donia,' but the anxiety of Paul for the new church at Thessalonica, induced him to send his young fellow-labourer thither,

On this point there is much uncertainty. According to the Acts, Silas and Timothy first rejoined Paul at Corinth. But 1 Thess. iii. 1 seems to imply the contrary. This passage may indeed be thus understood, that Paul sent Timothy, before his departure for Athens, to the church in Thessalonica, although he knew that he should now be left in Athens without any companions, for he wished to leave Silas in Beroa. If he came from Bercea alone, he would rather have said, egxeσbai eis 'Alñvas póvol. But this he could not say, since he did not depart to Athens alone, but with other companions. Still the most natural interpretation of the passage is, that Paul, in order to obtain information respecting the Thessalonians, preferred being left alone in Athens, and sent Timothy from that city. Also, in the Acts, xvii. 16, it is implied that he waited at Athens for the return of Silas and Timothy; for though the words ἐν ταῖς ̓Αθήναις may be referred, not to ἐκδεχομένου, but to the whole clause, still we cannot understand the passage otherwise. If we had merely the account in the Acts, we should be led to the conclusion, by a comparison of the xvii. 16, and xviii. 5, that Silas and Timothy were prevented from meeting with Paul at Athens, and they first found him again in Corinth, as he had given them notice that be intended to go thither from Athens. But by comparing it with what Paul himself says, 1 Thess. iii. 1, we must either rectify or fill up the account in the Acts. We learn from it that Timothy at least met with Paul at Athens, but that he thought it necessary to send him from thence to Thessalonica, and that he did not wait for his return from that city to Athens, which may be easily explained. But Luke, perhaps, had not so accurate a knowledge of all the particulars in this period of Paul's history; he had perhaps learned only that Paul met again at Corinth with Timothy and Silas, and hence he inferred, as he knew nothing of the sending away of Timothy in the mean time from Athens to Thessalonica, that Paul, after he had parted from his two companions at Beroa, rejoined them first at Corinth. As to Silas, it is possible that, on account of the information he brought with him, he was sent back by Paul with a special commission from Athens to Beroa, or, what is more probable, that he had occasion to stay longer than Timothy at Bercea, and hence could not meet him at Athens. It might also be the case that Luke erroneously concluded, since Silas and Timothy both first met Paul again at Corinth, that he left both at Bercea,-it would be possible that he left only Silas behind and brought Timothy with himself to Athens. It favours, though it does not establish this opinion, that Paul, in 1 Thess. iii. 1, alleges as the reason for sending away Timothy, not the unpleasant news brought by Timothy from Macedonia, but the hindrances intervening, which rendered it impossible for him to visit the church in Thessalonica according to his intention. Schneckenburger, in his learned essay on the date of the Epistles to the Thessalonians (in the Studien der Evangelischen Geistlichkeit Würtemburgs, vol. vii. part 1, 1834, p. 139,) (with which in many points I am happy to agree,) maintains that Paul might have charged his two companions

that he might contribute to the establishment of their faith and their consolation under their manifold sufferings; for Timothy had communicated to him many distressing accounts of the persecutions which had befallen this church.

He travelled alone from Athens, and now visited a place most important for the propagation of the gospel, the city of Corinth, the metropolis of the province of Achaia. This city,

within a century and a half after its destruction by Julius Cæsar, once more became the centre of intercourse and traffic to the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire, for which it was fitted by its natural advantages, namely, by its two noted ports, that of Keyxpeal towards Lesser Asia, and that of Aexator towards Italy. Being thus situated, Corinth became an important position for spreading the gospel in a great part of the Roman Empire, and hence Paul chose this city, as he had chosen others similarly situated, to be the place where he made a long sojourn. But Christianity had here also, at its first promulgation, peculiar difficulties to combat, and the same causes which counteracted its reception at first, threatened at a later period, when it had found entrance, to corrupt its purity, both in doctrine and practice. The two opposite mental tendencies, which at that time especially opposed the spread of Christianity, were, on the one side, an intense devotedness to speculation and the exercise of

