critical examination of the life of st. paul by boulanger translated from the french of boulanger "paul, thou art beside thyself, much learning doth make thee mad." acts, chap. 26, ver. 24. 1823 introduction. epistle dedicatory to m. l. n. sir, in our last conversation you appeared to me, very much smitten with st. paul and his works; you recommended me to reperuse his writings; assuring me that i should there find arguments well calculated to shake incredulity and confirm a christian in his faith. although the actions of this celebrated apostle, related in the acts, and his doctrine contained in his epistles, were already perfectly known to me, yet to conform myself to your desires, and give you proofs of my docility, i have again read those works, and i can assure you that i have done it with the greatest attention. you will judge of that yourself, by the reflections i send you; they will at least prove to you that i have read with attention. a superficial glance is only likely to deceive us or leave us in error. the passions and the prejudices of men prevent them from examining with candour, and from their indolence they are often disgusted with the researches necessary for discovering truth; that has also been with so much care veiled from their eyes: but it is in vain to cover it, its splendour will sooner or later shine forth; the works of enthusiasm or imposture, will always end by betraying themselves. as for the rest, read and judge. you will find, i think, at least, some reasons for abating a little from that high opinion, that prejudice gives us of the apostle of the gentiles, and of the religious system of the christians, of which st. paul was evidently the true architect. i am not ignorant that it is very difficult to undo at one blow the ideas to which the mind has been so long accustomed; but whatever may be your judgment it will not alter the sentiments of friendship and attachment which are due to the goodness of your heart. i am, &c, &c. critical examination of the life of st. paul chapter i. is the conversion of st. paul a proof in favour of the christian religion? many theologians would make us regard the miraculous conversion and apostleship of st. paul as one of the strongest proofs of the truth of christianity. but in viewing the thing closely it appears that this conversion, far from proving any thing in favour of this religion, invalidates the other proofs of it, in fact, our doctors continually assure us that the christian religion draws its strongest proofs from the prophecies of the old testament, whilst there is not in fact a single one of these prophecies that can be literally applied to the messiah of the christians. st. paul himself willing to make use of these oracles of the jewish nation to prove the mission of christ, is obliged to distort them, and to seek in them a mystical, allegorical, and figurative sense. on the other side, how can these prophecies made by jews and addressed to jews, serve as proofs of the doctrine of st. paul, who had evidently formed the design of altering, or even of destroying, the jewish religion, in order to raise a new system on its ruins? such being the state of things, what real connection, or what relation, can there be between the religious system of the jews, and that of st. paul? for this apostle to have had the right of making use of the jewish prophecies, it would have been necessary that he should have remained a jew; his conversion to christianity evidently deprived him of the privilege of serving himself, by having recourse to the prophecies belonging to a religion that he had just abandoned, and the ruin of which he meditated. true prophecies can only be found in a divine religion, and a religion truly divine, can neither be altered, reformed, nor destroyed: god himself, if he is immutable, could not change it. in fact, might not the jews have said to st. paul, "apostate that you are! you believe in our prophecies, and you come to destroy the religion founded upon the same prophecies. if you believe in our oracles, you are forced to believe that the religion which you have quitted is a true religion and divinely inspired. if you say, that god has changed his mind, you are impious in pretending that god could change, and was not sufficiently wise, to give at once to his people a perfect worship, and one which had no need of being reformed. on the other side, do not the reiterated promises of the most high, confirmed by paths to our fathers, assure us, that his alliance with us should endure eternally? you are then an impostor, and, according to our law, we ought to exterminate you; seeing that moses, our divine legislator, orders us to put to death, whoever shall have the temerity to preach to us a new worship, even though he should confirm his mission by prodigies. the god that you preach is not the god of our fathers: you say that christ is his son; but we know that god has no son. you pretend that this son, whom we have put to death as a false prophet, has risen from the dead, but moses has not spoken of the resurrection; thus your new god and your dogmas are contrary to our law, and consequently we ought to hold them in abhorrence." in short these same jews might have said to st. paul: "you deceive yourself in saying, that you are the disciple of jesus, your jesus was a jew, during the whole of his life he was circumcised, he conformed himself to all the legal ordinances; he often protested that he came to accomplish, and not to abolish the law; whilst you in contempt of the protestations of the master, whose apostle you say you are, take the liberty of changing this holy law, of decrying it, of dispensing with its most essential ordinances." moreover the conversion of st. paul strangely weakens the proof that the christian religion draws from the miracles of jesus christ and his apostles. according to the evangelists themselves the jews were not at all convinced by these miracles. the transcendant prodigy of the resurrection of christ, the wonders since wrought by some of his adherents did not contribute more to their conversion. st. paul believed nothing of them at first, he was a zealous persecutor of the first christians to such a degree, that, according to the christians, nothing short of a new miracle, performed for him alone, was able to convert him; which proves to us that there was, at least, a time when st. paul did not give any credit to the wonders that the partisans of jesus related at jerusalem. he needed a particular miracle to believe in those miracles, that we are obliged to believe in at the time in which we live, without heaven operating any new prodigy to demonstrate to us the truth of them. chapter ii. opinions of the first christians upon the acts of the apostles, and upon the epistles and person of st. paul. it is in the acts of the apostles, and the epistles of st. paul, that we find the details of his life and the system of his doctrine; but, how can we be certain of the authenticity of these works, whilst we see many of the first christians doubt and reject them as apocryphal? we find, in fact, that from the earliest period of the church, entire sects of christians, who believed that many of the epistles published under the name of this apostle, were not really his. the marcionites were confident that the gospels were filled with falshoods, and marcion, their head, pretended that his gospel was the only true one. the manicheans, who formed a very numerous sect at the commencement of christianity, rejected as false, all the new testament, and produced other writings, quite different, which they gave as authentic. the corinthians, as well as the marcionites, did not admit the acts of the apostles. the encratites and the severians did not adopt either the acts or the epistles of st. paul. st. john chrysostom in a homily, which he has made upon the acts, says, that in his time (that is to say, towards the end of the fourth century) many men were ignorant not only of the name of the author, or of the collector of these acts, but even did not know this work. the valentinians, as well as many other sects of christians accused our scriptures of being filled with errors, imperfections, and contradictions, and of being insufficient without the assistance of traditions; this is a fact that is attested to us by st. irenæus. the ebionites or nazarenes, who, as we shall soon see, were the first christians, rejected all the epistles of st. paul, and regarded him as an impostor and hypocrite. it will not fail being said to us, that we ought not to rely on the testimony of heretics; but i shall reply, that in the matter in question, their testimony is of the same weight as that of the orthodox, seeing that all the different sects consider themselves as orthodox, and have treated their adversaries as heretics. how shall we unravel the truth if we do not hear both parties? by what signs shall we know those on whom we ought to rely? shall we cede the cause without examining their adversaries, to writers who utter to us falshoods without number, who contradict each other, who are never agreed amongst themselves, and whose discordant writings are nevertheless produced as proofs of what they advance? in any other subject such a conduct would seem to betray a partiality or even insincerity: but in religious matters, every thing is fair, and there is no necessity of being so nice. however that may be, it does not follow that because one sect has received or rejected a work, that the work itself is either true or false; there cannot be otherwise than, a diversity of opinions between persons of different parties; their testimony ought to have equal weight, until the partisans of one sect, have been convicted of being greater cheats and liars, than those of the other. if we pay no regard to the authority of heretics, it is because they have not had sufficient power to enforce their opinions. it is power or weakness which makes orthodoxians or heretics: the last are always those who have not power enough to make their opinions current. what course shall we then pursue to discover on which side is the truth? an impartial man will no more expect to find it in one party than in another, thus the testimony of the one can have no greater weight than that of the other in the eye of an unprejudiced man. this granted, we cannot rely on the authority of christian traditions which vary in all sects, and we shall be reduced to recur solely to reason, especially when we find that the works, which are to-day regarded as authentic, have in other times been considered as suppositious, or apocryphal, by some very ancient sects of christians, and that the works and writings, then regarded as apocryphal, have since been adopted as true. it appears that in the ancient churches, they read at once the works that we now regard as true, and those that now-pass for suppositious, in such sort, that there is reason to believe they were then held to possess equal claim to authenticity: it is, at least, very, difficult to demonstrate the contrary in the present time. some churches have attributed the same authority to false or doubtful writings as to true. the roman church to-day adopts as authentic and divinely inspired many books of the bible, absolutely rejected by the protestants. how is it possible to decide which is the party that deceives itself? by what right can we then affirm to-day that the works of st. paul, formerly rejected by so many christian sects, are authentic, that is to say, truly belong to this apostle? on the other hand, how can we attribute to divine inspiration writings filled with inconsistencies, contradictions, mistakes, and false reasonings, in a word, which bear every character of delirium, of ignorance, and of fraud? i acknowledge that those who want valid proofs, always do right to affirm the thing, with the tone of authority; but this tone proves nothing, and always prejudices against those who take it. nothing is more injurious to the interest of truth, than the arrogance of an usurped authority. these are, however, the arms that are incessantly opposed to those who doubt of religion. it would seem that its defenders have no other arguments than their pretences; it is easy to feel that these arguments are every thing, but convincing. the acts of the apostles, adopted by the ebionites or nazarenes, relate amongst other things, that, "paul was originally a pagan, that he came to jerusalem where he dwelt for some time; that being desirous of marrying the daughter of the high priest he became a proselyte, and was circumcised; but not being able to obtain the woman he desired, he quarrelled with the jews, began to write against the circumcision, against the observation of the sabbath, and against legal ordinances." we know that the name of nazarenes was the first which was given to the christians. st. epiphanius, from whom the preceding passage is taken, says, "that they were thus named because of jesus of nazareth," of whom they were the first disciples. the jews called them nazarenes from the hebrew word nozerim, which signifies one separated or excommunicated; again they designated them under the name of mineans, that is to say, heretics. they were also by contempt called ebionites, which signifies poor, mendicant, weak-minded. in fact, the hebrew ebion, means poor, miserable, and we know, that the first followers of christ, were every thing but opulent or intelligent men. the first faithful, were jews converted by jesus himself, or by the most ancient apostles, such as peter, james, and john, who as well as their master, lived in judaism. these apostles, disciples, and new converts, differed from the jews in nothing but the belief in jesus christ, whom they regarded as the messiah predicted by the prophets; otherwise they believed themselves bound constantly to observe the mosaic law, persuaded that their messiah was come to accomplish and not to destroy this law. in consequence of this, they observed circumcision, the abstinence from certain meats, separation from the gentiles, in a word, the jewish rites and ordinances. thus the first apostles, and their adherents, were only jews, persuaded that the messiah was already come, and was going soon to commence his reign, which made them hated and persecuted as schismatics or heretics by their fellow-citizens. st. jerome informs us, "that even down to his time, the jews used to anathematize the christians, under the name of nazarenes, three times a day in their synagogues." all this evidently proves, that the nazarenes, of ebionites, were the first christians, taught by the most considerable of the apostles, and that the first christians were only reformed jews; this is clearly the only idea we can form of christianity, such as it was taught by jesus christ himself. how then comes it that since jesus, christianity has been so separated from judaism? a slight attention will prove to us that this is owing to st. paul. repulsed by the jews, or perhaps desirous of playing a more important part, we see him separate himself from his brethren of jerusalem, and undertake the conversion of the gentiles, for whom the jews entertained no sentiment but horror. encouraged by his first successes and wishing to extend them, he dispensed the pagans from the painful ceremony of circumcision; he declared that the law of moses, was only a law of servitude, from which jesus was come to free mankind; he pretended that all the old law was merely the emblem and figure of the new; he announced himself as the apostle of the gentiles, and leaving peter and the other nazarenes to preach the gospel of circumcision, he preached his own gospel, which he himself called the gospel of uncircumcision: in a word, he made a divorce with the jewish laws, to which his apostolic brethren believed they ought to hold themselves attached, at least, in most respects. the conduct of paul, must naturally have displeased his seniors in the apostleship, but fear appears to have deter mined them to cede, at least for a time, to our missionary who had already made a considerable party. nevertheless the acts of the apostles and the writings of paul, prove to us his quarrels with his brethren, who, according to appearances, never viewed with a friendly eye, his enterprizes and innovations. moreover, eusebius and st. epiphanius inform us, that our apostle was regarded as an apostate, an impostor, and an enemy by the ebionites, that is to say, by the first faithful. but st. paul's party having in the end prevailed, the jewish law was entirely banished from christianity, and the ebionites, or nazarenes, though of more ancient date and though formed by christ and his first apostles were declared heretics. it is proper to remark in this place that these ebionites, or first christians, believed that jesus was but a man, as much on the side of his father as on that of his mother, that is to say, the son of joseph and mary; but that he was a wise, just, and excellent person, thus meriting the appellation of the son of god, because of his holy life and good qualities whence we see that the first christians were as well as the first apostles, true socinians. but st. paul to give, without doubt, more lustre to his ministry, and his adherents after him, willing to extol the holiness of their religion, made a god of jesus, a dogma which it is no more permitted to doubt, especially since the partizans of paul have become more numerous, and stronger than those of st. peter and the other nazarenes, or jewish founders of primitive christianity, which thus totally changed its face as to its capital dogmas. having thus become masters of the field of battle, paul, his adherents, and the disciples formed in their school, saw themselves in possession of the power of regulating belief, of inventing new dogmas, of making gospels, and of arranging them in their own manner, of forging to themselves titles, and of excommunicating as heretics all those who showed themselves unteachable. it is thus that the author of the acts of the apostles, only speaks, as it were, of his master, of st. paul, and glances very slightly over the acts of the apostles of the contrary party. the same author (st. luke) is presumed to have composed his gospel from the notes furnished him by st. paul, though he had neither known nor seen jesus christ. faustus, the manichean, said on the subject of the gospels, "that they had been composed a long time after the apostles, by some obscure individuals, who fearing that faith would not be given to histories of facts with which they must have been unacquainted, published under the name of the apostles their own writings, so filled with mistakes and discordant relations and opinions, that we can find in them neither connection nor agreement with themselves." a little further on he loudly accuses his adversaries, who had the credit of being orthodox, and says to them, "it is thus that predecessors have inserted in the writings of our lord many things which, though they bear his name, do not # at all agree with his doctrine. that is not surprising since we have often proved that these things have not been written by himself nor by his apostles, but that for the greater part they are founded on tales, on vague reports, and collected by i know not who, half jews, but little agreed among themselves, who have nevertheless published them under the name of our lord, and thus have attributed to him their own errors and deceptions." origeo informs us, that celsus exclaimed against the licence that the christians of his time, had taken of altering many times imprudently the originals of their gospels, in order to be able to deny or to retract those things, which embarrassed them. chapter iii. of the authority of the councils, of the fathers of the church, and of tradition it is only in the fathers of the church, and the councils, that we can find the proofs of the authenticity of the christian traditions, and according to the proofs which remain it appears, that they only approved or rejected opinions, as they found them favourable or injurious to the interests of the party which they had embraced. every ecclesiastical writer, and every assembly of bishops, adopted as canonical the writings in which they found their own particular dogmas, the others they treated as apocryphal or suppositious. a slight acquaintance with the writings of the fathers, will show us that we cannot rely on them for any facts; we shall find that their books are filled with negligences, tales, impertinences and falsehoods; we shall see them buried in the thickest darkness of superstition and prejudice. every word announces their incredulity or their insincerity. st. clement the roman, believed the fable of the phoenix reviving from its ashes, and cites it as a proof of the resurrection. papias, who was the master of st. irenæus, was, in the opinion of eusebius himself, a man of weak mind, a fabulous author, who had contributed to lead many men into error, and amongst others st. irenæus who was his disciple, whom eusebius regards as a very credulous man, though he was the first ecclesiastical historian of note. it is not surprising that those who have followed such guides have fallen into error. on the other side, we should never finish, were we to enter into a detail of the excesses committed by the fathers of the church and the councils: their history would only serve to prove their ambition their pride, their infatuation, their seditious spirit, their cheats, their intrigues, and their cruelties in the persecutions which they excited against their adversaries. it is nevertheless on the probity and on the knowledge of these great personages that we are called to rely! it is pretended that it is from them that we hold the pure oracles of truth; must we then take lessons of mildness, of charity, of, holiness, from the writings of some factious individuals, who were perpetually quarrelling and treating their adversaries with the utmost cruelty, whose works were filled with gall, whose conduct it is admitted even by their own friends and admirers, was almost always unjust, violent, and criminal? how can it be expected that we should find any point of unity in the canons and decrees of assemblies agitated by intrigue, discord, and animosity? how can we regard as saints, and infallible doctors, as persons worthy of our confidence, perverse men, continually involved in disputations with others, and in contradictions with themselves? what guide can we expect to find in turbulent priests whose ambition, avarice, and intriguing and persecuting spirit are every where visible? it is only necessary to read ecclesiastical history to be convinced that the picture which we have drawn of the councils and fathers is no ways exaggerated. on the other hand the writers and councils on whose authority, christians are called upon to found their belief, do, in all their traditions, but blindly follow and copy each other; we see them devoid of the arts of reasoning, of logic, and of criticism; hence their works are found filled with fables, vulgar errors, and forgeries. is it possible to believe the traditions of such a man as st. jerome, who in his life of st. anthony, assures us that this holy man had a conference with satyrs with goats feet? do we not justly doubt the sincerity of st. augustine, when he says, "that he had seen a nation composed of men, who had eyes in the middle of their stomachs?" are such authors more entitled to credit, than those of robinson crusoe, and of the thousand and one nights? supposing even that at the commencement of christianity, there had been authentic books in which the actions and the discourses of jesus christ and his apostles had been faithfully related, should we be justified in supposing that they have been handed down to us such as they were originally? prior to the invention of printing, it was doubtless much easier to impose upon the public than it is now, and notwithstanding, we see that the _press_ gives currency to innumerable falsehoods. the spirit of party causes every thing to be adopted that is useful to its own cause. that granted, how easy was it for the heads of the church, who were once the only guardians of the holy books, either from pious fraud, or a determined wish to deceive, to insert falsehoods and articles of faith, in the books entrusted to their care. the learned dodwell admits, that the books which compose the new testament did not appear in public, until at least 100 years after christ. if this fact be certain, how shall we convince ourselves that they existed prior to this time? these books were solely entrusted to the care of the ecclesiastical gentry, till the third or fourth century, that is to say, to the guardianship of men, whose conduct was universally regulated by self interest and party spirit, and who possessed neither the probity nor knowledge requisite for discovering the truth, or of transmitting it in its original purity. thus each doctor had the power of making such holy books as he pleased, and when, under constantine, the christians saw themselves supported by the emperor, their chiefs were able to accept, and cause to be accepted as authentic, and of rejecting as apocryphal, such books as suited their interest, or did not agree with the prevailing doctrine. but were we even sure of the authenticity of the books, which the church of this day adopts, we are nevertheless, without any other guarantee of the authority of the scriptures than the books themselves. is there a history which has the right to prove itself by itself? can we rely upon witnesses who give no other proof of what they advance than their own words? yet the first christians have rendered themselves famous by their deceptions, their factions, and their frauds, which are termed pious when they tend to the advantage of religion. have not these pious falsehoods been ascribed to the works of jesus christ himself and to the apostles his successors? have we not, in their manner, sybilline verses, which are evidently all christian prophecies, made afterwards, and often copied word for word into the old and new testament? if it had pleased the fathers at the council of nice, to regard these prophecies as divinely inspired, what or who should have prevented them from inserting them into the canon of the scriptures? and from that the christians would not have failed to regard them in the present day, as indubitable proofs of the truth of their religion. if the christians at the commencement of christianity, gave credit to works filled with reveries, such as the shepherd of hermas, the gospel of the infancy, the letter of jesus christ to algarus, what confidence can we have in such of their books as remain? can we flatter ourselves, with having even these such as they were originally written? how can we at the present time, distinguish the true from the false, in books, in which enthusiasm, roguery and credulity pervade every page. since the gospels themselves fail in the proofs necessary to establish their authenticity, and the truth of the facts which they relate, i do not see that the epistles of st. paul, or the acts of the apostles, enjoy in this respect a greater advantage. if the first christians had no difficulty in attributing works to jesus, would they have been over scrupulous, in doing the same to his apostles, or in making for them romantic legends, which length of time has caused to pass for respectable books? if a body of powerful men, had it in their power to command the credulity of the people, and found it their interest, they would succeed, at the end of a few centuries, in establishing the belief that the adventures of don quixote were perfectly true, and that the prophecies of nostradamus were inspirations of the divinity. by means of glossaries, commentaries and allegories, we may find and prove whatever we desire; however glaring an imposture may be, it may, by the aid of time, deception, and force, pass in the end for a truth, which it is not permitted to doubt; determined cheats supported by public authority may cause ignorance, which is always credulous to believe whatever they choose, especially by persuading it that there is merit in not perceiving inconsistencies, contradictions, and palpable absurdities, and that there is danger in reasoning. chapter iv. life of st. paul, according to the acts of the apostles i have thus far shewn that nothing was more destitute of proof than the authenticity of the books which contain the life and writings of st. paul. i have shewn that the acts of the apostles, and the epistles of st. paul, were rejected by some christian sects which subsisted from the earliest times of the church. it must have been seen that the opinion of the authenticity of these books was founded solely on traditions, to which it is very difficult to give credit, considering the characters of those by whom these traditions have been transmitted, it is however upon such suspicious guarantees, that the authority of these works has been pretended to be established; it will then be necessary to admit them at once and without examination, or else recur to reason in order to examine for ourselves, what we ought to think concerning them. to form our ideas of st. paul, let us then consult only these works, however suspected their origin may appear to us, which contain the detail of his life; there are no others to which we can have recourse. the author of the acts of the apostles, whoever he be, relates the miraculous conversion of saul, afterwards called paul, in the ninth chapter. we find him already named in the two preceding chapters, first as approving of the death of st. stephen, the first martyr for the christian religion, and next as persecuting and desolating the church. not contented with tormenting the christians of jerusalem, he furnished himself with letters from the high priest which authorised him to seize those whom he might find at damascus; but, while on the road a miracle caused him to change all his projects; he is suddenly surrounded by a divine light, without seeing any one, he hears the voice of jesus of nazareth, who demands of him the motives of his persecutions. saul trembling enquired what conduct he ought to pursue. jesus tells him, that at damascus he would be informed of his intentions. our persecutor on this occasion is struck blind, but his heart is converted, and sight is miraculously restored to him by a christian of damascus named ananias, who had been, by a particular revelation informed of his hostile designs against the church, and of the great designs of god, who, of this persecutor, would form a vessel of election, that is to say the apostle of the gentiles. soon after this conversion and cure, saul is baptized and commences preaching christ in the synagogues, confounding the jews to such a degree that they came to the resolution to take away his life. but the new missionary deceived their vigilance by saving himself during the night by means of a basket, in which he was lowered, and made his escape from damascus. he returned to jerusalem where the disciples of jesus were thrown into consternation at his appearance; but barnabas presented him to the apostles, informed them of his conversion, and enrolled him to their college. in consequence he preached the gospel; this conduct soon raised troubles and persecutions against him on the part of the jews, who again formed the design of putting him to death. but he found means of escaping from their fury by the assistance of some disciples who conducted him to cesarea, whence they afterward sent him to tarsus. barnabas came and joined saul in the latter city, whence he led him to antioch. here saul and barnabas remained during a year, they there made a great number of converts; it was there that the proselytes first took the name of christians. to warm the zeal of the new converts, they sent for prophets from jerusalem, one of these named agabus predicted a great famine, which determined the disciples of antioch to distribute alms to their brethren of judea; saul and barnabas were the bearers of these marks of generosity, and the apostles, whom the first faithful made the depositaries of their riches, knew, without doubt, the price of the acquisition that the sect had made in the person of the new missionary*. * acts of apostles, chap. 12. chapter v. st. paul styles himself the apostle of the gentiles--causes of his success. all proves to us that paul and his associate barnabas found it much easier to convert the gentiles than the jews, who showed themselves almost always rebels to their lessons. the docility of the first, and indocility of the latter may be traced to very natural causes; the idolators were destitute of instruction, their priests, content with exacting from them their offerings and sacrifices, never thought of instructing them in their religion; thus our missionaries encountered few obstacles in persuading them of the truth of the novelties which they came to announce to them. it was not thus with the jews, who had a law, to which they were very strongly attached, since they were convinced that it had been dictated by god himself. in consequence our preach-. ers could not make themselves listened to, but, in proportion, as the doctrine they preached agreed with the notions with which the jews were previously imbued. the apostles were therefore compelled to reason with the jews, according to their own system, to shew them that the christ whom they announced was the messiah which they expected from their own prophets; in a word, in preaching the gospel to the jews, the preachers were driven into embarrassing discussions, and perpetually exposed to cavils and contradictions which they had no fear of on the part of the gentiles, who received without disputing the novelties which they broached to them, and which besides agreed well enough with the notions of the pagan mythology, as we have shewn in another work. on the other side also, the idolators had not the exclusive ideas of religion peculiar to the jews; they were tolerant, they admitted every species of worship, and were disposed to pay homage to every god that was proposed to them. the hebrews were not of this disposition, they believed themselves alone in the possession of the knowledge of the true god, and rejected with horror strange gods and worships. these reflections are sufficient to explain to us the reason of the great success that the apostles had in preaching to the gentiles, compared with their endeavours amongst the jews; they likewise show us especially the true motives of paul's conduct. in fact, repulsed by the cavils and opposition of the jews, we see paul and barnabas turn themselves to the side of the pagans, who listened to them with more attention and declared to the jews, that god had forsaken them*. * acts of apostles, chap. xiii. ver. 45, &c, the gentiles were apparently flattered by the preference; numbers of them adopted the religion announced to them, which did not hinder the jews from exciting, against our missionaries, the zeal of the female devotees whose clamour obliged them to quit antioch. from thence our two associates, after having shook the dust of their feet against their opposers, repaired to iconium, where they again met with opposition on the part of the jews who even irritated the gentiles against them, which compelled them to fly to lystra in lycaonia. there according to the acts of the apostles, paul thought it necessary to perform a miracle, well knowing that nothing is more efficacious than a prodigy in making an impression on the minds of the vulgar. he then cured a lame man. this miracle convinced the idolators, who took paul and his comrade for gods, and under this idea would have offered them sacrifices. however this wonder did not produce the same effect upon the jews; these apparently regarded it as a deception, or some trick of which they were not the dupes. in fact we see that the jews, who nevertheless yielded to no people in credulity, so far from being moved by paul's miracle, that they stoned him as a malefactor and left him for dead. from this unlucky affair he however extricated himself and returned to antioch, whence he set out in order to give an account of the success of his mission, from which it appears that he had no reason for self congratulation, since, if he made a number of recruits for jesus, he had succeeded at the expence of much personal ill usage. nevertheless the nazarenes, or ebionites, i. e. the first of the jews, who had embraced the doctrine of the apostles, were persuaded that the religion of christ was merely a reformed judaism. always attached to the practices of the mosaic law, they believed themselves called upon to evince their zeal in its favour; in consequence of which they pretended that the gentiles, converted by the apostles, ought, like themselves, to submit to the rite of circumcision. but paul and barnabas strongly opposed this opinion*; they were well aware that so painful an operation, especially after a certain age, would be very likely to dishearten the heathen whom they had drawn to their sect. but as the affair appeared very important they referred the decision to the apostles who remained at jerusalem. in consequence paul and barnabas, and also the partisans of circumcision, repaired, thither, each with the view of maintaining their own opinion. the question was argued, and our two missionaries convinced the apostolic college of the necessity of freeing the gentiles from a rite at which they revolted. thus, according to the author of the acts of the apostles, (who appears to have been devoted to st. paul's party) it was decided, that the newly converted gentiles should be exempted from a ceremony which, until now, had been regarded as highly essential, since it had been ordained by the divinity himself. * see acts of apostles, chap. xv. ver. 5; see also in the second chapter, of this work what is said of the nazarenes. there is reason to believe that the old apostles did not subscribe without great reluctance to a decision which seemed to annul one of the capital points of the mosaic law, and had the appearance of rectifying the ordinances, of the most high. jesus himself in his infancy underwent the ceremony of circumcision; during his life he practised the customs prescribed to his nation; he formerly declared that he was come, not to destroy, but to accomplish the law of the jews; and nevertheless we see st. paul and his adherents, of their own authority, annul at one blow a ceremony of divine institution, approved of and observed by their master and that for political and worldly considerations, which saints ought never to regard. however this may be, by this decision, which paul extorted from the apostles, it seemed from that time to give the signal of the schism, which in the end totally separated the jews from the christians. nevertheless we shall soon see paul, who on this occasion took in hand the cause of the gentiles, prepare (resuming the old errors) and circumcise a disciple himself. so true it is, that the greatest saints are not always consistent in their opinions, nor uniform in their conduct. the apostles having shewn so much indulgence in the article of the circumcision of the gentiles, were, however desirous of giving a kind of satisfaction to the partisans of judaism; with this view they prohibited the new converts from worshipping idols, from giving themselves up to fornication; and ordered them to abstain from things strangled and from the blood of animals. by these means they sought to conciliate every one; the gentiles were not circumcised, and submitted themselves, in part, to the ordinances of the jews, who thus saw a deference always paid to the law of their fathers, to which they were ever strongly attached *. * see acts of apostles, chap. xv. all seems to prove that the apostles soon repented of the weakness they had been guilty of in ceding to st. paul, for we find he formed a separate party, who preached the gospel in his own manner, that is to say, the gospel of the uncircumcision. furnished with this decision of the council of jerusalem, in which the apostles declare themselves authorised by the holy spirit, paul and barnabas returned to antioch, whence they were desirous of visiting the towns where they had already preached; but a contest respecting the choice of an associate of their labours, made a breach between our two missionaries and caused a separation between them. barnabas accompanied by mark embarked for the isle of cyprus, whilst paul with silas, his new companion, traversed syria and cilicia to confirm in the faith those who had been recently converted *. * it ought here to be remarked, that there exists yet a gospel of the nazarenes, the honour of which has been decreed to st. barnabas, and in which paul is roughly handled. in fact this apostle preached, as we have shewn, besides uncircumcision, a doctrine very different from that of the nazarenes, ebionites, or first christians, who, according to st. irenæus, st. epiphanius, and eusebius, regarded jesus merely as a man, the son of joseph and mary, and who was called the son of god, only on account of his virtues. this may enable us to guess at the cause of paul's quarrel with barnabas, whose gospel insinuates that paul was in error in teaching that jesus was god. chapter vi. paul preaches in asia minor, macedonia, and greece upon his arrival at lystra, st. paul, notwithstanding the indulgence of the council of jerusalem, thought it good policy to circumcise a proselyte named timothy, who was born of a gentile father and a jewish mother. the acts of the apostles inform us of the motive of this circumcision (chap. xvi. ver. 3) it being done "because of the jews which were in those quarters." our two missionaries now travelled over several provinces of asia minor, such as phrygia and galatia, and yet we find that the holy ghost forbade them to announce the word of god in asia. we may indeed suppose, that in this passage, the "holy ghost" is only intended to indicate that our missionaries themselves perceived, that it would be dangerous for them to preach their doctrine; for in the holy scriptures the persons of whom it speaks are always supposed to act from divine impulse. paul had a vision, which persuaded him to go to macedonia. being arrived at phillippi, he preached to the women with such success, that he had the happiness of converting a dealer in purple, named lydia, who, from gratitude, invited them pressingly to lodge in her house. they were well accommodated no doubt, since devotees take great care of their directors; but our holy personages had the misfortune to perform a miracle which deranged all their affairs. paul cast out the evil spirit from a damsel, who having a spirit of divination, brought great profit to her masters by soothsaying. the cure, or perhaps conversion, of this slave, displeased her masters, they carried their complaint to the magistrates; the people took a part against our preachers, who were beaten with rods and then sent to prison. an earthquake retrieved their affairs, they gained over the gaoler whom they converted to the faith. in the meantime the magistrates sent him an order to release our prisoners. but paul, bearing in mind the scourging they had received, required that the magistrates should come in person and release them, asserting that they were roman citizens: at these words the magistrates were intimidated, and came with apologies to set them free, begging them to leave their city, which request they complied with, after having been to console lydia the devout, and the brethren, who according to appearances did not suffer them to depart empty-handed. this bad success did not discourage our missionaries who were aware doubtless, that they were inconveniences attached to their profession. they now went to thessalonica, where paul had the good luck to make some proselytes both among jews and gentiles; he converted especially, some ladies of quality; but the hardened jews were very much irritated at his successes; they endeavoured to apprehend paul and silas, but not being able to find them, they dragged jason, their host, and some of the brethren, before the magistrates, accusing them of treason, and of acknowledging another king besides cæsar. this uproar obliged our missionaries to decamp during the night from thessalonica, and take the road to berea, where they were well received by the jews, since paul succeeded in convincing them that the gospel which he announced was clearly predicted in their own scriptures: there is reason to believe that this was effected by the aid of mystical, cabalistical, and allegorical senses, of which he so well knew the use, in finding in the old testament sufficient to establish whatever he was desirous of proving. he gained in this city a great number of recruits from amongst the greek females of quality, women, according to st. jerome are best fitted to propagate a sect; their levity makes them easily caught by novelties; their ignorance renders them credulous; their talkativeness spreads the opinions with which they are imbued; and, in short, their obstinacy strongly attaches them to the way of thinking they have once adopted. in a word we see, that in all times the christian religion has been under the greatest obligations to women; it is to them that innovators ought especially to address themselves when they have opinions to establish, it is by their aid that fanatics and devout impostors succeed in giving importance to their doctrine, and sow the seeds of discord in society. it appears that in the time of paul, women had the right of speaking or of prophesying in the church, of this, they have since been deprived, and they are only allowed the privilege of bawling in public, in favour of the systems of their holy directors, whom they always believe infallible, without so much as knowing the state of the question. the quakers are now the only sect which permits women to preach *. * there appears some little ambiguity in this paragraph, since if the levity of women renders them so easily susceptible to the embracing new opinions, the obstinacy with which they are charged in adhering to old ones, would seem to neutralize the opposite propensity, and like the infinite attributes of justice and mercy in the christians' god, they would annihilate each other. the fact is, that the ignorant of either sex, are always the most credulous, and their opinions, when imbibed, are seldom to be dignified with any other term than prejudice. of the great influence of woman in society, no one can doubt, and it is the duty of all who think, and who desire a reformation of the present semi-barbarous state of society, to endeavour to inform and enlighten the female mind; it belongs to man to war against old systems, and errors rendered sacred by their antiquity, and perhaps to lay down some few elementary principles, founded upon a more rational basis, but so long as the infant mind is under the controul of woman, it is to her that we must look to see those principles implanted: it is by the aid of woman that the mass of mankind will (if ever it be done) be transformed from a herd of slaves, to a race of happy and intelligent beings, knowing their rights, and daring to defend them. the jews of thessalonica proceeded to trouble our preachers, in their apostolic labours, to such a degree that paul was under the necessity of flying. he, however, took care to leave two missionaries at berea, to watch over the flock which he had gathered. nevertheless these soon received orders to join him at athens. in this celebrated city the zeal of our apostle kindled, he had conferences with the philosophers: desirous to learn the nature of the discoveries which this man had come to announce to them, they conducted him to the areopagus, there paul harangued them and spoke to them of his god, in a manner something conformable to the notions already entertained by some of the greek philosophers of the divinity. to confirm his discourse he cited to them a passage from the poet aratus, who nevertheless appears to suppose, according to the doctrine of plato, that god is the soul of the world. he inveighed against gods made of stone and metal, which did not shock the philosophers, whose ideas were more refined than those of the vulgar. thus far our orator was attentively heard, but the sages of athens would no longer listen to him, when he began to speak of the last judgment, and of the resurrection, which they regarded as an absurd and ridiculous notion. nevertheless the preaching of paul was not totally useless at athens, the dogma of the resurrection was no obstacle to the conversion of dionysius, the areopagite, a woman named damaris, and some others. these were none of them shocked at this doctrine, which was so revolting to philosophers, who were accustomed to the study of nature, and who refused to adopt, without examination, such marvellous and romantic ideas. chapter vii. preaching of st. paul at corinth and ephesus after leaving athens our apostle came to corinth. it appears that at first he had not much success, for he took to his old trade of tent-making. however, he ventured to preach in the synagogue, where the jews were indignant at his discourse: they carried him to the tribunal of the proconsul of achate, who had sufficient prudence to refuse to interfere in their contests. the jews did not imitate his moderation; they ill-treated sostenus, the chief of their synagogue, either for having allowed paul to preach there, or for having been converted by his discourse. paul, after some days, departed from corinth, he cut off his hair to fulfil a vow he had made, and which apparently obliged him to be present at jerusalem, in order to sacrifice in the temple, according to the law. whence we see that our apostle had not yet totally abandoned the jewish religion, and that he judged it good policy, occasionally to manoeuvre with the jews. in fact we continually see him sometimes practising, and at others decrying, judaism. from jerusalem, paul went to antioch, where he remained some time, but the activity of his mind soon put him in motion. after having crossed the high provinces of asia he came to ephesus, where he found the secret of uniting to his sect the disciples of st. john the baptist, whom he rebaptized, and made them acquainted with the holy ghost of whom they had no idea. having now increased his party by these new recruits, paul set about preaching in the synagogue, but finding the jews rather untractable, he withdrew himself, and separated his disciples from them. he then commenced teaching in a separate school and performing miracles to confirm his discourses; he cured the sick, and especially those possessed, in which he succeeded much better than those of the jews, who endeavoured from his example to attempt such cures. these miracles converted many persons. nevertheless, the preaching of paul at ephesus gave rise to an affair, which had nearly proved very troublesome. the goldsmiths of this city derived much profit from the manufacture of little silver shrines of diana, the patroness of the ephesians these artisans were much disturbed with the preaching of our apostle, who decried the gods, and might thus occasion the ruin of their trade; their clamour alarmed the people, and caused a great commotion; the public, as is generally the case, when the affair relates to religion, grew very violent, without knowing why. they comprehended, in general terms, that their religion and its patroness were attacked; and there needed nothing more to inflame their zeal. however the town-clerk of the city having explained to them that their goddess was in no danger, succeeded in calming the fury of the superstitious populace, and thus extricated our apostle from his embarassments. paul, however, thought proper to quit a city, in which he had run such a risk, and again put himself in motion. arrived at troas he recommenced preaching, when his sermon, being a little too long, sent a young man to sleep, who fell from the third story into the street: they took him up for dead, when our apostle having embraced him, assured them that he lived, the author of the acts, takes this fact for a miracle, and tells us gravely that paul raised a dead man on this occasion. notwithstanding this pretended miracle, which if it had been true ought to have converted the whole town, paul went directly away, and recommenced his travels. at miletus he took leave of the priests of all the adjacent places, after having made them a pathetic exhortation, in which he boasts of his humility and disinterestedness, and desires them to watch over the flock which he had gathered together by his preaching and indefatigable exertions. chapter viii. the apostle gets into embarrassments at jerusalem, and is sent to rome paul now embarked for jerusalem; notwithstanding his own presentiments, the warnings that were given him, and the prayers of his adherents, he was obstinately determined to resort to this city, where the jews irritated by his successes, prepared him an unpleasant reception. he was welcomed by the brethren, to whom he related the progress of the new sect, but these informed him of the bad designs of the jews, who pretended, and not without reason, that he taught a doctrine contrary to that of moses. to silence these rumours, and to calm the anger of the populace, they advised him to fulfil some of the jewish ceremonies in public, and to give to these acts of religion much solemnity. paul consented to this counsel, but the jews of asia, were not thus duped, they knew what to keep to respecting the doctrine which had disgusted them; they then excited the jews of jerusalem, by saying, that he brought the gentiles into the temple. all the city was soon in an uproar, the devout people seized paul, drew him out of the temple, the gates of which were closed against this profaner. they were going to kill him, had not a tribune rescued him out of their hands, and shut him up in a fortress, in the midst of the clamour of an enraged populace, which demanded his death. the apostle ready to enter his prison, asked of the tribune permission to harangue the mob, which was granted after his conductor was probably assured that he was not the brigand who had lately excited an insurrection in the country. in his discourse, which he pronounced in hebrew, paul related to the people the history of his miraculous conversion, nearly in the manner in which it has been narrated. this recital far from softening the jews, made them lose all patience, especially when our apostle told them he was sent to the gentiles. they then broke silence, crying out, "away with such a fellow from the earth, it is not fit that he should live." the tribune then shut him up in prison, and commanded that he should be scourged, in order to draw from him an acknowledgment of the crime which had excited the fury of the jews. paul then declared himself a roman citizen, and represented to the centurion charged with the execution of these orders, that it was contrary to law, thus to treat a citizen without a trial. the centurion informed the tribune, who was fearful of having acted with too much precipitation. he was desirous of knowing for a certainty of what he was accused by the jews, and the next morning, freeing him from his chains, presented him to the priests and council of the nation. paul then began to harangue the council. he first declared that in all he had done, he had followed strictly the dictates of his conscience. at these words the high priest gave him a box on the ear, at which paul being irritated, instead of turning the other cheek, according to the precept of jesus, abused the high priest, treated him as a hypocrite, or whitened wall. but as he perceived that he had given offence by his insolence to a man respected by the jews, he moderated himself, and alleged that he was ignorant that it was the high priest whom he had thus addressed in such terms; an ignorance, however, which cannot fail to excite surprise, considering that he was a man, who must have been informed respecting the place where he was, and the quality of those before whom he was speaking. our orator was more of an adept, in managing the opinions of his auditory: aware that the council was composed of sadducees, who denied the doctrine of the resurrection; and of pharisees, who supported it, he knew how to profit by this circumstance, by sowing the seed of discord among his judges. in order to this he pretended that he was a pharisee, and the son of a pharisee, and asserted that they sought his life, because of his hope in the resurrection of the dead, this stratagem produced the desired effect, the pharisees declared in his favour, and acknowledged his innocence, saying, "we find no evil in this man, but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to this man, let us not fight against god." the tumult increased, and the tribune fearing that the orator would be torn in pieces, put him under a guard of soldiers, and carried him back to prison. during the following night, paul had a vision, in which he thought he saw the lord, who told him to be of good courage; and prophecied that he should go to rome to bear witness. on the other hand forty fanatical jews, made a vow neither to eat nor drink till they had assassinated paul. this resolution had the approbation of the princes and priests, who, according to the clerical spirit, found nothing more just than assassination in order to get rid of an enemy. the senators also consented to this treachery. but paul's nephew having informed him of this plot, he made the tribune acquainted with it, who to secure the safety of his prisoner, and to rescue him from the fury of the jews, conducted him under a good escort to cæsarea, and put him under the protection of felix, the governor of that province. paul, and his accusers, made their appearance before the pagan governor, who, little versed in the theological disputes of the jews, told them that he should decide the affair when he was more fully acquainted with the particulars. however some days after, he caused the apostle to be brought before himself, and his wife drusilla, who was a jewess; they heard what he had to say to them of faith in jesus christ. but when paul, after having preached to them of justice, charity, and repentance, spoke of the last judgment, they were afraid, and ordered him to retire, postponing the hearing till a future time. felix hoping to draw some money from his prisoner, often sent for him to converse with him. this conduct lasted two years, at the end of which period this governor was replaced by festus. the jews proceeded to accuse paul before the new governor, and demanded that he should be sent to jerusalem. the accused, well knowing that the place of this scene would be unfavourable to him, and fearing that festus would yield to the importunities of his enemies, appealed from him to cæsar. this appeal suspended all proceedings. however festus having spoken of his prisoner to king agrippa, who had the curiosity to see a man that had made so much noise in judea. paul appeared before this prince, justified himself from the accusations brought against him, and finished by preaching the resurrection of jesus christ. this doctrine appeared so strange to festus that he did not doubt a moment of his being deranged. however as folly did not seem to him a crime worthy of death, he would instantly have acquitted him, had he not made an appeal to cæsar. in consequence of this appeal, paul was put on board a ship about to sail for italy. after many difficulties he was shipwrecked on the coast of the isle of malta, where the author of the acts, from whom we have taken this narrative, does not fail to make him perform miracles, a necessary seasoning to legends. amongst other wonders which paul wrought in the isle of malta, he cured himself, in a very natural manner, of the bite of a viper; in fact, it appears that he applied fire to it immediately, a simple and well known remedy, but which was such a prodigy in the eyes of the poor maltese, that they took him, who was in possession of so fine a secret, for a god*. there was apparently nothing more wonderful in the apostle curing the son of his host, whom he found ill of a fever and dysentery; disorders which we find yield to very simple remedies. still this cure gained paul great reputation, they soon brought him a great number of sick, who, according to our historian, he did not fail to cure. they rendered him great honours, furnished him with the necessary provisions for his voyage, and he embarked for italy. * acts chap. xxviii. ver. 3-6. upon his arrival at rome, paul was permitted to confer with the christians, and to preach to the jews, whom he endeavoured to convert to the faith of christ by the law of moses and the prophets, which he had the talent of applying wonderfully to his views: some smitten with the mystical, cabalistical, and allegorical explications, that our apostle gave them, adopted his opinions, while many others resisted his arguments. indignant against the latter, he told them that their hardness of heart had been predicted by isaiah; he then gave them to understand, that god had formed the project of blinding them, in order to have a fair pretext for rejecting them, and transferring to the gentiles, the light and salvation of which the jews had made themselves unworthy, by the obstinacy in which it was the will of god that they should persist. this conduct of the divinity must doubtless have appeared very strange to the jews. so the acts inform us, that there arose from these preachings of paul, great contests among them. they turned apparently upon predestination and grace; questions upon which christian theologians, have not after eighteen centuries been able to come, either to an understanding or agreement. it appears that notwithstanding the obscurity of his doctrine our apostle succeeded in gaining proselytes to his sect; this obscurity itself, has charms for many persons, who believe that a doctrine, is so much the more marvellous or divine, as it is above the power of the understanding. he preached during two years to the romans, without any person throwing obstacles in his way, and thus laboured to spread this religion in the capital of the world. the acts of the apostles, which the church orders us to receive as of divine inspiration, informs us nothing more. st luke to whom this work is generally attributed, has transmitted to us, neither the actions, miracles nor death of his heroes. we are reduced to seek our information thereupon from traditions, which the interests of the clergy would wish us to regard, almost as sacred as divine inspirations. according to these respectable traditions, our apostle shed his blood for the faith in the propagation of which he had laboured; he was, say they, beheaded in the reign of nero, and in the sixty-sixth year of the christian era. after what has been said, we ought naturally to regard st. paul as the true founder of the pontifical see of rome. nevertheless certain traditions, useful to the roman pontiffs, oblige us to believe that it was st. peter, who established his throne in the capital of the world; the popes have thought, that their interests required, that they should pass for the authorized successors of this prince of the apostles, to whom christ himself according to the gospel, granted immense rights and privileges. these traditions then make st. peter travel to rome, prior to st. paul, and only regard the latter as the subaltern associate in the apostolic labours of the former. nevertheless some critics have ventured to doubt of the reality of st. peter's voyage to italy, and his foundation of the first see in the world, some authors otherwise very orthodox, without regarding the interests of the pope, or respect for the traditions which favour them, have treated those pretensions as chimeras: as to the heretics, the sworn enemies of the authority of the roman pontiff, they have asserted, that the voyage of st. peter to rome was a fable invented by the supporters and partizans, with a design to exalt his authority. both parties found their doubts or assertions upon these grounds. first, that the books which the church considers as inspired, make no mention of the voyage of simon peter, although the circumstance of going to plant the faith in the capital of the world, was sufficiently remarkable to claim a notice in preference to all the minor cities, which the acts inform us that he visited to preach; in fact, the holy ghost, or st. luke his organ, wishing to inform us in this history of the means made use of by god, to propagate the gospel, could not without injustice, omit such a signal success, nor fail to give the honour of it to st. peter, in case he had a claim to it. secondly, st. paul who was at rome at the same time, that peter was supposed to have been there, never once mentions this prince of the apostles, in the epistles to the faithful at different places, while he speaks to them of many other disciples of much less consideration than his illustrious colleague: we ought piously to suppose that if st. peter had really established the faith at rome, the apostle of the gentiles would have been too equitable to ravish from him the glory, that must have accrued to him from so fine a conquest. thirdly, our two apostles, after the disputes, which they had at antioch would not have been desirous of meeting, or exhibiting in the same place. st. peter would naturally avoid a haughty colleague, who resisted him to his face, and who publicly reproved him in a manner sufficiently disagreeable. besides rome being a pagan city, naturally fell into the department of the apostle of the gentiles. in short according to the acts of the apostles, st. paul was too hasty to agree long with an associate greater than himself. his quarrel with barnabas, for a slight difference, proves that paul was easily irritated. fourthly, st. peter wrote his first epistle from babylon, and not from rome. it is true that the advocates of this voyage of peter's, pretend that babylon is the same city as rome, but this is a geographical error, that without a great share of faith can never be admitted for a truth. again, the city of babylon in syria, no longer existed in the time of peter, there was then only a babylon in egypt; it is only there that we can suppose peter to have written this first epistle. fifthly, the traditions which make st. peter travel to rome, are filled with fables, which make them very suspicious, such as his dispute with simon the magician, who having raised himself into the air, by virtue of his art, fell down and broke his limbs by virtue of the apostles prayers. we may also place in the list of fables, the apparition of christ to peter, when he fled from rome, and his crucifixion with his head downwards. these facts are related neither by inspired authors, nor eye witnesses, they are founded on traditions only, that is to say, popular rumour, which many persons do not respect so much as the pope, and the clergy seem to desire. at the risk then of "uncovering peter to cover paul" we say that all these reasons, seem at least to authorize a doubt respecting the voyage of st. peter to rome, at any rate the acts of the apostles appears to insinuate that paul was the true founder of the see of rome. he must then be regarded as the first pope. besides the popes have adopted his maxims, and faithfully imitate his policy in many respects; this would easily be proved by comparing the almost constant principles of the church of rome, with those of our apostle, which we shall soon have occasion to examine. chapter ix. reflections on the life and character of st. paul such is in a few words the life of st. paul whom we are justly entitled to regard as the principal founder of the christian religion. in fact it appears that without him, the ignorant and rude disciples of jesus, would never have been able to spread their sect. in order to succeed they required a man of greater information and activity, more enterprising and enthusiastic, and possessing more dexterity than any of those, who composed the apostolic college, before it was joined by paul. in him we see all those qualities united, which made him of all others, the most fitted to lay the foundation of a new sect. he knew how to profit by the lessons he had received from gamaliel; from him he had acquired a profound knowledge of the jewish scriptures, and learnt the art of explaining them in an allegorical sense, or, in other words, the cabala by which we may find in these books whatever we desire. it can hardly be doubted that our apostle, possessed much energy and ambition. we first see him persecuting the disciples of jesus with ardour; and with the view of gaining his ends, and making court to the priests, stoop to the trade of informer and spy. apparently he expected by these means to advance himself, but seeing the futility of these ambitious hopes, and probably despised and neglected even by those whom he had thus zealously served; he changes his batteries, threw himself upon the enemies side, and seeing the abilities of those whom he found at the head of the new sect, he felt how easily he could eclipse them, and constitute himself the chief. there is reason to believe that these were the true motives of paul's conversion; a mind of his stamp in declaring itself on the side of the new sect, at once satisfied its vengeance and ambition. it was then very easy for ananias to make him listen to reason. the apostles were not slow in discovering the value of their new acquisition; they acknowledged the superiority of such a man; they foresaw the advantages the rising sect would derive from his knowledge, his active and persevering genius and intrepidity of character. thus we see the new apostle, from the moment that he was enrolled in the apostolic college, perform the principal part, and throw his coadjutors completely in the shade. these contented with preaching at jerusalem, seldom showed themselves at a distance from this city, whilst our hero, continually traversed the provinces, made spiritual conquests, and strengthened in a hundred places the cause of the disciples of christ, now become his own. in a word paul now becomes the soul of his sect; his enthusiasm extends itself; he braves danger when it is necessary to increase the number of his partizans; his ambition is flattered by the empire that he has gained; crosses, fatigues, imprisonments, and blows are not capable of abating his ardour; determined to succeed at any cost he sacrifices every thing to the desire that he has of extending those opinions, which give him the power of reigning over the minds of men. he knew well that no-empire upon earth is more grateful or stronger than that of opinion. nothing appears that ought to induce us to regard the activity, obstinate constancy, and courage of paul as miraculous or supernatural effects. we find the same zeal, and frequently the same intrepidity and obstinacy in all those strongly animated by ambition or any other passion. obstacles but serve generally to irritate energetic minds, more and more, they make a merit of braving dangers; torture, and even death, cannot restrain those who are thoroughly enamoured with any object in which they have placed their happiness. st. paul has been held up to us as a man divested of all personal views. his humility, constancy, disinterestedness, and patience, have been advanced, as undoubted proofs of his sincerity, and pure zeal for his religion. but we say that all these things prove nothing but his violent desire for success. the preachers of an infant and oppressed sect, destitute of power, must always announce themselves with much suppleness, mildness and humility; an ambitious man must in order to gain men's hearts, effect much moderation and appear disinterested; besides he is sure of losing nothing, when he shall succeed in establishing his empire over the mind. do devotees ever neglect their spiritual guides? in short patience and constancy are necessary in all enterprises; every man who would crown a great adventure with success, ought to avoid hastiness. nevertheless if we turn to the history of st. paul, we shall see that patience was not always his ruling virtue; he very often spoiled his plans by his eagerness, and especially he alienated the minds of the jews, rather than converted them to his opinions. he would perhaps have succeeded much better with them, had he kept a better government over his impetuous temper, at which it appears his coadjutors often revolted. devotees generally mistake that for zeal, which is but a vice in their character, and an imprudence in their conduct. the bitter reply that paul made to the high priest, proves that our apostle was not excessively enduring, and forgot, at least, on some occasions his christian patience. chapter x. of the enthusiasm of st. paul it appears certain that this apostle was filled with enthusiasm and zeal. it will perhaps be asked whether we have a right to regard him as an impostor? a thousand examples prove to us, that nothing is more common, than to witness enthusiasm, zeal and imposture united in the same person. the most sincere enthusiast is generally a man whose passions are turbulent, and capable of blinding him; he takes his passions for divine impulses, be deludes himself, and if we may be allowed the expression, gets intoxicated with his own wine. a man who at first engages in a particular cause from motives of interest, or ambition, very frequently finishes by attaching himself to it with sincerity and with strength proportioned to the sacrifices he may have made for it. if he succeed in persuading himself, that the cause of his passions is the cause of god, he will make no scruple of supporting it by all sorts of means, he will sometimes allow the use of artifice, deceit, and oblique ways of maintaining the opinions of which he happens to be convinced. it is thus we daily see very zealous devotees, employ deception, fraud, and sometimes crime, in support of the interests of religion, i. e. of the cause they have embraced. thus although in the first instance the desire of being revenged on the priests, or ambitious views, may have determined st. paul to join the sect of christians, he might have been able by degrees to attach himself strongly to it, to persuade himself that it was preferable to the religion of the jews, and to employ objectionable means, in order to make it succeed in the world. the examination that now remains for us to make of some features in the conduct of our apostle, and of some passages in the writings which are attributed to him, will serve better than any reasoning to determine the judgment, we ought to come to respecting this person. let us then hear what he has to say for himself. this analysis will shew us whether paul was so sincere, disinterested, humble, mild, and upright as his partizans, maintain him to have been. st. paul in speaking of himself says: "that he knew a man who was caught up into the third heaven, and that there he heard unspeakable words, which it was not lawful for man to utter*." it appears in the first place that no one but a man of a very heated imagination could with sincerity pretend to have been caught up into the third heaven; and no one but an impostor, could assert such a fact without being persuaded of it. in the second place we may ask of what use could it be to mankind that st. paul should hear in the third heaven, unspeakable words, that is to say, such as it was unlawful for man to utter? what should we think of a man who should come and assure us, that he possessed a secret most important to our happiness, but yet one which he was not permitted to divulge? thus the voyage of st. paul is either a chimera engendered by a sickly brain, or a fable, contrived by a cheat, who sought to make himself respected by boasting of the peculiar favours of the almighty. this voyage then was perfectly useless, since it was not permitted him who made it to relate that which he learnt from it. in short there is malice in st. paul thus irritating the curiosity of his hearers and refusing to satisfy it. under whatever point of view then we behold this history or tale of paul's ravishment into the third heaven, it can be of no utility to us, and reflects but little honour upon himself. * 2 corinthians, chap. xii. ver. 2, 3, 4. chapter xi. of the disinterestedness of st. paul in narrowly examining into the conduct of our apostle, we shall have much difficulty in discovering that disinterestedness with which his partizans are so desirous of investing him. we have already exposed the natural motives which may have contributed to his conversion. if it be true as the acts of the apostles, adopted by the ebionites or nazarenes, asserts, that st. paul flattered himself with the idea of marrying the high priest's daughter, and failed in the project, the disappointment might to a man of his passionate and hasty temper, be a motive sufficient to determine him to change sides, and from being as we have shewn him to have been the spy and satellite of the priests, basely seeking to gain their good will, by becoming the agent in their furies against the disciples of jesus; to declare himself in favour of those, who were their greatest enemies. it was perhaps the ill success of paul's amours, that determined him to a life of celibacy, and to boast of it as meritorious, whilst according to the jewish law, nothing was held in less repute than this state. this holy man would doubtless transform into a virtue, a conduct, which in him was nothing but chagrin and ill temper. he asserts that it is good for men to abstain from women; consequently our clergy have regarded celibacy as a virtue: they have fancied themselves obliged to imitate the great st. paul even in his resentments against the sex. they have flattered themselves with the idea of being able to resist like him the temptations of the flesh, which often torments them; if they have indulgently permitted marriage to the profane, it is because paul has said, it is better to marry than to burn. it is notwithstanding probable that the conversion of st. paul was occasioned by other motives than the anecdote related by the acts of the ebionites, which appears exposed to many objections. in fact, according to these acts, paul was a pagan born, was made a proselyte, and consequently he could not, without having been guilty of great folly, pretend to the daughter of a high priest, whose dignity was so eminent amongst the jews. on the other hand according to the writings adopted by the christians of our time, st. paul was of the tribe of benjamin, and would not have been permitted to marry the daughter of a high priest, who must necessarily have been of the tribe of levi. again paul was a mechanic, a tent-maker, a situation which must have deprived him of all hope of an alliance so illustrious as that of a sovereign pontiff. thus unless we suppose that love had totally blinded our hero, to the obstacles which naturally opposed themselves to his desires, there is reason to believe that his conversion, or change of party, originated from other motives, than the chagrin of seeing his amours frustrated. there is reason to believe that paul being of a very unquiet genius, was tired of his trade: desirous of trying his fortune, and living without work, he became the spy of the priests and the informer against the christians. dissatisfied with the priests, who perhaps had not rewarded him to the extent of his expectations, he joined the new sect, which assisted by his talents promised good success, or even a probability that he might become the head; at least he might fairly calculate on an easy and honourable subsistence without being obliged to make tents, in fact he saw, that the apostles, who were vulgar men much inferior to himself, lived very well at the expence of the new converts, who eagerly brought their wealth and laid it at the apostles feet, consequently paul was sensible, how easy it was for him to live in the same way, and provide himself a very comfortable birth, in a sect, in which he felt himself capable of playing a very important part. his ambition must have been more gratified with occupying one of the first posts, even amongst beggars, than of cringing in an infamous and dishonourable capacity, under avaricious, haughty and disdainful priests. indeed paul himself tells us that he had relations of considerable note among the apostles, who having embraced the faith before him, might have laboured with success for the conversion of a man so disposed.* * epis, to romans, chap. xvi. verse 7. the persecutions that he had excited against the disciples could not have put any very serious obstacles in the way of his admission into the apostolic college: nothing was required but to explain and agree upon facts. the chiefs of the sect were very much flattered at seeing the conquest made by their party of an inconvenient adversary, who came of his own accord, and offered his services. his conversion, effected by a miracle, did honour to his mission, and showed the vulgar the protection of heaven, which changed the heart of the most bitter enemy of the christians. as paul was not ignorant that in this sect great value was set upon miracles, visions and revelations, he thought this was the most favourable door by which he could enter, and render himself acceptable to the apostles; they received him with open arms well assured of the sincerity of a man who after having made such an uproar could not recede without making himself equally odious both to jews and christians. st. paul amongst other talents which rendered him a fit person to propagate the new religion, understood, according to appearances, hebrew, greek, and latin, whilst in spite of the gift of tongues, we do not find, that the other apostles possessed these advantages. in fact we see them remain at jerusalem, preaching to the jews only, whilst the new apostle extended his spiritual conquests, into the provinces of asia and greece, where it appears that without him the gospel would not have been preached so soon. once connected with the new sect, paul had doubtless a great interest in spreading it, in strengthening his party, and making converts in order to gain support, and have the pleasure of reigning over a great number of devotees. thus, under every point of view, we see that our apostle, whether in his conversion, or in his preaching, was every thing but negligent of his interest. all missionaries have necessarily ambition; they propose to themselves the pleasure of governing minds, and every thing proves that paul was not exempt from a passion inherent in all founders of sects. and further having once established his ecclesiastical power, we often see him taking care of his temporal interests, and making his flock feel how just it is that the priest should live by the altar; in a word to occupy himself with the emoluments of his preaching. "let him," says he, "that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.*" he speaks in the same tone to the thessalonicans (chap. v. ver. 12.) he likewise recommends them an abundant charity. * epis, to galatians, chap. vi. ver. 6. it remains to be observed, st. paul is not like his successors ungrateful for the benefits which he has received. he thanks the philippians for having twice assisted him in his need. it appears that in his time the apostles did not possess the divine right that men had the goodness to give them: but the clergy have since asserted that they hold from god alone, that which they obtained from the generosity of princes and people, which evidently frees them from the necessity of showing gratitude to any one. chapter xii. of the imperious tone and political views of st. paul it appears by the writings attributed to paul himself that the empire which he exercised over the members whom he had added to his sect, was not one of mildness. in proof of this, may be cited the manner in which this spiritual despot speaks to the faithful of corinth. "moreover (says he) i call god for a record upon my soul, that to spare you, i came not as yet into corinth."* again, "for to this end also did i write, that i might know the proof of you, whether ye be obedient in all things**". he threatens the corinthians, and says to them, "if i come again i will not spare." again he justifies the tone in which he talks, by saying, "therefore i write these things being absent, lest being present i should use sharpness, according to the power which the lord hath given me to edification, and not to destruction."*** it is probably by virtue of this right of chastising, here assumed by st. paul, that the pontiffs and priests of the christians have since arrogated to themselves an unlimited spiritual power over, the thoughts of their subjects. their empire extended itself by degrees over their persons; christian priests, exceeding the apostle to whom the lord had given this power to edify, availed themselves of it to destroy those whom they found not sufficiently submissive to their decisions. if st. paul did not exercise over his sheep a power so extensive, it is doubtless because he had not, like our pastors, princes, magistrates and soldiers under his orders, capable of executing his holy will: with his imperious temper we may justly conclude that he would have conducted himself much in the same manner as some fathers of the church, the pontiffs of rome, or the holy inquisition. we see also that the apostle, not satisfied with being sole judge in spiritual affairs, was desirous of the power of deciding in civil suits. "dare any of you having a matter against another go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?****" this passage evidently proves that the apostle in the depth of his policy had already formed the design of making the saints, i. e. the clergy, masters of the fortunes as well as the consciences of the faithful. in fact, he adds, know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more, things that pertain to this life? we cannot sufficiently admire the moderation of the christian clergy, in not having rigorously acted up to the letter of this decisive text, which formally gives them the right of judging in all temporal affairs, or the concerns of this life. indeed it appears according to this passage, that christians in their transactions, ought to have no other judges, or even sovereigns, than the church. it is from these maxims, that our priests have become censors, or a kind of magistrates, who interfere with every thing, and set themselves up for the judges of the legitimacy of civil acts, of births and marriages, of which they have made themselves masters; in a few words, they seize upon man the moment he is born, and regulate all his motions until his death. it is from these pretences, that the popes have impudently arrogated the power of disposing of crowns, of exciting insurrections and wars, and of deciding upon the rights of sovereigns and people. * 2 corinthians, chap. i. ver. 23. ** 2 corinthians, chap. ii. ver. 9. *** 2 corinthians, chap. xiii. ver. 2. and 10. **** 1 corinthians, chap. vi. ver. 1. and 2. it is by no means surprising that the heads of the christian church, have at all times held up st. paul, as a man divinely inspired; have for a distinction entitled him, the apostle, have inculcated for his writings the most profound veneration, and have caused them to be considered, as the oracles of the holy ghost. this apostle was evidently the architect of the church. we may consider him especially as the founder of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. it is to him that are owing the prerogatives, privileges, divine rights and pretences of the clergy. st. paul established bishops, assigned them their rights, and in his writings laid the foundations of that spiritual power, which has since become so formidable to temporal authority. how could the inventor of so many useful things, fail to be regarded as the organ of the divinity. nevertheless, if we read the gospels with the slightest attention, we shall find that jesus has no where spoken of this hierarchy or power, nor of the prerogatives of the clergy; on the contrary, we see him' incessantly preaching to his apostles, equality, humility and poverty. but in that as in many other instances, our apostle thought himself at liberty to correct the institutions of christ, who on all occasions shewed himself unfavourable to priests. these changes effected by paul are sufficient to make us acquainted with his secret policy. he endeavoured apparently to make himself the spiritual and temporal head of the churches, which he had by his labours, founded among the gentiles, with whom, as we have shewn, he had more success than amongst the jews. it was to gain them over that he became all things to all men, that he dispensed them, as we have said, from the most essential ordinances of the mosaic law. in short he had the secret of insinuating himself, into the minds of idolators, whom he sometimes took by surprize accommodating himself to their capacities, and giving them as he himself has said, sometimes milk, and at others, solid food. as we have already sufficiently shewn, paul after his successes with the gentiles, gave himself little trouble respecting the converted jews, or with his elder brethren in the apostle-ship; and openly declared himself against the mosaic law. as we have seen be went himself to jerusalem, to solicit a decree, to dispense the gentiles from the rite of circumcision; this he had much at heart, feeling how necessary this indulgence was, in order to secure his new subjects. thus it was he who enlarged the breach, though small in its origin, which separated the jews from the christians, or nazarenes. this conduct naturally displeased the rest of the apostles, who appeared, even after the council, always attached to the jewish ordinances, but who on this occasion, found themselves compelled to cede to paul, or at least to temporize with a man who had gained an ascendancy over them. chapter xiii. of the humility, of st. paul with the ability and ambitious conduct which we have just remarked in st. paul it is difficult to conceive that humility could have been his ruling passion. perusing his writings, we shall without much difficulty discover that when he humbles himself it is generally with a view of exalting himself in the eyes of his adherents; he does not fail to boast of the penalties, sufferings, and labours that he has submitted to for love of them, it is upon this, that he founds his claims to their respect and gratitude. "let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of christ, and stewards of the mysteries of god:" further on he adds, "for i think that god hath set forth us, the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men." st. paul then reproaches the corinthians, with their ease, their luxury, and their pretences, and compares their happy situation with his own. "we are, (says he to them,) fools for christ's sake, but ye are wise in christ: we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised. even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place, and labour, working with our own hands." he then enumerates the evils he has suffered, and adds "i write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons to warn you." of what? he explains himself, and says, "for though you have ten thousand instructors in christ, yet have ye not many fathers; for in christ jesus i have begotten you through the gospel." our humble missionary sends them his lieutenant, timothy, to bring them back to their duty, i. e. to the obedience they owed to their spiritual father, he threatens them himself, and mildly demands of them, "what will ye? shall i come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness?" in all this remarkable tirade there are no traces of that profound humility, for which credit has been given to paul: on the contrary, all discovers a domineering spirit, and a desire of exclusive power over the faithful whom he had converted. it is generally the proudest men who complain the most bitterly of being despised and treated with contempt; and, amongst devotees, pride knows how to cover appearances with the garb of humility. however, our apostle does not give himself the trouble to mask his self-love: in fact, when he compares himself to the rest of the apostles, he makes us understand, that though he terms himself the last, he has a right to be considered as the first. he says, "for i suppose i was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles." it seems that the corinthians were shocked with the harshness of his tone; for he adds, "but though i be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge: but we have been thoroughly made manifest among you in all things." then feeling that they might be disgusted with these imprudent self commendations, he says, "seeing that many glory after the flesh, i will glory also." it is easy to see that our evangelical doctors propose to themselves paul's humility as a model for their own. it is doubtless, in imitation of this great saint, that the pope calls himself the servant of the servants of god, which does not, however, prevent him from making those who refuse to acknowledge his unlimited power, and blindly subscribe to his infallible decisions, feel his pastoral rod; but when the rulers of the church make use of this rod, it is only to shew their great zeal for the interests of the lord. chapter xiv. of the zeal of st. paul; reflections on this christian virtue that passion which in common life is termed, anger, fury, vengeance or delirium, becomes zeal as soon as its object is religion, or the cause of god. it is a maxim among christian devotees, that we cannot love god too much, consequently we cannot sin in excess of zeal. according to these principles, our doctors in their quarrels, injure, defame, calumniate, and asperse, and when they have the power, persecute and exterminate each other. each sect, firmly persuaded that it is in the right, and that its peculiar way of thinking is the only one that god can approve, thinks itself justified in destroying the opinions of its adversaries, which displeasing to itself, must consequently displease the divinity. thus in attentively examining the thing, we find that religious zeal is nothing but anger, excited in a bigot by opinions adverse to his own, or those of the party he has espoused. in a word, zeal is the gall which contradiction secretes in the souls of bigots. there can be no doubt, but that st. paul has left a model of this sort, which our evangelical doctors, have in all times faithfully copied. if this great apostle did not go to the extent of persecuting those who resisted his arguments, or refused blindly to submit to his supreme decisions, it is because he was not sufficiently strong; otherwise judging from the warmth of his temperament we may reasonably presume, that he would have been easily carried to extremities, well calculated to justify the holy passion to which the heads of the church have since given themselves up on all occasions, when they have had sufficient power to give a lustre to their zeal. in fact we find, that paul's self love, did not suffer contradiction with too much patience. he delivers over to satan those who refuse to obey him, he pretended that any other gospel, than his own, was abominable. "i marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of christ unto another gospel." he pretends and affirms that he alone taught the true doctrine, and that all others are impostors, false prophets, and disturbers; we are obliged to believe on his own word that he possesses infallibility. he goes so far as to say in the heat of his self-love "but though we, or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you, than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. as we said before, so say i now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you, than that ye have received, let him be accursed."* this language might well appear insolent, presumptuous, and even impious to those who have not faith, nevertheless it is that which is invariably held by the chiefs of every sect; we see them, upon their own authority, continually anathematizing, excommunicating, damning and delivering over to the devil, whoever has the temerity to understand the gospel in any other way but their own. every doctor like paul, declares himself and even believes himself to be infallible; nothing in the world, (not even the angels of heaven) could make him renounce opinions which his self-love, his obstinacy, and his vanity, cause him to behold as the only true. * epistle to gal. chap. i. ver. 8 and 9. the history of paul, however furnishes us with an embarrassing circumstance. ardent in dispute and obstinately attached to his own ideas, we see this infallible apostle boasted of having resisted cephas, i.e. peter, to his face, who nevertheless appears to have had titles to infallibility, still better established than those of our apostle; in fact if paul, in order to prove his own infallibility, supports it by his visions, inspirations, revelations, and miracles: st. peter might in favour of his own, oppose to him a great number of visions, dreams, and prodigies equally authentic with those of his brother. if paul founded the divinity of his mission, and the truth of his particular way of thinking on his own testimony, could not st. peter cite, in support of his authority, the testimony of jesus christ, who had declared him the chief of the apostles, who had established him, as the first shepherd of his flock, and the rock on which, he would found his church? is it not upon this authentic evidence, that the pope, who stiles himself the successor of peter, founds his infallibility, acknowledged and maintained by the greater part of the roman catholic clergy? there is then reason to be astonished that paul, with titles not so well established, should have dared to resist peter to his face, or that he should have boasted of such resistance; and it is not less surprising that the latter should have ceded to his junior in the apostleship, having such powerful arguments to support his claim to infallibility. all may however be explained by the supposition that upon this occasion st. paul showed himself more headstrong than st. peter, who for the sake of peace, yielded to the eagerness of his adversary, and would not support his own infallibility at the risk of exciting a schism in the rising sect. we have seen in our time pious jansenists avail themselves of st. paul's example, to resist to the face the infallible decisions of the roman pontiff; but he, less moderate than his predecessor st. peter, would not cede, but remained obstinate in maintaining his irrefragable authority, and by this means produced and fomented divisions, which the determined zeal displayed by both parties, has rendered very dangerous. the successor of st. peter anathematizes, and finding himself the strongest, persecutes the imitators of st. paul, for daring to resist him: these of course strongly attached to their principles which they deem infallible, are obstinate in their resistance, detest the opinions of their tyrants, and in spite of charity, very cordially damn those who do not think like themselves, whilst these last from attachment to the infallibility of the pope, whom they have on their side, believe themselves compelled, in conscience, to make their adversaries submit to the most inhuman and unreasonable treatment. such are the salutary effects which zeal has produced in the church of jesus christ, from the first preaching of the gospel to the present day. the zeal of st. paul not contented with exercising itself against his brethren the apostles, shewed itself strongly in all situations. we see him excite trouble and clamour in whatever cities he happened to be. we generally term a man a public disturber, who troubles the peace of his neighbours; but, in religion, a saint is a man who dares to preach his own opinions, as those of god himself, at the risk of exciting the most disastrous revolutions in society. his self-love becomes legitimate as soon as its object is religion; proves to him in the most convincing manner that he is always right; that his way of thinking is necessary to salvation, and that all considerations ought to give way to such an important object. if religious zeal is able one day to procure advantages in the other world; it is at least very evident that it causes many misfortunes here below. in the eyes of reason it is always equally dangerous, even when it is the fruit of the most sincere devotion. if the impostor, the ambitious man and the hypocrite, avail themselves of it as a cloak to cover all crimes, the sincere bigot thinks that zeal justifies the greatest excesses, and often makes a merit, and even a duty, of detesting his fellows and troubling society. it is in fact difficult to reconcile zeal with the spirit of union, concord, and peace, that christianity recommends, or with that charity which st. paul places above all virtues, and without which, he assures us that all the others are useless. but did this apostle himself possess much charity, when not satisfied with carrying trouble into every place where he preached, he inveighed against those whom he found not disposed to believe*? * epistle to tim. chap. i. ver. 20. it is doubtless nothing but a lively faith, which can reconcile the violent conduct of this great apostle, with the charity which he incessantly recommends. it appears at least difficult to have a sincere regard for men whom zeal obliges us to hate, either as our own enemies, or as the enemies of god. the subtle theology of the christians, can alone reconcile these incompatible dispositions. it is only the ministers of the church, who have the talent of proving, that without a violation of christian charity, it is lawful to harass, persecute, and destroy ones neighbours. they can in fact clearly show that we may burn the body of a man, out of tenderness for his soul. they think they have a right to excommunicate a man, or anathematize him, that is to say, exclude him for ever from spiritual grace, to put him in short into the road to damnation, to deliver him to satan, for the destruction of the flesh, in order to save him, according to the spirit. this conduct is not the least inconceivable mystery of the christian religion; faith is doubtless necessary to find it either charitable or intelligible. how can we conceive, for example, that the desire of saving the soul of an heretic, or an impious man, can determine the inquisition or christian magistrates to consign him to the flames, even while be persists in those opinions, which they suppose must plunge him into hell? chapter xv. of the deceptions or apostacy of st. paul by the aid of faith we never find any thing to condemn in the conduct of those, whom we have been accustomed to regard as saints; their obstinacy, seditious spirit, pride, even their ferocity, are justified, by saying that they are animated with a holy zeal. in a word, a saint may violate with impunity, the most sacred rules of morality, without his bigoted admirers permitting themselves to criticise his conduct. saints have always been in the habit of terming those chastisements, which they have drawn upon themselves (oftentimes justly) by their unruly passions or indiscreet zeal, persecution. those whom a devout phrensy excites to tumult and disorder are honoured as confessors and martyrs, and we find the jews and pagans were the most unjust and cruel of men, for having treated the christians, whom they could not consider but as disturbers of the public peace, in the same manner as the christians now treat the jews, heretics, and infidels. bigots, accustom themselves to regard their saints as irreproachable characters, or if they cannot justify their conduct, they say that god has permitted them to sin, to humiliate them, in order that he might have an opportunity of pardoning them. it is thus that every good christian regards a brigand in revolt against his legitimate sovereign, an usurper, a monster of cruelty, an infamous adulterer, an assassin, in a word, a david, as a great saint; or even by excellence, as the man after god's own heart! faith in the mind of a bigot, is able to reverse, even the most simple rules of morality and virtue. religion encourages the most perverse men to give themselves up to the blackest crimes, the most shameful vices, and the most shocking irregularities, by setting before them the examples of scoundrels, who were nevertheless the friends of god. it cannot be pretended that st. paul of whom we are now speaking, was guilty of excesses, similar to those committed by the king of the jews, whose whole history is a series of horrors: but without faith it is difficult to consider our apostle as an irreproachable character; though the historian, whoever he be, to whom we are indebted for the acts of the apostles, has designed to hold him up as a model of virtue, we find that by a singular oversight he did not seem aware, that he made him tell an untruth in public, and in the most solemn manner in presence of the sanhedrim or great council of the jews. in fact as we have already remarked, perceiving that his audience was composed of sadducees and pharisees, with the view of dividing them and gaining friends, paul cried out that he was a pharisee, the son of a pharisee, and that they sought to kill him, because of his hope in the resurrection. in this assertion we may detect two deceptions. in the first place paul was not a pharisee, at the moment he spoke he was a christian, he was an apostle, he preached jesus christ, he laboured effectually to make proselytes to his sect, he had disgusted the jews in announcing to them a new law, contrary to that of moses, he had procured in the council at jerusalem the abolition of the practice of circumcision so strictly ordained by their law. in a word he preached christianity and not judaism in the same moment that he declared himself a pharisee. on this occasion his conduct was in fact that of an apostate, at least it cannot be denied, that he conducted himself as a coward, who did not care to acknowledge his real belief in the presence of the council, and who had recourse to an artifice to outwit his judges. in fact the conduct of paul on this occasion has no resemblance to that of a great number of martyrs, who freely acknowledge themselves christians at the risk of their lives, and boldly confessed jesus christ, in the presence of their persecutors and executioners. the presence of the high priest and council so much imposed on st. paul, that he declared himself a pharisee; fear troubled his memory to such a degree, that he forgot he had just acknowledged himself a christian, and missionary of jesus to the gentiles in the presence of the people collected before the gate of the fortress, who indignant at his discourse, cried out, "away with such a fellow from the earth for it is not fit that he should live." nothing then but theological subtilty, can clear paul from deception, apostacy, and cowardice on this occasion. in the second place it was not true, that it was because of the hope of another life, and of the resurrection of the dead, that paul was persecuted by the jews. it was for having preached a new doctrine, contrary to the law of moses; this great legislator has in no part taught us what we ought to believe concerning the resurrection of the dead or of another life. the jews without ceasing to be jews, embraced respecting it whatever opinion they pleased, the sadducees rejected it without however being on that account, excluded from the synagogue, and without ceasing to observe the judaic law; the pharisee admitted it without its appearing to cause a schism between them, ami those who did not think, as they did. it is true that paul had preached the resurrection, but it was that of jesus, on which he endeavoured to establish a new sect very different from the jewish religion. thus the words of st. paul were merely a subterfuge unworthy of a man, whom grace ought to have endued with sufficient courage to maintain before the council, at the peril of his liberty and his life, the same sentiments that he had taught the people and preached in all those places where he had planted the faith. it was then for having preached christianity, and for having (in spite even of his brethren the apostles) desired in favour of the gentiles the abolition of the jewish customs, that paul was persecuted, the priests were doubtless irritated against a man who sought to abrogate a law and a priesthood which a divine revelation had so many times taught them was to endure eternally, whilst the authors of the epistle to the hebrews formerly assures us that they have been set. aside by the gospel. chapter xvi. st. paul's hypocrisy we cannot avoid perceiving still more of the insincerity and profound hypocrisy of paul's conduct at jerusalem. after having preached in a great number of towns in asia and greece, a doctrine revolting to the feelings of the jews, and which every where caused disturbances amongst them, after having in favour of the gentiles abolished circumcision so particularly ordained by the law of moses, and deemed so essential to the proselytes of the gate; we see this great apostle, by the advice of his brethren, submit himself, during seven days, to the jewish ceremonies; purify himself with affectation. "then paul took the men, and the next day purifying himself with them, entered into the temple, to signify the accomplishing of the days of purification, until that an offering should be offered for every one of them*." but the jews of asia, who knew the real sentiments of our missionary, from having heard him preach when amongst them, were not the dupes of his hypocrisy: they excited the people "crying out, men of israel, help: this is the man that teacheth all men every where against the people, and the laws of this place; and further brought greeks also into the temple, and hath polluted this holy placet.**" these were the true charges of the jews against paul, and without denying what we find in the acts of the apostles, we must acknowledge, that they were well founded. * acts of apostles, chap. xxi. ver. 6. ** acts of apostles, chap. xxi. ver. 28. what should we say in the present day of a bishop, who, whilst pretending to be a christian, should go for a period of seven days into a synagogue in london or amsterdam, to fulfil jewish ceremonies in the sight of the public? we should not fail to regard him as an apostate, or a knave, who had sinister intentions at any rate, the most favourable construction, we would put upon his motives, would be to suppose him a fool. we are however to admire this conduct in paul, he pretends to justify himself by the necessity of becoming all things to all men. it is thus we see that hypocrisy, falsehood, and imposture, are legitimate means, by which to advance the cause of god and gain souls. nevertheless there is every reason to think that st. paul in acting in such a singular manner, had his own interest and safety, more at heart than the cause of the divinity. his conduct has been faithfully copied by a great number of christian missionaries, and especially by the jesuits, whom their adversaries often reproach with having frequently assimilated the worship of jesus with that of those idolatrous people, whom they were endeavouring to convert. chapter xvii. st. paul accused of perjury, or the author of the acts of the apostles, convicted of falsehood. not contented with pursuing this oblique or hypocritical conduct, we again see, our great apostle, evidently, wilfully guilty of perjury, or a false oath. to convince ourselves of this we have only to read the commencement of his epistle to the galatians; to prove to them, that the gospel which he announced to them; was divinely inspired, he says "but certify to you brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me, is not after man. for i neither received it of man, neither was i taught it, but by the revelation of jesus christ." further on he proves what he advances by saying, "but when it pleased god, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his son in me, that i might preach him among the heathen; immediately i conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went i up to jerusalem to them which were apostles before me but i went into arabia, and returned again into damascus. then after three years, i went up to jerusalem to see peter, and abode with him fifteen days. but other of the apostles, saw i none, save james the lord's brother. now the things which i write unto you behold before god i lie not*." but if paul did not lie, in what he related to the galatians, it is clear that the author of the acts of the apostles, whom the christian church regards as an inspired writer equally with st. paul, has lied. in fact in the ninth chapter of the acts, it is said that paul after his conversion, and after having recovered his sight remained some days with the disciples who were at damascus; which proves that he was instructed by men, or that he took counsel of flesh and blood. believing himself sufficiently fortified in his theology, by ananias or others, he began to preach christ in the synagogue, at which conduct the jews were so shocked that they sought to take away his life: but saul escaped from their fury by means of a basket, and without mention made of his journey to arabia, he directly returns to jerusalem, where the disciples were in the first instance fearful of him, but barnabas, encouraged them, and presented him to the apostles, at the same time relating to them his miraculous conversion, and his courageous preaching at damascus. in consequence it is said that paul was added to the number of the faithful. (acts ix). * this passage proves very forcibly that paul preached a different gospel from that of the other apostles, i. e. from the ebionites or nazarenes. it is easy to see, how little this recital of the inspired historian of the acts, agrees with that of the inspired apostle, who wrote to the galatians, and confirmed his narration by an oath. besides the journey of st. paul to arabia upon leaving damascus, and which preceded his arrival at jerusalem by three years, becomes very improbable, as well as his stay in this country. in fact the disciples at jerusalem must have been in habits of correspondence with those of damascus, consequently they would thus have heard of an event so interesting to their sect, as the conversion of st. paul and the pains he took to propagate their doctrines; thus the presence of our apostle would not have created any uneasiness, and there could have been no need of barnabas becoming his surety. it appears then that the new convert upon leaving damascus went directly to jerusalem, that he had there an opportunity of conversing with the apostles, and that his theology was not intuitive. but even supposing that the journey and sojourn of three years in arabia, really took place, it would be no less certain that paul took a false oath to the galatians, or that the author of the acts is deceived. in fact st. paul writes that at the end of three years he returned to jerusalem to visit peter, and that he remained fifteen days with him without seeing any other of the apostles. this is quite at variance with the author of the acts, who informs us that paul being come to jerusalem, sought to join himself to the disciples, who were afraid of him, not knowing that he was a disciple. our saint contradicts all this by a different tale which he confirms by an oath. moreover by this oath paul himself contradicts the discourse which the author of the acts, puts into his mouth in the presence of king agrippa, of queen berenice, and the governor festus*. in relating to them his conversion, he says to them, whereupon, o king agrippa, i was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision; but shewed first unto them at damascus and at jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of judea, and then to the gentiles that they should repent and turn to god, and do works meet for repentance. thus according to the author of the acts, st. paul himself acknowledges that he first preached at damascus, then at jerusalem before addressing himself to the gentiles. if he had preached during a period of three years in arabia, he would have spoken of the circumstance, of which no mention is made in all the acts of the apostles, whilst we find there the most minute details of the continual journeyings. we shall just remark here a visible contradiction in the acts of the apostles; the author of this work in relating the miraculous conversion of st. paul, says that those who accompanied him, were speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no man**. however the same author, forgetting himself makes paul say in his discourse to the jews, "and they that were with me saw indeed the light and were afraid, but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me***". it belongs to the impartial reader to judge what degree of confidence is due to writers who are so often at variance. in the first instance paul solemnly attests by an oath, the truth of a fact, not only omitted, but even formally contradicted by st. luke, his historian and disciple. in the second instance the historian contradicts himself. this ought at least to shake the implicit faith, that so many persons put in works which possess neither the consistence nor harmony required in ordinary writers. as to our doctors they tell us their ways of saving the honour of these two inspired ones; whom they have much interest in washing from so grave an accusation, and such a taint upon the christian religion. * acts, xxvi. ver. 29. **acts, ix. ver. 7. ***acts, xxii. ver. 9. chapter xviii. examination of st. paul's miracles though st. paul as we have just seen, has himself taken care to shake the credit of the author of the acts of the apostles, it is nevertheless on the word of this writer that christians think themselves obliged to believe in the miracles of our great apostle. in fact, like all those who have endeavoured to establish new sects, our preacher could not dispense with performing prodigies: this is the most certain method of exciting the admiration of the vulgar. incapable of reasoning, of judging of the soundness of a doctrine, and frequently unable in the least to comprehend it, miracles always become the most powerful of arguments; they are indubitable proofs that he who works them is the favourite of the divinity, that consequently he cannot be in the wrong, nor capable of a wish to deceive. miracles were more especially necessary amongst the jews; they demanded signs from all those who spoke to them in the name of the lord, and there was little difficulty in working them, before an ignorant and credulous people, ready to receive as such every thing that was shewn to them. in spite of a disposition so favourable to miracle-mongers, we do not find that those of jesus himself and afterwards of his apostles, produced on the jews those effects which we have a right to expect from them. we find that at the time they were performed they convinced nobody and drew those who worked them, into difficult situations. it was not until a long time had elapsed that these prodigies produced their effects, and by a miracle that we can never cease to admire, we find, that these prodigies, which were discarded by those who saw them, were most firmly believed by those who did not see them, and are now ranked amongst the strongest evidences of the divinity of the christian religion. there are only some reasoners who persist in judging of these ancient miracles in the same manner as the contemporaries who did not see them, or who, if they did see them, regarded them as so many instances of deception and slight of hand, incapable of imposing on them. it is only the simplicity, of faith, that is to say, an implicit confidence in the assertions of our guides, which can make us see miracles, or cause us to believe in those we have not seen. but this simple faith is the effect of an especial grace that god grants only to those who are poor in spirit, and harshly refuses to those who think and reason. as soon as we want confidence in the operators, we see no more miracles, or at least we doubt of those that are shewn to us. it does not appear that st. paul performed miracles at jerusalem after his conversion; this city was not in his department: it belonged to st. peter and the other jewish apostles, who, according to the acts, did not cease to work miracles there. our apostle of the uncircumcised, or of the district in which the gentiles were converted, having quitted his brethren, commenced his course of miracles at paphos. he was upon the point of converting sergius, proconsul of the province, had not a cursed sorcerer of a jew, named barjesus, and surnamed elymas, i.e. magician, endeavoured to prevent the magistrate from believing in jesus christ. indignant at the obstacle that this man opposed to the divine will, instead of converting and convincing him, paul abused him according to the present practice of theologians, and called him a child of the devil, and finished with striking him with blindness. if this conduct was conducive to the salvation of the proconsul, who according to the author of the acts, having seen this miracle, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the lord, there are many who will not be so edified, at this prodigy, so contrary to christian charity and mildness. in fact would it not have been more kind of st. paul armed with divine power, to have enlightened the eyes of the sorcerer's mind, than to have struck those of his body with darkness? but we always see that the miracle that the apostles as well as their divine master had most difficulty in working was that of convincing those who were not disposed to believe every thing. it appears that on the present occasion, the sorcerer was stronger, in point of reasoning, than st. paul, which put him in a passion. logic was not in fact, the most prominent quality in our apostle, any more than in his brethren and successors. besides, this holy missionary was of too impetuous a temper to reason with moderation, and argue in a clear and precise manner. thus to terminate the dispute with elymas, he abused him, and perhaps relying on the protection of the proconsul, whom he saw wavering in favour of his doctrine, ventured to strike his antagonist, which deprived him of his sight for a period, for it is easy to deprive a man of the use of his eyes without a miracle*. * this, it must in candour be acknowledged, is an inference which the text will not warrant us to draw, and is unworthy boulanger's pen. it seems to be compromising the dignity of truth, to impose upon itself the necessity of accounting for all the hocus pocus tricks, or wilful falshoods, which the ignorance, bigotry, and knavery of a deplorable superstition, have handed down through the mist of eighteen centuries.--translators we learn that our apostle and his associate barnabas, wrought such miracles at iconiura, that all the city was divided, one part being in favour of the jews, and the other for the apostles. but immediately after we are informed, that "when there was an assault made, both of the gentiles and also of the jews, with their rulers, to use them despite-fully, and to stone them, the apostles were aware of it, and fled to lystra and derbe." this conduct of the inhabitants of iconiura is certainly inconceivable. pagans and jews unite to ill treat and stone our apostles, who in spite of the divine power which they possess have no other expedient, than to seek safety in flight. in spite of the inutility of his miracles, paul worked more at lystra; he there cured a lame man, in whom by mere inspection he discovered much faith. this gives rise to a suspicion that this might have been a miracle concerted between them. he said to him, with a loud voice, stand upright on thy feet, and he leaped and walked. the people of lystra were so struck by this prodigy, that they took our two missionaries for gods, and would have offered them sacrifices, but paul and barnabas forbade them with great modesty. this great miracle must have been believed, even by the priest of jupiter, since it is said, that he brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have sacrificed with them. this circumstance clearly proves that nobody at lystra doubted the truth of this miracle. however some jews who had arrived from iconium were able to undeceive a whole city, which had seen the miracle of the lame man. the poor st. paul, who had just before been taken for jupiter, was stoned, and dragged out of the city for dead; he revived, however, and, in spite of his miracle, he saved himself, with barnabas by fleeing to derbe. the miracle wrought by our saint at philippi in macedonia, did not meet with more success, he there cured a girl, who had a spirit of python, and being by that means possessed of the power of divination, gained great profit to her masters. these, far from acknowledging and admiring the power of a man who reduced to silence apollo, one of the most powerful gods of paganism, brought paul and silas before the magistrates, and excited the people against them. it is right to remark in this place, that apollo (i. e. the devil) who resided in this prophetess, laboured to destroy his own empire. in fact having perceived paul and his comrade, the girl followed them, crying, these men are the servants of the most high god, which shew unto us the way of salvation. and this did she many days. but paul being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, i command thee in the name of jesus christ to come out of her, and he came out the same hour*. it is surprising that paul was grieved at a declaration so favourable to his mission, and that he should impose silence on a demon, whose testimony was so honourable, and likely to draw adherents! but the conduct of saints is always inexplicable. in these unhappy times in which faith is so cold, no credit is given, either to those possessed, or to soothsayers; it is difficult to know what the nature of the spirit of python, which inhabited the macedonian girl could have been**. if we might hazard a conjecture on the subject, it might be supposed that our apostles, to give themselves some relief, gained her over, and employed her to play her part, by giving her to understand that it would be her interest to attach herself to the new sect, rather than work for masters, who, probably, paid her very poorly for her services from which they drew all the profit. * acts xvi. 17, 18. ** some critics have been very much embarrassed, to conjecture what the nature of this spirit of python could have been: several have thought that those who had this spirit, were such as are known to us in the present day by the name of ventriloquists, who have the power of articulating words, more or less distinctly, without any motion of the lips being perceptible. there are such persons, who create much surprise to those unacquainted with this faculty, and we cannot be astonished that the vulgar, who doat upon the marvellous, should attribute this power to supernatural causes. the magistrates of philippi on the complaint of those masters, as we have seen, caused our exorcists to be flogged, and sent them to prison. an earthquake happened very opportunely, the jailor was gained over or converted; the magistrates, thinking the missionaries had been sufficiently punished, permitted them to depart; but then, as we have seen, they declared themselves roman citizens, and refused to go, until the magistrates, who were now intimidated, consented to make them an honourable reparation. notwithstanding the miracles wrought by paul during his mission, disagreeable reports every where accompanied him, or followed him, so closely in all the cities through which he passed, that neither himself nor his comrades could remain long in the same place. they only passed through amphipolis and apollonia, and repaired to thessalonica, where, in a very short time, the whole city was in an alarm. jason, their host, was, as we have already seen, ill treated on their account, it was alleged against our missionaries, that they overthrew every thing, and in preaching another king than caesar, seemed desirous of plotting a conspiracy. in consequence of this, as it was a serious accusation, the brethren contrived the escape of paul and silas during the night. arrived at berea, our two adventurers, soon excited similar disturbances. paul repaired to athens, where the philosophers who heard him, took him for a talker whose brain was unsound. however in spite of his success, which was doubtless very slow, he had the mortification of being compelled to labour at his original trade of tent-making, which was very hard for a preacher ordained to live by the altar, that is to say, one whose trade it was to sell spiritual wares, to those who bound themselves to provide him, wherewith to subsist on credit such is clerical traffic. further, st. paul takes special care to boast to the corinthians of his great disinterestedness. he makes them understand he would not be chargeable upon them; by which he appears to have intended some indirect reproaches, calculated to pique their pride and excite their generosity, towards the holy man who laboured for their salvation*. the corinthians probably imagined that men who performed miracles, had no need of assistance: but our miracle-mongers were under the necessity of satisfying their wants by ordinary methods. they were like the adepts, who were always in poverty though offering to others the secret of making gold. there is reason to believe that paul performed great miracles amongst the corinthians, at least he says to them himself "truly the signs of an apostle, were wrought among you in all patience, in signs and wonders and in mighty deeds**." however we find that these miracles had not yet sufficiently convinced the corinthians, since paul says to them "seek ye a proof of christ speaking in me, which to you ward is not weak, but is mighty in you***." * see 2. corinthians, chap. xi. ver. 7, 8, 9, 16. chap. xii. ver. 13, and also 1. corinthians chap. ix. ver 11,13, 14, ** 2 corinthians xii. 12. *** 2 corinthians xiii. 3. respecting the miracles wrought by st. paul at corinth, we have only his own evidence, and that is sufficient; the author of the acts though very free upon this article does not inform us, that he wrought any in this city, this was most likely the case, since he remained there a long time, an unusual circumstance, where he condescended to perform miracles, which generally compelled him to remove, in consequence of the disturbance they excited. he was obliged to quit ephesus, where we are assured, that he performed a great number, and where handkerchiefs, linen, &c. which had touched him, cured the sick, and expelled devils. he departed from troas directly after having raised a dead man to life, or at least after having asserted that a young man, who was thought so, was in reality not so. in short in the isle of malta he cured himself of the bite, either because the reptile had not in fact bitten him, or by applying fire to the wound, a remedy which though common, might be unknown to the inhabitants of the island, as we have already remarked. chapter xix. analysis of the writings attributed to st. paul after having examined the character of st. paul by his conduct, it will be proper to make some reflections on his writings; they will serve to place in a still clearer light, this celebrated man, to whom christianity owes so many obligations. if we confine ourselves to those works attributed to him, the apostle of the gentiles must have been a very extraordinary compound of discordant qualities, which when united must have produced an inexplicable whole. he himself informs us, that he had within him two men, the new man and the old man; the just man, and the sinner. he had two bodies, the one natural and the other spiritual; the body of sin and death, and the body of justification and life. he had within him, two laws, which regulated his actions, the law of sin, and the law of justice, the law of the flesh, and the law of the spirit. never was poor mortal so perplexed and teazed, than was our apostle according to his own account, by these two opposite laws, which he had within himself. the carnal man makes him say, (see romans, chapter vii. verse 18, to the end of the chapter.) in other places the spiritual man, makes him hold another language, he assures the galatians, that he is one with christ and crucified with him (see galatians. chapter vii. verse 19 and 20.) in another place he says to the romans. "for the law of the spirit of life in christ jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." it is clear that this duplicity of nature and law in st. paul as acknowledged by himself is calculated to throw us into much embarrassment. in fact how can we distinguish in his conduct or discourse, that which springs from the old, from that which arises from the new man, or the spirit of life and the grace of christ? is it very easy at this time, to determine which governed st. paul in those moments in which he spoke, acted, or wrote? perhaps those maxims and dogmas most admired by christians have been the suggestions of the flesh, the fruits of the old man, and that this old man often influenced his conduct, which, as we have shewn was not at all times free from reproach. in short the acknowledgments are of a nature well calculated to plunge the most firm christians into uncertainties from which, without supernatural assistance, they will have great difficulty in extricating themselves. these confessions may further serve to shew us the inconsistencies, contradictions, absurdities, the sophistry and superficial reasoning, and disjointed ideas, which we meet with at every page of the writings attributed to st. paul. it is to be presumed, that it is the holy ghost, or christ, who speaks when he appears reasonable, it would be blasphemous to say or think, that they could talk nonsense: in this case we shall say, that it is st. paul or the flesh, who speaks, when we find him using bad arguments, extravagancies, and unintelligible nonsense. we cannot imagine that the spirit of god would have made him utter contradictions, or inspired him with a language incomprehensible to those whom he designed to enlighten and instruct by the mouth of this apostle. in fact, st. peter himself complains of the obscurities of paul's epistles, in which, says he, "are some things hard to be understood."* * 2 epis. peter, chap. iii. ver. 16 the distinction which we have just made will enable us to judge of the works of st. paul, and explain the obscurities which we find in them, as well as the continual variations, which we must remark in his principles. he tells the galatians that he was angry with peter, and withstood him to his face, and that he was offended, with the other apostles, because they temporized and used dissimulation, sometimes advocating the usages of the jews, and at others the customs of the gentiles*. elsewhere he says (here see 1 corinthians, chap. ix. ver. 19 to 22.) according to these passages, is it right to temporize, or not? it remains for our doctors to decide which of these two principles has been divinely inspired to st. paul, and in which of them we ought to imitate this great saint. our doctors however are not much in the habit of temporizing with their enemies unless they find themselves, too weak to cope with them. our apostle declares, formally to the galatians that circumcision, is useless and will avail them nothing, he says the same thing to the corinthians, yet we find him circumcising his dear timothy, and he tells the romans that circumcision is useful to those who fulfil the law. he writes to timothy, that god is the saviour of all men expecially of the faithful, which evidently supposes that the unfaithful, will not be excluded from salvation. he had also said, that god willed that all should be saved. but speaking to the romans, he will not allow that the gates of paradise, shall be opened to all the world**. * galatians chap. ii. ver. 11, &c. ** romans, chap. xi. ver. 7. we should never finish, were we to relate all the contradictions which are to be found in the writings attributed to st. paul. it is clear that if he be really the author of them, he exhibits himself to us, as a fanatical writer, whose disordered head prevents him from seeing that he is eternally contradicting himself. he says that black is white. he follows only the impulses of a heated imagination; he establishes principles to destroy them immediately; in a word from his want of logic, and the little connexion of his ideas without a most lively faith we should suspect, that he was in a continual state of delirium. it cannot be denied that this great saint was of a temperament too ardent to allow him to reason connectedly, or to speak with coolness. the tumultuous ideas which presented themselves in crowds to his brain, did not permit him to put them into any thing like an orderly arrangement; he incessantly wandered from his subject, so much so that an imagination, as warm as his own, is necessary in order to follow him in his flights. perpetually involved in figures, allusions and allegories, it is nearly impossible to guess what are his real sentiments. according to his doctrine he appears to establish in the strongest manner the dreadful doctrine of absolute predestination and reprobation. according to him god grants grace to whom he pleases, and whom he pleases he hardens. if we demand how this doctrine can be reconciled with the goodness and justice of god; or how a god who operates in man the will and the deed, can be offended with the wills and actions of men? he extricates himself by asking if the vessel shall say to him who made it, why hast thou fashioned me thus? thus st. paul, and after him all christian doctors, explain the conduct of a god, whom they pretend to love, at the same time that they hold him up as a tyrant, who is not accountable for his most unjust caprices, and despot-like is restrained by no rule! st. paul being divinely inspired should have taught us something of the nature of the soul, an object which so embarrasses alt philosophers who not being illumined from above, have formed ideas upon this subject, so much at variance with those of our christian doctors. but far from throwing any light upon this important matter, our apostle, who appears strongly tinctured with the platonic philosophy so universally taught in his time, distinguishes the body, soul and spirit, and thus obscures the thing still more. but it is the essense of theology to confound every thing, and the interest of theologians to plunge mankind into a labyrinth, from which nothing but faith can extricate them. chapter xx. of faith, in what this virtue consists generally speaking it is st. paul, or the author of the epistles, (wherever he be) that are attributed to him, that ought to be regarded as the true founder of christian theology. the mysterious obscurity of his works, the tone of fanaticism which reigns in them, and the unintelligible oracles with which they are filled, render them well suited to impose on the vulgar, who respect things only in proportion as they are impossible to be comprehended. devout enthusiasm and pious melancholy there finds a continual feast for its sickly brain. oracles and enigmas are taken for divine mysteries, which without a strong dose of faith we should conclude were the production of delirium or the inventions of imposture, which seeks to put reason to flight. reason had no means of examining ideas which are totally unreasonable; thus they persuaded men that it was necessary to renounce reason in order to become a good christian. in consequence of this principle, so humiliating to mankind and derogatory to the character of a god, the author of reason, it was no longer permitted to examine anything; man was commanded blindly to subscribe to the most incomprehensible reveries, and it was considered meritorious to renounce common sense and adopt fables and opinions revolting to every thinking being. thus delirium was changed into wisdom, deception into truth, and frequently crime became virtue. they closed the mouths of reasoners by citing the language of paul, who had said "that the foolishness of god is wiser than men, and the weakness of god is stronger than men." according to the same apostle god himself had predicted by the mouth of a prophet, the revolution that christianity was to produce in the minds of mankind. "i will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not god made foolish the wisdom of this world, &c.* and he concludes by saying, "but we preach christ crucified, unto the jews a stumbling block, and unto the greeks foolishness." * 1 corinth, chap. i. ver. 19. however violent paul's enthusiasm may have been, he well knew how odd the doctrine he preached, must appear to reasonable beings. he must have been aware, that it overturned all received ideas; that it would not bear the test of examination; that it was a difficult enterprise to persuade sensible beings that a god could die, that this god had arisen again, that an immutable god had changed and annulled the eternal alliance he had made with the jews, and which been so repeatedly confirmed with oaths, &c. thus our apostle in order to pass such improbable opinions, believed it requisite, to substitute folly in the place of reason, and to fortify his disciples against the weapons of logic. for the evidence which results from the testimony of the senses be substituted faith, which according to him is the evidence of things not seen, and evidence which can only be founded on the most stupid credulity. thus this prudent orator took care to guard against the philosophy of common sense, and against all science, seeing clearly that they opposed, invincible obstacles to the religion that he sought to establish, and of which he pretended to be the soul and chief. hence we find he attached the greatest merit to faith, that is to say, to a blind submission to his authority; and such an unbounded confidence in himself as prevented any doubt of those things, the truth of which he attested. as science was injurious to the establishment of his empire he decried it. "knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth." by charity, we may here understand that affection to a spiritual director which closing the eyes against those defects, which in common with other men he may possess, convinces us that he is always right, that he is incapable of the wish to deceive, and in short, that he ought to be believed in preference to the evidence of our senses. it is thus that this great apostle laboured incessantly to establish his own authority on the ruins of wisdom, reason, and science. however we may reply to his doctrine, so useful to those whose interest it is to maintain absurd opinions and incredible fables, that god who, is, according to them, the author of reason could not have destroyed his own work. we shall demand of st. paul and of those who like him preach up implicit faith, if folly is more able than wisdom to attain to the knowledge of god? we shall ask of them, if god has given wisdom to men on condition of their never using it, and if it is not by the aid of human wisdom, that man gains some idea of the divine wisdom? we shall ask if god can, without absolutely changing the nature of things, make wisdom folly, and folly wisdom? in short we shall ask them, if in order to become a christian it is necessary to renounce common sense, or how far our folly must prevail to have a religion? to all these questions theologians, faithfully treading in the steps of st. paul, will reply, that we must believe, and that as soon as they speak, we must submit to their authority. "faith" says paul "comes by hearing," whence it results that have faith, we must sacrifice our reason, to the wills of our spiritual pastors. charity ought to convince us, that these infallible guides, can neither deceive nor desire to lead us into error. according to this firm persuasion we shall never be embarrassed, unless, by chance, those pastors should happen to disagree in their opinions. this however often occurs in the church, and has done from the commencement. in fact we have seen st. paul himself resist st. peter to his face and differ from him in opinion. their quarrels like many others had fatal results, and produced a true schism between the partizans of peter, and those of paul, the apostle of the gentiles. the latter has acknowledged himself, that there must be heresies in a church, perpetually guided by the most high. this prophecy has been verified in the christian religion, which from its foundation has been incessantly agitated by quarrels, divisions, animosities, troubles, and paroxysms of fury mat would induce a belief, that the gospel was given to nations only to excite in them, fermentations unknown to paganism, and show them to what a degree of madness credulity could lead. the writings of paul especially have furnished in all ages ample matter, for disputes to the christian doctors. the obscure dogmas they contain, have of necessity been diversely understood by profound dreamers, who have passed their time in meditation. each pretended to have discovered the true sense of this infallible and divinely inspired doctor. each found in his writings a confirmation of his own sentiments. works filled with contradiction continually gave rise to parties the most opposite to each other, and virulently bent upon mutual destruction. the authority of st. paul was opposed to himself, and in the impossibility of deciding upon questions totally out of the power of reason to discuss, recourse was had to violence, and the strongest always made the weak feel, that they alone comprehended the true sense of the great apostle. they disputed continually on predestination, on grace, and on the liberty of man; they understood neither themselves nor st. paul. the most headstrong, the most wicked, and the most powerful, enforced their opinions as the only ones which the holy ghost had dictated. to conclude, the incredulous, are not those, who alone find the writings of paul obscure and unintelligible, as we have seen in the the case of st. peter already quoted. if this prince of the apostles founded difficulties in the work of st. paul, what shall we think of the presumption of modern commentators when they pretend to explain to us, the enigmatical and confused passages that we meet with in the epistles of this doctor of the gentiles. chapter xxi. of the holy ghost, and divine inspiration it would however have been wiser in the first instance to examine into the degree of confidence due to the real or pretended writings of this wonderful man, whose history we have been developing. before disputing it would have been better to have been certain of the authority of an apostle whose works appear to us infallible only on his own word, or on that of the written to whom we owe the acts of the apostles. in fact we are told that st. paul was inspired by the holy ghost. but what is the holy ghost? how can it inspire a man? what certainty have we that it has ever inspired anyone? by what signs shall we distinguish these invisible inspirations? as it is upon these inspirations only that the christian religion is established, these questions are well worth the trouble of being discussed. there is no mention made of the holy ghost in the old testament; there is mention made of the spirit of the lord, which possessed, or resided in the prophets, and other holy personages charged with speaking to the jewish people; but in no place of the old testament is the holy ghost announced as a being distinct from the divinity, it is only in the new testament that we find this metaphysical being deified, or this divine breath personified. in fact it is only in the history of jesus christ, that the holy ghost begins to perform, a part; we there find him commissioned to overshadow mary, and produce the savour of the world, who was, as we are told, begotten by the operation of the holy ghost. this same holy ghost descended in the form of a dove upon jesus christ at the moment of his baptism in the river jordan by john the baptist. in the gospel according to st. john, the author of which appears to have drawn his ideas from the platonic philosophy, there is much talk of the holy ghost which is never defined. jesus promises to send him to the disciples when he himself shall have left them. this spirit is described under term of the paraclete or comforter. jesus assures them that he proceeded from the father, and that he will send him on the part of the father, to bear witness of him jesus. further on he promises them, that when this spirit shall come, he shall guide them into all truth. according to the promise of jesus, this comforter did in fact descend upon the apostles at the feast of pentecost, see acts ari. ver. 2, 3, 13. many were astonished at the prodigy there related, but it seems not to have convinced others, who had probably less faith than the first. these sceptics pretended that the inspired apostles were drunken with new wine. but peter filled with the spirit, made them a long prophetic harangue; which, according to the author of the acts, produced a great effect upon many of his hearers, who were converted upon the spot. in consequence of the descent of the holy ghost, the apostles received the power, not only of speaking divers tongues, but likewise of driving out devils and performing miracles. however we do not find by their history, though written by one favourable to their cause, that the holy ghost gave them the power to cast out the demon of incredulity, especially from the minds of the jews; these resisted constantly the holy ghost and made those who said they were filled with it, to suffer cruel treatment. the apostles had not only received the holy ghost, but they had also received the power of communicating it to others by the imposition of hands. it is difficult, without a submissive faith, to conceive a clear idea of this invisible communication of the holy ghost, or the manner in which an indivisible spirit, divides itself among so many different individuals. however it is not allowed us to doubt that this transmission of the holy ghost has been perpetuated down from the apostles to our time. it is still by imposition of hands that the guides of the christian church receive the holy ghost, and the right to teach. if our bishops and and priests who represent in our eyes the apostles and disciples, have not received the gift of tongues and miracles they have, at least, received the faculty of pretending, that the holy ghost does not cease to illuminate them, in their frequently contradictory decisions, which ought to be regarded as a great prodigy. a christian would run the risk of being damned if he should dare to doubt, that the holy ghost invisibly presided in the church and will reside in the brains of its chiefs until the consummation of all things. what can be more calculated to inspire us with regard and respect for those, who themselves assure us, that they are the living temples of the holy ghost. in gratitude for these advantages which the holy ghost procured to the ministers of the christian religion, they felt themselves bound to deify him. it was the least they could do for a being from whom their power clearly emanated. in fact if the holy ghost, charged with inspiring the church had not been a god, the authority of the church might have been contested. but it being clearly decided, that the holy ghost is a god, men are no longer permitted to dispute his rights; it only remains to them to subscribe blindly to the decisions of those whom he has chosen for his organs; to contradict them, would be to revolt against god. we see then how important it was to the heads of the church to apotheosise the holy ghost. it was necessary to make him a god at any rate; otherwise the church would not have been infallible, its infallibility being founded, solely on the continued inspirations of the holy ghost; and that he himself should be infallible, it was necessary that he should be a god. thus the church has wisely made the god which makes her infallible. however useful this deification was to the church, it was attended with some difficulties. in fact how could they reconcile this new god, this mercury, this messenger of the father and son, with the unity of god? to cut short all dispute upon so important a matter, the heads of the church decided that the holy ghost proceeded from the father and son, and yet made but one god with them. they closed the mouths of those who cried out against this unintelligible oracle, by saying it was a mystery, that man was made to adore and believe, without being able to comprehend; they added that the church was infallible had thus decided, that being inspired by the holy ghost (i.e. by a god) it was impossible to avoid believing that she had the right to decide, that the holy ghost was a god. this is sufficient to show us upon what the authority of church, and the divinity of the holy ghost is founded. the church has deified the holy ghost, and the divinity of the holy ghost serves as the basis of the authority of the church. we thus see the true foundations of ecclesiastical power; we see the solidity of the titles of the church, we see the true origin of the mystery of the trinity, now held in such veneration by the faithful. in short we see what we ought to think of the inspirations of the holy ghost from the time of its origin until now. chapter xxii. of the inspiration of the prophets of the old testament it does not appear, as we have already observed, that the jews had any precise ideas of the holy ghost similar to those of the christian theologians. moreover there is reason to believe, that the apostles had not yet imagined such subtle notions of it, as the church has invented since their time. amongst the hebrews, every man who, during his sleep, had dreams, every enthusiast who had, or pretended to have visions, believed himself inspired by the lord, or at least gave himself out as such. he regarded the fancies of his brain, as warnings from heaven; he delivered his pious nonsense as oracles to credulous hearers, who did not doubt for an instant, that the unintelligible delirium of these harangues, was the effect of some divine illumination from the almighty. as in dreams, madness, in ebriation, in enthusiasm, man does not appear master of himself, they believed that what he uttered in these divers states must, of necessity, spring, from some supernatural force acting in him, without his knowledge, and in spite of himself; the sentences and discourse, which issued from his mouth, were regarded as inspirations from on high, and received as divine commands. their obscurity only served to excite curiosity, redouble terror, and confuse the imagination. it was supposed that god, who spoke by these demoniacs, did not choose to express himself in a clearer manner. these reflections founded upon the nature of credulous, ignorant, and superstitious men, may serve to fix our ideas of so many prophets and jugglers, that we see play such a prominent part, not only in jewish history, but in all pagan antiquity, and even among all savage and uninformed people that are now scattered over the globe. the trade of prophesying, appears to have been very lucrative and respectable amongst the jews, a people degraded by superstition, and whose priests always took care to keep them in a state of profound ignorance, and credulity, well-suited for the ends of those who sought to direct them after their own fancies. whoever desired to gain the attention of the jews, announced himself as inspired, threatened or promised them in the name of the lord, prophesied to them of evils calculated to intimidate, or of happy events which seduced them into belief. to draw the attention of the public, and frequently to produce revolutions in the state, it was enough for a prophet to say gravely, that the lord had spoken to him; and assure them that heaven had intrusted him with its designs in a vision; thus the brains of the jews were put into a fermentation. the apostles desirous of establishing reform, or exciting a revolution, in men's minds, felt the necessity of conforming to the prevailing liste of the nation. in consequence they erected themselves into prophets, gave themselves out for inspired, spoke in an obscure manner, uttered oracles, predicted the end of the world, they preached a messiah, they announced a kingdom in which their followers would enjoy a happiness, which their subjugated country had long since been deprived of. in short to prove the truth of their predictions, and the legitimacy of their mission, they performed miracles, i.e. works calculated to astonish so credulous a people as the jews. the jews, however, in spite of all their ignorance, did not suffer themselves to be convinced by either the harangues and miracles of jesus, nor by the preachings and prodigies of his apostles. all their efforts failed against the hardness of heart of a people so often the dupe of the numberless inspired who had so successfully deceived them. there is then reason to think that jesus and his disciples did not perform their part well, or else that in their time, the jews become more cautious, had not so much faith as their ancestors had formerly exhibited. indeed we do not find that the first preachers of christianity made much impression upon their fellow citizens; they had much more success, and paul especially amongst idolators, for whom their enthusiastic harangues, their preachings, and miracles was a more novel spectacle. amongst the gentiles preaching was an unknown thing, the people was held in disdain by the priests; each formed such ideas of religion as he choose, there was no theological system that they were compelled to adopt; in short, with the exception of esculapius, the gods worked but few miracles for their worshippers. thus, as we have already observed, circumstances were favourable for the mission of our apostle amongst the gentiles; they were more disposed to listen than the jews, and to regard him who performed such wonders before them, as an extraordinary man favoured by heaven. in fact st. paul gave himself out for such. and how can we doubt the veracity of a man who performs miracles? it was then necessary to give him credit; and without having seen these miracles we believe the same thing, and especially his divine inspiration, upon the authority of the writings, attributed to him, and upon the word of him who has transmitted to us an account of his actions in the acts of the apostles, works which the church enjoins us to regard as divinely inspired. it would be, i think, useless to make any long reflections on the validity of the titles of the church, and the right, that the writings which she has adopted have to the claim of divine inspiration. it is enough to remark, that if we admit those titles and rights, we have no reason to refuse also to admit those of any man, or body of men, which shall give themselves out as divinely inspired. if, on the word of paul, we believe that he was inspired, why shall we not have the same deference for the word of mahomet, who pretended to be the sent of the most high? if, after the decision of the christian church, we regard the books contained in the new testament as dictated by the holy ghost; what right have we to refuse our assent to the decision of the body of imans and mollahs, that the koran was revealed by the angel gabriel to mahomet? if it be permitted to one man, or body of men, to invest themselves with titles, and at the same time forbid the titles to be investigated, we shall be obliged to admit all the reveries, extravagancies, and fables that we see spread over the various countries of the earth. priests every where show us books, which they say were inspired by the divinity, and weak and silly people adore and and follow without examination books thus announced. all religions in the world are founded upon sacred hooks which contain the divine will, and whose truth is proved by miracles. chapter. xxiii. of the descent of the holy ghost upon the apostles, or their divine inspiration if we may believe the author of the acts of the apostles, the disciples assembled at jerusalem on the the day of pentecost, were filled with the holy ghost. but by what sign shall we be sure that they were filled with the holy ghost? it is this that they began to speak divers languages. but do these various languages prove the presence of the holy ghost? could not the disciples of jesus speak these languages naturally? however the jews who had come from the different provinces of asia to jerusalem to celebrate the feast all understood hebrew, since it was the language in which their law was written; nothing more then was requisite but to speak hebrew, in order to be understood by all of them; we cannot suppose that men assembled at jerusalem to celebrate the pentecost were gentiles. that granted of what use was the gift tongues? in supposing that among the jews there were some who only understood greek, which was at that time universal over all asia, it is very possible that without a miracle, some of the disciples or apostles, might know this language by the aid of which they could make themselves understood in most of the provinces mentioned in the acts of the apostles. there is then reason for believing, that the apostles and disciples were on this occasion desirous of passing for inspired. with this view, according to the practice of the diviners and prophets amongst the jews, they made noises contortions, cries, &c, and produced an extravagant cacophony, which, many well disposed persons mistook for undoubted sign of inspiration, while those who were less credulous took them for certain proofs of drunkenness or folly. but st. peter justified them, and showed that what they received to be extravagancies ought to be considered as proofs of inspiration. this he confirmed by quoting a prophecy of the prophet joel, (see acts of apostles, chap. ii. ver. 17.) but the question at issue is, whether visions, dreams, extravagancies, &c. are signs of divine inspiration. it is true that from the contents of the books, which christians regard as dictated by the holy ghost, and examining the nonsense and contradictions found in the writings of st. paul, we should be tempted to believe so. if the absence of reason, probability, logic, and harmony, is the distinguishing mark of divine inspiration, we cannot deny that st. paul has proved himself, by his writings, to have been divinely inspired. however at this rate nothing can be more easy than to pass; for inspired. if madness be a sufficient qualification to cause a man to be regarded as one filled with the holy ghost, there are many men who have just pretensions to this faculty. if we doubt it they have only to reply gravely that god hath confounded the wisdom of the wise; that our rebellious reason ought to be submissive, that the human mind becomes perverted by reasoning. such is however the language continually repeated by the supporters of st. paul and christianity. according to them, wisdom is folly, reason an uncertain guide, common sense useless, and contradictions are impenetrable mysteries, which we must adore in silence; and when our mind loses itself in the abyss of folly and imposture, they cry out with their great apostle: "oh! the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of god! how unsearchable are his ways, and his judgments past finding out!" a lucky quibble of which our theologians avail themselves with success, in order to escape from the embarrassment into which they are thrown by any reasoning on the ways of providence. it is thus that those who pretend to inspiration have the boldness to outrage the divinity, and make the holy ghost the accomplice of their blasphemies. when they find it impossible to escape from the labyrinth into which impostures and ill-contrived fables have led them, they make god responsible for their extravagancies; they pretend that their own follies are the effects of divine wisdom, they term their own perplexities mysteries; and assent that the author of reason is at the same time, the enemy of reason. men however are not shocked by these impious propositions. accustomed to regard st. paul as inspired, it never occurs to them that so great a saint may blaspheme. but what authority have christians for their high opinion of st. paul? it is the acts of the apostles, that is to say upon the suspected testimony of a partizan of paul's sect, who has compiled a history of his hero, filled with contradictions, but embellished with prodigies and fable, which however serve to establish his romance. but what proofs have we of these miracles themselves? we have no other evidence than the word of the romancer himself confirmed by the authority of the church, i.e. of a body of men interested in establishing the fable. it is true that we have in addition the testimony of st. paul himself, to whom are attributed the epistles in which are found a great number of details of his life. but does this apostle agree with his historian in his own narrative? no, doubtless, they vary materially in many circumstances, and frequently contradict each other in the most positive manner. who then shall we find to reconcile them, and show us what we ought to think of a history so differently related? the church. but what is the church? a body composed of the spiritual guides of the christians. have these guides been witnesses of the actions and miracles so differently related by paul and his historian? no; they know nothing of them but by a tradition, contested even in the times of the first christians, but since confirmed by a revelation of the holy ghost, who never, according to them, ceases to enlighten his church. how are we to know if the church is continually inspired? she herself says so, and there is, she says, the greatest danger in doubting this. it would be to resist the holy ghost who is identified with the church, and who makes common cause with her; a crime which will never be forgiven either in this world or in the next. of all sins the most unpardonable is to resist the clergy. chapter xxiv. general reflections on the foundations of christian faith, and on the causes of credulity these then are the only foundations of faith! christians are obliged to believe that st. paul was neither an enthusiast nor a cheat, because the church has decided that he was divinely inspired: the church has decided this important point of belief, according to the acts of the apostles and epistles, which, as we have shown, were both rejected by many sects of the primitive christians, and which, as we have proved in the course of this work, are filled with contradictions and absurdities. nevertheless no christian now dares to doubt of the authenticity of these books. these works are regarded as sacred by the universal church, by christians of all sects, who with the exception notwithstanding of some considerable and important variations, read them in the same manner and entertain for them the same veneration. what can we oppose to this unanimity? the example of mahomet. this prophet who is at this day equally revered by all sects of mussulmen, was at first regarded as an impostor at mecca, whence he was compelled to fly. his koran now become the rule and code of a clergy, supported by princes and powerful nations, was at first considered as a tissue of fables compiled by imposture. this unanimity of the mahometans, in acknowledging the sanctity of mahomet, and the divinity of the koran proves no more in their favour, than the agreement of all sects of christians in admitting the saintship of paul, and the inspiration of his writings, proves in favour of the apostle and his wonderful epistles. it is the property of habit to change the appearance of things, men by degrees become familiar with that which at first disgusted them; time is able to confound truth and falsehood; clearly proved deceptions, finish by becoming undoubted facts to the ignorant, the idle, and those either too much occupied, or involved in dissipation to examine, and these are the majority of mankind. the most palpable imposture when it has existed a length of time, acquires a solidity which nothing can shake: that which has been believed by many for ages appears to have a real foundation, and to have at least a claim to probability. when once time has obliterated the traces of imposture, they are difficult to detect, and most men find it easier to stick to received opinions than to undergo the painful task of examining what they ought to think. such are the true causes of the indolence that men generally show, as often as they are called upon to give a reason for their religious notions, they are contented to follow the current. besides when prejudice is supported by force, and becomes necessary to the interests of a powerful body, it is dangerous to combat it, and few men have the courage to oppose deceptions, approved by the world, and authorised by the governing powers. on the other hand error, when habitual passes for truth, and is equally agreeable. we hold fast to our vices and prejudices, the virtues and opinions which are opposed to them, appear ridiculous or disagreeable. it is this natural disposition of the human, species, which, by little and little, imbue nations with the most extravagant opinions, absurd fables, and ill-digested systems. no, artifice was; ever better imagined, nor trick was ever more calculated to deceive the vulgar than that of divine inspiration. upon this is founded all the religions in the world; it is to this marvellous invention that the priests of the whole earth are indebted for their authority, their riches, and their existence. when a man tells us, that he is divinely inspired, it is difficult for most men to ascertain whether he lie, or speak the truth. god never contradicts those who make him speak, on the contrary those impostors who deceive in his name generally perform miracles and prodigies, and these miracles and prodigies, are to the short sighted multitude undoubted signs of divine favor. shall we then judge those who are inspired by their conduct? they generally take care to impose on us by their disinterestedness, patience, and mildness of behaviour, and it can hardly be supposed that such moderate men could have formed the design of deceiving or gaining power. it is only when they have gently insinuated themselves into men's minds, that we find ambition, avarice, and passions of the missionary develope themselves: it is after having won over the multitude, that their empire discovers itself; and they exact with pride, the tribute and respect due to the organs of heaven, and the messengers of the most high. these are the means by which christianity has been established, the manoeuvres have been practised by our great apostle, and all those who have assisted in disseminating his doctrine. his own experience often made paul sensible, that his pride and fiery disposition, were frequently obstacles to his mission; thus we see him sometimes doa violence to his character, take the air of mildness and humility, so much better suited, to insinuate into mens good opinions than arrogance and pride. he only assumes the tone of the master, when he knows his ground; then he threatens, thunders, and displays his authority. does a dispute arise between himself and an associate? he resists him to his face; he makes the church feel how necessary he is to the cause; and avails himself of it, to exhibit his authority, his example has been at all times faithfully followed by the heads of the christian religion. humble, mild, patient, tolerant, and disinterested whenever they have been weak, they become haughty, quarrelsome, intolerant, avaricious, and rebellious subjects to princes whenever they were certain of their empire over the people. it was then that they prescribed laws, crushed their enemies, plundered the people, and caused kings to tremble at the name of the god whose interpreters they declared themselves to be. the heads of the christian religion have at all times made those opinions, most comfortable to their own interest pass for divine oracles. the holy ghost has had no other function, than to serve for a cloak to their intrigues, passions, and pretensions. the works of our apostle furnished quarrelsome priests with arguments for injuring each other; his disjointed reveries, his obscure mysteries, and his ambiguous oracles, were an arsenal whence the most opposite parties procured arms to combat incessantly. in short the writings inspired by a god who was desirous of instructing mankind, have only served to plunge nations in darkness. guides enlightened by the holy ghost saw no clearer than the ignorant, into mysteries, they continually presented to them by an unintelligible system. these great doctors were agreed upon nothing, each one sought to gain adherents whom he excited against the enemies of his own opinions, which he regarded as those only approved by heaven. thence arose animosities, hatred, persecutions, and wars, which have a thousand times spread trouble and desolation among christians, blind enough to follow men who pretended to be led by the holy ghost, while it was evident, that the only spirit which inspired them, was that of pride, ambition, obstinacy, vengeance, avarice, and rebellion. conclusion. let us then be careful, oh! my friends, of allowing ourselves to be guided by inspired persons. deceivers, or enthusiasts, they will only lead us into errors destructive of our peace. let us consult reason, so decried by men, whose interest it is to extinguish a light which is able to show us the plots of their dark policy, this reason will inform us that contradictory works do not merit our belief; that a turbulent, ambitious and enthusiastic apostle, may have been a very useful saint to the church, and a very bad citizen. this reason will convince us, that a god filled with wisdom could never inspire men with systems, in which folly is the most prominent feature; that a god who is the author of reason could never have called for its immolation, before the shrine of fable, and pretended mystery incapable of producing any thing but evil and dissension upon the earth. let us be just, benevolent, peaceable, let us leave to st. paul, and to those who take him for a model, their lofty ambition, their turbulent fanaticism, their obstinate vanity, their persecuting spirit, and above all things their bitter zeal, which they term an interest for the salvation of souls. let us show to all men not an evangelic charity which is converted into fury and hatred, but a real charity which inspires us with love, peace, indulgence, and humanity. may this charity so much boasted of, and so little practised, by st. paul and his successors, be the rule of our conduct, and the standard of our judgments on men and their opinions. examine all things, and hold fast that which is good. let us not be blinded by the prejudices, of infancy, of habit, or of authority. let us not be imposed upon by the pompous names of paul, of cephas, or of apollos; but let us seek the truth and follow reason, which can never lead astray, nor render us troublesome members of society. finis. bible studies in the life of paul historical and constructive by rev. henry t. sell, d.d. author of "supplemental bible studies," "bible study by books," "bible study by doctrines," "bible study by periods," and "bible studies in the life of christ." chicago new york toronto fleming h. revell company london & edinburgh copyright, 1904 by fleming h. revell company chicago: 63 washington street new york: 158 fifth avenue toronto: 27 richmond street, w. london: 21 paternoster square edinburgh: 30 st. mary street preface the book of acts shows in a very graphic way the rapid growth and marvelous progress of christianity in the midst of great opposition. we see in process of fulfillment the promise of jesus christ to his disciples that they should receive power after the holy ghost had come upon them and that they should be witnesses unto him "both in jerusalem and in all judea and in samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth." those were earnest times and full of stirring events, when men went forth to conquer a hostile world not with swords, but by the preaching of a gospel of peace and good will. as soon as this proclamation was made in judea and samaria a new instrument was chosen by jesus christ, in paul, to carry his message to the uttermost part of the earth. he thus became at once the chief character in the larger work of planting and developing churches outside of palestine. the study of paul's life shows the difficulties encountered, the doctrines taught, and the organization perfected in the early churches. "we here watch the dawn of the gospel which the savior preached as it broadens gradually into the boundless day." bible studies in the life of paul is designed to follow the author's bible studies in the life of christ and to show the work of the great apostle in carrying the gospel to a gentile world. the aim is to present the work of paul in a constructive and historical way. while there has been a careful consideration, on the part of the author, of disputed questions, only conclusions upon which there is a general agreement amongst scholars, and which can be consistently held, are presented. the great main facts of paul's life and work stand forth unchallenged and the emphasis is placed upon them. this book is divided into three parts, paul's preparation for his work, his missionary journeys, and his writings. this is a text book, and, with the analysis of each study and questions, is prepared for the use of normal and advanced sunday-school classes, teachers' meetings, schools, colleges, and private study. this is the sixth book of the kind which the author has prepared and sent forth. the large favor with which the other books have been received, and the desire, first of all, of making the life and work of paul even better known, have been the motives which have led to its preparation. chicago, ill. henry t. sell. contents i. paul's preparation study i. early life ii. conversion ii. paul's journeys iii. first missionary journey iv. second missionary journey v. third missionary journey vi. jerusalem to rome iii. paul's writings vii. the future of christ's kingdom viii. the old faiths and the new ix. the supremacy of christ x. pastoral and personal i. paul's preparation study i early life analysis +the place of paul+--the man. the work of the apostle. the leading thought. +birth+--place. time. family. +training+--home. mental, moral and religious. industrial. +the world as paul saw it+--the world. political. religious. the difficulties. bible studies in the life of paul i. paul's preparation study i early life the place of paul +the man, paul,+ judged by the influence he has exerted in the world, is one of the greatest characters in all history. he is pre-eminent not only as a missionary, but as a marvelous thinker and writer. "he was a personality of vast power, force, and individuality." there are some men who seem to be born and prepared to do a large work for the world; paul makes the impression upon those who carefully read the record of his life that he stands first in this class of men. +the work of the apostle.+--as john the baptist preceded christ and prepared the way for his coming, so paul succeeded christ and went throughout the heathen world proclaiming that the christ had come, and calling upon all men, jews and gentiles, to repent and accept him as their lord and savior. so wide was his work as a missionary of the cross, and an interpreter of the christ, that a certain class of critics have sought to make him the creator of christianity, as we know it; a position which paul would be the first to repudiate. he sought of himself, before he was apprehended by christ on the way to damascus, to drive christianity from the face of the earth. +the leading thought+ in paul's mind, after his conversion, was personal devotion to christ; this was the mainspring of every act. he said, "i am crucified with christ: nevertheless, i live; yet not i, but christ liveth in me": (gal. 2:20). "for me to live is christ" (phil. 1:21). in his letters to the churches which he founded, there are found no picturesque descriptions of cities or of scenery; his one thought is to make known the christ. he says, writing to the corinthian church, "and i, brethren, when i came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of god. for i determined not to know anything among you, save jesus christ and him crucified" (1 cor. 2:1, 2). in the evangelization of the heathen world, for which task he had been set apart by the holy spirit (acts 13:2) and which he had accepted with all his heart, it is not only his leading, but his only thought to make known jesus christ as lord and savior. to miss this supreme purpose of paul in the study of his life is to miss its whole significance (phil. 2:1-11; col. 1:12-20). birth +place.+--the world is interested in the birthplaces of its great men. some of these birthplaces are in doubt. there is no doubt about the place in which paul was born. he says, in making a speech to the jews, "i am verily a man which am a jew, born in tarsus, a city in cilicia" (acts 22:3). this city was the capital of cilicia and was situated in the southeastern part of asia minor. it was but a few miles from the coast and was easily accessible from the mediterranean sea by a navigable river. a large commerce was controlled by the merchants, on sea and on land. tarsus, while one of three university centers of the period, ranking with athens and alexandria, was an exceedingly corrupt city. it was the chief seat of "a special baal worship of an imposing but unspeakably degrading character." +time.+--the date of paul's birth is nowhere recorded, but from certain dates given in the acts, from which we reckon back, it is thought that he was born about the same time as jesus christ. +family.+--we are left, in this matter, without any uncertainty. paul says, "i am a pharisee, the son of a pharisee" (acts 23:6). i was "circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of israel, of the tribe of benjamin, an hebrew of the hebrews, as touching the law, a pharisee" (phil. 3:5). paul's father and mother were jews of the stricter sort. the expression which paul uses, "an hebrew of the hebrews" is very significant. the jews of the dispersion were known at this time as hebrews and hellenists. the hebrews clung to the hebrew tongue and followed hebrew customs. the hellenists spoke greek by preference and adopted, more or less, greek views and civilization. paul had a married sister who lived in jerusalem (acts 23:16) and relatives in rome (rom. 16:7, 11). training +home.+--the instruction received in the home has often more influence and is more lasting than any other. paul received the usual thorough training of the jew boy accentuated in his case, in all probability, by the open iniquity which was daily practised in his native city. we never hear him expressing any regret that he received such thorough religious instruction at the hands of his parents. +mental, moral, and religious.+--good teachers were employed to instruct the boy, who was afterwards to make such a mark in the world. after going through the school, under the care of the synagogue at tarsus, he was sent to jerusalem to complete his education. paul, speaking in this chief jewish city, says, i was "brought up in this city at the feet of gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers" (acts 22:3). it is very evident that he had a profound knowledge of the scriptures from the large use he makes of them in his epistles. he seems also to have been quite well acquainted with greek philosophy and literature. he quotes from the greek poets, aratus, epimenides, and menander. no man ever studied men and the motives which actuate them more than he. his inward life was pure (acts 23:1; 24:16). paul differed from christ in that he was a man who sought the cities and drew his illustrations from them, while christ was much in the country and drew his illustrations from country life. but in this study of and work for the city paul was but carrying out the commands of christ. +industrial.+--it was required of every jew father that his boy should learn some trade by which he might support himself should necessity require it. it was a common jewish proverb that "he who taught his son no trade taught him to be a thief." paul was taught the trade of tent making. "the hair of the cicilian goats was used to make a cloth which was especially adapted for tents for travelers, merchants, and soldiers." he afterwards found this trade very useful in his missionary work (acts 18:3; 20:34; 1 cor. 4:12; 1 thess. 2:9; 2 thess. 3:8). the world as paul saw it +this world+ was very different from the world as we see it to-day. this makes it difficult for us to appreciate his work at its full value. now, christianity is the great religion of the world; then it was unknown, outside a very limited circle of believers. the state and society were organized upon a different basis and were in strong opposition to the new religion. +political.+--the world was under the dominion of the romans. they, in conquering it, broke down the barriers that had separated tribe from tribe and nation from nation. yet it was a comparatively small world for all interests centered about the mediterranean sea. before the romans the greeks had been in possession of a part of this world and had permeated and penetrated the whole of it, with their art, language, and commerce. with the upheavals of war and the tribulations that had befallen the jews, they were everywhere scattered abroad and had their synagogues in most of the cities. +religious.+--for the romans, greeks, and conquered nations and tribes, it was an age of scepticism. while the gods and goddesses in the great heathen temples still had their rites and ceremonies observed yet the people, to a large degree, had ceased to believe in them. the roman writers of the period are agreed in the slackening of religious ties and of moral restraints. yet it was the policy of the state to maintain the worship of the gods and goddesses. any attack upon them or their worship was regarded as an offense against the state. +the difficulties+ of the situation were threefold: (a) to seek to overturn the religion of the state constituted an offense which was punishable by stripes and imprisonment; (b) to rebuke men's sins and the evils of the times stirred up bitter opposition on their part; (c) to proclaim a crucified and risen christ as the messiah to the jews, when they expected a great conquering hero, often excited and put them in a rage. that paul could preach christ and establish churches, under all the opposition that he encountered, shows how fully and implicitly he believed in his lord. questions what impression has the man, paul, made upon the world? what was his work as an apostle? what his leading thought? where is the place of his birth? what can be said of his family? how was he educated and trained, in the home, in school, and for a trade? what was the political and religious condition of the world as paul saw it? what were the three difficulties in the way of his work in preaching christ? i. paul's preparation study ii conversion analysis +paul the persecutor+--order of events. the inevitable conflict. cruelty of the persecutor. +conversion+--cause. effects (physical, mental and spiritual, penalty, relief to the christians, triumph of christ, and estimates of the results). +period of waiting+--retirement of paul. reasons. the gospel for the gentiles. paul brought to antioch. i. paul's preparation study ii conversion paul, the persecutor +order of events.+--it seems to be quite evident, when paul finished his studies in jerusalem, that he left the city and engaged in work somewhere else, during the years when john the baptist and jesus were preaching and teaching. in all probability he did not return until after the crucifixion and resurrection of christ. paul first appears in the narrative of the acts, under the name of saul, at the martyrdom of stephen, where he takes charge of the clothes of the witnesses (acts 7:58, 59). from the ascension of christ to the martyrdom of stephen is an important period in the history of the infant church. on and after the day of pentecost (acts 2) the apostles and followers of the risen lord assumed a very bold attitude. they did not hesitate to speak openly in the temple (acts 3:12-16) of the crime of putting "the prince of life" to death and asserted that he was risen from the dead. the priests and sadducees strongly objected to this kind of preaching (acts 4), laid hands upon the preachers, and put them in prison. when they were examined the next day before (acts 4:5-13) the jewish tribunal, the apostles spoke even more boldly of jesus and his resurrection and refused to be silenced (acts 4:13-20, 33). again an attempt was made to stop the preaching of the apostles, but they refused to keep still (acts 5:16-33). a remarkable prison deliverance by the "angel of the lord" (acts 5:19, 20) gave them great courage in proclaiming "all the words of this life." at this point gamaliel (acts 5:34-42) proposes in the jewish council a new policy, which was to let the followers of christ alone, arguing that then they would speedily give up their preaching. this policy was adopted (acts 5:40). but with the election of stephen as a deacon (acts 6:1-8) the followers of christ began to multiply with great rapidity and it was soon seen that "the let-alone policy" was a mistake (acts 6:9-15). persecution again breaks out which results in the death of stephen (acts 7), the bringing out of saul as the arch persecutor, and the scattering of the church (acts 8:1-4). +the inevitable conflict.+--had the early christians been content to have proclaimed jesus christ to be but a great teacher and prophet, they would in all probability have become a jewish sect and been speedily lost to sight. but extraordinary claims were put forth that jesus christ was the promised messiah (acts 2:25-40), the son of god (acts 3:26), the forgiver of sins (acts 2:38; 5:31), that he was risen from the dead (acts 4:33), that obedience to him was above that to the jewish rulers (acts 4:18-20), that the jews had wickedly slain christ (acts 3:14, 15), and that salvation was only through him (acts 4:12). further than this they wrought miracles in the name of jesus christ (acts 3:2-8, 16; 2:43; 5:12). it was very soon plainly seen that christianity could keep no truce, and proposed to keep no truce, which called in question or denied the supremacy of christ. +the cruelty of the persecutor.+--to a man of paul's temperament and zeal there could be no half way measures in a case like this. he could not be content to bide his time. either the claims of christ were true or false. if false, then they were doing harm and his doctrine and teaching must be eradicated at any cost. all the aggressive forces of the jews found a champion in this saul of tarsus. drastic measures were at once inaugurated. there was to be no more temporizing. the cruelty and thoroughness of the persecutor, in his work, are shown in his instituting a house to house canvass seeking for the christians and sparing neither age nor sex (acts 8:1, 3). in the first persecutions the jews had been content to arrest and imprison those who publicly preached christ, but now the policy was changed and christianity was to be exterminated root and branch. all believers in christ were to be hunted out. the character of saul, the arch persecutor, is shown in the characterization of him by luke, when he represented him as breathing out, "threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the lord" (acts 9:1). conversion +cause.+--the book of the acts, opened at one place, shows a fierce hater and persecutor of the christians (8:3), opened at another place it shows this same persecutor as an ardent and enthusiastic preacher of the faith in jesus christ (13:16-39) we seek for the cause of this remarkable change. luke tells us that saul was on his way to damascus, seeking victims for his persecuting zeal, when jesus suddenly appeared to him and saul was changed from a persecutor to a believer in christ (acts 9:3-7). the account is very brief. for an event which has had such tremendous results, the narrator is very reticent; a light from heaven, a voice speaking, and a person declaring that he is jesus. paul gives us two accounts of his conversion and how it took place (acts 22:6-15; 26:12-18). the men who were with paul saw a light and heard a voice, but not what was said. it is impossible to describe or exaggerate what took place in paul's mind in those brief moments while jesus talked to him; but his beliefs, and his whole life plan were radically changed. it had been well if no explanation of this conversion had been attempted and the great fact had been left to stand as it does in the acts. attempts, however, have been made to minimize the power of this conversion and the marvelous and sudden change it wrought in the character and life of paul. some critics seeking a natural, rather than a supernatural, cause have attributed to paul certain compunctions of conscience and misgivings about his persecution of the christians, together with a hot day and a certain temperament, which led him to have a subjective experience, which he thought was real. but there is no recorded evidence forthcoming that paul ever had any compunctions of conscience about persecuting the christians. paul was an honest man to the very core of his being; in the two accounts he gives us of this conversion, and in incidental references to it, he never even hints at any such state of mind. the expression used by jesus, "it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" (acts 9-5), of which so much has been made, means no more than that saul's opposition and hard work against the christians (acts 8:3; 9:1), would be of no avail. in doing what he did paul thought he was doing god's service. again the language which paul uses and the references which he makes to this appearance of christ forbid us to think that it was only a mere vision of christ which he saw. "he ranks it as the last of the appearances of the risen savior to his disciples and places it on the same level as the appearances to peter, to james, to the eleven, and to the five hundred" (1 cor. 15:1-8). in these appearances jesus had eaten with his disciples and been touched by them (john 20:24-31; luke 24:36-43), appearing as a real being, according to the narrative. "it was the appearance to paul of the risen lord, which made him a christian, gave him a gospel to preach, and sent him forth as the apostle of the gentiles." the time of paul's conversion was about 36 a.d. +effects.+--there is no question as to the very marked results which followed the appearance of the risen lord to saul on the way to damascus. 1. physical. he was smitten with blindness (acts 9:8), and was without food for three days (acts 9:9). his sight was restored by ananias at the command of the lord (acts 9:15-18). 2. mental and spiritual. his whole outlook upon life and its significance was changed. he received baptism and was filled with the holy spirit (acts 9:17). from being a persecutor he became an enthusiastic witness for christ (acts 9:20-22). 3. penalty. the consequences of his former course of action were visited upon him; for the jews sought to kill him and the disciples of christ were at first afraid of him (acts 9:23-26). but barnabas vouched for his sincerity (acts 9:27). 4. the relief to the christians at damascus, when saul was converted, was very great. they had looked forward to his coming with dread. 5. the triumph of christ. in paul christianity won its most efficient missionary and, next to christ, its greatest thinker, preacher, and teacher. 6. the estimates of the results of this conversion of saul cannot be too large; they are world wide. period of waiting +retirement of paul.+--from the conversion of paul (acts 9:3-7) to his call to the missionary work (acts 13:2) is a period of about ten years. during this time we have only incidental notices of him and what he was doing. when we think of it there is nothing strange in this retirement. it is the divine method, as in the case of moses, when a man is to do a very large work for god that he should be well prepared for it. the chief scripture notices of this period of retirement are found in acts 9:19-30; gal. 1:15-24; (acts 11:25-30; 12:25). from these notices it is quite plain: (a) that paul retired into arabia. (b) that he preached in damascus and jerusalem, but was compelled to flee from both cities on account of the persecutions of the jews, who sought his life. (c) that he went to tarsus and "into the regions of syria and cilicia." (d) that he came to antioch, where there was a great revival (acts 11:25-30), at the solicitation of barnabas. luke in his account (acts 9:19-30) does not mention the trip to arabia spoken of by paul in his epistle to the galatians (1:15-24). it must be remembered however that each is writing from a different point of view. luke is a historian recording only the most salient facts and passing over the mention of many events. we see this in the compression in eight and a half short chapters of the events of the three missionary journeys. paul writing to the galatians is anxious to establish the fact that he received his commission, as an apostle, not from man, but from christ himself (gal. 1:1); hence he enters more into details and we get from him the inside view. the accounts of luke and paul if read carefully, keeping in mind all the circumstances, are seen not to be in any way antagonistic, but to supplement each other. +reasons.+--many reasons have been given for the retirement of paul to arabia, and what seems to be the period of comparative inactivity that followed it. 1. fierce opposition on the part of the jews whenever paul attempted to preach, as in the cities of damascus and jerusalem. 2. a preparation of mind and heart for his great work. as a thinker he needed to look upon all sides of the gospel, which he was afterwards to preach so effectively to the gentiles. 3. a careful rereading of the old testament. as a jew he had read the scriptures in one way, now he reread them seeing christ there. 4. system of doctrine. he may at this time have wrought out that magnificent system of christian doctrine which he afterwards presented to the churches in his epistles. +the gospel for the gentiles.+--while paul was waiting for the call to his great missionary work there came a new crisis in the history of the early church, and a new era was inaugurated. in the tenth and eleventh chapters of the book of acts luke tells us of the conversion of the gentile cornelius, "a centurion of the band called the italian band" (acts 10:1-8), and of the instructions given to peter to receive him (acts 10:9-44). cornelius was the first gentile convert and we note here the beginning of the preaching of the gospel to the gentiles, which was to have such large results. "the day of pentecost, the conversion of saul of tarsus, the call of cornelius and the foundation of the gentile church at antioch are, if we are to pick and choose amid the events related by luke, the turning points of the earliest ecclesiastical history." how great and epoch making was this new departure of preaching the gospel to the gentiles, and receiving them into the church, is shown in the eleventh chapter of the acts (11:1-18) where, when peter goes up to jerusalem, he is put on the defensive and compelled to explain why he received cornelius into the church. when however the matter was fully explained the early disciples rejoiced over the fact that to the gentiles was granted by god repentance unto life (acts 11:18). +paul brought to antioch+ by barnabas, on account of the revival that had broken out in that city, is another step which he takes up to his work as the great missionary to the gentiles (acts 11:25-26). it was here that the disciples were first called christians (acts 11:26). it was from this city that paul went forth on his missionary journeys and it was here that he returned (acts 13:1-3; 14:26; 15:24-41; 18:22; 18:23). "antioch was the capital of the greek kingdom of syria, and afterwards the residence of the roman governor of the province. it was made a free city by pompey the great, and contained an aqueduct, amphitheater, baths, and colonnades. it was situated on the orontes about twenty miles from the mouth of the river. its sea-port was seleucia. it was intimately connected with apostolic christianity. here the first gentile church was formed" (acts 11:20, 21). questions give the order of events which led to the persecution in which paul was so prominent. why was the conflict between christianity and judaism inevitable? what can be said of the cruelty of paul, the persecutor? give the cause of paul's conversion. what were some of the effects? what can be said of the period of waiting; the retirement of paul? what are some of the probable reasons for this retirement? what can be said about the beginning of the gospel to the gentiles? by whom was paul brought to antioch and for what purpose? in what relation does antioch stand to the missionary journeys of paul? ii. paul's journeys _acts 13:1-28:31_ study iii first missionary journey _scripture, acts 13:1-14:26_ analysis +introduction to the three missionary journeys+--the call. the significance. extent and time. the record. other long journeys. method of work and support. the message. +the first journey+--preparation. companions. paul comes to the front. time and extent. rulers. +the itinerary+--salamis. paphos. perga. antioch. iconium. lystra and derbe. the return journey. +the jerusalem council+--one problem of the early church. the decision of the council. [illustration: outline map illustrating the first and second missionary journeys of paul.] ii. paul's journeys _acts 13:1-38:31_ study iii first missionary journey _scripture, acts 13:1-14:26_ introduction to the three missionary journeys before taking up the study of the first missionary journey, attention is called to certain points which should be considered in regard to all three of them (acts 13:1-21:17). we have now arrived at what we might call the watershed of the acts of the apostles. hitherto we have had various scenes, characters, personages to consider. henceforth paul, his labors, his disputes, his speeches, occupy the entire field, and every other man who is introduced into the narrative plays a subordinate part. our attention is now turned from the jewish world, considered so largely in the first twelve chapters of the acts, to the heathen world and the struggle which paul and his fellow laborers had with it, in bringing it to christ. +the call+ to this work was by the holy ghost in the city of antioch (acts 13:1-4). luke says, "as they ministered to the lord and fasted, the holy ghost said, separate me barnabas and saul for the work whereunto i have called them" (acts 13:2, 4). contrast this with the beginning of the work in jerusalem which was also inaugurated by the holy ghost on the day of pentecost (acts 1:14; 2:1-4). this call was in accordance with what jesus had told his disciples before his ascension (acts 1:8). the agency of the holy ghost in directing and promoting this missionary work is very manifest (acts 13:2, 4, 9, 52; 15:8, 28; 16:6; 19:2, 6; 20:23, 28; 21:11; 28:25). +the significance+ and importance of these journeys cannot be overestimated. it is probable, when the call came, that paul had but little idea of their magnitude and that in the end they would result in changing not only the religion, but the philosophy and civilization of the world. +extent and time.+--it is estimated that the first journey was 1,400 miles long, the second 3,200, and the third 3,500, making 8,100 miles traveled by paul. the time occupied for the three journeys was about ten years. +the record+ of the three missionary journeys, is briefly comprised in eight and a half chapters (acts 13:1-21:17), and it does not profess to be a complete one. only the most striking incidents and events, and probably not all of these, are given. there were side trips not recorded by luke; paul speaks of one to illyricum (rom. 15:19), and of others in which he underwent great perils (2 cor. 11:24-27). the purpose of luke seems to be to show how, in accordance with the command and promise of christ, the knowledge and power of the gospel was spread, beginning in jerusalem, through judea, and samaria, throughout the heathen world (acts 1:8); everything seems to be made to bend to this purpose. certainly there could be no more graphic and concise account of these epoch making events than that given us by this wonderful narrator. +other long journeys.+--1. paul's voyage to rome as a prisoner. luke gives a full account of this voyage, its many interesting incidents (acts 27:1-28:16), and of the circumstances which led up to it (acts 21:17-27:1). 2. there is every reason to believe that paul was released at the end of his two years imprisonment in rome (acts 28:30) and that he made an eastern journey as far as colossã¦ and a western journey as far as spain. note.--these last journeys are considered in chapter ten. +method of work and support.+--paul and his companion, or company, when they entered into a city would first seek for a lodging and then for work, going from one tent maker's door to another until finally a place was found. then upon the following sabbath they would seek the jewish synagogue and after the reading of the scriptures, when an opportunity was given, paul would arise and begin to speak, (acts 13:14-16) leading up through the old testament message (acts 13:17-43) to the great topic of jesus christ as the promised messiah and closing with an exhortation to believe on him. such a speech would naturally excite great interest coming from the lips of one, who by his speech and the handling of the old testament, would be recognized as a cultivated jewish rabbi. paul would be asked to speak again the next sabbath (acts 13:44-52), the synagogue would be full of people and he would set forth jesus christ more plainly as the savior both of jew and gentile. this would generally be a signal for the jews to contradict and oppose paul, but some jews would believe with a number of gentiles. this would be the starting point of the christian church in that community. the jews, however, who were untouched by what paul preached, and who looked upon him as the destroyer of their religion, would raise a cry against him and seek to have him expelled from the city. this experience was frequently repeated. there were great difficulties also to be encountered when the heathen thought that their worship was in danger (acts 19:20-30). +the message+ which paul bore to jew and gentile was the moving force of all his work. the starting point was the memorable day when jesus christ appeared to him on his way to damascus. paul believed that he received his commission as an apostle directly from jesus christ (gal. 1:1-24). the four main positions of paul, set forth so plainly in his epistle to the romans, are: (a) all are guilty before god (jew and gentile). (b) all need a savior. (c) christ died for all. (d) we are all (through faith) one body in christ. paul leaves us in no doubt as to how he regards jesus christ. he is to him the son of god, through whom god created all things and who is the divine savior of man (eph. 3:9-21; phil. 2:9-11; rom. 9:5). there is no doubt, no hesitation on paul's part in delivering his message. he is a witness, testifying to the glory of his divine lord. he is a messenger who cannot alter or tamper with that which has been entrusted to him. to the rude inhabitants of the mountain regions of asia minor, to the philosophers in athens, to the roman governors in cã¦sarea, to the dwellers in corinth and in rome the purport of the message is always the same. the first journey _scripture, acts 13:1-14:28_ +preparation.+--first, on the part of paul. about ten years have passed since his conversion. during this time we have few notices of him, but he was undoubtedly making ready for this very important work of a missionary. second, on the part of the church. the first step had already been taken, in the conversion of cornelius, in the giving of the gospel to the gentile world. third, paul was brought to antioch by barnabas to assist the church in the great revival which broke out in that second early center of christian work and teaching (acts 11:21-26). fourth, the large success of the disciples who went throughout judea and samaria, preaching the gospel, after the death of stephen (acts 7:5-8:4; 11:19-21) made possible this new aggressive movement to the regions beyond. fifth, the christian prophets and teachers at antioch "ministered to the lord and fasted." they desired to know the will of the lord and it was made known to them by the holy ghost. "and when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away." "so they being sent forth by the holy ghost, departed unto seleucia (acts 13:3, 4). +companions of the journey+, barnabas and saul (acts 13:2) and john mark (acts 13:5). barnabas has been called the discoverer of saul. he was probably a convert of the day of pentecost. he was a land proprietor of the island of cyprus and early showed his zeal for christ by selling his land and devoting the proceeds to the cause in which he so heartily believed (acts 4:36, 37). he early sought out and manifested, in a very practical way, his friendship for paul (acts 9:27; 11:22, 25, 30; 12:25). john mark, who started on this journey with barnabas and saul, was a nephew of barnabas (acts 13:5, 13; 12:25; col. 4:10). +paul comes to the front+ when his company leave paphos and ever after he has the first place (acts 13: 13). here also he is called paul for the first time, a name which he retains. +extent and time+--this was the shortest of the three journeys (about 1,400 miles). it extended over the island of cyprus and a part of asia minor. in time it occupied about three years, 47-50 a.d. +rulers+--claudius was the emperor of rome, since 41 a.d. herod agrippa was king of chalcis, ananias was high priest in jerusalem. the itinerary note.--the cities, which paul visited in this and the other journeys, should be located upon the map by the student. it will greatly increase the interest to consult some good bible dictionary and get well acquainted also with the history of the places. +salamis+, on the island of cyprus, was the first place reached, after sailing from seleucia (acts 13:4, 5) the sea-port of antioch. it was the natural thing to go first to this island as it had been the home of barnabas and many jews had settled there; it was about eighty miles to the southwest of seleucia. +paphos.+--after passing through the island from east to west the missionaries came to paphos. this city was the seat of the worship of venus, the goddess of love. this worship was carried on with the most degrading of immoralities. the chief incidents in the ministry here were the smiting of the jewish sorcerer, elymas, with blindness for his persistent opposition and the conversion of the deputy of the country, sergius paulus (acts 13:6-12). saul is filled with an unusual power of the spirit for his work in this city and takes the name of paul. it is now no longer barnabas and saul, but paul and barnabas. +perga in pamphylia+--(acts 13:13, 14). the missionaries take ship from paphos and sail in a north-easterly direction across the mediterranean sea to this city of asia minor. john mark, doubtless appalled by the difficulties which had already been experienced and now that the journey seemed to promise still greater hardships, left the company and returned to jerusalem. +antioch in pisidia+ (acts 13:14-52) was about ninety miles directly north of perga. it was a good-sized city with a large jewish population. luke's account of this visit is notable in that we have the chief points in paul's speech in the synagogue set down. this address is worth study from the fact that it is the first sermon of paul of which we have any record, and is probably the usual way in which he began his work in a great many jewish synagogues. paul is asked to speak to the assembled jews. he begins upon the common ground of the history of israel. he declares the promise of a savior. this savior is to be of the seed of david. then paul sets forth that jesus is the promised savior. he reminds them of the testimony of john and of those who had seen jesus before and after his resurrection. he declares unto them the glad tidings of a savior. he warns them of their peril in rejecting jesus christ. paul is invited to speak upon the next sabbath, but there is a division and those who oppose paul try to drive him out of their city which they finally succeed in doing. but the word has fallen into good soil and there is the beginning of a christian church. +iconium in lycaonia+ (acts 14:1-5) is over one hundred miles distant from antioch. the missionaries were now in a country of a people with strange ways. they remained here for some time and their ministry was attested by "signs and wonders." but again some of the jews opposed them and stirred up the multitude. a plan was made by the ringleaders of the opposition to stone them, but being made aware of it paul and barnabas "fled unto derbe and lystra." they had, however, the satisfaction of leaving behind "a great multitude of believing jews and greeks" (acts 14:1). +lystra and derbe in lycaonia+ (acts 14:6-21).--"and there they preached the gospel." there is no mention of any jewish synagogue at either of these cities. the inhabitants were worshippers of the heathen gods. the healing of a lame man at lystra brought paul and barnabas directly into touch with the heathen priests and populace. when they saw this miracle of healing, they thought that the gods had come down to earth in the likeness of men. barnabas was called jupiter "and paul mercurius, because he was the chief speaker." when paul and barnabas sought to restrain the priests and people from doing sacrifice to them, it is interesting to note what words paul uses in addressing them. as with the jews he here seeks first of all a common ground. he says, "we are men of like passions with you and preach unto you that you should turn from these vanities unto the living god, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein; who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. nevertheless he left not himself without a witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness" (acts 14:15-17). we find the same earnestness the same desire to preach the gospel to the heathen here as to the jews elsewhere. but the jews who had made trouble in antioch and iconium for the missionaries came to lystra and, forming a plot against paul, persuaded the people and stoned him so that he was drawn out of the city, they "supposing he had been dead." but he was not dead, he soon rose up and came back into the city and the next day departed with barnabas to derbe, where they preached the gospel and taught many. +the return journey+ is very briefly recorded (acts 14:21-28). the missionaries returned through the same cities, lystra, iconium, antioch, and so back to perga. but from the last city they did not sail to the island of cyprus, but took a different course, westerly along the coast to attalia in pamphylia and from thence they sailed to antioch, the starting point of their trip. during this return journey they proved to their friends and enemies that, in departing from the cities where mobs threatened them, it was through no cowardice on their part, but for other reasons and for the purpose of preaching the gospel in the regions beyond. they "confirmed the souls of the disciples exhorting them to continue in the faith." they also further perfected the organization of the churches, ordaining elders in every church. they prayed with and for the disciples and commended them to the lord. when the missionaries at last entered the city of antioch, "they rehearsed all that god had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith unto the gentiles." there must have been great rejoicing over this happy return of paul and barnabas. the jerusalem council _acts 15:1-35_ +one problem of the early church+ was how to reconcile the commandments of moses with the new law of liberty in jesus christ. ought the gentile christians to observe the law of moses? ought they to become jews before they became christians? were there to be two churches? one for jewish and another for gentile christians? these questions are obsolete now, but then they were burning ones and hotly debated. hence this jerusalem council, where the matter was debated and settled, was exceedingly important and fraught with great and grave consequences for the future welfare of the church. because certain of the jewish brethren came to antioch and began to teach that it was necessary to salvation that a certain jewish ordinance and the law of moses be kept, it was determined to send paul and barnabas to jerusalem. a council of "the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter" (acts 15:6). at this council in jerusalem, peter, paul, barnabas, and james were the chief speakers. all matters were carefully gone over. of all the speeches made, luke records only the two made by peter (acts 15:7-12) and james (acts 15:13-2l), which must have embodied the sense of the meeting in that both spoke for liberty, from the mosaic yoke, in christ. +the decision+ of the council was for the freedom of the gentile christians and that they should not be obliged to become jews before they became christians. thus was one of the grave crises of the early church safely passed. paul and barnabas went back happy in that great victory for gentile christianity to their brethren at antioch. it should be borne in mind, however, that while the question of the relation of the gentile christians to the law of moses was decided at this council, it was one which came up again and again to hamper and bother paul in his missionary work. questions what is to be considered in the introduction to the three missionary journeys? by whom was the call to this work? what is the significance of the journeys? the extent and time? what can be said of the record? were there other long journeys by paul? what was the method of work and support? what was the message? the first journey; what was the preparation for it? who the companions? time and extent? rulers? give some of the incidents that took place upon the itinerary, at salamis, paphos, perga, antioch, iconium, lystra, and derbe? what can be said of the return journey? why was the jerusalem council necessary, and what was decided by it? ii. paul's journeys _acts 13:1-28:31_ study iv second missionary journey _scripture, acts 13:36-18:32_ analysis +second missionary journey+--the inception. the companions. the wide scope. value to the world. time and rulers. epistles to the churches. +the itinerary+--through asia minor. in europe (philippi. thessalonica. berea. athens. corinth). +the return voyage+--ephesus. cã¦sarea. antioch. ii. paul's journeys _scripture, acts 13:1-28:32_ study iv second missionary journey _scripture, acts 15:36-18:22_ +the inception+--after the jerusalem council paul returned to antioch where he spent some time, "teaching and preaching the word of the lord with many others also." "and some days after paul said unto barnabas, let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the lord, and see how they do" (acts 15:35, 36). he felt that he must be advancing the work of jesus christ. +the companions+ (acts 15:37-40).--barnabas proposed to take john mark, his nephew, with them on this second journey. but paul strenuously objected, basing his objection on the ground that this young man had deserted them (acts 13:13) at a very important juncture in the first journey. we are told that the contention was very sharp between barnabas and paul over this matter. it was finally settled by barnabas taking john mark and sailing for the island of cyprus and paul choosing silas for his companion. when paul came to derbe and lystra timotheus was invited to join him, which he did (acts 16:1-4). luke, the author of the acts, goes with this company into macedonia (acts 16:10). we can trace luke's connection with the missionaries by the "we" passages. that paul was afterwards reconciled to barnabas and john mark is shown by his kindly mention of them in his epistles (1 cor. 9:6; col. 4:10; 2 tim 4:11; philem. 24). +the wide scope+ is a marked feature of this journey of about 3,200 miles. the first journey was through cyprus, where barnabas was well acquainted, and through that section of asia minor roundabout the province of cilicia, where paul was practically at home. paul was born in tarsus in cilicia and it was to this region that he went for some part of the time between his conversion and his call to the missionary work (acts 9:30; gal. 1:21). the second journey carries paul into entirely, to him, new provinces of asia minor and into macedonia and achaia. he comes into close contact not only with the rough native populations of the asian provinces but with the cultivated philosophers of greece and the effeminate voluptuaries of the heathen temples. here are new tests for this missionary and the gospel which he preaches, but he meets them all. this journey had a large significance for the spread of christianity. had the gospel failed to meet the wants of all sorts and conditions of men, there would have been no further triumphs for it. +value to the world.+--"this journey was not only the greatest which paul achieved but perhaps the most momentous recorded in the annals of the human race. in its issues it far outrivalled the expedition of alexander the great when he carried the arms and civilization of greece into the heart of asia, or that of cã¦sar when he landed on the shores of britain, or even the voyage of columbus when he discovered a new world." to paul's turning westward, instead of eastward, through the guidance of the spirit, and his entering upon his work in macedonia (acts 16:7-11) europe to-day owes her advancement and christian civilization. it is stating a sober fact when it is asserted that without christianity europeans would now be worshipping idols, the same as the inhabitants of other sections of the world where the gospel of christ has not been made known. +time and rulers.+--in time this journey extended over about three years, 51-54 a.d. the rulers were: claudius, emperor of rome (nero became emperor in 54 a.d.); herod agrippa ii., king of chalcis (who also gets batanea and trachontis); and gallio, procurator of achaia. +epistles to the churches.+--upon this journey paul makes a new departure. with the multiplication of the churches and the impossibility of visiting them often, when occasions demanded it, paul begins the writing of special and circular letters to the churches. the two first epistles, of which we have any record, were those to the thessalonians from corinth, written probably in the winter of 52-53 a.d. note.--for an account of and an analysis of these epistles see study 7. the itinerary +through asia minor+ (acts 15:40-16:8).--it was paul's custom to revisit the churches which he had organized, and to care for them. following out this plan he went through syria and cilicia confirming the churches, then to derbe and lystra, where he found timotheus who joined his company. after visiting the churches founded on the first missionary journey, paul and his company turned northward and "went throughout phrygia and the region of galatia" (acts 16:6) though there is no record of any church having been founded in these regions. "after they were come to mysia, they assayed to go into bithynia; but the spirit suffered them not" (acts 16:7). it is important to note that the holy ghost now forbade paul, at this time, to further preach the word in asia (acts 16:7). paul and his company tried after this to go into bithynia but they were prevented from doing so by the spirit, and came down to troas (acts 16:8-12). of this long journey through asia minor, of its perils and difficulties, of the rejoicings of the former christian converts, when they saw paul again, and of the many interesting facts and incidents we have only a glimpse. +in europe+ (acts 16:9-18:18).--paul, following what was to him a clear indication of the guidance of the holy ghost (acts 16:6-11), left troas and set out by ship, by way of samothracia, for neapolis, which he reached on the following day. there have been many conjectures as to what the fortunes of the christian church would have been had paul been allowed to carry out his intention to visit bithynia, and to preach the gospel in the regions of the east. had he done so, however, it is quite certain, that the history of the world would have been quite different from what it is to-day. in this invasion of europe paul came within the charmed circle of what was then the highest civilization. the gospel was now to try its strength with the keenest philosophers and the most seductive fascinations of immorality, masquerading under the guise of religion in the licentious rites of the heathen temples and groves. what could this missionary do? what could he preach? if philosophy, if art, if beauty could have saved the souls of men then they would not have needed the gospel which paul preached. but this was a gilded age, and the gilding hid the corruption, beneath. the message of paul to the men in this charmed circle of civilization was the same that he had set forth in the rough mountain towns of asia minor. human nature, under a rough or a polished exterior, is the same the world over. paul was seeking men, to bring them to a knowledge of their alienation from god through sin, and to show them the way of salvation through repentance and faith in jesus christ? greece, over whom the romans held sway at this time, had been divided into two parts: achaia on the south and macedonia on the north. a great roman road ran from east to west through macedonia. it was by this road that the missionaries traveled. 1. philippi (acts 16:12-40) will be forever memorable as the first city in europe in which a christian church was established. it had the character of a roman rather than a greek city; both the civil and the military authorities being roman. it had the rank of a roman colony. situated as it was on the great egnatian way travelers and traders passed through it, eastward and westward, from all parts of the roman world. "the greek character in this northern province of macedonia was more vigorous and much less corrupted than in the more polished society of the south. the churches which paul established here gave him more comfort than any he established elsewhere." the beginning of the work at philippi was not very promising and to most men would have been very discouraging. luke tells us that "on the sabbath we went out of the city by a riverside where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted hither." but there they met lydia, an energetic business woman and a work was begun which has had far reaching consequences. paul and his company had been but a short time in the city when they came in conflict with the roman authorities. a damsel, possessed with a spirit of divination, who brought much gain to her masters, testified to paul and his work; this spirit paul cast out and in consequence the owners of the girl brought the charge against paul and silas that they were jews who taught customs not lawful for romans to receive. notice, the shrewdness of the trumped-up charge against paul and silas. nothing is said about the real state of the case. in this charge the status of the jews is shown in this city. paul and silas are beaten and thrown into prison; their feet are made fast in the stocks; their wounds are left unwashed and undressed. but in the earthquake, which opens the prison doors and gives release to the prisoners, paul has an opportunity to preach the gospel to the jailer. how magnificently, forgetting himself, he sets forth the way of salvation through christ! we turn to the epistle to the philippians (see study 9) to see how paul loved this church, and how this church loved him. 2. thessalonica (acts 17:1-9). thinking it best to leave philippi, paul and his company passed on their way along the egnatian road through the two beautiful greek cities of amphipolis and apollonia to thessalonica, distant about seventy-three miles from philippi. thessalonica is one of the few cities which has retained its importance up to the present time. it was founded by cassander, king of macedon in 315 b.c. it came under the roman rule in 168 b.c. in paul's time it was a great commercial center, the inhabitants being greeks, romans, and jews. here was a jewish synagogue and for three sabbath days paul went into it and reasoned with the assembled jews about jesus christ, declaring to them that he was the promised messiah, and had suffered and was risen from the dead. we have the same results here which followed similar preaching elsewhere (1 thess. 1:8). out of the storm again emerges a christian church. paul and his company, after the usual tumult, pass on to another city but the church remains to send its blessed influence through all that region. the epistles to the thessalonians (see study 7) give us some graphic pictures of the converts and their ways of working. 3. berea (acts 17:10-14) was a secluded inland city. it must have been somewhat of a surprise to paul to find the jews of this place so ready to receive the word of god, which he preached to them in their synagogue. there was great searching of the scriptures and many believed. a large work was in progress when jews from thessalonica, hearing of the success of paul in berea, came down and stirred up the people against him. it became quite evident now that there was a persistent and organized effort being made to drive paul out of this section. as the opposition seemed to be directed against paul alone, the brethren proposed to send him away, and to have silas and timotheus remain for a short time. this plan was carried out. 4. athens (acts 17:15-34) was the most cultivated city of the old world; a statue was set upon every corner and an altar in every street. "here the human mind had blazed forth with a splendor it has never exhibited elsewhere. in the golden age of its history athens possessed more men of the very highest genius than have ever lived in any other city. to this day their names invest her with glory. yet even in paul's day the living athens was a thing of the past. four hundred years had elapsed since its golden age, and in the course of these centuries it had experienced a sad decline. philosophy had degenerated into sophistry, art into dilettanteism, oratory into rhetoric, poetry into verse making. it was a city living on its past." paul entered into the open places where the people gathered and talked with them. so much interest was aroused by what he had to say that he was asked to speak to them upon mars hill. thither they all went. paul as his custom was sought a common starting point in the altar to the unknown god. so long as he spoke of god and man in general terms he was listened to, but when he came to touch their hearts and consciences and to apply what he said, speaking of the judgment through christ and his resurrection from the dead, he was left alone. paul did not fail, the trouble with the athenians was that they possessed only intellectual curiosity; they had no appetite for the truth. but still some converts were made. "certain men clave unto him and believed; among whom were dionysius the areopagite and a woman named damaris and others with them" (acts 17:34). 5. corinth. (acts 18:1-18) was the largest and most important city in greece. from athens paul came to corinth and remained over a year and a half. we have a graphic picture of this church in the epistles to the corinthians. (see study 8.) probably no better place than this highway of all peoples could have been selected in which to preach the gospel. no one knew better than paul how to select strategic places. a stream of travelers, merchants, scholars, and sailors was constantly passing through this great commercial city; what was preached here would be carried to the ends of the earth. it was a city of art and culture and yet a place where the vices of the east and west met and held high carnival. religion itself was put to ignoble uses; a thousand priestesses ministered to a base worship in the magnificent temple of the goddess aphrodite. greek philosophy showed its decay in endless discussions about words and the tendency to set intellectual above moral distinctions. there was a denial of the future life for the sake of unlimited enjoyment in the present. paul, when he came into the city, found a lodging with aquila and his wife priscilla, and wrought with them at the occupation of tent making. when silas and timotheus joined him he openly testified to the jews that jesus was the christ. crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, was converted together with many corinthians. paul was comforted at this time by a vision of the lord which bade him to speak and not to hold his peace. after a year and a half of earnest preaching an attempt was made by the jews to drive paul out of the city by bringing accusations against him before the roman proconsul gallio, but in this they were unsuccessful. paul tarried and worked here until it seemed best for him to turn his steps homeward again to antioch. the keynote of his preaching in this city is given by him in his first epistle to the corinthians where he says (2:2), "for i determined not to know anything among you save jesus christ and him crucified." if this gospel could win converts in corinth, it can win converts anywhere. +the return voyage+ (acts 18:18-22) was by way of ephesus where he entered into the synagogue and reasoned with the jews. leaving ephesus he sailed for cã¦sarea where he landed. after he had gone up and saluted the church he went down to antioch. questions who proposed the second missionary journey? who were the companions? what can be said of the wide scope? what was its value to the world? time and rulers? what can be said of the new departure in writing epistles to the churches? what can be said of the itinerary through asia minor? give the incidents, of preaching the gospel, that occurred during the trip in europe, in the different cities; philippi, thessalonica, berea, athens, and corinth. how was the return voyage made? ii. paul's journeys _scripture, acts 13:1-28:31_ study v third missionary journey _scripture, acts 18:23-21:17_ analysis +third missionary journey+--method. the chief city. time and extent. epistles written. +itinerary+--through galatia and phygia. ephesus. through macedonia and greece. the return voyage. [illustration: outline map illustrating the third missionary journey of paul and the voyage to italy.] ii. paul's journeys _acts 13:1-38:31_ study v third missionary journey _scripture, acts 18:23-21:17_ +method.+--a study of the three missionary journeys shows the method of evangelization of the ancient world. the first journey was comparatively near home. the second was a review of the work done in the first and a pushing on to new work in asia minor and the larger conquests in europe. in the third we have a review visit to the churches of asia minor, a long stop at ephesus, and a review visit to the churches of macedonia and achaia, which were organized upon the second missionary journey. there was always a method in what paul did. he was not only a missionary preaching and testifying to jesus christ, but he was an organizer and leader of men. the churches formed were visited again and again; messengers were sent to them to instruct, to chide, and to encourage them; circular and special letters from paul's own hand were dispatched to them, when occasion required. wherever paul preached, whatever might be the tumults raised, he always won some adherents for jesus christ, who were brought together and organized into a church. on this third journey he was already planning to go to rome (acts 19:21) and wrote an epistle to the romans announcing his coming (rom. 1:7, 15). +the chief city+, in which paul spent most of his time (acts 19:1, 8, 10), between two and three years upon this journey, was ephesus in asia minor. this city situated midway between the extreme points of his former missionary journeys was a place where he could have an intelligent oversight over all the work which he had previously accomplished. ephesus has been thus described: "it had been one of the early greek colonies, later the capital of ionia, and in paul's day it was by far the largest and busiest of all the cities of proconsular asia. all the roads in asia minor centered in ephesus and from its position it was almost as much a meeting place of eastern and western thought as alexandria. its religion was oriental. its goddess called artemis or diana, had a greek name but was the representative of an old phrygian nature worship. the goddess was an inartistic, many-breasted figure, the body carved with strange figures of animals, flowers, and fruits. the temple built by alexander the great was the most magnificent religious edifice in the world. it was kept by a corporation of priests and priestesses, who were supported by the rents of vast estates. for centuries ephesus was a great center of pilgrimage, and pilgrims came from all parts of asia to visit the famous shrine." "the first great blow which this worship received was given by paul during his two years' stay in ephesus, and the story told in this chapter is the history of the beginning of a decline from which the worship of diana never recovered. the speech of demetrius perhaps exaggerates the effects of paul's work, but it should be remembered that the gospel took firm hold of proconsular asia from a very early period. paul's epistles tell us of the churches in ephesus, laodicea, and colossã¦, and the apocalypse adds churches in pergamos, smyrna, thyatira, sardis, and philadelphia. half a century later, pliny asserted that in this region the temples were deserted, the worship was neglected, and the sacrificial victims were unsold." during his long stay in ephesus, paul doubtless received many delegations and visitors from the churches formerly organized by him. the character of the ephesian christians can be seen from the epistle addressed to them (see study 9). +time and extent.+--about four years, 54-58 a.d., were occupied by paul in going about among the churches and about 3,500 miles were traveled. +epistles.+--this journey was prolific in masterly writings. paul wrote the first and second epistles to the corinthians from ephesus about 57 a.d., galatians from the same city (somewhere between 54 and 56 a.d.), and romans at corinth in 58 a.d. (see study 8). itinerary +through galatia and phrygia+ (acts 18:23).--after paul had spent some time at antioch, at the close of the second missionary journey, "he departed and went over all the country of galatia and phrygia in order strengthening all the disciples." thus luke briefly sums up in a few words all the incidents of a journey of hundreds of miles of travel. +ephesus+ (acts 19:1-20:1).--evidently with the purpose of showing what is new and of chief importance in each journey luke, as is his habit, calls attention to the work of paul in ephesus; other parts of this journey are passed over with slight mention. having gone through the upper coasts, paul comes to ephesus. the chief events in this city, during the visit of the apostle, were: 1. the incident of the work of apollos is given (acts 18:24-19:1) to show how paul found about twelve disciples of john the baptist (acts 19:7) at ephesus and instructed them further, baptizing them in the name of the lord jesus (acts 19:5, compare acts 19:1-7). 2. three months were spent by paul (acts 19:8, 9) with the jews in their synagogue, "disputing and persuading the things pertaining to the kingdom of god." but when certain of them became hardened and it was plainly seen that little good was being done he left the synagogue. 3. about two years' time was given, after the apostle had separated himself and followers from the jewish synagogue, to teaching in the school or lecture room of tyrannus (acts 19:9, 10). the result of this preaching and teaching was that a great multitude of men and women was brought to a confession of faith in christ, throughout asia. 4. the mighty growth of the word of god (acts 19:20) was attested by the miracles which paul did in the name of christ (acts 19:11, 12). he confounded the jewish exorcists, who attempted to imitate these miracles (acts 19:13-20). this great work was shown to be a thorough one from the fact that many who used curious arts brought their books and burned them amounting in value to over $31,000. 5. paul now proposed, thinking the ephesian church could stand alone (acts 19:21, 22), "after he had passed through macedonia and achaia to go to jerusalem, saying, after i have been there, i must also see rome." in anticipation of this visit he sent timotheus and erastus into macedonia, "but he himself stayed in asia for a season." 6. the tumult made by demetrius (acts 19:23-40) is a strong proof of the large impression made by the gospel of jesus christ upon not only the city of ephesus but all asia minor. the burning of the magical books had arrested the attention of many people, but when the sale of the silver images of the idol, diana, began to fall off so as to touch the trade of the silversmiths they were up in arms at once. demetrius showed how the power of christ had prevailed with men when he declared that, "paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that there be no gods which are made with hands." the violence of the men who composed the mob showed how deeply christianity had taken hold upon large numbers of people. paul, after the uproar had quieted down, carried out his intention of departing for macedonia. +through macedonia and greece+ (acts 21:1-6).--"the order of events seems to have been: (a) timotheus and erastus were sent to look after the church discipline at corinth (acts 19:22). stephanas and others came from corinth and returned with the first epistle to the corinthians (1 cor. 16:17). (b) paul meant to visit corinth (1 cor. 4:18, 19); instead he went to macedonia by troas (2 cor. 2:12, 13). (c) he waited at troas for news from corinth, and his anxiety told on his health (2 cor. 2:12; 1:8; 4:10, 11; 12:7). (d) in spite of illness he pressed on to macedonia (2 cor. 2:13), where he met titus, who brought him good news of the state of the corinthian church (2 cor. 7:5-9). (e) he wrote the second epistle to the corinthians and sent it by titus, and resolved to wait sometime longer before going to corinth, for he wished to take a contribution from the corinthians to jerusalem (2 cor. 9:1-5). (f) in macedonia he probably visited berea, thessalonica, and philippi, with perhaps a journey to illyricum (rom. 15:19). (g) he went to greece (corinth and cenchrea). (h) he proposed sailing for syria with the contributions of the various churches, and with delegates who carried the money; sopater from berea, aristarchus and secundus from thessalonica, gaius from derbe, timotheus from lystra, tychicus and trophimus from ephesus (acts 20:4; 21:29). (i) the jews of corinth conspired to murder paul on his embarkation, so his friends went by ship, and he eluded the conspirators by going by land to philippi. (j) then he took ship for troas, having luke who had been at philippi for his companion ("we sailed"). +the return journey,+ troas to jerusalem (acts 20:6-21:15). 1. troas. luke and paul were five days in reaching troas, from philippi, where they found a number of the brethren who had preceded them (acts 20:6, compare acts 20:4-6). seven days were spent at troas (acts 20:6). we have here the record of how the disciples spent the sabbath day in breaking bread together and in listening to the preaching of paul. (acts 20:7-12). this last day here came near being marred by eutychus meeting his death, when he fell down from the third loft. but paul was there and eutychus's life was spared. the meeting did not break up until the next morning, so interested were they in talking over "the way." 2. troas to miletus (acts 20:13-15). paul's company went by ship first to assos, where paul met them; he having covered the distance of about twenty miles on foot. at assos paul joined the company on the ship and they sailed from assos to mitylene. "and we sailed thence," says luke, "and came the next day over against chios; and the next day we arrived at samos, and tarried at trogyllium; and the next day we came to miletus." 3. at miletus (acts 20:17-38) paul sent for the elders of the ephesian church to come to him. when they came he spoke to them in a very touching and tender way. this address has been divided into four parts: (a) what was behind paul; he called them to witness that he had been faithful in declaring to them the full gospel of jesus christ, repentance toward god and faith in the lord jesus christ. (b) what was before paul; he said that in every city the holy ghost witnessed that bonds and afflictions awaited him. (c) what was before the elders of the ephesian church; it was theirs to take care of the flock over which they presided and "to feed the church of god." (d) commendation of the elders to god in their good work. (e) paul's earnest prayer for their welfare. (f) the farewell words. 4. miletus to cã¦sarea and jerusalem (acts 21:1-15) by way of coos, rhodes, patara, tyre, and cã¦sarea. at tyre there was a wait of seven days and a change of ships; in this city it was testified to paul that he should not go up to jerusalem. at the parting, when paul and his company took ship to go to cã¦sarea, the disciples of tyre came out to see them off and all kneeled down on the shore and prayed. at cã¦sarea where paul's company tarried many days, it was again made known to paul by the holy ghost that bonds and imprisonment awaited him at jerusalem, but still he pressed on saying, "the will of the lord be done." arriving in jerusalem they were gladly received by the brethren. questions what was the method of evangelizing the ancient world? how did the three missionary journeys differ from each other? what can be said of the chief city in which paul spent so much of the time of this journey? time and extent of this journey? what epistles were written? give the chief incidents of the itinerary; through galatia and phrygia; in ephesus; through macedonia and greece; the return voyage. ii. paul's journeys _scripture, acts 13:1-28:31_ study vi jerusalem to rome _acts 21:17-28:31_ analysis +this journey+--from jerusalem to rome. the seven speeches. the writings. time and extent. the historical connections. +paul at jerusalem+--the return to jerusalem. the meeting with james and the elders of the church. the temple riot. the speech of paul to the rioters. before the jewish council. paul comforted by god. conspiracy of jewish fanatics. +paul at cã¦sarea+--the first defense, before jewish accusers and the roman governor felix. second defense, before felix. third defense, before festus. fourth defense, before festus and king agrippa ii. +the voyage to rome+--cã¦sarea to myra. myra to melita. melita to rome. +paul at rome+--testifying to the jews. testifying to the gentiles. incidental notices of the imprisonment. the further travels of paul. ii. paul's journeys _scripture, acts 13:2-28:31_ study vi jerusalem to rome _scripture, acts 21:11-28:31_ this journey _scripture, acts 21:17-28:31_ +from jerusalem to rome.+--this portion of the book of the acts comprises more than one quarter of the whole, or seven and a half chapters. there must have been some important purpose to be served by thus relating so fully the incidents of this period in paul's life; for luke elsewhere narrates only the incidents of the missionary journeys which are of great interest. it may be that his purpose was to show, with the full connecting incidents, how clearly and strongly paul testified, to the jews in the temple (acts 22:1-23), and before the roman tribunal (acts 25:13, 14, 26; 26:1-32), that jesus was the christ. jesus himself, before his death, gave the same testimony to the sanhedrin (matt. 26:63, 64; mark 14:61, 62; luke 22:67-69), and the roman tribunal (john 18:33-37). the testimony of paul was further carried to imperial rome, the capital of the world (acts 28:17-24). +the seven speeches.+--the last recorded addresses of the great apostle are a striking feature of this period. they show his faith after it had been tried and tested in his toilsome years of missionary labors. they reveal the courage and character of the man in that they were given when he was in bonds and in imminent peril of his life. 1. the speech before the jewish mob in the temple (acts 22:1-29) in which paul tells the jews how he was changed from a persecutor to a believer in christ. he relates also the story of his conversion. 2. the speech before the jewish council (acts 22:30; 23:1-10) in which he creates confusion by raising the question of the resurrection. but the provocation was great for the high-priest had commanded that paul be smitten on the mouth when he began to speak. 3. the speech before felix, the roman governor (acts 24:10-22) in which he makes his defense against jewish accusers, and affirms his belief in the new "way" and in the resurrection. 4. the speech before felix and brasilia, his wife, (acts 24:24-27). paul, being sent for by felix to tell him of his faith in christ, reasons "of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." 5. the speech before festus the roman governor (acts 25:7-11) in which paul appeals to cã¦sar. 6. the speech before festus, the roman governor, and king agrippa and his wife, bernice, (acts 25:13; 26:1-32). here paul again relates the story of his conversion and shows that jesus is the christ. 7. the speech before the chief jews in rome (acts 28:17-31) showing that jesus is the christ. +the writings.+--during the two years' imprisonment of paul in cã¦sarea we have no account of any epistles written by him. but when he arrives in rome he again begins to indite those writings which have made his name so famous. from his prison in rome he sent out four letters which have been called, "the epistles of the first imprisonment"; colossians, philemon, ephesians, and philippians (see chapter 9). for profound expositions of the christian doctrines, lofty ethical teaching, and mellowness of feeling they stand unequalled. +time and extent.+--paul arrived in jerusalem in 58 a.d. he was imprisoned two years in cã¦sarea, 58 to 60 a.d. the voyage to rome was in the winter of 60 and 61 a d. he was imprisoned in rome two years, 61 to 63 a.d. in extent the journey which paul took from cã¦sarea to rome was about 2,300 miles. +the historical connections.+--nero was emperor of rome (since 54 a.d.). felix was procurator of judea from 51 to 60 a.d., when he was succeeded by festus. we fix the date of paul's going to rome by the fact that when festus came in 60 a.d., he made his appeal to cã¦sar. paul at jerusalem +the return+ to jerusalem (acts 21:17-23:23) was at the feast of pentecost when it was crowded with strangers from all parts of the world. paul had been warned not to come back to this city (acts 21:10-14) and it might have been possible for him to have remained away, passing the last years of his life in high honor and peace as the great apostle and head of the gentile churches. but he seems to have felt it incumbent upon him to return to jerusalem and testify for his faith (acts 21:14), and to carry alms (acts 24:17). paul was now about sixty years of age and for more than ten years had been engaged in the most arduous missionary labors, enduring stonings, beatings, and contumelies of all kinds, for the sake of preaching jesus christ. more than twenty years had elapsed since his conversion; and before his well-known three missionary journeys he had been actively engaged in the work which he loved so well. in his body he must have borne the marks of these incessant labors, but his spirit was as fresh and undaunted as ever. whatever awaited him in jerusalem he was ready for it. +the meeting with james and the elders of the church+ (acts 21:17-25) seems to have been a pleasant one. paul told his story of the wonders wrought in the gentile world, and god was glorified, but there seems to have been a certain constraint upon the company. paul was well known everywhere as an exponent of that liberty in christ by which the gentiles when they became christians were not obliged to become jews and obey the laws of moses. we find the elders, while freely admitting the binding nature of the decision of the jerusalem council upon this matter, advising him to show the many thousands of jews who believed and kept the law, that he himself still held to the observance of the law. hence the urgency with which they requested him to purify himself in the temple, with certain men who had a vow, so that the jews might see that he was not a renegade. the consequences of this advice soon became evident. +the temple riot and paul's imprisonment+ (acts 21:26-39).--when the days of purification for his companions were almost completed some jews of asia saw him and at once raised a great tumult. it is a wonder that he was not seen and recognized earlier. doubtless the asian jews had been restrained in their own cities from wreaking their hatred upon paul to the full, by the strong arm of the roman magistrate. at once a great outcry was raised and paul would have fared badly if he had not been rescued by the roman soldiers, to be imprisoned by them. +the speech of paul to the rioters+ (acts 21:40-22:23).--he requested that he be permitted to speak to this angry crowd of fanatic jews, who were howling for his life. what would he say? what defense could he make? listen to him! he is telling the story of his life and conversion, on the way to damascus. he is glorifying jesus and urging them to believe in him. there is not one word about the indignities that have been heaped upon himself. this personal testimony in this city where paul had been the chief persecutor was wonderful. but as the jews had demanded the life of christ, when he was upon earth and testified to his mission, so now they demanded the life of paul. +before the jewish council+ (acts 22:24-23:10).--paul, rescued from the clutches of the mob, would have been scourged by the romans had he not declared himself a roman. on the morrow, taken before the sanhedrin, and seeing no hope of any justice being done him, he sets one party of it over against the other by declaring that he was a pharisee and "of the hope of the resurrection of the dead i am called in question." so great was the dissension that arose over this matter that paul was faring badly when he was rescued by the chief captain and his soldiers. +paul comforted by god+ (acts 23:10).--paul must have been quite worn out with the tumults and mobs of the last two days. the encouragement of god speaking to him and telling him to be of good cheer, and that as he had testified of him in jerusalem, he must also bear witness in rome, put a new heart in him. it had been paul's great desire to visit rome and preach christ in that city (rome 1:11-15; acts 19:21). +conspiracy of jewish fanatics+ (acts 23:10-30).--the mad hatred of the jews against paul is shown by more than forty men binding themselves under a curse to kill him. the astonishing thing about this conspiracy is that the conspirators showed what they proposed to do to the chief priests and elders and asked their aid to bring paul down for another examination that they might kill him. the plot was brought to naught by paul's nephew, who heard of it and told paul. this information was at once given to the chief captain, who determined to send paul away that night to the roman governor at cã¦sarea. it was a large escort, 200 legionaries, 200 light armed troops, skirmishers, and 70 cavalry, which was sent out with paul. this great company of soldiers showed the immanent danger in which paul stood at this time. paul at cã�sarea _scripture, acts 23:33-27:1_ paul now comes under roman jurisdiction and remains for two years (acts 24:27) a prisoner in cã¦sarea. he is not kept in close confinement and his friends are allowed to see him (acts 24:23). who came to see him of these friends and what they talked about luke does not tell us. our attention seems to be purposely directed to the defense which paul made of his faith and work before the roman governors, felix and festus, and the jewish king agrippa ii. as pilate had seen no just cause why christ should be condemned to death, so felix and festus, when paul had testified of his faith in christ before them, saw no reason why he should suffer the death penalty. +the first defense; before jewish accusers and the roman governor, felix+ (acts 23:33-24:23).--awaiting the coming of his accusers from jerusalem paul was kept in herod's judgment hall. after five days ananias, with the elders, and an orator, named tertullus, came to cã¦sarea, and charged paul with being "a mover of sedition among all the jews throughout the world, and a ring-leader of the sect of the nazarenes"; they also accused him of profaning the temple. paul being beckoned by the governor to speak replied in answer to the charges made against him: (a) that felix, who has been governor so long (since 51 a.d.), must know from personal knowledge, that he had not been engaged in any sedition and that this charge could not be proved against him. it had only been twelve days since he went up to jerusalem and a number of them had been spent in roman custody. during this period there had been no time to plot against the government. (b) while he worshipped god after the way that they called heresy, yet he believed all that was written in the law and the prophets. he had come he said "after many years to bring alms to my nation, and offerings." it was true that certain jews had found him "purified in the temple, neither with multitude, nor with tumult." these ought to have been present and to have testified to these things. (c) he denied that he had committed any sacrilege. when he was seized in the temple he was in the very act of performing a portion of the worship prescribed by the mosaic law. (d) the knowledge of those present "went no further than that they had heard him declare his belief in the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead" (acts 22:30-23:1-6). upon the conclusion of paul's argument, felix adjourned the case until lysias, the chief captain, should come down and give his testimony. _second defense; before felix and his wife, drusilla_ (acts 24:24-27).--this was evidently a private hearing of paul of his faith in christ. there was ample reason for the trembling of felix when paul "reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." felix was a notoriously unjust ruler who had taken bribes, murdered a high-priest and, relying upon the influence of his infamous brother pallas at rome, was steeped in crimes. he had induced his wife drusilla to desert her husband to marry him. felix showed his character when he sent for paul a number of times and communed with him, hoping to receive a bribe. when recalled to rome in consequence of repeated complaints of his misadministration of justice he, "willing to show the jews a pleasure, left paul bound." +third defense; before festus, the new governor+ (acts 25:1-12).--festus, josephus tells us, was one of the best procurators of judea. he was appointed by nero in the year 60 a.d., and died two years after this. he is importuned by "the high-priest and the chief of the jews, as soon as he takes office, to send paul back to jerusalem (in order that he might be killed on the way thither). festus replies that they are to come to cã¦sarea and there make their accusations against paul. when they are come and festus sits on the judgment seat they make "many and grievous complaints against paul which they could not prove." paul's answer is: neither against the law of the jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against cã¦sar, have i offended in anything at all." but festus showed, notwithstanding his many good traits, a decided leaning toward paul's accusers. when therefore festus asked paul if he would go back to jerusalem and be there judged before the sanhedrin, paul recognizes the hopelessness of his case and exercised his right as a roman citizen in taking an appeal to the judgment seat of cã¦sar. this right of appeal was one of the most important prerogatives of the roman citizen; he had only to say the word, "appello" and proceedings must at once be stopped; his case must go to the court of the emperor. in exercising this appeal paul very justly said that if he had done anything worthy of death he was willing to die, but if the charges made against him by the jewish high-priest and elders were not true he ought not to be delivered up to them. +fourth defense; before festus and king agrippa ii.+--in acts 25:13-27 we have an account of the visit of jewish king agrippa ii. to festus and the statement of the latter in regard to the case of paul. festus is at a loss what to write about the prisoner, to the imperial court (acts 25:25-27), the accusations of the jews having failed of proof. to send a prisoner to cã¦sar and not be able to state clearly what his crime was might involve festus in difficulties. agrippa, as a jew, might be able to give some light upon this matter. the question seemed to be in regard to religious freedom. rome did not allow religious liberty. the jewish religion, however, was licensed as one of the forms under which men were allowed to worship god in the roman empire. agrippa might be able to solve this question as to whether paul was or was not within his legal rights and the christianity which he professed be as legal as judaism. paul in his argument (acts 26:1-29) before festus and king agrippa ii., took the ground that christianity, as an outgrowth of judaism, had a legal status. paul said that he preached that the messiah had come in the person of jesus christ and this was the one whom moses and the prophets had foretold, (a) paul's introduction is very courteous. he recognizes king agrippa as well versed "in all customs and questions which are among the jews." (b) he declares his early life to be well known, as a jew, and, of the strictest sect, a pharisee. (c) he stands accused because he believes that the messiah, whom all jews are praying may come, has come. (c) here, as prof. lindsay says, in his commentary on the acts, "agrippa may by look, word, or gesture have suggested, a crucified messiah! and paul have answered, no, but a risen redeemer! is it incredible that god should raise the dead?" then paul continues saying, that he himself was an enemy of christ at first. (d) paul proceeds with his argument, giving his personal testimony, how this risen messiah had appeared to him on the way to damascus and what he had said to him. (e) then he shows how it had been foretold by the prophets and moses that christ should suffer "and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should show forth light unto the people, and to the gentiles." the argument is over and after certain remarks, by festus and agrippa which are characteristic of both men, there is a conference and a decision rendered by the roman governor and jewish king, "that this man doeth nothing worthy of death or of bonds." but the appeal to cã¦sar cannot be set aside and paul must go to rome. the voyage to rome _scripture, acts 21:1-28:31_ paul now begins his long delayed trip to rome not, however, as he expected a free man, but as a prisoner. he comes finally to rome and there testifies of his faith in christ. his native force of character and christian graces bring him to the front upon this voyage and in the time of shipwreck he takes over the command. three ships convey him to rome, one of which is cast away on the island of melita; if we follow the fortunes of these three ships this section of acts may be divided into three parts: +cã¦sarea to myra+ (a city of lycia) or the fortunes of paul upon the first ship (acts 27:1-5). aristarchus and luke were the companions who embarked with the great apostle upon a ship of adramyttium. paul was in charge of julius, "a centurion of augustus's band." the first stop was at sidon where paul was given "liberty to go unto his friends and refresh himself." the ship then sailed for the city of myra in lycia passing to the east and north of the island of cyprus. +myra to the island of melita+, or the fortunes of paul upon the second ship (27:6-28:10). arrived at the city of myra the whole company changed ships, re-embarking in a large ship which was probably engaged in the grain carrying trade between alexandria in egypt and rome. this portion of the voyage was full of difficulties from the beginning. from myra to cnidus (a peninsula which projected from the carian coast having cos on the north and rhodes on the south) the progress against baffling winds was slow. the first stop was made at fair havens, a place upon the southern coast of crete (the modern candia). it was here that paul foretold the serious danger to the ship if the voyage should be continued. but the centurion taking the advice of the master and owner of the ship, and because the harbour "was not commodious to winter in," determined to make an attempt to reach phenice (a harbour west of crete and upon the same side of the island). the adventures that befell the ship's company, and, the misfortune that came to the ship, in the terrible fourteen days that followed after the departure from fair havens are best understood through the graphic language of luke, an eye witness (acts 27:14-44 should be read carefully in this connection). it is in this time of trial that paul steps forth and shows his mastery over men. comforted himself by "the angel of god" he comforts others in declaring that no harm shall come to the lives of those in the ship. in the midst of this great storm he alone is calm and able to insist that his companions keep up their courage and strength, and not to give away to despair. the island of melita (the modern malta), where the shipwreck took place, lies directly south of sicily. the place where the great apostle was cast ashore is now known as st. paul's bay. the inhabitants of the island received the ship's company "with no little kindness" and paul engaged here in a healing ministry, curing the father of publius, the chief man of the island, of a fever and many others of diseases. in whatever place or circumstances paul comes he at once begins to exercise his christian gifts. +the island of melita to rome+, or the adventures of paul on the third ship (acts 28:11-16). three months were spent at melita. then paul and the company embarked on another alexandrian grain ship for puteoli, "eight miles southwest of naples and the principal harbour south of rome in paul's day." "it was the port at which the egyptian grain ships usually unloaded." there were two stops made on the way to puteoli, one at syracuse in sicily and the other at rhegium, at the southern point of italy. at puteoli paul found christian brethren with whom he remained for seven days. the roman christians came but to meet paul at apii forum, forty-three miles, and the three taverns, thirty-three miles from rome. this expression of love and interest in him and his welfare greatly cheered the heart of the apostle. paul at rome +testifying to the jews+ (acts 28:17-27).--after an interval of only three days paul called the chief of the jews together, and explained to them why he had been sent to rome. he declared that he had no accusation to make against his nation to the roman authorities, but that he was a prisoner on account of his advocacy of the hope of israel fulfilled in jesus christ. but the jews replied that they had had no word about paul from jerusalem. desiring to hear more of what paul had to say about the christians they appointed a day in which they would hear paul at his lodgings. this hearing was evidently very thorough, and the usual division was made of believing and unbelieving jews. +testifying to the gentiles+ (acts 28:28).--paul receiving no sufficient response to his words from the jews now turns his attention to the gentiles. +the two years' imprisonment+ (acts 28:30, 31) was spent in preaching the gospel of jesus christ, in his own hired house, and receiving all who came to him. although paul was a prisoner he was allowed complete freedom of speech. +incidental notices of this imprisonment+ are found in the four epistles which were written from rome during its continuance. prof. j. r. lumby, d.d. (acts, cambridge bible for schools and colleges) says: "we know from first to last the prisoner's chain hurt paul (eph. 3:1; 4:1; phil. 1:13, 16; col. 4:18; philem. 1, 9, 10), and that his cause was at times an object of much anxiety (phil. 2:23, 24). we also learn from the same letters that besides luke and aristarchus (acts 27:2; 28:15) he had also the fellowship, for some time at least, of tychicus, who (eph. 6:21) was the bearer of his letter to ephesus; of timothy, whom (phil. 1:1; col. 1:1; philem. 1) he joins with himself in the greeting to the churches of philippi and colossã¦ and also in that to philemon. in the former of these churches timothy had been a fellow laborer with the apostle. epaphroditus came with the philippian contributions to the aid of the imprisoned apostle (phil. 4:18). onesimus found out paul when in flight from his master he made his way to rome (col. 4:9; philem. 10). mark, the cousin of barnabas, was also there and another jewish convert, jesus, called justus, of whom we only know that the apostle considered him worthy to be called a fellow worker unto the kingdom of god (col. 4:11). epaphras from the churches of laodicea and hieropolis, had come to visit paul, and to bring him greetings doubtless of the christians there, and carry back some words of earnest council and advice from the roman prisoner (col. 4:12, 13). last of all demas was there to be mentioned as having forsaken the good way through love of this present world (col. 4:14; 2 tim. 4:10). more than this and the few words in verses thirty and thirty-one, of acts 28, we do not know of this first imprisonment." his spirit however was unsubdued through all his hardships and he was ever exhorting the disciples of christ to rejoice in him (phil. 2:1, 2; 4:4). +the further travels of paul+ are considered in study 10. questions how much space does the account of this journey occupy in the acts, and why is so much given to it? what do the seven speeches of paul signify? what epistles did paul write while at rome? give the time and extent of this journey. give the historical connections. why did paul return to jerusalem? give an account of his meeting with james and the elders; the temple riot; his speech to the rioters; and his speech before the jewish council. how was paul comforted by god? what was the conspiracy of the jewish fanatics? how long did paul remain a prisoner at cã¦sarea? give an account of his first defense before his jewish accusers, and the roman governor felix; his second defense before felix; his third defense before festus; and his fourth defense before festus and king agrippa ii. give an account of the voyage to rome; cã¦sarea to myra; myra to melita; and melita to rome. what did paul testify to the jews and gentiles in rome? where do we find incidental notices of this imprisonment? iii. paul's writings study vii the future of christ's kingdom first group of epistles first and second epistles to the thessalonians analysis +introduction to the epistles of paul+--epistolary writings. some reasons for paul's writings. qualifications of paul. how the epistles are best understood. titles and groups. common plan. supreme purpose. +the future of christ's kingdom+--the first group of epistles. the chief doctrinal point. +the first epistle to the thessalonians+--the founding of the church. occasion, time, and place of writing. contents. analysis. +the second epistle to the thessalonians+--occasion, time, and place of writing. principal divisions and chief points. iii. paul's writings study vii the future of christ's kingdom first group of epistles the first and second epistles to the thessalonians introduction to the epistles of paul +epistolary writings.+--the new testament is composed of twenty-seven books, twenty-one of which are epistles. of this latter number thirteen are ascribed to paul. it is thus seen how largely the new testament is made up of epistles and how many of these are attributed to the great apostle. in the letters of men of great prominence and power of any age we get closer to the real condition of the affairs of that age than by any other means. in this way, we get information at first hand from the participants in the events of which they write. it is fortunate for us that we have this first hand material with which to deal, when we come to study the early growth and development of christianity. by means of the new testament epistles (which are real letters and written with a definite purpose in view) we look directly into the faith, the customs, and practices of the early christian churches. we see how they were organized and how they conducted their services. we see the marvelous changes wrought in the lives and characters of the converts. we note that the triumphs of faith were won through a belief in the divine son of god and the power of the holy ghost. the struggles and difficulties of these early christians in coming out of heathenism are depicted in a masterly way. paul, in his endeavor to guide aright the churches, of which he had been the spiritual father, shows what he believes and teaches about god, the holy ghost, jesus christ, sin, redemption, and the future state of the soul. in these letters the incidental and indirect references to the doctrines taught, and the customs of the early churches, are as valuable as the direct. +some reasons for paul's writings.+--the apostle was the founder of churches over a large area of territory. he soon realized, however, that it was impossible to visit them as often as he desired and as frequently as he ought. many of the converts had come out of heathenism and needed doctrinal and ethical instruction in the way of christ. they also needed encouragement, comfort, and sometimes sharp correction for outbreaking sins. as means of communication were open and easy along the well kept roman roads, what was more natural than that paul should begin to write letters which were not only to be read by the particular churches to which they were addressed, but passed on to the other churches. +qualifications of paul.+ 1. intellectual. he was not only pre-eminent as a missionary, but even more remarkable as a writer. "he was the greatest thinker of his age, if not of any age, who in the midst of his outward labors was producing writings which have ever since been among the mightiest intellectual forces of the world and are still growing." 2. spiritual. he had been converted in a wonderful way and had received a special revelation from christ (acts 9:3-15; 1 cor. 15:3; gal. 1:11, 12). he had been called to his great work among the gentiles by christ and the holy ghost (acts 9:15; 13:2). he was absolutely absorbed in the work of christ and in making known his gospel. +how the epistles are best understood.+--each one should be studied in the light of the occasion which called it forth and in connection with the church, group of churches, or the individual to which it is addressed. +titles and groups.+--the thirteen epistles fall naturally into four groups; in each of which is set forth some great doctrinal and ethical truth. first group, first and second thessalonians. "these epistles are short, simple, and practical. they may be regarded as illustrating paul's earlier missionary instruction to his converts--hence the name 'missionary epistles,' sometimes applied to them. they treat of but one doctrinal subject--the second coming of christ." it should be borne in mind, however, that paul speaks of jesus christ as "the lord," "our lord," about twenty-five times in first thessalonians; this shows how thoroughly he believed in the deity of christ. second group, galatians, first and second corinthians and romans. "this group is the great repertory of paul's doctrinal and ethical teaching. galatians and romans deal chiefly with his doctrine of justification by faith. they are designed to disprove the current jewish teaching (which was invading the churches) that men might be saved by obedience to the mosaic law. on the contrary paul maintained that the sole basis of salvation is the grace of god to be appropriated by faith on man's part." third group, colossians, philemon, ephesians, and philippians. "this group is predominantly christological. errors had invaded the churches addressed, which tended to degrade the person and work of christ, and the apostle writes with a view to showing his pre-eminence and saving power, so that the readers may be induced to keep their allegiance to christ and his gospel." fourth group, first timothy, titus and second timothy. "these are called 'the pastoral epistles,' and were designed to instruct timothy and titus as superintendents of the churches in ephesus and crete, and were thus semi-official in character. but they have also a strong personal element and a tone of warm sympathy and affection." the above characterization of the four groups of these epistles by prof. g. b. stevens is brief and to the point. +common plan.+--the plan in all of paul's epistles, with slight variations, is much the same. the outlines of these letters fall uniformly into six divisions. "first, a greeting sometimes very brief, sometimes extending over several verses, in which he generally manages with consummate skill to strike the keynote of the whole letter. secondly, a thanksgiving to god for the christian gifts and graces of his converts. thirdly, a doctrinal part, in which he argues out or explains some great topic of christian truth, specially required by the condition of the church to which he is writing. fourthly, a practical section, in which he applies to daily moral duties the great doctrines which he has developed. fifthly, personal messages, salutations, and details. sixthly, a brief autograph conclusion to ratify the genuineness of the entire letter." +the supreme purpose+ was to make known the divine christ as the savior of all men, both jew and gentile (1 cor. 2:1-16; col. 1:9-29; phil. 2:9-11; acts 26:22, 23; rom. 3:9-31). the future of christ's kingdom first group of epistles the first and second epistles to the thessalonians +the first group of epistles.+--the first and second epistles to the thessalonians are the earliest writings of paul of which we have any certain knowledge. he may possibly have written earlier epistles, which are now lost. he speaks of writing a salutation "in every epistle" (2 thess. 3:17), "with mine own hand," which may imply that he had already written a number of epistles. in regard to later writings he also speaks of an epistle (1 cor. 5:9) to the corinthians written to them before that now known as first corinthians and of one written to the laodiceans (col. 4:16); of these writings we have no record save these incidental notices, if these notices refer to lost epistles. +the chief doctrinal point+ considered in this group is "the future of christ's kingdom" as it was related to his second coming (1 thess. 4:13-5:9, compare 2 thess. 