XVIII

THE WORLD UPSET BY THE GOSPEL.

Acts xvii. 6.

These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.

SOMEWHERE about the year 53, towards the end of the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius, three strangers walked quietly into the town of Thessalonica in Macedonia. Starting from Philippi, they had come through the towns of Amphipolis and Apollonia-three stages of between thirty and forty miles each. In journeyings often,' one of the three said at a later time describing his life-here was an example of it. It had been a journey of great suffering. Two of the travellers still bore the marks of a cruel scourging, inflicted upon them by order of the magistrates (ashamed of it afterwards) at Philippi. All the three, though now in Europe, were clearly Asiatics by birth. One of them,

evidently the leader, was a person of insignificant appearance; by his own account more than insignificant peculiar, and even (at first sight) repulsive. Of one of his companions on this occasion, we know little personally, though his name occurs several times in the history. The third was a much younger man; already bound by strong attachment to his chief, and henceforth to be his closest friend and confidant till a martyr's death separates them.

The three strangers found a lodging in the house of a resident (no doubt of the Jewish faith) in Thessalonica. And there they peaceably occupied themselves in working for their bread during the week, and frequenting the Jewish synagogue on the sabbath.

But they had only been about three weeks in the place when a furious onset was made upon the house where they lodged by a party of fanatical Jews, aided by a low riotous rabble, in the hope of handing them over to some summary punishment, of stoning or other violent death, in the street of the city. Failing to find them within, they dragged the master of the house, and some others who had fallen under the new influence, to the police station, and laid against them the charge of receiving these men, who, in the words of the text, after turning the world upside down, had come thither also.

It was a curious charge to bring against three quiet humble working men, now for the first time in Europe, that they had already turned the world upside down. It must have puzzled the magistrate on duty. He could scarcely know how to take it seriously. And the explanation, when it came, was almost more perplexing than the charge. The three principals, who had themselves for the moment eluded the search, but for whom the lodging-house keeper, and any friends of his and theirs who had been captured, must be held responsible, were engaged (it is said) in a treasonable conspiracy on a great scale. They were ringleaders of a sedition which aimed at a revolution. They were setting up a rival king to the great Roman Emperor. Improbable as it might sound, this and nothing less was the charge lodged against them.

It must have sounded improbable: the magistrates seem to have felt it so. They contented themselves with binding over Jason and his companions to appear when they should be summoned. There the affair ended; for the three strangers were got away, under cover of night, by their new friends in the place, and set on their way to the next town, Berea, where they found a more friendly reception, though they were soon to be dislodged again by emissaries from Thessalonica.

It is with the charge brought against the three travellers that we are occupied this morning. They are accused of turning the world upside down.

The expression is strong, alike in the area which it points to, and in the action which it indicates.

The area of action is 'the world.' 'The inhabited earth' is the phrase of the original. The word is sometimes used, no doubt, in a somewhat modified sense, to denote the Roman Empire. There went out a decree,' our Christmas Day Lesson says, 'from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.' But even when thus limited by the context, the area spoken of was enormous. The vast ambition and extraordinary energy of that wonderful people had made the Roman Empire almost co-extensive with the then known world.

And this vast portion (at least) of the earth's surface these three travellers are accused of having turned upside down. The word used 1 to express their mischievous action is again a very strong one. It originally denoted the removal of a whole population from home and country by the barbarous edict of some Eastern despot. The ten tribes first, and then the two, of the Jewish people, had had this very experience

1 Οἱ τὴν οἰκουμένην ἀναστατώσαντες οὗτοι κ.τ.λ.

under Shalmaneser and Nebuchadnezzar. Jews could scarcely use the word ignorantly or lightly. St. Paul himself (in his Epistle to the Galatians) applies the same term1 to the ruinous influence of Judaizing teachers upon disciples of the pure Gospel. They upset and uproot them (as it were) from their heavenly land and home. Thus he retaliates (so to say) upon these Jews, his lifelong persecutors, their own accusation, doubtless everywhere repeated, that he and his associates had upset the world by bringing into it the Gospel.

Let us think now what they meant by the charge, and how far and in what sense there was any truth in it.

On their lips it was simply an outburst of passionate bigotry. They did not stay to analyze it. If they had done so, they would have found that it was only a violent way of calling these men innovators in religion. We have heard him say' was the charge brought twenty years before by the same fanatical race against the first Christian martyr, 'that this Jesus of Nazareth shall change our customs.' That is what the bigot—and there are bigots in politics as well as in religion-resents above everything, a proposed change of customs. The traditional thing, name or form, opinion or doctrine, is

1 Gal. v. 12, Οἱ ἀναστατοῦντες ὑμᾶς.