MISSIONARY METHODS:

ST. PAUL'S OR OURS?

By Roland Allen

 

Author's Preface

to The SECOND (1927) EDITION

 

It is now fifteen years since this book was first published, and it is thought that a new and cheaper edition may be useful. In these fifteen years I have seen, and I have heard from others, that action in many parts of the world has been influenced by the study of St. Paul's missionary methods; and I myself am more convinced than ever that in the careful examination of his work, above all in the understanding and appreciation of his principles, we shall find the solution of most of our present difficulties. We are talking today of indigenous churches. St. Paul's churches were indigenous churches in the proper sense of the word; and I believe that the secret of their foundation lay in his recognition of the church as a local church (as opposed to our 'national churches') and in his profound belief and trust in the Holy Spirit indwelling his converts and the churches of which they were members, which enabled him to establish them at once with full authority. It is not easy for us today so to trust the Holy Ghost. We can more easily believe in His work in us and through us, than we can believe in His work in and through our converts: we cannot trust our converts to Him. But that is one of the most obvious lessons which the study of St. Paul's work teaches us. I believe that we have still much to learn from his example.

In the reviews which appeared when this book was first published I was surprised and pleased to find that little fault was found with my statement of the Apostolic practice. Accepting the statement of the facts as substantially true, critics almost invariably fixed on two points: (1) that the gulf between us and the people to whom we go is deeper and wider than that between St. Paul and those to whom he preached; (2) that he could rely upon converts from the synagogue to preserve his churches from dangers only too plain to us. The conclusion drawn was that what was possible for him in his day is impossible for us in ours.

To the first of these criticisms I replied in a book entitled Educational Principles and Missionary Methods, in which I argued that the greater the gulf the greater was the value of the apostolic method. That argument is too long to summarize here. To the second I may say here briefly: (1) That the dangers which we anticipate, the dangers of lowering a standard of morals, or of a confusion of Christian doctrine by the introduction of ideas borrowed from heathen philosophy or superstition, were not less in his day than in ours; (2) that the breach between the Synagogue and the Christian Church arose so early and was so wide that as a matter of fact churches were soon being established which certainly were not 'off-shoots of the local synagogue', and yet the apostolic practice was maintained; (3) that at Corinth, and in Galatia, and in Ephesus, the presence of Jews or proselytes in the church did not prevent the dangers from arising; if St. Paul relied upon them, they failed him; (4) that the argument demands that we should admit that Mosaic teaching is a better foundation for Christian morality and theology than the teaching of Christ and of the Holy Spirit; (5) that St. Paul's faith in Christ and in His Holy Spirit would have forced him to act as he did, under any circumstances. He could not have relied upon any power either in heathen philosophic, or in Mosaic, teaching to establish his converts, under any circumstances whatsoever; (6) that if we went to China or to India and told those people that in morality and intelligence they were so far beneath the provincial Jews and proselytes of St. Paul's day that he could not have dealt with them as he did with the provincials of Galatia, they would be insulted, and we should be saying what we should find it hard to prove. And if anyone answers me that when we use such speech we are thinking only of people in Africa and other uncivilized lands, I must reply that we are plainly thinking of all men everywhere, because we everywhere employ the same method, and everywhere alike shrink from establishing the Church on the apostolic plan.

In the light of experience gained in the last fifteen years I might have enlarged this book, but it did not seem wise to add greatly to its bulk. I have therefore contented myself with making as few corrections and additions as possible, and have carried the argument further in a book, which is now published as a companion volume to this, entitled The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes which Hinder it. In that book I have tried to set forth the secret of an expansion which was a most remarkable characteristic of apostolic churches, and have examined the hindrances which have prevented us from establishing such churches.

If any of my readers desire to pursue the consideration of missionary methods further, I can only refer them to that book.

June 24, 1927

ROLAND ALLEN,

Beaconsfield

 

CHAPTER I

Introduction

In little more than ten years St. Paul established the Church in .four provinces of the Empire, Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia. Before AD 47 there were no churches in these provinces; in AD 57 St. Paul could speak as if his work there was done, and could plan extensive tours into the far west without anxiety lest the churches which he had founded might perish in his absence for want of his guidance and support.

The work of the Apostle during these ten years can therefore be treated as a unity. Whatever assistance he may have received from the preaching of others, it is unquestioned that the establishment of the churches in these provinces was really his work. In the pages of the New Testament he, and he alone, stands forth as their founder. And the work which he did was really a completed work. So far as the foundation of the churches is concerned, it is perfectly clear that the writer of the Acts intends to represent St. Paul's work as complete. The churches were really established. Whatever disasters fell upon them in later years, whatever failure there was, whatever ruin, that failure was not due to any insufficiency or lack of care and completeness in the Apostle's teaching or organization. When he left them he left them because his work was fully accomplished.

This is truly an astonishing fact. That churches should be founded so rapidly, so securely, seems to us today, accustomed to the difficulties, the uncertainties, the failures, the disastrous relapses of our own missionary work, almost incredible. Many missionaries in later days have received a larger number of converts than St. Paul; many have preached over a wider area than he; but none have so established churches. We have long forgotten that such things could be. We have long accustomed ourselves to accept it as an axiom of missionary work that converts in a new country must be submitted to a very long probation and training, extending over generations before they can be expected to be able to stand alone. Today if a man ventures to suggest that there may be something in the methods by which St. Paul attained such wonderful results worthy of our careful attention, and perhaps of our imitation, he is in danger of being accused of revolutionary tendencies.

Yet this is manifestly not as it should be. It is impossible but that the account so carefully given by St. Luke of the planting of the churches in the Four Provinces should have something more than a mere archaeological and historical interest. Like the rest of the Holy Scriptures it was 'written for our learning'. It was certainly meant to be something more than the romantic history of an exceptional man, doing exceptional things under exceptional circumstances&emdash;a story from which ordinary people of a later age can get no more instruction for practical missionary work than they receive from the history of the Cid, or from the exploits of King Arthur. It was really intended to throw light on the path of those who should come after.

But it is argued that as a matter of fact St. Paul was an exceptional man living in exceptional times, preaching under exceptional circumstances; that he enjoyed advantages in his birth, his education, his call, his mission, his relationship to his hearers, such as have been enjoyed by no other; and that he enjoyed advantages in the peculiar constitution of society at the moment of his call such as to render his work quite exceptional. To this I must answer: (1) That St. Paul's missionary method was not peculiarly St. Paul's, he was not the only missionary who went about establishing churches in those early days. The method in its broad outlines was followed by his disciples, and they were not all men of exceptional genius. It is indeed universal, and outside the Christian Church has been followed by reformers, religious, political, social, in every age and under most diverse conditions. It is only because he was a supreme example of the spirit, and power with which it can be used, that we can properly call the method St. Paul's. (2) That we possess today an advantage of inestimable importance in that we have the printing press and the whole of the New Testament where St. Paul had only the Old Testament in Greek. (3) That however highly we may estimate St. Paul's personal advantages or the assistance which the conditions of his age afforded, they cannot be so great as to rob his example of all value for us. In no other work do we set the great masters wholly on one side, and teach the students of today that whatever they may copy, they may not copy them, because they lived in a different age under exceptional circumstances and were endowed with exceptional genius. It is just because they were endowed with exceptional genius that we say their work is endowed with a universal character. Either we must drag down St. Paul from his pedestal as the great missionary, or else we must acknowledge that there is in his work that quality of universality.

The cause which has created this prejudice against the study of the Pauline method is not far to seek. It is due to the fact that every unworthy, idle and slip-shod method of missionary work has been lathered upon the Apostle. Men have wandered over the world, 'preaching the Word', laying no solid foundations, establishing nothing permanent, leaving no really instructed society behind them, and have claimed St. Paul's authority for their absurdities. They have gone through the world, spending their time in denouncing ancient religions, in the name of St. Paul. They have wandered from place to place without any plan or method of any kind, guided in their movements by straws and shadows, persuaded they were imitating St. Paul on his journey from Antioch to Troas. Almost every intolerable abuse that has ever been known in the mission field has claimed some sentence or act of St. Paul as its original.

It is in consequence of this, because in the past we have seen missionary work made ridiculous or dangerous by the vagaries of illiterate or unbalanced imitators of the Apostle, that we have allowed ourselves to be carried to the opposite extreme, and to shut our eyes to the profound teaching and practical wisdom of the Pauline method.

Secondly, people have adopted fragments of St. Paul's method and have tried to incorporate them into alien systems, and the failure which resulted has been used as an argument against the Apostle's method. For instance, people have baptized uninstructed converts and the converts have fallen away; but St. Paul did not baptize uninstructed converts apart from a system of mutual responsibility which ensured their instruction. Again, they have gathered congregations and have left them to fend for themselves, with the result that the congregations have fallen back into heathenism. But St. Paul did not gather congregations, he planted churches, and he did not leave a church until it was fully equipped with orders of ministry, sacraments and tradition. Or again, they have trusted native helpers with the management of mission funds, and these helpers have grievously misused them; but St. Paul did not do this. He had no funds with which to entrust anyone. These people have committed funds in trust to individual native helpers and have been deceived; but St. Paul left the church to manage its own finance. These people have made the helpers responsible to them for honest management; but St. Paul never made any church render an account of its finances to him. Or again, Europeans have ordained ill-educated native helpers and have repented of it. But they have first broken the bonds which should have united those whom they ordained to those to whom they were to minister, and then have expected them to be ministers of a foreign system of church organization with which neither the ministers nor their congregations were familiar. St. Paul did not do this. He ordained ministers of the Church for the Church, and he instituted no elaborate constitution. When these false and partial attempts at imitating the Apostle's method have failed, men have declared that the apostolic method was at fault and was quite unsuited to the condition and circumstances of present-day missions. The truth is that they have neither understood nor practised the Apostle's method at all.

There is yet another and a more weighty reason: St. Paul's method is not in harmony with the modern Western spirit. We modern teachers from the West are by nature and by training persons of restless activity and boundless self-confidence. We are accustomed to assume an attitude of superiority towards all Eastern peoples, and to point to our material progress as the justification of our attitude. We are accustomed to do things ourselves for ourselves, to find our own way, to rely upon our own exertions, and we naturally tend to be impatient with others who are less restless and less self-assertive than we are. We are accustomed by long usage to an elaborate system of church organization, and a peculiar code of morality. We cannot imagine any Christianity worthy of the name existing without the elaborate machinery which we have invented. We naturally expect our converts to adopt from us not only essentials but accidentals. We desire to impart not only the Gospel, but the Law and the Customs. With that spirit, St. Paul's methods do not agree, because they were the natural outcome of quite another spirit, the spirit which preferred persuasion to authority. St. Paul distrusted elaborate systems of religious ceremonial, and grasped fundamental principles with an unhesitating faith in the power of the Holy Ghost to apply them to his hearers and to work out their appropriate external expressions in them. It was inevitable that methods which were the natural outcome of the mind of St. Paul should appear as dangerous to us as they appeared to the Jewish Christians of his own day. The mere fact that they can be made to bear a shallow resemblance to the methods of no method is sufficient to make the 'apostles of order' suspicious. In spite of the manifest fact that the Catholic Church was founded by them, they appear uncatholic to those who live in daily terror of schism. It seems almost as if we thought it uncatholic to establish the Church too fast.

