The life and work of St. Paul

3C2 THE LIFE A.KD WOEK OF ST. PAUL
Hossiabship of Christ, and thus was as acceptable to the Christians as ho was
formidable to the Jews. He watered what Paul had planted. 1
By the time of St. Paul's arrival, Apollos had already started for Corinth.
He had, however, returned to Ephesus before St. Paul's departure, and the
Apostle must have gazed with curiosity and interest on this fervid and gifted
convert. A meaner soul might have been jealous of his gifts, and all the
more so because, while less valuable, they were more immediately dazzling
and impressive than his own. St. Paul was of too noble a spirit to leave
room for the slightest trace of a feeling so common, yet so ignoble. Apollos
had unwittingly stolen from him the allegiance of some of his Corinthian con-
verts ; his name had become, in that disorderly church, a watchword of
faction. Yet St. Paul never speaks of him without warm sympathy and
admiration, 2 and evidently appreciated the high-mindod delicacy which made
him refuse to revisit Corinth, 3 in spite of pressing invitations, from the,
obvious desire to give no encouragement to the admiring partisans who had,
elevated him into unworthy rivalry with one so much greater than himself.
Ephesus, amid its vast population, contained specimens of every form of
belief, and Apollos was not the only convert to an imperfect and half -developed
form of Christianity. Paul found there, on his arrival, a strange backwater
of religious opinion in the persons of some twelve men who, like Apollos,
and being perhaps in some way connected with him, were still disciples of the
Baptist. Although there were some in our Lord's time who stayed with
their old teacher till his execution, and though the early fame of his preaching
had won him many followers, of whom some continued to linger on in
obscure sects, 4 it was impossible for any reasonable man to stop short at this
position except through ignorance. St. Paul accordingly questioned them,
and upon finding that they knew little or nothing of the final phase of John's
teaching, or of the revelation of Christ, and were even ignorant of the very
name of the Holy Spirit, he gave them further instruction until they were
fitted to receive baptism, and exhibited those gifts of the Spirit the speaking
with tongues and prophecy which were the accepted proofs of full and
faithful initiation into the Church of Christ. 6
For three months, in accordance with his usual plan, he was a constant
visitor at the synagogue, and used every effort of persuasion and argument to
ripen into conviction the favourable impressions he had at first created. St.
Luke passes briefly over the circumstances, but there must have been many
1 1 Cor. iii 6. There can be little reasonable doubt that Apollos was the author of
the Epistle to the Hebrews. In reading that Epistle (which cannot be dealt with in this
volume) it is easy to see that, essentially Pauline as is much of its phraseology, the
main method is original, and would probably be more pleasing and convincing to Jews
than any which St. Paul was led to adopt. Some have seen a distinction between hia
pupils and St. Paul's in Titus iii. 14, oi ^/xeVepot, but see infra, ad loc.
*
Tit. *
iii. 13,
1 Cor. TV! 12.
*
Sabacans, Mendaeans, &c. (Neander, Ch.. Hist. ii. 57). We find from the Clementine
Recognitions that there were some of John's disciples who continued to preach him