Apostles' Overpowering Difficulties
Historical Account★★★★Conceive the Apostles of Jesus Christ, the tent-maker or the fisherman, entering, as strangers, into one of the splendid cities of Syria, Asia Minor, or Greece. As they pass along to the remote and obscure quarter where they expect to meet with precarious hospitality among their countrymen, they survey the strength of the established religion which it is their avowed purpose to overthrow. Everywhere they behold temples on which the utmost extravagance of expenditure has been lavished by succeeding generations; idols of the most exquisite workmanship, to which, even if the religious feeling of adoration is enfeebled, the people are strongly attached by national or local vanity.
They meet processions, in which the idle find perpetual occupation, the young excitement, the voluptuous a continual stimulant to their passions. They behold a priesthood, numerous, sometimes wealthy: nor are these alone wedded by interest to the established faith; many of the trades, like those of the makers of silver shrines at Ephesus, are pledged to the support of that to which they owe their maintenance. They pass a magnificent theatre, on the splendour and success of which the popularity of the existing authorities mainly depends, and in which the serious exhibitions are essentially religious, the lighter as intimately connected with the indulgence of the baser passions.
They behold another public building, where even worse feelings—the cruel and the sanguinary, are pampered by the animating contests of wild beasts and of gladiators, in which they themselves may shortly play a dreadful part “Butcher’d to make a Roman holy day!” They encounter, likewise, itinerant jugglers, diviners, magicians, who impose upon the credulous, and excite the contempt of the enlightened. They meet philosophers, frequently itinerant like themselves; also the teachers of the different mysteries which would engross all the anxiety of the inquisitive, perhaps excite, even if they did not satisfy, the hopes of the more pure and lofty-minded.
Such must have been among the overpowering difficulties they contemned and defied.
The point
Describes the formidable obstacles the apostles faced in pagan cities—temples, idolatry, vested interests, entertainment, philosophy—and their defiant courage.