The Pulpit Commentary — Galatians — Section 36

advocacy; and ho bad drawn forth from the Christian consciousness of the twelve apostles and of James and of the elders and general body of the Jerusalemite believers, that letter of theirs registered in the Acts of the Apostles, which has been not inaptly styled the Magna Charta of the Gentile Church's freedom. Not long after again, as he himself has informed us, he had been called to grapple with the mischief, and secure the fruit of the preceding victory, at the second great capital of the then Christendom, the principal homo and head-quarters of Gentile disciples. A Barnabas and even a Peter might some- what hesitate and falter, and did; but Paul, never. What he was at Jerusalem and then again at Antioch, that, as we have good reason to believe, in every such emergency he proved himself still to be-the ever-watchful, keenly discerning, intrepid, uncom- promising guardian of the freedom of Christ's people. He himself knew, and the Gentile Churches knew, and the Judaiziag troublers of those Churches knew, that" he was set for the defence of the gospel." Those loved and rejoiced ir::. their protector; these feared their invincible adversary, and hated him . .Animosity of the Jews against St. Paul. For this unceasing vigilant antagonism which he offered to the Judaizing influences at work in the Church, replete as it was with blessing to believers in Christ in all ages whose freedom from ceremonial bondage he was the Lord's "chosen vessel" to convey to them, redounded in untold suffering upon himself. He was already before the peculiar abhorrence of the Jews who did not believe because, through the transforming grace of God, from being the bitter blasphemer and persecutor of Christ, he had suddenly stood forth before the world as his devoted and ardent minister. No ot.her apostle, no other preacher of the faith, was regarded by his fellow-Jews with any such feelings of rancorous animosity as already on this account fastened on the renegade Saul. And now the Israelite mind found with St. Panl another cause of offence. The position which, as a teacher of his Church, Christ had set him to take up in reference to the ceremonial law, was one which it was very easy to misconstrue, and with much colour of plausibility to misrepresent. It was in this way tbat the first martyr Stephen had perished, stoned to death as one who "blasphemed Moses and God," by the unbelieving Jews, and to all appearance misunderstood and forsaken by hill Christian brethren themselves (Acts viii. 2). Very similar to Stephen's experience was now the experience of Paul. The description of his doctrine, taking no doubt its origin in his vigorous antagonism to the Judaizers, which was current among the Jews, not only among those who did not believe in Christ, but also among the Christian Jews them- selves, was that he set himself to persuade the Jews of the dispersion to "apostatize from Moses," and to abandon the practice both of circumcision and the Levitical customs in general (Acts xxi. 21). Race prejudice, but especially the prejudice of religious partisanship, is wont to be a.like unscrupulous e.nd cruel; and the apostle became the object of unceasing malignant obloquy and detraction. Jewish and Judaizing brethren ready to gainsay St. Paul's apostleship. Not only was his personal character assailed with accusations of insincerity, two-facedness, and wilful perversion of the truth from interested motives-accusations which, as is shown by his frequent references to them in his letters, affected his mind with the keenest pain- but in particular also the authenticity of his call to teach was impugned. Why should he be listened to? His doctrine was palpably not the doctrine of James nor the doctrine of Cephas. They did not set themselves to cry down circumcision and the observance of the customs as he did I What he really wished you to believe it might be hard perhaps to exactly determine ; he said one thing af one time and to one set of hcarena, and something quite different at another time and with other surroundings; for he had "a yea and a nay " ever on the tip of his tongue, ready to use whichever of the GALATIANS.  THI!: El'IS'l'LE TO THE GALA'l'IANS.