The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles Volume Ii Part 3

II. The conversation between Christ and Ananias next claims our attention. Here we may note that it was the Lord Jesus Christ Himself who appeared to Ananias, and when appearing makes the most tremendous claims for Himself and allows them when made by Ananias. We are so accustomed to the words of the narrative that we do not recognise their bold a.s.sumptions and what they imply. The Lord calls Ananias, as He called Samuel of old, and then receives the same answer as Samuel gave, "Behold I am here, Lord." Ananias speaks to Jesus Christ of the disciples, and describes them as "_Thy_ saints, who call upon _Thy_ name." He knew that prayer to Jesus Christ was practised by them and const.i.tuted their special note or mark. Our Lord describes St. Paul "as a chosen vessel unto _Me_, to bear _My name_ before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel, for _I_ will show him how many things he must suffer for _My name's_ sake." While again, when Ananias came into the house of Judas, he is so completely dominated by the idea of Jesus Christ, His presence, His power, His mission, that his words are, "The Lord Jesus hath sent me that thou mayest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost." In these pa.s.sages we have a view of primitive Christianity and its doctrine as taught by Christ Himself, by His earliest disciples, and as viewed and recorded by the second generation of Christians, and it is all the same from whatever point it is looked at. The earliest form of Christianity was Christ and nothing else. The personality of Christ dominated every other idea. There was no explaining away the historical facts of His life, there was no watering down His supernatural actions and claims; the Lord Jesus--and His ordinary human name was used--the Lord Jesus, whom the Jews had known as the carpenter's son, and had rejected as the prophet of Nazareth, and had crucified as the pretended king of Israel, He was for Ananias of Damascus the supernatural Being who now ruled the universe, and struck down the persecutor of His people, and sent His messengers and apostles that they might with Divine power heal the wounded and comfort the broken-hearted. Ananias felt no difficulty in identifying Jesus the despised, the crucified, with the Lord of glory who had appeared to him, upon whose name he called and with whom he communed. Jesus Christ was not for him a dream or a ghost, or a pa.s.sing appearance, or a distinguished teacher, or a mighty prophet, whose spirit lived with the souls of the good and blessed of every age at rest in paradise. The Jesus of Ananias was no inhabitant or child of earth, no matter how pure and exalted. The Jesus of Nazareth was the Being of beings, who had a just right to call G.o.d's people "His saints," and to describe the great work of His messengers and ministers to be that of "bearing His name before the Gentiles," because the Christianity of Ananias and of the earliest Church was no poor, weak, diluted system of mere natural religion regarding Jesus Christ as a Divine prophet, but as nothing more. It theorised not, indeed, about the Incarnation and the modes of the Divine existence. It was too much wrapped up in adoring the Divine manifestations to trouble itself about such questions, which came to the front when love waxed cold and men had time to a.n.a.lyse and debate.

For Ananias and for men like him it was sufficient to know that Jesus Christ was G.o.d manifest in the flesh. For them and for the earliest Church that one fact embodied the whole of Christianity. Jesus Christ, the same when living in Galilee, suffering in Jerusalem, ascending from Olivet, reigning on the right hand of the Majesty on high, or manifesting Himself to His people, was the beginning and end of all religion.

This is a very important point to insist upon in the present age, when men have endeavoured to represent the religion of the primitive Church in quite a different light, and to teach that St. Paul was the inventor of that dogmatic system which insists upon the supreme importance and the essential deity of the Person of Jesus Christ. St.

Luke's narrative in this pa.s.sage seems to me quite decisive against such a theory, and shows us how Christianity struck an independent mind like that of Ananias, and how it was taught at a distant Christian Church like Damascus within five or at most seven years after the Ascension of Jesus Christ.[48]

[48] Ma.s.sutius, _loc. cit._, has a long chapter (book ii., ch. i.) on the date of St. Paul's conversion. See Findlay's _Epistles of St. Paul_, pp. 5, 6, for a concise statement of the arguments concerning it. Lewin's _Fasti Sacri_, pp. lxvi. and 253, contains long dissertations upon this point, a simple reference to which must suffice.

