CHAP. XXXV.
A sudden dryness in Paul's throat prevented him from finishing hissentence, and he asked for a cup of water, and having drained it he putdown the cup and said, looking round, I was speaking to you aboutCorinth. The moment seemed a favourable one to Mathias to ask aquestion. How was it, he said, that you passed on to Corinth withoutstopping at Athens? I made stay at Athens, Paul answered, and I thankyou, Mathias, for having reminded me of Athens, for the current of mydiscourse had borne me past that city, so eager was I to tell of thepersecutions of the Jews. We are all Jews here! I speak only of theHierosolymites who understand only that the law has been revealed, andwe have only to follow it; though, indeed, some of them cannot tell uswhy we should follow any law, since they do not believe in any lifeexcept the sad life we lead on the surface of this earth.
But you asked me, Mathias, about Athens. A city of graven images andstatues and altars to gods. On raising my eyes I always saw their marbledeities--effigies, they said, of all the spirits of the earth and seaand the clouds above the earth and the heavens beyond the clouds.Whereupon I answered that these statues that they had carved with theirhands could in no wise resemble any gods even if the gods had existenceoutside of their images, for none sees God. Moses heard God on MountSinai, but he saw only the hinderparts; which is an allegory, for thereare two covenants, and I come to reveal---- Whereat they were muchamused and said: if Moses saw the hinderparts why should we not see thefaces, for our eyes see beauty, whereas the Hebrews see but thebackside? At which I showed no anger, for they were not Jews, butstrove, as it is my custom, to be all things to all men. The Jewsrequire a miracle, the Greeks demand reason, and therefore I asked themwhy they set up altars to the unknowable God. And they said: Paul, thoureadest our language as badly as thou speakest it; we have inscriptions"to unknown gods" but not to the unknowable God. Didst go to school atTarsus, yet canst not tell the plural from the singular? To which Ianswered: then you are so religious-minded that you would not offend anygod whose name you might not have heard, and so favour him by theinscription to an unknown God? But some of your philosophers, Athenians,call God unknowable. I knew this before I learnt how superstitious yeare. Ye are all alike ignorant since God left you to your sins for youridolatry; God, unknown or unknowable, has been made manifest to us byour Lord Jesus Christ, who was born like us all for a purpose, hisdeath, which was to save the world from its sins, whereupon, greedy fora story, they began to listen to me, and I had their attention till Icame to these words--"And was raised by his Father from the dead." Paul,they answered, we will listen another day to the rest of this story ofthy new divinity.
A frivolous people, Mathias, living in a city of statues in the air, andin the streets below a city of men that seek after reason, and wouldexplain all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath by theirreason, and only willing to listen to the story of a miracle becausemiracles amuse them. A race much given to enjoyment, like women,Mathias, and among their mountains they are not a different race fromwhat they are in the city, but given to milking goats and dancing in theshade to the sounds of a pipe, and dreaming over the past glories ofAthens, that are dust to-day though yesterday they were realities, alight race that will be soon forgotten, and convinced of theirtransience I departed for Corinth, a city of fencing masters, merchants,slaves, courtesans, yet a city more willing to hearken to the truth thanthe light Athenians, perhaps because it has much commerce and is notslothful in business, a city wherein I fortuned upon a pious twain,Aquila and Priscilla, of our faith, and of the same trade as myself,wherefore we set up our looms together in one house and sold the clothsas we weaved them, getting our living thereby and never costing thefaithful anything, which was just pride, and mine always, for I havetravelled the world over gaining a living with my own hands, nevertaking money from anybody, though it has been offered to me in plenty bythe devout, thinking it better to be under no obligation, for suchdestroys independence....
Once only was this rule broken by me. In Macedonia, a dyer of purple----But Lydia's story concerns ye not, therefore I will leave her storyuntold and return to Corinth, to Priscilla and Aquila, weavers likemyself, with whom I worked for eighteen months, and more than that;preaching the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ to all whowould hear us when our daily work was done, until the same fate befellus--the intervention of the Jews, who sought to embroil us, asbeforetimes, with the Romans.
