---

1. The relation between the old Church at Jerusalem and the new at Antioch was that which St. Paul, writing under parallel circumstances, described in Romans 15:27 (cf. 2 Corinthians 9:12-15). It was a becoming acknowledgment of the vast debt under which all the world must lie to the Jew, but it was no repayment of it, when rich Antioch sent bread to starving Judaea. Jerusalem sent prophets, Antioch sent back corn. Agabus appears once again (Acts 21:10), and again as a predictor of disasters. This is the more noticeable that prediction was not the usual function of the prophetic order of the apostolic Church. They were men whom the Spirit had gifted with persuasive speech, and insight into truth. We have lost the name, but the thing remains.

2. The prediction of Agabus had a practical design. He foretold the dearth that the Church might act upon it, and on the hint they acted. The reign of Claudius was one of disaster; in the opening year it was Italy which suffered from the failure of crops; in the fourth, Palestine; in the eighth and ninth, Greece; in the eleventh, Italy again. It was to the second of these dearths that Agabus pointed which occurred in A.D. 45-46. We are here on sure chronological ground, and know that the want was so great that many were starved to death. A new convert to Judaism, the Queen of Adiabene, was so struck with the condition of things that she sent to Alexandria and Cyprus for supp Josephus tells us, contributed great sums of money to the same object.

3. On such occasions it was usual for the foreign synagogues to remit aid, as at this hour numbers of indigent Jews in Jerusalem are sustained by the charity of their European compatriots. The Church at Antioch, however, did not contribute through the synagogue, and in this separate assistance there is the first historical recognition of the fact that church and synagogue had parted company; that to be a Christian cut off a Jew from the charities of his own people; and that henceforth the tie of fellow Christian was to prove a stronger bond betwixt Jew and Gentile, than any other which bound Jew to Jew or Gentile to Gentile. A new force had entered into humanity, the name of Christian had already begun to dissolve ancient unities and to reconcile ancient feuds and to construct on the ruins of race hatreds a catholic society.

4. It is true to this day that Christianity plants in genuine Christian hearts a brotherhood which can cross the barriers of nationality. When the Reformation revived the primitive faith, the newly-formed Churches of Germany, Switzerland, England, etc., were brought into close and friendly relations. They exchanged famous teachers, sheltered one another's confessors, shared each other's fortune, and leagued their political influence for their common good. The Evangelical Churches of our own day have shown a similar readiness to succour feeble and struggling foreign congregations. If ever that decaying virtue called patriotism is to lose itself in a more cosmopolitan charity, it must be on a Christian, not on a socialistic, basis. It is sad to see the best hearts of Europe groping after the foundations of a new civil order in which all men shall be brothers while they cast off the name of One in whom alone the principles of love and freedom and authority meet. It is sadder still to see a Christian Church so rent by animosity that instead of demonstrating to distracted peoples where to find the true secret of brotherhood, it rather repels from Christ those who are most passionate for peace and fellowship. But when Jerusalem shall not envy Antioch nor Antioch vex Jerusalem, when Churches that are poor in this world are rich in faith, and those who are rich in this world are "ready to distribute," then will men learn that to be a Christian is to be free of a universal commonwealth whose citizens are all equal and all loving.

5. The Gentile Church made its gift more precious by sending it through its most honoured members. It is notable that just before we part with the mother Church, we hear for the first time of its being ruled by presbyters (ver. 30). This official name, the most venerable and Biblical of all ecclesiastical distinctions, frequently recurs, at first associated with apostles at Jerusalem, and afterwards with deacons or alone in the Churches of Ephesus, Crete, Philippi, etc.

(J. O. Dykes, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch.

WEB: Now in these days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.