Then, again, we have in the vision granted to Ananias and the revelation made to him a description of Christ's disciples. The description is a twofold one, coming on the one hand from Christ, and on the other from Ananias, and yet they both agree. Ananias describes the religion of Christ when he says, "Lord, I have heard from many of this man, how much evil he did to Thy saints at Jerusalem"; and then he proceeds to identify His "saints" with those that called on Christ's name at Damascus. We have already noted prayer to Christ as a distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of His people[49]; but here we find, for the first time in the New Testament, the term "saints" applied to the ordinary followers of Christ, though in a short time it seems to have become the usual designation for the adherents of the crucified Redeemer, as we shall see by a reference to Rom. i. 7; 1 Cor. i. 2; Eph. i. 1, and to numerous other pa.s.sages scattered throughout the Epistles. Our Lord Himself sanctions the use of this t.i.tle, and applies it Himself in a different shape in the fuller account of the divine words given us by St. Paul in his speech before King Agrippa (ch. xxvi. 18). Christ tells St. Paul of his destined work "to turn the Gentiles from darkness to light, that they may receive an inheritance among them which are _sanctified_ by faith that is in Me."

The followers of Christ were recognised as saints in the true sense of the word saint--that is, as separated, dedicated, consecrated persons, who had been made to drink into one Divine Spirit, had been made partakers of a new life, had been admitted to a kingdom of light and a fellows.h.i.+p of love, and who, by virtue of these blessings, had been cut off from the power of Satan and the kingdom of darkness. And all this had been and ever is to be effected "by faith that is in Christ."

Christ's saints or separated people are sanctified by faith in Christ.

Not that the bare exercise of a faculty or feeling called faith will exercise a sanctifying influence upon human nature,--this would be simply to make man his own sanctifier, and to usurp for his own poor weak wretched self the work and power which belong to the Holy Ghost alone,--but when Christ is realised as including all the parts of G.o.d's final revelation, when no partial or limited view is taken of Christ's work as if it were limited to the Incarnation alone, or the Atonement alone, or the Resurrection alone, but when the diverse and various parts and laws of His revelation are recognised as divinely taught, and therefore as tremendously important for the soul's health.

When the Holy Ghost and His mission, and good works and their absolute necessity, and Christ's sacraments and His other appointed means of grace are duly honoured and reverently received, then indeed, and then alone, faith is truly exercised in Christ, and men are not merely separated by an external consecration, such as the Jews received at circ.u.mcision, and which qualified even that hard-hearted and stubborn people to be called a nation of saints; but when Christ is thus truly and fully received by faith into the hearts and affections of His people, they walk worthy of the high vocation called upon them. Many a mistaken exposition has been offered of St. Paul's Epistles, and many an effort has been made to explain away the plainest statements, because men will apply a false meaning to the word saints which Ananias here uses. If we first determine that the word saint could only have been applied to a truly converted man, clothed in the robe of Christ's imputed righteousness, elected from eternity to everlasting salvation, and who could never finally fall away, and then find the term so defined applied, for instance, to the Corinthian Church as a whole, we shall come to some strange results. If truly converted men, true saints of Christ, could be guilty of sins such as were not named amongst the heathen, or could be drunk at the Lord's Table, or could cherish all that long and dreary catalogue of spiritual crimes enumerated in the Corinthian Epistles, then indeed the words true conversion have completely changed their meaning, and Christianity, instead of being the principle and fountain of a regenerate life, becomes a cloak under which all kinds of maliciousness and evil-doing may have free course and be glorified.

[49] See vol. i., pp. 338-41.

Our Lord protests beforehand unto St. Paul against such a perversion of the gospel of free grace with which His great Apostle had all his life to struggle. Antinomianism is as old as St. Paul's doctrine--so very much misunderstood--of justification. Our Lord raises His voice against it in His earliest commission to St. Paul when He sends him to the Gentiles "to turn them from darkness to light," that is, from moral and spiritual darkness to moral and spiritual light, and "from the power of Satan unto G.o.d." And the New Testament often enough tells us what is meant by "the power of Satan." It was not any mere system of false beliefs alone, but it was a wicked, impure belief joined and leading to a wicked and impure practice; and St. Paul's work was to turn the Gentiles from a wicked faith, combined with a still more wicked practice, to a life sanctified and purified and renewed after the image of a living Christ.[50]

