Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Cu31924029302399 PDF
Cu31924029302399 PDF
LIBRARY
""'"™'"' '""'"^
BS2361 .F24'"
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029302399
THE
''"o.
.>y -> ..
'^ I'
MACMILLAN AND CO. K,""nnnnu^.^^
'
-\,sv^^^ ,
Dr. Donald Fraser's Synoptical Lectures, in which a similar plan is carried out.
viii Preface.
DISCOURSE I,
General Object. —The Gospels not earliest in order. — "The New Testa- thOS
ment." —
The word "Gospel." Hellenistic — Greek. — Three Events,
i. The Evangelists, ii. DUferences between the Synoptists and St.
John. iii. Emblems of the Evangelists : 1. Characteristics of St.
Matthew. 2. Of St. Mark. 3. Of St. Luke. 4. Of St. John.—
Summary, —How to read the Gospels 3-21
II.
III.
IV.
—Analysis
III. .92
IV. — The Muratorian Fragment 02
Note I. —
Special Words and Phrases 114
II.— The Muratorian Fragment 116
III. —External Evidence 110
Table of Contents, xi
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XL
TEE FinST EPISTLE TO THE COEINTHIANS.
St. Paul and Corinth.—I. A letter to St. Paul from
the Corinthians.— Its
seven inquiries.- Serious disorders prevalent
in the Church —Effect
of these tidings on St. Paul.-The
method of his reply.-Li<Tht
thrown on the character of St. Paul.-II.
Outline of the Letter.
-Practical lessons: i. Unity amid divergent
opinions, ii. Little
details to be decided by great principles, iii. Life in, but not the
world „„„„„, of,
208-224
Note I. — Leading Ideas
II.— Analysis ....'.'.
226
III.— Dates in the History of Corinth
226
Table of Contents, xiii
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XVI.
XVIII.
XIX.
sions. — Special passages ». ii. 15, " Saved through the child-
:
XX.
Travels of St. Paul after his liberation. —Titus.— Outline of the Epistle.
Its characteristics : 1. Leading conceptions : a. The word "&J)ioi/r."
/3.
" Soundness in doctriiie." y. " Soiermindedness." 8. Prominence
of "good worTcs." e. Duty of " sulytnission." 2. Majestic sum-
maries of Christian faith, ii. 11—14 ; iii. 4—7. 3. Special passages.
«.Severe remark about Cretans. ;3. iii. 13, 14, Zenas, Apollos,
aa^ " our jieople." 7. Heresy and "/acWoa." ....... .373-383
——
XXI.
TEE SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTBY. PAGE
Scripture as judged by its own contents : 1. St. Paul. 2. The Neronian
persecution. 3. St. Paul's final movements— His imprisonment.
XXIII.
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER.
Many internal evidences of the genuineness of the Epistle.— It illustrates
the character of St. Peter.— Catholicity. —
Indebted yet independent.
—References to St. Paul's Epistles. —Not a tendency-writing. -Prac-
tical point of View.— One doctrine of capital importance.- The
Gospel to the Dead.— Circumstances under which the Epistle was
written. —General Outline. — Concluding remarks 419-429
Note I. —Keynotes of the Epistle 430
II. —Special words ^gg
III. — Special passages ^gj
— '
XXIV.
XXV.
TUE EPISTLE OF JUDE.
Surprising —
phenomena. 1. The writer, " The Brother of James, '
XXVI.
XXVII.
II.— Style .
492
III. — Special Passages . . 492
IV. — Genuineness 493
XXVIII.
XXIX.
XXX.
TEE REVELATION OF ST. JOEN.
PAGE
The earliest of St. Jolin's writings, —Inferiority to tlie Gospel in foi-m and
manner —Characteristics of Apocalyptic — Dislike of the
literature.
THE GOSPELS.
" Si come luce Ince in ciel seconda
Vennero appresso lor quattro animali
Coroiiato ciascun di verde fronda,"
Dante, Purgatorio, xxix. 91-93.
"Ich halte die Evangelien fur durchaiis acht; denn es ist in ilmen der
Abglaiiz einer Hoheit wirksam, die von der Person Christi ausging : die ist
gottlicher Art, wie nnr je anf Erden das Gottliclie erschienen ist." Goe'J'he,
Gcsprdche init Eckermann, iii. 371.
" Mag die geistige Cultur immer fortsclireiten, mogen die Natiirwisseu-
sohaften in imroer breiterer Ausdehnung und Tiefe wachsen, iind der menschliche
Geist sioh erweitern wie er will aber die Hoheit und sittliche Cultur des
;
It will be my
endeavour in the following discourses to thefoui;
GOSPELS.
consider the main object and special peculiarities of each of
the twenty-seven books of which the New Testament is
composed. Out of the many thousands of sermons which
are weekly and sometimes even daily delivered in England,
it is I think very desirable that some should be devoted to
THE FOTTK other books as far as possible in the order in wbich they were
GOSPELS,
written, and we shall find an obvious advantage in so doing.
No inconvenience will, however, result from our speaking
first of the four Gospels, both because they record the life of
occurs in the name Baal Berith, " lord of the covenant ").
Nowhere in the New Testament does it mean " a will," ex-
cept (for a special reason) in a single passage of the Epistle
to the Hebrews.2 What we call the " New Testament " is
the book which reveals to us that fresh {Kaivrf) covenant
which God, in this last epoch of the world's history, has
made with man in Jesus Christ, as He had made His former
covenant with Abraham and with Moses.
In placing the Gospels first in the order of the canon, the
Church has been guided by a right instinct. For Christi-
anity is an historical religion, and our
Christian faith is
faith in God revealed in Christ. Now the Gospels not only
' Comp. Matt. xxvi. 28 (in R. V.), 1 Cor. xi. 25. 2
Hebrews ix. 16, 17.
The word " Gospel." 5
record for us the historic facts which are the objective bases the four
'^o^^^''®-
of our Christian creed, but they are our almost exchisive
authority on this subject. They tell us all that we are really
permitted to know in detail about the earthly life of the
Saviour in whom we believe.^
The word Gospel is the Saxon translation of the Greek
word euanffelion.^ In early Greek the word meant the reward
given to one who brought good tidings.^ In Attic Greek
itmeant (in the plural) a sacrifice for good tidings.* Hence
the word became, even among Romans, a kind of ex-
clamation like our " Good news " ^ In later Greek it !
translation, is used by euphony for godspel, i.e. news {spelian, "to tell")
about God. So "gossip" is for "godsib," i.e. relationship in things per-
taining to God " and gossamer for god-summer, from the legend that the
;
' In the address of the Angel to the Shepherds we find the words " / bring
you good tidings of great joy," where the verb used is eva-yyexi^onai. This
verb is specially common in St. Luke and St. Paul. The substantive does
not occur in St. In St. John the only instance of either verb or sub-
Luke
stantive is Rev. xiv. 6 (where it does not refer to the Gospel). In St. Paul it
occurs sixty-one times. From this Greek word are derived the French
livoMgiU, the German Evangelium, the Italian Evangelio, the Portuguese
Ew/ilgelho, &o.
G The Gospels.
THE FOUR always means " the word preached," and is never used for a
GOSPELS,
^.ritten book.^
The language in which the New Covenant is written is the
form of Greek which was everywhere spoken in the first
century of the Christian era. It was known as the Mace-
donian, or common," or Hellenistic Greek. The growth of
"
„
'
Jf"'^
^'\ ^ J C!ol^ viii 18 Eph. ir. 11 Acts xxi. 8 The earliest
'
; ;
" Go^P^'Mli^r" ^ ^""^ '' mJustm Martyr. Marcion gave the naa.e
L,ospel (withoutf naming any author) to his mutilated
St Luke
Cicero, Pro. Arch. 10. " Graeca leguutur in omnibus fere gentibus '
The Jews, Greehs, and Romans. 7
Let us pause for a moment to notice the perfectness of the the foitr
" evangelic preparation " by which God marked " the fulness '^°^'^'^^^-
1 " The New Testament," sa3's Dr. Schaff, "has a Greek body, a Hebrew
soul, and a Christian spirit which rules both."— JHst. of Apostol. Church,
p. 573.
8 The Gospels.
THE FOTJK Augustus, and Gamaliel and Philo— were alike engaged un-
GOBPELs. the
consciously, but with momentous influence, in preparing
" way of the Lord." The letters of Hebrew and Greek and
Latin inscribed above the cross were the prophetic testimony
of the world's three noblest languages to the undying claims
of Him who suffered to unite all nations into the one great
family of God.
Beginning then with the Gospels, let us see what are the
first facts which demand our attention.
i. We see four separate books containing
somethmg that
is peculiar to each, much that is common to all of which ;
tradition says, and research —even the most recent and the
most thorough —goes far to prove, that the three first were
written within forty ,i and the fourth within fifty, years of the
death of Christ. Each of these professes to give us some
account of Him. It is probable that the one which stands
firstwas actually written first, but all of them may alike
have been preceded by fragments of written, as, from the
nature of things, they were all certainly preceded by cycles
of oral teaching. —
The first then the Gospel according to
St. Matthew — is the Gospel of God, the good news or glad
tidings of Jesus Christ, in the form of delivery which St.
Matthew adopted. He
was by trade a humble "publican,"
not improbably a first cousin to our Lord according to the
flesh, of whom all that we learn from the Bible is, that one
his naked body, "who showed that strange mixture of curiosity the four
gospels.
and boldness at the Garden of Gethsemane. In later years
— though on one occasion he wavered when he was acting as
an attendant (v7T7]peT'>]<;, Acts xiii. 5) to Paul and Barnabas
he became the chosen son and companion of St. Peter, by
whose sanction and with whose aid his Gospel was probably
writte^x
\St. Lufee was not a Jew but a Gentile. la his Gospel we
Gospel of one who came to Christ from Heathendom.
haivS~tfte
Tradition says that he was a proselyte and physician of
Antioch, and we own modest writings that he
learn from his
was the year-long friend and helper of St. Paul in his travels
and imprisonment. He narrated the facts which he diligently
gathered from oral and written sources. But he, too, like St.
Mark, though not an Apostle, was the representative of an
Apostle, and illustrates
the truths which were most pro-
minently taught by the great Apostle of the Gentiles.
Lastly, St. John in his old age at Ephesus — the disciple
whom Jesus loved, who also leaned on His breast at supper,
the last survivor of the Apostles as his brother was their
earliest martyr —
when the first generation of Christians was
dead and gone, when the Gospel as it was preached by
St. Matthew, St. Peter, and St. Paul was already in men's
hands, when Jerusalem was now trodden under foot of the
Gentiles —under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, left as his
any forger. Any one who desired to palm upon the Church
a written Gospel under the shadow of some great name,
would have attributed his work to St. Peter or St. James,
or one of the greater Apostles, not to the despised publican,
the wavering deacon, and the Gentile physician.
10 The Gospels.
THE FOUR ii. Now, as we look at these four Gospels, one obvious
GOSPELS, difference between them at once strikes the most careless
reader. It is that St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke
are in many respects like each other, and in many respects
unlike St. John. The first three dwell mainly and almost
exclusively on Christ's ministry in Galilee; the fourth on
His ministry in Judea. The first three only narrate at
length one of His visits to Jerusalem the one which ended —
in the crucifixion John gives us the incidents of four
; St.
rest and of the home. Hence the first three are called the
Synoptists, because one tabular view can be given of their
narratives ; " the fourth stands in many respects apart. Once
more, the first three are more fragmentary than the fourth.
The first three " may be compared to a succession of pictures,
1The remark that St. John's is the spiritual Gospel {irnvnaTiKov) is as old
IS Clement of Alexandria {ap. Euseb., H. E. iii. 24).
^The Greek word Synopsis has the same meaning as the Latin Conspectus,
viz. " a collective view," The first three Evangelists are called " Synoptists "
because their Gospels can be arranged and harmonised, section by section, in
a tabular form, since they are mainly based on a common outline. The term
.appears to be quite modern, but has been rapidly brought into general use
since its adoption by Griesbach. See Holtzinann in Schenkel, Bibcl-Lexicon,
s.v. Evangelieu and Ebrard in Herzog, s.v. Harmonic. I am not aware of
;
any earlier use of the word, "Synopsis," as applied to a tabular view of the
llrst three Gospels, than Georgii Sigelii Synopsis historiaa Jcs. Christi quomad-
m.odum MatthrwAis, Marcus, Lucas, dcscripscre in forma tabulae proposita
Noribergae. 1585. Folio.
The Synoptists and St. John. 11
" " Per hujusmodi evaugelistarum locutiones vm-iaased non contrarias disci-
mus nihil in oujusiiue verbis nos inspicere debere nisi voluntatem. "—Aug,
Ve Consens. Evang. ii. 28.
* "Westcott, Introd. p. 234.
12 The Gospels.
differences recall the
THE FOTJK remains the same. Their circumstantial
GOSPELS, variety of Nature; their substantial agreement resembles
and all of the Gospels is that expressed by St. John, " that
ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of
Cherubic Emblems. 13
is good, and which have bdellium and the onyx-stone.^ But the four
°°^^^^^-
a still commoner symbol of the Evangelists is that derived
from the four living creatures, "the fourfold- visaged four"
the cherubim which form the chariot of the Lord in the Vision
of Ezekiel by the river Chebar.^ In almost every church
you find, somewhere depicted, the four symbols of the Evan-
gelists — the man or angel for St. Matthew; the lion of
St. Mark ; the calf of St. Luke the ; eagle for St. John.
The man was chosen as the emblem of St. Matthew because
he brings out Christ's kingly and human character;* the
lion for St. Mark, from the strength and energy of his
delineation;* the ox for St. Luke, because he indicates
Christ's priestly and mediatorial office ;
^ the eagle for St.
John, because " he soars to heaven above the clouds of
human infirmity, and reveals to us the mysteries of the
Godhead, and the felicities of Eternal Life, gazing on the
Resurrection, and the mediaeval notion was that young lions were bom dead
and vivified by the parent lion's roar in three days. Rupert of Deutz in
Apoc. iv., and Mark xvi. 16, connects it with the terribleness of this Gospel,
beginning with the voice " crying " {rugiens) in the wilderness, and ending
with a curse.
' The ox being the emblem of sacrifice.
li The Gospels.
THE FOUR light of immutable truth with a keen and steady ken." ^
GOSPELS. This, then, is why the Gospels are compared to the Vision
of the Four at the river of Chebar. " Like them the Gospels
are Four in number like them they are the Chariot of God
;
woven with wheel like them they are full of eyes, and
:
'Aug. De Consent. Evang. i. The union of the four emblems into one
figure was called " the Tetramorph," or Animal EccUsiae. Calvin, in a style
not usual with him, compares the Gospels to a four-horsed triumphal chariot
— the qtcadriga of Christ.
' Wordsworth, Greek Test., The Four Gospels, The first instance of
p. xli.
this symbolism is found in Irenaeus (Adv. Eacr. iii. 11, s. 8), who, howeyer,
assigns the eagle to St. Mark and the lion to St. John. St. Augustine assigns
the lion to St. Matthew, the man to St. Mark (De Oonsens. Evang. i. 6).
Pseudo-Athanasius again {Synopsis Script.) assigns the ox to St. Mark, the
lion to St. Luke. The distribution sanctioned by St. Jerome is that which has
finally prevailed. " Prima hominis facies Matthaeum signiflcat qui quasi
de homine exorsus est scribere Liber gcnerationis Jesu Christi, filii David, filii
Abraham. Secunda Marcum in quo vox leonis rugieutis in eremo auditur
(Mark i. 3). Tertia Vituli quae Evangelistam Lucam a Zacharia sacerdote
initium sumpsisse praefigurat. Quarta Evangelistam Joannem qui assumtis
pennis aquilae, et ad altiora festinans, de Verbo Dei disputat." Praef.
in CoTnment. Ev. Matth. (See Lange, Lcben Jesu, i. 156 Mrs. Jameson
;
E85-589.)
— —
St. Matthew. 15
the Gospel for the Jews appears in the very first words, " the
book of the generation of Jesus Christ the son of David, the
son of —
Abraham "; the son of David, and therefore the heir to
the Jewish kingdom the son of Abraham, and therefore the
;
St. Matthew; the Discourse on the Church: and the Discourses ^"J:.
'
xviu.
on Judgment — _
' These generic peculiarities were very early noticed. Thus in the Carmen
of St. Gregory of Nazianzus we find :
Godet, Bible Studies, Eng. Trans, p. 23. We shall see hereafter that
1
St. Matthew's point of view is so little exclusive that he can admit passages
which point to the evanescence of the law and the universality of the Gospel
(ix. 16 xii. 7, 8
; xiii. 31 sq.
; xxvii. 19, &c.). ; It should be carefully borne
in mind that these characteristics are merely general and relative. It is not
meant that the Evangelists represent our Blessed Lord exclusively, but only
predominantly, under the aspects here mentioned. It must not be supposed
that any one of the Evangelists wrote with a deliberate subjective bias.
They dealt with facts not theories, and in no way altered those facts in the
interests of any special view. They neither did, nor could, invent or create ;
it was their sole duty to record. It is only from the grouping of facts,
and from the prominence given to particular incidents or expressions through-
out the several Gospels, that we deduce the ruling conceptions of the inspired
writers. St. Augustine's expression that they wrote " ut quisque meminerat
^
et ut cuique oordi erat " (De Gotisens. Evang. ii. 5) is not a very happy one.
^ 'Awofivnix.ofii/xaTa, Just. Mart. Dial. 103.
St. Luke's Gospel. 17
brief and startling succession, our Lord's deeds as He lived, the foub
GOSPELS.
and moved among men.
3. St. Luke on the other hand wrote in Greece, for the
bright, clever, affable Greek world. Hence his Gospel is
in its language the most accurate, in its order the most his-
torical and artistic.^ It is the volume of a great
first
would have been less intelligible to Greek readers, and substitutes 'EwurrdT-ns
or AtSaimaXos ("Master" or " Teacher ") for Eabbi "lawyer" for "scribe ;"
;
"yea" or "verily" for "Amen ;" the Greek (pdpos for the Latin census; the
Lake for the Sea of Galilee, &c.
' Thus St. Luke has only twenty-four Old Testament 'quotations as against
Matthew, and (except iv. 18, 19) none which are peculiar to
sixty-five of St.
himself, except in the first two (i. 17-25, ii. 23, 2i) and the 22nd and 23rd
chapters (xxii. 37, xxiii. 31, 46).
* Yet St. Luke never excludes passages which speak of the spiritual per-
petuity of the Law (xvi. 17) and obedience to it (ii. 22 sq., v. 14, &c.). Sea
too i. 32, ii. 49, xix. 46, xxii. 30. This is of course due to the fact that the
Evangelists were primarily faitliful recorders, and were never led into dishonest
suppression by party bias.
C
;
18 The Gospels.
men, the pre-existent and Eternal Son of God not only as the ;
Son of Man who ascended into heaven, but as the Son of God,
who descended from heaven to sanctify the world. The
whole circle of Gospel Revelation is as it were rounded into
a flawless symbol of eternity, when
John was inspired to
St.
write that " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was
made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth."
We may thus sum up these large, though neither exclusive
nor exhaustive generalisations.
St. Matthew wrote in Judaea for the Jews. His is the Gospel
of the Past, the Gospel which sees in Christianity a fulfil-
ment Judaism, the Gospel of discourses, the didactic
of
Gospel, the Gospel in which Christ is represented to us as
primarily the Messiah of the Jew.
St. Mark wrote Romans. His is the Gospel
in Italy for the
of the Present;
the Gospel of incident; the anecdotical
Gospel; the Gospel which represents Christ as the strong
Son of God and Lord of the World.
St. Luke wrote, perhaps in Corinth, for the Greeks. His
is the Gospel of the Future ; the Gospel of progressive
Christianity; the Gospel of Universal and free Salvation;
the Historic Gospel; the Gospel for Sinners; the Gospel
cf Jesus as the Good Physician and the Saviour of
Mankind.
St. John wrote in Ephesus for all
Christians. His is pre-
eminently the Gospel for the Church the Gospel
of Eternity
:
fill disciple ; the Gospel of Christ as the Eternal Son, and the fotir
''°^^^'^-
the Incarnate Word.
" Matthew," says Godet, " groups together doctrinal teach-
ings in the form of great discourses ; he is a preacher. Mark
narrates events as they occur to his mind ; he is a chronicler.
' This verse describes the actual work of Jesiis as set the Gospel.
fortli in
The genera] idea of the Gospel itself may be seen in i. 77. tod Soifai yvaaiv
crci)Ti]pCas Ttp AoaJ ai/ToS eV a(|)eo'€i aiiapTL&v avToJif, and xxiv. 47, Kai "tipvx^^^o.t
iirX T^ imfiari avrou |iCTavoiav Kal &<^«riv o|iapTio;v els iravTa ra ^Bv-q, dp^i-
fievov dTri 'lepoutroAif/i.
C 2
20 The Gosjjels.
THE FOUR The motto for St. John—indicative of the depth of view
GOSPELS,
.^^jjjgjj pervades all his Gospel— could only be the four most
flesh."
The extent which the differences which we have pointed
to
out were and recognised is curiously illustrated by the
felt
22 The Gospels.
NOTE L
THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS.
divergence.
a. The resemblance.? extend even to slight peculiarities of language
such as the rare and dubious word cViouVior " daily " in the Lord's prayer
the use of the diminutive ariov " little ear " (John xviii. 10 ; Matt. xxvi.
51 ; Luke xxii. 51) ; the curious adverb hva-icoKas to mean "with diffi-
culty " (Matt. xix. 23 Mark x. 23 Luke xviii, 24)
; : the irregular Doric
;
form of the perfect passive atpewvrai (Matt. ix. 2 ; Mark ii. 5 Luke ;
Ileuss has further calculated that the total number of verses common the four
to all the Synoptists is about 330; that St. Matthew has 350 verses gospels.
peculiar to himself, St. Mark 68, and St. Luke 541. The coincidences
are usually in the record of sayings : the peculiarities in the narrative
portion. In St. Matthew, the narrative occupies about one fourth in ;
St. Mark one half ; and in St. Luke one third. The instances of verbal
coincidence between all the three Synoptists together are mostly in short
sentences and are not very frequent.
Another important fact is that when St. Matthew and St. Luke
— —
verbally agree which is chiefly in the words of Jesus St. Mark always
agrees with them that the resemblances between St. Luke and St. Mark
;
are much closer than those between St. Luke and St. Matthew, but are
not numerous, being only eight in all,^ and mostly in short words of the
Lord ; that where St. Mark has additional touches St. Luke usually has
them also, but less seldom when additions are found only in St. Matthew
and that where St. Mark is silent, St. Luke often differs from St.
Matthew.
St. Luke and St. Mark agree most in the Galilean, and least in the
Judean scene of the narrative. Their agreement chiefly is in short
" words of the Lord " with the context that leads to them. Bat the
agreement of St. Luke with St. Matthew is often for several consecutive
sentences. To give the passages and details would occupy too much
space. It is not often that both St. Luke and St. Matthew contain passages
omitted by St. Mark {e.g. the Lost Sheep, Matt, xviii. 12 14 Luke — ;
XV. 4 —
7, and compare Matt. viii. 5 sq., xxii. 1 sq. with Luke vii. 1 sq.,
xiv. 15 sq.).
All the Evangelists have in common forty-seven sections. In St.
Mark there are not more than twenty-four versos to which no paiallel
exists in St. Matthew and St. Luke.^
The best way to estimate the facts is to examine side by side the text
of the Synoptists in any passage which they have in common, such as
the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen (Matt. xxi. 33 44 ; Luke —
XX. 9 — —
18 ; Mark xii. 1 11), or the Transfiguration and the healing of
the demoniac boy (Matt. xvii. 1—21 ; Mark ix. 1—27 ; Luke ix. 28—42).
This may very easily be done by studying Rushbrooke's Synoptieon, in
which the matter common to all the Evangelists is printed in red the ;
matter common to each pair in black spaced type ; and the matter
peculiar to each in ordinary type. The examination will at once illus-
trate the extraordinary complexity of the problem to be solved. It will
' Marsh. Renan says " Lea details que Matthieu ajoute k Marc, Luc ne
:
lesa pas ; ce que Luc semble ajouter k Matthieu Maro I'a toujours._ Dans
les passages qui manquent chez Marc il y a chez Luc une autre recension que
chez Matthieu." Les ivangiUs, 258.
2 Westuott Introd. ; Schaff. Hist, of Christian Church, p. 6D5.
24 The Gospels.
GOSPELS, ^in at the same time leave on every candid mmd an irresistible un-
the same
pressionthat we are reading the trutliful narrative of one and
different witnesses, modified only by
the individuality, the
story by
observation, and the retentiveness of memory
of the
keenness of
Tl flTTfltOI'S
' Other passages which may most profitably be contrasted are Matt. xxi.
83—44. Mark xii. 1—11. Luke xx. 9—18, or we may compare only single
verses, such as ;
Origin of the Gospels. 25
word of Christ," says Holtzmann, " was manifested by the fact that for a
26 The Gospels.
THE FOUK century passed througli the world of human thought, preserved only
it
GOSPELS, by unweakened in essence, and still maintaining its
oral tradition, yet
freshness and originality."' " So full of grace were His lips," Origenhad
said, seventeen centuries earlier,
" that brief as was the period during
wliich He taught, yet the whole world has been filled with His faith and
^
doctrine."
ii.This authoritative tradition, retained for a time in the strong
memories of those who frequently heard it, was gradually committed to
writing by some of the disciples for the use of wider circles. Earliest
among such narratives (Sii/y^tretf) and u.tterance3 would be the genealogy
of Christ, His miracles. His discourses, briefer sayings and eschatological
prophecies.
iii. These written memorials were early used by those who, more or
less unsuccessfully, first attempted to set forth a continuous sketch of
the ministry of Christ.
iv. The most authentic and valuable of such attempts were to a
certain extent utilised in the narratives of the Evangelists. This is
attempts. They profeBsed, indeed, to represent the " tradition " de- j^j. pouK
livered by those who had been " from the beginning eye-witnesses and gospels.
ministers of the word," but St. Luke felt himself compelled to offer to
Theophilus something more perfect. Besides his knowledge and use of
this sacred tradition he had made careful investigations of the whole
history from the beginning (wapTjieoXou^Tj/coVt avcoBcv rrda-iv axpi/Sms) in
order that his friend might fully know (ii-a emyvms) the actual and
certain facts {ttiv about aU the truths in which he had
aacjiaKeiav)
already been orally instructed. Christ had not commanded His Apostles
to write, but to preach. The Gospels were produced to meet a more
and more imperious necessity. The same impulse and the same reason-
ings which weighed with St. Luke may well have influenced the other
Evangelists at nearly the same time. That St. Luke did not include
these Gospels among the "attempts" with which he was dissatisfied, and
indeed that he was not acquainted with them, though he had recourse to
traditions and documents which they also had incorporated, is clear
from every page of his Gospel.
7. If then this hypothesis of a fixed oral tradition gradually reduced
to writing,be insufiicient to account for the differences and resemblances
of the Evangelists, it is at least certain that no more reasonable sugges-
' is the view which has been adopted in the main by Herder, Gieseler,
This
(who first developed it in 1818) Schulz, Crednev, Lange, Ebrard, Thiersch,
Norton, Alford, Eenan, Godet, Westoott, Schaff, Weiss, and Archbishop
Thomson.
^ "Multi conati sunt scribere Evangelia, sed non omnes recepti," Orig.
TTom. in Lue.
' Keim, Jesu
of Nazara, i. 45 (E. T.)
" Keim, i. 45.
2S The Gospels.
NOTE II.
THE FouE One of the greatest modern has said that there are at least
stylists
GOSPELS, five different styles in the New Testament. Under this head he ranks
together
^ Matt. ix. 10. The modest reticence of the Evangelist appears in his sup-
pression of his share in this feast. Comp. Luke v. 29.
^ Herod Antipas may perhaps have been allowed to collect his own taxes,
Maikii^is
—
^^Y ^ feast in which the guests were so numerous as to
prove that St. Matthew had something to lose by the aban-
—
donment of his functions and then, forsaking all, he followed
Christ. It is he alone who has appended to his own name
"Matthew the publican."^ He
the opprobrious addition of
need not have done Matthew was a new name. His
so, for
old name had been Levi. Matthew means " the gift of
God." ^ The old name Levi had been abandoned with the
old profession.^ In that single word, "the publican" (x. 3),
and in the absolute suppression of his own personality
throughout the Gospel, we see the deep humility of the
Evangelist. Not one incident, not one question, of his is
recorded. He occupied a very retiring and humble position
in the apostolic band. Tradition only records one saying of
his and one The traditional fact is that he
fact about him.
lived the life of an
on herbs and water.* The saying
ascetic,
is that when the neighbour of an elect man sins, he himself
' It has been fancied that St. Matthew shows traces of the matters which
foTmeiiy occupied his attention in the use of the word "tribute-money" not
"penny " in xxii. 17—22, and in recording the miracle of the stater.
^ MaTdalos is the Greek form of *F1D^ shortened from n>nO (perhaps
another form of Amittai, Jonah i. 1) QeoSupos. Mattathias, 1. Mace. ii. 1.
Matthias, Acts i. 23.
^ The Matthew with Levi (Matt. ix. 9, x. 3. Markii. 14.
identification of
Luke V. 27) has indeed been questioned (what has not been questioned ?),
but it has been all but unanimously accepted from the earliest ages. The chief
exceptions are the Valentinian Eerakleon (Chem. Alex. Strom, iv. 9, 73)
Origen (c. Cels. i. 62), Grotius, Michaelis, de Wette, and Ewald (CAmtes, pp'
^'^
289, 321).
**
MarQalos fxev oZv 6 aTTotTTOAoy (nrepfia.Tuy Kal aKpo^i!cav Kal Kaxavtcv &vfv
Kpiav ixiTiKafiPaff. Chem. Alex. Pacd. ii. 1, p. 16. If so this manner of
life seems to have been adopted in later days (see Matt. ix. 10
feast).
14, Matthew's —
!
St. Matthew. 31
—
but whither he went whether to ^Ethiopia or to Parthia is —
uncertain nor is it known whether he died peacefully, or
;
service —
the first Gospel. He thus lived to confer an eternal
benefit on that Church of God, which he alone of the Evan-
gelists has mentioned by that name.* It is not the only
instance in which one who seems to have lived much alone
with God and his own soul has, like John Tauler or Thomas
a Kempis, embalmed book the inmost fragrance
in one brief
beyond life.
of a blessed spirit, to last for a life
' Herakleon {ap. Clem. Alex, I. c.) excepts from the iiiimber of martyrs
Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Levi and many others. In all western works of
art he is represented as being slain by the sword. Greek artists uniformly
exhibit him as dying in peace, while an angel swings the censer beside his
bed ; as on the ancient dome of San Paolo at Eome. (Mrs. Jameson. ) As to
his missionary labours, Ensebius only says that he went i(p' krepovs. Eusebius
and Jerome have nothing to add to this. Macedonia, Persia, &o. are only ,
specified by later writers, till at last, Nicephorus Callistus (in 1350) specifies
the Anthropophagi
* 'EKic\i)<rio. Matt. xvi. 18 xviii. 17.
; The fact that this word, so common
in the Epistles, where it occurs 112 times, should occur here only in the
Gospels, like the fact that the title "Son of Man," so common in the Gospels,
is not found in the Epistles, is an interesting but entirely undesigned coinci-
dence, which throws light on the purpose, age, and credibility of the Gospels.
32 The Gospels.
ST. MATTHEW. wouM havB attributed his work to one whose name belonged
to the least distinguished among the Apostles. It would
^ Credner, Volkmar and others, argue that " the Gospel according to (Kara)
Matthew " does not imply direct autliorship hut their view is disproved hy
;
1, s. 1); Origen (ap. Euseb. vi. 25) Eusebius (if. E. v. 8) ; Jerome (De Virr.
;
spite of the Hebraic colouring which it has in common with nearly all the
books of the New Testament and (;3) the use of the LXX. in the majority of
;
the quotations, prove our present Greek Gospel to have been an original.
Keim and others suppose that Papias and all who followed him may have
been led into confusion by the existence of the "Gospel of the Hebrews
which mainly agreed with the narrative of Matthew. See the note at the end
of this discourse.
^ There would bo nothing very extraordinary about this fact. Josephus tells
us that he first iia-ote his Antiquities in Aramaic.
^ The Greek figure paronomasia occurs twice (vi. 16 xxi. 41). It is notice-
;
able too that in the Gospel to the Hebrews the Holy Ghost is feminine (" my
mother the Holy Ghost ") because the Hebrew Tyo is feminine ; but there is
nothing of this kind in St. Mattliew.
5 Ep. Barnab. iv. vii. Iren. Eaer. i. 26, § 2 iii. 1, §. 1.
; Euseb. S. E.
iii. 27. Origen, ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 25. Cerinthus (ciro. a.d. 110) used the
Gospel (Epiphan. Saer. xxx. 14), as also Clement, Hermas, Justin, &o. And
this viesv is accepted even hy Schwegler, Strauss, Hilgenfeld, Iveim, &c.
Irenaeus (Eaer. iii. 1) dates it a.d. 61 —
64, which is probaljly a little too early.
;;
St. Matthe'w. 33
engaged in apostolic work, St. Matthew may have been st. matthew.
specially marked out for that high task. He may have
undertaken it when twelve years had elapsed after the death
' The tradition is first found in the Preaching of Peter quoted by Clement
of Alexandria (Strom, vi. § iZ), and is alluded to by Apollonius (A.D. 180) ap.
Euseb. H. E. v. 18.
2 Euseb. E. E. iii. 24.
' The Tares the Hid Treasure ; the Pearl ; the Drawnet (xiii. 24—50) ; the
;
—
Unmerciful Servant (xviii. 23 35) ; the Labourers in the Vineyard (xx. 1 16) —
the Two Sons (xxi. 28 32) —
the Marriage of the King's Son (xxii. 1
;
14) —
the Ten Virgins (xxv. 1—13) the Talents (xxv. 14—30.)
;
^ The Cure of Two Blind Men (ix. 27—31) ; The Stater (xvii. 24—27.)
" The Magi the Massacre of the Infants ; the Flight into Egypt ; the
;
return to Nazareth.
' The Bargain, and Suicide of Judas ; the Dream of Pilate's wife the ;
departed saints who rose ; the watch at the sepulchre ; the story of the San-
liedrin the earthquake on Easter morning.
;
the invitations to the weary (xi. 25^30) ; about Idle Words (xii. 36 37) the — ;
—
prophecy to Peter (xvi. 17 19) ; on Humility and Eorgiveness (xviii. 15-35)
Rejection of the Jews (xxi. 43) ; the Great Denunciation (xxiii. ) ; the Esohato-
logical Discourse (xxv. 31-46) ; the Great Commission and promise (xxviii.
—
18 20). Hence the frequency of such phrases as " And when Jesus finished
these sayings" (vii. 28 ; xi. 1 ; xiii. 53 ; xix. 1 ; xxvi. 1).
D
34 The Gospels.
ST. MATTHEW, the actual woi'ds and sermons of the Son of Man. Mean-
while these minute analyses have established the great result
that the Evangelists are, as witnesses, independent of each
other, and that as each gave his own testimony in his own
way, they weave the separate strands of that fourfold cord
of evidence by which the Church is moored to the living
Rock of truth.
4. The next question which we ask about a book is,
" When was it written ? " When we remember that we owe
exclusively to the Gospels our knowledge of the life and
death of our Saviour Christ; when we recall that our faith
centres in a Person and that the Gospels are our sole nar-
rative of His life, we see how much it imports us to know
at what date they were penned.^ Had the records of the life
of Jesus, like those of the life of Buddha, been only written
long centuries after His death, we could feel no security as
to their faithfulness. Tradition may
last unimpaired for a
Christian, have not preserved for us a single fact. At the hest, a few of the
unrecorded sayings {&jpa(pa Si^v/iostk) are possibly genuine, as is certaialy that
preserved by St. Paul (Acts xx. 35). They are deeply interesting, and have
often been collected, as by Fabricius, Cod. Apoer. N. T. i. 32 Grabe Spicileg.
;
553 Westcott, Introd. Append. C. The three most interesting and well-
;
Fortunately the epoch of the Old Dispensation was closed st. maithew.
by an event so stupendous that it completely revolutionised
the religious history of Judaism, and fundamentally affected
the thoughts of Christians. That event, of which the results
are still unexhausted, was the Fall of Jerusalem. Had that
catastrophe preceded the writing of the Synoptic Gospels and
the Epistles of St. Paul, nothing is more certain than that it
must have been directly mentioned, and that it must have exer-
cised an immense influence on the thoughts and feelings of the
Apostles and Evangelists. No writer, dealing with the topics
and arguments and prophecies with which they are constantly
occupied, could possibly have failed to appeal to the tremend-
ous sanction which had been given to all their views by
God Himself, who thus manifested His Providence in human
history, and showed all things by the quiet light of inevitable
circumstances.! It may then be regarded as certain — it is
Jesus gave to Himself. Nothing is more natural than the fact that it is used
to describe our Lord in the Gospels only.
^ Such passages as Matt. v. 35 xxii. 7 ; xxiii. 2-34
; xxiv. 2
;
(" The
;
Holy City," "The Holy Place," "The City of the Great King" &c.) could
not have been written after the destruction of Jerusalem. The whole of
Chapter xxiv. implies expectations which were indeed fulfilled, and fulfilled in
the sense intended, but in a sense very different from that which was under-
stood by the early Christians, or anticipated by the Evangelists and Apostles.
See especially xxiv. 15 again, such passages as xvi. 28 xxiii. 36, 39 xxiv.
; ; ;
34 xxvi. 64 ; xxvii. 8 ; xvii. 24, are certain proofs that the Gospel was
;
gogue, and sailed with Him in the boat, and prayed with
Him under the star-lit sky one who had seen and heard,
;
and lis hands had handled the Word of Life :—and that
which he had seen and heard declares he unto us.
And we must count it as a distinct blessins: a circum- —
'Thus Strauss speaks of Christ as something unique, and says "Neyer at
any time will it be possible to rise above Him, nor to imagine any one who
should even be equal with Him. " Goethe calls him, "the Divine Man, the
Saint, the type and model of all men." Channing says, "I believe Jesus
Christ to be a more than human being." Eenan says, "Between thee and
God there is no longer any distinction. " J. S. Mill says that there is no better
rule than "so to live that Christ would approve our life." Similar testi-
monies might be indefinitely multiplied. Some of them I have quoted in my
Hulseau Lectures on The Witness of History to Ohrist.
A Simple Narrator. 37
stance in which we see the Providence of God —that there st. matthew.
is no trace whatever that St. Matthew was naturally a
highly-gifted man. The glory of his Gospel consists in the
inherent glory of the divine events which it was his high
mission to narrate. We have already seen that not an
act, not a sentence, not a question of his own, is recorded
in any of the Gospels. So far as we are aware, he did not
possess, either before or after the Crucifixion, a particle of
special, still less of preponderant, influence in the apostolic
band. His call is is in no way
mentioned, and after that he
distinguishable from the mass of his brother-Apostles. He
was present at Pentecost, and thenceforth he disappears alto-
gether from the pages of New Testament history. We do not
know either where he lived, or what he did, or when or how
he died. For the world the significance of his life is simply
concentrated in his authorship of the Gospel. His writings
do not show a trace of that glorious and indefinable quality
for which there cannot be found any other name than genius.
