why delayest thou ? Arise and have thyself baptized and
thy sins washed away, calling on His name. And it came
to pass, after I had returned to Jerusalem, and while I was
praying in the temple, that I fell into an ecstacy, and saw
Him saying to me Haste and get thee quickly out of
Jerusalem; for they will not receive thy testimony con-
cerning me. And I said Lord, they know themselves
that I was ever imprisoning and beating from synagogue
to synagogue those that believe on thee; and when the
blood of thy martyr, Stephen, was shed, I myself also
was standing by and consenting heartily and keeping the
raiment of those who slew him. And He said to me
Depart ; for unto the heathen afar off am I about to send
thee."
Now, first, we may notice what may be called the art-
fulness of this address. He does not obtrude offensive
matter; now that he is out of their hands, he does not
speak to chafe them, that he may enjoy their futile rage.
No; he speaks honestly, but he speaks with wondrous
360 PAUL AT JERUSALEM.
skill, that he may carry them along with him. He uses
their favourite tongue, though himself a Hellenist, and for
the purpose of propitiating them. He styles them out of
respect brethren and fathers ; tells them his relationship to
Gamaliel and his education as a zealous Pharisee ; refers
to the high-priest who had sanctioned his proceeding ; calls
the Jews in Damascus "the brethren;" names Jesus only
when he quotes what He said ; describes Ananias as
"pious according to the law" and in high repute among
his countrymen, while the previous narrative names him a
" disciple ; " speaks of Jehovah by the Israelitish term,
"the God of our fathers;" and informs them how after
his change he came back to the temple and did as all
devout Jews did prayed in it. The orator did not wish
to give unnecessary provocation, but he makes a calm and
impressive statement.
Again, he appeals for confirmation to themselves. Theo-
philus, the high-priest from whom he received his letter
or commission to Damascus, was alive, and might be pre-
sent ; while many of the sanhedrim might also survive.
What he wished them to infer was, that he had not
changed for light reasons that he could not but change
that the glory which enveloped him at mid-day was no
deception and that his ears had actually heard the voice
of the Nazarene. It was the Nazarenes, as they were
contemptuously termed, that he was going to capture and
bind in Damascus; and his interceptor styled Himself
Jesus the Nazarene the simplest, but in the circumstances
the most alarming and stinging epithet which could be
employed. He hoped that they who knew what he was
THE SPEECH AND THE NARRATIVE. 361
might seek to know what he had become, and why he had
abandoned his previous course. This we have already
considered in our second chapter " Paul at Jerusalem."
The account of his conversion here given by himself
differs but slightly from the narrative in the ninth chapter.
He groups together its more prominent incidents, as they
bore upon the object which he had immediately in view.
The very fact, that the author of the book of the Acts has left
some discrepancies, when he could easily have moulded them
into uniformity, shows that he regarded them as in perfect
harmony. Speaking from his vivid recollection, the apostle
calls the light a "great" light, and he names the precise
period of the day variations from the historical account,
but natural to the orator describing earnestly his own
experience. The historian relating the circumstances says
that the companions of Saul were speechless the orator
simply says they were afraid alarmed. In the ninth
chapter it is said "They heard the voice, but saw no
one " dazzled with excess of light ; but here it is said
that they " saw the light, but heard not the voice " the
meaning being, that though the splendour enveloped them,
they saw not Him from whose glorified humanity it flashed;
and though they heard the sound, they could not distinguish
the articulate words which it pronounced to the ear of the
apostle. The speaker omits what the narrator has told as
the dialogue of the Lord with Ananias, but he brings out
other features that Ananias was a Jew, a devout observer
of the law, and held in high repute by all the Jews in
Damascus. What the apostle reports as being said to him
by Ananias is not given in the previous account, but the
362 PAUL AT JERUSALEM.
substance was spoken by the Lord to Ananias, and he
naturally repeated it when he visited Saul in the street
called Straight. But the appearance of the Kedeemer is
specially dwelt upon, as this placed Paul on a level with
the other apostles as " eye-witnesses of His majesty."
From the Saviour's lips he received his commission, and
having seen Him, he could testify as truly as Peter and
John that He was risen from the dead.
