'YALE«¥IMII¥EI&SiniTo iuiisiiyrarar DIVINITY SCHOOL TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY @f)rist and gJjrtetianUg THE ' f ' •¦,-/" PICTURE OF %AUL (THE DISCIPLE) BY THE REV. H. R. HA WE IS, M.A. INCUMBENT OF ST. JAMES'S, MABYLEBONE AUTHOR OP 'MUSIC AND MORALS' ' THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES* 'SPEECH IN SEASON' 'THE BROAD CHURCH' 'THE DEAD PULPIT' ETC. LONDON URNET AND ISBISTEK ,16 BTJCKIN&HAM STREET, STRAND 1902 PRINTED ET SPOTTISWOODE AKD CO. LTD., SEW-STEEET SQUARE LONDOIS FOKEWOKDS ' The Picture of Paul ' has been drawn by himself. He is seen after the lapse of nineteen hundred years through no luminous haze. To read his Epistles in conjunction with Luke's diary, ' The Acts,' is like looking through some magic glass or mutoscope and seeing the Apostle alive again on his way to Damascus, or battling with the storms of the Mediterranean — hurrying from port to port — weaving mats in hired lodgings — charming princes with his elo quence —dictating to Timothy in private — pleading with his ' countrymen ' in the crowded synagogues — facing the philosophers on Mars Hill — lying crushed beneath stones at Lystra — preaching to devoted congregations in upper »rooms — kneeling down to pray with his Ephesians at : Miletus — shut in the stocks at Philippi — chained to a 'soldier in a prison cell at Jerusalem — or still in captivity, >but receiving all that came to him in his house beyond |the Tiber at Rome — answering for himself before Nero when ' no man stood by him ' — at last quite forsaken, alone, waiting for death — the victory almost won. 288 FOREWORDS The sharpness of outline is often surprising— the colouring positively dazzles the eye — the lights are ' above the brightness of the sun ' — the shadows are of ' blackness and darkness and tempest.' Paul moves before us ever ' in the gloom of gloom, and the sunshine of sunshine.' We can almost feel the emotion of his people — we can almost see their faces as they are ready to pluck out their own eyes and give them to him — for their lives are mir rored in his heart, and echoes of their very words still reach us ; we can hear Paul's voice too, faltering at times with passion, and broken with suppressed fervour. His sentences leap and rush, and then hang suspended like the waters of a cataract dispersing in clouds of foam and constantly smitten with the rainbow tints of love. Sud denly the current of his speech broadens into a majestic river, and moves on with the roll and harmony as of full waters — widening out towards the sea with the shining coasts of Eternity beyond. Of all past writers Luther seems to me the only one who has intensely seized the personality of Paul. He lived with him as one lives with a familiar friend — under stood his temptations through his own — spoke of him as ' Dear Paul; and, whilst inevitably twisting his doctrine, was certainly touched in a remarkable manner by the greatness of his spirit. In modern times there is but one artist who has, in an equal degree, entered into the heart of Paul and seized FOREWORDS 289 with the intuition of imaginative genius his unique figure. 'His natural character,' writes Dr. Jowett ('Paul's Epistles,' vol. i. p. 367), ' was the type of that communion of the spirit he preached ; the meanness of his appearance which he attributed to himself ; the image of that con trast which the gospel presents to human greatness. Glorying and humiliation ; life and death ; a vision of angels strengthening him; the "thorn in the flesh" rebuking him; the greatest tenderness, not without sternness ; sorrow above measure ; consolations above measure — are some of the contradictions which were reconciled in the same man. ' It is not a long life of ministerial success on which he is looking back a little before his death when he says, " I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." These words are sadly illustrated by another verse of the same Epistle : " This thou knowest, that all they that are in Asia be turned away from me " (2 Tim. i. 15). ' So when the contrast was at its height, he passed away rejoicing in persecution also, and " filling up that which was behind in the affliction of Christ for his body's sake." Many, if not most, of his followers had forsaken him, and there is no certain memorial of the manner of his death. ' Let us look once more a little closer at that " visage scarred" in his Master's service, as it appeared about three years before on a well-known scene. 290 FOREWORDS ' A poor, aged man, worn by some bodily or mental disorder, who had been often scourged, and bore on his face the traces of indignity and sorrow in every form— such an one led out of prison between Roman soldiers ; pro bably at times faltering in his utterance ; the creature, as he seemed to spectators, of nervous sensibility ; yearning, almost with a sort of fondness, to save the souls of those whom he saw around him — spoke a few eloquent words in the cause of Christian truth, at which kings were awed — telling the tale of his own conversion with such simple pathos, that after-ages have hardly heard the like.' It is scenes in the life of this man — not his biography — that I now present to the readers of ' Christ and Christianity.' My obligations to such writers as Bishop Ellicott, Mr. Ernest Renan, Dr. Jowett, Dean Stanley, and last, but not least, Canon Farrar, are only not acknowledged in detail because hardly a single page has been studied or written without reference to one or more of them. For the rest, I hope my prefaces to ' The Story of the Four ' and ' The Picture of Jesus ' will be held to be a full and adequate expression of my gratitude and indebted ness to all previous writers. CONTENTS 'ONE SAUL OF TARSUS ' No. PAKE No. PAGH 1. Paul's Supremacy . . 299 11. The Jewish Leaven . 303 2. Fidelity . . 300 12. Paul's Composite Train 3. Sound Judgment . 300 ing . . . . 303 4. Love of Mankind . 300 13. Gamaliel and the Haggada 304 5. Sources of Paul's Bio- 14. The Halacha . 304 graphy . . 300 15. The Haggada a Half-way 6. Luke and the Acts . . 301 House .... 305 7. Late Glimpses in the 16. The Old Order changeth . 305 Epistles . 301 17. Conversion 306 8. Events a.d. 34-90 . . 302 18. Saul sees through a Glass 9. Paul's Letters . . 302 darkly .... 306 10. Tarsus . 303 19. Saul Clings to the Old . 306 II SAUL HEARS STEPHEN 20. Saul nears the Crisis 21. The Narrow Church in all Ages .... 22. Stephen, a Dissenter with in the Church, thrust out .... 23. Is Novelty always Eevo- lution ? ... 24. Is Authority always Life ? 25. Saul's Self-conflict . 20. Stephen at the Bar . 308 27. Stephen Speaks 311 28. The First Count, ' Irrever 309 ence ' . 311 29. The Second Count, ' Moses ' 312 30. The' Third Count, 'The 309 Temple' 313 31. Stephen Stands at Bay . 314 310 32. The Mask down 314 310 33. They Stone him to Death 315 311 34. A Young Man named Saul 311 • looks on- . . 315 292 CONTENTS III SAUL MEETS WITH JESUS No. FAGTC No. PAGE 35. Spiritual Crisis 317 42. Saul Thinks . . .321 36. Conversion in General 317 43. Saul's growing Excite 37. Saul's Intellectual Pride . 318 ment . . . .321 38. Divine Leadings 319 44. Damascus in Sight . . 322 39. Saul the Persecutor . 319 45. The Vision . . .323 40. Judaic and Hellenic 46. More Visions and their Christians , 320 Solution . . .323 41. Saul en, route . 320 IV SAUL BEGINS WORK 47. God, Man, Self . 325 48. Saul in the Desert . 326 49. Saul Observes . 327 50. Preaches at Damascus 327 51. Scene in the Synagogue 327 52. A Sermon between the Lines . 328 53. A Perilous Escape . . 329 54. Saul's Desire to see Peter 330 55. Cool Beception at Jeru salem . . . .330 56. Barnabas comes to the Bescue. . . .330 57. Saul a Difficult Person . 331 PAUL TO THE GENTILES 58. Saul shipped off to Tarsus 332 68. Missionary Saul and Gov 59. ' Barnabas devina Paul ' . 333 ernor Paulus 338 60. ' First called Christians ' . 333 69. Saul Changes his Name 61. ' What's in a name ? ' 334 to Paul .... 339 62. Saul must go . 334 70. At Antioch in Pisidia 339 63. Separate me Barnabas and 71. Paul's Sermon . 340 Saul .... 334 72. Escape of Paul 340 64. Bound for Cyprus 335 73. Hunted by the Jews . 341 65. The First Passenger, Saul 336 74. Two Strange Gods . 341 66. The Second Passenger, 75. Paul is Stoned . 341 Barnabas 336 76. Confirming the Churches . 342 67. The Third Passenger, John Mark .... 337 CONTENTS 293 VI PAUL'S BATTLE WITH THE JEWS No. PAGE 77. Paul's Policy at Antioch . 343 78. Harassed by the Orthodox Party . . . .343 79. Excursion to Jerusalem . 344 80. Strained Belations . . 344 81. The Story in Galatians . 345 82. The Breach widens . . 346 83. Antioch Convulsed . . 346 No. PAGE 84. Paul's Supremacy . . 347 85. Paul's sudden Illness in Galatia . . .347 86. The Thorn in the Flesh . 348 87. Temperament of the Gala tians .... 349 88. For Our Learning . . 349 89. Paul meets Luke 90. Called in a Vision 91. The Divine Method 92. Philippi . 93. Lydia 94. A Girl Medium . 95. Arrest of Paul and Silas 96. Songs in the Night VII PAUL AT PHILIPPI 351 97. 'The prisoners heard . 352 them ' . 355 1 . 352 98. The Earthquake . 355 353 99. The Jailer's Conversion . 356 . 353 100. Paul and Silas Comforted 356 . 353 101. Paul's Dignified Triumph 356 Silas 354 102. ' The readiness is all ' 357 354 103. Joy in the House of Lydia 357 VIII PAUL AT ATHENS 104. At Thessalonica . . 359 105. Brought before the Magi strates . . . 360 106. Sails for Athens . . 360 107. Paul and the Parthenon . 360 108. Paul and Socrates . . 361 109. Paul and the Philosophers 362 110. Paul on Mais Hill . . 302 111. An impossible Situation . 362 112. Begins his Statement . 363 113. Fails to Please . . 363 114. Paul's Failure . . 365 IX PAUL AT CORINTH 115. Corinth . . . .366 116. The Corinthians . . 367 117. Paul as he seemed . . 367 118. Paul's View . . .367 119. Paul's Opportunity 368 120. Paul Works for a Living 368 294 CONTENTS IX. PAUL AT CORINTH— continued No. PAGE No. PAGR 121. Paul's Private Beceptions 369 128. Paul a Master of Detail . 373 122. Paul tries the Synagogue 369 129. Idol Meats . . 374 123. Crispus Converted . . 370 130. Mixed Marriages . 374 124. First-fruits at Corinth . 370 131. Going to Law . . 374 125. Paul changes his Method 371 132. Gifts and Graces . 375 126. Secrets of Style . . 372 133. On Charity . . 375 127. Paul's Moral Leverage . 372 134. Not many Fathers . 376 135. Immense Enterprise 136. ' I must see Bome ' 137. Ephesus . 138. The Silver Shrines . 139. Diana's Temple 140. Spiritualism . 141. ' Try the spirits ' 142. The Phenomena 143. Paul's Success 'AUL AT EP] EESUS e . 377 144. Pocket or Principle 381 . 377 145. Paul in Danger 382 . 378 146. The Town-clerk 382 . 378 147. The Town-clerk's Speech 382 . 379 148. The Internal History 383 . 379 149. The Ephesian Epistle 3S4 . 379 150. Epistles to Corinthians . 380 and Ephesians 384 . 381 XI PAUL'S FAREWELL TO ASIA MINOR 151. Paul turns to Jerusalem 385 152. Stopped at Philippi . 385 153. At Troas . . .386 154. Paul's Long Sermon . 386 155. Sleeping in Church . 387 156. Need of Solitude . . 387 157. His Policy . . .387 158. From Assos to Miletus . 388 159. Paul's Farewell Sermon . 388 160. Last Words . . .389 XII ARREST OF ST. PAUL AT JERUSALEM 161. Paul's Plans for a.d. 59-60 391 162. Paul and Philip at Tyre 391 163. Paul Warned but Besolute 392 164. Arrival at Jerusalem . 393 165. Introduction to James . 394 166. Chilling Beception . . 394 167. A Crushing Proposal . 395 168. An Awful Moment 169. A Moral Triumph 170. Clerical Hornets 171. Stung after all 172. Paul Mobbed . 173. Paul Faces his Foes 174. A Critical Moment . 396396397397398398 399 CONTENTS 295 XIII ST. PAUL'S APOLOGIA No. page 175. Paul's Tact . . .400 176. The Speech . . .400 177. Away with such Fellows ! 401 178. Paul to be Scourged . 403 179. Pleads Privilege . . 404 180. The Tables Turned . . 404 181. Paul Smitten on the Mouth . . . .405 No. PAGE 182. Paul's Stratagem de fended . . . .406 183. Paul true to the Letter and Spirit . . . 406 184. Growing Uproar . . 407 185. Lysias rescues Paul . 407 186. A Best for Paul . . 408 XIV PAUL BEFORE FELIX 187. Murder ! . 188. Paul's Sister and Nephew 189. How to treat ' a Boman ' 190. Escape .... 191. Felix reads 192. The Accusers arrive at Csesarea 193. Tertullus the Special Pleader 194. Brazen Flattery 195. Tertullus explains the Case .... 409 196. ' Take my oath of that ! ' 413 409 197. Paul's Beply . 414 410 198. Effect of Paul's Speech . 416 410 399. The Scene changes 417 411 200. Between the Joints of the Harness 417 411 201. Banquet and Prison 418 202. Avarice ! . . . . 418 412 203. Paul left Bound 419 412 204. Felix and his Last Mis take .... 420 412 205. End of Felix . 420 XV PAUL BEFORE FESTUS 206. The Jews on the Watch for Paul . . .421 207. Festus on Guard . . 421 208. Paul's Flat Denial . . 422 209. Befuses a Good (?) Offer . . . .422 210. End of Case Paul v. Sanhedrim . . < 423 296 CONTENTS XVI PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA AND BERENICE No.211 Visit of Agrippa and Berenice 212. Festus has an Idea . 213. A Novel Seance 1 . 214. Enter Paul . 215. ' Paul, thou art mad 1 ' PAGE 424424425 425 425 No. PAGE 216. Why Paul was stopped . 426 217. Father Hyacinth . . 427 218. Festus not unkind . . 427 219. ' Except these bonds ! ' . 427 220. Impression upon the Court . . . .428 XVII PAUL DISAPPEARS 221. At Last ! ... 430 222. Paul's Advice rejected . 430 223. The Storm . . .431 224. Paul's Ascendancy . . 431 225. Paul's Advice taken . 432 226. Paul's Practical Ministry 432 227. Prisoners in Peril . . 433 228. Winter at Malta . . 434 229. Last Becords . . . 434 230. To Bome . . .435 231. Paul before Nero . . 435 232. Belease and Be-arrest . 436 233. Time and Place of Death uncertain . . . 436 XVIII PRELUDE TO PAUL'S THEOLOGY 234. Method of Pauline Theo logy ... . 438 236. Epistles, Genuine or Otherwise . . . 439 235. Key-note of ' Hebrews ' . 438 237. Central Ideas 439 XIX PAUL'S LOVE IN GOD 238. Man is Akin to God . 440 j 240. Jesus the Meeting-point . 441 239. The Mystery revealed . 441 | 241. The Universal Embrace . 441 CONTENTS 297 XX PAUL'S LIFE IN CHRIST No. PAGE 242. Athanasian Doctrine . 442 243. The Life of God in Man . 442 244. The Union that ' Saves ' 443 245. Paul's Gospel hampered 443 246. The Atonement . . 444 247. Buddha and David . . 444 248. Vicarious Atonement . 445 249. The Popular Theology of the Shambles . . 445 No. PAGE 250. The Three Theories of Sacrifice . . . 446 251. The Substitution Theory 446 252. The Bepre sentative Theory . . .446 253. The Appropriation Theory . . .446 254. A Protestant Analogy . 447 255. How are we ' Saved ' 1 . 448 XXI PAUL'S JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 256. What is Justification ? . 449 257. Meanings of Faith . . 449 »58. Meanings of Works . 450 259. Meanings of the Law . 450 260. ' Justified by Faith ' ex plained by ' the Spirit and the Letter ' . . 451 261. Clear Vision . . .451 262. Accepted in the Beloved . 452 XXII PAUL'S PERFECT WAY 263. The Panacea . . .453 264. Love is Delegated Power 453 265. Love is enough . . 454 266. Faith and Hope . . 454 267. Varied Applications 268. The Care of all Churches the 455 455 'ONE SAUL OF TAESUS ' 1. Paul's supremacy. — 2. Fidelity. — 3. Sound judgment. — 4. Love of man kind.— 5. Sources of Paul's biography. — 6. Luke and the Acts.— 7. Late glimpses in the Epistles. — 8. Events a.d. 34 -90.— 9. Paul's letters — 10. Tarsus. — 11. The Jewish leaven. — 12. Paul's composite training. — 13. Gamaliel and the Haggada. — 14. The Halacha 15. The Haggada a half-way house. — 16. The old order changeth.— 17. Conversion.- -18 Saul sees through a glass darkly. — 19. Saul clings to the old. The large outlines of St. Paul's character are not hard to master. We have several of bis letters, though many are doubtless lost. We catch some very vivid glimpses i of him as we read his friend and travelling-physician's paul's diary (see ' Luke the Physician's Diary,' in ' Story sotkemacy. of the Four '). That work has something of the regularity and order of a developing drama — but there can be no doubt about who is the hero of it. In the absence of the great Apostle others may hold the stage, but Paul has only to appear and they are all no better than dummies by the side of him. He dwarfs his companions, and the philosophers and Roman kings and governors seem of small account. The very mise- en- scene is adjusted to suit him. He has but to open his lips and the trenchant views of the church at Jerusalem grow misty, and even James, the oracle of orthodoxy, begins to give forth an uncertain sound. St. Paul's qualities are sufficiently rare, and I think quite exceptional, in such a combination. 300 'ONE SAUL OF TARSUS' 1. Fidelity to tlie highest that was in him. That is not common. Christians sing, ' Teach us this and every day to live more nearly as we pray ' — I think Paul lived 2' . very nearly as he prayed — he could, without pre sumption, exclaim at the close of life, ' I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.' 2. A judicial calmness united to ardent enthusiasm. That, too, is rare. We don't trust the judgment of enthusiasts as a 3 rule ; but Paul was found to be the wisest and sound coolest of counsellors. In the Corinthian Epistles judgment. we jjave chapter after chapter occupied with deci sions dealing with all kinds of practical everyday concerns- sober, sometimes diplomatic, but well-ordered, comprehensive utterances, like those of a judge — and in the middle of it all bursts of intense enthusiasm, such as ' Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity,' ifcc— a fragment of perhaps unequalled beauty, which stands by no means alone. 3. An inexhaustible love of mankind — not seeking for return or reward — never discouraged by faithlessness or desertion — out- 4 living all manner of rebuffs, persecutions, calumny, love or slander — ' I will very willingly spend myself for mankind. yOU an(j ke spent, though the more abundantly I love you the less I am beloved.' That again is not common. I shall first deal briefly with the sources or authorities for Paul's life, and then call attention to that peculiarly transition state of mind through which he was passing when sources of we first come upon him as Saul of Tarsus. As to paud's the sources. Take the Acts first. The Acts were, niooBAi'HY. ag £ar ag we can gafcneri undoubtedly written by St. Luke.1 Luke was a Greek Jew — an Hellenist, not a Judaaan Jew, but a man who had come under Greek influence, and was 1 The reader will find what is here briefly summarised for convenience, more exhaustively stated iu my Story of the Four ; Luke, the Physician, and his Diary. 'ONE SAUL OF TARSUS' 301 in sympathy generally with the Roman Government. In Acts we are far away from the Jerusalem atmosphere. Luke's Palestine geography is not good — his Rabbinical lore is not famous, and he was imperfectly acquainted with the cliques, the wheels- within- wheels of the Judaising Christians — the Jerusalem party, and those who ' seemed to be pillars of the Church,' yet added ' so very little unto Paul.' Luke was the very man to travel with Paul. He was observant, sympathetic, gentle, conciliatory, careful — an excellent scholar and refined writer. If we take his diary g in the Acts as ' Guide-Book to the Mediterranean ' luke and with us to day we shall be surprised to find how THE ACTS- faithfully he describes those general outlines of nature that are the same now as then — the coast, the islands, the creeks, the winds and currents of that most treacherous of waters — the Mediterranean Sea. In all, then, that concerns Jerusalem and the Early Church Luke is of secondary authority ; his .narrative is heavily coloured by Greek and Roman sympathies — in all that concerns Paul, especially between the years 52 and 63, Luke's narrative is of first importance and authority. We may suppose that Luke was about twenty-five when he first travelled with Paul into Macedonia, a.d. 52. „ The Acts traverses the history of the Church from late 34 to 63, and is of great authority in all things glimpses in connected with Paul — especially between the eye witness years 52-63. At 63-4 the Acts stop, and stop very abruptly. Paul is taken on his own appeal as a prisoner to Rome, to be tried before Nero ; he disappears not long after the fire of Rome, about 67-8 — probably condemned to death after a second trial before the Emperor. We catch (if we accept II. Timothy as authentic) one fugitive glimpse of Luke, who seems to have visited Paul in prison after Demas had forsaken him. At that time, Paul found himself a lonely aged man. with hardly a friend left in the wide world — his beloved Asian Churches having mostly fallen away from him, his old companions being dead or terrified, and x2 302 .'ONE SAUL OF TARSUS' his influence rapidly on the decline. After a laborious life of apparent failure he was waiting for death ; still, however, trium phant in spirit, with every now and then a touch of human sadness, depression, and weariness. ' Only Luke is with me,' he writes in that last epistle to Timothy, ' do thy diligence to come shortly unto me,' that is, ' before winter.' But that winter never came to Paul ; before then he was taken to be ' for ever with the Lord,' which was ' far better.' Though the Acts deals with the Christian history, and especi ally with the history of Paul, between 34 and 63, Acts is later in publication than Luke's Gospel {cir. 90) — probably it did not appear till about 94-6, Luke being then over seventy. The same sort of thing occurs daily. Jefferson Davis and General Grant publish, twenty years after the events, their eye-witness account of the great American Civil War. Luke probably published, more than thirty years afterwards, his notes of Travels with Paul. (See ' Story of the Four,' pp. 16 and 130.) Before 90 many momentous things had taken place. Jesus had passed away — the infant Church had fled (65-8) from g Jerusalem to Persea, beyond Jordan — Jerusalem events itself had been burned (a.d. 70) and the Jews a.d. 34-90. massacred — the Gospel narrative had come together — Paul had scoured the Mediterranean and sown the seeds of a new Broad- Church Christianity throughout Asia Minor- Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Titus, Nerva, had succeeded each other on the Imperial throne ; and it was, perhaps, under the mild roign of Nerva that the Acts — (which carefully avoids allusion to any Christian grievances and to anything that could offend the authorities, who for a time seemed willing to let the Christians alone, if not actually favouring them) — it was, then, under Nerva that the Acts probably appeared (96 ?). The other source of Paul's life is his own correspondence-* y public and private. A few of these letters only paul's have been preserved, but they are enough to give letters. us a marvellous insight into his character— sup plying an accurate photograph of the man ; and one letter at 'ONE SAUL OF TARSUS' 303 least— to the Galatians — provides us with a sort of frame work for Paul's biography. With it we are able to check the loose chronological narrative and accommodating statements of the Acts in more places than one. As materials for Paul's life we have, then (1) the travelling diary of his friend and companion, the physician Luke ; (2) his own letters to his Churches and one or two addressed to private friends. Paul was born at Tarsus, probably about the year 3 ; Tarsus in Cilicia was a very bad place. Tpia Kcnnta mKiara — the three most villainous k's in the Empire, according to the Greeks, were Kappadokia, Kilikia, and Krete. rr ' ' tarsus. Tarsus was a busy seaside mart, with a mixed population — delightfully situated enough to be a fashionable resort. A veneer of refinement and a gloss of learning were put upon it by Greek schools and wealthy otiose residents, who had their villas in the neighbouring hills. The city thus presented a mixture of fashionable pollution, superstition, and science (falsely so called) which made it morally one of the unhealthiest spots upon the face of the earth. The Jewry established there, as almost everywhere, repre sented the only Puritan element or moral leaven in -^ the place. The Jews attracted to themselves and the jewish their cult in most of the Asia Minor towns the heaven. higher natures, inimical to the Oriental superstitions on the one hand, and to Roman practical Atheism on the other. The Jews had a profound horror of the Eastern idolatries and superstitions (outside their own cult) which came chiefly from Egypt, and they equally loathed the Greek and Roman impurities. New faiths and old corruptions PAul's were alike repulsive to the Jew. Paul, with his composite clean Pharisaic training, shrank instinctively from training. both ; yet he was himself singularly mixed. He was a Jew — a Roman citizen — a man of education and high Pharisaic culture, who had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the most liberal and humane 304 'ONE SAUL OF TARSUS' of Rabbis. Thus in the person and surroundings of Paul there seemed to meet the most varied and most irreconcilable elements : he owned to the pride of Jewish caste— he possessed the privi lege of Roman citizenship and culture — a combination which just touched the Greeks on one side, enabling him to quote their more hackneyed poets ; which touched the straitest sect of the Pharisees on the other, and enabled him to glory in his national heritage ('Are they Hebrews, so am I!') — add to all this a knowledge intimate and abhorrent of the heathen corruptions, described by him in language almost too plain for ears polite in the Epistle to the Romans. Surely a foreordained apostle to the Gentiles here ? — but not yet. To grasp the mental condition — the transition state of mind- Paul was evidently in when he first comes before us as Saul of ,„ Tarsus, we must begin with his master, Gamaliel. Gamaliel From him Paul probably acquired that passion for and the bringing his religious belief into conformity with the facts of life — with common sense and moral sense. Gamaliel was a Haggadist, not a Hcdachist. The Hagga dist devoted himself chiefly to the study of the Prophets, the Halachist to the Law. Along with the Haggadist or Pro phetical studies went a constant endeavour to restate — to find out the practical and spiritual thrust of the Mosaic teaching and apply it to the times — to illustrate with stories or parables— to make religion 'a comfort and a blessing,' as Emmanuel Deutsch puts it— to claim for it as many points of contact as possible with the conscience — to make it useful and cogent for the conduct of life — that was the mood and the method of the Haggadist. He was, in the best sense, the Jesuit of the period, for, like him, he re-se', re-stated, explained, and sought to reconcile all religious doctrine with conscience and common sense. The Halachist walked by the letter ; he was a ceremonialist 14 to the backbone, studied Moses chiefly on that side the — took little note of the Prophets, whom he mis- HALACHA. quote(J . he wag a man Qf Rujeg rather fchan of prin ciples. Instead of deducing rules from principles, he elevated rules 'ONE SAUL OF TARSUS' 305 fo the dignity of principles and increased their number until they had become so inconceivably burdensome and pedantic and minute that no one could possibly keep them all. Those Lawyers, Scribes, and Pharisees whom our Lord denounced were no doubt the Halachist section, with the Haggadists He would have much more sympathy — He was Himself, as far as His method of instruction went, the great Haggadist. It was the sympathetic Gamaliel-like Haggadistical instinct for bringing religious belief into conformity with the heart and conscience that at last saved Saul. 15 He was struggling with an outworn system, yet THE HAG0ADA he could find no other ; would not look for it, dread- a half-way ing novelty. He still clings passionately to the old. house. Haggadism had done its best for him, but it became increasingly hard to pour the new wine into the old bottles. The crisis of the ages repeats itself — Saul clinging frantically to Gamaliel, Luther trying to make terms with the Pope, the Jesuits invent ing a whole Haggadistical literature of forced interpretation rather than part with che old ecclesiastical system. For ever and for ever it is the old friends and enemies with the new faces. And the crises which come to churches come to earnest-minded individuals at all great transition epochs, like the first century, the sixteenth century, THE 0LD and, I may add, the nineteenth century. The old oedeb forms are passing away — old catechisms, old creeds, old dogmas, old ceremonies and watchwords, and, • not seeing what is to take their place, how they are to be changed, or 'clothed upon,' in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the young, and hasty, and eager, according to their quality of heart and head, adopt one of two courses. They either throw up everything, become, as they say, infidels, or they go backwards for a season like Saul ; at the very moment of the blankest mis giving — and when most unsatisfied, most doubting, they cling most fanatically to the old forms, just as drowning men cling to a rotten spar, because they cannot yet see the life-buoy which is being thrown to them. 306 'ONE SAUL OF TARSUS' This was Saul's exact condition when he stood in the crowd before the Sanhedrim and heard Stephen's oration. This was Saul's exact mood when he kept the clothes of the young men who stoned Stephen. The solution of such a transition state, which may be called conversion, the re-discovery of God, the vitalising of religion, the bringing our belief into sane and cogent accord with the conduct of life, comes to us, if it comes at CONVERSION. ' ' all, very much as it came to Saul. Sometimes the crisis of our religious life, the solution of our theological doubt, the restatement of our private faith, is marked by some piteous bereavement. Sometimes, as in the case of Peter, by a grievous fall ; sometimes by the winged words of a new spiritual teacher, like Stephen ; or by the stroke of bodily affliction, in the midst of which, as it were, we see a light aDd hear a voice. It was thus in the case of Saul. The phenomena of the religious life are startlingly constant — the passing from death unto life can seldom be without some wrench. Paul's whole life is, after all, but a parable of our own - this is its power. It is written down for our instruction and .„ consolation. He heard Stephen speak of a life saul sees transcending all forms — a spiritual power which in through a the past had been misknown, and was misknown in the present — of religious teachers who had been blind and carnal, betrayed their trust in the past and in the present — of a God that dwelt not in temples made with hands, but in the loving heart and the contrite spirit. But Saul was not yet ready for the only message which could bring him peace. He dreaded the new. He could not believe that 19, the priestly authorities which he had been taught haul clings to reverence — barren as they were — were wrong, TO THE OLD. an(j tha<; tnjngs were rJpe ISSENTEE WITHIN and wide-hearted Gamaliel sometimes taught ; but the church, the very kinship bred an extreme bitterness. It is TflB"s'' out. just those people in politics and religion who are separated in 310 SAUL HEARS STEPHEN opinion by a shade of meaning who hate each other most. Not the Whig and the Tory — not the High Church and the Low Church ,' but the Catholic and the High Church (at least on the Catholic side), the Liberal and the Adullamite (at least on the Liberal side). So it was the enlightened Jew and the Christian — the Jew who was nearest the Christian (at least on the Jewish side), Saul and Stephen (at least on Saul's side). Had Stephen's spiritual doctrine been tolerated inside the Jewish Church, under the aegis of the Sanhedrim, things might have been different ; as it was, Stephen's doctrine seemed a direct attack on ecclesiastical authority. He acknowledged One above Moses — he was already outside the pale of toleration. Saul's reverence for authority in these early days was exces sive. That belonged to him as a good Jew of the straitest sect. The Jewish Church seemed to him the only is novelty thing which stood between God's righteousness on always earth and the universal corruptions of the heathen ' J ' ' ' world. There was a good deal of sense in that view. Both of Saul's positions were respectable ; but they were half- truths. Novelty in religion or politics may mean — often does mean— anarchy and revolution ; but it may also mean the revival of neglected truths, the assertion of new truths, or the timely restatement and modification of old ones. Christianity meant all three. Saul could not see that yet — the scales had to fall from his eyes first. Reverence for established authority may mean love of order, morality, self-control ; it may also mean respect for systems 24 that have lasted too long— refusal to adapt the is authority forms of the past to the wants of the present — always life . s]avery t0 form, at the expense of substance ; but ' the life is more than meat and the body than raiment.' Saul could not see that either. By-and-bye he was to see and feel little else to the end of his life. But now he saw just what he chose to see, like a good many others. He had to go through a great shaking before he could acknowledge things as they were. SAUL HEARS STEPHEN 311 He had had his eye on the Christian sect for some time, no doubt. Every point of its teaching which was naturally calcu lated to make his heart bound with spontaneous 25 assent incensed him. The man who does not wish saul's self-. to be convinced, and is compelled to listen to cogent conflict. reasoning, what does he do 1 He gets savage — he stops his ears, and he gnashes his teeth — then, if he can — he persecutes. In the days of Saul he crucifies and stones his adversaries — in the Middle Ages he racks and barns them — in our days he traduces, misrepresents, and, if possible, ostracises and hunts them down socially to the utmost of his power. The council is set. Stephen, one of the Christian almoners, with a keener and more philosophic insight than most of the good Christians at Jerusalem into the essential dif- 26 ference between the spirit of Christ and that of the Stephen at Sanhedrim, Pharisee or Sadducee — Stephen, gifted IHE BAV" with rare eloquence, disputes eagerly in the synagogue, convincing raiher too many, and at last gets stopped and brought before the Council on a double charge — 1. He had spoken against God and the Temple ; 2. He had spoken against Moses and the Law. As the first charge of irreverence to God is cast at the Deacon, all eyes are turned upon him. His face was the answer. Those inquisitors seemed taken aback — a man's face 27 is, after all, the most convincing thing about him, Stephen conscious innocence has a way of asserting itself — speaks. ' his face was as the face of an angel ! ' He is allowed to sppak for himself. They very possibly meant to give him an impartial hearing, and they did up to a certain point. Let us overhear the running comments on his defence as he proceeds. A quiet, orderly narrative is that which opens at Acts vii. All about the God of Glory and the chosen people favoured by Him. 