Chapter II: Part 2

There was one man in this Synagogue of the Hellenists more remarkable than any of the other people who belonged to it. His name was Stephen. I do not know what city he came from. But he was one of the “out-dwellers,” and he had become a follower of Jesus, “one of the way”—“a Nazarene.” He was different from any of the other followers of Jesus. He saw farther than the rest did. He seems to have been the first of “those of the way” to realise that Jesus did not come to be the Messiah of the Jews alone and to purify their customs. Stephen thought He came to bring life and light and joy to _all_ the world. The other followers of Jesus in this early period were loyal, devoted Jews. They went every day to the temple and they kept the law as the other Jews did. They supposed that Jesus was to be the king in Jerusalem and that only Jews were to be His people. Those who were not Jews could have no share in the good news which He proclaimed.

Stephen was so pure and good and wise that he got a new idea of what the coming of Jesus meant. The truth was far bigger than the others dreamed, and he began to see it, and to tell about it. If God is Father, as Jesus kept saying He was, then He must love all men as well as Jews, and if God is Life and Spirit, then He can come into men’s lives everywhere without any temple and without priests and sacrifices. Stephen began to wonder, as he thought about all that Jesus had said and taught and done, whether His message was not far greater and more wonderful even than the law of Moses, whether some day it would not take the place of the old system of laws and customs and sacrifices and whether even the temple itself might no longer be needed to worship God in, for men might worship Him anywhere where they happened to be.

Stephen was so bold and fearless, and he was so full of his great idea, that he tried to tell the people in Saul’s Synagogue about it. They all turned upon him and called him a dangerous man. They tried to make him see that he was not true to the religion of his fathers, that he was teaching new ideas, that he was turning people away from the old customs, and that if the people followed his teaching they would overthrow the whole wonderful system of Moses, and so make it impossible for the Messiah to come, for whom all good Jews were waiting and longing.

Saul, with all his learning and his knowledge, thought he could easily answer Stephen and prove that he was entirely wrong. But every time he tried, Stephen got the best of him. Saul would quote texts from the Old Testament and Stephen would rise up and show that these texts meant something quite different from what Saul had always thought they meant. He was so powerful and his life was so noble that all the people who listened felt that even if he was wrong in his ideas he was great in his soul, and they began to wonder if he perhaps might be right and Saul wrong. Day after day the discussion went on without any end to it. At last Saul decided that this would never do. Some way must be found to stop this dangerous man who was leading the members of his Synagogue astray. He told the rulers in Jerusalem that he had discovered a traitor who must be arrested. “He talks against Moses,” he said. “He does not love our holy land, or our holy law, or our holy temple, the way all true Jews should.” Then the Council in Jerusalem had Stephen arrested and brought before them for trial, and witnesses came in and told all the things they could think of to make the Council condemn him.

While they were talking against him they all saw a light shine on his face, and he looked more like an angel than like an ordinary man, and everybody wondered what he would say in answer to the charges that were made against him. And Saul must have been eager to see what was going to happen to this man with the shining face, whom nobody could defeat in an argument. Then quietly Stephen began to speak for himself. He did not try to prove that the things which had been said against him were false. He paid no attention to his own case. He told the Council that all through the history of their Hebrew race the people had always failed to see new light when God brought it to them; they had always missed the path when God was trying to lead them into a new way, and they had always misunderstood when God was trying to teach them new ideas. They cried out against Moses, he told them, in the wilderness. They worshipped a golden calf just at the time when he was giving them the law of God, and when the prophets came to teach them more about God, they served Moloch and other false gods instead of Him. Their great, wise king Solomon had told them, when he built the temple, that no temple, however wonderful, could contain the great God who fills the universe, but the people did not understand his words and seemed to think that God lived only in their temple. “You have always failed to see the truth,” Stephen cried. “You have always persecuted prophets when God has sent them to you. You have killed those who told about the coming of Jesus. And now _you, yourselves_, have betrayed and killed Him when He did come. You talk about the law and you say that God gave it through angels. But you do not understand it and you do not really keep it.”

