Introduction

THE town of Philippi was situated in the east of Macedonia, on the banks of a little river called the Gangites, and about ten miles from the shore of the Archipelago. It had its name from the famous Macedonian king Philip, father of Alexander the Great, by whom the old town on the site was enlarged and fortified. Various circumstances combined to make the place prosperous. The plain around is well watered and fertile ; and in ancient times-gold and silver mines were worked in the neighbourhood with considerable success. The chief importance of the town, however, arose from its standing on the great highway from Asia to Western Europe. The mountains, which for a long distance form a natural wall, sink down here and allow a passage, steep, but not seriously difficult. It was no doubt this advantage of position which led Philip to fortify the town. For the same reason also the neighbourhood was chosen by Brutus and Cassius as the scene of the event which mainly has given Philippi celebrity in secular history, the great battle between the republican armies commanded by them, and the forces of Mark Antony and young Octavianus Cæsar, afterwards the Emperor Augustus, which decided the question who should rule the civilised world.

In memory of his victory, Augustus constituted the town what the Romans called a colony. To this attention is drawn in the Acts of the Apostles (xvi. 12), the fact being there referred to evidently as one of some moment in its bearings on the progress of the kingdom of Christ in Philippi. Paul, in the course of his missionary travels, had visited other towns enjoying this particular privilege, in speaking of which, however, the sacred historian makes no mention of it; but at Philippi the apostle was. to some extent personally affected by influences peculiar to a colony. A Roman colony bore no close resemblance to anything known by the name in modern times. It. was constituted by a formal enactment of the supreme authority at Rome ; and might be described as a garrison of Romans in a conquered territory. To the colonists, frequently veteran soldiers whom their general desired to reward, a portion of the land in the neighbourhood of the town selected was given as their property. They retained the much-prized privilege of Roman citizenship. Their chief duty was to guard the empire from revolts of the vanquished, and from incursions of the barbarians. Politically, a town invested with this character was a kind of miniature of the metropolis. The traveller who passed through a colony heard the Latin tongue, saw the insignia of Roman power, and was under Roman law in the strictest sense. The pride of Roman citizenship met him everywhere. Bearing these things in mind, we see why it was that the heartless owners of the poor slave girl, whom Paul had healed of her insanity, thus putting an end to their wicked gains, made their charge before the magistrates in this particular form: ‘These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, and teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, deing Romans’ (Acts Xvi. 20,21). The fury of the people too, on hearing this accusation, is thus explained ; and also the intensity of the fear of the magistrates, when they learned that Paul and Silas were themselves Roman citizens, and remembered that in their dealings

with them one of the most cherished privileges of the citizenship, immunity from bodily chastisement, had been violated. In more than one passage of this Epistle, moreover, the apostle’s language seems to have been moulded by the remembrance that he was writing to persons who lived in a Roman colony.

At a time, and from causes, of which no record is left to us, Philippi fell into decay, or suffered sudden destruction. Its site has long been a wilderness,—no memorial of the busy life of old presenting itself to the traveller, except the vague outlines of the city walls, and of some of its houses, and over all the area fragments of marble columns and heaps of rubbish, overgrown by thorns and briars.

The chief interest which Christians have in Philippi, arises from the fact that it was the first place in Europe where the gospel was preached, at least by the lips of an apostle. On Paul’s second great missionary tour, about twenty years after the ascension of our Lord, he had come down to Troas, a town on the Asiatic shore of the Archipelago, from which, on a clear evening, a point in Europe can be seen, the towering promontory of Athos, in Macedonia. Immediately around the apostle lay the scenery of the noblest poem of heathen antiquity, that which tells of the wars of Troy. To Paul, a man of fine general culture, who could gain the ear of the polished Athenians by quoting what ‘ certain of their own poets had said,’ the plain of Troy could not be without interest. But zeal for the progress _ of the kingdom of Christ was the great missionary’s consuming _ passion ; his heart was full of pity for fellow-men living and dying in darkness and sin ; and the Trojan war was, after all, a very little matter for him who knew himself set in the high places of the field, to fight the battles of the Lord. Retiring to rest, perhaps after a glimpse of distant Europe, certainly with the spiritual needs of Europe before his heart, he received from God in the night a command to arise and pass over. In a vision, a man of Macedonia stood beside him, and entreated

