(f) Second musionary joiirncij. — The immediate impulse to the second missionary journey is repre- sented as having come from St. Paul, who said to his companion, Barnabas, 'Let us return now and visit the brethren in every city wherein we pro- claimed the word of the Lord, and see how they fare' (Ac 15^'*). But he lost his comrade through a dispute about Mark, who, as has been nu'ntioned, had deserted the mission on the preceding journey ; and one wishes one could be certain that at this juncture St. Paul was sufficiently conscious of how nmch he owed to this friend. In his place he ob- tained Silas, who had come to Antioch as one of the bearers of the decree of the Council atJerusalum ; and, before going far, he found at Lystra, in the youtliful Timothy, one to take the place of Mark.
They are said to have gone first through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches ; and it is to be observed that these churches were the fruit not of the first missionary journey, but of earlier labour. It was at Derbe that they first came upon the fruits of the foregoing journey, and it is probable that they followed them up further by visiting Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch-inPisidia. Then, it used to be KU]iposed, they struck away to the north-east and evangelized Galatia. But it was against this supposition that St. Luke gives no account of this new conquest, though it is his habit to give ample information whenever new ground is opened up, whilst observing great brevitj' in mentioning visits to parts that had been visited already. Accordingly, Kamsay has championed the view that by the phrase ' the region of Plirygi.a and Galatia' is meant no more than the scenes of the first missionary journey, this contention, which is most fully explained by Kamsay, artt. ' (-ialatia,' ' Galatia, Region of,' 'Galatians,' in HDli ii., being what is known as the South Galatian theory. The basis of this theory is that ' Galatia,' while designating the country occupied by the Galatians, was also the name of a political province, which
was of varying extpiit at ditl'eient times, and at tlie time of St. Paul's visit iiicliuled I'lirj'jjia, or at least the part of it in whicli the towns in question lay. This theory has been widely ac- lepted by English-speaking scholars, but has en- countered strong opposition in Germany.
The course of the missionaries' movements was under some constraint, the nature of which is not clearly indicated, but which prevented them, ap- parently against their will, from evangelizing the province of Asia, in the west of Asia Minor, as well as Mysia and Bithynia, in the north-west of the peninsula, and brought them down to the coast at Troas, the ancient Troy, near the southern entrance to the Hellespont. It may have been illness which was thus forcing St. I'aul forward against his will, for at Troas he is seen in the company of a physician, St. Luke, who, if he rendered medical assistance to the Apostle, was rewarded by the gift of the gospel, of which he ultimately became a servant. The reason, how- ever, for the haste and the direction of this journey hinted at in the narrative itself is that it was in order to see and to obey the vision of the night whicli,at Troas, called him to proceed to Macedonia, thereby determining the direction taken by the gospel to be westwards to Athens and Rome, the centres of the ancient civilization. It is ditiicult, however, to get rid of the impression that at this point, so critical not only for his own fortunes but tor the future of Christianity and the history of the world, there were, besides the providential causes hinted at, reasons in St. Paul's own mind and genius similar to the passionate desire, to which he gave expression at a later stage, to preach the gospel ' also ... in Rome ' (Ro P°). He was the Apostle of the Gentiles, and this was a call to the great seats of Gentile influence.
Landed in Macedonia, he proceeded from city to city along the Roman highway — Philippi, Thessa- lonica, Bercea — in each of which there took place some peculiar development of Providence, the adhesion of ' honourable women ' to the new religion being a conspicuous feature of Mace- donian Christianity. But it is as we approach Athens, ' the eye of Greece,' that the excitement of the reader is aroused ; and St. Luke rises to the occasion, too, dipping his brush liberally in the colours of classical association. Indeed, the scenes are so lifelike and dramatic that he has been accused of exaggeration, E. Norden, in a work entitled Agnostos Theos, 1913, accusing him of puttin" into the mouth of St. Paul a speech which was delivered later at Athens by another religious figure of the age, ApoUonius of Tyana, and which exhibits the qualities of the artihcial prose prac- tised in the circles to which ApoUonius belonged. But Harnack has come to the vindication of St. Luke, demonstrating in his pamphlet ' 1st die Rede des Paulus in Athen ein urspriinglicher Bestandteil der Apostelgeschichte?' in TU, 3rd ser., ix. 1 [1913], by a close examination of the facts, that it is extremely doubtful whether ApoUonius ever delivered at Athens any such speech, and showing that the speech attributed to St. Paul enters into the very structure of the Book of Acts as a whole, while the rhetorical form is due to the lofty style of the thoughts demanding expression.