Hebrew prophets. But it is there though in comparative
obscurity. Isaiah sings "Thy dead men shall live,"
and the figure in Ezekiel as to the valley and the dry
DIVISION IN THE COUNCIL. 375
bones, is based upon the popular belief and conception
of the reality. The Pharisees held by this faith, but the
Sadducees denied it. These rationalists were also materialists
saying that there is " no resurrection, neither angel nor
spirit;" either denying a spirit- world altogether, or affirm-
ing that mind is but the result of cerebral organization
that there is no soul in man, or that it dies with his body.
How they received the Old Testament, and explained
away the passages in which angels and supernatural beings
are so often spoken of, we do not know. Only we know
that a similar process is not uncommon, and that men in
our days profess to accept scripture, and yet explain away
its natural meaning declaring the story of creation to be
a myth, and that of the deluge a fable ; regarding angels
but as names of such messengers as a " flaming fire," and
devils but as the dreams of a dark superstition ; holding
that prophecy is but sagacious conjecture, and miracles but
dexterous feats ; and even affirming that the language of
Jesus in reference to demoniac possession and the resurrec-
tion from the dead, was merely a conformity to current forms
of thought and language. Men may profess to take the
Bible, and thus eliminate all that characterizes it as if there
might be salvation without a saviour, and without human
souls to be saved.
The council was at once divided. "And there arose
a great cry : and the scribes that were of the Pharisees'
part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this
man ; but if a spirit or angel hath spoken to him, let us
not fight against God." The commotion became violent
the disputants waxed very angry. Fierce polemi-
376 PAUL AT JERUSALEM.
cal passions were at once let loose. The Pharisees
suddenly discovered that their old adherent might be used
as a champion against their Sadducean foes, and at once
they took his side ceased to be judges, and sank into
partisans. It was a strange reaction when they shouted
" We find no evil in this man " a sentiment which they
could not in their hearts believe, but what he had spoken was
an opportune war-cry. And they added in their new-born
zeal and patronage "But if a spirit or an angel hath
spoken to him" . . . and the rest of the sentence was
drowned in the uproar. The one word rendered " Let us
not fight against God " does not appear to form a portion
of the text, and the abrupt sentence has a special emphasis,
the very reference to spirit and angel exasperating their
opponents into a yell which interrupted the speakers.
Thus orthodoxy clamoured, and heresy retorted with
similar din nay, the debate was intensified into action,
hands were laid on the apostle, and he was clutched
hither and thither by his unexpected allies and their
antagonists. Then the chief captain feared "lest Paul
should have been pulled in pieces of them" some assault-
ing, and others defending him; and there being no hope
of the restoration of quiet, and not knowing how far the
unseemly excitement might be carried, Lysias " com-
manded the soldiers to go down and to take him by force
from among them, and bring him into the castle."
During the following night, when strange thoughts must
have occupied his mind the scenes of the day starting up
before him, and the events of his previous life, from the
martyrdom of Stephen and his departure under the high
377
priest's commission to Damascus, rising vividly in his
recollection, while his mind was profoundly impressed by
the truth of the repeated warning that imprisonment
awaited him in Jerusalem, and he might be wondering as
to the issue, and whether his fate should be that of the
protomartyr, or whether he should be able to accomplish
his earnest wish of visiting Italy the Lord stood by him
and said, " Be of good cheer, Paul, for as thou hast testified
of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at
Kome." His heart was at once relieved and comforted.
The cloud was lifted. The Lord was his shield, and had
been a witness of all the procedure. Faithful service is
never overlooked His eye is never dimmed. " Be of
good cheer " is His frequent salute, and His words do their
own errands, creating what they command. They come in
the crisis, and men wonder at the martyr's courage. How
is it that fetters and stripes, and every form of refined
cruelty, do not quench the soul ; that the sight of the
rack or the gibbet, the cage of wild beasts, or the fagots
piled up before the stake, do not terrify a prisoner into
weakness or recantation ? Is it not that Jesus has spoken,
and the words are yet ringing in his ears " Be of good
cheer ? " May not every one who works and witnesses for
Jesus enjoy the same blessed consolation ? Shall He with-
hold His words from the faithful spirit that bows to no
will but His, relies on no strength but His, and covets no
assistance but His ? Nay, such loyalty reposing on such
confidence brings Jesus ever near, as He still repeats the
same syllables " Be of good cheer."
