Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/536

 *tiles separated; and while Barnabas, accompanied by his favorite nephew, pursued the former route to Cyprus, his native island, Paul took a different direction, by land, north and west. In selecting a companion for a journey which he had considered as urgently requiring such blameless rectitude and firmness of resolution, he had set his heart upon Silas, the efficient Hellenist deputy from Jerusalem, whose character had been fully tested and developed during his stay in Antioch, where he had been so active in the exercise of those talents, as a preacher, which had gained for him the title of "prophet" before his departure from Jerusalem. Paul, during his apostolic association with him, had laid the foundation of a very intimate friendship; and being thus attached to him by motives of affection and respect, he now selected him as the companion of his missionary toils. Bidding the church of Antioch farewell, and being commended by them to the favor of God, he departed,—not by water, but through the cities of Syria, by land,—-whence turning westward, he passed through the Syrian gates into Cilicia; in all these places strengthening the churches already planted, by making large additions to them from the Gentiles around them. Journeying northwest from Cilicia, he came by the Cilician gates of Taurus, to his old scenes of labor and suffering, in Lycaonia, at Derbe and Lystra, where he proceeded in the task of renewing and completing the good work which he had himself begun on his former tour with Barnabas; with whom he might now doubtless have effected vastly more good, and whose absence must have been deeply regretted by those who owed their hopes of salvation to the united prayers and labors of him and Paul. Among those who had been converted here by the apostles on their first mission, was a half-bred Jew, by name Timotheus, his father having been a Greek who married Lois, a Jewess, and had maintained a high character among his countrymen in that region, both in Lystra and Iconium. Under the early and careful instructions of his pious mother, who had herself received a superior religious education under her own mother Eunice, Timothy had acquired a most uncommon familiarity with the Scriptures, which were able to make him wise unto salvation; and that he had learned them and appreciated their meaning in a much more spiritual and exalted sense than most Jews, appears from the fact, that notwithstanding his early regard for the law as well as the prophets, he had never complied with the Mosaic rite of circumcision,—perhaps because his father may