forbid any suspicion that the change was owing to caprice or to irresolution on his part. Nor was it due to the immediate and unexpected success of their ministry in that city ; on the contrary, his recorded address in their synagogue furnishes ample evidence of his previous failure to touch the consciences or win the hearts of his Jewish hearers. He, doubtless, had begun his ministry there, as elsewhere, by offering the Gospel to the Jews, and his bitter denun- ciation of their prejudice against Christ shows how stubborn had been their resistance to his Gospel before he turned to his Gentile hearers with this despairing appeal.
On the whole therefore I conclude from a survey of the historical narrative that Paul and Barnabas embarked at Paphos on an ambitious project of missionary enterprise, which for some unknown reason they failed to realise, though they pursued it steadily without a pause as far as Antioch. It further appears that their first efforts after their arrival in that city were foiled by the persistent opposition of the Jews, but that their perseverance was at last rewarded by signal success amongst the Greeks.
It is time now to turn to the Epistle and compare these con- clusions with the incidental reference there made to the circum- stances of the conversion. In Gal. iv. 13 the Apostle reminds his converts that he had not originally preached the Gospel to them by his own deliberate choice, but on account of an illness which deprived him of all option in the matter. They knew (he writes) that his preaching had been due to infirmity of the flesh, 1.6., to bodily illness. This language plainly intimates that he altered his plans in consequence of the illness, and undertook their conver- sion instead of carrying out his previous intention. Neither the time nor the place of the attack are specified, but the context supplies materials for determining both. It shows that the Galatians were quite aware of his previous design, that they had been eye- witnesses of the illness, had watched its progress and seen enough of its repulsive symptoms to provoke natural contempt and disgust, but had on the contrary exhibited heartfelt sympathy and intense desire to alleviate his sufferings. It is quite certain therefore that it ran its course after his arrival in their country. It may have been contracted on the way; if it was (as his language in iv. 15 and vi. 11 suggests) an attack of virulent ophthalmia which permanently impaired his sight, it is probable that he caught the infection in the lowlands of Pamphylia, where that malady was notoriously prevalent. But whatever its specific character, it was in Galatia that it pros- trated him, and by incapacitating him for continuing his journey