The life and work of St. Paul

THE CLOSE OF THE JOTTENKT. 217
and impulse. 1 In their disappointment they would be Inclined to assume
that if theso two mysterious strangers were not gods they were despicable
Jews ; and if their miracle was not a sign of their divinity, it belonged to the
malefic arts of which they may well have heard from Roman visitors. And
on the arrival of the Jews of Antioch and Iconium at Lystra, with the express
purpose of buzzing their envenomed slanders into the ears of these country
people, the mob were only too ripe for a tumult. They stoned Paul and, when
they thought he was dead, dragged him outside their city gates, leaving him,
perhaps, in front of the very Temple of Jupiter to which they had been about
to conduct him as an incarnation of their patron deity. But Paul was not
dead. This had not been a Jewish stoning, conducted with fatal deliberateness,
but a sudden riot, in which the mode of attack may have been due to
accident. Paul, liable at all times to tho swoons which accompany nervous,
organisations, had been stunned, but not killed; and while the disciples stood!
in an agonised group around what they thought to be his corpse, he recovered
his consciousness, and raised himself from the ground. The mob meanwhile
had dispersed; and perhaps in disguise, or under cover of evening for all
these details were as nothing to Paul, and are not preserved by his biographer
he re-entered tho little city.
Was it in the house of Eunice and Loia that ho found the sweet repose
and tender ministrations which he would need more than ever after an
experience so frightful? If Lystra was thus the scene of one of his intensost
sufi-ermgs, and one which, lightly as it is dwelt upon, probably left on his
already enfeebled constitution its lifelong traces, it also brought him, by the
merciful providence of God, its own immense compensation. For it was at
Lystra that he converted the son of Eunice, then perhaps a boy of fifteen, 2 for
whom he conceived that deep affection which breathes through every line of
tho Epistles addressed to him. This was the Timothens whom he chose as tho
companion of his future journeys, whom he sent on his most confidential
messages, to whom he entrusted the oversight of his most important churches,
whom he summoned as the consolation of his last imprisonment, whom ha
always regarded as tho son in tho faith who -was nearest aiid dearest to his
heart. If Luke had been with St. Paul in this his first journey, ho would
probably hava mentioned a circumstance which the Apostlo doubtless regarded
as one of God's best blessings, and as one which would help to obliterate in a
feeling of thankfulness even the bitter memories of Lystra. 3 But we who,
from scattered allusions, can see that it was here and now that St. Paul first
mot with the gentlest and clearest of all his converts, may dwell with pleasure
on the thought, that Timotheus stood weeping in that group of disciples who
1 Commenting on the treachery of Pandarus, in 77. iv, 88 92, the Scholiast quotes
tlie testimony of Aristotle to the untrustworthy character of the Lycaonians ; and see
Cic. f>p. ad Att. Y. 21, &c., who speaks of the natives of these regions with great
con tempt.
2 This can hardly he regarded KB In any way doubtful if ire compare 1 Tim. i. 2, 18
and 2 Tim. ii. 1 with Act* xvi. 1,
a 2 Tim. iii. 11.