The sanhedrim could not destroy the apostle ; an invi-
378 PAUL AT JERUSALEM.
sible hand interposed and stayed their fury. No matter
what delays might happen, or what obstacle the tardy
and hostile operations of law might create Rome is the
goal. There were compearances before Felix and Festus,
and two years of captivity at Cesarea; the storm raged
fiercely in the Mediterranean, sending the ship of Alex-
andria far out of her course, and casting her upon an
island a total wreck ; but another vessel received the
prisoner, and he whose name and fame had preceded him,
landed safely at Puteoli, where some of the brethren wel-
comed him " and so we went towards Rome."
XVI. PAUL AT CESAEEA.
t
BEFORE FELIX. ACTS XXIV. 1-23.
THE apostle's work was done in Jerusalem, and so the
words of Jesus had intimated. But how he was to reach
Home he could not tell, and events were happening around
him which threatened to defeat the Master's promise. Dis-
appointed of their prey, more than forty Jews " banded
together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying,
that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed
Paul." This conspiracy indicates the rancorous fanaticism
which characterized the people. Probably those men were
sicarii, or zealots that desperate class who, pleading the
example of Phinehas, took the execution of the law into their
own hands, and at length sank into hired assassins paid
agents of private revenge. To show the state of feeling and
morals, we are told that they made their purpose known
to the sanhedrim, who, from the report of Paul's nephew,
seem to have acquiesced in the murderous project. Such
a conspiracy was quite in accordance with the temper of
the people. Josephus tells us of ten men who combined
in a similar way against the life of Herod, because he was
deemed an apostate ; and Philo, another contemporary of
the apostle a calm, meditative, and philosophical Jew
given to speculation rather than political or ecclesiastical
policy, thus writes " It is highly proper that all who have
380 PAUL AT CESAREA.
a zeal for virtue should have a right to punish with their
own hands, without delay, those who are guilty of this
crime ; not carrying them before a court of judicature, or
the council, or, in short, before any magistrate ; but they
should indulge the abhorrence of evil, the love of God,
which they entertain, by inflicting immediate punishment
on such impious apostates, regarding themselves for the
time as all things senators, judges, praetors, sergeants,
accusers, witnesses, the laws, the people so that, hindered
by nothing, they may without fear, and with all prompti-
tude, espouse the cause of piety." But Providence has
many modes of working out its ends. It is not the tribune
or his centurions who are to save Paul ; nor is there to be
any bold or sagacious unravelling of the plot. A young
man suddenly steps upon the scene, and frustrates it.
Gaining a knowledge of it by some means, he first informs
his uncle, and by him is sent to the chief captain to give
him similar insight. Lysias was well aware of the unscru-
pulous nature of the men with whom he had to deal, and
at once took measures for his prisoner's safety and sent him
the same night under a strong military escort to Cesarea.
And thus Paul finally left Jerusalem a prisoner guarded
by a troop of soldiers. He had come to it in early youth
with bright hopes and eager purposes. His rabbinical
studies had delighted him, and he outstripped many com-
petitors. The juvenile emotions of the student, as he first
gazed upon the metropolis the city of God, and the scene
of so many glories and disasters must have been in
strange contrast to his feelings, when as a prisoner, and
to escape assassination, he issued from one of its northern
JERUSALEM. 381
gates, in the midst of four hundred soldiers, and took the
road to Cesarea. He had left it on one memorable occa-
sion for Damascus, and come back three years after totally
changed in soul and pursuit. Again arid again had he
visited it, but now he takes leave of it for ever a foreign
power protecting him from its lawless and vengeful populace ;
the clatter of those hoofs, and the glitter of those spears
in the starlight, ever and anon impressing him with the
strangeness of his situation, and showing him that Christ
can make the enemies of his nation his shield and defence.