But that day is passing. In face of the vast proportions of the work to be done, we are day by day seeking for some new light on the great problem how we may establish the Catholic Church in the world. In this search, the example of the Apostle of the Gentiles must be of the first importance to us. He succeeded in doing what we so far have only tried to do. The facts are unquestionable. In a very few years, he built the Church on so firm a basis that it could live and grow in faith and in practice, that it could work out its own problems, and overcome all dangers and hindrances both from within and without. I propose in this book to attempt to set forth the methods which he used to produce this amazing result.

I am not writing a book on St. Paul's doctrine. I do not feel it necessary to argue over again the foundations of the faith. I am a churchman, and I write as a churchman. I naturally use terms which imply church doctrine. But the point to which I want to call attention is not the doctrine, which has been expounded and defended by many, but the Apostle's method. A true understanding of the method does not depend upon a true interpretation of the doctrine, but upon a true appreciation of the facts. About the facts there is very general agreement: about the doctrine there is very little agreement. E.g.&emdash;It is almost universally agreed that St. Paul taught his converts the rite of baptism: it is very far from agreed what he meant by baptism. I use about baptism the terms of the Church of which I am a member; but my argument would be equally applicable if I used terms which implied a Zwinglian doctrine. Similarly I use about the orders of the ministry the terms natural to one who believes in apostolic succession. But the general force of my argument would not be affected if I used the terms natural to a Presbyterian or a Wesleyan. I suppose that I should scarcely need to alter more than a word or two, if I believed in 'the Churches' as firmly as I believe in 'the Church'. I hope, then, that, if I am happy enough to find readers who do not accept my ecclesiastical position, they will not allow themselves to be led away into the wilds of a controversy which I have tried as far as possible to exclude; and will rather seek to consider the method of the Apostle's work which I set forth than to find fault with the use of terms or expressions which imply a doctrine which they do not hold.

Neither am I attempting to describe the character of the Apostle or his special qualifications for the work, or his special preparation for it, still less am I attempting to write his life. I propose to deal simply with the foundation of the churches in the four provinces of Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia, Asia, in the ten years which covered the three missionary journeys. I wish to suggest an answer to the following questions:

I. Was there any antecedent advantage in the position or character of the cities in which St. Paul founded his churches?

We must inquire:

(1) Whether he deliberately selected certain strategic points at which to establish his churches?

(2) Whether his success was due to the existence of some peculiar class of people to which he made a special appeal?

(3) Whether the social, moral or religious condition of the provinces was so unlike anything known in modern times, as to render futile any comparison between his work and ours.

II. Was there any peculiar virtue in the way in which the Apostle presented his gospel? Under this heading we must consider: (1) His use of miracles; (2) His finance; (3) The substance of his preaching.

III. Was there any peculiar virtue in the teaching which he gave to his converts or in his method of training his converts for baptism, or for ordination?

IV. Was there any peculiar virtue in his method of dealing with his organized churches? This will include the means by which (a) discipline was exercised and (b) unity maintained.

I shall try to point out as occasion offers where and how far we now follow or refuse the Apostle's method. It will, of course, be impossible and inadvisable to quote particular instances from the mission field. I can only deal in general terms with tendencies which will, I think, be quite familiar to any one who is acquainted with the missionary work of the present day.

V. Finally, I shall call attention to certain principles which seem to lie at the back of all the Apostle's actions and in which I believe we may find the key to his success, and endeavour to show some at least of the ways in which the apostolic method might be usefully employed today.

 

CHAPTER 2

Strategic Points

It is quite impossible to maintain that St. Paul deliberately planned .his journeys beforehand, selected certain strategic points at which to establish his churches and then actually carried out his designs. The only argument, which seems to support that theory, is the use of the word 'the work' with regard to his first missionary journey in Acts 13. 2, 14. 26, 15. 38. In Acts 13. 2 it is said, 'The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them'. In 14. 26 we are told that the apostles returned to Antioch 'from whence they had been committed to the grace of God for the work which they had fulfilled'. And in 15. 38 St. Paul complains that Mark 'withdrew from them in Pamphylia and went not with them to the work'. These words taken together seem naturally to imply (a) that the apostles started out with a definite plan before them, (b) that they actually carried out their plans, and (c) that St. Mark's fault lay in the fact that he had deserted a work which he had undertaken to do.

But the difficulties in the way of that interpretation are very great. If we accept Professor Ramsay's theory that the churches to which the Epistle to the Galatians was written were the churches in South Galatia, which St. Paul founded on this journey, then there can be no dispute that St. Paul did not design to visit them when he started out from Syria, for in that epistle he distinctly states that he preached to them because he was either driven to them or detained amongst them by an infirmity of the flesh.

The most natural explanation of the return of John Mark from Perga is that he turned back because he saw that after the crisis at Paphos St. Paul was become the real leader of the mission in the place of his own cousin, Barnabas, and was prepared both to preach outside the synagogue to Gentiles with greater freedom than he had anticipated, and to admit Gentiles into fellowship on terms which he was hardly proposing to accept. He saw too that St. Paul was proposing to penetrate into regions more remote, perhaps more dangerous, than he had expected. In other words there was at Perga a real change both in the direction and in the character of the mission.

On these grounds it seems more reasonable to suppose that the words 'the work' are used in a general sense of the objects of their journey rather than of any defined sphere of action. But whatever view we take of this first journey, it is perfectly clear that in the second journey St. Paul was not following any predetermined route. If he had any definite purpose when he left Antioch it was to go through Cilicia and South Galatia to Ephesus. It is expressly stated that he tried to preach in Asia and was forbidden by the Holy Ghost, and that he then attempted to go into Bithynia and again was forbidden by the Spirit. So he found himself at Troas not knowing where he was to go, until he was directed by a vision to Macedonia. Having preached in Philippi, Thessalonica and Beroea he was apparently driven out of Macedonia and fled to Athens, not, as it seems, with any intention of establishing himself there as a preacher, but simply as a retreat until circumstances would allow him to return to Macedonia. When he was expelled from Athens he went to Corinth, either because that was the most convenient place from whence to keep in touch with Macedonia, or because he was directed thither by the Spirit. In all this there is little sign of premeditation or deliberate design.

Only one other place remains at which St. Paul established the church before his first imprisonment, viz. Ephesus, and it appears from Acts 18. 19 that he touched at that place in the ordinary course of his journey to Jerusalem, and that, finding the people ready to listen to him, he promised to return again.

On this third journey St. Paul apparently laid his plans and executed them as they were designed so far as Ephesus, but after that he was so uncertain in his movements as to lay himself open to an accusation of vacillation. It is during this journey that we find the first expressed plan for future work. Whilst at Ephesus, 'Paul purposed in the spirit when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia to go to Jerusalem saying: After I have been there, I must also see Rome'.

I cannot help concluding then from this brief review that St. Paul did not deliberately plan his missionary tours, but nevertheless there are certain facts in the history of his missionary journeys which demand attention.

1. Both St. Luke and St. Paul speak constantly of the provinces rather than of the cities. Thus St. Paul was forbidden to preach the word in Asia, he was called from Troas not to Philippi, or to Thessalonica, but to Macedonia. Speaking of the collection for the saints at Jerusalem St. Paul says that he boasted that Achaia was ready a year ago. The suggestion is that in St. Paul's view the unit was the province rather than the city.

2. Secondly, his work was confined within the limits of Roman administration. It is perfectly clear that in preaching in South Galatia, St. Paul was evangelizing the Roman province next in order to his native province of Cilicia, in which there were already Christian churches. Between these two, there lay the territory of Lycaonia Antiochi, and across this territory St. Paul must have passed when he went from Tarsus to Lystra and Iconium. Yet we are never told that he made any attempt to preach in that region. From this fact we must certainly infer that St. Paul did deliberately consider the strategic value of the provinces and places in which he preached. The territory of Antiochus&emdash;Lycaonia Antiochi&emdash;was not so important from the view of the propagation of the Gospel as the region of Lystra. St. Paul deliberately chose the one before the other.

3. Thirdly, St. Paul's theory of evangelizing a province was not to preach in every place in it himself, but to establish centres of Christian life in two or three important places from which the knowledge might spread into the country round. This is important, not as showing that he preferred to preach in a capital rather than in a provincial town or in a village, but because he intended his congregation to become at once a centre of light. Important cities may be made the graves of a mission as easily as villages. There is no particular virtue in attacking a centre or establishing a church in an important place unless the church established in the important place is a church possessed of sufficient life to be a source of light to the whole country round.

It is not enough for the church to be established in a place where many are coming and going unless the people who come and go not only learn the Gospel, but learn it in such a way that they can propagate it. It has often happened that a mission has been established in an important city, and the surrounding country has been left untouched so far as the efforts of the native Christians have been concerned, because the Gospel was preached in such a form that the native convert who himself received it did not understand how to spread it, nor realize that it was entrusted to him for that purpose. By establishing the church in two or three centres St. Paul claimed that he had evangelized the whole province. Ten years after his first start from Antioch, he told the Romans that he had 'fully preached the Gospel of Christ from Jerusalem and round about Illyricum', and that he had 'no more place in these parts'. In that single sentence we have the explanation and the justification of St. Paul's establishment of the churches in important centres in a province. When he had occupied two or three centres he had really and effectually occupied the province.

All the cities, or towns, in which he planted churches were centres of Roman administration, of Greek civilization, of Jewish influence, or of some commercial importance.

(1) Just as he refused to preach in native states and passed through large towns in the territory of Antiochus without stopping to preach, so within the Roman province he passed through native provincial towns like Misthia or Vasada in order to preach in Lystra and Derbe&emdash;military posts in which there was a strong Roman element. Professor Ramsay has shown that there is in the Acts an apparent intention to contrast the conduct meted out to St. Paul by local provincial authorities with that which he received at the hands of Roman officials and to present the Romans in the light of protectors of the Apostle against the persecutions of the Jews. No doubt in selecting as the sphere of his work the centres of Roman administration, St. Paul was led by the desire to obtain for himself and for his people the security afforded by a strong government. He felt that as a Roman citizen he could in the last resort expect and receive the protection of Roman officials against the fanatical violence of the Jews; but he did not only seek Roman protection. He found under the Roman government something more than peace and security of travel. He found not only toleration and an open field for his preaching, there was also in the mere presence of Roman officials an influence which materially assisted his work. The idea of the world-wide empire which they represented, the idea of the common citizenship of men of many different races in that one empire, the strong authority of the one law, the one peace, the breaking down of national exclusiveness, all these things prepared men's minds to receive St. Paul's teaching of the Kingdom of Christ, and of the common citizenship of all Christians in it.

