Corinth

• Corinth

130:0.3Af­ter their stay in Rome they went over­land to Tar­en­tum, where they set sail for Athens in Greece, stop­ping at Nicopo­lis and Corinth. From Athens they went to Eph­esus by way of Troas. From Eph­esus they sailed for Cyprus, putting in at Rhodes on the way. They spent con­sid­er­able time vis­it­ing and rest­ing on Cyprus and then sailed for An­ti­och in Syria. From An­ti­och they jour­neyed south to Sidon and then went over to Da­mas­cus. From there they trav­eled by car­a­van to Mes­o­po­ta­mia, pass­ing through Thap­sacus and Larissa. They spent some time in Baby­lon, vis­ited Ur and other places, and then went to Susa. From Susa they jour­neyed to Charax, from which place Gonod and Ga­nid em­barked for In­dia.

• capital of Roman province of Achaia

133:2.5They spent sev­eral days at Nicopo­lis, the city which Au­gus­tus had founded some fifty years be­fore as the “city of vic­tory” in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the bat­tle of Ac­tium, this site be­ing the land whereon he camped with his army be­fore the bat­tle. They lodged in the home of one Jer­amy, a Greek pros­e­lyte of the Jew­ish faith, whom they had met on ship­board. The Apos­tle Paul spent all win­ter with the son of Jer­amy in the same house in the course of his third mis­sion­ary jour­ney. From Nicopo­lis they sailed on the same boat for Corinth, the cap­i­tal of the Ro­man prov­ince of Achaia.

133:3.1By the time they reached Corinth, Ga­nid was be­com­ing very much in­ter­ested in the Jew­ish re­li­gion, and so it was not strange that, one day as they passed the syn­a­gogue and saw the peo­ple go­ing in, he re­quested Je­sus to take him to the ser­vice. That day they heard a learned rabbi dis­course on the “Des­tiny of Is­rael,” and af­ter the ser­vice they met one Cris­pus, the chief ruler of this syn­a­gogue. Many times they went back to the syn­a­gogue ser­vices, but chiefly to meet Cris­pus. Ga­nid grew to be very fond of Cris­pus, his wife, and their fam­ily of five chil­dren. He much en­joyed ob­serv­ing how a Jew con­ducted his fam­ily life.

133:3.2While Ga­nid stud­ied fam­ily life, Je­sus was teach­ing Cris­pus the bet­ter ways of re­li­gious liv­ing. Je­sus held more than twenty ses­sions with this for­ward-look­ing Jew; and it is not sur­pris­ing, years af­ter­ward, when Paul was preach­ing in this very syn­a­gogue, and when the Jews had re­jected his mes­sage and had voted to for­bid his fur­ther preach­ing in the syn­a­gogue, and when he then went to the gen­tiles, that Cris­pus with his en­tire fam­ily em­braced the new re­li­gion, and that he be­came one of the chief sup­ports of the Chris­tian church which Paul sub­se­quently or­ga­nized at Corinth.

133:3.3Dur­ing the eigh­teen months Paul preached in Corinth, be­ing later joined by Silas and Tim­o­thy, he met many oth­ers who had been taught by the “Jew­ish tu­tor of the son of an In­dian mer­chant.”

• 2nd city in Greece, 3rd in empire

133:3.4At Corinth they met peo­ple of ev­ery race hail­ing from three con­ti­nents. Next to Alexan­dria and Rome, it was the most cos­mopoli­tan city of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean em­pire. There was much to at­tract one’s at­ten­tion in this city, and Ga­nid never grew weary of vis­it­ing the citadel which stood al­most two thou­sand feet above the sea. He also spent a great deal of his spare time about the syn­a­gogue and in the home of Cris­pus. He was at first shocked, and later on charmed, by the sta­tus of woman in the Jew­ish home; it was a rev­e­la­tion to this young In­dian.

133:3.5Je­sus and Ga­nid were of­ten guests in an­other Jew­ish home, that of Jus­tus, a de­vout mer­chant, who lived along­side the syn­a­gogue. And many times, sub­se­quently, when the Apos­tle Paul so­journed in this home, did he lis­ten to the re­count­ing of these vis­its with the In­dian lad and his Jew­ish tu­tor, while both Paul and Jus­tus won­dered what­ever be­came of such a wise and bril­liant He­brew teacher.