For the Church it is a happy circumstance that neither he, nor
Apostles ten times more gifted than he, had the ability to
invent the words, so inexhaustible in their profundity, the
character so divine in its power, which on this earth have
belonged to Christ alone. On every page of St. John's
writings we do see the marks of an individual genius, unique
and indisputable. This very circumstance has led many
sceptics to discredit his testimony,and depreciate the his-
toric value of his Gospel. They have seen in him a writer
who had the high capacity to modify or even in some measure
to originate. No such suspicion has ever attached to the
Gospel of the less gifted Publican. He gives us exactly
what we most needed: he could be a simple and faithful
naiTator, and he aims at nothing more.
5. We know then who wrote the Gospel, and when but ;
considered the days of old, and the years of, ancient times."
7.These are not mere theories. St. Matthew alone calls
Jerusalem the " Holy City," and the " Holy Place," and the
"City of the great King." Seven times he calls our Lord "the
Son of David." He derives His genealogy not, as St. Luke
does, from Adam the ancestor of mankind, but from Abraham
the Jewish forefather, and David the Jewish king. He alone
speaks of Christianity as " the consummation of the Ages."
He has upwards of sixty references to the Old Testament.
His ever-recurring formula is, "that it might be fulfilled,"^
The words " I am not come to destroy but to fulfil," modified
by " except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of
the Scribes and Pharisees ye cannot enter into the kingdom
of heaven," might be regarded as the doctrinal epitome of
large portions of his Gospel. He conceived of Christianity
primarily as the " bright consummate flower " and perfected
fruit of Judaism.^ The stumbling-blocks of the Jew were the
deep humiliation of Jesus; His rejection by their rulers; His
death of shame His depreciation of their oral and Levitic
;
Law. was
Matthew's task to show, by the simple
It St.
testimony of truth, that in all this Jesus had but fulfilled
to the letter the ideal of their grandest prophecies.^ He
1 Thus in quotations used by our Lord we have yeypa-n-Tat, dyairXripovTat,
iras irAripioBao'i xiii. 14
(iv. 14xxvi. 64).
; In other quotations we have
;
cxviii. 22, 23 ; His rejection, Is. liii. 1 ; xxix. 13, 14 ; vi. 9, 10 ; Matt. xiii.
14, 15 xxi. 42
; xv. 7—9 ; His death, Zech. xiii. 7 ; xi. 12, 13 ; Matt.
•
xxvi. 31, 14 — —
16 ; xxvii. 3 10 His depreciation of their Levitic and oral
;
ST. MATTHEW, clesired to set Jesus forth to them as their very Christ; tlie
Matthew alone who records, and that twice over (xx. 16, xxii.
14), the remarkable saying of Christ about " the called " and
" " More than the rest of the Evangelists," it has
the chosen."
been said, " He
seems to move in evil days, and amid a race of
backsliders; among dogs and swine who are unworthy of
the words of truth; among the tares sown by the enemy;
among fishermen who have to cast back many of the fish
caught in the net of the Gospel. The broad way is ever in
his mind, and the multitude of those that go thereby; and
the guest without the wedding garment and the foolish ;
virgins; and the goats; and those who cast out devils in
the name of the Lord, and yet are rejected." It has been
conjectured that Antinomian tendencies may at this time
have begun to be developed among the Hellenising Jews.
The Evangelist lays special stress on the guilt of hypocrisy
and religious ostentation, and viewed in the light of the
' The use of the Hebraism ohpavoi (2 Cor. xii. 2) in St. Matthew ia
peculiar. 'H ;3acri\e(o tUv ovpavSv occurs in this Gospel thirty twd times. The
other Christian writers use " the kingdom of God." The plural "heavens"
is used by St. Matthew where there is a reference to the dwelling-place of
God (6 iraT-fip 6 iv tois oi/paj-oTs). He uses it even in the first clause of the
Lord's prayer. St. John does not use the plural once, and Luke only four
times.
Unity of the Gospel. 41
ST. MATTHEW. H. Aftcr thls prelude the central mass of the book falls
into two great divisions (a) the Ministry and (b) the Passion
Christ the Redeemer by revelation; Christ the Redeemer
by death; Christ the Word of God, making His Father
known ; Christ the Lamb of God, dying for the sins of the
world.
A. The Ministry begins at iv. 12 with a swift preliminary
glance at the prophecy -which marked out Galilee as its
this Galilean hill, with its calm voice, its lowly Teacher, its
listening multitude, its lilies sprinkled
on the green grass,
is the Sinai of the New
Those beatitudes are its
Covenant.
decalogue, those virtues its ritual. Prayer and alms, holi-
ness and humbleness of heart there you have the Leviticus —
of Christianity, the Pentateuch of spiritual worship. The
1 Isaiah ix. 1 ; Matt. iv. 14 —16.
Words and Deeds. 43
Law to a freer and freer criticism of it ; from a calling of all Israel to a calling
of babes and sucklings ; from a calling of the Jews to a calling of the Gentiles ;
" —
44 The Gospels.
ST. MATTHEW. would ask you to observe how through these Acts of
I
—
the divine drama these objective stages of Word and Deed
— there run the undertones of two other deep subjective
contrasts —
one, the acceptance of Christ by His chosen,
contrasted with His rejection by the world ; the other, a yet
more universal contrast at every stage, the contrast between
the sin and misery of man and the infinite compassion and
love of the Incarnate Lord. These marvellous and subtle
contrasts are not due to any skill of the Evangelist himself
It is only because he bears witness to the Truth, and is in-
spired by the Spirit of Truth, that the simple Galilean
tax-gatherer becomes a divine musician, so that falling from —
concord or sweet accord to discord or harsh accord through
noble yet unsuspected harmonies,
the mockery ; the torture ; the cross ; the grave. And then,
after thismidnight of horror and of mystery, as with one
—
awful " Now " from the grey dawn to the rosy flush, to the
bursting splendour, to the risen sun, to the all-pervading
daylight —in pulse after pulse of radiance, in flood after
flood of sunshine —there beam upon us the empty sepulchre
the angel visions ; the triumph over death ; the Eesurrection
the appearances to the assembled disciples ; the vast com-
mission; the illimitable promise of a Presence with us for
evermore. Language will hardly describe for us the grandeur
of this consummation. We require for its due apprehension
the yearning passion of music. You may have heard
Haydn's oratorio of the Creation. You remember there
the fine recitative, " And God said. Let there be light " ;
centrates into one crowning note all wonder and all exulta-
tion, come forth the words, " And there was Light "
!
This
alone gives me a faint conception of what must have been,
to those sorrowing and half-crushed disciples, the gladness
ST. MATTHEW, the Gospel of the past fulfilled ; the Gospel of the Prophesied
Messiah ; the Gospel of the nine Beatitudes ; the Gospel
of the seven consecutive Parables ; of the ten consecutive
miracles ; of the five continuous discourses, of which one is
"Immeasurably Effective." 47
Death. But, ]o when all seems lost when the sun and
! — st. matthew.
moon have shrunk into darkness from the dreadful sacrifice
when the kings and peoples of the earth seem to have burst
His bands asunder and cast away His cords from them when ;
the Powers of Evil seem to have won their last and most
awful victory, suddenly, as with a flash of lightning out of
the blue sky, the Cross becomes the Throne, and the
Sepulchre the portal of Immortality ; and shattering the
gates of brass, and smiting the bars of iron in sunder. He
rises from Death to Life, from Earth to Heaven, and sends
forth His twelve poor chosen ones, armed with the implement
of a malefactor's torture, and with "the irresistible might of
weakness,'' to shake, to conquer, to evangelise, to enlighten,
to rule the world.
10. And thus the book carries with it internal evidence of
its own sacredness. How could the unlettered
Galilean
publican have written unaided a book so " immeasurably
effective " ? How could he have sketched out a Tragedy
which, by the simple divineness of its theme, dwarfs the
greatest of all earthly tragedies ? How could he have com-
posed a Passion-music which, from the flute-like strains of
its sweet overture to the "multitudinous chorale" of its
48 The Gospels.
ST. MATTHEW, mental writing," he brought to his work but three intellectual
endowments the love of truth an exquisite sensibility to the
: ;
IV. The closing scenes, the death and burial (xxvi 3-xxvii).
50 The Gospels.
ST. MATTHEW. There is scarcely a book of the New Testament which some German
15, 19 ; the parables of the Husbandman, &c. (xx. 1-16 ; xxi. 33-44
xxii. 1-14), &c.
Do these differences necessitate the supposition that a Judaic Gospel st. matthbw.
has been interpolated, or edited (uberarbeitet) by a liberal Christian ?
The answer is simple. The asserted discrepancy lay in facts which
found their synthesis in wider truths. Jesus was both the Messiah of
the Jew and the Saviour of the World. He came to the Jew first, and
afterwards to the Gentile. The Evangelist was a Jewish Christian, but
he could not nor did he desire to suppress, facts and words which
suppress.,
belonged to an order of thoughts infinitely wider than that in which
he had been trained. There is no contradiction between these different
points of view. They are but various aspects of many-sided truths.
3. A third attempt to divide the Gospel has been based on the fact
that of the numerous quotations from the Old Testament some are from
the Septuagint, others are rendered from the original Hebrew.
This phenomenon, first noticed by Credner and then by Bleek,
Holtzmann and others, has been minutely examined especially by
Anger. The result of his investigations is —
(i.) That both kind of quotations are scattered throughout the Gospel.
(ii.) That St. Matthew's cyclic quotations {i.e. those which he has in
common with the general cycle of Synoptic tradition) are from the LXX.,
—
but that in his individual quotations those which involve remarks and
—
inferences of his own he generally reverts to the Hebrew.
(iii.) That quotations from the LXX. bear the proportion of about
xxvii. 9. Yet he reverts to the LXX. even in his own remarks in i. 23 iii. ;
3. The strange thing is that in some of these instances (e.g., ii. 6, 18 iv. ;
15 xxi. 5), the LXX. would have served his purpose as well though not in
;
also the same formulae, such as "the kingdom of the heavens " thirty- two
times "Our Father in the heavens " or "heavenly" twenty-two times "that
; ;
it might be fulfilled " the pleonastic, iropeuBets "going;" the frequent koI
;
formulae of vague transition, &o. See Reuss, Eeilige Schrifien, ii. p. 194".
E 2
52 The Gospels.
lllustr. 36). The truth seems to be that the Gospel of the Nazarenes,
Twelve Apostles,
the Gospel of the Ebionites, the Gospel according to the
and the Gospel according to the Hebrews were
more or less heretical,
all
or at the best were unwarrantable Antilegomena based upon the genuine
Gospel. The Roman Catholic writer, Sepp, without more ado calls the
Gospel according to the Hebrews "a Jewish-Christian humbug."
Of the Gospel according to the Hebrews thirty-three fragments remain.
They have been collected by Credner, Hilgenfeld, and Nicholson. They
are also collected in Canon Westcott's InlroducUon to the Gospel (pp.
433-438), with the fragments of the Gospel to the Ebionites.
^ See such phrases as icaKohs KanQs diroXeirei auTOvs, xxi. 41, and such
paronomasias as utjiovTai iced Kitpovrai (xxiv. 30); a^avl^siv. cpaiyeaBai, vi. 16,
. .
1. The old notion of the Gospel of St. Mark which satisfied st. makk.
many of the Fathers and Schoolmen, and still satisfies most
readers — is the mistaken and superficial view that the
Evangelist was nothing but a follower and epitomist of St.
Matthew.^ It is a view which does not look an inch deeper
than the most obvious phenomena. ^ No doubt the Gospel of
St. Mark does present the same general outline as the pre-
ceding Gospel. We have seen that St. Matthew had five great
divisions. St. Mark entirely omits the Genealogy and the
64 Tlie Gospels.
ST. MAKK. opening glory and deepening gloom the year of prosperity in
;
scene both of tlie Last Supper and of the descent of the st. mark.
Holy Spirit at Pentecost. He
was a cousin of Barnabas, and
therefore, was of Levitic descent,^ and as Barnabas was from
Cyprus, Mark may have owed his Latin name to this circum-
stance.^ He was the companion of Paul and Barnabas in
their first journey. Becoming the unwilling cause of the sharp
dispute between them, he went with Barnabas to Cyprus.
Afterwards we find him in the closest and dearest intimacy
with St. Peter in Kome, and completely forgiven and trusted
by St. Paul also during his Roman imprisonment. The great
Apostle of the Gentiles mentions him in one Epistle with a
kindly message, and in another specially wishes for his
^
presence, because he was " profitable to him for ministering."
There is no ground for the fancy that St. Mark was the young
man in the linen sheet whom he mentions
unique and in the
characteristic incident of the arrest at Gethsemane.* Tradi-
tion says that he went to Alexandi'ia ; founded the famous
Catechetical school in that city, and there died a martyr's
death.^
3. The date of his Gospel was certainly before the fall of
^ Col. iv. 10, dvfjpios, not "sister's son," as in A. V. Epiplianius (ffaer.
11. 6) says (without probability) that St. Mark was one of the seventy disciples
of Christ, and fell away from Him (John vi. 66) but was brought back by
St. Peter.
^ The name was adopted (after the Jewish fashion) for use among Gentiles.
It was one of the commonest Latin names, as John was' one of the commonest
Hebrew names.
3 1 Pet. V. 13 Philem. 24
; 2 Tim. iv. 11.
; St. Peter uses vlis, not
TiKvov, but evidently the term is one of affection.
* This precarious identification has been rendered all the more popular
because it falls in with the fancy that each of the Evangelists has, as Godet
expresses it, left in a corner of his picture a modest indication of his own
personality Matthew in the Publican whom Jesus calls by a word from the
;
receipt of toll Mark in the young man in the linen garment Luke in the
; ;
whom Jesus loved (St. Luc. ii. 447). If the last supper was held (as is pro-
bable) in the house of Mary the mother of Mark, the Evangelist may have
been " the man bearing a pitcher of water." To bear a pitcher of water was
most unusual for a man, and this man could only have been the master of the
family bringing the water for some sacred purpose. Possibly too the signal
had been privately agreed on. It must be remembered that our Lord was at
that time under the ban, and that there was a price upon His head.
^ Euseb. H. ii. K
16 Epiphan. Boer. li. 6 Jer. Do Virr. III. 8 ; Chrys.
; ;
Eom. in Matt. Nicephor. ii. 43. For numerous legends and their treatment
;
But even Eomanists have given up the view of Baronius that he wrote in
1
Latin, a statement which ig found in some MSS. The Roman Christians all
spoke Greek. Even Clement of Rome wrote in Greek.
2 Kpipfiaros (grahatus), which he, alone of the Synoptists, uses five times,
occurs also in John v. 8-12, Acts v. 15 ix. 33. At the end of the Gospel
:
the Peshito version adds; "End of the Holy Gospel of the preaching of
Mark, who spoke and preached in Latin at Rome.
^ rb iKCivov XV. 15.
Tvoi^lv,He also has avu^ovXiov Sl^Svul, coiisilium dare ;
—
'™ extremis esse a phrase which Phrynichus says was only used
^irXOTtos exf"'>
by the vulgar. Sipa woW-n, vi. 35. No less than eight words which St. Luke
avoids are used by St. Mark, and are condemned by Phrynichus as "slang"
words {Kpi^HaTos, ixov6(pBa,Xp.os, eiitrx'^A""'' (ill the sense of rich), KoWv^mrcti,
KopdiTiov, ipKi^as, (taTrKT/ia, pa.<pii). The last word for "needle" is used by
Hippocrates, but Phrynichus reprehends it severely, and St. Luke used fieX6vi]
instead (Luke xviii. 25, B. D. L.). His Greek is sometimes incorrect, othv
with indicative ; h-a. first with the conjunctive and then the infinitive (iii.
U, 15).
Mark i. 2, 3. The reference in xv. 28 is omitted in our Revised Version,
*
as perhaps a gloss from Luke xxii. 37.
Seventeen of these quotations (out of nineteen) are from the LXX., and
°
for the most part agree with St. Matthew almost verbally.
;
Jewish usages.^ The word "Law" does not occur in his st. mark.
pages, though it occurs eight times in St. Matthew, nine times
in St. Luke, and fifteen times in John.^ Even the style
1 See vii. 1-5, 11-18 vii. 3, 4 ; xii. 18 ; xiv. 12 ; xv. 42, &c.
;
Christ, the Son of God," are a most fitting keynote to the whole book. "The
Son of God" is here omitted by {<, but the same title is given to Christ. in
seven other passages of the Gospel.
58 The Gospels.
et illo scribente compositum est " (ad Bed. i. 5 Epp. cxx. 10). Minute :
incidents connected with St. Peter are found in i. 29 ix. 5 xiv. 54, 72 xvi. ; ; ;
vividness. 59
" Peter and Andrew and James and John"; Simon of Cyi'ene
is " the father of Alexander and Rufus," whom the Roman
Christians know. The swine " are in number about two
thousand " ; the cock crows " twice." The time is " a great
while before day " ; or " the third hour " ; or " eventide."
The scene is " over against the treasury "
or on the sea- ;
"
60 The Gospels.
v. 41 ; xiv. 36.
3 See Life of Christ, i. 402. The remark has often since been copied.
3 —
Realistic. 61
' It perhaps, to the desire for vividness that we owe St. Mark's constant
is,
double expressions. See ii. 19 iii. 5, 27, &o. ; Thus in iii. 22 he has two
phrases for " He has Beelzebub," and yet another in iii. 30. Papias speaks of
his desii-e to omit nothing that he had heard. Such an expression as 6\f/ias
Se yGPO/Meyrjs ore ^Sucrev 6 ^Aios (i. 32) may be taken as a type of these "re-
duplicated phrases," and combines the words separately used by Matt. viii.
16 and Luke iv. 40.
^ " He is an author in a flower-bedecked garment. He makes the nan-ative
more efifective by the contrast between rapid progression and contemplative
stillness, painting the scenery with a thousand touches, the house, the sea,
the followers, the growing throng, the names of persons, the numbers of the
men, and of the animals, and of the pieces of money, the greenness of the
grass, the pillow in the stem of the boat on Gennesareth all given with a —
preference for affectionate and familiar diminutives, and in the present tense."
— Keim. The same picturesqueness of style is found in the Epistles of St.
Peter, and in nan-atives which must have come from him. Compare the
account of the cripple healed by St. Peter— which is full of graphic details
(Acts iii. 1-11) with the much less vivid account of the cripple healed by St.
Paul (Acts xiv. 8-10).
' Ewald. Meyer calls him malerisch, anschaulich.
" ;
62 Tlie Gospels.
with the wild cry, " Thou art the Son of God." Here, for
instance, is a single touch of description from Christ's last
approach to Jerusalem, found in St. Mark alone
— " And they
were on the way going up to Jerusalem ; and Jesus went
before, and they were amazed, and they that followed were
afraid." What a unique and marvellous picture All hope !
was now gone. The doom was near. Alone, with bowed
head, in deep and awful silence, like the leader of some fatal
enterprise, Jesus walked in front. But even in that supreme
hour of His desolation and rejection, when He was excom-
municate, when a
was on His head, in the lowest deeps
price
of the valley of His humiliation, on the path to His Cross of
shame, He inspires not the patronage of compassion, but an
^ St. Mark vises five words expressive of fear, wonder, trouble, amazement,
extreme astonishment, (i. 27 ; v. mvTfs
28, ii. 12, Sa-re
idaij^^ifdnaav ;
vi. 51, i^icrravTO Koi IBavfxaCov vii. 37, uirf pTrepicro-cSs cleTrA^o- o-ovto.)
] "The
wonder-working Son of God sweeps over His Idngdom svi'iftly and meteor-
The Lion of St. Marie. 63
was like His sorrow yet the pomp of empires fades, and tlie
;
^ 'E0aat\eviTev dirj toS ^ixov. Ps. xcvi. 10. LXX. Just. Mart. Dial.
p. 298. August. Enarrat. in Ps. xcvi. Tert. c. ilarc. iii. 19.
^ "Solo guardando
64 The Gospels.
ST. MARK Already St. Paul had said " I am not ashamed " —not even in
was the imperial purple, the glitter of the lictor's naked axe,
the drawn swords of Braetorian guards, the background of
thirty legions, the awful entourage of spies and informers,
whose whispers cut men's throats. But St. Mark shows them
a Man who, though he lived in the midst of poverty and
insult, a persecuted Nazarene though all His state was in
;
Himself only though His face was marred more than any
;
man though He gave His back to the sniiters, and His cheeks
;
Special Details. 65
the only flash which falls on the continuous tenor of the first
thirty years—from infancy to manhood —of the Life of
Christ ;
^ how in one phrase " This He said . . . making all
66 The Gospels.
NOTE I.
It is impossible to read these verses attentively in tlie original -willioiit st. maek.
being struck by very remarkable peculiarities.
1. In ivi. 2 we are told that the women went to the tomb very early
in the morning (Kiav irpaX) and found that Christ was already risen.
We are surprised, therefore, to find again in verse 9 the phrase " having
risen early."
2. " On the first day of the week" (jrpmTrj o-a/S/Sarou) is expressed by a
phrase for " week " which St. Mark never uses. Even in verse 2 we
have T^c fuas (ra/3/3aT<a k.
3. " He appeared first." The " first " is surprising, since in the pre-
vious verses we have already been told of an earlier appearance to the
women of whom Mary Magdalene was one.
4. " Out of whom He had cast seven devils.'' This is still more unex-
pected, since the addition to Mary's name has not once been given when
she is mentioned before in this Gospel (three times).
5. "She." Here, and in 11 and 13, we have exeij'of used absolutely
in a way unlike St. Mark's. (There is no similar instance in his Gospel
except in iv. 20, where, perhaps, the true reading is oBroi.)
6. " Went." This verb, iropevofiai, is used three times in these few
verses ; not once elsewhere throughout the Gospel.
7. As we proceed we find a number of words and phrases unknown
8. Wehave the title " the Lord " twice ; which St. Mark never uses
elsewhere.' In verse 9 the subject (6 'Irjaovs) is strangely omitted.
9. The use of the connecting particles in verses 19, 20 is rare in
St. Mark, and the omissions of the copula in verses 10 and 14 is
unusual.
10. Besides these very numerous and undeniable peculiarities thus
accumulated into a few verses, the powers promised to " believers," in
verses 17, 18 (handling of serpents, drinking poison, speaking with
" new " tongues) are unparalleled, and suggest difficulties.
' St. Mark invariably uses the address "Eabbi," or ''Rabboni," even
where " Lord " is used in the parallel passages of the Syuoptists.
F 2
"
68 The Gospels.
told that it was omitted by many ancient copies. It is also absent from
some old MSS. of the Armenian version, and from one Arabic version.
3. Eusebius, Jerome, Gregory of Nyssa (or Hesychius), and the
Scholia of several MSS., say that in their day it was wanting in almost
all the Greek copies of the Gospels.^
4. It seems to have been unknown to Cyril of Jerusalem (?), Tertul-
lian, and Cyprian and is not mentioned by Clement of Eome or
;
Clement of Alexandria.
5. A different, shorter, and unquestionably spurious ending is found
in some MSS. and versions (e.g. L. and Cod. k. of the Itala, and the
margin of the Philoxenian Syriac).
Even if the internal evidence in its favour had been strong, the
external evidence against it would have made us at least doubtful as to
its authenticity. But when we find it thus deficient in external evi-
dence, whUe at the same time the internal evidence is so startlingly
unfavourable, we can hardly wonder that it is rej ected or questioned by
such critics as Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Schulthess,
Schulz, Eitschl, Auger, Zeller, Fritzsohe, Credner, Eeuss, Wieseler,
Holtzmann, Keim, Scholten, Klostermann, Hitzig, Schenkel, Ewald,
Meyer, Weiss, Alford, Norton, Godet, Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort.
The external arguments in its favour are,
u. That it is found in most Uncials, and all Cursives (though in the
^ TO. 56 I^TJs (Mark xvi. 9-20) airaviias iv runv aW' ovk iv iraai (\>^p6ii^va
nepiTTa t(,v Kol fj-dKiffra etirep %x°^^^ avrtKoyiav ry tosv Xotiruv evayy^Kiffroiv
ettj,
/jMpTupla. Euaeb. Qu. 1, ad Marinum. " Omnibus Gi-aeciae libris paene hoc
capitulum in fine non habentibus, pracsertim cum dimrsa alque contraria
evangelistis caeteris narrare videatur. Jer. ad Hedib. Qu. — ii.
have been lost. The " triple tradition " of the Synoptists, as Dr. Abbott
has pointed out, ended with the return of the women from the sepul-
chre, and St. Mark may have scrupled to make any further addition.
In these matters we must make allowance for idiosyncrasy, and cannot
judge by modern ideas.
Let the reader compare the phenomena presented by these verses with
those found in John xxi. That too is regarded, and in all probability
rightly regarded, as an appendix, but there can be no doubt that (with
the possible exception of the last two verses) it proceeded from the pen
of the Apostle himself. This passage of St. Mark stands on a wholly
different footing. It is accepted as canonical —
in other words it has
been accepted by the Church as having a right to be regarded as a part
of Scripture but the number of competent critics who still believe it
;
to be genuine is diminishing.
The passage is, however, defended, as genuine by Mill, Bengel,
Schleiermacher, De "Wette, Bleek, Olshausen, Lange, Ebrard, Hilgenfeld,
Scrivener, Wordsworth, McLellan, Cook, Morrison, and Burgon. All
who desire further evidence may seelt it in the second volume of West-
cott and Hort's Revised Greek Text, pp. 38, sqq. ; and will find every-
thing which can be said in its favour in Dean Burgon's monograph on
the subject (Oxford and London, 334 pp.). Having read both sides on
the controversy they will be able to estimate the value of Dean Burgon's
remark that, "not a particle of doubt, not an atom of suspicion, attaches
to the last twelve verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark."
— —
" ;
" He was a physician : and so, to all, his words are medicines of the
drooping soul." —S. Jee. Ep. ad Paulin.
" Vidi due veccM in abito dispari
Ma pari in ogmmo onesto e sodo,
atto,
L'un si monsti'ava alcun de famigliari
Di quel sommo Ipocxate, che natura
Agli animali fe' ck' ella ha piil cari."
Dakte, Purg. xxix.
1 Acts i. 19.
' He
implies (Luke i. 1) that he was not an eye-witness.
' speaks of "Nicolas of Antioch " in Acts vi. 5, without mentioning
He
the native place of any other of the six deacons. Mr. Smith of Jordanhill,
in his dissertation on St. Luke, points out the interesting parallel that of eight
accounts of the Russian campaign, only the two Scotch authors (Scott and
Alison) mention that General Barclay de Tolly was of Scotch extraction.
Schaff. Hist, of Christian Ohurch, p. 651. Some of St. Luke's special infor-
mation about the Herods may have been derived from Manaen, the foster
brother of Antipas of Antioch, Acts xiii. 1.
72 The Gospels.
(TvveaTpaju,fieva>v Se r)ij.S]V,
" but while we were assembled
together," it would prove that St. Luke had been acquainted
with the Apostle shortly after his arrival from Tarsus to
assist the work of Barnabas. In that case he may well have
been one of the earliest Gentile converts ^ whom Paul ad-
St.
written Gospel ;
^ but it is probable on other grounds, and is
' In Col. iv. 11, 14, he is distinguished from " those of tlie circumcision."
' Jer. He Virr. ill. 7.
—
Caesarea (a.d. 54) there is good reason to believe that it was not published till
a later date. The general tone of the Gospel e.g. the use of avrds and i
—
Kipios when speaking of Christ indicates a later time in the rapid develop-
ment of early Christianity than we should infer from the tone of the other
Synoptists. Kiptos as a substitute for Jesus occurs fourteen times in St. Luke ;
but elsewhere in the Synoptists only in Mark xvi. 19, 20. The combination
"the Lord Jesus," occurs (if genuine) only in Luke xziv. 3, though common
in the Epistles. This would however be partly accounted for by the fact that
St. Luke as a Gentile proselyte, belonged in point of feeling even more than in
point of time to a later gcneratioa of Christiana than the original Apostles.
» 2 Tim. iv. 11.
—
74 The Gospels.
and the course of the narrative may have been suddenly cut
short either by accident or even by his own death. Irenaeus
{adv. Haer. III. 1) expressly tells us that his Gospel was
written after the death of Peter and Paul. The most trust-
worthy tradition says that he died in Greece and it was ;
was nothing bettered but rather grew worse." Dr. Plumptre, in the Expositor
(No. XX. 1876), has collected many ti'aces of St. Luke's medical knowledge
(cf. Acts iii. 7, ix. 18, x. 9, 10, xii. 23, xx. 31, xxvi. 7, xxviii. 8 ;Lnkeiv.
23, xxii. ii, &c.), and even of its possible influence on the language of St.
Paul. The theme has been greatly (and perhaps unduly) expanded by Eev.
W. H. Hohart, On the Medical Language of St. Luke, Dublin, 1882.
Luhe a Physician. 75
preaching of St. Peter, then St. Luke may have been his
freedman.^ Physicians frequently held no higher rank than
that of slaves, and Lobeck, one of the most erudite of modern
Greek scholars, has noticed that contractions in as, like Lucas
from Lucanus, were peculiarly common in the names of
slaves.^ One more conjecture may be mentioned. St. Luke's
allusions to nautical matters, especially in Acts xxvii., are at
once remarkably accurate and yet unprofessional in tone.^
Now the ships of the ancients were huge constructions, hold-
ing sometimes upwards of 300 people, and in the uncertain
length of the voyages of those days, wo may assume that the
presence of a physician amid such multitudes was a matter
of necessity. Mr. Smith of Jordanhill, in his admirable
monograph on the voyage of St. Paul, has hence been led to
the inference that St. Luke must have sometimes exercised
his art in the crowded merchantmen which were incessantly
coasting from point to point of the Mediterranean. How-
ever this may Luke
be, the naval experience of St. as well
as his medical knowledge would have rendered him a most
valuable companion to the suffering Apostle in his constant
voyages.
Turning to the Gospel itself, we may first notice that it
connection of some kind between Luke and the poet Lucan, nephew of GaUio
(Acts. XTiii. 14-17) and of Seneca. This possibility was inferred from the
apocryphal correspondence between St. Paul and Seneca, and other very slight
indications (see Bishop EUicott's ComTnentary, i. 257, 288).'
" He uses in this chapter seven compounds of irXew, and at least ten other
providence of God we
find such holy and beautiful friendships
in formative epochs of the Church, as at the Reformation
between Luther and Melanchthon, Calvin and Beza, Cran-
mer, Latimer, and Ridley.^ How much should we have lost
but for the friendship between St. Paul and the loved
physician, between St. Peter and " Marcus my son " !
A long list of words and phrases which are common to St. Luke and St. Paul
may be seen in Davidson's Introd. to the New Test. ii. 12-19. The student
may compare the following :
St. Luke —
— ;
Hymns. 77
28-33) and the Gloria in excelsis (ii. 14).^ How rich a con-
tribution to our Christian Psalmody is this How great !
the Nunc Dimittis in the fifth. The Magnificat is found as a part of the Evening
Service as early as A.D. 507 in the rule of Caesarius of Aries. The Gloria
seems to have been used in the second century.
78 The Gospels.
i5T. LTJKE. of tlie Saviour begins witli hymns and ends witli praises ;
and good will towards men. Jesus is not only the Son of st. luke.
David, 01 even tlie Son of Abraham, but the Son of Adam,
the Son of God. It is St. Luke alone who ends the prophecy
of Isaiah about the Baptist with the words, " And all flesh
shall see the salvation of God." He alone records the sermon
on the text which prophesied that Jesus should heal the
brokenhearted and preach deliverance to the captive. Lastly
(to omit many other instances), in him alone does the Lord
ascend to His Father in heaven blessing His people with up-
lifted hands. Tradition says that the Evangelist was a painter
a painter in the common sense he was not, but in another
sense he was ; and what a picture of our Saviour Christ does
this great ideal painter set forth to us —how divine, how exqui-
site, how circled, as it were, with a rainbow ! He comes with
angel carols ; He departs with priestly benedictions. We
catch our iirst glimpse of Him in the manger cradle of Beth-
lehem ; our last, as from the slopes of Olivet, He vanishes
into the cloud of glory with pierced hands upraised to bless.
to be which
identified with a partisanship, clothed its own
egotism under the guise of zeal for God, and lost itself
in a frenzy of persecuting zeal against all opinions and all
practices which were not its own. -The Pharisaic Jews hated
the Gentiles, hated the Samaritans, despised the poor, op-
pressed womanhood, insulted publicans, would have called
down fire from heaven on all who differed from themselves.
Far different is the spirit of the Gospel as set forth by St.
Luke. In his pages, towards every age, towards either sex,
towards all nations, towards all professions, towards men of
80 The Gospels.
"
the hymn about Christ as " a Light to lighten the Gentiles ;
;
the prophe(;y that " all flesh shall see the salvation of God
the destined end that repentance and remission of sins
should be preached unto beginning at Jerusalem
all nations,
true humanity of Christ, and treated His life on earth as an illusory semblance.
St. Luke alhides to the human existence of our Lord before birth (i. 40); as a
babe (ii. 16) ; as a little child (ii. 27) as a boy (ii, 40) ; and as a man
;
(iii. 22).
The Gospel of Womanhood. 81
—
journeys not by warriors like David, not by elders like
Moses, not by kings and princes like the Herods but by a —
most humble band of ministering women. He alone pre-
serves the narratives, treasured with delicate reserve and
holy reticence in the hearts of the blessed Virgin and of the
saintly Elizabeth —
narratives which show in every Hne the pure
and tender colouring of a woman's thoughts. He alone tells
us how honest Martha was cumbered with much serving, and
—
how Mary of Bethany the gentle and the lowly chose, —
sitting humbly at the feet of Jesus, the better part he alone ;
G
82 The Gospels.
ST. LUKE, and Pharisees gathered up their robes lest they should touch
a -woman in the streets or synagogues they pretended that
;
but He, the holy and the sinless, knew that in the normal
life of pure humanity it is only the twofold heart which beats
with one full life ; that man and woman must together walk
this world
" Yoked to all exercise of noble end,
And so through those dark gates across the wold
Which no man knows."
of " the poor, the maimed, the halt, the blind " to the great
to " give alms " and to the disciples to " sell what they
;
have :
and the advice of St. John the Baptist to part with
''
VI. But, more than this, St. Luke's Gospel is the Gospel
not only of children and of the Gentiles, and of the humble
and the despised, of the blind, the lame, the halt, the
maimed, but even of the publican and the harlot, the prodi-
gal and the outcast not only of Mary, but of the Magdalene
;
;
1 See iii.
10,01 ; x. 38-42 ; xiv. 12-24 xvi. 14-31. ; "We find in the Act"
the same fondness for the Gospel of self-denial.
G 2
:
!!
8i The Gospels.
not only of Zacchaeus, but of tlie dying thief. There are two
conditions of human life ; —the oae is pompous, critical, in-
dependent, self-satisfied. by
It is represented in the world
the airs of little, and in the Church by the
brief authority,
boastful tone, the censorious arrogance, the broad phylactery.
It is human life as seen in the rich and haughty Pharisee of
to-day, no less than it was seen 2,000 years ago the life ; —
and bearing of the person who has succeeded in trade, or made
a good marriage, or of whom people are afraid ; of the man
who " holds his head high, and cares for no man, he." And
there is quite the other side of human life ;
—the condition
of the depressed, the poor, the unprosperoiis ; of the man who
has notmade a success of life, as men count success ; of the
weak, who feel themselves weak. It is the life of failure
which recognises itself as failure, for which no hope dawns
on this side the grave. Or, much sadder even than this
There is the humanity that is conscious of its shame
crushed by its evil, accepting as its due the contempt poured
upon it not turning like even the trampled worm which
; ;
over a man that has once slipped !How it rakes out of his
past years his buried faults ! How it evokes from the un-
forgetting tomb the pale ghosts of his past delinquencies
The lessons of this Gospel should make us blush if ever we
are eager to point the first finger, or to fling the first stone.
To delight in blame, to revel in depreciation, is the charac-
teristic of the very basest of mankind. And are we more
sinless than the sinless One ? more indignant at wrong
than He ? Yet, while He had plain thunderings and light-
nings for impenitent Pharisaism and triumphant wickedness,
how did He treat the sinful who knew that they were sinful,
and the fallen who did not deny their fall ? Now it is a
tax-gatherer of bad reputation, and He says, " He also is a
son of Abraham." Now it is a gay young fool, who has
"
devoured his living with harlots, and comes all ragged and
degraded from the far land and the feeding swine and while ;
this fold," though they all form the one flock. St. Luke
' " On ne fut jamais moins sectaire. Tout y r^vMe un esprit large et dous.
— Renan, Let Evangilea, p. 282.
;
8G The Gospels.
—
He commend the gratitude of the Samaritan leper ! How
does He choose as His type of love to our neighbour, not the
indifferent priest, or the peering Levite, but the Good
Samaritan !
" Let us call down fire from heaven as Elijah
did," all times; and
cry the religious controversialists of
to comes the meek rebuke of the Saviour,
all times
"Ye know not, ye, what manner of spirit ye are of;^ for
the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to
save them."
" We forbad him, because he followeth not us ;
" so have
the champions of party dogmatism fiercely exclaimed, age
after age, hampering and hindering many a grand discovery
of science and many a holy work of good to whom comes ;
for us."
VIII. Such, then, is the Gospel of St. Luke ;
—the Gospel
of theGreek and of the future of cathoUcity of mind the ; ;
of the lost piece of money and the lost sheep the Gospel of ;
pardon for all the world ; the Gospel of grace and of the
glad tidings of free salvation the Gospel of Him who was,
;
as we all are, the Son of Adam, and who died that we all
' John
iv. 22 ^ Luke ix. 55, oi)k oTSaTf iix^U.
" remarkable that St. Matthew's formula for parables is " The kingdom
It is
"
of Heaven is likened unto." That of St. Luke is more " human and humane
viz., "A certain man," " A certain rich man," &e. See x. SO xiv. 16 ; xv. ;
might be the sons of God. Such are its lessons.^ Have not st. lukb.
some of us very much misread and mistaken them ? Has
the best Christian among us all done more than just begin
to spell out their meaning ?
' " Das Evangelium des Menschensohnes, der Humanitat Christi, derVerklanmg
allerHumanitat," Lange, BibeVcwnde, p. 187 " Le son pur et olair d'une ame
;
tout argentine," Renan. The word xopii occurs in this Gospel no less than
eight times (Luke i. 14 ; il. 10 viii. 13 x. 17
; ; ; xv. 7, 10 ; xxiv. 41, 51).
Such terms as ?Aeos, irlcrTH, Smaioaivi), irctS^ua &yiov, yvurts, &c., are common
to St. Luke and St. PauL
";
88 The Gospels.
NOTE I.
ST. LUKE. Besides the ten characteristics of St. Liike's Gospel which we have
pointed out, we may notice further that St. Luke's Gospel is differen-
tiated by
(xi.) The bias of St. Luke is
Its careful chronological order (1
3). —
Matthew is theological. " Luke is like a botanist
historical, as that of St.
who delights to study each flower in the very spot where it has sprung
up, and amidst its native surroundings. Matthew resembles the gardener
who is culling splendid bouquets for some special purpose which he has
in view." — Godet, New Test. Studies, p. 16.