(2) The centres in which St. Paul established his churches were all centres of Greek civilization. Even at Lystra, half the inscriptions which have been discovered are Greek, while the other half are Latin. Everywhere Roman government went hand in hand with Greek education. This education provided St. Paul with his medium of communication. There is no evidence of any attempt to translate the Scriptures into the provincial dialects of Asia Minor. St. Paul preached in Greek and wrote in Greek, and all his converts who read at all were expected to read the Scriptures in Greek. For St. Paul, the one language was as important as the one government.

Moreover, the influence of Greek civilization was an influence which tended to the spread of general education, and Christianity from the very first was a religion of education. From the first, Christians were learners. They were expected to be able to give a reason for the hope that was in them. They were expected to learn something, if only a very little, of the Old Testament and of the stock proofs that Jesus was the Messiah. They were expected to know something of the life and teaching of Christ, and something of Christian doctrine. Before very long it became a common argument of the Christian apologists that amongst Christians, 'tradesmen, slaves, and old women knew how to give some account of God and did not believe without evidence'. It was from the widespread influence of Greek education that they were able to acquire this, and it was to places where that education was established that St. Paul naturally turned.

(3) Nearly all the places in which St. Paul established churches were centres of Jewish influence. St. Paul, as a Jew, was at home in the Jewry. He did not enter these great cities as a mere stranger. He came as a member of a family, as a member of a powerful and highly privileged association. Under the Roman Government the Jews enjoyed singular advantages. Their religion was definitely recognized. They had liberty to administer their common funds in their own way and to administer their own laws. They were exempt from the obligation to share in the worship of the Emperor, they enjoyed freedom from a military service in which it was evident they could not take part without violating their religion. They had many other privileges of less importance, but of considerable advantage.

When, therefore, St. Paul took up his residence in the Jewry or entered the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, he had for the moment a singular opportunity. He had an audience provided for him which understood the underlying principles of his religion, and was familiar with the texts on which he based his argument. When he went out into the city, he went as a member of a community which was associated in the minds of all men with the idea of a very strict, if unreasonable, observance of religion. Men would naturally expect from him as a Jew an unbending stiffness towards every form of idolatry, and the unhesitating maintenance as a part of his religious system of a strict code of morals. Much as the Greek and Roman world disliked and spurned the Jew, yet the religion of the Jew was exercising a very wide influence and no small attractive power over the minds of some of the best and most thoughtful of the people.

(4) St. Paul established his churches at places which were centres of the world's commerce. They were cities which occupied an important place as leaders of the provinces. They were foremost in every movement of policy or thought. They were sometimes almost ludicrously jealous of one another and strained all their powers in emulous rivalry to maintain their position as leaders. But they were leaders, and they felt it their duty to lead. They represented something larger than themselves and they looked out into a wider world than the little provincial town which was wholly absorbed in its own petty interests. Thus they were centres of unity, realizing that they had a responsibility for a world outside themselves. Even the settlers in Lystra and Derbe on the borders of a province realized that they were pioneers of a civilization which they were to extend to the barbarous country round. They lived in a life that was larger than their own. They could not live wholly to themselves.

Nor were these cities only centres of their own provinces. Through some of them the commerce of the world passed. They were the great marts where the material and intellectual wealth of the world was exchanged. They were bound to the whole Empire by great roads of which they were the keys. In their streets the busiest and most fervent life of the Empire hurried to and fro. How constant that intercourse was we learn not only from the history of the early churches: we cannot forget that Phrygian, who in his single life made the journey from Phrygia to Rome no less than seventy-two times. These places were not only centres of unity, they were points in the circumference of a larger unity.

Thus at first sight it seems to be a rule which may be unhesitatingly accepted that St. Paul struck at the centres of Roman administration, the centres of Hellenic civilization, the centres of Jewish influence, the keys of the great trade routes.

We must not, however, allow ourselves to lay over-much stress on these characteristics of the places at which St. Paul established his churches. They were common to a great many towns and cities on the great highways of the Empire. If the Apostle had gone to Laodicea or to Dyrrachium the same remarks might have been made about those places. In Macedonia, Beroea was not as important a place as Pella. St. Paul plainly did not select where he would preach simply on grounds like these: he was led of the Spirit, and when we speak of his strategic centres, we must recognize that they were natural centres; but we must also recognize that for missionary work they were strategic centres because he made them such. They were not centres at which he must stop, but centres from which he might begin; not centres into which life drained but centres from which it spread abroad.

We have often heard in modern days of concentrated missions at great centres. We have often heard of the importance of seizing strategic points. But there is a difference between our seizing of strategic centres and St. Paul's. To seize a strategic centre we need not only a man capable of recognizing it, but a man capable of seizing it. The seizing of strategic points implied a strategy. It is part of a plan of attack upon the whole country. Concentrated missions at strategic centres, if they are to win the province, must be centres of evangelistic life. In great cities are great prisons as well as great railway stations. Concentrated missions may mean concentrated essence of control or concentrated essence of liberty: a concentrated mission may be a great prison or a great market: it may be a safe in which all the best intellect of the day is shut up, or it may be a mint from which the coin of new thought is put into circulation. A great many of our best men are locked up in strategic centres: if once they get in they find it hard to get out. At many of the strategic points where we have established our concentrated missions it is noticeable that the church rather resembles a prison or a safe or a swamp into which the best life of the country round is collected than a mint or a spring or a railway station from which life flows out into the country round. We are sometimes so enamoured with the strategic beauty of a place that we spend our time in fortifying it whilst the opportunity for a great campaign passes by unheeded or neglected.

St. Paul's centres were centres indeed. He seized strategic points because he had a strategy. The foundation of churches in them was part of a campaign. In his hands they became the sources of rivers, mints from which the new coin of the Gospel was spread in every direction. They were centres from which he could start new work with new power. But they were this not only because they were naturally fitted for this purpose, but because his method of work was so designed that centres of intellectual and commercial activity became centres of Christian activity. St. Paul was less dependent upon these natural advantages than we generally suppose. We have seen that he did not start out with any definite design to establish his churches in this place or in that. He was led as God opened the door; but wherever he was led he always found a centre, and seizing upon that centre he made it a centre of Christian life. How he did this we shall see in the following chapters.

 

CHAPTER 3

Class

In these days there is a strong and apparently growing tendency to lay great stress on the importance of directing attention to some particular class of people in a country which we desire to evangelize. We had a striking illustration of the wonderful results which may be obtained by a judicious appeal to an influential class in the history of the 'Natural Foot Society' in China. The success of that movement was largely due to the fact that the promoters of the Society did not spend their time in preaching to the ignorant and conservative rustics of the villages, but began by enlisting the support of enlightened and well-to-do official and commercial families. As a consequence of that policy a movement started by a few foreigners became in ten or twelve years so firmly established in the country that foreign encouragement and support were no longer necessary.

Similarly, it was the appreciation of the value of a special class for the achievement of certain ends that led to the foundation of movements like the Student Christian Movement, and the same thought really lies at the back of nearly all educational missions in the foreign field as well as of special missions to official classes, whilst at the other end of the scale we are often told that in India we should concentrate all our efforts on the upraising of the depressed castes in the belief that the sight of the recovery and civilization of the most degraded and most despised will exercise an irresistible attraction over the other sections of society.

A common explanation of the success of St. Paul's preaching in the Four Provinces is that he followed this method. There was, we are told, in the Four Provinces, a special class of people specially prepared for the reception and establishment of the Gospel, and it is used as an argument against the employment of St. Paul's method in modern days under modern conditions that such a class does not now exist, and that our converts have none of the special advantages which his enjoyed. It is therefore important to inquire whether there was any special class to which he did in fact appeal, and whether the adherents which came to him from any special class were sufficiently numerous to justify us in rejecting his method, on the ground that that method was used by him under such peculiar circumstances, and applied by him only in dealing with converts of such special and peculiar character.

Is it possible to maintain that St. Paul established Christianity in the Four Provinces by enrolling in its service the gifts and influence of any particular important class of men? This would scarcely appear to be the case. St. Paul always began his work by preaching in the synagogue, to Jews and God-fearing Greeks. But neither Jews nor proselytes provided him with such a class. It very soon became apparent that Christianity could not take root in Jewish soil. The Christian spirit was in harmony rather with the freedom of the Greek mind than with the narrow legality of the Jewish. It was altogether too large to be bound by the shackles of Judaism. From the very first it was driven out of the nation in which it was born to find in a strange country not only its own life, but the life of those to whom it came. St. Paul preached in the synagogue, indeed, but he was not allowed to preach there very long, nor did many Jews join themselves to him. It is not necessary here to examine the history of the founding of the church in the Four Provinces, it is not necessary to examine the epistles of St. Paul to the churches in the Four Provinces, to show that those churches were composed almost entirely of Greek converts, for there is almost complete agreement on this subject. Again and again St. Luke draws a sharp distinction between the obstinate refusal of the Jews, and the eager readiness of the Greeks to listen to St. Paul's teaching. Again and again St. Paul refers to his converts as men who knew idolatry by personal experience.

But St. Paul's attempts to preach to the Jews were not only for the most part unsuccessful, they also stirred up great difficulties in his way. Not only did they invariably result in personal violence offered to him and sometimes to his converts, not only did they involve the sudden suspension of his work, whilst he fled for refuge from the fury which he had aroused; but they also brought into prominence a difficulty with which we today are only too familiar. They raised in the most acute form the question of the Apostle's own authority and the truth of his message. St. Paul entered the cities as a Jew, and as a teacher of a form of Judaism. He claimed to be preaching a revelation given to men by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He came to proclaim that the Messiah of the Jews was come, and had shown Himself to be not only the Saviour of the Jews, but of all men. Yet the moment he delivered this message the whole Jewish community rose up against him, expelled him, and sought to take his life as a blasphemer of God. Now if with us today the great stumblingblock in the way of our missions is the practical denial ofChristianity, the indifference of men of our own blood, who yet call themselves Christians, this violent persecution of St. Paul, by the religious teachers of his own nation, must have been a far greater stumblingblock; for it must have appeared to large numbers of people a sufficient refutation of the truth of his message. If from Jerusalem, and round about to Illyricum St. Paul had preached the Gospel, from Jerusalem and round about to Illyricum that Gospel was denied by all the people who were naturally best qualified to judge. When St. Paul turned to the Gentiles it must have appeared that he had given up the attempt to convince the Jews, who really knew this Jesus of Nazareth, and that he was now wandering round the world, continually getting further from the place where the facts were known, trying to teach those who did not know something which those who did know rejected with scorn.

This difficulty would have been largely avoided if St. Paul had not begun his preaching in the synagogue. It was when the Jews saw the multitudes, who had been worshippers in their synagogues, following the Apostle that 'they were filled with envy' and went about contradicting and blaspheming. No doubt the difficulty was necessarily there and could not have been avoided, but by his preaching in the synagogue St. Paul brought the difficulty at once to a head in its acutest form.