That was more than they could stand. They forgot that they were judges and were having an orderly trial. They all rushed at Stephen. They showed their teeth at him and howled him down. But he was as calm and steady as though everything were peaceful. In the midst of the uproar, they suddenly heard him say: “I see Jesus! There He is, up there in the open sky, at the right of God in His glory.” Then they all stopped their ears, so that they might not hear what he said, and they rushed at him and dragged him out of the city and stoned him. As the people who stoned him pulled off their garments so that they could throw the stones better, they gave their garments to Saul to hold. He did not join in throwing the stones, but he approved of what the others were doing and he ran along with them and carried the garments. And he could see Stephen’s wonderful face which was shining more than ever now! He did not say one hard word against those who were killing him. But just at the end, Saul heard him say: “Lord Jesus, do not blame these people for what they are doing”—“Wilt thou now receive my spirit to Thyself.” And then, with the stones raining round him, the brave, good Stephen died—with the light still on his face.

Saul never forgot that face. He thought Stephen was wrong and he believed that he must be stopped or he would bring harm to God’s people. But he had never seen anybody die like that before! And the more he meditated and thought about it, the more he wondered at what Stephen had said, and still more over his dying words and his happy, shining face!

IX

ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

This young man who now unexpectedly found himself a persecutor was by nature kind and tender-hearted. He had never wilfully hurt any creature or given pain to anybody. He had come up to Jerusalem for his life-career with the highest hopes and the noblest aspirations. His whole being was aflame with a passion for his nation. Ever since he was old enough to know the story of his own people he had dreamed of the splendid future that was soon to dawn. All that the greatest prophets had seen in distant vision, he believed he should one day see with his own eyes. He had tried, with almost superhuman effort, to make his own life perfect so that he might be one of the little inner circle of perfect Jews, who would help to bring the Messiah and the perfect age and who would be ready for this glorious king when he should come.

Now he suddenly found, in his own Synagogue even, people who said that the Messiah _had come already_, that the rulers and Pharisees who were expecting Him and preparing for Him had not recognised Him when He did come and had crucified Him. This seemed to Saul an awful idea—an unbelievable tale. He was sure the Messiah could not be crucified. But he was afraid that these enthusiastic and misguided followers of Jesus would ruin his hopes. Everything that could be done must be done at once to stop their teaching and to destroy their influence. He saw only one way to guard the hope of Israel and that was to crush this movement absolutely and to shut up or kill every person who went about claiming that Jesus was the Messiah. It was a very disagreeable task, but it must be done for the good of the nation and, however hard and distasteful it might be, Saul was resolved to carry it through and to leave nobody who would ever again dare to say that Jesus, the crucified, was the long-expected king.

Into the peaceful homes of the “Nazarenes” he went and seized both men and women and carried them away to prison. He had to separate husbands from their wives. He had to take mothers away from their tender little babies. He had to break up meetings and drag away those who were preaching the new gospel to their eager listeners. But everywhere he went he found that these people had something which he did not have. In the midst of their sufferings and their trials they were calm and peaceful and happy and triumphant and radiant. When they were persecuted their faces shone with a light that seemed almost heavenly. They prayed for those who injured them and were not disturbed by any troubles. They kept saying most remarkable words about Jesus and their faith in Him, and they all seemed to believe that He was still alive and that they would all soon be with Him.

Saul had been trying all his life to be perfect, to be fully righteous. He had worked with all his might to keep all the law and all the commandments. But he knew deep down in his soul that he had failed to reach his aim. He could not do it. He found something in himself which he could not govern. If he didn’t break one commandment, he broke another. If he was strong at one point he was sure to be weak at another. That commandment which his mother had told him was the hardest to keep—“thou shalt not covet or desire”—was always bothering him. Even when he did not actually _do_ wrong things, he found himself _wanting_ to do them, and _that_ he knew was wrong. It all filled him with discouragement, and sometimes with despair.

But these people whom he was persecuting and dragging away to prisons seemed to be good almost without trying. They had found a new power somewhere that seemed to help them. It made him wonder whether they were perhaps right and he possibly was wrong. He hated what he was doing. How gladly he would stop it, if only he could be sure that God did not want him to persecute these strange followers of Jesus. But until God should make it perfectly plain to him, he must go on with his hard duty.

He had heard of some of these “Jesus-people” in the city of Damascus. He would go to that city and stop them before they had time to spread. He got documents from the rulers in Jerusalem giving him power to ride to Damascus and to seize these people and to treat them as he had treated those in Jerusalem. With his band of helpers he started off on his journey, looking bold and fearless in his face, but feeling in his soul that it was the most disagreeable journey he had ever set out upon, and wishing all the time that he could ride straight on through Damascus and the Syrian gate in the mountains to Tarsus, and give up the whole sorry work of dragging mothers away from their children. As he rode he thought and wondered.

