Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Acts 16:8

And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas.

8. And they passing by Mysia ] i.e. without preaching in that district, which was a part of Proconsular Asia, where they were not permitted to preach.

came down to Troas ] The well-known seaport on the coast of Mysia.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Came down to Troas – This was a city of Phrygia or Mysia, on the Hellespont, between Troy north, and Assos south. Sometimes the name Troas or Troad, is used to denote the whole country of the Trojans, the province where the ancient city of Troy had stood. This region was much celebrated in the early periods of Grecian history. It was here that the events recorded in the Iliad of Homer are supposed to have occurred. The city of Troy has long since been completely destroyed. Troas is several times mentioned in the New Testament, 2Co 2:12; 2Ti 4:13; Act 20:5.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Act 16:8-12

And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas and a vision appeared to Paul in the night.

Pauls vision at Troas

I. Its benevolence. What is the gospel? Help for man. It helps man–

1. To know God.

2. To preach Christ.

3. To promote civilisation.

II. Its influence. It recognises–

1. The independent capacity of man as a moral agent.

2. The weakness of man.

III. Its ministration. The appeals of humanity to Christianity are various.

1. By the information of history.

2. By the general operation of Christian principles.

3. By inward impressions. (Caleb Morris.)

What might have happened had the vision not occurred

That figure represented Europe, and its cry for help Europe s need of Christ. Paul recognised in it a Divine summons; and the very next sunset which bathed the Hellespont in its golden light shone upon his figure seated on the deck of a ship whose prow was moving towards the shore of Macedonia. In this passage of Paul, from Asia to Europe, a great providential decision was taking effect, of which, as children of the West, we cannot think without the profoundest thankfulness. Christianity arose in Asia and among an Oriental people; and it might have been expected to spread first among those races to which the Jews were most akin. Instead of coming west, it might have gone eastwards, It might have penetrated into Arabia and taken possession of those regions where the faith of the False Prophet now holds sway. It might have visited the wandering tribes of Central Asia, and, piercing its way down through the passes of the Himalayas, reared its temples on the banks of the Ganges, the Indus, and the Godavery. It might have travelled farther east to deliver the swarming millions of China from the cold secularism of Confucius. Had it done so, missionaries from India and Japan might have been coming to England at the present day to tell the story of the cross. But Providence conferred on Europe a blessed priority, and the fate of our Continent was decided when Paul crossed the Hellespont. (J. Stalker, D. D.)

There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us.—

The Macedonian spectre

Sometimes men hear better with their eyes than with their ears. Truth will get in through the imagination when it will make no impression through the intellect. Hence Bunyan was as philosophical as he was ingenious in representing Mansoul as having Feel-gate, Nose-gate, Mouth-gate, as well as the chief among them all, Ear-gate and Eye-gate. But when the grand attack of Diabolos was made it was found that Captain Resistance was established above Ear-gate; but Ear-gate was much more slightly defended. In Scripture there is constant recognition of this comparative ease of entering the human soul by the way of the eyes. Hence we are sure to find some splendid vision whenever a fresh messenger is appointed from God to men. Observe:–

I. That this vision was addressed to an inspired man. It found him shaken with uttermost perplexity, and was the only thing which availed to give direction in his present duty. Twice in succession their intentions were suddenly held in check by a power higher than their own. The man of those regions deepens the impressiveness of such a strange discipline. For while the apostle was urging his way east the Holy Ghost was constraining him to go to the west. Westward the star of empire takes its way, seems to be the Divine rule for human history. Learn:

1. That the great Head of the Church retains guidance of every form of Christian enterprise. It was the Spirit of Jesus which stopped Paul now, just as He did on the road to Damascus. That we must ask Gods decision, when we set about religious effort. We are to invite Divine cooperation in selection of methods, as well as in choice of ends, and so to discern in failure a stimulant to faith, and in success a reason for our giving new glory to God.

II. This story throws light upon calls to service.

1. Any real declaration of want is a call. Anything that has a voice can utter a call. Adaptations to usefulness are direct calls to usefulness.

2. The supreme necessity of a lost human soul. The words which the world at large is speaking are Come over and held us. It does not appear to have occurred that the spectre could have possibly had any meaning beside a religious one. All men the world over have one point in common at which they need succour: they must have pardon for sin.

3. The calls to duty which one has afford a safe exposition of his heart. A politician would have imagined that a struggling people were sending for soldiers to fight for their cause. A philanthropist would find some signs of a famine. Thus each would discover his own.

III. How readily these messengers of Christ started out on a foreign mission.

1. Note the intense form of expression: immediately, etc.

2. The finest picture in this world is that of a human will surrendered in sublime obedience to the will of God. The beauty of the Troad is famous: think of Mount Ida, the city of Priam, the tomb of Achilles. But the chief fame of that region now is found in the remembrance that there four men set out upon the sea to conquer Europe unto Christ. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

The Macedonian phantom

I. St. Pauls need of faith and Divine guidance. The apostles differed from ourselves in that they were endowed with extraordinary gifts.

1. It might have been thought that, possessed as they were of superhuman might, there would have been but little opportunity or demand for that trust which is required from ourselves. But that the apostles were able to work miracles did not secure to them the supply even of their daily wants. It was a strange, but an instructive spectacle, that of a man who could raise the dead, obliged to labour like a common artisan in order to procure a meal. But God, in order to keep His servant dependent on himself, would not allow him to exercise, on his own behalf, the powers which were so mighty in subjugating the world.

2. The apostles had the gift of prophecy, and, privileged with immediate revelation, they knew far more than common men of the will and purposes of the Almighty. But this was no more allowed than their power of working miracles, to diminish the necessity for the exertion of faith. You might have thought that such men would never have been at any loss with regard to their own plans. Yet this was far from being the case. The Apostles appear to have had just our trials of faith; they were called upon for the same patient waiting on God, the same watching the leadings of His Providence, the same studying the minute indications of His will. If you look at the verses which immediately precede our text, you will find abundant evidence that St. Paul and his companions were required, like ourselves, to go forward in faith, uninformed as to the precise course which God would have them take, but acting on the assurance that He directs the steps of all such as commit themselves to His guidance.

3. At last, there is granted unto Paul the vision recorded in our text, from which he is enabled assuredly to gather that the Lord designed him to preach in Macedonia. We hear much of the leadings of Gods providence; and it is our business to be always on the watch for the leadings; assured that, as God taught His people of old by the cloud upon the tabernacle, He will not fail now to vouchsafe guidance to those who in all their ways acknowledge Him. But we are not to expect that the leadings of Providence will be always, or even often, marked and distinct. This would be to change the character of our dispensation; for if the pillar of fire and cloud went visibly before us, it would be by sight, and no longer by faith, that Christians were required to walk. It is the easiest thing in the world to imagine the leadings of Providence, where we have already got the leadings of inclination. And we may learn from the instance of St. Paul that, even where there is prayerfulness and entire submission, it may be only by dark intimations, and after many frustrations, that Gods providence will mark out our course.

II. St. Pauls vision. There is not one who does not consider that sleep is a sort of image of death. The heathen spake of death as a sleep; and Scripture, from the very first, made use of the figure. But the metaphor has not been carried to its proper extent.

1. I do indeed think that God designed sleep as the standing image of death. But I think also that God hereby meant to fix their thoughts, not only on their dying, but on their rising from the dead. Why, when every morning calls us from our beds, strung with new energy, and, as it were, freshened into a new life–why are we to speak of sleep as though it imaged our death, but not also our resurrection?

2. But our condition whilst asleep furnishes notices of our condition whilst we lie amongst the dead.

(1) In sleep it is not the whole man, it is only the earthly part that falleth asleep. The bodily senses and faculties are suspended from their usual exercise; but the mind is more than commonly active. What flights will the soul take during sleep. It may be well doubted whether the soul is ever inactive: we do not always remember our dreams; but, probably, we always dream. And what ought we to gather from this? Surely, that the soul shall be active while the body lies dead.

(2) Neither is this all. Such passages of Scripture as our text teach us that while the body is asleep the soul may be receiving instruction. It is every way observable that God should have made such frequent use of visions or dreams in the communicating intimations of His will. He might have given these intimations through many other modes; for nothing can be more vague or uncertain than a dream. And it may have been that in thus frequently employing dreams, and employing them more frequently whilst there was less distinct information as to mans state after death, Gods purpose was to direct attention to the capacity of the soul for receiving instruction, yet not through the organs of the body, but whilst those organs might be closed and unable to discharge their ordinary offices. The separate state shall not be a state of dull inactivity or low attainment: that state is imaged by sleep; and as if to tell me what the righteous may expect in that state, God hath come to His servants in visions of the night, and taught them in sleep what they had vainly striven to discover when awake. And now I am not to give room to any fears that, whilst the flesh lies slumbering in the grave, the soul will not be admitted into acquaintance with portions of Gods will which it may vainly have endeavoured to ascertain whilst on earth; enough that St. Paul, whilst awake, had meditated to preach in Asia, and assayed to go into Bithynia, seeking fruitlessly to determine what Gods will might be, and yet that St. Paul, in sleep, which is the image of death, was thoroughly instructed in regard of that will–there stood by him in a vision, a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us.