[50] I am referring in this pa.s.sage to what we may designate the Antinomian method of expounding First Corinthians still current in many circles. They first determine that the word saint is always used by St. Paul to express a truly converted man, one, therefore, in their idea who has no need to ask pardon for sin and who never can finally fall away. They then find this term "saints" applied to the Corinthian Church, which must therefore have been composed of truly converted men alone, else, they think, St. Paul would not have called them saints. But then a difficulty arises, How about the gross sins prevalent in that Church? Their peculiar system of theology, however, rapidly solves this perplexing point. All the sins of believers, past, present or to come, have been forgiven long before they were born, therefore these gross immoralities at Corinth were mere believer's slips, as I have heard them called. A believer guilty of them should be sorry for them as causing scanda to the world, but as far as final salvation is concerned he has nothing to do with them save to a.s.sure himself of their pardon wrought out by our Lord on the cross. Abundant instances of this method of exposition will be found in the works of Dr. Williams, the Nonconformist of the time of William III., founder of the well-known library in Grafton Street, London. He had a great controversy with the Antinomians of the day, who represented themselves as the true champions of the doctrines of grace. They were simply teaching the ancient Gnostic heresy that the soul can be in communion with G.o.d while the body is all the time wallowing in the depths of sin. Precisely the same views are now commonly taught and called as in Williams's day, two hundred years ago, "the Gospel." If, however, we recognise the New Testament use of the word saints as meaning "dedicated to G.o.d, consecrated to His service," the meaning of the First Corinthians and of the words of Ananias is quite clear and plain, and no such immoral results follow as the Antinomian exegesis implies, but rather the saintly character of baptized Christians becomes the foundation of the most practical exhortations to holiness of life.

III. Finally, we notice in this conversation, and that only very briefly, the t.i.tle given by our Lord to St. Paul, which became the favourite designation of the Apostle of the Gentiles, especially among the Western doctors of the ancient Church. "Go thy way," says Christ to Ananias, "for he is a chosen vessel unto Me," or, as the Revisers put it in the margin, translating still more literally from the original, "for he is a vessel of election." "Vas Electionis" is the usual t.i.tle for St. Paul in St. Jerome's letters, as also in St.

Chrysostom's homilies, and it expresses a side of his character which is prominent throughout his writings. Saul's early life was so alienated from Christ, his career had been so completely hostile to the gospel, his conversion had been so entirely G.o.d's work and G.o.d's work alone, that he ever felt and ever insisted more than the other New Testament writers on G.o.d's electing love. If we compare the writings of St. John with those of St. Paul, we shall see how naturally and completely they reflect in their tone the history of their lives. St. John's life was one long continuous steady growth in Divine knowledge. There were no great gaps or breaks in that life, and so we find that his writings do not ignore G.o.d's electing love and preventing grace as the source of everything good in man. "We love Him because He first loved us" are words which show that St. John's gospel was at bottom the same as St. Paul's. But St. John's favourite topic is the Incarnation and its importance, and its results in purity of heart and in a sweet consciousness of the Divine Spirit. St. Paul's life, on the other hand, was no continuous upgrowth from youth's earliest day to life's latest eventide. There was a great gap, a tremendous yawning chasm separating the one portion from the other, and Paul never could forget that it was G.o.d's choice alone which turned the persecuting Rabbi into the Christian Apostle. His Epistles to the Romans, Ephesians, and Galatians amply testify to the effects of this doctrine upon his whole soul, and show that the expositors of the early Church displayed a true instinct and gauged his character aright when they designated him by this t.i.tle, "Vas Electionis." And yet the Apostle proved his Divine inspiration, for he held and taught this truth in no one-sided manner. He combined the doctrine of electing love with that of intense human free will and awful personal responsibility. He made no effort intellectually to reconcile the two opposite sides of truth, but, wiser than many who followed him, he accepted both and found in them both, matter for practical guidance.

G.o.d's eternal and electing love made him humble; man's free will and responsibility made him awfully in earnest. Two pa.s.sages, drawn from different Epistles, sufficiently explain St. Paul's view. Gal. i. 15, 16--"When it was the good pleasure of G.o.d, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me"--are words which show how entirely St. Paul viewed himself as a "Vas Electionis." 1 Cor. ix. 27--"I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage, lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected"--are words showing how real and profound was his fear of final defeat and ruin, how convinced he was that no display of Divine grace or love a.s.sured him of his own final perseverance. It is well that people should notice this difference between the tone and spiritual experience of a Paul and of a John. At times sincere Christians have been troubled because their spiritual experience and feelings have been very different from St. Paul's. They have limited to a large extent their own reading of Scripture to his writings, and have not noticed the clear distinction which Scripture makes between the tone and ideas of St. Paul and St. Peter, St. James and St. John; and why? Just to meet this very tendency, and to show us that spiritual experiences, feelings, temptations, must vary with the varying circ.u.mstances of each individual. No saintly life can be taken as a universal model or standard; and, above all, the conversion of a persecutor and blasphemer like St. Paul is not to be taken as the normal type of G.o.d's dealings with men, who grow up, like St. John or like Timothy, in the paths of Divine love from their earliest childhood.[51]

[51] It should be carefully noted that the great end of St. Paul's election is set forth by our Lord when speaking to Ananias as "to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel." From the very outset of Paul's Christian career his work as the Apostle of the Gentiles is thus clearly revealed through Ananias. I say _through_ Ananias, and not _to_ him; for I suppose that Ananias could not himself have realised the real force and meaning of the Divine words.