'Quite true,' whispers a Rabbi THE pIKST to his neighbour, surprised into an unusual interest count, ' ir- ir> the old familiar tale so succinctly put, ' he knows KEVEnEN0E- his history — he gives glory to God and our father Abraham — the statement is good — I think we shall have to acquit him of 312 SAUL HEARS STEPHEN irreverence — he's sound so far, eh 1 ' Then come the wanderings in the -desert. ' He touches that well,' says another, ' and the Promise, he's not forgotten the Covenant — and the Circumcision, sound about that too — most important.' Then to the reporting clerk aside (there were always two present), ' Set that down ' — [as who should say now-a-days ' the man is sound on Baptismal Regeneration or Verbal Inspiration ? — put it down in his favour ']. ' And the Providence which watched over Joseph- nothing could be better than his treatment of that.' ' Really, I think,' adds a third, ' the man has been maligned — these so called Christians are not so far wrong, in spite of their Messianic delusion, if they preach all this ; quite a decent set of people, though poor— wretchedly poor — most of them. Perhaps the first charge of irreverence to God may be dismissed — what say you ?' Here a couple of reverend greybeards, with keen eyes, lean forward to urge, ' We have not heard him yet on Moses or tlie Temple ; he's got to defend himself there — listen ! ' ' In which time,' continues Stephen, ' Moses was born.' Now for it ! Moses •was, fair (good), Moses was learned (good) — slays 2q the Egyptian, who is oppressing the Israelites— sup- the second poses that his brethren would have understood, hut count, they understood not — (more asides) — 'well, of HOSES course, early days, they hadn't really had much chance.' Stephen goes on to relate how next day Moses tries to reconcile two quarrelling Israelites. Again his mediation is rejected. ' True, true,' mutters Rabbi No. 1, ' but why harp on these early misunderstandings, what have they got to do with us ? ' Then comes the burning bush and the great commission to lead the people forth. ' He's on the right tack again — he does the great Lawgiver full honour ; we shall have to acquit him on that count too, I think— but listen ! ' Stephen contiuues, ' This Moses whom they refused ' — ' why can't he get off that unpleasant j ground 1 Why does he always allude to our fathers in connection j with the few blots upon our glorious Past ? ' ' Look to it,' says , Rabbi No. 2, ' we shall have to pull him up here, as they had to pull him up in the Synagogue, for by his mien I think he intends I these strictures as so many backhanders for us, by the Holy I SAUL HEARS STEPHEN 313 Mount ! — this won't do — hark ! ' ' Our fathers would not obey—- tliey thrust him from them — they made a calf in those days ' — ' we are not here to listen to this sort of thing, let the man stick to his case.' There is a growing impatience on the bench. ' Moses said a prophet shall the Lord raise up unto you like unto Me.' ' What ! he can't mean that Moses alluded to the crucified Nazarene ? ' ' That has been said, you know,' answers Rabbi No. 1, ' these ignorant followers of Jesus, harmless folk for the most part, believe it.' ' He's a slippery speaker,' says another, ' he is off that point— he won't follow up the prophecy — he's off the idolatry question too, but only after reminding us that our fathers rejected, misunderstood, and rebelled against Mces— 'tis an indirect insult to the Sanhedrim — there's method in it tho' — but still we can't say :that he's spoken against Moses — but how about the Temple ?.' ' Ay, the Temple's the chief point, after all,' mumbles an old priest, nodding his head. ' Solomon built Him an house' — 1 Good again ! ' says the old priest approvingly. ' Now for a worthy panegyric on the glorious THE THIED Temple, by which we live, with its blessed Corban count, ' the and all that 1 ' But as the image of the Temple TEMPLE-' rose before the inspired orator there crowded upon him also the thought of all the corruption, fraud, heartlessness, hypocrisy, and worse, of which the Temple courts had been the scene — ay, and were at that moment the centre — in truth, as Jesus said, that Temple had become ' a very den of thieves ! ' It was not possible that God should dwell in any house ; God was a Spirit, 'and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' The Temple might have been once the symbol of religion, but the religion it contained had outgrown it — outgrown the ceremonial law, outgrown all the Jewish framework, as it must indeed out grow all dogmatic and ceremonial frameworks ; for was it not written, 'They must perish, but Thou remainest — they all shall wax old, as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed.' Well, we know not what exalted spiritual developments the speech of Stephen may here have reached — we have but a sketch of that splendid ' Apology ' 314 SAUL HEARS STEPHEN — but we do know that just here he loses, once and for ever, touch with his audience. The drift of his argument was no longer doubtful — not against the Law, or Moses, or the Temple, but against the Priests and Elders, Scribes and Pharisees, and Sadducees — Q-l ' Stephen hypocrites— were the facts of Israel's past history so stands at crushingly marshalled, and with one startling- bound BAY- which seemed to them, and doubtless to Saul, an in famous attack upon the Temple at Jerusalem— all the more infamous because the shaft of arraignment was feathered with a sacred text, he tosses their Ritualism to the four winds of heaven. * Solomon built Him an house ; howbeit tlie Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. What house will ye build Me, saith the Lord, and where is the place of My rest ? ' He had been drawing bis net closer and closer — as does the fisherman — till the fish could no longer swim at ease. None of 32 them could escape now, they were all taken in the the mask meshes of that inexorable logic — all crushed by the down. murderous invective which crowned it. Stephen knew by the scowling faces and restless swaying to and fro of his furious audience that but a moment remained for him to pull in his net ; but it is now a net full of scorpions and dragons, ready to tear their captor to pieces. The mask is down with a venge ance on both sides as tbe orator stands for a moment at bay and hurls at them the last defiance of scorn with all the concentrated j fire of a divine indignation. ' Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears ! ye do always resist tlie Holy Ghost — as your fathers did, so do ye.' ' We thought so, villain ! knave ! traitor ! ' We read they were cut to the heart, they gnashed on him with their teeth ; they are ready to spring upon him like mad tigers ; but in a moment his fury has passed— the angel radiance returns to his face. He looks up, and sees the vision of Jesus at the right hand of God. ' I see heaven opened,' he cries. ' Blas phemy ! blasphemy ! stone him to death ! perverter of Moses ! slanderer of Israel! enemy of the Temple! blasphemer of the God SAUL HEARS STEPHEN 315 whom no man hath seen, nor can see and live — stone him to death ! ' They rose in a body, hurried him with yells from the council chamber through the streets, out of the city gate — that very gate- through which, a few months before, Jesus Himself had passed forth bearing His cross — and they stone outside the walls they stoned Stephen. him to He sank on his knees, with ' Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ' upon his lips — then, crushed with the stones, uttered that one last burst of divine love triumphant — the prayer for his murderers, ' Lord, lay not this sin to their charge ! ' and so fell asleep. There was one who had been a close, perhaps a somewhat agitated, spectator of this appalling scene. Saul had heard Stephen's apology. He saw, or tried to A young man see, in it nothing but an attack on the Temple, a named saul libel on the Priesthood, and a blasphemy against L00KS 0N' God. He took no active part in the trial — no active part in the execution. He sat by and looked on, and the executioners who stoned Stephen merely laid their clothes 'at the feet of the young man whose name was Saul.' But there were some things on that memorable day that Saul could never forget — the visions haunted him to the last. He alluded to the dreadful event again and again in deepest grief and humiliation. He could never forget that face which ' was as the face of an angel,' nor the long tale of Israel's national resistance to spiritual truth — so apt a comment on his own spiritual blindness and obstinacy ; nor the last solemn arraignment and bitter invective which brought the murderers down upon their victim like a hawk on its prey ; nor the vision of Jesus in the heavens which recalled his own upon the road to Damascus ; nor the last committal of the martyr's spirit into the Saviour's keeping — so like his own in later years, 'I am persuaded that He is able to keep that Y 316 SAUL HEARS STEPHEN which I have committed unto Him against that day.' Nor could Saul ever forget the supreme triumph of — A love that rose on stronger wings Unpalsied when he met with death, as Stephen kneeled in prayer for the last time. It sounded so like the Lord's own words, ' Father, forgive them ; they know not what they do.' The angel face, all dimmed with blood, amidst the crushing stones, was lifted once more with that stifled cry that has nevertheless come ringing to us down the ages — ' Lord, lay not this sin to their charge ! ' The yells of his frantic murderers must have ceased for very wonder, whilst in the weird silence Stephen ' fell asleep.' Ill SAUL MEETS WITH JESUS 35. Spiritual crisis.— 36. Conversion in general.— 37. Saul's intellectual pride.— 38. Divine leadings.— 39. Saul the persecutor.— 40. Judaic and Hellenic Christians.— 41. Saul en route.— 42. Saul thinks.— 43. Saul's growing excitement.— 44. Damascus in sight.— 45. The vision.— 46. More visions and their solution. Saul had now arrived at his spiritual crisis. Such a crisis has occurred in the lives of most great Reformers, and at these moments they become absorbingly interesting. 35 Buddha waiting for the final illumination under his spiritual wisdom tree — Mahomet in the caves of the desert crisis. — Luther in his monk's cell — Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus ; each in his own way was having that last desperate encounter with the Past and its outworn traditions, which was to fit him to be the religious pioneer of the Future. Such a passage from the old to the new may be fitly called conversion ; most of us may have known something like it. I do not say that every one must pass through a 3g spiritual or intellectual convulsion. Some souls conversion seem to grow like flowers — some leap like cataracts. IN GENKEAL- There are halcyon as well as earthquake natures ; there are neutral-tinted people who never seem to rise or fall very much, but live on steadily and harmlessly ; there are well-balanced people set in harmonious conditions — they develop from day to day and never know the shocks of sudden mental change — the wrench of spiritual conversion. But in most of us there is a bar to spiritual progress, and that bar has to be passed or the soul y 2 318 SAUL MEETS WITH JESUS will languish. Pleasure is one man's bar. Till he recogni-es something above pleasure he will make no way. A noble cause or enthusiasm at last lays hold upon him. He counts pleasure loss for the first time that he may compass tbe new ideal. He postpones appetite — he learns self-sacrifice. The bar is passed. Another drifts. Indecision — want of purpose — is his bar. The love of a pure, strong, tender woman delivers him ; or the companionship of a high-minded friend steadies and directs his aims. The bar is passed. A third is an idolator of self. His horizon is hopelessly narrowed in. You begin and end each day with self. Good ! There is no moral progress for you until you get out of that dismal vicious circle. Responsibility — duty — claims — interests — loves and lives of others — sense of a spiritual world — in one word, God and religion in some form awakeniDg divine echoes, sounding undreamed-of, unfathomed depths within, such a revelation may truly come upon you with a shock — a sound of many waters — a sound as of a mighty rushing wind — a clarion note of God. ' Awake, thou that sleepest,' and the scales fall suddenly from your eyes ; and so the bar is passed. 'The expulsive power of a noble affection '— the absorbing power of a good cause or of a high ambition — the emancipating and illuminating power of a divine sentiment — such may be the terms of your conversion. Now come we back to Saul as he trembles on the verge of his great life-crisis, or Conversion. There was a bar in Saul— what was that special bar ? He was struggling • saul's witn the Past, no doubt, like all great Reformers intellectual and innovators, Religious or Political. But why could he not break with the Past, and pass at once from death to life in Christ ? Saul's personal bar was, in one word, Intellectual Pride and Self-sufficiency. Till that bar was down, no progress possible for Saul. Want of humility- mental obstinacy — the deep slumber of a decided opinion- indifference to facts, arguments, good-feeling, humanity, right principle — every rhing — when my opinion, my theory, my Shibboleth is attacked ; perfect belief in myself against the SAUL MEETS WITH JESUS 319 ¦sforld— sublime indeed when you are right, no doubt, but disastrous and infinitely be-littling when you happen to be wrong— i.e., when facts, reason, experience are all dead against you. In Politics this obstinate habit of mind breeds the State Despot — the man who will sacrifice Party, Principle, the Welfare of his country, Armies, Heroes, Decency, Consistency, Truth, eating his own words daily if needful, immovable and reckless ! In Religion the same obstinate habit of mind produces the Fanatic. The fruits of the Spirit are nothing to him — the Son of God may hang on a tree ; as for Stephen with the angel face, ' stone him to death ! ' Savonarola and Huss — burn them like so much chaff' ! Well, there came a day when Paul the Apostle wept to remember how one Saul of Tarsus, in his intellectual pride and self-sufficiency, had persecuted the Church of Christ. 33 There was indeed a mighty shaking in store for divine him as he rode towards Damascus. He had to be leamngs. met by the way — he had to be changed, born again, made humble and receptive like a little child, before he could enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Saul must kneel to Jesus, whom he was persecuting. Then the bar of intellectual pride and self-sufficiency would be passed. In himself he was to be nothing — everything in Christ ; his motto ' not me, but Christ in me' ; and when Paul remembered the wonderful discipline — that sounding and shaking and sifting of his whole being, by which he had passed from the dead works of the law to a living faith, and been brought out of darkness into marvellous light, can we wonder at his breaking forth' into such exclamations as — ' O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ; how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out ! ' But now, just after Stephen's death, we find Saul restless for more slaughter — crushing all misgivings. His work in Jerusalem is over — the blow struck had been effective — the 39, poor sectaries, the church at Jerusalem, were saul the scattered or terrorised — Saul hurried to the High PEESECDT0K- Priest, and, armed with letters and an escort, prepared to strike 320 SAUL MEETS WITH JESUS a blow at the Christian Jews in Damascus. Under Caligula, who went mad about a.d. 37, such persecutions had become possible — Roman authority was in complete disorder throughout the provinces. Up to this time Christians had been regarded as a sort of revivalist Jews, nothing more ; but Stephen had struck loud the jarring note of coming separation — he emphasized the standpoint of the Greek- Jew-Christian as against the Jerusalem- Jew-Christian. Saul and the Rulers would have taken little notice of the Jerusalem- Jew- Christian, who was sound on Moses and the Temple, it was the Broad-Church Greek-Jew-Christian whom they hated. Stephen's theology meant the overthrow of Judaism. Saul and the Rulers felt that Stephen was indeed the enfant terrible of the Jerusalem-Church — those Hellenist or Greek-Jew-Christians (of whom Saul was to be chief) remained the enfants terribles of the pure Jews and Jew-Christians alike ; these last might have got on together pretty well for some time, and did get on — it was impossible for either to get on permanently with the Greek-Jew-Christian. But when Saul set out from Jerusalem the distinction of Judaic and Hellenist Christian was as yet only half understood even at Jerusalem, and probably not at all at judaic and Damascus. Saul was off to Damascus to teach the Hellenic Jewry settled there its business, and to warn it of the Hellenist serpent that lay coiled in its bosom. In his own mind he probably at this time stifled all distinctions, and resolved to crush both Jew-Christian and Hellenist types alike. Anyhow it was a time for sweeping and decisive action, and it might not be safe to think overmuch. There are times when we dare not be alone— dare not think. At such seasons God may say to us — ' Ay, but you shall be alone, 41 you shall think.' It was so with Saul. He had saul 150 miles to go— at least three-days' journey *" B0UTE- None but officials were with him. Beneath the golden starlight of those Eastern skies, travelling mostly at night, he had, for the first time since the stoning of Stephen, ample leisure for reflection. What were his thoughts? In SAUL MEETS WITH JESUS 321 that heated brain conflicting ideas and memories must have flashed and struggled for the mastery. Saul thinks : ' 'Tis an odious business, this hunting down Sectaries. Would it were not a duty. Is it a duty ? My duty 1 My master Gamaliel used to say, " Let them alone 4.2 — if their doctrine was from below it would come to saul nought, if from above we could not fight against thinks. it." Ah ! he was too mild — he would risk the mischief rather than inflict pain on others and stay the plague. There he was surely weak. One must not tolerate insult to authority — the Holy Temple and the Law.' So Gamaliel was pushed aside. Saul thinks : ' This Jesus. Why did the people hear Him 1 A magician of words it seems, mistaken at first for an eloquent Rabbi — most cursed perversion of talent. That He who spoke the story of The Prodigal, which the very children in the streets now babble as the story of the latest Haggadist, should have uttered that hateful tale of the vineyard, and the men who kept it, and who weie turned out by the Master on His return ; that was aimed at our holy rulers — at those who sit in Moses' seat ; a poisoned tongue, an insidious, treacherous Rabbi, this Jesus of Nazareth ; His viper brood of disciples must be stamped out ; 'tis the will of God.' And so Jesus was pushed aside. Then, as he hurried on through the night alone, far in front of his escort, once again Saul thinks, as the face of the murdered Stephen rises before him. ' Such an one with the 4„ makings of a good Haggadist, but tainted — hope- saul's IpssIv tainted. Ah ! insidious orator, is it not growing .',„ . , . j ,, ¦ ,- „ , . EXCITEMENT. writ, " The poison of asps is under their hps ? — yet did his looks belie his iniquity. Comelier in his error seemed he for a moment than many who sat beside me on the judicial bench. We judged him ; he seemed to be judging ns. " Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears." Monstrous, brazen-tongued heretic or visionary — which ? Yes, he saw a vision. I would that face had not been crushed in so bloody a death. But no, it was expedient that one man should suffer for the people. We liave stamped the thing out in Jerusalem, at least, by that hardy 322 SAUL MEETS WITH JESUS stroke. Yet his face, his smile, his prayer — ay, that was a strange prayer : " Lay not this sin to their charge ! " Last fraud of Satan ! Get thee behind me, tempter. Thou hadst Stephen in thy toils — thou shalt not take me so easily.' And with this did Saul strike spurs into his jaded steed ? Did he smite the animal as the haunting face of the Deacon rose before him — even as Balaam smote his ass when the angel stood in the narrow way ? It may be so. His thoughts were strangely mingled ; his -misgivings grew in spite of his frenzied energy. On ! on ! he fiercely spurred, and again his poor beast kicked against the pricks. Was it a suggestion of this that went home to him in those words presently to be heard in the noonday vision ? — ' It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.' At that moment, as he was urging his recalcitrant steed forward, was not he himself kicking against the pricks of the Divine Master, who sought to guide him whither he would' not go ? Early clawn of the last morning breaks upon the travellers t" Damascus. The sun was rising on the fourth day — not upon a 44 desert rocky region — a dry land where no water is Damascus — but upon green pasturage fed by Arbana and in sight. Pharpar, the streams that flow in the 'neighbourhood of the beautiful Damascus. Before him rose the snow-capped hill of Hermon. He passed beside refreshing groves of plum, walnut, olive, and oleanden It is full, blazing day. Why does he hurry on? Why not wait as usual till the cool night comes down! But, no ! On ! on ! Is there a storm gathering — a tiny cloud only as large as a man's hand hanging above Hermon ? It may be so. The white houses of Damascus gleam through the distant trees. Can he reach them before midday ? So near the end, at any rate, he cannot rest ; he feels he must press on through the intense heat— through the laden, electrical atmosphere; Peradventure he will escape the crash of the thunderstorm, when, suddenly, his brain reels — like an over-bent bow, gives in a moment— he staggers on horseback— all swims before him — the bolt seems to fall from the blue. Is it thunder ? Is it a voice ? Is it a light ?— ay, ' above the brightness of the sun, but it leaves Saul in darkness. SAUL MEETS WITH JESUS 323 No great difference in the three accounts — the story in Acts, the story he tells to the mob from the steps of the Castle of Antonia, the story he tells to Agrippa and Festus. In all three he is struck to the ground blind — hears ° THE vision. a voice, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?' In all he answers, ' Who art Thou, Lord ? ' In all tbe reply, ' I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.' Saul, you are a strange emissary of the High Priest. Is this your triumphal entry into Damascus ? — a poor, blind, abashed, dumbfoundered man led through the gates of the city by a few policemen, whom you have brought along with you to arrest the Christians ! You do not dare even to present the letters you bring to the heads of the synagogue at Damascus. You inquire humbly for the very men you came hither to persecute. Well, it is that little obscure section of the Jews favourable to the disciples of Jesus who now open their homes to receive you — you falter out your story — your feelings confuse your utterance — you fall to weeping in the midst — you seem utterly broken-down, and you are quite blind. No one who sees you can doubt your sincerity. You are the man who has known affliction. Jesus has met you by the way ; no doubt of that. Saul, be comforted ; these disciples of the Nazarene are, after all, kind, good people. Now note what follows — what is to be said about Saul's Vision of Ananias — about Ananias' Vision, by which he is directed to seek out Saul ? This is to be said about the matter. These Visions have (1) a natural or rational " side ; (2) a spiritual or religious side ; and (3) a visions and human or affectional side. their 1. The dear people who take Saul into their houses comfort him — 'You will get over this; your sight will come back. This affection of the eyes is not so .uncommon — a nervous shock — keep quiet, be calm, there is a man here, one of us, named Ananias, with a great gift of healing ; like the beloved Jesus, he lays his hands on the sick and they recover, even as the Lord said, " He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also ; and greater works than these shall he do." 324 SAUL MEETS WITH JESUS John xiv. 12. I would we could bring Ananias to you.' If they spoke thus to him, as was most fit and natural they should, is it wonderful that Saul should see in his dream the figure of Ananias entering in to him as a healer ? That is tbe natural side of his Vision. But the Christian circle was small. Everything that hap pened was known. Saul and his conversion was no doubt the one absorbing topic of the little Damascus group, and so about the time that certain of them were speaking to Saul about Ananias, others would most naturally be speaking to Ananias about Saul. Is it wonderful, then, if Ananias, who had doubt less heard Saul's story, also had his Vision, and found therein Saul marked out as the next person upon whom he was to exercise his beneficent mesmeric, magnetic power — his blessed gift of healing ? And so it was. 2. But the spiritual side is contained in the words, 'Behold he prayeth ! ' Saul had been driven to think before he was blind — in his utter darkness and despondency he was forced to fray. The divine mechanism of prayer wrought out the correspondence — it was the indispensable link in the mysterious chain of divine discipline and superintendence — ' Behold, he prayeth ! ' 3. But there was also a human and affectional side to the event. The answer to Saul's prayer was no doubtful intuition, but a real sympathetic presence — a man's voice — a loving touch — a very ready help in time of trouble. Ananias entered with the words ' Brother Saul I ' upon his lips. O, proud Saul ! de pendent now utterly upon the good offices of those poor people whom thou earnest hither to hand over to torture and to death, do not these words, 'Brother Saul ' break thee 1 — yea, they melt thee — yea, they are also as sweetest balm to thy spirit. Thy Jesus finds thee again through the devout and faithful Ananias. This is the purely human and aflectional side of the event— ' Bear ye one another's burdens ' — Be ye ' helpers of their joy '— ' See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.' So the story of Saul's conversion is itself converted into a parable of divine love, interpreted by the gracious and tender ministrations! of human sympathy. ' Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost/ IV SAUL BEGINS WORK 47. God, man, self.— 48. Saul in the desert.— 49. Saul observes.— 50. Preaches at Damascus. — 51. Scene in the Synagogue. — 52. A sermon between the lines. — 53. A perilous escape. — 54. Saul's desire to see Peter. — 55. Cool reception at Jerusalem. — 56. Barnabas comes to the rescue. — 57. Saul a difficult person. We must now keep the Acts open at ix. 19-30 ; xi. 22-30 ; xii. 24-25 ; xiii. 1, 2, 3 ; Gal. i. 16-24 ; 2 Cor. xi. 32, 33. After a crisis there is always a pause. People marry, but they 47 take a little time to settle down — to re-adjust ideas god, man, and habits. Professional life has its initiation— its SEL1?' season of probation. You emigrate, but you don't get acclimatised in a day. You have to look about you, to think, to organise your new life before you can focus your powers and act up to your capacity. It was so with Saul. Such times are momentous — they hold the future. Men are anxious about themselves, their friends are anxious about them, angels look on and tremble for them. In part we are led, in part we lead. Three influences rule, or should rule, such transition times. Those three in fluences controlled -Saul— (1) God— (2) Man— (3) Self. The future turns on the fit entertainment of those influences. Saul is strictly representative in his experiences. They are written for our learning. History repeats itself, so does individual experience. At every new turn in life then, first look up, listen, wait upon God. Saul went out immediately after his conversion into the Arabian desert. We are not enough in our deserts. ' The world is too much with us.' You may over-think, over-consult with friends ; but the first and best thing to do is to lie open to God 326 SAUL BEGINS WORK — to spread out your letter of doubt or perplexity, like Hezekiah, before Him. ' Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.' After that, man may come in as a help— Barnabas, and Mark, and Silas. Man will not often send you to God, but if you begin with God, if you question the Spirit, you will be often referred back for consolation and aid to your brother-man, but you will then know how to choose. You will have been taught of the Spirit ; first and last influence upon which both God and man have to act is your inmost self, your special character or individuality. Don't be cheated out of yourself — your individuality — don't trifle with it, don't sell it for a mess of pottage, for peace, for quiet. Don't let yourself be absorbed, supplanted; be yourself, develop yourself, work in your own way, God guiding, man help ing, but you acting, beating out your own special music of life, doing after your own fashion your own task, which cannot be done by anyone else in the world. These three influences acted and re-acted upon Saul — God, Man, Self. They wrought in him mightily. They are seen working with peculiar distinctness in his transition period — i.e. between his conversion in 38 a.d. and his first missionary voyage in 45 a.d. The desert of Arabia — alone with God. Place sanctified by the transition of the Hebrews of old from Egypt to Palestine— 48 from bondage to freedom. Note the absolute dis- saul in the crepancy between Acts ix. 20, and Gal. i. 16, 17. desert. Luke (not nearly so familiar with' Saul's earlier career as later on when he became his fellow-traveller) says that after his conversion Saul straightway preached Christ in Damascus. Saul corrects this. Immediately, he tells us, he con ferred not with flesh and blood, but went into the Arabian desert. There he got his revelation direct. He was not by any means ready to preach ' straightway.' He must pray, think, re read the prophets, re- mould his theology, re-cast his ideas about Jesus, weld together his teaching with that new world-embracing, anti-formal spirit which had been struggling in him for years, seeking expression and finding none (save in Stephen's speech, which would become Saul's text-book for several years). SAUL BEGINS WORK 327 Passing away from Arabia, Saul would further have to note the spread of the Gospel amongst the Gentiles, he would hear of Peter's mission to Cornelius, of Philip the deacon's 49 to the Eunuch of Queen Candace, of the spread saul northwards through flying teachers who had reached observes. Antioch, Seleucia, Cilicia ; of the receptive Greeks of the serious Roman, of the passionate Oriental, all of whom, in different degrees, had hailed the better life — the fuller revelation of God in Christ, unfolded to the Jew first and afterwards to the Gentile. Within three years Saul was back at Damascus. Now he was ready to preach. He came back full of his new doctrine. His head and heart on fire, irresistible in debate, 50 with that torrent of words which fell from him preaches at in disjointed but vigorous sentences ; tumbling Damascus. like a cataract, and, like a cataract, sweeping all before it. There had never been such preaching in Damascus before. We can imagine whilst at first the orthodox Jews were ' con founded ' and struck dumb, even their Christian brethren hardly knew what to make of it ; but they were attached to Saul as an illustrious convert (as the Catholics might feel towards Manning or Newman). Saul had to be managed — they could not afford to lose him ; but it was hard sometimes to work him in at all. He seemed to go too far ; he did not conciliate ; he trampled on sacred associations, verbal inspirations which he called dead letters, holy rites which he called ' old things,' immutable decrees, which he said would have to ' pass away,' national privileges which he stigmatised as ' beggarly elements.' Saul ! Saul ! how can Damascus ever get on with you or you with Damascus ? At last matters came to a head. (Acts ix. 21-23.) I think we can easily read between the lines here. Saul enters the synagogue. The little band of Christian Jews aie cowering together in a state of some trepidation. They are still on terms with the orthodox Jews — merely regarded as eccentric Broad-Church Jews, a kind of scene in revivalists who held curious notions about one Jesus THE of Nazareth, a mission-preacher who certainly did some good, but also made some extravagant claims. Look again 328 SAUL BEGLNS WORK at the congregation A crowd of old-fashioned Jews, a sprinkling of curious heathen, Greeks, Romans, Orientalists, hanging round the doors. Saul, it is understood, is going to sum up his doctrine. Ascending the raised tribune, the Roll of the Law is handed to him ; all eyes are upon him. His awkward, shy, perhaps jerky manner, and at first hesitating speech, attracts attention and excites curiosity ; but there is that in his tall, prominent brow, stiff, scanty black hair, full beard, restless eye, and small wiry figure, which makes itself felt — a fascination of force — and after a very few sentences the oldest Rabbi there feels himself in the presence of a master. On that day Saul raised a storm of fury which finished his career at Damascus. What did he say ? Something of this kind no doubt : ' I was met by Jesus of Nazareth a sermon in the way — you all know that. Since then I have between been with God in the desert. He has revealed His the line . gQn ^n me ->^o jyjan jjas taught me what I believe, I have not communed with flesh and blood. But, after all, God's ways are clear enough in this matter — he who runs may read. The signs of the times are all about. Jesus is the Lord of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews. These millions of outsiders are not to be damned, as you think ; they are not even to be slaves of your Rabbi or mere idolators of Moses. One is to be th<-ir Master and yours ; they are to be the slaves of Christ — they are His, with ceremonies or without ceremonies. Moses was only the schoolmaster. Christ is the end, the Wisdom of God, the Life of God, the Love of God manifest in the flesh. But He is for all men, not for you only ; for the Jew first, if you like, but also for the Gentile. Look at Peter the Apostle, wasn't he encouraged to go to Cornelius the heathen ? Look at Philip the Almoner, wasn't he led to the Egyptian Eunuch of Queen Candace ? Look at these crowds outside eager to hear the Word of God, will you shut the door in their faces ? No, the message is not only to you and your children, but to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.' Here would arise angry murmurings of 'question,' 'proof! SAUL BEGINS WORK 329 ' Hand me up Isaiah,' cries Saul, and unrolling the book he would read out passage after passage alluding to the 53 Gentiles, finishing with, ' the knowledge of the a perilous Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the escape. sea.' Tben he would perchance thunder out his famous ' One faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of all ! ' Dis regarding the growing murmurings — like Stephen— he would kindle and glow with ardour. ' What use are your rites and ceremonies, the blood of bulls and goats, the tithe of mint and annise, the Corban, a mere cloak of maliciousness, even your badge of separation — circumcision ; I tell you in Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. The old things are past away. I glory not in the law, a mere shadow of good things to come. The body is of Christ — Christ in you, Christ in me, Christ in every man. That's the only hope of glory — ay, Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, and crucified for all men ; for in Him there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor Scythian, nor bond nor free.' ' Question ! stop him ! renegade ! traitor ! How about our privileges ? false Jew sold to the Romans, a Roman citizen, bribed by the Greeks ' ; and here Saul, fronting the whole angry crew, would launch this final burst of indignation at them by way of self-defence, ' What, am I not proud of my lineage ? do not I love my nation ? slanderers ! Mark you, brethren, slanderers these (turning to the little group of be lievers now pale with fright), beheve them not. Are they Hebrews, so am I ; are they Israelites, so am I ; are they of the seed of Abraham, so am I. . The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ knoweth that I lie not.' But Saul has lost the ear of the synagogue, the clamour is too great, the fortunes of the little church are already well-nigh wrecked. Saul himself was hustled out of the synagogue, and narrowly escaped with his life. For now it is (not as recorded in the Acts as happening just after his conversion, but on his return to Damascus from Arabia) that Saul makes his hairbreadth and humiliating escape, thus succinctly de scribed in his own words (2 Cor. xi. 32), 'In Damascus the governor under Aretas the King kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me. And through a window- in a basket was L let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.' 