Digging Deeper for such a time as this: - from: Hastings, J. (Ed.). (1915). In The Greater Men and Women of the Bible: Mary–Simon. Edinburg: T&T Clark. _____________________________________________ MATTHEW And as Jesus passed by from thence, he saw a man, called Matthew, sitting at the place of toll: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.—Matt. 9:9. Matthew the publican.—Matt. 1:3. I MATTHEW THE PUBLICAN IT is a profoundly significant fact that the first of the four Gospels, which is for ever associated with the name of Matthew, is the only one that contains the phrase “Matthew the publican” (Matt. 10:3). He did not himself coin the phrase, which must at one time have been on many lips. But he alone has introduced it into the Scriptures, and we may ho sure that he did so with a definite purpose. The Church in all ages might call him “Matthew the Apostle,” or “Matthew the Evangelist,” but he was determined to let every reader of his book know that in his pre-Christian days he was known, and well-known, as “Matthew the publican.” That was his occupation; and more, that was his character; therefore let that still be his name. Neither Mark nor Luke nor John sets that mark of ignominy upon him; he brands himself with it. He might, one would have thought, have preferred to bury his past. He could have been a truthful enough evangelist without that personal reference and that melancholy confession. But evidently he had other thoughts on the matter. He probably felt an overmastering necessity laid upon him. Impelled by the Spirit to which he owed his inspiration, he realized somehow that he could not write the Gospel truly without telling the truth about himself. And in telling it he inscribes in his book—a monument more enduring than bronze—his own name with a word of dishonour and shame beside it. Not with any desire to attract attention to himself, but in deep humility, and for the encouragement of others as steeped in worldliness and sin as he had been, he gives himself the name he bore before he knew the Lord. Once Matthew the publican, he will always be Matthew the publican. It would have been discourteous and ungenerous had any of his fellow-Apostles continued to use that name, either in their ordinary talk or in their writings; but it is the surest indication of the greatness as well as the lowliness of Matthew’s own soul that he published and perpetuated the stigma by inserting it in the Holy Scriptures. For the glory of his Lord, who redeemed him from the service of mammon and received him into the circle of His disciples and friends, he kept up, as a Christian, the old name which other New Testament writers left in oblivion. Matthew the publican, like Paul the persecutor, Augustine the libertine, Bunyan the blasphemer, and many another sinner snatched as a brand from the burning, felt the impulse, when he became a Christian writer, to return to the penitent-form and remain there, uttering his confession in a phrase which will be read with wondering awe and adoring gratitude as long as the world lasts. His confession is contained in three words. When he had called himself “Matthew the publican,” he needed to say no more. For the Jew who demeaned himself to become a publican—a telōnēs or farmer of the Roman revenues—paid a great price for his lucrative office. He sold his country and his soul for gold. He was in the first place a traitor to his country, trampling his nation’s ideals in the dust. In order to enrich himself, and to do so as quickly as possible, he joined hands with the oppressors of his people. And what was still worse, he deliberately chose a calling in which it was impossible to be an honest man. In our country the scale of taxation is fixed by law, and any tax-gatherer who appropriated a part of the revenue would be held guilty of fraud and severely punished for his crime. But in ancient Palestine the business of collecting the revenue was let to the highest bidder, who did his duty if he paid a lump sum into the Roman exchequer, pocketing the surplus of the profits, or who received a certain percentage of whatever he contrived to extort from the long-suffering populace. In either case the system evidently lent itself to all kinds of abuses. The more exacting a farmer of the revenue was—the more he gave the rein to his avarice, grinding the faces of the poor, hardening his heart and stilling his conscience—the more certain was he to become a rich man. But he was equally certain to lose what, in the estimation of all good men, alone makes life worth living—the honour, affection, and friendship which wealth can never buy. He could make no friends among the Romans, by whom he was regarded merely as a useful tool; and he made nothing but enemies among his own people, who despised and scorned him as a traitor while they hated and feared him as an extortioner. When a wave of religious revival swept over the Holy Land in the days of John the Baptist, the publicans came among the rest to receive the baptism and listen to the counsels of the stern prophet, who laid the axe at the root of their besetting sin by bidding them extort no more than what was appointed them (Luke 3:12, 13). The words indicate clearly enough that in his opinion the ordinary publican was an extortioner. When Zacchæus, the chief publican (architelōnēs) of Jericho, was deeply moved by the presence and spirit of Jesus, and called Him for the first time “Lord,” he at once felt a pang of remorse at the thought of all his ill-gotten wealth, and promised to restore it fourfold. And Matthew and Zacchæus were but two of a crowd of Jews who had taken service under the Romans in order to feather their nests at the expense of their own countrymen. Many taxes had to be collected—a heavy poll-tax, customs duties payable at the frontiers, land taxes, road taxes, and many others. Hence the publicans (telōnai) were very numerous, and each had his office where he sat and collected his own special tax, either alone or in company with others, for associations of telōnai sometimes united to make the contract. And every penny paid to the Romans in this way was, in the eyes of Jewish patriots, a sign and symbol of Israel’s shame; for the Jews regarded it as a fundamental principle of their religion that they should pay no money except to the Temple and to the priests. ¶ Along the north end of the Sea of Galilee, there was a road leading from Damascus to Acre on the Mediterranean, and on that road a customs-office marked the boundary between the territories of Philip the tetrarch and Herod Antipas. Matthew’s occupation was the examination of goods which passed along the road, and the levying of the toll. The work of a publican excited the scorn so often shown beyond the limits of Israel to fiscal officers; and when he was a Jew, as was Matthew, he was condemned for impurity by the Pharisees. A Jew serving on a great highway was prevented from fulfilling requirements of the Law, and was compelled to violate the Sabbath law, which the Gentiles, who conveyed their goods, did not observe. Schürer makes the statement that the customs raised in Capernaum in the time of Christ went into the treasury of Herod Antipas, while in Judæa they were taken for the Imperial fiscus. Matthew was thus not a collector under one of the companies that farmed the taxes in the Empire, but was in the service of Herod. Yet the fact that he belonged to the publican class, among whom were Jews who outraged patriotism by gathering tribute for Cæsar, subjected him to the scorn of the Pharisees and their party; and his occupation itself associated him with men who, everywhere in the Empire, were despised for extortion and fraud, and were execrated. II MATTHEW THE CHRISTIAN 1. Matthew had his “receipt of custom” at Capernaum, by the Lake of Galilee. And Capernaum in his time was famous for other things than its exquisite scenery and its thriving trade and its rapidly made fortunes. It was a city exalted to heaven in privilege, inasmuch as it was the second home of Jesus of Nazareth. Not that all the inhabitants of Capernaum knew what that meant. There were many Jews in that busy town whom the holy presence and the mighty works of Jesus did not lead to repentance; many who never understood their privilege or knew the day of their visitation—many, but not all. For the words and the deeds of Jesus soon began to make a profound impression upon the mind of Matthew the publican, reawakening his better nature and making him ashamed of his nefarious trade. Some of those sayings (logia) of our Lord which he afterwards recorded so faithfully were in the first instance sharp arrows piercing his own heart and conscience. We can easily imagine what were the winged words that came to him with convicting power, and so found him. They were the words which told him that the life is more than meat, that a man is not profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul, that a man’s chief business is to lay up treasures for himself not on earth but in heaven, and that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Words like these destroyed his peace. ¶ Our veritable birth dates from the day when, for the first time, we feel at the deepest of us that there is something grave and unexpected in life.… We can be born thus more than once; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God. But most of us are content to wait till an event, charged with almost irresistible radiance, intrudes itself violently upon our darkness, and enlightens us, in our own despite. We await I know not what happy coincidence, when it may so come about that the eyes of our soul shall be open at the very moment that something extraordinary takes place. But in everything that happens is there light; and the greatness of the greatest men has but consisted in that they had trained their eyes to be open to every ray of this light. ¶ We have been watching successive men following after the ideal, which, like some receding star, travelled before its pilgrims through the night. In Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven, the ideal is no longer passive, a thing to be pursued. It halts for its pilgrims—“the star which chose to stoop and stay for us.” Nay, more, it turns upon them and pursues them.… The Hound of Heaven has for its idea the chase of man by the celestial huntsman. God is out after the soul, pursuing it up and down the universe—God,—but God incarnate in Jesus Christ, whose love and death are here the embodiment and revelation of the whole ideal world. The hunted one flees, as men so constantly flee from the Highest, and seeks refuge in every possible form of earthly experience.… The soul is never allowed, even in dream, to rest in lower things until satiety brings disillusion. The higher destiny is swift at her heels; and ever, just as she would nestle in some new covert, she is torn from it by the imperious Best of all that claims her for its own.