"When the judgments of the Lord are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness 1"

1 Isai. xxvi. 9.

Special ordination of Barnabas and Saul-Paul's first apostolic journey with Barnabas to convert the Gentiles. AntiochSeleucia-Cyprus-Salamis and Paphos-Pamphilia-Perga -Antioch in Pisidia. A.D. 45.

THE progress of the Gospel is compared, by an elegant allusion of our Saviour, to the growth and maturity of a plant. As we pursue the early history of the Church, we find the truth of the comparison wonderfully, and emphatically, confirmed. The dews of heaven, emblematic of divine grace, nourish and refresh the seed, whilst the spiritual husbandmen, under the same influence, industriously cultivate the soil. May all those, peculiarly distinguished as the servants of such a master, remember their important charge, and be always ready to complete his work!

Notwithstanding the persecution of Herod, as related in my last lecture," the word of God grew and multiplied." The very methods used for its destruction proved the means of its preservation and prosperity. The particular interposition of

Providence in the deliverance of Peter, and the punishment of his oppressor, must have cherished the faith, and revived the confidence of the early Christians. We seldom hear of any great calamity having befallen the Church, or the serious persecution of any of her more eminent members, but the spirit of religion seems to gain greater strength among them, and the repeated language of the sacred historian is-" the word of God grew, and multiplied!"

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St. Luke now recurs to the mission of Barnabas and Saul, who had been sent from Antioch with alms for the relief of the brethren in Judea. These faithful messengers having fulfilled the object of their journey, return again to their charge, and bring with them a new associate, John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, at the house of whose mother, St. Peter had found an asylum.

During the period that St. Paul had now spent at Jerusalem, that singular trance, or extasy, which he mentions in his second Epistle to the Corinthians', is by some learned men supposed to have taken place. Others have placed it at Lystra, at Antioch, and, with less reason, at Damascus, soon after his conversion. But if that Epistle was written, as it is generally imagined, in the year 58, fourteen years backward from that time will direct us to the year 44, near the exact period at which we are now arrived 2.

The marginal reference of our Bible dates the Ep. 60, and the transaction at Lystra, A. D. 46.

No inferior member of the Church of Christ had as yet undertaken to ordain any to the high office of the Apostleship, which, as I have before remarked, was the foundation of episcopal authority. The successors of the Apostles were constituted by themselves, through the power originally bestowed upon them by their Master; and we know not, in the early Apostolic times, that this power was ever violated. A miraculous interposi tion, it will be allowed, forms no exception to the rule. But even here, a man's own evidence was not of itself considered as a sufficient proof of his appointment. He was expected to display the usual Apostolic gifts. "If I bear witness of myself (said our Lord) my witness is not true," is not corresponding with that evidence which is required as the proof of human testimony. "The works which I do," the miracles which I perform, "they bear witness of me." In the trance which St. Paul had in the temple, or indeed wherever it happened, we have reason to imagine, that he was endowed with these spiritual proofs of his mission to the Gentiles; and for any thing we know to the contrary, the same might have been the case with Barnabas, as he was sent with him to this important work 2. Yet notwithstanding this, neither Paul nor Barnabas thought himself at liberty to go forth on a new appointment to preach the Gospel, not merely to the Jewish Proselytes and con

2 Benson's History of Christianity, Vol. II. p. 3.

verted Jews (for the former had been already done in consequence of St. Peter's vision) but on a new mission, which had not yet been suggested to any of the Apostles-to men of all countries, and of all religious persuasions, heathens, idolaters, as well as to all those (if such there were) who acknowledged no supreme ruler of the universe at all, without a more public call from the Church to which they belonged.

In many parts of St. Paul's writings he refers to the immediate revelations which he had to direct him in his preaching, and particularly to the injunction to preach the Gospel to the heathen. In his speech to the Jewish people from the stairs of the tower of Antonia, he informs them that he had been enjoined in a vision (most probably in the trance which, we presume, he had at this period) to "depart," for he should be sent "far hence,” far from Jerusalem, where he then was, " unto the Gentiles." And repeatedly he says, that he "received of the Lord that which he delivered 1;" that he was an Apostle "not of men, neither by men," but by "Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead"." Had he, therefore, at this time received his full ordination from Simeon, and Lucius, and Manaen, " prophets and teachers," as we are told, in the Church which was at Antioch, but certainly not men of Apostolic authority, upon their own suggestion, the circumstance would have contradicted the assertions of St. Paul. But this