330 SAUL BEGINS WORK Saul now felt that he must visit Jerusalem. He wanted, he says, to see Peter. As Carlyle seemed drawn to Emerson until they met — but not after — so Saul was drawn to saul's Peter until they met— but not after. Peter was desire to interesting to Saul, not only because he was an see peter. Ap0Stie, but because he was apparently a leader of the Broad-Church party at Jerusalem. As Peter retired from his advanced opinions (just as Broad-Church ecclesiastics have been known to retire from theirs on being elevated to the bench) he became less and less interesting to Saul, and at last some thing like an open breach took place between him and Cephas. But at this time Saul himself was in his novitiate — he had not made his position — he had had no success anywhere — he was, dependent on the good offices of friends — he had something to learn, too, from the brethren at Jerusalem — he would be eager to gather many facts from Mark, Peter, James, and John, and, above all, from Barnabas. The young man who had kept the clothes of Stephen's mur derers got but a cool reception at Jerusalem. Very naturally ! News travelled slowly in those days. Saul was C00L still known at Jerusalem — first as a notable per- reception secutor — few believed in his conversion. But there AT JERUSALEM. till* J I.- was one man who took his measure — guessed his quality. ' Barnabas devina Paul.' Barnabas took him by the hand — found him lodging probably with Mary, John Mark's mother. Barnabas, the son of consolation, truly Apostolic in word and deed. Invaluable at all times are such genial liberal spirits. A man of Cyprus, with wider culture than James or Peter — a quick- sighted person, with a grace of manner. A man barnabas difficult to quarrel with — one who could persuade — comes to who took enemies by the hand and reconciled them — knew how to weld antagonistic elements and fuse alien dispositions— how to minimise differences and magnify points of agreement. Probably no one but Barnabas at Jerusalem knew what a treasure they had found in Saul of SAUL BEGINS WORK 331 Tarsus — but he — be it recorded to his eternal honour — knew. Saul's brusque manner, ill at ease in the sacerdotal atmos phere of the Jerusalem leaders, ' who seemed to be pillars, but added nothing to him ' ; Saul's difficult tempera ment—at one moment haughty and arrogant, at SATJL another cast down — the sensitive man smarting a difficult with a sense of personal infirmity, radically out of PEK sympathy with the good narrow-minded people at Jerusalem, yet unable either to contain himself or adapt his preaching to their tastes and prejudices ; truly, a most difficult person, this fiery, strange, learned, yet somewhat difficult, often aggressive, and wholly inflexible person, Saul of Tarsus ; truly, a fit subject for such a man as Barnabas — and one who more than any other needed a Barnabas. V PAUL TO THE GENTILES 58. Saul shipped off to Tarsus 59. 'Barnabas devina Paul.' — 60. ' First called Christians.' — 61. ' What's in a name ? ' — 62. Saul must go.— , 63. Separate me Barnabas and Saul. — 64. Bound for Cyprus.— 65. The first passenger, Saul. — 66. The second passenger, Barnabas.— 67. The third passenger, John Mark. — 68. Missionary Saul and Governor Paulus.— 69. Saul changes his name to Paul. — 70. At Antioch in Pisidia. • — 71. Paul's sermon. — 72. Escape of Paul. — 73. Hunted by the Jews. — 74. Two strange gods. — 75. Paul is stoned. — 76. Confirming the churches. In a very short time something like the scene in the Damascus synagogue repeated itself at Jerusalem, with this difference, that g8 the Jerusalem atmosphere was even more inflamma- saul shipped ble than that of Damascus. The disaster of Stephen's OPE TO TARSUS. death wag ^ recent# The Church wag omy just getting over the shock, and the ' Sauve qui pent ' dispersion which followed it. The brethren did not see their way to such another break-up, and although they felt the paramount importance of covering such a convert as Saul, little as they may have liked him personally, they persuaded him to leave Jerusalem before any second disaster had taken place, brought him down to Cesarea, and shipped him off to Tarsus, several hundred miles away. Meanwhile, in spite of their narrow instincts, the Elders at Jerusalem could not ignore such startling outside developmental as were taking place at Antioch, and with a view of keeping the movement in their own hands, they sent Barnabas to Antioch to organise the Church there on the right lines. PAUL TO THE GENTILES 333 Antioch was a great mixed city on the sea coast, where all the Gentile hordes of the earth seemed to jostle one another. It had a little Jewry in its heart, like almost every 5g city ; but the Greek influences were dominant. ' barnabas Antioch was a difficult place to handle. Tbe good de™a paul.' Barnabas, at home in the little coteries at Jerusalem, felt this great mixed world rather beyond him ; perhaps he had not the learning to confound the Greeks — nor the tenacity and vigour of purpose to battle with the stolid Jew — or the genius for organi sation to weld together such heterogeneous elements ; but he knew a man who had. It was Saul — living now again at Tarsus, probably having taken for a time to mat-making again — broken in spirit — discouraged for a season — wondering how, after such failures, Jesus of Nazareth, whom he had persecuted, was ever going to make a chosen vessel out of him — when, suddenly, Bar nabas appears before him. Barnabas qui devina Paul — ' I must have you, Saul — you must come to Antioch — we will work together — you shall find your sphere — your time has come ; Jesus, who called you on the way to Damascus — who sent you to Arabia — who saved you at Damascus and Jerusalem — now sum mons you to Antioch.' And Saul went, and there the two laboured for a whole year — and there the followers of Jesus were first called C hris- tians ; and with that name (powerfully differentiating gQ them off from the Jews) the Jews lost for ever the 'first califd chance of leading the new movement. How nar- c> lonians was to offer them his secretary — I had almost said his bodyguard — Timothy, who had become nearly indispensable to him — knew his ways, could find his manuscripts, see that he did not go without his cloak, which he had once left at Troas ; look after his luggage, write his letters, interview his disciples, and manage his board and lodging, travelling affairs, and countless; other details which require good quick eyes. In hi -¦ sickness Paul probably found the Galatians at their best. They were very kind and attentive to him. They were PAUL'S BATTLE WITH THE JEWS 349 susceptible, proud, foolish, fickle people — but warm-hearted, im pulsive, full of generous instincts ; but soon ' be witched,' as St. Paul says, with delicate, almost TEMPEBament playful suggestivt-ness — ' O foolish Galatians, who of the hath bewitched you ? ' literally, ' what evil eye has GALATIANS- now looked upon you ? ' My eyes were poor enough, but you have got affected by some others now I The Galatians were, in fact, Celtic — like the Irish — with a strain of national instability about them ; easily led by the last comer. But Paul felt ever lastingly indebted to them for the gentle, loving care they showed him in his deep need, when the thorn in the flesh made life almost unbearable — almost, for he had great and peculiar compensations. These attacks were accompanied, it seems, with a cerebral agita tion which laid him open to trances, visions. At such times the flesh was brought down and almost perished — whilst the inward man was mightily renewed. These bursts of inner illumination would have been too much for mortal to bear, he thinks, had they not been tempered with much physical pain and humiliation So Paul felt, at least. Two great and consolatory teachings come to us from this episode of mingled suderings and triumphs. 1st. Observe the deepest spiritual impressions — sense of God's near- gg ness and personal regard— come not to us com- for our monly when we are well and prosperous, but when learning. we are sick or solitary and bereaved. Physical pain and help lessness is often a great deepener of the inner life. Could we feel this we should take our sickness more patiently — we should bend but not break beneath the rod of discipline — the light affliction would be hailed what time the working out of the weight of glory was being revealed in us. 2nd. The lesson of Prayer. Paul prayed thrice for the thorn to be removed. It was not removed — did he not do well to pray for it ? Yes, we must pray for what we want ; but the best use of prayer is to draw us near to God — in order that we may be taught what His will is, and be reconciled to it. Prayer no doubt is a real spiritual mechanism for getting what we want ; but its deepest secret is to acquaint us with the will of God. A a2 350 PAUL'S BATTLE WITH THE JEWS Whilst, therefore, it is always heard, it is not always granted. Paul's prayer was not granted, it was answered — and he was more than content with the answer. The thorn was to remain, but Paul was to be comforted and supported — 'My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfept in weakness.' VII PAUL AT PHILIPPI 89. Paul meets Luke. — 90. Called in a vision. — 91. The Divine method. — 92. Philippi. — 93. Lydia.— 94. A girl medium. — 95. Arrest of Paul and Silas. — 96. Songs in the night. — 97. ' The prisoners heard them.' — 98. The earthquake. — 99. The jailer's conversion. — 100. Paul and Silas comforted. — 101. Paul's dignified triumph. — 102. ' The readiness is all.' — 103. Joy in the house of Lydia. Soon after his severe attack of ophthalmia I find Paul in company with one Luke. Luke was a doctor, probably an Antiochene whose practice seemed to lie about 89 the coasts of the _3Cgean Sea. Seaport towns no paul meets doubt brought him a rich crop of patients, and luke. he may have acted sometimes as ship's doctor on board the cruisers between Macedonia and Asia. At any rate, Paul needed him. What may we not owe to him ? Was it Luke's skilful treatment — some operation or clever prescription — which re stored the Apostle's eyesight for a time ? Do we owe Paul's health to Luke's professional skill, as we owe Paul's biography to his pen ? Possibly — probably — but not certainly. At any rate, he was with him about a.d. 50, in the middle of his second journey. The narrative, from being sketchy, suddenly grows clear, rich, and minute, full of graphic touches, between Troas and Philippi. Luke was on board the ship. Seven years later the beloved physician joined his apostolic friend, and again they were at Philippi ; and then he never more left him. But I anticipate. St. Paul had recovered. He had left Galatia, but he was not going back to Antioch, Tarsus, or Jerusalem. 352 PAUL AT PHILIPPI And now occurs one of those episodes of the interior life which are so full of profound interest and instruction to ail „0 spiritually -minded peop'e. It is an episode of called in human intent and divine guidance. Paul wanted a vision. to penet.rate further into Asia— the 'Holy Ghost forbad him.' Then he essayed to go into Bythinia, but ' the Spirit, suffered him not.' At last he comes down upon the plains of Troy on the sea coast ; where the funeral mounds of Aga memnon and Achilles were already antiquities, and there, in a vision, a man of Macedonia stands before him and cries, ' Come over and help us.' From this we read Paul ' assuredly gathered ' that he was to go West. Note the divine method. You want to know what to do, how to act, where to go. There is one safe and sure method— 9! only one. It is Paul's. He thought, he used his the divine natural reason ; his instinct was to travel on, his method. inclination was to visit Asia, then Bythinia. Having done his best to choose, he submits his choice to a higher guidance. He carries the question in prayer to God, then he feels he is not to go — knows not where to go, obeys this intuition which happens to be opposed to his own wishes, waits, but waits not long. The vision and the voice follow speedily. It is at length from these he ' assuredly gathers '—infers truly his next step. It is even so. Use your faculties, submit your judgment to the highest, be true to what seems to you the highest leading, and the divine message will grow clearer and clearer — the intuition, the vision, the voice — but, mark you, clearer only for the next atep. The whole of Paul's journey was not mapped out. He could not see far, but he was not left in doubt. He ' assuredly gathered ' the next move. Perhaps he thought he was now bound for Rome — Rome attracted him far more power fully than Athens. Yet he was not to go to Rome that time, nor could he have guessed, when he started for Philippi in Mace donia with Luke and Timothy and Silas, that he was to go to Athens and preach there to the subtle and scoffinc Greeks with whose intellect he had little sympathy, and with whose art he had none. PAUL AT PHILIPPI 353 At Philippi he seemed to breathe, for the first time, the keen bracing air of tbe Roman world, badly represented though it was by a couple of bullying magistrates. Still there was a Roman flavour about the Philippians. rr philippi. The majesty and trappings of Roman civilization were conspicuous e\ery where, and the people already spoke more Latin than Greek. There were no Jews — that was a relief ; there was no synagogue. A few devout souls, just tinged with the purer elements of Jewish worship, met by the river-side on the Sabbath-day — Lydia, a superior forewoman of some purple- dyer's works, and Euodias and Syntyche and Epaphroditus. Surely no sweeter hymns were sung by the waters of Babylon, no more heartfelt prayers offered, no more prophetic words uttered than on that first Sabbath day at Philippi, when Paul and his friends went 'out of the city by the river-side where prayer was wont to be made,' and afterwards 'sat down and spoke to the women who resorted thither.' There was no one to tell them that Paul was a Broad-Church heretic— no one to roar him down or to misrepresent him — and so the good people of Philippi received the engrafted word with all joy and meekness. So hearty and lydia earnest was Lydia that she insisted on lodging the beloved strangers who had brought them the new gospel of peace. But the calm was not to last. A certain girl with abnormal mediumistic powers of some sort — a kind of trance medium, but very ill regulated — the prey, as our spiritualists would say, of bad undeveloped g4 spirits — followed the little Apostolic group, shouting a girl after them, ' These are the servants of the most high medium. God.' There was no harm in what she said. It was quite true, but one has sometimes need to be saved fiom one's friends. She was noisy, excitable, and at last became a perfect nuisance. Then follows what always takes place when a higher spirit controls a lower. Paul turns on the girl a spiritual force more powerful than her own. The disorderly element is at once calmed. She is harmonised — regulated — her powers, whatever 354 PAUL AT PHILIPPI they were, were no longer exercised showily, noisily, but subdued to reverence and healthy spiritual activity. She followed them- converted, sobered, regenerate. But her value as an attiac- tive soothsayer — a phenomenal person — was gone. Her employers and clients in a rage drag Paul and Silas before the magistrates. The poor prisoners only half understand the proceedings, which are all in Latin. In the arrest of clamour they are roughly condemned, unheard, as paul and troublesome, seditious Jews. The Jews, indeed, silas. j)a(j g0£ a kar] name with the Roman governors. They were stubborn, contumelious, quarrelsome. The vices of their race were naturally visited on the heads of Paul and Silas. Tbey were soon hustled into the market-place, severely scourged^:1 and thrust into a loathsome prison cell without light or food, with their feet made fast in the stocks. Bleeding, lacerated — unjustly condemned— with unwashed wounds — how could they sleep ? They slept not, but at midnight gg they lifted up their voices and sang ! Wondrous songs in power of music ! When prayers give out, when all the night. js ^ark, tne ,Uystic waves of sweet melody have still force to lift us out of ourselves, and upon their golden tides our souls seem to float away and leave far behind them the sad life of tears and strife. I note that Jesus is recorded as singing but once. It was whej his soul was exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death — when the gloom and foreboding was deepest — when His disciples could not speak or pray, and hardly dared to think. Then, after supper, when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the garden of Gethsemane. In our own homes, in times of deep trouble — after the death or burial of a beloved one — in the midst of some great pain or loss — when the children look blankly at each other, and sit talking together in whispers, and father and mother scarce know how to speak without weeping — a sister or friend will go to the piano or harmonium, and presently there shall arise such a sweet hymn as shall draw the voices of the sorrowing little company together, and the cloud will be lifted, something like a tender serenity and peace coming over the PAUL AT PHILIPPI 355 oppressed and darkened hearts as the pulses of the music rise and fall. Indeed, there have been times in the history of the Church when music, hymn-singing, chanting, have done duty for almost the whole of religion. What a part did hymn-singing play in the life of Luther — in the Lollard movement — in the Wesleyan meetings — in the Salvation Armies — past and present ! ' At midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them.' Paul ! Is there then no place unfit for your propaganda ? Won't stripes tame you ? Is a noisome prison cell — where you i TH"E sit all night smarting with pain, with your feet in prisoners the stocks— a suitable pulpit ? Is it a likely place HEAKD THEM'' to sing praises in ? Truth is stranger than fiction. No writer of romance would have chanced to hit upon such a telling, dramatic, but altogether impiobable situation as this. It is writ down that two men scored with wounds — shut up in a pestilential hole, without food, without light — in the middle of an altogether dismal night, found it natural to sing praises to God — 'and the prisoners heard them.' But in the middle of that same night the city of Philippi was shaken to its foundations. One of those volcanic upheavals which during the first and second centuries visited g8_ the bed of the Mediterranean — destroyed Laodicsea the a few years later, and buried Herculaneum and EA-n'la'iy,iKE- Pompeii — shook the prison where Paul and Silas sang, burst open the prison doors. In the confusion chains, stocks, cells, furniture, prisoners, everything seems to have got mixed and shaken up. The terrified jailer prepares to stab himself, sup posing that his convicts would be sure to have escaped in the confusion. They were held together by the moral force of the only two innocent men locked up with them. Paul behaves with the exact balance and propriety of a perfect gentleman — he respects the majesty of the Roman law, even when malad- ministered. ' Do thyself no harm, we are all here,' he cries, 356 PAUL AT PHILIPPI reassuringly, for as the terrified jailer rushed towards him with a 1 ghted torch he alone was calm. Well, is not this after all a golden moment for his propa ganda ? Tne shaken soul of the jailer yields readily at such a 99 crisis to a man who is steadied with peace and the jailer's power from above in the midst of an earthquake. conversion. He would have believed anything Paul had preached that night — ' Sir, what must I do to be saved ? ' seemed as natural for the man to ask as it was easy for Paul to answer : ' Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.' What a change of scene — what a time of jubilant peace and thanksgiving follows ! It is still night, but the dawn approaches^ 100 Picture the transformation scene : — Paul and Silas paul and seated up-stairs, their stripes tenderly washed by silas tne jailer and his family, suddenly shanged into COMFORTED. , . j- ¦ i , XJ7. . , , . . ' adoring disciples! What a meal — what a gracioms Lord's Supper was that as the two scourged prisoners sat in the midst of this strange newly-baptised circle — as the jailer and his wife set meat before them, aud rejoiced, ' believing in God, he and his whole house.' Paul was beginning to understand the meaning of his stripes:.; now. The Lord was rewarding him — doing for him as He always did, exceeding abundantly above what he dared to ask or think. More triumphs await you, Paul, at the dawn of day ; your cup shall run over this time. The magistrates, alarmed at the earthquake — hearing, perhaps, strange tales of the Paul's tvro Jews — a people who have always contrived to dignified inspire interest and a sort of dread even when most hated and trampled on — the magistrates, knowing that they had exceeded their power in condemning Roman citizens unheard, sent hastily to release Paul and Silas. Again Paul's perfect dignity and balance assert themselves. That respect for the law which kept him in prison when he might have escaped now prompts him to insist upon justice being openly done. Not for the first and not for the last time does Paul jud<*e his jud"es. PAUL AT PHILIPPI 357 Sneak out of prison now ? Not at all ! Not in the night when I could have done it— not in the morning when you would have me do it. You poor creatures, disguised in the trappings of an imperial authority which you abuse, quite mistake the situation. ' You have,' says Paul, ' beaten us openly, uncondenmed, being Romans (an oflence against the Lex Porcia), and have cast us into prison, and now you are for thrusting us out privately. Nay, verily, come and fetch us out yourselves.' And the magistrates came and fetched them out publicly, with many apologies. What a fine stroke for the future prestige of the Philippian church ! How exactly fit and just and dignified ! Again Paul stands out as the first man and master of the situa tion. Would you know the secret of all true dignity ? i THE How to say and do exactly the right thing with per- readiness feet ease and propriety ? There is but one receipt. IS ALL' You must be right within. You must, like Paul, always follow the highest lead. Have a clear conscience, void of offence toward God and man. Walk with God in the Spirit. Com mit your way unto Him. You can't go wrong then. You need never fidget, nor fret, nor worry about what you shall say or how you shall look or act. ' It shall be given you at that hour.' The inner harmony will regulate your outward conduct. Perfect peace within — perfect propriety without. ' The readiness is all.' There was joy in the house of Lydia the dyer of purple that night. I warrant you there was another blessed Lord's Supper with Euodias and Syntyche and Epaphroditus. It may be the jailer looked in with some of his baptised J0T iN THE household. Only yesterday, and these lonely Jews house of were beaten publicly and hounded to prison by the roughs of Philippi. This morning, escorted from the prison publicly, with all honour and due reparation, by the chief magi strate and attendant constables — restored to their friends — seated at meat in the midst of a little company — warm hearts — ready hands —lips eager to pray, and to give the pure and indispensable kiss of peace— voices fresh and vigorous to sing praises and 358 PAUL AT PHILIPPI thanksgivings ! And now surely Paul understood altogether the meaning of his stripes — his ' light affliction.' It was worth all the pain and shame to come to such a season of refreshing — such a, triumph — such outpouring of love — such prayer and praise, such harvest of souls, as he found in the prison and in the house of the gentle, generous, and ardent Lydia. 'They entered into the house of Lydia, and when they had seen the brethren they com forted them and departed.' VIII PAUL AT ATHENS 104. At Thessalonica. — 105. Brought before the Magistrates. — 106. Sails for Athens. — 107. Paul and the Parthenon. — 108. Paul and Socrates. — 109. Paul and the Philosophers.— 110. Paul on Mars Hill.— ill. An impossible situation.— 112. Begins his statement. — 113. Fails to please. — 114. Paul's failure. Scarcely recovered from his rough handling at Philippi, the dauntless Apostle pushed on to Thessalonica with Silas. The drama began to re-enact itself. Great popularity ^u with the common Gentile people — simple folk who at heard the Word gladly — and acceptance, even in the thessalonica. Synagogue — when lo ! from Philippi arrive the hostile Jews — explain to the Synagogue that Paul is not orthodox— explain to the common people that Paul is a seditious conspirator against the Roman authority — emissary of another king, a cer tain Christos, a pretender — no friend of Caesar's. The double indictment told. But there was one man at least staunch. Ic was Jason. He harboured Paul and Silas. He had the courage of his opinions. That is not common. It is easy to stand by those who are popular. How hard it is to be true to your con science when it means danger or loss of friends, of prestige, ease, comfort, money ! Yet to be true is the one thing needful. It is of less importance to y ou that your opinions should be true in politics or religion than tbat you should be true to your opinions. To follow conscience is the only rule for every one. Wrong opinions inflict injury on the community, no doubt, but, if sin cere, leave you stainless. Follow conscience where it leads you, and, sooner or later, your very errors will educate you, and you shall come to truth. Neglect conscience, you never will progress 360 PAUL AT ATHENS in tbe right direction. Saul was quite wrong about Stephen, but sincerity triumphed, and so he was led out of his error to know the truth. His error was not irretrievable; but it dispersed the church at Jerusalem and inflicted a severe blow on. the rising Christian sect. The mob, roughs (certain lewd fellows of the baser sort— the scum of the city), were next used by the Jews to hustle the new ,„- teacher. Jason's house was then next beset. Jason drought was hauled hefore the magistrates (Politarchs1. before the j}uk thei=e high-class Roman officials saw through the question, didn't believe a word of the accusa tion, cautioned Jason, and bound everyone over to keep the peace, and so sent them away. But it was wise to get off without delay, and Beraa, an out-of-the-way town, quite in the south of Macedonia, was their next resting-place. Great kindness, great simplicity, great sincerity, truly an atmosphere after Paul's own heart. Here were warm friends. He loved those Berseans, and they loved him, and when the inevitable Jews hunted him out there, his new friends would not send him away alone, but some of them accompanied him to the coast. Late in the autumn of 53 he pushed out into the ^Egean— that treacherous sea so full of peril — so indispensable to the 10g future of the Gospel — and leaving behind him Silas sails for and Timotheus, Paul sailed for Athens. At Thes- athens. salonica he had won Aristarchus, Jason, and others, who formed the nucleus of that church which he addressed in a loving epistle — his earliest— a few months after. At Bersa, besides the nameless brethren he had attached to himself, was Sopater, so the good seed was sown in a few honest and good hearts wherever Paul passed by — although he might never hve to t>ee the waving of the golden corn. Athens and Paul ! Tho old -ZEstheticisrn — the new moral 1Q force; the first encounter between the Gospel of Jesus paul and and the Gentile world of art and philosophy. ™e ' The little ugly Jew,' as he has been called- PARTHENON. / J • J ] 1 1 • . .¦, (and, indeed, by his own account of himself he was that)— 'the little ugly Jew' lifted up his eyes to the PAUL AT ATHENS 361 Acropolis, glittering with white marble statues, and beheld the treasures of Greek art, and the words, ' Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image,' rang in his ears. What were all these to an iconoclastic Jew ? The Parthenon was standing in all its glory, with its wondrous gold and ivory statue of Minerva, by Phidias ; its frieze in bas-relief — now in the British Museum. Paul gazed upon these. ' Idols ! ' All, nothing but idols they were to him, and from the moment that his lips pronounced that fatal word they were doomed. Many of them were not idols at all. There was the new statue of Berenice (anything but a goddess) ; there were the statues of poets, statesmen, celebrated athletes, orators, and philosophers. To Paul it all seemed a delusion and a snare — no touch of the Greek spirit was upon him. As he walked aV>out the streets his heart grew hot within him. What was he to do in this city of idols ? What could he do ? He tried the synagogue. At Athens, the Jew and his synagogue were without influence — the Athenian Jews themselves were probably tainted with the universal scepticism and frivolity of Athens in her sinful and degraded state. The air was indeed full of philosophy, and science fa'sely so- called ; but tbe philosophy was grown as poor as the art. All the best sculptors had gone off' to Rome. Athens was living on her great traditions. Her splendid statues by Phidias, Praxiteles, had not yet been removed by Nero for his golden house, but her best artists had migrated ; and little, even respectable, in art and literature was actually produced at Athens. Paul talked in the streets, as Socrates, who was also ugly, and opposed to the religion of the place, had talked three centuries before him. But he had not Socrates' chances. He 108 spoke poor Greek — he cared nothing for Greek paul and modes of thought— knew little about Greek philo- socrates. sophy, less about Greek art- ha-1 not the lightness of Socrates' touch — his cheerful bonhomie — his genial, sometimes satirical, tolsration of the current vices — his 'Hail fellow, well met' with the citizens — and, above all, his complete though sly absence of all dogmatism. 362 PAUL AT ATHENS Paul was a very different person from Socrates. He had a message to deliver ; he must be master, and master at once, 10q His doctrine admitted of no compromise — some paul and the adaptation in the form was all he would ever stoops philosophers. t0 paul could have no success in such a place as* Athens. Christianity took no deep root there for centuries,; The Epicureans, who lived for pleasure, and left Out God — the| Stoics, who lived (professedly) above pleasure and pain, but left out the human heart — the Academics, who discussed everything and believed nothing — ' the Athenians and strangers, who spent) their time in nothing else but to see and hear some new thing'1 — what could Paul have to say to them ? He had something! to say, and he said it. *, The day came when a motley group of philosophers, Epi-, cureans, and Stoics, and some members of the Areopagus, or 110 chief' court in Athens, thought that half-an-hour's paul on entertainment might perhaps be got at the expend mars hill. of , the ugiy little jeWj> g0 they brought him to the Areopagus — they put him on a raised platform, known as Mars Hill, and with the delicate raillery of mock politeness, possiblyj not detected by Paul (whilst amongst themselves they said, ' What will this babbler say ? ') they trimmed their words for Paul, ' May we hear what this new doctrine is 1 ' The situation was quite an impossible one — far more im possible even than that of Stephen vis-a-vis the Sanhedrim at ln Jerusalem ; but, under the circumstances, no one an could have handled it with greater skill than impossible st Paul. He was certainly a bom orator. In spite of personal defects, like Demosthenes— an indifferent master of Greek — with an imperfect understanding of his audience and a poor physique — the orator won attention for a time by his tact and ingenuity. He said he had walked about the streets of Athens a good PAUL AT ATHENS 363 deal and had been looking at their works of art — effigies of deities, he presumed — there certainly were a great 112 many gods ; and the Athenians must, he opined, be begins his a very religious people — almost too religious. (The statement. allusion to their art and the splendid ritual for which Athens was famous won them at once ; they were proud of both, although they had almost ceased to be artists and quite ceased to be religious.) But what had most struck him, as a foreigner, was one altar to an ' Unknown God.' He understood they liked to hear new things, would they care to hear about that Unknown God ? He believed he could tell them — indeed it was the only thing he cared about — for the God to them apparently unknown was to him the only real God. Was it reasonable to believe tha.t the Creator of the Universe could Himself dwell in temples made with hands, or be carved and fashioned in stone, or bronze, or ivory ? He who gives life needs nothing, for everything is His— sacrifices don't feed Him whose were the cattle on a thousand hills. (' There's grit, in it,' says a stoic, ' we don't believe in those gods any more than yonder lit'le Jew — we keep them going for the good of art and to amuse the people ; but yonder is a min of sense at any rate, and culture too, though— pity th.t his Greek should be villainous; but hear him.') As there is one God so there is one race. All human beings are of one blood — slaves, philosophers, rulers, and ruled — common children of a common Father. The fatherhood of 113 God, the brotherhood of man. (Paul ! Paul ! thou fails to wert surely beside thyself to preach such a Utopian please. Gospel in such a world as this, in the first century, too ; why, it is now the nineteenth century, and we cannot believe your Gospel yet — we cannot practise it, at least, though we sometimes venture to preach it. There was something nevertheless about the notion that pleased the Greek. It was a theory like another theory ; but it had never been put forward as Paul put it, as the keynote of faith and the guide of practice.) Continued Paul — Shall there not be real intercourse between God and the race % Are we not all created to feel after Him and find Him ? Surely B B 364 PAUL AT ATHENS not because we can enrich Him, but because He has fashioned us with a spiritual nature like His own. One of your own poets sings, ' We too are of His offspring.' You admit it, Athenians, in your own way, when you fashion a statue in human form and call it a god. He is not like these statues — He is not many, but One ; but He has gone so far as to speak to human beings through a human form. There have been all kinds of errors about Him in the past. Your own enlightened times were really dark times. (' Hear him,' sneer the philosophers. ' That's good ! Sophocles, Socrates, Pericles— mark you well, "dark times!'" — and an ill-suppressed laughter doubtless drowned the Apostle's next sentence. A further allusion to their ' ignorance ' was still more unfortunate, as what they did profess was to know every thing, except indeed an Unknown God, who might or might not exist.) When, however, Paul ceased from what might, iu their eyes, pass muster as speculation about God and the race, and announced a moral doctrine of judgment to come, they began to yawn ; and when he went on to declare that a crucified Jew was to be the Judge — that God had spoken through Him — that He stood before man as the human side of God personified, and that though withdrawn from earth He was alive for evermore, and that through Him the ' Unknown God ' would judge all men !