LECT. V. would be able, in due time, to fulfil the purpose of the original calling much more effectually than they had yet done. They would be able to show that He who was the glory of His people Israel, must, therefore, be a light to lighten the Gentiles.

LECTURE VI.

SAMARIA AND SYRIA.

THE death of Stephen may have been the effect of mere mob violence. But, if it was, the Sanhedrim was so well inclined to favour that violence, that they commenced a general persecution against those whom they called the Nazarenes. The Apostles remained in Jerusalem, the other disciples dispersed themselves abroad. Perhaps it is in favour of the opinion to which I alluded in my last Lecture, respecting the class from which the Deacons were chosen, that Philip the Deacon went down to Samaria and preached Christ there. If he was a Hellenist, he may have had less prejudice against a race with which the pure Jews had no dealings. It is true, that the people of Judæa despised also the Galileans, among whom so many of the Apostles were reckoned. But they looked upon the Galileans as uncouth, inferior men ;-upon the Samaritans, as deserters from the true faith.

LECT. VI. Philip the

Deacon; in

what sense

a successor of Stephen.

You remember what we hear of the Samaritans in Samarithe Gospels. All our Lord's allusions to them would

tans; their
character
as deduced

from the

lead us to suppose, that their minds were more open than those of the Jews to sympathy and kindness;- Gospels. that, if they knew less, they were more trustful and

LECT. VI. grateful. They were feeling their want of a teacher, as the woman showed who met our Lord at the well. They were more liable to be deluded by false teachers than a more hard and suspicious people; but they were also more prepared to welcome a true one. There were many sects among them; but they were not exactly like those we have read of in Judæa. They were craving for some power to come from the unseen world and act upon them. How it should come-how it should act-was the question which led to their controversies.

Philip's

Message.

The
Enchanter.

We are told that Philip caused great joy in the city, to which he preached of Christ. He told them the thing they were wanting to hear; that there was a mighty King over them; that He had subdued the powers of evil; that He had overcome death; that He baptized men with His Spirit. These words, which sounded so ridiculous and monstrous to the Sadducees, found their way to the hearts of the Samaritans. But Philip had a rival. The Roman empire at that time was teeming with magicians and enchanters. Adapting themselves to the different tendencies of the people among whom they came, they were all alike in this, that they spoke of wonderful agencies in the earth and air, to which men were subject; that they exhibited portents and miracles ; that they turned their exhibitions to profit. Simon, probably, mixed many Heathen notions with his teaching, for the Samaritans had much Heathenism in their own creed. Still he must have been a believer in the Hebrew Scriptures-most likely a circumcised

man.

The message which Philip brought, mingled LECT. VI. with his previous dreams and notions. Christ seemed to him, not One who had come to make men righteous, but only a great Power out of the unseen world. In that character he believed in Him and was baptized.

A Society

formed by

the Spirit.

tion of

The people of Samaria had received a message which had done them good: but they were not yet a community. The Apostles Peter and John came down from Jerusalem. Then that gift was bestowed upon them, which had bound the disciples at Jerusalem into a body. The Apostles were the instruments of conferring the gift. They may have wondered themselves, in spite of all the preparation their Lord had given them, that the Spirit should descend upon Samaritans. As might have been expected, the signs Simon's noand powers which accompanied this gift, not the gift spiritual itself, seemed wonderful to Simon. He had been powers. always a trader in spiritual charms. This was a higher kind of charm, which might, he thought, be purchased with money. St. Peter said, "Thy money Thou art in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity." The traditions of the early Church represent Simon as the first of a class of men who looked upon Christ as an emanation from God, or one of the Powers which had descended from a mysterious world into this. On that ground they call him the first of Christian heretics. With The dif these traditions are mixed others, which represent hoods conhim as continuing to put forth himself as another nected with great power and emanation from God, and as working Simon.

perish with thee.

ferent false

the name of

LECT. VI. enchantments along with a woman who was his mistress. Later ages connect his name with the crime of treating spiritual powers and functions as subjects for bargain and sale. The reports respecting him are uncertain; some of them are evidently fabulous. The story in the Acts of the Apostles contains the substance and the meaning of them. If you meditate well upon that, you will have a key to many dark passages in the records of after times.

Ethiopia.

Saul the
Greek, the
Roman

Before we part with Philip the Deacon, we have a glimpse of the way in which the news that had cheered the Samaritans and bewildered Simon, may have found its way into another country. The minister of Candace, the Queen of the Ethiopians, a Jewish proselyte, and a reader of the prophets, is taught by the Deacon, of a Son of God who fulfilled the vision of Isaiah. He is baptized into the Name of that Son of God, and goes away rejoicing. But we hear no more of him, or of his country, or of his teacher. The story passes to the life of a young man who was to be the means of breaking down barriers between that country and all countries, which Philip had only begun to shake.

Saul of Tarsus had had a Greek education in Asia Minor. His father, for some cause or other, had been Citizen, the made a Roman citizen. But he was a Hebrew of the Hebrew of the Hebrews. Hebrews. Every other honour that belonged to him looked contemptible in his eyes, in comparison with that. To perfect himself in the law of his fathers. and the traditions of the elders, he came up to Jerusalem and studied under Gamaliel, the most learned