticipations were doomed— there is too much reason to fear—to utter disappointment.
Having finished his work in the whole of Macedonia, and finding no more opportunity for usefulness in those parts,7 he at last set out on his way to Corinth. It was probably towards the close of the year 57, but whether Paul travelled by sea or land, and from what point he started, we do not know. After his journey into Macedonia Quarta, he perhaps returned to Thessalonica, which was a convenient place of rendezvous for the various brethren who now accompanied him. The number of his associates makes it most probable that he chose the less expensive, though, at that late season of the year, more dangerous mode of transit, and took ship from Thessalonica to Cenchreae. The care of the money, and his own determination to have nothing to do with it, rendered it necessary for the treasurers appointed by the scattered communities to accompany his movements. The society of these fellow–travellers must have been a source of deep happiness to the over–tried and over–wearied Apostle, and the sympathy of such devoted friends must have fallen like dew upon his soul. There was the young and quiet Timothy, the beloved companion of his life; there was Tychicus, who had been won in the school of Tyrannus, and remained faithful to him to the very last;8 there was Gaius of Derbe, a living memorial of the good work done in his earliest missionary journey. Thessalonica had contributed no less than three to the little band—Jason, his fellow–countryman, if not his kinsman, whose house at St. Paul’s first visit had been assaulted by a raging mob, which, failing to find his guest, had dragged him before the Politarchs; Aristarchus, who had shared with him the perils of Ephesus, as he subsequently shared his voyage and shipwreck; and Secundus, of whom no particulars are known. Besides these Berœa had despatched Sopater, a Jewish convert, who is one of those who sends his greetings to the Roman Christians.9 In Corinth itself he was again looking forward to a meeting with some of his dearest friends—with Titus, whose courage and good sense rendered him so invaluable; with Luke the beloved physician, who was in all probability the delegate of Philippi; with Trophimus, an Ephesian Greek, the fatal but innocent cause of St. Paul’s arrest at Jerusalem, destined long afterwards to start with him on his voyage as a prisoner, but prevented from sharing his last sufferings by an illness with which he was seized at Miletus;10 and with the many Corinthian Christians—Justus, Sosthenes, Erastus, Tertius, Quartus, Stephanas, Fortunatus, Achaicus, and lastly Gaius of Corinth, with whom St. Paul intended to stay, and whose open house and Christian hospitality were highly valued by the Church.
The gathering of so many Christian hearts could not fail to be a bright point in the cloudy calendar of the Apostle’s life. What happy evenings they must have enjoyed, while the toil of his hands in no way impeded the outpouring of his soul! what gay and genial intercourse, such as is possible in its highest degree only to pure and holy souls! what interchange of thoughts and hopes on the deepest of all topics! what hours of mutual consolation amid deepening troubles; what delightful Agapæ; what blessed partaking of the Holy Sacrament; what outpourings of fervent prayer! For three months St. Paul stayed at Corinth, and during those three months he wrote, in all probability, the Epistle to the Galatians, and certainly the Epistle to the Romans—two of the most profound and memorable of all his writings.11 And since it was but rarely that he was his own amanuensis—since it is his custom to associate one or more and sometimes the whole body of his fellow–travellers with himself in the superscriptions of his letters, as well as to send greetings from them—may we not regard it as certain that those letters were read aloud to the little knot of friends, and formed fruitful topics of long and earnest discussion? Did even St. Paul anticipate that those few rolls of papyrus would be regarded to the latest ages of the world as a priceless treasure?
But what was the state of things which the Apostle found when he stepped out of the house of Gaius into the house of Justus? It was St. Luke’s object to show the fundamental unity which existed among Christians, and not to dwell upon the temporary differences which unhappily divided them. He does not, indeed, conceal the existence of discordant elements, but his wish seems to have been to indicate the essential harmony which these discords might disturb, but not destroy. He has not, therefore, told us a single detail of St. Paul’s encounter with the false Apostles, the deceitful workers who had huckstered and adulterated the Word of God, or with that one insolent and overbearing emissary, who with his stately presence, trained utterance, and immense pretensions, backed with credentials from Jerusalem and possibly with the prestige of a direct knowledge of Christ, had denied St. Paul’s Apostleship, and omitted no opportunity of blackening his character. Did this man face St. Paul? Did his followers abide by the defiance which they had expressed towards him? Was there a crisis in which it was decisively tested on which side the true power lay? Did he after all come with a rod, or in the spirit of meekness? was the proof of his Apostleship given by the exercise of discipline, and the utterance of excommunications which struck terror into flagrant apostates, or did the returning allegiance of the erring flock, and the increase of holiness among them, render it unnecessary to resort to stringent measures? To all these questions we can return no certain answer. We may imagine the hush of awful expectation with which the little community gathered in the room of Justus would receive the first entrance and the first utterances of one whose love they had so terribly tried, and against whose person they had levelled such unworthy sareasms. Personal questions would, however, weigh least with him. They knew well that it was not for party opposition but for moral contumacy that his thunders would be reserved. Since many of them were heinous offenders, since many had not even repented after serious warnings, how must they have shuddered with dread, how must their guilty consciences have made cowards of them all, when at last, after more than three years, they stood face to face with one who could hand them too over to Satan with all the fearful consequences which that sentence entailed! Over all these scenes the veil of oblivion has fallen. The one pen that might have recorded them has written nothing, nor do we hear a single rumour from any other source. But that for the time the Apostle triumphed—that whether in consequence of an actual exertion of power, or of a genuine repentance on the part of his opponents, his authority was once more firmly established—we may infer from his hint that until the Corinthian difficulties were removed he could take no other task in hand, and that in the Epistles which he wrote during these three months of his residence at the Achaian capital he contemplates yet wider missions and freely yields himself to new activities.
Yet, amid our ignorance of facts, we do possess the means of reading the inmost thoughts which were passing through the soul of St. Paul. The two Epistles which he despatched during those three months were in many respects the most important that he ever wrote, and it inspires us with the highest estimate of his intellectual power to know that, within a period so short and so much occupied with other duties and agitations, he yet found time to dictate the Letter to the Galatians, which marks an epoch in the history of the Church, and the Letter to the Romans, which may well he regarded as the most important of all contributions to the system of its theology.