— shouts of laughter followed. The clever Greeks made exceeding merry with the notion, and broke up in little knots, discharging {Grmco more) all sorts of pleasantries at the foreign preacher. ' Paul, jour eyes look rather weak,' one would say, 'standout of the sun, my good man. I'm sure you've had enough for to-day — we have. It's very warm ; hadn't you better go home? What ! You can't see your way down the steps ? We'll help ¦• you.' Or the more polite stoic would say, as the words ' Resur rection of the Dead ' left Paul's lips — ' Good Jew ! We can't s'ay any longer — we go to the baths — we've got an appointment, A word in your ear — we did ask you to speak, no doubt, but your style's not the thing. The Athenians don't run into length— ' short and sweet, that's the sort. You're a bit too long-winded for us. That spice of the poets was good, but we don't quote; Ar tus much. He's second-rate. Can't you manage a bit of Aristophanes ? — that would go down better. Very sorry we have. PAUL AT ATHENS 365 to go — when we've more time we will hear thee again on this matter — (aside to each other) — not if we know it ; enough's as good as a feast, isn't it ? -#!sop says that ' — and so chattering and laughing, the light, fickle crowd breaks up, and simply leaves Paul to go his own way. ' Some mocked and others said, we will hear thee again on this matter ; so Paul departed from among them.' Luke makes no attempt to disguise the situation. The speech on Mars Hill, admirable as it was, was a failure, yet not quite, for as usual one or two clave to the lowly en- 114_ thusiast — Dionysius, an Areopagite, and a woman paul's named Damaris, and a few others. Yet within failure. 474 years the schools of all the Athenian philosophers were closed as useless worn-out institutions, in the name of the crucified Jew ; whilst a few of Paul's letters, written at odd times in indifferent Greek, guided the thoughts and formulated the religion of the Roman Empire. i; B 2 IX PAUL AT CORINTH 115. Corinth.— 116. The Corinthians.— 117. Paul as he seemed.— 118. Paul's view. — 119. Paul's opportunity. — 120. Paul works for a living.— 121. Paul's private receptions. — 122. Paul tries the Synagogue. —123. Crispus converted. — 124. First-fruits at Corinth. — 125. Paul changes his method. — 126. Secrets of style. — 127. Paul's moral leverage. —128. Paul a master of detail.— 129. Idol meats. — 130. Mixed marriages.— 131. Going to law. — 132. Gifts and graces. — 133. On charity. — 134. Not many fathers. Paul enters Corinth ; not the grand classical Corinth — but a sort of afterglow Corinth. The old city had been destroyed by Consul Mummius 146 B.C. It was burned to the ground. The streets ran with molten metal from CORINTH the innumerable statues and public buildings— the fused mass continued to be collected for years afterwards, and fetched a good price in the open market. As ' Corinthian brass,' it was exported in blocks — the deep yellow bronze sockets lately disclosed in the Colosseum at Rome may be bits of this Corinthian brass. Julius Caesar rebuilt and colonised Corinth not long before Christ. It was a flourishing mercantile town in Paul's time : Roman merchants, Greek traders, Jews, and other Orientals, flocked to it. Over its isthmus were dragged the ships from port Cenchrrea on one side to port Lechseum on the other, and thus the tide of commerce flowed from the East straight on through the Corinthian isthmus to Rome — leaving in the city about one of the most unenviable and mixed moral deposits conceivable. PAUL AT CORINTH 367 Imagine Liverpool and Brighton, without a touch of Christian influence, rolled into one, and you have Corinth. They were traders, mark you, not manufacturers — money 116 getters, not creators ; engaged not in producing the (which requires invention and implies education and cokinthians. culture), but in transferring articles from one place to another (which requires little education and less culture). Mere money- grubbing is not elevating, refining, or morally bracing. They were pleasure-mad too — that was their reaction from toil. Drunkenness and debauchery — temples consecrated to it, priestesses devoted to license ; when your life work is on a low moral plane, your recreation is certain to be on a lower one still. The Jewry was there of course, but it had little influence, It remained a sort of protest against sin, without a touch of sympathy for human frailty, and I should like to know what good ever came of such a gospel as that. What could Paul do in such a Vanity Fair as Corinth ? Poor suffering Jew ! himself apparently a very indifferent physical specimen of a very sorry commuuity of 117 fanatics ! Such he must have seemed to the paul as he fashionable tourist from Rome — to the Corinthian seemed. fop or merchant. How could he expect to do anything at Corinth ? Indeed, how hopele s is the outlook upon a great city like Liverpool or London, even after nineteen centuries of Chris tian civilisation ! How to lift such degradation — how to touch such selfishness — how to meet such callousness, check such frivolity, stem the tide of avarice and lust ! Paul looked upon that scene with other eyes. The fields which to us might appear to be spiritually Phlegrsean — black, burut-up, and wasted — were to him whitening to • 118 the harvest. He felt he could operate in that atmos- PAnL>s V'IEW phere — he believed in humanity— he believed in Christ — that was quite enough. He had to deal with the slaves of pleasure — the dupes of money — the puppets of ambition. He knew every one of them hungered for something different from what he had got. 368 PAUL AT CORINTH Bide your time, man of God ! Watch and pray ; the world will come round to you — the world can't do without you. When 119 the thrill of the senses is past — money gone— ambi- paul's tion a wreck — does not every one cry out for some- opportunit-j. thing which the world cannot give or take away 1 Is it not a universal experience ? Every tree which the Father hath not planted shall be rooted up — every house built upon sand shall fall — every child of earth who leans only on things seen and temporal shall pay the price. Sensuality ! Drink ! Extortion ! I have seen something like it not a hundred miles from London. ' Truly a mad world, my masters ! ' this Corinth about a.d. 53. It was Paul's opportunity. At this time he was miserably poor — he had hardly enough to eat and drink — he was tolerably ragged and out at elbows, no 12o. doubt. He was more alone than usual. He had to paul works work first, but work has a way of coming to willing . for a living. hanclS- Aquila and Priscilla, respectable Jews, kept a shop — tent and mat makers they were. They let Paul have a room, and he at once sat down steadily to mat weaving. He might certainly have posed as a teacher of some note — a gifted man, an advanced Rabbi, as indeed he was ; he might have, set up a school, taken fees, and accepted board and lodging from his admirers ; instead of which he worked with his hands. He would, at such a place as Corinth, be chargeable to no man. His instinct, as usual, was right. How right we shall see when we note that, as it was, he was accused of raising money out of the Corinthians for his own purposes, because he was so eager about the collections for the poor saints at Jerusalem. He could then turn and remind them that although the labourer was worthy of his hire, he had never taken any hire from them, nor had Titus, nor Timothy ; he had been chargeable to no man ; never made gain of them ; aiways worked for his living and taught for nothing, except his usual reward — ingratitude and slight — for ' the more he loved them the less it seemed he was beloved.' Presently came Timothy and Silas from Philippi. By this PAUL AT CORINTH 369 time Paul had earned a little money — a few weeks' hard work had made him somewhat easier — and his friends ,21 brought him a loving gift from his dear Philip- Paul's pians, which he received in love. Paul would not private , ' take anything from Corinth— he would from Philippi. ' The gift, to be true,' says Emerson, ' must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at a level then my goods pass to him and his to me. All his are mine, and all mine his.' So thought Paul. He was now out of immediate want, and could think of his mission. Be sure that already there was a church in the house of Aquila and Priscilla. Paul, weaving his coarse goat's hair, could preach just as well sitting cross-legged in the little work-room as anywhere else, and many a Corinthian buyer must have lingered to have a chat with the intelligent, sensitive, nervous, but singularly courteous, and somehow strangely attractive Jew, who suffered from his eyes, and T seemed to be so full of his own ideas, yet with a wonderfully quick interest in and insight into other people's. Paul emerges ; enters the synagogue ; goes to the point at once — that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah — that He comes with a wider religion than that of Moses, fulfilling 12„ the prophets, *- completing ' the Jews — that He died PACl tries for all men — that He belonged to all men — Jew and THE Gentile were claimed by Him, were one in Him — They couldn't stand that. They mocked, they coughed, and talked him down. ' A very crack-brained ranter ! I pray you, good people, what becomes of Moses in his hands ? Oh, fie I A Jew and teaches contrary to the law ; out upon him ! Answer me, Jew, if such you pretend to be — Where are our privileges ? "Open to all !" For shame ! Why, the man is mad, or igno rant ; but stay, is it perversity, or stupidity, or both ? Paul,' says one conceited Corinthian Jew, ' can't you see, my irrespon sible chatterer, my wrong-headed dreamer, what wretched stuff all this is ? You haven't got hold of the a, b, c, — the very Alpha — not to say the Omega — of Judaism, which is that the Jews are the chosen favourites of God ; although oppressed now 370 PAUL AT CORINTH we are going to have a good time by-and-bye, when the true Messiah (a very different sort of person from your crucified Christos) comes ; then we are all to be saved, and the Romans and the Greeks will be well and finally damned. That's the beauty of our holy religion — damnation is the strong point. If you can't see that you're not fit to teach. Go honie, you mad tent-maker, with your salvation for all, and your crucified heretic. We'll have none of your universalism here. Be off!' So said the Jews at ©orinth. Such language may sound shocking enough to our ears, but I have not in the least overstated the situation. Do I not read 123 ' Wnen they opposed themselves and blasphemed, he crispus shook his raiment and said unto them — I am clean ; converted. vour blood be on your own heads ; I will go to the Gentiles ' — and he entered a certain man's house, named Justus, hard-by the synagogue. But the most extraordinary thing remains to be told, namely, that Crispus, the chief ruler of the, synagogue, stood by him ; and was probably deposed in consequence, as presently a new governor, Sosthenes, is installed. Paul stayed about eighteen months at Corinth, and the nucleus of his church came together. A difficult heterogeneous! ]2. church in good sooth — a living church — a strong,' first- troublesome, self-willed church — like a flock of fruits at sheep, all disposed to run different ways, giving the shepherd and his watch-dog much anxiety — but a church which remained dear to Paul. There they were, these Corinthian converts, gathered from all classes, all sorts and conditions of men. Paul has but to pass by — the attraction is irresistible ; like steel filings they fly to the magnet; all that are akin — like-minded — those for whom* the message is — hear it and obey, even as the dead hear the • voice of the Son of Man and live. It is Crispus, the routine'! synagogue official; it is Justus, the worthy citizen; and Erastus, the rich chamberlain of the city ; and Stephanas, and i Fortunatus, and Achaicus ; slaves or men of low degree • andi PAUL AT CORINTH 371 humble women, pure, or willing to be pure — Chloe and Phoebe in the midst of a licentious town, whose spirits rise sympa thetically to the higher level of the Christly life so soon as it is announced to them. These are the saints at Corinth, the first historic and immortal fruits of Achaia. What was the secret and what was the method of Paul's preaching at Corinth ? We know that too. He tells us. He changed his style completely. He was no longer .„„ the Paul we lately met with at Athens. He had paul adapted himself to the prejudices and tastes of his changes his hearers. He had there quoted their poets — ordered his matter like a Greek orator — put his case logically, with much art, and used the wiles of rhetoric. And the result 1 An utter failure ! The flippant Greeks had listened languidly, with scant polite ness ; shrugged their shoulders, and gone away, to think no more of it. So Paul had now done with the arts of rhetoric and philosophy. He was going to speak his message in his own way. Straight to the point, ' not with enticing words of men's wisdom ' any more. No ; nothing now but ' Christ and Him , crucified ! ' That was the beginning and the end ; or, in other words, his text was the life and death of One outwardly humi liated (crucified), yet who before all men's eyes towered into Deity by the force of righteousness and tbe majesty of love ! That was to be found in an imperium in imperio — the Christian church ; its life, the open secret of the Cross. ' Victory by the life within.' Yes ; evermore, this and only this — Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The life within conqueror over all. Suffering, failure, humiliation, death — all these appeared suddenly as nothing — so many spots in the sun, scarcely dis cernible in the blaze of the eternal life. ' Christ within the hope of glory.' And conversely without this inner righteousness, harmony, oneness with God — everything in the world — no better than so much wreck and death ; all wealth, all honour, glory, thrills of pleasure, gifts, successes— 'mere dross, which with the carnal man, and what belonged to him, would pass away. Nothing but the moral and spiritual would last. Nothing but 372 PAUL AT CORINTH that mattered ; what you were, that alone mattered, not wheri you were, or what you had got — ' For the things which were seen were temporal, but the things which were not seen were eternal !' Such was the sum and substance of Paul's gospel to Corinth, It is always equally true— equally forgotten — equally despised and rejected — equally needed, and equally recurrent and vic torious in the long run, simply because it places the whole of life upon an imperishable foundation. Founded on a rock — that's what we all want. And Paul's method of preaching we may most certainly gather from the two Corinthian Epistles, even if we had not some of Luke's published versions of it in the Acts. It may he summed up in two words. Directness — Detail. Paul was not afraid of going straight to the mark. Nothing roundabout in his method. ' Awake to 126 righteousness and sin not.' A direct appeal to the' secrets of conscience. That's just what most preachers shirk. style. yfe uge artSi clever arguments ; we don't trust the simple witness to truth, the witness to righteousness in each heart ; we say, ' If you do wrong, drink, steal, indulge your passions without rule, you'll lose caste; you'll be punished; you'll be ruined — wreck your health.' ' Leave all that alone,' says Paul. ' Awake to righteousness.1 Be true, just, pure, because you know yon ought, because you're the children of God, because One is your Master, because you belong to Christ, because, in a word, there is that inner constraint, You know you ought, and ' woe is you ' if you are not. Time-serving Christians — ye latter-day saints ! — the heathen shame you — savages shame you. Many a wild tribesman would j „ not be bribed or frightened into robbing his own paul's people. He would scout the idea (poor natural moral man !) as dishonourable. He wouldn't think of it twice. He has feelings. He must not. He will not. He ought not. That is enough. The law in the fleshly tablets of the heart — imperfect if you will — but the moral law PAUL AT CORINTH 373 still, conscience still, it weighs with the savage, and you, my Christian worm of lust and grubber of money — want rewards and punishments, and considerations of interest, before you can do right. Paul, indeed, is not slow to point all consequences out for good or evil. ' Knowing the terrors of the Lord,' he persuaded men. God was not mocked, men would ' reap what they sowed.' All that was so, as mere matter-of-fact, as part of a divine order, but Paul's leverage was not there — his leverage was not without, but vAthin. To be followers of Christ as dear children - to have the spirit of sons crying ' Abba Father ' — to live ' worthy of their voca tion,' as became saints, simply to ' Awake to righteousness and to sin not' That was the leverage— that kindled, that converted, that brought the heart with supplication and prayer and suffering too, and much love — close to God. It was indeed very simple, very direct. Any child, any woman, any slave could take it in. It might be a weak and despised Gospel to the Jews — a stumbling- block — and to the Greeks foolishness, but it was found quite enough, in a few years, to upset the Roman temples and hurl all the gods of Greece from their Parian thrones. I find, further, that Paul was very strong on detail. Someone has said that although a great missionary, Paul was still greater as a director of the conscience — and so he was. He .„„ was probably doing every day when at Corinth what PAUL A he is doing throughout the whole of the first Epistle master of , „ . , , . » -r-i l DETAIL. written to the Corinthians from Ephesus — answer ing questions. That is, after all, one of the great uses of Christianity — to answer questions. It does not consist in a correct apprehension of the Trinity, or Verbal Inspiration, or even Justification by faith. No mere head belief will save a man. But to be able to decide what to do rightly under perplexing circumstances — always rightly ; to be able to act at once upon the decision — that is the one thing needful. It is to ask of Christ and get His answer ; yes, down to the minute and most worrying details of dai y life. That is how Paul taught the Gospel. They asked him, and, instead of consulting a dubious Delphic oracle, or any other oracle, he laid Christ— the mind of Christ (' We have the 374 PAUL AT CORINTH mind of Christ ') open to them ' in demonstration of the spirit and with power.' And how did he contrive to do this ? By always tacking on to every inquiry a higher suggestion, which would enable the enquirer to answer bis own question in the most 129- explicit way. For instance : IDOL MEATS. r J Were they to eat meats offered to idols ? Why, an idol counted for nothing ; so of course it could not matter one way or the other. But people's fee'ings counted for a good deal — all had not this knowledge, and the weak brother might be tempted by such liberty, and do what he thought to be very wrong in eating meat offered to an idol. So Paul would n< t eat meat whilst the world stood, if it made his brother to offend. Then, again : How about mixed marriages between heathens and Chris tians ? ' Ah ! ' says Paul — almost cunningly — ' suppose you are 130 so married ; then suppose, wife, you try and*win mixed your husband to Christianity — or. husband, you win marriages. ynur wife, will you not have your answer then?' ' Truly, Paul, thou art a good physician of the soul, but an almost better prophet of the heart, and altogether a proselytiser and spiritual organiser of the first order ! How can we wonder at the churches thou didst found?- a master-builder thou, and one who could not only lay down living stones on adamantine founda tions, but cement them together — "fitly compacted by that which every joint supplieth '' — aye, with the very mysteries of wedded love ! ' And were they to go to law ? ' Why, what need of that ?— do you not love one another ? Is not that your law — your perfect 131 law ? Then you don't want to defraud, and in doubt- going to ful cases, each, desiring the other's content before LAW- his own, will gain — one will be offered more than he asks, the other will yield more than he will find accepted, so con tention will cease. So Christ is better, quicker, kindlier — aye, and cheaper — than the magistrate ! ' PAUL AT CORINTH 375 ' But, Paul, how about our " gifts " ? We can preach — we can go into trances and deliver oracles to match the heathen utter ances — some of us heal, others speak with tongues — 132 we have all got a huge opinion of whatever powers gifts and we happen to possess — pray, what is your opinion ? graces. Of healing, knowledge, eloquence, inspired uttering, which is the best gift ? We are endlessly debating whilst the sick man waits to be healed, the ignorant to be taught — we stand disput ing still, arrange us in order — pray settle our merits — fix our positions in the church ! ' Then it is that suddenly a great weariness and impatience of detail for the first time seems to seize on the Apostle ; the careful discussion is broken-off abruptly, and he rises into an atmosphere so serene and high — above the din and turmoil of the world — that we can hardly hear a faint echo of the clamour and strife of tongues coining up from below. The thirteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians stands out as one of those gemmed utterances ' which on the stretched forefinger of Time sparkle for ever.' ' On either side of this chapter,' writes Dean Stanlev, . . » ' ON CHARITY. ' rages the tumult of argument and remonstrance, but within all is calm. The sentences flow with almost rhyth mical melody ; the imagery unfolds itself with almost dramatic propriety ; the language arranges itself with almost rhetorical accuracy. We can imagine how the Apostle's amanuensis must have paused to look up in his master's face at the sudden change in the style of dictation, and seen his countenance lit up, as it were the face of an angel — as the vision of Divine perfection passed before him. 'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal ! ' (I Cor. xiii., read the whole chapter). Paul's living voice thus reaches ug out of the distance — it is clear ani vibrant still in the written words. They have, as Luther put it, ' hands and feet.' The Corinthians may have listened 376 PAUL AT CORINTH with delight to gifted Apollos, and many teachers with many 1 34. gifts, we know, sprang up in Corinth and preached not mant Christ — ' some of love and some of contention ' fathers. after Paul's departure, but though ' they had many teachers, truly they had not many fathers,' and such a father as Paul — no, not one. X PAUL AT EPHESUS 135. Immense enterprise. — 136. ' I must see Eome.' — 137. Ephesus. — 138. The silver shrines. — 139. Diana's temple. — 140. Spiritualism. — 141. ' Try the spirits.' — 142. The phenomena. — 143. Paul's success. — 144. Pocket or principle. — 145. Paul in danger. — 146. The town-clerk. — 147. The town-clerk's speech. — 148. The internal history. — 149. The Ephesian Epistle. — 150. Epistles to Corinthians and Ephesians. Paul had only about twelve more years to live. That fever of enterprise now seemed to take possession of him which was to end only with his latest breath. Those ' Teachings i35_ forward to the things that were before ' — those im- immense mense longings, embracing the whole human race, enterprise. and that passion for winning over all men as an ambassador of Christ— those perilous voyages and headlong journeys of the later years, sweeping the Mediterranean, scouring Asia Minor ; with a heart already in Rome and an eye to Spain and the far-off Isles of the Gentiles beyond, even the ultima Thule — England, Scotland, and Ireland, if not Iceland : we stand and look on afar off', with the Acts, the Corinthian Epistles, and the Ephesians open before us ; we watch the incredible exploits of this great unwearied pioneer of Christ with amazement and awe. Paul leaves Corinth in a.d. 55, hurries through Ephesus, although besought to tarry awhile, sails for Jerusalem, salutes the churches, meets probably with a cold welcome, 13g and is off to Galatia and Phrygia — with a prophetic ' i must see onward glance towards Rome, that seems to lie and bome. beckon to him in the distance. ' I must see Rome also.' Rome I great magnetic Attraction of the Old World, as of the New. ' All 378 PAUL AT EPHESUS roads lead to Rome,' said the old proverb— Mother of Empires, Mother of Churches, at once the Old Babylon and the New Jerusalem of the world. ' I must see Rome also' — but he was after all destined to remain for a time at Ephesus. Everywhere arrested by matters of urgency, Paul could neither get where he would nor stay where he was. I have sometimes wondered if bis growing desire to see Rome, and preach Christ in the centre of the civilised world, lay at the root of that hasty appeal to Csesar, which he was by-and-bye to make. Was he not at last rather willingly bound and carried prisoner where he would fain be, but whither he found it so diffi cult to go ? These delays — arrests, imprisonments, disputes with the ' Pillars,' and wranglings with ' false brethren ' had become intolerable. In time he might have got through the courts at C»sarea, for he had influence, growing influence, and the good will and respect of the authorities, but he preferred to cut the knot and get to Rome anyhow. Of all this more presently. Another scene opens — Paul at Ephesus ! Athens was the seat of Art and Philosophy, Corinth of Commerce ; Ephesus was a f tmous centre of Commerce, Art, and of what we 1 on ' ' ephesus should call Spiritualism. A glance at the map will show how necessarily this famous seaport attracted both the overland and maritime commerce of the East, handing it on across the -33gean Sea, through the Corinthian Isthmus tu Rome. There, too, stood- the great temple of Diana (Artemis), with its showy and sensational staff of eunuchs and virgins, priests and pries'esses. Built in the reign of Alexander the Great, adorned with his famous likeness by Apelles, and decorated with the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxiteles, it was the glory of Greece, second only to the Parthenon. Tbe ' silver shrines ' made by Demetrius were simply grotesque little idols, sold chiefly, like the Pope's medals, to tourists, 138 These religious trinkets were mummy shaped, with the silver a cluster of monstrous breasts, symbols of fertility—, shrines. images of which are still to be seen on numerous1] Ephesian coins of the period. PAUL AT EPHESUS 379 A splendid fragment of one pillar of this great Ephesian Temple of Diana, with elaborately sculptured base, figures in bas relief, now stands in the British Museum ; as 13q we look at it we may be sure that our eyes rest „ diina's (although with emotions of admiration unknown to te.mple. Paul in the presence of Greek art) upon the very stones which must have arrested without fascinating the eyes of the Apostle. But Ephesus interested Paul. Here he found the kind of atmosphere which always opened him out. He was at heart a mystic ; the sanest mystic that ever lived — but a mystic still. Ephesus was full of spiritualism. 1*0' _ . . , , , r spiritualism. rLveryone saw visions, dreamed dreams, worked miracles — superstition indeed, and its concomitant immorality, had well nigh swamped religion and good conduct ; but the air was full of portents, the people were eagerly receptive, medium - istic, open to spiritualism for good or for evil. This suited Paul's temperament - it was the atmosphere in which he was best fitttd to operate, in which he came out most powerfully, but not as a conjurer, or mere trancemedium or soothsayer, but rather as Ruler of the Spirits. That principle of order — ' proportion of faith ' striking good sense — arrangement of ' gifts ' and ' graces ' — that control over the ' Prince of the Power of the Air ' (Ephesians 141 ii. 2), is just what separated Paul from those who ' try the were physically mediumistic like himself, akin to spirits.' him temperamentally, but far as the Poles apart from him spiritually. In the presence of abnormal phenomena, Paul always held the balance true. He never let go the magic thread of the moral law, which alone can conduct any of us safely through this mysterious labyrinth of unknown forces and spiritual expe riences. ' Try the spirits,' says St. John, and Paul declarer 'discerning of spirits' to be a special gift, but the test is always a moral one — is it for the healing of man's body 1 is it for the illumi nation of his mind — for the lifting up of his life 1 the refreshment of his soul— the increase of his energy ? Is it for the good of man c c 380 PAUL AT EPHESUS and the glory of God? No phenomena — no practices, gifts, privi leges, can elude these questions ; they must all stand and deliver when Paul comes by. In the last analysis the moral law tests all. What is the effect of your spiritualistic phenomena upon conduct and character ? Try the spirits whether they be of God. What ever your feelings, or your intuition, or your powers may he, normal or abnormal, Conscience is still on the judgment-seat to decide according to the moral law, and there is no goirg back from the verdict. We cannot wonder at Paul's successes amongst the Ephesians. The mystic borderland between things seen and unseen — which 142. possessed such a fascination for them, which they the trifled with, exploited for gain, pleasure, and all phenomena. ^{n^s 0f Dase purposes — was familiar to him ; it was his native atmosphere ; he could tell them the things they knew and others of which they had never dreamed ; he knew all they knew experimentally, and more ; he was, from the first, master of the situation. Paul's ministry is characteristically more satu rated with the phenomenal at Ephesus than elsewhere. It took on the hue and complexion of his surroundings. He became all things to all men. ' He spake with tongues more than they all.' Whomsoever he touched the Holy Ghost came upon them. ' Special miracles were wrought by his hands ' (see Acts xix.). The necromancers who tried to imitate him were vanquished; the spirits leapt upon them and silenced them ; they fled dis comfited ; they confessed themselves beaten. The recipe-books, with stored-up experiences of what took place, presumably in light and dark seances — details, doubtless, of how to get the raps, the voices, the lights, the materialisations, and all the rest of it — these were all brought out and a great bonfire of them was made in the presence of Paul. The cardinal doctrine of all the better sort of spiritualists in every age of the world was practical!^ announced — viz., that physical manifestations (especially when apart from direct therapeutic application), signs, and wonders j were wholly subordinate in importance to spiritual tempers aud moral instruction, and apt to be degrading and objectionable. Jesus bad taught precisely the same when He had refused to do PAUL AT EPHESUS 381 miracles to satisfy curiosity, whilst granting them readily in acts of mercy to loving trust. But Paul was going to have a rough time of it. The popular shrines at Ephesus — and their name was legion — (greatly owing to his influence) were fast being deserted. The 143 priests began to suffer. ' All Asia (which was con- paul's tinually passing through that great Vanity Fair) success. heard the word of the Lord Jesus, and the word grew mightily and prevailed. Depend upon it, Paul was voted a good-enough sort of Jew by tbe mixed Ephesian populace until he began to interfere with business. It is always so. You touch men's trade ^,a and you will soon find out how near their religious pocket or convictions lie to their pockets. Anyone who pro- principle. poses to interfere with profits will be set upon, right or wrong. It is no longer a question of principle, but of £ s. d. Suppose T am a High Churchman, or a Low Churchman, or a Broad Church man — it matters little which — and in the name of decency and common-sense I declare that six public- houses within thirty yards, as in Glasgow, are excessive ; or 20,000 public-houses are too many for London — do you think I shall stop the renewal of one license next year ? Not a bit of it ! There's too much wealth and social influence enlisted against me — too many brewers in the House of Lords — for my feeble voice or yours to have much weight. But what will happen ? Why, if I am a High Churchman, the brewers will discover that I am a person of Romanising tendencies, to be vigorously resisted in the name of our national Protestantism ; if I am a Low Churchman, they will call me a narrow, old-fashioned bigot ; and if I am a Broad Churchman, they will say I am unorthodox, a most dishonest parson, a wolf in sheep's clothing, and a very dangerous man. Yes, certainly ; very dangerous, no doubt — to beer ! And so the. instant Paul's popularity touched the manufacture of silver shrines for Diana, Demetrius, the silversmith, orga uised a Trades-Union mob, and nearly succeeded in wrecking c c 2 382 PAUL AT EPHESUS Paul and his followers. But the bold Apostle had powerful friends besides his own little bodyguard — Timotheus, ErastuSj: ,.r and Alexander. He never was allowed to get as paul in far as the theatre, where he would have been torn danger. to pieces. By the time his friends got there the streets were full of a rowdy mass of Ephesian roughs, the greater' part of whom knew not for what cause they had come together. The instant Alexander proposed to enlighten them they, taking their cue from Demetrius and his workmen, set up a shout, ' Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! ' When this had gone on for about two hours, down comes the Town-Clerk of Ephesus. At the appearance of a well-known ¦j^g Roman official order is quickly restored, just as we the have seen a crowd in the streets of London asrembled town-clerk. to -^ness a fight quietly disperse on the appearance of one policeman, whilst the two excited combatants saunter off calmly in the opposite direction with their hands in their pockets. This sudden quieting of the city was a great tribute to the genius of Rome for good government. The Roman officials,, -.