exception; and it is confirmed by a philological analysis of the names both of persons and of places in Galatia that have come down to us. The theory of the Teutonic origin of the Galatians is now given up, not only in England, but in Germany.

The Galatians, then, were Celts, and we are not surprised to find in them the Celtic qualities. They came of the race which "shook all empires, but founded none." Their great failing was in stability. Quick to receive impressions, they were quick to lose them; at one moment ardently attached, at the next violently opposed. This is precisely what St. Paul complains of. He gives a striking picture of the enthusiasm with which he had been received on his first visit. himself was stricken down with sickness, but that did not damp the ardour of his converts. They would even have "plucked out their eyes," and given them to him. But in a short space of time all this was gone. They had now made common cause with his adversaries. They had forsaken his teaching and repudiated his authority.

He

The cause of the evil lay in the intrigues of certain Judaisers. And the consideration of the question in debate between them and St. Paul opens out a new subject for discussion.

III. Contents and Doctrinal Character of the Epistle. The controversy that divided, and could not but divide, the infant Church, came to a head most conspicuously in Galatia. Was the Jewish Law to be binding upon Christians? It was only natural that many should be found to say that it was. Christianity had sprung out of Judaism. The first and most obvious article in the Christian creed-the Messiahship of Jesus-was one that might easily be accepted, and yet all the prejudices in favour of the Jewish Law be retained. It was only a deeper and prolonged reflection that could show the fundamental antagonism between the Jewish view of things and the Christian. St. Paul saw this, but there were many who were not so clear-sighted. The main body of the Church at Jerusalem held tenaciously to the Jewish practices. The old Pharisaic passion for making proselytes still clung to them. And emissaries from this Church had found their way-as they easily might, through the chain of Jewish posts scattered over Asia Minor-as far north as Galatia.

These emissaries pursued the same tactics as they had pursued elsewhere. They called in question the Apostle's authority. They claimed to act from a superior commission themselves. They disparaged his teaching of personal faith in Jesus. They knew nothing of such faith. They acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, and with that they were content. They still looked for salvation, as they had done hitherto, from the literal performance of the Mosaic Law, and they forced this view upon the Galatians. They insisted specially on the rite of circumcision. They would not allow the Gentile converts to escape it. They proclaimed it as the only avenue to the covenant relation with God. And no sooner had the convert submitted to circumcision than they proceeded to lay upon him an oppressive burden of ritualistic ceremonies. He was to keep a multitude of seasons, "days, and months, and times, and years." If he was to enjoy the Messianic privileges he must be righteous. But to be righteous was to perform scrupulously the precepts of the Mosaic Law, and in the attempt to do this the convert's whole powers and energies were consumed. The Messiahship of Jesus was something secondary and subordinate. The Judaisers accepted

it so far as it seemed to hold out to them a prospect of advantage, but otherwise it remained a mere passive belief. The key to life and conduct was still sought in the fulfilment of the Mosaic Law.

With such a position as this the Apostle could not but be directly at issue. To him the Messiahship of Jesus (including, as it did, His eternal Sonship) formed the very root and centre of his whole religious being. Faith-or the ardent conviction of this Messiahship in its completest sense-was the one great motive power which he recognised. And the state in which the Christian was placed by faith was itself-apart from any laborious system of legal observances-an attainment of righteousness. The Messianic system was everything. The Law henceforth was nothing. By his relation to the Messiah the Christian obtained all of which he had need. Sin stood between him and the favour of God, but the Messiah had died to remove the curse entailed by sin; and by his adhesion to the Messiah the Christian at once stepped into the enjoy ment of all the blessings and immunities which the Messianic reign conferred. It was not that he was released from the obligations of morality (as represented by the Law), but morality was absorbed in religion. One who stood in the relation that the Christian did to Christ could not but lead a holy life; but the holy life was a consequence-a natural, easy, necessary consequence of this relation, not something to be worked out by the man's unaided efforts, independently of any such relation. The command, "Be ye holy as I am holy," remained, but there intervened the motive and stimulus afforded by the death and exaltation of Christ. "Be ye holy, because ye are bought with a price; because ye are Christ's, and your life is hid with Christ in God."