The apostle's main end is to show that he did not disown
the religion of his fathers as a creed which he had ceased
to believe in that he had been profoundly attached to it,
and still venerated it as divine in its claims and origin
that he had only gone beyond it under a supernatural
summons which he durst not resist that he had espoused
the religion of Jesus as the fulfilment of Judaism, and not
as a hostile or a rival faith that he did not cease to be
a Jew on becoming a Christian, or renounce the ties of
country and kindred and that his Christianity did not
prevent him from revisiting Jerusalem, the chief city of
his people, and offering prayer in the temple, their one holy
place.
The populace listened till he uttered his commission to
the Gentiles : they bore with him till he came to this
hated word, and in a moment the sea of faces beneath him
lashed itself into fury, and they shouted "Away with
such a fellow from the earth, for it is not Jit that he should
live" literally, was not fit he should not have been
rescued by the chief captain from our hands. He had
been accused of sacrilege of profaning the holy place
and they imagined that his words were tantamount to a
EOMAN CITIZENSHIP. 363
confession of his guilt and a vindication of his conduct.
In their phrenzy they cried out, tossed about their clothes
in wild excitement, and " threw dust into the air," in token
of exasperation. Lysias the tribune, not knowing what
the apostle said, and seeing what commotion his foreign
words had produced, commanded that he should be taken
into the garrison, and put to the torture, that the nature of
the charges against him might be discovered. As they
bound him with thongs in such a way as to prepare him for
the scourge, he felt that it was his right to secure immunity,
and put the quiet question to the presiding centurion " Is
it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman and
uncondemned" not even put upon his trial? He did not
turn in anger and dare or defy them to lay a hand upon him,
or tell them what vengeance should fall on them if they did.
He states the simple query, and the few words acted like
magic. The centurion reported them at once to his tribune,
and warned him of the hazard. " Then the chief captain
came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman ? He
said, Yea. And the chief captain answered, With a great
sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was
free-born." The prisoner stood on higher ground than his
interrogator ; they who should have put him to the question
left him, and Lysias was afraid, as if he had gone too far in
even preparing to scourge a Roman citizen. To bind the
prisoner for safe-keeping was no crime, but to bind him
into the posture for flagellation was an infringement of the
law and the majesty of Rome. But not knowing well
what to do in the case, not understanding the nature of
the popular enmity and clamour against his prisoner, and
364 PAUL AT JERUSALEM.
" because he would have known the certainty wherefore he
was accused of the Jews," he summoned the sanhedrim,
11 the chief priests, and all their council," " on the morrow,"
"loosed him from his bands/' "and brought Paul down
and set him before them."
PAUL AT JERUSALEM. 365
BE.
BEFORE THE SANHEDRIM.
ACTS Ttxiii. 111.
The council are met, not in the old hall, Gazith, where
they were wont to assemble a chamber into which from
its position none but a Jew might enter but in some
place beyond the sacred precincts of the temple, and to
which the Roman power could have immediate access.
The apostle is brought in by his guards, and set before
them. It is likely that he had once occupied a seat in
that high court himself, but he who had been the judge
is now the prisoner. All eyes must have been turned
upon him; for his career and character had been noto-
rious, and the agitation of yesterday had scarcely sub-
sided. Some were there who might have known Saul
in the school of Gamaliel, and been his competitors in
rabbinical studies. They had not only witnessed his
piety and admired his erudition, but they must have
marked the zeal, energy, and downrightness which had
distinguished him, the absence of indifference in his
nature, his formation of high and definite purposes and
the integrity and tenacity with which he pursued them,
the keenness of his intellect and the ardour of his temper,
the conscientiousness with which he chose a side, and the
chivalrous energy with which he flung himself at once into
its defence. Many of them might not have seen him for
366 PAUL AT JERUSALEM.
years, and they could not but be struck with his altered
appearance his furrowed brow and shattered frame.