… Thus has he compassed the length and breadth of the universe in the vain attempt to flee from God. Now at last he finds himself at bay. God has been too much for him. Against his will, and wearied out with the vain endeavour to escape, he must face the pursuing Love at last.… Finally, we have the answer of Christ to the soul He has chased down after so long a following: “Strange, piteous, futile thing Wherefore should any set thee love apart? Seeing none but I makes much of naught” (He said), “And human love needs human meriting: How hast thou merited— Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot? Alack, thou knowest not How little worthy of any love thou art! Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, Save Me, save only Me? All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms, But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms. All which thy child’s mistake Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: Rise, clasp My hand, and come!” Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? “Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He whom thou seekest! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.” 2. The conversion which seems sudden, and which is indeed consummated by an instantaneous act of the will, is never without its antecedent and preparatory train of events. It is extremely probable that in Matthew’s case, as in Paul’s, there was a season in which he was “kicking against the goads.” Every time he saw Jesus pass his toll-booth, his heart felt a pang. Every time he stood on the edge of a crowd, listening to that thrilling and soul-awakening voice, he was conscious of a growing hatred of the life to which he was bound by interest and habit. Every time he heard the solemn call to repentance, he despised himself as a man lost to faith and honour. Until Jesus had come into his life, he had had the comfortable feeling that he was getting rich, that he was increased in goods and would soon have need of nothing; but now he knew that he was poor and miserable and blind and naked. For now he knew that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses. Now that he began to look at life through Christ’s eyes, he saw what a glorious thing it might be made, and what an inglorious thing he was making it. And his discontent with himself made him the most unhappy of men. Such a state of things could not last, and it was well for him that the kind but searching eyes of Jesus saw what was going on in the depths of his soul. And that was the gladdest day in his life when Jesus, once more passing the place of custom, where he was miserably and mechanically gathering in the taxes, said to him in a voice of irresistible authority, “Follow me.” And without a moment’s hesitation, Matthew arose, left all, and followed Him. In doing so he began the new life. He came to himself. Stepping out of his toll-booth he stepped out of bondage into liberty and peace and joy. ¶ While I was making myself acquainted with the work of the West London Mission I came across a man so much out of the common, and with so original a view of the religious life, that I turned aside from my researches to cultivate his sympathy and learn his story.… On the subject of conversion he had his own particular view. The narratives in Professor James’s wonderful book moved him to no admiration. “The best model for a story of conversion,” he said, “is to be found in Matthew, nine, nine—He saith unto him, Follow Me. And he arose, and followed Him.” ¶ “If we had to choose one out of all the books in the Bible for a prison or desert friend the Gospel according to St. Matthew would be the one we should keep.” So remarks Ruskin in speaking of Carpaccio’s picture of the calling of Matthew; and the great art critic adds, “We do not enough think how much the leaving the receipt of custom meant as a sign of the man’s nature who was to leave us such a notable piece of literature.… Matthew’s call from receipt of custom, Carpaccio takes for the symbol of the universal call to leave all that we have, and are doing. ‘Whosoever forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple.’ For the other calls were easily obeyed in comparison of this. To leave one’s often empty nets and nightly toil on sea, and become fishers of men, probably you might find pescatori enough on the Riva there, within a hundred paces of you, who would take the chance at once, if any gentle person offered it them. James and Jude—Christ’s cousins—no thanks to them for following Him; their own home conceivably no richer than His. Thomas and Philip, I suppose, somewhat thoughtful persons on spiritual matters, questioning of them long since; going out to hear St. John preach, and to see whom he had seen. But this man, busy in the place of business—engaged in the interests of foreign governments—thinking no more of an Israelite Messiah than Mr. Goschen, but only of Egyptian finance, and the like”—[at the time Ruskin wrote, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Goschen had gone to Cairo to reorganize the public debt of Egypt]—“suddenly the Messiah, passing by, says, ‘Follow me!’ and he rises up, gives Him his hand. ‘Yea! to the death;’ and absconds from his desk in that electric manner on the instant, leaving his cash-box unlocked, and his books for whoso list to balance—a very