The Law then no longer held that primary position which it had occupied under the old covenant. It had fulfilled its functions, which were preparatory and not final. Its object had been to deepen the sense of sin, to define unmistakably the line which separated it from righteousness, and so to prepare the way for that new Messianic system in which the power of sin was not ignored but overcome, and overcome by lifting the believer as it were bodily into a higher sphere. He was taken out of a sphere of human effort and ritual observance, and raised into a sphere in which he was surrounded by divine influences, and in which all that he had to do was to realise practically what had already been accomplished for him ideally. In that sphere the centre and life-giving agency was Christ, and the means by which Christ was to be apprehended was Faith. So that Christ and Faith were the watchwords of the Apostle, just as the Law and Circumcision were the watchwords of the Jews.

Thus the line that the Apostle takes in this Epistle was clearly marked out for him. Against the attacks upon his apostolic authority he defended himself by claiming that, although he was a late comer in point of time, this did not imply any real inferiority. His was not an authority derived at second-hand. On the contrary, he owed his calling and commission directly to God Himself. The proof was to be seen both in the circumstances of his conversion and also in the fact that, though he had once or twice been brought into apparent contact with the elder Apostles, his teaching was entirely independent of them, and was already fully formed when he had at last an opportunity of consulting them about it. And in practice, not only was he recognised by them as an equal, but even Peter submitted to a rebuke from him. On the other hand,

upon the great dogmatic question, St. Paul meets his opponents by an emphatic statement of his own position. Christianity is not something accessory to the Law, but supersedes it. Righteousness is to be sought not by legal observances, but by faith. The old system was carnal, material, an affair of externals. The new system is a spiritual renewal by spiritual forces. Not that there is any real contradiction between the new and the old. For the very type and pattern of the old dispensation-Abraham himself-obtained the righteousness that was imputed to him not by works, but by faith. Thus, the true descendant of Abraham is he who puts faith in Christ. It was to Christ that the promise related, in Christ that the whole divine scheme of redemption and regeneration centred. The Law could not interfere with it, for the Law came after the Promise, by which it was guaranteed. The function of the Law was something temporary and transient. It was, as it were, a state of tutelage for mankind. The full admission to the privileges of the divine patrimony was reserved for those who became personal followers of the Messiah. He was the Son of God, and those who cast in their lot wholly with Him were admitted to a share in His sonship. To go back to the old stage of ritual observance was pure retrogression. It was an unnatural exchange a state of drudgery for a state of freedom. It was a reversal of the old patriarchal story-a preferring of Hagar and Ishmael for Isaac, the child of promise. The Apostle cannot think that the Galatians will do this. He exhorts them earnestly to hold fast to their liberty, to hold fast to Christ, not to give up their high privilege of seeking righteousness by faith, and accepting it through grace, for any useless ordinance like circumcision. Yet the liberty of the Christian is far from meaning license. License proceeds from giving way to the impulses of the flesh, but these impulses the Christian has got rid of. His relation to Christ has brought him under the dominion of the Spirit of Christ. He is spiritual, not carnal; and to be spiritual implies, or should imply, every grace and every virtue. The Galatians should be gentle and charitable to offenders. They should be liberal in their alms. The Epistle concludes with a repeated warning against the Judaising intruders. Their motives are low and interested. They wish to pass off themselves and their converts as Jews, and to escape persecution as Christians. But to do so they must give up the very essentials of Christianity.

The Epistle is not constructed upon any artificial system of divisions, but the subject-matter falls naturally into three main sections, each consisting of two of our present chapters, with a short preface and conclusion, the last in the Apostle's own handwriting. The first section contains the defence of his apostolic authority and independence in a review of his own career for the first seventeen years from his conversion. This leads him to speak of the dispute with St. Peter at Antioch, and the doctrinal questions involved in that dispute lead up to the second or doctrinal section, in which his own main tenet of righteousness by faith is contrasted with the teaching of the Judaisers and established out of the Old Testament. This occupies chaps. iii. and iv. The last section, is, as usual with St. Paul, hortatory, and consists of an application of the principles just laid down to practice, with such cautions as they may seem to need, and one or two special points which his experience in the Church at Corinth and the news brought to him from Galatia appear to have suggested.