133:3.6When in Rome, Ga­nid ob­served that Je­sus re­fused to ac­com­pany them to the pub­lic baths. Sev­eral times af­ter­ward the young man sought to in­duce Je­sus fur­ther to ex­press him­self in re­gard to the re­la­tions of the sexes. Though he would an­swer the lad’s ques­tions, he never seemed dis­posed to dis­cuss these sub­jects at great length. One evening as they strolled about Corinth out near where the wall of the citadel ran down to the sea, they were ac­costed by two pub­lic women. Ga­nid had im­bibed the idea, and rightly, that Je­sus was a man of high ide­als, and that he ab­horred ev­ery­thing which par­took of un­clean­ness or sa­vored of evil; ac­cord­ingly he spoke sharply to these women and rudely mo­tioned them away. When Je­sus saw this, he said to Ga­nid: “You mean well, but you should not pre­sume thus to speak to the chil­dren of God, even though they chance to be his erring chil­dren. Who are we that we should sit in judg­ment on these women? Do you hap­pen to know all of the cir­cum­stances which led them to re­sort to such meth­ods of ob­tain­ing a liveli­hood? Stop here with me while we talk about these mat­ters.” The cour­te­sans were as­ton­ished at what he said even more than was Ga­nid.

133:3.7As they stood there in the moon­light, Je­sus went on to say: “There lives within ev­ery hu­man mind a di­vine spirit, the gift of the Fa­ther in heaven. This good spirit ever strives to lead us to God, to help us to find God and to know God; but also within mor­tals there are many nat­u­ral phys­i­cal ten­den­cies which the Cre­ator put there to serve the well-be­ing of the in­di­vid­ual and the race. Now, of­ten­times, men and women be­come con­fused in their ef­forts to un­der­stand them­selves and to grap­ple with the man­i­fold dif­fi­cul­ties of mak­ing a liv­ing in a world so largely dom­i­nated by self­ish­ness and sin. I per­ceive, Ga­nid, that nei­ther of these women is will­fully wicked. I can tell by their faces that they have ex­pe­ri­enced much sor­row; they have suf­fered much at the hands of an ap­par­ently cruel fate; they have not in­ten­tion­ally cho­sen this sort of life; they have, in dis­cour­age­ment bor­der­ing on de­spair, sur­ren­dered to the pres­sure of the hour and ac­cepted this dis­taste­ful means of ob­tain­ing a liveli­hood as the best way out of a sit­u­a­tion that to them ap­peared hope­less. Ga­nid, some peo­ple are re­ally wicked at heart; they de­lib­er­ately choose to do mean things, but, tell me, as you look into these now tear-stained faces, do you see any­thing bad or wicked?” And as Je­sus paused for his re­ply, Ga­nid’s voice choked up as he stam­mered out his an­swer: “No, Teacher, I do not. And I apol­o­gize for my rude­ness to them—I crave their for­give­ness.” Then said Je­sus: “And I be­speak for them that they have for­given you as I speak for my Fa­ther in heaven that he has for­given them. Now all of you come with me to a friend’s house where we will seek re­fresh­ment and plan for the new and bet­ter life ahead.” Up to this time the amazed women had not ut­tered a word; they looked at each other and silently fol­lowed as the men led the way.

133:3.8Imag­ine the sur­prise of Jus­tus’ wife when, at this late hour, Je­sus ap­peared with Ga­nid and these two strangers, say­ing: “You will for­give us for com­ing at this hour, but Ga­nid and I de­sire a bite to eat, and we would share it with these our new-found friends, who are also in need of nour­ish­ment; and be­sides all this, we come to you with the thought that you will be in­ter­ested in coun­sel­ing with us as to the best way to help these women get a new start in life. They can tell you their story, but I sur­mise they have had much trou­ble, and their very pres­ence here in your house tes­ti­fies how earnestly they crave to know good peo­ple, and how will­ingly they will em­brace the op­por­tu­nity to show all the world—and even the an­gels of heaven—what brave and no­ble women they can be­come.”

133:3.9When Martha, Jus­tus’ wife, had spread the food on the ta­ble, Je­sus, tak­ing un­ex­pected leave of them, said: “As it is get­ting late, and since the young man’s fa­ther will be await­ing us, we pray to be ex­cused while we leave you here to­gether—three women—the beloved chil­dren of the Most High. And I will pray for your spir­i­tual guid­ance while you make plans for a new and bet­ter life on earth and eter­nal life in the great be­yond.”

133:3.10Thus did Je­sus and Ga­nid take leave of the women. So far the two cour­te­sans had said noth­ing; like­wise was Ga­nid speech­less. And for a few mo­ments so was Martha, but pres­ently she rose to the oc­ca­sion and did ev­ery­thing for these strangers that Je­sus had hoped for. The el­der of these two women died a short time there­after, with bright hopes of eter­nal sur­vival, and the younger woman worked at Jus­tus’ place of busi­ness and later be­came a life­long mem­ber of the first Chris­tian church in Corinth.

133:3.11Sev­eral times in the home of Cris­pus, Je­sus and Ga­nid met one Gaius, who sub­se­quently be­came a loyal sup­porter of Paul. Dur­ing these two months in Corinth they held in­ti­mate con­ver­sa­tions with scores of worth-while in­di­vid­u­als, and as a re­sult of all these ap­par­ently ca­sual con­tacts more than half of the in­di­vid­u­als so af­fected be­came mem­bers of the sub­se­quent Chris­tian com­mu­nity.