The road took him through Capernaum and around the magnificent lake where Jesus had done much of His work, where He had preached His divine messages and where He healed multitudes of people. Saul could hardly stay at any inn in that country without hearing some wonderful story of the Galilean Teacher. He might easily see the father of the little girl who had been raised from her bed by this Teacher. He might talk with a man whose eyes had been opened, or with a person who had been delivered from leprosy or insanity, which the people in that day called being “possessed with devils.” He might hear men tell how they themselves had heard this wonderful Galilean talk about God His Father and about the kingdom of life and love. And he might hear strange stories of what had happened after the crucifixion—how fishermen who had lived by that lake all their lives had seen Jesus in glorified form, after He had been dead and buried.

Saul would ride on from Galilee with new thoughts surging in his mind. The simple faith of those who saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears would stir him with fresh meditation as he rode over the stretch of country between Gennesareth and Damascus.

One thing had always made it impossible for him to believe that Jesus was divine, that He was sent by God or that He was the long-looked for Messiah: _He had suffered and died on the cross._ Saul felt sure that, if God had sent Him and He had been divine, He would not have had to suffer, but He would have come in glory and power. But as he rode along in silence and in deep thought, he remembered that he had heard these followers of Jesus say in their meetings that the Old Testament was full of prophecies which said that Christ must suffer. He began to think more carefully about these passages—especially the one in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah: “He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief.” “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.” “As a lamb that is led to the slaughter and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea he opened not his mouth.” “For the transgression of my people was he smitten.” “He poured out his soul unto death and was counted with the transgressors, yet he bore the sins of many.”

This might mean that God’s great servant would not be glorious and full of power when He came but a sufferer. It might be that He would come and suffer for the sins of others, and that He would do for men what they could not do for themselves. He might be the perfect one and He might through His suffering and death bring them a new power to live by. If he was only sure that God had raised Him from the dead and had brought Him triumphantly through His sufferings and His crucifixion, then he could believe that this Galilean was the Saviour and the divine Deliverer for whom they had been waiting.

Stephen had cried out in his dying moments, “I see Jesus there, at the right hand of God.” Saul had heard how others claimed that they had seen Him alive and glorified. He would be likely to say to himself as he rode along: “If _I_ could only see Him as these others say they have done, I would believe as they do. I would stop this miserable work I am doing and I would follow Him forever and I would make everybody believe in Him.”

Then in the stillness there suddenly broke in upon this young man a light which seemed brighter than the mid-day sun in the sky and he saw Jesus and heard Him speak and call him and his whole life was forever changed by this wonderful thing that happened on the road to Damascus.

X

IN ARABIA

Though dazed and blinded by the light, which seemed to come from another world beyond this world, Saul nevertheless felt perfectly sure that he _saw_ Jesus glorified. Through all the rest of his life, he always said that he had _seen_ Christ—he had seen Him as Stephen saw Him. He had seen Him as Peter and James and John saw Him and he never had any doubt any more that He was alive and victorious over death. He had heard Him speak, too, in that wonderful meeting outside the gate of the city. He had heard Him say: “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” “Why persecutest thou _me_?”

All the rest of the way into Damascus, he walked in darkness. His outer eyes were still blind from the light, but in the city his sight came back again and he could see once more. He knew that a mighty change had come within himself, but he did not know at once all that it meant. He wanted to go far away from all the old scenes of his life, far away from everybody he knew, far away from the noisy, busy world, and think out what had happened. Even before talking with Peter and the other disciples of Jesus, he wished to meditate alone and find his bearing in the new experience which had so suddenly come to him.

The greatest leaders of Saul’s race had found out the meaning of life, alone with God, in the wilderness, or in the mountains, or on the edge of the desert. Moses had come face to face with God on Mount Sinai. Elijah had heard the still small voice speaking to him, far away from the rush and din of the world. John the Baptist got his preparation for his mission in the solitary wilderness undisturbed by people. Jesus had discovered in the desert how to come forth victorious over temptation and here he had realised that His kingdom was not to rest on force and worldly power. So, too, Saul now felt that he must go away from the city and live for a time in the heart of nature and open his soul to God.

