The life and work of St. Paul

PAUL AT EPHESUS. 363
return. Once more, therefore, lie weighed anchor, and sailed to Csesarea.
From thence he hastened to Jerusalem, which he wag now visiting for the
l
fourth time after his conversion. He had entered it once a changed man ;
he had entered it a second time with a timely contribution from the Church of
a Antiooh to the famine- stricken poor ; a third time he had come to obtain a
decision of the loud disputes between the Judaic and the liberal Christians
which threatened, even thus early, to rend asunder the seamless robe of Christ. 3
Four years had now elapsed, and he came one* more, a weak and persecuted
missionary, to seek the sympathy of the early converts,* to confirm his faithful
spirit of unity with them, to tell them the momentous tidings of churches
founded during this his second journey, not only iu Asia, but for the first time
la Europe also, and even at places so important as Philippi, Thessalcnica,
and Corinth. Had James, and the circle of which he was the centre, only
understood how vast for the future of Christianity would be the issues of these
perilous and toilsome journeys had they but seen how insignificant, compared
with the labours of St. Paul, would be the part which they themselves were
playing in furthering the universality of the Church of Christ with what
stfecfion and admiration would they have welcomed him ! How would they have
striven, by very form of kindness, of encouragement, of honour, of heartfelt
pa-ayer, to arm and strengthen him, and to fire into yet brighter lustre his grand
enthusiasm, so as to prepare him ia the future for sacrifices yet more heroic,
for efforts yet more immense ! Had anything of the kind occurred, St. Luke,
in the interests of his great Christian Eirenicon St. Paul himaelf, in his
account to the Galatiana of his relations to the twelve eould hardly have failed
to tell us about it. So far from this, St. Luke hurries over the brief visit in
the three words that " he saluted the Church," 6 not even pausing to inform ua
that he fulfilled his vow, or whether any favourable impression as to his Judaic
orthodoxy was created by the fact that he had undertaken it. There is too
:
much reason to fear that his reception was cold and ungracious that ; even if
James received him with courtesy, the Judaic Christians who surrounded
" "
the Lord's brother did not and ; even that a jealous dislike or that free
position towards the Law which he established amongst his Gentile converts,
led to that determination on the part of some of them to follow in his track
and to undermine his influence, which, to the intense embittormont of his latter
days, was so fatally successful. It must have been with a sad heart, with
something even of indignation at this unsympathetic coldness, that St. Paul
hurriedly terminated his visit. But none of these things moved him. He did
but share them with his Lord, whom the Pharisees had hated and the Sadduccoa
had slain. He did but share them with every great prophet and every true
thinker before and since. Not holding even his ike dear unto himself, it is not
likely that the peevishness of unprogressive tradition or the non-appreciation
of suspicious narrowness, should make him swerve from his divinely appointed
About A.D. 37.
s A.D. 44. About A.D. 50. About A.D. 54.
' St. Luke does not 10 much as mention the word Jerusalem, bat the word d^f-a*
dieproTes the fancy that Paul went no further than Csesarea*