(xii.)very important preface. This preface tells us that St. Luke
Its
had read previous '' attempts " to write Gospels, and deeming them in-
adequate, had used all diligence to secure completeness (nao-tv), accuracy
(aKpifims),^ chronological order {Ka6e^rjs), and earlier commencement
1 " Lucam tradunt veteres. magis Graecas literas scisse quam Hebraeas.
. .
— Jer. ad llamas. Ep. 20. Where the style is less pure, and abounds in Hebra-
isms, we find internal evidence that St. Luke is closely following soifte Aramaic
document in which the oral tradition had been reduced to writing. The
preface shows in what a perfect Greek style he covZd have written.
Instances are— vo/tiKol for ypa/iiiaTtTs, eiriiTTdrrjs for Pafiffl, \iiivt) for
'•'
Further Characteristics. 89
that of St.Matthew and St. Mark. His peculiar skill as a writer lies rather
in "'psychologic comments,"^ and the reproduction of conversations with
their incidents, than in such graphic and vivid touches as those of St.
Mark. He is also a great master of light and shade, i.e. he shows re-
markable skill in the presentation of profoundly instructive personal
contrasts — e.g. Simon and the Sinful Woman
Zacharias and Mary ;
Martha and Mary the Pharisee and the Publican the Good Samaritan,
; ;
Priest, and Levite Dives and Lazarus beatitudes and woes tears and
; ; ;
fihv oZv and re, the combination oiiris &, the more frequent use of the optative,
t6 elpt\ixivov for t3 pr\6iv, &c. He avoids the Latinism KoSpdvTip, and the
word " metamorphosis" (liereixopipiiBri) which the Greeks might have misunder-
stood (ix. 29). He uses 'Upotr6xvfia only three times, but 'l€povaa\i}ii
twenty-six times. A
long list may be found in Dr. Davidson's Introd. to
the New Test. ii. 57-67, and in Dr. Abbott's article "Gospels" in the JEneyel,
Britannica. In some instances St. Luke con-ects an awkward phrase found in
the other Synoptists, «. g. by using tpiXoivTuv for Bi\ivrav deirairiiLO^s (xx. 46) ;
by the addition of Taa-a-iiievos after 6ir' 4^ovtriai> (vii. 8) ; by say ing irfireio'/jeVoj
^(TTiv 'IwavfTiy trpoii>'i\T'f]v cleat (xx. 6) for exouci t))v 'Iwaypr/y us Trpotp-iirTiv ;
by substituting oV Kareaeiovat (xx. 47) for oi KaTeadoures; by using nefixpa
(xxi. 2) for trTtex^ (except when quoting Christ's words), and v<rTipiiij.aTos for
the less accurate v<mpi](reus (xxi. 4). For other instances of St. Luke's
editorial changes see iv. 40 vii. 25; viii. 1 ; xi. 13, 36, 39, 49, 51, xii.
;
61, 55. Expressibns of St. Mark which might have been cavilled at {e.g.
"He was not able," Mark vi. 5 ; "to lay hands on Him," iii. 21) were
omitted, or softened ; see the tentative miracle (Mark viii. 24).
1 iii. 15 ; vi. 11 ; vii. 29, 30, 39 ; xvi. 14, &c. Bishop EUieott, Eist.
Leet. p. 28.
^'
Satan is mentioned six times ; only three times in St. Matthew and
once in St. John. It is a curious circumstance, showing the common use
made by the Synoptists of a fixed oral tradition that they only use Salfjuar
in the Gadarene narrative (Matt. viii. 31 ; Mark v. 12 ; Luke viii. 29)
but Saiiiiviov forty-five times. It is much to be regretted that our revisers did
not keep up the marked distinction between haunting " demons " and " devils."
"Devils" occurs many times in our Bibles, but not once in the New Testa-
ment, except in the sense of "slanderers" (2 Tim. iii. 3 ; Tit. ii. 3) and ;
"Devil" is only used by St. Paul in Eph. iv. 27 ; vi. 11 ; 1 Tim. iii. 6 ;
2 Tim. ii. 26.
'This praise is the more striking because of the source from which it
comes. The writer adds that it shows "un admirable sentiment popalaire,
une fine et touchante po^sie." " C'est surtout dans les recits de I'Enfance et
de la Passion que I'on trouve un art divin. . Le parti qu'il a tire de Marthe
.
et de Marie sa soem- est chose merveilleuse aucune plume n'a laiss^ toniber
;
dix lignes plus charmantes. L'dpisode des disciples d'Emmaus est un des
recits les plus fins, les plus nuances qu'U y ait dans aucune langue." "Son
livre est un beau recit bien suivi, k la fois h^braique et hellenique, joignant
I'emotion du drame k la s^renite de I'idylle. Tout y rit, tout y pleure, tout y
chante partout les larmes et les cantiques c'est I'hymne du peuple nouveau,
;
;
90 The Gospels.
The two first chapters and the great section, ix. 51 xviii. 14, ars —
mainly peculiar to St. Luke. This section, descriptive of the inci-
dents in the Journey of Christ, has sometimes, but inadequately, been
called " the Gnomology " or collection of moral teaching. No place is
mentioned by name (ix. 52 x. 38 ; xi. 1 xvii. 12). Besides the
; —
"greater insertion " there is a lesser insertion (vii 11 — viii. 3).
dress to the Daughters of Jerusalem (27-31) ; the prayer, " Father, for-
give them " (xxiii. 34) ; the penitent robber (40-43) ; the disciples at
Emmaus (xxiv. 13-31) ;
particulars of the Ascension (xxiv. 50-53).
Additional touches which are sometimes of great importance may be
found in iii. 22 (" in a bodily shape "), iv. 13, (" for a season "), iv. 1-6 ;
NOTE II.
Marcion (about a.d. 140) not only knew tlie Gospel of St. Luke, but st. lukb.
adopted it as tbe basis of bis own Gospel witb such mutUations as
suited bis peculiar opinions. This fact is not only asserted by Irenaeus,
Tertullian, Epiphanius, &c., but may now be regarded as conclusively
proved, and accepted by modem criticism,Marcion omitted chapters
i. ii. and joined iii. 1 with iv. 31. His Gospel, in fact, was a Gospel,
" written a priori."
Marcion, the son of a bishop of Sinope, was expelled from that city
by his father, went to Rome about a.d. 143, and becoming an adherent
of the Syrian heretic Cerdo, founded a formidable schism. There were
in his system Gnostic elements of dualism and docetism. He wrote a
book called Antitheses to contrast the teachings of the Old and New .
New Test. pp. 312-315 ; Sanday, Gospels in the Second Century, c. viii.,
and Fortnightly Rev. June, 1875. For a reproduction of Marcion's
Gospel see Thilo. Cod. Apocr. i. 401. The strangest omission by Marcion
is that of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. As regards the readings,
modern opinion view that some at
inclines to the least of these may be
worthy of consideration, especially as they often affect no doctrine or
point of importance.
:
92 The Gospels.
NOTE III.
1. Introduction, i. 1-4.
2. The Preparation for the Nativity, i. 5-80.
3. The Nativity, ii. 1-20.
4. The Infancy, ii. 21-38.
5. The Boyhood, ii. 30-52.
6. The Manifestation, iii. 1-iv. 13.
7. Early Ministry, iv. 14-vii. 50.
8. Later Ministry in Galilee and its neighbourhood, viii.
9. Close of Galilean Ministry and Journey northwards, ix. 1-50.
10. Incidents and Teachings of the Journey to Jerusalem, ix. 51-
xviii. 14.
11. Incidents and Teachings of the last stages of the Journey, xviii.
14-xix. 46.
12. Closing Scenes and Death, xix. 47-xxiii. 49.
13. The Burial and Resurrection, xxiii. 50-xxiv. 49.
14. The Ascension, xxiv. 50-53.
NOTE IV.
The discussion began with Evanson's Dissonance of the Evangelists iij 1792.
'
study all that can be urged against the Gospel by the ablest st. john.
nor Hilgenfeld, nor Reuss, nor Keim, nor any other of the
able critics who have persuaded themselves that the Gospel
was the work of a Gnosticising dreamer in the second century,
have I met with any argument that does not seem to me to
have been fully and fairly answered. So long as the arguments
of such writers as Ewald, Luthardt, and "Weiss, in Germany ;
Sanday's Fourth Gospel ; in Weiss's Liibcn Jesu ; and in Di-. Ezra Abbott't
Authorship of the Fourth Gospel. The Johannine literature in this century
'
alone would fill a library ;but the objections urged against the genuineness
of the Gospel have been met point by point, and nothing can invalidate the
mass of external and internal evidence in its favour from early, varied, and
unanimous testimony ; from the proof that i ;i the second century it was not
only widely known, but various readings had already risen in the text from ;
the style, the knowledge of Palestine, the depth of insight displayed, the
many subtle indications that we are reading the words of an eye-witness and ;
96 The Gospels.
ST. JOHN, depth and the beauty of this Gospel. No one can reasonably
doubt that it was written by the author of the First Epistle.
If St. John did not write it, it was written by one whose
spiritual insight it would be hardly possible to exaggerate.
Where, whether within the Apostolic circle or outside of it,
is such a writer to be found unless we find him in St. John ?
writer like Keim in answer to such an objection, we can only st. john.
H
— —
98 The Gospels.
lie." But the man who had the intellectual capacity to forge
this book, must have been little short of a portent if he also
had the spiritual baseness and the reckless audacity to thrust
upon the Church his own fancies as the record and revelation
of the Living Christ. I do not think that any one has ever
had the courage to charge the author of the Fourth Gospel
with gross irreverence and fundamental insincerity. No one
has ever ventured to hint that he did not believe heart and
soul in the Christ of whom he wrote, as the Incarnation of
the very God. If then this were so, could there be any
presumption so monstrous as that of a writer who, with the
Gospels in his hands, devised a deliberate falsification and
invention of the words and works of Him whom He pro-
claimed to be the Son of God ? This at least was a course on
which the worst and boldest of the Gnostic heresiarchs would
—
hardly have ventured much less the holy and humble
disciple who gave to the world " the spiritual Gospel." It has
been well said by Gustave Schwab
" Hat dieses Buoh, das ew'ge "Wakrheit ist,
Ein liigenhafter Gnostiker gesehrieben,
So hat seit tausend Jahren Jesus Christ
^
Den Teiifel durch Beelzebub vertrieben."
Are Ave to believe that the writer' who gave its supreme
and final form to the theology of the New Dispensation
whoi in the judgment of nineteen Christian centuries, saw
most deeply into the heart of the Lord Jesus," and expressed
—
most perfectly His inmost teaching, the writer who, more
even than St. Paul, has moulded the thoughts of all
Christendom in its conception of what is the very essence
^ Lines given to, and quoted by, Dr. Schaff. The interesting and not im-
probable legend of the cu'cumstances which led St. John to write his Gospel
at the entreaty of the Ephesian elders is related in the Muratoriau fragment,
in Victorinus of Pettau (Migne, Patrol, v. 333), and in Jerome (Com. ire
Matt. Prol.).
^ " In reading St. John's writings I always seem as if I saw him
before me
at the Last Supper, leaning on his Master's breast." —CLAtTDius.
— —
seded the old Law (17), for it is the only vision of God which
is possible to man (18).
Having in this Prologue set forth with unequalled
II.
but also that I have varied from them. Godet's outline ia very simple. He
divides the Prologue into three parts— the Word (1-5) the "Word rejected by ;
unbelief (6-11) the "Word accepted by faith (12-18) and he thinks that the
; ;
Gospel has three corresponding sections— the Son of God Jewish unbelief ; ;
Christian faith—namely, i.-iv. v. -xii. ; xiii.-xvii. ; Then follow the oon-
Bummation of unbelief (zviii., xix.) and of faith (xx.).
Outline of the Gospel. 101
by side with works ever more decisive, and testimony ever more
and more emphatic. In Jerusalem Jesus heals the impotent
man, and reveals His relation to God (v.). In Galilee He
feeds the five thousand, and reveals in anticipated sacra-
mental teaching, His relation to men (v.). In Jerusalem, at
the Feast of Tabernacles He holds His great controversy
with the wavering multitudes and proclaims Himself as the
Light of the World (vii. viii.) at the Feast of Dedication He
;
heals on the Sabbath the man born blind, and gives to the
hostile Pharisees His clear testimony to Himself as the Door
and the Good Shepherd, and as one with the Father He is ;
His last warning to the Jews to walk in the Light while they
had the Light; by a summary (37 43) in which the —
Evangelist points out that the rejection of Christ's ministry
was in accordance with ancient prophecy ; and by another
—
summary (44 50) in which Jesus Himself utters His judg-
ment respecting those who believe and those who do not
believe on Him, and His emphatic testimony to the truth of
His words, as being the commandment of the Father which is
life eternal (50).
—
ST. JOHN. III. The next great division of the Gospel shows us Christ
among His own. It occupies in point of time but one single
evening. The period of conflict and antagonism with the
multitude and with their leaders is practically over. Jesus
has been rejected by the world ; He now has to reveal Him-
self to His disciples in such a way as through them after —
they have been endued with power by the Holy Ghost to —
win the world tinto Himself.
It falls like the former division into three sections: A. the
last supreme revelation by acts of humility and love. B. the
last discourses. 0. the prayer of consecration. These dis-
courses have been called The Sermon in the Chamber.
" The Sermon on the Mount sets forth the New Law of Christ,
the Sermon in the Chamber vivifies the New Law with the
New Spirit."
A. In the first of these sections the Lord washes the
Disciples' feet, and separates the last element of antagonism
by dismissing the traitor into the night.
The discourses fall
B. into —
two groups those in the Upper
Chamber (xiii. 31 xiv. — 31) ; and those on the way (xv. xvi).
This double group of discourses corresponds to the double
preamble. The former discourses mainly arise from the
questions of individual Apostles, and deal with the Lord's
approaching departure, His relation to the Father and the
Disciples, and the promise of the Holy Ghost. The discourses
on the way dwell on the living union with Christ, with its
peripety of the divine tragedy."^ Jesus has revealed Himself st. john.
to the world, and the -world has rejected Him. He succumbs
to that opposition and remains dead to unbelief. But He
triumphs for faith, and His death becomes the source of life.
These chapters are much more than a narrative. Through
the narrative they set forth the Person and the Idea. With
the history they suggest the interpretation of its inner
meaning.^ They show us that the sufferings of the Lord
were voluntary, were predetermined, and in no wise obscured
His majesty. The narrative, as usual, falls into three sections
— (i.) the Betrayal (ii.) the Trial
;
(iii.) the End.
;
other sisrns which are not written in this book " but these," :
he says, " are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye may have life
^
in His name."
This statement of the writer's threefold object is at once
terse and extraordinarily comprehensive.
In very early days there began a fatal tendency (as we
i.
shall see hereafter) " to sever Jesus," i.e. of the two natures to
make two persona ; to draw a distinction between the human
Jesus and the eternal Christ to represent the life of Jesus
;
the world lacks, hut which are offered hy the Son and received by the elect.
John iii. 15 1 John iv. 9.
;
^See the remarks of Irenaeus about Cerinthus (Jlacr. i. 26), and the note
on John iii., iv. 3 infra, and for further information see Early Days of
1
Chrisiianity, ii. 446-451.
Object of the Gospel. 105
life —true life, eternal life. The thesis of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, and the central conception of St. Paul which was —
mystic union with Christ and life " in Christ "—are in these
few pregnant words united with the Messianic theme of the
first Evangelist, St. Matthew. The words have that stamp of
supreme finality which a vaulting criticism would vainly
attribute to an unknown, second-century Gnostic forger, but
which we believe to have been the consummate glory of the
bosom Apostle.
3. The characteristics of the Gospel are very clearly
marked. First it is eminently the spiritual Gospel, the
J
In his prologue St. Jolin shadows forth the outline of a great philosophy
of religion. 1. The contradiction between God and the
world, with the Logos
as mediator. 2. The coming of the Logos into the
world (but never fully
recognised) in the form of an illuminating revelation. 3. The Incarnation of
speaks at such length of the Last Supper, does not narrate the Institution of
the Eucharist. On the one hand that was universally known and
practised ;
on the other he has already given its inmost idea in eh. vi.
Characteristics of the Gospel. 107
Saviour; St. John sets forth His Person.* Christ fills the
whole book, and absorbs the whole life of the drama of
which He is the centre.^ The informing idea of every page
and chapter is "the Word made flesh." The idea of the
Logos, as Godet says, very far from being the mother of the
narrative is the daughter of it. The title of Logos is not
used by Christ Himself or in the body of the Gospel. He
is nowhere, like the Philonian Logos, a vague, changeful,
bodiless abstraction, but He is a living human being. St.
John sets forth to us that there is no vast unspanned abyss
between God and man, but that God became man; that
1 See ii. 23
; iv. 45 x. 32 ; xi. 2 ; xii. 37, &o.
; For many special points
of information see as to names vi. 71 ; xii. 1 ; xiii. 26; xviii. 10 ; xix. 13, &c.
He supplies onr knowledge of the first cycle of the teaching of Jesus, His
Judaean ministry, His greatest miracle.
2 XX. 30, "many other signs . . which are not written in this look." It
.
-" '
^\ 11 ;^ix. 28. '
ap. Cyril c. Julian.
"
l^
bee Schair, Mistory of the Christian Cliurch, 697 Godet, i. 197
; West- '
cott, Ixxix.-lxxxiii.
;
See Eeuss, p. 8. This feature recurs no less than twenty-five times (ii. 20 ;
^
for Jesus Christ the Son ofGod has been recognised in all
Monast. 0pp. ii. 225); "the archetype of the visible world;" the ideal
unity of all things; the "idea of ideas;" "the image of God, by whose
means the whole universe was created " " the bond of all things " the
; ;
manna the source of life and holiness " the soul of the world." See
; ;
from the Memra or Debura of the Jewish schools (afterwards st. john.
used in the Targums), his adaptation of it infused into the title
a majesty and a depth of meaning which were absolutely
original. In Philo the Logos is, at the best, a dim abstrac-
tion in whose wavering outlines it is impossible to af36rm that
any absolute hypostasis is meant. In the Jewish schools the
use of Memra and Debura (meaning " the word ") was due to
the desire to soften the simple anthropomorphic and anthro-
popathic phrases of phrases which
the Old Testament —
attributed to God human and human passions. Thus
parts
both in Philo and in the Eabbis the object was to make God
seem more distant rather than more near to interpose lower ;
Goethe), " das Wort," " der Sinn," " die Kraft," " die That
the Word, the Thought, the Power, the Act. It fixes and, so
had been said in the Sapiential
to speak, crystallises all that
books of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha about the
Word, the Angel of the Presence, and the Wisdom of God, as
well as all the speculations of Gentile, Kabbinical, and
Alexandrian philosophy. At the same time it supersedes
and transcends all those dim approximations to half-appre-
hended truths. It infuses into them a life which raises them
into a loftier sphere of being. More epoch-making words
words which more express the inmost meaning of all revela-
tion in all ages —
were never written than the four words of
this Gospel, " The Word became flesh," which modern writers
are content to assign to an unknown forger of the second
century.^
7. It is the Gospel of symbolism ; and mystic numbers
prevail even throughout the arrangement of the topics.
" The clothing of the book is Greek, but the body is
mii'acle of the loaves, there are seven miracles (at Cana the nobleman's son ;
;
the paralytic the loaves walking on the sea the man born blind Lazarus),
; ; ; ;
The grouping round the three Passovers is part of St. st. john.
John's oi-iginal plan (ii. 13, vi. 4, xi. 55). And it can hardly
be an accident that Christ utters seven times " I am," and
1 Eeim, p. 159.
—
NOTE I.
ST. JOHN. On the style of St. Jolin, see infra. He has been called "a
master of lucid obscurity," ' and the remark, though meant as a sneer,
is a happy one. His style i.s pre-eminently lucid ; his thoughts are
somewhat obscure. Their spirituality and profundity make them
" dark with excess of light." We and the
find both in the Gospel
Epistle the same "emphatic remoteness," the repeated words, the
simple constructions, the positive and negative statements (i. 7, 8, 20 ;
We see in the Gospel, as in the Epistle, the ideality which regards all
subjects in the light of their absolute antitheses :
—
" Light and darkness,
God and the world, heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, life and death,
truth and error, love and hatred, eternal and transitory, Christ and
Satan, the Church and the world, present Christianity attaining to
victory through contest." '
It is obviously an undesigned coincidence —an unconscious trace of
personality —that the Evangelist speaks of the Baptist as " John " with-
out adding his title, as the other Evangelists do. An interesting sign of
the later date at which he wrote is that he alone speaks of the Sea of
Galilee as the Sea of Tiberias (vi. 1 ; xxi. 1). Thirty years earlier,
when the other Evangelists wrote, Herod's new town of Tiberias had
not yet succeeded in giving its name to the lake, and superseding its
older designation.
It is a very remarkable fact that every one of St. John's peculiar
phrases and expressions is found also in his reports of the teaching of
our Lord.*
It has been often made a serious difficulty that the style remains
essentially the same alike in the discourses of John the Baptist, of our
Lord, and of the Evangelist himself. Much has been written on this
subject, but no further explanation can be given than that the writer
profoudeur, sainte melancolie et vivacity non moms sainte par dessus tout, :
was intensely influenced, and, if tlie expression be allowed, magnetised st. john.
by what he had heard from the lips of Jesus as it was reflected in his
own subjectivity. Though the style differs, even opponents of the
genuineness of the Gospel admit the close and constant identity of the
teaching of our Lord as represented by the Synoptists and by St. John.
Every reader may verify this fact for himself again and again.^
Words which specifically mark St. John's tone of thought are
" Saying " {irapoi/iia 4 times, Xo'yos many times). He does not use
"parable" once.
" To gaze upon" {Beapeiv). This occurs 23 times, and only 15 times
in all the three Synoptists.
''The Light" (i. 4,5, 7-9, &c., 23 times; "Glory," 20 times).
" Glorify," 22 times.
" Darkness," 9 times.
" The Truth," 25 times.
" Love," 6 times. " To love," 12 times.
" The World" 78 times (only 15 times in the Synoptists).
" Flesh," 8 times.
" Eternal Life" 15 times.
" To abide in" 18 times.
" To manifest," 8 times.
" To judge," 19 times "judgment" 11 times.
;
I 2
116 The Gospels.
NOTE II.
relate what shall have been revealed to each.' That same night it was
revealed to Andrew, one of the Apostles, that John should set forth all
things in his own name, while all revised. Hence, though various
points of importance are taught in separate Gospels, it still makes no
the faith of believers, since all things about the Nativity,
dift'erence to
Passion, Resurrection, intercourse with His Disciples, and about His
twofold coming, first in the humility of contempt, which has been, then
glorious in royal power, which is to be, have been set forth in them
all by one supreme Spirit. . . . What wonder is it then if John so
consistently brings forth each point also in his Epistles, saying about
himself, What we have seen with our eyes, and heard with our ears,
'
and our hands have handled, those things we have written.' For thus
Ire proclaims himself not only an eye-witness, but a hearer too, and
NOTE III.
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
the other Gospels" (Jesu of Nazara, Eng. Trans., i. 187), and allows sx. .tohn.
and that Hermas was acqnainted with the first Epistle. Bishop Light-
foot (see quotations from his nnflnished work in Plnmmer's St. John,
p. 19) shows that allnsions to it are fonnd even in the shorter Greek forms
of the Ignatian Epistles. The first Epistle (and, therefore, probably
the Gospel) was known to Hermas and to Polycarp. When snch a
writer as Keim rejects the attempts of the Tubingen school to bring
down its date middle of the second century, and places it
till after the
as far back as a.d. 100-117, the weight of the external evidence can
hardly any longer be questioned, and the immense force of the internal
evidence, added to the impossibility of finding or imagining a forger,
will be duly felt. Among the most recent and powerful contributions
to the arguments in favour of the Gospel are the Commentaries of Canon
Westcott, and the chapters inWeiss's Life of Cliritst (v.-vii.).
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
—
"The best evidences for the truth of the Gospel are Christianity and
Christendom."
" Midtitudiiiis credmtiiim erat cor unum ct anitna una. Quand on a ecrit
cela on est de cenx qui ont lance au coeur de I'lmmanite I'aiguillon qui ne
laisse plus dormir jusqu'a ce qu'on ait d^couvert ce qu'on a vu en songe et
touohe ce qu'on a rSve." Eenan.
"
Dieses Buch wohl mochte heissen eine Glosse iiher die Episteln St. Pauli."
—Luther Vorrede.
"So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." —Acts xix. 20.
We see at the first glance that it falls into two great sec-
The extraordinary fact that in St. Chrysostom's day there were many who
were unaware of its existence (Horn, i.) was perhaps due to its having been
addressed to one person.
. "
it on another principle, we may say that the first section (i. — the acts of
ix. 30) records the establishment of the Church in Palestine/'"''"^''°^''''''^''-
and the second (ix. 31 — xxviii. 31) its extension as far as Rome.
The first fourteen verses are introductory. They describe
the final intervie'P' of the risen Lord with the disciples, and
they give fuller details of His Ascension than were known to
— or, at any rate, were recorded by — the Evangelist when he
wrote his earlier volume. Here alone we learn that forty
days elapsed between the Eesurrection and the Ascension.
The Gospel was a narrative of all that Jesus began both to do
and to teach as the inauguration of His kingdom. The Acts
furnishes the continuation of that beginning. Prominent in
those last words of Christ are " the promise of the Father
and "the baptism of the Holy Ghost." The eighth verse
might stand as the motto of the whole book, " Ye shall
teceive power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you and ;
THE ACTS ov Mary the mother of Jesus and other women, not separated
THE APOSTLES.
^^^^ thsm as in the seclusion of the synagogue, but in the
midst of them as in the worship of the church the third, that ;
the brethren of the Lord, who hitherto had been at the best
but partial believers, had by this time been fully convinced
by the Resurrection, and from henceforth cast in their lot,
—
no longer with the world which therefore from thenceforth
—
hated them but with the obscure and persecuted followers
of the Nazarene, the Crucified.
The next chapter explains all that follow by telling us of
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and of the
instantaneous results in the conversion of 3,000 souls after
the first Apostolic sermon. It also gives us a glimpse of the
sweet and simple lives of the first believers in Jerusalem,
and their interesting experiment of communism which, as
experience soon proves, is neither possible nor desirable in
the existing conditions of the world (i.).
The next two chapters narrate the cure of the lame man,
which was the first Apostolic miracle the death of Ananias- ;
must have been present at the trial of St. Stephen, and who, the acts or
as we can trace m n •
-I-,
his Epistles,
• ,1 111
had been
1 1 J.1,
deeply, tnougli
1 IHE APOSTLES.
THE ACTS OF faced, and for a time allayed, the storm of jealous indignation
THE APOSTLES,
^j^-^j^ the act of eating with uncircumcised Gentiles had
—
The next paragraph (22 26) tells us how the Elders, of
Jerusalem, alarmed by the free admission of Gentiles into the
Church, sent Barnabas to Antioch to see what was going on, and
to report to them. The choice of such an emissary was a very
happy one. A narrow ecclesiast would in that day, humanly
speaking, have ruined the destinies of the infant Church.
The large-heartedness of Barnabas tended to counteract the
Pharisaism of the more bigoted Judaists. His position as a
Levite and a man of wealth, who had so wholly thrown in
his lot with the brethren as to sell his estate for their support,
gave him a deserved influence. He had already shown his
magnanimous breadth of insight by taking Paul by the hand
and introducing him to the Apostles and the Elders; he
now showed it still more conspicuously by two memorable
acts. He gave his entire approval to the work among the
Gentiles at Antioch, and feeling the need of some one who
would be adequate to help him, he made a journey to Tarsus,
Neio Develo23ments. ^-7
of
and summoned from his retirement the man whose thoughts the
aci-s
"we" (xvi. 10), whicli shows that at Troas St. Luke joined the acts op
the travellers. We
then follow the fortunes of St. Paul, re-
™b apostles.
joicing in his successes, and filled with admiration for the
indomitable courage and endurance with which he braved all
perils and he founded church after church in
difficulties as
—
and Jerusalem (xviii. 23 xxi. 17). This interesting journey,
so full of touching incidents, is narrated with the graphic
details which mark an eye-witness. St. Luke seems
to have
rejoined his friend at Troas (xx. 5), and was henceforth his
constant companion.
At Jerusalem, following the unfortunate counsel of James
and the other elders to take part in a Nazarite vow, he
became entangled in a fierce tumult of bigoted Jews, and,
after a powerful speech, was nearly torn to pieces by them.
' Acts xxiv. 21. His respite was due to the latent animosities which he
roused among his accusers.
K
130 The Acts of the Apostles.
THE ACTS OF St. Lulce, who was companion during all those weary
his
THE APOSTLES.
j^Qj^^jjg of imprisonment, peril, and adventure (xxi. 18 —
xxvii. 44).
After a stay of three months in Malta he was taken on to
Rome, and there handed over by the centurion Julius to
Burrus, the Praetorian Praefect. After three days he called
the Jews together to state his case and to preach to them
the Gospel. Some of them believed, but the hostility of the
majority was so evident that in stern words of rebuke St. Paul
warns them that thenceforth the salvation of God was sent
unto the Gentiles, and that they would hear it.
—
ceeded by rest, of action settled in repose ^ the genial, and skil-
ful writer who has thus far accompanied us suddenly drops the
curtain. It is impossible to explain why he ends his sketch
of the Apostle at that period. Did he do so deliberately or
accidentally ? Did he carry down his narrative to the period
at which he first wrote his book ? Did some remarkable
change in the prisoner's condition take place at the close of
those two first years in Rome ? Did St. Luke intend in yet
another book to say what more he knew respecting St. Paul
and other Apostles and Evangelists and was he prevented
;
Roman eagle, was a very different thing from writing a book the acts of
from the hands of the Jew to those of the Gentile how the ;
' The four points de replre for the chronology of the Acts are xi. 28 ; xii,
23 ; xviii. 2 xxiv. 27.
;
bility. There is not the least reason why St. Luke should be
less trustworthy because of his desire to be catholic. Let it be
granted that he wished to prove that there was no irreconcil-
able opposition between St. Paul and the Twelve, between the
Churches of Antioch and Jerusalem, between Jewish and
Gentile Christians. Let it be granted that the allusion to the
synod of Jerusalem in the Epistle to the Galatians gives a
glimpse of severer struggles and keener heart-burnings than
we might have divined from the narrative of St. Luke.
Let it be assumed that subjective and artificial considerations
played their part in the selection and arrangement of the
narratives which are here brought together. These conces-
The "we sections " are xvi. 10-xvii. 1 (St. Luke seems to hare been left
'
and St. Paul found him there again seven years later), xx. 5, to
at Philippi,
the end. St. Luke was with St. Paul during his Caesarean and both his
Roman imprisonments.
See Acts ii. 44-47 ; iv. 32, &o.
^
' Especially by Baur, Schwegler, Zeller, and the Tiibingen critics in generaL
See Hilgenfeld Einleitwng, 575.
134 The Acts of the Apostles.
THE ACTS OP sions in no wise detract from the credit due to St. Luke as a
I HE APOSTLES,
ggj^^j^g historian. They only show that he was too earnest
to be a sceptic or a neutral. His bias, if bias it were, was a
truly noble one. Real history can never be written by those
who look with philosophic indifference on the great passions
which it brings into play, nor is truth the less truth because
it can and indeed must be regarded under different aspects
by different minds. St. Luke has misrepresented nothing.
There were divisions of opinion in the Apostolic Church as
there always have been in all religious communities St. Luke ;
stances there are coincidences between the Acts and St. Paul's
letters of the subtlest character and wholly undesigned. No
one can read even Paley's Horm Paulince which now could —
—
be greatly enlarged without seeing at once that any writer
Minute Accuracy. l^^
which he ™^e^^^^s ot
who was not thoroughly acquainted with the facts
Epistle, but does not mention the fact that St. Paul ever
wrote an Epistle at all. And yet St.Luke not only agrees
with the indications given by the Apostle in an immense
number of small particulars, but can be proved to do so
even when there might seem, at first sigkt, to be obvious
contradiction. The proof of his credibility, which is founded
on these undesigned coincidences, is at once striking and
beyond the reach of dispute.
/3. But further than this, St. Luke touches on many points
of secular history, and geography, and archaeology, and
biography. We can test him again and again from the most
unsuspected sources.^ He introduces sketches of historical
personages, both Jews and Gentiles, of whom comparatively
little is known — of Jews, like Gamaliel and the High Priest
Ananias ; Herod Agrippa I., Agrippa II.,
of Idumeans, like
Bernice, of Romans,
and Drusilla like Fehx, the brother of
;
—
Paulus ^ and in each instance his sketch, incidental as it is,
has been confirmed by all that we can leam from non-Christian
sources. He mentions strange and obscure titles, like the
Protos of Malta, the Recorder, and the Asiarchs at Ephesus,
the local Praetors at Philippi, and the Politarchs of Thessa-
lonica and his accuracy is proved by rare coins and broken
;
' an unsolved difficulty about Theudas (v. 36) but St. Luke is at
There is
least as likely tobe accurate as Josephus who contradicts him.
Even the name of this Cyprian Proconsul has been discovered in an
"^
mountain, leaping over the plains and seas from Ida to the
scaur of Hermes in Lemnos, thence to Mount Athos, then to
Makistus, Messapium, Cithaeron, and so at last to the roof
of the Atridae.
Even so does St. Luke, a poet, and more than a poet, tell
THE ACTS OF out of carcless ignorance and the eternal Pharisaism of the
THE APOSTLES.
h^jnaQ heart, submit to the reimposition of abrogated tyrannies
and thrust and formulae, and all sorts of external in-
priests
fallibilities between themselves and the Spirit of the Lord.
—
There are many centuries especially when Christianity began
to lose more and more of its true simplicity —in which Church
History is only exhilarating to those who love to trace the
growth of formalism and the decadence of faith. But in the
Origines Christianae of St. Luke we see a spectacle which is
see the Spirit of God triumphing not only over the idolatrous
corruptions of Paganism, but also over the more subtle and
dangerous opposition of false types of orthodoxy, and false
types of Christian life. We read the ultimate doom of
Antichrist, alike in his semblance to Christ, and in his enmity
against Him. We see that when men are faithful their dead-
liest foes may be those within as well as those without the
fold which they would defend but that, however feeble God's
;
St. Paul, that the servant must still be as his Master, and the acts op
™^'^^°^^'^^-
that they can never be exempt from the hatred of false
Apostles, like Judas, and false princes, like Herod, and false
and false religious parties, like the Pharisees
rulers, like Pilate,
and Sadducees, led on by false priests, like Annas and
—
Caiaphas; but that nevertheless, the foundation of God
The Lord knoweth them that
standeth sure, having this seal, "
are His," and "Let him that nameth the name of Christ
depart from iniquity.''
THE EPISTLES.
—— ! —
The New Covenant is the Revelation of the Gospel of the episi les.
Jesus Christ. A large part of that revelation is conveyed
to as in the form of letters. Those letters are twenty-one in
number. The ISTew Testament is indeed entirely composed
of a collection of letters, together with five historical books
and one Apocalyptic Vision.
In this respect the records of Christianity are absolutely
unique in the religious history of the world. Of aU the
sacred books which the world has seen there is not one which
is composed mainly, or at all, of letters, with the single ex-
ception of the New The Bibles of the world
Testament.
the Vedas, the Zend Avesta, the Tripitaka, the Koran, the
writings of —
Confucius are poems or rhythmic addresses, or
legendary histories, or philosophic discourses. In this, as
in all other respects, the ways of God's Providence differ
— ;
THE EPISTLES, from man's expectations. We may thank God that we derive
some of the deepest truths of our belief from documents so
simple, so individual, so full of human interest and love —
written, most of them, " in a style the most personal that
ever existed."
Yet it may perhaps be doubted whether there are ever
many persons in an ordinary congregation who, if asked to
explain what is the special scope and outline —the charac-
teristic —
meaning and tenor of any one of those deeply
important letters, would be able to do so with any definite-
ness. But surely it is necessary for an intelligent acquaint-
—
ance with " the oracles of God " for a real knowledge of,
and reverence for the Bible, and a power to read it aright
that we should know something of its books as well as of
those isolated fragments which we call " texts." That is the
reason why it seems desirable, in a very simple way, to make
clearer, for those who need such help, the totality and general
bearing of the books of Scripture. And the best result
which we could desire would be that, like the noble Bereans
of old, we should all be stimulated to read^and to inquire
searching the Scriptures for ourselves whether these things
are so.
1. Now the twenty-one letters, which occupy more than
a full third of the New Testament, fall into well-marked
groups. Two of —
them the Epistle to the Hebrews and the
1st Epistle of St. John —
to some extent also the Epistle to
the Romans — are more like treatises than letters; of the
remainder, four are Catholic —that is, addressed to the
Church in general nine are addressed to separate Churches
;
directly two, by St. Peter two by St. James and St. Jude,
;
externalism ;
—the Gospel to the Gentile world. In those of
St. John we have Christianity in its intense.st spirituality, in
its abstractest essence, as the religion of spiritual purity,
love, and adoration. And with all these glorious source.s
from which to learn, we may well feel a humble thankfulness
and exclaim with the poet,
' This must have been so from the nature of the case, and is now generally
admitted. We can hardly see any other form in which the care of all thf
churches could have come upon St. Paul daily (2 Cor. xi. 28). There is no
"
more reason to believe that every word which an Apostle wrote was " inspired
than every word which he spoke. Traces of letters written by St. Paul
which have now perished are found in 1 Cor. v. 9. "I wrote to you in the
letter not to associate with fornicators " and in 2 Cor. x. 9, 10, " That I may
;
not seem as though I would frighten you by my letters " (SiA -riiv iTnaroKHv).
Another lost letter may be alluded to in Eph. iii. 3 ; and another, which may
however be an Epistle to the Ephesians, in Col. iv. 16. It is impossible to
suppose that St. Paul never wrote to thank the Philippians for the contribu-
tions which they twice sent to him to Thessalonica (PhU. iv. 16) or that he ;
as yet, he had only written one ? The preservation of brief Epistles written
on fugitive materials in troublous times is far more surprising than that others
(perhaps uudoctrinal and unimportant) should have perished.
a
a pecuniary contribution while lie was in prison ; a fifth be- the epistles.
cause he wished to intercede for a runaway slave ; a sixth
because, in his last days, he longed to be cheered by the
society of a beloved convert. St. John wrote one letter —
little note, as wo should call it —to convey a kindly message
to a Christian lady ;
another to a hospitable friend to warn
him against the presumption of an intriguing presbyter. We
see then that Providence has ordained that many of the
documents from which we derive our faith should be in the
form of unconstrained epistolary intercourse. And this, so
asserted that the hold which the New Testament has taken
on the minds of men has been due in great measure to its
personal element. Christian theology would have been im-
measurably less effective if it had been conveyed to the world
in canons, or articles, or liturgies, or scholastic treatises.^
II. The epistolary form of Christian instruction was,
then, a providential arrangement, first of all —I say it with-
out hesitation —because
that form of writing is essentially
unsystematic. might well seem an astonishing circum-
It
stance that we should have been left to learn almost
all that we know, not only about Church organisation,
but even about many deep theological mysteries from forms
of writing so apparently unpremeditated. But the method of
the Bible is alien from the spirit of elaborate, technical, all-
explaining theological systems, which attempt to storeaway
the infinite in the little cells and to soar up to
of the finite,
the secrets of the Deity on the waxen wings of the under-
standing. We may thank God that it has not pleased Him to
' St. Paul's letters, with their numerous antimonies, as much resist the
like the legendary Ulysses, had seen many cities and knew
the minds of men. He was no narrow scribe, no formalising
Pharisee, no stunted ascetic, no dreaming recluse, no scholastic
theologian, no priestly externalist, who could suppose that
the world depended on the right burning of the two kidneys
and the fat ;— he wasa man, full of strength and weak-
ness, full of force and fire. He was not a man to mistake
words for things, or outward scrupulosity for true service, or
verbal formulae for real knowledge. Whether it is with a
burst of tears or in a flame of indignation that he seizes his
1 Of the special style of St. Paul I have spoken fully elsewhere, and I have
shown the extreme probability that he had attended classes of rhetoric in his
early years at Tarsus. Otherwise, considering the thoroughly Semitic cast of
his mind, it would be dif&eult to account for the fact that there is scarcely
a figure of Greek rhetoric which he does not familiarly use. The same remark
would apply to no other writer of the LXX. or of the New Testament.