2:1-17). it was natural that, after so great a manifestation of the divine christ, the earlier believers in him should make much of the promise that he said he would come again, and amid their troubles and difficulties the strong tendency would be to think that second coming was close at hand. it is a well known fact however that the near approach of a great joy or sorrow unfits men and women for the ordinary pursuits of life. paul, in his first letter to the members of the church of thessalonica, spoke of the second coming of christ to relieve their minds of a worry over those who had died since he had preached to them (lest they should not see the lord when he came), and also to encourage them in their faith (1 thess. 4:13-18). it seems that paul was taken to mean by what he wrote that christ's coming was near at hand. the believers in christ, in thessalonica, began to give up their ordinary avocations and pursuits in speedy anticipation of this great event. he therefore takes occasion in his second letter to the church to correct the impression that christ's coming (2 thess. 2:1-17) was near at hand. he exhorts them to true and faithful living in the sight of their lord jesus christ (2 thess. 3:1-18) as the best way to serve their divine master. the principle of the true christian life is here set forth in a masterly way; it holds good for all time and all peoples. the first epistle to the thessalonians +the founding of the church at thessalonica+ (acts 17:1-10).--paul was on his second missionary journey and this church was the second which he organized in europe. he entered into the synagogue at thessalonica and three sabbath days reasoned with the jews out of the scriptures, "opening and alleging, that christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead; and that this jesus, whom i preach to you, is christ" (acts 17:3). through this preaching a few of the jews believed "and of the devout greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few." it appears from this account that the church was mostly made up of gentiles. but through the opposition of the jews all the city was set in an uproar and paul was sent away by night to berea. +occasion, time, and place of writing.+--paul left thessalonica unwillingly for he had a great affection for his converts in this city. twice he endeavored to return, but was prevented from doing so (2:17, 18). when he reached athens (acts 17:15) he grew so anxious about the church at thessalonica that he sent timothy back to see how it prospered (3:1, 2). while timothy was gone on his mission paul went on to corinth (acts 18:1). here timothy found him when he returned with his report of the church (acts 18:5; 1 thess. 3:6). paul was greatly pleased with what timothy had to say about the converts. while enduring persecution they were standing fast in the lord and devoted to their faith in christ (3:7-13). the report which timothy brought was the occasion of the first letter to this church. the time was, in all probability, in the winter of 52-53 a.d., and the place of writing was at corinth, where paul remained for over a year and a half (acts 18:1, 11, 18). +contents.+--the first three chapters are of a personal character and show how dear to paul's heart were these converts of thessalonica. they also show the good record made for the short time since they had embraced christianity. but nothing could be more revolutionary in those days than to become a christian; therefore paul takes occasion to correct social, moral, and doctrinal faults and to instruct them more fully in the faith, in christ, which they professed. in the matter of doctrine paul mentions christ as "the lord," "our lord" about twenty-five times, showing his belief in and teaching of the deity of christ. in regard to christ's speedy second coming, of which many seem to have had a lively expectation so that they were troubled when some died lest these had lost their opportunity to see this glorious event, paul writes to reassure them that all believers, those who have died and those who are alive at that time, "will enter together and share equally in the blessings of christ's heavenly kingdom" (4:13-18). the epistle closes with exhortations to be joyful, thankful, and prayerful. +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. introduction (1:1-10). personal address and salutation. thanksgiving for their faith, love and hope in jesus christ and for their conversion. 2. narrative (2:1-4:12). how the gospel was given and how it was received at thessalonica. an account of paul's care and anxiety for the church. paul's prayer for their establishment in the faith of jesus christ. exhortation to abstain as followers of christ from impurity and fraud; to follow after holiness and brotherly love. 3. doctrinal (4:13-5:11). the second advent of christ. the parts which the dead and living will have when christ shall come again. the uncertainty of the time. the need of constant watchfulness. 4. practical (5:12-28). rules for the conduct of the church, its overseers and members. exhortation to be joyful, prayerful, and thankful. closing prayer that they may be preserved blameless unto the coming of the lord jesus christ. greeting and benediction. the second epistle to the thessalonians +occasion, time, and place of writing.+--what paul wrote about the second coming of christ, in the first epistle, seems to have been misunderstood by the church at thessalonica (1:7-3:11). then too there was probably a spurious epistle (and this may have occasioned much of the trouble) in circulation, in which paul is evidently made to declare that the day of christ is close at hand (2:2). he writes of this false epistle very vigorously that they be not troubled in spirit by a letter, "as from us, as that the day of christ is at hand." evidently some were neglecting their work, becoming impatient at the delay in christ's coming (3:5, 11, 12) and walking disorderly. the epistle opens, with an expression of thanks for the general condition of the church and that it was enduring persecutions and tribulations well (1:2-6). hence it is evident that some but not all of the church members were out of accord with an earnest sensible faith in christ. this epistle reflects certain conditions which paul had to meet in his work and shows how he sought to check any defections from right conceptions of true christian doctrine and life. in the second chapter paul shows that the "day of christ" may not speedily come, that certain other things must come to pass before it is revealed (compare matthew ch. 24), and that the true christian way is to stand fast always in the lord. in thus standing fast every believer will grow in faith and grace. the duties taught are "courage and faith under persecution and calmness and quiet industry in the presence of the greatest expectations." the time of writing was probably, a few months after that of the first epistle, in 53 a.d. the place of writing was corinth. +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. introduction (1:1-4). salutation. thanksgiving for the growth of faith in the thessalonian church. 2. doctrinal (1:5-2:17). the great day of the lord. the thessalonians seemingly misunderstood paul's first letter and he now more fully explains the second advent of christ. it will be a day of terrible retribution for the unbeliever but one of glory for all who trust in him. a warning is given not to think the day near at hand. certain things must first come to pass; "a falling away," "a man of sin," "signs and lying wonders." thanksgiving that the thessalonians have been chosen to salvation through the sanctification of the spirit. 3. conclusion (ch. 3). paul requests prayer for himself that "the word of the lord may have free course and be glorified" with him; he also desires that the lord may direct their "hearts into the love of god and into the patient waiting for christ." paul gives command to discipline the disorderly and that every man earn his own living. exhortation to be not weary in well doing. salutation and benediction. questions what can be said of epistolary writings; their place and usefulness? give some reasons for paul's writings. what were the qualifications of paul? how are the epistles best understood? what can be said of the four groups and their characteristics? what is the common plan? what is the supreme purpose? what can be said of the first group of epistles; first and second thessalonians? what is the chief doctrinal point? the first epistle; what can be said of the founding of the church at thessalonica? what can be said of the occasion, time, and place of writing? what are the contents? give the four parts of the principal divisions and chief points. the second epistle; what can be said of the occasion, time, and place of writing? give the three parts of the principal divisions and chief points. iii. paul's writings study viii the old faiths and the new second group of epistles galatians. first and second corinthians. romans. analysis +problems of early christianity+--the old faiths and the new. the great question. the jewish faith. the heathen faith. the new faith in christ. practical bearing upon present day living. the epistles of this group. +the epistle to the galatians+--the galatians. time of writing. occasion and purpose. principal divisions and chief points. +the epistles to the corinthians+--the church at corinth. the city of corinth. +the first epistle to the corinthians+--occasion and purpose. place and time. the supremacy of christ. principal divisions and chief points. +the second epistle to the corinthians+--occasion and purpose. place and time. principal divisions and chief points. +the epistle to the romans+--the church at rome. occasion and purpose. place and time. central thought. principal divisions and chief points. iii. paul's writings study viii the old faiths and the new second group of epistles galatians. first and second corinthians. romans. problems of early christianity +the old faiths and the new.+--in this second group of epistles, galatians, first and second corinthians, and romans, we enter upon a period of conflict in which christianity is being defined, and differentiated from judaism and heathenism. no great truth ever came into the world without a battle for its right to the attention of men. the new faith in christ made large claims for itself. it marked an advance upon judaism and maintained that in christ was fulfilled all the promises made by the prophets of the coming of the jewish messiah. it radically antagonized the heathen religions. it had a double task to win men out of judaism and heathenism. only by a careful study of these great doctrinal epistles, and the circumstances out of which they arose, can it be seen how really great was this task. +the great question+ was: "on what terms does god save men? does he owe salvation to any because of what they have done, or does he bestow it as an unmerited favor upon condition of trust and self-surrender?" paul maintained that the sole basis of salvation is the grace of god through jesus christ to be appropriated by faith on the part of man. this is still the great question. +the jewish faith+ had been long in the world. its prophets had two great themes, the messiah and the messianic kingdom. all israel, while observing feast and fast days, the precepts of the mosaic law and offering sacrifices, looked forward to the coming of the messiah and the establishment of his kingdom upon earth, as the supreme fulfillment of its hopes. it is the contention of paul in these epistles that this messiah has come in the person of jesus christ and fulfilled all the promises made to israel, and that, through faith in him, believers are released from the observance of the precepts of the mosaic law. there were two parties of jews who sought to check the advance of the early church, with its all sufficient savior. first, there were the jews who denied any and every claim of christ to be the messiah; of this party were the rioters who drove paul out of city after city and sought to kill him in the temple. second, there were the jewish christians who "asserted that their faith was judaism with a new prophet; that the law of moses and mosaic ceremonial practices were binding on christians as well as on unbelieving jews; that gentile believers must first become proselytes to judaism before they could become christians; and lastly that circumcision was the only gateway to baptism." with the first class of jews it was not so difficult to deal, for they were out and out antagonists, but the jewish christians, (who still clung to the jewish law) were constantly making trouble not only amongst the christian jews, who had fully come out from under the law of moses and expressed their faith in christ, but also among the christian gentiles who had come out of the heathen religions. the masterly arguments of paul, presented in galatians and romans, deal chiefly with the doctrine of justification by faith in jesus christ alone. in gal. 5:1-4 he calls the return to jewish belief and practice, "falling from grace." +the heathen faith.+--the people of the roman empire were idolaters. temples for the worship of idols occupied prominent positions in every city. some of them were very beautiful, from an architectural point of view. but the objects of worship, frequently, were of the basest sort. this worship caused a notorious laxness of view in regard to the relations between the sexes. this state of things is not overstated by paul in his epistle to the romans (1:18-23). it was this condition of idolatrous worship which led to the decision of the jerusalem council in regard to the gentile converts (acts 15:29). the christianity which paul taught called for a pure and upright life and a subjugation of human passion. we see the effects of former idolatrous lives manifesting themselves in the evils which paul sought to correct in his letters to the corinthians. it was no small conflict in which the great apostle to the gentiles engaged when he sought to cleanse, through christ, the base idolatrous hearts of the men of his times. +the new faith in christ.+--paul stands for spiritual freedom in christ and loyalty to him as divine lord without the necessity of observing the minute regulations of the jewish ritual. he insists upon purity of soul and outward life as opposed to the laxness of the idolaters. each individual soul is related to christ to whom it is responsible. +practical bearing upon present day living.+--the things contended for, the evils scored in these epistles may seem to belong to dead controversies, but they do not. while it is a fact that christianity has freed itself from judaism and the heathen religions have been conquered, the old evils still manifest themselves and the same remedies must be applied to them. many to-day will do works of the law (gal. 2:16) who have no use for christ, or his church, thinking in this way to buy their way to god. these are the old judaizers come to life again. they often know nothing and care less for spiritual things and heart righteousness. sensuality, and all its attendant evils, driven from the old heathen temples, manifests itself in many ways; it still seeks to array itself in beautiful garments that it may lure many to ruin. there is need of repeating over again the arguments of paul for a pure life lived in the faith of jesus christ, and the spiritual upbuilding of the soul through him. paul also insists upon good works as the outcome of faith, but faith must come first. +the epistles of this group were written+ on the third missionary journey. the epistle to the galatians +the galatians+ to whom this epistle was addressed; who were they? the name galatia was used in two ways. geographically to denote the country inhabited by the celtic tribes (who were descended from the gauls and who formerly inhabited the country we now call france). politically it meant the roman province which also included "psidia, lycaonia, and part of phrygia to the south of galatia proper." it has been a question which of the two paul intended to address in his letter. there are no particular names of churches which are specified. many scholars think that paul means to address his epistle to the churches of the roman province. in this case the letter would be sent to the churches of a wide area, and primarily addressed to those founded in the first missionary journey at antioch, iconium, derbe, and lystra (acts 14:1-28). luke speaks also of a region lying roundabout derbe and lystra where the gospel was preached on this first journey (acts 14:6). the passage in galatians (2:5) in which paul refers to the jerusalem council where he contended for the liberty in christ of the gentiles would naturally be taken to mean these first churches (however wide the application) as the jerusalem council was held at the close of the first missionary journey. the word galatia may be used in the narrower sense also by luke in speaking of the beginning of paul's second (acts 16:6) and third (acts 18:23) missionary journeys. it would be natural for the judaizers, who sought to turn back the converts of paul to judaism, to begin with the churches in south galatia first. +time of writing.+--the common opinion is that this epistle was written at ephesus, during paul's long stay there on his third missionary journey or between 54 and 56 a.d. some however would place the date earlier. +occasion and purpose.+--that which caused paul to write this first of his great doctrinal epistles was the teaching of certain judaizers who had found their way into the churches of galatia. they claimed that the jewish law was binding upon believers in christ, and declared that salvation was through works of the law. they insisted upon the rite of circumcision. paul's gospel and authority were disparaged. paul wrote this epistle for the purpose of showing that "faith in christ was the sole and sufficient condition of salvation." +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. introduction (1:1-10) salutation. subject of the epistle; the defection of the galatian churches. 2. the divine commission given to paul as an apostle (1:11-2:21). he makes a statement of his claims and gives a sketch of his life. the gospel he preached came not from man but through a revelation of jesus christ. all this is to show the authenticity of his claims. 3. doctrinal. justification is by faith (ch. 3-4). the galatian churches had received the spirit through faith and not by law; why should they turn back? the superiority of faith is shown by abraham's faith. the covenant of the promise of christ was before the law. the law is subordinate to faith, its purpose is to bring men to christ. there is serious danger in returning to the law. 4. practical. application of the doctrinal teaching (ch. 5-6:10). an exhortation to stand fast in the liberty of christ; this liberty excludes judaism. a warning against the abuse of christian liberty. the works of the flesh and the fruits of the spirit. sowing and reaping. 5. autograph conclusion (6:11-18). summary of the epistle. the glory of the apostle is in the cross of christ. benediction. the epistles to the corinthians +the church at corinth+ was founded during paul's second missionary journey (acts 18:1-18). when the apostle came to corinth he found a home with aquila and priscilla and worked with them at his trade as a tent-maker. he preached in corinth for over a year and a half. although paul was the means of converting crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, and his family, he had no large success with the jews and consequently turned to the gentiles. the gentiles gladly heard him and there was a great ingathering into the church. paul's sole purpose was to preach christ for he says, "i determined not to know anything among you, save jesus christ and him crucified" (1 cor. 2:2). +the city of corinth+ was the largest and most important city of greece. the commerce of the world flowed through its two harbours. the population consisted of greeks, jews, italians, and a mixed multitude; it was excitable, pleasure loving, and mercurial. in this city was held a perpetual vanity fair. the vices of the east and west met and clasped hands in the work of human degradation. the greek goddess aphrodite had a magnificent temple in which a thousand priestesses ministered to a base worship. while it was a center of wealth and fashion it was a city of gilded vice. in the philosophical schools there was an endless discussion about words and non-essentials and a strong tendency to set intellectual above moral distinctions. the first epistle to the corinthians +occasion and purpose.+-it was natural that the pressure of heathen customs and practices should be very great upon this young church. it was also to be expected that parties and divisions would arise. the immediate cause of this epistle was that strifes and divisions had arisen in the church. it was the reporting of these matters to paul by those "of the house of chloe" (1 cor. 1:11) that led him to write in the way in which he did. to settle the strifes of this church and to define the relations which christians should assume towards the political, religious, and domestic institutions of the heathen was a matter of no little delicacy and difficulty. the mastery of paul is shown in the laying down of principles, in accordance with the gospel of christ, that were effective not only for the corinthian church but which are applicable to-day to all such church difficulties and the conduct of christians towards non-christians. +a former epistle.+--previous to the one now called "the first," had been written to the corinthians (1 cor. 5:9) and "it appears that the church had replied and requested further explanation and instruction on certain points" (5:11; 7:1; 8:1; 12:1; 16:12). +place and time.+--this epistle was written during paul's long stay in ephesus (acts 19:10; 1 cor. 16:19) and the date is in all probability 57 a.d. +the supremacy of christ+ over all parties, his love as the touchstone of all service, and his resurrection are the great subjects of this epistle. +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. salutation and thanksgiving (1:1-9). 2. correction of divisions of party spirit (1:10-4:21). it having been reported to paul that four parties were striving for mastery in the church and there was great contention; he rebukes the party spirit, sets forth the principles of his teaching, and declares that christ alone is the center of the christian system. faith stands not in the wisdom of men. the only foundation is in christ. 3. correction of moral disorders (ch. 5-7). in consequence of the close contact of the church with heathendom grave moral evils found their way into the fold. (a) the case of an incestuous person, paul writes that such a person is to be expelled because the leaven of evil separates men from christ. (b) the sin of going to law in heathen courts. christians ought to settle their own disputes. (c) sins of the body. no man should commit a sin as his body is the temple of the holy ghost. (d) advice concerning marriage. the purpose of the gospel is not to antagonize but to christianize the natural relations between society and the believer. 4. correction of social and ecclesiastical misconceptions (ch. 8-14). (a) the question of eating of meats offered in idol worship is decided on the ground of love rather than knowledge. (b) the preacher of the gospel has the right to be supported by the church. (c) the true christian liberty to be observed in the matters of eating and drinking. the proper celebration of the lord's supper. (d) the use and abuse of spiritual gifts. (e) the greatness of love (ch. 13) the touchstone of all is love. (f) the end to be sought in every spiritual gift is the edification and upbuilding of the church. 5. the true doctrine of the resurrection (ch. 15), paul lays great stress upon this doctrine. "if christ be not risen from the dead, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain." 6. parting directions, exhortations, and salutations (ch. 16). the second epistle to the corinthians +occasion and purpose.+--paul was quite anxious about the reception of his first letter by the corinthian church. not long after its dispatch he sent titus (2 cor. 2:13) to see how it was received and to note whether the strife of parties had ceased, the incestuous person had been dealt with, and other matters properly adjusted. while titus was absent on this mission paul left ephesus on account of the riot made by demetrius and his fellows (acts 19:23-41; 20:1) and went over into macedonia (acts 20:1). on the way, at troas, he expected to meet titus and was greatly disappointed in not seeing him (2 cor. 2:12-13). it is evident that he met titus in macedonia and received from him the report of the condition of the corinthian church and the manner in which his first letter had been received and acted upon (2 cor. 7:5-16). again it is evident, from the epistle, that titus brought back the encouraging news to the apostle that the incestuous person had been dealt with and had repented, and that, as a whole, the church stood loyally by him, but still there were some who were making trouble. it was this report that was the occasion of the second epistle. prof. g. b. stevens says in regard to this letter, it reflects the mingled joy and grief of the apostle. the earlier chapters are predominately cheerful and commendatory, the latter mainly sorrowful and severe. in the light of these facts the letter may be described as threefold: first, to encourage and instruct the church (1-7). second, to induce the corinthians to make a collection for the poor judean churches (8-9). third, to defend the writer's apostolic authority against the calumnies of his enemies (10-13). +place and time.+--there are a number of references by the apostle which show that this epistle was written in macedonia (1:15, 16; 2:12, 13; 8:1; 9:2) and shortly after paul came out of asia (1:8, compare acts 20:1, 2). the time probably 57 a.d., the same year in which the first epistle was written. +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. salutation (1:1, 2) 2. paul's principles and ways of working (1:3-7:16). in these chapters the apostle endeavors to remove any feeling of bitterness which may have been produced in the corinthian church by his dealing with a certain evil in the previous epistle. he also vindicates his spiritual ministry. he declares his love for the church and its spiritual advancement. he also declares that he has put off his visit to corinth that he might not come in sorrow. he rejoices in the good news brought by titus. while he is weak in body, the power is of god and the ministry is a communication of the spirit. he asserts that he is sustained by the hope of the future life. he earnestly exhorts the church to receive and live the gospel which he preached to them, for separation from the world and unity with god. in chapter seven he rejoices that they have received his words so well. 3. the collection for the poor christians in jerusalem (8-9). paul here speaks of the liberality of the macedonian churches and the work of titus who is sent to forward the contributions. 4. paul's vindication of his authority as an apostle (10:1-13:10). he has been attacked in his person, character, and teaching by parties in the corinthian church who would overthrow his authority and ruin the church. these four chapters are a magnificent setting forth of his apostolic claims. (a) his power and glory are not in his bodily presence or his letters but in the spiritual might of god. (b) his preaching is the pure gospel of christ. in bodily labor, trials, and persecutions he has excelled them all (ch. 11). (c) he has the highest qualifications (in visions and revelations) but he will glory only in his infirmities. his object is not to boast but to put an end to the disorders in the church. (d) the apostle declares his intention to visit the church. by the power of christ he will not spare the evil. his desire is only for righteousness. 5. farewell greetings and messages (13:11-14). the epistle to the romans +the church at rome.+--when and by whom this church was founded it is not known. it is thought that the "strangers of rome" (acts 2:10), who were present at the day of pentecost when the great manifestation of the holy spirit took place, carried back the good news and that this was the beginning of the church. it was composed of both jews and gentiles for paul addresses both classes (rom. 1:13; 9:24; 11:13; 2:17; 4:1; 9:13; 7:1; 9:1-5). this church seems to have made rapid progress (1:8). paul was evidently acquainted with some of the roman christians (16:3-15). +occasion and purpose.+--this epistle grew out of a desire on the part of paul to see rome (acts 19:21; rom. 1:11; 15:24-28). as this would be his first visit it was no more than a courteous act that he should write to the church of this intention. again as the christians in rome might have heard false and distorted reports of the gospel which he preached, paul takes care to clearly and logically set forth the principles and doctrines which he was teaching. this letter then becomes very important as the summing up of the experience and teaching of many years of service in the cause of jesus christ. +place and time+.--this epistle was in all probability written from corinth during paul's stay there in the course of his third missionary journey 58 a.d. (compare acts 19:21; 20:1-3; rom. 16:23; 1 cor. 1:14; 2 tim. 4:20). +central thought.+--the theme is justification by faith and not by works. there are four main positions. first, all are guilty before god. second, all need a savior. third, christ died for all. fourth, we are all (through faith) one body in him. the thought may be put in other ways, but all to the same purpose. the doctrine of sin, and the doctrine of grace; or the universality of sin and the universality of grace. +principal divisions and chief points.+--there are two great sections, doctrinal (ch. 1-11), and practical, (ch. 12-16). 1. introduction (1:1-15). paul's salutation to and thanksgiving for (the faith of) the roman church. 2. doctrinal (1:16-11:36). (a) the great theme stated, justification by faith. (b) all have sinned and all are guilty, gentiles without the law and jews with the law have failed to attain righteousness. (c) righteousness for all comes through faith in jesus christ and not by law or works; the universality of grace. abraham was justified by faith (ch. 4). the blessedness of justification by faith in jesus christ (ch. 5). (d) objections against free grace that it will multiply sin or discredit the law are taken up and answered. thorough union with christ on the part of the believer annihilates sin and the law has no more any power. the believer justified by his faith in christ is dead to the law while quickened to a new and holy life by the spirit. (e) the apparent rejection of israel is the problem considered in chapters 9-11. the nation sought righteousness through the law and not by faith. (f) christ is the end of the law for righteousness. (g) the restoration of israel. 3. practical (12-16). (a) advice and exhortation. the christian's duty to the church and his conduct outside of it; duty to the state and society; duty of toleration and supreme trust in christ. (b) salutations. paul's apology and explanation for addressing the roman church. greetings to various persons and farewell words. questions what can be said of the old faiths and the new? what was the great question? the jewish faith; how fulfilled in christ? what can be said of the heathen faith? what of the new faith in christ? what is the practical bearing of this group of epistles upon every day life? when written? give some account of the galatians. when was the epistle to the galatians written? what was the occasion and purpose? give the principal divisions and chief points. what can be said of the epistles to the corinthians? when was the church founded? give some account of the city. what was the occasion and purpose of writing the first epistle to the corinthians? what was the place and time? what the thought of christ. give the principal divisions and chief points. what was the occasion and purpose of writing the second epistle? place and time? give the principal divisions and chief points. when was the church at rome founded? what was the occasion and purpose of writing the epistle to the romans? time and place? central thought? give the principal divisions and chief points. iii. paul's writings study ix the supremacy of christ third group of epistles colossians. philemon. ephesians. philippians. analysis +the question at issue+--the supremacy of christ. reason for raising this question. the answer to the question. present day attention. +the writing of the epistles+--the interest. the sending of the epistles. +the epistle to the colossians+--the church at colossã¦. the occasion. central thought. time and place of writing. principal divisions and chief points. +the epistle to philemon+--occasion. principal divisions and chief points. +the epistle to the ephesians+--the city and the church. title and time of writing. subject. principal divisions and chief points. +the epistle to the philippians+--the city and the church. occasion. objects. time of writing. principal divisions and chief points. iii. paul's writings study ix the supremacy of christ third group of epistles colossians. philemon. ephesians. philippians. the question at issue +the supremacy of christ.+--these epistles mark a new stage in the writings of paul. the great question discussed in the second group of epistles was in regard to the terms of salvation. the question now at issue (in colossians, ephesians, philippians) is: what is the nature, the rank, the dignity of the mediator of salvation? is he one of a series of saviors? does he belong to some angelic order (col. 2:18), or, does he stand supreme (col. 2:8, 9, 19) and solitary? is he the head and chief of all creation (col. 2:19; 1:16). other matters are discussed in these epistles, but this is the great doctrinal question and burden of the apostle's thought. +the reason for the raising of this question+ was the development of certain false religious beliefs among which were, "asceticism, the worship of angels, revelings in supposed visions and belief in emanations." these "degraded the object of faith and so destroyed its meaning and power." +the answer to the question.+--paul is in no doubt as to the supremacy of christ. all his argument is to show the deity of christ. he holds "aloft the true object of faith namely, the supreme divine savior himself, in opposition to speculation which would degrade and deny to him the eminence which belongs to him" (col. 1:15-20; eph. 1:10, 20-23; 3-9; philippians 2:5-11). +present day attention+ has been focused upon this matter of the supremacy of christ. was he human or divine? the arguments of paul still hold good for a stout belief in the divine christ. the writings of the great apostle are all characterized by his grasp of fundamental things; they serve their purpose for the modern church in bringing it back to jesus christ as the only savior, as they also in times past corrected the errors of the early church. the writing of the epistles +the interest+ in these epistles is heightened by the fact that they were written during paul's first roman imprisonment of which luke gives all too brief an account (acts 28:30,31). they have been called from this fact, "the epistles of the first imprisonment." it is a marvel that paul with his surroundings could have written in such a masterly way and handled such lofty themes in a manner which has commanded the attention of the thinking world ever since his day and age. +the sending of the epistles+--colossians, philemon, and ephesians were evidently dispatched from rome by the same messenger, tychicus (col. 4:7, 9; eph. 6:21). philippians was sent by the hand of epaphroditus (phil. 2:25; 4:18). the epistle to the colossians the church at colossã¦--the city of colossã¦ was situated about 110 miles east of ephesus where paul spent so long a time during his third missionary journey (acts 19:10). we have no record of any visit of paul to this city or how the church was founded (col. 2:1). it is supposed that ephaphras might have organized this church (col. 1:7). +the occasion+ (and purpose) of this epistle was evidently the coming of epaphras to rome to consult paul about the affairs of this church (1:7, 8). in chapter 2:8-23 we have some account of the things which were troubling this christian community and drawing them away from faith in jesus christ as their savior. false teachers had appeared at colossã¦ who were confusing the minds of the christian converts. the starting point of the error of teaching was the old oriental dogma that matter is evil and the source of evil (2:8), that as god is good the world could not have come directly from god. to bridge the chasm between god and the matter of the world a long chain of intermediate beings was conceived to exist. this doctrine played havoc with the simplest moral conceptions for if matter is evil, and its source, then man's sin is not in his will, but in his body. redemption from sin can come only through asceticism and the mortification of the flesh. the result of all this was a lowering of the dignity of christ, taking away his saving power and the "substitution of various ascetic abstinences and ritualistic practices (2:20) for trust in him, the worship of angels (2:18), and a reveling in dreams and visions." "this was kindred to a type of speculation which later became rife under the name of gnosticism." to these ideas paul opposed the true doctrine of the headship of christ (2:19) and that he is the only link between god and the universe (1:15-17). "by him were all things created (1:16) that are in heaven and that are in earth." christ is the only mediator (1:13, 14). in this faith there is no place for ascetic mortification. evil is in our unwillingness to live the life in christ. in christ we are dead to sin and risen with him to a life of holiness (2:20-23; 3:1-4). christ is not only our redeemer (1:14) and the head of the church, but the source of creation and its lord (1:16, 17). we have a similar error (against which paul warns) taught to-day by the speculative thinker, who fills the world with forces which leave no room for the working of a personal will. +central thought+--jesus christ the sole savior of men and mediator between god and men (1:13-14), the creator (1:16; 2:9) and head of the church (1:18). exhortation to follow christ (3:1-4). +time and place.+--this epistle was written at rome and sent by the messenger, tychicus, (4:7, 8, 18) to the church at colossã¦ about 63 a.d. paul also directed that it be read to the church at laodicea (4:16). +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. introduction (1:1-12) salutation. thanksgiving for their faith and prayer for their increase and knowledge of the will of god. 2. doctrinal. "the sole headship of christ" (1:13-3:4). (a) christ the mediator. there is redemption for us through his blood. (b) christ, the image of the invisible god, creator and preserver of all things. (c) he is the head of the church, reconciliation is only through him. the colossians were reconciled to god through the mediation of christ. it is the earnest desire of paul that the church at colossã¦ should remain rooted in the faith which it had been taught. (d) warning against wrong speculation; lest any man "through philosophy or vain deceit" obscure or cause the colossians to deny the true godhead of christ (2:8-15). (e) renewed warnings against errors in worship; jewish observances, ordinances and asceticisms, and the adoration of angels. (f) in christ we are dead to the rudiments of the world and risen into communion with god in christ. 3. practical (3:5-4:6). (a) exhortations to cast out all sins of the unregenerate nature and to put on the new man in christ. then christ will be all and in all. (b) all family and social duties are to be performed as in the sight of christ. (c) renewed exhortations to prayer and watchfulness. 4. conclusion (4:7-18). (a) the mission of tychicus and onesimus, the greetings of the companions of paul and his expressed desire that the churches of colossã¦ and laodicea exchange epistles. (b) the salutation. the epistle to philemon +occasion.+--this is the only purely personal letter of paul that we possess. it is placed in this group because it was sent with the epistle to the colossians and by the same messenger, tychicus (col. 4:7-9). philemon was a member (with his wife apphia) of the church at colossã¦ (philemon 2). onesimus was a runaway slave, belonging to philemon, who had found his way to rome and been converted by paul (philemon 10), who returned him, with this letter, to his master (col. 4:9; philemon 10-12). in this letter we have a picture of the apostle's kindness of heart and a carrying out of the principles which paul had advocated in his first epistle to the corinthians (7:20-24), "let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called." we find also this same principle set forth, in another way, in his letter to the colossians upon the "supremacy of christ." these principles will make all men brethren in christ and every man will strive to serve christ in his own place, whatever that place is. paul exhorts philemon, along this very line, to receive onesimus not as a servant but as a brother beloved (philemon 16). the practical teaching of this letter upon the relations between masters and servants and employers and employees is very pertinent to the present times. the true solution of all labor troubles is that men should regard each other as brethren under the leadership of jesus christ. +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. salutation and thanksgiving (1-7). 2. statement of the object of the letter (8-21). as a favor for love's sake philemon is asked to receive back onesimus no longer a runaway slave but paul's spiritual child. emphasis is laid upon the fact that he is now a christian brother and should be received as such. 3. conclusion (22-25). (a) in expectation of a speedy release from imprisonment the apostle asks that a lodging be secured for him (22 v.). (b) salutation and benediction (23-25). the epistle to the ephesians +the city of ephesus and the church.+--this city was, next to rome, the most important visited by paul. it was the capital of asia minor and a great commercial center. it was the seat of the worship of the goddess diana. paul first visited the city when he was returning from his second missionary tour, but, while asked to prolong his stay, he remained only for a short time (acts 18:19-21). during his third missionary journey he again visited the city and remained for three years (acts 20:31, compare 19:10, 22). his success in ephesus was very great (acts 19:18-20, 26) and extended beyond the city. the letters to the churches at colossã¦ (col. 1:2) and laodicea (this letter is lost) (col. 4:16) show his care for the churches that were adjacent to ephesus and of which we have no account of his visiting. +title and time of writing.+--many scholars think that this epistle was a circular letter written for the edification of the churches of asia minor and sent to the church of the capital city. this opinion is strengthened by the lack of local allusions and the naming of friends, as in other epistles. the inscription "at ephesus" is wanting in two of the more important manuscripts. "on this view it may be supposed that a space was left in the salutation in which could be inserted the name of the particular place where the letter was being read, that the letter finally fell wholly into the keeping of the ephesian church, and that the space was at length permanently filled by the phrase 'at ephesus.'" the time and place of writing was at rome about 63 a.d. this epistle was sent by the messenger, tychicus, (eph. 6:21) who also carried the letters to the church at colossã¦ and to philemon (col. 4:7-9). +subject.+--as in colossians, the subject is the headship of christ (3:9-11); his person and work. god's eternal purpose is disclosed. christ is given sway over all things "both which are in heaven and which are on earth" (1:10, 2l). the unity of the church in christ is set forth; the unity of the gentile and jewish branches in him; the unity of all the individual members in him. this union is spiritual and not mechanical; it is holy and pure; therefore sin is excluded. paul looks upon this as the mystery of the ages, now revealed to him. there is one great kingdom, the risen and glorified christ is the head of this kingdom (1:19-23). redemption and reception into this kingdom is through jesus christ (1-7). paul in this epistle rises above the controversies of the hour and sees in clear vision the eternal realities and the great plan of god for the saving of men. +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. introduction (1:1-23). (a) salutation. (b) thanksgiving and thesis (1:3-14). unity in christ. he who is the head of the church is the center of the universe (1:10). the eternal purpose of god in salvation is now made known. before the foundation of the world, man and the redeemed church of christ were in the thought of god. christ in whom we have redemption looked forward to his mission from eternity. "creation, nature, and redemption are all parts of one system"; in the reconciliation of the cross all orders of beings are concerned. "that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in him" (1:10). (c) prayer. a petition that the understanding of believers may be illuminated; that they may know the hope of their calling and the riches of their heritage, which comes through unity with their risen and ascended lord. 2. doctrinal. unity in christ (ch. 2-3). (a) the calling of the gentiles out of "trespasses and sins" into a new life in christ. (b) jews and gentiles are reconciled and brought together in one body by the cross; "no more strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of god." all built upon the foundation of jesus christ, through the spirit. (c) the mystery of the universal call was made known to paul by a new revelation. prayer for a more full comprehension of this unity. 3. practical. the new life in unity with christ (4:1-6:17). (a) exhortation to walk worthy of this new life. (b) exhortation to gain the victory over sin "in virtue of the sense of unity with man in christ." (c) social duties. the regeneration and consecration in this new life of the relations of husbands and wives, children and parents, and slaves and masters, (d) final entreaty, in the battle against the powers of evil, to put "on the whole armour of god." 4. conclusion (6:18-24). (a) personal. paul requests special prayer for himself in captivity. tychicus is commended. (b) farewell and blessing. the epistle to the philippians the city of philippi and the church.--this city is notable from the fact that it was the first, in europe, in which the gospel tidings were made known. accounts of how paul came to visit macedonia and to begin the work in philippi are given in acts (16:10, 12-40). going out of the city as he did by the river side, where prayer was wont to be made, and talking to a number of women about the "new way" would not seem to be a very favorable beginning for a movement which was to produce such exceedingly large results. but paul was so full of zeal for christ that he seized every opportunity, no matter how small, to make him known. this church afterwards was a great comfort to the apostle. this letter shows how he loved it and how he exhorted them to rejoice in the lord (4:4). +occasion.+--paul was in prison in rome. the philippian converts were greatly concerned about him, therefore they sent epaphroditus with gifts and offerings to him (4:18). this was not the first time that they had taken thought of and remembered their founder, in a similar way (4:15, 16). the apostle was very grateful for their care (4:10-14). while in rome, epaphroditus was taken very sick and came near death (2:25-28). as soon as he had recovered from his sickness paul sent him back to philippi (2:28), with this letter. the reference to cã¦sar's household shows how strong a hold christianity was getting in rome (4:22; 1:12-14), and that there was great boldness in proclaiming the gospel. +objects.+--it is an epistle of thanks to the philippians for their kindness (4:10-18) in remembering the apostle with substantial gifts in his work and for their fellowship (1:5) in the gospel. another object is to give them friendly advices and warnings (2:12-24; 3:2-3, 17-21). paul does not forget, in this connection, to remind them of him to whom they owe a whole-hearted allegiance, their lord and master, jesus christ (4:1). the great doctrinal object, the supremacy of christ, is also set forth as is markedly manifest in the epistles of colossians and ephesians. the whole christian creed, "the incarnation, passion, and exaltation of christ" is expressed in the second chapter (2:5-11), "that at the name of jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that jesus christ is lord to the glory of god the father." the great end to be attained is likeness to christ (2:5). +time of writing.+--this epistle is generally regarded as the latest of the letters written during the first imprisonment in rome, and in the same year with those to the churches at colossã¦, and ephesus. it was probably sent to philippi shortly after the other epistles (colossians, philemon, and ephesians) had been dispatched to asia minor. +principal divisions and chief points.+--this epistle is divided into two parts. first part (1:1-3:1). i. introduction (1:1-2:4). (a) greeting. (b) paul's thanksgiving, joy in the fellowship, and prayer for the philippians. (c) an account of the rapid spread of the gospel in rome and the apostle's rejoicing that christ is preached. (d) exhortation to unity in christ. 2. doctrinal (2:5-12). in this short passage we have the christian creed in brief form. "the godhead of christ and his manhood--his pre-existence and his incarnation--his passion and his exaltation." 3. conclusion of the first part (2:13-3:1). (a) renewed exhortation to an upright and blameless christian life. (b) the return of epaphroditus. (c) farewell message. second part (3:2-4:23). this section seems to have been added after the letter had been finished. 1. warnings (3:2-21). (a) against judaic errors. paul could boast that he had been a good jew and scrupulously kept the law, yet he renounced all that he might win christ. true righteousness can come only through faith in christ. (b) against a false idea of the liberty of the gospel; whereby men, claiming to be christians, walked in evil ways. 2. final exhortations (4:1-9) to steadfastness, unity, joy, and the following of all good in christ. acknowledgment of gifts and benedictions (4:10-23). questions what is the question at issue in this group of epistles? what the reason for raising this question? what answer is given? what attention is now paid to this question? when were these epistles written? how were they sent? what can be said of the epistles to the colossians? the church at colossã¦, how was it organized? what was the occasion of this epistle? what the central thought? what the time and place of writing? give the principal divisions and chief points. what was the occasion of the epistle to philemon? give the principal divisions and chief points. what can be said of the epistle to the ephesians? give an account of the founding of this church. what can be said of the title and time of writing? what is the subject? give the principal divisions and chief points. what can be said of the epistle to the philippians? how was this church organized? what was the occasion of the epistle? what the objects? give the time of writing. give the principal divisions and chief points. iii. paul's writings study x pastoral and personal fourth group of epistles first timothy. titus. second timothy. analysis +the place of the epistles+--when written. +paul's fourth missionary journey+--notices and time. the first trip eastward. the trip westward to spain. the second trip eastward. the second imprisonment of paul. +the questions discussed+--the personal element. the doctrinal part. the practical teaching. the special theme. +paul's last declaration of his faith.+ +the first epistle to timothy+--timothy. time and place. purpose. principal divisions and chief points. +the epistle to titus+--titus. purpose. time and place. principal divisions and chief points. +the second epistle to timothy+--the last words of paul. time and place of writing. purpose. principal divisions and chief points. iii. paul's writings study x pastoral and personal fourth group of epistles first timothy. titus. second timothy. the place of the epistles +when written.+--it is generally agreed among scholars that no place can be found for the writing of first timothy, titus, and second timothy in the period covered by luke in his narrative in acts. agreeing with the tradition of the church, however, the opinion of many eminent scholars is that paul was released from the first roman imprisonment (acts 28:16, 30), that he again took up his missionary work, and at the end of a few years of such work, he was a second time imprisoned and suffered martyrdom under the roman emperor nero. it was during this period between the first and second imprisonments that first timothy and titus were written. second timothy was written during the second imprisonment at rome, and at the time when paul was expecting his sentence of death. eusebius (h. e. 2:22-2) says, that "at the end of the two years of imprisonment, according to tradition, paul went forth again upon the ministry of preaching; and in a second visit to the city ended his life by martyrdom under nero, and that during his imprisonment he wrote the second epistle to timothy." paul's fourth missionary journey +notices and time.+--from the notices given in the epistles and other sources the probable course of the missionary travels of paul from 63-67 a.d. has been reconstructed. +the first trip eastward.+--when paul wrote to the church at philippi (2:24) and to philemon at colossã¦ (22 v.) he evidently expected to be released from his imprisonment very soon and to see his beloved philippian church and philemon. he was so sure of speedily visiting colossã¦ that he asked that a lodging be prepared for him. with paul to plan was to act and it is quite possible that he undertook this trip immediately upon his release from prison. he probably also visited ephesus and a number of other cities. +the trip westward to spain.+--in the epistle to the romans paul declared his intention to visit spain (rom. 15:24, 28). it is probable that he, upon his return from the visit to asia minor, remained for a very short time in rome and then made a voyage to spain. the tradition of the early church is very pronounced upon this voyage to spain. clement of rome (cor. 5) speaks of paul "having reached the furtherest bound of the west." this could hardly mean anything but spain. the muratorian fragment names "the departure of paul from the city to spain." +the second trip eastward.+--we can now, from notices in first and second timothy and titus, quite closely follow paul in his travels. from spain he probably went by various stages to ephesus, where as he tells us (1 tim. 1:3) he left timothy in charge when he went into macedonia. from macedonia he probably wrote his first letter to timothy (1:3). from macedonia he went to troas and from troas to miletus (2 tim. 4:13). on account of sickness trophimus was left at miletus (2 tim. 4:20). he next probably visited crete, where he left titus (titus 1:5). from crete it is thought that paul went to corinth (2 tim. 4:20) where he left erastus and in all probability wrote to titus (1:5). in the letter to titus paul speaks of being at nicopolis and of his intention to spend the winter in that city (titus 3:12). but these notices of places are by no means exhaustive. they show, however, how wide were paul's last travels. +the second imprisonment of paul.+--it is by no means unlikely that the enemies of paul, of whom we hear so much in the first three missionary journeys, were stirred to renewed activity by again seeing him at liberty and conducting an active missionary campaign. but with a prisoner on parole from the imperial court the local magistrates could do nothing. but a new element came in. the great fire, which destroyed so large a part of the city of rome on the 18th of july, 64 a.d., was used by the emperor nero as an excuse for starting a great persecution against the christians. this was done to divert the odium of the starting of the fire from himself, for he had sung and danced the "mime of the burning of troy" from a turret of his palace during this great conflagration. it was some time before this persecution was extended to the provinces and paul's enemies saw their opportunity to accuse him to the imperial court, where under the circumstances they would then find a ready hearing. paul was probably rearrested at nicopolis where he intended to winter (titus 3:12) and hurried off to rome. this time he endured no light imprisonment. onesiphorus had difficulty in finding him (2 tim. 1:16, 17) and he was closely confined in a common criminal dungeon (2 tim. 2:9). from this dungeon he wrote the second epistle to timothy and from thence he went to his death. the questions discussed +the personal element+ in these epistles is quite large both in respect to timothy and titus and paul himself, but it is quite evident that this element is not the chief cause for the writing. +the doctrinal part.+--paul is here as strenuous for the need of repentance, the atonement through jesus christ and his sole sufficiency as mediator, savior, and lord of all (1 tim. 1:15-17; titus 2:13; 3:4-7), as in his other epistles. there are also enemies of the truth who are to be opposed (2 tim. 3). it is quite evident from what paul says in the second chapter and elsewhere in titus and second timothy that the colossian heresy is already bearing its evil fruit and is likely in the future to do great injury to the churches. +the practical teaching+ about the necessity of developing and conserving the church's system of government occupies, however, the chief place. "the two notes which are struck again and again are: first, 'hold fast the tradition, the deposit of faith.' second, 'preserve order in the church.' in short this group of epistles constitutes paul's last will and testament in which he gives his final instructions for the maintenance and continuity of the faith." the church of jesus christ must have form and order. the truth must have a proper shelter. churches must have and observe certain regulations. there must be proper officers. the gospel is applied to outward conduct. great stress is laid upon the character of church officers (1 tim. 3:1-13; titus 1:5-7). pastors are directed how they should bear themselves toward church members and what they should teach (1 tim. 5; titus 2). the conduct of the church in the presence of the heathen world and its magistrates is set forth (titus 3). instruction is given in regard to public worship (1 tim. 2). the most effective barrier against all forms of evil, it is declared, is a diligent study of the scriptures and a fervent preaching of the word (2 tim. 3:13-4:5). +the special theme+ then is, "the constitution, methods, and conduct of the early churches." (1 tim. 2:1, 2, 8, 9-12; 3:1-13; titus 1:5-14; 2:1-10; 3:1, 2, 8-11, 13, 14; 2 tim. 2:2, 14-18; 3:6-9). paul's last declaration of his faith the famous passage in 2 timothy (4:6-8) shows how the great apostle went triumphantly to his death. it is a declaration of the sustaining power of his faith in the savior whom he had everywhere proclaimed. "i am now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand. i have fought a good fight, i have finished my course, i have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing." the first epistle to timothy +timothy+ was one of the close companions of paul. his father was a greek and his mother a jewess, by the name of eunice, (2 tim. 1:5; acts 16:1). he was a native of lystra, paul took him as his companion in travel and addressed two epistles to him; he was sent on a number of important missions. timothy is mentioned twenty-four times by name in the acts and epistles; from these notices we can construct his itinerary with paul and see how beloved and how trusted he was by the great apostle. during paul's last journey he left him in charge of the affairs of the church at ephesus (1 tim. 1:3). when paul was apprehended a second time and lying in a dungeon at rome, in expectation of death, he wrote timothy the last letter (2 timothy) he ever penned, and besought him to come to him as speedily as possible (2 tim. 4:9). +time and place of writing.+--paul in all probability wrote the first epistle to timothy from macedonia (1 tim. 1:3) in the year 66 a.d. +the purpose+ "involved is through the instruction and exhortation of timothy, to purify, strengthen, and elevate the christian life of the church in ephesus." this teaching is put in such a way that it is applicable to every christian minister and church. +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. greeting (1:1, 2). 2. the true teaching of the gospel (ch. 1). timothy is warned against false teachers and reminded of the aim and end of life in christ. 3. the order and regulation of public worship (ch. 2). (a) prayer, for those in authority and for all men. (b) instruction. there is one god and one mediator (christ) between god and man. (c) conduct of men and women in the church assemblies. 4. qualifications of the church officers (ch. 3). (a) the ideal minister. (b) the ideal deacon and the ministering women. (c) conclusion of chapter. paul declares his intention to visit timothy. an ascription of praise. 5. the government of the christian church and community (ch. 4-6). in these three chapters timothy is charged by paul to keep before him a high view of the church and its grand destiny. (a) timothy, as a teacher, is reminded of his commission to put the church on guard against errors of doctrine and life (ch. 4). (b) timothy is shown how he should bear rule and conduct himself towards the elders and women of his congregation. paul adds instructions in regard to a man's care for his family, support of the ministry, discipline of offenders, etc. (ch. 5). (c) relations of masters and servants. right attitude of believers in christ toward riches. the chief thing is to follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness, and to fight the good fight of faith (6:1-19). (d) closing charge to timothy with benediction (6:20, 21). the epistle to titus +titus+ was a beloved disciple of paul. he was a gentile and was taken by paul to jerusalem and was made a test case of the freedom of the gospel and was not compelled to be circumcised (gal. 2:1-5). he is mentioned by name, by paul, twelve times in four of the epistles (2 cor. 2:13; 7:6, 13, 14; 8:6, 16, 23; 12:18; gal. 2:1, 3; 2 tim. 4:10; titus 1:4). the early church tradition is that titus was descended from the royal family of crete. he was an able and capable missionary. we have no account of his conversion. he might have come first in contact with paul and been converted when the great apostle visited crete on his way to rome as a prisoner (acts 27:7-13). some time was spent at this island by paul's company (acts 27:9). paul again visited crete after his first roman imprisonment and when he went away he left titus in charge of affairs (titus 1:5), "to set in order things that are wanting and to ordain elders in every city." this message of paul to titus not only shows the confidence which paul reposed in him, but also how widespread christianity was in crete. after titus had completed his special work in crete he was to rejoin paul at nicopolis (titus 3:12). +the purpose+ of this letter is to show titus what he is to do, in his work with the churches, and how to do it. +time and place of writing.+--it is thought that this epistle was written from corinth in 66 a.d. +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. greeting and subject of the epistle (1:1-5). titus is left in crete to accomplish certain things (1:5) after which he is to rejoin paul (3:12). 2. the kind of officers to be appointed in the cretan churches (1:5-16). special moral and spiritual fitness is set forth as necessary in view of the peculiar character of the cretans and certain forms of doctrinal error. 3. the instruction to be given to the cretans (2:1-3:11). (a) "the things which become sound doctrine." (b) practical teaching for the proper regulation of the conduct of all classes. (c) the foundation of the instruction rests upon christ. (d) proper attitude of the christian community toward the pagan world; magistrates and those who have not yet believed in christ. kindness and gentleness and the avoidance of foolish questions best reveal the spirit of christ by those who profess his name. (e) parting requests and benediction (3:12-15). the second epistle to timothy +the last words of paul.+--this epistle is of special interest as it contains the last recorded words of paul to his faithful disciple, timothy. the great apostle is writing from a strict prison confinement (1:16, 17; 2:9). he has had a first preliminary trial (4:16) and this was of such a dread nature that none of his friends dare to stand with him, yet he rejoices in his lord that he stood by him and strengthened him. he feels however that his end is near and gives a magnificent testimony of his faith (4:6-8). he urges timothy to come to him in rome and bring mark with him (4:9, 11). +time and place of writing.+--it was written by paul in prison at rome 67 a.d. +the purpose.+--paul shows here his care for the churches, their upbuilding in the faith and their proper regulation of the things that pertain to worship and organization. timothy, as a preacher of the word, has his personal responsibility, for the upbuilding of the churches, presented to him. +principal divisions and chief points.+ 1. greeting and thanksgiving (1:1-5). 2. the christian conduct of timothy (1:6-2:14). paul exhorts timothy not to allow himself to be daunted by fear of opposition or suffering in doing his work for christ. he encourages him by, (a) the great revelation and power of the gospel. (b) his own work. (c) the sure hope of a great reward. 3. timothy as a preacher of the word (2:15-4:5). paul exhorts timothy, (a) to study to show himself a workman. (b) in the perilous times that are coming to feed on the word of god and preach it in season and out of season. 4. last words of paul (4:6-22). the apostle now turns to himself and speaks of his coming martyrdom. he is ready to be offered, he has fought a good fight. he beseeches timothy to come and see him and bring mark. he refers to his first hearing when every friend left him alone and only the lord stood by him. he, after various messages, closes with the usual benediction. questions what is the place of these epistles in paul's life? what can be said of paul's fourth missionary journey; the first trip eastward, the trip westward to spain, and the second trip eastward? how did paul come to be imprisoned a second time? what are the questions discussed in these epistles; the personal element, the doctrinal part, the practical teaching, and the special theme? what is paul's last declaration of faith? what can be said of the first epistle to timothy; timothy's life, time, and place of writing, the purpose, and the principal divisions and chief points? what can be said of the epistle to titus; the life of titus, the purpose, time, and place of writing, and the principal divisions and chief points? what can be said of the second epistle to timothy; the last words of paul, time and place of writing, and the principal divisions and chief points? a new method for bible classes by henry t. sell studies in early church history. 12 mo, paper, 25 cts. net; cloth, 50 cts. net. studies in the life of the christian. his faith and his service. 12 mo, paper, 25 cts. net; cloth, 50 cts. net. bible studies in the life of paul. historical and constructive. 12 mo, paper, 25 cts. net; cloth, 50 cts. net. bible studies in the life of christ. historical and constructive. 12 mo, paper, 25 cts. net, cloth, 50 cts. net. _15th edition, revised and enlarged._ supplemental bible studies. 12 mo, paper, 25 cts. net; cloth, 50 cts. net. _5th edition, revised._ bible studies by books. 12 mo, paper, 35 cts. net; cloth, 60 cts. net. bible studies by doctrines. 12 mo, paper, 25 cts. net; cloth, 50 cts. net. bible studies by periods. a series of twenty-four historical bible studies, from genesis to revelation. 12 mo, paper, 35 cts. net; cloth, 60 cts. net. fleming h. revell company _publishers_ note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustration (map). see 21828-h.htm or 21828-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/1/8/2/21828/21828-h/21828-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/1/8/2/21828/21828-h.zip) the life of st. paul by prof. james stalker, d.d. author of "the life of jesus christ" with foreword by wilbert w. white, d.d. president of the bible teachers' training school, new york new and revised edition new york ---chicago ---toronto fleming h. revell company london and edinburgh copyright, 1912, by american tract society contents chapter foreword i. his place in history ii. his unconscious preparation for his work iii. his conversion iv. his gospel v. the work awaiting the worker vi. his missionary travels vii. his writings and his character viii. picture of a pauline church ix. his great controversy x. the end hints to teachers and questions for pupils foreword by wilbert w. white, d.d. when asked to write a foreword to dr. stalker's "life of st. paul," i thought of two things: first the impression which i had received from a sermon that i heard dr. stalker preach a good many years ago in his own pulpit in glasgow, scotland, and secondly, the honor conferred in this privilege of writing a foreword to one of dr. stalker's books. i felt sure before even glancing at the pages that i should be pleased and profited by their perusal. the first thing that i did was to glance over the pages for the headings of chapters and the summaries of paragraphs. i found the arrangement admirable, and would advise those into whose hands this fine volume may come to follow this plan. the only sentence apart from the headings which i read in the aforesaid preview was the last one in chapter x, and that because the closing words, "the best of friends," especially arrested my attention. i wondered before i read this sentence if the author was saying of paul that he was going out of the world to the one who had been to him the best of friends. from this you may gather--what you like. only i felt sure before reading the pages that dr. stalker would interpret paul in a manner such as i could enthusiastically approve. and now having read the volume i heartily commend it. it is the best brief life of paul of which i know. before reading the book i said to myself, i shall put down what i think the writer will make the heart of the secret of paul. it was this: the key to paul's efficiency was his wholehearted persistent loyalty to christ, his saviour and friend. he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. he stood fast in the liberty wherewith christ set him free. he was three things all stated in one verse, and put thus: "i am crucified with christ--christ liveth in me--i live in faith." here are some, a very few of many striking, true thoughts presented by dr. stalker: "paul was the interpreter of christ, saying what christ himself would have said under the circumstances." "paul's entire theology was nothing but the explication of his own conversion." "in bringing paul west, providence gave to europe a blessed priority, and the fate of our continent was decided, when paul crossed the aegean." "a secret of paul's success was his sense of having a mission and his freedom alike from the bondage of bigotry and the bondage of liberty." a writer recently gave me this thought about paul: "what makes st. paul so interesting is his conception of the dimensions of life." back to christ? yes, the whole world needs it, but the way to get back to christ is through the apostolic interpretation of christ in words and life. this is the only way, and dr. stalker's book is a great help in this direction. the life of st. paul chapter i his place in history paragraphs 1-12. 1, 2. the man needed by the time. 3, 4. a type of christian character. 5-8. the thinker of christianity. 9-12. the missionary of the gentiles. 1. the man for the time.--there are some men whose lives it is impossible to study without receiving the impression that they were expressly sent into the world to do a work required by the juncture of history on which they fell. the story of the reformation, for example, cannot be read by a devout mind without wonder at the providence by which such great men as luther, zwingli, calvin and knox were simultaneously raised up in different parts of europe to break the yoke of the papacy and republish the gospel of grace. when the evangelical revival, after blessing england, was about to break into scotland and end the dreary reign of moderatism, there was raised up in thomas chalmers a mind of such capacity as completely to absorb the new movement into itself, and of such sympathy and influence as to diffuse it to every corner of his native land. 2. this impression is produced by no life more than by that of the apostle paul. he was given to christianity when it was in its most rudimentary beginnings. it was not, indeed, feeble, nor can any mortal man be spoken of as indispensable to it; for it contained within itself the vigor of a divine and immortal existence, which could not but have unfolded itself in the course of time. but, if we recognize that god makes use of means which commend themselves even to our eyes as suited to the ends he has in view, then we must say that the christian movement at the moment when paul appeared upon the stage was in the utmost need of a man of extraordinary endowments, who, becoming possessed with its genius, should incorporate it with the general history of the world; and in paul it found the man it needed. 3. a type of christian character.--christianity obtained in paul an incomparable type of christian character. it already, indeed, possessed the perfect model of human character in the person of its founder. but he was not as other men, because from the beginning he had no sinful imperfection to struggle with; and christianity still required to show what it could make of imperfect human nature. paul supplied the opportunity of exhibiting this. he was naturally of immense mental stature and force. he would have been a remarkable man even if he had never become a christian. the other apostles would have lived and died in the obscurity of galilee if they had not been lifted into prominence by the christian movement; but the name of saul of tarsus would have been remembered still in some character or other even if christianity had never existed. christianity got the opportunity in him of showing to the world the whole force it contained. paul was aware of this himself, though he expressed it with perfect modesty, when he said, "for this cause i obtained mercy, that in me as chief might jesus christ show forth all his long-suffering for an ensample of them who should hereafter believe on him to everlasting life." 4. his conversion proved the power of christianity to overcome the strongest prejudices and to stamp its own type on a large nature by a revolution both instantaneous and permanent. paul's was a personality so strong and original that no other man could have been less expected to sink himself in another; but, from the moment when he came into contact with christ, he was so overmastered with his influence that he never afterward had any other desire than to be the mere echo and reflection of him to the world. but, if christianity showed its strength in making so complete a conquest of paul, it showed its worth no less in the kind of man it made of him when he had given himself up to its influence. it satisfied the needs of a peculiarly hungry nature, and never to the close of his life did he betray the slightest sense that this satisfaction was abating. his constitution was originally compounded of fine materials, but the spirit of christ, passing into these, raised them to a pitch of excellence altogether unique. nor was it ever doubtful either to himself or to others that it was the influence of christ which made him what he was. the truest motto for his life would be his own saying, "i live, yet not i, but christ liveth in me." indeed, so perfectly was christ formed in him that we can now study christ's character in his, and beginners may perhaps learn even more of christ from studying paul's life than from studying christ's own. in christ himself there was a blending and softening of all the excellences which makes his greatness elude the glance of the beginner, just as the very perfection of raphael's painting makes it disappointing to an untrained eye; whereas in paul a few of the greatest elements of christian character were exhibited with a decisiveness which no one can mistake, just as the most prominent characteristics of the painting of rubens can be appreciated by every spectator. 5. a great thinker.--christianity obtained in paul, secondly, a great thinker. this it specially needed at the moment. christ had departed from the world, and those whom he had left to represent him were unlettered fishermen and, for the most part, men of no intellectual mark. in one sense this fact reflects a peculiar glory on christianity, for it shows that it did not owe its place as one of the great influences of the world to the abilities of its human representatives: not by might nor by power, but by the spirit of god, was christianity established in the earth. yet, as we look back now, we can clearly see how essential it was that an apostle of a different stamp and training should arise. 6. christ had manifested forth the glory of the father once for all and completed his atoning work. but this was not enough. it was necessary that the meaning of his appearance should be explained to the world. who was he who had been here? what precisely was it he had done? to these questions the original apostles could give brief popular answers; but none of them had the intellectual reach or the educational training necessary to put the answers into a form to satisfy the intellect of the world. happily it is not essential to salvation to be able to answer such questions with scientific accuracy. there are tens of thousands who know and believe that jesus was the son of god and died to take away sin and, trusting to him as their saviour, are purified by faith, but who could not explain these statements at any length without falling into mistakes in almost every sentence. yet, if christianity was to make an intellectual as well as a moral conquest of the world, it was necessary for the church to have accurately explained to her the full glory of her lord and the meaning of his saving work. of course jesus had himself had in his mind a comprehension both of what he was and of what he was doing which was luminous as the sun. but it was one of the most pathetic aspects of his earthly ministry that he could not tell all his mind to his followers. they were not able to bear it; they were too rude and limited to take it in. he had to carry his deepest thoughts out of the world with him unuttered, trusting with a sublime faith that the holy ghost would lead his church to grasp them in the course of its subsequent development. even what he did utter was very imperfectly understood. there was one mind, it is true, in the original apostolic circle of the finest quality and capable of soaring into the rarest altitudes of speculation. the words of christ sank into the mind of john and, after lying there for half a century, grew up into the wonderful forms we inherit in his gospel and epistles. but even the mind of john was not equal to the exigency of the church; it was too fine, mystical, unusual. his thoughts to this day remain the property only of the few finest minds. there was needed a thinker of broader and more massive make to sketch the first outlines of christian doctrine; and he was found in paul. 7. paul was a born thinker. his mind was of majestic breadth and force. it was restlessly busy, never able to leave any object with which it had to deal until it had pursued it back to its remotest causes and forward into all its consequences. it was not enough for him to know that christ was the son of god: he had to unfold this statement into its elements and understand precisely what it meant. it was not enough for him to believe that christ died for sin: he had to go farther and inquire why it was necessary that he should do so and how his death took sin away. but not only had he from nature this speculative gift: his talent was trained by education. the other apostles were unlettered men; but he enjoyed the fullest scholastic advantages of the period. in the rabbinical school he learned how to arrange and state and defend his ideas. we have the issue of all this in his epistles, which contain the best explanation of christianity possessed by the world. the right way to look at them is to regard them as the continuation of christ's own teaching. they contain the thoughts which christ carried away from the earth with him unuttered. of course jesus would have uttered them differently and far better. paul's thoughts have everywhere the coloring of his own mental peculiarities. but the substance of them is what christ's must have been if he had himself given them expression. 8. there was one great subject especially which christ had to leave unexplained--his own death. he could not explain it before it had taken place. this became the leading topic of paul's thinking--to show why it was needed and what were its blessed results. but, indeed, there was no aspect of the appearance of christ into which his restlessly inquiring mind did not penetrate. his thirteen epistles, when arranged in chronological order, show that his mind was constantly getting deeper and deeper into the subject. the progress of his thinking was determined partly by the natural progress of his own advance in the knowledge of christ, for he always wrote straight out of his own experience; and partly by the various forms of error which he had at successive periods to encounter, and which became a providential means of stimulating and developing his apprehension of the truth, just as ever since in the christian church the rise of error has been the means of calling forth the clearest statements of doctrine. the ruling impulse, however, of his thinking, as of his life, was ever christ, and it was his lifelong devotion to this exhaustless theme that made him the thinker of christianity. 9. the missionary of the gentiles.--christianity obtained in paul, thirdly, the missionary of the gentiles. it is rare to find the highest speculative power united with great practical activity; but these were united in him. he was not only the church's greatest thinker, but the very foremost worker she has ever possessed. we have been considering the speculative task which was awaiting him when he joined the christian community; but there was a no less stupendous practical task awaiting him too. this was the evangelization of the gentile world. 10. one of the great objects of the appearance of christ was to break down the wall of separation between jew and gentile and make the blessings of salvation the property of all men, without distinction of race or language. but he was not himself permitted to carry this change into practical realization. it was one of the strange limitations of his earthly life that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of israel. it can easily be imagined how congenial a task it would have been to his intensely human heart to carry the gospel beyond the limits of palestine and make it known to nation after nation; and--if it be not too bold to say so--this would certainly have been his chosen career, had he been spared. but he was cut off in the midst of his days and had to leave this task to his followers. 11. before the appearance of paul on the scene, the execution of this task had been begun. jewish prejudice had been partially broken down, the universal character of christianity had been in some measure realized, and peter had admitted the first gentiles into the church by baptism. but none of the original apostles was equal to the emergency. none of them was large-minded enough to grasp the idea of the perfect equality of jew and gentile and apply it without flinching in all its practical consequences; and none of them had the combination of gifts necessary to attempt the conversion of the gentile world on a large scale. they were galilean fishermen, fit enough to teach and preach within the bounds of their native palestine. but beyond palestine lay the great world of greece and rome--the world of vast populations, of power and culture, of pleasure and business. it needed a man of unlimited versatility, of education, of immense human sympathy and breadth, to go out there with the gospel message--a man who could not only be a jew to the jews, but a greek to the greeks, a roman to the romans, a barbarian to the barbarians--a man who could encounter not only rabbis in their synagogues, but proud magistrates in their courts and philosophers in the haunts of learning--a man who could face travel by land and by sea, who could exhibit presence of mind in every variety of circumstances, and would be cowed by no difficulties. no man of this size belonged to the original apostolic circle; but christianity needed such an one, and he was found in paul. 12. originally attached more strictly than any of the other apostles to the peculiarities and prejudices of jewish exclusiveness, he cut his way out of the jungle of these prepossessions, accepted the equality of all men in christ, and applied this principle relentlessly in all its issues. he gave his heart to the gentile mission, and the history of his life is the history of how true he was to his vocation. there was never such singleness of eye or wholeness of heart. there was never such superhuman and untiring energy. there was never such an accumulation of difficulties victoriously met and of sufferings cheerfully borne for any cause. in him jesus christ went forth to evangelize the world, making use of his hands and feet, his tongue and brain and heart, for doing the work which in his own bodily presence he had not been permitted by the limits of his mission to accomplish. chapter ii his unconscious preparation for his work paragraphs 13-36. 14-16. date and place of birth. his love of cities. 17, 18. home. 19-26. education. 19. roman citizenship; 20. tent-making; 21, 22. knowledge of greek literature; 23-26. rabbinical training. gamaliel. knowledge of old testament. 27-30. moral and religious development. 28. the law; 29, 30. departure from and return to jerusalem. 31-33. state of the christian church. stephen. 34-36. the persecutor. 13. god's plan.--persons whose conversion takes place after they are grown up are wont to look back upon the period of their life which has preceded this event with sorrow and shame and to wish that an obliterating hand might blot the record of it out of existence. st. paul felt this sentiment strongly: to the end of his days he was haunted by the specters of his lost years, and was wont to say that he was the least of all the apostles, who was not worthy to be called an apostle, because he had persecuted the church of god. but these somber sentiments are only partially justifiable. god's purposes are very deep, and even in those who know him not he may be sowing seeds which will only ripen and bear fruit long after their godless career is over. paul would never have been the man he became or have done the work he did, if he had not, in the years preceding his conversion, gone through a course of preparation designed to fit him for his subsequent career. he knew not what he was being prepared for; his own intentions about his future were different from god's; but there is a divinity which shapes our ends, and it was making him a polished shaft for god's quiver, though he knew it not. 14. birth and birthplace.--the date of paul's birth is not exactly known, but it can be settled with a closeness of approximation which is sufficient for practical purposes. when in the year 33 a.d. those who stoned stephen laid down their clothes at paul's feet, he was "a young man." this term has, indeed, in greek as much latitude as in english, and may indicate any age from something under twenty to something over thirty. in this case it probably touched the latter rather than the former limit; for there is reason to believe that at this time, or very soon after, he was a member of the sanhedrin--an office which no one could hold who was under thirty years of age--and the commission he received from the sanhedrin immediately afterward to persecute the christians would scarcely have been entrusted to a very young man. about thirty years after playing this sad part in stephen's murder, in the year 62 a.d., he was lying in a prison in rome awaiting sentence of death for the same cause for which stephen had suffered, and, writing one of the last of his epistles, that to philemon, he called himself an old man. this term also is one of great latitude, and a man who had gone through so many hardships might well be old before his time; yet he could scarcely have taken the name of "paul the aged" before sixty years of age. these calculations lead us to the conclusion that he was born about the same time as jesus. when the boy jesus was playing in the streets of nazareth, the boy paul was playing in the streets of his native town, away on the other side of the ridges of lebanon. they seemed likely to have totally diverse careers. yet, by the mysterious arrangement of providence, these two lives, like streams flowing from opposite watersheds, were one day, as river and tributary, to mingle together. 15. the place of his birth was tarsus, the capital of the province of cilicia, in the southeast of asia minor. it stood a few miles from the coast, in the midst of a fertile plain, and was built upon both banks of the river cydnus, which descended to it from the neighboring taurus mountains, on the snowy peaks of which the inhabitants of the town were wont, on summer evenings, to watch from the flat roofs of their houses the glow of the sunset. not far above the town the river poured over the rocks in a vast cataract, but below this it became navigable, and within the town its banks were lined with wharves, on which was piled the merchandise of many countries, while sailors and merchants, dressed in the costumes and speaking the languages of different races, were constantly to be seen in the streets. the town enjoyed an extensive trade in timber, with which the province abounded, and in the long fine hair of the goats kept in thousands on the neighboring mountains, which was made into a coarse kind of cloth and manufactured into various articles, among which tents, such as paul was afterward employed in sewing, formed an extensive article of merchandise all along the shores of the mediterranean. tarsus was also the center of a large transport trade; for behind the town a famous pass, called the cilician gates, led up through the mountains to the central countries of asia minor; and tarsus was the depot to which the products of these countries were brought down, to be distributed over the east and the west. the inhabitants of the city were numerous and wealthy. the majority of them were native cilicians, but the wealthiest merchants were greeks. the province was under the sway of the romans, the signs of whose sovereignty could not be absent from the capital, although tarsus itself enjoyed the privilege of self-government. the number and variety of the inhabitants were still further increased by the fact that, like the city of glasgow, tarsus was not only a center of commerce, but also a seat of learning. it was one of the three principal university cities of the period, the other two being athens and alexandria; and it was said to surpass its rivals in intellectual eminence. students from many countries were to be seen in its streets, a sight which could not but awaken in youthful minds thoughts about the value and the aims of learning. 16. who does not see how fit a place this was for the apostle of the gentiles to be born in? as he grew up, he was being unawares prepared to encounter men of every class and race, to sympathize with human nature in all its varieties, and to look with tolerance upon the most diverse habits and customs. in after life he was always a lover of cities. whereas his master avoided jerusalem and loved to teach on the mountainside or the shore of the lake, paul was constantly moving from one great city to another. antioch, ephesus, athens, corinth, rome, the capitals of the ancient world, were the scenes of his activity. the words of jesus are redolent of the country, and teem with pictures of its still beauty or homely toil--the lilies of the field, the sheep following the shepherd, the sower in the furrow, the fishermen drawing their nets; but the language of paul is impregnated with the atmosphere of the city and alive with the tramp and hurry of the streets. his imagery is borrowed from scenes of human energy and monuments of cultivated life--the soldier in full armor, the athlete in the arena, the building of houses and temples, the triumphal procession of the victorious general. so lasting are the associations of the boy in the life of the man. 17. paul's home.--paul had a certain pride in the place of his birth, as he showed by boasting on one occasion that he was a citizen of no mean city. he had a heart formed by nature to feel the warmest glow of patriotism. yet it was not for cilicia and tarsus that this fire burned. he was an alien in the land of his birth. his father was one of those numerous jews who were scattered in that age over the cities of the gentile world, engaged in trade and commerce. they had left the holy land, but they did not forget it. they never coalesced with the populations among which they dwelt but, in dress, food, religion and many other particulars remained a peculiar people. as a rule, indeed, they were less rigid in their religious views and more tolerant of foreign customs than those jews who remained in palestine. but paul's father was not one who had given way to laxity. he belonged to the straitest sect of his religion. it is probable that he had not left palestine long before his son's birth, for paul calls himself a hebrew of the hebrews--a name which seems to have belonged only to the palestinian jews and to those whose connection with palestine had continued very close. of his mother we hear absolutely nothing, but everything seems to indicate that the home in which he was brought up was one of those out of which nearly all eminent religious teachers have sprung--a home of piety, of character, perhaps of somewhat stern principle, and of strong attachment to the peculiarities of a religious people. he was imbued with its spirit. although he could not but receive innumerable and imperishable impressions from the city he was born in, the land and the city of his heart were palestine and jerusalem; and the heroes of his young imagination were not curtius and horatius, hercules and achilles, but abraham and joseph, moses and david and ezra. as he looked back on the past, it was not over the confused annals of cilicia that he cast his eyes, but he gazed up the clear stream of jewish history to its sources in ur of the chaldees; and, when he thought of the future, the vision which rose on him was the kingdom of the messiah, enthroned in jerusalem and ruling the nations with a rod of iron. 18. the feeling of belonging to a spiritual aristocracy, elevated above the majority of those among whom he lived, would be deepened in him by what he saw of the religion of the surrounding population. tarsus was the center of a species of baal-worship of an imposing but unspeakably degrading character, and at certain seasons of the year it was the scene of festivals, which were frequented by the whole population of the neighboring regions, and were accompanied with orgies of a degree of moral abominableness happily beyond the reach even of our imaginations. of course a boy could not see the depths of this mystery of iniquity, but he could see enough to make him turn from idolatry with the scorn peculiar to his nation, and to make him regard the little synagogue where his family worshiped the holy one of israel as far more glorious than the gorgeous temples of the heathen; and perhaps to these early experiences we may trace back in some degree those convictions of the depths to which human nature can fall and its need of an omnipotent redeeming force which afterward formed so fundamental a part of his theology and gave such a stimulus to his work. 19. trade.--the time at length arrived for deciding what occupation the boy was to follow--a momentous crisis in every life--and in this case much was involved in the decision. perhaps the most natural career for him would have been that of a merchant; for his father was engaged in trade, the busy city offered splendid prizes to mercantile ambition, and the boy's own energy would have guaranteed success. besides, his father had an advantage to give him specially useful to a merchant: though a jew, he was a roman citizen, and this right would have given his son protection, into whatever part of the roman world he might have had occasion to travel. how the father got this right we cannot tell; it might be bought, or won by distinguished service to the state, or acquired in several other ways; at all events his son was free-born. it was a valuable privilege, and one which was to prove of great use to paul, though not in the way in which his father might have been expected to desire him to make use of it. but it was decided that he was not to be a merchant. the decision may have been due to his father's strong religious views, or his mother's pious ambition, or his own predilections; but it was resolved that he should go to college and become a rabbi--that is, a minister, a teacher and a lawyer all in one. it was a wise decision in view of the boy's spirit and capabilities, and it turned out to be of infinite moment for the future of mankind. 20. but, although he thus escaped the chances which seemed likely to drift him into a secular calling, yet, before going away to prepare for the sacred profession, he was to get some insight into business life; for it was a rule among the jews that every boy, whatever might be the profession he was to follow, should learn a trade, as a resource in time of need. this was a rule with wisdom in it; for it gave employment to the young at an age when too much leisure is dangerous, and acquainted the wealthy and the learned in some degree with the feelings of those who have to earn their bread with the sweat of their brow. the trade which he was put to was the commonest one in tarsus--the making of tents from the goat's-hair cloth for which the district was celebrated. little did he or his father think, when he began to handle the disagreeable material, of what importance this handicraft was to be to him in subsequent years: it became the means of his support during his missionary journeys, and, at a time when it was essential that the propagators of christianity should be above the suspicion of selfish motives, enabled him to maintain himself in a position of noble independence. 21. education.--it is a question natural to ask, whether, before leaving home to go and get his training as a rabbi, paul attended the university of tarsus. did he drink at the wells of wisdom which flow from mount helicon before going to sit by those which spring from mount zion? from the fact that he makes two or three quotations from the greek poets it has been inferred that he was acquainted with the whole literature of greece. but, on the other hand, it has been pointed out that his quotations are brief and commonplace, such as any man who spoke greek would pick up and use occasionally; and the style and vocabulary of his epistles are not those of the models of greek literature, but of the septuagint, the greek version of the hebrew scriptures, which was then in universal use among the jews of the dispersion. probably his father would have considered it sinful to allow his son to attend a heathen university. yet it is not likely that he grew up in a great seat of learning without receiving any influence from the academic tone of the place. his speech at athens shows that he was able, when he chose, to wield a style much more stately than that of his writings, and so keen a mind was not likely to remain in total ignorance of the great monuments of the language which he spoke. 22. there were other impressions, too, which the learned tarsus probably made upon him: its university was famous for those petty disputes and rivalries which sometimes ruffle the calm of academical retreats; and it is possible that the murmur of these, with which the air was often filled, may have given the first impulse to that scorn for the tricks of the rhetorician and the windy disputations of the sophist which form so marked a feature in some of his writings. the glances of young eyes are clear and sure, and even as a boy he may have perceived how small may be the souls of men and how mean their lives, when their mouths are filled with the finest phraseology. 23. the college for the education of jewish rabbis was in jerusalem, and thither paul was sent about the age of thirteen. his arrival in the holy city may have happened in the same year in which jesus, at the age of twelve, first visited it, and the overpowering emotions of the boy from nazareth at the first sight of the capital of his race may be taken as an index of the unrecorded experience of the boy from tarsus. to every jewish child of a religious disposition jerusalem was the center of all things; the footsteps of prophets and kings echoed in the streets; memories sacred and sublime clung to its walls and buildings; and it shone in the glamor of illimitable hopes. 24. it chanced that at this time the college of jerusalem was presided over by one of the most noted teachers the jews have ever possessed. this was gamaliel, at whose feet paul tells us he was brought up. he was called by his contemporaries the beauty of the law, and is still remembered among the jews as the great rabbi. he was a man of lofty character and enlightened mind, a pharisee strongly attached to the traditions of the fathers, yet not intolerant or hostile to greek culture, as were some of the narrower pharisees. the influence of such a man on an open mind like paul's must have been very great; and, although for a time the pupil became an intolerant zealot, yet the master's example may have had something to do with the conquest he finally won over prejudice. 25. the course of instruction which a rabbi had to undergo was lengthened and peculiar. it consisted entirely of the study of the scriptures and the comments of the sages and masters upon them. the words of scripture and the sayings of the wise were committed to memory; discussions were carried on about disputed points; and by a rapid fire of questions, which the scholars were allowed to put as well as the masters, the wits of the students were sharpened and their views enlarged. the outstanding qualities of paul's intellect, which were conspicuous in his subsequent life--his marvelous memory, the keenness of his logic, the super-abundance of his ideas, and his original way of taking up every subject--first displayed themselves in this school, and excited, we may well believe, the warm interest of his teacher. 26. he himself learned much here which was of great moment in his subsequent career. although he was to be specially the missionary of the gentiles, he was also a great missionary to his own people. in every city he visited where there were jews he made his first public appearance in the synagogue. there his training as a rabbi secured him an opportunity of speaking, and his familiarity with jewish modes of thought and reasoning enabled him to address his audiences in the way best fitted to secure their attention. his knowledge of the scriptures enabled him to adduce proofs from an authority which his hearers acknowledged to be supreme. besides, he was destined to be the great theologian of christianity and the principal writer of the new testament. now the new grew out of the old; the one is in all its parts the prophecy and the other the fulfillment. but it required a mind saturated not only with christianity, but with the old testament, to bring this out; and, at the age when the memory is most retentive, paul acquired such a knowledge of the old testament that everything it contains was at his command: its phraseology became the language of his thinking; he literally writes in quotations, and he quotes from all parts with equal facility--from the law, the prophets, and the psalms. thus was the warrior equipped with the armor and the weapons of the spirit before he knew in what cause he was to use them. 27. his religious life.--meantime what was his moral and religious state? he was learning to be a religious teacher; was he himself religious? not all who are sent to college by their parents to prepare for the sacred office are so, and in every city of the world the path of youth is beset with temptations which may ruin life at its very beginning. some of the greatest teachers of the church, such as st. augustine, have had to look back on half their life blotted and scarred with vice or crime. no such fall defaced paul's early years. whatever struggles with passion may have raged in his own breast, his conduct was always pure. jerusalem was no very favorable place, in that age, for virtue. it was the jerusalem against whose external sanctity, but internal depravity, our lord a few years afterward hurled such withering invectives; it was the very seat of hypocrisy, where an able youth might easily have learned how to win the rewards of religion, while escaping its burdens. but paul was preserved amidst these perils, and could afterward claim that he had lived in jerusalem from the first in all good conscience. 28. he had brought with him from home the conviction, which forms the basis of a religious life, that the one prize which makes life worth living is the love and favor of god. this conviction grew into a passionate longing as he advanced in years, and he asked his teachers how the prize was to be won. their answer was ready--by the keeping of the law. it was a terrible answer; for the law meant not only what we understand by the term, but also the ceremonial law of moses and the thousand and one rules added to it by the jewish teachers, the observance of which made life a purgatory to a tender conscience. but paul was not the man to shrink from difficulties. he had set his heart upon winning god's favor, without which this life appeared to him a blank and eternity the blackness of darkness; and, if this was the way to the goal, he was willing to tread it. not only, however, were his personal hopes involved in this, the hopes of his nation depended on it too; for it was the universal belief of his people that the messiah would only come to a nation keeping the law, and it was even said that, if one man kept it perfectly for a single day, his merit would bring to the earth the king for whom they were waiting. paul's rabbinical training, then, culminated in the desire to win this prize of righteousness, and he left the halls of sacred learning with this as the purpose of his life. the lonely student's resolution was momentous for the world; for he was first to prove amidst secret agonies that this way of salvation was false, and then to teach his discovery to mankind. 29. at jerusalem.--we cannot tell in what year paul's education at the college of jerusalem was finished or where he went immediately afterward. the young rabbis, after completing their studies, scattered in the same way as our own divinity students do, and began practical work in different parts of the jewish world. he may have gone back to his native cilicia and held office in some synagogue there. at all events, he was for some years at a distance from jerusalem and palestine; for these were the very years in which fell the movement of john the baptist and the ministry of jesus, and it is certain that paul could not have been in the vicinity without being involved in both of these movements either as a friend or as a foe. 30. but before long he returned to jerusalem. it was as natural for the highest rabbinical talent to gravitate in those times to jerusalem as it is for the highest literary and commercial talent to gravitate in our day to the metropolis. he arrived in the capital of judaism very soon after the death of jesus; and we can easily imagine the representations of that event and of the career thereby terminated which he would receive from his pharisaic friends. we have no reason to suppose that as yet he had any doubts about his own religion. we gather, indeed, from his writings that he had already passed through severe mental conflicts. although the conviction still stood fast in his mind that the blessedness of life was attainable only in the favor of god, yet his efforts to reach this coveted position by the observance of the law had not satisfied him. on the contrary, the more he strove to keep the law the more active became the motions of sin within him; his conscience was becoming more oppressed with the sense of guilt, and the peace of a soul at rest in god was a prize which eluded his grasp. still he did not question the teaching of the synagogue. to him as yet this was of one piece with the history of the old testament, whence looked down on him the figures of the saints and prophets, which were a guarantee that the system they represented must be divine, and behind which he saw the god of israel revealing himself in the giving of the law. the reason why he had not attained to peace and fellowship with god was, he believed, because he had not struggled enough with the evil of his nature or honored enough the precepts of the law. was there no service by which he could make up for all deficiencies and win that grace at last in which the great of old had stood? this was the temper of mind in which he returned to jerusalem, and learned with astonishment and indignation of the rise of a sect which believed that jesus who had been crucified was the messiah of the jewish people. 31. state of the christian church.--christianity was as yet only two or three years old, and was growing very quietly in jerusalem. although those who had heard it preached at pentecost had carried the news of it to their homes in many quarters, its public representatives had not yet left the city of its birth. at first the authorities had been inclined to persecute it, and checked its teachers when they appeared in public. but they had changed their minds and, acting under the advice of gamaliel, resolved to neglect it, believing that it would die out, if let alone. the christians, on the other hand, gave as little offence as possible; in the externals of religion they continued to be strict jews and zealous of the law, attending the temple worship, observing the jewish ceremonies and respecting the ecclesiastical authorities. it was a kind of truce, which allowed christianity a little space for secret growth. in their upper rooms the brethren met to break bread and pray to their ascended lord. it was the most beautiful spectacle. the new faith had alighted among them like an angel, and was shedding purity on their souls from its wings and breathing over their humble gatherings the spirit of peace. their love to each other was unbounded; they were filled with the inspiring sense of discovery; and, as often as they met, their invisible lord was in their midst. it was like heaven upon earth. while jerusalem around them was going on in its ordinary course of worldliness and ecclesiastical asperity, these few humble souls were felicitating themselves with a secret which they knew to contain within it the blessedness of mankind and the future of the world. 32. but the truce could not last, and these scenes of peace were soon to be invaded with terror and bloodshed. christianity could not keep such a truce; for there is in it a world-conquering force, which impels it at all risks to propagate itself, and the fermentation of the new wine of gospel liberty was sure sooner or later to burst the forms of the jewish law. at length a man arose in the church in whom these aggressive tendencies embodied themselves. this was stephen, one of the seven deacons who had been appointed to watch over the temporal affairs of the christian society. he was a man full of the holy ghost and possessed of capabilities which the brevity of his career only permitted to suggest but not to develop themselves. he went from synagogue to synagogue, preaching the messiahship of jesus and announcing the advent of freedom from the yoke of the law. champions of jewish orthodoxy encountered him, but were not able to withstand his eloquence and holy zeal. foiled in argument, they grasped at other weapons, stirring up the authorities and the populace to murderous fanaticism. 33. stephen.--one of the synagogues in which these disputations took place was that of the cilicians, the countrymen of paul. may he have been a rabbi in this synagogue and one of stephen's opponents in argument? at all events, when the argument of logic was exchanged for that of violence, he was in the front. when the witnesses who cast the first stones at stephen were stripping for their work, they laid down their garments at his feet. there, on the margin of that wild scene, in the field of judicial murder, we see his figure, standing a little apart and sharply outlined against the mass of persecutors unknown to fame--the pile of many-colored robes at his feet, and his eyes bent upon the holy martyr, who is kneeling in the article of death and praying: "lord, lay not this sin to their charge." 34. the persecutor.--his zeal on this occasion brought paul prominently under the notice of the authorities. it probably procured him a seat in the sanhedrin, where we find him soon afterward giving his vote against the christians. at all events, it led to his being entrusted with the work of utterly uprooting christianity, which the authorities now resolved upon. he accepted their proposal; for he believed it to be god's work. he saw more clearly than any one else what was the drift of christianity; and it seemed to him destined, if unchecked, to overturn all that he considered most sacred. the repeal of the law was in his eyes the obliteration of the one way of salvation, and faith in a crucified messiah blasphemy against the divinest hope of israel. besides, he had a deep personal interest in the task. hitherto he had been striving to please god, but always felt his efforts to come short; here was a chance of making up for all arrears by one splendid act of service. this was the iron of agony in his soul which gave edge and energy to his zeal. in any case he was not a man to do things by halves; and he flung himself headlong into his task. 35. terrible were the scenes which ensued. he flew from synagogue to synagogue, and from house to house, dragging forth men and women, who were cast into prison and punished. some appear to have been put to death, and--darkest trait of all--others were compelled to blaspheme the name of the saviour. the church at jerusalem was broken in pieces, and such of its members as escaped the rage of the persecutor were scattered over the neighboring provinces and countries. 36. it may seem too venturesome to call this the last stage of paul's unconscious preparation for his apostolic career. but so indeed it was. in entering on the career of a persecutor he was going on straight in the line of the creed in which he had been brought up; and this was its reduction to absurdity. besides, through the gracious working of him whose highest glory it is out of evil still to bring forth good, there sprang out of these sad doings in the mind of paul an intensity of humility, a willingness to serve even the least of the brethren of those whom he had abused, and a zeal to redeem lost time by the parsimonious use of what was left, which became permanent spurs to action in his subsequent career. chapter iii his conversion paragraphs 37-50. 37, 38. severity of the persecution. 39-42. kicking against the goad. 43, 44. the vision of christ. 45-48. effect of his conversion on his thinking. 49, 50. its effect on his destiny. 37. severity of the persecution.--it was the persecutor's hope utterly to exterminate christianity. but little did he understand its genius. it thrives on persecution. prosperity has often been fatal to it, persecution never. "they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." hitherto the church had been confined within the walls of jerusalem; but now all over judaea and samaria, and in distant phoenicia and syria, the beacon of the gospel began in many a town and village to twinkle through the darkness, and twos and threes met together in upper rooms to impart to each other their joy in the holy ghost. 38. we can imagine with what rage the tidings of these outbreaks of the fanaticism which he had hoped to stamp out would fill the persecutor. but he was not the person to be balked, and he resolved to hunt up the objects of his hatred even in their most obscure and distant hiding-places. in one strange city after another he accordingly appeared, armed with the apparatus of the inquisitor, to carry his sanguinary purpose out. having heard that damascus, the capital of syria, was one of the places where the fugitives had taken refuge, and that they were carrying on their propaganda among the numerous jews of that city, he went to the high priest, who had jurisdiction over the jews outside as well as inside palestine, and got letters empowering him to seize and bind and bring to jerusalem all of the new way of thinking whom he might find there. 39. kicking against the goad.--as we see him start on this journey, which was to be so momentous, we naturally ask what was the state of his mind. his was a noble nature and a tender heart; but the work he was engaged in might be supposed to be congenial only to the most brutal of mankind. had his mind, then, been visited with no compunctions? apparently not. we are told that, as he was ranging through strange cities in pursuit of his victims, he was exceedingly mad against them; and, as he was setting out to damascus, he was still breathing out threatenings and slaughter. he was sheltered against doubt by his reverence for the objects which the heresy imperiled; and, if he had to outrage his natural feelings in the bloody work, was not his merit all the greater? 40. but on this journey doubt at last invaded his mind. it was a long journey of over a hundred and sixty miles; with the slow means of locomotion then available, it would occupy at least six days; and a considerable portion of it lay across a desert, where there was nothing to distract the mind from its own reflections. in this enforced leisure doubts arose. what else can be meant by the word with which the lord saluted him: "it is hard for thee to kick against the goad!" the figure of speech is borrowed from a custom of eastern countries: the ox-driver wields a long pole, at the end of which is fixed a piece of sharpened iron, with which he urges the animal to go on or stand still or change its course; and, if it is refractory, it kicks against the goad, injuring and infuriating itself with the wounds it receives. this is a vivid picture of a man wounded and tortured by compunctions of conscience. there was something in him rebelling against the course of inhumanity on which he was embarked and suggesting that he was fighting against god. 41. it is not difficult to conceive whence these doubts arose. he was a scholar of gamaliel, the advocate of humanity and tolerance, who had counseled the sanhedrin to leave the christians alone. he was himself too young yet to have hardened his heart to all the disagreeables of such ghastly work. highly strung as was his religious zeal, nature could not but speak out at last. but probably his compunctions were chiefly awakened by the character and behavior of the christians. he had heard the noble defense of stephen and seen his face in the council-chamber shining like that of an angel. he had seen him kneeling on the field of execution and praying for his murderers. doubtless, in the course of the persecution he had witnessed many similar scenes. did these people look like enemies of god? as he entered their homes to drag them forth to prison, he got glimpses of their social life. could such spectacles of purity and love be products of the powers of darkness? did not the serenity with which his victims went to meet their fate look like the very peace which he had long been sighing for in vain? their arguments, too, must have told on a mind like his. he had heard stephen proving from the scriptures that it behooved the messiah to suffer; and the general tenor of the earliest christian apologetic assures us that many of the accused must on their trial have appealed to passages like the fifty-third of isaiah, where a career is predicted for the messiah startlingly like that of jesus of nazareth. he heard incidents of christ's life from their lips which betokened a personage very different from the picture sketched for him by his pharisaic informants: and the sayings of their master which the christians quoted did not sound like the utterances of the fanatic he conceived jesus to have been. 42. such may have been some of the reflections which agitated the traveler as he moved onward, sunk in gloomy thought. but might not these be mere suggestions of temptation--the morbid fancies of a wearied mind, or the whispers of a wicked spirit attempting to draw him off from the service of heaven? the sight of damascus, shining out like a gem in the heart of the desert, restored him to himself. there, in the company of sympathetic rabbis and in the excitement of effort, he would dispel from his mind these fancies bred of solitude. so onward he pressed, and the sun of noonday, from which all but the most impatient travelers in the east take refuge in a long siesta, looked down upon him still urging forward his course toward the city gate. 43. the vision of christ.--the news of saul's coming had arrived at damascus before him; and the little flock of christ was praying that, if it were possible, the progress of the wolf, who was on his way to spoil the fold, might be arrested. nearer and nearer, however, he drew; he had reached the last stage of his journey; and at the sight of the place which contained his victims his appetite grew keener for the prey. but the good shepherd had heard the cries of the trembling flock and went forth to face the wolf on their behalf. suddenly at midday, as paul and his company were riding forward beneath the blaze of the syrian sun, a light which dimmed even that fierce glare shone round about them, a shock vibrated through the atmosphere, and in a moment they found themselves prostrate upon the ground. the rest was for paul alone: a voice sounded in his ears, "saul, saul, why persecutest thou me?" and, as he looked up and asked the radiant figure that had spoken, "who art thou, lord?" the answer was, "i am jesus, whom thou art persecuting." 44. the language in which he ever afterward spoke of this event forbids us to think that it was a mere vision of jesus he saw. he ranks it as the last of the appearances of the risen saviour to his disciples, and places it on the same level as the appearances to peter, to james, to the eleven, and to the five hundred. it was, in fact, christ jesus in the vesture of his glorified humanity, who for once had left the spot, wherever it may be in the spaces of the universe, where now he sits on his mediatorial throne, in order to show himself to this elect disciple; and the light which outshone the sun was no other than the glory in which his humanity is there enveloped. an incidental evidence of this was supplied in the words which were addressed to paul. they were spoken in the hebrew, or rather the aramaic tongue--the same language in which jesus had been wont to address the multitudes by the lake and converse with his disciples in the desert solitudes; and, as in the days of his flesh he was wont to open his mouth in parables, so now he clothed his rebuke in a striking metaphor: "it is hard for thee to kick against the goad." 45. effect on paul's thought.--it would be impossible to exaggerate what took place in the mind of paul in this single instant. it is but a clumsy way we have of dividing time by the revolution of the clock into minutes and hours, days and years, as if each portion so measured were of the same size as another of equal length. this may suit well enough for the common ends of life, but there are finer measurements for which it is quite misleading. the real size of any space of time is to be measured by the amount it contains of the soul's experience; no one hour is exactly equal to another, and there are single hours which are larger than months. so measured, this one moment of paul's life was perhaps larger than all his previous years. the glare of revelation was so intense that it might well have scorched the eye of reason or burnt out life itself, as the external light dazzled the eyes of his body into blindness. when his companions recovered themselves and turned to their leader, they discovered that he had lost his sight, and they had to take him by the hand and lead him into the city. what a change was there! instead of the proud pharisee riding through the streets with the pomp of an inquisitor, a stricken man, trembling, groping, clinging to the hand of his guide, arrives at the house of entertainment amidst the consternation of those who receive him and, getting hastily to a room where he can ask them to leave him alone, sinks down there in the darkness. 46. but, though it was dark without, it was bright within. the blindness had been sent for the purpose of secluding him from outward distractions and enabling him to concentrate himself on the objects presented to the inner eye. for the same reason he neither ate nor drank for three days. he was too absorbed in the thoughts which crowded on him thick and fast. 47. in these three days, it may be said with confidence, he got at least a partial hold of all the truths he afterward proclaimed to the world; for his whole theology is nothing but the explication of his own conversion. first of all, his whole previous life fell down in fragments at his feet. it had been of one piece, and wonderfully complete. it had appeared to himself to be a consistent deduction from the highest revelation he knew and, in spite of its imperfections, to lie in the line of the will of god. but, instead of this, it had been rushing in diametrical opposition against the will and revelation of god, and had now been brought to a stop and broken in pieces by the collision. that which had appeared to him the perfection of service and obedience had involved his soul in the guilt of blasphemy and innocent blood. such had been the issue of seeking righteousness by the works of the law. at the very moment when his righteousness seemed at last to be turning to the whiteness so long desired, it was caught in the blaze of this revelation and whirled away in shreds of shriveled blackness. it had been a mistake, then, from first to last. righteousness was not to be obtained by the law, but only guilt and doom. this was the unmistakable conclusion, and it became the one pole of paul's theology. 48. but, while his theory of life thus fell in pieces with a crash that might by itself have shaken his reason, in the same moment an opposite experience befell him. not in wrath and vengeance did jesus of nazareth appear to him, as he might have been expected to appear to the deadly enemy of his cause. his first word might have been a demand for retribution, and his first might have been his last. but, instead of this, his face had been full of divine benignity and his words full of considerateness for his persecutor. in the very moment when the divine strength cast him down on the ground he felt himself encompassed by the divine love. this was the prize he had all his lifetime been struggling for in vain, and now he grasped it in the very moment in which he discovered that his struggles had been fightings against god; he was lifted up from his fall in the arms of god's love; he was reconciled and accepted forever. as time went on, he was more and more assured of this. in christ he found without effort of his own the peace and the moral strength he had striven for in vain. and this became the other pole of his theology--that righteousness and strength are found in christ without man's effort by mere trust in god's grace and acceptance of his gift. there were a hundred other things involved in these two which it required time to work out; but within these two poles the system of paul's thinking ever afterward revolved. 49. effect on his future.--the three dark days were not done before he knew one thing more--that his life was to be devoted to the proclamation of these discoveries. in any case this must have been. paul was a born propagandist and could not have become the possessor of such revolutionary truth without spreading it. besides, he had a warm heart, that could be deeply moved with gratitude; and, when jesus, whom he had blasphemed and tried to blot out of the memory of the world, treated him with such divine benignity, giving him back his forfeited life and placing him in that position which had always appeared to him the prize of life, he could not but put himself at his service with all his powers. he was an ardent patriot, the hope of the messiah having long occupied for him the whole horizon of the future; and, when he knew that jesus of nazareth was the messiah of his people and the saviour of the world, it followed as a matter of course that he must spend his life in making this known. 50. but this destiny was also clearly announced to him from the outside. ananias, probably the leading man in the small christian community at damascus, was informed, in a vision, of the change which had happened to paul, and was sent to restore his sight and admit him into the christian church by baptism. nothing could be more beautiful than the way in which this servant of god approached the man who had come to the city to take his life. as soon as he learned the state of the case, he forgave and forgot all the crimes of his enemy and sprang to clasp him in the arms of christian love. certain as may have been the assurance which in the inner world of the mind paul had in those three days received of forgiveness, it must have been to him a most welcome reassurance when, on opening his eyes again upon the external world, he was met with no contradiction of the visions he had been looking on, but the first object he saw was a human face bending over him with looks of forgiveness and perfect love. he learned from ananias the future the saviour had appointed him: he had been apprehended by christ in order to be a vessel to bear his name to gentiles and kings and to the children of israel. he accepted the mission with limitless devotion; and from that hour to the hour of his death he had but one ambition--to apprehend that for which he had been apprehended of christ jesus. chapter iv his gospel paragraphs 51-67. 51-53. sojourn in arabia. 54-58. failure of man's righteousness. 56. failure of the gentiles. 57. failure of the jews. 58. the fall the ultimate cause of failure. 59-65. the righteousness of god. the new adam. the new man. 66, 67. leading peculiarities of the pauline gospel. 51. sojourn in arabia.--when a man has been suddenly converted, as paul was, he is generally driven by a strong impulse to make known what has happened to him. such testimony is very impressive; for it is that of a soul which is receiving its first glimpses of the realities of the unseen world, and there is a vividness about the report it gives of them which produces an irresistible sense of reality. whether paul yielded at once to this impulse or not we cannot say with certainty. the language of the book of acts, where it is said that "straightway he preached christ in the synagogues," would lead us to suppose so. but we learn from his own writings that there was another powerful impulse influencing him at the same time; and it is uncertain which of the two he obeyed first. this other impulse was the wish to retreat into solitude and think out the meaning and issues of that which had befallen him. it cannot be wondered at that he felt this to be a necessity. he had believed his former creed intensely and staked everything on it; to see it suddenly shattered in pieces must have shaken him severely. the new truth which had been flashed upon him was so far-reaching and revolutionary that it could not be taken in at once in all its bearings. paul was a born thinker; it was not enough for him to experience anything; he required to comprehend it and fit it into the structure of his convictions. immediately, therefore, after his conversion he went away, he tells us, into arabia. he does not, indeed, say for what purpose he went; but, as there is no record of his preaching in that region and this statement occurs in the midst of a vehement defense of the originality of his gospel, we may conclude with considerable certainty that he went into retirement for the purpose of grasping in thought the details and the bearings of the revelation he had been put in possession of. in lonely contemplation he worked them out; and, when he returned to mankind, he was in possession of that view of christianity which was peculiar to himself and formed the burden of his preaching during the subsequent years. 52. there is some doubt as to the precise place of his retirement, because arabia is a word of vague and variable significance. but most probably it denotes the arabia of the wanderings, the principal feature of which was mount sinai. this was a spot hallowed by great memories and by the presence of other great men of revelation. here moses had seen the burning bush and communed with god on the top of the mountain. here elijah had roamed in his season of despair and drunk anew at the wells of inspiration. what place could be more appropriate for the meditations of this successor of these men of god? in the valleys where the manna fell and under the shadows of the peaks which had burned beneath the feet of jehovah he pondered the problem of his life. it is a great example. originality in the preaching of the truth depends on the solitary intuition of it. paul enjoyed the special inspiration of the holy ghost; but this did not render the concentrated activity of his own thinking unnecessary but only lent it peculiar intensity; and the clearness and certainty of his gospel were due to these months of sequestered thought. his retirement may have lasted a year or more; for between his conversion and his final departure from damascus, to which he returned from arabia, three years intervened; and one of them at least was spent in this way. 53. we have no detailed record of what the outlines of his gospel were till a period long subsequent to this; but, as these, when first they are traceable, are a mere cast of the features of his conversion, and, as his mind was working so long and powerfully on the interpretation of that event at this period, there can be no doubt that the gospel sketched in the epistles to the romans and the galatians was substantially the same as he preached from the first; and we are safe in inferring from these writings our account of his arabian meditations. 54. failure of man's righteousness.--the starting-point of paul's thinking was still, as it had been from his childhood, the conviction, inherited from pious generations, that the true end and felicity of man lay in the enjoyment of the favor of god. this was to be attained through righteousness; only the righteous could god be at peace with and favor with his love. to attain righteousness must, therefore, be the chief end of man. 55. but man had failed to attain righteousness and had thereby come short of the favor of god, and exposed himself to the divine wrath. paul proves this by taking a vast survey of the history of mankind in pre-christian times in its two great sections--the gentile and the jewish. 56. the gentiles failed. it might, indeed, be supposed that they had not the preliminary conditions for entering on the pursuit of righteousness at all, because they did not enjoy the advantage of a special revelation. but paul holds that even the heathen know enough of god to be aware of the obligation to follow after righteousness. there is a natural revelation of god in his works and in the human conscience sufficient to enlighten men as to this duty. but the heathen, instead of making use of this light, wantonly extinguished it. they were not willing to retain god in their knowledge and to fetter themselves with the restraints which a pure knowledge of him imposed. they corrupted the idea of god in order to feel at ease in an immoral life. the revenge of nature came upon them in the darkening and confusion of their intellects. they fell into such insensate folly as to change the glorious and incorruptible nature of god into the images of men and beasts, birds and reptiles. this intellectual degeneracy was followed by still deeper moral degeneracy. god, when they forsook him, let them go; and, when his restraining grace was removed, down they rushed into the depths of moral putridity. lust and passion got the mastery of them, and their life became a mass of moral disease. in the end of the first chapter of romans the features of their condition are sketched in colors that might be borrowed from the abode of devils, but were literally taken, as is too plainly proved by the pages even of gentile historians, from the condition of the cultured heathen nations at that time. this, then, was the history of one half of mankind: it had utterly fallen from righteousness and exposed itself to the wrath of god, which is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men. 57. the jews were the other half of the world. had they succeeded where the gentiles had failed? they enjoyed, indeed, great advantages over the heathen; for they possessed the oracles of god, in which the divine nature was exhibited in a form which rendered it inaccessible to human perversion, and the divine law was written with equal plainness in the same form. but had they profited by these advantages? it is one thing to know the law and another thing to do it; but it is doing, not knowing, which is righteousness. had they, then, fulfilled the will of god, which they knew? paul had lived in the same jerusalem in which jesus assailed the corruption and hypocrisy of scribes and pharisees; he had looked closely at the lives of the representative men of his nation; and he does not hesitate to charge the jews in mass with the very same sins as the gentiles; nay, he says that through them the name of god was blasphemed among the gentiles. they boasted of their knowledge and were the bearers of the torch of truth, the fierce blaze of which exposed the sins of the heathen; but their religion was a bitter criticism of the conduct of others; they forgot to examine their own conduct by the same light; and, while they were repeating, do not steal, do not commit adultery, and a multitude of other commandments, they were indulging in these sins themselves. what good in these circumstances did their knowledge do them? it only condemned them the more; for their sin was against light. while the heathen knew so little that their sins were comparatively innocent, the sins of the jews were conscious and presumptuous. their boasted superiority was therefore inferiority. they were more deeply condemned than the gentiles they despised, and exposed to a heavier curse. 58. the truth is, gentiles and jews had both failed for the same reason. trace these two streams of human life back to their sources and you come at last to a point where they are not two streams but one; and, before the bifurcation took place, something had happened which predetermined the failure of both. in adam all fell, and from him all, both gentiles and jews, inherited a nature too weak for the arduous attainment of righteousness; human nature is carnal now, not spiritual, and, therefore, unequal to this supreme spiritual achievement. the law could not alter this; it had no creative power to make the carnal spiritual. on the contrary, it aggravated the evil. it actually multiplied offenses; for its clear and full description of sins, which would have been an incomparable guide to a sound nature, turned into temptation for a morbid one. the very knowledge of sin tempts to its commission; the very command not to do anything is to a diseased nature a reason for doing it. this was the effect of the law: it multiplied and aggravated transgressions. and this was god's intention. not that he was the author of sin; but, like a skillful physician, who has sometimes to use appliances to bring a sore to a head before he heals it, he allowed the heathen to go their own way and gave the jews the law, that the sin of human nature might exhibit all its inherent qualities, before he intervened to heal it. the healing, however, was his real purpose all the time: he concluded all under sin, that he might have mercy upon all. 59. the righteousness of god.--man's extremity was god's opportunity; not, indeed, in the sense that, one way of salvation having failed. god devised another. the law had never, in his intention, been a way of salvation. it was only a means of illustrating the need of salvation. but the moment when this demonstration was complete was the signal for god to produce his method, which he had kept locked in his counsel through the generations of human probation. it had never been his intention to permit man to fail of his true end. only he allowed time to prove that fallen man could never reach righteousness by his own efforts; and, when the righteousness of man had been demonstrated to be a failure, he brought forth his secret--the righteousness of god. this was christianity; this was the sum and issue of the mission of christ--the conferring upon man, as a free gift, of that which is indispensable to his blessedness, but which he had failed himself to attain. it is a divine act; it is grace; and man obtains it by acknowledging that he has failed himself to attain it and by accepting it from god; it is got by faith only. it is "the righteousness of god, by the faith of jesus christ, unto all and upon all them that believe." 60. those who thus receive it enter at once into that position of peace and favor with god in which human felicity consists and which was the goal aimed at by paul when he was striving for righteousness by the law. "being justified by faith, we have peace with god through our lord jesus christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of god." it is a sunny life of joy, peace and hope which those lead who have come to know this gospel. there may be trials in it; but, when a man's life is reposing in the attainment of its true end, trials are light and all things work together for good. 61. this righteousness of god is for all the children of men--not for the jews only, but for the gentiles also. the demonstration of man's inability to attain righteousness was made, in accordance with the divine purpose, in both sections of the human race; and its completion was the signal for the exhibition of god's grace to both alike. the work of christ was not for the children of abraham, but for the children of adam. "as in adam all died, so in christ shall all be made alive." the gentiles did not need to undergo circumcision and to keep the law in order to obtain salvation; for the law was no part of salvation; it belonged entirely to the preliminary demonstration of man's failure; and, when it had accomplished this service, it was ready to vanish away. the only human condition of obtaining god's righteousness is faith; and this is as easy for gentile as jew. this was an inference from paul's own experience. it was not as a jew, but as a man, that he had been dealt with in his conversion. no gentile could have been less entitled to obtain salvation by merit than he had been. so far from the law raising him a single step toward salvation, it had removed him to a greater distance from god than any gentile, and cast him into a deeper condemnation. how, then, could it profit the gentiles to be placed in this position? in obtaining the righteousness in which he was now rejoicing he had done nothing which was not competent to any human being. 62. it was this universal love of god revealed in the gospel which inspired paul with unbounded admiration for christianity. his sympathies had been cabined, cribbed, confined in a narrow conception of god; the new faith uncaged his heart and let it forth into the free and sunny air. god became a new god to him. he calls his discovery the mystery which had been hidden from ages and generations, but had been revealed to him and his fellow-apostles. it seemed to him to be the secret of the ages and to be destined to usher in a new era, far better than any the world had ever seen. what kings and prophets had not known had been revealed to him. it had burst on him like the dawn of a new creation. god was now offering to every man the supreme felicity of life--that righteousness which had been the vain endeavor of the past ages. 63. this secret of the new epoch had not, indeed, been entirely unanticipated in the past. it had been "witnessed by the law and the prophets." the law could bear witness to it only negatively by demonstrating its necessity. but the prophets anticipated it more positively. david, for example, described "the blessedness of the man unto whom god imputed righteousness without works." still more clearly had abraham anticipated it. he was a justified man; and it was by faith, not by works, that he was justified--"he believed god, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness." the law had nothing to do with his justification, for it was not in existence for four centuries afterward. nor had circumcision anything to do with it, for he was justified before this rite was instituted. in short, it was as a man, not as a jew, that he was dealt with by god, and god might deal with any human being in the same way. it had once made the thorny road of legal righteousness sacred to paul to think that abraham and the prophets had trodden it before him; but now he knew that their life of religious joy and psalms of holy calm were inspired by quite different experiences, which were now diffusing the peace of heaven through his heart also. but only the first streaks of dawn had been descried by them; the perfect day had broken in his own time. 64. the old adam and the new.--paul's discovery of this way of salvation was an actual experience; he simply knew that christ, in the moment when he met him, had placed him in that position of peace and favor with god which he had long sighed for in vain, and, as time went on, he felt more and more that in this position he was enjoying the true blessedness of life. his mission henceforth must be to herald this discovery in its simple and concrete reality under the name of the righteousness of god. but a mind like his could not help inquiring how it was that the possession of christ did so much for him. in the arabian wilderness he pondered over this question, and the gospel he subsequently preached contained a luminous answer to it. 65. from adam his children derive a sad double heritage--a debt of guilt, which they cannot reduce, but are constantly increasing, and a carnal nature, which is incapable of righteousness. these are the two features of the religious condition of fallen man, and they are the double source of all his woes. but christ is a new adam, a new head of humanity, and those who are connected with him by faith become heirs of a double heritage of a precisely opposite kind. on the one hand, just as through our birth in the first adam's line we get inevitably entangled in guilt, like a child born into a family which is drowned in debt, so through our birth in the line of the second adam we get involved in a boundless heritage of merit, which christ, as the head of his family, makes the common property of its members. this extinguishes the debt of our guilt and makes us rich in christ's righteousness. "as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." on the other hand, just as adam transmitted to his posterity a carnal nature, alien to god and unfit for righteousness, so the new adam imparts to the race of which he is the head a spiritual nature, akin to god and delighting in righteousness. the nature of man, according to paul, normally consists of three sections--body, soul and spirit. in his original constitution these occupied definite relations of superiority and subordination to one another, the spirit being supreme, the body undermost, and the soul occupying the middle position. but the fall disarranged this order, and all sin consists in the usurpation by the body or the soul of the place of the spirit. in fallen man these two inferior sections of human nature, which together form what paul calls the flesh, or that side of human nature which looks toward the world and time, have taken possession of the throne and completely rule the life, while the spirit, the side of man which looks toward god and eternity, has been dethroned and reduced to a condition of inefficiency and death. christ restores the lost predominance of the spirit of man by taking possession of it by his own spirit. his spirit dwells in the human spirit, vivifying it and sustaining it in such growing strength that it becomes more and more the sovereign part of the human constitution. the man ceases to be carnal and becomes spiritual; he is led by the spirit of god and becomes more and more harmonious with all that is holy and divine. the flesh does not, indeed, easily submit to the loss of supremacy. it clogs and obstructs the spirit and fights to regain possession of the throne. paul has described this struggle in sentences of terrible vividness, in which all generations of christians have recognized the features of their deepest experience. but the issue of the struggle is not doubtful. sin shall not again have dominion over those in whom christ's spirit dwells, or dislodge them from their standing in the favor of god. "neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of god which is in christ jesus our lord." 66. the pauline gospel.--such are the bare outlines of the gospel which paul brought back with him from the arabian solitudes and afterward preached with unwearied enthusiasm. it could not but be mixed up in his mind and in his writings with the peculiarities of his own experience as a jew, and these make it difficult for us to grasp his system in some of its details. the belief in which he was brought up, that no man could be saved without becoming a jew, and the notions about the law from which he had to cut himself free, lie very distant from our modern sympathies; yet his theology could not shape itself in his mind except in contrast to these misconceptions. this became subsequently still more inevitable when his own old errors met him as the watchwords of a party within the christian church itself, against which he had to wage a long and relentless war. though this conflict forced his views into the clearest expression, it encumbered them with references to feelings and beliefs which are now dead to the interest of mankind. but, in spite of these drawbacks, the gospel of paul remains a possession of incalculable value to the human race. its searching investigation of the failure and the wants of human nature, its wonderful unfolding of the wisdom of god in the education of the pre-christian world, and its exhibition of the depth and universality of the divine love are among the profoundest elements of revelation. 67. but it is in its conception of christ that paul's gospel wears its imperishable crown. the evangelists sketched in a hundred traits of simple and affecting beauty the fashion of the earthly life of the man christ jesus, and in these the model of human conduct will always have to be sought; but to paul was reserved the task of making known, in its heights and depths, the work which the son of god accomplished as the saviour of the race. he scarcely ever refers to the incidents of christ's earthly life, although here and there he betrays that he knew them well. to him christ was ever the glorious being, shining with the splendor of heaven, who appeared to him on the way to damascus, and the saviour who caught him up into the heavenly peace and joy of a new life. when the church of christ thinks of her head as the deliverer of the soul from sin and death, as a spiritualizing presence ever with her and at work in every believer, and as the lord over all things who will come again without sin unto salvation, it is in forms of thought given her by the holy ghost through the instrumentality of this apostle. chapter v the work awaiting the worker paragraphs 68-78. 68-70. eight years of comparative inactivity at tarsus. gentiles admitted to christian church. 71, 72. paul discovered by barnabas and brought to antioch. his work there. 73-78. the known world of that period. 75. the greeks; 76. the romans; 77. the jews; 78. barbarians and slaves. 68. years of inactivity.--paul was now in possession of his gospel and was aware that it was to be the mission of his life to preach it to the gentiles; but he had still to wait a long time before his peculiar career commenced. we hear scarcely anything of him for seven or eight years; and yet we can only guess what may have been the reasons of providence for imposing on his servant so long a time of waiting. 69. there may have been personal reasons for it connected with paul's own spiritual history; because waiting is a common instrument of providential discipline for those to whom exceptional work has been appointed. a public reason may have been that he was too obnoxious to the jewish authorities to be tolerated yet in those scenes where christian activity commanded any notice. he had attempted to preach in damascus, where his conversion had taken place, but was immediately forced to flee from the fury of the jews; and, going thence to jerusalem and beginning to testify as a christian, he found the place in two or three weeks too hot to hold him. no wonder; how could the jews be expected to allow the man who had so lately been the chief champion of their religion to preach the faith which they had employed him to destroy? when he fled from jerusalem, he bent his steps to his native tarsus, where for years he remained in obscurity. no doubt he testified for christ there to his own family, and there are some indications that he carried on evangelistic operations in his native province of cilicia: but, if he did so, his work may be said to have been that of a man in hiding, for it was not in the central or even in a visible stream of the new religious movement. 70. these are but conjectural reasons for the obscurity of those years. but there was one undoubted reason for the delay of paul's career of the greatest possible importance. in this interval took place that revolution--one of the most momentous in the history of mankind--by which the gentiles were admitted to equal privileges with the jews in the church of christ. this change proceeded from the original circle of apostles, in jerusalem, and peter, the chief of the apostles, was the instrument of it. by the vision of the sheet of clean and unclean beasts, which he saw at joppa, he was prepared for the part he was to play in this transaction, and he admitted the gentile cornelius, of caesarea, and his family to the church by baptism without circumcision. this was an innovation involving boundless consequences. it was a necessary preliminary to paul's mission-work, and subsequent events were to show how wise was the divine arrangement that the first gentile entrants into the church should be admitted by the hands of peter rather than by those of paul. 71. as soon as this event had taken place, the arena was clear for paul's career, and a door was immediately opened for his entrance upon it. almost simultaneously with the baptism of the gentile family at caesarea a great revival broke out among the gentiles of the city of antioch, the capital of syria. the movement had been begun by fugitives driven by persecution from jerusalem, and it was carried on with the sanction of the apostles, who sent barnabas, one of their trusted coadjutors, from jerusalem to superintend it. this man knew paul. when paul first came to jerusalem after his conversion and assayed to join himself to the christians there, they were all afraid of him, suspecting the teeth and claws of the wolf beneath the fleece of the sheep. but barnabas rose superior to these fears and suspicions and, having taken the new convert and heard his story, believed in him and persuaded the rest to receive him. the intercourse thus begun only lasted a week or two at that time, as paul had to leave jerusalem; but barnabas had received a profound impression of his personality and did not forget him. when he was sent down to superintend the revival at antioch, he soon found himself embarrassed with its magnitude and in need of assistance; and the idea occurred to him that paul was the man he wanted. tarsus was not far off, and thither he went to seek him. paul accepted his invitation and returned with him to antioch. 72. the hour he had been waiting for had struck, and he threw himself into the work of evangelizing the gentiles with the enthusiasm of a great nature that found itself at last in its proper sphere. the movement at once responded to the pressure of such a hand; the disciples became so numerous and prominent that the heathen gave them a new name--that name of "christians," which has ever since continued to be the badge of faith in christ--and antioch, a city of half a million inhabitants, became the headquarters of christianity instead of jerusalem. soon a large church was formed, and one of the manifestations of the zeal with which it was pervaded was a proposal, which gradually shaped itself into an enthusiastic resolution, to send forth a mission to the heathen. as a matter of course, paul was designated for this service. 73. the known world of that period.--as we see him thus brought at length face to face with the task of his life, let us pause to take a brief survey of the world which he was setting out to conquer. nothing less was what he aimed at. in paul's time the known world was so small a place, that it did not seem impossible even for a single man to make a spiritual conquest of it; and it had been wonderfully prepared for the new force which was about to assail it. 74. it consisted of a narrow disc of land surrounding the mediterranean sea. that sea deserved at that time the name it bears, for the world's center of gravity, which has since shifted to other latitudes, lay in it. the interest of human life was concentrated in the southern countries of europe, the portion of western asia and the strip of northern africa which form its shores. in this little world there were three cities which divided between them the interest of those ages. these were rome, athens and jerusalem, the capitals of the three races--the romans, the greeks and the jews--which in every sense ruled that old world. it was not that each of them had mastered a third part of the circle of civilization, but each of them had in turn diffused itself over the whole of it, and either still held its grip or at least had left imperishable traces of its presence. 75. the greeks were the first to take possession of the world. they were the people of cleverness and genius, the perfect masters of commerce, literature and art. in very early ages they displayed the instinct for colonization and sent forth their sons to find new abodes on the east and the west, far from their native home. at length there arose among them one who concentrated in himself the strongest tendencies of the race and by force of arms extended the dominion of greece to the borders of india. the vast empire of alexander the great split into pieces at his death; but a deposit of greek life and influence remained in all the countries over which the deluge of his conquering armies had swept. greek cities, such as antioch in syria and alexandria in egypt, flourished all over the east; greek merchants abounded in every center of trade; greek teachers taught the literature of their country in many lands; and--what was most important of all--the greek language became the general vehicle for the communication of the more serious thought between nation and nation. even the jews in new testament times read their own scriptures in a greek version, the original hebrew having become a dead language. perhaps the greek is the most perfect tongue the world has known, and there was a special providence in its universal diffusion before christianity needed a medium of international communication. the new testament was written in greek, and, wherever the apostles of christianity traveled, they were able to make themselves understood in this language. 76. the turn of the romans came next to obtain possession of the world. originally a small clan in the neighborhood of the city from which they derived their name, they gradually extended and strengthened themselves and acquired such skill in the arts of war and government that they became irresistible conquerors and marched forth in every direction to make themselves masters of the globe. they subdued greece itself and, flowing eastward, seized upon the countries which alexander and his successors had ruled. the whole known world, indeed, became theirs from the straits of gibraltar to the utmost east. they did not possess the genius or geniality of the greeks; their qualities were strength and justice; and their arts were not those of the poet and the thinker, but those of the soldier and the judge. they broke down the divisions between the tribes of men and compelled them to be friendly toward each other, because they were all alike prostrate beneath one iron rule. they pierced the countries with roads, which connected them with rome and were such solid triumphs of engineering skill that some of them remain to this day. along these highways the message of the gospel ran. thus the romans also proved to be pioneers for christianity, for their authority in so many countries afforded to its first publishers facility of movement and protection from the arbitrary justice of local tribunals. 77. meanwhile the third nation of antiquity had also completed its conquest of the world. not by force of arms did the jews diffuse themselves, as the greeks and romans had done. for centuries, indeed, they had dreamed of the coming of a warlike hero, whose prowess should outshine that of the most celebrated gentile conquerors. but he never came: and their occupation of the centers of civilization had to take place in a more silent way. there is no change in the habits of any nation more striking than that which passed over the jewish race in that interval of four centuries between malachi and matthew of which we have no record in the sacred scriptures. in the old testament we see the jews pent within the narrow limits of palestine, engaged mainly in agricultural pursuits and jealously guarding themselves from intermingling with foreign nations. in the new testament we find them still, indeed, clinging with a desperate tenacity to jerusalem and to the idea of their own separateness; but their habits and abodes have been completely changed: they have given up agriculture and betaken themselves with extraordinary eagerness and success to commerce; and with this object in view they have diffused themselves everywhere--over africa, asia, europe--and there is not a city of any importance where they are not to be found. by what steps this extraordinary change came about it were hard to tell and long to trace. but it had taken place; and this turned out to be a circumstance of extreme importance for the early history of christianity. wherever the jews were settled, they had their synagogues, their sacred scriptures, their uncompromising belief in the one true god. not only so: their synagogues everywhere attracted proselytes from the surrounding gentile populations. the heathen religions were at that period in a state of utter collapse. the smaller nations had lost faith in their deities, because they had not been able to defend them from the victorious greeks and romans. but the conquerors had for other reasons equally lost faith in their own gods. it was an age of skepticism, religious decay and moral corruption. but there are always natures which must possess a faith in which they can trust. these were in search of a religion, and many of them found refuge from the coarse and incredible myths of the gods of polytheism in the purity and monotheism of the jewish creed. the fundamental ideas of this creed are also the foundations of the christian faith. wherever the messengers of christianity traveled, they met with people with whom they had many religious conceptions in common. their first sermons were delivered in synagogues, their first converts were jews and proselytes. the synagogue was the bridge by which christianity crossed over to the heathen. 78. such, then, was the world which paul was setting out to conquer. it was a world everywhere pervaded with these three influences. but there were two other elements of population which require to be kept in mind, as both of them supplied numerous converts to the early preachers: they were the original inhabitants of the various countries; and there were the slaves, who were either captives taken in war or their descendants, and were liable to be shifted from place to place, being sold according to the necessities or caprices of their masters. a religion the chief boast of which it was to preach glad tidings to the poor could not neglect these down-trodden classes, and, although the conflict of christianity with the forces of the time which had possession of the fate of the world naturally attracts attention, it must not be forgotten that its best triumph has always consisted in the sweetening and brightening of the lot of the humble. chapter vi his missionary travels paragraphs 70-114. 79-88. the first journey. 79, 80. his companions. 81. cyprus. change of his name. 82-87. the mainland of asia minor. 83. desertion of mark. 84. antioch-in-pisidia and iconium. 86-87. lystra and derbe. 88. return. 89-108. the second journey. 90, 91. separation from barnabas. 92, 93. unrecorded half of the journey. 94-96. crossing to europe. 97-108. greece. 97-101. macedonia. 99. women and the gospel. 100. liberality of churches. 102-108. achaia. 103-105. athens. 106-108. corinth. 109-114. the third journey. ephesus, polemic against superstition. the first journey 79. paul's companions.--from the beginning it had been the wont of the preachers of christianity not to go alone on their expeditions, but two by two. paul improved on this practise by going generally with two companions, one of them being a younger man, who perhaps took charge of the traveling arrangements. on his first journey his comrades were barnabas and john mark, the nephew of barnabas. 80. we have already seen that barnabas may be called the discoverer of paul; and, when they set out on this journey together, he was probably in a position to act as paul's patron; for he enjoyed much consideration in the christian community. converted apparently on the day of pentecost, he had played a leading part in the subsequent events. he was a man of high social position, a landed proprietor in the island of cyprus; and he sacrificed all to the new movement into which he had been drawn. in the outburst of enthusiasm which led the first christians to share their property with one another, he sold his estate and laid the money at the apostles' feet. he was constantly employed thereafter in the work of preaching, and he had so remarkable a gift of eloquence that he was called the son of exhortation. an incident which occurred at a later stage of this journey gives us a glimpse of the appearance of the two men. when the inhabitants of lystra mistook them for gods, they called barnabas jupiter and paul mercury. now, in ancient art jupiter was always represented as a tall, majestic and benignant figure, while mercury was the small, swift messenger of the father of gods and men. probably it appeared, therefore, that the large, gracious, paternal barnabas was the head and director of the expedition, while paul, little and eager, was the subordinate. the direction in which they set out, too, was the one which barnabas might naturally have been expected to choose. they went first to cyprus, the island where his property had been and many of his friends still were. it lay eighty miles to the southwest of seleucia, the seaport of antioch, and they might reach it on the very day they left their headquarters. 81. cyprus--change of name.--but, although barnabas appeared to be the leader, the good man probably knew already that the humble words of the baptist might be used by himself with reference to his companion, "he must increase, but i must decrease." at all events, as soon as their work began in earnest, this was shown to be the relation between them. after going through the length of the island, from east to west, evangelizing, they arrived at paphos, its chief town, and there the problems they had come out to face met them in the most concentrated form. paphos was the seat of the worship of venus, the goddess of love, who was said to have been born of the foam of the sea at this very spot; and her worship was carried on with the wildest licentiousness. it was a picture in miniature of greece sunk in moral decay. paphos was also the seat of the roman government, and in the pro-consular chair sat a man, sergius paulus, whose noble character but utter lack of certain faith formed a companion picture of the inability of rome at that epoch to meet the deepest necessities of her best sons. in the proconsular court, playing upon the inquirer's credulity, a jewish sorcerer and quack, named elymas, was flourishing, whose arts were a picture of the lowest depths to which the jewish character could sink. the whole scene was a kind of miniature of the world the evils of which the missionaries had set forth to cure. in the presence of these exigencies paul unfolded for the first time the mighty powers which lay in him. an access of the spirit seizing him and enabling him to overcome all obstacles, he covered the jewish magician with disgrace, converted the roman governor, and founded in the town a christian church in opposition to the greek shrine. from that hour barnabas sank into the second place and paul took his natural position as the head of the mission. we no longer read, as heretofore, of "barnabas and saul," but always of "paul and barnabas." the subordinate had become the leader; and, as if to mark that he had become a new man and taken a new place, he was no longer called by the jewish name of saul, which up to this point he had borne, but by the name of paul, which has ever since been his designation among christians. 82. the mainland of asia.--the next move was as obviously the choice of the new leader as the first one had been due to barnabas. they struck across the sea to perga, a town near the middle of the southern coast of asia minor, then right up, a hundred miles, into the mainland, and thence eastward to a point almost straight north of tarsus. this route carried them in a kind of half circuit through the districts of pamphylia, pisidia and lycaonia, which border, to the west and north, on cilicia, paul's native province; so that, if it be the case that he had evangelized cilicia already, he was now merely extending his labors to the nearest surrounding regions. 83. at perga, the starting-point of this second half of the journey, a misfortune befell the expedition: john mark deserted his companions and sailed for home. it may be that the new position assumed by paul had given him offense, though his generous uncle felt no such grudge at that which was the ordinance of nature and of god. but it is more likely that the cause of his withdrawal was dismay at the dangers upon which they were about to enter. these were such as might well strike terror even into resolute hearts. behind perga rose the snow-clad peaks of the taurus mountains, which had to be penetrated through narrow passes, where crazy bridges spanned the rushing torrents, and the castles of robbers, who watched for passing travelers to pounce upon, were hidden in positions so inaccessible that even the roman army had not been able to exterminate them. when these preliminary dangers were surmounted, the prospect beyond was anything but inviting: the country to the north of the taurus was a vast tableland, more elevated than the summits of the highest mountains in this country, and scattered over with solitary lakes, irregular mountain masses and tracts of desert, where the population was rude and spoke an almost endless variety of dialects. these things terrified mark, and he drew back. but his companions took their lives in their hand and went forward. to them it was enough that there were multitudes of perishing souls there, needing the salvation of which they were the heralds; and paul knew that there were scattered handfuls of his own people in these remote regions of the heathen. 84. can we conceive what their procedure was like in the towns they visited? it is difficult, indeed, to picture it to ourselves. as we try to see them with the mind's eye entering any place, we naturally think of them as the most important personages in it; to us their entry is as august as if they had been carried on a car of victory. very different, however, was the reality. they entered a town as quietly and as unnoticed as any two strangers who may walk into one of our towns any morning. their first care was to get a lodging; and then they had to seek for employment, for they worked at their trade wherever they went. nothing could be more commonplace. who could dream that this travel-stained man, going from one tentmaker's door to another, seeking for work, was carrying the future of the world beneath his robe! when the sabbath came round, they would cease from toil, like the other jews in the place, and repair to the synagogue. they joined in the psalms and prayers with the other worshipers and listened to the reading of the scriptures. after this the presiding elder might ask if any one present had a word of exhortation to deliver. this was paul's opportunity. he would rise and, with outstretched hand, begin to speak. at once the audience recognized the accents of the cultivated rabbi: and the strange voice won their attention. taking up the passages which had been read, he would soon be moving forward on the stream of jewish history, till he led up to the astounding announcement that the messiah hoped for by their fathers and promised by their prophets had come; and he had been sent among them as his apostle. then would follow the story of jesus; it was true, he had been rejected by the authorities of jerusalem and crucified, but this could be shown to have taken place in accordance with prophecy; and his resurrection from the dead was an infallible proof that he had been sent of god: now he was exalted a prince and a saviour to give repentance unto israel and the remission of sins. we can easily imagine the sensation produced by such a sermon from such a preacher and the buzz of conversation which would arise among the congregation after the dismissal of the synagogue. during the week it would become the talk of the town: and paul was willing to converse at his work or in the leisure of the evening with any who might desire further information. next sabbath the synagogue would be crowded, not with jews only, but gentiles also, who were curious to see the strangers; and paul now unfolded the secret that salvation by jesus christ was as free to gentiles as to jews. this was generally the signal for the jews to contradict and blaspheme; and, turning his back on them, paul addressed himself to the gentiles. but meantime the fanaticism of the jews was roused, who either stirred up the mob or secured the interest of the authorities against the strangers; and in a storm of popular tumult or by the breath of authority the messengers of the gospel were swept out of the town. this was what happened at antioch in pisidia, their first halting-place in the interior of asia minor; and it was repeated in a hundred instances in paul's subsequent life. 85. sometimes they did not get off so easily. at lystra, for example, they found themselves in a population of rude heathens, who were at first so charmed with paul's winning words and impressed with the appearance of the preachers that they took them for gods and were on the point of offering sacrifice to them. this filled the missionaries with horror, and they rejected the intentions of the crowd with unceremonious haste. a sudden revolution in the popular sentiment ensued, and paul was stoned and cast out of the city apparently dead. 86. such were the scenes of excitement and peril through which they had to pass in this remote region. but their enthusiasm never flagged; they never thought of turning back, but, when they were driven out of one city, moved forward to another. and, total as their discomfitures sometimes appeared, they quitted no city without leaving behind them a little band of converts--perhaps a few jews, a few more proselytes, and a number of gentiles. the gospel found those for whom it was intended--penitents burdened with sin, souls dissatisfied with the world and their ancestral religion, hearts yearning for divine sympathy and love; "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed;" and these formed in every city the nucleus of a christian church. even at lystra, where the defeat seemed so utter, a little group of faithful hearts gathered round the mangled body of the apostle outside the city gates; eunice and lois were there with tender womanly ministrations; and young timothy, as he looked down on the pale and bleeding face, felt his heart forever knit to the hero who had courage to suffer to the death for his faith. 87. in the intense love of such hearts paul received compensation for suffering and injustice. if, as some suppose, the people of this region formed part of the galatian churches, we see from his epistle to them the kind of love they gave him. they received him, he says, as an angel of god, nay, as jesus christ himself; they were ready to have plucked out their eyes and given them to him. they were people of rude kindness and headlong impulses; their native religion was one of excitement and demonstrativeness, and they carried these characteristics into the new faith they had adopted. they were filled with joy and the holy ghost, and the revival spread on every hand with great rapidity, till the word, sounding out from the little christian communities, was heard all along the slopes of taurus and down the glens of the cestrus and halys. paul's warm heart could not but enjoy such an outburst of affection. he responded to it by giving in return his own deep love. the towns mentioned in their itinerary are the pisidian antioch, iconium, lystra, and derbe; but, when at the last of them he had finished his course and the way lay open to him to descend by the cilician gates to tarsus and thence get back to antioch, he preferred to return by the way he had come. in spite of the most imminent danger he revisited all these places to see his dear converts again and cheer them in face of persecution; and he ordained elders in every city to watch over the churches in his absence. 88. the return.--at length the missionaries descended again from these uplands to the southern coast and sailed back to antioch, from which they had set out. worn with toil and suffering, but flushed with the joy of success, they appeared among those who had sent them forth and had doubtless been following them with their prayers; and, like discoverers returned from the finding of a new country, they related the miracles of grace they had witnessed in the strange world of the heathen. the second journey 89. in his first journey paul may be said to have been only trying his wings; for his course, adventurous though it was, only swept in a limited circle round his native province. in his second journey he performed a far more distant and perilous flight. indeed, this journey was not only the greatest he achieved but perhaps the most momentous recorded in the annals of the human race. in its issues it far outrivaled the expedition of alexander the great, when he carried the arms and civilization of greece into the heart of asia, or that of caesar, when he landed on the shores of britain, or even the voyage of columbus, when he discovered a new world. yet, when he set out on it, he had no idea of the magnitude which it was to assume or even the direction which it was to take. after enjoying a short rest at the close of the first journey, he said to his fellow-missionary, "let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the lord and see how they do." it was the parental longing to see his spiritual children which was drawing him; but god had far more extensive designs, which opened up before him as he went forward. 90. separation from barnabas.--unfortunately the beginning of this journey was marred by a dispute between the two friends who meant to perform it together. the occasion of their difference was the offer of john mark to accompany them. no doubt when this young man saw paul and barnabas returning safe and sound from the undertaking which he had deserted, he recognized what a mistake he had made; and he now wished to retrieve his error by rejoining them. barnabas naturally wished to take his nephew, but paul absolutely refused. the one missionary, a man of easy kindliness, urged the duty of forgiveness and the effect which a rebuff might have on a beginner; while the other, full of zeal for god, represented the danger of making so sacred a work in any way dependent on one who could not be relied upon, for "confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth or a foot out of joint." we cannot now tell which of them was in the right or if both were partly wrong. both of them, at all events, suffered for it: paul had to part in anger from the man to whom he probably owed more than to any other human being; and barnabas was separated from the grandest spirit of the age. 91. they never met again. this was not due, however, to an unchristian continuation of the quarrel; for the heat of passion soon cooled down and the old love returned. paul mentions barnabas with honor in his writings, and in the very last of his epistles he sends for mark to come to him at rome, expressly adding that he is profitable to him for ministry--the very thing he had disbelieved about him before. in the meantime, however, their difference separated them. they agreed to divide between them the region they had evangelized together. barnabas and mark went away to cyprus; and paul undertook to visit the churches on the mainland. as companion he took with him silas, or silvanus, in the place of barnabas; and he had not proceeded far on his new journey when he met with one to take the place of mark. this was timothy, a convert he had made at lystra in his first journey; he was youthful and gentle; and he continued a faithful companion and a constant comfort to the apostle to the end of his life. 92. unrecorded work.--in pursuance of the purpose with which he had set out, paul began this journey by revisiting the churches in the founding of which he had taken part. beginning at antioch and proceeding in a northwesterly direction, he did this work in syria, cilicia and other parts, till he reached the center of asia minor, where the primary object of his journey was completed. but, when a man is on the right road, all sorts of opportunities open up before him. when he had passed through the provinces which he had visited before, new desires to penetrate still farther began to fire his mind, and providence opened up the way. he still went forward in the same direction through phrygia and galatia. bithynia, a large province lying along the shore of the black sea, and asia, a densely populated province in the west of asia minor, seemed to invite him and he wished to enter them. but the spirit who guided his footsteps indicated, by some means unknown to us, that these provinces were shut to him in the meantime; and, pushing onward in the direction in which his divine guide permitted him to go, he found himself at troas, a town on the northwest coast of asia minor. 93. thus he had traveled from antioch in the south-east to troas in the northwest of asia minor, a distance as far as from land's end to john o' groat's, evangelizing all the way. it must have taken months, perhaps even years. yet of this long, laborious period we possess no details whatever, except such features of his intercourse with the galatians as may be gathered from the epistle to that church. the truth is that, thrilling as are the notices of paul's career given in the acts, this record is a very meager and imperfect one, and his life was far fuller of adventure, of labors and sufferings for christ, than even luke's narrative would lead us to suppose. the plan of the acts is to tell only what was most novel and characteristic in each journey, while it passes over, for instance, all his repeated visits to the same scenes. there are thus great blanks in the history, which were in reality as full of interest as the portions of his life which are fully described. of this there is a startling proof in an epistle which he wrote within the period covered by the acts of the apostles. his argument calling upon him to enumerate some of his outstanding adventures, "are they ministers of christ?" he asks, "i am more; in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. of the jews five times received i forty stripes save one. thrice was i beaten with rods. once was i stoned. thrice i suffered shipwreck. a night and a day have i been in the deep. in journeyings often, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." now, of the items of this extraordinary catalogue the book of acts mentions very few: of the five jewish scourgings it notices not one, of the three roman beatings only one; the one stoning it records, but not one of the three shipwrecks, for the shipwreck so fully detailed in the acts happened later. it was no part of the design of luke to exaggerate the figure of the hero he was painting; his brief and modest narrative comes far short even of the reality; and, as we pass over the few simple words into which he condenses the story of months or years, our imagination requires to be busy, filling up the outline with toils and pains at least equal to those the memory of which he has preserved. 94. crossing to europe.--it would appear that paul reached troas under the direction of the guiding spirit without being aware whither his steps were next to be turned. but could he doubt what the divine intention was when, gazing across the silver streak of the hellespont, he beheld the shores of europe on the other side? he was now within the charmed circle where for ages civilization had had her home; and he could not be entirely ignorant of those stories of war and enterprise and those legends of love and valor which have made it forever bright and dear to the heart of mankind. at only four miles' distance lay the plain of troy, where europe and asia encountered each other in the struggle celebrated in homer's immortal song. not far off xerxes, sitting on a marble throne, reviewed the three millions of asiatics with which he meant to bring europe to his feet. on the other side of that narrow strait lay greece and rome, the centers from which issued the learning, the commerce and the armies which governed the world. could his heart, so ambitious for the glory of christ, fail to be fired with the desire to cast himself upon these strongholds, or could he doubt that the spirit was leading him forward to this enterprise? he knew that greece, with all her wisdom, lacked that knowledge which makes wise unto salvation, and that the romans, though they were the conquerors of this world, did not know the way of winning an inheritance in the world that is to come; but in his breast he carried the secret which they both required. 95. it may have been such thoughts, dimly moving in his mind, that projected themselves into the vision which he saw at troas; or was it the vision which first awakened the idea of crossing to europe? as he lay asleep, with the murmur of the aegean in his ears, he saw a man standing on the opposite coast, on which he had been looking before he went to rest, beckoning and crying, "come over into macedonia and help us." that figure represented europe, and its cry for help europe's need of christ. paul recognized in it a divine summons; and the very next sunset which bathed the hellespont in its golden light shone upon his figure seated on the deck of a ship the prow of which was moving toward the shore of macedonia. 96. in this passage of paul, from asia to europe, a great providential decision was taking effect, of which, as children of the west, we cannot think without the profoundest thankfulness. christianity arose in asia and among an oriental people; and it might have been expected to spread first among those races to which the jews were most akin. instead of coming west, it might have gone eastward. it might have penetrated into arabia and taken possession of those regions where the faith of the false prophet now holds sway. it might have visited the wandering tribes of central asia and, piercing its way down through the passes of the himalayas, reared its temples on the banks of the ganges, the indus and the godavery. it might have traveled farther east to deliver the swarming millions of china from the cold secularism of confucius. had it done so, missionaries from india and japan might have been coming to england and america at the present day to tell the story of the cross. but providence conferred on europe a blessed priority, and the fate of our continent was decided when paul crossed the aegean. 97. macedonia.--as greece lay nearer than rome to the shore of asia, its conquest for christ was the great achievement of his second missionary journey. like the rest of the world it was at that time under the sway of rome, and the romans had divided it into two provinces--macedonia in the north and achaia in the south. macedonia was, therefore, the first scene of paul's greek mission. it was traversed from east to west by a great roman road, along which the missionary moved, and the places where we have accounts of his labors are philippi, thessalonica and beroea. 98. the greek character in this northern province was much less corrupted than in the more polished society to the south. in the macedonian population there still lingered something of the vigor and courage which four centuries before had made its soldiers the conquerors of the world. the churches which paul founded here gave him more comfort than any he established elsewhere. there are none of his epistles more cheerful and cordial than those to the thessalonians and the philippians; and, as he wrote the latter late in life, the perseverance of the macedonians in adhering to the gospel must have been as remarkable as the welcome they gave it at the first. at beroea he even met with a generous and open-minded synagogue of jews--the rarest occurrence in his experience. 99. women and the gospel.--a prominent feature of the work in macedonia was the part taken in it by women. amid the general decay of religions throughout the world at this period, many women everywhere sought satisfaction for their religious instincts in the pure faith of the synagogue. in macedonia, perhaps on account of its sound morality, these female proselytes were more numerous than elsewhere; and they pressed in large numbers into the christian church. this was a good omen; it was a prophecy of the happy change in the lot of women which christianity was to produce in the nations of the west. if man owes much to christ, woman owes still more. he has delivered her from the degradation of being man's slave and plaything and raised her to be his friend and his equal before heaven; while, on the other hand, a new glory has been added to christ's religion by the fineness and dignity with which it is invested when embodied in the female character. these things were vividly illustrated in the earliest footsteps of christianity on our continent. the first convert in europe was a woman, at the first christian service held on european soil the heart of lydia being opened to receive the truth; and the change which passed upon her prefigured what woman in europe was to become under the influence of christianity. in the same town of philippi there was seen, too, at the same time an equally representative image of the condition of woman in europe before the gospel reached it, in a poor girl, possessed of a spirit of divination and held in slavery by men who were making gain out of her misfortune, whom paul restored to sanity. her misery and degradation were a symbol of the disfiguration, as lydia's sweet and benevolent christian character was of the transfiguration of womanhood. 100. liberality of the churches.--another feature which prominently marked the macedonian churches was a spirit of liberality. they insisted on supplying the bodily wants of the missionaries; and, even after paul had left them, they sent gifts to meet his necessities in other towns. long afterward, when he was a prisoner at rome, they deputed epaphroditus, one of their teachers, to carry thither similar gifts to him and to act as his attendant. paul accepted the generosity of these loyal hearts, though in other places he would work his fingers to the bone and forego his natural rest rather than accept similar favors. nor was their willingness to give due to superior wealth. on the contrary, they gave out of deep poverty. they were poor to begin with, and they were made poorer by the persecutions which they had to endure. these were very severe after paul left, and they lasted long. of course they had broken first of all on paul himself. though he was so successful in macedonia, he was swept out of every town at last like the off-scourings of all things. it was generally by the jews that this was brought about. they either fanaticized the mob against him, or accused him before the roman authorities of introducing a new religion or disturbing the peace or proclaiming a king who would be a rival to caesar. they would neither go into the kingdom of heaven themselves nor suffer others to enter. 101. but god protected his servant. at philippi he delivered him from prison by a physical miracle and by a miracle of grace still more marvelous wrought upon his cruel jailor; and in other towns he saved him by more natural means. in spite of bitter opposition, churches were founded in city after city, and from these the glad tidings sounded out over the whole province of macedonia. 102. achaia.--when, leaving macedonia, paul proceeded south into achaia, he entered the real greece--the paradise of genius and renown. the memorials of the country's greatness rose around him on his journey. as he quitted beroea, he could see behind him the snowy peaks of mount olympus, where the deities of greece had been supposed to dwell. soon he was sailing past thermopylae, where the immortal three hundred stood against the barbarian myriads; and, as his voyage neared its close, he saw before him the island of salamis, where again the existence of greece was saved from extinction by the valor of her sons. 103. athens.--his destination was athens, the capital of the country. as he entered the city, he could not be insensible to the great memories which clung to its streets and monuments. here the human mind had blazed forth with a splendor it has never exhibited elsewhere. in the golden age of its history athens possessed more men of the very highest genius than have ever lived in any other city. to this day their names invest it with glory. yet even in paul's day the living athens was a thing of the past. four hundred years had elapsed since its golden age, and in the course of these centuries it had experienced a sad decline. philosophy had degenerated into sophistry, art into dilettanteism, oratory into rhetoric, poetry into versemaking. it was a city living on its past. yet it still had a great name and was full of culture and learning of a kind. it swarmed with so-called philosophers of different schools, and with teachers and professors of every variety of knowledge; and thousands of strangers of the wealthy class, collected from all parts of the world, lived there for study or the gratification of their intellectual tastes. it still represented to an intelligent visitor one of the great factors in the life of the world. 104. with the amazing versatility which enabled him to be all things to all men, paul adapted himself to this population also. in the market-place, the lounge of the learned, he entered into conversation with students and philosophers, as socrates had been wont to do on the same spot five centuries before. but he found even less appetite for the truth than the wisest of the greeks had met with. instead of the love of truth an insatiable intellectual curiosity possessed the inhabitants. this made them willing enough to tolerate the advances of any one bringing before them a new doctrine; and, as long as paul was merely developing the speculative part of his message, they listened to him with pleasure. their interest seemed to deepen, and at last a multitude of them conveyed him to mars' hill, in the very center of the splendors of their city, and requested a full statement of his faith. he complied with their wishes and in the magnificent speech he there made them, gratified their peculiar tastes to the full, as in sentences of the noblest eloquence he unfolded the great truths of the unity of god and the unity of man, which lie at the foundation of christianity. but, when he advanced from these preliminaries to touch the consciences of his audience and address them about their own salvation, they departed in a body and left him talking. 105. he quitted athens and never returned to it. nowhere else had he so completely failed. he had been accustomed to endure the most violent persecution and to rally from it with a light heart. but there is something worse than persecution to a fiery faith like his, and he had to encounter it here: his message roused neither interest nor opposition. the athenians never thought of persecuting him; they simply did not care what the babbler said; and this cold disdain cut him more deeply than the stones of the mob or the lictors' rods. never perhaps was he so much depressed. when he left athens, he moved on to corinth, the other great city of achaia; and he tells us himself that he arrived there in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. 106. corinth.--there was in corinth enough of the spirit of athens to prevent these feelings from being easily assuaged. corinth was to athens very much what glasgow is to edinburgh. the one was the commercial, the other the intellectual capital of the country. even the situations of the two places in greece resembled in some respects those of these two cities in scotland. but the corinthians also were full of disputatious curiosity and intellectual hauteur. paul dreaded the same kind of reception as he had met with in athens. could it be that these were people for whom the gospel had no message? this was the staggering question which was making him tremble. there seemed to be nothing in them on which the gospel could take hold: they appeared to feel no wants which it could satisfy. 107. there were other elements of discouragement in corinth. it was the paris of ancient times--a city rich and luxurious, wholly abandoned to sensuality. vice displayed itself without shame in forms which struck deadly despair into paul's pure jewish mind. could men be rescued from the grasp of such monstrous vices? besides, the opposition of the jews rose here to unusual virulence. he was compelled at length to depart from the synagogue altogether, and did so with expressions of strong feeling. was the soldier of christ going to be driven off the field and forced to confess that the gospel was not suited for cultured greece? it looked like it. 108. but the tide turned. at the critical moment paul was visited with one of those visions which were wont to be vouchsafed to him at the most trying and decisive crises of his history. the lord appeared to him in the night, saying, "be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace; for i am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee; for i have much people in this city." the apostle took courage again, and the causes of discouragement began to clear away. the opposition of the jews was broken, when they hurried him with mob violence before the roman governor, gallio, but were dismissed from the tribunal with ignominy and disdain. the very president of the synagogue became a christian, and conversions multiplied among the native corinthians. paul enjoyed the solace of living under the roof of two leal-hearted friends of his own race and his own occupation, aquila and priscilla. he remained a year and a half in the city and founded one of the most interesting of his churches, thus planting the standard of the cross in achaia also and proving that the gospel was the power of god unto salvation even in the headquarters of the world's wisdom. the third journey 109. it must have been a thrilling story paul had to tell at jerusalem and antioch when he returned from his second journey; but he had no disposition to rest on his laurels, and it was hot long before he set out on his third journey. 110. in asia.--it might have been expected that, having in his second journey planted the gospel in greece, he would in his third have made home his principal aim. but, if the map be referred to, it will be observed that, in the midst, between the regions of asia minor which he evangelized during his first journey and the provinces of greece in which he planted churches in his second journey, there was a hiatus--the populous province of asia, in the west of asia minor. it was on this region that he descended in his third journey. staying for no less than three years in ephesus, its capital, he effectively filled up the gap and connected together the conquests of his former campaigns. this journey included, indeed, at its beginning, a visitation of all the churches formerly founded in asia minor and, at its close, a flying visit to the churches of greece; but, true to his plan of dwelling only on what was new in each journey, the author of the acts has supplied us only with the details relating to ephesus. 111. ephesus.--this city was at that time the liverpool of the mediterranean. it possessed a splendid harbor, in which was concentrated the traffic of the sea which was then the highway of the nations; and, as liverpool has behind her the great towns of lancashire, so had ephesus behind and around her such cities as those mentioned along with her in the epistles to the churches in the book of revelation--smyrna, pergamos, thyatira, sardis, philadelphia, and laodicea. it was a city of vast wealth, and it was given over to every kind of pleasure, the fame of its theater and race-course being world-wide. 112. but ephesus was still more famous as a sacred city. it was a seat of the worship of the goddess diana, whose temple was one of the most celebrated shrines of the ancient world. this temple was enormously rich and harbored great numbers of priests. at certain seasons of the year it was a resort for flocks of pilgrims from the surrounding regions; and the inhabitants of the town flourished by ministering in various ways to this superstition. the goldsmiths drove a trade in little silver models of the image of the goddess which the temple contained and which was said to have fallen from heaven. copies of the mystic characters engraven on this ancient relic were sold as charms. the city swarmed with wizards, fortune-tellers, interpreters of dreams and other gentry of the like kind, who traded on the mariners, merchants and pilgrims who frequented the port. 113. paul's work had therefore to assume the form of a polemic against superstition. he wrought such astonishing miracles in the name of jesus that some of the jewish palterers with the invisible world attempted to cast out devils by invoking the same name; but the attempt issued in their signal discomfiture. other professors of magical arts were converted to the christian faith and burnt their books. the vendors of superstitious objects saw their trade slipping through their fingers. to such an extent did this go at one of the festivals of the goddess that the silversmiths, whose traffic in little images had been specially smitten, organized a riot against paul, which took place in the theater and was so successful that he was forced to quit the city. 114. but he did not go before christianity was firmly established in ephesus, and the beacon of the gospel was twinkling brightly on the asian coast, in response to that which was shining from the shores of greece on the other side of the aegean. we have a monument of his success in the churches lying all around ephesus which st. john addressed a few years afterward in the apocalypse; for they were probably the indirect fruit of paul's labors. but we have a far more astonishing monument of it in the epistle to the ephesians. this is perhaps the profoundest book in existence; yet its author evidently expected the ephesians to understand it. if the orations of demosthenes, with their closely packed arguments between the articulations of which even a knife cannot be thrust, be a monument of the intellectual greatness of the greece which listened to them with pleasure; if the plays of shakspeare, with their deep views of life and their obscure and complex language, be a testimony to the strength of mind of the elizabethan age, which could enjoy such solid fare in a place of entertainment; then the epistle to the ephesians, which sounds the lowest depths of christian doctrine and scales the loftiest heights of christian experience, is a testimony to the proficiency which paul's converts had attained under his preaching in the capital of asia. chapter vii his writings and his character paragraphs 115-127. 115-119. his writings. 115, 116. principal literary period. 117. form of his writings. 118. his style. 119. inspiration. 120-127. his character. 121. combination of natural and spiritual. 122-127. characteristics. 122. physique; 123. enterprise; 124. influence over men; 128. unselfishness; 126. sense of having a mission; 127. personal devotion to christ. 115. principal literary period.--it has been mentioned that the third missionary journey closed with a flying visit to the churches of greece. this visit lasted several months; but in the acts it is passed over in two or three verses. probably it was little marked with those exciting incidents which naturally tempt the biographer into detail. yet we know from other sources that it was nearly the most important part of paul's life; for during this half-year he wrote the greatest of all his epistles, that to the romans, and two others only less important--that to the galatians and the second to the corinthians. 116. we have thus alighted on the portion of his life most signalized by literary work. overpowering as is the impression of the remarkableness of this man produced by following him, as we have been doing, as he hurries from province to province, from continent to continent, over land and sea, in pursuit of the object to which he was devoted, this impression is immensely deepened when we remember that he was at the same time the greatest thinker of his age, if not of any age, and, in the midst of his outward labors, was producing writings which have ever since been among the mightiest intellectual forces of the world, and are still growing in their influence. in this respect he rises sheer above all other evangelists and missionaries. some of them may have approached him in certain respects--xavier or livingstone in the world-conquering instinct, st. bernard or whitefield in earnestness and activity. but few of these men added a single new idea to the world's stock of beliefs, whereas paul, while at least equaling them in their own special line, gave to mankind a new world of thought. if his epistles could perish, the loss to literature would be the greatest possible with only one exception--that of the gospels which record the life, the sayings and the death of our lord. they have quickened the mind of the church as no other writings have done, and scattered in the soil of the world hundreds of seeds the fruits of which are now the general possession of mankind. out of them have been brought the watchwords of progress in every reformation which the church has experienced. when luther awoke europe from the slumber of centuries, it was a word of paul which he uttered with his mighty voice: and when, one hundred years ago, our own country was revived from almost universal spiritual death, she was called by the voices of men who had rediscovered the truth for themselves in the pages of paul. 117. form of his writings.--yet in penning his epistles paul may himself have had little idea of the part they were to play in the future. they were drawn out of him simply by the exigencies of his work. in the truest sense of the word they were letters, written to meet particular occasions, not formal writings, carefully designed and executed with a view to fame or to futurity. letters of the right kind are, before everything else, products of the heart; and it was the eager heart of paul, yearning for the weal of his spiritual children or alarmed by the dangers to which they were exposed, that produced all his writings. they were part of his day's work. just as he flew over sea and land to revisit his converts, or sent timothy or titus to carry them his counsels and bring news of how they fared, so, when these means were not available, he would send a letter with the same design. 118. his style.--this may seem to detract from the value of these writings. we may be inclined to wish that, instead of having the course of his thinking determined by the exigencies of so many special occasions and his attention distracted by so many minute particulars, he had been able to concentrate the force of his mind on one perfect book and expound his views on the high subjects which occupied his thoughts in a systematic form. it cannot be maintained that paul's epistles are models of style. they were written far too hurriedly for this; and the last thing he thought of was to polish his periods. often, indeed, his ideas, by the mere virtue of their fineness and beauty, run into forms of exquisite language, or there is in them such a sustained throb of emotion that they shape themselves spontaneously into sentences of noble eloquence. but oftener his language is rugged and formless; no doubt it was the first which came to hand for expressing what he had to say. he begins sentences and omits to finish them; he goes off into digressions and forgets to pick up the line of thought he has dropped; he throws out his ideas in lumps instead of fusing them into mutual coherence. nowhere perhaps will there be found so exact a parallel to the style of paul as in the letters and speeches of oliver cromwell. in the protector's brain there lay the best and truest thoughts about england and her complicated affairs which existed at the time in that island; but, when he tried to express them in speech or letter, there issued from his mind the most extraordinary mixture of exclamations, questions, arguments soon losing themselves in the sands of words, unwieldy parentheses, and morsels of beautiful pathos or subduing eloquence. yet, as you read these amazing utterances, you come by degrees to feel that you are getting to see the very heart and soul of the puritan era, and that you would rather be beside this man than any other representative of the period. you see the events and ideas of the time in the very process of birth. perhaps, indeed, a certain formlessness is a natural accompaniment of the very highest originality. the perfect expression and orderly arrangement of ideas is a later process; but, when great thoughts are for the first time coming forth, there is a kind of primordial roughness about them, as if the earth out of which they are arising were still clinging to them: the polishing of the gold comes late and has to be preceded by the heaving of the ore out of the bowels of nature. paul in his writings is hurling forth the original ore of truth. we owe to him hundreds of ideas which were never uttered before. after the original man has got his idea out, the most commonplace scribe may be able to express it for others better than he, though he could never have originated it. so throughout the writings of paul there are materials which others may combine into systems of theology and ethics, and it is the duty of the church to do so. but his epistles permit us to see revelation in the very process of birth. as we read them closely, we seem to be witnessing the creation of a world of truth, as the angels wondered to see the firmament evolving itself out of chaos and the multitudinous earth spreading itself forth in the light. minute as are the details he has often to deal with, the whole of his vast view of the truth is recalled in his treatment of every one of them, as the whole sky is mirrored in a single drop of dew. what could be a more impressive proof of the fecundity of his mind than the fact that, amid the innumerable distractions of a second visit to his greek converts, he should have written in half a year three such books as romans, galatians and second corinthians? 119. his inspiration.--it was god by his spirit who communicated this revelation of truth to paul. its own greatness and divineness supply the best proof that it could have had no other origin. but none the less did it break in upon paul with the joy and pain of original thought; it came to him through his experience; it drenched and dyed every fiber of his mind and heart; and the expression which it found in his writings was in accordance with his peculiar genius and circumstances. 120. the man revealed in his letters.--it would be easy to suggest compensations in the form of paul's writings for the literary qualities they lack. but one of these so outweighs all others that it is sufficient by itself to justify in this case the ways of god. in no other literary form could we, to the same extent, in the writings have got the man. letters are the most personal form of literature. a man may write a treatise or a history or even a poem and hide his personality behind it; but letters are valueless unless the writer shows himself. paul is constantly visible in his letters. you can feel his heart throbbing in every chapter he ever wrote. he has painted his own portrait--not only that of the outward man, but of his innermost feelings--as no one else could have painted it. it is not from luke, admirable as is the picture drawn in the acts of the apostles, that we learn what the true paul was, but from paul himself. the truths he reveals are all seen embodied in the man. as there are some preachers who are greater than their sermons, and the principal gain of their hearers, in listening to them, is obtained in the inspiring glimpses they obtain of a great and sanctified personality, so the best thing in the writings of paul is paul himself, or rather the grace of god in him. 121. his character presented a wonderful combination of the natural and the spiritual. from nature he had received a strongly marked individuality; but the change which christianity produces was no less obvious in him. in no saved man's character is it possible to separate nicely what is due to nature from what is due to grace; for nature and grace blend sweetly in the redeemed life. in paul the union of the two was singularly complete; yet it was always clear that there were two elements in him of diverse origin; and this is, indeed, the key to a successful estimate of his character. 122. physique.--to begin with what was most simply natural--his physique was an important condition of his career. as want of ear may make a musical career impossible or a failure of eyesight stop the progress of a painter, so the missionary life is impossible without a certain degree of physical stamina. to any one reading by itself the catalogue of paul's sufferings and observing the elasticity with which he rallied from the severest of them and resumed his labors, it would naturally occur that he must have been a person of herculean mold. on the contrary, he appears to have been little of stature, and his bodily presence was weak. this weakness seems to have been sometimes aggravated by disfiguring disease; and he felt keenly the disappointment which he knew his bodily presence would excite among strangers; for every preacher who loves his work would like to preach the gospel with all the graces which conciliate the favor of hearers to an orator. god, however, used his very weakness, beyond his hopes, to draw out the tenderness of his converts; and so, when he was weak, then he was strong, and he was able to glory even in his infirmities. there is a theory, which has obtained extensive currency, that the disease he suffered from was violent ophthalmia, causing disagreeable redness of the eyelids. but its grounds are very slender. he seems, on the contrary, to have had a remarkable power of fascinating and cowing an enemy with the keenness of his glance, as in the story of elymas the sorcerer, which reminds us of the tradition about luther, that his eyes sometimes so glowed and sparkled that bystanders could scarcely look on them. there is no foundation whatever for an idea of some recent biographers of paul that his bodily constitution was excessively fragile and chronically afflicted with shattering nervous disease. no one could have gone through his labors or suffered the stoning, the scourgings and other tortures he endured without having an exceptionally tough and sound constitution. it is true that he was sometimes worn out with illness and torn down with the acts of violence to which he was exposed; but the rapidity of his recovery on such occasions proves what a large fund of bodily force he had to draw upon. and who can doubt that, when his face was melted with tender love in beseeching men to be reconciled to god or lighted up with enthusiasm in the delivery of his message, it must have possessed a noble beauty far above mere regularity of feature? 123. enterprise.--there was a good deal that was natural in another element of his character on which much depended--his spirit of enterprise. there are many men who like to grow where they are born; to have to change into new circumstances and make acquaintance with new people is intolerable to them. but there are others who have a kind of vagabondism in the blood; they are the persons intended by nature for emigrants and pioneers; and, if they take to the work of the ministry, they make the best missionaries. in modern times no missionary has had this consecrated spirit of adventure in the same degree as that great scotchman, david livingstone. when he first went to africa, he found the missionaries clustered in the south of the continent, just within the fringe of heathenism; they had their houses and gardens, their families, their small congregations of natives; and they were content. but he moved at once away beyond the rest into the heart of heathenism, and dreams of more distant regions never ceased to haunt him, till at length he began his extraordinary tramps over thousands of miles where no missionary had ever been before; and, when death overtook him, he was still pressing forward. paul's was a nature of the same stamp, full of courage and adventure. the unknown in the distance, instead of dismaying, drew him on. he could not bear to build on other men's foundations, but was constantly hastening to virgin soil, leaving churches behind for others to build up. he believed that, if he lit the lamp of the gospel here and there over vast areas, the light would spread in his absence by its own virtue. he liked to count the leagues he had left behind him, but his watchword was ever forward. in his dreams he saw men beckoning him to new countries; he had always a long unfulfilled program in his mind; and, as death approached, he was still thinking of journeys into the remotest corners of the known world. 124. influence over men.--another element of his character near akin to the one just mentioned was his influence over men. there are those to whom it is painful to have to accost a stranger even on pressing business; and most men are only quite at home in their own set--among men of the same class or profession as themselves. but the life he had chosen brought paul into contact with men of every kind, and he had constantly to be introducing to strangers the business with which he was charged. he might be addressing a king or a consul the one hour and a roomful of slaves or common soldiers the next. one day he had to speak in the synagogue of the jews, another among a crowd of athenian philosophers, another to the inhabitants of some provincial town far from the seats of culture. but he could adapt himself to every man and every audience. to the jews he spoke as a rabbi out of the old testament scriptures; to the greeks he quoted the words of their own poets; and to the barbarians he talked of the god who giveth rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. when a weak or insincere man attempts to be all things to all men, he ends by being nothing to anybody. but, living on this principle, paul found entrance for the gospel everywhere, and at the same time won for himself the esteem and love of those to whom he stooped. if he was bitterly hated by enemies, there was never a man more intensely loved by his friends. they received him as an angel of god, or even as jesus christ himself, and were ready to pluck out their eyes and give them to him. one church was jealous of another getting too much of him. when he was not able to pay a visit at the time he had promised, they were furious, as if he had done them a wrong. when he was parting from them, they wept sore and fell on his neck and kissed him. numbers of young men were continually about him, ready to go on his errands. it was the largeness of his manhood which was the secret of this fascination; for to a big nature all resort, feeling that in its neighborhood it is well with them. 125. unselfishness.--this popularity was partly, however, due to another quality which shone conspicuously in his character--the spirit of unselfishness. this is the rarest quality in human nature, and it is the most powerful of all in its influence on others, where it exists in purity and strength. most men are so absorbed in their own interests and so naturally expect others to be the same that, if they see any one who appears to have no interests of his own to serve but is willing to do as much for the sake of others as the generality do for themselves, they are at first incredulous, suspecting that he is only hiding his designs beneath the cloak of benevolence; but, if he stand the test and his unselfishness prove to be genuine, there is no limit to the homage they are prepared to pay him. as paul appeared in country after country and city after city, he was at first a complete enigma to those whom he approached. they formed all sorts of conjectures as to his real design. was it money he was seeking, or power, or something darker and less pure? his enemies never ceased to throw out such insinuations. but those who got near him and saw the man as he was, who knew that he refused money and worked with his hands day and night to keep himself above the suspicion of mercenary motives, who heard him pleading with them one by one in their homes and exhorting them with tears to a holy life, who saw the sustained personal interest he took in every one of them--these could not resist the proofs of his disinterestedness or deny him their affection. there never was a man more unselfish; he had literally no interest of his own to live for. without family ties, he poured all the affections of his big nature, which might have been given to wife and children, into the channels of his work. he compares his tenderness toward his converts to that of a nursing-mother to her children; he pleads with them to remember that he is their father who has begotten them in the gospel. they are his glory and crown, his hope and joy and crown of rejoicing. eager as he was for new conquests, he never lost his hold upon those he had won. he could assure his churches that he prayed and gave thanks for them night and day, and he remembered his converts by name at the throne of grace. how could human nature resist disinterestedness like this? if paul was a conqueror of the world, he conquered it by the power of love. 126. his mission.--the two most distinctively christian features of his character have still to be mentioned. one of these was the sense of having a divine mission to preach christ, which he was bound to fulfill. most men merely drift through life, and the work they do is determined by a hundred indifferent circumstances; they might as well be doing anything else, or they would prefer, if they could afford it, to be doing nothing at all. but, from the time when he became a christian, paul knew that he had a definite work to do; and the call he had received to it never ceased to ring like a tocsin in his soul. "woe is unto me if i preach not the gospel;" this was the impulse which drove him on. he felt that he had a world of new truths to utter and that the salvation of mankind depended on their utterance. he knew himself called to make christ known to as many of his fellow-creatures as his utmost exertions could enable him to reach. it was this which made him so impetuous in his movements, so blind to danger, so contemptuous of suffering. "none of these things move me, neither count i my life dear unto myself, so that i might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which i have received of the lord jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of god." he lived with the account which he would have to give at the judgment-seat of christ ever in his eye, and his heart was revived in every hour of discouragement by the vision of the crown of life which, if he proved faithful, the lord; the righteous judge, would place upon his head. 127. devotion to christ.--the other peculiarly christian quality which shaped his career was personal devotion to christ. this was the supreme characteristic of the man, and from first to last the mainspring of his activities. from the moment of his first meeting with christ he had but one passion; his love to his saviour burned with more and more brightness to the end. he delighted to call himself the slave of christ, and had no ambition except to be the propagator of his ideas and the continuer of his influence. he took up this idea of being christ's representative with startling boldness. he says the heart of christ is beating in his bosom toward his converts; he says the mind of christ is thinking in his brain; he says that he is continuing the work of christ and filling up that which was lacking in his sufferings; he says the wounds of christ are reproduced in the scars upon his body; he says he is dying that others may live, as christ died for the life of the world. but it was in reality the deepest humility which lay beneath these bold expressions. he had the sense that christ had done everything for him; he had entered into him, casting out the old paul and ending the old life, and had begotten a new man, with new designs, feelings and activities. and it was his deepest longing that this process should go on and become complete--that his old self should vanish quite away, and that the new self, which christ had created in his own image and still sustained, should become so predominant that, when the thoughts of his mind were christ's thoughts, the words on his lips christ's words, the deeds he did christ's deeds, and the character he wore christ's character, he might be able to say, "i live, yet not i, but christ liveth in me." chapter viii picture of a pauline church paragraphs 128-144. 128, 129. the exterior and the interior view of history. 130-143. a christian church in a heathen city. 131. the place of meeting. 132, 133. the persons present. 134-137. the services. 138-148. abuses and irregularities. 139, 140. of domestic life. 141-143. inside the church. 144. inferences. 128. history without and within.--a holiday visitor to a foreign city walks through the streets, guidebook in hand, looking at monuments, churches, public buildings and the outsides of the houses, and in this way is supposed to be made acquainted with the town; but, on reflection, he will find that he has scarcely learned anything about it, because he has not been inside the houses. he does not know how the people live--not even what kind of furniture they have or what kind of food they eat--not to speak of far deeper matters, such as how they love, what they admire and pursue, and whether they are content with their lot. in reading history one is often at a loss in the same way. it is only the outside of life that is made visible. it is as if the eye were carried along the external surface of a tree, instead of seeing a cross-section of its substance. the pomp and glitter of the court, the wars waged and the victories won, the changes in the constitution and the rise and fall of administrations, are faithfully recorded; but the reader feels that he would learn far more of the real history of the time if he could see for one hour what was happening beneath the roofs of the peasant, the shopkeeper, the clergyman and the noble. even in scripture-history there is the same difficulty. in the narrative of the acts of the apostles we receive thrilling accounts of the external details of paul's history; we are carried rapidly from city to city and informed of the incidents which accompanied the founding of the various churches; but we cannot help wishing sometimes to stop and learn what one of these churches was like inside. in paphos or iconium, in thessalonica or beroea or corinth, how did things go on after paul left? what were the christians like, and what was the aspect of their worship? 129. happily it is possible to obtain this interior view of things. as luke's narrative describes the outside of paul's career, so paul's own epistles permit us to see its deeper aspects. they rewrite the history on a different plane. this is especially the case with those epistles written at the close of his third journey, which cast a flood of light back upon the period covered by all his journeys. in addition to the three epistles already mentioned as having been written at this time, there is another belonging to the same part of his life--the first to the corinthians--which may be said to transport us, as on a magician's mantle, back over two thousand years and, stationing us in mid-air above a great greek city, in which there was a christian church, to take the roof off the meeting-house of the christians and permit us to see what was going on within. 130. a christian gathering in corinth.--it is a strange spectacle we witness from this coigne of vantage. it is sabbath evening, but of course the heathen city knows of no sabbath. the day's work at the busy seaport is over, and the streets are thronged with gay revelers intent on a night of pleasure, for it is the wickedest city of that wicked ancient world. hundreds of merchants and sailors from foreign parts are lounging about. the gay young roman, who has come across to this paris for a bout of dissipation, drives his light chariot through the streets. if it is near the time of the annual games, there are groups of boxers, runners, charioteers and wrestlers, surrounded by their admirers and discussing their chances of winning the coveted crowns. in the warm genial climate old and young are out of doors enjoying the evening hour, while the sun, going down over the adriatic, is casting its golden light upon the palaces and temples of the wealthy city. 131. meanwhile the little company of christians has been gathering from all directions to their place of worship; for it is the hour of their stated assembly. the place of meeting itself does not rise very clearly before our view. but at all events it is no gorgeous temple like those by which it is surrounded; it has not even the pretensions of the neighboring synagogue. it may be a large room in a private house or the wareroom of some christian merchant cleared for the occasion. 132. glance round the benches and look at the faces. you at once discern one marked distinction among them: some have the peculiar facial contour of the jew, while the rest are gentiles of various nationalities; and the latter are the majority. but look closer still and you notice another distinction: some wear the ring which denotes that they are free, while others are slaves; and the latter preponderate. here and there among the gentile members there is one with the regular features of the born greek, perhaps shaded with the pale thoughtfulness of the philosopher or distinguished with the self-confidence of wealth; but not many great, not many mighty, not many noble are there; the majority belong to what in this pretentious city would be reckoned the foolish, the weak, the base and despised things of this world; they are slaves, whose ancestors did not breathe the pellucid air of greece but roamed in savage hordes on the banks of the danube or the don. 133. but observe one thing besides on all the faces present--the terrible traces of their past life. in a modern christian congregation one sees in the faces on every hand that peculiar cast of feature which christian nurture, inherited through many centuries, has produced; and it is only here and there that a face may be seen in the lines of which is written the tale of debauchery or crime. but in this corinthian congregation these awful hieroglyphics are everywhere. "know ye not," paul writes to them, "that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of god? be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of god. and such were some of you." look at that tall, sallow-faced greek: he has wallowed in the mire of circe's swine-pens. look at that low-browed scythian slave: he has been a pickpocket and a jail-bird. look at that thin-nosed, sharp-eyed jew: he has been a shylock, cutting his pound of flesh from the gilded youth of corinth. yet there has been a great change. another story besides the tale of sin is written on these countenances. "but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the lord jesus and by the spirit of our god." listen, they are singing; it is the fortieth psalm: "he took me from the fearful pit and from the miry clay." what pathos they throw into the words, what joy overspreads their faces! they know themselves to be monuments of free grace and dying love. 134. the services.--but suppose them now all gathered; how does their worship proceed? there was this difference between their services and most of ours, that instead of one man conducting them--offering their prayers, preaching, and giving out the psalms--all the men present were at liberty to contribute their part. there may have been a leader or chairman; but one member might read a portion of scripture, another offer prayer, a third deliver an address, a fourth raise a hymn, and so on. nor does there seem to have been any fixed order in which the different parts of the service occurred; any member might rise and lead away the company into praise or prayer or meditation, as he felt prompted. 135. this peculiarity was due to another great difference between them and us. the members were endowed with very extraordinary gifts. some of them had the power of working miracles, such as the healing of the sick. others possessed a strange gift called the gift of tongues. it is not quite clear what it was; but it seems to have been a kind of tranced utterance, in which the speaker poured out an impassioned rhapsody by which his religious feeling received both expression and exaltation. some of those who possessed this gift were not able to tell others the meaning of what they were saying, while others had this additional power; and there were those who, though not speaking with tongues themselves, were able to interpret what the inspired speakers were saying. then again, there were members who possessed the gift of prophecy--a very valuable endowment. it was not the power of predicting future events, but a gift of impassioned eloquence, the effects of which were sometimes marvelous: when an unbeliever entered the assembly and listened to the prophets, he was seized with uncontrollable emotion, the sins of his past life rose up before him, and, falling on his face, he confessed that god was among them of a truth. other members exercised gifts more like those we are ourselves acquainted with, such as the gift of teaching or the gift of management. but in all cases there appears to have been a kind of immediate inspiration, so that what they did was not the effect of calculation or preparation, but of a strong present impulse. 136. these phenomena are so remarkable that, if narrated in a history, they would put a severe strain on belief. but the evidence for them is incontrovertible; for no man, writing to people about their own condition, invents a mythical description of their circumstances; and besides, paul was writing to restrain rather than encourage these manifestations. they show with what mighty force, at its first entrance into the world, christianity took possession of the spirits which it touched. each believer received, generally at his baptism, when the hands of the baptizer were laid on him, his special gift, which, if he remained faithful to it, he continued to exercise. it was the holy spirit, poured forth without stint, that entered into the spirits of men and distributed these gifts among them severally as he willed; and each member had to make use of his gift for the benefit of the whole body. 137. after the services just described were over, the members sat down together to a love-feast, which was wound up with the breaking of bread in the lord's supper; and then, after a fraternal kiss, they parted to their homes. it was a memorable scene, radiant with brotherly love and alive with outbreaking spiritual power. as the christians wended their way homeward through the careless groups of the heathen city, they were conscious of having experienced that which eye had not seen nor ear heard. 138. abuses and irregularities.--but truth demands that the dark side of the picture be shown as well as the bright one. there were abuses and irregularities in the church which it is exceedingly painful to recall. these were due to two things--the antecedents of the members and the mixture in the church of jewish and gentile elements. if it be remembered how vast was the change which most of the members had made in passing from the worship of the heathen temples to the pure and simple worship of christianity, it will not excite surprise that their old life still clung to them or that they did not clearly distinguish which things needed to be changed and which might continue as they had been. 139. yet it startles us to learn that some of them were living in gross sensuality, and that the more philosophical defended this on principle. one member, apparently a person of wealth and position, was openly living in a connection which would have been a scandal even among heathens, and, though paul had indignantly written to have him excommunicated, the church had failed to obey, affecting to misunderstand the order. others had been allured back to take part in the feasts in the idol temples, notwithstanding their accompaniments of drunkenness and revelry. they excused themselves with the plea that they no longer ate the feast in honor of the gods, but only as an ordinary meal, and argued that they would have to go out of the world if they were not sometimes to associate with sinners. 140. it is evident that these abuses belonged to the gentile section of the church. in the jewish section, on the other hand, there were strange doubts and scruples about the same subjects. some, for instance, revolted with the loose behavior of their gentile brethren, had gone to the opposite extreme, denouncing marriage altogether and raising anxious questions as to whether widows might marry again, whether a christian married to a heathen wife ought to put her away, and other points of the same nature. while some of the gentile converts were participating in the idol feasts, some of the jewish ones had scruples about buying in the market the meat which had been offered in sacrifice to idols, and looked with censure on their brethren who allowed themselves this freedom. 141. these difficulties belonged to the domestic life of the christians; but, in their public meetings also, there were grave irregularities. the very gifts of the spirit were perverted into instruments of sin; for those possessed of the more showy gifts, such as miracles and tongues, were too fond of displaying them, and turned them into grounds of boasting. this led to confusion and even uproar; for sometimes two or three of those who spoke with tongues would be pouring forth their unintelligible utterances at once, so that, as paul said, if any stranger had entered their meeting, he would have concluded that they were all mad. the prophets spoke at wearisome length, and too many pressed forward to take part in the services. paul had sternly to rebuke these extravagances, insisting on the principle that the spirits of the prophets were subject to the prophets, and that, therefore, the spiritual impulse was no apology for disorder. 142. but there were still worse things inside the church. even the sacredness of the lord's supper was profaned. it seems that the members were in the habit of taking with them to church the bread and wine which were needed for this sacrament; but the wealthy brought abundant and choice supplies and, instead of waiting for their poorer brethren and sharing their provisions with them, began to eat and drink so gluttonously that the table of the lord actually resounded with drunkenness and riot. 143. one more dark touch must be added to this sad picture. in spite of the brotherly kiss with which their meetings closed, they had fallen into mutual rivalry and contention. no doubt this was due to the heterogeneous elements brought together in the church; but it had been allowed to go to great lengths. brother went to law with brother in the heathen courts instead of seeking the arbitration of a christian friend. the body of the members was split up into four theological factions. some called themselves after paul himself. these treated the scruples of the weaker brethren about meats and other things with scorn. others took the name of apollonians from apollos, an eloquent teacher from alexandria, who visited corinth between paul's second and third journeys. these were the philosophical party; they denied the doctrine of the resurrection, because it was absurd to suppose that the scattered atoms of the dead body could ever be united again. the third party took the name of peter, or cephas, as in their hebrew purism they preferred to call him. these were narrow-minded jews, who objected to the liberality of paul's views. the fourth party affected to be above all parties and called themselves simply christians. like many despisers of the sects since then, who have used the name of christian in the same way, these were the most bitterly sectarian of all and rejected paul's authority with malicious scorn. 144. inferences.--such is the checkered picture of one of paul's churches given in one of his own epistles; and it shows several things with much impressiveness. it shows, for instance, how exceptional, even in that age, his own mind and character were, and what a blessing his gifts and graces of good sense, of large sympathy blended with conscientious firmness, of personal purity and honor, were to the infant church. it shows that it is not behind but in front that we have to look for the golden age of christianity. it shows how perilous it is to assume that the prevalence of any ecclesiastical usage at that time must constitute a rule for all times. everything of this kind was evidently at the experimental stage. indeed, in the latest writings of paul we find the picture of a very different state of things, in which the worship and discipline of the church were far more fixed and orderly. it is not for a pattern of the machinery of a church we ought to go back to this early time, but for a spectacle of fresh and transforming spiritual power. this is what will always attract to the apostolic age the longing eyes of christians; the power of the spirit was energizing in every member, the tides of fresh emotion swelled in every breast, and all felt that the dayspring of a new revelation had visited them; life, love, light were diffusing themselves everywhere. even the vices of the young church were the irregularities of abundant life, for the lack of which the lifeless order of many a subsequent generation has been a poor compensation. chapter ix his great controversy paragraphs 145-162. 146-148. the question at issue. 149-153. the settlement of it. 149, 150. by peter; 151. by paul; 152, 153. by the council of jerusalem. 154-156. attempt to unsettle it. 157, 158. paul crushes the judaizers. 159-162. a subordinate branch of the question: the relation of christian jews to the law. 145. the version of the apostle's life supplied in his own letters is largely occupied with a controversy which cost him much pain and took up much of his time for many years, but of which luke says little. at the date when luke wrote, it was a dead controversy, and it belonged to a different plane from that along which his story moves. but at the time when it was raging, it tried paul far more than tiresome journeys or angry seas. it was at its hottest about the close of his third journey, and the epistles already mentioned as having been written then may be said to have been evoked by it. the epistle to the galatians especially was a thunderbolt hurled against his opponents in this controversy; and its burning sentences show how profoundly he was moved by the subject. 146. the question at issue.--the question at issue was whether the gentiles were required to become jews before they could be true christians; or, in other words, whether they had to be circumcised in order to be saved. 147. it had pleased god in the primitive times to choose the jewish race from among the nations and make it the repository of salvation; and, till the advent of christ, those from other nations who wished to become partakers of the true religion had to seek entrance as proselytes within the sacred enclosure of israel. having thus destined this race to be the guardians of revelation, god had to separate them very completely from all other nations and from all other aims which might have distracted their attention from the sacred trust which had been committed to them. for this purpose he regulated their whole life with rules and arrangements intended to make them a peculiar people, different from all other races of the earth. every detail of their life--their forms of worship, their social customs, their dress, their food--was prescribed for them; and all these prescriptions were embodied in that vast legal instrument which they called the law. the rigorous prescription of so many things which are naturally left to free choice was a heavy yoke upon the chosen people; it was a severe discipline to the conscience, and such it was felt to be by the more earnest spirits of the nation. but others saw in it a badge of pride; it made them feel that they were the select of the earth and superior to all other people; and, instead of groaning under the yoke, as they would have done if their consciences had been very tender, they multiplied the distinctions of the jew, swelling the volume of the prescriptions of the law with stereotyped customs of their own. to be a jew appeared to them the mark of belonging to the aristocracy of the nations; to be admitted to the privileges of this position was in their eyes the greatest honor which could be conferred on one who did not belong to the commonwealth of israel. their thoughts were all pent within the circle of this national conceit. even their hopes about the messiah were colored with these prejudices; they expected him to be the hero of their own nation, and the extension of his kingdom they conceived as a crowding of the other nations within the circle of their own through the gateway of circumcision. they expected that all the converts of the messiah would undergo this national rite and adopt the life prescribed in the jewish law and tradition; in short, their conception of messiah's reign was a world of jews. 148. such undoubtedly was the tenor of popular sentiment in palestine when christ came; and multitudes of those who accepted jesus as the messiah and entered the christian church had this set of conceptions as their intellectual horizon. they had become christians, but they had not ceased to be jews; they still attended the temple worship; they prayed at the stated hours, they fasted on the stated days, they dressed in the style of the jewish ritual; they would have thought themselves defiled by eating with uncircumcised gentiles; and they had no thought but that, if gentiles became christians, they would be circumcised and adopt the style and customs of the jewish nation. 149. the settlement.--the question was settled by the direct intervention of god in the case of cornelius, the centurion of caesarea. when the messengers of cornelius were on their way to the apostle peter at joppa, god showed that leader among the apostles, by the vision of the sheet full of clean and unclean beasts, that the christian church was to contain circumcised and uncircumcised alike. in obedience to this heavenly sign peter accompanied the centurion's messengers to caesarea and saw such evidences that the household of cornelius had already, without circumcision, received the distinctively christian endowments of faith and the holy ghost, that he could not hesitate to baptize them as being christians already. when he returned to jerusalem, his proceedings created wonder and indignation among the christians of the strictly jewish persuasion; but he defended himself by recounting the vision of the sheet and by an appeal to the clear fact that these uncircumcised gentiles were proved by their possession of faith and of the holy ghost to have been already christians. 150. this incident ought to have settled the question once for all; but the pride of race and the prejudices of a lifetime are not easily subdued. although the christians of jerusalem reconciled themselves to peter's conduct in this single case, they neglected to extract from it the universal principle which it implied; and even peter himself, as we shall subsequently see, did not fully comprehend what was involved in his own conduct. 151. meanwhile, however, the question had been settled in a far stronger and more logical mind than peter's. paul at this time began his apostolic work at antioch, and soon afterward went forth with barnabas upon his first great missionary expedition into the gentile world; and, wherever they went, he admitted heathens into the christian church without circumcision. paul in thus acting did not copy peter. he had received his gospel directly from heaven. in the solitudes of arabia, in the years immediately after his conversion, he had thought this subject out and come to far more radical conclusions about it than had yet entered the minds of any of the rest of the apostles. to him far more than to any of them the law had been a yoke of bondage; he saw that it was only a stern preparation for christianity, not a part of it; indeed, there was in his mind a deep gulf of contrast between the misery and curse of the one state and the joy and freedom of the other. to his mind to impose the yoke of the law on the gentiles would have been to destroy the very genius of christianity; it would have been the imposition of conditions of salvation totally different from that which he knew to be the one condition of it in the gospel. these were the deep reasons which settled this question in this great mind. besides, as a man who knew the world and whose heart was set on winning the gentile nations to christ, he felt far more strongly than did the jews of jerusalem, with their provincial horizon, how fatal such conditions as they meant to impose would be to the success of christianity outside judaea. the proud romans, the highminded greeks, would never have consented to be circumcised and to cramp their life within the narrow limits of jewish tradition; a religion hampered with such conditions could never have become the universal religion. 152. but, when paul and barnabas came back from their first missionary tour to antioch, they found that a still more decisive settlement of this question was required; for christians of the strictly jewish sort were coming down from jerusalem to antioch and telling the gentile converts that, unless they were circumcised, they could not be saved. in this way they were filling them with alarm, lest they might be omitting something on which the welfare of their souls depended, and they were confusing their minds as to the simplicity of the gospel. to quiet these disturbed consciences it was resolved by the church at antioch to appeal to the leading apostles at jerusalem, and paul and barnabas were sent thither to procure a decision. this was the origin of what is called the council of jerusalem, at which this question was authoritatively settled. the decision of the apostles and elders was in harmony with paul's practice: the gentiles were not to be required to be circumcised; only they were enjoined to abstain from meat offered in sacrifice to idols, from fornication, and from blood. to these conditions paul consented. he did not, indeed, see any harm in eating meat which had been used in idolatrous sacrifices, when it was exposed for sale in the market; but the feasts upon such meat in the idol temples, which were often followed by wild outbreaks of sensuality, alluded to in the prohibition of fornication, were temptations against which the converts from heathenism required to be warned. the prohibition of blood--that is, of eating meat killed without the blood being drained off--was a concession to extreme jewish prejudice, which, as it involved no principle, he did not think it necessary to oppose. 153. so the agitating question appeared to be settled by an authority so august that none could question it. if peter, john and james, the pillars of the church at jerusalem, as well as paul and barnabas, the heads of the gentile mission, arrived at a unanimous decision, all consciences might be satisfied and all opposing mouths stopped. 154. attempt to unsettle.--it fills us with amazement to discover that even this settlement was not final. it would appear that, even at the time when it was come to, it was fiercely opposed by some who were present at the meeting where it was discussed; and, although the authority of the apostles determined the official note which was sent to the distant churches, the christian community at jerusalem was agitated with storms of angry opposition to it. nor did the opposition soon die down. on the contrary, it waxed stronger and stronger. it was fed from abundant sources. fierce national pride and prejudice sustained it; probably it was nourished by self-interest, because the jewish christians would live on easier terms with the non-christian jews the loss the difference between them was understood to be; religious conviction, rapidly warming into fanaticism, strengthened it; and very soon it was reinforced by all the rancor of hatred and the zeal of propagandism. for to such a height did this opposition rise that the party which was inflamed with it at length resolved to send out propagandists to visit the gentile churches one by one and, in contradiction to the official apostolic rescript, warn them that they were imperilling their souls by omitting circumcision, and could not enjoy the privileges of true christianity unless they kept the jewish law. 155. for years and years these emissaries of a narrow-minded fanaticism, which believed itself to be the only genuine christianity, diffused themselves over all the churches founded by paul throughout the gentile world. their work was not to found churches of their own; they had none of the original pioneer ability of their great rival. their business was to steal into the christian communities he had founded and win them to their own narrow views. they haunted paul's footsteps wherever he went, and for many years were a cause to him of unspeakable pain. they whispered to his converts that his version of the gospel was not the true one, and that his authority was not to be trusted. was he one of the twelve apostles? had he kept company with christ? they represented themselves as having brought the true form of christianity from jerusalem, the sacred headquarters; and they did not scruple to profess that they had been sent from the apostles there. they distorted the very noblest parts of paul's conduct to their purpose. for instance, his refusal to accept money for his services they imputed to a sense of his own lack of authority: the real apostles always received pay. in the same way they misconstrued his abstinence from marriage. they were men not without ability for the work they had undertaken: they had smooth, insinuating tongues, they could assume an air of dignity, and they did not stick at trifles. 156. unfortunately they were by no means without success. they alarmed the consciences of paul's converts and poisoned their minds against him. the galatian church especially fell a prey to them; and the corinthian church allowed its mind to be turned against its founder. but, indeed, the defection was more or less pronounced everywhere. it seemed as if the whole structure which paul had reared with years of labor was to be thrown to the ground. for this was what he believed to be happening. though these men called themselves christians, paul utterly denied their christianity. theirs was not another gospel; if his converts believed it, he assured them they were fallen from grace; and in the most solemn terms he pronounced a curse on those who were thus destroying the temple of god which he had built. 157. paul crushes the judaizers.--he was not, however, the man to allow such seduction to go on among his converts without putting forth the most strenuous efforts to counteract it. he hurried, when he could, to see the churches which were being tampered with; he sent messengers to bring them back to their allegiance; above all, he wrote letters to those in peril--letters in which the extraordinary powers of his mind were exerted to the utmost. he argued the subject out with all the resources of logic and scripture; he exposed the seducers with a keenness which cut like steel and overwhelmed them with sallies of sarcastic wit; he flung himself at his converts' feet and with all the passion and tenderness of his mighty heart implored them to be true to christ and to himself. we possess the records of these anxieties in our new testament; and it fills us with gratitude to god and a strange tenderness to paul himself to think that out of his heart-breaking trial there has come such a precious heritage to us. 158. it is comforting to know that he was successful. persevering as his enemies were, he was more than a match for them. hatred is strong, but stronger still is love. in his later writings the traces of his opposition are slender or entirely absent. it had given way before the crushing force of his polemic, and its traces had been swept off the soil of the church. had the event been otherwise, christianity would have been a river lost in the sands of prejudice near its very source; it would have been at the present day a forgotten jewish sect instead of the religion of the world. 159. christian jews and the law.--up to this point the course of this ancient controversy can be clearly traced. but there is another branch of it about the course of which it is far from easy to arrive at with certainty. what was the relation of the christian jews to the law, according to the teaching and preaching of paul? was it their duty to abandon the practices by which they had been wont to regulate their lives and abstain from circumcising their children or teaching them to keep the law? this would appear to be implied in paul's principles. if gentiles could enter the kingdom without keeping the law, it could not be necessary for jews to keep it. if the law was a severe discipline intended to drive men to christ, its obligations fell away when this purpose was fulfilled. the bondage of tutelage ceased as soon as the son entered on the actual possession of his inheritance. 160. it is certain, however, that the other apostles and the mass of the christians of jerusalem did not for many a day realize this. the apostles had agreed not to demand from the gentile christians circumcision and the keeping of the law. but they kept it themselves and expected all jews to keep it. this involved a contradiction of ideas, and it led to unhappy practical consequences. if it had continued or been yielded to by paul, it would have split up the church into two sections, one of which would have looked down upon the other. for it was part of the strict observance of the law to refuse to eat with the uncircumcised; and the jews would have refused to sit at the same table with those whom they acknowledged to be their christian brethren. this unseemly contradiction actually came to pass in a prominent instance. the apostle peter, chancing on one occasion to be in the heathen city of antioch, at first mingled freely in social intercourse with the gentile christians. but some of the stricter sort, coming thither from jerusalem, so cowed him that he withdrew from the gentile table and held aloof from his fellow-christians. even barnabas was carried away by the same tyranny of bigotry. paul alone was true to the principles of gospel freedom, withstanding peter to the face and exposing the inconsistency of his conduct. 161. paul never, indeed, carried on a polemic against circumcision and the keeping of the law among born jews. this was reported of him by his enemies; but it was a false report. when he arrived in jerusalem at the close of his third missionary journey, the apostle james and the elders informed him of the damage which this representation was doing to his good name and advised him publicly to disprove it. the words in which they made this appeal to him are very remarkable. "thou seest, brother," they said, "how many thousands of jews there are who believe; and they are all zealous of the law; and they are informed of thee that thou teachest all the jews who are among the gentiles to forsake moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs. do therefore this that we say to thee: we have four men who have a vow on them. take them and purify thyself with them, and be at charges with them, that they may shave their heads; and all may know that those things whereof they were informed concerning thee are nothing, but thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the law." paul complied with this appeal and went through the rite which james recommended. this clearly proves that he never regarded it as part of his work to dissuade born jews from living as jews. it may be thought that he ought to have done so--that his principles required a stern opposition to everything associated with the dispensation which had passed away. he understood them differently, however, and had a good reason to render for the line he pursued. we find him advising those who were called into the kingdom of christ being circumcised not to become uncircumcised, and those called in uncircumcision not to submit to circumcision; and the reason he gives is that circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. the distinction was nothing more to him, in a religious point of view, than the distinction of sex or the distinction of slave and master. in short, it had no religious significance at all. if, however, a man professed jewish modes of life as a mark of his nationality, paul had no quarrel with him; indeed, in some degree he preferred them himself. he stickled as little against mere forms as for them; only, if they stood between the soul and christ or between a christian and his brethren, then he was their uncompromising opponent. but he knew that liberty may be made an instrument of oppression as well as bondage, and, therefore, in regard to meats, for instance, he penned those noble recommendations of self-denial for the sake of weak and scrupulous consciences which are among the most touching testimonies to his utter unselfishness. 162. indeed, we have here a man of such heroic size that it is no easy matter to define him. along with the clearest vision of the lines of demarcation between the old and the new in the greatest crisis of human history and an unfaltering championship of principle when real issues were involved, we see in him the most genial superiority to mere formal rules and the utmost consideration for the feelings of those who did not see as he saw. by one huge blow he had cut himself free from the bigotry of bondage; but he never fell into the bigotry of liberty, and had always far loftier aims in view than the mere logic of his own position. chapter x the end paragraphs 163-189. 163, 164. return to jerusalem. prophecy of approaching imprisonment. 165-168. arrest. 166. tumult in temple; 167. paul before the sanhedrim; 168. plot of zealots. 169-172. imprisonment at caesarea. 170. providential reason for this confinement. 171. paul's later gospel. 172. his ethics. 173-176. journey to rome. 173. appeal to caesar. 174. voyage to italy. 175. arrival in rome. 176-182. first imprisonment at rome. 176. trial delayed. 177-182. occupations of a prisoner. 178. his guards converted; 180. visits of apostolic helpers; 181. messengers from his churches; 182. his writings. 183-188. last scenes. 185. release from prison; new journeys. 186. second imprisonment at rome. 187, 188. trial and death. 189. epilogue. 163. return to jerusalem.--after completing his brief visit to greece at the close of his third missionary journey, paul returned to jerusalem. he must by this time have been nearly sixty years of age; and for twenty years he had been engaged in almost superhuman labors. he had been traveling and preaching incessantly, and carrying on his heart a crushing weight of cares. his body had been worn with disease and mangled with punishments and abuse; and his hair must have been whitened, and his face furrowed with the lines of age. as yet, however, there were no signs of his body breaking down, and his spirit was still as keen as ever in its enthusiasm for the service of christ. his eye was specially directed to rome, and, before leaving greece, he sent word to the romans that they might expect to see him soon. but, as he was hurrying toward jerusalem along the shores of greece and asia, the signal sounded that his work was nearly done, and the shadow of approaching death fell across his path. in city after city the persons in the christian communities who were endowed with the gift of prophecy foretold that bonds and imprisonment were awaiting him, and, as he came nearer to the close of his journey, these warnings became more loud and frequent. he felt their solemnity; his was a brave heart, but it was too humble and reverent not to be overawed with the thought of death and judgment. he had several companions with him, but he sought opportunities of being alone. he parted from his converts as a dying man, telling them that they would see his face no more. but, when they entreated him to turn back and avoid the threatened danger, he gently pushed aside their loving arms, and said, "what mean ye to weep and to break my heart? for i am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at jerusalem for the name of the lord jesus." 164. we do not know what business he had on hand which so peremptorily demanded his presence in jerusalem. he had to deliver up to the apostles a collection on behalf of their poor saints, which he had been exerting himself to gather in the gentile churches; and it may have been of importance that he should discharge this service in person. or he may have been solicitous to procure from the apostles a message for his gentile churches, giving an authoritative contradiction to the insinuations of his enemies as to the unapostolic character of his gospel. at all events there was some imperative call of duty summoning him, and, in spite of the fear of death and the tears of friends, he went forward to his fate. 165. paul's arrest.--it was the feast of pentecost when he arrived in the city of his fathers, and, as usual at such seasons, jerusalem was crowded with hundreds of thousands of pilgrim jews from all parts of the world. among these there could not but be many who had seen him at the work of evangelization in the cities of the heathen and come into collision with him there. their rage against him had been checked in foreign lands by the interposition of gentile authority; but might they not, if they met with him in the jewish capital, wreak on him their vengeance with the support of the whole population? 166. this was actually the danger into which he fell. certain jews from ephesus, the principal scene of his labors during his third journey, recognized him in the temple and, crying out that here was the heretic who blasphemed the jewish nation, law and temple, brought about him in an instant a raging sea of fanaticism. it is a wonder he was not torn limb from limb on the spot; but superstition prevented his assailants from defiling with blood the court of the jews, in which he was caught, and, before they got him hustled into the court of the gentiles, where they would soon have despatched him, the roman guard, whose sentries were pacing the castle-ramparts which overlooked the temple-courts, rushed down and took him under their protection; and, when their captain learned that he was a roman citizen, his safety was secured. 167. but the fanaticism of jerusalem was now thoroughly aroused, and it raged against the protection which surrounded paul like an angry sea. the roman captain on the day after the apprehension took him down to the sanhedrin in order to ascertain the charge against him; but the sight of the prisoner created such an uproar that he had to hurry him away, lest he should be torn in pieces. strange city and strange people! there was never a nation which produced sons more richly dowered with gifts to make her name immortal; there was never a city whose children clung to her with a more passionate affection; yet, like a mad mother, she tore the very goodliest of them in pieces and dashed them mangled from her breast. jerusalem was now within a few years of her destruction; here was the last of her inspired and prophetic sons come to visit her for the last time, with boundless love to her in his heart; but she would have murdered him; and only the shields of the gentiles saved him from her fury. 168. forty zealots banded themselves together under a curse to snatch paul even from the midst of the roman swords; and the roman captain was only able to foil their plot by sending him under a heavy escort down to caesarea. this was a roman city on the mediterranean coast; it was the residence of the roman governor of palestine and the headquarters of the roman garrison; and in it the apostle was perfectly safe from jewish violence. 169. imprisonment at caesarea.--here he remained in prison for two years. the jewish authorities attempted again and again either to procure his condemnation by the governor or to get him delivered up to themselves, to be tried as an ecclesiastical offender; but they failed to convince the governor that paul had been guilty of any crime of which he could take cognizance or to persuade him to hand over a roman citizen to their tender mercies. the prisoner ought to have been released, but his enemies were so vehement in asserting that he was a criminal of the deepest dye that he was detained on the chance of new evidence turning up against him. besides, his release was prevented by the expectation of the corrupt governor, felix, that the life of the leader of a religious sect might be purchased from him with a bribe. felix was interested in his prisoner and even heard him gladly, as herod had listened to the baptist. 170. paul was not kept in close confinement; he had at least the range of the barracks in which he was detained. there we can imagine him pacing the ramparts on the edge of the mediterranean, and gazing wistfully across the blue waters in the direction of macedonia, achaia and ephesus, where his spiritual children were pining for him or perhaps encountering dangers in which they sorely needed his presence. it was a mysterious providence which thus arrested his energies and condemned the ardent worker to inactivity. yet we can see now the reason for it. paul was needing rest. after twenty years of incessant evangelization he required leisure to garner the harvest of experience. during all that time he had been preaching that view of the gospel which at the beginning of his christian career he had thought out, under the influence of the revealing spirit, in the solitudes of arabia. but he had now reached a stage when, with leisure to think, he might penetrate into more recondite regions of the truth as it is in jesus. and it was so important that he should have this leisure that, in order to secure it. god even permitted him to be shut up in prison. 171. paul's later gospel.--during these two years he wrote nothing; it was a time of internal mental activity and silent progress. but, when he began to write again, the results of it were at once discernible. the epistles written after this imprisonment have a mellower tone and set forth a profounder view of doctrine than his earlier writings. there is no contradiction, indeed, or inconsistency between his earlier and later views: in ephesians and colossians he builds on the broad foundations laid in romans and galatians. but the superstructure is loftier and more imposing. he dwells less on the work of christ and more on his person; less on the justification of the sinner and more on the sanctification of the saint. in the gospel revealed to him in arabia he had set christ forth as dominating mundane history, and shown his first coming to be the point toward which the destinies of jews and gentiles had been tending. in the gospel revealed to him at caesarea the point of view is extra-mundane: christ is represented as the reason for the creation of all things, and as the lord of angels and of worlds, to whose second coming the vast procession of the universe is moving forward--of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things. in the earlier epistles the initial act of the christian life--the justification of the soul--is explained with exhaustive elaboration: but in the later epistles it is on the subsequent relations to christ of the person who has been already justified that the apostle chiefly dwells. according to his teaching, the whole spectacle of the christian life is due to a union between christ and the soul; and for the description of this relationship he has invented a vocabulary of phrases and illustrations: believers are in christ, and christ is in them: they have the same relation to him as the stones of a building to the foundation-stone, as the branches to the tree, as the members to the head, as a wife to her husband. this union is ideal, for the divine mind in eternity made the destiny of christ and the believer one; it is legal, for their debts and merits are common property; it is vital, for the connection with christ supplies the power of a holy and progressive life; it is moral, for, in mind and heart, in character and conduct, christians are constantly becoming more and more identical with christ. 172. his ethics.--another feature of these later epistles is the balance between their theological and their moral teaching. this is visible even in the external structure of the greatest of them, for they are nearly equally divided into two parts, the first of which is occupied with doctrinal statements and the second with moral exhortations. the ethical teaching of paul spreads itself over all parts of the christian life; but it is not distinguished by a systematic arrangement of the various kinds of duties, although the domestic duties are pretty fully treated. its chief characteristic lies in the motives which it brings to bear upon conduct. to paul christian morality was emphatically a morality of motives. the whole history of christ, not in the details of his earthly life, but in the great features of his redemptive journey from heaven to earth and from earth back to heaven again, as seen from the extramundane standpoint of these epistles, is a series of examples to be copied by christians in their daily conduct. no duty is too small to illustrate one or other of the principles which inspired the divinest acts of christ. the commonest acts of humility and beneficence are to be imitations of the condescension which brought him from the position of equality with god to the obedience of the cross; and the ruling motive of the love and kindness practised by christians to one another is to be the recollection of their common connection with him. 173. appeal to caesar.--after paul's imprisonment had lasted for two years, felix was succeeded in the governorship of palestine by festus. the jews had never ceased to intrigue to get paul into their hands, and they at once assailed the new ruler with further importunities. as festus seemed to be wavering, paul availed himself of his privilege of appeal as a roman citizen and demanded to be sent to rome and tried at the bar of the emperor. this could not be refused him; and a prisoner had to be sent to rome at once after such an appeal was taken. very soon, therefore, paul was shipped off under the charge of roman soldiers and in the company of many other prisoners on their way to the same destination. 174. voyage to italy.