„ indeed, usually appear to advantage in the New the Testament, especially in the Acts. Gallio knew his town-clerk's business at Corinth, and the Town- Clerk knew his business at Ephesus. His speech was brief and admirable — quite as good, in its way, as Gallio's, and to the point. He said, in effect — ' Good people, what is this noise about ? " Great is Diana ! " We all know Diana is great. If a wretched wandering Jew, half off his head, comes here and says otherwise, what can it matter? Everyone in this assembly is aware that the famous image we adore came straight down from J upiter. Nobody doubts that, and so there's an end of the matter. You are not so simple as to suppose that the Temple of Ephesus, celebrated throughout the world, can be in any danger from the windy chatter of this half-blind Paulus and his crew! Then, after all, poor deluded troublesome creatures as we know all the Jews are, yet these particular ones have committedltai robbery ¦ (Cries of ' Demetrius and all of us are bein" robbed, PAUL AT EPHESUS 383 Here's the month of May, the place is full of visitors, the Temple festival at its height, and we can't sell our shrines ; there's a lot of dead stock on hand.') ' Well, well,' continues the Town-Clerk, ' if Demetrius and his friends have any grievance, the law is open ; let him get his solicitor to prepare his case ; both sides will then be heard, and you know that in a Roman law-court justice will be done. I'll see to that. But this is not the way to get your rights. Go home quietly and your business shall be attended to " in a lawful assembly." Remember, an uproar like this is a very serious matter. You have special privileges, and you are in danger of forfeiting them by your unseemly behaviour. You are not under martial law, with a Pro-Praetor and a legion to rule you, but you are a senatorial province, with a Pro-consul and your humble servant in oflice, who is likely to be " called to account " for this disturbance, and in what a ridiculous, if not criminal, light will Demetrius and his followers have to appear then ! I fear they, and not Paulus and Alexander, will have to stand as prisoners in the dock ' — and beneath this mixture of flattery, irony, and menace the excited crowd melted away. ' Having thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly.' It was another victory for Paul — the Gospel to be so formidable to trade at Ephesus must indeed have been making great strides, but it evidently could not be put down. How strangely is the whole situation played upon by the first Corinthian Epistle, written from Ephesus, and the second, written soon after Paul's departure. It was indeed a stormy time. ' He had fought with beasts at Ephesus ' — THE' does he allude to Demetrius and his crew, or to some internal narrow escape in the gladiatorial arena itself ? We know not. Anyhow, it was a time of intense excitement and overwhelming anxiety, for whilst holding his own, in miserable health, there came to him the most disquieting reports from Corinth : ' the care of all the churches ' had to be thrown into his daily labours, and nothing but an indomitable buoyancy of heart and his heroic courage kept him up. And what a ministry of eternal consolation reaches us in those words — ' We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed ; we are perplexed, but 384 PAUL AT EPHESUS not in despair ; persecuted, but not forsaken ; cast down, hut not destroyed.' (2 Cor. iv. 8, 9.) And by-and-bye that too lias passed, and nothing remains, as he looks back at Ephesus from his prison in Rome, but exultation, joy, overflowing thankfulness, and the wideness and universal embrace of the Go -pel in the City of Diana To me the Ephesian Epistle, to whomsoever written, remains the golden Epistle of Paul. All that is accidental and transitory in the form of his teaching has disappeared. He THB is near his own martyrdom, and he sees things ephesian already lifted up in the radiant light of Eternity. Here all are gathered together, of divers tongues and nations, and there is at last one fold or ' flock ' (which is the correct translation) and one Shepherd — one body, one spirit, one hope of your calling — one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, ' who is above all, and through all, and in you all.' And Paul was right. The second thoughts were best. Not the storm and disquiet of the Corinthian Epistles, reflecting' his actual state at Ephesus, was the truest reflection epistles to an<^ memory of his achievement there, but the corinthians glory and the calm of the Epistle to the Ephesians, AND flooded with the golden glow and mellow peace of ephesians. ° r sunset. XI PAUL'S FAEEWELL TO ASIA MINOE 151. Paul turns to Jerusalem. — 152. Stopped at Philippi. — 153. Troas. — 154. Paul's long Sermon. — 155. Sleeping in Church. — 156 Need of solitude. — 157. His policy. — 158. From Assos to Miletus.— 159. Paul's farewell Sermon. — 160. Last words. Paul leaves Ephesus — hurries with almost feverish haste through Macedonia, then on to Greece, where a Jewish conspiracy seemed hatching against him, and for many reasons he now again turned his eyes towards PAUL TDrns Jerusalem. Perhaps he thought it worth while to T0 make a last attempt to put himself right with the Judaizing party, whose bitter and narrow followers in the provinces were far more extreme than the Apostles of Jerusalem, but who tried to sail under their authority, and probably did to a considerable extent — at all events, the opinions on church matters at Jerusalem were far nearer to those of the Jews who hunted Paul in the provinces than they were to Paul's opinions, as we shall presently see. But there was evidently no straight road to Jerusalem for Paul, and at Philippi he seems to have been detained — perhaps by some recurrence of his malady- in the spring 152 of the year 59. At all events we find him again stopped at in tbe company of his friendly physician Luke, who philips- stays with him, whilst Sopater, Secundus, Timothy, and the rest of his travelling companions, set sail in advance for Troas. 386 PAUL'S FAREWELL TO ASIA MINOR The ' We ' of the Acts, so indicative of tbe presence of Luke, now recommences. The missioners re-unite at Troas for a breathing space of seven days — a time of refresh- 153' ment, no doubt, but also of great excitement and AT TROAS. ' ° fatigue. The Sunday night before he le't, in an upper room, brilliantly lighted, and doubtless thronged with eager listeners, Paul held what we may call a 'Conference.' There was so much to say, so little time to say it in— so many to be spoken with, some perhaps who had never seen Paul, new converts— all must be conversed with, touched, prayed with, and far into the warm spring night, with all windows wide open and within hearing of the .ZEgean Sea, whose waters lapped lazily on the beach outside, did Paul continue his discourse. One after another the questioners and their companions will have grown silent — the answer, the encouragement, the explana- j54 tion, remained with Paul, the master spirit of that pacl'b long devoted circle, till at last all seemed gathered up sermon. an(j expanded into one continued earnest discourse, till past midnight. The heat of the room, the continuous sound of Paul's voice, the lateness of the hour, was unnoticed by Paul, and doubtless by many others who hung on his lips — when suddenly a crash, a cry, a groan. Eutychus, a boy who had climbed up and been sitting in a window, doubtless to get all the air he could, had fallen asleep, and then fallen out of the window, and lay dying or dead in the court below ; yet so intense was the interest in Paul that even this alarming accident proved only a momentary interruption in less than an hour Paul — who had gone down, raised the youth, who seems to have been merely stunned, revived him, restored him to his friends — was again with his congregation, speaking with unabated fervour, listened to with breathless interest, and so he continued until the dawn of day. The weakness to which poor Eutychus succumbed is not altogether unknown in our modern churches — though all thohe who slumber in their pews cannot plead the excuse of having PAUL'S FAREWELL TO ASIA MINOR 387 been kept up all night to listen to a sermon several hours in length ; but perhaps if everyone who went to s'eep in church fell down three stories and got picked up half 15g dead, people would think twice before they indulged sleeping themselves in a nap. When Paul noticed the IN CH0ECH' irreverent tak ng of the Eucharist at Corinth, where each seemed bent on getting as much bread and wine for himself as he could snatch, he exclaimed, 'What, ha ye ye not houses to eat and to drink in ?' — and when I see people mistaking their pews for dormitories, I have often felt inclined to say, ' What, bave ye not beds and sofas at home to sleep on that you thus profane the House of God with your indolence ? ' If people are too tired on Sunday morning with the week's work, they should rest their weary bodies at home rather than come jaded to church. Why give to God a worn-out brain and body, not good enough for man ? Come rested and fresh, but don't forget to come. ]f you will listen to Paul you should try and get to church or chapel once on the Lord's Day. ' Forsake not,' so he pleaded, ' the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is ' — but remembering Eutychus, perhaps we may add, ' Whenever you do come, try to keep awake.' But Paul's hours in Asia Minor are now numbered — he was anxious to get to Jerusalem before Pentecost — he wanted to show those Jews who accused him of despising Moses that lgg he reverenced the Jewish feasts, and could conform need of to the usual ritual with the best of them — but, after solitude. the excitement of the sleepless night, the rush of parting, the last words, the conflicting emotions of that Sunday at Troas, Paul wanted to be alone. Again he sent on his company, and walked, this time not even with Luke, quietly across the promontory from Troas to Assos by himself. He felt he had neither the time nor 157 the strength to face another popular reception at policy Ephesus. He knew what he had gone through at Troas, a farewell at Ephesus would be five times as exhausting, and he might, in the hurry of crowds coming and going, omit what 388 PAUL'S FAREWELL TO ASIA MINOR he most wanted to say. Perhaps he had other reasons. Perhaps already there were discords brewing at Ephesus that his presence might intensify — those discords which culminated a few years later when his own work was destroyed, and tbe Judreo-Christian element triumphed for a season in the person of St. John — under whose influence Paul's followers were so completely discredited. Better, on the whole, just now — when actually en route for the centre of J uda;o- Christianity at Jerusalem — to avoid all chanceof an explosion in the provinces. Better to rally round him a few staunch Elders of the Ephesian Church in this important and last meeting, at a distance from Ephesus —those men who had power over the people — better this concentrated instruction to a few than a possible disturbance with disaffected Jews, and, at any rate, a sensational parting with hundreds. So when Paul rejoined his friends at Assos he took ship and they sailed past Ephesus, and landing forty miles down the coast at 153 Miletus sent for the Elders to come over from the from assos city of Artemis. They met at Miletus and received to miletus. jjj3 parting instructions and his last adieu. As over an expressive face flit sudden changes, catching with a spiritual photography, infallible and instantaneous, the hidden 15g motions of the soul, so as we read fragments of Paul's paul's farewell address to the Ephesian Elders are we able farewell (-0 n0£e the sw}ft change of his thought and emotion, sermon. ° ^ ' as the gusts of feeling transfusing his speech sweep over him, are interrupted, resumed, and constantly caught up into a region of inspirational fervour. ' They knew him well,' he said ; ' he had been with them at " all seasons " — he was not afraid of the scrutiny — he had nothing to conceal, not even his weak ness, his love for them, his tears, and they had been many. Of his own suffering and persecution this was, perhaps, not the time to speak, but he had only then just escaped from a murderous plot of the Jews. He had preached the same thing to both Jew and Gentile ; there was no difference in the eyes of God only one Gospel— only one Saviour — only one safe path. "Repentance ! " "Trust/" — these were the two watchwords, their meaning was PAUL'S FAREWELL TO ASIA MINOR 389 plain enough ; to turn from every suspicion of evil and be recon ciled to God, that was Repentance — laying hold of His righteous ness and His love in Christ Jesus, that was Trust. In him God is near, intelligible, powerful to embrace our spirits, to kindle, en lighten, and save — that was about the whole of his gospel. Let them accept Christ, and suffer Him to lead them, through the outpouring of His Holy Spirit, to the knowledge and righteous ness of God. As for himself, he had got into the way of walking so entirely by faith and not by sight that even now he was going " bound in the spirit to Jerusalem," a place bristling with enemies, not knowing in the least what would happen to him when he got there. But he had a foreboding of disaster — the road to Calvary, he understood, was not through green pastures nor beside still waters, and the disciple was not above his Lord. Why should he be moved 1 Bonds and affliction were nothing to him — they had become his daily portion ; he carried his life in his hand — he was ever ready to lay it down at the bidding of his Master, Christ— sure as he did so it would be, whenever the time came, a last joyful self-surrender. The crown of glory could not be far off, if only he could endure unto tbe end and finish his work. There was so much to be done.' Then a sudden human pang seemed to shoot through him. O, Paul — so far away with Christ, and yet so near to all the throbbing hearts that are around thee — wilt thou not teach us that when most near in spirit to the Lord Jesus we are most truly united to one another ? There was a movement in the little congregation. They could ill afford to part with Paul just then ; still less afford to hand such a teacher over to bonds — perhaps to death. Paul felt that their eyes were intently fixed upon him. He could himself, on account of his weak eyes, see them indifferently, but he could feel that they saw him, and it was natural for him to say, not ' I shall see your faces no LAgT WqEDS more,' but ' Ye shall see my face no more, all ye among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God,' and then he makes up his accounts with them. ' People had said he was always asking for their money— always making collections. That was true, but it was for others ; for the poor saints, not 390 PAUL'S FAREWELL TO ASIA MINOR for himself. Look at these hands — are they not stained and hardened with the constant weaving and plaiting of goat's hair ? Are they the hands of an idler ? No ! they belong to a working- man. When you think of suffering Paul with his toil-worn hands, remember that by labouring ye too ought to help the weak.' And here Paul lets drop in parting an infinitely precious sayinw of Jesus — not recorded elsewhere — 'Remember,' he says, 'the words of the Lord Jesus, how that He said " it is more blessed to give than to receive." ' ' And when he had thus spoken he kneeled down and prayed with them all, and they all wept sore and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake unto them that they should see his face no more ; and they accompanied him to the ship.' XII AEEEST OE ST. PAUL AT JERUSALEM 161. Paul's plans for a.d. 59-60.— 162. Paul and Philip at Tyre.— 163 Paul warned but resolute. — 164. Arrival at Jerusalem. — 165. Introduc tion to James. — 166. Chilling reception.— 167. A crushing proposal. — 168. An awful moment. — 169. A moral triumph. — 170. Clerical hornets. — 171. Stung after all — 172. Paul mobbed. — 173. Paul faces his foes. — 174. A critical moment. It was spring in the year a.d. 59. Paul had about ten years more to live. His plans for the immediate future were fixed. After leaving Miletus he would coast by Coos, ° . 161. Rhodes, Patara, in a small fishing smack ; then take raul's a larger vessel and strike right across the Mediter- plans for ranean (passing Cyprus on the left) to Tyre ; then, A"D' J_b ' with a few breaks, on to Jerusalem, where he would deposit the alms he had collected for the poor at the feet of the Elders ; attend the Spring Feast, and get away as soon as possible to fulfil his long-cherished wish — for {en route for Spain), as he said, I must see Rome also. But Paul might propose — God disposed. He was to go to Rome, and that shortly, but not a free man, and his perilous voyage was to be the beginning of the end. Paul and his friends, Luke, Timothy, perhaps Trophimus, and a few others, landed at Tyre in fair spring weather. He found it a busy, roaring mart, with its crowded 162 quays, its special trade in purple crimson dyes and paul and stained cloths, giving its streets and people the PHILIP AT look of an everlasting holiday. Under the blue water at low tide may still be seen the massive marble blocks, 392 ARREST OP ST. PAUL AT JERUSALEM remnants of ancient piers, built far out into the water — dumb relics of a prosperity and commerce long since stamped out beneath the all- blighting rule of the unspeakable Turk. Paul could breathe at Tyre. It was the air of the great world — the stir of an unprovincial city-life did him good — a Gentile world, far as the Poles removed from the stifling Judaic atmosphere of Jerusalem. He lingerel seven d*ys amidst men of advanced thought and open minds, fervent in heart, serving the Lord — then pushed on to Ptolemais, then to Caesarea. Another sweet respite. Philip the Evangelist — or (his more coveted title), ' one of the seven ' — was there, earliest of the broad-church Christians. Philip, who had baptized the Eunuch of Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians — Evangelist of liberal tendencies, who preferred Caesarea half- heathen to Jerusalem ihe orthodox capital — a very Cathedral Close of conservatism — timorous, dry, narrow, and wholly clerical. It was good to be within touch of the holy men there no doubt — James and Cephas and John — but better not be too intimate, if any real work was to be done, any result obtained amongst the free living, free thinking people of Cesarea. So with his four girls, devout and gifted maidens every one of them, full, doubtless, of gentle and joyous service, Philip dwelt at Caesarea and welcomed Paul and his company. I think before the great crises of life God sends us such times of refreshing. Truly it was the lull before the storni, for Paul had a terrible fortnight before him ; how terrible he did not know, but one day a certain Agabus, a prophet, a man of second sight, entered mysteriously, and goin^ into a sort of trance, took Paul's girdle, and binding his own hands and feet foretold that even so Paul would be bound on his arrival at Jerusalem. The events were casting their shadows before them. This was not the first warning. At Tyre he had been told the same 16„ thing — implored not to go to Jerusalem. What paul should such an one as Paul do at Jerusalem warned but amongst believers so narrow that, to them, Jesus, the world's Saviour, was a mere Jewish Messiah, whilst the outworn ceremonial law of Moses still seemed more important than the widest conquest over the Gentiles. ' Paul I ARREST OF ST. PAUL AT JERUSALEM 393 Paul ! you must indeed be beside yourself. You will be torn to pieces by men who regard you as the enemy of Moses and the friend of the heathen. They think your Christianity just as much warped as you think theirs narrow, but, remember, they have the power and prestige -and some of them "seem to be pillars." They have a horror of anything like a broad-church protest like that of Stephen, which brings them into direct collision with the old-fashioned Jews, who can't quite accept the theory that Jesus was Messiah, but with whom James and the Elders want to live peaceably. Stay where you are, Paul — send on the money don't go yourself — we shall never see you alive again.' ' What mean yt- ,' cries the great-hearted Apostle, ' to weep and to break my heart ? ' He was touched — but inexorable. He would not only go and be bound, but even suffer death for the name of Jesus. That was Paul all over — tremblingly responsive to every thrill of human affection, but set firm like a rock for Christ. So now Agabus might go his way. Paul would take back his girdle ; it would remind him that he was to be what he was afterwards so fond of calling himself (Eph.), 'the .fi4 prisoner of Jesus Christ for the Gentiles.' But the arrival at Feast of Pentecost was at hand. The roads were Jerusalem. crowded with caravans and pilgrims. Paul's party hired carriages and set out from Caesarea for the capital. The Elders knew he was coming, yet no lodging was prepared for him — one Mnason — whom the travellers seem to have met on the way, offered to put them up. They entered Jerusalem. It now requires all Luke's art (Acts xxi.) to give a tolerably harmonious colouring to the situation. Looking back through some thirty or more years upon the events, he could not bear to think of the cruel slight put upon Paul by Elders of the Chris tian Church at Jerusalem. Things are toned down in the twenty-first chapter even more than in the fifteenth chapter, recounting Paul's previous struggle with the Orthodox Party. Some brethren however welcomed him — friends of Mnason probably. None of the Elders seem to have met him, not one of the Apostles came near him, but the next day a meeting was inevitable. 394 ARREST OF ST. PAUL AT JERUSALEM The eagerly awaited moment came. Paul and his Gentile. proteges were ushered into the reverent and austere presence of James ' Obliarn,' the brother or cousin of the Lord, 165. the ruler of the Judsean Christian Church. Was introduction j0^n there ? He may have been ; if so, we can easily TO JAMES. . , -r tii imagine that, along with J ames and the Elders, he expressed his intense dread of the dangerous nature of Paul's teaching against the laws of Moses, and in favour of extension of all Gospel privileges, but without Jewish customs, to the Gentiles-* There then sat ' the Pillars,' the men who had seen Christ. Paul directs the money to be laid at their feet — hardly, anxiously collected by him amongst the Asiatic churches — his 166. peace-offering from which he had hoped so much — reception trusting it might smooth the way to keep up the union of the spirit between the growing vigorous Gentile churches and the church at Jerusalem — to save, if only in appearance, for the outside world the prestige of the old orthodox establishment, for the young, insubordinate, independent, almost dissenting branches at Ephesus, Corinth, Philippi. Piles ei money — more than they cculd have expected when they asked him ' to remember the poor,' which he had been indeed ' forward to do.' Not a word — not a ' thank you.' How eagerly would Luke have set it down ; but he couldn't — he passes it over silence. Then Paul, for a moment depressed — surprised perha_ 3 — a little indignant, reflects, 'They don't care for the money, because I bring it ; no matter, they look on it as if I were trying to buy the church's favour, like a second Simon Magus.' But, stifling his disappointment, he breaks at once into a passionate recital of how the Gentiles had received the Gospel. O that he could melt that cold and apathetic audience — touch them with just one flash of sympathy for the outlying nations, who wanted the Saviour but who did not want the Jew ! How Paul must, have pleaded with them 'that Christ might dwell in the hearts;'/ of all men by faith ; that being rooted and grounded in love they might be able to understand with all saints what was the height, and length, and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which passed knowledge, and be filled with all the fulness of ARREST OF ST. PAUL AT JERUSALEM 395 God.' Still not a glow ! — as aimed at their exclusive privileges, such words must have sounded to 'the Pillars' wild and heretical The council was getting restless— all such talk seemed to the Elders most unpractical — mere frothy rhetoric ; nay worse dangerous, broad-church, and revolutionary in the extreme. His personal ascendancy alone held them in check. Not a word of sympathy had they for Paul, who brought the crowns of the Gentiles and the first-fruits of the nations and laid them at the Elders' feet — not a word of personal kindness ; but Luke, forcing the situation even then a little perhaps, adds concisely, ' They glorified God ! ' It was safe to ' glorify God,' there was nothing writ down in Moses against that. Whatever was good was God's — the rest might be Paul's. Hardly have his glowing words of passionate love to Christ — his plea for a free pulpit, as it were, a ctmmon Christianity — ¦ ceased to echo through the hall, when James, the 167 chairman of the meeting, cuts in severely and dryly a crushing enough with, 'Thou seest, brother, thousands of proposal. Jews believe our way (not your way) — they keep the law, tht-y are told you don't — that you don't care for Moses— trample ou our holy things ; they know you have arrived, and an orthodox crowd will muster ; be advised — don't let us repeat the disaster of Stephen's speech — we don't wish you ill, but that self- opiniated young man nearly ruined the Church of Jerusalem — brought our names into open disrepute with the good old- fashioned Jews, our friends here ; but if you say aloud iu Jerusalem what you have just been saying to us now, or anything like it, nothing can save j ou, and it will go hard, but that you will ruin us along with yourself. Be advised ; show everyone here that you are after all a good Jew.' And then — as every word fell like an ice-drop upon the fervtnt spirit of Paul, and he was wondering whether humiliation could go any further— he had to listen to this crowning proposal, that Iih should take four beggars who had a vow, pay for them himself, and see to their head shaving, fees, and purification in the Temple before all the people ! Paul, who had taught through out Asia that such usages were futile or indifferent — beggarly D J 396 ARREST OF ST. PAUL AT JERUSALEM elements, superstitions— Paul was to go nigh eating his own words to allay the fears or gratify the narrow minds of those who called themselves Christ's disciples ! The burning question, in fact, in Jerusalem, seemed to be not the love of Christ, or the conversion of the heathen, or fellowship between Christian teachers, but this— how to keep in with the orthodox laity, how stand firm by the old organisation. ' Paul ! this talk about love and fellowship is a little beside the mark just now. You've got to clear yourself — that's the point ; show yourself loyal tr the established and endowed church at Jerusalem — 1st, loave and fishes ; 2nd, theology ; 3rd, morality, brotherly love, and a! . that.' As Paul listened and read acutely, as he so well could, between the lines, a bitter, terrible, choking feeling must have ig8 come over him. There he stood, having toiled for an awful years to get them money, amongst other things, for moment. their poor, yearning above all for their sympathy, if only a friendly word, for him and his converts — first-fruits of the new world he was conquering for them — and they met him with a stare and a rebuke. He was wretchedly disappointed, almost personally insulted ; his offerings slighted — his senti ments ignored — his opinions and arguments misunderstood or disregarded. Last indignity : he was to be heavily fined — he forced to eat bis own words, and undergo openly a test of suspicion in the Temple. It was an awful moment — the fate of his Gentile churches seemed hanging in the balance. But the grandeur of Paul's mission prevailed. At all cost this rupture between him and the Apostles must not take 169 place — and of all places in the world, not at a moral Jerusalem ; the party of the Church must be saved triumph. somehow— the segis of those who had seen the Lord must be spread over the Gentiles. Paul rose to the occasion. Statesman, diplomatist — man of ideas — man of action — man of heart ; where shall we find such qualities combined ? They met in Paul. Concession and consistency for one moment seemed at war within him. But, with a flash of true spiritual genius, he ARREST OF ST. PAUL AT JERUSALEM 397 harmonised them— by appeal to a principle higher than either. Charity. That Divine formula enabled him now — not for the first and not for the last time— to stoop to conquer. Paul accepts. He appears in the Temple -he is 'at charges ' with the four beggars— he keeps the law of Moses ! Would he now get off?— escape with his life— with the freedom of his Churches — without formal inhibition — with perhaps even a cold ' God speed ' from those ' who 170 seemed to be pillars,' at Jerusalem ; but ' who (and clerical here he may have thought of all the money he had hornets. brought them, and how they had met the gift by imposing an additional fine) added nothing unto him ' ? No ; the seven days were almost over — but he was not to get off. The ship was tc be wrecked within sight of land ! He had thrust his head intc that orthodox nest of clerical hornets at Jerusalem, and they would if they could sting him to death. How could he escape 3 He did not even know who were his friends and who his enemies. The line of demarcation between James and the Sanhedrim was too faint. The Apostles in authority were disaffected, though still outwardly it was ' Brother Paul ' full of his ' things hard tc be understood ' ; but the bulk of Judfeo-Christians were openly opposed to Paul's doctrines, and as for the old Jews of the Sanhedrim, with whom these Judaeo-Christians lived in tolerable amity — they were furious. It was as impossible to save Paul at Jerusalem in 59 a.d. as it had been to save Jesus there in 33 a.d. They came upon him in the Temple — -Asiatic Jews who reflected in the provinces the Conservative party of the capital. They had seen Paul in the provinces — they had tried 1?1 to ruin him there — they knew him again — their stung time was come — they would strike him down in the AFTEE all. great centre of the old faith. To seize this schismatic son of Beelzebub - this new Balaam — this Nicolaus, or deceiver of the people, in the Holy Temple itself, would be a grand revenge— a summary national protest. 'Help, men of Israel,' they cried, rushing out of the Temple, ' this is the man that teacheth all men everywhere aga'nst the Temple ai.d the law .and this place, D D 2 398 ARREST OF ST. PAUL AT JERUSALEM and has now brought Greeks into the Temple and polluted the holy place.' It was a lie ; but any lie will do to wreck a doomed man — and Paul was doomed. Trophimus. an Ephesian, had been ,sfen talking with Paul in the streets, and then rumour ran that Paul had taken the uncircumcised dog into the Temple. The mob gathered and drove Paul and the four beggars out into the street — fell upon Paul and were bent upon beating him ]72 to death, when from the Tower of Antonia the ever- paul vigilant Roman police were aware of a fight in the mobbed. streets, and in a few minutes, such was the police organisation in those days, a strong body of Roman guards were on the spot and soon arrested Paul — beaten and breathless. So great was the pressure of the yelling rabble that Paul was lifted off his feet, and borne by the soldiers up the steps of the castle. There was a pause before the massive doors could be got open, and Paul, recovering himself, won the ear of the chief captain, who was bent only on getting him out of the mob. That was not Paul's idea. One would have thought he would have welcomed the respite of incarceration — almost killed a moment before, but in no hurry to get into safety. Strange man ! but, hark, he speaks Greek. The Roman officer seems to have been struck with his coolness and courage — probably he and Paul were the only two men in that excited crowd who had perfectly kept their heads. The captain was struck too with his speaking Greek — a man of education apparently, not an Egyptian fanatic, after all, then — although small, dark, with thick eyebrows, and iron-grey baldish head, he looks very like an Egyptian to be sure. ' I pray thee,' says Paul, ' let me speak to the people.' There was something strange and masterful in such a request at such a moment. The perfectly impartial Roman — rough soldier 173_ as he was — was not inclined to say him nay. Per- taul eace3 chance this singular man might manage the mob his poes. and quell the uproar without bloodshed, and so with only a thin line of Roman steel glittering between him and a furious Eastern rabble, Paul — bruised, shaken, and probably ARREST OF ST. PAUL AT JERUSALEM 399 bleeding — stood on the top steps of the citadel, with his back to the closed castle door, and beckoned with his hand unto the people. The angry roar of the troubled sea that surged beneath him seemed suddenly to subside. The appearance of the Roman soldiers had sobered the mob — the sight — to many 17^ the first good sight — they had got of Paul, standing a critical calm — superior to insult and injury — intent on his moment, s»-t purpose of addressing them — dominating his appalling cir cumstances without effort ; the singularity of his appearance — the small, dark, fragile man, with mobile expressive features, high forehead, lips quivering with utterance and hand raised with an air of command. It was a moment for a great painter ! The crowd, obeying an irresistible instinct, paused expectant, even overawed, ' and when there was made a great silence, Paul spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue.' XIII ST. PAUL'S APOLOGIA 175. Paul's tact. — 176. The speech. — 177. Away with such fellows!— 178. Paul to be scourged.— 179. Pleads privilege.— 180. The tables turned. — 181. Paul smitten on the mouth. — 182. Paul's stratagem defended.- -183. Paul true to the letter "and spirit. — 184. Growing uproar. — 185. Lysias rescues Paul. — 186. A rest for Paul. With the tact of an orator facing a disorderly crowd, the Apostle suddenly becomes autobiographical and sympathetic. When people think they are really going to get at Paul's tact Persorial facts they always prick up their ears; indeed, tbe inexhaustible interest which we take in each other's lives and genuine experiences is seen in the popu larity of biographies, and, I may add, in the thirst for gossip of all kinds upon which what are called society papers live. Paul had a hard task — he had to commend himself to a prejudiced and envenomed assembly — he bad an intensely upopu- lar doctrine to float — viz., the extension of the religious franchise to the Gentiles ! It is heart-breaking to see such admirable courage, temper, and eloquence all thrown away ; but the crowd listened at first. 