The judgment of the Church was immediately re- corded in a letter addressed to the (ienlile brethren in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia. That this letter might carry greater authority, it was intrusted to " chosen men of the Jerusalem Church, Judas surnamed Barsabas, and
Silas, chief men among the brethren." The letter speaks affectionately of Barnabas and Paul (with the elder Church Barnabas still retained the precedence, XV, 12, 25) as "men who have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." So Judas and Silas came down with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch, and comforted tlie Church there with their message, and when Judas returned " it pleased Silas to abide there still."
It is usual to connect with this period of the history that rebuke of Peter which Paul records in Gal. ii, 11-14. The connection of subject makes it convenient to record the incident in this place, although it is possible that it took place before the meeting at Jerusalem, and perhaps most probable that it did not occur till later, when Paul returned from his long tour in Greece to Antioch (Acts xviii, 22, 23). (The presence of Peter, and the growth of Jewish prejudice, are more easily accounted for, if we suppose Paul in the meanwhile to have left Antioch for a long time ; and there was but a very short interval be- tween the council at Jerusalem and his second mission- ary tour.) Peter was at Antioch, and had shown no scruple about " eating with the Gentiles," until " certain came from James." These Jerusalem Christians brought their Jewish exclusiveness with them, and Peter's weak- er and more timid mood came upon him, and through fear of his stricter friends he too began to withdraw himself from his former free association with the Gen- tiles. Such an example had a dangerous weight, and Barnabas and the other Jews at Antioch were partly seduced by it. It was an occasion for the intrepid faith- fulness of Paul. He did not conceal his anger at such weak dissembling, and he publicly remonstrated with his elder fellow-apostle. " If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the JevvsV" (Gal. ii, 14). Peter had abandoned the Jewish exclusiveness, and deliberately claimed common ground with the Gentile : why should he, by separating him- self from the uncircumcised, require the Gentiles to qualify themselves for full communion by accepting cir- cumcision? This "withstanding" of Peter was no op- position of Pauline to Petrine views ; it was a faithful rebuke of blamable moral weakness.
7. Second j\rissionary Journe;/. — The most resolute courage, indeed, was required for the work to which Paul was now publicly pledged. He would not asso- ciate with himself in that work one who had already shown a want of constancy. This was the occasion of what must have been a most painful difference between him and his comrade in the faith and in past perils, Barnabas. After remaining a while at Antioch, Paul proposed to Barnabas to revisit the brethren in the countries of their former journey. Hereupon Barnabas desired that his nephew John Mark should go with them. But John had deserted them in Pamphylia, and Paul would not try him again. " And the contention was so sharp between them that they departed asunder one from the other ; and so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus; and Paul chose Silas, and departed." A.D. 47. Silas, or Silvanus, now becomes a chief com- panion of the apostle. The two went together through Syria and Cilicia, visiting the churches, and so came to Derbe and Lystra. Here they found Timotheus, who had become a disciple on the former visit of the apostle, and who so attracted the esteem and love of Paul that " he would have him go forth with him." Him Paul took and circumcised. If this fact had been omitted here and stated in another narrative, how utterly irreconcila- ble it would have been, in the eyes of some critics, with the history in the Acts ! Paul and Silas were actually delivering the Jerusalem decree to all the churches they visited. They were no doubt triumphing in the freedom secured to the Gentiles. Yet at this very time our apos- tle had the wisdom and largeness of heart to consult the feelings of the Jews by circumcising Timothy. There were many Jews in tliose parts, who knew that Tim-
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othy's father was a Greek, his mother a Jewess. That Paul should have had, as a chief companion, one who was uncircumcised, would of itself have been a hinderance to him in preaching to Jews; but it would have been a still greater stumbling -bloclv if that companion were half a Jew by birth, and had professed the Jewish faith. Therefore in this case Paul " became unto the Jews as a Jew that he might gain the Jews."
Luke now steps rapidl}' over a considerable space of the apostle's life and labors. " They went throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia" (xvi, 6). At this time Paul was foimding " the churches of Galatia"' (Gal. i, 2). He himself gives us hints of the circumstances of his preaching in that region, of the reception he met with, and of the ardent though unstable character of the people, in the following words : " Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh {on ^i dc^iveiav rj/e (TfipKof) I preached the Gospel unto you at the first (ro TTponpoi'), and my temptation which was in mj' flesh ye despised not, nor rejected ; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Where is then the blessedness ye spake of (o ficiKapianbq vfiCor, q. d. youi- bfcilification of me)! for I bear you record that, if it had been possible, j'e would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me'' (iv, 13). It is not easy to decide as to the meaning of the words di aa^'ii'iiav Tti(; aapicnc. Undoubtedly their grammati- cal sense implies that "weakness of the flesh" — an ill- ness— was the occasion of Paul's preaching in Galatia ; and De Wette and Alfurd adhere to this interpretation, understanding Paul to have been detained by illness, when otherwise he would have gone rapidly through the country. On the other hand, the form and order of the words are not what we should have expected if the apostle meant to say tliis; and professor Jowett prefers to assume an inaccuracy of grammar, and to un- derstand Paul as saying that it was in weakness of the liesh that he preached to the Galatians. In either case I'aul must be referring to a more than ordinary pressure of that bodily infirmity of which he speaks elsewhere as detracting from the influence of his personal address.