The life and work of St. Paul

268 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL,
the temple, and copied from the inscription set up by his own command upon
bronze tablets in front of his mausoleum ; but while ho may have glanced at it
with interest, and read with still deeper pleasure on one of the pillars the
decree in which the Emperor had rewarded the friendlinesa of the Jews by a
grant of religious immunity, 1 he must have thought with some pity and indignation
of the frivolity of spirit which could thus readily combine the oldest
and the newest of idolatrous aberrations the sincere and savage orgies of
Dindymene with the debasing flattery of an astute intriguer the passionate
abandonment to maddening religious impulse, and the calculating adoration
of political success. In point of fact, the three capitals of the three tribes
furnished data for an epitome of their history, and of their character. In
passing from Pessinus to Ancyra and Tavium the Apostle saw specimens of
cults curiously obsolete side by side with others which wore ridiculously now.
He passed from Phrygian nature-worship through Greek mythology to
Roman conventionalism. He could not but have regarded this as a bad sign,
and he would have seen a sad illustration of the poorer qualities which led to
his own enthusiastic reception, if he could have read the description in a Greek
rhetorician long afterwards of the Galatians being so eager to seize upon what
was new, that if they did but get a glimpse of the cloak of a philosopher,
they caught hold of and clung to it at 1
once, as steel filings do to a magnet.
In fact, as he had bitter cause to learn afterwards, the religious views of the
Gauls were more or less a reflex of the impressions of the moment, and their
favourite sentiments the echo of the language used by the last comer. But
on lus first visit their faults all seemed to be in the background. Their tendencies
to revelries and rivalries, to drunkenness and avarice, to vanity and
boasting, to cabals and fits of 3
rage, were in abeyance, checked if not mastered
by the powerful influence of their now faith, and in some instances, we may
hope, cured altogether by the grace of tho Holy Spirit of God. All that he
saw was their eagerness and affection, their absence of prejudice, and willingness
to learn all that vivacity and warmheartedness which wore redeeming
4
points
in their Celtic character.
How long he was detained among them by his illness we are not told, but
it was long enough to found several churches, one perhaps in each of the three
capitals, and it may be in some of the minor towns. His success was clearly
1 Jos. Antt. xvi. 6, 2. On Caesar-worship see Tac. Ann. iv. 55, 66.
5 Tkemistius, Or. xxiii., p. 299 ; ap. Wetstein in Gal. i. 6.