There is one common feature, however, which can be traced in all religious lives, whether sternly and even violently ordered like Saul's, or gently guided like St. John's. They all agree in presenting one feature when the fresh breath of the Spirit blows upon them and the deeper sense of life's importance first dawns upon the vision, and that is, they are all marked by prayer. Of every sincere seeker the Divine watcher, ever on the outlook for the signs of spiritual life, repeats "Behold, he prayeth." Saul, we may be sure, had never forgotten his duty in the matter of the prescribed round of Jewish devotions; but now for the first time he rose above the level of mere mechanical saying of prayer to spiritual communion with G.o.d in Christ; now for the first time he prayed a Christian prayer, through Christ and to Christ; now for the first time perhaps he learned one secret of the spiritual life, which is this, that prayer is something wider and n.o.bler than mere asking. Prayer is communion of the spirit with G.o.d reconciled in Christ Jesus. That communion is often deepest and most comforting when enjoyed in simple silence. Saul, the converted persecutor, could know but little yet of what to ask from Christ. But in the revelations made in those hours of darkness and penitence and silence, there were vouchsafed to him renewed proofs of the truths already gained, and of the awful trials which those truths, realised and acted out, would demand from him, "I will show him what things he must suffer for My sake."

CHAPTER IV.

_SAUL AND SINAI._

"Saul was certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus.

And straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that He is the Son of G.o.d."--ACTS ix. 19, 20.

We have bestowed a great deal of attention upon the incidents at Damascus, because the conversion of Saul of Tarsus is more closely connected with the truth and authenticity of Christianity than any other event save those immediately connected with the life and ministry of our Lord Himself. We shall, however, in this chapter, endeavour to discuss the remaining circ.u.mstances of it which the Acts of the Apostles brings under our notice.

I. We are told in verse 17 of the visit of Ananias to Saul. "Ananias departed, and entered into the house; and laying his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way which thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mayest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost." This conversation with Ananias is largely expanded by St. Paul himself in the account which he gives us in Acts xxii., while in his speech to Agrippa in the twenty-sixth chapter he entirely omits all mention of Ananias, and seems to introduce our Lord as the only person who spoke to him, and yet there is no real inconsistency. St. Paul, in fact, in the latter address is intent on setting vividly before Agrippa the sum total of the revelations made by Christ. He ignores, therefore, every secondary agent. Ananias was Christ's messenger. His words were merely those which Christ put into his mouth. St. Paul goes, therefore, to the root of the matter, and attributes everything, whether uttered by our Lord or by Ananias, to the former alone, who was, indeed, the great Inspirer of every expression, the true Director of every minutest portion of this important transaction.

The ninth chapter, on the other hand, breaks the story up into its component parts, and shows us the various actors in the scene. We see the Lord Jesus consciously presiding over all, revealing Himself now to this person and again to that person. We get a glimpse for a moment behind the veil which Divine Providence throws around His doings and the doings of the children of men. We see Christ revealing Himself now to Saul and then to Ananias, informing the latter of the revelations made to the former; just as He subsequently revealed Himself almost simultaneously to Cornelius at Caesarea and to Simon Peter at Joppa, preparing the one for the other. The Lord thus hints at an explanation of those simultaneous cravings, aspirations, and spiritual desires which we often find unaccountably arising amid far distant lands and in widely separated hearts. The feelings may seem but vague aspirations and their coincidence a mere chance one, but the typical cases of Saul and Ananias, or of Cornelius and St. Peter, teach the believer to see in them the direct action and government of the Lord Jesus Christ, turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. Surely we have an instance of such simultaneous operations of the Divine Spirit, and that on the largest scale, in the cravings of the world after a Saviour at the age and time when our Lord came! Virgil was then preaching in tones so Christian concerning the coming Saviour whom the world was expecting, that the great Italian poet Dante exempts him from h.e.l.l on account of his dim but real faith. The Wise Men were then seeking Christ from a far country; Caiaphas was prophesying concerning a man who was to die for G.o.d's people. Mankind, all the world over, was unconsciously longing with a divinely inspired desire for that very salvation which G.o.d was then revealing; just as upon the narrower stage of Damascus or Caesarea Jesus Christ inspired Saul and Cornelius with a Divine want and prepared Ananias and Peter to satisfy it. John Keble in his poem for Easter Monday has well seized and ill.u.s.trated this point, so full of comfort and edification, turning it into a practical direction for the life of the human spirit:--

"Even so the course of prayer who knows?