--the journal of the voyage has been preserved in the acts of the apostles and is acknowledged to be the most valuable document in existence concerning the seamanship of ancient times. it is also a precious document of paul's life; for it shows how his character shone out in a novel situation. a ship is a kind of miniature of the world. it is a floating island, in which there are the government and the governed. but the government is, like that of states, liable to sudden social upheavals, in which the ablest man is thrown to the top. this was a voyage of extreme perils, which required the utmost presence of mind and power of winning the confidence and obedience of those on board. before it was ended paul was virtually both the captain of the ship and the general of the soldiers; and all on board owed to him their lives. 175. arrival in rome.--at length the dangers of the deep were left behind; and paul found himself approaching the capital of the roman world by the appian road, the great highway by which rome was entered by travelers from the east. the bustle and noise increased as he neared the city, and the signs of roman grandeur and renown multiplied at every step. for many years he had been looking forward to seeing rome, but he had always thought of entering it in a very different guise from that which now he wore. he had always thought of rome as a successful general thinks of the central stronghold of the country he is subduing, who looks eagerly forward to the day when he will direct the charge against its gates. paul was engaged in the conquest of the world for christ, and rome was the final position he had hoped to carry in his master's name. years ago he had sent to it the famous challenge, "i am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at rome also; for i am not ashamed of the gospel of christ, for it is the power of god unto salvation to every one that believeth." but now, when he found himself actually at its gates and thought of the abject condition in which he was--an old, gray-haired, broken man, a chained prisoner just escaped from shipwreck--his heart sank within him, and he felt dreadfully alone. at the right moment, however, a little incident took place which restored him to himself: at a small town forty miles out of rome he was met by a little band of christian brethren, who, hearing of his approach, had come out to welcome him; and, ten miles farther on, he came upon another group, who had come out for the same purpose. self-reliant as he was, he was exceedingly sensitive to human sympathy, and the sight of these brethren and their interest in him completely revived him. he thanked god and took courage; his old feelings came back in their wonted strength; and, when, in the company of these friends, he reached that shoulder of the alban hills from which the first view of the city is obtained, his heart swelled with the anticipation of victory; for he knew he carried in his breast the force which would yet lead captive that proud capital. it was not with the step of a prisoner, but with that of a conqueror, that he passed at length beneath the city gate. his road lay along that very sacred way by which many a roman general had passed in triumph to the capitol, seated on a car of victory, followed by the prisoners and spoils of the enemy, and surrounded with the plaudits of rejoicing rome. paul looked little like such a hero: no car of victory carried him, he trode the causewayed road with wayworn foot; no medals or ornaments adorned his person, a chain of iron dangled from his wrist; no applauding crowds welcomed his approach, a few humble friends formed all his escort; yet never did a more truly conquering footstep fall on the pavement of rome or a heart more confident of victory pass within her gates. 176. imprisonment.--meanwhile, however, it was not to the capitol his steps were bent, but to a prison; and he was destined to lie in prison long, for his trial did not come on for two years. the law's delays have been proverbial in all countries and at all eras; and the law of imperial rome was not likely to be free from this reproach during the reign of nero, a man of such frivolity that any engagement of pleasure or freak of caprice was sufficient to make him put off the most important call of business. the imprisonment, it is true, was of the mildest description. it may have been that the officer who brought him to rome spoke a good word for the man who had saved his life during the voyage, or the officer to whom he was handed over, and who is known in profane history as a man of justice and humanity, may have inquired into his case and formed a favorable opinion of his character; but at all events paul was permitted to hire a house of his own and live in it in perfect freedom, with the single exception that a soldier, who was responsible for his person, was his constant attendant. 177. occupation in prison.--this was far from the condition which such an active spirit would have coveted. he would have liked to be moving from synagogue to synagogue in the immense city, preaching in its streets and squares, and founding congregation after congregation among the masses of its population. another man, thus arrested in a career of ceaseless movement and immured within prison walls, might have allowed his mind to stagnate in sloth and despair. but paul behaved very differently. availing himself of every possibility of the situation, he converted his one room into a center of far-reaching activity and beneficence. on the few square feet of space allowed him he erected a fulcrum with which he moved the world, establishing within the walls of nero's capital a sovereignty more extensive than his own. 178. even the most irksome circumstance of his lot was turned to good account. this was the soldier by whom he was watched. to a man of paul's eager temperament and restlessness of mood this must often have been an intolerable annoyance; and, indeed, in the letters written during this imprisonment he is constantly referring to his chain, as if it were never out of his mind. but he did not suffer this irritation to blind him to the opportunity of doing good presented by the situation. of course his attendant was changed every few hours, as one soldier relieved another upon guard. in this way there might be six or eight with him every four-and-twenty hours. they belonged to the imperial guard, the flower of the roman army. paul could not sit for hours beside another man without speaking of the subject which lay nearest his heart. he spoke to these soldiers about their immortal souls and the faith of christ. to men accustomed to the horrors of roman warfare and the manners of roman barracks nothing could be more striking than a life and character like his; and the result of these conversations was that many of them became changed men, and a revival spread through the barracks and penetrated into the imperial household itself. his room was sometimes crowded with these stern, bronzed faces, glad to see him at other times than those when duty required them to be there. he sympathized with them and entered into the spirit of their occupation; indeed, he was full of the spirit of the warrior himself. we have an imperishable relic of these visits in an outburst of inspired eloquence which he dictated at this period: "put on the whole armor of god, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil; for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. wherefore take unto you the whole armor of god, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and, having done all, to stand. stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of god." that picture was drawn from the life, from the armor of the soldiers in his room; and perhaps these ringing sentences were first poured into the ears of his warlike auditors before they were transferred to the epistle in which they have been preserved. 179. visitors.--but he had other visitors. all who took an interest in christianity in rome, both jews and gentiles, gathered to him. perhaps there was not a day of the two years of his imprisonment but he had such visitors. the roman christians learned to go to that room as to an oracle or shrine. many a christian teacher got his sword sharpened there; and new energy began to diffuse itself through the christian circles of the city. many an anxious father brought his son, many a friend his friend, hoping that a word from the apostle's lips might waken the sleeping conscience. many a wanderer, stumbling in there by chance, came out a new man. such an one was onesimus, a slave from colossae, who arrived in rome as a runaway, but was sent back to his christian master, philemon, no longer as a slave, but as a brother beloved. 180. still more interesting visitors came. at all periods of his life he exercised a strong fascination over young men. they were attracted by the manly soul within him, in which they found sympathy with their aspirations and inspiration for the noblest work. these youthful friends, who were scattered over the world in the work of christ, flocked to him at rome. timothy and luke, mark and aristarchus, tychicus and epaphras, and many more came, to drink afresh at the well of his ever-springing wisdom and earnestness. and he sent them forth again, to carry messages to his churches or bring him news of their condition. 181. of his spiritual children in the distance he never ceased to think. daily he was wandering in imagination among the glens of galatia and along the shores of asia and greece; every night he was praying for the christians of antioch and ephesus, of philippi and thessalonica and corinth. nor were gratifying proofs awanting that they were remembering him. now and then there would appear in his lodging a deputy from some distant church, bringing the greetings of his converts or, perhaps, a contribution to meet his temporal wants, or craving his decision on some point of doctrine or practice about which difficulty had arisen. these messengers were not sent empty away: they carried warm-hearted messages of golden words of counsel from their apostolic friend. some of them carried far more. when epaphroditus, a deputy from the church at philippi, which had sent to their dear father in christ an offering of love, was returning home, paul sent with him, in acknowledgment of their kindness, the epistle to the philippians, the most beautiful of all his letters, in which he lays bare his very heart and every sentence glows with love more tender than a woman's. when the slave onesimus was sent back to colossae, he received, as the branch of peace to offer to his master, the exquisite little epistle to philemon, a priceless monument of christian courtesy. he carried, too, a letter addressed to the church of the town in which his master lived, the epistle to the colossians. the composition of these epistles was by far the most important part of paul's varied prison activity; and he crowned this labor with the writing of the epistle to the ephesians, which is perhaps the profoundest and sublimest book in the world. the church of christ has derived many benefits from the imprisonment of the servants of god; the greatest book of uninspired religious genius, the pilgrim's progress, was written in a jail; but never did there come to the church a greater mercy in the disguise of misfortune than when the arrest of paul's bodily activities at caesarea and rome supplied him with the leisure needed to reach the depths of truth sounded in the epistle to the ephesians. 182. his writings.--it may have seemed a dark dispensation of providence to paul himself that the course of life he had pursued so long was so completely changed; but god's thoughts are higher than man's thoughts and his ways than man's ways; and he gave paul grace to overcome the temptations of his situation and do far more in his enforced inactivity for the welfare of the world and the permanence of his own influence than he could have done by twenty years of wandering missionary work. sitting in his room, he gathered within the sounding cavity of his sympathetic heart the sighs and cries of thousands far away, and diffused courage and help in every direction from his own inexhaustible resources. he sank his mind deeper and deeper in solitary thought, till, smiting the rock in the dim depth to which he had descended, he caused streams to gush forth which are still gladdening the city of god. 183. release from prison.--the book of acts suddenly breaks off with a brief summary of paul's two years' imprisonment at rome. is this because there was no more to tell? when his trial came on, did it issue in his condemnation and death? or did he get out of prison and resume his old occupations? where luke's lucid narrative so suddenly deserts us, tradition comes in proffering its doubtful aid. it tells us that he was acquitted on his trial and let out of prison; that he resumed his travels, visiting spain among other places; but that before long he was arrested again and sent back to rome, where he died a martyr's death at the cruel hands of nero. 184. new journeys.--happily, however, we are not altogether dependent on the precarious aid of tradition. we have writings of paul's own undoubtedly subsequent to the two years of his first imprisonment. these are what are called the pastoral epistles--the epistles to timothy and titus. in these we see that he regained his liberty and resumed his employment of revisiting his old churches and founding new ones. his footsteps cannot, indeed, be any longer traced with certainty. we find him back at ephesus and troas; we find him in crete, an island at which he touched on his voyage to rome and in which he may then have become interested; we find him exploring new territory in the northern parts of greece. we see him once more, like the commander of an army who sends his aides-de-camp all over the field of battle, sending out his young assistants to organize and watch over the churches. 185. but this was not to last long. an event had happened immediately after his release from prison which could not but influence his fate. this was the burning of rome--an appalling disaster, the glare of which even at this distance makes the heart shudder. it was probably a mad freak of the malicious monster who then wore the imperial purple. but nero saw fit to attribute it to the christians, and instantly the most atrocious persecution broke out against them. of course the fame of this soon spread over the roman world; and it was not likely that the foremost apostle of christianity could long escape. every roman governor knew that he could not do the emperor a more pleasing service than by sending to him paul in chains. 186. second imprisonment.--it was not long, accordingly, before paul was lying once more in prison at rome; and it was no mild imprisonment this time, but the worst known to the law. no troops of friends now filled his room; for the christians of rome had been massacred or scattered, and it was dangerous for any one to avow himself a christian. we have a letter written from his dungeon, the last he ever wrote, the second epistle to timothy, which affords us a glimpse of unspeakable pathos into the circumstances of the prisoner. he tells us that one part of his trial is already over. not a friend stood by him as he faced the bloodthirsty tyrant who sat on the judgment-seat. but the lord stood by him and enabled him to make the emperor and the spectators in the crowded basilica hear the sound of the gospel. the charge against him had broken down. but he had no hope of escape. other stages of the trial had yet to come, and he knew that evidence to condemn him would either be discovered or manufactured. the letter betrays the miseries of his dungeon. he prays timothy to bring a cloak he had left at troas, to defend him from the damp of the cell and the cold of the winter. he asks for his books and parchments, that he may relieve the tedium of his solitary hours with the studies he had always loved. but, above all, he beseeches timothy to come himself; for he was longing to feel the touch of a friendly hand and see the face of a friend yet once again before he died. was the brave heart then conquered at last? read the epistle and see. how does it begin? "i also suffer these things; nevertheless i am not ashamed; for i know whom i have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which i have committed unto him against that day." how does it end? "i am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. i have fought a good fight, i have finished my course, i have kept the faith. henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them that love his appearing." that is not the strain of the vanquished. 187. trial.--there can be little doubt that he appeared again at nero's bar, and this time the charge did not break down. in all history there is not a more startling illustration of the irony of human life than this scene of paul at the bar of nero. on the judgment-seat, clad in the imperial purple, sat a man who in a bad world had attained the eminence of being the very worst and meanest being in it--a man stained with every crime, the murderer of his own mother, of his wives and of his best benefactors; a man whose whole being was so steeped in every namable and unnamable vice that body and soul of him were, as some one said at the time, nothing but a compound of mud and blood; and in the prisoner's dock stood the best man the world contained, his hair whitened with labors for the good of men and the glory of god. such was the occupant of the seat of justice, and such the man who stood in the place of the criminal. 188. death.--the trial ended, paul was condemned and delivered over to the executioner. he was led out of the city with a crowd of the lowest rabble at his heels. the fatal spot was reached; he knelt beside the block; the headsman's axe gleamed in the sun and fell; and the head of the apostle of the world rolled down in the dust. 189. so sin did its uttermost and its worst. yet how poor and empty was its triumph! the blow of the axe only smote off the lock of the prison and let the spirit go forth to its home and to its crown. the city falsely called eternal dismissed him with execration from her gates; but ten thousand times ten thousand welcomed him in the same hour at the gates of the city which is really eternal. even on earth paul could not die. he lives among us to-day with a life a hundredfold more influential than that which throbbed in his brain whilst the earthly form which made him visible still lingered on the earth. wherever the feet of them who publish the glad tidings go forth beautiful upon the mountains, he walks by their side as an inspirer and a guide; in ten thousand churches every sabbath and on a thousand thousand hearths every day his eloquent lips still teach that gospel of which he was never ashamed; and, wherever there are human souls searching for the white flower of holiness or climbing the difficult heights of self-denial, there he whose life was so pure, whose devotion to christ was so entire, and whose pursuit of a single purpose was so unceasing, is welcomed as the best of friends. hints to teachers and questions for pupils teacher's apparatus.--english theology has no juster cause for pride than the books it has produced on the life of paul. perhaps there is no other subject in which it has so outdistanced all rivals. conybeare and howson's _life and epistles of st. paul_ will probably always keep the foremost place; in many respects it is nearly perfect; and a teacher who has mastered it will be sufficiently equipped for his work and require no other help. the works of lewin and farrar are written on the same lines; the former is rich in maps of countries and plans of towns; and the strong point of the latter is the analysis of paul's writings--the exposition of the mind of paul. sir william ramsay has made the whole subject peculiarly his own by the enthusiasm and labors of a lifetime. the german books are not nearly so valuable. hausrath's _the apostle paul_ is a brilliant performance, but it is as weak in handling the deeper things as it is strong in coloring up the external and picturesque features of the subject. baur's work is an amazingly clever _tour de force_, but it is not so much a well-proportioned picture of the apostle as a prolonged paradox thrown down as a challenge to the learned. the latest large german work, clemen's _paulus_, proceeds on the principle that the miracle is untrue, and the effect may be sufficiently seen in the account it gives of the first visit to philippi. in weinal's _paulus_, pp. 312, 313, there appears a forbidding picture of the effects produced by the teaching of the subject in the author's country; in our country, on the contrary, it has long been among the most attractive subjects for both teachers and students. adolphe monod's _saint paul_, a series of five discourses, is an inquiry into the secret of the apostle's life, written with deep sympathy and glowing eloquence; and renan's work, with the same title, gives, with unrivaled brilliance, a picture of the world in which the apostle lived, if not of the apostle himself. there are books on the subject which do honor to american scholarship from the pens of cone, gilbert, bacon and a. t. robertson, the last mentioned with a valuable bibliography. but the best help is to be found in the original sources themselves--the cameolike pictures of luke and the self-revelations of paul's epistles. the latter especially, read in the fresh translation of conybeare, will show the apostle to any one who has eyes to see. johnstone's wall-map of paul's journey is indispensable in the class-room. chapter i paragraph 2. subject of class essay--paul and the other apostles: points of connection and contrast. 5. subject of class essay--relation of christianity to learning and intellectual gifts: its use of them and its independence of them. 9. _quote passages of scripture in which paul's destination to be the missionary of the gentiles is expressed._ chapter ii on the external features of the period embraced in this chapter compare the corresponding pages of hausrath; on the internal features see principal rainy's lecture on paul in _the evangelical succession lectures_, vol. i. 14. on the chronology of paul's life see the notes at the end of conybeare and howson, and farrar, ii. 623. the principal dates may be given at this stage from conybeare and howson, for reference throughout: a.d. 36. conversion. 38. flight to tarsus. 44. brought to antioch by barnabas. 48. first missionary journey. 50. council at jerusalem. 51-54. second missionary journey. 1 and 2 _thessalonians_ written at corinth. 54-58. third missionary journey. 57. 1 _corinthians_ written at ephesus; 2 _corinthians_, in macedonia; _galatians_, at corinth. 58. _romans_ written at corinth. arrest at jerusalem. 59. in prison at caesarea. 60. voyage to rome. 62. _philemon, colossians, ephesians, philippians_, written at rome. 63. release from prison. 67. 1 _timothy_ and _titus_ written. 68. in prison again at rome. 2 _timothy_. death. with these may be compared some of ramsay's dates--the conversion, 33; first missionary journey, 47-49; second, 50-53; third, 53-57; voyage to rome, 59, 60; trial and acquittal, 61; second trial, 67. whereas conybeare and howson consider galatians to have been written, in close conjunction with romans, at corinth during the fourth missionary journey, ramsay believes it to have been written at antioch before this journey commenced; and, whereas the older authorities suppose it to be addressed to galatians evangelized by paul during the second missionary journey, though no details of such a conquest are found in acts, ramsay holds the recipients of the epistle to have been the churches in the interior of asia minor evangelized during the first missionary journey, the regions of phrygia and lycaonia in which these were situated forming at that time part of the province of galatia, the boundaries of which had been extended. this is the south galatian theory, the fullest statement and defence of which will be found in hastings' _dictionary of the bible_, vol. v. 15. the goat's-hair cloth was called "cilicium," from the name of the province. 16. dean howson's _metaphors of st. paul_. also hausrath, p. 15. 18. compare the long lists of sins frequent in the epistle. 23. subject for class essay: paul's first sight of jerusalem. 27. a startling picture of the state of society in jerusalem might be constructed from the materials supplied in matt. xxiii. 28. detailed comparison of the experience of paul with that of luther: their early religious ideas; the state of religion around them; their failure to find peace and their sufferings of conscience; their discovery of the righteousness of god. on the religious associations of paul's early life see the first 100 pages of reuss' _christian theology in the apostolic age_. 31. on the history of christianity between the death of christ and the conversion of st. paul see dykes' _from jerusalem to antioch_. 34. the question whether paul was married. his views on the place of woman. 35. perhaps acts xxvi. 11 may not imply that any of the christians yielded to his endeavors to make them blaspheme. 15. _what was the latin name for a town enjoying the political privileges possessed by tarsus?_ 16. _what are paul's principal metaphors?_ 17. _where does he make this boast?_ 19. _what was the latin name for the roman citizenship, and what privileges did it include? on what occasions is paul recorded to have used it? on what occasions might he have been expected to use it, when he omitted to do so? what reasons may be given for the omission?_ 20. _name friends of paul who were engaged in the same trade as he._ 21. _give paul's quotations from the greek poets. do you know the authors he quoted from? explain septuagint and diaspora._ 22. _where does paul refer to the sophists and rhetoricians?_ 26. _make a collection of paul's quotations from the old testament, showing whence each of them was taken._ 28. _what does paul mean by the law?_ 32. _trace out the points of contact between the language and views of stephen's speech and those of paul. explain--_ "_si stephanus non orasset_, _ecclesia paulum non haberet._" 34. _where is it said that paul voted in the sanhedrim?_ 45. _collect paul's references to the persecution and bring out how severe it was._ chapter iii on paul's mental processes before and at the time of his conversion see principal rainy's lecture, already quoted. the conversion of paul is one of the strong apologetic positions of christianity. see this worked out in lyttelton's _conversion of st. paul_. but it might be worked out afresh on more modern lines. 40. principal rainy, in the lecture above referred to, says that he sees no evidence of such a conflict as this in paul's mind; but what, then, is the meaning of "it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks"? 41. the general tenor of the earliest christian apologetic, as it is to be found in the speeches of the acts of the apostles. 44. nothing could be more alien to the spirit of the new testament than to turn this round the other way, and, assuming that what paul saw was only a vision, argue that the other appearances of christ, because they are put on the same level, may have been only visions too. this is a mere stroke of dialectical cleverness, which shows no regard to the obvious intention of the writers. _there are three accounts of the conversion of paul in the acts. what is the significance of this reduplication in so small a book? enumerate the differences between these accounts, and explain them._ 38. _prove that the first christians called christianity_ the way, _and explain the signification of this name._ chapter iv on the subject of this chapter see the works on pauline theology by pfleiderer, bruce, du bose, titius and stevens, also the relevant portions of any of the handbooks of new testament theology--weiss, reuss, schmid, van oosterzee, beyschlag, holtzmann, and stevens. weiss' exposition is among the most solid and trustworthy. he divides paulinism into four sections:-i. the earliest gospel of paul during the heathen mission (gathered from thessalonians). one chapter--the gospel as the way of deliverance from judgment. ii. the doctrinal system of the four great doctrinal and controversial epistles (corinthians, romans, galatians). ch. i. universal sinfulness of man; ch. ii. heathenism and judaism; ch. iii. prophecy and fulfilment; ch. iv. christology; ch. v. redemption and justification; ch. vi. the new life; ch. vii. the doctrine of predestination; ch. viii. the doctrine of the church; ch. ix. the last things. iii. the development op the doctrine in the epistles written in prison (colossians, ephesians, philippians, philemon). ch. i. the pauline foundations; ch. ii. further development of doctrine. iv. the teaching of the pastoral epistles. one chapter--christianity as doctrine. 51. subject for class essay. the sources of st. paul's theology. 52. luther in the wartburg. 54-65. as these paragraphs are nothing but a paraphrase of rom. i.-viii., pupils ought to be asked to compare with them the corresponding paragraphs of the epistle. 56. compare tholuck, the moral character of heathendom. 65. on paul's psychology see the monograph of simon and the handbooks of biblical psychology by delitzsch and beck: also heard, _the tripartite nature of man_, laidlaw, _the bible doctrine of man_, and dickson, _st. paul's use of the terms flesh and spirit_. 67. compare somerville, _st. paul's conception of christ_, and knowling, _the testimony of st. paul to christ_. 51. _where does paul mention his journey to arabia?_ 56. _what is the connection between moral and intellectual degeneracy?_ 62. _where does paul speak of the gospel as a "mystery," and what does he mean by this word?_ 65. _does paul divide human nature into two or into three sections? do you know the theological names for these alternatives? does paul regard the unregenerate man as possessing the part of human nature which he calls "spirit"?_ 67. _enumerate the incidents of christ's earthly life referred to by paul._ chapter v on this subject see the first two chapters of conybeare and howson; _new testament times_ of hausrath or schã¼rer; fairweather, _from the exile to the advent_, moss, _from malachi to matthew_. 72. subject of class essay: the origin and significance of the name "christian." 72. _by what other names were the christians called in new testament times, among themselves or among their enemies?_ 78. _what did the greeks, the romans, and the jews severally contribute to christianity?_ chapter vi the aim of this handbook, as of _the life of jesus christ_ in the same series, being to show at a single glance the general course of the life and the principal objects it touched, a good many details have been omitted. this is especially the case in this chapter and in chapter x. the omissions cause those great features to stand out more prominently which details are apt to obscure. in this chapter an endeavor has been made to show in this way what were the different regions into which the apostle traveled, and what the peculiarities and the extent of the work he did in each. but in an extended bible class course the lessons will naturally go more into detail, and perhaps the incidents which took place in each town may generally form a lesson. here, therefore, and at the beginning of chap. x., a few hints may be given of the viewpoints for the lessons, in so far as these are not already supplied in the text. acts xiii. 1-12. first footsteps of christian missions. " " 14-52. _antioch_. paul's missionary method. " xiv. 1-6. _iconium_. among the jews. " " 6-20. _lystra_. among the heathens. " " 21-28. paul as a pastor. " xv. paul as an ecclesiastic. acts xvi. 1-6. the new companion. " " 6-10. opening up virgin soil. " " 12-40. _philippi_. transfiguration and disfiguration of humanity. " xvii. 1-9. _thessalonica_. an honorable reproach. " " 10-14. _beroea_. rare freedom from prejudice. " " 15-34. _athens_. the gospel and intellectual curiosity. " xviii. 1-3. _corinth_. paul's earthly home. " " 4-17. the missionary's discouragements and encouragements. " " 23-28. a polished shaft in god's quiver. " xix. _ephesus_. see the text. also, conflict of christianity with vested interests and mob violence. 79. howson's _companions of st. paul_. 81. a minute inspection of acts xiii. 9 will confirm the view here given of the change of name, though it is difficult to get rid of the idea that the conversion of the governor, who bore the same name, had something to do with it. 84. on the worship of the synagogue see farrar's _life of christ_, i. 220. 89. on the council of jerusalem, which took place between the first and second journeys, see ch. ix. 93. what is here said of the plan of the acts explains still more strikingly the meagerness of the record of the third journey. 97. beroea was to the south of the via egnatia. 99. subject of class essay: the influence of christianity on the lot of woman. 103. subject of class essay: paul at athens. 104. subject of class essay: paul and socrates. 113. a strong argument against the mythical theory of the miracles of our lord may be constructed from the paucity of the miracles attributed to paul. if that age naturally wove miraculous legends round great names, why did it not encircle paul with a continuous web of miracle? and why does the new testament admit that the baptist worked no miracle? 114. see ramsay, _letters to the seven churches_. 79. _give a list of paul's companions and friends mentioned in the new testament._ 84. _what were the charges generally brought against him before the authorities?_ 91. _where in his writings does he mention barnabas and mark?_ 93. _give the places in acts where the items of this catalogue are recorded._ 94. _mention other classical associations of this region._ 98. _what two kings of macedonia are famous in history?_ 102. _expand these allusions to greek history._ 103. _give a number of the names associated with the golden age of athens and mention what they were famous for._ 108. _find out all the visions mentioned in paul's life, and prove that they were given him at the crises of his history._ 110. _distinguish our asia and asia minor from the asia of the new testament._ chapter vii in the chronological table, p. 138, the dates of the epistles have already been given and the points of the history indicated where they come in. it is a pity the epistles are not arranged in chronological order in our bibles. their characteristics may be mentioned: 1 and 2 _thessalonians_. simple beginnings. attitude to christ's second coming. 1 _corinthians_. picture of an apostolic church. 2 _corinthians_. paul's portrait of himself. _galatians_. vehement polemic against judaizers. _romans_. paul's gospel. _philemon_. example of christian courtesy. _colossians_ and _ephesians_. paul's later gospel. _philippians_. picture of roman imprisonment. 1 _timothy_ and _titus_. form of the church. 2 _timothy_. the last scenes. ramsay places _galatians_ before 1 and 2 _corinthians_; compare p. 139 above. 116. compare shaw, _the pauline epistles_. 118. on paul's style see farrar's excursus at the close of vol. i. the comparison of it to that of thucydides is more dignified than that of the text, but less true. 119. inspiration did not interfere with natural characteristics of style. it made the writer not less but more himself, while of course it imparted to the products of his pen a divine value and authority. 120-127. howson's _character of st. paul_; speer, _the man paul_; hausrath, 45-57; baur's remarks (ii. 294 ff.) on his intellectual character are very good. but the principal sources are 2 corinthians and acts xx. 122. farrar's treatment of paul's bodily infirmities is a serious blot on his book; for these are obtruded with a frequency and exaggeration which produce an impression quite different from that made by the references to them in scripture. this is still truer of baring-gould's _study of st. paul_. for a treatment of the same subject, realistic, but full of sympathy and delicacy, see monod. ramsay is of opinion that the "thorn in the flesh" was chronic malarial fever. 122 ff. _illustrate these paragraphs fully from scripture._ 128. _compare paul with livingstone and other missionaries._ chapter viii on this subject compare neander's _planting of christianity_, book ii., ch. 7, and schaff's _church history_; also bannerman's _church of christ_. this chapter is only a piecing together of the information scattered through 1 corinthians. it would be well to get pupils to seek out the passages of the epistle which correspond to the different paragraphs. a picture of a pauline church of a later date might be compiled in the same way from the pastoral epistles. 136. the doctrine of the holy spirit was revealed "at sundry times and in divers manners," and the complete doctrine is to be obtained by uniting the representations of the various writers of scripture. in the new testament there are four phases--1. in the synoptical gospels the holy spirit is set forth in his influence on the human nature of christ; 2. in the acts and paul, as the power for founding the church and converting the world; 3. in paul as the principle of the new life of christians; 4. in john as the comforter. 138. compare the irregularities of other periods of vast change, _e.g._, the reformation. 144. on the extent to which an authoritative ecclesiastical system is given in the new testament compare _jus divinum presbyterii_ and hooker's _ecclesiastical polity_. 130. _give the names of the principal games of ancient times, derived from the places where they were held._ 131. _where are churches mentioned as meeting in the houses of individuals?_ 132. _explain the words "barbarian," "scythian," in col. iii. 11._ 135. _what modern divine endeavored to revive these phenomena, and what is the name of the church he founded? what is the meaning of the word "charism"? were the tongues of pentecost the same as those of 1 corinthians? give instances in which new testament prophets did predict future events._ chapter ix the criticism which seeks to disintegrate the new testament writings and set the apostles against one another is founded on a revival of the claim of the judaizers that their propaganda had the sanction of peter and the other original apostles. in a handbook like this it is impossible to discuss at any length the tã¼bingen theory. but some of its points are silently met in the text; and the whole theory is answered by an attempt to give a view of the course of the controversy which covers all the facts. the distinction drawn in paragraphs 159 ff. between the central question in dispute and a subordinate aspect of the controversy will be found to clear up many intricacies. compare sorley's _jewish christians and judaism_. this chapter is full of references to passages in acts and galatians, which pupils ought to be asked to produce. chapter x viewpoints for lessons on details omitted or only lightly referred to in the text: acts xx. 4-16. paul the hirer of laborers for christ's vineyard: the unwearied preacher (_troas_). " " 17-38. the man of heart (_miletus_). " xxii. final effort to save his country. " xxiii. 1-10. in the dock where he had placed others. " xxiii. 22-27. the preacher of righteousness. " xxvi. the inspired student. " xxvii. paul as a ruler of men. " xxviii. the benevolence of nature and that of grace (_malta_). 171. see notes on ch. iv., p. 141. the authenticity of ephesians and colossians can only be denied by ignoring the impression of majesty and profundity which they have made on the greatest minds. (see the introductions in meyer and alford.) what other mind of those ages except paul's could have erected a structure so magnificent on the very foundations of the epistle to the romans? or in what other mind was there such a union of the doctrinal and the ethical? in john's writings the relation of believers to christ is illustrated by a far higher comparison: it is compared to the union of father and son in the deity. 172. see ernesti: _the ethic of paul_; also juncker. 174. see smith's _voyage of st. paul_; also sir william ramsay's article on roads and travel in hastings' _dictionary of the bible_, vol. v. 176. burrus, the praetorian prefect. so conybeare and howson; but ramsay, following mommsen, holds the officer to have been the princeps peregrinorum, whose quarters lay on the coelian hill. on the various kinds of imprisonment in roman law see ramsay's _roman antiquities_, ch. ix. 177-182. the materials for this account of paul's prison life at rome are chiefly gathered from the epistle to the philippians. 184. on the genuineness of the pastoral epistles see essay by findley in sabatier's _the apostle paul_. the comparative lack of doctrinal matter in them is accounted for by the fact that they were written to ministers well acquainted with his doctrinal system. 188. at tre fontane, to the south of rome, the traditional scene of the execution is still pointed out; and not far off stands st. paul's-outside-the-walls, one of the most gorgeous churches in the world. 164. _trace out the different collections which paul is recorded to have been engaged with._ 166. _what were the courts of the temple; and what was the name of the roman fortress which overlooked them?_ 171. _how often does the phrase "in christ" (or "in" with pronouns referring to christ) occur in ephesians?_ 172. _give examples from paul's writings of the application of great principles to small duties._ 175. _give the names and localities of other great roman roads. describe a roman triumph._ 179. _narrate the story of onesimus, gathering it from the epistle to philemon._ 184. _explain the name of the pastoral epistles._ distributed proofreading canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net st. paul & protestantism "we often read the scripture without comprehending its full meaning; however, let us not be discouraged. the light, in god's good time, will break out, and disperse the darkness; and we shall see the mysteries of the gospel." bishop wilson. "with them (the puritans) nothing is more familiar than to plead in their causes _the law of god, the word of the lord_; who notwithstanding, when they come to allege what word and what law they mean, their common ordinary practice is to quote by-speeches, and to urge them as if they were written in most exact form of law. what is to add to the law of god if this be not?" hooker. "it will be found at last, that unity, and the peace of the church, will conduce more to the saving of souls, than the most specious sects, varnished with the most pious, specious pretences." bishop wilson. * * * * * st. paul and protestantism _with an essay on puritanism and the church of england_ by matthew arnold formerly professor of poetry in the university of oxford and fellow of oriel college _third edition_ london smith, elder, & co., 15 waterloo place 1875 (_the right of translation is reserved_) * * * * * preface. (1870.) the essay following the treatise on st. paul and protestantism, was meant to clear away offence or misunderstanding which had arisen out of that treatise. there still remain one or two points on which a word of explanation may be useful, and to them this preface is addressed. the general objection, that the scheme of doctrine criticised by me is common to both puritanism and the church of england, and does not characterise the one more essentially than the other, has been removed, i hope, by the concluding essay. but it is said that there is, at any rate, a large party in the church of england,--the so-called _evangelical_ party,--which holds just the scheme of doctrine i have called puritan; that this large party, at least, if not the whole church of england, is as much a stronghold of the distinctive puritan tenets as the nonconformists are; and that to tax the nonconformists with these tenets, and to say nothing about the evangelical clergy holding them too, is injurious and unfair. the evangelical party in the church of england we must always, certainly, have a disposition to treat with forbearance, inasmuch as this party has so strongly loved what is indeed the most loveable of things,--religion. they have also avoided that unblessed mixture of politics and religion by which both politics and religion are spoilt. this, however, would not alone have prevented our making them jointly answerable with the puritans for that body of opinions which calls itself scriptural protestantism, but which is, in truth, a perversion of st. paul's epistle to the romans. but there is this difference between the evangelical party in the church of england and the puritans outside her;--the evangelicals have not added to the first error of holding this unsound body of opinions, the second error of separating for them. they have thus, as we have already noticed, escaped the mixing of politics and religion, which arises directly and naturally out of this separating for opinions. but they have also done that which we most blame nonconformity for not doing;--they have left themselves in the way of development. practically they have admitted that the christian church is built, not on the foundation of lutheran and calvinist dogmas, but on the foundation: _let every one that nameth the name of christ depart from iniquity._[1] mr. ryle or the dean of ripon may have as erroneous notions as to what _truth_ and _the gospel_ really is, as mr. spurgeon or the president of the wesleyan conference; but they do not tie themselves tighter still to these erroneous notions, nor do their best to cut themselves off from outgrowing them, by resolving _to have no fellowship with the man of sin_ who holds different notions. on the contrary, they are worshippers in the same church, professors of the same faith, ministers of the same confraternity, as men who hold that their _scriptural protestantism_ is all wrong, and who hold other notions of their own quite at variance with it. and thus they do homage to an ideal of christianity which is larger, higher, and better than either their notions or those of their opponents, and in respect of which both their notions and those of their opponents are inadequate; and this admission of the relative inadequacy of their notions is itself a stage towards the future admission of their positive inadequacy. [footnote 1: ii _timothy_, ii, 19.] in fact, the popular protestant theology, which we have criticised as such a grave perversion of the teaching of st. paul, has not in the so-called evangelical party of the church of england its chief centre and stronghold. this party, which, following in the wake of wesley and others, so felt in a day of general insensibility the power and comfort of the christian religion, and which did so much to make others feel them, but which also adopted and promulgated a scientific account so inadequate and so misleading of the religion which attracted it,--this great party has done its work, and is now undergoing that law of transformation and development which obtains in a national church. the power is passing from it to others, who will make good some of the aspects of religion which the evangelicals neglected, and who will then, in their turn, from the same cause of the scientific inadequacy of their conception of christianity, change and pass away. the evangelical clergy no longer recruits itself with success, no longer lays hold on such promising subjects as formerly. it is losing the future and feels that it is losing it. its signs of a vigorous life, its gaiety and audacity, are confined to its older members, too powerful to lose their own vigour, but without successors to whom to transmit it. it was impossible not to admire the genuine and rich though somewhat brutal humour of the dean of ripon's famous similitude of the two lepers.[2] but from which of the younger members of the evangelical clergy do such strokes now come? the best of their own younger generation, the soldiers of their own training, are slipping away from them; and he who looks for the source whence popular puritan theology now derives power and perpetuation, will not fix his eyes on the evangelical clergy of the church of england. [footnote 2: in a letter to the _times_ respecting dr. pusey and dr. temple, during the discussion caused by dr. temple's appointment to the see of exeter. dr. temple was the total leper, so evidently a leper that all men would instinctively avoid him, and he ceased to be dangerous; dr. pusey was the partial leper, less deeply tainted, but on that very account more dangerous, because less likely to terrify people from coming near him. a piece of polemical humour, racy, indeed, but hardly urbane, and still less christian!] another point where a word of explanation seems desirable is the objection taken on a kind of personal ground to the criticism of st. paul's doctrine which we have attempted. 'what!' it is said, 'if this view of st. paul's meaning, so unlike the received view, were the true one, do you suppose it would have been left for you to discover it? are you wiser than the hundreds of learned people who for generation after generation have been occupying themselves with st. paul and little else? has it been left for you to bring in a new religion and found a new church?' now on this line of expostulation, which, so far as it draws from unworthiness of ours its argument, appears to have, no doubt, great force, there are three remarks to be offered. in the first place, even if the version of st. paul which we propound were both new and true, yet we do not, on that account, make of it a new religion or set up a new church for its sake. that would be _separating for opinions_, heresy, which is just what we reproach the nonconformists with. in the seventh century, there arose near the euphrates a sect called paulicians, who professed to form themselves on the pure doctrine of st. paul, which other christians, they said, had misunderstood and corrupted. and we, i suppose, having discovered how popular protestantism perverts st. paul, are expected to try and make a new sect of paulicians on the strength of this discovery; such being just the course which our puritan friends would themselves eagerly take in like case. but the christian church is founded, not on a correct speculative knowledge of the ideas of paul, but on the much surer ground: _let every one that nameth the name of christ depart from iniquity_; and, holding this to be so, we might change the current strain of doctrinal theology from one end to the other, without, on that account, setting up any new church or bringing in any new religion. in the second place, the version we propound of st. paul's line of thought is not new, is not of our discovering. it belongs to the 'zeit-geist,' or _time-spirit_, it is in the air, and many have long been anticipating it, preparing it, setting forth this and that part of it, till there is not a part, probably, of all we have said, which has not already been said by others before us, and said more learnedly and fully than we can say it. all we have done is to take it as a whole, and give a plain, popular, connected exposition of it; for which, perhaps, our notions about culture, about the many sides to the human spirit, about making these sides help one another instead of remaining enemies and strangers, have been of some advantage. for most of those who read st. paul diligently are hebraisers; they regard little except the hebraising impulse in us and the documents which concern it. they have little notion of letting their consciousness play on things freely, little ear for the voice of the 'zeit-geist;' and they are so immersed in an order of thoughts and words which are peculiar, that, in the broad general order of thoughts and words, which is the life of popular exposition, they are not very much at home. thirdly, and in the last place, we by no means put forth our version of st. paul's line of thought as true, in the same fashion as puritanism put forth its _scriptural_ _protestantism_, or _gospel_, as true. their truth the puritans exhibit as a sort of cast-iron product, rigid, definite, and complete, which they have got once for all, and which can no longer have anything added to it or anything withdrawn from it. but of our rendering of st. paul's thought we conceive rather as of a product of nature, which has grown to be what it is and which will grow more; which will not stand just as we now exhibit it, but which will gain some aspects which we now fail to show in it, and will drop some which we now give it; which will be developed, in short, farther, just in like manner as it has reached its present stage by development. thus we present our conceptions, neither as something quite new nor as something quite true; nor yet as any ground, even supposing they were quite new and true, for a separate church or religion. but so far they are, we think, new and true, and a fruit of sound development, a genuine product of the 'zeit-geist,' that their mere contact seems to make the old puritan conceptions look unlikely and indefensible, and begin a sort of re-modelling and refacing of themselves. let us just see how far this change has practically gone. the formal and scholastic version of its theology, calvinist or arminian, as given by its seventeenth-century fathers, and enshrined in the trust-deeds of so many of its chapels,--of this, at any rate, modern puritanism is beginning to feel shy. take the calvinist doctrine of election. 'by god's decree a certain number of angels and men are predestinated, out of god's mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works in them, to everlasting life; and others foreordained, according to the unsearchable counsel of his will, whereby he extends or withholds mercy as he pleases, to everlasting death.' in that scientific form, at least, the doctrine of election begins to look dubious to the calvinistic puritan, and he puts it a good deal out of sight. take the arminian doctrine of justification. 'we could not expect any relief from heaven out of that misery under which we lie, were not god's displeasure against us first pacified and our sins remitted. this is the signal and transcendent benefit of our free justification through the blood of christ, that god's offence justly conceived against us for our sins (which would have been an eternal bar and restraint to the efflux of his grace upon us) being removed, the divine grace and bounty may freely flow forth upon us.' in that scientific form, the doctrine of justification begins to look less satisfactory to the arminian puritan, and he tends to put it out of sight. the same may be said of the doctrine of election in its plain popular form of statement also. 'i hold,' says whitefield, in the forcible style which so took his hearers' fancy,--'i hold that a certain number are elected from eternity, and these must and shall be saved, and the rest of mankind must and shall be damned.' a calvinistic puritan now-a-days must be either a fervid welsh dissenter, or a strenuous particular baptist in some remote place in the country, not to be a little staggered at this sort of expression. as to the doctrine of justification in its current, popular form of statement, the case is somewhat different. 'my own works,' says wesley, 'my own sufferings, my own righteousness, are so far from reconciling me to an offended god, so far from making any atonement for the least of those sins which are more in number than the hairs of my head, that the most specious of them need an atonement themselves; that, having the sentence of death in my heart and nothing in or of myself to plead, i have no hope but that of being justified freely through the redemption that is in jesus. the faith i want is a sure trust and confidence in god, that through the merits of christ my sins are forgiven and i reconciled to the favour of god. believe and thou shalt be saved! he that believeth is passed from death to life. faith is the free gift of god, which he bestows not on those who are worthy of his favour, not on such as are previously holy and so fit to be crowned with all the blessings of his goodness, but on the ungodly and unholy, who till that hour were fit only for everlasting damnation. look for sanctification just as you are, as a poor sinner that has nothing to pay, nothing to plead but _christ died_.' deliverances of this sort, which in wesley are frequent and in wesley's followers are unceasing, still, no doubt, pass current everywhere with puritanism, are expected as of course, and find favour; they are just what puritans commonly mean by _scriptural protestantism, the truth, the gospel-feast_. nevertheless they no longer quite satisfy; the better minds among puritans try instinctively to give some fresh turn or development to them; they are no longer, to minds of this order, an unquestionable word and a sure stay; and from this point to their final transformation the course is certain. the predestinarian and solifidian dogmas, for the very sake of which our puritan churches came into existence, begin to feel the irresistible breath of the 'zeit-geist;' some of them melt quicker, others slower, but all of them are doomed. under the eyes of this generation puritan dissent has to execute an entire change of front, and to present us with a new reason for its existing. what will that new reason be? there needs no conjuror to tell us. it will be the rev. mr. conder's reason, which we have quoted in our concluding essay. it will be scriptural protestantism in _church-order_, rather than scriptural protestantism in _church-doctrine_. 'congregational nonconformists can never be incorporated into an organic union with anglican episcopacy, because there is not even the shadow of an outline of it in the new testament, and it is our assertion and profound belief that christ and the apostles have given us all the laws that are necessary for the constitution and government of the church.' this makes church-government not a secondary matter of form, growth, and expediency, but a matter of the essence of christianity and ordained in scripture. expressly set forth in scripture it is not; so it has to be gathered from scripture by collection, and every one gathers it in his own way. unity is of no great importance; but that every man should live in a church-order which he judges to be scriptural, is of the greatest importance. this brings us to mr. miall's standard-maxim: _the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the protestant religion_! the more freely the sects develop themselves, the better. the church of england herself is but _the dominant sect_; her pretensions to bring back the dissenters within her pale are offensive and ridiculous. what we ought to aim at is perfect equality, and that the other sects should balance her. on the old, old subject of the want of historic and philosophic sense shown by those who would make church-government a matter of scriptural regulation, i say nothing at present. a wesleyan minister, the rev. mr. willey, said the other day at leeds: 'he did not find anything in either the old or new testament to the effect that christian ministers should become state-servants, like soldiers or excisemen.' he might as well have added that he did not find there anything to the effect that they should wear braces! but on this point i am not here going to enlarge. what i am now concerned with is the relation of this new ground of existence, which more and more the puritan churches take and will take as they lose their old ground, to the christian religion. in the speech which mr. winterbotham[3] made on the education bill, a speech which i had the advantage of hearing, there were uncommon facilities supplied for judging of this relation; indeed that able speech presented a striking picture of it. [footnote 3: mr. winterbotham has since died. nothing in my remarks on his speech need prevent me from expressing here my high esteem for his character, accomplishments, oratorical faculty and general promise, and my sincere regret for his loss.] and what a picture it was, good heavens! the puritans say they love righteousness, and they are offended with us for rejoining that the righteousness of which they boast is the righteousness of the earlier jews of the old testament, which consisted mainly in smiting the lord's enemies and their own under the fifth rib. and we say that the newer and specially christian sort of righteousness is something different from this; that the puritans are, and always have been, deficient in the specially christian sort of righteousness; that men like st. francis of sales, in the roman catholic church, and bishop wilson, in the church of england, show far more of it than any puritans; and that st. paul's signal and eternally fruitful growth in righteousness dates just from his breach with the puritans of his day. let us revert to paul's list of fruits of the spirit, on which we have so often insisted in the pages which follow: _love_, _joy_, _peace_, _long-suffering_, _kindness_, _goodness_, _faith_, _mildness_, _self-control_.[4] we keep to this particular list for the sake of greater distinctness; but st. paul has perpetually lists of the kind, all pointing the same way, and all showing what he meant by christian righteousness, what he found specially in christ. they may all be concluded in two qualities, the qualities which jesus christ told his disciples to learn of him, the qualities in the name of which, as specially christ's qualities, paul adjured his converts. 'learn of me,' said jesus, '_that i am mild and lowly in heart_.' 'i beseech you,' said paul, '_by the mildness and gentleness of christ_.'[5] the word which our bibles translate by 'gentleness' means more properly 'reasonableness with sweetness,' 'sweet reasonableness.' 'i beseech you by _the mildness and sweet reasonableness of christ_.' this mildness and sweet reasonableness it was, which, stamped with the individual charm they had in jesus christ, came to the world as something new, won its heart and conquered it. every one had been asserting his ordinary self and was miserable; to forbear to assert one's ordinary self, to place one's happiness in mildness and sweet reasonableness, was a revelation. as men followed this novel route to happiness, a living spring opened beside their way, the spring of charity; and out of this spring arose those two heavenly visitants, charis and irene, _grace_ and _peace_, which enraptured the poor wayfarer, and filled him with a joy which brought all the world after him. and still, whenever these visitants appear, as appear for a witness to the vitality of christianity they daily do, it is from the same spring that they arise; and this spring is opened solely by the mildness and sweet reasonableness which forbears to assert our ordinary self, nay, which even takes pleasure in effacing it. [footnote 4: _gal._, v, 22, 23.] [footnote 5: +dia tãªs praã¼tãªtos kai epieikeias tou christou.+ ii _cor._, x, 1.] and now let us turn to mr. winterbotham and the protestant dissenters. he interprets their very inner mind, he says; that which he declares in their name, they are all feeling, and would declare for themselves if they could. '_there was a spirit of watchful jealousy on the part of the dissenters, which made them prone to take offence; therefore statesmen should not introduce the established church into all the institutions of the country._' that is positively the whole speech! 'strife, jealousy, wrath, contentions, backbitings,'[6]--we know the catalogue. and the dissenters are, by their own confession, so full of these, and the very existence of an organisation of dissent so makes them a necessity, that the state is required to frame its legislation in consideration of them! was there ever such a confession made? here are people existing for the sake of a religion of which the essence is mildness and sweet reasonableness, and the forbearing to assert our ordinary self; and they declare themselves so full of the very temper and habits against which that religion is specially levelled, that they require to have even the occasion of forbearing to assert their ordinary self removed out of their way, because they are quite sure they will never comply with it! [footnote 6: ii _cor._, xii, 20.] never was there a more instructive comment on the blessings of separation, which we are so often invited by separatists to admire. why does not dissent forbear to assert its ordinary self, and help to win the world to the mildness and sweet reasonableness of christ, without this vain contest about machinery? why does not the church? is the dissenter's answer. what an answer for a christian! we are to defer giving up our ordinary self until our neighbour shall have given up his; that is, we are never to give it up at all. but i will answer the question on more mundane grounds. why are we to be more blamed than the church for the strife arising out of our rival existences? asks the dissenter. because the church cannot help existing, and you can! therefore, _contra ecclesiam nemo pacificus_, as baxter himself said in his better moments. because the church is there; because strife, jealousy, and self-assertion are sure to come with breaking off from her; and because strife, jealousy, and self-assertion are the very miseries against which christianity is firstly levelled;--therefore we say that a christian is inexcusable in breaking with the church, except for a departure from the primal ground of her foundation: _let every one that nameth the name of christ depart from iniquity_. the clergyman,--poor soul!--cannot help being the parson of the parish. he is there like the magistrate; he is a national officer with an appointed function. if one or two voluntary performers, dissatisfied with the magisterial system, were to set themselves up in each parish of the country, called themselves magistrates, drew a certain number of people to their own way of thinking, tried differences and gave sentences among their people in the best fashion they could, why, probably the established magistrate would not much like it, the leading people in the parish would not much like it, and the newcomers would have mortifications and social estrangements to endure. probably the established magistrate would call them interlopers; probably he would count them amongst his difficulties. on the side of the newcomers 'a spirit of watchful jealousy,' as mr. winterbotham says, would thus be created. the public interest would suffer from the ill blood and confusion prevailing. the established magistrate might naturally say that the newcomers brought the strife and disturbance with them. but who would not smile at these lambs answering: 'away with that wolf the established magistrate, and all ground for jealousy and quarrel between us will disappear!' and it is a grievance that the clergyman talks of dissent as one of the spiritual hindrances in his parish, and desires to get rid of it! why, by mr. winterbotham's own showing, the dissenters live 'in a spirit of watchful jealousy,' and this temper is as much a spiritual hindrance,--nay, in the view of christianity it is even a more direct spiritual hindrance,--than drunkenness or loose living. christianity is, first and above all, a temper, a disposition; and a disposition just the opposite to 'a spirit of watchful jealousy.' once admit a spirit of watchful jealousy, and christianity has lost its virtue; it is impotent. all the other vices it was meant to keep out may rush in. where there is jealousy and strife among you, asks st. paul, _are ye not carnal_?[7] are ye not still in bondage to your mere lower selves? but from this bondage christianity was meant to free us; therefore, says he, get rid of what causes divisions, and strife, and 'a spirit of watchful jealousy.' 'i exhort you by the name of our lord jesus christ that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be not divisions among you, but that ye all be perfectly joined in the same mind and the same judgment.'[8] [footnote 7: i _cor._, iii, 3.] [footnote 8: i _cor._, i, 10.] well, but why, says the dissenting minister, is the clergyman to impress st. paul's words upon me rather than i upon the clergyman? because the clergyman is the one minister of christ in the parish who did not invent himself, who cannot help existing. he is not asserting his ordinary self by being there; he is placed there on public duty. he is charged with teaching the lesson of christianity, and the head and front of this lesson is to get rid of 'a spirit of watchful jealousy,' which, according to the dissenter's own showing, is the very spirit which accompanies dissent. how he is to get rid of it, how he is to win souls to the mildness and sweet reasonableness of christ, it is for his own conscience to tell him. probably he will best do it by never speaking against dissent at all, by treating dissenters with perfect cordiality and as if there was not a point of dispute between them. but that, so long as he exists, it is his duty to get rid of it, to win souls to the unity which is its opposite, is clear. it is not the bishop of winchester[9] who classes dissent, full of 'a spirit of watchful jealousy,' along with spiritual hindrances like beer-shops,--a pollution of the spirit along with pollutions of the flesh;[10] it is st. paul. it is not the clergyman who is chargeable with wishing to 'stamp out' this spirit; it is the christian religion. [footnote 9: the late bishop wilberforce.] [footnote 10: i _cor._, vii, 1.] but what is to prevent the dissenting minister from being joined with the clergyman in the same public function, and being his partner instead of his rival? episcopal ordination.[11] if i leave the service of a private company, and enter the public service, i receive admission at the hands of the public officer designated to give it me. sentiment and the historic sense, to say nothing of the religious feeling, will certainly put more into ordination than this, though not precisely what the bishop of winchester, perhaps, puts; this which we have laid down, however, is really all which the law of the land puts there. a bishop is a public officer. why should i trouble myself about the name his office bears? the name of his office cannot affect the service or my labour in it. ah, but, says mr. winterbotham, he holds opinions which i do not share about the sort of character he confers upon me! what can that matter, unless he compels you, too, to profess the same opinions, or refuses you admission if you do not? but i should be joined in the ministry with men who hold opinions which i do not share! what does that matter either, unless they compel you also to hold these opinions, as the price of your being allowed to work on the foundation: _let every one that nameth the name of christ depart from iniquity_? to recur to our old parallel. it is as if a man who desired the office of a public magistrate and who was fitted for it, were to hold off because he had to receive institution from a lord-lieutenant, and he did not like the title of lord-lieutenant; or because the lord-lieutenant who was to institute him had a fancy about some occult quality which he conferred on him at institution; or because he would find himself, when he was instituted, one of a body of magistrates of whom many had notions which he thought irrational. the office itself, and his own power to fill it usefully, is all which really matters to him. [footnote 11: it has been inferred from what is here said that we propose to make re-ordination a condition of admitting dissenting ministers to the ministry of the church of england. elsewhere i have said how undesirable it seems to impose this condition; and to what respectful treatment and fair and equal terms, in case of reunion, protestant nonconformity is, in my opinion, entitled. see the preface to _culture and anarchy_. what is said in the text is directed simply against the objection to episcopal ordination as something wrong in itself and a ground for schism.] the bishop of winchester believes in apostolical succession;--therefore there must be dissenters. mr. liddon asserts the real presence;--therefore there must be dissenters. mr. mackonochie is a ritualist;--therefore there must be dissenters. but the bishop of winchester cannot, and does not, exclude from the ministry of the church of england those who do not believe in apostolical succession; and surely not even that acute and accomplished personage is such a magician, that he can make a puritan believe in apostolical succession merely by believing in it himself! in the same way, eloquent as is mr. liddon, and devoted as is mr. mackonochie, their gifts cannot yield them the art of so swaying a brother clergyman's spirit as to make him admit the real presence against his conviction, or practise ritualism against his will; and official, material control over him, or power of stipulating what he shall admit or practise, they have absolutely none. but can anything more tend to make the church what the puritans reproach it with being,--a mere lump of sacerdotalism and ritualism,--than if the puritans, who are free to come into it with their disregard of sacerdotalism and ritualism and so to leaven it, refuse to come in, and leave it wholly to the sacerdotalists and ritualists? what can be harder upon the laity of the national church, what so inconsiderate of the national good and advantage, as to leave us at the mercy of one single element in the church, and deny us just the elements fit to mix with this element and to improve it? the current doctrines of apostolical succession and the real presence seem to us unsound and unedifying. to be sure, so does the current doctrine of imputed righteousness. for us, sacerdotalism and solifidianism stand both on the same footing; they are, both of them, erroneous human developments. but as in the ideas and practice of sacerdotalists or ritualists there is much which seems to us of value, and of great use to the church, so, too, in the ideas and practice of nonconformists there is very much which we value. to take points only that are beyond controversy: they have cultivated the gift of preaching much more than the clergy, and their union with the church would renovate and immensely amend church preaching. they would certainly bring with them, if they came back into the church, some use of what they call _free prayer_; to which, if at present they give far too much place, it is yet to be regretted that the church gives no place at all. lastly, if the body of british protestant dissenters is in the main, as it undoubtedly is, the church of the philistines, nevertheless there could come nothing but health and strength from blending this body with the establishment, of which the very weakness and danger is that it tends, as we have formerly said, to be an appendage to the barbarians. so long as the puritans thought that the essence of christianity was their doctrine of predestination or of justification, it was natural that they should stand out, at any cost, for this essence. that is why, when the 'zeit-geist' and the general movement of men's religious ideas is beginning to reveal that the puritan gospel is not the essence of christianity, we have been desirous to spread this revelation to the best of our power, and by all the aids of plain popular exposition to help it forward. because, when once it is clear that the essence of christianity is not puritan solifidianism, it can hardly long be maintained that the essence of christianity is puritan church-order. when once the way is made clear, by removing the solifidian heresy, to look and see what the essence of christianity really is, it cannot but soon force itself upon our minds that the essence of christianity is something not very far, at any rate, from this: _grace and peace by the annulment of our ordinary self through the mildness and sweet reasonableness of jesus christ_. this is the more particular description of that general ground, already laid down, of the christian church's existence: _let every one that nameth the name of christ depart from iniquity_. if this general ground, particularised in the way above given, is not 'the sincere milk' of the evangelical word, it is, at all events, something very like it. and matters of machinery and outward form, like church-order, have not only nothing essentially to do with the sincere milk of christianity, but are the very matters about which this sincere milk should make us easy and yielding. if there were no national and historic form of church-order in possession, a genuine christian would regret having to spend time and thought in shaping one, in having so to encumber himself with serving, to busy himself so much about a frame for his religious life as well as about the contents of the frame. after all, a man has only a certain sum of force to spend; and if he takes a quantity of it for outward things, he has so much the less left for inward things. it is hardly to be believed, how much larger a space the mere affairs of his denomination fill in the time and thoughts of a dissenter, than in the time and thoughts of a churchman. now all machinery-work of this kind is, to a man filled with a real love of the essence of christianity, something of a hindrance to him in what he most wants to be at, something of a concession to his ordinary self. when an established and historic form exists, such a man should be, therefore, disposed to use it and comply with it. but,--as if it were not satisfied with proving its unprofitableness by corroding us with jealousy and so robbing us of the mildness and sweet reasonableness of christ, which is our mainstay,--political dissent, dissent for the sake of church-polity and church-management, proves it, too, by stimulating our ordinary self through over-care for what flatters this. in fact, what is it that the everyday, middle-class philistine,--not the rare flower of the dissenters but the common staple,--finds so attractive in dissent? is it not, as to discipline, that his self-importance is fomented by the fuss, bustle, and partisanship of a private sect, instead of being lost in the greatness of a public body? as to worship, is it not that his taste is pleased by usages and words that come down to _him_, instead of drawing him up to _them_; by services which reflect, instead of the culture of great men of religious genius, the crude culture of himself and his fellows? and as to doctrine, is it not that his mind is pleased at hearing no opinion but its own, by having all disputed points taken for granted in its own favour, by being urged to no return upon itself, no development? and what is all this but the very feeding and stimulating of our ordinary self, instead of the annulling of it? no doubt it is natural; to indulge our ordinary self is the most natural thing in the world. but christianity is not natural; and if the flower of christianity be the grace and peace which comes of annulling our ordinary self, then to this flower it is fatal. so that if, in order to gratify in the dissenters one of the two faults against which christianity is chiefly aimed, a jealous, contentious spirit, we were to sweep away our national and historic form of religion, and were all to tinker at our own forms, we should then just be flattering the other chief fault which christianity came to cure, and serving our ordinary self instead of annulling it. what a happy furtherance to religion! for my part, so far as the best of the nonconformist ministers are concerned, of whom i know something, i disbelieve mr. winterbotham's hideous confession. i imagine they are very little pleased with him for making it. i do not believe that they, at any rate, live in the ulcerated condition he describes, fretting with watchful jealousy. i believe they have other things to think of. but why? because they are men of genius and character, who react against the harmful influences of the position in which they find themselves placed, and surmount its obvious dangers. but their genius and character might serve them still better if they were placed in a less trying position. and the rank and file of their ministers and people do yield to the influences of their position. of these, mr. winterbotham's picture is perfectly true. they are more and more jealous for their separate organisation, pleased with the bustle and self-importance which its magnitude brings them, irritably alive to whatever reduces or effaces it; bent, in short, on affirming their ordinary selves. however much the chiefs may feel the truth of modern ideas, may grow moderate, may perceive the effects of religious separatism upon worship and doctrine, they will probably avail little or nothing; the head will be overpowered and out-clamoured by the tail. the wesleyans, who used always to refuse to call themselves dissenters, whose best men still shrink from the name, the wesleyans, a wing of the church, founded for godliness, the wesleyans more and more, with their very growth as a separate denomination, feel the secular ambition of being great as a denomination, of being effaced by nobody, of giving contentment to this self-importance, of indulging this ordinary self; and i should not wonder if within twenty years they were keen political dissenters. a triumph of puritanism is abundantly possible; we have never denied it. what we, whose greatest care is neither for the church nor for puritanism, but for human perfection, what we labour to show is, that the triumph of puritanism will be the triumph of our ordinary self, not the triumph of christianity; and that the type of hebraism it will establish is one in which neither general human perfection, nor yet hebraism itself, can truly find their account. elsewhere we have drawn out a distinction between hebraism and hellenism,[12]--between the tendency and powers that carry us towards doing, and the tendency and powers that carry us towards perceiving and knowing. hebraism, we said, has long been overwhelmingly preponderant with us. the sacred book which we call the word of god, and which most of us study far more than any other book, serves hebraism. moses hebraises, david hebraises, isaiah hebraises, paul hebraises, john hebraises. jesus christ himself is, as st. paul truly styles him, 'a minister _of the circumcision_ to the truth of god.'[13] that is, it is by our powers of moral action, and through the perfecting of these, that christ leads us 'to be partakers of the divine nature.'[14] by far our chief machinery for spiritual purposes has the like aim and character. throughout europe this is so. but, to speak of ourselves only, the archbishop of canterbury is an agent of hebraism, the archbishop of york is an agent of hebraism, archbishop manning is an agent of hebraism, the president of the wesleyan conference is an agent of hebraism, all the body of the church clergy and dissenting ministers are agents of hebraism. now, we have seen how we are beginning visibly to suffer harm from attending in this one-sided way to hebraism, and how we are called to develop ourselves more in our totality, on our perceptive and intelligential side as well as on our moral side. if it is said that this is a very hard matter, and that man cannot well do more than one thing at a time, the answer is that here is the very sign and condition of each new stage of spiritual progress,--_increase of task_. the more we grow, the greater is the task which is given us. this is the law of man's nature and of his spirit's history. the powers we have developed at our old task enable us to attempt a new one; and this, again, brings with it a new increase of powers. [footnote 12: see _culture and anarchy_ (2nd edition), chap. iv.] [footnote 13: _romans_, xv, 8.] [footnote 14: ii _peter_, i, 4.] hebraism strikes too exclusively upon one string in us. hellenism does not address itself with serious energy enough to morals and righteousness. for our totality, for our general perfection, we need to unite the two; now the two are easily at variance. in their lower forms they are irreconcileably at variance; only when each of them is at its best, is their harmony possible. hebraism at its best is beauty and charm; hellenism at its best is also beauty and charm. as such they can unite; as anything short of this, each of them, they are at discord, and their separation must continue. the flower of hellenism is a kind of amiable grace and artless winning good-nature, born out of the perfection of lucidity, simplicity, and natural truth; the flower of christianity is grace and peace by the annulment of our ordinary self through the mildness and sweet reasonableness of christ. both are eminently _humane_, and for complete human perfection both are required; the second being the perfection of that side in us which is moral and acts, the first, of that side in us which is intelligential and perceives and knows. but lower forms of hebraism and hellenism tend always to make their appearance, and to strive to establish themselves. on one of these forms of hebraism we have been commenting;--a form which had its first origin, no doubt, in that body of impulses whereby we hebraise, but which lands us at last, not in the mildness and sweet reasonableness of christ, but in 'a spirit of watchful jealousy.' we have to thank mr. winterbotham for fixing our attention on it; but we prefer to name it from an eminent and able man who is well known as the earnest apostle of the dissidence of dissent and the protestantism of the protestant religion, and to call it _mialism_. mialism is a sub-form of hebraism, and itself a somewhat spurious and degenerated form; but this sub-form always tends to degenerate into forms lower yet, and yet more unworthy of the ideal flower of hebraism. in one of these its further stages we have formerly traced it, and we need not enlarge on them here.[15] [footnote 15: see _culture and anarchy_ (2nd edition), chap. ii.] hellenism, in the same way, has its more or less spurious and degenerated sub-forms, products which may be at once known as degenerations by their deflexion from what we have marked as the flower of hellenism,--'a kind of humane grace and artless winning good-nature, born out of the perfection of lucidity, simplicity, and natural truth.' and from whom can we more properly derive a general name for these degenerations, than from that distinguished man, who, by his intelligence and accomplishments, is in many respects so admirable and so truly hellenic, but whom his dislike for 'the dominant sect,' as he calls the church of england,--the church of england, in many aspects so beautiful, calming, and attaching,--seems to transport with an almost feminine vehemence of irritation? what can we so fitly name the somewhat degenerated and inadequate form of hellenism as _millism_? this is the hellenic or hellenistic counterpart of mialism; and like mialism it has its further degenerations, in which it is still less commendable than in its first form. for instance, what in mr. mill is but a yielding to a spirit of irritable injustice, goes on and worsens in some of his disciples, till it becomes a sort of mere blatancy and truculent hardness in certain millites, in whom there appears scarcely anything that is truly sound or hellenic at all. mankind, however, must needs draw, however slowly, towards its perfection; and our only real perfection is our totality. mialism and millism we may see playing into one another's hands, and apparently acting together; but, so long as these lower forms of hellenism and hebraism prevail, the real union between hellenism and hebraism can never be accomplished, and our totality is still as far off as ever. unhappy and unquiet alternations of ascendency between hebraism and hellenism are all that we shall see;--at one time, the indestructible religious experience of mankind asserting itself blindly; at another, a revulsion of the intellect of mankind from this experience, because of the audacious assumptions and gross inaccuracies with which men's account of it is intermingled. at present it is such a revulsion which seems chiefly imminent. give the churches of nonconformity free scope, cries an ardent congregationalist, and we will renew the wonders of the first times; we will confront this modern bugbear of physical science, show how hollow she is, and how she contradicts herself! in his mind's eye, this nonconforming enthusiast already sees professor huxley in a white sheet, brought up at the surrey tabernacle between two deacons,--whom that great physicist, in his own clear and nervous language, would no doubt describe like his disinterred roman the other day at westminster abbey, as 'of weak mental organisation and strong muscular frame,'--and penitently confessing that _science contradicts herself_. alas, the real future is likely to be very different! rather are we likely to witness an edifying solemnity, where mr. mill, assisted by his youthful henchmen and apparitors, will burn all the prayer books. rather will the time come, as it has been foretold, when we shall desire to see one of the days of the son of man, and shall not see it; when the mildness and sweet reasonableness of jesus christ, as a power to work the annulment of our ordinary self, will be clean disregarded and out of mind. then, perhaps, will come another re-action, and another, and another; and all sterile. therefore it is, that we labour to make hebraism raise itself above mialism, find its true self, show itself in its beauty and power, and help, not hinder, man's totality. the endeavour will very likely be in vain; for growth is slow and the ages are long, and it may well be that for harmonising hebraism with hellenism more preparation is needed than man has yet had. but failures do something, as well as successes, towards the final achievement. the cup of cold water could be hardly more than an ineffective effort at succour; yet it counted. to disengage the religion of england from unscriptural protestantism, political dissent, and a spirit of watchful jealousy, may be an aim not in our day reachable; and still it is well to level at it. * * * * * contents. st. paul and protestantism puritanism and the church of england * * * * * st. paul and protestantism. i. m. renan sums up his interesting volume on st. paul by saying:--'after having been for three hundred years, thanks to protestantism, the christian doctor _par excellence_, paul is now coming to an end of his reign.' all through his book m. renan is possessed with a sense of this close relationship between st. paul and protestantism. protestantism has made paul, he says; pauline doctrine is identified with protestant doctrine; paul is a protestant doctor, and the counterpart of luther. m. renan has a strong distaste for protestantism, and this distaste extends itself to the protestant paul. the reign of this protestant is now coming to an end, and such a consummation evidently has m. renan's approval. _st. paul is now coming to an end of his reign._ precisely the contrary, i venture to think, is the judgment to which a true criticism of men and of things, in our own country at any rate, leads us. the protestantism which has so used and abused st. paul is coming to an end; its organisations, strong and active as they look, are touched with the finger of death; its fundamental ideas, sounding forth still every week from thousands of pulpits, have in them no significance and no power for the progressive thought of humanity. but the reign of the real st. paul is only beginning; his fundamental ideas, disengaged from the elaborate misconceptions with which protestantism has overlaid them, will have an influence in the future greater than any which they have yet had,--an influence proportioned to their correspondence with a number of the deepest and most permanent facts of human nature itself. elsewhere[16] i have pointed out how, for us in this country, puritanism is the strong and special representative of protestantism. the church of england existed before protestantism, and contains much besides protestantism. remove the schemes of doctrine, calvinistic or arminian, which for protestantism, merely as such, have made the very substance of its religion, and all that is most valuable in the church of england would still remain. these schemes, or the ideas out of which they spring, show themselves in the prayer book; but they are not what gives the prayer book its importance and value. but puritanism exists for the sake of these schemes; its organisations are inventions for enforcing them more purely and thoroughly. questions of discipline and ceremonies have, originally at least, been always admitted to be in themselves secondary; it is because that conception of the ways of god to man which puritanism has formed for itself appeared to puritanism superlatively true and precious, that independents and baptists and methodists in england, and presbyterians in scotland, have been impelled to constitute for inculcating it a church-order where it might be less swamped by the additions and ceremonies of men, might be more simply and effectively enounced, and might stand more absolute and central, than in the church-order of anglicans or roman catholics. [footnote 16: see _culture and anarchy_, chap. iv.] of that conception the cardinal points are fixed by the terms _election_ and _justification_. these terms come from the writings of st. paul, and the scheme which puritanism has constructed with them professes to be st. paul's scheme. the same scheme, or something very like it, has been, and still is, embraced by many adherents of the churches of england and rome; but these churches rest their claims to men's interest and attachment not on the possession of such a scheme, but on other grounds with which we have for the present nothing to do. puritanism's very reason for existing depends on the worth of this its vital conception, derived from st. paul's writings; and when we are told that st. paul is a protestant doctor whose reign is ending, a puritan, keen, pugnacious, and sophisticating simple religion of the heart into complicated theories of the brain about election and justification, we in england, at any rate, can best try the assertion by fixing our eyes on our own puritans, and comparing their doctrine and their hold on vital truth with st. paul's. this we propose now to do, and, indeed, to do it will only be to complete what we have already begun. for already, when we were speaking of hebraism and hellenism,[17] we were led to remark how the over-hebraising of puritanism, and its want of a wide culture, do so narrow its range and impair its vision that even the documents which it thinks all-sufficient, and to the study of which it exclusively rivets itself, it does not rightly understand, but is apt to make of them something quite different from what they really are. in short, no man, we said, who knows nothing else, knows even his bible. and we showed how readers of the bible attached to essential words and ideas of the bible a sense which was not the writer's; and in particular how this had happened with regard to the pauline doctrine of resurrection. let us take the present opportunity of going further in the same road; and instead of lightly disparaging the great name of st. paul, let us see if the needful thing is not rather to rescue st. paul and the bible from the perversions of them by mistaken men. [footnote 17: see _culture and anarchy_, chap. v.] so long as the well-known habit, on which we have so often enlarged, prevails amongst our countrymen, of holding mechanically their ideas themselves, but making it their chief aim to work with energy and enthusiasm for the organisations which profess those ideas, english puritanism is not likely to make such a return upon its own thoughts, and upon the elements of its being, as to accomplish for itself an operation of the kind needed; though it has men whose natural faculties, were they but free to use them, would undoubtedly prove equal to the task. the same habit prevents our puritans from being reached by philosophical works, which exist in sufficient numbers and of which m. reuss's history of the growth of christian theology[18] is an admirable specimen,--works where the entire scheme of pauline doctrine is laid out with careful research and impartial accuracy. to give effect to the predominant points in paul's teaching, and to exhibit these in so plain and popular a manner as to invite and almost compel men's comprehension, is not the design of such works; and only by writings with this design in view will english puritanism be reached. [footnote 18: _histoire de la thã©ologie chrã©tienne au siã¨cle apostolique_, par edouard reuss; strasbourg et paris (in 2 vols. 8vo.) there is now (1875) an english translation of m. reuss's work.] our one qualification for the business in hand lies in that belief of ours, so much contested by our countrymen, of the primary needfulness of seeing things as they really are, and of the greater importance of ideas than of the machinery which exists for them. if by means of letting our consciousness work quite freely, and by following the methods of studying and judging thence generated, we are shown that we ought in real truth neither to abase st. paul and puritanism together, as m. renan does, nor to abase st. paul but exalt puritanism, nor yet to exalt both puritanism and st. paul together, but rather to abase puritanism and exalt st. paul, then we cannot but think that even for puritanism itself, also, it will be the best, however unpalatable, to be shown this. puritanism certainly wishes well to st. paul; it cannot wish to compromise him by an unintelligent adhesion to him and a blind adoption of his words, instead of being a true child to him. yet this is what it has really done. what in st. paul is secondary and subordinate, puritanism has made primary and essential; what in st paul is figure and belongs to the sphere of feeling, puritanism has transported into the sphere of intellect and made formula. on the other hand, what is with st. paul primary, puritanism has treated as subordinate: and what is with him thesis, and belonging (so far as anything in religion can properly be said thus to belong) to the sphere of intellect, puritanism has made image and figure. and first let us premise what we mean in this matter by primary and secondary, essential and subordinate. we mean, so far as the apostle is concerned, a greater or less approach to what really characterises him and gives his teaching its originality and power. we mean, so far as truth is concerned, a greater or less agreement with facts which can be verified, and a greater or less power of explaining them. what essentially characterises a religious teacher, and gives him his permanent worth and vitality, is, after all, just the scientific value of his teaching, its correspondence with important facts, and the light it throws on them. never was the truth of this so evident as now. the scientific sense in man never asserted its claim so strongly; the propensity of religion to neglect those claims, and the peril and loss to it from neglecting them, never were so manifest. the license of affirmation about god and his proceedings, in which the religious world indulge, is more and more met by the demand for verification. when calvinism tells us: 'it is agreed between god and the mediator jesus christ, the son of god, surety for the redeemed, as parties-contractors, that the sins of the redeemed should be imputed to innocent christ, and he both condemned and put to death for them, upon this very condition, that whosoever heartily consents unto the covenant of reconciliation offered through christ, shall, by the imputation of his obedience unto them, be justified and holden righteous before god;'--when calvinism tells us this, is it not talking about god just as if he were a man in the next street, whose proceedings calvinism intimately knew and could give account of, could verify that account at any moment, and enable us to verify it also? it is true, when the scientific sense in us, the sense which seeks exact knowledge, calls for that verification, calvinism refers us to st. paul, from whom it professes to have got this history of what it calls 'the covenant of redemption.' but this is only pushing the difficulty a stage further back. for if it is st. paul, and not calvinism, that professes this exact acquaintance with god and his doings, the scientific sense calls upon st. paul to produce the facts by which he verifies what he says; and if he cannot produce them, then it treats both st. paul's assertion, and calvinism's assertion after him, as of no real consequence. no one will deny that such is the behaviour of science towards religion in our day, though many may deplore it. and it is not that the scientific sense in us denies the rights of the poetic sense, which employs a figured and imaginative language. but the language we have just been quoting is not figurative and poetic language, it is scholastic and scientific language. assertions in scientific language must stand the tests of scientific examination. neither is it that the scientific sense in us refuses to admit willingly and reverently the name of god, as a point in which the religious and the scientific sense may meet, as the least inadequate name for that universal order which the intellect feels after as a law, and the heart feels after as a benefit. 'we, too,' might the men of science with truth say to the men of religion--'we, too, would gladly say _god_, if only, the moment one says _god_, you would not pester one with your pretensions of knowing all about him.' that _stream of tendency by which all things strive to fulfil the law of their being_, and which, inasmuch as our idea of real welfare resolves itself into this fulfilment of the law of one's being, man rightly deems the fountain of all goodness, and calls by the worthiest and most solemn name he can, which is god, science also might willingly own for the fountain of all goodness, and call god. but however much more than this the heart may with propriety put into its language respecting god, this is as much as science can with strictness put there. therefore, when the religious world, following its bent of trying to describe what it loves, amplifying and again amplifying its description, and guarding finally this amplified description by the most precise and rigid terms it can find, comes at last, with the best intentions, to the notion of a sort of magnified and non-natural man, who proceeds in the fashion laid down in the calvinistic thesis we have quoted, then science strikes in, remarks the difference between this second notion and the notion it originally admitted, and demands to have the new notion verified, as the first can be verified, by facts. but this does not unsettle the first notion, or prevent science from acknowledging the importance and the scientific validity of propositions which are grounded upon the first notion, and shed light over it. nevertheless, researches in this sphere are now a good deal eclipsed in popularity by researches in the sphere of physics, and no longer have the vogue which they once had. i have related how an eminent physicist with whose acquaintance i am honoured, imagines me to have invented the author of the _sacra privata_; and that fashionable newspaper, the _morning post_, undertaking,--as i seemed, it said, very anxious about the matter,--to supply information as to who the author really was, laid it down that he was bishop of calcutta, and that his ideas and writings, to which i attached so much value, had been among the main provocatives of the indian mutiny. therefore it is perhaps expedient to refresh our memory as to these schemes of doctrine, calvinistic or arminian, for the upholding of which, as has been said, british puritanism exists, before we proceed to compare them, for correspondence with facts and for scientific validity, with the teaching of st. paul. calvinism, then, begins by laying down that god from all eternity decreed whatever was to come to pass in time; that by his decree a certain number of angels and men are predestinated, out of god's mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works in them, to everlasting life; and others foreordained, according to the unsearchable counsel of his will, whereby he extends or withholds mercy as he pleases, to everlasting death. god made, however, our first parents, adam and eve, upright and able to keep his law, which was written in their hearts; at the same time entering into a contract with them, and with their posterity as represented in them, by which they were assured of everlasting life in return for perfect obedience, and of everlasting death if they should be disobedient. our first parents, being enticed by satan, a fallen angel speaking in the form of a serpent, broke this _covenant of works_, as it is called, by eating the forbidden fruit; and hereby they, and their posterity in them and with them, became not only liable to eternal death, but lost also their natural uprightness and all ability to please god; nay, they became by nature enemies to god and to all spiritual good, and inclined only to evil continually. this, says calvinism, is our original sin; the bitter root of all our actual transgressions, in thought, word, and deed. yet, though man has neither power nor inclination to rise out of this wretched fallen state, but is rather disposed to lie insensible in it till he perish, another covenant exists by which his condition is greatly affected. this is the _covenant of redemption_, made and agreed upon, says calvinism, between god the father and god the son in the council of the trinity before the world began. the sum of the covenant of redemption is this: god having, by the eternal decree already mentioned, freely chosen to life a certain number of lost mankind, gave them before the world began to god the son, appointed redeemer, on condition that if he humbled himself so far as to assume the human nature in union with the divine nature, submit himself to the law as surety for the elect, and satisfy justice for them by giving obedience in their name, even to suffering the cursed death of the cross, he should ransom and redeem them from sin and death, and purchase for them righteousness and eternal life. the son of god accepted the condition, or _bargain_ as calvinism calls it; and in the fulness of time came, as jesus christ, into the world, was born of the virgin mary, subjected himself to the law, and completely paid the due ransom on the cross. god has in his word, the bible, revealed to man this covenant of grace or redemption. all those whom he has predestinated to life he in his own time effectually calls to be partakers in the release offered. man is altogether passive in this call, until the holy spirit enables him to answer it. the holy spirit, the third person in the trinity, applies to the elect the redemption purchased by christ, through working faith in them. as soon as the elect have faith in jesus christ, that is, as soon as they give their consent heartily and repentantly, in the sense of deserved condemnation, to the covenant of grace, god justifies them by imputing to them that perfect obedience which christ gave to the law, and the satisfaction also which upon the cross christ gave to justice in their name. they who are thus called and justified are by the same power likewise sanctified; the dominion of carnal lusts being destroyed in them, and the practice of holiness being, in spite of some remnants of corruption, put in their power. good works, done in obedience to god's moral law, are the fruits and evidences of a true faith; and the persons of the faithful elect being accepted through christ, their good works also are accepted in him and rewarded. but works done by other and unregenerate men, though they may be things which god commands, cannot please god and are sinful. the elect can after justification and sanctification no more fall from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere to the end and be eternally saved; and of this they may, even in the present life, have the certain assurance. finally, after death, their souls and bodies are joyfully joined together again in the resurrection, and they remain thenceforth for ever with christ in glory; while all the wicked are sent away into hell with satan, whom they have served. we have here set down the main doctrines of calvinistic puritanism almost entirely in words of its own choosing. it is not necessary to enter into distinctions such as those between sublapsarians and supralapsarians, between calvinists who believe that god's decree of election and reprobation was passed in foresight of original sin and on account of it, and calvinists who believe that it was passed absolutely and independently. the important points of calvinism,--original sin, free election, effectual calling, justification through imputed righteousness,--are common to both. the passiveness of man, the activity of god, are the great features in this scheme; there is very little of what man thinks and does, very much of what god thinks and does; and what god thinks and does is described with such particularity that the figure we have used of the man in the next street cannot but recur strongly to our minds. the positive protestantism of puritanism, with which we are here concerned, as distinguished from the negative protestantism of the church of england, has nourished itself with ardour on this scheme of doctrine. it informs and fashions the whole religion of scotland, established and nonconforming. it is the doctrine which puritan flocks delight to hear from their ministers. it was puritanism's constant reproach against the church of england, that this essential doctrine was not firmly enough held and set forth by her. at the hampton court conference in 1604, in the committee of divines appointed by the house of lords in 1641, and again at the savoy conference in 1661, the reproach regularly appeared. 'some have defended,' is the puritan complaint, 'the whole gross substance of arminianism, that the act of conversion depends upon the concurrence of man's free will; some do teach and preach that good works are concauses with faith in the act of justification; some have defended universal grace, some have absolutely denied original sin.' as puritanism grew, the calvinistic scheme of doctrine hardened and became stricter. of the calvinistic confessions of faith of the sixteenth century,--the helvetic confession, the belgic confession, the heidelberg catechism,--the calvinism is so moderate as to astonish any one who has been used only to its later developments. even the much abused canons of the synod of dort no one can read attentively through without finding in parts of them a genuine movement of thought,--sometimes even a philosophic depth,--and a powerful religious feeling. in the documents of the westminster assembly, twenty-five years later, this has disappeared; and what we call the british philistine stands in his religious capacity, sheer and stark, before us. seriousness is the one merit of these documents, but it is a seriousness too mixed with the alloy of mundane strife and hatred to be called a religious feeling. not a trace of delicacy of perception, or of philosophic thinking; the mere rigidness and contentiousness of the controversialist and political dissenter; a calvinism exaggerated till it is simply repelling; and to complete the whole, a machinery of covenants, conditions, bargains, and parties-contractors, such as could have proceeded from no one but the born anglo-saxon man of business, british or american. however, a scheme of doctrine is not necessarily false because of the style in which its adherents may have at a particular moment enounced it. from the faults which disfigure the performance of the westminster divines the profession of faith prefixed to the congregational _year-book_ is free. the congregationalists form one of the two great divisions of english puritans. 'congregational churches believe,' their _year-book_ tells us, 'that the first man disobeyed the divine command, fell from his state of innocence and purity, and involved all his posterity in the consequences of that fall. they believe that all who will be saved were the objects of god's eternal and electing love, and were given by an act of divine sovereignty to the son of god. they believe that christ meritoriously obtained eternal redemption for us, and that the holy spirit is given in consequence of christ's mediation.' the essential points of calvinism are all here. to this profession of faith, annually published in the _year-book_ of the independents, subscription is not required; puritanism thus remaining honourably consistent with the protests which, at the restoration, it made against the call for subscription. but the authors of the _year-book_ say with pride, and it is a common boast of the independent churches, that though they do not require subscription, there is, perhaps, in no religious body, such firm and general agreement in doctrine as among congregationalists. this is true, and it is even more true of the flocks than of the ministers, of whom the abler and the younger begin to be lifted by the stream of modern ideas. still, up to the present time, the protestantism of one great division of english puritans is undoubtedly calvinist; the baptists holding in general the scheme of calvinism yet more strictly than the independents. the other great division of english puritanism is formed by the methodists. wesleyan methodism is, as is well known, not calvinist, but arminian. the _methodist magazine_ was called by wesley the _arminian magazine_, and kept that title all through his life. arminianism is an attempt made with the best intentions, and with much truth of practical sense, but not in a very profound philosophical spirit, to escape from what perplexes and shocks us in calvinism. the god of calvinism is a magnified and non-natural man who decrees at his mere good pleasure some men to salvation and other men to reprobation; the god of arminianism is a magnified and non-natural man who foreknows the course of each man's life, and who decrees each of us to salvation or reprobation in accordance with this foreknowledge. but so long as we remain in this anthropomorphic order of ideas the question will always occur: why did not a being of infinite power and infinite love so make all men as that there should be no cause for this sad foreknowledge and sad decree respecting a number of them? in truth, calvinism is both theologically more coherent, and also shows a deeper sense of reality than arminianism, which, in the practical man's fashion, is apt to scrape the surface of things only. for instance, the arminian remonstrants, in their zeal to justify the morality, in a human sense, of god's ways, maintained that he sent his word to one nation rather than another according as he saw that one nation was more worthy than another of such a preference. the calvinist doctors of the synod of dort have no difficulty in showing that moses and christ both of them assert, with respect to the jewish nation, the direct contrary; and not only do they here obtain a theological triumph, but in rebutting the arminian theory they are in accordance with historical truth and with the real march of human affairs. they allow more for the great fact of the _not ourselves_ in what we do and are. the calvinists seize, we say, that great fact better than the arminians. the calvinist's fault is in his scientific appreciation of the fact; in the reasons he gives for it. god, he says, sends his word to one nation rather than another at _his mere good pleasure_. here we have again the magnified and non-natural man, who likes and dislikes, knows and decrees, just as a man, only on a scale immensely transcending anything of which we have experience, and whose proceedings we nevertheless describe as if he were in the next street for people to verify all we say about him. arminian methodism, however, puts aside the calvinistic doctrine of predestination. the foremost place, which in the calvinist scheme belongs to the doctrine of predestination, belongs in the methodist scheme to the doctrine of justification by faith. more and more prominently does modern methodism elevate this as its essential doctrine; and the era in their founder's life which methodists select to celebrate is the era of his conversion to it. it is the doctrine of anselm, adopted and developed by luther, set forth in the confession of augsburg, and current all through the popular theology of our day. we shall find it in almost any popular hymn we happen to take, but the following lines of milton exhibit it classically. by the fall of our first parents, says he:- man, losing all, to expiate his treason hath nought left, but to destruction sacred and devote he with his whole posterity must die; die he or justice must; unless for him some other able, and as willing, pay the rigid satisfaction; death for death. by adam's fall, god's justice and mercy were placed in conflict. god could not follow his mercy without violating his justice. christ by his satisfaction gave the father the right and power (_nudum jus patri acquirebat_, said the arminians) to follow his mercy, and to make with man the covenant of free justification by faith, whereby, if a man has a sure trust and confidence that his sins are forgiven him in virtue of the satisfaction made to god for them by the death of christ, he is held clear of sin by god, and admitted to salvation. this doctrine, like the calvinist doctrine of predestination, involves a whole history of god's proceedings, and gives, also, first and almost sole place to what god does, with disregard to what man does. it has thus an essential affinity with calvinism; indeed, calvinism is but this doctrine of original sin and justification, _plus_ the doctrine of predestination. nay, the welsh methodists, as is well known, have no difficulty in combining the tenet of election with the practices and most of the tenets of methodism. the word _solifidian_ points precisely to that which is common to both calvinism and methodism, and which has made both these halves of english puritanism so popular,--their _sensational_ side, as it may be called, their laying all stress on a wonderful and particular account of what god gives and works for us, not on what we bring or do for ourselves. 'plead thou singly,' says wesley, 'the blood of the covenant, the ransom paid for thy proud stubborn soul.' wesley's doctrines of conversion, of the new birth, of sanctification, of the direct witness of the spirit, of assurance, of sinless perfection, all of them thus correspond with doctrines which we have noticed in calvinism, and show a common character with them. the instantaneousness wesley loved to ascribe to conversion and sanctification points the same way. 'god gives in a moment such a faith in the blood of his son as translates us out of darkness into light, out of sin and fear into holiness and happiness.' and again, 'look for sanctification just as you are, as a poor sinner that has nothing to pay, nothing to plead but _christ died_.' this is the side in wesley's teaching which his followers have above all seized, and which they are eager to hold forth as the essential part of his legacy towards them. it is true that from the same reason which prevents, as we have said, those who know their bible and nothing else from really knowing even their bible, methodists, who for the most part know nothing but wesley, do not really know even wesley. it is true that what really characterises this most interesting and most attractive man, is not his doctrine of justification by faith, or any other of his set doctrines, but is entirely what we may call his _genius for godliness_. mr. alexander knox, in his remarks on his friend's life and character, insists much on an entry in wesley's journal in 1767, where he seems impatient at the endless harping on the tenet of justification, and where he asks 'if it is not high time to return to the plain word: "he that feareth god and worketh righteousness is accepted with him."' mr. knox is right in thinking that the feeling which made wesley ask this is what gave him his vital worth and character as a man; but it is not what gives him his character as the teacher of methodism. methodism rejects mr. knox's version of its founder, and insists on making the article of justification the very corner-stone of the wesleyan edifice. and the truth undoubtedly is, that not by his assertion of what man brings, but by his assertion of what god gives, by his doctrines of conversion, instantaneous justification and sanctification, assurance, and sinless perfection, does wesley live and operate in methodism. 'you think, i must first be or do thus or thus (for sanctification). then you are seeking it by works unto this day. if you seek it by faith, you may expect it as you are; then expect it now. it is of importance to observe that there is an inseparable connection between these three points: expect it _by faith_, expect it _as you are_, and expect it _now_. to deny one of them is to deny them all; to allow one is to allow them all.' this is the teaching of wesley, which has made the great methodist half of english puritanism what it is, and not his hesitations and recoils at the dangers of his own teaching. no doubt, as the seriousness of calvinism, its perpetual conversance with deep matters and with the bible, have given force and fervency to calvinist puritans, so the loveliness of wesley's piety, and what we have called his genius for godliness, have sweetened and made amiable numberless lives of methodist puritans. but as a religious teacher, wesley is to be judged by his doctrine; and his doctrine, like the calvinistic scheme, rests with all its weight on the assertion of certain minutely described proceedings on god's part, independent of us, our experience, and our will; and leads its recipients to look, in religion, not so much for an arduous progress on their own part, and the exercise of their activity, as for strokes of magic, and what may be called a sensational character. in the heidelberg catechism, after an answer in which the catechist rehearses the popularly received doctrine of original sin and vicarious satisfaction for it, the catechiser asks the pertinent question: '_unde id scis?_'--how do you know all that? the apostle paul is, as we have already shown, the great authority for it whom formal theology invokes; his name is used by popular theology with the same confidence. i open a modern book of popular religion at the account of a visit paid to a hardened criminal seized with terror the night before his execution. the visitor says: '_i now stand in paul's place_, and say: in christ's stead we pray you, be ye reconciled to god. i beg you to accept the pardon of all your sins, which christ has purchased for you, and which god freely bestows on you for his sake. if you do not understand, i say: god's ways are not as our ways.' and the narrative of the criminal's conversion goes on: 'that night was spent in singing the praises of the saviour who had purchased his pardon.' both calvinism and methodism appeal, therefore, to the bible, and, above all, to st. paul, for the history they propound of the relations between god and man; but calvinism relies most, in enforcing it, on man's fears, methodism on man's hopes. calvinism insists on man's being under a curse; it then works the sense of sin, misery, and terror in him, and appeals pre-eminently to the desire to flee from the wrath to come. methodism, too, insists on his being under a curse; but it works most the sense of hope in him, the craving for happiness, and appeals pre-eminently to the desire for eternal bliss. no one, however, will maintain that the particular account of god's proceedings with man, whereby methodism and calvinism operate on these desires, proves itself by internal evidence, and establishes without external aid its own scientific validity. so we may either directly try, as best we can, its scientific validity in itself; or, as it professes to have paul's authority to support it, we may first inquire what is really paul's account of god's proceedings with man, and whether this tallies with the puritan account and confirms it. the latter is in every way the safer and the more instructive course to follow. and we will follow puritanism's example in taking st. paul's mature and greatest work, the epistle to the romans, as the chief place for finding what he really thought on the points in question. we have already said elsewhere,[19] indeed, what is very true, and what must never be forgotten, that what st. paul, a man so separated from us by time, race, training and circumstances, really thought, we cannot make sure of knowing exactly. all we can do is to get near it, reading him with the sort of critical tact which the study of the human mind and its history, and the acquaintance with many great writers, naturally gives for following the movement of any one single great writer's thought; reading him, also, without preconceived theories to which we want to make his thoughts fit themselves. it is evident that the english translation of the epistle to the romans has been made by men with their heads full of the current doctrines of election and justification we have been noticing; and it has thereby received such a bias,--of which a strong example is the use of the word _atonement_ in the eleventh verse of the fifth chapter,--that perhaps it is almost impossible for any one who reads the english translation only, to take into his mind paul's thought without a colouring from the current doctrines. but besides discarding the english translation, we must bear in mind, if we wish to get as near paul's real thought as possible, two things which have greatly increased the facilities for misrepresenting him. [footnote 19: see _culture and anarchy_, chap. v.] in the first place, paul, like the other bible-writers, and like the semitic race in general, has a much juster sense of the true scope and limits of diction in religious deliverances than we have. he uses within the sphere of religious emotion expressions which, in this sphere, have an eloquence and a propriety, but which are not to be taken out of it and made into formal scientific propositions. this is a point very necessary to be borne in mind in reading the bible. the prophet nahum says in the book of his vision: '_god is jealous, and the lord revengeth_;'[20] and the authors of the westminster confession, drawing out a scientific theology, lay down the proposition that god is a jealous and vengeful god, and think they prove their proposition by quoting in a note the words of nahum. but this is as if we took from a chorus of ã�schylus one of his grand passages about guilt and destiny, just put the words straight into the formal and exact cast of a sentence of aristotle, and said that here was the scientific teaching of greek philosophy on these matters. the hebrew genius has not, like the greek, its conscious and clear-marked division into a poetic side and a scientific side; the scientific side is almost absent. the bible utterances have often the character of a chorus of ã�schylus, but never that of a treatise of aristotle. we, like the greeks, possess in our speech and thought the two characters; but so far as the bible is concerned we have generally confounded them, and have used our double possession for our bewilderment rather than turned it to good account. the admirable maxim of the great mediã¦val jewish school of biblical critics: _the law speaks with the tongue of the children of men_,--a maxim which is the very foundation of all sane biblical criticism,--was for centuries a dead letter to the whole body of our western exegesis, and is a dead letter to the whole body of our popular exegesis still. taking the bible language as equivalent with the language of the scientific intellect, a language which is adequate and absolute, we have never been in a position to use the key which this maxim of the jewish doctors offers to us. but it is certain that, whatever strain the religious expressions of the semitic genius were meant, in the minds of those who gave utterance to them, to bear, the particular strain which we western people put upon them is one which they were not meant to bear. [footnote 20: _nahum_ i, 2.] we have used the word _hebraise_[21] for another purpose, to denote the exclusive attention to the moral side of our nature, to conscience, and to doing rather than knowing; so, to describe the vivid and figured way in which st. paul, within the sphere of religious emotion, uses words, without carrying them outside it, we will use the word _orientalise_. when paul says: 'god hath concluded them all in unbelief _that he might_ have mercy upon all,'[22] he orientalises; that is, he does not mean to assert formally that god acted with this set design, but, being full of the happy and divine end to the unbelief spoken of, he, by a vivid and striking figure, represents the unbelief as actually caused with a view to this end. but when the calvinists of the synod of dort, wishing to establish the formal proposition that faith and all saving gifts flow from election and nothing else, quote an expression of paul's similar to the one we have quoted, 'he hath chosen us,' they say, 'not because we were, but _that we might be_ holy and without blame before him,' they go quite wide of the mark, from not perceiving that what the apostle used as a vivid figure of rhetoric, they are using as a formal scientific proposition. [footnote 21: see _culture and anarchy_, chap. iv.] [footnote 22: _rom._ xi, 32.] when paul orientalises, the fault is not with him when he is misunderstood, but with the prosaic and unintelligent western readers who have not enough tact for style to comprehend his mode of expression. but he also judaises; and here his liability to being misunderstood by us western people is undoubtedly due to a defect in the critical habit of himself and his race. a jew himself, he uses the jewish scriptures in a jew's arbitrary and uncritical fashion, as if they had a talismanic character; as if for a doctrine, however true in itself, their confirmation was still necessary, and as if this confirmation was to be got from their mere words alone, however detached from the sense of their context, and however violently allegorised or otherwise wrested. to use the bible in this way, even for purposes of illustration, is often an interruption to the argument, a fault of style; to use it in this way for real proof and confirmation, is a fault of reasoning. an example of the first fault may be seen in the tenth chapter of the epistle to the romans, and in the beginning of the third chapter. the apostle's point in either place,--his point that faith comes by hearing, and his point that god's oracles were true though the jews did not believe them,--would stand much clearer without their scaffolding of bible-quotation. an instance of the second fault is in the third and fourth chapters of the epistle to the galatians, where the biblical argumentation by which the apostle seeks to prove his case is as unsound as his case itself is sound. how far these faults are due to the apostle himself, how far to the requirements of those for whom he wrote, we need not now investigate. it is enough that he undoubtedly uses the letter of scripture in this arbitrary and jewish way; and thus puritanism, which has only itself to blame for misunderstanding him when he orientalises, may fairly put upon the apostle himself some of its blame for misunderstanding him when he judaises, and for judaising so strenuously along with him. to get, therefore, at what paul really thought and meant to say, it is necessary for us modern and western people to translate him. and not as puritanism, which has merely taken his letter and recast it in the formal propositions of a modern scientific treatise; but his letter itself must be recast before it can be properly conveyed by such propositions. and as the order in which, in any series of ideas, the ideas come, is of great importance to the final result, and as paul, who did not write scientific treatises, but had always religious edification in direct view, never set out his doctrine with a design of exhibiting it as a scientific whole, we must also find out for ourselves the order in which paul's ideas naturally stand, and the connexion between one of them and the other, in order to arrive at the real scheme of his teaching, as compared with the schemes exhibited by puritanism. we remarked how what sets the calvinist in motion seems to be the desire to flee from the wrath to come; and what sets the methodist in motion, the desire for eternal bliss. what is it which sets paul in motion? it is the impulse which we have elsewhere noted as the master-impulse of hebraism,--_the desire for righteousness._ 'i exercise myself,' he told felix, '_to have a conscience void of offence towards god and men continually_.'[23] to the hebrew, this moral order, or righteousness, was pre-eminently the universal order, the law of god; and god, the fountain of all goodness, was pre-eminently to him the giver of the moral law. the end and aim of all religion, _access to god_,--the sense of harmony with the universal order--the partaking of the divine nature--that our faith and hope might be in god--that we might have life and have it more abundantly,--meant for the hebrew, access to the source of the _moral_ order in especial, and harmony with it. it was the greatness of the hebrew race that it felt the authority of this order, its preciousness and its beneficence, so strongly. 'how precious are thy thoughts unto me, o god!'--'the law of thy mouth is better than thousands of gold and silver.'--'my soul is consumed with the very fervent desire that it hath alway unto thy judgments.'[24] it was the greatness of their best individuals that in them this feeling was incessantly urgent to prove itself in the only sure manner,--in action. 'blessed are they who hear the word of god, and _keep_ it.' 'if thou wouldst enter into life, _keep_ the commandments.' 'let no man deceive you, he that _doeth_ righteousness is righteous.'[25] what distinguishes paul is both his conviction that the commandment is holy, and just, and good; and also his desire to give effect to the commandment, to _establish_ it. it was this which gave to his endeavour after a clear conscience such meaning and efficacity. it was this which gave him insight to see that there could be no radical difference, in respect of salvation and the way to it, between jew and gentile. 'upon every soul of man that _worketh evil_, whoever he may be, tribulation and anguish; to every one that _worketh good_, glory, honour, and peace!'[26] [footnote 23: _acts_, xxiv, 16.] [footnote 24: _ps._ cxxxix, 7; cxix, 72; _ibid._, 20.] [footnote 25: _luke_, xi, 28; _matth._, xix, 17; i _john_, iii, 7.] [footnote 26: _rom._, ii, 9, 10.] st. paul's piercing practical religious sense, joined to his strong intellectual power, enabled him to discern and follow the range of the commandment, both as to man's actions and as to his heart and thoughts, with extraordinary force and closeness. his religion had, as we shall see, a preponderantly mystic side, and nothing is so natural to the mystic as in rich single words, such as faith, light, love, to sum up and take for granted, without specially enumerating them all good moral principles and habits; yet nothing is more remarkable in paul than the frequent, nay, incessant lists, in the most particular detail, of moral habits to be pursued or avoided. lists of this sort might in a less sincere and profound writer be formal and wearisome; but to no attentive reader of st. paul will they be wearisome, for in making them he touched the solid ground which was the basis of his religion,--the solid ground of his hearty desire for righteousness and of his thorough conception of it,--and only on such a ground was so strong a superstructure possible. the more one studies these lists, the more does their significance come out. to illustrate this, let any one go through for himself the enumeration, too long to be quoted here, in the four last verses of the first chapter of the epistle to the romans, of 'things which are not convenient;' or let him merely consider with attention this catalogue, towards the end of the fifth chapter of the epistle to the galatians, of fruits of the spirit: 'love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control.'[27] the man who wrote with this searching minuteness knew accurately what he meant by sin and righteousness, and did not use these words at random. his diligent comprehensiveness in his plan of duties is only less admirable than his diligent sincerity. the sterner virtues and the gentler, his conscience will not let him rest till he has embraced them all. in his deep resolve 'to make out by actual trial what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of god,'[28] he goes back upon himself again and again, he marks a duty at every point of our nature, and at points the most opposite, for fear he should by possibility be leaving behind him some weakness still indulged, some subtle promptings to evil not yet brought into captivity. [footnote 27: verses 22, 23.] [footnote 28: _rom._, xii, 2.] it has not been enough remarked how this incomparable honesty and depth in paul's love of righteousness is probably what chiefly explains his conversion. most men have the defects, as the saying is, of their qualities. because they are ardent and severe they have no sense for gentleness and sweetness; because they are sweet and gentle they have no sense for severity and ardour. a puritan is a puritan, and a man of feeling is a man of feeling. but with paul the very same fulness of moral nature which made him an ardent pharisee, 'as concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless,' was so large that it carried him out of pharisaism and beyond it, when once he found how much needed doing in him which pharisaism could not do. every attentive regarder of the character of paul, not only as he was before his conversion but as he appears to us till his end, must have been struck with two things: one, the earnest insistence with which he recommends 'bowels of mercies,' as he calls them: meekness, humbleness of mind, gentleness, unwearying forbearance, crowned all of them with that emotion of charity 'which is the bond of perfectness;' the other, the force with which he dwells on the _solidarity_ (to use the modern phrase) of man,--the joint interest, that is, which binds humanity together,--the duty of respecting every one's part in life, and of doing justice to his efforts to fulfil that part. never surely did such a controversialist, such a master of sarcasm and invective, commend, with such manifest sincerity and such persuasive emotion, the qualities of meekness and gentleness! never surely did a worker, who took with such energy his own line, and who was so born to preponderate and predominate in whatever line he took, insist so often and so admirably that the lines of other workers were just as good as his own! at no time, perhaps, did paul arrive at practising quite perfectly what he thus preached; but this only sets in a stronger light the thorough love of righteousness which made him seek out, and put so prominently forward, and so strive to make himself and others fulfil, parts of righteousness which do not force themselves on the common conscience like the duties of soberness, temperance, and activity, and which were somewhat alien, certainly, to his own particular nature. therefore we cannot but believe that into this spirit, so possessed with the hunger and thirst for righteousness, and precisely because it was so possessed by it, the characteristic doctrines of jesus, which brought a new aliment to feed this hunger and thirst,--of jesus whom, except in vision, he had never seen, but who was in every one's words and thoughts, the teacher who was meek and lowly in heart, who said men were brothers and must love one another, that the last should often be first, that the exercise of dominion and lordship had nothing in them desirable, and that we must become as little children,--sank down and worked there even before paul ceased to persecute, and had no small part in getting him ready for the crisis of his conversion. such doctrines offered new fields of righteousness to the eyes of this indefatigable explorer of it, and enlarged the domain of duty of which pharisaism showed him only a portion. then, after the satisfaction thus given to his desire for a full conception of righteousness, came christ's injunctions to make clean the inside as well as the outside, to beware of the least leaven of hypocrisy and self-flattery, of saying and not doing;--and, finally, the injunction to feel, after doing all we can, that, as compared with the standard of perfection, we are still unprofitable servants. these teachings were, to a man like paul, for the practice of righteousness what the others were for the theory;--sympathetic utterances, which made the inmost chords of his being vibrate, and which irresistibly drew him sooner or later towards their utterer. need it be said that he never forgot them, and that in all his pages they have left their trace? it is even affecting to see, how, when he is driven for the very sake of righteousness to put the law of righteousness in the second place, and to seek outside the law itself for a power to fulfil the law, how, i say, he returns again and again to the elucidation of his one sole design in all he is doing; how he labours to prevent all possibility of misunderstanding, and to show that he is only leaving the moral law for a moment in order to establish it for ever more victoriously. what earnestness and pathos in the assurance: 'if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily, righteousness should have been by the law!'[29] 'do i condemn the law?' he keeps saying; 'do i forget that the commandment is holy, just, and good? because we are no longer under the law, are we to sin? am i seeking to make the course of my life and yours other than a service and an obedience?' this man, out of whom an astounding criticism has deduced antinomianism, is in truth so possessed with horror of antinomianism, that he goes to grace for the sole purpose of extirpating it, and even then cannot rest without perpetually telling us why he is gone there. this man, whom calvin and luther and their followers have shut up into the two scholastic doctrines of election and justification, would have said, could we hear him, just what he said about circumcision and uncircumcision in his own day: 'election is nothing, and justification is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of god.' [footnote 29: _gal._, iii, 21.] this foremost place which righteousness takes in the order of st. paul's ideas makes a signal difference between him and puritanism. puritanism, as we have said, finds its starting-point either in the desire to flee from eternal wrath or in the desire to obtain eternal bliss. puritanism has learned from revelation, as it says, a particular history of the first man's fall, of mankind being under a curse, of certain contracts having been passed concerning mankind in the council of the trinity, of the substance of those contracts, and of man's position under them. the great concern of puritanism is with the operation of those contracts on man's condition; its leading thought, if it is a puritanism of a gloomy turn, is of awe and fear caused by the threatening aspect of man's condition under these contracts; if of a cheerful turn, of gratitude and hope caused by the favourable aspect of it. but in either case, foregone events, the covenant passed, what god has done and does, is the great matter. what there is left for man to do, the human work of righteousness, is secondary, and comes in but to attest and confirm our assurance of what god has done for us. we have seen this in wesley's words already quoted: the first thing for a man is to be justified and sanctified, and to have the assurance that, without seeking it by works, he is justified and sanctified; then the desire and works of righteousness follow as a proper result of this condition. still more does calvinism make man's desire and works of righteousness mere evidences and benefits of more important things; the desire to work righteousness is among the saving graces applied by the holy spirit to the elect, and the last of those graces. _denique_, says the synod of dort, _last of all_, after faith in the promises and after the witness of the spirit, comes, to establish our assurance, a clear conscience and righteousness. it is manifest how unlike is this order of ideas to paul's order, who starts with the thought of a conscience void of offence towards god and man, and builds upon that thought his whole system. but this difference constitutes from the very outset an immense scientific superiority for the scheme of paul. hope and fear are elements of human nature like the love of right, but they are far blinder and less scientific elements of it. 'the bible is a divine revelation; the bible declares certain things; the things it thus declares have the witness of our hopes and fears;'--this is the line of thought followed by puritanism. but what science seeks after is a satisfying rational conception of things. a scheme which fails to give this, which gives the contrary of this, may indeed be of a nature to move our hopes and fears, but is to science of none the more value on that account. nor does our calling such a scheme _a revelation_ mend the matter. instead of covering the scientific inadequacy of a conception by the authority of a revelation, science rather proves the authority of a revelation by the scientific adequacy of the conceptions given in it, and limits the sphere of that authority to the sphere of that adequacy. the more an alleged revelation seems to contain precious and striking things, the more will science be inclined to doubt the correctness of any deduction which draws from it, within the sphere of these things, a scheme which rationally is not satisfying. that the scheme of puritanism is rationally so little satisfying inclines science, not to take it on the authority of the bible, but to doubt whether it is really in the bible. the first appeal which this scheme, having begun outside the sphere of reality and experience, makes in the sphere of reality and experience,--its first appeal, therefore, to science,--the appeal to the witness of human hope and fear, does not much mend matters; for science knows that numberless conceptions not rationally satisfying are yet the ground of hope and fear. paul does not begin outside the sphere of science; he begins with an appeal to reality and experience. and the appeal here with which he commences has, for science, undoubted force and importance; for he appeals to a rational conception which is a part, and perhaps the chief part, of our experience; the conception of the law of _righteousness_, the very law and ground of human nature so far as this nature is moral. things as they truly are,--facts,--are the object-matter of science; and the moral law in human nature, however this law may have originated, is in our actual experience among the greatest of facts. if i were not afraid of intruding upon mr. ruskin's province, i might point out the witness which etymology itself bears to this law as a prime element and _clue_ in man's constitution. our word righteousness means going straight, going the way we are meant to go; there are languages in which the word 'way' or 'road' is also the word for right reason and duty; the greek word for justice and righteousness has for its foundation, some say, the idea of describing a certain line, following a certain necessary orbit. but for these fanciful helps there is no need. when paul starts with affirming the grandeur and necessity of the law of righteousness, science has no difficulty in going along with him. when he fixes as man's right aim 'love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control,'[30] he appeals for witness to the truth of what he says to an experience too intimate to need illustration or argument. [footnote 30: _gal._, v, 22, 23.] the best confirmation of the scientific validity of the importance which paul thus attaches to the law of righteousness, the law of reason and conscience, god as moral law, is to be found in its agreement with the importance attached to this law by teachers the most unlike him; since in the eye of science an experience gains as much by having universality, as in the eye of religion it seems to gain by having uniqueness. 'would you know,' says epictetus, 'the means to perfection which socrates followed? they were these: in every single matter which came before him he made the rule of reason and conscience his one rule to follow.' such was precisely the aim of paul also; it is an aim to which science does homage as a satisfying rational conception. and to this aim hope and fear properly attach themselves. for on our following the clue of moral order, or losing it, depends our happiness or misery; our life or death in the true sense of those words; our harmony with the universal order or our disharmony with it; our partaking, as st. paul says, of the wrath of god or of the glory of god. so that looking to this clue, and fearing to lose hold on it, we may in strict scientific truth say with the author of the imitation: _omnia vanitas, prã¦ter amare deum, et illi soli servire_. but to serve god, to follow that central clue in our moral being which unites us to the universal order, is no easy task; and here again we are on the most sure ground of experience and psychology. in some way or other, says bishop wilson, every man is conscious of an opposition in him between the flesh and the spirit. _video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor_, say the thousand times quoted lines of the roman poet. the philosophical explanation of this conflict does not indeed attribute, like the manichã¦an fancy, any inherent evil to the flesh and its workings; all the forces and tendencies in us are, like our proper central moral tendency the desire of righteousness, in themselves beneficent. but they require to be harmonised with this tendency, because this aims directly at our total moral welfare,--our harmony as moral beings with the law of our nature and the law of god,--and derives thence a pre-eminence and a right to moderate. and, though they are not evil in themselves, the evil which flows from these diverse workings is undeniable. the lusts of the flesh, the law in our members, _passion_, according to the greek word used by paul, _inordinate affection_, according to the admirable rendering of paul's greek word in our english bible,[31] take naturally no account of anything but themselves; this arbitrary and unregulated action of theirs can produce only confusion and misery. the spirit, the law of our mind, takes account of the universal moral order, the will of god, and is indeed the voice of that order expressing itself in us. paul talks of a man sowing to _his_ flesh,[32] because each of us has of his own this individual body, this _congeries_ of flesh and bones, blood and nerves, different from that of every one else, and with desires and impulses driving each of us his own separate way; and he says that a man who sows to this, sows to a thousand tyrants, and can reap no worthy harvest. but he talks of sowing to _the_ spirit; because there is one central moral tendency which for us and for all men is the law of our being, and through reason and righteousness we move in this universal order and with it. in this conformity to _the will of god_, as we religiously name the moral order, is our peace and happiness. [footnote 31: _col._, iii, 5.] [footnote 32: _gal._, vi, 8.] but how to find the energy and power to bring all those self-seeking tendencies of the flesh, those multitudinous, swarming, eager, and incessant impulses, into obedience to the central tendency? mere commanding and forbidding is of no avail, and only irritates opposition in the desires it tries to control. it even enlarges their power, because it makes us feel our impotence; and the confusion caused by their ungoverned working is increased by our being filled with a deepened sense of disharmony, remorse, and dismay. 'i was alive without the law once,'[33] says paul; the natural play of all the forces and desires in me went on smoothly enough so long as i did not attempt to introduce order and regulation among them. but the condition of immoral tranquillity could not in man be permanent. that natural law of reason and conscience which all men have, was sufficient by itself to produce a consciousness of rebellion and disquietude. matters became only worse by the exhibition of the mosaic law, the offspring of a moral sense more poignant and stricter, however little it might show of subtle insight and delicacy, than the moral sense of the mass of mankind. the very stringency of the mosaic code increased the feeling of dismay and helplessness; it set forth the law of righteousness more authoritatively and minutely, yet did not supply any sufficient power to keep it. neither the law of nature, therefore, nor the law of moses, availed to blind men to righteousness. so we come to the word which is the governing word of the epistle to the romans,--the word _all_. as the word _righteousness_ is the governing word of st. paul's entire mind and life, so the word _all_ is the governing word of this his chief epistle. the gentile with the law of nature, the jew with the law of moses, alike fail to achieve righteousness. '_all_ have sinned, and come short of the glory of god.'[34] all do what they would not, and do not what they would; all feel themselves enslaved, impotent, guilty, miserable. 'o wretched man that i am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'[35] [footnote 33: _rom._, vii, 9.] [footnote 34: _rom._, iii, 23.] [footnote 35: _rom._, vii, 24.] hitherto, we have followed paul in the sphere of morals; we have now come with him to the point where he enters the sphere of religion. religion is that which binds and holds us to the practice of righteousness. we have accompanied paul, and found him always treading solid ground, till he is brought to straits where a binding and holding power of this kind is necessary. here is the critical point for the scientific worth of his doctrine. 'now at last,' cries puritanism, 'the great apostle is about to become even as one of us; there is no issue for him now, but the issue we have always declared he finds. he has recourse to our theurgy of election, justification, substitution, and imputed righteousness.' we will proceed to show that paul has recourse to nothing of the kind. ii. we have seen how puritanism seems to come by its religion in the first instance theologically and from authority; paul by his, on the other hand, psychologically and from experience. even the points, therefore, in which they both meet, they have not reached in the same order or by the same road. the miserable sense of sin from unrighteousness, the joyful witness of a good conscience from righteousness, these are points in which puritanism and st. paul meet. they are facts of human nature and can be verified by science. but whereas puritanism, so far as science is concerned, ends with these facts, and rests the whole weight of its antecedent theurgy upon the witness to it they offer, paul begins with these facts, and has not yet, so far as we have followed him, called upon them to prove anything but themselves. the scientific difference, as we have already remarked, which this establishes between paul and puritanism is immense, and is all in paul's favour. sin and righteousness, together with their eternal accompaniments of fear and hope, misery and happiness, can prove themselves; but they can by no means prove, also, puritanism's history of original sin, election and justification. puritanism is fond of maintaining, indeed, that paul's doctrines derive their sanction, not from any agreement with science and experience, but from his miraculous conversion, and that this conversion it was which in his own judgment gave to them their authority. but whatever sanction the miracle of his conversion may in his own eyes have lent to the doctrines afterwards propounded by paul, it is clear that, for science, his conversion adds to his doctrines no force at all which they do not already possess in themselves. paul's conversion is for science an event of precisely the same nature as the conversions of which the history of methodism relates so many; events described, for the most part, just as the event of paul's conversion is described, with perfect good faith, and which we may perfectly admit to have happened just in the manner related, without on that account attributing to those who underwent them any source of certitude for a scheme of doctrine which this doctrine does not on other and better grounds possess. surely this proposition has only to be clearly stated in order to be self-evident. the conversion of paul is in itself an incident of precisely the same order as the conversion of sampson staniforth, a methodist soldier in the campaign of fontenoy. staniforth himself relates his conversion as follows, in words which bear plainly marked on them the very stamp of good faith:- 'from twelve at night till two it was my turn to stand sentinel at a dangerous post. i had a fellow-sentinel, but i desired him to go away, which he willingly did. as soon as i was alone, i knelt down and determined not to rise, but to continue crying and wrestling with god till he had mercy on me. how long i was in that agony i cannot tell; but as i looked up to heaven i saw the clouds open exceeding bright, and i saw jesus hanging on the cross. at the same moment these words were applied to my heart: "thy sins are forgiven thee." all guilt was gone, and my soul was filled with unutterable peace: the fear of death and hell was vanished away. i was filled with wonder and astonishment. i closed my eyes, but the impression was still the same; and for about ten weeks, while i was awake, let me be where i would, the same appearance was still before my eyes, and the same impression upon my heart, _thy sins are forgiven thee_.' not the narrative, in the acts, of paul's journey to damascus, could more convince us, as we have said, of its own honesty. but this honesty makes nothing, as every one will admit, for the scientific truth of any scheme of doctrine propounded by sampson staniforth, which must prove itself and its own scientific value before science can admit it. precisely the same is it with paul's doctrine; and we repeat, therefore, that he and his doctrine have herein a great advantage over puritanism, in that, so far as we have yet followed them, they, unlike puritanism, rely on facts of experience and assert nothing which science cannot verify. we have now to see whether paul, in passing from the undoubted facts of experience, with which he begins, to his religion properly so called, abandons in any essential points of his teaching the advantage with which he started, and ends, as puritanism commences, with a batch of arbitrary and unscientific assumptions. we left paul in collision with a fact of human nature, but in itself a sterile fact, a fact on which it is possible to dwell too long, although puritanism, thinking this impossible, has remained intensely absorbed in the contemplation of it, and indeed has never properly got beyond it,--the sense of sin. sin is not a monster to be mused on, but an impotence to be got rid of. all thinking about it, beyond what is indispensable for the firm effort to get rid of it, is waste of energy and waste of time. we then enter that element of morbid and subjective brooding, in which so many have perished. this sense of sin, however, it is also possible to have not strongly enough to beget the firm effort to get rid of it, and the greeks, with all their great gifts, had this sense not strongly enough; its strength in the hebrew people is one of this people's mainsprings. and no hebrew prophet or psalmist felt what sin was more powerfully than paul. 'mine iniquities have taken hold upon me so that i am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head; therefore my heart faileth me.'[36] _they are more than the hairs of mine head._ the motions of what paul calls 'the law in our members' are indeed a hydrabrood; when we are working against one fault, a dozen others crop up without our expecting it; and this it is which drives the man who deals seriously with himself to difficulty, nay to despair. paul did not need james to tell him that whoever offends on one point is, so far at least as his own conscience and inward satisfaction are concerned, guilty of all;[37] he knew it himself, and the unrest this knowledge gave him was his very starting-point. he knew, too, that nothing outward, no satisfaction of all the requirements men may make of us, no privileges of any sort, can give peace of conscience;--of conscience, 'whose praise is not of men but of god.'[38] he knew, also, that the law of the moral order stretches beyond us and our private conscience, is independent of our sense of having kept it, and stands absolute and what in itself it is; even, therefore, though i may know nothing against myself, yet this is not enough, i may still not be just.[39] finally, paul knew that merely to know all this and say it, is of no use, advances us nothing; 'the kingdom of god is not in word but in power.'[40] [footnote 36: _ps._ xl, 12.] [footnote 37: _james_, ii, 10.] [footnote 38: _rom._, ii, 29.] [footnote 39: i _cor._, iv, 4.] [footnote 40: _ibid._, 20.] we have several times said that the hebrew race apprehended god,--the universal order by which all things fulfil the law of their being,--chiefly as the moral order in human nature, and that it was their greatness that they apprehended him as this so distinctly and powerfully. but it is also characteristic of them, and perhaps it is what mainly distinguishes their spirit from the spirit of mediã¦val christianity, that they constantly thought, too, of god as the source of life and breath and all things, and of what they called 'fulness of life' in all things. this way of thinking was common to them with the greeks; although, whereas the greeks threw more delicacy and imagination into it, the hebrews threw more energy and vital warmth. but to the hebrew, as to the greek, the gift of life, and health, and the world, was divine, as well as the gift of morals. 'god's righteousness,' indeed, 'standeth like the strong mountains, his judgments are like the great deep; he is a righteous judge, strong and patient, who is provoked every day.'[41] this is the hebrew's first and deepest conception of god,--as the source of the moral order. but god is also, to the hebrew, 'our rock, which is higher than we,' the power by which we have been 'upholden ever since we were born,' that has 'fashioned us and laid his hand upon us' and envelops us on every side, that has 'made us fearfully and wonderfully,' and whose 'mercy is over all his works.'[42] he is the power that 'saves both man and beast, gives them drink of his pleasures as out of the river,' and with whom is 'the well of life.'[43] in his speech at athens, paul shows how full he, too, was of this feeling; and in the famous passage in the first chapter of the epistle to the romans, where he asserts the existence of the natural moral law, the source he assigns to this law is not merely god in conscience, the righteous judge, but god in the world and the workings of the world, the eternal and divine power from which all life and wholesome energy proceed.[44] [footnote 41: _ps._ xxxvi, 6; vii, 11.] [footnote 42: _ps._ lxi, 2; lxii, 6; cxxxix, 5, 14; cxlv, 9.] [footnote 43: _ps._ xxxvi, 6, 8, 9.] [footnote 44: _rom._, i, 19-21.] this element in which we live and move and have our being, which stretches around and beyond the strictly moral element in us, around and beyond the finite sphere of what is originated, measured, and controlled by our own understanding and will,--this infinite element is very present to paul's thoughts, and makes a profound impression on them. by this element we are receptive and influenced, not originative and influencing; now, we all of us receive far more than we originate. our pleasure from a spring day we do not make; our pleasure, even, from an approving conscience we do not make. and yet we feel that both the one pleasure and the other can, and often do, work with us in a wonderful way for our good. so we get the thought of an impulsion outside ourselves which is at once awful and beneficent. 'no man,' as the hebrew psalm says, 'hath quickened his own soul.'[45] 'i know,' says jeremiah, 'that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.'[46] most true and natural is this feeling; and the greater men are, the more natural is this feeling to them. great men like sylla and napoleon have loved to attribute their success to their fortune, their star; religious great men have loved to say that their sufficiency was of god.[47] but through every great spirit runs a train of feeling of this sort; and the power and depth which there undoubtedly is in calvinism, comes from calvinism's being overwhelmed by it. paul is not, like calvinism, overwhelmed by it; but it is always before his mind and strongly agitates his thoughts. the voluntary, rational, and human world, of righteousness, moral choice, effort, filled the first place in his spirit. but the necessary, mystical, and divine world, of influence, sympathy, emotion, filled the second; and he could pass naturally from the one world to the other. the presence in paul of this twofold feeling acted irresistibly upon his doctrine. what he calls 'the power that worketh in us,'[48] and that produces results transcending all our expectations and calculations, he instinctively sought to combine with our personal agencies of reason and conscience. [footnote 45: _ps._ xxii, 29.] [footnote 46: _jer._, x, 23.] [footnote 47: ii _cor._, iii, 5.] [footnote 48: _eph._, iii, 20.] of such a mysterious power and its operation some clear notion may be got by anybody who has ever had any overpowering attachment, or has been, according to the common expression, in love. every one knows how being in love changes for the time a man's spiritual atmosphere, and makes animation and buoyancy where before there was flatness and dulness. one may even say that this is the reason why being in love is so popular with the whole human race,--because it relieves in so irresistible and delightful a manner the tedium or depression of common-place human life. and not only does it change the atmosphere of our spirits, making air, light, and movement where before was stagnation and gloom, but it also sensibly and powerfully increases our faculties of action. it is matter of the commonest remark how a timid man who is in love will show courage, or an indolent man will show diligence. nay, a timid man who would be only the more paralysed in a moment of danger by being told that it is his bounden duty as a man to show firmness, and that he must be ruined and disgraced for ever if he does not, will show firmness quite easily from being in love. an indolent man who shrinks back from vigorous effort only the more because he is told and knows that it is a man's business to show energy, and that it is shameful in him if he does not, will show energy quite easily from being in love. this, i say, we learn from the analogy of the most everyday experience;--that a powerful attachment will give a man spirits and confidence which he could by no means call up or command of himself; and that in this mood he can do wonders which would not be possible to him without it. we have seen how paul felt himself to be for the sake of righteousness _apprehended_, to use his own expression, by christ. 'i seek,' he says, 'to apprehend that for which also i am apprehended by christ.'[49] this for which he is thus apprehended is,--still to use his own words,--_the righteousness of god_; not an incomplete and maimed righteousness, not a partial and unsatisfying establishment of the law of the spirit, dominant to-day, deposed to-morrow, effective at one or two points, failing in a hundred; no, but an entire conformity at all points with the divine moral order, the will of god, and, in consequence, a sense of harmony with this order, of acceptance with god. [footnote 49: _philipp._, iii, 12.] in some points paul had always served this order with a clear conscience. he did not steal, he did not commit adultery. but he was at the same time, he says himself, 'a blasphemer and a persecutor and an insulter,'[50] and the contemplation of jesus christ made him see this, impressed it forcibly upon his mind. here was his greatness, and the worth of his way of appropriating christ. we have seen how calvinism, too,--calvinism which has built itself upon st. paul,--is a blasphemer, when it speaks of good works done by those who do not hold the calvinist doctrine. there would need no great sensitiveness of conscience, one would think, to show that calvinism has often been, also, a persecutor, and an insulter. calvinism, as well as paul, professes to study jesus christ. but the difference between paul's study of christ and calvinism's is this: that paul by studying christ got to know himself clearly, and to transform his narrow conception of righteousness; while calvinism studies both christ and paul after him to no such good purpose. [footnote 50: i _tim._, i, 13.] these, however, are but the veriest rudiments of the history of paul's gain from jesus christ, as the particular impression mentioned is but the veriest fragment of the total impression produced by the contemplation of christ upon him. the sum and substance of that total impression may best be conveyed by two words,--_without sin_. we must here revert to what we have already said of the importance, for sound criticism of a man's ideas, of the order in which his ideas come. for us, who approach christianity through a scholastic theology, it is christ's divinity which establishes his being without sin. for paul, who approached christianity through his personal experience, it was jesus christ's being without sin which establishes his divinity. the large and complete conception of righteousness to which he himself had slowly and late, and only by jesus christ's help, awakened, in jesus he seemed to see existing absolutely and naturally. the devotion to this conception which made it meat and drink to carry it into effect, a devotion of which he himself was strongly and deeply conscious, he saw in jesus still stronger, by far, and deeper than in himself. but for attaining the righteousness of god, for reaching an absolute conformity with the moral order and with god's will, he saw no such impotence existing in jesus christ's case as in his own. for jesus, the uncertain conflict between the law in our members and the law of the spirit did not appear to exist. those eternal vicissitudes of victory and defeat, which drove paul to despair, in jesus were absent. smoothly and inevitably he followed the real and eternal order, in preference to the momentary and apparent order. obstacles outside him there were plenty, but obstacles within him there were none. he was led by the spirit of god; he was dead to sin, he lived to god; and in this life to god he persevered even to the cruel bodily death of the cross. as many as are led by the spirit of god, says paul, are the sons of god.[51] if this is so with even us, who live to god so feebly and who render such an imperfect obedience, how much more is he who lives to god entirely and who renders an unalterable obedience, the unique and only son of god? [footnote 51: _rom._, viii, 14.] this is undoubtedly the main line of movement which paul's ideas respecting jesus christ follow. he had been trained, however, in the scholastic theology of judaism, just as we are trained in the scholastic theology of christianity; would that we were as little embarrassed with our training as he was with his! the jewish theological doctrine respecting the eternal word or wisdom of god, which was with god from the beginning before the oldest of his works, and through which the world was created, this doctrine, which appears in the book of proverbs and again in the book of wisdom,[52] paul applied to jesus christ, and in the epistle to the colossians there is a remarkable passage[53] with clear signs of his thus applying it. but then this metaphysical and theological basis to the historic being of jesus is something added by paul from outside to his own essential ideas concerning him, something which fitted them and was naturally taken on to them; it is secondary, it is not an original part of his system, much less the ground of it. it fills a very different place in his system from the place which it fills in the system of the author of the fourth gospel, who takes his starting-point from it. paul's starting-point, it cannot be too often repeated, is the idea of righteousness; and his concern with jesus is as the clue to righteousness, not as the clue to transcendental ontology. speculations in this region had no overpowering attraction for paul, notwithstanding the traces of an acquaintance with them which we find in his writings, and notwithstanding the great activity of his intellect. this activity threw itself with an unerring instinct into a sphere where, with whatever travail and through whatever impediments to clear expression, directly practical religious results might yet be won, and not into any sphere of abstract speculation. [footnote 52: _prov._, viii, 22-31; and _wisd._, vii, 25-27.] [footnote 53: _col._, i, 15-17.] much more visible and important than his identification of jesus with the divine hypostasis known as the logos, is paul's identification of him with the messiah. ever present is his recognition of him as the messiah to whom all the law and prophets pointed, of whom the heart of the jewish race was full, and on whom the jewish instructors of paul's youth had dwelt abundantly. the jewish language and ideas respecting the end of the world and the messiah's kingdom, his day, his presence, his appearing, his glory, paul applied to jesus, and constantly used. of the force and reality which these ideas and expressions had for him there can be no question; as to his use of them, only two remarks are needed. one is, that in him these jewish ideas,--as any one will feel who calls to mind a genuine display of them like that in the apocalypse,--are spiritualised; and as he advances in his course they are spiritualised increasingly. the other remark is, that important as these ideas are in paul, of them, too, the importance is only secondary, compared with that of the great central matter of his thoughts: _the righteousness of god, the non-fulfilment of it by man, the fulfilment of it by christ_. once more we are led to a result favourable to the scientific value of paul's teaching. that jesus christ was the divine logos, the second person of the trinity, science can neither deny nor affirm. that he was the jewish messiah, who will some day appear in the sky with the sound of trumpets, to put an end to the actual kingdoms of the world and to establish his own kingdom, science can neither deny nor affirm. the very terms of which these propositions are composed are such as science is unable to handle. but that the jesus of the bible follows the universal moral order and the will of god, without being let and hindered as we are by the motions of private passion and by self-will, this is evident to whoever can read the bible with open eyes. it is just what any criticism of the gospel-history, which sees that history as it really is, tells us; it is the scientific result of that history. and this is the result which pre-eminently occupies paul. of christ's life and death, the all-importance for us, according to paul, is that by means of them, 'denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly;' should be enabled to 'bear fruit to god' in 'love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control.'[54] of christ's life and death the scope was 'to redeem us from all iniquity, and make us purely zealous for good works.'[55] paul says by way of preface, that we are to live thus in the actual world which now is, 'with the expectation of the appearing of the glory of god and christ.'[56] by nature and habit, and with his full belief that the end of the world was nigh at hand, paul used these words to mean a messianic coming and kingdom. later christianity has transferred them, as it has transferred so much else of paul's, to a life beyond the grave, but it has by no means spiritualised them. paul, as his spiritual growth advanced, spiritualised them more and more; he came to think, in using them, more and more of a gradual inward transformation of the world by a conformity like christ's to the will of god, than of a messianic advent. yet even then they are always second with him, and not first; the essence of saving grace is always to make us righteous, to bring us into conformity with the divine law, to enable us to 'bear fruit to god.' [footnote 54: _tit._, ii, 12; _rom._, vii, 4; _gal._, v, 22, 23.] [footnote 55: _tit._, ii, 14.] [footnote 56: _ibid._, 13.] 'jesus christ gave himself for us that he might redeem us from iniquity.' first of all, he rendered an unbroken obedience to the law of the spirit; he served the spirit of god; he came, not to do his own will, but the will of god. now, the law of the spirit makes men one; it is only by the law in our members that we are many. secondly, therefore, jesus christ had an unfailing sense of what we have called, using an expressive modern term, the _solidarity_ of men: that it was not god's will that one of his human creatures should perish. thirdly, jesus christ persevered in this uninterrupted obedience to the law of the spirit, in this unfailing sense of human solidarity, even to the death; though everything befell him which might break the one or tire out the other. lastly, he had in himself, in all he said and did, that ineffable force of attraction which doubled the virtue of everything said or done by him. if ever there was a case in which the wonder-working power of attachment, in a man for whom the moral sympathies and the desire of righteousness were all-powerful, might employ itself and work its wonders, it was here. paul felt this power penetrate him; and he felt, also, how by perfectly identifying himself through it with jesus, and in no other way, could he ever get the confidence and the force to do as jesus did. he thus found a point in which the mighty world outside man, and the weak world inside him, seemed to combine for his salvation. the struggling stream of duty, which had not volume enough to bear him to his goal, was suddenly reinforced by the immense tidal wave of sympathy and emotion. to this new and potent influence paul gave the name of _faith_. more fully he calls it: 'faith that worketh _through love_.'[57] the word _faith_ points, no doubt, to 'coming by hearing,' and has possibly a reminiscence, for paul, of his not having with his own waking eyes, like the original disciples, seen jesus, and of his special mission being to gentiles who had not seen jesus either. but the essential meaning of the word is 'power of holding on to the unseen,' 'fidelity.' other attachments demand fidelity in absence to an object which, at some time or other, nevertheless, has been seen; this attachment demands fidelity to an object which both is absent and has never been seen by us. it is therefore rightly called not constancy, but faith; a power, pre-eminently, of _holding fast to an unseen power of goodness_. identifying ourselves with jesus christ through this attachment we become as he was. we live with his thoughts and feelings, and we participate, therefore, in his freedom from the ruinous law in our members, in his obedience to the saving law of the spirit, in his conformity to the eternal order, in the joy and peace of his life to god. 'the law of the spirit of life in christ jesus,' says paul, 'freed me from the law of sin and death.'[58] this is what is done for us by _faith_. [footnote 57: _gal._, v, 6.] [footnote 58: _rom._, viii, 2.] it is evident that some difficulty arises out of paul's adding to the general sense of the word faith,--_a holding fast to an unseen power of goodness_,--a particular sense of his own,--_identification with christ_. it will at once appear that this faith of paul's is in truth a specific form of holding fast to an unseen power of goodness; and that while it can properly be said of abraham, for instance, that he was justified by faith, if we take faith in its plain sense of holding fast to an unseen power of goodness, yet it cannot without difficulty and recourse to a strained figure be said of him, if we take faith in paul's specific sense of identification with christ. paul however, undoubtedly, having conveyed his new specific sense into the word faith, still uses the word in all cases where, without this specific sense, it was before applicable and usual; and in this way he often creates ambiguity. why, it may be asked, does paul, instead of employing a special term to denote his special meaning, still thus employ the general term faith? we are inclined to think it was from that desire to get for his words and thoughts not only the real but also the apparent sanction and consecration of the hebrew scriptures, which we have called his tendency to judaise. it was written of the founder of israel, abraham, that he _believed_ god and it was counted to him for righteousness. the prophet habakkuk had the famous text: 'the just shall live by _faith_.'[59] jesus, too, had used and sanctioned the use of the word _faith_ to signify cleaving to the unseen god's power of goodness as shown in christ.[60] peter and john and the other apostles habitually used the word in the same sense, with the modification introduced by christ's departure. this was enough to make paul retain for that vital operation, which was the heart of his whole religious system, the name of faith, though he had considerably developed and enlarged the name's usual meaning. fraught with this new and developed sense, the term does not always quite well suit the cases to which it was in its old sense, with perfect propriety, applied; this, however, paul did not regard. the term applied with undeniable truth, though not with perfect adequacy, to the great spiritual operation whereto he affixed it; and it was at the same time the name given to the crowning grace of the great father of the jewish nation, abraham; it was the prophet habakkuk's talismanic and consecrated term, _faith_. [footnote 59: _gen._, xv, 6; _habakkuk_, ii, 4.] [footnote 60: _mark_, xi, 22.] in this word _faith_, as used by st. paul,[61] we reach a point round which the ceaseless stream of religious exposition and discussion has for ages circled. even for those who misconceive paul's line of ideas most completely, faith is so evidently the central point in his system that their thoughts cannot but centre upon it. puritanism, as is well known, has talked of little else but faith. and the word is of such a nature, that, the true clue once lost which paul has given us to its meaning, every man may put into it almost anything he likes, all the fancies of his superstition or of his fanaticism. to say, therefore, that to have faith in christ means to be attached to christ, to embrace christ, to be identified with christ, is not enough; the question is, to be attached to him _how_, to embrace him _how_? [footnote 61: with secondary uses of the word, such as its use with the article, '_the_ faith,' in expressions like 'the words of the faith,' to signify the body of tenets and principles received by believers from the apostle, we need not here concern ourselves. they present no difficulty.] a favourite expression of popular theology conveys perfectly the popular definition of faith: _to rest in the finished work of the saviour_. in the scientific language of protestant theology, to embrace christ, to have saving faith, is 'to give our consent heartily to the covenant of grace, and so to receive the benefit of justification, whereby god pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous for the righteousness of christ imputed to us.' this is mere theurgy, in which, so far as we have yet gone, we have not found paul dealing. wesley, with his genius for godliness, struggled all his life for some deeper and more edifying account of that faith, which he felt working wonders in his own soul, than that it was a hearty consent to the covenant of grace and an acceptance of the benefit of christ's imputed righteousness. yet this amiable and gracious spirit, but intellectually slight and shallow compared to paul, beat his wings in vain. paul, nevertheless, had solved the problem for him, if only he could have had eyes to see paul's solution. 'he that believes in christ,' says wesley, 'discerns spiritual things: he is enabled to taste, see, hear, and feel god.' there is nothing practical and solid here. a company of cornish revivalists will have no difficulty in tasting, seeing, hearing, and feeling god, twenty times over, to-night, and yet may be none the better for it to-morrow morning. when paul said, _in christ jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith that worketh through love; have faith in christ!_ these words did not mean for him: 'give your hearty belief and consent to the covenant of grace; accept the offered benefit of justification through christ's imputed righteousness.' they did not mean: 'try and discern spiritual things, try and taste, see, hear, and feel god.' they did not mean: 'rest in the finished work of christ the saviour.' no, they meant: _die with him!_ the object of this treatise is not religious edification, but the true criticism of a great and misunderstood author. yet it is impossible to be in presence of this pauline conception of faith without remarking on the incomparable power of edification which it contains. it is indeed a crowning evidence of that piercing practical religious sense which we have attributed to paul. it is at once mystical and rational; and it enlists in its service the best forces of both worlds,--the world of reason and morals, and the world of sympathy and emotion. the world of reason and duty has an excellent clue to action, but wants motive-power; the world of sympathy and influence has an irresistible force of motive-power, but wants a clue for directing its exertion. the danger of the one world is weariness in well-doing; the danger of the other is sterile raptures and immoral fanaticism. paul takes from both worlds what can help him, and leaves what cannot. the elemental power of sympathy and emotion in us, a power which extends beyond the limits of our own will and conscious activity, which we cannot measure and control, and which in each of us differs immensely in force, volume, and mode of manifestation, he calls into full play, and sets it to work with all its strength and in all its variety. but one unalterable object is assigned by him to this power: _to die with christ to the law of the flesh, to live with christ to the law of the mind_. this is the doctrine of the _necrosis_,[62]--paul's central doctrine, and the doctrine which makes his profoundness and originality. his repeated and minute lists of practices and feelings to be followed or suppressed, now take a heightened significance. they were the matter by which his faith tried itself and knew itself. those multitudinous motions of appetite and self-will which reason and conscience disapproved, reason and conscience could yet not govern, and had to yield to them. this, as we have seen, is what drove paul almost to despair. well, then, how did paul's faith, working through love, help him here? it enabled him to reinforce duty by affection. in the central need of his nature, the desire to govern these motions of unrighteousness, it enabled him to say: _die to them! christ did._ if any man be in christ, said paul--that is, if any man identifies himself with christ by attachment so that he enters into his feelings and lives with his life,--he is a new creature;[63] he can do, and does, what christ did. first, he suffers with him. christ throughout his life and in his death presented his body a living sacrifice to god; every self-willed impulse blindly trying to assert itself without respect of the universal order, he died to. you, says paul to his disciple, are to do the same. never mind how various and multitudinous the impulses are; impulses to intemperance, concupiscence, covetousness, pride, sloth, envy, malignity, anger, clamour, bitterness, harshness, unmercifulness. die to them all, and to each as it comes! christ did. if you cannot, your attachment, your faith, must be one that goes but a very little way. in an ordinary human attachment, out of love to a woman, out of love to a friend, out of love to a child, you can suppress quite easily, because by sympathy you enter into their feelings, this or that impulse of selfishness which happens to conflict with them, and which hitherto you have obeyed. _all_ impulses of selfishness conflict with christ's feelings, he showed it by dying to them all; if you are one with him by faith and sympathy, you can die to them also. then, secondly, if you thus die with him, you become transformed by the renewing of your mind, and rise with him. the law of the spirit of life which is in christ becomes the law of your life also, and frees you from the law of sin and death. you rise with him to that harmonious conformity with the real and eternal order, that sense of pleasing god who trieth the hearts, which is life and peace, and which grows more and more till it becomes glory. if you suffer with him, therefore, you shall also be glorified with him. [footnote 62: ii _cor._, iv, 10.] [footnote 63: ii _cor._, v, 17.] the real worth of this mystical conception depends on the fitness of the character and history of jesus christ for inspiring such an enthusiasm of attachment and devotion as that which paul's notion of faith implies. if the character and history are eminently such as to inspire it, then paul has no doubt found a mighty aid towards the attainment of that righteousness of which jesus christ's life afforded the admirable pattern. a great solicitude is always shown by popular christianity to establish a radical difference between jesus and a teacher, like socrates. ordinary theologians establish this difference by transcendental distinctions into which science cannot follow them. but what makes for science the radical difference between jesus and socrates, is that such a conception as paul's would, if applied to socrates, be out of place and ineffective. socrates inspired boundless friendship and esteem; but the inspiration of reason and conscience is the one inspiration which comes from him, and which impels us to live righteously as he did. a penetrating enthusiasm of love, sympathy, pity, adoration, reinforcing the inspiration of reason and duty, does not belong to socrates. with jesus it is different. on this point it is needless to argue; history has proved. in the midst of errors the most prosaic, the most immoral, the most unscriptural, concerning god, christ, and righteousness, the immense emotion of love and sympathy inspired by the person and character of jesus has had to work almost by itself alone for righteousness; and it has worked wonders. the surpassing religious grandeur of paul's conception of faith is that it seizes a real salutary emotional force of incalculable magnitude, and reinforces moral effort with it. paul's mystical conception is not complete without its relation of us to our fellow-men, as well as its relation of us to jesus christ. whoever identifies himself with christ, identifies himself with christ's idea of the solidarity of men. the whole race is conceived as one body, having to die and rise with christ, and forming by the joint action of its regenerate members the mystical body of christ. hence the truth of that which bishop wilson says: 'it is not so much our neighbour's interest as our own that we love him.' jesus christ's life, with which we by faith identify ourselves, is not complete, his aspiration after the eternal order is not satisfied, so long as only jesus himself follows this order, or only this or that individual amongst us men follows it. the same law of emotion and sympathy, therefore, which prevails in our inward self-discipline, is to prevail in our dealings with others. the motions of sin in ourselves we succeed in mortifying, not by saying to ourselves that they are sinful, but by sympathy with christ in his mortification of them. in like manner, our duties towards our neighbour we perform, not in deference to external commands and prohibitions, but through identifying ourselves with him by sympathy with christ who identified himself with him. therefore, we owe no man anything but to love one another; and he who loves his neighbour fulfils the law towards him, because he seeks to do him good and forbears to do him harm just as if he was himself. mr. lecky cannot see that the command to speak the truth to one's neighbour is a command which has a natural sanction. but according to these pauline ideas it has a clear natural sanction. for, if my neighbour is merely an extension of myself, deceiving my neighbour is the same as deceiving myself; and than self-deceit there is nothing by nature more baneful. and on this ground paul puts the injunction. he says: 'speak every man truth to his neighbour, _for_ we are members one of another.'[64] this direction to identify ourselves in jesus christ with our neighbours is hard and startling, no doubt, like the direction to identify ourselves with jesus and die with him. but it is also, like that direction, inspiring; and not, like a set of mere mechanical commands and prohibitions, lifeless and unaiding. it shows a profound practical religious sense, and rests upon facts of human nature which experience can follow and appreciate. [footnote 64: _eph._, iv, 25.] the three essential terms of pauline theology are not, therefore, as popular theology makes them: _calling_, _justification_, _sanctification_. they are rather these: _dying with christ_, _resurrection from the dead_, _growing into christ_.[65] the order in which these terms are placed indicates, what we have already pointed out elsewhere, the true pauline sense of the expression, _resurrection from the dead_. in paul's ideas the expression has no essential connexion with physical death. it is true, popular theology connects it with this almost exclusively, and regards any other use of it as purely figurative and secondary. for popular theology, christ's resurrection is his bodily resurrection on earth after his physical death on the cross; the believer's resurrection is his bodily resurrection in a future world, the golden city of our hymns and of the apocalypse. for this theology, the force of christ's resurrection is that it is a miracle which guarantees the promised future miracle of our own resurrection. it is a common remark with biblical critics, even with able and candid biblical critics, that christ's resurrection, in this sense of a physical miracle, is the central object of paul's thoughts and the foundation of all his theology. nay, the preoccupation with this idea has altered the very text of our documents; so that whereas paul wrote, 'christ died and lived,' we read, 'christ died and rose again and revived.'[66] but whoever has carefully followed paul's line of thought as we have endeavoured to trace it, will see that in his mature theology, as the epistle to the romans exhibits it, it cannot be this physical and miraculous aspect of the resurrection which holds the first place in his mind; for under this aspect the resurrection does not fit in with the ideas which he is developing. [footnote 65: +apothanein syn christã´+, _col._, ii, 20; +exanastasis ek nekrã´n+, _philipp._, iii, 11; +auxãªsis eis christon+, _eph._, iv, 15.] [footnote 66: _rom._, xiv, 9.] not for a moment do we deny that in paul's earlier theology, and notably in the epistles to the thessalonians and corinthians, the physical and miraculous aspect of the resurrection, both christ's and the believer's, is primary and predominant. not for a moment do we deny that to the very end of his life, after the epistle to the romans, after the epistle to the philippians, if he had been asked whether he held the doctrine of the resurrection in the physical and miraculous sense, as well as in his own spiritual and mystical sense, he would have replied with entire conviction that he did. very likely it would have been impossible to him to imagine his theology without it. but:- below the surface-stream, shallow and light, of what we _say_ we feel--below the stream, as light, of what we _think_ we feel--there flows with noiseless current strong, obscure and deep, the central stream of what we feel indeed; and by this alone are we truly characterised. paul's originality lies in the effort to find a moral side and significance for all the processes, however mystical, of the religious life, with a view of strengthening, in this way, their hold upon us and their command of all our nature. sooner or later he was sure to be drawn to treat the process of resurrection with this endeavour. he did so treat it; and what is original and essential in him is his doing so. paul's conception of life and death inevitably came to govern his conception of resurrection. what indeed, as we have seen, is for paul life, and what is death? not the ordinary physical life and death. death, for him, is living after the flesh, obedience to sin; life is mortifying by the spirit the deeds of the flesh, obedience to righteousness. resurrection, in its essential sense, is therefore for paul, the rising, within the sphere of our visible earthly existence, from death in this sense to life in this sense. it is indubitable that, so far as the human believer's resurrection is concerned, this is so. else, how could paul say to the colossians (to take only one out of a hundred clear texts showing the same thing): '_if ye then be risen with christ_, seek the things that are above.'[67] but when paul repeats again and again, in the epistle to the romans, that the matter of our faith is 'that god raised jesus from the dead,' the essential meaning of this resurrection, also, is just the same. real life for paul, begins with the mystical death which frees us from the dominion of the external _shalls_ and _shall nots_ of the law.[68] from the moment, therefore, that jesus christ was content to do god's will, he died. paul's point is, that jesus christ in his earthly existence obeyed the law of the spirit and bore fruit to god; and that the believer should, in his earthly existence, do the same. that christ 'died to sin,' that he 'pleased not himself,' and that, consequently, through all his life here, he was risen and living to god, is what occupies paul. christ's physical resurrection after he was crucified is neither in point of time nor in point of character the resurrection on which paul, following his essential line of thought, wanted to fix the believer's mind. the resurrection paul was striving after for himself and others was a resurrection _now_, and a resurrection to _righteousness_.[69] [footnote 67: _col._, iii, 1.] [footnote 68: see _rom._, vii, 1-6.] [footnote 69: it has been said that this was the error of hymenã¦us and philetas (ii _tim._, ii, 17). it might be rejoined, with much plausibility, that their error was the error of popular theology, the fixing the attention on the past miracle of christ's physical resurrection, and losing sight of the continuing miracle of the christian's spiritual resurrection. probably, however, hymenã¦us and philetas controverted some of paul's tenets respecting the approaching messianic advent and the resurrection then to take place (i _thess._, iv, 13-17). if they rejected these tenets, they were right where paul was wrong. but if they disputed and separated on account of them, they were _heretics_; that is, they had their hearts and minds full of a speculative contention, instead of their proper chief-concern,--_putting on the new man_, and the imitation of christ.] but jesus christ's obeying god and not pleasing himself culminated in his death on the cross. all through his career, indeed, jesus christ pleased not himself and died to sin. but so smoothly and so inevitably, as we have before said, did he always appear to follow that law of the moral order, which to us it costs such effort to obey, that only in the very wrench and pressure of his violent death did any pain of dying, any conflict between the law of the flesh and the law of the spirit, in christ become visible. but the christian needs to find in christ's dying to sin a fellowship of suffering and a conformity of death. well, then, the point of christ's trial and crucifixion is the only point in his career where the christian can palpably touch what he seeks. in all dying there is struggle and weakness; in our dying to sin there is great struggle and weakness. but only in his crucifixion can we see, in jesus christ, a place for struggle and weakness.[70] that self-sacrificing obedience of jesus christ's whole life, which was summed up in this great, final act of his crucifixion, and which is palpable as sacrifice, obedience, dolorous effort, only there, is, therefore, constantly regarded by paul under the figure of this final act, as is also the believer's conformity to christ's obedience. the believer is crucified with christ when he mortifies by the spirit the deeds of unrighteousness; christ was crucified when he pleased not himself, and came to do not his own will but god's. [footnote 70: +estaurã´thãª ex astheneias+, ii _cor._, xiii, 4.] it is the same with life as with death; it turns on no physical event, but on that central concern of paul's thoughts, righteousness. if we have the spirit of christ, we live, as he did, by the spirit, 'serve the spirit of god,'[71] and follow the eternal order. the spirit of god, the spirit of christ is the same,--the one eternal moral order. if we are led by the spirit of god we are the sons of god, and share with christ the heritage of the sons of god,--eternal life, peace, felicity, glory. the spirit, therefore, is life _because of righteousness_. and when, through identifying ourselves with christ, we reach christ's righteousness, then eternal life begins for us;--a continuous and ascending life, for the eternal order never dies, and the more we transform ourselves into servants of righteousness and organs of the eternal order, the more we are and desire to be this eternal order and nothing else. even in this life we are 'seated in heavenly places,'[72] as christ is; so entirely, for paul, is righteousness the true life and the true heaven. but the transformation cannot be completed here; the physical death is regarded by paul as a stage at which it ceases to be impeded. however, at this stage we quit, as he himself says, the ground of experience and enter upon the ground of hope. but, by a sublime analogy, he fetches from the travail of the whole universe proof of the necessity and beneficence of the law of transformation. jesus christ entered into his glory when he had made his physical death itself a crowning witness to his obedience to righteousness; we, in like manner, within the limits of this earthly life and before we have yet persevered to the end, must not look for full adoption, for the glorious revelation in us of the sons of god.[73] [footnote 71: according to the true reading in _philipp._, iii, 3.] [footnote 72: _eph._, ii, 6.] [footnote 73: _rom._, viii, 18-25.] that paul, as we have said, accepted the physical miracle of christ's resurrection and ascension as a part of the signs and wonders which accompanied christianity, there can be no doubt. just in the same manner he accepted the eschatology, as it is called, of his nation,--their doctrine of the final things and of the summons by a trumpet in the sky to judgment; he accepted satan, hierarchies of angels, and an approaching end of the world. what we deny is, that his acceptance of the former gives to his teaching its essential characters, any more than his acceptance of the latter. we should but be continuing, with strict logical development, paul's essential line of thought, if we said that the true ascension and glorified reign of christ was the triumph and reign of his spirit, of his real life, far more operative after his death on the cross than before it; and that in this sense, most truly, he and all who persevere to the end as he did are 'sown in weakness but raised in power.' paul himself, however, did not distinctly continue his thought thus, and neither will we do so for him. how far paul himself knew that he had gone in his irresistible bent to find, for each of the data of his religion, that side of moral and spiritual significance which, as a mere sign and wonder, it had not and could not have,--what data he himself was conscious of having transferred, through following this bent, from the first rank in importance to the second,--we cannot know with any certainty. that the bent existed, that paul felt it existed, and that it establishes a wide difference between the earliest epistles and the latest, is beyond question. already, in the second epistle to the corinthians, he declares that, 'though he had known christ after the flesh, yet henceforth he knew him so no more;'[74] and in the epistle to the romans, shortly afterwards, he rejects the notion of dwelling on the miraculous christ, on the descent into hell and on the ascent into heaven, and fixes the believer's attention solely on the faith of christ and on the effects produced by an acquaintance with it.[75] in the same epistle, in like manner, the kingdom of god, of which to the thessalonians he described the advent in such materialising and popularly judaic language, has become 'righteousness, and peace, and joy in the holy spirit.'[76] [footnote 74: ii _cor._, v, 16.] [footnote 75: _rom._, x, 6-10.] [footnote 76: _rom._, xiv, 17.] these ideas, we repeat, may never have excluded others, which absorbed the most part of paul's contemporaries as they absorb popular religion at this day. to popular religion, the real kingdom of god is the new jerusalem with its jaspers and emeralds; righteousness and peace and joy are only the kingdom of god figuratively. the real sitting in heavenly places is the sitting on thrones in a land of pure delight after we are dead; serving the spirit of god is only sitting in heavenly places figuratively. science exactly reverses this process. for science, the spiritual notion is the real one, the material notion is figurative. the astonishing greatness of paul is, that, coming when and where and whence he did, he yet grasped the spiritual notion, if not exclusively and fully, yet firmly and predominantly; more and more predominantly through all the last years of his life. and what makes him original and himself, is not what he shares with his contemporaries and with modern popular religion, but this which he develops of his own; and this which he develops of his own is just of a nature to make his religion a theology instead of a theurgy, and at bottom a scientific instead of a non-scientific structure. 'die and come to life!' says goethe,--an unsuspected witness, assuredly, to the psychological and scientific profoundness of paul's conception of life and death:--'die and come to life! for, so long as this is not accomplished, thou art but a troubled guest upon an earth of gloom.'[77] [footnote 77: stirb und werde! denn so lang du das nicht hast, bist du nur ein trã¼ber gast auf der dunkeln erde.] the three cardinal points in paul's theology are not therefore, we repeat, those commonly assigned by puritanism, _calling_, _justification_, _sanctification_; but they are these: _dying with christ_, _resurrection from the dead_, _growing into christ_. and we will venture, moreover, to affirm that the more the epistle to the romans is read and re-read with a clear mind, the more will the conviction strengthen, that the sense indicated by the order in which we here class the second main term of paul's conception, is the essential sense which paul himself attaches to this term, in every single place where in that epistle he has used it. not tradition and not theory, but a simple impartial study of the development of paul's central line of thought, brings us to the conclusion, that from the very outset of the epistle, where paul speaks of christ as 'declared to be the son of god with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead,'[78] to the very end, the essential sense in which paul uses the term _resurrection_ is that of a rising, in this visible earthly existence, from the death of obedience to blind selfish impulse, to the life of obedience to the eternal moral order;--in christ's case first, as the pattern for us to follow; in the believer's case afterwards, as following christ's pattern through identifying himself with him. [footnote 78: _rom._, i, 4.] we have thus reached paul's fundamental conception without even a glimpse of the fundamental conceptions of puritanism, which, nevertheless, professes to have learnt its doctrine from st. paul and from his epistle to the romans. once, for a moment, the term _faith_ brought us in contact with the doctrine of puritanism, but only to see that the essential sense given to this word by paul puritanism had missed entirely. other parts, then, of the epistle to the romans than those by which we have been occupied must have chiefly fixed the attention of puritanism. and so it has in truth been. yet the parts of the epistle to the romans that have occupied us are undoubtedly the parts which not our own theories and inclinations,--for we have approached the matter without any,--but an impartial criticism of paul's real line of thought, must elevate as the most important. if a somewhat pedantic form of expression may be forgiven for the sake of clearness, we may say that of the eleven first chapters of the epistle to the romans,--the chapters which convey paul's theology, though not, as we have seen, with any scholastic purpose or in any formal scientific mode of exposition,--of these eleven chapters, the first, second, and third are, in a scale of importance fixed by a scientific criticism of paul's line of thought, sub-primary; the fourth and fifth are secondary; the sixth and eighth are primary; the seventh chapter is sub-primary; the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters are secondary. furthermore, to the contents of the separate chapters themselves this scale must be carried on, so far as to mark that of the two great primary chapters, the sixth and the eighth, the eighth is primary down only to the end of the twenty-eighth verse; from thence to the end it is, however eloquent, yet for the purpose of a scientific criticism of paul's essential theology, only secondary. the first chapter is to the gentiles. its purport is: you have not righteousness. the second is to the jews; and its purport is: no more have you, though you think you have. the third chapter announces faith in christ as the one source of righteousness for all men. the fourth chapter gives to the notion of righteousness through faith the sanction of the old testament and of the history of abraham. the fifth insists on the causes for thankfulness and exultation in the boon of righteousness through faith in christ; and applies illustratively, with this design, the history of adam. the sixth chapter comes to the all-important question: 'what _is_ that faith in christ which i, paul, mean?'--and answers it. the seventh illustrates and explains the answer. but the eighth, down to the end of the twenty-eighth verse, develops and completes the answer. the rest of the eighth chapter expresses the sense of safety and gratitude which the solution is fitted to inspire. the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters uphold the second chapter's thesis,--so hard to a jew, so easy to us,--that righteousness is not by the jewish law; but dwell with hope and joy on a final result of things which is to be favourable to israel. we shall be pardoned this somewhat formal analysis in consideration of the clearness with which it enables us to survey the puritan scheme of original sin, predestination, and justification. the historical transgression of adam occupies, it will be observed, in paul's ideas by no means the primary, fundamental, all-important place which it holds in the ideas of puritanism. 'this' (the transgression of adam) 'is our original sin, the bitter root of all our actual transgressions in thought, word, and deed.' ah, no! paul did not go to the book of genesis to get the real testimony about sin. he went to experience for it. '_i see_,' he says, 'a law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity.'[79] this is the essential testimony respecting the rise of sin to paul,--this rise of it in his own heart and in the heart of all the men who hear him. at quite a later stage in his conception of the religious life, in quite a subordinate capacity, and for the mere purpose of illustration, comes in the allusion to adam and to what is called original sin. paul's desire for righteousness has carried him to christ and to the conception of the righteousness which is of god by faith, and he is expressing his gratitude, delight, wonder, at the boon he has discovered. for the purpose of exalting it he reverts to the well-known story of adam. it cannot even be said that paul judaises in his use here of this story; so entirely does he subordinate it to his purpose of illustration, using it just as he might have used it had he believed, which undoubtedly he did not, that it was merely a symbolical legend, having the advantage of being perfectly familiar to himself and his hearers. 'think,' he says, 'how in adam's fall one man's one transgression involved all men in punishment; then estimate the blessedness of our boon in christ, where one man's one righteousness involves a world of transgressors in blessing![80] this is not a scientific doctrine of corruption inherited through adam's fall; it is a rhetorical use of adam's fall in a passing allusion to it. [footnote 79: _rom._, vii, 23.] [footnote 80: _rom._, v, 12-21.] we come to predestination. we have seen how strong was paul's consciousness of that power, not ourselves, in which we live and move and have our being. the sense of life, peace, and joy, which comes through identification with christ, brings with it a deep and grateful consciousness that this sense is none of our own getting and making. no, it is grace, it is the free gift of god, who gives abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, and calls things that are not as though they were. 'it is not of him that willeth or of him that runneth, but of god that showeth mercy.'[81] as moral agents, for whom alone exist all the predicaments of merit and demerit, praise and blame, effort and failure, vice and virtue, we are impotent and lost;--we are saved through that in us which is passive and involuntary; we are saved through our affections, it is as beings _acted upon_ and _influenced_ that we are saved! well might paul cry out, as this mystical but profound and beneficent conception filled his soul: 'all things work together for good to them that love god, to them who are the called according to his purpose.'[82] well might he say, in the gratitude which cannot find words enough to express its sense of boundless favour, that those who reached peace with god through identification with christ were vessels of mercy, marked from endless ages; that they had been foreknown, predestinated, called, justified, glorified. [footnote 81: _rom._, ix, 16.] [footnote 82: _rom._, viii, 28.] it may be regretted, for the sake of the clear understanding of his essential doctrine, that paul did not stop here. it might seem as if the word 'prothesis,' _purpose_, lured him on into speculative mazes, and involved him, at last, in an embarrassment, from which he impatiently tore himself by the harsh and unedifying image of the clay and the potter. but this is not so. these allurements of speculation, which have been fatal to so many of his interpreters, never mastered paul. he was led into difficulty by the tendency which we have already noticed as making his real imperfection both as a thinker and as a writer,--the tendency to judaise. already, in the fourth chapter, this tendency had led him to seem to rest his doctrine of justification by faith upon the case of abraham, whereas, in truth, it needs all the good will in the world, and some effort of ingenuity, even to bring the case of abraham within the operation of this doctrine. that righteousness is life, that all men by themselves fail of righteousness, that only through identification with jesus christ can they reach it,--these propositions, for us at any rate, prove themselves much better than they are proved by the thesis that abraham in old age believed god's promise that his seed should yet be as the stars for multitude, and that this was counted to him for righteousness. the sanction thus apparently given to the idea that faith is a mere belief, or opinion of the mind, has put thousands of paul's readers on a false track. but paul's judaising did not end here. to establish his doctrine of righteousness by faith, he had to eradicate the notion that his people were specially privileged, and that, having the mosaic law, they did not need anything farther. for us, this one verse of the tenth chapter: _there is no difference between jew and greek, for it is the same lord of all, who is rich to all that call upon him_,--and these four words of another verse: _for righteousness, heart-faith necessary!_--effect far more for paul's object than his three chapters bristling with old testament quotations. by quotation, however, he was to proceed, in order to invest his doctrine with the talismanic virtues of a verbal sanction from the law and the prophets. he shows, therefore, that the law and the prophets had said that only a remnant, an _elect remnant_, of israel should be saved, and that the rest should be blinded. but to say that peace with god through jesus christ inspires such an abounding sense of gratitude, and of its not being our work, that we can only speak of ourselves as _called_ and _chosen_ to it, is one thing; in so speaking, we are on the ground of personal experience. to say, on the other hand, that god has blinded and reprobated other men, so that they shall not reach this blessing, is to quit the ground of personal experience, and to begin employing the magnified and non-natural man in the next street. we then require, in order to account for his proceedings, such an analogy as that of the clay and the potter. this is calvinism, and st. paul undoubtedly falls into it. but the important thing to remark is, that this calvinism, which with the calvinist is primary, is with paul secondary, or even less than secondary. what with calvinists is their fundamental idea, the centre of their theology, is for paul an idea added to his central ideas, and extraneous to them; brought in incidentally, and due to the necessities of a bad mode of recommending and enforcing his thesis. it is as if newton had introduced into his exposition of the law of gravitation an incidental remark, perhaps erroneous, about light or colours; and we were then to make this remark the head and front of newton's law. the theological idea of reprobation was an idea of jewish theology as of ours, an idea familiar to paul and a part of his training, an idea which probably he never consciously abandoned. but its complete secondariness in him is clearly established by other considerations than those which we have drawn from the place and manner of his introduction of it. the very phrase about the clay and the potter is not paul's own; he does but repeat a stock theological figure. isaiah had said: 'o lord, we are the clay, and thou our potter, and we are all the work of thy hand.'[83] jeremiah had said, in the lord's name, to israel: 'behold, as the clay in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, o house of israel.'[84] and the son of sirach comes yet nearer to paul's very words: 'as the clay is in the potter's hand to fashion it at his pleasure, so man is in the hand of him that made him, to render to them as liketh him best.'[85] is an original man's essential, characteristic idea, that which he adopts thus bodily from some one else? but take paul's truly essential idea. 'we are buried with christ through baptism into death, that like as he was raised up from the dead by the glory of the father, even so we also shall walk in newness of life.'[86] did jeremiah say that? is any one the author of it except paul? then there should calvinism have looked for paul's secret, and not in the commonplace about the potter and the vessels of wrath. a commonplace which is so entirely a commonplace to him, that he contradicts it even while he is judaising; for in the very batch of chapters we are discussing he says: 'whosoever shall call upon the name of the lord shall be saved.'[87] still more clear is, on this point, his real mind, when he is not judaising: 'god is the saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.'[88] and anything, finally, which might seem dangerous in the grateful sense of a calling, choosing, and leading by eternal goodness,--a notion as natural as the calvinistic doctrine of predestination is monstrous,--paul abundantly supplies in more than one striking passage; as, for instance, in that incomparable third chapter of the philippians (from which, and from the sixth and eighth chapters of the romans, paul's whole theology, if all his other writings were lost, might be reconstructed), where he expresses his humble consciousness that the mystical resurrection which is his aim, glory, and salvation, he does not yet, and cannot, completely attain. [footnote 83: _is._, lxiv, 8.] [footnote 84: _jer._, xviii, 6.] [footnote 85: _ecclesiasticus_, xxxiii, 13.] [footnote 86: _rom._, vi, 4.] [footnote 87: _rom._, x, 13.] [footnote 88: i _tim._, iv, 10.] the grand doctrine, then, which calvinistic puritanism has gathered from paul, turns out to be a secondary notion of his, which he himself, too, has contradicted or corrected. but, at any rate, 'christ meritoriously obtained eternal redemption for us.' 'if there be anything,' the quarterly organ of puritanism has lately told us in its hundredth number, 'that human experience has made certain, it is that man can never outgrow his necessity for the great truths and provisions of the incarnation and the sacrificial atonement of the divine son of god.' god, his justice being satisfied by christ's bearing according to compact our guilt and dying in our stead, is appeased and set free to exercise towards us his mercy, and to justify and sanctify us in consideration of christ's righteousness imputed to us, if we give our hearty belief and consent to the satisfaction thus made. this hearty belief being given, 'we rest,' to use the consecrated expression already quoted, 'in the finished work of a saviour.' this doctrine of imputed righteousness is now, as predestination formerly was, the favourite thesis of popular protestant theology. and, like the doctrine of predestination, it professes to be specially derived from st. paul. but whoever has followed attentively the main line of st. paul's theology, as we have tried to show it, will see at once that in st. paul's essential ideas this popular notion of a substitution, and appeasement, and imputation of alien merit, has no place. paul knows nothing of a sacrificial atonement; what paul knows of is a reconciling sacrifice. the true substitution, for paul, is not the substitution of jesus christ in men's stead as victim on the cross to god's offended justice; it is the substitution by which the believer, in his own person, repeats jesus christ's dying to sin. paul says, in real truth, to our puritans with their magical and mechanical salvation, just what he said to the men of circumcision: 'if i preach resting in the finished work of a saviour, _why am i yet persecuted? why do i die daily? then is the stumbling-block of the cross annulled._'[89] that hard, that well-nigh impossible doctrine, that our whole course must be a crucifixion and a resurrection, even as christ's whole course was a crucifixion and a resurrection, becomes superfluous. yet this is my central doctrine.' [footnote 89: _gal._, v, 2.] the notion of god as a magnified and non-natural man, appeased by a sacrifice and remitting in consideration of it his wrath against those who had offended him,--this notion of god, which science repels, was equally repelled, in spite of all that his nation, time, and training had in them to favour it, by the profound religious sense of paul. in none of his epistles is the reconciling work of christ really presented under this aspect. one great epistle there is, however, which does apparently present it under this aspect,--the epistle to the hebrews. paul's phraseology, and even the central idea which he conveys in that phraseology, were evidently well known to the writer of the epistle to the hebrews. nay, if we merely sought to prove a thesis, rather than to ascertain the real bearing of the documents we canvass, we should have no difficulty in making it appear, by texts taken from the epistle to the hebrews, that the doctrine of this epistle, no less than the doctrine of the epistle to the romans, differs entirely from the common doctrine of puritanism. this, however, we shall by no means do; because it is our honest opinion that the popular doctrine of 'the sacrificial atonement of the divine son of god' derives, if not a real, yet at any rate a strong apparent sanction from the epistle to the hebrews. even supposing, what is probably true, that the popular doctrine is really the doctrine neither of the one epistle nor of the other, yet it must be confessed that while it is the reader's fault,--a fault due to his fixed prepossessions, and to his own want of penetration,--if he gets the popular doctrine out of the epistle to the romans, it is on the other hand the writer's fault and no longer the reader's, if out of the epistle to the hebrews he gets the popular doctrine. for the author of that epistle is, if not subjugated, yet at least preponderantly occupied by the idea of the jewish system of sacrifices, and of the analogies to christ's sacrifice which are furnished by that system. if other proof were wanting, this alone would make it impossible that the epistle to the hebrews should be paul's; and indeed of all the epistles which bear his name, it is the only one which we may not, perhaps, in spite of the hesitation caused by grave difficulties, be finally content to leave in considerable part to him.[90] luther's conjecture, which ascribes to apollos the epistle to the hebrews, derives corroboration from the one account of apollos which we have; that 'he was an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures.' the epistle to the hebrews is just such a performance as might naturally have come from an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures; in whom the intelligence, and the powers of combining, type-finding, and expounding, somewhat dominated the religious perceptions. the epistle to the hebrews is full of beauty and power; and what may be called the exterior conduct of its argument is as able and satisfying as paul's exterior conduct of his argument is generally embarrassed. its details are full of what is edifying; but its apparent central conception of christ's death, as a perfect sacrifice which consummated the imperfect sacrifices of the jewish law, is a mere notion of the understanding, and is not a religious idea. turn it which way we will, the notion of appeasement of an offended god by vicarious sacrifice, which the epistle to the hebrews apparently sanctions, will never truly speak to the religious sense, or bear fruit for true religion. it is no blame to apollos if he was somewhat overpowered by this notion, for the whole world was full of it, up to his time, in his time, and since his time; and it has driven theologians before it like sheep. the wonder is, not that apollos should have adopted it, but that paul should have been enabled, through the incomparable power and energy of religious perception informing his intellectual perception, in reality to put it aside. figures drawn from the dominant notion of sacrificial appeasement he used, for the notion has so saturated the imagination and language of humanity that its figures pass naturally and irresistibly into all our speech. popular puritanism consists of the apparent doctrine from the epistle to the hebrews, set forth with paul's figures. but the doctrine itself paul had really put aside, and had substituted for it a better. [footnote 90: considerations drawn from date, place, the use of single words, the development of a church organisation, the development of an ascetic system, are not enough to make us wholly take away certain epistles from st. paul. the only decisive evidence, for this purpose, is that internal evidence furnished by the whole body of the thoughts and style of an epistle; and this evidence that paul was not its author the epistle to the hebrews furnishes. from the like evidence, the apocalypse is clearly shown to be not by the author of the fourth gospel. this clear evidence against the tradition which assigns them to st. paul, the epistles to timothy and titus do not offer. the serious ground of difficulty as to these epistles will to the genuine critic be, that much in them fails to produce that peculiarly _searching_ effect on the reader, which it is in general characteristic of paul's own real work to exercise. but they abound with pauline things, and are, in any case, written by an excellent man, and in an excellent and large spirit.] the term _sacrifice_, in men's natural use of it, contains three notions: the notion of winning the favour or buying off the wrath of a powerful being by giving him something precious; the notion of parting with something naturally precious; and the notion of expiation, not now in the sense of buying off wrath or satisfying a claim, but of suffering in that wherein we have sinned. the first notion is, at bottom, merely superstitious, and belongs to the ignorant and fear-ridden childhood of humanity; it is the main element, however, in the puritan conception of justification. the second notion explains itself; it is the main element in the pauline conception of justification. jesus parted with what, to men in general, is the most precious of things,--individual self and selfishness; he pleased not himself, obeyed the spirit of god, died to sin and to the law in our members, consummated upon the cross this death; here is paul's essential notion of christ's sacrifice. the third notion may easily be misdealt with, but it has a profound truth; in paul's conception of justification there is much of it. in some way or other, he who would 'cease from sin' must nearly always 'suffer in the flesh.' it is found to be true, that 'without shedding of blood is no remission.' 'if you can be good with pleasure,' says bishop wilson with his genius of practical religious sense, 'god does not envy you your joy; but such is our corruption, that every man cannot be so.' the substantial basis of the notion of expiation, so far as we ourselves are concerned, is the bitter experience that the habit of wrong, of blindly obeying selfish impulse, so affects our temper and powers, that to withstand selfish impulse, to do right, when the sense of right awakens in us, requires an effort out of all proportion to the actual present emergency. we have not only the difficulty of the present act in itself, we have the resistance of all our past; fire and the knife, cautery and amputation, are often necessary in order to induce a vital action, which, if it were not for our corrupting past, we might have obtained from the natural healthful vigour of our moral organs. this is the real basis of our personal sense of the need of expiating, and thus it is that man expiates. not so the just, who is man's ideal. he has no indurated habit of wrong, no perverse temper, no enfeebled powers, no resisting past, no spiritual organs gangrened, no need of the knife and fire; smoothly and inevitably he follows the eternal order, and hereto belongs happiness. what sins, then, has the just to expiate?--_ours._ in truth, men's habitual unrighteousness, their hard and careless breaking of the moral law, do so tend to reduce and impair the standard of goodness, that, in order to keep this standard pure and unimpaired, the righteous must actually labour and suffer far more than would be necessary if men were better. in the first place, he has to undergo our hatred and persecution for his justice. in the second place, he has to make up for the harm caused by our continual shortcomings, to step between us foolish transgressors and the destructive natural consequences of our transgression, and, by a superhuman example, a spending himself without stint, a more than mortal scale of justice and purity, to save the ideal of human life and conduct from the deterioration with which men's ordinary practice threatens it. in this way jesus christ truly 'became for our sakes poor, though he was rich,' he was truly 'bruised for our iniquities,' he 'suffered in our behoof,' 'bare the sin of many,' and 'made intercession for the transgressors.'[91] in this way, truly, 'he was sacrificed as a blameless lamb to redeem us from the vain conversation which had become our second nature;'[92] in this way, 'he was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin.'[93] such, according to that true and profound perception of the import of christ's sufferings, which, in all st. paul's writings, and in the inestimable first epistle of st. peter, is presented to us, is the expiation of christ. [footnote 91: ii _cor._, viii, 9; _is._, liii, 5; i _pet._, ii, 21; _is._, liii, 12.] [footnote 92: i _pet._, i, 18, 19.] [footnote 93: ii _cor._, v, 21.] the notion, therefore, of _satisfying and appeasing an angry god's wrath_, does not come into paul's real conception of jesus christ's sacrifice. paul's foremost notion of this sacrifice is, that by it jesus died to the law of selfish impulse, parted with what to men in general is most precious and near. paul's second notion is, that whereas jesus suffered in doing this, his suffering was not _his_ fault, but ours; not for _his_ good, but for ours. in the first aspect, jesus is the _martyrion_,--the testimony in his life and in his death, to righteousness, to the power and goodness of god. in the second aspect he is the _antilytron_ or ransom. but, in either aspect, jesus christ's solemn and dolorous condemnation of sin does actually loosen sin's hold and attraction upon us who regard it,--makes it easier for us to understand and love goodness, to rise above self, to die to sin. christ's sacrifice, however, and the condemnation of sin it contained, was made for us while we were yet sinners; it was made irrespectively of our power or inclination to sympathise with it and appreciate it. yet, even thus, in paul's view, the sacrifice reconciled us to god, to the eternal order; for it contained the means, the only possible means, of our being brought into harmony with this order. jesus christ, nevertheless, was delivered for our sins while we were yet sinners,[94] and before we could yet appreciate what he did. but presently there comes a change. grace, the goodness of god, _the spirit_,--as paul loved to call that awful and beneficent impulsion of things within us and without us, which we can concur with, indeed, but cannot create,--leads us to _repentance towards god_,[95] a change of the inner man in regard to the moral order, duty, righteousness. and now, to help our impulse towards righteousness, we have a power enabling us to turn this impulse to full account. now _the spirit_ does its greatest work in us; now, for the first time, the influence of jesus christ's pregnant act really gains us. for now awakens the sympathy for the act and the appreciation of it, which its doer dispensed with or was too benign to wait for; _faith working through love towards christ_[96] enters into us, masters us. we identify ourselves,--this is the line of paul's thought,--with christ; we repeat, through the power of this identification, christ's death to the law of the flesh and self-pleasing, his condemnation of sin in the flesh; the death how imperfectly, the condemnation how remorsefully! but we rise with him, paul continues, to life, the only true life, of imitation of god, of putting on the new man which after god is created in righteousness and true holiness,[97] of following the eternal law of the moral order which by ourselves we could not follow. then god justifies us. we have the righteousness of god and the sense of having it; we are freed from the oppressing sense of eternal order guiltily outraged and sternly retributive; we act in joyful conformity with god's will, instead of in miserable rebellion to it; we are in harmony with the universal order, and feel that we are in harmony with it. if, then, christ was delivered for our sins, he was raised for our justification. if by christ's death, says paul, we were reconciled to god, by the means being thus provided for our else impossible access to god, much more, when we have availed ourselves of these means and died with him, are we saved by his life which we partake.[98] henceforward we are not only justified but sanctified; not only in harmony with the eternal order and at peace with god, but consecrated[99] and unalterably devoted to them; and from this devotion comes an ever-growing union with god in christ, an advance, as st. paul says, from glory to glory.[100] [footnote 94: _rom._, v, 8.] [footnote 95: _acts_, xx, 21.] [footnote 96: _gal._, v, 6.] [footnote 97: _eph._, iv, 24.] [footnote 98: _rom._, v, 10.] [footnote 99: the endless words which puritanism has wasted upon _sanctification_, a magical filling with goodness and holiness, flow from a mere mistake in translating; +hagiasmos+ means _consecration_, a setting apart to holy service.] [footnote 100: ii _cor._, iii, 18.] this is paul's conception of christ's sacrifice. his figures of ransom, redemption, propitiation, blood, offering, all subordinate themselves to his central idea of _identification with christ through dying with him_, and are strictly subservient to it. the figured speech of paul has its own beauty and propriety. his language is, much of it, eastern language, imaginative language; there is no need for turning it, as puritanism has done, into the methodical language of the schools. but if it is to be turned into methodical language, then it is the language into which we have translated it that translates it truly. we have before seen how it fares with one of the two great tenets which puritanism has extracted from st. paul, the tenet of predestination. we now see how it fares with the other, the tenet of justification. paul's figures our puritans have taken literally, while for his central idea they have substituted another which is not his. and his central idea they have turned into a figure, and have let it almost disappear out of their mind. his essential idea lost, his figures misused, an idea essentially not his substituted for his,--the unedifying patchwork thus made, puritanism has stamped with paul's name, and called _the gospel_. it thunders at romanism for not preaching it, it casts off anglicanism for not setting it forth alone and unreservedly, it founds organisations of its own to give full effect to it; these organisations guide politics, govern statesmen, destroy institutions;--and they are based upon a blunder! it is to protestantism, and this its puritan gospel, that the reproaches thrown on st. paul, for sophisticating religion of the heart into theories of the head about election and justification, rightly attach. st. paul himself, as we have seen, begins with seeking righteousness and ends with finding it; from first to last, the practical religious sense never deserts him. if he could have seen and heard our preachers of predestination and justification, they are just the people he would have called 'diseased about questions and word-battlings.'[101] he would have told puritanism that every sunday, when in all its countless chapels it reads him and preaches from him, the veil is upon its heart. the moment it reads him right, a veil will seem to be taken away from its heart;[102] it will feel as though scales were fallen from its eyes. [footnote 101: i _tim._, vi, 4.] [footnote 102: ii _cor._, iii, 15, 16.] and now, leaving puritanism and its errors, let us turn again for a moment, before we end, to the glorious apostle who has occupied us so long. he died, and men's familiar fancies of bargain and appeasement, from which, by a prodigy of religious insight, paul had been able to disengage the death of jesus, fastened on it and made it their own. back rolled over the human soul the mist which the fires of paul's spiritual genius had dispersed for a few short years. the mind of the whole world was imbrued in the idea of blood, and only through the false idea of sacrifice did men reach paul's true one. paul's idea of dying with christ the _imitation_ elevates more conspicuously than any protestant treatise elevates it; but it elevates it environed and dominated by the idea of appeasement;--of the magnified and non-natural man in heaven, wrath-filled and blood-exacting; of the human victim adding his piacular sufferings to those of the divine. meanwhile another danger was preparing. gifted men had brought to the study of st. paul the habits of the greek and roman schools, and philosophised where paul orientalised. augustine, a great genius, who can doubt it?--nay, a great religious genius, but unlike paul in this, and inferior to him, that he confused the boundaries of metaphysics and religion, which paul never did,--augustine set the example of finding in paul's eastern speech, just as it stood, the formal propositions of western dialectics. last came the interpreter in whose slowly relaxing grasp we still lie,--the heavy-handed protestant philistine. sincere, gross of perception, prosaic, he saw in paul's mystical idea of man's investiture with the righteousness of god nothing but a strict legal transaction, and reserved all his imagination for hell and the new jerusalem and his foretaste of them. a so-called pauline doctrine was in all men's mouths, but the ideas of the true paul lay lost and buried. every one who has been at rome has been taken to see the church of st. paul, rebuilt after a destruction by fire forty years ago. the church stands a mile or two out of the city, on the way to ostia and the desert. the interior has all the costly magnificence of italian churches; oh the ceiling is written in gilded letters: '_doctor gentium_.' gold glitters and marbles gleam, but man and his movement are not there. the traveller has left at a distance the _fumum et opes strepitumque romã¦_; around him reigns solitude. there is paul, with the mystery which was hidden from ages and from generations, which was uncovered by him for some half score years, and which then was buried with him in his grave! not in our day will he relive, with his incessant effort to find a moral side for miracle, with his incessant effort to make the intellect follow and secure all the workings of the religious perception. of those who care for religion, the multitude of us want the materialism of the apocalypse; the few want a vague religiosity. science, which more and more teaches us to find in the unapparent the real, will gradually serve to conquer the materialism of popular religion. the friends of vague religiosity, on the other hand, will be more and more taught by experience that a theology, a scientific appreciation of the facts of religion, is wanted for religion; but a theology which is a true theology, not a false. both these influences will work for paul's re-emergence. the doctrine of paul will arise out of the tomb where for centuries it has lain buried. it will edify the church of the future; it will have the consent of happier generations, the applause of less superstitious ages. all will be too little to pay half the debt which the church of god owes to this 'least of the apostles, who was not fit to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the church of god.'[103] [footnote 103: i _cor._, xv, 9.] * * * * * puritanism and the church of england. in the foregoing treatise we have spoken of protestantism, and have tried to show, how, with its three notable tenets of predestination, original sin, and justification, it has been pounding away for three centuries at st. paul's wrong words, and missing his essential doctrine. and we took puritanism to stand for protestantism, and addressed ourselves directly to the puritans; for the puritan churches, we said, seem to exist specially for the sake of these doctrines, one or more of them. it is true, many puritans now profess also the doctrine that it is wicked to have a church connected with the state; but this is a later invention,[104] designed to strengthen a separation previously made. it requires to be noticed in due course; but meanwhile, we say that the aim of setting forth certain protestant doctrines purely and integrally is the main title on which puritan churches rest their right of existing. with historic churches, like those of england or rome, it is otherwise; these doctrines may be in them, may be a part of their traditions, their theological stock; but certainly no one will say that either of these churches was made for the express purpose of upholding these three theological doctrines, jointly or severally. a little consideration will show quite clearly the difference in this respect between the historic churches and the churches of separatists. [footnote 104: in his very interesting history, _the church of the restoration_, dr. stoughton says, most truly of both anglicans and puritans in 1660: 'it is necessary to bear in mind this circumstance, that _both parties were advocates for a national establishment of religion_.' vol. i, p. 113.] people are not necessarily monarchists or republicans because they are born and live under a monarchy or republic. they avail themselves of the established government for those general purposes for which governments and politics exist, but they do not, for the most part, trouble their heads much about particular theoretical principles of government. nay, it may well happen that a man who lives and thrives under a monarchy shall yet theoretically disapprove the principle of monarchy, or a man who lives and thrives under a republic, the principle of republicanism. but a man, or body of men, who have gone out of an established polity from zeal for the principle of monarchy or republicanism, and have set up a polity of their own for the very purpose of giving satisfaction to this zeal, are in a false position whenever it shall appear that the principle, from zeal for which they have constituted their separate existence, is unsound. so predestinarianism and solifidianism, calvinism and lutherism, may appear in the theology of a national or historic church, charged ever since the rise of christianity with the task of developing the immense and complex store of ideas contained in christianity; and when the stage of development has been reached at which the unsoundness of predestinarian and solifidian dogmas becomes manifest, they will be dropped out of the church's theology, and she and her task will remain what they were before. but when people from zeal for these dogmas find their historic church not predestinarian or solifidian enough for them, and make new associations of their own, which shall be predestinarian or solifidian absolutely, then, when the dogmas are undermined, the associations are undermined too, and have either to own themselves without a reason for existing, or to discover some new reason in place of the old. now, nothing which exists likes to be driven to a strait of this kind; so every association which exists because of zeal for the dogmas of election or justification, will naturally cling to these dogmas longer and harder than other people. therefore we have treated the puritan bodies in this country as the great stronghold here of these doctrines; and in showing what a perversion of paul's real ideas these doctrines commonly called pauline are, we have addressed ourselves to the puritans. but those who speak in the puritans' name say that we charge upon puritanism, as a sectarian peculiarity, doctrine which is not only the inevitable result of an honest interpretation of the writings of st. paul, but which is, besides, the creed held in common by puritans and by all the churches in christendom, with one insignificant exception. nay, they even declare that 'no man in his senses can deny that the church of england was meant to be a thoroughly protestant and evangelical, and it may be said calvinistic church.' to saddle puritanism in special with the doctrines we have called puritan is, they say, a piece of unfairness which has its motive in mere ill-will to puritanism, a device which can injure nobody but its author. now, we have tried to show that the puritans are quite wrong in imagining their doctrine to be the inevitable result of an honest interpretation of st. paul's writings. that they are wrong we think is certain; but so far are we from being moved, in anything that we do or say in this matter, by ill-will to puritanism and the puritans, that it is, on the contrary, just because of our hearty respect for them, and from our strong sense of their value, that we speak as we do. certainly we consider them to be in the main, at present, an obstacle to progress and to true civilisation. but this is because their worth is, in our opinion, such that not only must one for their own sakes wish to see it turned to more advantage, but others, from whom they are now separated, would greatly gain by conjunction with them, and our whole collective force of growth and progress be thereby immeasurably increased. in short, our one feeling when we regard them, is a feeling, not of ill-will, but of regret at waste of power; our one desire is a desire of comprehension. but the waste of power must continue, and the comprehension is impossible, so long as puritanism imagines itself to possess, in its two or three signal doctrines, what it calls _the gospel_; so long as it constitutes itself separately on the plea of setting forth purely _the gospel_, which it thus imagines itself to have seized; so long as it judges others as not holding _the gospel_, or as holding additions to it and variations from it. this fatal self-righteousness, grounded on a false conceit of knowledge, makes comprehension impossible; because it takes for granted the possession of the truth, and the power of deciding how others violate it; and this is a position of superiority, and suits conquest rather than comprehension. the good of comprehension in a national church is, that the larger and more various the body of members, the more elements of power and life the church will contain, the more points will there be of contact, the more mutual support and stimulus, the more growth in perfection both of thought and practice. the waste of power from not comprehending the puritans in the national church is measured by the number and value of elements which puritanism could supply towards the collective growth of the whole body. the national church would grow more vigorously towards a higher stage of insight into religious truth, and consequently towards a greater perfection of practice, if it had these elements; and this is why we wish for the puritans in the church. but, meanwhile, puritanism will not contribute to the common growth, mainly because it believes that a certain set of opinions or scheme of theological doctrine is _the gospel_; that it is possible and profitable to extract this, and that puritans have done so; and that it is the duty of men, who like themselves have extracted it, to separate themselves from those who have not, and to set themselves apart that they may profess it purely. to disabuse them of this error, which, by preventing collective life, prevents also collective growth, it is necessary to show them that their extracted scheme of theological doctrine is not really _the gospel_; and that at any rate, therefore, it is not worth their while to separate themselves, and to frustrate the hope of growth in common, merely for this scheme's sake. and even if it were true, as they allege, that the national and historic churches of christendom do equally with puritanism hold this scheme, or main parts of it, still it would be to puritanism, and not to the historic churches, that in showing the invalidity and unscripturalness of this scheme we should address ourselves, because the puritan churches found their very existence on it, and the historic churches do not. and not founding their existence on it, nor falling into separatism for it, the historic churches have a collective life which is very considerable, and a power of growth, even in respect of the very scheme of doctrine in question, supposing them to hold it, far greater than any which the puritan churches show, but which would be yet greater and more fruitful still, if the historic churches combined the large and admirable contingent of puritanism with their own forces. therefore, as we have said, it is out of no sort of malice or ill-will, but from esteem for their fine qualities and from desire for their help, that we have addressed ourselves to the puritans. we propose to complete now our dealings with this subject by showing how, as a matter of fact, the church of england (which is the historic church practically in question so far as puritanism is concerned) seems to us to have displayed with respect to those very tenets which we have criticised, and for which we are said to have unfairly made puritanism alone responsible, a continual power of growth which has been wanting to the puritan congregations. this we propose to show first; and we will show secondly, how, from the very theory of a historic or national church, the probability of this greater power of growth seems to follow, that we may try and commend that theory a little more to the thoughts and favour of our puritan friends. the two great puritan doctrines which we have criticised at such length are the doctrines of predestination and justification. of the aggressive and militant puritanism of our people, predestination has, almost up to the present day, been the favourite and distinguishing doctrine; it was the doctrine which puritan flocks greedily sought, which puritan ministers powerfully preached, and called others _carnal gospellers_ for not preaching. this geneva doctrine accompanied the geneva discipline. puritanism's first great wish and endeavour was to establish both the one and the other absolutely in the church of england, and it became nonconforming because it failed. now, it is well known that the high church divines of the seventeenth century were arminian, that the church of england was the stronghold of arminianism, and that arminianism is, as we have said, an effort of man's practical good sense to get rid of what is shocking to it in calvinism. but what is not so well known, and what is eminently worthy of remark, is the constant pressure applied by puritanism upon the church of england, to put the calvinistic doctrine more distinctly into her formularies, and to tie her up more strictly to this doctrine; the constant resistance offered by the church of england, and the large degree in which nonconformity is really due to this cause. everybody knows how far nonconformity is due to the church of england's rigour in imposing an explicit declaration of adherence to her formularies. but only a few, who have searched out the matter, know how far nonconformity is due, also, to the church of england's invincible reluctance to narrow her large and loose formularies to the strict calvinistic sense dear to puritanism. yet this is what the record of conferences shows at least as signally as it shows the domineering spirit of the high church clergy; but our current political histories, written always with an anti-ecclesiastical bias, which is natural enough, inasmuch as the church party was not the party of civil liberty, leaves this singularly out of sight. yet there is a very catena of testimonies to prove it; to show us, from elizabeth's reign to charles the second's, calvinism, as a power both within and without the church of england, trying to get decisive command of her formularies; and the church of england, with the instinct of a body meant to live and grow, and averse to fetter and engage its future, steadily resisting. the lambeth articles of 1595 exhibit calvinism potent in the church of england herself, and among the bishops of the church. true; but could it establish itself there? no; the lambeth articles were recalled and suppressed, and archbishop whitgift was threatened with the penalties of a _prã¦munire_ for having published them. again, it was usual from 1552 onwards to print in the english bibles a catechism asserting the calvinistic doctrine of absolute election and reprobation. in the first bibles of the authorised version this catechism appeared; but it was removed in 1615. yet the puritans had met james the first, at his accession in 1603, with the petition that _there may be an uniformity of doctrine prescribed_; meaning an uniformity in this sense of strict calvinism. thus from the very commencement the church, as regards doctrine, was for opening; puritanism was for narrowing. then came, in 1604, the hampton court conference. here, as usual, political historians reproach the church with having conceded so little. these historians, as we have said, think solely of the puritans as the religious party favourable to civil liberty, and on that account desire the preponderance of puritanism in its disputes with the church. but, as regards freedom of thought and truth of ideas, what was it that the church was pressed by puritanism to concede, and what was the character and tendency of the church's refusal? the first puritan petition at this conference was 'that the _doctrine_ of the church might be preserved in purity according to god's word.' that is, according to the calvinistic interpretation put upon god's word by calvin and the puritans after him; an interpretation which we have shown to be erroneous and unscriptural. this calvinistic doctrine of predestination the puritans wanted to plant hard and fast in the church's formularies, and the church resisted. the puritan foreman complained of the loose wording of the thirty-nine articles because it allowed an escape from the strict doctrine of calvinism, and moved that the lambeth articles, strictly calvinistic, might be inserted into the book of articles. the bishops resisted, and here are the words of their spokesman, the bishop of london. 'the bishop of london answered, that too many in those days, neglecting holiness of life, _laid all their religion upon predestination_,--"if i shall be saved, i shall be saved," which he termed a desperate doctrine, showing it to be contrary to good divinity, which teaches us to reason rather _ascendendo_ than _descendendo_, thus: "i live in obedience to god, in love with my neighbour, i follow my vocation, &c., therefore i trust that god hath elected me and predestinated me to salvation;" not thus, which is the usual course of argument: "god hath predestinated and chosen me to life, therefore, though i sin never so grievously, i shall not be damned, for whom he once loveth he loveth to the end."' who will deny that this resistance of the church to the puritans, who, _laying all their religion upon predestination_, wanted to make the church do the same, was as favourable to growth of thought and to sound philosophy, as it was consonant to good sense? we have already, in the foregoing treatise, quoted from the complaints against the church by the committee of divines appointed by the house of lords in 1641, when puritanism was strongly in the ascendent. some in the church teach, say the puritan complainers, 'that good works are concauses with faith in the act of justification; some have oppugned the certitude of salvation; some have maintained that the lord's day is kept merely by ecclesiastical constitution; some have defended the whole gross substance of arminianism, that the act of conversion depends upon the concurrence of men's free will; some have denied original sin; some have broached out of socinus a most uncomfortable and desperate doctrine, that late repentance,--that is, upon the last bed of sickness,--is unfruitful, at least, to reconcile the penitent to god.' what we insist upon is, that the growth and movement of thought, on religious matters, are here shown to be in the church; and that on these two cardinal doctrines of predestination and justification, with which we are accused of unfairly saddling puritanism alone, puritanism did really want to make the national religion hinge, while the church did not, but resisted. the resistance of the church was at that time vanquished, not by importing strict calvinism into the prayer book, but by casting out the prayer book altogether. by ordinance in 1645, the use of the prayer book, which for churches had already been forbidden, was forbidden also for all private places and families; all copies to be found in churches were to be delivered up, and heavy penalties were imposed on persons retaining them. we come to the occasion where the church is thought to have most decisively shown her unyieldingness,--the savoy conference in 1661, after king charles the second's restoration. the question was, what alterations were to be made in the prayer book, so as to enable the puritans to use it as well as the church party. having in view doctrine and free development of thought, we say again it was the puritans who were for narrowing, it was the churchmen who were for keeping open. their heads full of these tenets of predestination, original sin, and justification, which we are accused of charging upon them exclusively and unfairly, the puritans complain that the church liturgy seems very defective,--why? because 'the systems of doctrine of a church should summarily comprehend all such doctrines as are necessary to be believed,' and the liturgy does not set down these explicitly enough. for instance, 'the confession,' they say, 'is very defective, not clearly expressing original sin. the catechism is defective as to many necessary doctrines of our religion, some even of the essentials of christianity not being mentioned except in the creed, and there not so explicit as ought to be in a catechism.' and what is the answer of the bishops? it is the answer of people with an instinct that this definition and explicitness demanded by the puritans are incompatible with the conditions of life of a historic church. 'the church,' they say, 'hath been careful to put nothing into the liturgy but that which is either evidently the word of god, or what hath been generally received in the catholic church. the catechism is not intended as a whole body of divinity.' the puritans had requested that 'the church prayers might contain _nothing questioned by pious, learned, and orthodox persons_.' seizing on this expression, wherein is contained the ground of that _separatism for opinions_ which we hold to be so fatal not only to church life but also to the natural growth of religious thought, the bishops ask, and in the very language of good sense: 'who are _pious, learned, and orthodox persons_? are we to take for such all who shall confidently affirm themselves to be such? if by orthodox be meant those who adhere to scripture and the catholic consent of antiquity, we do not yet know that any part of our liturgy has been questioned by such. it was the wisdom of our reformers to draw up _such a liturgy as neither romanist nor protestant could justly except against_. persons want the book to be altered for their own satisfaction.' this allegation respecting the character of the liturgy is undoubtedly true, for the puritans themselves expressly admitted its truth, and urged this as a reason for altering the liturgy. it is in consonance with what is so often said, and truly said, of the thirty-nine articles, that they are _articles of peace_. this, indeed, makes the articles scientifically worthless. metaphysical propositions, such as they in the main are, drawn up with a studied design for their being vague and loose, can have no metaphysical value. but no one then thought of doing without metaphysical articles; so to make them articles of peace showed a true conception of the conditions of life and growth in a church. the readiness to put a lax sense on subscription is a proof of the same disposition of mind. chillingworth's judgment about the meaning of subscription is well known. 'for the church of england, i am persuaded that the constant doctrine of it is so pure and orthodox, that whosoever believes it and lives according to it, undoubtedly he shall be saved; and that there is no error in it which may necessitate or warrant any man to disturb the peace or renounce the communion of it. _this, in my opinion, is all that is intended by subscription._' and laud, a very different man from chillingworth, held on this point a like opinion with him. certainly the church of england was in no humour, at the time of the savoy conference, to deal tenderly with the puritans. it was too much disposed to show to the puritans the same sort of tenderness which the puritans had shown to the church. the nation, moreover, was nearly as ill-disposed as the church to the puritans; and this proves well what the narrowness and tyrannousness of puritanism dominant had really been. but the church undoubtedly said and did to puritanism after the restoration much that was harsh and bitter, and therefore inexcusable in a christian church. examples of churchmen so speaking and dealing may be found in the transactions of 1661; but perhaps the most offensive example of a churchman of this kind, and who deserves therefore to be studied, is a certain dr. jane, regius professor of divinity at oxford and dean of gloucester, who was put forward to thwart tillotson's projects of comprehension in 1689. a certain number of dr. janes there have always been in the church. there are a certain number of them in the church now, and there always will be a certain number of them. no church could exist with many of them; but one should have a sample or two of them always before one's mind, and remember how to the excluded party a few, and those the worst, of their excluders, are always apt to stand for the whole, in order to comprehend the full bitterness and resentment of puritanism against the church of england. else one would be inclined to say, after attentively and impartially observing the two parties, that the persistence of the church in pressing for conformity arose, not as the political historians would have it, from the lust of haughty ecclesiastics for dominion and for imposing their law on the vanquished, but from a real sense that their formularies were made so large and open, and the sense put upon subscription to them was so indulgent, that any reasonable man could honestly conform; and that it was perverseness and determination to impose their special ideas on the church, and to narrow the church's latitude, which made the puritans stand out. nay, and it was with the diction of the prayer book, as it was with its doctrine; the church took the side which most commands the sympathy of liberal-minded men. baxter had his rival prayer book which he proposed to substitute for the old one. and this is how the 'reformed liturgy' was to begin: 'eternal, incomprehensible and invisible god, infinite in power, wisdom and goodness, dwelling in the light which no man can approach, where thousand thousands minister unto thee, and ten thousand times ten thousand stand before thee,' &c. this, i say, was to have taken the place of our old friend, _dearly beloved brethren_; and here, again, we can hardly refuse approval to the church's resistance to puritan innovations. we could wish, indeed, the church had shown the same largeness in consenting to relax ceremonies, which she showed in refusing to tighten dogma, or to spoil diction. worse still, the angry wish to drive by violence, when the other party will not move by reason, finally no doubt appears; and the church has much to blame herself for in the act of uniformity. blame she deserves, and she has had it plentifully; but what has not been enough perceived is, that really the conviction of her own moderation, openness, and latitude, as far as regards doctrine, seems to have filled her mind during her dealings with the puritans; and that her impatience with them was in great measure impatience at seeing these so ill-appreciated by them. very ill-appreciated by them they certainly were; and, as far as doctrine is concerned, the quarrel between the church and puritanism undoubtedly was, that for the doctrines of predestination, original sin, and justification, puritanism wanted more exclusive prominence, more dogmatic definition, more bar to future escape and development; while the church resisted. and as the instinct of the church always made her avoid, on these three favourite tenets of puritanism, the stringency of definition which puritanism tried to force upon her, always made her leave herself room for growth in regard to them,--so, if we look for the positive beginnings and first signs of growth, of disengagement from the stock notions of popular theology about predestination, original sin, and justification, it is among churchmen, and not among puritans, that we shall find them. few will deny that as to the doctrines of predestination and original sin, at any rate, the mind of religious men is no longer what it was in the seventeenth century or in the eighteenth. there has been evident growth and emancipation; puritanism itself no longer holds these doctrines in the rigid way it once did. to whom is this change owing? who were the beginners of it? they were men using that comparative openness of mind and accessibility to ideas which was fostered by the church. the very complaints which we have quoted from the puritan divines prove that this was so. henry more, saying in the heat of the calvinistic controversy, what it needed insight to say then, but what almost every one's common sense says now, that 'it were to be wished the quinquarticular points were all reduced to this one, namely, _that none shall be saved without sincere obedience_;' jeremy taylor saying in the teeth of the superstitious popular doctrine of original sin: 'original sin, as it is at this day commonly explicated, was not the doctrine of the primitive church; but when pelagius had puddled the stream, st. austin was so angry that he stamped and puddled it more,'--this sort of utterance from churchmen it was, that first introduced into our religious world the current of more independent thought concerning the doctrines of predestination and original sin, which has now made its way even amidst puritans themselves. here the emancipation has reached the puritans; but it proceeded from the church. that puritanism is yet emancipated from the popular doctrine of justification cannot be asserted. on the contrary, the more it loosens its hold on the doctrine of predestination the more it tightens it on that of justification. we shall have occasion by and by to discuss wesley's words: '_plead thou solely the blood of the covenant, the ransom paid for thy proud stubborn soul!_' and to show how modern methodism glories in holding aloft as its standard this teaching of wesley's, and this teaching above all. the many tracts which have lately been sent me in reference to this subject go all the same way. like luther, they hold that 'all heretics have continually failed in this one point, that they do not rightly understand or know the article of _justification_:' 'do not see' (to continue to use luther's words,) 'that by none other sacrifice or offering could god's fierce anger be appeased, but by the precious blood of the son of god.' that this doctrine is founded upon an entire misunderstanding of st. paul's writings we have shown; that there is very visible a tendency in the minds of religious people to outgrow it, is true, but where alone does this tendency manifest itself with any steadiness or power? in the church. the inevitable movement of growth will in time extend itself to puritanism also. let it be remembered in that day that not only does the movement come to puritanism from the church, but it comes to churchmen of our century from a seed of growth and development inherent in the church, and which was manifest in the church long ago! that the accompaniments of the doctrine of justification, the tenets of conversion, instantaneous sanctification, assurance, and sinless perfection,--tenets which are not the essence of wesley, but which are the essence of wesleyan methodism, and which have in them so much that is delusive and dangerous,--that these should have been discerningly judged by that mixture of piety and sobriety which marks anglicans of the best type, such as bishop wilson,[105] will surprise no one. but years before wesley was born, the fontal doctrine itself,--wesley's '_plead thou solely the blood of the covenant!_'--had been criticised by hammond thus, and the signal of deliverance from the lutheran doctrine of justification given: 'the solifidian looks upon his faith as the utmost accomplishment and end, and not only as the first elements of his task, which is,--_the superstructing of good life_. the solifidian believes himself to have the only sanctified necessary doctrines, that having them renders his condition safe, and every man who believes them a pure christian professor. in respect of solifidianism it is worth remembering what epiphanius observes of the primitive times, that _wickedness was the only heresy_, that impious and pious living divided the whole christian world into erroneous and orthodox.' [footnote 105: for example, what an antidote to the perilous methodist doctrine of instantaneous sanctification is this saying of bishop wilson: 'he who fancies that his mind may effectually be changed in a short time, deceives himself.'] in point of fact, therefore, the historic church in england, not existing for special opinions, but proceeding by development, has shown much greater freedom of mind as regards the doctrines of election, original sin, and justification, than the nonconformists have; and has refused, in spite of puritan pressure, to tie herself too strictly to these doctrines, to make them all in all. she thus both has been and is more serviceable than puritanism to religious progress; because the separating for opinions, which is proper to puritanism, rivets the separatist to those opinions, and is thus opposed to that development and gradual exhibiting of the full sense of the bible and christianity, which is essential to religious progress. to separate for the doctrine of predestination, of justification, of scriptural church-discipline, is to be false to the idea of development, to imagine that you can seize the absolute sense of scripture from your own present point of view, and to cut yourself off from growth and gradual illumination. that a comparison between the course things have taken in puritanism and in the church goes to prove the truth of this as a matter of fact, is what i have been trying to show hitherto; in what remains i purpose to show how, as a matter of theory and antecedent likelihood, it seems probable and natural that so this should be. a historic church cannot choose but allow the principle of development, for it is written in its institutions and history. an admirable writer, in a book which is one of his least known works, but which contains, perhaps, even a greater number of profound and valuable ideas than any other one of them, has set forth, both persuasively and truly, the impression of this sort which church-history cannot but convey. 'we have to account,' says dr. newman, in his _essay on development_, 'for that apparent variation and growth of doctrine which embarrasses us when we would consult history for the true idea of christianity. the increase and expansion of the christian creed and ritual, and the variations which have attended the process in the case of individual writers and churches, are the necessary attendants on any philosophy or polity which takes possession of the intellect and heart, and has had any wide or extended dominion. from the nature of the human mind, time is necessary for the full comprehension and perfection of great ideas. the highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for all by inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all at once by the recipients; but, as admitted and transmitted by minds not inspired, and through media which were human, have required only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucidation.' and again: 'ideas may remain when the expression of them is indefinitely varied. nay, one cause of corruption in religion is the refusal to follow the course of doctrine as it moves on, and an obstinacy in the notions of the past. so our lord found his people precisians in their obedience to the letter; he condemned them for not being led on to its spirit,--that is, its development. the gospel is the development of the law; yet what difference seems wider than that which separates the unbending rule of moses from the grace and truth which came by jesus christ? the more claim an idea has to be considered living, the more various will be its aspects; and the more social and political is its nature, the more complicated and subtle will be its developments, and the longer and more eventful will be its course. such is christianity.' and yet once more: 'it may be objected that inspired documents, such as the holy scriptures, at once determine doctrine without further trouble. but they were intended to create _an idea_, and that idea is not in the sacred text, but in the mind of the reader; and the question is, whether that idea is communicated to him in its completeness and minute accuracy on its first apprehension, or expands in his heart and intellect, and comes to perfection in the course of time. if it is said that inspiration supplied the place of this development in the first recipients of christianity, still the time at length came when its recipients ceased to be inspired; and on these recipients the revealed truths would fall as in other cases, at first vaguely and generally, and would afterwards be completed by developments.' the notion thus admirably expounded of a gradual understanding of the bible, a progressive development of christianity, is the same which was in bishop butler's mind when he laid down in his _analogy_ that 'the bible contains many truths as yet undiscovered.' 