III. St. Pauls interpretation of the vision. There is no reason to think that any further revelation was added; the expression, assuredly gathering, implies that the disciples were left to draw the inference that the Lord had called them for to preach the gospel unto them. They never seem to have imagined that there might be any other way in which they could help the Macedonians, that the Macedonians could want any other sort of help. Do you not, then, see that St. Paul and his companions lived for only one object? that they acknowledged but one supply for all the wants of the world? Ah, how very different would it be amongst ourselves! Let the phantom be sent to one of our statesmen; let the form of the wild Indian, or of the African, stand by his bedside in the stillness of the midnight, and breathe, in accents compelling his attention, the simple entreaty, Come over and help us, and how would the politician interpret the call? He would probably conclude that ruthless foes were invading the distant country; and his first, his only thought, might be to send an army to its succour. Or let the spectre go and speak to one of our merchants–he would presently think of commercial embarrassments or commercial openings, and if he assuredly gathered anything it would be that he must freight a vessel and send out a mercantile establishment. Or if it were even to one of our benevolent and philanthropic men that the phantom addressed itself, the likelihood is he would think of famine, or pestilence, and he would hesitate as to what help could be given, till he had made out some particular and temporal evil under which they were labouring. And yet, whatever our occupation, we are professed servants of Christ, and all bound, by the vows of our profession, to take as our chief object the advancing Christs kingdom. It was not merely because St. Pauls business was that of a preacher that he interpreted a cry for help into a cry for the gospel; St. Paul was also a tent maker; St. Luke was a physician; but it never occurred to either the one or the other that assistance might be wanted to teach a trade or heal a disease: their ruling desire was that of glorifying Christ; they could not, therefore, be invited into a country and not seize on the invitation as an opening for Christianity. They believed that in carrying Christianity to a land, they were carrying that which would best rectify disorders, alleviate distresses, assuage sorrows, and multiply happiness. And, therefore, they never stopped to consider whether they had at their disposal the particular engine which, on a human computation, might be suited for counteracting a particular evil–enough that they had the gospel to preach; and they felt that they had an engine which could in no case be inappropriate and in none inefficient. Let us learn, from the example of St. Paul, to set a higher value on the gospel: whether it be as a nation or as individuals that we are called upon by the Macedonian for help; whether the cry, borne from heathen lauds, be a cry specifically for religious instruction, or the cry generally of suffering and degraded humanity.

IV. St. Pauls obedience to the vision. Observe how ready they were to obey Gods will the moment they had ascertained it. Immediately. It had not been into Macedonia that they had been wishing or purposing to go, and unbelief might have suggested, Shall we let a phantom guide us? ought we not at least to wait for some less dubious intimation? But no; there was sufficient reason to think that Gods will was now discovered, and there was nothing to be done but to hasten to the sea and seek the means of embarking. Alas! we are all ready enough to follow the leadings of Gods providence when they concur with our own wish; but how reluctant are we when God points in one direction and inclination in another! This is the trial–to set out for Macedonia, to which duty calls us, in place of staying at Troas, to which our own wishes bind us. But a Christian should have no will of his own–he is the servant of a Master in heaven, and the only thing for him to ascertain is where that Master would have him work, and what He would have him do. Has the phantom been at his bedside? Then he ought not to confer with flesh and blood. He is indeed to take every just means for assuring himself that he is not deceived, that the phantom has not been woven from the imagining of his own brain, but has really been sent to him by his Master. But this having been done, there is no room for hesitation. And are we not summoned to Macedonia? and is not the voice for assistance more thrilling and more plaintive than that which fell, in night visions, on the ear of St. Paul? It is the voice, not only of the Macedonian, the foreigner, the heathen; it is the voice of our own countrymen. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The cry of the Macedonian to Paul

The cry–

I. Was human.

1. A man–

(1) Not an angelic intelligence.

(2) Not a member of a class, but of a race. It was not a philosopher, artist, priest, warrior, king; but a man.

2. It is the humanity in heathendom that is in moral distress. The aid that is so deeply required is not secular, political, educational, military, but moral. Help to the conscience, soul; help to man as man in his spiritual and eternal relationships.

II. Was significant. Come over and help us. It implies–

1. A sense of need. Man everywhere feels that there is something wanting to make matters right between him and his God. Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord?

2. Conscious inability to supply the need. The Macedonian felt that the Macedonians, with all their wealth and intelligence, could not supply the necessity. Heathenism has no self-redemptive power.

3. Faith is the power of Christians to help. The Macedonian took it for granted that Paul could help. Macedonia represents the western world. Once this call sounded for help from the heathen West to the Christian East; now it sounds from the heathen East to the Christian West.

III. Was obeyed. Paul attends at once to the call. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

The cry of the heathen

Consider–

I. The wants of the heathen. Think of the millions of India ignorant of God, of Christ, and of the way of salvation; destitute of hope, victims of the most degrading superstition, Of their rites we may well say with St. Paul (Eph 5:12; Rom 1:29-32).

II. The character of the blessing.

1. It offers a Divine atonement.

2. The Holy Spirit applies it and imparts the state of mind essentially necessary (Mar 16:16).

III. Our obligations.

1. It is the command of Christ, Go ye, etc. (Mar 16:15).

2. Common humanity demands it.

IV. The motives which urge us.

1. The facilities offered for the propagation of the gospel. Multitudes are prepared for it. The Bible is translated into their tongues, there is a disposition to read it, prejudice is wearing away. God is pouring out His blessing on the means already employed.

2. Our abundant means. We have wealth, piety, influence, talent, all at our command.

3. The magnitude of the work calls forth our exertions.

V. Improvement.

1. The glory of the Redeemer is involved in the extension of His Church. Has not God given Him the heathen for His inheritance, etc. Every soul saved adds one gem to the Redeemers crown. Is not this the object of our daily prayer, Thy kingdom come, and can we consistently use the words without employing the means?

2. Gratitude, as enlightened Gentiles. Here God was once unknown. All the blessings we enjoy we owe to the labours of those holy men who left their peaceful homes to preach among us the unsearchable riches of Christ.

3. Compassion to their deplorable state. The temporal salvation of millions of men is not equal to that of one soul. (Pulpit.)

The vision and the call

I. The vision. They came down to Troas–that is, to Troy, a modern city bearing the name, and marking the region, if not the site, of Priams Troy, the City of the Iliad and the blind singers deathless song. Such places are fountains of inspiration in themselves. Hill and grove, stream and plain, are vocal with great memories; and the soul that is worthy of such a scene hears, as Augustine heard voices in the air saying, Let us, too, conquer something. But more depends upon the soul than on the scene; for whatever it looks upon the eye can only see what the eye brings with it, the means of seeing, for everything wears the hue of the spirit. Xerxes, Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar, and many more came to this famed region, and each one saw and heard according to the spirit that was in him visions of battles. But the man who had now come to Troy had brought with him another spirit and an eye capable of nobler visions. He brought with him a great soul, wide in the range of its sympathies, sensitive, impressionable, and glowing with the quenchless passion of love to God and man. Never in all its eventful history had Troy an eye so rich in the means of seeing whatever Troy could show. And what did Paul see upon the Trojan plain? Behold, then, the new Troy that God would have besieged and conquered, as the spring besieges, and as the summer conquers the land! Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the message that moulded his life came to him from the very lips of God, speaking in person. That was the highest vision of which the best man in that stage of the worlds spiritual development was capable. But Paul in that great moment, not only of his life, beheld, not the Lord high and lifted up, but a man of Europe, one of ourselves, and heard a human voice pleading in the darkness for such help as he could give. It was the vision rendered possible by the Incarnation of the Son of God, and necessary by the state of the world. He beheld a man! That is the vision needed today. In all our difficulties in England, political, economic, social and ecclesiastic, the devils policy is still to raise such a dust of controversy as to hide man from man. Penetrate to the heart of any question of the day, and there you find a man, a man asking for help. At the heart of the Drink Question, at the heart of the Labour Question, there are men, not monsters, but men, flesh of our flesh, men with difficulties, crying to us, calling to us, pleading with us. And our only hope of settling these questions lies in laying the cloud of devils dust of passion and prejudice until we can see the man and hear what he is saying. And this great matter of missions, what is it? Do some of you young people think that, after all, it is nothing but a war of religions? that it is simply a crusade of one creed against another? Nothing of the sort. It is mans ministry to man. How shall we figure heathenism to ourselves tonight? Shall we call up a vision of idols and groves and temples and mitred priests and garlanded victims? No; all that is mere detail. If you want to see heathenism in the fullest pathos and tragedy of its fate, think of it under the guise of a man with soul enough to conceive the sublime ideas of Brahminism, with conscience enough to appreciate the grand moral precepts of Buddha, with brain enough to frame the marvellous scheme of Confucius, and spirituality enough in him to see with Zoroaster that the difference between good and evil is no measurable distance, but a distance as between day and night. We have to approach them rather in the spirit of brotherliness; for a man stands before us, and yet in a spirit of compassion for this man, so noble, so subtle, so mighty of intellect, is weighed down, is cramped, he is weary with searching and cannot find, he is a baffled man, and he asks us to help him with that very thing in the possession of which alone we are superior to him, the thing which, perhaps, when we have handed it to him he will be able to make a very much better use of than we have made.

II. The call. Human need is always sacred and ever oracular, for through it God speaks. The will of God is the only plain thing in this universe, the only thing that is absolutely known. Everything else has darkness and mist about it, but the will of God is absolutely plain. The will of God is gladness, sunshine, music, life. It is everywhere. Go forth into the byways and highways of London with open eye and reverent heart, and you shall see it written upon every human need, and you shall hear it speaking to you in every human cry. It is the will of God that men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; and Gods will be done! The call of God is a call to unity. When he had seen the vision we sought to go forth. It is noticed that the word we comes in here for the first time. The men felt that it was a call not only to action, but to united action. There had been quarrels and partings at Antioch. Paul and Barnabas had separated; but this revelation of the need of the world came to give compression and compactness and unity to this little band. If you want to see the quarrel at Antioch in its true nature, look at it in the light of Europes need; and if you want to see the divisions and the jealousies that divide Christian people at home, look at them against the worlds need today. God is not calling us simply to action, but to united action, to cooperation, to Christian unity. Twice one man is not simply two, but two plus their unity. It does not matter how many they are. It is not the number of men that work; it is the spirit in which any number work; their unity tells.

III. The work. God had called us to preach the gospel unto them. Dr. Owen, in his sermon on this text, says: No men want help like the men that want the gospel. But what is the gospel?