It springs in silence where it will, Springs out of sight, and flows At first a lonely rill.

"Unheard by all but angel ears, The good Cornelius knelt alone, Nor dreamed his prayers and tears Could help a world undone.

"The while upon his terraced roof, The loved apostle to the Lord, In silent thought aloof, For heavenly vision soared.

"The saint beside the ocean prayed, The soldier in his chosen bower, Where all his eye surveyed Seemed sacred in that hour.

"To each unknown his brother's prayer, Yet brethren true in dearest love Were they--and now they share Fraternal joys above."

Ananias, guided by Divine Providence, enters into Saul's presence, states his mission, lays his hands upon him and restores him to sight.

Ananias is careful, however, to disclaim all merit so far as he is himself concerned in the matter of this miracle. His language is exactly the same in tone as that of the apostles Peter and John when they had healed the impotent man: "Why marvel ye at this man? or why fasten ye your eyes on us, as though by our own power or G.o.dliness we had made him to walk?... By faith in His name hath His name made this man strong," were their words to the people. "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk," was their command to the man himself. And so in the case of Ananias, he attributes the healing power to Jesus Christ alone. "The Lord Jesus, who appeared unto thee, ... hath sent me, that thou mayest receive thy sight." The theology and faith of the Church at Damascus were exactly the same as those of the Apostles and Church at Jerusalem. And what a confirmation of Saul's own faith must this miracle have been! It was then no pa.s.sing vision, no fancy of a heated imagination which he had experienced; but he had the actual proof in his own person of their objective reality, a demonstration that the power of Jesus of Nazareth ordered all things, both in heaven and earth, healing the bodily as it could illuminate the spiritual eye.

II. Ananias restored Saul's sight. According to the ninth of Acts his mission was limited to this one point; but, according to St. Paul's own account in the twenty-second chapter, he made a much longer communication to the future Apostle: "The G.o.d of our fathers hath appointed thee to know His will, and to see the Righteous One, and to hear a voice from His mouth. For thou shalt be a witness for Him unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard. And now why tarriest thou?

Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on His name."

Ananias predicted to Saul his future mission, his apostles.h.i.+p to all nations, and the fact that the Apostle of the Gentiles would find the root and sustenance of his work in the force of personal conviction with which his miraculous conversion had endowed him. Personal knowledge, individual acquaintance with the things of the eternal world was then, as it is still, the first condition of successful work for Jesus Christ. There may be intellectual power, intense energy, transcendent eloquence, consummate ability; but in the spiritual order these things avail nothing till there be joined thereto that sense of heavenly force and reality which a personal knowledge of the things unseen imparts. Then heart answers to heart, and the great depths of man's nature respond and open themselves to the voice and teaching of one who speaks as St. Paul did of what "he had seen and heard."

There are two points in this address of Ananias as reported by St.

Paul himself to which we would direct special attention. Ananias baptized Saul, and used very decided language on the subject, language from which some would now shrink. These two points embody important teaching. Ananias baptized Saul though Christ had personally called him. This shows the importance which the Holy Scriptures attach to baptism, and shows us something too of the nature of Holy Scripture itself. St. Luke wrote the Acts as a kind of continuation of his Gospel, to give an account to Theophilus of the rise and progress of Christianity down to his own time. St. Luke in doing so tells us of the inst.i.tution of the Eucharist, but he does not say one word in his Gospel about the appointment of baptism. He does not record the baptismal commission, for which we must turn to St. Matthew xxviii.