Here it will be sufficient to refer to his Enumerations (Asyndeta 1 Cor. xiii.
4-8; 2 Cor. vi. 4-10 xi. 22-28 &c.) ; Antitheses (2 Cor. iv. 7-12 ; v. 21)
; ;
Climaxes, (1 Cor. xiii., 2 Cor. vii. 11) Rapid interrogatives (Eom. viii.
;
31-34 ; 1 Cor. ix. 1-9 ; Gal. iii. 1-6) ; Irony (1 Cor. iv. 8 ; 2 Cor. xi.
16, &c.) ; Multiplication of Synonyms (2 Cor. vi. 14-16 ; Rom. ii. 17-23) ;
Oxymora (2 Cor. ii. 2, viii. 2, xii. 10) ; and Paronomasias (Rom. i. 29, 30
2 Cor. iii. 2 ; Phil. iii. 2, 3, &o.)
150 The Epistles.
THE EPISTLES, pen OT begins liis dictation, he will always speak out the very
thing he thinks. The mere form of these writings led to
blessed results. When we remember that the Christians of
the first one or two decades after the Crucifixion had no
Christian books at all, and that all, or nearly all, the letters of
the Apostles were the very earliest books of the New Testa-
ment, and were known to Christians before the Gospels, we
cannot doubt that to their fresh individuality is due, at least
in part, the radiant simplicity, the glad enthusiasm of the
early Church. What and buoyant, and
can be more free,
calm, but on the eve of some bold leap never vehement, but ;
tell us of the scores of times that a merchant or agent had the epistle,
writing.
iv. a practical section, in which he applies
Fourthly,
to daily moral duties the great doctrines which he has
developed.
V. Fifthly, personal messages, salutations, and details.
Now
though the mere salutations at the beginning of the
letters might seem to be a small matter, we should
observe the beautiful element of novelty, of universality,
and of depth which they involve. The ordinary salutation
of a Greek letter was "joy" {j^^alpetv) of a Jewish letter •,'^
the letter of the Synod of Jerusalem to the Gentile Church (Acts xv. 23), and
even the letter written to Jews by the Judaist St. James (Jas. i. 1).
3 "'Grace' which is the beginning of every blessing;
'Peace' which is
the end of all blessings.'' St. Thomas Aquinas. In his later Epistles he made
the touching addition of "mercy." The salutation of the Roman world from
—
which our word "salutation" is derived was "health" (s.p.d. salukm
plurimam dicit.)
;•
in his later letters St.Paul addresses his words, " not to the
"
Church," but to the saints." Let us not carelessly overlook
the deep lesson involved in this. Whatever we are we are called
to be, we are meant to be, saints, i.e. holy. No Church can
be bound together, no worship can be arranged, no rules of
Christian living laid down on any other supposition. The
very word for " Church " in the original means " called
out " '
—
summoned forth from the world to higher aims and
holier aspirations. We may fall indefinitely short of our
ideal ; we may be very wavering in our pledged allegiance ;
' The word 'EKK\7)(r(a is used in the Gospels by St. Matthew alone (Matt.
XTi. 18 ; xviii. 17). It corresponds to the Hebrew ?nip. St. James still
charaoteristically retains the word " synagogue " to describe even a Christian
place of worship. Jas. ii. 2.
^ The peculiarities of the opening salutations of St. Paul's Epistles may be
summed up as follows, (i.) In all his Epistles after his two first (1, 2 Thess.)
written at a period before the Judaisers had questioned his Apostolic authority
— he calls himself " an ApostU" ; except in the private letter to Philemon,
and in the letter to his beloved Philippians to whom the designation was
needless, (ii.) In his five earliest Epistles (1, 2 Thess. 1, 2 Cor. Gal.) he
Chui-ch of the, " in later letters "to the church which is in " (1, 2 Cor. Gal),
;
(iv.) In all the later letters he addresses himself "to the saints." (v.) He
wishes them "grace and peace" in all but the Pastoral Epistles which have
"grace, mercy, and peace."
154 The Epistles.
7. Even the
final salutations have their own deep human
interest. In themselves, indeed, there is nothing specially
sacred about them. The names A.syncritus, Phlegon,
Hermas, Olympas, &c. have nothing in them more intrinsic-
ally mysterious or important than the names of Smith and
Jones. Many of them were names of slaves and artisans,
undistinguished and ordinary persons. Some of them, like
Tryphaena and Tryphosa (" the wanton," " the luxurious "),
could have been little less than insulting; Nereus, Hermes,
Phoebe were names of heathen deities in whom men believed
no longer, grotesquely bestowed on slaves Stachys " wheat- ;
THE EPISTLES, his (Jeath, "being scarcely able to see, traced the following
lines at different intervals, in large and irregular characters,
which filled a page, "Adieu, dear friend, Andr^ Blanc;
partly due to the modesty which in all languages dislikes the needless promi-
nence of "I." "We"
is chiefly characteristic of 1, 2, Thess. In 2 Thess.
the only passage which relapses into "I" is ii. 5. SUas and Timothy are
associated with him in 1, 2 Thess. Sosthenes in 1 Cor., Timothy in 2 Cor.
Phil. Col. Philem. Paul writes in his own name only to the Romans and
Laodiceans (Eph.), which Churches he had not personally visited.
"
every letter with his own signature and written benediction the epistle
and thus secured to future ages also a proof that they
are reading the words of him who was indeed " a vessel of
^
election."
Such then, in the most rapid and summary view, is the
general structure of the Epistles of the New Testament ; and
such, in the briefest possible form, suggested rather than
worked out, are some of the lessons which that structure
suggests. Any one who will read the Epistles through, each
at a sitting, to verify these facts will more and more realise
what a hid treasure we may find in the field of these
sacred letters. We may thus become more earnest, more
intelligent, and more faithful students of the Book of God.
^ St. Paul first adopted this final authentication [yvApuriia) orhadge of cogni-
sance —in 2 Thesa. iii. 17 ; and implies that he means henceforth to use it.
a. In 1 Thess. 1 Cor. we have The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with
'
'
you " to which the word " all " is added in 2 Thess. Eom. Phil.
;
p. In Philem. and Gal. we have "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be
with your spirit," ("brethren" Gal.)
7. In Col. 1, 2 Tim. Tit. " Grace be with you" ("thee") ("all" Tit.)
S. Eph. " Grace be with those that love the Lord Jesus Christ in
sincerity.
e. 2 Cor. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and
the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with you aU."
On authenticating signatures see Cio. Ad. AU. viii. 1 ; Suet. Tib. 21, 32.
"
—
Pseudepigraphy the adoption of an honoured name which was not
the —
name of the author was common in ancient Jewish literature. It
must not be caUed by the hard name of literary forgery. In many in-
stances it was not at all intended to deceive. A man wrote in the name
of some great and well known person because he desired to call attention
to what he had to say ; because he desired to claim the sanction of high
authority ; because he believed his teaching to be in accordance with
that of the writer whose name he assumed. It is (for instance) extremely
unlikely that the Alexandrian author of the Book of Wisdom, intended
for a moment that any one should be misled to suppose that the old
Jewish king was the actual author of the book which he called The
Wisdom of Solomon. He simply wrote in the person of Solomon, be-
cause the pseudepigraphy furnished him with a convenient and recognised
form of sapiential literature.
Of this kind of pseudepigraphy we have many instances in early
Christian literature ; such as the Epistle of Barnabas (if " Barnabas
was meant to be " the Apostle ") the Gospels of James, of Thomas, of
;
deplores the falsification of his own letters. So too Irenaeus ends one of xhe epistli
his books with an adjuration to the copyists " by the Lord Jesus Christ
and by His glorious coming to judge the quick and dead " to compare
and carefully correct their copies by their exemplar, and likewise to place
this adjuration in their copies {0pp. 1, 821, ed. Stieren). A similar
passage isfound at the end of Eufinus's prologue to his version of
Origen De Principiis (Huidekoper, Judaism at Rome, p. 289).
There was even a forged letter purporting to be addressed by our Lord
to Abgarus, king of Edessa.
There are spurious letters of Paul to the Laodiceans, and another
Epistle to the Corinthians preserved in the Armenian ; and a spurious
correspondence of Paul and Seneca.
Among other Fathers Origen suffered severely from the falsification of
his writings.
Even in modern times the danger has not wholly ceased. The glaring
and wretched sermon of a Spanish Jesuit Nieremberg on " the Pains ot
Hell " is often attributed (even by Mr. Lecky and Mr. Alger) to Bishop
Jeremy Taylor.
— — "
"The divine assurance of the old prophets, the all-transcending glory and
spiritual presence of the eternal Lord, and all the art and culture of a ripe
and wonderfully excited age, seem to have joined, as it were, in bringing
forth the new creation of these Epistles of the times, which were destined to
last for all the times." Ewald.
" Even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given
unto him, hath written unto you as also in all his Epistles speaking in them
;
rejoicing; the memory of the dead — (to quote well-known the epistles,
words) — passes into it; the potent traditions of childhood
are stereotyped in its verses ; it speaks to us with a music
that can never be forgotten ; we read it — (and seem as if we
could read nothing else) —by the bedsides of the dying, and
over the graves of our beloved. Yet how many of us even
approximately understand it ? How many of us obtain from
this one Book of God the treasure, and the joy, and the
peace which we might obtain from it, better, and in larger
measure, than from all the books which fill the world ?
THE EPISTLES. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, went on deepening
9,nd expanding even to his death. Take the case of any
secular writer. The importance of observing the chronology
of his works is greater in proportion to his greatness. What
should we think of an edition of Shakespeare which led us
to imagine that he wrote the Two Gentlemen of Verona, or
Love's Lahonrs Lost in his maturest age, or that he wrote
Hamlet and Julius Caesar when he was a mere youth ? What
should we think of an editor of Milton who left us to suppose
that the Samson Agonistes was written at College, and the
Lycidas when he was a blind old man ? But if the bearing
of a man's life, and spiritual growth upon his writings be
important in such a case, it must (except on the most
—
persecutor appearing first on the scene as the young man
at whose feet the witnesses laid their clothes while they were
stoning St. Stephen —
he had been grasped by a resistless
hand he went to Damascus to hale Christian men and
as
women to prison, and, by one flash of Christ's light into his
erring but noble heart, he had been made " a fusile Apostle."
Thenceforth, with the exception of brief retirements in
bound by the yoke of the Levitic law; that though Judaism, iheepistlei
had been the cradle of Christianity it was not to be suffered to
be its grave. He was already despised by the Gentiles as an
enthusiast detested by the Jews as an apostate but now
; ;
—
fourth and last group of letters the three Pastoral Epistles.
Liberated just in time to escape martyrdom in the Neronian
persecution, he again travelled to Asia Minor and Western
Greece. It was some time during the wanderings which
at
—
followed wanderings which, unhappily, no Luke has recorded
for us— that he wrote his letter to Titus whom he had left to
govern the Church of Crete and the first to Timothy, who
;
THE EPISTLES. II. Such then are the four groups of Epistles the first :
which would have been abhorrent to him had it not been that theepistli
his boastwas in his infirmities and in the Cross of Christ his
Lord. The Epistle is specially marked by its intense emo-
tion; it is full of haunting words —now "tribulation," now
" commendation," now " boast." It is the Epistle of personal
details the Apologia pro vita sud of the great Apostle.
;
THE EPISTLES. Epistle of the " mystery " and " riclies " of tlie Gospel. Its
key-note is grace.
The letter to Philemon is a little satellite and annex to
the planet of the Colossians. It is a letter to a private
Christian gentleman, to ask pardon for a runaway Laodicean
slave.
;
"Come quickly ; " " Come before winter " " Come and cheer
me a little ere I die " — yet, drowning this low chord of sorrow,
rings the paean of quenchless hope and undaunted trust, as to
the dear but timid racer he hands the torch of the Gospel,
which in own brave grasp no cowardice had hidden, no
his
had dimmed, no storms had quenched.
carelessness
What an inexhaustible treasure have we here The First !
triumph in deep, apparent failure —of victory in the defeat the epistl
of lonely death. Again, I say, what a treasure have we here !
" Considering these Epistles for themselves only," says Ewald, " and
apart from the general significance of the great Apostle of the Gentiles,
we must admit that, in the whole history of aU centuries and of
still
anxiety and bitterness of human strife to set forth in brighter lustre their
superhuman grace and beauty."
NOTE II.
Baur, who rejected the authenticity of all St. Paul's Epistles except
four, classifies them as follows :
1. Homologoumena. —
Pour. Those of the second group (1, 2 Cor.,
Gal., Rom.).
ii. Antilegomena, or of uncertain authenticity. Six. Namely, —
those of the first group (1, 2 Thess.), and tiie Epistles of the
Captivity (Phil., Eph., Col., Philem.).
iii. Notha, or Spurious. The three Pastoral Epistles.
i. Eschatological. 1, 2 Thess.
ii. Soteriologioal. Gal., Rom.
iii. Ecclesiastical, a. Polemically. 1 Cor.
0. Apologetically. 2 Cor.
iv. Christological. Col., Eph.
V. Ethical. Phil,
vi. Pastoral (or rather to Individuals). 1, 2, Tim., Tit., Philem.
NOTE IIL
CHRONOLOGY OF THE EPISTLES.
The approximate dates and sequence of the Epistles of St. Paul are
as follows :
-D „ CO f Written at Cormth.
Romans, a.d. 58. J
^ Some of these (1, 2 Cor., Gal.) were addressed to little groups of Churches
A.D.
Gaids (Caligula), a.d. 37.
St. Paul's conversion and martyrdom of St. Stephen . 37
St. Paul's first visit to Jerusalem 39
Claudius, a.d. 41.
St. Paul summoned from Tarsus to Antioch .... 41
Famine. Second visit to Jerusalem 44
First Mission journey 45
Expulsion of Jews from Rome 49
Third visit to Jerusalem 51
" 1 Thessalonians " 52
" 2 Thessalonians " 53
Nero, a.d 54.
Fourth visit to Jerusalem 54
"1 Corinthians" 57
"2 Corinthians" 58
« Qalatians " 58
"Romans" 58
St. Paul at Rome 61
"Philippians" 62
" Colossians " and " Philemon " 63
"Ephesians" 63
Paul liberated 63
" 1 Timothy " 64
"Titus" 65 or 66
" 2 Timothy " 67
Martyrdom 68
— — —
THE
FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS.
WBITTEN FEOM COEINTH, A.D. 52.
" Sabet haec epistola meram quandam diileediruim, quae lectori dulcibua
affeotibus non assueto minus sapit quam oaeterae severitate quMam palatum
stringentes. " Bengel.
"Im ganzer ist es ein Trostbrief." Hauseath, iV. Test. Zeitgesch. ii.
299.
" Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus, unto the Church of the Thessa-
lonians." — 1 Thbss. i. 1.
1 THBss. the Turks, it was taken by Amurath II. in 1430, and the
majority of its 70,000 inhabitants are now Mohammedans and
Jews. Itwas the outbreak of rage and massacre in this city
in the year 1876 which was the first prominent event in the
later phases of that Eastern question which has now for so
long a period engrossed the attention of the civilised world.
2. In the first century, Thessalonica, the ancient Thermae,
the capital of Macedonia Secunda, and the residence of a
Roman Proconsul, shared with Ephesus and Corinth the com-
merce of the Aegean. Into this busy emporium, 1,800 years
by the great Egnatian road three travellers.
ago, there entered
One was a grave elder from Jerusalem, another was a timid
and youthful deacon from the bleak highlands of Lycaonia, the
third was a worn and suffering Jew of Tarsus, The names
of thesethree poor wandering missionaries were Silas,
Timotheus, and Paul. Two of them, only a few days pre-
viously, had endured a terrible flagellation with Eoman rods
in the open market-place, and had then been thrust into the
lowest dungeons of Philippi, from which they had been saved
by a manifest interposition of Divine power. The whole
aspect of the persecuted wanderers bespoke their poverty,
their sufferings, and their earthly insignificance. Hated as
the Jews were in classical antiquity, it is probable that these
mean occupation night and day lie could barely earn sufficient i thess.
1 THEss. already chased Paul from city to city —from Damascus, from
Jerusalem, from Antioch of from Iconium, from
Pisidia,
Lystra, from Philippi, as it drove him afterwards from Beroea
—
and from Corinth broke out once more against the bearers of
the glad tidings of peace. The Jews themselves were afraid to
act, but they enlisted in their bad cause the services of " cer-
by night. Such was the manner in -which Christ had been i thess.
1, "for ye yourselves IcTiow." ii. 9, " for ye remember." ii. 11, " even as ye
know." iii. 3, " for ye yourselves know." iv. 2, " for ye know."
182 The Epistles.
. Thess. 14- - word " and digress into a severe denunciation of the Jews
16.
which must have arisen from the bitter, though momentary
exacerbation caused by their conduct towards him at
Acts xviii. Corinth.^ But after he instantly recovers
this outburst
28.
his calm of mind. He continues to thank God for con-
verts who were "his glory and his joy." He had sent
Timotheus to encourage them, since he had himself been
twice hindered by Satan from coming to them in person.
That dear feUow-worker with God had brought back an
almost unexpectedly encouraging report of their steadfastness,
which had been to the Apostle amid his own heavy trials a
fresh spring of life. St. Paul's feelings towards his little
passages as Rom. iz. 1-5, written only a few years afterwards. But the feeling
must have been strong at the moment, since it led St. Paul to speak of his
fellow countrymen in terms which recall the bitter scorn of Tacitus {Hist. v.
5), and Juvenal (Sat. xiv. 100), where Jews are charged with " hatred of the
human race." This is one of the passages which led Baur to treat the letter
as spurious. But he mistakes the meaning of 1 Thess. ii. 16, " but the wrath
is come {itpea.<Tev) npon them to the uttermost." St. Paul means that their
guilt involves their doom ;that their rejection of Christ is Christ's rejection of
them ; their wrath against Christ was His wi-ath against them. Their doom
was consummated (Matt, xxvii. 25) in the fulness of their criminality, though
the final punishment was for seventeen years longer postponed. St. Paul must
have heard from the Apostles about the great esch.atological discourse of Christ
(Matt, xxiii. 37-39 ; xxiv. passim). Ewald speaks of " Christusworten die
ihnen gewiss auch schriftlich vorlagm."
" Quoted by Dr. Donald Fraser, Sympt. Lectures,
iii. 98.
The Second Advent. 183
then (iii. 11 — 13) begins the practical section of the Epistle. \ thess.
in the lovely lines of Pindar about the sunlight and golden flowers in the
islands of the Blest, had any ancient poet spoken hopefully of the world
beyond the grave. And the Islands of the Blest were only for the few, the
prevalent conception is that of even Agamemnon in the Shades :
1 THBS3. From that point —the eleventh verse of the fifth chapter-
he ends the Epistle with moral exhortations of extraordinary-
force, freshness, and beauty. There were traces of insub-
ordination among them, and he bids them respect and love,
for their work's sake, their spiritual pastors.^ There were
traces of despondency among them, and he bids them encourage
the faint-hearted and take the weak by the hand. There were
traces of impatience and quarrelsomeness among them, and
he bids them to seek peace among themselves, to avoid all
retaliations and seek after aU kindness (v. 12 15). Then —
foUow little arrow-flights of sentences, unique in their orgin-
aUty, and pregnant in meaning " Eejoice always," " Pray
:
first brief flight, as it were, of the young eagle from the ark
^ There can te no more touching illustration of these remarks than the fact
that when in the earthquake at Manilla in 1853, the cathedral fell on the clergy
and congregation the voice of one of the dying sufferers, whom it was impossible
to rescue was heard calmly uttering the words of 1 Thess. iv. 16. (See the
Bishop of Derry, ad. loc. in Speaker'e Commentary.)
186 The Epistles.
noticed.
a. The first is Purity. St. Paul was one of the very few
men to whom it has been granted to speak on this painful
subject, with stainless delicacy, yet with absolute precision.
To him the Spirit of God seems more especially to have
intrusted the high task of raising the world out of the depths
of vileness to which it had sunk down. In what few words,
in a tone how solemn and how fatherly, with arguments how
weighty, does he speak at the opening of the fourth chapter.
These Thessalonians had been Gentiles and the life of the ;
the deep sin of sensual indulgence, because the will of God i thess.
"was their sanctification. He bids them each learn how to
possess their bodies in sanctification and honour —that is to
obtain a holy and noble mastery over themselves and the
impulses of their lower nature. If they neglect this, he tells
them —and this they knew
well that they rendered
full —
themselves liable to the awful and inevitable consequences of
permitted sin and he tells them further, what they had not
;
our Holy of Holies into a place of riot; to make the soul itself
hard, impious, barren ; —
surely a day is coming when it will
be known again what virtue is in purity and continence of life
how divine is the blush of young human cheeks how high, ;
must they have rejoiced to know that they might use, for
their daily wear, such glory and holiness of thought as had
scarcely been attained by the greatest spirits of their race at
their rarest moments of inspiration and therewith that
;
1 THESS. NOTE I.
This was no rhetorical oxymoron, but the sign of a new epoch in the
history of human souls.
Its main theme is Consolation from the near hope of the Second
advent.
" The dead in Christ shall arise first; then we that are alive, that are
Ipft,shall, together with them, he caught up in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air ; and so shall we ever he with the Lord. Wherefore
comfort one another with these words." 1 Thess. iv. 17, 18. —
NOTE II.
I. Retrospective.
Greeting (ii.).
In this Epistle the personal, doctrinal, and practical sections are 1 thess.
intermingled ; and there are no special salutations.
NOTE III.
important than Epistles to the Eomans ? ^ (/3) So far from being built
on the Acts, it is not at first sight easy to reconcile the data of the
Epistle with the events narrated in the Acts, (y) May an author have
no reciirrent phrases ?
2. The supposed traces of a later date are exaggerated inferences from
Pauline " simply assumes that St. Paul's opinions were stereotyped not ;
accounted for by Acts xviii. 2-13. The whole Epistle was an answer to
the secret calumnies of Jews who charged him with " cleceitfulness, un-
cleanness, guile." In this way they began the controversy which did
not end tUl his death (see Lipsius, Stvd. u. Krit. 1854).
" These things must fiirst come to pass, but the end is not immediately."
Luke xxi. 9.
2THBSS. 1. But yet there was one new and serious danger over- —
excitement about the coming of the Lord a mistaken notion ;
1 Tao. Ann. xii. 64. Suet. " Claud." xlvi. &o. and comp.
a 4 Esdras, i'
vassim .;
,
Orac. Sib. iv. &o.
Occasion of the Letter. 195
so, of what use were the petty details of daily routine, the
petty energies of daily effort So the Thessalonians seem
?
' The energetic adjuration in 1 Thess. v. 27, seems to show some misgiving
xxii. 20.
2
196 The Epistles.
2 THEss. believed that the close of the Age, the end of all things, the
visibleEpiphany of Christ in judgment, would occur very
soon that literally, as well as metaphorically, the Lord was
;
Church that our Lord's great Prophecy of the last things had
referred in the first instance, and in its primary fulfilment, not
to His but to His spiritual return in the destruction of
visible
Jerusalem and the full inauguration of the last aeon of
God's dealings with mankind. It was the winding up of all
the Past; the starting point of all the Future. It was at
once the death-blow to Paganism, and the annulment of the
Jewish Law. Within seventeen years of the date at which
St. Paul was writing (A.D. 52 or 53) the Pagans saw an
awful sign of the anger of their gods, which Tacitus calls
" the saddest and most shameful blow." It was nothing less
Himself had emphatically told them that it was not given to 2 thess.
them, or even to the angels of God, to know. But as to
St. Paul's expression, "we who are alive and remain," the
Thessalonians had, in any case, emphasised its meaning un-
warrantably. They had mistaken a generic phrase for a
specific and individual one.^ St. Paul had used the word
"we'' to mean "we, the living," as opposed to the dead.
Even if he implied, he had not meant to lay the slightest
stress on his own possible survival to that great day. He
merely shared the feeling which prevailed even through the
GentUe world, that some awful catastrophe was near at
hand.^
2. He them therefore with two great objects, one
writes to
doctrinal and one practical. As a matter of doctrine, he
wishes to remind them that the second coming of Christ,
though he held it to be near (iyyv^) ^ was not instant
(ivicTTTjKev), had not, so to speak, actually begun and as a ;
^ Thess. iv. 15
1 ^^ets . . . oh
: irepl eavTOv tpijffiif . . d\xd Toits TrtffTobs
\4yei. S. Chrys.
2 Tac. Ann. vi. 28 ; xu. 43, 64 ; xiv. 12, 22; xt. 22, Sist. 1, 3; Suet.
Ncr. 36-39, &c.
' Maranatha S Kipios iyyv!.
:
198 The Epistles.
2 THESs. here. It may come very soon ; but two things must happen
first, namely, " the Apostasy '' (erroneously rendered in our
version "a falling away"), and the revelation of a human
Satan 1
—the Man of Sin, the Son of Destruction, whose
characteristic is blasphemous self-exaltation against God.''
those who have really studied the passage, the remotest con-
nexion with hell or with penal fire. The words "in fire of
flame " are to be joined with ''
revelation," not with " inflicting
retribution.'' They aUude to the light of Christ's coming
(Dan. vii. 9 ; Ex. iii. 2) ; the glory of the Shechinah ; the
Sinaitic splendour of the clouds that burn into gold and
crimson before His Advent feet. The words "taking ven-
geance" are a severe exaggeration of a rare Greek phrase,
which means rather " assigning retribution for the sake cf
others" {SlBovai, iKBiKrjaiv, 2 Sam. xxii. 48, LXX.). Those
who are punished are not poor ordinary sinners, but wilful
rejecters and hardened persecutors. The punishment is not
"everlasting destruction," but spiritual cutting-o£f, in the
period between the Advent and the Judgment, from the
Presence of the Lord; in other words, an exclusion from
the Beatific Vision at Christ's First Advent, not at the final
Judgment Day.
But passing from this, we may add, that if of the " How ? " of
Christ's Advent we know little, of the " When 1 " of the Advent
202 The Eijistles.
judge both the quick and the dead but it V70uld not be true ;
There are for us hut two lessons as regards His coming, which
this Epistle, and which all Scripture teaches ; the first is,
day was over, and the sun had set. " How ? " exclaimed the
Rabbi. " The day is past, and He has not come Has He !
Yes, and that too is a summary of the Second Epistle " To- :
—
day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." *
ii. Be ready then ! And how are we to be ready ? Not
by religious excitement ; not by intrusive curiosity ; not by
feeble heresy-hunting ; not by cheap prophesying the exact
year in which the world is to end ; not by going about and
' KKhTas, B.
" Omiies calculantiiam digitos resolvit,'' Aug. on
^ i
Matt. xxiv. 36;
quoted by the Bishop of Deny in Spealcer's Commentary.
8 Sanhedrin, f. 98, 1.
204 The Epistles.
"
2 THBSs. asking people, "Are you converted ?
" or, " How is your soul ?
NOTE I. 2 TiiESS.
NOTE II.
iv. The practical section (iii. 1-16) mingled with messages, and ended
by a prayer.
V. The autographic conclusion and benediction (iii. 17, 18).
The sections flow into each other with no marked separations. Each
of the prayers (ii. 16 ; iii. 16) begins with Airos 8e 6 Kv'pios.
The authenticity of the Epistle is all but universally accepted, though
Hilgenfeld sees in it " a little Pauline Apocalypse of the last year of
NOTE in.
Dei, XX. 12 Jerome, Qu. xi. ad Algas.; Lactant. Div. Instt. vii. 15, &c.
;
2. Early Eabbinic notions. " The Messiah will not come till the world
has become all white with leprosy " (i.e. has embraced Christianity),
Sanhedrin, f. 97, 1. Soteh, f. 49, 2 (Amsterd. ed.). The Jews gave to
Antichrist the name Armillus, by which they seem to mean the brace-
leted Caligula [Armillatus, Suet. " Calig." 52).
3. The resemblance to the language of Daniel about Antiochus
Epiphanes (Dan. vii. 25, xi. 36, 37), who is also called a " Man of Sin "
{avrip ijiapTokos, 1 Macc. ii. 48, 62). The touches of description
(" sitteth in the temple of God," &c.) are evidently suggested by the
insane attempts of Caligula to place his statue in the temple at Jerusalem,
and to the stories that he used to go into the Temple of Jupiter at Rome,
and pretend to hold conversation with him, during which he would
sometimes get angry and frown at him.
4. The fact that St. Paul is evidently touching on a perilous subject
(iX^Oy, 666, &c.), just as the Talmudists were driven to similar crypto-
graphs by similar persecution in later centuries. The mystery lay not
in the facts alluded to, but in the symbols by which it had to be
partially concealed from those who were not in the secret.
Baur, who always suggestive even when his views are most untenable,
is
"Est enim haec periculosa tentatio nullam Ecclesiam putare ubi non
appareat perfecta puxitaa. " Calyin.
commerce, arising from its being " the gate of the Pelopon-
;
nese " ^ and the " bridge of the sea " * the multitude of
slaves, the actual slave-market, the mongrel and hetero-
geneous population of Jews, Greeks, Romans, Asiatics, and
Phoenicians the confluence of sailors and merchants from
;
P
2J0 The Epistles.
—
doned proletariat in sight and hearing of everything which
could quench spiritual aspiration and kiridle carnal desires, in
"a city the most licentious of all that are and have ever
—
been"^ when the careless, common life went on around
them, and the chariot wheels of the Lord were still afar, it
was hardly wonderful if the splendid vision of the life of
heaven on earth waxed gradually dim. And so it began to
be with some of them as it was with Israel of old when
Moses was on Sinai they sat down to eat and to drink, and
;
the selfishness around them, as though they had never heard l comnth.
the heavenly calling and never tasted of the eternal gift.'^
whether during his three years' stay at Ephesus St. Paul had paid any visit to
Corinth. If he had, it could only have been brief and eventless, and St. Luke
at any rate leaves it unrecorded (Acts xix.). The notion that he had paid this
visit is founded on needless straining of popular expressions in 1 Cor. xvi. 7 ;
P 2
212 The Epistles.
(ii.) Then, with the conceited remark that " they all had
knowledge" (1 Cor. viii. 1), they asked him about meats
They " knew that an idol was nothing in
offered to idols.
the world;" might they then, with their stiperior "know-
ledge,'' go to heathen festivals ?
' The Epistle is full of tlie word "inflation " by which St. Paul stigmatises
(pucrtovTai, xiii. i ; ^ucnciffeis, 2 Cor. xii. 20. Elsewhere the word only occurs
in Col. ii. 18.
The Corinthians could hardly have asked these questions unless they had
^
that the Resurrection was purely spiritual, and that it was l colinth.
' 2 Cor. xii. 20 epets, fijXoi, Su/io), epLBfTai, Ka,Ta\aXia), \j/i9vpia-/io\, (pv(ni(reLs
;
aKaraaTaalai. Hillel had said "many teachers, much strife." The factious-
ness at Corinth had been first cansed by the visit of Apollos, and then in-
creased (probably) by wandering missionaries from the rank and file of parties
at Jerusalem who represented (respectively) the views of Peter, and of James
"the Lord's brother." St. Paul in his impetuous way reminds them that
though they had " ten thousand pedagogues (l Cor. iv. 15, nvplovs iraiSaymyov^)
in Christ," yet after all he was their sole spiritual father. This "detestable
and unholy spirit of faction, " as it is called by St. Clement of Rome, contiuued
long afterwards (Clem. Eom. Ep. ad Cor. i.), and was "carried to a pitch of
demeutation " of which the world has seen many subsequent specimens.
214 The Einstlcs.
1 CORINTH, and philosophical views, and said, " I am of Apollos " others
on their sacerdotal pretensions and ecclesiastical correctness,
and said, " I am of Cephas " others on their unsophisticated
;
had been seen to stretch drunken hands to the very chalice l ookinth,
of the Lord.^
(xi.) Last and worst there existed among them a depraved
;
^ 2 Cor. ii. 4, ^/c yhp ttoKKtjs 6\i^ecos icai irvvoxv^ /capStos e-ypa-^a vfup Sia
Intellectual Force. 217
soars through the air does not worry itself how it is to cross
the rivers."
compared with the somewhat
If this letter of St. Paul be
similar letter which Gregory the Great sent to St. Augustine
in answer to inquiries which are of much the same character
as to arrangements about the English converts, we see at once
how immeasurably more decisive and minute the Pope is than
the Apostle.i But for tliis very reason, as Mr. Maurice says,
the First Epistle to the Corinthians is " the best manual for
the ductor diibitantium, because it teaches him that he must
not give himself airs of certainty on points where certainty
is not to be had." ^ Thus in the very difficult questions about
marriage —which seem to have been suggested by members
of the Church who had perhaps imbibed an admiration for
the practices of the Essenes, and who may have been led to
their particular view by the fact that our Lord lived a celibate
' The way in which asceticism has tampered with the Greek text in vii. 3, 5,
and the comments of St. Jerome on the passage show how different a spirit
prevailed at a later period.
Rebuke of Factiousness. 219
1 coKiNTH. not say one word to identify himself with any of the parties,
nor will he say which section of wrangling Churchmen or
wrangling theologians most in the right or most in the
is
' St. Paul does not even refer to the decision of the synod of Jerusalem, which
was a local and temporary compromise.
222 The E2nstles.
This passage (xi. 2-16) is not a mere detached paragraph. The fact that
^
women claimed the right to appear with uncovered heads was part of the
self-assertion which he is combating.
" It ia a remarkable and interesting fact that the question of the Resun'eo-
tion had at this epoch received fresh prominence from the asserted re-appear-
ance of the Phceuix in Egypt twenty years before the letter was written, (Tac.
Ann. vi. 28,) and the exhibition of a live Phoenix (!) in the Comilium of Rome
in A.D. 47, exactly ten years before this letter was written, (Plin. H. N. x. 2.)
Clement of Kome in his Epistle to the Corinthians actually appeals to the
fable of the Phosnix as a collateral proof of the Resurrection. At that epoch
all Gentiles and therefore many Cliristians believed in the existence of the
Phoenix. It is impossible not to recognise a grace of superintendence in the
fact that the New Testament is not discredited by any such allusion.
Practical Lessons. 223
Let all things be done with charity i.e., in all but the first
;
ever any one does and says, I must be good and true, as
though the gold, or the purple, or the emerald were always
saying thus whatever happens I must be emerald and keep
:
my colour.''
He-re surely are great lessons, and they may all be summed
up in this one great truth —that the life of the Christian is
NOTE I. 1 COKINTH.
LEADING IDEAS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS.
NOTE IL
Q
226 The Epistles.
B.C.
243. Aratus and the Achaean League.
197. Battles of Cynocephalae. Corinth occupied by a Roman
garrison.
146. Corinth taken and burnt by L. Mumniius.
46. The Colonia Julia Corinthus founded by Julius Caesar, and
peopled with old Italian veterans (Corinthienses not Corinthii).
A.D.
52. St. Paul founds Christianity in Corinth. Gallio Proconsul of
Achaia.
57. the Church of Corinth.
St. Paul's letter to
95. Clement of Rome writes to the Church of Corinth.
135. The Church of Corinth visited by Hegesippus. (Euseb. H. E.
iv. 22.)
For ancient descriptions of the city, see Livy, xiv. 28 ; Stat. Theh. vii.
106 ; Claudian, Be Bell. Get. 188 ; Pausanias, ii. 2 ; Strabo, viii. p. 379.
For modern, see Leake, Peloponnesiaca, p. 392 ; Morea, iii. 229 ; Curtius,
Peloponnesos, ii. 514; Byron, Siege of Corinth; and Clark, Pe?oj)o«-
•nesus, pp. 42-61.
THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE
COEINTHIANS.
WRITTEN AT PHILIPPI (?) A.D. 57 (LATE) OR A.D. 58
(early).
"There are three crowns the crown of the Law, the crown of the Pripst-
;
hood, and the crown of Royalty but the crown of a Good Name mounts above
—Pirke, Awth.
;
"I wi-ite these things being absent, lest being present I should use
sharpness." —2 Cor. xiii. 10.
Q 2
228 The Epistles.
2 coRixTH. above the crowd, has ever, since the world began, wholly
escaped attacks. The thistles gather, in their tangled growth,
round the foot of the cedars of Lebanon, and fires which
come forth from the crackling brambles scathe often, if they
cannot wholly devour, the forest trees. The stainless purity of
Joseph did not save him from accusation; nor the perfect
meekness of Moses; nor the splendid services of Samuel.
Elijah was a glorious patriot, and his king met him with the
question, " Art thou he that troubleth Israel ?
" Shimei
cursed and flung dust at David. Of the Baptist's stern, self-
' Lang, in the Protestanten Bibel, conjectures from 2 Cor. i. 8-10, compared
with iv. 8, 9, that in the tumult at Ephesus, St. Paul, hunted through the
230 The Epistles.
(2 Cor. ii. 12, 13). But though his preaching was blessed
though " a door was opened for him in the Lord
" he forgot —
himself in anxiety about the feelings of his converts. He
could not stay at Troas from extreme anxiety to know the
effect produced upon the Corinthians by the severity of his
letter, and especially by his sentence upon the notorious
offender. He had told Titus to rejoin him there, and bring
him news; but either Titus had been delayed, or the pre-
cipitation of Paul's escape from Ephesus had brought the
Apostle to Troas earlier than Titus had expected. At any
rate at Troas he had no rest fox his spirit, because he found
not Titus his brother. he grew more and more
And since
uneasy, at length (ii. became so
13), his oppression of spirit
intolerable that he could work no more, and hurried from
Troas into Macedonia. There at last probably at—Philippi —
he met Titus. What Titus said to him the Apostle, in his
eagerness, forgets to tell us but ; it appears, from the burst of
thanksgiving at the close of the chapter, that he brought
news which, though chequered, was on the whole favourable.
The effect of the severe letter had been to a great extent
satisfactory. It had caused among the Corinthian Christians
a salutary grief which had shown itself in yearning affection
and remorseful endeavour to amend. Titus himself had
been received cordially, yet with fear and trembling. The
offender, if he had not been dealt with exactly as Paul had
—
ordered ^ which was perhaps rendered unnecessary by his
—
repentance had still been visited by the majority with
severe reprobation. Accordingly, he sent Titus back —and
streets, driven into a corner, and dashed to the gi'ound, had barely escaped
with his life, and had suffered severe bodily injuries from which he had scarcely
yet recovered.
^ This seems clear from a comparison of 1 Cor. v. 3-5, with 2 Cor. ii. 5-10,
TTad Titus been the bearer of another short letter, no longer extant ' It is a
question which we cannot answer.