1. Preaching the gospel; what is it? It is calling the righteous to repentance. There were good folk in Philippi, and Paul found them engaged in a good work on a good day. Well, then, let well alone? No, for it is not at all well. Nowhere in all Philippi was Paul more needed than among these good folk praying on the Sabbath day by the rivers brim; and there is no one in all England that needs a mission more than many a good, blameless, irreproachable, man. But are there good among the heathen? Oh! yes. I am no more concerned to deny goodness to India and China than St. Luke to Philippi. There is goodness among the heathen, conscientiousness, aspiration, prayerfulness. Why, then, send missions to good people? Why? Because the goodness of the world, almost more than its badness, demonstrates the absolute necessity of the gospel. If the badness of the world proves how far down man can fall left to himself, the goodness of the world goes to show what a very little way, left to himself, he can lift himself from where he has fallen.

2. Preaching the gospel, what is it? Deliverance of the captives. As Paul passed and repassed through the streets on his way to the place of prayer, to preach to the good, kind people, he saw another phase of European life–a poor girl, on whose supposed powers of divination greedy men were making a fat living. Well, she, too, as well as Lydia, should be helped. Paul held a gospel in trust for her. Oh! yes: but think of the difficulties and the danger of doing it! For timid friends tell Paul, who had never been in Europe before; never been face to face with downright heathenism before: She is a property, a human chattel; she belongs to the men who live upon her powers. Salvation for her means ruin for them: good money is good in Europe, and what it might mean ultimately for Paul no one could say. Then think of the scandal, the interruptions of the good work so nicely begun–all this to be stopped and a great scandal raised, and Christianity itself, perhaps. Yes, there were strong reasons for not touching this matter, and Paul seems to have shrunk from doing so. But God forced his hand. The girl followed him day by day, advertising the mission that he had been sent upon, until, at last, able to bear it no longer, he stood there in the open street and, in the name of Christ, opened fire upon the devil in her, and the more malignant devil in her masters. Yes, there was a scandal and tumult, and much trouble came of it. But it had to be done, for in this matter peace is with the devil and the fight is with God.

3. Preaching the gospel to the heathen is preaching Christ as the Saviour of lost men. Philippi held not Lydia only, not girls like that poor lost, wild one; but men like this gaoler, coarse, hardened, sceptical. What can Paul do to help that man? What does that man want? Why, he wants everything; he wants the chief thing. And so, from obeying the vision they saw and following the call they heard, God led these people into a work that touched the European town at every point of its life, and stirred it to its lowest depths. They left it in a few days a different place from what they had found it. (J. M. Gibbon.)

The cry of the heathen

This was no doubt a special vision sent of God for the direction of the apostle. And yet the vision may be very readily accounted for by natural causes. Men usually dream of that which is most upon their minds. Who marvels that the miser dreams of gold, the mother of her infant, the soldier of battle? No wonder that Paul, whose whole soul was full of his Masters cause, should have a vision concerning a new field of labour. God sometimes tells men in their sleep the secret they could not discover when they were awake. We have heard of the preacher who dreamed his sermon and then preached it. The text suggests that–

I. The greatest help that can be given to any people is the preaching of the gospel. Those who have not the gospel stand in the greatest need of help; but when the gospel is carried, you carry everything within it.

1. Many lands are still subject to despots. How is liberty to be established in these lands? We need something more potent than steel to carve out the liberty of mankind. If liberty, equality, and fraternity, the three great words that are the worlds heirloom, are ever to be fully known, it must be by the preaching of the Word of Jesus.

2. See how the nations are lying under gloomy superstition. How many have their intellect blighted, their hopes blasted, their progress stepped, by the cursed dominancy of priests. But the preaching of the gospel which teaches that believers are all priests and kings–this, and this only, is the worlds hope of its deliverance from the slavery of the body and the yet more accursed bondage of the soul.

3. There are many places where all social comforts and enjoyments are as yet totally unknown. Nothing else can make the barbarian into a civilised man but the cross.

4. There are districts where the ground is red with blood. What shall we do to put an end to war? The gospel of Jesus shall yet break the battle bow in sunder.

5. But still, the greatest help that the gospel brings is help to the soul. Does not your heart desire that the blind eye should be opened, the misguided directed, the vicious led to virtue, and the virtuous to righteousness! Ye must send the gospel far and wide. How can they believe without a preacher? How can they preach except they be sent?

II. Every day and hour the nations are saying, Come over and help us. They do not vocally ask for help; nay, if you send it, they will many of them reject it. Missionaries have been slain; but still the nations are silently crying, Come over and help us. If I saw a person in the street faint and dying, although he spoke not to me, I should think the weakness of his silence more potent than all the power of words. Ay, and if I saw him like a maniac, pushing me from him, for that very reason I would give him my assistance; and so must you do. It is ours to thrust our kindness upon unwilling men, because we believe that their unwillingness arises from the madness of their disease. Unborn generations shall bless the men that sent the gospel which at first their fathers did reject.

III. What do you mean to do is answer to the heathens cry? Have I one man who has a mind to go and preach the gospel in other lands? Because if I have, and if I have ten others who have a mind to give him ten pounds a year, I have an opening for sending him out at once. Who can tell?–he might be another Livingstone. Have we no young men here who are ready to volunteer? And what are you resolved to do who cannot preach? Says one, I will pray. Do so; but in doing that, recollect that is what the Roman priest did for the beggar. The priest said he would not give him a sovereign, nor a half-crown, nor a penny. Holy father, said the beggar, will you give me your prayers? Yes, said the priest; kneel down. No, said the beggar; for if your prayers had been worth a penny, you would not have given them to me. If you have nought else to give to Christ, ye need not be ashamed; but if you are blessed in your substance, you will be lying before Him if you ask Him to bless His cause and do not give of your means in its support. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Cry of the heathen

One sunny evening, on Mr. Masons return from a preaching excursion among the Burmans, the first object which attracted his attention was the fine form of a Sgare chief, who, seated like a child at Mrs. Masons feet, was earnestly imploring her to visit the karens in his village and neighbourhood. We have heard of Christianity, and it seems to us something wonderful. We do not understand it, and yet it seems the very thing we want. Come to our jungle homes, and preach to us on our native streams. Many will believe. I have a Burman wife, and I have daughters, and sons-in-law, and brothers, and nephews, all of whom will become Christians, as well as myself, as soon as we really understand. In a few years this man became one of the most efficient labourers in Merqui and Tavoy, and under his influence many were baptized. (J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)

A cry for help

The form of the petition, which we may declare without exaggeration to be addressed to all of us in the periodical call of Christian missions, places in a very attractive light the work to which it refers. The gospel is designed by its Author, and is felt by its true disciples to be the help of man. The Bible is full of this aspect of the gospel. Man wants help, and God alone offers him help.

I. Instruction is help. We all speak of the helplessness of the blind. See a blind man groping his way: math the vacillation of his step, the uncertainty of his hand; see how a little child, a dumb animal, a lifeless staff, is welcomed as the guide and helper. Now what the light of the sun is to one who has to move among the things of this world, that knowledge is to a man who has to find his way through the mysteries, perils, and obstructions of this life into an eternal state. Well can you imagine yourself crying, in the words of the text, Come over and help me! Help me by telling me for certain what I am and where; who is He above me, and what the life beyond; how I can so pass through things temporal that I finally lose not the things eternal.

II. Comfort is help. See how the Psalmist cries out for help in his hours of distress. Shew me a token for good: that they who hate me may see it and be ashamed, because Thou, Lord, hast holpen me and comforted me. Holpen and comforted. The two things are one. If I could only feel that someone has cared for my soul, it is help at once. It is neglect, indifference, alienation, which disheartens and makes me feel myself helpless. Let me know that God whom I have displeased yet loves, that God whom I have neglected waits for me with outstretched arm, and I can bear anything, I can do anything. It is so when first the gospel is apprehended as indeed a message of peace from God. And it is so again day by day. The gospel is indeed help for the helpless and life from the dead.

III. But there are hearts of which the inward thought is, The help I need most of all is, in the simplest sense, assistance–aid against difficulties, enemies, temptations. Yes, here we touch the vital point. What makes a true Christian love his gospel is that he finds strength in it. (Dean Vaughan.)

A call for help

Oriental in its lineage and nativity Christianity was destined to become European in its triumphs. A few centuries saw it wither in those lands which gave it birth. Whereas transplanted to Europe it has struck here abiding roots and borne ample fruit. Nourished by the stronger soil of Western life, it is now beginning to repay the East its early obligations. The moment to which the text refers was one of the supreme turning points of history. It was a moment sure to come. Sooner or later the gospel was bound to pass from the continent of its infancy to that robuster continent which was to prove the home of its manhood. Yet it needed quite a series of unusual providential indications to bring that mission band down to Treas. Again and again had the unseen Guide of that enterprise stood, like the angel of Balaam, barring progress. Read widely the Macedonians appeal suggests–

I. That all human religions, governments, literature, civilisation, have ended in a confession of failure.

1. What are human religions but attempts to find God? But they strive after the unattainable. The net result of them all in Pauls day was a general scepticism respecting religious truths, and despair respecting their highest good.

2. The end of government and all social systems is the regeneration of society and a reign of justice, peace, and happiness; and at this problem men had long been working. Government by one, by a few, by the many, by the best–the world has tried them all, and under all of them has gone to corruption.

3. This failure repeats itself in the individual soul. The inward history of every man, when the net result of all lifes efforts comes to be inspected, does not satisfy even the man himself. It is not what it ought or was meant to be.

II. To all this incessant, profound, pathetic plaint of humanity, Gods answer has been the gospel of His Son, or rather Gods Son Himself. He is the Helper who has come over to us. He has brought light, revealing the Father whom we had ignorantly worshipped; peace cancelling guilt and atoning for transgression; power to break the bonds of evil habit, to renew the wasted moral energy, and to build up holy character. We believe in this Helper; to receive Christ is to be a Christian. Come and see if He be not the Christ of God.