17g ' I can understand you,' Paul virtually urges, ' I the was like you once — I persecuted Stephen, and you speech. persecute me — What changed my mind ? Listen ! You know I am a Christian — I don't disguise that ' — (they might let that pass, the Judseo-Christians since the death of Stephen being so like other Jews and quite inoffensive) — 'How did I become a Christian ? ' Then, of course, follows the vision on the ST. PAUL'S APOLOGIA 401 road to Damascus. That too might pass — visions were altogether respectable things, and not very uncommon. ' The young men,' it was written, ' should see visions, and the old men should dream dreams.' Paul's .vision told him that he was henceforth to preach Jesus — well, that was just tolerable in the ears of an old-fashioned Jerusalem Jew — it did no great harm to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. It seemed an innocent superstition at all events, so lor.g as it threatened not the established order of things at Jerusalem. But what more had Jesus said in the vision ? Why, that tho Jews at Jerusalem would reject the inspired voice from above — that it was too good for them, and that one so specially favoured as to hear it, was not sent to them, but to the Gentiles. When affairs took this turn, Paul seemed a kind of spiritual traitor in the camp, affecting personal communication with heaven in order to undermine the chosen people and wreck the old church. ' Sent to the Gentiles ! ' Forsooth, there was no toning down that. It meant the decline of Jewish influ ence ; it meant ruin to an elaborate ritual, full of practices which brought great gain to the priesthood, but which, according to Paul, could never be accepted by the Gentiles ; and the Gentiles, enemies of religious vested interests and national privileges, numerically would doubtless soon swamp the old church of Jerusalem. Paul was opening the flood-gates — ' The Romans would come and take away their name and country ! ' This- and more did Paul's words, however postponed, however veiled, however sanctioned by a vision, convey to the ' Men, brethren, and fathers' in the crowd, as they listened with increasing excitement — on the other side of the Roman soldiers. At that fatal allusion to the Gentiles, arose a wild cry — ' Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live ! ' It is the old story. You will be heard in politics or religion up to the point of somebody's prejudice or pocket— then with reason, argument, God on your side, you will be stopped as Paul was stopped. Tell people the Bible has AWAy WITH difficulties — they assent ; say the explanations are such not always satisfactory — they agree ; say that no explanations can or ever will be found for some statements — ¦ 402 ST. PAUL'S APOLOGIA they grow restless ; tell them plainly the sun or rather the earth never could have stood still at the bidding of Joshua or any other man ; that a moment's pause in the diurnal revolution must, as we all know now, bave shattered the -universe instan- tmeously ; tell them the story is a tradition of some real event, but coloured by the fervid imagination of the national historian ; go 01 to say that Noah's ark is of a similar character — probably the description of a picture which served to hand down some extraordinary event in the world's past history — but that things could not have happened with Noah and his family exactly as described in Genesis ; all the animals and insects could not have got into the ark with the Patriarch's household as de scribed ; if the vessel was about the size of Westminster Abbey; with a window a square foot large for illumination and ventilation, that would have amounted to total darkness, and so forth. And long before you have got through what the ' men, brethren, and fathers ' of the period will call your attack on the verbal inspira tion of the Bible, you will be stopped with ' Away with such a fellow from the earth ! ' Or try the Established Church ; say that the English Church is so oddly mixed up with the State as to be full of anomalies — good ; that its forms are antiquated and require interpretation, che very words of its formularies being often obsolete — no doubt ; but when you go on to denounce the scandalous jobbery of church patronage, and tell your staunch churchman that unless the church's administration throughout the country is reformed (the scandal of unfit and incompetent pastors removed) nothing can scand between the church and the abolition of her special privi leges ; that she must, if she will not reform and adapt herself to the wants of the people, be disestablished and disendowed — then you will be howled down by bishops, priests, and deacons, who will hound on the more bigoted of the laity — 'Away with such a fellow,' they will all shout together, 'for it is not fit that I e should live I ' Interfei e with peoples' preconceived ideas, threaten their vested interests, touch their pride, prejudice, pocket, or position in the world, and though you were the Apostle Paul or an Archangel, you shall be denounced as a turbulent fellow and declared not fit to live. ST. PAUL'S APOLOGIA 403 But the swaying of the thin line of flashing steel between Paul and tbe mob is ominous of a coming struggle. The soldiers with difficulty keep the crowd back. Paul had evidently lost c< ntrol over his audience. The hopes of Lysias, the chief captain, that the prisoner might be able to quell the mob and restore quiet, were disappointed. He was no doubt very angry at Paul's. failure, after having stretched a point in allowing him to speak. He could not understand his Hebrew speech, but he could see that something Paul had said bad made matters worse than before. There was an ugly rush at the prisoner, in another moment he would have been seized ; there would then have been a free fight, and Roman swords would (not for the first time) be bathed in Hebrew blood. This was ever the great bugbear of the Roman Governors, who, whenever it happened, never failed to be accused of maladministration to the Emperor at Rome. The critical moment had arrived — the great castle doors unfold and Paul is hastily pushed in ; the doors swing back and the disappointed mob remains (confronting a serried file of Roman guards) baulked of the prey and disinclined to risk an unequal struggle with disciplined force. Paul had made a brave fight, but the situation was, from first to last, an impossible one. His failure had evidently put the governor out of conceit with his pr isoner. He would 178 get at the rights of this matter — he must wrench paul to be from Paul by torture the secret of this incredible scourged. disturbance — as it seemed about nothing at all. There must be something very perverse or quarrelsome about this prisoner — so he ordered him to be bound and had the official torturers in, with their whips knotted with lead. It was a punishment like the Russian knout, and some died under it. Our Lord seems nearly to have succumbed. How nearly He was saved the protracted torture of the cross, we shall never know — His fearful bodily prostration, after Pilate's scourging, being very evident, from John's narrative, throughout the rest of His trial. The Apostle's extraordinary calmness and presence of mind did not desert him at this terrible moment. ' Is it lawful,' he 401 ST. PAUL'S APOLOGIA said, turning to the centurion, who watched him being bound with thongs to the whipping-post, 'to scourge a man that is a ]79 Roman, and uncondemned ? ' Every word told— pleads both characteristic points of the Roman law— parts privilege. 0£ evcr.v policeman's catechism were stated in that short well-chosen sentence. It took instant effect. The cen turion goes straight to Lysias, the chief captain. ' Mind what you're about,' he said, hurriedly, ' Paul, the prisoner, is a Roman.' Lysias, though incredulous, still thinks it prudent to question Paul in person. ' You a Roman ! — but you're a poor man, aren't 180 you ' How could you ever get money to buy the the tables Roman franchise — it cost me ever so much ? ' turned. < No doubt,' says Paul ; ' but I was born free.' In some way Paul satisfied the chief captain of this. He was not, after all, so very unknown in Jerusalem, as he had a married sister living there at that very moment, and he may have given Lysias his sister's name and address as a respectable reference. If he did so, it will account for the courage of his young nephew in going straight to Uncle Paul in his dungeon, aud for the kind and familiar way in which the rough Roman captain, who was begin ning to take a different view of Paul, received the boy, and got from him news of the plot against his uncle's life. Anyhow, the tables were for a moment turned, and it seemed that Lysias, not Paul, was now on his defence ; for Paul could plead at Caesar's judgment-seat, if he chose, unlawful binding, the indignity of threatened scourging, and treatment derogatory to the dignity of a Roman. The captain's instinct now was to have nothing more to do with the matter, or as little as possible. Paul had better go before the Jewish court ; after all, quibbles about the law and Jewish superstitions were matters more proper for the Sanhedrim than for a Roman law court. So after what to the tired prisoner must have been a blessed Dight of respite, he was brought next day, with his head clear and his body recruited, and with at least some hours' time for deliberation, into the presence of Ananias, the High Priest, and the Elders, Scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees. ST. PAUL'S APOLOGIA 405 With all his tact and ability, Paul failed in his opening sentence to hit the humour of that difficult assembly. 'Men and brethren,' he said, 'I have lived in all good consciencebeforeGodunt.il this day.' 'Smite him PAul on the mouth! ' cried the High Priest. What had smitten on been Paul's offence ? He had omitted to address E M0UTH- the Chairman and the Elders — as who should forget ' Mr. Chairman and my lords,' and begin with 'Ladies and gentlemen.' ' Men and brethren ' seemed further to place him (Paul, the prisoner) on a level with the members of council who were met to judge him. He v>as socially (perhaps by rank too, as an ex-Sanhedrist) on a level with them ; but it was scarcely politic to remind them of that. Then to claim his innocence and parade his good conscience was again to usurp the functions of the council, prejudging his own case, and, perhaps, to deal a side blow at the judge (all the more offensive because he had not addressed him, but the general assembly). Was he, by chance, talking at the judge, who happened to be one of the vilest and most corrupt of men ? Perhaps Ananias thought so, and had him at once smitten on the mouth. ' God shall smite thee, thou wbited wall ! ' ciies Paul — seeing in the distance a blurred, white-robed figure gesticulating ; but on learning that it was the High Priest he instantly tendered an official apology. ' I wist not, brethren, that it was the High Priest ' — (we can almost see him shading his weak eyes to peer into the distance, and unable to see distinctly to the end of the Court) — and then still partly to show his reverence for Moses, whom he was said to deride, Paul quotes the law — it is written ' Thou shalt not speak evil of the rulers of my people.' Whatever speech or defence he had prepared in the wakeful watches of the past night, it was clear it would be useless to deliver it before such a ' ruler ' and such Elders. The Court was already in an uproar — it was difficult to get any hearing — then he tried a stratagem. He noticed that some were Sadducees, others Pharisees — he resolved to throw the apple of discord amongst them, arid turn his enemies off himself on to one another. ' / am a Pharisee,' be cried ; ' For the hope of the Resurrection of the Dead I am called in question this day.' 403 ST. PAUL'S APOLOGIA Was Paul disingenuous ? No. He was a Pharisee by train ing and education ; he had a right to throw himself on the only 182 section of the crowd with whom he had any Paul's sympathy ; and it would be a great mistake to stratagem suppose that there was not a great deal in the better Pharisees of that day with which Paul and e^ery good man could heartily sympathise, if it were nothing else but their firm belief in a spiritual world, and their sincere" attempt to live cleanly. If Paul was to stand his ground for a moment in such a mixed assembly, it must be by an immediate appeal to anything friendly and sympathetic to be found there. Again, was it true that he was a prisoner on account of his belief in the resurrection ? Was he not rather a prisoner 18.°. because of his sympathy with the Gentiles 1 Was paul true be not submitting a false issue at the expense of TO 1 HE letter and truth in order to extricate himself from a perilous spirit. position ? Not at all — he was strictly within tbe letter and the spirit of uprightness. True the beginning of his troubles had to do with the Gentiles — but the last scene which ended in his being haled before the Sanhedrim was directly connected with the message he claimed to have from the risen One ; the mission to the Gentiles held for him its consecrating force directly and solely from ' the power of His resurrection,' and like a skilful orator again Paul takes up, not the central grievance at first, but the controversy just where it had left off — it had left off' in chapter xxii. 21, with ' He (this risen One) said unto me,' etc. That's what Paul stood on — the authority of the risen life. The resurrection from the dead happened to be held a verity by the Pharisee and a delusion by the Sadducee- it happened to draw all the Phaiisees over to Paul's side — audit was an oratorical feat to pit the Sadducee and Pharisee against each other, no doubt, but it was justifiable. The plea was per fectly true, consummately opportune, and absolutely successful. For the moment Paul in this fierce struggle was a^ain in the ascendant. For a moment, and for a moment only, he ST. PAUL'S APOLOGIA 407 dominated even that tempestuous assembly. The Pharisees pass over to him in a body — for their own purposes, no doubt — they seem to fee completely won. Paul will do as well lg4 as another for a stalking-horse to fight the Sad- growing ducees with. So far they hadn't a fault to find uproar. with him, and they sa'd as much, and then tauntingly added, as a kind of direct insult to the theological convictions of their foes the Sadducees, ' If an angel or a spirit (in neither of which the Sadducees believed) hath spoken to him let us not fight against God.' Not than the Pharisees were prepared to accept Paul's extension of the franchise to the Gentiles, even if an angel or spirit had proposed it ; neither did they care for Paul and his Gospel ; but simply this, that any stick would do to beat the Sadducean dog with — and, as the saying is, when thieves fall out honest men come by their own — just so much got Paul out of his subtle appeal and no mo'-e — for the next moment he was in bodily danger of being ' pulled to pieces ' by the excited debaters. Lysias, with a few determined and disciplined soldiers at his back, had been watching this unusual scene in surprised and probably contemptuous silence. What could it be ,„. all about ? Again this troublesome man seemed to lysias have said something which rendered the crowd rescues completely unmanageable — again his life was in danger. At the decisive moment Lysias steps in with the word of command — the Latin accents ring as strangely ia the ears of the Sanhedrim as Paul's loud and unintelligible cry of defence in Hebrew must have sounded to the Roman captain. The s ddiers seize Paul and he is hurried out of the shouting assembly under a strong bodyguard. Once, more the blessed respite of a night's repose. Indeed Paul needed it. To the noise and turmoil of conflicting sects, and the bodiiy peril and the exhausting altercations, followed the quiet of the night — ay, and kindly sleep — ay, and the atmosphere of heaven came along with it. Rest, weary Paul — there are no dungeon walls in thy dreams — no mailed soldiers — no flashing of bare swords — no 408 ST. PAUL'S APOLOGIA hideous malignant faces with grinding teeth yelling for thy blood — but all is calm and peaceful as a summer morn ; and a Pres- ,g6 ence is about thy path and about thy bed, and a a rest for voice is in thy ear, ' Be of good cheer, Paul,' it saith, paul. not 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou MetU thine own time of persecution has come, and behold He is with thee to comfort thee. ' As thou hast testified of Me at Jerusalem, so must thou also bear witness of Me at Rome.' Was it not enough ? Yes ! the grace was quite sufficient this time. It dealt with the present — 'Be of good cheer'— it pointed not only to a past but a future — a life to be lived — a work to be done. ' As thou hast,' ' So thou shalt '¦ — nay, ' must.' Great, comforting, constraining power of God, be with all men in their prison cells ; bring them through their seasons ti depression and doubt and failure ; nourish and cherish them with the inexhaustible hopes of the future, and the vision of the heavenly rest beyond ! XIV PAUL BEFORE FELIX 187. Murder 1—188. Paul's sister and nephew. — 189. How to treat ' a Roman.' — 190. Escape. — 191. Felix reads.— 192. The accusers arrive at Ca-sarea. — 193. Tertullus the special pleader. — 184. Brazen flattery. — 195. Tertullus explains the case. — 196. ' Take my oath of that.' — 197. Paul's reply. — 198. Effect of Paul's speech. — 199. The scene changes. — 200. Between the joints of the harness.- 201. Banquet and prison. — 202. Avarice 1—203. Paul left bound.— 204. Felix and his last mistake. —205. End of Felix. 'Not knowing what shall befall me.' That was true at every stage of thy career, great Apostle ! Little indeed could Paul guess what was in store for him on the morrow. Little did it matter to Paul — danger he knew was . ¦ I r murder ! in the air. Pharisee friends, who for one moment had sided with him, might again turn round like weathercocks — ¦ his very bodyguard, Timothy, Trophimus, Luke, might be fear- stricken, and who would blame them in such days of woe and terror. At all events Paul was utterly alone, when sudden y the door of his cell opens, and a young lad rushes in. It is his nephew. What news ? ' 'Tis murder, uncle Paul — foul murder I ' Worst news, yet best news, for Paul — on the point of being assas sinated — is how warned. What sort of sister was that of Paul who lived at Jerusalem 1 An anxious, loving sister, no doubt ; the mother of a fine courageous boy, with the dauntless spirit of Paul Paul's ia him ; not afraid to face danger and incur suspicion sister and to save his reckless and adventurous uncle. But the Jews were already without, clamouring for Lysias, the chief 410 PAUL BEFORE FELIX captain, with an insidious request that Paul might be brought before the council next day (forty of them being secretly prepared ro stab him in the street as he came out of the castle). So said the boy. Little surprised at this last villainy, Paul sent his nephew straight' to Lysias, who takes the boy courteously by the hand and invites his confidence. Needful now to be polite to Paul and his relative,i who might report him (Lysias) to the higher authorities for having . bound Paul, a Roman prisoner, in the prison ; needful, above* all, to get rid of said Paul, if possible. The attempt to shift the responsibility from himself to the Sanhedrim had failed • Lysias would now transfer his perplexing prisoner to Felix the governor at Cesarea — at leatt sixty miles away from Jerusalem — and so peradventure en<^ the matter. The boy's clear, straight- .« forward story carries immediate conviction. There was not a moment to lose. ' Whatever you do, my boy, don't chatter]! — not a word of this ! ' (Acts xxiii. 22) and so the boy leaves the caitle. In the dead of the night, and amid tbe clash of arms and tramp ling of horses in the courtyard (four hundred men, horse and joo foot), Paul is led out and quickly mounted. ' You how to see, I mean you to be safe. They shall not touch a treat ' a hair of your head — we know how to treat a Roman ROMAN. . . , _, .,, ., , , . .„ ' citizen. So with a smile and maybe a warm signifi cant hand-grip, we can imagine how Lysias sealed his peace with Paul and parted good friends, convinced that the prisoner owed ' him no grudge, and would take no more note of his hasty mistake. > A few loiterers in the dark streets of Jerusalem, a few star gazers on the housetops may have turned to look at the troop of horse and heavily armed foot — and the stray doss 3 90 jo escape (natural scavengers of all eastern town.-) \app at the running javelin men and slink back to their dust heaps. In another moment the gate of the city swings open— the watchmen on the tower salute the centurions. The Roman \ guards trot out into the night — the massive doors close between Paul and his murderers — he is safe. PAUL BEFORE FELIX 411 In the blazing sunshine Paul enters Cassarea. So soon back ! Had Philip and his daughters heard of his arrest at Jerusalem — were they on the look-out — did Agabus see Paul lgl ride in chained by the right arm to a Roman soldier, pelix aud escorted by the Roman guard ? ' Bound,' as by reads. the prophecy (Acts xxi. 11), Paul is at once brought into court. Felix, the Governor, reads (Acts xxiii, 26) : From ' Claudius Lysias to the most excellent governor Felix,' &c. Brief, business like, to the point. The prisoner Paul had been rescued, says the letter, from the mob with difficulty, brcvght before the Jewish council— charged unsubstantially enough — conspired against iniquitously enough — being a Roman citizen, and having done apparently nothing worthy of bonds or death — (a clause of acquit tal for Paul, which served also as a saving clause for Lysias, in case Paul should complain of his rough treatment in the castle of Antonia) — the best course had been adopted — the prisoner with his accusers were referred to the Governor, who would judge whether there was anything in their religious dispute which could be dealt with by a Roman law court. Chief captains knew nothing about theology ; but the man wis a Roman, . so Lysias had saved his life ; the Governor muse now deal with the case — either dismiss it or hand Paul over to the Sanhedrim ; but that would evidently, after what had passed, mean assassination, and Lysias could not incur the responsibility of that. The accusers would be down in a day or two. Farewell ! They were down in five days. By this time Pharisee and Sadducee again made a solidarity against Paul — as we have seen Herod and Pilate combine against Jesus — as we 192 have seen high -church and low-church combine to THE' browbeat and persecute the broad-church — as we accusers have seen all kinds of unholy coalition ministries t^foTf AT CESAREA. .combine for party purposes to crush a common foe. But all such unions of hate are as sand colun n > held together by the wind. Tertullus, a local barrister, holds a brief for the Sanhedrim. His line is clever and brazen, but fortunately abortive. He will E E 412 PAUL BEFORE FELIX cheapen the case — declare that it ought never to have come before Felix at all— a case properly for the Sanhe-' tertullus drim ; urge simply that Paul be handed back again to the special be dealt with by the Jews. Tbat was tbe natural, fleader. tQe obvious thing to do, and no questions asked. Only Paul was a Roman citizen— that alone saved him. Tertullus opens (Acts xxiv.) with an extravagant eulogy of Felix. The J ews had enjoyed under him ' great quietness ' (the -,0,, fact being that never had there. been more disturb- brazen ances, bloodshed, and general.-disconteht).. The flattery. worid( continued the windy orator, was ringing with Felisc' ' worthy deeds ' (the truth being that he was accused of conspiring with bandits to rob the well-to-do citizens and waylay travellers — that his life was a flagrant scandal.! He was, in fact, a bad man of a bad period ; for, under Claudius, the Roman government in the provinces had deteriorated ; the grave, and, on the whole, respectable and trustworthy Roman official — the Pilate type — had been replaced by wretched court menials. Felix had been a palace slave, and chad risen by all kinds of base and corrupt service. He was an altogether shameless character). Tertullus proceeds in Latin. This was not a case for speechmaking and witnesses — it ought never to have come before ]q_ the court at all — the counsel, on behalf of the tertullus members of the Sanhedrim, who could easily deal explains with the prisoner, merely applied for an order for him to be handed over to them. Paul may have been a Roman citizen, but he was also a Jew, and his offence was against the Jewish law — - still, his Excellency might wish to understand the matter quite clearly before making out the order. He was instructed by the Sanhedrim to explain it. That was easy enoughs-it lay all in a nutshell. Paul was a well-known impostor — a public nuisance. He was a ring leader of a noisy Jewish clique who called themselves Nazarenes — after a certain Jesus of Nazareth, whom his Excellency, perhaps, had never heard of. He might add that Jesus was a PAUL BEFORE FELIX ' 413 criminal fanatic, who had been crucified by his late Excellency Pontius Pilate. The sect, it seemed, had not yet been quite stamped out ; but the action of Paul had probably given it a death-blow. His attack on Moses and the Temple — the two most revered points of the Jewish faith — had turned the Sanhedrim against him ; and his forcing what they called Gentiles upon them, and bringing them into the Temple, had brought things to a crisis. The counsel for the plaintiff only asked now that as Paul, the Roman, had been rescued from the mob by Lysias, the Roman captain, so now Paul, the Jew, might be properly handed back to the Jewish Sanhedrim to be tried on a purely technical point of Jewish law ; indeed, his Excellency ought not to be pestered with these sectarian squabbles. But before bis Excellency made out the order for Paul's surrender! he would just appeal to the reverend Rabbis present as to whether he had stated everything quite correctly. The reverend Rabbis, who had been listening open-mouthed not understanding a word of the Latin speech, but knowing the three charges in the brief, were quite equal to the occasion. ' Was Paul a public nuisance ? ' Chorus TAKE Jly of Jews, ' Take my oath of that.' ' Was Paul a oath op Nazarene ringleader ? ' Chorus, ' Oh, yes ; take my THAT ' oath of that.' ' Was Paul a profaner of the Temple ? ' Choru ' Oh, yes; take my oath of that, too.' Case proved ? ' Wait a bit, Tertullus.' Can we not see the shrewd Roman official Felix — who had been for years the sitting magistrate at Csesarea — and in whom corruption had not extinguished a certain professional instinct of law, listening cynically to the one-sided pleading of this petty provincial barrister ; and, having scanned Paul too — ' Not so fast, Tertullus ! ' — and Felix turns coldly from the counsel for the plaintiff and nods to Paul, who is his own counsel — slight though the case may be, the magistrate will hear both sidts. As we have read a little between the lines of Tertullus' speech, so we can even more easily read a little development into Luke's scanty report of Paul's defence. Paul, too, opens courteously. e e 2 414 PAUL BEFORE FELIX He is glad to plead before a magistrate who had so intimate a knowledge of Jewish affairs. He must first remind his iq7 Excellency that Tertullus had called no witnesses Paul's to prove any one of his statements. reply. ipjjg piaintiffs in this case could not be witnesses, for tbe plaintiffs were not present in the Temple or the street when his conduct had been complained of ; they were only witnesses as to what took place before the Sanhedrim, and there they knew that nothing had been proved against him — the sitting of the council, in fact, had been broken up on that very ground. What then were these unsupported charges ? That he was t public disturber ! Whose fault was that ? Not his. He hau not been exciting the mob in Jerusalem, but going about his own religious dutiis quietly. Why, what brought him to Jerusalem 1 He had come like any other Jew to the feast twelve weeks ago — he had come bringing money that he had collected in Asia for the Jerusalem poor, that was his chief business at Jerusalem. Now as to his religious opinions. What they had to do with a magistrate's court was not for him to say, but they had been dragged in simply to blacken him. Well, it was true he was a follower of Jesus — but he was a Jew also. He believed in Moses, so did his accusers ; he believed the prophets, so did they. But he worshipped God with the Nazarenes, no doubt ; he believed with them that Jesus was from God, and that there would be a resurrection of the dead. His Excellency must be aware that for years there had been hundreds of Jews at Jerusalem of the same way of thinking, who lived on perfectly good terms with the Pharisees — indeed James, their present chief, was at tbat moment highly respected by the Pharisees. As to the Resurrection, certainly he believed in that ; so did the Pharisees. Where, then, was he to blame ! As to his profaning the Temple, there was not a word of truth in it ; they had not a single witness who had affirmed or would affirm it ; his accusers, in fact, had brought no witnesses at all, nor had he been allowed to call a single one on his side. He looked round the Court, and he asked where was Lysias, the chief captain, who knew everything. Might he ask his Excel- Jency, although he knew the communica ion was privileged, to PAUL BEFORE FELIX 415 read Lysias' letter out loud, or to state whether it contained anything showing that he, Paul, was worthy of bonds or death. Where, again, were any witnesses who had seen him in the Temple ? who had been present in the streets when he was nearly pulled to pieces ? As for the scene in the Sanhedrim every one in Jerusalem knew what had taken place there. The result was entirely to his advantage. The Pharisees now in Court — whom he was surprised to see eating their own words s s his accusers — had gone over to him in a body at Jerusalem, and the meeting had broken up, not because he had quarrelled with anyone, but because the Pharisees and Sadducees could not agree amongst themselves. Lastly, where, he asked, were his own witnesses ? Where was Timothy, Trophimus, the Ephesian, who could prove that he had never been invited to set foot in the Temple, as had been falsely alleged ? Where was Luke, Philip, Agabus ? Where was his own sister — his nephew, who could tell them some curious things about his brethren, the unfriendly Jews ? His sister had been some time in Jerusalem. She was in a good position, and evidently worthy of credit, or her messenger would not have been so respectfully received by Lysias. She could prove that he, Paul, was a respectable man, and not at all the kind of fanatical ruffian described by Tertullus ; but it was not for him as a prisoner to instruct the Court or to weary his Excellency in his turn. Tertullus was quite right in one thing. The case, if case it could be called, was a very slight one ; so slight that no witnesses had been called either for or against him ; so slight that nothing had been proved ; so slight that it had broken down on every one of the counts, and rested upon nothing at all but the word of his enemies. Was that a case which could be brought, without disrespect to the magistrate, before a Roman or any other Law Court ? His Excellency was, again, the best judge of that. He, Paul, was not responsible for the altogether loose manner in which the evidence had been proffered. He had not brought the case into Court. He was merely an undefended prisoner at the bar. In the absence of all evidence against him, he was quite within his right to deny summarily every one of the charges, and to declare, as he had done before on a similar occasion, that he exercised 416 PAUL BEFORE FELIX himself to have always a conscience void of offence towards God and man. With all respect to the judge, he simply declared that he was blameless — let his accusers prove the reverse — that was his case for the defence. The effect of this speech, whatever it may have been in detail —we have but a few heads — was instantaneous. Bad man as he was, Felix was a magistrate of large experience, effect with the Roman instinct of justice about him, which op pacl's be probably obeyed when it did not interfere with his pocket or his pleasure. He turns to the prisoner and addresses him directly. Tertullus, the special pleader, the whole noisy crew of hostile Jews are not answered — simply ignored. Their claim to have Paul and to judge him is passed over in contemptuous silence. Felix had ' more perfect knowledge of that way,' in short, he knew the Jews by this time, and with a quick eye he seems to have discerned the world-wide difference between Paul and his accusers. ' As to your case, Paul, I will sift it thoroughly — to the uttermost - I'll hear what Lysias has got to say ; these prejudiced persons shall not have it all their own way this time. I can count on Lysias, he will be sure to tell the truth,' and there may have been a reassuring look in the magistrate's eye, as though he would add, ' the chief captain is a good friend of yours, little Jew, although you have given him some trouble. Courage 1 ' Then aside to the centurion on guard, ' As to the prisoner — the case is over for to-day — take care of him, make him at home, let his friends have access, let him have writing material, or, as his eyes are weak, let his amanuensis come and go freely ; he's out of health, a good deal broken, it seems ; let him have liberty.' And so Paul returned to a sort of state prison, and there he was doubtless soon found by Philip and his daughters, and visited . by Agabus, Timothy, perchance by poor heart-broken Trophimus the Ephesian — innocent cause of all the trouble— and, above all, . by Luke, the beloved physician, of whose skill he doubtless had some need, and who, during the eventful two years.of his friend's imprisonment, had ample opportunities for recording the stirring PAUL BEFORE FELIX 417 events of the past twelve days, and noting down the heads of Paul's recent speeches. Paul's audience now shifted, and his manner entirely changed. He was no longer on his defence — his audience was a close court circle — he found himself transformed suddenly into -tgg a select court preacher. The congregation, in its the scene way, was quite as remarkable as the orator. Here changes. was Felix, steeped in crime, a slave who had risen by every species of corruption to wealth and favour — but he liked to he a Paul explain — not his case — but Christianity. Here was Drusilh his new wife — little more than a girl — of extreme beauty an bright intelligence — a Jewess — but of no morals, yet with Jewess' appetite for religion, and a woman's partiality fo preachers. She had been married only a few months, having left her husband to be unlawfully re-wed to Felix — she was a queen — one of three who had married Felix, ' Trium reginarum maritus,' as Suetonius calls him. But she was, before all, a Jewess — having the same aptitude for theology in the midst of all her degradation as Felix had for Roman law, in spite of his corrupt living. And these two, the elderly profligate and the young wife, seem both to have been attracted by the preaching of Paul. Mixed characters — very mixed indeed — yet bow many are like them ! Call them not wholly hypocrites — they were not all base — no one is — the worst have gleams of better things— good moments — a blind groping after truth and honour — a vision of a better way — inconsistent then, if you will — but incon sistency is not hypocrisy. We sometimes misjudge people — especially convicted criminals — we put a side of them to do duty for the whole — but bad as they are, they too may have their searchings of heart, their generous impulses— their readiness to' honour BETWE'EN those who are better than themselves, whom they THe joints admire but cannot imitate — they too, although 0F THE , . , . , , , . .. . HARNESS. few suspect it, have their hidden longings, their sincere misgivings ; and so it fell out that, as Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled. 418 PAUL BEFORE FELIX It was Paul's opportunity — it was Felix' chance. So it seems the worst are open to good influences at some point of their downward career, at some time. Felix was open then and there. Watch him. Scenes there were, doubtless, which rose vividly before the guilty man as he listened — the arrow went in more than once between the joints of the harness — scenes of blood and lust, appalling in cruelty and cynicism, and over them all loomed the red and lurid vision of judgment to come, and 'Felix trembled.' Will he strike for God and truth — for righteousness and temperance whilst the fire burns? No, ' Go thy way.' So passes the wave of divine influence — the light of the Spirit breaks over him like a wind, but the trembling of the heart ceases with the exit of Paul. A gay feast with Drusilla — a few draughts of Falernian, and all is forgotten ! ' Fer, puer, poculum ' — bring hither the wine on bowl, boy ; and he calls to his Roman valet, ' sparge banquet rosas,' he adds — scatter the rose leaves to grace the and prison. banquet- The splendid palace at Caesarea, built by the first Herod, which was appropriated to the Governor's use, resounded that day, doubtless, with high revelry, whilst syco phants and courtiers were loud in praise of the beauty and wit of the fascinating Drusilla — and dishes, perhaps wines (had Luke ordered Paul a little wine for his stomach's sake and his other infirmities ?) were haply despatched from the Procurator's table for the prisoner whose eloquence had pleased the queen, and before whom even Felix had that day trembled ! Ard the time wore on, ' the days followed and resembled each other,' and whether Lysias came down or not we know nut, and whether Felix ever re opened the case judicially avarice 1 we know not either ; but by-and-bye he had up Paul again, at a convenient season, but this time the sermon must have taken less effect. Felix, your chance is gone ! Your moment of spiritual sensibility will return no more — Paul will now preach to deaf ears — another passion, a very seven-clawed devil, has come in to stifle the flickering conscience PAUL BEFORE FELIX 419 and steady into iron obstinacy tne heart that for a moment trembled with a passing and involuntary emotion. What is that passion ? — avarice ! Felix knew that Paul had brought a good deal of money with him to Jerusalem — where was all that hard cash ? It could not be all spent — his friend Philip might know something 203 about that— or Luke might get at it. Just a little paul left bribery, or, for the matter of that, just as big a bound. bribe as could be squeezed out of Paul and his friends, and justice might still be done and Felix would line his pockets — the old Judas policy, the old Judas blunder ! I read ' Felix hoped that money would be given him of Paul, that he might loose him (he could not really do it without, it would positively amount to a dead loss ! ), wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and communed with him.' Felix, for once you are at sea, you do not know your man. 