133:3.12When Paul first went to Corinth, he had not in­tended to make a pro­longed visit. But he did not know how well the Jew­ish tu­tor had pre­pared the way for his labors. And fur­ther, he dis­cov­ered that great in­ter­est had al­ready been aroused by Aquila and Priscilla, Aquila be­ing one of the Cyn­ics with whom Je­sus had come in con­tact when in Rome. This cou­ple were Jew­ish refugees from Rome, and they quickly em­braced Paul’s teach­ings. He lived with them and worked with them, for they were also tent­mak­ers. It was be­cause of these cir­cum­stances that Paul pro­longed his stay in Corinth.

133:4.1Je­sus and Ga­nid had many more in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ences in Corinth. They had close con­verse with a great num­ber of per­sons who greatly prof­ited by the in­struc­tion re­ceived from Je­sus.

133:4.2The miller he taught about grind­ing up the grains of truth in the mill of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence so as to ren­der the dif­fi­cult things of di­vine life read­ily re­ceiv­able by even the weak and fee­ble among one’s fel­low mor­tals. Said Je­sus: “Give the milk of truth to those who are babes in spir­i­tual per­cep­tion. In your liv­ing and lov­ing min­istry serve spir­i­tual food in at­trac­tive form and suited to the ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity of each of your in­quir­ers.”

133:4.3To the Ro­man cen­tu­rion he said: “Ren­der unto Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and unto God the things which are God’s. The sin­cere ser­vice of God and the loyal ser­vice of Cae­sar do not con­flict un­less Cae­sar should pre­sume to ar­ro­gate to him­self that homage which alone can be claimed by De­ity. Loy­alty to God, if you should come to know him, would ren­der you all the more loyal and faith­ful in your de­vo­tion to a wor­thy em­peror.”

133:4.4To the earnest leader of the Mith­raic cult he said: “You do well to seek for a re­li­gion of eter­nal sal­va­tion, but you err to go in quest of such a glo­ri­ous truth among man-made mys­ter­ies and hu­man philoso­phies. Know you not that the mys­tery of eter­nal sal­va­tion dwells within your own soul? Do you not know that the God of heaven has sent his spirit to live within you, and that this spirit will lead all truth-lov­ing and God-serv­ing mor­tals out of this life and through the por­tals of death up to the eter­nal heights of light where God waits to re­ceive his chil­dren? And never for­get: You who know God are the sons of God if you truly yearn to be like him.”

133:4.5To the Epi­curean teacher he said: “You do well to choose the best and es­teem the good, but are you wise when you fail to dis­cern the greater things of mor­tal life which are em­bod­ied in the spirit realms de­rived from the re­al­iza­tion of the pres­ence of God in the hu­man heart? The great thing in all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence is the re­al­iza­tion of know­ing the God whose spirit lives within you and seeks to lead you forth on that long and al­most end­less jour­ney of at­tain­ing the per­sonal pres­ence of our com­mon Fa­ther, the God of all cre­ation, the Lord of uni­verses.”

133:4.6To the Greek con­trac­tor and builder he said: “My friend, as you build the ma­te­rial struc­tures of men, grow a spir­i­tual char­ac­ter in the simil­i­tude of the di­vine spirit within your soul. Do not let your achieve­ment as a tem­po­ral builder out­run your at­tain­ment as a spir­i­tual son of the king­dom of heaven. While you build the man­sions of time for an­other, ne­glect not to se­cure your ti­tle to the man­sions of eter­nity for your­self. Ever re­mem­ber, there is a city whose foun­da­tions are righ­teous­ness and truth, and whose builder and maker is God.”

133:4.7To the Ro­man judge he said: “As you judge men, re­mem­ber that you your­self will also some day come to judg­ment be­fore the bar of the Rulers of a uni­verse. Judge justly, even mer­ci­fully, even as you shall some day thus crave mer­ci­ful con­sid­er­a­tion at the hands of the Su­preme Ar­biter. Judge as you would be judged un­der sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances, thus be­ing guided by the spirit of the law as well as by its let­ter. And even as you ac­cord jus­tice dom­i­nated by fair­ness in the light of the need of those who are brought be­fore you, so shall you have the right to ex­pect jus­tice tem­pered by mercy when you some­time stand be­fore the Judge of all the earth.”

133:4.8To the mis­tress of the Greek inn he said: “Min­is­ter your hos­pi­tal­ity as one who en­ter­tains the chil­dren of the Most High. El­e­vate the drudgery of your daily toil to the high lev­els of a fine art through the in­creas­ing re­al­iza­tion that you min­is­ter to God in the per­sons whom he in­dwells by his spirit which has de­scended to live within the hearts of men, thereby seek­ing to trans­form their minds and lead their souls to the knowl­edge of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of all these be­stowed gifts of the di­vine spirit.”