III. Christ being Gods response to the cry for help, it follows that Christians in their turn must listen to the cry and answer it. If the gospel has not forgotten its own origin it can never hear unmoved the Macedonian appeal. Christianity, is nothing if not a mission; and the Churchs loyalty is tested by the degree of her sensitiveness to catch and her promptness to answer the cry of perishing men. Not that the Church must wait for any formal invitation. Paul did not wait for that. Macedonia knew and cared nothing about Christianity. The cry came not from Europe, but from God. What the vision meant was that Macedonia needed and was ready for the gospel. And no other provocation is needed for the Churchs missionary effort today. Note then–

1. The need. The study of comparative religion yields two results–

(1) It brings to light the seeds of spiritual truth which lie buried beneath the great old religions, and which testify to the inextinguishable cravings after God to which Christ is Gods reply.

(2) It shows the necessity for the Christian revelation. To know heathenism thoroughly is to know not only its fragments of partial truth, but also their insufficiency, and their witness to mans abortive spiritual struggles. There is great need for a fuller acquaintance with heathen creeds, and their outcome in heathen life. It is most difficult for men whose moral sense has been refined by Christianity to fathom the deeps of sinfulness and cruelty in which men have been plunged by unnumbered centuries of heathenism. Had Christians only an exacter knowledge of these things, compassion for the heathen would be vastly more keen and active than it is.

2. The readiness. The Church literally staggers beneath appeals for help. You can scarcely name a region that is inaccessible to the gospel. This is the privilege and perplexity of all our Churches. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.)

The worlds want, the worlds cry

It is only hearts burdened with Divine pity, and moved by Divine love, that see such visions or hear such voices as Paul saw and heard. The cold and indifferent sleep on; never hear and never see the great spirit world that wraps us close round. But we must not suppose that the Macedonians were actually hungering for the gospel. We know that they did not welcome Paul. His first sermon was preached to a few women only, and he was beaten and disregarded by the Philippians at large, and driven from their city; and when he went further south to Thessalonica, they assaulted him so furiously that he had to escape out of the city by night. And further south again in Athens they mocked him and said, What will this babbler say? Alas! the heathen, as a rule, do not see their darkness or feel their misery. The sheep in the wilderness, though utterly lost and in utmost peril, never seek the shepherd; it is the shepherd who has to seek the sheep. There was once an old man, diseased and worn and literally clothed in rags, who sat by the wayside begging, an object of pity: yet he never uttered a word, but simply sat there. One day a gentleman passing by was struck by his abject misery, but as no appeal was made he passed on. Yet, haunted by the mans woe-begotten appearance, he came back and said, Are you in want? And the old man replied, Oh, sir! I am sick and cold and hungry. Then said the gentleman, Why dont you beg? And the old man, stretching out his worn, wasted hands, and looking at his rag-covered body, said, Sir, I am begging with a thousand tongues. Yes, his misery was begging more eloquently than words. And it is thus that the heathen world is begging at the doors of the Church. It is its misery that begs; for the heathen are without God, and without hope in the world. But it is only a Christians eye that can see that misery, and only a Christians ear that can hear the cry. But what kind of help did the Macedonians want from Paul? and what kind of help had Paul to give them? It was–

1. Help out of their debasing idolatries and superstitions to the knowledge of the one true and living God.

2. Help out of their moral degradation to a higher and nobler life.

3. Help out of darkness and death to Christ and life. (G. Owen.)

The beginning of European missions

I. The dream. It seems a slight sort of thing to be the beginning of any enterprise, for a dream may arise from some slight derangement of the body, some uneasy posture, some preoccupation of the mind. Sometimes, however, it may be the effluence of another life. Just as a telegraph wire will transmit an influence that will reach another wire quite detached from it miles away–how, no man knows–so there are souls, perhaps, with so much vitality and power to propagate an impression that they may waft their desire into other hearts by the subtle breathing and yearning of the soul. In such a case a dream may have a meaning. God fulfils Himself in many ways, and sometimes, when He cannot get into our waking mind, He will enter into the mind while it sleeps, and convey His message there. From the result we see that this dream was a ministering angel. Mark some of the strange things about him.

1. It is very strange that He goes to the hearts that He does. Truly there was need of some angel to be the mouthpiece of creation that was groaning. For despair spread over the face of the people. The power of Rome was oppressive; liberty was extinct; the laws were bitter and cruel in a degree we cannot easily imagine. But surely that angel went to the wrong house. Let him go to the emperor, to the Roman Senate, to some that had power to see to the well-being of the people. But he is gone to travel-stained men with no fitness for any task like this. Angel, you have come to the wrong door. But oh! woe always knows in what direction to look for help; it has an instinct unerring as the childs for the mothers breast. And the dream angel, that is the pleader for human help, is always coming to Christian hearts. They may be few and poor; but somehow the cry of distress is always coming to the Church of Christ, as if she had some secret by which to heal the troubles of men. It may be the poor people of London; the ignorance of little children; orphans; the hospital; some nation struggling for liberty; womanhood. All the sorrowful the world over passing by all others say to us, Come over and help us. In Tokio, in Japan, a pool woman asked to be led to the Christian people. They asked her what she wanted. She said she understood that they knew how to heal the broken heart, and her heart was broken, and she wanted to find them. You cannot get out of this position. It is an evidence of Christianity little noticed, the expectation that the world has from us. Realise it. You may learn what to do in learning what the world expects you to do. The first marvel about this dream angel is the people to whom he goes.

2. The next strange thing about this dream angel is that he gets into the heart he goes to. It was not every heart that he got into. There are thoughts and feelings that cannot be got into our minds and hearts, for they are not big enough for them. There are some who can look upon sorrow and never see a claim in it; who can have the gospel and never feel that they have anything that can heal the woes of men. If such an angel had come to such, he might have stood at the door and knocked the whole night through, and he would not have disturbed their slumber. We would have told him that the rich man lived in the next street, or that somebody that was particularly interested in this sort of work was to be found somewhere else, or of the number of calls that we had, or turned to ask the news from Macedon: what about the crops, and the business, and the state of the frontier? The dream angel has been trying to get into some of our hearts for years, and we do not heed him, and send him away. Blessed are the souls that are open to let him in. All Christ-like hearts listen to such appeals. St. Patrick heard the dream voice, and the great missionaries of the Middle Ages–Boniface, the missionary of Central Europe; Raymond Lully, who went to Northern Africa; Xavier, who went to the furthest India and the edge of China. He came to our own Carey. There are some people that have never seen this dream angel. God pity them! Blessed are they who have.

II. What did they do with the dream? What would you have done? Probably you would have told it as rather a strange, curious dream, and have forgotten it. And suppose you had been with Paul; would you have given in to him, and gone to Macedonia on the mere strength of this dream? I fancy Silas would be very much tempted to say, Well, Paul, that is you all over; your dream cometh of your compassions. When you were at Antioch you thought of Cyprus, and when you got to Cyprus you thought of Asia Minor; when yon were at Syria you wanted to go to Rome, and when you get to Rome you will want to go to Spain–always the regions beyond. Your dream by night just comes of your thought by day. I can fancy Luke was tempted to say, Paul, you had a very serious illness in Galatia a month or two ago, ought you to go yonder? Oh, if it had been you or I, we would have wanted a month or two to consider it, and we would have got everybodys opinion till we got addled by the multitude of opinions that we took, and chilled by the cold water we invited. What did they do? (verse 10). How long it takes to convince us of any duty! We ask for light, and when light comes we look at it as if it had been something sent on approbation, and send it back, or wait for God to change His mind and show us something else; or we consult with flesh and blood, with books, and wonder whether we have to do it, or perhaps we say, Is it necessary? Is there not somebody else that can do it? Happy are those hearts that are easily convincible of Gods love and of their own duty. These men were of that make. They assuredly gathered that the Lord had called, and there was an end of it. Four big children, not stupid enough to philosophise, nor prudent enough to tarry for light, but heroes as well as children. Immediately they endeavoured to go. Not lingering. How much they gained by their promptness! Why, if they had waited till tomorrow the ship would have been gone, and no one knows how long it would have been before another vessel would sail in that direction. Besides, when you are guided by Gods eye, the eye that guides you smiles on you, and you walk in the light. And they went with its bloom upon them, and the voyage pleasant, and three days do not elapse before they are in the capital of Macedon at their work. Brethren, this world is too short for us to practise delay. You are going to give a lot of money to the missions when your fortune is made. Immediately they endeavoured to go into Macedonia–that was Pauls example. Tomorrow is not yours or mine; today is ours. Be like the stars, as Goethe said; not hasting, not tarrying, waiting till the light is clear; the moment it is clear, go forth.

III. The result of this action. What was it? Perhaps not very encouraging at first. Nobody is waiting for them. They go out to the little oratory by the riverside; there is not a man, only a few women. It is true that one of them is converted; it is true that another is converted. And then, when they have got into prison, another low-natured man that it took an earthquake to rouse is added to the other two; and thus there are three to start the Christian worship in Europe. It is a strange trio–a seeker after God, a poor demoniac woman, and a great sinner. You know that is the way the Church is gathered–seekers, sufferers, sinners. Was that all? Not quite all. For these three, with two women at the head, grew into the noblest of all the Apostolic Churches. Then after Philippi they went to Thessalonica, Beroea, Athens, Corinth; and the Church grew and grew till today European Christianity has grown out of it. Brethren, send the bail rolling, and somebody else will keep it up. Sow one seed, and a thousand years hence some fruit of it may wave. Were they repaid? What says your heart? What would you give to have their reward in heaven? Oh! what overpowering delight would it be to any one of us to have a ten thousandth part of the reward that came to them! So all are rewarded that obey these heavenly visions. (R. Glover.)