The following may be taken as a tabular outline of the Epistle* :—

I.-Introductory Address (chap. i. 1-10).

a. The apostolic salutation (chap. i. 1—5).
b. The Galatians' defection (chap. i. 6—10).

II. Personal Apologia: an Autobiographical
Retrospect (chaps. i. 11-ii. 21).

The Apostle's teaching derived from God and not man (chap. i. 11, 12), as proved by the circumstances of

(1) His education (chap. i. 13, 14).

(2) His conversion (chap. i. 15-17).
(3) His intercourse with the other Apostles
whether at (a) his first visit to Jerusalem
(chap. i. 18-24), or (b) his later visit
(chap. ii. 1-10).

(4) His conduct in the controversy with Peter at
Antioch (chap. ii. 11—14);

The subject of which controversy was the supersession of the Law by Christ (chap. ii. 15-21).

III.-Dogmatic Apologia: Inferiority of Judaism, or Legal Christianity, to the Doctrine of Faith (chaps. iii. 1-iv. 31). (a) The Galatians bewitched into retrogression from a spiritual system to a carnal system (chap. iii. 1—5).

(b) Abraham himself a witness to the efficacy of faith (chap. iii. 6-9).

(c) Faith in Christ alone removes the curse
which the Law entailed (chap. iii. 10—14).
(d) The validity of the Promise unaffected by
the Law (chap. iii. 15-18).

(e) Special pædagogic function of the Law, which
must needs give way to the larger scope
of Christianity (chap. iii. 19-29).
(f) The Law a state of tutelage (chap. iv. 1—7).
(g) Meanness and barrenness of mere ritualism
(chap. iv. 8-11).

(h) The past zeal of the Galatians contrasted
with their present coldness (chap. iv.
12-20).

(i) The allegory of Isaac and Ishmael (chap. iv. 21-31).

(b) The Judaising intruders (chap. v. 7—12).
(c) Liberty not license, but love (chap. v. 13—
15).

(d) The works of the flesh and of the Spirit
(chap. v. 16-26).

(e) The duty of sympathy (chap. vi. 1-5).
(ƒ) The duty of liberality (chap. vi. 6—10).

V.-Autograph Conclusion (chap. vi. 11-18).
(a) The Judaisers' motive (chap. vi. 12, 13).
(b) The Apostle's motive (chap. vi. 14, 15).
(c) His parting benediction, and claim to be
freed from further annoyance (chap. vi.
16-18).

Figures are used where the subdivisions are continuous steps in the same argument, letters where they are distinct arguments.

The subject of the Epistle to the Galatians might be summarily described as the same as that to the Romans the doctrine of justification by faith-i.e., the state of righteousness entered by means of faith. For a further discussion of the group of ideas involved in this the reader may be referred to the Excursus on Romans.

IV. Date of the Epistle.-Mention has just been made of the Epistle to the Romans, and the resemblance between these two Epistles forms an important element in the consideration of the next question with which we have to deal the question as to the date of the Epistle, and the place from which it was written.

On this point two views are current. It is agreed that the Epistle was written on St. Paul's third great missionary journey. It is agreed that it belongs to the group which includes 1 and 2 Corinthians and Romans. The difference is as to the place which it occupies in this group. A large majority of commentators suppose it to have been the first of the four Epistles, and date it from Ephesus at some time during the Apostle's lengthened stay there, i.e., at some time during the three years A.D. 54-57. The other view is that the Epistle was written after the two Epistles to the Corinthians, but before the Epistle to the Romans, i.e., at the end of the year 57 or beginning of 58, from Macedonia or Greece. This view has until recently not had many supporters, but it has lately found a strong advocate in Dr. Lightfoot.