He decided to go to Arabia for his period of quiet and of meditation. Perhaps he went, as Moses had gone, to Sinai, or to some other region of this strange, mysterious land of wilderness, mountains and deserts. He has not told us a word about his life in Arabia and none of his friends has given us any reports of these months of solitude and meditation. To-day, if any man wished to prepare for a great career of ministry or missionary service, he would go to some college or university or seminary or training school and learn how to do the work which lay before him, and he would train his body with games of skill and athletic courses, so as to be at his very best in mind and heart and body. Saul had nothing of this sort open to him. He had finished his years of study but they only prepared him to be a Jewish Rabbi, a teacher of the law. Now he wanted to learn how to tell the world the full message, the good news, which Jesus had brought to men. There was no school where this was taught. There were no Christian colleges or universities or seminaries yet. There were only a few followers of Jesus. Most of them lived in Jerusalem, and they were ignorant people—fishermen, and tax-collectors—who had had no chance to study. The best thing Saul could do was, therefore, to go away alone and read and think and let God teach him.

At first he supposed that the good news which Jesus had brought was for his own people alone but as he meditated and studied and listened he began to see that God’s love reached everybody and that the great Galilean had come to bring new life to all people in the world. It was many years perhaps before Saul fully realised all that this meant, but I think he began to see it in Arabia. Another thing kept coming before him all the time. He was eager to find out why Jesus had died on the cross, why He had suffered, and what it all meant. That also took years of thought before he understood it, but here in the quiet of the mountains he began to _see_. How we wish he had written some letters from Arabia and told what he was doing and thinking! If he had only written to his mother once a week, or even once a month, and she had preserved the letters, how eagerly we would read them now! But there is not a word about it all. We only know that in the stillness his spirit was gathering power and his soul was growing richer.

At last he felt that he was “ready.” This is one of his great words—“I am now ready.” The time of quiet was over and the busy life must begin. He felt sure he could make everybody believe in his Christ. It was all so plain and wonderful that people would be bound to listen as he told them what he had seen and known and felt! He decided to go back to Damascus and begin there—near the place where he had first seen Jesus and where the great change in his life had come.

But it was not as easy as he expected. In the first place he soon discovered that he needed to know more about the life of Jesus. He had not talked with anybody yet who had been with Him in Galilee and in Jerusalem. He must learn more about Him before he could move people with his words. And then he found that the people did not want to hear about Jesus. The Jews in Damascus all thought Saul was a traitor. He had started for their city to persecute the followers of Jesus and now he was one of the followers himself, trying to make them believe. They decided to seize him and do to him what he used to do to the followers of Jesus. They would soon put him where he would not talk any more about this Galilean Teacher. They watched all the gates of the city so that Saul could not get away and they had men hunting for him through the streets. But some of Saul’s friends put him in a great basket and in the dark of the night, by a long rope, they let him down the side of the wall and he got far away from the dangerous city before the morning sun came up.

He must have felt a strange thrill as he passed by the place where he saw the great light and heard the voice saying: “Saul, why persecutest thou me?” But he hurried on over the road through Galilee and came to Jerusalem, which he had left three years before. He had started out a persecutor. He came back a follower of Jesus. He had crossed the “great divide.”

XI

FIFTEEN WONDERFUL DAYS

We have invented a little instrument called a “dictaphone.” If one of these instruments is hidden away in a room, a person at the other end of the dictaphone can overhear all the conversation that goes on in the room where it is concealed, and the entire conversation can be written down and kept. How we wish now that there had been a dictaphone in the room in which Saul staid with St. Peter for fifteen days in Jerusalem. Part of the time James, the brother of Jesus, was there, too, with them. But the rest of the time they were alone—talking, talking, talking. St. Peter was telling Saul the things he wanted to know about the life of Jesus and about His death and resurrection. What a wonderful story it would be, if we could only get it all back, word for word! There was that keen and eager face of the man still young, with all his life-work before him, and opposite the older man whose whole life had been boating and fishing until one with authority had said to him, “Follow me.” The older man knew more about this Galilean life than anybody else knew, unless it were that other fisherman, named John, and he could answer all the questions the young man asked so long as they were just questions about events, for he had seen with his eyes and he had heard with his ears and he had handled with his hands and he _knew_.

The pity of it is, not a word of this conversation has been preserved. We can imagine what some of the questions were and we can guess what some of the answers would be, but the actual words are gone. They are lost forever. What we do know, however, is that at the end of these fifteen days of wonderful talk, Saul went away from Jerusalem, his mind stored with truth about Jesus. He had heard from Peter’s lips the supreme facts about the life of the Person who was henceforth to be Lord and Master of his own life. Peter and James told all their friends in Jerusalem what had happened to Saul, how his career had suddenly changed, how the man who once dragged harmless Christians to prison was now getting ready to give his whole life to the work of telling the good news about Jesus and they already saw that a mighty champion of the truth had joined them and they all thanked God for Saul of Tarsus. When he left Jerusalem, after his memorable visit with Peter, Saul probably went home to Tarsus, and he lived and worked for a time in the home province of Cilicia. There is a long period of his life at this time about which we know nothing at all. He must have been at work for he could not settle down and rest. There was a tremendous drive in his glowing spirit, and wherever he was something was always happening. If he spent some years in Tarsus, as is probable, it is certain that many people there heard of Jesus from him and we can well believe that he went from town to town through the mountain province to tell in all the synagogues the truth which he had learned.

