The life and work of St. Paul

THE CLOSE OF THE JOTJBNEY. 221
But brief as was the period occupied, the consequences were immense.
For though Paul returned from this journey a shattered man though twenty
years afterwards, through a vista of severe afflictions, he still looks back, as
though they had happened but yesterday, to the "persecutions, afflictions,
which came upon him at Antioch, at Iconinm, at Lystra ; what persecutions
he endured, and yet from all the Lord delivered him" 1
though the journeyings
and violence, and incessant menace to life, which has tried even men
of such iron nerves as Oliver Cromwell, had rendered him more liable than
ever to fits of acute suffering and intense depression, 8 yet, in spito of all, he
returned with the mission -hunger in his heart; with the determination
more strongly formed than ever to preach the word, and be instant in season
and out of season ; with the fixed conviction that the work and destiny in life
to which God had specially called him was to bo the Apostle of the heathen. 3
That conviction had been brought unalterably home to his soul by the
experience of every town at which they had preached. Up to a certain point,
and that point not very far within the threshold of his subject, the Jews were
willing to give him a hearing; but when they began to perceive that the
Gospel was universal that it preached a God to whom a son of Abraham
was no whit dearer than any one in any nation who feared Him and loved
righteousness that it gave, in fact, to the title of "son of Abraham" a
significance so purely metaphorical as to ignore all special privilege of blood
their anger burnt like Same. It was the scorn and indignation of the elder
brother against the returning prodigal, and his refusal to enjoy privileges
which henceforth he must share with others. 4 The deep-seated pride of the
-t'iVir.LJ iU U" i.Vfhi. lv ^MiJ tt>'.\ ;/'?.. i. VJJr>.!..i..!.,ii : -.-,..' ,.- -nii.'.fc .
suddenly, without any notice, to use Galatia in Acts xvi. in its political sense, especially
as this political sense was shifting and meaningless. It can hardly be supposed that
since he must hundreds of times have heard St. Paul mention the churches of Galatia,
he should, if these were the churches of Galatia, never drop a hint of the fact, and,
ignoring the Roman province altogether, talk of Antioch "of Pisidia," and Lystra and
Derbe, "cities of Lycaonia." I should be quite content to rest an absolute rejection of
the hypothesis on these considerations, as well as on the confusion which it introduces
into the chronology of St. Paul's life. The few arguments advanced in favour of this view
e.g., the allusion to Barnabas in Galatians ii. 1 are wholly inadequate to support it
against the many counter improbabilities. Indeed, almost the only serious consideration
urged in its favour namely, the very cursory mention in Acts xvi. 6 of what we learn
from the Epistle was the founding of a most important body of churches is nullified by
the certainty which meets us at every step that the Acts does not furnish ua with a
complete biography. In other instances also as in the case of the churches in Syria
and Cilicia he leaves us in doubt about the tune and manner of their first evangelisation.
The other form of this theory, which sees the founding of the Galatian churches
in the words K