remarkable kind of person indeed, it seems to me.” So Matthew left his golden gains, At the great Master’s call; His soul the love of Christ constrains Freely to give up all. The tide of life was at its flow, Rose higher day by day; But he a higher life would know Than that which round him lay. Nor Fortune, bright with fav’ring smile, Can tempt him with her store; Too long she did his heart beguile, He will be hers no more. To one sweet Voice his soul doth list, And, at its “Follow Me,” Apostle, and Evangelist Henceforth for Christ is he. O Saviour! when prosperity Makes this world hard to leave, And all its pomps and vanity Their meshes round us weave: Oh grant us grace that to Thy call We may obedient be; And, cheerfully forsaking all, May follow only Thee. 3. Forthwith Jesus made Matthew the publican one of His disciples. In doing so He set every consideration of worldly prudence at defiance. He outraged public opinion, and earned for Himself the scornful title, “a friend of publicans and sinners.” But no title ever bestowed on Him on earth or in heaven, by adoring saints and angels, proclaiming His eternal power and honour and glory, ever gave Him greater joy than that name which was first flung at Him in mockery, by jibing and jeering enemies. For that name told exactly what He was; it indicated the whole end and aim of His life on earth. Of Him more truly than of any other teacher it might have been said, “He was a man, and nothing human was alien to Him.” He knew best what was in man—all the weakness and all the sin—yet He was the greatest of all optimists. He saw infinite possibilities in those whom the official teachers of the time—the scribes and the Pharisees—had given up in despair. And He was able to awaken in the publicans and sinners a twofold faith—faith in Himself as the Saviour and Friend of mankind, the Physician of all sick souls, and faith in themselves, which they needed no less. And to the end of their lives they never for a moment imagined that what was high and pure and good in them had come there through their own efforts or achievements; they knew that it had all come through the love of God revealed to them in the friendship of Jesus of Nazareth. Among them was Matthew the publican, drawn by the love of Christ into the Kingdom of God. And it was because he wished to make his own conversion an object-lesson which might help to convince his readers of the freeness and richness of Divine grace, and so assure the most doubting and despairing of a welcome into the same Kingdom, that he persisted in calling himself, even after many years of Christian apostleship, “Matthew the publican.” ¶ “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” After long conscientious serving of God, refreshed by little feeling of joy or comfort, there are moments when the soul seems suddenly made aware of its own happiness.… Such moments are surely more to us than a passing comfort. Do they not teach us something of the depth of those words, “We love him because he first loved us”? For is not this also of the Lord—this tender attraction, this warmth, at which the frozen waters of the heart break up and flow forth as at the breath of spring? And does not this seeking of our love on Christ’s part convince us that He is ever loving us in our colder as well as more fervent seasons, and that in being drawn by His lovingkindness we have laid hold on His everlasting love—a chain which runs backwards and forwards through all eternity? III MATTHEW THE EVANGELIST 1. It is St. Luke who informs us that before Matthew became a disciple of Jesus he was known as Levi, the son of Alphæus. We may perhaps infer that he was a brother of James, the son of Alphæus (Acts 1:13). “Matthew,” which means “the gift of God,” corresponding to the Greek “Theodore” (fem. “Dorothea”), was probably the surname which he assumed or received when he became a Christian. And in the Third Gospel we learn that Levi, after forsaking all, and rising up and following Christ, “made him a great feast in his house: and there was a great multitude of publicans and of others that were sitting at meat with them.” Being no ascetic like John the Baptist, Jesus was often seen at feasts, and no banquet which He ever attended—not even the marriage feast at Cana of Galilee—gave Him greater happiness than the festal gathering in the house of Levi. That feast had a profound significance for Levi himself, and the day on which it took place must have been ever afterwards the red-letter day in his calendar. For not only was the feast of Levi, now to be called Matthew, the instinctive offering of a glad and grateful heart, but it gave him the opportunity of telling his own companions—publicans and “others,” as Luke says with characteristic reticence—that he had broken with his past, renouncing for ever a life in which he could not be true to God and his conscience. And best of all, it enabled him to gather for Jesus just such an audience as He loved to have around Him. In rendering such a service to Christ, Matthew was only obeying, with a fine originality, the impulse which every new convert to Christianity immediately and inevitably feels—the impulse of evangelism. No one ever believed in the glad tidings of the gospel—in the forgiveness offered to all sinners who repent of their sin and resolve to live a new life—without at once desiring the same tidings to be proclaimed to all the world. Nothing creates