his own person from the cause of the gospel, and has become genuinely tolerant towards the opponents who pursued him with relentless hatred even to Rome. But in the two concluding chapters he falls into the old tone, denounces them more bitterly than ever as "dogs, evil workers, mutilated." In answer to their Jewish arrogance he once more enumerates the legal privileges which he had cast under his feet for Christ's sake,' and calls them enemies of the cross. He emphatically warns the Philippians against them and against all sectarian animosity, exhorts Euodia and Syntyche by name and the community in general to unanimity, humility, and self-denying love, after the example of Christ, who had relinquished his heavenly glory, and had been obedient even to the death upon the cross.

"Be blameless and upright, unpolluted children of God, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear like lights of heaven in the world!"2 Paul had good reason to utter such words as these to the Philippians, for if he saw or heard any thing of what was going on at Rome, its foul iniquity must have sent a sickening shudder through his heart, and made him more certain than ever that the Lord was near at hand and that the world hastened to its close. Such a wild outburst of shameless infamy as took place in 62 A.D. and the following years, under Nero's rule, the world has never witnessed before or since. We suspect that the Apostle himself was one of its victims.

3

We suspect it, but we cannot be certain. Since the book of Acts breaks off abruptly after mentioning that Paul remained two years in Rome, it follows that after this period some change in his lot took place. Why is there not a word about his subsequent fate, whether release and renewed activity or the death of a martyr? A later tradition, founded on what was known or reported of Paul's own plans and expectations, says that he was set at liberty, that he carried out his original projects, was then taken prisoner again, and perished in Rome by the hand of the executioner in the year 67 A.D. The legend adds that it was on June 29, and that Peter was his fellow-victim, Paul being beheaded and Peter crucified with his head downwards. But all this is groundless speculation. There is no trace of the Apostle's life or preaching after the period to which we have already brought them; and the detestation with which the Christians were regarded 1 See p. 520. See pp. 605, 638, 639.

2 Philippians ii. 15.

just at that moment in Rome makes it highly improbable that Paul should have been released. We have every reason to suppose that he perished amid the horrors of the summer of 64 A.D. But why does the author of Acts tell us nothing? Why does he simply drop his hero, as he has previously dropped Peter and Barnabas? There is not the smallest indication that he intended to complete his task in another work, and even if there were we should still have to ask why he broke off just here. Is it possible that his anxiety to hold the balance between Peter and Paul induced him to say nothing of the latter's crown of martyrdom, because tradition had not as yet woven the similar crown with which it afterwards 1 girt the brow of Peter? Or did he stop at this point because he had completed his design of portraying the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome, and because the constant burden of his narrative had been the friendly reception and protection which Paul had received at the hands of the Roman magistracy, so that he shrank from destroying the impression by touching on the fierce contrast of that dismal close, in the horrors of Nero's persecution, in which the Apostle disappeared?

Enough! On July 19, 64 A.D., a fire broke out at Rome and made unheard-of ravages. It spread with incredible rapidity, and nothing could check its fury. It was not till the sixth day that it seemed to be got under, and it soon broke out again and raged for three days more. Of the fourteen districts of the huge capital but four remained. In seven the fire had left charred and blackened walls alone, and the other three were heaps of smoking ruins! The maddened populace believed that the Emperor had kindled the flames; and he was doubtless guilty in the matter, though he could not have foreseen the appalling catastrophe. Now when Nero found that no religious processions and no generosity of provision for the impoverished victims of the disaster could free him from the suspicion he had incurred or restore him to popular favor, he adopted fresh tactics, and declared that a strict investigation had brought it to light that the fire was raised by the Christians.

Who furnished him with this monstrous conception? Can it have been his Jewish favorites? In any case the story found acceptance. The Christians, who had increased considerably in numbers since Paul arrived in Rome, and whose organization was now more distinct than formerly from that of the

1 John xxi. 18, 19; 2 Peter i. 14.

synagogue, had excited public attention; while their holding aloof from the corrupt heathen society and their expectation of the end of the world, which some of them may have hailed in this very fire, had earned them the character of "enemies of mankind" with the populace and the cultivated classes alike. A horrible persecution broke out. Some of the believers were crucified. Others were thrown to the lions in the amphitheatre, or wrapped in the skins of animals and torn to pieces by bloodhounds. Yet others were smeared with resin and pitch, secured to stakes of pinewood, and lighted up at nightfall to serve as torches.

The last traces of Paul are lost in this night of horror. Are we to look for his blackened corpse among the ruins of the conflagration? Or did he literally fight with wild beasts, and this time without being saved from the lion's mouth? 1

Of his friends and fellow-workers, too, we have lost all certain information, except that we are told a few years later on that Timothy had been a prisoner, and was just released. Uncertain speculations or traditions point out Apollos as the possible author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Mark and Silvanus as the companions of Peter, and Titus as laboring in Crete and in Dalmatia. But the fate of these men is far from exciting the same interest in our minds as that of the Apostle himself. The dead silence of history, unbroken even by his biographer and defender the author of Acts, has involved his martyr-death in obscurity, and has suffered this greatest of the followers of Jesus, this founder of the Christian Church, to fall by an unnoted and in that sense an inglorious death. In this there is something very painful.