'I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.' That is the sort of thing Paul was saying to his friends when the meats and wines arrivi d from your tabie. And so Paul would not pay, and so ' Paul, the prisoner of the Lord,' he remained. And now (inevitable, fatal, pathetic consequence of faniliarity with right, coupled with persistence in wrong) the spiritual impression quite died away. Two years had passed — sad things had happened in Judwa — Felix had got all wrong with the Jewish people. His guards had met them and slaughtered them in the streets — ineutable prelude this (so dreaded and avoided by Lysias) to conspiracy and deposition. His unusually long term of office availed him nothing. It was known in the palace that he was about to be superseded. By this time Paul was a recognised and standing bone of contention, fit to be worked for all sorts of party purposes — some last capital might be made out of him, so thought Felix. The complaints of the Jews might be silenced or minimised with a bribe — he would pay them, since Paul would not pay him — and the bribe he would pay should be the prisoner Paul himself. 'After two years,' so runs the severe chronicle, 'Porcius Festus came into Felix' 420 PAUL BEFORE FELIX room, and Felix, willing to do the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound ! ' And that is what came of the trembling of a slave's heart, and so Felix lost his last chance. He had been moved, but he was mercenary — so are thousands. The moment felix and f°r decisive action arrived suddenly — one act of his last closing justice might have been done, but he who had dallied for two years with righteousness and temperance was, when the hour struck, found unready — so are thousands ; wholly insensible to the judgment to come — so are thousands. They hear — they tremble — they trifle — they vacillate — they seek bribes — they make promises— they do nothing — and then the bolt falls from the cloudless sky. And now at lust the devilish comedy of this man's misrule was over, and the judgment was come. Felix went into disgrace — had to disgorge his ill-gotten gains — barely escaped with his life — lost his favourite son by 205. Drusilla, who perished on the eruption of Mount end of Vesuvius, a few years later, in the last days of felix. Pompeii. And so the husband of three queens, the slave of an emperor and the despot of a province sank into obscurity and de;?pair— leaving nothing behind him but a black reputation, a confiscated fortune, a ruined woman — nay, how many ruii.ed women ?¦ — a nation in insurrection — 'and a prisoner of the Lord ' in bonds. XV PAUL BEFOEE FESTUS 206. The Jews on the watch for Paul.— 207. Festus on guard.— 208. Paul's flat denial.— 209. Eefuses a good (?) offer.— 210. End of case Paul v. Sanhedrim. The hopes of the baffled Jews who were thirsting for Paul's blood rose on the entrance of the new Governor, Festus, into Jerusalem. Paul was safe behind his prison bars at Cajsarea, but 'the beasts,' not this time 'at ' THE JEWS Ephesus, but in Judaea, were grinding their teeth on the and ready to spring upon him, if only Festus could watch for be got to undo the bars and let the prisoner out on ¦any pretext. 'We pray, your Excellency,' they roared in a chorus, ' let us have our own — 'tis a small favour to grant. Paul is no doubt a seditious malefactor, but his crimes are so mixed up with technical offences against our laws tbat he may fitly be handed over to us, thus saving you all further trouble. You've only to send him down from Caesarea to Jerusalem.' It was the second plot — Paul would never have got to Jerusalem. The hired assassins (Sicarii) were already out — 'lying in wait in the way to kill him ' (Acts xxv. 3). But Festus knew more than enough about Paul. Doubtless Felix and Lysias had not left him in the dark. Festus was a ¦ better man than Felix, and he meant to begin well. 207. He at once foiled the Jews with the greatest tact festus on ..arid politeness. ' Nay ; but I will go up to guard. lUsesarea ; come with me, and we will try the prisoner together — . if there be any wickedness in him.' The very words seem to imply a favourable view (Acts xxv. 5). 422 PAUL BEFORE FESTUS So the prisoner was brought before the new Governor. The Jews trusted entirely to clamour and intimidation. This time 208 they had no lawyer like Tertullus to state or paul's flat plead — no witnesses — no proofs ; but Festus was a denial. new. man — they might impose upon him. Felix had only just been deposed because he could not manage the Jews— his successor might be frightened. But they little knew their man. Festus was made of stouter stuff — polite, dignified, business-like ; and, whilst willing to please the Jews, determined, first and foremost, to administer the law. With veiled contempt, but patient equanimity, the new magistrate listens to the noisy crew, ' with their many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove.' ' Have you done ? — silence in the court!' — and turning to Paul — 'the prisoner may answer for himself.' What could Paul answer ? — nay, what could anybody answer when baseless and unsupported charges are made ? Paul said simply, ' Neither against the Law, nor the Temple, nor Csesar have I offended.' A flat denial, that was all ; but that was enough. They were at a deadlock. Festus now has a bright idea. Like Pilate he would be glad enough to shift the responsibility of „0q the case to another court — so to Paul — ' will you go refuses a up to Jerusalem and there be judged by the San- good (?) hedrim, but' before me. The Jewish court must settle the religious points — your alleged offences against the Law and the Temple — and I will take cognisance of any offence committed against the State or Csesar — so we shall get complete all-round justice done, will that do for you ? ' Then Paul, knowing well that anyhow Jerusalem meant death, quickly claims privilege. The Governor meant well, no doubt ; but he did not know. With a risky home-thrust, stretching his privi lege of reply to the utmost, Paul declares (with two trials to back his statement) that no case for such an elaborate mixed tribunal had been made out, and that the Governor knew it. ' I have done no wrong, and that thou very well knowest. This is simply a plot to kill me without any trial at all, and you should protect me till I can get a fair one, which, with the best will in PAUL BEFORE FESTUS 423 the world, you will never be able to give me at Csesarea or Jerusalem. I am a Roman citizen — I appeal to Csesar ! ' The Governor caught at the loophole — as did Pilate when he heard that Jesus was a Galilean and under Herod's jurisdiction. Yet there is something sinister in his ' hast thou „.„ appealed unto Caesar?' Poor little Jew! perhaps end of case you don't know tbe sort of Csesar Nero is — you're paul v. safer in my hands ; but that's no affair of mine— at any rate, I am well out of it. I can't have the business of the Court stopped by these yelling Hebrews, and this subtle minded eccentric, though, as it seems to me, altogether respectable Rabbi. ' Hast thou appealed unto Caesar — unto Csesar shalt thou go.' The great case of ' Paul v. The Sanhedrim,' which had con vulsed Jerusalem and amused Csesarea for two years, was then over. The defendant had, so far, baffled the plaintiffs, and we can imagine the rage with which the chief priests and elders left tie Court and hurried back with the bad news to the Holy City — there was one prophet whom she was at all events not destined to slay. Thd strong arm of the Roman law had a gun interposed aud saved the prisoner Paul. XVI PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA AND BERENICE. 211. Visit of Agrippa and Berenice. — 212. Festus has an idea 213. A novel seance.— 214. Enter Paul. — 215. 'Paul, thou art mad!'— 216. Why Paul was stopped.— 217. Father Hyacinth. — 218. Festus not unkind. — 219. ' Except these bonds ! ' — 220. Impression upon the Court. The next scene is highly characteristic of the times. Agrippa, one of the puppet kinglets set up by Rome over her subject pro vinces — a splendid position of honour, with all the visit of gaudy insignia of authority, but little of the sub- agril'pa and stance — came down to visit the new Governor in Berenice. state, and brought with him his beautiful sister Berenice, who was at that time (as in her day — the Princess Alexandra) the favourite model of Greek and Roman painters and sculptors. The round of festivities began to flag ' after many days ' — some novel show would be desirable. Festus remembered Paul. A 2x2. Jewish heretic might interest Agrippa, who was festus has himself a Jew. Berenice was clever and cultivated, an idea. an(j ajj women ]ove(j eloquence and genius, and Paul bad both ; and women, especially such women as Berenice, also loved novel and strange excitements. The upper classes then, as now, sated with luxury and refine ment, found a certain fascination about prison life — out-of-the way scenes connected with police courts — human crime and misery. They liked a criminal cause cdlebre then, just as they do now. An afternoon with Paul was the very thing to suit Agrippa and Berenice. Then, the king would be flattered by having his PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA AND BERENICE 425 opinion asked, and in very truth Festus was at his wits' end to know what to write to the Emperor about Paul. His case was hopelessly mixed up with Jewish ritual, and some strange tale about ' one Jesus who was dead, but whom Paul affirme i to be alive.' What could it matter ? He, Festus, had never heard of Je^us— how could a Governor from Rome be expected to know the names of all the criminals executed twenty years ago at Jerusalem; but such things might interest the Jews- at any rate, Paul had a great deal to say about it, and after bearing him, perhaps King Agrippa would kindly formulate some sort of statement which would read intelligibly at Rouie. 'For,' says the practical Festus, ' it seemeth to ine unreasonable to send a prisoner, and not withal to signify the crime laid against him.' Further trial at Caesarea of course there could not be. confer ence there might be — a novel and agreeable sensation for Berenice, a seance, half police court, half drawing- 2ia room, combined with the amusement and instruction, a novel and a sort of lecture by a learned man and able sjS.i.ick! speaker, and a glamour of exciting religious fanaticism over the whole, which w;is not in the least dangerous or likely to degene rate iuto anything noisy or vulgar, as all accusers were absent, and the prisoner himself was in chains. It was all admirably conceived — Festus looked forward to a real success. The court assembled in state attire, with a bodyguard of honour, and the invited presence of a large number of grandees and officers. And presently, before that glittering and expectant assembly, appeared a slightly built, _„_„_ ' , dark complexioned prisoner, with his hands chained somewhat widely to allow of free action, his head a little leaning forward, his eyes evidently somewhat affected, but earnestly belt upo:i fie assembly, which he scans cvefu'.Iy as b st he may, ' Thou art permitted to speak for thyself,' says Agrippa, and the prisoner raises his head towards the splendid figure of the ; Icing, who thus addresses him from the throne. 215. Paul accepts the situation, and instinctively esta- ' paul, thou blishes a rapport between himself and the king rather AET MAD ¦ than Festus, who plays but a secondary part in the scsne. It 426 PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA AND BERENICE was a fortunate and happy moment, so Paul declared ; the king was in a position to understand all he had to say, and he would speak the more freely. He then appealed to his own past ; there' were things in it which he deeply regretted, no doubt ; but throughout he had been conscientious, he had been a strict Jew, arid, as such, a persecutor of the reformed Judaism, whose prophet was that Jesus of Nazareth, of whom his Excellencv the new Governor had not apparently heard, but whom Agrippa certainly knew all about. The crucifixion of Jesus had made too much stir to be soon forgotten in Judsea. Pilate had tried in vain to save the prisoner, but had failed, which showed his importance (and we can imagine, in spite of the scanty report in Luke, how Paul would have expanded the reflexion that ' this thing was not done in a corner'). Then follows the tale of li? own opposition, and in another moment he is in the middle of his favourite narration, which occurs three times in the Acts. His Meeting with Jesus on the road to Damascus — his Call— his Conversion — his Instructions — his subsequent Mission to the Jews first, and then to all Gentiles. It is this last point which has wrecked him, he says ; his brethren would not hear of a divine message offered to the outside world ; but it was neverthe less true all were to receive forgiveness, all were to turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. The voice of the crucified One had uttered it. He was alive for evermore. (Growing impatience as Paul now launches out — not in any self 'efence, but into passionate assertions that all this was in exact accord ance with the Prophets.) Suddenly Festus, n>t willing that his guests should be wearied by the enthusiast, interrupts him with a loud voice, ' Paul, thou art beside thyself ! ' His pitience broke down on two points. First, he did not care for the ' preaching ' part of the speech. As long as Paul stood on his defence, or attacked the Jews, the why paul thing was entertaining enough ; but the forgiveness was of sin and the call to repentance was out of place in stopped. court; circles, and sounded trivial to men of the world. I remember soon after Father Hyacinth, the great Catholic PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA AND BERENICE 427 orator, had quarrelled with the Pope and turned free lance, he had a great church given him at Geneva, which was to be the centre of a reformed Catholicism. So long as he de nounced the Pope and eloquently abused the French father Government all went well— crowds came to hear him hyacinth. and went away applauding. But presently he thought it was time to come to the root of the matter and preach morality and goodness, and denounce the sins of the age ; in short, ' That men should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repent ance.' Then the Frenchmen shrugged their shoulders, 'C'est un bon cure comme les autres ' — ' He is just like all the other good clergymen '— said they, and left him to preach to the women. The other distasteful element in Paul's address was the story of a risen Jesus — visions, personal convictions, sects, prophets and all that — such a mixture as Festus had never 2ig heard in his life — quite unintelligible and visionary, festcs not so it seemed to him. Not unkindly, or even dis- unkind. courteously, did he at last exclaim, hoping to bring so able sen orator back to reason and common -sense, 'Paul, Paul, all this book-learning has turned your brain ! You're mad ! ' Checked, but not abashed — with admirable presence of mind and finished courtesy, the Apostle turns towards Festus, and with a sudden coolness and deliberation answers, ' Your Excellency, I am not mad. I speak simply the ¦ EXCE1.T words of truth and soberness. The king who site these with you is in a position to estimate my sanity. He B0N:DS - understands what I am talking about.' Then he faces Agrippa and resumes in a more impassioned strain, because he knows he is addressing a more sympathetic hearer — 'King Agrippa, be- lievest thou the prophets ? ' — the king, perhaps, avoids his glance ; but the wavering eye betrays him — in an instant Paul is down. upon him, 'I know that thou believest' — but Agrippa has re covered his sangfroid, and conceals any tinge of emotion under a light, but not insulting, banter. ' Is this your short method with the Jew, Paul (not almost thou persuadest me to be a Chris tian) ; but " Do you imagine, with so little argument, to bring 428 PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA AND BERENICE me round to Christianity ? " ' ' Whether with much or little I would to God,' cries Paul, ranging round the assembly, and ptretching his arms wide open as though to embrace them, ' I would to God that not only thou, but all that hear me this day, were by much or by little argument made altogether such as I am ' (but his wide-spread arms having been suddenly checked by the chain that bound his wrists, he brings both hands together, and, lifting them, probably clasped, towards the assembly, adds), ' except these bonds ! ' No trained orator could have made a more effective point ; but Paul's powers were not art, but instinct — the finest instinct of courtesy — the noblest generosity of heart. He did not wish for his worst enemies such misfortunes as had fallen to his lot — he did wish for them all such peace and joy and hope as he had in his Lord and Master Christ. His speech had long ceased to be an apology or personal defence — his own interests had been entirely forgotten — he was thinking wholly of others and what was best for impression them, and how they might know the truth and come upon the to the great salvation. He was no longer a prisoner t" ' ' on trial, but a loving Apostle, pleading with men for their own souls — as an ambassador of Christ. They might not heed his message, but the spectacle of such self-immolation was quite unexampled — a man on trial for his life thinking only of how to save others — entreating, exhorting, loving them with a strange sort of fervour and simplicity — this was quite irre sistible ; there was not one in that assembly, from the king to the doorkeeper, who could withstand such a man — he must have won all hearts— although Festus decided that they had had enough. So ' the king rose and Berenice, and they that sat with them ' — but they could not dismiss the subject at once — it still remained the topic of eager conversation— Paul had made a profound im pression. They all agreed that the prisoner had certainly done nothing woithy of deatli or even bonds, and Agrippa at last turning to Festus with an undisguised sympathy for the hetero dox Rabbi, remarked — 'This man might have been set at liberty if he had not appealed unto Csesar.' The day then had after all not been wasted. The result was PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA AND BERENICE 429 jgatisfactory to Festus, and, as events proved, more than satis factory to Paul, for Agrippa, in the few words he let drop, had supplied Festus with the keynote of that favourable elogium sent with the prisoner to Rome — which, doubtless, more than any thing else procured Paul's acquittal when he was first tried before .Nero. r F 2 XVII PAUL DISAPPEARS 221. At last 1-222. Paul's advice rejected.— 223. The storm.— 224. Paul's ascendancy. — 225. Paul's advice taken. — 226. Paul's practical minis try.— 227. Prisoners in peril.— 228. Winter at Malta.— 229. Last records.— 230. To Eome.— 231. Paul before Nero.— 232. Release and re-arrest. — 233. Time and place of death uncertain. At last ! The ship glides out of the port of Caesarea, carrying passengers for Rome, and Paul is on board. Luke, his tender physician, and Aristarchus of Macedonia are also 22L . with him. at last ! . It is an inconvenient merchant vessel, and the passengers are much crowded with a body of Prsetorian Guards, homeward bound, who had probably come to Caesarea with Festus, the new governor. Julius the centurion, it seems, had special charge of Paul, and he soon learned to know and value him. They touched at Sidon, where Paul had friends, and Julius, in the kindest manner, invited Paul to go on shore ' unto his friends and refresh himself.' Throughout the voyage the sanguine Apostle seems singularly buoyant and elated, for Rome was looming now, and not in the far distance. Day by day he gained steadily on the officers and crew — soon there would be nobody on board more thought of and consulted than Paul the prisoner. Passing Cyprus, they touched at Myra, on the Asian coast, Then they got into one of those heavily laden corn ships from Alexandria, which supplied Rome with food, just paul's as our railways supply London with meat and vege- advice tables from the provinces. The vessel, after touch- rejected. jQg a). Qj^j^ je£t ^e coast 0f Asia Minor, and rolled heavily on to ' The Fair Havens ' on the south coast of PAUL DISAPPEARS 431 Crete. It was a poor enough harbour, but it was getting late in the year for navigation, and Paul, who seems soon to have become the general friend and counsellor of everybody on board, advised wintering there — he added that there would be danger to the ship and to the ship's crew if they persisted in pushing on. He knew the Mediterranean well, he knew the ships, he knew the winds and the perils by sea. Had he not been 'a day and a night in the deep ' ? But his authority was set aside. The captain and the centurion thought they knew better — the fact being that both had a vision of superior comfort suggested to them by the name of Phenice, an excellent port several leagues further down the Cretan coast. They never got to Phenice. The wind at first blew softly, but soon rose to a hurricane — it hurried them furiously out to sea. Night came down, and they found they could not steer. With great difficulty they got up the THE STOi;m. ship's boat, which had hitherto been towed. There was scant room on board for it anywhere — they were 276 souls in all. As the timbers creaked and the corn rolled about, and the waves beat heavily in, they passed chains and ropes under the keel, and tightened them so as to support the ship's weight. All night it seemed as if every moment she must go to pieces. She drove helplessly before the wind. They cast over every thing but the precious cargo of grain. Black nights, without stars or moon, succeeded gloomy and tempestuous days without sun, and still the wind howled and the ship rolled and battled with the elements. Paul now had that opportunity which is sweet to most of us. He was able to stand forth in the midst of the men who had slighted his counsel, and say, ' I told you so ! ' 224. ' Sirs, ye should bave hearkened to me, and not paul's loosed from Crete and gained this harm and loss.' ascendancy. But he had more to say. As they gathered round the frail insignificant-looking prisoner, who, as usual, was getting a com plete ascendancy over them all, they listened to words of singular comfort and good cheer. Paul seemed quite calm, probably the only man on board who was calm. He had the 432 PAUL DISAPPEARS repose and confidence which trust in God and communion with Him always brings. That is what made him master of the situation. That lifted him at once into moral command — ' the unstable estimates of men crowd to him, whose soul is filled with a, trust as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the moon' {Emerson). They should all be saved, he said, the Angel of tbe Lord had been with him in the night — this gift of foresight had been granted to bim — God had given him the lives of all on board. Even in detail he was correct. ' We must be cast on a certain island.' We are next surprised at the Apostle's practical sagacity, only equalled by his quickness and decision. He was as much at home on board that merchant vessel, as easily paul's master of the rough crew, the centurion, the ship's advice officers— as he was in the midst of his Asian iakjin. Churches, or when he had stood before kings and Sanhedrims at Jerusalem or Caesarea. Now see what follows. After fourteen days of weary tossing, suddenly, at day dawn, a cry of ' Land ! ' The ship was in great peril — she had got into the shallows — no one knew where the rocks were ; but they knew there were rocks ahead. At this critical moment the sailors were caught in the act of quietly lowering the boat, intending to escape and leave the ship to its fate. Instantly Paul is to the front again in this new emergency. He strikes at once, boldly — ' Except these abide in the ship,' he says, address ing Julius the centurion, ' ye cannot be saved ! ' It was common- sense — how could tliey be saved if all the men who knew how to handle the ship left her at that critical moment ? The soldiers made a rush at the sailors — the sailors fell back cowed 'like guilty things surprised,' and then the soldiers hastily cut the ropes and let the boat drop into the sea. That bone of contention gone, Paul assembles the whole ship's „„. company, who now seem to obey him like children. paul's He notices the profound discouragement of the practical crew, their alarm — the breakers and hidden rocks are more terrible to them than the open sea and the driving wind ' Euroclydon.' But surely never was a time PAUL DISAPPEARS 433 when courage, self-control, alertness, and discipline were more needed. They were suffering, he told them, from want of food and long exposure and watching. The first thing was to pluck up courage — ' to pull themselves together,' as we should say — to take a little food and restore tone to their exhausted systems. 0 wise Paul !— how many ills of the mind can be met — how many perils faced — how many sorrows tided over by due and rational attention to the claims of the stomach and the equili brium of the nervous system. How many cases which come to the vestry of the clergyman are more fit for the doctor's con sulting-room ! How often in the house of death, to the bereaved, to the watcher, might the clergyman, instead of overloading patients with spiritual consolation, instead of feeding the wasting tire of grief with too much cil of sympathy, more wisely say to the exhausted and over- wrought and weary friends and relatives, in the simple and homely words of Paul : ' I pray you to take some meat, for this is for your health.' And even as Paul spake he began to eat before them — his courage, his good sense, his example were infectious. A change passed over the trembling crew — ' there shall not a hair of your head fall,' continued the great missioner — and he pointed heavenwards to the source of his prophetic consolation and good hope, ' giving thanks to God in the presence of them all ! ' ' Then,' we read, ' were they all of good cheer ! ' One more dark struggle, this time between the soldiers and their commander for the lives of the prisoners. The sol diers' proposal to kill the prisoners for fear they 227. should escape in the coming scramble for life was prisoners not unnatural. It was neither so mean nor so IN PEEIL- cowardly as the attempt of the sailors to slink off and save themselves. It was the Roman soldier's duty to keep his prisoner in custody and deliver him up dead or alive — his own life being forfeit — but Julius took all the responsibility on himself. If there must be a slaughter, he well knew Paul was the last man to allow of any distinctions — the last captive to claim favour — the first to sacrifice himself— and Paul could not be allowed so to die— no one on board could afford to part with Paul, least of al 431 PAUL DISAPPEARS the soldiers who, through his vigilance ar.d wisdom, had just saved themselves and the whole company by defeating the con spiracy of the sailors. So the centurion interfered with the rough and ready plan of the legionaries, and boldly protected all t he prisoners alike — and soon afterwards the ship was run aground — the order given for everyone to shift for himself — and whilst the ship went to pieces, they ' that could swim cast themselves first into the sea and got to land, and the rest, some on boards and some on broken pieces of the ship ; — and so it came to pass (even as Paul had foretold) that they escaped all safe to laud.' The island turned out to be Malta (Melita), within easy reach of Syracuse in Sicily. They had beaten about ' up and down in 228 Adria ' for several days, Luke says — but after all winter had not come so far out of their way. The stay at at malta. ]yjaita was signalised by the noble hospitality of the principal inhabitant and landowner, one Publius, and by several miracles attributed to Paul. The strangers were very well re ceived by the people No doubt a detachment of the fashionable Praetorian Guard, together with several interesting visitors from the East, was as welcome to the dull little island as a similar incursion of the military and interesting foreigners usually proves to any of our own more stagnant little watering-places. They were all made much of, and, depend upon it, Paul improved the occasion. His reputation as a miracle-worker — a magician — a healer soon spread amongst ' the barbarous people,' and when the spring came and the company again went on board, they were laden with gifts by the simple islanders, who were, no doubt, genuinely sorry to part with them. A few verses more from Acts xxviii. 13 to 31— the curtain falls abruptly, and the historic Paul disappears in the most per- 229. plexing and disappointing way for ever. Scanty are last the details, filmy are the few scenes that remain. records. j^ fUgjtive passage here and there in Philippians, and in the Pastorals to Timothy and Titus and Philemon (if these be counted genuine) are all that help us to fill up the last three or four years of the great Apostle's life ; then tradition steps in, PAUL DISAPPEARS 435 with her paint-brush full of strong primary colours, and her aureole of flame to paint the close — but the story of that close belongs more to the dreams of the second or even later centuries than to the authentic annals of the first, and to my next volume 'The Conquering Cross' must it be referred. This is what authentically remains. At Puteoli, close on the Bay of Naples, Paul meets certain brethren and rests there seven days ; then he pushes on to Appii Forum, crosses the Alban hills, and enters Rome. 230. Julius, his friendly custodian, now takes leave of T0 home. him. The prisoner is then passed from the Praetorian camp to the Jews' quarter, where he is allowed to dwell ' in his own hired house ' — still in the keeping of a soldier — but enjoying free inter course with his friends. Here he has his last encounter with the hostile Jews, his brethren. They declare themselves at first entirely unprejudiced, and hear him out ; but his new Gospel, striking at their exclusive privileges as a nation, is as unpalatable to them as it proved to their brethren of Jerusalem — ' some believed and some believed not.' Paul was in no mood to temporise — he was tired of half way houses — saw that conciliation would do no good — so he forthwith hurled the prophecies of Isaiah at the ' dull ears ' and the ' gross hearts ' that failed to listen appreciatively and espouse warmly his doctrine. The gauntlet was thrown down, and from that moment he had nothing to hope for from any Jewish influence at Rome or elsewhere which might have been exercised in his favour. His trial dragged on for about two years. Nero could not be got to attend to business, especially to anything so contemptible and unimportant as the heresy of a Jewish school- - master ; but at last the case seems to have come on, PAtII, and as all the Roman authorities — Felix, Festus, before Lysias, and Julius — had nothing but good to say of Paul, Paul's confidence — expressed in Philippians and Philemon — appears to have been justified, and he was set at liberty. This .probably happened just before the great fire of Rome and the 436 PAUL DISAPPEARS consequent frightful Neronian persecution of the Christians, to whom it suited Nero (himself the author of it) to attribute that wanton conflagration. Had Paul remained in prison till the autumn of a.d. 64 nothing could have saved him. Where he went on recovering his freedom and what he did we know not — but it is generally held that he was arrested about two years later, perhaps at the instigation of the release Roman Jews, whom he had offended, and who now and curried favour with the Emperor and sought their own safety by dissociating themselves from the unpopular Christians and joining in their official persecution. Ou his second trial before Nero it is generally held that he was con demned and executed. The detailed tradition, lit up by a few fragmentary verses from the later Epistles, must be dealt with as tradition in my next volume. The last chapter of the Acts is unwritten or lost — lost as I think — as also are several of Paul's own Epistles. In the awful confusion of a.d. 64 (fire of Rome) and the year fol- time and lowing, everything Christian at Rome was stamped place of out, destroyed, or silenced — the only wonder is that death we have any Acts or any Pauline Epistles — they uncertain. , , , , , _, _, were preserved, no doubt, elsewhere. That Luke, with his fine literary taste, his passion for a well-rounded narra tive, and his devotion to Paul, should have ended his story as the Acts ends is incredible. If the ' beloved physician ' survived the Neronian persecution — and he certainly did if we are correct in dating his Gospel and Acts — he must surely have written some account of St. Paul's last days. The whole of the Acts leads up to the trial before Cssar — no trial is given — the libera tion — re-arrest — death came within four years of his landing in Italy — but not a word of it has come down to us from Luke. His fear of offending the authorities may, indeed, be taken as an explanation of his strange reticence ; but, after all, the officials of Nerva's reign might well have listened patiently to any num ber of reflections on the maladministration of Nero's last years— and it is more likely that the confusion of that terrible time of PAUL DISAPPEARS 437 blood and fire is responsible for the loss of those parchments which possibly contained the priceless but irreparably gone ' Second part of the Acts.' Even had Luke taken the trouble to rewrite his second part towards the close of the first century, he would scarcely then have found a sympathetic public ; for Paul's churches had mostly fallen back under the influence of Judaizing Apostles. Paul's star was certainly under eclipse — and, in fact, the traditions of Paul's martyrdom were only forthcoming in detail on the revival of Paul's popularity much later, when it appeared clear that the heretical Christianity of the Gentiles, and not the orthodox Christianity of the Jews, was to be the church of the future. But of one thing we can at least be certain — Paul's hand never loosened upon the plough until his work was accomplished ; nor did he put off ' the whole armour of God ' upon earth until death was swallowed up in victory ! XVIII PRELUDE TO PAUL'S THEOLOGY 234. Method of Pauline theology. — 235. Key-note of ' Hebrews.'