'and as,' he says, 'the whole scheme of scripture is not yet understood, so, if it ever comes to be understood, before the restitution of all things and without miraculous interpositions, it must be in the same way as natural knowledge is come at,--by the continuance and progress of learning and of liberty, and by particular persons attending to, comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered up and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the generality of the world. for this is the way in which all improvements are made; by thoughtful men's tracing on obscure hints, as it were, dropped as by nature accidentally, or which seem to come into our minds by chance.' and again: 'our existence is not only successive, as it must be of necessity, but one state of our life and being is appointed by god to be a preparation for another, and that to be the means of attaining to another succeeding one; infancy to childhood, childhood to youth, youth to mature age. men are impatient and for precipitating things; but the author of nature appears deliberate throughout his operations, accomplishing his natural ends by slow successive steps. thus, in the daily course of natural providence, god operates in the very same manner as in the dispensation of christianity; making one thing subservient to another, this to somewhat further; and so on, through a progressive series of means which extend both backward and forward, beyond our utmost view. of this manner of operation everything we see in the course of nature is as much an instance as any part of the christian dispensation.' all this is indeed incomparably well said; and with dr. newman we may, on the strength of it all, beyond any doubt, 'fairly conclude that christian doctrine admits of formal, legitimate, and true developments;' that 'the whole bible is written on the principle of development.' dr. newman, indeed, uses this idea in a manner which seems to us arbitrary and condemned by the idea itself. he uses it in support of the pretensions of the church of rome to an infallible authority on points of doctrine. he says, with much ingenuity, to protestants: the doctrines you receive are no more on the face of the bible, or in the plain teaching of the ante-nicene church, which alone you consider pure, than the doctrines you reject. the doctrine of the trinity is a development, as much as the doctrine of purgatory. both of them are developments made by the church, by the post-nicene church. the determination of the canon of scripture, a thing of vital importance to you who acknowledge no authority but scripture, is a development due to the post-nicene church.--and thus dr. newman would compel protestants to admit that which is, he declares, in itself reasonable,--namely, 'the probability of the appointment in christianity of an external authority to decide upon the true developments of doctrine and practice in it, thereby separating them from the mass of mere human speculation, extravagance, corruption, and error, in and out of which they grow. this is the doctrine of the infallibility of the church, of faith and obedience towards the church, founded on the probability of its never erring in its declarations or commands.' now, asserted in this absolute way, and extended to doctrine as well as discipline, to speculative thought as well as to christian practice, dr. newman's conclusion seems at variance with his own theory of development, and to be something like an instance of what bishop butler criticises when he says: 'men are impatient, and for precipitating things.' but dr. newman has himself supplied us with a sort of commentary on these words of butler's which is worth quoting, because it throws more light on our point than butler's few words can throw on it by themselves. dr. newman says: 'development is not an effect of wishing and resolving, or of forced enthusiasm, or of any mechanism of reasoning, or of any mere subtlety of intellect; but comes of its own innate power of expansion within the mind in its season, though with the use of reflection and argument and original thought, more or less as it may happen, with a dependence on the ethical growth of the mind itself, and with a reflex influence upon it.' it is impossible to point out more sagaciously and expressively the natural, spontaneous, free character of true development; how such a development must follow laws of its own, may often require vast periods of time, cannot be hurried, cannot be stopped. and so far as christianity deals,--as, in its metaphysical theology, it does abundantly deal,--with thought and speculation, it must surely be admitted that for its true and ultimate development in this line more time is required, and other conditions have to be fulfilled, than we have had already. so far as christian doctrine contains speculative philosophical ideas, never since its origin have the conditions been present for determining these adequately; certainly not in the mediã¦val church, which so dauntlessly strove to determine them. and therefore on every creed and council is judgment passed in bishop butler's sentence: '_the bible contains many truths as yet undiscovered._' the christian religion has practice for its great end and aim; but it raises, as anyone can see, and as church-history proves, numerous and great questions of philosophy and of scientific criticism. well, for the true elucidation of such questions, and for their final solution, time and favourable developing conditions are confessedly necessary. from the end of the apostolic age and of the great fontal burst of christianity, down to the present time, have such conditions ever existed in the christian communities, for determining adequately the questions of philosophy and scientific criticism which the christian religion starts? _god_, _creation_, _will_, _evil_, _propitiation_, _immortality_,--these terms and many more of the same kind, however much they might in the bible be used in a concrete and practical manner, yet plainly had in themselves a provocation to abstract thought, carried with them the occasions of a criticism and a philosophy, which must sooner or later make its appearance in the church. it did make its appearance, and the question is whether it has ever yet appeared there under conditions favourable to its true development. surely this is best elucidated by considering whether questions of criticism and philosophy in general ever had one of their happy moments, their times for successful development, in the early and middle ages of christendom at all, or have had one of them in the christian churches, as such, since. all these questions hang together, and the time that is improper for solving one sort of them truly, is improper for solving the others. well, surely, historic criticism, criticism of style, criticism of nature, no one would go to the early or middle ages of the church for illumination on these matters. how then should those ages develop successfully a philosophy of theology, or in other words, a criticism of physics and metaphysics, which involves the three other criticisms and more besides? church-theology is an elaborate attempt at a philosophy of theology, at a philosophical criticism. in greece, before christianity appeared, there had been a favouring period for the development of such a criticism; a considerable movement of it took place, and considerable results were reached. when christianity began, this movement was in decadence; it declined more and more till it died quite out; it revived very slowly, and as it waxed, the mediã¦val church waned. the doctrine of universals is a question of philosophy discussed in greece, and re-discussed in the middle ages. whatever light this doctrine receives from plato's treatment of it, or aristotle's, in whatever state they left it, will anyone say that the nominalists and realists brought any more light to it, that they developed it in any way, or could develop it? for the same reason, st. augustine's criticism of god's eternal decrees, original sin, and justification, the criticism of st. thomas aquinas on them, the decisions of the church on them, are of necessity, and from the very nature of things, inadequate, because, being philosophical developments, they are made in an age when the forces for true philosophical development are waning or wanting. so when hooker says most truly: 'our belief in the trinity, the co-eternity of the son of god with his father, the proceeding of the spirit from the father and the son, with other principal points the necessity whereof is by none denied, are notwithstanding in scripture nowhere to be found by express literal mention, only deduced they are out of scripture by collection;'--when hooker thus points, out, what is undoubtedly the truth, that these church-doctrines are developments, we may add this other truth equally undoubted,--that being _philosophical_ developments, they are developments of a kind which the church has never yet had the right conditions for making adequately, any more than it has had the conditions for developing out of what is said in the book of genesis a true philosophy of nature, or out of what is said in the book of daniel, a true philosophy of history. it matters nothing whether the scientific truth was there, and the problem was to extract it; or not there, and the problem was to understand why it was not there, and the relation borne by what was there to the scientific truth. the church had no means of solving either the one problem or the other. and this from no fault at all of the church, but for the same reason that she was unfitted to solve a difficulty in aristotle's _physics_ or plato's _timã¦us_, and to determine the historical value of herodotus or livy; simply from the natural operation of the law of development, which for success in philosophy and criticism requires certain conditions, which in the early and mediã¦val church were not to be found. and when the movement of philosophy and criticism came with the renascence, this movement was almost entirely outside the churches, whether catholic or protestant, and not inside them. it worked in men like descartes and bacon, and not in men like luther and calvin; so that the doctrine of these two eminent personages, luther and calvin, so far as it was a philosophical and critical development from scripture, had no more likelihood of being an adequate development than the doctrine of the council of trent. and so it has gone on to this day. philosophy and criticism have become a great power in the world, and inevitably tend to alter and develop church-doctrine, so far as this doctrine is, as to a great extent it is, philosophical and critical. yet the seat of the developing force is not in the church itself, but elsewhere; its influences filter strugglingly into the church, and the church slowly absorbs and incorporates them. and whatever hinders their filtering in and becoming incorporated, hinders truth and the natural progress of things. while, therefore, we entirely agree with dr. newman and with the great anglican divines that the whole bible is written on the principle of development, and that christianity in its doctrine and discipline is and must be a development of the bible, we yet cannot agree that for the adequate development of christian doctrine, so far as theology exhibits this metaphysically and scientifically, the church, whether ante-nicene or post-nicene, has ever yet furnished a channel. thought and science follow their own law of development, they are slowly elaborated in the growth and forward pressure of humanity, in what shakspeare calls,- ... the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come; and their ripeness and unripeness, as dr. newman most truly says, are not an effect of our wishing or resolving. rather do they seem brought about by a power such as goethe figures by the _zeit-geist_ or time-spirit, and st. paul describes as a divine power _revealing_ additions to what we possess already. but sects of men are apt to be shut up in sectarian ideas of their own, and to be less open to new general ideas than the main body of men; therefore st. paul in the same breath exhorts to unity. what may justly be conceded to the catholic church is, that in her idea of a continuous developing power in united christendom to work upon the data furnished by the bible, and produce new combinations from them as the growth of time required it, she followed a true instinct. but the right _philosophical_ developments she vainly imagined herself to have had the power to produce, and her attempts in this direction were at most but a prophecy of this power, as alchemy is said to have been a prophecy of chemistry. with developments of discipline and church-order it is very different. the bible raises, as we have seen, many and great questions of philosophy and criticism; still, essentially the church was not a corporation for speculative purposes, but a corporation for purposes of moral growth and of practice. terms like _god_, _creation_, _will_, _evil_, _propitiation_, _immortality_, evoke, as we have said, and must evoke, sooner or later, a philosophy; but to evoke this was the accident and not the essence of christianity. what, then, was the essence? an ingenious writer, as unlike dr. newman as it is possible to conceive, has lately told us. in an article in _fraser's magazine_,--an article written with great vigour and acuteness,--this writer advises us to return to paley, whom we were beginning to neglect, because the real important essence of christianity, or rather, to quote quite literally, 'the only form of christianity which is worthy of the serious consideration of rational men, is protestantism as stated by paley and his school.' and why? 'because this protestantism enables the saint to prove to the worldly man that christ threatened him with hell-fire, and proved his power to threaten by rising from the dead and ascending into heaven; _and these allegations are the fundamental assertions of christianity_.' now it may be said that this is a somewhat contracted view of 'the unsearchable riches of christ;' but we will not quarrel with it. and this for several reasons. in the first place, it is the view often taken by popular theology. in the second place, it is the view best fitted to serve its benthamite author's object, which is to get christianity out of the way altogether. in the third place, its shortness gives us courage to try and do what is the hardest thing in the world, namely, to pack a statement of the main drift of christianity into a few lines of nearly as short compass. what then was, in brief, the christian gospel, or 'good news'? it was this: _the kingdom of god is come unto you_. the power of jesus upon the multitudes who heard him gladly, was not that by rising from the dead and ascending into heaven he enabled the saint to prove to the worldly man the certainty of hell-fire (for he had not yet done so); but that _he talked to them about the kingdom of god_.[106] and what is the kingdom of god or kingdom of heaven? it is this: _god's will done, as in heaven so on earth_. and how was this come to mankind? because _jesus is come to save his people from their sins_. and what is being saved from our sins? this: _entering into the kingdom of heaven by doing the will of our father which is in heaven_. and how does christ enable us to do this? by teaching us _to take his yoke upon us, and learn of him to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow him, and to lose our life for the purpose of saving it_. so that st. paul might say most truly that the seal of the sure foundation of god in christianity was this: _let every one that nameth the name of christ depart from iniquity_: or, as he elsewhere expands it: _let him bring forth the fruits of the spirit,--love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control._[107] [footnote 106: nothing can be more certain than that the _kingdom of god_ meant originally, and was understood to mean, a messianic kingdom speedily to be revealed; and that to this idea of the _kingdom_ is due much of the effect which its preaching exercised on the imagination of the first generation of christians. but nothing is more certain, also, than that while the end itself, the messianic kingdom, was necessarily something intangible and future, the _way_ to the end, the doing the will of god by intently following the voice of the moral conscience, in those duties, above all, for which there was then in the world the most crying need,--the duties of humbleness, self-denial, pureness, justice, charity,--became from the very first in the teaching of jesus something so ever-present and practical, and so associated with the essence of jesus himself, that the _way_ to the kingdom grew inseparable, in thought, from the kingdom itself, and was bathed in the same light and charm. then, after a time, as the vision of an approaching messianic kingdom was dissipated, the idea of the perfect accomplishment on earth of the will of god had to take the room of it, and in its own realisation to place the ideal of the true kingdom of god.] [footnote 107: ii _tim._, ii, 19; _gal._, v, 22, 23.] on this foundation arose the christian church, and not on any foundation of speculative metaphysics. it was inevitable that the speculative metaphysics should come, but they were not the foundation. when they came, the danger of the christian church was that she should take them for the foundation. the people who were built on the real foundation, who were united in the joy of christ's good news, naturally, as they came to know of one another's existence, as their relations with one another multiplied, as the sense of sympathy in the possession of a common treasure deepened,--naturally, i say, drew together in one body, with an organisation growing out of the needs of a growing body. it is quite clear that the more strongly christians felt their common business in setting forward upon earth, through christ's spirit, the kingdom of god, the more they would be drawn to coalesce into one society for this business, with the natural and true notion that the acting together in this way offers to men greater helps for reaching their aim, presents fewer distractions, and above all, supplies a more animating force of sympathy and mutual assurance, than the acting separately. only the sense of differences greater than the sense of sympathy could defeat this tendency. dr. newman has told us what an impression was once made upon his mind by the sentence: _securus judicat orbis terrarum_. we have shown how, for matters of philosophical judgment, not yet settled but requiring development to clear them, the consent of the world, at a time when this clearing development cannot have happened, seems to carry little or no weight at all; indeed, as to judgment on these points, we should rather be inclined to lay down the very contrary of dr. newman's affirmation, and to say: _securus delirat orbis terrarum_. but points of speculative theology being out of the question, and the practical ground and purpose of man's religion being broadly and plainly fixed, we should be quite disposed to concede to dr. newman, that _securus =colit= orbis terrarum_;--those pursue this purpose best who pursue it together. for unless prevented by extraneous causes, they manifestly tend, as the history of the church's growth shows, to pursue it together. nonconformists are fond of talking of the unity which may co-exist with separation, and they say: 'there are four evangelists, yet one gospel; why should there not be many separate religious bodies, yet one church?' but their theory of unity in separation is a theory palpably invented to cover existing facts, and their argument from the evangelists is a paralogism. for the four gospels arose out of no thought of divergency; they were not designed as corrections of one prior gospel, or of one another; they were concurring testimonies borne to the same fact. but the several religious bodies of christendom plainly grew out of an intention of divergency; clearly they were designed to correct the imperfections of one prior church and of each other; and to say of things sprung out of discord that they may make _one_, because things sprung out of concord may make _one_, is like saying that because several agreements may make a peace, therefore several wars may make a peace too. no; without some strong motive to the contrary, men united by the pursuit of a clearly defined common aim of irresistible attractiveness naturally coalesce; and since they coalesce naturally, they are clearly right in coalescing and find their advantage in it. all that dr. newman has so excellently said about development applies here legitimately and fully. existence justifies additions and stages in existence. the living edifice planted on the foundation, _let every one that nameth the name of christ depart from iniquity_, could not but grow, if it lived at all. if it grew, it could not but make developments, and all developments not inconsistent with the aim of its original foundation, and not extending beyond the moral and practical sphere which was the sphere of its original foundation, are legitimated by the very fact of the church having in the natural evolution of its life and growth made them. a boy does not wear the clothes or follow the ways of an infant, nor a man those of a boy; yet they are all engaged in the one same business of developing their growing life, and to the clothes to be worn and the ways to be followed for the purpose of doing this, nature will, in general, direct them safely. the several scattered congregations of the first age of christianity coalesced into one community, just as the several scattered christians had earlier still coalesced into congregations. why?--because such was the natural course of things. it had nothing inconsistent with the fundamental ground of christians, _let every one that nameth the name of christ depart from iniquity_; and it was approved by their growing and enlarging in it. they developed a church-discipline with a hierarchy of bishops and archbishops, which was not that of the first times; they developed church-usages, such as the practice of infant baptism, which were not those of the first times; they developed a church-ritual with ceremonies which were not those of the first times;--they developed all these, just as they developed a church-architecture which was not that of the first times, because they were no longer in the first times, and required for their expanding growth what suited their own times. they coalesced with the state because they grew by doing so. they called the faith they possessed in common the _catholic_, that is, the general or universal faith. they developed, also, as we have seen, dogma or a theological philosophy. both dogma and discipline became a part of the catholic faith, or profession of the general body of christians. now to develop a discipline, or form of outward life for itself, the church, as has been said, had necessarily, like every other living thing, the requisite qualifications; to develop scientific dogma it had not. but even of the dogma which the church developed it may be said, that, from the very nature of things, it was probably, as compared with the opposing dogma over which it prevailed, the more suited to the actual condition of the church's life, and to the due progress of the divine work for which she existed. for instance, whatever may be scientifically the rights of the question about grace and free-will, it is evident that, for the church of the fifth century, pelagianism was the less inspiring and edifying doctrine, and the sense of _being in the divine hand_ was the feeling which it was good for christians to be filled with. whatever may be scientifically the merits of the dispute between arius and athanasius, for the church of their time whatever most exalted or seemed to exalt jesus christ was clearly the profitable doctrine, the doctrine most helpful to that moral life which was the true life of the church. people, however, there were in abundance who differed on points both of discipline and of dogma from the rule which obtained in the church, and who separated from her on account of that difference. these were the heretics: _separatists_, as the name implies, _for the sake of opinions_. and the very name, therefore, implies that they were wrong in separating, and that the body which held together was right; because the church exists, not for the sake of opinions, but for the sake of moral practice, and a united endeavour after this is stronger than a broken one. valentinians, marcionites, montanists, donatists, manichã¦ans, novatians, eutychians, apollinarians, nestorians, arians, pelagians,--if they separated on points of discipline they were wrong, because for developing its own fit outward conditions of life the body of a community has, as we have seen, a real natural power, and individuals are bound to sacrifice their fancies to it; if they separated on points of dogma they were wrong also, because, while neither they nor the church had the means of determining such points adequately, the true instinct lay in those who, instead of separating for such points, conceded them as the church settled them, and found their bond of union, where it in truth really was, not in notions about the co-eternity of the son, but in the principle: _let every one that nameth the name of christ depart from iniquity_. does any one imagine that all the church shared augustine's speculative opinions about grace and predestination? that many members of it did not rather incline, as a matter of speculative opinion, to the notions of pelagius? does any one imagine that all who stood with the church and did not join themselves to the arians, were speculatively athanasians? it was not so; but they had a true feeling for what purpose the gospel and the church were given them, and for what they were not given them; they could see that 'impious and pious living,' according to that sentence of epiphanius we have quoted from hammond, 'divided the whole christian world into erroneous and orthodox;' and that it was not worth while to suffer themselves to be divided for anything else. and though it will be said that separatists for opinions on points of discipline and dogma have often asserted, and sometimes believed, that piety and impiety were vitally concerned in these points; yet here again the true religious instinct is that which discerns,--what is seldom so very obscure,--whether they are in truth thus vitally concerned or not; and, if they are not, cannot be perverted into fancying them concerned and breaking unity for them. this, i say, is the true religious instinct, the instinct which most clearly seizes the essence and aim of the christian gospel and of the christian church. but fidelity to it leaves, also, the way least closed to the admission of true developments of speculative thought, when the time is come for them, and to the incorporation of these true developments with the ideas and practice of christians. is there not, then, any separation which is right and reasonable? yes, separation on plain points of morals. for these involve the very essence of the christian gospel, and the very ground on which the christian church is built. the sale of indulgences, if deliberately instituted and persisted in by the main body of the church, afforded a valid reason for breaking unity; the doctrine of purgatory, or of the real presence, did not. however, a cosmopolitan church-order, commenced when the political organisation of christians was also cosmopolitan,--when, that is, the nations of europe were politically one in the unity of the roman empire,--might well occasion difficulties as the nations solidified into independent states with a keen sense of their independent life; so that, the cosmopolitan type disappearing for civil affairs, and being replaced by the national type, the same disappearance and replacement tended to prevail in ecclesiastical affairs also. but this was a political difficulty, not a religious one, and it raised no insuperable bar to continued religious union. a church with anglican liberties might very well, the english national spirit being what it is, have been in religious communion with rome, and yet have been safely trusted to maintain and develop its national liberties to any extent required. the moral corruptions of rome, on the other hand, were a real ground for separation. on their account, and solely on their account, if they could not be got rid of, was separation not only lawful but necessary. it has always been the averment of the church of england, that the change made in her at the reformation was the very least change which was absolutely necessary. no doubt she used the opportunity of her breach with rome to get rid of several doctrines which the human mind had outgrown; but it was the immoral practice of rome that really moved her to separation. and she maintained that she merely got rid of roman corruptions which were immoral and intolerable, and remained the old, historic, catholic church of england still. the right to this title of _catholic_ is a favourite matter of contention between bodies of christians. but let us use names in their customary and natural senses. to us it seems that unless one chooses to fight about words, and fancifully to put into the word _catholic_ some occult quality, one must allow that the changes made in the church of england at the reformation impaired its catholicity. the word _catholic_ was meant to describe the common or general profession and worship of christendom at the time when the word arose. undoubtedly this general profession and worship had not a strict uniformity everywhere, but it had a clearly-marked common character; and this well-known type bede, or anselm, or wiclif himself, would to this day easily recognise in a roman catholic religious service, but hardly in an anglican; while, on the other hand, in a roman catholic religious service an ordinary anglican finds himself as much in a strange world and out of his usual course, as in a nonconformist meeting-house. something precious was no doubt lost in losing this common profession and worship; but the loss was, as we protestants maintain, incurred for the sake of something yet more precious still,--the purity of that moral practice which was the very cause for which the common profession and worship existed. now, it seems captious to incur voluntarily a loss for a great and worthy object, and at the same time, by a conjuring with words, to try and make it appear that we have not suffered the loss at all. so on the word _catholic_ we will not insist too jealously; but thus much, at any rate, must be allowed to the church of england,--that she kept enough of the past to preserve, as far as this nation was concerned, her continuity, to be still the _historic church of england_; and that she avoided the error, to which there was so much to draw her, and into which all the other reformed churches fell, of making improved speculative doctrinal opinions the main ground of her separation. a nonconformist newspaper, it is true, reproaching the church with what is, in our opinion, her greatest praise, namely, that on points of doctrinal theology she is 'a church that does not know her own mind,' roundly asserts, as we have already mentioned, that 'no man in his senses can deny that the church of england was meant to be a thoroughly protestant and evangelical, and it may be said calvinistic church.' but not only does the whole course of church-history disprove such an assertion, and show that this is what the puritans always wanted to make the church, and what the church would never be made, but we can disprove it, too, out of the mouths of the very puritans themselves. at the savoy conference the puritans urged that 'our first reformers out of their great wisdom did at that time (of the reformation) so compose the liturgy, as to win upon the papists, and to draw them into their church communion _by varying as little as they could from the romish forms before in use_;' and this they alleged as their great plea for purging the liturgy. and the bishops resisted, and upheld the proceeding of the reformers as the essential policy of the church of england; as indeed it was, and till this day has continued to be. no; the church of england did not give her energies to inventing a new church-order for herself and fighting for it; to singling out two or three speculative dogmas as the essence of christianity, and fighting for them. she set herself to carry forward, and as much as possible on the old lines, the old practical work and proper design of the christian church; and this is what left her mind comparatively open, as we have seen, for the admission of philosophy and criticism, as they slowly developed themselves outside the church and filtered into her; an admission which confessedly proves just now of capital importance. this openness of mind the puritans have not shared with the church, and how _should_ they have shared it? they are founded on the negation of that idea of development which plays so important a part in the life of the church; on the assumption that there is a divinely appointed church-order fixed once for all in the bible, and that they have adopted it; that there is a doctrinal scheme of faith, justification, and imputed righteousness, which is the test of a standing or falling church and the essence of the gospel, and that they have extracted it. these are assumptions which, as they make union impossible, so also make growth impossible. the church makes church-order a matter of ecclesiastical constitution, is founded on moral practice, and though she develops speculative dogma, does not allow that this or that dogma is the essence of christianity. 'congregational nonconformists,' say the independents, 'can never be incorporated into an organic union with anglican episcopacy, because there is not even the shadow of an outline of it in the new testament, and it is our assertion and profound belief that christ and the apostles have given us all the laws that are necessary for the constitution and government of the church.'[108] 'whatever may come,' says the president of the wesleyan conference, 'we are determined to be simple, earnest preachers of _the gospel_. whatever may come, we are determined to be true to _scriptural protestantism_. we would be friendly with all evangelical churches, but we will have no fellowship with the man of sin. we will give up life itself rather than be unfaithful to _the truth_. it is ours to cry everywhere: "come, sinners, to _the gospel-feast_!"' and this _gospel_, this _scriptural protestantism_, this _truth_, is the doctrine of justification by 'pleading solely the blood of the covenant,' of which we have said so much. methodists cannot unite with a church which does not found itself on this doctrine of justification, but which holds the doctrine of priestly absolution, of the real presence, and other doctrines of like stamp; congregationalists cannot unite with a church which, besides not resting on the doctrine of justification, has a church-order not prescribed in the new testament. [footnote 108: address of the rev. g. w. conder at liverpool, in the _lancashire congregational calendar_ for 1869-70.] now as hooker truly says of those who 'desire to draw all things unto the determination of bare and naked scripture,' as dr. newman, too, has said, and as many others have said, the bible does not exhibit, drawn out in black and white, the precise tenets and usages of any christian society; some inference and criticism must be employed to get at them. 'for the most part, even such as are readiest to cite for one thing five hundred sentences of scripture, what warrant have they that any one of them doth mean the thing for which it is alleged?' nay, 'it is not the word of god itself which doth, or possibly can, assure us that we do well to think it his word.' so says hooker, and what he says is perfectly true. a process of reasoning and collection is necessary to get at the scriptural church-discipline and the scriptural protestantism of the puritans; in short, this discipline and this doctrine are developments. and the first is an unsound development, in a line where there was a power of making a true development, and where the church made it; the second is an unsound development in a line where neither the church nor puritanism had the power of making true developments. but as it is the truth of its scriptural protestantism which in puritanism's eyes especially proves the truth of its scriptural church-order which has this protestantism, and the falsehood of the anglican church-order which has much less of it, to abate the confidence of the puritans in their scriptural protestantism is the first step towards their union, so much to be desired, with the national church. we say, therefore, that the doctrine: 'it is agreed between god and the mediator jesus christ the son of god, surety for the redeemed, as parties-contractors, that the sins of the redeemed should be imputed to innocent christ, and he both condemned and put to death for them upon this very condition, that whosoever heartily consents unto the covenant of reconciliation offered through christ shall, by the imputation of his obedience unto them, be justified and holden righteous before god,'--we say that this doctrine is as much a human development from the text, 'christ jesus came into the world to save sinners,' as the doctrine of priestly absolution is a human development from the text, 'whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them,' or the doctrine of the real presence from the text, 'take, eat, this is my body.' in our treatise on st. paul we have shown at length that the received doctrine of justification is an unsound development. it may be said that the doctrine of priestly absolution and of the real presence are unsound developments also. true, in our opinion they are so; they are, like the doctrine of justification, developments made under conditions which precluded the possibility of sound developments in this line. but the difference is here: the church of england does not identify christianity with these unsound developments; she does not call either of them _scriptural protestantism_, or _truth_, or _the gospel_; she does not insist that all who are in communion with her should hold them; she does not repel from her communion those who hold doctrines at variance with them. she treats them as she does the received doctrine of justification, to which she does not tie herself up, but leaves people to hold it if they please. she thus provides room for growth and further change in these very doctrines themselves. but to the doctrine of justification puritanism ties itself up, just as it tied itself up formerly to the doctrine of predestination; it calls it _scriptural protestantism_, _truth_, _the gospel_; it will have communion with none who do not hold it; it repels communion with any who hold the doctrines of priestly absolution and the real presence, because they seem to interfere with it. yet it is really itself no better than they. but how can growth possibly find place in this doctrine, while it is held in such a fashion? every one who perceives and values the power contained in christianity, must be struck to see how, at the present moment, the progress of this power seems to depend upon its being able to disengage itself from speculative accretions that encumber it. a considerable movement to this end is visible in the church of england. the most nakedly speculative, and therefore the most inevitably defective, parts of the prayer book,--the athanasian creed and the thirty-nine articles,--our generation will not improbably see the prayer book rid of. but the larger the body in which this movement works, the greater is the power of the movement. if the church of england were disestablished to-day it would be desirable to re-establish her to-morrow, if only because of the immense power for development which a national body possesses. it is because we know something of the nonconformist ministers, and what eminent force and faculty many of them have for contributing to the work of development now before the church, that we cannot bear to see the waste of power caused by their separatism and battling with the establishment, which absorb their energies too much to suffer them to carry forward the work of development themselves, and cut them off from aiding those in the church who carry it forward. the political dissent of the nonconformists, based on their condemnation of the anglican church-order as unscriptural, is just one of those speculative accretions which we have spoken of as encumbering religion. politics are a good thing, and religion is a good thing; but they make a fractious mixture. 'the nonconformity of england, and the nonconformity alone, has been the salvation of england from papal tyranny and kingly misrule and despotism.'[109] this is the favourite boast, the familiar strain; but this is really politics, and not religion at all. but righteousness is religion; and the nonconformists say: 'who have done so much for righteousness as we?' for as much righteousness as will go with politics, no one; for the sterner virtues, for the virtues of the jews of the old testament; but these are only half of righteousness and not the essentially christian half. we have seen how st. paul tore himself in two, rent his life in the middle and began it again, because he was so dissatisfied with a righteousness which was, after all, in its main features, puritan. and surely it can hardly be denied that the more eminently and exactly _christian_ type of righteousness is the type exhibited by church worthies like herbert, ken, and wilson, rather than that exhibited by the worthies of puritanism; the cause being that these last mixed politics with religion so much more than did the first. [footnote 109: the rev. g. w. conder, _ubi supra_.] paul, too, be it remembered, condemned disunion in the society of christians as much as he declined politics. this does not, we freely own, make against the puritans' refusal to take the law from their adversaries, but it does make against their allegation that it does not matter whether the society of christians is united or not, and that there are even great advantages in separatism. if anglicans maintained that their church-order was written in scripture and a matter of divine command, then, congregationalists maintaining the same thing, to the controversy between them there could be no end. but now, anglicans maintaining no such thing, but that their church-order is a matter of historic development and natural expediency, that it has _grown_,--which is evident enough,--and that the essence of christianity is in no-wise concerned with such matters, why should not the nonconformists adopt this moderate view of the case, which constrains them to no admission of inferiority, but only to the renouncing an imagined divine superiority and to the recognition of an existing fact, and allow church bishops as a development of catholic antiquity, just as they have allowed church music and church architecture, which are developments of the same? then might there arise a mighty and undistracted power of joint life, which would transform, indeed, the doctrines of priestly absolution and the real presence, but which would transform, equally, the so-called _scriptural protestantism_ of imputed righteousness, and which would do more for real righteousness and for christianity than has ever been done yet. tillotson's proposals for comprehension, drawn up in 1689, cannot be too much studied at the present juncture. these proposals, with which his name and that of stillingfleet, two of the most estimable names in the english church, are specially associated, humiliate no one, refute no one; they take the basis of existing facts, and endeavour to build on it a solid union. they are worth quoting entire, and i conclude with them. their details our present circumstances would modify; their spirit any sound plan of church-reform must take as its rule. '1. that the ceremonies enjoined or recommended in the liturgy or canons be left indifferent. '2. that the liturgy be carefully reviewed, and such alterations and changes be therein made as may supply the defects and remove as much as possible all ground of exception to any part of it, by leaving out the apocryphal lessons and correcting the translation of the psalms used in the public service where there is need of it, and in many other particulars. '3. that instead of all former declarations and subscriptions to be made by ministers, it shall be sufficient for them that are admitted to the exercise of their ministry in the church of england to subscribe one general declaration and promise to this purpose, viz.: _that we do submit to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the church of england as it shall be established by law, and promise to teach and practise accordingly_. '4. that a new body of ecclesiastical canons be made, particularly with a regard to a more effectual provision for the reformation of manners both in ministers and people. '5. that there be an effectual regulation of ecclesiastical courts to remedy the great abuses and inconveniences which by degrees and length of time have crept into them; and particularly that the power of excommunication be taken out of the hands of lay officers and placed in the bishop, and not to be exercised for trivial matters, but upon great and weighty occasions. '6. that for the future those who have been ordained in any of the foreign churches be not required to be re-ordained here, to render them capable of preferment in the church. '7. that for the future none be capable of any ecclesiastical benefice or preferment in the church of england that shall be ordained in england otherwise than by bishops; and that those who have been ordained only by presbyters shall not be compelled to renounce their former ordination. but because many have and do still doubt of the validity of such ordination, where episcopal ordination may be had, and is by law required, it shall be sufficient for such persons to receive ordination from a bishop in this or the like form: "if thou art not already ordained, i ordain thee," &c.; as in case a doubt be made of any one's baptism, it is appointed by the liturgy that he be baptized in this form: "if thou art not baptized, i baptize thee."' these are proposals 'to be made by the church of england for the union of _protestants_.' who cannot see that the power of joint life already spoken of would be far greater and stronger if it comprehended roman catholics too. and who cannot see, also, that in the churches of the most strong and living roman catholic countries,--in france and germany,--a movement is in progress which may one day make a general union of christendom possible? but this will not be in our day, nor is it business which the england of this generation is set to do. what may be done in our day, what our generation has the call and the means, if only it has the resolution, to bring about, is the union of protestants. but this union will never be on the basis of the actual _scriptural protestantism_ of our puritans; and because, so long as they take this for the gospel or good news of christ, they cannot possibly unite on any other basis, the first step towards union is showing them that this is not the gospel. if we have succeeded in doing even so much towards union as to convince one of them of this, we have not written in vain. the end. transcriber's notes:text originally written in greek has been transliterated and framed between plus marks, thus: +hagiasmos+. minor punctuation errors and omissions corrected. [illustration: titlepage] _by the same author_ the epic of paul a sequel to "the epic of saul" the action of the epic of paul begins with that conspiracy formed at jerusalem against the life of the apostle, which in the sequel led to a prolonged suspension of his free missionary career. it embraces the incidents of his removal from jerusalem to cæsarea, of his imprisonment at the latter place, of his journey to rome for trial before cæsar, and of his final martyrdom. the design of the poem as a whole is to present through conduct on paul's part and through speech from him, a living portrait of the man that he was, together with a reflex of his most central and most characteristic teaching. its descriptions are vivid, and it brings the reader's mind into close touch with the great spirit of paul. it is a poem in which dignity, beauty, and power are commingled with a rare charm. "paul, the new man, retrieved from perished saul, unequaled good and fair, from such unfair, such evil, orient miracle unguessed!- both what himself he was and what he taught- this marvel in meet words to fashion forth and make it live an image to the mind forever, blooming in celestial youth."--_from the proem._ _an appreciative criticism._ "noble as was dr. wilkinson's 'epic of saul,' his 'epic of paul' is even nobler. the kingliness of its range; the majesty of its principal figure; the fascination of its subordinate figures; the subtlety of its characterizations; the pathos of its interviews; the intricate consistency of its plot; the conscientiousness of its exegesis and allusions; the splendor of its imaginations; the nobility of its ethics; the stateliness of its rhythm; the grandeur of its evolution--these are some of the characteristics which make 'the epic of paul' another necessary volume in the library of every clergyman, philosopher, and litterateur." --rev. george dana boardman, d.d. _8vo, cloth, gilt top, 722 pp. price, $2.00, post-free._ _both books together, $3.00._ funk & wagnalls company, publishers, new york the epic of saul by william cleaver wilkinson author of "the epic of paul" funk & wagnalls company new york and london 1898 copyright, 1891, by funk & wagnalls; 1898, by funk & wagnalls company. [registered at stationers' hall, london, eng.] printed in the united states of america. contents. page book i. saul and gamaliel, 5 book ii. saul and the sanhedrim, 37 book iii. saul against stephen, 59 book iv. stephen against saul, 87 book v. saul and shimei, 113 book vi. saul and rachel, 139 book vii. stephen and ruth, 159 book viii. stephen martyr, 183 book ix. ruth and rachel, 209 book x. saul at bethany, 235 book xi. saul and hirani, 265 book xii. saul and the apostles, 299 book xiii. saul and sergius, 317 book xiv. for damascus, 347 book xv. saul and jesus, 371 the epic of saul. saul of tarsus, brought up at jerusalem a pupil of gamaliel, the most celebrated rabbi of his time, from setting out as eager but pacific controversialist in public dispute against the preachers of the gospel, changes into a virulent, bloody persecutor of christians, and ends by abruptly becoming himself a christian and a teacher of christianity. the epic of saul tells the story of this. proem. saul saw the prophet face of stephen shine as it had been an angel's, but his heart to the august theophany was blind- blinded by hatred of the fervent saint, and hatred of the lord who in him shone. what blindfold hatred such could work of ill in nature meant for utter nobleness, then, how the hatred could to love be turned, the proud wrong will to lowly right be brought, and paul the "servant" spring from rebel saul- this, ye who love in man the good and fair, and joy to hail retrieved the good and fair from the unfair and evil, hearken all and speed me with your wishes, while i sing. book i. saul and gamaliel. saul visits gamaliel to submit a forming purpose conceived by him of entering into public dispute with the christian preachers. gamaliel disapproves; informing saul that the jewish rulers are about to apply against those preachers the penalties of the law. these men accordingly arrested and arraigned, the sanhedrim hold a council on their case, at which caiaphas advises accusing them to the romans as seditious; mattathias urges stoning them out of hand; shimei recommends pursuing against them a policy of guile. the epic of saul. saul and gamaliel. gamaliel sat at evening on his roof and deeply mused the meaning of the law. the holy city round about him lay magnificent, encircled with her hills. beyond the torrent kedron, sunken deep within his winding valley, olivet leaned long his shaded ridge against the east, distinct in every olive to the sun. nearer, amid the city, chief to see, the glory of the temple of the lord! the seat was noble for a noble pile: the summit of moriah, levelled large, spread larger yet, outbuilt on masonry cyclopean, or more huge, pillar and arch fast-founded like the basis of a world. a world of architecture rested there- temple, and court, and long-drawn colonnade on terrace above terrace ranged around, cloister, and porch, and pendent gallery, height, depth, length, space, and splendor, without end, glittering its stones of lustre purest white, and stately portals rich with gems and gold: the setting sun now smote it that it blazed. the sight was torment to gamaliel's pride, torment with pleasure mixed, but torment more, as there he sat upon his roof alone. tall, and erect in port, unbent his form with all that weight of venerable years, his head with almond-blossom glory-crowned, and bosom overstreamed with silver beard, gamaliel stood before his countrymen their stay, their solace, and their ornament, one upright pillar in a fallen state. fallen, for rome had pushed her foaming wave of conquest far into the east, and laid judæa under deluge, quiet now, but deep, of domination absolute- a weight as of the sea upon her breast. jerusalem was glorious to behold, girdled with guardian mountains round about, and sunlit with her temple in the midst. alas, but more her glory, more her shame! for all her glory was the roman's now, the queen a vassal at a tyrant's feet, she cæsar serving who should serve but god. and, worse disgrace than heathen servitude, there recreant jews were found, and more and more, who their hearts sold to their captivity, and abjectly gave up the ancient hope and promise, dawning-star of prophecy, that yet to captive israel should arise messiah, king of kings and lord of lords, to break the yoke from off his people's neck and gift them with the empire of the earth- this crown of israel's hope gave up, to choose, instead, for captain and deliverer, one base-born, from galilee, consorting friend with publicans and sinners, hung at last convicted malefactor on the cross! such thoughts and tortures exercised the mind of grave gamaliel on his roof that eve. he felt the burden of his name and fame weigh heavy, his renown of sanctity, with wisdom, rife so wide, and holy zeal. his head declined upon his bosom, there amid the evening cool unheeded, he, gray reverend teacher of the law, sat mute, rapt over the writ parchment on his knees, and read, or thought, or thought and read, and prayed. the veil was on the old man's heart; he saw unseeing, for the sense from him was sealed. in words like these his prayer and plaint he poured: "hath god forgotten to be gracious? will jehovah cast us off forevermore? we groan, o lord, thy people groan, beneath the yoke of the oppressor. it is time, lo, bow thy heavens and come avenging down! appear thou for thy people! visit us! not only the uncircumcised are come, and heathen, into thine inheritance, but of thy chosen seed are risen up false children unto abraham, to vex our nation's peace and shame us to our foes. the son of joseph suffered his desert, accurséd, on the tree, pretender vile, who out of nazareth came forth to claim messiahship, the gift of david's line, and trailed a glorious banner in the dust, the banner of the hope of israel. that day, too long expected, yet shall dawn and true messiah, girded on his thigh his sword athirst for alien blood, shall ride conquering and to conquer over all the necks of these his enemies and ours. how long, lord god of sabaoth, how long? for now that hated false messiah's name is preached, the dead for re-arisen to life, the crucified for glorified, to men, and ichabod is written everywhere on all that was the boast of israel. o thou that overthrewest the harrying horde of pharaoh whelmed beneath the entombing sea, rise, overwhelm thine enemies, restore the glory and the kingdom to thine own!" gamaliel prayed, and knew not that his prayer found voice and smote at least an earthly ear. "amen!" gamaliel started as he heard the voice of saul responding fervently. saul had been pupil to gamaliel, loyal and loving, and he now was friend familiar, whom, as guest, unbidden oft and unannounced, that famous pharisee welcomed to share his most seclusive hours. "my son!" "rabboni!" mutually they said. the younger to the elder now had come, a thought to purpose quickening in his breast. he too was hebrew patriot, and he yearned with anguish like his master's, yet at once sharper than his, and more accessible to hope, as well his livelier youth became and native blood more nimble in his veins- saul also, with gamaliel, yearned and burned, beholding prone his country in the dust, under the grinding heel of roman power- and messianic glory turned to shame! saul's first wish was to bring his brethren back stung to their pristine, proud, prophetic hope of a messiah born to regal robes, swaying a sceptre, seated on a throne, crowned with a crown of myriad diadems, symbol of lordship that should myriad tribes mass in one mighty empire of mankind. he felt the soul of eloquence astir within him, and he longed to be at war, in words that flamed like lightning and that smote like thunder-stones, against those grovelling men who israel taught to grovel at the feet of galilæan jesus crucified, accepted for the christ, forsooth, of god! such wish, becoming purpose, saul has brought this evening to gamaliel, with high hope, hope high, but vain, to disappointment doomed, of grateful gratulant words to hearten him, approving and applauding his desire, won from the wisest in jerusalem. thus minded, saul, blithe, eager, sanguine, bold, with yet a grace of filial in his mien, as toward a master had in love and fear, said: "teacher, what i came to learn from thee, already, having marked thy prayer, i know. god hear thee out of zion in thy prayer! god bring to naught the counsels of his foes! now know i, and rejoice to know, that thou, my teacher in the blessed law, wilt say, 'god speed thee, son,' in what i seek to do. for, lo, i seek to serve the suffering cause of truth wounded and bleeding in the street. love of my country burns me as with flame imprisoned and living in my very bones- my country, and my countrymen. this land to me is lovely like a bride beloved- beloved the more, unutterably wronged! her trodden dust is dear to me. not i, as do my brethren on her bosom born, equably love her with composed and calm affection sweet. that homesick longing bred with boyhood in cilicia haunts me yet, to heighten love with anguish, and more dear make the dear soil of this my fatherland. a passion, not a fondness, is my love; and for my countrymen to die, were sweet- such blind abandonment of love usurps my being for my kinsmen in the flesh. would god i might in very deed pour out this blood, no vain oblation, to redeem my bondmen brethren and to purge this land!" in speech no farther--though in passionate tears the strong man vented still his else choked heart. gamaliel, with wise senior sympathy, sat silent, waiting till that burst were past. then gravely: "yea, my son, i know thy zeal, and praise it. such as thou, in number more, might somewhat; such as thou, alas, are few." his master's praise saul took as check and chill, uttered with that insinuated sense of sage discountenance to his youthful zeal. he shrank, but braced himself, and gently said: "but, father, not by many or by few is our god bound to working. many or few to him is one. nay, were there none save me, were i alone among my brethren, i, alone among my brethren, yet would dare." against the vernal aspiration warm of saul's young blood and tropic temperament gamaliel's aged, wise, sententious phlegm, and magisterial manner though benign, abode unmoved, inert, insensible; like an ice-alp that freezes on its cheek a breath of spring soft blowing from the south. with viscid slow demur the old man spoke, and downcast heavily shook his hoary head: "to dare is cheap and common with our race, we are few dastards; did not judas dare? and theudas? but their daring came to naught. wisdom with daring, fortitude to wait, we need, son saul; the daring that must do, and cannot wait, has wrought us sumless ill." damped, but remonstrant, saul still plied his plea: "and yet but now, 'how long,' i heard thee cry, 'how long, lord god of sabaoth, how long?'" "yea," said gamaliel, "that i daily cry." "thy counsel and thy praying how agree?" "men i bid wait; wait not, i pray my god." "were this not well, o master calmly wise, in trust that god will rouse him at my cry, to rouse myself and strongly side with god? i cannot rest in peace; i hear the woe denounced for such as safely sit at ease in zion. let me do as well as pray." saul's rising zeal once more the master checked: "praying is doing, likewise waiting works; but what, son saul, is in thine heart to do? i cherished better dreams, my son, for thee, than to behold thee leading to their doom one helpless, hopeless, hapless company more, insurgent out of season against rome, confederate sons of folly and of crime!" rebuke like this saul brooked it ill to hear; with filial sweet resentment he replied: "and cherish other dreams, i pray thee, father! no man-at-arms am i to challenge rome; though not even rome should daunt me, called of god to front her with but pebble from the brook, like david, in her plenitude of power. rome rules us, and i grieve, but i rejoice: i grieve that we are such as must be ruled, and cannot rule ourselves; but i rejoice, since such we are, that we are ruled by rome. the strongest and the wisest is the best to serve, if one must serve. alas, my country! her face is in the dust because her heart grovels, and therefore on her neck the heel. so, not to rid us of the roman, i labor with this desire, but to erect the dustward spirit of my countrymen. this people knowing not the law are cursed!" by instinct wise of policy unmeant, saul, in his last half-maledictory words of vehement passion edged with bitterness, had struck a chord that answered in the breast of the habitual teacher of the law. "yea," said gamaliel, "now art thou true son and utterest wisdom. make them know the law. with both my hands i bless thee speaking thus. the law shall save them, if they know the law." saul knew it was gamaliel's wont that spoke, his life-long wont of reverence for the law and trust in its omnipotence to serve whatever need befell his nation--this, rather than any fresh, fair-springing sense of hope in him auxiliar to his own. yet, in despair of better heartening now, and self-impelled to ease his laboring mind, he, fixed and faltering both, with courteous phrase premised of teachable assent sincere to smooth somewhat thereto his doubtful way, frankly a hearing for his counsel sought: "i ever heard thee, father, teaching that, and i believe it wholly, mind and heart; but something now i did not learn from thee, hearken, i pray, and weigh if it be wise." but less like one who hearkened as to weigh a counsel shown, gamaliel now to saul seemed, than like one who sat behind a shield in opposition, a broad shield of brow immobile, placid, large circumference, and orb of diamond proof, between them hung there on the housetop still in dim twilight, ready to quench in darkness any ray of word or sign from him that should aspire to reach an understanding guarded so- such to saul seemed gamaliel now, while yet, despite, repressed but irrepressible, that strenuous strong spirit thus went on: "deeply i have desired to know my time and not to waste my strength beating the air. are not men's needs other with other times? no more perhaps in peaceful shelters now sacred to sacred studies, synagogue retirements, where our doctors of the law propose in turn their sage conclusions, heard by questioning disciples--here perhaps no more is truth most truly taught to men. some, it may be, might well go forth to stand even at the corners of the streets and cry. folly amain preaches to gaping crowds, and shall not wisdom cry? my heart is hot, amid the multitude they make their prey, to meet these false proclaimers to their face, and stop their mouths, with moses and with all the prophets and the psalms, from uttering lies." gamaliel heard, and like a lion stood, that shakes his dewy mane from slumber roused; the old man loomed in action nobly tall, as thus, with weighty gesture, in a voice solid with will, he gently, sternly spoke: "nay, saul, my son, thy zeal misguides thee now- thy zeal, and peradventure some conceit of wisdom wiser than thine elders. thou, consenting thus to parley with the fool according to his folly, like becomest. this is a time to answer otherwise than with the wind of words against their words of wind, as equal against equal matched. those wresters of the law must feel the law smiting their mouths shut with the heavy hand. with blows, not words, vain fools like these are taught. go thou thy way, to-morrow shalt thou see hap other far than that thou hast devised befall those evil men of galilee. our chiefly prudent, watchful for our weal, will stop their mouths profane and make an end." saul chode his tongue to silence, but his heart set stern in resolution touched with pride, as, after decent pause, he took farewell. the master and the pupil parted thus, and both were blind to that which was to be; for both would change, but change in converse ways gamaliel gentle grow, and saul grow hard. that morrow, peter with his brethren all, apostle preachers of the gospel, felt the heavy hand gamaliel shadowed fall indeed upon them into dungeon thrown. but thence by night the angel of the lord, opening the doors, delivered them, and bade boldly into the temple take their way and there preach christ to all the worshippers. with the first flush of morning, their swift feet shod with the sandals of obedience, they hasten to fulfil the angelic word. meanwhile the sanhedrim for counsel met concerning those their prisoners, and the state, the vexed state, of the hebrew commonwealth, sent pursuivants to fetch them from their cells and station them in presence to be judged. but those despatched to bring them came and said, "we found, indeed, the prison safely shut and all the keepers keeping watch and ward without before the doors; but entering in to find our prisoners, prisoner found we none." the captain of the temple, the high-priest, and all that council mused in maze and doubt- gamaliel most, guessing the finger of god. but now comes one who brings a fresh report, "behold," said he, "the men ye put in bond are standing in the temple teaching there." forthwith the captain of the temple goes, his band attending, and, no violence shown- for fear was on them of the people, lest they stone them--leads the galilæans in. robed venerably each in rich array of purple, and fine linen, glistering white and broidered fair, their flowing garments fringed with large expanse of border and with cords of blue adorned, broad their phylacteries, the council of the seventy sat severe within their council-hall in solemn state. a semi-orb they sat, or crescent-wise, and in the midst, between the horns, were placed, under their beetling frown, the prisoners. awful these felt the presence of the place, and, while the high-priest of their nation, throned middle and chief among the councillors, denouncing asked: "did we not straitly bid forbear to teach in this accurséd name? and, lo, ye fill jerusalem with bruit, and seek to bring on us this person's blood!"- while thus, sternly, he spoke, those simple men felt the heart fail within them and the tongue cleave to the mouth's dry roof. he ceasing, back their spirit came, and spirit not their own, the holy ghost of god, flooded their souls, as when into a bay the ocean pours. then peter and his brethren boldly spoke: "fathers and brethren, hearken to our words: god needs must we, rather than men, obey. that jesus whom ye crucified and slew, him did the lord god of our sires raise up, and at his own right hand exalt to be both prince and saviour, to bestow on us repentance and forgiveness of our sins. of these things all we stand here witnesses; nor we alone, for with us witnesseth god's spirit bestowed on whoso him obeys." something not earthly in those prisoners' mien a tone of more than human in their words, a majesty, as of omnipotence patient within them, ready to break forth, but patient still, to brook how much was need- so much, no more!--this awed one watchful heart prepared amid that council now to heed; gamaliel inly pondered, 'is it god?' the clear simplicity, the perfect faith, the steady, prompt obedience, the serene courage that dared, without defying, all the terrors brandished by the sanhedrim- this spirit, strange in those despiséd men, as with a soft and subtle atmosphere enfolding and suffusing him, subdued the solid temper of his mind, the strong set of his resolution grim relaxed, undid the hard contortions of his nerves, and supple made the will so firm before. his steadfast poise of confidence perturbed, gamaliel trembled with uncertainty. otherwise saul; he, merged in different thought, eluded quite that penetrative spell. unconscious of the holy ghost, he strove blindly against him, like the rest, though not yet, like the rest, with zeal of violence to do the prisoners harm or shed their blood; with such zeal not, but with ambitious pride of wisdom unawares puffed up to show his prowess in the scriptures, and to earn a high degree surpassing all his peers. his fellow-councillors concerting how to quench this propagandist fire in blood, saul said within his heart: 'nay, nay, instead, might i but once these bold presumers face amid the idling crowds they feed with lies, how, from the law itself, whereof, untaught therein, they prate, would i, in open test of argument, confute them to their teeth! their own ill-wielded weapons from their hands seen wrenched and turned against them, surely then not only would these brawlers cease, but all would laud and magnify the glorious word of god, thus shown, well wielded, capable of wreaking its own vengeance on its foes.' these twain such counsel in their secret breast held diverse, while that strife of words went on. not what, in present need, behooved to do- a full and fell accord conjoined them there!- was doubt or question to the sanhedrim; but in what chosen way their chosen goal, the doom of death for those accurséd men, with safe sure speed, most prudently, to reach- this doubt embroiled a vehement debate. one argued thus his sentence and advice- caiaphas he, high-priest that lately was, reputed statesman politic and wise: "we are a subject nation; government is for this present slipped from out our hands. chafe how we may, how will it otherwise, ours is a state of vassalage to rome. death in our hearts and death upon our tongues, denounced amain against our enemies, is futile--thunder bare of thunderbolt. we make ourselves a laughter--unless we warp toward our end with wisdom; who is weak well needs be wise, to win--wisdom is power. to kill and keep alive, by process due of law, no longer appertains to us, that right being forfeit to our conqueror; this must we not let our honorable pride, justly indignant, and our holy zeal incensed for god, bribe us to blink. but slave, if wise, may make a foolish master serve. break we proud rome to do our task for us. true triumph, when we wield the tyrant power itself of domination over us a weapon in our hands to work our will! "i counsel that we seek and find firm ground of mortal accusation, before those who rule us, against these audacious men, as teachers of seditious doctrine meant to undermine allegiance, and at length prompt insurrection and a state of war. rome then will stamp our troublers out of life, and we, well rid of them without annoy, besides shall safely reap from her the praise, ill-merited, of fealty to her right- praise that sometime hereafter may be gain of vantage, if sometime hereafter come fit season to fling off her hated yoke." such words of weight spoke caiaphas, and ceased those words, not idle, fell as falls the steel smiting the flint; a sparkle keen of fire flew forth, found tinder ready, and flashed up in instant flame. a patriot malcontent, fiercely, irreconcilably, a jew, was mattathias; mattathias said: "yoke by whom hated? surely not by him who tamely brooks to talk of earning praise for loyalty from rome! nor more by those who patient sit to hear such counsel broached! nay, men my brethren, that i did not hear! sure, son of abraham never have i heard own himself slave, and meekly speak of rome, as of a master! this i will not hear! i could not hear it! speech of such a strain were like a river of molten metal poured red-hot into my ear to quench the sense! stone-deaf am i to craven treachery from one of my own fellow-councillors here! i only heard my brother say, 'let us arise and stand for god!' lo, i arise and stand, with him, with all! there is a law, ancient and unrepealed, wholesome and good, to stone for blasphemy. blasphemers these, what wait we? we have hands, and there are stones, let us this instant forth and stone them, stone unto the death!" the clenched hands, and the fierce menace of husky tones, half-choked, and teeth gnashing, and brow braided with swollen knots, were more than words to speak the murderous will. the prisoners listened with suspended breath; they deemed a dreadful doom indeed was nigh. instinctive instant fear, forestalling faith, with sudden loud alarum startled them, and for one moment violently shook, in them, all save the basis of the soul- one moment--then they sped themselves with prayer, ran to the shelter of the promises, and were at peace! in that secure retreat withdrawn, the secret place of the most high, the angel of the lord encamping round, composédly at leisure they looked out and saw the wicked plot against the just, vainly, and gnash upon him with his teeth! within their hearts they knew his day would come. the speaker still stood leaning imminent, his posture instigation, while a hiss of hot adhesion ran increasing round- but skipped gamaliel, skipped the musing saul with one beside, scarce daring to be dumb- when, in his place, slowly, by soft degrees, with furtive look and gesture, to his feet stealing, half stood, half crouched, a speaker new. this was one shimei, an abject man, abject in spirit, though in wit not dull, and capable of long malevolence fed on resentments such as abjects feel. saul listened, but gamaliel bowed in prayer, as shimei thus, obliquely, sneering, spoke: "stoning is pleasant, doubtless, when, as now, one's sense of righteousness is much engaged. the reflex satisfaction to be had from accurately casting a choice stone to break the teeth of the ungodly, is superlative, perhaps the very highest relish attainable to mortals here. the consciousness of sympathy with god always exhilarates delightfully; but in particular if the sympathy be exercised in such a case as this, where the most glorious of god's attributes, his justice, is involved. borne far above pity, or any weakness of the sense, you only feel a rapture of divine approval of the law you execute. so subtly strong and sweet possesses you the instinct to indulge your appetite for righteousness, you might almost mistake your pleasure for the pleasure of revenge. "but let revenge be for the heathen, who know not jehovah and his law contemn. jehovah's chosen we, our sentiment purged of all personal bias of mere hate, we simply wash our feet in wicked blood with pleasure--pleasure naturally enhanced, if we have spilled said wicked blood ourselves. "yea, stoning gratifies the pious mind profoundly--grant the stoning be by you; by you, not to you; being stoned, i judge, is less satisfactory. on this point who doubt or differ, have their opportunity to clear their minds by prompt experiment- they need but act upon the last advice; for--grant our gracious masters smiled and pleased to let us play a prank of self-misrule, this once, wilful, but harmless, in their view, which might even turn out comedy for them- yet, stoning these, we should ourselves get stoned, with expedition--past all chance of doubt. our friend, the vehement adviser here, might peradventure go himself as blithe to be stoned by the people, as to stone these pestilent fellows--for the glory of god. but, then, more clearly how the glory of god would be subserved thereby, the rest of us, colder in heart perhaps, but certainly cooler in head, would wish to be advised, before we take our lives into our hands to wreak the righteous judgment of the law on favorites of a fierce and fickle mob whose palms, unless i much misread the signs, already itch for stones to throw at us, while we sit here and talk of throwing stones at whom they love and honor. "give them line this wild jerusalem mob, and they will change their mood. remember how it chanced but late with jesus nazarene. hailed yesterday messiah, king of kings and lord of lords, ovation of hosannas greeting him from thousand times a thousand throats--to-day, a malefactor hooted through the streets, with 'crucify him! crucify him!' cried in multitudinous chorus like one voice- the mouths to-day and yesterday the same. their second tune indeed we set for them and sang precentors--but how well they joined! in due time pitch them the like tune again, and doubt not they will sing it with full breath. "not that i hence advise to wait remiss; my counsel is no less from sloth removed than hostile to crude, hasty violence. only, shun public note; with proper quest, ways may be found, ways pregnant too, that make no noise. the nail that went so shrewdly through sisera's temples made no noise. it sped softly, but sped surely, and found the quick secret of life. are there not jaels yet? you have guessed what i advise. the end you seek is holy; holy hold whatever means shall lead thereto. let us commit this thing to those the wisest found among us, few better than many, charging them to choose some suitable silent means of silencing these praters, without stir or scandal made, likest the ways of nature, hint, perhaps, conveyed of overruling providence at work through nature for revenging crime. "for me, i seek no honor at your hands: i do not court responsibility; i am least wise among you; yet a trust imposed were duty sacred in mine eyes." as, should along a living bosom warm with youthful life-blood coursing joyously, a deadly serpent, with protracted, cold belly incumbent, glide, beneath that touch and creep the conscious flesh would creeping shrink, and all the genial current in the veins curdle; so now, at shimei's words, much more at signs in him that spoke beyond his words, the accent of the voice, the look, the port of figure, sinister suggestion couched in action or grimace, there came a chill, a shudder, of reaction and collapse over the council late with zeal aglow. even mattathias, who, in attitude of menace, after shimei arose, some space still stood--he, too, while shimei was speaking, felt the evil spell and sank into his seat. with one accord they all, when shimei ceased, a gloomy silence kept. gamaliel did not lift his head, but groaned audibly now, though gently, in his prayer. from such a source such sound made seem yet more ominous the spell which hushed that council-hall. book ii. saul and the sanhedrim. the sanhedrim still in session on the apostles' case, saul speaks; first scornfully repudiating for himself shimei's proposal of guile, and then impressively announcing his own purpose, now fully mature, to controvert the christian preachers in open argument before the people. after a pause following saul's speech, gamaliel speaks in favor of letting the prisoners go free. other councillors express their sentiments. a scourging of the utmost severity being proposed, nicodemus, with bated breath, deprecates first a cruel infliction, and then any infliction at all. release after scourging is finally resolved upon. saul and the sanhedrim. dumb-struck and stirless long the sanhedrim- instinctively abhorrent from the part of that base councillor--at last there rose a new assessor in the midst to speak. a young man he, who, in the general thought, wherever moving, round about him wore a golden halo of uncertain hope and prophecy of bright futures. aspect clear and pure; straight stature; foothold firm and free; the bloom of youth just ripening to the hue of perfect manhood upon cheek and brow; lip mobile, but not lax--capacity expressed of exquisite emotion, will elastic and resilient, tempered true to bend, not break, and ultimately strong; glances of lightning latent in the eye, but lightning liable to be quenched in tears; the pride of every hebrew, such was saul. a stir of expectation broke the hush of that strange silence, ere his opening words: "that i, the youngest of this order, thus should rise for speech--and that beloved gray head before me bowed, unready yet--might seem unseemly. but to speak after he speaks, my own reveréd guide, the guide of all, would be, should i then speak to differ, more unseemly still. and what i have to say, being my thought, burns in me to be said, approve, condemn, who will; god bids me speak." gamaliel raised his head and looked at saul. saul felt the look, and hardened his will, but not his heart, to meet it. turning so, he saw, not what he inly braced himself to bear, warning, rebuke, anger to overawe, reproach, appeal, dissuasion, pain confessed at filial separation, grasp of will at old authority elapsed--of these, naught; only a pathos of perplexity, a broken, anguished, groping childlikeness, desire of any help, and hope of none- saul will hereafter understand it all; he simply marks it now compassionately in wonder, pausing not, and thus, with loth allusion to the last advice, proceeds: "but other speech my lips refuse, until i purge my conscience by protesting here, for me, i spurn, scorn, hate, loathe utterly the devil and devilish lies. i have no qualms at blood, but i love truth, and qualms i own at falsehood, practised in whatever name; damnable ever, then thrice damnable, damning a holy cause it feigns to serve!" a flush of warm revival in the breasts of some that listened answered to such words. but one there was, that vile adviser, felt a gripe of mortal hatred at his heart. he, by gamaliel's eye not unobserved, behind a black malignant scowl which, like that murk emission of the cuttle-fish, flushed from his heart his face to overspread and hide his thought, sat fostering the wound of saul's disdainful noble words--a wound to rankle long in the obscene recess of that bad bosom, and therein to breed at last an issue foul of fell revenge; in purpose fell, though in fulfilment foiled. but saul, magnanimously heedless, deigned nor glance at him nor thought of consequence. elate with the elixir of his youth, and buoyed with confidence exultant now by the rebound of his beginning, buoyed besides with sympathy, he passed along, yet, master he, not mastered, of his mood, curbed strongly his strong passion and delight of power, and, calm with self-possessing will, force in him to have sped a thunderbolt stayed back from sudden waste, to be sent on in fine diffusive throb--as farther thus: "enough of that; i did but purify my soul with words. i feared some inward stain from only listening, if i listened only, and did not speak, when base was proffered me. "hear now what i propose. what i propose is not advice; advice i neither give nor ask. i do not ask it, for my heart is fixed; duress of conscience presses me, with flesh and blood forbidding to confer. i must do what i shall, in man's or devil's despite. i trust i speak not thus in pride. not therefore that the census of your yeas or nays may guide me, but that ye may weigh what force my purpose now unfolded owns to sway your present counsels, hear and judge. "ye know, and all jerusalem, that saul has counted nothing worthy to be prized beside the learning of the law of god. for this, a boy, from yon cilician lands i came; for this, i have consumed my youth. what envied gains of knowledge i have made, sitting a student at gamaliel's feet, befits me not to vaunt; these, small or large, belong to god and to my nation, being mine only to use for him and them. i see plainly how i must use my trust from god. wherefore are we assembled? wherefore, save because these sciolists pervert the law, deceived perhaps, deceiving certainly?" scarce waved a careless hand in sign at them- toward the apostles, still in presence there, saul deigned not to divert his scornful eyes: "shame is it if i, knowing the law indeed, am less than match for these untutored minds, amid the flocking fools they lead astray, to controvert their hateful heresies. herewith then i proclaim my ripe resolve to undertake, against the preaching liars, on their own terms, a warfare for the truth. let it be seen which cause, in open list, is stronger, truth from heaven or lie from hell! "brethren and fathers, as ye will, consult; the youngest has his purpose thus divulged." as when a palm diversely blown upon in a strong tempest of opponent winds, now this way, and now that, obedient to each prevailing present urgency, leans to all quarters of the firmament by turns, but quickly, let a lull succeed, upright again, shows every leaf composed; so now the council, long enough between opinion and opinion buffeted, while saul was speaking took a little ease, no new advice proposed, to breathe again, steady itself, and come to equipoise. some thought that saul had spoken proudly; some, that pride became his worth; some held that he would make his vaunting good; some feared his plan savored of youth and rashness; others deemed public dispute mistaken precedent teeming with various mischief--sure to breed insufferable pretensions in the crowd, so taught to count themselves fit arbiters on scriptural or traditional points of moot, and, by close consequence, a serious breach endanger in their own authority; yet others felt, whatever fruit beside was borne of saul's proposed experiment, two things at least were safe to reckon on- in its own dignity, the sanhedrim must needs incur immedicable hurt, so plainly scandalous a spectacle exhibiting, a councillor enrolled of their own number stooping to debate on equal terms with ignorant fishermen; then, on their side, those flattered fishermen, far from indulging proper gratitude for being publicly confounded quite at such illustrious hands, would be instead inflated out of measure, nigh to burst, with added pride at complaisance so new from their superiors, while the common herd would give them greater heed accordingly. such things diverse they thought, and silence kept, saul's colleagues in the sanhedrim; they all together felt that saul in any wise would go saul's way; they therefore silence kept. one man alone, by age and gravity, and reverence his in ample revenue, was easy master of the sanhedrim: on him the council rested and revolved, as on a fixéd centre and support. and now 'gamaliel! let us hear at last gamaliel's word' was suddenly the sole, the simultaneous, silent thought to all. the eyes of all concentred instantly upon gamaliel found that saint esteemed and sage already stirring as to rise. their readiness to hear, with his to speak, timed so in perfect reciprocity and exquisite accord responsive, marked that fleet meet moment for the orator, which, conscious half, but half unconscious, he, gamaliel, wielded by the holy ghost, was now to seize and use for god so well. the hoary head, the mien of majesty, the associative power of ancient fame, his habit and tradition of command, their instinct, grown inveterate, to obey, always, wherever he arose to speak among his brethren, won gamaliel heed. but now, a certain gentle winsomeness, born of a certain wavering wistfulness, qualified so a new solemnity of manner, like a prophet's, felt in him, that awe came on his hearers as from god. gamaliel first bade put the prisoners forth, in keeping, out of audience, and then said: "my brethren: saul my brother--son no more i name him, since he parts himself from me in counsel--yet i love him not the less--" a tremor of sensation fluttered through the council, with these words, and at saul's heart pausing, infixed, then healed, a subtle pang of sweet remorse and gracious tenderness- "yea, not the less for this love i my son, my brother, while i honor him the more. yea, and not wholly does he part himself from me; in deepest counsel we are one. saul seeks to honor god obeying him, the same seek i; are we not deeply one? and ever i have taught obedience to god as the prime thing and paramount; disciple therefore still to me, and son, is saul, even in this act and article of his secession from his master's part; saul and gamaliel both, and all of us, i pray my god to save from self-deceit! i shudder while i pray, 'deliver me, o lord, deliver, from the secret sin of false supposed obedience masking pride!' "late, i was sure, as saul is sure to-day. i thought, and doubted not, we ought to do even what ye now are bent to bring to pass. my way was not saul's way, but rather yours; to me it seemed plainly, as seems to you, wiser to save the body by some loss, if loss were need, of limb. unfalteringly, the knife would i myself with mine own hand have wielded to cut off these members, judged unsound and harmful to the general health, forever from the congregation. now, i feel less sure, gamaliel feels less sure. i wish--brethren, i think i wish--to be obedient; though deceitful is the heart above all things and wicked desperately- what man can know it?--yet i think i will obedience. that was a pure word--the mouth however far from pure that uttered it- 'to god rather than men must we obey.' saul was true son of mine to turn from me to god--if haply he to god indeed have turned from me, and not from me to saul, not knowing! might i also turn, even i, gamaliel from gamaliel, unto god! i dread to trust myself, lest i, myself obeying, misdeem myself obeying god. "hearken, my children. these accuséd men unlikely, most unlikely, choice of heaven to be his prophets, seemed, and seem, to me. i look at them and find no prophet mien; i listen and their galilæan speech offends me; and far more the scandal is to think what message they propound to us. their person and their message i reject- reject, or if reject not, not receive. and yet, my brethren, yet, i counsel you, beware! what ye intend, accomplished once, were once for all accomplished, not to be undone forever. ye consult to slay, and find your purpose hard to come by. how, if, having slain, to your repentance, ye consulted to bring back to life again? were that not harder yet? wherefore take heed, ye men of israel. remember how, a generation gone, theudas arose, proud boaster and asserter of himself, who drew his hundreds to his standard; he was slain, and all his followers came to naught. some space thereafter, out of galilee judas arose and mustered to his side many adherents; but he perished too, and all that clave to him were far dispersed. "this therefore as to these is my advice: refrain your hands from them; let them alone. know, if their deed and counsel be of men, its doom is certain, it will come to naught; but if it be of god, strive how ye may, ye cannot overthrow it. well take heed, lest haply ye be found to fight against god. for myself, when close upon the heels of what was wrought mysterious in the escape of these our prisoners from that warded keep fast-barred, i heard their answer to our sharp inquest and blame, i felt as felt of old that prophet chanting his majestic strain, 'the lord is in his holy temple, let the earth, let the whole earth, before him keep silence.' my soul kept silence and still keeps. and silence keep, all ye, before the lord! for the lord cometh, lo, he cometh swift to judge the earth! and who of us shall bide the day of his approach? not surely he then found in arms against god and his christ!" gamaliel spoke and ceased; but, while he spoke, his speaking was like silence audible, rather than sound of voice; and when he ceased, his silence was as eloquence prolonged. awhile the council sat as in a trance, unable or unwilling to bestir themselves for speech or motion. but not all are capable of awe. some present there, either through sad defect of nature proof, or through long worldly habit seared and sealed, against the access of heavenly influence, bode unaware of anything divine descended near them--carnal minds, immersed in sense, from shocks of spirit insulate, calm, discomposure none from things unseen, the faculty for such experience lost, pitiably self-possessed! and god himself so nigh to have possessed them! these a space waited to let the power a little pass, wrought by gamaliel on the council; then with tentative preamble, one of them said that gamaliel's words were words of weight, weight well derived from character like his- whereat the speaker paused, with crafty eye cast round from countenance to countenance, to read how much he safely might detract, by open difference or by sly demur, from the just value and authority of mild gamaliel's sentence. but small sign saw he to hearten him in hope of ebb to the strong tide still standing at full flood that set in favor of the prisoners. he feebly closed with wish expressed--and wish it was, not hope--of hope no grounds he saw- that some means might be found to save the shocked and staggering dignity--a dignity ancient and sacred--of the sanhedrim from sheer shipwreck. some slight responsive stir under such spur to pride emboldened one to trust they should at least sharply rebuke the prisoners, and take bond of word from them not further to disturb the city's peace. another following said, that had been tried already once, with what result accrued was plain to see. and now the sanhedrim, through various such suggestion commonplace, relaxed somewhat from their late mood so tense, grew readier to approve his voice who said: "the first offence we deemed condignly met with reprimand from us, and interdict. those gentle means the prisoners once have scorned, and to our face assure us they will scorn. now let such contumacious insolence toward just authority too meek, be met, if not with death deserved, at least with stripes so heavy they shall wish it had been death." such truculence renewed provoked a new reaction. this, that councillor less stern noted--who, with gamaliel and with saul, refrained, when all the others hissed applause to mattathias--noted, and with thrift converted into opportunity. a wary spirit nicodemus was, with impulses toward good, but weak in will, and selfish as the timid are. his heart was a divided empire in his breast, half firm for god, but half to self seduced. his fellows trusted him accordingly; hate him they could not, but they did not love. some guessed him guilty of discipleship to jesus, secretly indulged through fear. this their suspicion the suspect in turn suspected, and the uneasy consciousness made him more curious than his wont to move by indirection toward his present aim. what he wished was, to serve the prisoners and not disserve himself--a double end, rendering his counsels double; but as such could speak, now nicodemus rising spoke. with sinuous slow approach winning his way devious whither he wished to go, like those creatures that backward facing forward creep and seem retiring still while they advance, so nicodemus wound him toward his goal, well-chosen, as he said: "let us be wise; beyond our purpose were not well to go, were foolish. cruelty is not, i trust, our spirit; god is just, but cruel not. let us, god's sons, be just indeed, like god, but then, like god, also not cruel. stripes are heavy, howsoever lightly laid on freeborn men. the shame is punishment; a wounded spirit who can bear? through flesh you smite the smarting spirit, every blow. remember too that lacerated flesh has lips to plead with, makes its mute appeal to pity--eloquence incapable of being answered, charging cruelty; whereas the bleeding spirit, bleeding hid, no cruelty imputes, reports no pain, but, pith of self-respect clean gone from one, glazes the eye, dejects the countenance, changes the voice to hollow, takes the spring out of the step, and leaves the man a wretch to suffer on an object of contempt more than compassion--hopelessly bereft of power to captivate the public ear, which ever itches to be caught the prey of orator full-blooded, iron lungs, brass front, a lusty human animal. such make of men, through shame of public stripes, transformed to eunuchs--this, sure, were enough; nay, for our purpose, more than more would be. and even so much as this, yea, lightest stripe, drawing a sequel such as i have said- brethren, for me, my soul revolts from it; i feel it cruel, fear it impious. behooves we ponder well gamaliel's word; and, if to slay were haply against god to be found fighting, why not, then, to scourge?" "such fine-spun sentiment," another now, concurring, though sarcastically, said, "in pity of the victim of the scourge for suffering inwardly endured through shame, supposes that your victim is endowed with some small faculty for feeling shame, which in the present case asks evidence. "still, i too take the clement part, and say, if only for saul's sake, let these go free of any but the lightest punishment. saul will desire for foemen hearts as strong as may be, to call out that strength in him which we well know, for their discomfiture. even thus, he may prefer some other foe than men disparaged by the brand of blows upon their backs, some fairer, fresher fame, his gage of battle to take up, and be by him immortalized through overthrow experienced, such as never yet was worse." divergent so in view or motive, they agreed at last to let the prisoners go with stripes inflicted, and a charge severe imposed to speak in jesus' name no more. these so released departed thence with joy, rejoicing to have been accounted meet for jesus' sake to suffer shame. nor ceased those faithful men to preach and teach as erst, both in the temple and from house to house, daily still sounding forth jesus as christ. but saul withdrew deep pondering in his mind how he might best his plan divulged fulfill. book iii. saul against stephen. stephen, as a christian preacher of brilliant genius and of growing fame, is selected by saul to be his antagonist in the controversy resolved upon by him. to a vast concourse of people assembled in expectation of hearing stephen preach, saul takes the opportunity to address an impassioned and elaborate appeal, with argument, against stephen's doctrine. his hearers are powerfully affected; among them, he not knowing it, saul's own beloved sister rachel. saul against stephen. like a wise soldier on some task intent of moment and of hazard, who, at heart secure of prospering, yet no caution counts, no pains, unworthy, but with wary feet explores his ground about him every rood, all elements of chance forecalculates, draws to his part each doubtful circumstance; never too much provided, point by point equips himself superfluously strong, that he prevailing may with might prevail, and overcome with bounteous victory; so saul, firm in resolve and confident, and inly stung with conscience and with zeal not to postpone his weighty work proposed, would not be hasty found, nor rash, to fail of any circumspection that his sure triumph might make more sure, or wider stretch its margin, certain to be wide. some days after the council, he, with forecast sage and prudence to prepare, refrained himself from word or deed in public; while, at home, not moody, but not genial as his use, his gracious use, was, self-absorbed, retired in deep and absent muse, he nigh might seem a stranger to his sister well-beloved, wont to be sharer of his inmost mind. inmost, save one reserve. he never yet had shown to any, scarce himself had seen, the true deep master motive of his soul, that fountain darkling in the depths of self whence into light all streams of being flowed. saul daily, nightly, waking, sleeping, dreamed of a new nation, his belovéd own, resurgent from the dust consummate fair, and, for chief corner-stone, with shoutings reared to station in the stately edifice- whom but himself? who worthier than saul? this beckoning image bright of things to be- audacious-lovelier far than might be shown to any, yea, than he himself dared look, with his own eyes, steadfast and frank upon- was interblent so closely in his mind with what should be the fortune and effect of his intended controversy nigh, that, though his settled purpose to dispute he had for public reasons publicly declared, he yet in private, of that strife, still future, everywhere to speak abstained, abiding even unto his sister dumb. rachel from tarsus to jerusalem had borne her brother company, her heart one heart with his to cheer him toward the goal of his high purpose, which she knew, to be beyond his equals master in the law. alone they dwelt together, their abode between gamaliel's and the synagogue of the cilicians. beautiful and bright his home she made to him, with housewife ways neat-handed, and with fair companionship. the sister, with that quick intelligence the woman's, first divined, for secret cause of this her brother's travailing silentness, that he some pregnant enterprise revolved; then, having, with the woman's wit, found means to advise herself what enterprise it was, she, with the woman's tact of sympathy, in watchful quiet reverent of his mood, strove with him and strove for him, in her thought, her wish, her hope, her prayer; nor failed sometimes a word to drop, unconsciously as seemed, by lucky chance, that might perhaps convey a timely help of apt suggestion wise to saul her brother for his purpose, he all undisturbed to guess that aught was meant. at home, abroad, reserved, saul not the less all places of men's frequence and resort still visited, and mixed with crowds to catch the whisper of the people; active not, but not supine, observing unobserved as if alone amid the multitude. the brave apostles of the nazarene he heard proclaim their master lord and christ, and marked their method in the scriptures; not with open mind obedient toward the truth, but ever only with shut heart and hard, intent on knowing how to contradict. meanwhile the novel doctrines spread, and found new converts day by day, and day by day proclaimers new. of these more eminent was none than stephen, flaming prophet he, quenchless in spirit, full of faith and power. him oft saul heard, to listening throngs that hung upon the herald's lips with eager ear, the claim of jesus to messiahship assert, and from the psalms and prophets prove. in guise a seraph rapt, with love aflame and all aflame with knowledge, like the bush that burned with god in horeb unconsumed, the fervent pure apostle stephen stood, in ardors from celestial altars caught kindling to incandescence--stood and forged, with ringing blow on blow, his argument, a vivid weapon edged and tempered so, and in those hands so wielded, that its stroke no mortal might abide and bide upright. stephen is such as saul erelong will be risen from the baptism of the holy ghost! saul felt the breath of human power that blew round stephen like a morning wind, he felt the light that lifted and transfigured him and glorified, that bright auroral ray of genius which forever makes the brow it strikes on from its fountain far in god shine like the sunrise-smitten mountain peak- saul felt these things in stephen by his tie with stephen in the fellowship of power; kindred to kindred answered and rejoiced. but that in stephen which was more and higher than stephen at his native most and highest, the inhabitation of the holy ghost- this, saul had yet no sense to apprehend. the spirit of god, only the spirit of god can know; the natural man to him is deaf and blind. saul, therefore, seeing did not see, and hearing heard not. but no less his heart, in seeing and in hearing stephen speak, leapt up with recognition of a peer in power to be his meet antagonist and task him to his uttermost to foil. beyond saul's uttermost it was to be, that task! though this of stephen not, but god. still goaded day by day with such desire as nobler spirits know, to feel the strain and wrestle of antagonistic thews tempting his might and stirring up his mind, saul felt, besides, the motion and ferment and great dilation of a patriot soul, magnanimous, laboring for his country's cause. he thought the doctrines of the nazarene pernicious to the jewish commonwealth, not less than was his person base, his life unseemly, and opprobrious his death. he saw, or deemed he saw, in what was taught from jesus, only deep disparagement disloyally implied of everything nearest and dearest to the hebrew heart. the gospel was high treason in saul's eyes; suppose it but established in success, the temple then would be no more what erst it was, the daily sacrifice would cease, the holy places would with heathen feet be trodden and profaned, the middle wall of old partition between jew and greek would topple undermined, the ritual law of moses would be obsolete and void, common would be the oracles of god, to all divulged, peculiar once to jews- of jewish name and nation what were left? such thoughts, that seemed of liberal scope, were saul's, commingled, he not knowing, with some thoughts, less noble, of his own aggrandizement. it came at length to pass that on a day the spacious temple-court is thronged with those come from all quarters to jerusalem, or dwellers of the city, fain to hear once more the preacher suddenly so famed. present is saul, but not as heretofore to hearken only and observe; the hour has struck when his own voice he must uplift, to make it heard abroad. he dreamed it not, but rachel too was there, his sister. she had, from sure signs observed, aright surmised that the ripe time to speak was come to saul. in her glad loyalty, she doubted not that he, that day, would, out of a full mind, pressed overfull with affluence from the heart, pour forth a stream of generous eloquence- stream, nay, slope torrent, steep sheer cataract, of reason and of passion intermixed- for such she proudly felt her brother's power- which down should rush upon his adversaries and carry them away as with a flood, astonished, overwhelmed, and whirled afar; rescued at least the ruins of the state! so glorying in her high vicarious hope for saul her brother, rachel came that morn betimes and chose her out a safe recess for easy audience, nigh, and yet retired, between the pillars of a stately porch, where she might see and not by him be seen. thence rachel watched all eagerly; when now the multitude, expecting stephen, saw a different man stand forth with beckoning hand as if to speak. the act and attitude commanded audience, for a king of men stood there, and a great silence fell on all. some knew the face of the young pharisee, these whispered round his name; saul's name and fame to all were known, and, ere the speaker spoke, won him a deepening heed. rachel the hush felt with a secret sympathetic awe, and for one breath her beating heart stood still; it leapt again to hear her brother's voice pealing out bold in joyous sense of power. that noble voice, redounding like a surge pushed by the tide, on swept before the wind, and all the ocean shouldering at its back, which seeks out every inlet of the shore to brim it flush and level from the brine- such saul's voice swelled, as from a plenteous sea, and, wave on wave of pure elastic tone, rejoicing ran through every gallery, and every echoing endless colonnade, and every far-retreating least recess of building round about that temple-court, and filled the temple-court with silver sound- as thus, with haughty summons, he began: "ye men of israel, sojourners from far or dwellers in jerusalem, give heed. the lines are fallen to us in evil times: opinions run abroad perverse and strange, divergent from the faith our fathers held. a day is come, brethren, and fallen on us- on us, this living generation, big with promise, or with threat, of mighty doom. which will ye have it? threat, or promise, which? yours is the choosing--choose ye may, ye must. "abolish moses, if ye will; destroy the great traditions of your fathers; say abraham was naught, naught isaac, jacob, all the patriarchs, heroes, martyrs, prophets, kings; that seed of abraham naught, our nation's hope, foretold to be an universal king; make one wide blank and void, an emptied page, of all the awful glories of our past- deliverance out of egypt, miracle on miracle wrought dreadfully for us against our foes, path cloven through the sea, jehovah in the pillar of cloud and fire, and host of pharaoh mightily overthrown; the law proclaimed on sinai amid sound and light insufferable and angels nigh attending; manna in the wilderness; the rock that lived and moved and followed them, our fathers, flowing water in the waste- obliterate at a stroke whatever sets the seal of god upon you as his own, and marks you different from the heathen round- shekinah fixed between the cherubim, the vacant holy of holies filled with god, the morning and the evening sacrifice, priest, altar, incense, choral hymn and psalm, confused melodious noise of instruments together sounding the high praise of god; all this, with more i will not stay to tell, this temple itself with its magnificence, the hope of him foreshown, the messenger of that eternal covenant wherein your souls delight themselves, who suddenly one day shall come unto his temple--blot, expunge, erase, efface, consent to be no more a people, mix and merge yourselves with aliens, blood that in your veins flows pure all the long way one stream continuous down from abraham called the friend of god--such blood adulterate in the idolatrous, corrupt pool of the gentiles--men of israel! or are ye men? and are ye israel? i stand in doubt of you--i stand in doubt of kinsmen mine supposed that bide to hear such things as seems that ye with pleasure hear! "say, know ye not they mean to take away your place and name? are ye so blind? or are ye only base poor creatures caring not though knowing well? oft have ye seen the fat of lambs upon the flaming altar fume one instant and in fume consume away; so swiftly and so utterly shall pass, in vapor of smoke, the glorious excellency, the pomp, the pride, nay, but the being itself, of this our nation from beneath the sun, let once the hideous doctrine of a christ condemned and crucified usurp the place in hebrew hearts of that undying hope we cherish of messiah yet to reign in power and glory more than solomon's, from sunrise round to sunrise without end, and tread the gentiles underneath our feet." indignant patriot spirit in the breast of rachel mixed itself with kindred pride and gladness for her brother gleaming so before her in a kind of fulgurous scorn which made his hearers quail while they admired; she could not stay a sudden gush of tears. but saul's voice now took on a winning change, as, deprecating gently, thus he spoke: "forgive, my brethren, i have used hot words freely and frankly, as great love may speak. but that i love you, trust you, hope of you the best, the noblest, when once more you are yourselves, and feel the spirit of your past come back, i had not cared to speak at all. i simply should have hung my head in shame, worn sackcloth, gone with ashes on my brow, and sealed my hand upon my lips for you forever. love does not despair, but hopes forever. and i love you far too well to dream despair of you. bethink yourselves, my brethren! me, as if i were the voice of your own ancient aspiration, hear. bear with me, let me chide, say not that love lured me to over-confidence of you. "be patient now, my brethren, while i go, so briefly as i may, through argument that well might ask the leisure of long hours, to show from scripture, from authority, from reason and from nature too not less, why we should hold to our ancestral faith, and not the low fanatic creed admit of such as preach for christ one crucified. be patient--i myself must patient be, tutoring down my heart to let my tongue speak calmly, as in doubtful argument, where i am fixed and confident to scorn." as when gennesaret, in his circling hills, by wing of wind down swooping suddenly is into tempest wrought that, to his depths astir, he rouses, and on high his waves uplifts like mountains snowy-capped with foam; so, smitten with the vehement impact and passion of saul's rash, abrupt beginning, that mercurial multitude had answered with commotion such as seemed menace of instant act of violence: but, as when haply there succeeds a lull to tempest, then the waves of galilee sink from their swelling and smooth down to plane yet deep will roll awhile from shore to shore that long slow undulation following storm; so, when, with wise self-recollection, saul, in mid-career of passionate appeal, stayed, and those gusts of stormy eloquence impetuous poured no longer on the sea of audience underneath him, but, instead, proposed a sober task of argument, the surging throng surceased its turbulence, and settled from commotion into calm; yet so as still to feel the rock and sway of central agitation at its heart, while thus that master of its moods went on: "what said jehovah to the serpent vile which tempted eve? did he not speak of one, offspring to her seduced, who should arise to crush the offending head? no hint, i trow, of meekness and obedience unto death found there at least, death on the shameful tree, forsooth, to be the character and doom of that foretokened champion of his kind, that haughty trampler upon satan's head! "to abraham our father was of god foretold, 'in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.' what blessing, pray, could come abroad upon mankind through abraham's seed, messiah, should messiah, abraham's seed, prove to be such as now is preached to you, a shame, a jest, a byword, a reproach, a hissing and a wagging of the head, a gazing-stock and mark for tongues shot out- burlesque and travesty of our brave hopes and of our vaunts, shown vain, rife everywhere among the nations, that erelong a prince should from the stem of jesse spring, to sway an universal sceptre through the world? "did god mock abraham? did he mean, perchance, that all the families of the earth should find peculiar blessedness in triumphing over that puissant nation promised him, his progeny, to match the stars of heaven for multitude, and be as on the shore the sands, innumerable? was such the sense of promise and of prophecy? behooves, then, we be glad and thankful, we, on whom the fullness of the time now falls, to be this blessing to the gentiles. but ye halt, beloved. slack and slow seem ye to greet the honor fixed on you. why, hearken! ye, ye, out of all the generations, ye fallen on the times of jesus crucified, may count yourselves elect and called of god to bless the gentiles, in affording them unquenchable amusement to behold your wretched plight and broken pride! now clap your hands, ye chosen! let your mouth be filled with laughter, and your tongue with singing filled! "nay, sons of abraham, nay. no mocking words spake he who cannot lie, lord god of truth and grace. he meant that abraham's race should reign from sea to sea while sun and moon endure. and ever a blessing true it is to men to bend the neck beneath an equal yoke of ruler strong and wise and just to rule. then will at last the gentiles blesséd be in abraham, when, from abraham's loins derived through david, god's anointed shall begin, in david's city, his long government of the wide world, and every heathen name shall kiss the rod and own messiah king. "our father jacob, touched with prophecy, spake of a sceptre that should not depart from judah until shiloh came, to whom the obedience of the peoples was to be; a sceptre, symbol of authority and rule, law-giving attribute, resort of subject nations speeding to a yoke- such ever everywhere in holy writ the image and the character impressed on god's messiah, hope of israel. "what need i more? wherefore to ears like yours, well used to hear them in the temple chants resounded with responsive voice to voice, rehearse those triumphs and antiphonies wherein jehovah father to his son messiah speaks: 'ask thou of me, and i to thee the heathen for inheritance will give, and for possession the extreme parts of the earth. thou shalt with rod of iron break them, yea, shatter them shalt thou in shards, like a clay vessel from the potters hand. be wise now, therefore, o ye kings, be ye instructed, judges of the earth. kiss ye the son, lest he be angry, and his wrath, full soon to be enkindled, you devour.' tell me, which mood of prophecy is that, the meek or the heroic? craven he, or king, to whom jehovah deigns such speech, concerning whom such counsel recommends? "'gird thou upon thy thigh thy sword, o thou most mighty,'--so once more the psalmist, rapt prophetical as to a martial rage, breaks forth, jehovah to messiah speaking- 'gird on thy glory and thy majesty; and in thy majesty ride prosperously, and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. sharp in the heart of the king's enemies thine arrows are, whereby the peoples fall beneath thee.' such messiah is, a man of war and captain of the host of god. nay, now it mounts to a deific strain, the prophet exultation of the psalm: 'thy throne, o god' it sings--advancing him, messiah, to the unequalled dignity and lonely glory of the one i am, audacious figure--close on blasphemy, were it not god who speaks--to represent the dazzling splendors of messiahship. "let us erect our spirits from the dust, my brethren, and, as sons of god, nay, gods pronounced--unless we grovel and below our birthright due, unfilial and unfit, sink self-depressed--let us, i pray you, rise, buoyed upward from within by sense of worth incapable to be extinguished, rise, found equal to the will of god for us, and know the true messiah when he comes. be sure that when he comes, his high degree will shine illustrious, like the sun in heaven, not feebly flicker for your fishermen from galilee to point it out to you with their illiterate 'lo, here!' 'lo, there!'" at this increasing burst of scorn from saul, exultant like the pæan and the cry that rises through the palpitating air when storming warriors take the citadel, once more from rachel's fixéd eyes the tears of sympathetic exultation flowed- the sister with the brother, as in strife before the battle striving equally, now equally in triumph triumphing. but saul, his triumph, felt to be secure, securer still will make with new appeal: "if so, as we have seen, the scriptures trend, not less the current of tradition too- no counter-current, eddy none--one stress, steady and full, from adam down to you, runs strong the self-same way. out of the past what voice is heard in contradiction? none. "turn round and ask the present; you shall hear one answer still the same from every mouth of scribe or master versed in holy writ. tradition and authority in this agree with scripture, teaching to await for our deliverer an anointed king. what ruler of our people has believed in jesus, him of nazareth, joseph's son, as christ of god? if any, then some soul self-judged unworthy of his rulership, secret disciple, shunning to avow his faith, and justly therefore counted naught- ruler in name, in nature rather slave. "and now i bid you look within your breast and answer, does not your own heart rebel against the gospel of the nazarene? 'gospel,' forsooth! has god, who made your heart, provided you for gospel what your heart rejects with loathing? likely seems it, pray, becoming, fit, that he who, on the mount of sinai once the law promulging, there displayed his glory more than mortal eye could bear to look upon or ear to hear- who in the temple hid behind the veil shekinah blazed between the cherubim- nay, tell me, seems it tolerable even to you, that your jehovah god should choose, lover of splendor as he is, and power, to represent himself among mankind not merely naked of magnificence, but outright squalid in the mean estate and person of a carpenter, to die at last apparent felon crucified? reason and nature outraged cry aloud, 'for shame! for shame!' at blasphemy like this." a strange ungentle impulse moved the heart of rachel to a mood like mutiny, and almost she "for shame!" herself cried out in echo to her brother's vehemence; while murmur as of wind rousing to storm ran through the assembly at such words from saul, the passion of the speaker so prevailed to stir responsive passion in their breasts. this saul perceiving said, in scornful pride, fallaciously foretasting triumph won: "ye men of israel, gladly i perceive some embers of the ancient fire remain, if smouldering, not extinguished, in your breasts. i will not further chafe your noble rage. you are, if i mistake not, now prepared to hear more safely, if less patiently, the eloquence i keep you from too long. let me bespeak for stephen your best heed." and saul, as if in gesture of surcease, a pace retiring, waved around his hand toward stephen, opposite not far, the while his nostril he dispread, and mobile lip curled, in the height of contumelious scorn; and rachel, where she stood, unconsciously, the transport of her sympathy was such, repeated with her features what she saw. book iv. stephen against saul. stephen, following saul, turns the tide of feeling overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. saul, however, but he almost alone--for even his sister rachel has been converted--stands out defiant against the manifest power of god. shimei appears as an auditor watching with sinister motive the course of the controversy. stephen against saul. the tumult grew a tempest when saul ceased: no single voice of mortal man might hope, though clear like clarion and like trumpet loud, to live in that possessed demoniac sea of vast vociferation whelming all, or ride the surges of the wild uproar. what ailed thee, o thou sea, that thy mad mind so suddenly was soothed? did 'peace, be still!' dropping, an unction from the holy one, softly as erst on stormy galilee, wide overspread the summits of the waves and sway their swelling down to glassy calm? stephen stood forth to speak, and all was still. before he spoke, already rachel felt a different power of silence there, and sense, within, other than sympathetic awe; this felt she, though she knew it not, nor dreamed it was the holy ghost sent down from heaven! "brethren"--so stephen spoke, beyond his wont now, under awe of grave occasion, calmed from god with power--"god's thoughts are not our thoughts, neither our ways his ways; for as the heavens are than the earth more high, so than our ways more high are his, and his thoughts than our thoughts. our valued wisdom folly is to god full oft; then most, when folly seems to us god's wisdom. have ye yet to learn that god rejoices to confound the vain conceit of man? the scriptures, then, search ye with eyes blinded so thick? it is isaiah's word: 'jehovah, yea, hath poured upon you all the spirit of deep sleep, and hath your eyes, those prophets of the soul that might be, closed, also your heads, meant to be seers, hath veiled; and vision all is now to you become even as the words of a shut book and sealed. therefore jehovah saith, for that this people draw nigh to me in worship with their mouth, but have their heart removed from me afar, while all their fear of me is empty form enjoined of men, and idly learned by rote- behold, a thing of wonder will i do among this people, wonder passing thought, and perish shall the wisdom of their wise and prudence of their prudent come to nought!' "brethren, that was man's wisdom which just now ye heard, and were well pleased to hear, from saul. hearken again, and hear what god will speak." at the first word that fell from stephen's lips, an overshadowing of the holy ghost hung like a heaven above the multitude; with every word that followed, slow and full, that awful cope seemed ever hovering down impendent nearer, as when, fold to fold, droops lower and lower a dark and thunderous sky. the speaker used no arts of oratory; only a still small voice, not wholly his, nor wholly human, issuing from his lips, only a voice, but eloquence was shamed. and stephen thus his theme premised pursues: "rightly and wrongly, both at once, have ye this day been taught of god's messiah; king he is, as saul has said, but in a sense, and with a highth and depth and length and breadth and reach immense of meaning, that nor saul, nor ye, nor any by the holy ghost untaught, have yet conceived. not of this world his kingdom is. the pageant and the pomp, state visible, and splendor to the eye, are of this world that vanishes away, and of the princes of this world that come to naught. his glory whose the kingdom is whereof i speak, no eye hath seen, no eye can see. that vision is for naked soul. "the lordship and authority which craves obeisance of the knee, the lip, the hand, and the neck breaks to an unwelcome yoke, but traitor leaves the hidden heart within, rebel the will insurgent, infidel the mind, the critic reason dissident, and violated conscience enemy- such rule is but the hollow show of rule, a husk of vain pretence, the kernel gone. "no earthly kingdom such, messiah's is, of nations hating and yet serving him- trampled into the dust beneath his feet, and either cringing or else gnashing rage. a kingdom here on earth of heaven to found, from heaven to earth god's true messiah comes; a kingdom built of meek and lowly hearts by monarch meek and lowly to be ruled; a world-wide kingdom and a time-long reign. this kingdom new of heaven on earth commenced will gather jew and gentile both in one, whereso, of high or low, of rich or poor, heart ready to receive it shall be found, in time or clime however hence afar. for hear him speak, the high and lofty one who maketh his abode eternity: 'lo, in the high and holy place dwell i, likewise with him of meek and contrite mind.' "in those words were foreshown the things which are, brethren, and kingdom which we preach to you, messiah here indeed, his reign begun, invisible but glorious, on the earth. he that hath ears to hear, lo, let him hear, and hail the one right ruler come at last; who rules not nations, masses of mankind only, with indiscriminate wide sway imperfect though to view magnificent, by many an individual will unfelt; but seeks his subjects singly, soul by soul, and over each, through all within him, reigns. jew must with gentile, heart by heart, submit to own messiah thus his lord and king, throning him sovereign in the realm of self, the empire of a humble, contrite mind. "no other rule is real than rule like this, the true messiah's rule, which well within the flying scouts and outposts of the man, wins to the midmost seat and citadel of being, where the soul itself resides, and tames the master captive to its thrall. then sings the soul unto herself and says, 'bless thou, jehovah, o my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!' filled is the hidden part with melody. for joyfully the reason then consents, the mind is full of light to see, and says 'amen!' the will resolves the opposite of its old self, won by the heart, which, more than mere obedience, loves; conscience the while delightedly infusing all delight, and holy spirit breathing benison. "such subjugation is a state of peace; but peace, stagnation not, nor death. you live and move and have your being evermore fresher and deeper, purer and more full, drawn in an ether and an element instinct and vivid with god. the appetites are subject servitors to will, the will hearkens to reason and regards its voice- reason which is the will of him who reigns, your reason and his will insensibly blending to grow incorporate in one. such is the kingdom of the christ of god. you easily miss it--for it cometh not with observation; you must look within to find it--pray that you may find it so." a mien of something more than majesty in stephen as he spoke, transfiguring him; conscious authority loftier than pride; deep calm which made intensity seem weak; slow weight more insupportable than speed; passion so pure that its effect was peace, beatifying his face; betokened power beneath him that supported him, behind him that impelled, above him and within that steadied him immovable, supplied as from a fountain of omnipotence; an air breathed round him of prophetic rapt solemnity oppressive beyond words and dread communication from the throne, moved near, of the most high, which only not thundered and lightened, as from the touched top of sinai once in witness of the law- such might, not stephen's, wrought with stephen there and laid his hearers subject at his feet. saul saw the grasp secure that he had laid upon his brethren's minds and hearts--to hold, he proudly, confidently deemed, against whatever counter force of eloquence- this tenure his he saw relaxed, dissolved, evanishéd, as it had never been. perplexed, astonished, but impenetrable, though dashed and damped in spirit and in hope, angry he stood, recoiled upon himself. but rachel had a different history. she felt her inmost conscience searched and known; sharper than any sword of double edge, the word of god through stephen pierced her heart, and there asunder clove her self and self. she heeded stephen's warning words; she looked within, she pressed her hand upon her heart and prayed, "o god, my god, my fathers' god, thy kingdom--grant that _i_ may find it _here_!" so praying she listened while farther stephen spoke: "that such a ruler should be such as he whom we proclaim, the man of nazareth, the carpenter, the man of calvary, affronts your reason, tempts to disbelief- doubtless; but all the more shown absolute his sovereignty, transcendent, passing quite limit of precedent or parallel, as nothing in him outwardly appears to soothe your pride in yielding to his claim. always the more offended pride rebels, is proved his triumph greater who subdues. deep is our human heart, and versatile exceedingly, ingenious past our ken, inventive of contrivances to save fond pride from hurt. but here is no escape; pride must be hurt and bleed, unsalved her wounds. she may not conquer crouching, she must crouch conquered; nor only so, she must be glad to be the conquered, not the conqueror; thus deeply must the heart abjure itself, thus deeply own the mastership of christ. christ will not practise on your self-conceit and lure you to obey illusively. obedience is not obedience save as, obeying, you love, loving, obey- the chief of all obediences, love." such serene counter to his own superb disdain of jesus wrought on saul effect diverse from that meanwhile in rachel wrought. she yielded to exchange her standing-ground, and ceased to hold her centre in herself. centred in god, she all things new beheld translated by the mighty parallax. open she threw the portals of her soul and gave the keys up to her new-found king. but saul more stubbornly than ever clamped his feet to keep them standing where they stood. haughty, erect, rebuffing--he alone- he still stared on at stephen, who saul's scorn felt subtly like a fierce oppugnant force resistlessly attractive to his aim, as, suddenly soon borne into a swift involuntary swerving of his speech- himself, with saul, surprising--he went on: "such lord, requiring such obedience, in him of nazareth, a man approved of god by many mighty works through him among you done, this day i preach to you, my brethren all--my brother saul, to thee!" therewith full round on saul the speaker turned; that self-same instant, the seraphic sheen brightened to dazzling upon stephen's face; saul standing there, transfixed to listen, blenched, as if a lightning-flash had blinded him. then, prophet-wise, like nathan come before king david sinner, stephen, his right hand and fixed forefinger flickering forth at saul, an intense moment centred upon him, sole, the converging ardors of his speech- as who, with lens of cunning convex, draws into one focus all the solar rays collected to engender burning heat. rachel, who saw saul blench, and full well knew what pangs on pangs his pride could force him bear- he smiling blithely while he inly bled- watched, with a heart divided in sore pain between the sister's pity of his case and sympathy against him for his sake, as stephen thus his speech to saul addressed: "yea, to thee, saul my brother, in thy flush and prime of youth and youthful hope, thy joy, thy pride, of all-accomplished intellect, and sense of self-sufficing righteousness- to thee, thou pupil of gamaliel, thee, thou hebrew of the hebrews, pharisee, against the gust and fury of thy zeal, and in the teeth of thy repellent scorn, jesus the crucified i preach _thy_ lord. blindly with bitter hate thou ragest now against him; but hereafter, and not long hereafter, thou, despite, shalt lie prostrate before him and beneath him in the dust, astonished with his glory sudden shown beyond thy power with open eye to see. lo, by the holy spirit bidden, i this day plant pricks for thee to kick against. cruel shall be the torture in thy breast, and unto cruel deeds thou didst not dream the torture in thy breast will madden thee- the anguish of a mind at strife with good, a will self-blinded not to cease from sin. nevertheless at length i see thee mild- broken thy pride, thy wisdom brought to naught, to thyself hateful thy self righteousness, worshipping at his feet whom late thou didst persecute in his members, persecute in me. lo, with an everlasting love i long for thee, o saul, and draw thee, love born of that love wherewith the lord loved me and gave himself for me to bitter death." rachel her prayer and love and longing joins, with tears, to stephen's, for her brother, who, conscious of many eyes upon him fixed, far other thought, the while, and feeling, broods. as captain, on the foremost imminent edge of battle, leading there a storming van of soldiers in some perilous attack, pregnant with fate to empire, if he feel pierce to a vital part within his frame wound of invisible missile from the foe, will hide his deadly hurt with mask of smile, that he damp not his followers' gallant cheer; thus, though with motive other, chiefly pride, saul, rallying sharply from that first surprise, sternly shut up within his secret breast a poignant pang conceived from stephen's words, resentment fated to bear bitter fruit, but melt at last in gracious shame and tears. with fixéd look impassible, he gazed at stephen, while, in altered phase, that pure effulgence of apostleship burned on: "nor, brethren, let this word of mine become scandal before your feet to stumble you headlong to ruin--'gave himself for me to bitter death'--implying it the christ's to suffer death in sacrifice for sin. this is that thing of wonder prophesied, confounding to the wisdom of the wise; a suffering saviour, a messiah shamed, monarch arrayed in purple robes of scorn, with diadem of thorns pressed on his brow, and in his hand for sceptre thrust a reed- the lord of life and glory crucified! "dim saw perhaps our father abraham this, through symbol and through prophecy contained in smoking furnace and in blazing torch beheld, that evening, when the sun went down and it was dark. the smoking furnace meant the mystery of the messiah's shame to go before his glory typified in the clear shining of the torch ablaze. "of the same mystery of agony in sorrow, shame, and death, forerunning dark the bright and brightening sequel without end of the messiah's work, isaiah spake, when he foresaw his coming day from far. the eagle vision of that seer was dimmed with tears, like jeremiah's, to behold what he beheld--messiah's visage so marred more than any man's, and so his form more than befell the sons of men. he read, within the mirror of his prophecy, astonishment depicted in the eyes of many--in the eyes of which of you, my brethren?--at a spectacle so strange. the melancholy prophet saw a gloom of unbelief darken the world. 'what soul,' wails he, 'is found to credit our report? to whom has been revealed jehovah's arm in such a wise outstretched to save?' heart-sick at what, too clearly for his peace, he sees, isaiah, turning from his vision, cries in pain--consider, brethren, whether ye unwittingly fulfil what he portrays!- 'he was despised, rejected was of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted well with grief; as one from whom men hide their face, despised was he, and we esteemed him not.' "now our own gospel hear isaiah preach, the good news that such sufferings borne by him, messiah, were for you, for us, for all: 'surely our griefs they were messiah bore, he carried sorrows that were due to us. yet we, alas, of him as stricken thought, smitten of god, and for affliction marked!' "would god, my brethren, ye who hear these things, this day, were minded as the prophet was who thus from god reported them to you! he but foresaw them, and he saw them; ye saw them, and did not see! and yet, even yet, look back, as forward he; lo, touch your eyes with eyesalve that ye be not blind, but see! see, with isaiah, how messiah was 'wounded for your transgressions, bruised so sore for your iniquities, how chastisement on him was laid that peace should bring to you, how stripes whereby he bled to you were health.' "meekly and thankfully isaiah sinks himself, one drop, into the human sea, and says 'we,' 'our,' and 'us'--do ye the same. o brethren, if this day ye hear his voice, a whisper only in your ear from heaven, i pray you, harden not your heart. confess your fault, and say with your own prophet, 'we, all we, like sheep, have gone astray, astray, and god on him hath laid the sin of all.'" at such expostulation and appeal ineffable, found hidden in the words of prophecy, rachel her heart felt fail into a pathos of repentance sweet with love and soft sense of forgiveness, bought for her at cost so dear!--and she dissolved in sobs and tears of sorrow exquisite, better than joy, and uncontrollable. the mastership of jesus now to her merged in the sweetness of his saviorship; the duty of obedience to a lord all taken up, transfigured, glorified, in the transcendent privilege of love. never such grief in joy, such joy in grief, was hers before--for self was wholly slain and her whole life grew love unutterable. yet longed she, with a hope that half was pain, for saul, while stephen brokenly went on: "o ye to whom for the last time i speak, my heart is large for you, it breaks for you, and melts to tears within me while i plead. i pray you, i beseech you, in christ's stead, be reconciled to god. hearken this once and answer, were it set your task, in choice few words to frame the image and the lot of jesus whom ye slew, how otherwise more fitly could ye do it than was done aforetime by isaiah when he wrote prophetically thus of christ to be: 'oppressed he was, yet he abased himself and opened not his mouth; even as a lamb led to the slaughter, as a sheep before her shearers speechless, so he opened not his mouth. his grave they with the wicked made, and with the rich they laid him in his death.' say, brethren, was not jesus very christ? "but, that ye err not, messianic woe is not the end; a glorious change succeeds. isaiah chanted it in sequel glad and contrast of the sorrow-laden strain that mourned messiah's sufferings; hear the song: 'when thou, jehovah, shalt his soul have made an offering for sin, messiah then the endless issue of his pain shall see; still on and on he shall his days prolong, and in his hand the pleasure of the lord shall prosper; of the travail of his soul he shall see fruit and shall be satisfied.' so, with rejoicing too serenely full for exultation, sang isaiah then of messianic glory following shame. "and now, concerning jesus whom ye slew, know, brethren, that he burst the bands of death, which could not hold the lord of life in thrall. know that he, having risen, rose again, ascending far above all height, and led captive captivity; attended so with retinue of deliverance numberless, he entered heaven a conqueror and a king; before him lifted up their heads the gates, the everlasting doors admitted him. there sits he now associate by the side of his almighty father, lord of all. for to him every knee shall bow, in heaven, on earth, and every tongue confess that he, jesus, is lord; jehovah wills it so. "fall, brethren, i adjure you, haste to fall betimes upon this stone and bruise your pride; wait but too long, this stone will fall on you: not then your pride, but you, not bruised will be, but ground to undistinguishable dust." so stephen spoke; and ceased, as loth to cease. the moments of his speaking had been like a slow and dreadful imminence of storm. with those august and awful opening words of his, which were not his, but god's, it was as when an altered elemental mood usurps the atmosphere; the winds are laid, clouds gather, mass to mass, anon perchance roll back, disclosing spaces of clear sky, but close again, deeper and darker, full of thunder, silent yet, of lightning, leashed from leaping forth, but watchful for its prey. such had been stephen's speaking, boded storm; his ceasing was the tempest burst at last- a silent tempest, silent and unseen, rending the elements of the world of soul! meanwhile the angels in attendance there, watching with eyes that see the invisible things of the spirit of man within his breast, the posture and behavior of the mind, had seen exhibited amidst that late motionless multitude of souls suspense with supernatural awe, a spectacle of consternation and precipitate flight to covert, such as sometimes is beheld in nature, when a mighty tempest lowers, and man, beast, bird, each conscious living thing, shuddering, hies to hiding from the wrack. with wild inaudible outcry heard in heaven, that shattered congregation, soul by soul, each soul its several way, fled, to find shroud from spiritual tempest hurtling on the head, intolerably, hailstones and coals of fire. but one excepted spirit stood aloof, scorning to join the fellowship of flight. like a tall pine by whirlwind lonely left upon his mountain, forest abject round, this man dared lift, though sole, a helmless brow of stubborn hardihood to take the storm. others, dismayed, might flee to refuge; saul, not undismayed, fronted the wrath of god. shimei alone there neither stood nor fell; by habit grovelling, on his belly prone, already prostrate he had thither come. incapable of awe from good inspired, he, abject, but without humility, ever, by force of reptile nature, crawled; and now had crawled, as, dusty demon's-heart and vitreous eye of basilisk, he still- with equal, though with different, enmity, devising death for stephen in his mind, and studying slow prolonged revenge for saul- watched all, whatever chanced to either there; but most, malignantly delighted, watched deepen the settled shadow on saul's face cast from the darkness of his inner mood. book v. saul and shimei. saul, sullen, gloomy, and chagrined, over his discomfiture recently experienced, is visited, in his self-imposed seclusion at home, by shimei, who, always by nature antipathetic to saul, hates him virulently now for the affront from him received publicly in the late council. shimei exasperates saul with sneering, pretended sympathy for him over his defeat at stephen's hands; at the same time disclosing the plot he has himself concocted, involving subornation of perjury, with alleged connivance on the part of the sanhedrim in general, for the stoning of stephen. shimei gone, saul, in the open court of his dwelling, sits solitary, brooding in the depths of dejection over the fallen state of his fortunes. saul and shimei. as if one, from some poise of prospect high, should overlook below a plain outspread and see a bright embattled host, in close array of antique chivalry, supposed invincible, advancing, panoplied, horseman and horse, in steel, and with delight of battle pricked to speed, he--while that host, swift, like one man, across the field of war, with pennons gay astream upon the wind, and arms and armor flashing in the sun, moved to the sound of martial music brave- might ask, "what strength set counter could withstand the multiplied momentum of such blow?" and yet, as, let a rock-built citadel upspring before them in their conquering way, and, through embrasures in the frowning wall, let enginery of carnage new and strange, vomiting smoke and flame from hellish mouths- let cannon, with their noise like thunder, belch, volleying, their bolts like thunderbolts amain among those gallant columns, then would be amazement seen, and ruinous overthrow; so, late, to saul's superbly confident assay of onset all seemed nigh to yield, till that the wisdom of the holy ghost, through stephen speaking, made the utmost might of eloquence ridiculous and vain, so was the duel all unequal, joined by saul with stephen on that fateful day. though not ill matched the champions' native force and spirit, and not far from even their skill, equipment disparate of weaponry- human against divine, infinite odds!- made the conclusion of the strife foregone. had mortal prowess against prowess been between those twain the naked issue tried, saul, with his sanguine dash of onset, might perchance have won the day--through sheer surprise of sudden and impetuous movement swift beyond the other's readiness to oppose an instantaneous rally of quick thought and lightning-like alertness of stanch will mustering and mastering his collected might. but the event and fortune of that hour resolved no doubt which combatant excelled in wit or will or strength or exercise. stephen was fortressed round impregnably, saul stood in open field obvious to wound; saul wielded weapons of the present world, celestial weapons furnished stephen--nay, weapon himself, the almighty wielded him. saul knew himself defeated, overwhelmed. by how much he had purposed in his heart, and buoyantly expected, beyond doubt or possible peradventure, to prevail, more than prevail, triumph, abound, redound, and overflow, with ample surplusage of prosperous fortune far transcending all public conjecture of his hoped success; by so much now he found himself instead buried beneath discomfiture immense and boundless inundation of defeat. for multitudes of new believers won to stephen's side from saul's thronged to the way, storming the kingdom of heaven with violence. it was a nation hastening to be born, like israel out of egypt, in a day. as israel out of egypt were baptized to moses in the cloud and in the sea, so israel out of israel saul now saw baptized obedient into jesus' name. dissolving round about him seemed to saul the earth itself with its inhabitants, and, to bear up the pillars of it, he a broken reed that could not stand alone! but, while thus worsted saul forlornly felt himself, he by whom worsted missed to know. his challenge was to stephen; how should he guess that in stephen god would answer him? unconsciously with god at enmity, but with god's servant stephen consciously, saul chafed and raged in proud and blindfold hate; half yet, the while, despising too himself, detected hating thus, by his own heart detected hating, his antagonist, for the sole blame of visiting on him the fortune he had purposed to inflict. saul in such mood of rancor and remorse commingled--both unhappy sentiments still mutually exasperating each the other--shimei came to him. now saul and shimei were two opposites intense in nature, never toward each other drawn, but violently ever sent asunder; yet chiefly by repulsion lodged in saul, spurning off shimei, as the good the evil; for saul instinctively was noble, frank, and true, as shimei instinctively was false, profound in guile, to base inclined. but strangely, since that council wherein saul fulmined his shame on shimei's proffer vile, shimei had felt the other's scorn of him a force importunate to tempt him nigh- perverse attraction in repulsion found!- as evil ever struggles toward the good, not to be leavened with virtue issuing thence, but leaven instead to likeness with itself. so shimei came to saul, as knowing saul spurned him avaunt with loathing; in degree attracted as he was intensely spurned. he fain would feast his malice on the pride, seen writhing, fain would make it writhe the more, of saul in his discomfiture. with mien demure of hypocritic sympathy, the nauseating vehicle of sneer, malignly studied to exacerbate the galled and angry feeling in saul's mind, he thus addressed that haughty pharisee: "the outcome of your effort, brother saul, to vindicate the cause of truth and god- and therewithal justly advance somewhat your individual profit and esteem as rising bulwark of the jewish state, whereby so much the better you might hope hereafter to promote the general weal- this spirited attempt, i say, of yours has in its issue disappointed you, you, and your friends no less, who, all of us, together with yourself, refused to dream aught but the most felicitous event to enterprise with so much stateliness of dignity impressively announced by you, and show of lofty confidence. by the way, saul, the grand air suits your style astonishingly well; i should advise your cultivation of it. why, at times, when you display that absolutely frank and unaffected lack of modesty which marks you, really, now, the effect on me, even me, is almost irresistible; i find myself well-nigh imposed upon to call it an effect of majesty. "but, to sustain the impression, saul, it needs, quite needs, that you somehow contrive to shun these awkward misadventures; the grand air is less impressive in a man well known to have made a bad miscarriage, such as yours. for in fact you--with sincere pain i say it- but served to stephen as a sort of foil to set his talent off and heighten it. you must yourself feel this to be the case; for never since that windy pentecost in which we thought we saw the top and turn to this delirium of delusion touched, never, i say, till now were seen so many new perverts to the nazarene as seems you two, between you, you and stephen, saul, managed, that memorable day, to make. it is a pity, and i grieve with you. still, saul, let us consider that your case, undoubtedly unfortunate, presents this one alleviating circumstance, at least, that your defeat demonstrates past gainsaying what an arduous attempt yours was, and thereby glorifies the more that admirable headiness of yours which egged you on to venture unadvised. for my own part, i like prodigiously to see your young man overflow with spirit; age will bring wisdom fast enough; but spirit, like yours, saul, comes, when come it does at all, born with the man. never regret that you dared nobly; rather hug yourself for that with pride; pride greater, since, through proof, aware you really dared more nobly than you knew. "some increment too of wisdom you have won from your experience; not to be despised, though ornament rather of age than youth. i may presume you now less indisposed than late you were, to reinforce, support, and supplement mere obstinacy--fine, of course, as i have said, yet attribute common to man with beast--by counsel ripe and scheme of well-considered policy, adapted to secure your end with ease. economy of effort well befits man, the express image and counterpart of god, who always works with parsimony, compassing greatest ends with smallest means, to waste no particle of omnipotence. "count now that you have rendered plain enough what single-eyed, straightforward stubbornness can, and cannot, effect in this behalf; so much is gained; now be our conscience clear to cast about and find some other means, than mere main strength in public controversy, of dealing with these raw recalcitrants. they lacked the grace to be discomfited in honorable combat fairly joined, let them now look to it how much their gross effrontery in overthrowing you shall profit them at last. i have a scheme"- "your scheme,"--so, from the depths of his chagrin and anguish at the contact of the man, spoke saul, unwilling longer to endure the friction and abrasion of his words- "your scheme, whatever it may be, cannot concern my knowing; nothing you should plan were likely to conciliate in me either my judgment, or my taste, or please my sense of what becoming is and right. i pray you spare yourself the pains to unfold further to me your thought; your work were waste." but shimei, naught abashed, nay, rather more set on, imagining that he touched in saul the quick of suffering sensibility replied: "yea, brother saul, i did not fail in our late session to observe what you hinted of your unreadiness to accord your valuable support to my advice, advanced on that occasion loyally however far outrunning what the most were then prepared frankly to act upon. we weaker, saul, who may not hope to be athletes like you, whose sole resource must lie in studying more profoundly than the rest, are liable to be misunderstood not seldom, when, through meditation deep and painful, we arrive to see somewhat beyond the common, and propound advice startling, because some stages in advance of the conclusions less laborious minds reach and stop at contented--for a while, but which mere halting-places on the road prove in the end, and not the final goal. you probably remember, when i told the council that some good judicious guile was what was needed, not one voice spoke up to second my suggestion. very well, the lagging rear of wisdom has since then moved bravely up to step with me, and now we walk along abreast harmoniously upon the very road i pointed out; 'guile' is the word with all the sanhedrim. "but stay, you may perhaps not be apprised exactly of the current state of things- you have kept yourself, you know, a bit retired these few days past, a natural thing to do, under the circumstances, all admit- well, we have made some progress; i myself, to imitate your lack of modesty and don the egotistic, i myself have not been idle; all in fact is now adjusted on a plan of compromise, my own invention, everybody pleased. we shall dispose of stephen for you, saul: council; stephen arrested and arraigned; production of effective testimony; a hearing of the accused; commotion raised, while he is speaking, to help on his zeal; then, at the proper point, some heated phrase of his let slip, a sudden rush of all upon him with a cry of 'blasphemy!'- impulse of passionate enthusiasm, you know, premeditated with much care- and he is stoned; which makes an end of _him_. such is the outline; not precisely what i could have wished, a little too much noise, the mattathias tinge in it too strong- still, everything considered, fairly good. the moment favors; for the very fume and fury of the popular caprice has put it out of breath; nay, for the nonce, the wind sits, such at least my hope is, veered and shifted points enough about to bear a touch of generous violence from us; then, as for those our rulers, they connive. "you see i have been open to admit ideas the very opposite of my own. i am not one to haggle for a point simply because it happened to be mine. the end, the end, is what we seek; the means signifies nothing to the wise. 'let us be wise,' as our friend nicodemus said, that day, with so much gnomic wisdom couched in affable cohortative, as who should say encouragingly, 'go to, good friends, let us be gods'; wisdom and godship come, as everybody knows, with equal ease indifferently, through simple conative, 'let us,' and so forth, and the thing is done." this voluble and festive cynicism, taking fresh head again and yet again, at intervals, to flow an endless stream, from shimei's mouth, of bitter pleasantry; his vulgarly-presumed familiar airs and leer of mutual understanding, felt rather than seen, upon his countenance; the gurgling glee of self-complacency that purred, one long susurrus, through his talk; the insufferable assumption tacitly implied that human virtue was a jest at which the wise between themselves might grin nor hide their grin with a decorous veil; these things in his unwelcome guest, traits all inseparably adhering to the man, or fibre of his nature, saul recoiled from, and revolted at, habitually: they rendered shimei's very neighborhood an insupportable disgust to him. still did some fascination shimei owned, perhaps a show of wit in mockery, playing upon a momentary mood of uncharacteristic helplessness in saul (a humor too of wilfulness and spite against himself displacent with himself that made him hold his sore and quivering pride hard to the goad that hurt it) keep him mute, if listless, while thus shimei streamed on: "well, as i said, friend saul, i had no pride to carry an opinion of my own; the scheme i brooded was a compromise. i plume myself upon a certain skill i have, knack i should call it, in this line. i like a pretty piece of joinery in plot, such match of motley odds and ends as tickles you with sense of happy hit, and here you have it. see, i take a bit of magisterial statesmanship to start with--go to rome, as caiaphas advised, though not quite on his errand; rome agrees to wink, while we indulge ourselves in what to us will be self-rule resumed, to her, a spasm of our judæan savagery. thus is the way made eligibly clear for brother mattathias with those stones he raves about on all occasions--rubbed smooth, they must be, as david's from the brook, with constant wear in mattathias' hands! was it not grim to hear him talk that day? his dream of maccabæan blood aboil within his veins has been too much for him, made him a monomaniac on this point; he sees before him visionary stones, imponderable stones torment his hands; give him his chance, have him at last let fly a real stone, a hard one, at somebody, who knows? it might bring mattathias round. stephen at any rate shall be his man, his _corpus vile_, as our masters say- fair game of turn and turn about for him, dog, to have handled you so roughly, saul! trick of beelzebub, no manner of doubt. "but here i loiter, while you burn of course to hear what figure you yourself may cut in my brave patchwork scheme of compromise. i modestly adjoin myself to saul, and so we two go in together, paired- a little of your logic let into a little of my guile, and a fine fit." shimei had counted for a master stroke of disagreeable humor sure to tell on saul, the piecing of himself on him in plan, conscious of saul's antipathy. but shimei still misapprehended saul, lacking the standard in himself wherewith to measure or assay the sentiment of such as saul for such as shimei. saul simply and serenely so despised shimei, that nothing he should do or say could change saul's sentiment to more, or less, or other, than it constantly abode, the absolute zero of indifference. half absently, through fits of alien thought, and half with unconfessed concern to know what passed among his fellow-councillors abroad, a little curious too withal wondering how any artifice of fraud could saul with shimei combine, to make such twain seem partners of one policy- so minded, saul gave ear, while shimei thus the acrid juices of his humor spilled: "here is the method of the joinery. you know you put it strongly that the end of that pretended gospel which they preach, would be to overturn the jewish state, abolishing moses, and extinguishing the glory of the temple, and all that- really sonorous rhetoric it was, that passage, saul, and it deserved to win; but who can win against beelzebub? logic turned rhetoric is my idea of eloquence, and my idea you realized; but stephen, without eloquence, bore off from you the fruit of eloquence: never mind, saul, it was beelzebub. let rhetoric now go back to logic; you demonstrated so inexpugnably the necessary inference contained in stephen's doctrine, hardly were it guile- though doubtless you will call it such, you have your sublimated notions on these points- to say outright that stephen taught the things you proved implicit in the things he taught; at all events, guile or no guile--in fact, guile _and_ no guile it is, if closely scanned- here is the scheme:--we find some blunderheads, who, primed with method for their blundering, will misremember and transfer from you to stephen what you stated on this point. these worthies then shall roundly testify before our honorable body met to give the fellow his fair hearing ere his sentence--said fair hearing not of course eventually to affect said sentence due- shall, i say, swear that they distinctly heard stephen set forth that jesus nazarene was going to destroy this place and change the customs moses gave us; bring about in brief precisely what, with so much force, you showed would surely happen"- "shimei"- saul interrupted shimei again, surprised into expression by the shock to hear himself mixed up in any way, of indirection even, in fraud like this- "shimei, i thought that nothing you could say would further tempt me into speech to you; but you have broken my bond of self-restraint. suborning perjury! that well accords with what you slanted at in council once, and what i trusted i had then and there made clear my scorn of. shimei, hear--i set my heel upon this thing and once for all grind it into the dust." "in figure, of course," promptly leered shimei, interrupting saul; "the thing goes forward just the same; you set it under foot--in your rhetorical way; i, in my practical way, set it on foot; no mutual interference, each well pleased. "but, seriously, saul, you overwork the idea of conscience. what is conscience? mere self-will assuming virtuous airs. a term cajoles you into making it a point of moral obligation to be stiff. limber up, saul, and be adjustable. capacity of taking several points of view at will is good. for instance, now, probably stephen may, at various times, himself have stated quite explicitly what your rhetorical logic showed to be inextricably held as inference in his harangues. take it so, saul, if so render your conscience easier; i myself highly enjoy my easy conscience. still, nothing could be more natural than that some, hearers non-critical, you know, should mix what you said with what stephen said, and so quite honestly swear falsely--to the gain of truth. and to whose loss? stephen's, perhaps, but other's, none. so, salve your conscience, saul- which somehow you must learn, and soon, to do; unless you mean to play obstructionist, instead of coadjutor, in the work you, with good motive, but with scurvy luck, set about doing late so lustily. conscience itself is to be sacrificed, at need, to serve the cause of righteousness. what is it but egregious egotism to obtrude, forsooth, a point of conscience, when you jeopard general interests thereby? one's conscience is a private matter; let your conscience wince a little, if need be, in order that the public good be served. that is true generosity. 'let us be just,' said nicodemus; good, say i, but in this matter of our consciences, let us go further and be generous." as one who turns a stopcock and arrests a flow of water that need never cease, so shimei left off speaking, not less full of matter than at first that might be speech. with indescribable smirk, and cynic sneer conveyed, sirocco breath of blight to faith in virtue and in good, he went away, cheering himself that he had somewhat chilled within the breast of that young pharisee the ardor of conviction, and of hope fed by conviction,--but still more that he had probed and hurt the festering wounds of pride. saul's first relief to be alone again, rid of that nauseous presence, presently was followed by depression and relapse from his instinctive tension to resist the unnerving spell of shimei's influence. saul found that in the teeth of his contempt for shimei, absolute in measure, nay, by reason of that contempt, he had conceived shame and chagrin beyond his strength to bear. that shimei, such as shimei, should have dared to visit saul, and drill and drill his ears, with indefatigable screw of tongue sinking a shaft through which to drench and drown his soul with spew from out a source so vile- this argued fall indeed for him from what he lately was, from what he hoped to be, far more, in popular repute. the sting that shimei purposed subtly to infix, with that malicious irony and taunt recurrent, the intentional affront, all of it, failed, blunted and turned in point against the safe impenetrable mail of saul's contempt for shimei. but that which shimei meant not, nor dreamed, but was, went through and through saul's double panoply, found permeable now, of pride and scorn, and wilted him with self-disparagement. he marvelled at himself how he had not, at first forthputting of that impudence, stormed the wretch dumb, with hurricane outburst of passionate scorn; a quick revulsion then, and saul was chafing that he had so far grace of rebuff vouchsafed, and honest heat, to creature lacking natural sense to feel repudiation. comfort none he found, no refuge from the persecuting though of his own fall. he tried to brace himself with thinking, "if i failed, i failed at least not for myself, but god; i strove for god." but, ceaselessly, the image of himself, humiliated, swam between to blur his vision of god. he could not cease to see saul ever, in the mirror of his mind, and ever stephen shadowing saul's fair fame. book vi. saul and rachel. to saul, wrapt in his gloomy contemplations, rachel unobtrusively presents herself. conversation ensues between them, and saul confides to his sister his own most secret purposes and hopes, dashed now so cruelly. the fact, however, at length comes out that rachel was herself converted to christianity as a result of stephen's reply to saul. saul instantly hereon experiences a violent revulsion of feeling. he breaks away from rachel, spurning her, and breathing out threatening and slaughter against the christian church. saul and rachel. saul thus forlorn, a voice smote on his ear, voice other than of shimei, clear and sweet; the very sound was balsam to his pain. rachel's the voice was, who, with deep distaste, as jealous for her brother, had perceived the entering in to saul of his late guest ill-favored, and through all his stay had still, impatiently awaiting, wished him sped. he now some moments gone, she issued forth from out her curtained chamber glimpsing gay behind her, through the hangings, as she passed, with color--stuff of scarlet, linen fine embroidered, weft of purple tapestry, her handiwork--and sending after her sweet scent of herb and flower, her husbandry- forth issued, and across the inner court open to heaven--small close of paradise, a tall palm by a fountain, bloomy shrubs, and vines that clad with green the enclosing walls- stepped lightly to saul's side. saul sat beneath a tent-cloth canopy outspread, his own tent-making skill--the high noon of the sun to fend, if place perchance one then might wish in which free air to breathe safe from the heat- there sat relapsed, deep brooding gloomy thoughts, when now his sister pausing stood by him. a lovely vision! moving, or at rest, ever a rapture rachel seemed of grace which but that moment that felicity of posture or of gesture had attained, by accident, yet kept it, through all change, inalienably hers, by right divine of inward rhythm that swayed her heart in tune. the sister had, with love's observance, watched some days the phases of her brother's mood, biding her time to speak; and now she spoke. "brother," she murmured softly, "thou art sad. thy brow is written over like a scroll with lines of trouble that i try to read. unbind thy heart, i pray, to me, who grieve to see thee grieve, and fain at least would share such brother's sorrow as i may not soothe." this suave appeal of sister's sympathy won upon saul to wean him from himself- a moment, and that moment he partook comfort of love, nepenthe to his pain, while thus he answered rachel: "nay, but thou, my sister, thou thyself art to me rest and solace. sit thee down, i pray, beside thy brother. but to have thee nigh as now refreshes like the dew. i bathe my heart in thee as in a fountain. ask me not to ease its aching otherwise than so. pillow me on thy love and let me rest in silence from the sound of my own voice. i hate myself, rachel." "but i love thee, my own dear, noble brother," rachel said; "i love thee, and i will not let thee hate thyself. brother and sister should be one in love and hate. hate what i hate, and what i love, love thou--that is true brotherhood." "safe law of brotherhood indeed for me, with thee for sister, rachel," saul replied, with fondness and self-pity, as he kissed the pure young brow upturned toward him; "but me, thou dost not know me as i know myself." "o nay, but better, brother," rachel said; "right hate is good, as good as love. so, hate, but not thyself, saul. shall i tell thee one to hate? i hate him, and i counsel thee, hate, saul, that evil man i saw but now steal from his too long privilege at thine ear." "him, rachel," saul replied, "i cannot hate; hatred is made impossible by scorn." "thou scornest him," she said, "but not too much to have been disturbed by him. the cloudy brow, so unlike my brother--i have brought it back, i see, dear saul, by only mentioning him. hate him well, saul, and be at peace again. to hate is safer, better, than to scorn. we scorn with pride, we must with conscience hate, such hating as i mean. thou art too proud, saul." saul answered, "for my pride i hate myself." but she: "were it not wiselier done to hate one's pride, than for one's pride to hate one's self? whoever hates himself for his own pride still keeps the pride for which he hates himself. hate and abjure thy pride, and love thyself." "easy to say, o rachel, hard to do," sighed saul,--"at least for such as i, who am too proud, too proud! thou seest that after all thou and myself know saul alike, too proud, albeit the too proud man we treat unlike, thou loving and i hating him." "o saul," thus spoke she, gazing steadfastly at him, but sudden-starting tears swam in her eyes, "o saul, saul, saul, my brother, whence is this? thou wert not wont to talk thus. changed art thou since when i heard thee speak in that dispute with stephen--" "thou heard'st me?" asked saul. "yea, saul," rachel replied, "i heard both thee and him." (saul proudly hid an answering hurt of pride.) "i heard thee, brother, and was proud for thee; i never knew more masterful high speech fall from thy lips. my heart leaped up for joy to listen. when those men of israel shouted, i shouted with them, silently, louder than all. god heard the secret noise, like thunder, of the beating of my heart in sister's pride for brother's victory. i crowned thee, i anointed thee my king, so glorious wast thou in thy conquering might! and that effulgent pride upon thy brow!" "but when," said saul, forestalling ruefully the expected and the dreaded change and fall from such a chanted pæan to his praise- "but when"- "but when, o saul," she said, "when he, stephen, stood forth to answer thee, there was- didst thou not feel it?--" "sister, yea, i felt, more than my sister even could feel, that i was baffled, put to shame." "nay, nay," she said; "not that, o saul, dear saul, it was not that." "what, then? for i felt nothing else," said saul; "that feeling filled me, as sometimes the sound and stir of whirlwind fill the firmament. my mind was one mad vortex swallowing up all other thought than this, 'saul, thou art shamed!'" "why, saul," cried she, "what canst thou mean? thou shamed? how shamed?" "rachel, i lost, and stephen won." "what didst thou lose?" said rachel, wonderingly; "and what did stephen win, that also thou won'st not? i cannot understand thee, saul." such crystal clearness of simplicity became a mirror, wherein gazing, saul beheld himself a double-minded man. how should he deal with questioner like this? "why, rachel, canst thou then not understand," he said, "how i should wish to conquer?" "yea," said she, "for truth's sake, saul. and still, if truth conquered, though not by thee, thou wouldst be glad, wouldst thou not, saul? here sad i see thee now, as if truth's cause were fallen--which could not be, since truth is god's--and yet thou sayest not that, but, 'saul is shamed!' and, 'saul has lost!' not truth, but saul. i cannot understand. thou hadst perhaps, unknown to me, some other end than only truth, which also thou wouldst gain?" it was his sister's single-heartedness that helped her see so true and aim so fair. saul was too noble not to meet her trust in him with trust in her as absolute. "rachel," he said, his reverence almost awe, "never did burnished metal give me back myself more truly, outer face and form, than the pure tranquil mirror of thy soul shows me the image of my inner self. the truth i see by thee is justly thine, and thou likewise shalt see it all in all. "the law of god was ever my delight, as thou knowest, sister, who hast seen me pore daily from boyhood on the sacred scroll of scripture, eager to transfer it whole unto the living tablets of my heart. and i have sought, how earnestly thou knowest to make my life a copy of the law. no jot or tittle of it was too small for me to heed with scruple and obey. with all my heart was i a pharisee, born such, bred such, and such by deep belief. "but more, my sister. musing on the world, i saw one nation among nations, one alone, no fellow, worshipper of god, the true, the only, and by him elect to be his people and receive his law; that nation was my nation. my heart burned, beholding in the visions of my head, the glory that should be, and was not, ours. think of it, sister, god himself our king, and bondmen we of the uncircumcised! i brooded on the shame and mystery with anguish in the silences of night. i saw the image of a mighty state loom possible before me. her august and beautiful proportions, builded tall and noble, rested on foundation-stones of sapphire, and in colors fair they rose; her pinnacles were rubies, and her gates carbuncles--i beheld jerusalem, the city of isaiah's prophecy; her borders round about were pleasant stones. she sat the queen and empress of the earth; the tributary nations, of their store, poured wealth into her lap, and vassal kings hasted in long procession to her feet. the throne and majesty of god in her held capital seat, or his vicegerent christ reigned with reflected splendor scarce less bright. such, sister, was the dream in which i lived, dream call it, but it is the will of god, more solid than the pillared firmament. "was it a fault of foolish pride in me, did i aspire audaciously, to hope that i, by doing and by daring much, beyond my equals, might beyond them share fulfilments such as these? i heard a voice saying, 'prepare the lord his way.' i thought the lord was near, and what i could, i would do to make wide and smooth and straight his way before him, ere he came. i trusted him that, when he came, he in his hands would bring large recompense for servants faithful found, and not forget even saul, should haply saul not utterly in vain prove to have striven, removing from the path of his approach the stone of stumbling. "sister, these are thoughts such as men have, but cherish secretly, even from themselves, and never speak aloud to any; i have now not spoken these to thee; thou hast but heard a few heart-beats rendered articulate breath by grace of right thine own to know the truth, who hast the truth revealed to me. "o other conscience mine, wherein have i gone wrong? i felt the power, asleep within me, stirring half awake, to take possession of the minds of men and sway their wills; the world was not too wide to be the empire i could rule aright, as chiefest minister, were such his will, of god's messiah. some one needs must sit at his right hand to hear and execute his pleasure--why not saul? who worthier? but now, alas! less worthy who, or who less likely? i am fallen, am shamed--past hope, past hope! i who aspired to greatest things am to least things by proof unequal found! how shall i _not_ hate stephen, who has wrought on me this great despite--besides what he wrought on the suffering cause of truth divine?" rachel's heart heaved, but in what words to speak she did not find. saul into his dark mood retired, and sat in silence for a while. returning, then, for torture of himself, to that which rachel brokenly began to say, and left unsaid, saul asked of her: "what was it, sister, thou beganst to tell, when, not thy brother, but thy brother's spleen, broke thy words off with interruption rude? something it seemed of how, at stephen's words, a change fell on thee, from thy first applause of me--" "o saul! a chasm of difference," so to her brother, rachel sad burst forth, "yawns betwixt thee and me this day, how wide, how wide! i feel the bond of sisterhood, stretching across, not strained to break--for that shall never, never be, in any world, o brother, truest, noblest, best beloved!- but strained to draw thee to me where i am from where thou art, far off, albeit so near!" "a tragic riddle which i fail to read, rachel," said saul, perplexed; "solve thou it me." "brother, i fear i cannot," rachel said; "but loyally i will try. when stephen stood to answer thee that day, a power not he oppressed my spirit with a sense of weight, gentle but insupportable, which grew instantly greater and greater, until it seemed ready to crush, unless i yielded; saul, i yielded, and that weight became as might which passed to underneath me and upbore." "rachel, be simpler," saul severely said; "my soul refuses to be teased with words. meanest thou this, that stephen mastered thee?" "nay, saul, my brother," meekly rachel said, meekly and firmly; "stephen not, but god. no man could master me away from saul. proudly i was thy vassal sister, saul, until god summoned me with voice that i might not resist; god's vassal am i now, but sister still to thee, and loyal, saul, beyond all measure of that loyalty i held before, which made me proud of thee, and glad of thee, and spurred me on to praise my brother as the paragon of men. o saul--" "nay, rachel," saul said, with a tone repressive more than the repressive words, "i will not hear thee further in this vein. thou art a woman, and i must not blame thy weakness; sister too to me thou art, and i will not misdoubt thy love; but thou hast added the last drop of bitterness to the crowned cup of grief and shame poured out for me to drink. go, rachel, muse on this: a brother leaned an aching, aching heart upon a sister's bosom to be eased, and that one pillow out of all the world to me, that trusted downy softness, hid the cruelest subtle unsuspected thorn. saul's sister a disciple and a dupe of those that preach the son of joseph, christ! and this, forsooth, the fruit that was to be of saul's aspiring trust to strike the stroke that in one day should crush the wretched creed! rachel, methinks thou mightst have spared me this! but nay, my sister, better is it so. haply no barb less keen had stung me back to my old self and made me saul again- the weakling that i was, to pule and weep, as if the cause were lost and all were lost! i thank thee, sister, thou hast done me good, like medicine--like bitter medicine! tell me true, rachel, thou didst feign me this, to rouse me from my late unmanly swoon. that is past now; i rise refreshed and strong, i see my path before me, stretching straight, i enter it to tread it to the end. doubt not but i shall feel the wholesome hurt of the shrewd spur my sister, with wise heart of hardness, plunged full deep into my side betimes, when i was drooping nigh to sink. peace to thee, sister, cheer thee with this thought, 'i saved my brother from the last disgrace by a disgrace next to the last--it was a hard way, but the only, and it sped!'" such cruel irony from her brother cut the tender heart of rachel like a knife. but more for saul she grieved than for herself; she knew that naught but anguish of chagrin the sharpest could have tortured out from him, so noble and so gentle, any taunt. from sheer compassion of his misery, she wept, and said: "o saul, saul, saul--" but he: "rachel, no more; already deep enough, i judge, for present use, the iron has gone; i shall not falter; thou mayst safely spare to drive it deeper now--it rankles home. and surely, if hereafter i should feel, at some weak woman's moment, any touch of foolish tenderness to make me pause relaxing and relenting from my course- a sad course, rachel, traced in blood and tears!- should ever such a softness steal on me, surely i should but need remember thee, thou younger playmate of my boyhood! thee, mirror, that was, of saintly sisterhood! loveliest among the daughters of thy race once, to thy brother! fountain flowing free of gladness, never sadness, unto him!- never of sadness until now, but now- o rachel, rachel, sister, changed this day from all thou wert to what i will not name- surely i shall but need bring back this hour, and let the image of my sister pass- o broken image of all loveliness, distained and broken!--pass before my eyes, as here i see her, separate from me forever, and outcast from god--that thought, that image, shall make brass the heart of saul, and his nerve iron, to smite and smite again, until no wily stephen shall remain for any silly rachel to obey!" fierce so outbreathing threat and slaughter, saul in bitterness of spirit broke away. book vii. stephen and ruth. rachel in dismay soliloquizes. she at length resolves on conveying to stephen, through ruth, his wife, a warning of his danger. ruth, not a christian, expostulates with her husband, attempting to dissuade him from his course--a course certain, she says, to end fatally for him. after a gentle, long, anguished effort on his part to bring ruth to sympathy with himself in his christian faith, stephen parts from her with presentiment that it is never to return. under the power of the holy spirit, he takes his way from bethany, where his home is, to jerusalem. his friends. martha and mary, with their brother lazarus, see him going, and follow. stephen and ruth. rudely thus parted from his sister, saul straightway sought certain of his synagogue- the synagogue of the cilicians--men less alien from himself than shimei was in spirit, while compatriot too by birth as was not shimei, an asian he- and these made privy to his changed resolve. they, glad of such adhesion, opened free their counsel to him, telling, with grimace added, and shrug of shoulder, to attest their scorn of shimei, shimei's scheme, which they sourly, as from compulsion, now took up. saul, swallowing a great throe of innermost revolt that well-nigh mastered him, subscribed himself, by silence, partner of their deed. rachel, spurned from him by her brother, sat moveless a while, the image of dismay, her two ears caves of roaring sound, her mind a whirling void of sheer astonishment. when presently the storm a little calmed within her, and she knew herself once more, she cleared her thought by settling it in words- words which through fluent mood and mood changed swift from passionate soliloquy to prayer, and from prayer back to soft soliloquy: "my brother shall not excommunicate his sister! while i love him he is mine, and i shall _not_ be 'separate' from him 'forever'--let him hate me as he will, who hates himself, and otherwise amiss hates liberally. why did i let him go? i should have held him, should have told him i am of one blood with him, as high as he in spirit; though a 'woman,' not to be put down; he gave me right, with speech like that, to equal him in stinging word for word. i could have done it. woman am i? yea, and deborah was a woman, miriam too. i feel my blood a-tingle in my veins with lust to have him back, and make him know the lion with the lamb lies down in me together; and i showed him but the lamb! the lion rouses late, occasion gone! did he cow me? so tamely i endured his contumely! anger none till now, nor shame not to be angry at such speech from him; but now--anger with burning shame turns inward and incenses me like fire. i scorn myself for that, reed-like, my head i bowed before the tempest of his scorn, when blast for blast i should have blown him back his tempest." rachel's indignation so like a sea wrought and was tempestuous. but the recoil of her own violent speech first gave her pause, then pierced her with remorse. daily, from when she, hearing stephen speak, heard god through stephen speaking, and obeyed, rachel, first having in baptism testified her death to sin, her birth to righteousness- never her absent brother dreaming it- gladsome had broken bread of fellowship with the disciples of the lord, and learned, both from their lips and from their lives beheld, deep lessons in the lore of jesus, apt by the tuition of the holy ghost. the better spirit, for a moment lost, so lately made her own, came back to her. sadly she mused, recalling her hot words of passion: "'tempest'? tempest sure just now hummed in me. 'scorn myself'? what word was that? rachel forsooth forbade saul saying, 'i hate myself'--and scorn herself does she, yea, here sit impotently brooding scorn for scorn to rival him? surely i missed my way. 'scorn,' 'hate,' one spirit both these speak, such scorn such hate, in him, in me. one spirit both, and that the spirit of this world, not his, not christ's, no spirit of thine, o crucified, thou meek and lowly holy lamb of god! forgive, forgive me, from thy cross of shame and passion, o thou suffering son of god! once prayedst thou thence for those that murdered thee, 'father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' i knew not what i did when so i crucified thee afresh through shameful pride. my heart breaks with my sorrow for my sin, a broken and a contrite heart, o lord, thou never wilt despise. "and now yet more my heart breaks with forgiveness poured on me. o sweet and blessed flood, pour on me still! deliciously i tremble and rejoice. to be thus broken is bliss more to me than to be whole. i love to lie dissolved, dissolving, under this soft fall of peace distilled like dew from out thy bleeding heart! lo, here i wholly, wholly, wholly yield to thee, o christ, am fluid utterly, to take whatever shape thee best may please. remake me after thine own image, lord! "i pray thee for my brother. suffer not that he act out his purposed madness. save, o save him from that dreadful sin he means against thee and against thy holy cause. i cannot bear it, that my brother rage against thee like the heathen. thou art strong, o christ! i pray thee--thee i pray, o christ, thee only, for none other can--meet thou and master saul! his sister pleads with thee; i plead for his sake, he being dear to me, but more for thine own name and glory's sake, and for thy suffering cause! i thank thee, lord, with joyful tears, i thank thee, gracious lord, that thou restrainedst me dumb with silence then when saul spake evil of me--for thy sake. through thee, who, when reviled, reviledst not again, through thee, through thee, i, also i, proud foolish rachel, then refrained from words! no taunt retorted, no reproach, no blame, stung him from me to sin; i thank thee, lord, for that! "now is there naught that i may do? may i not warn that prophet stephen? saul wildly foreshadowed harm himself might wreak on him; and what meant shimei's visit here? mischief, no doubt of that; collusion strange, incredible, impossible, such twain, that shimei and my brother! i will go and talk with stephen's wife, her, what i can, without disloyalty to saul, stir up to fear for stephen's safety; he need not, surely, dauntless high prophet of the lord although he be, still ready-girt to die, rush blindfold into danger unforewarned." so to the house of stephen rachel went with haste, and there, in darkened words to ruth, perturbed her woman's breast with vague alarms: 'her husband must of stratagem beware, and even of violence, aimed against his life.' stephen, by ruth his wife, of all advised, armed him his heart to face what must befall. ruth shook him to the centre of his soul with storms of wife's complaints and love and tears: "nay, stephen, many a time, bear witness thou, my heart before she came misgave me sore; but now, since rachel's words, no peace i find concerning thee, in this thy wilful way wherein thou goest--whither, i know not, whence, too well i know, for from a home thou goest once happy, ere this madness came on thee!" sharply so stephen's wife upbraided him. gravely and gently he admonished her: "name it not madness, woman, lest thereby thou sin that sin against the holy ghost. no madness is it when the soul of man is sovereignly usurped by the most high to be the organ of almighty will. i yield myself, nay, ruth, i join myself, to god--no blind unsharing instrument, but joyful partner of his purposes." solemnly chided so, ruth quick replied: "and what if of his purposes one be to let thee plunge, as headstrong, so headlong, thy way to bloody death, thou stiff-necked man? thou hearest what rachel brings us, doubtful hint indeed, but therefore in itself to me only more fearful; and how fearful joined to what thyself confessest thou of late, with thine own ears, hast, from the public mouth, heard--instigated whisper, shimei's brew, accusing thee of treason to the hope of israel, and purpose to destroy the temple, and the customs do away which moses left us! stephen, all these signs singly, much more together, point one way- they threaten death to thee, if thou persist to preach things hateful to the wise and good." ruth intermitted, and her husband said: "the danger, ruth, i know, but i must not, for danger, slack obedience to my lord." then ruth said: "but i only ask that thou now, for a little, prudently abide in hiding till this storm be overpast." he, with a glance of irony, replied: "and always run to covert at the first bluster of opposition? yea, to some that is permitted; but to other some, whereof am i, only to stand foursquare and take the buffet of whatever storm. and the best prudence is obeying, ruth." high answered stephen thus, but ruth rejoined: "stephen, thou ever wert a stubborn will, and overweening of the wisdom thine, hard-hearted and unloving never yet, never, till now. how canst thou bide thus calm, and i, thine erst loved wife, beheld by thee so tossed with tempest and not comforted?" wherewith self-pity broke her words to sobs: she fell on stephen's neck and wept aloud. with both his arms he folded her about, while his heart, hugely swelling in his breast, forced to his eye the slow, large, rounding tear. it was as if a cloud that wished to rain strongly held back its drooping weight of shower. his melting voice at last he fixed in words: "what meanest thou to weep and break my heart, o thou, mine own, most loving and most loved of women? flesh cries out to flesh in me against the purpose of my spirit set to crucify the flesh with its desires!" ruth caught her sobs and held them while she spoke: "flesh of thy flesh am i; thou slayest me in slaying thyself; i will not have it so. not ready yet am i to die in thee; and thee god surely needs alive, not dead: the dead cannot praise god nor serve his cause. who will so preach that gospel that thou lovest when thou art gone? who then will silence saul? i tell thee, stephen, this is satan's guile- to get thee slain--and overmatch mightst thou the arch-deceiver, easily, if thou wouldst, so easily--only live." conclusive seemed her argument to ruth and stanched her tears. she gently disengaged the fond embrace that held her to her husband's heart, and, drawn a little backward from his face her face, she smiled on him like sunshine after rain. smiling pathetically back, he kissed, with kisses that she felt like sacraments, then, and forever after till she died, his wife's brow beautiful with hope, and said: "ruth, thou hast said; it is, be sure, his guile, satan's, whereby i presently shall die; if so to die indeed be mine, who feel too young still, and too strong, too full of hope, too full of--shall i name it, ruth?--too full of god himself, the holy ghost, to die! for he within me lives such life and power, death seems impossible, all weakness seems far off, an alien thing, and not for me; i am immortal and omnipotent. that, ruth, is when i stand to speak for god, preaching to men the gospel of his son. "but when, as now, i sit with thee and talk, or when my children cluster round my knees, and i hear husband, father, from fond lips pressed to these lips so oft, and with such joy, when all the dearness that is meant by home, and all the drawing lodged in kindred blood, and all that sense, unutterably deep, of oneness, soul in soul, with those we love- o ruth!--but, ruth, our tears commingled flow, 'tis our hearts flow together in those tears! o wife and life, when all that i have said, and that far more which never tongue could say, surges upon me, surge on surge of thought and feeling, like an overflowing flood, belovéd, then, how weak i am, how frail, how low and like to die! i lean toward thee, as if the oak should lean upon his vine." ruth took his word from him and made reply: "so lean on me, my love, and be at rest; lean, and make proof how vines at need are strong. in me no faltering purpose weakens will. thou speakest of flesh within thee crying out to flesh against the spirit--warfare strange of elements that dwell in me at one. my nature moves straightforward all one way. rebellion none, no mutiny, i find only resolve to thwart thy mad resolve, thy half resolve, say rather, half and mad- so proved by these compunctious visitings thou hast, these gracious sweet remorses wise, relentings toward thy children and toward me; divine presages, stephen, scorn them not, sent to forewarn thee ere it be too late! "bethink thee, stephen, when didst thou before, ever, thus will and straight unwill, thus halt, thus parley with thyself, thus stand in doubt like a reed shaken with the wind, as now i see thee here? thou art not like thyself; not like that stephen, ready, combative, thy stature still elastically tall to tower and overtop and overfrown whatever front of menace challenged thee. by thy changed state, i pray thee, be advised. god teaches thee hereby. he does not wish thy will with thy desire to be at war. give up thy heady will, and let desire, divinely wise, the wisdom of the heart, guide thee; her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." again well pleased with her own argument, ruth tearful smiled a smile that, tenfold tender through those tears, was argument to stephen more than words. from deep within he heaved a sigh and said: "oh! woman! woman! ruth, thou teachest me how adam could, by eve's enticement drawn, be even beguiled to die. and now, to live, not die, my eve entices me. o ruth, i feel, i feel, doubt not but that i feel, the sweet, the subtly sweet, dissolving spell of wish infused by thee, with thee to live, with thee and for thee, nay, in thee, as thou in me--this twain one life, how dear, how dear! o wife, what is there that i could not bear and dare of hard and high, wert thou, with smiles and tears and love, for christ but eloquent, as all too well i feel thee eloquent for our sweet selves?" ruth's heart sank, but she said: "o stephen, for our children!" then she threw her head upon his bosom, there in tears, with passionate sobs and throbs, poured out her heart. he mightily a mighty swell that yearned to be a storm within him, ruled, and said: "nay, ruth, but we forget. life beyond life remains to us and to our children. we, forgetfully, desire and hope and fear as if death bounded all. a little while and christ will come again. then they that sleep in him will wake to him, and they that still wake when he comes, but love him, will, with those late sleeping in him now awake, ascend to meet the lord descending, in the air: thenceforward all that love him, loved of him, will be forever with him where he is, beholding there his glory. blessed state! no tears, no fears, no hearts that break, no hearts that will not break, although they ache the more, perhaps, god knows, not breaking--naught of these, and naught of any ill, but only peace, joy, love, security of peace and joy and love, and fellowship in peace and joy and love, forever, perfect, more and more, with vision beatific still of him who washed us in his blood and made us kings and priests to god. ruth, here is hope indeed for us that will not make ashamed." but ruth unhearing heard and was not comforted. she raised her head from stephen's breast, with act as if to part herself in hope from him, and, with regard made almost alien, said: "hug thou thy hope, thy hope is not for me. he could not save himself, thy christ, but died as the fool dieth--and as die wilt thou, if thou despise my counsel! stephen, i would rather take my lot a little less, less large, less perfect, and less durable, than that thou figurest in thy fantasy, so i might have it something different from that, real, substantial, palpable to sense, something whereof one could be sure. i am no visionary. take, say i, with thanks the good god gives us now and here; not spurn his bounty back into his face, and reach out emptied hands of wanton greed to grasp at more he has not offered us. we have no right to throw our life away!- in hope of life hereafter, only ours then when with patience our appointed time- '_all_' our appointed time, stephen--we wait, till our change come." ruth's chill repellent tone, her mask of manner hard, could not deceive her husband, who, through such disguise with pain put on, well recognized a new device of wife's love, versatile as resolute, constraining tenderness to play severe. yet not the less for that, more rather, he felt at her words a dull weight of despair oppress his spirit; he could only pray, in silent sorrow not to be expressed, "o holy ghost of god, pity and save!" a hundred times so praying for his wife, in anguished iteration o'er and o'er, stephen not speaking sat, and speechless she. at last, as if one bound with green withes rose rending the withes to rise, rose stephen, sweat of supreme agony victorious at dreadful cost dewing his brow; he took his wife's hand solemnly and tenderly, his port majestical compelling awe, and, with tense speech, in tones that strangely mixed the husband with the prophet, slowly said: "farewell, ruth, for the hour is fully come that i must hence. the burden of the lord is instant and oppresses me. i go, whither i know not, but he knows, to bear witness once more to his most worthy name. i thought that i should never preach again his gospel in those temple courts, but now perhaps he wills even that; whatever be his purpose, unforeshown, i welcome it. "lo, ruth, this is the last time, for full well i know i never shall come back to thee! come thou to me, i charge thee that, and bring our children to their father. always think hereafter, 'he, that last time, charged me that!' i think my god in this has heard my prayer, and i go hence in comfort of some hope. our children! oh! my children! god in heaven, have mercy! how a father pitieth his children, think of that, and pity me! a father lays them on a father's heart; father, i charge thee, by thy father's-heart, not one be plucked from out his father's hand! lord christ, see thou to this, in session there forever, interceding for thine own! "ruth, give their father's blessing to our babes; i trust that they will cheer their mother well, when i am gone, and cheer thee to the end. their sweet unconscious voices now i hear in laugh and prattle of pathetic glee! i fain would see their faces once again, kiss them once more, and take a last caress! but nay, i spare myself one pang; sweet babes, they are too young to know! but by and by, when they are older and will understand, then tell them thou what i now cannot, say, 'your father loved you, loves you, and will love forever--that was his last word to me for you.' so, ruth, farewell!" with first his hands, both, placed in solemn blessing on her head, she kneeling by his knees, forth from his house therewith went stephen all as in a trance. with open eyes that saw not, yet with steps guided--how, he well knew, but whither not- in simple rapt obedience, he his way took absently like one that walks in sleep. stephen his home had fixed in bethany- sequestered hamlet on the slope behind the mount of olives from jerusalem. mary and martha, here, and lazarus, he knew and loved; and with them oft, their guest, held converse sweet of what he said and did, and was, the friend who wept when lazarus died, the lord of life through whom he lived again: but ruth, self-sundered from this fellowship, abode apart, or only with them bound in bonds of kindly common neighborhood. these marked when stephen, marking not, passed by, that day, steps toward the holy city bent, and to each other said: 'he goes once more bound in the spirit to jerusalem to preach the gospel of the grace of god. behold the lit look on the forward face! behold the gait half-buoyed as if with wings! it is like jesus hastening to his cross! lo, let us follow!' and they followed him. but he went ever onward, slacking not his steps, nor heeding when the brow he reached of olivet and thence, across the deep ravine of kedron worn with rushing floods, before him and beneath him saw outspread the city of david with its palaces. book viii. stephen martyr. as stephen approaches the temple, he is suddenly arrested and brought before the sanhedrim. there making his defence, he is interrupted with hostile demonstrations, instigated by shimei. on this, he bursts out with noble indignation, which furnishes the desired occasion for a cry against him of "blasphemy!" from all, and for a violent hurrying forth of the prisoner without the walls to be stoned. a file of roman soldiers confronts and stays the tumultuous crowd; but, after parley conducted by shimei with the centurion, their leader, the rout is suffered to proceed. meantime, however, a little company of sympathizing christians, including rachel with the three from bethany, have gathered round stephen and listened to cheerful, tranquillizing words from him. after the stoning, these friends carry the body of stephen for laving to the pool of siloam, whence by moonlight up olivet to bethany. here they lay it in a room of martha and mary's house until morning. stephen martyr. the sun of syrian afternoon, declined half-way betwixt the zenith and the west, burned blinding in the cloudless blue of heaven and fired a conflagration in the copes of beaten gold hung over the august house of jehovah, whither stephen now tended unconsciously with wonted feet. that spectacle of splendor he, agaze with holden unbeholding eyes, saw not, or, as but with his heart beholding, saw only as goal of his obedience due. down the abrupt declivity with speed, the westward-slanting slope of olivet, descending by a path stony and steep- the same whereon full often to and fro had fared the blessed feet, between the dust and din and fever of jerusalem, and the sweet purity and peace, the cool, the quiet, of that home in bethany, his refuge!--so descending, stephen passed on his right hand gethsemane, that moved muse of the master's agony for men, crossed kedron, and thence upward pressing gained gate susan, whence the temple nigh in view. 'perhaps,' thought he, 'perhaps, once more, against my expectation, i am thither brought to preach as when i answered saul that day. the lord will show me, in full time, alike what i must speak, and when, and where.' so wrapt in welcome of the will unknown of god, and full of faith and of the holy ghost, stephen with no amazement was afraid when, suddenly and rudely, in the street, a band in service of the sanhedrim set on him, and, by their authority, seized him and brought him prisoner accused of blasphemy before their council, there to be examined for his words and deeds. captive in body, he in soul was free, exulting in that glorious liberty, the sense of sonship to almighty god. false witnesses, by shimei suborned, and well their lesson taught by shimei, stood forth, who, to the teeth of stephen, swore: "this person never ceases speaking words against this holy place and moses' law; we heard him say that jesus nazarene is going to destroy this place, and change the customs moses handed down to us." all the assessors in the sanhedrim, fastening their eyes on stephen, saw his face, as it had been an angel's, kindling shine. saul marked it, and remembered how that day the lightning of that face had blinded him! the high priest now, accosting stephen, asked, "are these things so?" and stephen thus replied: "brethren and fathers, hearken to my words. with ears that tingle to the echoes yet, perchance, of that high passionate harangue which late from saul ye heard concerning wounds intended to this jewish commonwealth, ye now have heard forsooth again from these- how temple, law, and well-belovéd ways bequeathed us by our fathers from of old are threatened in the message that i preach. "but, brethren, he mistakes who deems that god is to one place, one race, one time, one clime, one mode of showing forth himself, shut up. consider through what phases manifold has passed already heretofore god's way with men; thence learn how lightly reckons god of place or method. "unto abraham first before he came to charan, while he yet dwelt in the land between the rivers, god appeared. nor in a place thus holy made, and glorious, by theophany, was he, our father, suffered to abide. 'arise,' jehovah said, 'and get thee hence and come into the land which i will show thee.' then to charan that obedient pilgrim passed. nor there found he a settled rest. again he journeyed and in canaan, this fair land wherein ye dwell, a sojourner became; for here god gave him no inheritance, promising only that in after times that childless father's children here should dwell. "meanwhile another change, and now what seems a long postponement of the purposed grace. four hundred years should abraham's seed sojourn as strangers in an alien land where they should suffer bondage and an evil lot: delivered thence with judgment on their foes, they then should hither come and here serve god. "yet when the ripeness of the time was full, and moses offered to deliver them, our fathers doubted and refused his hand: but moses notwithstanding led them out. and that same moses prophesied of one to follow him as prophet whom must all obey. yet moses, mouth of god to men, obeyed our fathers not, but, in their hearts gone back to egypt, spurned him far aloof from them. then followed that apostasy to idols, by jehovah god chastised, on those offending, with captivity which beyond babylon carried them away. "albeit jehovah gave to moses such honor as never yet to man was given, still much that moses wrought was cast aside. that tabernacle, made by him express as god himself had shown him in the mount, and so inwove with hebrew history, god suffered this to pass, and in its place preferred the temple built by solomon. "yet not in houses built with human hands dwells the most high; as, by his prophet, god says, 'on the heaven sit i as on a throne, and the earth make a footstool for my feet.' 'what house will ye build me,' the lord inquires, 'or what shall be the place of mine abode?'" so far a loth penurious decent heed the council had grudged out to stephen; here the scowl of curious incredulity, wherewith they listened while as yet in doubt whither might tend his drift of argument, changed to a frown of deadly hate, as they conclusion from his use of scripture drew that stephen glanced at overthrow indeed meant for the temple. instantly, alert to seize occasion, shimei the sig gave to prepared conspirators, who now obediently framed a menace grim of gesture to denounce the speaker's aim; and all the council, as one man, astir with insurrection, frowned a vehement refusal to receive the word of god. stephen beheld their aspect, and his soul, dilating to a seraph's measure, filled with sudden prophet's zeal aflame for god. he forged his indignation into words which, like bolts kindling, now he launched at them. he said: "stiff-necked ye, and uncircumcised in heart and ears! always do ye resist the holy ghost; as did your fathers, so do ye. which of the prophets did they not, your fathers, persecute? who showed before the coming of the just one, those they slew; and of him now have ye betrayers been and murderers. ye who the law, received at angels' disposition, have not kept!" cut to the heart at this, those councillors gnashed with their teeth on stephen. but that sight stephen, his eyes rapt elsewhere, did not see. full of the holy ghost, his face he raised, gazing with sense undazzled into heaven, and saw the glory of god, and jesus there, not sitting, as at ease, but, as in act to help, standing, on the right hand of god. he testified that vision thus to men: "opened see i the heavens and standing there the son of man on the right hand of god." thereat a loud acclaim of hatred forth burst in one voice from all the sanhedrim. full come was shimei's opportunity. as started mattathias to his feet in honest wrath instinctive, shimei too rose, counterfeiting wrath, sign understood by his complotters, who now likewise rose in simultaneous second and support, setting the council in a wild turmoil. they stopped their ears, and all together ran on stephen with tumultuary rage to thrust him forth without the city walls. the rush of such commotion through the streets, a torrent madness raging on its way, raging and roaring, every moment more, roused a wide wind of rumor and surmise troubling the air of all jerusalem. tremor of this reached rachel's jealous sense, on edge--she knowing that the sanhedrim would that day summon stephen to its bar- to fear the worst for stephen and for saul. but ruth, her home more distant, she at home urged by importunate cares which for her wrought some present respite from the strain and pain of that farewell with stephen--vexing thought! too certain to return insistently, in waking and in sleeping vision, soon, at night upon her bed, unbidden guest, and haunt her bosom with sad memories, and vague, unhappy, beckoning shapes of fears!- ruth, so precluded, nothing knew of all. rachel, with other women of the way like-minded with herself, pathetic group! drew timorous nigh the ragged rushing rim of that confusion pouring toward the gate which northward opened on damascus road. the self-same path it was whereby had walked a little while before, bearing his cross, the saviour of mankind toward calvary. stephen remembered, and, remembering, went both meekly more, and more triumphantly, to suffer like his lord without the gate. he said within himself, 'i follow him; i feel his footprints underneath my feet.' those women watched the martyr every step, and with hands waved signalled him sympathy. such helpless help was help the more to him- who had no need, but gave them back again their sympathy in looks of strength and cheer which bade them too be faithful unto death, as they saw him that day. the peace of god, lodged in his heart--a trust from christ, whose word was, "peace i leave with you, my peace to you i give; not as the world gives give i you: let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid"--that peace steadfast he bore amid the tumult round him, the one thing not shaken in a shaken universe, like the earth's axle sleeping and the earth whirling from centre to circumference! not yet the rout had reached the city gate, when, lo! a sudden halt, a sudden hush, arrested and becalmed the multitude. a file of roman soldiers from the fort, with swift, straight, sure lock-step, steel-clad, that clanged, flowed like a rill of flowing mercury, heavy yet nimble, through a street that crossed the course of that mad progress, and, athwart its head abutting, stayed; the clang of pause rang sharper than the clang of the advance. the leader, a centurion, sternly spoke: "what means this uproar? seek ye to provoke your rulers? love ye, then, your yoke so well ye fain would feel it heavier on your necks? sedition into insurrection grows full easily, and this sedition seems. speak, who can tell, and say, what would ye?" prompt, then, shimei, of the foremost, stepping forth said; "this is no sedition as might seem; a crushing of sedition rather. we, the sanhedrim"--wherewith a smirk and bow from shimei, with wave of hand swept round upon his colleagues in their sorry plight dishevelled, seemed, in sneering cynic sort, to introduce them with mock dignity- "we sanhedrim this fellow caught employed in stirring up sedition, and our zeal for peace and order under roman rule inflamed us, following our forefathers' way, to visit death on him without the gate. we beg you will allow us to proceed and put to proof of act our loyalty"- hot breath, half hiss, from mattathias here- "this script perhaps will help determine you." and shimei handed up a tablet writ. the roman read: "let this disorder pass; it may be useful. watch it well." the seal once more with care examined, parley had with shimei, whose crafty answers meet each wary scruple of the officer, and sign is given to let the rout proceed. meantime a different scene has quietly been passing unperceived. that company of ministering women rachel found, salomé, and the marys, blessed name! with others who had followed and bewailed when jesus suffered--these, joined now by those from bethany, with lazarus, prevailed to edge their way ungrudged through the close ranks of idle gazers round not undisposed themselves to sympathize, until they stood nigh stephen, and in undertones could speak with him, and hear his words. "weep not for me," he said, "ye blesséd! i am well content. i think how short the way is, not how sharp, to jesus where just now i saw him. there he stood in heaven on the right hand of god. he seemed to lean toward me with arms outstretched as if at once to take me to himself! i spring toward him with joy unutterable. i shall not feel the pain, which will but speed me thither. he hath overcome the world. be of good cheer, belovéd, ye who wait a little longer to behold his face. for you too he hath overcome the world. be strong, be faithful, be obedient, a little while--and we shall meet again safe, happy, in the new jerusalem, forever and forever with the lord. "but ruth, my wife, yet unbelieving--care for her and for my children! god will give all to our prayers. and husband he will be to her, and father to the fatherless." rachel to lazarus whispered: "tell him i, rachel, saul's sister, would do something. ask what i may do for ruth, to testify a sister's sorrow for a brother's fault. and let him not think hardly, not too hardly, of saul who wrongs him so!" and lazarus told stephen, who, with look benign addressed to rachel, said: "thou, rachel, thou thyself, no other, shalt to ruth my wife convey her husband's very last farewell; good-night call it, and bid her meet me there to say good-morning. comfort her with words. to saul say--when the time comes he will hear, not now- that all is well, is wholly well. i go- and that is well--perhaps in part through him, which seems not well, but is, by grace of christ, who thus, in part through me--and surely that likewise is well--erelong will make of saul, in stephen's room, a more than stephen both to preach and suffer for his name. this hope be thine, rachel, and god be with thee, child!" martha, her hand as ready as her heart, had other cheer provided than of words. 'the willing spirit, if the flesh be weak, may faint,' she thought, 'and angels strengthening him brought jesus succor in gethsemane. may i not be his angel, stephen's, now, and his flesh brace to bear his agony?' she said to stephen: "i have brought thee here a cake of barley and a honeycomb. i pray thee eat and cheer therewith thy heart." "god bless thee, martha, for thy loving thought!" said stephen; and he took the food from her and ate it, giving thanks before them all. and all with him gave thanks, for nothing else could so have cheered them in their sad estate as thus to see their friend at such an hour cheering himself with food, his appetite not troubled by least trouble of the mind, and he approved superior to his lot, not by a strain of high heroic pride, not by access of transient ecstasy, but simply by the sober confidence, well-grounded, of the soul enduring all as seeing him who is invisible. besides, had any deemed that martha erred, inopportunely ministering to the flesh, when spirit unsupported by the flesh as well had conquered, and more gloriously, haply, too, letting this their thought escape, unmeant, in look or gesture, to her pain- such might, in stephen's gracious act, have heard as if a silent echo of those words- ineffably persuasive sweet reproof at once and soft assuagement of unease- "why trouble ye the woman? she hath wrought a good work for me." but the sanhedrim, permitted by the roman to resume their way with stephen, now to him once more their notice turned. within their heart enraged, first, to have met with such a check, and then, scarce less, _so_ to have had the check removed- both this and that their sense of bondage chafed- ill brooked it they to see what now they saw, their prisoner in calm converse with his friends. "begone!" to these they cried. "for shame to show untimely softness thus to whom ye see your rulers judge worthy of death. begone!" one churl among those councillors was found, when stephen gently bade his friends give way, even for his own sake, who could least endure to see them suffer roughness, most unmeet for such as they--one graceless churl was found to raise his hand at stephen speaking so and smite him on the mouth. a wail at this broke from those women, and their hair they tore in passion of compassion and of wrath holy as love. but stephen was most meek, and only in a shadowed look expressed pain at such painful sympathy with pain. this seen by those, they soon responsively resumed composure like his own, and walked, following, molested not, at small remove from the belovéd martyr, cheering him, and cheered, with sense of some society. so, on, with going less precipitate, and less vociferous rage, but not less fell, moved the infatuate multitude, repressed and maddened, both at once, to feel themselves only by sufferance masters of the fate of stephen, and their very footsteps timed to regular and slow behind those few austere, impassive, automatic men armed, who, though few they might be, yet meant rome. arrived at length at the accurséd spot, they stay. the ground about was strewn with stones, rejected fragments from the quarry cleft, flakes from the mason's chisel, interspersed dilapidations from the city walls twice overthrown and razed, or missiles thence once by defenders on assailants hurled. they stay, and, stephen stationed in the midst where, first, a circle of spectators round was ordered in disorderly array, prepare to act their dreadful blasphemy. within, opposed to stephen, saul stood, pale, blanched with resolve, anguished, and tremulous, but in nerve shaken, not in will, to take his part. saul's part was only to consent. perhaps the eyes, the beautiful sad eyes, of rachel, dark and liquid ever, now unfathomably deep with unshed tears- perhaps such eyes, his sister's, fixed on him, he seeing not because he would not see, wrought yet some holy spell that charmed him back insensibly from part more active there. but his consent saul testified with sign open to all to see, and understood. he held the outer robes thrown off of those who, disencumbered so, might, with main strength, and aim made sure, the better speed to fling at that meek heavenly man the murderous stone. those witnesses malign who had forsworn stephen to this, were first to cast at him the stone to slay. there stephen stood, his face, his glory-smitten face, upturned to heaven, and his arms thither raised as if to meet the down-stretched arms of jesus from on high. it was a sight both beautiful to see and piteous. the angels might have wept, who saw it, but that they more deeply saw, and saw the pity in the beauty lost, like a few drops of water on a fire that only serve to feed the flames more bright. at the first shower of stones at him with cry of self-exciting execration flung, stephen, with answering cry, as if of one running to refuge and to sanctuary, betook him to the covert of the wings that trembled with desire to be outstretched once over doomed jerusalem unfain, and, "jesus, lord, receive my spirit!" said. that his friends heard and echoing said "amen!" but they the flying stones saw not, nor saw alight the flying stones upon their friend; for they too turned their faces upward all, and, gazing unimaginable depths beyond the seen, beheld the glory there, wherein the scandal and the mystery of visible things vanished, like shadows plunged in the exceeding brightness of the sun, or were transformed to make the glory more, like discords conquered heightening harmony. with the next flight of stones, unwatched likewise, stephen, raised far above the fierce effect, stinging or stunning, of the cruel blows, spoke heavenward once again, not for himself petitioning now, but pleading for his foes. his foes already had prevailed to bring the martyr to his knees, and, on his knees, with loud last voice from lips inviolate yet- as if that angel chant at bethlehem still sounded, "peace on earth, good will to men," or that diviner tone from calvary, "forgive them, for they know not what they do"- one ransomed pure and perfect human note threading the dissonant noise with melody- he prayed, "lord jesus, lay not thou this sin to their account." therewith he fell asleep. that holy prayer exhaled his breath away, and on his breath exhaled to heaven in prayer his spirit thither aspired and was with christ. as stephen fell asleep, the sun went down; but over olivet the great full moon rose brightening. 'so,' thought stephen's friends of him, 'his life has been extinguished to our eyes, only elsewhere to shine, but while we wait for the new day to dawn that lingers, lo, his memory instead shall give us light, not splendid like the sun, yet like the moon lovely!' thus comforting themselves, they saw the murderers of their friend above his corse build roughly of the stones that smote him dead a kind of cairn in mockery of a tomb. melted away meanwhile the multitude in silence, and, soon after, all were gone save the true lovers of the man. then these gathered together round the accurséd spot, now hallowed, where he stood to suffer, where he prayed, and where he fell, and whence he rose deathless, leaving the sacred body there, dead, desolate of the spirit, but still dear, most dear to them. and so, with many tears fast falling that nigh blinded them, they took from off the body, one by one, the stones- almost as if they loved them, with such care!- until his face, his fair disfeatured face, and his form marred and broken, open lay to the mild moon that seemed to sympathize, and touched and softened all with healing beams. "let us bear hence the sacred clay," they said, "and wash it from the pool of siloam." then lazarus, with three fellow-helpers more- nathanael, israelite indeed, was there, joseph of arimathæa too had come, later, and nicodemus, by nightfall, these were the chosen four, with lazarus- making a litter of their robes, took up the noble form that lately stephen wore, and gently carried it to siloam. with soft lustration there at loving hands, the dust and blood were wholly washed away; the hair and beard then decently arranged, with skill that hid the wounds on cheek or brow, the eyelids closed on eyes that saw no more, the scarce cold palms folded upon the breast, stephen it seemed indeed just fallen asleep. then they were glad that ruth would see him so, so peaceful and so beautiful asleep, expecting soon to waken satisfied! "to-morrow will be time enough," they said, "to tell ruth--let her sleep to-night." but ruth slept not, or if she slept, slept but to dream of stephen and his last hands on her head. under the balmy moon, up olivet to bethany they bore the holy dust, and there, beneath the roof that sheltered oft the man who had not where to rest his head, they laid the body down to dreamless sleep; and slept themselves until the morrow morn. book ix. ruth and rachel. very early in the morning, rachel, charged with this office by stephen, breaks to ruth the news of her husband's death. the two then go together to the place where the body of stephen is laid. there, ruth, kneeling in prayer beside her martyred husband, repentantly accepts his lord for hers, becoming a christian. rachel, having hastily visited her home, to find saul gone thence with purpose not to return, leaves the house in her maid's care and goes back to ruth, to whom, being requested to do so, she tells the story of stephen's stoning. then the funeral of stephen takes place, with a memorial discourse pronounced, and an elegy recited, at the tomb. ruth and rachel. the morrow morn broke fair in bethany, and ruth rose early from unquiet sleep; rachel likewise, who slept in mary's house. the sun had not yet risen, but in the west the moon hung whitening opposite the dawn, when ruth, her children left asleep, went forth to feel the freshness of the morning air without, and water from the village well to draw, both for the slaking of her thirst and for the cooling of her brow that burned and of her throbbing temples. at the well rachel she met who earlier still was forth on the like errand. the two women hailed and kissed each other. ruth to rachel then said: "thou art not, i trow, this morning come hither the long way from jerusalem?" "nay, ruth," said rachel, "here the yesternight with mary and martha i abode a guest." "how fresh the wind is," ruth said, "hither blown from off the western sea! us, underneath the crest of olivet, it lights upon descending, broken, like a breath from heaven. what a delicious balm!" "about my brow," said rachel, "gratefully i feel the air, attempered so, soft flowing, as if one that loved me like a mother gently stroked my temples to undo a band of pain bound round them." "and, in sooth," the other said, now looking narrowly at rachel's face, "thou seemest sad of favor, rachel. thou, thou too, so young, hast then thy cause to grieve! it is a sad world and a weary. but- forgive me if such quick instinctive fears be selfish, i am wife and mother--aught of evil tidings bringest thou me? spare not to speak. thou wilt but answer to the dreams i had this night, portending nameless ill. stephen--i fear for him. he yesterday left me beyond his wont oppressed in spirit, and has not since returned. strange--yet not strange; sometimes the livelong night he spends in prayer alone upon the top of olivet or in the shadows of gethsemane." "ruth," rachel said, "the angel of the lord round his belovéd, like the mountains round jerusalem, encampeth ever; he of god's belovéd is, and guarded well!" but ruth scarce listened; she insisting said: "perhaps of stephen some report thou bringest, hint doubtless of new danger threatening him!" "nay, ruth, no longer danger threatens now thy husband; that is past, and he is safe." "thank god," said ruth; "but stay, i dare not yet thank god. tell me, have then our rulers ceased to frown on stephen preaching jesus christ? or stephen, will he cease and preach no more? this cannot be, for stephen is such stuff as never yet did bend to mortal beck; and that--our rulers surely have not changed thus suddenly their mind. thou art deceived, they have deceived thee--stephen is not safe; it is their guile to make us think him safe, he off his guard will fall an easier prey into their hands. rachel, it was not kind, not faithful in thee so to be deceived. more love had made thee more suspicious. i suspect forever everybody; thee now i suspect. thou keepest something back, or haply palterest with a double sense. rachel, i charge thee, i adjure thee, speak and tell me all. stephen is dead! say that- is dead! thou meantest that by, 'he is safe.' they have stoned him, stoned my husband, stoned the man that was the truest hebrew of them all!" though by her words ruth challenged frank reply, yet by her tones and by her eager looks she deprecated more what she invoked. this rachel saw, and answered not a word. then ruth gainsaid what rachel would not say: "they have not done it, could not do it, he- rachel, it is not true, unsay it, quick, it was a cruel jest to tease me so, thou art not a wife, thou art not a mother, else thou never hadst conceived so ill a jest!" rachel was tortured, but she could not speak, and ruth, secure in sense of respite yet, went on invoking what she would not hear: "why art thou silent? speak, and keep not back the truth, whatever it may be; there's naught so soothing and so healing as the truth. but i will not believe that he is dead. thou didst not know my husband. dead! dead! dead! i tell thee, rachel, _that_ is something past imagining dreadful, hopeless. to be dead is--not to love, and not to speak to those who loved and love thee, not to hear them speak, saying they loved and love thee and lament they ever gave thee cause of grief and now are different and would die a thousand deaths to have been different then when thou couldst know- death, rachel,--but of death what canst thou learn, for thou art but a child and never wast, never, to such a husband such a wife- to vex the noblest heart that ever broke!" rachel at first had listened with dismay, and nothing found to answer to ruth's words, whose words indeed flowed on and made no pause for answer, as if she in truest truth sought not the answer that she seemed to seek, would fain postpone it rather, or avert. but when at length the utterance of ruth's thought from converse passed into soliloquy and the deep secret of her soul revealed, then rachel caught a welcome gleam of hope. a sign of grace she saw or seemed to see at work for ruth within her heart of grief, transmuting human sorrow to divine repentance, and for pain preparing peace. "let us go in together," rachel said, for they by this were nigh to ruth's abode, "let us go in where we may be withdrawn from note of such as here might mark our speech or action; i have word from him to thee." then they went in, and ruth bestirred herself to make a cheer of welcome for her guest. that momentary truce to troubled thought for ruth, and interspace of quietness from her own words which could not choose but flow with helpless importunity till then, gave rachel needed chance to speak. she said: "o ruth, thy husband fell asleep last night, and slept a sweeter sleep than thine or mine, a deep sweet sleep, a happy sleep, a blest. thou wouldst not wake him thence for worlds on worlds. he felt before he slept that he should sleep, and me, whom god our father let be nigh, stephen bade bear a last good-night to thee. he did not think the night was very long before him for his sleeping, and his wish was thou shouldst meet him presently to say good-morning. this was his true message, ruth." the ineffably serene steadfast regard of rachel's eyes, that, out of liquid depths unsounded, looked angelic love and truth, with pity mingled, equal measure--tears orbing them large, shot through and through with light of heavenly hope for ruth--but, more than all a subtly sweet insinuating tone, most musical, of softness in the voice, that gently wound into the listener's heart- these, with what else, who knows? of help from heaven, wrought a bright miracle of change in ruth. she had been hard and dry, a desert rock; the rock was smitten now with moses' rod. ruth gushed in gracious tears, she veiled herself with weeping, as sometimes a precipice veils itself dim with mist of cataract. and rachel wept with ruth, until ruth said: "but where is stephen, rachel? it might be they, meaning death, yet did not compass death. such things have been; haste, let us go and see. monstrous it were, if he should need me--i the while here sitting weeping idle tears!" "come," rachel said, and took her by the hand. so hand in hand they went to mary's house, the elder guided as the younger led, and neither speaking, stilled with solemn thought. mary and martha met the twain, with mute, subdued, affectionate greeting, at the door, and, understanding without word their wish, straight led them inward, with a quietude of gesture that spoke peace and peace infused, to the place where in quietude reposed that slumberer late so violently lulled to this so placid sleep. the room was flushed with hue of gold in hangings round the walls and rugs of russet muffling deep the floor, that made a kind of inner light diffused, like sunshine without sun and shadowless. a golden-curtained window opened east, and east the upturned face of stephen looked, lying there motionless in that fast sleep- so lying that, had he his eyelids raised, he without moving might have seen the morn. the rest, with one accord not entering, stood about the door without, silent, and saw while the wife sole went to the husband's side. that instant, lo, from out the breaking dawn a level sunbeam through the curtain slipped and touched the fair translucent face with light. ruth marked it and she testified and said, falling upon her knees beside the couch: "i take it as a token, lord, from thee; even so send thou thy light into my heart! lo, by the side of him made beautiful in death, of whom i was unworthy, here i give myself--alas, that it should be too late for him to have known it!--to his lord. i trust to be forgiven for my sin! i thank thee that i was not weight enough upon him to prevail against thy might within him and prevent this sacrifice- accomplished all without my help, nay, all in spite of my resistance! o my god, how hast thou humbled me! to have had no part, wife with her husband to have borne no part- save hindering what she could!--when such a deed of martyrdom for christ was possible! behold, o lord, thus late i take my part! this now is also mine, as well as his, this sacrifice. i have offered him to thee! and if my share be heavier even than his- to live bereaved more grievous martyrdom than to have died--this too is my desert, accept the witness of my widowhood!" ruth ceased, but rose not from her knees, still fixed in posture as if grown a pillar of prayer. then those three women came and knelt with her beside her dead, a silent fellowship of sympathy in sacrifice; but soon rachel and mary, one on either side of ruth, borne by the self-same impulse each, each at the self-same instant borne, unto the self-same beautiful appeal, pure love's pure touch, stole softly each a hand in hers. each plighting hand so proffered ruth upraised slowly and solemnly as with a kind of consecrating gesture to her lips, and kissing seemed to seal a sacrament. then she arose, and all arose with her, when martha, not forgotten, likewise shared, she too, with ruth the kiss of sisterhood. so, never a word between them spoken, all went backward and withdrew, ruth last, who saw that sunshine glorifying stephen's brow, and bore it thence, shekinah in her heart. her countenance thus illumined from within, the mother to her orphan children went, and moved, a light, about her household ways. she knew that others would with holy heed prepare that holy dust for burial. but rachel was more comfortless than ruth. rest in her spirit found she none--until, first having broken fast, but sparingly, she hastened with winged footsteps to her home. there her maid told her saul went early forth leaving this message for his sister: "here bide, if thou wilt; this house be still thy home. but i go hence, whither i cannot tell, nor yet for how long absence; to what end- thou knowest. cheer thee well!" the little maid looked rueful and perplexed, but nothing asked, as nothing rachel told her, save to say: "quick, bring thine elder sister, thou and she shall keep the house together for a time. i also go, my little maid"--wherewith her little maid, now weeping, rachel kissed- "i also go, but weep not, i shall come again, i trust, in happier times. farewell!" then rachel straight to ruth's abode returned. "glad am i thou hast come once more," said ruth, "for i have wished to ask thee many things. how came his dreadful chance of martyrdom on stephen? i can bear to hear it all, since all is done and past and--'he is safe,' as thou saidst, rachel!" tenderly ruth smiled, with tears behind her smiles that did not fall. then rachel said: "i cannot tell thee all as having all beheld, but this i heard, that stephen gave a noble testimony before the council who had cited him; that there his face shone like an angel's, god himself so swearing for his servant, while against him swore false witnesses suborned by shimei; that his enemies could not bear the fierceness of the love with which in wrath he burned for god against their wickedness, and so they rushed upon him violently and thrust him forth without the city walls. but god beheld their threatening, and he sent his romans to withstand them for a while. then we that loved and honored him drew nigh, and would have spoken words of cheer to him, but he--o ruth, thou shouldst have seen him then! i never can describe to thee how fair thy husband was to look upon, while he, as steadfast as a star and as serene, and not less lovely-luminous to our eyes, stood there amid the angry sanhedrim and to us spake such heavenly words of cheer! he spake of thee, ruth, and i think god gave his spirit comfort in good hope for thee. for, 'god will give all to our prayers,' said he, and added, 'husband he will be to her, and father to the fatherless.'" thereat ruth's tears as from a fresh-oped fountain flowed, and eased her aching heart, too full before of love, remorseful love, for perfect peace. rachel with ruth wept tears of sympathy; but with the sweet and wholesome in her tears mixed salt and bitter, for she thought of saul. ruth at length ceased to weep and yearning said: "and then those romans let them work their will!" "on stephen's body, yea, ruth," rachel said, "but on his spirit they could have no power." "the stones," said ruth- "the stones, ruth," rachel said, "god gave his angels charge concerning them- so verily i believe--and strictly bade, 'lo, let these slay, but see ye that they do no harm unto my prophet.' so the stones, they slew, but hurt not. god translated him; he rose triumphant in meek majesty. i should have told thee, ruth, that while he stood before the council, he looked up and saw jesus in heaven on the right hand of god- there standing; this he testified to all. it was as if his faithful lord had risen to side with stephen in his agony. so, when they stoned him, stephen upward spoke, 'lord jesus, take my spirit'; then once more, 'lord, lay not thou this sin unto their charge.' this he said kneeling and so fell asleep." the two some space sat musing silently; then ruth: "i feel that thou hast told me all most truly, rachel, as most tenderly. thus, then, god giveth his belovéd sleep, thus also! and he doeth all things well! amen!" silence once more, that seemed surcharged with deepening inarticulate amen from both, and ruth, regarding rachel, said: "even so! but, rachel, us not yet doth god will thus to sleep. still, otherwise to sleep- for his belovéd are not also we?- may be god's gift to us. thou surely needest, body and spirit, rest." and rachel said: "the words of stephen leap unto my lips for answering thee; and these were stephen's words: 'god bless thee, martha, for thy loving thought!' and this makes me remember that one thing done yesterday i missed to tell thee of. for martha, faithful heart, forecasting well, brought food for stephen that might hearten him to bear whatever he had need to bear, a cake of barley and a honeycomb. 'god bless thee, martha, for thy loving thought!' said stephen, and so took the food from her, and ate it giving thanks before us all. he ate it with such look of appetite, it cheered us with a sense of freedom his from any discomposure of the mind. o ruth, in his pavilion god did hide thy husband, and his soul had perfect peace!" "was it not done like martha?" ruth replied; "and done like stephen too. for courtesy bloomed like a flower to grace his daily life. i used to wonder at it--and i now wonder i did not see where such a flower, where, and where only, such a flower could find rooting to flourish in a world like this! he always told me that the heart of christ nourished what good in him, or beautiful, i found--or fancied, as he smiled and said. but i--oh, holden heart!--i did not see. and now it is too late, too late, for him to have known! it may be that he knows it, yea, but now to know it is not wholly such as to have known it then, to have known it then! alas, there is not any chance of hope behind us, rachel; hope is all before. let us look onward; we in hope were saved, so stephen used to say, and, 'i go hence in comfort of some hope,' were his last words, or of his last, to me--concerning me, spoken with a sad cheerfulness that now breaks me with such a surge of memory! but this is endless, let it here have end. come, rachel, see, the sun rides high, come thou, and i will bring thee to a quiet room, safe from the sun, where thou shalt rest a while." so rachel followed ruth, not ill content to be alone for thought if not for sleep. her will was not to sleep; but weariness, with youth and health, was stronger, and she slept. already, when she woke, the sun halfway from his high noon had down the western slope of sky descended, and she hearkening heard a rumorous noise without upon the ways, the stir of movement, steps of many feet, with sound, muffled, of many voices nigh, that startled her from sweet forgetfulness to sudden sad remembrance of the things that had been, and that were, and were to be. instinctive up she sprang, for, "lo," she said, "they gather unto stephen's funeral; behooves that i be ready with all speed." therewith upon her knees she sank and prayed a prayer for ruth and for ruth's little ones, widowed and orphaned by so dear a death, and for herself--and for her brother saul! then her heart swelled to a capacious wish, and, anguished in one swift vicarious throe of great desire for help and grace divine, she embraced the total church of jesus christ- of such a guide, of such a stay, bereaved! then rachel, with the everlasting arms invisibly, nigh visibly, around her to sustain her steps, came forth, as one that meekly walks leaning on her beloved, and begged of ruth that she might sister be to her, that day, and thenceforth ever, mourn as sister with her in the eyes of all. "for i am lonely," rachel said, "o ruth, as thou art; lonely let us be, we twain, together, widows both, and mix our tears. for also i am widow, as thou art, yet not as thou--since me a heavier stroke makes widow, who have never been a wife!" ruth answered, though she did not understand, and kissed her friend in plight of sisterhood. so they two, clad alike from out ruth's store of raiment, clad in sad attire alike, as sisters walked together side by side- ruth's children with them, grieved, not knowing why- to where, from mary's house and martha's borne, with grievous lamentation, by good men devout, the flower and choice of israel, was laid the sacred dust of stephen down and sealed within a rock-hewn sepulchre. joseph of arimathæa, he who sought and gained from pilate leave to take away the body of jesus crucified, had sent to bethany, betimes, before the hour of burial, rich spices, a great weight, aloes and myrrh, with linen pure and fine, to wrap the body of stephen for his tomb. mary, the mother of the lord, with john beloved of jesus, loving her as son, came to that feast of sorrow bringing tears, to ruth medicinal more than any, wept by one who had so learned to weep. so there with sackcloth worn and ashes on the head, they wailed aloud, that hebrew company, women and men, they beat the breast, they rent their raiment, until one stood forth who said: "enough already has to grief been given. us it befits not here, for stephen dead, to mourn as mourn others who have no hope. he was a burning and a shining light, and we a season in his beams were glad. glory to god who kindled him for us! glory to god who hath from us withdrawn his shining, and now hides him in himself! we thought we could not spare him, but god knew. let all be as god wills who knows. amen!" "amen!" they solemnly responded all, and he who spake these things went on and said: "the lord anointed stephen with the oil of gladness in the gift of speech above his fellows. how he flamed insufferably, in words that leapt out of his mouth, like swords out of their sheaths, enkindled to devour the wicked! when he spoke, flew seraphim and bore from off the altar living coals of god which, laid upon his lips, purged them to utter those pure words that purified. what zeal, what wisdom, what fixed faith, what power! he stood our bulwark, he advanced our sword, and single seemed an insupportable host. yet this puissant soldier of the truth, to disobedience so implacable, how gentle and how placable he was to all obedience! he was like his lord, that lion of the tribe of judah, named also the lamb of god. no words had he save words of vivid flame, sudden and swift and deadly like the lightning, for god's foes; but for the little flock of jesus, balm his speech--into those lips such grace was poured! "nor less in him for mighty work than word the holy ghost a fountain was of power. from him or through him what a plenteous stream flowed like the river of god in miracle! signs, wonders, gifts of healing, heavenly powers, innumerable flocked about his hand, like doves unto their windows flying home, waiting there eager to perform his will. "a prophet of the elder time, reborn into the spirit of this latter age, was stephen. thanking god for him, let us together and steadfastly pray that he who made the great elijah live again in john the baptist, give us stephen back in resurrection from his tomb with power. thus shall we pray as himself prophesied- for stephen, you remember, glanced at this in prophecy; unless not prophecy it were, but only generous hope, with wish to comfort rachel, when he spake to her of grace to come upon her brother yet- we shall so seek what seems it he foresaw, if we ask jesus to make captive saul!" that speaker ceased, and then a prophetess among the women there took up a wail, which triumphed into gladness as it grew: "is fallen, is fallen, a prince in israel! woe, while it yet was day, his sun went down! daughters of judah, mourn for stephen slain! "mourn for a candle of the lord put out, a torch of noble witness quenched in blood; wear sackcloth of thick darkness and bewail! "repent, o daughters of jerusalem, repent, forsake your wickedness of woe; look up, look up, the quenched torch burns a star! "is risen, is risen; behold, at the right hand on high sits he of his ascended lord; rejoice, rejoice, for stephen could not die! "comfort ye ruth; thrice among women she lives blesséd, who, from wife to him, became, widowed, partaker of his martyrdom! "hosanna to the son of david, who, beheld of stephen standing in the heavens, received his servant's spirit to himself! "the resurrection and the life is he; he will not leave this body in its tomb; stephen and we shall meet him in the air. "descending with the sound that wakes the dead, ten thousand of his saints attending him, he comes! he comes! even so, lord jesus, come! "salvation, worship, blessing, glory, power, forever and forever unto god, our god; he never will forsake his own." uplifted high in heart, they went away. book x. saul at bethany. at the funeral service for stephen, shimei was a skulking attendant. he catches at a mention there overheard by him of the name of saul in connection with that of stephen, to plot an instigated persecuting visit on saul's part to bethany; shimei hoping that saul will thus encounter his own sister identified as a christian. saul takes a band of men and makes the visit. he finds his intended victims all together at the house of ruth condoling with her--rachel indeed among them. after sharp inward conflict, and much effort put forth without success to make his victims abjure their faith, saul finally takes them to prison. but rachel, she vainly entreating to share her companions' fate, he leaves behind. she takes upon herself the charge of ruth's children in their own home, where saul, month after month, secretly sends to her supply of every need. saul at bethany. among the sons of god, when these one day came to present themselves before the lord, satan came also; and so shimei, amid the throng that mourned at stephen's death, intruded. with smooth face of sanctimony, skulking to be unseen or heeded not, he hovered furtive on the outer edge of audience, when those words of praise were said to hearten--eye and ear alert to mark all that befell. his thought was, 'here perhaps i shall learn something to the true behoof and profit of our cause--right aim secure for the next blow of vengeance to be struck.' the name of saul mysteriously conjoined with rachel's, in abhorrent prophecy as seemed--this, shimei caught at eagerly and said, 'aha!' then, as the throng dispersed all to their several homes, straight shimei went to seek saul. him found that spy malign with the chief priests in council, plotting deep to hunt the sect of jesus to the death. these had armed saul with writ and warrant sealed empowering him to enter where he would, house after house, and whomsoever found, man be it or woman, guilty of belief in jesus as messiah, such to seize and drag to prison. instantly conceived shimei a subtle snare to enmesh the feet of saul. the proud young zealot pharisee should be set on to visit first in search those homes of bethany; where, unadvised perhaps, so shimei guessed, the brother might, to his dismay, find his own sister one with the disciples of the nazarene. then to make prisoner his own flesh and blood, or openly spare rachel for kin's sake- this, scandal against scandal doubtful weighed, would be the hard alternative to saul. "belovéd brother saul," so shimei spoke, "_i_ mourned at stephen's funeral to-day. not loud, you know, but deep, my mourning was; not loud, for i am modest, and my wish was less to be seen than to see; but deep, for there was cause, to one that loved you, saul, to be sincerely sad on your behalf. incredible it seems, they spoke your name, not, as might honor it, with hate and dread, but very ambiguously, to say the least. in fact, i fear you may be compromised, unless you take prompt measures in the matter. hark you, a certain orator stood up who, after praising stephen to his worth, distinctly hinted saul was looked upon as hopeful future pervert to their cause predestined to fill stephen's vacant room. the fellow founded on some prophecy which, as i gathered, stephen had put forth. now this preposterous notion, with such folk, is far more like to prosper, and thus be noised undesirably, than you might guess, as a report injurious to your name. you will be tainted with disloyalty, in general esteem--to our great loss. "what i propose is that you strike a stroke so sudden and so ringing and so aimed as shall decisively and neatly nip this precious piece of prophecy in the bud, and put you out of reach of calumny. you have your warrant and commission; good, use them at once, sleep not upon them; now, this very night--for domiciliary work like what you purpose, night is the best time, birds to their nests, you know, at night come home- this very night, take you a trusty band and make a bold foray at bethany. there stephen lived, and there a hotbed yet thrives of this pestilent heresy. no place fitter than the abode and vicinage of your late overmatch in controversy to make first theatre of the exploits you aim at in this different field--field where, with odds so in your favor, you should win. easier far, given the right support, to drag to dungeon and to death a hundred men or praying women, all as tame as sheep, than one impracticable fellow like that stephen manage in fair controversy! "you have my best kind hopes and all good men's. ask for the house that harbored stephen's corpse and whence the funeral issued--quarry there you cannot fail to find. the widow too of stephen, i watched her, and what i saw makes me misdoubt her hebrew orthodoxy. sound her--an ounce of thorough work done now, unquestionably thorough, will be worth a hundred weight of paltering by and by. despise the fear that now and then a man may call you cruel; the worst cruelty, as you and i well know, is ill-timed softness. this thing must be stamped out; it is a plague, it creeps from house to house, no house is safe. your house, saul, mine--that sister fair of yours, yes, treat the thought with scorn, but some fine day, why not? saul wakes to find his sister lost." how far unconsciously, saul could not guess, but shimei, in that last home thrust of his, either by pure fortuity, or else with malice the most exquisitely wise, had hit the quivering quick of saul's sore pride. saul winced visibly, and shimei, satisfied, left him alone the prey of his own thoughts. saul's thoughts were visions rather; first, he saw his sister as in that farewell with her bowed beautiful beneath a brother's scorn, like a meek flower broken with tempest; then, stephen he saw, his face with god in him afire, before the council; next, that face toward heaven upturned, he, far within the veil agaze, beholding there the glory of god; once more, the martyr lifting holy hands on high, with his last breath praying for those that slew him, praying also then for saul! rachel the while--she rather felt than seen- with tears that did not gather, but that made her deep eyes deeper than the soundless sea, looking at him. swift then the vision changed, and he saw stephen in the temple court turn suddenly round on saul his blinding face to threaten him with promise that, one day, he, saul himself, should grovel in the dust before the feet of jesus crucified! those visions were as when the lightning-flash, by night, fast following lightning-flash, reveals, one instant and no more, the world, but prints its image on the eye intensely bright. the final vision wrought a fierce revolt in saul from that relenting which, before, the earlier visions almost made him feel. as with a mortal gripe, his vise-like will clutched at his heart and held it fast and hard. scorning to be diverted from his path because, forsooth, the meddling shimei pointed it out to him offensively, saul moved at once to go to bethany. seven servitors he chose, strong men whom use had, hand and heart, seasoned to such employ- with these a guide--and started on his way. again the moon shone, as the yesternight, and flooded heaven and earth with glory mild. but her mild glory now was a rebuke to human passion, not a balm to pain. with swords and staves armed, as that night came they who looked for jesus in gethsemane- the needless lamps and torches in their hands with flare and smoke affronting the moonlight- they marched, those seven, following the guide with saul. at first these chattered lightly as they walked, but soon the stern, stark, wordless mood of saul, and his grim purpose in his pace expressed, urgent and swift, taxing their utmost strength to follow and not fall behind, quite quelled the social spirit in all, and on all went in sullen silence like their chief. like him, insensibly each moment more and more, while thought and feeling they shut strictly up within them from all vent in speech, they these changed to brute instinct of vindictiveness; insensibly, like him, with every step of vehement ongoing, vehement propulsion gathered they in mind and will to reach and grapple with their task. so on and up with speed they pressed toward bethany. at bethany, meanwhile, the flock in fold abode the coming of those prowler wolves- unweeting, in sad sense of safety lulled. the sisters, with the brother lazarus, had to ruth's house at eve repaired; they there with rachel sat together, in the court under the open sky, and spake with ruth, or spake for ruth to hear, comforting her. "'i am the resurrection and the life'"- thus martha--"how the very words to me were spirit of life, were resurrection power, so spoken, from such lips, at such a time, when lazarus lay sleeping in that swoon which we call death! i did not need to wait until my brother should indeed again arise, obedient, at his word, to feel the utterer of that saying was the christ." "but when he wept, when jesus with us wept," said mary, "i felt solace in his tears such that almost i would have always grieved, to be always so comforted." a pause, then eyes on lazarus turned, and he: "from where i was--but where i was, although i seem well to remember, yet could not i tell in any words, or show by any signs, however i might try--i heard his voice say, 'lazarus, come forth.' those round me heard, i thought they heard, with me, that potent voice, and they were not surprised, as was not i, seeming to know it and to understand. that voice goes everywhere and is obeyed, to all the perfect law of liberty, and i obeyed as naturally as i breathe; and i am here, in witness of his power, whose power is universal through all worlds." "his power is great," said ruth, "and wide his sway, yet seems his grace the sovereign of his power." "yea," rachel said, "for doth not power in him bend to the yoke and service of his grace?" "we easily err," said lazarus, "seeking here to comprehend the incomprehensible. all difference is in us, for all in him one and the same is; power is grace and grace is power, in him, nay, power and grace is he. and he is ours and we are his, and one are we with him and in him one likewise each with the other, all." "how blest!" they said, "and the whole family in heaven and earth are one, and stephen is with us or we with him, and heaven is here or here is heaven!" a little while in silence and deep muse, and, by the holy spirit, fellowship with the almighty father and his son. then, "lo, let us join hands," they said, "and sing that psalm which breathes of unity like this." with braided tones, in unison they sang: 'behold, how good it is for brethren here, 'how pleasant, thus in unity to dwell 'together! it is like that costly chrism 'upon the head which overflowing ran 'down aaron's beard and down his garment's folds, 'abundant as the dew of hermon drops, 'distilled, upon the heights of sion where 'jehovah fixed the blessing, life, even life 'forevermore.' "a sweet strain and a rich," said lazarus; "david touched it to his harp, taught by the holy spirit. nevertheless, something it lacks to fill the measure up to that deep sense of oneness which we feel in jesus, since he came, since jesus came and spake, then went, but came again, in us forever to abide. cannot we sing some words of his, as tunable, more deep? such words he spake in a celestial rhythm that night before he sought gethsemane. they sat as in the holy of holies with him, and john leaned on his bosom where he sat. i have heard john rehearse the heavenly words until at length i too have them by heart." then lazarus gave them sentences, which all chanted in simple measure low and sweet: 'let not your heart be troubled, ye believe 'in god, also in me believe. within 'my father's house there many mansions are. 'i should have told you, had it not been so, 'because i go to fit a place for you. 'and if i go and fit for you a place, 'i shall return and take you to myself, 'that where i am there ye may also be.' was it a premonition, or did grief surge up through peace and joy to claim its own? said lazarus: "yet he told us, 'in the world ye will have tribulation, though in me ye shall have peace.' with tribulation, peace!" his closing words they took from lazarus' lips, "with tribulation, peace!" and of them made a musical refrain half sad, half glad, or wholly glad in sadness, which they sang. when ever were there cadences more sweet, more sweet or more pathetic? thrice sang they those words together; but, at the fourth time, just in that breath between the rise and fall, before from 'tribulation' they touched 'peace'- a shock as of a mace struck on the door, which yielded, and abrupt there strode in--saul! saul was alone; his men he left without. the band had first the sisters' dwelling sought, to find the inmates gone--fled, as saul guessed. without delay, they came to ruth's abode, fiercer from disappointment saul. but though ruthless he came, he now, arrested there, ruthful a moment stood at gaze. he saw four women and one man in simple sort sitting together in communion still. they did not look like culprits, nay, a light purer than purest moonlight seemed to shine from out their faces underneath the moon. it was a feast of comfort that they kept, those four, with ruth the widowed--this saul saw, and his heart thawed to pity and sheer shame. he would have turned and left them, but--his men without! the chief priests and the sanhedrim! and shimei! and saul, with all saul owed to saul's fair fame, his conscience, and his god! this all was in an instant, while he yet only the group and not the persons saw who made the group, and so before he knew his sister in her sombre different garb disguised and in the half light of the moon. as rachel now he fully recognized, dismay almost unmanned him once again. then anger to dismay succeeding made his brother's heart in him against her burn the hotter that it was a brother's heart. speechless he hung, because he could not speak for anger; but when she, adventuring, drew near him and said, "brother, i pray thee let me speak with thee apart a moment," then the vials of his speech he broke on her: "'brother'! thou shalt not 'brother' me. thou hast no brother more, no sister i. once, yea- but that is long ago, and she is dead, my sister, and in _her_ name will i hear no woman speak henceforth. thou hast missed thy mark in that appeal. better hadst thou bode dumb. go, woman! thither! sit thee with thine own!" saul, with his finger pointing to her seat, just left, in added scorn, spurned her from him. then lazarus spoke: "with me do what thou wilt; but these are women, let me stand for them." "stand for thyself," said saul, "and answer me. thou art called lazarus, i trow?" "thou hast said," lazarus replied. "well, friend, with thee," said saul, "i have to speak. disciple art thou, then, of jesus nazarene, late crucified?" "of jesus," full confessing, lazarus said, "of jesus, whom, not knowing what they did, men crucified, but whom god glorified, raising him from the dead and seating him at the right hand of glory in the heavens- of him i am disciple. bless his name!" "thou art young to utter blasphemy," said saul; "sure unadvisedly thou hast spoken this. unsay it instantly, and swear it false, or, by the warrant of the sanhedrim, thou goest with me to prison, perhaps to death, the way of stephen and all heretics!" "thou speakest idly," lazarus said to saul; "prison and death no terrors have for me. the lord i serve is lord of life and death." "yea, i have heard," said saul to lazarus, "thou boastest to have been from death itself called back to life by whom thou namest christ. let him, once more, call thee from out the tomb to which i shall consign thee--if he can. saul then perhaps will his disciple be! poor fool, fanatic, what shall i call thee? persist not in this folly. be a jew, a jew indeed, nor fling thy life away. anathema be jesus!' say but that, thou, lazarus, and all the rest, with thee, and i go hence taking the sword away, the sword of just authority, undrawn, asleep within its scabbard, ye all safe, all jews indeed, and i given back again a sister, rachel mine, won from the dead! 'anathema be jesus!' say those words." saul ceased, awaiting what those five would do. they did not look at one another; all, as with one will to all--their eyes upraised, and their hands clasped in ecstasy of awe- together "alleluia jesus!" said. on saul a power like lightning fallen from heaven fell, at that adoration from their lips. a moment he stood stupefied, and then, with a great wrench of scornful will, he freed himself and summoned his retainers in. these entered rudely, but abashed they hung, and wondering saw their master half abashed, before that little company clothed on with virtue like a dreadful panoply. half with the air of one subdued, or one feeling he acts by sufferance not by power, saul bids bind all--save rachel--and forthwith lead them to prison. "also me, bind me," so rachel to the men said eagerly, and offered her fair wrists. they looked at saul, but saul vouchsafed to them nor word nor sign. still, 'no,' they gathered from that cold aspect in him which seemed to say, 'that which i bid, do, further, naught.' rachel to saul himself beseechingly then turned and said: "o saul, full well i know thou doest this, constrained by conscience. then by conscience be constrained to let thy men bind also me, who am as guilty as these are and with them should share one lot." "i did not come here to be taught my duty," saul said, "least of all by thee. and least of all from thee will i abide to be adjured as by my conscience. once i had a sister, she was conscience to me, but, as i told thee, that was long ago, and she is dead, my sister!" sadness mixed, unmeant, resisted, irresistible, with saul's enforced hardheartedness, which broke his tone to pathos, and, despite himself with those last words he burst in tears. he shook in shudders of strong agony, while all wondered, but rachel did not wonder, she knew far too well her brother, far too well knew their joint past, the two pasts they had had together, long and happy one, and one so brief, so bitter,--and she pitied saul. she pitied him, but strongly did not weep- though afterward, alone, remembering, she wept as if her eyes were fountains of tears- with him now rachel would not weep, for she knew far too well her brother, that he scorned himself for weeping those hot tears, and would be vexed to see tears wept in sympathy as if with will he let his mood relent. so rachel held her pity hard shut up within her heart, which ached the more denied its wished-for vent in tears, and saul soon curbed his passion and in other passion veiled. "haste, there!" he said, sharp turning on his men, "the night flies, while ye loiter." now the men already had bound lazarus. he, ere yet the shameful needless bonds upon the wrists of those four gentle women were made fast, said: "saul, what evil have these women done that they deserve roughness like this? i go willingly with thee, albeit innocent, for i a man am and can well endure bonds, stripes, dungeon, or death, having such hope within me as makes all afflictions light, whatever they may be, compared with that eternal weight of glory nigh at hand. like hope have also these, and they will bear, doubtless, supported, whatsoever ill unmerited thou choosest to inflict. but wilt thou choose to inflict indignity and pain on such as these?" "i do not choose," said saul; "i without choosing do, not what i would, but what i must. i too wear chains, am bond of conscience, heavier chains wear i than these light manacles that bind the hands but leave the heart free and one's will one's own. chained am i and driven. conscience drives me on, both will and heart in me under the lash cower, and i here as but a galley-slave do what my conscience bids, joyless, and fierce from lack of joy, more miserable far, binding, than ye are bound, with your fool's joy of windy hope! for me, i only know that, in whatever way, this thing accursed, this craze to think _that_ man the christ, must be curbed, checked, stopped, crushed, brought to an utter end, forever. all the future of our race hangs on it. woman, tempted, fell, she first, in eden, whence is all our woe, and now women it seems are the peculiar prey of this new trick of devilish subtlety; and, as of old, woman deceived becomes deceiver, and through her the mischief spreads ungovernably. so women, too--the cause in part of the disease--must in part pay the price of cure. for remedy this is, not punishment. ye for the general health suffer--for your own health not less, if ye yield wisely, and not foolishly resist. yield wisely now, and let me hence depart cheered to have healed a little here the hurt with which the daughter of god's people bleeds!" how little prospered this his new appeal, saul learned, when ruth, as not having heard even, said: "at least let me, if i indeed must leave my children double orphans so, let me now go and see them in their helpless sleep, and take a farewell of them with my eyes. but who will care for them when i am gone? i cannot, will not, go away from them. nay, ye may bind me, ye may slay me, drag me hence may ye, alive or dead, but make me go with my own feet away from them, my children, in their innocent infancy, and leave them to pine motherless, forlorn, and perish in their innocent infancy- that is beyond your strength--i will not go- a mother may defy the sanhedrim!" ruth spoke dry-eyed, with holy mother's wrath, sublime in her indignant eloquence. saul, not unmoved, although inexorable, said: "woman, as thy wish is, thou shalt go freely to see thy children. may the sight dispose thee to a better mind! come back ready to say, 'for their sake, i renounce my folly, i will be true jewish mother to them, so let me stay,'--and thou shalt stay. ruth going, rachel thought, 'shall i too go with her, that i may help her bear to part from her dear babes?' quickly resolved behind to tarry, she, ruth gone, went up to saul, and said: "i pray thee, saul, let rachel go instead of ruth to prison. let ruth bide to nurse her children. i will take her place gladly in her captivity, and be a surety for her. young and strong am i, and i will be a firm good surety, saul, not fleeing and not complaining, always there,- and if, hereafter ever, it should seem needful to have ruth come herself to prison, why, she will still be here, under thy hand, as now, so then, to be hence thither led. be kind, and have me bound straightway, before ruth comes again, that she be left no choice but to let rachel have her wilful way, perceiving that i have my bonds on me to go to prison with her, if not without, while much i wish to go without her--wish, and, by thy kind permission, have the power. dost thou not think, saul"--wherewith rachel smiled on saul a starlight smile, which made him feel how high she was above him in her sphere unconsciously--"dost thou not think that i will make as good a prisoner as ruth?" had she not smiled that smile, saul might have thought, 'infatuated child!' and thought aloud. but that bright smile of almost humor sad showed him how sanely her true self she was, and he was baffled, sudden-smitten dumb. he could not answer her; much less could he bid bind those slender wrists with manacles and send his sister to imprisonment! so there saul stood before her, marble-mute. not long--for ruth soon now came back, more calm, she having prayed beside her sleeping babes, and trusted them again to the most high as father, and from the most high received grace to bear graciously her testimony, even by imprisonment, and children reft, for stephen's lord and hers. the others marked ruth's placid changed demeanor, and gave thanks silent to god who thus their prayer had heard. "i go," she said to saul, "for jesus' sake wherever thou mayst lead. my babes i trust, as stephen trusted them before he suffered, unto the father of the fatherless. lo, i am ready--bind me--for his sake!" never so ruefully had those hard men bound any hands for prison as they bound hers; and scarcely saul found steady voice to say: "thy children shall be cared for tenderly, till thou return to them in sounder mind; the fathers of our tribes will see to this." then rachel said, and saying it wept at last: "they would not bind me, ruth, to take thy place, though i entreated them while thou wert gone. i shall be left, unworthy to be left, if ye, beloved, are worthy to be taken! but, ruth, if thou wilt let me, i shall stay and myself be a mother to thy babes, nurturing them most lovingly, alike for thine, their father's, and their own sweet sakes. and i will daily bring thee word of them, treasuring for thee each little syllable they lisp from day to day of loving speech concerning father or mother gone away. they shall not lack whatever i can give of mother's tendance, so as yet to feel that i am not their mother, only one less wise, less good, less loving, and less fair than she, who for their mother's sake loves them! all this, i trust, will not last very long, this motherlessness for them, this childlessness for thee--thou wilt come back--but, o ruth, pray"- thus rachel softly for ruth sole to hear- "for surely now thou understandest well, too well! what then i meant when once i told thee, 'i too am widow as thou art, yet not as thou, since me stroke heavier has bereaved!'- o ruth, pray thou and never cease to pray for saul, my brother!" so they went away, and, lodged in prison, those four captives sang, a silent melody making in their hearts, "with tribulation, peace!" until they slept. but rachel having followed at remove behind them, saw where they were put in hold, then, hedged about meanwhile with purity, with convoy doubtless too of angels hedged, gladly on such an errand earthward come, invisible bright legion hovering round!- safely returned to sleep in stephen's house. there she abode, and thence, an angel she! went daily to and fro between ruth's house and ruth in prison, bearing messages, refections often bearing, food or drink, her own housewifely skill and instinct nice, with other comforts portable, sometimes, pillow or cushion, rug or robe or shawl, such as might serve to cheer the homesick heart in any there imprisoned, with sweet sense at least of loving thought from one for those in bonds, as herself with them bound; the while that for the orphaned children she made home. nor ever failed to rachel full supply of all whatever need there was to her. month after month, her cruse was brim with oil, with meal her measure, large replenishment. god put it in the heart of saul to send, diverted like an irrigating rill full all its season from the affluent nile, a secret stream of various providence for rachel and for rachel's fosterlings fed from the fountain of his patrimony. book xi. saul and hirani. saul, ill-content with his own prosperity in persecution, retires gloomily, late at night, to his desolated home. he vainly tries to sleep, and, rising very early, goes to consult gamaliel. returning, he encounters shimei, who, with gibes, instigates a further act of persecution on saul's part, cunningly contriving it to make refusal impossible. saul attempting the arrest proposed by shimei meets with opposition, which the latter has secretly inspired. the persecutor in consequence narrowly escapes violent death, being rescued at the critical moment by shimei; who himself, with a band of servitors, makes the arrest unsuccessfully attempted by saul alone. the man arrested confesses jesus before the sanhedrim, constant against every inducement to deny his lord. he is scourged, at the instance of shimei, and finally, at the instance of mattathias, stoned; saul in both cases giving his vote against the man. saul and hirani. with large prosperity and little joy, thus the first stage of that 'straight path' foreseen by him to rachel, 'traced in blood and tears,' saul had accomplished, and the night was late; he parted from his men and was alone. alone and moody, by the westering moon, his face downcast turned absently toward what late was his home, home longer not to him, with footstep slow suspended by sad thought- which had no goal, but ever round and round on one fixed centre hopelessly revolved- saul paced the still streets of jerusalem, like a soul seeking rest and finding none. before the door at length he finds himself of his own house forsaken yesterday. for an uncertain absence, but for long as he supposed, saul thence that morn had fled in haste and bitterness. he could not bear to think of meeting rachel day by day, and that great gulf impassable between her and himself yawning! he hands imbrued perhaps in blood of those she counted dear but he most hateful counted bringing home, her innocent white hands to touch, and feel the difference! therefore he fled because 'rachel,' thought he, 'must bide, and bide we twain cannot.' but now rachel was gone, and saul, alone and lonely, sojourner might be where brother and sister late had shared a home. he enters noiselessly, and unperceived steals to his chamber; there upon his couch to restless thought, he, not to rest, lies down. restless and fruitless, save that, morning yet pearl-white, untinted with that ruddy flush of color in the east before the sun, saul rose, and, after joyless orisons, went to gamaliel's house, sure him to find already on his roof to greet the dawn. "in anguish sore and sore perplexity of spirit, master," saul said, "lo, i come to thee, not knowing whither else to go, for solace, and the solving of my doubt." "welcome thou comest ever, even or morn," gamaliel said; "but what disquiets thee? when in the council last i heard thee speak, thou wert all firmness, as one wholly clear in purpose, and thou hadst that glad aspect, though serious, which befits the mind resolved. whence, saul, the change in thee?" "thou knowest," said saul "how prospered my attempt, ventured upon without thy counsel, in that issue joined with stephen." "yea, my son," gamaliel said; "but i, meantime, after my counsel given dissuading thee, had learned myself to feel how failed the hand of brute authority against this strange faith of the nazarene. thine undertaking i less disapproved after our hearing of the galilæans. something perceived in them, or through them felt, disturbed me with a strange solicitude, which the ill fortune of thine own assay did not relieve. but thou, thou still wert clear, wert thou not, saul? thine action did not halt; promptly in stephen's stoning thou took'st part." "i acted promptly, that i might be clear in thought," said saul; "this, rather than because i was so clear. my halting urged me on. yet now, o master mine, i might perhaps be clear, but that my coadjutorship offends me so, torments me with such doubt. in the right way how can i be, and be in the same way with shimei? my soul sickens at him, at all his words and ways sickens, and still he dogs me every step, clings to me like my shadow, whispers me over my shoulder, pointing me out my way, until i hardly can do that which else freely i should, because he bids me do it!" "yea, saul, my son, trust thou thine instinct there," gravely gamaliel said, with slow reserve that warned how more than he would say was meant; "our brother shimei is a dark man, whose public zeal is edged with private spite; him well, son saul, it thee behooves beware. since when thou scornedst him in those high words before the council, shimei hates thee, saul, and hate like his is sleepless till revenge. ill for a cause that must be served by him! but some are tools, and others ministers, of god, who works his holy will with all!" unwarned by warning, but in conscience pricked, and following his own tyrannous thought, saul spoke: "those infamous false witnesses of his- say, master, did i on my conscience take the guilt of their suborning, when consent i gave to stephen's death thereby procured? my conscience like a scorpion stings me on, but whether a good conscience before god it be, or rather a conscience violated, which i must quiet by not heeding it, and by confusing it with din of deeds forever doing--this i cannot well resolve me, and--but, nay, for that were false, i do not wish thou shouldst resolve me it. forgive me, and farewell! but pray for saul!" therewith, and pausing not, like one distraught, or one goaded, and wildly seeking fast enough before the goad to fly, which flies only the faster, following, for his speed, and pricks the harder--so saul broke away and left gamaliel on his roof alone astonished. swiftly now, yet with a haste as of one wishing to leave far behind some spot abhorred, much more than as of one eager a goal before him to attain, say rather as of one insanely fierce somewhither, anywhither, from himself pursuing hard himself, to fly, saul flew back toward his dwelling. at the door arrived, he well-nigh stumbled--for his hasting feet against some shapeless heap struck that alive seemed, for it moved, and from the threshold, where he in a kind of ambush crouching lay, slowly into the semblance of a man, under saul's eyes down bent, upgrew--shimei! 