LECTURE II. HISTORICAL BEGINNING OF CHRISTIANITY. How ye turned to God from idols, to serve the Living and I. SUCH First I. movement of the are the brief words in which the oldest known monument of Christianity calls to mind the first movement of the Gospel in Europe, which Gospel in began twenty years after the Evangelical preaching in the synagogues of Judæa. Europe; εἴσοδον, in S. Paul's They are S. Paul's words, appealing to the recollection of the Christians of populous Thessalonica, the metropolis of Macedonia. They occur in one of Its record his letters to them, which represent in so vivid a way Epistles. the actual position of his recent converts in that city. The historical value of these letters is established, as we have intimated, beyond the disputes of antiquarian theorists; scattered copies of them, and of other Epistles of the same writer, are found to have been in the common possession of Christians in most places at the opening of the second century. They are no new discoveries, but simple records of the then recent past, recognized and cherished. In examining them we may watch, even now, the first stirring of the heart of the heathen world to Christ its Deliverer; and may in some degree read The cha the deepest thoughts and feelings and learn the new moral hopes of man, when 'turning to God from idols, to serve the living and true God.' We know, indeed, that the revival of the inner life implies far more than external observation detects, or philosophy explains; but in this case the phenomena suffice at once to show how the Gospel instantly addressed itself to the restoration of the knowledge of God and the aspirations of virtue in man. The persons who received these earliest letters, an associated body of the Thessalonians, were connected with S. Paul, had been taught by him, and were still looking to him as their guide. It would seem that those who they were somewhat familiar with Judaism, though now apart from the synagogue. Their great teacher wrote to them, indeed, as none but a Jew could have ch. ii. 14. written; but his message had been rejected by the racter of are ad dressed in the first Epistles. Kλŋoia: comp. ch. i. I, and S. Matt. representatives of his own people in that part of Macedoniaa, as emphatically as it had been by the Sanhedrim of Judæa. We find him significantly calling the Thessalonians a Church,'-the name, it seems, traditionally received from Christ for His followers. Their 'ready faith' is apparently conThess. i. 5. trasted with the painful hesitation of a neighbouring xvi. 18; xviii. 17. πληροφορία. city; and from them, it is said, the Gospel 'sounded ch. i. 8. out,' not only to the Macedonian province, but onwards to Achaia, and to every chief place along those grand roads of the Empire, there branching forth as if to aid in opening anew the moral intercourse of mankind. a Appendix, Speeches I. and II. b Strabo, vii. 323. These Christians of Thessalonica, like those other places soon afterwards, are not only seen of Their dis tinctness to from the if world, as Gentile well as Jews. be separated from the Jews, but distinct from, not in some collision with, the world around them. from the Their teacher reminds them of the persecutions lately undergone by him in that sacred cause which they had espoused in common. He refers them to no x. 25. Gr.) Society theists. Divine scriptures, nor to anything but his own teaching, for comfort or guidance; notwithstanding their evident acquaintance with Judæan Christianity. They are almost addressed as if they were a kind of new synagogue, though their ritual is undescribed and (as in Heb. their law unwritten. He thus speaks to the 'Church,' -it is his first word-as disconnected alike from the ancient Israel and from the heathen population. This attitude of the new believers may have a new A checked the otherwise natural suspicion of the world, of Monothat the Gospel was but a schism among Jews, troublesome chiefly to themselves; and rulers and magistrates were certainly more and more at a loss (Acts xviii. how to deal with this phenomenon, this growing and xvii. association, for such it was, hostile to the religions and customs of the whole empire. Externally viewed, it was but a sect of monotheists aiming at moral purity; but the members of the sect were acting together in the name of Christ, on some subtle understanding, some secret not easily got at by others, and expecting a 'judgment to come.' What is thus far said seems to lie on the surface c The Old Testament Scriptures are not noticed in the Epistles to the Thessalonians. 13, xix. 9, 6.) of the letters to the Thessalonians. Of course some knowledge of the new faith, some rumours of Galilee, more or less vague, would be rife in Macedonia, as in other parts of the Roman world, and be differently interpreted by believers and unbelievers. Comparatively little, however, would be certain, except to those who were under specific teaching concerning Him Who 'had come from God, and gone to God;' and these looked for the speedy return of this Jesus the Lord. A living It is important that we should pause on this first body, and not a lite aspect of our Religion, its appearance as an energetic fact, rather than a 'written vision' like Ezekiel's, or a burden of the Lord' like Isaiah's, or the 'roll of a book' like Jeremiah's read out before kings and people. It does not seem that any one yet asked for a record of the life of the Great Master Himself, nor of the doings of each of His chief apostles, nor for a formal synopsis of the Gospel teaching; but here was this living reality before men, the Christian 'Church,' rapidly making proselytes among all classes. rature. Literary expectations are artificial. It may be natural for people of our modern habits to be disturbed by the form in which our Religion thus showed itself. We are surprised that there was no strict registration of facts, which from the first were to be so vital. But are we reasonable in this? Surely in real life,—and never was life more real than in Christianity,-there are very few who pause to think that they are acting history, for the guidance of future times. That is a higher spirit which is self-forgetting, or only notes so much of the present as may suffice for those who are immediately to follow. And then the first Christians daily expected the present to be wholly eclipsed in the splendours of the approaching future. certain Now if we conceive of a Christian Society anywhere, as a body which had internal reason for its existence, we must attribute to it some self-consciousness. It would of course have a story and theory of its own. Letters sent to such a society would imply its previous life or being. This we Having have to bear in mind in referring to what may be Epistles, termed the archives of a primitive Christian com- conceive munity, which would precede its formal history. We the Society must needs idealize the body, and conceive a history, they were while we peruse an Epistle. Every one does this, more or less perfectly; and incidental phrases and allusions throughout the writing will suggest something to complete the previous idea. It happens that the first addresses to the first Gentile Christians seem to be almost of a casual kind; yet they were treasured up by those who received them from S. Paul, and, as time went on, they acquired a growing value among all Christians. And just as the obscure beginnings of an illustrious biography obtain significance at last, so we may surely trace in these short letters to the Thessalonians the Christianity which they inherited, which they lived, and which they transmitted. We find after S. Paul's death that the vivid expectation of Christ's speedy Second Advent began to subside. This of itself would then concentrate attention on what had been left in writing for the help we must to which |