So it was that St. Paul was constrained to advertise publicly the breach between himself and the Jews, proclaiming in the synagogue his severance from the Jews. The tendency to do this became more marked as time passed, until he went so far as to force the attention of all men to the separation by opening his preaching-room next door to the synagogue. This act of St. Paul seems at first sight deliberately calculated to stir the passions of his countrymen,&emdash;and it is difficult to understand why St. Luke should have called our attention to it so carefully, unless he had seen in it a distinct advance in the relation between St. Paul and the Jews, between Christianity as represented by St. Paul and Judaism.

In order that Christianity might be fairly represented to the Greeks, it was necessary for St. Paul to emphasize the truth that Christianity was not a sect of Judaism, and that its truth or falsehood was wholly independent of the attitude of Jewish authorities towards it. There may be thus some reason in the contention that St. Paul preached first in the synagogue from a sense of religious obligation as much as from any motives of policy, and this seems to be the natural force of his words in the synagogues of Antioch and Corinth and his general attitude towards the Jews in the Epistle to the Romans. The preaching in the synagogue may have been a religious duty; it was certainly not an unmixed advantage. St. Paul may have felt that he owed a debt to the Jews, but he can hardly be said to have deliberately aimed at the conversion of the Jews as a class.

Nevertheless, though St. Paul did not make many Jewish converts in the synagogue, yet it was from the synagogue that he received a certain number of converts whose adherence must have been of great importance to the Church. Proselytes and God-fearing Greeks brought into the Church elements which were of the utmost value for the future life of the body. They had already an established conviction of the Unity of God and of the folly of idolatry. They possessed a conviction and experience of the necessity of morality for true religion. They had an acquaintance with the theory and practice of public worship and some knowledge of the Old Testament. St. Paul was already using the Old Testament, not only as a textbook of controversy; he was also transferring it from the nation to which it naturally belonged to the new Israel to which it spiritually belonged. Already he was treating the story of Hagar as an allegory, already he was treating circumcision as a spiritual, not a carnal, rite, already he was proclaiming Abraham the father of the faithful. All this, some, at least, of the God-fearing Greeks were prepared to receive and understand and teach.

At the same time it is possible to exaggerate the influence which these people exercised in the Church. They cannot have been very numerous, for St. Paul speaks of the majority of Christians in his churches as having been idolaters. The epistles to the Macedonian churches are the epistles which demand no acquaintance with the Old Testament for their understanding, and the moral warnings in those epistles refer to the vices which are common to heathen surroundings. When, then, we take it for granted, as we so often do, that the existence of a synagogue and the presence of some God-fearing Greeks in a city so alter the problem of church building that methods used by St. Paul under these circumstances cannot possibly be applied to any modern conditions, I think we are labouring under a delusion. The existence of the synagogue and the presence of God-fearing Greeks enabled St. Paul to receive into the church a few people who could read the Old Testament and were acquainted with the Law, a few people who were before dissatisfied with idolatry or heathen philosophy and were seeking after a truer and purer teaching. The Jews who joined St. Paul had enjoyed this knowledge from their infancy, the Greeks who had become proselytes had enjoyed it for a few years. But this is not enough to justify us in imagining that the presence of these few people in a church made so vast a difference, that there can be no comparison between a church in which they were and a church in which they were not.

Outside the synagogue St. Paul does not seem to have addressed himself to any particular class. He certainly did not give himself up almost exclusively to preaching to the loafers, the porters, the ignorant and degraded, the casual labourers in the streets. He does not seem to have preached at street corners to the idle or curious crowd. It is true that the lame man at Lystra, who was apparently sitting by the wayside begging, heard St. Paul speak. It is true that the soothsaying girl at Thessalonica had apparently heard him, and that we are told that he preached in the Agora at Athens, but whatever we may say with regard to the lame man at Lystra, it is by no means clear that the soothsayer at Thessalonica was doing more than repeating the popular estimate of St. Paul and his preaching. At any rate, it is particularly stated that he was not preaching at the time, but was on his way to the place of prayer, where he was accustomed to preach. As for the Agora at Athens, that was certainly not what we ordinarily mean by the street corner. If then the fact that the lame man at Lystra heard St. Paul speak necessarily implies that St. Paul taught in the street, we must conclude that this was an exception to his general practice, for as a rule St. Paul preached first in the synagogue and afterwards in the house of some man of good repute. It is curious how careful St. Luke is to tell us exactly where St. Paul lodged, or in whose house he taught, e.g. we are told that at Philippi he lodged with Lydia and preached at the prayer-place. At Thessalonica he lodged with Jason, and apparently taught in his house; at Corinth he lodged with Aquila, and preached in the house of Titus Justus; and at Ephesus he preached in the School of Tyrannus. St. Luke evidently desires us to understand that St. Paul was careful to provide things honest in the sight of all men, and took thought for what was honourable and of good report, as well as of what was true, and of what was pure, and of what was just.

On the other hand, St. Paul did not seek particularly to attract the scholars, the officials, the philosophers. He certainly did not address himself to them. If he did so once at Athens, he deliberately refused to take that course at Corinth. He himself says that he did not receive many converts from those classes. 'From the middle and lower classes of society,' says Bishop Lightfoot, 'it seems probable that the Church drew her largest reinforcements.' Similarly, Professor Ramsay declares that 'the classes where education and work go hand in hand were the first to come under the influence of the new religion'. This conclusion is supported by St. Paul's reference to the deep poverty of the churches of Macedonia; and St. Luke by his careful note of the conversion of 'chief women' at Thessalonica, and of 'women of honourable estate' at Beroea, seems to suggest that men of rank and importance were few. Moreover, the frequent references to slavery in the Epistles show that many of the Christians belonged to that class. I conclude then that the majority of St. Paul's converts were of the lower commercial and working classes, labourers, freed-men, and slaves; but that he himself did not deliberately aim at any class.

Moreover, it is difficult to believe that he did not also attract many people who make the least desirable converts. We are all familiar with the experience that people who are most ready to receive new impressions, to follow new ideas, to embrace new creeds, to practise new rites, are by no means always the most stable and admirable, sober and trustworthy, high-principled and honest hearted of men. And one form of St. Paul's preaching was of a kind peculiarly suited to attract many undesirable elements. Miracles draw a gaping crowd of idle, superstitious, and inquisitive folk. They make converts of those who are on the look-out for any means of gaining and exercising an influence over their fellows, people like the sons of Sceva, men who have a craving for power, without the natural ability which will enable them to win and exercise it in a natural way. They make converts of the weak-minded and credulous.

That many such did approach St. Paul seems inevitable. If the churches of Galatia were anything like the churches of Achaia and Macedonia and Asia there were certainly many members whose ideas of religion and morality were far from high. St. Paul did not exclude such. But he did not make his first converts of such. He so taught that no church of his foundation was without a strong centre of respectable, religious-minded people. These naturally took the lead and preserved the church from rapid decay.

Thus it would appear that St. Paul made no attempt to seek after any particular class of hearers. He had his place of preaching and addressed himself to all who would listen, and, just as in China today, men of different classes came in whilst he was preaching or called upon him for private conversation. His converts were no better and no worse than ours in any Eastern land. Not here is the secret of his peculiar success to be found. We cannot excuse our failure in the East on the ground that we have no synagogues to preach in, no proselytes to convert. If half our converts had been Jews or proselytes I think it would have made little difference. We have had plenty of good and able converts. In this St. Paul had no advantage over us.

But it may be said that if this is true of the civilized East it is certainly not true of many other parts of the world. If St. Paul's method of establishing churches is conceivably applicable to civilized peoples, it is certainly inapplicable to the uncivilized, the savage, the illiterate. To this, one answer is that we have never tried, and therefore cannot tell, what may be the power of the Holy Ghost in such cases. But it is at least strange that we should hitherto have applied exactly the same rule to those whom no one ventures to call uncivilized and to those whom no one would call civilized. And further it is true that, where uncivilized men have accepted the Gospel, a very few years have wrought a most amazing change in their mental and moral outlook. They are often not incapable of education of the highest order, they are not destitute of natural ability to lead, they are no mean evangelists. Examples can be found in the South Seas, in Papua, in New Zealand, in Central, South and West Africa, and among the low castes of India, in fact, everywhere. Is it true that the missions to the civilized people of the East are established more quickly or surely than those amongst the uncivilized? Our difficulty is that we have not yet tried St. Paul's method anywhere, and have used the same argument to bolster up our dread of independence everywhere. For such an attitude St. Paul's practice and the accounts of his work handed down to us lend no authority.

 

CHAPTER 4

Moral and Social Condition

The places at which St. Paul established his churches were centres of Roman and Greek civilization. Now when we speak of Graeco-Roman civilization we generally have in mind the lofty teachings of the great philosophers, and we imagine a world permeated with those teachings. But as a matter of fact there was in the empire no common standard of civilization. The great cities were the homes of a bewildering variety of religions, and of an amazing assortment of people in every stage of civilization or barbarism. Their inhabitants differed one from another in manners and religion as widely as the Kaffir differs from the Englishman. Dr. Bigg tells us that the state of the empire in the first century can only be compared with the state of India since the conquests of Clive and Warren Hastings.

This is a circumstance of the first importance when we turn to consider the moral surroundings of the churches founded by St. Paul in the Four Provinces. We are sometimes apt to think that the social condition of those to whom St. Paul preached may account for his success in establishing the Church, and the answer comes with irresistible force that the majority of St. Paul's converts were born and bred in an atmosphere certainly not better, and in some respects even worse, than that with which we have to deal today in India or China.

There were of course lofty philosophies: there were profound mysteries: there were simple religious people like some of those whom Dion Chrysostom met in his wanderings. These are everywhere to be met in all ages, the people of profound thought or of simple faith; but such people were not really typical of the religion and morals of the Four Provinces in St. Paul's day. They were no more typical than Chang Chih Tung was typical of the Chinese Mandarinate, or Tulsi Dâs typical of the Hindus, or Alfred the Great of the Saxons of his day. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius were as far removed from the religious life of the empire as the doctrines of Seneca were from his practice.

So Friedlander contrasts the evidence afforded by the literature and the monuments of the early centuries of our era. 'The literature was chiefly the work of unbelievers or indifferentists, or of those who strove to spiritualize, purify or transform, the popular beliefs by reflection and interpretation. The monuments, on the other hand, to a great extent, at least, had their origin in those classes of society which were little affected by literature and its prevailing tendencies... thus in the majority of cases they are witnesses of a positive belief in a system of polytheism, of a faith which is free from doubt and subtlety alike.'

I cannot here, of course, attempt to depict the moral and social conditions of the provinces, but to a right understanding of St. Paul's work it is essential that we should remember four elements in the life of the people.