'sin coucheth at the door!' thought saul; he thought half of himself, as half of shimei, for, 'if thou doest not well, thou saul!' thought he, then, "reptile! how beneath my heel should i his serpent head have bruised!" hissed hotly out between his set teeth, and perused the man. half under breath this, then to him aloud: "what art thou? imp of hell spawned hither new up from the pit? avaunt! i loathe thee hence!" "nay, brother saul," grinned shimei, therefore pleased thus spurned to be, because the spurning was with anguish of disgust to him who spurned, malevolently yet storing reserve of hatred and revenge therefor, to be afterward feasted when the time should come, "nay, brother saul, you look with eyesight dazed from undersleeping, and from rash surprise at this encounter. i am shimei, your special coadjutor tried and true. i am a little early, i confess- or late, which shall i call it? early and late- like moral good and evil, saul--ofttimes change places with your point of view--become the one the other, as you look at them. "you see i hardly slept myself this night, thinking of you, and pleasuring my mind with fancies of the odd coincidences that might be happening you at bethany. i got prompt information how it all fell out, and hastened hither to advise with you. upon your sleep, already much cut short, i would not thoughtlessly break in, and so i dropped me at your threshold here, to wait a proper hour for seeing you, and yet not let you pass out hence unseen. i must have fallen asleep, and, brother saul be sure i was no less surprised than you, when you just now came on me unaware. ha! ha! how naturally you mistook your friend for something not so pleasant from the pit vomited suddenly up under your feet! another might have taken it amiss to be so little courteously greeted, but i--why, give and take, say i, in joke, you have bravely evened up the score between us!" "i do not bandy jokes with such as you, suborner of false witnesses!" gnashed saul. saul's look, his tone, had withered any man save shimei, who grew blithe in sultry heats of human scorn as in his element. so shimei flourished lustier hearing saul despise him with the question further asked: "what is there common between you and me?" "oh! ah!" sneered shimei; "i had thought you dazed in eyesight only, but distempered mind you show now, taking this high strain with me. 'what common 'twixt us?' yea, yea, very good! 'suborner of false witnesses'--hence base, shimei, but very, very virtuous, saul, who, with much flourish of disdain, his hands, his lily hands, washes, for all to see, quite white and fair of all complicity with 'lies,' 'devilish lies,' 'lies damnable,' you know, and so forth, and in due course then, his moral indignation unabated, takes profit of said lies to make away with stephen, through more weighty argument in stones found than conveniently to hand came when he crossed words with that heretic!" the mordant sneer corrosive of such speech ate through the thin mail of saul's scornful pride, and bit him in his wincing sense of truth. against these thrusts in no wise could he fence, having the foothold lost whereon he stood firm in the conscience of integrity. unbidden would those words of stephen, "pricks to kick against!" returning come to him in memory, while ever, with each return, fiercer waxed saul's resistance, fiercer wound infixing in his secret-suffering mind- as should the bullock battle with the goads behind him, shrinking flesh on sharpened steel. so now his wild heart saul pressed sternly up against the cruel points of shimei's jeer, and suffered them in silence. shimei felt his own triumph, and at feline ease leisurely played with his proud captive. "saul," he added, "you and i are men too wise to waste strength here in mutual blame. forgive me that i was so far led on to speak as if retorting word for word unkind. i should have made allowance for your state, devoid of that just self-complacency so needful to a happy health of mind. now you and i at bottom are such twins, we ought to understand each other well; it is a shame that this has not been so. here we are one in aim, and unity in aim--what deeper unity than that joins ever man and man? let us strike hands together, since our hearts beat unison." not less revolted at these words was saul, more, rather, that he knew how insincere they were, how hollow, as how void of truth, spoken in pure malicious irony. the sense of difference his from shimei, browbeaten in him, badgered, stunned, ashamed, could not rejoice in thought, in speech far less, against that flourished claim of unity. he stood silent, ignobly helpless, while maliciously his pastime further took with him his captor, who then, sated, said: "well, saul, i shall excuse it to a mind in you disordered through late loss of sleep, that you do not invite me in to sit a little at my ease while i disclose the thought i had in coming to you now. nay, nay"--for saul, broken in self-command false shame to feel, and false self-blame, as found defaulting dues of hospitality, instinctive moved toward making shimei guest- "permit me to decline the courtesy. you are tired, you are very tired, and you should rest. once within, seated, i might stay too long, bound by the charms of your society. "i pray you be not overmuch disturbed, but really you should know it, saul, the chance you fell in with this night at bethany- i mean your meeting of your sister there confessed a bold disciple of the way- is likely to engender consequence. it was a noble chance, saul, from the lord, pushed to your hand--would you had used it nobly! alas, at the extreme pinch, your virtue failed! i can excuse it, while regretting it, i myself, saul. not every one, i fear, is naturally so lenient as i am. my sympathy is facile, but the most will say, 'why did not saul send _her_ to prison?' now what you need is, to forestall such talk by giving people something else to say. fill their mouth full with daily fresh report of other, and still other, great exploits achieved by you in the same line, and then they either will forget that one lapse yours, or cease, from the perversion of a sister, connived at or colluded with by you, to accuse a taint and pravity of blood inclining you yourself to heresy. "i give myself no end of trouble for you, and i have made discovery of the man you must not fail to move for as next prize. he is a notable fellow, full of quip, quaint turn of phrase, and ready repartee, each trick of tongue to catch the common ear, and mischievous accordingly; for he boasts everywhere how, having been born blind and grown to forty years of age in blindness, he one day met jesus of nazareth, when that deceiver spat upon the ground and mixed an unguent of the clay, therewith smearing his sightless balls, and bidding him go wash them in the pool of siloam; he went and washed, and came a seeing man. "such is his story, and so plausibly he tells it that a wide belief he wins. 'hirani' is the name by which he goes; name self-assumed since his pretended cure, a kind of label that he boldly thrusts in people's faces to placard his lie. 'he made me see'--he, to wit, jesus, mind- as were no other 'he' in all the world! well, this hirani to be weaver feigns, mere cover to that other trade he drives- a famous flourishing one with him, they say- proselyte-making for the nazarene. clap him in prison, saul, let him repeat his marvel to the unbelieving walls. at present, many of the way are fled hither and thither through the countryside, but this man tarries to rehearse his tale. so there your plan is, ready-wrought for you; now, saul, go sleep upon it, and farewell." man through malicious mind more miserable, more miserable man from every cause of inward sorrow save malicious mind, never were met and parted than when there shimei found saul and left him thus that morn. once more saul visited his couch in vain; sleep could he not, could not but round and round tread the treadmill of painful barren thought, on this fixed only, with resentful will, _not_ to do that which shimei pressed him to. so, having eaten, without appetite, he flung forth in the street dispirited- aimless, nor on the way through hope to aim, hopeless, nor on the way through aim to hope- irresolute, deject, energiless, therefore the destined prey of whatso snare should sudden first waylay his nerveless foot- forth in the street flung, at his door to meet an ambushed messenger of shimei's, who from his master gave him written word: "the sanhedrim to sit this afternoon in council on the case you will present. all feel the utmost flattering confidence that saul will promptly bring his prisoner in. the bearer of this can guide you to your man." 'himself false witness now become, the wretch!' thought saul. 'this buyer of false witnesses has falsely told my brethren that i put myself in pledge to do a special task, his bidding, and has got the council called in expectation on their part from me that i will bring them in this man to judge- death doubtless meant, instead of prison, for _him_! the wretch, the perjured wretch, and damnable! yet for me what escape? alternative none offers. yea, denounce might i the man even to his teeth before them all a liar- but to what profit? he could truly say i listened, not demurring, when he broached this his new plan, as i had done before concerning the arrests at bethany by him projected, meekly made by me! i should seem caviller, than he more false, and trifler with the ancient majesty prescriptive of the sanhedrim.' saul writhed with all the frail remainder of his force, writhed--and submitted. with the guide he went, and the man found whom he, under duress resented, sought. the invisible chains which then that captive captor wore, far worse galled him than those whereof he plained at bethany. master more cruel yet the devil can be than vehement conscience blinded by self-will. pride driving makes an intimate misery, but a more intimate misery pride driven! at his loom seated--there his handicraft, late learned by him after sight given him late, busily plying--saul's intended prey, with his hands weaving, as the shuttle flew, a fabric of coarse cloth, wove with his tongue, that subtler shuttle in the loom of thought, discourse simple yet sage, for those to hear, a goodly audience, who had gathered round him in his place of labor out-of-doors under an awning stretched that fenced the sun- drawn thither by the fame of what he told, a strange experience never man's before. "thou art disciple of the nazarene?" abruptly so, intruding, saul inquired. the accent of authority that spoke in him, the masterful demeanor his, all felt, and of the listeners some, afraid, withdrew in silence; but the sifted more who stayed clouded their aspect, and, with grim mutter in undertone exchanged between them, each with other, asked or answered who this was that rudely thus and threateningly broke in upon them. saul! the sanhedrim! were dreaded names, but red runs jewish blood, and hot, and quick, and those affronted men scarce waited for their neighbor seen thus scorned to answer yea to his stern challenger, ere they together moved in mass about saul unattended, naked of all arms save his authority, and, hustling him, seemed on the verge of using violent hands to thrust him forth--nay, to saul's ears there came that pregnant word, ready on jewish tongues, yet readier hardly than to jewish hands the deed, word full of instant menace, "stones!" saul knew his danger and his helplessness; but, far from terror, though not void of fear, blanching not blenching, he a tonic breath drew, in an air that to another man had softened all his fibre or dissolved. vanished that mood of feebleness he brought, and in its place a resolute, alert, defiant sense of self-sufficing strength supported him, nay, buoyed him almost gay, as thus, with bitter words, he taunted them: "yea, now ye show what lessons ye have learned of unresisting meekness at the feet of this your teacher--_then_ not to resist when ye are certain to be overpowered! but twenty of you to one man are brave! nay, but one man may twenty of you scorn. back, there! stand back! this man my prisoner is. i, saul, commissioned by the sanhedrim, summon and seize him to appear this day before their just tribunal to be judged as self-confessed disciple of the way. follow me thou! make way before me there!" the peremptory tone, the audacity, the prompt aggressive movement, with the proud, high, lordly speech disdainful, the assured serene assumption of authority enforced by personal will as strong as power- these for a moment's space surrounded saul with that inviolable immunity, the nameless spell which perfect courage casts; nay, so far gave him full ascendant there that he quite to his man his way had made and on a shoulder laid the arresting hand. but stay! not quelled, suspended only, seems the indignant angry humor of the crowd. scarce has saul uttered his last scornful words and turned to front the men about him massed- not doubting but, with only the drawn sword of his fixed forward countenance, he shall this side and that before him cleave a way wide from amid them forth to pass--upon such hinging-point scarce poises saul, when they, with many-handed violence, seize him and, irresistibly uplifting, bear helpless, headforemost, ignominiously, whither they will. in vain hirani cries, by turns rebuking and beseeching them; in vain he follows, warning them beware to involve themselves in risk fruitless for him; in vain implores them even for jesus' sake, whose name will be dishonored by their deed; presents himself in vain a prisoner willing to go with saul unmanacled; in vain avouches he, in any case, shall yield his person to the sanhedrim, doubtless to suffer but the heavier doom for what is doing, unless they refrain. hirani had adjured them by the name of jesus, but those heady men, that name, that mastership, owned not, jews only still, still in the changed new spirit all unschooled. so by their own mad motion ever mad growing, they hurtle saul along the way- he the while musing, with mind strangely clear, how like to stephen's lot his own is now!- till chance unlooked-for their wild turbulence stays. all had been teemed from shimei's fruitful brain. first, he had mixed the listening crowd around the weaver at that moment with base men, his creatures, who, for hirelings' pay, should stir their neighbors up to wreak indignity upon saul's person, wounding to his pride, and in the public view disparaging. then, at the point of need, to succor saul, bringing his haughty colleague under debt to himself, shimei, for his very life- this was that crafty plotter's next concern. a band accordingly of men-at-arms, sworn in the service of the sanhedrim, he had made ready; and these now appeared confronting that tumultuary crowd. saul rescued--not without some disarray and soil of rent apparel, hair and beard dishevelled, and disfigured countenance, his person thus disparaged to the eye, hirani, as ringleader of the rout, chained and brought forward, while go free, but blamed for being misled, the others--shimei then to view emerges. he addresses saul: "well met! that fellow, with his crew of like, treated you badly, saul. you might have prayed to be delivered into stephen's hands from tender mercies such as theirs! i trust you have not suffered worse than what i see, some slight derangement of apparel shown, your hair and beard less sleek than might beseem, with here and there a scratch scored on your face- nothing more serious, let me trust? our men were at the nick of time in coming up. it was not pure coincidence. you see, both knowing your mettle and the vicious ways these sanctimonious ruffians have at times, i had misgivings that you might be rash, and suffer disadvantage at their hands. so, as in like case you would do by me, i, with these faithful servitors of ours, run to your rescue here, and not too soon! a little later would have been too late. you were well started down the steep incline, which, very happily, as i learn, you styled 'the way of stephen and all heretics.' droll, very, with of course its serious side, queer irony, you know, of will divine, supposing they had really stoned you, saul! well, well, it turns out better than your fears. you will not, true, and i lament it, make quite a triumphal entry with your man before the sanhedrim, leading him in, with air of captain fresh from glorious war, who brings proud trophy of his single spear redoubtable; but the main point is ours, the man we want is safe in custody." thus shimei with his devilish sneering glee nettled the heart of saul and cheered his own. before the council shimei stood forth, instead of saul, to accuse the prisoner. with plausible glib mendacity, he said: "not only is this fellow heretic after the manner of those galilæans, but myself saw with mine own eyes just now how he the idlers in the street stirred up to most unseemly act of violence against our brother saul, worthy of death, as being aimed at death, unless that i had ready been at hand with force enough to rescue one of our own number thus to the most imminent brink of stoning brought. saul, if he would, might show himself to you in lively witness of the things i say." hereon to saul he signed with hand and eye; but saul arose and calmly, with disdain, thus spoke: "the man here present prisoner is, out of his own mouth, disciple proved of jesus nazarene. as such i sought to bring him hither before you to be judged. this my attempt, most unexpectedly, a crowd of idlers round about him drawn vacantly listening to discourse from him, resented; they, resisting, thrust me back- i had ventured single-handed and alone- and, borne to madness, might perhaps have wrought some harm to me--i know not; but one thing i know, and that i freely testify, this man, our prisoner, did nought of all, contrariwise, with all his eloquence endeavored to dissuade those violent, constantly saying and averring he, in any case, should, of his own free will, give himself up to you--thereby to clear the name he sought to honor of reproach for wild deeds done as in defence of him." a moment, having heard saul testify, the sanhedrim sat silent in fixed thought. then shimei, ever easily equal found to his occasion, when need seemed to him of whatsoever fraud in word or act, said that of course from brother saul was heard never aught other than he deemed was true; but the fact was, as would by witnesses be amply proved, that all this culprit's show of zeal to stay those rioters back was show merely, dust in the eyes of saul to cast, or rather sport to make of him, the prey secure supposed of his, the prisoner's, malicious machination through the hands of his confederates, or tools, who knew better their master's purposes, his real purposes, than his feigned dissuasive words to heed, and let his victim go. saul's state was at the moment such, so ill at ease his mind--why, even his body in that vile duress was hardly to be called his own- saul--and without offence would shimei say it- might be regarded as not competent on this particular point to testify. at all events, here were good witnesses who, from a safer, steadier point of view than saul's, and longer occupied, could tell both what the prisoner's wont had been to teach, and what he instigated in this case. with such preamble to prepare their minds, minds used to guess the drift of shimei's wish, this arch-artificer of fraud produced as witnesses the men whom he had late mixed with hirani's audience to foment that lawlessness. such serviceable tongues failed not to swear, in all, as shimei wished. saul, in his secret mind with anguish torn, gazed at the man forsworn against, maligned, and almost envied him. a look of peace was on him like a light of fixéd stars, so constant, and so inaccessible of change through jar, through stain, so clear, so fair! he listened to the voices round him loud, as if some softer voice from farther sent made ever an inner music to his mind charming him with a melody unheard. he saw the things, the faces, and the forms, about him nigh, as if he looked beyond or through them, and beheld far, far away or whom or what to others was unseen. so when the high-priest, from his middle seat among the councillors, accosted him, asking, "to all these things what sayest thou?" the prisoner, like one absent-minded brought to sudden sense of present things, replied: "i hardly understand what 'these things' are, for otherwhither i was drawn in thought. but if it be inquired concerning him whom lately they not knowing crucified, why, this i answer for my testimony: 'let there be light,' said god, and light there was. almost thus did that man of nazareth, creative, speak for me, and changed my world of native darkness to this cheerful scene above, beneath, about me, sudden spread, and sun and moon and stars for me ordained. i praise him as the lord of life and light, and giver of light and life to dead and blind. all glory to his ever-blesséd name!" the simple ecstasy from which he spoke, illuminated, and the holy power of truth, in witness such, meekly so borne, wrought even upon the jealous sanhedrim an influence which they could not resist, and a pang shot to the inmost heart of saul. a faltering of compunction close on shame made the high-priest half-tenderly, with tone as of a father toward a child in fault, say: "nay, my son, deceived art thou; of will surely thou dost not utter blasphemy. if so be demon power had leave from god to give thee back one day what demon power had erst one day from god had leave to take away, thy sight--be glad indeed, but fear to yield wrongly thy praise to demon power permitted; all to god permissive yield. glory belongs to god alone. my son, bethink thee now betimes and save thy soul. 'jesus of nazareth anathema!' those words repeat for all to hear, and go acquitted hence of that thy blasphemy." so the high-priest to him, but he replied: "blinded again i should expect to be, my eyeballs blasted to the roots of sight, nay, worse, my inner seeing quenched in dark, forever and forevermore past cure, were i to speak that name except to praise. glory to god and glory to his son, forever and forever in the heavens, the heaven of heavens, seated at his right hand!" "a bold blasphemer!" so, discordant, shrieked suddenly shimei, the spell to break he feared those simple, solemn, holy words again might cast upon the sanhedrim. the chance for heaven precarious is on earth ever, and now the heavenly chance was lost, such counter breath unable to withstand. those half-rapt souls reverted to themselves, and brooked to listen--nay, assent gave they, even saul too gave assent wrung out!--when, next, "stripes for his back!" sharply shrilled shimei; "good forty stripes less one may save his soul! he loves his blasphemy, give him his fill, whet him his appetite, make him blaspheme his own lord god, the man of nazareth. for that thrice damnéd name require from him, at every lash, an imprecation loud, on pain of instant death should one curse fail!" so there with cruel blows was scourged the man, at every blow he crying out aloud joy that he might thus suffer for that name, and, baffled, they gnashing their teeth on him. "his madness has infected all his flesh," screamed mattathias; "cure there is but one. destroy his flesh with stones, let his flesh rot!" this also they, beside themselves with rage, rage rabid from the sight of bloodshed vain, resolved--resolving with them likewise saul! without the gate they thrust their victim forth, and there stoned him calling upon the name of jesus to his last expiring breath. that night, the violated body, left there where it fell by those his murderers to be of ravening beast or bird the prey, was thence, with reverent rite, by unseen hands borne to a sepulchre, with spices wrapt in linen pure and fine, and laid away in secret, not unwept or unbewailed of such as loved him for the love he bore, quenchless by death, to the belovéd name. book xii. saul and the apostles. again deeply distressed in heart, saul at set of sun withdraws to the top of olivet for solitary thought. there falling asleep, after pensive soliloquy, he dreams that shimei has followed him thither, and that he now pours a characteristic strain of sneer and instigation into his ear. this rouses him, and he goes moodily home. after a long, deep slumber there, he resolves on undertaking what he dreamed that shimei proposed, namely, the arrest of the apostles. his men fail him at the pinch, and saul bitterly upbraids them, declaring strongly that their renegade behavior only determines him the more sternly to root utterly out the pestilent galilæan heresy, at whatever cost of exertion and blood and tears. saul and the apostles. so one day more of bitterness had spent saul, and the night, the solemn night, came on, grateful to him, for he would be alone. whether the thought of home, no home, repelled, or longing toward his sister unconfessed there in that banishment at bethany bright with her presence in it--whether this drew him, or wish of lonely room and height where more he might from human kind be far- however listing, saul to olivet turned him, and slowly to the summit climbed. the moon not risen yet, the hemisphere of heaven above him was with clustered stars glittering, and awful with the glory of god. upward into those lucid azure deeps, withdrawn, deep beyond deep, immeasurably, gazing, saul said: "deep calleth unto deep! those deeps above me unto deeps within me cry, as infinite to infinite. the spaces of my spirit answer back; i feel them, empty but capacious, vast and void abysses of unfed desire, hunger eternal and eternal thirst! upward i gaze, and see the steadfast stars unshaken in their station calmly shine, i listen to the silence of the skies and yearn, with what desire! for peace like that, vainly, with what desire! for peace like that! beneath the pure calm of the holy heaven, so nigh! here am i seething like the sea, that cannot rest, casting up mire and dirt continually! o state forlorn! where, where, my god, for me is rest? for me, for me! 'great peace have they,' so sang that psalmist taught by thee, 'great peace have they that love thy law and nothing shall offend them.' answer me, lord god, do _i_ not love thy law? then why this opposite of peace within my breast? am i deceived? do _not_ i love thy law? answer me thou!" but answer came there none, or saul was deaf, and the great sky looked down, with all its multitude of starry eyes, impassible, upon a human soul wretched, unrespited from long unrest. the weary man upon a spot of ground bare to the heaven had thrown himself supine; lying diffuse, his wistful face upturned, and poring on the starry-scriptured scroll above him, he such thoughts breathed out in words. he had deemed himself alone, aloof from men; but seemed had scarce his murmurous monotone died on his lips, he skyward gazing still, when he was conscious of approaching feet, feet all at once so nigh, they in the dark touched him ere he could rouse himself to stand. 'why, brother saul! i stumble on you here, much as this morn you stumbled over me!' such, to the sleeping man, a voice seemed borne. 'those odious false-cheery tones once more! shimei has watched, and, hither following me, lurked overhearing my soliloquy; then, stealthily retiring a few steps, comes back, as with the brisk and frank advance of one somewhither walking at full speed, and stumbles against me of purpose rude!' so saul divined dissembling shimei, who said, or to saul, dreaming, seemed to say- vision as life-like as reality: "how naturally appear our paths to cross! i thought that i would take a casual stroll alone, and you the same thought had, it seems, at the same time, directed both, odd too, the self-same way--another proof, you see, what kindred spirits we are! "you must have marked how fine the night is! what a wealth of stars! do you not sometimes wish, saul, you could be as comfortably calm at heart as stars? how wonderfully quiet all is there, up in the region of the firmament! probably stars have nothing else to do than to be calm like that, and smile at us fretting ourselves down here with worry and work. worry is worse than work to wear us out. but worst of all is having huge desires that nothing in the world can satisfy. some men moon sighing for they know not what, mainly great hollow hungry mouths and maws, like void sea-beds; abysses of desire, you know, that not the world itself could fill. better close up your heart than stretch it wide and never get enough to make it full. adjust yourself, say i, to circumstance, hard work adjusting circumstance to you! there's nothing better than to go right on doing the obvious duty next to hand, and let the stars pursue their peaceful way, as hindered not, so envied not, by you. the sky is calm, no doubt--the upper sky- but happens we do not live in the sky, but on the earth, a very different place, and man's work we, not star's work, have to do; so let us be about it while we may. "for instance now, to bring the matter home (i trust i shall not seem officious, saul, i really must make one suggestion more), your pristine prestige has been much impaired through slips and ill-successes on your part. no mean advantage to a man, repute for what the godless romans call 'good luck,' piously we, 'the favor of the lord'; this is forsaking you, i grieve to find, on all sides round, wherever i inquire. up, and recover it with one bold push, push that dares hazard all upon a cast. you know twelve men there are in special sort dubbed the 'apostles' of the nazarene, who play a part assigned as witnesses to testify that jesus rose again, after his crucifixion, from the dead. these fellows boldly in jerusalem stay, while the rest run scattering far and wide. some kind of superstitious charm or awe surrounds them--that is, in their own conceit and fond illusion of impunity. boldly arrest them, saul, and spoil the spell." thus far, as oft in dreams will chance, saul lay and helpless heard what irked him sore to hear; but now, the loathing irrepressible excited by such hateful speech, roused him to spurning that asunder broke the bonds, the nightmare bonds, of sleep. he, full awake, groped with his hands about, dreading to feel shimei indeed couched nigh, as he had dreamed, breathing into his ear. no shimei there! he sprang upon his feet, and in the light of the waned moon, now risen, still large and fair, looked round and round--to find himself alone. "a dream, then," saul said, "only a hideous dream! thank god! how horribly real it seemed! how like must i have grown to _him_, to have had his thoughts! what demon's doom only to have such thoughts! perhaps a demon whispered these now to me! i could even pity shimei, to be haunt and harbor of his ceaseless evil thoughts- could pity, save that i detest too much. i cannot be like him and loathe him so; or does he haply also loathe himself? then were i like, for sure i loathe myself! what travesty it was of those my thoughts! and not ignoble thoughts, though vain, they were. the mad pranks that our dreaming brains will play!" so musing, there saul, on the mountain's brow, statue-like stood some moments in suspense; then slow descending to his house repaired. a deep, deep draught of pure oblivion in sleep drowned him until the morrow noon. prayer then, and then fast broken, and calmly saul the ill dream of his yesternight revolved. what better project for fresh act than that which, gladly now he pondered, shimei did not propose, but only shimei's false lively mimic counterfeit in sleep? yea, he would next, with prompt but circumspect audacity, the audacious head and front smite of this growing mischief, in those men styled the apostles of the nazarene. saul knew within his heart that secretly he dreaded this adventure; therefore he, with will sardonically set, moved on to undertake it. twenty men of tried true mettle, men with muscle iron-firm, and mind seasoned, through many hazards run, and long wont of impunity, to scorn all danger--such a score of men chose saul, and, from them veiling yet his purpose, took, with indirection intricate, his way toward where, as he, by diligent quest, had learned, the twelve apostles used each day to meet in secret from their prowling enemies; but to the common people, loving them for manifold miracles of beneficence, their secret meeting-place was not unknown. as, gradually, saul with his retinue drew near the spot, so large a following of arméd men, led by a chief whose fame was rife now through jerusalem for deeds and purposes of uttermost revenge against the galilæan heresy, gathered about their course a growing crowd, who, urged by various thought and feeling, watched what might that minatory march intend. reached thus at length the place, saul stays his steps, and, turning to his men in halt to hear, speaks, with that dense clear voice which tense will breeds: "here hide the twelve arch-heretics of all. ye come to take them hence bond prisoners, for lodgment in a hold whence no escape, that they may cease sedition to foment. duly the fathers of the sanhedrim, wise warders of our hebrew commonwealth, will thence adjudge them to their doom of death. no waste of words in parley now, leave asked, terms offered, naught of that, no paltering pause, instantly, stroke on stroke, down with the door!" but pause they did, those picked, use-hardened men; they stood as struck with palsy or with fear. "traitors be ye, or cravens, which?" cried saul- amazement, indignation, ire, disdain, effacing exhortation in his tone. then, mastering himself, less fiercely he chode them: "whence and whereto is this? mean ye, ye surely mean not, mutiny? rouse, then, with will; obey, your loyalty retrieve!" but still they hung there moveless, until one, seeming the spokesman of his fellows, said: "no mutineers, no traitors, cravens none, are we. but look around, and judge what means this concourse of beholders"--"'look around'? _around_ look?" thundered saul. "nay, straight-on looks, these sole, become stout hearts, staunch wills. 'around' cease looking ye, and all right forward stare to where yon door fronts you and you affronts. batter it down, and, staring forward, on!" the vehement, vindictive, dense onslaught of that impatient, proud, imperious will smote like the missile of a catapult against the clamped immovable dead wall of fixed inert resistance to saul's wish, which strangely, as one man, those men opposed. that impact did not shake that stubborn strength, nor shiver back in staggering recoil- absorbed, annulled, annihilated, waste! one infinitesimal instant, saul a blind mad impulse felt--which, that same instant, he quenched in a simultaneous saner thought- to rush single upon the door, with blank ridiculous demonstration of balked will indignant. "me, then, seize, your chief contemned," said saul, "contemned, since not obeyed, and me deliver captive to the sanhedrim, denounced unworthy of your trust, and theirs!" as, saying this, around he glanced, he saw, with unintending eyes, a spectacle which well had awed him, but that he was saul. the frequence of spectators serried nigh had armed themselves with stones, and imminent stood, a thunder-cloud of menace on each brow, ready those bolts of vengeance to let fly, in hail-storm that no mortal might withstand, at whoso dared defy their angry mood; portent so dire saul could not but peruse. "it was but question which should overawe, ye, or this rabble of sedition here, and ye have solved it like the cowards ye are!" so, with his passion humored to its height, and javelin looks shot at his men in shower, cried saul; "i had deemed otherwise of you. and yet, even yet, once wake the dormant man within you, and, from hands through fear relaxed, harmless will drop those miscreant stones which now, with your poltroonery, ye invoke to fall in well-deservéd doom upon your heads!" upbraided thus, they, by that spokesman, said: "stoning may lightly be despised by men like us, whose trade it is at need to die; and bloody death were meet for men of blood. but we are of the people, as are these whom here thou seest around us, stone in hand; and we, the people, love for cause those men, our benefactors, whom thou seekest to slay- wherefore, we know not, save perhaps it be some ill persuasion thine that slanders them as enemies of our race, seditious men, conspiring to do evil and not good. but, if we should as lief, as we should loth, offer them violence, and if we could, as we could not, hope then to escape the stones here seen uneasy in so many hands at only brandished threat of harm to them, know, there is more than mail enduing these inviolate against what human touch might mean them wrong. something intangible, invisible, inaudible, unknown, a might as irresistible as strange, not only arms them proof against assault, but issues from them in dread strokes of doom, silent like lightning, and like lightning swift, and instantaneous deadly more than that. what prison-walls can prisoners hold these men? hast thou not heard how ananias fell, sapphira too, his wife, dead at their feet, fell at their feet stone-dead, when they but charged a lie unto the spirit of the lord on those twain twinned in judgment as in crime? a dreadful visitation, as from god; but, whencesoever issuing, dreadful yet! no panoply have we against such stroke, against the authors of such stroke, no power. slay us, or get us slain, we can but die; but die like ananias will we not!" saul listened with illimitable scorn; and scorn incensed his rage thus crossed to be, hopelessly crossed, by crass perversity. in rage and scorn, he scourged those men with words: "there is no reasoning with minds like you!- too ignorant to guess how ignorant ye are, and self-conceited in degree to match. such ignorance, with self-conceit such, renders blind indeed. what boots it i should tell you superstition clouds your brain? your superstition would not let you hear. your very senses, given by god to be the avenues of knowledge to your mind, satan has clogged to truth, and made of them but open thoroughfares for lies from him to enter by and capture you his own. mere satan's lies those tales are that ye tell, of prison-doors thrown wide mysteriously to let these men go free, and of deaths dealt by magic sentence weaponless from them- mere satan's lies those tales, or, were they true, yet tokens only of satanic power and craft permitted to disport them here for their destruction who to be destroyed prove themselves greedy by such act as yours. dupes of the devil, go, i pity you! this is your weakness, not your villainy. i thought to make you helpers in my strife to save the souls of others, but your souls themselves need saving first and most of all- if souls like yours of saving worthy be, or capable! some different make of men from you, seems i must seek, to serve my need. yet you i thank at least for this, that ye by your behavior show me what a sore, how seated, and how wide, into the heart eats of my nation! lo, i take the cup, the full, the overflowing cup of shame which ye this day wring out for me, that cup take i with thanks from you, and to the dregs drain it, in pledge, in pledge and sacrament, that i hereafter give myself more whole, more absolute, more consecrate, to one, one only, pure endeavor and desire, the utter rooting out--at cost how dear, no reckoning, mine or other's, toil, and tears, and blood--wherever jewish name be found, of this foul creeping rot and leprosy, this blight, this blast, this mildew, on our fame!" saul, in the light of luminous wrath, foresaw nigh, and saluted, that career, which thence, after judæan cities overrun with havoc at his hand to jesus' name, will bear him ravening on damascus road! book xiii. saul and sergius. after further persecution accomplished by him in judæa, saul, with spirits recovered, sets out for damascus to carry thither the persecuting sword. pausing on the brow of hill scopus to survey jerusalem just left, he soliloquizes. at the same moment, there rides up a troop of roman horse escorting a man who turns out to be sergius paulus, an old-time acquaintance of saul's, also bound to damascus. the two pursue their journey together, highly enjoying their ride in that charming season of spring weather, and delightedly conversing on the way. they talk over greek literature, and in particular by starlight at the close of the first day's journey, sergius paulus having by occasion recited an apposite passage of homer, saul matches and contrasts this first with a psalm of david, and then additionally with a strain from the prophet isaiah. this gives rise to conversation on ensuing days, in which religious questions are discussed. sergius declares himself an atheist of the epicurean sort, and he plies saul with incredulous inquiries about the religion of the jews--saul answering with hebrew conviction and earnestness. the two part company at neapolis (shechem) because sergius paulus halts there, and saul, in the spirit of true jewish strictness, will for his part not rest till he has quite passed the bounds of samaria. saul and sergius. not yet his fill of slaughter supped, though forth afar the timorous flock of jesus now were from before his restless, ravening, fierce, rapacious sword out of judæa fled to alien lands remote, beyond the heights of hermon with their everlasting snows, and farther to the islands of the sea- not yet, even so, his fill of slaughter supped, saul had from the high-priest commission sought to search among the hebrew synagogues of syrian damascus, and thence bring bound to jerusalem whomever found, woman or man, confessing jesus christ. the season was fresh flowering spring; the earth was glad with universal green to greet the sun once more, returned in his blue heaven after his winter's sojourn in the south. how blithe the welcome of the morning was, forth looking from his east across the hills of moab on the just awakening world! saul met it with a sense as if of spring and morning linking hand in hand for dance together in the courses of his blood, as, mounted on a palfrey fresh and fleet, with servitors attendant following him, he issued jocund from damascus gate. the animal spirits of youth and health in him, the joy of new adventure, the fine pulse of life felt in the buoyant, bounding step with which his steed advanced him on the road, the secret pleasure of release at last, release and long secure removal, won, through growing leagues of distance interposed, from the abhorred access of shimei- these, with the season and the hour so bright, brightened the darkling heart of saul to cheer. he was a radiant aspect, fair to see, fronting his future with that sanguine smile! the acclivity surmounted of a hill, whence downward dipped his road, declining north, and farewell glimpse gave of jerusalem, saul rein drew on his foamy-flankéd steed, and, about winding him, paused, looking back. his retinue, far otherwise than he mounted, part even on foot, with sumpter beasts bearing camp equipage, behind were fallen. these, presently come up, he lets pass on before him in the way, while still at gaze, there on the back of his indignant steed resentful to be curbed in mid-career- companion hoofs heard leaving him behind- saul sits, perusing, with an inner eye, yet more than with his outer, what he sees. half-shadow and half-light, jerusalem he sees, smitten athwart her level roofs with sunshine from the horizontal sun, the temple of jehovah in the midst, as if itself a sun, so dazzling bright with its refulgence of reflected beams; while, round about, the warder mountains stand, bathing their sacred brows in sacred light. saul's heart distends immense with patriot's joy, yet joy pierced through and through with patriot's pain. "o beautiful for situation, thou, jerusalem!" he fervently bursts forth. "peace be within thy walls, prosperity within thy palaces! yea, yet again, now for my brethren and companions' sakes, say i, 'within thee, peace!' lo, my vow hear: for that the temple of the lord my god is in thee, i henceforth thy good will seek. and thou, jehovah in the heavens! behold, saul for himself that ancient promise claims: 'prosper shall he jerusalem who loves.' for love not i jerusalem, with love to anguish, for her anguish and her tears? take pleasure in her stones, favor her dust, o god, my god! is not the set time come? do i not hear thee say: 'awake, awake, put on thy strength, o zion, long forlorn, and beautiful thy garments put thou on, jerusalem! henceforth no more shall come the uncircumcised into thee, nor the unclean!'" "amen!" saul added, with a gush of tears, the light mercurial feeling in his heart less to sad sinking, weighted down, than all, with fluent lapse, to pleasing pathos changed. into that strain, so ardent and so true, of patriot prayer, deeply had braided been, half to himself unknown, a silent strand of subtle self-regard, vague personal hope that would have spurned to be imprisoned in words: 'the new jerusalem that was to be, should she not saul her chief deliverer hail!' musing, and praying, and beholding, so, saul suddenly a sound of clanging hoofs heard, and, his eyes quick thither turning, saw, between hill scopus, on whose top he stood, and the damascus gate through which he came, advancing toward him on the roman road- cemented solid with its rutted stones, like an original stratum of the sphere- a turm of horse, large not, but formidable, caparison and armor gleaming bright, and with a nameless air forerunning them of wide-renownéd might invincible expressed in that momentous rhythmic tread four-footed, underneath which from afar with pulse on pulse now rock to iron rang. the cavalcade, by slow degrees more slow, moved up the acclivity till, reached the brow, sank to a walk their pace, when saul perceived an arméd escort was convoying one thereby betokened an ambassador, somewhither posting on affair of state, or haply citizen of high degree honored with ceremonious retinue. this man regarded saul with curious look respectful, which almost admiring grew; and gravely, as their mutual glances met, the youthful roman to the youthful jew inclined in distant salutation meant for natural courtesy due from peer to peer. saul, in like wise, his greeting gave him back; whereon the roman, reining to one side his horse, and halting, said: "peace, but methinks i saw thee late, months since it may have been, where that fanatic stephen suffered death with stoning at your angry elders' hands." "i, in that act of punishment," said saul, "as loyal jew befitted, took my part." "nay, but as now i read thy features nigh," sudden more earnest grown, the roman said, "labors my brain with yet a different thought. somewhere we twain must earlier still have met. in tarsus i some boyish seasons spent; i there, by chance full well-remembered, knew a hebrew-roman boy whose name was saul." "then sergius paulus is thy name," said saul, "and saul am i--and saul to sergius, peace!" who but as man and man just now had met greeted again in sense of comradeship. "thy face is toward jerusalem," to saul said sergius; "but thy look is less of one arriving, journey finished, than of one forth setting on adventure planned abroad." "i journey to damascus," saul replied: "and thither also i," said sergius. damascus-ward turned saul his horse's head, and slowly, with the roman, now resumed his onward way, while further sergius said: "having a brief apprenticeship at arms accomplished, to jerusalem i came, centurion still, urged by desire to see thy capital city, famed throughout the world. since witnessing--by lucky hap it fell my military duty to be there- since witnessing that spectacle so strange of stephen's stoning--strange to roman eyes, yet to eyes jewish doubtless quite as strange our roman fashion, hanging on the cross- all various ways of various tribes of men from clime to clime, delights me to observe- what comedy to the gods must we present!- since i saw stephen slain with stones, i say, good fortune, and some interest made for me at rome, have given me this my welcome chance to travel and more widely see the world. now to damascus i as legate go." "and of our sanhedrim as legate, i," said saul, "if so without offence i may from jewish mode to gentile dare my speech conform--legate, or hand executive, say rather, in some certain offices deemed needful, to consult my nation's weal." with mutual question asked and answered, vein of old-time boyish reminiscence shared between them as together on they rode- their horses pricking each the other's speed- the two soon overtook their retinues, who, seeing their chiefs adjoined in comradeship, themselves in comradeship dissolved their sense of race and race to mix as men and men. so all day long together, side by side, riding, or resting in the noontide shade, sergius and saul, a frank companionship, immixed their minds in speech of many things. young life, young health, glad sense of fair emprise, high-hearted hope of boundless futures theirs, delicious weather and blithe season bland, blue cloudless heaven forever overhead- by the sole sun usurped his tabernacle whence sovran virtue beaming into all- sweet voice of singing-bird, sweet smile of flower, sweet breath exhaled from tender-fruited vine, joy, a full feast, through every flooded sense- and, heightening all, that billowy onward sway of motion without effort on their steeds, made, to those lord possessors of the world, their talking like the coursing of their blood, self-moved, or like the running of a brook that laughs and sparkles on its downward way, as ceasing never from its hope to drain the fountain, brimming ever, whence it flows. of arms, of art, and of philosophy, they spoke, and letters; spoke, too, of the fame of ancient grecian masters of the mind, who ruled, and rule, by charm of prose or verse. first, homer, hoar with immemorial eld, pouring his epics in that profluent stream which, like his ocean, wandered round the world; bold pindar, with his lyric ecstasies, on throbbing wings of exultation borne into the empyrean, whence his song broken descends in showers of melody; father of history, herodotus, "half poet, epic, or idyllic, he"- so, saul thereto assenting, sergius said- "with his ionic strain mellifluous of wonder-loving artless narrative"; thucydides, the soul of energy; æschylus, titan; happy sophocles; with soft euripides unfortunate; then socrates, "who wrote no books," said saul, "or wrote most living books in living men; plato, the chiefest book of socrates, yet mind so large and so original that, in him reading what his teacher taught, one knows not whether socrates it be, or socrates's pupil, that one reads"- "knows not, and, for delight, cares not to know, full-sated with the feast of such discourse, so wealthy, wise, urbane, harmonious!"- stung to enthusiasm, thus sergius, continuing what from saul ceased incomplete. "our tully," added he, "from plato's well deepest his draughts drank of philosophy, and, thence inspired, wrote such sweet dialogue, latin half seemed delectable as greek." "yea, and a man of fine civility in manners as in mind, your tully was," said saul; "cilicia keeps his memory green for virtues long in roman rulers rare. his too a sounding, stately eloquence, and copious; but greek demosthenes pleases me better, with that stormy stress of passion in him, reason on fire with love or hatred, that indignant vehemence which overwhelms us like a torrent flood, or, like a torrent flood, upon its breast lifts us, and tosses us, and bears us on! he is more like our hebrew prophets rapt above themselves in sympathy with god." in talk like this the livelong day was spent; hardly the talkers heeding when they passed meadows of flowers pied rich in colors gay, poppy, anemone, convolvulus, bright marigold wide yellowing belts of green into a vivid gold that dazed the eye; and heeding hardly if upsprang the lark from almost underneath their horses' hoofs, startled to leave her humble hiding nest, and, soaring, better hide her otherwise amid the blinding lightnings of the sun; such sights and sounds and glancing motions swift scarce heeded--yet, as subtle influence, admitted, each, to infuse insensibly into their mood an added joyousness- the afternoon declined into the eve. passed now a fountain on the wayside cliff, coyly, through ferny leafage, shedding down its weeping waters shown in fresher green, up a long glen they mounted to a crest of hill where opened a soft grassy plain- inviting, should one wish his tent to spread- and here they twain their double camp bid pitch. supper soon ended, saul and sergius, ere sleep they seek, a hill, not far, ascend, the highest neighboring seen, less thence to view the landscape round them in the deepening dark glooming, or even the heavens above their heads brightening each moment in the deepening dark, than youth's unused excess of strength to ease with exercise, and to achieve the highest. but there the splendors of the firmament, enlarged so lustrous through that syrian sky, hailed such a storm of vertical starlight downward upon their sense as through their sense inward into their soul beat, and a while mute held them, hushed with wonder and with awe, awe to the hebrew, to the roman, joy. then said the roman: "this is like that place of glorious homer where he hangs the sky innumerably bright with moon and stars over the trojan host and their camp-fires: 'holding high thoughts, they on the bridge of war 'sat all night long, and many blazed their fires. 'as when in heaven stars round the glittering moon 'shine forth exceeding beautiful, and when 'breathlessly tranquil is the upper air, 'and in their places all the stars are seen, 'and glad at heart the watching shepherd is; 'so many, 'twixt the ships and xanthus' streams, 'shone fires by trojans kindled fronting troy.'" "the spirit of greece, with greek simplicity, a nobleness all of homer, there i feel," concession checking with reserve, said saul; "our hebrew, to us hebrews, rises higher. homer, unconscious of sublimity, down all its dreadful height above our sphere brings the august encampment of the skies- to count the number of the trojan fires! our poet david otherwise beholds the brilliance of the nightly firmament, seeing it mirror of the majesty of him who spread it arching over earth, and who yet stoops his awful thought to think kindly of us as father to our race, nay, kingdom gives us, glory, honor, power, and all things subjugates beneath our feet. let me some echoes from that harp awake to which, with solemn touches, this his theme our psalmist david chanted long ago: 'jehovah, our dread sovereign, how thy name 'is excellent in glory through the earth! 'upon the heavens thy glory hast thou set; 'the heart of babe and suckling reads it there, 'and, raised to rapture, utters forth thy praise, 'that mute may be the adversary mouth 'which would the ever-living god gainsay. 'when i survey thy heavens, thy handiwork, 'the moon, the stars, thou didst of old ordain, 'man, what is he? that thou for him shouldst care, 'the son of man, that thou shouldst visit him. 'for thou hast made him hardly lower than god, 'and dost with glory him and honor crown. 'dominion over all thy works to wield 'thou madest him, and underneath his feet 'put'st all things, sheep and oxen, roaming beast, 'and winging fowl, and swimming fish, and all 'that passes through the pathways of the seas. 'jehovah, our dread sovereign, how thy name 'is excellent in glory through the earth!'" recited in slow solemn monotone, as with an inward voice muffled by awe, those new and strange barbaric-sounding notes of hebrew music shut in measured words smote on some deeper chord in sergius' ear that, trembling, tranced him silent for a while. then he said, rousing: "what a sombre strain! from the light-hearted greek how different!" "sombre thou callest it, and solemn i, who find in such solemnity a joy; but different, yea, from the light-thoughted greek." less as in converse than soliloquy deep-musing so to sergius saul replied. "our bard isaiah modulates the strain into another mood less pastoral. he pours divine contempt on idol gods, on idol gods and on their worshippers; and then majestically hymns his praise who made yon host of heaven and leads them out. 'to whom then will ye liken god?' he cries, 'or what similitude to him compare? 'the skilled artificer an image forms, 'and this the goldsmith overlays with gold, 'and tricks it smartly out with silver chains: 'or haply one too poor for cost like this 'chooseth him out a tree judged sound and good, 'and seeks a cunning workman who shall thence 'grave him an image that may shift to stand! 'but nay, ye foolish, have ye then not known? 'not heard have ye? you hath it not been told 'from the remote beginning of the world? 'from the foundations of the ancient earth 'have ye indeed so missed to understand? 'he sits upon the circle of the earth 'and they that dwell therein are grasshoppers; 'he as a curtain doth the heavens outspread, 'and makes a blue pavilion of the sky. 'to whom then will ye liken me? saith god; 'whom shall i equal? saith the holy one. 'lift up your eyes on high, the heavens behold- 'who hath these things created? who their host 'by number bringeth out, and all by names 'calls? by the greatness of his might, for that 'so strong in power is he, not one star fails.'" the deep tones ceased, and once more silence fell between those two amid the silent night. but sergius, lightly rallying soon to speech, said, with a ready, easy sympathy: "there seems indeed to breathe in such a strain some solemn joy, but the solemnity is greater, and my spirit is oppressed. not less your poets differ from the greek in matter than in manner, when they sing. how high you make your deity to be, beyond the stature of the gods of greece! homer has zeus compel the clouds, forth flash the lightnings, and the thunderbolts down hurl; the mightiest meddler with the world, his zeus, yet of the world the mighty maker not. but your jehovah reaches even to that, as with his fingers fashioning yonder heaven, and fixing in their station moon and stars. and he in human things concerns himself! the epicurean gods are cold and calm; on high olympus far withdrawn they sit, and smile, and either not at all regard our case, or, if so be regarding, smile still, unconcerned, our case however hard. your hebrew god is much more amiable, but much more probable that olympian crew; nay, probable not at all is either; dream, fond dream, the fable of divinities who either care, or care not, for our case. we are the creatures and the sport of chance, puppets tossed hither and thither in idle play, a while, a little while, fooled to suppose we do the dancing we are jerked to do- and then, resolved from our compacture brief into the atoms which once on a time together chanced and so were we, we drop plumb down again into the great inane abyss, and recommence the eternal whirl! there is that epicurean cosmogony, an endless cycle of evolution turned upon itself, in worlds forevermore becoming, out of worlds forevermore merging in their original elements: no god, or gods, to tangle worse the skein inextricably tangled by blind chance!" saul was affronted, but he held his peace, brooding the while his jealousy for god. at length, with intense calm, he spoke and said: "the hebrew spirit is severe and says, 'the fool it is who in his secret heart, rebelling, wills no god.' 'the hebrew spirit,' said i? forget those unadviséd words; for to speak so is not the hebrew spirit. god is a jealous god; his glory he will to another not divide; and god himself it is, the living god, and not what, gentile fashion, my rash lips miscalled 'the hebrew spirit,' that charges atheism with folly. god his prophet psalmist bade write with a diamond pen on adamant that stern damnation of the atheous soul: 'the fool hath in his heart said, god is not.' this tell i thee my conscience so to cleanse of sin in saying 'the hebrew spirit' for god." with tolerant wonder, sergius heard and said: "a strangely serious race you hebrews are; i do not think i understand you yet. i shall be glad to-morrow, if so please thee likewise, to renew this night's discourse." so they descended from the hill and slept. the herald dawn, white-fingered, from the east had signalled to the stars, 'he comes! he comes!' and these, veiling themselves from view with light, had all into the unapparent deep retired, and left the hemisphere of heaven, late glowing with their fixed or wandering fires, one crystal hollow of pure space made void to be a fit pavilion for the sun, when forth from their encampment rode the twain, fresh as the morning from the baths of sleep, and keen with hunger for the forward road. "the allotment of my tribe," said saul--"my tribe is benjamin--in measure such, bare rock and rugged hill, hardly through age-long toil of tilth so clothed as we have seen them clothed, in terrace above terrace of won soil, with verdure--that, we leave behind, to cross this day the fatter fields of ephraim." then saul to sergius rehearsed in short the tale of hebrew history, how god, having his fathers out of egypt brought, with sign and wonder thence delivering them and hither led them through the parted sea, and past the smoking top of sinai- touched by the finger of god to burn with fire and thunder and lighten more than man could bear to see or hear, in sanction of his law- had lastly parcelled out this land to them in portions by their tribes to be their rest. while saul to sergius so discoursing spoke, over their right the sun, long since uprisen, climbed the steep slope of morning in the sky. and now the summit of a ridge those twain reach, whence, straightforward looking, they behold, in light so bright, through air so fair, a scene of the most choice the eye can rest upon. a wide and long champaign of fruitful green, on either side hemmed in with skirting hill, stretches before them to the bounding sky, where hermon, scarce descried through distance dim, silvers with frost each morn his crown of snows. descended, they therein, through billowing wheat wind-swayed, might, to a watcher from the hill, seem laboring like two swimmers in the surf, and hardly, in the fluctuation, way making whither they went; yet swiftly borne were they, and easily, onward. soon saul said- and therewith pointed to two mountain peaks, seen towering on the left to lordly height, twin warders of a lesser vale between, in stature twin and twin in symmetry- "ebal and gerizim yon mountains are, and these between the vale of shechem lies, theatre once of oath and sacrament enacted by my nation with dread rite. 'a strangely serious race', thou yesterday calledst us hebrews, strangely frivolous race surely were we, if somewhat serious not, for we are heirs of serious history. yon natural amphitheatre thou seest, circled and sloped against those mountain sides with spacious interval of plain enclosed; there was the oath of our obedience sworn. on ebal half our tribes, and half our tribes on gerizim, stood opposite, and midst, the tribe of levi, god's peculiar tribe, stood in the vale about the ark of god, whence joshua, our great captain, read the law- he and the levites, ocean-like the sound- with blessing or with curse by god adjoined as disobedient or obedient we. this was when scarce our fathers had set foot hitherside jordan in the promised land; they from their stronghold camp came here express to swear such solemn covenant with god. six hundred thousand souls of fighting-men, with women and with children fourfold more, ranged on the one side or the other, joined to them that mustered in the middle vale, all heard the threatening or the gracious words, and all, in multitudinous answer, said 'amen!'--the tribes on ebal to the curse, and to the blessing, those on gerizim, replying--choral imprecation dire upon themselves of every human ill, if disobedient found, of promised good acceptance at the price, acknowledged just, of whole obedience to god's holy law. it was as if jehovah had adjured all things, above, below, his witnesses, 'hear, o ye heavens, and thou, o earth, give ear, while thus my people covenant swear with me.' the host of israel, though such numbers, heard- these mountain-sides redouble so the voice." "theatric sacramental rite most weird," said sergius, "thou hast described to me. sure never elsewhere did lawgiver yet, with ceremony such, a people swear to obedience of his laws. the laws, i trow, subscribed and sealed with signature so strange, strange must have been. example couldst thou give?" "of all those laws," said saul, "doubtless the law to gentile ears the strangest, is the first; that law it is which makes the jew a jew: 'other than me no god shalt thou confess; 'image, resemblance, none, molten or carved, 'of whatsoever thing in heaven, or earth, 'or hidden region underneath the earth, 'fashion to thee shalt thou, or bow thee down 'in service or in worship unto them; 'for i the lord thy god a jealous god 'am, and i visit the iniquity 'of fathers upon children, chastisement, 'in long entail, on generation linked 'to generation, following hard the line 'of such as hate me, endless mercy shown 'to such as love me and observe my law. 'curséd be he who dares to disobey'; and ebal, with its countless multitude, thundered to gerizim a loud 'amen!' while heaven above and the wide world around hearkened in witness of the dreadful oath." saul ceased as mute with awe of memory; and something of a sympathetic sense, communicated, also sergius made silent in presence of such history. not long, for, rousing from his reverie, and looking up before him nigh, he sees a city with its walls and roofs and towers. "neapolis!" exclaims the roman voice, the jewish, in tone different, "sychar!" said. "neapolis! and here i halt," said sergius; "sychar! and forward through samaria, i, not pausing till this hateful soil be passed," said saul; "perchance to-morrow met again, beyond, we may together forward fare." so there they parted with such slight farewell; nor after met, until, two morrows more now spent in separate travel, they had reached the bursting fountain of the jordan, where, forth from between the feet of hermon born forever--in the joy and anguish born, the certain anguish and the doubtful joy tumultuous of an everlasting birth- leaps to the light of life that famous stream, like many another child--from adam sprung- to run his heedless, headlong, downward course and lose himself at last in the dead sea! here was what life, all-welcoming, lusty life, doom of what deadly worse than death was there! a city here the tetrarch philip built, or raised to more magnificent, which then, in honor of dishonorable name imperial, tiberius cæsar, he called cæsarea, and philippi too eponymous therewith for surname joined; but paneas, earlier name, clung to the place, as to this day it clings in banias. book xiv. for damascus. coming together again at cæsarea philippi (paneas, banias) after an interval of days, saul and sergius cross the southern spur of hermon. a violent thunderstorm comes slowly up during the afternoon, which gives sergius occasion, by way of mask to his own secret disquietude, to quote his epicurean poet lucretius on the subject of jupiter's control of thunderbolts. as the storm increases in violence, the fears of sergius overpower him, and he breaks down at last into a deprecatory prayer and vow to jupiter. saul then, the storm still raging, rehearses from scripture appropriate fragments of psalm, timing them to the various successive bursts of tempest. the sound of a tranquil human voice has a quieting effect on sergius, and even on the frightened steeds of the two travellers. the storm ceases, and they pass the night under a serene sky, ready to set out the next morning for the last stage of their journey to damascus. for damascus. the splendor of the morning yet once more was a theophany in syria, when saul and sergius, met, from paneas started, with mind to overpass that day the spur of hermon interposed between them and damascus. "strange the human bent," said saul, "the universal human bent, toward worship of unreal divinities! 'paneas!' the very sound insults the name and solitary majesty of god, jehovah, ever-living, only true. think of it! 'pan', forsooth! and god, who made these things which we behold, these waters, woods, and mountains, glens, and rocky cliffs, and caves, who these things made, and made the mind of man capacious of himself, or capable at least of knowing him creator, such a god thrust from his own creation forth, by his own noblest creature thus thrust forth, that a rough, rustic, gross, grotesque, burlesque, goat-footed, and goat-bearded, horned and tailed divinity like pan, foul caricature at best of man himself who fashions him, and out of wanton fancy furnishes him his meet appendages of brute wild beast- that this deform abortion of the brain might take the room, made void, of god outcast, and, with his ramping, reeling, riotous rout of fauns and satyrs, claim to be adored! i feel the hebrew blood within me boil at outrage such from man on god and man! phoebus apollo seems an upward reach of human fancy in theogony; some height, some aspiration, there at least, toward what in man, if not the noblest, yet is nobler than the beasts that browse, or graze. apollo, too, i hate, but i loathe pan!" "we romans are more catholic than you hebrews," said sergius, "more hospitable to different peoples' different gods. our own synod of native deities we have, but we make room for others than our own. from greece we have adopted all her gods, and all the gods of egypt and the east are domiciled at rome--all save your god, jehovah, his pretensions overleap the bounds of even our hospitality, who not on any terms of fellowship will sit a fellow with his fellow-gods. him sole except, it is our policy to entertain with wise indifference in brotherly equality all gods of whatsoever nations of the earth. a temple at rome have we, pantheon called, so called as to this end expressly built that there no human god might lack a home. such is our roman way; your hebrew way is different; different races, different ways." sergius so spoke as if concluding all with the last word of wisdom to be said; he paused, and saul mused whether wise it were to answer, when thus sergius further spoke: "i marked late, when 'neapolis!' i said, 'sychar!' saidst thou, in tone as if of scorn; 'hateful,' thou also calledst samarian soil- wherefore? if i may know." "'sychar,'" said saul, "imports deceit, and there deceit abounds. from the samaritans we jews refrain; corrupters they of the right ways of god. across their soil we either shun to go, or, going, hasten with unpausing feet." "those also have their ways!" said sergius; "such humors of the blood thou wilt not cure. worship jehovah ye, it is your way, and let us gentiles serve our several gods, or serve them not, be atheists if we choose- i, as thou knowest, an atheist choose to be- of comity and peace the sole safe rule. this therefore is the sum--i say it again- ways diverse worship men, or worship not, all as our natural bents may us incline. keep your jehovah, you, he is your god, chosen, or feigned and fashioned to your mind- keep him, but not impose your ethnic dream, or guess, of deity on all mankind." "no dream of ours," said saul, "jehovah is. nay, nay, alas, far otherwise than so, our hebrew dreams of god have, like the dreams dreamed by all races of mankind besides, grovelled to low and lower, have bestial been, or reptile, nay, to insensate wood and stone descended; we have loved idolatry, we, with the rest, and hardly healed have been, though purged with hyssop of dire history, constrained--against the subtly treacherous soft relentings of our heart, oft yielded to, then punished oft full sore, which bade us spare whom god to spare forbade--constrained to slay with our own swords, abolish utterly, the idolatrous possessors of this land, in judgment just on their idolatry, and lest we too be tainted with their sin; yet foul relapse despite, and after, stripes, stripes upon stripes again and yet again, suffered from the right hand of god incensed, defeat, captivity, long servitude, with the probe searched, with the knife carved until scarce left was life to bear the cautery wherewith a holy and a jealous god out of our quivering soul throughly would burn that clinging, deep, inveterate human plague inherited from adam in his fall, that devil-taught depravity which prompts apostasy to other gods no gods- hardly so healed, with dreadful chastisement, has been my nation of her dreadful crime. loth, slow, ingrate, rebellious pupils, we taught have been thus to worship only god- jehovah, only god of the whole earth!" those last words as he spoke, saul his right hand swept round in waving gesture--for they now a height of goodly prospect had attained, wherefrom, pausing to breathe their laboring steeds, they backward looked beneath them far abroad- swept round his hand, as if the circuit wide of the whole earth might there his words attest; their fill they gazed, then upward strained once more. at length a stage of smoother going reached, sergius, abreast of saul, took up the word: "yea, might one deem thy hebrew race indeed had been the subjects of such history, so purposed, then sound were thine argument and thy jehovah would be very god, and god alone, and god of the whole earth. but other races too besides thine own have had their chances, their vicissitudes; fortune to all has served her whirling wheel, and every several race has had its turn of rising now, now sinking in the dust. wherefore should we you hebrews sole of all reckon divinely taught by history, taught to be theists in an atheist world, or in a world idolatrous, of god the true, the only, only worshippers?" "the other nations all," so saul rejoined, "followed the bent of nature, had their will, what they chose did, and were idolatrous, god gave them up to their apostasy; us god withstood, his hebrews he forbade; with the same bent as others, as headstrong, we hebrews strangely went a different way, and upward moved against a downward bent. a fiery flaming sword turned every way forever met us on the errant track, and forced us right though still found facing wrong. god's prophets did not fail, age after age- until for that we needed them no more- to warn us, chide us, threaten, plead, conjure, against our passion for idolatry. yet, as defying all that god could do, such was the force of that infatuate love fast-rooted in the sottish hebrew heart for idol-worship, that king solomon, the greatest, wisest, wealthiest of our kings, mightiest, most famous, most magnificent, the glory and the crown of israel, the wonder and the proverb of the east- this king, at point of culmination highest to the far-shining splendor of our race, the son of david, solomon, turned back from god who gave him his pre-eminence, from god, the living god, turned back, and sold his heart, his spacious, all-experienced heart, to gods that were no gods. "against a will, a set of nature, a prime pravity stubborn like this, and tenfold impulse given through such example in our first of kings, that, conflagration of infection round, _we_ should escape and not idolatrous be, we only of all nations on the earth, this, without miracle, were miracle, a miracle of chance, confounding chance, monstrous, incredible, impossible! nay, miracles on miracles were for us wrought, the manifest finger of god unquestionable, yet to ourselves ourselves, to all men we, wisely looked on, are chiefest miracle, witness from age to age that god is god." with hebrew heat, thus saul to sergius; the frequent steep ascents meanwhile, the halts for rest, for prospect, or for dalliance under some cooling shade of rock or tree- shield from the waxing fervors of the sun- slack pace, due to the humors of their steeds unchidden while their masters held discourse, left the twain still below the topmost crest of hermon when the noontide hour was on. large leisure to refection and repose allowed, with converse, and mid-afternoon it was, before to horse again were got the horsemen, and their forward way resumed. as, lightly, they into the saddle sprang, out of a purple-dark dense cloud that slept wakefully now along the horizon's rim under the flaming sun in the deep west, there came a roll of thunder to their ears, remote, and mellow with remoteness, rich bass music in long rumbling monotone; they listened with delight to hear the sound. then sergius, as the vibration died in low delicious tremble from their sense, said, coupling this with that in saul's discourse, fresh, or remembered from the days before: "that thunder and this mountain bring to me, imagined, the wild scene on sinai when your lawgiver gave his laws to you. he schemed it well to have a thunder-storm chime in and be a brave accompaniment to enforce his ordinances upon the awe of the unthinking timorous multitude. popular leaders and lawgivers have always and everywhere their tricks of trade, to impress, hoodwink, and wheedle vulgar minds. our sabine numa, he pompilius named, had his mysterious nymph egeria to bring him statutes for all men to heed; and that lycurgus got an oracle from famous delphi to approve his laws, which having sworn his spartans to observe at least till he returned from whither he went abroad, he, after, masked in such disguise that never thence to have returned he seemed. the herd of men still love to be cajoled, trolled hither and thither about with baited lies; frighten them now with brandished empty threat, and now with laud as empty tickle them. augustus taught the art to tyrannize through forms of ancient freedom false and vain, the stale trick since of all our emperors. your hebrew moses in his rude grand way well plied his shifts of lead and government." thunder, a rising mutter, broke again, and sergius in his saddle turned to look; but saul, with forward face intent, replied: "nay, but our moses thou dost misconceive. all was to lose and naught to gain for him then when he left the ease, the pomp, the power, of pharaoh's court--of pharaoh's daughter son esteemed, and to imperial futures heir- this left, and loth his brethren led, slaves they, out of the realm of egypt to the sea- for such a multitude impassable, yet passed, through mighty miracle, by all- beyond the sea, into that wilderness led them, where neither food nor water was, yet food found they, and water, in the waste, full forty years of error till they came next to a land set thick with bristling spears against them--though land promised them for theirs- and land that moses never was to see, save as afar in prospect from the mount, because unworthy judged to enter there, who unadviséd words in haste let slip, unworthy judged, and meekly by himself recorded judged unworthy--such a man, to such a people, so long led by him, through such straits of extremity, not once spake words to humor or to flatter them; thwarted them rather, balked them of their wish, upbraided, blamed, rebuked, and punished them, each art of selfish demagogue eschewed. to rule and leadership like his, nowhere wilt thou find precedent or parallel; one key alone unlocks the mystery--god!" at that last word from saul, like answer, came a deep-mouthed boom of thunder from the west, after a sword of lightning sudden drawn then sheathed within the scabbard of the cloud, which now, spread wide, had blotted out the sun. a vagrant breath of tempest shook the trees, and the scared birds flew homeward to their nests. sergius remarked the stir of elements uneasily the more that he alone remarked it, saul, involved in his own thought, seeming unconscious of the outward world. the roman, groping in his secret mind vainly to find support of sympathy, faltered to feel himself thus fronted sole with danger he could neither ward nor shun, in presence yet forbidding sign of fear. in this distress he buoyed himself with words, cheer seeking in the sound of his own voice: "a merry place that in lucretius where this bold poet rallies jupiter- the whole olympian crew, jupiter most- in such a rattling vein of pleasantry, on his plenipotence with thunderbolts! lucretius, thou shouldst know, interpreter of epicurus is to roman minds; from whom we moderns learn the truth of things and generation of the universe. 'if jupiter,' lucretius sings and says, 'if jupiter it be, and other gods, 'that with terrific sound the temple shake, 'shake the resplendent temple of the skies, 'and launch the lightning whither each one wills, 'why is it that the strokes transfix not those 'guilty of some abominable crime, 'as these within their breast the flames inhale, 'instruction sharp to mortals--why not this, 'rather than that the man of no base thing 'to himself conscious should be wrapt about 'innocent in the flames, and suddenly 'with whirlwind and with fire from heaven consumed? 'also, why seek they out, the gods, for work 'like this, deserted spots, and waste their pains? 'or haply do they then just exercise 'their muscles, that thereby their arms be strong?'" sergius so far, from his lucretius, when the cloud, cloven, let out an arrowy flash, and, following soon, a muffled muttering threat prolonged, that ended in a ragged roar- as if, with angry rupture, violent hands atwain had torn the fabric of the sky. a shuddering pause, but again sergius, flying his poet's gibes at jupiter: "'why never from a sky clear everywhere 'does jupiter upon the lands hurl down 'his thunderbolts, and thunder-booms outpour? 'or, when the clouds have come, does he descend 'then into them that nigh at hand he thence 'the striking of his weapon may direct?'" one sheet of flame the bending welkin wrapt, and a broadside of thunder roared amain. with mortal strife against a mortal fear, hidden, the roman struggled, not in vain- as, faltering yet from his feigned gayety, he, in a forced voice almost grim, went on with that lucretian blasphemy of jove: "'why lofty places seeks out jupiter, 'and why most numerous vestiges find we 'traced of his fires on lonely mountain-tops?'" no farther--flash on flash and crash on crash, chaos of light and universe of sound!- for the wind roared a tumult like the sea which the gulfs filled between the thunder-peals. one mighty blast, frantic as battle-charge when, mad with last despair, ten thousand horse headlong into the hell at cannon-mouth plunge--such a blast rushed down the rent ravine whereby, along a shaggy side, the twain, now nigh the utmost mountain summit, climbed. the glacial air, as in a torrent rolled precipitous or vertical sheer down some dizzy height in cataract, so swift! unhorsed them both; but, crouching, man and steed, with one wise instinct instantly to all, which equalled all--supreme desire of life- they huddling crept transverse to where a rock on their right hand lifted its moveless brow and, safely founded in the mountain's base, made, leaning, an impendent roof which now proffered a dreadful shelter from the storm. hardly this refuge gained, the tempest, loosed, hailstones and coals of fire commingled, fell. the wind, with such a weight oppressed, went down, and, with the sinking wind, a water-spout, whirled roaring in its spiral from on high, those watchers saw peel off, with one steep swoop descending, a whole mountain-top and roll its shattered forest into the ravine suddenly thus with foaming torrent filled. therewith, as weary were the storm, a lull; lull only, for the welkin seemed to sink collapsed about them, and what was the sky became the nether atmosphere on fire, enrobing them with lightning fold on fold and thunder detonating at their ears. sergius, ere shut had seared his eyes the glare, saw a gigantic cedar nigh at hand, under a flaming wedge of thunderbolt, riven in parted halves from head to foot, fall burning down the frightful precipice. spite of himself, his terror turned to prayer: "o jupiter," he said, "it was not meant, what i spoke late against thy majesty! spare me yet this once more, and i a vow, a pledged rich vow, will in thy temple hang, then when i first shall safe reach rome, inscribed 'from sergius paulus to king jupiter, lord of the lightning and the thunderbolt.'" "'give ye unto jehovah,'" so at last, fragments of psalm responsive to the storm- as in antiphony of worship joined, he and the elements!--chanting, saul burst forth, at intervals, between the swells of sound, and varying to the tempest's varying phase, "'give ye unto jehovah, lo, all ye 'sons of the mighty, to jehovah give 'glory and strength; unto jehovah give 'the equal glory due unto his name; 'worship jehovah in fair robes of praise!'" "'deep calleth unto deep at the dread noise 'made by thy waterspouts. the earth, it shook 'and trembled; the foundations of the hills 'moved and were shaken for that he was wroth. 'the heavens moreover bowed he, and came down, 'he his pavilion round about him made 'dark waters and the thick clouds of the skies. "'jehovah also thundered in the heavens, 'and therein the most high gave forth his voice, 'hailstones and coals of fire! "'jehovah's voice 'in power! "'jehovah's voice in majesty! "'jehovah's voice is on the waters! god, 'the god of glory thunders! "'lo, his voice, 'jehovah's voice, the mighty cedar breaks, 'jehovah's voice divides the flames of fire! "'praise ye jehovah, heavens of heavens, and ye 'waters that be above the heavens, him praise! 'praise ye jehovah, from the earth beneath, 'thou fire, thou hail, thou snow, and vapors ye, 'thou, stormy wind that dost fulfil his word!'" so saul, in dialogue with the elements, that heard him, and responded voice for voice. sublimity into sublimity other, immeasurable heights more high, was lifted and transformed, the terror gone, gone or exalted to ennobling awe- in converse such, god, with his image man! the thunder, and the lightning, and the hail falling in power, the pomp of moving clouds, the sound of torrent and of cataract, the multitudinous orchestra of winds- trumpet and pipe, resounding cymbal loud, timbrel and harp, sackbut and psaltery- the majesty of cedars prostrate strewn in utmost adoration, the veiled sun, the kneeling heavens, face downward on the earth, in act of penitence as found unclean by the white-burning holiness of god- all this wild gesture of the elements and deep convulsion of the frame of things, appalling only erst, interpreted by interjections such from saul of phrase inspired, seemed from confusion and turmoil transposed and harmonized to an august service and symphony of prayer and praise and solemn liturgy of the universe. sergius was charmed insensibly to peace, and a calm human voice had subtle power to soothe to breathing rest the trembling steeds. and now began the cadence of the storm; lifted the sky was from the burdened earth, the lightnings flashed less imminent, less thick. the thunder dulled his stroke, retired to far and farther in the muffling firmament, the hail ceased falling in a fall of rain, through which at last the low descending sun smiled in a rainbow on the opposite cloud. "god's sign," said saul, "his seal of promise set oft on the clouds of heaven when storm is past, in radiant curve of blended colors fair, that he with flood no more will drown the world." therewith they got them to their path again, and, forward hastening, on the farther slope of hermon overpassed, were met by some returning of their escort companies who sought their laggard masters left behind. these had crossed earlier, and, before the storm, housed them in covert, where all now with joy welcomed their chiefs from threatened scath escaped. they slept that night beneath a starry sky fair as if wrinkled never by a frown; to-morrow they would see that paradise, renowned damascus, pearl of all the east. this their sleep filled with dream of things to be, until the morning breaking radiant made the desert seem to blossom as the rose wherein damascus sat an oasis. book xv. saul and jesus. the scene of the poem changes, being transferred to paradise. here a group composed of those who had come to their death by the hands of saul assemble, privileged by special grace to witness from their celestial station the happy overthrow and conversion of their late persecutor. sergius applies his interpretation of the occurrence, and saul finishes his journey on foot, blind, led by the hand into damascus. saul and jesus. without the limits of this earthly sphere, immeasurable distances beyond the region of the utmost fixéd stars, nay, high above all height, transcending space, transcending time, subsists a different world, invisible, inapprehensible to whatsoever power of human sense, all unimaginable even--so far removed from aught that ever we on earth have seen, or heard, or felt, or known, or guessed. believed in only, and not otherwise than to the vision of meek faith revealed (though indefeasible inheritance reserved for her fruition after death), yet is that world unknown substantial more than all this solid-seeming universe of matter round about us that assaults our senses daily with its imminence, its impact, as if nothing else were real! but till the destined moment, we must deem, much more, must speak, of that transcendent world, and of our human brethren there insphered, in figure borrowed of our mortal state. while those things nigh damascus so befell, and now the night was almost waned to morn, its different morning in that different world dawned to the saints forever summering there in bliss and glory with their glorious lord. morning in the celestial paradise is not as morning here, new-springing day crescent the same out of eclipsing night: no night is there, and therefore no vicissitude of dark and bright to separate the days. yet condescends our father to their frame, still finite though immortal, still in need of changes to diversify their state, and punctuate into periods the smooth lapse, else cloying with prolonged beatitude, of that eternal dateless life serene lived by the happy souls in paradise; our father condescends and gives them days and days, with difference of each from each, that they may reckon up and date their bliss; no night is there, but without night a morn. morning in paradise is perfect light ineffably more fair become to-day than yesterday, forever, through more fair disclosure, dawn on dawn, eternally made of the glory of the face of him in whom to his belovéd god still shines. morn such had risen once more in paradise, when there a group elect together drawn, wearing a brow of expectation each, stood on a flowery hill enringed around to be almost an island with a loop of river, the river of life, that lucent flowed mirroring ranks of trees along its banks ruddy or gold in gleams of fruitage seen glimpsing against the rich green of their leaves- here stood a chosen group who waited now tidings a messenger to come should bring. these were those all who lately on the earth had suffered death for jesus' sake through saul- all saving stephen; he, at point of dawn that morning, had been summoned by his lord to bear from him some embassy of grace. the man born blind was there whom jesus healed to double seeing, seeing of the soul, as of the body, and whom not the threat of stripes, of stones, and not the blandishment of gentle words from lips with power of death could bribe to live at cost of least unfaith toward his light-giver and redeemer lord- he, and a little company besides, women with men, who like him lightly recked of loss but for a moment then and there compared with that far more exceeding weight of glory now, in over-recompense, forever and forever sealed their own. this little group, beyond their happy wont beatified with hope that heavenly morn, soon greet one coming whose irradiate brow bespeaks him fresh from audience with the king; stephen it was, whose earthly-shining face was shadow to the brightness now it wore. the martyr to his fellow-martyrs brought glad tidings; they were all that day to see break forth in power the glory of the lord. "saul," stephen said, "still breathes his threatening out and slaughter aimed against the church of christ; he journeys to damascus in this mind. but the lord christ will meet him in the way and overthrow him with resistless light. ours is to tarry on this pleasant hill of prospect, and, hence gazing, all behold, tasting a sweet revenge of paradise, to see our prayers fulfilled, in saul become from persecutor brother well-beloved, and builder from destroyer of the church." so these there sat them down upon the mount. here, gaze turned ever earthward, they in talk of earthly things that still were dear to them consumed the happy heavenly hours, until, to those their native syrian climes, drew nigh noontide; then, in a new theophany, the transit of a shadow!--seldom seen there where was neither sun, nor moon, nor star, but all was equal universal light- came sudden notice to their eyes to watch the messianic dread procession forth, christ in the majesty of solitude, swifter than meteor's fall, from paradise. he, purposed not to slay, only cast down saul from the top of his presumptuous pride, and break him from his disobedient will, would not in his essential glory meet his creature, lest he be abolished quite, but dimmed himself with splendor which, more bright than the supreme effulgence of the sun at mid-day in a crystal firmament, fixed, but more vivid than the fleeting flash of lightning when its beam burns most intense, was splendor yet of ray less luminous than the accustomed radiance of his face, and showed as cloud against that shining sky. for, in that unimaginable world of perfect, purged from sin and sin's defect, the senses of the blest inhabitants, their organs and their faculties, are all inured to bear with ease, with pleasure bear, continuance and intensity of light that mortal frames like ours would quite consume. those there from light need neither change nor rest, their proper substance is illuminate, and their bliss is to bathe themselves in light, and light, more light, drunk in at every pore from the bright omnipresence of the lord, revealed each day brighter forevermore, makes their eternal life eternal joy. but on this day select of many days, the happy people all of paradise saw jesus as a darkness of less light, a glancing shadow, pass from out their sphere- the most unweeting whither or why he went; but those knew who kept vigil on the mount. these had their sense for sight and sound that day exalted to seraphic keen and clear beyond the glorious wont of paradise; while a circumfluous ether interfused for their behoof between where thus they stood and where they earthward looked, a subtile air, a discontinuous element rare like space, was now such vehicle, so voluble, for lightest appulse to both eye and ear supernal, thrice sevenfold refined, as made seem nigh things seen or heard, however far. fixed to behold and hearken thus at ease, they saw afar two pilgrim companies, where, near damascus, these a shady tuft of grove or thicket, in the arid waste of burning sand, at noontide hour had found, for rest and coolness ere their goal they gained. those pilgrims just in act, as seemed, to start anew upon the way for their last stage of going, one, well recognized for saul- remounted not from halt, but some few steps leading his horse with bridle-rein remiss along his destined path--comrade beside, was by this comrade asked, as in discourse after suspense renewed: "how was it, then, through what offence, that he deserved his death? since atheist not, and not idolater, nor yet of those samaritan heretics, wherein did stephen fail of loyalty?" "traitor was he," said saul, "to our chief hope, he taught that jesus nazarene was christ; nay, that impostor, he, blaspheming, made coequal partner of the eternal throne and solitary majesty of god; worst of idolatry such blasphemy! jesus of nazareth anathema!" almost, at this, a shudder of horror ran chill through the spiritual pure corporeal frames wherein were housed those blessed essences, hearing from earth such words in paradise! they then considered at what cost were bought perpetual consciousness of things terrene! watched they meanwhile that cloud of glory go darkened wherein the lord of light was hid. incredibly though swift its far descent, yet answerably swift their vision was, as swift likewise the motion of their mind; and so they plainly saw how, by degrees, what shadow was, in the celestial sphere, became a growing brightness as it went, until, within the bounds of sunshine come, that mild beclouded glory, still unchanged, paled with its bright the brilliance of the sun. hardly those watchers dare keep looking, pierced with a redeemed fine sympathy for saul, and marvelling, "such light can he bear and live?" to saul himself no interval there seemed; instant, with his anathema, down smote that awful light on him, and straight to earth prostrate as dead he fell, yet heard a voice, awful not less, speak twice his name, "saul, saul," and, "wherefore dost thou persecute me?" ask. then further these deep searching words to him: "hard findst it thou to kick against the pricks!" "who art thou, lord?" came trembling forth from saul, whereby their brother yet alive those knew. "jesus i am, jesus of nazareth, the crucified, whom thou dost persecute," they heard messiah say, and thrilled with joy of gratitude to feel afresh that he suffered when any suffered for his sake, and bled in wounds that made his brethren bleed, joining himself to them, by fellowship of passion, they in him and he in them, the living members with the living head mysteriously incorporate in one. thus a sweet thrill of grateful love to him, their saviour, trembled in those heavenly breasts, while in suspense of balanced hope and fear- the fear but such as made the hope more bliss- they waited what their brother next would say. but in the prostrate man, at such reply, felt from amidst that imminent light descend, "i jesus am whom thou dost persecute," thought following thought, a fleet succession, flew the boundless blank astonishment was brief which, as with wing world-wide of hurricane, shadowy, his mind bewildering overswept. 'such power of splendor his, the nazarene's! jesus had launched that thunderbolt of light! the lord of glory then the crucified!' the momentary hurricane was past, but passing it had overturned the world. saul vividly saw stephen as that day he shone shekinah in the temple court effulgent with a milder light like this; 'and this was that which stephen prophesied! how madly had he kicked against the pricks!' next, stephen martyr stood before his eyes uplifting holy hands to heaven in prayer, on poise for that translation to his lord wherein his, saul's, the murderer's part had been! and rachel flashed in vision on his mind, pathetically beautiful, once more, as on that moonlit eve at bethany! the sisters there, and lazarus--with ruth exalted in her mother-majesty! hirani, then, in his simplicity perplexed before the sanhedrim, but borne in ecstasy above them far away, thence looking down upon them all, a light fair on his forehead like the light of stars; all these things in his past, with many more- instant, at sudden summons of his mind, to swear against him his own blasphemy- shot through saul's spirit, as the lightning leaps, rapid, one leap, from end to end of heaven. 'this dreadful splendor was not vengeance all, it had not slain him, he was thinking still! a grace was in the glory, oh, how fair!' the features of a face began to dawn upon him in the darkness of that light; as the sun shineth in his strength, it shone, an awful meekness mild with majesty! the outward light light to his soul became- a light of knowledge of the glory of god to saul, seen in the face of jesus christ! 'it would be freedom to serve such a lord!' the passion of rebellion all was gone, a passion of obedience in its place; the will that hated had dissolved away, and will no more was left, but only love. this love which was obedience spoke and asked, "lord jesus, what wilt thou have me to do?" the brightness of the father's glory said: "rise thou, and stand upon thy feet, for i have to this end appeared to thee, to make thee minister and witness both of what this day thou hast beheld and of those things wherein i after will appear to thee, delivering thee from jewish enemies and from the gentiles unto whom i now send thee, their eyes to unseal and them to turn from darkness unto light, and from the power of satan unto god, that they of sins forgiveness may receive, and heirs become among those sanctified through faith in me." saul heard, and in his heart of hearts obeyed; and his whole life thenceforth obedience was- whereof the greater song remains to sing, if so be god vouchsafe such grace to me. but jesus to his servant further said, "hence now into damascus city go; there fully shall be shown thee all thy way." a way indeed stain-traced in blood and tears, as saul foresaw to rachel; but in tears and blood his own thereafter to the end, even to the end of that apostleship. yet glorious end! already then afar will kindle the dark earth with many a ray, never to be extinguished, of heaven's light caught from the torch that this world-wandering man, this flying angel fledged with wingéd feet tireless, this heart of love unquenchable, has borne abroad, when, now the good fight fought, finished his course, the faith full kept, he, last, with aged eagle eyes strained forward, sees the crown of righteousness laid up for him which christ, the righteous judge, will give him then, give him in that forever-imminent day- nor him alone, as his vicarious soul swells to remember, but all them likewise who shall have loved the appearing of the lord. the transit of a thought athwart the brain- what computation for such speed in flight! what reckoning of the number of the thoughts that in an individual instant will chase one another through a human mind in never-sundered continuity of change! the measureless diameters of being that a mortal man may cross from one pulse to another of the blood! how, in the twinkling of an eye, become the spirit its own polar opposite! between his lord's reply, "i jesus am," and his own further question instant asked, "lord jesus, what wilt thou have me to do?" that prostrate proud young hebrew penitent the utmost stretch of longitude traversed that can divide two different selves in man- he from rebellious to obedient passed, blasphemer was adoring worshipper, the pharisee was christian, saul was paul. at witness of the wondrous change, the joy, the grateful joy, within those friendly minds above who saw it, borne to ecstasy of gladness, was triumphal, and broke forth in singing such as heard in paradise: "glory to god, and to our saviour lord, for one more captive to the heavenly thrall; for one more human soul to heaven reclaimed from hell, and star set in christ's diadem! for one more witness, an apostle new, like angel flying through mid-heaven, to fly and wing the gospel wide throughout the world! thanks to thee, christ, for that his name is saul!" heard was this quiring song afar, and heaven her other joy suspended at the sound: and every echoing hill of paradise, each grove, each grotto, every fountain-side, with every bank of river, every glen, and every bowery, flowery wide champaign where angels bask in bliss, took up the strain and rang it swelling to the highest heaven; while harpers harped it to their harps, and palms were rhythmic waved in music to the eye, and the trees clapped their hands, and god was pleased. so they in paradise, who saw and heard truly; saul's fellow-pilgrims nigh at hand vacantly wondered, who, though they the light beheld, and heard the voice speak, missed the sense. sergius, recovered from his first surprise and terror, mused within himself, and found, remembering words from saul against the gods, easy solution of the mystery; 'pan roared at him from out the copse-wood nigh, with wholesome punishment of fear infused avenging his despised divinity; while lord apollo twanged his silver bow and shot at him a shaft of blinding light; the gods of right are wroth to be reviled!' saul from the ground arose a sightless man; the glory that not slew had blinded him. his steed he would not mount again to ride, but chose, humbly, and guided by the hand, footing to go among his followers. who, that blithe morning, as the morning blithe, forth for damascus from jerusalem rode breathing threat and slaughter quenchless sworn against the church of jesus nazarene, entered the city walking, led and blind, bondslave thenceforth to the one worthy name. the end. transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error. transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. * * * * * the epic of paul william cleaver wilkinson _author of "the epic of saul"_ funk & wagnalls company new york and london 1898 copyright, 1897, by funk & wagnalls company [registered at stationers' hall, london, england] printed in the united states of america contents. page book i. plot and counterplot 9 book ii. paul and gamaliel 43 book iii. shimei and the chiliarch 77 book iv. by night for cæsarea 115 book v. shimei and young stephen 147 book vi. paul before felix 167 book vii. "to cæsar" 193 book viii. shimei before julius 227 book ix. paul and young stephen 257 book x. re-embarked 291 book xi. the last of shimei 315 book xii. paul and krishna 339 book xiii. shipwreck 363 book xiv. mary magdalene 395 book xv. young stephen and felix 425 book xvi. interlude of krishna 453 book xvii. the story of the cross 485 book xviii. krishna 507 book xix. baptism of krishna 537 book xx. euthanasy 569 book xxi. arrival 597 book xxii. drusilla and nero 625 book xxiii. nero and simon 661 book xxiv. the end 691 the epic of paul. the action of the epic of paul begins with that conspiracy formed at jerusalem against the life of the apostle which in the sequel led to a prolonged suspension of his free missionary career. it embraces the incidents of his removal from jerusalem to cæsarea, of his imprisonment at the latter place, of his journey to rome for trial before cæsar, and of his final martyrdom. the design of the poem as a whole is to present, through conduct on paul's part and through speech from him, a living portrait of the man that he was, together with a reflex of his most central and most characteristic teaching. proem. paul, the new man, retrieved from perished saul, unequalled good and fair, from such unfair, such evil, orient, miracle unguessed!- both what himself he was and what he taught- this marvel in meet words to fashion forth and make it live an image to the mind forever, blooming in celestial youth, were well despair to purer power than mine; help me thou, author of the miracle! book i. plot and counterplot. paul is arraigned before the sanhedrim at jerusalem. he had the day preceding been murderously set upon by a jewish mob, from whose hands he was with difficulty rescued by a roman officer, to be held as a prisoner supposed of infamous character. while paul is thus held, a conspiracy of desperate jews is formed by shimei against his life. this conspiracy is fortunately discovered and exposed by stephen, a young nephew of the apostle, acting at the instance of his mother rachel, paul's sister, and under the advice of gamaliel, paul's old teacher. the epic of paul. plot and counterplot. the sanhedrim once more, with saul arraigned, saul now no longer, and no longer young, paul his changed name, to note his nature changed. confronting frown on him, a prisoner, paul's colleagues of the days when he was saul. shimei, with smile, or scowl, uncertain which, hatred and pleasure both at once expressed, pleasure of hatred gratified, with more hatred than could be wholly gratified- his pristine aspect worse and worse deformed. sore vexed at heart were all the sanhedrim that now the victim of their wished despite- thrice the more hated as erst so beloved, christian apostate the once zealot jew!- stood there but doubtfully within their power; the roman sway had cited him--and them. for, yesterday, paul in the temple-court had with fierce violence been set upon by jews who thought the holy place profaned through his unlawful bringing thither in of gentile greeks--had there been set upon and thence dragged forth with blows that purposed death. but, as when stephen suffered, so again now intervened the roman, and this time forbade the turbulence and rescued paul- rescued, but double-bound his hands with chains. demanding then who was the prisoner, and what his crime, and nothing learning clear amid the hubbub loud of various charge, the roman chiliarch was conducting paul into the castle, by the soldiers borne- hardly so wrested from the eager hands of those enraged who thirsted for his blood, and rent the air crying, "away with him!"- when calmly to his captor-savior, he addressed himself and asked, "may i to thee a few words speak?" "greek understandest thou?" exclaimed the roman. "art thou then not he, not that egyptian, who but late stirred up sedition, and into the wilderness led out a company four thousand strong of the assassins?" "i a hebrew am," said paul, "of tarsus in cilicia, of no mean city citizen. let me, i pray thee, speak unto the multitude." permitted, paul, upon the castle stairs standing, stretched forth his hand in manacles unto the tumult surging at his feet, and, a great silence fallen upon those waves, spoke in the hebrew tongue to them and said: "brethren and fathers, my defence hear ye." (the silence deepened at the hebrew words.) "a jew am i, who, though in tarsus born, was in this city bred and at the feet of that gamaliel taught the ancestral law with every scruple of severity, burning in zeal for god, as now do ye. and i this way hunted unto the death, sparing from chains and from imprisonment nor man nor woman. this will the high priest witness, and all the jewish eldership. by these commissioned, to damascus i journeyed, that, thence even, i might hither bring for punishment disciples of the way. and lo, as, journeying, nigh damascus now i drew, at noonday round about me shone suddenly a great light from heaven. to earth prostrate i fell, and heard a voice that said, 'saul, saul, why art thou persecuting me?' 'thou, thou--who art thou, lord?' i said. and he: 'jesus i am, jesus of nazareth, whom thou art persecuting.' those with me beheld indeed the light, but to the voice that spake to me were deaf. and i then said, 'what wilt thou, lord, that i should do?' 'arise,' said he, 'and on into damascus go; what thou must do shall there to thee be told.' blind-smitten with the glory of the light, into damascus guided by the hand i came. "there, ananias, a devout observer of the law, of good renown with all the hebrew damascenes, found me. i felt him, though i saw him not, as he paused standing there before me, and these words spake: 'brother saul, receive thy sight.' and i, that selfsame hour my sight receiving, fixed my eyes on ananias, when he said: 'the god of our forefathers hath of thee made choice his will to know and to behold the righteous one and from his mouth a voice to hear. for, witness shalt thou be for him to all men of the things thou hast beheld and heard. and now why lingerest thou? arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins, calling upon his name.' "thereafter i, unto jerusalem returned, and here within the temple praying, into trance passed, and beheld him, as to me he said: 'haste, from jerusalem to go make speed, for witness will they not from thee receive concerning me.' 'but, lord,' said i, 'they know themselves how i, of all men i, imprisoned and scourged from synagogue to synagogue them that on thee believed. and when was shed thy martyr stephen's blood, i, also i, stood near, consenting, and their garments kept who slew him.' but the lord to me replied: 'depart, for i will send thee forth far hence in mission to the gentiles--" to this word the throng to paul gave patient ear, but now- at sign and instigation, ambushed erst in waiting for the moment meet to spring, and springing pregnant from the ready wit of shimei, when that hateful hint was heard of mission to the gentiles through a jew- rose an uproar of voices from the crowd, as when winds mingle sea and sky in storm. "away with such a fellow from the earth!" they cried; "it is not fit that he should live." a wild scene, for with outcry wild was mixed wild gesture; the whole madding multitude rent off their raiment, and into the air dust flung in cloud as where a whirlwind roars. astonished stood the chiliarch at the sight, nor doubted that some monster was the man against whom such a storm of clamor raged. he bade bring paul within the castle, there bade scourge him that he might his crime confess. already they had bound him for the thongs, when paul to the centurion standing by said, "is it lawful for you then to scourge a man that is a roman--uncondemned?" this the centurion hearing, straightway he went to the chiliarch and abrupt exclaimed: "what is it thou art on the point to do? for this man is a roman." then to paul hastens the chiliarch and, perturbed, inquires: "tell me, art thou a roman?" "yea," said paul. surprised, incredulous half, the chiliarch cried: "i with an ample sum that franchise bought." "but i," calmly said paul, "was thereto born." at that word from their prisoner, the men who ready round him stood the lash to ply instantly vanished, and the chiliarch too was panic-stricken--now in doubt no more that paul a roman was, whom he had bound for stripes, against a law greater than he, nay, sacred as the sacred majesty itself of the republic--ancient name disguising empire!--law forbidding stripes on any flesh that roman title owned. paul slept, in roman chains, the christian's sleep, that night, but ill at ease the chiliarch tossed in troubled slumbers. he, with early morn, to council called the jewish sanhedrim, set paul unbound before them, and so sought the truth to know of what on him was charged. with calmly steadfast eye paul faced his foes, but shimei smiled in confidence of guile; whatever the accused might seek to say, affront should meet him and torment his pride. paul, his fixed eyes pointing his moveless aim full in the faces of the elders, said: "brethren, in all good conscience have i lived in loyalty toward god unto this day." on such a claim from such a prisoner, angry the high priest ananias cried, "smite him upon the mouth!" to those near by. paul flamed in answering righteous wrath, and said, flashing a lightning from his eyes on him: "smite thee shall god, thou whited wall! and thou, sittest thou here to judge me by the law, and, the law breaking, biddest me be smitten?" the bolted word had flown and found its mark, and paul stood quivering with the stern recoil. but the bystanders, tools of shimei, in chorus of well-simulated zeal of reverence toward authority, cried out: "the high priest, then, of god revilest thou?" tempting the outraged man to further vent volcanic of resentment at his wrong. but paul had tutored down his rebel will; meekly he said: "brethren, i did not know that he the high priest was, for it is writ, 'of one that rules thy people speak not ill.'" through such self-recollection and self-rule, paul, master of himself once more become, became likewise master of circumstance. marking that pharisee and sadducee made up the assembly, he, with prudent choice, as pharisee to pharisee appealed. "brethren," he cried, "a pharisee am i, from pharisees descended; for the hope and resurrection of the dead it is that i this day am judged." discord hereon arose of pharisee with sadducee, which atwain rent the whole assembly there. for sadducee no resurrection owned, no angel, and no spirit; pharisee these all confessed. a hideous clamor grew, and certain scribes, who with the pharisees sided, rose and, contending stoutly, said: "no evil find we in this man; and if, and if so be indeed, there hath to him a spirit spoken, or an angel--" thus a hot dissension waxing, and afraid become the chiliarch lest his prisoner be in sunder torn, the soldiery he sent to pluck him from amidst the wrangling crowd, and lodge him in the castle. the next night the lord stood in theophany by paul, and said: "be of good cheer; as thou of me hast witnessed in jerusalem, so must thou also yet witness in rome." and paul was of good cheer in glad obedience, and slept a sleep so leavened with happy dream. but night-long lonely vigil shimei kept, stung from repose to study of revenge. at dawn, his hatch of hell, quick by the heat of brooding hatred in that patient breast, was ready to come forth and stalk abroad. 'death to apostate saul!' his public word, 'death to that hated man!' was shimei's thought. thought not so much, as law to him of thought, which formed and fixed the habit of the mind; his thought was simply, 'how to get paul slain,' his feeling was a hatred bent to slay; now, bent to slay; once, but to torture bent. this, partly because hatred is like love herein, that it, by only being, grows- until, at last, usurping quite the man, it overgrows him like a polypus; and partly because plot and act of hate sting to find hateful more the hated one, hate against whom is so self-justified. but shimei's hate of paul, antipathy at first, deep, primal, irreversible, a doom born in him when himself was born, and thence--from that time forth when in the hall of council saul disdained and flouted him- a conscious, fostered, festering grudge become- this hate, now grown by but persisting long, and much more grown through long self-exercise, had yet, beyond the private argument, its public ground of warrant for itself. mocker though shimei was, not less was he, to his full measure of sincerity, sincerely in his mockery a jew; his nation's scorn of jesus was his scorn, and who loved jesus for that cause he hated. buoyed and supported by the spirit rife, the common conscience, of his countrymen, nay, conscious of approval and acclaim without him, as of genius blithe within him, prompt to indirection and deceit, shimei, far more than clear and confident, felt also something of the fowler's joy in cunning, as for paul his toils he spread. all this; yet all was not enough to fire the hate that burned sevenfold in shimei's breast. with all, there was an alien element infused, tartarean fuelling from beneath, a breath of hell to blow his hate so hot. no merely human hatred crucified the lord of glory and the lord of love! no merely human hatred followed paul on his angelic errand round the world, with scourge, with ambush, with imprisonment, and mouth agape to drink that holy blood! forty fanatic jews were quickly found to bind themselves by a religious oath of dreadful imprecation on their heads neither to eat nor drink till paul was slain. prompt chance to slay him shimei promised them; he would procure that, on the morrow morn, the chiliarch should desire to quit his doubt concerning his strange prisoner, by one more test of his cause before the sanhedrim. then, while from the near tower antonia, saul at leisure to their council-hall was brought, so large a number of sworn arms in league might easily, with rash violence, breach their way to him amid his guard of soldiery, and, far too suddenly for these to fend, spill his life-blood like water on the ground- whence could not all the power of rome again gather it up to store his veins withal. so shimei plotted, with the guile of hate; but, with a wiser guile, the guile of love, there counterplotted a true heart for paul. rachel that ministry of grace had plied for ruth by saul imprisoned, and for those of bethany bound with her--where, meanwhile, she for ruth's children happy kept their home- month after month, with inexhaustible sweet patience and bright heart of hope and brave, until, the soul of persecution slain in saul converted, they were all let go beneath their wonted roofs at peace to dwell; rachel first welcoming ruth safe home once more, and ruth then welcoming rachel still to bide. but lazarus, toward rachel, to and fro daily seen moving, with that punctual truth to tryst so beautiful, more beautiful in her who was herself so beautiful, whose every step, look, gesture, and least speech, or very silence, seemed a benison- toward rachel, such beheld--a crescent dawn brightening upon him to the perfect day, apocalypse of lovely--lazarus, in secret, more and more felt his heart drawn, through all the dreaming hours he passed in prison. released at last, he told his heart to her, and rachel learned to yield him love for love; so, saul consenting gladly, they were wed. the eldest-born of rachel now was grown a stripling youth, in face and person fair, fair spoken, with a winning gift of grace in manner, and a conscious innocence, becoming conscious virtue, written free in legend over all his lineaments, where beamed likewise a bright intelligence, alert, beyond such years, with exercise; for rachel's had been long a widow's child, and long that widow's only, as her first. stephen they had named their boy--for memory. it still was dark, deep dark before the dawn, when rachel rose from wrestling sleepless dream to rouse her son from happy dreamless sleep. "stephen," said she, "my son, my heart divines danger nigh imminent for one we love." "but, mother," said the son, "mine uncle paul, if him thou meanest, is safe in citadel. those romans, heathen though they be, and void of pity as the nether millstone is, are yet in their hard way, and heathen, just. they have the power, as they have shown the will, to keep thy brother hedged from hebrew hate." "from hebrew hate, but not from hellish guile," rachel replied; "and hellish guile, my son, thy mother's heart, quickened with sisterhood, and, from some sad experience of the world, suspicious--nay, perhaps, through deep divine persuasion by the holy spirit wrought, intuitive of the future, and on things else hidden, inly privileged to look- yea, hellish guile, my heart, somehow advised, insists and still insists she knows, she feels, this hour at work against my brother saul. haste, get thee quickly to gamaliel- brief his sleep is, and he will be awake, for, with his gathering years, now nigh five score, lighter and lighter grow his slumbers, ever broken and scattered by the first cockcrow- greet him from me with worship as beseems, and, telling him my fears, entreat to know if aught that touches his old pupil saul, haply an issue from the brooding brain of shimei to saul's hurt, have reached his ear. be wise, be wary, stephen, whet thy sense, fail not to see or hear whatever sign glimpses or whispers, smallest hint that may concern the safety of thine uncle saul. how knowest thou but thy scouting walk this morn shall rescue to the world, in need so deep, yet many a year of that apostleship? besides, with such a sun quenched from our sky, what then were day prolonged but night to us? go, and thy mother here meanwhile will pray: 'lord, speed my son, make him discreet and brave!'" brave and discreet the boy had need to be; for, as he went, amid the rear-guard dense of darkness undispersed before the dawn, steering his flying steps along the street, and watching wary, with tense eye and ear, to every quarter of the dim dumb world- a sudden thwarting ray that disappeared! he paused on tiptoe, leaning forward, stood one instant, with his hand behind his ear, to listen, while his noisy heart he hushed; and heard, yea, footsteps, with a muffled sound of human voices sibilant and hoarse. what meant it? nothing, doubtless, yet well were to be unseen, and see--if see he might- and hear unheard, until his way were sure. with supple swift insinuation, he slipped him beneath the slack ungathered length of a chance-left rolled tent-cloth at his feet. two men--one bore a lantern, darkened deep behind the outer garment that he wore- drew nigh, and stephen held his breath to hear the name of saul hissed out between the twain. slow was their gait, and ever and anon, halting, they checked their words, and seemed to list, as if for comrades lingering yet behind. they against stephen halted thus, and he lay breathlessly awaiting what might fall. first having paused, as hearkening from afar- to naught but silence--the two men sat down upon that roll of tent-cloth, thus at ease to rest them, till the waited-for appeared. at stephen's very ear, he in duress and forced to hear them, there those two ill men, complotters in the plot to murder paul, unfolded in free converse all their scheme. fiercely the listening boy forbade to cry the aching heart of eagerness in him, that almost rived with its desire of vent. fear for himself could not have held him mute; horror and hatred of that wickedness swelled swiftly in his breast, so huge and hard, there must have sprung from out his lips a cry, sharp like an arrow cleaving from its string, had not great love been instant, stronger yet, binding his heart to burst not, and be dumb. so there he lay as dead, so deathlike still, until at length--the waited-for come up- they all went forward thence their purposed way. then stephen lithely to his feet upsprung and, sped as with his anguish, his disdain, his indignation, to be silent--force pent up in him from all escape but speed- swift, like the roe upon the mountains, ran to find gamaliel, where that ancient sage sat on his dewy roof expecting morn. "rachel my mother sends gamaliel hail, and bids me haste to bring thee instant word!" so stephen, with quick-beating heart that broke his words to pulses of sobbed sound, began: "she says--but i, in hither coming, learned more than my mother charged me with to thee. lo, wicked men of our own nation plot this day to shed my mother's brother's blood. they will desire the roman to send down mine uncle saul before the sanhedrim, to be by these examined once again; but they will set upon him while he comes, and so, or ever he can rescued be, make of mine uncle saul a bloody corpse. o rabbi, master of mine uncle saul, beseech thee, speak, bid me, what must i do?" the old man bent upon the boy his brow, and, slowly rousing without motion, said: "the world grows gray in wickedness, my son; what the lord god of all intends, who knows? most wise is he, but deep, in many ways, past human finding out. thine uncle saul is hated for himself by shimei yet more than for his cause. and shimei is doubtless the artificer of this." with inward adjuration then, a hand uplifted as in gesture to repel, gamaliel deeply added, "o my soul, into the secret of such man come not!" wherewith the aged tremulous lips were mute, though mutely moving still, as if the words said themselves over, again and yet again, within him, of that ancient fending spell. stephen, well-schooled in awe of the hoar head, stood an uneasy instant silent, then yielded to his untamable desire of action and impatience of delay. "o rabban," he importunately cried, "but thy young servant's soul already god into the secret of this man has brought- doubtless to baffle him--knew i but how!" "yea, verily, stephen; also that might chance," gamaliel answered with benignity; he almost let grave admiration breathe, through softly-lighted look and gentle tone, a kind of benediction on the boy, as he, unhastened, felt the youthful haste that made the stripling stephen beautiful; "for david was a shepherd lad, when he was chosen of god to lay goliath low. who knows but thou shalt save thine uncle saul? i loved him long ago--when thou wast not; he went his way, and i abode in mine, ways widely parting, but i love him still. and i would see him yet before i die. tell him, gamaliel would see saul once more. perhaps, perhaps, i might dissuade him yet. thine uncle, lad, was ever from a youth headstrong to think his thought and will his will. no man might bend him from his own fixed bent; if any man, then i; he honored me, and hearkened reason from gamaliel's lips. yea, send saul hither, i would prove if i have not still left some saving power for him." gamaliel spoke half as from reverie, lapsed in oblivion of the present need. "rabban gamaliel," bold upspoke the boy, "thy saving power i pray thee now put forth to pluck mine uncle from the jaws of death. i promise gladly then to bring thee saul, if so i may, when, by thy counsel, i have set him safe from those that seek his blood. these have their mouth agape already now, their throat an open sepulcher for him. i see, i see them spring upon their prey- o master, master, must he die like this?" the passionate pleading boy dropped on his knees, and the knees clasped of the thus roused old man. "yea, i remember," now gamaliel spoke; "weep not, my boy, but haste, my bidding do." therewith gamaliel clapped his aged hands, when instantly a servant to his call stood on the roof with, "master, here am i." "an inkhorn and a pen, with parchment; speed!" shot from gamaliel's lips, so short, so sharp with instance, that the man not went, but flew. "make thou a table of my knees, and write," gamaliel to forestalling stephen said; "write: 'i, gamaliel, send this lad to thee; i know him; he will tell thee what concerns thy hearing; thou canst trust him all in all.' there, so is well; now superscribe it fair: 'to the chief captain of antonia.' run, carry this--stay, i must sign it first with mine own hand for certainty to him. up, haste thee to the castle, ask for saul, him tell what thou hast learned, and show him this; saul will to the chief captain get thee brought, and thou hereby shalt win believing heed. no thanks, and no farewell, but thy feet wing!" so sped, but of his own heart better sped, stephen quick got him to the castle gate, where, with gamaliel's seal displayed--his truth, patent in face and voice, admitting him- he gained prompt privilege of speech with paul. paul heard the tidings that his nephew brought and, summoning a centurion, said to him: "pray thee, to the chief captain take this youth; he has a matter for his private ear." so the centurion, taking stephen, went to the chief captain, and thus spoke to him: "the prisoner paul bade me to him and asked that i would bring this youth to thee, who has a certain matter he would tell thee of." the chiliarch looked at stephen glowing there before him in the beauty of his youth, a beauty that was more than beauty now, touched and illumined into nobleness by the pure ardor of the soul within kindling upon the face in flames of zeal- the roman, on the boy ennobled so feasting his eye a moment in fixed gaze, caught the contagion of that nobleness. a waft perhaps of reminiscence waked blew soft and warm upon his heart from rome; clear in the mirror of the hebrew boy shining in sudden apparition so, fairer than fountain of bandusia, there swam perhaps an image to the eye of that stern roman father, dear with home; perhaps he thought of a young claudius, who, far away beneath italian skies, was blooming crescent in a grace like that, his father exile in jerusalem! however wrought on, claudius lysias, touched somehow to a mood of gentleness, took stephen by the hand and went with him apart a little into privacy, and said: "and now, my pretty hebrew lad, what matter is it thou hast hither brought?" "o, sir," said stephen, with half-downcast face of beautifying shame that he must bear such witness unto roman against jew, "there are some israelites not of israel; pray thee, judge not my race by this that i must tell thee of my wicked countrymen. forty vile men have in jerusalem, by one the vilest who knows all the vile, been found to bind themselves by oath in league together all, under a dreadful curse, neither to eat nor drink, till they the best, the noblest, of their countrymen have slain thy prisoner paul. these presently will ask, or others speaking for them will--high climbs, sir, and wide spreads, this foul conspiracy of evil against good, among the jews- they soon will ask that thou to-morrow bring thy prisoner before the sanhedrim as of his cause to certify thyself. but, while he comes, those base complotters will, lying in wait for this, upon him fall too quickly for the soldiers to forefend, and slay him as beneath thy very eyes. o, sir, do not thou give them their desire." "thou lookest truth, my boy," the chiliarch said; "but a mad bloody plot thou warnest me of. thou knowest these things? but how these things knowest thou? and how shall _i_ know that thou knowest these things? how, too, that thou speakest truly as thou knowest?' "my mother is paul's sister," stephen said, "and she, all in her secret heart, divined some mischief that impended over him, and bade me hasten to the wise and good gamaliel, counsellor to her and all, and ask if he knew aught, or aught advised, that touched the safety of her brother; he was once gamaliel's pupil well-beloved. it came to pass, as i devoured my way through the deep dark before the earliest dawn, whetted to heed whatever might be sign of import to the purpose i would serve, that a low noise of voices, and a ray, shot, so it after proved, athwart the night from out a lantern, for an instant bare, that some one carried underneath his robe, and, by pure hap, or haply for a hint from far to comrade, or to light his course, let shine that moment through the parted folds- it chanced, i say, that such a sudden sign- for sign i found it--made me haste to hide where i, unmarked, might mark, both eye and ear. o, sir, god sent those wicked twain so nigh me i could plainly hear them, every word, unfold the counsel of their wickedness. as soon as freed by their departure, i flew to gamaliel, told him all, from him at last received instruction and strict charge to hasten hither, seek out paul, access secure through him to thee, and in thine hand give this, gamaliel's word, for proof of me." stephen stood silent, and the chiliarch read; "aye, as i thought," he slowly, musing, spoke; "i did not doubt thy truth, my boy, before, i myself did not, though the chiliarch did, as by his office bound to scruple deep, and ever doubt, till doubt by proof be quelled. this well agrees with the wild, heady way of the whole restless, reckless race of jews. they count no cost, of peril, or of pain, loss, labor, naught; impossibility is but temptation to attempt--in vain. was never city like jerusalem, menace of mob in every multitude! well, well, my lad, i trust thee, go thy way, say naught of this to any one abroad; i will take care no harm shall happen paul. thou hast well done to bring this word to me; i should have felt it for a vexing thing had thus a roman in my custody disgracefully been slain with violent hands. but thou it seems lovest thy kinsman paul; now for thy youth, and for thy comely face, and for the service thou hast wrought for me, i give thee thy request, what wilt thou have? be prudent, so that i need not repent, and, so that thou need not repent, be bold. ask widely, wisely, for thine uncle paul." "i thank thee, sir, for this thy grace to me," said stephen; "but for paul i nothing ask, sure as i am he has what he desires; for he has learned in whatsoever state he be, therein to be content--so i have heard mine uncle say, in telling what, strange hap and hard to me it often seemed, has him befallen in wandering through the world. still, if i might two things in one desire, though not for paul, yet partly for his sake, i this would crave from thee, that i may here bide with mine uncle, or with, him go hence, if hence thou sendest him; that is one thing; and this the other is, that i may bid gamaliel hither, here to visit paul. gamaliel wishes to see paul once more, and paul i know would gladly yet again greet his belovéd master face to face. doubtless the last time it will be to them; for he, gamaliel, waxes very old, almost five score the tale is of his years." "thou askest little; all is granted thee," the roman said, and that centurion charged: "let this lad come and go, unchecked, at will, or bide companion with the prisoner paul." "and thou, my little hebrew," added he, apart, "behooves thou know the time is short for paul to tarry in antonia. this very night, i send him forth with haste to cæsarea from jerusalem; both for his safety, and my quiet, this. thou shalt go with him, if thou choose to go. remember that i trust thee, and be dumb." benignantly dismissed thus, stephen first home hied him to his mother rachel, her told what had fallen and comforted her heart; then to gamaliel bore the chiliarch's word, bidding him freely come to visit paul. book ii. paul and gamaliel. the aged gamaliel has his wish and enjoys a prolonged interview with the prisoner paul in the castle where the latter is confined--young stephen being present. the result is gamaliel's conversion to christianity; but this is followed by the old man's peaceful death on the couch where he had been resting while he talked. so peaceful is the death that, in the darkness of the late evening, paul and young stephen are not aware that it has occurred. paul and gamaliel. his eye now dim, as too his natural force abated--for the long increase of years, each lightly like a gentle white snow-shower descending on his shoulders scarcely felt, grew a great weight at length that his tall form stooped, and his steps made gradually slow- gamaliel, stayed in hand by stephen, walked, gazed on of all with worship where he passed gathering the salutations of the street, meet revenue of his reverend age and fame, until he entered at antonia gate. paul met his master with a welcoming kiss, then led him forward to a couch, whereon the aged man his limbs to rest composed. there kneeling by him, paul upon his neck wept in warm tears the pathos of his love. "o great and gentle master of my youth, rabban gamaliel, saul, in many things other than he was erst, is still the same in his old love and loyalty to thee!" such words paul found, when he his heart could tame from inarticulate passion into speech. "yea, changed, my son, in many things art thou," gravely gamaliel framed reply to paul, "in many things changed, and in some things much. thou too, my son, art older grown, like me- nay, like me, not. thou art but older; i, past being older, now am truly old. yet old art thou beyond thy proper years; life has been more than lapse of time to thee, to bleach the youthful raven of thy locks to such a whiteness as of whited wool; and all thine aspect is of winter age, closed without autumn on short summer time. it should not grieve me, but indeed it grieves, to see thee thus before thy season old. i could have wished to live myself in thee, hereafter, a long life of use again, as that good hillel lived--not worthily- again in me, gamaliel, hastening hence, i now, less happy, none inheriting me. as my soul's son, o saul, i counted thee, thee, chosen of all my pupils to such kin; that thou, of all, shouldst separate thyself from the good part, and from thy father's side, to choose thy lot with aliens and with foes! what ruin of what hope! already now, the prime, the flower, the glory, of the strength unmatchable for promise that was saul, spent, squandered, irrecoverably waste! nor this even yet the worst; for, worse than waste, saul has all used to rend what was to mend, to scatter what to gather need was sore, and what asked wise upbuilding to pull down. o saul, saul, saul, my son, what hast thou wrought! o israel, o my people, this from saul!" the old man shook, ceasing, with tearless sobs, and in hands trembling hid his face from paul. paul silently a moment bowed himself- like blinded samson leaning hard against the pillars of the palace of the lords philistine, so paul bowed himself against the pillars of gamaliel's house of trust, in one great throe and agony of prayer; then said: "o thou hoar head most reverend, my master, how those words of thine pierce me! far, far more easily have i born all ills, though many and heavy, that on me have fallen, than now such words i hear of pained reproach, thrice grievous as thus gracious, from thy lips. how shall i find wherewith to answer thee? i think thou knowest, my master, that i love my nation, and a thousand times would die to save from death my kindred in the flesh. not willingly do i seem even to rend the oneness of my people so asunder. scatter i do not, if i seem to scatter: i sift and choose, and cast the bad away; that is not scattering, it is gathering rather. nor is it i do this, but by me god. reprobate silver still some souls will be, and rightly so men call them, for the lord, he hath rejected them, the judging lord. this is that word of malachi fulfilled- whom also thou, o master, once, inspired perhaps, beyond our dreaming, from the lord, recalledst, when our seventy elders sat consulting how most prudently they might slay those apostles of the nazarene. thou warnedst us more wisely than our hearts were meekly wise enough, enough to heed. for, 'the lord cometh,' saidst thou then, and, 'who of us,' thou askedst, 'who of us shall bide the day of that approach?' 'not surely he,' thou answeredst, prophet-wise, 'surely not he, then found in arms against god and his christ.' and did not malachi foretell that he, the angel of the covenant, should sit as a refiner and a purifier, to purge the sons of levi of their dross? so sits he now, attending in the heavens, until appear a people purified, israel gathered out of israel, a chosen peculiar people for himself. "thou knowest how i hated once this name, and persecuted to the death his church. i raged against jehovah; mad and blind, on the thick bosses of his buckler rushed. but he, jehovah, met me in the way with his sword drawn and slew me where i stood. one stroke, like living lightning, and i fell; saul was no more, but in his stead was paul." paul therewith paused, awaiting; for he saw a motion change the listener's attitude. gamaliel turned toward paul, and looked at him, a grave, a sad, inquiry in the gaze. "what dost thou mean?" almost severely he, with something of his magisterial wont, inveterate, in the gesture of his eye and in his tone expressed, now said to paul: "what dost thou mean? thou riddlest thus with me. the lord slew thee, then made alive again not thy slain self, but some new other man! meet is it thou shouldst speak in parable thus to thy master in his hoary age? plain, and forthwith, what meanest thou, son saul?" "i would not vex with darkened words thine ear, my master," gently deprecated paul; "but otherwise how can i, than in words dark-seeming, frame of things ineffable shadow or image only? god revealed his son in me; thenceforth no longer i lived, but christ in me. i am not myself. the self that once was i, was crucified with jesus on that cross, with jesus then was buried, and with jesus rose again, to be forever other than before. "i journeyed to damascus glorying, in my old heart, the heart thou knewest for saul, against the name, and those that owned the name, of jesus, to destroy them from the earth. but jesus, in a terror of great light, met me and smote me prostrate on the ground. a voice therewith i heard, the voice was wide, and all my members seemed one ear to hear that voice, which shone too, like the light around me that had quenched the midday sun; it pressed at every pore with importunity so dreadful that the world became a sound: 'saul, saul, why art thou persecuting me?' 'who art thou, lord?' my trembling flesh inquired. 'jesus i am whom thou dost persecute,' i heard through all my members in reply. "i cannot tell thee, master, how my soul, all naked of its flesh investiture, lay quivering to the touch of sight and sound. into annihilation crushed, my pride, my pride, my hate, the fury of my zeal, the folly and the fury of my zeal against god and his christ, were not, and i myself was not, but christ in me was all. thenceforth to me to live was christ, and christ none other than that man of calvary, the jesus whom we crucified and slew. rabban gamaliel, then knew i that god had visited his people otherwise than we were used to dream that he would come, in glory, and in splendor, and in power, to overwhelm our enemies, and us to the high places of the earth lift up. yea, otherwise, far otherwise, than so, had our god visited his people--hid that glory which no man could see and live- sojourning in the person of one born lowly, to teach us that the lowly place, and not the lordly, is for us to choose. whoso the lowly place shall choose, and, prone before jehovah humbled to be man in jesus christ of nazareth, fall down to worship, and, believing, to obey, him will the lord god show himself unto, since unto such he can, such being like himself and able to behold his face." silence between them, silence filled to paul with intercession of the spirit, he in groanings that could not be uttered praying; and to gamaliel silence filled with awe. a pride not inaccessible to touch from the divine, and not incapable of moments almost like humility, was nature to gamaliel that sometimes renewed him in his spirit to a child. he lay now like an infant tremulous that feels the motion of the mother's breast, but other motion, of its own, has not. the awful powers of the world to come, benign but awful, brooded over him; eternity a presence watching time! such breathless silence of the elder twain left audible the breathing of the boy, young stephen, who, worn weary with his hours of over-early anxious walk and watch, had found the happy haven, ever nigh to youth and health and innocence o'erwrought, and dropped his anchors in the sounds of sleep. thus then stretched out remiss upon the floor, as if unconscious body without soul, lay stephen slumbering there, beside those two so wakeful that each might in contrast seem soul only, without body, soul disclad. a blast, not loud, of trumpet sudden blown for signal, and a clangor as of stir responsive from the mailéd feet of men, broke on the stillness from the court without. gamaliel, rousing from his reverie, gazed deep on paul, who met his master's eye- gazed long and deep with slow-perusing look. "look on me, saul, and let me look on thee," at length gamaliel said, "look on thee still; steady thine eye, if that thou canst, my son, and my look take, unruffled, like a spring sunken beneath the winging of the wind; stay, let me sound within thee to the deeps, and touch the bottom of thy being, there at leisure with mine eye the truth explore. be pure and simple, if thou mayest; cloud not my seeing with aught other than sincere, nor cross with baffling thwart perversity." gamaliel, leaning on his elbow, fast his aged vision, like an eagle's, fixed on paul, and through the windows of his soul, wide open, as into a crystal sky gazing, beheld his thoughts orbed into stars. half disappointed and half satisfied, the gazer slowly let the look intense fade from his eyes, and pass into a deep withdrawn expression, as of one who sees, unseeing, things without, and wraps his mind in contemplations of an inward world. "no conscious falseness," murmured he, aloud, yet inly, as communing with himself; "no conscious falseness there, the same clear truth that ever was the character of saul; no falseness, and no subtle secret flaw, unconscious, in the soundness of the mind; the same sane sense that marked him from of old. he has been deceived; how could he be deceived? that light which fell around him at mid-noon, who counterfeited that? it might have been force from the sun that smote him in the brain, as he was smitten whom elisha healed, that son of promise to the shunammite- nay, that had made a darkness, and not light, to him, and dulled his senses not to hear, and dulled his fancy not to feign, such voice as that which spake so dreadfully to him. astounding voice, that uttered human speech and yet, like thunder, occupied the world! did saul discern the tongue in which it spake? perhaps some mere illusion of the mind, whimsical contradiction to the thought that had so long been uppermost therein, imposed itself upon him for the truth; perhaps some automatic stroke reverse of overwrought imagination made a momentary, irresponsible conceit of fancy seem a fact of sense; perhaps, not hearing, he but deemed he heard. if he distinguished clearly what the tongue was of the voice that spake, then--i will ask and see. those words, saul, which thou seemedst to hear, what were they, greek or hebrew? didst thou heed so as to mark the manner of the speech, or peradventure but the meaning take?" "hebrew the words were, master," saul replied; "if ever it were possible for me to lose them from my memory, mine ear would hear their haunting echo evermore. such light, such sound, forsake the senses never. o master, when god speaks to man, doubt not he finds the means to certify himself. let him now certify himself to thee, through me, me the least worthy of such grace, to be ambassador of grace from him!" paul's words were not so eloquent as paul. he to such conscious noble dignity joined such supreme effacement of himself; burned with such zeal devoid of eagerness; a manner of entreaty that was his, not for his own, but all for other's sake, made such a sweet chastised persuasiveness, from self-regarding purpose purified; meekness of wisdom such clothed on the man with an investiture of awfulness; while, fairer yet, a most unworldly light, a soft celestial radiancy, diffused, self-luminous, illuminating all, the light divine of supernatural love, upon him from a sacred source unseen flung such a flush, like sunrise on some peak of lonely height first to salute the sun; that paul, to whoso had beholding eyes, shone as a milder new theophany. gamaliel had not eyes for all he saw. he slowly from his leaning posture sank relapsed upon the couch, clasping his hands. half to himself and half to paul, he spoke: "my mind is sore divided with itself. it is as if the heavenly firmament were shifted half way round upon its pole, and east to west were changed, and west to east; all things seem opposite to what they were. strange, strange, incomprehensible to me! but strangest, most incomprehensible, thou, what thou art to what thou wast, o saul! thou wast, though ever not ungentle, proud ever, the proudest of the pharisees. i loved thee, i admired thee, for thy pride. pride did not seem like arrogance in thee, but meet assumption of thy proper worth; rather, such air in thee, as if thou woredst a mantle of thy nation's dignity, committed by the suffrages of all unto the worthiest to be worthily worn. and now this saul, our paragon of pride, through whom our suffering nation felt herself uplifted from the dust of servitude, in prophecy by example, to her true, long-forfeited inheritance, to be one day restored to her, of regal state- this saul i see beside me here a gray old man humbling himself, humbling his race, in abject posture of prostration bowed before--whom? why, nobody in the world! before--what? why, the phantom of a man led through low life to malefactor's death! impossible transformation, to have passed upon that proud high saul whom once i knew; impossible perversion, baffling me! impossible, but that with mine own eyes, but that with mine own ears, i witness it." in simple helpless wonder and amaze more than in wroth rejection scorn-inspired, gamaliel thus had uttered forth his heart. paul had his answer, but he held it back, respectfully awaiting further word seen ripe and ready on gamaliel's lips. a question, still of wonder, soon it came: "tell me, what hast thou gained, in all these years of thy most strange discipleship, my son?" a pathos of compassion tuned the tone with which gamaliel so appealed to paul. paul, with a pathos of sweet cheerfulness, in dark and bright of paradox replied: "gained? i have gained of many things great store; much hatred from my erring countrymen; much chance of thankless service for their sake; stripes many, manacles, imprisonments, beatings with rods, bruisings with stones, shipwrecks, a night and day of tossing in the deep; far homeless wanderings up and down the world; perils on perils multiplied, no end, perils of water--wave and torrent flood- perils by mine own countrymen enraged, perils from heathen hands, perils pursued upon me, ceasing not, wherever men in city gather, or in wilderness; in the waste sea, still perils; perils still among false brethren; these, and weariness with painfulness, long watchings without sleep, hunger and thirst endured, oft fastings fierce, cold to the marrow, shuddering nakedness. such things without, to wear and waste the flesh, and then beside, the suffering of the spirit in care that comes upon me day by day for all the scattered churches of the lord. i have not missed good wages duly paid; gain has been mine in every kind of loss." paul's answer turned gamaliel's sentiment into pure wonder, pity purged away. deeper and deeper in perplexity sank the old man, the more in thought he strove; as when the swallow of a quicksand sucks downward but faster one who writhes in vain. silent he listening lay, and paul went on: "i have thus counted as the vain world counts, summing the gains of my apostleship. i myself reckon otherwise than thus. for, what was gain to me, in that old state wherein thou knewest thy disciple saul, this count i now but only loss and dross, yea, all things count but dross, all things save one, to know christ jesus, and be known of him. that knowledge is the one true treasure mine; true, for eternal; mine, for not the world, nor life, nor death, nor present things, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor aught beside created in the universe of god, can from me wrest this one true good away. i have had sorrow, but amid it joy; pain has been mine, but hidden in it peace; rest, deeper than the weariness, has still my much-abounding weariness beguiled; immortal food my hunger has assuaged, and drink of everlasting life, my thirst. i have sung praises in imprisonment, at midnight, with my feet fast in the stocks, and my back bleeding raw from roman rods; so much the spirit of glory and of power prevailed to make me conqueror of ill. tossed in whatever sea of bitterness, wide as the world, and weltering with waves, a fountain of sweet water still i find fresh as from elim rising to my lips. a parable in paradox, sayest thou, but--" stephen here his eyes wide open laid and looked a look of simple love on paul. his sleep had sudden-perfect been, as night at the equator instantly is dark; and now, as day at the equator dawns full splendor, and no twilight of degrees, so stephen was at once and all awake. he straight, without surprise, remembered all, or, needing not remember, recognized. paul caught his nephew's upward look of love, and sheathed it in the light of his own eyes, which, downward bent a moment on the boy, gave him his gift with usury again. "behold," said paul, "my parable made plain by parable not dark with paradox. a sea of bitterness was yesterday poured round me in that madding multitude that tossed me on the shoulders of its waves; but here is this my loving nephew, stephen, a fountain of sweet water in the sea- art thou not, stephen?--whence to drink my fill. but this is parable of parable; no more--for what i mean is still to speak. know, then, there is no earthly accident of evil that has happened me, or can happen, nay, and no swelling flood of such, of any power at all to touch with harm the peace that passeth understanding, fixed by jesus in my inward firmament; the sea less vainly might assail the stars." "if this thou meanest," gamaliel, groping, said, "that when the angry people yesterday bore thee headlong and menaced death to thee, then thou wert calm at heart, feeling no fear- what else were that than boasting, 'i am brave,' which but such vaunt of it could bring in doubt?" "nay, master," paul said, "braggart am i not, as justly thou hast signified no brave man can be; and the peace whereof i speak is not the calmness that the brave man drinks out of the cup of danger at his lips. that also i perhaps have sometimes known; but this is other, and a mystery even to myself, who only have, and not the secret of the having understand- save that i know it no virtue, but a gift renewed forever from the grace of christ." gamaliel listened deeply, with shut eyes; he listened, and kept silence, and then sighed, a long, considerate sigh, and unresolved. his struggling reason could not right itself; it staggered like a vessel in the sea that cuff and buffet of the storm has left a hulk, dismasted, rudderless, forlorn, wedged between waves rocking her to and fro, and threatening to engulf her in the deep; so there gamaliel swayed, with surge on surge of thought and passion sweeping over him, till now he trembled on the point to sink. paul saw the old man's state, and, pitying him, knew how to shed a balm upon the waves. with a low voice, daughter of silence, he slowly intoned a soft, melodious psalm: "'not haughty is my heart, o god the lord, nor do mine eyes ambitiously aspire; in great affairs i exercise me not, and not in things too wonderful for me. yea, i have stilled and quieted my soul; as with its mother a new-weanéd child, so is my soul a weanéd child with me. o israel, hope thou, in jehovah hope, from this time forth and even forevermore!'" the mood, all melting, of that monody- less monody, than sound of sobbing ceased- its cradling gentle lullaby to pride, went, subtly permeant, through gamaliel's soul, and mastered it to sympathy of calm. paul saw with pleasure this effect, and wished the too much shaken old man venerable might taste the soothing medicine of sleep. not pausing, he, with ever softer tone verging toward silence, over and over again crooned like a cradle melody that psalm; till, as that vexing spirit in saul the king once yielded to young david's harping, so now even the fluttering of the aged flesh owned a strange power reverse to cancel it, hid in the vibrant pulsing of paul's voice, its flexures and its cadences, that matched the meaning with the music; lulled to rest, gamaliel lightly, like an infant, slept. "hist! haste!" so paul to stephen signed and said; "hence, and bring hither quickly bread and wine, wherewith to cheer gamaliel when he wakes; he sleeps now, weary with unwonted thought." shimei saw stephen from the fort come out and bear purveyance back of bread and wine; so, earlier, he had seen gamaliel pass, led by the hand of stephen, through the gate, presumably to visit paul within. for he, as ever when some crime he teemed, uneasy till the full-accomplished birth, was like the hungry hunting hound denied access to his wished prey, known to be near- though thus from touch, as too from sight, withdrawn, and only by the teaséd nostril snuffed- who cannot cease from patient jealous watch, on haunches sitting, or on belly prone, lest somehow yet he miss his taste of blood- so that ill spirit all day had scented paul, shut up within the castle out of reach, and sedulously studied, at remove, whatever might be token of attempt, other's or his, the morrow's doom to cheat. the very thought, 'should he slip through our hands!' was anguish, like a goad, to shimei, who now was sure he had the hope divined that paul was harboring--an escape by night! 'paul, in the darkness, stealing out disguised as old gamaliel, would, with meat and drink supplied him, safety seek in distant flight.' filled with such thought, the tireless crafty jew, colluding with the sentry at the gate, there sat him down the sentry's watch to share; paul should by no such stratagem avoid the vengeance that next morrow waited him. but paul and stephen, guileless, of the guile imputed dreamed not; they with happy thought contented them until gamaliel woke. then when gamaliel woke, they gave him wine, pure from the grape, so much as heartened him, and bread that strengthened him, from fasting faint. discourse then followed, eased with many a change from theme to theme, from mood to mood diverse, until the long daylight was waned away, and twilight deepened round them talking still. gamaliel, in whatever various vein of converse with his outward mind employed, was ever, in his deeper inward mind, resistlessly drawn backward to the doubt, the question, the perplexity, the fear, 'saul--is he right? and is gamaliel wrong? and have i missed to know the christ of god?' he gazed abstractedly on paul, beheld so different; less in outer aspect changed- although therein, too, other--than in act, in gesture and in attitude of soul, the spirit and the motive of the man, transfigured from the pride that once was saul. "i do not know thee, saul," at length he said; "nay, nay, not saul--i should not call him saul, this is some different man from him i knew, in other years long gone, and called him saul! such difference in the same the sameness makes impossible. impossible, but that the sameness still in difference survives persistently. the impossible itself i must believe--when i behold it." "yea," paul said, "and more, the impossible become, when god so wills it; as for me he willed! my life these many years, my self, has been one contradiction of the possible. the reconcilement of all things in christ is god the blessed's purpose and decree. for god delights in the impossible." gamaliel did not heed, but murmuring spoke, in absent deep communion with himself: "saul, paul, the same still, and so changed, so changed! and cause of change none other than that stroke, that lightning-stroke he tells of, launched on him from out a cloudless sky at blazing noon! whence, and what was it, that stupendous blow! would he have lied who flashed it blinding down? or suffered any liar to claim it his? and the dread voice made answer: 'it is i, jesus of nazareth, the crucified.' lo, my whole head is sick, my whole heart faint, turned dizzy with the whirl of many thoughts- thoughts many, and too violently strange, for a worn-weary aged mind like mine! i feel i am too feeble to abide much longer all this tumult of my heart; i shall myself cease, if it does not cease. and peradventure cease it would, could i stop striving, and give up to be a child. a child once more! ah, that in truth were sweet, to find some bosom like a mother's, where i might lay down my aching head to rest, this head, so hoar, the foolish think so wise! old, but not wise, not wise indeed though old; in weakness--would it were in meekness too!- a child, leaning, with none to lean upon- such is gamaliel in his hoary age!" besides his words, the old man's yearning look bore witness to the trouble of his mind. paul spoke--so gently that the sense he gave seemed to gamaliel almost his own thought: "'come unto me,' messiah jesus said, 'come unto me,' as who had right, said, 'ye that labor and are heavy-laden, all, come unto me and i will give you rest. my yoke upon you take, and learn of me; for meek am i in heart, and lowly; so shall ye find rest unto your souls." from paul no more; for, all as if he naught had heard, but only was remembering what he heard, gamaliel went on musing audibly: 'rest'--comfortable word! but he was young that spake thus, young, and in the law unlearned; and of a yoke spake he, 'my yoke,' he said. surely i am too old to go to school, too reverend-old, my neck so late to bend, a sign to all the people--stooped to take meekly that youngster galilæan's yoke! beware, beware! i tremble at the words i speak. i feel the dreadful presence here, more dreadful, of the power that shook me so, when those apostles of the nazarene stood up before our council to be judged. if i should now, this last time, err through pride!" the murmur of gamaliel's musing ceased; but ceased not the strong crying without words in paul's heart for his master so bestead. the solemn silence of that prison cell, less broken than accented by the tread monotonous and measured heard without of the dull sentry pacing to and fro his beat along the way before the door more like mechanic pendulum than man; the darkness of the place now utter, night full come, no lamp; the awe, the dread suspense unspeakable of such an issue poised, eternity in doubtful balance there a-tremble on a razor-edge of time- this even on stephen's bright young spirit cast as if a shadow from the world to come; he parted with it after nevermore the vivid certainty, that moment seized, of an unseen, more real, beyond the seen. but presently gamaliel yet again mused audibly in murmur as before: "i fear me i shall fail, and not let go betimes the hold i have, the hold has me, say rather, this fierce hold upon myself and mine own righteousness so dearly earned, to take the fall proposed, the shuddering fall, through emptiness and that waste waiting deep of nothing under me, in hope to reach at last--what rescue, or what landing-place? rest in the arms once pinioned to the cross! he draws me with his heavenly-uttered 'come'! this is god's voice; god's voice i must obey- yea, lord, thy servant heareth, and i come. i say it, but i do it not. too late? what if at last i prove to hold too hard upon myself, and not undo my hand, grown stiff with holding long, until too late! these are my last heart-beats, and with the last, the very last, what would i do? resist? resist, or yield? oh, not resist, but yield; lord, help me not resist, but yield, but yield--" the faltering utterance failed, suspended; then, to a new key transposed, went faltering on: "this peace within my breast, the peace of god! jesus, thou son of blesséd god most high, i know thee by the token of thy peace! thine is this peace, not given as by the world. thou wast beforehand with thy servant; i had not known thee, hadst thou not first known me, and hastened to be gracious, ere i died. thou art most gracious, and i worship thee. what was it simeon said?--'now lettest thou thy servant hence depart in peace,' for i- in peace, in peace, even i--yea, for mine eyes, mine also, most unworthy, have beheld the light of thy salvation, o my god! oh, peace ineffable! it seems to steal through all my members and dispose to rest. i think that i will sleep; i am at peace. my heart has quieted itself, peace, peace--" the words died into silence audible; soft, like a wavelet sinking, ceased his breath, and there gamaliel lay, a breathless peace. paul joyful, knowing that his aged friend had found peace in believing, did not dream that it had been the last of life for him, the first of life indeed, paul would have deemed; but thinking, 'he has fallen asleep once more,' gave silent thanks to god and himself slept, with stephen then already safe asleep. when, with the earliest dawn, four elders came, gamaliel's equals, to antonia, in reverent wise to bear him thence away, they found the many-wrinkled brow that was, smoothed out most placid fair, and on the cheek a bloomy heavenly hue, as if of youth revived, or immortality begun. but paul and stephen, summoned to depart, the sleeper's sleep were minded not to break; there in the dead and middle of the night, they knelt to kiss the forehead in farewell, and were surprised to feel the touch was cold. book iii. shimei and the chiliarch. paul, accompanied by young stephen, is started at about midnight, under strong military escort, for cæsarea. at the gate of the castle, shimei, lurking there, is arrested, and brought before the chiliarch, claudius lysias by name. a conversation ensues, in which shimei, for a time with some success, practises on the chiliarch his characteristic arts of deception. at last, the chiliarch, denouncing him for what he is, and putting him under heavy bonds to respond in person, whenever and wherever afterward commanded by the roman authorities, dismisses him from presence, chagrined and dismayed. shimei and the chiliarch. ere midnight, had reveillé to those twain sounded, and from brief slumber rallied them. they passed from the surprise of that farewell kissed on the coolness of gamaliel's brow- he his reveillé waiting from the trump of resurrection, tranced in happy sleep!- from this passed paul and stephen to the court without, where stood, made ready in array, five hundred roman soldiers, foot and horse, filling the place with frequence and ferment. armed men, and horses in caparison, and saddled asses thick together poured- all was alive with motion and with sound. there was the stamping hoof of restless steed, the rattling bridle-rein, the bridle-bit champed hoary, the impatient toss of head shaking the mane disheveled, and with foam flecking the breast, the shoulder, and the flank, eruptive snort from nostril and from lip, the ass's long and melancholy bray, horse's salute of recognition neighed to greet some fellow welcomed in the throng, therewith, voices of men, scuffle of feet- all under bickering light and shadow flung from torches, fixed or moving, fume and flame. to paul and stephen sharp the contrast was between that quietude and this turmoil, sleeping gamaliel and these urgent men! but paul his peace held fast amid it all, peace, yet a posture girded and alert; while stephen, hanging on his uncle's eye, caught the contagion of that heedful calm. the natural pathos of one fond regret ached in the heart of paul, a hoarded pain- his wish, denied him, to have given in charge, before he went, gamaliel's lifeless form, if to the keeping of his kindred not, at least to roman care and piety; amid the hurly-burly of the hour, no chance of speech, with any that would heed, for jewish prisoner hurried thence by night! but paul's reveréd friend, safe fallen asleep in jesus, beyond care or want was blest; yea, and the human reverence of great death, toward one in death so reverend great as he, well might be trusted, for such clay to win, through kindred care, the sepulture most meet. yet paul, come to antipatris, and there left with the horsemen only thence to ride, a needless careful message touching this gave to the chief of the returning foot. when to the chiliarch's ear such word was brought, that captain deeply mused it in his mind- to find it throw a most unlooked-for light on certain dark alternatives of doubt that had meanwhile his judgment sore perplexed. lowly upon an ass they seated paul, and stephen, likewise mounted, ranged beside. then those appointed to prick forth before, out through the two-leaved gate at sign withdrawn, were issuing on the street in order due, when the proud prudent steed that led the way swerved, and, with mighty surge of rash recoil, had nigh his rider from the saddle thrown. he, his fine nostril wide distended, snuffed suspicion on the tainted wind, and, dazed his eyes with darkness from the glare just left of torchlight in the court, uncertain saw, to the right hand beside the open port, there on the ground, as ambushed at his feet, a motion, or a shadow, or a shape, which to his careful mind portended ill. "halt!" rang abrupt the startling stern command; "seize him!" the leader of the vanguard cried, and pointed to the skulking figure near. darted three soldiers from the rank of foot, with instant light celerity--a flash of movement from the serried column sent inerrant to its aim, like lever-arm of long bright steel by some machine flung forth to do prehensile office and fetch home- darted upon the man in hiding there, and brought him prisoner to the chiliarch. "knowest thou this man?" the chiliarch asked of paul. "shimei his name, an elder of the jews," responded paul; turning, the chiliarch then said: "thou--stephen, i think they call thee--speak. thou toldst me yesterday, not naming him, of one all-capable of crime, the head and chief of a conspiracy to slay; answer--thou needst not fear--is this the man?" stephen flushed shame; "the same, my lord," he said; he dropped therewith his eyes, and head declined. "thou stayest," the chiliarch said to shimei; "on, and with speed!" he to the soldiers said. to a centurion, then, attending him: "relieve the sentry set outside the port, and hither bid the man released to me." "what wast thou doing at thy sentry-post, that miscreant such as this should sit him there unchallenged? sleeping? soothed perhaps to sleep with chink of gold sweet-shaken in thine ear?"- a perilous frown dark on his imminent brow, the chiliarch thus bespoke the sentinel. but with full steady eye, the man replied: "i crave thy pardon, if, through ignorance i erred, but i nowise forgot myself, or failed my duty of strict challenging. indeed, sir, if the man in presence be aught but a loyal, honest gentleman, then am i much deceived, and punish me; but not for slackness or base traitorhood. as i my oath and office understand, i was true soldier and true sentinel." 'sound heart, if addle head,' the chiliarch thought, "thy oath and office, my good sentinel- thou needest to understand them better," said. the sentry, fain to clear himself, began: "he told me"- "doubtless some amusing tale," smiling an easy scorn, the chiliarch said. surging with zeal and conscious honesty, the sentinel again his part essayed: "he said, sir"- "aye, i warrant thee he did, if but thou hearkenedst," said the chiliarch; "tongue seldom lacks, let ear be freely lent. sharp question and short answer, there an end- that is the wisdom for the man on watch. words are a master snare, beware of words, thine own or other's, either equal fear; no parley, is the sentinel's safe rule. whet up thy wits, my man, but this time--go!" the sentry thus dismissed, retiring, shot into the chiliarch's ear a parthian word: "beseech thee, sir, prejudge nor him, nor me; wait till thou hear the gentleman explain." "thou hast bewitched him well," to shimei turning, the chiliarch said; then, with cold eye regarding and repelling him, exclaimed "hoar head, thou lookest every inch a rogue!" shimei had marked with a considering mind the chiliarch's manner with the sentinel; in dilatory parry, he replied: "not what we look, but what we are, we are." "but what we are, conforms at length our looks," surprised, amused, in doubt, but dallying, matched the roman his rejoinder. then the jew, adventuring on one more avoidance, said: "well dost thou say 'at length'; for it might chance that looks were obstinate, requiring time." "coiner of wisdom into apothegm! an undiscovered seneca in sooth, where least expected, seems i meet to-night! but spare to bandy sentences with me." with change to chilling dignity from sneer, the roman so rebuffed the cringing jew; who, cringing, yet was no least whit abashed, but answered: "pardon, sir, thy servant, who has missed his mark in his simplicity. i thought, 'if i might spare my lord his time!' and dutifully thereto spared my words. the farthest was it from my humble aim to mint my silly thought in adages. forgive me, if, unconsciously set on by thy example of sententious speech- true wisdom closed in fitting words and few- i seemed to match my worthless wit with thine. i have a helpless habit of the mind, a trick of mimicry that masters me; when i observe in them what i admire, i can not but my betters imitate. i fear me i have compromised my cause; had i been deeper, i had less seemed deep! i lack the art to show the artless man that in my own true self, sir, thou shouldst see. with my superiors, i am not myself; i take on airs, or seem to, copying them. quite other am i with my proper like; i feel at home, and am the man i am. ask that plain-spoken, honest sentinel- he now was my own sort, i never thought to strain myself above my natural mark with him; we were hail fellows, he and i, and talked the harmless wise that such know how. with thee--oh, sir, myself i quite forsook, and slipped into a different shimei. pity my weakness, i am sick of it; to ape the great is folly for the small- but small may hope forgiveness from the great!" the chiliarch listened, unconvinced; yet charmed, like the bird gazing by the serpent charmed. "pretend that i am of thy kind," said he, "and show me how thou with the sentry talkedst." now lysias nursed a proudly roman mind disdainful of all nations save his own- disdainfully a roman but the more, that he by purchase, not by birth, was such; the nation that he ruled he most disdained. child of the high-bred fashion of his time, by choice and culture he a skeptic was. skeptic, he yet was superstitious too, open and weak to supernatural fears; he easily believed in magic powers, charms, sorceries, witchcrafts, incantations, spells, and all the weird pretensions of the east. his habit of disdain and skepticism made him a cynic in his views of men; whereby he oft, wise-seeming, was unwise. he took upon himself laconic airs in speech, in action airs abrupt, as who bold was, and strong, and from reflection deep- the manner, rather than the matter, his. to any chance observer of his ways in use of office and position, these could but have seemed comportable and fair. accesses too of gentleness he had, wherein a strain of kindly in the man opened and gushed in flow affectionate, or well-becoming courtesy and grace. this roman chiliarch, claudius lysias, now found himself much at leisure and at ease, rid of that worrying case of prisoner strange; unconscious satisfaction with himself warmed at his heart, a pleasurable glow- he had so neatly got it off his hands! he was quite ready, mind acquitted thus, heart buoyant, to disport himself. he saw that in the man before him he had met no dull mere mediocrity, but one who, besides being ruler of the jews, as paul pronounced him, had a quality, an individual difference, all his own. claudius might test this man, get him to talk- an interesting study, learn his make. besides the pleasure to his appetite for piquant knowledge of his fellow-man, it might in some way, indirect the better, give him a point or two of policy to guide the conduct of his rulership among a people difficult to rule. in such mood, idle, curious, partly wise, this half-wise man, unwise through cynicism, gave himself leave to say to shimei: "pretend that i am of thy kind, like him, let me hear how thou with the sentry talked." hardly could shimei, through the mask he wore of feigned simplicity, help leering out, confessed the mocker that he ever was, in that sardonic grin, as he replied: "pretense, of whatso sort, be far from me- save when my betters wish it of me; then, i think it right to put my conscience by; or rather place it at their service--that, the dearest thing the poor good man can claim! i reason in this way, 'why should i presume to scruple, where those wiser far than i are clear?' that sure would be the worst pretense- pretending to be holier than the saints. my will, thou seest, is tractable enough; but how, with thee, to feel sufficient ease to do what thou desirest, go right on and talk and chatter as we simple did! "first, then, perhaps i said: 'this is dull work'- and no offense to thee, sir, that i said it- 'dull work,' said i, 'to stand, or pace, and watch, long hours alone, and nothing like to happen that makes it needful thou shouldst thus keep watch!' 'aye,' grunted he; i thought him stupid like, but i had something i could tell him then that might rub up his wits and brighten them. 'there is a plot,' said i. 'aye, plots enough,' said he. 'and something thou shouldst know,' i said. 'i doubt,' said he; and added: 'soldiers should know nothing but their duty, how to watch, march, dig, fight, slay, be slain, and no word speak. thou hadst better go,' said he, like that, more frank than courteous, thou mightst think--he meant no harm, but only like a loyal soldier spoke. i did not go, but said: 'the plot i mean is of escape from prison.' but he replied: 'nobody can escape these times from prison; the emperor has a hundred million eyes, that never wink, because they have no lids, and never sleep, because they never tire, and these run everywhere and all things see; the emperor's arms are many, long and strong, east, west, north, south, they range throughout the world. oh, he can reach thee wheresoever hiding, and pluck thee thence and fetch thee safely home; the world is all his prison, the emperor's.' 'thou thinkest that?' said i. 'no doubt,' said he. 'but captives still,' said i, 'might try to escape?' 'oh, aye,' said he, 'that is quite natural.' 'and should they try,' i said, 'with thee on watch, and should they somehow skill to get by thee, then--and although they be thereafter caught- how fares it then with thee?' said i to him- 'yea, how with thee that lettest them go by?' 'then there would be,' he said, 'account to give, and i should wish i had not been on watch.' 'nay, better wish, man, thou hadst better watched,' said i, 'and thyself caught the fugitive.' 'aye, that were something better yet,' said he. 'why, yea,' said i, 'that, laid to thy account, might win thee prompt promotion out of this.' 'i never dream,' said he, 'of anything to lift me from the common soldier's lot.' 'dreaming is idle, yea,' said i to him, 'but waking thought and action need not be. for instance, now,' i then went on and said"- the subtle hebrew, drawing out his tale, mock-artless long, of gossip with the watch, had never intermitted an intent, considerate, sly, solicitous regard fixed on the chiliarch's face, therein to read the reflex of the phases of his thought; and now he marked with pleasure how their mere indifferent or incredulous cold scorn was fading from the haughty roman's eyes, merged in a dawn of curious interest. disguisedly, but confidently, glad- his course seen smooth before him to his goal- shimei thence eased that tension of the will to simulate simplicity of speech, as, more directly, his ambages spared, he almost blithely, in his natural vein of fondness for the false and the malign, slid on, in fabrication of report, or in report of fabrication, thus: "inside those castle walls there is a man, a jew, one paul, i know him very well, prisoner for crime that richly merits death. the outraged people yesterday were fain to wait no longer, but at once inflict, themselves, with righteous hands, the penalty. the gentle chiliarch rescued him from them, not knowing, as of course how could he know? what a base wretch he plucked from doom condign. so here paul is in roman custody, safe for the moment, but full well aware, as he deserves to die, that die he will, whenever once he shall be justly judged. he therefore schemes it to attempt escape, this very night, from his imprisonment. he has his tool, tool and accomplice both, in that young fellow thou hast seen pass by, entering and issuing through the castle-gate. 'aye, i have seen him plying back and forth,' the sentry said, 'a likely hebrew lad; i challenged him, but he had documents. wicked, ungrateful!--that good chiliarch had shown such grace to him for his fair looks.' 'well, i will stay,' said i, 'and watch with thee, and help thee foil their game, and thy chance mend. but let us have two stout young fellows ready, i can provide them, hidden nigh at hand- no call for us to spend our breath in running!- to give the prisoner chase, should need arise. arise it will not, if my guess is right, and i know paul so well, i scarce can miss. paul stakes his hope on craft, and not on speed; still, it is good to be at all points armed, and should craft fail, there will be test of speed, no doubt of that, since paul would run for life, and life is prize to make the tortoise fleet. paul is no stiff decrepit--far from such; old as his look is, he is light of heel. running, however, only last resort, the desperate refuge of necessity; paul's main reliance is on something else, to wit, a pretty ruse and stratagem. a wary fellow paul, and deep in wiles!" shimei was entered on a mingled vein of true and false reflection of his thought, wherein himself could scarce the line have drawn to part the fabrication from the fact. partly, he thought indeed that paul was such as he was now describing him to be, in image and projection of himself; partly, he painted an ideal mere, conscious creation of malicious mind. he did uneasily believe, or fear, that paul would somehow cheat the malice yet of those who hated him; perhaps contrive escape by night from prison. his restless mind, hotbed of machination, equally was hotbed of suspicion and surmise. his mere suspicion and surmise became, to his imagination, certainty; or else he took, himself, for certainty, at length, what he for certainty affirmed, swearing the false till he believed it true. he thus the story of his talk prolonged: "'now hark thee, friend, and hear me prophesy,' so to the worthy sentinel i said, 'thou sawest paul brought in, and he was paul- tell me, was not he paul, when he came in? aye, paul he was, thou sayest. well, what i say- and this now, mark it, is my prophecy- paul will come out, not paul, but some one else; in short, will hobble forth--gamaliel! gamaliel, thou must know, i said to him, 'is the old man that lad this morn led in; making, forsooth, a touching sight to see, so tenderly and gingerly the lad guided and stayed the steps of that old man. a pretty acted piece of loyalty to venerable age from blooming youth! watch, thou shalt see it acted over again to-night, with haply some improvement made on the rehearsal, when he leads out paul. paul's hair and beard will not need dusting white, being as white as old gamaliel's now; but edifying it will be to mark the careful studied totter of the step, the tremble of the hand upon his staff, the thin and querulous quaver of the voice, the helpless meek dependence on his guide, and all the various aged make-believe, wherewith that subtle master of deceit, that natural, practised, life-long actor, paul, will put the guise of old gamaliel on. 'he-he!' i chuckled to the sentinel, 'to me the spectacle will be as good and laughable, as i should guess a play, a roaring one, of plautus were to thee!'" shimei was venturing to let lapse his part of mere reporter to a talk supposed betwixt himself and the dull sentinel- this to let lapse, or, if not quite let lapse, mix and confound with his own proper part, inveterate, unassumed, of scoffer free; he saw the chiliarch sink so deep immersed in hearing and in weighing what was said, he deemed he might thenceforward trust his speech, with scant disguise of indirection, aimed as frankly for a keen intelligence- the chiliarch's own, and not the sentinel's- to snare his listener's now less warded wit. paul was clean gone indeed, gone otherwise than through the guile that he had dared impute; but he, meantime, would such a chance not miss, a golden chance that might not come again, to prepossess the chiliarch's captive mind with pregnant ill surmise concerning paul. there yet was unexhausted circumstance suggestively at hand, seed that but sown would a fine harvest of suspicion spring. point-blank his aim shifted to lysias now, he said: "why did gamaliel stay so long? why, indeed, come at all, but, having come, why so long tarry, wearing out the day? where is gamaliel now? what did it mean that that officious hebrew youngster--he who, at paul's wish, gamaliel hither brought, who back and forth has flitted through the gate all day, carrying and fetching as he liked- what did it mean, i ask, that he bore in flagons of wine and loaves of bread? what mean? why, this, provision got to serve paul's need, when, issuing in gamaliel's vesture, he should shuffle forth, gamaliel, on the street, to try the fortune of a runaway, a hopeless runaway in cæsar's world. the clement chiliarch never would be hard on an old dotard of a hundred years, found aider and abettor in such wile, where left behind in ward to take his chance; or, possibly, gamaliel might not know, much more, not share, the stratagem of paul. it would be easy to put him to sleep and strip him of his raiment, unawares, for the exchange, unbargained-for, with paul. paul has much travelled everywhere abroad and freely commerced with all kinds of men. he has the skill of many magic arts, the virtue knows of many a mighty drug; he can compound thee opiate drinks to drown thy thought and senses in oblivion. he could compose thee in so deep a sleep, fair like an infant's, that not all the blare of all rome's trumpets loud together blown could rouse thee ever from that fixéd sleep. a dangerous wicked man to wield such power!" the chiliarch stood suspended in fast gaze on shimei, not perusing him, but lost in various troubled and confounded thought. 'had he indeed been tricked? was paul such knave? had that young hebrew, with his innocent bright look of truth and faith and nobleness, had he been hollow, false, base, treacherous, and played upon a roman father's heart to rid a rascal out of custody? gamaliel--was that reverend-looking man, that image of a stately-fair old age, was he a low complotter of deceit? or, if not that, had nameless turpitude abused such dignity into a tool, helpless, unwitting, of ignoble wile?' thought, question, doubt, suspicion, guess, surmise, tumbled, a chaos, in the chiliarch's mind. shimei paused, watching, with delight intense; he felt the chiliarch fast ensnared, his prey. wary as was his wit, and ill-inclined ever to take a needless risk, or dip his feet in paths wherein, once entered, he perforce must fare right forward, no retreat- though such in temper, such in habit, yet- either that instant suddenly resolved that his true prudence was temerity, or trusting his resourceful craft to pluck desperate advantage from the jaws of chance- shimei dared interrupt the roman's muse: "will not my lord the chiliarch now think well to call gamaliel into presence here? well frightened, the old man perhaps might tell what passed in his long interview with paul, something to help thee judge betwixt us twain, which it were well to credit, paul or me." the chiliarch started from his reverie; "go bring that hebrew ancient here," he said. then neither jew nor roman uttered word, each busy with his own unsharéd thought, till the centurion from his quest returned, alone, and serious, no gamaliel brought. "i found"--but scarcely the centurion, faltering, had so essayed to make report, when the wroth chiliarch snatched the word from him: "was not he there? did he refuse to come? the more loth he, the more to be required! gray hair will not atone for stubbornness; thou shouldst have brought him, though by greater force. something lurks here lends color to the tale this hoar-head jew has filled my ear withal. i will gamaliel see and learn from him--" "but, sir," spoke up the loth centurion, "nothing from that old hebrew wilt thou learn, for--" "i will hear no 'fors,'" the chiliarch said, "but, hark thee, have the man before me straight!" mute, the centurion, left no option, turned, and, with four soldiers bidden follow him, went to the lodgment where gamaliel slept. those five men, used to death in many forms, yet in the presence of such death were awed. the four in silence took the sleeper up, motionless, with the couch whereon he lay, and bore him, as to honored burial, into the court beneath the starlit sky, and set him down before the chiliarch. like one of those gray monuments in stone, oft seen where church or minster of old days, in secret vault or holy chapel dim, gathers and wards its venerated dead- marmoreal image of some man, supine, deep sunken, in marmoreal down, to sleep, safe folded in marmoreal robes from cold, the meek, pathetic face upturned to heaven, and thither-pointing hands forever laid together on the breast, as thus to pray for the shriven spirit thence to judgment fled- so, stretched upon his couch amid the court, white with his age, yet purer white with death, an unrebuking, unrebukable reminder of the nothingness of time, unheeding who beheld or what was spoke, silent, and bringing silence touched with awe, there in marmoreal calm gamaliel lay. the simple presence of the living man, in native majesty august with age, would have subdued who saw to reverence; but the ennoblement and mystery of death, now added, wrought a mightier awe, and almost breathless made the hush wherein the chiliarch for the moment from the spell of shimei's woven words was quite set free, seeing things true by his simplicity. breaking that hush, while never once his gaze unfixing from the features of the dead, "thou shouldst have told me this," said lysias to the centurion, gently chiding him. but the centurion understood aright that his superior's words were less as blame than as atonement meant for fault his own in that his late too peremptory air- this the subaltern knew, and answered not. shimei, alone not capable of awe, coolly had used the interval of pause, to take the altered situation in, and to his own advantage fit his part. two points of promise to his profit he saw, and at once to seize them shaped his course: first, to release himself from duress there, and, further, still to sow the chiliarch's mind with seed of foul suspicion against paul. "gamaliel mute," said he to lysias, "might, peradventure, if but understood, even better witness to thy purpose prove than should he waken from his swoon to speak." the sleight of tone with which was uttered "swoon"- no emphasis, insinuation all, subtle suggestion, naught to be gainsaid, since naught was really said, however much without the saying got itself conveyed- this well subserved the wish of shimei. for, like a sovereign solvent, that, with soft assiduous chemistry insensible, some solid to a fluid form breaks down, there stole from shimei's speech an influence in, which, by degrees not slow, dissolved the charm shed from the solemn spectacle of death upon the chiliarch's mind; his childlike mood vanished, his simple wise credulity! lysias reverted to his cynicism, and, unawares lured on by shimei, followed false lights to a conclusion vain. once more he overweened to be astute, and, with astuteness recommencing, fell from the brief wisdom reverence brief had brought. his faith in human virtue undermined, he doubted and believed exactly wrong; there where he ought to have believed, he doubted, and where he should have doubted, there believed- the captor fallen into the captive's snare. lysias resumed to do what shimei wished; the tissue of sophistication set already well aweaving in the loom of fancy and false reason and unfaith, which had before been humming in his brain- this to piece out, and make a finished web. "'swoon,' sayest thou?" to shimei, lysias thus; "that is not death, thou thinkest, but a swoon?" "it looks indeed like death," the crafty jew responded; "yea, it looks like death indeed. it was not meant, but death it sure must be." "what wilt thou say?" said lysias. "'was not meant!'- thy words conceal thy meaning; speak it out." "why, sir, i have no meaning to conceal," the jew replied, "no meaning to conceal. i only thought, i could but only think- why, see, paul was gamaliel's pupil once, and loved his master, so as such can love; at least i thought so. paul, for sure i know, gamaliel like a doting father loved." "thou dost not thus explain, 'it was not meant'; out with thy thought, sir jew," the chiliarch said. "what was not meant? by whom not meant? forsooth, not by gamaliel meant that he should die? except the suicide, none means to die; and death like this is not the suicide's." "oh, nay, sir," shimei said, "no suicide was our gamaliel; far the heinous thought! a good old man, whom all the people loved, paul even, yea, paul--i thought--till now--but now- but i will not believe so base of him, even him; he did not mean it, did not mean worse than to make gamaliel deeply sleep. paul's drug belike was stronger than he thought, or weaker waxed gamaliel with his age. paul would himself repent it, now, too late- particularly since of no avail, thy wise forestalling plan defeating his, and fruit none from it ripening to his hand!" "this is too foully base!" said lysias, and shimei's heart misgave him with a fear. 'too foully base insinuation mine, does lysias mean?' he closely asked himself; but calmly, with deep candor, said aloud: "yea, even for paul, beyond belief too base! paul never meant it, i shall still insist. he meant at most such sleep as should prevail over gamaliel's scruple to take part willingly in his surreptitious flight. and such a master of his arts is paul, i shrewdly doubt if here his mark he missed. were paul but now at hand to try his skill, i should not wonder yet to see this swoon yield to some potent drug of counter force, and good gamaliel wake to life again. once, as they say--in troas, i believe- where he all night was lengthening out harangue, after his manner, in an upper room, a youngster, tired to death of hearing him, and sensible enough to go to sleep, not sensible enough to seat him safe, fell headlong out of window, whence he sat, a good three stories' fall--which finished him. stay, not so fast--thou reckonest without paul! yea, paul performed some sort of magic rite over the body of the luckless lad, which, presto, brought him round as brisk as ever! a mighty master in his kind, that paul!" "perish thy paul with his accurséd craft!" burst out the chiliarch in indignant heat. "would i but had him back here safe in thrall!- i should have let them rend him limb from limb!" a sudden hope beyond the bounds of hope flourished up rank, gourd-like, in shimei's breast. were it but possible to have paul back, to take that walk yet to the judgment-hall! the forty faithful should not fail their task! "might i propose if it be yet too late?" with timid daring, shimei inquired. "a fleet-foot horse should overtake the troop, if so thou choose, and turn them hither back. and thou couldst cause that paul exert his power to lift this corpse into a living man- which were a famous spectacle to see! besides that then thou mightst assure thyself, through counsel of our sanhedrim, what crimes worthy of death are proved upon this paul." "thou art a superserviceable jew," the chiliarch frowned and said. a choleric man, he choleric now, through self-expression, grew. exasperate thus, he added: "'ruler' thou of thine accurséd nation--as i hear- me too thou fain wouldst rule, with thy advice officiously advanced unsought. know, then, that i confound thee with thy race, and curse ye all together, pestilent brood--not less thee than thy fellows, whom thou rulest, forsooth, worthy to rule those worthily so ruled! like ruler to like people, vipers all! if i believe thee of thy brother paul, it is no wise that i suppose thee true rather than him; but only that i reckon one rascal feels another by mere kin, and can, and, if so be he hates him, will, into his own soul look and paint him _that_- making a likeness apt to two at once! nay, nay, thou wretched, reptile jew, all thanks! i would not have paul back upon my hands. i am well rid of _him_, and now hence thou! go tell thy fellow-elders of the jews that here gamaliel lies, dead or aswoon, and bid them haste to bear him hence away. go, not one further word from thy foul mouth, lest whole thou never go!" red with his wrath, abruptly on his heel turned the wroth man and disappeared within. the jew so spurned- though disappointed, imperturbable- with wry grimace hugging himself, made speed to use the freedom thus in overplus thrust on him, and incontinently went. scarce was he well without the castle gate, when a brusque message from the chiliarch summoned him back. he came, with supple knee cringing his thanks and deprecations dumb. "so act thy abject language, if thou will, but no word speak, edging thine ear to hear," the chiliarch, from his heat of passion passed to a grim mood of resolution, said; "i will that--no delay--thou hither bring large satisfaction from thy countrymen- just measure of their estimate of thee!- that thou wilt duly bide within command the suddenest from this castle, and appear, whenever i may call for thee, to go whithersoever i shall bid thee hence, whether to cæsarea or to rome, whether now presently or hereafter long, accuser meet and witness against paul. count it that thou thus much at least hast gained, through thy this night's adventure, chance, to wit, assuréd chance, thy famished grudge to glut upon thy brother rogue and countryman- be he, that is, the wretch thou paintest him, _and_, mark it well, be thou his overmatch in lying eloquence to make appear likeliest whatever best thy turn shall serve. perhaps twin rascals, of each other worthy, will, both at once, and each the other, prove just to be what they are, and earn their doom!" "send with this worthy," thus the chiliarch, to his centurion turning, said, "some man who knows, if nothing more, thus much at least, how to be adder-deaf and death-like dumb- to dog him hence about and hither back!" "i wish thee pleasure of thy evening walk!" to shimei, in mock courtesy, he said. with pleasantry as bitter as his own the mocker found himself a second time, and now to discomposure worse, dismissed. of his own will he gladly would have gone from east to west as wide as was the world, to weave the meshes of his witness false about paul's feet, or still to ambush him with instant bloody death at unawares; but thus to go, a lasso round his neck held in the hand of rome--it irked him sore. his heart misgave him heavily; he felt: 'and here perhaps is destiny for me, perhaps, who knows? at last, at last, for me! on mine own head do i paul's house pull down?' strange, but, born with the boding sense thus born of unguessed danger for himself, there crept into that case-hard heart, long exercised to plot of mischief for his fellow-man, a softness, that was nigh become remorse, a kind of pity from self-pity sprung, toward whoso was endangered, yea, even paul! it was the slow beginning of an end- slow, liable to be quenched like smoking flax, yet not so quenched to be--with shimei. meanwhile, from this to that there stretched much road, and shimei still had demon's work to do. book iv. by night for cæsarea. the narrative returns to paul riding with young stephen, under escort of roman soldiers, toward cæsarea. the uncle and nephew (at sufficient remove from the cavalry before them and the infantry behind them) after an interval of silence, engage in conversation on a subject suggested by young stephen's quoting against shimei one of the imprecatory psalms. this conversation is prolonged till antipatris is reached, from which point young stephen comes back to jerusalem with the returning foot-soldiers, while paul goes on with the horse to cæsarea. by night for cæsarea. clanging their armor and their arms alight in doubtful glimmer from the torches blown, forward into the silence and the dark, through the strait street, out from the city gate, along the ringing highway stretched in stone to cæsarea from jerusalem, rode vanguard in that order of array the turm of horse--in count three score and ten, but many fold to seeming multiplied under the shadowy light that showed them half, half hid them, and amid the numerous noise and movement of their massive martial tread. the centuries of foot the rear composed, while midst, between the horse and infantry, and double-guarded so from every fear- before, behind, commodious interval- those hebrew kinsmen, paul and stephen, rode. a league now measured under the still heaven- quiet, they twain, as the beholding stars- and stephen heard the silence at his side softly become the sound of a low voice. as when the ground parts and a buried seed- quickened already in that genial womb, but viewless--steals from darkness into light, so, with such unperceived transition, now, melodious meditation in paul's heart grew out of secret silence into song. stephen, who, from his very cradle taught, the holy lore of scripture had by heart, knew the subdued preamble that he heard for echo from the music of a psalm. 'mine uncle of gamaliel muses!' he felt from the moment that thus paul began: "yea, so he giveth his belovéd sleep! blesséd be god, who such a gift gave him! blesséd be god, who yet such gift from me withholds, gift longed for, but awaited still with patience--till his pleasure to bestow! blesséd be god! he doeth all things well! it may be i shall wake until he come! but if i sleep, i still shall sleep in him, for so he giveth his belovéd sleep! sweet gift, and sure the way of giving sweet, since it will be in him, in him, in him- however long hence, and however harsh, the lullaby may be that brings the sleep, at last, at last, the sleep will be in him! to wake to jesus, or in him to sleep, whichever lot for me he choose, i choose. his choice i do not know, but he knows mine; my will, he knows, is his, for him in me to choose with, or his will is mine, for me in him to choose with, now and evermore." "amen!" paul murmured, with such voice as if the prayer he uttered turned to sacrament. stephen a little lingered, and then said: "thou and thy voice, o honored kinsman mine, commend to me whatever thou mayst say or sing; that inner-sounding melody, most sweet, which never other makes save thee, but oft thou makest as to thyself alone when thou alone art, or, as now, with whom thou lovest, and so trustest, utterly, it seems--this i have heard my mother say, who loves it, as i love it, taught by her- it seems to pass the hearing sense unheard; the deeper, if i hear it not, i feel; my heart feeds on it with her inner ear. yet, and however so commended, yet thy choice awakens no desire in me. sleep, to thy nephew, uncle, seems not sweet, or less sweet seems than waking is to him. to lie, like reverend dear gamaliel there, still, stirless still; cold, marble cold; deaf, dumb; calm, yea, too calm, for ever, ever calm; no pain, no fret, but joy, but pleasure none; nor action, nor endeavor, nor attempt, nor strife, nor aspiration, nor desire; no glorious exultation in emprise, or rally of reaction from defeat; fear none indeed, but never, never hope; no change, no chance of any change, the same, the same, continuance without end prolonged; of life--nothing, but only dull, dull death and apathy--o uncle, such a state, and though thou call it sleep in jesus, yet- shall i confess it, uncle, to my shame?- it has no charm for me, i wish to live; i love life, motion, and the sense of power. hebrew i am, in spirit as in blood, yet greek withal enough, if greek it be, to dread the drear, dark, sunless underworld, hades or sheol, and to choose instead this cheerful upper air and joyousness, the brightness of this sun-enlightened earth. and i should like to see what i with life can do; something, i trust, besides to live, some worthy, noble, arduous end to serve, to wrestle with the world and overthrow!" paul thought within himself: 'along this road, this very road, some score of years ago, saul, in the early dawn of that spring day, rode for damascus from jerusalem, nursing such thoughts--fair thoughts they seemed to him! and i was then nigh double my stephen's age- ah, and not half his bright young innocence!' "it is thy youth," to stephen paul replied, "thy youth and health, the fountain fresh of life unwasted, springing up for flow in thee; life is the secret of the love of life. my song of sleep i did not sing for thee, but for a weary older man than thou, who has already lived, already seen what he could do with life! weary am i- with living weary, though of living not- and, god so willing, i should gladly rest." the sweetness of the pensiveness of this, from such an one as paul the aged, smote on stephen with a stroke as of reproof- unmeant, to him the less resistible- and touched to recollection and remorse. he said: "o uncle, be my fault forgiven, that i so lightly thought but of myself! this ride to thee is added weariness, which to me were exhilaration pure, could i forget again, as i cannot, the need my uncle has of rest instead. i slept, while thou wert waking, through that long farewell talk with thy friend, and i am fresh from slumber, as thou art with waking worn- besides that i am young and thou art old." "nay, thou wert right, my lad," said paul to him; "'rejoice thou,' so that ancient preacher cried, and so cries god himself within the blood, 'rejoice thou, o young man, in thy fair youth, and let thy heart in thy young days cheer thee.' i were myself the egotist thou blamest, were i to hang my heavy age on thee and with it weigh thy blithesome spirits down; besides that i should suffer loss deserved, who, in the midmost of my spirit, spring with answering pulse to pulse of youth from thee. go on, my stephen, for paul's sake be glad, thou canst not be more glad than gladdens me. now glad we both are surely in one thing, that thou hast saved thine uncle from that death. let us together sing a gladsome psalm." then softly they in unison began, softly, with yet their accent jubilant: "'had it not been jehovah on our side, let israel now'--let us as israel--'say, had it not been jehovah on our side, when men, together sworn, against us rose, then had they truly swallowed us alive, when sore their wrath against us kindled was; the waters then had overwhelmed us quite, over our soul the rushing stream had gone, over our soul the proud exulting waters. forever blesséd be jehovah lord, who did not give us to their teeth a prey! escaped our soul is, like unto a bird that is escaped from out the fowler's snare; the snare is broken, and escaped are we. our help is in the lord jehovah's name, in his name is, who fashioned heaven and earth.'" they ceased, but presently paul's voice alone: "how those great words, which god the holy ghost spake by the mouth of men of old, elect to be his earthly oracles--how they fill yet the mouth of him that utters them, and fill the ear of him that hears them uttered, and the heart fill of him that makes them his- fill, and, enlarging ever, ever fill! they satisfy the soul, not as with food that sates the hunger, to cry out, 'enough!' but as with hunger's self, and appetite that never ceases crying, 'more! and more!' forever greater growing, and sweeter far than could be any stay to such desire! according as the lord himself once spake pronouncing blesséd those whose hunger is for righteousness, and promising to them fulness. fulness without satiety their blesséd state! state blesséd, sure--to be if only with that heavenly hunger filled!" to stephen half, but half in ecstasy of pure abandonment to worshiping high passion and communion rapt above, paul so his heart disburdened of its praise. "yea," stephen said, "it is a noble psalm, triumphal in its gladness at escape like thine from evil and from evil men. with all my heart i sang it thankfully- at least, if joyfully be thankfully; yet have _i_ thoughts not uttered through that psalm." the elder and the wiser well divined, from something in the manner of the speech of stephen, as too from the words themselves he spoke, what was the spirit of those thoughts within him, which the chanted psalm left dumb. paul safer judged it for his nephew's health of heart and conscience, that the heat and stir of natural thought untoward in him find issue in utterance, than sealed shut to be. "and what, then, nephew, were those thoughts of thine?" in gentle serious question he inquired. "how is it, uncle," swerving, asked the youth- for a fine tact to feel what other felt, unspoken, unbetokened, though it were, was stephen's, and this power of sympathy now gave him sobering sense of check from paul- "how is it, so thou deemest me meet to know, i never hear thee speak of shimei?" "ah, stephen," paul replied, "we lack not themes to speak of, promising more food to thee for sweet and gracious thought and feeling. yet i think of shimei, and to god i speak of him in prayer, often, not without hope. i never will abandon him to be himself, the self that now is he. too well, too bitterly, i remember what i was, i myself, once, as rancorous as he! if guileful less, that was the grace of god, who made us differ from each other there. hateful to him i needs was, from the first, but i was hateful more than needed be; i helped him hate me by my scornful pride. would from his hate i could that strand untwine! hating paul less, he less might jesus hate; only to pity shimei am i clear." "thy patience and thy meekness make me fierce with anger, with ungovernable wrath most righteous," stephen cried, "against those men who, hating, hunt mine uncle to the death! i hate them, and i wish them--what themselves wish thee; dogs of the devil that they are! i know a psalm that i should like to sing- but i should need to roughen hoarse my voice, and a tune frame well jangled out of tune, to sing it as i would, and as were meet. thy pardon, but my rage surpasses bound; to think of what thou art and what they are! some spirit in me, right or wrong, too hot for any counsel, even thine own, to cool, forces unto my lips those wholesome words of hearty human hatred, god-inspired, most needful vent and ease to wish like mine; i lift to god the prayer himself inbreathed: 'hold not thy peace, thou lord god of my praise! who hath rewarded evil still for good, and hatred still for only love returned, set thou a wicked one lord over him, and satan ever keep at his right hand. when he is judged, then let him guilty prove, and let his very prayer turn into sin. few let his days be, and his office let another take. his children fatherless, his wife a widow, be. nay, vagabonds his children, let them beg from door to door. all that he hath, let the extortioner catch, and let strangers make his labor spoil. let his posterity be utterly cut off, and in the time to come their name be blotted out. let the iniquity of his forefathers still remembered be in the lord's presence, and his mother's sin not blotted out: because he persecuted the poor and needy man, and those that were already broken-hearted sought to slay. cursing he loved, and cursing came to him; in blessing he delighted not, and far from him was blessing. he with cursing clothed himself as with his garment, and it sank soaking into his inward parts like water and penetrating to his bones like oil. amen! let cursing be forevermore as if the raiment wherewith he himself covers, and for the girdle of his loins about them belted fast forevermore!'" stephen felt blindly that the eager ire with which he entered, flaming, on that strain of awful imprecation from the psalm, faltered within his heart as he went on- insensibly but insupportably dispirited toward sinking by the lack of buoying and sustaining sympathy supplied it from without; as if the lark, upspringing, on exultant pinion borne, should, midway in his soaring for the sun, meet a great gulf of space wherein the air was spun out thinner than could bear his weight. he ended, halting; and there followed pause, which ponderable seemed to stephen, so did his heart feel the pressure of that pause. at length paul said, with sweetest irony, that almost earnest seemed, it was so sweet: "yea, nephew, hast thou, then, already grown perfect in love, that thou darest hate like that?" it was not asked for answer, stephen knew, and answer had he none he could have given, no answer, save of silence, much-ashamed. paul let the searching of himself, begun and busy in the spirit of the youth, go on in silence for a while; and then in gravest sweet sincerity he spoke: "hating is sweet and wholesome, for the heart that can hate purely, out of utter love. but who for these things is sufficient--save god only? god is love, and he can hate. but for me, stephen, mine own proper self, i dare not hate until i better love. when, as i hope, hereafter i shall be perfect in love, then i may safely hate; till then, i task myself to love alone." there was such reverence in paul's gravity, reverence implied toward him as toward a peer, not peer in age, but peer in human worth- toward him, so young, so heady, and so fond- that stephen, in the sting of the rebuke itself, shaming him, though so gracious, felt a tonic touch that made him more a man. uplifted, while abashed, he dared to say: "perhaps i trespassed in my vehemence; but, uncle, did not god inspire the psalm?" "doubtless, my stephen," paul replied; "but not, not therefore, thee inspire to use the psalm. sound thine own heart now, nephew, and tell me, which was it in thy heart that prayed the prayer- true vehemence in sympathy with god, or vehemence against thy brother man? a sentiment of sympathy with me thou canst not say, for i have no such wish as that thou breathedst, touching any man." "though not in sympathy with thee, at least for thy sake," stephen said, "mine anger burned." "for my sake, yea, but not acceptably even so," said paul; "since neither did it serve my cause, nor please me, if i speak the truth. i know thy love for me and hold it dear; all the world's gold were no exchange for it. so, doubt not, stephen, that to what degree love for thine uncle prompted that thy prayer, thine uncle thanks thee for it from his heart. but let us, thou and i together both, to our own selves severely faithful be. shall we not say that that love faulty is, which less desires to please the one beloved, than to indulge itself, have its own way? and knowest thou not it would have pleased me better- since, for the present, question is of me- to see my nephew altogether such as i myself am, lover of all men, hater of none, not even mine enemy? thou didst not love me well enough for that! "thy love though precious and though well-refined had yet alloy in it of selfishness- of specious, almost lovely, selfishness, i grant thee; yea, according to the world, that loves its own illusions, lovely quite- of such a selfishness alloy enough to take its counsel of itself, not me, blindly abandoned to its own excess." "the art of love thou makest difficult!" stephen, with chastened deprecation, said. "not 'difficult,' impossible," said paul, "save to whom jesus makes it possible. i wish that i could bring thee to perceive how, severed from him, thou canst not love at all, right love, i mean, the one safe sense of love, love with the gift of immortality, since pure and perfectly-proportioned love! left to ourselves, we love capriciously; ever some form of fond self-love it is, which in disguise of love to other masks. if thou in jesus truly hadst loved me then hadst thou loved me as i would be loved, to absolute effacement of thyself through whole replacement of thyself with me. enormous claim seems this of selfishness in me? but i describe ideally the love that i myself to jesus bear. in him i lose, and find again, my self, and the new self i find again, is--he! it is but as united thus with him- my wish, my will, become the same as his- that i dare make exaction for myself of love that seems to blot another out, or merge him in a new and different self. i ask thee--not my will, but christ's, made thine- to love me with the love that pleases him." "all this," said stephen, "must be true, i feel- i feel it better than i understand." "i also," paul said, "in this mystery am wiser with my heart than with my mind, i feel it better than i understand; although i understand it better too than i can make it plain in any words." whereon in silence for a space they rode, while their thoughts ranged diverse in worlds apart. then stephen: "that distempering heat in me, o uncle, is clean gone from out mine heart, slaked by the overshadowing of thy spirit, like the earth cooled with overshadowing night. i am calm enough, i think, to learn, if not thy difficult high doctrine touching love, something at least about those psalms of hate. hate is the spirit of the psalm i said, is it not, uncle?" "as thou saidst it, yea, or i mistook the meaning of thy voice," said paul; "whatever meant the holy words, the tones, i felt, meant that and nothing else." "could then those words themselves mean something else?" asked stephen. "yea," said paul, "for words are naught but empty vessels that the utterer fills with his own spirit when he utters them; the spirit is the lord of utterance." "what was the spirit with which the spirit of god breathed these into the soul of him elect among the sons of men to give them voice? did not god hate whom he so heavily cursed?" stephen inquired; and paul at large replied: "god hates not any, as wicked men count hate- and men not wicked may, in wicked mood- nor wills that of the souls whom he has made any should perish; rather wills that all come to the knowledge of the truth and live. but look abroad upon the world of men; what seest thou? many souls resist the will, the blesséd will to save, of god. of these, some will hereafter yield--thou knowest not who, but some--and let themselves be saved. again, some will to the end resist--thou knowest not who; but some--and obstinately choose to die; choice is the fearful privilege of all. now, toward the man incorrigibly bad, who evil loves and evil makes his good forever, without hope of other change than change from worse to worse forevermore- toward such a man, what must the aspect be of the supreme eternal holiness? what but of wrath, or as of wrath, and hate? canst thou imagine other face of god than frown and threat aflame implacable against implacable rebellion set, and sin eternal, to eternal sin doomed, for self-doomed through free unchanging choice? one flame burns love toward love, and hate toward hate- toward hate that utmost love cannot subdue, the hate that, like the stubborn diamond-stone amid the fiercest fires rebellious, bides still, in love's sevenfold-heated furnace, hate. that flame is the white flame of holiness- which god is, and whose other name is love." "god is a dreadful thought," said stephen. "yea," said paul; "such jacob felt it when he cried, 'how dreadful is this place!' and bethel named the place where god was and he knew it not. god is a dreadful thought, dreadful as sweet- the sweetness and the dreadfulness are one. but never was the dreadfulness so sweet, the sweetness never yet so dreadful shown, as then when jesus died on calvary! shroud thyself, stephen, from the dreadfulness, felt to be too intolerably bright, in the cool, shadowing, sheltering thought, so nigh, of mercy, mercy, still in judgment sheathed." "i feel the buoyance of my spirit sink, oppressed by the great weight of these thy thoughts," said stephen; "and my heart is very still. i wait to hear what god the lord will speak." "hearken," said paul. "those fearful words of curse which late thou nigh hadst turned to blasphemy, daring to lade them with thy personal spite against a neighbor man, whom we must love, until we know hereafter, which god fend! that he bides reprobate, self-reprobate- those maledictions dire, through david breathed, express not human hate, but hate divine, revealed in forms of human speech, and, too, inspired in whoso can the height attain to side with god, and passionlessly damn, as if with highest passion, any found- whom, known not yet, even to himself not known, much less to thee or me, but known to god, and to be known, in that great day, to all- fixed in his final choice of evil for good. henceforward, stephen, when thou sayest that psalm, say it and tremble, lest thyself be he, the man thou cursest in its awful curse!" "if it were right," said stephen, after pause prolonged in solemn chiding of himself, "if it were right and seemly, things profane to mingle with things sacred so--i think perforce now of a certain tragedy i read once by that grecian sophocles, wherein a theban king, one oedipus, denounces on a murderer frightful doom, dreaming not he--though every reader knows- the murderer he so curses is himself. i shudder when i think, 'were it to be that the fierce blasting i invoked to fall upon another's head, i drew on mine: "cursing he loved, and cursing fell on him!"' forefend it god, and christ with blessing fill this heart of mine, too hasting prone to hate!" "amen!" said paul, "thou prayest for me and thee!" out of the depths of the long hush that then followed between those midnight travellers, emerging, like a diver of the sea that brings up dripping pearl from sunken cave and, gladdened, lifts it flashing to the sun, so, to his young companion speaking, paul- not turning while he spoke his countenance toward him, but fixed right forward keeping it, intent, as on an object not of sight, before him held with unmaterial hand, an unmaterial treasure passing price, imagined fair by the creating soul- said, with such cheerful rally in the voice as one invites with, some delight to share: "wilt thou hear, stephen? i have been revolving in form a kind of hymn concerning love, which, in a letter, some twelve months ago, i wrote the church in corinth. there was need, for they were sore at strife among themselves, vying with one another to outdo in divers showy gifts miraculous, or outward deeds that daze the eyes of men: tongues, prophecies, the keys of mysteries, high knowledges, sublime degrees of faith, almsgivings to impoverishment, stout heart to brave devouring flames in testimony- all these things, but for lowly love small care! "my soul was worn and anxious with my pain at such distractions of the church of christ; i found my peace at last in this thought, 'how love would heal all, would gently join from schism, and in one bind the body of the lord!' a wish ineffable seized me to make love lovely to those loveless ones. i had, with the wish born, and of the wish perhaps, a sudden vision that entranced me quite. i saw love take a body beautiful and live and act in most angelic wise; it was as if a heavenly spectacle let down before me by a heavenly hand- not to be viewed with unanointed eyes; i touched my eyes with eyesalve and beheld. then a voice said, 'what thou beholdest, write.' i took my pen and sought to catch the grace of being and behavior shown to me, and fix it, as i could, in form and phrase, for those corinthians and all men to see. a living picture, and a hymn, there grew. "hymn i may call my eulogy of love, then written, for indeed it seemed to sing within me, as i mused it, and the tune still to the hearing of my heart is sweet. i felt, and feel, a kind of awe of it, myself that made it, for i did not make it wholly, i myself, i know quite well; a breath divine, breathed in me, purified my will to will it, and my soul to sing. "my stephen will not think it strange that thus our talking of an hour ago on hate set me to dreaming counterwise of love. i build of love a refuge for myself, whither to run for rest and sanctuary from thoughts of hatred thirsting for my soul. love is my house, and there the air is love- my shelter round about, the breath i draw. no castle is there like my house of love, charmed not to let footstep of evil in; and what will quench the wicked's fiery darts like love drawn round one for an atmosphere? himself gasps breathless with but love to breathe; yea, i am safe from him if i can love. and love i can, through christ who strengthens me, whatever natural force i feel to hate. i love to love, it is my chief delight; i triumph by it over all my foes. the harder these my triumph make to win, the more, since i must win it still by love, to love they drive me, and increase my joy. my triumph is my love, and my love's joy. but thou my poem hear in praise of love: with men's tongues speaking, and with angels', yet, love lacking, i am sounding brass become, or clanging cymbal. prophecy though mine, and mysteries all to grasp, and knowledge all, and mine though be all faith so as to move mountains, i yet, love lacking, nothing am. and though i lavish all i own in alms, and though i yield my body to be burned, yet i, love lacking, am naught profited. love suffers long, is kind, love envies not, love does not vaunt herself, is not puffed up, deports herself in no unseemly wise, seeks not her own, is not provoked, imputes not evil, at unrighteousness no joy feels, but her joy has with the truth, bears up against all things, all things believes, all things hopes, undergoes all things. love never fails; but whether there be prophecies, they will be done away, tongues whether, they will cease, whether there knowledge be, it will have end. for we in part know, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect comes, then that which is in part will pass away. when i a child was, as a child i talked, i did my thinking as a child, i used my reason as a child; since i a man have grown, the child's part i have put aside. for now we darkly, through reflection, see, but face to face then. now i know in part, but then shall i know fully, even as i also am fully known. and now these three bide, faith, hope, love; but of these chief is love.' "stephen, how little shimei guesses," paul said, having thus his hymn of love rehearsed, "the secret triumph ever over him i celebrate, in loving him, despite his hating me, and seeking to destroy! who knows but god to love will win him yet?" a certain gentle humor exquisite enlivened and commended this from paul. but stephen answered not; indignant love swelled in his heart, and choked within his throat the way of words, and dimmed his eyes with tears. thus at antipatris arrived, they halt: here stephen, nursing other purpose not disclosed, disclosed to paul a wish he had to go back with the infantry returning, and reassure his mother that all was well. paul sped his nephew with his benison; and, after rest had, and refreshment meet, himself thence, with the escort cavalry safeguarded, on to cæsarea rode, not lonely, though alone, and prisoner. book v. shimei and young stephen. stephen, having returned, goes at once to the chiliarch, his secret purpose being to convict shimei of his crime, through certain evidence which he thinks he can bring to bear on the case. to the youth's disappointment and chagrin, he is received coldly and repellently by the chiliarch now much out of humor as a sequel to his disagreeable interview with shimei. dismissed crestfallen to go, stephen is suddenly confronted at the door by shimei, at that moment arriving in obedience to a summons from the chiliarch. the mutual encounter has the effect on the chiliarch observing it, to change his attitude toward stephen, making it favorable again. shimei is sent to cæsarea under suspicion; where felix, the governor, plans a hearing for the prisoner paul. shimei and young stephen at cæsarea soon the sanhedrim, by deputy and advocate, appeared before the bar of felix governor, to implead the prisoner paul. the high-priest brought the weight and dignity of rulership supreme among his people, to impress on felix fitting sense of the grave cause now come before him to be judged. thin veiled beneath the decent fair exterior show of only public and judicial aim and motive in that ruler of the jews (the high-priest ananias), deep there wrought a leaven of personal vindictiveness twofold, sullen resentment of affront, and, added, that least placable, that worst hatred, the hatred toward a brother wronged. whom he, from his own judgment-seat--profaned thus by his profanation of the law- had wantonly commanded to be smitten upon the mouth, this outraged man must now be proved, forsooth, a wretch unmeet to live. but shimei, as prime mover, was left, too, to be prime manager, of all. far less festive, than his old wont, in exercise of that exhaustless wit his own in wile, serious he now, yea even to sadness, seemed. and reason was. for claudius lysias had summoned him to presence in the fort; and there, hap not to have been imagined, he, besides the haughty roman chief, had met another face more welcome scarce than his. young stephen's purpose, not revealed, had been to move some action against shimei. this gentle hebrew youth inherited large measure of the wilful spirit high that in the blood of all his kindred ran. of his own motion he, without advice, nay, headstrong, in the teeth of thwart advice, which, though he sought it not, he full well felt in current counter to his wish--self-moved thus, and self-willed, paul's nephew had resolved to try what might to him be possible- by putting in the place of the accused instead of the accuser's, that base man, his uncle's foe--to free his uncle's state, once and for all, from danger and annoy due to the restless hate of shimei. the friendly chiliarch was his first resort. in one swift glance, which more was of the mind itself, perceiving as it were without organ, than of the eye with which it saw, stephen that night, upon the point of time when shimei was arrested and brought in, a glimpse had caught of two receding forms of men upon the street, flying as seemed; whom instantly he knew to be the same with that pair of conspirators to slay, whose whispers had revealed their plot to him: these were the stout young fellows shimei set to lie in wait for the escaping paul. the moment they beheld their master seized, they quickly had betaken them to flight; but stephen's mind flew faster than their feet, and with intangible tether had them bound. this his new observation of the twain made him secure of recognizing them whenever or wherever seen again. with so much clue as this, no more, in hand, to guide him in the quest of testimony that might his crimes bring home to shimei- supposed still safe in keeping at the fort- stephen his audience with the chiliarch sought. the bright hope that he brought in coming, sprung from grateful recollection of the grace he found, that morning, in the roman's eyes, was promptly damped to deep dejection now. the chiliarch met him with a cold and sour severity of aspect that repelled, beyond the youth's capacity--unbuoyed, for this occasion, with approving sense of well-advised attempt at least, if vain- to front it with unruffled brow. abashed he stood, confused; the blood rushed to his face; his tongue clung to his mouth's roof; and in all he less looked like that youthful innocence which won the roman so in his soft mood, than like the conscious guilt, uncovered now, in shimei's slant insinuation shown. the chiliarch by reaction was relapsed into his sternest temper of disdain embittered by suspicious cynicism; apt sequel of the interview prolonged with shimei, and the final passionate ejection of that hebrew from the fort. he now awaiting shimei, summoned back once more, to be to cæsarea sent, here was that stephen--despicable he too, doubtless, like his despicable race! such was the prompt involuntary set, inhospitable, of the chiliarch's thought, for welcome of the youth before him there. to stephen's stammering words about those men, and how they might be made to testify of shimei's desperate plot to murder paul, thus bringing shimei to deservéd doom, the roman tartly said: "aye, aye, young sir, i think it like, seems altogether like. you jews could, all of you, i doubt not, swear of one another, brethren as ye be, things damnable enough to crucify ye all, and, what is more, for just that once, swear true! but thanks, lad, i have had my fill at present of these proffered services." the manner was dismissory, more even than were the words, and stephen bowed to go. but his own manner in thus bowing changed, although he spoke not, to such dignity, recovered from his discomposure late, so instantly recovered, and so pure- adulterate in no trace with hardihood- a dignity comportable with youth, while eloquent of virtue and high mind, and, like a robe, so beautifully worn over a person and a gesture fair, that claudius lysias, cynic as he was that moment, seeing could not but admire. he, on the point to bid the youth remain, wavering, not quite persuaded,--at the door, bowing his different bow, stood shimei; that sight and contrast fixed his wavering mind. "stay thou, my lad," abruptly he exclaimed- wherewith another fall the countenance fell of shimei, cringing, to his footsteps glued. "look ye on one another, ye two jews," the chiliarch in a sudden humor said; "i have a fancy i should like to see how two reciprocal accusers such as you are, rogues both--though one young, one old, in roguery--if your mutual witness hold- i say, the fancy takes me to observe how two accusers of each other, like yourselves, confronted in close quarters thus, will severally enjoy each other's stare." an indescribable something in the tone of claudius lysias speaking thus, or look perhaps, couched in the eye or on the face playing, signified clear to shimei that the same words were differently meant to stephen and to him; spoken to him in earnest, in but pleasantry to stephen. stephen's high air, in proud sense of his worth wronged by misdoubt, had shimei led astray. he saw it as a sign of prosperous suit- doubtless against himself--just finished there. already tuned to fear, his conscious mind, quite disconcerted by this fresh surprise of some detection that he could not guess, suddenly wrote abroad on all his mien a patent full conviction of himself. as more and more his heart misgave him, worse ever and worse his brow was discomposed. the lively opposite of shimei's change was meantime making stephen's face more fair. he, at the chiliarch's mating of himself with shimei, though in veriest raillery meant, felt all the soul of manliness in him stung to its most resistant; as he turned, obedient to the chiliarch's word, and looked at shimei, such transfigurement there passed upon him that he stood there glorified. an infinite repellence seemed to ray from out his eyes, and put impassable remove between him and that other, while ascendance, as peculiar to a race and rank of being wholly different, endued him, like a natural right to reign. such kingly to such servile seen opposed, surprised the chiliarch into altered mood. "enough," said he; and, writing while those stayed, he gave to shimei what he wrote to read. it was a letter shimei should himself convey to felix governor; it ran: "who brings this is a rascal, as i judge; he comes to accuse the jewish prisoner paul. detain him, if thee please, to see the end; the end should be perhaps a cross for _him_!" wincing, the miscreant read; he, reading, felt draw, from rome's hand, the coil about his neck. choking for speech, he, ere he found it, heard the chiliarch say, with voice hard like a flint: "thou hast thine errand; tarry not, but go. nay, bide a moment; let the youngster see what message i have given thee to bear; then, if so chance thou lose it on the way, he can supply thy lack of carefulness!" his air that of the miser who, compelled, gives up gold hoarded, like his own heart's blood, shimei, with griping pangs, in sick recoil of grudging overmastered to submit, yielded, as if he were withholding it, the hateful letter into stephen's hand. stephen, as one not daring otherwise, deigned a reluctant look, that, seeking not, yet seized, the sense of that which shimei showed; softened, he gave the parchment back to him. prodded with such oblique sarcastic spur to heed of sinister commission such, shimei withdrew, a miserable man. the chiliarch then to stephen--who, at once pity of shimei's utter wretchedness, shame of his utter abjectness, conceived- said, with changed tone: "my lad, i think thee true; that miscreant vexed me into petulance. thou hast not altogether missed thy mark in coming hither now, although i thus seem to let shimei for the present slip. follow him, if thou wilt, to cæsarea. with letter of bellerophon in charge, he carries his own sentence thither hence; watch it--if slow in execution, sure!" sobered by triumph, and not triumphing, made pensive rather, stephen went away. forth from the hour when shimei, so dismissed, shrank out of presence at antonia collapsed in spirit as in mien and port, he to the end was seen an altered man. dejected, absent, like a criminal convicted of his crime, sentenced to die, though day of death unfixed, imprisoned not, nay, moving, as if free, about the world, to view not different from his fellow-men, yet with a sense forever haunting him of doom uncertainly suspended still above him, that at any moment might in avalanche descend upon his head- so he lived joyless, the elastic spring broken that buoyed him to his wickedness. but loth he had to cæsarea gone, where, with wry looks and deprecation vain, he gave the letter to the governor; had he, to ease his case, dared fail the trust, the failure would have failed his case to ease, nay, rather, would have harder made his case, since stephen could report what he did not, and could besides report his negligence. but shimei dared not fail; he knew offence, added, of disobedience, would but draw speedier the dreaded danger ruining down. joy is to some a spring of energy, which failing, all their force for action fails- they having in themselves no virtue proof against the palsying touch ill fortune brings; of such was shimei. in his broken state, his measures he took feebly, without hope. the wish--which with the expectation joined would have made hope--yea, even the very wish, that life and strength of hope, was well-nigh dead in him; for he no longer now desired the thing he wrought for still, under constraint of habit, and that strange necessity which sense of many eyes upon him fixed to watch him working the familiar wont of shimei, bred within this wretched man, forcing him like a fate. fit tool he found in one tertullus--hireling roman tongue, or function mere, not organ--who, for price, spoke customary things accusing paul to felix, for the jews; these joined their voice in sanction of the truth of what he said. but paul denying their base charges all, denying and defying to the proof, the governor postponed them for a time. paul he remanded into custody, but bade with courteous ways distinguish him; whereof the secret cause was, not a sense in felix of the righteousness of paul, with therefore sweet magnanimous desire to grace him what in loyalty he could- of no such height was felix capable- the cause none other was than shimei; who paul however served not, but himself. for shimei dreaded what he seemed to seek, the sentence "guilty," at the judgment-bar of felix on this prisoner paul pronounced; dreaded it, lest appeal therefrom be claimed by paul to the imperial ear at rome. he himself, shimei, then might be compelled to go likewise the same unwelcome way, though witness and accuser only named, yet labelled target for suspicious eyes, where eyes suspicious oft portended doom. so he to felix--less with words than signs, mysterious looks and reticences deep, as of a man who could, if but he would, and were it wise, tell much that, left untold, might well be guessed from things kept back, yet thus, and thus, and thus (in shimei's pantomime) winked with the eye and with the shoulder shrugged- hint signalled that there hid a gold mine here, for who, with power like his, conjoined the skill to make it yield its treasure to demand; this paul had wealthy friends who gladly would buy at large price indulgences for him. let felix hold out hopes, deferring still, suffer his friends to come and visit paul, give hearings to his case, but naught decide, weary him out, and them, with long delays- till a realm's ransom woo his clutch at last. now shimei thus consummately contrived; for felix was a mercenary soul, who governed in the spirit of a slave. he, therefore, doubting not that shimei (confessed the player of a double part, pander to him, accuser for the jews) was all the rascal that the chiliarch guessed, yet deemed he saw his profit in the man. he could use shimei to his own behoof, in winning what he coveted from paul; meantime remitting not his hold on him for final expiation of his crimes. the two, well fitted to each other, thus played each his several sordid game with each, and neither by the other was deceived, both equally incapable of trust, as equally unworthy to be trusted- until, two years accomplished, felix fell from power at cæsarea; when, his greed long disappointed of its glut of gain from paul, he left him there in prison. he hoped the dreaded accusation of the jews for his abuse of power, surpassing bound, might less fierce follow him to rome, should he, by that injustice added, in their eyes his thousands of injustices atone. moreover felix hated paul, as hates the upbraided ever his upbraider, when, the conscience yielding, yet the will withstands. for, during the imprisonment of paul, and that prolonged delay of trial due him, this base freedman--basely raised to be a ruler--as a pleasure to his wife, devised a feast of eloquence for her. she was a jewess, beautiful as vile, and as in beauty brilliant, so in wit; she would enjoy it, like a spectacle, to sit, in emulated state, a queen beside her husband in his judgment-hall, and there, at ease reclined, her lord's delight, in her resplendent and voluptuous bloom, disport herself at leisure, eye and ear tasting their satisfaction to the full, to see and hear her famous countryman expound his doctrine and defend his cause. not often, in his rude judæan seat of government in banishment, could he proffer the stately partner of his throne an equal hope of entertainment rare. so, royal in their pomp of progress, came, one day, the lustful felix with his bride, adulterous drusilla, guilty pair! and, on his throne of judgment seating him, bade paul before them, in his prisoner's chain, to burn the splendors of his oratory in pleading for the faith of jesus christ- fresh pastime to the cloyed and jaded sense for pleasure those voluptuaries brought! uncalculated thrills, not of delight, that lawless roman ruler had purveyed himself, to chase each other in their chill procession through the currents of his blood, and, shuddering, shoot along his nerves, and freeze his marrow!--conscience in him her last sign making perhaps that day. but will he heed? or will the terrors of the world to come vainly appal him with the eternal fear? book vi. paul before felix. paul discourses solemnly before felix and his queen drusilla, treating the topics of righteousness, self-control, and impending judgment. the effect is to make felix show visible signs of discomposure on his judgment-seat. drusilla, apprehensive of consequences disastrous to herself from her wicked husband's awakened remorse and fear, invokes the intervention of simon, that cyprian jewish sorcerer who had at first been instrumental in bringing the guilty pair together. simon plays upon the superstition of felix with his pretended magic arts. paul before felix. the power of the most high, descending, fell on paul, as, led of soldiers, he came in, bound, at the mercy of the governor, and took his station in that presence proud. at once, but without observation, changed became the parts of felix and of paul. paul, from a prisoner of felix, now to felix was as captor and as judge; and felix was as prisoner, bound, to paul. paul his right hand in manacles stretched forth, as if it were a scepter that he swayed, and said: "most excellent lord felix, hear, and thou, drusilla, unto felix spouse! obedient, at thy bidding, i am come to make thee know the faith in jesus christ, and wherefore i obey it, and proclaim. know, then, that jesus, he of nazareth, the crucified of calvary, is christ, the christ of that jehovah god most high who by his word created heaven and earth, and him anointed to be lord of all. god was incarnate in him here on earth, to reconcile the world unto himself; and i beseech men--i, ambassador from him, as if the lord god did by me beseech--beseeching them, 'be reconciled to god.' "for all men everywhere are found by wicked works god's enemies; on all, god's wrath, weight insupportable, abides; a message this, that down from heaven he brought, that christ of god, that savior of the world. but his atonement lifts the load of wrath, which down toward hell the sinking spirit weighed, lifts, nay, transmutes it to a might of love, which bears the spirit soaring up to heaven. 'believe in jesus, and be reconciled to god'; that is the gospel which i preach. obey my gospel, and be saved--rebel, and pray the mountains to fall down on thee to hide thee from the wrath of god, and hide thee from the wrath, more dreadful, of the lamb. for lamb was jesus, when on calvary in sacrifice for sin he died; but when, resurgent from the tomb, above all height into the heaven of heavens he rose, and sat on the right hand of glory and of power with god, then the lamb slain from far before the world was founded, by his blood our guilt to purge, as capable of wrath became, as he before was capable of love. he burns against unrighteousness, in flame which, kindling on the wicked, them devours. there is no quenching of that fearful flame, as ending none is there of what it burns; the victim lives immortally, to feed the immortal hunger of that vengeful flame. it swifter than the living lightning flies, to fasten on its victim in his flight; no refuge is there in the universe for fugitive from it. thou, felix, knowest no hider can elude the ranging eyes, no runner can outrun the wingéd feet, no striver can resist the griping hands, that to the emperor of the world belong; whom cæsar wishes, cæsar has for prey." paul fixed his gaze point-blank on felix while these things he said, not as with personal aim- which might have been resented, being such, resented, and thereby avoided quite- rather as if, through body, he beheld his hearer's soul, and set it with his eyes far forward into the eternal world, and there saw the fierce flame he spoke of, fast adhering or inhering, burn that soul, with burning unescapable by flight or refuge through the universe of god. paul's vision was so vivid that his eyes imprinted what he saw upon the soul of felix, that almost he saw it too. he stared and listened, with that thought intense wherewith sometimes the overmastering mind will blind the eyesight and the hearing blur. a sense of insecurity in power, bred in him by his consciousness of crime, with dread, too, of the moment, then perhaps already nigh! when that omnipotence, that omnipresence, that omniscience, rome's, might beset _him_, to cut him off from hope- this feeling blindly wrought the while beneath, like struggling earthquake, to unsettle him; thus weakened, half unconsciously, his will fell childlike-helpless in the power of paul. now fear hath torment, and to felix, prey of fear with torment, paul still added fear; perhaps his fear intolerable grown might save the sufferer from the thing he feared! paul further said: "o felix, cæsar's sway over this world, inevitable thus, subduing all, is yet but image pale of the supreme dominion absolute which to christ jesus in the heaven belongs. the captives of the emperor need but wait patient a while and sure release arrives; since death at least, to all, or soon or late, comes, one escape at last from cæsar's power, who owns no empire in that world beyond. but of that world beyond, no end, no bound, whither we all must flee in fleeing hence, still the lord christ abides eternal king; death is but door to realm of his more wide. here, the sheathed sword of his avenging ire will sometimes touch, undrawn, with blunted edge, the wincing conscience of the wicked man that knows himself a criminal unjudged. those touches are the mercy of the lord that would betimes the guilty soul alarm; those pains of conscience are the smouldering fires which, quenched not now in sin-atoning blood, will, blown to fury, by and by burst forth, and, fuelled of the substance of the soul, that cannot moult its immortality, one inextinguishable vengeance burn. "'be wise now, therefore, o ye kings, be ye instructed, judges of the earth;' so god cries in our scriptures in the ears of men. 'kiss ye the son,' he says, 'in homage kiss the son of mine anointing, christ the lord, kiss him lest he be angry, and his wrath ready to be enkindled you devour. but in the living scriptures of the soul itself, the holy word of god in man, the selfsame admonition beats and burns- if men would read it and would understand! the raging of desire not satisfied, the sickness of the surfeit of desire, the ravages of passion uncontrolled, and waste of being, by itself consumed, to bury or deface what else were fair- like lava spouted from the crater's mouth of the volcano burning its own bowels to belch them torrent over fertile fields- these things, o felix, in the conscious heart, are muffled footfalls of oncoming doom." peculiar commination seemed to flame, volcanic, in paul's manner as he spoke. one might have felt the figure prophecy- for some fulfilment in this present world impending to be symbol of his thought- his likening of the self-consuming soul, disgorging desolation round about, to a volcano its own entrails burning, and in eruption pouring them abroad; so real, so living, so in imminent act, paul's speaking made his fiery simile. drusilla, when, long after, with her son agrippa, born to felix, overwhelmed in that destruction from vesuvius which under ashen rain and lava flood pompeii rolled with herculaneum, like sodom and gomorrah whelmed again!- drusilla then, despairing, for one fierce fleet instant--instant endless, though so fleet- saw, as from picture branded on her brain, heard, as from echo hoarded in its cells, the very image of the speaker's form, his posture, gesture, features in their play, these, and the tones, reliving, of the voice wherewith, in cæsarea judgment-hall, he fulmined, yea, as if this self-same wo! but paul, no pause, immitigably said: "belshazzar, babylonian king of old, once in a season of high festival held in his palace with a thousand lords, saw visionary fingers of a hand come out upon the palace walls and write. then that king's countenance was changed in him, in answer to the trouble of his thoughts; the very jointings of his loins were loosed, and his knees, shaken, on each other smote. in language that he did not understand, but prophet daniel told the sense to him, belshazzar had his own swift ruin read. thus, o lord felix, in our hours of feast, oft, mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, dread warning to us that the end is come, that we have been full proved and wanting found, that now our vantage must another's be- appalling words of final doom from god, in lurid letters live along the walls of the soul's pleasure-house--for who will heed! remorses, doubts, recoils, forebodings, fears, and fearful lookings for of judgment nigh, previsions flashed on the prophetic soul refusing to be hooded not to see- these are handwritings on the wall from god; they, syllabling the sentence of his ire, spell mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, for pleasure-lovers lost in lust and pride. well for belshazzar, if betimes he heed!" had felix been alone, deep in the dark, and a wide waste of solitude around, a comfort it had seemed to him to loose one mighty agitation of his frame and shiver his blood-curdling terror off; or, in one wanton, wild, voluptuous cry, shriek it into the startled universe. but, seated there upon his throne of power, drusilla by his side regarding him, to tremble, like a culprit being judged, before a culprit waiting judgment! he, with last resistant agony of will, kept moveless his blanched lips, and on his seat sat stricken upright, and so stared at paul. there paul stood tranquil, choosing thunderbolts, and this the thunderbolt that last he launched: "hearken, o felix. in the clouds of heaven, attended by the angels of his might, the lord christ jesus i behold descend. the trumpet of the resurrection sounds, and sea and land give up their wakened dead; these all to judgment hasten at his call: the books are opened and the witness found; all the least thoughts of men, with all their words and deeds, all their dumb motions of desire, their purposes, and their endeavors all, are written in the record of those books. they blaze out in the light of that great day. like lightning, fixed from fleeting, on the sky; deem not one guilty can his guilt conceal. a parting of the evil and the good; the good at his right hand he bids sit down, the awful judge, omnipotent as just; the evil, frowning, bids from him depart. swift, them departing--who would not know god, and not obey the gospel of his son- he, taking vengeance, follows in their flight with flaming fire and dreadful punishment, destruction everlasting from his face, from the lord's face, and glory of his power!" the shudder that had slept uneasy sleep within the breast of felix lulling it, woke startled at these minatory words spoken as with the voice of god by paul. that couchant shudder from its ambush broke, and openly ran wantoning over all the members of the terror-stricken man. but the cry clamoring in him for escape, to ease the anguish of his mortal fear, felix found strength to modulate to this, in forced tones uttered, and with failing breath: "go thy way this time, paul; at season fit hereafter i will call for thee again." the soldier duly led his prisoner out, and felix was full easily rid of paul; of paul, but of paul's haunting presence not the image of that orator in chains, the solemn echo of the words he spoke, swam before felix, sounded in his ears, so real, the real world round him seemed less real. drusilla, to her discomposure, found her husband strangely alien from his spouse; the blandishments so potent with him late lost on an absent or repellent mind. the awe of felix under paul's discourse she had remarked with unconcerned surprise. she now recalled it with a doubt, a fear. the jealous thought woke in her: 'if my lord should, overwrought in conscience, cast me off! what byword and what hissing then were i, stranded and branded an adulteress! i, who the scion of a kingly house, haughty antiochus epiphanes, haughtily spurned as suitor for my hand, because he would not for my sake be jew; who wedded then azizus, eastern king, willing to win me at the price i fixed; who next with scandal parted from his bed, to snatch this dazzle of a roman spouse- _i_ to be now by him flung to the dogs! all at the beck of an apostate jew, arraigned a culprit at his judgment-bar! drusilla, rouse thee, say, it must not be! drusilla, arm thee, swear, it shall not be!' she summoned straight that cyprian sorcerer who had played the pander's part between herself and felix, when they twain at first were brought in guilt together. "simon, know," she said, "i with cause hate this jewish prisoner paul. he, insolence intolerable, is fain to come between my roman lord and me. withstand him, and undo his hateful spell." "his hateful spell, o stately queen, my liege," said simon, "i far rather would assay unbinding from thy spouse's soul enthralled, than him withstand, the binder of that spell, meeting him face to face. at paphos once, of cyprus, elymas, a master mind in magic--at the court proconsular of sergius paulus, regent of the isle, wielding great power--withstood this self-same paul. but paul denounced a curse deipotent against him, and forthwith upon his eyes a mist fell and a darkness, that he walked wandering in quest of one to lead him, late redoubtable magician, by the hand. this conjuration on the conjurer, himself proconsul sergius paulus saw, and, overpowered with wonder and with fear, roman and governor as he was, became fast docile dupe and devotee to paul. "perhaps indeed there was a cause for this older in date than such a feat of paul's. long years before, when paul and he were young, by chance they fared together on the way damascus-ward out of jerusalem, when, nigh damascus, of a sudden, paul on sergius tried a novel magic trick. in broad noon, with unclouded sun ablaze above him, burning all that tract of sand, he flashed a sheen of mimic lightning forth, with stage effect of thunder overhead muttering words. thereon as dead fell paul, yet to that unintelligible voice from heaven intelligible answer made, pretending dialogue with some unseen high dweller in the upper air, with whom colluding, he thenceforth his spells of power might surer, deadlier, fling on whom he would. sergius was then too full of youth to yield; the lusty blood in him fought off the spell; but somewhat wrought upon, no less, was he, and secretly, in mind and will, prepared to fall in weaker age a prey to paul. a potent master paul is in his kind, owning some secret from us others hid, that makes our vaunts against him void and vain. i would not needlessly his curse provoke by too close quarters with him front to front. his spell on felix i may hope to solve, let me but have thy husband by himself, in privileged audience safe apart from paul; i will see felix, but paul let me shun." so simon to his moody master went, and, well dispensing with preamble, said: "what will mine excellent lord felix please command the service of his servant in?" "unbidden thou art present," felix frowned. "so bidden i retire," the mage replied. "nay, tarry," with quick wanton veer of whim, said felix, "tarry and declare to me, if with exertion of thy skill thou canst, what is it that this hour perturbs my thought? answer me that, pretender to be wise, or own thy weird pretensions nothing worth. no paltering, no evasion, doubling none in ambiguity like oracle, but instant, honest, simple, true reply; else, i have done with all thy trumpery tricks, haply, too, with some certain fruits thereof that thee buy little thanks, as me small joy." "my master pleases to make hard demand, in couple with condition hard, to-day," the sorcerer, with dissembled pleasure, said. simon full ready felt to meet his test; for, in an antechamber to the hall of judgment, he, with shimei too, had lurked, and, overhearing paul's denouncement, marked the trepidation of the judge's mien. "lord felix suffers from an evil spell cast on him by a wicked conjurer;" so, with deep calculation of effect, the sorcerer to the sovereign firmly said. "a hit--perhaps," said felix, some relief of tension to his conscience-crowded mind welcoming already in the hint conveyed; "repeat to me," he added, keen to hear, "repeat to me the phrasing of the spell; that i may know it not a groping guess, but certain knowledge, what thou thus hast said." that challenge flung to simon's hand the clue he needed for his guidance in the maze. he sees the roman's superstitious mind in grapple with imaginative awe infused by recollection of those words barbaric--of comminatory sound, though understood not, therefore dreaded more- which paul, two several times, in his discourse, had solemnly recited in his ear. "the spell," he said, "o felix, that enthralls thee was of three chaldæan words composed; but one word was repeated, making four. i dare not utter those dire syllables in the fixed order which creates the spell. my wish is to undo, and not to bind." felix was frightened, like a little child told ghostly stories in the dead of night; he watched and waited, with set eye intense. the conjurer, standing in struck attitude, made with his voice an inarticulate sign intoned in tone to thrill the listening blood. thereon, in silence, through the opening door, with gliding motion, a familiar stole into the chamber, which now more and more, to felix's impressionable fears, as if a vestibule to hades was. that noiseless minister to simon gave into his master's hand a rod prepared. "hearken, lord felix," low the conjurer said, "hearken and heed. well needs it thou, with me, fail now in nothing through a mind remiss. hear thou aright, while i aright reverse the order of the phrasing of that spell. beware thou think it even no otherwise than as i give it, weighing word and word. i turn the sentence end for end about, upharsin, tekel, mene, mene, say; all is not done, still keep thy mind intent, and, with thine eyes now, as erst with thine ears, watch what i do, and let thy will consent." therewith his wizard wand he waved in air, as who wrote viewless words upon the wind. a hollow reed the wand he wielded was, with secret seed asleep of fire enclosed. this, at the end that in his hand he held; powder of sulphur at the other end was hidden in the hollow of the reed. the sulphur and the fire, unconscious each of other, had, though neighboring, since apart, slept; for the sorcerer's minion brought the rod, as first the sorcerer held it, levelled true. but with the motion of the magian's hand, the dipping virgule sent the ember down the polished inner of its chamber-walls, and breath let in to blow it living red, until it touched the sulphur at the tip. issue of fume there followed, edged with flame, and wafting pungent odor from the vent, which, woven in circlet and in crescent, seemed to knit a melting legend on the air. "so vanish and be not, thou hateful spell, and leave this late so vexéd spirit free!" with mutter of which words, the sorcerer turned to felix, and thus farther spoke: "breathe thou, lord felix, from that bond emancipate. yet, that thou fall not unawares again beneath its power, use well a countercharm i give thee, which, both night and day, wear thou a prophylactic to thy menaced mind. gold--let the thought, the motive, the desire, the purpose, and the fancy, and the dream, not leave thee nor forsake thee till thou die. the sight, the sound, the touch, the clutch, of gold is sovereign absolution to a soul beset like thine with fear of things to be beyond the limit of this mortal state; but, failing that, the thought itself will serve. the thought at least must never absent be, if thou wouldst live a freeman in thy mind." 'freedman,' he would have said, but did not dare; he had dared much already in his word, 'freeman,' so nigh overt allusion glanced at the opprobrious quality of slave, out of which felix sprang to be a king. to that, contempt and hatred of a lord served but from hard self-interest and from fear had irresistibly pressed simon on beyond the bound of calculated speech. therewith, and waiting not dismissal, both, the sorcerer and his minion, silently slid out of presence, and left felix there to rally as he might to his true self. but, not too trustful to his sorcery, simon thought well to follow and confirm the influence won on felix through his art, with worldly wisdom suited to his end. he bade drusilla open all access ever for shimei to her husband's ear, and even from her own treasure help him ply felix's avid mind with hope of gold- assured to him through earnest oft in hand- an ample guerdon in due time to come from paul's rich friends to buy release for paul. at cæsarea, in the judgment hall that day, a solemn crisis of his life, to felix, he not knowing, there had passed. successfully, with sad success! he had resisted conscience in her last attempt, her last and greatest, to alarm a soul sufficiently to save it from itself. at length, with the still process of the days dulled, and besides with opiate medicines drugged, that conscience, so resisted, sank asleep, sank dead asleep in felix, to awake never again. he indeed sent for paul afterward oft, and talked with him at large; but always only in that sordid hope- blown to fresh flame with seasonable breath, that never failed, from shimei, prompt in watch to play on his cupidity--the hope of princely ransom from his prisoner won. such hope, so kept alive, led this bad man- although he hated paul for shaking him to terror, and to open shameful show of terror, in his very pitch of pride- to palter with his prisoner, month by month, until the end came of his long misrule. then, hope deferred, defeated hope at last, let loose the hatred that in leash had lain of avarice, in the kennel of that breast, and felix found a sullen feast for it in leaving paul at cæsarea bound. book vii. "to cæsar." paul, in preferred alternative to being judged, as was proposed, by his murderous fellow-countrymen, appeals to cæsar. he is in consequence embarked on a ship for rome. with him sail certain kindred and friends of his, young stephen among them. fellow-voyagers with him are also felix and drusilla, fallen now from power and under cloud at rome. shimei and simon the sorcerer are of the company. the voyage is described, together with some of the notable prospects of the coasts along which the vessel sails. shimei plots against the life of paul. his plot is thwarted by young stephen, and the culprit is thrown into dungeon in the hold under chains. "to cæsar." during the years of his captivity under that wanton hand at cæsarea, paul's sister, with her stephen, brought their home thither, and there abode, for love of paul; that they might minister to him, and be ministered to by him in overflow of his far more exceeding rich reward. thither came also others of the way, drawn by like love, to serve the same desire. of these was martyr stephen's widow, ruth, a stately lady, with the matron's crown of glory in her wealth of silver hair, and with the invisible pure aureole of living saintship radiant round her brow. with her, a daughter, left to ruth alone among her children--wedded all beside. her youngest-born, and fairest, was this one, eunicé named; a gift from god to ruth after her husband's martyrdom bestowed. euníce bore her father's image, lined softer with girlhood and with yielding youth, both in her features and her character. the light that in her lovely countenance shone lovelier, was not playful, did not flash, but sat there tempered to an equal beam, selené-like, that one might look upon, from far or near, dwelling however long, with sense of rest and healing to the eye; you seemed to gaze upon the evening star in sole possession of a twilight sky. it was as if the father's zeal intense- which, kindling on his way to martyrdom, shone into brightness dazzling like the sun- descended to the daughter, were suffused so, and so qualified, with woman's love, that it undazzling like the moon became. eunicé, such in queenly womanhood, already to young stephen was betrothed; they waited only till the years should bring full ripeness, with meet circumstance, to wed. mary of magdala kinswoman was to ruth. she, long afflicted, from before her marriageable season, with the haunt in her of evil spirits vagabond from the abyss, had, then to woman grown, met jesus in his rounds of doing good and been by him delivered from her woe. seven demons, at his word, went forth from her, foul inmates of a mansion passing fair. mary to her divine deliverer gave her life thenceforth one long oblation up. with other women, like herself in love of him, she followed that immanuel whithersoever he went about the world, and of her treasure lavished on his need. she stood bewailing when they crucified her lord, and, after, at his sepulcher the earliest, ere the breaking of the morn, saw two fair-shining angels clothed in white, one at the head, the other at the feet, sit where the body of the lord had lain. these talked with mary, who then turning saw, but knew not, jesus, face to face with her. but jesus to the weeping woman said: "mary!" and, in the hearing of her name, she forthwith knew the voice that uttered it. in her delight of love, she would have touched his person, to assure still more her mind, save that again that voice, forestalling, gave enough assurance for such faith as hers. mary refrained her hand, but full well knew no fleeting phantom, no dissolving show, no spirit only, angel of the dead, stood there before her in the form of him; but her lord christ himself, his flesh and blood. this mary magdalené, in such wise first to such joy delivered from such woe, then witness of so much theophany, thenceforward lived, unwedded to the end, a life of watching for her lord's return, true to his promise, in the clouds of heaven; not idle watching, watching unto prayer and unto almsdeeds to his glory done. in the due sequel of the days, she came, bidden by her kinswoman ruth, to share her widow's home with her and help her peace. thus then, the much-experienced mary, meek with wisdom and with holy meekness wise (her sorrow all to cheerful patience turned) unnoticed, not unfelt, as light, as strength unconscious, from the source of strength, of light daily renewed, for guidance and support to all within her happy neighborhood- she also, mary magdalené, came to cæsarea, yoked in fellowship with ruth and rachel, ministrant to paul. these all, with others, still intent to ease, if but by sharing, what to paul befell, were minded to go with him even to rome- when festus, following felix dispossessed, sent paul away to cæsar's judgment-seat, fulfilling so the wretched shimei's fear. for--festus asking paul (accused afresh before him from jerusalem by jews afresh to hope reviving with the change from felix to a different rulership): "wilt thou hence go unto jerusalem, and there by thine own countrymen be judged?"- the wary wise apostle, well forewarned touching the deadly ambush, to waylay him in the journey thither, set once more by shimei, desperate and forlorn, had said: "i am a prisoner at the judgment-bar of cæsar; to my countrymen have i no wrong done, as thou knowest; if any crime be mine, if i have perpetrated deed worthy of death, i do not shun to die. but if of such act i be innocent, then no man may to them deliver me. roman am i, to cæsar i appeal." that answer was as word omnipotent, to be unsaid, gainsaid, resisted, never; and festus was its servant and its thrall. there sailed a ship of adramyttium (in mysia of the asian province west, from lesbos in a deep recess withdrawn of bay in the ægean, neighboring troy) which touched at cæsarea in its course coastwise, now northing on the syrian shore. festus on board this vessel quartered paul, with soldiers to convoy him safe to rome; a maniple, by a centurion commanded, julius named, a roman he worthy of the imperial name he bore. for he of clement grace was capable, and of sagacity to know a man, though of despiséd race and charged with crime, and, knowing, yield to him his manhood's claim. julius the profit of his virtue reaped; he, in the issue of that voyage, will through favoring paul save his own soul alive. those kin and lovers of the prisoner, who had for his name to cæsarea come, would not forsake him sailing thence away; they all, in one accord of fellowship, willed to sail with him on his way to rome. besides these, there was luke, a loyal soul, well learnéd in the lore of medicine, who loved paul, and with joy his right hand lent, joining thereto the service of his eyes, to fix for the apostle, at his need, in written record, his thick-coming thoughts- ease for those weary organs overworn with labors and with watchings; haply, too, touched with effect from that excess of light! historian of the voyage likewise luke, as, guided by the heavenly-guided paul, who thus redeemed long prison hours else waste, historian of the life of christ the lord. so many, with a man from macedon, a faithful, aristarchus named, made up the little company who loving hearts linked, shield to shield, in phalanx fencing paul. if they could serve him little on the sea, at least they could be with him there; and then, should long delays of law, or of caprice, hold him still bound in rome, they would be nigh to bring him, daily, comfort of their love. so, doubting not, not fearing, all for love, these changed their fixéd gear for portable, and on that ship of adramyttium, facing whatever fortune unforeseen, cheerfully sailed--to tempest and to wreck! scarce well bestowed within that asian bark, riding at anchor in her rock-fenced haven, those christian pilgrims felt unwonted stir rouse round them on the crowded deck, with surge on surge of movement, of expectancy, as when a rising surf beats the sea-beach; while, huddling here, here parting, all made way to let who seemed high passengers of state enter with gorgeous pomp and pageantry, forerun and followed by a various train. felix it was, in sumptuous litter borne, drusilla with him, looking still the queen: from power they fallen, were fallen not from pride. with them, besides their troop of servitors, came other two, strange contrasts: simon one, the conjurer, fast to their joint fortune bound, beginning to be gray with rime of age, as sinister grown in look through habit of guile; a little lad tripped lightly by the side of simon (who his evil genius looked) leading him by the hand upon the ship. this little lad was little felix, son of felix and drusilla, and dear to them, felix agrippa the lad's double name. felix went summoned from his province back to give at rome account of his misrule. behind the sorcerer, following in that train, went last, as one who unattached would seem, shimei, compelled, though prisoner not; he strove to carry lightly a too heavy heart. felix so much from festus had obtained, that shimei should go forward with himself as witness and accuser both to paul; yet sinister suspicion shadowing him, with information laid against, the while, as the ringleader in a plot of crime. the unhappy legate would at least detach thus from his own leagued jewish foes, the jew, the one jew, who, best knowing and hating him, with the least scruple the most genius joined to crowd him falling, to the farthest fall. fairly the lading and unlading done, and all things ready, the good ship puts forth. the oarsmen sat in triple ranks that rose tier above tier along the vessel's side; with cheer of voice that timed their rhythmic stroke, they, all together, many-handed, bent over the supple oars, well-hung arow, and beat the waters into yeast and foam. the wieldy trireme answered to their will, and, past the towers and domes of cæsarea, along a windless way under the lee of sea-walls fending from the bluff southwest, pushed to the north beyond the harbor-mouth. here the wind took her, freshening from behind, and, sail all set, they rested from the oar. softly and swiftly, with such favoring gale, they prosper, and, along the storied coast close cruising, soon discern the headland height, mount carmel, with his excellency crowned of forest, and wide overlooking east the plain outrolled of great esdraelon washing with waves of green the mountain's feet- mountain whereon, in single-handed proof, elijah those four hundred priests of baal gave to contempt; and, whence descending, he, red with indignant wrath for his lord god, by the brook kishon slew them to his name. this paul remembered, as he passed; and deemed he saw, hallowing the hills of nazareth, a halo from the childhood of the lord. from horn to horn across a crescent bay, embosomed by its arc of shore that curved from carmel round to ptolemais north, faring, they could, well inland gazing, catch a glimpse that vanished of the shapely cone of tabor soaring in his syrian blue. still onward, they next day the ancient seat of famous sidon in phoenicia reached- long ruined now, with her twin city tyre; then, paired with her as mistress of the main, sidon sat leaning on her promontory, diffused along its northward-sliding slopes, like a luxurious queen on her divan. her sailors drove her keels to every haven, and fetched her home the spoil of every clime. to farthest thulé was the ocean wave white with her sails or spumy to her oars. felix's hope of splendid bribe from paul was brighter, that, of those who brought him cheer in prison, some from wealthy sidon came. here the ship touching, julius, of his grace, granted to paul the freedom of the shore. with grateful gladness there, sidonian friends, women and men, with children, welcome him. full in mid-winter, lo, a moment's spring! so did a sudden-blossoming scene of home smile briefly bright about this homeless man, this prisoner of the lord--for the lord's sake, and for his own sake, dear--most human heart! in whom his office of apostle wrought to heighten, not to hurt, the faculty, as it left whole the lovely need, of love. he went thence clothed upon the more with sense of love his from so many, like a shield barring his heart from harm; and in his heart love buoyant more to bear what harm must fall. from sidon sailing, they, still northward driven by wind that would not let them as they wished southwestward to the south of cyprus isle win with right way the mysian port, their aim- so hindered, those greek seamen warp their wake with zigzag steering over whitening waves, until they feel that current of the sea, northwestward with perpetual ocean-stream washing the cyprian shore to easternmost, thence veering toward the mainland, and along the asian border drawing to the west. there, on such river in the ocean borne whither they will against a wind adverse, they, wise with much experience of the sea, yet in the lee of neighboring cyprus seek a pathway sheltered from that roughening wind. so, forward fairly, the cilician sea they traverse, with the mountains on their left, sheer through the length of sunny cyprus drawn, building a sea-wall, to break off the wind. over against, to be descried, though far- well by two hearts on board that vessel felt, paul and his sister rachel--to the north, lay the long reach of the cilician shore. those (thither strained their homeward-yearning eyes) there, tearful, saw remembered taurus tower; whence river cydnus rushing snow-cold down, wild from his mountain to the stretched-out plain, tames him his torrent to a pace more even; and yields to be a navigable stream for tarsus, cleft two-fold, upon his banks, a seaboard city inland from the sea. dear places of the playtime of their youth! gray river, with its everlasting flood, libation from the mountain to the sea; the wharves, the ships, the sailors, travelled men, motley in garb and polyglot in speech; the lading landed or to be embarked- mysterious bales of costly merchandise tempting to guess what treasures might be there!- the hallowed sabbath in that hebrew home islanded in its sea of heathenism! the sabbath seasons in the synagogue! the reverend scriptures of the jewish law, by father and by mother taught to them, so diligently taught, day after day, and talked of in their ears, alike when they sat in their house and when they walked abroad, and when they laid them down and when they rose; beheld too for a sign bound on the hand, likewise for frontlets worn between the eyes!