Attacks on St. Paul. 231
with him Luke — to finish the good work which he had 2 coeinth.
begun.^
On the other hand, there had arisen against St. Paul a
defiant and infiuential opposition from the two Judaic
factions which called themselves the Cephas-party and the
Christ-party, who attacked him with every weapon of
fanatical religious hatred. His change of plan in not paying
them a double visit had led to much unfavourable criticism.
Many injurious remarks on his character and mode of action
had been industriously disseminated, especially by certain
itinerant Judaic teachers, who were unhappily countenanced,
or at to be so, by commendatory letters
any rate professed
from Christian Pharisees in the Church of Jerusalem. These
factious partisans, as we see from the undercurrent of self-
defence which runs so strongly throughout the letter, had
said, or at least insinuated, that Paul was a man who was so
capricious as not to own mind that he wrote private
know his ;
does not even pretend that such calumnies did not sting and
wound him. They stung him, and aU the more because they
came upon him at a time of great mental discouragement
—
and physical prostration (iv. 8 12), when, as he said, " our
flesh had no rest, but we are troubled on every side from ;
^ St. Paul assumes tliat he may rely on the loyalty of the majority hence ;
finite " yes " of God in Christ, and the everlasting Amen of
got the better of the ambassador. But the man and the
ambassador are one, and what he wants from them is not
a cold and critical appreciation of his elof^uence, but the
sympathy of Christians, if not the affection of sons.^ He
proceeds therefore to tell them that if he had written to them
severely in his former letter was only to inflict upon them
it
in a matter dear to his heart —the offertory for the poor at 2 coeinth,
(cninp. Gal. v. 2 Eph. iii. 1). There is a similar, but less marked change
;
236 Tlie Epistles.
that the attack on St. Paul's authority was fomented by some who resisted hia
sentence on the offender.
' V. 13, 16 xii. 6 ; xi. 16, 17, 19 ; oomp. the blunt "Thou art mad, Paul,"
;
of Festus.
* xii. 16.
^ 2 Cor. iii. 1-6 the taunt that he had nnne of those " commendatory
;
' See X. 18; xi. 8; (o!) KaTsvdpiojaa, " I did not benumb yon lilie a torpedo "
one of St. Paul's " cilicisms " according to Jerome) xi. 20 i xii. 13, 14. Theo*
doret thought that St. Paul wrote x. 12-18, with kind and intentional obscui-ity
(affcKpas). St. Chrysostom saw that many expressions in this section are quo-
tations from the sneers of his enemies {kct elpdvetai' <j>ri(r\ to fKelvcoi
(f>Bey'y6fievos).
^ On these insinuations see x. 1. 10, 12 ; xi. 6, 16, 17, 19, &c., and note 2,
at the end of this discourse.
In the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies Paul is surreptitiously attacked under
the name of Simon Magus. In the spurious letter of Peter to James, he is
called " the lawless one." In the Becognitions he is evidently meant by " the
enemy " sent by Caiaphas to arrest St. Peter at Antiocb, who also threw St.
James down the Temple steps. A pestilent fiction called the "Ascents of
James " is believed to have been the source of the notable story that he was a
Gentile who had accepted circumcision in hopes of marrjdng the High Priest's
daughter, and who apostatised when his hopes were disappointed. See Epiphan.
ffaer. xxx. 16. Ps. Chem. Eccogn. iv. 34. Horn. xi. 36. Baur, First Three
Centuries, (E.T.) i. 89-98 Life of St. Paul, i. 673-678.
;
/3. This, then, for the large class of religious accusers who,
in the original Greek are called ''
devils " (Sia^oXovi;)} And
for the accused this. The cases are rare in which it is wise
for any man, as it was for St. Paul, to refute sneers, or expose
the worst lampoons which had ever been written against him,
with the pathetic memorandum, " May God forgive them ; I
am sure I do." And there is one way at any rate to rob aU
criticisms of their sting. It is to prove their falsity by the
innocence and simplicity of our lives. If we be sure of God's
smile, men may say what they wiU. Moral nobleness is the
one shield of adamant against the arrows of intolerable
wrong.
7. One What had Paul that we have
brief lesson more.
not ? He
was weak, he was sensitive, he was uncomely, he
was hated, he was poor even religious persons in churchly
;
2 coaiNTH. NOTE I.
the practices which were struggling for existence in their worship ; the
manifold thoiights and speculations which were seething in the midst ot
them. "We see Christianity, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
endeavouring " to grasp and to set its seal upon life in all its variety."
The second gives us our chief insight into the life and character of the
great Apostle. Here, in self-defence, he opens the most secret recesses
of his heart. We see his keen logic, his nervous excitement, his deep
indignation, his constant self-denial, his strong sense of independence,
his immeasurable love. We see his sympathy with the strong combined
with his tenderness for the weak his fire and passion ; his practical
;
good sense and tact his religious fervour his immense devotion to the
; ;
1 " Nirgends flnden wir die Subjeotivitat des Apostels in so hohem Gr.irle
imd so versohiedener Weise angeregt wie in diesem Briefe, iiii'gends die redner-
ische SeiySrrjs so hiiufig hervortreteiid (iv. 8-11 vi. 4-10 vii. 11
; ; xi. 22-29)."
;
Tlie First Epistle deals with the elements of perilwhich sprung, up 2 ooeintii.
for themost part in the Hellenic section of the Church—inflated culture,
spurious liberty, &c. The second is aimed almost exclusively at Judaic
antagonists.
NOTE II.
NOTE III.
In the New Testament we hear no more about the state of the Church
of Corinth ; but we have two glimpses of it within the century which
2 CORINTH. Corintli was still in mucli tlie same condition as when St. Paul wrote
full of tendencies to faction, insubordination, In a.d. 13.5, and doubt.
the church was visited by Hegesippus, who stayed there some days on
his way to Rome. The account which (from a Jewish-Christian point of
view) he gives is more favourable. The Corinthian Christians were
under an excellent and active bishop named Primus women like Phoebe ;
and Priscilla had found a successor in Chrysophora ; and the Church was
well spoken of for liberal almsgiving.
NOTE IV.
his character.
1. As to his PERSON.
a. He is "abject" (raw^ivos, x. 1.)
0. Weak (da-eevfjs, X. 10.)
y. A contemptible speaker (o Xo'yor i^ovdevrjfievos, x. 10), only big
and strong in his letters when he is at a safe distance (i8iii7-j;s
y. He has nothing to boast of like the true Apostles, the " out and
out Apostles" (oi vnepXiav dirixTToXoi, xi. 5) and is in fact
"nothing" (xi. 16-33 xii. 11). ;
viii. 20-23).
«. The only excuse for him is that his mind is hardly sound (v. 13 ;
xi. 16-19 ; xii. 6), and hence he has only visions to appeal to,
never having really known Christ (xii. 2 ; v. 16).^
II. To all this the Apostle's answer is indignant and complete indeed ;
to some of the charges he hardly deigns to give any further answer than
a passing word.
' This was remembered against St. Paul by the Ebionites long afterwards.
See Ps. Clem. Eecogn. iv. 3, 5, where Peter is made to give directions that
every one is to be regarded as a false Apostle who cannot produce a
" testimonial" from James the Bishop of Jerusalem.
Even in the Clementines we find a surreptitious sneer at St. Pa ttl's visions
''
as being mere subjective fancy, or deceit of the devil. Ps. Clement Sbm. xvii.
33, seq. irws 5e iro\ Kol •nLfneuffofx.^v avT6 J . irws 5e ffot'Kal fi)^0?j, iircfre oury
• .
2-iG The Epistles
2 CORINTH. 22), and if he be " nothing " he is at any rate not inferior to
them (xii. 11).
f,
rj, 6. He preaches the true, and the only Christ, not himself (ii.
INTEODUCTOEY.
GALATiANs. St. Paul bad founded these Churches A.D. 52, in the visit
of which we learn the particulars from Acts xvi. 6, Gala-
tians iv. —
13 16. When he paid them a second visit, in
A.D. 55,he saw some ground for misgiving, and seems to
have been much more coldly received (Acts xviii. 22, 23,
iv. 16—20).
exposed to the -world's eye. This was the service which the galatians.
^
Apostle achieved for mankind by his magnificent dialectic."
The tactics of the Jewish emissaries were very simple.
They began with the Psalms and pure monotheism, and so,
when they had made their " proselytes of the gate/' they put
forward so strongly the desirability of further advances, and
the peril of not accepting legal observances that they gradually
got to the knife of circumcision and the whole yoke of the
Levitic Law,^ and so made them " proselytes of righteous-
ness," and in some cases, as our Lord said, twofold more the
children ofGehenna than themselves.
was thus that they had treated the royal family of
It
Adiabene, some of whom lie buried in " the tombs of the
kings " near Jerusalem. Queen Helena, in performance of a
Nazarite vow (twice renewed), spent twenty-one years in
Jerusalem, and during the famine of Claudius's reign fed its
fury of the Jewish bigots by a hasty flight {Vit. Jos. 23, 31).
The Rabbis say that "Rabbi" (Juda Hakkodesh, who
edited the Mishna) induced the Emperor Antoninus
to be
circumcised. The story is none the less significant though it
is a fable, and it is uncertain which emperor is meant by
Antoninus.*
that " but for circumcision heaven and earth could not exist
the quiver of fanaticism —they for whom God has " illuminated
the eyes of the understanding," ^ they who know that the
very Scriptures of God, as St. Peter says, may be wrested, by
the unlearned and the unstable, to their own perdition ^ are —
more than ever bound to use the Bible on behalf of that
liberty —that civil, that social, that intellectual, that moral,
that spiritual liberty —of which it was meant by God to be
the shield and sword. The letter of the Bible, if it have
been used to wound, may also, thank God — like the fabled
spear of AchiUes —be used to heal. By the help of the
Bible, in time, we freed the slave, though vested interest
quoted Moses and St. Paul to prove the sacredness of slavery.
By the help of the Bible, in time, Ave shall make England
temperate, though men quote the Epistle to Timothy to
defend the system which maddens men and women with
ardent spirits into desperate crimes. By the help of the
Bible, in time, the English nation shook to the dust a system
of despotism, though priests quoted the Apostles to prove the
2
ireipairtfffxevov^ rohs otpdaK/j-ohs TTJs Siavoias, —Eph. i. 18.
2 ret. iii. 15, 16.
Liberty. 253
;
not, taste not, handle not " free from the encroachments of
the law of grace, the royal law of liberty, the law of those
who are not slaves, but sons ; the law which is fulfilled in one
GALATIANa.
word even in Thou
this, " shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
But this freedom is " in Christ." Forty-three times in this
Epistle does the name Christ occur, and thirty-nine of these
times it is Christ, not "the Christ;" Christ the personal name,
not Christ the descriptive appellative; Christ the Saviour,
the man Christ Jesus.
2. What St. Paul was principally thinking of —the freedom
was involved was freedom
in which, to him, all other freedom —
from Judaism freedom from the petty and intolerable yoke of
;
and the more you study this Epistle, the more you will
recognise that the significance of its teaching is as great for
the nineteenth century as for the first. The early Apostles
were Jews, all of them circumcised, all of them attending
the Temple three times a day, all of them offering sacrifices,
and keeping that Levitical law which was indeed necessary,
at first for a stiffnecked nation of sensual slaves, who were
hankering in their hearts for the specious renewal of
Egyptian idolatries under Jewish forms, but which, now that
Christ had died, was for the Jews half meaningless, and for
the Gentiles wholly pernicious. Christ, in accordance with
Innate Judaism. 255
the divine economy had not, in so many words, abrogated the galatians.
Mosaic law ; but He had
taught spiritual truths which in-
volved the necessity for its abrogation. He had left the
consummation of His teaching to that light of God which
" shines on patiently and impartially, showing all things in
^ V. 10 ; St. Panl here speaks of his opponents as ol anh rrjs 'lovSalas, oi e'tt
Tuv iapuraiaiv. The synagogue had, as it were, been honourably buried in the
256 The Epistles.
GALATiANs. from Jerusalem to his fickle and ignorant Galatians with the
hard, ready-made BibHcal dogma " Unless ye be circumcised,
and keep the whole law, ye cannot be saved." ^ They
wanted to substitute external badges for inward faith ; legal
moons of God, and in a word, do all the things written in the law, and then
jierhaps (!) you will find mercy from God."
St. Pauls Indignation. 257
oALATiANs. gospel, and fling away the scabbard. What Luther did at
Wittenberg, and at Worms, and at Wartburg, that, and more
than that Paul did when he wrote the Epistle to the
St.
Galatians. was the manifesto of that spiritual reformation
It
which was involved in the very idea of Christianity. More
than any book which was ever written these few pages marked
an epoch in history. It was, for the early days of Christi-
anity, the Confession of Augsburg and the Protest of Spires
in one. But it was these combined with intense personality
and impassioned polemics. His weakness of eyesight usually
compelled him to employ an amanuensis but in this instance ;
he felt driven, at all costs, to write with his own hand, though
it could only be in large, awkward, uneven characters. To
the Churches of Galatia he never came again but the words ;
Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our galatiaxs.
sins that He may dehver us from this present evil world."
Notice, first, the stern compression of the salutation. It is
not, as in other Epistles, to "the beloved of God;" not to
;
" the saints in Christ Jesus " not to " the saints and faithful
brethren ;
" but, in hisimpetuous desire to deal at once with
their errors, simply "to the Churches of Galatia." Notice
too, the emphatic assertion of his Apostolate, as though he
had Speak not to me of the authority of James, or of
said, "
the Twelve the —
super-exalted Apostles of your Judaic
'
'
seducers *
—
I am not responsible to them. I owe to them no
allegiance. My commission is not through them, but direct
from Christ. ^ Then notice, thirdly, how he strikes the key-
note of the Epistle in the word " deliver." ^ Your circumcisions,
and your Judaisms are vain. In Christ alone —only by faith
in Him — does salvation come.
Then, without a word of the thanksgiving which is found
in every other Epistle, he bursts, with startling abruptness,
into the subject ofwhich his mind is so indignantly full. " I
am amazed that you are so quickly shifting from the grace of
"
Christ into a different Gospel." The very word " shifting
may perhaps, as Jerome says, be a sharp paronomasia —
reference to their name Galatae, as though it were derived
"
from a Hebrew word meaning " to move." " Your galatising
closely into one community. Bleelz, Mnleit 5, 155. The Church was com-
posed both of Jews (iii. 13, 23, 25 iv. 3, 5) ; and Gentiles (iii. 29 ; iv. 8, 12.
17, 21 ; V. 2 vi. 12).
;
oALATiANs. is but too like your name.^ Your Jewish teachers have told
you that I am shifty and inconsistent ; that I try to please
men. The blame applies to you rather than to me. But no
one shall at any rate mistake what I now say, which is, that
if man or angel preach a different gospel, let him be
anathema — let the ban fall on him. Is that clear ? If not I
repeat again, " Let him be anathema." ^ He then plunges to
the end of the second chapter into a personal narrative, to
prove the absolute independence of his own authority. He
proves it negatively by showing, from his education and
conversion, how small had been his intercourse with any of
the Apostles. He proves it positively, by showing that the
Apostles had been compelled by facts to recognise his
mission; and on one very memorable occasion, he
that,
had, before the whole Church* withstood and condemned
Peter to his face, and proved to him that if the works of the
law were necessary, then Christ had died in vain.
5. He then turns, in the thu'd chapter, from personal self-
tries to make out that Kephas does not mean St. Peter. St. Peter's weakness
bore other bitter fruit, long years afterwards. It was one ultimate cause of
Ebionite attacks on St. Paul ; of Gnostic attacks on Judaism of Porphyry's
;
slanders against the Apostles (comp. Celsus ap. Orig. v 64) and of Jerome's
;
who bewitched you with his evil eye ? — you, before whose
eyes Jesus Christ crucified was conspicuously painted." I
held up before you a banner, as it were, blazoned with the
Cross of Christ ;
^ and lo ! under some strange sorcery of
you are apostatizing to Judaic rituals
sinister influence,
And these two chapters, he proceeds to
then, throughout
show them that the law of which they boasted so much, on
which they relied so much, really placed them under the
curse which it had itself pronounced on its imperfect fulfil-
ment ; that the promise to the faith of Abraham preceded the
Law ; that the Law— so far from being supreme and final
hanner with the monogram of Christ when they came before King Ethelbert.
^ St. Paul puts the Fromise to Abraham in all respects above the Law, and
^ It is here that we have the famous verse, " Now a mediator is not
a medi-
ator of one; but God is one" (iii. 20), with its "300 different expla-
nations. " This diversity of interpretation arises from isolating the words
from their context, and mistaking the simple meanings of "mediator"
and " one." Tlie obvious, and now generally-accepted meaning of the passage
—
seems to be the Promise to Abraham is not only antecedent to the Law of
Moses, but intrinsically above it. The Law is of the nature of a contract
which requii-es two contracting parties but in the promise God stood alone,
;
and no " mediator " (no intermediate agency like that of Moses or the Angels)
was necessary.
2 But the immense superiority of St. Paul's
allegorising over that of Philo
is shown by his plain acceptance of the literal history in which he traces a
divine law. He does not with Philo make Abraham a symbol of " the soul,"
Sarah of "Divine Wisdom;" Isaac of "Human Wisdom;" Ishmael of
" Sophistry," &c.
' It was all the more necessary for St. Paul to
speak thus plainly because
his opponents (owing to his circumcision of Timothy, and as I believe, of
Titus also), had taunted him with having himself, at one time, preached cir-
cumcision (v. 11). Similarly in Ps. Clement {Horn. ii. p. 3), St. Peter charges
"the enemy" (i.e. St. Paul) with having represented teji as preaching the
abolition of the Law.
\
iv. 3, 9. The word o-Toix^a either means "rudiments" the A B C of
religion ;or "physical elements" material and sensuous symbols invested
with religious significance.
St. Paul's Boldness. 263
the self-mutilation of the Galli. Nearly all critics are now agreed that
"O^eXov Kal liiroKSyf/ovTai in v. 12 means "since they attach so much importance
to circumcision, would that they would go a little further and make eunuchs
of themselves altogether." (Comp. ci.-noKiKonii.ivoi, Dent, xxiii. 1.) Eeuss calls
this " UTie phrase affreuse qui revolte notre sentiment. " But Paul says elsewhere
that "circumcision" would be to the Gentiles a mere "concision," a mere
"cutting the flesh" (Phil. iii. 2, 3), and we must not judge a writer by the
taste of neai'ly two millenniums later. What modern feeling would stigmatise
as coarse, ancient feeling would accept as justifiable plain-speaking.
^ Luther went through the same experiences as St. Paul. " Ministerium
Ecclesige," he adds, " omnibus periculis expositum est ; diaboli insultationibus,
mundi ingratitudini, sectarum blasphemiis." CoUo^. i. 13.
204 The Epistles.
While we
have time let us do good unto all men, but especially to
them that are of the household of faith."
Then came the conclusion, " Look at the large letters in
which I have written to you with my own hand " ^ the
:
^ The .size of the scrawled TincTen letters was probably due to the painful-
ress of the effort to write. Many congruent circumstances besides the Apostle's
habitual use of an amanuensis tend to prove that he suffered from short-
sightedness and probably from ophthalmia.
ra (rri-yij.aTa rod 'iriaov. "Stigmata" were brands generally inflicted as a
''
a recruit (Konsch. Dns N. T., Teriullian, p, 700). Hence for the first time in
Warn. i. 1, as in later Epistles {Phil. Tit.) St. Paul calls himself "a. slave of Jesus
Christ." Justified by faith in Christianity he has been sanctified by crucifixion
\\ith Christ to the world.
^ The deeply-moved tenderness of the Apostle breaks out in the unusual
NOTE I. GALATIASS.
OUTLINE OF THE EPISTLE.
It falls into three marked divisions,
I. Personal.
II. Doctrinal.
III. Practical.
I. Personal.
1. Greeting (i. 1-5).
III. Practical.
(a) The nature of Christian Freedom (v. 1-12).
(fi)
Warnings against its abuse, both general (13-18) and
special (v. 19-vi. 10).
Closing summary of his main theses (ii. 17), polemical
(12-13), personal (14-17), and doctrinal (15-16). Blessing
(18).
The letter contains the germ of the Theological system which St. Paul
develops more fully in the Epistle to the Eomans.
Bengel calls ii. 19-21 " Summa ac medulla Christianismi " ; and of
he
v. 1-6, says, " In these stands all Christianity."
THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.
WRITTEN AT CORINTH, A.D. 58.
" First of all (he wrote) to the Corinthians forbidding schismatic factious-
ness to the Galatians forbidding circumcision but to the Romans at greater
; ;
" Justificationand sanctification cohere, but they are not one and the same.
1 1 is faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone ;
j jst as it is the lieat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the
sun it is not alone, because it is always conjoined with light." Calvin.
" Therighteousness wherewith we shall be clothed in the world to come is
lioth and inherent that whereby we are justified is perfect but not
perfect ;
inherent ; that whereby we are sanctified inherent but not perfect." Hooker.
" Faith doth not shut out repentance, hope, love, dread, and the fear of
God, to be joined with faith in every man that is justified but it shutteth ;
INTRODUCTORY.
Jews had been introduced into Rome in large numbers by
Pompeius the Great (B.C. 63), and soon began to multiply
and flourish. Augustus, iufluenced by friendship for the first
Herod, had improved their condition, and assigned them
The Jews in Rome. 26S)
2 See Seekers after God, p. 168. Mart. Epp. i. 42, 109 ; vi. 93, &o. Jut.
Sat. xiv. 96, 134, 186, 201 ; iii. 14, 296 vi. 542 Peri. v. 184, &o.
; ;
third person {vrnp avroov " for them," not, as in the received
text, " for Israel "), and in is. — xi. he is not so much addressing
the Jews as arguing ahout them. In the later chapters he
seems to be addressing Gentiles of liberal views. On the
;
other hand, in iv. 1, he speaks of " Abraham our father " he
assumes that his readers have an intimate knowledge of the
Old Testament, and he says that he is writing " to them that
;
know the law " and in ii. 17-24, he speaks directly to Jews.
Tregelles points out that there are more quotations from
the Old Testament in this letter than in all the rest put
together. The reconciliation of these apparent contradictions
lies in the fact that the nucleus of the Church was Jewish,
and that even the Gentiles were mainly proselytes who at
Rome were very numerous.^
The Church of Rome claims St. Peter as its actual founder.
For that claim there is not only no historic evidence, but
such evidence as we have, and, indeed, the whole tenor of
this letter, as well as of the Acts of the Apostles, point the
other way. Early Church tradition is indeed almost unani-
' Compare Eom. iv. 16 ; xi. 26 ; with Gal. iv. 3 ; 2 Cor. iii. 6 ; 1 Thess. iv.
14-16.
2 "Latin Christianity was bom
in Africa, not in Italy, and its first eminent
wi'iter was TertuUian." Fbaser. Even in writing to Rome, St. Paul classifies
mankind as "Greeks and barbarians " (i. 14), and " Jews and Greeks " (i. 16,
ii. 9 &c.)
" The Churches of the west," says Milman, "were Greek religious
colonies. Their language was Greek, their organisation Greek, their orders
Greek.
272 The Ejnstles.
glory.
Thus the Epistle to the Komans is St. Paul's Homily of the
Salvation of Mankind.
Some leading words in the Epistle :
"
All" {Trd<;). Free Salvation offered to all, because needed
byaU.
Imputing (Xoyl^ofiai). The word occurs ten times in the
fourth chapter alone.
Righteousness, AtKaioavvr] (SiKaioeo, SiKaleo/xa, Slkt)). God's
inherent righteousness becoming man's justification ; the
new relation of reconcilement between God and man. The
righteousness of God, not the righteousness of the law.
God forbid ! {jjJy) r^kvoiro). The horror naturalis which re-
jects false inferences from accepted theses (ten times, iii. 4, 6,
T
274 The Epistles.
Leading thought :
The verse has already been quoted by St. Paul in Gal. iii. 11.
In the LXX. it is " the just shall live by my faith " (e« Trt'o-Teo)?
/uou) in some MSS. In its original context, the verse meant
" the just man shall live {i.e. shall be delivered from perU) by
; "
his fidelity " but St. Paul reads a deeper meaning into " faith
and Habakkuk ends where Paul begins.
" live."
" The just shall live by faith." Hab. ii. 4, and RoM. i. 17 ; Gal. iii. 11
IIeb. X. 38.
he had received the news from Galatia which called forth the
burning letter to the waverers of that unstable Church and ;
the notion that their divine and cherished law was only eomans
given "to multiply transgressions." They looked on St. Paul's
teaching as nothing short of scandalous.
And yet, because he loved them, because the letter killeth
and the spirit quickeneth, because his heart was full of
courage, and his soul of spiritual illumination, he was able in
the Epistle to the Romans to develop his peculiar Gospel
with such power as to get rid of aU. objections and to carry
with him the grateful assent and conviction of the universal
Church.
2. In the few words of introduction I have touched on the
origin of Christianity in Rome, on the share which St. Peter
may or may not have had in and on the question
preaching it,
the clearest and fullest statement of the doctrine of sin and the
doctrine of deliverance as held by the greatest of the Apostles.
It is St. Paul's definition of what he understood as the Gospel
of Christ. At the time when St. Paul wrote it he could not
fail to see the to him painful and perplexing fact that the
fifteen verses, St. Paul passes, in the most natural manner, to eomans.
state, in the sixteenth and seventeenth verses, his great theme,
which he sums up in those words of Habakkuk, " The just
shall live by faith." Since the necessity of this mode of
salvation arises from the universality of sin which deserves
God's wrath, he proceeds to prove his statement that aU have
sinned. Of the he gives a truly
sinfulness of the Gentiles
fearful picture in the rest of the first chapter and then (to ;
bad that, in the opinion of the Jewish historian, earthquake and lightning
must have destroyed them if the Romans had not done so (Jos. B.G. iv. 3 ;
V. 9 § 4 ; X. § 5 ; xiii. § 6).
^See the Introductory Note, and an interesting excursus (F.) " on SI. Paul's
view of the Religious History of Manlcitid, " by Dr. Sanday, in I3ishop Ellicott'g
Commentary, ii. 278.
280 The Epistles.
1 Conciliatory as is the tone of St. Paul, ie here uses the startling ex-
pression that the Law "came in" (ira/jeio-TJA-eec, Vnlg. subintravit, " super-
vened "GaL iii. 19, irpoa-eTeeri) "that the trespass might abound," i.e. to
multiply transgressions, which in Gal. iii. 19, he had more otscurely expressed
by "for the sake of transgressions" {irapaffaffioiv xapij/). He justifies his
position by a deep psychological analysis showing that the Law stimulates the
impulse to sin (nitimur in vetitwn semper) and intensifies the subsequent
remorse ; but that it only does this with the merciful purpose of bringing sin to
a head and so of curing it. Thus the use of the law is, as the Eeformers said,
1. CivU. 2. Educational. 3. Formative. Augebatur morbus ; crescit
malitia; quaeritur medieus, et to turn sanatur." Aug. in Ps. cii.
"And therefore Law was given them to evince
Their natural pravity by stuxing up
Sin against law to fight that when they see
;
Into these lines Milton has compressed something of the main conception, botli
of the Epistle to the Romans and of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
^ To 'he difficulty about the rejection of Israel St. Paul furnishes two
answers.
1. A —
theologic v^nsiver : God predestinates.
2. An historic answer : — the rejection of the Jews was due to their own
obstinacy.
He does not attempt to reconcile the antinomy because it is irreconcilable.
He would have said with E. Akiva, " Everything is foreseen and free will is
given. And the world is judged by grace and everything is according to
works " (PirTce Avoth. iii. 24). He was not oppressed by the problem of God's
foreknowledge because (1) He believed absolutely in God's infinite love and ;
thatwe shall never see God. Shall we then never see Him ?
Can God bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? Can there
be any destiny before the race of man except lamentation,
and mourning, and woe ? Clearly there can be no hope
unless God —even while we are yet sinners, yet disobedient,
yet alienated — interferes on behalf of the wretched and
fallen race. Does God interfere, and how ? The Gospel is
true answer, then there is none. And St. Paul gives the
answer by saying that if there be a revelation of wrath, there
is a revelation of righteousness; that the righteousness
also
of God towards the sinner is being revealed by the pure
steady light of the Gospel, no less clearly than the wrath of
God towards sin is being revealed by the lurid blaze of
punishment. The word for righteousness and for justification
is one and the same word, because God has provided the
means whereby His righteousness can become our justification;
whereby He can so impart to us His righteousness that it
becomes ours whereby the guilty can be not only forgiven
;
This element in the plan of salvation you will see more fully
in the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth verses of that third
chapter, which have been called by Olshausen " the Acro-
polis of the Christian faith." There you will read that God
has provided a way whereby all may attain to the glory of
God, "being justified freely by His grace, by means of the
redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a
284 The Epistles.
anion with Christ, which becomes in man (5) the spirit of a new life.
3. This plan of salvation offered to ALL ; (tij iravras koI e'lrl irdvTas robs
TTiffTeiiovTas).
i. It has been finished and made known [ireipaveptoTai) in accordance with
continuous testimony {/j.apTvpov/j.4t>ri).
5. This grace, a free gift not earued by man (x"plj vi/wv), nor to be earned
{3ci}pEav).
6. The object of this faith, —
Jesus Christ, His life and death ; which is a
ransoming (aTroXi/Tpoxris) and a propitiation {t\a(rT'lipiov) as regards its results
for man. (The Avord l\a<nT]piov seems here to be used in the sense of lXa(riJi.6s.)
7. —
The reason for tliis, the vindication of God's righteousness which
might otherwise have been questioned because of His praetermission (trdpeaiv)
of previous sins.
8. The end
to be obtained —
that God might justify every man whose new
life has
rnot (e'/c) in faith in Christ.
its
—
Thus the Gospel what the Apostle called specifically his Gospel (Eom. ii.
16 xvi. 25 Gal. i. 7, ii. 2 2 Tim. ii. 8) is grounded on the grace of God
; ; ; —
(xapis) ; the Redemption in Christ (aitoKiTpaiais) ; and the faith of man
{TriffTis).
St. ]?aul expresses the conclusion in verse 28. "We reckon therefore
that a man is justified by faith, apart from works of Law." This is the verse
into which Luther, by inference (but unwan-antably) admitted from the Genoese
aud Nuremberg Bibles the word "alone," "by faith only" {mx sola tot
clamorihis lapidata, Evs,sm.) Hence the name SoUdifian. Luther was not
guilty of the foolish error that " faith" [Glauhe) means merely " belief." Qlauhe
implies not merely belief but trust. Knowing that in St. Paul, " faith " ulti-
mately means "union with Christ" (Phil. i. 21 Gal. ii. 20), Luther knew ;
mtio," it cannot be regarded as certain that that meaning of the word is not
hpre applied to Christ by a metaphor.
" Bengel.
The Theodicy. 285
just and pardons. The fact that His judicial righteousness eomans.
loth condemns and pardons is " the divine theodicy for the
past history of the world."^ This is all that we know or can
know (and that only by most imperfect metaphor) of the
nature of the redemptive act as regards God. We know no
more because we need to know no more. But this we know,
that if we are in Christ, " suck we are in the sight of God
the Father, as is the very Son of God Himself Let it be
counted folly, or fury, or frenzy, or whatsoever. It is our
wisdom and our comfort: we care for no knowledge in the
world but God hath made Himself the sin of men,
this, that
and that men made the righteousness of God." ^
are
ii. But though God has thus provided the remedy, man
must apply it and if we ask how. Scripture has but one
;
letting us have them and feel bitter with weariness and sick
with sin, even while we possess them by the shattering blow ;
' The right understanding of the word "faith" in its highest sense is
essential to the understanding of St. Paul. There are ascensive degrees and
qualities of faith.
1. There is dead faith —
faith which produces no works fides informis.
2. There is "belief," theoretic persuasion (assensus) Eom. iv. 18; x. 14
(Heb. xi. 1).
3. There is faith which has been touched by emotion and has become faith-
fulness by producing self-surrender (Rom. x. 9), xii. 3.
4. Faith passes into unio mystica, incorporation with Christ, Rom. i. 17 ;
stage, it passes from theoretic assent to dominant conviction (Baur. Paid, ii.
149; Pfleiderer, Paulinism, § v. Hooker, Eccl. Pol. 1, xi. 6).
In Christ. 287
former phrase occurs thirty-three times, the latter phrase only eomans.
three or four times. What then shall we say to these things ?
We might say many things. We might lose ourselves in
endless perplexities ; we might entangle ourselves in inter-
minable controversies ;we might, by rash logical inferences and
syllogistic intrusions into the secret things of God, injure and
harden our own souls; and, trying to measure the arm of God
by the finger of man, we might lose ourselves in the mazes of
defiance and blasphemy. We might take the phrase as a
sort of test of the heresy of others, instead of a blessed truth
intended for ourselves. Let us reject all such rash conclu-
sions, such repellent inferences, such uncharitable presumption
Let us put forth the hand of faith to receive this Avhite robe
of God's righteousness which shall admit us into the marriage
supper of the Lamb. God loves us, sinners though we be.
Christ died to save us from our sins. We are not asked to
reason, but to accept a loving Saviour, and yield ourselves to
a loving will. If we do this, then we shall be able to fling
away arguments and horrible conclusions about
all foolish
will, but the more we trust God, the more we shall hope in
not only the loss of hope, but also the most perilous abandon-
ment of the soul to faithlessness. The Gospel is good
tidings ; it is a message of peace to all who will receive it.
It tells us how we may be found in Christ, not having our
own righteousness, but that whichcometh from God by faith
in Christ, even the righteousness which begins with the faith
of simple trust in God, and ends in the faith of union with
His Spirit, and fulfilment of His will.
Analysis of the Epistle. 289
NOTE I.
The Epistle falls into two great divisions, i.-xi. mainly Doctrinal
xii.-xvi. mainly Practical.
It also falls into seven clear sections,
i.-v. Statement of the doctrine.
vi.-viii. Answers to objections.
ix., xi. The question of the rejection of Israel,
xii., xiii. Practical exhortations.
xiv.-xv. 13. Mutual duties of the strong and the weak.
XV. 14-33. Personal,
xvi. Salutations.
The closer analysis of the Epistle is as follows :
1. Greeting (i. 1-7). This is the first letter which St. Paul addresses
to the saints, and the first in which he calls himself a slave of Christ.
3. Doctrinal Section,
A. Fundamental thesis (i. 16, 17).
i. All equally guilty (i. 18-iii. 20).
U
290 The Epistles.
5. Personal apology for having thus addressed them (xv. 13-21) with
remarks on hia future plans.
6. Salutations (xvi. 1-24) (15-33).
NOTE II.
There is great reason doubt whether the last chapter was addressed
to
Roman Church.
to the has been suggested with some probability
It
that it is really an appendix to the letter when it was sent to the Church
of Ephesus.''
i. The urgency of the recommendation of Phoebe to a strange Church
three times as distant from Corinth as Ephesus, is hardly what we
should expect (Eom. xvi. 1, 2).
months before St. Paul wrote this letter (1 Cor. xvi. 19), and again some
eight or nine years later (2 Tim. iv. 19).
iv. There are no salutations to such well-known Eoman Christians as
and with him so many " kinsmen and ardent supporters, and fellow
''
^ The reader may see different views as to this subject, by Bishop Lightfoot,
Jmirnal of Philology, vi. (1871) Dr. Hort (id. v. 1870), and Dr. Gilford,
;
Speaker's Commentary, iii. 20-30. The view adopted in this note was suggested
by Schulz, and has been adopted by Ewald, Eenau, Eeuss and others.
^ Semler as far back as 1707 wrote a pamphlet De Duplice Appendice Ep.
ad Rom. Ewald also thought that xvi. 1-20 was part of a letter to Ephesus
written from Rome.
The Last Chapter. 291
prisoners " of St. Paul (xvi. 7, 9, 12, 13) ? Had all the Ephesian Churcli Romans,
made a rendezvous at Rome ? ^ Where
was in the scantily
(unless it
recorded perils at Ephesus) could AfLuila and Priscilla have run such
risks for St. Paul, and Andronicus and Juniaa have been his fellow-
prisoners (o-uj/aip^/idXiDToi) ? 2
the final doxology from E.G. and MSS. mentioned by Jerome 1 its
position after xiv. 23, in L. &c. ? its double recurrence (xiv. 24 xvi. ;
NOTE III.
A.D. 49. The Jews expelled from Eome by Claudius, because impulsore
Ohresto (through Messianic excitement 1 or disputes about Chris-
tianityt) they were assidue tumultuantes}^
A.D. 58. Their influence at Rome is so strong that Seneca says " the
conquered race gave laws to the conquerors." ^^
^ Jos. Antt. xiv. 10, § 1, 6-8, c. Apion, ii. 4. Maerobius, Saturn, i. 12.
.Appian, Bell. Civ. ii. 106.
^ See Jahn, Bclrew Commonwealth, §§ cxvii.
fg.
' Jos. Antt. xvii. 9-11. B. J. ii. 6.
* The growing fear, jealousy, and detestation, inspired by the Jews at Eoine
INTEODUCTOEY.
There cannot be the shadow of a doubt as to the genuine- philippiaks.
•
De AVette, Schenkel, Reuss, Liiuemann,
Briickner, Emesti, Meyer,
Wilibald Grimm, B. "Weiss, Pfleiderer, Hilgenfeld, Lightfoot, &c.
294 The Epistles.
this Epistle (i. 7, 13, 16, 17), and in the others, he constantly
(ii. 24). On the other hand, when he wrote the letter to Philemon (and there-
fore those to the Colossians and Ephesians) he was sufficiently sanguine of
acquittal to ask Philemon (v. 22) to prepare him a lodging. Further (2) the
order of thought in this Epistle has an affinity with that of the letters
to the Galatians and the Romans. It breathes the same toiie as the letter
to the Romans, and has many parallels of thought and expression. On the
other hand, when he wrote to Ephesus and Colossae, a new set of experiences,
and the necessity for dealing with problems of a wholly different character
from those which he had hitherto faced, had carried him into wholly different
subjects. Seeing the delicate susceptibility of St. Paul's mind, and its tenacity
of recent phrases and impressions, I hold it to be a psychological impossibility
that he should have written Philippians after Colossians and Ephesians, and yet
have shown no traces of the special thoughts with which he had been so recently
and so powerfully occupied. It could not have been written at the beginning
of St. Paul's imprisonment, because time must be allowed for the news of St.
Paul's arrival at Rome
to reach Philippi ; for the journey of Epaphroditus
from Philippi to Rome
for his illness for the reception of the news of that
; ;
illness at Philippi ; and for the return of their expressions of soitow and
sympathy. But this would not reqiiire more than a year. Philippi is about
700 mUes from Rome, and the journey occupied about a month.
296 The Epistles.
some had been converted. The ingenious speculations which try to connect
St. Paul with Seneca through Gallic and Biirrhus have no real base. The
resemblances to Stoic doctrines as enunciated by Seneca, which are found in
this Epistle, are of a general character, and refer to truths which, so to speak,
were "in the air." See Bishop Lightfoot's Essay on St. Paul and Seneca
{Fhilippians, pp. 268-326).
' It may be that St. Paul would hardly have used such mild words in the
earlier stages of his Judaic controversy. But as Hitzig says the age of the
Epaphroditus. 297
Amid neglect, misery, and opposition St. Paul felt aU the philippians.
for Macedonia
!