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soon

Practically there is a single main argument on each side. In favour of the earlier date, the one point that can be pressed is the expression used in chap. i. 6: "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you, into another gospel." The conversion of the Galatians appears to have taken place in A.D. 51. St. Paul paid them a second visit in A.D. 54. In the autumn of that year his three years' stay at Ephesus began. And it is argued that the expression will not allow us to go beyond these three years. Soon," however, is a relative term. It may mean any interval from a few minutes to one or more centuries. The context must decide. A change, which in the natural course of things would take a protracted length of time to accomplish, might be described as taking place soon" "if it was brought about in a space of time conspicuously shorter than might have been expected. But for the conversion of a whole community to Christianity, and for their second conversion to another form of Christianity wholly distinct from the first, we should surely expect a long and protracted period. Under such circumstances a period of six or seven years might very well be called soon. To this argument, then, it does not seem that very much, or indeed any, weight can be attached.

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The one chief argument upon the other side is the very close and remarkable similarity, both in ideas and language, between the Epistles to Galatians and the Romans, and, in somewhat lower degree, 2 Corinthians. Any one may observe in himself a tendency to use similar words, and to fall into similar trains of thought at particular periods. This is especially the case with strong thinkers who take a firm grip of ideas, but are possessed of less facility and command of words in which to express them. Such was St. Paul. And accordingly we find that the evidence of style as a help to determine the chronological relations of the different Epistles is peculiarly clear and distinct. But in the doctrinal portions of Romans and Galatians we have a resemblance so marked-the same main thesis, sup

ported by the same arguments, the same Scrip proofs (Lev. xviii. 5; Ps. cxliii. 2; Hab. ii. 4), the same example, Abraham, thrown into relief by the same contrast, that of the Law, developed to the same conse quences and couched throughout in language f striking similarity that we seem to be precluded from supposing any interval between them sufficient to allow of a break in the Apostle's mind. And o sidering the throng of events and emotions througt which the Apostle was now passing; observing further that the three Epistles, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans, in this order, form a climax as to the distine. ness with which the ideas expressed in them are elaborated, it would seem that the Epistle with which we are dealing should be placed between the other two; that is to say, we should assign it to the end of the year 57, or beginning of 58, and the place of its composition would probably be Macedonia or Greece.

The course, then, of the history will be this: St Paul first visited Galatia on the occasion of his second missionary journey soon after the memorable conference at Jerusalem, and probably about the year A.D. 51. His intention had been to pass from Lycaonia due west into the Roman province of Asia. From this, however, be was prevented, as St. Luke informs us, by some super. natural intimation. Accordingly he turned northwards through Phrygia, and so entered Galatia. Here he seems to have been detained by illness (Gal. iv. 13, 14). He took the opportunity to preach, and his preaching was so successful that the Church in Galatia was definitely founded. This work accomplished, he left for Mysia, and thence passed on to Troas and Macedonia, where the better known portion of the second missionary journey begins. After the conclusion of this journey St. Paul, in starting upon his third missionary journey, again directed his course to Galatia. This time the historian mentions " the country of Galatia and Phrygia" in a different order from that in which they had occurred before. We should conclude, therefore, that St. Paul made his way straight from Antioch; and as no mention is made this time of the churches of Lycaonia, it would seem probable that he took the direct Roman road skirting Cappadocia. On his arrival in Galatia we read that he went through it "in order, strengthening the disciples" (Acts xviii. 23). We should gather from some indications in the Epistle (chaps. iv. 16; v. 21) that he had found it necessary to administer rather severe reproof to his converts. Already there were signs of false teaching in the Church. The Apostle's Judaising opponents had obtained an entrance, and he was obliged to speak of them in language of strong condemnation (Gal. i. 9). But the warning was in vain. This second visit had taken place in the autumn of A.D. 54, and from the end of that year till the autumn of A.D. 57, during which he was settled at Ephesus, disquieting rumours continued to be brought to him of the increasing de fection of his converts, and the increasing influence of the Judaising party. Matters went on from bad to worse; and at last, apparently upon his way through Macedonia to Greece, the Apostle received such news as determined him to write at once. The Epistle bears marks of having been written under the influence of a strong and fresh impression; and Dr. Lightfoot, with his usual delicate acumen, infers from the greeting, "from all the brethren that are with me (chap. i. 2), that it was probably written en voyage, and not from any of the larger churches of Macedonia, or, as might have been otherwise thought natural, Corinth. At all events, it would seem that we should be keeping most

closely to the canons of probability if we assign the Epistle to the winter months of the years 57-58.