The charter of Massachusetts

granted by Charles I contains an expression of the hope that the settlers to whom it is granted may win and incite the natives of the country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind and the Christian faith, which, in our royal intention, and the adventurers free profession, is the principal end of this plantation. The first seal of the State represents an Indian giving utterance to the words, Come over and help us. (W. E. Rae.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 8. Came down to Troas.] The Troad, or part of Phrygia Minor in which the celebrated city of Troy was formerly situated. This city was first built by Dardanus, who was its king, and from whom it was called Dardania; from Tros, his grandson, it was called Troja, or Troy; and from his son, Ilus, it was called Ilium. It has been long so completely destroyed that no ascertainable vestige of it remains; insomuch that some have even doubted of its existence. Those who contend for the reality of the history of Troy suppose it to have stood on the site of the modern village Bounarbachi, about twelve miles from the sea, on an eminence, at the termination of a spacious plain.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Either the relics of the famous city of Troy, or the country thereabouts, in which the city of Antigonia was built.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

8. came down to Troasa cityon the northeast coast of the gean Sea, the boundary of Asia Minoron the west; the region of which was the scene of the great Trojanwar.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And they passed by Mysia,…. Without stopping or staying there, though they came to it:

came down to Troas; either the country of Troas, as the Syriac version renders it; which, according to Solinus m, is bordered on the north part of Galatia, and was near to Lycaonia, Pisidia, and Mygdonia on the south, and to Lydia on the east, and to Mysia and Caria on the north: or rather the city of Troas, which Pliny says n, was formerly called Antigonia, now Alexandria, a colony of the Romans. Antigonus king of Asia called it Troas at first, because it was in the country, and near where Troy stood, but afterwards he called it, according to his own name, Antigonia; but Lysimachus king of Thrace having got this city into his hands, repaired it, and called it after the name of Alexander, Alexandria; and to distinguish it from Alexandria in Egypt, and other cities of the same name in other places, it was called Alexandria Troas.

m lb. c. 53. n Hist. Nat. l. 5. c. 30.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Passing by Mysia ( ). Literally, passing alongside or skirting Mysia, neglecting it without preaching there. Strictly they passed through part of it to reach Troas.

To Troas ( ). This city, named Alexandria Troas after Alexander the Great, was the seaport of Mysia, though a Roman colony and not counted as part of either Asia or Bithynia. New Ilium, on the site of the old Troy, was four miles farther north. It was the place to take ship for Philippi. Twice again Paul will be here (2Cor 2:12; Acts 20:6).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Passing by Mysia. Not avoiding, since they could not reach Troas without traversing it; but omitting it as a preaching – place.

Came down. From the highlands to the coast.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “And they passing by Mysia,” (parelthontes de ten Musian) “Then when they had passed by Mysia of their own choice or decision,” passed by the outskirts.

2) “Came down to Troas.”(katebesan eis Troada) “They came down into Troas,” a seaport on the upper Mediterranean Sea, near Hellespont, located four miles south of Ancient Troy, now called Eski Stamboul, mentioned Act 20:5-6; 2Co 2:12; 2Ti 4:13. Troas was a Roman colony, an important port for commerce and communication between eastern Europe and northwest Asia Minor.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

(8) Came down to Troas.Their travels had at last led them to the coast, and they looked out upon the waters of the gean. The town of Alexandria Troas, at this time reckoned as a Roman colony and a free city, recalls to our memories, without entering into vexed questions as to its identity with the site of the older Troy, the great poem which tells us the tale of Ilium. To St. Paul that poem was probably unknown, and had it been otherwise, the associations connected with it would have had no charms for him. The question which must have occupied all his thoughts was, where he was next to proclaim the glad tidings of the Christ, and of forgiveness and peace through Him. That question, we may well believe, expressed itself in prayer, and to that prayer the vision of the next verse was an answer.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

8. Passing by Mysia The Spirit had forbidden them to preach in Asia, (in which Mysia was included,) but did not preclude their passing through without preaching. Paul from the Bithynian border bent his western course, probably to Adramyttium; thence, taking the Roman road along the gulf, in the regions of Mount Ida, comes down to the Hellespont at Alexandria Troas. Before him lie the waters that divide Asia from Europe. Divine warnings have bidden him away from Asia; shall he now cross the celebrated straits, and set his foot on European soil? Yonder lies the vast continent. First in order is Greece, brightened with points of a rare civilization; next comes Rome, the seat of empire; and central in Europe are the vast hives of barbarians, noble in race, the ancestors of modern Europe and of us, but as yet dividing the forests with the savage beasts. To the margin of this Europe, our apostle comes, charged with a mission pregnant with the hopes of modern civilization. To all his queries now comes a divine answer.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Act 16:8-10 . They were now between Mysia and Bithynia. To Bithynia the Spirit suffered them not to go; in Mysia they were not to preach, because it belonged to Asia. In this position of things they saw themselves directed to the West, away from all their former sphere of action, and across to Greece. This the Spirit now willed. Accordingly they had first to make for the Asiatic sea-coast, and therefore they went directly westward along the southern border of Mysia (of course without preaching, for this they were not permitted to do), and thus, having passed by Mysia ( ), they came down to Troas on the Hellespont, in order there to determine more precisely their further journey to the West, or to receive for this purpose a higher determination, which they might expect in accordance with the previous operations of the Spirit. And they received this higher determination by a visionary appearance ( , Act 9:10 , Act 10:3 , Act 18:9 ) which was made to the apostle during the night ( . , as in Act 5:19 ). This vision [49] is not to be considered as a dream (Heinrichs, Kuinoel, Zeller), as is evident from the expression itself, and from the fact that there is no mention of a or the like, or afterwards of an or other similar expression, but after the seeing of the vision the . . . comes in without further remark. Olshausen, however, very hastily lays it down as a settled point, that revelation by dreams, as the lowest form of revelation (? see Delitzsch, Psychol . p. 284), was no longer vouchsafed to the apostles who were endowed with the Holy Spirit, but that they must have had their visions in ecstasy, always in a waking condition. We have far too little information as to the life of the apostles to maintain this. Comp. also Act 2:17 .

] is used adjectivally (comp. on Act 5:1 f.), as in Thuc. i. 62. 3, i. 63. 3. As Macedonian the appearance announced itself , namely, by . . . It is arbitrary in Grotius to say that an angel had appeared, and indeed “angelus curator Macedonum.” Something objectively real is not indicated by . Comp. Act 10:17 .

] we sought , directed our view to the necessity of procuring, first of all, the opportunity of a ship, etc. Here Luke, for the first time, includes himself in the narrative, and therefore it is rightly assumed that he joined Paul at Troas . He does not enter further on his personal relations, because Theophilus was acquainted with them . Olshausen arbitrarily thinks: from modesty . On and against the assumptions, that Timothy (Schleiermacher, Mayerhoff, Ulrich, Bleek) or Silas (Schwanbeck) wrote the portions in which “we” occurs, see Introd. 1.

. . .] because we gathered (colligebamus) as the meaning of that appearance, drew from it the conclusion (comp. Plat. Hipp. min . p. 369 D, Pol . vi. p. 504 A, and Stallb. in loc .), that in it there was issued to us the call of God (see the critical remarks), and the in itself indefinite was the call for help to be afforded by communication of the gospel .

[49] Taken by Baur, I. p. 166, Exo 2 , only as an embellishment of the history, namely, as symbolizing the desire of salvation , with which not only the Macedonian population, but the men of Europe in general, called upon the apostle to come over to them. This view Zeller also, p. 251, considers as possible. It is in the connection of the entire narrative impossible , and simply tends to obscure the further occurrences as regards their historical character.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

8 And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas.

Ver. 8. Came down to Troas ] The relics of old Troy, called also Antigonia and Alexandria, as Pliny testifieth.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

8. ] must from the context mean ‘ having passed by ,’ i.e. as regarded their work of preaching (cf. ch. Act 20:16 ), and not ‘having passed by’ as avoiding it; for they could not get to the coast without entering Mysia . I adhere to this interpretation, notwithstanding what has been said against it by Dr. Bloomfield (Gr. Test. edn. 9). For this sense of , which is not figurative at all, but involved in the literal, cf. Hom. Il. . 239: Aristoph. Vesp. 636, 7: Plato, Phdr. p. 278 fin.

] Troas (Alexandria Troas, in honour of Alex. the Great: now Eski Stamboul) was a colony juris Italici (see on Act 16:12 ), and a free city, and was not reckoned as belonging to either of the provinces Asia or Bithynia. Whether it was for this reason that Paul and his companions visited it, is uncertain. He may have had the design of crossing to Europe, if permitted, which the subsequent vision confirmed. See ch. Act 20:5 ; 2Co 2:12 ; 2Ti 4:13 .

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Act 16:8 . : “passing by Mysia”. Ramsay renders “neglecting Mysia,” cf. St. Paul , pp. 194, 196, 197, i.e. , passing through it without preaching. McGiffert, p. 235, so Wendt (1899), following Ramsay. Rendall, p. 278, explains “passing along or alongside of Mysia,” i.e. , skirting it, the southern portion of it. The words cannot mean passing by without entering. Mysia was part of Asia, but there was no disobedience to the divine command, which, while it forbade them to preach in Mysia did not forbid them to enter it. Troas could not be reached without crossing Mysia; Blass sees this clearly enough (but note his reading): “non prtereunda sed transeunda erat Mysia, ut ad gum mare venirent,” Blass, in loco, cf. also Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire , p. 76; Wendt (1899), in loco . : a town on the sea coast (Alexandria Troas, in honour of Alexander the Great), a Roman colony and an important port for communication between Europe and the north-west of Asia Minor, opposite Tenedos, but not to be identified with New Ilium , which was built on the site of ancient Troy, considerably further north. It was not reckoned as belonging to either of the provinces Asia or Bithynia, cf. also Act 20:5 , 2Co 2:13 , 2Ti 4:13 : C. and H., pp. 215 and 544, Renan, St. Paul , p. 128, Zckler, in loco .

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Troas. Alexandreia Troas, the port on the coast of Mysia, about thirty miles south of the Dardanelles. Now Eski stamboul.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

8.] must from the context mean having passed by, i.e. as regarded their work of preaching (cf. ch. Act 20:16),-and not having passed by as avoiding it; for they could not get to the coast without entering Mysia. I adhere to this interpretation, notwithstanding what has been said against it by Dr. Bloomfield (Gr. Test. edn. 9). For this sense of , which is not figurative at all, but involved in the literal, cf. Hom. Il. . 239: Aristoph. Vesp. 636, 7: Plato, Phdr. p. 278 fin.