- all these things like a flood-tide of the sea swelled on those homesick kindred hearts, while they, brother and sister, distant many years from what they saw, from what much more they felt, seen or unseen, on that familiar shore, alien and heathen, yet, being native, sweet, lapsed into musing of the pensive past. half they in words, but half in silence, mused. "far-off by years, yet more by difference far," said paul to rachel, "are we two withdrawn from what we were in our cilician home. that dearer is to us to dream of so, remembering and imagining, than it were to see; it is not what we knew it once, with the child's heart we carried in us then. we should not find the places that we loved; nay, for we should not know them--with these eyes. they have not so much changed, but we have changed." "yea, doubtless, changed we are," rachel replied; "yet, i at least, o saul, not so much changed but that it would delight me still to see those haunts of happy childhood--more endeared to me, as to my brother more, i know, from father's and mother's memory hovering there. i loved my mother and i honored her, but my own motherhood has taught me how i might have better loved and honored her!" "we must not at past failures vainly pine"- so paul, to rachel sorrowing tenderly- "but rather let them make us wiser now. thy lesson, sister, let it teach us both how to be children to our father god. these earthly kinships all are parable of the enduring kinships of the skies. we are to be to god, as children dear, what parents would their children were to them, so full of love with fear, of trust with heed, and imitators of his heavenly ways." "and is it, brother," rachel gently asked, "indeed to thee so easy ever thus to lose the earthly in the heavenly thought, and in the symbol find the symbolized, that only, saul? it is not so with me. i love the letter, and i cling to it- a little; at least when it is so fair as i have found it in my motherhood. the spirit is far fairer, i suppose, but god has made this letter 'very good'!" rachel spoke thus with deprecation sweet, the while a little liquid sparkle played of loving humor in her eyes half turned toward stephen sitting nigh them but apart; he and eunicé sat together there. "cling to thy lovely letter," paul replied, "'a little,' as thou sayest it, not too much- the 'little,' as the 'not too much,' god's will for thee, my sister; and, a paradox! the little will be more when not too much. it is the spirit makes the letter dear, or dearest, as it is itself more dear. we better love the earthly images of things in heaven, when we those heavenly things themselves more than their loveliest shadows love." "o brother," rachel--suddenly her voice sunk to a vibrant low intensity of accent--said, hands clasped and eyes upturned to him, "o brother, when such things thou sayest, i tremble with unspeakable desire to be what one must be to think such things. but it is all too wonderful for me. that inspiration of the holy ghost whereby thou knowest what else thou wouldst not know- perhaps that helps thee be, as well as know?" "nay, sister," paul replied, "it is not so. that inspiration is a gift to me for knowing only, not for being. yea, and even my gift to know is not for me, more than for thee, my rachel, and for all. it is that all may know, god makes _me_ know. i profit by my awful trust from god of farther vision in his mysteries, only as i a faithful steward am to part to others what i hold from him: freely i have received freely to give. but besides this there is a grace of god in jesus by the holy spirit given, that comes alike to all obedient souls to help them in the life of holiness. the habit of the heavenly mind which thou attributest to me in what thou askest, this i have learned, if it indeed be mine, by being to the spirit teachable, who teaches all as fast as each will learn. he could far faster teach us, and he would, if only we were teachable enough. alas, we strangely hold the flood-gate down not to let all the waiting fulness in. but what of holy willingness i have he gives, who worketh in me both to will and work, for the good pleasure of his name." "amen!" breathed rachel, in devout accord with paul's ascription of all good to him. by this, the night had settled on the sea, an interlunar night bereft of stars, for the dark azure of the deep was black to blackness of the overhanging heaven hung thick with clouds. "see," rachel added soon, "how the sky lowers! god fend us all from storm! good night, my brother. david's word for me, 'in peace will i both lay me down and sleep, for thou, lord, only makest me to dwell in safety.'" "yea, in safety also here, o sister," paul said; "for the sea is his, he holds it in the hollow of his hand." brother and sister parted with a kiss- kiss from the kindred habit of old time dear, but far dearer in a dearer love, and, with some sense of reconcilement, sweet. therewith the sister to her pillow went; but paul abode to vigil on the deck. he pacing to and fro, the night wore on, and one by one his fellow-passengers withdrawing left him more and more alone. a sheen of phosphorescence on the sea kindled along the running vessel's side, and drew a trail of brilliance in her wake, splendid a moment and then vanishing, devoured by the immensity of dark which made it for that moment so intense. paul saw this, less admiring what he saw, beautiful though it was and wonderful, than musing what it seemed to mean for him: 'so my soul on her voyage through the world lights her own pathway as she moves along; bright ever where she is she makes her place, and ever plunges on into the dark before her; but her latter end is light!' meanwhile, of all the lingerers on the deck amid that darkness, only two remained. these, as they might, watched him now bending there in wistful gaze over the vessel's side downward into the waters weird below: stephen was one; the other, shimei. but shimei had crept later on the deck, when the increasing dark veiled all from view save what was moving or what stood upright; so he knew not of stephen now reclined, motionless in a trance of pleasant dream, there where eunicé left him, when she too with rachel from the open night retired. the youth had lapped him in a happy muse of memory of the things they twain that eve had shared in converse; it was like twilight prolonging softer the full light of day. shimei thought darkly: 'could yon leaning form lean farther, and embrace indeed the wave he yearns toward, this enticing murky night! there were redemption ready-wrought for me- who might be spared, forsooth, accusing whom his own forestalling conscience had condemned, (so it should look!) and forced him on to die. "vengeance is mine and recompense," as saith our moses, hinting of a moment when "their foot shall slide." ha! ha! it fits the case! "their foot shall slide!" feet may be brought to slide! the deck is slippery with the spray; a tip forward above, with a trip backward, so, from underneath'--and shimei acted out in pantomimic gesture his quick thought; 'an accidental movement, were it seen, but it would not be seen. a fine dark night, no moon, no stars, and the whole hollow sky ink-black with clouds that when ere long they break will spit ink-rain into an inky sea! finger of god! it were impiety not to obey a pointing such as this.' his propense thought plunged him a step toward paul. stephen hereon, stretched out upon the deck, marking the sinister action of the man shadowed upon the dark, a denser dark, noiselessly gathered up his members all, ready to rush at need to rescue, yet reserved, alert, to watch and to await, like leopard couchant tense in poise to spring. that instant, a new dimness in the dark, a swimming outline, figure of a man approaching, with a rustle of approach hinted, no more, amid the rising wind. this stephen knew, and shimei, both at once. shimei recoiled; he thought, 'well paused for me! i might have been detected, after all!' then, gliding toward that shadowy moving form, he met--a roman soldier, front to front, nigh stephen where he lay in ambuscade unpurposed, but now vigilant all ear for what might pass between those men so met. a sudden shift of phase to shimei's thought, in altered phase persistent still the same. the desperate fancy seized him to essay corrupting that custodian of paul. a helpless fixed fatuity of hate, a dull insistent prodding from despair, robbed him of reason, while of cunning not: he could warp wisely toward an end unwise. suspected by the roman, by the jew no longer trusted as of old--since seen, those years at cæsarea, changed and chilled so from his pristine ardor in pursuit of paul--shimei saw nothing now before him in the future but the nearing close in a blind alley, opening none beyond, of the strait way wherein perforce he walked. one gleam of light, of possible light, ahead, he now descried. if paul could somehow be utterly cancelled from his case, no paul anywhere longer in the world, and if, ah, if, o rapture! paul could disappear confessing guilt by seeming suicide- that were the one deliverance left to hope, hope if forlorn, at least, at least, a hope. shimei his foot set softly in the snare. with slow and sly ambages of approach, he sounded if the soldier were of stuff to be in safety tampered with, and how. close at his feet, but guarded from their touch by a low heap of cordage coiled between, there stephen lay the while, a breathless corpse, and listened--with his body and his mind both utterly all organ to attend- as shimei with that shifty cunning his, insidious, like the entrance of disease, wormed him into the bosom of his man, instilling the temptation, sweet with bribe, to make away with his jew prisoner. it would but give the wretch's wish effect- so shimei glozed with subtle speciousness- should now his gentle keeper intervene to end the endless waverings of a mind on self-destruction bent, a suicide who only lacked the courage of despair, by tossing paul headforemost overboard. three points thereby were gained, and nothing lost: a criminal would meet his just desert, one fain to die his heart's desire obtain, and he, the soldier, no one wiser, take the profit, gold in hand, of a good deed. "thou knowest," the tempter said, "the feel of gold, the weight," and therewith thrust some pieces broad into the soldier's hand, the antepast and warrant of a ready rich reward. if question should arise involving him, why, nothing easier than to say and swear, the prisoner, conscious of his guilt, and now quite at the end of all his hopes by wile, had used the favoring cover of the night to make a sudden spring into the brine. he, heedful of his duty and his charge, had promptly put the utmost effort forth to seize him, and defeat the dire attempt. but desperation was too masterful in force and quickness, to be so forestalled. the fates and furies buoyed him overboard and plumped him to the bottom of the deep. then, were his single witness held in doubt, why, by good luck, here was a passenger who saw the fellow fetch his frenzied leap, and saw his watchman hold him back in vain; he, shimei, would not fail him at the pinch, to swear him clear of any touch of blame. the soldier, to this word, had little spoke, nothing that might import his secret thought, heed giving in blank silence, ominous, or hopeful, for his tempter, dubious which. now he spoke, saying: "glibly dost thou talk, making the task light, laughable the risk. know it is perilous business, this of thine. yon paul appears a prisoner of note, whom our centurion, for his reasons, treats with favor"--"for his reasons, yea; well said," interposed shimei; "but such reasons fail promptly when the purse fails that yields them. end already, as i know, was reached with paul, when he at sidon bought his leave to land, hoping a rescue." "but," the soldier said, "paul seems indeed to be a worthy man." "a wise head, thou," the wily jew replied; "'seems,'--thou hast once more hit it in that word! fair-seeming truly, rotten at the core." "however that may be," the guard rejoined, "rotten or sound the man, it were a deed, a bold deed, deed of risk and price, to do what thou requirest." 'willing,' shimei thought, 'willing, but greedy; bid for higher pay! bait him his fill, no time for higgling now.' he said: "bold enterprises to the bold. yea, there is risk; no need to make it small; it is a soldier i am talking with. but i will amply match the risk with wage. thy peril stint not thou, i not thy pay. here is a scrip stuffed out with yellow gold, test it for weight, thou earnest it all this night." the soldier had but meant to parley: now this toying with temptation by the touch, added to his long dalliance through the ear, proved penetrant, seductive, so beyond his forethought, that he stood amazed, appalled, listening, to feel how much he was enticed. he might have yielded to the sorcery, but stephen, with an instant instinct wise, sudden sprang, speechless, imminent, to his feet. the soldier at the apparition took a fine air of indignant virtue on. "rascal," said he, "i have trolled thee well along from point to point and let thee talk and talk, and my palm tickle with the touch of gold, or counterfeit of gold, thou counterfeit of man! thou hast shown thyself for what thou art. thy proffered bribe i keep for proof of thee; but thou, thou goest with me my prisoner. a night in irons down in the deepest hold may give thee waking dreams thy morrow's chance with the centurion hardly will dispel!" therewith he stalked off shimei, stunned to dumb and dizzy, with that deafening crack of doom. scarce less astonished and scarce less dismayed, stephen stood stricken on the staggering deck; the roaring of the unregarded wind less noisy than the tumult of his thoughts. the contrast of the horror of such crime to the sweet peace and pleasure he but now was tasting in the hallowing afterglow of those bright moments with euníce spent; the frightful danger overpast for paul; the retribution, like a thunderbolt, fallen on shimei; these, with remembrance mixed of what the chiliarch, wiser than he knew, said, touching shimei with that letter charged of sinister import to cæsarea, "he carries his own sentence thither hence"- 'unwritten sentence in his bosom, yea, he carried, and he carries, wretched man!' thought stephen. 'and what dire things in the world! and god from heaven beholds and suffers all! and what will be the end, if ever end, of all this tale of wickedness with woe drawn out from age to age, through clime and clime!' such thoughts on thoughts held stephen hanging there unnoted minutes, till the dash of rain in great drops threatening deluge smote his face like hailstones, and awoke him to the world. at the same moment, paul--who had not dreamed of the swift, muffled, darkling tragedy of plot and peril, shame and crime and doom, just acted nigh him in that theater, and microcosm afloat of the wide world- broke up the long lull of his reverie above the running waters, heard, scarce seen, beneath him, by the hasting vessel's side- as if a symbol of the mystery of things, an-hungered to devour all thought!- and turned to shroud him from the weather wild. the uncle and the nephew met, but spoke only a peace and farewell for the night; stephen not finding in his heart to break to paul the ill good news of what had passed. with the rain falling, soon the wind was laid, planed was the sea, and cleansed of cloud the sky. bright the stars looked innumerably down on the ship smoothly sped her prosperous way. book viii. shimei before julius. the centurion julius, having in charge the prisoners on board including paul, examines shimei, accused of his crime by the sentinel whom the crafty hebrew had sought to bribe. shimei makes a desperate effort to clear himself by bringing a countercharge against paul of the same murderous attempt through bribe upon his, shimei's, life. almost on the point of succeeding, he is confronted first with felix, then with stephen, last with paul--to his complete undoing. shimei before julius. the waking dreams of shimei, in his chains and darkness, were not altogether those foreshadowed by the soldier bitterly to him--dreams of foreboding and despair only; that roman had not learned that jew. the touch and prick of uttermost dismay stung him to one more struggle for himself. ere julius, with the morning, had him forth to inquest from his dungeon, that quick brain had ripe and ready, conjured up in thought, for self-defense, with snare involved for paul, a desperate last compacture of deceit; desperate, yet deftly woven, and staggering, till the contriver was now quite undone, confronted with ascendant truth and power. "what sayest thou, jew," with challenge lowering stern, asked the centurion of his prisoner, "in answer to the charge against thee laid?" "what say?" with shrug of shoulder shimei said; "why, that thy soldier was too strong for me, and haled me and bestowed me as he would, while at his leisure then his tale he told, forestalling mine, to prepossess thine ear. i come too late; for i should speak in vain." "worse than in vain such words as those thou speakest. out on thine insolence, thou hebrew dog!" savagely the centurion said. "'too late'! 'too late'! know, jew, too late it never is, where roman justice undertakes, for one accused of crime to answer for himself. true judge's ear cannot be 'prepossessed.' even now, deserving, as thou art, to be buffeted, rather than aught further heard, speak on and say thy say; but give good heed thou curb thy tongue from insolence and lies." "from lying i shall have no need my tongue to guard," said shimei; "but from insolence- beseech thy grace, a plain blunt man am i, will it be insolence, if i inquire what is the crime that i am charged withal?" curtly the roman said: "attempt to bribe a soldier, and a roman soldier he, to break his oath and be a murderer." "no stint of generous measure to the charge," said shimei; "yet i ought not to complain, i, who a charge of ampler measure would myself have brought (as well as he knew who now, and for that very cause, accuses me) had i been first; and first i should have been, but for duress, and also this he knew, thence the duress--outrageous act from _him_, lese-majesty committed against thee!- i say, had i beforehand been with him to gain thine ear and a foul plot disclose." the soldier stood in stupid blank amaze, with silence by his discipline enforced, to hear this frontless impudence of fraud. he so much looked the guilt in slant implied by shimei, that no marvel julius glanced from one to the other of the two, perplexed, each the accuser and accused of each. his soldier was a trusty man supposed; the jew came clouded and suspect as false: but always it was possible repute accredited a man, or blamed, amiss. "thou riddlest like an oracle: be plain and outright," so to shimei julius spoke. "thou hast vaguely shadowed some worse shape of crime thou couldst reveal than that which seems revealed, accused to thee. what could be worse misdeed than breach attempted of a soldier's faith to purchase murder?" "breach accomplished," said shimei, "were worse; and, in a just assay, worse to attaint the honor of a man upright and good and true, and of him make a criminal worthy of death, and doomed as such to die: yea, a far darker crime than were purveyal of the needed stroke to end a little earlier some base life, forfeit at any rate by guilt, and fain itself to court such refuge from despair. still more were worse the crime whereof i speak, let the man so attainted in his truth be one that moment bearing office grave as an accuser and a witness sworn against such very criminal himself. then is the crime no longer merely crime against the single man however just, but crime against justice itself and law, and even against the outraged human race." there was a stumbling incongruity- blasphemous, had it been less whimsical, whimsical, had it been less blasphemous- between the man himself and what he said. his words were noble, or had noble been but that the ignoble man who uttered them gainsaid them with the whole of what he was. the soldier more and more astounded stood, or cowered, say rather, underneath the frown beetling and imminent of falsehood such, mountainous high, and like a mountain set immovable. (immovable it seemed, but at its heart with fear was tremulous, and, to the proper breath, would presently melt, like cloud-mountain massed of misty stone to the wind's touch.) as in a nightmare, he could no least gesture move to give the lie, browbeaten half to disbelieve himself. julius, nonplussed to see his soldier's air almost confessing judgment on himself, skeptic, yet therewithal impressed despite, imposed on even, by a mock-majesty, the specious counterfeit of virtue wroth but, though wroth, calm in conscious innocence, couched in the lofty words of shimei, while by his aspect blatantly belied- julius, thus wondering, curious, frowned and said: "cease from preamble, and forth with thy charge! no further swelling phrases, large and vague; but facts--or fictions--in plain terms and few." audience at length prepared, so shimei deemed, his story, well before prepared, he told: "i lingered late last night upon the deck: slow pacing up and down for exercise, i strict bethought me how i best might quit the serious task committed to my hands of seeking sentence on a criminal there at the fountain and prime spring of law and justice, that august tribunal last, the imperial seat at rome. while i thus mused, the providence that, dark sometimes and slow, as to us seems, does after all pursue the flying footsteps of foul crime with scourge, or human vengeance help to overtake, showed me a light, which, alas, quickly then by envious evil powers in turn was quenched. for it so fell that in the exceeding dark, unseen, i overheard the prisoner paul broach a new plot of bribery and wrong. he promised to the soldier keeping him large money--earnest offered, and received, i plainly heard it clink from hand to hand." the soldier winced beneath the meaning glance shot at himself wherewith the subtile jew spoke these last words; winced, and sore wished, too late, that, as he first had purposed, he had shown in proof to the centurion shimei's gold shoved for a bribe into his hand, but here adroitly turned to use against himself. what if his captain, prompted by such hint, should now demand to see that dastard gold! he had been silent touching it because his mere possession of it would, he felt, look too much like his paltering with a price; but, after shimei's words, to have it found upon him! with such disconcerting thoughts, the soldier listened like a criminal, as shimei with calm iteration said:- "thus would paul buy his keeper to forswear against the one man he most feared, myself, that i had sought to bribe a soldier's faith, bargaining with him to fling overboard his prisoner and so rid him from the world. 'thou sawest,' paul told the soldier, 'how at sidon an ample sum was put into his hands by wealthy friends there': he all this now pledged to be his keeper's, no denary short, if but he would traduce me thus, and so both break the damning power i else could wield against him, and, besides, my life destroy. thy soldier yielded: grievous wrong indeed, yet him i can forgive, for less as bribed he faltered, than as overcome he fell. paul is the master of an evil art to make his subject firmly hold for true what, free from sorcery, he would know was false. he, in the very act and article of sketching what his victim was on me to father, the illusion could in him produce of hearing his own words from me. a trick paul has of vocal mimicry- sleight of longiloquence, whereby he throws to distance, as may like, his uttered words, to make them seem another's, not his own- aided him here; i hardly knew, myself, hearing him speak, but that the voice was mine. thus i account for it, that, without blame so much to him himself, he being deceived, this worthy soldier, whom i never wronged, doubtless an honest fellow in the main, should in effect malign me so to thee. "in my simplicity, and in my faith undoubting that, confronted fair with truth, falsehood must needs take on its proper shape, then shrivel, ashamed to be at all, i sprang suddenly up, discovered to the pair. i never dreamed but they would at my feet fall, and for mercy sue; which shimei- soft-hearted ever for another, where only himself is wronged, however hard he steel his heart where stake is public good- had doubtless weakly granted out of hand. but, to my wonder, and, i own, dismay- this for the moment, but that weakness passed- at a quick sign from paul, the soldier seized me and consigned to dungeon for the night. what followed more on deck, i can but guess. i doubt not paul completed work begun in this poor soldier's mind, and fixed his faith that all had happened as he made report. i pray thee judge his error lightly; he was of another's will, against his own, possessed, loth pervert of a power malign." the soldier, hearing, was now witched indeed. partly his sense of flaw in rectitude- then suffered when he paltered with the bribe proffered by shimei--shook him; and partly he descried a shift of refuge for himself from dreaded blame at his centurion's hands- should julius, as looked likely more and more, at length accept the hebrew's tale for true- in letting it appear that paul in fact had wrought upon him so as shimei said, to cheat him into honest misbelief. this was the deeply calculated hope wherein that glozer, plotting as he went with versatile adjustment to his need- need shifting, point by point, from phase to phase- provided for the soldier his escape from the necessity of holding fast, in self-defence, to his first testimony. thus, if all prospered, shimei, yea, might yet save to himself the future chance to use this soldier, more amenable to use. paul's keeper, thus prepared to falter, heard ambiguous challenge from the officer: "what sayest thou, soldier? wast beside thyself? dazed, hast thou then denounced the innocent man?" whereto ambiguous answer thus he framed: "if i have done so, it was in excess and haste of zeal to do a soldier's duty, misapprehended under wicked spell." "thou art not sure? a witness should be sure; more, be he one denouncing deeds essayed worthy of death; most, if besides he add an office of the executioner." thus the centurion to his soldier spoke, who answered, shuffling: "if my senses were rightly my own last night, i told thee true; but if i was usurped by sorcery to see and hear amiss--why, who can say?" "go find lord felix, and, due worship paid, pray him come hither for a need that waits," so julius made his soldier messenger. "grieving to trouble thee so far," he next to felix, soon appearing, said: "i sent to ask thee of the jew in presence here. knowest thou aught of him that might resolve a doubt how much he be to trust for true?" shimei shrank visibly, while felix, glad to vent his hatred of the pander, spoke: "as many as his words, so many lies; trust him thou mayest--to never speak the truth." wherewith the haughty freedman on his heel turned, as disdaining to use tongue or ear further in such a cause, and disappeared. julius in silence looked a questioning pause at shimei, who risked parrying answer, thus: "lord felix is a disappointed man, who, if so soured, is gently to be judged. yet were it better he had stooped to speak by instance, named occasion, wherein i had seemed to fail matching my words with deeds. i own i sought to serve him in his need; and if, forsooth, when he his hold on power felt slipping from his hands, i undertook freely, in succor of his fainting mind, somewhat beyond my strength to bring to pass, in reconcilement of my countrymen against his sway unwontedly aggrieved- why, i am sorry; but failed promises, made in good faith, should not be reckoned lies." there seemed to the centurion measure enough of reason in what shimei so inferred, if truly he inferred, to leave the doubt still unresolved with which he was perplexed. while the diversion of the incident with felix, and of shimei's parrying, passed, the soldier, so released to cast about at leisure, thought of stephen standing up, in that so sphinx-like silence, startlingly, beside him, in the darkness on the deck, at just the fatal point of his own poise for the returnless plunge in the abyss; that hebrew youth would doubtless testify to shimei's damning;--to his own as well? that were to think of! what would stephen say? must it not cloud his own clear truth and faith, to have it told how he abode so long a hearkener to temptation; how he took gold as for bribe, and greedy seemed of more? why had he not been first to speak of that? wisest it looked to him not to invoke a witness of so much uncertain power to bring his own behavior into doubt. and shimei showed such master of his part, equal to shifting all appearances this way or that, as best would serve himself, promised so fair to make his side prevail, were it not well to choose the chance with _him_? the soldier fixed to stake on stephen naught. shimei meantime had otherwise bethought himself of stephen--fearing, yet with hope prevailing over fear: hardly would he, the soldier, risk to call such witness in. those twain diversely so with the same thought secretly busy, the centurion- whether by some unconscious sympathy his mind drawn into current following theirs, like idle sea-drift in the wake of ships- startled them both alike with his next word: "that hebrew lad, stephen they call him, go fetch him; say, 'come with me,' and no word more." this to the soldier, who soon brought the youth. "some kin thou to the prisoner paul, i think?" said the centurion. "sister's son," said he. "i had thee well reported of, my lad; belie not thy good fame, but answer true," julius to stephen spoke, adjuring him. "knowest thou aught, of thine own eye or ear, how paul thy kinsman was bestead last night?" now stephen had not yet to paul declared aught of the strange disclosures of the night. seeing here the plotter of that nameless deed demoniac, in the part of one accused, witnessed against with damning testimony, the soldier's, all-sufficing for his doom, before a judge as roman sure to be swift in his sentence upon such a crime- prompt in his secret mind stephen resolved, as likeliest best to please his kinsman paul, not to go further than compelled, to add superfluous proof against the wretched man. sincerely wretched now indeed once more shimei appeared; effrontery of fraud and his vain confidence of hope forlorn abashed in him, intolerably rebuked- not more by this access of evidence (unlooked for, since that muzzle to his mouth had so well served to hold the soldier mute from mention of the hebrew lad)--not more abashed thus and rebuked, than by the mere aspect of the clear innocence and truth and virtue, honor and high mind, in fair and noble person there embodied seen in stephen beamy with his taintless youth. was it some promise of retrieving yet possible for this soul, so lost to good, that, broken from that festive confidence once his in the omnipotence of fraud to answer all his ends, he thus should feel pain in the neighborhood of nobleness? unconsciously so working, like a wand wielded that cancels a magician's spell, to shame back wretched shimei to himself, nor ever guessing, in his guileless mind, of possible other posture to affairs than full exposure of the criminal already reached, no need of word from him- stephen to julius frugally replied: "paul's case was happy, sir, if this thou meanest, how fared he in the hap which him befell;" then, conscious of a look not satisfied in julius, added: "if instead thou meanest what hap was threatened him but came to naught, then i shall need to answer otherwise." "this i would learn," said julius, "dost thou know, of certain knowledge, thine own eye or ear, where paul was, and what doing, through the hours of last night's darkness? how was he bestead? that tell me, if thou knowest, naught else but that. fact, first; thereafter, fancy--if at all." a little puzzled, but withal relieved, not to be witness against shimei, "it happened," stephen said, "that as the dark drew on, paul with his sister rachel talked, they two apart; but nigh at hand i sat, with others, on the deck. as the night waxed, with darkness from the still-withdrawing sun, and then from clouds that blotted out the stars, almost all went to covert one by one; but paul abode, and i abode with him. yet were we from each other separate, and paul perhaps knew not that i was nigh; but i lay watching him and nursed my thoughts. at first he paced, as musing, up and down, then, still alone, and still as musing, leaned, in absent long oblivion of himself, over the vessel's side--into the sea gazing, like one who read a mystic book. this and naught else he did, until a dash of rain-drops shredded from the tempest broke his reverie; and then both he and i, meeting a moment but to say good-night, housed us for the forgetfulness of sleep." "thou hast told me all? communication none between paul and this soldier keeping him?" straitly of stephen the centurion asked, with eye askance on shimei shrinking there. "with no one," stephen answered, "spake paul word, after that converse with his sister, till i met him face to face and changed good night." "thou hadst some fancy other than thy fact," said julius now to stephen, "some surmise as seemed concerning danger threatened paul"- but shimei dimmed so visibly to worse confession of dismay in countenance, that julius checked the challenge on his lips, and, turning, said to shimei: "need we more? or art unmasked to thy contentment, jew? shall i bid hither paul, forsooth, and let thee face the uncle, since the nephew so, simply to see, thy gullet fills with gall, and twists thy wizened features all awry? aye, for meseems it were a happy thought, go, lad, and call thy kinsman hither straight. stay, hast thou seen him since last night's farewell?" "nay," answered stephen. "well!" the roman said; "so tell him nothing now of what is here. say only, 'the centurion wishes thee'; haste, bring him." stephen soon returned with paul, who wondered, knowing naught of all, to see what the encounter was, for him prepared. not till now ever, since the fateful time when, buoyant with the sense of his reprieve won for a season from the contact loathed of shimei, paul rode forth damascus-ward, had they two in such mutual imminence met. paul looked at shimei now, not with regard that, like a bayonet fixed, thrust him aloof, or icily transpierced him pitiless; but in a gentle pathos of surprise, with sorrow yearning to be sympathy- reciprocal forgiveness interchanged between them, and all difference reconciled: a melting heaven of cloudless april blue ready to weep suffusion of warm tears, the aspect seemed of paul on shimei turned. good will, such wealth, expressed, must needs good will responsive find, or, failing that, create! but shimei did not take the look benign of paul, to feel its vernal power; downcast his eyes he dropped and missed the virtue shed- missed, yet not so as not some gracious force, ungraciously, ill knowing, to admit. "thou knowest this fellow-countryman of thine?" to the apostle speaking, julius said. "i know him, yea," said paul. "and knowest perhaps," said julius, further sounding, "what the chance of mischief from him thou hast late escaped?" "nay, but not yet have i, i trow," paul said, "escaped the evil he fain would bring on me. he hates me, and, if but he could, he would quite rid me from the world; that know i well." "but knowest thou," the centurion pressed, "how he plotted last night to have thee overboard to wrestle, swimming, with the swirling sea?" "nay," paul said, "nay; i knew not that." he spoke without surprise couched in his tone; far less, horror or fear expressed in look or act; no sidelong stab at shimei from his eye; only some sadness, with the patience, dashed the weariness with which he spoke. "and yet- and yet," he added, half as if he would extenuate what he could, "it is his way, the natural way in which he works his will. his will i well can understand, though not, not so, his way. from that i was averse ever, but once i had myself his will." "thou canst not mean his will to get paul slain," baffled, the roman said. "nay, but his will to persecute and utterly to destroy," said paul, "the name, and all that own the name, of my lord jesus christ from off the earth." at that name, thus with loyal love confessed, the hoarded hatred, deep in shimei's heart, toward jesus, which so long had fed and fired the embers of the hatred his for paul, stirred angrily; it almost overcame the cringing craven personal fear in him. though he indeed spoke not, uttered no sound, there passed upon his visage and his port a change, from abject while malign, to look malign more, and less abject, fierce and fell. it was a strange transfiguration wrought, an horrible redemption thus achieved- from what before one only could despise to what one now, forsooth, might reprobate! the quite-collapsed late liar and poltroon rallied to a resistant attitude, which stiffened and grew hard like adamant, while further julius thus his wiles exposed: "the 'way' of this thy fellow-countryman, o paul, thou hast yet, i judge, in full to learn. when, by the soldier whom he sought to bribe for thy destruction, of his crime accused to me, how, thinkest thou, he would purge himself? why, by persuading me that paul, instead, had himself bought his keeper to forswear against _him_, shimei, such foul plot to slay. hold i not well thou hadst something still to learn of the unsounded depths his 'way' seeks out?" julius said this with look on shimei fixed, full of the scorn he felt, each moment more. like the skilled slinger toying with his stone swung round and round in air, full length of sway, through circles viewless swift, but in its pouch uneasy, at his leisure still delayed for surer aim and fiercer flight at last, and that, the while, the wielder may prolong both his delight of vengeance tasted so, and his foe's fear accenting his delight; thus julius, dallying, teased to wrath his scorn, more threatening as in luxury of reserve suspended from the outbreak yet to fall. the while the scornful roman's wroth regard fixed as if caustic fangs upon the jew, the jew, with stoic endurance, steeled himself to take it without blenching. full well felt through all his members was that branding look; though his eyes still were downward bent, as when he dropped them to refuse paul's sweet good will. but suddenly now, he one first furtive glance lifting, as if unwillingly, to paul, shimei takes on a violent change reverse. a wave of abjectness swept over him that drenched, that drowned, his evil hardihood and wrecked him to a ruin of himself. julius who saw this change had also seen shimei's stolen glance at paul; he himself now turned toward the apostle with inquiring eye. what he saw seized him and usurped his mind- his passion with a mightier passion quelled, or to another, higher, key transposed: the wrathful scorn that had toward shimei blazed became a rapt admiring awe of paul. for there paul stood, the meek and lowly mien, the sadness and the patience, not laid by, but an unconscious air of majesty enduing him like a clear transpicuous veil, self-luminous so with cleansed indignant zeal for god and truth and righteousness outraged, that he was fair and fearful to behold. god had made him a sinai round whose top a silent thunder boomed and lightnings played. white holiness burned on his brow, a flame the like whereof the roman never saw glorifying and making terrible, beyond all fabled gods, the front of man. the exceeding instance of this spectacle it was, filling the place as if with beams, not of the day, but stronger than the day, that had perforce drawn shimei's eyes to see- a moment, and no more. as seared with light fiercer than they could bear, again they fell. then all the man with saving terror shook to hear paul speak--in tones wherein no ire, as for himself, entered, to ease the weight with which the might of truth omnipotent pressed on its victim like the hand of god: "full of all subtlety and mischief! thou child of the devil, as doer of his deeds! accurséd, if thou hadst but plotted death against me, death however horrible, that i had found a light thing to forgive. but to swear me suborner like thyself of perjury"--but the denouncer marked how, under his denouncement, shimei quailed: he in mid launch the fulmination stayed. his adversary victim's broken plight disarmed him, and a sad vicarious sense of what awaited such as shimei hereafter, penetrated to his heart. as shamed from his indignant passion, paul instantly melted to a mood of tears. this shimei less could bear than he had borne those terrors of the lord aflame in paul. the old man shaken with so many sharp vicissitudes of feeling, sharp and swift:- hope from despair, despair again from hope; then fresh hope from the ashes of despair; that costly hardening of the heart with hate, and steeling, to resistance, of the will; next, a soul-cleaving anguish of remorse, new to him, mingled with forebodings new, menaces beckoning from the world to come; these, with the unimagined tenderness that now reached out and touched him in paul's tears- the old man, plied and exercised thus, broke abruptly from the habit of a life, utterly broke, and suddenly was no more, at least for one sweet moment of release, the hard, the false, the bitter, the malign shimei of old--changed to a little child! in both his quivering hands his face he hid, and, all his strength consumed to scarcely stand, wept, with convulsion poured from head to foot, but made no other sign, to this from paul: "as i forgive thee, lo, forgive thou me, shimei, my brother! and christ us both forgive!" the roman wondering saw these things and heard, nor moved in speech or gesture, touched with awe. but when now all was acted so, and seemed there nothing was to follow more, he turned, and, not ungently, though with firm command, said to the soldier: "lead him hence away to keeping; make his manacles secure. thou wilt not, i suppose, a second time, try ear or tongue in parley--never wise. thou hast lost somewhat in this adventure; see thou win it back with double heed henceforth." so shimei went remanded to his doom, with paul and stephen pitying witnesses. book ix. paul and young stephen. in sequel of the tragic crime and doom that had just been witnessed by him in the case of shimei, young stephen is drawn to resume with his kinsman paul the topic of the imprecatory psalms, which they had previously discussed on their night ride from jerusalem toward cæsarea. paul gently lets his nephew unbosom all his heart, and, point by point, meets the young man's difficulties with senior counsel and instruction. paul and young stephen. the brilliant weather, with the sparkling sea blue under the blue heaven above it bowed, there the great sun, his solitary state making his own pomp as it moved along in that imperial progress through the skies, the blithe wind blowing in the singing sails, and the gay answer of the bounding bark, on either hand bright glimpses of the shore- all these things to enliven were not enough for that day's need to paul and those with him: they could not rally to their customed cheer, serious, not sad, although light-hearted never. the deed of shimei and scarce less his doom still damped their spirits, so strung to sympathy, till sunny day wore on to starry night. then, paul and stephen by themselves apart resting, the younger to the elder said: "much, o mine uncle, have i pondered, since, the deep things that i heard from thee, that night, already now so many months ago, by thy side riding, thou by lysias sent (safeguarded by his romans from the jews!) to wear out thy duress at cæsarea. thou wert then as now escaped from shimei's snare! we spake, thou wilt remember, of those psalms which breathe, or seem to breathe, such breath of hate. i had recited one aloud to thee- to myself rather, bold, for thee to hear- vent to the feeling fierce that in my breast boiled into tempest against shimei. thou chidedst me with a most sweet rebuke that drew the tumor all, out of my heart; thou taughtst me then that the good spirit of god, who breathed the inspiration into men to utter such dire words, seeming of hate, hated not any as i to hate had dared. i understood thee that god only so revealed in forms of vivid human speech the implacable resentment--but i pause, pause startled at the word i use; i would, could i, find other than such words as these, 'resentment,' 'indignation,' 'hatred,' 'wrath,' to speak my thought of holy god aflame with infinite displacency at sin- once more! another word i fain would shun! for by some tether that i cannot break, bound, i revolve in the same circle still." as if his speech were half soliloquy, the youth let lapse his musing into mute, which not with word or sign would paul invade. almost with admiration, with such joy of hope for stephen, paul remarked in him the noble gains of knowledge he had made- wisdom say rather out of knowledge won- in those two years at cæsarea spent; years for the youth so rich in fruitful chance of converse with his elders, and of thought which in that quick young mind, for brooding apt no less than apt for action, brought to full sweet ripeness all that he from other learned, and touched it with a quality his own. paul could not but in measure feel himself given back to him reflected in the words that he just now had heard from stephen's lips; yet he therein felt too a surge of youth and youth's unrest and eagerness and strife and dauntless heart to assay the impossible which were all stephen's. and he held his peace. presently stephen took up voice again: "almost i thus resolve myself one doubt, one question, that i thought to bring to thee. god is not altogether such, i know, as we are; yet are we too somewhat such as he, for in god's image were we made. and we perforce must know god, if at all, then by ourselves as patterned after him. so i suppose our best similitude for what god feels--but 'feeling,' also that!- how fast do these anthropomorphic walls enclose us still in all our thought of god!- 'feeling' is but a parable flung forth by us, bridge-builders on the hither side, to tremble out a little way toward god, then flutter helpless down in the abyss, the impassable abyss, of difference between created and creator, us and him, the finite and the infinite! forgive me, but i lose my way in words!" and again stephen broke his utterance off, faltering; like one who fording a full stream now in midcurrent finds his foothold fail, and cannot in such deepened waters walk. this time paul reached the struggling youth a hand with: "thou hast not ill achieved in thine essay to utter what is nigh unutterable. but, stephen, better bridge than any form of fancy, figure or similitude, to human sense or reason possible and capable of frame in human speech, for spanning the great gulf immeasurable, unfathomable, nay, inconceivable, (gulf, otherwise than so, impassable, yet so, securely closed forevermore!) the awful gulf of being and of thought, much more, of moral difference, since our fall, that parts our kind from holy god most high- yea, better bridge than any word of ours aspiring upward from beneath to god, is that eternal word of god himself to us, down-reaching hither from above, who, being god with god, was man with man, and who, returning thither whence he came, carried our nature with him into heaven, and to the ever-living joined us one. "but rightly thou wert saying, my stephen, that we best can approach to put in speech of man the ineffable regard of god toward sin, if we impute to him a spurning such as we feel when we hate or loathe or scorn, and wish to wreak in punishment our wrath. but we must purge ourselves of self-regard, or we are sinful in abhorring sin; and we attaint god with gross attribute imputed from what we through fall became. an horrible profaneness, sure, it were, the image first of god in us to foul, and then that foulness back on god asperse, making him hate with wicked human hate!" the wide impersonal purport of paul's words, not meant, he knew, in hidden hint to him, still, stephen with his wise docile spirit took home to himself, and fell some moments mute, considering; then afresh his mind exposed: "i feel, o kinsman most revered, how bold, how froward, how perverse, it were in me, first to lay hold on holy words of god to use them, as i used that psalm that night, profanely for a vehicle of hate; and then, convicted of my fault therein, turn round and blame the very words i used, or seem to blame them, as unmeet from god. yet i experience an obscure distress- is it of mind or heart? i scarce know which- a sense of contradiction unresolved, when, in the spirit of all-loving love, such as sometimes i seem to catch from thee, i read or ponder those terrific psalms." "thou art tempted then perhaps," gently said paul, yet with some gentle irony implied, "to doff the pupil's lowly attitude in which thou hadst learned so much; as if indeed thou hadst learned enough to be a teacher now, and even a teacher to thy teacher, god? beware, my son, of these delusive thoughts; love also has its specious counterfeits- whence that deep word of the apostle john, so frequent on his lips, his touchstone word- more needed, as, to seeming, needed not- to make us sure, when we suppose we love, whether we love in truth: 'herein we know that we god's children love, when we love god, and his commandments do.' for this is love indeed of god, to do his holy will! a childlike humble spirit, the spirit of love, contented to believe and to obey! the wiser that she seeks not to be wise, she wins her wisdom by obedience. "does thy love puff thee up to challenge god whether he be consistent with himself? suspect 'all-loving love' which moves to that! love puffs not up--right love, love which is awe (as ever love inbreathed from jesus is)- to any pride of wisdom questioning god. some specious counterfeit it is of love, not love herself--who grows by meekness wise to meekness more, and more obedient faith- not love, nay, stephen, but other spirit than love (self-pity, self-indulgence, self-regard, some spirit fixing for the center self), that sits in judgment on the ways of god to find him sometimes wise or sometimes not. god was as wise when he inspired those psalms as when in christ he bade us ever love, love even our enemies and do them good. submit thyself to god, my stephen, and be humble; for god resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble still and grace for grace- grace given already, ground for added grace. grow then in grace thus, and be meekly wise. i have spoken divining what thy meaning was, perhaps amiss"--and paul refrained from more. but stephen answered: "if such was my thought, at least i did not know it to be such, as thou hast thus divined it now for me. thither perhaps it tended--but that goal, shown in this light from thee, though far, i shun; i would not be more wise than god, for god. but is there then no contrariety at all, no spirit discrepant, between the frightful fulminations of those psalms and the forgiving love of our lord christ?" "none, stephen," said paul, "for none did jesus know, who knew those psalms and never protest made against them, never softened their austere, their angry, aspect, never glozed their sense, never one least slant syllable let slip, hint as that _he_ would not have spoken so, never with pregnant silence passed them by. nay, of those psalms one of the fiercest, he- and this, then when his baptism into death, his offering of himself for sin, was nigh, those feet already in the crimson flood!- most meek and lowly suffering lamb of god, took to himself to make it serve his need in uttering the just horror of his soul at such hate wreaked on him without a cause. 'pour out thine indignation on them, lord, and let the fierceness of thy wrath smite them! to their iniquity iniquity add thou'--such curse invokes this dreadful psalm- 'let them be blotted from the book of life'! from close beside these burning sentences, these drops of sodom-and-gomorrah rain, out of the self-same psalm with them, our lord, now nigh to suffer (saying to his own he as in holy of holies with them shrined, more heavenly things than ever even himself till then had spoken) drew those words--sad words, stern words!--'they hated me without a cause.' love shrank not, nay, in him, from holy hate! "his spirit and the spirit of those psalms ever with one another dwelt at peace; more than at peace, with one another one were they, the selfsame spirit both; as needs was, since the spirit of all psalms was he. even thus, i have not to the full expressed the will, with power, that in christ jesus wrought to fulmine indignation against sin. the psalms, those fiercest and most branding, fail to match the fury of the lamb of god poured out in words of woe on wickedness, his own words, burning to the lowest hell- enraged eruption from the heart of love! most dreadful of things dreadful that! a fire, my stephen, which, as loth to kindle, so, once kindled, then will burn the deepest down! woe the most hopeless of surcease or change- mercy herself to malediction moved, love forced to speak in final words of hate!" an energy of earnest in paul's voice, a tender earnest, full of love and fear, fear without dread, serene vicarious fear (yet faithful sympathy with god expressed) the solemn somber of a lighted look in him, reflected as from some unseen region where light was more than luminous, appalling, like the splendor of a cloud whence deep the thunder now begins to break- these, with his words themselves infusing awe, made stephen feel his heart in him stand still. both for meet reverence toward the reverend man who spake these things, and likewise to assure himself that he in nothing failed the full sense and effect of all that he had heard, stephen his hush awe-struck, of thought, prolonged. then, partly from a certain manliness innate in him, inalienably his, which, while of noble and ennobling awe it made his spirit but more capable, yet kept him ever conscious of his worth, and would not suffer that, with any thought quick in him and still seeming to him true or worthy to be questioned for its truth, he should, howso abashed, abandon it- partly self-stayed so in a constant mind, but more, supported by his perfect trust well-grounded in his kinsman's gentleness and tact of understanding exquisite, stephen returned to press his quest once more: "i must not seem insistent overmuch, o thou my kinsman and my master dear, to whom indeed i hearken as to one divinely guided to be guide to men; but a desire to know not yet allayed, perhaps i ought to own, some haunting doubt, prompts me to ask one question more of thee. "i know the psalms whereof we speak were meant, as were their fellow psalms, each, not to breathe the individual feeling of one soul whether himself the writer or whoso might take it for his own, but to be used by the great congregation joining voice in symphony or in antiphony of choral worship, with stringed instruments adding their help, and instruments of wind: so, most unmeet it were if private grudge of any whomsoever, high or low, should mix its base alloy with the fine gold of prayer and praise stored in our holy psalms for pure oblation from all holy hearts to him, the ever-living holy god. the wicked and the enemy therein accurséd so from good to every bane and ill here and hereafter following them and hunting down their issue to the end of endless generations of their like- these, i can understand, were public foes, not private, adversary heathen tribes that hated us because they hated god who chose us for his own peculiar race, and swayed us weapon in his dread right hand to execute his judgment on his foes, his foes, not ours, or only ours as his- 'them that hate thee do not i hate, o god?' the righteous execration bursting forth, an outcry irrepressible of zeal, through all the cycle of those fearful psalms, not from a heart of virulence toward men, but from a love, consuming self, for god. such, i can understand, the purport was wherein himself, the holy ghost of god, inspired those psalms and willed them to be sung. but, o my master, tell me, did not yet some too importunate spirit not thus pure, of outright sheer malevolence some trace, escape of private malice uncontrolled, hatred toward man that was not love for god, on his part who was chosen god's oracle to such high end and hard, enter the strain he chanted, here or there, to jar the tune and of his music make a dissonance?" stephen, as one who had with resolute exertion of an overcoming will discharged his heart with speech, let come what might, rested; the tension of his purpose still persisting to refuse himself recoil. feeling his nephew's girded attitude, nowise resistant, though recessive not, braced to keep staunch his standing where he stood, paul would not overbear it with sheer strength; choosing, with just insinuation wise, to ease it through concession yielded him. he said: "my stephen has pondered deep these things, and to result of truth well worth his pains. thou hast profited, my son, perhaps beyond thine own thought of thy profiting, in sweet acquist of wisdom from the mind of christ. fair change, change fair and great, in thee since when thou cursedst shimei in that bitter psalm!- bitter from thee who saidst it bitterly. behold, thou art fain, forsooth, to find those words, those same words now which then thou likedst well rolling them under thy tongue a morsel sweet, almost too human for at all divine. was there not in them, this thou askest me, expression intermixed of wicked hate, his whose the occasion was to write the psalm? the turns and phrases of the speech wherein the psalmist here or there breathes out his soul in malediction, have such force to thee, importing that his spirit let escape a passion of his own not purified amid the pressure and the stress of zeal inspired from god against unrighteousness. "well, stephen, the entrusted word of god to men is ours through men and, men being such, why, needs we have the priceless treasure stored, stored and conveyed, in vessels framed of clay. no perfect men are found, were ever found: god's inspiration does not change men such. his wisdom is to make of men unwise, of men, too, fallen far short of holiness, imperfect organs of his perfect will. adhesion hence of imperfection, man's, fast to the letter of the scripture clings; but it makes part of his perfection, god's, who knows us, and from his celestial height benignly earthward deigning condescends. in terms of our imperfect, flawed with sin even, the divine inworking wisdom loves to teach us noble lessons of himself, ennobling us to ever nobler views of what he is, so shadowed forth to us. "'sin,' that word 'sin,' so weighted as we know with sense, beyond communication deep, of evil, of wrong, of outrage, of offence toward god, and toward ourselves of injury irreparable and growing ever great and greater to immortal suicide wreaked with incredible madness on the soul- what is that word in the light shallow speech of pagan greek? what but a word to mean, as if of purpose to make naught the blame, simply the casual missing of a mark? venial, forsooth, merely an aim not hit- the aim right, but the arrow flying wide! into such matrix, shallower as would seem than could be made capacious of such sense, god must devise to pour his thought of sin! but how the thought has deepened since its mould, still vain to match the sinfulness of sin! humbleness--what a virtue, what a grace say rather, yet in all the greek no word to name it, till god's wisdom rectified a word that erst imported what was base, mean, sordid, dastard, unuplifted, vile in spirit, pusillanimous, to name the lowly temper, best beloved in man by god, the heavenly temper of his son! the thought at last is master of its mould, though mould is needful for the plastic thought. "in our imagination of the true, we climb as by a ladder, round by round, slowly toward him, the inaccessible, who dwells in a seclusion and remove of glory unapproachable, and light that makes a blinding darkness round his throne. he stoops and finds and touches us abased so far beneath him where we grovelling lie; nay, he lays hold of us and lifts us up; with cords, so it is written, of a man he draws us, blesséd god!--with bands of love, of love, the mightiest of his heavenly powers! o, the depth fathomless, the starry height, the breadth, the length immeasurably large, both of the wisdom and the knowledge, god's! because, forsooth, we have some few steps climbed, shall we, proud, spurn from underneath our feet the ladder that uplifted us so far, that might have raised us yet the full ascent? that ladder rests on earth to reach to heaven: let us go on forever climbing higher, but not forget the dark hole of the pit out of which we were digged, nor, more, contemn the way of wisdom thither reaching down and thence aspiring to the topmost heaven; whereby our race may (so we stumble not through pride, or like jeshurun waxen fat kick) reascend at length to whence we fell- nay, higher, and far above all height the highest, to him, with him, exalted to his right, to him, with him, in him, lord christ, who rose for us in mighty triumph from his grave, then reascended where he was before, ere the world was, god with his father god, but still for us; and, still for us, sat down forever, in his filial godhead man, assessor with his father on his throne, inheriting the name o'er every name ascendant, king of kings and lord of lords, and us assuming with himself to reign! amen! and hallelujah! and amen!" as one might watch an eagle in his flight that soared to viewless in the blinding sun; as one might hearken while from higher and higher a lark poured back his singing on the ground, so stephen gazed, listening, with ecstatic mind. "transported with delight i hear thee speak thus, o my reverend master, for with awe, which is delight, the deepest that i know"- thus at length stephen spoke, easing his mind a little, with its fulness overfraught. "doxology outbreaking from thy lips becomes them so! the rapture of thy praise is as the waving of a mighty wing beside me that is able to upbear me also thither whither it will soar. i am caught in its motion and i mount unmeasured heights as to the heaven of heavens. let me join voice with thee and say, 'amen!' not least i love when least i understand often thy high discourse. eluding me it leads me yet and tempts me after thee, tempts and enables, and, above myself, i find myself equalled to the impossible! but then when afterward i sink returned to what i was--no longer wing not mine to lift me with its great auxiliar sweep upward--i grope and stumble on the ground. "bear with me that i need to ask such things, but tell me yet, o thou who knowest, tell me, am i then right, and is it, as thou seemedst to say but saidst not, veering from the mark when now almost upon it, so i thought, who waited watching--did the psalmist old commingle sometimes an alloy of base unpurified affection with his clear all-holy inspiration breathed from god, lading his language with a sense unmeet, personal spite, his own, for god's pure ire? forgive me that i need to ask such things." "thou dost not need to ask such things, my son," paul with a grave severity replied. "to ask them is to ask me that i judge a fellow-servant. what am i to judge the servant of another, i who am servant myself with him of the same lord? i will not judge my neighbor; nay, myself, mine own self even, i judge not; one is judge, he who the master is, not i that serve. if so be, the inspired, not sanctified, mere man, entrusted with the word of god- our human fellow in infirmity, remember, of like passions with ourselves- indeed in those old days wherein he wrote, his enemies being the enemies of the lord, and speaking he as voice at once of god and of god's chosen, his ministers to destroy those wicked--if so be such man, so placed, half conscious, half unconscious, oracle of utterance not his own, did in some part that utterance make his own, profaning it, to be his vehicle for sense not meant by the august supreme inspiring will- whether in truth he did, be god the judge, not thou, my son, nor i, but if he did- why, stephen, then that psalmist--with more plea than thou for lenient judgment on the sin, thine the full light, and only twilight his, with christ our sun unrisen--the selfsame fault as thou, committed. be both thou and he forgiven of him with whom forgiveness is- with whom alone, that so he may be feared!" abashed, rebuked, the youth in silence stood, musing; but what he mused divining, paul, with gently reassuring speech resumed, soon to the things unspoken in the heart of stephen spoke and said: "abidest still unsatisfied that anything from god, though even through man, should less than perfect be, or anywise other than incapable, than utterly intolerant, of abuse to purposes profane? consider this- and lay thy hand upon thy mouth, nay, put thou mouth into the dust, before the lord- that god most high hath willed it thus to be, that thus christ found it and pronounced it good. who are we, stephen, to be more wise than god, who, to be holier than his holy son?" "amen! amen! i needs must say, amen!" in anguish of bewilderment the youth cried out, almost with sobs of passionate submission, from rebellion passionate hardly to be distinguished; "yea, to god from man, ever amen, only amen, no other answer possible to him!- who is the potter, in whose hands the clay are we, helpless and choiceless, to be formed and fashioned into vessels at his will!" "helpless, yea, stephen," paul said, "but choiceness not; we choose, nay, even, we cannot choose but choose- the choice our freedom, our necessity: free how to choose, we are to choose compelled. we choose with god, or else against him choose. which wilt thou, stephen? thou! with him or against?" a struggle of submission shuddered down to quiet in the bosom of the youth- strange contrast to the unperturbed repose, with rapture, of obedience, that meantime, and ever, safe within the heart of paul breathed as might breathe an infant folded fast to slumber in its mother's cradling arms! so had paul learned to let the peace of christ rule in his heart, a fixed perpetual calm, like the deep sleep of ocean at his core of waters underneath the planes of storm. and stephen answered: "oh, with god, with god! and blesséd be his name that thus i choose!" "yea, verily," paul said, "for he sole it is who worketh in us, both to will and work for the good pleasure of his holy will. as thou this fashion of obedience obediently acceptest at his gift, so growest thou faithful mirror to reflect clear to thyself, and just, the thought of god. thus thou mayst hope to learn somewhat of true, of high and deep and broad, concerning him, him and his ways inscrutable with us- of thy self emptied, for more room to be from god henceforth with all his fulness filled! "this at least learn thou now, how greatly wise was god, by that which was in us the lowest to take us and uplift us higher and higher until those very passions, hate and wrath, which erst seemed right to us, as they were dear, become, to our changed eyes--eyes, though thus changed, nay, as thus changed, sore tempted to be proud- become forsooth unworthy symbols even to shadow god's displeasure against sin. to generation generation linked in living long succession from the first, to nation nation joined, one fellowship of man, through clime and clime, from sea to sea- thus has by slow degrees our human kind been brought from what we were to what we are. thus and no otherwise the chosen race was fitted to provide a welcoming home, such welcoming home! on earth for him from heaven- the only people of all peoples we among whom god could be immanuel and be in any measure understood, confounded not as of their idol tribes. and we--_we_ did not understand him so but that we hissed him to be crucified! so little were we ready, and even at last, for the sun shining in his proper strength! after slow-brightening twilight ages long to fit our blinking vision for the day, the glorious sun arising blinded us and maddened! we smote at him in his sphere, loving our darkness rather than that light!" therewith, as for the moment lapsed and lost in backward contemplation, with amaze and shame and grief and joy and love and awe and thanks commingling in one surge of thought at what he thus in sudden transport saw, paul into silence passed, which his rapt look made vocal and more eloquent than voice. this stephen reverenced, but at last he said: "o thou my teacher in the things of god, that riddle of wisdom in divine decree whereof thou spakest, the linking in one chain together, one fast bond and consequence, of all the generations of mankind and all their races for a common lot of evil or good, yet speak, i pray, thereof, to make me understand it if i may. why should jehovah on the children wreak the wages of the fathers' wickedness? shall not the judge of all the earth do right? yea, doubtless, yea; but _that_--how is that right?" "his way is in the sea," said paul, "his path in the great waters! would we follow him, his footsteps are not known! blesséd be god!" "amen! amen! forevermore amen!" as one who bound himself with sacrament, assenting without interrupting said stephen, and paul went on: "yet this note thou: it is not on the children, such by blood, that god will visit the iniquity of fathers: the children must be such in choice as well, in spirit, must be the fathers' like- and there another mystery! (for deep sinks endless under deep, to who would sound the bottomless abyss of god's decree)- the children ever, prave and prone, incline to follow where the fathers lead the way; the children, yea, must do the fathers' deeds, then only share the fathers' punishment. this, by that prophet mouth, ezekiel, god taught with expostulation and appeal pathetically eloquent of love with longing in our heavenly father's heart that not one human creature of his hand be lost, but all, but all, turn and be saved. "nay, even from sinai's touched and smoking top was the same sense of grace to men revealed. for what said that commandment threatening wrath divine, in sequel of ancestral sin, to light on generations yet to be? said it not, 'on the children?' yea, but heed, it hasted to supply in pregnant words description of the children thus accursed: 'on the third generation and the fourth of them that hate jehovah'--wicked seed of wicked sires, and therefore with them well deserving to partake one punishment. and now consider what stands written next. deterrent menace done, to fend from sin, allurement then, how large! to righteousness. if first the warning filled a mighty bound, all bound the grace succeeding overflowed. o, limitless outpouring from a full, an overfull, an aching, heart of love in god our father! mercy to be shown, not to two generations or to three, but to a thousand generations, drawn, a bright succession, to unending date, of them--that 'fear and worship'? nay--that love god for their father and his will observe! "but, stephen, enough for now of such discourse. my mind is helpless absent while we talk, my heart being heavy with desire and prayer and groanings from the spirit unutterable for shimei in his noisome dungeon pent. i have sung praises in worse stead than his, christ in me joyance and the hope of glory: but, chafed with fetters and with manacles, and worse bonds wearing of iniquity, he sits unvisited of this fair light, a midnight of no hope within his heart. go pray for shimei thou, and leave me here to pray, if haply god will touch his heart." so they two fell apart and mightily strove together in intercession and one prayer. book x. re-embarked. arrived at myra on their way toward rome, paul and his companions are transferred to a different vessel to pursue their voyage. the new vessel is from alexandria: it brings thence as passengers for rome two mutual friends, one of them a roman, the other a buddhist from india named krishna. rachel, having seen paul and the roman greet each other as old acquaintances, soon inquires apart of paul who the roman is, and, learning is thence drawn on into exchange of reminiscence and reflection with her brother. the two at length unite in interceding with julius on behalf of shimei. they secure for him the freedom of the deck. re-embarked. where on the towering shore a mighty gorge breaks headlong through the mountains to the sea, and a deep stream into a haven large spreads for the welcome of all ships that sail the mediterranean ocean, there of old myra, metropolis of lycia, sat; mart once of many meeting nations--now a few colossal shadows sign and say mutely, 'here myra was, and she was great!' at myra safe arrived and anchor cast, that adramyttian vessel disembarked her voyagers bound to rome, and went her way. when she at cæsarea touching found that jewish prisoner there and bore him thence, she had suddenly gone sailing unaware, in transit as of star athwart the sun, into the solar light of history; at myra parting with him she passed on into the rim of dark and disappeared: a moment in a light she guessed not of illuminated for all time to see, then heedless dipping deep her plunging keel and foundering in the gulfs of the unknown! a bark of egypt seeking italy, wheat-laden of the fatness of the nile, swung resting in the myra roadstead nigh. hereon were re-embarked that company, paul, and the friends that sailed with paul to rome- fallen felix too, with his wife spurring him to hope yet and to strive and still be strong. alexandreia sent the vessel forth, city twice famous, joining to her own the august tradition of her founder's fame, the mighty macedonian's mightier son, great alexander who the whole world gained indeed--with what for profit of it all? at this sea-gate wide opening to the west, from all the east men met and hence dispersed- that current laden most which drew to rome. besides from egypt her hierophants, hence thither flocked those worshippers of fire from persia holding zoroaster sage, astrologers of assyria, and from ind confessors of the somber faith of buddh. of many such as these on board that bark one indian buddhist votary there was worthy of note: a gentle-mannered man deep in himself involved, as who mused much of hidden things and hard to understand, the pathos of the mystery of the world, the human strife, with the defeat foregone companioning the strife and ending it- yet ending not a strife that could not end, but ever, round and round, one dull defeat, trod the treadmill of fate, no hope, no goal. a gentle-mannered man, but sad of cheer, krishna his name, pilgrim of many climes, not idly curious to behold and learn, but hiding pity in his heart for men seen everywhere the same, poor blinded moles toiling and moiling in the sunless mines of being, where no joy, whence no escape. escape none, or, if any, then escape impossible to win except by slow, and unimaginably slow, process of suicide to endless date prolonged, æons on æons following numberless, and fatal transmigrations of the soul from state to state, from form to form, of self: yet progress none that might be felt the while, but one long-drawn monotony instead of labor waste in movement seeming vain, cycles of change returning on themselves forever, bound to orbits that revolve eternal repetitions of the same vicissitude (the weaver's shuttle flung tediously back and forth from hand to hand- or swinging pendulum), 'twixt death and birth, lapses from misery to misery always, prospect like retrospect stretched out to vista and perspective vanishing of path to be pursued and still pursued by the undaunted seeker of an end- he by his own act dying all the time in ceaseless effort utterly to cease, will willing not to will, desire desiring to be desire no more, pure apathy, no hope, no fear, no motion of the mind, until, through dull disuse and atrophy, extinguished be capacity itself to do or suffer anything, and so, down sinking through the bottomless abyss of being, at last the fugitive go free, emancipate but by becoming--naught! krishna thus deeming of his fellow-men, their present and their future and their fate, hid a vast pity in his heart for them, pity the vaster that he could not help. this melancholy man compassionate, who might in musing to himself seem lost, yet saw and heard with vigilant quick sense whatever passed about him where he stood, or where he sat--for most he moveless sat, moveless and silent, on the swarming deck. one man indeed he spake with, yet with him his speech, grave ever, he spared, and sheathed in tones soothingly soft and low like blandishment. that one man was a roman; roman less to seeming than cosmopolite--his air an air of long-accustomed conversance with whatsoever might be seen and learned through much ulyssean wandering to and fro and up and down among his fellow-men, and watching of their works and words and ways. this roman citizen of the world, mailed proof in habit of a full-experienced mind against commotion from surprise, was now visibly moved to wonder seeing paul. his wonder checked with reverence and with love indignant to behold the captive state of one deserving rather wreath than bond, he stepped toward paul and with such homage paid as liege to lord might pay saluted him. "grace unto thee, my brother," answered paul, "from the lord jesus christ, thy lord and mine!" they twain fell on each other's neck and kissed with tears. such salutation and embrace- no more; but this with variant mood was marked by three that saw it. the centurion blent in his look pleasure with his surprise; but felix and drusilla frowned askance (they also knowing the roman, as at court courtiers know one another--without love); those frowned askance, and mixed their mutual eyes in sinister exchange of look malign portending sequel if the chance should serve; and in neronian rome the happy chance of mischief, but be patient, scarce could fail! that gentle indian with his pregnant eye saw all and mused it--then, and after, long- the cheerful, joyful, reverent greeting given a jewish prisoner by a roman lord and by the jewish prisoner so returned in unaccustomed words ill understood but solemn like the language of a spell; this, with the roman captain's look benign approving what surprised him yet; nor less, the menace of the mutual scowls that met darkening each other on the alien brows of felix and drusilla at the sight- most like two clouds that, black already, blown together, shadow into a deeper dark! in due time, anchor weighed with choral sound of sailors' voices cheering each himself and each his fellow in a formless tune, the ship from out the haven slowly slid, urged with the oar but wooing too the wind with slack sail doubtful drooping by the mast. large planes of lucid ocean tranced in calm they traversed with loth labor of the oar, or else were buffeted of winds that blew thwart or full opposite day after day, while they hugged close the asian shore, then rhodes saw southward, mooring fair her fruitful isle. the leisures long-drawn-out of those delays, to paul and to his friends were prize and spoil. grown wonted to the sway of wind and wave, they spent, cradled at grateful ease, the slow, soft-lapsing, indistinguishable hours that wore the sunny summer season out, in various converse or communion sweet oft with mere sense of mutual nearness nursed. "who was that kindly courteous gentleman," thus at fit moment rachel asked of paul, "that spoke so fair my brother coming up? roman he seemed, and lordly was his air; yet something other, sweeter, differenced him from his compatriot peers, and i observed thou gavest him thy grace from christ the lord." "that, rachel," paul replied, "was one i knew- almost mightst thou have known him--long ago in tarsus; we were boys together there. but since then twice, with now this added time, has god in wisdom made our pathways meet. that roman to damascus went with me and saw, what time the glory of the lord blinded me to behold at last the true. but him that glory, seen not suffered, left for outward vision what he was before, while inwardly with denser darkness blind, reclaimed from atheism to idolatry! but god had mercy on him; years went by, and i, with barnabas to cyprus come, found there this selfsame roman, governor. the skeptic whom theophany had made religious not, but superstitious, now led captive of delusion--worldly-wise albeit he was, yet unto god a fool!- was given up wholly dupe and devotee of a deceiver, jew, bar-jesus named, pretender to the gift of prophecy. this sorcerer dared withstand us to the face before the governor, who had summoned us (not dreaming whom he summoned summoning me) to tell him of the word of god. but i, filled with the spirit of the lord--mine eyes on him, that sorcerer, fastened--uttered words which god the faithful followed with such blast and blight of blindness on the wretched man that he groped seeking who would lead him thence. the governor beheld and wonder-struck to see god's work god's word at last believed. the pagan playmate of my boyhood so became the changed soul thou hast seen him here, in jesus brother, loving and beloved; and sergius paulus thou his name mayst call." "o saul," said rachel, "in what history of marvel following marvel has thy life, since when that noon christ met thee in thy way damascus-ward, been portioned out to thee! the stories of the prophets old whom god wrought through to show his people how behind the thick veil of his outward handiwork he himself lived and was a present god- those tales of wonders, let me own it, saul, had grown to me to seem so far away from our time, and so alien from the things we with our eyes behold, hear with our ears, much more, with these our hands perform, that i almost had fallen, not into disbelief (not that, ever, i trust--nay, god forbid!) concerning them, but into a listless mind which to itself no image of them framed- fault well-nigh worse than outright disbelief! that now the things themselves, nay, things more strange, should be by god repeated in the world, nor only so, that one of mine own blood, my brother, should a chosen vessel be of this great grace of god through christ to men- this less with wonder than with awe fills me, and i--believe not, faith were name too faint for passion such as mine is--i adore!" paul bent on rachel eyes unutterable wherein a sense of sympathy serene betwixt himself and her he talked with, shone, and they twain dwelt in a suspense supreme, silent, of adoration where they stood- the rapture of doxology unbreathed to either doubled as by other shared. at length paul spoke; his tones intense and low thrilled through the ear of rachel to her heart: "o rachel, he who out of darkness once bade the light shine, god, shined into our hearts enkindling there this dayspring from on high, this light of knowing from the face of christ the glory inexpressible of god!" a pause once more of rapt communion; then this added in a chastened other strain: "but we such treasure have in urns of clay fragile and nothing worth that all in all the exceeding greatness of the power may be not of ourselves but ever only god's! constrained i find myself in every way, but straitened not; perplexed, but not dismayed; hunted, but not forsaken; smitten down, but not destroyed; forever bearing round within the body wheresoever driven the dying of the lord, that the lord's life may also in my body forth be shown. therefore i faint not; let my outward man fail, if it must, my inward man meantime is day by day in fadeless youth renewed. how light affliction sits upon my heart! it is but for a moment, and it works the while for me an ever-growing weight of glory fixed forever to be mine! i look no longer on the things about me, seeming to be real, since they are seen, but far away instead, far, far away beyond these, at the things that are not seen. these for a season, rachel, the things seen! but those, the things not seen, eternal they! "when i saw stephen upward into heaven gaze, and behold there what no eye might see, the glory of the ever-living god, and jesus standing by his father's side; when afterward i saw hirani stand before the anger of the sanhedrim, his eyes not seeing what their faces looked, his ears not hearing what the voices round were saying and forswearing to his harm, but steadfastly his vision fixed afar and all his hearkening bent for sounds unheard, sights, sounds, sent couriers from the world to come, the real world, the eternal, and the blest- how little knew i then what now i know! o rachel, why was i not then disturbed with doubts and fears, and guesses of the true? the darkness of that hour before the dawn! the brightness of this full-accomplished day! the glory of that other day that waits! the jacob's ladder and the shining rounds! the moving pomps of angels up and down ascending and descending the degrees betwixt the heights of heavenly and my feet! "now unto him that in such darkness died, but rose amid such brightness from the tomb and reascended where he was before to glory inaccessible with god, and there expects until he thither bring us also both to witness and to share his exaltation to the almighty throne- to our lord christ, redeemer by his blood, worthy, and only worthy, to receive ascription without measure of men's praise, be honor, worship, thanks, obedience, paid, and love, even love like his, forevermore!" rachel had barely to her brother's words breathed fervently her low amen, when he, the passion of doxology unspent yet quivering in his tones, went on and said: "but, rachel, all amid this strain of joy exulting like a fountain in my heart- unspeakable and full of glory indeed, as peter matched it with his mighty phrase!- yea, in it, as if of it and the same, i feel a sense of pathos and of pain and hint of earthly with the heavenly mixed. i cannot but of shimei think, and grieve- the grief indeed a paradox of joy, such pity and such anguish of desire to help and save! can we not succor him? can we not have him forth of his duress in dungeon into this fair light of day? i feel it must be possible. pray thou, and i will pray, and haply god may touch the heart of julius to such act of grace that at our suit and intercession he will bid the wretched bondman up again out of the noisome darkness where he pines, if to full freedom not, at least to breathe the freshness of the unpolluted air and feel the force of the reviving sun. sick he may be, in prison is, we know, and neighbor let us count him, taught of christ to hold for neighbor any who in need is nigh enough to us for us to help. sick and in prison jesus we might find in shimei, if for jesus' sake we go and carry him the solaces of love!" "but he, will he receive what we should bring?" said rachel; "would not bitter-making thought welling up in him like a secret spring of brackish issue gushing from beneath a crystal runlet pure as siloa's brook, turn for him all our sweetness into gall?" "perhaps, perhaps," said paul; "we cannot know. that were for thee and me defeat indeed- to be of evil overcome! but, nay, nay, rachel, let us hope, and overcome evil with good. what is impossible? is this, even this, impossible--through christ? love, if love perfect be, hopeth all things. there is in love, as john delights to say, no fear; for perfect love casteth out fear. perfect our love, be faithless outcast fear no counsellor of ours; but hope instead far-seeing, with her forward-looking eyes reflecting hither light from that beyond. hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of god is poured forth in our hearts a stream, an overflowing, like the river of god, fed from the fulness of the holy ghost! o, how omnipotent i feel in him! but, behold, julius! let me speak straightway!" "o thou, my keeper"--so to julius paul- "full courteous to thy prisoner often proved, nay, more than courteous, kind--beseech thee now beyond thy wont be courteously kind!" "what wilt thou, then?" said julius. "grant it me," paul answered, "to reprieve, from chains, i ask not, but from his dungeon doom, to see the sun and breathe this vital air, the wretched man whom, partly for my sake perhaps, thou keepest immured in dismal dark duress below!" "strange being thou!" said julius answering paul, yet answering not, with wonder overpowered. "that wretch, that miscreant, craven, liar, proved corrupter of the faith of men through bribe- nay, but assassin, only that he failed, assassin disappointed in attempt- on whose life but thine own?--such man accurst do i now hear thee interceding for, thee, prisoner thyself, and that--unless the story of his plot and traitorhood and band of forty sworn conspirators against thee at jerusalem, have been falsely told me--aye, _that_ solely through him! i wonder at thee! art thou mad? the day thy countryman confronted by thee quailed, convicted of his dastard perjury which aimed to make _thee_ murderer of _him_- then, paul, i thought thee sane enough, as thou with words launched like the thunderbolts of jove didst rive him to his rotten innermost! yet then, even then, relenting strangely, thou didst melt the hardness that became thee so- making thee almost roman, as i thought- melt it into a softness like a woman's. and now again from thee this wanton whim and suit of pity for that damnable! i cannot make thee out--unless it be thou art moonstruck, and maudlin-mindedness at times seize thee betraying thy manhood thus!" paul did not answer the centurion's words with words again; instead--with look serene, ascendant, irresistible--received, absorbed, and overbore that other's look (which, after the words spoken, rested on paul's face in pity that was almost scorn) quenching it as a shield a fiery dart; till julius, fain to yield yet somewhat save his pride in yielding, turned from paul and said to rachel, as in condescension dashed with banter: "let thy sister if she will go carry shimei tidings of reprieve; a sister to a brother's murderer go and take him token of her love--and his!" a little softening, as he spoke, from sneer, at the sheer aspect of her loveliness, an aspect not of weakness, but wherein there mingled, with the lovely woman's charm, something august of saintly matronhood, remote from any hint of what could seem defect of sane and saving self-control- thus wrought upon a little while he spoke, julius to rachel turning spoke such words. "all thanks," she gently said, "thou art most kind. it shall be as thou sayest, for i will go." she turned, but hung in action, as through doubt; with artless art of hesitation sweet beyond persuasion eloquent, she said: "yea, thou art good, and gladly will i go, but i--i am a woman--were it meet?- if thou declarest it meet, then it shall be, and thither will i venture down alone; for god will round me globe an angel guard to treasure me from peril and from soil." her grace, but more her graciousness, prevailed; for won upon by her demeanor meek, majestic, and that awe of womanhood instinctive in a noble breast of man, the roman, with even a flush of shame at last not altogether hidden as he turned his bronzéd cheek away, spoke out aloud: "varenus!" so he called the soldier's name whose turn it was that watch to sentry paul- the same that shimei late had sought to bribe- "go bid up shimei hither from the hold!" haggard, dejected, squalid from the filth and fetor of his dungeon, in surprise with terror, doubting what awaited him- dazed in the sudden light his blinking eyes- the more bewildered that he could not frame with any true and steady sight to see color, or shape, of person or of thing before him or about him anywhere, shimei stepped halt and staggering on the deck. a spectacle for pity to abhor, and for abhorrence shuddering to behold with pity--wreck and remnant of a man! the soldier would not touch to steady him, but let him shuffle as he might his way. scarce more than one or two uncertain steps, and shimei insecure of standing stood, shaken in all the fabric of the man- like some decrepit crazy edifice wind-shaken trembling on the point to fall. paul saw, and felt his heart within him moved. to the unmoved centurion thus he spoke: "wilt thou not let him rest awhile retired apart a little till his force revive and his eyes grow rewonted to the light?" "have thou thy will with him," the roman said, "so far as of his chains to ease him not. thou art right perhaps; a little added strength were well, were timely, in his present plight- may save him over to added punishment. so nurse him fair, ye brotherhood," said he, "and sisterhood, of mercy ill-bestowed!" and round the roman glanced, with roman scorn masking some sense of admiration shamed, upon the group of ready hearts and hands, the circle of paul's fellowship in faith, now gathered nigh with looks of wish to help. book xi. the last of shimei. shimei in his feebleness and distress is ministered to by the companions of paul. thus relieved, he falls asleep and dreams. on his waking, ministration to his needs is renewed; and, strengthened now with nourishment, he sleeps out the night. the next morning he finds himself an altered man. he at length makes some loth acknowledgment to paul, who in turn expresses his own sorrow for high words spoken in pride against shimei. a storm some days after rises, and shimei meets a sudden and awful doom. the last of shimei. a parable in life of perfect love (other than was in heaven to be beheld), the clustering angels, crowded nigh to see, saw in the things that then and there befell. it might indeed have been a scene let down suddenly from above in lively show of love in act on earth like love in heaven- only that never in heaven is need of act, from love, of mercy such as now was seen, a living picture, on that vessel's deck! luke the physician, at a sign from paul, with aristarchus, one on either side, supported shimei, tottering as he went (too weak to wish or will or this or that, or otherwise behave than just submit), to where with feat celerity meanwhile the women, of one mind, rachel and ruth and fair eunicé, in a sheltered place had spread, of rug and pillow thither brought, a sudden couch whereon a man might rest. stephen, from out the store of frugal cheer by his forecasting mother's care purveyed- provision for the needs that might attend the chances of sea-faring--brought and broached a flagon of sweet wine. this, to the lips of shimei in a slender goblet pressed, cheered him his heart and made him seem to live. all was in silence done, and then, withdrawn a little from about the man supine, that company of ministrants, one will- among them mary magdalené too, pathetic, with her deep-experienced eyes- kept quiet watch and wished that he might sleep. and shimei slept; a deep dissolving sleep- unjointed all his members in remiss solution of the consciousness of life. a long deep sleep; a dreamless sleep at first, then, as the hours wore on and still he slept, delicious reminiscences in dream (unconscious hoarded treasure of the brain,) were loosed within him of a dewy dawn forgotten, and a time when he was young. he had found the fountain in that land of dream, and drunk his fill from it with sweet delight, famed for its virtue to renew in youth. the old man was a boy again, at home, a hebrew home though on an alien shore. perhaps some soft insinuation crept into his sleep from that last waking sense of his, the sense, to him unwonted long- a lonely man, of wife, of child, bereft, who never sister's gentleness had known- of touch from woman's hand; however it was, shimei a vision of his mother had. a son, her only, by his mother's knee, that mother's blossoming hope, her joy, her pride, he felt the benediction of a hand, her hand, laid like a softness on his brow; and shimei's lips, no longer thin and cold, but warm now, and with flush of lifeblood full, moved in responsive welcome of a kiss, her kiss, and holy, like a touch of chrism. how fair the vision was that then he saw! how sweet the tones were that once more he heard! such sound, such sight, were better than sweet sleep; and the fond sleeper fain would wake, to dream so good a dream awake, and to the full taste it, with senses and with soul nowise bound from the right fruition of their feast. so, as of his own motion, shimei woke- and instantly was sorry for the change. his eyes he dared not open to the day, holding them shut to hold himself asleep. alas, in vain! too late! full well he knew now what he was, and where, and that in truth his happy boyhood had come back in dream. yet lay he lapped in luxury of pain and pathos, and sweet pity of himself, and longings toward a past beyond recall, with something also of a good remorse that he was such as then he felt he was, poor broken worldling, empty heart, and old (in contrast of his visionary youth!), therewith perhaps some upward-groping wish that he were other. all-undoing stress it was, of elemental motions blind about the bases of his being bowed like samson, and his state was overthrown. those agéd eyes that had been used to glint metallic lusters, or of adamant, softened beneath the lids, unseen, and tears forced themselves forth down either temple falling. instinctively he stirred, and with his hands (vainly, encumbered with their manacles!) he sought to brush those trickling tears away. they wandered down to mingle with his hair, long locks, and thin, of iron grey, unkempt, close clinging to the sunken temple walls. rachel with ruth remarked the motions vain, and gently, without word, moved to his side. there rachel with her kerchief wiped the tears with strokes as of caress, so loving light; but ruth, observing for a moment, turned with token to eunicé, quick of heart to understand, who hastening lightly thence a laver full of water brought, wherefrom the mother washed the forehead and the face, as had that agéd man her father been, then dried them with a towel clean and sweet. not once the while would shimei lift the lids that trembled shutting over his dim eyes: strange new emotion made him shrink from seeing- shame, and a tenderness of gratitude, and love, that, with wing-footed memory, ran backward to his boyhood and there fell with tears and kisses on his mother's neck- remembered, she, a _woman_--such as these! the squalid wretchedness of his estate forgotten, and its utter hopelessness, was it not blesséd, only thus to lie ministered to as if he were beloved of some one, he who long had no one loved! melted like wax within him was his heart, and when at length they spoke to him, and said, "thy hands too, if we might too wash thy hands!" and when, he neither yes nor no with word or sign replying, they, with yes assumed, did it, assuaging with all healing heed the hurts and bruises of the chafing chains, then the old man with a convulsive wrench turned his whole frame averse from them to hide the tears that streamed in rivers from his eyes. "and this they do for love of their lord christ!"- such muffled words, sobbed out amid his tears and shaken with the throbs that shook his frame, those women seemed to hear from shimei's lips. "lo, jesus, wilt thou master also me? i cannot bear the pressure of this love! crushed am i under it into the babe indeed i dreamed just now i was become!" so shimei to himself, in words more clear with the abating passion of his sobs, spoke plaintive with the accents of a child. a start of tears responsive orbed the eyes of ruth and rachel at such token shown of gracious change in shimei; grateful tears they were, and hopeful, and each tear a prayer- how prevalent, who knows?--for shimei. god, in his lachrymary urn reserved to long remembrance, treasures up such tears! paul, at remove with stephen, beholding all, felt a great pang and passion of desire to bear some part and render a testimony of love and of forgiveness toward this man, yea, of sweet will to be forgiven and loved by him in turn, that shimei needs must trust. he thought of how the lord, that extreme night in which he was betrayed, he knowing well the father had given all things into his hands, and he was come from god and went to god, rose from the supper, disarrayed himself- as if so laying his majesty aside to clothe himself in mightier majesty of meekness, with the servant's towel girded!- then, pouring water in the basin, kneeled, girded in fashion as a menial, kneeled. the lord himself of life and glory kneeled, washing and wiping his disciples' feet! and judas, paul remembered, was among them! "this is my time," said he, "my time at last; shimei will not resist nor say me nay, and i, with mine own hands, will wash his feet." but stephen said: "lo, i have hated him more wickedly than any, i beseech mine uncle let me do this thing to him. shimei will know i do it for thy sake, and it will be to him as if thou didst it." so, paul allowing it for his nephew's sake, glad to confirm him in that gentleness, stephen a ewer of water made haste to bring, and there amid them all admiring him known to have hated shimei so, he stooped, with a most beautiful behavior stooped- not without qualms of lothness overcome, considering he how swift those feet had been, how swift those agéd feet, how long, had been, to shed blood, and what blood to shed how swift!- and dutifully washed and wiped them clean. the old man now lay utterly relapsed, exhausted his capacity to feel, resistance therefore, and even reaction, none, a state suspended between life and death; so had the vehemence of his passion wrought on shimei's weakness to disable him. the women with sure instinct knew his need; they lightly on him laid one covering more, for now the coolness of the night was nigh, and again wished for him the gift of sleep. and again shimei slept, to wake refreshed then when the moonless sky was bright with stars, stars that not more intently over all watched, than those faithful had watched over him. refection from their hands, both heedful meet and choicest possible to case like theirs, strengthened the faster for a night-long sleep, which with the morning brought him back himself, a self with pity and terror purified, but better purified with thanks and love. so, lapt in a delightsome consciousness, half haze, a kind of infant consciousness, of being changed to other than before, shimei slid sweetly on in reverie- no words, nay, thoughts even not, pure reverie; but if that mist of musing in his mind had into thoughts, like star-dust into stars, been orbed, their purport such as this had been: 'i miss it, and i feel that i should grope vainly to find in me the power that once was ever mine to be my proper self. all standing-ground seems melted under me, planted whereon i might with hope resist. it is all emptiness, all nothingness about me, i am utter helplessness. yet somehow it is blesséd helplessness! let him do with me as he will, who now is dealing thus with me through these! o ye, his ministers, o, holy women, ye, behold, i give myself through you to him! ye have conquered me for him at last with love. no weapons have i to withstand such might. tell paul that he and ye have overcome for that both he and ye were overcome yourselves first by the love that made you love even me, even me, even me, grown gray in sin, such sin, amid such light, against such love! forgive ye me, forgive, forgive, forgive, and pray ye all that i may be forgiven of him to whom henceforth, unworthy i to be at all accepted to such thrall, i give myself forever up a slave!' thus shimei, in his formless fantasy, which being nor word, nor thought, still less was will, mused, like a river lapsing to the sea; so softly did an inner current draw him unresisting whither it desired. it seemed to shimei, in that strong access and overflow of feeling new to him, as if it would be easy to speak out. nay, but as if he must at once speak out, aloud, for those to hear toward whom he now felt this delicious love and longing; yet he never did so speak, alas, but wronged himself, wronged them, refraining; more, the spirit of grace nigh quenched with silence! so it fared with shimei then, self-shut from needful speech, as might it with some tender plant denied its freedom of the sun and air, that peaks and pines and cannot open into flower. perhaps the habit of his heart life-long was winter all too fast for any spring to solve; perhaps he could not, if he would, unbind its cold constriction from himself for welcome and exchange of sweet good-will such as he felt rife round him in the air, wooing him, like bland weather, toward full bloom in frank affections and fair courtesies. sad, if indeed the faculty in him of finer feeling and the word to fit were lost through long disuse, or by abuse! but it was much in shimei that thenceforth he never was bitter again with cynicism; the fountains of his evil humor were dry; he never vented blast of unbelief to blight the region round him with black death to every springing plant and opening flower of cheerful faith in human nobleness; that mordant tongue refrained itself from sneer. yea--this with travail of will through enforced lips- shimei, in frugal phrase, but phrase sincere, gave, of his conscience, rather than his heart, thanks to them all that ministered to him. more: after days of silence, passed in muse and struggle in secret with himself, and prayer, once, having asked to speak with paul apart and easily won what he desired, he said: "behold, o saul, i think that i have erred, mistaking thee, perhaps myself mistaking- yea, but i know that i mistook myself, and mistook god, both what he was and wished; most wickedly mistook him, honestly- honestly deeming him other than he was, imputing honestly what was not his will- mistaking, with no heed not to mistake! this was my wickedness, that lightly i misdeemed him such an one as i myself. and thee i wronged comparing thee with myself, and hated thee for what, i now am sure, thou wast not. saul, i need to be forgiven!"- wherewith his heavy head the old man bent low, with his uplifted hands in manacles seeking to hide his face as if in shame; not shame that he had sinned, but that he now had spoken thus. yet did that gesture naught diminish from his words, but only show at cost how great he had wrung them from himself. paul understood the anguish of his mind, and said to shimei: "nay, my brother, nay, forgiven thou art, nor needst to be forgiven, or at least i have nothing to forgive thee; i long ago forgave thee all in all. but i myself would be of thee forgiven! i vexed thee once with high words spoken in pride; i never have forgiven myself that pride. forgive me thou it, thou, that hadst thy hate needlessly blown to hotter flame thereby. let us forgive each other and love henceforth, as god, for christ's sake, will us both forgive!" as paul these last words spoke, he strongly yearned, even for christ's sake, to throw himself in tears on shimei's neck and there weep out his love. but he, for shimei's sake, forbore; he saw that shimei, softened as he was, and changed, was not ripe for forgiveness so complete. so paul forbore, rejoiced that shimei spoke no word, and signified with silence naught, in blasphemy of the belovéd name; name by himself in hope, not without fear, pronounced--like costliest pearl at venture flung before what under foot might trample it and round to rend the largess-giver turn. the chill obstruction never to the end was altogether thawed in shimei's heart to make him childlike placable and mild. perhaps more time, and vernal influence permitted longer to brood over him, had made it different; but the time was short for shimei in that air of paradise. the voyage long had been with froward winds; at length those winds blew into tempest wild, with winter lightnings strangely intermixed, god thundering marvellously with his voice: all on that ship were awed, and some appalled. shimei, hugging himself upon the deck where most were gathered, for to most it seemed better to stand beneath the open sky shelterless, than, though sheltered, not to see god make himself thus terrible in storm- shimei, who, not more helpless than the rest, felt a degree more helpless through his chains, listened intently, with some power of calm communicated to him, while, in tones depressed unshaken into depths of awe, paul, meek inheritor of the universe, as conscious child to god through jesus christ- the spirit of adoption in his heart that moment crying, "abba father!"--spoke of how those dwelling in the secret place of the most high, beneath the shadow abode of the almighty, safe from every harm. amid the booms of thunder bursting nigh the dreadful forks of lightning flashed the while and fell all round the ship into the sea, frequent, dividing pathways blinding bright between sheer walls of blackness built like stone, so dense was piled the darkness of the night! for it was night, no moon, no star, and cloud hung drooping in festoons from all the sky wind-swept along the bosom of the deep- sky only by the lightning flashes seen, at intervals, yet every moment felt, oppressive, like a mighty incubus. the lightning flashes thick and thicker fell, near, nearer, deadlier, as in conscious aim, like the fierce vengeful flames from heaven that once elijah prophet, on mount carmel, drew down on his altar trenched about with flood: those tongues of fire that circling trench lapped dry, but these divided tongues of lightning seemed equal to lick the boundless ocean up! the watchers huddling on the deck beheld in silence--for now also paul was dumb- the imminent menace of the elements. then what might seem a frightful sign from heaven! a leap of lightning and a rending roar of thunder at one selfsame moment broke, sudden, and nigh at hand--as if he, seen of john on patmos isle, that angel dread (who, setting his right foot upon the sea and his left foot upon the land, so cried with a loud voice) now standing on this ship had once more cried and loosed the thunders seven, so manifold the noise!--and therewith swayed the sword of god in a descending stroke on some one there select for punishment. they looked, and, lo, the fearful stroke had fallen on shimei; he lay lifeless on the deck. no motion, save of falling, and no voice- appalling silence and appalling calm! close at the foot of the tall mast he fell, against which with his shoulder he had leaned to stay him where he stood and watched the storm. the storm seemed broken with that burst of rage, and quieted itself through slow degrees of sullenness to peace. but the tall mast at top had been enkindled with the touch of the fell lightning, and it burned a while lifted amid the tempest and the night, a beacon flaming from the most high god. such was the end of shimei, unforeshown; to this he tended all those devious ways! next morning mid a weather pacified they shrouded him for burial in the deep. "until the sea give up its dead!" said paul solemnly, as the corse went weighted down. julius would not let free his hands from chains; "culprit he was and culprit he shall go," he said, "to hades by this watery way. incenséd jupiter despatched him hence, and neptune will convey him duly down to where their brother pluto will behold upon him the olympian's thunderbrand, and send to rhadamanthus to be judged!" but paul said to his company apart: "let us not judge before the time; the day, the day, that shall declare it. let us hope; the mercy of the lord is measureless: it is, even like his judgment, a great deep, and it endures forever; as the psalm sings it, again and yet again, in long antiphony of praise that cannot end. think not, because the promise is no harm shall light on any one who dwells within the secret place of the most high, that thence, seeing this awful-seeming way of death has found out shimei, he perforce has proved not to have fixed his dwelling ere he died safe in the shadow of the almighty's throne. the safety promised is not for the flesh, but for the spirit. the outward perishes in many ways that to the senses seem preclusive quite of hope for life to come. but, so the inward bide untouched of harm, the true self lives and is inviolate. that lightning did not fall on shimei's soul; no certain sign was it of wrath divine: nay, even perhaps the opposite of such, it may have been a fiery chariot with fiery horses hither sent from heaven, to bear him up elijah-like to god. far be it to say that this indeed was so; yet often last is first, as first is last. ye saw how wrought upon our brother was of late to be how different from himself! i trust he trusted in the atoning blood. i shall have hope to see him yet endued in shining robes of jesus' righteousness, translucent shining robes wherethrough the soul herself shows shining in essential white! god grant it, and farewell to shimei!" book xii. paul and krishna. felix and drusilla on the one hand and krishna on the other disclose the contrasted feelings severally excited in them by what they had just witnessed in the lot of shimei. krishna seeks from his friend sergius paulus explanation of the relations that subsisted between those ministering christians and the sufferer. he at length requests and obtains an interview with paul, and the two have a conversation, one result of which is that krishna asks to hear a full account of the life and character of jesus christ. paul proposes that mary magdalené give this account, but krishna courteously declines to receive it from the lips of a woman. the ship meantime puts in at the fair havens, whence, after a short stay in that anchorage, it sets sail, against the advice of paul. paul and krishna. as one transported to a different sphere, some sinless planet fairer far than ours, amid new scenes and aspects there beheld, would watch and wonder and not understand, so had the most of that ship's company, not understanding, but much wondering, watched what passed between the wretched shimei and those his ministers of grace and love. felix, discoursing with drusilla, said (for he, by virtue of his being himself, perforced divined accordingly--amiss) "much painful cultivation, for no fruit! paul, turn and turn about, that time did seem his enemy at advantage to have had, and prospect was that shimei, won to him with all those unexpected services (sore needed, in such sorry case, no doubt!) would, could he first make shift to clear _himself_, right face about at rome and, far from being an adversary witness against paul, swear him snow-white with turncoat testimony. how easily king jupiter, with that pass of playful lightning, brought it all to naught!" said felix; then, with change abrupt from sneer, grim added this, in sullen afterthought: "that lightning was a neat dispatch for _him_! i wish that it had fallen on _me_ instead." "ill-omened from thy lips such words as those," drusilla answered. "and what love to me speak they, thy wife and queen--not with her lord joined in thine imprecation dire of doom? perhaps indeed we shall be separate in death--with death, despite the difference, but differently horrible to both! for i have _my_ forebodings, bred of thine, and dread to be somehow hereafter caught in some form of calamity unknown but unescapable and horrible and final and fatal as that shimei's. and what if he, our son (thine image--form, and face, and character, and all) dear pledge to me of love that once his father bore his mother, happy she as worthy judged, once!--what if he, our little felix too be in that dread catastrophe involved!" drusilla thus half feigned contagious fears, but half she felt them; for in truth she now, so long in shadow from her husband's mood, was under power of gloomy imaginings. yet, felt or feigned her fears, she made them spells this day to conjure with, when to her own image the little felix's she joined in desperate hope to spur her husband's spirit out of the slough of his despondency and comfort him by making him comfort her. but felix was not fiber fine enough to feel even, less to heed, appeal wrung out though from sincerest pain for sympathy; and now his own crass egoism coarsely knew how shallow, or how hollow, or how false, this subtler egoism of his consort was. drusilla's art defeated its own end; felix more murkily lowered, and muttered fierce betwixt set teeth in husky tones and low: "aye, and why _not_ thou too along with me? count thyself meant--thyself not less than me- in what that memorable day was said at cæsarea in the judgment hall- said, and much more conveyed without being said- by that jew paul, of dark impending doom. if i am wicked, sure thou art wicked too; the gods must hate us, if they hate, alike. let us, since hated jointly, jointly hate. perhaps compact and cordial partnership betwixt us in some hatred chosen well will be almost as good as mutual love!" drusilla to such savage cynicism gave loth ear bitterly, as one well sure it were not wise in anything to cross her husband's brutal whim, and he went on: "there is that milksop sergius paulus--_he_ roman, forsooth! the roman in his blood, if ever roman ran therein true red, has been washed white with something else infused. i much misdoubt that paul has brought him round to be disciple of the nazarene. a pretty pair, a roman and a jew- like us, my dear drusilla! and the jew, in either case, the chief one of the pair!" with such communings entertained those two, adulterer and adulteress, the hours; the passion that they once had miscalled love, yea, even that passion--long in either breast with the disgust of sick satiety palled--now at length by guilt and guilty fears, brood of ambition disappointed, slain: but in the ashes of such burned-out love smouldered the embers of self-fuelled hate, fell fire that thus on sergius fixed its fangs! meanwhile that indian krishna, deep in muse, masked with impassable demeanor mild from all about him, from himself even, masked a trouble of wonder that he could not lay. he gazed with gentle furtiveness at paul and strove to read the riddle of the man. he felt paul's spirit different from his own; his own was placid with placidity resembling death, or trance and apathy that would be, were it perfect, death. but paul, not placid, peaceful rather, seemed to live not less but more intensely than the rest, his fellow-creatures round him in the world; a life of passion reconciled with peace! 'impossible! passion reconciled with peace!' thought krishna; 'i seek peace through passion slain, expecting, i the seeker, not to be at all, the moment i a finder am. this hebrew has the secret now of peace; strange peace, not passionless, but passionate!- extinction not of being, here forestalled, like that for which i strive by ceasing striving (with fear lest after all i miss the mark, and only strive to cease, not cease to strive) nay, no nirvâna antedated, his- that hope of our lord buddha hard to win- but life increased with life to such a power as is the mighty river's grown too great to register in eddy or ripple even resistance in its channel overcome. is life then, boundless, better than blank death?' so krishna mused in doubt beholding paul, until at last to sergius paulus he, breaking the seals of silence, spoke and said: "if to thy thinking meet, bring me, i pray, to speak with paul, so named, thy friend as seems. but first tell me who was, and what, that jew to such plight of sheer wretchedness reduced that to be rid by lightning of his life seemed blessing, whatsoever might ensue hereafter to him in his next estate, doubtless some sad metempsychosis due. was he perhaps a kinsman near of paul?" "nay, kinsman none, save as all jews are kin, descended from the same forefather old," said sergius. "then perhaps of some of those, near kinsman," krishna said, "women with men, who watched with that long patience over him, and won him as from death to life with love?" "nay, also not their kinsman," sergius said, pleasing himself with saying no more, to see how far the silence-loving indian drawn by unaccustomed wonder still would seek. "some reverend father of his people, then," krishna adventured guessing, "whom, oppressed with undeserved calamity, they yet honored themselves with honoring to the end?" "o nay, far otherwise than such, he was," said sergius, "vile, most vile by them esteemed, and that of rich desert, a man of shame and crime committed or fomented still." "then haply--not of purpose, but by chance"- said krishna, groping deeper in his dark, "that vile man yet, if even by wickedness, had wrought some service to these kindly folk which they would not without requital pass?" "still from the mark," said sergius, "thy surmise. that evil man no end of evil deed instead had plotted and led on in guile against these gentle people to their woe. last, and but late, during this selfsame voyage of theirs from syria to rome, on board that other vessel whence they came to us, he sought, with midnight bribe and treachery, to compass violent death for paul, a man, as thou hast seen, beyond belief beloved, and for good cause, of all. that failing, he with perjury and well-supported fraud of adamantine front and impudence, charged upon paul attempt to murder _him_." so sergius paulus, with some generous heat, and horror of the heinous things he told. he said no more and krishna naught replied. after much vexing controversy vain with winds that varying ever blew adverse, they had made the roadstead of the havens fair. here they dropped anchor, glad of peace and rest and leisure to consider of their way, whether they still would forward stem despite the threats of winter, or there wait for spring. krishna fell silent when those things he heard from sergius paulus; silent krishna fell, but in his bosom shut deep musings up whereof the first he, in due season brought to speech with paul while they at anchor rode, propounded with preamble soft and suave in words like these: "much merit hast thou hope doubtless, yea, and most justly, to have earned, thou, and thy hebrew fellow-voyagers, with all that ill-deservéd kindness shown him, thy base countryman, whom, thunderstruck, fate hurried lately hence to other doom. a millstone burden bound about the neck is karma such as his to weigh one down- 'karma,' we say; but otherwise perhaps thou speakest; merit or demerit, what accrues to one inseparable from himself, in part his earning, heritage in part, the harvest reapt of virtue or of vice- aye, karma such as his was weighs one down in dying, to new life more dire than death. hard-won a karma like thine own, but worth the winning though ten thousand times more hard!" paul felt the indian's gentleness and loved him with great pity answering him: "i know thy meaning, and i take the courtesy, while yet the praise i cannot, of thy words. my karma is not mine as won by me with either easy sleight or hard assay- the karma thou hast seemed in me to find: that was bestowed, and is from hour to hour with ever fresh bestowal still renewed. i had a karma once indeed my own, much valued, wage it was of labor sore, but it grew hateful in my opened eyes and i despised it underneath my feet to be as dross rejected and abjured." paul's sudden vehemence in recital seemed less vehemence from recalling of long-past strong spurning, than that spurning now renewed. unmoved the indian save to mild surprise made answer: "our lord buddha teaches us our karma is inalienably ours, the fatal fruit of what we do and are, no more to be divided from ourselves than shadow from its substance in the sun. but, nay, that figure fails; our karma is substantial and enduring more than we. we die, our karma lives; it shuffles off us as outworn, and takes unto itself forever other forms to fit its needs, until the cycle is filled of change and change, and misery and existence cease together. such karma is, the one substantial thing, and such are we, mere shadows of a day. pray then explain to me how thou dost say thou ridst thee of a karma once thine own; and how moreover thou canst add and say thou tookst another karma, given, not won. i fain would understand the doctrine thine." with something of a sweet despondency pathetically tingeing his good will, paul on the gentle indian gazed and said: "o brother, with all wish to meet thee fair, yet know i that i cannot answer thee, save as in parable and paradox beyond thine understanding, yea, and mine." paul so replied because his mind indeed sank in a sense sincere of impotence; but partly too because he felt full well how all-accomplished in the skill of thought, how subtle, and how deep, the indian was, as how by nature and by habit fond of allegory and of mystery. he deemed that he should best his end attain of feeding this inquiring spirit fine with the chief truth, by frankly staggering him, as the lord staggered nicodemus once, with that which in his doctrine was the highest and hardest to receive or understand, set forth in terms of shadow to perplex, but also tempt to further curious quest. merging the indian's idiom in his own and lading it with unwonted sense, paul said: "that karma, erst so valued, i escaped how? by becoming other than i was. the old man died and a new man was born, with a new karma given him, of pure grace, a seamless robe of snow-white righteousness, enduement from the hand of one that died to earn the right of so bestowing it. raiment of filthy rags with pride i had worn before, not knowing, painful patchwork pieced upon me of such works of righteousness mine own as cost me dear indeed, yet worth nothing to hide my nakedness and shame. now i am clad in jesus' righteousness, a shining vesture, with nor seam nor stain." "proud words, albeit not proudly spoken, thine," said krishna; "spotlessly enrobed art thou in righteousness and karma without flaw, then thou hast reached the issue of the way and art already for nirvâna ripe: gautama could not make a bolder claim when, conquering, he attained the buddhaship. yet meekly thou madest mention of pure grace, and merit all another's, not thine own. a paradox indeed, perplexing me, such boldness mixed with such humility." "yea," paul said, "the humility it is that makes the boldness thou hast found in me; it were defect of right humility not boldly to obey when christ bids do. christ bids me take his perfect righteousness; i can be humble but by taking it- boldly? yea, or as if boldly, for here humility and boldness twain are one." "to thee thy teacher christ," said krishna, "seems something the same as buddha is to me: yet other, more; not teacher simply, christ to thee, and master, setter forth of wise instructions and commands obeying which thou also now, as he once saved himself, mayst thyself save through merit hardly earned. thy christ is will, not less than wisdom; power and help, as well as guidance in the way. sovereign creator and imparter, he saves thee, thou trustest, through new life bestowed, which makes thee other than thou wast before, and therefore frees thee from the fatal yoke and bondage of the karma thou hadst won with labor when thou wast the former man: the words are easy, but the sense is hard." "hard?" paul said; "nay, outright impossible to any soul of man that still abides his old first natural self unchanged to new. submit thyself unto the righteousness of god, and thou the mystery shalt know with knowledge deeper than the mind's most deep divinings of the things she cannot speak." "to fate, the universe, and necessity," said krishna, "i submit, because i must. but to submit because i will, to any thing, much more to any one, that is, give up my will, which is my self, my very self, to be another's and no longer mine, consent to be another person quite than i have been, and am, and wish to be- this thou proposest to me, if i take rightly thy words to mean thou thus hast done, becoming what thou art by vital change from something different that thou wast before. i frankly tell thee i have not the power so to commute myself, had i the will." "'i cannot' is 'i will not' here," said paul; "no power is needful of thine own save will: will, and thou canst; god then in thee is power. consider, it is only to submit." "i feel my inmost will in me disdain," said krishna, "this effacement of myself." "yea, yea," said paul, "it is the carnal mind in thee, the primal unregenerate self ever in all at enmity with god, which is not subject to the law of god, neither indeed can be; to be, were death to that old self which must resist, to live: the carnal mind is enmity to god; when enmity to god ceases in one, then ceases in that one the carnal mind, the original man with his self-righteousness his karma, if thou please, his good, his ill. he is no more, and all that appertains to him is dead and buried out of sight forever; but there lives a second self by resurrection from that sepulcher- by fresh creation rather from the dead- a new regenerate man at one with god, for to the law of god agreed in will, replaced the carnal with the spiritual mind, warfare and death exchanged for life and peace." into paul's voice, he ceasing with those words, there slid a cadence as of reverie: he seemed to muse so deeply what he said that he less said than felt it; 'life' and 'peace,' so spoken, no mere sounds upon the tongue, were audible pulses of the living heart. invasion thence of power seized krishna's soul, and, 'life and peace!' he murmured, 'life and peace!' but said aloud: "strange union, peace with life! _we_ look for peace only with death, last death, that death indeed beyond which nothing is, no further transmigration of the soul, no soul, no karma, all pure passionless non-being; not a state, since state implies some subject of a state, and here is none, to do or suffer or at all to be: absolute zero, such the buddhist's peace." "'i am come,' jesus said," so paul replied, "'that ye might have life, more abundant life.' life, life, deep stream and full, a river of god, pours endless, boundless, from the heart of christ; 'ho, every one that thirsteth, drink,' said he, 'lo, drink and live with mine eternal life.'" "i fear fallacious promises of good," sighed krishna; "life were good indeed with peace. but me, i hope not any good save flight, save flight and refuge inaccessible from persecuting and pursuing ill. being is misery; i would cease to be; no hope have i, and no desire, but that. hope is for children; i am not a child to chase the ends of rainbows, seeking gold: there is no hope that does not make ashamed. i dare not hope, eagerly, even for death, lest that likewise elude my clutch at last. despair no less i shun; despair is naught but hope turned bitter and sour, postponed too long. i only seek to cease from hope, from fear, from every passion that can shake my calm. calm is my good, and perfect calm is death, therefore i wait for death with death-like calm. thou wouldst disturb the calm with hope of life, fair, but fallacious; let me alone to die." with soft pathetic deprecation so krishna, in form of words, half faltering, begged from paul no more, yet added: "i would hear something of what he was, thy master; what he did as well as taught; and whence he came, and when, and where, and how; and how he lived and died, having achieved his buddhaship." "for me," paul said, "i never truly knew my master while he lived among us here, almighty god incarnate in the form of servant--glory and blessing to his name!- though after he in triumph from the dead rose, and ascended far above all height into the heaven of heavens to be with god- whence he had stooped the dreadful distance down to his humiliation among men- then he revealed himself in power to me, and i beheld his face and heard his voice, and knew him for co-equal son of god. but thou, besides that in this power and glory no man may see him save he show himself, wouldst wish a picture of the life he lived, the manner of man he was, while still on earth, the death he died, and how he died his death. there is one here among us well can draw the living picture thou wouldst look upon, for she was with him when he walked the ways of galilee and jewry doing good; she saw him suffer when by wicked hands his blindfold yet _more_ wicked countrymen- alas, among them i!--put him to death. with early morning at his sepulcher, his emptied sepulcher, she weeping stood and saw--but what she saw and all her tale of jesus as she knew and loved him here, is mary magdalené's right herself with her own lips and is her joy, to tell." "lord buddha would not let a woman teach," indulging so much of recoil concealed as might consist with utmost courtesy said krishna; but, with wise avoidance, paul: "and mary magdalené will not teach, but only in simplicity with truth bear testimony of eye-witness how immanuel jesus lived his life on earth." while thus they talked a movement on the deck, words of command and bustle to obey, betokened that the purpose was to leave the sheltered anchorage of the havens fair and tempt the dangers of the winter deep. paul saw it and suddenly broke off discourse with krishna, saying to him: "they err in this; surely we here should winter. let me speak a moment with the master of the ship." krishna with such surprise as disapproved dimly in his immobile features shown, watched while this intermeddling strange went on; strange intermeddling ventured, strangely borne, captive to captor bringing advice unsought; for paul to the centurion also turned when now the master and the owner both agreed against him; but that roman chose likewise his part with them to sail away. book xiii. shipwreck. a violent storm occurs and the vessel is wrecked. krishna, having carefully noted the part that paul takes in the rescue of the lives of all on board, and having noted besides the miracles performed by paul on the island of malta where they come safe to shore, brings himself to signify now his willingness to hear from mary magdalené her story of jesus christ. a company assemble, including, with the christians, julius as well as krishna, and mary begins her narrative. this after a time is interrupted by a peremptory summons from felix to paul, to which paul responds in person. shipwreck. the south wind softly blew a favoring breeze as forth they put and stood for italy: but that fair mother in her bosom bore offspring of storm that hastened to the birth. for soon the fondling weather changed to fierce, and, blustering from the north, euraquilo beat down with all his wings upon the sea, which under that rough brooding writhed in foam to whirlpool ready to engulf the ship. no momentary tempest swift as wild; but blast of winter wanting never breath poured from all quarters of the sky at once and caught the vessel like a plaything up hurling it hither and thither athwart the deep. the sails were rent and shredded from the masts; the boat, to be the hope forlorn of life, was hardly come by, so the hungry wave desired it as a morsel to its maw. the ship through all her timbers groaned and shrieked and all her joints seemed melting with the fray and fracture of the jostling elements. at their wits' end, those mariners distraught, feeling the deck dissolve beneath their feet, with undergirding helped the anguished ship; while, worse than waters waiting to devour, a sea of quicksand seethed, they knew, full nigh. so the night fell but brought no stay to storm; fresh fury rather every darkening hour. the dismal daylight dawned, and wind and wave, gnashing white teeth of foam, all round the ship howled like wild beasts defeated of their prey. then, as to bait those monster ravening mouths, they portion of the lading overboard fling, in the hope that lightened so the bark springing more buoyant may outride the storm. but the storm thickened as the third day dawned, and not the crew alone but all on board worked the ship's gear in the increasing gale. they thus bestead, the heavens above them lowered day after day that neither sun nor stars one instant flickered in the firmament; the blotted blackness made one dreadful night of day and night confounded in the gloom. hope now went out, last light to leave the sky, outburning sun and moon and star all quenched before her in that drowning drench of dark- hope too went out, touched by the hand of death. then paul stood forth, himself with fasting faint, amid those famished faint despairing souls and upward reaching high his hand to heaven, there kindled once again the star of hope. chiding them fairly that they did not heed his warning word betimes to shun that harm, he gave them cheer that they should yet escape, all should escape with life from this assay; only the ship must suffer wreck and loss. "the angel of the lord, that lord," said paul, "whose with all joy i am and whom i serve, as ye have seen, with worship night and day, stood by me in the night and said to me: 'fear thou not, paul; thou art to stand in rome before the bar of cæsar; lo, thy god hath to thee given all those that sail with thee.' be of good cheer then, ye; for i believe god that he will perform his word to me. upon an island look to find us cast." full fourteen days the ship went staggering on a helpless hulk amid the adrian sea, when now the sailors, deeming that they neared some coast-line, sounded in the midnight dark; then farther drifting sounded once again to find themselves indeed upon the shoals. here, fearing to be driven upon rocks, they anchored, and so waiting wished for day. and now a dastard thing those sailors schemed: under pretext to cast one anchor more, as to that purpose they let down the boat, minded therein to steal their own escape leaving the rest to perish with the ship. but paul perceived their fraud and subtlety and said to julius with his soldiery; "let those men go and _ye_ cannot be saved;" whereon the soldiers cut the lowering ropes, sending the boat to surf and reef a prey. as broke the fourteenth morning yet forlorn, paul, unconfessed the captain of the ship and master of his fellow voyagers, in the dim twilight of the struggling dawn stood on the slippery deck amidst them all and stoutly cheered them to take heart of hope break their long fast and brace themselves with food. "for not a hair shall fall from off the head of any one of you," said he, and took therewith himself, in act more eloquent than spoken word, bread and gave thanks to god in presence of them all; then breaking it forthwith began to eat; this heartened them that they likewise strengthened themselves with meat. thus comforted, once more the laboring ship they lighten of her lading and the wheat sow in the barren brine. the land descried they knew not, but there was no land unknown that were not better than that wallowing sea. so, cutting loose their anchors, they made sail and drove the vessel aground upon a beach, where the keel plunged into the yielding sand which closing heavy upon it held her fast; but the free stern rocked on the billowing surge that soon atwain must break her in the midst. hardness of habit and of discipline partly, and partly a self-regarding fear lest they be held to answer with their lives, if even amid the mortal panic pangs of shipwreck they should let their charge escape, made now those roman soldiers, in the jaws themselves yet of the common peril hung, ready to put their prisoners to the sword; but julius stayed them for the sake of paul. "you that can swim," he shouted, "overboard!" some thus, and some on spars buoyed up, and some on other floatage of the breaking wreck, they all got safe to shore, not one soul lost. the master of the rescue still was paul; calm, but alert, completely self-possessed- (possessor of himself, yet not himself considering, save to sacrifice himself freely at need); his courage and his hope inspiring hope and courage; self-command in him aweing the rest to self-command; his instinct instant and infallible amid the terror and the turbulence,- winds howling and sea heaving and strait room for nigh three hundred souls in face of death!- each moment seeing ere the moment passed what the need was and what the measure meet to match it--that serene old man and high was as an angel there descended who could had he chosen at once have stayed the storm, but rather chose to wield it as he would. the captain of the vessel and the man whose was the vessel, these, with julius too, roman centurion as he was in charge, grouped themselves close by paul and heard his word and had it heeded without stay by all. "i shall be last to leave the ship," paul cried, "do therefore ye the things that i advise. the women first. lady drusilla, thou commit thyself to four picked sailors, these"- the master of the vessel chose them out- "two soldiers with them--julius, by thy leave and of thy choice--and on this ample spar supported thou shalt safely come to land; and, madam, thy little son shall go with thee." they lashed them to the timber, lowered it fair (with felix desperately hugging it, the image of a sordid craven fear); the men detailed leapt overboard to it, and steering it as they could with feet and hands let the sea wave on wave wash it ashore: she was indignant to be rescued so, but by abrupt necessity was tamed. "let me, i pray thee, save thy sister, paul," said sergius paulus, who, assuming yea, forthwith led rachel--she with such a grace of confidence in him as made him strong following--to where a fragment of the deck disjointed in the vessel's agony lay loosened, which he clove and wrenched away; then watching when the vessel listed right and the sea met it with a slope of wave, they, this beneath them, clinging to it, slid down the steep floor into the frothing brine stephen was by and helped them make the launch. sergius, from the side opposite to her- to steady the light wreckage all he might lest wanting balance it should overturn- reaching across, kept rachel's fingers clasped in hold upon the wavering wood, until, what with his oarage and the wash of waves, they found a melting foothold on the sand. krishna stood wishing to be serviceable, and when to aristarchus, stout and brave, paul was commending mary, at a look from the indian that imported such desire, leave was given him to undertake for ruth. each of the two life-savers rent a door from off its hinges and thereon secured the women awed in that extreme assay yet girded to a constancy of calm, and, stephen helping, lowered them to the deep. krishna was let down after by a rope, no swimmer he, but ruth too held the rope and drew him to the float whereon she tossed. greek aristarchus was a swimmer born and practised, and he plunged headforemost down, soon to emerge with easy buoyancy and aim unerring true where mary rode. the two then--aristarchus in the lead teaching the indian how, and, with the rope flung to his hand at his desire by ruth and by him featly bound about his waist, drawing the floatage forward, while his own he pushed with swimming--won their way to shore. twice aristarchus was, for stress of wave, fain to release his hold upon his float, so fierce the tug, and sudden, at his waist; but he, by swimming and by seamanship consummate joined to strength well-exercised, strength by the exigence redoubled now, both times regained it and thenceforward kept. mary meanwhile, forsaken, faltered not; she felt the stay of other hands than his. all his advices and permissions paul put forth in such continuous sequence swift that well-nigh simultaneous all they seemed: the vessel swarmed with ordered movement mixed, and the sea lived with strugglers for the shore. of all these only simon had the cool cupidity and temerity to risk weighting himself with treasure to bear off in rescue from the wreck; he his loved gold, ill-gotten gains of sorcery and of fraud, secretly carried with him safe to land. stephen did not lack helpers; julius bade varenus, of the soldiers, serve his wish; and syrus, a young slave of felix's, sprang of his own free motion joyfully to help him pluck eunicé out of scath; for he had marked the youthful hebrew pair with distant, upward-looking, loyal love instinctive toward such virtue and such grace. but, "nay," eunicé said, "not yet for me; see there those trembling creatures"--the hand-maids of dame drusilla--"rescue first for them!" on a good splinter of the tall curved stem- the sign of ceres at the gilded beak- by the rude violence of the shock torn off when the ship grounded, they tied the two slave girls; but the shipmaster fair eunicé's act of self-postponing nobleness admired, and bade two trusty seamen help let down that beam life-laden soft into the sea whither they, at the master's further word, followed it, as with frolic leap to death, and brought it safely to the wave-washed shore. then stephen and eunicé, each to each as if in a symbolic bond of fate linked, with a length of rope allowing play between them for their wrestle with the surge, and having each in hold a wooden buoy provided with what might be firmly grasped, wieldy in size yet equal to support them safe above the summits of the sea, were lowered by eager volunteers who all sped them to their endeavor for the land. they reached it and thanked god for life such prize. the soldiers that were bidden overboard to take their chance of swimming to the beach bore with them lines which, stretched from ship to shore, became the means of saving many souls; the most were thus, some buoyed on floats of wood, some dragged half drowning through the sandy surf, landed at last--forlorn, but yet alive. paul was not, as he had his will to be announced, quite last to leave the breaking bark; centurion julius would not have it so. when all except the owner of the ship and the shipmaster and himself with paul (and luke, who would not quit the apostle's side) were safe ashore, he intervened for paul. now so it was, the mast to which was tied the rescue-line beneath the strain gave way and fell with a great crash along the deck. on this those four made fast the brave old man who with his counsel and his cheer had saved so many, counting not his own life dear but seen, the crisis of the need now past, exhausted, tremulous, and nigh to sink. then having with great strength--helped by a lurch that now the vessel seasonably gave- pushed smoothly overboard the noble spar entrusted with that treasure of a life, prompt they plunged after it into the brine, and having reached it, clung to it, and well buoyed up upon its surging lift, were borne themselves with paul by urgent wind and wave safe to the beach, where those arrived before met them with outstretched arms and cheers and tears. the island of their refuge and escape was melita: the melitans were kind, and though they spoke a tongue not understood by hebrew, greek, or roman stranded there, and bore the name 'barbarian' from the greek, yet were they alien not; in deeds they used a universal language of the heart. kindling a fire, most grateful--for the rain fell drenching and the weather was windy cold- those shipwrecked strangers all they entertained. now so it happened that to paul, he too ranging to gather fuel where he could and fetching soon a fagot to the fire, sudden there sprang a viper from the heat, warmed from his winter dormancy to life, and angry fastened hanging on his hand. the islanders beholding doubted not but here some murderer, saved in vain from death by shipwreck, now was suffering vengeance due. paul lightly shook the deadly reptile off into the flames and felt no harm. but they, the islanders, kept jealous watch to see the dooméd victim of those fatal fangs swell with the venom in his veins, or drop haply at once a corpse upon the ground. after long disappointed watch, no sign of hurt perceived in paul, they changed their mind and said among themselves, "he is a god." the chief man of the island, publius, houses and lands possessing in those parts, gave paul and his companions welcoming cheer in three days' courteous hospitality- not unrequited; for the father lay wasting with fever and worse malady in the son's house; but paul went in to him and prayed and laid his hands on him and he was healed. then others also of the sick among the melitans came and were healed. so paul had honors from them thrust on him; these he divided with a liberal hand to all, and when at last they left the isle they went thence laden with a plenteous store bestowed of what they needed on their way. but all the winter long they tarried there, waiting for spring to open up the sea; and many an hour was theirs for various talk, they fenced in sunny places from the wind or grouped about their outdoor fires for cheer. the indian krishna, uncomplaining, bland, with that quick quiet eye which naught escaped and that deep-studying mind which rested never, had slowly by degrees, considering all that paul wrought or was wrought through paul, been won- against a passive incredulity inert but stubborn and resistant still, the instinct and the habit of his mind- to judge that jewish prisoner otherwise than when he hearing paul give his advice unasked about the conduct of the voyage had fixed on him the blame of meddlesome. he owned an awe of paul's authority exerted for the rescue of the lives of those that sailed with him; he shared the power of hope and courage that went forth from paul, his words, his deeds, and, more than either, himself. he did not quite escape some sense, inspired by paul's thanksgiving when he broke the bread, of other presence than paul's own in paul that lifted him to higher than himself. when he saw paul from his uninjured hand shake that fell viper off into the fire, he half-confusedly thought: 'that seems not strange; our indian serpent-charmers do as much.' but when those gifts of healing flowed from paul, not singly, but in troops of miracle sufficing the whole island countryside, with only prayer and laying on of hands, then at last krishna said: 'i do not know, is there some power in him greater than he? what power? not buddha, unconfessed, unknown, yet willingly with that large tolerance his and bounty and sweet unconcern to claim acknowledgement of his gifts, working in paul despite--nay, buddha not, he long ago passed, and while living never power was he, though wisdom manifold. yea, wisdom is, that know i, power; but not the converse holds, that power is wisdom; and pure power it is, not wisdom, that in paul these wonders works; no healing arts he uses, no medicine. whence is the power? or what? is christ the power?' in sequel of communings such as these held with himself, krishna recalled the thought of the rejected proffer made him late by paul, of mary's story of the christ. he now would hear it, if but still he might; and so one calm bright day when winter smiled as if in dream and vision of the spring, with proud repression of his natural pride he brought himself to say to paul: "o paul, if thy friend mary magdalené yet will deign so great a grace to me, who own my scant desert of it, i with all thanks would hear her tell the story of her lord," a group of those who, loving and honoring her, loved from her lips again and yet again to hear the story, old but ever new, of their belovéd lord, were gathered then, with sergius paulus welcomed of their band and krishna and the kindly julius too, in a recess sequestered of the shore where the sun shining from the open south made a sweet warmth at noon, and whence the sea, so capable of fierceness, now was seen with many-sparkling wavelets beautiful and gentle in demeanor as a lamb. cast in no mould of outward loveliness to lure the eye, but of a native worth such that her person noble seemed, and tall her stature--all instinct with stately grace her gesture and behavior--mary sat that vernal winter noon amid her friends, throneless and crownless, an unconscious queen: yet over all in her that made her state seem regal there presided the effect, other and finer, of a lofty mind arrived through sorrow to serenity, and in the heart of pathos finding peace. such, mary; who now thus took up her tale: "the story of my knowledge of the lord begins in shadow, shadow of shame for me; at least i feel it for a kind of shame to have been chosen of demons their abode; the recollection is a pang to me. i sometimes dare compare it in my mind with what paul suffers"--and she glanced toward paul a holy look of reverence understood- "'thorn in the flesh,' he calls it, but my thorn, within my spirit rather, rankles there, as messenger of satan buffeting me lest i should be exalted above measure- i, to whom christ the lord used first his voice uttering that 'mary!' when he from the dead rose in his glory. surely i well should heed how mary, honored so, was the abode once of seven demons. why this should have been i cannot tell, unless to humble me. sometimes my pride--or is it sense of worth, sacred and not rebukable as pride?- whispers me, 'mary, thou wert therefore choice of demons for their dwelling-place on earth, because thou wert pure found and they desired a refuge that should least resemble hell.' "oh, how they rent me with their revelry, the hideous tumult of their joy in sin! and me they mixed up with their obscene mirth, till half i doubted it was i myself foaming my own shame out from helpless lips that blasphemed god, then laughed with ribald glee. i was not mistress of my mind or heart; reason in me was a distracted realm, and will and conscience seemed like ships at sea driven with fierce winds and tossed toward hopeless wreck. "i wonder at myself that i do not fight against god who strangely suffered it. but, never, never! he suffers many things strangely, but i, this is his grace in me, bow down at all of them, saying, 'amen!' the crown of all my reasons for believing that god is gracious, is that i believe. for why do i believe, except that he makes me believe, against so many signs seen in the world abroad which swear in vain he is not good? o, ever-blessed god, who let those demons seven take up in me their lodgment, that they might be so dislodged! "on an accepted day for me the lord was passing through the city where i dwelt, and one that knew my miserable case implored him to have mercy upon me. he heard, he condescended, and he came. but how at his first footsteps of approach, how did those inmates evil within me rave! what riot, mixed of panic and despair and hatred! the whole land elect where christ upon this earth appeared, when he appeared was rife with insurrection from the pit mad in attempt against him. so in souls possessed by spirits from hell, if christ drew nigh outrageous spasms of futile fury raged. those demons seven in me usurped me now with tenfold more abominable rape. they with my fingers clutched and tore my hair; gnashed with my teeth, and flickered with my tongue; they frothed from forth the corners of my mouth with foul grimace and execrable grin; in random jaculation hither and thither flung my arms wildly like a windmill wrought to ruin in a whirlwind's vortices; writhed all my bodily members, till i thought, with what of power to think was left to me, that surely nothing of corporeal mould had strength enough of life to suffer more." while mary magdalené told these things, her noble face took on disfigurement expressive of indignant horror and shame; and hardly had she been still beautiful but for a pathos fine of gratitude tenderly crescent in it to the full, that all was of the past, no present pain, naught but a memory! when her aspect cleared and she composedly went on again, it was as if the full moon late eclipsed with clouds rode from amid them forth serene in splendor, regent of the altered sky. "those were the pangs of my deliverance, the throes of evil possession overcome. 'come out of her!' he said; straight at that word, rending me like a travail and a birth, they fled, and left me as one slain with wounds. but it was a delicious sense of death. i would be dead like that to be at peace! i hugged the death-like trance in which i lay, until another word from the same voice made it seem sweeter yet to live indeed. 'i say unto thee, maid, arise!' i heard and i arose, obeying, i knew not how; it was as resurrection from the dead, or first creation out of nothingness." the indian bent on mary telling all a fixed and eager heed that veiled itself, as wont was to this devotee of buddh, under a mask of face expressionless. he quenched in silence of quick second thought impulses strong to speak and quit himself of doubts and questions starting in his mind. he abode mute, and mary, after pause filled to each one with various thought, resumed "how glad was i, and grateful, when the lord permitted me, with other women too healed by him of distresses like to mine, to follow, in the ways of galilee, his footsteps as he went from place to place on his unending rounds of doing good! he had not where to lay his head, was poor though making many rich; and it was joy unspeakable to us to minister out of our substance to his daily needs. 'give to us day by day our daily bread,' the prayer was that he taught us. god through us answered that prayer to him and we were glad! "not all those whom he cleansed of spirits foul inhabiting and defiling them did he permit to follow with him as they wished. one man, perhaps as sorely vexed as i, being healed, entreated leave to stay with him. it may be there was some defect of faith, whence fear in him lest he, not with the lord, might again be invaded by that host of wicked angels whom he 'legion' called, and jesus out of kindness was austere, to exercise him to a better trust needing not crutch of sight to stay itself. i know not; this i know, and rest content, he doeth all things well, his choice is wise. the master sent that man away, and bade: 'return to thine own house and publish there how great things god hath done to thee.' he went and filled that favored city with the fame. who knows? it may have been a better lot, more blesséd, to sound forth the savior's praise and thus prepare him welcome among men, as did that healed demoniac, than to be, as i was, near his person in the flesh. but nay, nor more nor less, no difference, all is equal, and all blesséd perfectly, to all that simply meet his blesséd will!" some subtle charm of eloquence, made up the listener thought not how, thought not indeed that there was any charm of eloquence- manner perhaps, a flexure of the voice, accent of clear simplicity with depth, a strand of pathos braided into it, the capture of an all-subduing eye- these things in her, but more than these, herself, say rather the spirit of god inhabiting her, made mary speaking irresistible. krishna did not withstand the undoing spell, but yielded more and more, as still she spoke: "o, it was dreadful to behold his case, that demon-ridden man's! no clothes he wore, but fetters and chains instead, which could not bind his frantic strength to hold him anywhere. like a wild beast in lair he lived abroad housed but in rocky hollows of the hills. no man dared pass his way, so fierce was he, cutting himself with stones among the tombs. when he saw jesus coming, still far off, he ran toward him and prostrate worshipped him, crying with a most lamentable voice: 'lo, what have i to do with thee, o thou jesus, thou son of god most high? i plead and i adjure thee by the name of god that thou torment me not!' for christ had said, 'thou unclean spirit, come thou forth from him!' 'what is thy name?' asked jesus; and he said: 'legion, for we are many.' "what was strange then happened; for the demons prayed from christ to be not wholly banished from the land. 'send us,' they cried, 'into the swine'--for near were feeding a great herd of swine--and christ gave them their whim to enter into them. wherefore, i cannot tell; the sadducees among our people had no faith in spirits, angels or demons; so it may have been to show it no mere foolish fancy vain, as they, the sadducees, had taught it was, that there are wicked beings, other than we, unseen and spiritual, errant in the world, and that these sometimes truly may invade the holy of holies of the human mind, that sanctuary meant for god's indwelling, and wrest it to their own foul purposes. no sadducee i trow had sadducee remained, that saw that day the hideous rout made when those swine, two thousand hoofs together, rushed headlong down the lakeside precipice to perish in the waters; reason none, save that the demons had gone into them. it was not sudden assault of epilepsy; "those swine at least did not imagine it all!"- over the face of mary speaking now a moment of sarcastic humor played- "a woman herself possessed, then dispossessed, of demon inhabitants, may be forgiven a little natural scorn to be assured that she was only shaken in her wits!" and mary so recovered with a smile the sweet and holy candor of her face. but now an interruption--for there came rudely, from felix sent, a minion who, with little felix following him, to paul drew nigh and said: "my master bids thee come, for simon whom he honors has fallen sick, and he would have thee heal him." summons such delivered in curt wise so insolent, betrayed the master through the messenger. "go tell thy master that i come," said paul; "go thou, but leave the lad to come with me." so paul took little felix by the hand, he well-pleased equally to stay or go in that benign companionship, and went. but first paul said: "perhaps the afternoon already is far spent enough, the cool and damp of evening will draw on apace; to-morrow, if god will--and mary please- our hearing of her tale may be renewed." they, thus dispersed, and slowly following, saw paul like a guardian angel in the guise of a serene old man and venerable lead on the boy and heed his prattling talk. he had the ruffled spirits of his friends, indignant all at felix's affront, composed with only his superior pure detached christ-like serenity and calm. book xiv. mary magdalené. paul declines to undertake the healing of simon at felix's request. but simon had first refused to suffer paul's access to him, at the same time warning both felix and drusilla of the evil likely to result to their little son from a touch to him of paul's hand which the sick sorcerer had just observed through the lattice. felix and drusilla, freshly angered at paul, resolve together on his destruction. a second meeting assembles to hear mary's story. this time there is an interruption occasioned by a disturbing written message from felix, sent to julius the centurion, one of the listeners. mary magdalené. when one set high, but hopeless gross in grain of nature--and through habit of license long and self-indulging pride of place and power grown grosser--by reverse of fortune falls, and can no longer wield his insolence so widely as his wish were and his wont has been, then often he will salve himself that sore-felt loss of brutal privilege by being more insolent still where yet he may: so felix now wreaked his revenge on paul. paul knew him powerless, but he would not turn retort on the humiliated man, or aught abate toward him the obeisance due the ruler that he lately was--a strict respect enforced by his own self-respect. felix had with fair princely promises- commended to those simple islanders by large report of recent royal state his and of prospects brighter yet at rome, as by drusilla's airs of queen--made shift to lodge himself commodiously with his train: under his roof apart simon lay sick. "thou hast heard doubtless what i would from thee"- so without greeting felix said to paul- "thy trick of healing for a gentleman i have the humor to regard with love. a fellow-countryman of thine he is, something too of a fellow-conjurer"- and felix grinned at his own pleasantry; "he has fallen sick in this accurséd place. 'physician, heal thyself,' thou wilt say to him, for, aye, he is helpless for his own relief. heal him; thou shalt not unrewarded go. i think that i can serve thy cause at rome, where there is need greater than thou wouldst guess. for they love justice there so well they sell it high; great sums, money in hand, they want; or preferably sometimes they will commute for other things than money still dearer to men. a mighty mart is rome; they barter there justice for pleasure, pleasure in various kinds, most of it such as thou couldst not provide- unless indeed thy pretty countrywoman--" but a sharp spearthrust look, shot forth from paul, sudden as lightning and as branding bright, broke that word off, and felix faltered on with forced resumption of his insolence: "a good round price they ask, whatever the kind. have me for friend at court and thou shalt thrive. simple and easy; make this gentleman well, nothing but that; just a few mumbled words, a magic touch of hand, presto, all's done. what thou art _giving_ to these wretches here, these beggarly melitans, with no reward except the fun of seeing them jump for joy, look, i am _purchasing_ from thee at great price. but stay, thy patient has not yet been told what thus is planned for him. let me prepare thy way a little, ere thy task thou try." when felix entered where the sorcerer lay the peevish sick man was the first to speak: "that paul had little felix by the hand; just now i saw him through the lattice here. it is an evil hand, beware of it. its touch brings certain mischief where he will, and that toward thee and thine he will, be sure." felix was startled, but he cheerily said: "go to, i was just bargaining with paul to have him use his laying on of hands for thee, good simon. cheer thee up, my man; we shall soon have thee out of this." but he: "paul shall not touch me, shall not look at me. i fear him, and i hate him; out upon him!" "listen to reason, simon," felix said; "thou canst not doubt he really works strange cures; there was the father of sir publius, and scores of sick among this native rabble have come out whole from under those same hands." "it served his turn," piped simon. "it shall serve no less his turn to heal thee," felix said; "i have made it his account to play us true." "hark thee, my master, for this word stands fast," said simon, rousing halfway from his bed, "i will have none of paul; i will get well from spite, rather than have those hands on me." and simon moved in act as if to rise; but felix stayed him still his bed to keep. then, thwarted, he returned to paul, and said: "he will not let thee lay thy hands on him, a fit of foolish stubbornness, he fears thee, or pretends he fears; he certain hates thee, no pretence. well, he is right perhaps; you fellow-jews ought to know one another. but _i_ would trust thee, roman as i am." (vaunting his roman franchise felix thus his clinging freedman's quality betrayed); "that is, safe pledge in hand, thou understandest, such as i hold, thou knowing well thy life hangs on my word for thee at rome; _would_ trust thee, nay, i trust thee, paul, and thou shalt yet despite this worthy's jewish contumacy, heal him, ha! ha! without his knowing it. put him to sleep, thou canst; thou hast the drugs doubtless will soundly do it; compound them thou, and i will undertake he swallows them. then thou canst fetch thy passes with the hand at leisure over all his ailing frame, and heal him--joke as it were at his expense!" paul had stood listless with his eyes downcast and with his heart withdrawn from what he heard, and felix had felt effect that penetrated yea even his triple mail of insolence and dashed him sore; he had rallied all his force against it to maintain his tone assumed of falsely-festive brutal cynicism. helplessly dumb he hearkened, while paul replied: "lord felix cannot know the grace of god, whereof mine is but trust and stewardship. my power of healing is not mine, but god's; i have it, not to use it as i will, but as god wills, who shows his will to me. i dare not, would not, use it otherwise, i could not, he would take it away from me; would not continue it rather, for it is dependent momently on his immanent will. i had no hint from him as of behest that i accomplish thine announced desire. i might have promptly sent thee back such word by thine own messenger; but i had seemed so to be wanting somewhat in the heed due to thy station; i therefore came myself to tell thee, o lord felix, to thy face, that i am servant of the most high god, subject as such to no man's bidding, thine or other's, and not free to mine own choice. yet so i half misrepresent myself, for to mine own choice i feel wholly free, my choice being his who works in me to choose. toward simon, although he love me not, i bear, god is my witness, no ill will; instead, would i could serve him! and perhaps i might, i know not, were his heart but right with god. let him renounce his ways of wickedness; god to all men is good who will repent. but his face is as fire not to be quenched, wrathful, devouring to the uttermost, against all, no respect of person, who strengthen themselves in their iniquity. none shall escape at last, although, because god's judgment is a while delayed, they may dream that it never will descend on them. delay is but forbearance, not neglect; god's goodness leadeth to repentance; woe, woe, yea, and sevenfold woe, alight on those, all, who despise that grace of god in christ!" no shudder of terror swept over felix now, as when that wave of trembling shook him so at cæsarea in the judgment hall. he recognized an echo in paul's words of what he heard that day from those same lips and then thought dreadful. 'strange,' he dully mused, 'how moments of weakness sometimes find out men! why should i then have feared, and naught to fear, save words, mere words? solemnly spoken, aye, and i could not but hearken to the man, majestic in his gesture and austere. even now i sit and listen to the voice, but i am fenced and mailed that it hurts not. would that i felt but half as safe from rome!' so felix in a half unconscious sort heard paul's words then hollow and meaningless; only rebounded from them to the doubt, the hateful haunting doubt, of what lay hid within the horizon of this present world for him; deaf, since that day of final doom, to sinai thundering from the world to come! two witnesses had witnessed that which passed thus between paul and felix: secret one, eavesdropper from behind a hanging nigh, felix's jealous and suspicious spouse drusilla; one in open view, and frank, observant while obtrusive not, well-poised in sense of self-effacing loyalty, young stephen, shadow of his uncle paul. he, as of course, fulfilling duty, went wherever his illustrious kinsman went, if aught of peril to him, or need, could there by watchful love be guessed. paul now by stephen attended from that alien presence forth, drusilla from her hiding burst, and cried: "a jewish mother's curse fast cling to paul, false, renegade jew, who has his cursing hand folded on little felix's this day! heed simon, and beware of paul. o, why, why didst thou, couldst thou, think of summoning him, hated of all his nation so, to blight the hope and fortune of our shaken house with creeping leper's plague upon our boy; or perhaps other mischief worse than that! o, felix! felix! o, my lord, my lord!" such woman's wailing and upbraiding broke all the man's force in felix to withstand. he joined his imprecations upon paul and swore her ready oaths to work him woe. then as the pair conspired in vengeful vows against him, mutually to each other pledged, "with that young cub of his too," felix said, "fair-favored as he is, a meddlesome lad, following his greybeard uncle round about with spaniel looks and watch-dog carefulness; and our friend sergius paulus, understood!" simon made good his threat of getting well, and fostered and fomented all he could the viperous hatch of hatred against paul. stephen reported to his company the incident and the spirit of the scene beheld by him enacted between paul and felix; and all knew full well the dark presage of consequence for paul it bore. a little more deeply shadowed in their mind, pathetically hopeful yet in god, they met next day again, as had been planned, in the same spot with the same weather still prolonging that winter interlude of spring, when mary thus her broken-off tale resumed: "the wonder of the works that jesus did, wonderful as they were for grace and power, was less than of the words that jesus spake. 'spirit and life' these were, as himself said. once i remember, near gennesaret, on a green grassy mound which swelled so high that mountain even it meetly might be called, sitting him down as on a natural throne of kinglike gentle state, there, with the waves of that bright water kneeling at his feet and the blue cope of sky canopying his head, he his disciples round about him drew and taught us of the coming kingdom of heaven. 'blesséd the poor in spirit,' he began, 'for unto them belongs the kingdom of heaven; blesséd the souls that mourn, for in god's time they shall be comforted; blesséd the meek, for theirs the heritage of the earth shall be; blesséd the souls ahungered and athirst for righteousness, for they shall yet be filled; blesséd the merciful, for mercy they in turn shall find; blesséd the pure in heart, for they god's face shall see; blesséd, who make peace among men, for they shall thence be called children of god; blesséd, who for the sake of righteousness shall persecuted be, for unto them belongs the kingdom of heaven.'" "i cannot," interrupting so herself, said mary, "cannot ever make you know how like a heavenly-chanted music flowed the stream of these beatitudes from him. the lovely paradox of blessedness pronounced upon the persecuted, seemed so like the purest, simplest reasonableness, when those unfaltering lips declared it true! all things seemed easy and certain that he said; certain, yet some things awful and austere; as when in that same speech with altered strain he sternly spake of judgment and hell-fire; it was as if the mount whereon he sat, verdurous and soft, were into sinai turned, and muttered thunder. but when with a change and cadence indescribable he said: 'love ye your enemies, and them that curse you, bless, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that use you only with despite and persecute you still, that ye may be the children of your father in the heavens, for he his sun maketh to rise alike upon the evil and upon the good, and without difference sendeth rain upon the just with the unjust. for if ye love them that love you, what have ye for reward? do not the oppressive publicans the same? and if your brethren only ye salute, what more than others do ye do? do not the oppressive publicans likewise? but ye, be perfect, as your heavenly father is:' and then when, closing, with authority he said: 'whoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, i will liken him to one who wisely built his house upon a rock; the rain descended then and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, being founded on a rock: and every one that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not, he shall be likened to one who foolishly his house built on the sand; the rain descended then and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house- it fell, and mighty was the fall thereof;' when thus, i say, he tempered his discourse, sweetness and awfulness were blended so in his majestic and benignant mien as never yet i knew them--never until they met and kissed each other at calvary. that," mary with a look toward krishna said, after a pause of reminiscence mute, "that was when jesus died upon the cross." "tell me of that," said krishna answering her, forgetful for an instant of reserve; then added with self-recollection swift: "but all in order due, or as thou wilt, for i am debtor to thy courtesy, and i shall listen fain to what thou sayest, all, and however thou shalt order it. i find thy master's doctrine sweet to hear, and partly not unlike our buddha's strain." "perhaps our guest, if i may name him such," downcast toward krishna turning, mary said- "most welcome we all make him, i am sure, to this our simple hospitality of converse or of audience, wherein i seem to be bearing here a part too large- perhaps," repeated mary, "now our guest will tell us something of his master buddha"- she therewith resting, as to yield him room. "another day, if i may choose, for that," said krishna; "pardon me my hasty word, and pray thee let thine own tale choose its way." then mary: "it were sad to tell the end, how jesus died, save that he afterward rose gloriously, and that before he died, in prospect near of dying, he spake words so gracious and so full of victory! how well we know it now; but, alas, then our hearts were holden and we did not know! strange that we did not know, for oft he said, oft, and in many ways, remembered since, that he would die and after rise again. yet, at the last, when he of dying spake, our hearts were charged with sorrow, and when he died our hearts, they broke with sorrow and with no hope. "o, it was beautiful, most beautiful- it seems so to the backward-looking eye, which sees it now, when all is over and done, the shame and sharpness of the cross gone by, and he safe sitting in the glory of god- beautiful and pathetic beyond words (pathetic still, though all be over and done, secure the issue and blesséd), the way in which our savior faced his future welcoming it, that future with its unescapable cross, its mystery of his father's smile withdrawn! for truly, though our lord by faith foreknew the end beyond the seeming end, the dawn to be after the shadow of the night- the dawn, the day, the everlasting day!- yet horror possessed his almost-drowning soul of that which he must suffer ere the end. peter and james and john told us of how, alone of all companionship, retired from them even whom he had chosen to be with him, he, in the garden of gethsemane at midnight of the night before the cross, prayed, and in agony great drops of blood shed as in sweat, desiring with desire to have the cup removed that he must drink. it could not be, it was not, dread of death, though painful and though shameful, shook him so--" so mary, swerved to sudden wonder, said, and question in her look as if for paul. paul answered: "nay, oh, nay, not dread of death; that cup how many, finite like ourselves, have taken and quaffed with overcoming joy in martyrdom for truth! some mixture worse, o, unimaginably worse! to him embittered his inevitable cup, that he, beyond his human brethren brave, so shrank from drinking it. his was to bear as lamb of god in sacrifice, the weight of the world's sin. this crushed him sinless down immeasurable abysses into woe, the woe of feeling forsaken by his god. supported by believing in the joy far set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is in sequel now, we know, and love to know, at the right hand of god his father throned forevermore, there waiting--he, inheritor of the name exalted high above whatever name, the name of king of kings and lord of lords- until his footstool all his foes be made." "amen!" in fervent chorus, krishna heard break, soft and solemn, from the lips of all, with mary, who then thus her tale renewed: "before his passion in gethsemane and on the cross loomed nigh enough to him to cast its solemn shadow deep and dark over his prophet mind and over us, we had been walking joyous through the land, green flowery land it was of hill and dale, with flocks and herds, and villages of men, the land of galilee, gushing with springs, and spreading fair her lake gennesaret, now placid a pure mirror to the sky, anon tumultuous, if rash wing of wind swooped down upon it from the mountain shore- we had been walking through this lovely land with jesus, he, like sower gone forth to sow, scattering his gifts of healing everywhere broadcast about him as he passed along; or sometimes feeding the great multitudes that, like to sheep having no shepherd, thronged his way, feeding them freely from a hand that multiplied the bounty it bestowed;- it was like journeying sphered with journeying spring created for us where we set our feet; our hearts were garlanded as for festival, so gladsome was it to behold our king advancing in such progress through the land and lavishing such largess on his poor. but largess of beneficence from his hand was nothing to the largess from his lips of wisdom and of grace and of good news- to the obedient; the rebellious he judgments and terrors dire announced against that fastened and kindled like gehenna fire. i was baptized with shuddering but to hear the woes leap living from those holy lips- which then nigh seemed to smoke like sinai top with indignation--on the pharisees, the sadducees, the lawyers, and the scribes, unworthy found and judged for hypocrites. most fearful as most fair theophany, he! one looked to see them flame, as lightning-struck, those cities of people that rejected him, bethsaida, chorazin, and that proud capernaum, when on them his woes he launched, hurtling them from his mouth like thunderbolts. "to ears fresh wounded from such frightful woes, how balmy and how healing were these words cadenced ineffably from those same lips: 'come unto me, all ye that labor, ye that heavy laden are, come ye, and i will give you rest. my yoke upon you take and learn of me, for meek and lowly in heart am i, and ye rest to your souls shall find.' "with invitation or with warning he or with most sweet instruction heavenly wise, our soul, our senses, feasting thus, the while he wrought too with that easy omnipotence his manifold mighty miracles of grace, we walked long time with jesus; how long time i know not, for the days and weeks they came and went unnoted and the seasons changed. but at last he, how shall i say it? became almost a different being from himself. he spake of a mysterious hour, 'mine hour,' he called it with some solemn meaning, what, we could not or we did not then divine, couched in the word; that hour was now drawn near. it seemed to frown upon him imminent and cast a somber shadow on his face. he dreaded it, and yet he welcomed it, hasting the more to meet it as it neared. "we were afraid of him, with a new fear, he looked so awful in his loneliness. for he no longer with us walked; he walked before us, hasting to jerusalem. how steadfastly his face was thither set! he as if saw the features of his hour coming out clearer and clearer, and always there! he now would oftentimes his chosen twelve take from the rest apart to tell them how the son of man, oft so he named himself, should be delivered up to the chief priests and to the scribes, and be by them condemned to death; and how the gentiles in their turn should mock him and should scourge him and should spit upon him and should kill him; then how he should from the dead the third day rise again. but they those sayings understood not then, so simple and easy afterward, though strange. like a refrain recurring in a song, some sad refrain that lingers in the ear persistent through whatever else is sung, so did these doubtful boding prophecies again and yet again, not understood, at intervals return amid the strain of other teaching opulent and sweet that flowed and flowed in changes without end, unending, from his lips. and all the while were miracles and signs, as by the way and little reckoned, dropping from his hands like full-ripe fruit from an unconscious tree! "and so it came to pass that we at length were nigh to bethphagé and bethany. here resting, to a village opposite our master sent to fetch an ass's colt appointed for his use, one virgin yet of touch from human rider to his back; thereon the lowly king sat him to ride. how little did what we saw follow look like the fulfilment of ill-boding words! for now the people flung their garments down before him in the way, they branches strewed from trees on either side to keep the feet of even that ass's colt which he bestrode from touching the base ground, the while a shout went up, one voice, from the great multitude before him and behind him where he rode, 'hosanna to the son of david! lo, blesséd is he that cometh in the name of the lord god! hosanna in the highest!' how little then to us, blind eyes, it looked as if this march triumphal of our king was to a death of shame upon the cross!" with wondering interruption julius asked: "but how, but wherefore, was it thus? no crime had jesus done; and what suspicion even of crime intended by him could there lie in any mortal's mind against a man so wise so pure and so beneficent as he was in the obvious view of all?" he added: "i could understand how some, offended at his stern rebuke of them before the people, might in secret wish his death, might plot it, and might compass it, by private means of murder; but how one like jesus should fall under law, be tried in open forum as criminal, be found guilty, be sentenced, and be put to death, all as in process due of justice, _that_ i cannot understand, that baffles me. and under _roman_ rule and government! for crucifixion seems to mean so much. perhaps some reason of state demanded it: justice must often yield to reasons of state." "a reason of state," said paul, "was the pretext, and but pretext it was, the real ground not. with deep hypocrisy my nation came and pleaded to thy nation against him pretension on his part to be a king, saying, 'we have no king but cæsar;' so falsely affecting loyalty to rome, and therewith falsely too attainting him of treason in purpose to dispute with cæsar his claim of worldly lordship over them. thy nation, julius, with full equal deep hypocrisy, believing the charge no more than they believed who brought it, washed its hands vainly of guilt, condemning innocent blood. jew joined with gentile, gentile joined with jew, in one conclusive act of wickedness, that the whole world at once might before god be guilty of the death of christ his son; _our_ sin it was that slew the lamb of god!" while the centurion hung confounded, dumb with silence that half conscience-smitten seemed, pondering paul's words, charged, heavy charged, with blame involving him too in complicity of guilt with the whole world for jesus' death- a messenger from felix came once more; this time to julius with a letter sealed. julius, unready for intrusion such upon that moment's privacy of thought, with petulant gesture broke the seal and read these brusque words, which, though writ with other's hand, were self-shown straight from felix's own heart; no salutation, and no signature, ambages none of complaisance or form, frank unrelieved mock-kingly insolence, drusilla's phrase, but spirit felix's: "does it become a roman officer honored with grave responsibility as thou art for the custody and safe conduct of arrant criminals to rome, to be consorting with the chief of these in affable familiar intercourse? how thinkest thou? if report were brought to rome of such acquittal of the office thine, would it seem well? dost thou judge nothing at all due from thee to the dignity of trust received from the august imperial hand? is such thy measure of the faith required in one of cæsar's deputies? or thou perhaps at heart art christian: ask thyself if thine be a _religio licita_! apostate from the emperor to christ am i to recognize in thee? judge then what duty will demand from me arrived at rome, me who am loyal still to him, nero augustus cæsar named with gods!" these things read julius with a knitted brow that discomposure with resentment showed; then mastering himself to courtesy wherein some air of condescension played, he made his peace by gesture without word, and slowly, like one doubting, went away. with nothing said or signed to set in light the meaning of the message thus conveyed, paul from the person of the messenger, well-known a slave of felix's, divined the meaning mischievous, but kept his thought and only said: "with the centurion now our guest no longer, and the day so far declined from its meridian, meet perhaps it were to let our interrupted tale from mary--thanks to whom once more we owe- rest till to-morrow, if to-morrow be ours, and the weather then still smile as now: god will still smile, through weather fair or foul. and now to god our father blessing be, from whom all blessing is, and to his son, and to the holy ghost. amen!" "amen!" they echoed all, with not even krishna mute; then silently and solemnly withdrew. book xv. young stephen and felix. drusilla has a confidential conference with simon the sorcerer, now recovered, though still weak. he tempts her to think of ensnaring the emperor with her charms. he insinuates into her mind the idea of making away with felix on the ground of his being an obstacle in her path to success with this in view, he forms suddenly a plot to convict felix in his wife's eyes of infidelity to herself. he easily awakens drusilla's jealousy, and she, with her own motives, enters into simon's present proposals. eunicé is accordingly invited to visit drusilla as one repentant and desirous of being a christian--felix having meantime been filled by simon with the notion that eunicé is enamored of him, felix. she comes with her mother to felix's house, and the two are there entrapped; but at the crisis of danger they are rescued by young stephen. young stephen and felix. that bland sweet weather changed to truculent at sunset, and through all the winter night raged with wild wind and sleet of rain and hail. the roofs, the doors, the casements, of the house where felix and drusilla sojourned, shook as toward dilapidation of its frame. drusilla lay in terror of her life tossing upon her couch and could not sleep. brief intervals and lulls of tempest came; but images of distant danger then mixed with the imminent menaces of the night. so with the earliest morning--furious yet the unabated rack of elements- drusilla sent for simon, rallied now out of his low estate, and, tremulous with weakness, through that very weakness made more searchingly clairvoyant than his wont. untimely roused, and unrefreshed with sleep, and shaken as still she was with panic fears, the jewess, ever conscious of herself and proudly the more conscious now before one whom she fain would hold her vassal, sat like a queen giving audience, well-arrayed, yet artfully in speaking seemed to plead. "simon," she said, "be once more my resource." "not once more, but an hundred hundred times, liege lady," simon said, "if mine art serve." "but, simon, _will_ it serve for no reward?" drusilla, not without some pathos, said; yet also not without some scrutiny of simon, which that deep dissembler bore flinching, but scarcely flinching, as he said: "my fortune i account bound up with thine." "yea, simon, what through thee i gain," she said, "reckon that thou no less gainest through me. as has been, is, our pact; art thou content?" "more than content, most thankful," simon said; "i pray thee of conditions now no more, but speak thy wishes; they shall be commands." "well, faithful simon," wheedling now she spoke, "that proud drusilla thou once knewest in me, is abject in sheer sense of helplessness. my lord is broken in spirit with lack of hope: i stay him up, as best i may, to show the world some front of kingly boldness yet, but truth is, i am broken with staying him. what can we do at rome? how mend our case? friends have we few, and on the fallen thou knowest enemies swarm like flies on rotting flesh. all is for sale at rome, but who can buy that goes barehanded thither, as do we? thou hast the truth; now, simon, like the rest, leave us, as rats forsake a dooméd ship!" "thou pleasest to be facetious, o my queen," said simon; "thou barehanded never art, go where thou wilt, with beauty such as thine, such beauty, and such wit to use it well." with pregnant ambiguity he spoke, and deeply read the features of her face. those features molded nobly fair, but now through their disfiguring discomposure wronged, slowly regained the aspect clear and calm wherein the proud possessor long before learned that her sumptuous beauty best prevailed to make her sovereign of the hearts of men: habit, with reminiscence of her past triumphs, usurped her mind that she forgot simon, the raging storm, her doubts and fears. simon considered his mistress at his ease; he saw she was not flattered by his words to be a childlike plaything in his hands; he saw she was too haughty to resent, too haughty to acknowledge by word or sign, perhaps too haughty even to recognize in her deep mind, much more in heart to feel, hint as conveyed by him in what he said that in the marriage markets of the world such charms as hers were merchantable ware; and that he simon abode at her command loyally ready to renew for her, on some august occasion still to seek, that intermediary office his which once from king azizus parted her to make her of the roman felix spouse. drusilla in no manner made response; but not less simon knew his wish was sped; he knew the venus victrix heart in her was flattering to the height her sense of power. he could not err by over-audacity in tempting this presumptuous woman's pride. he ventured: "it were loyal service done thy husband, to whom loyal service thou already even to sacrifice hast done in being his consort, thou a queen before, and he"--'but lately raised from servile state,' simon would fain have said outright, to ease the pressure of hate and scorn he felt for felix, but knew he must no more than thus arrest that word upon the point of utterance caught- "it were i say, well-weighed, a service to him if thou shouldst wake the matchless power thou hast of kindling admiration and desire, to exercise it in supreme assay at the tribunal where he must be judged, making the judge himself thy willing thrall!" the subtle sorcerer watched with wary eye askance, to see his mistress give at this some sign of pleased and startled vanity: impassible placidity he saw- serene, withdrawn, uninterrupted muse. a little disconcerted, he bode mute, half glad in hope that he had not been heard. when at length she, that queenly creature, broke, herself, with speech the growing spell of awe he felt upon him cast by her supreme beauty suspense in its august repose, its silence and reserve and mystery, then simon knew that she had been before him with the soaring thought of nero led- the emperor of the world in triumph led- a captive at drusilla's chariot wheels! a flash of light invaded simon's mind: 'were there not hidden here the way long sought to free himself from the abhorréd yoke of felix? this bold woman would not stick at putting such an obstacle as was a husband such as he, out of her path- this by whatever means--a path that led steep to enthronement by the emperor's side.' thenceforward felix's worst foe was one of his own household at his table fed. "the emperor is a bloody man, if true be all, be half, that they report of him--" drusilla thus, as in soliloquy rather than in discourse to ear addressed, spoke slowly--"he, the latest story goes sped like a shudder of horror around the world, has got his mother slain, bunglingly drowned by accident forsooth, at his command- accident such as asks design to chance, a vessel foundering in a placid sea, on a serene and starry summer night- and after all not drowned, even awkwardly, but rescued to be stabbed, with mother's cry first from her lips, 'i never will believe this of my son!' but then with, 'strike me _here_!' confessing that she knew it was her son! and his young queen octavia, silly sweet, and good, and pure, and fair, and amiable, and in short all a roman emperor's spouse should not be--she, they say, leads a slave's life, or worse, amid her husband's palace scorned, and happy if at last only with death and not with shame he rid her from his side." thus speaking, his bold mistress, simon knew, called up deterrent thoughts so formidable, not to succumb before them shocked, appalled, but to confront them fairly, know them well, then with defiance triumph over them. still, with slant thrust at felix in his thought, he dared a word of double-edged reply: "emperors, and those however now ill-placed yet worthy to be empresses, are free to seek their consorts, consorts true i mean, wherever they can find them in the world; and obstacles must not be obstacles to them; their pathway must somehow be cleared. such, one may all too easily judge amiss. wait till thou see the emperor fitly wed! that emperor-mother agrippina balked her boy too often of his wish. she would be empress of the emperor of the world; her blood in him made this impossible: it was her folly and crime invoked her fall. as for that young octavia--thou hast said." "poppæa"--so drusilla had resumed, but simon rashly took the word from her: "poppæa is a rival to be weighed doubtless--highborn, and beautiful, and deep in cunning, and sure mistress of herself- as art not thou too, and full equally?- but then she has a husband in the way, and is _she_ of the stuff to deal with _him_?" simon's hatred of his lord had pricked him on beyond the mark of prudence; he recoiled from his own words before drusilla spoke, and added, for diversion of her thought: "but doubtless thou wilt need to buy thy way to opportunity at rome; betimes prepare thee bribes to drop along thy path. our gentile brethren have a pretty tale"- and simon with sarcastic humor leered- "of how a runner once upon a time won him a famous race by letting fall gold apples on the course too tempting bright not to delay his rival gathering them. provide thyself with apples of gold to drop, while thou art speeding featly to thy goal." "gold, simon!" drusilla said, "thou teasest me, too well thou knowest i have no gold; our store was swallowed all in that devouring sea." "i speak in figure, my lady," simon said; "i mean neither literal apples nor literal gold." "pray, no more parable to me," severe with air resumed once more of queen enthroned, drusilla answered, and, with only look, as haughtily disdaining further word, demanded that he make his meaning plain. simon, with indirection sly, replied: "hast thou remarked the daily opening bloom of beauty in the face, and in the form, of that eunicé, our young countrywoman?" drusilla gave a fiercely jealous start- on simon, eagerly alert, not lost, brief though it was, and instantly subdued; it was as instantly interpreted- a welcomed effect, though calculated not. she had recalled what late she overheard hinted from felix to the prisoner paul, "unless indeed thy pretty countrywoman"- and construed it as meaning that his eye, her husband's, had been levying on the maid. "women are not like men to note such things," drusilla answered with a frigid air, yet not as with unwillingness to learn what sequel there might be in simon's thought. that sequel simon changed to suit the case he had now created unexpectedly. he would torment drusilla's jealous mind, and whet her temper to the proper edge for helpful quarrel with that spouse of hers so hateful to him. "women that are wives," said simon, "well might condescend to pay some heed to such things! but the present need is to have bribes in hand of the right sort to lavish where occasion may arise when we reach rome. try if thou canst not gain this pretty damsel for our purposes. play patroness to her, have her at court here--for wherever the true queen is, there is court, though in a desert--flatter her, and ply her to thy will. arrived at rome, where all is venal yet venal not all for gold, offer her as likest seems to serve thy cause. there is my scheme for thee; and thy lord will, i doubt not, wink at least to forward it." simon could not forbear the tempting chance to end, as he began, with what would bait further drusilla's flushed and jealous mind. 'is simon playing me false in a deep game to serve lord felix at his wife's expense?' drusilla wondered; 'would he dare so far? does he even seek to make a tool of me? of me, drusilla, make a pliant tool- _i_ serve their turn forsooth against myself? be it so, and let them trow their plotting speeds! i will try to be as simple as they could wish.' in secret with herself she wondered thus; but spoke aloud with cleared and brightened look: "the storm, i see, which i had quite forgot, thanks to the charms of thy society, is much abated; let us break our fast, and then go thou and bid her hither to me, that pretty child. tell her i need her much, for i am deeply sorry for my sins, and think that, with a little guide like her to take me by the hand and lead me right, i could forsake them all and follow with her henceforward, a true sister in the faith. a little lure of harmless simple hope to win a wicked woman from her ways, i think thou wilt find useful with the maid, if, as is likely, she be loth to come." felix, drusilla, and the sorcerer that morning at their simple meal reclined together in a show of amity; but inwardly it was a state of feud or hollow truce of armed hypocrisy. eating in silence with small appetite, their breakfast soon they ended; simon then withdrew and did his errand. he did more; for having perforce to meet the mother too, whose daughter was seen ever at her side, he feigned to be himself a penitent, protesting his belief that he was healed, unworthy to be healed, because paul came but near him where he lay sick in his bed; and this although he had wickedly refused to see paul and to suffer paul's hands on him. he said his mistress was afraid, as he was too, of felix; both of them must move warily, no suspicion to excite in one so irritable and so violent. they therefore could not ask for paul to come, or indeed any _man_ among paul's friends. but ruth might safely come and bring the maid her daughter. simon begged the matron would kindly indulge drusilla's preference, caprice perhaps it was, for making her child and not herself--senior, and so more wise doubtless--her chosen guide and confidant. eunicé's youth had won drusilla's heart. all simon's plausible art could not prevail to gain from ruth the promise he desired; she only told him she would ponder well what he had said and do as wisest seemed. but simon, cheering himself that in the end ruth by the tempting bait held out to her, the hope of doing good, would be enticed, went straight to felix, and with many a wink of sly salacious import hinted to him that he, his master, had quite unawares, with just his manly martial front and port, taken captive a fair hebrew damsel who, if all sped as he hoped, would soon appear there at the mansion, by her mother led, to feed her fancy on his noble looks. the simple mother, she knew nothing of it, but came to visit drusilla in the hope, which, naughty child! the daughter had inspired of gaining my lady over to the faith. should felix condescend to speak to her the maid would be all blushes, that of course, she coyly would insist she only came bearing her mother company to wait upon the mistress of the house with her. felix would understand how much was meant, or rather how little, by the pretty airs and arch pretexts of feminine coquetry. it was as simon hoped: ruth, overcome in prudence by her generous desire to serve a soul in need; some natural zeal perhaps commingling to bring home such spoil of her eunicé's winning, a surprise and joy to paul and all the rest--so led, ruth with eunicé to drusilla went. but not alone; stephen their counsel shared, and he, deeply misdoubting of it all, went with them. in the inner court he stayed, awaiting watchful, eye and ear, while they, having with all obeisance been received and ushered inward by the instructed slave, should do their errand with the mistress there. he was disturbed, when felix, with a scowl askance at him, crossing the court in haste followed the women through the selfsame door, scarce shut behind them ere he entered too. it was of her astute design and art, drusilla's, that her husband should have scope to show at full in act before her eyes what ground of truth there was for simon's hints against his faith to her. she had hid herself, not to be seen but see, while in the room whither the women were ushered felix might, were such his mind, waylay the pretty maid, proving himself what simon would have him be. "thou with thy daughter, madam, art well come; these are dull days in melita for us," so, with a gross familiar air ill masked in mock of supercilious courtesy, felix to ruth; who noticed with dismay that servitor and servitress at once, as if at silent signal unperceived, vanished from presence and left her alone, her and eunicé, no drusilla seen, with felix and his bristling insolence. her fears were not allayed when felix said further: "my lady will be glad to see thee, madam, for she dies of weariness in this insufferable place, with naught of new to while the endless hours away; but as for this our pretty little maid, she shall accept my awkward offices to entertain her, while her mother waits apart on dame drusilla and chats with her." so saying, he stepped to the half-open door and clapped his hands in summons for a slave. one quickly answered, and the master said: "where is thy mistress? take this madam to her," pointing to ruth. ruth in a whirl of thought wondered, 'are these things all a wicked wile of simon's to entrap us here? does she, drusilla, too, collude? or does she know nothing of all? or, knowing, does she fear felix, and therefore leave us helpless thus? how far may i abiding true to her involve drusilla in a plea to him?' she stood, not stirring at the servant's beck, and spoke in tones held clear and firm with will: "it is my daughter, sir, the errand has with dame drusilla. she shall go to her, and as the custom is between us twain we will together go, for twain with us is one. dismiss us, then, i pray, to go." "thou art hard-hearted, madam," felix said; "one surely is enough to meet the dame drusilla, and the other might solace me. i pay my lady's taste a compliment in myself choosing for my company, as seems she chose for hers, thy daughter fair rather than thee; for, without prejudice to thine own comeliness, thy daughter is, thou wilt confess it, madam, nay, with pride, a trifle fresher in her youthful bloom." eunicé standing by her mother glowed with an indignant shame sublimely fair; it kindled up her beauty into flame dreadful to see, had he who saw it been but capable of awe from virtue shown lovelier with noble wrath; felix admired only more fiercely and was not afraid. a flash of movement instant changed the scene. stephen, who, through the door left open, caught felix's first ominous words of insolence, had, winging his feet with his suspicious fears, fled out into the open--whither, scarce thought- yet with instinctive wish that went to paul. he chanced on aristarchus walking nigh, in solitary muse, after his wont; him, with such instance as spared needless words, he hurried forth to find and fetch back paul. returning he dashed swiftly through the court, avoiding who perhaps with servile sloth reluctant might have moved to stay him there, and through the door where his eunicé was defenceless in that ruthless robber's den. the youth's ear, quivering quick with jealous love, snatched felix's last words, his ravening eye seized on the splendid vision of his bride betrothed, gleaming there in her loveliness illumined so with virtue and with shame beside her mother, facing such a foe! his instinct was far swifter than his thought; counting not odds, not deeming there was odds, he like an arrow from a bow that twanged shot into place between his bride and him, that spoiler, and there stood. his face he turned defiantly on felix, lightning of scorn in sheafs of flashes shooting from his eyes, distended his fine nostrils with disdain, his right arm raised in gesture to forefend, and his light frame a-quiver with repose of purpose to dare all and to prevail. it was a duel of silence betwixt those twain, that slender youth through whose translucent flesh blushed the bright blood of innocence and truth. that burly man corrupt in every vein with the thick foecal currents of debauch. ruth and eunicé would not cower or cry: eunicé's spirit partook of that high strain which was her martyr father's, and she now triumphed to see transfigured to more fair than ever with his glorious hardihood the youth that worthily bore her father's name and worthily held the empire of her heart. in confidence of stephen which subtly too wrought to make him more confident of himself, eunicé stood confronting the event. felix succumbed and was the first to speak: "well, youngster, thou hast struck an attitude! what wilt thou? and what doest thou here? knowest not thou beardest thus the lion in his lair?" felix's air of pride and lordliness was ever such flatulent swell of windy words. stephen some space disdained him loftily with dumb and blank refusal of reply; then grudged him this: "i into the wolf's den enter to rend the ravin from his paw." the youth thus having spoken half-way turned toward the two women and with instant voice, low-toned yet less to be inaudible to felix than for intimate passion of love, said: "haste, fly! i will follow as i may." ruth with eunicé had not reached the door when, frantic to be balked of his desire, felix lunged after them with lusty stride seeking to stay the damsel in her flight. for all her fear she still forbore to cry, but could not check her impulse of appeal to stephen, and she uttered forth his name. the eager agile stripling had no need to hear that call from his belovéd; he, already at her side, had, with clenched fist, which flashing like a scimitar came down, smitten felix on the forearm with such might that for the moment it was numbed with pain, and dropped as palsied from its reach for her. eunicé with backhanded movement quick seized, as she flew following her mother forth, on stephen's girdle behind her and drew him, willingly led in that captivity, to share their flight and rescue from their foe. beside himself with rage at his defeat, and aching still with pain from stephen's blow, felix now stamped and shouted: "slaves! what, ho! rascals, where are ye all?" some, trembling, came, but ere their master could possess his wits to give them orders, paul before him stood. worse crazed at that sight, felix fiercely cried: "him! _him!_ are ye all blind? seize _him_, i say!" betwixt their terror of felix and their awe of paul, august in his unmovéd calm and venerable with virtue and with age, well-known to them besides as one who wrought with other power than mortal, the poor slaves hung helpless to perform their master's hest. "these do not need to seize me, here i am," said paul, "and of no mind to fly; i came hastily summoned as to some distress here, what i know not, that i might relieve." "smite him upon the mouth," felix broke forth, "and make him _feel_ distress to need relief!" the freedman's truculence waxed with every word, and swaggering forward he his hand upraised as if himself to strike the blow he bade; when, with a maniple of soldiers armed accompanied, julius the centurion stood abruptly at the door. stephen with his charge had met the band of soldiers on their way just as, with circumspection looking back, he saw paul, by a different path arrived, and earlier, enter at felix's abode. he quickly acted on a counsel new. for, with a farewell of, "now ye are safe, yet hie ye to the uttermost remove from felix," to the women spoken, he turning walked back with julius who his pace now slacked to listen while the stripling told what had befallen and how he feared for paul imperilled in that violent house alone. "come in good time, however hither called," felix to julius said, with such a tone as seemed to ask how he was thither called. "thy servant syrus begged that i would come," said julius, "for the safety of thy house endangered by two women and a boy, who had found entrance and were threatening thee." in truth, that sly young slave of felix's- for reason ill-affected toward his lord, as much enamored of the christian folk for their fair manners, and the comely looks of some of them, and the beneficent working of wonders seen or heard from paul- had summoned julius in the true behoof of ruth with her eunicé and of stephen; this, shrewdly under guise of service shown his master. julius understood the guile and humored it, while felix's thick wits spread ample cover to render syrus safe. "of course," so julius added, "it had not seemed needful to come, but that i also heard a prisoner of my charge would here be found, for whose safe keeping i am answerable." then glancing in a kindly neutral way at stephen, he, with show of grave rebuke that could not wholly hide his lively sense of whimsical humor in the part he played as mediator in such case, went on: "this hebrew youth confesses that, in haste of spirit, he offered thee some disrespect." with language purposely made light and vague thus the centurion glozed stephen's offence, discreetly shunning to let felix know that _he_ knew from the offender's own report how, for good cause, as to a happy end, the indignant youth inflicted on him there the shame and anguish of that timely blow. "what wilt thou, my lord felix," julius asked, "wilt thou forgive the lad outright? or pleasest thou rather _i_ condignly deal with him?" it was astutely so proposed, to save appearances _to_ felix and _for_ him. gross-witted as he was, he yet was proud, and such end of the incident appeared at once some homage to his dignity and an escape unhoped from threatened shame. he condescended loftily to leave the case of stephen in the centurion's hands; and the centurion presently retired with paul and stephen both. stephen he bade see to it that he never thenceforth act less worthily of himself than he that day had done, and with no other reprimand dismissed him to rejoin his company. as for drusilla, she now had her proof; and seeing his purpose prosper simon was glad. book xvi. interlude of krishna. publius, the governor of the island, who in gratitude to paul for the healing of his father has opened his house to the christians for their meetings, now expresses, through sergius paulus, his guest, a wish to hear himself the story that mary magdalené is relating. the company accordingly assemble in his house, and publius is in courtesy asked to act as a kind of master of the feast. he accepts the part, and discharges it with much urbane demonstrativeness. interrupting mary at one point of her story with exclamations of surprise and pleasure, he proposes to krishna that he offset what has just been told with something parallel from the life of his master buddha. krishna reluctantly complies, when, after some comment following from paul, mary resumes her narrative. interlude of krishna. for many following days in melita there was no season of hospitality to man from nature under open sky, genial for ease and comfort out of doors. but the fair spacious halls of publius stood smiling ever ready to entertain resort of paul or any dear to paul whether for social worship in prayer and psalm, with hearing of paul discourse of things divine, or for communion sweet of friend and friend. here presently were gathered yet again the company that had with one accord already twice assembled to give ear to mary magdalené while she told her story still unfinished of the lord. publius, as roman to his roman peer- and roman peer so versed in all the arts and all the accomplishments urbane that make amenity in companionship--had said to sergius paulus (likewise, for his sake, to krishna), "pray thee, honor thou my house, and be content, abide with me a guest." now sergius had to publius rehearsed the things that mary those two afternoons recounted, and the roman lord would fain hear from her lips the rest. so he was there- guest in a sort, while host, at his own hearth- and sergius paulus said: "o publius, thou- most welcome, as thou makest us welcome here- shalt, so it please thee, us all it will please, be the feast-master in the present feast of story and of audience. krishna here"- and courteous toward the indian sergius bowed- "has also a story to tell us of his lord. whether with alternation and relief between our two historians, or in course, till one have finished, be the order best, judge thou for all, and all will grateful be." "let mary magdalené then go on," said publius, "if she will, from where she ceased at the last audience;" and he turned to her with, "sergius has most kindly made me know so far thy story, madam, with the rest of this good company. but, with thy peace, and with the peace of krishna and of all, i will upon occasion interrupt- for haply the occasion may arise- to ask what contrast or what parallel to this or that of jesus, buddha yields." so mary, with some heightened flush like shame to speak in this new place and presence, yet sedately like herself and with a charm already round her ambient from the pure, the perfect, the accomplished womanhood that hers was, purged of self, charm by all felt at once ere her beginning, thus began: "i think that i was saying, as my words i stayed at our last gathering on the shore, how little like a tragedy so nigh it looked to us, when we beheld the throngs strewing christ's way before him with their robes flung down, and with green branches of the palm, and shouting their hosannas to his name. but jesus was not blinded as were we! he, on the brink of the descent arrived steep from the mount of olives leading down, beheld the holy city with its sheen of splendor from the temple roofs and walls, and, far removed from glorying at the sight as king might welcomed to his capital, wept over it, with much-amazing tears, and cried: 'hadst thou but known, but known, even thou, yea, even in this thy day but known the things that to thy peace belong! but they are hid now from thine eyes. for days will come on thee--' and then such dreadful days he told us of- days which our holy apostles think are nigh, whence their 'maranatha!' so often heard, reminder watchword of the lord at hand, they solemnly adjuring by the days reserved for our jerusalem, a wrath to come upon her to the uttermost then when he, with the angels of his power, and as the lightning shineth suddenly ablaze from one end to the other of heaven, shall back return in clouds to execute his judgment on the city that slew him!" "but wherefore," the centurion asked once more, and mary with a loyal look toward him of honor for his kindly courtesy that day and ever bountiful to them- look too betokening welcome of his return to share the audience of her tale again late interrupted by that message brought seeming to be of sinister import- mary, with such a meaning so conveyed, paused, while the friendly roman plied his quest: "but wherefore did jerusalem desire to slay one innocent of crime like him? some reason of state i dared to guess there was, but what the reason of state, thou didst not tell," turning to paul he said, and paul replied: "the jewish rulers of the people said: 'this jesus, if we let him thus alone, will draw all men to follow after him; the romans then will come and take away alike this city which belongs to us, yea, and the nation over which we rule.' the rescued remnant of authority wielded by the chief priests and pharisees over our nation under roman sway, this still was dear to them and this they feared to forfeit if the fame of jesus grew." "and grow it did surpassing even their fears," mary resumed, at silent sign from paul; "for but a little while before, and nigh jerusalem, a height of miracle jesus had wrought. one four days dead, nay, one already four days in his sepulcher, our lord, with only 'lazarus, come forth!'- commanded in loud voice before the tomb- summoned to life again. the dead came forth bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, and his head bound with a napkin round about--no pause, not of an instant, in obeying that word, prevention none felt from impediment. abrupt descent then from such miracle to the plain level of sobering commonplace. for he whom jesus from the dead could call to leave his tomb, to stand upright, to walk, unconscious of obstruction, swathed about with grave-clothes though he was, must be released by others from his bonds; the master said to those near by, 'loose him and let him go.'" while mary told these things, a sense diffused of something felt by all the christians there, felt, but acknowledged not in word or sign, signalled itself despite to all the rest; and through a kind of dumb intelligence it came that publius, julius, and that deep discerning indian, krishna, with one mind to all, unspoken, fixed inquiring gaze on rachel and on stephen, who their hands meantime had silently, unconsciously, with simultaneous mutual movement clasped, as if in token of some memory which they that moment felt between them rise, some sacred memory, some undying love. then mary, with the happy instinct hers of what was fitting to be said, and when, and what more fitting to be left unsaid, and how to say all, or how silent be, assuming, with a look of deference first toward the twain, their present leave to speak- granted to her as so much trusted in for wisdom, and for love in wisdom poised- said, with a certain courtesy implied for publius as the master of the feast, and for the others needing to be told: "that lazarus, raised by jesus from the dead, is to the christians of this company a name the dearer that to two of us he is the dearest memory of their lives. for after he had risen from the dead at jesus' call he lived his human life as he before had done, till in due time a husband and a father he became. but rachel lives in honored widowhood, as, with her, half in orphanhood lives stephen, because he after fell asleep in christ to be waked only when christ comes again." a tender pause succeeded, which all filled with solemn, some with wondering, thought; and then, tempered, beyond his will or consciousness, to a contagious mood of sympathy, publius most gently as feast-master spoke: "the height of miracle well calledst thou such summoning of the dead to life again; for greater wonder were not possible. to see it, as thou sawest it, was a gift indeed from the supernal powers; next is, to have it in report of one who saw it; and then, for attestation of thy word, where attestation surely need was none yet serving for attestation, to behold here those who knew the dead man raised to life as husband and as father--all makes seem the story like reality itself. "and now," to krishna turning, publius said: "o krishna, pray from thee a parallel. what comparable wonder wilt thou show that thou hast seen thy master buddha work?" the countenance fell to krishna hearing this, but quickly himself recovering he replied "i am not able out of all i know concerning buddha aught this day to tell as one that saw and heard; i never saw, i never heard, lord buddha act or speak." "then from report that some eye-witness gave thee, speak and tell us what thou wilt, and we will be therewith content"--so publius, dashed a little from his lively hope, but fain to ease the discomposure of his guest. but krishna, in no wise more cheerful, said: "nor from eye-witness have i aught received that my lord buddha either said or did: he lived and passed five hundred years ago." "but doubtless some memorials," publius said, "were written by eye-witnesses of him, while he still lived, or close upon his death, to keep so dear a memory alive and certify it to all aftertime. so, out of such memorials known to thee, fresh still, though old five hundred years, because then written when the images were fresh, imprinted on the writer's mind of things he either saw or heard himself from buddha- strange virtue has eye-witness testimony in simultaneous records of the time to stay, though old, perennially young- i say, then, out of such memorials stored and treasured up in mind to thee speak thou, and it shall be to us as if thou hadst seen." publius, with all sincerity of aim to hearten krishna and make most the worth of that which he, although eye-witness not, nor yet reporter from eye-witness known, should proffer to that hospitality of audience touching his dear master buddh, had unawares confused him more and more. for the first time the indian felt give way a little, melting underneath his feet, his standing-ground of settled certitude: 'was it all quicksand? nothing there of rock?' but he made answer: "o my courteous host, all is uncertain, for tradition all, concerning times, and order of events. indeed, we indians care not for these things, but trust full easily, or, not trusting, yet rest as if trusting, in much unconcern whether that which we learn be wholly true, or partly not; and yet i have heard it said that, close upon the passing of the buddh, a council of five hundred faithful met who said together in accord complete- no sentence varying, nay, no syllable- the mighty mass of all the exalted one's instructions; but no writing then was made, nor again afterward an hundred years, when such rehearsal came a second time. so, truth to say, where all is doubt--for me, i fear there was, for half five hundred years after he died, no record in writing made of what our master buddha wrought and taught. save for those synods of rehearsal met, that precious memory lived precariously, as himself lived, the master, vagabond and mendicant from loyal mouth to mouth. but such tradition was too vital to die; compact of only vocal breath, it still persisted and would still for aye persist though never at all in written record sheathed. "but the fourth part of a millennium after lord buddha died, a synod sat of his discreet disciples, who decreed that then at least a record should be framed in writing of the master's deeds and words." "most fit," said publius, who to complaisance, his impulse and his habit, now adjoined a certain willingness not unamiable to magnify the twofold part he played as host and as symposiarch, and make cheer all that he could for krishna; "aye, most fit; and doubtless they were men, that synod, famed for wisdom and for virtue; name them thou, or at least some, the chief, that we may here honor them for their worth." but krishna said (for, by some sense of disadvantage stung, he took reprisals of his gentle sort): "what if i could not name them? what if they, concerned less to survive themselves in fame, mere empty wraiths of sound to mortal ears in futile issues of dissolving breath, repeated echoes of unmeaning names- what if, i say, concerned less so to be vainly themselves remembered for a day than to keep living for the use of men the saving truths their master buddha taught, those saints and sages of the elder time let themselves perish quite from human thought?" but publius interposed, insisting, fain to show some ground of reason in his mind, beyond mere curiosity for words, why he desired to know those ancient names. "yet were it some support," he said, "to faith in those same saving truths as truly saved themselves for men, after so long a term of vagabondage (to take up thy word), of vagabondage and of mendicancy- the fourth part of a thousand years consumed in flying forward hither from mouth to mouth--" so far, uncertain of his way, he groped; bethinking then himself of one more chance, that might be, of the proof he sought, he said: "and still, o krishna, if those nameless ones, deserving well to be not nameless, nay, of far-renownéd name; nor less, but more, deserving that they waived their own desert; if these--nobly not mindful whether they remembered or forgotten were of men, yet heedful not to let the coming time fail of the truth that they themselves had found so dear, or dwell in any needless doubt of its just phrase--committed at the last the task of fixing it in written form to some illustrious man who would consent to forego for himself his choice of being obscure, unknown to aftertime, and lend the great weight of his name to the result, for satisfaction to inquiring souls- why, that were much, indeed perhaps enough, and i before required beyond my right." demand upon demand sincerely so urged by the genial host upon his guest as if urbane concessions granted him, involved the patient indian more and more. pressed beyond even his measure now at length, he brooked no longer to allow the toils to multiply about him which he felt were fast entangling him to helplessness. he boldly spoke to disengage himself: "we of the east, o publius, are not such as you are of the west. we do not count the years as you do, fixing fast our dates. we live content a kind of timeless life that moves continuous on from age to age unreckoned. countless generations come and go, and come and go, like forest leaves from year to year, and no one takes account of those more than of these. why should we? those, as these, are ever to each other like, harvest and harvest endlessly the same. what profit were there in a history, what history indeed were possible, of either leaves or men? let leaves and men together to oblivion go; be sure there will not fail to follow leaves and men to fill the places never vacant left. "but then we easterns are yet otherwise different from you; for we remember more. because we do not write our records down, we all the better keep them safe in mind. doubtless we mix them much with fantasy: we are not nice to draw a certain line between what we remember and what dream. all is as dream to us, for we ourselves are dream, and oft imagination wakes where memory sleeps; but, so the form be full, somehow, somewhence, it matters naught to us whether from fact it be, remembered right, or half from fancy fitted to the fact. our buddha is the fair ideal man, exemplar of the human possible. we cannot dream him fairer than he is, or was--for he perhaps is not--and so we fling the rein down on our fancy's neck and let her freely take her own wise way. "i will not warrant you the truth of it, that is, the insignificant truth of fact, mere fact, but if the deeper truth of fit and fair will answer you, i can relate the story of one miracle of buddh, the sole one of the sutta pitaka, that chiefest treasure of our sacred texts. this, though to raising of the dead no match, yet, to my mind, is meet and memorable, for that therewith a lovely word is joined of tuneful teaching from the master's lips." "let us have both, the wonder and the word," said publius, and the indian thus complied: "'the blesséd to the sacred ganges came and found the stream an overflowing flood. the others looked for boats and rafts to cross, or else wove wicker into basket floats; but he, as quickly as a strong man forth would stretch his arm, or his arm being stretched would bring it back, so quickly at his wish, had changed the hither for the thither side. there standing, he the wicker-weavers saw, and thus broke forth in parable and song: they who traverse the ocean of desire, building themselves a causeway firm and good across the quaking quagmires, quicksands, pools, of ignorance, of delusion, and of lust, whilst the vain world its wicker baskets weaves- these are the wise, and these the saved indeed.'" a pang of suffering love and loving ruth, for buddha himself, long quit of earthly strife, but more for buddha's disciple present there, shot through the heart of paul hearing these things. he sighed in spirit heavily, but said, when publius seemed to seek a word from him: "if i have taken the buddha's sense aright, he means that they the happy are and wise who find a means of ceasing from desire and entering into passionless repose, a state from death itself scarce different. contrariwise taught jesus: 'blesséd they that hunger and that thirst;' that fan desire to all-consuming flame of appetite- but it must be for righteousness they pant. not from desire, but from impure desire, to cease--that is salvation; and we best cease from impure desire when we to flame the whitest fan desire for all things true, for all things honorable, and all things just, for all things pure, and all things lovely, all of good report, and worthy human praise. passion for these things, being pure passion, burns the impure passion out: but passion such is kindled only at the altar fire of the eternal god's white holiness. "no god find i in all the buddha's thought- a ghastly gap of void and nothingness, o krishna, to the orphaned human heart that aches with longing and with loneliness, a weanling infant left forlorn of god, and, 'o, that i might find him!' ceaseless cries in yearnings that will not be pacified, fatherless in a dreadful universe! i would thy buddha had felt after god, and haply found him, or been found of him! i wonder if, not knowing it, he did! sadly i wonder when of this i think, that he who comes to god must needs believe god is, and a rewarder is of such as diligently seek him--such alone. but may one seek god unawares? with hope i wonder, when i think again of him, the light that lighteth every soul of man that anywhere is born into the world. o christ, thou brightness of the father's glory, immanuel, god with us, the son of man, the son of god, god himself manifest on earth to us, redeemer, brother, lord!" the strain of such ascription bursting forth unbidden, and unboundedly intense in tone, from the great heart of paul surcharged with passion of devotion to his lord and with vicarious travailing desire to save men, wrought in all who heard an awe of immanent god. but krishna to the quick was touched with tenderness toward paul to hear paul's tenderness toward buddha, far removed although it were from reverence like his own. to publius there seemed no fitting thing for modulation to the mood from paul, save to let mary now resume the word. she said: "after the raising from the dead of lazarus, we disciples of the lord ought not to have been astonished or dismayed at anything that in his wisdom he, his wisdom and his power, might either do or suffer to be done. but we were blind, and it did seem to us so violent, so opposite to all that should have been, when he, that lord of life and glory, let the soldiers take him prisoner. at first indeed, when he stood forth and said to them, 'whom seek ye?' and they, ignorant, said to him, 'jesus of nazareth,' and thereupon he answered, 'i am he,' they, at that word from him, majestically spoken more than they could bear to hear and stand upright, went backward and fell prostrate on the ground. this, as i think, was not so much _against_ those who thus suffered as _for_ us who saw- to reassure our faith that naught then done was done without his sovereign sufferance, who such things could, then even, and so easily, work. "but i have told now what i did not see, for it was midnight when this came to pass- deep in the garden of gethsemane, a little paradise of olive trees where oft the master loved to be retired; a few disciples only were with him there, his chosen apostles; and not all of these, for one of them a little while before had gone out from among them--well foreknown by jesus wherefore, it was to betray his lord and master to his enemies! judas, the name of this one was, and he had given it for a sign to those that sought to lay hands on our master, 'whomsoever i kiss, that same is he; make sure of him.' so judas, as in all sweet loyalty, came up to jesus with his proffered kiss of salutation; but the lord would not receive it, till he had first made known to all his understanding of its treachery: 'judas,' he said, 'betrayest thou with a kiss the son of man?' when judas had his sign given, he fell back among the band he had brought. then was it that the lord asked them, not yet enough assured or haply stunned with fear, 'whom seek ye?' and declared himself to them. so judas was of those who prostrate fell recoiled before the glory of the lord flashing in sudden glimpse from out the shame like lightning disimprisoned from a cloud- foretasted retribution of his crime! thus much not as eye-witness i relate, but having heard it from eye-witnesses so many and so close upon the time that half it seems as if myself had seen it. "i saw when, with the breaking of the dawn, after a night to jesus of such strain and pain in agony and bloody sweat, and sorrow of heart for human traitorhood, and disappointment in his hopes from friends, and dreadful bodings of the doom so nigh, and being rudely hustled to and fro between one jurisdiction and another, everywhere treated with all contumely both of accusing and reviling word and of gross act in blasphemous affront to the image of god in man--were he but man!- but he being god, conceive the blasphemy of spitting in that heavenly human face divine, and smiting him in mockery, blindfolded not to see whence came the blow, then bidden prophesy, 'who struck thee, christ?' (the very slaves there smote him with their hands)- i say that after such a night to him who condescended to be human, god although he was, and felt all human woe, i saw when, morning having broken, they led jesus last to pilate in his hall. there he stood lamblike, so pathetical in his meek majesty i could have wept for heart-break in sheer pity of his state, but that the fountain was dried up in me of blesséd tears, and i consumed myself in anguish that fed on my soul like fire." the anguish whereof mary spoke that fed so like an inward fire upon her soul, seemed to surge back on her in memory; and it was after strong recoil subdued that she resumed to say: "ye will not ask that i tell all again, how shame on shame was wreaked upon my lord, until no more was possible from men. pilate himself (now pilate was the roman governor) pilate himself, i think, was moved to pity, though, paltering, he with cruel weakness bade scourge that sweet human flesh and temple of god! perhaps he thought, 'this will content his foes.' so having done, he, issuing from his hall, brought jesus forth before the multitude wearing upon his brow a crown of thorns the soldiers had in mockery plaited him, and over his bruised form the purple robe. 'behold the man!' said pilate to the jews; i think he must have had his hope to meet relenting on the part of that wild mob when they saw jesus in his piteous plight. bloodthirsty as they were, perhaps they would, with the blood streaming from his wounded brows, they knowing besides how underneath the robe mock-kingly that he wore the blood coursed down the trenches opened by the cutting lash--with so much blood they might be satisfied. nay, so much blood but maddened them for more. "'behold the man!' said pilate, and i looked. i knew that he was more than man, and never did he the human measure more surpass, yet man he was, and so divinely man! the god in him, apparent like the sun to me, made him not less, more rather, man. i worshipped him, and yet i pitied him! i never pitied other half so much. "he was so exquisitely human! our little capacity of suffering pain, whether of spirit or of flesh, in him seemed to be carried to unmeasured heights. what form of anguish ours did he not feel? yea, sorrow for sin not his; 'which one of you,' he asked once, and no hearer made reply, 'which one of you convinceth me of sin?' sinless he was, nor ever felt remorse, that worm which dieth not prey on his soul. yet somehow he became so one with us he felt our sin as if it were his own, his own to bear in undeservéd woe suffered on our behalf, worse than remorse. all this i blindly felt seeing him there. he did not mail him proof with hero pride to suffer as if he suffered not, and so wrest their vain triumph from his enemies. they saw him suffer more than any man, not quailing indeed, yet hardening not himself. 'never man spake like this man,' some one said; i say, suffered man never so as he. how my heart bled for him when pilate spoke those words, 'behold the man!' and pilate too, i pitied him. pity, with worship blent into one overmastering passion, poured out of my heart toward jesus; but toward him, pilate, that weak, that wicked, went instead pity with horror, doubtful which was more. forgive me that i mix myself with this. indeed i could not tell you all in all my story, not another's, of the lord, unless, besides the things i saw or heard, i told you also how they seemed to me, what thoughts, what feelings started in my breast." the purged high passion with which mary spoke, calm though she kept with costly self-command, betrayed itself to paul observing her. he knew the tension of remembered pain, imagined with such vividness of recall that well-nigh mary suffered it all afresh, had touched already the extremest bound of what that spirit, in its shaken shrine of frail flesh quivering so, could safely bear. he spoke and said: "o publius, there is much remaining still for mary to recite of the last things to jesus here on earth, both his obedience faithful unto death, and his victorious rising from the grave. so thou, feast-master of the hour, consent, let us--thine own urbane feast-mastership resumed then--meet, if god will, yet once more to hear this solemn history to the end." such word from paul was mastership transferred to him; and publius promptly, without sense of yielding, yielded and broke up the feast. book xvii. the story of the cross. when the company next assemble, publius greets them with a feast spread in his house. this gives occasion for his explaining the customs of his nation in the matter of recognizing various divinities at feasts. paul replies, setting forth the christian doctrine on this point. mary, in due time about to begin her narrative, is seized with a sudden faintness, which however soon yielding to restoratives supplied by ruth, she goes on and relates the incidents of the crucifixion of jesus. the story of the cross. "'feast-master,' ye were pleased to call me, friends:" so in a cheerful humor publius spoke, bright-hearted welcome radiant on his face as vibrant in his brisk and cordial tones, then when by concert after interval- their appetite the keener from suspense- the selfsame company again were met under his ample roof to hear the rest what mary, or what krishna, more might tell. they found the mansion furnished as for feast. garlands of fresh leaf and of fragrant flower hung everywhere about and frolic laughed a momentary mimicry of spring. a fountain playing in the court without shot up its curving column to the sun; he caught the shattered capital in air, and, kindling every crystal water-drop of all the circling shower to which it turned into a jewel, sent the largess down, shifting as in a shaken kaleidoscope from form to form of light and rainbow hue- a glittering evanescence passing price, sard, topaz, sapphire, opal, diamond-stone, emerald and ruby, pearl and amethyst. that fountain, to the eye refection such, plashed gentle-murmuring music in the ear. couches and chairs about the board disposed awaited. the guests' feet, as they reclined, or sat--the woman sat, the men reclined- were duly washed and wiped after the wont of homage in those times and in those climes accorded ever to the honored guest. while this was passing, the complacent host, not in quite unpremeditated words though from his heart, welcomed his guests and said: "'feast-master' ye were pleased to call me late when of your own ye furnished forth the feast, invisible viands, yet of savor rare. then i was helpless, taken by surprise, and could do nothing to deserve my name. if, by your grace, i must feast-master be, let me in some sort be feast-maker too. forewarned to-day, i venture to assume leave of your goodness, and provide this cheer; too obvious to the sight and touch and taste to be as delicate as yours, yet fruit of hospitality sincere. partake, i pray you, freely, and commend the food. with meat and drink refreshed, we shall not less, more rather, relish what of nobler sort may follow, entertainment to the mind." paul answering with a grave sweet courtesy for all attuned that genial atmosphere to a chaste spirit of something finer yet than genial, which prepared him easy way to saying: "and now, o publius, unto god most high, who gave thee what thou givest us, and gave thee likewise thy good will to give, that god in whom we live and move and have our being, who of one blood made us all, gentile and jew together, and whose son christ jesus died that we might be redeemed to fellow-sonship with himself to god- let us to god, all-giver, render thanks for these his gifts, and therewithal for that, his gift unspeakable in christ his son." so, publius assenting with bowed head and complaisance unspoken, paul gave thanks. "oblation of the lips in chosen words, warm from the heart no doubt yet only words, o paul, thou offeredst to the powers unseen above us," publius said soon after, while the equal feast they shared; "as if one god alone thou worshippedst, all-giver named by thee: but we have gods and goddesses diverse in name and office, unto whom we offer gift and sacrifice diverse according as may seem diversely meet. apollo is the regent of the sun, of the moon, cynthia with her crescent bow; pomona is our patroness of fruits, while flora rules the gentle realm of flowers, and mother ceres yields us corn and oil. jupiter gives us weather, and he broods in fecund incubation from the skies over the earth to quicken all that grows with moisture; but he sometimes frowns in cloud not kindly, and hurtles down the thunderbolt. know it was neptune that stirred up the sea so, in that insurrection and revolt against you late, and stranded you forlorn, happy for me and mine! upon this isle; for neptune is the sovereign of the wave. those winds that blew meantime were breath in blast puffed from the cheeks of æolus who holds the invisible dominion of the air. the world is peopled dense with deities whom well to worship all, is no light task. we build them temples, and on altars there pour them out rivers of blood from victims slain; blood is the favorite drink to most of them. the victims' flesh we offer them for food: they do not eat it; so we eat it for them. for instance now, these meats purveyed for you ere going to the shambles to be sold, were duly each presented to some god: so we may gratify our appetite, and feel that we are worshipping the while. but bacchus is our hospitable god: a big, bluff, honest face we figure him, bloodthirsty not, but fond of festal cheer. him we best please by drinking of his gift, not blood of beast but generous blood of grape, and spending a libation of the same, tribute to him, the end of every feast." this spring and flow of talk idolatrous, uncertain how much serious and how much a play of skeptic humor half ashamed, was a sad note discordant to the tune of chastened reverent feeling in the breasts of men and women owning debt indeed for hospitality sincerely meant by publius they well knew, yet paramount allegiance owning to a jealous god who brooked no name divine beside his own. all toward paul turning waited, and he spoke: "o publius, guests are we and thou art host; most gracious we acknowledge thee to be, as most ungracious were we did we not, or undiscerning. thou hast honored us using that frankness to set forth thy ways, thine, and thy fellow countrymen's; ways yet far alien from the ways endeared to us. these let me, honoring thee thus with return of frankness like thine own, declare to thee. "we count that thy so-named divinities are nothing such as thou supposest them. they are not gods, since god is one, and will his incommunicable majesty permit none other to partake with him. perhaps, when ye idolaters enshrine reputed images of whom ye call gods and these worship with your various rites, it is with some endeavor of your thought beyond the sign to what is signified. but so even is your worship worse than vain. for there is nothing in the world--the world of things existent, things substantial, real, spirit or matter--that as counterpart answers to these conceived resemblances, these idols framed by your artificers, pretending to be images of gods; nothing, i mean, that can be called divine. behind them there is something real indeed, but evil, not good; no such reality as that ye dream. demons, not gods are they, who, hid behind your idols, mask and mock. therefore we can but hate idolatry, and flee it as one flees a pestilence. "forgive me, the affront is not to thee, not to thy fellow worshippers misled, but to the kingdom of the evil one, that emperor of the powers of the air who for a season yet has sufferance here to practice his impostures on mankind. thou therefore, o lord publius, understand, thou, and ye others not of hebrew race, that we, full gladly sharing this fair feast, and out of true hearts thanking him our host, know nothing of the dedications made of meats or drinks partaken to those gods no gods; but give our worship and our praise only to one god over all most high, the maker and the ruler of all worlds, jehovah named, blesséd forevermore. add to our debt, o publius, also this, that i have spoken thus without offence." paul ended with a look toward publius, then also toward julius present there, which these felt as fixed firmness tempered with appeal. publius took counsel with quick sounding eyes on the centurion bent, and answered thus, his own thought by that other's fortified: "o paul, have thou thy will; no will have i in this thing; all is one to me; our gods are our conventions, and we worship them in form, but not in spirit. strange to us it seems, us more enlightened than the crowd, us who have tasted of philosophy, to see thee thus engaged in earnestness on the behalf of things not seen, not known." paul broke in with a burst of testimony: "but i have seen, but i have known. the lord, the lord christ, son of god declared, from heaven flashed in a sudden vision once on me, sudden and swift, for both my eyes went blind." "it was a stroke of lightning blinded thee," said publius. "nay, the sky was cloudless clear," paul answered, "and the hour was high midnoon; the syrian sun was shining in his strength. i know whom i believe and i adore and bless him, calling on my soul and all that is within me to adore and bless his holy name. whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever do, in word or deed, we his redeemed do all in our lord's name, to god the father giving thanks through him." "is this thy lord to whom thou renderest thus thy service, the whole service of a life," so interrupted publius, "is this lord the same as he whom mary tells us of?" "the same, o publius," answered paul. "but he- i thought that he was put to death," replied publius. "yea, but he burst the bands of death, he rose in power and glory from the grave, he thence ascended far above all height into the heaven of heavens beyond all thought, where he sat down enthroned forevermore by the right hand of god;" so paul, enrapt and with his rapture aweing all who heard. publius then said, for now with meat and drink the appetite to each was satisfied: "o paul, what thou thus sayest quickens in me desire to hear the rest of mary's tale. that death of shame, however undeserved, yet fallen on him as if inevitable- he surely would have shunned it, if he could- had, i will own, induced in me some doubt whether the man who suffered it could be indeed the worker of such miracles as those that mary thought she saw from him. but his triumphant rising from the dead, his after showing of himself to thee, that, this, if that, if this, did happen--why, such conquest over death and hades won and by such proof assured to us, were much. but let us listen to what mary yet will tell us of the last things to that life and of the shameful death that ended it." then, with the genial sun, somewhat declined from his steep noon, streaming his golden rays into the room to qualify the cool; and with, beside, two ample braziers brought of coals in ruddy glow, one at each end, to cheer the shadowed spaces of no sun, the company, in comfortable wise- after the fragments of the feast, with due despatchful ministry of practised hands, had disappeared, disposed themselves at will and sat attentive to hear mary's words. but mary's words hung and she did not speak; her voice had like a failing fountain failed, and drifts of pallor whitened all her cheek. a doubtful moment, and she swayed to fall in death or death-like swoon upon the floor. but ruth who sat next quickly stayed her up; then, letting her sink softly toward supine on her own bosom, held her resting thus. resourceful ministration soon revived her spirits to mary, till she seemed herself again, and thought that they might trust her now not to disturb them more with cause for fear. so, with a certain added gentleness in tone and manner marking her, she spoke thus, while the rest with added reverence heard: "that image of my lord abides to me; i see him as i saw him when i heard 'behold the man!' the memory of my eyes is vivid and it seems to dazzle dark the vision that by faith i ought to see. i know and i believe that jesus now is glorious in the heaven beyond all reach of anything to flaw his perfect fair. but what he then was still will swim between, and i perforce see this instead of that. my ears ring with the maddening murderous shout of the chief priests and rulers with the mob mingling their voices now, 'crucify him!' 'he made himself the son of god,' they cry. that frightened pilate, and, 'whence art thou?' he asked jesus, in his palace-hall withdrawn; but jesus never answered him a word. pilate was vexed, and tried browbeating him. 'speakest thou not to me? dost thou not know i can release thee if i will,' he said; 'or, if i will can send thee to the cross?' then jesus spoke. he said: 'no power is thine save as bestowed upon thee from above. therefore who gave me up to thee, he hath the greater sin.' "pilate perhaps was awed, or he perhaps, albeit a cruel man, was truly for this once compassionate. however it was, he sought with quickened zeal to pacify the jews for the release of jesus; but they knew that governor, and he knew that they knew him, and when they cried out, 'thou art not cæsar's friend, if thou release this man; whoever makes himself a king, speaks against cæsar,' pilate then trembled within his mind for guilty fear. he covered over his weakness with vain show of mock and sarcasm as, with jesus brought forth from within before them, he exclaimed, 'behold your king!' tumultuously all hooted, 'away with him! away with him! crucify him!' 'what! crucify your king?' bitterly said pilate, dashing ruth with sneer. those proud chief priests, eating their pride at once and god abjuring, said: 'we have no king but cæsar.' then he gave him up to them. "but pilate acted out before them all in symbol a purgation of himself. he had a basin of water brought, and washed his hands, and said: 'lo, i am innocent of this just blood; see ye yourselves to it.' and all my people shouted out a curse upon themselves which for their sakes i fain had stopped my ears against--if not to hear, could have undone that dreadful curse! they cried, 'on us and on our children be his blood!' god waits yet, but not long, to wreak that curse. "that was the end of all until the cross. a multitude of people followed him, as he went forth out of the city gate bearing his cross to golgotha, the place where he should suffer. thither going, they met simon a cyrenean coming in, and, of some wanton humor seized, they made him take the cross and bear it. with the throng mingled, were many women who like me wailed and lamented. but the lord to us turning said: 'daughters of jerusalem, weep not for me; but for yourselves weep ye, yea, and your children. for the days will come when, blessed are the barren, ye shall say, and breasts that never nourished children. lo, then to the mountains men shall lift their cry, fall ye upon us; cover us, to the hills.' "while they nailed jesus to his cross, he spake words such as never other spake before; upward he spake, praying, and not to them. 'father,' he prayed, 'forgive them, for, behold, they know not what they do.' so there he hung, the savior of the world, upon his cross. i saw the soldiers four whose watch it was sit unconcerned--not knowing what they did!- and cast lots for the garments of the lord. 'jesus of nazareth, king of the jews,' pilate had written in three languages, hebrew, and greek, and latin, on the cross; for so he gave his jeering humor play. the chief priests winced at this, and begged of him, 'king of the jews, write not, but that he said, king of the jews am i.' but pilate spoke curtly, 'what i have written, i have written.' there then the title stood, a bitterness mixed in their cup of triumph to the jews, and a truth deeper far than pilate guessed. "mary, the mother of the lord, stood by; jesus beheld her, and, close at her side, that one of his disciples whom he loved. a word then from those suffering lips which wrung the mother-heart of mary with sweet woe to hear it spoken at such time as this. 'woman,' said jesus, to his mother speaking, 'behold, thy son!' he meant john, for to him likewise he spake, 'behold, thy mother!' so thenceforward mary had with john her home. "there were chance passers-by that railed on him, not knowing, those too, what they did! they scoffed, wagging their heads: 'ha! thou that couldst destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save thyself now, and from the cross come down.' after the same sort the chief priests and scribes, mocking among themselves, made mirth and said: 'others he saved, let him now save himself! the christ of god, the king of israel, let him come down now from the cross, and we, we, will believe on him.' two robbers even crucified with him joined the ribaldry, tauntingly saying, 'save thyself and us!' but one of them relented, touched with grace. he praying said, 'jesus, remember me when thou art come into thy kingdom!' faith like that, to see and to believe--despite the shame and seeming helplessness--the king in jesus of a world beyond the world, won on the lord; and he--he too with faith, sheer faith, faith far more wonderful in him- gave answer calmly as became the king, 'this day shalt thou be with me in paradise.' "it grew now to be near the point of noon, and there fell midnight darkness on the land gross for three hours; it was as if the sun in heaven would not behold that wickedness. then the lord jesus uttered a loud cry, the saddest that on earth was ever heard; 'eli, eli, lama sabachthani,' he said. those are the first words of a psalm prophetic of a suffering savior christ; they mean, 'my god, my god, wherefore hast thou forsaken me?' that was the bitterness, that must, i think, have been the bitterness, which most he dreaded in gethsemane." mary looked up toward paul with eyes that asked whether she well divined that this was so. paul swerved a little from the point, but said: "the mystery of redemption! a great deep it is, to us unfathomable quite- soundless as is the mystery of sin. but alienation and exile from god, distance, and darkness, and abandonment, this, sin works of its own necessity; and this helps make the sinner's punishment. therefore to feel a frightful sense of this perhaps was needful to atone for sin." paul so far only, and then mary said: "the savior's sense of that abandonment must have been short, i think, as short as sharp. for following close upon that lonely cry, there came this word, 'i thirst.' it was as though- the imperious overmastering agony of spirit past--the flesh, silenced before, had leave to speak now witnessing its need. anguished the word was, but it seemed relief to hear such sad acknowledgment succeed the desolation of that other wail. they brought a hyssop drenched in vinegar, and on a reed lifted it to his lips. that moisture loosed his tongue to speak once more, the utter last time that he ever spake- until he used his resurrection voice. the words were: 'it is finished! father, i into thy hands commend my spirit.' loud he spoke thus, and therewith his head declined, surrendering so his spirit up to god. it did not seem like dying, as men die of sickness or of violence causing death. i could not but bethink me how he said once, 'i lay down my life, no man from me taketh it, of myself i lay it down!" so mary, with a cadence in her voice that meant an end of speaking for that time. book xviii. krishna. the company still together though the hour is late, krishna, at the request of publius, after a breathing-spell enjoyed by all under the open sky, tells the story of the death of buddha. a warning recited by him as having proceeded from the dying buddha's lips against all speech on the part of his disciples with womankind, prompts krishna to turn, with apology in his manner, in a kind of appeal to paul, who, answering, gives the contrasted teaching of christianity on this topic. at the conclusion of krishna's recital, publius makes a few characteristic observations suggested by it, and the company, having first agreed to assemble on some favorable day at dawn to hear from mary the story of the resurrection of jesus, disperse. krishna. slowly the solemn of late afternoon settled into the somber of twilight: it was a pensive company that there sat nursing each his thought as if alone. then julius, out of muse and memory, spoke, without harming the suspense of awe that held all as pavilioned round with god: "yea, i remember to have heard it said, in fact it was a story of the camp among us soldiers in jerusalem, that the centurion who stood by and watched the doings of that day and jesus' death, said, when he saw that having so cried out he yielded up the ghost, 'surely he was the son of god!'" "the death was wonderful," said publius, "not like that of any man." he spoke with reverence far from insincere, and yet a note of shallow in his tone was dissonant to the feeling of the hour. this, krishna with a fine discernment felt when publius turned to him, and made demand: "and now, o krishna, tell us thou of him, thy master buddha, how he met his death. but first, o friends my guests," he added then, with volatile quick turn, "let us all forth into the open underneath the sky and shake the languor of our sitting off. the night is fine, no wind, and weather mild; a half hour's freedom out of doors to breathe the fresh air, and with motion loose our limbs and make our blood brisk, will be nigh as good as a night's sleep for health to body and mind." host and symposiarch, publius clapped his hands, and to the servants promptly answering said: "lamps, and more braziers brim with glowing coals; also refection, cakes and wine, good store." therewith the company dispersed at will, wandering in groups or singly as each chose. when, after a brief interval, they all were under roof once more, refreshed with change, publius said: "the evening yet is long, and all the night thereafter is ours for sleep, with an untouched to-morrow if need be to borrow from and piece the measure out. eat ye and drink at leisure and at ease; meanwhile, and not to overtask our friend here who likewise shall share his equal chance with us of what may stay hunger and thirst, let us content our nobler appetite with viand brought us out of utmost ind." the roman hugged himself with a pleased sense that he had turned his genial phrases right. the indian for his part, not voluble by nature, would have wished to hold his peace; for mary's tale had wrought upon him so that he was lost in thought and absentness. loth rallied out of mute to use of speech, he felt the bonds of courtesy and said: "o publius, would thou hadst rather been content to leave this hebrew story uncompared. i have no means to parallel it so as need were i should do for right effect; since neither was i present to behold, nor lives there record by eyewitness made." as these words wavering from the indian fell, the dimness of the lamplight in the room, clouded with fumy issue from the flame, seemed to become a symbol of that dark, that doubtful, that uncertain, which he thus shadowed his tale withal--strange contrast felt to the eyewitness truth and lifelikeness of mary's story by full daylight told. but krishna heartened himself to firmly say: "howbeit there is tradition that we trust. this holds the voyage was peaceful toward the end, the voyage of buddha through the last of life; not without pain, but peaceful as was fit for voyage slow tending to the port of peace. there was no persecution of the buddh; or he had long outlived it ere his death. he died among old friends who loved him well, soothing him toward nirvâna with all heed of healing words spoken to him or heard from him, and nothing lacked to stay his steps, as he declined gently, with neither haste to go hence nor desire to linger here, down the slow slope that slides into the sea of utter, utter void and nothingness. "it was a kindly office rendered him by a fast friend, kunda his name, that brought, he far from meaning it, the master's end. kunda prepared his master's food, a dish of swine's flesh dried, with savory messes dressed. our lord waxed weary with walking, for he was old; full fifty years long since his wasted youth (wasted his youth had been on fleshly lusts), he had gone the beggar's ways from door to door while he taught men how to escape from life; weary thus, buddha rested in a grove of mangoes; his disciples, a great band, accompanying. kunda's was the grove, and he sat by the master's side, and with his ears drank in deep draughts of wisdom from those lips. then he besought the master to partake, the master with his disciples to partake, refreshment on the morrow at his house; by silence buddha signified assent. "so at the hour boar's flesh was offered him; and he did not refuse it for himself, but bade his host give other food to them, his brethren; sweet rice was their share, and cakes. some prescience warned him what the end would be; 'for other none, save such as i myself,' the blesséd one to kunda listening said, 'were able to receive this nourishment, the boar's flesh, and convert it to right use. so what remains thereof when i have done, bury it under ground and eat it not.' so spoke lord buddha and partook the meat. but he was seized straightway with colic pangs that griped him sore; long time be sought in vain for ease to his distress; but he was calm and fully self-possessed amid it all, uttering no complaint. relieved at last a little, he to his attendant said- ânanda that one was, the venerable- 'on now to kusinârâ i will go.' "but going, he fell weary with the way and rested underneath a tree. 'i thirst,' to ânanda he said; 'fetch me to drink.' but ânanda replied: 'this stream, behold, is turbid, roiled with many passing wheels: yon other river is a pleasant stream, with banks that make it easy of access.' 'i thirst, o ânanda,' the master said a second time, repeating the same words. and yet a second time too ânanda repeated that the nearer stream was foul, and the one farther on approachable and clear. a third time buddha said, 'i thirst,' and a third time repeated those same words. then ânanda no longer made demur, but took a bowl and to the streamlet went. the water that had just been roiled with wheels was flowing limpid, bright, and sweet. he thought, 'how wonderful, how marvellous, the power, the might, of the tathâgata!' but he, the blesséd one, received the bowl and drank. (tathâgata we call our buddha, so honoring him as one who holds himself filially faithful to ancestral ways.) "to kusinârâ faring forward still the buddha sowed instructions all the way. but that which he in his forethoughtful care said for the solacing of kunda's mind, should kunda peradventure afterward hear some one say to him, 'o kunda, that was evil to thee and loss, that buddha died having partaken his last meal with thee'- what buddha said forefending blame like that, was memorable. he ânanda thus taught: 'tell kunda: that was good to thee, and gain, that the tathâgata then died when he had his last meal as guest of thine partaken. there is no offering of alms in food of greater profit unto him who gives than when one offers a tathâgata food that once eaten by him he departs with that complete departure wherein naught of all that late he was is left to be. "one admonition our lord buddha gave in those last times with him, which let me pray from some of you pardon that i report; new lessons i have learned of womanhood, sharing these feasts of converse with you all. now ânanda inquired of buddha this: 'how, master, shall we deal with womankind?' 'o ânanda,' the master made reply, 'refrain from seeing them.' but ânanda said: 'if by chance we see them at some time?' 'abstain, o ânanda, from speech with them,' the blesséd one made answer. ânanda once more: 'o master, if they speak to us?' 'bestir your senses to keep well awake,' the buddha said in final warning word." the indian paused hereon, his eyes down dropt, a noble gentle shame confusing him. he would have added (what, not added, paul felt in his manner of reticence implied) tardy acknowledgment of fault his own that he at first had spurned the thought proposed to him of learning aught from mary's lips; acknowledgment condign, with suit to be judged gently since his master so had taught- all this he would have said in words outright, but sense of other duty kept him dumb; besides that he was conscious in his mind of being by paul already understood. publius as master of the feast perceived blindly that here a rally of some sort was needed for the rescue of the cheer just trembling on the balance to be lost. he was perplexed, but his perplexity was his resource better than ready wit. for, with a quick dependent instinct, he turned him to paul unconsciously confessed ascendent wheresoever he might be, and paul, thus silently appealed to, spoke: "such thought of woman is not from the lord; the lord our god made woman one with man. equal? nay, equal not. inferior? nay, nor equal nor inferior; as too not superior; rather, part of him, as he of her, they twain together one, and whole neither without the other. he is head, not lord and master to rule over her, as she not slave, not servant, to be ruled; she, of her will unforced, subject to him through joyful choice of reverence and of love, and he, with equal mutual reverent love, honoring her and cherishing as himself." "so is it with you," said krishna, "as i have seen with wonder, and admired; almost convinced that ye herein are better taught than i. if i perchance in anything have failed of reverence meet toward womankind, i pray pardon ye it to me; and hold besides that haply my lord buddha had himself judged otherwise herein, with other types to judge from of what womankind may be." "yea," paul said, "he but judged from what he saw; not knowing he, as our lord jesus knew, what god from the beginning and before established as the order of his world, and looked upon it and pronounced it good. but also what your buddha judged amiss became a force creating what he saw; for teaching and believing, subtle powers, are plastic to conform us to themselves. what ye believe of woman, teaching her to know that ye believe it of her, yea, making her half believe it of herself, this she hereby, even in her own despite, tends to become; if it unworthy be, then all the issuing stream of humankind, fouled at the fountain thus, flows forth corrupt and ever more corrupt--the stream turned back with every generation to its source, and adding to the feculence of that. "the ruin has no remedy but one. the lord christ by a woman came to us, and opened a new fountain for our race, pure, more than pure, for purifying too. life drawn from him, life fed from him, life lived in him and for him, that alone is pure, and endless because boundless; blesséd; joy, and peace, and power, and triumph evermore. his life may all through faith in him partake, faith which unites us vitally to him. christ is the founder of a race redeemed, redeemed from sin, and death, and every ill. in him believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, now already though before the time in hope. belief in misery makes miserable. we do not need to be defeated so; thanks be to god most high who giveth us the victory through jesus christ our lord! "would that thy buddha groping in his dark, nobly as seems, with that maimed nobleness which only is left possible by sin without a savior known, ah, would that he had known a savior such as christ the lord! "yet let us hear, o publius, if so please thee and so please krishna likewise, the rest concerning buddha's death. we shall at least, sorrowing with wholesome sorrow for his case, learn from such high example how far short the highest human and the best, unhelped, must fall of helping helpless humankind." the tone of just authority in paul, felt to be not assertion of himself but fealty to his lord effacing self, was mixed so with a suasive gentleness in manner and even a certain deference to other as that other's right from him, all without harm or loss allowed to truth, that krishna was both charmed and overawed while discomposed not, and he thus went on: "ânanda was concerned to know what dues of honor should be paid to the remains of the tathâgata when he was gone. but buddha said: 'ye must not wrong yourselves to honor the tathâgata's remains; others will honor these. be zealous ye, i pray you, on your own behalf. devote yourselves to your own profit. earnest be and eager and intent for your own good.' yet buddha taught that the tathâgata was to be honored after his decease by rites of reverence to his remains like those accorded to a king of kings, "now ânanda the venerable was weighed to heaviness with sorrow at the thought: 'alas, i still am but a learner, much to me remains of labor, ere i reach nirvâna; and my master, he so kind, is on the point to pass away from me.' so, leaned against the lintel of the door, ânanda stood and thought and thinking wept. but buddha sending called him to himself, and said: 'enough, o ânanda, weep not, nor let thyself be troubled. have i not oft told thee that it deep inheres in things the nearest and the dearest unto us, that we must leave them, rend ourselves away, sever ourselves from them? how could it be, ânanda, otherwise than thus? for know, whatever thing is born, whatever comes into existence, holds within itself the seed of dissolution and decay; such being therefore needs must cease to be. long time thou, ânanda, to me hast been, by many offices of love, most near, unchanging love and without measure large. thrice say i this that thou mayst know it well: long time thou, ânanda, to me hast been, by many offices of love, most near, unchanging love and without measure large. long time thou, ânanda, to me hast been by many offices of love, most near, unchanging love and without measure large. thou hast well done, o ânanda. faint not, thou too shalt soon anâsava become'- whereby our lord meant his disciple soon should touch the wished-for goal himself was now nigh touching, blest nirvâna, last surcease of all the ills that sum up human life. "at length lord buddha said to ânanda: 'go now for me into kusinârâ and tell them the tathâgata is here, close on the point to pass forever away. say: leave no room to chide yourselves too late: alas, and he in our own village died, he, the tathâgata, and we then failed to come and visit him in his last hours.' so all the dwellers in kusinârâ came and did honor to the blesséd one. "then to the brethren of the order he said: 'if in mind perchance to any of you doubt or misgiving lurk concerning aught, the buddh, the truth, the path, the way, inquire freely before i pass, that afterward ye have not to reproach yourselves that ye being face to face with him failed to inquire.' with one accord, the brethren held their peace. the second and the third time those same words did the tathâgata to them address; but even the third time they were silent all. then with much pitiful concern for them the buddha said: 'it may be out of awe of me, your master, ye keep silence thus. speak therefore ye, i pray, among yourselves.' but all the brotherhood were silent still. then ânanda the venerable spoke up and said: 'a wonder and a marvel, lord, i truly think there has not one of us a doubt or a misgiving in his mind as to the buddh, the truth, the path, the way. the blesséd one made answer: 'ânanda, thou from the fulness of thy faith hast spoken; but the tathâgata for certain knows not one of these five hundred brethren all doubt or misgiving has concerning aught, the buddh, the truth, the path, the way. no one of all but guarded is from future birth to suffering; your salvation is secure.' he added: 'brethren, i exhort you, know, decay inheres in whatsoever is, of parts composed, since these may be dissolved. inflame your zeal, make your salvation sure.' the last word that of the tathâgata. "yet did he not with that last word expire, but enter into a state ineffable. from stage to stage, four stages, he advanced, of meditation more and more withdrawn. a fifth stage followed, one of vacancy compact: all seeming substance, seeming form, abolished to the mind, and naught but space, pure space, empty and formless, colorless, spun out to infinite on every side. the next degree abolished also space, replacing that with reason infinite. but reason infinite then passed away, dispersed into a sense of nothingness. then sense of nothingness, that yielded too, and neither anything nor nothing was a presence in sensation to the soul. but beyond that he passed into a state between unconsciousness and consciousness; whence next he issued in a farther stage wherein no trace of consciousness remained. then of two venerables there watching, one said to the other, 'the blessèd one is dead;' but, 'nay,' that other made reply, 'not dead, only beyond where thought or feeling is.' "then by regress the blesséd one returned the way that he had traversed, stage by stage, till, having reached the first stage, now the last, that of deep meditation, he expired. "so our lord buddha having all the depths sounded unto their nethermost, and scaled unto their topmost all the soaring heights, of thought and being, like a weaver's shuttle to and fro passing, and found naught at all the substance and the basis of the world, himself at last absorbed in the abyss escaped existence and sank into peace." the lamps had burned to low, and some of them had flickered to a fall, while krishna spoke- their fumy flames meanwhile blurring the air to dimness deepened with the deepening night. the stillness of the room was audible, accented by the murmurous monotone of krishna's muffled, bland, and inward voice. the strange, far-off, unreal, unthinkable last things he told involved the laboring mind too, in a sense confused of cloud and dark. when he ceased speaking, with that word pronounced, "peace," like a hollow sphere of sound, no core, it was as if, with that for spell outbreathed, nirvâna softly would engulf them all. but one was there to whom such spell was naught. "'peace,'" publius said, reechoing the word, as pondering what the purport of it was, "'peace,' i should think must be a euphemism, as the greeks say when they avoid a name, the right name, for a thing to be avoided. there is no peace, unless there be some one to have the peace; but buddha then was not, had vanished like a breath breathed on the air, if of his end i have understood thee right." "thou hast not misunderstood," said krishna; "yet we shrink from saying of buddha, 'he is not.' we sheathe the sense, and softly say instead, 'he has ceased to suffer,' 'he has touched the goal.' himself he would not say, 'i shall not be;' but if he taught us true that life is woe, then not to suffer, needs is not to live: save not to live, salvation there is none." "aye," publius said, "i see, a euphemism; a needed euphemism, and well devised. for who, not weary of life through long defeat, or through disease, old age, or loss of good, or else exhausted in the springs of joy within himself through waste of youth and health in those excesses which bring on decay before its season--who not broken so, here and there one, not many in any time, would to that bait proffered without disguise, mere blank non-being, spring with appetite? and those, the few who did, would they await nirvâna as the goal of long pursuit, not snatch it instant with rash suicide? we romans have a growing fashion of so precipitately rushing on our end. i trow thou wouldst in vain strive to persuade us romans to spend tedious years and years in seeking not to live so as not to suffer; we should be too impatient far for that." "o publius," krishna said, "rash suicide is no escape from life. life has its snare safe round thee still, and thou art born again into another form, another state, worse, and not better, than before. the path, that only, leads thee to the utter end: so buddha taught and so i have believed." the indian ceased thus with the air of one wavering where he had certain been before; and publius felt that he for krishna spoke, scarce less than for himself, when he inquired: "aye, aye, how know we that the 'path,' to name thus by thy word a thing to me unknown, how know we that the path, even that, indeed will lead one out of life to nothingness? if so be buddha's doctrine holds, and life slides on from form to form, from state to state, unhindered by the fact of suicide, how know we that there ever comes an end? consider, he himself, the teacher, may, who knows?