The life and work of St. Paul

BEGINNING OF THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY 263
we see that otherwise the Epistle to the Galatians might never have been
written, and that thus the whole course of Christian theology might have been
entirely changed.
Of any work in l
Phrygia, therefore, there was nothing to narrate but ; we
may well deplore St. Luke's non-acquaintance with the details of that visit to
Galatia, which were deeply interesting and important, and of which we are
now left to discover the incidents by piecing the fragmentary notices and allu-
sions of the Epistle.
We may suppose that on finding it impossible to preach at this time in the
preat cities of Lydian Asia, 2 St. Paul and his companions next determined to
make their way to the numerous Jewish communities on the shores of the
Euxine. They seem to have had no intention to preach among a people so
new to them, and apparently so little promising, as the Galatians. But God
had other designs for them ; they were detained in Galatia, and their stay was
attended with very memorable results.
St. Luke, who uses the ordinary geographical term, must undoubtedly
have meant by the term Galatia that central district of the Asian peninsula*
which was inhabited by a people known to the ancient world under the names
of Celts, Galatians, Gauls, and (more recently) Gallo-Greeks. Their history
was briefly this. When the vast tide of Aryan migration began to set to the
westward from the valleys of the Oxus and the plains of Turkestan, the Celtic
family was among the earliest that streamed away from their native seats.4
They gradually occupied a great part of the centre and west of Europe, and
various tribes of the family were swept hither and thither by different
currents, as they met with special obstacles to their unimpeded progress. One
of their Brennuses, 6 four centuries before the Christian era, inflicted on Rome
its deepest humiliation. Another, one hundred and eleven years later, 6 filled
Northern Greece with terror and rapine, and when his hordes were driven
back by the storms and portents which seconded the determined stand of the
Greeks at Delphi, they joined another body under Loonnorius and Lutarius,*
1 That some converts were made is implied by Acts xviii. 23. The absence of a
definite Phrygian Church is seen in the silence about any collection there.
2 ''Asia in the Acts (cf. Catull. xlvi. 5) seems always to mean the region round the
old "Asian meadow" of Homer (II. ii. 461) Le., the entire valley and plain of the
Cayster i.e., Lydia. Every one of " the seven churches which are in Asia " (Rev. i. iii.)
is Lydian.
3 The term Asia Minor is first used by Orosius in the fourth century (Oros. i. 2).
4 On the Celtic migrations, see the author's Families of Speech, 2nd ed. (reprinted in
Language and languages), p. 329.
5 B.C. 390. The word Brennus is a Latinised form of the title which is preserved in
the Welsh brenin, " king."
6 B.C. 279.
7 Liv. xxxviii. 16. These names Celtic words of obscure origin with Latin terminations
are eagerly seized on by German travellers and commentators, and identified with
Leonard and Lothair (Luther), in order to prove that the people of Galatia were not Celts,
but Teutons. Why both French and Germans should be so eager to claim affinities with
these not very creditable Galatians I cannot say ; but meanwhile it must be regarded aa
certain that the Galatae were Celts, and not only Celts, but Cymric Celts. The only
other arguments, besides these two names, adduced by Wieseler and other German
writers are (1) The name Gfermanopoli3& late and hideous hybrid which, at the beat,