It is possible, however, that he may at this time have had a long period of serious illness. He has himself given us one single glimpse into this unknown period of his life. In the twelfth chapter of Second Corinthians, he says that a tremendous experience came to him fourteen years before—that would be in this period. He was suddenly “caught up” into a higher world where he saw what nobody can see with ordinary eyes and where he understood the mysteries of life in a new way. It seemed for a moment as though he had lost his body and found his soul, as though he had leaped across all the space of the universe and had come to God’s dwelling-place and everything lay plain and clear before him. But about this time, he says further, some terrible illness came upon him, which was so bad that it felt like “a thorn,” or “a stake in his body”—a piercing, racking pain that seemed to bore into his quivering flesh. It was almost more than he could endure. He begged and besought that he might be relieved of it but it lasted on and on. We do not know certainly what this painful disease was but perhaps a little later, as we go on with his life, we may get some idea of what it was, for it appears to have come back again when he was in Galatia.

What we do know is that, while he was living in Tarsus, a man named Barnabas thought of Saul and came to Tarsus to find him. Barnabas was another man something like Stephen. He saw farther than most of the others did. He was always ready for new things and he was full of faith and activity. Like Saul, he could not rest—he wanted to tell everybody what he had discovered. He heard of a new movement in the great city of Antioch, the capital of the province of Syria, and he went off to Antioch to see what this movement really was. When he got there he found that some followers of Jesus who had been forced to leave Jerusalem, because of the persecutions, had come to Antioch and had begun a little church there and were preaching to everybody who would listen. It did not make any difference to them whether the people who came to hear were Jews or not. They were as ready to tell the good news about Christ to Greeks as to the people of their own race. It was the first time and the first place in all the world that anybody had done this. In Jerusalem, “those of the way” were all Jews and they had nothing to do with anybody else. They never dreamed that peoples of all races were alike and were equally dear to God and that Christ came to bless and save all men. They made a sharp distinction between Jews and Gentiles. But in Antioch it was all different. Those who formed the church in Antioch forgot about race and thought only about brotherhood. Greeks flocked into the same room with Jews and together they worshipped God like brothers. And here in Antioch where this new spirit was born and where this new movement began, the followers of Christ were for the first time called “Christians.” In Jerusalem this word was not used or thought of, because no outside people came in and there was no need of a new name. But in Antioch where the Greeks joined the movement and where everybody discovered that a new religion was born they needed a word to name it with and so they called these persons who talked so much about Christ, “Christians.” Barnabas was filled with joy when he found what was going on in Antioch. It looked like the beginning of a movement that would sweep across the world and change the whole empire. He saw at once that he must have the best man whom he could find to help him push the work along, and as he sat thinking of the different persons who could do this great work, suddenly he remembered the young man whose persecutions had driven these first Christians to Antioch and he knew that Saul was now a changed man and a powerful champion of the truth. Whereupon he hurried off through the Syrian gate in the mountains to fetch Saul to Antioch and Saul went back with him to begin the greatest work any man has ever done in the world.

XII

THE FIRST GREAT MISSIONARY JOURNEY

Antioch, the great Syrian city, from this time on became Saul’s new home. He was henceforth to be very closely connected with the flourishing capital of Syria. This was now to be the mother-church of all his activities. From Antioch he started out on all his missionary journeys and he came back to Antioch at the end of each of his far-reaching travels. Here were faithful Christians praying for him as he worked and suffered and here, when he arrived weary and worn with labour, were dear friends to welcome him and to refresh him. Antioch was the first city in the world to have Gentile Christians in it and it was from this city that Christianity spread out over the world and conquered the Roman Empire and became a world movement, and, as we shall see, the man from Tarsus was in this great undertaking the foremost leader and the untiring worker.