" says Chrysostom. He liked the manly
independence and affectionate enthusiasm of the Roman
"
citizens of Macedonia. His use of the word " citizenship
and " play the citizens " shows how he shared with them
the honourable pride of a claim to the franchise of the
empire. Perhaps the wealth of a few converts like Lydia
made it less difficult for him to avail himself of their
bounty.
was about autumn when Epaphroditus arrived from
It
Philippi,with the offering,^ which supplied the suffering
Apostle with all that was immediately necessary for his
simple needs. Flinging himself into the work of the
Gospel at Rome at that unhealthy and malarious season,
Epaphroditus was soon prostrated by a dangerous and all
Apostle, which was now perhaps approaching sixty years, and the trial of his
imprisonment tended to soften his feelings. Further, these Eoman Jews
may not have helonged to the "ultramontane " Judaists, who demanded that
the Gentiles should be cu-cumcised. Calvin was not a man of very mild dLS<
position, yet he said of Luther, "he may call me 'a beast,' and 'a devil,
but I shall always think of him as a good servant of Jesus Christ."
' They had ministered to his necessities twice before at Thessalonica (iv. 16)
and once at Corinth (2 Cor. xi. 9).
298 The Epistles.
iLippiANs. asLuther and the Reformers pleaded for the life of Melanch-
thon.i God heard their supplication. Epaphroditus recovered
and deeply as St. Paul, in his loneliness and discouragement,
would have liked to keep this dear friend by his side, yet,
with his usual unselfishness, he yielded to the yearning of
Epaphroditus for his home, and of the Christians of Philippi
for their absent pastor. He therefore sent him back, and
with him Uu ., "it this letter, in which he expressed his heart-
felt gratitude foi ^e affection which had so happily cheered
the monotony of his sorrows.
Thus the Epistle to the Philippians is what we should call
' " Allda musste mir unser Heir Gott herhalten. Deun ich rieb Ihm die
Ohren mit alien promissionibus exaudiendarv/m precum." Luthek. —
Unity. 299
' An interesting feature of this greeting that here alone he makes special
is
mention of the " bishops and deacons." the word " bishops " we must
From
exclude all modern connotations of the word. At this period " bishops " were
simply "presbyters." The plural form of the word shows the date of the
Epistle before the separation of the office of the " Episcopos " from that of the
" Presbuteroi."
^ There are two sections in the letter which are devoted to the subject of
—
unity i. 27-ii. 18 and iv. 1-9. Unity was aU the more essential in the
;
Paul, that even into an exhortation to the common Christian duty of unity he
thus casually introduces a passage so theologically important. The chief
truths of the profoundest Christology could not have been expressed more
grandly, and at the same time more tersely than in this sw&t outline of
300 The Epistles.
Christ's passage downwards, step by step, from the infinite heights into the
uttermost abyss of self-humiliation (ii. 6-8), and then His re-ascent upwards
into the super-exaltation * of unimaginable dominion (ii. 9-11). Each word
of the passage is full of meaning. Around the single verb "He emptied
Himself" t has risen a wide controversy known as "the Jcenosis controversy,"
and there is much significance, though no shadow of Dooetism, in the contrast
between the expressions "form" and "fashion" the abiding and essential —
form or inmost nature {iJiop<l>^) of God, in which Christ eternally was, and the
outward transitory fashion {(rxvi^'a) of a man In which He was found.
In this passage the " thought it not robbery to-be equal with God" of the
A.V. is an unfortunate mistranslation which almost reverses the real meaning.
The whole context proves the meaning to be that " He.counted it not a prize "
— apiTayij.iv colloquially, perhaps incorrectly, used in the sense of ap-Kayna —
or "a thing to be grasped " to be on an equality with God. We can only
mention it as a literary and theological curiosity that so able a critic as
Baur fancied that this was an allusion to Wisdom (Sophia) the last Man of
the Pleroma in the Valentinian system, whose offspring sank back into the
Emptiness (Kenoma) when she attempted to unite herself to the Absolute !
were, in his flymg car ; bending over the shaken rein and the
goaded steed, forgetting everything — every peril, every com-
petitor, every circling of the meta in the rear, as he pressed on
for the goal by which sate the judges with the palm, which
should be the prize of his heavenly calling of God in Christ.^
^ This passage (iii. 2-19') is, with the famous passage about Christ's self-
inanition (ii. 5-11), the most distinctive and doctrinally important in the
letter. Having begun the chapter, "Finally, my brethren, farewell in the
Lord, to write to you the same things" i.e. these constant exhortations to
unity, or perhaps to joy
—
" is for me not burdensome, but for you it is safe,"
he stops, and adds with startling suddenness, "Beware of the dogs, beware
of the evil workers, beware of the concision." There is nothing un-PauIine in
the words. In 2 Oor. xi. 13, he had spoken of Judaists as "dccdi^/MZ workers,"
—
and if " concision" a word which implies that circumcision may be a mere
—
physical mutilation ^be a very severe expression, it is at any rate less so than
the (perhaps half-humorous) sternness of the expression i^eXov aiTOK6i^ovTai
in Gal. V. 12.
^ iii. 14, (TKoTrhs "goal " occurs here alone in the New Testament.
302 The Epistles.
PHiLippiANs. This long digression is, as it were, the spent wave, the dying echo
of the Judaic controversy. Beginning in strong indignation, it
2 In iv. we have " Yea and I beseech thee, also, true yolcefellow " (yvi\ixii
3,
aiCvyf). Who is this unnamed yokefellow ? Eenan {S. Paul, 165) thinks that
it was Lydia, and Clemens of Alexandria (Strmn. iii. 6, 53) that she was
Paul's wife Baur thinks that it was meant (by the forger) to indicate St.
!_
can know but the exile himself" We know how, when the
monk who opened for him the door of the monastery of
Santa Croce asked him " What seek you here ? " he gazed
"
round him with hollow eyes and slowly answered " Pacem !
" Peace."
not only an exile, he was cold and hungry, and a prisoner philippians.
since
" Once we were sad
In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun,
Now in this mii'ky darkness, we are sad.
NOTE I. PHILIPPIAKS
i. Greeting, i. 1, 2.
iv. 10-19).
4. Exhortations to unity (i. 27- ii. 16 ; iv. 1-9).
The letter is the least systematic of all the Epistles, but it contain?
several very striking and beautiful passages. Such are —
i. 19-26. The doubt respecting the choice of life or death.
ii. 5-11. The appeal to the example of Christ, in His "inanition
(Jcenosis) which was followed by exaltation.
iii. 7-11. His readiness to sacrifice everything for Christ.
iv. 12-16. His continued sense of imperfection.
as St. Paul himself did. The substantive " citizenship " does not occur
again in the New Testament ; the verb only in Acts xxiii. 1.
X 2
SOS The Epistles.
PHILIPPIANS. ii. If there he any tender mercies and compassions. The reading of
1.
nearly the Uncials is el' ns a-irXdyxva koI olKTipjioi, "if any one he
all
tender mercy and compassion." This has been treated as a mere clerical
error, but St. Paul may have written it as he writes ivSvcraa-de aiikayxva.
Col. iii. 12.
ii. If I am poured out upon the sacrifice and offering of your faith.
17.
The metaphor is taken from the drink-oflfering poured over a sacrifice.
2 Tim. ii. 6. geneca when dying (Tac. Ann. xv. 64) sprinkled the by-
standers with his blood, saying, " Libare se liquorem ilium Jovi Libera-
tori." So too Thrasea, " Libemus, inqtiit, Jovi Liberatori." Id. xv. 35.
ii. 19. Hazarding his life. The reading of the best MSS. is napa^o-
Xtva-diiivos. The word was technically used oi parabolani, who as it were
" played the gamblers " with their lives in attending on the sick.
iii. 1. Rejoice in the Lord. The word p^aipere means both "farewell,"
and " fare ye well."
iii. 9. A righteousness which is through faith in Christ, the righteous-
iii. 21. Our vile body. Happily this is, in the A.V., a mistranslation
of 1-0 crapa "the body of our humiliation."
Trj<! TaireivaxTsas fjpaii;
iv. 7. The peace of Ood shall guard your hearts. God's peace shall
—
stand armed shall keep sentry over {(j>povpricrei) your hearts.
iv. 12. / have learned. Eather, "I have been initiated," "I have
learnt the secret " {pepvtjpai).
THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS.
WRITTEN DURING THE FIRST ROMAN IMPRISONMENT.
ABOUT A.D. 63.
the river Lycus, a river which, like the Anio, clothes its bed
and valley with calcareous deposits, and forms for itself natural
bridges of gleaming travertine, of which the fantastic effect
is increased by the earthquakes to which this region has been
the heresy that evil resides in matter, and therefore that the
body is essentially and inherently vile, the adherents of this
perverted doctrine were perhaps led to hint at some distinc-
tion between the human Jesus and the divine Christ. They
were certainly trying to thrust all kinds of intermediate
agencies, especially angels, between the soul and God. Such
were the crafty errors — swiftly germinating in the "loose
fertility" of the Asiatic intellect —which St. Paul had to
combat in writing to Christians, of whom the majority were
personal strangers to himself. He met them, not by indignant
controversy, for as yet these errors were only undeveloped;
nor by pergonal authority, for these Christians were not his
converts but by the noblest of all forms of controversy,
;
the Plenitude —at once tlie brimmed receptacle and the total colossians.
contents of all the gifts and attributes of God ; Christ is all
different, but each has its own greatness. If this Epistle has
ooLossiANs. them, that they may be filled with full knowledge and
spiritual understanding, still bearing fresh fruit, and being
strengthened with fresh power, and perpetually giving thanks
to God, who rescued us from the power of darkness, and
qualified us for our share of the inheritance of the saints in
light, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His
love, in whom we have our redemption, the remission of our
sins (1-13).
2. This leads him gradually to the great doctrinal passage
respecting the nature and office of Christ, as supreme alike
in relation to the Universe and to the Church, alike in the
natural and in the moral creation (ii. 15-17). It is this
passage which constitutes the theological germ of the Epistle,
and stamps it pre-eminently as the Christological Epistle. In
the following verses St. Paul characteristically dwells on the
thoughts at once exalting and humiliating, that the fuU
absolute, and universal revelation of this long-hidden mystery
should have been intrusted and he expresses his
to Mm;
earnest desire that the Churches of the Lycus valley, though
they had not seen his face in the flesh, may be helped by him
to the full knowledge of that mystery of God, which is
Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge, to be by us sought for and enjoyed (i. 11 ii. 3). ;
' iii. 5. Ne/cpdJo-are ... 8. aTrSSeffBe. All that was evil was to be blown up
at once, but all good habits were to be continually built up.
* Th«se are all in the present imperative, implying contiuuous duties.
316 The Epistles.
God and all created things, being prior to all creation, and colossians,
sovereign over all creation. Mystic dreamers might invent
Angelologies, and thrust intermediate agencies between man
and God, thus interfering with man's most blessed privilege
of immediate access but Christ is all in all.;All things —
in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible whether —
" thrones," or " lordships," or " principalities," or " powers,"
all things were created (eVr/a^i?) by His agency ; all things
continue their being (eKTia-Tui) with reference to Him ; His
divine prae-existence (avro? e<jTiv) precedes all things, and
in Him band of the universe all things cohere. Such
as the
is His relation to God, and to all the natural Universe. The
constant repetition of the words "all things" ^ shows with what
absolute jealousy St. Paul would exclude His universality of
pre-eminence from every encroachment, whether of Angels
or of jEons.^ However great they may be in themselves
"thrones, dominations, virtues, princedoms, powers," are
nothing in respect to His all-completeness. St. Paul will
hear of none but
" Him first, Him last, Him midst, and without end." '
lias already warned the Colossians in this Epistle that the plenitude of
Godship is in Christ.
' Col. i. 15-17.
* KaToiKEi. St. John uses the word cff/t^vaKrcc (i. 14).
S18 The Epistles.
.^\ Ti!'' p/' "''^^^ly ^°"},^ Ji^alogy between the MatOm of this Jewish proverb
and the Pleroma. The Kabbalistic method
of Gematria or assigning numerical
equivalents to words (the Greek isopsephia.)
aided this nsa|e^Fo^ nin
belonlir^fttGr-'eek^'i^^tJSr'^^'
'^ ^''^ -^'^' '' '^- -"-. a word
The Colossian Heresiarch. 819
—
ordinances distinctions of clean and unclean food, feasts
new moons. Sabbaths (ii. 16).
But how would these avail them ? They were but shadows
of which the substance is Christ. All that bond which was
once valid against them by its ordinances that " killing —
letter" —
Christ had blotted out, had torn, had cancelled, had
nailed its fragments to His cross (ii. 14 17). —
iii. Further, there had been an attempt to remove God so
There is some corruption or obscurity in the words, but they seem to allude to
visions real or imaginary.
' The adoration of angels was a Jewish (Epiphan. Sacr. xxv.
3, 16, and a
fiagment of the Kiipvy/ict ireToov] and specifically an Essene aberration (Jos.
/?. J. ii. 8, § 7).
''
ii. 20, Ti .. . SoyiiariCeaee j
' Mark vii. 1-23.
TliG True Remedy. 821
old selves, dead to the world. Their life has been hidden
with Christ in God. It is a hidden life, a divine life, which
at Christ's manifestation should become a life of manifested
glory. Hence the Apostle, in closing the controversial aspect
of the truths which he desires to inculcate, bids them to strike
K.T. \.
322 The Epistles.
NOTE I. COLOSSIANS.
to the hateful and violent " translation " of 2,000 Jewish families by
Antiochus the Great, from Babylon into Lydia and Phrygia, Jos. Antt.
xl. 3, § 4. The verb is used for wholesale deportations by the LXX.
2 Kings xvii. 23 ; xxiii. 33.
The words /mW knowledge of the mystery (ii. 2) ; and the riches of the
glory of this mystery, i. 27 ; and walk in Him (ii. 6), are keynotes of
the Epistle.
The most remarkable passages have been explained in the discourse.
In i. 24 we have a suggestive conception " Now I rejoice in my :
sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking
(to. varepifimTa) of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for His body's sake
which is the Church."
We might be startled by such a phrase as " that which is lacking in
the sufferings of Christ," and stni more at the notion that any can
fill up that which so lacks. But though Christ's death was
" a fuU, perfect
and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world," and though no
human sufferings can be vicarious in the sense in which His were, yet
Y ^
324 The Epistles.
coLossiANS. the sufferings of His saints may lie ministrative, and thus, as continuing
Christ's work on earth, they are able personally to supplement in His
stead [avTavaitXrjpovv), for His Church, what is still required.
eminently Christological as it
It is curious that, in this Epistle alone,
is, the salutation " Grace be unto you, and peace from God the Father"
is not associated Tvith the name o^ Christ, since the following words
" and the Lord Jesus Christ " are omitted by the best MSS. On the
other hand in iii. 15, the true reading is " Let the peace of Christ " (not
"of God," as in the A.V.) "arbitrate" ("Le umpire" ^pa^eueTco) "in
your hearts."
THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.
WEITTEN AT ROME, A.D. 63.
" Nulla epistola Pauli tanta Labet mysteria tarn reconditis sensibus involuta.'^
-Jer. in Eph. iii.
the Christian —
armour (vi. 10 17), have no parallel in bphesians,
Colossians. Ephesians has seven Old Testament allusions,
Colossians has only one. Again, Colossians is brief and
logical, Ephesians more lyrical and diffuse. In Colossians
St. Paul is the soldier, in Ephesians the builder. Colossians
is " his argument, his process, his caution " Ephesians is
;
' The occurrence of two Epistles on almost the same themes, yet widely different
in details, is found in the indisputably genuine Epistles to the Eomans and Gala-
tians. The relations between those two Epistles are closely analogous to the
phenomena presented by Colossians and Ephesians. Galatians and Colossians
are specific, impassioned, and polemical ! Komans and Ephesians are calm and
independent expositions of the truths involved in the letters which had im-
"
mediately preceded them. To speak with De Wette of the '
verbose expansion
'
nameless forger have written in these few pages a better refutation of the essence
of Gnosticism, than Irenaeus in his five books against heresy, and Hippolytus
in his ten books of Philosophomena, and Tertullian in his Scorpiace combined ?
328 The Epistles.
love and
EPHEsiANs. divine Epistle, glowing with the flame of Christian
holy light, and flowing with fountains of
the splendour of
living water. Alford calls it "the most heavenly work of
—
thought now " the heavenlies," now now " spiritual,"
" riches," now " glory," now " mystery," now " plenitude,"
now " light," now " love," seem as it were to leave behind
the most sublime, the most profound, the most advanced and
final utterance of St. Paul's Gospel to the Gentiles. There
we deal no longer with a material advent, nor with argu-
ments about the nullity of ceremonialism, nor with personal
but we are
vindications, nor even with a system of theology :
the tone, the absence of the word " brethren," which in vi. 10, is wanting in
some of the best MSS., the twice repeated "if" in iii. 2 iv. 12 would be ; ;
due to the encyclical character of the letter. See Bleek, Mnl. § 168-170.
^ i. 18, Tre(ptijTi<Tfi4vovs robs 6<p6a?ifj.ohs rris Kap^ias v/j.uv.
^The word Pleroma is here used in a different sense from Col. i. 19, where
it means " the totality of the Divine attributes and agencies." There is
nothing strange in the supposition that St. Paul should use in two senses a
rare, undefined, and technical word which is not one of his own words, but is
bon-owed from the terminology of others.
3 St. Paul is so anxious in *V<Te first three chapters to raise the conception
of the Church into that of absolute unity of Gentiles with Jews in the
heavenlies, i.e. in the realm of the Ascended Lord —
that he not only uses such
words as "coheirs" {a-vyK^vp^fo/^y), and "built together" {avvoiKoSoji^'iaSe),
but adopts the late unclassical word "co-citizens" (avfaoTCiTai.), and invents
such strange terms as " con- corporate" (aivaujia), " comparticipant
{(rviJiii.4Toxa), "compaginated" (avvapiioKoyovii.ivn), "compacted" (iru/i^i^afcJ-
Christ bestowed. Let them then put away lying, and wrath,
and bitterness, dishonesty, 'and unclean speech, which are all sins
against our oneness in Christ.* And especially as children of
light let ttiem walk iu the light, and bring forth the fruits of ephbsians.
light,^ in goodness, righteousness, and truth, in the spirit of
an exhortation which is perhaps a fragment from some early
Christian hymn.
" Awake thee thou that sleepest,
And from the dead arise thou.
And Christ shall shine upon theo." ^
armour with which the worn and aged prisoner was so familiar.
The long coupling-chain (aXucri?) which bound his right
wrist to the left of a Roman legionary clanked continually as
it touched some part of the soldier's arms. Among the few
objects on which St. Paul could daily gaze were the baldric,
the military boot, the oblong shield, the cuirass, the helmet of
his Praetorian guardsmen. Doubtless the Apostle, in his
tender yet manly breadth of sympathy with his fellowmen in
all things human, often conversed with these soldiers. That
was how it came about that the Gospel was heard of through-
KPHBsiANs. out the Praetorian barracks. It was the beginning of the days
when there should be in the Eoman army a Thundering
Legion ; of the days when the host of Maxentius should be
flung into wild panic by the cross on the Labarum of
what blow made that hack in the sword, and how under the
walls of what besieged fortress their armour bad got those
marks of fire from the falaricae or malleoli the darts, which —
had been flung down upon them wrapped in flaming tow. And
with these images in his mind, drawn from the daily spectacle
of his prison, he tells his Christians since they too are soldiers,
not of Caesar but of Christ, in what panoply they may
resist ''
the world-rulers of this darkness," the spiritual
powers of wickedness in the beavenlies.^ He tells them of
the baldric of sincerity; the breast-plate of moral righteous-
ness the war-boots {caligae) of ready zeal in the cause of the
;
Satan " the prince of the power of the air." The expression " world-rulers"
(HoffiioKpiropes) is even transliterated in the Eabbis from the Greek. " The
spirituals " here means the band of demon-powers [Geisterschaft). St. Paul
was familiar with this conception from his Eabbinic studies. In the Talmud
Thacksiphid and Ibalgannith (Berachoth, f. 51, 1) are used for bodies of
Shedim or evil spirits.
Exhortations. S33
sword of the Spirit whicli is the Word of God.^ In this armour ephesians.
they were to stand fast. "Blessed," says David, "is the man
that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly ; nor standeth
^
in the way of sinners ; nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful."
St. Paul has told the Ephesians that they must sit with
Christ in the heavenlies ;
' that they must walk in love, walk
not as other Gentiles walk, walk as children of light, walk
accurately, walk not as unwise but as wise ;
* he tells them
now that clad in heavenly armour they are to stand fast in
the Lord, to stand against the wiles of the devil, and having
done all to stand.*
And then he ends with asking for their prayers —not
that he may be set free ; for his thoughts are never for
—
splendid and inviolable but an " ambassador in a coupling-
chain," an ambassador with fettered hands.® He sends no
personal messages because they will be carried by the beloved
and faithful Tychicus, but he ends with a blessing singularly
full and sweet, " Peace to the brethren, and love with faith
from God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be
with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorrupt
sincerity."
6. Such is a most imperfect sketch of this rich, many-sided
circular letter. Not a tenth part of its beauty and wealth of
truth is here indicated. Its fervour, intensity, and sublimity ;
BPHEsiANs. the manner which (as in the Colossians) chord after chord
in
of feeling is and all of them seem to vibrate in unison
struck,
before the ones first struck have trembled into silence all ;
—
this must be studied with close and repeated study before it
can be appreciated. In the depth of its theology, in the
loftiness of its morals, in the way in which the simplest
moral truths are based upon the profoundest religious doctrines
— the Epistle is unparalleled. In it you see Paul the
theologian and Paul the man at their greatest and their best.
He has risen as into some purer atmosphere far above all
controversies and all personalities. The mingled prayer and
paean of this magnificent Epistle is inspired throughout by a
sense of opposites, " of the union of weakness and strength
of tribulation and glory of all that had been and all that
;
NOTE I, EPHESIANS.
1. Greeting, i. 1, 2.
NOTE II.
1. " It has many new and rare expressions, such as the heavenlies (i.) ;
* St. Paul elsewhei-e uses " Satan," except in the Pastoral Epistles.
" It is also urged t];at he uses &(j>ecris for " remission " (Eph. i. 7 ; Col. i. 14),
not Trdpeffis, Rom. iii. 25 ; and uses Church in a more abstract sense. Minor
criticisms are hardly worth noticing.
336 The Epistles.
This quite baseless objection arises from overlooking the fact that in
1 Cor. vii. (with which Eph. v. 22-23, is supposed to conflict), St. Paul
is only speaking of marriage under one special aspect, and in answer to
definite questions, and with reference to special exigencies. Nor is there
anything strange even if on that subject his thoughts had widened and
deepened as they did in many other directions.
The Epistle Genuine. 337
7. The advanced Christology of the Epistle, and its developed con- ephesuk ,
ception of the Church are due to the rapid growth and enlightenment of
Christian thought in the most germinant period of the Church's life, and
amid the most marked outpouring of spiritual gifts. At supreme epochs
of human enlightenment, the writings of a few years seem to be sepa-
ratedby whole centuries of thought. St. Paul has already left far
behind him the now settled controversies of a few years earlier.
Even if the objections were as valid as they are in reality weak,
they could not counterbalance the positive proofs that the Epistle is
genuine. The external evidence in its favour is strong and ancient, and it
was received by the whole Church without question from the days of
Ignatius to those of Schleiermacher. In every essential particular it is
admittedly Pauline. It abounds in the most fundamental conceptions
of St. Paul —the relations of Christianity to Judaism ; the universality
of sin ; the prominence given to faith and love ; the freedom of grace ;
the moral necessity for good works the exaltation of Christ. No forger
;
could have developed the thoughts which St. Paul had already ex-
pressed in Colossians, with the intimate knowledge, and yet splendid
originality and independence which are seen in every clause of this
Epistle. There was not a single writer in the first three centuries, except
St. Paul, who
could have written this deepest, loftiest, and most final
utterance of his special Gospel. If any one but Paul wrote this letter
there must have been two Pauls. We may confidently assert that
no Christian of whom the Church has ever heard was capable of either
forging the style or expressing the deepest thoughts of St. Paul. " Non
est cujusvis hominis," says Erasmus, " Pauliuum pectus eflfingore.''
• NOTE III.
There has been no reversal of God's plans respecting the unity of Jews
and Gentries in the Church. All has been foreordained (irpoopta-as, i. 5 ;
i. 4
TTpo KaTafioXrjs K6irp.ov, irpoopKrOevres, i. 11 J vpoeBeTO, i. 9
; Trpoijroi'yu- ;
Z
338 The Epistles.
EPHESiANs. 5, 7, 8
ii. iii. 2, 7, 8 ; iv. 7, 32 ; vi. 24)
;
and may be regarded as the ;
" together." 2
(Spiritual) Wealth, i. 7, 18 ; ii. 4, 17 ; iii. 8, 16.
Light, v. 8-15.
Love. iv. 3-13.
NOTE IV.
16) and the Bride of Christ (v. 25-27). Indeed we might take as the
;
essence of the Epistle, the words which Paul addressed to the elders of
Ephesns at Miletum, " the Church of God, which He purchased with ephesians.
His own blood."
Pfleiderer calls the writer of the Epistle (which he does not regard as
genuine) "the first dogmatist of Catholicism." He points out that
whereas the Epistle to the Colossians is directed against a speculative,
"
ascetic, mystic Judaism, mixed with Oriental elements, the " Ephesians
is directed against the libertinism and exaggerated Paulinism of Gentile
NOTE V.
z 2
EPISTLE TO PHILEMON.
WBITTEN IN ST. PAUL'S FIRST IMPEISONMENT, ABOUT A.D. 63
* St Paul calls him his "child," and uses of him the word (nrXdyxva
Even the elder Cato, that model of Pagan virtue, had habitually
sold innocent and faithful slaves when they were too aged to
be of any further use to him. At that very period there had
been in Kome a recrudescence of the worst severities of
slavery. The multiplication of slaves, which had been pro-
gressing for nearly two centuries, had now become so over-
whelming that the slaves in the wealthiest houses were to be
counted not by hundreds, but by thousands. The natural
Nemesis of that vile institution 'had ensued. Everywhere
there was terror everywhere there was enervation, misery,
;
purple, and silk, and scarlet, and ivory, and incense, and
wine, and thyine wood, but also of slaves and souls of men
in the sight of the whole city that long line of slaves old —
and young, men and women and children had been led —
forth to die.^
' In tlie Miles Gloriosus (i. 4, 18) of Plautus, a slave touchingly exclaims,
" 1 know the cross will be my sepulchre all my ancestors are buried there."
;
346 The Epistles.
PHILEMON. At such a time there was not a slave in Rome who must
not have felt his slavery and galling than ever.
more bitter
Never had the chasm between slave and freeman seemed to
be more immense. When a slave was emancipated the
Praetor had but to turn him round and touch him with his
wand, and the most worthless stable-boy in Rome the non —
tressis agaso —
might assume his master's praenomen, and
spring into the full dignity of a man. But Onesimus was a
slave —
a slave of the lowest class, for he was a Phrygian ^
and, more than that, he was a dishonest Phrygian slave, a
pilferer and a fugitive. But in a happy hour Onesimus
came, or was brought, to St. Paul. He learnt that Christ
died for all, that God is no respecter of persons that in ;
— —
The good tidings good for all had for slaves a yet more
indescribable and infinite sweetness. Onesimus became a
man and a Christian. He was no longer Onesimus, the
worthless Phrygian fugitive, whose very name had become a
satiric contrast to his character, but Onesimus the brother
and literary ease among men of the highest rank and refine-
Paul and Pliny. 349
ment ; and he was celebrated for the polished style of his philbmon.
correspondence, which was specially written for publication.
Yet with all its noble carelessness of expression, the incidental
note of the poor despised Jewish tent-maker is more moving,
' Even Baur calls it a "short, attractive, friendly and graceful letter."
Paul. ii. 80.
850 The Epistles.
PHILEMON, that, even four centuries later, there were Christians who
thought very lightly of the Epistle to Philemon, and argued
that it was beneath the dignity of an Apostle to trouble him-
self about a runaway slave.'- But St. Paul had learnt from
the example of Him who was a friend of publicans and
sinners, not only that all men are of one blood, and that
the words, " Have I not taught you that these signs of respect
are not to be shown at the death of slaves and that nothing ;
may be said but what is said when oxen or asses die May :
'
^
children of God.' "
We know that Sabinianus at Pliny's request forgave his
' Mazzini, Works, vi. 99.
352 The Epistles.
NOTE I.
Verse 2. The true reading probably is " to Ajjphia the sister," not
" tbe beloved." Theodore of Mopsuestiahints that the epithet "beloved"
had given rise to coarse sneers in his age, and it may have been so far
the case at this period also as to make the title "sister" appropriate
(Comp. 1 Cor. ix. 5, " to lead about a Christian sister as a wife ").
Verse 5. This verse should be rendered "the faith which thou hast
towards the Lord Jesus (irpbs, Vulg. in Domine Jesu) and (manifested)
unto (cis) all the saints " (Vulg. in omnes sanctos). Comp. Col. i. 4 ; there
the phrase is varied.
Verse 7. The bowels of the saints. This literal translation has been
very wisely altered by the R.V. into " the hearts of the saints." This
Epistle is characterised by the repetition of this metaphoric terra
tr7rXd-y;;(i/a three times (verses 7, 12, 20). It is the Greek equivalent of
the Hebrew rechamim.
Verse 8. Not " though I might have much boldness ; " (as in the
A. v.), but "though I have" (^x"")-
Verse 12. " Thou therefore receive him." These words (trii Se
Trpoa-'S.a^ov) are probably spurious, and were only added to complete the
sense of St. Paul's careless, natural, epistolary anaholuthon. The verse
should really run, " I send back to thee in his own person, that is my
very heart." Compare the Latin term of endearment, "Corculum,"
" my little heart ; " and viscera, used of sons. Ol nalSes airXayxva Xeyovrat,
Artemid. Oneirocr. i. 44.
Verse 11. " Onesimus, who was aforetime to tliee unprofitable." There
is clearly a play on the name Onesimos, " Helpful," as also in verse 20,
" yea, brother, let me have help of thee." Baur acutely sur-
ovalitijv,
A A
354 The Epistles.
NOTE II.
Most men who kindle against them the intense hatred of enemies are
gifted with qualitieswhich win for them the warm love of friends.
St. Paul seems to have made some friends in nearly every city which he
visited.
Among them we may mention :
SLAVERY.
When Timotliy, still in his early boyhood,^ had once left 1 timothy.
his Lycaonian home, and been swept into the vortex of St.
Paul's fervid activity, he seems to have lived a life of toil and
travel as the almost inseparable companion of his beloved
master and father in Christ. Eunice, his mother —probably
his widowed mother —and his grandmother Lois, were faithful
Christian women well known to St. Paul. The boy had
" followed from the first St. Paul's teaching, conduct, purpose,
faith, long-suffering, patience," and had witnessed the bitter
and persecutions, which he had to endure at Antioch,
sufferings
at Iconium, at Lystra. It was during the second mission
journey that his mother made the brave sacrifice of her son
to the cause of Christ. St. Paul, in order to fit him for work
among Jewish synagogues, had performed the rite of circum-
cision,2 which the youth's Greek father had hitherto neglected
or opposed. By this act, which had a purely national and not
^ This appears from the fact that he is still addressed as a youth nearly six-
teen years later, in 1 Tim. iv. 12 ; 2 Tim. ii. 22. A critic sneeringly says
that " the Timotheus-legend endowed him with the gift of immortal youth " ;
but nothing is more natural than that St. Paul when old would stUl regard as a
youth one who was still young for his high duties, and whom he seems to have
loved from a child. The only known dates in the life of Timothy are those
in the life of St. Paul. They were together in the second mission journey, at
Philippi, Corinth, Ephesus and Rome.
» 2 Tim. iii, 10, 11.
A A 2
356 The Epistles.
order to receive the last instructions, and solace the last hours
of his friend. And thus, " as a son with a father he slaved
with him for the Gospel." ^ The effort was all the nobler
because, as we judge from various allusions, he was naturally
of a timid and shrinking temperament.^ This may havs
been partly due to weak health and frequent attacks of
' 1 Tim. vi. 12, "Thou didst make the fair confession hcfore many wit-
nesses." 1 Tim. iv. 14, "The charism which was given thee by means of
prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery." (2 Tim. i. 6,
"by the laying on of my hands.") 1 Tim. i. 18, "According to the prophe-
cies, whieh went before on thee." 2 Tim. i. 6,
" 'io
fan into flame (ava^amvpelv)
the charism of God which is in thee."
^ Phil. ii.22, ^^ovXevcr^v €is rh evayy^Ktov,
' So we infer from 1 Cor. iv. 17 xvi. 10, 11,
; and from the general tenor of
all St. Paul's personal exhortations to him in 1, 2 Tim.(1 Tim. iv. 14-16 vi. :
illness, -whicli in their turn may have been caused by months l timothy.
of hardship iu many lands and under many trials. But his
friend and teacher saw the depths of self-sacrifice and the
"The place from which the letter was written is entirely unknown. Tho
various idle guesses of the unauthorised superscriptions say, "from Lao-
;
dicea " "from Pacatiana the capital of Phrygia;" "from Nicopolis;"
"from Athens ;" and "from Macedonia."
358 The Epistles.
as follows :
' The connection of tliouglit has been Tariously, but not successfully
explained.
360 The Epistles.
far stronger than liis former saying that he is " less than the l timothy.
least of saints " ? Would he purposely, by way of mere
literary imitation, have lost the thread of his subject as in
ii. 3 —7 ? Would he have said anything which prima facie
appears bo contradict what St. Paul had said to the Corinthians
(1 Cor. vii.) about marriage, as in ii. 15 v. 14 ? Would
he have written as though he had meant to end the Epistle
at iii. 14 — 16, and then had begun again ? ^ Could he have
introduced so casually the personal directions to be pure, and
" not to continue drinking water," as in verses 22, 23 ?
1 TIMOTHY. i. 1. " God our Saviour and Christ Jesus our Hope.^
i. 5. " But the end of the charge ^ you are to give is love
out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith un-
feigned."
i. 15. "Faithful is the saying,^ and worthy of all accepta-
tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners
of whom I am chief."
ii. 3 — 6. "
and acceptable in the sight of
For this is fair *
God our Saviour who willeth that all men should be saved,
;
He who was ® :
''
Manifested in the flesh,
" Justified in the Spirit,''
1 attribution of the title " our Saviour " to God is one of the peculi-
The
arities ofthe Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim. iv. 10 ; Tit. i. 4 ii. 10, 13 ; iii. 4, 6). ;
The omission of the article with this word shows that it was beginning to be
regarded as an appellative. St. Paul perhaps adopts both these striking ex-
pressions from Ps. Ixii. 6, 7. " God our Saviour'" also occurs in Jude 25 2 ;
Here the word one may be emphatic (Col. ii. 15-18), and the word
^
the passage. The " Mystery of God" is Christ. Col. ii. 2. (On the hyni-
nio form see Eph. v. 19). The passage is closely analogous, line for line, with
1 Pet. iii. 18, 19, 22,
' See Rom. i. 4.
Phrases and Thoughts, 363
second, and third centuries, and yet fail to find such pearls of
great price as these ? Could an equal number of sayings of
the same value be collected in all the writing of Confucius ?
Tit. ii. 11). To these we must add such words as " other-
;
teaching " " myths " " boundless genealogies " " vain talk-
;
;
864! The Epistles.
;
1 TIMOTHY, ing " " profane emptinesses of speech," " profane anile
(ypaaiSei,<;) myths," and others which are used to describe
and denounce the false teachers. What is the exact meaning
of myths " and " genealogies " we cannot say, since we are
'
pressed very obscurely. " faith " and " love " which
As the
he speaks of must have an object no one could mistake St.
Paul to mean that motherhood in itself had any saving
power.
/3. iii. The curious expression, " a good degree" seems
13.
to mean no more than "a fair standing-point,'' " an honour-
able position." Comp. vi. 19.
7. iii. 15, " That thou mayest know how to behave in the
1 TIMOTHY, truth " (for such in any case must be the meaning of
eSpaiafia), the expression is one of the least Pauline, the most
difficult and the most modern in these Epistles. It is so
unlike anything which St. Paul anywhere says, that it would
certainly add to the strength of the suspicions which attach
to the genuineness of the Epistle. In that case this verse
might have led Schleiermacher (for the first time in many
centuries) to feel a hesitation on the subject far more natu-
rally than the word " to teach a different doctrine," ^ which
excited his doubts. It would, moreover, be an excessively
—
clumsy anti-climax amounting to positive confusion of
—
thought to speak of the Church first as the House of
God and then as a pillar and stay of the House. On the
other hand, all difficulties vanish if we refer the words to
Timothy, who is here bidden to bear himself as an upholder
and support of the truth. The parallel expressions in Gal. ii.
9, Eph. ii. 20, Rev. iii. 12 are in each case used with reference
holy angels " in his appeal to the Jews not to rebel.^ The
^ i. 3, €TepoSt5aiTKa\€7i'.
"
1 Cor. xi. 10 ; 1 Pet. i. 12. Comp. Tobit xii. 15.
f Jos. £. J. ii. 16.
Phrases and Thoughts. 867
word " elect " seems to be no more than a general epithet of l iimotht.
excellence.
The passage in iv. 4, " Every creature of God is good, and
nothing to be rejected, if it be received with thanksgiving,"
is interesting because, as Dr. Field has pointed out, it is
1 TIMOTHY.
NOTE I.
It has for centuries been the common belief of the Church that after
having pleaded his cause before Nero, or before those whom Nero left in
charge of Eome during his disgraceful expedition to Greece,^ St. Paul
was acquitted and set free. This must have taken place early in a.d. 64.
Had it been later, St. Paul must inevitably have perished in the fiery
horror of the Neronian prosecution.
The belief in his liberation at least accords with his own confident
and twice-expressed anticipation to the Philippians (i. 25, 27), and to
Philemon (verse 22). So strong were his reasons for expecting an
acquittal that he even requested Philemon to provide a lodging for him
on his expected visit to Colossae,
Of course this hope may have been disappointed but if St. Paul's;
trial was finished before the Fire of Rome, the deficiency of evidence
against him, or the testimony of Festus, Agrippa, Lysias, and the cen-
turion Julius, may have secured the recognition of his innocence.
Further, he may have been aided by the very favourable impression
which he had made on the soldiers of the Praetorian guard, or by some
of the humble converts in the households of Caesar and Narcissus if —
the latter be the famous freedman of Claudius.^ We might even con-
jecture that the case against him practically collapsed, if any of tlie
witnesses or documents were on their way to Rome in that vessel in
which about this time Josephus sailed to secure the release of certain
Jewish priests. The prosecution of St. Patil may have been a subordinate
object of that expedition. But the vessel foundered at sea, and out of
200 souls, eighty alone — of whom Josephus was one —were rescued,
afterhaving floated or swum all night in the waves.^
While, however, there is great probability in the belief that St. Paul
was liberated, and that he enjoyed two years of missionary freedom
before his arrest at Troas and his second imprisonment at Rome, the
external historic evidence in favour of these events is unhappUy weak.
» Jos. nt. 3.
