Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/513

 HIS APOSTOLIC LABORS IN ANTIOCH.

During this retirement of Saul to his native home, the first great call of the Gentiles had been made through the summons of Simon Peter to Cornelius. There was manifest wisdom in this arrangement of events. Though the original apostles were plainly never intended, by providence, to labor to any great extent in the Gentile field, yet it was most manifestly proper that the first opening of this new field should be made by those directly and personally commissioned by Jesus himself, and who, from having enjoyed his bodily presence for so long a time, would be considered best qualified to judge of the propriety of a movement so novel and unprecedented in its character. The great apostolic chief was therefore made the first minister of grace to the Gentiles; and the violent opposition with which this innovation on Judaical sanctity was received by the more bigoted, could of course be much more efficiently met, and disarmed, by the apostle specially commissioned as the keeper of the keys of the heavenly kingdom, than by one who had been but lately a persecutor of the faithful, and who, by his birth and partial education in a Grecian city, had acquired such a familiarity with Gentile usages, as to be reasonably liable to suspicion, in regard to an innovation which so remarkably favored them. This great movement having been thus made by the highest Christian authority on earth,—and the controversy immediately resulting having been thus decided,—the way was now fully open for the complete extension of the gospel to the heathen, and Saul was therefore immediately called, in providence, from his retirement, to take up the work of evangelizing Syria, which had already been partially begun at Antioch, by some of the Hellenistic refugees from the persecution at the time of Stephen's martyrdom. The apostles at Jerusalem, hearing of the success which attended these incidental efforts, dispatched their trusty brother Barnabas, to confirm the good work, under the direct commission of apostolic authority. He, having come to Antioch, rejoiced his heart with the sight of the success which had crowned the work of those who, in the midst of the personal distress of a malignant persecution, that had driven them from Jerusalem, had there sown a seed that was already bringing forth glorious fruits. Perceiving the immense importance of the field there opened, he immediately felt the want of some person of different qualifications from the original apostles, and one whose education and habits would fit him not only to