A few years later and the Eoman engines compass the
" holy city." Assault after assault is made upon it ; point
after point is gained through successive breaches ; murder,
faction, plague, and famine reign within it ; the temple is
set on fire ; the streets run with blood ; wild shrieks rise
high above the uproar Jerusalem has fallen. It had been
JVIelchizedek's citadel and David's capital the place of
sacrifice and worship the scene of the national gatherings
at the Passover and Pentecost and the dwelling-place of
the ark and the cherubim. But its reverses had been as
marked as its glories. Shishak and his bands from the
Nile had sacked it ; Arabians and Assyrians had captured
and plundered it ; Necho and his Egyptian legions had
levied contributions from it ; Sennacherib had invested it,
but was utterly smitten by its guardian angel ; Nebuchad-
nezzar had left it a heap of stones and dust, but it had been
rebuilt; Alexander of Macedon had approached it with hostile
intentions, but spared and honoured it ; Ptolemy of Egypt
ruthlessly spoiled it ; Antiochus Epiphanes ravaged it with
characteristic ferocity; the Maccabean chieftains restored
382 PAUL AT CESAREA.
and purified it ; Herod adorned and beautified it but its
days were numbered, and in a brief period it became a
mass of ruins, and yet is " trodden down of the Gentiles."
But as the apostle went out of it for the last time, he
could not but feel the power of early associations ; not
only the memories of old historic times of Solomon's
glory, Hezekiah's revival, and Ezra's patriotic enterprise
but also of more recent events which had hallowed Siloam
and Gethsemane, and shed an undying lustre on Calvary
and the Mount of Olives.
Along with the prisoner Lysias sends a despatch to
Felix the governor. The despatch states the case with
truth in its general features, but in such a way as to pro-
duce the impression that the tribune had done his duty
from another motive than the real one. He writes "This
man was taken of the Jews, and should have been killed
of them : then came I with an army, and rescued him,
having understood that he was a Koman." But it was
not true that he had rescued him from the knowledge that
he was a Eoman citizen; for he was not aware of this
fact till after the capture, and when he was about to do
him the worst of all indignities to scourge him. But
the credit which he so adroitly takes to himself verifies
the document as the report of a Roman officer who wishes
to stand well with his superior. Felix, on receiving the
letter, asked of what province he was ; and when he under-
stood that he was of Cilicia " I will hear thee, said he,
when thine accusers are also come. And he commanded
him to be kept in Herod's judgment-hall."
After five days Ananias the high priest and the elders
TERTULLUS.
came to Cesarea, and along with them a certain orator a
professional pleader, who was to lay the charges against
Paul before the governor. The trial began, and Tertullus
set forth the various points of accusation unsparing in
his invective, throwing out insinuations against Lysias the
chief captain, and screening the Jews from blame. But
the orator told a falsehood when he said " Whom we took
and would have judged according to our law;" for the
mob would have put the apostle to death without any trial,
had the chief captain not prevented them. But Tertullus
represents him as impeding " by great violence" an ordi-
nary process of Jewish law. The charges against Paul
were artfully laid by a forensic debater, "and the Jews
also assented, saying that these things were so."
The prisoner at the bar had no counsel had the benefit
of no professional skill but rose to reply for himself
when the governor beckoned to him. His answer is a
plain statement of facts. He had heard the charges, and
he calmly refutes them, count by count showing the im-
possibility of some of them, and the absurdity of others.
He began by the usual complimentary appeal not false
and fulsome, as that of Tertullus, but one that only spoke
the truth referring to the long period of six years during
which Felix had been governor, and the consequent know-
ledge which he must have acquired of Jewish character
and customs. He then refers to the knowledge which
Felix could easily obtain as to his actings since he had
come into Palestine. His whole conduct during that brief
period could bear the closest inspection " Because that
thou mayest understand, that there are yet but twelve
384 PAUL AT CESAREA.
days since I went up to Jerusalem for to worship. And
they neither found me in the temple disputing with any
man, neither raising up the people, neither in the syna-
gogues, nor in the city : neither can they prove the things
whereof they now accuse me." Those twelve days have
been variously counted, but may be thus given first day,
his arrival ; the second, his interview with James ; the
third, his assumption of the vow; the fourth, fifth, and
sixth, its continuance ; the seventh, his apprehension ; the
eighth, his appearance before the council ; the ninth, his
nocturnal departure for Cesarea ; the tenth, eleventh, and
twelfth, at Cesarea ; the thirteenth, being the day of the
trial, for five days after his departure from Jerusalem,
Ananias came down to Cesarea.