St. Pauls Liberation. 369
St. Lulce, who 'ould so well have informed us, suddenly drops the i timotht.
curtain upon St Paul with the one emphatic word unmolestedly {aKto-
XuVwr), when he
describes the comparative lenity of the early part of
imprisonment. Perhaps the prisoner's sufferings were aggra-
St. Paul's
vated when the upright and honourable Burrhus had been superseded
in the Praefeotorship of the Praetorian guard by the villainous
Tigellinus.
The only other evidence we have is
(1) A
vague and rhetorical passage of Clement of Rome in the first
century (Ep. 1, ad Cor. 5), in which the liberation is perhaps implied,
but which is too general and uncertain to have much weight.
(2) A phrase in the fragment of the Muratorian Canon (about a.d.
170), which perhaps implies his voyage to Spain, but in which the text
is corrupt and the meaning uncertain.
and Gospel of St. John. In the latter instance the difference can be
accounted for, and in the former it may perhaps be explained. But no
one can read the Pastoral Epistles without admitting that if the style be
an imitation it is an imitation transcendently skilful, and without sus-
' Such as "piety" (fuo-e'/Sem, fv(r€$as, euo-efleii'). The word may (as Pflei-
derer suggests) have been taken as the fundamental idea of the Christian life,
as the word "faith" became gradually appropriated to express a body of
doctrines.
" Soundness" {iji^s, vyiaivdv) 1 Tim. i. 10 vi. 3 2 Tim. i. 13 Tit. i. 9,
; ; ;
as the new phra.ses, irapaireXadai, irpoffix^'-^ nvL, may have been picked up from
intercourse with St. Luke.
Master (ieair6Ti)s), 2 Tim. ii. 21, for Kvpiot, Lord. As kuoios became more
and more a proper name, SecTTrtfTTjj was wanted.
" To deny " {apmo-Bai), 1 Tim. v. 8 ii. 12, 13, &o., in the sense of renouncing
;
truth.
For other expressions see the Note to the Epistle of Titus.
Technical terms, due to special subjects, fall under a different head.
Genuineness. 371
3. But the theology of these Epistles differs from, that of Paul. 1 timothy.
This assertion is not true. It is absurd to stigmatise tlie dominantly
practical tendency of these Epistles as " utilitarianism and religious eu-
daemonism," when good works, though profitless to deserve salvation,
are insisted on as a moral necessity in every one of St. Paul's Epistles.
To say that a difference of theology is involved in the new use of
"Saviour" as applied to God ; in the greater objectivity of the word
" faith ; " and in the phrase " the sound doctrine," is to ignore the simple
fact that the circumstances of the Church progressed with great rapidity
during its earliest days, and that even in St. Paul's day, and through his
powerful influence, the struggle between Paulinism and Jewish Christi-
anity gave way to the deadlier struggle between heresy and tho
Church.
4. But these Epistles hetray the existence of an ecclesiastical organisa-
tion more developed than that which existed in the days of St. Paul.
So far as this is at all true it is exactly what we should expect. Every
year that a Church existed there would be a more pressing necessity for
Church government and order. On the other hand the simplicity of the
organisation alluded to in these Epistles, the fact that there is no trace
of predominant episcopal authority, and that the names " bishop " and
"presbyter" are etOl synonymous (1 Tim. iii. 1-19 ; Tit. i. 5-7), furnish
the strongest proof that these letters could not possibly have been written
in the second century. The "crushing de-spotism" of an irresponsible
Episcopate had not yet begun. The directions given to the presbyter-
bishop are ethical, not hierarchic.^
5. The Einstles are aimed at phases of gnosticism which did not exist
The proof that this is the case wholly fails. It is founded on the
flimsiest inferencesfrom such words as " aeons," " gnosis," " antitheses,"
which were borrowed by gnosticism from Scripture. The germs of
—
gnosticism the systems and ideas prevalent in that vague form of
—
heretical teaching have existed in many ages, and countries, and
religions, and philosophies. They were familiar to the Essenes, to the
Greek philosophers, to Oriental mystics, to Alexandrian theosophists, to
Simon Magus, to Cerinthus, and many others. We find traces of them in
the Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, PhUippians, and even in those
to the Corinthians, as well as in the letters of St. Peter, St. Jude, and
St. John. This argument, like the last, rather tells the other way. If
these Epistles had been second-century forgeries, they would not have
dealt so vaguely with such definite errors as those of Valentinus,
Carpocrates, &c.
The Gnostics as a body were, in the second century, intensely anti-
'
widows " of 1 Tim. v. 11-1
1 The argument founded on the fancy that ' the
meant, as in later times (Ignat. y4d Smyrn. 13), a sort of cehbate order of
vu-ains is contradicted by the plainest facts.
B B 2
372 The Epistles.
1 TIMOTHY. Judaic. The incipient Gnostics of these Epistles are, on the contrary,
Judaisers, who have affinities alike with the Kabalists, the Pharisees,
and the Essenes.' Lipsius ^ sees in the false teachers of these Epistles " a
development of the same Essene Jewish Christianity as that of the false
teachers of the Colossians." In theory they were ascetic (i. Tim. iv. 3, 8)
and duaHstic (1 Tim. iv. 4 Tit. i. 15, 16 2 Tim. ii. 18) in character
; ; ;
was needless for St. Paul to dismiss their views. He is not writing to
them, hut to his apostolic delegates Timotheus and Titns, who were
perfectly well acquainted with all his views. To the heretical doctrines
of opponents he has only to oppose the sound doctrine of the Church of
God, and to their moral aberrations the rules of practical piety.
The Epistles stand or fall together. Even the most "advanced" and
hostile critics are prepared to admit the genuineness of the Second
Epistle to Timothy.' But if that be genuine, St. Paul must have been
liberated before the Neronian persecution, and the case in favour of the
two other Epistles is greatly strengthened. The power, beanty, and
value of the Epistles is their best attestation. Dr. "Wace says truly that
" the sacred writings are throughout characterised by a wonderful com-
bination of the loftiest faith in the mysteries of godliness with profound
practical wisdom ; and it is a combination of which no instance can be
shown in those apocryphal and forged productions among which it has
been attempted to range these Epistles."
• "Jewish myths," Tit. i. 14. " Teachers of the law," 1 Tim. i. 7. " Sti'ifea
about the law," Tit. iii. 9 ; 1 Tim. i. 8.
^ Ber GnosticisTmis (in Ersch. u. Gniber)
' The extreme frivolity of some of the arguments urged against these
Epistles is illustrated (1) by Baur's suggestion on 1 Tim. ii. 2 that "kings" (a
common term in the provinces for local dynasts and even for the Roman
Emperor) refers to the times of the Antonines, when emperors took associates
into the empire and (2) by Plleiderer's remark on the same verse (Frotestanten
I
" Speak thou tlie things which become the healthy teaching." Tit. ii. 1.
his old route to Corinth, and from thence it would have been
an easy sail to the great island. Christianity had already
been established under the shadow of the ancient Ida, in aU
probability by some of the Jews who had been converted on
the day of Pentecost.'- But the Church needed organization,
and for this reason St. Paul left Titus to superintend the
infant communities, and " to ordaiu elders in every city."
During the last year of his missionary activity we only catch
an occasional glimpse of him. We see him still burdened
with the care of the Churches.
all We still find him
surrounded by a band of devoted friends, whose presence
little
' It seems idle to suppose that St. Paul could have founded any Churches
during the days of storm which he passed as a prisoner on board the Alexan-
dnan vessel at Lasaea and Fair Havens.
Rom. XV. ]9 Tit. iii. 12.
•=
;
Titus. 375
^ There reason to think that he had been converted by St. Paul, who calls
is
him "his genuine child in the faith" (Tit. i. i). There is an apocryphal
biography of Titus in Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. ii.
^ As this is not the usual opinion, and as it cannot here be argued out, the
author must refer to the full discussion of the question in his Life of St. Paul,
i. 407-420.
^ 2 Cor. vii. viii.
••
2 Tim. iv. 10.
376 The Epistles.
iii. Judaic Christianity did not at once lose all the elements
9, ii-Ax"'^ vofiixis.
of Judaism, and the Judaism of that day, no less than of the days of the
Talmud, abounded in discussions (CvT'fia-eis) both foolish {/ia>pal), empty in their
own nature (Kei'ctf), and void of ail results (jiaraiol), as well as in discords
{ipeis, fiaxa') and "genealogies."
Peculiarities. 877
great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ ") certainly seems
in accordance with the analogy of other passages.^
/3. Another dominant conception is soundness in doctrine.
2 2 Tit. i. 13 ; ii. 2.
' The word au(p(ioaivtt (which in one form or another occurs ten times in these
Epistles) is a very beautiful one. It is derived from aai^eiv and <ppiiv and
represents the many-sided excellence of practical conduct and character which
is represented by the Latin frugi. Elsewhere in St. Paul it is only found in
llom. xii. 3 2 Cor. v. 13 ; and (in a speech) Acts xxvi. 25.
;
Peculiarities. 37 D
" But when the kindness of God our Saviour, and His love
reculiarities. 381
"The Cretans are always liars, evil wild beasts, lazy gluttons,"
which is quoted (i. 12) from the poem "On Oracles" by
the Cretan poet Epimenides, whom St. Paul calls " a prophet
of their own.'' St. Paul adds that the witness is true. Of
course his words are not meant to be taken au pied de la
lettre, as though the Cretans were indiscriminately wicked.
No more meant than that Titus has to deal with a popula-
is
Artemas or Tychicus and the title " the lawyer," which Titus would under,
;
stand, but which may mean either Eomaii jurist or Jewish scribe.
^ Kp^Tey, Ka7r7ra5o/c€s, KiA.(/c€s, Tpia Kiiinra KaKiffra.
382 The Epistles.
our people also learn to maintain good works " (or, possibly,
" to profess honest occupations ") " for necessary uses " (or
" wants ") What is meant by " our people also " {jcal oi
^/j,eT€poi)'? It cannot possibly mean "other Cretan Christians
as well as you and me." Such a meaning would be incon-
ceivably vapid, and would not have been so expressed.
Does it then mean that Zenas and ApoUos belonged to some
assembly or gathering of Christians other than those over
which Titus was to preside? It is a question of great
interest, for the answering of which we possess no data. But
its very obscurity —
which could not have been obscure to
—
the recipient of the letter is one of the many marks of an
authentic document.
• Liv. xliv. 45 ; Plut. Paul. JlSmil. 23 ; Polyb. vi. 46. See Clem. Alex.
Strom, i. 14 ; Jer. ad loc.
Heresy. 383
1 In St. Paul the word atpeais only occurs in 1 Cor. xi. 19 Gal. v. 20.
—
;
Elsewhere only in the Acts six times viz. once of the Sadduceea, once of the
Pharisees, and four times as applied by the Jews to Clu'istians.
THE SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY.
WRITTEN SHORTLY BEFORE ST. PAUL'S MARTYRDOM AT ROME,
A.D. 67.
"Non tanquam atramento scripta, sed ipsius Pauli sanguine aocipere con-
Tenit. Proinde haeo Epistola quasi solennis quaedam est subscriptio Paulinae
doctrinae eaque ex re praesenti. " Calvin.
" The clolce that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with
thee, and the books, but especially the parchments." —2 Tim. iv. 13.
•z TIMOTHY. Many have regarded this verse as one of the least im-
portant in the whole Bible. Many have been perplexed by
its appearing there at all. They
unworthy of consider it
it as exactly what it is —
no cryptograph, no oracular utter-
—
ance but just a simple message of one Christian brother to
another, which acquires its pathos and its wholesomeness
neither from impossible supernaturalism, nor Gnostic alle-
gorising, but from the circumstances, and from the man.
1. The man we know. We know him doubly, from the
picture of a friend in the Acts of the Apostles, and from his
own thirteen letters. It is that " man of the third heaven,"
—the worn, bent, scourged, exiled, shattered missionary, who,
persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed,
c c
386 The Ejnstles.
2 TIMOTHY, flung wide open to the Gentiles the gates of the Christia;
Church, and showed to all men that in Christ Jesus circum
cision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but a ne\
creature.
2. And we know the circumstances. When the curtail
falls upon him in the Acts of the Apostles, we see him a
Rome during his first imprisonment, in custody indeed, hu
in immediate expectation of his acquittal and deliverance
That acquittal came, and it came not one hour too soon
A few months after his release there burst forth at Romi
that frightful conflagration, which raged for six days, anc
laid a vast region of the city in ashes. It was darkb
rumoured that the guilt of that conflagration rested on the
—
head of the Emperor himself of Nero, the imperial monster
who at that time disgraced, not only the name of Roman
but the name of man. Just as the great fire of London wai
falsely attributed to the Papists, even in the inscription oi
the Monument
"Where London's column, pointing to the skies,
Like some tall bully, lifts its head, and lies
—
80, in order to avert the suspicion from himself, Nero laic
helped to free the world from such horrors —he who dispelled, 2 timothy.
this time almost exclusively Judaists who had but little sympathy with h
views ? Or had they been almost exterminated by the martyrdom of that " inga
muUitudo " in the Neronian persecution ? Or had they not as yet acquirf
that sympathy with martyrs, confessors, and prisoners which was so remarl
able in later days, and which Lucian mentions with admiration in his accoui
of the worthless impostor Peregrinus, who at one time professed to be a Chri
—
tian ? Lucian, De Morte Peregr. 13.
^ " They who hurt me most," said Luther, " are my own dear children ^n —
brethren—/j-ateTCMH mei, aurei amiculi mei."
The Trial. 389
the trouble to find the aged prisoner, and often refreshed his 2 timothy.
them " He felt that it was God alone who had enabled him
!
ipriffi Bict rh BripmSss, Chrys. When the jailer announced to Agrippa the death
of Tiberius, he did so in the words, " The lion is dead " (Jos. Antt. xviii. 6,
§ 10); and Esther (Apocr. Esth. xiv. 3) in entering before Xerzesgoes "before
the lion." For " the mouth of the lion " see Amos iii. 12, " Save me from
the lion's mouth " (Esther, in Megillah, t. 15, 2).
390 The Epistles.
year, the pangs of hunger, and thirst, and cold, and nakedness
Doubtless the cloke was an old companion. It may hav(
been wetted many a time with the water-torrents of Pam
phylia,^ and whitened with the dust of the long roads,* an(
stained with the brine of shipwreck, when, on the rocky cliffs o
Malta, Euraquilo was driving the Adrian into foam.^ He ma;
have slept in its warm shelter on the chill Phrygian uplands
under the canopy of stars and it may have covered hi
;
pity he himself) an
calls ambassador in a chain —
" " sit
^ The notion that it was a book case (yXa(r<x6Koii.ov) is given up. It may b
a transliteration of poenula (Syi-iao f vS).
_" That St. Paul often had to struggle with poverty, and sometimes eve
with positive want and hunger, appears from many passages of the Epistles
Whether he had any private means is an interesting question which we cannc
solve. It appears from his ability to hire a room of his own at Eome (Act
xxviii. 30), and to be responsible for the debt of Onesimus (Philem. 19), tha
some small resources were at his disposal. The expression, " I was mulcted (
all " {e^Tifiuieriv T^ TrdvTa), in PhU. iii. 8, might imply a sudden loss of what h
once had possessed. His other means of livelihood may have been derived i
part from his relatives at Tarsus and Jerusalem (Acts xxiii. 16), from his Maw
donian converts (Phil. iv. 15), and especially from liis own exertions at th
trade of tentmaking, which, in Thessalonica at any rate, earned sufficient nc
only for his own maintenance but even for that of his comrades also (2 Thesi
8). Obviously the trade would not be equally flourishing at all places, an
in prison St. Paul would not be able to work at all.
' KivSivoLs iroTajxav, 2 Cor. xi. 26.
* SSoLTToptais
iroATiois, 2 Cor. xi. 26.
' KiMi^oLs if eaAaa-crri, 2 Cor, xi. 26. rpls havayriaa, id. 25. Sve/iu
rvrfxuviKhs 6 ica\oi/ievos EiipaKvAmv, Acts xxvii. 14.
The Books and Parchments. 391
are —
coming on he bethinks him of the old cloke, and asks 2 timothy.
—
Timothy to bring it him, the cloke in which in former days
" Yes -without cheer of sister or of daughter,
!
'If these he fancies, they are at least fancies founded on real indications.
St. Paul quotes from the Cilician poet Aratus in Acts xvii. 28. It is certain
from many passages that he was not nnfamiliar with the conceptions of Philo.
There are several passages in his Epistles which resemhle the Wisdom of
Solomon. St. Paul was so completely a student that Festus thought his
studies were driving him mad (Acts xxvi. 24, to troWa as ypdft.ij.aTa eis liaviav
TrepiTpiirei),
392 The Epistles.
the touching letter written from his prison in the damp cell
only for our good. There is not the least reason it is not —
—
even right to create tortures and miseries for ourselves
2 TIMOTHY. wMch He has not sent us. We are allowed to take, we ought
to take, every harmless and innocent gift which He permits
to us, and to thank Him for it. Let us never think that our
sorrows as such, 0( our hardships as such, are pleasing to
God. "The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when
thou comest, bring with thee ; and the books, but especially
the parchments."
iii. Then look at the matter in one more light. What is
done.
"Where are the great, whom thou couldst wish to praise thee 1
Where are the pure, whom thou couldst choose to love thee ?
Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee,
Whose high commands would cheer, whose chidings raise thee ?
and his palace, his title and his estate. But the thinker who 2 timothy.
has raised the aim of nations may die imnoticed, and the poet
who has enriched the blood of the world be left to starve.
Just " the cloke that I left at Troas, and the books, and the
parchments." Do we think that he sighed when he con-
trasted his sole possessions —that cloke and books —with the
jewels of Agrippa, or the purple of the vile Nero, or even
with the gains of any buffoon or parasite in a rich man's
house ? Such rewards he had never sought. He sat loose
to earthly interests. He knew that on earth the cross is
2 TIMOTHY, standing sure, with a seal on it, and on tlie seal these two
the other, " Let every one that nameth the name of Christ
depart from iniquity." It was because he could say with all
•his heart, " Faithful is the saying " —the saying which perhaps
he quotes in all its rhythmic beauty from some ancient
Christian hymn
"If we died with, we shall also live with Him ;
' ii. 7-13. The words are certainly rhythmical, perhaps liturgical.
Outline of the Epistle. 897
^ TIMOTHY,
NOTE I
Thanisgiving (3-5).
2.
3. Exhortation to steadfastness in tte Gospel (6-14).
Come ! (SttovSuo-ov !)
:
God has not given us the spirit of cowardice (SetXms). He knew the
unfeigned faith of Lois and Eunice, "but" he is persuaded (7r/7reio-/iai Se)
that it is in Timothy also (i. 4). Timothy is " not to be ashamed of
Paul and the Gospel" he is to endure hardship (KaKtyirddrja-ov, i. 8, iv.
;
ii. 26. Lit. " That they may become sober from the snare of the devil,
after having been talcen captive by him (iV avrov), to do ifls) His (God's)
will {to (Keivov 6eXr}p,a),"
iii. 4. " Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." The Pytha-
gorean Demophilus said that no man could be at the same time a
^iKTjSovos and a (piXodeoc.
iii. 8. "Jannes and Jambres." Names derived from the Jewish
Haggada.
iii. 15. " Thou knowest from infancy {dm ffpecjiovs) the sacred
writings.''
THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES.
The Epistles of St. Peter, St. John, St. James and St. Jude are called
" Catholic Epistles." They seem to have acquired this name in the second
century. Clement of Alexandria speaks of the Synodical letter of the Church
of Jerusalem (Acts xv.) as "a Catholic Epistle," Properly only three of the
seven letters are " Catholic " in the proper sense, i.e. General or Encyclical.
The use of the word to mean "Canonical," and its rendering by "Canoni-
cal " in the "Westera Chm-ch seem to arise from mistake.
THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES.
WRITTEN FROM JERUSALEM ABOUT A.D. 61 OR 62.
" A document like the Epistle of James shows completely how the full con-
sciousness of possessing God's love and forgiveness subordinated to itself all
reflection upon the means by which they were obtained." Weiss, Life of
.' Christ, i. 4.
"James put this Epistle into the hands of the Jewish Christians that it
might influence all Jews, as it was a missionary instruction to the converted
for the unconverted and the truly converted for the half converted." Lange.
" Thj' works and alms and all thy good endeavour
Staid not behind nor in the grave were trod
But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod
Followed thee up to joy and blias for ever." Milton.
ST. JAMES. were mainly occupied with the future of the kingdom of
God.
The acknowledged head Jewish Christians was
of the
James, the first recognised presbyter-bishop of the Church of
Jerusalem, whom, without any controversy on the subject,
we may here call by the name under which he was known to
the Apostles and to the Church of the first century, " James
—
the Lord's brother."
During the lifetime of Jesus, " His brethren did not
believe on Him." Immediately after the Ascension they
appear in close union with the Apostles as faithful Christians.
The change was wrought by the Resurrection. We find the
clue to that change in the passing reference of St. Paul
" then He was seen of James." ^ Seven or eight years later
James is incidentally mentioned among those whom St. Paul
saw when, after his return from Damascus, he spent fourteen
days in Jerusalem.^ Six years more elapse and we find that
in the year A.D. 44, when James the son of Zebedee had
been martyred by Herod Agrippa the First and Peter had
been thrown into prison, Peter on his escape sends a
special message to James
—
"Tell James," he says, "and the
^
brethren."
That expression shows that on the death of James the son
of Zebedee, James the Lord's brother became the recognised
ruler of the Church of Jerusalem.
An old and probable tradition says that the Apostles had
been bidden by the Risen Christ to make Jerusalem their
head-quarters for twelve years, and then to preach the
Gospel far and wide to all nations.* When the Apostles had
thus separated in fulfilment of their high mission, it was
natural that the stationary superintendence of the Christians
at Jerusalem should be intrusted to James. His force of
character, his near kinsmanship to Christ after the flesh,
^ Acts xxi. 20, &<epe7s, iS^Ai^c, ircJcroi fivpidSes elalv 'lovdaiav ruv irenuTTeu-
Kirav.
D D 2
404 The Catholic Epistles.
there was but one chance left for the Jewish race. It was st. james.
that they should learn to see in Christianity the true theo-
cratic inheritance. This St. Peter had tried to teach them.
It was that they should turn from the shadow to the sub-
stance, from the transient to the permanent, from the Aaronic
to the Eternal Priesthood. This the author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews had It was that instead
tried to teach them.
of trusting to a dead profession and an external conformity
they should learn to obey from the heart the royal and
perfect law of liberty. This was the lesson which is here
enforced upon them by St. James.
His faithfulness precipitated his death. In all other
respects the Jews loved and reverenced him, but they did
not forgive his emphatic testimony to the Messiahship of
Jesus, or his bold rebuke of their refusal to look on Him
whom they had pierced. It was this, if we may trust the
testimony of Hegesippus, which led to the murder of the
unresisting Just One. His Epistle was written almost cer-
tainly from Jerusalem.^ It reads like the pastoral of some ideal
" Prince of the Captivity " to all the faithful. It was the
last appeal addressed to the Jews in the tones of ancient
prophecy by one whom early legend described as " a Christian
High Priest wearing the golden mitre." It was a missive
like that which was despatched from time to time to the
Jews of the Dispersion by the great Hierarch of the Temple.
We will first consider the message and outline of this
memorable Epistle, and then try to account for its many
peculiarities.
It is addressed to the " twelve tribes that are in the Disper-
sion" — in other words to Jews scattered throughout the world.
There can, however, be no question that by the twelve tribes
are meant primarily not Jews but Christians, for St. James
begins by calling himself " a slave of God and of the Lord
• This view is favoured both by what we know of St. James's history and by
allthe local allusions to o^l, wine, figs (iii. 12), the Kaus6n, or Sirocco (i. 11),
the earlier and latter rain (v. 7) &o. St. James was doubtless familiar with
Joppa also (i. 6 ; iii. 4 iv. 13).
;
406 The Gatliolic Epistles.
ST. JAMES. ii. The next deals with the power of prayer and Christian
intercourse, especially in sickness (v. 13-18).
iii. The third abruptly terminates the Epistle with a
solemn declaration of the blessedness of converting others,
" With a glorious doctrine," says Zwingli, " as with a colophon,
about the rich and the poor and their mutual relations to
each other ; about prayer ; about perfection.
3. It is marked by abruptness.
It plunges in medias res
from point to point with no connecting sentences. It begins
with no thanksgiving, it ends with no benediction. Clause is
attached to clause, something in the manner of St. John by
what is called duadiplosis, — by the repetition of a previous
i.e.,
word.'- The writer will not throw away any superfluous words ;
so on, throughout.
Ebionism. 409
he does not care for preambles or formulae. His stern, st. james.
unbending character is reflected in his manner of address.
4. It contains, as do the writings of St. Luke, an element of
and " mercy " which were the special duty of Essenes, together with his
lessons about riches, and the virtue of silence, and the duty of checking
wrath (Jas. i. 19 ii. 5-13 iv. 13 v. 12. Comp. Joseph. £. J. ii. 8 § 6.
; ; ;
Philo, Quod omnis probus liber, § 12). But any Christian who had studied
the Sei-mon on the Mount might have written on these subjects.
410 The Catholic Epistles.
close student of what the Jews called the clwkmah the litera- —
ture about " Wisdom." ^ Most of the early Christian writers
show traces of the effects produced in their minds by the words
of others but St. James is no mere plastic borrower, like
;
on the Mount —
in opposition to the Judaic legalism which left st. james
room for Antinomian license and prating sloth. What he had
to counteract was the barren predominance of a subjective
dogmatism which was dissevered from practical activity. What
he had to obviate was the dangerous falling asunder of
knowledge and action.
Nor must it, on the other hand, be overlooked that, besides
the preciousness of this Epistle as a protest on behalf of the
necessity for what is idly called " mere morality," it is (a) more
full than any other of thoughts drawn from the discourses
of Christ ;
^has one passage of deep and comprehensive
(/3) it
theology 18)
(i. and (7) it contains a sketch of heavenly
;
his words
admire the noble independence of a spirit which was free an
bold because it was living and because it felt the Spirit of Go
as a fresh power. But his condemnation of the Epistle roj
conciled if St. James and St. Paul meant the same things b
"Faith," "Justification," and "Works." But if it is df
liberty.
By "justification" St. Paul meant the righteousness (
It is not even certain tliat St. James intended in any way bt. james.
NOTE 11.
Deut. xxviii. 25. St. Paul uses the phrase " our twelve-tribed nation "
(to ScoSeKdcj>vkov, Acts xxvi. 7). The fiction that the lost Ten Tribes
still existed as a body first occurs in 2 Esdr. siii. 39-47. Evten the
Talmud recognises their complete dispersion (Sanhedrin, f. 110. 2). But
many individual Jews kept their separate tribal genealogies.
i. 1. "Greeting" (xaipsLv), "giving them joy." This was the Greek
method of address, and elsewhere occurs only in Gentile letters (Acts
xxiii. 26 ; 2 Mace. ix. 9). The Hebrew greeting was Shaldm, " Peace !
It is singular that St. James, both here and in Acts xv. 23, uses only
Xaipeiv, but the LXX. render Shalom by xalpeiv in Is. xlviii. 22 ;
Ivii. 21.
i. 3. " The testing (to SoKifuoii) of your faith." The phrase is adopted
by St. Peter (i. 7).
ST. JAMES. i. 13. " Untempled of evil." " God is always in the meridian." He is
the lights of heaven have their parallaxes, yet for God He is subject to
none of them." Bishop Andrews.
i. 26, 27. "Religious, religion" (Bprja-Kos, 6pt]a-Kela). The words refer to
external and ritual service. This is the old sense of the word "religion,"
as in Milton's
V. 9. " Murmur not against one another." Lit. Oroan not (firj trreva^eri).
" Grudge " (A.V.) once meant "murmur.'' (See Prayer-Book version of
Ps. lix. 15.)
Notes. 417
SPECIAL PASSAGES.
NOTE IV.
turns of the Greek, and from the absence of all trace or tradition of an
Aramaic original, that we possess the Epistle in its earliest forni. If
E E
418 The Catholic Epistles.
ST. JAMES, there be any difficulty in the supposition that a Galilean peasant coul'
have expressed himself in a Greek vocabulary so forcible, varied, an
easUy conceivable that he, like St. Peter,' may have availei
poetical, it is
himself of the services of an interpreter. Prof. Wordsworth has, indeec
suggested that there may have been an Aramaic original, because th
supposition might account for some of the strange variations of th
Corbey Latin MS. of St. James (Codex fP) recently edited by Mi
Belsheim at Christiania.^ This Latin text, which is entirely differen
from the Vulgate, furnishes a new testimony to the recognition of th
Epistle iu the Western Church (though it did not obtain early reoogni
tion, Jer. De Virr. ill. 2, and is not quoted by Tertidlian or Cyprian)
The divergences of this Latin text exceed the ordinary limits of varia
tion. Prof. Wordsworth refers to certain peculiarities of tenses, and con
junctions, and certain Hebrew turns ; to the rendering of SeXea^oixevos
(i. 14), by eliditur (as though from nddach) of liiarla (v. 2), by res (ai
;
though from Kelini ; of iii. 6, by " et lingua ignis saeculi iniquitatis," foi
which he accounts by the fact that &A " fire " does not change its fom
in the construct state of ixfj KaraKavxaa-Be by quid alapamini as thougl
;
the Greek and Latin Churches tUl placed in the Canon by the Council
of Carthage, a.d. 397. On the other hand_its apparent contradiction ol
St. Paul, and apparent silence as to the essential docti'ines of Christi-
its
anity, together with its close resemblance to what we should have ex-
pected from the writer and his surroundings, are strong evidences in its
favour. Dogmatic prejudices which might have been an obstacle to its
acceptance were overpowered by the proof of its Apostolic origin. The
fact that it was (probably) known to St. Peter^ more than outweighs
any other deficiency of external testimony.
' St. Peter is said to have used the services both of St. Mark and of a
certain Glaucias.
" A paper in the Guardian signed J. W., Jan.
9, 1884.
^ See 1 Pet. i. 6-7, 24 iv. 8 ; v. 5-9 as compared with James i. 2-4,
; ;
10 ; V. 20 ; iv. 6, 7, 10.
THE FIEST EPISTLE OF PETEE.
WRITTEN ABOUT A.D. 67.
" Habet
—Gkotius.haec
epistola rb ffipoSphv conveniens ingenio prinoipis apostolonim."
"When once thou hast turned again, stablish thy brethren." Luke xxii.
32.
of Peter," &o.
E E 2
420 The Catholic Ejnstles.
1 PETER, him, " Thou art Petoos, and on this rock {petra) will I build
my Church " and He calls Christ " a rock," and the corner-
;
''
Matt. V. 25 ; Luke xviii. 3 ; 1 Pet. v. 8.
* 1 Pet. ii. 20, Ko\a!lii(6fi.€i/oi ; 23, ovk a.VT€AoiS6pei
24, ficiXmin. ;
analogy between St. Peter's speeches in the Acts and this Epistle see Acts iv.
11 ii. 32-36 ; iii.
; 19-26 ; (The rejected cornerstone, "witness," Prophecy,
the Resurrection, &c.).
1° 1 Pet. ii. 25, v. 2. To these we may add 1 Pet. i. 13 ; ivaCaxrifievoi
(Luke xii. 35) i. 12
; iraiiaKiif/ai (Luke xxiv. 12),
; ii. 15; (pt/ioCv (Luke iv. 35)
<rK((\ios, ii. 15 (Acts ii. 40).
St. Peter. 421
the views of both. The day had been when, in the " con-
sistent inconsistency " which rose from his natural impulsive-
ness, he had been too anxious to stand well both with Judaists
and Gentiles ; but long before he wrote this letter he had
seen that the unsystematic but practical synthesis of com-
plementary truths lay in Christian holiness and Christian
love. It is clear from his letter —and it is a fact of the
deepest interest —that
he had read and was even familiar
with St. Paul's Epistles to the Eomans and Ephesians, which
he would have been sure to see during his stay in Rome.^ It
^ Compare i. Pet. i. 5, "who are being guided by the power of God through
faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time," with Gal. iii. 23
{iriffTiv , . . i(f>povpoifj.e9a . . . inrfTKaKv^drivat),
1 Pet. with Eom.
ii. 6, 7, ix. 23, where two quotations from Isaiah ai'e
similarly combined.
1 Pet. ii. 11, with Rom. vii. 23 (the same metaphor of warring passions).
,, ii. 13, 14, ,, „ xiii. 1-4 (the same main verbs and nounsV
„ iii. 9, ,, ,, xii. 17.
„ iii. 18, „ ,, vi. 9, 10.
„ iii- 21, ,, „ vi. 4.
,, iv. 10, 11, „ „ xii. 6, 7.
>, V. 1, ,, ,, viii. 18.
Also compare 1 Pet. i. 1, 3, U, with Eph. i. 3-8 ; 1 Pet. ii. 18, with Eph,
vi. 5 ; 1 Pet. and v. 5, with Eph. v. 22, i. 20, v. 21.
iii. 1, 2,
All these references are by way of reminiscence, not direct quotation.
Comprehensiveness. 423
' This is quite in accordance with his speaking of the Law as an intolerable
yoke (Acts. xv. 10).
« Cross, i. 18, 19 ; ii. 24 iii. 18. ;
1 PETER. And yet he does not in so many words, nor of set purpose,
try to reconcile the separated parties. His Epistle has no
resemhlance a tendency-writing.
to His catholicity, his
conciliatoriness, are due to the natural and happy tempera-
ment which acts as a solvent to aU religious asperity. He is
fixed not on its sacramental aspects but on the vow by which 1 pbtek.
and '
execrable Such were the circumstances in
' superstition. i petek.
1 PETER. NOTE I.
21 ; V. 9.
3. Submissive Eesignation in accordance with Christ's example.
a. "Submit yourselves to every human ordinance for the Lord's
sake," ii. 13.
4. WsLL-DOlNa (iyaSoiroua), ii. 12, 14, 15, 20 ; iii. 6, 11, 1'7 ; iv. 19.
5. Obedience (vnaKofj), i. 2, 22 ;
" as children of obedience," i. 14.
Salvation, i. 5, 9, 10 ; ii. 2.
KOTE IT.
peculiar to St. Peter ; but comp. Jas. i. 18, iii. 3 ; and Tit. iii.
5 Eph. ii. 10.
;
Special Words. 431
4. " That fadeth not away " {dfiapavTon), i. 4 ; comp. afxapavTivov 1 peter.
'' amarantMne," v. 4 (Wisd. vi. 12).
Kkrjpoi. means the same as " your flock" (jrotfuviov). The Church,
like the Holy Land, was divided "by allotments" (Jos. xiv. 2).
NOTE IIL
SPECIAL PASSAGES IN THE EPISTLE.
(y.) ii. 24. " Who Himself, in His own body, bore up our sins to the tree."
not of "the Christ within us," Gal. iv. 19, but of the
inmost soul.
(e.) iii. 18-20 ; iv. 6. The preaching of the Gospel to the dead.
(f.) iii. 21, " which also, in the antitype, doth now save you, even
baptism, —not the putting aivay
of the filth of the flesh, but the
interrogation of a good conscience towards God by the resur-
rection of Jesus Christ." 'Avrirvirov means " baptism as an
antitype of the deluge," and may be paraphrased as in the E.V.
by "after a true likeness.'' The meaning of iwip^Trifjia, and of
the parenthetic clause, is very uncertain ; the word has been ex-
plained (1) "pledge" or "vow" ; or (2) "question and answer,"
"animanon laxationesedre-spowsionesancitur." Tert. DeResurr.
48 or (3) " the inquiry after God of a good conscience " ; or (4)
;
" the request to Ood for a good conscience." The latter seems a
possible view (comp. 2 Kings xi. 7 ; Dan. iv. 14, LXX.). "The
word intends the whole correspondence of the conscience with
God." Leighton.
(tj.) iv. 16. But if a man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed."
"
The word " Christian " had not yet been adopted by the Church,
but was only used by enemies or Gentiles (Acts xi. 26 xxvi. ;
(i.) V. 13. " The co-elect in Babylon saluteth you." Babylon ia the j peter.
common cryptograph used by the Jews and Christians of this
epoch for Rome (Rev. xiv. 8, &o.; Orac. Sibyll. v. 143, &c.),
just as in the Talmud Rome
is called Babylon and Edom.
(k.) v. 12. " By Silvanus, our faithful brother, as I esteem him." There
is nothing to show whether the Silvanus thus incidentally men-
tioned was or was not the Silas of the Acts. The words air
Xoyi^ofiai, " as I account him," are due to some under-current of
thoiight. Some imagine that Silvanus was the amanuensis, and
that he modestly added those two words.
'
Euseb. ff.K ii. 15, § 2 ; Jer. Se Virr. illustr. 8 ; Hippolytus, De
Christo et AnticJiristo, 36.
^ Peter was married, and there is a touching legend that in passing his wife
on the road to his martyrdom he bade her " remember the Lord " (Me'/xyTjo-e
& oBtt) toJ Kuptov). Clem. Alex. Strom, vii. 11, § 63.
F F
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS
WEITTEN BY AN UNKNOWN AUTHOR, PERHAPS APOLLOS,
ABOUT A.D. 68.
"Nihil interesse cujns sit, dum ecclesiastici viri sit, et quotidie ecclesiarum
leotione celebretuT." Jee. Mp. 129, ad Dardaniiim.
" He is the mediator of a better covenant, which hath been enacted upon
better promises." Heb. viii. 6.
^ ' ' Quis porro earn oomposnerit non magnopere curanilum est, aed ipsa
dicendi ratio et stylus alium esse quam Paulum satis testantur. " Calvin.
' The Vatican, not the Alexandrian, as Bleek proves, ITebr. 338.
' These are pointed out by Bleek, Tholuok, &c. See Early Says of
Christianity, i. 297.
* Paul uses " Christ Jesus our Lord," or " our Lord Jesus Christ," sixty-
St.
eight times this writer not once, and only once even " our Lord Jesus." He
;
based. He
shows that Christianity is a nearer (and on earth
the nearest attainable) approximation to the Eternal Arche-
type. He thus furnishes a " thoroughly original attempt to
establish the main results of Paulinism upon new presuppo-
sitions and in an entirely independent way." St. Paul's
arguments, from the very fact that they were so sweeping and
irresistible, awoke the bitterest antagonism of the Jews, and
(i. 1, ii. 2, iii. 9, iv. 12, xii. 19, &c.), while yet he can lead his Hebrews.
readers to see that Christianity offers a better hope (vii. 19)
a better covenant (vii. 22) ; a more excellent service (viii. 6)
a better and more perfect tabernacle (ix. 11) ; better sacrifices
and better promises (ix. 23) ; and above all a great, sym-
pathetic, atoning, glorified Eternal Priest.'
He was able thus to avail himself of Jewish feeling by
regarding Judaism less as a law than as a system of worship.
He seizes upon Priesthood and Sacrifice as the central point
of his treatment. He treats the Temple and the High Priest
with profound respect. Christianity is represented as a
sublimated, completed, idealised Judaism. He dwells with
loving detail on the imposing splendour of the Tabernacle,
and shows us the High Priest entering the awful darkness of
the Holiest Place and clad in thepomp of his gorgeous and
jewelled robes and then as with one wave of the wand
; —
sets all this aside as a symbol, a picture, a transient shadow,
while he draws aside the blue curtain of the heavens and points
to the High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek who
has passed with His own blood once for all into a Tabernacle
not made with hands eternal in the heavens.^ The Jewish
Tabernacle was a material pattern of that ideal archetype
which is partially realised in Christianity now, and will be
attained in heaven hereafter. was a shadow of salvation
It
which now is subjectively enjoyed in Christianity, and wUl
hereafter be objectively realised in heaven.