133:4.9Je­sus had many vis­its with a Chi­nese mer­chant. In say­ing good-bye, he ad­mon­ished him: “Wor­ship only God, who is your true spirit an­ces­tor. Re­mem­ber that the Fa­ther’s spirit ever lives within you and al­ways points your soul-di­rec­tion heav­en­ward. If you fol­low the un­con­scious lead­ings of this im­mor­tal spirit, you are cer­tain to con­tinue on in the up­lifted way of find­ing God. And when you do at­tain the Fa­ther in heaven, it will be be­cause by seek­ing him you have be­come more and more like him. And so farewell, Chang, but only for a sea­son, for we shall meet again in the worlds of light where the Fa­ther of spirit souls has pro­vided many de­light­ful stop­ping-places for those who are Par­a­dise-bound.”

133:4.10To the trav­eler from Britain he said: “My brother, I per­ceive you are seek­ing for truth, and I sug­gest that the spirit of the Fa­ther of all truth may chance to dwell within you. Did you ever sin­cerely en­deavor to talk with the spirit of your own soul? Such a thing is in­deed dif­fi­cult and sel­dom yields con­scious­ness of suc­cess; but ev­ery hon­est at­tempt of the ma­te­rial mind to com­mu­ni­cate with its in­dwelling spirit meets with cer­tain suc­cess, not­with­stand­ing that the ma­jor­ity of all such mag­nif­i­cent hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences must long re­main as super­con­scious reg­is­tra­tions in the souls of such God-know­ing mor­tals.”

133:4.11To the run­away lad Je­sus said: “Re­mem­ber, there are two things you can­not run away from—God and your­self. Wher­ever you may go, you take with you your­self and the spirit of the heav­enly Fa­ther which lives within your heart. My son, stop try­ing to de­ceive your­self; set­tle down to the coura­geous prac­tice of fac­ing the facts of life; lay firm hold on the as­sur­ances of son­ship with God and the cer­tainty of eter­nal life, as I have in­structed you. From this day on pur­pose to be a real man, a man de­ter­mined to face life bravely and in­tel­li­gently.”

133:4.12To the con­demned crim­i­nal he said at the last hour: “My brother, you have fallen on evil times. You lost your way; you be­came en­tan­gled in the meshes of crime. From talk­ing to you, I well know you did not plan to do the thing which is about to cost you your tem­po­ral life. But you did do this evil, and your fel­lows have ad­judged you guilty; they have de­ter­mined that you shall die. You or I may not deny the state this right of self-de­fense in the man­ner of its own choos­ing. There seems to be no way of hu­manly es­cap­ing the penalty of your wrong­do­ing. Your fel­lows must judge you by what you did, but there is a Judge to whom you may ap­peal for for­give­ness, and who will judge you by your real mo­tives and bet­ter in­ten­tions. You need not fear to meet the judg­ment of God if your re­pen­tance is gen­uine and your faith sin­cere. The fact that your er­ror car­ries with it the death penalty im­posed by man does not prej­u­dice the chance of your soul to ob­tain jus­tice and en­joy mercy be­fore the heav­enly courts.”

• 2nd city in Greece, 3rd in empire

133:4.13Je­sus en­joyed many in­ti­mate talks with a large num­ber of hun­gry souls, too many to find a place in this rec­ord. The three trav­el­ers en­joyed their so­journ in Corinth. Ex­cept­ing Athens, which was more renowned as an ed­u­ca­tional cen­ter, Corinth was the most im­por­tant city in Greece dur­ing these Ro­man times, and their two months’ stay in this thriv­ing com­mer­cial cen­ter af­forded op­por­tu­nity for all three of them to gain much valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence. Their so­journ in this city was one of the most in­ter­est­ing of all their stops on the way back from Rome.

• land track between harbors

133:4.14Gonod had many in­ter­ests in Corinth, but fi­nally his busi­ness was fin­ished, and they pre­pared to sail for Athens. They trav­eled on a small boat which could be car­ried over­land on a land track from one of Corinth’s har­bors to the other, a dis­tance of ten miles.

• Peter visited

139:2.11Af­ter leav­ing Je­ru­sa­lem and be­fore Paul be­came the lead­ing spirit among the gen­tile Chris­tian churches, Pe­ter trav­eled ex­ten­sively, vis­it­ing all the churches from Baby­lon to Corinth. He even vis­ited and min­is­tered to many of the churches which had been raised up by Paul. Al­though Pe­ter and Paul dif­fered much in tem­per­a­ment and ed­u­ca­tion, even in the­ol­ogy, they worked to­gether har­mo­niously for the up­build­ing of the churches dur­ing their later years.