THE EPISTLES TO THE THESSALONIANS

IN the very earliest times there was a place called Therma, at the northwestern corner of the Ægean Sea. It was so called because there were warm springs there; and that place Therma gave its name to the Thermaic Gulf, the northwestern projection, so to speak, of the Greek Archipelago. That place was beautifully situated and had great advantages for commerce. The result was that, in the year 315 before Christ, Cassander rebuilt it and gave it a new name from the name of his wife, who was the sister of Alexander the Great; and the name he gave to the place was Thessalonica.

This Thessalonica became afterward one of the great cities of the Via Egnatia, the great Roman military road between the East and the West, and a place of great political importance.

In the time of the apostle it was the capital of Macedonia; it was governed by a Roman prefect, although under him the old laws were respected, and according to those old laws there were seven politarchs, so called, or magistrates, elected by the people. It is a very curious fact that this word "politarchs" is used in the Acts of the Apostles in describing the founding of the church at Thessalonica. The word precisely answers to what has recently been found to be the actual government of the city. The word, moreover, is found in inscriptions upon the site of the old city of

Thessalonica; and a ruined arch not only has this word "politarch" on it, but has also some names which bear a very strong resemblance to those we find in the Acts and in the Epistles. So we have evidence that the accounts of the founding of the church in the Acts and in the Epistles, which were written by Paul, are all genuine. They exactly fit in with what we know from other sources to be the surroundings and government of the place.

Thessalonica was a center from which Christianity might be very easily diffused, for it was upon the great highway from the East to the West. All the travel from East to West passed through it. And, as it was a seaport of great importance, it shared with Corinth and with Ephesus the commerce of the Ægean Sea. We are quite prepared to hear Paul say to us that from Thessalonica the gospel had sounded out through Macedonia and all Achaia.

The modern town is called Salonica, a corruption or shortening of the ancient word. Even now it is the second city in European Turkey. It has a population of ninety thousand, a curious population in its constitution, for one-third of them are Spanish Jews who came thither when they were expelled from Spain; one-third are Greeks; and another third are Turks.

Very curiously too, one of the commonest trades in Salonica to-day is the weaving of goat's-hair, so that travelers say that the sound which most frequently strikes one's ear as he passes through the streets, is the click of the shuttle. And we read, in the founding of the church, that Paul worked here with his own hand; worked undoubtedly at his trade of weaving

goat's-hair, or making tents of goat's-hair; worked before the break of day in order to save his time for preaching, and yet support himself in his labors for the gospel.

You remember that, after Paul had preached the gospel in Philippi and had passed through stripes and imprisonment, he was compelled to leave the town, and to leave it suddenly. With his back still raw and bleeding from the scourge, he made his way through Apollonia and Amphipolis until he came to Thessalonica. As there is no mention of his staying any length of time in these intermediate places, it seems to be altogether probable that, without delay, he proceeded to Thessalonica, and began to preach the gospel there—a remarkable instance of courage and devotion in the prosecution of his work. Persecution in one place only drives him to another; and, no sooner has he reached that other, than he immediately begins to proclaim the same truth that had brought him into difficulty before. The teacher is as indomitable as the truth is unchangeable.

During his stay in Thessalonica he was dependent upon his own labor for his support. People there do not appear to have been wealthy. He would not lay upon those who were won for the gospel the burden of supporting him. During that short stay-perhaps not more than a month-he twice received contributions from the Philippian brethren whom he had so recently left. So by his own personal labor, before the break of day or possibly by night work, after he had been preaching the gospel in public and from house to house all the day, Paul gained the means of his own

support in carrying on his work in the gospel. For three Sabbath days he preached the gospel in the synagogue.

In Philippi there was no synagogue; but in Thessalonica, apparently, there was a large number of Jews, and probably a synagogue where they met together. Some Jews, it is said, believed, and of the chief women not a few; and a multitude of proselytes were converted-heathen adherents of the synagogue, or Gentiles who had accepted more or less perfectly the Jewish faith, but had not actually become Jews. The result seems to have been the formation of a church that was mainly composed of Gentile converts. We do not find in Paul's letters to the church any evidences of necessity on his part to deal with questions of law and circumcision, such as we find him dealing with when he writes to other churches that were Jewish in their constitution.

He preached the gospel here for about four weeks, and gathered to himself so large a number of these proselytes that he aroused the wrath of the unbelieving Jews. They stirred up a riot against him. They assembled a great number of unbelievers in the marketplace; and, with this following, made an assault upon the house of Jason, Paul's host. In the Epistle to the Romans, Jason is called a kinsman of Paul. Some have supposed that this means a kinsman spiritually; yet it seems most natural to take the word in its literal acceptation. When the Jews made their assault upon the house of Jason, Paul and Silas and Timothy were not there. They were perhaps preaching elsewhere, although still somewhere in the town. The Jews could

only take Jason, Paul's host, and bring him before the magistrates, the politarchs of the city.

They made the charge that Paul and Silas and Timothy were attempting to establish another sovereignty, by preaching in the name of one Jesus, a king. The intimation was that they were subverting the constituted authority and were guilty of high treason. The magistrates were desirous of maintaining their good relations with Rome. If they allowed such preaching as this to go on they would be compromised; and, as they were unable at the time to take bail of Paul and Silas, they seem to have taken bail of Jason, that no harm should be suffered and that this work should not continue. The result was that Paul and Silas and Timothy, that very night, took their departure from Thessalonica, and presently made their way southward to Athens, and finally to Corinth, to which Paul came toward the close of the year A. D. 50.

The persecution which had failed to harm the apostles themselves broke upon the devoted heads of the new church-members at Thessalonica. It would seem that they were maltreated after the departure of Silas and Paul, and that their circumstances of persecution and trial called especially for the sympathy of the apostle. This doubtless was one of the reasons why the first letter to the Thessalonians was written. Paul naturally was concerned about the spiritual and the temporal welfare of these new converts. Twice he proposed to make them a visit, but in one way or another he was prevented. At last he sent Timothy to inquire with regard to their state, and when Timothy came back to him with a favorable report, declaring