Twenty years of toil, travel, and suffering had told upon
him, and he was now such an one as " Paul the aged;"
for scourging, stoning, shipwreck, cold, hunger, and rags,
continual perils in every place, and perpetual corrosion of
heart from the "care of all the churches" had broken down
his constitution. Eagerly as the eyes of the sanhedrim
scanned him, he quailed not, but calmly and steadily
returned their gaze. There stood Paul " earnestly behold-
ing the council," trying whom he could recognize, learning
the composition of the assembly on whose votes his fate
depended, and balancing the hopes of a fair and impartial
investigation.
His lofty moral courage did not desert him, and he
begins " Men and brethren, I have lived in all good
conscience before God until this day" my public life
to God has all along been a conscientious one. His
life as a member of the theocracy, prior to his change
and since his change, had been regulated by conscience.
Once, indeed, he persecuted, and now he "built up the
faith which he once destroyed." But in both cases he had
acted not only sincerely, but in perfect deference to the
theocratic principle. Before he understood Christianity
he strove to suppress it as an impious innovation, and
after he embraced it he felt it to be only the spiritual
renovation and development of the old economy. He was
a conscientious Jew at both periods in blaspheming as
well as in preaching Christ. He was wrong, indeed,
far wrong in the first action, and he honestly and deeply
CHRISTIANITY THE CROWN OF JUDAISM. 367
repented it ; but lie had acted up to his light, and when
new light was thrown in upon him he was bound to
follow it. He had not become a renegade as they imagined,
or renounced his circumcision. He gloried still in
Abraham, but more in his faith than in his blood. He
had not ceased to love Jerusalem, "the city of solemnities,"
and he had again and again paid it a visit. He wor-
shipped in the temple, but thought more of the spirit of
the service than the mere ceremonial ; and he regarded the
altar not so much in its present victims as in the real and
glorious propitiation which it had prefigured. He had
renounced Judaism in the sense that a child leaves the
nursery and enters the world, but still remains a member
of the same household. He never acted against con-
science, allowed no inferior considerations to move him,
cast all aside for conviction's sake, yea, had sacrificed all
for truth and God. It was this idea that filled his bosom,
as he rose to address the council. Nay, he had not forfeited
his right to sit there, by obeying the prophets and believing
the promised Messiah. Why should one who accepted the
national Messiah forfeit any national right ? Was any one,
by acting as the inspired teachers bade him, to denude
himself of any privilege ? He will not admit a charge of
inconsistency, for he has only taken the step for which
Moses and Aaron, David and Isaiah, had prepared him.
He had once sat on those benches, and why should not he
sit now ? He will not allow that he has done anything to
disinherit himself, and therefore he says, " Men-brethren,"
as if he were yet one of themselves a judge speaking to
his colleagues in office. Old scenes revive; he has not
368 PAUL AT JERUSALEM.
cast off his judicial comrades, and though he spoke to the
infuriated crowd as " Men, brethren, and fathers," he simply
styles the sanhedrim " Men-brethren," not, as Peter had
styled them, " Ye rulers of the people, and elders of
Israel."
Ananias the high priest could not bear such an intro-
duction. It was not an appeal to clemency, nor even an
admission that matters of high moment were in debate.
It was more than a plea of not guilty it was a protestation
of positive rectitude, containing in it an implied charge
against the judges. Ananias ordered the mouth that
uttered these sentiments to be struck, as a penalty for its
sin. He had spoken so wrongly that he must be symboli-
cally punished his " cheek-bone" hit with a sandal, and
perhaps his " teeth broken " by the blow. This sudden
outbreak of temper was a virtual judicial sentence from
the head of the council, and many of them must have
acquiesced in it as a just punishment for contempt of court.
The apostle would not bear such an indignity from a
court with which he felt himself quite on a level. He
wished his case to be tried, and his reply to be fully
heard ; and it was heartless on the part of Ananias so to
treat a man who but the day before had been in danger of
his life, and was now defenceless and in the hands of the
Eoman power. Paul sought only fair play ; he wanted no
partiality shown him, and he would have scorned to say a
word for the mere purpose of ingratiating himself with his
judges. But that mouth must be struck, if this ebullition
of temper on the part of the president be obeyed the
mouth which had so often dropped those precious pearls,
ANANIAS. 369
which had given utterance to so many blessed truths in
Asia and in Europe, and all because mention was made of
conscience, a monitor which Ananias possessed not, or it
had so often warned him in vain, that it had ceased to
whisper any suggestion or reproof.
