THE BELIEVERS IN THE TWO FIRST CENTURIES.
By Stephen N. Haskell
The obscurity which enshrouds the lives of the apostles is such that very few have any just idea of the extent and efficiency of their labors. To them the divine commission, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature," was personally addressed. Profane history, faint, and uncertain though its record is of these times, gives abundant evidence that the disciples were not disobedient to this sacred charge. Their efforts were not confined to the learned and enlightened, but they went also to the heathen, those who had little or no knowledge of God. They had not the facilities for labor existing at the present time. Their journeys were largely performed on foot, and, to some extent at least, they labored with their hands for their own support. The printed sheet was not at their command. They could not through the mails send written communications of good cheer and counsel to their friends and each other; but with dauntless and unflinching zeal they labored on until all but one sealed their testimony with their blood. Peter who for a time confined his labors to his countrymen and the Samaritans, having been admonished by divine revelation to call nothing common or unclean which God had cleansed, labored with much zeal and success in Greece, Thrace and Asia Minor. He also extended his travels as far as Babylon. Paul who had his first experience after his conversion in Arabia, states that he labored more abundantly than the other apostles, and that from Jerusalem round to Illyricum he had fully preached the gospel of Christ. This embraces a large extent of territory, the different countries of which it would be useless to mention. Clemens, who lived contemporary with him, states that "he preached the gospel both in the east and west, that he taught righteousness to the whole world, and went to the utmost limits of the west." For two years he also preached in the imperial city of Rome. Andrew seems to have chosen Scythia and the adjacent countries as the field of his labor. He passed along the Euxine or Black Sea and returned to what is now Constantinople, where he labored with considerable success. He afterward traveled through Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, Achaia and Epirus. Philip is supposed to have labored in company with Andrew in Scythia, afterward in Phrygia. Bartholomew, supposed by some to be the same as Nathanael, extended his labors as far as India on the side of the Ganges. He is also said to have traveled in Lesser Asia. Thomas, according to the testimony of Jerome, was very active and useful, laboring among the Medes, Persians, Parthians, Magians, etc., and traveling as far as the Island of Taprobane, supposed to have been the same as Ceylon. When the Portuguese visited India in the sixteenth century, they discovered, from certain traditions and ancient monuments, that this apostle had preached there, and it is asserted that he was put to death in that country by some Bramins, who feared that his labors might eventually prove subversive to their idolatrous superstitions. Matthew remained in Judea for some time where it is wrote his gospel, after which he labored in Ethiopia, Persia, Parthia, and India, in the latter place, or in Abyssinia, he was put to death. Simon, who was probably called Zelotes, appears to have taken a wide field of labor. He traveled in Egypt, Cyrene, Asia, etc. By some it is asserted that he introduced the gospel into Britain. Others, however, are of the opinion that he directed his course toward Persia, where he suffered martyrdom. John, the beloved disciple, shared with Peter for some time the severe persecutions which came upon them at Jerusalem, after which his field of labor is not definitely known. Some locate it in Parthia and India, others in Asia Minor. Jude, the brother of James, commenced his labors in Palestine, but afterward extended them to Mesopotamia, Persia, Armenia, and Libya. James the less, was an eminent supporter of the church at Jerusalem, and did not extend his labors beyond that place.57About twenty-four years after our Lord's ascension, the Hebrew rulers, having become violently enraged at the rapid dissemination of evangelic truth, commanded this apostle, then in his ninety-sixth year, to ascend one of the galleries of the temple and proclaim to the people that they had deceived themselves in supposing Jesus of Nazareth to have been the promised Messiah. Fired with holy indignation at these orders, and resolving to devote the last remnant of his life and strength to the honor of the Saviour, this venerable man ascended the eminence, and, with a loud voice asserted that the crucified One was indeed the Son of God, and that he would, in fullness of time, appear in the clouds of heaven as the great Judge of quick and dead. Exasperated by this declaration, the Pharisees threw him headlong over the battlement, and while he was in the act of praying for his inhuman murderers, their associates beat out his brains with a fuller's club. Although the apostles were successively removed from the scenes of their labor, the great cause of missions inaugurated by them and the great Teacher, was by no means checked. Holy men were raised up to take their places, and the gospel light was rapidly diffused. Early British historians give strong intimation that as early as A. D. 60 the gospel had begun to be successfully established in that country. Eusebius distinctly states that some of the apostles "passed over the ocean and preached in the British isles," and Theodoret mentions the Britons among the nations whom the "fishermen, publicans, and tentmakers," as he styles them, had induced to embrace the religion of the crucified Jesus. It also appears that the gospel was carried to Britain by persons of royal birth who were prisoners at Rome about the time that the apostle Paul was held a captive at that place. In the second century this work continued. The followers of the apostles imitated their example in distributing their worldly goods to the poor, and leaving their own country to carry the gospel to distant lands. As soon as they were enabled to organize a Christian society in one nation they hastened to another, unlocking the stores of divine revelation to those who were sitting in darkness. In A. D. 106, Pliny in writing to the Emperor Trajan says: "The number of culprits [Christians] is become so great as to call for serious consultation; the contagion of their superstition having spread not only through cities, but even in villages and the country." Some years after this Tertullian in speaking of the extension of the gospel, numbers among those who had previously embraced it, the Dacians, Germans, Scythians, Sarmatians; many of the Getuli, great numbers of the Moors, those in the utmost bounds of Spain, the various nations of Gaul, and those of Britain which were inaccessible to the Roman arms. Thus we see disseminated throughout the entire Christian church, the same spirit of reaching out for the salvation of others which was manifested in its commencement. No sooner had Andrew found the Saviour than he sought his brother Simon and brought him to Christ. So likewise did Philip bring Nathanael to the Saviour. John 1:41-49. It is the spirit of Christ, and hence it will ever remain with the true church.