--this moment while we talk of him be fleeting forward on the endless flight fatal of that metempsychosis preached. what surety have we that it is not so? "and since so much we ask, let us ask more, o krishna. how know we the master died after the manner that thou toldst us of? that kunda's kindly hospitable meal was followed by that sickness to his guest; that his guest bore it with sweet fortitude, not intermitting his serene discourse the while, yet weakening slowly till he died- thus much, i say, might be observed by those who stood about the master so bestead; but who could tell that in his secret mind the dying buddha accomplished all that strange vicissitude and movement to and fro, which thou in honey-flowing speech describedst, but which, pardon, i could not understand. himself, the buddha, uttered not one word through all, made not a motion nor a sign. how, pray, did those disciples round him pierce the dark and silence of their master's mind, to know what passed therein?" "ah," krishna said, "the master had foretold those things would be to him, and they believed, and therefore knew." "aye," publius said, "they knew by faith, not proof; but we, we of the west, are fond of proof. yet proof of buddha's dying so as thou describedst, proof likewise that he, so dying, was cancelled quite from out the universe- proof of these things, conceded these things were, would, i can see, be no wise possible; we may believe them, but we cannot prove. now if thy master had taught otherwise, contrariwise indeed, that life, not death- not death, but life victorious over death- was the chief good, and that this good the chief might be attained by us, and how attained, that were a doctrine would have cheered one more, and been besides more capable of proof. at least good proof of it might be conceived. buddha, supposed extinguished utterly out of the world, he being nowhere at all, could not come hither back and testify, 'behold me, i am non-existent now.' but one who taught the opposite, who taught that death was not the end of life, if he himself, having died, could conquer death and live, could living hither come and speak to us, and say, 'i told you i would rise again!' why, krishna, that were proof and 'path' indeed, aye, path as solid as a roman road. "it seems from this our hebrew lady's tale, that jesus, ere he suffered on the cross, promised again and yet again that he would rise the third day from the dead and live. i doubt not thou thyself, with all of us, wouldst gladly farther hear from her at full whether and how this promise was fulfilled." "that is a tale for a new day and dawn," paul said; "the resurrection of the lord was morning before morning when it came. mary, not waiting for daybreak, repaired by twilight to his tomb and found it void. a great while before day the lord sometimes would rouse him and go forth apart to pray; perhaps a great while before day he now woke from the sleep of death, and left his tomb. what morning then it was dawned on the world!" "well thought," said publius; "let us at daybreak, some day not long hence when the weather smiles, meet out of doors and see sunrise, while we hear also of that sunrise on the world paul in his master's resurrection finds; whereof to hear at least, surely were sweet. spring hastens hither, with the punctual sun returning from his winter in the south. there will not fail a weather warm enough, some select balmier morning by and by, to make it pleasant for us, in a place i know of on the sheltered ocean shore fronting full east, to meet and hear a tale so well befitting spring and morning both as a tale told of victory over death. i will, if so it please all, undertake to rally you in season when signs say, now!" thereon the company broke up, with thanks from each guest to the host for heartsome cheer provided; and with silent prayer from each that god would bless him through their guestship there more than he dreamed of needing to be blessed! book xix. baptism of krishna. krishna, much wrought upon in his secret mind, seeks a private interview with paul. the two converse at large, paul expounding his doctrine of sin and of salvation through faith in christ. krishna resists, feeling nevertheless an impulse in himself responsive to paul's words. they part with nothing concluded between them, but krishna meditating alone is finally brought to obedience of faith. he seeks the company of the christian disciples and declares himself a believer. he expressing eager desire to testify as soon as possible in some outward act commanded by jesus his readiness to obey him, paul tells him of the command "be baptized," and krishna accordingly is baptized by aristarchus, paul giving the new disciple appropriate counsel and exhortation. baptism of krishna. as the days passed, the prisoner paul, allowed the freedom of his ways about the isle, would often, musing by himself alone- or haply his shadow stephen following so as never to be seen yet ever see in jealous loving watch and ward of him- walk in seclusions well to julius known where, held by all the islanders in awe and sentried as if sentried not the while, he could be safe in sense of solitude and easement from the fret of custody. he walking thus one sunny afternoon, the indian met him at the hither goal and entrance to his wonted rounding ways, and with such salutation greeted him as seemed to seek access for mutual speech. paul, out of insulation and himself emerging wholly at his fellow's call, rallied at once to be a social man; he welcomed krishna frankly to his side, and they twain walked and talked together there. "o paul," said krishna, "i am not at rest; thou, and that mary's story of her lord, have deeply shaken my repose in me. there must have been, lodged in me from the first, a witness ready to speak up and say, 'hearken, o krishna!' when the name of 'god' fell on my ear. for since that word from thee, i have not ceased to hear within me cry reverberant through the chambers of my soul- like a voluminous echo shouting round reduplicated images of voice- clamor and attestation vehement confirming what thou saidst that day of god, and of our orphanhood without him. oh, my friend, that i might find him, i, even i!" such passion in passivity moved paul to pity, which he hid, while thus he spoke: "it is the answer of the infinite within thee to the infinite above thee and beneath thee and about thee round. god made thee for himself, and himself is the only good that can content thy mind. feel after him and find him, he is nigh, drawn nigh and drawing nigh, in jesus christ. not to believe in him, god's son made flesh- he once revealed to thee--this, this, is sin; and sin is death; but to believe is life. believe and live, o krishna." "thy word 'sin,' o paul," said krishna, "it perplexes me. what is sin? evil, i guess. now evil i know in many forms--forms many, essence one- misery all. but sin to thee, i trow, is something else than simple misery." "o, yea," said paul, "and measurelessly more. no misery is like sin, but sin is evil not to be told in terms of misery. the sinner is an enemy of god; god is against him, and the wrath of god abides upon him; such is the evil of sin. for sin is the transgression of the law, that law which is the will of god express in precept, or that law more broad, more deep, higher, which is the will of god inwrought into the substance of the human heart. thou canst not live transgressor of this law and be at peace; god is too merciful to suffer it. for mercy it is in god which wrath we call; against the sinner, wrath; but toward the man, mercy eager to save: the wrath of god is as the shepherd's crook which with threat drives the foolish flock to fold. hasten, obey, be folded, thou, by him, the shepherd and the bishop of thy soul. within is safety, life, and peace, and joy; ruin, without, and wretchedness, and death." "a living will," said krishna, "in the waste, the wild waste, of a world of chance and fate- a will amid it, nay, much more, a mind, a heart, present, presiding over all the blind whirl of the things we see, whereof we seem ourselves a petty part, impelled helpless--whither, who knows?--this is to me a thought greater than the great universe; yet does it less than that oppress, appal; i feel my spirit in me quickened too while overwhelmed. o were it true indeed! and were this being whom thou namest god willing to condescend and think on me! i feel that i could love him if i could believe him--in the teeth of all that seems to swear against him in this dreadful world!" "the whole creation groaneth, yea," said paul, "and travaileth under the curse of sin. but the blind-bondman universe awaits with earnest expectation a new day when he shall be delivered from his thrall, to share, we know not how, that liberty which is the birthright of the sons of god. meantime the discord and the perjury thou seest of a distracted universe forsworn against its maker! yet even so enough abides unshaken from the firm fair order of the first all-wise design, to testify his everlasting power who framed it. but, beyond that perjury thou findest in the janglings of the world browbeating faith herself to disbelieve, is the blaspheming atheous spirit in man which _will_ not god. o strife and warfare strange within us! godward-springing instinct fain to answer 'abba, father!' to his call, and all the while rebellion muttering, 'nay!' o wretched, wretched creatures that we are! who, who is able to deliver us out of the clinging body of this death? i thank my god, through jesus christ our lord! "christ's voice against the clamor of the world, his still small voice, heard by the inner ear of whosoever will heed and obey, makes music of this roaring dissonance which dins and deafens every one besides. hush the gainsaying of the heart within, o krishna, the dull heart of unbelief, and hearken if thou shalt not presently hear him say, come. it is a heavenly sound, heard never save by the anointed ear of true obedience; but once heard thereby it ever after lingers in the sense a haunting invitation still obeyed. and still as we obey it, drawing near and nearer to that voice forevermore, forevermore we hear the harmony evolved from the confusions of the world grow perfect and the discord die away. like as a human father pitieth his children, so jehovah god most high pitieth them that fear him. this long since we heard through one inspired from god to sing it cadenced in our sweet and solemn psalms." krishna could not but speak his froward thought: "it looks such contradiction to the fact staring us in the face from round about us wheresoever in the world we turn our eyes and see the seeming pitiless ongoing of the blind necessity that, deaf and blind and irresistible, rides like a juggernaut upon his car crushing beneath the wheels the hearts of men and spirting up their blood to splash his feet!" unwonted passion heaved the indian's breast, and shook the tones in which he said these things. paul gently made reply as one that knew: "yea, such the spectacle that sight beholds; nor ever other had the mind of man guessed, had the voice of god not spoken clear to faith, revealing his veiled fatherhood: the blatant falsehood of the seeming fact failed in the ear of faith hearing that word. she said: 'it must be true; how otherwise than because god himself who cannot lie declared it could such gospel come to men? not from the world of sense; that world instead gainsays it with all clamor of perjury; not from the heart of man averse from god and full of alien fear through hate of him: for filial fear it is, begot of love, not alien fear, of conscious hate begot, that god desires from men and will reward with pity like a father's for their state. yea, such a gospel must from god have come; let god be true and the whole world a liar.' so faith cried out in passionate protest against appearance, and clasped fast her creed. "but when the fulness of the time was come, god sent a mighty succor down to faith faint with her fasting in the wilderness. from his own bosom he his only son, only and well-belovéd, the express image of his own person and the bright effulgence of the father's glory, tore and bade him, joyful at the mission he: 'empty thyself of thine equality with me in godhead; take the lowly form of a bondservant; fashioned like a man humble thyself to be obedient through all degrees of all obedience unfaltering down to that extreme degree of death, yea even of death upon the cross!' for god so loved the world, with pity loved, that he his own son and his only gave that whosoever should on him believe might perish not, but have eternal life. "a paradox divine of love and pity- god sparing not his own coequal son, but, last impossible proof of love to men, giving him freely up to suffer so, the just for the unjust, if haply he might bring us unto god! his father's heart of tenderness toward his obedient son breaking, while he that son delivered up- father and son together overcome with love and pity toward a wretched race apostate, disobedient, rebel, lost! well spake that savior son while yet he lived a heavenly exile here on earth--he now about to suffer at the hands of whom he came to save--making the sum of sin consist in not believing upon him. not to believe on such as jesus christ seen living, the exemplar of all good, that, that, was sin indeed. yet greater sin, yea, sin inclusive and conclusive, this- not to believe on christ raised from the dead!" paul interrupted his discourse with pause. he eased the pressure on his heart with prayer, while krishna slowly, softly, sadly said: 'sin as transgression of a law supreme; law as expression of a living will; nay, the existence of a living will sovereign over an ordered universe; much more, a heart behind the will to feel pity and love, such pity and such love, not idle passion but at work to save, save at vicarious cost so great--these thoughts, ill canst thou know how new they are to me, how strange! sin, sin--and sinner i, for this, that i do not believe on him! "but thou, tell me, what is it to believe on him? i willingly believe that he was good, was wise, was gentle, gracious, merciful." "believe that he was what he claimed to be," said paul, "absolute lord of life and thought to all men, and to thee. acknowledge him thy lord; believing is obeying here. to whom he master is, to them is he also a savior; trust thyself to him." "a fearful act of self-surrender thou, o paul," said krishna, "thus proposest to me. take jesus for my lord in life and thought, absolute lord as thou hast strongly said it, that might be, for what were it but exchange of masters, buddha left for jesus; true, never such claim of mastership made he, our buddha, as thou sayest thy jesus makes- but to commit myself into the hands of any, whosoever he may be, to be saved--saved from what, to what, how saved?"- with sudden turn on paul, krishna thus spoke, the gentleness which was his manner, now to almost fierceness changed, so vehement was the revulsion and revolt expressed. "am i so lost i cannot save myself?" he added, when he could command his tones to speak with full becoming courtesy- an inexpugnable repulsion yet shown of the answer that he thus invoked. calmly, but without effort to be calm, "o, yea," said paul, "so lost, and worse than so; so lost thou dost not wish to save thyself; nay, dost not know thou needest to be saved. it is the sad besotment deep of sin, wherein not thou alone but all of us since adam, the first man, are sunk and lost. we are dead in sin, this even from our first breath, and, like the dead, know not that we are dead, and, like the dead, care not to live again, nor, more than they, could, if we would, revive. a dreadful doom of helpless living death! helpless, yet hopeless not, blesséd be god! yea, there is hope, albeit not in ourselves; christ is a power of life that overflows to all that will make ready a way for him to enter by the gladsome gates of will. he quickens whom he will, but will not quicken save who will say to him, 'lord, quicken me!' a paradox, sayest thou, hard to be solved? yea, more, outright impossibility- with man impossibility, but not with god; with god, all things are possible." "thou makest this thing 'sin,'" the indian said, "such evil as is more miserable far than misery's self. who taught thee this? 'sin,''sin'- is it not perhaps some specter of the mind only, unreal as horrible, which thou hast conjured up from nothing to thyself in thy lone brooding on the riddle of things?" paul hearing this thought backward of the time when porcius festus brusquely said to him in public presence: 'paul, thou art mad; thy long deep pouring over books turns wild thy wits.' with himself musing: 'one in his right mind thus to be judged distraught by those distraught!' he answered: "yea, that is a wile i know of satan's playing on this human heart of ours, deceitful as it is above all things and desperately wicked, yet insanely cunning in complicity against itself--a wile i know too well to cheat us into thinking naught of sin. a bugbear of the morbid conscience, sin! i might myself have been, i cannot know, lulled by this lie into false fatal peace; but the lord christ himself appeared to me in light like lightning though a hundred fold keener, shot suddenly from out a clear sky at midnoon, and called me by my name, the name that then i bore; 'saul, saul,' he said, 'why dost thou persecute me?' 'thee,' said i, 'who art thou, lord?' and he, 'jesus i am whom thou dost persecute.' "that moment first, in its true hideous native aspect shown, sin was revealed to me. i saw it wear a face of horrible malignity gnashing its teeth on jesus, the one man who sinned not ever and yet died for sin, died for the sin that slew him, for my sin that slew him on the bitter cross, that still was slaying him afresh--who died for _me_. i found the truth and meaning of those words by jesus from the imminent verge of death spoken, that not believing upon him was the one sin. when the ideal man is shown us, then to know him not for such betokens us how besotted!--beyond hope; but if the ideal man be son of god and bring us out of heaven a word from him, not to receive the message, nay, to flout the messenger himself as i had done, yea, was that moment doing when the light i spoke of fell on me--what height, what depth of sin! o, sin's exceeding sinfulness! and yet, not so even is the measure full. for god in testimony of his son put forth the working of his mighty power and raised him from the dead, exalting him to the right hand of glory with himself. christ then, there sitting by his father's side and with him reigning, victor over death and over him that had the power of death, the devil, sent thence the holy spirit down hither to us to lead us into truth. the holy spirit in thy heart, o krishna, grieve him not, send him not away from thee! it was his secret prompting made thee take that spring toward god at mention of his name. yield to him, he desires thy good, consent to be convinced of sin--sin still committed till thou believe on jesus christ as lord; and now a sin against the holy ghost!" solemn the words, spoken solemnly by paul; they wrought an awe in krishna hearing them. the sense indeed was half not understood; yet not the less, almost it seemed the more, they touched him to the quickest in his soul. paul too was awed and did not further speak, thinking, 'let me beware not to obtrude myself untimely between god and man!' nay, even he would that krishna were alone, to wrestle in that solemn solitude wherein needs must at last the human spirit ever transact the awful mystery of its own reconcilement with its god. yet paul so wishing still would not withdraw, he might inhospitable seem or seem too conscious of his fellow's inward strife; he prayed in silence with unutterable strong yearning of desire quickened with hope: 'let krishna win the victory of defeat!' the indian soon with gesture of farewell unspoken, which meant thanks and courtesy habitual, but meant also not habitual appeal for sympathy in felt helplessness, as who should say, 'pray, pray for me,' retired. 'impossible!' so he murmured to himself; 'i would have paid a hundred million years of pain and patience and unceasing toil to buy escape from being and misery. now to accept deliverance as a gift, acknowledging that i cannot purchase it- i sicken within me at the very thought! deliverance not from being but misery- if _that_ could be! fulness of life, not death! aye, that were better--were it possible! i do not wish to cease from consciousness if consciousness can be, apart from woe. o thou who must be, thou whom since i heard thy name i cannot doubt more than i doubt myself, thou, god, is this thy word indeed, that i am lost in sin as not believing on that man jesus for mine only lord? is he thy son? shall i trust all to him? all, all, as if i were a little child? 'what is it in my heart that answers, yea? is it thou, o holy spirit? if it be thou, and none other and naught else than thou then certify thyself, give me a sign! ah, but i know, i know. o heart within, thou wilt not cheat thyself thus! thou and i, we know full well when god speaks it is he, he and none other. other none than thou, paul's god, and mine, and mine, and mine, o yea, who but my god could speak thus closely to me? o buddha, buddha, trusted long in vain! in whom i took my refuge once, behold, my house of refuge then supposed in thee is melted into ruin round about me. i am a naked soul, unhoused, disclad; o god, receive me, lo, i come to thee; forgive my sin that i have not believed earlier in christ thy son, whom now i take to be my lord henceforth. i trust to him to save me and i cannot save myself. but he, he can and will, thanks to his name; thanks to thy name, lord jesus, i am thine, and thou art mine, my savior as my lord! 'where is my pride, which was so dear to me, my pride, and my vain confidence of strength? gone, yea, and my desire even gone to be myself my own redeemer and not owe redemption as a debt of gratitude to any; sense of debt is sweet to me now, and my heart is meekly glad to know that i henceforth am not my own, but his who died to save me from myself and sin. nirvâna, which i erst befooled myself to deem desirable, what dreary doom were it! instead of life, and love, and joy, true peace, and ever-springing gratitude growing greater every moment, like a stream increasing every moment to the sea with fresh floods from fresh tributaries poured- instead of this, blank death and nothingness! end unattainable, i now can see, even were it good. to lose this power to think and suffer and enjoy, to quench in night utter, unending, reason's starry lamp, and hope's, and memory's, and be naught at all! i shudder backward from the crumbling brink of such annihilation of myself imagined only, and i eager spring endeavoring upward toward that different good assured to me and native now i know, the prospect of eternal life with joy.' so krishna mused, was grateful, and aspired, rescued from the abyss to hope of heaven. but the new life of love within his heart, of love and love's delicious gratitude, swelled with sweet pain to unappeasable desire of vent and overflow in word or deed to testify itself abroad. when, the next day, the daily trysting-time drew them that loved the lord together for prayer, the indian, who by fellow instinct now divined the secret of those gatherings, came and sought to be admitted of the band. they welcomed him with hospitable joy, which borrowed tears from sorrow to express itself in silence when he spoke and said: "o friends, receive me, for i am of you, redeemed by your redeemer, christ the lord. i love him, and i know it is because he first loved me and taught me how to love. this love that wells in me and overflows my being thus, it is not mine i know, but his, or only as he makes it, mine. i love you all in him, and feel that ye in him likewise love me. he has unlocked the gates of speech; he makes the dumb to speak. and now i pray you tell me, is there not some thing ye know, some little thing perhaps, for i am meek and lowly like a child and i do not aspire to things above my measure, which indeed i know is small, some little simple thing that i can do for jesus, just because he wishes it and for no other reason in the world than only that, to testify to him in act and testify to all that see how much i love him, and how much desire to be henceforth his servant all in all? i should be glad to do this if i might with no delay at all, i am in haste. i know from all that i have learned through you and from the lovely feeling in my heart, this eager impulse to make haste and be the perfect image of your lord and mine- i know thus that there is an endless joy before me of obedience to his will in beautiful behavior like his own and all conformity to what is fair whether in temper, thought, wish, word, or deed, or whatsoever else is life or being- a boundless possibility of bliss awaiting and inviting me--whereto all hail and welcome, be my footsteps fleet to run forever up this shining way!- yet am i not contented till i hear whether there be not bidden some thing besides of gracious privilege from christ to those who love him as i love him, which such may, in the first freshness of new birth, at once do for an ease and comfort to their love." wonder with gladness filled all hearts that heard, when krishna, he of words so slow and few, flowed like a river thus from frost unbound. and paul said: "'be baptized,' lord jesus taught first privilege of obedience to his will in outward visible act offered to those who have before invisibly obeyed him inwardly and taken him for lord. thou therefore, brother, if thou wilt, shalt be forthwith baptized according to his word. buried with him by baptism into death thou wilt be, that as christ was from the dead raised by the glory of the father so thou also mayst henceforth forever walk in a new life." within the spacious halls of publius there was found a laver large which, by the master of the mansion put at paul's command, with water pure was filled; and therein krishna was straightway baptized. but not by paul's hands. "for christ sent me forth," he said, "not to baptize but to proclaim the gospel of obedience to mankind." so aristarchus, for that office named by paul, baptized the indian. he went down joyous into that liquid grave with christ to rise with him in resurrection thence. "because thou art disciple now become," to krishna speaking, aristarchus said, "and because christ hath so commanded us, lo, i baptize thee thus into the name, the one name, of the father, of the son, and of the holy ghost. amen!" "amen!" said krishna, issuing from his watery tomb as one new-born like lazarus from the dead. "if thou, then," paul said, taking krishna's hand for welcome, "if thou be indeed with christ risen from the dead, i charge thee seek those things which are above where christ ascended sits on the right hand of god the father throned. endeavor upward toward what heavenly is, not suffer thine affection here to cling; we must not grovel where we ought to climb. reckon that when christ died thou diedst with him, and that thy life is hid with christ in god. when christ our life shall manifested be, then manifested thou shalt be with him in glory. "for this life we live on earth is as the insect's life in chrysalis. the creature shut in chrysalis awaits the promise of the sun's approach in spring; the sun is his true life, and when the sun returns rejoicing hither from the south, then cracks the chrysalis that bound him in, and, blossoming out in wings, he disimprisoned springs a new creature forth, and sails abroad in beauty on the bosom of the air- a living parable of that which we shall undergo of glorious change when christ, our sun, at his return revisits us. haste, then, to put to death those things in thee, pride, unbelief, self-will, vain trust in self, excess of self-regard, whatever else belongs to this thine earthly state of being and cannot overlive into the life of glory to be thine forever in heaven- all these things put to death, and nourish rather faith, hope, love, joy, upward desire and pure, the spirit of forgetfulness of self- self-will become obedience unto god, presumption changed to sweet humility, thanksgiving like a fountain from the heart springing, with a delicious tremble deep reflected to the center of the soul, in eager exultation up to god: these and like things are of the heavenly mind; cherish them thou with heedful husbandry. so shalt thou grow full-summed those buoyant wings which, when christ comes again, shall bear thee up to meet him in the air and soar with him immeasurable heights above all height into the heaven of heavens to be with god forever and forever safe in bliss. "dost thou ask, how do this? i answer thee, be thy whole life obedience to his will who lived and died and lives forevermore to save thee ransomed by his blood from sin. yea, whatsoever thou henceforth shalt do, whether in thought or word or deed, do all not from thyself, nor for thyself, but all as living in the person and the name, as living therein only, of the lord jesus, to god the father giving thanks by him. "and now to him that loved us, him that washed us from our sins in his own blood, and made us kings and priests to god his father- to him dominion be, and glory, given for ever and for evermore! amen!" krishna soon after came to paul and said: "the sense of resurrection power i feel within me working to sustain my will in striving upward as thou bidst toward god i take it as a warrant and a proof that christ lives and exerts it from above. i need no longer any testimony other than what i have within myself, that he rose from the dead to die no more. this new life that is mine i draw from him; it is because he lives i thus can live; yet gladly would i hear from mary's lips (not now with curious ear, and unbelief) her story of the rising of the lord. i wake not seldom in the depths of night, a kind of leaven of light breaks through my sleep, as if the glory of the lord around me made untimely morning for mine eyes. better, i trow, than our good publius, i shall peruse the daily prophecies of weather in the midnight wind and sky. so he consents and i beforehand am with him in waking, as i trust to be, let me bring tidings when my vigils next discern the promise of a smiling dawn tempered to vernal warmth. we then can meet, as late the hint was, ere the rising sun, to hear from mary, while the morning breaks and the fresh splendors of new-wakened day lighten the world, how jesus over death triumphed, and spoiled the princedom of the grave." "so it shall be, my krishna," paul said, glad at heart that such desire, so purified with faith, and joy, and sense of partnership in all things by the lord of life bestowed, possessed the indian. and the days went by. book xx. euthanasy. ruth and mary magdalené waking very early talk with one another having not yet risen, and mary discloses a placid premonition that she has of her own imminent death. they thus engaged, a signal sound from without is heard in notes from stephen on his pipe. the summons is for the meeting proposed to hear mary's story of the resurrection. the company repair to a hilltop of easy access and goodly prospect, where after a matin prayer from paul mary tells her story. she has scarcely ended, when she gently sinks in death. paul on occasion of this speaks comfortingly, not without tears of personal sorrow for mary's loss, of the resurrection awaiting the dead in christ. meantime simon the sorcerer having observed from a distance the meeting of the christians puts his own sinister interpretation on what occurred, which, so interpreted, he reports, to paul's disadvantage, to felix and drusilla, with suggestion of use that may be made of it in evidence against the apostle at rome. at sunset of the same day the christians gather to the burial of mary on the spot where she died, and paul describes the promised return of jesus to accomplish the triumphant rapture and resurrection of the saints. euthanasy. the stars that with the setting of the sun rose in the east had climbed the highest heaven and from their top of culmination now with steadfast gaze were looking steeply down through spaces pure, or lucid depths of sky pure as pure spaces, blanched to perfect blue, when mary, waking, softly spoke to ruth. they in one chamber lodged, and were so nigh each other in their couches side by side (with rachel also in close neighborhood) that they could trust themselves to mutual speech if need were in the night or if the wish prompted, nor hazard to disturb the rest wherein eunicé, nigh them both bestowed, lay locked securely in those faster bonds which bind the young and innocent asleep. "ruth," mary said, so softly that the sound was like a pulse of silence, "art asleep?" "nay, all awake to hear what thou wouldst say," ruth answered, in a murmur soft as hers. she had slept, but she instantly awoke when mary scarcely more than thought her name. this was the wont between them; for ruth knew that her kinswoman mary bore her life but as a dewdrop trembling on a leaf that any little waft of wind may scatter; and so she held herself even when she slept still in a kind of vigil not to miss a breath from mary that might call for her. "thou wilt not sorrow should i leave thee soon," said mary, with the tone of one who soothed far rather than of one who soothed would be. "i have a premonition that the end to me of things upon the earth is nigh. thou knowest how frail the hold whereby i hold to life here and how ready i am to go hence whensoever he shall call my name, as once he called it i remember well, so call it yet again, bidding me come. i have wavered between this and that in thought; now thinking: 'he will surely hither soon return, so as we saw him forty days after his resurrection wrapt in cloud ascending from the mount in galilee- return, and take us all unto himself;' but then again i think: 'perhaps for me he will anticipate that destined hour and call me on a sudden thither hence.' let not mine ear be heavy if he call! "o ruth, i think i have within my heart foretokening sent that he will call to-day; a fluttering in my blood admonishes me. i should be thankful if i might once more ere going bear some witness to his name! for krishna's sake, too; ever a soul sincere he seemed to me, but he would listen now with other ear, eager to drink the truth." "yea, and that may be," ruth said, "not once more but often if the will of god be so. god grant it! for indeed i could but grieve to lose thee from my side; grieve, though i saw heaven open to receive thee, as to stephen, my stephen, it opened--with the glory of god full shown him in the face of christ the lord! "yet so the weather promises this night the morning will, i think, be heavenly fair and mild, and haply thou indeed shalt greet full soon thy wished-for chance of testimony. thou wilt remember we were all to meet on such a morning as this sure will be and hear thee tell thy story of the lord's victorious resurrection from the dead just then when day is glorying over night." those women with each other communing so, the morning hastened, and--now nigh to break full splendor but with brilliance soft and chaste over the welcoming world both land and sea- mary and ruth, with rachel at the sign awakening and eunicé fresh as dawn, heard from without a matin signal sound blown with the breath of stephen on his reed- token of tryst by all well understood, while secretly entrusted with a thrill to one heart that the others knew not of. the indian joyful to his host had said: "i shall forestall thee, o my publius, i know it by my heart within me wise, in hailing the selectest dawn to break, and fittest, for our meeting on the shore to hear from hebrew mary what she yet reserves to tell us of her rising lord: so, if thou please, i will myself betimes awake thee when the hour i wait for comes." publius thus roused, he in his turn awaked stephen, who rallied with his pipe the rest; but paul, with stephen in one chamber sleeping woke, as his nephew woke, when publius called. the new wine of the vernal weather filled the golden cup of morning to the brim, and those blithe wakers drank deep draughts of it; but other morning bathed their souls with light. they to a hill of gentle rise repaired that sloped its eastern side into the main thence rippling up in spiral terraces by playful nature round about it wound: here goodly prospect over sea and shore, from a well-sheltered seat, invited them. before they sat, paul stretched his hands toward heaven and prayed: "thou who didst out of darkness make light dawn on chaos, and who day by day dost kindle morning from the shades of night, thanks to thy name for this fair spring of dawn! dawn thou into our hearts, and dayspring there make with the shining of thy face on us shown milder in the face of christ thy son!"- then, to his fellows turning, added this: "we owe it to krishna that we thus are here; his wishes waked him, and, as was agreed, he waked us that we might prevent the morn to celebrate the rising of the lord. krishna knew not, what yet by happy chance has now befallen, if aught befall by chance, that we, upon the first day of the week meeting, meet on the day when christ arose, the lord's day, day peculiarly his own. we listen, mary, tell us of that morn." then mary, her fair face like morning, white with pureness not with pallor, spoke and said: "it was not hope, nor faith--both faith and hope had died within us when our master died- not hope, not faith, but love, and memory, and sorrow, and desire to testify our sense of everlasting debt to him, that, early in the morning of the day third following the day wherein he suffered, brought me--with mary, james's mother, joined- likewise salomé, to the garden where they had laid him in a rock-hewn sepulcher. we took sweet spices to embalm the flesh which late for robe the lord of life had worn. we wondered as we went, 'but who will roll the great stone back for us that closes up the doorway to the tomb?' yet went we on, to find the stone already rolled away; for there had been a mighty earthquake throe, and a descended angel of the lord with easy strength in his celestial grace had rolled away the stone, and on it sat. his aspect was like lightning, and snow-white his dazzling vesture shone. the keepers shook, the keepers that the jewish rulers set to watch the grave--these for sheer terror shook and sank into a helpless swoon like death. but unto us that awful angel said: "ye, fear not; for i know ye come to seek jesus the crucified; he is not here, for he is risen according to his word. come, see the empty place where the lord lay." "i heard and saw with a bewildered wit; and though i afterward remembered all, i did not at the moment understand well anything save that the sepulcher was empty of the body of the lord. this i told the disciples, sorrowing: i ran to tell them, and they, running, came to find it so as i had made report. those went away, perplexed and sad at heart: but as for me, i lingered by the tomb and wept; i could have wept my heart away. i thought: 'and so i may not even anoint- there would be comfort, something like a sense of healing to that holy wounded flesh, if i might salve those dead wounds with sweet spice- i may not even anoint his body dead! they have taken it away, i know not whither. alas, alas, and woe is me!' my tears were falling like a shower of rain the while, but i stooped weeping, and with veiled eyes looked into the open sepulcher and saw two angels sitting there, vested in white, one at the head, the other at the feet, where late the body of the lord had lain. "it was a heavenly spectacle to see, those shining-vested angels sitting there with posture so composed and face serene! yet would i rather then have seen the lord, or seen his body wounded from the cross; but if those angels knew that this was so, their blame of me was very gently spoken: 'woman, why weepest thou?' i sobbed reply: 'because they have taken away my lord, and where they have laid him i know not.' "with that i turned me back, i think i should have gone away, but i saw one i knew not, standing there, who also spake, 'woman, why weepest thou?' distraught i took him for the gardener, and half i did not see him for my tears, and i made answer from my eager thought: 'o, sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him and i will take him thence away.' then jesus, for it jesus was, uttered one word, no more; 'mary!' he said. i turned toward him, but all i said was this: 'rabboni!' for it was a hebrew word sprang quickest to my lips; 'master' it means--" this with a glance toward krishna mary said. the indian dropped his eyes as with a kind of sudden conscious shame confusing him to feel her eyes that instant meet his own and know his own were charged with other look than ever woman drew from him before. in her unconscious pure serenity, mary--her momentary glance toward one, in equal gaze on all together sheathed- went on, no pause, yet with some air of muse tingeing her reminiscence as she said: "perhaps i had an impulse which the lord saw, to assure myself with touch of hand or even to cling to him, i hardly know; 'nay,' he said tenderly, 'i am not yet,' said he, 'ascended to the father; thou, go to my brethren and tell them that i ascend unto my father and your father and my god and your god.' and this i did. "o, the deep joy, the deep and solemn joy, of knowing that the lord was risen indeed! and the solemnity was almost more than even the joy; we trembled and rejoiced. he was so awful in his majesty after his rising from the dead! yea, sweet was he, beyond all language to express; but sweetness was with awfulness in him so qualified, the sweetness could not be enough to overcome the awfulness; gazing on him we trembled and rejoiced. "he forty days appeared and disappeared by turns before us, passing through shut doors unhindered, yet sometimes partaking food- a paradox of spirit or of flesh, the resurrection body of the lord! ensample of our bodies that shall be, and witness of the wondrous wisdom god's, and power to work the counsels of his will by many secret potencies of things, who spirit of matter could capacious make, as matter make to spirit permeable! "those forty days in which he showed himself after such fashion to his chosen few nigh ended, we withdrew to galilee where he appointed he would meet his own- more than five hundred we were mustered there upon a mountain top that well we knew. here he was glorious in majesty, the son of god become from son of man; hushed to obedient awe, we heard him speak. he said: 'lo, all authority is given to me, whether in heaven or on the earth. forth, therefore, ye, among all nations go, making disciples and baptizing them into the name, the one name, of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost; teaching them to observe all things that i commanded you, neglecting naught of all: behold, i am with you ever to the end.' "thence to jerusalem and bethany. here from a chosen spot on olivet jesus, his hands uplifted as he blessed us, rose heavenward, but he blessed us still in rising, until a cloud enwrapt him from our sight." the upward look of mary saying this, her fixéd, eager, upward-yearning look, failed, and her face grew white as if the blood were shamed to stain that heavenly purity. all saw the change she suffered, and were awed. mary's voice faltered, but she brokenly went on in utterance such as if she spoke out of another world just reached from this: "that cloud--i seem to see it now again- or something swims between to dim my sight. those angels said that he would yet return so as we saw him then ascend to heaven- is he now come? i hear as if a voice, his, his, the same that in the garden spake to me calling my name, 'mary!' it says now, 'hither, mary!' yea, lord jesus, i know thee, and come. at last! at last! farewell!" mary such words uttered with failing breath, her eyes withdrawn from vision of things here. her body--which in gentle rest reclined on her kinswoman ruth supporting her when her strength failed--she left, winging her way hence, as the lark soars from his groundling nest into the morning sky to meet the sun. with a communicated quietude of spirit--which into their gesture passed making it seem habitual, no surprise, scarce sorrow, hinted, perturbation none, but reverence and love ineffable- not speaking, ruth and rachel decently composed the body to a look of rest in sleep on the sweet earth, the stainless sky bending in benediction over her and the bright sun just risen touching the face to an auroral beauty with his beams. "she has gone hence," paul said, "to be with christ, which is far better. see the peace expressed in the unmoving hands on the stilled heart, the form relapsed oblivious on the ground, and the face fixed in transport of repose! surpassing beauty! but corruptible; faint image of the beauty which shall be when this seed planted springs in heavenly bloom and mortal takes on immortality! think when we sow this beauty in the dust, that which we sow is earthly though so fair; but that will be celestial which shall hence in the bright resurrection season spring. "ye know that when the husbandman entrusts his seed-grain to the soil he does not sow that body which shall be, but kernels bare to which god gives a body as he will; from the wheat sown there springs a blade of green unlike the wheat and far more beautiful. so is the resurrection that awaits mary, our sister; this corruptible will put on incorruption in that day, and christ will fashion it anew more fair, after the body of his glory changed! "ye do not ask, but some have doubting asked, 'how are the dead raised up, and in what form of body do they come?' not surely such as they within the tomb were laid away. there sleeps a natural body in the dust; there wakes a spiritual body purified from every imperfection of the flesh. whatever glorious beauty here was worn is worn a changed more glorious beauty there. "his proper glory to the sun belongs, and the moon has her glory, and the stars each in his own peculiar glory shines: the body of the resurrection so has its enduements proper to itself, capacities, adjustments, attributes, other than we know here--though shadowed forth obscurely in the body that the lord after his resurrection wore--such high transfigurations of the faculties belonging to the body of this flesh as man's imagination cannot dream! "o clay, that late seemed mary!"--and therewith the tears that would not longer be stayed back burst from paul's eyes and fell a sunlit shower, while all the rest beholding wept with paul- "form, for her sake, our well-belovéd, dear, must we then leave thee in the dust of earth? but not as thus we leave thee wilt thou rise! thou in corruption wilt lie waiting here, but thou shalt rise, to incorruption changed; thou wilt sleep darkling underneath the clod, but thence in glory shalt thou waking burst; in weakness buried, thou shalt rise in power. mary the image of the earthy bore, she shall the image of the heavenly bear: comfort yourselves, belovéd, with such hope." paul these triumphal words of prophecy uttered with streaming tears that testified the sorrow in him at the heart of joy; and they all wept with paul, in fellowship of pathos at sweet strife with glorying hope. a little leave for silent tears, and paul said: "bide ye here until the evenfall, or some of you by turns as need of rest, of food, of change, allows the privilege of watching by this sacred dust asleep. i will meantime desire from publius permission to prepare her resting-place for mary here upon the selfsame spot that she has hallowed for us by dying here; and we at set of sun will bury her." now publius had, with sergius paulus too, and krishna--those, and the centurion- silently, in that silent time of tears, retired; they with one instinct felt that here were love and grief that needed privacy from witness even of moistened eyes like theirs. but krishna went apart from all, and bowed himself together motionless and wept. while those sat weeping, and these last withdrew refraining not the sympathetic tear, a different scene passed elsewhere in the isle. simon, the sorcerer, sought and found access to felix and drusilla and said to them: "i roused this night an hour before the dawn, my sleep disturbed with signs in dreams of you. some secret prescience urged me out of doors, and i went wandering forth with no clear thought whither, but felt my footsteps onward drawn, until i gained an overlooking height of hill, whence, ranging round me with mine eyes, i saw a dozen people more or less, women as seemed with men, a motley train, walking thus early, why i could not guess; they tended toward a hillock neighboring mine. i, heeding to be hid from them the while, crept up as near them as i safely could. paul was among them, chief, though not the guide as guide our worthy friend sir publius served. that sergius paulus, with his indian friend, krishna they call him, the centurion too, were of the company; as for the rest, count up the tale of paul's companionship, they were all there. "after these reached the point where they made pause, the first thing that befell was paul in menace lifting up those hands of his and therewith muttering magic words. i could not hear them, but the tone i knew, as too i knew that gesture of the hands. i thought of how he conjured with his spell of uncouth baleful words at cæsarea! paul got all seated; but one sat apart, the destined victim of his wicked wiles, a woman she, that mary magdalené, like an accused impaled to make defence. paul seemed to say to her, 'speak, if thou wilt,' whereon the woman with a pleading voice, but hopeless, breaking into moan at last, made her apology--of course in vain. the spell that paul had cast upon her wrought, and she sank lifeless at his feet. so once a spell from peter at jerusalem with ananias and sapphira wrought killing them out of hand." "but wherefore this?" drusilla doubted. "also wherefore that?" "real reason, or pretended, wilt thou have?" said simon with his air of oracle. "both," said drusilla shortly, answering him. "well, the pretended reason," simon said, "to peter, was hot zeal for righteousness. seems ananias and sapphira lied; a venial lie, they set a little short the price they had received for certain lands or other property sold by them late in the behoof of peter and his crew. peter would none of that; the revenues to be extorted from his dupes would shrink with such prevarications once in vogue: there hast thou the real reason for his crime. "as for this last case, paul's, i can but guess what his pretended reason was. indeed perhaps pretended reason there was none. it may be he preferred to have it seem, to all except his special followers, a case of sudden death from natural cause. or again, likelier, he alleged some crime against her, sacrilege or blasphemy, secret, thence lacking proof but capable of being proved upon her by his art. he would pronounce a spell of magic power, then let her talk and try to clear herself: meanwhile, if she were guilty as he thought, the spell would work and punish her with death, but remain harmless were she innocent. guesses, but plausible; still it would be sufficiently like paul if he devised a blank mere demonstration for the sake of those outside spectators of the scene, simply in order to impress on them his power in magic, and win their applause. it would at the same time inspire with awe those dupes of his, and faster bind their bonds. yet a particular reason intermixed doubtless with general motives for his crime; some insubordination, it may be, on mary magdalené's part toward him, had stung him to inflict this punishment." "what of it all?" drusilla coldly said. "nothing," said simon; "just a pretty tale! only i thought it might perhaps subserve lady drusilla's purpose yonder at rome, to have a crime convenient to her hand, a fresh crime, and a flagrant, she could charge to paul's account to make more sure his doom." 'why, aye,' drusilla thought, 'one that involves sergius paulus, renegade, and that too complaisant centurion, the whole crew indeed present to be spectators there and not protesting, hence accomplices all of a crime they might have stayed in act. as to the matter of a sudden death with circumstance attending such and such, surplus of testimony was to hand for that; as to the matter of the means employed, magic--simon magician was, and he, as expert witness, should suffice. if any question as to _him_ arose, drusilla should be equal to the need; _i_ would vouch for him to the emperor. nothing would please me better than to try on him the virtue of my sponsorship!' so the proud woman swiftly in mute muse slid to the goal she wished. nay, scarce a pause seeming to have occurred before she spoke, already had her formless thought forecast the triumphs over nero she would win with her voluptuous beauty wielded so as she could wield it through her equal wit, when she to simon answered absently: "true, worthy simon; something such might chance; be ready to make good at need thy part." this as dismissal; and the sorcerer went. felix had moody sat with never a word. and now the cloudless splendor of the day was softly toward a cloudless sunset waned, when round an open grave upon that hill were gathered those who mourned for mary dead; publius was there, and julius, with the rest. they with all reverence lifted the fair form, wrapped round about with linen clean and white, and laid it like a seed within the ground; they spread it with a coverlet of soil which falling through the farewell sunset beams seemed leavened to lie more lightly on the dead: the earth with such a treasure in her breast was sweeter, and they almost yearned toward it. yet upward rather soon they turn their eyes as once those upward gazed in galilee seeing their lord ascend in cloud to heaven- while thus paul, he too thither looking, said: "concerning her who sleeps here, think aright; for we must sorrow not as others do who have no hope. we have a hope. our hope is, that if jesus died and rose again, even so them likewise who in jesus sleep will god bring with him. yea, i say to you by the command and promise of the lord if we survive to see the lord return we shall not so forestall our sleeping friend in springing toward him as he hither comes. for with a shout the lord himself from heaven will hither come descending with the voice of the archangel and the trump of god. first shall those dead in christ arise, and then we, if we linger living till he come, (transfigured in the twinkling of an eye when the trump sounded to our heavenly guise) will be with them together in the clouds caught up in instant rapture from the earth to meet the lord descended in the air: so shall we be forever with the lord. with these things comfort ye yourselves, and each comfort the other. "and all comfort me!" paul added, with a breaking voice, and tears; but quick he rallied for those others' sake and his victorious tone recovered quite, looking down, like a warrior on a foe trampled into the dust beneath his feet- so looking down upon that vanquished grave, paul almost chanted in heroic rhythm this lyric exultation calmed to praise: "o death, where is thy sting? thy victory where, o grave? thanks be to god who giveth us, through our lord jesus christ, the victory!" paul indeed craved the touch of human love, to stay him with a healing sense of help, and medicine to sorrow; but in part it was for his companions' own behoof he had desired their fellowship of cheer; he knew well that to comfort was of all ways the way surest to be comforted. book xxi. arrival. the day following, the shipwrecked company embark on a vessel that had wintered at melita and sail for puteoli. the islanders give paul and his companions a grateful farewell of good wishes and of presents for their cheer. with felix and drusilla goes as a fresh addition to their train a phrygian runaway slave whom syrus, a young slave of felix's, has befriended and has devised thus to get safely to rome. stephen is made confidant of this plan, and becoming interested in the runaway introduces him to paul. the foot journey from puteoli to rome is accomplished, the approach to that city being made along the appian way. various reflections are inspired in paul by this experience and by the sight of the metropolis itself. at rome, the phrygian runaway slave goes to paul's quarters, merged in the daily concourse that throngs thither to hear the gospel. having been converted, he is encouraged by paul to return to his master. this he finally does, carrying with him a letter from paul. the result is, that the slave at the wish of the master comes joyfully back to rome and devotes himself to the loving service of paul. arrival. a trireme that had wintered in the isle- by stress of weather hindered in her way from egypt to the shores of italy- refitted now was ready to pursue her destined voyage to puteoli. the master's thought had been to put to sea that selfsame day whose beamy morn beheld the meeting on the hill in melita; but the centurion intervened to bid delay the sailing yet another day: his mind was with his prisoners to embark himself on that egyptian ship for rome; and, partly out of kindly complaisance toward paul, and partly from a sympathy unconscious, or ashamed and unconfessed of interest in the tale that mary told, he would not let the purposes he knew engaged the christians for that morn be crossed. the morrow morn full early they put forth on a smooth sea beneath a smiling sky. a concourse of the grateful islanders flowed to the quay with signals of farewell and blessing and with honors manifold lavished on paul and for paul's sake on them that with him sailed; nor only eager words brought they and tears of reverence and of love, but bounty in unbounded store of all things needful to sustain those travellers' cheer. so, sail and oar, they steered for syracuse; there for three days they tarried, and thence north warping their way in variance with the wind touched rhegium where another day they bide. then, the south blowing, they once more set sail and the next day attained puteoli. of those who sailed on that good ship for rome were felix and drusilla with their train; and their train was, by one addition, more than when the shipwreck cast them on the isle. this was a slave, a phrygian runaway, out of colossæ strayed to melita but in his wish and purpose aimed for rome: he should be safely lost in multitude drowned in the depths of that metropolis. the shifty syrus, fond of his device, and not without true kindness in his heart, meeting the fugitive had befriended him. onesimus--such name the bondman bore- he wisely warned that, wandering unattached and destitute (for spent long since was all he had in starting from his lord purloined), he advertised himself for what he was, a vagrant slave, and ran a needless risk. "attach thyself," said syrus, "to the train of my lord felix; i will manage it he shall receive thee; he delights in pomp and show as does drusilla too his spouse, and they would gladly swell their retinue with one head more to make them great at rome. this gets thee thither whither thou wouldst go; once there, thou quittest at thine own good will thy dear adoptive master's service--no exchanges of farewells betwixt you twain- and hast thy freedom, safe of course from him, lord felix, who will have no claim on thee, and well removed from fear of thine own lord." he added in pathetic humor half: "remember syrus when thou art thine own and hast perhaps some small peculium gained, and in turn help who freely now helps thee." onesimus, so doing as syrus planned his part, was reckoned of lord felix slave, and on that vessel sailed with him to rome. now that which syrus had, on stephen's behalf and on eunicé's, done and dared, the day that felix in his lust threatened to them in his own house in melita such harm- this, stephen in time had come to know; nor ceased thenceforth to wish that he might recompense in some kind to the bondman his good will. his grateful wish stephen had signified to syrus, which emboldened him in turn to make the hebrew youth a confidant of his devices for onesimus. thus stephen with onesimus had talked; not often, for need was that all should be transacted as in secret to avoid felix's, more, drusilla's, jealous watch- not often but so many times as served to yield some true impression to the youth of what the slave was in his manhood's worth, and to inflame a generous desire of rescue for him to a nobler life. stephen spoke of onesimus to paul, and paul on shipboard came to speech with him. the runaway's heart was wholly won to paul; and ere those parted at puteoli onesimus had gladly promised stephen to seek his uncle out, arrived in rome. a sequel thence redounded to the slave of boundless blessing he had dreamed not of; likewise of good to men in every age wherever might be found fit soul to be ennobled to the touch of noble thought, in answerable style with nobleness conveyed, and purified fine feeling, borne to perfect heavenly-mindedness yet sweet and tender with a pulsing human love. for felix and drusilla, disembarked, no welcome waited and no warm godspeed; they went their romeward way in lonely state, the showiest that in their impoverished plight they could make shift to invest themselves withal. but paul with his companions, good heart's cheer met at puteoli; a brotherhood of lovers greeted them and bade them bide seven days for rest and for refreshment there: the kindly julius suffered this to them for paul's sake easily, seeing to paul he owed his own life snatched from those shipwrecking waves. a week of opportunity it was to paul for service of his fellow-men; for he most rested when he labored most, unhindered, with the joy of harvest his, winning men to the obedience of his lord. fed with a full refection of such toil and gladdened with the cordial dearest to him, comfort of love from mutual human hearts, the prisoner apostle, those seven days ended, was ready to move on toward rome. dusty and weary footing many a mile to him and to his fellow-prisoners, as to those willing sharers of his lot, lay stretched before them on the roman road. eastward a stage by the campanian way to capua--city famous then as since for lulling in her too luxurious lap to loss of manhood in enervate sloth those warriors who, with the great hannibal for leader, late had spurned the barrier alps, thence, like a loosened avalanche, had fallen on italy--and might have taken rome! a different conqueror now in captive's chains was marching on that world-metropolis: no battle of the warrior would he wage, with confused noise and garments rolled in blood; yet wrested from the cæsars rome should be and from the empire of her gods no gods! from capua northwestward breaking sharp, the way, now appian from campanian, led over the stream vulturnus; then across savo to sinuessa by the sea; onward thence, climbing the falernian hills vine-clad, until the massic, last of these, descended on their northward-sliding slope, shut off behind the wayfarers their view of the bright summit of vesuvius (his fiery heart uneasily asleep) and the blue circlet of the lucrine lake. like a stream flooded level with its banks, the appian way was filled from side to side with travel flowing double to and fro. now centuries of soldiers, foot or horse, clanged iron hoof or heel with rhythmic beat along the bedded rock that paved their way; now pomps of embassy in various garb, returning from their suits at cæsar's feet or thither tending vexed with hope or fear; then some gay reveller to baiæ bound, behind his foaming steeds urged ever on, dashed in his biga down the crowded road and recked not what might meet his whirling wheels; next, moving slowly in more solemn state- outriders either hand and nigh before- the chariot of some rich patrician rolled who sought the spring of southern italy: huge wains there were, that creaked along the way laden with beasts from afric or from ind, lions and tigers, and hyenas dire; these--destined to dye red, perhaps with blood of human ravin, the arena sands of mighty amphitheaters, a feast of foul and fell delight to avid eyes of roman lords and ladies gathered there with scum and dross plebeian to behold- now winked and glared behind their prison-bars or frothed and fretted out their fierce disdain. luxurious litters borne of sinewy slaves- who softly eased them, bending as they went with well-timed flexure and compliant gait their supple knees in perfect unison- were thickly sown between, with ladies fair reposing in them sunk in silk and down, or senators of rome effeminate; besides, were foot-wayfarers, motley groups or single, messengers that hasted post, slaves trusted by their masters to convey letters of import out of lands remote to rome or out of rome abroad; with those, idlers and loiterers sauntering without aim, vomit from rome or current thither sucked, freemen, but of the dregs of populace and shameless feeders at the public crib. beholding all this various spectacle of life lived wholly without god, and vain, paul sighed in spirit and thought: 'the world, the world! how vast and dreadful, overshadowing all! how strong and dreadful, dominating all! kingdom and usurpation in the earth! what power shall overthrow thee, so enthroned as thou art at the center of all things in rome, and wielding, thou unshaken there, thence wielding all the shaken universe implement in thy hand to wreak thy will? appalling! yea, yet am i not appalled. "be of good cheer," said jesus, then when he seemed to be sinking vanquished by the world, even then, "be of good cheer," said he, "lo, i have overcome the world." o, hollow show and mockery of power browbeating me! browbeaten am i not, though in myself nothing, nay, less than nothing, vanity. there is one in me who is mightier far than is that mighty who is in the world. not carnal are the weapons of my war; but potent through my god they yet shall prove unto the pulling down of all strong holds, and false imaginations of the minds of men, with every overweening high thing that exalts itself against the lord! 'but, o, the streams of men that blinded go, one secular procession perishing, endlessly on and on, from age to age, in every race and clime--that blinded go in sadness or with madcap songs of mirth frightfully toward the brink and precipice beetling sheer over the abyss profound of hopeless utter last despair and death- for whom christ died! shall he have died in vain? forbid it god! was it not promised him that he should of the travail of his soul see and be satisfied? my soul with his travails in infinite desire to save; give thou me children in my bonds at rome! o god, my god, hear me herein i pray!' enlarged in heart with such desire and prayer and lifted high in hope of what would be, paul walked as one with feet above the ground unconsciously buoyed up to tread the air. but god had further cheer in store for him. at appii forum and the taverns three, two several stations on the appian way, there met him out of rome two companies of brethren who, while he abode those days guest at puteoli, had heard of him as romeward faring, and had come thus far to bring him greeting and good cheer. they vied with one another, those two companies, in joyful rivalry of love to see which should speed faster farther forth, and come first with their plight of loyalty to paul. divided thus, their welcome doubled was in worth and in effect to him who now thanked god and took fresh heart. so on to rome. the city, from the summit of a hill surmounted, of the alban range, hill hung with villas and with villages, was seen, a huge agglomerate of building heaved above the level campagna, circuit wide by the blue sabine mountains bounded north with lone soracte in etruria shown- streets of bright suburbs, gardens, aqueducts confused about the walls on every side. between long rows of stately sepulchers illustrious with memorial names inscribed, the scipios, the metelli, many more- each name a magic spell to summon up the image of the greatness of the rome that had been--ranged along the appian way, slowly they passed, paul with his train, unmarked. through throngs of frequence serried ever dense and denser with the confluence of the tides of travel and of traffic intermixed, pedestrian, and equestrian, and what rolled in chariots, splendid equipage, or mean, entering and issuing at the city gate- slowly, thus hindered, on they urged their way. at last they--passing by the capene port under an arch of stone forever dewed and dripping through its grudging pores with ooze as of cold sweat wrung out by agony to bear the great weight of the aqueduct above it--were within the servian wall. on their left hand the aventine, they wound about the coelian by its base; traversed a droop of hollow to the palatine; over the gentle undulation named velia next passing (where, ere many years, the arch of titus would erect its pride to glory over jerusalem destroyed!); hence down the sacred way into the famed forum, where stood that milestone golden called which rayed out roads to all the provinces, and was as if the navel of the world. all round them here great architecture rose, temples, basilicas, long colonnades, triumphal arches, amphitheaters, aqueducts vaulting with colossal spring as if in huge cyclopean sport across from pier to pier of massive masonry; stupendous spectacle! but over all, to paul's eye, one sole legend written large, not rome's majestic history and power, but her abjectness in idolatry; rome's captive pitied her, and would have saved! crowning the summit of the capitoline, the palace of the cæsars wide outspread, a wilderness of building, hung in view. to burrus, the prætorian prefect, here in due course julius gave his prisoners up; but ere he deemed himself acquitted quite of his debt due to paul he gained for him from burrus, a just man, the privilege of living as in free captivity in quarters of his own, at small remove from the prætorium yet in privacy. with paul abode his sister and her son; ruth nigh at hand with her eunicé lodged- protected, for again from these not far the faithful luke and aristarchus dwelt. a season the disciples of the lord in rome supplied to all their frugal needs; but each one had some handicraft or skill which soon found chance and scope to exercise itself to purpose; and with cheerful toil in thankfulness they earned their daily bread. two years long here, as late in cæsarea, paul waited on the wanton whim of power; a prisoner in chains, accused of crime, and even the right of trial still denied. yet, though both night and day, asleep, awake, bound to a ruthless roman soldier arm to arm, he, the great heart, the spacious mind, was not uncomforted, not void of joy: he had at full his fellowship of love, and, better, he could freely preach his lord. besides, whatever soldier guarded him, that soldier, if his heart was capable at all of gentleness for any cause toward any one, was softened toward this man whom he felt ever strangely toward himself as toward one not so happy in his lot considerate, regardful, pitiful; and whom not seldom, with a sweet constraint persuaded or compelled, he listened to telling him of a savior that could save even to the uttermost, therefore also him. as loyal lover of his nation, paul invited to give audience to his cause first his compatriots judged the chief in rome. he told them that, albeit he had appealed to cæsar from his fellow-countrymen, yet had he naught to accuse his nation of. paul's hearers on their part had had, they said, no word against him from jerusalem. they added: "we would hear thee speak thy mind; as for this party of the nazarene, that everywhere we know is spoken against." so they appointed paul a day to speak, and in full frequence to his lodgings came. all the day long from morn to evenfall he held discourse to them, and testified the kingdom come on earth of god, and him, the king, christ jesus; with persuasions drawn from moses and from all the prophets old. divided were his hearers; some elect believed, but others disbelieved. to these paul solemnly denounced the prophecy of sad isaiah to his countrymen that seeing they should see and not perceive; then added: "witness now, i make you know that the salvation sent by god in vain to you turns to the gentiles; they will hear." thenceforward daily, streams of concourse flowed unhindered, bondmen, freemen, to paul's doors, and heard while god's ambassador in chains besought them to be reconciled to god. the million slaves of the metropolis were as a subterranean city rome, substruction to the mighty capital. here undercurrent rumor to and fro from mouth to mouth or haply in dumb sign transmitted--cipher unintelligible save to the dwellers of that underworld- ran swift and secret as by telegraph and everywhither messages conveyed. onesimus thus learned where paul abode, and what a tide set daily toward him there of eager audience for the things he taught: the bondman threw himself upon the tide, and was borne by it whither he would go. hearing good tidings meant for such as he, decree of manumission for the slave, he joyful freeman of the lord became. freeman and bondman both at once was he- free from the hateful service of himself, and bond of love to serve his savior lord. this his new loyalty paul put to proof extreme, proposing to the runaway return to his colossian servitude; paul would test also the obedient faith of the wronged master of the fugitive. when syrus learned this from onesimus, he, wary, with a much-importing shrug of shoulder, warned his friend betimes beware. the young disciple by such whispered fears was somewhat shaken in his faithful mind; he failed a moment from his first good will to do as prompted his new heart and paul. but at the last he was persuaded quite; yet rather by the spectacle itself of that apostle willingly in chains for jesus than by any words he spoke: he fixed to go back to his master. paul gave him a letter for that master, sealed. now paul well knew the master, but of this he wisely to onesimus said naught. philemon was his name; he had by paul been won to be a brother in the lord. "how knowest thou what is in that letter?" so syrus, with honest scruple, asked his friend. "paul is a good man, aye; but good men need money in rome to serve themselves withal. he makes a merit of returning thee haply and in his letter claims reward which thou thyself shalt pay with servitude exacted henceforth heavier than before- besides the stripes and brands for runaways. thou hast thy freedom, keep it, and be wise." onesimus was wise, but he went back; onesimus was wise; yea, and he kept his freedom also, double freedom kept, of spirit as of flesh, though he went back. this was the letter which the bondman bore: paul, prisoner of christ jesus, and with him timotheus the brother, to our friend belovéd and our fellow-laborer, philemon; and to appia the sister; and to our fellow-soldier of the truth, archippus; and to all the church with thee: grace unto you and peace in plenteous store, from god our father and his son our lord! 'i never cease pouring out thanks to god for thee, my brother, in my daily prayers; i hear such tidings of thy faith and love toward our lord jesus and toward all god's own. i pray thy faith may multiply itself richly in others, and of influence prove to spread the knowledge everywhere abroad of all the good in us to work for christ. joy have i and sweet comfort in thy love, because god's people oft have been in heart cheered by thee, brother. so, albeit i might boldly in the authority of christ enjoin upon thee what is seemly, yet for love's sake i beseech thee rather, i, being such as paul the aged, prisoner now of jesus christ--beseech thee for my son whom i have late begotten in my bonds, onesimus; unprofitable once to thee but now to thee and me alike found profitable. i have sent him back- him have sent back, that is, mine own heart sent; i fain myself had kept him with me here to minister to me in thy stead, while i for preaching the glad tidings wear these bonds; but i would nothing do without thy mind in order that thy kindness may not be as of compulsion but of free good will. who knows but in god's grace and wisdom he was parted from thee for a little time that thou mightst have him for thine own forever, as slave no longer, but above a slave, brother belovéd now, greatly to me, but how much more to thee, both in the flesh and in the lord! if then a partner's place i hold in thy regard, receive thou him even as myself. if he have wronged thee aught, or anywise have fallen in debt to thee, put that to mine account.' until these words, paul had let stephen catch with ear alert what issued hastening from his fervid lips, and fix it on the parchment with swift hand. but now himself he seized the pen and wrote as so to make his promise fast and good. 'put that to mine account,' he wrote; 'i, paul, write this with mine own hand; i will repay thee; for i would not say to thee that thou owest to me thy very self besides. yea, brother'--now by stephen's hand once more- let me have joy of thee in christ the lord; comfort thou me in him. i write to thee in fullest faith of thine obedient heed; thou wilt go even beyond my word i know. moreover i have hope to be thy guest erelong; make ready for me; through the prayers of you belovéd all, i trust to come. epaphras, fellow-prisoner of mine in jesus christ, sends greeting to thee; mark likewise, and aristarchus, demas, luke, my fellow-laborers, wish thee health and peace. the grace of our lord jesus christ abide a guestship with your spirit evermore!' the generous trust paul staked upon him found philemon worthy, or him worthy made. at first he frowned on his returning slave, who shrank before him, conscious of his fault. but in the truth and secret of their hearts, master and bondman toward each other yearned. either remembered what before had been, the wont of mutual human-heartedness which, between such as they, could not but spring to blossom in kind offices exchanged to make the bond of master and of slave unnatural though it was yet tolerable. philemon, less in anger and despite than in love disappointed and aggrieved, was ready to burst out upon the youth in loud upbraidings of his gracelessness to have made his master such return for all the kindness he had tasted in his house; whereto onesimus would have replied with protestations of his penitence and tears of promise never to offend again a master so magnanimous; but when philemon broke the letter's seal and read what paul had written, his eyes swam and his heart melted and he flung his arms wide to embrace his slave and welcome him with kisses of a brother to his breast; and they twain wept together happy tears of equal love and heavenly gratitude, and fell upon their knees before the lord and poured out all their soul in fervent prayer for paul through whom their blessing came to them. soon after, from philemon charged with gifts to paul and many messages of love, onesimus went joyful back to rome to serve his master there by serving paul. he faithfully rehearsed to syrus all that at colossæ chanced to him, and said: "paul never told me that he knew my lord, that therefore i might trust him all in all. he must have wished to put me so to proof what naked peril i would dare for christ. i tremble when i think: 'if i had failed in faith and in obedience to paul's word! had i not made the venture to go back! what had i lost on earth, perhaps in heaven!' but i am glad the venture was so sheer, since i at last went back in spite of doubt. but, know, my heart beat thick against my ribs, when i was on the brink to meet him first, my master--for in truth i had wrought him wrong. but, syrus, what thinkest thou my master did? thou hast never, i suppose, beheld a slave wept over by his master as in love, and like an equal drawn unto his breast and kissed. but so my master did to me. for he too was disciple, like myself, and paul erst won him to discipleship; and thus we twain were brethren in the lord. and _he_ was tried and found not wanting too! and here am i in rome, no runaway, but hither by philemon's wishes sped to be a happy minister to paul." when syrus heard such things, the skeptic heart that had resisted all paul's eloquence was overcome at last through works to faith. book xxii. drusilla and nero. while paul in chains is writing to christian churches letters characterized at once by the sublimest reaches of spiritual vision and by the most painstaking condescension to details of practical precept, simon the sorcerer, with felix and drusilla, plots the apostle's death. simon proceeds by indirection, having it in mind to bring about the death of felix also. this he accomplishes, with the collusion and complicity of drusilla. but first, at drusilla's instance, he procures for her in company with her husband an audience with nero, of which poppæa, the emperor's favorite, is secretly an observer. poppæa notices the impression made on her sovereign by drusilla, and she is openly present at a subsequent hearing granted by nero to the beautiful jewess, during which the latter accuses paul, together with other crimes, of instigating the murder by poison of felix. nero throughout displays, with much license, his reckless and frivolous character. drusilla and nero. that phrygian slave did not companionless his way colossæ-ward pursue; he went by tychicus accompanied, who bore another letter written from the lips of paul to the colossian church at large. this gloried and exulted in sublime prophetic visions of far future things- things future far and other quite than these. paul's hand was manacled, but not his soul; that, given the freedom of the universe, ranged as at will on wing omnipotent through all the heights and depths of space and time, and saw unutterable things, which he seeking to lade upon expression made the very pillars of expression bend and sway and totter, like to sink, beneath the burden insupportable they bore. great soul and free, free in a body bound, so soaring those empyreal altitudes winged with his native vigor but upborne on a strong-breasted gale of power divine inspiring and enabling him, who took undazzled, like an eagle in full gaze upon the sun, insufferably bright glimpses of heavenly glory, he yet deigned- nay, he ascended but to condescend the mightier by his lofty lowliness, from exaltation such beheld come down!- deigned to the level of the mean degree of men that needed to be counselled thus: "lie not one to another, seeing ye have put off the old man that late ye were, him with his deeds, and the new man put on, the man made new through knowledge to become once more the image, long so far defaced, of that god who at first created him. put ye on, therefore, as elect of god to be his holy and belovéd, all sweet meltingness of heart, kindness and love, a lowly mind most meek, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and should ever, but that be far! some man among you have complaint or quarrel against any, then, as christ forgave you once, forgive so ye; and over all these vestments of the soul, completing them and binding them secure, put ye on love, girdle of perfectness. and let the peace of christ rule in your hearts. "ye wives, to your own husbands subject be, so yielding as befits you in the lord. ye husbands, love your wives and nourish not against them any bitterness of heart. children, obey your parents in all things, for this well-pleasing is unto the lord. fathers, good heed give ye not to provoke your children unto wrath, lest they lose heart. servants, your masters in the flesh obey, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, this, but single-heartedly as fearing god. and whatsoever be the thing ye do, heartily do it, as if doing all for the lord christ in heaven and not for men; knowing that of the lord ye shall receive guerdon of that inheritance reserved for your true bond of service is to christ. but he that doeth wrong shall for that wrong due recompense receive; and with the lord is no respect of person or degree. ye masters, to your servants what is just and equal render; for a master ye, ye also, have who watcheth from the heaven." while paul with tongue or pen such things discoursed, things heavenly and things earthly intermixed (yet so as earthly things to raise to heaven, like the sea lifted skyward by the moon), simon the sorcerer, with the guilty pair, his master and his mistress, otherwise was busy, plotting the apostle's death. plot within plot there was; the sorcerer sought the death of felix too, for hate of him. to compass this, he fed drusilla's mind with bitter poison and with poison sweet; the bitter, of innuendo to inflame her jealous rancor more against her spouse; the sweet, of flattery ever interfused in casual hint dropped, whisper by the way, no recognition sought, still less reply, rebuke, repudiation, tempted not, but inly working to inebriate her pride of beauty and her sense of power, till she should dare whatever need be dared of danger or of crime to clear her way to empire hoped over the emperor. at length the double venom took effect such on drusilla's fierce aspiring mind, that simon ventured on these words to her: "ill sleeper is thine husband, o my liege! i overhear him oft in troubled dream belching forth broken voices of unrest. he sleeps like ætna or vesuvius, say like enceladus with ætna piled- thou knowest their fable of that giant old. i hope he never will by evil chance work his wife harm unmeant in his nightmares! such weight, such strength, are monstrous in such throes!" drusilla was as deep as simon; she well enough guessed whither he tended so. she made her face an utter vacancy, and listened all as if she listened not, while simon, who was satisfied, went on with his approaches neither shunned nor met: "at least, madam, thine own rest needs must be disturbed: it would be easy to compose thine husband to a sounder sleep." he paused, and she made answer quite as from the point, but simon did not miss the relevance: "simon, my lord is still postponed at court, has had no hearing of the emperor: reason enough that he should restless be. procure he have his audience soon, and then- simon, what thinkest thou? would it not be well that i attend him when he pleads his cause? thou knowest i have some gift of eloquence, the woman's, and thy master is but man, and somewhat slow of speech--if thick of wit too, that becomes me not to say to thee. i feel that i might help our common cause by being in presence with the emperor myself, as loyal sponsor for my spouse." "excellent," simon said; "and no doubt i, permitted to make proffer such as this from queen drusilla, shall with ease contrive an early audience with his majesty." the conscious twain each other understood, but neither token gave with lip or eye. simon bethought him of the beautiful wanton, poppæa, with the emperor precariously omnipotent by her charm. to her, in manner suiting such as he, he wormed at length his way and fawning said: "i have some little skill in certain arts called by the people magic, and i fain thus offer thee my services. i thought i might amuse a tedious idle hour for his imperial majesty and so perhaps, i know not how, but thou shouldst choose, serve thee, the wonder of the woman world. nay, this presumes amiss; i crave thy grace, forgive me, thou who art already queen and empress of the earth, and canst not need service from any. i am all confused before thee, like one dazzled by the sun. "it is my foolish vanity, i feel, nothing but that; but here am i in rome, and it would be the triumph of my life- just a judæan magian as i am- to have seen the emperor, and diverted him with a few rather pretty tricks i know. i on occasion have even awed a mind open to superstition (as most minds are sometimes, aye, the wisest among men, let witness the great julius) with my art. if ever the fair sovereign of his breast should in aught wish him more amenable, thou mayst trust me, and i should not despair to move his mind as thou mightst signify." not quite at venture simon drew his bow thus, for from common fame he knew how keen that very moment was poppæa's wish, as yet denied to her imperious suit, to supersede octavia in her right and be the consort of the emperor. the wily sorcerer warped his sinuous way: "here i have seemed to sue thee for myself; but, sooth to say, i plead another's cause. wilt thou not see drusilla? jewess, who, declined from royal fortune and degree, now seeks a hearing from the emperor for her lord felix, late in palestine a ruler, but unhappily since fallen under some cloud of doubt at rome. beseech thee, give my liege drusilla speech with thee. she too is fair, if not as thou, yet fair. she fain, i think, would meet the emperor in person, that her tears might touch his heart." subtle insinuation was conveyed by simon saying this, which the quick sense of the imperial favorite caught; she said: "it does not need thy lady fair should first wait upon me; without that, she shall have her wished access and opportunity. when her lord felix presently is called to hearing, let drusilla with him come. her privilege she will find before prepared; so much i freely undertake for her." poppæa had her reasons and her scheme; and, as for simon, he said to himself: "whichever woman prosper, i am sped." drusilla girded up both mind and will to meet her one imperial chance aright. felix went like a culprit; like a queen went she, her peerless beauty wielded all with absolute command infallible- like a bright weapon edged and tempered true seen wielded in the perfect swordsman's hand. slack heed the youthful emperor paid him still struggling to support his truculence; his gaze fixed undisguisedly on her. poppæa from behind a screen set nigh saw and heard all; not unsuspected quite of the alert drusilla wise as she in arts of ambush for waylaying words or looks meant to be private: nero knew poppæa was there. drusilla triumphing joyed in her heart to have her rival see how easy usurpation was when one appeared whose very birthright was to reign: nero was willing those eavesdropping ears and eyes should witness what would madden them; he took a wanton mischievous delight in teasing that fierce heart to jealousy. this, too much drunken with her glorying, drusilla did not guess, and overweened in measure of the conquest she had won. the emperor made the hearing short; dismissed felix dismayed and from his truculence completely broken--to his servile state remanded, as in spirit so in mien. yet did not nero so his cause conclude: he said frankly to felix: "go, my lord, thy way; i shall not need to see thee more. let thou this lady at next summons come without thee; she shall better plead thy cause." sentence of death the emperor had pronounced, not meaning it, upon that wretched man. felix resumed his truculence, alone returning with drusilla; he had felt- insensate as he was, could not but feel- her separation of herself from him in the imperial presence, and he now fiercely upbraided her. but she was soft replying; with indignant tenderness purged herself clear of all but loving guile practiced reluctantly in his behoof- his, sole, her husband, father to her son!- to serve him with the amorous emperor. felix could not resist the witching wiles of fondness and of faithfulness she plied, and he became a plaything in her hands trusting alike her loyalty and wit. she presently told simon: "full come now the time is that thy master should enjoy sleep undisturbed with dreams. compound for me the quieting potion that thou toldst me of. see that thou make it strong enough; thy lord is not a puny weakling to be soothed with what might still a crying babe; and i- nay, thou, thou thyself, simon, shalt commend his opiate to his lips." the sorcerer shrugged his shoulders and demurred: "o liege, nor thou, nor i, with our own hands, should to his lips present the potion. let a trusted slave bear it unto his master's bath to-night, and say: 'his queen unto lord felix sends health and the promise of more quiet sleep.' the draught is drastic--for a lullaby- indeed disturbing in its first effect; but safe sleep it will bring whoever drinks." "thy sedative will not pain my lord too much?" drusilla made her tone expressionless in asking; and in like wise simon said: "not too much, lady--let me be the judge, or thee who lovest him equally with me." drusilla summoned syrus, and said to him: "thou lovest thy master and thy mistress well- better, i think, of late than once thou didst." "my master and my mistress both i love so as, i trust, to serve them faithfully," the slave, a little hard bestead, replied. "aye, i have noted thy true love for us; be sure, lad, thou shalt nothing lose thereby," drusilla wheedlingly resumed; whereat syrus could not refrain himself from saying in so much spurning of the sense implied: "yea, noble lady, none can ever lose aught by obeying christ the lord in heaven." "what meanest thou, boy?" drusilla sharply said. "lord other than lord felix hast thou then?" syrus was sorry he had gone so far; yet loyalty to jesus and to paul wrought in him, and, supported as it was with instinct of unquenchable revolt from felix and drusilla both alike, buoyed him and kept him firm in that assay. "yea, madam," he replied, "i have a lord, christ jesus, crucified once, but alive now and ascended far above all height by the right hand of god in heaven set down." 'that is of paul, that surely is of paul!' drusilla reasoned; then, with threatening brow, to syrus: "whence these things to thee? the truth- thou hast heard paul, and learned such lies from him?" "i have heard paul, yea, madam, and have learned from him such truth as makes me true to thee beyond what ever i had been before." "aye, aye, no doubt," drusilla, musing, sneered. a light broke in upon her mind; she said: "that precious runaway, onesimus, he, i suppose, heard paul, and got himself puffed up with these same notions of a lord in heaven, which set him feeling free of us. tell me, what knowest thou of onesimus? did he hear paul? where is he now? tell me, thou rogue, for verily i believe thou knowest." shrewd as he was, syrus conceived a hope, a sudden simple hope that if the truth, the beautiful mere truth, were told her now, drusilla, yea, drusilla even, would feel its power. so he rehearsed the history, how that onesimus, induced by paul, had gone back to his master at colossæ; how that his master, for the love of paul who had erst won him to the love of jesus, had bidden onesimus return to rome there in his stead to minister to paul; how that onesimus had gladly come, and was that moment gratefully with paul. drusilla listened, but she gave no sign; she had in truth been listening absently, absorbedly considering what fresh proof to purpose against paul perhaps was here. she said to syrus: "aye, a pretty tale to entertain thy mistress' ear withal! why never can you people tell the truth? you always seem to think you must contrive some falsehood, though the truth would better serve. well, well, it is your way. but now, my lad, be ready, when thy master to his bath shall presently repair, bring me prompt word. an errand i shall have for thee to him that as thou lovest him thou wilt love to do." syrus, as bidden duly coming, heard: "take this, my lad, let not a drop be spilled, and bearing it to thy master say to him, 'thy lady sends a sleeping-draught to thee, and with it wishes health and placid sleep.'" syrus, deep scrupling, 'fair is this, or foul?' yet found no way not to fulfill the word. felix said: "this is strange. what sayest thou, boy? thy mistress sends me this? thou liest, thou wretch! this is thine own work; thou wouldst do me dead; drink it thyself, thou varlet, and go sleep. thou wilt not? nay, but yea thou wilt, thou shalt; now, let me see thee drink it every drop." and with his trembling hand the debauchee gave syrus back the chalice. "let me call my mistress; thou shalt hear from her own lips whether she did not send this draught to thee, charging me not to waste one precious drop. i know i should offend by drinking it. but thou mightst take it somewhat heedfully, trying it drop by drop at first to prove its virtue and its fitness to thy case." so syrus pleaded; and his master said: "that is not spoken like a poisoner. but so thou darest, rascal, cast a doubt on what thy mistress sends in love to me? thou shalt pay dear for that; for i shall tell her thou presumedst to advise to me a care, forsooth, how i partook her cheer. here, give it me, and i will toss it off- one swallow--there!--and lay me down to sleep." drusilla, soon thereafter called again to audience with the emperor, high in hope went radiant with her beauty; but was vexed to find poppæa seated by his side as if assessor of his judgment-throne. she sat resplendent in her robes of state, as queenly in her person and her port; yet of a soft delicious loveliness that took drusilla captive by its charm. aspiring as she did to rival her drusilla thought involuntary thoughts of admiration mixed with jealousy: 'no wonder that she sits there throned by him, imperial lovely creature that she is! that bloom of youth and beauty on her cheek! the tempting undulation of repose suggested underneath the graceful folds of vesture that flow down the supple limbs and softening into curves of lusciousness the statuesque perfection of her form! but pampered with what pains of luxury! they say five hundred asses follow her wherever she makes progresses abroad and spend their milk to brim a bath for her, that her sweet flesh and delicate lose not that melting softness and that lucency!' 'the wanton!'--so she virtuously thought. poppæa was all graciousness; she bade drusilla trust her friendship utterly. she had had herself her sorrow; whereat tears orbed large her lucid eyes and fairer made. she quoted dido out of virgil, saying, "'myself not inexperienced in distress, i learn to succor who are miserable.' my otho--but that wound is yet too fresh! why had lord felix died so suddenly? he had no need to die so--if he took his own life rashly in despair; his cause was far from lost--in fact, was safe enough--" "his brother pallas," nero interposed, "had seen to that; but there were reasons of state why his acquittal should not yet transpire." "indeed i comforted my spouse with hope all that i could," drusilla wiped a tear responding, "and it was not suicide, i think now, but a prompted murder base." "murder is rampant everywhere in rome," the rhadamanthine nero sadly said; "but we think little of it till it stalks into the sacred circle of our own and strikes down husband, mother, ruthlessly!" poppæa and the emperor joined hands in tacit token of sweet sympathy. 'such acting! can i hope to equal it?' drusilla, not a little dashed in spirit, said to herself; 'yet let me not despair.' "madam, thy husband's death must be avenged," so nero, with imperial complaisance but in a manner to dismiss the theme. accepting the dismissal meant, and yet attaching to her dutiful reply a hint to tempt him on, drusilla said: "i thank thy majesty for saying that; and the same stroke will many crimes avenge." had she achieved her wish? she could not guess. nero, as if with shift of aim, inquired: "thou art late arrived in rome from palestine; what dost thou chance to know of this man paul, prisoner here, like thyself jew in blood?" "i thank thee too that thou hast asked me that," drusilla with judicial candor said; "aye, paul is of one kindred with myself, i blush to say it; he is a renegade, offscouring, outcast of his countrymen. i pray thee judge thou not our race from him." "but our sage seneca, my schoolmaster," smiled nero with imperial pleasantry, "speaks otherwise of paul. i bade him go visit the jew philosopher in chains and sound him of the depth of wisdom his. he brought me back a wonderful report; 'a little transcendental,' so he said, 'too much of oriental mysticism, but sane at bottom, and a man of worth.' tell us about paul. i should be much pleased to put to blush my old oracular smug seneca with proof that he for once at least mistook; a fine old gentleman is seneca, but too infallible; in fact, intolerably infallible. i cannot stand infallibility- except my own and thine of course, my dear poppæa! when they come to deify us, we shall have to be infallible. that is, supposably: i will inquire of seneca; he is my arbiter, know, madam, in these minor points, as is my superfine good friend petronius in those more serious points of etiquette." drusilla masked amazement, listening keen while this young portent of an emperor let play his humor of hilarity. eccentric and incalculable curves of orbit, pure caprices of career, might seem to be the movement of his speech; but always, from whatever apogee, it failed not its return to bitterness: the playful tiger gnashed his ravin fangs. still turning toward drusilla, he went on: "behooves, lady, thine emperor of the world should be well schooled in all things; i abound in tutors at my elbows to nudge me; old burrus there, i have not mentioned him- no disrespect intended--what thinkest thou? schoolmasters and schoolmistresses and all, is there not risk they overstep the bound? so few know where, just where, the limit is. my own dear mother--to her ashes peace!- sacred as was her right, if she had lived might yet have come to manage overmuch." poppæa even, in her victorious calm of conscious power beside him, winced at this as at slant notice served upon herself; and poor drusilla hugged a shudder down. but nero rattled on licentiously: "what was i saying? aye, 'infallible'"- and toward poppæa now his eye he turned- "we two shall have to be infallible- i take it so--when they make gods of us. what a bore that, to be infallible! bore to be anything because one must! let us take it as a joke and not be bored- uproarious joke, my dear, for me and thee to pose as gods, while we hold both our sides lest we split laughing and upset mankind! "but for the present here is help arrived, welcome, while we stay only mortals yet, to make that old prig of a seneca come down once from his magisterial throne." wherewith he to drusilla spoke once more: "madam, we listen, tell us about paul." besides that menace slanted in his words, the gamesome emperor hurt drusilla sore demonstrating before her thus a firm accord and understanding knit between himself and this poppæa; worse to bear, poppæa's easy air of affable- a condescension equal to his own toward her, drusilla, air as of a queen deigning her scepter toward a suppliant! drusilla would have felt it like a touch of tonic to her blood, could she have found one least hint that poppæa in her heart hated her: but poppæa far too well was mistress of her part; she sweetly smiled exquisite discomposure on her foe. with sheer exertion of her will, or helped only with the delight to injure paul- daunted, yet with a front of dauntlessness- drusilla entered on her perjury. by the reaction of her eloquence upon herself reflected from the fixed admiring heed she won, she plucked up heart of buoyance to be brilliant more and more as she went on and told the emperor, him chiefly, and at length not her at all, how paul was a disturber everywhere; he at jerusalem had raised a mob and tumult of his outraged countrymen against himself; they, out of loyalty, would then and there have rent him limb from limb, but that the chiliarch intervened to save the wretch from violence--not of the law, though well deserved--and under escort thence sent him to her lord felix, governor at cæsarea, to be held and judged. felix, who was the heart of lenity, not bearing to condemn him for his crimes, postponed his trial, until festus came successor to her husband dispossessed of kingdom for his too much clemency- fault, yet a noble fault, and cæsar-like ('my otho!' thy word, madam; 'my felix!' mine)- then festus on the point to sentence him was thwarted by the culprit's hardihood; desperate hardihood seeking reprieve at least from doom by refuge in appeal to cæsar. "aye, a roman citizen paul has devised some scheme of fraud to be- gross profanation of a sacred right perverted to asylum thus from crime! paul is a master mind--no need to swear falsely that he is not; wise seneca was not so much to blame for being deceived in him, so upright-seeming, plausible. their best man, sagest, subtlest of them all, the jewish councillors picked out to send hither with paul to make his sentence sure. alas, the culprit was too deep for him. one night on shipboard in the voyage hither he sought to bribe the soldier guarding him to make away with this jew shimei by tossing him in darkness overboard. that plot did not succeed; but paul contrived to hoodwink the centurion and make him believe the scheme to murder was not his, paul's, against shimei, but shimei's against paul! so shimei was thrown into chains, while paul stalked the deck free, though for form's sake still watched. this lasted, till the very gods in heaven had pity on poor shimei and with stroke of lightning set him free from men by death." "so, is a stroke of lightning pity then, sometimes," said nero, "with the gods in heaven? a piquant way to pity! we, my dear"- the emperor with a frolic feline look that made poppæa shiver turned to her- "when we are gods on earth, may imitate those our facetious cousins in the skies with many a stroke of lightning launched in pity!" an almost boyish blithesomeness lit up the handsome face of nero saying this; had it not been for frightful lightning strokes too frequent sent in deadly earnest down from that olympus of imperial power, all might have seemed but pranksome playfulness. drusilla--with profound obeisance bowed- after due deferent pause if it should please his majesty to be facetious farther, her weaving at her loom of lies resumed: "thou wouldst in vain, o emperor, inquire of that centurion julius for the truth; he himself fell a helpless prey to paul. why, on the wretched island where our ship was stranded, lost, and where all winter we were cooped up waiting for reluctant spring, day after day did that oblivious man attend upon his prisoner and a crew, that prisoner's dupes about him clustering ever, to hear long tales which seemed to cast a spell on whoso heard them and bewitch his sense. i grieve to say a roman knight was found there, sergius paulus, to lend countenance- a name proconsular so much defiled! yea, and the roman governor of the isle, publius, fell openly into paul's snare. "no very serious matter it might seem, so far, but hearken what a sequel came. a worthy member of our court abroad, who loyally our fortune followed still, and follows--o sire, in this degenerate age, happy if ancient loyalty survives!- simon, a man of merit and device, saw when, one morning on an open hill withdrawn, paul made a demonstration dire before all these assembled to behold whom i have named, what he could do, and would, with practice of his wicked magic arts. he smote a woman of his company who had offended him dead at a stroke of incantation that his lips let fall. simon will tell thee, that thou hear first-hand. "but to crown all"--and here drusilla's voice faltered, and her eyes, eloquent before with fine indignant passion, now with tears dimmed, pathos tenfold eloquent took on- "aye, to crown all, no doubt my felix fell a victim to his ingrate wickedness. our slave-boy syrus bore his lord a drink pretended as of virtue to bring sleep- which my poor felix long had needed sore!- it brought sleep, but the sleep it brought was death. alas, my felix! and, last infamy, that slave lad had been primed by paul to lay her consort's murder at his spouse's door! the frontless varlet had the face to tell his mistress to her very teeth that she had herself sent that sleeping-draught by him to felix as he took his evening bath. it was paul's sorcery made the boy believe, against his own right senses, what was false. i should have told thee how in lesser sort, that is, in matter of estate--light thing indeed in contrast of such harm to life- we had before this suffered from paul's hands; for he beguiled away a slave of ours- by name onesimus, a phrygian lad- through whom perverted first himself from faith this other servant syrus was seduced. no end to that wretch paul's devices evil! let him go free, nay, let him only live, though in a prison, the emperor has a foe cannot indeed unfix him from his throne- where he sits firm as on olympus jove (if thus a faithful jew may fit her speech)- but will the quick seeds of sedition sow to fill the empire with their harvest wild. paul teaches all men of another king than cæsar whose sole right it is to reign." while thus drusilla at the emperor's ear artfully wove false witness against paul, paul in his chains was beating out his heart in throbbing letters of such strain as this: if any consolation, then, in christ there be, if any comfort sweet of love, if in the spirit any fellowship, if any moving of compassion even, make my joy full, belovéd, that ye be like-minded each with other, the same love within you all, one spirit, one accord; far be contention, and vainglory far, but all in lowly-mindedness esteem each one his fellow better than himself. look not each man toward his own things alone, but each man also toward the other's look. this mind be in you which in jesus was: he, in his right, was of the form of god, yet thought not his equality with god a thing to be held fast to as his spoil; but freely made himself of no repute, taking upon him the bond-servant's form and entering the similitude of men. nor yet was this enough; he, being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself still farther and became obedient, to the degree of dying--not a death such as befalls the common lot of men, but that most dreadful death upon the cross this is the reason why the righteous god exalted him so highly and the name gave him that over every name prevails, that in the name of jesus every knee should bow, of beings in heaven, of beings on earth, of beings under earth, and every tongue confess that jesus christ is lord of all unto the glory of the father god. so, my belovéd, as ye have obeyed me ever, not as in my presence only but in my absence now much more, work out your own salvation with much wholesome fear, awed in the thought that god himself it is that in you works alike to will and work as seemeth in his holy pleasure good. no murmurings and no questionings allow, that ye may blameless be and void of guile, children of god, open to no rebuke, among a crooked people and perverse, full in the midst of whom ye shine as lights set in the darkness of a world of sin; steadfastly holding forth the word of life, that in the day of christ i may rejoice as having not in vain run this my race, and not in vain accomplished all my toil. but, let it even be mine to be poured out, as on an altar set for sacrifice, a victim for the service of your faith, know i rejoice and with you all rejoice; and for the selfsame cause rejoice all ye, yea, and in fellowship with me rejoice.' from prison this, in face of martyrdom! whatever fell, paul's victory was secure. such love, such faith, such hope, such power in christ of joy, such hold on heaven, was to defeat present or future, harm or threat of harm- from earth, from hell, aimed--inaccessible, safe as a star smiling above a storm. so then paul wrote, and such himself he was, while those vain wicked wished to work him ill. though the twain listened with all courteous heed to what drusilla told and acted then, nor nero nor poppæa was deceived; but both admired, and this drusilla felt. having retrieved thus in some part her loss, she heard demurely while the emperor said: "thou understandest, madam, this is not a formal sitting of our court august. i oft advise myself beforehand thus- though seldom, lady, so agreeably- what the real merits of an issue are. i have much enjoyed thy story--and thyself- and i shall hope to see thee yet again. meantime, i pray thee, send thy simon to me; i might find use for such a man as he." poppæa, to play out her part of queen, added a gracious word: "and come thyself to see me--by the emperor's leave assumed- and teach me to be jewess, such as thou. it must be lovely beyond anything to hate so and abide so beautiful!" she had mixed a cunning bitter with her sweet; perhaps her nero so would be forewarned! book xxiii. nero and simon. simon, sent by drusilla to the emperor, finds it impossible to reach the imperial presence without help from poppæa, who grants him her favor only on condition that he will serve her wish at need. the crafty sorcerer buys his way with the necessary promises. nero flouts simon with disdainful irony and sarcasm, which excites the sorcerer's resentment. this feeling he dissembles, while he counsels the unfaithful imperial husband how to rid himself of his young empress octavia--the sorcerer being all the time in doubt whether it is with drusilla or with poppæa that the emperor, who speaks darkly, would supplant her. nero at length dismisses simon, bidding him tell his mistress the emperor's desire to pay her a secret visit. this message the sorcerer gratifies his own spleen by conveying to drusilla in terms the most offensive to her pride. she bursts out in violent anger and spurning; but simon shows his mistress how she may salve in a measure the hurt to her dignity, and at the same time serve her hatred of paul, by making it a condition of her complaisance that the emperor shall first put the apostle and his companions to death. the sorcerer returns with her reply to nero, who again, and even more deeply than before, stirs the jew's heart to deadly hatred. simon plots a wild scheme to have his revenge. meantime with change in certain officers of the government the aspect of affairs grows threatening for paul and his fellow-christians. onesimus and syrus are arrested and hurried away to suffer on the rack. nero and simon. drusilla, eager in uncertain hope to meet the pleasure of the emperor, promptly sent simon to him as he said. she charged her minion to bend all his craft to win his mistress way that she in proof upon that youngster emperor of the world might, without let from other present, try if for once only what of power was left her, after such misfortunes suffered late, to steal possession of the hearts of men. "consider, simon, what might not i do for thee, once seated in that place of power?" she with such words and with a subtle smile of deep insinuation cheered him forth. but simon, in an outer anteroom of the imperial palace with its guards- many removes from where the emperor was- long hung in waiting day by day in vain. at length poppæa, not the emperor, sent gracious word that she would see that jew. "thou hadst perhaps forgotten who it was," the favorite, drunken-fond of power nor less of demonstration too of power, began, to dash the sorcerer in his confidence- "say, hadst thou not forgotten who it was gave thee for thy drusilla her desired access to the imperial presence late?" simon saw what she wanted, and was quick to humor to the full her proud caprice. he readily commanded to his face a trouble of confusion and chagrin, and stammered something inarticulate. the merciless poppæa pressed her point: "was it to me, or to somebody else, i heard thee offer service of thine art? methinks thou spokest, or perhaps i dreamed, of certain potencies thou couldst exert on my behalf--or some one's--if thou wouldst, to make at need a mind amenable to reason that might otherwise resist?" simon her humor flattered to its height, and artfully grew more and more confused before her, till he judged her satisfied that his humiliation was complete. then, with abject profession of remorse and shame that he so far forgot her due as to seek audience with the emperor in any way other than through herself, he humbly asked her what her wish might be; in short, renewed the proffer of himself to be her faithful servant all in all. "but art thou not in prior duty bound to that drusilla fair of thine?" she asked. "yea, doubtless," the adroit dissembler said- a protestation of deep loyalty to his old mistress, not to be seduced, commingling strangely in his look and tone with offer to be serviceable now. "supposing beautiful drusilla's aims and mine should clash?" poppæa said. but he: "that were calamity indeed--for her; the far more beautiful must needs prevail. she has perhaps her too aspiring hopes; her hopes, i own, i have no heart to dash. let her nurse them; but be it mine meanwhile to watch and strive they do not pierce the breast that suckles them in vain." "what meanest thou?" poppæa asked. "why, this," the sorcerer said, "lady drusilla's interests and her aims may not agree. they do not, if her aims and thine, o empress, clash. her interests, true interests, i mean, she best consults in being to her sovereign loyal liege. i serve the subject, when i serve the queen." "'empress,' thou namest me," poppæa said. "thou knowest i am not empress." "yea, i know," said simon, "empress not in name--as yet." "another," with deep implication said poppæa, "that imposing title bears." "were it not so," with apt intelligence, made instant answer simon, "thou wouldst not need modestly disclaim the title--thou who worthily possessest now the power." "not all the power," poppæa sagely said; "some real part of the power is in the name. help me to win the name, and fix thy price." "my price would be the pleasure i should have to see thee sitting, where thy right ere now had placed thee, on the half throne of the world"- so simon with devout obeisance said. then added: "if the emperor should suspect- but, pardon, thou hast asked me nothing yet." "i ask thee now, speak freely out to me all that is in thy mind," poppæa said. "if then, i say, the emperor should suspect- of course with ground for the suspicion (that well understood, no innocent to be wronged)"- and simon grinned intolerably a wry involuntary grin of import such, so horribly conveyed, that almost she, poppæa, shuddered in recoil from him- "suspect, with reason shown, a full supply, that the young partner of his bed and throne, octavia, is less worthy of his faith than were to--" "aye, i see, i see," broke poppæa, her instinctive first recoil quite overmastered; it was of the flesh, mere backward creep of muscle and of nerve, repugnance of the inner spirit none. "but to supply the reason--" "shall be mine," said simon, finishing her arrested speech. he undertook at venture in the dark; but to gain time, and to secure access, his present errand, to the emperor, he added, with demure and downcast look: "the ground beneath us now is treacherous; i could with greater freedom utter all that might be needful in such case as this, to other ear than thine, o empress fair, or any woman's. let me, pray thee, see the emperor. thou shalt be well satisfied, i pledge me, with the issue when it comes." so simon won him clear for then, and went- his way made easy by poppæa's part; yet not as with her privity, much less as with her favor openly displayed- to his wished waiting on the emperor. "thou art a go-between, i understand," abruptly and ambiguously said the emperor to simon. simon winced a little, he so little wont to wince. what did it mean? had nero overheard through some eavesdropper what had just now passed between him and poppæa? was he vexed? himself at least was inly vexed to hear the opprobrious name of 'go-between' applied, where he had hoped for honor as a mage and wielder of weird supernatural power. he wavered, and found nothing to reply. "thou art modest," nero said, with irony; "but i have heard thy fame, thou needst not blush, pallas has told me how as go-between thou servedst his brother felix in the east, finding for him a really royal spouse. i hope thy go-between officiousness ended with bringing the devoted pair together? nothing after had to do with the late parting of the same by death?" simon was stumbled at such raillery, uneasily uncertain what it meant. he writhed and wriggled on his feet; but deemed the emperor best were pleased to have his will of banter, unreplied to--banter felt as far too formidable for right zest, proceeding from a prince, and such a prince! "wilt ply again thy skill of go-between, and faithfully, for me?" the emperor said. a question fairly asked, which must be met: could it concern--poppæa? in such case, the office of the 'go-between'--as pleased this jocular young ruler of mankind to name him ignominiously--might take a dignity almost imperial on; simon would frame reply comportably: "if the august will of his majesty, the emperor of the world, should condescend to make one most unworthy of the grace in any wise elect ambassador to serve the imperial pleasure at what court soever of such beauty as were fit to be assumed for partner of his throne- why, simon could but pledge his loyalty, and trust his wonted fortune might not fail." "thou takest thy pander's part full seriously," the emperor, bantering still, but curious, said: "perhaps our grave ambassador of love might, from his pregnant wit, even nominate the court of beauty where befitting were the majesty of empire should pay suit. the roman state impersonate in me gives ear." played with in such ambiguous wise simon was much perplexed to choose his way. he flung himself on rumor, and replied: "the roman state, embodied in thyself most worthily, most worthily has made its choice already; mine to serve that choice." "thou art an oracle; who knows so much, should needs know more," the emperor teasing said. "advise me, thou who knowest so easily what my choice is, how i may win my choice. consider that the emperor of the world is after all the veriest slave in rome; the rascal people lord it over him. i have no trouble with the senators, they follow like whipped spaniels at my heels- the reverend 'conscript fathers,' to be sure! but the great roman people is a spell i am afraid of; i must please the mob, who will not let me marry as i would; the many-headed monster mob of rome." the emperor gave his peevish humor vent, contemptuously regardless of who heard. but simon was alert and caught his cue. "the tyrant mob may easily be fooled," he said with politic suggestion deep; "fooled rightly, they will clamor, not against, but for, the emperor's wish." "open thy thought, said nero; "be an oracle indeed- for wisdom; for equivocation, not." "what the imperial wish is," simon said, "it were impiety in me to guess. but grant it were a prince's natural wish to change a barren or a faithless spouse for one more suited to his princely mind, ways might be found to make his realm agree." "suppose the case, then; how wouldst thou proceed?" so, as if only idly, nero asked. "let me suppose a case of faithlessness," simon, with study of the emperor's face, adventured; "that is the more simple sort, more likely, or at least of easier proof. the offended prince reluctantly succumbs to testimony--whereof the supply will manifestly equal the demand"- this with both look and tone sententious said- "he makes his loving people confidant of his misfortune--which is also theirs- and with one voice they generously cry, 'put her away, and wed a worthy mate.'" the emperor listening sank into a muse, which simon as of happy omen took. nero was deeper than the sorcerer guessed; his muse had really, as that worthy framed his speech to have it, of octavia been and of poppæa in octavia's room; but for his present prurient whim the young imperial profligate was fain to make misdeem the jewish pander otherwise. as if drusilla, not poppæa, had, unnamed between them, been that worthier one of whom the sorcerer darkly all the time had hinted, and whom he himself the while had understood him tacitly to mean, nero now said, rousing from reverie- ejaculation like soliloquy: "worthy to be the consort of a king! perhaps well widowed--for some nobler fate hers by the right of beauty and of wit- drusilla, thy good mistress, that born queen! tell her this from the emperor, and ask when she will let the emperor himself pay her his personal homage at her court; some night it needs must be, and in disguise- to fool the prying people as thou saidst. prove thou thy prowess as ambassador, and bring me speedy word of thy success." the emperor let the sorcerer retire. a little pleased, but disappointed more, simon his message to his mistress brought. he wreaked his disappointment upon her, by rendering nero's proffer of himself in terms the most offensive to her pride: "know, o my lady--empress, by just right of high ambition and of mettle high- lucius domitius nero cæsar, proud young wearer of the crown that julius wore- or would not wear, but three times put it by- successor to the great augustus, who earth's jarring fragments welded to a whole, and settled order government and peace- conscious of his own merit, condescends to ease his aching shoulders of the weight of empire by indulging now and then in certain little pranks of pleasantry, more lively, as might seem, than dignified. he dons him his disguise and sallying forth goes roystering through the streets incognito, attended by a well-becoming rout of boon companions in hilarity- much to the scandal of good citizens, specially such as happen to be out; these often get quite tumbled up and down in the wild frolic of imperial sport. they make the night--these rouses are by night- merry with jocund laughter, and with song that would be ribald save that it is sung by a divine augustus in his cups. i am permitted, as ambassador from this imperial personage, to bear thee courteous salutations, and to say the emperor deems thee worthy to be queen, thinks thou perhaps wast widowed in good time to make thee to a nobler fortune free; begs thou wilt name the night when he may come in person and pay imperial court to thee." "this, simon, is impudence insufferable, equal affront to nero and to me," drusilla in a flame of fury said. "thou hast overstepped thy limit jesting so. repair thy fault forthwith, or suffer for it! tell me in terms, and without flourishes, what word, if any, the emperor charged thee with." maliciously unmoved, the sorcerer said: "with some loss doubtless--most regrettable, granted; yet scarce avoidable, confess- from the august imperial dignity of the first utterance, i have told thee true the message cæsar bade me bear to thee." drusilla, with rekindled anger, cried: "thou hast cruelly misrepresented me, to bring upon me such indignity. in what mistaken terms of complaisance, tell me--mistaken, or even treacherous- didst thou present me to his majesty?" simon, exasperating purposely by his cool air of imperturbable, said: "madam, it seemed wisest policy- best suited to avoid that compromise i knew to be so justly hateful to thee of dignity and modesty and shame- so i observed a careful reticence, but drew the emperor on from point to point to be first--as he was--in mentioning thee." drusilla's fury now redoubled rose; with blazing eyes she rather hissed than said: "he takes drusilla to be such as that! will seek me under cover of the dark! hark thee! _i_ to be visited by stealth, the happy finish of a night's carouse! give him my compliments and tell him, nay! bid him by daylight come, in proper state, and bringing with him his empire cast it down a proffered bauble at drusilla's feet- i will consider of the matter then. up, go, speed, tell him what i thus have said. i am in haste to wash this stain away, and fling his insult back into his face. he is mighty, he--but i am haughty, i; i am as haughty as he mighty is: i burn in hell until he knows this from me. thou hangest--wilt not go?--art false to me? aye, thou art false, or thou hadst out of hand told him thou knewest drusilla otherwise than to dare take her such a word as that!" "the emperor should see my lady now," said simon with provoking flattery, provoking, yet it mollified her mind, and shaped her to receive what he would say- "yea, but the emperor should behold thee thus- if he would have his beauty spiced with spite, and splendid with a little awfulness. i have never seen thee so the queen before! but, madam, in good sooth and soberness, behooves that we consider well our way. the emperor is a dangerous man--or god, thou knowest they deify this personage; it were not wise to tempt him overmuch. yet i agree thy woman instinct well advises thee to dictate terms to him. let these be high--agreed; but not too high: not quite impossible, observe; enough, no more, to give thee value in his eyes. "i think of one end that thou mightst subserve by a condition prior to consent- an end long meditated, and most dear, not to thee only, but no less to him, thy well-belovéd consort late. why not say to the emperor: 'give thou me a pledge beforehand of thy worthy sentiments toward thy poor vassal, in this little thing: put paul to death and all the curséd crew that hold with him, exempting not a soul- this do thou first, o emperor august, a very little thing, and see if then thy will find let in my will; so be i am honored as befits my quality'- a guardian clause elastic of import, which thou mayst after construe as thou wilt? such terms i might obey to bear to him, and they could only heighten his regard of thee, and more thy hold on him assure." "there was poppæa sitting by his side that day!" drusilla bitterly exclaimed. "and knowest thou by what arts her place she won?" pressed simon; "she was not afraid to impose conditions on her lover; she told him, 'thou must do thus, and thus,' and he admired her for her spirit, and succumbed; do thou likewise, and prove thy right to reign--by reigning. it is not quite so proud to reign, i grant thee, as to spurn; but bend thy pride so much: spurning is fine, but reigning profits more." "thou hast well advised, my simon," with strong qualms subdued of pride, and loathing sprung from pride, drusilla made reply; and simon left the humbled woman to her wretchedness. for she no longer now deceived herself, or was by simon deceived, to keep her hope of splendid triumph by the emperor's side. salt tears and bitter, after he had gone, she stained the queenly beauty of her face withal and quenched the brilliance of her eyes. her chalice was of disappointment full; she had sinned, and she was still to sin, in vain: she knew it, but she did not change her choice. her only comfort in her hour of shame was that at least a drop of sweet revenge and malice gratified might mingle yet- a dash of soothing--in the draught she drank; she yet might see her heart's desire on paul. what if thou dost, drusilla! thou wilt see the hated dying, not as one who dies, rather as one who, borne aloft and crowned, rides celebrating triumph over death! the while thou seest exalted to the place thou fain hadst purchased for thyself with crime poppæa, empress by the emperor throned, spouse in the room of young octavia slain. go, wretched woman, with thy little son beside thee, down the valley of the years- years few and evil, full of many woes- until thou shalt with him be overwhelmed in that volcano ruin, thy fit doom! with first obeisance to poppæa paid (and blithe report to her of progress good toward what she wished--wanting, he cheerly thought, but one more audience to attain the goal) simon betook him to the emperor, who greeted him with: "well, what, pander? speak! no parley, no ambages; great affairs are now engaging me. is all arranged? what is the night appointed? o, i see broad written over all thy countenance, palter, pretext, delay, to tantalize forsooth and tease a lover's eagerness. but i am in no mood to be played with; thou balkest me at thy peril; speak, man, speak! what message does the fair drusilla send?" simon came hating with a perilous hate, hate perilous to himself, the emperor for all the scorning poured before on him; now, at such words of scorn more bitter yet, his fierce resentment almost overbore his fear; it threatened to burst out in flame. but he was prudent and afraid enough to smother it--as yet; the deeper burned it in his bosom, forced to smoulder there. his hatred and his fear together made his wit clear, swift, and ready to command. he dared not fence, and so he answered fair- at some cost to his mistress, more than he foreshadowed in obtaining her consent: "my lady agrees, but does not fix the time." "agrees, of course agrees," grossly replied nero; "but when, thou paltering rascal, when?- that is the point thou knowest, and she knows." "lady drusilla begs the emperor will," wily simon said, "do her the grace to choose his own time; his choice will be hers." "beyond just expectation complaisant!" with a placated grin, the emperor said. simon made thrifty haste not to let slip his favorable chance precarious; he spoke: "aye, when thy gracious majesty shalt have appointed death deserved for paul and for the pestilent crew his company, and shalt have signified to her thy leave to see the sentence visited on them- the very night which follows that bright day of vengeance on the emperor's enemies shall brighter than that day to her be made if she may welcome then as visitant him who shall so have pledged her his regard." "ah, so she makes conditions after all," clouding his brow, but lightly, nero said. "a woman is a woman," simon replied, "and queen drusilla is high-spirited doubtless beyond the common; humor her, i pray thee, in this trifle; thou wilt note how that, in seeming so to save her pride somewhat, her dignity, her modesty, she really seeks to serve a public end of justice and of good imperial fame." "thou makest her worthy of a throne indeed," the emperor with indulgent sarcasm said, "with her wise forecast and expansive views." "faith toward the person of the emperor- faith, and perhaps some nearer sentiment- inspires her to be large in statesmanship," said simon--eased a moment in his mind to be diplomatist in honeyed lies. "tell her i will consult my oracle," nero maliciously replied; "and say my oracle is a lady, hence will know better than i should dare pretend i can what would be fit in such peculiar case. as fountain prime of justice to my realm, i own i have some scruples in this thing- whether it were ideal right and good to barter sentences of life and death simply that i may please a lady fair, and be a favored suitor at her court. "but i perhaps will toss a die and see what chance will say; chance is a prudent god, and, in his seeming-random way, is right as oft as wisdom with his reasons weighed: besides i can keep on throwing, till the turn pleases my fancy of the moment. go, solemn ambassador from court to court, report what i have said, but give a wink at end to mean thou guessest all is well." simon, retiring, soon poppæa sought, and, with dark hint and indirection, told how he had dropped into the emperor's ear a seed of such suggestion as, he thought, would quickly spring and blossom and bear fruit to the advantage of her dearest wish: it would but need attaint octavia's faith as consort of the emperor, and so, by open operation of the law, set her aside and leave him lorn of wife. the acclamation of the people then would join the emperor's own desire to fill octavia's vacant room with--whom but one? but would poppæa help him in one thing? he greatly wished to give the emperor proof of what he could accomplish in his art of conjuring with weird supernatural powers; he thought his weight as intermediary in her behalf would be increased thereby. poppæa, promising to stir up the mind of nero to a proper appetite for simon's thaumaturgy, let him go. while such fruits in the dark were growing ripe, things in the open looked the self-same way. stephen, who daily scouted in the world without of rome, its rumor, its event, brought thence one day to paul ill-boding word: "burrus is dead, that just man; how he died, whether of sickness, poison, suicide, no man can say--or rather all men say, some, one thing, some, another; doubtful all. but two men take his place in prefecture, one, tigellinus--baser none than he: i doubt thou wilt come to feel his heavy hand. then that vile woman poppæa, so they say, has become jewish proselyte, forsooth. wherefore? no doubt, colluding with drusilla- the wicked simon with his sorcery, and with his office low of go-between, egging them on--to be jews good enough, the three together, to act in shimei's place as thine accusers to the emperor. o, my heart sinks in doubt and fear for thee!" "it need not, stephen; my heart is buoyant," paul said to his nephew in calm and firm reply. "nothing can fall out from the order fair of god's will for his chosen and well-beloved; all things together work for good to them." "all things?" said stephen; "lord, increase my faith!" for he hung staggered at the paradox. "o, yea, all things, exception none," said paul. but hardly had been uttered those strong words, when, in the door, rudely burst open, stood two arméd minions of the prefecture. "wanted, for torture on the witness-rack"- one of these spoke in strident tones and hard- "onesimus, a phrygian runaway, slave of the late lord felix, harbored here. point out the rogue; we are under strait command, and tigellinus will brook no delay. ah, there he is--he has betrayed himself- white as a corpse; were he as innocent! come, rascal, and cheer thee up, thou art to have thy syrus for a fellow on the rack." with rally such, in coarsest irony, they hurried off onesimus to doom- scarce time to paul for breathing in his ear to bid him in the strength of christ be strong. "o, uncle, 'all things' to onesimus, him also, in a fearful stead like this?" said stephen, in vicarious agony. "would i could take his stead for him!" said paul. "i cannot, but christ can, and will--nay, did, then when he suffered all on calvary. pray for onesimus that he his trust withdraw not from the lord who thus proves him- and pray for syrus that his faith fail not. now, o lord jesus, in gethsemane and on the bitter cross of calvary thyself so anguished once in that frail flesh thou worest for our sake--that thou mightst suffer!- help, help, thy servants in their sudden hour." the soldier that was manacled to paul wondered, but reverenced, when these things he heard. book xxiv. the end. the two slaves, onesimus and syrus, bear their torture with constancy, refusing to testify otherwise than in grateful praise of paul. the emperor, at seneca's prompting, has secretly overheard their testimony, and, obeying a caprice of justice and of pity, he follows a further hint from seneca to let paul go free under bond to appear again when formal accusation shall be laid against him from jerusalem. paul thus released sends home to holy land the friends that had thence accompanied him to rome, and accomplishes his last missionary tours, with luke only for companion. meantime drusilla, in a desperate hope revived by the rumored fall from imperial favor of poppæa, sends simon once more to secure for his mistress the long-postponed meeting with nero. simon plays drusilla false and pretends to the emperor that she had indulgently sent him, simon, to sue on his own behalf for the privilege of practising his art in the palace. nero agrees that he may do this on condition that he shall first have secured from his mistress fresh consent to receive an imperial visit in her house. simon, stung by the emperor's scorn of him, had wrought himself up to the temerity of attempting to play on nero's guilty conscience by an exhibition that should bring up before the tyrant a dreadful recollection of one of his own most heinous crimes. the result proves suddenly fatal to simon. paul, brought back in due time for trial, becomes the victim not only of enmity openly working under legal forms against him, but of secret intrigue for unholy personal purposes on the emperor's part. condemned to die, after having been permitted first to speak in his own defence, the apostle is led to a suburb of rome, and there beheaded. luke, enjoined thereto by paul, gives to his kindred and friends in palestine an account of the end, of which he was eye-witness. the end. onesimus and syrus had been seized to make them swear a dreadful perjury; it was persuasion from drusilla wrought with tigellinus to commit this deed of outrage against ruth and righteousness: those bondmen should be brought, by utmost pangs wreaked on them in the anguish of the rack, to charge paul with the poisoning of her spouse. drusilla first had vainly sought to bribe poor syrus to that lie and perfidy. smiles, blandishments, entreaties, promises, failing--she next, with scourgings from her tongue, threats, thrusts from female weapons in her hands, had striven to warp him to her wish--in vain. at last she, giving him up for torture, yet bade him remember he need only swear, therein supported by onesimus, that from paul's hand he had a dust received- impalpable, so fine--of unknown power to work unknown effect upon a man, and had by paul instructed been to sift this secretly into some draught his lord would drink, and watch how it would gladden him- that he had only to protest that lie, confessing then that, in all innocence of childish curiosity to see, he did it when his mistress sent by him a sleeping-draught to felix in his bath- only just this, and straight for both of them, onesimus with syrus, the sharp pains and rending of the question should be stayed. syrus said sadly to onesimus: "o, would that paul were here to give us heart!" "jesus is here, and he will give us heart," onesimus replied; "let us trust him." "i fear i shall be broken to their will," said syrus, "and swear whatever they desire; i am so in terror of the frightful pain!" this was while they were binding the poor slaves upon the rack. his comrade spoke in cheer: "'lo, i am with you alway,' jesus said; he will not let us suffer overmuch. i shall not wonder if he take away the pain, almost--or altogether even. for he abideth faithful--so paul says, and paul has proved it over and over again. at any rate, the promise jesus made to paul once, when his need was very sore, will be as good to us in this our stead; his grace will be sufficient for us still. the dread is heavier than the pain will be." and it was so; for after the first wrench, which well-nigh solved the jointings of their limbs, the spirit rose the sovereign of the flesh and bore those helpless victims of the rack triumphant as in painless ecstasy. their mortal frames became as instruments of music underneath the player's hand; for every quivering nerve within them strung responded to the running torture's touch in bursts of exclamation like the notes of a song sung to some pathetic tune wherein the pathos still keeps triumphing: "lord jesus, this for thee!" "and this!" "o, joy that we are counted worthy thus to suffer!" "it is not suffering, since for thee we suffer!" meanwhile to every challenge touching paul, though thrills of anguish broke their speech to cries, they said, and would forever only say: "he taught us nothing but to reverence our masters with all good fidelity of service rendered them out of true hearts as to the lord in heaven and not to men." by secret orders from the emperor the torture-room was cunningly contrived to be a sort of whispering gallery, an ear of dionysius, to resound whatever might be uttered from the rack wrung out of victims put to question there- words, cries, sighs, groans, or moans of agony- and carry them to distance where above, if one should listen, they might all be heard. here nero laid a listening ear that day- seneca's prompting, who was present too- and heard onesimus and syrus bear their steadfast witness on behalf of paul, with adjuration mingled of a name. the not yet utterly extinguished spark of human in that indurated breast (perhaps therewith effect of fear infused- divinely--at such adjuration heard) responded in a transitory glow of something gentle that resembled ruth toward those poor sufferers faithful against pain; of something that resembled justice too toward paul so stoutly witnessed for by them. he forthwith bade release the witnesses; and hearkened to a counsel touching paul. for seneca adventured this to him- a farewell flicker of his influence, ere tigellinus overbore him quite--: "shouldst thou think well it might indeed be well, to loose this jewish prisoner from his thrall- he giving surety under ample bond to answer with his person at the bar of cæsar upon summons, to be tried whenever shall appear accusers sent accredited from jerusalem to rome." so out of darkness there sprang up a light to paul, and for that present he went free. soon at a meeting of thanksgiving held to celebrate with praises to the lord his unexpected riddance out of thrall paul to his brethren and his kindred said: "my life reprieved from threatened death in shame, i dedicate anew to christ the lord. i go hence, parting from you all with tears of joyful love, and thanks for love again mine in full measure from so many hearts that have not here my bonds in christ despised- i go hence, in the spirit bound, to bear far as i may abroad in all the world the glorious gospel of the blesséd god. pray for me that i may be sped in peace, and that before me doors of utterance may swing open wide wherever i am led. the time is short for all of us; for me shorter, it may be, than our present joy buoys us to hope. perhaps the lord will come and find me waking still--and not asleep- to welcome him descending in the air. amen! so may it be! lord jesus, come! "and yet, belovéd, though these words i speak, a more prevailing prescience in my heart forewarns me i shall witness with my blood for him who suffered unto blood for me. if so it be, amen! lord jesus, yea, thy will for me is my will for myself; i spring to it with joy, or far or near- unknown to me--enough that it is thine! "so, farewell, ye. watch and remember, all, that by the space of two full years in chains i have not ceased to warn you night and day, each one, with tears. and now, behold, i know that some of you to whom i have fulfilled this ministry shall see my face no more. o, brethren, i commend you unto god! be perfect, be of brave and hopeful cheer, be of one mind, abide in peace, and he, the god of love and peace, shall with you be. o, how my heart is large toward you! the love of god, the grace of our lord jesus christ, and the communion of the holy ghost be with you and abound--ever! amen!" therewith paul kneeled and prayed a breaking prayer; and they all wept, and he wept with them all, they falling on his neck and kissing him in love and sorrow. each one with himself 'among them, i?' asked, and so sorrowed most of all for that word which he spoke, "i know that some of you shall see my face no more." paul sent his kindred and his lovers--those who for his sake had sailed with him to rome- back to find home again in holy land, while he, with luke for his companion sole, should run his rounds of mission through the world. "but what ye can," he said, "before ye go, comfort onesimus and syrus, sick with wounding for christ's sake and mine; i have already bathed onesimus with tears of love, and bidden him in christ be strong: ye will not leave him till his health be whole at least enough to take the journey back to our philemon, bearing thanks from me. "those here in rome that love me i shall trust to speed both you and him with needful aid- even as i trust them not to let me lack. onesimus no doubt will find a way that ye could not, nor i, to carry help to syrus in his far more wretched case- beset with household craft and cruelty. pray ye for him; and lade onesimus in seeking syrus deep with love from me. christ will not fail him, if he fail not christ; 'it is but for a moment, all the pain,' charge it upon onesimus to say, 'but for eternal ages is the joy!' "now unto such as can receive it i, under this present imminence of woe forerunning the return of christ the lord, give counsel not to marry but abide in undistracted waiting for the day. yet for our stephen and eunicé here, already long betrothed and lovers true, my will is as their will is; let them wed. stephen as husband to eunicé can in journeying better fend both her and ruth her mother; he as well can fend his own, rachel, the only--sister of my heart!" paul's voice a little failed him, ending thus; and all took knowledge how his kindred love broke over him, a wave of tenderness! so stephen and eunicé wedded were, paul each in turn adjuring solemnly: "thou, o eunicé, wilt as wife be true, that know i well, to whom thou thus hast wed. submit thyself to him in loyal love, and as in pledged obedience to the lord- less to his will so yielding than to christ's. for god ordains it that the husband be head to the wife, as to the church is christ. but thou, o stephen, judge what sanction so is on the husband laid, to be how pure, above self-will and selfishness how high, how full of ministration and of help, how ready ever to self-sacrifice for the wife's sake, how gentle and how kind! thou, therefore, stephen, love thy wife, even so as the lord jesus loved the church, his bride, and for her gave himself. be happy, ye, belovéd, in a love so sanctified." paul blessed them, and they felt that they were blessed. when soon from rome they took their homeward way- ruth, rachel, and the newly-wedded pair- they wept that they had looked their last on paul; wept with rejoicing that, a little while, and the lord coming would make all things glad. now sergius paulus chose it for his part to fill paul's purse, speeding him on his way; but krishna was of mind himself to go with those who would return to holy land. he longed with his own eyes to see the scenes amid which jesus lived his life on earth and to glean up from the tradition found haply there current in the mouths of men concerning him, both what he taught and what he was: the indian's thought was he would then, full-laden with such treasures of the west, to his own native east return and there dispense them to enrich his countrymen. paul bade him prosper in his wish, and go. acquitted thus of all his natural cares, and joyful in the sense of his reprieve, and springing toward the work that he would do, and for that work renewed in strength by hope and faith and love and zeal unquenchable and passion for the saving of the souls of men, his fellows, perishing in sin- much more, by the almighty hand of god upon him stayed in an immortal youth- that spent old man, refusing to be spent though spending daily like the river of god, set forward, luke alone companion now, to send with torch in hand a running fire of gospel conflagration round the world. go, paul, forgetful of thyself, make speed! thou shalt not be forgotten of thy god! go, with that treasure for thy fellows fraught! go, with the future of the world in trust! nowhere in utmost islands of the sea, never till time shall be no more, shall men not owe thee debt for blessings manifold- crowning the life that now is, frail and fleet, crowning the nobler life that is to be- blessings theirs but because thou wouldst not shrink from whatsoever hardship, peril, harm, loss, toil, self-sacrifice to martyrdom. so thou mightst scatter far and wide for us the deathless seeds of that which we enjoy in harvest of all good, civility of morals and of manners, science, art, fair order, freedom, progress, light and life, and, overvaulting all, the hope of heaven! while paul his circuits was accomplishing, paul's enemies (and ours) were not remiss, whether in rome or in jerusalem. drusilla, disappointed of her hopes with nero to ensnare his heart and be assumed to sit beside him on his throne, even cheated for the moment of the glut she thought she had purchased at such cost to pride of extreme vengeance visited on paul, was sullenly but more than ever bent not to fail yet of at least that desire. she saw octavia, sent to exile, way make for poppæa's spousals; heard the shout of shallow hollow popular acclaim that hailed her hated rival conqueror, bearing her as on billows of applause to the high seat herself had hoped for once! envy and hatred ulcerous ate her heart- but not despair; despair was not for her: malignity was fuel still to hope. she despatched simon to jerusalem to blow the embers smouldering there to flame of deadly accusation against paul: simon was shimei risen from the dead, shimei in all his pristine force unspent. the elders of the jews commissioned him, with others to whom he was heart and head, to press at rome for paul the doom of death. meantime the mouth of common fame began to whisper that poppæa, though a wife to nero now--perhaps because a wife and mother of a daughter, claudia, born to him--no longer charmed him as of old. unholy hope flared up a flicker of flame delusive in drusilla's breast once more. octavia, when her husband tired of her, went into exile and then went to death to give poppæa room; poppæa's turn perhaps was nearing to make room for her, drusilla! 'up, o heart!' she inly cried. the emperor had indeed with fickle whim, dazed by some intercepting lure more nigh, forgotten quite his thought of tryst with her- as her conditions too he had not met. but her conditions now were well in train, she trusted, to fulfill themselves on paul; and if before, some trace of conscience left in nero interfered to make him pause, such scruple would no longer be a let to his desire, should his desire revive, of meeting her upon the terms she fixed to satisfy at once her hate, her pride. simon then, from jerusalem returned blithe with his prosperous mission and with hope, should go once more to nero for her cause. and simon went, but went not for her cause. he had a purpose of his own to serve- purpose malignant, fatuous--which, fulfilled, would swift recoil in ruin on himself. no worship to poppæa's setting sun paid by him now to win his way at court, he boldly in drusilla's name besought access to the imperial ear: that name procured him instant audience. discomposed a little by the sudden way he made simon stood faltering, and before his wit was ready with apt words the emperor spoke: "what will thy mistress? she perhaps has thought the emperor was a trifle slow to claim his privilege at her court? bid her take heart; things now begin to shape themselves aright." by this time simon had recovered himself; he said: "my mistress is indulgent, sire. knowing my fondness for my art, and wish that i might entertain the emperor, she begs thou wilt appoint a time for me--" "o, aye," the emperor said; "return to her, and if thou canst bring promptly back to me assurance of her grace that she forgives my tardiness in the past, and will receive me yet upon the terms she fixed before- somewhat abated, aye, but in the main whole; for although the rabble rest she named are scattered and not worth regathering, paul is under hand again, duly accused, and freely may be dealt with to our wish- bring, i say, word to me that she consents, and thou shalt exercise for me thine art at pleasure here within my palace halls. go, and good speed, ambassador of love!" the sarcasm and the irony took effect to quicken in the sorcerer his resolve: for simon his own doom was teeming now. he was infatuate with the vain conceit that he the secret in his art possessed of a mock-supernatural power to play upon the conscience of the emperor and fill his conscious breast with guilty fears: so once he saw paul play on felix's, making him shudder on his judgment-throne; aye, and so he himself in sequel played on the same kingly culprit with his spells. beyond all, simon was beside himself with suffocated hatred seeking breath in freak of demonstration on the man who in the wantonness of despotic pride had so despised and mocked and flouted him. mad thus--judicially, and doubly--he, having brought back the word the emperor wished, and had the promised day appointed him, dared an audacious and a fatal thing. a series of phantasmagories shown by him, he closed with a presentment, clear in outline cast upon the palace wall in shapes of shadow moving like grim life, of the dread scene of agrippina's death: there hung the vessel on a glassy sea; the coping timbers causelessly fell down, but missed the empress-mother figured there; there followed then the ghastly after-act of mother-murder done in pantomime- more ghastly, that it passed in silence all. simon mistook--it was his last mistake! he had overweened both of the power his own, and of the emperor's openness to fear. nero sat gazing on the spectacle with heed moveless, and mute, and ominous, till the device was acted to the end. then still no sign he gave--save summons sent bidding two household soldiers straight come in. to these he coldly, curtly, only said: "crucify me this jew; do it at once! be gentle with him; make him last for days, and every day bring me report of him." simon bethought him as he shuddering went hustled and hurried to that sudden doom, of his gold hoarded long for utmost need: he offered it in ransom for his life. the soldiers took it, share and share alike between them, but it did not buy his life! simon died miserably upon the cross. 'i have abolished _him_!' the emperor thought- 'the adamantine front of impudence! whimsical way of paying a lady court, to crucify her conjurer out of hand! i hope she did not greatly care for him! happily if she did i can repair the loss to her by putting paul to death. strange, they should hate that blameless man so much! but reasons of state are strong--and reasons of love; i must propitiate with a sacrifice. jove is compelled by fate mightier than he!' the tetrarch herod, to content the whim and hatred of his wife herodias, once at petition of her daughter fair- whose dancing measures beat at festival before him had, forsooth, the monarch pleased!- sent to behead john baptist in his prison: so nero now in mind delivered paul to death--an unconsidered pledge and pawn of complaisance to a base woman paid. as were a star by some avulsive force malignant sheer from out her pathway torn where she went singing her celestial way happy but to fulfill his high decree who orbed her and who sped her on her course (thenceforth to be abolished from a heaven lighted no longer with her lucent beams!); so paul was in his heavenly circuits stayed and wrenched thence by the hand of violent power. rome had already round him flung the loop of her long lasso irresistible, and drawn him home to cæsar to be judged. no little damped because their head was gone, but more because he so had disappeared, the jews commissioned from jerusalem pressed fierce their suit against their fellow-jew. nero's assessors sat without their chief; for nero was grown indolent and lax, and he deputed his judicial powers. yet oft deigned he to give his deputies hint of what judgment he desired from them; and they now knew the doom required for paul. paul was left lonely of all men save luke; but luke the faithful chose with him his part. paul longed for timothy, and wrote to him bidding him haste and bring john mark to rome. but the end hasted more than these could haste, and timothy was never in the flesh to greet again that father of his soul who, for the son's sake more than for his own, yearned toward the son to fix in him his faith seen nigh to falter in the face of things such as now fronted paul. john mark though once in haste of spirit sundered from paul's part, had long before been won again--to bide thenceforward ever fast in loyalty; but as not timothy, so neither he would comfort paul in this his last assay. so much the more paul's lonely fortitude in witness amid storms of obloquy and under the impending threat of doom, then against doom itself upon him fallen, should at need brace them both to martyrdom. most exquisitely human-hearted, paul could not but feel full sore his loneliness- loneliness more for sense of being forsaken. "demas," to timothy he sighed, "has loved this present world, and has forsaken me. all men forsook me the first time i stood to make my answer at the judgment-bar; i pray it be not laid to their account!" nobly repined!--yet for a moment only; then cheerly added, this, and thankfully: "of men not one stood with me; but the lord, he with me stood, and cheered and strengthened me, that all the gentiles might the gospel hear; and for that time from out the lion's mouth i was delivered. yea, and betide what may, still the lord jesus will deliver me from every machination of ill men, and to his heavenly kingdom bring me safe. to whom be glory evermore! amen!" enjoined thereto by paul, luke bore from rome to rachel and the rest in holy land- that dear companionship of kindred hearts- the tidings how all ended with his death; yet how, before he died, and when he died, he conquered gloriously. luke said to them: "he was not taken at all at unawares; nothing surprised and nothing daunted him. nay, he rejoiced in spirit that all was now finished for him on earth; that he might lay his warrior's harness off and take his crown. he said this to his judges with such calm clear consciousness of speaking simple truth, such sober confidence devoid of vaunt, that something like conviction seized on them listening; while on the listening multitude- for the basilica was thronged--i felt fall a great hush and a pathetic awe. 'i know well whom i have believed,' he said, 'and my persuasion is complete that he is able to keep that which i have given in trust to him against the coming day. yea, ye will surely send me hence to die; the time of my departure ye have set; so much is in your power to do to me; but there is more, far more, beyond your power. life ye can take, but not the good of life. the good of life is lodged where it is safe, and life indeed no power can take from me; that is committed to almighty hands, almighty, and all-faithful, and all-wise: there it is mine, inalienably mine. so there is that in me which bides secure from any terror men can threat me with. a witness in my heart attests that i have fought the good fight, fought it to the end; that i have run my race and touched the goal; through all temptation, i have kept the faith. i strain my eyes before me and i see, shining, a crown, the crown of righteousness, held in the hand once pierced and pierced for me of the arisen lord and glorified, the righteous judge who will award the prize. that prize he holds for me'--"hereon," luke said, "paul turned toward where i stood--o, how i wished there had been many others with me then to hear what i heard, and to take his look, that kindling look of large vicarious hope!- paul turned toward me his heaven-illumined face, and added: 'yea, for me holds--nor for me alone, but with me all men also who have loved the bright appearing of the lord. 'i have been bound, but not the word of god; that has run freely, sped around the world. i am to die, but the quick word of god, so much incapable of dying, lives forever an invulnerable life. this roman empire, like those empires old, will crumble into dust and pass away; the temples and the palaces of rome will vanish like a vision from men's eyes; but the majestic kingdom of my god will stand forever and forever grow. within its walls, i have not built in vain; for i have founded on a corner-stone that never will be moved. the earth we tread will tremble and be moved out of its place; the heavens above us, sun and moon and star, will yet be rolled together like a scroll, or folded like a vestment laid aside; but what on jesus christ for corner-stone i, with much prayer and many tears, in faith have builded to the glory of his grace, will still in ever-during beauty shine. 'but though i speak thus of the vanishing of all this fabric of a mighty state, all this imperial pomp and power of rome, and the succeeding of an order new, a heavenly kingdom with a heavenly king, yet know, o judges, that in all good faith, i ever everywhere have taught and shown loyal submission to the powers that be. by letter, ere i came myself to rome, i charged this duty on my brethren here; i told them they could not in any wise obedient be to god, and not obey the powers by him set over them to rule: ask my disciples, make them witnesses, they all will testify i taught them thus. not that my life is such a prize to me; but i would have the holy name of him who bought me with his blood, and made of me a herald of his glorious grace to men- yea, i would have that ever-blesséd name pure of reproach through me before you all. 'i thank my judges that at least i may thus freely speak once more before i die. a cloud of witnesses around me here hangs in my eye; i might behold, beyond these and above, innumerably bright, thick ranks of hovering angels beckoning me; but i stretch out my hands in suit to these, my fellows, and beseech them one and all, and you, my judges, i beseech--and would i might beseech the whole world with my voice now speaking for its last time in men's ears!- be reconciled through jesus christ to god. with me it is a light thing to be judged of men; albeit obeisance due i pay to this tribunal as ordained of god. but i look forward to be judged of one before whose eyes the secrets of men's hearts lie open like the pages of a book. and ye too all who judge me, and all these who see me judged--yea, and himself, your head, the emperor, with his counsellors, and all that under earth slumber or in the sea, the living generations and the dead, one congregation and assembly called at last together whencesoever found, shall stand before the judgment-seat of christ. o, i adjure you and entreat you, hear betimes my message sent from god to you. one advocate alone, none other, can plead to the father with effect for you. but he can, for it is the judge himself will be your advocate, if but you will now choose him to be such, and he will speak for you with a resistless eloquence of wounds shown in his hands and feet and side, signs of his suffering borne in the behalf of all those who will come to god by him. 'i have a vision of that judgment-scene: these wide-embracing walls i see expand to the horizon's utmost rim around; this roof is lifted to the top of heaven; this multitude is multiplied to count beyond all count; yon judgment-throne becomes dazzling beyond the splendors of the sun with an exceeding whiteness, such as eye of man nor angel can abide to see; and he that sits thereon, and makes it dark by the excess of brightness in his face, speaks, and his voice to hear is as the sound of many waters rolling down in flood. i heard that voice once speaking from the sky amid a blaze of light falling around me at midnoon that blanched the syrian sun burning from his meridian height on me. o men, my brethren, it was a dread voice; but i obeyed it, and i therefore lived. obey it ye, heard speaking through my lips and bidding, come! o, sweet and dreadful voice, both sweet and dreadful, uttering now that word! dreadful, not sweet, it then will sound to those who hearing thus the invitation, come, harden their hearts to disobey. for then in changed tones it will speak a different word. 'hence, curséd of my father!' it will say, and drive the disobedient as with sword of flame forth issuing and pursuing them, pursuing and devouring, while they fly in vain forever and forever far before it, and no refuge anywhere in all the boundless universe of god find from the fiery fangs of that fierce sword!' "i never saw," said luke, "such pity cast such pathos over such solemnity, such faithfulness to god, to man, as then, while he in that hushed audience spoke these things, lived in paul's looks and tuned his prophet tones. no one that listened and beheld escaped the power of god; and some perhaps believed. "but they condemned the guiltless man to die; and, like his lord, he died without the gates. they led him to a chosen spot not far beyond the city walls--he all the way seen walking like one meekly triumphing; for a train followed and attended him, before whom he was as a conqueror. where gushed a fountain in a pine-tree shade suburban, there they made their prisoner stay. here they beheaded him; christ suffered it- what matter to his servant how he died? the pain was short, if sharp; perhaps indeed there was no pain at all, but only swift transition to a state of perfect rest from pain, from weariness, from every ill, forever in the presence of the lord. the dear dissevered head we joined again to the worn-weary body as we could: we comforted ourselves to see the peace that the white-shining countenance expressed, and stanched our tears and eased our aching hearts to think that all his toil was over now, and all the contradiction he so long had suffered from his thankless fellow-men; and that he had aspired triumphantly at last to be at home with christ in heaven, there to behold the glory that he had, ere the beginning of the world, with god his father. "so we buried him in hope there on the selfsame spot where he had fallen; and said to one another the great words, heroic, heartening, full of heavenly truth, himself with streaming tears once spoke to us- you will remember--then when mary died, and when we buried her that sunset hour there on that holy hill in melita." with such a gentle cadence to his tale, luke ended; and those sat in silence long, remembering with sweet heart-ache what had been. then, having knelt together first in prayer, and having lifted a pathetical high hymn of triumph over death, they rose calm and addressed themselves anew to life: a little patience and the lord would come. * * * * * _by the same author_ the epic of saul a companion to "the epic of paul" saul of tarsus, brought up at jerusalem, a pupil of gamaliel, the most celebrated rabbi of his time, from setting out as eager but pacific controversialist in public dispute against the preachers of the gospel, changes into a virulent, bloody persecutor of christians, and ends by abruptly becoming himself a christian and a teacher of christianity. the epic of saul tells the story of this. "it is the great success of the poem," says prof. john a. paine, "to put the reader in the place of those who opposed the rising and rapidly spreading faith in jesus, and to unfold a marvellous insight into the reasonings, motives, intrigues, and action of those actually engaged in trying to suppress the new movement; and thus, it helps to form a remarkably vivid conception of the crisis, and to gain a deeper understanding of the conflict." "saul in the council stephen's face saw shine as it had been an angel's, but his heart to the august theophany was blind- blinded by hatred of the fervent saint, and hatred of the lord who in him shone, what blindfold hatred such could work of ill in nature meant for utter nobleness, then how the hatred could to love be turned, the proud wrong will to lowly right be brought, and paul the 'servant' spring from rebel saul- this, ye who love in man the good and fair, and joy to hail retrieved the good and fair- from the unfair and evil, hearken all and speed me with your wishes while i sing."- --_from the proem._ _appreciative criticisms._ "decidedly impressive and attractive.... one never wants to lay the book down, and reads it through with increasing, rather than flagging interest."--the spectator, london. "dr. wilkinson's epic of saul is daring in conception, subtle in analysis, exquisite in delineation, stately in movement, dramatic in unfolding, rythmical in expression, reverent in tone, uplifting in tendency. the poem of saul is as truly an epic as milton's paradise lost." --rev. george dana boardman, d.d. _8vo, cloth, gilt top, 386 pp. price, $1.50, post-free._ _"epic of saul," and "epic of paul" together, $3.00._ funk & wagnalls company, publishers, new york * * * * * transcriber's note: the ad page has been moved from the beginning to the end of the book. minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed. the cover for the ebook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. [frontispiece: "the seed of his teaching has spread abroad" _page 4_] saul of tarsus _a tale of the early christians_ _by_ elizabeth miller _author of_ the yoke with illustrations by andré castaigne indianapolis the bobbs-merrill company publishers copyright 1906 the bobbs-merrill company contents chapter i saul of tarsus ii a prudent exception iii the first martyr iv the bankrupt v agrippa in repertoire vi marsyas assumes a charge vii the bondman of hate viii an alexandrian characteristic ix "--as an army with banners" x flaccus works a complexity xi the house of defense xii "scattering the flock" xiii a trust fulfilled xiv for a woman's sake xv the false balance xvi a matter handled wisely xvii a word in season xviii the ransom xix the deliverance xx the feast of flora xxi the fining fire xxii "in the cloak of two colors" xxiii a letter and a loss xxiv the digged pit xxv the speaking of eutychus xxvi the arm made bare xxvii the proconsul's deliberations xxviii the strange woman xxix in extremis xxx the eremite in scarlet, and the bankrupt in purple xxxi the dregs of the cup of trembling xxxii sanctuary xxxiii the dregs of the cup of fury xxxiv captives of the mighty xxxv the approach of the day of visitation xxxvi on the damascus road xxxvii in the house of ananias xxxviii the requital in memory of my soldier brother ralph miller lieutenant sixth cavalry u.s.a. saul of tarsus chapter i saul of tarsus on a certain day in march of the year 36 a.d., a levite, one of the shoterim or temple lictors, came down from moriah, into the vale of gihon, and entered the portal of the great college, builded in jerusalem for the instruction of rabbis and doctors of law in judea. with foot as rapid and as noiseless as that of a fox among the tombs, the levite crossed the threshold into the great gloom of the interior. this way and that he turned his head, watchful, furtive, catching every obscure corner in the range of his glance. he saw that three men sat within, two together, one a little apart from the others. from this to that one, the alert gaze slipped until it lighted upon a small, bowed shape in white garments. then the levite smiled, his lips moved and shaped a word of satisfaction, but no sound issued. silently he flitted into an aisle which would lead him upon the two, and suddenly appeared before them. the small bent figure made a nervous start, but the levite bowed and rubbed his hands. "greeting, rabbi saul; god's peace attend thee. be greeted, rabbi eleazar; peace to thee!" rabbi eleazar raised a great head and looked with an unfavorable eye at the levite; in it was to be read strong dislike of the levite's stealthy manner. "greeting, joel," he replied in a voice quite in keeping with his splendid bulk, "peace to thee. yet take it not amiss if i suggest that since there is no warning in thy footfall or thy garments, thou shouldst be belled!" the other had dropped back in his seat, and the levite bowed again to him. "i pray thy pardon, rabbi saul, but i came as i was sent--in haste." "it is nothing, joel," saul answered. "give us news of the high priest's health." "he continues in health, god be thanked, but his spirit was sorely tried--" he stopped abruptly to look, as if in question, at the man sitting apart in the shadows. "who is that?" he asked suspiciously. "a pupil," was eleazar's impatient reply. the levite looked again, but, the twilight thwarting him, he hitched a slant shoulder and, passing to one of the windows, drew aside its heavy hanging. instantly, a great golden beam shot into the cold chamber and illuminated it gloriously. saul threw his hand over his eyes to shut out the blinding radiance. but the pupil, helped at his reading by the admitted light, straightened himself, glanced up a moment, and turned to his scroll without a word. "a stranger," joel whispered, coming back to the rabbis. "what burden of mystery dost thou conceal, joel?" eleazar exclaimed. "yonder man is an essene; look about; the stones will take tongue and betray thee, sooner than he." "let me be sure, let me be sure!" joel insisted stubbornly. as if obedient to eleazar, he cast an eye about the chamber. the light which came in at the west was straight from the spring sun, moted and warm with benevolence. that which entered at the east was only a quivering reflection from the marble walls and golden gates of the temple. the chamber was immense, shadowy and draughty, the floor of stone, the walls of hermon's rock, relieved by massive arcades supported on pilasters, and friezes of such images as were hieratically approved. the ceiling was so lost in height and cold dusk that its structure could not be defined. at the end opposite the doors was the lectern of ivory and ebony, embellished with symbolical intaglios and inlaid with gold. beside it stood the reader's chair, across which the rug had been dropped as he had put it off his knees. before the lectern, across and down the great chamber, were ranges of carven benches, among which were lamps of bronze, darkened and green about the reliefs and corrugations on the bowls, depending from chains or set about on tripods. but besides the three already noted, the levite saw and expected to see no others. eleazar regarded his ostentatious inspection of the room with disgust. "thou hast a burden on thy soul, joel," saul urged mildly. "let us bear it with thee." the levite came close and bent over the rabbis. "question your souls, brethren," he said. "hath judea more to lose than it hath lost?" he asked in a lowered tone. "its identity," eleazar responded shortly. but the levite looked expectantly at saul. "its faith," saul suggested quietly. the levite nodded eagerly. "its faith," saul continued, as if speaking to himself, "and after that there is nothing more. yea, restore unto it its kings and its dominions, yet withhold the faith and there is no judea. desolate it until the land is sown in salt and the people bound to the mills of the oppressor, so but the faith abide, judea is judea, glorified!" "what then, o rabbi," the levite persisted, "if the land be sown in salt and the people bound to the mills of the oppressor, if the faith be abandoned--what then?" "god can not perish," eleazar put in. "fear not; it can not come to pass." "nay, but evil can enter the souls of men and point them after false prophets so that god is forgotten," the levite retorted. his lean figure bent at the hips and he thrust his face forward with triumph of prophecy on it. saul looked at him. "what hast thou to tell, joel?" he asked with command in his voice. the levite accepted the order as he had worked toward it--with energy. "listen, then," he began in a whisper. "dost thou remember him whom they crucified at golgotha, a passover, four years ago?" eleazar nodded, but saul made no sign. "know ye that they killed the plant after it had ripened," the levite hastened on. "the seed of his teaching hath spread abroad and wherever it lodgeth it hath taken root and multiplied. wherefore, there is a multitude of offspring from the single stem." saul stood up. he did not gain much in stature by rising, but the temper of the man towered gigantic over the impatience of eleazar and the craft of the levite. "what accusation is this that thou levelest at judea?" he demanded. "a truth!" joel replied. "that israel hath a blasphemer among them, which hath been spared, concealed and not put away?" questioned saul. "dare ye?" the levite cried. "dare ye not!" saul answered sternly. "it is the law!" the levite came toward him. "go thou unto the high priest jonathan," he whispered evilly; "he hath work for thee to do!" eleazar doubled his huge hand and whirled his head away. there was tense silence for a moment. "is there a specific transgression discovered?" saul demanded. the levite weighed his answer before he gave it. "rumor hath it," he began, "that certain of the sect are in the city preaching--" "rumor!" saul exclaimed. "hast rested on the testimony of rumor?" "can ye track pestilence?" he asked craftily. "by the sick!" was the retort. "go on!" "it is the high priest's vow to attack it," joel declared. "he hath no other thought. it is said that one of the disputants, who yesterday troubled them in the cilician synagogue with an alien doctrine, preached the nazarene's heresy." "in the cilician--in mine own synagogue!" saul repeated, in amazement. "in thine, in the libertine, the cyrenian and the alexandrian." "and they suffered him?" saul persisted with growing earnestness. "they did not understand him, then; he is but a new-comer from galilee." "and i was not there; i was not there!" saul exclaimed regretfully. "what is he called?" "stephen." there was a sound from the direction of the silent pupil. they looked that way to see that he had dropped his scroll and had sprung to his feet. the levite dropped his head between his shoulders and scrutinized him sharply. but the young man had fixed his eyes upon saul, as if waiting for his answer. "stephen of galilee," the levite added, watching the young man. "a hellenist; and he wrapped his blasphemy so subtly in philosophy that none detected it until after much thought." the young man turned his face toward the speaker and a glimmer of anger showed in his black eyes. "it is bold blasphemy which ventures into a synagogue," saul said half to himself. "ah! thou pointest to the sign of peril," the levite resumed. "boldness is the banner of strength; strength is the fruit of numbers; and numbers of apostates will be the ruin of judea and the forgetting of god!" saul caught up his scrip which lay beside him, but eleazar continued to gaze at the beam of light penetrating the chamber. "wherefore the high priest is troubled, and, laying aside all his private ambitions, henceforward he will devote himself to the preservation of the faith," the levite continued. "which means," eleazar interrupted, "the persecution of the apostate." the levite spread out his hands and lifted his shoulders. the rabbi eleazar forged too far ahead. "it is our duty, eleazar," saul said, "to discover if this galilean preaches heresy. let us go to the synagogue." eleazar arose, a towering man, broad, heavy and slow, but his rising was as the rising of opposition. "i am enlisted in the teaching of the law, not in the suppression of heresy," he said bluntly. "furthermore, my work here is not yet complete. wilt thou excuse me, my brother?" "let me not keep thee from thy duty," saul answered courteously. "joel! come with me," eleazar commanded, and together the two disappeared into the interior of the college. then the young man who had held his place came out of the shadows into the broad beam of the sun, which fell now over saul. "peace to thee, saul," he said; "peace and greeting." the voice, in contrast to the tones of the men who had lately discussed, was very calm and level, restrained by cultivation, yet one which is never characteristic of an undecided nature. "thou, marsyas!" saul exclaimed in sudden recognition. he extended his hands to meet the other's in a greeting that was more affectionate than conventional. the young man with sudden impulsiveness raised the hands and pressed them to his breast. "saul! saul!" he repeated with a quiver of emotion in his voice. "and none hath supplanted me in thy loves, marsyas?" saul smiled. "art thou come hither for instruction? am i to have thee by me now in jerusalem?" the glow of warmth in the rabbi's manner did not contribute its confidence to the young man. he seemed not less troubled than moved. with searching eyes, he looked down from his superior height into saul's face. as the two stood together, physical extremes could not have been more perfect. the rabbi was not well-formed, and his frame had a note of feebleness in its make-up in spite of its youth and flesh. the face was pale, the eyes so deep-set as to appear sunken, the hair, thin, curling and lightly silvered, the beard, short, full and touched with the same early frost. though no recent alien blood ran in his veins, his features were only moderately characteristic of the sons of jacob. he was not erect, and the stoop in his shoulders was more extreme than the mere relaxation from rigidity, yet less pronounced than actual curvature. the veins on the backs of his hands stood up from the refined whiteness of the flesh, and when his head turned, the great artery in his throat could be seen irregularly beating. it was the physique of a man not only weak but sapped by a subtle infirmity. he wore the head-dress and the voluminous white robes of a rabbi, girded with the blue and white cord of his calling. but his class as a pharisee was marked by the heavy undulating fringes at the hem of his garment, and by the little case of calf-skin framing a parchment lettered in hebrew which was bound across his forehead. herein, by fringe, phylactery and the traditional colors, he published his submission to the minutiæ of the law. in so much the rabbi could have had twenty counterparts over judea, but his aggressive nature stamped him with an individuality which has had no equal in all time. over his countenance was a fine assumption of humility curiously inconsistent with a consciousness of excellence which made an atmosphere about him that could be felt. yet, holding first place over these conflicting attributes was the stamp of tremendous mental power, and a heart-whole sweetness that was irresistible. the union of these four characteristics was to produce a man that would hold fast to theory, though all fact arise and shouted it down; who would maintain form, though the spirit had in horror long since fled the shape. thus, inflexibly fixed in his convictions, he was unlimited in his capacity for maintaining them. in short, he was a leader of men, a zealot, a formalist and an inquisitor--one of great mentality dogmatized, of great spirit prejudiced, of immense capabilities perverted. such was saul of tarsus. but the other was a jew of blood so pure, of type so pronounced, that the man of mixed races before him appeared wholly foreign. his line had descended from the persistent love of jacob for rachel, through the tents of them that slew the midianitish women in the wilderness, through the households of esdras and the camps of judas maccabæus. he was above average height, and built ruggedly, as were judah the lion, and jacob who wrestled with the angel. one of in-door habit, he was fair on the forehead, under the soft young beard and the shining black curls at his temples. but his cheeks were crimson, his eyes intensely black and sparkling, his teeth, glittering ranges of shaded ivory. and the bold strength of his profile and the brilliance of his color seemed finished by the deep cleft distinctly discernible. on his face was written an attribute common among men of a time of messianic hopes and crises. asceticism with its blank purity of brow set him apart from the sordid souls in his walk. yet about him there seemed to be an atmosphere surcharged with physical radiations, with human electricity that fairly sparkled in its strength. even saul, his long-time friend, on this occasion of sudden meeting, remarked this equal power of body and spirit. the pharisee glanced at the young man's garments,--simple robes without fringes, without gaud, and white as the snows of hermon. "strange," the pharisee said after his peculiar manner of talking with himself, "strange that thou shouldst elect to be an essene." a little proud surprise appeared on marsyas' face. "i can not be anything else," the young man answered. "thou hast not ventured. but, nevertheless, thou wilt be noted in the college. the essenes are very few these days in jerusalem; en-gadi receives them all. and thou art a doctor of laws--a master essene. how long wilt thou study here?" "five years, rabbi." yet the young man was at least twenty-five years of age. what course of instruction was it which carried a man into middle life before it was finished? what but the tremendous complexities of the mosaic and the oral law. but these things had been taught the young man in the forecourt of the little synagogue in nazareth where he was born. so, because his learning extended beyond the reach of the provincial essenic philosopher who had taught him in his youth, the young man had quitted the little hill town in galilee to come to the feet of the master essene in the great college of jerusalem. to be an essene was to live a celibate under the regime of community laws, under a common roof, at a common board; to be bodily and spiritually spotless, to believe in the resurrection of the soul, the brotherhood of man, and the frailty and the incontinence of women; to accept no hospitality from one not an essene and to own no possessions apart from the common ownership of the order. but to be an essenic doctor was to be the most ascetic scholar and the most scholarly ascetic in the world, at that time. but marsyas had no thought on saul's contemplation of him. "i heard the talk of the levite," he said. "because it concerns me much, i could not shut mine ears against it. i, too, have heard the creed of the nazarenes." "how, marsyas? harkened unto the heretics?" "i have heard their creed," he persisted in his calm way. "it differs little from the teachings of mine own order, the essenes, except that they believe in the divinity of jesus of nazareth and the receptiveness of the gentile." "and thou callest that a little difference?" "not so great that one going astray after the nazarenes could not be satisfied with the essenes, if he were obliged to give up his apostasy. i seek a remedy." "moses supplied the remedy," saul averred with meaning. "the essenes are not inflicters of punishment," was the even reply. the pharisee made a conciliatory gesture. "it is then only a discussion of the practices of my class and of thine." but marsyas was not satisfied. "thou knowest stephen?" he asked after a pause. "stephen of galilee? only by report." "perchance, then, thou knowest galilee," the essene resumed after a short pause. "galilee that sitteth between phoenicia the menace and samaria the pollution, and is not soiled; that standeth between the middle sea, the power, and the jordan, the subject, and is not humbled. she is israel's brawn, not easily governed of the mind which is enthroned jerusalem. "we are rustics in galilee, tillers of the soil, mountaineers and fishers, simple rugged folk who live in the present, expecting miracles, seeing signs, discovering prophets and wonders. we are patriots, bound and hooped against an alien, but bursting wide with whatever chanceth to ferment within us. let there but arise a galilean who hath a gift or a grudge or a devil, and proclaim himself anointed, and he can gather unto himself a following that would assail cæsar's stronghold, did he say the word." he paused and seemed to recall what he had said. "yet, we are good jews," he added hastily, "faithful followers of the law and such as israel might select to die singly for israel's sake. no galilean is ashamed of himself except when he permits himself to be led so far into folly that he can not turn back." the pharisee foresaw intuitively the young man's climax. "the law does not remit punishment for blasphemy, even if a soul turn back from its folly," he observed. marsyas' face became grave and he gazed at the place on the wall where quivered the reflection from the splendors of the temple. "stephen is my friend," he said earnestly, "a simple soul, generous, fervid, and a true lover of god." "if he be such, he is safe," saul replied. the young man fingered the scarf that girded him. "the brothers at en-gadi would receive him," he said. "what need of him to retire from the world if he be a good jew?" saul persisted. again the young man hesitated. saul was driving him into a declaration that he would have led forth gradually. then he came to the pharisee and laid a persuading band on his arm. "go not to the synagogue," he entreated. "wait a little!" "wait in the lord's business?" saul asked mildly. "be not hastier than the chastening of the lord; if he bears with stephen, so canst thou a little longer. give love its chance with stephen before vengeance undoes him wholly!" "marsyas," saul protested in a tone of kindly remonstrance, "thou dost convict him by thy very concern." "no!" the young essene declared, pressing upon the pharisee in passionate earnestness. "i am only troubled for him. let me go first and understand him, for it seems that there is doubt in the hearts of his accusers, and after that--" "thine eye shall not pity him," saul repeated in warning. "saul! saul! he is my beloved friend!" "moses prepared us for such a sorrow as apostasy among those whom we love. what says the lawgiver--'thy friend, which is as thine own soul, thy hand shall be the first upon him to put him to death!'" the lifted hands of the young essene dropped as if they had been struck down. "death!" he repeated, retreating a step. "wilt thou kill him?" "i am more thy friend, marsyas," the pharisee went on, "because i am zealous for the law. the heresy is infectious and thou art no more safe from it than any other man. and i would rather sit in judgment over stephen, whom i do not know, than over thee, who art dear to me as a brother." the young man drew near again. "dear as a brother!" he said. "stephen is that to me. even now didst thou ask if any had supplanted thee in my loves. no; yet my loves have broadened, so that i can take another into my heart. the lord god be merciful unto me, that i may not be driven to choose one, for defense against the other! even as ye both love me, love one another! saul! thou wast my earlier friend! i can no more endure stephen's peril than i can uproot thee from my heart!" saul flinched before the concealed intimation in the words. a wave of pallor succeeded by hardness swept over his face, and marsyas, observing the change, seized the tarsian's hands between his own. "wait until i have seen him," he besought, "and if there be any taint in his fidelity to the faith, i shall stop at no sacrifice to save him. he is, if at all, only momentarily drawn aside, and as the lord god daily forgives us our sins, let us forgive a brother--" saul tried to draw away, but the young essene's imploring hands held his in a desperate clasp. "i will give up mine instruction," he swept on. "i will retire into en-gadi and take him with me! i will give over everything and become one of their husbandmen; i will have no aim for myself, but for stephen! and if i fail i will take sentence with him! wait! wait! let me return to nazareth and get my patrimony! i will come then and take him at once to en-gadi! saul!" but saul threw off the beseeching hands and stepped back from the young man. the two gazed at each other, the pharisee to discover a crisis in the essene's look; the essene to see immovability in the pharisee. then the distress in marsyas' face changed swiftly, and an ember burned in his black eyes. he straightened himself and stretched out a hand. "i have spoken!" he said. turning purposefully away, he went back to his place and took up his scroll. for a moment he held it, his eyes on the pavement. slowly his fingers unclosed and the scroll dropped--dropped as if he had done with it. catching up his white mantle, he walked swiftly out of the chamber and saul looked after him, yearning, wistful and sad. joel came out of the interior of the building. "i will go with thee to the synagogue," he offered. the pharisee looked at him with cold dislike in his eyes, and, inclining his head, led the way out. at the threshold of the porch he halted. in the street opposite two young men were walking slowly. one was slight, young, graceful and simply clad in a jewish smock. the other was marsyas, the essene, who went with an arm over the shoulders of the first, and, bending, seemed to speak with passionate earnestness to his companion. the faces of the two young men thus side by side showed the same spiritual mode of living, and youthful purity of heart. but the expression of the slighter one was less ascetic than happy, less rigorous than confident. as marsyas spoke, the other smiled; and his smile was an illumination, not entirely earthly. joel seized saul's arm, and held it while the two approached, unconscious of the watchers in the shadow of the porch. "that is he," he whispered avidly. "that is he! stephen, the apostate!" stephen turned his head casually, and, catching the pharisee's eye, returned the gaze with a little friendly questioning; then he raised his face to marsyas and so they passed. the pallor on saul's face deepened. chapter ii a prudent exception after he had separated from stephen, marsyas went to the house of a resident essene with whom he made his home, to be fed, to be washed, to offer supplication and to announce his decision to go on a journey. at the threshold of his host's house he put aside his sandals and let himself in with a murmured formula. in a little time he came forth with a wallet flung over his shoulder and took the streets toward gennath gate. it was not written in the laws of his order that he should make greater preparation for a journey. he had already acquainted himself with the abiding-places of essenes in villages between jerusalem and nazareth and, assured of their hospitality and the provision of the essene's god, he knew that he would fare well to the hill town of galilee. so he passed through the city by the walk of the purified, garments well in hand lest they touch women or the wayside dust, meeting the eye of no man, proud of his humility, punctilious in his simplicity, and wearing unrest under his shell of calm. he had an unobstructed path, a path ceremonially clean. he had but to hesitate on the edge of a congestion, and the first gowned and bearded jew that observed him signed his companions and the way was opened. for the essenes were the best of men, the truly holy men of israel. he went down between the fronts of featureless houses, through the golden haze of sun and dust that overhung the narrow, stony mule-ways, until the distant dream towers of mariamne, of phasælus and of hippicus became imminent, brooding shapes of blackened masonry, and the wall cut off the mule-ways and the great shady arch of the gate let in a glimpse of the country without. on one hand was the prætorium, the roman garrison encamped in the upper palace of herod the great; on the other, the houses of the sadducees, the jewish aristocrats, covered the ridge of akra. marsyas came upon an obstruction. at a gate opening into the street, camels knelt, servants of diverse nationality but of one livery clustered round them, several unoccupied jewish traveling chairs in the hands of bearers stood near. in the center of the considerable crowd, a number of sadducees, priests of high order and pharisees in garments characteristic of their several classes were taking ceremonious farewell of a man already seated in a howdah. no one took notice of the essene, who stood waiting with assumed patience until he should be given room. presently the camel-drivers cried to their beasts which arose with a lurch, priests and sadducees hurried into their chairs, the servants fell into rank, the crowd shifted and ordered itself and a procession trailed out alongside the swaying camels toward gennath gate. a distinguished party was taking leave under escort. marsyas repressed the impatient word that arose to his lips and followed after the deliberate, moving blockade. the rank of the departing strangers did not encourage the city rabble to follow, and as the escort kept close to the head of the procession the hindmost camel was directly before marsyas and the occupant of the howdah in his view. over head and shoulders the full skirts of a vitta fell, erasing outline, and, contrasting the stature with that of the attending servant, he concluded that the small traveler was a child. under the dripping shade and chill of the ancient gate they passed and out into the road worn into a trench through the rock and dry gray earth and on to the oval pool which supplied hippicus, where a halt for a final farewell was made. again marsyas was delayed, and for a much longer time. he might have climbed out of the sunken roadway and passed around the obstruction, but the banks above were lined with clamoring mendicants, women and lepers, and he could not escape ceremonial defilement that might more seriously delay his journey. meanwhile the courtly leave-taking progressed with dignified sloth. gradually sadducee, priest and pharisee moved one by one from the departing aristocrat. at the hindmost camel the pharisees stopped not at all, but saluting without looking at the traveler, the priests merely raised their hands in blessing; but the sadducees to a man salaamed profoundly, and passed on if they were old, or lingered uncertainly if they were young. a little flicker of enlightenment showed in the young essene's brilliant eyes, an angry tension in his lips straightened their curve and he drew himself up indignantly. the young aristocrats tarried and laughed his precious time away with a woman! that was the traveler in the last howdah! twice and thrice the time they had spent speeding the rest of the party they consumed bidding the woman farewell, and every moment carried danger nearer to stephen. then an old voice, refined and delicate as the note of an ancient lyre, lifted in laughing protest from the front, the young men laughed, responding, but moved away to their chairs, the camel swung out into a rapid walk, and crying farewells the party separated. with abating irritation marsyas moved after them. at the intersection of the first road, he would pass these travelers and hasten on. a breeze from the hills cut off the smell of the city with a full stream of country freshness. marsyas lifted his head and drew in a long breath that was almost a sigh. his first trouble weighed heavily upon him and its triple nature of distress, heart-hurt and apprehension, sensations so new and so near to nature as to be at wide variance with anything essenic, moved him into a mood essentially human. then an exhalation from aft the fragrant spring-flowered groves stole into the pure air about him, bewildering, sweet, and through it, as harmoniously as if the perfume had taken tone, a distant hill bird sent a single stave of liquid notes. the small figure in the howdah at that moment turned and looked back, and marsyas for the first time in his life gazed straight into the eyes of a beautiful girl. spring-fragrance, bird-song and flower-face were harmony too perfect for essenism to discountenance. without the slightest discomposure, and absolutely unconscious of what he was doing, marsyas gazed and listened until the vitta fell hastily over the face, the bird flew away and the garden incense died. he passed just then the intersecting road, but he continued after the last camel. he walked after that through many drifts of fragrance, and many hill birds sang, but he knew without looking that the flower face was not turned back toward him again. he halted for the night at a little village and sought the hospitality of an essene hermit that lived on the outskirts. but in the night, terror for stephen, of that unknown kind which is conviction without evidence and irrefutable, seized him. he endured until the early watches of the morning and took the road to nazareth while the stars still shone. he had forgotten his fellow wayfarers of the previous afternoon until their camels, speeding like the wind, overtook him beyond mt. ephraim. in a vapor of flying scarves he caught again a glimpse of the flower face turned his way. then for the first time in his life he reviled his poverty that forced him to walk when the life of the much-beloved depended upon despatch. nazareth, clinging like a wasps' nest under the eaves of its chalky hills, was many leagues ahead, and the sun must set and rise again before he could climb up its sun-white streets. his hope was not strong. his plan had won such little respect from him that he had not ventured to propose it to stephen. it was extreme sacrifice for him to make, a sacrifice lifelong in effect, and in that he based his single faith in its success. stephen loved him and would not persist in the fatal apostasy, if he knew that his friend, the essene, was to deny himself ambition and fame for stephen's sake. he would get his patrimony of the old master essene who held it in trust for him, formally give over his instruction, bind himself to the perpetual life of husbandry and seclusion, and then tell stephen what he had done and why he had done it. everything else but the appeal to stephen's love for him had failed, and he had shrunk from forcing that trial. but saul had meant to go to the synagogue at once; there were innumerable chances that he was already too late. at noon he came upon the party of travelers again. a fringed tent had been pitched under a cluster of cedars and the slaves were putting away the last of the meal. he saw now as he hurried by that there was a spare and elegant old man, in magistrate's robes, reclining with singular grace on a pallet of rugs before the lifted side of the tent. the girl sat near. he noted also that the master and the slaves fell silent as he approached and looked at him with interest. but he sped on, forgetting that it was the noon and that he was hungry, heated and weary, and remembering only that the time and the distance were deadly long. there was the soft pad-pad of a camel-hoof behind him and a servant of the aristocrat that he had passed drew up at his side. with a light leap the man dropped from the beast's neck and bowed low. the ease of his salaam and the purity of his speech were strong evidences of training among the loftiest classes of the time. the attitude asked permission to address the essene. marsyas signed him to speak. "i pray thee accept my master's apologies," the man said, "for interrupting thy journey. he bids me say that he is a stranger and unfamiliar with the land. we have found no water for the meal. wilt thou direct us to a pool?" marsyas checked his impatience. "save that i am in great haste i would tarry to direct him. but let him send hence into the country to the westward, half a league to the hill of the flat summit. there is a grove by a well of sweet water." "nay, the country is as obscure to us as the whereabouts of the pool," the servant protested. "we are alexandrians and as good as lost in these hills. if thou wilt speak to my master, he will understand better than his foolish servant." irritation forced its way up through the essenic calm. the servant salaamed again. "the essenes are noted even in alexandria for their charity," he said deftly. marsyas turned with him and went back to the fringed tent. the old aristocrat still lounged gracefully, as no thirsty man does, on his pallet of rugs, but the girl had drawn farther away and her eyes were veiled. "i perceived by thy garments that thou art an essene," the old man said, "and therefore a safe guide in this land of few milestones." marsyas thanked him and waited restlessly on the inquiry. "we have not found a well since mid-morning and i crave fresh drink. the water we bear is brackish." "bid thy servants go westward without deviation for less than half a league, until they come unto a hill with a flat summit, which can be seen afar off. they will find there a grove with a well." "and none is nearer?" the old man asked idly. "there is none nearer." "my servants were bred to the desert; they are ill mountaineers. thou wilt show them the way?" "they can not lose the way," marsyas protested; "it is the flock's well and all the hill paths lead to it. think not ill of me, that i can not go, for i am in haste." the old man smiled a little. "an essene, and he will not stop to give an old man water?" marsyas frowned resentfully, but turned to the servant at hand. "get thy fellows and the water-skins and follow!" he turned off the roman road and struck into the hills to the west. the servitors of the alexandrian caught up amphoras and hastened after him. in less than an hour he reappeared before the man under the fringed tent. "thy servants are returned. peace and farewell." "nay, but it is the noon. wilt thou not tarry and rest?" "i go," marsyas said resolutely, "to save a life." "ah, then i did wrong to delay thee! i remember that essenes are physicians." "we can not cure the wicked of their evil intent, so i haste to save one threatened with another's malice. my friend is in peril. i must go unto nazareth and return unto jerusalem, before i can save him. and even now i may be too late!" the magistrate searched the young man's face and then the half-incredulous curiosity passed out of his manner. "pardon mine idle wasting of thy precious minutes," he said soberly. "go, and the lord speed thee!" marsyas bowed low, and keeping his eyes fixed on the gray earth, lest they stray in search of the flower face, he turned again toward nazareth. he heard a very soft, very hurried and almost imperious whisper, as he moved away, but he knew that it was not for him to hear, and he did not tarry. but a word from the magistrate brought him up. "stay! it is not customary for any outside of thine order to offer an essene assistance, since we would spare thee the pain of refusal. but--it hath been suggested that thy haste may permit thee to waive thy scruples and accept help from me--as it hath been suggested--i filched precious time from thee. thou canst ride with us, if thou wilt, and take my daughter's camel. she will come with me." the brilliant eyes no longer obeyed the restraint which would keep them from the flower face. he turned to the girl, shyly withdrawn under the shade of the fringed tent, and knew by the lowered eyes and the warmer flush mantling the cheek that it was she that had made these suggestions. twenty reasons why he should accept the magistrate's offer arose to combat the single stern admonition of custom. he was not yet under the essenic vow to accept hospitality from none but essenes, though he had lived in its observance all his life; he could not reach nazareth under a day's journey and these swift beasts could carry him into the village by midnight. and stephen's life depended on it. "we depart even now," the magistrate added, "and i promise thee no further delay." ancient usage accused the young man on account of the woman, but by this time she had arisen and passed out of his sight, as if in good faith that he should not be troubled by her presence. "thou yieldest me invaluable aid," he said in a lowered tone, "and since i am not an elected essene, but a ward of the brotherhood and a postulant, i am free and most glad to have thy help. be thou blessed." the magistrate acknowledged the young man's acceptance by a wave of a withered white hand and the slaves made the camels ready to proceed. at midnight, the rocking camels sped without apparent weariness up the uneven streets of nazareth, white under the stars. at the lewen of the single khan, the drivers drew up and marsyas alighted to go forward and thank his host, but the magistrate slept, even while his servants lifted him down from the howdah. as he turned away, regretfully, he confronted the veiled girl, almost childlike in stature under the protection of her tall handmaiden. she dropped her head modestly and moved aside to let him pass, but he hesitated, and stopped. few indeed had been the words he had addressed to women in his lifetime, and now his speech was more than ever unready. "thy father sleeps, yet i would not depart with my thanks unsaid. be thou the messenger and give him my gratitude when he waketh." "it shall be my pleasure," she answered softly, "and may thy hopes come to pass. farewell." "thou hast my thanks. the peace of the lord god attend thee. farewell." chapter iii the first martyr mid-march in judea was the querulous age of the young year. it was a time of a tempered sun and intervals of long rains and chill winds. under such persuasion, the rounded hills which upbore and encompassed jerusalem took on a coat green as emerald and thick as civet-fur. above it the leaning cedars, newly-tipped with verdure, spread their peculiar flat crowns like ancient hands extended in benediction over the soil. shoals of wild flowers, or rather flowers so long in fellowship with the fields of palestine as to become domesticated, were scarlet and gold in shallows of green. almond orchards snowed in the valleys and every wrinkle and crevice in the hills trickled with clear cold water. the winds whimpered and had the snows of lebanon yet in mind; the days were not long and the sun shone across vales filled with undulating vapors, smoky and illusory. the shade was not comfortable and within doors those apartments which denied entrance to the sun had to be made tenantable by braziers. loiterers, wayfarers and outcasts betook themselves to protected angles and sat blinking and comatose in the benevolent warmth of the sun. it was late afternoon and without the cedar hedge of gethsemane, where the ancient green wall cut off the streaming wind, was a group sitting close together on the earth. one, much covered in garments barbarously striped, and who bestirred long meager limbs now and then, was an arab. next to him a jewish husbandman from bethesda squatted awkwardly, the length of his coarse smock troubling him, while his hide sandals had been put off his hard brown feet. his neighbor was a damascene, and two or three others sat about two who were employed in the center of this racial miscellany. one of these was a greek, the ruin of a greek, not yet thirty and bearing, in spite of the disfigurement of degradation, solitary evidences of blood and grace. opposite him sat a roman, in a scarlet tunic. the two were playing dice, but the end of the game was in sight, for the neat pile of sesterces beside the roman was growing and the greek had staked his last on the next throw. presently the greek took the tesseræ and threw them. the roman glanced at the numbers up and smiled a little. the greek scowled. "the old defeat," he muttered. "fortune perches on the standards of rome even in a game of dice. oh, well, we have had our day!" the roman stowed away the sesterces in a wallet and hung it again inside his tunic. "yes, you have had your day," he replied. "marathon, thermopylæ and platæa--in my philosophy you can afford to lose a game of dice to a wolf-suckled roman!" the greek sat still with his chin upon his breast, and the roman, getting upon his feet, scrutinized the sluggish group of on-lookers. his interest was not idle curiosity in the men. such as they were to be seen cumbering the markets and streets of jerusalem by day or by night throughout the year. they were types of that which the world calls the rabble--at once a strength and a destruction, a creature or a master, as the inclination of its manipulators is or as the call of the situation may be. individually, it has a mind; collectively, it has not; at all times it is a thing of great potentialities overworked, and of great needs habitually ignored. that the man in scarlet should scan each one of these, as one appraises another's worth in drachmæ, was a natural proceeding, old as the impulse in the shrewd to prey upon the unwary. out of this or that one, perhaps he could turn an odd denarius at another game of dice. but when he looked reflectively at the west, where the broad brow of the hills was outlined against a great radiance, he calculated on the hour of remaining daylight and the distance from that point to another in bezetha far across jerusalem, and felt of his wallet. it was bulky enough for one day's winnings, and entirely too bulky to be lost to some of the criminals or vagrants that would walk the night. with a motion of his hand he saluted the defeated greek and the gaping group which sat in its place and watched him, and turned down the mount toward jerusalem. to a casual observer it would appear that he was a roman. he wore the short garments characteristic of the race, was smooth-shaven, and displayed idolatrous images on his belt, and, in disregard of judean custom, uncovered his head. but his features under analysis were arabic, modified, not by the solidity of rome but by the grace of the classic jew. he was built on long, narrow lines, spare as a spear stuck in the sand before a dowar, but judean flesh rounded his angles and reduced the arabian brownness of complexion. he was strikingly handsome and tall; not imposing but elegant, modeled for symmetry of his type, not for ideality, for refinement, not for strength. his hands were delicate almost to frailty, his feet slender and daintily shod. never a roman walked so lightly, never a jew so jauntily. his presence was captivating. naïveté or impudence, carelessness or recklessness, gravity or mockery were ever uncertain in their delineation on his face, and one gazed trying to decide and gazing was undone. never did he reveal the perspective of a single avenue in his intricate and indirect disposition. he forwent the human respect that is given to the straight-forward man, for the excited interest which the populace pays to the elusive nature. it was hard to name his years. he was too well-knit to be young, too supple to be old. the only undisputed evidence that he was past middle-age was not in his person but behind the affected mood in his soft black eyes. there was another nature, literally in ambush! he had reached the gentler slopes of the mount, when a young man dressed wholly in white approached from the north. the wayfarer walked hesitatingly, his eyes roving over the towered walls of the city of david. there were other wayfarers on olivet besides the man in white and the man in scarlet. there were rustics and traveling sadducees, in chairs borne by liveried servants, pharisees with staff and scrip, marketers, shepherds, soldiers on leave and slaves on errands, men, women and children of every class or calling which might have affairs without the walls of jerusalem. but each turned his steps in one direction, for the night was not distant and jerusalem would shelter them all. the hill was busy, but many took time to observe the one in white. the men he met glanced critically at his fine figure and passed; the women looked up at him from under their wimples, and down again, quickly; some of the children lagged and gazed wistfully at his face as if they wanted his notice. even the man in scarlet, attracted by the wholesome presence of the comely young man, studied him carelessly. he was a little surprised when the youth stopped before him. "wilt thou tell me, brother, how i may reach the gate of hanaleel from this spot?" he asked. his manner was anxious and hurried, his eyes troubled. "thou, a son of israel, and a stranger in the city of thy fathers?" the other commented mildly. "the essenes are rare visitors to jerusalem," was the reply. "ah!" the other said to himself, "the bleached craven of en-gadi. dost thou come from the community on the dead sea?" he asked aloud. "i journey thither," the essene answered patiently. "i come from galilee." the man in scarlet looked a little startled and put his slender hand up to his cheek so that a finger lay along the lips. "now, may thy haste deaden thy powers of recognition, o white brother," he hoped in his heart, "else thou seest a familiar face in me." he lifted the other arm and pointed toward the wall of the city. "any of these gates will lead thee within," he said. "doubtless, but once within any but the one i seek, i am more lost than i am here. wilt thou direct me?" the man in scarlet motioned toward a splendid mass of masonry rising many cubits above the wall toward the north. "there," he said. "go hence over the bridge of the red heifer and follow along the roadway on the other side of kedron." as the man in white bowed his thanks, his elbow struck against an obstruction which yielded hastily. the two looked, to see the greek who had been defeated at dice make off up the hill. the essene caught at his pilgrim wallet which hung at his side and found it open. "ha! a thief!" the man in scarlet cried. "did he rob thee?" his quick eyes dropped to the wallet. there were many small round cylinders wrapped in linen within, evidently stacks of coin of various sizes from the little denarius to the large drachma; a handful of loose gold and several rolls of parchment which might have been bills of exchange. the essene frowned and closed the mouth of the purse. "a trifle is gone," he said. "he was discovered in time." "if thou carryest this to the temple, friend," the older man urged, "get it there to-night, else thou walkest in danger continually." "i give thee thanks; i shall be watchful; peace to thee,"--and the young man walked swiftly away. "wary as the eyes of juno!" the man in scarlet said to himself. "essenes never make offering at the temple; that treasure goes into the common fund of the order. now, what a shame that the unsated maw of the essenic treasury should swallow that and hold it uselessly when i need gold so much! would that i had been born a good thief!" he sauntered after the young essene and idly kept him in sight. "he walks like a legionary and talks like a patrician, but doubtless he hath the spirit of an ass, or he would not have let that knave of a greek make off with so much as a lepton. i wonder if i should not seek out the thief and win his pilferings from him." the essene in the distance, just before he reached the bridge of the red heifer, unslung his wallet and resettled the strap over his shoulder, but the purse did not reappear at his side. he had concealed it within his gown. "i wish he were not in such uncommon haste; i might persuade him to loan it me. money-lending is second nature to a jew. there must be several thousand drachmæ in that wallet--enough to take me to alexandria. i wonder if he sped so all the way from--_hercle!_ what an aristocrat!"--noting the essene draw aside his robes from contact with the unclean mob at the opposite end of the causeway. "what! do they resent it?" he exclaimed, lifting himself on tiptoe to watch the young man, who seemed suddenly pressed upon and swallowed up by rapidly assembling numbers. distant shouts arose, the sheep gate choked suddenly with a mass, kedron's banks, the tombs of tophet and the rubbish heaps there yielded up clambering, running people. the hurry was directed along the brook outside the wall; stragglers closed up and the whole, numbering hundreds, flung itself toward the north. the man in scarlet, moved by amazement and a half-confessed interest in the man he had seen disappear, ran down the mount and after the crowd. but a glance ahead now showed him that the essene had not called forth this demonstration. the gate next beyond the heavy shape of hanaleel was discharging a struggling mass that instantly expanded in the open into a great party-colored ring, dozens deep. the flying body the man in scarlet believed to encompass the young essene swept up to the circle and melted into it. meanwhile, around him came running eagerly the travelers, the marketers, shepherds, soldiers and slaves, and behind, the loiterers, who had watched him defeat the greek. focalizing at the bridge of the red heifer which spanned kedron at a leap, the mob caught and precipitated him into its heart. rushed toward the road on the opposite side, he seized a corner of the parapet, and, holding fast, let the mass stream by him. when the rush trailed out, thinned and ceased altogether, he leisurely drew near the huge compact circle and stood on its outskirts. but he could hear and see nothing but the crowd about him. "what is it?" he asked, touching a man in front of him. the man shook his head and stood fruitlessly on tiptoe. presently unseen authority in the hollow ring pressed the crowd back. in the ferment and resistance, he caught, through a zigzag path of daylight between many kerchiefed heads, a glimpse of a segment of the center. a young man stood there. about his forehead was bound the phylactery of a pharisee. at his feet was a tumbled heap of white outer garments. then the breach closed up. "a sacrifice?" the man in scarlet asked himself. but such a deduction would not answer for the behavior of the crowd. its temper was ferocious. they howled, they spat, they shook arms and clenched hands above their heads and forward over their neighbors' shoulders; they cursed in greek and aramic; they twisted their faces into furious grimaces; they pressed forward and were driven back and the foremost rank which knew wherefore it raged was not more violent than the rearmost which was perfectly in the dark. it was typically the voice of the beast in man. some circumstance, unknown to the greater body, had waived restraint. therefore the wolves of perea could have come down from the bone-whited wadies of the wilderness and said to them with truth: "we be of one blood, ye and we!" each felt the support of numbers, the momentum of unanimity, the incentive of relaxed order, and the original cause, however heinous, was forgotten in the joy of the reversion to primordial savagery. their quiet fellow stood on the outskirts and listened to the yelp of the jackal in man. before him was a wall of variously clad backs and upstretched heads, beside him rows of raving men in profile, with strained eyes, open mouths and working beards; and one of them was the man who had shown, when asked, that he did not understand this demonstration. the man in scarlet finally shrugged his shoulders. he had suddenly evolved an explanation--the blood of a fellow man. he turned away, not because he had revolted--he had seen too many spectacles in the circus in rome--but because he was disinclined to stand till he had learned the particulars of the uproar. a gnarly hummock, white, harsh and dry, as if it were a heap of disintegrated ashes, rose several rods away on the brink of kedron. he mounted it and sat. yes; he would wait, also, till he saw the essene again, who, he was sure, had been buried in the ring. it would be unkind to himself to permit a chance for a loan to pass untried. the tumult continued many minutes before he noticed abatement in the forward ranks. movement which had been general throughout the interval increased at times, but the mob showed no signs of dispersing. the western slope of olivet was now in its own shadow, its ravines already purpling with night. only the glory on the summit of moriah blazed with undiminished fire, as the gold of the gates gave back the gold of the sunset. presently a number of men, dressed alike in priestly robes, hurried back through hanaleel into the city. hardly had they disappeared before the gate gave up a number of radiant shapes in a column, which broke suddenly and flung itself upon the great raving circle. the flash of armor and the glitter of swords were suddenly interjected into a demoralized eddy of stampeded hundreds. another sort of clamor arose, no less voluminous, no less fervid, but it was a howl of panic and protest against the methods of vitellius' legionaries sent to disperse a crowd. a solid core of fugitives drove through the gate beside hanaleel and the sheep gate; fragments, detachments and individuals rolled down the banks into kedron; screaming, tumbling, falling bodies fled north and south by the roadway and wherever there was a gate or a niche or a crevice it received fugitives who appeared no more. dust arose and obscured everything but the flash of arms and armor which rived through it like lightning in a cloud. the uproar began to subside, and presently the laughter and jests of the soldiers mounted above the protest. fainter and fainter the cries grew, fewer the sounds of flying feet, and at last, strong, harsh and biting as the clang of a sledge upon metal, the command of the centurion to fall in settled even the shouts of the soldiers. there was the even, musical ring of whetting armor as the column filed back through hanaleel, and silence. the man in scarlet, who had sat on his ash-heap and smiled throughout the dispersing of the mob, a royal creature enthroned and entertained by the discomfiture of the mass, suddenly realized that the obscurity, which he had expected to lift, was the shadow of night. he arose and, dusting off his scarlet skirt, moved out into the road. at that moment, a figure moving nearer the wall passed him, walking swiftly. it was the essene. "ho! a discreet youth! a cautious youth!" the man in scarlet said to himself; "profiting by experience, he waited in safety somewhere until this light-fingered rabble was dispersed. that must be a fat purse, a fat purse! and i am looking for such!" he quickened his pace to overtake the young man and in his interest forgot the late riot. suddenly the young essene stopped as if he had been commanded. the man in scarlet brought up and looked. before them was an immense trampled dusty ring. in the falling twilight, he saw several huddled shapes, in attitudes of suffering and sorrow, kneeling together in its center over something which was stretched on the sand. a strangling gasp attracted the older man's attention once more to the essene. his figure seemed to shrink, his cheeks fell in. swiftly about his lips crawled the gray pallor of one physically sick from shock to the senses. his eyes flared wide and the next instant he flew at the mourning cluster about the prostrate shape in the ring. one or two fell back under his hand, and he leaned over and looked. a cry, heartrending in its agony, broke from his lips. he dropped to his knees and fell forward with his face in the dust. a murmur of compassion arose from the little group around him, and the man in scarlet lifted his shoulders and turned his back on the blighting spectacle of the young man's anguish. he walked hurriedly out of the falling night on the mount, through hanaleel, into the lights and noise of the city of david. soldiers on the point of closing the great gate paused to let him through. "comrade," he said to one, "what did they out yonder?" "they stoned a nazarene named stephen," was the reply. [illustration: "they stoned a nazarene named stephen"] chapter iv the bankrupt somewhat subdued, the man in scarlet walked through the night in the city of david. after his first sensations he was discomfited. "now this is what comes of the irregular barbarity in judean executions," he ruminated. "in rome this nazarene would have been despatched in order and his body borne away to the puticuli and no opportunity given for that painful scene outside. doubtless i should have convinced the young man and borrowed his gold of him, by this time. certainly, fortune is a haughty jade when once offended. but i shall be fortunate again; by all the gods, jewish or gentile, i will compel her smiles! "it would be my luck never to see him again; he will probably linger only to see this dead man buried, and go on to en-gadi, as he said he would. it would hardly be seemly to approach him about his gold, in his unhappiness, or i would waylay him, yet. a pest on the zealots! why did they not hold off this stoning for a day?" moodily occupied by his thoughts, he passed unconscious of the careless people about him. the huge tower of antonia set on the brink of mount moriah frowned blackly over the street and in its shadow the idle life of the night laughed and reveled and sauntered. the woman of the city was there, the roman soldier in armor, the alien that bowed to brahm or bel, the son of the slow nile, of the orontes and of the yellow tiber. it was not the resort of the lowest classes, but of those that were at variance with the spirit of the city, or the times and their philosophies. light streamed from open doorways, the wail of lyres and the jingle of castanets resounded within and without. now and then belated carters, driving slow donkeys, would plod through the revelry--a note of relentless duty which would not be forgotten. again, humbler folk would retreat into wagon-ways or hug the walls to permit the passage of a sadducee and his retinue, or a decurion and his squad--rank and power asserting their inexorable prerogative. presently there approached the click of hoofs upon flagging. a soldier, passing through a broad shaft of light from a booth, stopped short, drew himself up and swung his short sword at present. up the street, from lip to lip of every arms-bearing man, ran his abrupt call to attention. a body of legionaries appeared suddenly in the ray of light--brassy shapes in burnished armor, picked for stature and bearing. not even the plunge into blackness again broke the precision and confidence of that tread before which the world had fled as did now the mule-riders and the pedestrians of jerusalem. after them, the beam of light projected two horsemen into sudden view. there was the rattle and ring of saluting soldiers by the way. the radiance showed up a typical roman in the armor of a general, but in deference to israelitish prejudice against images, the eagle was removed from his helmet, the bosses of titan heads from breastplate and harness. this was vitellius, proconsul of syria and the shrewdest general on cæsar's list. by his side rode herrenius capito, cæsar's debt-collector, a thin-faced roman in civilian dress, and with the ashes of age sprinkled on his hair. the man in scarlet took one glance at the gray old countenance frowning under the sudden light of the lamp and slid into the obscurity of an open alley at hand. he did not emerge till the hoof-beats had died away. "so thou comest in search of me, sweet capito," he muttered, "and i am penniless. but it is comforting to know that thou hast no more hope of getting the three hundred thousand drachmæ which i owe to cæsar, than i have of paying it!" after a little silence, he said further to himself, with added regret: "now, had i that young essene's gold, capito would not find me in jerusalem! o alexandria! i must reach thee, though i turn dolphin and swim!" he continued on his way to the north wall, where he found exit presently into bezetha, the unwalled suburb of jerusalem. here the houses were comparatively new, less historic, less pretentious than those in the old city. here were inns in plenty, relaxed order and a general absence of the racial characteristics and the influence of religion. the middle classes of jerusalem dwelt here. it was dark, poorly paved, and the man in scarlet laid his hand on his purse under his tunic and walked with circumspection toward a khan. it was no surprise to him to hear the sounds of struggle and outcry. he stopped to catch the direction of the conflict that he might avoid it. it came out of a street so narrow, in a district so squalid, that happiness seemed to have fled the spot. if ever the wealthy entered the place, it was to seek out human beings hungry enough to sell themselves as slaves. the commotion centered before a hovel, a tragedy in sounds, ghastly because the night made it unembodied. the man in scarlet located it as out of his path and would have continued but for the insistent screams of a woman in the struggle. harsh shouts attempted to cry her down, but desperation lent her strength and the suburb shuddered with her mad cries. the man in scarlet lagged, shook his shoulders as if to throw off the influence of the appeal and finally stopped. at that moment several torches of pitch, lighted at once, threw a smoky light over the scene. the passage was obstructed by a group of men uniformly dressed, and several spectators attracted by the commotion. assured that this was arrest and not violence, the curiosity of the man in scarlet drew him that way. at a nearer view, he saw that the aggressors were shoterim or temple lictors, under command of a pharisee wearing the habiliments of a rabbi. the man in scarlet identified him as the referee in the center of the ring about the stoning. the sudden lighting of the torches convinced him that the attack had its inception in secret. in the center of the fight was a middle-aged woman clinging desperately about the bodies of a young man and a young woman. it was the efforts of the shoterim to tear her away and her resistance that had made the arrest violent. shouts and revilings told the man in scarlet the meaning of the disturbance. the ferrets of the high priest, jonathan, had discovered a house of nazarenes and were taking them. "more ill-timed zeal!" he muttered to himself. "or let me be exact: more bloody politics!" he had turned to leave when a figure in white, directed from the city, drove past him and through to the center of the crowd, with the irresistible force of a hurled stone. spectators fell to the right and left before it and the man in scarlet drawing in a breath of amazement turned to see what the light had to disclose. it was the young essene, hardly recognizable for the distortion of deadly hate and passion on his face. there were dark stains on his garments and dust on his black hair. every drop of blood had left his cheeks, but his eyes blazed with a light that was not good to see. he went straight at the pharisee. his grasp fell upon saul's shoulder, drove in and seized upon its sinews. the startled tarsian turned and the young essene with bent head gazed grimly down at him. an interested silence fell over both captor and captive. the blaze in the young man's eyes reddened and flickered. "i have been seeking thee, saul of tarsus," he said in a voice of deadly silkiness. "thou hast been most zealous for the law in stephen's case. look to it that thou fail not in the law, for i shall profit by thy precept! and even as stephen fell, so shalt thou fall; even as stephen came unto death, so shalt thou come! mark me, and remember!" the words were menace made audible; it was more than a threat: it was prophecy and doom. a tingle of admiration ran over the man in scarlet. he who could leave the bier of a murdered friend to visit vengeance on the head of the murderer was no weakling. "a roman, by the gods!" he exclaimed to himself. "a noble adversary! a man, by bacchus!" a threatening murmur arose from the spectators. but there was no responsive fury kindled in saul's eyes. instead he looked at marsyas with unutterable sorrow on his face. presently his shoulders lifted with a sigh. "the city festereth with nazarenes as a wound with thorns," he said to himself; aloud he called, "joel." the levite materialized out of obscurity and bowed jerkily. "bear witness to this young man's behavior. lictors, take him. we shall hold him for examination as a nazarene and an apostate." marsyas started and his hand dropped. plainly, he had not expected to be accused of apostasy. but the old mood asserted itself. "this for thy slander of stephen in the college," he said with premonitory calm when the levite approached him, and struck with terrific force. the levite's body shot backward and dropped heavily on the earth. the rest of the lictors precipitated themselves upon the young man, and, in desperation and in fury, the one man and the numbers fought. meanwhile the man in scarlet thought fast. his roman love of defiance and war had roused in him a most compelling respect for the young essene, but cupidity put forth swift and convincing argument even beyond the indorsement of admiration. if the shoterim took the young man in ward, he would be executed and the treasure come into the hands of the state for disposition. in view of the fact that herrenius capito had traced the bankrupt to jerusalem, jerusalem was no longer tenantable for the bankrupt. he had to have money to escape to alexandria and the essene was too profitable a chance to be lost to the murdering hands of fanatics. excited and bent only on preventing the arrest, the man sprang into the crowd and forced his way to the essene's side. but the next instant he also was sent reeling by a blow delivered by marsyas in his blind resolution not to be taken without difficulty. before the bankrupt could recover, the united force of spectators and lictors flung itself upon marsyas. steadying himself, the man in scarlet urged his bruised brain to think. half of his life for a ruse! for nothing but a ruse could save the young man, now. then, with a half-suppressed cry of eagerness, the bankrupt took to his heels and ran toward the city as only an arab trained in roman gymnasia could run. the sentry at the gate passed him and he entered on the marble pavements of the streets for the finest exhibition of speed he had shown since he had carried off the laurel in rome. he knew the city as a hare knows its runways. he cut through private passages, circled watchful constabulary, eluded congestions, and took the quick slopes of jerusalem's hills as though the deep lungs of a youth supplied him. when the broad, marble-paved street, which let in some glimpse of the starry sky upon the passer, opened between the rich residences of the sadducees, the white luster of many burning torches lighted an area on a distant slope at its head. the running man sped on, taking the rise of mount zion without slackening, until he rushed upon a sentry obscured under the brooding shadow of a heavy wall. "halt!" the challenge of the sentry brought him up. "without the password, comrade," he panted. "call the officer of the guard. and by our common quarrels in rome do thou haste, for if i see not vitellius and herrenius capito this instant i expire!" the cry of the sentry passed from post to post until the centurion of the guard emerged from a small gate. "one cometh without the countersign," the sentry said. "a visitor for vitellius and herrenius capito," the bankrupt explained. "the general and his guest have retired," was the blunt reply. "hip! but thou art the same glib liar thou always wast, aulus," the bankrupt laughed. "take me into the light, and slap me with thy sword if i am frank beyond the privileges of mine acquaintance with thee!" the gate-keeper, in response to a short word from the dubious aulus, let down the chains with a rattle and a small side portal swung in, revealing an interior of semi-dusk. the centurion conducted his visitor within. torches stuck in sconces high up in the walls lighted a quadrangle of tessellated pavement, terminating distantly in banks of marble stairs of such breadth and stature that their limits were lost in the unilluminated night. after a quick glance, the centurion started and slapped his helmet in salute to the bankrupt. the other responded with a skill and grace that could not have been assumed for the moment. the dexterity of the camp was written in the movement. "i am expected of capito," the bankrupt said, which was true only in a very limited sense. "i know, and do thou follow. thou shalt see him. were he dead and inurned he would arise to thee." the man in scarlet smiled a little grimly and followed his conductor out of the light up the marble heights of stairs duly set with sentinels, to a porch that even the royal colonnade of the temple could not shame. a huge cresset with a jeweled hood, depending from a groining so high that its light was feeble, showed dimly the giant compound arch of the portal. an orderly, a veritable pygmy within the outline of the dark entrance, appeared and saluted. "a visitor for the proconsul and his guest," the centurion said, passing the man in scarlet to the orderly. he was led through a valve groaning on its granite hinges into the vestibule of herod the great's palace. it was a lofty hall, nobly vaulted, lined with costly indian onyx and florid with pagan friezes, arabesques and frescoes. yet, though its jeweled lamps were dark and cold, its fountains still, its hangings and its carpets gone, its bloody genius held despotic sway from a shadowy throne, over the note of brute force which the roman garrison had infused into it. at the far end was a small carven table at which two romans sat, a lamp and a crater of wine at their elbows, the tesseræ of a dice-game between them. without waiting for the orderly to speak, the man in scarlet stepped forward. "greeting, vitellius. capito, i salute you," he said. his voice was that of a composed man speaking with equals. vitellius turned his head toward the speaker; capito drew up his lids and his lower jaw relaxed. slowly then both men got upon their feet. "by the bats of hades--" vitellius began. "by the nymphs of delphi!" capito's aged falsetto broke in. "it is the herod himself!" "herod agrippa!" vitellius exclaimed. "from the faces of you," agrippa declared, "i might have been the shade of my grandsire. but i have been hunting you. i need help. and as thou hopest to return three hundred thousand drachmæ to cæsar from my purse, do thou aid me in urging vitellius to yield it, capito." "help," capito repeated. "what manner of help?" vitellius demanded, fixing agrippa with a suspicious eye. "arrest me an essene from the hands of jonathan." "jonathan!" the proconsul exclaimed darkly. "the high priest, the nasi, thy sweet and valued friend!" the agrippa explained with amiable provoke. "he has arrested an essene on a trifling charge of apostasy and he is my voucher before the essenic brotherhood for a loan to repay cæsar. i left him in the hands of the shoterim, in bezetha. if he be not speedily rescued, they will stone him without the walls to-morrow and my debt to cæsar--" he drew up his shoulders and spread out his hands in a gesture highly jewish. capito frowned and vitellius glowered under his grizzled brow at agrippa. "it is one to me," agrippa continued coolly, as he noted signs of dissent in the contemplation. "i am just as happy and as like to escape cæsar's displeasure by failing to pay it, as thou wilt be, capito, if thou failest to collect it." capito nervously fingered the tesseræ at his hand. "meanwhile," added the herod, perching himself on the edge of the table, "the youth proceeds to jonathan's stronghold." vitellius looked at cæsar's debt-collector. "dost thou see anything more in this than appears on the face of it?" he asked. capito scratched his white head. he had learned to look for ulterior motives in every move of this slippery herod, but he was too little informed in the matter to see more than the surface. "we--can look into it, first," he opined. "jonathan will not await your pleasure," agrippa put in. "he is hurried now with the responsibility of executing enough blasphemers to save himself popular favor. the sanhedrim may sit to-morrow, the prisoner come for trial and be executed--even more expeditiously because the nasi expects thee to interfere, vitellius." the proconsul bit through an expletive. jonathan was a thorn in his side. "what is it you wish me to do?" he demanded. "arrest me this youth. the claim of the proconsul's charge will take precedence over the hieratic." "but he has not offended--" "save the protest; he has; he struck me, a roman citizen. but draw up the warrant, good vitellius, and send a centurion after the young man. thou canst make no error by so doing and thou canst save capito the favor of his emperor." vitellius summoned a clerk and while the warrant for marsyas' arrest was written, despatched an orderly for an officer. one of the contubernalis to vitellius, or one of the sons of a noble family serving his apprenticeship in warfare, appeared. "take four," vitellius said grimly, in compliance with herod's demand, when the young centurion approached, "and go with this man. arrest by superior claim the high priest's prisoner, who shall be pointed out. fetch him and this man back to me!" the young centurion saluted and agrippa assented with a nod. "thanks," he added nonchalantly. "come, brother," he said to the young officer, "if we be late it may take the whole machinery of rome to undo the work of jonathan." agrippa and the roman legionaries passed out of the prætorium and turned directly up the slanting street toward the palace of jonathan, which stood a little above the camp. the herod had lost little time and the progress of the arresting party toward the stronghold would not have been rapid with the resistance of marsyas and the friends of the nazarenes to retard the movement. after a quick walk of a short distance, the roman group came upon the temple's emissaries, entering from an intersecting street. saul and joel walked a little ahead of the broken-spirited prisoners who were centered in a group of armed lictors and a hooting escort of half a hundred vagrants. the flaring torch-light shone down on bowed heads and disordered garments, and showed fugitive glints of manacles and knives. among them, unbroken and silent, was marsyas, heavily shackled. he was marked with blows, but several besides the levite joel staggered as they walked, and agrippa, lifting himself on tiptoe to point out his prisoner to the centurion, eyed the young man with approval. the officer nodded abruptly and broke through the crowd. the light dropping on his shining armor instantly displayed his authority to halt the group. his command to stop elicited almost precipitate obedience. the hooting vagrants scattered. the centurion laid his hand on marsyas' shoulder. "thou art a prisoner of the proconsul," he said. the halt and the dismayed silence caught saul's attention. he turned back and pushed his way into the center of the circle. "unhand him," he said to the centurion. "he is wanted of the sanhedrim." the young officer smiled derisively and thrust off the hold of the apprehensive lictors. the four made way through the crowd and the officer passed marsyas into their hands. "make my excuses to the sanhedrim," the officer said sarcastically. the pharisee glanced over the roman's party. then he stepped without ostentation in the centurion's way--a weak, small figure in fringes and phylactery, living up to his nature as he fronted brassy rome. "show me thy warrant," he said quietly. the centurion drew forth the parchment and flourished it. saul took it with a murmured courtesy, and, holding it near a torch, read it carefully. then he passed it back. "after the proconsul hath done with this young man," he observed, "the sanhedrim will claim him. say this much to the proconsul. we shall wait. peace!" he motioned his party to proceed and the crowd moved on, leaving marsyas in the hands of new captors. "back to the prætorium," the centurion said to agrippa. chapter v agrippa in repertoire on the way two dark figures emerged from the shadows and halted to let the soldiers pass. agrippa peered at them intently through the gloom, and raising his arm made a peculiar gesture. both figures approached immediately. "do thou fetch my civilian's dress, silas, to the gate of the prætorium to-morrow, early, and my umber toga broidered with silver. and thou, eutychus, prepare our belongings so thou canst carry them and bring them also that we may proceed at once to en-gadi. i remain at the prætorium to-night. be gone and fail not!" the two men bowed and disappeared. when the party reëntered the gates of the camp, herod's vestibule was dark. the prisoner and agrippa were led to the barracks and turned into a cubiculum, or sleeping-chamber. one of the four was manacled to marsyas and the bolts shot upon them. the soldier immediately stretched himself on the straw and, bidding the others hold their peace, fell asleep promptly. after a long time, when the sounds from the pallet assured agrippa that the soldier could not be easily aroused, he arose and came over to the side of the young essene. the torch-light for the officer of the guard, flaring on the wall without, shone through the high ventilation niche in the cell and cast a faint illumination over the dusky interior. under the half-light the face of marsyas looked fallen and lifeless,--his dark hair in disorder on his forehead, his shadowed eyes and slight black beard making for the increase of pallor by contrast. agrippa looked at him a moment before the young man had noticed his approach. "the medicine for thy hurts, young brother," he said to himself, "is only one--the comforting arms of a woman. i have had experience; i know! but if thou art an essene that comfort is denied thee. now, i wonder what demon-ridden jew it was who first thought of an order of celibates!" he drew closer and the somber eyes of the young man lighted upon him. "so thou dost not sleep," agrippa said in hebrew. marsyas' face showed a little surprise at the choice of tongue, but he answered in the same language. "why am i here?" he asked. "better here than there," agrippa responded under his breath, indicating the direction of jonathan's stronghold. "listen," he continued, "and may morpheus plug this soldier's ears if he knows our fathers' ancient tongue. canst see my face, brother?" marsyas signed his assent. "thou sayest thou art a galilean," agrippa pursued. "look now and see if thou discoverest aught familiar in me." marsyas raised himself on an elbow and gazed into the herod's face. finally he said slowly: "i have seen thee in tiberias--in power--as--as prefect! thou art herod agrippa!" there was silence; the essene's eyes filled with question and the herod gave him time to think. "i had thee arrested," agrippa resumed when he believed that marsyas' ideas had reached the point of asking what the herod had to do with him. "to-morrow thou wilt be fined for striking me and turned loose--to jonathan--unless thou art helped to escape." "i understand," said marsyas with growing light, but without enthusiasm. "thou seest i am virtually a prisoner here. i became so, to save thee from jonathan." "for me! thou becamest a prisoner to save me?" marsyas repeated, astounded. "because i need thee as much as thou needest me," was the frank admission. "what can i do for thee that thou shouldst need me?" marsyas asked softly, but still wondering. "hast--hast thou ever lacked friends so wholly that thou wast willing to purchase one?" agrippa asked. "i am thy grateful servant; yet i am an essene, poor, persecuted, homeless, hungry and heartbroken. what wilt thou have of me?" in that was more earnestness than blandishment, more appeal than offering. the young man published his helplessness and asked after the other's use of him. agrippa was silent; after a pause marsyas put out his hand and lifting the hem of the pagan tunic pressed it to his lips. the act could not fail to reach to the innermost of the herod's heart. his head dropped suddenly into his hands, and the young essene's touch rested lightly on his shoulder. finally agrippa raised his head. "dost thou know my history, brother?" he asked. "from the lips of others, yes; but let me hear thee." "thou art a just youth; nothing so outrages a slandered man as to pen his defense within his lips. hear me, then. to be a herod once meant to be beloved by the cæsars. in my early childhood, after the death of my young father, i was taken to rome by my mother and reared among princes and the sons of consuls. best of all my friends was drusus, cæsar's gallant son, and we studied together, raced and gambled and feasted together, loved and hated--and fought together, and never was there a difference between us except in purse! "while he lived, i lived as he lived, but when he died his sire drove me out of rome because i had been the living drusus' shadow and it stung the father that the shadow should live while the sweet substance perished. "when drusus died my living died with him, and when i took ship at puteoli for palestine i owed three hundred thousand drachmæ to cæsar and forty tradesmen barked about my heels. "i had a ruined castle in idumea. i forgot that i owned it till i was in actual want of shelter. thither i went. but i was a young man, hopeless, and young hopelessness is harder than the hopelessness of age. i should have put an end to myself, but cypros, my princess, prevented me by the gentle force of her love and devotion. "she could not have balked me more thoroughly had she tied me hand and foot. i railed, but while i railed she wrote and sent a messenger, and in a little time an answer came. it was from my brother-in-law, herod antipas, who is tetrarch of galilee. cypros had besought him to help us. he wrote courteously, or else his scribe, for it is hard to reconcile that letter with the man i met, and begged me come and be his prefect over tiberias. i went." the prince paused and when he went on thereafter it seemed as if his account were expurgated. "at tyre before an hundred nobles assembled at a feast he twitted me with my poverty and boasted his charity. i tore off the prefect's badge and flung it in his face. and that same night i took the road to antioch, my princess with me, a babe on either arm. "the proconsul of antioch took us in, but there was treachery against me afoot in his household, and i lost his friendship through it. his was my last refuge under roof of mine own rank. i heard recently that alexander lysimachus, alabarch of alexandria, was in jerusalem, presenting a gate to the temple, and sending my wife and children to ptolemais, i hastened hither to get a loan of him. but he had departed some days before i came. so here am i as a player of dice to win me money enough to take me back to ptolemais. but herrenius capito, cæsar's debt-collector, hath found me out." he looked down at marsyas' interested face. "let me be truthful," he corrected. "i found him. i could have flown him successfully, but for thy close straits. all that would save thee would be the interference of rome, and i could command it at sacrifice." public version of agrippa's story had enlarged much on certain phases of his adventures which he had curtailed, and these minutiæ had not been to herod's credit. yet, though marsyas knew of these things, his heart stirred with great pity. his was that large nature which turns to the unfortunate whether or not his misfortune be merited. it seemed to him that the prince's fall had been too hapless for comment. but the word here and there, which suggested the prince's intercession in his behalf, stirred him. "how shall i make back to thee thy effort in my behalf?" he asked earnestly. "thou sayest that thou needest me; what can i do?" "first let me know of thyself." marsyas relinquished his thought on agrippa to turn painfully to his own story. "i am marsyas, son of matthew, of nazareth. he was a zealot who fought beside judas of galilee. i was born after his death, and at my birth my mother died, and being the last of their line, i am, and have been all my life alone. i was taken in mine infancy by the essenic master of the school in nazareth and reared to be an essene. but i developed a certain aptness for learning and in later youth a certain aptness for teaching, and my master by the consent of the order, whose ward i was, designed me for the scholar-class of essenes, which do not reside in en-gadi but without in the world. the vows of the order were not laid upon me; they are reserved for the sober and understanding years when my instruction should be completed." agrippa frowned. "art thou not a member of the brotherhood, then?" he asked. "no, i am a neophyte, a postulant." the herod ran his fingers though his hair, and marsyas went on. "i had two friends, both older than i. one was saul of tarsus; one, stephen of galilee. neither knew the other. stephen was born an hellenist, and until the coming of his prophet, a good jew. but when jesus arose in nazareth, stephen followed him, and, after the nazarene was put away, he remained here in jerusalem. when i came hither to complete mine instruction in the college, i found the synagogue aroused against him. "chief among the zealous in behalf of the law is saul of tarsus. him i most feared, when the rumors of stephen's apostasy spread abroad. an evil messenger finally set saul upon stephen, and i pleaded with him to spare stephen, until i could win him back to the faith. but saul would not hear me. "i meant to give over mine ambition to become a scholar and take stephen into the refuge of en-gadi--" he stopped for control and continued presently with difficulty. "but when i returned from nazareth, whither i had gone to get my patrimony which the essene master held in ward, his enemies stoned him before mine eyes!" stephen's death and not his own peril was the climax of his story and he ceased because his heart began to shrink under its pain. "and this saul of tarsus, whom i heard you threaten over in bezetha, mistaking your natural grief and hunger for vengeance as signs of apostasy, would stone you also," agrippa remarked, filling in the rest of the narrative from surmise. marsyas assented; it hurt him as much to think on saul as it did to remember that stephen was dead. "it was doubtless his intent." "implacable enough to be cæsar! and thou art not a member of the essenic order--only a neophyte. that is disconcerting. hast thou any influence with the brethren?" "none whatever." perplexity sat dark on the herod's brow. marsyas, with his eyes on the prince's face, observed it. "can i not help thee?" he asked anxiously. "i thought once that thou couldst; but thou sayest that thou hast no power with the essenes. now, i do not know." "what is it thou wouldst have had me do?" "i have said that i owe three hundred thousand drachmæ to cæsar. unless i discharge it, under the roman law i can be required to become the slave of my creditor. that i might secure intercession in thy behalf, i had to promise capito and vitellius that thou couldst help me to repay this sum." "i!" marsyas cried, sitting up. the legionary stirred and agrippa laid a warning finger on his lip. the two sat silent until the sleeper fell again into total unconsciousness. "three hundred thousand drachmæ!" marsyas repeated. "i, to get that!" "i knew that the essenic brotherhood have a common treasury and that they are believed to be rich. i thought that thou couldst persuade them to lend me the sum." marsyas shook his head. "they are poor, poor! their fund is not contributed in great bulk, and the little they own must be expended in hospitality and in maintaining themselves. their treasury would be enriched by the little i bring." "o fortune!" agrippa groaned aloud. "i am undone and so art thou!" marsyas lapsed into thought, while the herod looked at the solid door that stood between him and liberty. he had set the subject aside as profitless and was a little irritated when marsyas spoke again. "what hopes hast thou in alexandria?" "the alabarch, alexander lysimachus, is my friend. he is rich; i could borrow of him." "take thou my gold and go thither," marsyas offered at once. "it is not so easy as it sounds, for the sound of it is most generous and kindly. how am i to get out of capito's clutches, here?" marsyas gazed straight at agrippa with the set eyes of one plunged into deep speculation. then he leaned toward the prince. "will this gold in all truth help thee to borrow more in alexandria?" "i know it!" "and then what?" "to rome! to imperial favor! to suzerainty over judea!" marsyas laid hold on the prince's arm. "thou art a herod," he said intensely. "ambition natively should be the very breath of thy nostrils. yet swear to me that thou wilt aspire--aye, even desperately as thy grandsire! swear to me that thou wilt not be content to be less than a king!" at another time, agrippa might have found amusement in the young man's earnestness, but the cause was now his own. "thou tongue of my desires!" he exclaimed. "i have sworn! being a herod, mine oaths are not idle. i have sworn!" "then, let us bargain together," marsyas said rapidly. "i have told thee my story: thou heardest my vow to-night! for my fealty, yield me thy word! as i help thee into power, help me to revenge! promise!" "promise! by the beard of abraham, i will conquer or kill anything thou markest; yield thee my last crust, and carry thee upon my back, so thou help me to alexandria!" "swear it!" agrippa raised his right hand and swore. the legionary roused and growled at the two to be quiet. marsyas fell back on the straw and lay still. agrippa made signs and urged for more discussion, but the essene, masterful in his silence, refused to speak. presently the herod lay down and slept from sheer inability to engage his mind to profit otherwise. a little after dawn the following morning, the essene and the herod were conducted into the vestibule of herod the great, for a hearing before vitellius and herrenius capito. but marsyas' offense against a roman citizen was held in abeyance; it was agrippa's debt to cæsar which engaged the attention of the judges. vitellius was in a precarious temper and capito looked as grim as querulous old age may. agrippa's nonchalance was only a surface air overlaying doubts and no little trepidation. but marsyas, white and sternly intent, was the most resolute of the four. capito stirred in his chair and prepared to speak, but vitellius cut in with a point-blank demand on the young essene. "dost thou know this man?" he asked, indicating agrippa. "i do, lord," marsyas answered, turning his somber eyes on the legate. "he owes three hundred thousand drachmæ to cæsar; he says that thou canst help him pay it; is it so?" "it is, lord." agrippa's eyes were perfectly steady; it would not do to show amazement now. "how?" was the next demand flung at the essene. "i can place him in the way of certain wealth," was the assured reply. "how?" "the noble roman's pardon, but there are certain things an essene may not divulge." agrippa's well-bred brows lifted. was this evader and collected schemer the innocent essene he had met on the slopes of olivet the previous evening? "answer! dost thou promise to provide the herod with three hundred thousand drachmæ which shall be paid unto cæsar's treasury?" "i promise to place the prince where he will provide himself with three hundred thousand drachmæ. if he pay it not unto cæsar, the fault shall be his, not mine." "will the essenes do it?" "it shall be done," marsyas replied, his composure unshaken by the menace implied in the questioning. "capito, what thinkest thou?" vitellius demanded. the old collector shuffled his slippered feet, and his antique treble took on an argumentative tone. "cæsar wants his money, not a slave; i want the emperor's commendation, not his blame. but let us bind this young jew to this." vitellius motioned to an orderly. "send hither a notary; and let us take down this jew's promise. now, herod, speak up. there are no rules of an order to bind you. where shall you get this money?" "of two sources," agrippa declared, unblushing. "from the young man himself and from the essenes." "if you had so many moneyers, why have you not paid your debt long ago?" "i had not the indorsement of this young essenic doctor to validate my note, o vitellius," the herod responded with equanimity. the two romans frowned; the clerk finished his transcription. "sign!" vitellius ordered marsyas threateningly. marsyas calmly wrote his name in greek under the voucher. after him agrippa signed the document. "now, listen," vitellius began conclusively. "i believe neither of you. but for the fact that cæsar would be burdened with a useless chattel i should let capito foreclose upon you, agrippa. but there is a chance that this rigid youth may be telling the truth; if he is not--" the legate closed his thin lips and let the menace of his hard eyes complete the sentence. marsyas contemplated him, unmoved, undismayed, no less inflexible and determined. "the punishment for his offense against you, agrippa, is remitted. get you gone. capito! follow them!" totally undisturbed by this sudden entanglement in a supposedly clear skein, agrippa waved his hand and smiled. "many thanks, vitellius," he said. "would i could get my debts paid if only to deserve thy respect once more. but thy hospitality must be a little longer strained. the wolves of jonathan wait without to lay hands on this young man. he must be passed the gates in disguise. i provided for that last night. admit my servants, i pray thee." "have your way, herod, and fortune go with you, curse you for a winsome knave," vitellius growled. agrippa laughed, but there was no laughter in his eyes. the two were led through a second hall instinct with barbaric splendors, to a small apartment where they were presently attended by two servants. one was a slow, stolid jew of middle-age, with stubbornness and honesty the chief characteristics of his face. the other would have won more interest from the casual observer. he was young, well-formed, but of uncertain nationality. his head was like a cocoanut set on its smaller end, and covered with thick, stiff, lusterless black hair, cut close and growing in a rounded point on his forehead. one eye was smaller than the other and the lid drooped. the fault might have given him a roguish look but for the ill-natured cut of his mouth. both wore the brown garments of the serving-class. when agrippa and marsyas stood up from the ministrations of these two, they were fit figures for a procession of patricians on the palatine hill. marsyas' soiled white garments had been put off for a tunic and mantle of fine umber wool, embroidered with silver. a tallith of silk of the same color was bound with a silver cord about his forehead. agrippa's garments were only a short white tunic of extraordinary fineness belted with woven gold, and a toga of white, edged with purple. but the prince examined marsyas with an interested eye. "by kypris!" he said aloud, "and thou art to entomb thyself in en-gadi!" but marsyas did not understand. capito awaited them when they emerged, and announced himself ready to proceed. procedure was to be an elaborate thing. a squad of soldiery had been detailed as escort, and stood prepared in marching order; the collector's personal array of apparitors was assembled; his baggage sent forth to his pack-horses,--himself, duly arrayed after the fashion of a conventional old roman afraid of color. agrippa placed himself beside the collector with an equanimity that was almost disconcerting. the old man signed his apparitors to proceed and followed with his two virtual prisoners. through the envelope of grief and rancor, the grave difficulties of his predicament reached marsyas. unless he could be rid of the surveillance of capito, both he and the herod were in sore straits. but agrippa's amiable temper presaged something, and marsyas merged the new distress with the burden of misery which bowed him. they passed out of the simpler portions of the royal house into the state wing and emerged in the great audience-chamber. it would have been impossible for a scion of that bloody house to pass for the first time in years through that royal chamber without comment upon it. agrippa after crossing the threshold slackened his step and his eyes took on the luster of retrospection. "i remember it," he said in a preoccupied way, "but only as a dream. i went this way when my father and mother fared hence to rome!" capito lagged also, and marsyas and the men following slackened their steps, until by the time the center of the vast hall was reached they paused as if by one accord. the hall was an octagonal, faced half its height, or to the floor of its galleries, in banded agate from the indies; from that point upward the lining was marble panels and frescoes, alternating. the galleries were supported by a series of interlaced oriental arches, rich with tracery and filigree. with these main features as groundwork, the barbaric fancy of herod the great threw off all restraint and reveled in magnitude, richness and display. he did not permit greece, the _arbiter elegantarium_, to govern his building or his garnishment. he harkened to the arab in him and made a bacchanal of color; he remembered his one-time poverty and debased the hauteur of gold to the humility of wood and clay and stone. he imaged life in all its forms and crowded it into mosaics on his pavement, subjected it in the decoration of his scented wood couches, tables, taborets, weighted it with the cornices of his ceilings, the rails of his balustrades, the basins of his fountains--until he seemed to shake his scepter as despot over all the beast kind. he was a hunter, a warrior and a statesman; the instincts of all three had their representation in this, his high place. he was a voluptuary, a tyrant, and a shedder of blood; his audience-chamber told it of him. thus, though he had crumbled to ashes forty years before, and the efforts of the world to forget him had almost succeeded, he left a portrait behind him that would endure as long as his palace stood. the light of the judean sun came in a harlequinade of twenty colors, but, where it fell and was reproduced, nature had mastered the kaleidoscope and made it a glory. the immense space, peopled with graven images, yet animated with ghostly swaying of hangings, had its own shifting currents of air, drafts that were streaming winds, cool and scented with the aromatic woods of the furniture. the portals were closed, and there was no sound. sun, wind and silence ennobled herod's mistakes. the four stood longer than they knew. then agrippa made a little sound, a sudden in-taking of the breath. "see!" he whispered, laying a hand on capito's shoulder and pointing with the other. "that statue!" following his indication, their eyes rested on the sculptured figure of a woman, cut from parian marble. it was a drowsy image, the head fallen upon a hand, the lids drooping, the relaxation of all the muscles giving softness and pliability to the pose. so perfect was the work that the marble promised to be yielding to the touch. some imitator of phidias had achieved his masterpiece in this. indeed, at first glance there was startlement for the four. a warm human flush had mantled the stone, and marsyas' brows drew together, but he could not obey the old essenic teaching and drop his eyes. "a statue?" capito asked, uncertainly taking his withered chin between thumb and forefinger. "a statue," agrippa assured him. "the illumination is from the batement light above. come nearer!" he led them to the angle in which the image stood, not more than three paces from the wall. "it is my grandsire's queen, mariamne," he continued softly, for ordinary tones awakened ghostly echoes in the haunted hall. "murdered mariamne!" the old man whispered with sudden intensity. "he loved her, and killed her in the fury of his love. they said that the king was wont to come in the morning when the sun stood there, drive out the attendants so that none might hear, and cling about this fair marble's knees in such agony of passion and remorse and grief that life would desert him. they would come in time to find him there, stretched on the pavement, cold and inert, to all purposes dead! and it was said that these groins here above held echoes of his awful grief after he had been borne away." capito shivered. "what punishment!" he exclaimed. "punishment! they who curse herod's memory could not, if they had their will, visit such torture upon him as he invented for himself!" but capito was lost now in contemplation of the statue. "she was beautiful," he said after a silence. "didst ever see her?" agrippa asked eagerly. the collector's back was turned to the prince, that he might have the advantageous view, and he answered with rapt eyes. "once; through an open gate which led into her own garden. so i saw her in the lightest of vestments, for the day was warm and half of her beauty usually hidden was unveiled." "well for thee my grandsire never knew," agrippa put in, leaning against one of the cestophori which guarded a blank panel in the wall. "he never knew; but i would have died before i would give over the memory of it. she was slight, willowy, with the eyes of an attic antelope, yet braver and more commanding than any woman-eye that ever bewitched me. her mouth--praxiteles would have turned from lais' lips to hers." agrippa's hand slid down the side of the cestophorus and fumbled a little within the edge of the molding. "her hair was loose," the old man went on, "the sole drapery of her bosom--a very cloud of night loomed into filaments--" an inert, moldy breath reached marsyas. he turned his head. the panel between the cestophori was gone and a square of darkness yawned its miasma into the hall. the prince made a lightning movement; noiselessly the two servants dived into the blackness; marsyas followed; after him, the prince. an eclipsing wall began to slide between them and the hail they had left. "her arms were languidly lifted--arms that for whiteness shamed this marble--" the old man was saying as the panel glided back into place and shut them in darkness. "ow!" agrippa whispered in delight, "he tells that story better every year!" chapter vi marsyas assumes a charge agrippa crowded past the three that had preceded him into the black passage and, whispering a command to follow, led on. they kept track of him by the sound of his shoes on the stone, but the absolute darkness and the unfamiliar path made their steps uncertain and slow. frequently the sure footfall before them receded and in fear of losing their guide they stumbled forward in nervous haste. presently the darkness about them lifted; the sensation was not that light had entered in, but that the darkness had simply failed in strength. there was a perceptible increase in temperature and the atmosphere, changing from a chill, became muggy and oppressive. marsyas, drawing in a full breath in search of freshness, told himself that this was the original air of chaos, penned in at the hour of creation. the floor under his feet became irregular, the instinctive realization that a roof was imminent overhead, passed, and, when the darkness became sufficiently feeble, they discovered that they were following through an immense chamber. light came in through air-holes in the rock above. agrippa spoke aloud. "this is a quarry-chamber. it was also my grandsire's secret stronghold, trial-chamber and tomb where many of his private grudges were satisfied. but there are no evidences, now. the place was open to the hill-jackals, by another passage which, if my memory has not failed me, shall lead us out." one of the servitors, whose teeth had been chattering, made a shuddering sound. agrippa laughed. "thou, eutychus?" he said. "comfort thee; the jackals have ceased to haunt the place since their hunger was last satisfied, thirty years ago." an irregular spot of blackness in one of the walls swallowed up the prince as he spoke. eutychus halted at the edge and drew back with a whimper. but the second servitor, who had not spoken since marsyas had first seen him, muttered contemptuously some inarticulate word and pushed eutychus into the blackness. marsyas followed. thereafter it was only time which ensued. sound, sight and, except for the stone under their feet, feeling were defeated. they moved interminably. once or twice eutychus became hysterical from the depression, but the stolid servitor smote him and bundled him on. ahead a light laugh floated back to them in appreciation of the humor in eutychus' predicament. in time a yellow star with ragged points appeared ahead of them, high above the level upon which they had been walking. eutychus trembled before it, but agrippa quickened his steps. "what a memory i have," he observed cheerfully. "any other than myself would have been hopelessly entangled in these galleries and perished miserably some days hence." the star enlarged, lost substantiality and presently eutychus with a gasp of joy faltered that it was daylight. several minutes later they emerged through an open tomb into high noon over judea. before their blinded vision, the green hills swimming in sunlight upheaved between them and all points of the horizon. the city of david was nowhere to be seen; the sun stood directly in the zenith. marsyas was lost; but the prince smiled in immense satisfaction and, seeking a grassy spot, sat down and breathed deeply. presently he motioned to the others to sit. marsyas came close to him; the others remained at a respectful distance. for a long time no one spoke. at last agrippa fell to inspecting his delicate hands and his garments for marks of the long journey under the earth, and the embroidered shoes for evidences of contact with jagged rock. satisfied that he was clean and intact, he laughed a little. "by the hat of hermes, this was noble apparel to wear through the bowels of the earth. _eheu_! i was at my best, and not so much as a she-bat saw me!" eutychus, entirely recovered, chuckled, and a grin overspread the face of silas; but marsyas was plunged in his own reflections. "this is the country-side west of jerusalem," agrippa resumed presently, for the young essene's information. "yonder," pointing north, "the road runs which shall lead us hence. we are an hour's journey by daylight above ground, from the tower of hippicus. but we are not beyond the zone of danger yet." marsyas did not answer. reaction had set up within him against the foreign interest which had engaged his attention since sunrise. he had thought of himself and had been concerned for agrippa; he had planned and had achieved ends. entanglements straightened, immediate danger passed, the cloud of his sorrow embraced him wholly. he did not want to see that canaan was beautiful, indeed a land of milk and honey. the wind laden with spring sweets struck a chill in his soul; the singing birds hurt him with a pain greater than he could endure. his heart was bruised, his every sensation sore and weighted with a numb consciousness that