to follow him quickly from Beroa, because he intended soon to leave Athens, where he expected no suitable soil for his missionary labours. But we have no sufficient reason for supposing this. Paul found at Athens a synagogue for the first scene of his ministry as in other cities; he felt himself compelled, as he says, to publish the gospel to Greeks and to Barbarians; he knew it was the power of God, which would conquer the philosophical blindness of the Greeks as well as the ceremonial blindness of the Jews, though he well knew that on both sides the obsta cles were great. At all events, by some not improbable combinations, the narrative in the Acts and the expressions of Paul may easily be reconciled, and we are not therefore justified with Schrader in referring the passage in 1 Thess. iii. 1, to a later residence of Paul at Athens. All the circumstances mentioned seem best to agree with the period of his first visit. Paul having been obliged, contrary to his intention, to leave Thessalonica early, wished on several occasions to have revisited it; his anxiety for the new church there was so great, and in his tender concern for it, he showed the great sacrifice he was ready to make for it, by saying that he was willing to remain alone at Athens. In later times, when there was a small Christian church at Athens, this would not have been so great a sacrifice.

the intellect, to the neglect of all objects of practical interest, which threatened to stifle altogether the religious nature of men, that tendency which Paul designates by the phrase, "seeking after wisdom;”—and, on the other side, the sensuous tendency mingling itself with the actings of the religious sentiment; the carnal mind which would degrade the divine into an object of sensuous experience; that tendency to which Paul applies the phrase, "seeking after a sign." The first of these tendencies predominated among the greater number of those persons in Corinth who made pretensions to mental cultivation, for new Corinth was distinguished from the old city, chiefly by becoming, in addition to its commercial celebrity, a seat of literature and philosophy, so that a certain tincture of high mental culture pervaded the city. The second of these tendencies was found among the numerous Jews, who were spread through this place of commerce, and entertained the common sensuous conceptions respecting the Messiah. And finally, the spread and efficiency of Christianity was opposed by that gross corruption of morals, which then prevailed in all the great cities of the Roman Empire, but especially in Corinth was promoted by the worship of Aphrodite, to which a far-famed temple was here erected, and thus consecrated the indulgence of sensuality, favoured as it was by the incitements constantly presented in a place of immense wealth and commerce.2

The efficiency of Paul's ministry at Corinth was doubtless much promoted by his meeting with a friend and zealous advocate of the gospel, at whose house he lodged, and with whom he obtained employment for his livelihood, the Jew Aquila from Pontus, who probably had a large manufactory in the same trade by which Paul supported himself. Aquila does not appear to have had a fixed residence at Rome, but to have taken up his abode, at different times, as his business

1 In the 2d century, the rhetorician Aristides says of this city: σópov δὲ δὴ καὶ καθ ̓ ὁδὸν ἐλθὼν ἂν εὕροις καὶ παρὰ τῶν ἀψύχων μάθοις ἂν καὶ ἀκούσειας τοσοῦτοι θησαυροί γραμμάτων περὶ πᾶσαν αὐτὴν, ὅποι καὶ μόνον ἀποβλέψειέ τις, καὶ κατὰ τὰς ὁδοὺς αὐτὰς καὶ τὰς στοάς· ἔτι τὰ γυμνάσια, τὰ διδασκαλεῖα, καὶ μαθήματάτε καὶ ἱστορήματα. Aristid. in Neptunum, ed. Dindorf, vol. i. p. 40.

2 The rhetorician Dio Chrysostom says to the Corinthians: wóλiv οἰκεῖτε τῶν οὐσῶν τε καὶ γεγενημένων ἐπαφροδιτοτάτην. Orat. 37, vol. ii. p. 119, ed. Reiske.

might require, in various large cities situated in the centre of commerce, where he found himself equally at home. But at this time, he was forced to leave Rome against his will, by a mandate of the Emperor Claudius, who found in the restless, turbulent spirit of a number of Jews resident at Rome (the greater part freed-men),' a reason or a pretext for banishing all Jews from that city. 2

If Aquila was at that time a Christian, which will easily account for his speedy connexion with Paul, this decree of banishment certainly did not affect him as a Christian, but as

1 There was a particular quarter on the other side the Tiber inhabited by Jews. See Philo-legat. ad Caium, § 23. τὴν πέραν τοῦ Τιβέρεως ποταμοῦ μεγάλην τῆς Ῥώμης ἀποτόμην κατεχομένην καὶ οἰκουμένην πρὸς Ἰουδαίων.

