The life and work of St. Paul

TKESSALONICA AND BERCEA. 293
senco might, for a time at any rate, remain unsuspected. Striking off from the
great Via Egnatia to one which took a more southerly direction, the two f ugitivea
1
mado their way through the darkness. A night escape of at least fifty miles, along
an unknown road, involving the dangers of pursuit and the crossing of large and
frequently flooded rivers like the Axius, the Echidorus, the Lydias, and some
of the numerous affluents of the Haliacmon, is passed over with a single word.
Can we wonder at the absence of all allusion to the beauties, delights, and
associations of travel in the case of one whose travels were not only the
laborious journeys, beset with incessant hardships, of a sickly Jewish artisan,
but also those of one whoso life in its endless trials was a spectacle unto the
universe, to angels and to men ? l
The town which they had in view as a place of refuge was Borcea, 1 and
their motive in going there receives striking and unexpected illustration from
a passage of Cicero. In his passionate philippic against Piso he says to him
that after his gross maladministration of Macedonia, ho was so unpopular that
he had to slink into Thossalonica incognito, and by night; 3 and that from
thence, unable to boar the concert of wailers, and the hurricane of complaints,
he left the main road and fled to the out-of-the-way town of Bercea. We
cannot doubt that this comparatively secluded position was the reason why
Paul and Silas chose it as safer than the more famous and frequented Pella.
And as they traversed the pleasant streets of the town " dewy," like
those of Tivoli, " with twinkling rivulets "
it must have been with sinking
hearts, in spite of all their courage and constancy, that Paul and Silas onca
more made their way, as their first duty, into the synagogue of the Jews.
But if tho life of the Christian missionary has its own breadths of gloom, it
also has its
lights, and after all the storms which they had encountered they
were cheered in their heaviness by a most encouraging reception. The Jews
of this synagogue were loss obstinate, less sophisticated, than those whom St.
Paul ever found elsewhere. When he had urged upon them those arguments
from the Psalms, and from Isaiah, and from Habakkuk, about a Messiah who
was to die, and suffer, and rise again, and about faith as the sole means of
justification, the Jews, instead of turning upon him as soon as they understood
tho full scope and logical conclusions of his arguments, proved themselves
to be "nobler" 4 than those of Thessalonica more generous, more
simple, more sincere and truth-loving. Instead of angrily rejecting this new
Gospel, they daily and diligently searched the Scriptures to judge Paul's
arguments and references by the word and the testimony. The result was
that many Jews believed, as well as Greeks men and women of the more
respectable classes. They must have spout some weeks of calm among these
1 Cor. lv. 9.
* Bercea is perhaps a Macedonian corruption for Pheroea (cf.
It is now called Kara Pheria.
BtXmroc for tAunro).
3
Cic. in Pis. 36. Adduced by "Wetstein ad loc.
4 Acts xvii. 11, tvyevtmepoi. The expression is interesting as an instance of tvyeify,
used (as in modern times) in a secondary and moral sense. The best comment on it u
the " Nobilitas solo, eat atqne unica virtus."