During this interval, the apostle did none of the things
with which he was charged. He entered into no disputes,
and addressed no popular assembly, in any supposable
place, for he was under a vow. Not only had he not com-
mitted those misdemeanours, but he had not even had the
requisite opportunity. Therefore he 'defied them to the
proof. Their allegations against him were baseless. He
was no pest, and no mover of sedition. Nay, he goes on
to affirm that he was a better or more consistent Jew than
his accusers. " But this I confess unto thee, that after the
way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my
fathers, believing all things which are written in the law
and in the prophets." He does not deny his Christianity;
and he admits that they called it heresy or schism, as
Tertullus had already said. This portion of the accusa-
tion was true, but far from true in their sense. He adored
THE APOSTLE NO RENEGADE. 385
no new God, he still worshipped the paternal God using
a classic epithet of special significance before a Roman
judge. The Roman law allowed this toleration to the Jew,
and the apostle claimed its protection. None other God than
the national God the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
the God who had done such wonders for them, and for
whose service that temple had been erected the God
owned by the nation, and still standing in a covenant
relationship to it none other God did the apostle acknow-
ledge, worship, or preach. He was therefore no apostate
or innovator no setter forth of strange divinities. Nay
more, he worshipped the God whom his nation had always
worshipped, in the way which Himself had prescribed, for
he was " believing all things which are written in the law
and in the prophets." He honoured God by crediting His
oracles. He would not discredit Jehovah by denying His
revelations. It was his pure and comprehensive faith in
the Old Testament that made him what he was. He held
by the national creed as well as by the national God. He
had virtually uttered the same sentiment before maintain-
ing, that when he became a Christian, he had not ceased
to be a Jew ; nay, that the only consistent Jew is he who
becomes a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth of Him of whom
the law, the prophets, and the psalms, are so full and
follows out the teaching and predictions of Moses and his
inspired successors. Had not he believed the Old Testa-
ment foreshowing Christ, he had never been a Christian
believing in Christ. Warned by God of a Christ to come,
he simply accepted Him when He had come at the time
and in the place predicted : so that he held by the national
2B
386 PAUL AT CESAKEA.
faith more intelligently, honestly, and piously than did his
accusers. He had done nothing that they were not bound
to do, if they would only obey the God of their fathers
"with a perfect heart, and with a willing mind." He
believed that God had been true to His promises, but they
did not. He believed that God had sent the great Deliverer
at the period predicted, but they did not.
He subjoins farther " And have hope toward God,
which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a
resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." He
and they had the very same hope. They were at one in
acknowledging the same God, and the same scriptures, and
they had also the same hope for futurity. That hope is
the hope of a resurrection, or what he had already expressed
in his address before the sanhedrim, but always connected
in his mind with the resurrection of Jesus as its pledge and
pattern. The Pharisees, and indeed the nation generally,
held this view the Sadducees being always a minority.
Having this great similarity of faith with his nation, he
differed only in this that he believed God had verified
his oft-given pledge to them, and held that this belief, " the
way which they called heresy," was yet the highest homage
to the God of truth. Then he repeats the sentiment, for the
utterance of which before the Jewish council Ananias had
commanded him to be smitten on the mouth. " And
herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience
void of offence toward God and toward men." That is
in consequence of this belief my worship of my fathers'
God, my faith in the law and the prophets, and my hope
of a resurrection I discipline myself so as to have and to
A GOOD CONSCIENCE. 387
hold an offenceless conscience in every way toward God
and toward men. I have nothing to charge against myself.