] Troas (Alexandria Troas, in honour of Alex. the Great: now Eski Stamboul) was a colony juris Italici (see on Act 16:12), and a free city, and was not reckoned as belonging to either of the provinces Asia or Bithynia. Whether it was for this reason that Paul and his companions visited it, is uncertain. He may have had the design of crossing to Europe, if permitted, which the subsequent vision confirmed. See ch. Act 20:5; 2Co 2:12; 2Ti 4:13.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Troas: Act 16:11, Act 20:5, 2Co 2:12, 2Ti 4:13

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

9

Act 16:8-9. In obedience to the divine orders, Paul journeyed on until he came to Troas, the Troy of history. This is the time and place where the familiar Macedonian call was made upon Paul in a vision. The Gospel had never been preached in Macedonia, hence this will be new territory and the real start of his “second missionary journey.”

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Act 16:8. Troas. This famous place bearing the name of the ancient Troy was a seaport on the Hellespont, situated some four or five miles from the supposed site of the ancient city. It was built and named after the great Macedonian king Alexandria Troas by two of his successors, Antigonus, who founded it, and Lysimachus, who completed the work and named it. By the Romans in the days of their greatest power it was regarded as New Troy, and was then one of the most important cities of Proconsular Asia. It is reported that Julius Csar intended to make it eventually the capital of the Roman Empire, both of the east and west. Some three centuries later, Constantine the Great, before he finally chose Byzantium as the site of his world-capital, had fixed upon Alexandria Troas as the future seat of his vast united empire. Gibbon writes: Though the undertaking was soon relinquished, the stately remains of unfinished walls and towers attracted the notice of all who sailed through the Hellespont. In the days of Paul it had not attained to its utmost growth, but it possessed the privileges of a Roman colony, and the law had been assimilated already to that of Italy, these rights having been conferred upon it by Augustus.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

These words are a relation of a message from heaven unto St. Paul, to direct him in his preaching and publishing of the gospel, both as to the place where, and as to the persons to whom, he was to deliver it.

Where note, The manner of it: it was by a vision, A vision appeared. The time of it, it was in the night, the bringer of it, a man of Macedonia: the matter of it, help for the Macedonians, interpreted (ver. 10) to be by the preaching of the gospel. Of all distresses, want of the gospel cries loudest for relief and help; for by want of the gospel, they want everything that is worth having; they want Jesus Christ, who is revealed only by the gospel; they want communion with God, they want the comforts and refreshments of ordinances, and they will at last want heaven and salvation. But that which is most deplorable is this: Those that want the gospel, though they want all these things, yet are they not sensible that they want anything.

Learn, 2. That the sending of the gospel to one nation, place, or people, and not to another, proceeds from the determinate will and pleasure; Stay not in Asia, go not into Bithynis, but come over into Macedonia; Even so, Father, for thus it seemed good in thy sight.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

See notes on verse 6

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

8. Mysia borders the Aegean Sea, lying between Asia and Europe, Troas, the capital on the sea-shore, occupying the site of old Troy, so memorable in Homers Iliad.

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

Chapter 11

APOSTOLIC QUARRELS AND THE SECOND TOUR.

Act 15:36; Act 15:39; Act 16:6; Act 16:8-9

THE second missionary tour of St. Paul now claims our attention, specially because it involves the first proclamation of Christianity by an apostle within the boundaries of Europe. The course of the narrative up to this will show that any Christian effort in Europe by an apostle, St. Peter or any one else prior to St. Pauls work, was almost impossible. To the Twelve and to men like-minded with them, it must have seemed a daring-innovation to bring the gospel message directly to bear upon the masses of Gentile paganism. Men of conservative minds like the Twelve doubtless restrained their own efforts up to the time of St. Pauls second tour within the bounds of Israel, according to the flesh, in Palestine and the neighbouring lands, finding there an ample field upon which to exercise their diligence. And then when we turn to St. Paul and St. Barnabas, who had dared to realise the free-ness and fulness of the gospel message, we shall see that the Syrian Antioch and Syria itself and Asia Minor had hitherto afforded them scope quite sufficient to engage their utmost attention. A few moments reflection upon the circumstances of the primitive Christian Church and the developments through which Apostolic Christianity passed are quite sufficient to dispel all such fabulous incrustations upon the original record as those involved in St. Peters episcopate at Antioch or his lengthened rule over the Church at Rome. If the latter story was to be accepted, St. Peter must have been Bishop of Rome long before a mission was despatched to the Gentiles from Antioch, if not even before the vision was seen at Joppa by St. Peter when the admission of the Gentiles to the Church was first authorised under any terms whatsoever. In fact, it would be impossible to fit the actions of St. Peter into any scheme whatsoever, if we bring him to Rome and make him bishop there for twenty-five years beginning at the year 42, the time usually assigned by Roman Catholic historians. It is hard enough to frame a hypothetical scheme, which will find a due and fitting place for the various recorded actions of St. Peter, quite apart from any supposed Roman episcopate lasting over such an extended period. St. Peter and St. Paul had, for instance, a dispute at Antioch of which we read much in the second chapter of the Galatian epistle. Where shall we fix that dispute? Some place it during the interval of the Synod at Jerusalem and the second missionary tour of which we now propose to treat. Others place it at the conclusion of that tour, when St. Paul was resting at Antioch for a little after the work of that second journey. As we are not writing the life of St. Paul, but simply commenting upon the narratives of his labours as told in the Acts, we must be content to refer to the Lives of St. Paul by Conybeare and Howson, and Archdeacon Farrar, and to Bishop Lightfoots “Galatians,” all of whom place this quarrel before the second tour, and to Mr. Findlays “Galatians” in our own series, who upholds the other view. Supposing, however, that we take the former view in deference to the weighty authorities just mentioned, we then find. that there were two serious quarrels which must for a time have marred the unity and Christian concord of the Antiochene Church.

The reproof of St. Peter by St. Paul for his dissimulation was made on a public occasion before the whole Church. It must have caused considerable excitement and discussion, and. raised much human feeling in Antioch. Barnabas too, the chosen friend and companion of St. Paul, was involved in the matter, and must have felt himself condemned in the strong language addressed to St. Peter. This may have caused for a time a certain amount of estrangement between the various parties. A close study of the Acts of the Apostles dispels at once the notion men would fain cherish, that the apostles and the early Christians lived just like angels without any trace of human passion or discord. The apostles had their differences and misunderstandings very like our own. Hot tempers and subsequent coolnesses arose, and produced evil results between men entrusted with the very highest offices, and paved the way, as quarrels always do, for fresh disturbances at some future time. So it was at Antioch, where the public reproof of St. Peter by St. Paul involved St. Barnabas, and may have left traces upon the gentle soul of the Son of Consolation which were not wholly eradicated by the time that a new source of trouble arose.

The ministry of St. Paul at Antioch was prolonged for some time after the Jerusalem Synod, and then the Holy Ghost again impelled him to return and visit all the Churches which he had founded in Cyprus and Asia Minor. He recognised the necessity for supervision, support, and guidance as far as the new converts were concerned, The seed might be from heaven and the work might be Gods own, but still human effort must take its share and do its duty, or else the work may fail and the good seed never attain perfection. St. Paul therefore proposed to Barnabas a second joint mission, intending to visit “the brethren in every city wherein they had proclaimed the word of the Lord.” Barnabas desired to take with them his kinsman Mark, but Paul, remembering his weakness and defection on their previous journey, would have nothing to say to the young man. Then there arose a sharp contention between them, or as the original expression is, there arose a paroxysm between the apostles, so that the loving Christian workers and friends of bygone years, “men who had hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” separated the one from the other, and worked from henceforth in widely different localities.

I. There are few portions of the Acts more fruitful in spiritual instruction, or teeming with. more abundant lessons, or richer in application! to present difficulties, than this very incident. Let us note a few of them. One thought, for instance, which occurs at once to any reflecting mind is this: what an extraordinary thing it is that two such holy and devoted men as Paul and-Barnabas should have had a quarrel at all; and. when they did quarrel, would it not have been far better to have hushed the matter up and never! have let the world know anything at all about it?

Now I do not say that it is well for Christian people always to proclaim aloud and tell the world at large all about the various unpleasant circumstances of their lives, their quarrels, their misunderstandings, their personal failings and backslidings. Life would be simply intolerable did we live always, at all times, and under all circumstances beneath the full glare of publicity. Personal quarrels too, family jars and bickerings, have a rapid tendency to heal themselves if kept in the gloom, the soft, toned, shaded light of retirement. They have an unhappy tendency to harden and perpetuate themselves when dragged beneath the fierce light of public opinion and the outside world. Yet it is well for the Church at large that such a record has been left for us of the fact that the quarrel between Paul and Barnabas waxed so fierce that they departed the one from the other, to teach us what we are apt to forget-the true character of the apostles. Human nature is intensely inclined to idolatry. One idol may be knocked down, but as soon as it is displaced the heart straightway sets to work to erect another idol in its stead, and men have been ready to make idols of the apostles. They have been ready to imagine them supernatural characters tainted with no sin, tempted by no passion, weakened by no infirmity. If these incidents had not been recorded-the quarrel with Peter and the quarrel with Barnabas-we should have been apt to forget that the apostles were men of like passions with ourselves, and thus to lose the full force-the bracing, stimulating force-of such exhortations as that delivered by St. Paul when he said to a primitive Church, “Follow me, as I, a poor, weak, failing, passionate man, have followed Christ.” We have the thorough humanity of the apostles vigorously presented and enforced in this passage. There is no suppression of weak points, no accentuation of strong points, no hiding of defects and weaknesses, no dwelling Upon virtues and graces. We have the apostles presented at times vigorous, united, harmonious; at other times weak, timorous, and cowardly.