— 236. Epistles, genuine or otherwise. — 237. Central ideas. The Picture of Paul does not include the theology of Pauh— except in so far as that was inseparable from his life. A good deal of Paul's theology — like some other people's— method' of was very separable from his life. If he wrote the pauline EpLtle to the Hebrews — at least a good half of that theolo y. jg separable fr0m his life, and so is much of the Romans, which he certainly did write. No teacher, not even Jesus Himself, can wholly dispense with the fashion of the times or the traditions of the past. People must be taught by cognate and acceptable ideas. Jesus worked up into His daily discourse the prophetical images of Isaiah and Daniel, and borrowed the parable form of the popular Haggadist of the period — that was one reason why the people were very attentive to hear Him. In like manner Paul used up the Mosaic ceremonial — reducing it often to mere figures of speech. He took the Jewish ritual of the priesthood as it stood, and through it taught the superiority of a spiritual religion to which it was a contrast, but of whieh it was also, in parts, an allegory. Such a method was probably more effective in the hands of Apollos, who mightily confounded tbe Jews, or of Barnabas, who 235. persuaded them, than of Paul, who alternately wept key-note of over them and trampled upon them ; and I should ' Hebrews. l;ke weli enough to believe that Barnabas (as is very generally held) wrote the Hebrews, and not Paul. That Epistle PRELUDE TO PAUL'S THEOLOGY 439 (with a disastrous kind of success to Christian theology), is one long and elaborate attempt to make the life and death and sacrifice of Jesus Christ hang together with the Jewish system of thought and feeling in its more popular, ceremonial, or carnal aspect. It is largely due to the sacrificial portions of this Epistle, and to certain other Pauline explanations, written with tbe same apologetic intention, that what may be called the theology of the shambles — a survival of the unfittest sort of theology — bas been so largely imported into the Christian ' scheme ' — of which more presently. Into a discussion of the genuineness of Paul's Epistles it is not my purpose to enter — partly because the most reliable critics, ancient and modern, are agreed as to the genuine- „ ness of most of them, and partly because the disputed epistles, ones, such as Titus and Timothy, are, if not Paul's genuine or own, such admirable reflections of his mind and 0THEKWISE- method that, like school pictures of the first quality, they deserve to be treasured up and studied side by side with the genuine works. Those who have read the ' Picture of Paul ' up to this point will hardly need an elaborate description of his doctrine. Jusi as he said to his churches, ' ye are our Epistle,' so we may say of Paul — his life was his doctrine and his doctrine was his life. Still, Paul was ruled by certain very definite theological con ceptions, which seem at times to coalesce into one central and flaming sun, and then again to detach themselves, 237. and hang hke separate stars in his mental firma- central „ j. IDEAS. ment. The first of these conceptions is, I say without fear of con tradiction, Love in God. Tbe second is Life in Cheist. The third is Justification by Faith. The fourth is The "Vision of the Perfect Wat. XIX PAUL'S LOVE IN GOD 238. Man is akin to God.— 239. The mystery revealed.— 240. Jesus the meeting-point. — 241. The universal embrace. Love in God meant to Paul the going forth of a divine yearning from the Creator towards the creature. He preached One 238 ' Who was rich in mercy, for His great love where- man is akin with He hath loved us.' The originality of the to god. thought lay in the meaning of ' us ' — not the Jews only — but ' all men, women, and children ' — because they were human beings. The message was ' to them that were far off and to them that were nigh.' There was no difference between Jew or Greek, bond or free. The proof of this was the human nature of God Himself. He could not deny his own being, any more than a man could hate his own flesh. There always had been mind- power (or mind -stuff, as the Germans say) ; will-power like ours — moral and affectional powers like ours — in Him. They were as much involved in the construction of the Divine Nature as of our own — nay more. Of ' His fulness we have all received and grace for grace.' Yet one signal manifestation had been made of this His human side. It had been revealed — uniquely re vealed in Jesus. God was in Christ — but man also was in Christ. Man's nature, therefore, wherever found, was loved by God, because it was akin to God Himself. That was ' the mystery ' of which prophets had dreamed and psalmists sung, and which angels desired to look into — it had been ' hid from the foundation of the world ' — even the chosen PAUL'S LOVE IN GOD 441 people had only recognised ' love in God ' as extended to their own nation ; but, in the fulness of time, ' God sent 239 forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the THE' law,' who had now proclaimed the Universal mystery Fatherhood of God, and through Him intended ' to EEVEALED- gather together in one all things.' Christ thus became the term for the universal and divine embrace of human nature — because He was Him self in His humanity our heavenly kinsman, as JEsus the well as ' the brightness of His Father's glory, heeting- and the express image of His Person.' point. After this it was clearly impossible to limit the operations of grace — to set bounds to 'love in God.' That victorious energy must reign until it had subdued all things under it — reaching and redeeming, sooner or later, in THj Time or in Eternity, every forlorn hope and remnant universal of the human race. bmbrace. This world was now seen to be bound with golden cords about the feet of God. ' God willed all men to be saved,' and God's will was quite unescapable. ' O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable were His judgments, and His ways past finding out ! ' Yes I in the last analysis all was mystery still — but then the Spirit crying ' Abba Father ! ' was in every one of the children — that was enough — ' I thank God,' says Paul, continually, in accents of broken and uncontrollable emotion — as the thoughts, too deep for words, cro*ded upon him, and 'the exceeding riches of God's grace in His kindness towards us ' overpowered him — riches of creation — preservation and all the blessings of this life — the past gemmed with benefactions — the present lifted up with comfort — the future irradiated with the hope which was full of immortality— and this for all men — it was far too deep and 'abounding' for any words that Paul could find to utter! As he thought of so great a salvation for all men he trembled and wept —one stifled sob of gratitude alone escaped him — ' I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord ! ' XX PAUL'S LIFE IN CHRIST 242. Athanasian doctrine. — 243. The life of God in man. — 244. The union that ' saves.'— 245. Paul's Gospel hampered. — 246. The Atonement.— 247. Buddha and David. —248. Vicarious atonement.— 249. The popular Theology of the Shambles.— 250. The three theories of sacrifice. - 251. The Substitution Theory.— 252. The Representative Theory.— 253. The Appropriation Theory. — 254. A Protestant analogy.— 255. How are we ' saved ' ? By Life in CHRiST,"Paul meant exactly what Jesus meant when He said to His disciples, ' I am the Vine, ye are the branches 242 .... as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except athanasian it abide in the Vine, no more can ye except ye abide doctrine. in jy[e_> jt had been so even ' from the foundation of the world.' There was but one Vine, but one Life, but one Light — the Life was the Light of men — that Light was the Human side of God, it had always been (as Athanasius reminded Arius at the Council of Nicfea), it would always be, it was and is and is to come, it was the Light that lightened every man that came into the world. When the human will, renouncing its waywardness and proclivity to evil, submitted to the divine impulsions, and 243 suffered itself to be convinced of judgment and of the life of righteousness and of sin, the human will became god in man. reconciled to God. The whole man was then said to be ' in Christ.' Everything else followed ; all Paul's other references to the believer's union with his Lord are merely so many fillings-in of PAUL'S LIFE IN CHRIST 443 the picture, and are all subordinate to the one clear doctrinal outline of God's human side, perfect in Jesus — reflected in human nature, according to its measure of receptivity, like ' the symbol of love in heaven, and its wavering image here.' The light and shade, the often intense colouring, the in numerable and softened middle-tints of that picture which 1 seems both human and divine,' are all so disposed 244 as to emphasise the absolute spiritual union of the the union ' disciple with his Lord.' Above his Lord he could THAT 'saves. not be, but as his Lord and one with Him, he must be if he would be saved. For this reason it would be equally correct to say that we were ' saved by His life,' because we dwelt in Him ; ' by His agony,' because we suffered with Him ; ' by His death,' because we died with Him to sin ; ' by His burial,* because we were buried with Him in baptism ; by ' His resurrection,' because we rose with Him to newness of life ; ' by His example,' because we could daily put on the Lord Jesus Christ. We were, in a word, ' complete in Him,' ' sons and heirs ' and kings with Him ; and so strong and effectual was this bond of fellowship if we would but claim it, that no conceivable power would be able to separate us from the love of Christ, or pluck us out of the hand of 'His Father and our Father, of His God and our God.' But a work so amazing as the recovery of our lost sonship, the return of a wandering world to God, the restoration of sinful human creatures like ourselves to righteousness, and 245. therefore to pardon and peace, required some further paul's gospel explanation. Paul was equal to that. He would hampered. have indeed made as clean and short work of the doctrine of salvation as did his Lord and Master when He said that ' it was the Father's good will to give His children the kingdom,' that God forgave freely, that the Prodigal had only to repent and return to his father's arms. But the sublime simplicity which was in Jesus alone was an atmosphere too rare for Paul's mixed churches to breathe— so at least he seemed to feel. The religions of the world, with all their clumsy devices, their half truths G G 444 PAUL'S LIFE IN CHRIST ' seen through a glass darkly,' lay behind him ; the ' handwriting of ordinances ' was heavily ' against him ' ; above all, the carna. ceremonial law of the Jews, with its devices of propitiation, its theories of substitution, its gross materialism, its scapegoat, its godless mechanism of sacrificial blood — this weighed down his spirit like lead. He could neither preach Christ with it nor hope to preach Him successfully without it. The needful bloody sacrifice had to be introduced somehow if he expected to get a hearing at all in any Jewry throughout the Roman or Greek world, not to speak of Jud»a ; and Paul, as he almost always did, accepted the situation — even threw himself into it with characteristic zeal, and an inconceivable ardour of ingenuity. The question was this — man having sinned and thus deserved punishment at the hands of God, how was he to be pardoned, 24g_ reconciled, and saved ? The answer was, of course, the ' by Sacrifice.' That had always been the answer. atonement. jew an(j Q.enti]e were satisfied about that. Every one felt instinctively that it was true — eternally true. But of what kind is the sacrifice to be ? — Just at this point the division arose — it arises now — the religious press rings with it periodically ; and as the doctrine of the Atonement and the sacrifice upon Calvary has not yet ceased to be a source of discord in the Church, it may be as well here to re-state the opposing theories (see ' Winged Words ' on ' The Divine Sacrifice,' a few paragraphs of which I have here in substance reproduced), with a view to ascertaining where the truth most certainly lies — and what St. Paul most certainly taught about it. The Buddha had touched his highest spiritual level, when he abolished sacrifice and taught that remission of sin was without 247 shedding of blood. It was a point reached in buddha and moments by the spiritual Jew also, but it was david. n6ver adopted as a sound and orthodox doctrine. On the one side stood the Priests and Levites and the Cere monial Law, with its bloody sacrifices by which they lived. On the other side stood the seer and singer, prophet and psalmist, PAUL'S LIFE IN CHRIST 445 David and Isaiah, before whose inspired gaze the formal sacrifices vanished away, leaving nothing but the pure Buddhist doctrine behind them. ' Sacrifices and burnt offering, and offering for sin hast thou not required— then said I, lo I come to do thy will, O God!' It was a glimpse like most of our inspired moments, no sooner reached than lost. The whole nation relapsed into a quagmire of ceremonial sacrifice, which lasted up to 248. Christ's time, and upon His own blessed death fell vicarious the shadow of the carnally minded Jews. atonement. I need not here repeat the well-worn doctrine that God's justice demanded satisfaction for sin, and that Christ's vicarious death and sufferings — the arbitrary infliction of 249. suffering on the innocent for the guilty — instead TH:! P0PULAli „ . ., ~ • . • . • „ theology pf aggravating tlie offence against justice, actually 0F THK satisfies divine justice — although the same process shamulks. would be considered an outrage on justice in any human law court. Nor is it necessary here to affirm that of such a doctrine there is nothing in Christ's own teaching or in the four Gospels. He who stood for the worship of the Father in spirit and in truth, and who laid down His life for His friends, is dyed with the blood that cleaves to the ceremonial victim of the Jewish shambles. That is now seen to be the truth of the matter. He who came to lift the world out of this very notion, that any sacrifice but that of the heart was demanded by God, to teach men that purely spiritual conception of sacrifice of which, first, the barbarous holocaust, and, second, the blood of calves and goats were the carnal symbols, even He has been confounded in that loving sacrifice of Himself with the vicarious victim of the carnally minded Jewish theologian. We now see what Paul had to contend with. We can almost sympathise with the extent to which he uses the sacrificial language of accommodation. First, there was the Substitution G G 2 446 PAUL'S LIFE IN CHRIST Theory of the carnal Jewish Christian. Secondly, there was the Theory of the Enlightened Gentile Christian— the three Paul's own. And, lastly, there is the Appropriation teeories op Theory, also grandly emphasised by St. Paul, and sacrifice. quij.e ^dispensable to the effective religion of Jew and Gentile alike. The Substitution theory is absolutely false. Embodying the lower carnal element, which ought to have entirely died out of the Jewish conception of sacrifice, involving the THK' notion that strokes inflicted on an innocent victim, substitution however divine that victim (in a world morally consti- theory. tuted), are credited to the account of guilty people. The Representative theory is absolutely true. It was taught by Christ when he called himself ' the Son of Man ' — one who stands where we stand ; for ' as He is so are we in 252 the this present world.' He has done for us in our representa- human nature what each is bound to do. Even as tive theory. He washed the discipies' feet >for US)> as 0ur Example, not ' instead of us.' In this way, ' He tastes death for every man ' ; in this view He is Representative, as Adam was, for ' as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.' And lastly, there is the Appropriation theory of sacrifice ; absolutely true, taught by Christ when he identified Himself with us in the Vine parable. In this sense His THE sacrifice is not viewed as apart from our own, His appropriation death was as representative as His life, and both can theory. onjy avaij us in SQ £ar ag Vj0tn are absorbed, appro- priated by us in act or in aspiration. In this conviction Paul longs to enter into ' fellowship with His sufferings ' — ' bears about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus ' ; he even represents Christ's sacrifice as in a sense incom plete without his (Paul's) own — yea, without those of each one of his brethren. He labours, he aspires to fill up ' that which is behind in the sufferings of Christ.' All this is absolutely true. The Representative and Appropriation doctrine is Christ's doc- PAUL'S LIFE IN CHRIST 447 trine. The Substitution doctrine is the compromise offered by the Apostolic writers to the Jewish section of the Christian church ; and there is this to be said for it, that it was a Bridge, a Transition between the Old and the New, inevitable and necessary for those times (like Luther's consubstantiation at the Reformation), but not for these. The English Reformers did precisely the same thing, and with very similar results — good for their own age, but, like all such compromises, embarrassing for those who came after 254. them. They issued a common prayer-book, designed a protestant to conciliate people born and bred in Romanism, analogy. just as the Apostles issued circulars" of Christian doctrine in the shape of Epistles, containing passages and accommodations de signed to conciliate people born and bred, like themselves, in Judaism. Christ's death was but a part, and not the most important part, of His work. In his keener moments of insight Paul saw this. ' Much more,' he says, ' being reconciled by His death are we saved by His life.' Evermore observe it is the life that saves. There was no divine need as between Christ and the Father for the death of Christ. The very heart and centre of His gospel is the reversal of this old Jewish doctrine, the last echo of which is complete in the Hebrews, - that ' without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin,' for without bloody holocausts it was the Father's good pleasure to give His children the kingdom — the blood even of bulls and goats was needless. The servant was freely to forgive the debt without exacting sacrifice or any pound of flesh ; the brother was freely to forgive seventy times seven. Why 1 Because the Lord and Master forgave without sacrifice — the Father forgave the child when the child's heart turned. ' The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.' That is the theology of Isaiah at its highest level ; that is the theology of Paul, too, when speaking of himself as crucified with Christ, and so recon ciled to God, he is bold enough to affirm that he henceforth no 448 PAUL'S LIFE IN CHRIST longer lives his own life, but the ' life hid ' through self-immola tion, through the great heart-surrender ' with Christ in God.' The great stress sometimes laid by theologians on the words ' saved by His death ' is simply an artifice of selection ; we are saved by at least twenty other things according to How the Scriptures. Healing saves, baptism saves, hope are we saves, memory saves, the Word saves, love of truth saves, preaching saves, grace saves, endurance to the end saves, calling on the Lord saves, coming to Christ saves, His life saves, His death saves, faith saves, belief in His resur rection saves, knowledge of Scripture saves, Christ is Salvation, some are saved so as by fire, and so on throughout the Pauline writings — ad infinitum. XXI PAUL'S JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 256. What is Justification?— 257. Meanings of Faith 258. Meanings of Works. — 259. Meanings of the Law.— 260. 'Justified by faith' explained by ' the spirit and the letter.' — 261. Cl vision. — 262. Accep ted in the Beloved. To he Justified by Faith and not by works meant to St. Paul that the true servants of God in all ages are made just or right in the sight of God by an Inward State of Heart, 256 and not by any Deeds, however excellent in them- what is selves, or any Ritual or Ceremonial, however jowwci- orthodox and correct. That so clear and simple a conception should have given rise to tomes of controversy, founded and dissolved schools of thought, and set Christian sects by the ears for nineteen centuries, is partly due, no doubt, to the eternal conflict between the Letter and the Spirit, and the obsti nate preference of the carnal man for the first over the second — for Mechanical Rites over Spiritual States ; but it is also due to St. Paul's overlaying his own central conception of Faith and Works with a variety of meanings. 'Faith is sometimes the spiritual principle whereby we go out of ourselves to hold communion with God' (Jowett) — then it belongs to the heart. 257. At others it is an act of belief in God or Christ, meanings op or in the resurrection, or in the Holy Spirit, or in the promises. Faith is then equivalent to a reasonable belief founded upon a variety of considerations which the Apostle is always careful to urge — arguing for persuasion — and that kind of Faith belongs to the head. 450 PAUL'S JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH At other times Faith seems to be the result of an even com bination of head and heart— a joint act— a man's heart being in a certain condition, his head gives weight to arguments which' would not otherwise suffice intellectually, but are all powerful to convince on account of a prepared state within — just as certain seed will take root in an honest and good heart and not in another. Then Faith becomes ' the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.' It may be defined generally as a loving trust, founded upon a reasonable belief, which, taken in connection with tlie experience of life and the general constitution of nature, amounts to a working cer tainty. Lastly, there is the purely Lutheran and forensic meaning of Faith, which some of us read back into the Epistles of Paul, which means the acceptance of Christ's sacrifice as a means of possessing ourselves of a righteousness not our own, in which we stand, as in ' a wedding garment,' justified before God. ' Works ' lend themselves to a similar variety of interpreta tions. Sometimes they are merely the ceremonial observance of 253 the Mosaic law ; sometimes they are the evil deeds meanings or done in the body ; sometimes they are the spon- wouks. taneous actions without moral significance ; at others they are extra works — works of supererogation not even enjoined in the law ; and at others they are right actions done, from a sense of duty, or beneficent deeds done out of love. The Law is a third term of ambiguity. It is the moral or the ceremonial law of Moses ; it is the law in the members 259 earring against the law in the mind ; it is a meanings burdensome and out worn system of ordinances of the that are against us ; it is our enemy — it is evil ; it is our friend — and only a terror to evildoers ; it is holy, just, and true ; it is fulfilled ; it is abolished. Upon the labyrinthine discussions which have arisen out of these various definitions and statements it is not my purpose to PAUL'S JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 451 enter ; it has been wisely said, however, ' that there is one inter pretation put upon St. Paul's Epistles by later controversy which is necessarily false. ... St. Paul can only be 260 interpreted by himself — not from the systems of • justified modern theologians, nor even from the writings of BY *'A1TH ' ... , . . . . ° EXPLAINED BY one who had so much in common with him as Luke. > THE SPIIUT . . The words ' Justified by faith' have been car- and the ried out of their original circle of ideas into a new LEITEK- one by the doctrines of the Reformation. They have become hardened, stiffened, sharpened by the exigencies of controversy, and torn from what may be termed their context in the Apostoli cal age' ('Jowett's Epistles,' 527-530). Perhaps the words 'Justification by faith,' which lend themselves to so much uncertainty, may best be read in the light of those other famous words 'the Letter killeth, the Spirit giveth life,' about the meaning of which there never was, and never can be, any doubt — words at once most wide-reaching, and yet most capable of exact and immediate application to all questions concerning the outward (works of the law) and the inward (life of faith). He is not a Jew which is a Jew outwardly, but he is a Jew that is one inwardly. Circumcision of the flesh, which is the law, is passed over in favour of circumcision of the spirit, which is by Faith (Romans ii. 29). They are npt all Israel that are of Israel (Romans ix. 8). The spirit does not come by the woiks of the law, but by faith (Galatians iii.). Everywhere in Paul's highest moods, when he rises out of the quagmire of Judaism into the glorious liberty of the children of God, there is the same piercing insight into the heart of things. In the moments of clearest vision CLEAE VISI0N, the trappings (ceremonial or dogmatic) of all religions seem to fall off, and the soul finds itself face to face with God. In that fierce hght, in that consuming fire, everything but reality is burnt up. The Letter is forgotten — only the Spirit remains. Unless a man is in Christ, then it must needs go hard with him. He sees clear. He knows at last that he cannot plead circum cision, or sacrifices, or offerings for sin — nothing can avail him but Repentance and Faith— the surrender to Jesus at discretion 452 PAUL'S JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH —a passionate and final rejection of all tbat is opposed to righteousness — a simple trust in the Infinite Love. His actions are certain to have been wrong — his repentance may have been tardy — his trust born of terror, weakness, or 2g2 necessity. He knows all that, but he also knows accepted in that he may stand before the Judge of all flesh, the beloved, justified by Faith, and have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. He pleads another's righteousness, in all sincerity and literalness, and that plea is accepted. He is par doned, not on account of what he is, but of what he would be. God, in His infinite charity, sees him in Christ, and in that immortal hope the sinner has ceased to tremble before the Judge. He looks off himself. His eyes are fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of his faith, and he is at peace. His life of failure is constantly redeemed by his life of aspiration, and evermore he feels within him stirring the grace of God, like a divine leaven, which is Christ in him ' the hope of glory.' He, the imperfect, elaims the perfect ; and through the ages, if he will but stand by that (for 'by faith ye stand'), tliat claim shall be admitted. And so the life of infinite longing grows towards its realisation, like the path of the just shining more and more unto the perfect day, until, with the glorious ' not as though I had attained ' still upon his lips, he finds himself 'accepted in the Beloved' — for ' He is come in the Unity of the Faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.' XXII PAUL'S PEEFECT WAY 263. The Panacea. — 264. Love is delegated power. — 265. Love is enough. — 266. Faith and hope.— 267. Varied applications.— 268. The care of all the churches. ' Yet show I unto you a more excellent way,' says the Apostle, after exhausting every counsel of perfection. The perfect way was charity or love. „„„ Paul has seized with incomparable vigour and a the passion unexampled in homiletic literature this *a»*cba. cardinal position of the Christian life. It is not a Conception, or a Sentiment, or a Dream, or an Impulse, or an Aspiration. Love is a way. It is the way out of every difficulty — it is the solvent of every doubt — it brings man close to man — it leads man straight to God through Christ. ' Love is enough ' — it takes the place of bodily comfort — it compensates us for material losses — it soothes all disappointments — it supplies all needs — it slays death — it is a foretaste of heaven. Paul had found it sufficient, and he preached it without the least concealment or misgiving as the one divine panacea for all the ills that could happen to the body or assault and hurt . the soul. Love meant to St. Paul the self-life merged in the lives of others, yet without the loss of an ever energetic individuality, by which it enriched and built up others with innu- 2g4 merable sympathetic ministries, and was itself love is reciprocally blessed. delegated ,»..-. /-I xx POWER. The ground of this Jove was a Common Hu manity. This again had its source in tbe Central Humanity of 454 PAUL'S PERFECT WAY God Himself, and thus every true and love-redeemed human life was said to be ' hid with Christ in God.' God's human nature remained the ground of our human nature — the central power of that nature was love, or the going forth of Being blessing and to bless. The whole creation was nothing but tbat — all dis orders which had crept into that creation would be set right by that. Human love is delegated power. We who are His offspring have received the spirit of sons and are called upon to love one another, even as He has loved us and given Himself for us. The philosophy of this is deep — it will bear inspection on every side. You can put in your test-rod anywhere, and the 2g5_ living waters will rise. love is In human society that which alone resists dis- enough. integration is love. The cementing power of the state is not the sword, but self- devotion. You call it patriotism, or allegiance to the Throne or the Republic, or Enthusiasm for Leaders — Paul called it love. That which holds families together, and causes people to be of one mind in a house is not interest, or argument, or law, or force, or avarice, or ambition, or selfish pleasure — but love. That which tempers the administration of justice is again mercy, or a form of love. That which goes forth to seek and to save the lost in our great cities, which feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, which gives to the suffering the second necessaries of life, which binds up the broken-hearted, warms the spiritually frost-bound back to life, converts an outward Hell into an inward Paradise, composes discords, and brings back peace to a tormented world, making Heaven possible to the soul — is ever love. .j Faith and Hope there may and must be, but Love is still the greatest because it includes the other two, for if we love we 266. must have some Faith in those whom we love, and if faith and we have Faith, who shall deprive us of Hope, since in Faith we realise the very substance of things hoped for — the evidence of things not seen. Therefore of Faith, PAUL'S PERFECT WAY 455 Hope, and Charity (Love), the greatest of these is Charity or Love. The more excellent way being thus quite clear to Paul, he proceeded to walk in it with the utmost assurance. His firmness of tread is admirable ; his touch is almost infallible ; 267 his decisions are rapid, and, though sometimes varied supported by argument, require none. Love was a applications. thread which guided him through every labyrinth. Were the Gentiles to be admitted on equal terms with the Jews 1— Whv, certainly ; the bond of universal brotherhood in Jesus ran through the whole human race, and the love which bound all to Christ must needs bind most closely all together. Was it good to curtail a man's liberty in lawful things ? That depended — love would decide — for if our liberty wounded a weak brother it were well not to eat meat whilst the world stood. Might they go to law ? Did people who loved each other ask such questions ? Should they pardon a man who had brought scandai on the company of the faithful ? If such an one truly repented, what did love say ? Love said — comfort him — take him back. Were they to stand on their rights 1 ' In honour preferring one another ' was tbe reply — then the question of rights would not arise, and love would be the fulfilling of the law. What should they do with the poor ? Love suggested at once that they should not only look after their own poor, but also send of their superfluity to distant churches, whose only claim might be that they were human and in distress. It is with something like awe and amazement that we note this astonishing command of detail, combined with the gigantic reach of the Apostle's spirit, displayed especially in „„. the Corinthian and Ephesian Epistles — embracing the care of Jew and Gentile ; composing the differences of all all the ,. . - • , churches. sorts and conditions of men ; yearning over remote communities and longing to be with them ; founding and then leaving church after church for new conquests ; attaching to himself bands of devoted men and women, and then separating himself from them for ever, because the time was short and the 456 PAUL'S PERFECT WAY imperious claims of humanity drove him forward to those who needed him more but loved him Jess. ' I will very willingly,' he says, ' spend myself for you and be spent, though the more abun dantly I love you the less I am beloved.' That feeling, which most men are capable of entertaining onb' for a few intimates, Paul seemed to feel for whole communities- i his dear churches of Thessalonica or Galatia ; his wayward ,, Corinthians ; his brilliant Ephesians — to all of them he was as a " father, and yet his heart yearned towards individuals whom he ; constantly craved to have near him. He forgot none of his personal friends, but his heart followed them in the distance — Luke, the beloved physician ; Timothy and Herodion, and the household of Narcissus, and the 'beloved Persis,' and Rufus, chosen in the Lord ; Tryphena and Tryphosa, and Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Philologus, and Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Amplias. Truly there was something Christ-like and spiritually colossal about this Apostle to the Gentiles. The whole world was his diocese. Time was too short for him ; ships were too slow ; i_ travelling-companions too dependent on ease — he wore them all out ; isles and continents w.ere spanned in his eager imagination or headlong courses from Jerusalem to Spain and away to the remotest Gentile coasts. And 'still the Perfect Way he trod was Love. And still the Lord stood by his side and strengthened him even when all men forsook him, until the time came when he was ready to be offered. The tired feet were no longer seen upon the mountains or hurrying from strand to strand, the toiling hands were at rest, and the voice of such an one as Paul the aged was silent — but the crown was won. tyottitwoade & Co. Ltd , Printers, Mew-street Square, London