The apostle at once answered, and that in no common
tone " God shall smite thee, thou whited wall : for sittest
thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be
smitten contrary to the law?" These words can scarcely
be regarded in any other light than a prophecy j no idle
malediction or passionate recrimination, but an oracle of
doom pronounced on one who had so shamefully outraged
the office which he filled. He was a hypocrite, notoriously
venal and ambitious ; and the sacerdotal robes, made " for
glory and for beauty," covered a depraved and cruel heart.
His office was to judge according to law, and by evidence
calmly weighed ; but he violated alike its letter and its
spirit by his peremptory order. Ananias, the son of
Nebedasus, obtained the office of high priest under the
procurator, Tiberius Alexander, and he held it also under
the procurator Cumanus. Involved in a quarrel between
Jews and Samaritans, he was sent a prisoner to Kome by
Quadratus, prefect of Syria, but the emperor Claudius
decided in his favour. On his return he retained his office
till superseded by Ismael, a short time before the departure
of Felix from Judea. After his deposition from the pon-
tificate, "he increased in glory every day," as Josephus
says. Bribery and violence had characterized his posses-
sion of power, and he occupied a princely palace in the
Upper city. But his crooked and nefarious policy provoked
2 A
370 PAUL AT JERUSALEM.
a tragical retaliation, and at length, at the commencemenf
of the Jewish insurrection, the sicarii, or lawless assassins,
surrounded his house and set fire to it. Ananias fled in
haste and took refuge in an aqueduct, out of which he was
dragged and slain.
The apostle's words may be regarded as in this way
fulfilled. The sentence, however, contains a general prin-
ciple often illustrated in divine providence. "The Lord
is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked
is snared in the work of his own hands." Thus the
maimed Adonibezek confessed, "As I have done, so God
hath requited me;" "As thy sword hath made women
childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women,"
said Samuel to Agag ; Nathan foretold a retributive fate
to David; Daniel's accusers met the punishment which
they had plotted for him ; and Haman was hanged on the
gallows which he had erected for his adversary.
The apostle had no sooner spoken than he was checked.
" And they that stood by said, Revilest thou God's high
priest?" The rank of Ananias is at once insisted on, as
if that could shield him from the awful fulmination. The
apostle at once replied " I wist not, brethren, that he was
the high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak
evil of the ruler of thy people." The meaning of this
verse has been much questioned. It has been said that
the apostle means to reply that Ananias was not high priest,
but had only usurped the office, and that Paul did not
recognize him a hypothesis that has no sure historical foun-
dation, nor does the apostle speak as this theory supposes.
Nor can it mean that Paul did not identify the high priest,
REPLY TO THE HIGH PRIEST. 371
inasmuch as lie had been long absent from Jerusalem,
and might not be acquainted with his person. But the
apostle does not say that he had made a mistake of persons,
or that he was ignorant of the rank of Ananias, who must
have been president of the council. Others imagine that
the apostle pleads defective eye-sight, and that his vision
had been seriously impaired ever since " the glory of that
light" had blinded him. It may be replied that the scales
fell from his vision, and that all miracles of restoration
are perfect in final result. Or even if his sight remained
under partial weakness, it was yet so good as to enable him
to work at his occupation as a tentmaker, and to travel by
himself in a strange country. Nay more, he had surveyed
the council before he began, and must have seen the posi-
tion of its supreme judge. The word rendered in the first
verse "earnestly beholding," does not denote, as some would
seem to think, the gaze of one who sees imperfectly ; it is
rather a steady eager look, and is rendered variously in
our version. Thus in Luke iv. 20, where it is said that
the "eyes" of all the synagogue with wonder and curi-
osity "were fastened" on Jesus; Luke xxii. 56, A maid
beheld Peter, and "earnestly looked upon him," scanning
his features so as to recognize him; or Acts i. 10, The
eleven disciples "looked stedfastly toward heaven," to
catch a glimpse of the ascending Lord ; Acts iii. 4, Peter
"fastening his eyes" upon the lame man at the beautiful
gate of the temple, said, &c.; or Acts vi. 15, As the face of
Stephen became like the face of an angel, all that sat in the
council were " looking stedfastly on him," &c.
None of the previous explanations hold for another
372 PAUL AT JERUSALEM.
reason. The passage of scripture quoted by the apostle
refers not exclusively to the high priest, but to any ruler,
and was violated if evil was spoken of any ruler or any one
of the assembled council. It was no real apology, therefore,
that he did not see that it was the high priest who offered
him this insolence. It happened, indeed, to be the high
priest who spoke, and the apostle answered, " I wist not,
brethren, that he was high priest" words that cannot
mean, I did not know that such a man could be a high
priest, or, I know the law to which you allude, but, in
speaking as I have done, I have not broken it; for, if
he was not high priest, and though the apostle might
deny his title, he was at least a ruler, and under the shield
of the old statute. Had he wished to refuse Ananias all
claim to the pontificate, might he not have used the lan-
guage of those " that stood by " " I know him not for
God's high priest," whatever title he may derive from
man's authority ? The conclusion, then, seems to be that
the apostle had not the knowledge present to his mind that
it was the high priest whom he was addressing. He does
not formally apologize, but perhaps he intimates that the
words might have been differently couched that he might
have uttered the malediction more solemnly, and with less
of personal feeling mingled up with it. Nor does he
retract it, though he may regret that it did fall upon a
successor of Aaron. What a terrible thought that one
whose function it was to represent the people, pass beyond
the vail, and stand before the ark, should be so foredoomed
to be smitten by God !
This incident must have made some commotion, which
PHARISEE AND SADDUCEE. 373
allowed the apostle to perceive more clearly tlie temper of his
judges. It must have kindled resentment against himself
on the part of those who thought themselves affronted by
the insult offered to their president. Justice was not to be
expected from an impassioned and prejudiced bench, of the
members of which Ananias might be a fair specimen.
The apostle now discerned the composition of the council,
and measured his advantage. It was in vain for him to
plead any farther one party were bound by their previous
creed to deny the very possibility of his most striking
proofs. So that he suddenly threw in a statement which
acted like the explosion of a bomb among his judges.
" But when Paul perceived that the one part were Saddu-
cees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council,
Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee :
of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in
question. And when he had so said, there arose a dissen-
sion between the Pharisees and the Sadducees : and the
multitude was divided." The apostle only stated the truth.
Not only was he a Pharisee, but the son of a Pharisee or
rather Pharisees, his ancestry being Pharisees for many
generations back. The phrase " hope and resurrection of
the dead," does not mean merely the hope of a resurrection,
but probably contains two distinct ideas "hope" as a
specific thing that hope in all likelihood being the Mes-
siah the grand hope of the nation ; and the " resurrection
of the dead" proved indeed and exemplified in His. Had
the prisoner been allowed to proceed, he would soon have
unfolded his views, and shown that every consistent Phari-
see must follow him to that Saviour who had glorified the
374 PAUL AT JERUSALEM.
law to which they were so deeply attached, and provided
that righteousness of which they were so eagerly in quest.
What he was charged with was no novelty. It was as
old as the first promise. It was found in the " adoption" as
its blessing, in the " covenants " as their peculiar heritage,
in " the giving of the law " as its grand object, for it was a
schoolmaster till Christ, and in "the promises" as their very
centre and fulness. Prayer had been offered, and victims
had bled for it. It was what the nation had been originally
organized for, and what it lived and longed for. For this
hope he was called in question, for a hope alike dear to
saint and patriot ; and his plea is, that in accepting that
hope when presented in the fulness of the time, he had acted
with perfect consistency as a Jew, and with honest faith as
a believer in God. He had only done as an individual
what the nation should have done as a body, and had done
simply what God had intended they should do ay, and
had long trained them for doing. His conversion had
only anticipated what might have been and ought to have
been the national decision as to the nation's hope.
The resurrection of the dead had been an article of the
national creed, but it was confirmed and illustrated by the
resurrection of Him who brought life and immortality to
light. The resurrection implies a future state. That
future state did not occupy any place among the ratifica-
tions of the Mosaic code, which was guarded by a special
providence, nor does it come into prominence among the