The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1916-05-05
International
Sunday School Lesson
BY w. T. ELLIS.
May is 1.-The Missionaries of An
tioch'-Acts 11:19-30.
When Saints Had a City Sense.


city Christianity got its name and its
world vision in a city, and big heath
en- city at that. Everybody Knows
that the church's greatest present
Broadly speaking, the church is suf-
fering a defeat in urban centers: she
is dominating civic life in a diminish
ing degree. Where problems are
thickest there churches are fewest-
Worse yet, the Christian leader with
a civic sense and spirit is rare almost
to the degree of invisibility. Most
ministers in great cities think in terms
of their own parishes. 1t IS notorious
that no movement or leadership has
ever been able to get the New York
pastors together for active co-opera-
ton in any city-wide Christian service.
Each is overwhelmed by his own pa
rochial problems. A need that under
lies most. other needs in our modern
church life is for a leadership that will
think in large units.
The City Problem Not New.
There is overmuch wailing about
the new problems which have been
created for the church by the modern
city. This lament seems to assume
that Christianity was constructed in
units of rural congregations. Frankly
this is nothing less than absurd. The
Christian church began in Jerusalem.
Its first notable victories were won
there. in the face of such opposition
as is found nowhere in Christendom
today. The greatest conquest of the
early church was in the third city in
the Roman empire, Antioch, with its
half million residents.
Now Antioch was no modern Phil
adelphia, predisposed by tradition and
aptitude toward Christianity. The ut
terness of its heathendom is glimpsed
in ben Hur,' with its pictures of the
denominations of the Grove of Daphne,
five miles out of Antioch. 1t was from
this great heather city that Christian
ity received it's name; and it was in
Antioch that there began the mission
airy enterprise for the conquest of the
cities of the old world.
In Antioch a vast number turned
to Christ. That result was won by
laymen, average folk who had been
scattered from Jerusalem by the trib-
ulations that arose over the martyr
dom of Stephen. AS they went they
preached. The brands that had been
sent flying far and wide by the foot of
persecution each started a fire in some
new place. Those early disciples were
like the modern Korean Christians,
who sometimes move their homes and
their businesses to new communities
| for the gospels sake. The first and
final dependence of the kingdom has
| been upon the Witnesses who bear
testimony, wherever they may be put
| to the new life that is in Christ Jesus
New Light ON Old Places
One is surprised when he realizes
how cosmopolitan was the early
church. We find the dispersed disci-
| Piles going to Cyprus, the British Is
| lard in the Mediterranean. where now
| troops are garrisoned and about
which the warships are sailing today;
and to old Phoenicia, the maritime
nation lying along the upper coast of
Palestine and Syria: and to the great
Ecity of Antioch Antioch has Recently,
! int he Of y a.
| marvellous defence which its Armenian
| Christians made for fifty-three days,
on mountain outside of the city,
against the attacking Moslem hosts.
The personnel of the church at An
tioch, which as the biggest city in the
whole region, beca me the natural rem
| devious of fugitives from Jerusalem,
was even more cosmopolitan yet. We
find among the names Lucius the
/ Cyrenean-aH students of geogra ply
identify Cyrene as within the modern
Tripoli, which Italy lately seized from
the Turks; and Manaen, the foster
brother of Herod; and Saul from the
| university of TarsuS. and Simeon the
Biaek-who may have been the simon
| of Cyrene who carried the cross of Je-
sus; and Barnabes of Jerusalem.
With such leadership the new
| church at Antioch could not be pa
| rochial or provincial. 1t had to think
in terms of the then known world.
The sympathies and contact and out
reach of the church membership ran
as far as the Roman dominions. In
| tolerance wss impossible to these men
| blazing with the zeal for the crucified
Christ.
It was easy for them to slip over the
fence of Judaism and carry the Good
| News to the Gentiles also. Their
breadth of vision made it impossible
for them to be holden by the narrow
prejudices of Judaism. So their con-
| kG x1yif n
such rapidity that the news was quick
ly carried to the mother church at
| Jerusalem.
A Radical Revival.
That news from Antioch upset the
Jerusalem leaders. They were con-
servatives, and solicitous for the pres
| ervation of the type The fear of her
esy had gripped them. 1t was with
sincere and pious alarm that they
learned chat the Christians exiled to
Antioch had preached to Gentiles as
well as to Jews
Little did they know that this fact
chronicled the high-water mark of the
history Of the Apostolic church. One
commentator calls this simple state
ment of the preaching to the Greeks
at Antioch, the climax of the Book of
the Acts" 1t records in few and sim
pie words the beginning of a new era
The truth was established and sealed
by the Spirit, that Christianity was
no longer for the Jews alone, but for
all the world.
In somewhat of a panic the Jeru-
salem leaders sent their star preacher
Barnabas, down to Antioch to set the
Christians straight, and to safeguard
their orthodoxy. But Barnabas was
bigger than his mission. He saw that
the hand of the Lord was with the
Antioch Christians, and he was glad
No heresy- hunting for him among
men who showed the Spirit of Christ
His religion was so vital that he ref-
ognized the real test of discipleshfp
Would that the Barnabas spirit might
dominate the great religious meeting
of this month of May, some of which
are perturbed over heresies and &c
clesiastical procedure. It is the spirit
of Christ and the works of Christ that