19, or to St. Mark xvi. 16. Yet St. Luke is careful to report the baptism of the three thousand on the Day of Pentecost, of the Samaritans, of the eunuch, and now of St. Paul, as afterwards of Cornelius, of Lydia, of the Philippian jailor, and of the Ephesian followers of John the Baptist. He records the universality of Christian baptism, and thus proves its obligation; but he does not give us a hint of the origin of this sacrament, nor does he trace it back to any word or command of the Lord Jesus Christ. He evidently took all these things as quite well known and understood, and merely describes the observance of a sacrament which needed no explanation on his part. The writings of St. Luke were intended to instruct Theophilus in the facts concerning our Lord's life and the labours of certain leading individuals among His earliest followers; but they make no pretence, nor do the other Gospels make any pretence, of being an exhaustive history of our Lord's ministry or of the practice of the earliest Church; and their silence does not necessarily prove that much was not known and practised in the early Church about which they have no occasion to speak.[52] The words of Ananias and the obedience of Saul show us the importance which the Holy Spirit attached to this sacrament of baptism. Here was a man to whom Christ Himself had personally appeared, whom Christ had personally called, and to whom He had made long-continued revelations of His will. Yet He instructed him by the mouth of Ananias to receive the sacrament of baptism. Surely if any man was ever exempted from submission to what some would esteem the outward ordinance, it was this penitent and privileged convert!

But no: to him the words of G.o.d's messenger are the same as to the humblest sinner, "Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins." I have known of truly good men who showed their want of spiritual humility, or perhaps I should rather say of spiritual thought and reflection, in this direction. I have known of persons aroused from religious torpor and death by powerful though one-sided teaching. G.o.d has blessed such teaching to the awakening in them of the first elements of spiritual life, and then they have stopped short. They were called, as Saul was, in an unbaptized state. They had never previously received the sacrament of regeneration according to Christ's appointment, and when Christ aroused them they thought this primal blessing quite sufficient, and judged it unnecessary to obey the full commands of Christ and be united by baptism to His Body the Church. They judged, in fact, that the blessing of conversion absolved them from the sacrament of responsibility; but such was not the view of the primitive Church. The blessing of conversion as in St. Paul's case, the visible and audible descent of the Holy Ghost as in the case of Cornelius, hindered not the importance nor dispensed with the necessity of the sacrament of baptism, which was the door of admission to the Divine society and to a higher level in the Divine life than any hitherto attained. Persons who act as those misguided individuals of whom we have spoken stop short at the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, and they attain to none of its heights, they sound none of its depths, because they bend not their wills, and learn not the sweetness and the power involved in spiritual humiliation and in lowly self-denying obedience taught by the Master Himself when He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."[53]

[52] Archbishop Whately used to make an important distinction between things _anti_-Scriptural and things _un_-Scriptural.

Things _anti_-Scriptural cannot be tolerated by the Church, because they contradict the Word of G.o.d. Things _un_-Scriptural, that is, things about which Scripture is silent and for which no direct warrant can be produced, may be right or wrong, useful or vicious. Sunday schools, for instance, are in this sense unscriptural. The Scriptures are silent about them, and if direct warrant with chapter and verse be required for them, none such can be produced. Hooker, in his Third Book, ch. v.-viii., has a powerful argument upon this subject as against the ultra-reformers or Puritans of his day, who would have tied the Church within much tighter bonds than ever Judaism submitted to.

[53] I have known cases where baptism was rejected avowedly on these grounds. This is of course a natural result of the pus.h.i.+ng individualism in religion to an extreme, and is often found among what we may call extreme Protestants. It naturally results from two errors. First of all, from a rejection of the article of the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." Such men reject the doctrine of a Church as a great fundamental article of the Creed, one of the necessary articles of the Christian faith, and therefore they reject baptism which is the door of entrance into the Divine society. And, secondly, they reject the true definition and idea of a sacrament. They view baptism, for instance, as the expression merely of a faith already received, and as nothing more. If, then, they express this faith sufficiently by their life and actions, baptism seems to them an empty and vain ceremony. But surely this was not St. Paul's view, either when he received baptism at the hands of Ananias, or when he wrote in the sixth of Romans "We were buried therefore with Him through baptism into death."

The language, again, of Ananias about baptism sounds strange in some ears, and yet the experience of missionaries is a sufficient explanation of it. What is that language? "Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins." These words sound startling to one accustomed to identify the was.h.i.+ng away of sin with the exercise of faith, and yet there they stand, and no method of exegesis will avail to make them say anything else than this, that baptism was for Saul the was.h.i.+ng away of sin, so that if he did not accept baptism his sins would not have been washed away. The experience, however, of those who labour in the mission field explains the whole difficulty. Baptism is the act of open confession and acknowledgment of Christ. St. Paul himself teaches the absolute importance of this confession: "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."[54] Pagan converts are even still abundantly found who are willing to accept the pure morality and the sublime teaching of Christianity, who are willing to believe and see in Jesus Christ the supreme revelation of G.o.d made to the human race, but who are not willing to incur loss and persecution and trial for His sake by the reception of Christian baptism and a public confession of their faith.

