and temperate and discerning, or was there something of fanaticism at work? These questions must be satisfied, and therefore they must send a trusty commissioner; and the man selected for this important work is Barnabas, who now for the first time comes prominently forward as a worker in the Gospel. Twice already have we met this good and noble-hearted man,-first liberally bestowing his goods upon his poorer brethren, then again fearlessly bringing forward his friend Saul at a time of extreme danger and difficulty before his distrustful brethren. He is described as a good man (ayalòs), which is something more attractive to the human heart than the righteous or just man (Síkalos). The good man one loves and would perhaps die for (Rom. v. 7); but the just man awes us and inspires a respect from which love may perhaps be absent. Barnabas was full of the Holy Ghost, which lighted up his countenance with an attractive grace of which none could resist the charm. (δίκαιος). A man so large-hearted and liberal, and so clear-sighted withal, was evidently the right man to send on this delicate and important mission. And what does he see on his arrival at Antioch, that city so famous for its luxury and corruption, and amongst a people so notorious for their levity and changeableness as the Greeks? He recognises at once a true and most remarkable change in the whole bearing and character of the new converts. They are serious, they are deeply convinced and thoroughly in earnest both in receiving the Gospel and in spreading its knowledge abroad. He sees in this marvellous change evident signs of the grace of God being in their midst and in the hearts of them all. They no longer rejoice in iniquity, they rejoice in the truth (1 Cor. xiii. 6). To their already profound persuasion Barnabas now, deeply moved, adds his own tender exhortation that with full purpose of heart they will cleave unto the Lord. VII. THE SYRIAN ANTIOCH. ACTS xi. 25-30. A.D. 43 to about 45-Claudius, Emperor-Herod Agrippa I., King of Judea-Cuspius Fadus, Procurator of Judea. OFT "Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured "Par. Lost," I. 445-455. (See Ezek. viii. 12.) FTEN a powerfully convincing illustration of the guiding, overruling providence of God is found in the wonderful manner in which the humble Christian perceives that, quite unconsciously to himself, he has been undergoing a special training and preparation for scenes of action in which he was afterwards to engage. What God was preparing for him to do he knew not; it interested him, he could not tell why. Then comes a change in his fortunes, and he finds himself well-adapted for a sphere he had never dreamt of occupying. So it was with Saul of Tarsus. He had cultivated the natural powers of his mind to an unusual extent; he had sharpened his intellectual gifts by study and by exercise, and added continually to his knowledge and experience, until the sudden change of front forced upon him by his conversion showed to him the Gentile world lying in ignorance and sin, and himself the chosen instrument to bring the nations of the Gentiles to Christ. Still, though he knew his destination, he saw not yet how he was to be brought face to face with his work, until one day that faithful Apostle who had so befriended him at Jerusalem in the time of his utmost need (Acts ix. 27), suddenly appeared before him at Tarsus, and invited him to come to Antioch to labour with him in the Gospel there. A man's highest exercise of wisdom is often shown in the selection of his instruments and associates. Barnabas, while perhaps conscious of his singular powers of persuasion, felt that he was lacking in logical acumen, in the fire and zeal that break through all obstacles, in the energy that conquers, in the wisdom and tact that know exactly the right thing to do and when to do it, in the charm that fascinates the hostile forces that surge around a man's arduous path. But he was well aware that Saul had these powerful qualifications for success; that he possessed a cultivated mind, was free from the embarrassing prejudices with which the proud Jew bristled at every point, and the fear of which dissuaded him from going to Jerusalem for help. Saul was, besides, an old, tried, and dear friend; and so Saul must be invited to come and preach the Gospel with Barnabas at Antioch. This was in A.D. 43; and the association then happily commenced lasted till it was rudely broken off in A.D. 51 (Acts xv. 39), after eight years of incessant labour in close companionship. Whatever may have been the nature of Saul's reflections at Tarsus, now, at any rate, he knew without a doubt that his mission was to bring the Gentiles to the knowledge of Christ; as he wrote afterwards: "The mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the Gospel, whereof I was made a minister" (Ephes. iii. 4-7). But was his abode at Tarsus made memorable by no effort to evangelize the heathen in his own neighbourhood? We are not told directly; but indirectly it seems almost certain from Acts xv. 41: "He went through Syria and Cilicia confirming the Churches." These provinces he had not visited during his first apostolic journey, which lay through Cyprus and among the more central regions of Asia Minor, Pisidia, Pamphylia, and Lycaonia. There is no time assignable for the foundation of these Churches in Syria and Cilicia but the time of his last sojourn at Tarsus. Wonderful news were those that Barnabas, with intense eagerness, would communicate to his gravely-listening friend and colleague: that "God had also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life;" that "he had come and seen the grace of God;"" that much people was added unto the Lord" (Acts xi. 18, 23, 24). "And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch." It does not appear that Saul took a long time, or any time, to consider about this proposal. A man of true wisdom, coupled with real vital energy, justly suspects second thoughts. The first are the freshest, the most generous, the most to be trusted. With second thoughts are apt to come prudential considerations, counsels of personal safety; and this is the curse of that cautious spirit of reform which mingles selfish interests with the public good: "I made haste, and delayed not to keep Thy commandments" (Psalm cxix. 60). In the spring, therefore, of the year 43, Saul and Barnabas arrived in Antioch, now to become the cradle of Gentile Christianity, the Mother Church of the Gentile Christian world, as Jerusalem was of the Jewish. We must now pause for awhile in our narrative to see what kind of a place was this famous Antioch of which we shall hereafter hear so often. When Saul entered it now, not probably for the first time, he beheld a great city, not hoary with antiquity like the familiar Jerusalem, but a bright and splendid city, Greek in its beauty, Roman in its stately grandeur and strength; magnificent within the broad compass of its massive, mountain-climbing walls, superlatively lovely in all its surroundings. Saul having passed through the shady groves and along the cool, sparkling streams that gently flowed through the luxurious groves and past the sumptuous villas and the flashing fanes of Daphne, would enter the city through the western or Golden Gate. But all this beauty he would view with less of admiration than of horror and indignation, knowing of the foul heathenish orgies that filled even Roman voluptuaries with disgust. Antioch had been founded in 312 B.C., by one of the most illustrious of those renowned generals of Alexander the Great, who, like Napoleon's marshals, but more successfully, after the death of their master shared the great empire between them. Seleucus Nicator took for himself Syria and Cilicia, but soon established an empire that extended from the Halys to the Indus, rivalling in extent and magnificence the ancient glories of the Persian Empire. He was a great founder of splendid cities, by means of which he delighted to perpetuate his name, and those of his father Antiochus and his mother Laodice. Sixteen Antiochs and nine Seleucias commemorated his and his father's, and six Laodiceas his mother's, name; but of these cities we shall hear much of only the Syrian and the Pisidian Antiochs, of Seleucia the port of the former, at the mouth of the Orontes, and of Laodicea in the |