We preached in the synagogues on the Sabbath and I upheld the faith Ihad come to preach: that the Messiah promised to the Jews had lived andhad died for us. Whereupon there was a great uproar among the Jews, whowould not believe, and so I tore my garments and said: then I will goforth to the Gentiles, and find believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, andleave you who were elected by God as his chosen people, who were his byadoption, a privilege conferred upon you throughout the centuries, therace out of whom came the patriarchs, and Jesus Christ himself in theflesh. I will leave you, for you are not worthy and will perish as allflesh perishes; will drift into nothingness, and be scattered even asthe dust of the roads is scattered by the winds. My heart is broken foryou, but since ye will it so, let it be so.
So did I speak, but my heart is often tenderer than my words, and Istrove again to be reconciled with the Jews, and abode in Corinthproving their folly to them by the Scriptures till again they sought torid themselves of me by means of the Romans, saying before Gallic: thisfellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the law. But Gallic,understanding fully that his judgment seat had not been set up for thesettling of disputes of the spirit, but of the things of this world,drove the Jews out of his court, and there was an uproar and Sosthenes,a God-fearing man, was beaten. Yet for the sake of the race of thepatriarchs, the chosen people of God, I abode in Corinth till the closeof the second year, when news reached me of the many dissensions thathad arisen in Jerusalem.
The old questions always stirring: whether the Gentiles should beadmitted without circumcision and if the observances of the law weresufficient; if salvation could be obtained by works without faith, andmany other questions that I thought had long been decided; in the hopeof putting an end to these discussions, which could only end in schism,I bade the brethren good-bye on the wharf, and, shaving my head as asign of my vow to keep the Feast of Pentecost, I set sail with Aquilaand Priscilla for Syria and left them at Ephesus, though there were manyChristians there who prayed me to remain and speak to them; but pointingto my shaved head, I said, my vow! and went down to Jerusalem and keptthe Feast of Pentecost and distributed money among the poor, which hadbeen given to me by the churches founded by me in Macedonia, in Greeceand Syria.
I hoped to escape from discussion with James, the brother of the Lord,for of what good could it be to discuss once again things on which it isour nature to think differently, but upheld by hope that the Jews mightbe numbered among the faithful at the last day I told him that the Jewswere the root of the olive-trees whose branches had been cut, and hadreceived grafts, but let not the grafts, I said, indulge in vainglory;it is not the branches that bear the root, but the root that bears thebranches. And many other things of this sort did I say, wishing to be inall things conciliatory; to be, as usual, all things to all men; butJames, the brother of the Lord, answered that Jesus had not come toabrogate the law but to confirm it, which was not true, for the lawstood in no need of confirmation. James could do that as well as hisbrother and better, and Peter not being there to bear witness of theteaching of Jesus (he too had gone forth upon a mission with John Markas an interpreter, for Peter cannot speak Greek), Silas, who was withme, was won over by James, and easily, for Silas was originally of theChurch of Jerusalem; as I have already told you, he had been sent withus to Antioch.
But I would not weary you with such small matters as Silas' desertion ofme to join Peter, who was preaching in Syria, and whose doctrine he saidwas nearer to Jesus' than mine, it having been given to him by Jesus,whom he had known in the flesh. So be it, I said to Silas, and wentwithout him to
Antioch, a city dear to me for that it was there the wordChristian was spoken for the first time; my return thither wasfortunate, for there I met Barnabas, whom it was pleasant after thesemany years to meet again, all memory of our dissension was forgotten,which was no great matter, it having arisen out of no deeper cause thanmy refusal to travel with John Mark, his cousin. Titus was there too,and we had much to tell each other of our travels and the conversions wehad made, and all was joy amongst us; and our joy was increased byPeter, who appeared amongst us, bringing Silas with him, who must havebeen grieved though he said nothing to me of it; but who must have seenthat the law to which he was attached was forgotten at Antioch; not byus only, but by his new leader, Peter, who mixed like ourselves with theGentiles and did not refuse to eat with them.