They may believe with the heart in the revelation of righteousness and may lead moral lives in consequence, but they are not willing to make public confession leading them into a state of salvation. They are, in fact, in the position of Saul of Tarsus as he prayed in the house of Judas, but they will go no farther. They will not act as he did, they will not take the decisive step, they will not arise and be baptized and wash away their sins, calling on the name of Jesus Christ. And if Saul of Tarsus had been like them and had acted as they do, he might have received the vision and have been convinced of the truth of Jesus Christ and of His mission, but yet his moral cowardice would have spoilt the whole, and Saul would have remained in his sins, unpardoned, unaccepted, reprobate from Christ, because he remained unbaptized. Christianity, in fact, is a covenant, and forgiveness of sins is one of the blessings attached to this covenant. Until men perform its conditions and actually enter into the covenant the blessings of the covenant are not granted. Baptism is the door of entry into the covenant of grace, and till men humbly enter within the door they do not exercise true faith. They may believe intellectually in the truth and reality of Christianity, but, till they take the decisive step and obey Christ's law, they do not possess that true faith of the heart which alone enables them, like Saul of Tarsus, to obey Christ and therefore enter into peace.

[54] Romans x. 10.

III. The next step taken by the Apostle is equally plainly stated: "Straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that He is the Son of G.o.d." But, though the words of the Acts are plain enough, it is not so easy to reconcile them with St. Paul's own account, as given in the Epistle to the Galatians (i. 15, 16, 17), where he states, "When it was the good pleasure of G.o.d to reveal His Son in me, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, but I went away into Arabia, and again I returned to Damascus." In the ninth chapter of the Acts we find the statement made that _immediately_ after his baptism he preached Christ in the synagogues of Damascus, while in his own biographical narrative he tells us that _immediately_ after his baptism he went away into Arabia. Is there any way in which we can reconcile them? We think so, and that a very simple one. Let us first reflect upon the story as told in the Acts. St. Luke is giving a rapid history, a survey of St. Paul's life of public activity. He is not telling the story of his inner spiritual experiences, his conflicts, temptations, trials, revelations, as St. Paul himself set them forth.

He knew not of them, in fact. St. Luke knew merely the exterior public life of which man had cognisance. He knew nothing, or but little, of the interior life of the Apostle, known only to himself and to G.o.d.

St. Luke therefore tells us of his early work at Damascus. St. Paul himself tells us of that early work, but also shows us how he was prepared for that work by his retirement into Arabia. Both agree in the main point, however, and place the scene of his earliest Christian efforts in the very spot, Damascus, which he had in his human prevision destined for himself as the field of his bitterest antagonism to the faith of the Crucified. This is an important point.

St. Luke wrote his historical narrative twenty-five years or thereabouts after St. Paul's conversion. He may have often visited Damascus. Tradition makes Antioch, a town of the same district, his birthplace. St. Luke must have had abundant opportunities of consulting witnesses who could tell the story of those eventful days, and could describe St. Paul's earliest testimony to his new convictions. But these men only knew St. Paul as he appeared in public. They may have known very little of the inner history of his life as he reveals it in his Epistle to the Galatians when vindicating his apostolic authority and mission.[55]

[55] St. Luke's informants, twenty-five years after the events, would naturally only remember the leading points, the most striking events of St. Paul's early Christian career. Few people realise how hard it is to recall the events of twenty-five years ago in anything like consecutive order. We preserve upon the whole a lively and a true impression; but till we go and consult doc.u.ments, diaries, journals, etc., it is almost impossible to state the succession of events in accurate order. I was trying the other day to recall the events of my own public life twenty-five years ago anent the controversy which raged about the disestablishment of the Irish Church, into which I plunged with the vehemence of early manhood, and I failed to distinguish events which must have been separated by months and even by years. How much more easily must others have failed accurately to follow details of St. Paul's life known only to himself!

Let us now see whether we cannot harmonise St. Paul's autobiographical narrative in the Epistle with the Evangelist's narrative in the Acts; always remembering, however, that an imperfect knowledge is never more completely felt than in such cases. When we try to harmonise an account written from the subjective side by one individual with an objective and exterior narrative written by some one else, we are like a man looking at a globe and trying to take it all in at one glance.

One side must be hidden from him; and so in this case, many circ.u.mstances are necessarily concealed from us which would solve difficulties that now completely puzzle us. But let us to our task, in which we have derived much a.s.sistance from the commentary of Bishop Lightfoot upon Galatians. St. Paul, we are told in ch. ix. 19, received meat after the visit of Ananias and was strengthened. St.