him, saying, ‘Come over into Macedonia and help us.’ Rejoicing in the prospect of new labours and new successes, undeterred by the prospect of new sufferings, Paul and his company, in obedience to the heavenly vision, at once set sail from Troas to take possession of Europe for Christ. After a prosperous voyage of two days they landed at Neapolis, the port of Philippi, and immediately went up to the town. The work, the success, and the persecution there are familiar to all.

To the church then founded, and which may well have still comprised among its members Lydia, and the jailor, and the slave girl, was addressed the Epistle before us. It was written during Paul’s imprisonment at Rome,! the period in his history to which the last verses in the Acts of the Apostles bring us,— probably, judging from various statements in the Epistle, towards the close of the imprisonment, in the end of a.D. 62, Or beginning of a.p. 63, and thus about eleven or twelve years after his first visit to Philippi.2 During those years he had revisited the town at least twice. 1

By some scholars it has been thought that the Epistle was written during the apostle’s imprisonment at Cæsarea, before he was sent to Rome. The only argument of any plausibility in support of this view is found in the fact that, in the 13th verse of the Ist chapter, he speaks of his ‘ bonds in Christ’ being ‘ manifest in all the Ar@torium’ (rendered in our version ‘ palace’) ; and, in Acts xxiii. 35, we are told that at Cæsarea he was lodged in ‘ Herod’s prætorium’ (‘judgment hall’). But the use of this word in the Epistle accords equally well with the apostle’s position at Rome, designating either the camp in which he lived, or rather (see the Lecture on the passage) the brigade of troops from which his sentries were taken. On the other hand, the reference in iv. 22 to ‘ Cæsar’s household,’ while it accords perfectly with the idea that he was writing in Rome, does not suit Cæsarea at all, without great forcing. The allusions in the Epistle, too, to expectations of a speedy termination of the imprisonment, either by release or by condemnation to death, lead our thoughts at once to Rome. Indeed, the whole tone of the letter appears to be in perfect congruity with the common opinion that it was written there ; whilst, on any other view, something unnatural in its tone in various places will be felt.

; 3 Dr Lightfoot has devoted a long chapter of the Introduction to his Commentary on Philippians to a discussion of the order in which the

Regarding the condition of the Philippian church, we know nothing except from intimations in this Epistle. It is evident that the Christians there had been subjected to persecution more or less severe, but had clung firmly to the faith of Christ. To Paul himself they were knit in singularly close affection. The unusual warmth and uninterruptedness of their love to him, as compared with that of some of the other churches he had planted, may perhaps be accounted for partly by the fewness of Jews among them. Unbelieving Jews and Judaizing professors of Christianity were the apostle’s most virulent calumniators and opponents. Now, in Philippi, which was not to any great extent a commercial town, and thus held out few inducements to foreigners to settle there, the Jewish community was not numerous. This is shown by the fact that at the time of Paul’s first visit they seem to have had no synagogue, but on the Sabbath merely held a prayer-meeting by the river-side.

The love of the Philippian Christians to the apostle showed itself in deeds. Again and again they had, out of their poverty, contributed money for his relief in times of special need ; and the immediate occasion of his writing this letter was his sending back to them Epaphroditus, who had come to Rome from Philippi with a gift from the church. At Rome, Epaphroditus had thrown himself into evangelistic work under the apostle’s direction ; and this with such intense devotion, that his physical — strength gave way, so that ‘for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death.’ But God restored him, and on his recovery he returned home bearing with him this Epistle.

epistles of the captivity were written. In this he opposes the view of the vast majority of biblical scholars, that those to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, which evidently belong to one group, were written early in the imprisonment, and that to the Philippians late,—maintaining that the case was exactly the reverse. His argument is characteristically candid and able ; yet the ordinary opinion still appears to me the more probable. The strong expectation which we find in the Epistle to the Philippians, of a speedy termination of the imprisonment, seems to point decidedly to a late date, later considerably than that of the others.