Again, we note that this passage not only shows us the human frailties and weaknesses which marked the apostles, and found a place in characters and persons called to the very highest places; it has also a lesson for the Church of all time in the circumstances which led to the quarrel between Paul and Barnabas. We do well to mark carefully that Antioch saw two such quarrels, the one of which, as we have already pointed out, may have had something to say to the other. The quarrel between St. Paul and St. Peter indeed has a history which strikingly illustrates this tendency of which we have just now spoken. Some expositors, jealous of the good fame and reputation and temper of the apostles, have explained the quarrel at Antioch between St. Paul and St. Peter as not having been a real quarrel at all, but an edifying piece of acting, a dispute got up between the apostles to enforce and proclaim the freedom of the Gentiles, a mere piece of knavery and deception utterly foreign to such a truth-loving character as was St. Pauls. It is interesting, however, to note as manifesting their natural characteristics, which were not destroyed, but merely elevated, purified, and sanctified by Divine grace, that the apostles Paul and Barnabas quarrelled about a purely personal matter. They had finished their first missionary tour on which they had been accompanied by St. Mark, who had acted as their attendant or servant, carrying, we may suppose, their luggage, and discharging all. the subordinate offices such service might involve. The labour and toil and personal danger incident to such a career were too much for the young man. So with all the fickleness, the weakness, the want of strong definite purpose we often find in young people, he abandoned his work simply because it involved the exercise of a certain amount of self-sacrifice. And now, when Paul and Barnabas are setting out again, and Barnabas wishes to take the same favourite relative with them, St. Paul naturally objects, and then the bitter, passionate quarrel ensues. St. Paul just experienced here what we all must more or less experience, the crosses and trials of public life, if we wish to pass through that life with a good conscience. Public life, I say-and I mean thereby not a political life, which alone we usually dignify by that name, but the ordinary. life which every man and every woman amongst us must live as we go in and out and discharge our duties amid our fellow-men, -public life, the life we live once we leave our closet communion with God in the early morning till we return thereto in the eventide, is in all its department most trying. It is trying to temper, and it is. trying to principle, and no one can hope to pass through it without serious and grievous temptations. I do not wonder that men have often felt, as the old Eastern monks did, that salvation was more easily won in solitude than in living and working amid the busy haunts of men where bad temper and hot words so often conspire to make one return home from a hard days work feeling miserable within on account of repeated falls and shortcomings. Shall we then act as. they did? Shall we shut out the world completely and cease to take any part in a struggle which seems to tell so disastrously upon the-equable calm of our spiritual life? Nay, indeed, for such a course would be unworthy a soldier of the Cross, and very unlike the example shown by the blessed apostle St. Paul, who had to battle not only against others, but had also to. battle against himself and his own passionate. nature, and was crowned as a victor, not because-he ran away, but because he conquered through the grace of Christ.

And now it is well that we should note the special trials he had to endure. He had to fight against the spirit of cowardly self-indulgence in others, and he had to fight against the spirit of jobbery. These things indeed caused the rupture in the apostolic friendship. St. Barnabas, apostle though he was, thought far more of the interests of his cousin than of the interests of Christs mission. St. Paul with his devotion to. Christ may have been a little intolerant of the weakness of youth, but he rightly judged that one who had proved untrustworthy before should not be rapidly and at once trusted again. And St. Paul was thoroughly right, and has left a very useful and practical example. Many young men among us are like St. Mark. The St. Marks of our own day are a very numerous class. They have no respect for their engagements. They will undertake work and allow themselves. to be calculated upon, and arrangements to be made accordingly. But then comes the stress of action, and their place is found wanting, and the work undertaken by them is found undone. And then they wonder and complain that their lives are unsuccessful, and that men and women who are in earnest will not trust or employ them in the future! These are the men who are the social wrecks in life. They proclaim loudly in streets and highways the hard treatment which they have received. They tell forth their own misery, and speak as if they were the most deserving and at the same time the most ill-treated of men; and yet they are but reaping as they have sown, and their failures and their misfortunes are only the due and fitting rewards of their want of earnestness, diligence, and self-denial. To the young this episode proclaims aloud. Respect your engagements, regard public employments as solemn contracts in Gods sight. Take pains with your work. Be willing to endure any trouble for its sake. There is no such thing as genius in ordinary life. Genius has been well defined as an infinite capacity for taking pains. And thus avoid the miserable weakness of St. Mark, who fled from his work because it entailed trouble and self-denial on his part.

Then, again, we view St. Paul with admiration because he withstood the spirit of jobbery when it displayed itself even in a saint. Barnabas in plain language wished to perpetrate a job in favour of a member of his family, and St. Paul withstood him. And how often since has the same spirit thus displayed itself to the injury of Gods cause! Let us note how the case stood. St. Barnabas was a good pious man of very strong emotional feelings. But he allowed himself to be guided, as pious people often do, by their emotions, affections, prejudices, not by their reason and judgment. With such men, when their affections come into play, jobbery is the most natural thing in the world. It is the very breath of their nostrils. It is the atmosphere in which they revel. Barnabas loved his cousin John Mark, with strong, powerful, absorbing love, and that emotion blinded Barnabas to Marks faults, and led him on his behalf to quarrel with his firmer, wiser, and more vigorous friend. Jobbery is a vice peculiar to no age and to no profession. It flourishes in the most religious as in the most worldly circles. In religious circles it often takes the most sickening forms, when miserable, narrow selfishness assumes the garb and adopts the language of Christian piety. St. Pauls action proclaims to Christian men a very needful lesson. It says, in fact, Set your faces against jobbery of every kind. Regard power, influence, patronage as a sacred trust. Permit not fear, affection, or party spirit to blind your eyes or prejudice your judgment against real merit; so shall you be following in the footsteps of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, with his heroic championship of that which was righteous and true, and of One higher still, for thus you shall be following the Masters own example, whose highest praise was this: “He loved righteousness, and hated iniquity.”

We have now bestowed a lengthened notice upon this quarrel, because it corrects a very mistaken notion about the apostles, and shows us how thoroughly natural and human, how very like our own, was the everyday life of the primitive Church. It takes away the false halo of infallibility and impeccability with which we are apt to invest the apostles, making us view them as real, fallible, weak, sinful men like ourselves, and thereby exalts the power of that grace which made them so eminent in Christian character, so abundant in Christian labours. Let us now apply ourselves to trace the course of St. Pauls second tour.

The effect of the quarrel between the friends was that St. Paul took Silas and St. Barnabas took Mark, and they separated; the latter going to Cyprus, the native country of Barnabas, while Paul and Silas devoted themselves to Syria and Asia Minor and their Churches. The division between these holy men became thus doubly profitable to the Church of Christ. It is perpetually profitable, by way of warning and example, as we have just now shown; and then it became profitable because it led to two distinct missions being carried on, the one in the Island of Cyprus, the other on the continent of Asia. The wrath of man is thus again overruled to the greater glory of God, and human weakness is made to promote the interests of the gospel. We read, too, “they parted asunder, the one from the other.” How very differently they acted from the manner in which modern Christians do! Their difference in opinion did not lead them to depart into exactly the same district, and there pursue a policy of opposition the one against the other. They sought rather districts widely separated, where their social differences could have no effect upon the cause they both loved. How very differently modern Christians act, and how very disastrous the consequent results! How very scandalous, how very injurious to Christs cause, when Christian missionaries of different communions appear warring one with another in face of the pagan world! Surely the world of paganism is wide enough and large enough to afford scope for the utmost efforts of all Christians without European Christendom exporting its divisions and quarrels to afford matter for mockery to scoffing idolaters! We have heard lately a great deal about the differences between Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries in Central Africa, terminating in war and bloodshed and in the most miserable recriminations threatening the peace and welfare of the nations of Europe. Surely there must have been an error of judgment somewhere or another in this case, and Africa must be ample enough to afford abundant room for the independent action of the largest bodies of missionaries without resorting to armed conflicts which recall the religious wars between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland! With the subsequent labours of Barnabas we have nothing to do, as he now disappears from the Acts of the Apostles, though it would appear from a reference by St. Paul- 1Co 9:6, “Or I only, and Barnabas, have we not a right to forbear working?”-as if at that time, four or five years after the quarrel, they were again labouring together at Ephesus, where First Corinthians was written, or else why should Barnabas be mentioned in that connection at all.

Let us now briefly indicate the course of St. Pauls labours during the next three years, as his second missionary tour must have extended over at least that space of time. St. Paul and his companion Silas left Antioch amid the prayers of the whole Church. Evidently the brethren viewed Pauls conduct with approbation, and accompanied him therefore with fervent supplications for success in his self-denying labours. He proceeded by land into Cilicia and Asia Minor, and wherever he went he delivered the apostolic decree in order that he might counteract the workings of the Judaisers. This decree served a twofold purpose. It relieved the minds of the Gentile brethren with respect to the law and its observances, and it also showed to them that the Jerusalem Church and apostles recognised the Divine authority and apostolate of St. Paul himself, which these “false brethren” from Jerusalem had already assailed, as they did four or five years later both in Galatia and at Corinth. We know not what special towns St. Paul visited in Cilicia, but we may be sure that the Church of Tarsus, his native place, where in the first fervour of his conversion he had already laboured for a considerable period, must have received a visit from him. We may be certain that his opponents would not leave such an important town unvisited, and we may be equally certain that St. Paul, who, as his Epistles show, was always keenly alive to the opinion of his converts with respect to his apostolic authority, would have been specially anxious to let his fellow townsmen at Tarsus see that he was no unauthorised or false teacher, but that the Jerusalem Church recognised his work and teaching in the amplest manner.