Paul was never one of those high-wrought fanatics who despise food and the care of the body. There was nothing of the Gnostic or the Manichean about him, leading him to despise and neglect the body which the Lord has given to be the soul's instrument. He recognised under all circ.u.mstances that if the human spirit is to do its work, and if G.o.d's glory is to be promoted, the human body must be sustained in force and vigour. When he was on board s.h.i.+p and in imminent peril of s.h.i.+pwreck and death, and men thought they should be at their prayers, thinking of the next world alone, he took bread and blessed and set the crew and pa.s.sengers alike the healthy example of eating a hearty meal, and thus keeping his body in due preparation for whatever deliverances the Lord might work for them; and so, too, at Damascus, his spiritual joy and hallowed peace and deep grat.i.tude for his restoration to sight did not prevent him paying due attention to the wants of his body. "He took food, and was strengthened." And now comes the first note of time. "Then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus. And straightway (e?????) he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of G.o.d." The very same expression is used by St. Paul in Galatians, where, after speaking of his conversion, he says, "Immediately (e?????) I conferred not with flesh and blood, but went away into Arabia, and again returned unto Damascus." Now my explanation, and not mine alone, but that of Bishop Lightfoot, is this. After the new convert had rested for a short time at Damascus, he retired into the Sinaitic desert, where he remained for several months, perhaps for a whole year. During this period he disappeared from the sight and knowledge of men as if the earth had opened its mouth and swallowed him. Then he returned to Damascus and preached with such power that the Jews formed a plot against his life, enlisting the help of the governor on their side, so that even the gates were watched that he might be arrested.

He escaped their hands, however, through the a.s.sistance of his converts, and went up to Jerusalem.[56]

[56] Mr. Lewin, in his _St. Paul_, vol. i., p. 72, argues that the governor or ethnarch, as he is called by St. Paul in 2 Cor. xi.

32, was the Jewish chief magistrate of Damascus, appointed to that post by Aretas, King of Petra, who then held Damascus. The Jews were allowed by the Romans to have chief magistrates of their own wherever they lived in large colonies. At Alexandria, for instance, where they occupied a large portion of the city, the Jews were ruled by an Alabarch. Mr. Lewin shows in the same place a picture of the exact spot in the walls where St. Paul is by tradition said to have escaped.

But here another difficulty arises. The Acts tells us that "when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he a.s.sayed to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple," whereupon Barnabas, fulfilling his office of mediation, explanation, and consolation, took him and introduced him to the Apostles; while on the other hand in the first chapter of Galatians St. Paul himself speaks of his first visit to the Jerusalem Church thus: "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the Apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother." Now the difficulty consists in this. First, how could the disciples at Jerusalem have been suspicious of St. Paul, if at least a year and a half had elapsed since his conversion? for the Jewish method of counting time would not require three whole years to have elapsed since that event. Secondly, how could Barnabas have brought him to the Apostles as the Acts states, if St. Paul himself says he saw none of them save Peter and James? As to the first difficulty, we acknowledge at once that it seems at first sight a very considerable one, and yet a little reflection will show that there are many explanations of it. If St. Paul kept quiet, as we believe he did, after his conversion and baptism, and departed into the solitudes of Arabia, and then upon his return to Damascus, perhaps after a year's retirement, began his aggressive work, there may not have been time for the Church at large to get knowledge of the facts. Communication, again, may have been interrupted because of the contest between Herod and Aretas, in which Damascus played no small part. Communication may not have been possible between the two Churches.[57] Then, again, the persecution raised by Saul himself seems to have practically extirpated the Jerusalem Church for a time.

"They were all scattered abroad except the Apostles," is the account given of the Christian community at Jerusalem. The terror of that persecution may have lasted many a long month. Numbers of the original members may never have ventured back again to the Holy City. The Jerusalem Church may have been a new formation largely composed of new converts who never had heard of a wondrous circ.u.mstance which had happened a year or two before to the high priest's delegate, which the Sanhedrin would doubtless desire to keep secret.[58]

[57] All thought about Saul and his doings may just then have been swallowed up in the national excitement about Caligula and his attempt to set up his statue in the Temple. The trouble connected with the Nazarene sect would seem to every true Jew but a small matter compared with the outrage to Jehovah threatened by the mad emperor. See more about this in the next chapter.

[58] It is expressly said in Acts ix. 26 that when Saul came to Jerusalem he tried to join himself to the _disciples_. They, knowing only of his record as a persecutor, were afraid of him.