(1) The first of these is the prevalence of belief in demons. 'In times of distress heathenism turned naturally to devil worship.' 'Not merely idolatry, but every phase and form of life was ruled by them, they sat on thrones, they hovered round cradles, the earth was literally a hell.' 'The whole world lieth in the Evil One.' Not only Barbarians, not only Phrygians, but Romans, Greeks, and Jews all alike believed this. Not only the uneducated, but the most cultured were as fully persuaded of this universal power of devils as are the Chinese or the Gonds today. And the consequences of that belief were then what they are today&emdash;physical and psychical disease, cruelty, bondage, vice. Men like Pliny the EIder, who argued that it was the height of impiety to attribute to the gods adultery and strife and to believe in divinities of theft and crime, believed in the most horrible forms of magic. Human sacrifice was not unknown and belief in witchcraft was universal. Educated men believed that any enemy could practise in secret upon their lives by means of incantations. Plutarch was a good and learned man but he was quite serious, when, speaking of rites associated with unlucky and evil days, the devouring of raw flesh, mangling of bodies, fastings and beatings of the breast, obscene cries at the altars, ragings and ravings, he said that he did not suppose any god was worshipped with these rites, but that they were instituted to propitiate and keep off evil demons. To this cause are to be traced the magic incantations of which so many have recently been found, and of which the formulae probably filled those magical books (worth 50,000 pieces of silver) which were publicly burnt at Ephesus under the influence of St. Paul's preaching.

From this root spring the leaden tablets, the bits of bones, the belief in dreams and omens, the magical love-potions, the epitaphs on children carried away by spiritual beings, in a word, a whole world of abject superstition. When we read the treatises of the philosophers we think of religion in the empire as we think of religion in the East when we read the books of Sir Edwin Arnold or Mrs. Besant. When we hear Dr. Bigg tell us that 'it is probably not too hard a thing to say that demon worship was the really operative religion of the vast mass of the people of the empire', we think of the religion of the empire as we think of the religion of the East when we read Dr. Copleston's account of Buddhism in Ceylon, or Professor de Groot's description of the religion of the Chinese. Professor de Groot takes the lowest possible view of the character of Chinese religion, but whole chapters of his descriptions of Chinese demonolatry might be incorporated in Dr. Bigg's or Dr. Friedlander's account of popular religion in the empire without affecting in any way the general impression which those accounts are calculated to produce upon our minds.

Before conversion every one of St. Paul's hearers was born and bred in this atmosphere of superstitious terror, and even after conversion the vast majority of them were still 'used to the idol' and did not cease to believe in demons. The preaching of St. Paul and the other apostles was not a denial of this belief; it provided those who accepted it with invincible weapons wherewith to meet the armies of evil, but it did not deny the existence of those armies. It was only the constant sense of the presence of the Spirit of Christ, before whom all spiritual powers must bow, that enabled Christians to banish these demons from their hearts and from the world in which they lived. Deliverance came not by denial but by conquest. Incidentally I should like to remark that in heathen lands it might still perhaps be the wiser course to preach constantly the supremacy of Christ over all things spiritual and material, than to deny or deride the very notion of these spirits. Some of our missionaries know, and it were well for others if they did know, that it is much easier to make a man hide from us his belief in devils than it is to eradicate the belief from his heart. By denying their existence or by scoffing at those who believe in them we do not help our converts to overcome them, but only to conceal their fears from us. By preaching the supremacy of Christ we give them a real antidote, we take to them a real Saviour who helps them in their dark hours.

(2) The second circumstance which it is impossible to ignore in considering the work of St. Paul in the Four Provinces is the moral character of the religious rites. Some of the mysteries were no doubt capable of a highly moral interpretation. Harnack has collected in two or three pages the most important elements of the intellectual and religious tendencies in which the mingling of Hellenism and Orientalism, prepared the way for the preaching of the Gospel. 'The sharp division between the soul and the body, and the more or less exclusive importance attached to the spirit; the sharp division between God and the world, and the recognition that the Godhead is incomprehensible and indescribable yet great and good; the depreciation of the material world and of the body; the yearning for redemption from the world, the flesh and death; the conviction that redemption is dependent on knowledge and expiation; that life eternal is to be found in return to God, that the means are at hand and can be sought, that the seeker can be initiated into the secret knowledge by which the redemption is brought to him.' 'The soul, God, knowledge, expiation, asceticism, redemption, eternal life, with individualism and with humanity substituted for nationality&emdash;these were the sublime thoughts which were living and operative....Wherever vital religion existed it was in this circle of thought and existence that it drew breath.' And he goes on, 'The actual number of those who lived within the circle is a matter of no moment ....The history of religion, so far as it is really a history of vital religion, runs always in a very narrow groove.' But for our present inquiry the number of those who lived within the circle is a matter of first importance. A few elect souls understood a spiritual purpose in the mysteries of Ceres or of Isis or of Cybele; but, to the vast majority, these rites did not suggest profound truths any more than the dancing and self-mutilation of the wandering priest&emdash;who made the round of the villages with his little shrine and idol and went through his performance of penance and expiation whilst a collection was being made on his behalf&emdash;suggested to the villagers any profound truths concerning sin and redemption. And the religious rites performed in the temples, both in respect of the filthy objects of devotion and the indecent concomitants of worship, were disgusting beyond all words. It is as impossible to quote the legends of the gods so worshipped, as it is to quote the stories of the Incarnations of Krishna, whilst the accompanying circumstances of the worship were only less filthy than the lives of the divinities in whose honour they were performed. Suffice it to say that the temples of Ephesus and Corinth were no more the homes of virtue than the temples in Benares or Peking. The language of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians exactly describes the condition of the people from whom his converts came, and amongst whom they lived.

It is upon these two conditions, superstition and uncleanness, that nearly all our arguments for our modern methods of conducting missionary enterprise in heathen lands today are based, and it is necessary that we should remind ourselves that, whatever may be the merits of St. Paul's methods, they do not rest upon social and religious conditions superior to those under which most of our modern missions are conducted.

(3) But in addition to these there were two evils, the like of which are not now to be found throughout the world, slavery and the amphitheatre. It is not necessary here to repeat what is perfectly familiar to all men concerning the shows in the amphitheatre. What is more important for us is to note the attitude adopted even by the very best men towards these inhuman spectacles. Dr. Bigg tells us that there are 'but three passages in which heathen writers express anything like adequate condemnation' of these shows. And Friedlander says, 'In all Roman literature there is scarcely one note of the horror of today at these inhuman delights.' For the most part they were spoken of with absolute indifference. People like Pliny and Cicero defended them as 'affording a splendid training for the eye, though perhaps not for the ear, in the endurance of pain and and as inspiring disdain of death and love of honourable wounds'. Even Marcus Aurelius was simply bored by them and complains that they were 'always the same'; whilst that model of Pagan virtue, Symmachus, was moved to bitter complaints by the heartless conduct of some Saxons who committed suicide in their cells rather than kill one another in public at the show which he had prepared in honour of his son's praetorship.

The extraordinary fascination which they exercised over the minds even of those who considered themselves far superior to such temptations is best illustrated by the oft-repeated tale of Alypius.

Alypius was dragged into the theatre by some college friends. '"If you drag me thither and put me there can you force me to give my eyes or put my mind to such a show?" he cried. "I shall be absent from it in spirit though present in body, and thus I shall overcome both you and it." When they had found their places he shut his eyes tight and forbade his thoughts to dally with such crimes. Would he could have scaled his ears also! For at some turn in the fight, the whole people broke into a roar of shouting, and overcome by curiosity, confident that whatever happened he could despise and forget even though he saw it, he opened his eyes. Then was he struck with a deadlier wound in his soul than the Gladiator whom he lusted to behold received in his flesh; and fell more miserably than the poor wretch over whose fall arose that bellow which pierced his ears and unlocked his eyes, and laid open his soul to the fatal thrust .... For, with the sight of blood, he drank in ruthlessness; no longer did he turn away, but fixed his gaze, and drank the cup of fury, and knew it not; he was fascinated by the din of battle, and drunk with murderous joy. He was no longer the Alypius who had come, but one of the crowd to which he had come, and the hardened accomplice of those who had brought him! Why should I say more? He gazed, he shouted, he raved, he carried home with him a frenzy which goaded him to return, not only with those who at first had dragged him thither, but before them dragging others in his turn.' 'No one,' says Tertullian, 'partakes of such pleasures without their strong excitements, no one comes under their excitement without their natural lapses.'

These shows had two very disastrous results: (1) They kept before all people's minds the division of humanity into two classes, men who had rights and men who had none, which was the great curse of slavery, and (2) this excitement made all other more reasonable forms of amusement seem tame. In particular they had a most disastrous influence over the theatre. 'What with the powerful excitement of the circus and the arena, the stage could only draw its audience by ignoble means, rough jokes and sensual by-play.' Nothing was too gross, nothing too indecent, to be displayed in the theatre, nothing too sacred to be parodied there. The legends of the gods often supplied the subjects of the most horrible and degrading scenes. 'When Bathyllus, a beautiful boy, was dancing, Leda, the most impudent actress of mimes, felt like a mere country novice on seeing such mastership in the art of refined sensuality.'

Apuleius describes a Pyrrhic dance which he saw at a festival at Corinth. There was a lofty mountain built of wood to resemble Mount Ida, covered with trees from which a fountain poured down a stream of clear water. A few goats were feeding on the grass and Paris, a young man dressed in flowing robes and crowned with a tiara, was tending them. Presently a beautiful boy, representing Mercury, whose only covering was a mantle thrown over his left shoulder, danced forward, holding in his hand a golden apple which he gave to Paris. Then a girl appeared dressed as Juno, having on her head a white diadem and carrying a sceptre. She was followed by another whom you could guess to be Minerva, for she had on her head a shining helmet encircled with an olive wreath. She raised her shield and brandished her spear like the goddess engaged in war. After these came another whose surpassing beauty and grace of colour proclaimed her to be Venus, and Venus in her youth. She was quite naked except for a transparent blue gauze scarf, with which the wind played lovingly. Her two colours, the white of her limbs and the blue of her scarf, showed that she was descended from the heavens and had come up from the sea. Juno, accompanied by Castor and Pollux, then danced with a quiet and unaffected grace and showed by gestures that she was offering to Paris the sovereignty of Asia if he would give her the prize. Next Minerva, attended by Terror and Fear, who leaped before her brandishing drawn swords, rushed forward with tossing head and threatening glance, and showed by quick animated gestures that she would make him renowned for valour if he would give her the prize of beauty. Lastly Venus, who was greeted with loud applause, advanced with a sweet smile and stood in the middle of the stage surrounded by a throng of little boys so delicate and fair that they looked exactly like cupids just flown from heaven or from the sea. They had little bows and arrows and they carried torches before their mistress as if lighting her to the nuptial feast. Presently the flutes began to breathe soft Lydian airs which thrilled the audience with delight. But greater still was their delight when Venus began a slow sensuous dance which, to judge from his description, evidently appealed strongly to Apuleius. He particularly noted the play of her eyes, at one moment full of languor, at another flashing with passion. 'Sometimes,' he says, 'she seemed to dance only with her eyes.' She came before the judge and by movements of her arms was seen to promise that she would give him a bride of surpassing beauty like herself. He then gladly gave her the apple which he held in his hand in token of victory. After the judgment Juno and Minerva, sad and angry, retired from the stage, showing their indignation by their gestures. But Venus, full of joy and delight, showed her pleasure by dancing with all her choir. Then from some secret pipe in the top of the mountain there broke out a fountain of wine which filled the theatre with fragrance. Finally the whole scene disappeared into the ground sinking out of sight.

