In Church history Thessalonica bears an honourable name. It was a bulwark of the Catholic faith and of the Greek Christian Empire in the early middle ages, when it bore the title of "the orthodox city1." It was also an active centre of missionary evangelism amongst the Gothic, and afterwards the Slavonic invaders of the Balkan peninsula. In its energetic zeal for the cause of Christ the Church of Thessalonica nobly sustained the character given to it by St Paul in these Epistles. This city was the scene of a memorable tragedy, when in the year 390 the Emperor Theodosius, in revenge for some affront, ruthlessly massacred 15,000 of its inhabitants. For this act St Ambrose, the great Bishop of Milan, compelled the Emperor to do abject penance, refusing him communion for eight months until he submitted. Amongst the Bishops of Thessalonica, only one name is recorded of the first rank, that of Eustathius (died 1198 A.D.), who was the most learned scholar of his age and an active Church reformer. During the decay of the Byzantine empire, the city was for a time under Latin and later under Venetian rule. It underwent three memorable sieges,-having been captured by the Saracens in 904; by Tancred of Sicily, the Norman Crusader, in 1185; and finally, by the Turkish Sultan Amurath II., in 1430 A.D.

Thessalonica possesses three ancient and beautiful Greek Churches turned into mosques, those of St Sophia2, St George, and St Demetrius; as well as a few very valuable and interesting remains of Roman antiquity. It is now the seat of an influential Greek archbishopric.

1 It should be said, however, that Tafel (De Thessalonica ejusque agro, Berlin, 1839), our chief authority on the history of the city, conjectures that this epithet was conferred on Thessalonica because of its stubborn defence of Image-worship against the Iconoclastic Emperors of Constantinople in the eighth and ninth centuries.

2 In the disastrous fire of September 4th, 1890, the mosque of St Sophia was destroyed-a heavy and irreparable loss. As a monument and treasury of Byzantine art, this once Christian cathedral stood second only to St Sophia of Constantinople itself.

CHAPTER II.

HOW THE GOSPEL CAME TO THESSALONICA.

It was in the course of his second great missionary expedition that the Apostle Paul planted the standard of the Cross in Europe, in the year of our Lord 53 (or 52). He had slowly traversed Asia Minor from the south-east to the north-west, and was detained in Galatia by sickness for a considerable time; a circumstance which gave him the opportunity of preaching to that interesting people, amongst whom he founded at this time important Churches (Acts xvi. 6, xviii. 23; Gal. iv. 13-15). Twice again were his plans frustrated during this journey. His chief intention seems to have been to evangelize the Roman province of Asia (Acts xvi. 6), where he afterwards spent three fruitful years (Acts xx. 31). This region, with its capital city Ephesus, was for the Apostle's mission probably the most important district between Jerusalem and Rome. But for the present he was "prevented by the Holy Spirit." A similar mysterious intimation arrested him when afterwards he was entering the northerly province of Bithynia: "the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not" (Acts xvi. 7). So St Paul and his companions (Silas and Timothy) found themselves at the port of Troas, fronting Europe and the West, where St Luke also joined them; for just at this point (ver. 10) the narrator of the Acts passes from the third to the first person plural. It was here that the true goal of the Apostle's journey disclosed itself, and the reason of God's repeated interference with His servant's designs. "A vision by night appeared to Paul. There was a man of Macedonia standing, beseeching him: Come over to Macedonia, and help us!" In Macedonia the Gospel was to find a congenial soil and a people prepared for the Lord.

We need not repeat the story of the missionaries' voyage across the Ægean, their journey inland to Philippi, their success and their sufferings in that city, all so graphically related by St Luke, who writes Acts xvi. 10-40 as an eye-witness. One

reference in these Epistles the Apostle makes to his experience at Philippi: he writes in 1 Ep. ii. 2, “Though we had already suffered and endured violence in Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak to you the good news of God." The pleasanter side of his connection at this time with Philippi is intimated when, addressing the Philippians many years later, he recalls how even in Thessalonica ye sent to supply my need, both once and twice" (Phil. iv. 16).

Thessalonica lies a hundred miles west of Philippi along the Via Egnatia, a distance of three days' journey. Amphipolis and Apollonia" are mentioned in Acts xvii. I as the chief towns and halting places on the way. But these places the three evangelists “travelled through." Thessalonica was their objective point. This city attracted the Apostle of the Gentiles on several accounts; and he was resolved to occupy it for Christ.