I have uniformly followed conviction. In becoming a
Christian, I have obeyed God; and since I became a
Christian, I have acted toward men honestly not stirring
up strife unnecessarily, but labouring to bring them to the
same belief. He had not been a pest, though he strove to
disseminate his views ; nor yet a mover of sedition, though
his enemies had broken the peace and tried to inculpate
him. No, he was a consistent member of the theocracy,
and the gospel which he had espoused and preached was
only its fruit and fulfilment. He had simply followed
whither God had pointed, and his conscience was void of
offence toward Him ; and as he had striven to make his
countrymen think with himself, had taught them no error
nor asked them to forsake Jehovah, their fathers' God, so
his conscience was void of offence also toward men. And
this was a perpetual work with him, no periodical task, or
detached effort of casuistry " I exercise myself," I put it
before me as an aim, and ever nerve myself to realize it.
His ends were not his own he obeyed God, and served
man.
The apostle now comes to the special charge which had
led to his apprehension " Now, after many years, I came
to bring alms to my nation, and offerings." Several years
had elapsed four, or it may be five since his last visit
to the capital. But he had not come as a sower of sedition.
He has said already that he came to worship, and he adds
more precisely as to the purpose of his journey, that he
came to bring alms to his nation, and offerings. He
388 PAUL AT CESAREA.
does not mean that he brought the offerings in the same
sense as he brought the alms. The offerings were those
made in the temple in connection with the vow which he
had taken upon himself, and with the purification of the
Nazarites, whose expenses, at the suggestion of James, he
had engaged to defray, perhaps out of the same fund which
had been collected among the foreign churches. The
offerings are introduced also as a kind of afterthought.
No mention is made in the history of the alms and offer-
ings, but there are many references in the epistles
Kom. xv. 25, 26; 1 Cor. xvi. 1 4; 2 Cor. viii. 1 4; and
this is one of those undesigned coincidences which attest
the credibility of the New Testament. His object was to
bring alms to the poor, but he also presented offerings in
the temple. How could he then be accused of disloyalty
or irreligion when he had so sedulously gathered alms for
his poorer brethren, and when he frequented the temple
and engaged in its most solemn acts of devotion ? He
thus boldly, and by a bare statement of facts, disposes of
the allegations made against him. How the disturbance
which had involved him came to be made he next states
"Whereupon certain Jews from Asia found me purified
in the temple, neither with multitude, nor with tumult."
"Whereupon" is literally " in which," or " amid which "
occupations showing my love to my nation, and my fidelity
to the law. The verse is variously read. Literally it is,
" In the midst of which they found me purified in the
temple, neither with multitude nor uproar, but certain
Jews from Asia" gathered the crowd and made the
tumult.
THE BASELESSNESS OF THE PROSECUTION. 389
The apostle was in the temple, a devout conscientious
Jew, and, so far from being disorderly, he was found
" neither with multitude, nor with tumult." He had
caused no disturbance and gathered no crowd, but, as
quietly and devoutly as the throng of worshippers around
him, he had entered into the ceremonial service. The
Jews from Asia were from Ephesus, and had known him
there. They surmised that he had brought Trophimus
into the temple and profaned it, and raised an immediate
alarm and outcry no difficult thing amidst the crowds
assembled at Pentecost. He had not been seized by any
officers of the law on any definite charge which might
be substantiated by legal evidence, but he had been set
upon by a disorderly mob. Besides, the very persons
who made the accusation, and " shouted Men of Israel,
help!" should have been produced in evidence against
him, or, as he says, "Who ought to have been here
before thee, and object, if they had ought against me."
This statement is a legitimate objection to the entire
proceeding. Where were the witnesses? What could
they depone ? Ananias and the deputation from the san-
hedrim could bear no witness, for their witness was but
hearsay. The Ephesian Jews were the proper parties to
hear, if they had ought against him. But they were not
brought forward. The conclusion the apostle comes to is,
that without these there could be no case against him.
Why should a man be prosecuted in absence of all the
principal witnesses ?
The prisoner makes another appeal to his very enemies
"Or else let these same here say if they have found
390 PAUL AT CESAREA.
any evil-doing in me, while I stood before the council,
except it be for this one voice, that I cried standing
among them, Touching the resurrection of the dead I am
called in question by you this day." If the Ephesian
Jews cannot be brought into court, let the men who
had come to Cesarea and now accused him let them
tell what they knew against him. They could, indeed,
depone nothing as to the original charge, but let them say