[135] The record of a very similar journey performed five years ago in July 1887 may be read in the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_ for April 1890. Mr. D. G. Hogarth, who writes the story, travelled on that occasion from the borders of Galatia to the Cilician coast. His narrative gives a vivid picture of the scenery over the Taurus Range as St. Paul must have seen it on this second missionary tour, and of the difficulties by which he must have been surrounded. Cf. Ramsay's _Historical Geography of Asia Minor_, p. 362.
[136] Cave has a long account of Timothy in his _Apostolici, or Lives of the Fathers_, pp. 45-53, where he gives an account of Timothy's martyrdom at Ephesus from Photius, the celebrated Greek scholar and patriarch of the ninth century: see Photius, _Bibliotheca_, cod. 254, and the _Acta Sanctorum_ for January, vol. ii., pp. 562-69. Timothy is said in the Martyrologies to have been buried on Mount Prion, a hill upon the side of which ancient Ephesus was built (see Wood's _Ephesus_, chap. i.), after he was cruelly put to death by the Ephesians enraged at his protest against one of their popular feasts. He suffered under Domitian about thirty years after St. Paul, and according to Photius was succeeded at Ephesus by St. John, who had been recalled from exile. His feast-day in the Calendar is January 24th.
St. Paul's work in Galatia is specially interesting to ourselves. The Celtic race certainly furnished the groundwork of the population in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and finds to this day lineal representatives in the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of these three islands. Galatia was thoroughly Celtic in St. Paul's day. But how, it may be said, did the Gauls come there? We all know of the Gauls or Celts in Western Europe, and every person of even moderate education has heard of the Gauls who invaded Italy and sacked Rome when that city was yet an unknown factor in the world's history, and yet but very few know that the same wave of invasion which brought the Gauls to Rome led another division of them into Asia Minor, where--as Dr. Lightfoot shows in his Introduction to his Commentary--about three hundred years before St. Paul's day they settled down in the region called after them Galatia, perpetuating in that neighbourhood the tribal organisation, the language,[137] the national feelings, habits, and customs which have universally marked the Celtic race whether in ancient or in modern times. St. Paul on this second missionary tour paid his first visit to this district of Galatia. St. Paul usually directed his attention to great cities. Where vast masses of humanity were gathered together, there St. Paul loved to fling himself with all the mighty force of his unquenchable enthusiasm. But Galatia was quite unlike other districts with which he had dealt in this special respect. Like the Celtic race all the world over, the Gauls of Galatia specially delighted in village communities. They did not care for the society and tone of great towns, and Galatia was wanting in such. St. Paul, too, does not seem originally to have intended to labour amongst the Galatians at all. In view of his great design to preach in large cities, and concentrate his efforts where they could most effectually tell upon the masses, he seems to have been hurrying through Galatia when God laid His heavy hand upon the Apostle and delayed his course that we might be able to see how the gospel could tell upon Gauls and Celts even as upon other nations. This interesting circumstance is made known to us by St. Paul himself in the Epistle to the Galatians iv. 13: "Ye know that because of an infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you for the first time." Paul, to put it in plain language, fell sick in Galatia.[138] He was delayed on his journey by the ophthalmia or some other form of disease, which was his thorn in the flesh, and then, utilising the compulsory delay, and turning every moment to advantage, he evangelised the village communities of Galatia with which he came in contact, so that his Epistle is directed, not as in other cases to the Church of a city or to an individual man, but the Epistle in which he deals with great fundamental questions of Christian freedom is addressed to the Churches of Galatia, a vast district of country. Mere accident, as it would seem to the eye of sense, produced the Epistle to the Galatians, which shows us the peculiar weakness and the peculiar strength of the Celtic race, their enthusiasm, their genuine warmth, their fickleness, their love for that which is striking, showy, material, exterior.[139] But when we pass from Galatia we know nothing of the course of St. Paul's further labours in Asia Minor. St. Luke was not with him during this portion of his work, and so the details given us are very few. We are told that "the Spirit of Jesus" would not permit him to preach in Bithynia, though Bithynia became afterwards rich in Christian Churches, and was one of the districts to which St. Peter some years later addressed his first Epistle.[140] The Jews were numerous in the districts of Bithynia and Asia, and "the Spirit of Jesus" or "the Holy Ghost"--for the sacred writer seems to use the terms as equivalent the one to the other--had determined to utilise St. Paul in working directly among the Gentiles, reserving the preaching of the gospel to the Dispersion, as the scattered Jews were called, to St. Peter and his friends. It is thus we would explain the restraint exercised upon St. Paul on this occasion. Divine providence had cut out his great work in Europe, and was impelling him westward even when he desired to tarry in Asia. How the Spirit exercised this restraint or communicated His will we know not. St. Paul lived, however, in an atmosphere of Divine communion. He cultivated perpetually a sense of the Divine presence, and those who do so, experience a guidance of which the outer world knows nothing. Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in one of his marvellous spiritual discourses called the _Via Intelligentiæ_, or The Way of Knowledge, speaks much on this subject, pointing out that they who live closest to God have a knowledge and a love peculiar to themselves.[141] And surely every sincere and earnest follower of Christ has experienced somewhat of the same mystical blessings! God's truest servants commit their lives and their actions in devout prayer to the guidance of their heavenly Father, and then when they look back over the past they see how marvellously they have been restrained from courses which would have been fraught with evil, how strangely they have been led by ways which have been full of mercy and goodness and blessing. Thus it was that St. Paul was at length led down to the ancient city of Troas, where God revealed to him in a new fashion his ordained field of labour. A man of Macedonia appeared in a night vision inviting him over to Europe, and saying, "Come over into Macedonia, and help us." Troas was a very fitting place in which this vision should appear. Of old time and in days of classic fable Troas had been the meeting-place where, as Homer and as Virgil tell, Europe and Asia had met in stern conflict, and where Europe as represented by Greece had come off victorious, bringing home the spoils which human nature counted most precious. Europe and Asia again meet at Troas, but no longer in carnal conflict or in deadly fight. The interests of Europe and of Asia again touch one another, and Europe again carries off from the same spot spoil more precious far than Grecian poet ever dreamt of, for "when Paul had seen the vision, straightway we sought to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God called us for to preach the gospel unto them." Whereupon we notice two points and offer just two observations. The vision created an enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm was contagious. The vision was seen by Paul alone, but was communicated by St. Paul unto Silas and to St. Luke, who now had joined to lend perhaps the assistance of his medical knowledge to the afflicted and suffering Apostle. Enthusiasm is a marvellous power, and endows a man with wondrous force. St. Paul was boiling over with enthusiasm, but he could not always impart it. The two non-apostolic Evangelists are marked contrasts as brought before us in this history. St. Paul was enthusiastic on his first tour, but that enthusiasm was not communicated to St. Mark. He turned back from the hardships and dangers of the work in Asia Minor. St. Paul was boiling over again with enthusiasm for the new work in Europe. He has now with him in St. Luke a congenial soul who, when he hears the vision, gathers at once its import, joyfully anticipates the work, and "straightway sought to go forth into Macedonia." Enthusiasm in any kind of work is a great assistance, and nothing great or successful is done without it. But above all in Divine work, in the work of preaching the gospel, the man devoid of enthusiasm begotten of living communion with God such as St. Paul and St. Luke enjoyed is sure to be a lamentable and complete failure.