For a whole year Barnabas and Saul worked in the city of Antioch, spreading the knowledge of Christ through that region, gathering in new people all the time, teaching them the truth and helping them to live the new way. It was joyous work and while they were doing it they were constantly discovering fresh light and were learning all the time how to tell the world their “good news” and how to build churches out of people who had before been heathen and idol-worshippers. At the end of the first year when the Antioch church had become strong and vigorous—full of life and power—Barnabas and Saul decided, with the approval of the entire church, to go out and tell their message to the great world around them. They felt sure that God called them to be missionaries and they resolved to go wherever He wanted them to go and to do whatever they felt in their hearts that He wanted them to do. These two men took with them as their companion and helper a third man, named John Mark, who had come from Jerusalem to Antioch and who was Barnabas’ nephew. It was probably this young man who later in life wrote the wonderful book which we call “The Gospel according to Mark.”

The whole church came together for a very solemn meeting and prayed for the travellers and then the three men, full of joy and enthusiasm, set out on their journey down the river to Selucia, where they took ship for the island of Cyprus which lies west of the Syrian coast. They visited all the cities of the island, going from the eastern end across to the western edge, to the city of Paphos where the governor of the island lived. This governor was greatly impressed with the message and the extraordinary power of the missionaries and he, Roman as he was, believed the wonderful new truths which they told him about God and about the Christ who had come to reveal Him.

From Paphos the little band of travellers struck out for a new field of work. They had been so successful in Cyprus that they now decided to attack a still larger and more difficult region of the earth. They sailed almost north from Paphos, to the shores of the Mediterranean, lying west of the Taurus mountains over which Saul gazed as a boy. They landed in the district of Pamphilia and came to the city of Perga, a little way in from the Sea. From this time on, our hero is never called Saul any more. His name suddenly changes here to Paul. It is probably due to the fact that the field of his work is now widening out to the Gentile world. He is leaving behind the narrow circle of his own people who always called him by his Jewish name and he is going out among the Greeks who henceforth call him by his Greek name, that has become so familiar to us.

Three things that concern our story seem to have happened at Perga. Paul appears to have been taken ill here with some dangerous disease. It was probably a return of the trouble which he had a few years before and which he called “a stake in his flesh.” The reason why we think he was taken ill here is that he wrote afterwards to his friends in Galatia that he came to them because he had an illness, and he seems to have gone directly to Galatia now from Perga. The illness may quite likely have been malaria, though there is no way to prove it. The few references to his trouble have made some scholars think that it was malaria—a disease which comes back again and again and is dreadfully annoying to a person who wants to do a great work. The low land of Pamphilia may quite likely have brought on a new attack and compelled our travellers to move up to a higher and healthier region. Anyway, whether this theory is correct or not, Paul and Barnabas decided to push on farther north to the hill country of Pisidia. This was the second of the three things. And the third was that Mark refused to go on with them. Something about the undertaking disturbed and frightened him. He turned back and went off home. Paul did not like Mark’s desertion, but Barnabas, who was his uncle, did not treat it as quite so serious.

The two men now started off alone up over the hills and through the dangerous robber-infested country to the finely situated city of Antioch in Pisidia, which my reader must remember is very different from the other Antioch in Syria, from which Paul started on his journey. This second Antioch is in the Roman province of Galatia and we must now realise that on this first great missionary journey of his life Paul came to one of the cities of Galatia where, so far as we know, he founded the first of his missionary churches.

He began his work in the Jewish Synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia and he and Barnabas preached to the Jews of that city and to the other people who sympathised with them and who were called “God-fearers” because they were eager to learn about the God of the Jews. But after a little time the Jews disagreed with the message which the missionaries brought them and so Paul and Barnabas gave up trying to convince the Jews and set to work to tell their good news to the Greeks, just as they had done in Syrian Antioch, and these people flocked to hear them and believed their message with great joy, and were ready almost to pluck out their eyes and give them to Paul. From this first city of the Galatian province they went on to other important cities of the same province—Iconium, Derbe and Lystra. These four cities, we shall now assume, were the four centres of the churches of Galatia. One remarkable incident happened while Paul and Barnabas were working in the city of Lystra. The simple country people here made up their minds that Paul and Barnabas must be gods come down from heaven to visit them and they brought out their oxen and were ready to sacrifice them to Barnabas and Paul, who they thought were Jupiter and Mercury. It was here in this very region around Lystra that Baucis and Philemon once lived. And according to the old Greek stories, Jupiter and Mercury came down to earth on a visit. They came looking like common men and nobody knew that they were gods and when they came to men’s houses asking to be taken in and entertained, nobody would receive them. Finally they came to the poverty-stricken home of Baucis and Philemon, who received their visitors with much joy. They killed their only chicken for the supper and did the best they could to show true hospitality. Suddenly the two visitors stood forth as mighty gods. They blessed and thanked Baucis and Philemon and turned their humble dwelling into a splendid temple and glorified the two poor people who had received them so kindly.