altruists—men and women who “live no longer unto themselves”—like an experience of Divine love in Jesus Christ. Matthew, till lately so hard and unmerciful, now felt his heart overflowing with pity and compassion. He knew well that many a publican of Galilee was just as unhappy as he had been, and would be just as happy to have done for ever with that shameful and degrading business. ¶ There was more than universalism latent in the mission of Christ to the publicans. It was the cradle of Christian civilization, which has for its goal a humanized society from whose rights and privileges no class shall be hopelessly and finally excluded. It was a protest in the name of God, who made of one blood all the nations and classes, against all artificial or superficial cleavages of race, colour, descent, occupation, or even of character, as of small account in comparison with that which is common to all—the human soul, with its grand, solemn possibilities. It was an appeal to the conscience of the world to put an end to barbarous alienations and heartless neglects, and social ostracisms, cruelties, and tyrannies; so making way for a brotherhood in which “sinners,” “publicans,” and “Pharisees” should recognize one another as fellow-men and as sons of the one Father in heaven. 2. Whether Matthew himself gave his old companions what would now be called his “testimony” is not told. It was strange if he did not. For when the heart is full the lips become eloquent, and even if a convert does not possess the distinctive gifts, he at any rate has the spirit, of an evangelist. He can no longer be dumb; he regards silence as a sin; he is impelled to say to all with whom he comes in contact, “Come and hear, and I will declare what God hath done to my soul.” The oral invitation to Matthew’s feast, which was at once his farewell to the old life and his welcome of the new, probably included an intimation that he wished his old comrades and friends to meet and to hear Jesus the prophet of Nazareth. And “a great multitude” came so that the court of his villa by the Galilæan lake was full of “publicans and others.” And it was with the memory of such a day and such an audience that Jesus afterwards said to the chief priests and elders of the Jews, “Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” Matthew did not call his friends merely that he and they might once more feast together. He invited them with the secret hope and prayer that after eating his bread and drinking his wine they might find spiritual food in the words of grace which would, he was sure, fall from the lips of Jesus. He wanted to give them something far better than the feast of reason and the flow of soul. He wished to receive, as he had received, the bread of life, whereof if a man eat he shall never hunger. And it is more than probable that both Matthew and his chief Guest were satisfied with the work done that day for eternity in the court of his house. And, having left all, he felt that he had already received his hundredfold. His cup was running over. ¶ The hostility [of the Jews to Jesus] recorded in the Gospels arose in connection with the class of persons to whom He made the offer of entry into the Kingdom, and the practical interpretation which He gave to repentance as the necessary condition for this entry. So far as the Scribes were concerned, the teaching of Jesus as to the class of persons who could be admitted to the Kingdom was wholly unacceptable. In their eyes this was the especial privilege of the righteous and pious in Israel; but Jesus announced that He had come to call sinners. In the later forms of the text this is softened by changing the phrase to “call sinners to repentance.” In one sense, no doubt, this change is justified: Jesus did not tell sinners to continue sinning, and nevertheless offer them entry into the Kingdom. But it obscures the full importance of the message. The Scribes did not seriously consider the possibility that a “Publican” or a “Sinner”—that is to say, anyone who did not observe all the obligations of the Scribes’ interpretation of the Law—would be admitted to the Kingdom, nor did they take any special pains to convert these despised elements among the people. Jesus, on the other hand, regarded Himself as having a special mission to those classes, and offered to those who would follow Him in His mission of preaching and preparation the certainty of entry into the Kingdom. 3. The multitude whom he entertained, and whom Jesus addressed, were regarded as outcasts, but they were outcasts of a peculiar type. The outcast with us usually means someone who has impoverished, and demoralized, and debauched himself with indolence and with vice till he is both penniless in purse and reprobate in character. We have few, if any, rich outcasts in our city and society. But the outcast publicans at that feast were well-to-do, if not absolutely wealthy, men. They were men who had made themselves rich, and had at the same time made themselves outcasts, by siding with the oppressors of their people and by exacting of the people more than was their due. And they were, as a consequence, excommunicated from the Church, and ostracized from all patriotic and social and family life. What, then, must the more thoughtful of them have felt as they entered Matthew’s supper-room that night and sat down at the same table with a very prophet, and some said—Matthew himself had said it in