The life and work of St. Paul

194 THE: LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
influence. As a Levite, as a prophet, as one who for the needs of the com.
mnnity had cheerfully sacrificed his earthly goods, as one who enjoyed to a
very high degree the confidence of the Apostles, Barnabas, in these early days,
was enabled to lend to St. Paul's conceptions a weight which they could
hardly otherwise have won. It is only when the work has actually begun that
Barnabas seems naturally to sink to a subordinate position. No sooner have
they left Salamis than the very order of the names is altered. Sergius Paulus
sends for " Barnabas and Saul," but it is Saul who instantly comes to the
front to meet the opposition of Elymas it is ; " Paul and his company " who
sail from Paphos to Perga ; it is Paul who answers the appeal to speak at
Antioch in Pisidia ; it is Paul who is stoned at Lystra ; and thenceforth,
it is
" Paul and Barnabas " throughout the rest of the history, except in the circular
missive from James and the Church at Jerusalem. 1
Nor must we altogether lose sight of the younger of the three voyagers-
John, whose surname was Mark, who went with them in the capacity of their
minister, corresponding, perhaps, in part to our notion of a deacon. 3 The presence
of an active attendant, who could make all arrangements and inquiries,
would be almost necessary to a sufferer like Paul. If Barnabas shared with
8
Paul the reluctance to administer in person the rite of baptism, we may suppose
that this was one of the functions in which Mark would help them. Nor
was it an unimportant circumstance to both of them that Mark, as the avowed
friend and protege of Peter, would have been unlikely to share in any mission
which did not command the entire approval of his illustrious leader. In this
and many other ways, now as at the close of his life, Paul doubtless felt that
Mark was, or could be, " profitable to him for ministry." His nature im-
periously demanded the solace of companionship ; without this he found his
work intolerable, and himself the victim of
4
paralysing depression. The prin-
ciples which he adopted, his determination that under no circumstances would
he be oppressive to his converts, the missionary boldness which constantly led
him into such scones of danger as none but a man could face, deprived him of
that resource of female society a sister, a wife which other Apostles
enjoyed, and which has been found so conducive to the usefulness of even
stich devoted missionaries as Adoniram Jndson or Charles Mackenzie. But
Paul was a missionary of the type which has been reproduced in Francis
Xavier or Coleridge Patteson ; and whatever he may have been in the past, he
was now, at any rate, a lonely man.
Such were the three humble Christian emissaries whose barque, bending its
prow to the south-west, sailed towards the mountains of Cyprus, and, leaving
1 Acts xv. 25 ; and Acts xiv. 14, where Barnabas is taken for the superior deity.
* Acts xiii. 5, un-qp-'nj?. In n Luke iv. 20 the wmipenj? wmipenj? is the Chazzan of the Synag Synagogue.
Mark, like Barnabas, may have been connected with the tribe of Levi; on the name
KoAo/3oaKTvAc* and traditions about him, see Ewald, Gesch. vi. 445.
3 1 Cor. i. 13
* 1 These, iii. 1 ; 2 Cor. ii. 13 ; Phil. ii. 19, 20 ; 2 Tim. IT. 11. It has been said thai
St. Paul "had a thousand friends, and loved each as his own soul, and seemed to live a
thousand lives in them, and to die a thousand deaths when he must quit them."