the record of the manifestation among Israel of the Son of God, the Saviour of the world,

as the "King of the Jews."

This influence of the Jewish surroundings upon the circumstances of the gospel history

has a most important bearing. It helps us to realise what Jewish life had been at the time

of Christ, and to comprehend what might seem peculiarities in the gospel narrative.

Thus--to come to the subject of this chapter--we now understand how so many of the

disciples and followers of the Lord gained their living by some craft; how in the same

spirit the Master Himself condescended to the trade of His adoptive father; and how the

greatest of His apostles throughout earned his bread by the labour of his hands,

probably following, like the Lord Jesus, the trade of his father. For it was a principle,

frequently expressed, if possible "not to forsake the trade of the father" --most likely not

merely from worldly considerations, but because it might be learned in the house;

perhaps even from considerations of respect for parents. And what in this respect Paul

practised, that he also preached. Nowhere is the dignity of labour and the manly

independence of honest work more clearly set forth than in his Epistles. At Corinth, his

first search seems to have been for work (Acts 18:3); and through life he steadily forbore

availing himself of his right to be supported by the Church, deeming it his great

"reward" to "make the Gospel of Christ without charge" (1 Cor 9:18). Nay, to quote his

impassioned language, he would far rather have died of hard work than that any man

should deprive him of this "glorying." And so presently at Ephesus "these hands"

minister not only unto his own necessities, but also to them that were with him; and that

for the twofold reason of supporting the weak, and of following the Master, however

"afar off," and entering into this joy of His, "It is more blessed to give than to receive"

(Acts 20:34,35). Again, so to speak, it does one's heart good when coming in contact

with that Church which seemed most in danger of dreamy contemplativeness, and of

unpractical, of not dangerous, speculations about the future, to hear what a manly,

earnest tone also prevailed there. Here is the preacher himself! Not a man-pleaser, but a

God-server; not a flatterer, nor covetous, nor yet seeking glory, nor courting authority,

like the Rabbis. What then? This is the sketch as drawn from life at Thessalonica, so

that each who had known him must have recognised it: most loving, like a nursing

mother, who cherisheth her own children, so in tenderness willing to impart not only the

Gospel of God, but his own life. Yet, with it all, no mawkishness, no sentimentality; but

all stern, genuine reality; and the preacher himself is "labouring night and day," because

he would not be chargeable to any of them, while he preached unto them the gospel of

God (1 Thess 2:9). "Night and day," hard, unremitting, uninteresting work, which some

would have denounced or despised as secular! But to Paul that wretched distinction,

the invention of modern superficialism and unreality, existed not. For to the spiritual

nothing is secular, and to the secular nothing is spiritual. Work night and day, and then

as his rest, joy, and reward, to preach in public and in private the unsearchable riches of

Christ, Who had redeemed him with His precious blood. And so his preaching, although

one of its main burdens seems to have been the second coming of the Lord, was in no

way calculated to make the hearers apocalyptic dreamers, who discussed knotty points

and visions of the future, while present duty lay unheeded as beneath them, on a lower

platform. There is a ring of honest independence, of healthy, manly piety, of genuine,

self-denying devotion to Christ, and also of a practical life of holiness, in this

admonition (1 Thess 4:11,12): "Make it your ambition to be quite, to do your own" (each

one for himself, not meddling with others' affairs), "and to work with your hands, as we

commanded you, that ye may walk decorously towards them without, and have no need

of any one" (be independent of all men). And, very significantly, this plain, practical

religion is placed in immediate conjunction with the hope of the resurrection and of the

coming again of our Lord (vv 13-18). The same admonition, "to work, and eat their own

bread," comes once again, only in stronger language, in the Second Epistle to the

Thessalonians, reminding them in this of his own example, and of his command when

with them, "that, if any would not work, neither should he eat"; at the same time sternly

rebuking "some who are walking disorderly, who are not at all busy, but are

busybodies" (we have here tried to reproduce the play on the words in the original).