A moment indeed of great joy this was, but it did not last longer thanmany other moments of the same kind with which my life has beensprinkled. James, the brother of the Lord, sent up agents to Antiochwith letters signed by himself. They had come to tell the people that Ihad not authority to teach, and could not be considered by anybody as atrue apostle, for I had not known the Christ, it was said: and when Ianswered them that my authority came straight from him, they began tomake little of my revelation, saying: even if thou didst hear the Christon the road to Damascus, as thou sayest, it was but for a few minutes,and he couldn't teach thee all his doctrine in a few minutes. A year ormore would be required. Thou wast deceived. No vision can be taken as ofequal evidence to the senses. Those that we see in a vision may be butthe evil spirits that, if it were possible, would deceive the veryelect. If we question an apparition it answers anything that we wish.The spectre shines for an instant and disappears quickly before one hastime to put further questions; the thoughts of the dreamer are not underhis control. To see the Son of God outside of the natural flesh isimpossible. Even an angel wishing to be seen has to clothe himself inflesh. Nor were they satisfied with such sayings as these, but mentionedthe vision of infidels and evil livers, and to support their argumentthus quoted Scripture, proving that God sent visions when he wasirritated. As in Numbers, murmured Eleazar. And likewise in Exodus, saidManahem, and he turned over the quires before him. These emissaries andagents asked me how it was that even if Jesus had appeared to me hecould not have instructed me wrongly. If I wished to prove the truth ofmy vision it were better for me to accept the teaching of the apostles,who had received it directly from him; to which I made answer: myrevelation was not from Jesus when he lived in the flesh, but from thespiritual Jesus; the spirit descended out of heaven to instruct me, andif God has created us, which none will deny, he has created our soulswherewith to know him, and he needs not the authority of other apostleswho speak as men, falling into the errors that men must fall into whenthey speak, for every man's truth is made known unto him by God.
One day we came out of a house heated with argument, and as we loiteredby the pavement's edge regretting we had not said certain things wherebywe might have confuted each other, we came upon Peter in a public inn,eating and drinking with the uncircumcised, whereupon the Hierosolymitessaid we see now what ye are, Peter, a Jew that eats with Gentiles and ofunclean meats. Peter did not withstand them and say as he should havedone: how is it that you call them that God has made unclean? but beinga timid man and anxious always to avoid schism, he excused himself andwithdrew, and was followed by Barnabas and Silas.
It was for this that I withstood him before all in the assembly,reproaching him for his inconsequences, saying to him: if thou that arta Jew livest according to the manner of Gentiles, how is it that thouwouldst compel the Gentiles to live as the Jews do? and until this mancame thou wert one with us, saying as we say, that none is justified byconforming to the law and practising it, but by the faith in JesusChrist. But if we seek justification in Christ, and in him alone, andyet are found to be sinners, of what help is Christ then to us? Is he aminister of sinners? God forbid! By his life and death he abolished thelaw, whereby we might live in faith in Christ, for the law standsbetween us and Christ. I say unto thee, Peter, that if Christ wascrucified for me I live in Christ; no longer my own life of the flesh,but the spiritual life that Christ has given me. I say unto theelikewise, that if we care only to know Christ through the law thenChrist has died in vain. To which Peter answered nothing, but went hisway, as is his custom, in silence, and my grief was great; for I couldsee that the many were shocked, and wondered at our violence, and couldnot have said else than that we were divided among ourselves, thoughthey said it under their breath. Nor did peace come till the emissariesof James left us to go to the churches I had founded in Galatia and undothe work I had done there. Whereupon I collected all my thoughts for anepistle that would comfort those, and enable them to resist, saying:though an angel from heaven tell you a different doctrine from the onethat I have taught you, listen not to him. Copies of this letter weresent to the churches that I had founded, but the sending of the letterdid not calm my anger. An angry soul I have been since God firstseparated me from my mother's womb, gaining something on one side andlosing on the other side; but we make not ourselves; God makes us. Andthere is a jealousy still within me; I know it and have suffered fromit, and never did it cause me greater suffering than in those days inAntioch. My jealousy was like a hungry animal, gnawing at my ribs till,unable to bear it any longer, and seeing in visions all that I hadraised pulled down, I started with Titus and travelled all over Galatiaand Phrygia to Bithynia, along the shores of Pontus, and returned backagain, informing the kindly, docile souls, who loved us in theirweakness, of Lystra, Derbe and other towns, setting up my loom andpreaching every evening the coming of the Lord, whither I went inMacedonia, Thessalonica, Iconium, Laodicea, not forgetful of Colossaefor two years or more (I have forgotten), and then hearing that Apollos,an Alexandrian Jew of great learning, our most notable convert, of whomI have not spoken, for there is no time to speak of everything, hadtaken ship at Corinth for Ephesus, I returned the way I had come alongthe coast to meet him there, likewise many good friends, Aquila andPriscilla, who were working at their looms, gathering a faithful circleabout them. We set up shop again as we had done at Corinth, Aquila,Priscilla and myself worked at our looms all day, and preached in theevening in and about the city, and on the Sabbath in the synagogue.