V. Genuineness of the Epistle.-No doubt of any real importance has been or can be cast upon the genuineness of the Epistle. It is one of those fervid outbursts of impassioned thought and feeling which are too rare and too strongly individual to be imitated. The internal evidence, therefore, alone would be sufficient, but the external evidence is also considerable. It is true that nothing conclusive is found in the apostolic fathers. The clearest allusion would seem to be in the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, cap. 5: "Knowing, then, that God is not mocked" (a peculiar and striking word) "we ought to walk in His commandment and His glory" (comp. Gal. vi. 7); and again, in chap. iii., with perhaps a somewhat more direct reference, "who (St. Paul) also in his absence wrote unto you Epistles that you might be able to be built up unto the faith given you, which is the mother of us all." (Comp. Gal. iv. 26.) It is noticeable that though Justin Martyr does not name the Epistle, and, indeed, nowhere directly quotes from St. Paul, yet in two consecutive chapters he makes use of two passages of the Old Testament (Deut. xxi. 23, and xxvii. 26), which are also quoted in close connection by St. Paul, and that these passages are given with precisely the same variations both from the Septuagint and the Hebrew. There is also a clear quotation in Athenagoras (circ. 177 a.D.). But, until we get towards the end of the second century, the best evidence is not so much that of orthodox writers as of heretics. Marcion, who flourished A.D. 140, laid great stress upon this Epistle, which he placed first of the ten which he recognised as St. Paul's. The Ophites and Valentinians, in writings belonging to this century, quoted largely from it. Celsus (circ. 178) speaks of the saying, Gal. vi. 14, "The world is crucified

unto me, and I unto the world," as commonly heard amongst Christians. The author of the Clementine Homilies (which may be probably, though not certainly, placed about 160 A.D.) grounds upon St. Paul's account of the dispute at Antioch an attack upon the Apostle himself; and the Epistle furnishes other material for accusation. As we draw near the last quarter of the century the evidence for this, as for most other books of the New Testament, becomes ample. The Muratorian Canon (circ. 170 A.D.) places the Epistle in the second place, next to 1 and 2 Corinthians. The Syriac and the Old Latin translations (the second of which was certainly, and the first probably, made before this time), both contain it. Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, quote the Epistle frequently, and as a work of St. Paul's. And, what is of still more importance, the text, as it appears in quotations by these writers, as well as in the versions, and even so far back as Marcion, already bears marks of corruption, showing that it had been for some time in existence, and that it had passed through a lengthened process of corruption. But to prove the genuineness of the Epistle to the Galatians is superfluous. It is rather interesting to collect the evidence as a specimen of the kind of evidence that, in the case of a work of acknowledged genuineness, is forthcoming.

[The English commentator upon the Epistle to the Galatians has no excuse beyond the calibre of his own powers, if his treatment of the subject is inadequate. He has before him two commentaries in his own language, Dr. Lightfoot's and Bishop Ellicott's, which, in their kind, cannot easily be surpassed. It is needless to say that these, along with Meyer, have been taken as the basis of the present edition, Wieseler, Alford, and Wordsworth being occasionally consulted.]

CHAPTER I.-(1) Paul, an apostle, Chap. i. 1–5. (not of men, neither by The salutation. man, but by Jesus Christ,

I.

(1-5) It is no self-constituted teacher by whom the Galatians are addressed, but an Apostle who, like the chosen Twelve, had received his commission, not from any human source or through any human agency, but directly from God and Christ. As such, he and his companions that are with him give Christian greeting to the Galatian churches, invoking upon them the highest of spiritual blessings from God, the common Father of all believers, and that Redeemer whose saving work they denied and, by their relapse into the ways of the world around them, practically frustrated.