Well, these simple people at Lystra evidently thought when they listened to Paul and Barnabas and saw their wonderful deeds that Jupiter and Mercury had come back again and they were resolved not to make a second mistake and miss the blessing. Paul and Barnabas had no desire to be treated as gods nor to have sacrifices made to them, but they had difficult work getting the simple hearted people to treat them as men and to drive their oxen home.

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XIII

THE FIRST GREAT PROBLEM

Paul and Barnabas had another experience at Lystra which was very different from that of being taken for gods. Paul’s own people, the Jews, had begun to see now that he was not like them. He did not care for the things which were as important to them as life. His entire interest lay in telling not about Moses and his law but about Christ and the new life which men could live in His power. To the faithful Jews he seemed like a traitor. They did not want to hear him preach and they were determined to make him stop telling these new things to the people, if they possibly could.

The Jews got together from the cities which Paul and Barnabas had visited and they came in a body to Lystra and stirred up the fickle, changeable peasants and set them against the missionaries who had come to help them. They dragged them out of the city and stoned them until they thought they were dead. Paul must have thought of Stephen as the stones rained down upon him and he knew now how it felt to be stoned by the very people he wanted most to help. Fortunately the stones did not kill him. They only wounded him severely and when the mob had gone away he got up and came back into the city and preached again to his friends who had learned to love him and to believe in him. The next day he and Barnabas left Lystra and went to Derbe. Then they returned and revisited all the churches they had started in Galatia—in Derbe, Lystra, Iconium and Antioch of Pisidia, after which they went back to their home-church in great Antioch. It must have been a happy moment, as the two travellers sat in the midst of the group at Antioch and told of the wonderful events of their long and dangerous journey and as they related how in the far-away province of Galatia they had built up new and flourishing churches out of people who just before had been ignorant heathen. But the happiness and joy were not long undisturbed, for some members of the church in Jerusalem came to Antioch and told the Christians there that Paul was wrong in his ideas and in his teaching, that Barnabas was wrong and that the church there in Antioch was wrong. These men insisted that nobody except Jews could be Christians. If any Gentile wanted to be a Christian and come into the church, they said that he must first be circumcised and become a Jew and he must keep the whole law of Moses. Christ came only for Jews, they said. If anybody went about teaching that Greeks and barbarians and men of all races and all customs could be Christ’s followers, that man was wrong and was a dangerous teacher. What these people said struck right against everything Paul was doing. According to their views most of the people in the church at Antioch were not real Christians. They would have to change all their ways of living. They would need to accept the whole system of Moses and all the sacrifices set forth in the Old Testament before they could have any part in Christ and His “good news.”

Paul was determined not to yield to these men from Jerusalem and he saw that he must go to Jerusalem himself and prove to the whole church there that this idea that only Jews could be Christians was false. He must make them see that the new idea which he and the Christians at Antioch held was true and right; the idea that all men everywhere, of every race and of every colour and of every custom could follow Christ and come to God through Him and live by the power of His Spirit without becoming Jews at all.

Paul and Barnabas, with one of their new converts, Titus, who was a Greek and who had never become a Jew, went together to Jerusalem to have a council with the church there and to settle forever, if they could, this important and difficult question. Paul threw himself into the discussion with all the earnestness and fire that were in his nature. He brought in Titus, as a specimen and exhibit of the kind of Christians the Greeks made when they gave their lives to Christ. Paul refused to let Titus be circumcised. He declared that Titus was already a full Christian without doing anything to make himself a Jew. As Paul talked and showed what Christ meant to him and told of the wonderful things Christ had done through him the men in Jerusalem who had been disciples of Christ were convinced that he was right and they gave him their hands as a token of their faith in him and of their regard for him. But the other members of the church were not yet ready for the new teaching and the new ideas. They were old-fashioned people who could not change their habits. They listened to Paul and were impressed with his shining face and his glowing words, but when he was done speaking they thought just as they did before!

