Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/441

PAUL 419 at which the Jewish distinctions of meats were disregarded. He thereby accepted Paul s position. But when " certain came from James " he drew back. The position of James was probably that, even if the law had ceased to be valid as a means of justification, it was still valid as a rule of life. For reasons which are not apparent, possibly the wish not to break with the community at Jerusalem, not only Peter but Barnabas and the whole of the Jewish party at Antioch accepted that position, with its consequent obligation of separation from the Gentile brethren, not only in social life, but probably also in the partaking of the Lord s Supper. Paul showed that the position of Peter was illogical, and that he was self-convicted (/careyrwcr/xevos r}v, Gal. ii. 11). His argument was that the freedom from the law was complete, and that to attach merit to obedience to the law was to make disobedience to the law a sin, and, by causing those who sought to be justified by faith only to be transgressors, to make Christ a " minister of sin." Obedience to any part of the law involved recognition of the whole of it as obligatory (Gal. v. 3), and consequently "made void the grace of God." The schism in the community at Antioch was probably never healed. It is not probable that Paul s contention was there victorious ; for, while Paul never again speaks of that city, Peter seems to have remained there, and he was looked upon in later times as the founder of its church. [i mis- But this failure at Antioch served to Paul as the occasion CT y for carrying out a bolder conception. The horizon of his irs- mission widened before him. The " fulness of the Gentiles " had to be brought in. His diocese was no longer Antioch, but the whole of the Roman empire. The years that followed were almost wholly spent among its great cities, " preaching among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ " (Eph. iii. 8). He became the spiritual father of many communities, and he watched over them with a father s constant care. He gathered round him a company of faithful disciples, who shared with him his missionary work, and whom he sent sometimes to break new ground, sometimes to arrange disputes, sometimes to gather con tributions, sometimes to examine and report. Of his travels, whether with them or alone, no complete record has been preserved ; some of them are minutely described in the Acts, others within the same period are knoAvn only or chiefly from his epistles. In giving an account of them it is necessary to change to some extent the historical perspective which is presented in the Acts ; for, in working up fragments of itineraries of Paul s companions into a consecutive narrative, many things are made to come into the foreground which Paul himself would probably have disregarded, and many things are omitted or thrown into the shade to which, from his letters, he appears to have attached a primary importance. 1 The first scene of his new activity, if indeed it be allow able to consider the conference at Jerusalem and the subse quent dispute at Antioch as having given occasion for a new departure, Avas probably the eastern part of Asia Minor, n and more particularly Galatia. Some of it he had visited atia. before ; and from the fact that the Galatians, though they had been heathens (Gal. iv. 8), were evidently acquainted with the law, it may be inferred that he still went on the track of Jewish missionaries, and that here, as elsewhere, Judaism had prepared the way for Christianity. Of his preaching he himself gives a brief summary ; it was the vivid setting forth before their eyes of Jesus as the crucified 1 The most important instance of this is probably the almost entire omission of an account of his relations with the community at Corinth ; one of his visits is entirely omitted, another is also omitted, though it may be inferred from the general expression " he came into Greece " (xx. 2) ; and of the disputes in the community, and Paul s relations to them, there is not a single word. Messiah, and it was confirmed by evident signs of the working of the Spirit (Gal. iii. 1, 5). The new converts received it with enthusiasm ; he felt for them as a father ; and an illness (some have thought, from the form of ex pression in Gal. iv. 15, that it was an acute ophthalmia) which came upon him (assuming this to have been his first visit) intensified their mutual affection. What we learn specially of the Galatians is probably true also of the other Gentiles who received him ; some of them were baptized (Gal. iii. 27), they were formed into communities (Gal. i. 2), and they were so far organized as to have a distinc tion between teachers and taught (Gal. vi. 6). But an imperative call summoned him to Europe. The western part of Asia Minor, in which afterwards were formed the important churches of Ephesus, Colossae, Hierapolis, and Laodicea, was for the present left alone. He passed on into Macedonia. The change was more than a passage in Mace from Asia to Europe. Hitherto, if Antioch be excepted, <lonia. he had preached only in small provincial towns. Hence forward he preached chiefly, and at last exclusively, in the great centres of population. He began with Philippi, which was at once a great military post and the wealthy entrepot of the gold and silver mines of the neighbouring Mount Pang8eus. The testimony of the eye-witness whose account is incorporated in Acts xvi. 12-18 tells us that his first convert was a Jewish proselyte, named Lydia ; and Paul himself mentions other women converts (Phil. iv. 2). There is the special interest about the community which soon grew up that it was organized after the manner of the guilds, of which there were many both at Philippi and in other towns of Macedonia, and that its administrative officers were entitled, probably from the analogy of those guilds, " bishops " and " deacons." In Europe, as in Asia, persecution attended him. He was "shamefully entreated" at Philippi (1 Thess. ii. 2), and according to the Acts the ill-treatment came not from the Jews but from the Gentile employers of a frenzied prophetess, who saw in Paul s preaching an element of danger to their craft. Consequently he left that city, and passingover Amphipolis, the political capital of theprovince, but the seat rather of the official classes than of trade, he went on to the great seaport and commercial city of Thessalonica. His converts there seem to have been chiefly among the Gentile workmen (1 Thess. iv. 11 ; 2 Thess. iii. 10-12), and he himself became one of them. Knowing as he did the scanty wages of their toil, he " worked night and day that he might not burden any of them" (1 Thess. ii. 9 ; 2 Thess. iii. 8). But for all his working he does not seem to have earned enough to support his little com pany ; he was constrained both once and again to accept help from Philippi (Phil. iv. 16). He was determined that, whatever he might have to endure, no sordid thought should enter into his relations with the Thessalonians ; he would be to them only what a father is to his children, behaving himself "holily and righteously and unblameably," and exhorting them to walk worthily of God who had called them (1 Thess. ii. 10-12). But there, as elsewhere, his preaching was " in much conflict." The Jews were actively hostile. According to the account in the Acts (xvii. 5-9), they at last hounded on the lazzaroni of the city, who were doubtless moved as easily as a Moslem crowd in modern times by any cry of treason or infidelity, to attack the house of Jason (possibly one of Paul s kinsmen, Rom. xvi. 21), either because Paul himself was lodging there, or be cause it was the meeting-place of the community. Paul and Silas were not there, and so escaped ; but it was thought prudent that they should go at once and secretly to the neighbouring small town of Beroea. Thither, however, the fanatical Jews of Thessalonica pursued them ; and Paul, leaving his companions Silas and Timothy at Beroea, gave