We have already, in Chap. I., described the position of Thessalonica and its growing importance as a centre of trade and population. There was an additional circumstance which gave the missionaries a vantage-ground here. At Philippi the Jews were not numerous or wealthy enough to boast a synagogue; only they had a proseucha, or retired oratory "by the riverside," probably open to the air (Acts xvi. 13). In Thessalonica "there was a synagogue of the Jews" (Acts xvii. 1). It was not that St Paul expected to gain many converts from the synagogue itself; but round the Jewish synagogue there was usually gathered a circle of devout and enlightened Gentiles, in various stages of proselytism, weary of heathen superstition and philosophy, and instructed more or less in the Old Testament, but not prepossessed by the ingrained prejudice, the pride of religion and of race, and the scorn of a crucified Messiah which closed the ears of the Jews themselves against the truth of the Gospel. In this outlying circle of proselytes and synagogue-hearers, distinguished frequently by the presence of a number of the more refined and intelligent Greek women of the upper classes, St Paul was accustomed to find his best audiences. Here he gathered the nucleus of his Gentile Churches. At Thessalonica while "some" of the Jews "were persuaded

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and consorted with Paul and Silas," a great multitude of the devout Greeks" did so, "and of the chief women (the ladies, as we should say, of the city) not a few” (Acts xvii. 4). Such people could best be reached through the synagogue, and the Apostle felt it his duty to address himself to his own countrymen in the first instance ('to the Jew first'), however often they might repel him; so "according to Paul's custom he went in unto them, and for three sabbaths discoursed with them from the Scriptures, expounding and explaining that the Christ was bound to suffer and to rise from the dead, and that this is the Christ, -this Jesus whom I preach to you" (Acts xvii. 3). After three weeks of this discussion the synagogue appears to have been closed against Paul and Silas. They only carried a small minority of their compatriots with them. But they must have continued for some time longer in the city, at least a month we should imagine, to have gathered and formed into a Church so large a community as the Epistles indicate, and to have carried them so far in Christian knowledge and discipline.

Before long, however, the jealousy of "the unbelieving Jews" at their success found means to arrest the work of the Apostles. They roused the city mob against them. The rioters attacked the house of Jason (his name is probably equivalent to Jesus), a Jew of property who had accepted the faith of Christ and invited the missionaries to lodge with him. Not finding the two leaders, they seized Jason and some other Christians and dragged" them before the magistrates, on the remarkable charge (1) of being revolutionaries—“ turning the world upside down," and (2) of rebellion against the Roman Emperor, in "saying that there is another king, one Jesus " (vv. 5—7). These charges, scattered broadcast, alarmed the "politarchs" as well as the common people (ver. 8); but they could not be sustained, and the accused were dismissed, security being taken for their good behaviour (ver. 9). The accusations brought against Paul and Silas were, however, a distortion of what they had actually preached, and may help us to understand the special character and drift of the Apostolic teaching in this city. The outbreak made it evident that St Paul's unscrupulous enemies were deter

mined, at any cost, to drive him from Thessalonica. He was now, as so frequently, in deadly "peril from his own countrymen" (2 Cor. xi. 26). “ "The brethren" insisted on his leaving them, and "sent Paul and Silas away by night immediately to Beroa" (ver. 10),—an inland Macedonian town situated forty miles or more from Thessalonica, in the direction of Achaia.

CHAPTER III.

THE GOSPEL OF PAUL AT THESSALONICA.

Now we may ask, What was the gospel brought to Thessalonica? Can we give to ourselves any precise account of the "good news" which "Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus" announced in this city, and which produced so powerful and enduring an effect? Further, was there anything special to the place and the occasion in the form which the Apostle's message assumed, and which will serve to explain the peculiar tone of Christian feeling, the style of thought and cast of doctrine, that distinguished the faith of this great Macedonian Church in its first beginnings? To these questions the indications of the two Epistles, compared with the story of the Acts, enable us to give a tolerable answer.

(1) The foundation of St Paul's teaching was laid in the proof of the Messiahship of Jesus, drawn from the prophecies of Scripture, compared with the facts of the life, death and resurrection of the Saviour. The method of this proof, briefly indicated in Acts xvii. 3, is set forth at length in the report of his discourse at the Pisidian Antioch given by St Luke in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts.

(2) The purpose of Christ's death and its bearing on human salvation must have been abundantly explained by the Apostles. So we infer not only from the central position of this subject in St Paul's later Epistles, and from the prominence given to it in Acts xiii. 38, 39, where the announcement of forgiveness of sins and justification by faith forms the climax of St Paul's