Starting then anew from Tarsus, Paul and Silas set out upon an enormous journey, penetrating, as few modern travellers even now do, from the southeastern extremity of Asia Minor to the northwestern coast, a journey which, with its necessarily prolonged delays, must have taken them at least a year and a half. St. Paul seems to have carefully availed himself of the Roman road system. We are merely given the very barest outline of the course which he pursued, but then, when we take up the index maps of Asia Minor inserted in Ramsays “Historical Geography of Asia Minor,” showing the road systems at various periods, we see that a great Roman road followed the very route which St. Paul took. It started from Tarsus and passed to Derbe, whence of course the road to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch had already been traversed by St. Paul. He must have made lengthened visits to all these places, as he had much to do and much to teach. He had to expound the decree of the Apostolic Council, to explain Christian truth, to correct the errors and abuses which were daily creeping in, and to enlarge the organisation of the Christian Church by fresh ordinations. Take the case of Timothy as an example of the trouble St. Paul must have experienced. He came to Derbe, where he first found some of the converts made on his earlier tour; whence he passed to Lystra, where he met Timothy, whose acquaintance he had doubtless made on his first journey. He was the son of a Jewess, though his father was a Gentile. St. Paul took and circumcised him to conciliate the Jews. The Apostle must have bestowed a great deal of trouble on this point alone, explaining to the Gentile portion of the Christian community the principles on which he acted and their perfect consistency with his own conduct at Jerusalem and his advocacy of Gentile freedom from the law. Then he ordained him. This we do not learn from the Acts, but from St. Pauls Epistles to Timothy. The Acts simply says of Timothy, “Him would Paul have to go forth with him.” But then when we turn to the Epistles written to Timothy, we find that it was not as an ordinary companion that Timothy was taken. He went forth as St. Paul himself had gone forth from the Church of Antioch, a duly ordained and publicly recognised messenger of Christ. We can glean from St. Pauls letters to Timothy the order and ceremonies of this primitive ordination. The rite, as ministered on that occasion, embraced prophesyings or preachings by St. Paul himself and by others upon the serious character of the office then undertaken. This seems plainly intimated in 1Ti 1:18 : “This charge I commit unto thee, my child Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee”; while there seems a reference to his own exhortations and directions in 2Ti 2:2. where he writes, “The things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men.” After this there was probably, as in modern ordinations, a searching examination of the candidate, with a solemn profession of faith on his part, to which St. Paul refers in 1Ti 6:12, “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called, and didst confess the good confession in the sight of many witnesses. I charge thee in the sight of God who quickeneth all things, and of Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession; that thou keep the commandment without spot, without reproach, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And finally there came the imposition of hands, in which the local presbyters assisted St. Paul, though St. Paul was so far the guiding and ruling personage that, though in one place {1Ti 4:14} he speaks of the gift of God which Timothy possessed, as given “by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery,” in another place he describes it as given to the young evangelist by the imposition of St. Pauls own hands. {2Ti 1:6} This ordination of Timothy and adoption of him as his special attendant stood at the very beginning of a prolonged tour throughout the central and northern districts of Asia Minor, of which we get only a mere hint in Act 16:6-8 : “They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia; and when they were come over against Mysia, they essayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not; and passing by Mysia, they came unto Troas.” This is the brief sketch of St. Pauls labours through the northwestern provinces of Asia Minor, during which he visited the district of Galatia and preached the gospel amid the various tribal communities of Celts who inhabited that district.

St. Pauls work in Galatia is specially interesting to ourselves. The Celtic race certainly furnished the groundwork of the population in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and finds to this day lineal representatives in the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of these three islands. Galatia was thoroughly Celtic in St. Pauls day. But how, it may be said, did the Gauls come there? We all know of the Gauls or Celts in Western Europe, and every person of even moderate education has heard of the Gauls who invaded Italy and sacked Rome when that city was yet an unknown factor in the worlds history, and yet but very few know that the same wave of invasion which brought the Gauls to Rome led another division of them into Asia Minor, where-as Dr. Lightfoot shows in his Introduction to his Commentary about three hundred years before St. Pauls day they settled down in the region called after them Galatia, perpetuating in that neighbourhood the tribal organisation, the language, the national feelings, habits, and customs which have universally marked the Celtic race, whether in ancient or in modern times. St. Paul on this second missionary tour paid his first visit to this district of Galatia. St. Paul usually directed his attention to great cities. Where vast masses of humanity were gathered together, there St. Paul loved to fling himself with all the mighty force of his unquenchable enthusiasm. But Galatia was quite unlike other districts with which he had dealt in this special respect. Like the Celtic race all the world over, the Gauls of Galatia specially delighted in village communities. They did not care for the society and tone of great towns, and Galatia was wanting in such. St. Paul, too, does not seem originally to have intended to labour amongst the Galatians at all. In view of his great design to preach in large cities, and concentrate his efforts where they could most effectually tell upon the masses, he seems to have been hurrying through Galatia when God laid His heavy hand upon the Apostle and delayed his course that we might be able to see how the gospel could tell upon Gauls and Celts even as upon other nations. This interesting circumstance is made known to us by St. Paul himself in the Epistle to the Gal 4:13 : “Ye know that because of an infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you for the first time.” Paul, to put it in plain language, fell sick in Galatia. He was delayed on his journey by the ophthalmia or some other form of disease, which was his thorn in the flesh, and, then, utilising the compulsory delay, and turning every moment to advantage, he evangelised the village communities of Galatia with which he came in contact, so that his Epistle is directed, not as in other cases to the Church of a city or to an individual man, but the Epistle in which he deals with great fundamental questions of Christian freedom is addressed to the Churches of Galatia, a vast district of country. Mere accident, as it would seem to the eye of sense, produced the Epistle to the Galatians, which shows us the peculiar weakness and the peculiar strength of the Celtic race, their enthusiasm, their genuine warmth, their fickleness, their love for that which is striking, showy, material, exterior. But when we pass from Galatia we know nothing of the course of St. Pauls further labours in Asia Minor. St. Luke was not with him during this portion of his work, and so the details given us are very few. We are told that “the Spirit of Jesus” would not permit him to preach in Bithynia, though Bithynia became afterwards rich in Christian Churches, and was one of the districts to which St. Peter some years later addressed his first Epistle. The Jews were numerous in the districts of Bithynia and Asia, and “the Spirit of Jesus” or “the Holy Ghost”-for the sacred writer seems to use the terms as equivalent the one to the other-had determined to utilise St. Paul in working directly among the Gentiles, reserving the preaching of the gospel to the Dispersion, as the scattered Jews were called, to St. Peter and his friends. It is thus we would explain the restraint exercised upon St. Paul on this occasion. Divine providence had cut out his great work in Europe, and was impelling him westward even when he desired to tarry in Asia. How the Spirit exercised this restraint or communicated His will we know not. St. Paul lived, however, in an atmosphere of Divine communion. He cultivated perpetually a sense of the Divine presence, and those who do so experience a guidance of which the outer world knows nothing. Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in one of his marvellous spiritual discourses called the “Via Intelligentiae,” or the Way of Knowledge, speaks much on this subject, pointing out that they who live closest to God have a knowledge and a love peculiar to themselves. And surely every sincere and earnest follower of Christ has experienced somewhat of the same mystical blessings! Gods truest servants commit their lives and their actions in devout prayer to the guidance of their heavenly Father, and then when they look back over the past they see how marvellously they have been restrained from courses which would have been fraught with evil, how strangely they have been led by ways which have been full of mercy and goodness and blessing. Thus it was that St. Paul was at length led down to the ancient city of Troas where God revealed to him in a new fashion his ordained field of labour. A man of Macedonia. appeared in a night vision inviting him over to Europe, and saying, “Come over into Macedonia and help us.” Troas was a very fitting place in which this vision should appear. Of old time and in days of classic fable Troas had been the meeting-place where, as Homer and as Virgil tell, Europe and Asia had met in stern conflict, and where Europe as represented by Greece had come off victorious, bringing home the spoils which human nature counted most precious. Europe and Asia again meet at Troas, but no longer in carnal conflict or in deadly fight. The interests of Europe and of Asia again touch one another, and Europe again carries off from the same spot spoil more precious far than Grecian poet ever dreamt of, for “when Paul had seen the vision, straightway we sought to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God called us for to preach the gospel unto them.” Whereupon we notice two points and offer just two observations. The vision created an enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm was contagious. The vision was seen by Paul alone, but was communicated by St. Paul unto Silas and to St. Luke, who now had joined to lend perhaps the assistance of his medical knowledge to the afflicted and suffering Apostle. Enthusiasm is a marvellous power, and endows a man with wondrous force. St. Paul was boiling over with enthusiasm, but he could not always impart it. The two non-apostolic Evangelists are marked contrasts as brought before us in this history. St. Paul was enthusiastic on his first tour, but that enthusiasm was not communicated to St. Mark. He turned back from the hardships and dangers of the work in Asia Minor. St. Paul was boiling over again with enthusiasm for the new work in Europe. He has now with him in St. Luke a congenial soul who, when he hears the vision, gathers at once its import, joyfully anticipates the work, and “straightway sought to go forth into Macedonia.” Enthusiasm in any kind of work is a great assistance, and nothing great or successful is done without it. But above all in Divine work, in the work of preaching the gospel, the man devoid of enthusiasm begotten of living communion with God, such as St. Paul and St. Luke enjoyed, is sure to be a lamentable and complete failure.

Then, again, and lastly, we note the slow progress of the gospel as shown to us by this incident at Troas. Here we are a good twenty years after the Crucifixion, and yet the chief ministers and leaders of the Church had not yet crossed into Europe. There were sporadic Churches here and there. At Rome and at possibly a few Italian seaports, whence intercourse with Palestine was frequent, there were small Christian communities; but Macedonia and Greece were absolutely untouched up to the present. We are very apt to overrate the progress of the gospel during those first days of the Churchs earliest Church life. We are inclined to view the history of the Church of the first three centuries all on a heap as it were. We have much need to distinguish century from century and decennium from decennium. The first ten years of the Churchs history saw the gospel preached in Jerusalem and Palestine, but not much farther. The second decennium saw it proclaimed to Asia Minor; but it is only when the third decennium is opening that Christ despatches a formal mission to that Europe where the greatest triumphs of the gospel were afterwards to be won. Ignorance and prejudice and narrow views had been allowed to hinder the progress of the gospel then, as they are hindering the progress of the gospel still; and an express record of this has been handed down to us in this typical history in order that if we too suffer the same we may not be astonished as if some strange thing had happened, but may understand that we are bearing the same burden and enduring the same trials as the New Testament saints have borne before us.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary