Some disciples[898], however, had been made even in Lystra, and these did not now desert their teacher in the hour of peril. While they were standing around him, and probably using means for his restoration, the Apostle arose, and returned with them to his abode. A longer stay was clearly dangerous, and therefore on the morrow he and his companion left for the neighbouring town of Derbe, and thence, having preached the Word and made several disciples (Acts xiv. 21), they returned through the several towns they had visited, exhorting the disciples to abide constant in the faith, and reminding them that _through much affliction they must enter the kingdom of God_. Moreover in the several churches they had established they now appointed elders[899], and after prayer and fasting, solemnly presented them before the Lord (Acts xiv. 23). Thence they proceeded to Perga, and after preaching the Word there, to the sea-port of ♦Attaleia. There they took ship, and sailing to Seleucia reached Antioch, and on their arrival summoned the brethren, and announced to them the success of their mission, and the many proofs they had witnessed that _God had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles_ (Acts xiv. 27). Arrived at Antioch, the Apostles continued there for some time, A.D. 47–50, strengthening and confirming the faith of the Church, and during their stay began that contest with the Judaizing Christians with which St Paul was destined to be so largely occupied. It had by this time become clear that the Christian faith, instead of being the purest and highest form of Judaism, was to prove itself a world-wide universal religion, and that its Jewish elements were to be absorbed and _vanish away_. In every nation and in every place, at Joppa, at Cæsarea, at Antioch, in rude village-towns like Lystra and Derbe, as well as populous cities like Perga and Iconium, it was seen that God accepted without respect of persons those that feared Him and worked righteousness (Acts x. 34, 35). Such a revolution of feeling towards the Gentile world[900] could not be at once received with entire acquiescence. At Jerusalem, in sight of the Temple, and in the midst of all the associations of his faith and national history, the exclusive feelings, which the Jew carried with him wherever he went, were concentrated and intensified[901]. Hitherto there had been no attempt to define the mutual relations of Jewish and Gentile converts. “All such questions, it would seem, had been tacitly passed over, neither side perhaps being desirous of provoking discussion[902].” Events, however, now occurred, which rendered necessary a solution of the question.