After quoting this story Friedlander proceeds to explain that these classic themes were altogether too refined for the vast majority. The chief delight of the educated was the pantomime; the common crowd preferred the boisterous rudeness and crude indecency of the mimes.

The moral influence of those spectacles in the circus, the amphitheatre or the theatre is more easily imagined than described. And it is not easily imagined. We instinctively beautify the past. We can hardly believe the descriptions of its vices. I suppose it is necessary to have lived long in intimate touch with heathen society to be able to understand at all what these things mean. But in the world today we can find no parallel to them. There are indeed vile religious plays, there are representations of divine beings, superhuman chiefly in their vices; but there are no gladiatorial shows, there are no criminals thrown to wild beasts.

(4) Finally there was slavery, and slavery in St. Paul's days was very different from any slavery known to us, and that not for the better.

It differed from slavery in America or the West Indies in that the slaves of the Empire were of the same colour and very often of the same race, with the same education, as their masters. They were slaves today; tomorrow, if set free, they might take their place with perfect propriety and ease in the society of their master and mistress. There was no great barrier of blood, no great gulf of social habit or thought and cultivation.

In this it may, perhaps, be compared with slavery in China today. In China slaves are of the same colour and race as their masters, but there they are always of the lowest class and generally wholly uneducated. They are nearly all girls, and they are not a numerous class. But in the Empire the males were in a vast majority, and the numbers were appalling. Not only was the actual multitude of slaves in some of the great houses amazing, but the number of people living in some of the cities in whose families there was no servile taint, must have been comparatively small. Corinth was colonized by Caesar with freed-men. The whole fabric of society in the cities of the Empire was built upon slavery, and was penetrated through and through with that peculiar infection of slavery, servility and insolence. It is true that at this time the condition of slaves in the cities was somewhat mitigated. They were well educated often, and often kindly treated, but they had no rights. Women, girls and boys had no protection against their masters: their master's will was their only law of virtue. And there was nothing between any slave and the lash, except his master's will. Wealthy gentlemen, who had made their fortunes and secured their freedom, gave great sums to their physicians to remove the scars of the lash, or covered themselves with costly ointments to conceal them from the eyes of their guests.

Now consider for a moment the effect of these conditions on the education of those with whom St. Paul had to do. From birth the child was in the care of a nurse who was a slave, 'steeped as a matter of course in the grossest and most horrible superstition'. When he was of age to go to school, the child was in the care of a pedagogue also a slave, whose interest it was to pander to his young master's vices, and to conceal his misdemeanours. He attended a private school kept by a freed-man. There he received an education which, Dr. Bigg says, was admirably designed. The system of education adopted in the best of these schools was 'probably much better than any to be found in our own schools down to the time of Dr. Arnold, but it was thoroughly pagan. It is true that a great many of the best classical authors treat the legends of the gods as mere legends, and children in England read the stories of Jupiter, Venus and Aesculapius with no more sense of reality than they feel in reading the story of Bluebeard; but the children of St. Paul's day were in a very different case. They read about Venus in Corinth beneath the shadow of the Temple of Venus with its 1,000 priestesses, whose deceits and arts were known to all the city. They read about Aesculapius with the knowledge that if they fell sick their parents would go to the Temple of Aesculapius to make an offering for their recovery. They read about Diana in Ephesus, where the silversmiths sold her shrines, and that impure image which fell down from Jupiter had its seat.

They understood a great deal too much; and the home influence was then, as ever in heathen lands, far from being what it ought to be. Even a good teacher could hardly counteract the influence of the nurse, the pedagogue and the parents, and all teachers were not good teachers.

When he left the grammar school, if he could afford it, the child went to the teacher of rhetoric, where he learned to speak on any topic under any circumstances with grace, fluency, and at least an appearance of erudition. There were set problems and characters which the scholar discussed, and he learned not only to censure the adulterer, the pander, and the gamester, but to defend them. He learned also a nice judgment in all things literary. Then he went out into the world with this education in the history of the gods and the character of men, with the fear of demons as the one strong religious influence, if there was any strong religious influence at all; to attend the games, the circus, and the theatre, in which he found every possible incitement to his animal nature; to visit the temples on a feast day and to find them the homes of riot; whilst slaves were ever at his elbow ready to minister to his slightest wish. Every man of any education (except the Jews) in the churches of St. Paul during these ten years had attended those schools, read that literature, visited those temples, and most of them had seen those games&emdash;and every Christian child of the parents who were St. Paul's first converts passed through that same training. They received that education or they received none.

If the moral atmosphere in Greece was bad, in Asia Minor it was even worse. The character of the native religion was such that 'Greek education was pure in comparison, and the Greek moralists, philosophers and politicians inveighed against the Phrygian religion as the worst enemy of the Greek ideals of life. Greek society and life were at least founded on marriage; but the religion of Asia Minor maintained as a central principle that all organized and settled social life on the basis of marriage was an outrage on the free, unfettered divine life of nature, the type of which was found in the favourites of the great goddesses, the wild animals of the fields and the mountains. The Greek and Roman law which recognized as citizens only those born from the legitimate marriage of two citizens had no existence in Phrygian cities.'

This is not, of course, a complete account of the social condition of the provinces in which St. Paul preached; but these elements were there, and they cannot be ignored if we are rightly to understand the character of the task which lay before the Apostle. Devil worship, immemorial religious rites, gladiatorial games, slavery&emdash;these things cannot be set on one side. How can a man behave properly to his sick friend when he believes that he has a demon? How can the most lofty philosophic doctrines avail to produce rectitude when trouble sends a man to pray to a devil? How can a man preserve a true devotion and a reverent attitude towards the Divine, when the divinities known to him are described as the basest of creatures? How can a man walk aright when he and all his world take it for granted that there is a class of men, and that class the most numerous class, which has no rights of any kind, to whom nothing can be wrong which their master says is right, who were designed and created solely to give service and amusement to their owners, whether by their life or by their death? Professor Harnack tells us that 'it is a mistake to suppose that any "slave question" occupied the early Church. The primitive Christians looked on slavery with neither a more friendly nor a more hostile eye than they did upon the State and legal ties. They never dreamt of working for the abolition of the State, nor did it occur to them to abolish slavery for human or other reasons&emdash;not even amongst themselves. Large numbers of the members of the churches founded by St. Paul were slaves, some of them were slave-owners. Christian masters are exhorted to clemency, Christian slaves to faithfulness. The fact that there was no 'slave question' simply emphasizes the universal acceptance of the conditions. What those conditions have always been wherever slavery has existed, what those conditions must have been where there was no colour or customary barrier between master and slave, is only too well known.

Whatever advantages of education, civilization, philosophy, religion, the Empire possessed, so long as it was defiled by slavery, the games, the temples and the magicians, it is, I think, impossible to argue that St. Paul's converts had any exceptional advantages, in the moral character of the society in which they were brought up, which are not given to our converts today.

 

PART II

The Presentation of the Gospel

 

5 Miracles. How far was St. Paul's success due to his possession of miraculous powers?

6 Finance. How far was his success due to his financial arrangements?

7 The Substance of St. Paul's Preaching. How far was his success due to his method of preaching?

 

CHAPTER 5

Miracles

Miracles hold an important place in the account of St. Paul's preaching in the Four Provinces, and, since this is one of the grounds on which is based the argument that his methods can have little or no bearing upon our work in the present day, it is necessary that we should examine carefully the nature and extent of these miracles, and the use which the Apostle himself made of them. We shall find, I think, that, so far from invalidating any comparison between his work and ours, St. Paul's use of miracles may throw an interesting light upon some principles of constant value which should guide us in the practice of many forms of missionary enterprise common today.

Miracles are recorded of St. Paul in five towns in the Four Provinces. In Iconium we are told that 'the Lord bare witness unto the word of His grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands'. At Lystra occurred the healing of a cripple. At Philippi the expulsion of a spirit of divination, and at Ephesus 'God wrought special miracles by the hand of Paul insomuch that to the sick were carried away from his body handkerchiefs or aprons and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out'. Finally, at Troas occurred the recovery of Eutychus.

This last miracle manifestly stands in a class quite by itself both in the nature of the case and in the surroundings in which it was wrought. It was not a miracle designed to further the proclamation of the Gospel: it was wrought for the comfort of believers, and it is to be compared rather with the raising of Dorcas by St. Peter, than with the other miracles recorded of St. Paul. It must therefore be left out of account in our present inquiry. At Antioch, Derbe, Thessalonica, Beroea and Corinth no mention is made in the Acts of miracles in connection with the preaching of the Gospel.

Thus it would appear that the importance of miracles in the work of St. Paul may be easily exaggerated. They were not a necessary part of his mission preaching: nor was their influence in attracting converts as great as we often suppose. Professor Ramsay indeed goes so far as to say that, 'The marvels recorded in Acts are not, as a rule, said to have been efficacious in spreading the new religion'; and it is true that only at Ephesus are we told of a great increase of disciples in close connection with the working of miracles, whilst in one case, at least, the working of a miracle was the immediate cause of serious obstruction.

But, on the other hand, the general tenor of St. Luke's narrative certainly does not produce the impression that he considered St. Paul's miracles other than as tending to further the cause of the Gospel. At Paphos a miracle led to the conversion of an important man; at Iconium signs and wonders were a witness to the truth of the Gospel; at Lystra a miracle introduced a great opportunity for expounding the doctrine; at Ephesus miracles were the means by which a great spiritual victory was won. St. Luke does not speak of these as though they were not efficacious in spreading the Gospel. He rather speaks of them as though they were a natural and proper part of St. Paul's ministry. He certainly does not relate all St. Paul's miracles; for we know that St. Paul wrought 'signs and wonders and mighty works' at Corinth (2 Cor. I2. I2). St. Luke tells of some as typical of many.

There is, however, one sense in which the truth underlying Professor Ramsay's words illustrates a most important principle. These miraculous powers were never used by the Apostle to induce people to receive teaching. He did not attract people to listen to him with a view to being healed of disease, or by the promise of healing. It seems as if St. Luke was careful to avoid producing the impression that miraculous powers might be used to attract people to accept Christianity because of the benefits which they might receive from it. We are never told of the conversion of anybody upon whom St. Paul worked a miracle of healing. It is indeed true that the lame man at Lystra was apparently converted; but it is plainly suggested in the story that he was already in some sort a convert before he was healed. He was what a later age would have called a 'hearer', and his conversion as a result of the miracle is certainly not asserted. Neither are we told of the conversion of the soothsaying girl at Phillppi. Bishop Lightfoot, indeed, and many others, take it for granted that she was converted. Referring to Lydia, the jailer, and this girl, he speaks of 'the three converts'. This may be a legitimate inference, but it is certainly not a necessary one. St. Luke tells us only that she proclaimed the apostles as servants of the Most High God, and that she was healed. We may think it impossible that such an event should take place in her life without leading to her conversion. It may have been so; but St. Luke does not say that it was so.

