Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/641



Of this apostle, so few circumstances are known, that are not inseparably connected with the life of Paul, in which they have been already recorded, that only a very brief space can be occupied with the events of his distinct life. The first passage in which he is mentioned, is that in the fourth chapter of Acts, where he is specified as having distinguished himself among those who sold their lands, for the sake of appropriating the avails to the support of the Christian community. Introduced to the notice of the reader under these most honorable circumstances, he is there described as of the tribe of Levi, and yet a resident in the island of Cyprus, where he seems to have held the land which he sacrificed to the purposes of religious charity. This island was for a long time, before and after that period, inhabited by great numbers of wealthy Jews, and there was hardly any part of the world, where they were so powerful and so favored, as in Cyprus; so that even the sacred order of the Levites might well find inducements to leave that consecrated soil to which they were more especially attached by the peculiar ordinances of the Mosaic institutions, and seek on this beautiful and fertile island, a new home, and a new seat for the faith of their fathers. The occasion on which Joseph (for that was his original name) left Cyprus to visit Jerusalem, is not known; nor can it even be determined whether he was ever himself a personal hearer of Jesus. He may very possibly have been one of the foreign Jews present at the Pentecost, and may there have been first converted to the Christian faith. On his distinguishing himself among his new brethren, both by good words and generous deeds, he was honored by the apostles with the name of Barnabas, which is interpreted in Greek by words that may mean either "son of consolation," or "son of exhortation." The for