The life and work of St. Paul

340 THE LIFE AND WOBK Or ST. PAUL.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIAN8.
" Ai yap raiira ycvcVdct wpG~ov, iAA" eux fvQiios ro WXos. LUJCX xzi. 9.
MANY months could not have elapsed before the Apostle heard that the
Thcssalonians, with all their merits and virtues, were still, and even more
than previously, hindered in moral growth by esehatological enthusiasms.
When he wrote to them before, they were tempted to despond about the death
of friends, whom they supposed likely ta be thus deprived of part at least of
the precious hopes which were their main, almost their sole, support in the
fiery furnace of affliction. The Apostle's clear assurance seems to have
removed all anxiety on this but now jtppic, they regarded the immediate coming
of Christ as a thing so certain that some of them were tempted to neglect his
exhortations, and to spend their lives in aimless religious excitement. 1
St.
Paul felt how fatal would be such a temperament to all Christian progress,
and the main object of his second letter was to control into calm, and shame
into diligence, the gossiping enthusiasm which fatally tended towards irregularity
and sloth. They were not to desert the hard road of the present for the
mirage which seemed to bring so close to them the green Edens of the future ;
they were not to sacrifice the sacreduess of immediate duty for the dreamy
sweetness of unrealised expectations. The Advent of Christ might be near
but it was not so instant as they had been led to imagine from an
at hand ;
erroneous view of what he had said, and by mistaken reports possibly
even by written forgeries which ascribed to him words which he had
never used, and opinions which he had never held.
The expression on which the Apocalyptic fanaticism of the less sensible
Theesalonians seems to have fastened was that which occurs in 1 Thess. iv.
15
" WE. which are alive and remain to tfoe presence of the Lord, sliall
certainly not anticipate those that have fallen asleep." It was not unnatural
that they should interpret this to mean that their teacher himself exjpected to
survive until the Epiphany of their Lord's presence. 2
If so, it must be very
close at hand; and again, if so, of what use were the petty details of daily
routine, the petty energies of daily effort ? Was it not enough to keep themselves
alive anyhow until tho dawn of that near day, or the shadows of that
rapidly approaching night, which might be any day or any night, on which all
earthly interests should be dissipated for ever as soon as the voice of God and
the trumpet of the dead should sound P
Now, we ask, had this been tho real tssaning of the words of St. Paul P
1 The reader will be struck with the close analogy of this temptation to that which
of the Reforma-
did BO much mischief among the Anabaptiati and other sects in the days
tion. The Thes&alonian Church may have had its Carlstadts whom St. Paul felt ifc
necessary to warn, just as Luther fought, with all the force of big manly sense, against
the crudities of the religious errors which had derived their impulse from a perversion of
bis own teaching.
* 'JL.T^'. i; J;L Tip