The Epistle was either written by ApoUos a friend of —
Timothy, and a follower of St. Paul, an Alexandrian with Jewish-
Christian antecedents, eloquent, courageous, independent, and
' The Christology of the Epistle, though the writer dwells so prominently
on Christ's sufferings and humiliation, is no less lofty than that of St. Paul.
" The writer does not however think of Christ as the 'Second Adam' any
more than St. Paul thinks of Him as the Captain and High Priest of our
'
profession.' " —
See Holtzmann in Sohenkel Bibel-Lexicon.
" A pattern," viii. 5 ; " a shadow," ix. 1, 23 zi. 1, 3 ; xii. 18, 27. " A
'^
;
parable," ix. 9 " antitype," ix. 24. The "visible " (xi. 3) is capable of being
;
shaken (xii. 27), and is tangible (xii. 15), but the archetypal world, the true
house of God (x. 21), the gemiine tabernacle (viii. 2), is based on firm
foundations, unshakable, heavenly (xi. 10 ; xii. 22-28).
440 The Catholic Epistles.
—
Melchizedek (v. vii.) on Christ's new and better Covenant
;
forth bread and wine for Abraham and his allies when they
returned victorious from the defeat of Amraphel, king of
Shinar, and his vassal kings. He is called a priest of El
Elion, and though there was a Phoenician deity of the name
Elion, it is clear that by that title here as elsewhere is meant
442 The Catholic Epistles.
was a priest of the Most High God," means that his priest- hebeews.
hood ceased with him, and was not handed down to his
descendants.
Since the Jews had thus interested themselves in the
venerahle figure of the king, peaceful and righteous, the
mysterious priest among idolaters, who flashes into light
f. 18, 1 "A Gentile has no father." Em-ip. Ion. 850 " Quibus nee pater
: :
nee mater est," Cio. De Nat. ii. 64 " nullis majoribus ortum " Hor Sat
: :
i. 6, 10.
2 On
the Melchizedekians our chief authorities are Marcus Eremita, Ipipha-
nius, Eaer. ly. 7, Ixvii. 3 Philastrius, Saer 52, 148 ; Augustine, Contra
;
See Friedlander, Le Secte des MelchisSdec et V^pitre auz Mibreux. {Rev. des
itvdes juiiies, 1883, yol. v. pp. 1-188.)
444 The Catholic Epistles.
The passage which the Church took most alarm was iii. 2,
at hebbews.
"
" Jesus Christ who was faithful to Him that appointed Him
{tS TTOirjcravTi, avTov, literally " to Him that made Him "), as
and High Priest was faithful to Him who made Him such.
"
Theodoret and other Greek Fathers rightly saw that " made
here means " appointed," and the particular verb (iroico) is
probably used from a reminiscence of the LXX. version of
^
1 Samuel xii. 6, " who made Moses."
It is, however, a curious circumstance that, in dealing with
other subjects also, the author uses language which, while
capable of explanation, lent itself easily to the possibility of
being misunderstood. Thus in vii. 27, and x. 11, he seems to
say that the high priests daily offered sacrifices ; in vii. 5, he
says that the priests received tithes of the people ; in ix. 3, 4,
rendered with the Calvinists and our A.V. " If they fall
away," but " on their falling away." But the author is only
thinking of earthly conditions, and of what is impossible to
men. He means that for deliberate apostasy and defiant
wretchlessness no human, no ecclesiastical, no earthly remedy
is provided. But that which is impossible with men is possible
with God.
In xii. 16, 17, the true rendering is, "For ye know that
afterwards, when he was even anxious to inherit the blessing,
he was rejected ; for he found no opportunity for repentance
—though he sought it (the blessing) earnestly with tears."
Unless we are to give to the passage a sense which con-
tradicts the rest of Scripture, we must understand " place
NOTE I.
NOTE II.
Tlie word " better " (Kpela-a-mv) occurs more often in this Epistle tlian
in all tlie rest of tlie New Testament —namely, thirteen times ; "whereas
elsewhere it only occurs twice in St. Peter, and three, or perhaps four,
times in St. PauL
i. 4. " Better than the angels."
vi. 9. " Weare persuaded better things of you " (vii. 7).
xi. 40. " God having provided some better thing concerning us."
xii. 24. " The blood of sprinkling which speaketh better than that of
Abel."
Besides this we have "more excellent" {bta(popd>Tepos, i. 4; viii. 6),
which does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament ; and " by so
much," "by how much more" (touoi/Vo) . icra), and similar phrases, .
It may thus be truly said that the essence of the Epistle is an argu-
ment a fortiori; a comparison a minori ad majus.
THE EPISTLE OF JUDE.
OF UNCERTAIN DATE.
" I was compelled to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for
the faitU once lor all delivered to the saints." Jude 3.
The Levitio training of the writer is shown by the fact that he twice
'
may now be regarded as all but certain that the author of that
Epistle is the borrower, and St. Jude the original writer, we
need not here allude further to that circumstance.
Who was the writer ?
1. He calls himself Jude, " a slave of Jesus Christ and a
brother of James."
The expression " slave of Jesus Christ," first used by St
Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, is found also in the Second
Epistle of St. Peter and in St. James. If the writer adds that
he is " a brother of James," this can only be to enable his
readers to identify him. Among the Jews there was an ex-
treme paucity of names, and Jude was one of the very
commonest of those few names. There are six Judes in the New
Testament alone and very many in Josephus and among the
Rabbis. The name at once marks the nationality of the writer
he is so completely a Jew that he has not even adopted the
almost universal practice among his countrymen of choosing
another name for the purpose of intercourse with the
Gentiles. But the name " Jude " alone
would convey no de-
finite information. There are at least three Judes in the
very narrow circle of early believers. Judas Iscariot was dead
there was another Apostle who with the name Jude also bore
the names Lebbaeus and Thaddaeus. This three-named
Apostle was the son of a James of whom we know nothing
(Luke vi. 16 ; Acts. i. 13) ; and is himself entirely unknown
to us except by a single question (John xviii. 3), and by the
tradition that he laboured in Syria and died at Edessa. There
was also a Judas Barsabbas (Acts xv. 22). The writer of this
Epistle distinctly intimates that he was not himself an Apostle
(verses 17, 18), and as he was in other respects unknown he
^
describes himself as " the brother of James."
At this period, after the early death of James the son of
Zebedee, there was but one James who was universally known
' Hegesippus, ap. Etiseb. E.E. iii. 19. There was also a Jude, Bishop of
lerusalem in the days of Hadrian. —Euseb, E.E. iv. 5.
G 2
452 The Catholic Epistles.
For the same reason that James does not. Awe and humih'ty
prevented him. Their relationship to Jesus of Nazareth in
the earthly life gave them no right to speak of themselves as
brothers of Him who now sat at the right hand of the Majesty
on high. I believe that both James and John would have
repudiated with something like horror and indignation the
title of adelpliotluos, " brother of God," which was sometimes
applied to them in the early Church, and which is even found
in late inscriptions of this Epistle.
We know nothing more of this Jude except that he was
married, and that he must have been dead before the reign of
Domitian (A.D. 80). We learn these facts from the anecdote
recorded by Hegesippus (ap. Euseb. JI.U. iii. 20), that the
grandsons of Jude, the Lord's brother, were summoned before
Domitian, whose jealousy had been excited by rumours about
Christ's kingdom. These earthly kinsmen of our Lord were
known among Christians as the Desposyni, and they were
summoned from Palestine into Domitian's presence. When
he saw that they were poor peasants, whose hands were hard
with labour, and heard that they had only seven acres of land
between them, which they farmed themselves, he was content
with their assurance that the kingdom of Christ was neither
earthly nor of this world but heavenly and angelical. He
dismissed them with contempt, and with them (so far as we
know) ended the race of the family of Nazareth.
2. What was the date of this Epistle, and by what circum-
stances was it called forth ?
stars for which the mirk of darkness has been reserved for
ever." Then, after applying to them a quotation from the
Apocryphal Book of Enoch,* he charges them with murmui •
^ TLose who are "kept for Jesus Christ," comp. John xvii. 11. The verb
rripe^v occurs three times in tliis Epistle, verses 1, 6, 13.
^ The readings here adopted often differ from those of the A.V. They are
generally noticed in the R.V.
' It seems clear, though we may think it strange, that these Antinomian
libertines are here reproved for railing at fallen spirits, which even Michael
would not do, comp. Rev. xii. 10. Milton makes Gabriel say to Satan,
" Satan, I know thy strength, and thou know'st mine.
Neither our own, but given.
Clearly, as Dr. Fraser says, St. Jude would not have approved of the tendency
of modern literature to speak of Satan with contemptuous jocularity, as iu
Ben Jonson's " The Devil is an Ass," or Burns's " Address to the Deil."
* " Enoch the swcniS. from Adam." "We should say "the sixth," but the
Jews counted inclusively. Besides this quotation there are references to the
language of the Book of Enoch in verses 6, 7, 13, &c.
Apostates. 455
" Now
to him that is able to guard you unstumbling, and
to setyou before His glory blameless in exultation, to the onlj-
God our Saviour by Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty,
might, and power, both before all the aeons, and now, and to all
the aeons. Amen."
Such is the strange Epistle of St. Jude, which is full of
' Rufinus has "Theobutes quidam." The word is possibly connected with
nXFl, "filth."
"'l Thess. iv. 6 ; Eph. v. 3 ; 1 Cor. v. 1-11 ; 2 Cor. xii. 21.
456 The Catholic Epistles.
for carnal lust.^ The notion that this Epistle was meant for
a venomous attack on Pauline Christians becomes absurd when
we see enough in St. Paul's own writings, to show that he
would have denounced the very same offenders with a flame
of indignant zeal no less intense than that which burned in
the breast of St. Jude himself.
It may be perfectly true that some of these offenders had
adopted Pauline watchwords and had perverted Pauline argu-
ments. We know that in very early days there were many
who did so.^ The Marcionites did so with the writings of
St. Paul, the Valentinians with those of St. John. And
this abuse of the truths whichit was his special mission
• The words of —
Jerome are remarkable: "Et quia de libro Enoch, qui
apooryphus est in eft (epistolS,), assumsit testimonium, a plerisque rejicitur
tamen auctoritatem vetustam jain et usu meruit, ut inter sacras scripturas
computetur." Oatal Script. Eccl. 4. Didymus of Alexandria felt the same ob
jeotion. The Book of Enoch is now well known from the translation from the
Aethiopic by Lawrence (1821), and Dillman (1853). "The Assumption of
Moses has perished.
Peculiarities of Structure and Phraseology. 459
NOTE I.
ST. JDDB.
Arrangements by threes.
Mercy, peace, love, vs. 1.
school at Nisibis it was rejected as " spurious and not in the 2 peter.
are —in many respects far less so ; and though the Councils of
Laodicea and Carthage declared it to be canonical,^ Jerome,
who, by admitting the Epistle into the Vulgate, did more than
any man to further its acceptance, yet admits that it was in
his day rejected by most Christians, and that it differs from
the First Epistle in style, character, and structure of words.^
In he can only accept the partial genuineness of the
fact,
^ For details see Davidson, Introd. ii. 474-484. Westcott, On the Canon,
Charteris on Canonwity.
" Laodicea, a.d. 363 Hippo, a.d. 393 ; Carthage, a.d. 397.
;
' " A
plerisque ejus esse negatur, propter styli cum priore dissonantiam."'
— Jer. De Script. JSccl. 1.
462 The Catholic Epistles.
^ Add
the words ^irixopfiyica, (pi\aBe\(pta &(r4\y^ta, evc^^eta (Acta iii.
12), "the Day
of the Lord" (Acta ii. 20). The Deluge and Prophecy are
prominent in hoth. All that can he urged under this head may he seen in
Professor Lumhy's papers in the Expositor, iv. 372, 446.
" i. 1, 13, 14, 15, 16-18; iii. 1, 15.
' A certain literary difficulty is shown by the incessant repetition of words.
Strange Phrases. 4G3
piety " ;
" greatest and precious " " bringing in besides all ;
not drowsily nodding " ; "to walk behind the flesh"; "eyes
fuU of an adulteress " ; " insatiable of sin " ; "a heart trained
in covetousness " ; "the mirk of the darkness"; "treasure
stored with fire " ; " pits of gloom " ; " calcining to ashes " ;
" hurling to Tartarus " ;
" blaspheming glories " ;
" hurtlingly "
;
" to the day of the age " " the world compacted out of ;
iKaraTraiiffTovs afjMpTias, ii. 14; yeyvfivaff^ivfiv TrAeorel^ais, ii, 14; & ^6(pos
rov (TKdTovSf ii. 17 fioi^'i}^6v, &c.
J
4G-l! The Catholic Epistles.
^ 2cot);p does not occur in the First Epistle. Kipios in 1 Pet. is. only applied
to Christ in ii. 3. The Second Epistle also differs from the First in using eV
Differences. 465
' iii.
9, 10, 12. In other passages of the Kew Testament the Second Advent
is not identified with the Day of Judgment.
" In the second century this expectation was chiefly retained among
tliB
Montanists. —
Banr, First Three Centuries, i. 247 ii. 45 (E. T.). ;
H n
466 The Catholic Epistles.
but all the things which, like the reasonless animals, they
understand naturally ((j)VcnKW<;), in these they corrupt them-
H H 2
468 Tlie Catholic Epistles.
2 PETER, selves " (or are destroyed, (j)0eopovrai). The writer of tliis
^ Among these words and phrases are ffpaSvr^s (iii. 9, as applied to Divine
squalid place " is found in Esdras ; ^ and tlie unusual word 2 peter.
1 " For you liave survived to us from all prophets, as a lamp in a dark
place." i Esdr. xii. 42.
" fleo0(f/)i)Tos, <j)a<T<l>6po5, IStos, hvareWsi . . Philo, Quis nr. div. haer. p. 52.
This parallel is pointed out by Dr. Abbott.
^72 The Catholic Epistles.
NOTE L 2 PETER.
Iv ^ap'" t«' yvita-eC), and ends with a brief benediction (17, 18).
It is an Epistle, therefore, of mingled exhortation and warning.
Its keynote is knowledge and full knowledge in contradistinction to
"cunning myths " (i. 16) and "feigned words " (ii. 3).
THE FIEST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.^
WRITTEN PERHAPS IN PATMOS, circ. A.D, 97.
INTEODUCTOEY.
1 JOHN. Although this Epistle resembles a theological treatise and
a religious homily, itwas yet evidently intended as an
encyclical letter. The words " I write " (ypdcpco, and the
epistolary aorist 'i'ypa^a) occur thirteen times ; the words
" to you," " you," occur thirty-six times ; "my little children"
(reKvia, TraiBla) six times ;
" beloved " six times. The uncon-
strained style, the informal transitions, the mingled exhorta-
tions, all show that it is a letter. At the same time it is the
most abstract and impersonal, the most independent of place
and time and circumstance, of all the writings in the New
Testament.
' Dr Westcott, whose edition of the Epistles of St. John I had not the
ailvautage of seeing till these pages had been written, calls it " a Pastoral."
Gosjjel and Eijistle. 475
the Spirit, the water, and the blood (v. 6-8) would have been
absolutely unintelligible to readers who had not received a
clue to the meaning in John xix. 34.
Bede, Prol. ad. Ep. Calh. attributes this assertion {ad Parthos) to Atha-
1
1 JOHN, of the Church. The Gospel had been spread far and wide.
The liberty of the GentUes, for which St. Paul had battled all
Tor. On all doubts and difficulties " Christ's own eagle," as l john.
lunion with Him, and with the Father through Him, and
ith aU. mankind in Him, is Eternal Life, and all life apart
1 JOHN, the Saviour of the world." In the region of the Idea there
is no room for jarring conflicts. This Epistle, with the Gospel,
sets the final seal to Revelation. — It does so
a. In its teaching about Eternal Life, as a state, not an
extension of time ; as an ethical condition, not as an endless
continuance. " The horologe of earth," as Bengel said, " is
no measure for the aeonologe of heaven." St. John does not
The Epistle of St. John differs greatly from most of the l john.
'
the world." The Church is older, more instructed, more
conscious of herself It was the task of the other Apostles
JO plant it is the task of St. John to water
; it was theirs to ;
tells them that they have an unction from the Holy One,
—
Heathendom, but the disguised Satan the Satan transformed
into an angel of light —
of idle speculations. Now in St.
John's view the victory of the Christian over evil depended
solely on his confessing Christ, on his believing Christ, on
his thus gaining fellowship with, and therefore reflecting, the
life of Christ. The belief that the life of the Christian is a
life " in Christ," that each true Christian is a member of His
body, a branch of His Vine, a stone on His foiindation, which
was the heart of the theology of St. Paul, was no less the
heart of the theology of St. John. But St. John saw with
St. John's Method. 481
[arm that there were some who were taking away his Lord, i john.
ibstituting for Him another Lord altogether; one who was
ot perfectly man, or was not truly God. And these foes
'ere within, not without the walls ; men who, not denying
ut simulating holiness, were introducing the spirit of the
'orld into the Kingdom of Heaven, the spirit of darkness
ito the sphere of light. These, then, are the immediate
angers, which, so late in life, when he was already an old
lan, first led St. John to break his long silence and to write,
s he expressed it, with paper and ink.
And how does he deal with them ?
i. St. John meets the heresies of his day by the assertion, not
f speculative, but of practical truths. He does not complain
f, he does not theorise about, the antagonism of the world to
he Church, or of Antichrists to Christ. He simply men-
ions and accepts them as facts. He does not argue, he
estifies he does not denounce
; error, he teaches truth,
^here is the kingdom of Satan —darkness, sin, death; and
iver against it is the Kingdom of God, which is Light,
lighteousness. Life. He has no theory as to how this
ingdom of Satan began
he has no express statement as to
;
LOW it will end. Enough for him that it began before, and
Qdependently of, the creation of man enough for him that ;
back with an energy of love into the days when he had lived
with the Son of Man, and forward with an energy of hope
;
into the days of His perfected kingdom " St. Jude, breaking
into passionate invective, calls the heretics filthy dreamers,
waterless clouds, withered trees, raging billows, wandering
stars ; but St. John seems merely to fix his intense gaze on
Oospel and Epistle. 483
ijoHN. We may say of St. John as the poet says of the raised
Lazarus
" Whence had the man the balm that brightens all ?
love ; not with the transient precarious love which comes and
goes, comes while good-will is shown us, and goes directly
ill-will and disfavour meets us not with the feeble love
;
that love wherewith God first loved us. Where this love . .
dwells —
a love which at the same time is joy in the Lord
there the heart never freezes nor withers. It remains
perpetually young, for the glow of eternal life streams
through it."i
" St. John's point of view is in many respects new and final.
eternal prototype —
" Holy light, offspring of heaven firstborn.
Bright effluence of bright essence uncreate
Whose fountain who shall tell ?
jOve that it bursts into its own full and proper splendour. j jqhn.
'hat little sentence has brought to the world more sweetness
ban all the world can bring besides. And from it springs
t once the clear truth for us to grasp, and the certain test
or us to apply, that every offence against the law of love is
, sin that all and every form of hatred, whether it be the
;
much forus ?
It is perhaps the very last utterance of revelation
— " Little
1 JOHN.
NOTE I.
In the previous discourse I have spoken of the Epistle under the three
heads suggested by the great utterances, God is Light, God is Kighteous,
God is Love. A formal analysis of the Epistle cannot, however, he
made under these heads. They throw light on the order of thought,
but are not the pivots of arrangement in the writer's mind. Huther
who, at De Wette's suggestion, adopted this division in Meyer's com-
mentary, abandoned it in his second edition. Still less can we adopt
Bengel's divisions made with reference to the Trinity, into which he was
misled by the spurious verse about the Three Heavenly Witnesses.
Certainly the Epistle illustrates the famous remark of St. Augustine,
Ubi Amor ihi Trinitas ; but the reference to the Trinity belongs to the
essence of the subject, not to the writer's intended plan.
The Epistle consists of an Exordium (i. 1-4) ; the treatment of the
flubject (i. 5-v. 12), and the conclusion (v. 13-21).
The general outline is as follows :
II. The confidence of sonship wMch springs from the possession of 1 joen
Eternal Life (ii. 28-v. 5).
C. CONCLUSION.
B. The coniiiot of truth and falsehood without and within (ii. 18-
iv. 6).
He adds, " The thought of a fellowship between God and man, made
possible and in part realised in the Christian Church, runs through the
ivhole Epistle. From this it begins " Our fellowship is with the Father,
tnd with His Son Jesus Christ" (i. 3). In this it closes " we are in Him :
Yet though the Epistle is thus obviously written by a Jew, it does not
mention the Jews, nor does it once quote the Old Testament.
The style is plain the manner contemplative. The sentences have
;
states truths, first positively, and then negatively. Each chief word is
like a stone flung into a smooth lake, making ripples which extend to
the shore in concentric circles, and these circles are broken and inter-
laced by the influence of other words. The difficulty of understanding
St. John is due to the depth of meaning involved by his use of ordinary
words ; his causal particles are often puzzling, but in his constructions
there is generally no difiiculty at all.
NOTE III.
SPECIAL PASSAGES.
ii. 6-11. The Commandment both new and old. The commandment
" Love one another " was old as the Gospel, and even as the Old Testa-
ment ; but it became new and was invested with a new significance under
the circumstances in which it was illustrated and renewed by Christ
(John xiii. 34, 35, 1-20).
ii. 12-14. A six-fold appeal to Christians.
ii. 15-19. Antichristand Antichrists. The word is peculiar to St.
John. The Antichrist which the Church had now to dread was no
longer a Koman emperor, but the spirit of Heresy.
iii. 6. Ideal sinlessness.
iii. 19, 20. God greater than our hearts. The rendering is "We shall
assure our hearts before Him, whereinsoever (on iav) our hearts condemn
Special Phrases. 493
3, God is greater than our hearts " or else, " because, if our hearts
because ;
1 john.
mdemn God is greater," omitting the second mi with some MSS., or
us,
hrist" (reading o Xu'ei, which has disappeared from the MSS., but existed
a ancient MSS., and is so quoted by Irenaeus, TertuUian, &c.). If this
eading be right, it alludes to that Antichristian element in Gnosticism
vhich severed the one person of Christ by isolating either the Divine or
he human nature.
V. 6-8. He
who came by means of water and blood (one a Xovrpov and
me Christ manifested Himself by virtue of the regenerating
a \vTpov).
md atoning power of which the water and the blood were symbols
[John xix. 34). "Why water ? Why blood 1 Water to cleanse, blood
,0 redeem." Ambrose {De Sacr. v. 1).
"
V. 7. The spurious verse about the " Three that bear witness in heaven
irst printed (perhaps from an ancient marginal note, possibly by St.
Dyprian, which had found its way into lath century MSS.) in the
3omplutensian edition of 1514. It was unknown to the Greek Fathers,
md does not appear in a single ancient version. It breaks the reasoning
oi and belongs to a totally different order of ideas. " Let
the passage,
them make good sense of it who are able, for my part I can make none."
—Sir I. Newton.
V. 16. "There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he should wahe
request for that." No definite sin is meant, but some interior quality
(undiscemible by man) of sin in its most desperate stage ; a sin which
cannot be remedied by man's prayer, though it cannot be beyond the
reach of God's mercy.
NOTE IV.
1 JOHN, fragment, and found in the oldest Syriac and Latin versions. Its inde-
ii. He applies the term " Advocate " (Paraklete) to Christ (ii. 1), not aa
in the Gospel, to the Holy Spirit (John xiv. 16). Bnifhe different offices
of " Advocate " belong alike to both Persons of the Blessed Tiinity.
iii. He uses the word "propitiation" {tKaa-fjids), which occurs here
alone in the N. T. (iv. 10). But this word, though not used in the
Gospel, belongs to the ordinary language of Christianity (Lukexviii. 13 ;
"Amor non modo verus amor est, sed veritate evangelic^ nititur."
iENGEL.
The Second and Third Epistles of St. John are in all 2 John.
)robability specimens of the free and unreserved religious
iorrespondence which in all ages has been interchanged
between Christians. In St. Paul's letter to Philemon, and
n these short missives, we have the first extant specimens
)fletters like those which were thenceforth constantly written
motive and supported his view by the fact that " some said
that there were two tombs in Ephesus, each of which was
called the tomb of John."
'
Papias in their hands and there is scarcely one of them,
ther Greek or Latin, who is even for a moment misled by
le specious suggestion of Dionysius and the bolder implica-
on of Eusebius.
But why does St. John call himself "The Elder"?
The term has three meanings.
a. It is used to express the dignity of age.
/8. It is used to express the office of a Presbyter.
7. It is used, especially by Papias and by later writers who
;fer to him, to describe the latest survivors among those
'ho had been the actual Apostles or disciples of Christ.
The John led him entirely to
retiring character of St.
ippress his name in the Gospel and First Epistle. In the
rivate letters he was naturally compelled to describe himself,
ut instead of choosing the high title of " Apostle," which it
'as not necessary for him as it was necessary for St. Paul to
[aim, he calls himself " the Elder " in all three of the senses
lentioned above. He was a Presbyter by office, just as
t. Peter calls himself the fellow-Presbyter of those to whom
e wrote (1 he was an Elder by age just as St.
Peter v. 1) ;
'aul calls himself " Paul the aged " ^ and he was the last ;
iirvivor of " the Elders " who could say " I have seen the
lOrd." The title was humble, but on the lips of St. John
i connoted a position of exceptional dignity ; on the other
and it would have been presumptuous for a mere Elder to
2 JOHN, write as " the Elder " as though he had any special title to a
then universal designation.
2. Who is the Elect Lady ?
written not " to the elect Kyria " but " to Kyria the elect."-'
Further than this, in verse 5, " I beseech thee, Kyria," would
have been a most unusual mode of address.
ii. Clement of Alexandria understood it to mean "to the
' Comp. 3 John i., Taiy rif iiyaiTrir^. Kom, xyi. 13, Fovfov rhv iic\eKTiv.
To a Christian Lady. 501
' Hilgenfeld, Einleit. 686, thinks that the name xvpia might
he applied to
a Ghurch from a misunderstanding of the LXX. in Is. xl. 10, fierii Kvplas.
' This expression has been used to show that St. John cannot
be writiu" to
a lady. "Why not 1 Why, for instance, might not any religious teacher say
to an esteemed and beloved con'espondent "ycm whom all Christians lore" ?
502 The Catholic Epistles.
missionaries of the Gospel, St. John warns her that she must
not show this hospitality, nor give the deeper fraternal greeting,
to those who would claim it as a sanction, and abuse it for
' In verse
9, the true reading is irSi i Trpoiyav. " Every one who goes in
advance" i.e. who enters into unauthorised and misguiding speculations such
as those which St. Paul condemns (1 Tim. vi. 4 ; 2 Tim. ii. 14, 16).
''It was quoted by an African Bishop, Aurelius, in an African Council in
Cyprian's days.
Abuse of Texts. 503
by Christians, exult over these passages as breathing " the deplorable spirit of
dogmatic intolerance " (Eenan) and others quote it as a proof that the
;
Epistle must be spurious, as proving that St. John had failed to learn the lesson
which Christ Himself had inculcated (Luke ix. 50). Such remarks and inferences
would be perfectly justifiable if we were obliged to understand St. John in the
sense which religious partisans have given to his narrowly limited and
perfectly intelligible caution.
THE THIRD EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.
Gaius of Macedonia (Acts xix. 29), Gaius of Derbe (Acts xx. 4),
' irepl iraj'Twi'. Not "above all things" as in A. V.
2 Both <pt\aSi\<j)la and ^iXofeWo (verse 5).
Diotrephes. 505
and a Gaius of Corinth (Rom. xvi. 4) who, like St. John's 3 john.
correspondent, was famous for the necessary duty of Christian
hospitality.i The Gaius to whom St. John writes may be
the Bishop of Pergamum mentioned in the ApostoUc
Constitutions.^
The word " Truth " — reality, sincerity, orthodoxy —occurs
no less than six times in these few verses.
From this Epistle, as from various allusions in St. Paul, we
get an interesting glimpse of the early missionaries. Some
who called themselves by this name were false teachers,
against whom in the last Epistle, the Christian lady
warned. is
3 JOHN, but apparently Diotrephes had suppressed it. St. John warns
him that when he comes, he will bring his ill-doings to
remembrance before the Church. Perhaps his special reason
for writing to Gaius was that Gains had welcomed the
travelling brethren whom Diotrephes had tried to turn away.
It has been thought impossible that any Presbyter should
have had the audacity to act in this way towards an Apostle
of the age, dignity and supreme authority of St. John. But
early Church history is full of surprises, and the figure of
Diotrephes is recognisable in the Church in all ages. If
St. Paul had to contend with a Phygellus and an Alexander
^ 3 John 9. There is a reading typa\f/a &v, and the Vulg. has scripsissem
forsitan. The change of reading is probably due to the desire to exclude the
notion that any letter by an Apostle could be lost.
The Third Epistle. 507
while the abuse of that spirit was repressed by the high Sjohn.
personal authority of the last Apostle, the independence
itself is left unrestrained, because where the Spirit of the
Lord there also is and must be liberty.
is,
St. John would have had much more to say, but prefers to
say it " mouth to mouth," not by " ink and reed." Probably
he was unaccustomed to, and disliked the physical toil of
writing, specially in his old age. He has said the same to
the Elect Lady. Possibly too it may not have been always
easy to procure papyrus, especially if St. John was writing
from his little isle of retreat in Patmos.^
^ The newly-discovered teaching of the Twelve Apostles shows us a state
of society which in many respects resembles that described in this brief
Epistle,
THE REVELATION OE ST. JOHN.
THE EEVELATION OF ST. JOHN.
WRITTEN IN PATMOS PROBABLY ABOUT A.D. 68.
'
REVELATION, proves that the book could not have been written after the
fall of Jerusalem, and the writer all but states in so many
words that he is writing in the brief reign of Galba.^ It must
be regarded as a psychological impossibility that St. John
should have written the Gospel in extreme old age in Greek,
which, though unidiomatic in structure, is comparatively pure ;
and yet, some years later, should have written the Apocalypse
in Greek, more rugged and solecistic than that of any other
book in the New Testament, and even than all but the very
worst parts of the Septuagint. It is still more impossible
psychologically that St. John should have retrogressed from the
supreme calmness and absolute spirituality of the Gospel and
the first Epistle to the cruder symbolism, the tamultuous
agitation, the intenser Judaism, the fiercer denunciations, the
more human tone and the more imperfect treatment of the
Apocalypse. It would be nothing short of a retrogression to
pass from the abstract and absolute forms in which the Gospel
and Epistle set forth to us the conflict of good with evil, to
the kabbalism of numbers and the symbolism of strange
figures from the most ethereal regions of Christian thought
;
he same, as has been carefully and fully shown in Gebhardt's Doctrine 0/ the
ipocalypsi, and as even Baur admits when he calls the Gospel a spiritualised
Apocalypse (Die Evang. p. 380). In both Christ is represented as the victim
iiamb. (The hfvlov of the Apocalypse is perhaps chosen, rather than the word
ijoihs of the Gospel, as the best antithesis to Bripiov.) In. both He is called
'
the Word." In both we read of the Living Water. Both give prominence
;o the prophecy of Zechariah (xii. 10), " They shall look on Him whom they
xave pierced " ; both, in this quotation, diverge in the same way from the
L/XX. There are many isolated resemblances of phrase and construction
see xiii. 13, 16), and in relation to many doctrines an identity of essence
mderlies the dissimilarity of form. Yet there is also a wide difference between
ihese writings. The material eschatology of the Apocalypse becomes in the
Sospel and Epistle a spiritual consummation. In the Apocalypse Christ is
rather the Judge and the Avenger than the Good Shepherd. The Antichrist
3f the Apocalypse is Nero ; the Antichrists of the later writings are incipient
Gnostics. In the Apocalypse Heaven is a future splendour ; in the later
writings a present and living realisation of eternal life. In the Apocalypse
the persecuted Christians are consoled with the promise of what shall be ; in
the later writings with the knowledge of what is. See among others,
Lechler, Apost. Zeitalt. 199-201. Eeuss, Eist. de la TMol. Ghrtt. ii. 564-571.
Ewald, Johan. Schriften, ii. 1, 52, 53, 62, 63; Diisterdieck, pp. 73-80,
md Early Days of Christianity, ii. 179-323. These differences, on the
hypothesis of the same author, can only be accounted for on the supposition
shat more than twenty years elapsed between the time when St. John wrote
;he Apocalypse when he was, so to speak, emerging from the synagogue (Rev.
i. 9 ; iii. 9 ; xi. 1, 19, &o.), and the ripe old age when after the Fall of
Ferusalem, and with all the enlightenment which dawned on his mind, in
lonsequence of the development of Christian history, he left to the Church
ihe precious legacy of his last Vfritings.
^ Weiss, Leben Jesu, i. 101.
' " War " occurs in the Apocalypse nine times ; and only seven times in the
est of the New Testament. "To war" occurs six times, and only once (Jas,
V. 2) in the rest of the New Testament.
* Comp. Eenan, L' Antichrist, p. 381.
L L
514 The Revelation of St. John.
which came from the mouth of the Dragon, the Beast, and eevelation.
the False Prophet, St. John was not indicating either the
;
French Revolution or " the growth of Tractarianism " finally,
that if the anticipations of the Seer have " germinant and
springing developments," it is because his book describes the
never-ending conflict of Christ with Antichrist of which the
world's history is full, and because all eternal principles are
capable of infinite applications. As the key to
the Book of Daniel
lies in the recognition of Antiochus Epiphanes as " the little
horn," so the key to the contemporary interpretation of the
Apocalypse has not been flung either into the Sea of Patmos
or the Maeander, but lies in the identification of Nero with
the Wild Beast, which is now accepted by almost every one
of the leading critics in England, Germany, and France.^
The true grandeur of the Apocalypse lies in its applicability
to the terrible days in which it was written, and in the fact
that it expressed the inextinguishable hopes and indomitable
courage of Christianity when first found them-
Christians
selves face to face with such had never before been
perils as
' The healing of the death- wounded head, and the phrases " which was, and
is not, and is about to come out of the abyss," and " he is an eighth, and is
of the seventh " are allusions to the universally believed escape cr future
resuscitation of Nero. Ideally it was more than fulfilled in Domitiar,
518 The Revelation of St. John.
Devil, the Beast, and the False Prophet, were holding foul
orgies in the streets of the mystic Babylon, red with the blood
of the martyrs of the Lord. It was written in days of earth-
quakes, and inundations, and volcanic outbursts, and horrible
prodigies. Emperor emperor was perishing by poison,
after
suicide, or slaughter. Eome and Jerusalem had been
Alike
deluged with massacre. Men were gnawing their tongues
with pain and terror. The sun of human life seemed to be
setting amid seas of blood the air Avas full of the vultures
;
a manifestation of Christ.
The essential ideas and entire structure of the Apocalypse
show us those deep and subtle resemblances in the midst of
difference which deepen our conviction that in reading the
Apocalypse we are reading an earlier book by the author of
the Gospel. It was the mental habit of St. John to regard
all the facts of life and religion in absolute antitheses, and
the Lamb and the Wild Beast there is the Harlot City and;
is heaven and the abyss there are the armies of the saints
;
the Wild Beast from the Sea the Wild Beast from the Land
;
;
The second is opened, and War rides forth on a fiery horse, revelation.
KEVELATioN. Petia, Oil the edge of the Arabian desert, and is there safe for
1,260 days, i.e. during the horrors of the three and a half
years between the time when Vespasian began his dreadful
work in Judea, and when city and temple
A.D. 70, perished
in fire and blood. The Dragon is overcome by Michael, and
the Woman, aided by the eagle-wings of divine protection,
escapes in safety.
Then in the vision of the Wild Beast from the Sea,
St. John intimates, as clearly as any Apocalypse could
possibly intimate, that he is speaking of Rome and Nero.^
ii. In the Sibylline verses Nero is called " the Beast," " the serpent,"
281-301.
&c. The belief that 666 = Nero Caesar "IDp )1"13 is adopted by Fritzsohe, Benary,
Reuss, Hitzig, Volkmar, Ewald, &o. In the ancient various readings 616 is
the correction of some reader who dropped the iinal n in the word Neron.
- The only difference is that in Dante's enigma the word Dux, "leader," is
answer is twofold, (1) At this epoch both among Jews, Christians, and
heathens, there was a universal expectation that he would, an expectation that
lasted centuries later (Suet. Nero. 40-57 ; Tao. Sist. i. 2 ; ii. 8, 9 ; Dion.
Cass. Ixiv. 9 Lactant. Mart. Persec. 2 ; Aug. Civ. Dei. xx. 19 ; Sulpic. Sever,
;
ii.36 ; Jerome on Dan. xi. 28 Chrysostom on 2 Thess. ii.). (2) Domitian was
;
e::velation. the meaning of this symbol has come down to us, but a study
of the hints thrown out point almost with certainty to
Vespasian. The symbol is, however, in all likelihood, a com-
posite one, as is the case with so many other apocalyptic
figures; and from improbable that into the main
it is far
ry. The final victoxy, the new heaven and earth, the
the brief blessing, " The grace of the Lord Jesus be with the
Saints."!
It is deeply to be deplored that while Christians have so
often and employed years of study in the attempt
so anxiously
to explain details by methods of exegesis wholly inapplicable
to this or to any other of the numerous extant Apocalypses
or, indeed, to any book or prophecy of Scripture they have —
succeeded in throwing general discredit on promises and
encouragements which were meant to be precious to the
Church in aU ages, but most of all during times of persecu-
tion. No one can understand the Apocalypse aright who
does not begin with studying this form of literature in
general, and understanding its common characteristics, the
' In the Epilogue the Triple Attestation twice repeated.
is The Angel
speaks twice in verses, 6, 9-11. The Lord twice in verses, 7, 12-17. St.
John twice, 8, 18-20.
528 The Revelation of St. John.
so, come, Lord Jesus ! Abide with us, for the day is far
spent ! And thus from first to last the object of the book is
simply practical. It is to encourage Christians to endurance
by the lessons of Hope. It is to keep them faithful to all
that is evil.
NOTE. EEVELATION.
APOCALTl'TIC SYMBOLS.
A synoptic glance at the series of the Seven Seals, of which the
Seventh seems to include the Seven Trumpets, and the Seven Trumpets,
of which the Seventh seema to include the Seven Vials, will shew their
parallelism. It will also he seen how largely the images are borrowed
from the Twelve Plagues of Egypt, from the Esohatological discourses
of Christ, from Isaiah, Joel, Ezeliiel, Daniel, &c.
comes a sword and in whose hand are seven, stars a Lamb with seven ;
horns and seven eyes who opens a book ; how can these be painted ?
What we have to do is to fix our eyes on the ideal signification and not
at all on the material symbol.^ In these eagles with human voices,
altars which speak (xvi. 7), angels clothed in precious stones, single stars
which fall on all rivers and infect them with poison, sting-armed
locusts, army-collecting frogs, and millions of horsemen in breastplates
of hyacinth, we must see, not material figures, but only symbols. In
the book of Enoch " stars " eat, and have hands and feet. The image of
the star is immediately superseded by direct references to the personality
wJiich it represents.
The characteristics of Apocalyptic literature are
1. The cessation of normal Prophecy.