The life and work of St. Paul

THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 233
an adult Gentile convert to submit to a Jewish rite which had no meaning
except as an acknowledgment that he was bound to keep the Mosaic Law
then, indeed, he might be charged with having sacrificed the very point at
issue. He might of course urge that he had only done it for the moment by way
of peace, because otherwise the very life of Titus would have been endangered,
or because his presence in the Holy City might otherwise have caused false
rumours and terrible riots, 1 as the presence of Trophimus did in biter years.
He might say, " I circumcised Titus only because there was no other chance of
getting the question reasonably discussed ;" but if he yielded at all, however
noble and charitable may have been his motives, he gave to his opponents a
handle against him which assuredly they did not fail to use.
Now that he was most vehemently urged to take this step is clear, and
perhaps the extraordinary convulsiveness of his expressions is only due to the
memory of all that he must have undergone in that bitter straggle. 2 In hold-
ing out to the last he had, doubtless, been forced to encounter the pressure of
nearly the whole body of the Church at Jerusalem, including almost certainly
all who were living of the twelve Apostles, and their three leaders. Perhaps
even Barnabas himself might, as afterwards, have lost all firm grasp of truths
which seemed sufficiently clear when he was working with Paul alone on the
wild uplands of Lycaonia. Certainly St. Paul's moral courage triumphed over
the severest tost, if he had the firmness and fortitude to hold out against this
mass of influence. It would have been far bolder than Whitofield standing
before a conclave of Bishops, or Luther pleading his cause at Rome. As far
as courage was concerned, it is certain that no fear would ever have induced
him to give way ; but might he not have yielded ad interim, and as a charitable
concession, in order to secure a permanent result P
Let us consider, in all its roughness, his own "
language. Then," he says,
"
fourteen 3
years after, I again went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking
1 This element of the decision has been universally overlooked. Gentiles of course
to introduce an uncircumcised
there were in Jerusalem, but for a Jew deliberately
Gentile a* a full partaker of all rclif/ious rites in a Judceo- Christian community was a
terribly dangerous experiment. If all the power and influence of Josephus could hardly
save from massacre two illustrious and hiyhly-connected Gentiles who had f.ed to him for
rcfui/e although there was no pretence of extending to them any religious privileges
because the multitude said that " they ought not to be suffered to live if they would not
change their religion to the religion or those to whom they fled for safety" (Vit. 31), how
could Paul answer for the life of Titus f
2 This is the view of Dr. Lightfoot (Gal. p. 102), who says, "The counsels of the
Apostles of the circumcision are the hidden rock on which the grammar of the sentence
is wrecked;" and "the sensible undercurrent of feeling, the broken grammar of the sentence,
the obvious tenour of particular phrases, all convey the impression that, though the
final victory was complete, it was not attained without a struggle, in which St. Paul
maintained, at one time almost single-handed, the cause of Gentile freedom." I give my
reason afterwards for adopting a different conclusion. The sense of a complete victory
contemplated years afterwards would hardly produce all this agitation. It would have
been alluded to with the calm modesty of conscious strength. Not so an error of judgment
involving serious consequences though actuated by the best motives. If Titus wot
not circumcised, why does not Paul plainly say sot
8 Gal. ii. 16. Fourteen years after his first visit,