The life and work of St. Paul

258 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
from the hands of a mighty people who also recognised Him as a Prophet,
though they did not believe Him to bo Divine !
Whatever road was taken by Paul and Silas,
own messengers, and announced their own arrival.
they must have been their
And we can well hnngine
the surprise, the emotion, the delight of the Christians in the little Isauric
town, when they suddenly recognised the well-known figure of the missionary,
who, arriving in the opposite direction, with the wounds of the cruel stonings
fresh upon him, had first taught them the faith of Christ. Can we not also
imagine the uneasiness which, during this visitation of the Churches which he
loved so well, must often have invaded the heart of Paul, when almost the
first question with which he must have been greeted on all sides would be,
" And where is Barnabas ? "
For Barnabas was a man born to be respected
THE COUNTRY ROUND TARSUS.
and loved; and since Silas great as may have been his gifts of utterance,
and high as were his credentials 1 would come among them as a perfect
stranger, whom they could not welcome with equal heartiness, we may be sure
that if Paul erred in that sad dissension, he must have been reminded of it,
and have had cause to regret it at every turn.
From Derbe once more they passed to Lystra. Only one incident of their
visit is told us, but it happily affected all the future of the great Apostle. In
his former visit he had converted the young Tiinothous, and it was in the
house of the boy's mother Eunice, 8 and his grandmother Lois, that he and
Silas were probaby received. These two pious women were Jewesses who
had now accepted the Christian faith. The marriage of Eunice with a Greek, 8
1
npofy-rfrtfi (Acts XV. 32).
3 The name Eunice being purely Greek might seem to indicate previous association
with Gentiles.
8 At the same time, mixed marriages were far less strictly forbidden to women than