St. Paul did not convert or attempt to convert people by working miracles upon them. He did not attract people to Christianity by offering them healing. He did not heal on condition that they attended to his teaching. In this he was illustrating a principle which guided the Christian Church in her administration of charity throughout the early centuries of her history. 'We know,' says Professor Harnack, 'of no cases in which Christians desired to win, or actually did win adherents by means of the charities which they dispensed.

I cannot help thinking that this is a principle which we cannot be too careful to observe. There was a day in India when our missionaries paid a regular fee to scholars to attend our schools in order that they might receive Christian instruction. The result was not good, and that plan has been universally abandoned. But we still sometimes offer secular education, or medical treatment, as an inducement to people to submit themselves, or to place their children under our religious instruction or influence. This is, in principle, precisely the same thing as paying them, though in a far less vicious form. I cannot help thinking that the day is not far distant when we shall consider the offering of any material inducement as contrary to sound doctrine as we now consider the money payments of former days.

But if St. Paul did not use his powers of healing as an inducement to people to receive his teaching, his use of miracles did yet greatly help him in his preaching. And that in four ways:

(1) His miracles attracted hearers. They were addressed rather to the crowd than to the individual. So it was at Lystra, so it was at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, so it must ever have been. The wonderful cures attracted men to St. Paul. They came to see who it was that had done such a thing. They naturally were eager to hear what he had to say. So miracles prepared the way for the preaching.

(2) Miracles were universally accepted as proofs of the Divine approval of the message and work of him through whom they were wrought. A good illustration of this is to be found in the account given by Tacitus of the miracle wrought by Vespasian at Alexandria. Two sick men at Alexandria were directed by the god Serapis to appeal to Vespasian for help. One was blind, the other had a crippled hand. The one begged Vespasian to anoint his cheeks and eyes with spittle, the other prayed that he would put his foot upon him. Vespasian at first laughed at them and put them aside; but at last he was persuaded to do what they desired. Instantly the hand of the one was restored and the blind received his sight. 'People,' says Tacitus, 'who were present at the scene still tell the story though there is now no advantage to be gained by lying.' And he remarks that these miracles were tokens of divine favour and affection for Vespasian. Everywhere by all men the same conclusion was drawn from the power to work wonders. So St. Luke insists that the signs and wonders wrought by St. Paul at Iconium were a witness given by God to the word of His grace. So amongst the Jews Christ Himself frequently appealed to His works; so Nicodemus confessed, 'No man can do these signs that Thou doest except God be with him'. So the blind man healed by Christ expressed the common belief when he declared, 'We know that God heareth not sinners', and many hearing of that case said, 'How can a man that is a sinner do such signs?' And this belief continued amongst the Christians. A most remarkable testimony of the appeal to miracles is found in the account of the Council held at Jerusalem to discuss the question of the admission of Gentiles to the Church. The question was raised whether the work of Paul and Barnabas was in accordance with the will of God. St. Peter, we are told, prepared the minds of the assembled multitude by reminding the Council how he himself (a man of whose orthodoxy there could be no doubt) had been led by the Holy Ghost to preach to Gentiles, and then Barnabas and Paul rose to address the Council. Now it had been expressly remarked that throughout their journey to Jerusalem they had been declaring to the Christians at every place, 'How God had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles', and 'the conversion of the Gentiles'. But in the Council the point upon which the apostles laid stress was not this but their miracles. 'All the multitude,' it is said, 'kept silence; and they hearkened unto Barnabas and Paul rehearsing what signs and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them'. That the Gentiles had been converted, that they had embraced the Gospel, that they had suffered persecution, that they were devoted followers of Jesus Christ, these things might satisfy the apostles; but for the multitude the one convincing proof of God's approval of their action was that He had enabled them to work miracles.

In exactly the same way when he wishes to persuade the Galatians of the superiority of the Gospel to the Law, St. Paul appeals to the evidence of miracles, 'He therefore that supplieth to you the spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?'. So too, when he is laying before the Corinthians the evidence of his apostleship, he appeals to miracles. 'Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience by signs and wonders and mighty works.'

For Christian, and Jew, and pagan alike the evidence from miracles was irresistible. Given the miracle, the approval of the god in whose name the miracle was done followed as a necessary consequence.

(3) Miracles were illustrations of the character of the new religion. They were sermons in act. They set forth in unmistakable terms two of its fundamental doctrines, the doctrine of charity and the doctrine of salvation, of release from the bondage of sin and the power of the devil.

Charity, pity for the weak and the oppressed, love for men expressed in deed and word, as taught by Christ and His apostles, and as practised by them, was something quite new in the history of the world. Christ not only gave men the parable of the Good Samaritan and the oft-repeated command: He went about doing good. He first inspired men with the spirit of charity. He first opened their eyes to see in every case of trouble and disease, not a loathsome thing to be avoided, but an opportunity for the revelation of grace and lovingkindness. Inspired by that spirit St. Paul uttered his profoundest teaching on the power of charity. 'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.' In that spirit he worked his miracles. Heathen magicians, for a great price, exercised their powers, uttered their incantations, administered their potions. St. Paul healed the sick and cast out devils because he was grieved at the bitter bondage of the oppressed or because he welcomed with the insight of sympathy the first signs of a faith which could respond to the power of the Lord. In this respect his miracles were the first steps in the path by which the early Church became renowned amongst the heathen for its organized charity, its support of widows and orphans, its tender care for the sick, the infirm and disabled, its gentle consideration for slaves, its constant help afforded to prisoners and those afflicted by great calamities. Two centuries later Tertullian, after recounting the charities of the Christians, could write, 'It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us'. How great and powerful an assistance this was to the conversion of the world is known to all men.

(4) Similarly, St. Paul's miracles illustrated the doctrine of release, of salvation. In the world to which the apostles preached their new message, religion had not been the solace of the weary, the medicine of the sick, the strength of the sin-laden, the enlightenment of the ignorant: it was the privilege of the healthy and the instructed. The sick and the ignorant were excluded. They were under the bondage of evil demons. 'This people which knoweth not the law are accursed,' was the common doctrine of Jews and Greeks. The philosophers addressed themselves only to the well-to-do, the intellectual and the pure. To the mysteries were invited only those who had clean hands and sound understanding. It was a constant marvel to the heathen that the Christians called the sick and the sinful.

Every one, they say, who is a sinner, who is devoid of understanding, who is a child, and, to speak generally, whoever is unfortunate, him will the Kingdom of God receive. Do you not call him a sinner, then, who is unjust, and a thief, and a homebreaker, and a poisoner, and a committer of sacrilege, and a robber of the dead? What others would a man invite, if he were issuing a proclamation for an assembly of robbers?

Nevertheless, there was at this time a growing sense of need. Men were seeking in religion for healing and salvation. The cult of Aesculapius as 'the Saviour' was already spreading widely amongst the people and other gods too were called saviours. 'No one,' says Harnack, 'could be a god any longer unless he was also a saviour.' Men were prepared to welcome a doctrine of salvation. It was to this sense of need that the Apostle appealed. 'The loving-kindness of God our Saviour hath appeared unto all men.' His preaching was 'the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth;' his converts were turned 'from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God'. Into a world burdened with sin and misery and death he came in the Spirit of Jesus who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. His miracles were a visible sign to the whole world of the nature and purpose of his teaching. They proclaimed Jesus as the deliverer of the captives, the healer of the sick, the solace of the weary, the refuge of the oppressed.

There can be no doubt that this power of working marvels, this striking demonstration of the authority of Jesus over evil spirits, was in the early Church considered to be a most valuable weapon with which to confute opponents and to convince the hesitating. 'It was as exorcisers,' says Professor Harnack, 'that the Christians went out into the great world, and exorcism formed one very powerful method of their mission propaganda.' Every Christian apologist appeals to it as a signal proof of the superiority of Christianity over heathen religions. The heathen appealed to miracles, to oracles, to portents, as proofs of the existence of the gods; Christians appealed to exorcism as proof of the divinity of Christ and of His superior authority over all the heathen gods and demons.

Such powers were highly valued in the Church and greatly coveted by the faithful. But their importance can be easily overrated and it is manifest that St. Paul saw this danger and combated it. He does not give the gift of miracles the highest place amongst the gifts of the Spirit. He does not speak as if the best of his workers possessed it. It was not the power of working miracles which was of importance in his eyes: it was the Spirit which inspired the life. Miraculous power was only one of many manifestations of the Spirit; above all, best of all, is the spirit of charity. It was not the manner in which the healing was wrought, by a word instantly, which was of value in his eyes: it was the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

Every day we see how it is not the possession of great powers but rather the spirit in which any power is used which attracts, which moves, which converts. If we no longer possess his power we still possess the Spirit which inspired him. We have powers enough whereby to let the Spirit shine forth. We have powers sufficient to gather hearers; we have powers sufficient to demonstrate the Divine Presence of the Spirit of God with us; we have powers sufficient to assure inquirers of the superiority of Christianity to all heathen religions; we have powers sufficient to illustrate in act the character of our religion, its salvation and its love, if only we will use our powers to reveal the Spirit. One day we shall perhaps recover the early faith in miracles. Meanwhile, we cannot say that the absence of miracles puts an impassable gulf between the first century and today, or renders the apostolic method inapplicable to our missions. To say that were to set the form above the spirit.

 

CHAPTER 6

Finance

It may at first sight seem strange to speak of finance as one of the external accompaniments of the preaching, rather than as part of the organization of the Church. But it is as it affects St. Paul's approach to his hearers that finance assumes its real significance and throws its most interesting light upon our missionary work today. The primary importance of missionary finance lies in the fact that financial arrangements very seriously affect the relations between the missionary and those whom he approaches. It is of comparatively small importance how the missionary is maintained: it is of comparatively small importance how the finances of the Church are organized: what is of supreme importance is how these arrangements, whatever they may be, affect the minds of the people, and so promote, or hinder, the spread of the Gospel.

By modern writers this is often overlooked, and the finance of St. Paul's journeys is treated as an interesting detail of ancient history, not as though it had anything to do with his success as a preacher of the Gospel. St. Paul himself does not so treat it. It is strange how often he refers to it, what anxiety he shows that his position should not be misunderstood; but he speaks as if its importance lay wholly in the way in which it might affect those to whom he preached, never as though it made any personal difference to him.

There seem to have been three rules which guided his practice: (1) That he did not seek financial help for himself; (2) that he took no financial help to those to whom he preached; (3) that he did not administer local church funds.