his letter of invitation—more than a prophet? And, then, all through the supper, if He was a prophet He was so unlike a prophet; and, especially, so unlike the last of the prophets. He was so affable, so humble, so kind, so gentle, with absolutely nothing at all in His words or in His manner to upbraid any of them, or in any way to make any of them in anything uneasy. If Jesus saw how hard it was for such men to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, He did not despair of them. It was in reference to the special difficulty of saving the rich that He said, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” ¶ With some the love of accumulation has a strange power of materializing, narrowing, and hardening. Habits of meanness—sometimes taking curious and inconsistent forms, and applying only to particular things or departments of life—steal insensibly over them, and the love of money assumes something of the character of mania. Temptations connected with money are indeed among the most insidious and among the most powerful to which we are exposed. They have probably a wider empire than drink, and, unlike the temptations that spring from animal passion, they strengthen rather than diminish with age. In no respect is it more necessary for a man to keep watch over his own character, taking care that the unselfish element does not diminish and correcting the love of acquisition by generosity of expenditure. IV MATTHEW THE WRITER Dr. Whyte says finely that “when Matthew rose up and left all and followed the Lord, the only things he took with him out of his old occupation were his pen and ink. And it is well for us that he took that pen and that ink with him, since he took it with him to such good purpose.” Early in the second century, Papias of Hierapolis wrote regarding the first of the four Evangelists: “Matthew put together and wrote down the Divine utterances (τὰ λόγια) in the Hebrew (Aramaic) language, and each man interpreted them as he was able.” From the Aramaic these priceless sayings are translated into New Testament Greek, and from the Greek they have been, or they are being, translated into all the languages of the earth. And the words which Christ spoke and Matthew recorded differ from all other words ever spoken or written, in that they are spirit and they are life. Tennyson says of the words of certain would-be comforters that they were “vacant chaff well meant for grain,” and that figure of speech might well have been applied to the teaching of the Rabbis in the beginning of our era. But the words of Christ were and are the bread of life. They are worth more than all the facts of science and speculations of philosophy put together. To receive them and to believe them is to have an education such as is provided in no school or college or university of secular learning, for it makes men wise unto salvation. It was Matthew’s supreme merit that he recognized the importance of the written word. What he heard he committed to rolls or tablets which were his priceless legacy to the Apostolic Church and to all the Churches of all ages. Litera scripta manet—the written word abides. After the record of his feast Matthew disappears from history; he is heard of no more in the New Testament. But in virtue of the Gospel which he was inspired to write, he is to-day one of the chief benefactors of the human race. ¶ Oh thou who art able to write a book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner! Thou, too, art a conqueror and victor; but of the true sort, namely, over the Devil. Thou, too, hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing city of the mind, a temple and cemetery and prophetic mount, whereto all kindreds of the earth will pilgrim. ¶ Traditions clash and contradict each other in relating to us the career of St. Matthew subsequent to the point at which Holy Writ leaves him. The year in which he wrote his Gospel is held to tally with that of the Apostolic Evangelist’s departure from Jerusalem to a wider field of missionary enterprise; thus, on quitting his Jewish flock, he bequeathed to them in lieu of his actual presence the written Word of God. Like so many points of his life his death remains unascertained. One ancient authority is quoted in favour of his having died a natural death, and the antiquity of such a view lends it weight. A contrary tradition, widely adopted both by early and later writers, shows us our Saint invested with the crown and palm-branch of martyrdom. In preparation for so glorious an end we mark him toiling to save the lost in Persia, Parthia, and other places; and in barbarous regions making converts among the actual Anthropophagi. Persia, or Parthia, or Caramania then held in subjection by the latter country, is fixed upon as the scene of his violent death; which some, again, assign to Ethiopia. Nor are legends unanimous as to the mode of his martyrdom. One avers that he was beheaded in requital for having warned Hyrtacus, King of Ethiopia, against contracting an unlawful marriage; others relate that he died by fire; or that a fire kindled around him being first extinguished by his prayers, he gave up the ghost in peace. - via Logos 5 #diggingdeeperforsuchatimeasthis #christjesus #vineofchristministries #theword #studyscripture #god #biblestudy #bible #jesus #faith
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:37:46 +0000
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