ity of Pa ing to idolatry, the concentration of the heart's whole devotion upon the One Almighty God, prepared the soul for a Christian bias. The great struggle to Jewish feeling was the abandonment of circumcision, as the sign of their covenant with God. But this once over, baptism, the substituted ceremony, was perhaps already familiar to his mind; or, at least, emblematic ablutions were strictly in unison with the genius and the practice of his former religion. Some of the stricter Pharisaic distinctions were local and limited to Palestine, as, for instance, the payment of tithe; since the Temple tribute was the only national tax imposed by his religion on the foreign Jew. Their sectarian symbols, which in Palestine were publicly displayed upon their dress, were of course less frequent in foreign countries; and though worn in secret, might be dropped and abandoned by the convert to Christianity, without exciting obserUniversal- valion. The whole life of the Heathen, whether of the philosopher ganism. who despised, or the vulgar who were indifferent to, the essential part of the religion, was pervaded by the spirit of Polytheism. It met him in every form, in every quarter, in every act and function of every day's business; not merely in the graver offices of the state, in the civil and military acts of public men; in the senate which commenced its deliberations with sacrifice; in the camp, the centre of which was a consecrated temple his domestic hearth was guarded by the Penates, or by the ancestral gods of his family or tribe; by land he travelled under the protection of one tutelar divinity, by sea of another; the birth, the bridal, the funeral, had each its presiding deity; the very commonest household utensils and implements were cast in mythological forms; he could scarcely drink without being reminded of making a libation to the gods; and the language itself was impregnated with constant allusions to the popular religion. However, as a religion, Polytheism was undermined and shaken to the base, yet, as part of the existing order of things, its inert resistance would every where present a strong barrier against the invasion of a foreign faith. The priesthood of an effete religion, as long as the attack is conducted under the decent disguise of philosophical inquiry, or is only aimed at the moral or the speculative part of the faith; as long as the form, of which alone they are become the ministers, is permitted to subsist, go on calmly performing the usual ceremonial: neither their feelings nor their interests are actively alive to the veiled and insidious encroachments which are made upon its power and stability. In the Roman part of the western world, the religion was an integral part of the state: the greatest men of the last days of the Republic, the Ciceros and Cæsars, the Emperors themselves, aspired to fill the pontifical offices, and discharged their duties with grave solemnity, however their declared philosophical opinions were subversive of the whole sys tem of Polytheism. Men might disbelieve, deny, even substitute foreign superstitions for the accustomed rites of their country, provided they did not commit any overt act of hostility, or publicly endeavour to bring the ceremonial into contempt. Such acts were not only impieties, they were treason against the majesty of Rome. In the Grecian cities, on the other hand, the interests and the feelings of the magistracy and the priesthood, were less intimately connected; the former, those at least who held the higher authority, being Roman, the latter local or municipal. Though it was the province of the magistrate to protect the established religion, and it was sufficiently the same with his own, to receive his regular worship, yet the strength with which he would resist, or the jealousy with which he would resent any dangerous innovation, would depend on the degree of influence possessed by the sacerdotal body, and the pride or enthusiasm which the people might feel for their local worship. Until, then, Christianity had made such progress as to produce a visible diminution in the attendance on the Pagan worship; until the temples were comparatively deserted, and the offerings less frequent, the opposition encountered by the Christian teacher, or the danger to which he would be exposed, would materially depend on the peculiar religious circumstances of each city (1). (1) In a former publication the author attempted to represent the manner in which the strength of Polytheism, and its complete incorporation with the public and private life of its votaries, might present itself to the mind of a Christian teacher on his first entrance into a heathen city. The passage has been quoted in Archbishop Whately's book on Rhetoric. "Conceive then the Apostles of Jesus Christ, the tent-maker or the fisherman, entering as strangers into one of the splendid cities of Syria, Asia Minor, or Greece. Conceive them, I mean, as unendowed with miraculous powers, having adopted their itinerant system of teaching from human motives, and for human purposes alone. As they pass along to the remote and obscure quarter, where they expect to meet with precarious hospitality among their countrymen, they survey the strength of the established religion, which it is their avowed purpose to overthrow. Every where they behold temples, on which the utmost extravagance of expenditure has been lavished by suc ceeding generations; idols of the most exquisite workmanship, to which, even if the religious feeling of adoration is enfeebled, the people are strong ly attached by national or local vanity. They meet processions in which the idle find perpetual occupation, the young excitement, the voluptuous a continual stimulant to their passions. They behold a priesthood numerous, sometimes wealthy; nor are these alone wedded by interest to the established faith; many of the trades, like those of the makers of silver shrines at Ephesus, are pledged to the support of that to which they owe their maintenance. They pass a magnificent theatre, on the splendour and success of which the popularity of the existing authorities mainly depends; and in which the serious exhibitions are essentially religious, the lighter as intimately connected with the indulgence of the baser pas sions. They behold another public building, where even worse feelings, the cruel and the sanguinary, are pampered by the animating contests of wild beasts and of gladiators, in which they themselves may shortly play a dreadful part, Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday! Show and spectacle are the characteristic enjoy. ments of a whole people, and every show and spectacle is either sacred to the religious feelings, or incentive to the lusts of the flesh; those feelings which must be entirely eradicated, those lusts which must be brought into total subjection to the law of Christ. They encounter likewise itinerant jugglers, diviners, magicians, who impose upon the credulous to excite the contempt of the enlightened; in the first case, dangerous rivals to those who should attempt to propagate a new faith by imposture and deception: in the latter, naturally tending to prejudice the mind against all miraculous pretensions whatever : here, like Elymas, endeavouring to outdo the signs and wonders of the Apostles, thereby throwing suspicion on all asserted supernatural agency, by the frequency and clumsiness of their delusions. They meet philosophers, frequently itinerant like themselves; or teachers of new religions, priests of Isis and Serápis, who have brought into equal discredit what might otherwise have appeared a proof of philanthropy, the performing laborious journeys at the sacrifice of personal ease and comfort, for the moral and religious improvement of mankind; or at least have so accustomed the public mind to similar pretensions, as to take away every attraction from their boldness or novelty. There are also the teachers of the different mysteries, which would engross all the anxiety of the inquisitive, Christia The narrative in the Acts, as far as it proceeds, is strikingly in accordance with this state of things. The adventures of the Apostles in the different cities of Asia Minor and Greece are singularly characteristic of the population and the state of the existing Polytheism in each. It was not, till it had extended beyond the borders of Palestine, that Christianity came into direct collision with Paganism. The first Gentile convert, admitted into the Christian community by St. Peter, Cornelius, if not a proselyte to Judaism, approached very nearly to it. He was neither polytheist nor philosopher; he was a worshipper of One Almighty Creator, and familiar, it should seem, with the Jewish belief in angelic appearances. Even beyond the Holy Land, Christianity did not immediately attempt to address the general mass of the Pagan community; its first collisions were casual and accidental; its operations commenced in the synagogue; a separate community was not invariably formed, or, if formed, appeared to the common observation only a new assemblage for Jewish worship; to which, if Heathen proselytes gathered in more than ordinary numbers, it was but the same thing on a larger, which had excited little jealousy on a smaller scale (1). During the first journey of St. Paul, it is manifest that in Cyprus nity in Cyprus. particularly, and in the towns of Asia Minor, the Jewish worship was an object of general respect and Christianity appearing as a modification of Jewish belief, shared in that deference which had been long paid to the national religion of the Jewish people. Sergius Paulus (2), the governor of Cyprus, under the influence of the Jew Elymas, was already more than half, if not altogether alienated from the religion of Rome. Barnabas and Paul appeared before him at his own desire; and their manifest superiority over his former teacher easily transformed him from an imperfect proselyte to Judaism into a convert to Christianity. Antioch in Lystra. At Antioch in Pisidia there was a large class of proselytes to Judaism, who espoused the cause of the Christian teachers, and who probably formed the more considerable part of the Gentile hearers, addressed by Paul, on his rejection by the leading Jews of that city. At Lystra (3), in Lycaonia, the Apostle appears for the first time, in the centre, as it were, of a Pagan population; and it is remarka perhaps excite, even if they did not satisfy, the (1) The extent to which Jewish proselytism ble, that in this wild and inland region, we find the old barbarous religion maintaining a lively and commanding influence over the popular mind. In the more civilised and commercial parts of the Roman world, in Ephesus, in Athens, or in Rome, such extraordinary cures as that of the cripple at Lystra, might have been pub licly wrought, and might have excited a wondering interest in the multitude but it may be doubted, whether the lowest or most ignorant would have had so much faith in the old fabulous appearances of their own deities, as immediately to have imagined their actual and visible appearance in the persons of these surprising strangers. It is only in the remote and savage Lystra, where the Greek language had not predominated over the primitive barbarous dialect (1) (probably a branch of the Cappadocian), that the popular emotion instantly metamorphoses these public benefactors into the Jove and Mercury of their own temples. The inhabitants actually make preparation for sacrifice, and are with difficulty persuaded to consider such wonder-working men to be of the same nature with themselves. Nor is it less characteristic of the versatility of a rude people, that no sooner is the illusion dispelled, than they join with the hostile Jews in the persecution of those very men, whom their superstition, but a short time before, had raised into objects of divine worship. Galatia. In the second, and more extensive journey of St. Paul, having parted from Barnabas (2), he was accompanied by Timotheus and Silas or Sylvanus, but of the Asiatic part of this journey, though it led through some countries of remarkable interest in the history of Paganism, no particulars are recorded. Phrygia, which was a kind Phrygia. of link between Greece and the remoter East, still at times sent out into the Western world its troops of frantic Orgiasts; and the Phrygian vied with the Isiac and Mithraic mysteries in its influence in awakening the dormant fanaticism of the Roman world. It its probable, that, in these regions, the Apostle confined himself to the Jewish settlers and their proselytes. In Galatia, it is clear, that the converts were almost entirely of Hebrew descent. The vision, which invited the Apostle to cross from Troas to Macedonia, led him into a new region, where his countrymen, though forming flourishing communities in many of the principal towns, were not, except perhaps at Corinth, by any means so numerous as in the greater part of Asia Minor. His vessel touched at Samothrace, where the most ancient and remarkable mysteries still retained their sanctity and veneration in that holy and secluded island. At Philippi he first philippi. came into collision with those whose interests were concerned in the maintenance of the popular religion. Though these were only indi (1) Jablonski, Dissertatio de Lingua Lycaonica, reprinted in Valpy's edition of Stephens's The- (2) Acts, xv. 36. to xviii. 18. saurus. viduals, whose gains were at once put an end to by the progress of Christianity, the owners of the female soothsayer of Philippi were part of a numerous and active class, who subsisted on the public credulity. The proseucha, or oratory, of the Jews (the smaller place of worship, which they always established when their community was not sufficiently flourishing to maintain a synagogue), was, as usual, by the water side. The river, as always in Greece and in all southern countries, was the resort of the women of the city, partly for household purposes, partly perhaps for bathing. Many of this sex were in consequence attracted by the Jewish proseucha, and had become, if not proselytes, at least very favourably inclined to Judaism. Among these was Lydia, whose residence was at Thyatira, and who, from her trading in the costly purple dye, may be supposed a person of considerable wealth and influence. Having already been so far enlightened by Judaism as to worship the One God, she became an immediate convert to the Christianity of St. Paul. Perhaps the influence or the example of so many of her own sex, worked upon the mind of a female of a different character and occupation. She may have been an impostor, but more probably was a young girl of excited temperament, whose disordered imagination was employed by men of more artful character for their own sordid purposes. The enthusiasm of this "divining" damsel now took another turn. Impressed with the language and manner of Paul, she suddenly deserted her old employers, and throwing herself into the train of the Apostle, proclaimed, with the same exalted fervour, his divine mission, and the superiority of his religion. Paul, troubled with the publicity, and the continual repetition of her outcries, exorcised her in the name of Jesus Christ. Her wild excitement died away; the spirit passed from her; and her former masters found that she was no longer fit for their service. She could no longer be thrown into those paroxysms of temporary derangement, in which her disordered language was received as oracular of future events. This conversion produced a tumult throughout the city; the interests of a powerful body were at stake, for the trade of soothsaying, at this time, was both common and lucrative. The employers of the prophetess enflamed the multitude. The Apostle and his attendants were seized, arraigned before the magistrates, as introducing an unlawful religion. The magistrates took part against them. They suffered the ordinary punishment of disturbers of the peace; were scourged and cast into prison. While their hymn, perhaps their evening hymn, was heard through the prison, a violent earthquake shook the whole building; the doors flew open, and the fetters, by which probably they were chained to the walls, were loosened. The affrighted jailor, who was responsible for their appearance, expected them to avail themselves of this opportunity of escape, and in his despair was about to commit suicide. His hand |