As we should anticipate in a letter of the kind now described, there is but little of methodical arrangement. We have a simple natural outflow of religious feeling,—comforting, no doubt, to the writer himself, who thus opened his heart to his friends ; edifying, strengthening, and refreshing to the Philippians ; and eminently fitted, through the divine blessing, to give wisdom and encouragement to all generations of readers. ‘To all ages of the church—to our own especially — this Epistle reads a great lesson. While we are expending our strength on theological definitions or ecclesiastical rules, it recalls us from these distractions to the very heart and centre of the gospel — the life of Christ, and the life in Christ. Here is the meeting-point of all our differences, the healing of all our feuds, the true life alike of individuals and churches,’ 3

’ Mr. Bullock, in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible; article, ‘ Epistle to the Philippians.’ 3 Dr. Lightfoot.

Into the condition of the church of Philippi, about half a century after the apostle wrote his Epistle, we have an interesting and most pleasing glimpse through an extant letter to them from Polycarp, pastor of the church at Smyrna.t His friend, Ignatius of Antioch, condemned to death for his religion by the Emperor Trajan, had been taken to Rome, to be thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheatre. On his way he passed through Philippi, and there was most kindly received by the brethren, and escorted by them on his journey. The interest in this noble martyr for Christ, which was thus awakened in their minds, led apparently to an application from them to Polycarp for copies of some letters which Ignatius had written during his journey. These he sent to them, and along with them, according to another request which they had made, a letter of counsel from himself. The martyrdom of Ignatius falling somewhere between A.D. 107 and A.D. 116, the date of this letter cannot be put later than a.p. 120. At that time the church evidently retained much of its pristine earnestness and spiritual beauty. Polycarp refers to serious flaws, of which he had heard, in the character of certain members; but the brethren generally were still conspicuous for Christian excellence. He congratulates them on their affectionate attention to Ignatius and other suffering servants of Christ. He ‘rejoices that the sturdy root of their faith, well reported of from early days, still endures, and bears fruit unto our Lord Jesus Christ.’ He ‘has confidence that they are well versed in the Scriptures.’? This is certainly a very pleasant last glimpse of the church so dear to the Apostle Paul. The last glimpse it is. In ecclesiastical records of a later time the name of Philippi is occasionally mentioned, but nothing in connection with it to

ΤᾺ document which professes to be a letter to the Philippians from Ignatius has also come down to us. There is the strongest reason, however, for regarding it as spurious, a composition of a later age.

* The whole letter, which on various grounds well repays perusal, will be found at the end of the present volume.

show whether the professed followers of Christ there continued to ‘adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour.’ Among the tuins of the city there have been found only the scantiest Christian remains. ‘Of the church which stood foremost among all the apostolic communities in faith and love, it may literally be said, that not one stone stands upon another. Its whole career is a signal monument of the inscrutable counsels of God.’ ?

That the Epistle to the Philippians is a genuine composition of Paul, there is the amplest evidence, external and internal. Even the destructive criticism of the modern sceptical school has scarcely ventured to assail its Pauline authorship,—only two or three voices having been heard professing doubt or denial ; and the arguments put forth in support of the hostile position have been frivolous and forced in the highest degree, wholly insufficient to establish even any approach to a plausible case. The mode of reasoning, indeed, adopted by Baur, the principal objector, and Schwegler, his admiring disciple, is so utterly and obviously absurd, that it is often difficult to believe men of such learning and ability to have really intended their arguing to be taken as serious. The words of Dean Alford are not extravagant, that the objections which have been offered to the genuineness of this Epistle afford ‘an instance of the very insanity of hypercriticism.’ 1

Dr. Lightfoot,