St. Paul had a two-fold object in writing to the Galatians. They had disparaged his authority, and they had fallen back from the true spiritual view of Christianity-in which all was due to the divine grace and love manifested in the death of Christ-to a system of Jewish ceremonialism. And at the very outset of his Epistle, in the salutation itself, the Apostle meets them on both these points. On the one hand, he asserts the divine basis of the authority which he himself claimed; and on the other, he takes occasion to state emphatically the redeeming work of Christ, and its object to free mankind from those evil surroundings into the grasp of which the Galatians seemed again to be falling.

(1) An apostle.—This title is evidently to be taken here in its strictest sense, as St. Paul is insisting upon his equality in every respect with the Twelve. The word was also capable of a less exclusive use, in which the Apostle would seem to be distinguished from the Twelve (1 Cor. xv. 5, 7). In this sense Barnabas and James the Lord's brother, possibly also Andronicus and Junias in Rom. xvi. 7, were called " Apostles."

Not of men, neither by man.-Two distinct prepositions are used:-"not of" (i.e., from) "men," in the sense of the ultimate source from which authority is derived; "neither by " (or, through) " man," with reference to the channel or agency by which it is conveyed. Thus we speak of the Queen as the "fount of honour, though honour may be conferred by the ministry acting in her name. The kind of honour which St. Paul held (his Apostleship) was such as could be derived only from God; nor was any human instrumentality made use of in conferring it upon him. His appointment to the Apostolate is connected by St. Paul directly with the supernatural appearance which met him upon the way to Damascus. The part played by Ananias was too subordinate to introduce a human element into it; and the subsequent "separation" of Paul and Barnabas for the mission to the Gentiles, though the act of the Church at Antioch,

and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;) (2) and all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches

was dictated by the Holy Ghost, and was rather the assignment of a special sphere than the conferring of a new office and new powers.

By Jesus Christ. The preposition here, as in the last clause, is that which is usually taken to express the idea of mediate agency. It represents the channel down which the stream flows, not the fountain-head from which it springs. Hence it is applied appropriately to Christ as the Logos, or Word, through whom God the Father communicates with men as the divine agent in the work of creation, redemption, revelation. (See John i. 3; 1 Cor. viii. 6; Heb. i. 2, et al.) It is also applied to men as the instruments for carrying out the divine purposes. The intervention of Jesus Christ took place in the vision through which, from a persecutor, St. Paul became a chosen vessel" for the propagation of the gospel.

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And God the Father-i.e., and by (or, through) God the Father; the same preposition governing the whole clause. We should naturally have expected the other preposition ("of," or "from"), which signifies source, and not this, which signifies instrumentality; and it would have been more usual with the Apostle to say, "from God," and "by, or through, Christ.' But God is at once the remote and the mediate, or efficient, cause of all that is done in carrying out His own designs. "Of him, and through him, and to him are all things" (Rom. xi. 36).

The Father.-This is to be taken in the sense in which our Lord Himself spoke of God as "My Father," with reference to the peculiar and unique character of His own sonship-the Father, i.e., of Christ, not of all Christians, and still less, as the phrase is sometimes used, of all men. This appears from the context. The title is evidently given for the sake of contradistinction; and it is noticeable that at this very early date the same phrase is chosen as that which bore so prominent a place in the later creeds and the theology of which they were the expression.

Who raised him from the dead.-Comp. Rom. i. 4: "Declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead." The resurrection is the act which the Apostle regards as completing the divine exaltation of Christ. It is this exaltation, therefore, which seems to be in his mind. He had derived his own authority directly from God and Christ as sharers of the same divine majesty. It was not the man Jesus by whom it had been conferred upon him, but the risen and ascended Saviour, who, by the fact of his resurrection, was declared to be the Son of God with power." So that the commission of the Apostle was, in all respects, divine and not human. (2) All the brethren which are with me-i.e.,

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