Paul was such as we have described him, -the greatest of the followers of Jesus, and the founder of the Christian Church! Attempts have indeed been made to exalt him at the expense of Jesus, and to place him above his Master in penetration and grasp of mind, in freedom and breadth of view, and in superiority to national prejudice. This is a mistake. The admission of the heathen to the kingdom of God had already found a place in the mind of Jesus. that was great and good in Paul's work he accomplished under the mastery of Christ's spirit; and he himself ascribed it all, and ascribed it solely, to the might of the Christ which had come upon him and dwelt in him. Nay! we must go

1 1 Corinthians xv. 32; 2 Timothy iv. 17.

2 Hebrews xiii. 23; 1 Peter v. 12, 13; Titus i. 5; 2 Timothy iv. 10.

All

further: He stands so far below Jesus, that in his subtle doctrinal system we can hardly recognize the simple but eternally-enduring and inexhaustible wealth of the principles of Jesus; in the sharp lines of his personality we can hardly trace the lineaments of the beloved image of Jesus. But this is undeniable: that the victory of the gospel over the heathen world is mainly due to the power and the gifts of Paul, with his insignificant person but his mighty spirit, with his zeal and inspiration, his elasticity and perseverance, his unconditional self-surrender to his work. It was he whose marvellous power and intensity of soul and utter self-sacrifice severed Christianity from the synagogue, when without him it would have remained an insignificant or forgotten Jewish sect; it was he who worked it out into a new principle of life and a new system of religion, who proclaimed and established it in two continents with a courage, an energy, and a perseverance that have never been surpassed. In a word, Christianity, and therefore humanity, owes an inestimable debt to Paul; and, except Jesus, we know of no human being who has won and still retains, after so many ages, an influence like his.

CHAPTER XII.

THE COMMUNITIES AFTER THE DEATH OF PAUL.

MATTHEW XIII. 24-30, 36-43.

I

REVELATION; JAMES; JUDE. HEBREWS; COLOSSIANS. 2 THESSALONIANS; MATTHEW XXIV. 4-41; 1 LUKE XVIII. 1-8; 2 PETER. 1 PETER; EPHESIANS; 2 TIMOTHY; TITUS; 1 TIMOTHY; 1 JOHN ; 2 JOHN; 3 JOHN.

N making ready for the kingdom of God, many perplexities arise, such as this parable may illustrate :

"A certain man had sown good and pure seed upon his land. But while he was asleep his enemy came and scattered darnel seed all about among the wheat. Both wheat and darnel grew up for a time without any one noticing the difference; but when the ears began to form, then the laborers saw with dismay that the wheat was all mixed with the shabby darnel-stalks. So they went to ask their master what it could mean, and he replied: A hostile man has done it.' Then they asked whether they should not go at once and weed out all the darnel; but he checked their zeal

1 Mark xiii. 5 ff.; Luke xvii. 22 ff., xxi. 8 ff.

and forbade them, because they might so easily root up the wheat with it. 'Let them both grow together,' he said, 'till the harvest. Then I will tell the reapers to pick out the darnel before they bind up the sheaves, and to make it up into bundles for the furnace; but the corn they must gather into my barn.''

66

Possibly this parable is founded upon some simpler one which Jesus may really have uttered as a companion to that of the sower. "1 But in its present form it is due to the Jewish-Christians, and refers to what they regarded as the melancholy spectacle of so many members of the Christian communities still preserving their gentile modes of life. Such men among the true heirs of the Messianic salvation were like darnel among wheat. They well knew that it was all the work of "a hostile man," who had scattered the false doctrine of "lawlessness" far and wide. Observe that this expression, "a hostile man," occurs elsewhere in JewishChristian writings, where it is unmistakably used to designate Paul. And it is doubtless specially to him that it applies here also. It was he who had planted the weeds! But how could the Lord suffer such a state of things to continue? Alas! in many a place the separation could not be effected except with great hurt to the faithful; and before long, at the day of judgment, the Lord would command the angels to sift out the members of the community who ate meat sacrificed to idols, or were guilty of any other such" abomination and uncleanness," and consign them to the place of weeping and guashing of teeth.3

But when the first Evangelist took up this parable into his narrative, we see by the interpretation he adds that he was not aware of its strongly anti-Pauline purpose. He simply took it to mean that the Church, by the will of her Lord, must suffer the wicked to remain among the faithful until the last judgment. So he says: "The weeds are the children of the devil, and the enemy' is the devil himself."

Now when we consider it rightly, we shall find in all this the brief epitome of the internal history of the communities after Paul's death. In the first place, the parable itself reflects the unabated bitterness of the Jewish-Christians against the disciples of the Apostle of the gentiles, together with the unshaken hope of all the believers alike in the speedy and glorious return of the Christ. In the next place, Matthew's interpretation indicates the disappearance of these 1 See p. 153. 2 See pp. 585, 586, 101. 8 See pp. 307, 308.