2 The account of Suetonius in the Life of Claudius, c. 25, "Judæos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit," is of little service in historical investigations. If Suetonius, about fifty years after the event itself, mixed up what he had heard in a confused manner of Christ, as a promoter of sedition among the Jews, with the accounts of the frequent tumults excited among them, by expectations of the Messiah, we are not justified in concluding, that this banishment of the Jews had any real connexion with Christianity. Dr. Baur, in his essay on the object and occasion of the Epistle to the Romans, in the Tubinger Zeitschrift für Theologie, 1836, part iii. p. 110, thinks, that the disputes between the Jews and Christians in Rome, occasioned the disturbances which at last brought on the expulsion of both parties, and that this is the fact which forms the basis of the account. But disputes among the Jews themselves, whether Jesus was to be acknowledged as the Messiah, would certainly be treated with contempt by the Roman authorities, as mere Jewish religious controversies. See Acts xviii. 15. And if Christians of Gentile descent, who did not observe the Mosaic law, were then living at Rome, these, as a genus tertium, would not be confounded with the Jews, and a decree of banishment directed against the Jews would not affect them. They only became subject to punishment by the laws against the religiones peregrinas et novas. We can only suppose a reference to political disturbances among the Jews, or to occurrences which might excite suspicions of this kind. And this account is of little service in fixing the chronology of the apostolic history, for Suetonius gives no chronological mark. Such a mark would be given, if we connect the banishment of the Jews with the senatus consultum, de mathematicis Italia pellendis, for here Tacitus (Annal. xii. 52), gives the date Fausto Sulla, Salvio Othone Coss. A. D. 52. But the chronological connexion of these two events is very uncertain, as they proceeded from different causes. The banishment of the astrologers proceeded from suspicions of conspiracies against the life of the Emperor, with which the banishment of the Jews stood in no sort of connexion, although it might have its foundation in the dread of political commotions.

classed with the other Jews, in virtue of his Jewish descent, and his participation in all the Jewish religious observances. But if the gospel had already been propagated among the Gentiles at Rome, (which is not probable, for this took place at a later period, by means of Paul's disciples, after his sphere of action had been much extended,) the Gentile Christians, who received the gospel free from Jewish observances, and had not yet attracted notice as a particular sect, would not have been affected by a persecution, which was directed against the Jews, as Jews, on purely political grounds.

We cannot answer with certainty the questions, whether Aquila, on his arrival at Corinth, was already a Christian; for it cannot be determined merely from the silence of the Acts, that he was not converted by Paul. In any case, his intercourse with the apostle had great influence in the formation of his Christian views. Aquila appears from this time as a zealous preacher of the gospel, and his various journeys and changes of residence furnished him with many opportunities for acting in this capacity. His wife Priscilla also distinguished herself by her active zeal for the cause of the gospel, so that Paul calls them both, in Rom. xvi. 3, his "helpers in Christ Jesus.”

We must suppose that the reception given in general at Athens to the publication of the gospel, must have left a depressing effect on the mind of the apostle, as far as he wasnot raised above all depressing considerations by a conviction of the victorious divine power of the gospel. Hence, he him. self says, that on his arrival at Corinth, he was at the utmost remove from attaching any importance to anything that human means, human eloquence, and human wisdom, could furnish towards procuring an entrance for the publication of the divine word that he came and taught among them with a deep sense of his human weakness—with fear and trembling as far as his own power was concerned; but at the same time, with so much greater confidence in the power of God working through his instrumentality. He had experienced at Athens, that it availed him nothing to become a Greek to the Greeks, in his mode of exhibiting divine truths, where the heart was not open to his preaching, by a sense of spiritual wants. At Corinth, he was satisfied with the simple annunciation of the Redeemer, who died for the salvation of sinful men, without