and worship. Great names were inwoven into the history of his ceremonial, and the archives of his country were, at the same time, the records of his faith. God had spoken to his fathers; the sea had been divided for them; angels' food had been, day after day, rained down upon them; the cloud and pillar of fire had been by turns the vanguard and rearguard of their march. They had possessed the rod of Moses and the sword of Joshua, the throne of David and the lyre of Isaiah. What Barnabas therefore impressed on the whole assembly was earnestness and tenacity, or resolution, at all hazards, to cleave to the Lord. What beauty and power in the thought-to cleave to the Lord; not simply to cling to their profession, or to adhere to an abstract or historical Christianity, but to cleave to the Lord—the living personal Redeemer-away from them, but yet with them— the one living source of blessing and object of fellowship. Theirs was to be a personal attachment to Him whom the gospel depicted as the centre of evangelical truth and the occupant of their hearts-Him to whom homage was paid as being of all others the most worthy of it, and to whom service was done as having a claim beyond all others upon it. For, alas! men may adhere to a denomination or to visible membership, and yet fall short of cleaving to the Lord. What folly-lingering by the fountain without tasting of its rill; lounging in the porches of Bethesda, but careless of the troubling of the waters!

One needs not to be surprised either at the joy of Barnabas, or the practical course he pursued, when an insight is gained into his character. The historian addsHe was a "good man." A noble eulogy, though a brief

and uncommon one. The ordinary panegyric is a " "great man," but the greatness of Barnabas was his goodness. His goodness had been already seen in his sale of his possession, when the first Christians kept free table in Jerusalem. The vulgar strife is to be great, but the Christian's ambition is to be good. Few can achieve greatness, but goodness is within the reach of all. Not to be first, but to be best-be this our heart's desire, for he who is best on earth shall be "greatest in the kingdom of heaven." The source of the goodness of Barnabas is laid open-" he was full of the Holy Ghost and of faith." Full of the Holy Ghost-so filled probably at Pentecostnot visited with occasional impulses, but like a vessel replete to overflowing. No wonder that Joses of Cyprus was surnamed "the Son of consolation." If he was so filled with the spirit of the promised Comforter, then surely words of consolation must have flowed from his lips. "Full of faith" was this companion of the apostles, and therefore full of the Spirit. A calm and uniform confidence possessed his soul, gave him the image of his Master, and won him his surname. When Stephen was stoned, and young Saul perpetrated these enormities, some of the brethren might wring their hands in dismay, and cry out in bitter lamentation, that it was all over with their cause -that the morning had been overcast, and the sun would never again shine through; but the faith of Barnabas, lifting him above such despondency, and fixing the assurance in his heart that Christ would ultimately triumph, enabled him to lift up "the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees," and so become in many ways

BARNABAS AND SAUL.

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and at many times a "Son of consolation." The labours of Barnabas were greatly blessed, and "much people was added to the Lord"—not simply to the church, but to the Lord-first to the Lord, and afterwards to the church, "by the will of God."

But Barnabas felt the work growing upon his hands. Unaided and alone, he was not a match for the crisis. He longed that during the bright hour the harvest should be gathered. He had none of that littleness of mind which, in order to monopolize the praise, could not bear the presence and labours of a rival, and he took a step which immediately brought him into a secondary position. He who had introduced Saul to the church at Jerusalem, and been his good genius, soon became his subordinate colleague, and is overshadowed by the greater soul, as Melancthon by Luther, and Beza by Calvin. The Holy Ghost says once "Barnabas and Saul;" but soon the order is reversed, and it is afterwards "Paul and Barnabas." Feeling that Saul was quite the man for the occasion, Barnabas left Antioch in quest of him. He had gone from Jerusalem to Tarsus, and thither Barnabas went in search of him. Barnabas must have known him somewhat intimately, and

it

may be had been associated with him in academic study. Saul may have been absent from Tarsus, labouring in some quarter of the province of Cilicia, but Barnabas at length found him—pointed out this sphere of labour as one specially adapted to him; and Saul consented, and accompanied his patron to Antioch. The eager spirit of Saul would need no urgent solicitation. It would spring to the scene in anticipation of earnest labours among the Hellenes

and Hellenists-the renewal of the work of Damascus and Jerusalem. And they twain laboured for a whole year with uninterrupted energy, and drew large assemblies round about them. Saul displayed his former intrepidity, while his past experience must have made his dialectics more skilful, and his own growth in the divine life must have deepened his yearning for men's salvation.

Our object in this volume is to illustrate the oral addresses of the apostle. Now, though the topic of his sermons at Antioch is not formally given us, we are at no loss to infer what it was. It must, indeed, have been the same as at Damascus and Jerusalem, for the one kind of preaching alone could enlighten and save. The preacher did not vary in his themes. Christ and Christ alone, and in Him salvation, only and fully, and of universal offer and adaptation, was his unvarying subject. Speculation and hypothesis, ingenuity and rhetoric, had no place in his addresses, but the plain, direct, and vivid exhibition of Christ. It was the story of salvation by the cross-the life and death of the Son of God. It was not opinion about Him, but what He really had been. It was not what conclusions might be formed of Him, but what He was, and what He did to redeem the world. With this lesson Saul "taught much people." For the population that filled the four great wards of Antioch was numerous and motley, and gathered from every nation under heaven.

But the twenty-sixth verse supplies us with another and distinct proof of our statement, that Saul preached Christ, and nothing but Christ, at Antioch. The disciples, we are told, "were first called Christians at Antioch "-not in the

holy city that reclined on the slopes of Mount Zion, but in the pagan town that lay on the northern sides of Mount Sylphius; not by the Jordan, which had parted its waters at the presence of the ark, but by the Orontes, the banks of which were disgraced by the legends and polluted by the scenes of the vilest lusts; not on the spot where three thousand on one day had been converted, but where impurity was hallowed with religious obligation, and luxury and dissipation held perpetual carnival. They got a distinctive epithet from the name Christ. And why? Simply because that name was so often on their lips; because Saul preached Christ, and Christ was the burden of all his addresses, and they believed Christ, and so often spoke of Christ; because Christ was the word that of all others marked them out as a class, from their fond and familiar use of it-they were naturally named Christians. So effectually and repeatedly did Saul preach Christ, so thoroughly did his preaching identify his party with Christ, that the name was imposed upon it as a new and distinct religious class. The "disciples " did not voluntarily assume it; the Jews could not give it to the "sect of the Nazarenes;" but the heathen population catching the sound so frequently, coined the epithet as a true and happy designation. Because they so often called 'upon His name," His name was called upon them. And though it does not hold a place in the nomenclature of the New Testament, yet it was well bestowed.

The name originated among non-Christians, and was used by them. Thus Agrippa addressed Paul-" Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian ;" and Peter says to