Soon after he had returned from the great conference in Jerusalem, when he thought he had convinced the church in Jerusalem that his position was the right one, he heard that men from Jerusalem had gone to the cities in Galatia and had told his new converts there—in Derbe and Lystra and Iconium and in Pisidia—that the two missionaries, who had recently visited them and had told them about Christ, were false teachers and had led them astray. These Jerusalem men worked upon the simple-minded Galatian people until they made them really believe that Paul and Barnabas were wrong. Their new visitors told the people in Galatia that they must go on now and become Jews. They must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses and they said that if they did that they could have the privilege of enjoying Christ. But if they did not do _that_, then they could have no part in Christ.

It was an unspeakable shock to Paul when this piece of news reached him about his Galatian friends. He saw how helpless they had been. He realised how hard it would be to answer their visitors and he knew that these simple peasants were not to blame for being confused. But he quickly saw that he must save them. He must not let them go astray. He must come to their help and he must write them a letter that would open their eyes and show them the full truth. I am inclined to think this letter was the first of all his wonderful epistles. We must turn and see how the great leader wrote to his beloved friends and young disciples in the hill country of Galatia.

XIV

A LETTER TO HIS CHURCHES

When Paul sat down to write to the churches in the province of Galatia he was facing one of the greatest crises of his life. If he could not convince them that he was right in his teaching and that all men everywhere could follow Christ and become His disciples, then his missionary work was ended and his career was over. He had been proud once to be a Jew. He had gloried in the privilege of belonging to the chosen people and he had hoped to become perfectly righteous by keeping all the law and the commandments. He had tried this plan with all his energy and it had miserably failed. He had never made himself perfect and he had discovered that nobody ever could reach perfection that way. Just at the moment when he realised his failure most, he had suddenly found Christ and through His life and power he had learned how to live in joy and peace and triumph. It was the most wonderful discovery! The whole world seemed new and all nature seemed changed! The whole business of his life was to go out and tell people everywhere about his discovery and what it meant.

And now these men from Jerusalem had gone out to his new churches and made them think that all his work was wrong, that all that he told them was false. They must become Jews. They must try with all their might to keep the law. They must do what Paul had endeavoured to do before he found Christ. They must strain and struggle on, all their lives, to make themselves good, and then, if they succeeded, they could enjoy Christ. It seemed to Paul a pitiful drop from his great and wonderful message. _He_ could never go out and tell people that. If his discovery and his message were not true, then he could never go out again on a missionary journey. There was nothing left for him but to go back to Tarsus and make tents and then to die and be buried like the rest of men. Now if ever he must make his new converts see and understand his discovery and he must absolutely convince them that he was right and that God was with him. That is what the Epistle to the Galatians was written for.

Intense and eager and determined as he was, he was also tender and loving. This letter is all full of passages in which you can almost feel this great man’s heart throb. “You are,” he tells them, “just like my own children. I came to you when you were living in sin and ignorance and, like a father full of love, I helped you into a new life. I brought you to Christ and I showed you how to get free from your old bondage and how to rise into a life of joy and power. I cannot bear to see you drop back into bondage again. If you believe what these visitors have told you, you will never be free again, you will have to carry burdens all your days.” “When I came first among you,” he wrote, “you were full of joy. You loved me and believed me, as though I had been an angel or a god come to visit you. You would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me, if you could have done it. I want now to be your friend and I want you to believe that what I tell you is the truth.” Then he showed them how foolish was the story which the Jews from Jerusalem had told them. They had said that only those who were “sons of Abraham” could share in the promises of Christ. “Sons of Abraham,” Paul cried out to them, “who are the real sons of Abraham!” “Not those who become Jews and keep the law but those who are full of faith, who trust Christ and live by His power. The most wonderful thing about Abraham was his _faith_. He believed God. He trusted God. He walked with God. He did not keep the law, because the law was not given until many centuries after Abraham had died. If you want to be ‘a son of Abraham’ you must live by faith. You must trust God and take Christ for your leader, your helper, your inward strength.”

He drew, in his letter, a wonderful picture of the true way to live. He gave his friends an account of his own life and told them they could also have what had come to him. “Why,” he said, “God has revealed His Son in my soul. I used to do wrong and go wrong. I could not keep myself. I tried to live by the law but it would not work. Now I live by faith—faith in Christ, and the life I now live is really the life He lives in me. I do not care any more for the things people do to make themselves good. I feel Christ coming into me and giving me strength and power, just as the sun comes into the tree and builds its life from within. You can all have that power formed in you. You can all feel the life of Christ sweep into your lives and that will make you free. And you will cry ‘Abba, Father,’ for you will find the life and spirit of God in your own hearts. When that happens you will not think much about those things which these Jews from Jerusalem have been telling you you must do to be saved!