0) He did not seek financial help. In his first contact with strangers and in his dealings with the Church he was careful to avoid any appearance of money making. Amongst the heathen there was a large class of teachers who wandered from town to town collecting money from those who attended their lectures. There was also a large class of people who wandered about as mystery-mongers, exhibiting their shows and collecting money from those who attended them. For these men philosophy and religion were a trade. St. Paul would not be accounted as one of them. He refused to receive anything from those who listened to him. Similarly in the Church there was a class of people who made their living by preaching. St. Paul did not condemn these; on the contrary, he argued that it was legitimate that they should do so. Heathen religion, the Jewish law, Christ's directions, all alike insisted on the right of the minister to receive support. But he himself did not receive it, and he was careful to explain his reason. He saw that it would be a hindrance to his work. 'We bear all things,' he says, 'that we may cause no hindrance to the Gospel of Christ.' He was anxious to show his fatherly care for his disciples by refusing to burden them with his maintenance. 'As a nurse cherisheth her children, we were well pleased to impart unto you not the Gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were become very dear unto us.' 'For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached unto you the Gospel of God.' He was anxious to set them an example of quiet work, 'We did not behave ourselves disorderly among you: neither did we eat any man's bread for nought'. 'But above all he was anxious to avoid any appearance of covetousness,' and 'What I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them which desire an occasion.' So, too, in his last speech to the Ephesian elders he lays great stress on the fact that he had not made money by his preaching, but had supported himself by the labour of his own hands. 'I coveted no man's gold or apparel. Ye yourselves know that these hands ministered unto my necessities.'

Yet St. Paul did receive gifts from his converts. He speaks of the Philipplans as having sent once and again unto his necessity, and he tells the Corinthians that he 'robbed other churches, taking wages of them, that he might minister to them'. He does not seem to have felt any unwillingness to receive help; he rather welcomed it. He was not an ascetic. He saw no particular virtue in suffering privations. The account of his journeys always gives us the impression that he was poor, never that he was poverty-stricken. He said indeed that he knew how 'to be in want', 'to be filled, and to be hungry'. But this does not imply more than that he was in occasional need. Later, he certainly must have had considerable resources, for he was able to maintain a long and expensive judicial process, to travel with ministers, to gain a respectful hearing from provincial governors, and to excite their cupidity. We have no means of knowing whence he obtained such large supplies; but if he received them from his converts there would be nothing here contrary to his earlier practice. He received money; but not from those to whom he was preaching. He refused to do anything from which it might appear that he came to receive, that his object was to make money.

In this our modern practice is precisely the same. Our missionaries all receive their supplies from home, and cannot possibly be thought to seek financial support from their converts. If they ever seem to be preaching for the sake of their living, that can only be because their attitude towards the preaching gives some cause or occasion for the charge.

(2) Secondly, St. Paul not only did not receive financial aid from his converts, he did not take financial support to his converts. That it could be so never seems to have suggested itself to his mind. Every province, every church, was financially independent. The Galatians are exhorted to support their teachers. Every church is instructed to maintain its poor. There is not a hint from beginning to end of the Acts and Epistles of any one church depending upon another, with the single exception of the collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem. That collection had in the mind of St. Paul a very serious and important place, but it had nothing to do with church finance in the ordinary sense. Its importance lay in its demonstration of the unity of the church, and in the influence which such a proof of brotherly charity might have in maintaining the unity of the church. But it had no more to do with church finance in the ordinary sense of the word than a collection made in India for Christians suffering from famine in China would have to do with ordinary Indian Church finance. That one church should depend upon another for the supply of its ordinary expenses as a church, or even for a part of them, would have seemed incredible in the Four Provinces.

From this apostolic practice we are now as far removed in action as we are in time. We have indeed established here and there churches which support their own financial burdens, but for the most part our missions look to us for very substantial support, and it is commonly taken for granted that every new station must do so, at any rate for some considerable time. Our modern practice in founding a church is to begin by securing land and buildings in the place in which we wish to propagate the Gospel, to provide houses in which the missionary can live, and a church, or at least a room, fitted up with all the ornaments of a Western church, in which the missionary may conduct services, sometimes to open a school to which we supply the teachers. The larger the establishment and the more liberally it is supplied with every possible modern convenience, the better we think it suited to our purpose. Even in the smallest places we are anxious to secure as speedily as possible land on which to build houses and churches and schools, and we take it for granted that the acquirement of these things by the foreign missionary, or by the foreign society, is a step of the first importance. Since it is obviously impossible that the natives should supply all these things, even if they are anxious to receive our instruction, it naturally follows that we must supply them. Hence the opening of a new mission station has become primarily a financial operation, and we constantly hear our missionaries lament that they cannot open new stations where they are sorely needed, because they have not the necessary funds to purchase and equip the barest missionary establishment.

This habit of taking supplies with us is due chiefly to two causes: first, the amazing wealth of the church at home and the notion that reverence and devotion depend upon the use of expensive religious furniture to which our luxury has accustomed us, and, secondly, the prevalence of the idea that the stability of the church in some way depends upon the permanence of its buildings. When we have secured a site and buildings we feel that the mission is firmly planted; we cannot then be easily driven away. A well-built church seems to imply a well-founded, stable society. So the externals of religion precede the inculcation of its principles. We must have the material establishment before we build the spiritual house.

As we begin, so we go on. Hence the frequent appeals to be found in church newspapers for organs and bells, cassocks, surplices and candlesticks, and such like, for mission stations in India or in Africa. How can we teach the new converts the majesty of worship without the materials for dignified ceremonial? Dignified ceremonial is ceremonial as practised in the best churches at home. The best churches use these things. The natives cannot supply them. It follows that we must take these gifts to our converts.

Thus, the foundation of a new mission is primarily a financial operation. But it ought not properly to be a financial operation, and the moment it is allowed to appear as such, that moment very false and dangerous elements are introduced into our work.

(i) By our eagerness to secure property for the church we often succeed in raising up many difficulties in the way of our preaching. We sometimes, especially perhaps in such a country as China, arouse the opposition of the local authorities who do not desire to give foreigners a permanent holding in their midst. We occasionally even appeal to legal support to enforce our right to purchase the property, and thus we begin our work in a turmoil of strife and excitement which we might have avoided.

(ii) We load our missionaries with secular business, negotiations with contractors, the superintendence of works, the management of a considerable establishment, to which is often added anxiety about the supply of funds for providing and maintaining the establishment. In this way their attention is distracted from their proper spiritual work, their energy and power is dissipated, and their first contact with the people whom they desire to evangelize is connected with contracts and other purely secular concerns. It is sad to think what a large proportion of the time of many of our missionaries is spent over accounts. It is sad to sit and watch a stream of Christian visitors calling upon a missionary, and to observe that in nearly every case the cause which brings them is money. They are the financial agents of the mission.

(iii) But in creating these missionary establishments we not only overburden our missionaries with secular business, we misrepresent our purpose in coming to the place. It is of the utmost importance that the external manifestation of our purpose should correspond with the inward intention and rightly express it. We live in a world in which spirit is known through material media. When the Son of God desired to reveal Himself to us, He took upon Him the form of a servant, and He made a material body the manifestation to all men of the Eternal God who is Spirit. That fact must govern all our thought. That is why the religion of Christ, who is Himself a Sacrament, is sacramental, and all our use of material things is sacramental. We, in our measure, do what He did. I know nothing of missionary zeal except as expressed in words and gifts and deeds. We cannot express ourselves otherwise in this world. Desire must employ words and glances and such like material vehicles. That is the reason why material apparatus is capable of spiritual uses. In themselves words and buildings have no power to produce spiritual results. If we will not preach we cannot convert, but no preaching in itself can convert. The value of the outward things is derived from the spirit which animates them and gives them being. They are manifestations of the Spirit of Christ who desires the salvation of men, working in us. It is the Spirit of Christ indwelling us who operates through them. Therefore, that external instrument is best which reveals the Spirit. The Body of Jesus was such an instrument: the Sacraments ordained by Christ are such. The Sacraments of the Gospel are not contrary to nature, but they are Divine.

A method of working, or a material instrument, may reveal or conceal, or misrepresent, the Spirit: e.g. in France the offer of the left hand is an act of cordial goodwill; in India it is an insult. If then a Frenchman in India were to offer a man his left hand, his goodwill would be interpreted as illwill. In ignorance we may use unsuitable expressions, but the moment we become aware that they are unsuitable we can no longer use them. That is why reformers constantly reject the use of things which have been long employed as the expressions of a spirit which they do not want to express. They must alter the form of the sacrament in order to reveal the change in their point of view. Today in India many of our younger missionaries are beginning to revolt against the big bungalows used by their predecessors. They look at them and say, 'That does not quite represent the spirit in which I wish to approach these people'. If that feeling grows, they must sooner or later abandon the bungalow. For if we are persuaded that the material vehicle misrepresents the spirit which we would express, and yet continue to use it, it checks the spirit in us. If we want to express respect and goodwill we cannot continue to offer the left hand, when we know that it will certainly be misunderstood. If we do so, we do violence to our feeling of goodwill, and our goodwill is checked and injured.

Moreover, because we cannot express ourselves, cannot manifest our real purpose in them, the use of wrong materials repels those whom we might draw to us. All men everywhere judge the inward spirit by the external form, and are attracted or repelled by it. They are apt to be much influenced by the first glance. If, then, the material form really does not express the true spirit, we cannot be surprised if they are hindered.

Now the purchase of land and the establishment of foreign missions in these establishments, especially if they are founded in the face of opposition from the local authorities, naturally suggest the idea of a foreign domination. The very permanence of the buildings suggests the permanence of the foreign element. The land is secured, and the buildings are raised, in the first instance by the powerful influence of foreigners. That naturally raises a question in the native mind why these people should be so eager to secure a permanent holding in their midst. They naturally suspect some evil ulterior motive. They suppose that the foreigner is eager to extend his influence and to establish himself amongst them at their expense. In China, particularly, the common idea prevalent amongst the people is that to become a Christian involves submission to foreign domination. This conception has a most powerful effect in deterring the people from approaching the missionary or from receiving his teaching with open minds. I think it is now almost universally admitted that the permanence of foreign rule in the Church ought not to be our object in propagating the Gospel. But by taking large supplies with us to provide and support our establishments and organizations we do in fact build up that which we should be most eager to destroy.

Moreover, we do not want to produce the impression that we design to introduce an institution, even if it is understood that the institution is to be naturalized. Christianity is not an institution, but a principle of life. By importing an institution we tend to obscure the truly spiritual character of our work. We take the externals first and so we make it easy for new converts to put the external in the place of the internal. Attendance at a house of prayer may take the place of prayer. It is easy to mistake the provision of the ornaments of worship for the duty of worship. The teachers seem to think these things so important that they must be the really important things. The duty of the Christian is to learn to attend to these things, and to go through the proper forms. The heathen naturally looks at religion from that point of view, and when he sees the externals provided at a cost which seems to him very great, and things imported which the country cannot provide, he inevitably tends to suppose that our religion is as his own, and the organization and the institution take ju