CHAPTER XIII

St. Paul in Greece—Antichrist and the Restrainer

A

LONG the great Roman road that led through the Macedonian cities, the unseen hand of Christ was now drawing the Gospel further and further away from what we call the Bible lands, nearer to the centre of the then civilized world, nearer to Rome, nearer therefore to the great stream of the world's history, with which in a few generations it was to mingle, with consequences which God alone foreknew.

From Philippi-demanding an apology from the Prætors for the violence they had done them, which they readily accorded when they found that they were Roman citizens,-Paul and Silas, with their young companion, journeyed on—a hundred miles or more -to Thessalonica, there to find that their worst enemies were by no means the civil magistrates, but their own countrymen. Three weeks only had they been in the place when the Jews, gathering a company of the baser sort,' 'set all the city on an uproar," and assaulting the house where Paul and Silas lodged, dragged their host Jason before the magistrates1, who

1

Thessalonica, being a 'free city,' and not a colony,' retained its native magistracy. St. Luke as usual shows his minute accuracy, calling them Politarchs. See Appendix, p. 153.

took bail of Jason, and so allayed the tumult. Not content, the baffled Jews pursued the Apostle to Berea, and stirring up the people there against him drove him onward into Greece.

Thus was St. Paul's route overruled and changed; not onward now to Rome,-that must be postponed ; the recent tumults in the capital, which had just led Claudius to expel the Jews, made this no fitting time for St. Paul's mission there; he is turned aside therefore, and finds himself at Athens, confronted with the world's keenest intellects in the heart of Greece.

us.

A crowd of thoughts rush into the mind at the mention of Athens; sacred and profane history seem to be brought into such startling contact. But to indulge such thoughts would contribute nothing to the right understanding of the simple narrative before Nor was the Athens, which St. Paul visited, the Athens of our Greek History. Greece, or rather Achaia, to give it the name it now bore, was a mere province of the Roman Empire; Corinth its capital; Athens frequented only for the sake of its schools of philosophy. Rome sent her youths to study at Athens as we send ours to Oxford or Cambridge. But politically the city was of no importance; and St. Paul's brief sojourn there, though full of vivid interest, is but an episode, as it were, in what may be called his spiritual invasion of the Roman Empire.

As he traversed the streets of Athens his eager spirit was stirred within him by the Pagan sights that met his eye on every side. No city of the Empire was so crowded with statuary. The Greek religion, gratifying a highly cultivated taste by its sculpture, and feeding the national love of excitement

by its pageantry, was altogether unconnected with morality; and St. Paul was simply shocked by it. In the market-place, where the Athenians resorted daily to hear the news and enjoy their unrivalled climate, the Apostle spoke earnestly, and was soon surrounded by the students eager to hear what the Eastern stranger had to say. Catching from his mouth the often repeated words 'Jesus' and 'Resurrection,' they thought these were new divinities that he was trying to introduce. And though many laughed there was a real curiosity to hear him; and that they might do so the more conveniently they adjourned from the market to the adjoining amphitheatre of stone seats, where the court of Areopagus used to hold its sittings in the open air. We must not suppose that the court was now sitting, though some of the Areopagites were among the listeners. St. Paul's speech was followed by no sentence, nor is it like the defence of one upon his trial. He had been asked to give a public address, and he does so with a skill and with an eloquence which have excited the admiration of our greatest orators. Doubtless what St. Luke. gives us is but a brief abstract, but every word suggests the power of the original. He begins with his characteristic courtesy1, seeking some common ground with his hearers, whereon he may build up his great argument. It is difficult to say which is most admirable, the persuasiveness with which he speaks, or the courage with which he sets before them the falseness of their creature-worship, of their idolatry, of their

1 The reader need hardly be reminded that the word rendered 'too superstitious' ought to be translated 'scrupulously religious,' being said in praise, as Chrysostom long ago pointed out, citing it in illustration of St. Paul's own precept in Col. iv. 5, 6.—Hom. xi. in Coloss.

proud exclusiveness, and the certainty of a coming judgment.

While Paul spoke of natural theology, and even of a future judgment, they listened; but when he approached the distinctive doctrine of the Gospel,—that this future Judge would be One whom God had recently raised from the dead, they interrupted him, and did not care to listen longer ;-it was foolishness to them. Some mocked, while others more civilly said they would listen to the rest of what he had to say some other time. A few, a very few, 'clave to him,' and sought to hear more. But for the rest, the whole tone and temper of the Athenians, intellectual as they were, was too childish to understand the earnestness of the inspired Hebrew man; and St. Paul went on to Corinth. And here in the Romanized1 capital of Greece for a full year and a half he made his home.

The period of six years on which we are now enterng was perhaps the season of St. Paul's greatest spiritual and intellectual exertion. Excepting only the hurried visit to the Holy Land in A.D. 54, he spent these years among the Greeks, Corinth and Ephesus being his headquarters. To this period belong his six greatest Epistles, the two to the Thessalonians, the two to the Corinthians, the Epistle to the Galatians, and, greatest of all, that to the Romans. In all of them there breathes a consciousness of the grandeur of the work before him, a conviction that here emphatically-westward not eastward—lay the

1 The old Greek Corinth had been shamefully destroyed by Mummius two hundred years before. C. Julius Cæsar had refounded and rebuilt it; and it was in St. Paul's time altogether Roman.

field of labour to which the Lord had called him.

The side-light which these Epistles throw upon the narrative of the Acts is invaluable.

It is indeed a privilege to be permitted at this crisis of St. Paul's life thus to look into his very mind, and see what thoughts most occupied him on finding himself for the first time in these great cities of the Roman Empire. His two letters to the Thessalonians were written in the early weeks of his sojourn at Corinth.

We open them, and what do we find? In the midst of very great depression of spirits, we find his thoughts ever recurring to the Second Advent of the Lord Jesus; and, as connected with it, he seems to be thinking of the destiny of this great Roman Empire, so powerful in its perfect organization for good or evil; and there is a third thought, he seems to have now felt, more intensely than at any other period of his life, the fearful wickedness—the mystery of iniquity of the Jews. Never in any other of his writings do we meet with such an outburst of anger against the Jews as that in the first Epistle :-men 'who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us, hateful to God, enemies of mankind, doing all they could to hinder the salvation of the Gentiles, filling up the measure of their own sins, bringing down upon themselves the wrath of God to the very uttermost.'

Of these things, and especially of the Second Advent, he seems to have spoken freely at Thessalonica; 'Remember ye not,' he writes in his second letter, ' that when I was yet with you, I told you these things.' This explains, what might else have perplexed us in