Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/208



The same is more concisely given by the same author in another place. (War II. ix. 5,-xi. 6.) The prominent events of Petronius's administration, are also given in the former.

THE PEACEFUL PROGRESS OF THE FAITH.

The apostles, after the great events last narrated, gave themselves with new zeal to the work which was now so vastly extended by the opening of the wide field of the Gentiles. Others of the refugees from the popular rage, at the time of Stephen's murder, had gone even beyond the boundaries of Palestine, bringing into the sphere of apostolic operations a great number of interesting subjects, before unthought of. Some of the bold, free workers, who had heard of the late changes in the views of the apostles, respecting the characters of those for whom the gospel was designed, now no longer limited their efforts of love to the children of the stock of Abraham, but proclaimed the faith of Jesus to those who had before never heard his name. The gospel was thus carried into Syria and Cyprus, and thence rapidly spread into many other countries, where Macedonian conquest and Hellenic colonization had made the Greek the language of cities, courts, commerce, and, to a great extent, of literature. The great city of Antioch soon became a sort of metropolis of the numerous churches, which sprang up in that region, beyond the immediate reach of Jerusalem, now the common home of the apostles, and the center of the Christian, as of the Jewish faith. Grecians as well as Jews, in this new march of the gospel, were made sharers in its blessings; and the multiplication of converts among them was so rapid as to give a new importance, at once, to this sort of Christians. The communication of these events to the apostles at Jerusalem, called for some systematic action on their part, to confirm and complete the good work thus begun by the random and occasional efforts of mere wandering fugitives from persecution. They accordingly selected persons especially fitted for this field of labor, and despatched them to Antioch, to fulfil the duties imposed on the apostles in refereuce to this new opening. The details of the operations of these new laborers, will be given in their lives hereafter.

In performing the various offices required in their domestic and foreign fields of labor, now daily multiplying, Peter and his associates had continued for several years steadily occupied, but achieving no particular action that has received notice in the history of their acts; so that the most of this part of their lives remains a