a dread thing had happened and that it was useless to pray and hope now. the presence of others was an obstacle, vaguely realized, that kept him from yielding to his desire to lie down on his face and hate everything and give himself up to whatever chose to befall him. agrippa's hand, presently laid on his shoulder, irritated him. he had to restrain himself to keep from shaking it off. but the prince spoke, and his words were helpful. "marsyas, i know thy pain. i, too, had a beloved friend foully murdered, and the agony of helplessness against the power that did him to death sowed ashes on my heart. but the time of the lord god, slow as it approaches, fell at last. the only bitterness in my cup of fierce triumph was that it was another, and not i, who accomplished, at the end, the undoing of the murderer." "the lord god forfend any such misfortune from me!" was the bitter rejoinder. "vengeance can not be vengeance, if it fall from any hand but mine!" "thou speakest truly: be thy requital sweeter than mine!" it was good to find the reflection of his own hurt in another's experience. it did not lessen his pain; but it gave him expression and the assurance of sympathy. agrippa continued in his pleasant voice. "this persecution will cease ere long. it is only jonathan's device to make him noted as one zealous for the faith. he is much disliked. it is reproach enough for a high priest to be popular with the sadducees: it is well-nigh unforgivable to be set up by rome; it is an insurmountable obstacle to be other than eligible, levitically; but this man hath been wholly undone by these and an offensive personality. wherefore the people hate him with a fervor which vitellius must respect. but jonathan fancies that if he can make him a name as a defender of the faith, the rabble will applaud, and thou and i and vitellius and the discerning jews will achieve no more against him than flies whining about a wall! what folly! how oft we believe a thing to be so, because we wish it to be so! vitellius does not see how the stoning of blasphemers indorses a man whom he dislikes. so jonathan's time is short and the persecution will cease with him. his minion will be discountenanced with the master, and thine opportunity is made. be of hope; thy day is not distant." but marsyas' brow blackened. "a noble reflection!" he exclaimed passionately, "and one that should soothe the tarsian's dreams! binding and stoning and killing in his zeal for an usurper of the robes of aaron! shedding sweet blood--doing irreparable deeds to serve a vain end, to further a useless attempt--a thing to be given over to-morrow! o thou god of wrath! if it be not sin to pray it, let him stumble speedily in the law!" meanwhile agrippa observed the sun, and after a little silence that his return to spirits seem not to grate upon the young essene's distress, arose briskly. "up! up!" he said. "it is not at variance with vitellius' extreme methods to empty the whole prætorium into the hills in search of us. up, fellows! to ptolemais!" marsyas arose with the others, but he hesitated and glanced down at the fine garments that covered him. he remembered that he had not brought his soiled essenic robes with him. he unslung his wallet and extended it to agrippa. "take it, and forget not that i shall ask payment from the strength of that high place to which this may help thee! the vengeful spirit is not of choice a patient thing! i shall wait--but to achieve mine ends. god prosper thee! if thy servants will lend me each a garment thou shalt have back thy dress once more and i will depart." "whither?" asked agrippa without taking the purse. "to en-gadi, for the present." "but the brotherhood will then be guilty of befriending thee and thou art a living example of that which befalls him who befriends one of saul's marked creatures." "so i am become as a pestilence," marsyas said grimly. it was another count against the pharisee. "thou art much beset. doubt not that vitellius will seek for thee in en-gadi, and it were better for thee and for the brotherhood that thou be not found. thou must leave judea, for the arm of the sanhedrim is long." to leave judea meant to be banished among the gentiles, to step out of four whitewashed walls into unknown turmoil; to leave the pleasures of solitude, the peoples of parchment, the events of old history, the ambitions of the soul and go forth amid arrogant heathen godlessness to meet precarious fortunes. the whole course of his life had been entirely reversed in a few hours. resolute and strong as the essene was, his face contracted painfully. agrippa laid a hand on his arm. "remember, it is our faith that this persecution will cease and then thou canst return to thy study in safety," he said as gently as if he were speaking to a child. but in that moment, marsyas told himself that there would be no returning to his old peace. "come with me," agrippa continued. "i will afford thee protection and thou shalt provide me with funds." he paused and, taking marsyas' arm, led him down to a little meandering vale, sweet with blossoming herbs. "look," he said, pointing back toward the east. the hills stood aside in a long, full-breasted series, and revealed through a narrow, green-walled aisle a distant view of jerusalem, white and majestic on her heights. the morning blue that encroaches upon the noon in early spring softened the spectacle with a tender atmosphere; distance glorified its splendors, and the light upon it was other than daylight--it was a nimbus, the ineffable crown. thus seen it was no longer the city of subjection, filled with wrongs and griefs and hopelessness. it was the holy city, upright with the godliness of david, lawful in the government of solomon; sacred with the presence of the shekinah in the holy of holies. here, sheba might have stood first to be shown the glories of solomon; here, alexander might have drawn up his macedonian quadriga to behold what excellence he was next to conquer. marsyas felt emotion seize him, the mighty welling of tears in their springs. "behold it!" agrippa said. "we go forth beaten and ashamed, but thou shalt return to it justified; i shall return to it crowned. believe in that as thou believest in jehovah!" he drew the young essene away and signed to the servitors. in the days that followed, agrippa tactfully and little by little won marsyas out of his brooding. delicately, he sounded the young man's nature and discovered the channel into which his sorrowful thoughts could be diverted. stirring incidents of the herod's own astounding history, graphic accounts of great pageants, of contests of famous athletæ, or of gorgeous cities, vivaciously told, engaged marsyas' attention in spite of himself. gradually his sharpened interest began to choose for itself. expectancy of things to come communicated by agrippa presently possessed marsyas. all this was a new and inviting experience for the young essene, as well as an alleviation. he had lived a placid, passionless life with the old essenic master and centered his broad loves on one or two. evil happenings had wrenched these from him and his affections wandered and wavered, lost only for an hour. by the time the journey to ptolemais was ended, agrippa had stepped into his own place in the heart of the bereaved young man. ptolemais was built for solidity and strength. its houses were defenses, its public buildings were fortifications; its mole, harbor front and wall the most unassailable on the asiatic seaboard. from the plains of esdraelon in their dip toward the sea, the city was seen, set broadside to the waves, stanch, regular, square and bulky--embodied defiance for ever uttered to whatever sea-faring nation turned its triremes into her roadsteads. in a narrow street near the southernmost limits of the city, agrippa stopped. a house of a single story stood before them, its roof barely higher than its door; a heavy wall before it, a narrow gate in that. "enter," said the prince to marsyas, "into the unctuous hospitalities of agrippa's palace." he unlatched the gate, and, leading his companion across a small court, knocked at the door, which after a little wait swung open. an uncommonly pretty waiting-woman stepped aside to let them enter. marsyas put off his sandals and followed the prince into a small recess cut off by curtains from the interior of the house. a bronze lamp was in a niche in the wall and a taboret stood in the corner. no other furniture was visible. the prince dismissed the two servitors and they passed behind the curtains, eutychus stumbling as he went, because his eyes were engaged in attempting to attract the attention of the pretty waiting-woman, who seemed quite oblivious of his glances. "send hither your mistress, drumah," agrippa said to her. she bowed and departed and presently one of the curtains lifted and a woman hastened into the apartment. with a low cry of joy she ran to the prince and flung herself on his breast. "oh, that thou shouldst come and none to watch for thee!" she exclaimed. "that thou shouldst enter thy house and none but thy hireling to meet thee!" he laughed lightly and kissed her. "i have brought also a guest, cypros," he said. for the first time her eyes lighted on marsyas and blushing she drew away from her husband. "i pray thy pardon," she murmured. the light from the day without shone full on her through a lattice, and since his journey to nazareth marsyas had learned to look on women with an interested eye. she was small, but her figure showed the perfect outlines of the matron, and the jewish dress, bound about the hips with a broad scarf, let no single grace lose itself under drapery. but it was the face that held the young essene's attention. there, too, was the blood of the herod, for agrippa had married his cousin, but its attributes were refined almost to ethereal extremes. flesh could not have been whiter nor coloring more delicate. the effect rendered was an impression of exquisite frailty, produced as much by the pathos in the over-large black eyes and the serious cut of the tender mouth as by the transparency of the exceedingly small hand which lay on her breast as if to still a fluttering heart. her beauty was not aided by strength of character or intellectuality; it was distinctly the simple, defenseless, appealing type which is an invincible conqueror of men. "this is marsyas of nazareth, an essene in distress, yet not so unfortunate that he is not willing to help us. what comfort canst thou offer him from thy housekeeping?" the essenes were the holy men of israel; the large eyes filled with deference and she bowed. "welcome in god's name. my lord has bread and a roof-tree. i pray thee share them freely with us." marsyas' formality so serviceable among the women of nazareth suddenly seemed infelicitous here, but it was all he had for response to this different personage. "the blessing of god be with thee; i give thee thanks." she summoned the pretty waiting-woman. "let my lord and his guest be given food and drink; set wine and such meats as we have, and let the children come and greet their father." the prince thrust the curtains aside and, motioning to marsyas', waited until his princess and the young man had passed within. the apartment was a second recess larger than the first, shut in by hangings of sackcloth and furnished with rough seats and tables of unoiled cedar. it was a cheerless room, fit for the humblest man in ptolemais, but the unconquered herod and his lovely princess ennobled it. there was a scarf of damask thrown over one of the tables and two or three pieces of magnificent plate sat upon it. "that," said agrippa, pointing to the silver, "hath been my moneyer for years. i have lived a month on a flagon." cypros sighed, but three pretty children, a boy and two girls, rushed in from the rear of the house and engaged the prince's attention. meanwhile, the attractive servant entered with plates for the table and eutychus followed with a platter of food. as she passed the young essene she tripped on an unevenness in the floor and would have fallen, but marsyas, with a quick movement, more instinctive than gallant, threw out a hand and stayed her. she thanked him composedly and went about her work, but marsyas, chancing to raise his eyes to eutychus' face, caught a look from the servitor that was livid with hate. shocked and astonished, marsyas turned his back and wondered how he had crossed the creature. agrippa sat at the table, and, with cypros at his left, bade marsyas sit beside him. the children were carried protesting away. the prince filled a goblet of silver with a pale wine, slightly effervescent and exhaling a bouquet peculiarly subtle and penetrating. he raised the frosty cup between his fingers--drink, drinker and cup of a type--and looked at the strip of sky visible through the lattice. "this to the gods," he said, "or whatever power hath fortune to give, and a heart to be won of libation. i yield you my soul for a laurel!" the princess leaned her forehead against his arm and whispered: "it is wicked--forbidden!" "i poured but one glass: i make the prayer; i have not asked thee or our young friend to pray it with me. but my devices are exhausted. i make appeal now, haphazard, for i grope!" "and didst thou fail in jerusalem?" "as i have failed from rome to idumea." she drew in a little sobbing breath and hid her eyes against his sleeve. marsyas sat silent. this first evidence of despair on the prince's part was most unwelcome. his own fortunes were too much entangled with agrippa's for him to contemplate their fall. he felt the prince's eyes upon him. the silver cup had been refilled and was extended to him. marsyas took it. "this to success," he said, "not fortune!" cypros stirred. "success is so deliberate!" she sighed. marsyas made no answer; would it be long before he should have his bitter wish? "thou seest judea," agrippa began, "thou heardest me aspire to it and thou didst abet me in mine ambition. but learn, for thy own comfort, marsyas, the vagabond to whom thou hast attached thyself doth not grasp after another man's portion. judea is mine! and rome must yield me mine inheritance!" the prince's eyes glowed with youth's ambition. marsyas listened intently. "a herod's word is in disrepute," the prince continued. "hence i am limited to action to prove myself. but look thou here, marsyas. judea is pillaged: so am i. judea is despised: so am i! judea weltereth in her own blood: am i not sprung from a murdered sire, who was son of a murdered mother--each dead by the same hand of father and husband? dear lord, i am an offspring of the shambles, mother-marked with wounds!" he shuddered and drew his hand across his forehead. "having thus suffered the same miseries which are judea's, is it not natural that i should relieve her when i, myself, am relieved? i should rule judea as judea would rule herself--" he broke off with a gesture of impatience. "how i hate the blatant vower of vows! help me to mine opportunity, marsyas." as between rome and herod the great as sovereign, there was no choice. though the asmonean slave, as the jewish patriots named the capable fiend, gave judea the most brilliant reign since the glories of solomon and the most monstrous since ahab, the nominal independence offered by his administration was absolutely submerged and lost in the terror of his absolutism and the devilish genius in him for oppression. herod and abaddon were names synonymous in judea, and the mildness of his sons or their inefficiency had not been able to set the reproach aside. no able herod had arisen since the founder of the house, except, as marsyas hopefully believed, this man before him. herod agrippa was the son of aristobolus, who was murdered in his youth before his capabilities developed. the herods, philip and antipas, had been mild because they were incapable. the recurrence of mental strength in the blood was an untried contingency. all this came to marsyas, now, suggested by the implied self-defense in the prince's words, and for a moment he wavered between concern for his people and anxiety for his own cause. agrippa and cypros watched him. "thou art a just youth," the prince went on in the winning voice that had already made its conquest over the essene. "i can not prove myself until i am given trial, and judgment without trial is an abomination even unto the tyrant rome!" "i have not judged, lord," marsyas protested. "and thou wilt not until i have shown myself unworthy of thy confidence. thou hast even now bespoken god's favor for me--be then, his instrument! thou art the first ray of light in a decade of darkness that has enveloped me and mine!" marsyas put out his hand to the prince. the peril in the herod blood, in his calculations, had dropped out of sight. "what dost thou say to me, my prince?" he said. "how is it that thou beseechest me--me, the suppliant, praying thy help for mine own ends? but hear me! thou aspirest to that place of which i have no knowledge, among peoples whose paths i never cross, into the calling of the great! yet, though most unequipped to yield thee support, i am thy substance. use me! thou knowest my price." agrippa smiled. "though i die owing even mine embalmer, i shall pay thee that debt. i have said. and now to the process. what money hast thou?" agrippa was silent and marsyas, watching his face, waited. "i need," the prince said slowly, "twenty thousand." marsyas got upon his feet, and for a moment there was silence. "i will get it for thee," he said. chapter vii the bondman of hate in a city like ptolemais, where many pagans lived extravagantly and many jews lived thriftily, there were, as naturally follows, many money-lenders among the sons of abraham. "seek them all," was agrippa's charge, "but peter, the usurer. him, thou hadst better avoid." the young essene laid aside the prince's dress, with its embroidery of precious metal, and, getting into a simpler garment affected by the stewards to men of rank, went out into the city to borrow twenty thousand drachmæ. he did not get the twenty thousand drachmæ, but he found, instead, that herod agrippa was the most notorious bankrupt in the world. being a jew and by heritage thrifty, the discovery shook him in his respect for the prince, but at the same time a resolution shaped itself in him against the usurers. but, on a certain day, he returned to the little house in the suburbs of the city to report that he had been placidly refused by every money-lending jew or gentile, except peter, in the seaport. but he delivered his tidings unmoved. "be of hope," he said to cypros, whose head drooped at the news; "there are many untried ways." he went again into the city, and visited the khans. there might be new-comers who were money-lenders in other cities. there were such as guests in ptolemais, but from their lips he learned that agrippa was black-listed from the adriatic to the euphrates; but marsyas did not return to the house in the suburbs that night. the weight of his obligation was too heavy to endure the added burden which the sight of agrippa's suspense had become. he went to the rabbis of ptolemais; they told him that they were not money-lenders. he applied to the prefect of the city, who laughed at him. hoping that the name of agrippa as a bankrupt had not penetrated into the fields he journeyed into the country-side of syria and tried an oil-merchant, a rustic, rich and unlettered. but the oil-merchant came up to ptolemais and made inquiry, shrugged his shoulders, glowered at marsyas and went back to his groves. an egyptian seller of purple landed at ptolemais from alexandria. the name of the city of hope attracted marsyas and he met the merchant at the wharves. but the seller of purple had been to rome and the topmost name on his list of debtors was herod agrippa. at the end of three days, marsyas returned to the house in the suburbs to assure the prince that he had not deserted and went again on his search. his invariable failures began to teach him a certain shrewdness. he discovered early that essenic frankness would not serve his ends. he found that men were approachable through certain channels; that it was better to speak advisedly than frankly; to lay plans, rather than to wait on events; to use devices rather than persuasion. these things admitted, he discovered that he had unconsciously subordinated them to his use. though momentarily alarmed, he did not hate himself as he should. on the other hand, it was pleasurable to lay siege to men and try them at their own scheming. at night in a dutiful effort to cleanse himself of the day's accumulation of worldliness, he went to the open proseuchæ, where in the dark of the great out-of-doors, he was least likely to be noticed, to comfort himself with stolen worship, stolen profit from the law. but the law was not tender to those who lived as stephen lived, and died as stephen died. not in all that great and holy scroll which the reader read was there compassion for the blasphemer. also, he heard of the great plague of persecution which saul had loosed upon the nazarenes in jerusalem and how the pharisee had become a mighty man before the council, and an awe and a terror to the congregation. so he came away from the proseuchæ, not only unhelped but harmed, embittered, enraged, alienated from his faith, and hungering for vengeance. by day, he walked through the commercial districts of ptolemais and pushed his almost hopeless search with an energy that did not flag at continued failure. he knew that if he obtained the twenty thousand drachmæ, he bound agrippa the surer to his oath of allegiance to the cause against saul. despair, therefore, was a banished and forbidden thing. his plans, however, had been tried and proved fruitless. typically a soldier of fortune, he was relying upon the exigencies of chance. ptolemais was a normal town, with large interest and pleasures, and the fair day was too fleeting for one to stop and take heed of another. passers pushed and hurried him when he came upon those more busy than he. sailors, bronzed as tatars, were probably the sole loiterers besides the inevitable oriental feature, the sidewalk mendicant. so it was that on a certain day when marsyas overtook a lectica in the street, the old man within complained aloud and had no audience, except his plodding bearers, or the attention of a glance, or a slackened step now and again among the citizens. "they rob me!" he was crying when marsyas came up with him. the young man turned quickly; the declaration was alarming. his eyes encountered the face of peter, the usurer, a stout, gray old jew, in the apparel of a sadducee. seeing that he had won the young man's notice the old usurer seized the opportunity to enlarge. "they ruin me!" he cried. marsyas bowed gravely. "thy pardon, sir," he said. "may i be of service?" "they sap my life!" the old man continued more violently, as if the young man's question had excited him. "they take, and demand more; they waste, and must be replenished! i drop into the grave and there will be nothing left to buy a tomb to receive me!" the words were directed to marsyas, and the young man having halted could not go on without awkwardness. "i pray thee," he urged, "tell me who plagues thee thus." "the tradesmen! because i am wealthy, they augment their hire; because i must buy, they increase their price; they hold necessities out of my reach! it is a conspiracy between them because i am of lowly birth, and i go from one to another and find no relief! behold!" he shook out a shawl which had been folded across his knees. "i must have it to protect me against the cold. it is inferior; it is scant; yet it cost me fifteen pieces of silver!" marsyas glanced at the mantle; even with his little knowledge of fabrics it appeared not worth its price. "thou hast servants, good sir, and camels," he said, drawn into suggestion in spite of himself. "do i overstep my privilege to suggest that thou mayest send to anthedon or to cæsarea and buy in other cities?" "but the hire--the hire! and how should i know that the knavery does not extend to anthedon and cæsarea?" "then," said marsyas, "establish thine own booths here and undersell the robbers." there was silence; the small eyes of the old man narrowed and ignited. "a just punishment," he muttered. "a proper punishment!" "or this," marsyas continued, interested in his own conspiracy. "thou sayest they oppress thee because thou art a lowly man! they are foolish. display them thy power and punish them. thou art a great usurer; powerful families here are in thy debt. how strong a hand thou holdest over them! what canst thou not compel them to do! nay, good sir; to me, it seemeth thou hast the whip-hand over these tradesmen!" the old man rubbed his hands. "an engaging picture," he said. "but unless i haste, they will ruin me yet!" marsyas shook his head. "not if the tales of thy famous wealth be true." the lectica had moved along beside him and he waited now to be dismissed; but, contrary to custom of that rank which is privileged to command, the old man waited for marsyas to take his leave. "methinks," he began, "i have seen thee--" "doubtless," marsyas interrupted hastily. "i am a steward here in ptolemais. but i have an errand here, good sir; by thy leave, i shall depart." the old man made a motion of assent, but he followed the young essene with a thoughtful eye. "if i am to know the world's way," marsyas said to himself, "i can use it, if need be." he did not visit another usurer, but on the following day went to those places likely to be the haunts of peter. when, presently, he discovered the old man near a fountain, marsyas did not attempt to catch his eye. but one of peter's servants touched him on the arm and told him that the master beckoned, and he hastened to the old man's side. "who is thy master?" peter asked. marsyas winced, but restrained a declaration of his free-born state. "a roman citizen who is preparing to return to italy." "a roman!" peter repeated. "but thou art a jew, or the blood of the race in thee lies." "a jew without taint of other blood in all the line." "art satisfied with thy service--serving a roman?" was the demand. "none has a better lord!" replied marsyas quietly, but with an inward delight in leading the old man on. "but it should be more lawful for thee to serve a jew," peter declared. "a roman's slave, a slave for ever; a jew's slave, a slave but six years--" marsyas could rest no longer under the intimation of bondage. "good sir, i am not a slave." "ho! a hireling." "no; a free man, unattached and serving for love." peter scratched his head. "for love only? then why not come and be my steward for wages?" "thou canst not pay my price," he said with meaning. the old man lifted his withered chin. "thy price!" he repeated haughtily. "and pray, sirrah, what is thy price?" a figurative answer to add to his first sententious remark was on marsyas' lips, but he halted suddenly, and a little pallor came into his face. "on another day, i shall tell thee," he said after a silence, and the old man impatiently dismissed him. marsyas turned away from the heart of the city and went straight to the house in the suburbs. he found agrippa stretched on a couch where the air entered through the west lattice, and the place otherwise solitary. the princess and the children with the servants had gone into the city. marsyas came uncalled to agrippa's side, and the prince noted the change on the young man's face. he looked expectant. "my lord," marsyas said, "thou didst say to me several days ago that thou didst hate a vower of vows. yet no man is chafed by a vow except him who finds it hard to keep. wherefore, i pray thee, for the prospering of the cause and mine, assure me once more of thy good intent toward judea." the herod raised his fine brows. "how now, marsyas? has the knowledge that i am a herod been slandering me to you?" "nay, my lord; thou hast won me; and i shall not stop at sacrifice for thy cause, which is mine." "what canst thou do, my marsyas?" "get thee money." "i give thee my word, marsyas. it has been sorely battered dodging debts, yet it is still intact enough to contain mine honor. i give thee my word." marsyas lingered with an averted face, which agrippa tried in vain to understand. he added nothing to emphasize his avowal; perhaps he realized at that moment, more keenly than ever afterward, how much a man wants to be believed. presently the young man spoke in another tone. "who is this peter, that i may not ask him for a loan?" "i owe him a talent already," agrippa answered with a lazy smile, "which he advanced to me while he was yet my mother's slave." "then thou knowest him! how--how is he favored in disposition?" "how is peter favored? are slaves favored? nay, they are tempered like asses, cattle and apes--like beasts. wherefore, this peter is voracious, balky, amiable enough if thou yieldest him provender--not bad, but, like any donkey, could be better." marsyas' eyes fell again; it seemed that he hesitated at his next question, as though upon its answer turned a matter of great moment. "art thou in all truth assured that this alexandrian will lend thee money?" he asked presently, beset by the possibility of doubt. agrippa laughed outright. "jove, but this questioning hath a familiar ring! surely thou wast sired of a money-lender, marsyas, else his inquiries would not arise so naturally to thy lips! will the alexandrian lend? of a surety! and even if not, then will my mother's friend, the noble antonia, cæsar's sister-in-law. if cæsar had not been so precipitate and hastened me out of rome, i should have borrowed the sum of her ten years ago. i have not borrowed of the alexandrian ere this because i had not the money to carry me thither." after a pause, agrippa anticipated a further question and continued. "the alexandrian is alexander lysimachus, the noblest jew a generation hath produced. even rome, that hath such little use for our blood, waives its ancient judgment against lysimachus. he is alabarch of the jews in alexandria, able as a roman, just as a jew, refined as a greek, versatile as an alexandrian. i saw him four years ago, here, in jerusalem, when he brought his wife's remains to bury them on sacred soil. he had with him two sons, one a man, grown, with his father's genius, but without his father's soul; the other a handsome lad of undeveloped character, and a daughter, a veritable sprite for beauty, and a sibyl for wits. i was afraid of her; i, a herod and a married man, turning forty, was afraid of her! but get me the twenty thousand drachmæ, marsyas, and thou shall see her--_hercle_--a thousand pardons! i forgot that thou art an essene!" marsyas stood silent once more, and agrippa waited. "and yet one other thing, my lord," the essene said finally. "i serve thee no less for love, because i serve thee also for a purpose. thou wilt not forget to serve me, when thou comest to thine own?" "i give thee again my much misused word, marsyas. believe me, thou hast forced more truths out of me than any ever achieved before. cypros will make thee her inquisitor when next she suspects me of warmth toward a maiden!" marsyas lifted the prince's hand and pressed it to his lips. without further word, he went out of the chamber and returned to the city. he sought out the counting-room of peter the usurer, and found within a commotion and a gathered crowd. the old man himself stood in a steward's place behind a grating of bronze, with lists and coffers about him. without stood a brown woman, in a strange dress sufficiently rough to establish her state of servitude, and she bore in her hands a sheep-skin bag that seemed to be filled with coins. about her was a group of men of nationalities so diverse and so evidently perplexed that marsyas immediately surmised that they had been summoned as interpreters for a stranger whom they could not understand. the brown woman was passive: the usurer behind his grating in such a state of great excitement and anxiety that moisture stood out on his wrinkled forehead. his eyes were on the sheep-skin bag; evidently the brown woman was bringing him money, and his fear that the treasure would escape made the old man desperate. "have ye forgotten your mother-tongues?" he fumed at the polyglot assembly, "or are ye base-born syrians boasting a nationality that ye can not prove? hold! let her not go forth, good citizens; doubtless she hath come from a foreign debtor to repay me! close the doors without!" marsyas pressed through the crowd to the grating, and the old man discovered him. "hither, hither, my friend," he exclaimed. "see if thou canst tell what manner of stranger we have here." the young essene had been examining the woman; with a quick glance, now, he inspected her face. dark the complexion, the eyes olive-green as chrysolite, mysterious and hypnotic; the features regular as an egyptian's, but stronger and more beautiful; the physique refined, yet hardy. the mystic air of the ganges breathed from her scented shawl. the young man's training in languages was not overtaxed. "what is thy will?" he asked in the tongue of the brahmins. "to exchange hindu money for roman coin," was the instant reply. marsyas turned to peter. "this is an indian woman," he explained. "she wishes to exchange coin of her country for roman money." "good!" the old man cried, rubbing his hands. "we shall oblige her. foreign coins are so much bullion; yet, we pay only its face value, in roman moneys! good! i shall melt it, and deliver it to the roman mint! good! but--but how shall i know one of these outlandish coins from another?" "i can tell you," marsyas answered. the assembled group drifted out of the counting-room and the usurer, sighing his delight, opened a gate and bade marsyas and the hindu woman come into the apartment behind the screen. there the exchange was made, and the old usurer, trusting to the hindu's ignorance of the language, permitted no moment to pass without comment on his profit. presently, marsyas turned to the woman. "you lose money by this traffic," he said deliberately. "rest thee, brother," was the calm reply, "i know it. yet i must have roman coin to carry me to egypt." marsyas glanced at her apparel. in spite of its humble appearance, it was the owner of this treasure, that dwelt within it. the exchange was made, amounting to something over twenty thousand drachmæ. marsyas, with wistful eyes, saw her put the treasure away in the sheepskin bag. he arose as she arose, and the two were conducted out by peter. without, it had grown dark. the woman had made no effort to hide the nature of her burden. she made an almost haughty gesture of farewell to marsyas. "i shall serve thee, perchance, one day," she said and passed out. marsyas followed her. at the threshold, he wavered and stepping into the street stopped. she made a small, frail, dusky apparition, under the black shadows of the bulky buildings of ptolemais--a profitable victim for some light-footed highwayman, less sorely in need of money than he. but she evidently felt no fear. then, he turned and went back into the counting-room. peter was behind his grating. "who and what art thou?" the usurer demanded, with no little admiration in his tone. "i am," marsyas answered, "a doctor of laws, a master of languages, a doctor of medicines, a scholar of the college at jerusalem, a postulant essene." the reply was intentionally full. "and a steward for love, only!" "only for a time. when i can repay thee a debt long standing, i shall cease to serve at all." the usurer's eyes brightened. "a debt," he repeated softly. "is this my fortunate day? which of the bankrupts who owe me has been replenished?" "not yet, the one of whom i speak," marsyas replied. "hast thou heard of herod agrippa?" "herod agrippa! evil day that he borrowed a talent of me, never to return it!" "perchance, some day--" "never! whosoever lends him money pitches it into the sea!" "yet the sea hath given up its treasure, at times. but let me trouble thee with a question. what price did the costliest slave in thy knowledge command?" "what price? a slave? in rome? nay, then, let me think. a georgian female captive of much beauty was sold to sejanus once for six hundred thousand drachmæ--" "i speak of serving-men," marsyas interrupted. "nay, then: cæsar owns a physician worth eighty thousand drachmæ." "hath he cured any in cæsar's house of poisoning; can he speak many languages; is he also a doctor of laws and a good jew?" the usurer shook his head. "what price, then, should i he worth to cæsar?" marsyas demanded. "sell not thyself to cæsar," peter cried, flinging up his hands. "it is forbidden!" "i shall not sell myself," marsyas said. "i have come only to find how to value my services." "whom dost thou serve?" the old man demanded. marsyas was not ready to disclose his identity. "a roman. peace and the continuance of good fortune be thine." he bowed and passed out of the counting-room. the usurer stood a moment, then summoned his servants, and, getting himself into street dress, hastened to follow the young man. marsyas turned his steps toward the house in the suburbs. there were several torches about the painted gate in the wall and the light shone on a group alighting from a curricle. cypros and her children had returned from the city, and agrippa had come forth to receive them. marsyas joined the group and peter's lectica was borne up to the circle of radiance under the torches. the old man's eyes filled with wrath when he recognized agrippa. he stood up and surveyed him with scorn. "a roman!" he scoffed. "a roman, only to add the vices of the race to the meanness of a herod! back to my house, slaves! we have taken profitless pains!" agrippa's anger leaped into his face and marsyas pursued and overtook the litter. "thy pardon, sir," he began. "i have a right to attach thee for the talent thy master owes me," peter stormed. "peace, good sir! i am not a slave." peter chewed his mustache impotently, but the young essene dropped his greek and spoke in hebrew, the language of the synagogue, the true badge of judaism. "perchance we may bargain together. wouldst have me for hire?" peter smoldered in sulky silence. "i can not serve longer without compensation," marsyas pursued. "what sum in hire?" peter demanded. "twenty thousand drachmæ--" peter blazed, but marsyas stopped his invective with a motion. "nay, peace! i have not finished. twenty thousand drachmæ in loan to agrippa, and i will serve thee gratis till he redeems me by paying the principal and the talent he owes." the usurer, with a snort, abruptly ordered the slaves to proceed. the next day, marsyas, loitering on purpose near the usurer's, was approached by a servant and sent into the presence of peter. "hath the bankrupt any hopes?" the money-lender demanded without preliminary. "he goes to alexandria, for money, and thence to imperial favor in rome. there is antonia who will aid him, as thou knowest. unless thou helpest him to reach either of these two places, he is of a surety bankrupt; wherefore he can never pay thee the talent or even the interest." peter dismissed him moodily and marsyas returned to the prince. but the next day peter appeared at agrippa's door and was conducted to the prince's presence, where cypros sat with him and marsyas waited. the old man made no greeting. "thou knowest me, agrippa," he began at once. "for thy mother's sake, whose happy slave i was, i will take thine essene at his terms, less the interest on the twenty thousand drachmæ." "my essene at his terms," agrippa repeated in perplexity. but marsyas, with a movement of command, broke in. "the bargain is at first hand between thee and me, good sir," he said to peter. "the second contract shall be between the prince and myself. bring the money here at sunset and the writings shall be ready for thee." "twenty thousand drachmæ, less mine interest on the sum," peter insisted. "less thine interest," marsyas assented, and peter went out. agrippa got upon his feet and gazed gravely at marsyas. "what is this?" he asked. "i have bound thee to my cause," the young man answered. "how? nay, answer me, marsyas. what hast thou done?" the prince urged, impelled by affection as well as wonder. "i have bought my revenge, and have paid for it with a season of bondage." "hast thou given thyself in hostage for us?" cypros cried, springing up. marsyas, without reply, moved to leave the room. but agrippa planted himself in the young man's way, and cypros in tears slipped down on her knees at his side, and, raising his hand, kissed it. "we shall not forget," she whispered to him. "i shall not know peace till i have redeemed thee," agrippa declared with misted eyes. great haste to get away from the overwhelmed pair seized the essene. trembling he shook off their hold and hurried out into the air. he had to quiet a great amazement in him at the thing he had planned for so many days to do. after a long agitated tramp in search of composure, he began to see more clearly the results of his extreme act. he had fixed himself within reach of vitellius and the sanhedrim: unless the ill fortune of the luckless prince improved, he had bound himself to servitude for a lifetime. but he drew his hand across his troubled forehead and smiled grimly. he had made his first decisive step against saul! chapter viii an alexandrian characteristic nothing but prescience could have inspired alexander, the young macedonian conqueror, to decide to plant a city on the sandy peninsula which lay hot, flat, low and unproductive between the glassy waters of lake mareotis and the tumble of the mediterranean. for a century previous, a straggling egyptian village, called rhacotis, eked out a precarious existence by fisheries; the port was filled with shoals or clogged with water-growth, and the voluptuous fertility of the nile margin followed the slow sweep of the great river into the sea twelve miles farther to the east. no other port along the coast presented a more unattractive appearance. but alexander, having no more worlds to conquer, turned his opposition upon adverse conditions. so he struck his spear into the sand, and there arose at the blow a city having the spirit of its founder--great, splendid, contentious, contradictory, impetuous and finally self-destructive through its excesses. he enlarged and embellished rhacotis, which lay to the west of the new city and left it to the tenantry of the egyptians, poor remnants of that haughty race which had been aristocrats of the world before troy. in its center arose that solemn triumph of pharaonic architecture, the serapeum. but it was they who approached from the south, with the sand of the libyan desert in their locks, who saw noble alexandria. between them and the city was first the strength of its fortifications, prodigious lengths of wall, beautiful with citadels and towers. within was the brucheum, with the splendor of the library, for the alexandrian spirit of contentiousness sharpened and forced the intellect of her disputants, till her learning was the most faultless of the time and its house a fit shape for its contents. after the library the pillared façade of the court of justice; next the unparalleled museum, and, interspersed between, were the glories of four hundred theaters, four thousand palaces, four thousand baths. against the intense blue of the rainless egyptian sky were imprinted the sun-white towers, pillars, arches and statues of the most comely city ever builded in africa. memphis, lost and buried in the sand, and thebes, an echoing nave of roofless columns, were never so instinct with glory as egypt's splendid recrudescence on the coast of the middle sea. to the northeast, there was abatement of pagan grandeur. here were quaint solid masses of syriac architecture, with gowned and bearded dwellers and a general air of oriental decorum and religious rigor which did not mark the other quarters of the city. in this spot the jews of the diaspora had been planted, had multiplied and strengthened until there were forty thousand in the district. those turning the beaks of their galleys into the alexandrian roadstead saw first the pharos, a mist-embraced and phantom tower, rising out of the waves; after it, the lochias, wading out into the sea that the palaces of the ptolemies might hold in mortmain their double empire of land and water; on the other hand the trisected heptistadium; between, the acreage of docking and out of the amphitheatrical sweep of the great city behind, standing huge, white and majestic, the grandest jewish structure, next to herod's temple, that the world has ever known--the synagogue. the jews of alexandria; as a class of peculiar and emphatic characteristics, a class toward which consideration was due in deference to its numbers, its wealth and its sensitiveness, were necessarily the object of particular provision. therefore, that they might be intelligently handled as to their prejudices, they were provided with a special governor from among their own--an alabarch; permitted to erect their own sanctuaries and to practise the customs of race and the rites of religion in so far as they did not interfere with the government's interests. thus much their privileges; their oppressions were another story. peopled by three of the most aggressive nations on the globe, the greek, the roman and the jew, alexandria seemed likewise to attract representatives of every country that had a son to fare beyond its borders. drift from the dry lands of all the world was brought down and beached at the great seaport. it ranged in type from the fair-haired norseman to the sinewy mede on the east, from the gaul on the west to the huge ethiopian with sooty shining face who came from the mysterious and ancient land south of the first cataract. it followed that such a heterogeneous mass did not effect union and amity. that was a spiritual fusion which had to await a perfect conception of liberty and the brotherhood of man. the racial mixture in alexandria was, therefore, a prematurity, subject to disorder. so long as a jew may have his life, his faith and his chance at bread-winning, he does not call himself abused. these things the roman state yielded the jew in alexandria. but he was haughty, refined, rich, religious, exclusive, intelligent and otherwise obnoxious to the alexandrians, and, being also a non-combatant, the jew was the common victim of each and all of the mongrel races which peopled the city. the common port of entry was an interesting spot. the prodigious stretches of wharf were fronted by packs of fleets, ranging in class from the visiting warrior trireme from ravenna or misenum, to the squat and blackened dhow from up the nile or the lateen-sailed fishing-smack from algeria to the papyrus punt of home waters. its population was the waste of society, fishers, porters, vagabonds, criminals, ruffian sea-faring men, dockmen, laborers of all sorts, men, women and children--the pariahs even of the rabble and typically the voice of revilement. agrippa, landing with his party, attracted no more attention than any other new-comer would have done, until silas gravely inquired the way into the regio judæorum. "jupiter strike you!" roared the man whom the sober silas had addressed. "do i look like a barbarian jew that i should know anything about the regio judæorum!" his words, purposely loud, did not fail to excite the interest he meant they should. "regio judæorum!" cried a woman under foot, filling her basket with fish entrails. "what say you, gesius? who, these? look, alexandrians, what tinsel and airs are hunting the regio judæorum!" "purple, by my head!" the man exclaimed. "roman citizens with the bent nose of jerusalem!" "agrippa, or i am a landsman!" a sailor shouted. "fugitive from debtors, or i am a pirate!" "jews!" another woman screamed; "coming to collect usury!" a howl of rage, threatening and lawless, greeted this cry, out of which rose the sailor's voice with a shout of laughter. "usury! ha, ha! he has not a denarius on him that is not borrowed!" the jewish prince had lived a life of diverse fortune, but never until then had he been the object of popular scorn. a surprise was aroused in him as great as his indignation; he stood transfixed with emotion. cypros, thoroughly terrified, came out from among her servants and clung to his arm. on her the eyes of the fishwives alighted. [illustration: cypros, thoroughly terrified, clung to his arm (missing from book)] "look! look!" they cried. "sparing us our husbands by hiding her beauty! the rag over her face! bah! for a plaster of mud!" "fish-scales will serve as well," another cried, snatching up a handful and throwing it at the princess. "have mine, too, bassia! thou art a better thrower than i!" a third shouted, handing up her basket. "be sure of your aim, bassia!" the uproar became general. "a handful for the simpering hand-maid, too!" "don't miss the she-herod!" "fall to, wives; don't leave it all to bassia!" "'way for the proconsul!"--a distant roar came up from the water's edge. "bilge-water in my jar, there, mate; it will mix their perfumes!" "'way for the proconsul!" the distant roar insisted. "don't soil the proconsul, women!" "'ware, bassia! the proconsul is coming!" "perpol! he will not see! he is the best jew-baiter in all alexandria! sure aim, o phoebus of the bow!" "'way for the proconsul!" "pluto take the legionaries; here they come!" "one more pitch at them, though cæsar were coming!" "no privileges exclusive for thyself, bassia! _habet_! more scales!" "scales; shells; water! scales; sh--" "fish-heads! _habet_!" "entrails--" "'way for the proconsul!" "directly, comrades! shells, water!" "ow! you hit a soldier!" "bad aim, bassia!" "the legionaries! scatter!" the centurion at the head of a column now appeared, with his brasses dripping with dirty water, threw up his sword and shouted. the column flung itself out of line and went into the mob with pilum butt or point as the spirit urged. pell-mell, tumbling, screaming, scrambling, the wharf-litter fled, parting in two bodies as it passed agrippa's demoralized group, one half plunging off the masonry on the sands or into the water, the other scattering out over the great expanse of dock. the soldiers pressed after, and, following in the space they had cleared, came a chariot, a legate in full armor driving, his charioteer crouching on his haunches in the rear of the car. his apparitors brought up against agrippa's party. they did not hesitate at the rank of the strangers; it was part of the blockade. eutychus took to his heels and silas went down under a blow from a reversed javelin. agrippa, besmirched with the missiles of his late assailants and blazing with fury, breasted the soldiers and cursed them fervently. two of them sprang upon him, and cypros, screaming wildly, threw off her veil and seized the foremost legionary. the legate pulled up his horses and looked at the struggle. cypros' bared face was presented to him. with a cry of astonishment, he threw down the lines and leaped from the chariot. "back, comrades!" he shouted, running toward them. "touch her not! unhand the man! ho! domitius, call off your tigers!" "how now, flaccus!" agrippa raged. "is this how you receive roman citizens in alexandria?" the legate stopped short and his face blackened. "agrippa, by the furies! i knew the lady, but--" with a motion of his hand he seemed to put off his temper and to recover himself. "tut, tut! herod, you will not waste good serviceable wrath on an alexandrian uproar when you have lived among them a space. they are no more to be curbed than the nile overflow, and are as natural to the place. but curse them, they shall answer for this! welcome to alexandria! beshrew me, but the sight of your lady's face makes me young again! come, come; bear me no ill will. be our guest, herod, and we shall make back to you for all this mob's inhospitality. ah, my lady, what say you? urge my pardon for old time's sake!" he turned his face, which filled with more sincerity toward cypros than was visible in his voluble cordiality to agrippa. cypros, supported by the trembling drumah, put her hand to her forehead and tried to smile bravely. "but thou hast saved us, noble flaccus; why should we bear thee ill will? blessed be thou for thy timely coming, else we had been killed!" agrippa, still smoldering, with silas at his feet, alternately brushing the prince's dress and rubbing his bruises, took the word from cypros. "what do roman citizens, arriving in alexandria, and no proconsul to meet them? perchance rome's sundry long missing citizens have been lost here!" intimated agrippa. "ho, no! they never kill except under provocation. yet i shall have a word with the wharf-master and the prætor. but come, have my chariot, lady. apparitor," addressing one of his guards, "send hither conveyance for my guests!" "thy pardon and thanks, flaccus," agrippa objected shortly, "we are expected by the alabarch." "then, by the horæ, he should have been here to meet you. forget him for his discourtesy and come with me. beseech your husband, sweet lady; you were my confederate in the old days." she smiled, in a pleased way. "but we did not inform the alabarch when we expected to arrive," she answered. "he hath not failed us." "and perchance," agrippa broke in, "it might disturb alexandria again to know that the proconsul had entertained jews!" "still furious!" flaccus cried jocosely. "oh, where is that elastic temper which made thee famous in youth, herod? but here are our curricles; at least thou wilt permit me to conduct thy party to the alabarch's." it was the bluff courtesy of a man who assumes polish for necessity's sake, and suddenly envelopes himself with it, momentarily for a purpose. agrippa, looking up from under his brows, glanced critically at the proconsul's face for some light on his unwonted amiability, but, failing to discover it, submitted with better grace to the roman's offers. the proconsul was near agrippa's age, and on his face and figure was the stamp of unalloyed roman blood. he was of average height, but so solidly built as to appear short. his head was round and covered with close, black curls; his brows were straight thick lines which met over his nose, and his beardless face was molded with strong muscles on the purple cheek and chin. he was powerful in neck and arm and leg, and prominent in chest and under-jaw. yet the brute force that published itself in all his atmosphere was dominated by intellect and giant capabilities. he was flaccus avillus, proconsul of egypt, finishing now his fourth year as viceroy over the nile valley. one of the few who stood in the wintry favor of tiberius, the imperial misanthrope of capri, his was the weightiest portfolio in all colonial affairs; his state little less than cæsar's. wherever he walked, industry, pleasure and humankind, low or lofty, stood still to do him honor. so, when he headed a procession of curricles and chariots up from the wharves of alexandria, he did not go unseen. many of the late disturbers watched with strained eyes and gaping mouths and saw him turn his horses into the street which was the first in the regio judæorum, and not a few stared at one another and babbled, or pointed taut or shaking fingers at the prodigy. flaccus, the most notorious persecutor of the jews among the long list of egyptian governors, was visiting the regio judæorum escorting jews! the sight created no less wonder and astonishment under the eaves of the jewish houses, and throughout their narrow passages, but there was no demonstration. each retired quietly to his family, or to his neighbor, and gravely asked what new trickery was this. but agrippa's party, following their conductor, proceeded through the less densely settled portion of the quarter into a district where the streets opened up into a stately avenue, lined by the palaces of the aristocratic jews of alexandria. before one, not in the least different from half a dozen surrounding it, their guide halted. the residence was square, with an unbroken front, except for a porch, the single attribute characteristic of egypt, and the window arches and parapet relieved the somber masonry with checkered stone. the flight of steps leading up to the porch was of white marble. one of the proconsul's apparitors knocked and stiffly announced his mission to the jewish porter that answered. immediately the master of the house came forth, followed by a number of servants to take charge of the prince's effects. the master of the house, alexander lysimachus, alabarch of alexandria, was a jew by feature and by dress, but sufficiently romanized in disposition to propitiate rome. he wore a cloak, richly embroidered, over a long white under-robe; and the magisterial tarboosh, with a bandeau of gold braid, was set down over his fine white hair. his figure was lean and aged, a little bent, but every motion was as steady as that of a young man, and his air had that certain ease and grace which mark the courtier. his first quick glance sought flaccus, for the visit was without precedent and highly significant. but there was neither hauteur nor suspicion in his manner. the bluff countenance of the proconsul showed a little expectancy, but there was even less to be seen on the jew's face that should betray his interpretation of the visit. the magistrates bowed, each after his own manner of salutation--the jew with oriental grace, the roman with an offhand upward jerk of his head and a gesture of his mailed hand. "behold your guests, lysimachus," flaccus said, "or what is left of them after an encounter with the rabble at the wharf. you should have been there to meet them." "so i should, had i been forewarned," the alabarch explained, the peculiar music of the jewish intonation showing in mellow contrast to the roman's blunt voice. "what! is this how the accursed vermin have used you!" he put out his old waxen hands to the prince and searched his face. "o thou son of berenice!" he said softly. "welcome to the worshiping hearts of jews, once more." "thanks," replied agrippa, embracing the old man. "my latest adventure with gentiles has well-nigh persuaded me to remain there!" "god grant it; god grant it! and thy princess?" cypros had uncovered her face and was reaching him her hands. "mariamne!" he exclaimed in a startled way. "mariamne, as i live!" flaccus, who had fixed his eyes on cypros the instant her veil was lifted, started. "mariamne! the murdered mariamne!" he repeated. "ah, sir!" the alabarch protested, smiling. "thou wast not born then. but i knew her: as a young man i knew her! but enter, enter! pray favor us with thy presence at supper, noble flaccus. it shall be an evening of festivity." he led them through a hall so dimly lighted as to appear dark after the daylight without, and into one of the noble chambers characteristic of the opulent orient. the whole interior was lined with yellow marble, and the polish of the pavement was mirror-like. the lattice of the windows, the lamps, the coffers of the alabarch's records, the layers for the palms and plantain, the clawed feet of the great divan were all of hammered brass. the drapery at arch and casement, the cushions and covering of the divan were white and yellow silk, and, besides a sprawling tiger skin on the floor, the alabarch's chair of authority, and a table of white wood, there was no other furniture. the alabarch gave flaccus his magistrate's chair, and, seating his two noble guests and their children, clapped his hands in summons. a brown woman, with eyes like chrysolite and the lithe movements of a panther, was instantly at his elbow. the alabarch spoke to her in a strange tongue, and the servant disappeared. "i send for my daughter," he explained to his guests. "the waiting-woman does not understand our tongue. my daughter--the only one i have, and unmarried!" "i remember her," agrippa said with a smile. at that moment in the archway leading into the interior of the house a girl appeared. she lifted her eyes to her father's face, and between them passed the mute evidence of dependence and vital attachment. she wore the classic greek chiton of white wool without relief of color or ornament, a garb which, by its simplicity, intensified the first impression that it was a child that stood in the archway. she was a little below average height, with almost infantile shortening of curves in her pretty, stanch outlines. but the suppleness of waist and the exquisite modeling of throat and wrist were signs that proved her to be of mature years. her hair was of that intermediate tint of yellow-brown which in adult years would be dark. it fell in girlish freedom, rough with curls, a little below her shoulders. there was a boyishness in the noble breadth of her forehead, full of front, serene almost to seriousness, and marked by delicate black brows too level to be ideally feminine. her eyes were not prominent but finely set under the shading brow, large of iris, like a child's, and fair brown in color. in their scrutiny was not only the wisdom of years but the penetration of a sage. though her tips were not full they were perfectly cut, and redder than the heart of any pomegranate that grew in the alabarch's garden. but it was not these certain signs of strength which engaged agrippa. beyond the single glance to note how much the girl had developed in four years he gave his attention to certain physical characteristics which called upon his long experience with women to catalogue. as she stood in the archway, the prince had let his glance slip down to her feet, shod in white sandals, and her ankles laced about with white ribbon. one small foot upbore her weight, the other unconsciously, but most daintily, poised on a toe. she swayed once with indescribable lightness, but afterward stood balanced with such preparedness of young sinew that at a motion she could have moved in any direction. foremost in summing these things, agrippa observed that she was wholly unconscious of how she stood. "terpsichore!" he said to himself, "or else the goddess hath withdrawn the gift of dancing from the earth!" "enter, lydia, and know the proconsul, the noble flaccus," the alabarch said. the girl raised her eyes to the proconsul's face and salaamed with enchanting grace. flaccus checked a fatherly smile. he would wait before he patronized a girl-child of uncertain age. "and this," the alabarch went on, "thou wilt remember as our prince, herod agrippa." "alas! sweet lydia," agrippa said, fixing soft eyes upon her. "must i be introduced? am i in four years forgotten?" "no, good my lord," she answered in a voice that was mellow with the music of womanhood--a voice that almost startled with its abated strength and richness, since the illusion of her youth was hard to shake off, "thou art identified by thy sweet lady!" agrippa stroked his smooth chin and flaccus shot an amused glance at him. meanwhile the girl had opened her arms to cypros. the children, one by one, greeted her. the alabarch went on. "my sons are no longer with us," he said. "they are abroad in the world, preparing themselves to be greater men than their father. but go, be refreshed; it shall be an evening of rejoicing. lydia, be my right hand and give my guests comfort." he bowed the herod and his family out of the chamber and they followed the girl to various apartments for rest and change of raiment. the alabarch turned to the proconsul. "if thou wilt follow me, sir--" "no; i thank thee; i shall return to my house and prepare for thy hospitality. but tell me this: what does agrippa here?" "he comes to borrow money, i believe." "of you?" "doubtless." "put him off until you have consulted me. he is not a safe borrower." chapter ix "--as an army with banners!" agrippa emerged at sunset from his apartment and descended to the first floor of the alabarch's mansion. the hall was vacant and each of the chambers opening off it was silent, so he wandered through the whole length of the corridor, composedly as a master in his own house. no one did he see until he reached the end of the hall, when there appeared suddenly, as if materialized out of the gloom, the brown serving-woman. the olive-green of her immense eyes glittered in the light of a reed taper she bore. she stepped aside to let him pass and proceeded to light the lamps. agrippa stopped to look at her, simply because she was lithe and unusual, but she continued without heeding him. on one of the lamp-bowls the palm-oil had run over and the reed ignited it; but with her bare hand the woman damped it and went her way with a running flame flickering out on the back of her hand. "perpol!" the prince exclaimed to himself as he rambled on. "no wonder the phenix comes to egypt to be born." at the end of a corridor he passed through an open door into a colonnade fronting a court-garden of extraordinary beauty. it was carpeted with sod, interlined with walks of white stone which led at every divergence to a classic roman exedra. the awning which usually sheltered the inclosure from the sun had been rolled up and the cooling sky bent loftily over it. the inert summer airs were heavy with the scent of lotus, red lilies and spice roses which were massed in an oval bed in the center. at that moment he caught sight of an indolent figure, half sitting, half lying in one of the sections of the exedra. he knew at first glance that it was not the alabarch's daughter, and, remembering that his last glance in the mirror after his servant had done with him had shown him at his best, he moved without hesitation toward the unknown. as he approached she raised her eyes and coolly scrutinized him. her face, thus lifted for inspection, showed him a woman in the later twenties, and of that type which since the beginning could look men between the eyes. she was a roman, but never in all the empire were other eyes so black and luminous, or hair so glossy, or cheek so radiant. her face was an elongated oval, topping a long round neck, which broadened at the base into a sudden and exaggerated slope of marble-white shoulders. the low sweep of the bosom, the girdle just beneath it, shortening the lithe waist, the slender hips, the long lazy limbs completed a perfect type, distinct and unlimited in its powers. for a fraction of a second the two contemplated each other; perhaps only long enough for each to confess to himself that he had met his like. then agrippa came and sat down beside her, and she did not stir from her careless posture. so many, many of the kind had each met and known that they could not be strangers. "the alabarch should turn his prospective son-in-law into his garden if he would speed the marrying of his daughter," the prince observed. "he hath the daughter, the garden, and the notion to dispose of her," she answered, "but it is the son-in-law that is wanting." "but in my long experience with womankind," he replied, "it would not seem improbable to believe that it is the lady and not the lover that makes the witchery of the garden a wasted thing. i have heard of unwilling maids." "unwilling in directions," she replied with a smile, "and under certain influences. for if there were any to withstand my conviction, i am ready to wager that there never lived a woman before whom all the world of men could pass without making her choice." "and perchance," he said promptly, "if there were any to withstand my conviction, i would wager that there never lived a man before whom the world of women could pass without making his choice,--again and again!" "which declaration," she responded evenly, "publishes thee a married man; the single gallant declares only for one." "o deft reasoning! it establishes thee a roman. what dost thou here, in alexandria where there is no court, no games, no senators, no cæsar--naught but riots and jews?" "jews," she said, scanning a rounded arm to see if its rest on the back of the exedra had left a mark on it, "jews are red-lipped, and eyed like heifers. sometimes brawn and force weary us in rome; wherefore we go into egypt or the east to seek silky and subtle devilishness." agrippa moved along the exedra and looked into her eyes. he saw there that peculiar expression which he had expected to find. it was a set questioning, one that runs the scale from appeal to demand--the asking eye, the sign of continual consciousness of the woman-self and her charms. "why make the effort? only tell us of the east that you want us and the east will come to you." "what? oriental love-philters, simitars, poisoning, silks and mysticism in the shadow of the fora and within sound of the senate-chamber? no, my friend; we must hear the lapping of the nile or the flow of the abana, behold camels and priests, and the far level line of the desert, while we languish on bronze bosoms and breathe musks from oriental lips." "it is not then the jews," he objected. "they are a temperate, a passionless lot, that carry the torah like hair-balances in their hearts to discover if any deed they do weighs according to the law. no, jews are a straight people. thou speakest of the--arab!" she turned her eyes toward him and measured his length, surveyed his slender hands, and glanced at the warm brown of his complexion. "so?" she asked with meaning. "an arab?" he continued to smile at her. "and every jew is thus minded?" she asked, observing later the unmistakable signs of jewish blood in his profile. "unless he is tinctured with the lawlessness of arabia." "ah!" she moved her fan idly and looked up at the sky. "it is then, of a truth, the arab, we seek," she added presently. "the arab that knows no manners but his fathers' manners; who eats, drinks, loves, hates and conquers after his own fashion." "without having seen jerusalem, or rome?" he asked. "rome!" she repeated, looking at him again. "yes, without having seen rome or jerusalem or alexandria." agrippa tilted his head thoughtfully. "then, it is good only for a time--for as long as the surfeit of civilization lasts--which lasts no longer the moment one realizes the arab is not devoted to the bath and that he counts his women among his cattle!" she laughed outright. "i remember thou didst indorse him not a moment since! wherefore the change?" "refinement in all things! to get it into an arab, he has to be modified by alien blood." "a truce! i am in alexandria; her poetic wickedness has not been entirely exhausted. i--meet new, desirable things--daily!" her fan was between them as she spoke and he took the stick of it just above where she held it and was putting it aside when the proconsul, resplendent in a tunic of white and purple, appeared in the colonnade. beside him was cypros in her jewish matron's dress. agrippa put the fan out of the way and made his answer. "forget not that the east, whether arab or alexandrian, is intense--once won. it might harass thee, if thou weariest of it, before it wearies of thee--even to the extreme of pursuing thee to rome." the proconsul and the princess approached. the deep-set eyes of the roman wore a peculiarly satisfied look. "men seek for stray cattle in the fields of sweet grass, look for lost jewels in the wallets of thieves, and missing herods in the company of beautiful women," he observed. "it is good to have an established reputation, whether we be cattle or jewels or herods," agrippa laughed; "for, thou seest, we are disjointed and unsettled, seeing flaccus now enduring a jew, again attending a lady. "again," said the beauty, "we mark the work of circumstances, which led us into difference just now, o thou disputatious." "well said, junia," the proconsul declared; "some ladies would make gallants out of the fiends! know ye all one another?" the proconsul continued. "except my lovely neighbor," agrippa replied. "the lady junia, daughter of euodus, who with her father hath been transplanted here from rome." in the colonnade lydia, the daughter, appeared and beside her a man, by certain of the more obvious signs, of middle-age. but when he drew closer the more obvious gave way to the indisputable testimony of smooth elastic skin, long lashes and strong, white, unworn teeth that the man was not yet thirty. he was a little above medium height, spare, yet well-built except for a slight lift in the shoulders, beardless, colorless, with straight dark hair, bound with a classic fillet. his general lack of tone brought into noticeable prominence the amiability and luster of his fine brown eyes. that he was a jew was apparent no less by dress than by feature. his jewish garments differed only in color and texture from those worn by his fathers in judea. the outer gown was of light green scantly shot with points of gold. the pair walked slowly as if unconscious of the presence of others, and the attitude of the man, bending to look into lydia's face as she walked, was clearly more attentive than ordinary courtesy demanded. "approacheth justin classicus," said flaccus. "in that garment he looks much like a chameleon that has strayed across an attic meadow in spring." "behold, already the witchery of the garden!" agrippa said softly to junia. "this," added the proconsul, introducing the new-comer, "is justin classicus, the latest fashion in philosophers, the most popular jew in alexandria." classicus bowed, glanced at junia and again at agrippa, and made a place for lydia on the exedra, so that he might sit on a taboret at her feet. "what news, good sir," agrippa asked, "among the schools over the world?" "news?" classicus repeated. "nothing. philo is silent; petronius is mersed in affairs in bithynia; rome's gone a-frolicking, scholars and all, to capri." "alas!" said flaccus; "nothing happens now but scandal; even the ancient miracles of divine visitations, phenixes, comets and monsters have ceased." "but you say nothing of religion," said classicus. "yet possibly it follows, now, in order." "after monsters, phenixes and the rest," put in agrippa. "what is it?" flaccus asked. "perchance thou hast heard," classicus responded. "it issues out of judea, which adds to its interest, since we are accustomed to nothing but sobriety from palestine." "what is it?" flaccus insisted. "a new messiah!" "oh," agrippa cried wearily, "a new messiah! how many in the past generation, cypros? ten, twenty, a hundred? alas! classicus, that thou shouldst serve up as new something which every jew hath expected and discovered and rejected for the last three thousand years." "o happy race!" junia exclaimed; "which hath something to which to look forward! but what is a messiah?" "a god," said agrippa. "the anointed king," cypros corrected hastily, "of godly origin that shall restore the jews to dominion over the world!" "_mirabile dictu!_" junia cried. "olympian jove!" flaccus exclaimed, smiting his muscular leg. "what a task, what an ambition, what an achievement! i behold cæsar's dudgeon. go on, classicus; though it be old to thy remarkable race, used to aspiring to the scope of olympus, let us hear, who have never wished to be more than cæsar!" "it is not so much of the messiah," classicus responded, smiling, "as his--school, if it may be so called. one of the followers appeared at the library some time ago, perchance as long as three years ago--an egyptian of the upper classes, much traveled, and told such a remarkable tale of the messiah's birth and death that he instantly lost caste for truthfulness." "alas!" lydia exclaimed in a tone of disappointment. "why will they insist that the messiah must be a miraculous creature, demeanored like the pagan gods and proceeding through the uproar of tumbling satrapies to the high place of supreme necromancer of the universe!" "sweet lydia!" agrippa protested. "roman hard-headedness hath turned thee against our traditions!" "but the egyptian did not picture such a man," classicus said very gently. "he went to the other extreme, so far that his hearers had to contemplate an image of a carpenter's son, elected to a leadership over a horde of slaves and outcasts and visionary aristocrats; who taught a doctrine of submission, poverty and love, and who finally was crucified for blasphemy during a popular uproar." "it hath the recommendation of being different!" lydia declared frankly. "tell me more." "there is no more." "what! is it dead?" she insisted. "dead as all the others? then it is different only in its inception." "no," said agrippa thoughtfully; "it is not dead, but dying hard. the sanhedrim is punishing its followers in jerusalem at present. thou rememberest, cypros; marsyas was charged with the apostasy." "so material as to engage the sanhedrim?" lydia pursued. "we hear," responded classicus, "that jerusalem and even judea are unsafe for them, and numbers have appeared in the city of late--" "among us?" lydia asked. "no; in rhacotis," replied classicus; whereupon flaccus raised an inquiring eye. "is that the sect that the prefect has been warned to observe?" he demanded. "doubtless; it seems that their foremost fault is rebellion against authority," classicus made answer. "so much for their doctrine of submission." "tell us that," lydia urged. "apostasy," agrippa answered for classicus, "flagrant apostasy; for the sanhedrim came out of the hall of judgment to stone an offender, for the first time in seven years. i saw the execution; in fact, in a way i was brought close to the circumstances by a friend of the apostate who was attached to my household." "is he with thee?" flaccus asked pointedly. "no, we left him in ptolemais. but the note of their presence in alexandria must have been sounded early, directly they arrived, for i departed from jerusalem the day following the first movement against the sect, and thence to ptolemais and alexandria with ordinary despatch." "they did not announce themselves," flaccus replied. "vitellius announced them. he wants an essene who is believed to be among them." agrippa raised his head and looked straight at flaccus. he remembered that he had betrayed marsyas' refuge. cypros drew in a breath of alarm. "that was simply done, flaccus," agrippa remarked coolly. the princess laid her hand on the ruddy flesh of the proconsul's arm. "we have been frank with thee, my lord," she said, "and thou art a noble roman--therefore a safe guardian of our unguarded words." the others maintained a wondering silence. flaccus smiled. "vitellius hath bidden me to look for him, adding with certain fervid embellishments that he hath sought everywhere but in egypt and hades. vitellius is no diplomat. whistling finds the lost hound sooner than search." "but thou wilt not find him, noble flaccus," cypros besought in a lowered tone. "yield us thy promise that thou wilt not betray him!" "my promise, lady! indeed, i gave it in my heart a moment since. hear it now. alexandria is subject to thee. let him come and be our ward." "i shall depend on that," agrippa said decidedly. "for i shall despatch a servant for the man, the instant i can so do!" "and yet," cypros insisted, still distressed, "if vitellius requires him at thy hands, how shalt thou avoid giving him up?" flaccus smiled at her with softened eyes. "o gentle lady, the day the young man should arrive, i shall set the prefect on the nazarenes in rhacotis. if he be not found, none without this trustworthy circle shall have cause to believe that i am not in all conscience striving to help a brother proconsul run down a fugitive." "a shrewd strategy," lydia said dryly, "but one rather costly for the nazarenes." "the nazarenes! who wastes tears over them? thine own straight people condemn them, lady." "an exhilarating recreation, indeed," she repeated as if to herself, "for the prefect, the rabble alexandrians and the nazarenes! o seekers of esthetic sport, that will be a rare occasion! yield me thy promise, my lord agrippa, that thou wilt tell us the day the young man arrives!" flaccus' face darkened for a moment, but at that moment the alabarch appeared in the colonnade. "here comes our host," said agrippa. "hast ordered the garlands, lysimachus?" "the feast is prepared," lysimachus replied, and, turning to flaccus, continued: "thou shalt see, now, good sir, how jews feast. in all thine experiences, thou hast never broken bread with a jew." "not so!" flaccus retorted, "for i was present at the lady cypros' wedding-feast!" "ho! flaccus remembering a wedding-feast!" agrippa laughed, as he arose, taking junia's hand. "mars, cherishing a confection!" "perchance," cypros ventured, pleased and coloring, "if mars' confections were more plentiful and the noble flaccus' wedding-feasts less rare, they both might forget the one!" "never!" flaccus declared, "though i were hymen himself!" as they proceeded toward the colonnade, cypros drew closer to him. "thou canst not know what service thou hast done us by that promise," she said. "it is more than the youth's security; it means my husband's success. for in this young man, we have found fortune itself!" the proconsul made no answer, for his gray-brown eyes flickered suddenly as if a candle had been moved close by them. chapter x flaccus works a complexity near sunset the following day the alabarch appeared in the porch of the proconsul's mansion,--an incident which would speedily have spread wildly over the brucheum had not the shrewd lysimachus come in roman dress, unostentatiously and hidden by the dusk. the slave who conducted the visitor to the master's presence was suspicious, but he did not lapse from courtesy. if he had prejudices they had to await a popular uproar for expression, and popular uproars at present against the jews were manifestly in disfavor with the proconsul. flaccus received the alabarch in the great gloom of his atrium. the torches had not been lighted, the cancelli admitted only dusk. the shadowy shape of the proconsul, relaxed in his curule, alone and immovable, thus surrounded by meditative atmosphere, suddenly appealed to the alabarch as out of harmony with the legate's blunt nature. as the jew drew near, he saw rolls and parcels of linen and parchment, petitions and memorials, scattered about on the pavement, as if the roman had let them roll off his table or drop from his hand unconsciously. his elbow rested on the ivory arm of his curule, his cheek on his clenched hand. the undimmed gaze of the jewish magistrate detected lines in the hard face that he had never seen before. but flaccus stirred and drew himself up to attention. "come up, lysimachus," he said. "there is a chair here, for thee." the alabarch advanced and dropped into the seat that flaccus had indicated. "this," he observed, nodding toward the dark torch at the proconsul's side, "would lead me to believe thou art inventing rhymes." "or conspiracies. plots and poetry demand the same exciting dusk. well, has the herod sued?" "not he, but his lady." "his lady! by hecate, the mystery is solved. thus it is that he hath been able to borrow every usurer poor from rome to damascus!" "he wins upon her virtue; but withhold thy interpretation of my words until i show thee what they mean. she is beautiful and virtuous; a herod and married--a conjunction of circumstances in these days so rare as to be out of nature--therefore, phenomenal. so we toss our yellow gold into her lap in recognition of the entertainment she hath afforded--being unusual." "virtuous; that means, faithful to the man she married. no woman is faithful except she loves her love. a just procession in the order of the furies' reign. the warm of heart, unrewarded; the unworthy, anointed and worshiped." "this melancholy twilight hath made thee morbid, avillus. you romans take womankind too seriously." "when womankind or a kind of woman can drain the world's purse, methinks she is a serious matter. what sum does she want?" "three hundred thousand drachmæ." "o midas; give her the touch! let all her possessions be gold! didst advance it to her?" "if thou wilt remember, it was thy command that i consult thee, first." "temperate jew! to remember a consular suggestion, while a lovely woman, and a herod at that, besought thee for the contents of thy purse. oh, thou art an old, old man, lysimachus!" the alabarch laughed and frowned the next moment. "beshrew the jest! men who make light of virtue deserve incontinent wives. and there is this one thing apparent, which should make me serious. the herod is absolutely penniless, and i can not turn that tender woman and her babes out of doors to take the roads of egypt." "rest thee in that small matter. thou and i can spare her sesterces enough to ship her back to judea." lysimachus was silent for a moment. "she would not be satisfied," he said at last. "she wants three talents, though she never had afterward a crust of bread. it seems that they permitted a free-born man to pawn himself for that sum in ptolemais and accepted the money from him!" "shade of herod!" the proconsul exclaimed. "it seems also that the man is in peril of the authorities, having placed himself in jeopardy to save agrippa from herrenius capito, who had run agrippa to earth for a debt he owes to cæsar--" "o, that is the way of it! i know of that man! well, then, perchance it is not so much because she loves her husband as because the debt to the pawned one chafes. i hear that he is young and comely." "forget the slanderous jest, flaccus; i am ashamed of it. what shall i do in this matter?" "lend her three talents." "she would buy the man's freedom, but what then? she would still be here in alexandria as penniless as ever." "the consular suggestion, it seems, only held thee a moment in abeyance," the proconsul said slyly. "she will get the three hundred thousand drachmæ, yet!" "she will not," the alabarch declared, "first, because i have it not; next, because i am not eager to pay a herod's debts." "or, chiefly, because thou shouldst never see it again." the alabarch tapped the pavement with his foot and looked away. the attitude was confession to a belief in the proconsul's convictions. "what sum couldst thou lend by pinching thyself?" flaccus asked presently. "two hundred thousand drachmæ--but not to a herod. i could lose five talents without ruin." "give her five talents, then; give it--do not slander a gift by calling it a loan." "what! toss an alms to a herod? they would throw it in my face!" "jupiter! but they are haughty!" the alabarch made no answer and flaccus looked out at the night dropping over his garden. "why not hold the lady in hostage, here, for five talents?" he asked after a while. the alabarch looked startled; it was roman extremes, a trifle too brutal for him to dress in diplomacy. he demurred. "not brutal, lysimachus," flaccus said earnestly. "herod can not use her well; it will be a respite from her long wandering and poverty. thou canst say to her that the five talents are all thou canst afford. tell her that it will do no more than beach them penniless in italy; that thou hast a crust for agrippa--will she starve him by eating half of it, herself?" flaccus laughed at his own words, but perplexity came into the alabarch's face. "but why?" he asked. "why? is it not plain to you? keep her so that agrippa will in honor have to redeem her if ever he become possessed of five talents!" now the alabarch laughed. "i am not so sure. is it native in a herod to love his wife so well? it would be a bad mortgage for me to foreclose--one cast-off female whose chief uses are for tears!" "no, by venus! she is too comely to play dido. but try my plan, alexander. it is well worth the experiment." the alabarch arose and stepped down from the rostrum. "it--it is--" he hesitated. "but then, i should have them on my hands, under any circumstances." he took a few more steps, and paused for thought. "well enough," he said finally, "we shall see." with a motion of farewell to the proconsul, he passed out and disappeared. flaccus dropped back into his curule, and lapsed again into gloomy meditation. the night fell and obscured him. he seemed to be waiting, but not with marked impatience. again the atriensis bowed before him. "a lady who says she was summoned," he said. "let her enter. and bid the lampadary light the torch, yonder, not here--and only one." the atriensis disappeared, and presently a slave with a burning reed set fire to the wick in one of the brass bowls by the arch into the vestibule, and junia appeared. "hither, and sit beside me, junia," flaccus called to her. he drew the chair closer, which the alabarch had occupied, and junia, dropping off her mantle and vitta, sat down in it. "what a despot one's living is!" she exclaimed. "but for the fact i owe my meat and wine to thy favor, thou shouldst have come to me, to-night, not i to thee!" "i came often enough at thy beck, junia! it were time i was visited!" "thou ill-timed tyrant! i am expected at a feast to-night, and my young gallant doubtless waits and wonders, at my house." "let him wait! i was his predecessor, and his better. methinks thou hast reduced thy standard of lovers of late." "no longer the man but the substance," she answered. "in the old days it was muscle and front; now it is purse and position." "the first was love; the second calculation. why wilt thou marry this obscure young alexandrian--whoever he be?" "to be assured of a living--to cast off the hand thou hast had upon me, thus long." he leaned nearer that he might look into her face. "so!" he exclaimed. "does it chafe, in truth?" she laughed. "no," she said. "why should i prefer the provision of one man above another's? young obscurity's authority over me, his wife, would be no less tyrannical than flaccus'--my one-time dear." flaccus took her hand and run his palm over her small knuckles. "_eheu!_" he said. "i shall not be happy to see thee wedded--" "nor shall i; like the fabulous maiden who weeps on the eve of her marriage, i shall in good earnest heave a sigh over the days of my freedom. alas! the mind grows old young, that learns the fullness of life early. there are as many ashes on my heart as there are in this bulging temple of thine, avillus." "dost thou love this--boy? beshrew him, let him have no name!" "how? dost thou love the usurer that lends thee money, flaccus?" "what dost thou love, at all?" he asked. "sundry old memories; perchance the image of a consul, less portly, less purple, less stiff--and less imposing!" "pluto! am i like that?" he demanded. "to one that was thy dear in younger days. to one who does not remember the sprightlier man, thou couldst be less charming." "younger? now, how much younger? six years at most! thou hast not changed in that time; why should i?" "o avillus; between the stage of the sun at noon and the previous hour, there is no appreciable change. but mark the difference an hour makes at sunset. but why this inquisition? has eros pierced thee in a new spot?" "pierced me twenty years ago and his arrow sticketh yet in the wound it made!" "what! spitted on an arrow during all those days thou didst love me?" "but eros has arrows and arrows, of many kinds, and two diverse barbs may with all consistency find lodgment at once in a heart. but of myself we may speak later; at present, i am moved to labor with thee for thine own welfare. why wilt thou marry this boy, for his purse, when there are men in pain for thy favor?" she studied him a moment. "i can not take thee back, flaccus; love's ashes can not be refired though the breath of eros himself blew upon them." "impetuous conclusion; hast thou forgotten the twenty-year-old wound which i confessed just now? i am this moment only an arbiter for my better--my betters--" "i shall keep the twenty-year-old barb in mind," she said. "methinks it is that which pricks thee into activity for me." "a wiser surmise than the first. but curb thy frivolous spirit; i am weighted with the business of the great. what dost thou here, o divinity, away from rome and the arms of cæsar?" "dost thou forget that we were invited away, because of my father's unfortunate preference of sejanus, during the days of sejanus' greatness?" "o venus, can not the ban be lifted? behold,"--stretching out his muscular arm, "flaccus is a strong man." "even then, is tiberius thy better in comeliness? perchance he would not please me." "i speak, now, to thy sordid self; but if thy maiden love of grace still lives in thee, there shall another serve thee. have i not said i indorse two?" "two!" "two. of cæsar first. his part in the bargain is really the smaller thing. thou, who couldst dint flaccus' heart in flaccus' stonier days, who upset caligula's domestic peace, put gray hairs in macro's forelock--all these in their doughty prime, methinks my poor doting ancient in capri will fall like a city with a thousand breaches in its wall." "oh, doubtless," she admitted; "but what of myself? if thine impurpled countenance--for all it is as firm as cocoanut flesh--if thine impurpled countenance does not suit my epicurean tastes, how shall i content myself with the toothless love-making of a mumbling boeotian?" "thou canst comfort thyself with a comely bankrupt on the gold of the toothless one." "it is complicated; too much duplication and detail," she objected. "thou hast done it before," he declared. "thou art right expert." she laughed and leaned back in her chair. "name me the comely one," she commanded. "agrippa." there was silence, in which she lifted her lowered eyes very slowly and faced him. amusement made small lines about her eyes, and in her face was worldly wisdom mingled with a sort of friendliness. "and now," she said in a quiet tone, "for the twenty-year-old wound. is it the lady herod?" his gaze dropped; emotion put out the half-humor which had enlivened his face. presently he scowled. "i have twitched the barb," she opined; "the wound is sore." "sore!" he brought out between clenched teeth. "sore! i tell thee, that though it is twenty years since i stood and saw her bound to him by the flamens, i have not ceased day or night to suffer!" junia looked at him with frank amazement on her face; the proconsul was declaring, with passion, a thing which she could not believe possible. such love as she knew, by the carefulest tendance, would have burnt out and resolved into cold ashes in half that time. that it should endure years, suffer discouragement, bridge distances and surmount obstacles, all uncherished and unrequited, was fiction, pure and simple. yet to reconcile this conviction with the honest suffering of the bluff man at her side was a task she could not attempt. "flaccus, i never pained thee so," she murmured. "perchance the jewess dropped madness from a philter in thy wine. and for simple cruelty, too, for she is fond of her graceful arab." the proconsul raised his head and looked at her with such speechless ferocity, that she shrank away from him, remembering former experiences. but he dropped his head into his hands and did nothing. she watched him for a moment then ventured discreetly: "is it thy wish to win him from her, or her from him?" "both!" he answered. "the one accomplished, the other follows!" with a sudden accession of emotion, he laid his short, powerful fingers about her smooth wrist and bent over her. "help me, junia!" he besought. "weigh what i offer against the portion of any alexandrian. by the lips of lysimachus, the richest man in the city, i know how little even he may waste--two hundred thousand drachmæ--the cost of a single necklace cæsar might put about thy throat. i never failed tiberius; his esteem of me is great. i have only to ask and the decree of banishment, or the sentence against thy father, shall be lifted. thou shalt return in honor to rome; thy father shall be one of cæsar's ministers, and thou shalt take thy place among the first of the patricians. and tiberius lays no bond of fidelity upon his ladies. i saw thee, last night! i saw thee run thine eyes along the herod's sleek length--curse him, it was that which undid me! i saw thy fancy incline toward him. it will be a new and pleasant game for thee, junia--a game in which thou art skilled--but it is my life--my very life to me!" she frowned at the jewels on her fingers. there was no reason why she should not lend herself to flaccus' schemes when her enlistment in his cause assured to her the realization of the highest ambitions of her kind. but enough of the creature impulse toward perversity, admitting that his gain would be as great as hers, restrained her. she was uncomfortable, uncertain, peevish. meanwhile, the proconsul's gray-brown eyes, large, intense, demanded of her. "wait!" she fretted at last. "thou art hasty! and perchance thou dost only make place for this mysterious fugitive for whom she was so solicitous last night!" he remembered his own jest with the alabarch, and added thereto the impatient surmise of this penetrative woman. could such a thing be possible? he sprang to his feet, all the intensity of his emotion concentrated in a spasm of fury and menace. "let him come!" he said between his teeth. "let him come!" she worked her hand loose from him. "wait," she repeated. "thou hast built gigantically on no foundation. let something happen. and if i am pleased to follow thy plans, i may; but be assured if i am not, i will not. my debt to thee is less than thy demands, avillus." she arose and put on her mantle, while he stood watching her every movement. "i shall wait," he said presently, "only a little time." she made a motion of impatience and withdrew from the atrium. he stood motionless for a long time; then he called his atriensis. "send hither the chief apparitor," he said. the captain of the proconsul's personal guard appeared and saluted. flaccus, in the meantime, had searched through the documents on the floor and by the dim light identified one. "take this," he said, handing the apparitor the parchment, "and make search for the man herein described. seek him in ptolemais, wherever a nazarene warren hides, in jerusalem, in alexandria--meet every incoming ship, spend the half of my fortune, wear out my army--but find him, or lose thy life!" the chief apparitor looked unflinching into the proconsul's gray-brown eyes. "i hear," he said. the proconsul waved his hand and the soldier withdrew. chapter xi the house of defense meanwhile marsyas lay on his straw pallet at the house of peter, the usurer, in ptolemais, night after night and made calculation. by fair winds, agrippa should reach alexandria in so many days. allowing time to begin and complete the negotiations for a loan, so many more days should elapse. then the same number with a few allowed for foul weather would be required to return to ptolemais. about such a day, so many weeks hence, he told himself he should be ransomed. six weeks is a long time for a free man to be enslaved. he sighed and turned again on his pallet and trusted in the god who does not forget prayers. it was a strange, sordid biding of time for marsyas. the man he served was the first of the kind he had ever known. the ascetic refinement of the white old essene, the simple purity of stephen, the polished rigor of the pharisee saul, the naïve sophistication of the romanized herod had constituted his social horizon, and he had come to believe that the world's manner was either cultured or simple. but he went into the usurer's counting-room to meet the borrowing world, to be amazed and shocked and finally to fortify himself to control it. it was not to change his nature; it was to develop latent powers in him that were the fruit of long generations of judaism. at night his fingers were soiled by contact with the coins, the counting-room had become noisome with the day's heat and the unhappy humanity that had come and gone through the busy hours. but he summed up, not what he had sacrificed in soul-sweetness and optimism, for that was a loss he did not realize, but his triumphs in achieving whatever he had been bidden to do, in his mastery of men and things and in the thoroughness of his workmanship. however loudly his mind declared that he was out of place, he felt no great repugnance to his duty. after the newness of his experience wore off, as it did in a very short time, the days began to go with wearing deliberation, as all days go that are counted impatiently. his sorrow and his wrongs were his only companions; as his anxiety for his liberty and agrippa's success increased, his healthy indifference to his unwholesome atmosphere began to decline rapidly, his resentment against his oppression to grow. the six weeks ebbed out and passed. his anxiety flowed into his bitterness and his bitterness into his anxiety until they were one. troubled about his liberty, he clenched his teeth and thought on saul; thinking of his impotent position against the powerful pharisee, he watched the harbor from the counting-room and trembled whenever a sail crossed it. inactivity became eventually unbearable, for an unemployed moment was a miserable moment. he could not devise a way to liberty, nor further aid his one ally into power, so he turned to his own resources against saul. continuing cautiously to visit the proseuchæ by night, he learned something, which he heard casually at the time, but which eventually developed into a matter of importance. he heard that the nazarenes were flying from jerusalem in great numbers, scattering in bodies from damascus to alexandria, and from jerusalem to rome. the rabbis of ptolemais were concerned to discover that there was a community hiding in the city, because they feared the evils of a persecution, established in ptolemais, as much as the influence of the apostasy upon the faithful. when marsyas admitted casually to himself, after he had heard the tidings, that the apostasy must have numbers of followers, he was carried in his thinking to the realization that numbers meant strength and strength meant resistance. why, then, should not these people turn on the pharisee? here, in a twinkling, he believed that he had discovered abettors, allies whom he could instantly enlist in his own cause. but before he could deduce resolution from this electrifying admission, events began to mark his days. late one afternoon, after the time for his ransoming was out, a man approached the opening in the grating. the shadows in the badly-lighted chamber made client and steward and all the appointments in the dingy counting-room imperfect shapes to the eye. the new-comer leaned down to the opening and peered at marsyas as he pushed a fibula of gold through the opening. "i am in need," the man said. "canst thou not give me the value of this in money?" the voice was resonant and strangely familiar to marsyas. in the gloom the great lifted shoulders of the man, bending from his height, brought back on a sudden the chamber in the college at jerusalem. the young essene came closer to the grating and looked at the applicant. there was a mutual start of recognition; in marsyas perhaps the chill that a fugitive feels who finds himself detected. the man was the rabbi eleazar. "thou! here, with them?" the rabbi exclaimed in a suppressed whisper. "i am here, rabbi," marsyas replied, "but alone." eleazar looked at him, but the examination under the difficulty of the gloom was not satisfactory; besides, there was the stir of others who had come in behind him and were able to listen. marsyas swept the fibula into one of the coin-baskets and passed a handful of silver to the rabbi. "meet me without at the end of the first watch to-night," the rabbi added, as he thanked marsyas. "do not fear me, for i am also a victim of thine enemy." marsyas saluted him, and the rabbi disappeared. a figure in armor stepped up to the place where eleazar had stood. he was helmeted and greaved and had a line of purple about the hem of his short tunic. he applied for a loan and yielded as indorsement the favor of cæsar and the family name of aulus. marsyas withdrew hastily into the overhanging shadow of the grating, received the officer's note, counted out the gold and drew in a free breath when another stepped into his place. it was vitellius' legionary. "am i run to earth?" marsyas asked himself. at the end of the first watch that night he prepared to follow eleazar's suggestion, if only to discover what to expect. that he was not filled with confidence nor resigned to suffer what might befall him was evident by his slipping a knife into his belt when he made himself ready. he went out into the unlighted street and looked about him for eleazar. the tall figure of the rabbi emerged from the darkness a moment after marsyas appeared and approached the young man. "have no fear," the rabbi said. "we are common victims of the same unjust suspicion; let us not be suspicious of each other." "thy words are fair, rabbi, but i do not know thee. whom i most trusted hath failed me of late; it must follow then that i am not sure of strangers. tell me first thy business with me." "i am eleazar, the rabbi, who sat with saul in the college that day when joel, the levite, came with news of stephen of galilee." "i know that; also that thou knowest that saul oppresses me. thou art a rabbi and zealous for the law. art thou sent for me on saul's mission?" "no, brother." "or the proconsul's?" "i know nothing of the proconsul; i am here, driven from jerusalem by saul who charged me with apostasy because i would not aid him in his oppression." for a moment marsyas was dumb with amazement. "he is mad!" he cried when speech came to him. "is it madness when he persecutes others, but villainy when he oppresses thee?" eleazar demanded. "i pray thy pardon," marsyas said quickly, "if i seem to miscall his work. it might follow in reason that he should accuse me, but thou--thou a rabbi, accepted before the law and clean-skirted before all judea--that he should accuse thee of apostasy seems to be the work of no sane man." "but it is! he layeth plans keen as joshua's who warred under god's banner, and he striketh with the strength of an army. unless he is stayed he will devastate to the end!" marsyas came close and laid a hand on the rabbi's shoulder. "what of stephen?" he asked with stiffened lips. "how did it come to pass?" for a moment there was silence, and then the rabbi drew up and shook himself. "it will not help thee, young brother," he said, with an impatience which was only fortification against feeling. "it is ill enough to take a blasphemer and deliver him up to punishment; ask no more, for it wrenches me to think of it." marsyas stood frozen; he did not want to hear more, after the rabbi had spoken, but when the reviving current of life stirred in his veins, it was turned to a fever for vengeance. now! not to wait for safety, or for circumstances or for men or things. it seemed that he should not eat or sleep till his work was done. eleazar, seeking to turn the current of the young man's thoughts, which he believed, being unable to see his face, must be sorrowfully retrospective, asked presently: "art thou here with--them?" "with whom?" "the nazarenes." marsyas seized the rabbi's shoulder with a fresh grasp. "where are they?" he demanded. "dost thou--in truth, dost thou not know?" he demanded. "accused though i am, i am a good jew, rabbi. never until now have i wished to know where they house themselves. but even were it the powers of darkness which alone could help me, now, i should not hesitate! where are these apostates?" "here, in ptolemais. what wilt thou have of them, marsyas?" "were not heathen and idolaters instruments for the lord's work? have not even the beasts of the fields served his ends?" "what dost thou meditate?" "saul's undoing!" eleazar heard him thoughtfully and answered after a silence. "so be it, then; if thou choosest that spirit, it must serve. thou hast a dead friend to avenge and i, the guiltless oppressed to justify. so the one end, the prevention of saul's work, be attained, what matter if the spirit be mine or thine!" "well enough; the means, then! where are these nazarenes?" "they--they meet on the water-front, nightly, since the oppression hath been instituted against them," eleazar answered reluctantly, as if he doubted the propriety of betraying a knowledge of the apostates' habits. "nightly!" marsyas repeated. "so then to-night! where is the place? we will go there!" eleazar stood undecided and debated with himself. but the pressure of the young man's impelling firmness assumed material force against him and he yielded doubtfully. "come, then," he said, and his hesitation melted in the face of the other's decision. marsyas put himself at the rabbi's side and together they tramped through the dark streets toward the poorer districts of ptolemais, along the harbor. it was poor indeed; the houses were the smallest in the city, low, square boxes of sun-dried earth little higher than a man's head and mere stalls for space and comfort. each, however, had a numerous tenantry, and wherever doors were opened the two men saw within, now jews, now greeks or romans. although uproar and disorder common in the lower walks of the city went on in the environments, the particular passage marsyas and the rabbi walked was quiet though not deserted. but it was a veritable black well, that maintained a swift slope for many rods and indicated the proximity to the water. "how found you them, in this hole?" marsyas asked, astonished, in spite of his intent thoughts, at the black labyrinth. "i, too, was in hiding for my life's sake," eleazar answered. the brooding cornices of the houses, visible against the strip of starry sky, rounded suddenly and closed in upon the passage. marsyas saw that they were nearing a blind end, when a door opened in the cul-de-sac, disclosing several other men preceding marsyas and the rabbi. "haste!" eleazar whispered, and, seizing marsyas' hand, ran so that they reached the lighted doorway before it closed again. they entered with the others, and the bolts were shot behind them. chapter xii scattering the flock they were in a single large chamber, rough, barren and barn-like. the gray drapery of cob-webs was sown with chaff; there was the fresh smell of grain with the mustiness of dust contending for prominence; the floor was dry packed earth that had not tasted rain for a century. high above the few resin torches burning on the walls, huge cedar beams traversed the ceiling which was tight, that no moisture nor the consuming rays of the sun should enter. it was an abandoned grain house, builded just without the reach of the highest storm-wave on the water-front. there were two or three benches, but not seating capacity for the number gathered there. so the youths, women and children sat on the earth along the walls and left the benches to the older men of the assembly. marsyas glanced at the gathering. he saw there not one, but many races, however jewish in predominance. in most of the number he found a common expression, which made him think. it was a certain delineation of fortitude, a brave patience that does not forswear persistence, however seriously the heart fears. in others, there were curiosity and expectation; in still others, apprehension and suspicion. these, he noted, seemed not to wear that look of uplift; intuitively, he knew them to be investigators, more or less convinced, at the moment. others, he saw, came with bundles of belongings as if prepared for a journey. eleazar selected a place by the door and signing to marsyas that he would sit and await the young essene's will, dropped down on the packed earth, and, drawing up his powerful limbs, clasped his arms around them. the torch above his head threw the shadow of his projecting kerchief over his face and hid his features. there was space between him and the next sitter, a young woman wearing the dress of a jewish matron. she glanced uneasily at the huge stranger and drew closer to a man of her own age, on the other side. marsyas, seized with a new interest, sat down between the rabbi and the woman. at the farther end of the building a man arose. he had a pilgrim's scrip at his side; he put away a staff as he gained his feet, and the heightened color of the brown on his cheek-bones and his nose showed that he had but recently come from a long journey. he raised his arms over the assembly, and each of those gathered there bowed his head and clasped his hands. "o patient bearer of the cross," he prayed, "let us not faint thus soon--we who are driven on! let thy footsteps be illumined that we may go thy way, even though they lead unto calvary! teach us thy submission, quicken us with thy love, clothe us with thy charity, that they who oppress us may see that submission is stronger than rebellion, that love is more enduring than hate, that charity is broad enough for our enemies. and if it be thy will that we should love the spoiler of thy church and the destroyer of thy saints, teach us then to love that enemy!" this of a surety was not what marsyas had expected to hear. undoubtedly the praying man spoke of saul. the prayer continued. "lo, thou hast tarried thus long away from us, and evil already gathereth thick about thy people. in those days, when we asked and were answered, voice unto voice, we did not grope. now, o lord, we ask and there answers but the speech of faith left in us, and that in grievous hours--doth not bid the cup to pass from us!" marsyas' chin sank on his breast; somehow the faltering sentences fell on some keenly sensitive spot in his soul, for in spirit he winced, and listened intently, in spite of himself. "yet, judge us not as wavering, o lord; we but miss thee from our side, who loved thee, o christ!" the sentence ceased suddenly at the edge of a break in the voice. it seemed that human sorrow had broken in on an inspiration, and the sound of a sob arose here and there from the bowed circle of nazarenes. marsyas suddenly saw the dark trampled space without hanaleel, the falling night, the still figure of stephen stretched on the sand, the three humble mourners who of all jerusalem were not afraid to sorrow for him, and the young essene choked back a cry to the praying man, "i know thy pain, brother!" for that instant bond of sorrow it did not matter that, according to marsyas' lights, the praying man blasphemed and besought another than the one lord god as divinity. the nazarene had loved a friend and lost him from his side; the voice had ceased and, in place of the warm content, only agony and emptiness abode in the heart. "show us thy will; let us see and we shall follow; above all things quicken our ears that thy loved voice may still be sweet in them across the boundaries of death and through the darkness which embraceth our heads. lo, thou art with us alway even unto the end, we believe, we believe!" there was too much human suffering, self-examination and beseeching in the prayer for it to help any who heard it. it was not like stephen's prayers, which had seized upon marsyas' spirit because of their unshaken confidence and beatification, and had terrified him, as assaults upon his steadfastness. in those moments, he had been afraid of the nazarene heresy; now, he was stirred to pity for the heretics. the sensation added to his resolution against saul. another voice roused him, by reason of its difference from that of the first speaker. it was not loud, but it carried and penetrated every dusty corner of the great space, with the strength and evenness of a sounded horn. the temper as well as the quality was different; it was triumphant, eager, glad. "it is the hour of fulfilment, beloved; the accomplishment of the prophecy, for by persecution shall we who are witnesses to the truth be scattered into all the world that the gospel may come unto every creature. the flesh in us which crieth out and feareth death shall be the instrument whereby fleeing to save ourselves we shall go quickened into distant lands and testify. wherefore let not any soul lament this day nor denounce the circumstance which sendeth him into strange places and unto the gentile. ye were not charged to save your flesh but to save your souls. and whosoever saveth his soul hath christ in his bosom and christ on his tongue; wherefore the redeemer is not dead and buried, nor even passed from among you, but living and preaching numerously, by many tongues. doubt not ye shall have your gethsemane and your calvary, yet likewise ye shall arise from the dead and enter into paradise. the oppressor shall persecute, the rod hang over you, the cross be set up, but though ye go forth unweaponed ye shall level walls and throw down tyrants by the power of love; ye shall conduct peace and mercy through the flights ye make from oppression, and life everlasting shall begin where your hour is accomplished and ye die. "if there be any among you who are timid in flesh that say in their souls, 'let us find a secure place and live secretly and in godliness away from the abominations of the wicked,' verily i say unto such, if the world were precious enough unto the son of god that he suffered death to save it, it is not too evil for the habitation of them who were in sin and ransomed by his sacrifice. "if there be those among you given to wrath and vengeance who shall say, 'let us fall upon the oppressor and put him to death,' verily i say unto such if the son of god, who was despised and rejected of men, who raised the dead and cleansed lepers, directed not his powers to punishment and havoc, how shall ye, who are but lately lifted out of sin and damnation? "ye are ministers of peace and love and humility. go forth and testify to these things in his name, and i who stand before you, elected of him whom ye follow to speak his word, i say unto you that if ye testify faithfully, no persecutor shall triumph over you, no power shall overthrow you, no evil shall prevail against your souls!" this was not the spirit marsyas would select to aid him in his punishment of saul; it was an alien doctrine opposed to nature; but he did not doubt the preacher's sincerity. his utterances were not strange to the ears that had listened with such fear to stephen. but it seemed that one in the assembly was not satisfied. "yet the saints perish by the persecutor," the man spoke. "behold stephen is martyred already in jesus' name." marsyas' eyes sought out the speaker; he was one of the unconvinced who sat apart and had become perplexed. "o my brother, when was it said unto thee by the teachers of christ that death is the end? i saw christ on the cross; on the third day i saw him living in the council of the apostles. the powers of evil pursued him only to the tomb; there began the dominion of god, and he ascended unto heaven and to eternal life. believest thou this? thy face sayeth me 'yea'; is it not written that they who believe on him shall share each and all of his blessings? wherefore, though stephen died, he liveth triumphant over his enemies; so shall ye, who are faithful unto the end." "but--but," the man objected, troubled, "is the church to perish, thus, one by one? if we die in this generation, who shall gather the harvest of the lord?" "'whoso would save his life shall lose it,' said the master. is it part of faith to fear that evil will triumph? wilt thou hold off life eternal that thou mayest bide a little longer in such insecurity as this life? and i tell thee that the fear of the adversary is awakened, and the strength of his forces is aroused. we measure by his rage against the elect his fear of christ prevailing. no man leadeth forth an army with banners against that which is weak and which he fears not. jesus, on whom thou believest, said, 'i have overcome the world.' know then that the church can not perish; that the persecutor rageth futilely; that the oppressor fighteth against the lord. doubt no longer, lest thy doubt become a fear that an enemy shall overthrow god!" the young man who sat by the woman at marsyas' side spoke next. "i am submissive, rabbi; yet, how far shall we fly? i am the bridegroom of cana at whose marriage the lamb was. when he changed water into wine he turned my heart into wondering, and from wondering into belief. but the sentence of wandering hath driven me out of cana, out of galilee, out of judea into syria. how far shall we flee, rabbi?" "we, too, are driven," many broke in at once. "few here are citizens of ptolemais; we have left our homes and have fled far. how long must we go on?" "as far as god's creatures fare; as far as the word hath not penetrated," was the answer. the faces of many fell, tears stood in the eyes of others, and still others murmured wearily. the sun-browned pilgrim who had prayed and who had leaned with a shoulder and his head against the wall, while the teacher spoke, raised himself. "my heart goeth out in pity for you," he said sorrowfully. "behind you the consuming fire, before you the overwhelming sea. i am newly come from jerusalem; i know what awaits you if ye fly not. even the gentile can not be worse than he who breathes out threatenings and slaughter against you, in the name of the law. fare forth; the world can not be worse; it may be kindlier." marsyas observed this man; in him was more promising material for his work than in the preacher. but the preacher looked over the congregation, by this time bowed and filled with distress. "it is your gethsemane," he said, turning the pilgrim's declaration into comfort, "but he sleepeth not while ye pray." marsyas looked over the congregation and saw here and there strong faces and bold, to whom the ordinance of submission must have been a bitter ordinance. he arose. "i behold that this is a council, in which men may speak," he said. "i take unto myself the privilege, as one akin to you in suffering if not in faith." his voice commanded by its essenic calmness. every eye turned toward him. they saw the habiliments of a slave covering the stature and dignity of a doctor of laws. the preacher looked interested, and the congregation stirred toward the young man. "by the words of your teacher," he continued, "i see that ye are summoned here to be banished. i see your reluctance; i know your sorrow, for i, too, have been driven on, even by your enemy." "who art thou, young friend?" the preacher asked. "i am an essene." "an essene!" many repeated, stirred into wonder at knowledge of the new apostleship. "as was john the baptist!" one declared. "nay, then;" a voice rose out of the comment, "thou shalt be kin to us in faith so thou acceptest jesus of nazareth." "let us lay aside the discussion of doctrine, in which we can not agree," the young man went on, "and unite in our cause against saul of tarsus." the kindly eyes of the preacher became paternal as he gazed at the hardness growing in the young man's face. "our cause," he said gently, "is not saul of tarsus, but jesus christ." "are ye sincere in your boast that ye will not defend yourselves?" marsyas demanded. "what need, young brother? god defends us." "well enough; but what of the persecutor?" "god will overtake him." "when? when he hath desolated israel, stained the holy judgment hall with tortured perjury, slandered the jews before the world as slayers of the innocent? your talk is all of the life hereafter; i, too, expect to live again; yet i am here to come and go at god's will, not saul's! even ye, in all your infatuation, will not call saul's work god's work! i will not be driven and desolated by abaddon!" he did not wait for the preacher, who seemed prepared to speak. "i was the friend of stephen, of whom ye spoke with love to-night. saul consented unto his death in spite of my prayers for him, and before i could save him. when i rebuked saul for his bloody zeal he denounced me as an apostate and set the shoterim upon me so that i am obliged to flee for my life. for mine own wrongs i do not care, but the blood of stephen cries out to me, the spectacle of his death rises to me in my dreams, and the infamy of it fills my hours with anguish. ye say he was one of your saints, a martyr in the name of your prophet, a teacher and a power in your church. ye claim that ye loved him. yet ye make timid preparation to flee before the oppressor who brought him low, and lift no hand to avenge his death! are ye men? have ye loves and hearts? do ye miss him--" the pilgrim pressed his palms together and looked at the young man with passionate grief in his eyes. marsyas turned his words to him. "was ever his touch laid upon you, warm with life and tender with good will? did ever his eyes bless you with their light? can ye take it idly that his hands grasp the dust and the tomb hath hidden his smile?" the pilgrim covered his face with his hands. "these be things that philosophy can not return to me!" marsyas drove on. "i can not pray stephen back to my side; i can not hope till his voice returns to my ear; i can not flee till i find him! and by the holy and the pure who have gone down into the grave before him, i know that ye can not! is it no matter to you that his memory is held in scorn? are ye not stabbed with doubts that he died in vain--even ye who believe thus firmly that he was right? and i, being a jew and an upholder of the law, can i be content, knowing he was cut off in heresy?" the congregation began to move as he went on; men rose from sitting to their knees, as if prepared to spring to their feet. the preacher circled the room with a glance, but the eyes of the people were upon the young man. "your prophet and my stephen! and ye fly! there are certain of you that are strong men, and stephen was as delicate as a child. there is blood and temper and strength and numbers of you, but stephen went forth alone--and died! where were ye? what of yourselves, now? are ye afraid of the weakling pharisee?" there was a low murmur and men sprang to their feet, with flashing eyes and clenched hands. the pilgrim flung up his head and drew in his breath till it hissed over his bared teeth. eleazar stood up by the young essene and gazed straight at the preacher, as if holding himself in check until the leader declared himself. but the preacher put up his hands and hurried into the center of the building. "peace, children!" he said kindly but firmly. his hands lifted higher as the stature of his authority seemed to tower over the people. in the sudden silence those that had stood up sank down again, the pilgrim lowered his head and only marsyas and the rabbi at his side seemed to resist the quieting influence of the pastor. the extended palms dropped and the nazarene looked at the young essene. "vengeance is mine and i will repay, saith the lord. eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth is of the old law and is passed away!" "there, o strange pastor of a human flock, our ways part. i am a jew, thou a nazarene--our laws differ. yet if, as ye preach, the god of moses is also the god of your prophet, ye are delivered sentences and punishments for evil-doing. wherefore, if ye evade them, ye evade a divine command!" "we do not punish; we correct. punishment is god's portion." "are ye not instruments?" the young man persisted. the preacher did not answer at once; his eyes searched marsyas' face for some expression by which he might select his line of argument. "bethink thee, young brother," he said finally. "how would stephen answer thee in this?" marsyas' demanding eyes wavered and fell; his lips parted and closed again; he frowned. "whom then wouldst thou please in this vengeance? not stephen! then wilt thou comfort thyself with bloody work, while the tomb stands between thee and stephen's restraining hands?" marsyas threw up his head defiantly, shaking off the influence of the argument. "do ye in all truth follow the doctrine that bids you suffer without requital?" he demanded, even while feeling that his logic was impotent. "god directs all things; if it be his will that we shall suffer or escape, god's will be done!" "it is cowardly!" marsyas declared with flashing eyes. the preacher came closer. "i believe that thou art determined and sincere. suppose saul fell into thy hands, as an evil-doer, and the law was ready for his blood, and god bade thee withhold thy hand. would it be easy?" "no, by my soul!" "look then at me and answer. is it easy for me, who hath suffered exactly thy sorrows, to stand still and wait on god?" marsyas looked at the preacher. he was tall, spare and old, his hair and his beard were so white that they shone in the torch-light, and his face was so thin and colorless that he seemed already to have put off the flesh. but his eyes glowed with fire and youth. here of a surety was no weakness to call into account. "no," he answered again. "then, o my son, which of us is truly subject to the lord?" "ye crucify yourselves to an unnatural doctrine! it is not human to bow to it!" "when thou canst do as we strive to do, my son, thou shall know that it is divine." marsyas looked at eleazar, and the rabbi, who had his eyes fastened on the preacher, spoke for the first time. "that is sweet humility, while ye are oppressed," he said, in a voice almost prophetic. "but will ye remember it, when ye come into power?" power! had any of that congregation a hope for power? the word startled them. they looked at the rabbi's garments, clothing a huge frame, the strength of the law typified, and wondered at his words. even the preacher had no ready answer. the intimation of the nazarenes in power on the lips of an expounder of the law was not conducive to instant comment. "so ye were in the jews' place, what would ye do?" he asked again. marsyas looked at the rabbi in surprise, but meanwhile the preacher answered. "christ's doctrine suffereth no change for rank or power." "watch; forget it not!" eleazar turned to marsyas. "i have seen, my brother," he said. "this is not the method. let us wait; our time will come." contented to go, marsyas turned with the rabbi and together they passed through the gathering to the door. but before they went out, marsyas spoke again to the silent congregation. "rest ye," he said, "we are not informers." they went forth. chapter xiii a trust fulfilled marsyas came forth moodily convinced by eleazar's words. no; it was not the method. revenge would have to come through another medium than the nazarenes. stephen had told him before that the privilege of taking vengeance had been removed from the followers of jesus of nazareth. at that time marsyas had not believed it of the whole sect; but now he was not too much irritated to be convinced. "is there any doctrine too mad to get it followers?" he said. "o brother," eleazar said, with his chin on his breast, "it is a period of change. the world wearies of its manner from time to time. surfeit of good is not less common than surfeit of evil, but it is deadlier. men tire of their gods as they do of their women, and thou, being an eremite and unfamiliar, may not know that death is much more desirable than enforced toleration of satiety." marsyas heard; satiety was only a word to him and the rabbi's earnestness carried no conviction for him. "it is the time for change; rest under old usages is no longer possible. but israel hath endured a long, long time in one habit." "give me thy meaning, rabbi." "thou and i are good jews, marsyas, yet i can not say that of a surety of any other man in judea. i have come from jerusalem, david's city, the rock of israel, but the hosts of schism possess it from the ophlas to the uttermost limits of bezetha!" "rabbi!" "i have seen; i have seen. saul hath set for himself a task of emptying the sea. in jerusalem they come singing to torture and death, but armies of them go fleeing into the rest of judea and all the world. and, hear me, thou true son of israel, the pastor of the apostates we heard this night declared at least one truth. the pharisee hath diffused an influence; he hath scattered a pestilence." because it was a new charge against saul, marsyas accepted it. "is there no help against him?" he exclaimed. "marsyas, there stirreth a dread fear in me that he is the instrument of the time. if not he, then another would have been called by the spirit of change--" "there is no such extenuation in me!" marsyas broke in. "might promises no allegiance to its ministers," the rabbi replied. marsyas recalled his history for evidence to corroborate this hope that saul's calamitous work might recoil upon him. from prometheus to augustus, the declaration was sustained. he lost sight of the rabbi's actual concern. saul covered his horizon; he could not know that eleazar looked upon the pharisee as only a detail in an immense stretch of grave possibilities. the young man made no reply. a hope had been snatched from him that night before his sense could grasp its reality, but the disappointment had not weakened his intent. his hope, for the moment centered upon the nazarenes, turned again upon agrippa. he did not permit himself to speculate on the prince's possible failure. at an intersecting street they parted, without further plan than that they should meet again. but the next morning when marsyas came with little spirit into the sunless counting-room, his first visitor was agrippa's lugubrious old courier, silas. with a cry, marsyas wrenched open the wicket and seized the old man's shoulders. "dost thou bring good or evil news?" he cried, unable to wait on the slow servant's deliberate speech. "perchance either, or both," the courier answered, fumbling in the wallet for his written instructions. "perchance that which thou already knowest, and that which may be news. at least, i fetch thee a ransom." "god reward thee for thy fidelity," marsyas replied, "and forget thy sloth! here, let me help thee to thy message." he put away the servant's inflexible fingers and wrested the parchment from the wallet. it was wrapped in silk and sealed with wax. it was directed to marsyas. he ripped it open hastily and read: "to marsyas, the essene, to whom cypros the herod would owe a greater debt, greeting and these: "it hath come to us here in alexandria that vitellius pursues thee with a mind to punish thee for helping my lord away from his difficulty in judea. the legate hath sent couriers broadcast over the empire to seek thee out, but the noble flaccus, proconsul of egypt, though forewarned and required to deliver thee up, hath promised thee asylum in alexandria. wherefore, if it please god that thou art preserved until my servant silas reaches thee, do thou return to this city, secretly and with all speed. "that thou care for thyself and that thy despatch be assured, i add further that there is much thou canst do for me. delay not if the same good heart which suffered for us in ptolemais still beats within thee. "thy friend, "cypros." within were three notes of a talent each, signed by alexander lysimachus, the alabarch of alexandria. six weeks before, they would have been mere strips of parchment to marsyas; to-day, with the commercial knowledge of a steward, cæsar's gold would not have commanded more respect in him. but he crushed them in his hand and turned his face, suddenly grown pale and tense, toward the east and jerusalem. they meant the beginning of the destruction of saul! presently he signed to silas to follow and led the way to old peter, who sipped his wine in his sleeping apartment. on the way, they met a slave whom marsyas despatched to the khan for eleazar. "but," objected peter, with the querulousness of an old man, after the first flush of satisfaction over the return of his three talents, "i took thee in hostage, young man, because i wanted thy service as steward, not because i wished to please agrippa." "but i have summoned my better to take my place," marsyas assured him. "thou shall not be without an able steward, who will serve thee for hire." and thus it was arranged when eleazar arrived, that the rabbi should take marsyas' place as steward and peter, grumbling, but no less mollified, put on his cloak and repaired to the authorities to make the young essene's manumission a matter of record. by sunset all the negotiations were completed and marsyas, with silas, passed out into the twilight and proceeded toward the mole. as they went, others were going; the freighter which was the first to sail for alexandria bade fair to be crowded with passengers. curious that so many wished to depart, marsyas looked critically at the people as they moved toward the water-front. he saw that many of them had been with him in the nazarene meeting the night before. they were obeying the command to move on. suddenly one of them, a young man in advance of two, old enough to be his parents, stopped and pointed with an outstretched arm. marsyas glanced in the direction the youth indicated. the lower slopes of the immense western sky over the placid sea were delicate with the pale shades of a clear, cold, spring sunset. the point where the sun had sunk, alone glowed with a sparkling, golden brilliance. and set against that, far out in the bay, was a frail dark mast, crossed by a faint yard--a fragile crucifix sunk in a glory! the elder man did not speak; the younger looked at the thing he had discovered, but as marsyas hurried in agitation by the woman, he heard her speak softly: "but it is bright--beyond!" chapter xiv fob a woman's sake the sails of the freighter had fallen slack in the breathless shelter of the alexandrian harbor. it was night, and only by daylight could the seamen pull the vessel by oar through the devious, perilous lanes between the fleets and navies packed in the greatest port in the world. the freighter would lie to until morning. the passengers would land in boats. its anchor rumbled down and plunged into a sea of stars. it had been a ship of silence, manned by barefoot, cowed slaves, captained by a surly, weather-beaten roman and freighted with a strange, sorrowful company. now that the journey was at an end, there were no shouts, no noisy haste, no excited preparation. when the wash of the disturbed bay settled over the anchor and the reflected stars grew steady again, there was silence. marsyas stood in the bow and looked ashore. over the whole arc of the southern heavens, he saw long, beaded strands of infinitesimal points of fire, tangles, cross-hatchings, eddies and jottings of light--the lamps of alexandria. right and left of him and embracing much of the bay, the confusion of stars swept, culminating in the towering flame surmounting the pharos to the east, and failing in featureless obscurity to the west. it might have been a congress of fireflies tranced in space. but there came across the waters, not appreciable sound, but the mysterious telepathic communication of animate life. marsyas sensed the heart-beat of the great invisible city under the _ignes fatui_ swung in the purple night. he did not contemplate it calmly. the mystery of impending destiny was written over it all. the silent company of nazarenes was put ashore an hour later at the wharf of the egyptian suburb, rhacotis, and together silas and marsyas passed up through the easternmost limits of the settlement toward the regio judæorum. they had not progressed beyond sight of their former traveling companions, before the cluster of nazarenes seemed to huddle and recoil, and presently turn back and flee over their tracks. as they rushed down upon the two jews, the body seemed to have increased greatly in number. the accessions were men, women and children; some were very old, all apparently very poor, so that the one small, female figure, in fine white garments showing under a coarse mantle, was conspicuous among the rough dark habits. marsyas had time to note this one out of the many when the flying company rushed about him; after it a body of city constabulary, at the heels of which followed a howling mob of rabid alexandrians. in an instant, marsyas and silas were in the thick of the tumult. the fugitives, demoralized by the attack of the constabulary, rushed hither and thither; the mob closed in upon them and a moving battle raged in the night on the square. events followed too swiftly for marsyas to grasp them as they happened. he had a heated sensation that he defended himself, defended others, struck gallantly, received blows, snatched up a small figure in white from the attack of a vindictive assailant, and then the running fight swept by and away in dust. he came to himself, panting and enraged, under a lamp, with a girl in his arms. confronting him with a stone in his hand was eutychus, petrified with amazement and apprehension. at one side, groaning and bent double with kicks and blows, was silas. at the other, a silent, brown woman peered at the insensible girl. up the street receded the sounds of riot. marsyas permitted his angry gaze to fall from eutychus' face to the stone the servitor held. the fingers unclosed and the missile dropped. then marsyas looked down at the girl in his arms. he drew in a full breath. the hill bird in the broken wilds of judea whistled again; the incense from the blooming orchards breathed about him, and the flower face that had looked back at him from the howdah rested now, white and peaceful against his breast. her long lashes lay on her cheeks, the pretty disorder of her yellow-brown curls was tossed over his arm. he was strangely untroubled for all that. the brown woman watched him from the gloom. silas meanwhile had straightened himself and was gazing with stupefaction at the insensible face on the essene's breast. "it--it--" he began, stammering before the rush of recognition and astonishment. "it is the alabarch's daughter--hither, fellow!" to eutychus; "see this face! see whom thou wast pursuing." eutychus looked and fell immediately into a panic. "i did not know her!" he cried. "by my soul, i did not know her! i was only visiting vengeance on the apostates, with the people! how should i expect to find her here!" marsyas broke in on his avowal. "do we go now to her father's house?" he asked of silas. "even now!" "lead on, then. eutychus! follow!" silas looked at the brown woman in the shadows, who beckoned and, turning, took roundabout and deserted passages toward the jewish quarter, so that the extraordinary party proceeded unseen to the house of the alabarch. once or twice, eutychus attempted to press up beside marsyas and excuse himself, but he was bidden to be silent. then, on missing the charioteer's footfall, marsyas turned to see him slipping away. immediately silas was despatched to bring him back; and so, placed between the two, he was dragged on to the house he had attempted to injure. remembering eleazar's statement concerning the breadth of the schism, marsyas was prepared to discover the alabarch a nazarene. "o israel! after triumph over the oppression of the mighty, is this your overthrow?" he said bitterly to himself. long before he reached the alabarch's house, the figure in his arms stirred and made a little questioning sound. but against her manifest wish, the promptings of his essenic training and the admission that she had been overtaken among apostates, something in him locked his arms about her and brought a single word to his lips. the gentleness of his voice surprised him. "peace," he said, and she lay still. after he had said it, a sudden rage against eutychus seized him. the charioteer's part in the pursuit of the fugitive apostates assumed a brutality and an enormity many times greater than it had originally seemed. he took savage pleasure in anticipating turning over the culprit to agrippa for justice. he was led presently into a dark porch and admitted into a hall. the startled porter glanced at him, and, seeing lydia in the stranger's arms, the serving-man cried out. the brown woman answered with a guttural sentence or two, and by the time marsyas, following the lead of the agitated porter, entered a beautiful chamber, people were running in from brilliantly-lighted apartments beyond. the spare and elegant old figure in the embroidered robes and cap of a jewish magistrate hurried toward him with terror written on his face. "lydia! what hath befallen thee? is she dead?" he cried. back of him came a rush of people. foremost was herod agrippa; behind him, cypros. with the growing group, marsyas ceased to note the details of their identity and remarked at random that one was a man who wore a fillet and that the other was a woman and beautiful. the number of servants increasing, the babble of questions and exclamations creating a great confusion, none who made answer was heard. but marsyas looked at the master of the house. he saw this time, not the magistrate's alarm, but his character, his nationality, his religion. in that aristocratic old countenance there was nothing of the nazarene. marsyas let his eyes fall on the face against his breast. by the brighter light, he saw now that which he had not seen under the smoky street-torch. in the folds of her white dress, beautiful and rich enough for a feast, reposed a small cedar cross, depending from a scarlet cord. the young jew with the fillet about his forehead sprang forward to take lydia from marsyas' arms. but with the instinctive feeling that none must see but himself, he disengaged one hand and stopped the jew with a motion. "i will put her down," he said calmly. classicus drew himself up to his full height, but marsyas had already turned toward the divan. with a quick movement, he slipped the crucifix from about the girl's neck and thrust it into his tunic. out of the babble about him he learned that the girl had supposedly gone to attend a maiden gathering in the regio judæorum with the brown woman as an attendant. catching with relief at this bit of foundation for a story, he stood up prepared to tell anything but the truth. meantime, attendants and a house physician bent over the girl with wine and restoratives, and the company's attention was directed toward her recovery. presently she put aside her waiting-women and sat up. marsyas glanced from her to the brown woman, who hovered on the outskirts. the handmaiden's great, mysterious, olive-green eyes were fixed upon him, half in appeal, half in command. before he could understand the look the jew in the fillet turned upon him. "come, we are learning nothing," he said in a voice that silenced the group. "thou," indicating marsyas with an imperious motion, "seemest to show the marks of experience. tell us what happened." marsyas' mind went through prodigious calculation. if he frankly told the truth, he betrayed the girl to much misery and peril. if he evaded, eutychus, wishing to justify himself and to escape punishment, might wreck a fabrication by a word. but the young man made no appreciable hesitation in answering. he caught the charioteer's eye and held it fixedly while he spoke. "i know little," he said. "from the ship we came up a certain street, where we met tumult between fugitives and pursuers. so disorderly the crowd and so extensive its violence that whosoever met it on the street was instantly caught in its center and mistreated as much as the guiltiest one. thus i and prince agrippa's servant were caught; thus, the lady. "we defended ourselves and should have escaped scathless, but that we stayed to save the lady from the rioters. this done we came hither. that is all." "who were the fugitives?" the jew in the fillet demanded. the thick lips of eutychus parted and he drew in breath, but the lower lids of the black eyes fixed upon him lifted a little and he subsided. "sir, one does not stop to identify passing strangers when one fights for his life," marsyas explained calmly. eutychus lost his air of trepidation, and his taut figure relaxed. "where was it?" the beautiful woman asked of the charioteer. marsyas answered directly. "lady, one does not locate himself in the midst of turbulence." lysimachus came closer to marsyas. "who art thou?" he asked. "i met thee once, it seems." "that," agrippa broke in, "by every act he hath done since i knew him, is the most generous of jews, marsyas, an essene, by his permission, my friend and companion. know him, alexander; it is a profitable acquaintance." marsyas flushed under the prince's praise, and cypros, drawing closer, took his arm and pressed her cheek against it. "thrice welcome to my house," the alabarch said with emotion. "blessed be thy coming and thy going; may safety be thy shadow!" marsyas, coloring more under the comment, thanked the alabarch and cast a beseeching look at the prince. the prince smiled. "let us supplement blessings with raiment and thanks with wine," he said to the alabarch. "this is an essene to whom uncleanliness is as great a crime as a love affair." "thou recallest me to my duty," the alabarch returned, at once. "stephanos,"--signing to a servitor,--"thou wilt take this young man to the room which hath been prepared for him and give him comfort. if he hath any hurts, the physician will wait on him. remember, brother, i am at thy command." with these words, he bowed to marsyas, who inclined his head to the company and followed stephanos. but at the arch leading into the corridor, there was a low word at his hand. lydia, with the rough mantle dropped from her, stood there in her rich white garments. "i owe thee my life," she said, in a little more than a whisper. "aye, even more--a greater debt which i can not make clear to thee now." he looked down into her lifted eyes, pleading for pity and forgiveness. "i made thee traffic with the truth," they said. "thou who art an essene and a holy man!" something happened in marsyas; a quickening rush of rare emotion swept over him. he took her small hand and held it, until, shyly and reluctantly, she drew it away. he went then through broad halls, flooded with lights from costly lamps, past whispering fountains and motionless potted plants, through arches relieved by silken draperies which adorned without screening, up a broad flight of stairs to his own chamber. this was all very beautiful and restful with its occasional whiffs of incense, or the musical drip of the waterfall or the soft murmur of distant voices. his lot had fallen in splendid places, he told himself, and, though opposed, by teaching, to the difference men make in each other, he was glad that he was not to live as a manumitted slave under the roof of the alabarch's house. as he stepped into the chamber which stephanos told him was his own, drumah appeared. startled at first sight of a man bearing marks of ill-usage, she stopped and cried out as she recognized him. "i am not hurt, drumah," he said, to quiet the rush of questions on her lips. "i was caught in a riot. it is nothing." "but i see marks on thy face," she persisted, coming near him; "and thy garments have bloodstains on them. thou dost not know that thou art hurt. o stephanos," she cried to the servitor, "fetch balsam and volatile ointment. eutychus, art thou there? run to the culina and get wine! where is the physician?" the charioteer, who had appeared in the upper story for the express purpose of seeking drumah to tell the details of the day's excitement, stopped short and scowled. "i thank thee," marsyas said to her. "i am not in need of assistance. the physician is with the master's daughter. i can care for myself. pray, do not give thyself trouble." he stepped into the apartment and dropped the curtain upon himself and stephanos. he had given himself up to the servitor's attentions, when it occurred to him that he had let slip a chance to deliver a telling and a much-needed warning to eutychus. the more he considered his neglect, the more serious it seemed. at last he hurried his attendant, and, getting into fresh garments, descended again to the first floor. he despatched stephanos in search of eutychus and stopped by the newel to await the charioteer's coming. as he stood, the brown waiting-woman came to him, gliding like a sand column across the desert. coming quite close to him, she dropped on her knees at his side and touched her forehead to the ground. "i am a brahmin," she said in hindu, "and i owe thee a debt. i shall not forget!" rising, she flitted away. marsyas looked after her in amazement. it was the same slave-woman whom he had helped at peter the usurer's. cypros, with her head drooping, a delicate forefinger on her chin, came slowly and sorrowfully into the hall. as marsyas looked at her, she seemed to him to be half-woman, half-child. but when she saw him, her face lighted, her eyes glowed. with extended hands she came toward him. "nay, nay," she said, seeing that thanks were on his lips. "do not shame me with thy thanks, marsyas, for i had a selfish use in releasing thee." "but i know, nevertheless, that i should have had freedom at thy hands though i never saw thee again." "oh, be not so filled with confidence and sweet believing, else i fear for myself," she said earnestly. "nay, if i were wholly unselfish, i should come to thee, this hour of thy honor, to bring thee praise. yet i come with mine own interest, to charge thee anew!" "command me; thou hast purchased me!" "not so; but thou hast purchased my husband, with the extreme of thy sacrifice for his sake!" "lady, i did that thing for myself--for mine own ends!" "nevertheless, it was my husband who profited. thou must learn that much hath transpired here in alexandria. the alabarch had not the three hundred thousand drachmæ to lend--" marsyas' forehead contracted; was not his work against saul of tarsus progressing? "--but he gave my lord in all readiness five talents, with which we ransomed thee. it was all the good alabarch could afford, but it is not enough for me and my babes. wherefore agrippa goes to rome without us. there, infallibly he will obtain money from antonia, discharge his debt to cæsar and settle vitellius' vengeful search after thee. there, he shall be restored to favor with cæsar and come into possession of his kingdom!" "how thou liftest my bitter heart!" marsyas exclaimed. "go yet further and say that, thereafter, i shall have my requital, my hunger after vengeance satisfied!" "all that shall be," she said with gravity, "on one condition!" "what?" he besought earnestly. "that he who hath agrippa's welfare deepest in his heart shall ever be near my lord to protect him against himself!" "o lady, even thou canst not wish thy husband successful with greater yearning than i!" "so i do believe! but hear me. thou seest my husband; thou knowest that he plans only for the moment, risks too much, is over-confident and too little cautious! in the beginning he believes that he is right, and thereafter and on to the end he acts, chooses friends, and makes enemies as his conviction directs him. thus he ruined himself thrice over from rome to idumea. none but one so eager for his success as i, but abler than i, can govern him! and thou must be his keeper, marsyas!" "thou yieldest me a welcome charge, lady," he said quickly. "thou knowest that i would not have him fail; wherefore, i yield thee my word!" "be thou blessed! yet there is more!" in spite of her preparation, her face flushed, and she hesitated. then as if forcing herself to speak, she said: "thou--thou wilt keep my lord's love for me, marsyas?" "i do not understand," he said kindly. "thou didst not say such a thing when my lord asked thee for twenty thousand drachmæ. thou didst get the drachmæ; keep now my husband's love for me. as thou didst offer thyself for his purse, offer thyself for his soul--if need be!" he frowned at the pavement and then at her. he had evolved enough from her words to believe that her call aimed at his spiritual welfare and he remembered that he was an essene. "be his companion," she hurried on, "be more; be his comrade, his abettor, even; sacrifice much; thy prejudices, even some of thy spotlessness, but make thyself desirable to him. then thou canst control him. promise, marsyas! oh, thy hope to overthrow saul is not dearer to thee than this thing is to me! promise!" "be comforted," he said hurriedly, for there were steps approaching from the inner room. "i shall do all that i can. more than that, one less than an angel can not promise!" she, too, heard the footsteps and passed up the stairs. looking up from his disturbed contemplation of the pavement, marsyas saw classicus in the arch leading into the hall. if the young essene had been a cestophorus upholding the ceiling, the philosopher's gaze could not have been more indifferent. he passed on and disappeared into the vestibule. hardly had he passed, before the dark end of the corridor leading in from the garden gave up the stealthy figure of eutychus, running, bent, purposeful and a-tiptoe, to overtake classicus. evidently he had not seen marsyas, for he passed without faltering and disappeared the way classicus had taken. instantly and as silently marsyas followed. at the porch, the alabarch bade his guests good night, and when marsyas brought up, he found classicus just departing and eutychus nowhere to be seen. surmising that there was a humbler exit for the servants, out of which the charioteer had taken himself, marsyas passed out directly after the philosopher. his surmises were not wrong, for the instant classicus planted foot on the earth without, eutychus came out of the darkness and bowed. "good my lord," he began, "the story truly told is this--" but his words babbled off into stammers and inarticulate sound, for marsyas, large in the gloom, stood over him. "thy master hath need of thee, eutychus," he said in a soft voice. the charioteer gulped and slid back into the door that had given him exit. "peace to thee, sir," the essene said to classicus, and bowing, returned into the house. "the truth of the story is this," said classicus as he stepped into his chair and was borne away, "the essene is no essene!" at the farther end of the corridor within, marsyas saw eutychus lurking. silent and swift the young essene went after him. the charioteer, fearing for cause, fled and marsyas followed. agrippa, on the point of ascending to his chamber, saw them flit noiselessly into the dusk. his wonder was awakened. drumah, with a laver under her arm, was emerging from the kitchens when she caught a glimpse of them. the prince stepped down and followed; drumah slipped after. at the door leading into the colonnade of the garden, marsyas seized eutychus. "thou insufferable coward!" he brought out. "thou blight and peril under a hospitable roof! i know what thou wouldst have said to the master's guest!" eutychus paled and struggled to free himself, but marsyas forced him against the wall and pinned him there. "if so much as a word escape thee, concerning the alabarch's daughter, if by a quiver of thy lashes thou dost betray aught that thou knowest to any living being, or dead post, or empty space, i shall kill thee and feed the eels of the sea with thy carcass!" fixing the charioteer with a menacing eye he held him until he was sure his words had conveyed their full meaning. "i have spoken!" he added. then he threw the man aside and turned to go back to his room. but in his path, though happily out of earshot of his low-spoken words, stood agrippa; behind him, drumah. not a little disturbed, marsyas stopped. eutychus saw the prince and expected partizanship. "seest thou how thy servant is used by this vagrant?" he demanded. but agrippa laid his hand on marsyas' arm. "i do not know thy provocation," he said, "but i know it was just. go back! it is not enough. teach him to respect thy strength. thou hast merely made him dangerous!" but marsyas begged agrippa's permission to go on and the prince, still declaring that the essene had made a mistake, turned and went with him. drumah, with her head in the air, passed eutychus without casting a look upon him. chapter xv the false balance marsyas did not sleep the sleep of a man worn with exertion and excitement. instead he lay far into the night with his wide eyes fixed on the soft gloom above him. he had many diverse thoughts, none wholly contented, many most unhappy. the instance of apostasy under the roof troubled him; not as apostasy should trouble one of the faithful, but as an impending calamity. he had strange, terrifying, commingling pictures of stephen's dark locks in the dust of the stoning-place, and the pretty disorder of yellow-brown curls thrown over his arm. his purpose against saul of tarsus seemed to magnify in importance, by each succeeding momentous event. he remembered cypros' charge and bound himself to keep it, again and again through the dark troubled hours. it was a long way yet until he could triumph over the powerful pharisee, and the stretches of misfortune that could ensue, in the time, were things he drove out of his thoughts. when at last he fell asleep, he dreamed that he stood on olivet and watched saul and lydia seeking for him in the trampled space without hanaleel, while a crucifix, instead of the moon, arose in the east. the old essenic habit was strong in marsyas. in spite of his long wakefulness, the dark red color in the east which announced the sunrise yet an hour to come was as a call in his ear. he arose while yet the night was heavy in the halls of the alabarch's house and the whisper of the sand lifting before the sea-wind was the only sound in the alexandrian streets. the stairway was intensely quiet and he hesitated to descend. but at the end of the upper corridor a slight dilution in the gloom showed him a loft let into the ceiling. he went that way and came upon another stairway leading up and out into the open. he mounted it and found himself on the roof of the house. at the rear was a double row of columns, roofed, and hung with matting which inclosed an airy pavilion where the dwellers of the alabarch's house could flee from the heat closer the earth. it was furnished with antique egyptian furniture, taborets of acacia, seated with pigskin, a diphros and divan, built of spongy palm-wood, but seasoned and hardened by great age, and grotesquely carved by old hands, dead a century. the young man entered and, seating himself, awaited the day and the arousing of the alabarch's household. the jewish housetops toward the east made an angular sea, broken by parapets and summer-houses in relief against the red sky, and the pavements in gloom. strips of darker vapor meandering among them showed the course of passages leading with many detours into the great open, where was builded the synagogue of alexandria. it was of tremendous dimensions, yet so majestically proportioned as to attain grace, that most difficult thing to reconcile with great size. the type of architecture was egypto-grecian,--repose and refinement, antiquity and civilization conjoined to make a sanctuary that was a citadel. here, the forty thousand jews of alexandria could gather, nor one rub shoulder against his neighbor. marsyas looked with no little pride at the triumph of the god of israel in this stronghold of paganism. what a reproach it must be to them that had departed from the rigor of the law! he became conscious of the little cross. he drew it forth from its hiding-place and looked at it. it was made of red cedar, slightly elaborated, and the cord passed through a small copper eyelet at the head. to his unfamiliar eye, it was a dread image, at once a suggestion of suffering and retributive justice. he had not seen one since his last talk with stephen. the acute wrench the reflection gave him now incorporated a fear for lydia. saul of tarsus should not lay her fair head low! he braced his fingers against the head and foot of the emblem to break it, when suddenly a bewildering reluctance seized his hand. at the moment of destruction, his hand was stayed. stephen had loved it and died for its sake, and lydia-his resolution dissolved; slowly and unreadily he put the crucifix back in his bosom, over his heart. at that moment, a little figure, on the brink of the housetop, was projected against the glowing sky. it was firmly knit and outlined like an infant love. the apparition brought, besides startlement, a prescient significance that made his heart beat. synagogue and alexandria dropped out of sight. he saw only the rosy heavens with a beautiful girl marked on them. he arose, and the new-comer turned toward him and approached. and marsyas watching her, in a breathless, half-guilty moment, told himself that never before had the fall of a woman's foot been a caress to the earth. he saw that she carried over her arm a many-folded length of silk, in the half-dusk, like a silvery mist, very sheeny and firm. here and there he discovered flame-colored streaks in it. one of the morning-touched vapors in the east, pulled down and folded over the girl's arm, would have looked like it. at the threshold of the summer-house, she let the arm fall which carried it, dropped the many folds and with a sudden uplift and deft circle of her hand, partly cocooned herself in the silken vapor. her eyes, lifted in the movement, fell on marsyas. with a little start, she unfurled the wrapping and doubled it over her arm. "i pray thy pardon," he said, with a sincerity beyond the formality of his words. "i am an intruder. but--the essenes do not keep their beds long." "neither do all alexandrians," she said, recovering herself. "thou art welcome, for i would speak with thee." she put up one of the mattings by a pull at a cord, and sat down on a taboret. she laid the silk across her lap and folded her hands upon it. "i pray thee, be seated. i have not said all that i would say concerning last night. art thou well--unhurt?" the morning lay faintly on her face and he saw that she was paler and sadder of eye than was natural for one so young and so round of cheek. he was touched, and his answer was a tender surprise to him. "thou seest me," he said, making a motion with his hands, "but thou--i would there were less of last night in thy face!" "i am well," she said, as her eyes fell. "for that i give thee thanks, and for the security of my fame among my friends--and--the sacrifice thou madest to preserve it!" she meant his evasions that had kept the true story of her rescue secret. he was glad she touched so readily upon the subject. it gave him opportunity to relieve his soul of part of its burden. "i was glad," he assured her. "now, that thou art still safe, i pray thee, lady, preserve thyself. none in all the world is so able to understand thy peril as i!" she looked at him, remembering that agrippa had told them that he had been accused of apostasy. "are--are these--thy people?" she asked in a whisper. "no; but dost thou remember why i went with such haste to nazareth?" he asked. "to save a life, thou saidst." "even so, i failed." she caught her breath and her eyes grew large with sympathy. "i failed," he continued. "i went to save a friend who had gone astray after the nazarene prophet. but they stoned him before mine eyes." her lips moved with a compassionate word, more plainly expressed in all her atmosphere. "they cast me out of judea," he went on, "because i was his friend. wherefore i have tasted the death and have died not; i have suffered for their sin, yet sinned not!" he had never told more of his story than that, but her eyes, filled with interest, fixed upon him, urged him to go on. believing that he might deliver her if he told more, he proceeded, but the sense of relief, the lifting of his load that followed upon the course of his narrative were results that he had not expected in confiding to this understanding woman. at first he felt a little of the embarrassment that attends the unfolding of a personal history, but ere long the fair-brown eyes urged him, with their sympathy, and consoled him with their comprehension. he left the outline and plunged into detail, and when he had made an end, the glory of the egyptian sunshine was flooding alexandria. at the end of the story, lydia's eyes fell slowly, and the interest that had enlivened her face relaxed into pensiveness. she was oppressed and sorrowful, almost ready to be directed by this man of many sorrows. but he leaned toward her. "henceforth, therefore," he said, "i am not a man of peace, but one burdened with rancor and vengeful intent. i go not into en-gadi, but into the evil world to use the world's evil to work evil. i am despoiled and blighted and without hope. is that the inheritance which thou wouldst leave to them who love thee?" she drew away from him, half alarmed. "i--i am not a nazarene," she faltered. "do not go to them, then!" he urged eagerly. "do not listen to their teachings; for whosoever listens must die!" "i went yesterday for a different cause," she said finally, "but before, of interest." "but thou art a faithful daughter of abraham; be not led of any cause. remember yesterday!" "yesterday?" she repeated quietly. "why yesterday? only the faith of the oppressed was different. we of israel's faith in alexandria know many of yesterday's like, and worse!" "suffer, then, the sufferings of the righteous! be not cut off for a folly!" she fell silent again, and smoothed the silk on her lap. "justin classicus told me of them," she began finally, "and their very difference from other philosophies, new or old, the simple history of their prophet attracted me. i sought them out, and learned that an egyptian merchant who traded in syria had passed through jerusalem at the time of the nazarene prophet's sojourn in the city, and had become converted to his teaching. he returned to egypt and planted the seed of the sect in rhacotis. and of power and attraction, he gathered unto him men of his like. finally he carried his teaching into the lecture-rooms of the library and all alexandria heard of the nazarenes. reduced in its frenzy, his faith had a burning and unconsumed heart to it. many searched and many accepted it. i went once--with my handmaiden--and heard his preaching. and i saw in it a remedy for the sick world." marsyas looked away toward the synagogue, glittering purely against the dark blue waters of the bay. he felt a recurrence of the old chill that possessed him, when he had failed to shake stephen in his apostasy. but she went on. "since there is but one god there can be but one religion. i do not expect a new godhead, but a new interpretation of the ancient one. bethink thee; all the world was not rome, in the days of abraham or moses or solomon or david. this is the hour of the supremacy of one will, one race. man does not fear god so much when he does not respect his neighbor at all. therefore, rome, being autocrat of the earth, is an atheist. she hath set up her mace and called it god. there is no hope against rome unless we hurl another rome against it. that we can not do, for there is only one world. sheol will not prevail against rome, for rome is sheol. only heaven is left and heaven does not proceed against nations with an army and banners. there is only one untried power in the list of forces, and the nazarene hath it in his creed." marsyas knew what it was; stephen was full of it. "it is a difficult vision to summon," she continued, "but it may fall that a dove and not an eagle shall sit on the standards of rome and that the dominion of god and not of cæsar shall prevail on the capitoline hill." she paused, and marsyas, waiting until he might speak, put out his hand to her. "i heard another building such fair structures of his fancy and his hopes," he said, with pain on his face. "even though they were realized to-morrow, he can not see it; i, being broken of heart, could not rejoice. and lydia--for they call thee by that name--i can not see another in the dust of the stoning-place!" her face flushed and paled and he let his hand drop on hers, by way of apology. "then, thou wilt give over the companionship of these people?" he persisted gently. she hesitated, and finally said in a halting voice: "i--went--i knew that--by thy leave, sir, thou camest to them as a peril. thou wast expected of the authorities, being doubly charged with apostasy and an offense against rome, and they were permitted to go thither, by the legate, even by this household, in search of thee, when i and all under this roof knew that thou wast not among them. i--went to give them--warning--" "then, the call hath been obeyed," he said kindly. "shut thy hearing against another. i thank thee, for the nazarenes. thou art good and wise and most generous--too rare a woman for israel to surrender." she arose, for sounds were coming up the well of the stair, which told of the awakening of the alabarch's household. she wrapped the silk in a closer roll and let the folds of her full habit fall over it. after a little hesitation, she extended her hand to him, and he took it. under its touch, he felt that his hour of mastery had passed. the gentle, thankful pressure had put him under her command. when she disappeared into the well of the stairs, marsyas, glancing about him, saw on the housetop next to him justin classicus. the philosopher was choicely clad in a synthesis to cover him completely from the chill of the morning air, while yet the warmth of his bath was upon him. his locks were anointed, his fillet in place. even in undress, he was elegant. he rested in a cathedra, and contemplated his neighbor as distantly as he had the night before. not until after he had broken his fast with the alabarch and his daughter and returned again to the housetop did he see any other of the magistrate's guests. junia's litter brought up at the alabarch's porch, and presently agrippa came up on the housetop. "how now?" he exclaimed, seeing marsyas. "is it the air or the sense of superiority over the sluggard that invites thee up at unsunned hours?" "both," marsyas replied, giving up the diphros to the prince, "and the further urging of an old unsettled grudge. my lord, when dost thou proceed to rome?" "shortly; after the feast of flora, which is to be celebrated soon." "nay; i pray thee, let it be directly," marsyas urged; "for my bitterness unspent bids fair to rise in my throat and choke me!" "_proh pudor_! cherishing a pulseless rancor with all fervor, when thou art here, in arm's reach and in high favor with that which should make back to thee all thou hast ever lost in the world! oh, what a placid vegetable of an essene thou art,--in all save hate!" "i am to go to rome with thee, my lord." "of a surety! my wife sees in thee a kind of talisman which will insure me favor with emperors and usurers, ward off the influence of beautiful women and give me success at dice!" marsyas glanced away from agrippa and his face settled into uncompromising lines. agrippa continued. "nay, thou goest to see that i make no misstep toward getting a kingdom. welcome! be thou hawk-eyed vigilance itself. but my pleasure might be more perfect did i know that thine and our lady's determination to crown me were less selfish!" "thou shalt not complain of more than selfishness in me," marsyas answered calmly. "but by my dearest hope, thou shalt live a different life than that which hath ruined thee of late. i know that thou canst win a kingdom by a word; but thou shalt not lose it by a smile. for, by the lord god that made us, thou shalt not fail!" agrippa turned half angrily upon the young essene, but the imperfectly formulated retort died on his lips. he met in the resolute eyes fixed upon him command and mastery. words could not have delivered such a certainty of control. in that moment of silent contemplation the contest for future supremacy was decided. agrippa frowned, looked away and smiled foolishly. "perpol! did i ever think to lose patience with a man for swearing to make me a king? but mend thy manner, marsyas. thou'lt never please the ladies if thou goest wooing with this rattle and clang of siege-engines!" junia appeared on the housetop. she came with lagging steps and sank upon the divan, gazing with sleepy eyes at marsyas. "i emancipated myself," she said, "from the study of new stitches, the neighbor's dress and the fashion in perfumes. a pest on your rustic habit of early rising! here we are aroused in the unlovely hours of the raw dawn to achieve business, ere the sun bakes us into stupidity at midday!" "a needless sacrifice to these egyptians," agrippa declared. "they are all salamanders. i saw a serving-woman in this house pick up a flame on her bare palm and carry it off as one would bear a vase." "vasti? nay, but she comes from india; fled from servitude to the brahmin priesthood to take service with the man who had pitied her once." "the alabarch?" "even so. he bought the gold and onyx plates that he put on the temple gates, in india, where he saw her and pitied her. so, she fled her owner and sought the world over till she found the alabarch to enslave herself anew." "so! small wonder, then, she is annealed like an amphora. yet i had believed she was a bayadere." "a bayadere?" junia repeated. "a brahmin dancer, having the peculiarities of an egyptian almah, a greek hetæra, and a pythian priestess, all fused in one. but now that she hath repented, she is rigidly upright and a relentless pursuer of evil-doers." "alas!" sighed junia, still watching marsyas, "is it not enough to grow old without having to become virtuous?" agrippa lifted his eyes to her face, and the look was sufficient comment. but marsyas had been plunged in his own thoughts and did not hear. "what is the feast of flora?" he asked. the roman woman smiled and answered. "a popular expression of the world's joy over the summer. that was its original motive, but it has been conventionalized into a feast formally celebrating the reign of flora. it was pastoral, but the poor cities walled away from the wheat and the pastures adopted it, in very hunger for the feel of the earth. it falls in the spring under the revivifying influence of awakening life and the loosed spirit of the populace grows boisterous. we become a city of rustics and hoidens. pleasure is the purpose and love the largess of the occasion." agrippa smiled absently. these two remarks of diverse character were tentative. she was sounding marsyas' nature. "i shall not sail till it is done," agrippa declared. "a rare diversion to tempt a man from his ambitions," the young essene retorted quickly. junia had made her sounding. she persisted in her latter rôle. "it is," she averred. "flora is elected among the beautiful girls of the theaters; she typifies universal love; she runs, leaving a trail of yellow roses behind her, which lead the multitude on to the delight she means to take for herself--and that is all. it is merely a pretty feast, but the world is made of many well-meaning though blundering natures; and the revel does not always reach the high mark of refinement at its highest." agrippa's eyes on the roman woman expressed intensest amusement and admiration, though they lost nothing of their cool self-possession. "my lord," marsyas observed coldly, "there are as choice evils in rome." junia laughed. "evil! tut, tut! how monstrous serious the little world takes itself! how great is its problems, how towering its philosophies, how bad its badness! see us wrinkle our little old brows and smile agedly over the creature impulses of children and forget that the gods sit on the brink of olympus and smile at us. how we deplore the feast of flora--and out upon us! none--save perchance thyself, good sir, and thy rigid order--but goes reveling after pleasure and chooses a love or casts a stone at an offender--and soberly calls it a crisis or a principle! philosophy! discovering the obvious! badness! only nature, more or less emphatic! all a matter of meat and drink, shelter and apparel and the recreation of ourselves! everything else is merely an attribute of the simple essentials. is it not so, good sir?" marsyas shook his head. for the first time in his life he had heard the world forgiven and the sound of it was good. he could not help remembering lydia's words, in contrast. but he was not convinced. "it is not from the place of the gods that we feel, do and believe," he said. "the child's difficulties are heavy to it; it can not imagine them to be greater. so if thy reasoning hold, lady, perhaps the higher god smiles at the rage of jove and the threats of mars and the loves and pains of venus. but jove and mars and venus do not smile at them; nor does the child at his fallen sand-house or his ruined bauble. it is therefore a serious world for worldlings." junia lifted her white arms, and, dropping her head back between them against the divan, smiled up at the roof of the pavilion. "i thought thee to be large and far-seeing," she said. "but go follow flora, and thou shall either be driven mad with astonishment, or persuaded to look upon the world henceforward with mine eyes!" chapter xvi a matter handled wisely flaccus avillus, proconsul of egypt, held audience in his atrium. he received a commission of three from the jews of alexandria. one was alexander lysimachus, who came with a civil petition; the other two were despatched from the congregation with a hieratic memorial. the three were stately and deliberate in manner, handsome even for their years, and as courtly as jews can be when they bring up their native grace to the highest standard of culture. they were bearded, gowned in linen, covered with tarbooshes, and as they walked their indoor sandals made no sound upon the polished pavement of the atrium. one wore on his left arm a phylactery, the last clinging to the old formality which had separated his fathers' class in judea from the others, as a pharisee. the second was an alexandrian sadducee. the third had over his shoulders the cloak of a magistrate. flaccus did not rise from his curule as they approached, but he returned their greetings with better grace than they had formerly expected of a roman governor. "be greeted," he said bluntly. "and sit; ye are elderly men!" lysimachus took the nearest chair and the others retired a little way to an indoor exedra. flaccus thrust away parchments and writings to let his elbow rest on his table, ordered the bearers of the fasces to withdraw to a less conspicuous position, and looked at lysimachus. "thou lookest grave, alexander," he said. "art thou commissioned with a perplexity?" the alabarch, being a magistrate and therefore recognized by rome before the synagogue, answered readily. "not so much perplexed, good sir, as troubled. i come with a petition, not in writing, but nevertheless most urgent." "let me hear it," flaccus said. "nay, then; thou knowest that a certain celebration of the gentiles in this city is approaching. it is a feast of much magnitude and of much lawlessness. thou knowest the temper of the city toward my people, and after three days of drunkenness, alexandria will love the jew no more, but much less. thou rememberest, as i and my people remember with mourning, that last year, the excited multitude, that followed flora's trail of yellow roses through the regio judæorum, fell upon the jews by the way and slaughtered and sacked as if it had been warfare instead of festivity. it was a new diversion for the multitude, and one like to be repeated. but we, who are led to believe by thy recent good will that thou dost not cherish rome's ancient prejudice against our race, come unto thee and hopefully beseech thee to forbid the flora to lead her rioters upon our peaceful community." "i have already warned the prætor," flaccus responded, "that flora is not to run through the regio judæorum this year." "the prætor dare not disobey thee," lysimachus said, with a tone of finality in his voice. flaccus smiled grimly. "nor flora," he added. "thou hast our people's gratitude and allegiance; mine own thankfulness and blessings," lysimachus responded heartily. flaccus waved his hand, and glanced at the other two, sitting aside. "and ye?" he said. "are ye but a portion of the alabarch's commission?" "nay, good sir," the sadducee answered, "we come upon a mission for the congregation." lysimachus arose, but the sadducee turned to him with a bow. "pray thee, sir, it concerns thee as well. wilt thou abide longer and hear us?" the alabarch inclined his head and sat down. flaccus signified that he was ready to hear them. "thou didst ask our brother, the alabarch, if he were commissioned with a perplexity," the sadducee continued. "not he, but we come perplexed. were we jews in judea, the method would be laid down to us by law. but in alexandria we have grown away from the method, while yet we have the same object to achieve." "we lose in guidance what we gain in freedom," the pharisee added. "in judea," the sadducee continued, "they are still bound by the usages of the mosaic law. an offender against the law is stoned. we do not stone in alexandria; yet we have the offender, and suffer the offense. what, then, shall we do to cleanse our skirt and yet offer no violence to our advanced thinking?" "give me thy meaning," the proconsul said impatiently. "perchance it hath come to thee that there is a sect known as the nazarenes, followers of jesus of nazareth, which are spreading like a pestilence on the wind over the world. so full of them is judea, even david's city, that the sanhedrim, in alliance with the roman legate, is proceeding against them with extreme punishment." "i have heard," flaccus assented. "but the numbers have grown so great and so far-reaching that the sanhedrim hath achieved little more than to drive them abroad into the world." "so the legate informs me," flaccus added. "perchance then thou knowest that alexandria hath its share." "i do." "even the regio judæorum." "strange," lysimachus broke in. "strange, if they be such law-breakers, as they are reputed to be, that they have not been brought before me for rebellion and violence, ere this!" the pharisee put his plump white hands together. "thou touchest upon the perplexity, brother," he said, addressing himself to lysimachus. "we are warned by the scribe of saul of tarsus, who leadeth the war against the heretics, that they are invidious workers of sedition; whisperers of false doctrines and pretenders of love and humility. they do not persuade the rich man nor the powerful man nor the learned man. they labor among the poor and the despised and the ignorant. saul, himself, though first to be awakened to the peril of the heresy, did not dream how immense an evil he had attacked until he found the half of jerusalem fleeing from him. wherefore, brother, we may be built upon the sliding sands of an evil doctrine; the whole regio judæorum may be going astray after this apostasy ere the powers know it." lysimachus stroked his white beard and looked incredulous. "the jews of alexandria will not tolerate a persecution," he said emphatically. "so thou dost grasp the perplexity wholly," the sadducee said. "what shall we do?" he turned to the proconsul. "i am to advise, then?" flaccus asked indifferently. "thou wilt not suffer them to lead our men-servants and our maid-servants and our artisans into heresy?" the pharisee asked. "we do not persecute in alexandria, thou saidst," flaccus observed. "no," declared lysimachus. "if all the regio judæorum were as we three, the apostates might come and go, strive their best and die of their own misdeeds, unincreased in number or in goods. but the clamoring voice of the mass--nay, even cæsar hath harkened to it! those that have not followed the nazarenes demand that they be cut off from us. but we can not kill, and not even death daunts a nazarene. commend thyself, flaccus, that thou didst call my brothers' mission a perplexity." "so you have come formally to me with your people's plaint and expect me to solve a question that you yourselves can not solve," flaccus said. "_poena_! but you are a helpless lot! i shall pen the heretics in rhacotis forthwith, and command them neither to visit nor to be visited! is it enough?" the three jews arose. "it is wisdom," said the sadducee. "it will serve," the pharisee observed. "i shall ferret them out," lysimachus said. "thanks," the three observed at once. "peace to all this house." flaccus waved his hand and the three passed out. chapter xvii a word in season the summer waxed over egypt. the delta, back from the yellow plain which fronted the sea, was in full flower of the wheat. the happy fellahs lay under the shade of dom-palms and drowsed the morning in and the sunset out, for there was nothing to do since rannu of the harvests had laid her beneficent hand upon the fields. across the mediterranean, nearer the snows, the wheat flowered later and the feast of flora held in celebration of the blossoming fields would arrive with the new moon. egypt could have given her celebration in honor of flora weeks earlier, but she preferred to wait for rome. these were not uneventful days in the alabarch's house, for cypros, with drumah at her feet, fashioned with her own hands agrippa's wardrobe and prepared for his departure, while the prince idled about the alabarch's garden, apparently oblivious to the call of his need to go to rome, in his enjoyment of junia's fellowship. and marsyas, daily more grave, gazed at him askance and furthered the plans for the trip, tirelessly. his patience might have continued unworn, but for a single incident. late one night, when oppressed by the crowding of his unhappy thoughts, he arose from his bed to walk the streets in search of composure, and, descending into the darkness of the alabarch's house, he heard the doors swing in softly. expecting robbers, or at least a servant returning by stealth from a night's revel, he stepped down into the gloom and waited till the intruder should pass. softly the unknown approached and laid hand on the stair-rail to ascend. at the second step the figure was between him and the window lighting the stairs. against the lesser darkness and the stars without, he saw lydia's outlines etched. noiselessly, she passed up and out of hearing. in his soul, he knew that she had been to the nazarenes! "to-morrow," he said grimly to himself, "i prepare the prince's ship! there passes a stiff-necked sacrifice to saul of tarsus, unless i can bring him low!" the next morning, justin classicus received a letter, by a merchant ship from syria. he retired into his chamber and read it: "o brother," it said, "that dwelleth among the heathen, this from thy friend who envieth thy banishment: "i delayed opening thy letter three days, believing it to come from him who lined my threadbare purse while in alexandria, asking usury, long since due, but at the end of that time, i received his letter of a surety. so i made haste to open thy slandered missive, and greater haste to answer it by way of propitiation. "i read much of thy letter with astonishment, some of it with rancor, some with congratulation. by abraham's beard, it is almost as good to be fortunate as it is to be single; wherefore in answer to thine only question, i say that i am neither. thus, am i led up to comment on the facts thou offerest me. "i remember the little lysimachus, a bit of ephesian ivory-work, that i augured would go unmarried, seeing that she was so hindered with brains. but naught so good as a dowry to offset the embarrassment of sense in a woman. prosper, my classicus! for if thou art the same elegant paganized son of abraham thou wast in thine old days, thy debts are as many as thy usurers are scarce. half a million drachmæ; demand no less a dowry than that, my classicus! "but here, below, thou writest that which hath cut my limbs from under me and set me heavily and helpless on the carpet! a manumitted slave, a cumbrous yokel of an essene, hath given thee troublous nights, because the lady's eyes soften in his presence! thou scented son of daphne; athene's darling; venus' latest joy! to let a phidian colossus, with a face high-colored like a comic mask, outstrip thee! "thou camest upon them once, the lady's hand in his! again, she stammered under his look! and yet a third time, he wrapped a cloak about her, and lingered getting his arm away! and all these things thou didst suffer and didst take no more revenge than to write thy plaint to me, eight hundred miles away! "by the philippics of jeremiah, thou deservest a wife with a figure like a durra loaf, and dowered with nine sisters for thy support! "thou opinest in a lady-like way, that he is a nazarene! thou addest, with a flurry of spleen, that the proconsul of egypt hateth him! thou offerest a womanish suspicion that he fled from difficulty here in judea! now, any blind dolt could see substance in this for the overthrow of a rival. lackest thou courage, classicus, or hast thou money enough to last thee till thou findest another lady? "is it not a sufficient cause against him that he is a nazarene? or perchance thou dost not know of them, which astonishes me more, since pharaoh in the plagues was not more cumbered with flies than the earth is of nazarenes. but read herein hope, then, against thy suspected rival. "these heretics are persistent offenders against law and order, rebellious and otherwise unruly. one pharisee, saul of tarsus, proceedeth against them, for the sanhedrim. whether he is an instrument of a political party or an immoderate zealot, is not for me to say; perchance he is both. at any rate he rages against the iniquity of the apostasy as a continuing whirlwind. he is not applying his methods locally, only. he reaches into neighboring provinces, and it is his oath to pursue the heresy unto the end of the world and bring back the last to judgment. vitellius is assisting him in judea, herod antipas in galilee and aretas in syria. i expect hourly to hear that cæsar hath lent him a strong arm, because the rebels are particularly rabid against rome. "of course, the members of the congregation are divided, but thou knowest that even a small number of zealous defenders of the faith can set a whole synagogue by the ears. even so tepid a jew as i should not care to rub shoulders with a nazarene. "do i give thee life, o languid lover? "of thyself, i would hear more and oftener. await not the rising of a new rival to write to me. fear not; i shall not ask to borrow money of thee--until thou hast wedded the lysimachus. "all thy friends in jerusalem greet thee. be happy and be fortunate. thy friend, "philip of jerusalem." at this point classicus composedly doubled the parchment, broke it lengthwise and cross-wise and clapped his hands for a slave. a hebrew bondman appeared. "this for the ovens," said classicus, handing it to him. when the servant disappeared, the philosopher descended into his house and was dressed for a visit. an hour before the noon rest, he appeared in the garden of the alabarch. there he found lydia and junia, agrippa, cypros, the alabarch and flaccus, idly discussing the day's opening of the feast of flora. he had given and received greetings and merged his interests in the subject, when marsyas appeared in the colonnade. he had taken off the kerchief usually worn about the head, and carried it on his arm. as he passed the spare old alabarch, the heavy purple proconsul and the exquisite herod, not one of the guests there gathered but made successive comparisons between him and the others. junia gazed at him steadily, under half-closed lids, but lydia followed him with a look, half-sorrowful, half-happy, and wholly involuntary. cypros glanced at his flushed forehead and damp hair. "hast thou been into the city?" she asked with sweet solicitude. "to the harbor-master," he answered, "i have been making ready thy lord's ship." agrippa overheard the low answer, and turned upon him irritably. "i have said that i do not depart until after the feast of flora," he remarked. "the men of the sea do not expect fair winds before three days," marsyas replied, "wherefore we must abide until after the feast." "but my raiment is not prepared," agrippa protested. "thou goest hence, my lord, to rome, to be dressed by the masters of the science of raiment," marsyas assured him. classicus raised his head and addressed to the essene the first remark since the memorable night of marsyas' arrival in alexandria. "what a game it is," he opined amiably, "to see thee managing this slippery herod!" agrippa flushed angrily, but marsyas did not await the retort. "my brother's pardon," he said, "but the herod has fine discrimination between cares becoming his exalted place, and the labors of a steward." agrippa's face relaxed, but classicus broke off the swinging end of a vine that reached over his shoulder and slowly pulled it to pieces. junia sitting next to marsyas turned to him. "so thou wilt follow flora?" she asked. "no." "why?" she insisted, smiling. "thou must go to rome, where flora runs every day. wilt thou turn thy back upon egypt's joy and see only italy's?" "is rome so much worse than alexandria?" "not worse; only more pronounced. there is more of rome; the world gets its impulse there. so much is done; so many are doing. and, by the caprice of the destinies, thou art to see rome more than commonly employed." "how?" he asked. by this time, the others were talking and the two spoke unheard together. "hist! i tell it under my breath, because the noble proconsul is burdened with the great responsibility of declaring the emperor's deathlessness, and i would not contradict him aloud. but tiberius is old, old--and rome casts about for his successor. but chance hath it that interest hath uncoupled the two eyes so that the singleness of sight is divided. 'look right,' saith one; 'look left,' saith the other, and each looking his own way reviles his fellow and creates disturbance in the head. but it behooves thee, gentle jew, to bid thine eyes contemplate tiberius, to do oriental obeisance and say as the persians say; 'o king, live for ever!" "but yesterday, thou didst cast a kindly light over the world's hardness. tear it not away thus soon and frighten me with the fierce power against which i must shortly go and demand tribute," he protested lightly. she took down her arms, clasped back of her head, to look at him. "light-hearted eremite!" she chid. "never a jew but believed that all the happenings in the world happen in jerusalem--that there is nothing else to come to pass after jerusalem's full catalogue of possibilities is exhausted. but i tell thee that, compared to rome, jerusalem is an unwatered spot in the desert where once in a century a loping jackal passes by to break its eventlessness." "lady," he said with his old gravity, "judea is a roman province. is rome harsher to her citizens than she is with her subjugated peoples?" "thou art nearer the executive seat; under the eye of power itself. icarus, on his waxen wings, was unsafe enough in the daylight; but he was undone by soaring too close to the sun!" "what shall i do, then?" he asked. "attach thyself to a power; get behind the buckler of another's strength!" "power is not offering its protection for nothing; what have i to give in exchange for it?" almost inadvertently, she let her eyes run over him, and seemed impelled to say the words that leaped to her lips. but she recovered herself in time. "it is a generous world," she said, "and such as thou shall not go friendless; depend upon it!" when marsyas glanced up, his eyes rested on lydia's, and for a moment he was held in silence by the faint darkening of distress that he saw there. something wild and sweet and painful struggled in his breast and fell quiet so quickly that he sat with his lips parted and his gaze fixed until the alabarch's daughter dropped her eyes. "i heard thee speak of rome," she said. "after thy labor is done, wilt thou remain there?" "no," he answered slowly, "i return to en-gadi." "en-gadi," junia repeated. "where is that and why shouldst thou go there?" "it is the city of the essenes, a city of retreat. it is in the judean desert on the margin of the dead sea." "after rome, that!" junia cried. but lydia said nothing and marsyas, gazing at her in hope of discovering some little deprecation, some little invitation to remain in the world, forgot that the roman woman had spoken. classicus, who had been a quiet observer of the few words spoken between the essene and the alabarch's daughter, drew himself up from his lounging attitude. "to en-gadi?" he repeated, attracting the attention of the others, who had not failed to note his sudden interest in marsyas. "why?" "i am an essene fallen into misfortune; but once an essene, an essene always," marsyas answered. "an essene?" the philosopher observed. then after a little silence he began again. "in alexandria, we live less rigorously than in judea, even too little so, we discover at times. wherefore it is needful that we watch that no further lapse is made, which will carry us into lawlessness." "ye are lax, yet wary that ye be not more lax?" marsyas commented perfunctorily. "even so. from agrippa's lips, we learn that thou hast led a precarious life of late; an eventful, even adventurous life: that thou hast been accused and hast escaped arrest. thou wilt pardon my familiarity with thine own affairs." "go on," said marsyas. "in alexandria--even in alexandria, of late, the jews have resolved not to entertain heretics--" "in alexandria, the extreme ye will risk in hospitality is one simply accused." "i commend thy discernment. but we separate ourselves from the convicted." "so it is done in judea. but continue." classicus waited for an expectant silence. "thou carryest about thee," he said, "an emblem which none but a nazarene owns." marsyas contemplated classicus very calmly. he had been accused of apostasy before, but by one whose every impulse had root in irrational fanaticism. he had not expected this romanized jew to become zealous for the faith; instead, he knew that classicus would have pursued none other for suspicion, but himself. why? he glanced at lydia. alarm and protest were written on every feature. classicus saw that she was prepared to defend marsyas and his face hardened. then the essene understood! a flush of warm color swept over his face. without a word he put his hand into his robes and drew forth and laid upon his palm the little cedar crucifix. cypros uttered a little sound of fright; agrippa whirled upon marsyas with frank amazement on his face. after a moment's intent contemplation of the essene's face, junia settled back into her easy attitude and smiled. lydia sprang up; yet before the rush of precipitate speech reached her lips, there came, imperative and distinct, marsyas' telepathic demand on her attention. tender but commanding, his dark eyes rested upon her. "thou shall not betray thyself for me!" they said. "thou shalt not bring sorrow to thy father's heart and disaster upon thy head! thou shalt keep silence, and permit me to defend thee! i command thee; thou canst do naught else but obey!" she wavered, her cheeks suffused, and her eyes fell. when she lifted them again, they were flashing with tears. a moment, and she slipped past her guests into the house. the alabarch broke the startled silence; he had turned almost wrathfully upon classicus. "it seems," he exclaimed, "that thou hast needlessly broadened thine interests into matters which once did not concern thee!" "good my father," classicus responded, "thou hast lost two sons already to idolatry and false doctrines. and thy lovely daughter, thou seest, is no more secure from the seductions of an attractive apostasy than were they!" "well?" marsyas asked quietly. "it is not needful to point the man of discernment to his duty," classicus returned. "methinks," said marsyas, rising, "that the sharp point of a pretext urges me out of alexandria, as it did in judea. thou hast had no scruples," he continued, turning to agrippa, "thus far in accepting the companionship of an accused man, so i do not expect to be cast off now." "but," agrippa protested, stammering in his surprise and perplexity, "acquit thyself, marsyas. thou art no nazarene!" "no charge so light to lift as this, my lord," marsyas answered. "yet even for thy favor i will not do it!" agrippa looked doubtful, and the alabarch exclaimed with deep regret: "what difficulty thou settest in the way of my debt to thee! thou, to whom i owe my daughter's life!" "yet have a little faith in me," marsyas said to him. "and for more than i am given lief to recount, i am thy debtor!" he put the crucifix into the folds of his garments. "i am prepared to go to rome, even now," he added to agrippa. "but--i would stay until after the feast of flora," the prince objected stubbornly. cypros was breaking in, affrightedly, when flaccus interrupted. "come! come!" he said, with a bluff assumption of good nature. "thou art not banished from the city, young man! i am legate over alexandria, and a conscienceless pagan, wherefore thou hast not offended my gods nor done aught to deserve my disfavor. get thee down to rhacotis among thy friends--or thine enemies--till the herod hath diverted himself with flora, and go thy way to rome! what a tragedy thou makest of nothing tragic!" "o son of mars," marsyas said to himself, "i do not build on finding asylum there. never a pitfall but is baited with invitation!" but cypros turned to the proconsul, her face glowing with thankfulness under her tears. "is it pleasing to thee, lady?" the proconsul asked jovially. "twice, thrice thou hast been my friend!" she cried. "i shall go," said marsyas. "remember, my lord prince, these many things which i and others suffer add to the certainty that thou shalt be called to pay my debt against saul of tarsus, one day! three days hence, thou and i shall sail for rome!" he saluted the company and passed out of the garden. "perchance," said flaccus dryly, with his peculiar aptitude for insinuation, "an officer should conduct him to this nest of apostates." "he will go, never fear!" cypros declared, brushing away tears. "by ate! the boy is spectacular," agrippa vowed suddenly. "he is no nazarene! i know how he came by that unholy amulet. it is a relic of that young heretic friend of his, whom they stoned in jerusalem!" but junia found immense amusement in that surmise. presently, she laughed outright. "o classicus, what a blunderer thou art! right or wrong, thou hast brought down the ladies' wrath, not upon the comely essene, but upon thine own head for abusing him!" chapter xviii the ransom marsyas passed up to his room to put his belongings together. the sound of his movements within reached lydia in her refuge, and, when he came forth, she stood in the gloom of the hall without, awaiting him. moved with a little fear of her reproach, he went to her, with extended hands. "what have i done?" she whispered. "thou hast done nothing," he said quickly. "i blame myself for keeping the amulet about me, when i should have destroyed it. but i could not--i have not yet; because--it is thine!" "but i kept silence--i who owned the crucifix--" "i made thee keep silence!" "but what have they said to thee; what wilt thou do?" she insisted. "i go without more obloquy than i brought hither with me; i was accused, before; i could stand further accusation, for thy sake! they have said nothing; done nothing--i go to rhacotis, to await the departure of agrippa, who goes to rome at the end of three days--nay; peace!" he broke off, as a momentous resolution gathered in her pale face. "thou wilt keep silence, else i do this thing in vain!" "i will not slander myself!" she cried. "i am not afraid to confess my fault--" "but thou shall not do it!" he declared. "the punishment for it would not be alone for thyself! choose between the quiet of thy conscience and the peace and pride of thy father! bethink thee, the inestimable harm thou canst do by this thing! be not deceived that the story of thy lapse would be kept under thy father's roof. that ignoble pagan governor below has no care for thy sweet fame! he would tell it; thy maidens would hear of it and fear thee or follow thee! thy father's government over his people would be weakened; the elders of the synagogue would question him--lydia, suffer the little hurt of conscience for thine own account, rather than afflict many for thy pride's sake!" her small hands, white in the darkness of the corridor, were twisted about each other in distress. marsyas' pity was stirred to the deepest. "how unhappy thou hast been!" he said, touching upon her apostasy. "give over thy wavering and be the true daughter of god, once more! let us destroy this evil amulet!" he plucked the crucifix from his tunic and caught it between his hands to break it, when she sprang toward him and seized his wrists. "do not so!" she besought, her eyes large with fright. he had forced her to defend it, and she had stood to the breach; he had proved the gravity of her disaffection for the faith of abraham. "why wilt thou endanger thyself for this social drift?" he demanded passionately. "lydia! how canst thou turn from the faith of thy fathers?" "i--i am not worthy to be a nazarene!" she answered. "they are forbidden to enact a falsehood!" "let be; i do not care for their philosophy; it is like the law of rome.--an empty armor that any knave can wear. but i urge thee to behold what misery thou invitest upon thyself! what will come of it? immortal as thou art in soul, thou canst not keep alive the single spark of wisdom in the ashes of their folly; thou canst not save them against the combined vengeance of the whole world! but thou canst be disgraced with them, persecuted with them, and die with them! unhallowed the day that ever classicus spoke their name to thee! cursed be his words! may the lord treasure them up against him--!" "hush! hush!" she whispered. he became calm with an effort. "lydia," he began after a pause, "it is a poor intelligence that can not foresee as ably as the augurs. one successful life gives opportunity, to all that spring from it, to be successful; a failure scatters the seed of misfortune through all its blood. choose thou for thyself and thou choosest for a nation which comes after thee. i see thee radiant, crowned, worshiped; and if they who come up under thy guidance walk as thou dost walk, lydia shall give queens unto principalities and rulers unto satrapies. these be days when women of virtue and women of remark; women of wisdom are remembered women. and thou, virtuous, wise and noble--the empresses of coming cæsars will assume thy name to conceal their tarnishment under a badge of luster! this on one hand. on the other thou shalt flee from the stones of the rabble, come unto the humiliation of thy womanhood and the agony of thy body in the torture-cell, and die like a criminal!" she shrank away with a quivering sound and flung her hands over her ears. he caught her and drew her close, until she all but rested on his breast. "lydia, naught but mine extremity could make me speak thus to thee," he said tremulously and in a passion of appeal. "if the words be hideous, let the actualities that they mean warn thee in time!" "but--thou dost not understand," she faltered, drawing away from him. "i do understand; through anguish and rancor and suffering, i have learned. must i give all to the vengeance of god, who visiteth apostates for their iniquity? lydia, depart not from the righteous religion, i implore thee. behold its great age," he went on, speaking rapidly and with quickened breath, "behold its history, its monuments, its achievements, its great exponents, its infallibility! the rest of the world was an unimagined futurity when an able son of thy race was minister to pharaoh and lord over the whole land of egypt. the godly kings of thy people were poets and musicians when pindar's and homer's ancestors were still peloponnesian fauns with horns in their hair. before isis and osiris, before bel and astarte, thy god was molding universes and hanging stars in the sky. and lo! the sons of the pharaohs are wasted weaklings, fit only for slaves; the chaldees are dust in the dust of their cities; babylonia is hunting-ground for jackals and the perch of bats; rome--even rome's greatness hath returned into the sinews of her hills, but there is no decadence in israel, no weakness in her god! aid not in the perversion of her ancient faith--thou who art the incarnation of her queens--" he halted, but only for an instant, in which he seemed to throw off recurring restraint and drove on: "david did not seek for one more lovely, nor solomon for one more wise! truth, even truth demands dear tribute when it takes a life. for a mere scintillation of verity, wilt thou die?" "i--i fear not," she answered painfully. "i--who could be affrighted out of telling a truth!" not his prayer, but the nazarene's teaching had weight with her, at that moment! "all thy hazard of life and fame for their vague philosophy," he cried, "and not one stir of pity for me!" there was a moment of complete silence; then she lifted her face. "thou knowest better," she said, "thou, who labored in vain with stephen, who loved thee!" his heart contracted; for a moment he entertained as practicable a resolve to stay stubbornly under the alabarch's roof until he had broken the determination of this sweet erring girl to destroy herself. he drew in his breath to speak, but the futileness of his words occurred to him. again, he had a thought of telling the alabarch privately of his daughter's peril, but instantly doubted that the good old jew could move her. while he debated desperately with himself, she drew, nearer to him. "be not angry with me! if thou leavest alexandria in three days, it may be that i--shall not see thee again--" "so i am dismissed to know no rest until i have brought saul of tarsus low, for thy sake, as well as for stephen's!" he knew at the next breath that he had hurt her, and repented. "i shall see thee once more," he said hurriedly, feeling that he dared not make retraction. he took up the pilgrim's wallet containing his belongings, and put out his hand to her. she took it, so wistfully, so sorrowfully, that a wave of compunction swept over him. bending low, he pressed his lips to her palm, and hastened, full of agitation, out of the alabarch's house. the preparations for the feast of flora had been brought to completeness. the funds for the lavish display had come out of the taxes upon provinces, the flamens managed it, the patricians and the rich patronized it and all alexandria, whether rich or poor, free or enslaved, plunged into its celebration with recklessness and relish. the dwellers of the regio judæorum took no part in the celebration, but marsyas saw that a spirit of interest invaded the district, even to the doors of the great synagogue. mothers in israel put aside the wimples over their faces when they met in the narrow passages or the market-places to talk of the recurring abomination in lowered voices and with sidelong glances to see if the velvet-eyed children, who clung to their garments, heard. fathers in israel, rabbis and constabularies were abroad to make preparation against the local characteristic which tended to turn every popular gathering into a demonstration against the jews. the bloody uproar of the preceding year was fresh in the fear of the people, and though lysimachus had spread abroad the promise of the proconsul, the regio judæorum had cause to be doubtful of the favor of a former persecutor. but as the young man entered the gentile portion of the city, he saw that, from the lochias to the gate of the necropolis, alexandria was no longer a city of normal life and labor but a play-ground for revel and lawlessness. the two main avenues which crossed the city toward the four cardinal points were cleared of traffic and the marks of wheel and hoof were stamped out by crowds that filled the roadways. the crowding glories of alexandrian architecture which lined these noble highways--temples, palaces, theaters, baths, gymnasia, stadia and fora, high marks of both greek and roman society--were wreathed, pillar and plinth, with laurel and roses, lilies and myrtle, nelumbo and lotus. fountains gave up perfumed water; aromatic gums in bowls set upon staves fumed and burned and were filling the dead airs of the alexandrian calm with oriental musks; everywhere were the reedy shrilling of pipe, the tinkle of castanet, the mellow notes of flutes and the muttering of drums. wine was flowing like water; immense public feasts were in progress, at which droves of sheep and oxen were served to gathered multitudes, which were never full-fed except at flora's bounty. processions were streaming along the streets, meeting at intersections to romp, break up in revel and end in excess. tens of thousands with one impulse, one law, frolicked, fought, drank, danced, sang, piped, wooed, forgot everything, grudges and all, except flora and her license and bounty. the citizens were no longer the descendants of quirites, remnant of the pharaohs or the macedonian kings, but satyrs, fauns, bacchantes, nymphs, mimes and harlequins. marsyas kept away from the crowds and went by deserted paths toward rhacotis. he knew without inquiry where to find the nazarene quarter. it was marked by the strange, strained silence that hovers over houses where life is not secure, by poverty, by orderliness, by the patient faces of the humble dwellers, by the brotherly greeting that the few citizens gave him as he approached. he saw many of the garrison loitering about, but they permitted him to pass without notice. the roar of the merrymaking without swept into the quiet passages like a titanic purr of satisfaction. the young man had grown away from his toleration of solitude. his essenic training had suffered change; its usages, at variance with his nature, had become difficult as soon as the opportunity for more congenial habits had presented itself. only a few weeks before, he could voyage the giant breadth of the mediterranean, excluding himself from the contaminating nazarenes, without effort. now, he asked himself how he was to live among these people for three days. he found the quarter absolutely packed with people, and realized then how many followers of jesus of nazareth there were in alexandria, and how thoroughly flaccus had weeded them out of the rest of the city. he looked about him, grew impatient, and, with the ready invention of a man who has lived only by devices for the past many months, made up his mind to house himself elsewhere than in the crowded nazarene quarter. "i will go to the ship," he said to himself. "it is victualed and ready for the prince's arrival to weigh anchor. no one but my seamen need know that i am there, and they will be too intent on flora to speak of me abroad in the city!" he turned promptly and made his way down the quarter toward the harbor. within sound of the waters lapping on the wharf piling, a soldier of the city garrison stepped into his way. "back!" he said harshly. marsyas stopped. "why may i not pass?" he demanded. "none passes from this rebel's nest hereafter!" chapter xix the deliverance there followed time for diverse and earnest meditation for marsyas: he criticized himself sarcastically, for permitting himself to be so easily entrapped, and cast about him for means of escape. he found by successive trials that the siege was perfect. half of alexandria's garrison had been posted about the district. the more he considered his predicament, the more an atmosphere of impending danger weighted the air of the nazarene community. he did not seek the hospitality of the nazarenes, because he had not come to the point of admitting that he was to remain among them. at nightfall, while the roar of the reveling city without swept over the community, he hoped to find some unguarded spot in the roman lines, but his hope was vain. with his attention thus forced upon the people penned in with him, he began to wonder if there might not yet be some profit in counsel with his fellows, hemmed in for some purpose by flaccus. he found the inhabitants gathered in a broad space in one of the streets, where at one time a statue or a fountain might have stood, but after a few minutes' listening, he heard only prayers and words of submission to the unknown peril threatening them. angry and disappointed he flung himself away from the gathering, to spend the night in the streets. but after the first gust of his anger, it was brought home to him very strongly, that these people were gifted with a new courage, the courage of submission--to him the most mysterious and impossible of powers. led from this idle conclusion into yet deeper contemplation of the nazarene character, he found himself admitting astonishing evidences in their favor. he had known not a few of them. stephen had been beatified, the most exalted, yet the sweetest character that he had ever known. lydia, wavering and hesitating between judaism and the faith of jesus of nazareth, struggled with fine points of conscience, and persisted, in the face of terror,--the most potent controlling agent, marsyas had believed, over the spirit of womanhood. the nazarene body at ptolemais had displayed before him a humanness in subjection, that, in spite of his own resolute disposition, seemed triumphant, after all. they had preached peace, and had maintained it in the face of the most trying circumstances. on ship-board, he had been shown that they were long-suffering. about him now, while alexandria rioted and reveled in excess, their order and decorum were highly attractive. these were excellences that he did not willingly see; circumstances and environment had forced their recognition upon him. at a late hour, he was sought and found by their pastor, the tall old teacher, whom he had come to consider as a man whom, for his own spiritual welfare, he should shun. "young brother," the pastor said, "thou art without shelter here, and imprisoned among us. i respect thy wish to be left to thyself, yet we can not see thee unhoused. i have a cell in yonder ruined wall; it is solitary and secluded. do thou take it, and i shall find shelter among my people." marsyas felt his cheeks grow hot, under the cover of the night. "i thank thee," he responded, "but i am here only for a little time. i am young and hardy; i will not turn thee out of thy shelter." "if thy time with us is stated, thou art fortunate. alexandria hath not set her limit upon our imprisonment. yet, i shall find a niche in the house of one of my people; be not ashamed to take my place." without waiting for the young man to protest, the nazarene signed him to follow, and led on through the dark to the place indicated--the remnant of an ancient house--a single standing wall of earth, sufficiently thick to be excavated to form a shallow cave. there was room enough for a pallet of straw within, and a reed matting hung before the opening. the pastor bade the young man enter, blessed him and disappeared. marsyas sat down in the cramped burrow, and, resting his head on his hands and his elbows on his knees, said to himself, in discomfiture: "beshrew the enemy that permits you to find no fault in him!" it was not the last time in the memorable three days of imprisonment that he frowned and deprecated the excellence of his hosts. he accepted their simple hospitality in moody helplessness, and spent his time either hovering on the outskirts of their nightly meetings, or vainly searching for a plan to escape. he noted finally that they stinted themselves food, but gave him his usual share; water appeared less often and less plentiful. the pastor was not less confident, but more withdrawn within himself: the elders became more grave, the people, oppressed and prayerful. at times, when the gradual growth of distress became more apparent, marsyas walked apart and chid himself for his resourcelessness. "i am another mouth to feed, among these people," he declared. "and by the testimony of mine own instinct, i am not the least cause of that which hath thrown this siege about them! i will get out!" he began at sunset the second day to discover the extent of the besieged quarter and sound every point for the strength of its particular blockade. he found that the nazarene portion of rhacotis stretched from the landings of the bay inland to a series of granaries where rhacotis, in its smaller days, had built receptacles for the wheat which the rustics brought for shipping. to the west it ended against a stockade for cattle, upon which mounted sentries could overlook a great deal of the quarter. to the east, the limit was a compact row of well-built houses, remnants of the egyptian aristocratic portion in alexander's time. the streets intersecting the row and leading into pagan rhacotis were each closed by a sentry. after his investigations, marsyas felt that here was the weakest spot in the siege. central in the row was a tall structure, with ruined clay pylons, blank of wall and, except for supporting beams, roofless. it had been a temple, but was now a dwelling, a veritable warren since the nazarenes were all driven to occupy a portion which could shelter only a fifth of the number comfortably. upon this structure, marsyas' eye rested. either it would be closely watched from without or not at all. it depended upon the features of the wall fronting on the street at the rear, in which the sentries were posted. for once he blessed a nazarene night-gathering, when he saw family after family emerge from the tunnel-like doors of the temple-house and proceed silently toward the meeting of their brethren in the street below. a long time after the last emerged and disappeared into the dark, marsyas crossed to the doors and knocked. for a moment after his first trial, he listened lest there be an answer. he knocked more loudly a second time, and, after the third, he opened the unlocked doors, and, putting in his head, called. the heated interior was totally dark and silent. he stepped in and closed the doors behind him. when at last his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw that he was in a single immense chamber; the entire interior of the old temple was unbroken by partition of any kind. above him, he saw the crossing of great palm-trunks, bracing the walls, and over them the blue arch of the night. at the rear, the starlight showed him the wall abutting the street of the sentries. it was absolutely blank and fully thirty feet in height. marsyas sighed and shook his head. though he made the leap in safety, he could not alight without noise enough to attract the whole garrison to the spot. but, determined to make his investigation thorough before he surrendered the scheme as hopeless, he felt about the great chamber and stumbled on a rude ladder leaning against a side-wall. he climbed it, to find that it reached to a ledge, where the deeper lower half of the wall was surmounted by a clerestory just half its thickness. he found here rows of straw pallets where the overflow of nazarenes took refuge by night. he pulled up his ladder, set it on the ledge and climbed again, finding himself at the uppermost rung within reach of one of the palm-trunks. he seized it, tried it for solidity and drew himself up on the top of the wall. fearing detection by the sentries more than the return of the householders, he crept with caution to the angle at the rear, and looked down into the street. he located two sentries, but no nearer the back of the temple than the two streets opening into the other several yards away to the north and south. he lay still to note the direction of their post and found that, in truth, they turned just under him. at a point half-way between either end of their walk, they were more than two hundred paces apart. but marsyas looked down the sheer wall. he could not possibly accomplish it without injury or discovery or both. with a heavy heart he retraced his steps, descended into the old temple and made his way toward the doors. before he reached them, he frightened himself by stumbling upon a huge light object that rolled away toward the entrance. he followed cautiously, and touched it again while fumbling for the latch. he felt of it, and finally, swinging the door open, saw by the starlight that it was a huge hamper of twisted palm-fiber, tall enough to contain a man and wide enough for two. he set the thing aside and went out into the night. to-morrow was the last day of his confinement, but he did not expect liberty. he did not doubt that the city meditated the destruction of the nazarenes, nor that flaccus would permit him to be overlooked in the general slaughter. not the least of his fears was that lydia might be thrust among them at any moment, to share the fate he had striven so hard to avert from her. he returned to his cave in the ruined wall, and lay down on his matting, not to sleep, nor even to plan intelligently, but to submit to his distress. at high noon the third day, on the summit of the serapeum in egyptian rhacotis, there appeared a slender figure in the burnoose of an arab. five hundred feet distant, in the beleaguered nazarene settlement, a woman stood in her doorway to pray, that the earthen roof might not be between her supplication and the master in heaven. she saw the microscopic figure on the pylon of the temple, but daily a priest came there to worship the sun. she saw the figure lift and extend its arms, presently, but that was part of the idolatrous ritual, she thought. she dropped her eyes to the crucifix in her hands and her lips moved slowly. at that instant, at her feet, as a thunderbolt strikes from the clouds, an arrow plunged half its length into the hard sand, and leaned, quivering strongly toward the tiny shape on the summit of the pylon. the nazarene woman dropped her crucifix and shrieked. the slow fisher-husband appeared beside her, and, seeing the fallen cross, picked it up with fumbling fingers, muttering an exclamation of remonstrance. "look!" the nazarene woman cried, pointing to the half-buried bolt, still quivering. the fisherman gazed at it. "whence came it?" he asked. the trembling woman shook her head and clasped and unclasped her hands. "an affront from the heathen," the man said. "it was despatched to murder thee. the lord's hand stayed it; blessed be his name!" he plucked the arrow with an effort from the sand, and looked at it. "it is a witness of the master's care; let us take it to the pastor," he suggested. the trembling woman followed her husband as he stepped into the street and raised her eyes to give thanks. she saw that the figure on the summit of the pylon was gone. the two found the leader of their flock, sitting outside an overcrowded house, bending over a half-finished basket of reeds. beside him was one complete; at the other hand were his working materials. "greeting, children, in christ's name," he said. "greeting, lord; praise to god in the highest!" the nazarene woman dropped to her knees, and her husband, extending the arrow in agitation, stumbled through their story. "may his name be glorified for ever," the woman murmured at the end. but the pastor took the arrow and examined it. it was uncommon; the story was uncommon, and he believed that there was more than a wanton attempt at murder in its coming. the bolt was tipped with a pointed flint, and feathered with three long, delicate papyrus cases, one dark, two white. the pastor felt of one of the white feathers, and presently ripped it off the shaft. it opened in his hand. within was lettering. after a little puzzled study of it, he shook his head and put it down. he loosened the other from the transparent gum and opened it. written in another hand were the following words in greek: "to the nazarene to whom this cometh: "deliver the arrow unto the young jew, marsyas, who dwells among you, but is not of your number." the pastor took up the arrow and the papyrus and arose at once. "verily, a sending, but it is not for us. abide here until i deliver it to him that expects it." he turned toward the ruined wall where marsyas secluded himself. the pastor knocked on the dried earth wall without the cave, and the matting was thrust aside. the young jew stood there. "i bring thee a message from without," the pastor said at once. "peace and the love of christ enter thy heart and uphold thee." he put the arrow into the young man's hand and saluting him with the sign of the cross, went his way. "what blind incaution," marsyas said, after he had stared in astonishment at the things delivered him. "a message! how does he know that he does not bear to me treachery against his people, and his undoing!" but he sat down and undid the white case. "that is agrippa's writing!" he declared after he had read it. he took up the other. the writing was in sanskrit. "o white brother:" it ran; "this by an arrow from the strong bow of thy lord prince. him i compelled. come forth from among the nazarenes! deliver thyself, by nightfall, in the pure name of her whom thou lovest! come ere that time, if thou canst, but fail not, otherwise, to be in the forefront of flora's followers! be prepared to possess her! "fail not, by all the gods! "vasti, by the hand of khosru, priest to siva." marsyas seized the writing with both hands and sprang up; reread it with straining eyes; walked the two steps permitted him in his cave over and over again; or leaned against the earthen wall to think. in the pure name of her whom he loved! lydia? he felt his essenic self dissolve in a flood of glad confusion, for the moment; instead of self-reproach, he felt more joy than he ever hoped to know in a life devoted to vengeance; instead of guilt, an uplift that separated him for an instant from even his terror for the rapture of contemplating lydia. then the grave alarm that the bayadere's letter aroused possessed him. a rereading filled him with consternation. the unrevealed peril that he was to avert, the intimation that lydia was endangered, the practically insurmountable obstacles in the way of his escape, shook him strongly in his self-control. he made no plans, for desperate conditions did not admit of formulated action. to pass outposts of half a cohort of brawny guards offered success only by a miracle, and the miraculous is not methodical. presently, he burst out of his burrow and tramped through the bright hours of the afternoon, cursing the sun for its deadly haste to get under the rim of the world, and dizzy with the pressure of terror and anxiety. near the softening hours of the latter part of the day, while the awakening revel roared louder in the distance, he stopped before the ancient temple. the great hamper stood without the heavy entrance with three little nazarene children tying ropes to the interstices between the fibers to pull it after them like a wagon. marsyas looked at the hamper, glanced with intent eyes at the front wall,--a duplicate, except for the entrance, of the rear one,--and then rushed away in search of ananias, the pastor. he found the pastor sitting outside the house that had given him refuge, cutting soles for sandals from a hide that lay by his side. the nazarene raised a face so kindly and interested that the young man dropped down beside him and blundered through his story, in his haste to lay the plan for escape before the old man. "at sunset," he hurried on, "or when the night is sufficiently heavy to hide us, i can be let down in the hamper by the rear wall of the old temple--if thou wilt bid some of thy congregation to help me! i pray thee--let not thy belief deny me this help, for the life of my beloved, or mayhap her sweet womanhood, dependeth upon my escape!" he clasped his hands, and gazed with beseeching eyes into the pastor's face. he did not permit himself to think what he would do if the old man denied him. "it is manifest," ananias said, after a pause for thought, "that only nazarenes are to be confined herein. and thou, being a jew, art here under false imprisonment. we shall not be glad to have thee suffer with us." "yes, yes!" marsyas cried. "i am falsely accused, and thou wilt avert an injustice--nay, by the holy death of the prophets!" he broke off, "if i could bear you all to refuge after me, i would do it!" "it is the spirit of christ in thee, my son; nourish it! yet be not distressed for our sake; he who holdeth the world in the hollow of his hand is with us." marsyas awaited anxiously the old man's further speech, when he lapsed into silence after his confident claim of divine protection. "give us the plan, my son, and we will help thee," he said at last. marsyas took the old man's hand and lifted it impulsively to his lips. while yet the serapeum was crowned with pale light, but the more squalid streets were blackening, marsyas, led by ananias, came to the old temple-house, and briefly unfolded his plan to three stalwart young gentiles, who had turned their backs upon jove and assumed the grace of jesus in their hearts. the hamper with which the children had played all day was brought. three troll-lines, each forty feet in length and borrowed from the fisher nazarenes who lived along the bay, were securely knotted in three slits about the rim of the basket. then, waiting only for the rapidly rising dusk, marsyas, the three young gentiles and the pastor climbed cautiously to the top of the side-wall of the old structure, and pulled up the hamper after them. at the angle in the rear, marsyas, who led the way, stopped. below it was already night, and he could hear the steps of the sentries in the echoing passage. he had not planned how he should pass them after his descent, but the houses opposite were dark and he did not look for interference, if he took refuge among them. he stepped into the hamper, and the three young men laid hold on the ropes. the pastor spread his hands in blessing over marsyas' head, and when the sound of the sentries' footsteps was faintest, the hamper, with little sound and at cautious speed, was let down the steep wall. it touched the sand with a grinding sound. marsyas leaped out, jerked one of the ropes in signal and the hamper sprang aloft. with a muttered blessing on the heads of the apostates, marsyas leaped across the narrow street, to the shadows of the other houses. creeping from porch to porch with the sheltering shade of overhanging roofs upon him, he passed guard after guard, until the row finally ended and the open space between him and safety on the bay showed up a line of soldiers guarding the water-front. the distance was not great, and success thus far had made marsyas strong. with a prayer to the god of those who help themselves, he burst from the passage into the great open of the docking and sped straight for the bay. instantly a howl went up, a pilum launched after him, shot over his shoulder, the rush of twenty mailed feet came in pursuit, swords, spears and axes flew and fell behind him, but panting and unfaltering he rushed straight to the edge of the wharf and dropped out of sight into the bay. the guards came after him, and hanging over the wharf looked down for him to come up. they saw the circles of water widen and widen, grow stiller and stiller, and finally cease to move, but the head for which they looked did not rise. meanwhile marsyas, native of galilee and lover of her blue sea, arose between sleeping boats far out into the bay. he caught a chain and clung while he drew breath and rested. not a vessel was manned; every seaman, officer and passenger had gone ashore to follow flora. presently, he looked about and took his bearings. there through a darkening lane of water, a hundred feet long, he made out the ornate aplustre of agrippa's ship. he let himself down into the water again, and, swimming around to port, away from land, climbed by her anchor-chains and got upon deck. the ship was wholly silent and deserted. none was there to ask why he came so unconventionally aboard. he went to the cabin prepared for the prince's reception, and with steward keys still fast to his belt let himself in and prepared to return to alexandria. chapter xx the feast of flora marsyas had assumed pagan dress, bound a scarlet ribbon for a fillet about his head, and flung a scarlet cloak over his tunic, and so, identified with the revelers, he safely entered the city. of the first he met on the brilliantly lighted wharves, he inquired, as a stranger, where he should find the night's celebration. the citizens he addressed, intoxicated with revel, smote him with palm-leaves or thyrsi and haled him with them, as their fellow, seeking flora. they skirted the regio judæorum toward the northwest and swept him along toward the serapeum. ever the streets opened up, more brilliantly lighted, more thickly crowded, more boisterously noisy; ever the nucleus of the crowd that had encompassed him increased and thickened and spread, until he was in the heart of a hurrying multitude. ever they shouted their indefinite anticipations, boasts of their favor with flora, hopes that the run would be diverting, threats that were half-jocular, half in earnest. and some of them, drunk with anarchy, made hysterical, inarticulate, yelping cries, like dogs on a heated trail. and so, with their silent fellow among them, they went, started into an easy trot, and unhindered, like waters turning over a fall. the strange, half-mad revelry did not make for reassurance in marsyas. his unexplained fears swept over him from time to time like a chill, and an unspeakable hatred for the unwieldy host about him, as well as the protest of his caution against the quick pace they had set, moved him to separate himself from them as soon as he might. flora was to begin her flight from the serapeum, but because the grove was most beautiful and the temple most rich, the aristocrats of the city had repaired thither to separate themselves from _hoi polloi_, and had builded for themselves the city of love. marsyas knew that superior advantages were always for the rich man, and he, who had to be in the forefront of flora's van, had to gather unto himself the most propitious opportunities. so while the riot of plebeians into which he had been absorbed streamed contentedly on to its own lowly place, marsyas worked his way out of the crowd and approached the city of love. the glow of its lights, breaking through low-hanging branches and pillared avenues of tree-trunks, reached marsyas with its music, its shouts and its tumult, but its inhabitants were shut away behind foliage, that their doings might be screened from the unqualified. the young man looked here and there for a way to enter, but the cunningly extended grove reached from street to street and blocked his passage. drawing closer he saw that a cordon of soldiers from the city garrison had been thrown around the grove for protection during revels. at that moment, some one whispered in his ear. "thou art in time, white brother. continue and fail not!" he looked to catch a glimpse of vasti, the bayadere, at his side. she was wrapped from head to heel in a murky red silk, like a fire-illumined tissue of smoke. he exclaimed to himself that this was no old woman, nor yet one young. there was too much lissome grace in the sinuous figure, and too much unearthly wisdom in the dark mysterious face. an instant and she had disappeared like a spirit. a little dazed he turned to follow his approved course, but stopped, seeing that many humbler folk who had preceded him were halted and driven away. the benefits of the grove were distinctly for those who came with a following and in chariots. the cars of the rich were constantly passing through the line of guards; the numbers were greatly increasing, and presently became congested. the shouts of the impatient waiting ones, the pawing of the horses and the calls of the slaves running hither and thither, added uproar to the lines which closed in around him, until finally he could go neither forward nor backward. while he turned this way and that for an avenue of escape, he found that he stood beside a shell of a chariot, with junia and justin classicus seated within. classicus was not given readily to seeing people afoot, and marsyas stepped hastily out of view. but the roman woman had already discovered him. he saw her speak to classicus, and, while he waited in resentment to be pointed out, classicus leaped lightly out of the car, and, forcing his way through a crush of slaves, got up beside another, whom marsyas saw to be agrippa. then junia leaned down to him. "come up; thou art safe," she said. "i will not betray thee. what was it, reason or repentance that freed thee?" her eyes sparkled and her breath came and went quickly between her parted lips. "an errand," he answered, "and the soldiers will not let me pass." "an errand? flora's errand? nay, but thou art an essene. come up, i say. the soldiers must pass thee if i bid them." with thanks on his lips he stepped in beside her and was presently driven without further interruption through the line of sentries, to the circle of abandoned chariots within. there, alighting, the young man found himself deftly thrust into the crowd by junia to avoid meeting the proconsul or justin classicus. she lost herself with him, and entirely obscured from any he had ever seen before, they proceeded. "i have delivered thee an evil charge," she said, and there was a note of regret in her voice. "yesterday and the day before they would have been less objectionable, and seeing them hour by hour thou shouldst have become gradually accustomed to their aberration. but suddenly exposed to this night's work, thy soul will be covered with confusion." marsyas smiled awkwardly. the woman could not understand that nothing short of the motive that had actuated him could have moved him to follow flora; neither did he wish her to rest under the self-blame that she had urged him. "i do not go of mine own will, nor even thine," he answered. "i was summoned." "what! has flora summoned thee?" she cried, gazing at him in unfeigned astonishment. "fie on her boldness! only the floras of rome do such a thing!" "a new evil in rome?" he responded, smiling. "o lady, i can not go thither unless thou promise me protection!" she laughed and waved him a warning hand. "behold how thou acceptest my counsel here in alexandria! what obedience need i expect in rome?" without waiting for his answer, she turned him out of the open into the grove. no extensive vista greeted him. no lamps, only their lights were visible. no green-and-gold walled aisle led far in a straight line. the woodland screening of leaf and branch prevailed everywhere. the music, the shouts, the tumult seemed to be in another direction than the one toward which they were tending. marsyas went uncertainly; he had been bidden to be in the forefront of flora's van, and ahead of him was falling silence. the splendid creature at his side held her peace, and moved rapidly. gradually, the people thinned out, and when junia turned him into another aisle they were alone. she seemed to be conducting him away from the music and noise. only for a moment, he hesitated at a loss, and then with an apologetic smile, he said to her: "we will go this way,"--and, turning at right angles, led back toward the tumult. "marsyas," she said, with more impatience than reproach, "and thou art an essene! how i reproach myself!" but he smiled uncomfortably, and kept on. the wail of instruments, wild and discordant, the blowing of horns, the pulsation of drums, seemed suddenly to unite as they approached. above the clamor and squeal of cymbals and pipes, voices were lifted, loud and strained as if striving to be heard above the uproar. some of them merely shouted, most of them were singing, not one but many songs; shrieks and laughter shrilled through it all, and once in a while the musical tone of a rich throat triumphant above the noise bespoke the presence of gift with frenzy. the tumult was not now distant, and marsyas did not wish junia's further aid. his search after flora was not a thing to be published abroad. he glanced at the lights, looked about for a less circuitous route, and, with a word to her, plunged through the brake toward the revel. before she had thought to protest, the forefront of a procession penetrated from the side of the aisle and, streaming across, broke through the green on the other side. the first were flamens, greek, roman and egyptian, robed in the pallium and carrying the lituus--first, if the order of procession had been observed, but before them, and about them bounded a harlequinade of baboons, centaurs, goats, swine--loose, ill-fashioned disguises that only robbed their wearers of human form and did not achieve the animal semblance. among them were slighter figures of lizards, snails on active pretty limbs, toads, beetles--glittering, sinuous things that surpassed the heavier figures in agility and boldness. after them came a great cornucopia of gold, banded with spiral garlands of roses, studded with jewels and drawn on low ivory wheels by snow-white mule-colts. out of the shell-tinted mouth of the great horn, and luxuriously bedded on a gauze of gold cast over the flowers and fruits, was the rosy figure of a little boy, with pearly wings bound to his shoulders. thus eros proceeded to flora. only thus far was any semblance of order distinguishable in the procession. the wave of uproar suddenly assumed overwhelming proportions; the aisle was inundated with frenzy. marsyas moved forward, junia moving with him, and the tumult drawing its bulky length across the aisle swept in now by multitudes. he was caught; junia clung to him determinedly for a moment, but was torn away; he permitted himself to be swallowed up and pitched along by the flood. he attracted no consecutive attention. mænads flung themselves upon him because his cheeks were crimson and his figure notable, but other youths with glowing cheeks drew the mænads away, now and again. satyrs, fauns and bacchantes saluted him, tumbled him, buffeted him: one snatched off his scarlet fillet and crowned him with a wreath of grape-leaves, while a second thrust a thyrsus into his hand. some clung about his shoulders and bawled into his ear; others reached him flagons of wine and did not notice that others snatched the drink away. these things were single events that stood up out of the daze of astonishment and shock that confounded him. the noise roared louder at every step: the thousands about him augmented. the grove opened more; the lights became more scattering and presently he found that he had been swept through another circle of chariots and outpost of soldiery into the city again. hurriedly glancing at the buildings on each side of the street into which the procession poured, he saw a sufficient number of familiar marks to inform him that he had been borne out on the rhacotis side of the city. then the blood within him chilled. this half-maddened, half-murderous multitude was upon the trail of flora, and was driving toward the settlement of the nazarenes! an unshakable conviction possessed him, that lydia stood between! meanwhile the army of rabble joined the procession of aristocrats. from every avenue fresh multitudes poured in and added to the thousands. except for the bounding mimes about them the flamens kept the front of the horde, following with downcast eyes the trail of yellow roses which, marsyas now knew, led the procession. in the midst of the gigantic hurly-burly he saw with strained eyes and a laboring heart that the light-footed goddess had made a long, deviating flight: that over and over again she doubled on her tracks, but that the detours led with deadly sureness toward the nazarenes. impelled now by desperation, he began to work his way toward the front. but he had not reckoned on the immense length of the procession, nor how far he had been absorbed into the heart of it. only when he was rushed over a slight rise in the street did he know that ahead of him for a great distance was a sea of tossing heads and moving shoulders, and on either side a compact wave wholly filled the two hundred feet of street and washed up against the walls of the houses. the street opened up into an immense square, the last stadium which marked the limit of the roman influence in the egyptian settlement. beyond that, on the water-front, were the streets of the nazarenes! praying and struggling, marsyas hardly noticed the increase of noise beginning at the front and extending back to him and passing until the wild clamor resolved itself into a stunning shout that shook alexandria and rippled the face of the bay. "flora! _dea maxima_! _solis filia_! give us joy; give us joy!" the trail of roses had been broken off. flora had been found. but another roar went up, here and there from the great body there were cries of protest and disappointment: the voice of looters and brawlers that had been deprived of sacrificial blood. there were hisses, shouts of derision and cries to the populace to press on. but the flamens stopped; the great concourse halted by rank and rank until the slackening and final cessation of movement imprisoned the dissenters that were resolved to go on. the main body continued its greetings to the goddess, above the cry of the dissatisfied. at the far side of the open was a tiny squat temple, hardly more than a shrine, to rannu, the egyptian goddess of the harvests. on the top of the cornice with the blush lights of the city of love upon her, stood a girl. thus lifted into the night sky, her features could not be distinguished, and marsyas believed that she was mummied, face and figure, in wrappings. he continued to press forward. the small figure on the summit of the temple stirred, turned half about and slowly raised her arms with a motion that seemed half-command, half-salute to the great expectant crowd below. then wing-like mists, taking into themselves the sunset flush of the fires of the city of love, rose up and fluttered about her. long, flaming, melon-colored tongues licked in and out of the illusion: distended convolutions of tissue tinged with rose floated and drifted above her, beside her, before her; shivering streamers of silver reached up and failed and dissolved; jagged streaks and reduplications of fiery jets stood out and up and all about her. when the clouds of pearly vapor lifted and eddied about her head, girdled her with circles or framed her with rosy wheels, the center of all this motion was distinguishable only as a snow-white spindle that whirled with dizzy rapidity. and presently it was noted that the shape was losing the mummy form, that more and more the outlines of a beautiful body were blossoming out of the impearled mists: that petaline wings opened out, fold on fold, as a rose-bud would blow, and each successive disclosure gave the entranced vision a clearer image of the dancer at the heart. ever the motion seemed slow and stately as do all great and graceful things maintaining splendid speed; ever the crimson light from the city of love lent its illimitable range of shade to the motion of the mists. below the great multitude, with its face lifted to the midnight sky, passed from uproar into silence and from silence into thunders of applause. the immense voice was the voice of admiration, for the cooling hand of wonder pressed back the crowd's passion for a let to its reason. they forgot their disappointment, their bloodthirst, their hate of the nazarenes, and stood to marvel that the goddess burned but was not consumed. but marsyas, patiently working his way forward, pressed by a tall black man who was saying over and over to himself in hindu: "it is the bayadere dance, for the glory of brahma! a sacrilege!" the rest of flora's program meanwhile was proceeding. slowly and mightily, magnificent young athletes, for only such could drive their way through so solid a pack of humanity, were working toward the portico of the temple. these were candidates for flora's favor. among them were black-eyed roman youths with laurel around their heads; golden-haired greeks, crowned with stephanes; lithe, bronze egyptians with ribboned locks at the temple which were the badge of princehood. and after them came one, crowned with grape-leaves, with a thyrsus in his hand, but he had shining black curls, the silken beard and the crimson cheeks of a jew. the eyes of this one glittered, not from excitement of fancy, but from desperate resolution and astounded recognition. the pagans were far in advance of him. now the crowd understood where they were bound and shouted to them; now the youths forced themselves past the cornucopia, the mimes, the flamens, and ran into the open space before the temple. in poses characteristic of their captivation and intent, they looked up at the dancing fires and cried aloud to the goddess. meanwhile the morning-tinted mists whirled in a circular plane about the girl; suddenly they began to tremble and rise,--up, up until the ripple and shiver of the shaken silk took on the action and appearance of an illuminated cataract. through it, the beautiful outlines of the dancer were distinguished, veiled as a nereid beneath waters, leaping, running. thousands below instinctively raised their arms to catch the figure which inevitably must leap through the inspirited cataract and over the parapet of the temple unless the rosy element pent her within its bosom. the flight gradually changed from a simple step into the entanglement and intricacy of a dance. no gossamer adrift on the wind was more a creature of the air, no tranced ephemera more the genius of motion. the roar of the multitude failed in a vast suspiration of surprise and bewildered delight. flora had invented, not a new wantonness, but a new grace. but the young men shouted: each sprang to a column which upheld the portico upon which flora danced, and began to climb, helping themselves by the incrusted garlands of stone which ran up the pillars from base to capital. it was a contest in climbing, and the best of the contestants was not long in proving himself. he was one of the golden-haired greeks and the multitude, for ever partizan to the strongest man, roared and thundered its encouragement to him. he went up with an ease and swiftness almost superhuman; now, he drew himself across the outstanding corner of the architrave, and stood with delicate foothold on its molding while he reached up past the frieze and caught the cornice with his hands. the dancer caught the flash of light on his golden stephane and wavered. "_habet_! _habet_!" roared the multitude. "evoe, ionides!" and ionides, lazily lifting himself to the top of the portico, lingered a moment on one hand and knee to contemplate his prize. the cataract sank; the flying feet halted, the glory of fire and motion was lost in lengths of silk which the dancer began hastily to wind about her head and body. sufficiently covered to hide her face, she paused and looked to see his further move. the greek, with shining eyes and smiling lips, began slowly to raise himself. then the one with the black curls and silken beard tore himself from the foremost of the crowd and rushed toward the portico. the dancer saw him come. she moved toward the edge of the cornice. the greek leaped: the other below flung up his arms, but the roar of the multitude swept away the cry that came from his lips. the dancer, eluding the triumphant greek, rushed over the brink of the portico and dropped like a plummet entangled in gossamer into the upreached arms of marsyas below. both fell like stones. but marsyas sprang up with his prize in his arms, and fled up the steps through the black porch and the stone valves into the temple of rannu. [illustration: marsyas sprang up with his prize in his arms (missing from book)] outside, the multitude, having seen flora flout her rightful possessor, fell for a moment silent. then, a part having but one desire to choose for itself, fell to its own choosing; but the rest, already cheated of blood and spoil, howled their disapproval, fought their way through disinterested masses in order to reach the refuge of the capricious flora, met resistance and precipitated warfare, and in an incredibly short time, bedlam reigned in the square before the temple of rannu. the public celebration of the feast of flora was at an end. meanwhile there was a trail of yellow roses, beginning abruptly in the nazarene community and leading around every household and out and on toward the west. the roses lay untouched and wilting through the night and were shoveled up and carted away by the street-cleaners the next morning. and on the summit of the gate of the necropolis, a painted beauty sat in jewels and flowers and little raiment, and wondered why she was not sought and found and why her followers stayed and roared before the temple of rannu. chapter xxi the fining fire as marsyas leaped into the temple of rannu, a figure started up beside him. he sprang away from it in alarm, but a word in hindu reassured him. "it is i, vasti." with the bayadere following he raced through the cloyed musk of the temple toward the square of lesser darkness at the rear, which showed the exit into the court. he flung himself across the pavement of the inner inclosure and down its aisle of sphinxes, through the gate in the rear wall and out into a black passage. behind, the roar of the contending host of flora followed him. though, for a second time this day he had run with peril on his track, the threatened identification of the precious burden he bore was more terrifying than death had been at sunset. it was a long alley, the single outlet for a jam of humble houses surrounding the temple, and it opened into a street deep in the egyptian quarter. though marsyas ran splendidly, he carried no little burden, and the way was black, unpaved and treacherous. he had begun to fear that he could not reach the end before pursuers, so minded, could hem him in, when almost as if the thought had invited the actuality, he saw a figure appear at the mouth of the alley. with a furious but repressed exclamation, the unknown plunged at the essene. determined to defend lydia's identity as long as he might, marsyas swung her behind him, and with a whisper to vasti to hide lydia, made ready to fight fast. with the dim illumination of the city behind him, marsyas was better able to see his antagonist. as the solid body projected itself at him, like a springing beast, he met it with a raised left arm and a ready right hand. instantly the two closed and for a brief, fierce moment, fought savagely. but marsyas discovered that he was far more agile, taller and apparently younger than his assailant, and for a space he had only to fight away the knife that glinted and darted hungrily at his throat. then, seizing upon his antagonist's first imperfect guard, he delivered a stunning blow over the heart. the heavy body staggered, quivered and collapsed. expecting to find the passage before him filling with ruffians, marsyas was astonished to see the way clear and vacant. without waiting to catch breath marsyas sprang back in the alley, and, whispering the bayadere's name, found lydia and the serving-woman only a pace from the spot. catching lydia up again, in spite of her protests, he was about to spring over the prostrate body that all but blocked the passage, when his eye fell upon the upturned face. the dim light of the city fell on it. it was flaccus! for a single moment of surprise and bewilderment, marsyas stood still. then very surely it penetrated through his brain that the proconsul had recognized him at the moment of flora's drop into his arms, and had come to capture him--or to identify the dancing flora! he knew that he had not struck a fatal blow and the proconsul's knife lay near. he picked it up. it was bloody. startled and aghast, he flung the weapon away, and, leaping over the unconscious roman, fled out of the alley. a torch of pitch, burnt down to a charred knot, with a feeble flame playing over it, was set upon a staff hardly ten paces from the mouth of the passage. it was a dark street, and deserted. the roar of the populace still centered about the square of the temple of rannu. marsyas turned toward the torch, and, as he ran, he saw under its sickly light the figure of a man stretched on the earth. at another step, he tripped over a second fallen body. it moved and groaned. marsyas put lydia down. carrying her through a street cumbered with prostrate men might mean bodily injury for both of them. with a reassuring word, he led her between the head of the obscured man and the feet of the one under the torch, and stumbled at his second step on a contorted shape. marsyas stopped, to ask himself if the deadly hand that had brought these men low might not await him and his dear charge farther on. vasti leaned over the one under the torch. then she sprang up. "come! look!" she whispered in excitement. marsyas hurried to the man, and met at that instant the last conscious light in the eyes of agrippa. the young essene dropped to his knees without a word, thrust his hand into the embroidered tunic and felt for the prince's heart. it beat but slowly. vasti, meanwhile, snatched the torch from the staff and beat the charred pitch knot on the ground till the still inflammable heart broke open and ignited afresh. by its light marsyas examined agrippa. between the prince's shoulders, his hand touched chilling blood. "ambushed!" he said grimly. "stabbed in the back!" marsyas looked at the prince's right hand. it was still clenched, and the flesh on the knuckles was abraded, the second joints swelling fast. vasti, with suspicion in her olive eyes, carried the torch over to the contorted shape. then she made a sign to marsyas. he looked. it was an egyptian wearing the livery of flaccus. the prince's arabic dagger was neatly buried to the hilt in the servitor's breast. vasti examined the second prostrate form. by her torch marsyas saw that it was eutychus, conscious but benumbed. his left ear, cheek and eye were swollen and black. "it seems," said marsyas, stanching agrippa's wound, "that the prince disabled his own support!" but vasti, by deft twitches of ear and hair and threats in hindu, significant in tone if not in speech to the charioteer, finally got eutychus upon his feet. "take up the prince," she said to marsyas. "the slave may follow or lie as he chooses. i shall attend my mistress." marsyas lifted the herod and, following vasti, hurried on again into the darkness. the bayadere made toward the sea-front, not many yards distant, sped across the wharf and over the edge apparently into the water. marsyas, by this time ready to follow the brown woman into any extreme, plunged after her. he landed abruptly in the bottom of a punt. lydia followed, and eutychus, with an alacrity not expected of one who groaned so helplessly. vasti severed the rope that tied up the boat, and, with a strong thrust of her hands against the piling, pushed the boat away from the wharf. but she did not take up the oars. she left them to marsyas, trained on the blue waters of galilee. in a moment he had pulled out into the black expanse of the bay, and, with the prince's ship in mind, rowed among the sleeping shipping. "how came the prince in this plight?" marsyas demanded of eutychus. the charioteer, with his head in his hands, groaned and murmured unintelligibly. lydia dipped an end of the wonderful silk that enveloped her into the water and pressed the wet corner to the charioteer's temples. marsyas frowned blackly. "nay, but thou canst answer, eutychus," he said shortly. after further murmurings, the charioteer brought out between groans an avowal that he was completely mystified. "how came agrippa in the street?" marsyas insisted. "he was with justin classicus; i attended him. when flora danced and chose her lover, and the two fled into the temple of rannu, the alexandrian cried to my lord that there was another passage into the temple, by which they could go in, or the flora and her lover come out. and he proposed for a prank that he and the prince go thither and discover flora and her lover. we were on the roof of a bath and could get down at once, so we ran through private passages, my lord and i, outstripping classicus, whom the crowd swallowed. and when we got into this dark street, two fell upon us without warning and killed us both!" "but it was agrippa who struck that blow," marsyas declared. the man murmured again. "some one struck me," he said finally; "mayhap the prince, not knowing friend from foe in the street." "of a surety, this stiff old roman took chances," marsyas averred after thought, "with but one apparitor to aid him against agrippa, palestræ-trained and this young charioteer! art sure thou didst not play the craven, eutychus?" he demanded. "or should i be blamed," eutychus groaned, "when it was three against me, with the prince striking at his single defender?" marsyas fell silent. it was not like agrippa to be confused under any circumstances. he pulled up beside agrippa's vessel, roused the watchman and had the prince and eutychus taken aboard; but vasti and lydia he left in the borrowed punt, out of sight of the crew that had returned. he followed the injured men on deck and hurriedly dressed agrippa's wound, restored him to consciousness and left him in the charge of the captain of the vessel. he ordered one of the skilled seamen to attend eutychus and hurried back to the women in the boat under the black shadow of the ship. he pulled straight for the sea, rounded eunostos point and skirting the tiny archipelagoes in the broad light of the pharos, brought up at a small indented coast between two sandy peninsulas. here the residence portion of alexandria came down to the ocean. the locality was dark and wrapped in sleep. as he lifted lydia from the boat, marsyas turned to vasti. "why didst thou not prevent her in this thing?" he asked in hindu. "the white brother forgets that i am a handmaiden," she replied. "but what if i had not come?" he persisted, growing more troubled by his perplexities. "i had prepared a path for escape; i was armed, and watching!" "did--did she expect me?" he asked after silence. "no." then she had done this thing for him. oh, for the safe refuge of the alabarch's musky halls that he might harken to the sweet distress in his soul and tell her of it! without further event, they reached the alabarch's house and the bayadere, producing keys, let her charges into the servant's entry beneath the porch. lydia instantly disappeared, but vasti in obedience to a word from marsyas conducted him through the well-beloved chambers to the corridor lined by the sleeping-rooms of the servants. before one, she stopped. "herein is the prince's other servant," she said, and quickly disappeared. marsyas opened the door and entering aroused silas. with a bare explanation that the prince would sail the instant the courier got aboard, he urged the grumbling old man into activity, and went back to the alabarch's presiding-room. he had a moment of waiting--at last a moment to think! he realized that an extreme of some nature had been reached; all his purposes had been brought up to a climax. there was no lingering in alexandria possible for agrippa, wounded or well, for marsyas knew that flaccus had the herod's undoing in mind. if lydia were a nazarene, marsyas had now, of a surety, though all heaven and earth intervened, to bring saul of tarsus to death before the pharisee's dread hand fell upon lydia for apostasy! for that purpose, he must go to rome--and leave alexandria--to return? for his love's sake? he, an essene? silas came, bowed, and was dismissed to wait in the street for the moment. and still marsyas stood. the house was silent and dark. the slumber that overtakes those relieved from a three days' strain enwrapped all under the alabarch's roof. presently he thought of cypros, in his search for an excuse for lingering. a lamp on the alabarch's table was ready to be lighted, and, finding the materials for fire-making in the drawer, he lighted it. "sweet lady," he wrote on a parchment at hand, "the winds favorable to thy lord's departure blow, and he will not awaken thee to the pain of a farewell. be comforted, be brave, be hopeful; for when he returneth, he bringeth thee a crown. i remember my pledge to thee. "be thou blessed. "marsyas." it was the first letter he had ever written to a woman; he did not dream that he had written so tenderly. he rolled the parchment and addressed it to the princess. there was nothing more to be done. was he not to see lydia again? filled with rebellion and fear, he hurried toward the hall; in the semi-dark, cast by the lamp within the larger room, he saw a small figure slip quickly behind a hanging. she had been waiting to have a stolen look upon him as he went! he caught her in his arms and drew her out into the light. under its revealing ray, he saw her lovely face smitten down with shame, but he lifted it, to kiss her eyes, her temples and her lips. "lydia! lydia! i fear to leave thee!" he whispered. she let her eyes light upon him, to catch his meaning, and when she saw terror for her apostasy and amazement for the thing she had done for the nazarenes, a sudden misery leaped into her face. she tried to put him back. "lydia, lydia!" he begged, feeling the repulse, "dost thou not love me, then?" his tone urged, his eyes pleaded. for a moment, she was silent; then she said, with infinite pain: "marsyas, i broke off the trail of roses through rhacotis, and held back the multitude from the nazarenes. but thou art an essene, and a jew; wherefore, in thy sight i can not be justified. forget not these things for my sake! go, ere thy teaching hath cause to reproach thee." "no, no!" he agonized. "do not say that to me! say rather that thou wilt turn away from this heresy and be led no more by it into transgression! better thy sweet life and thy sweet fame than all the truth in the world!" the word he used caught her. she waited and seemed not to breathe. he swept on. "art thou, beyond saving, a nazarene?" her face fell, and her soft red lips were parted with a heavy sigh. "from this night henceforward, marsyas! i have purchased the blessing dearly." she took the hands about her and undid them. "go!" she whispered. "farewell, and the one god, that loves us all, shield thee from harm all the days of thy life!" a moment and she was gone. after a while he turned and walked with stumbling feet into the new dawn on alexandria. chapter xxii "in the cloak of two colors" marsyas turned on the gilded couch, threw off the light covering and sat up. a syrian slave thrust aside the heavy drapery over the cancelli, which had been drawn in the atrium while the young man slept. in the brilliant light of the roman mid-afternoon, marsyas looked sleepily at the slave that bowed beside him, and the courier that stood near by. "a message for thee," the slave said. marsyas put out his hand and the courier laid in it a package wrapped in silk. marsyas broke the seal and read the contents. "o marsyas: "gossip hath it now that thou art no longer confused when a woman addresses thee: wherefore i write with less trepidation and more confidence. "i am in rome these seven days, under my father's roof, for a little space before we are commanded to join cæsar in capri. in this time i have not seen thee nor thy lord. "if not myself, then perchance the news i bring from alexandria may urge thee to accept the invitation i extend. "there exists no greater claim than thine upon my hospitality. "come thou, and make me welcome in mine own city. "junia." marsyas sprang up, the last of the languor gone from his face. "thou shalt conduct me," he said to the messenger. he disappeared in the direction of his cubiculum. in a time longer than he had consumed in his old essenic days to prepare himself for the streets he came again into agrippa's atrium. it was hard to recognize in him the picturesque jewish ascetic that had bent over the scroll in the great college of jerusalem. he had permitted the blade to come at his hair and beard; the kerchief had been replaced by the fillet; the cloak and gown by the scarlet tunic and mantle, the daylight had been let in on his fine limbs, and there was the fugitive glitter of jewels on his fingers and arms. he had assumed perfumes and polishes, had laid aside all his oriental habit and had become not only a roman but an exquisite. the change was not all in his dress; the indefinable something that marks the man of experience was upon him and the ascetic blankness was gone from his brow. he signed to the messenger to follow, and passing out of the house and down the long banks of marble steps which led up to agrippa's magnificent eyrie on the brink of the quirinal, entered a lectica that awaited him in the streets. years are not time enough to weary one of rome. marsyas had come into the capital with a spirit benumbed by a great shock, so that the first day he walked the imperial streets he was less conscious of their wonders than he was at this hour. he was borne through narrow lanes that were like clefts between heights of marble, under arches, chronicling the solemn consummation of triumph, along crowding pillars that arose out of the ravines between the seven hills, and, catching the sunlight on their white capitals, cast it down in the gloom of the depressions. glories clambered up the bosom of the esquiline; templed sanctity crowned the aventine, and might in marble and gold sat on the palatine. between were splendor and squalor, confused, for only beauty stood up above the miseries and defilement that made rome hateful in its unsunned ways. the feebleness of unwieldy and disunited multitudes cumbered the carinæ, along which he passed. starvation and the excess of plenty, power and abject subjection, unspeakable depravity and innocence met and passed. the slaves preceding the young man's litter made way for it with staff and pilum, or again it made way for slaves bearing fasces and maces. he did not proceed unnoticed. albucilla, widow of satrius secundus, in a litter with cneius domitius, turned from the languid senator at her side to cast a bewitching smile at the young essene; ennia, wife of macro, the prætorian prefect, leaned from her litter to cry him an invitation. "to tusculum! come with us!" "many thanks: yet i would the invitation came to-morrow!" "it shall," she said in answer and was borne on. running slaves pushed by him to overtake her chair, and marsyas knew without looking that the lectica they bore contained caligula, cæsar's grand-nephew. agrippina, a young matron in a chair, with a month-old babe in her arms, cast a sidelong glance out of her black eyes at the young man as he approached. stupid old claudius, clad in a purple-edged toga and stumbling as he walked, acknowledged the precedence marsyas gave him with a smile and a greeting. as the young jew was borne on he did not realize that he had made room for three coming cæsars in the carinæ. after them streamed a great number of patricians in chairs, all proceeding to the races at tusculum, but marsyas' bearers turned off the carinæ and began to mount the esquiline. in a few minutes he was set down before a small, newly-erected house as classic as a greek temple, as compact as a fortification. the messenger bowed him into the hands of the atriensis, who led him into the vestibule and left him for a moment. presently, a soft-footed, scantily-clad boy bowed gracefully beside him and begged him to follow. he was led into junia's atrium. the roman woman, who had been lounging in a chair at the cancelli, turned languidly, and sprang up in feigned surprise. but honest feeling came into her face as she looked at the changed man that stood before her. "welcome!" she cried, hastening to meet him. "would thou wast a god! perchance there would be despatch about answering prayers!" "give the gods as welcome a supplication, and the answer would come riding upon jupiter's thunderbolts!" he responded. she laughed and shook her finger at him. "how hopeless a ruin thou art! a jew speaking of the gods!" he led her to a chair, and, drawing one up beside her, sat. with bright eyes and a little changing smile she inspected him for a moment. "it is true!" she cried at last. "and i do not like to see it! thou art indeed changed; no longer the sincere jew that i met in alexandria." "a jew, lady, nevertheless," he answered. "but tell me of thyself, and after that of them that remain in alexandria." "no: thou canst not avert the preachment i have ready for thee. all thy misdeeds are known to me. when i forewarned thee of the various attributes of rome, i did not add that rome talks! i have heard how thou hast put chaplets on thy head, reclined at feasts and upset half a score of merry running courtships in the capital. i see thee, how thou hast put off thy sober habit and got into raiment that makes thee thrice and four times more deadly to the hearts of women. and thou an essene! prayerfully hoping to return into the peace and inertia of the salty desert of en-gadi--some time! overshadowing the herod till in very despair he hath taken to racing and left the triclinia and the atria to thee! fie and for shame, marsyas!" the young man smiled a little bitterly. cypros' charge had not been difficult, since his essenism had been the obstacle which lay between him and that love he would have, though it cost him his soul! "but rome enlarges," he protested. "agrippa chaseth the elusive bubble of fortune: and i--having a purpose to be achieved in his success--i speed him--in mine own way. but enough of ourselves. tell me of alexandria!" "but wait! i have not done. the charm of beauty hath lost its potency here in rome, where it is the business of every one to be beautiful. the charm of riches is debased because of its great prevalence, since every one hath his honor to sell, and honor commands the highest price. the charm of rank is dissolved, for there is no rank with a centurion's son bearing the ægis, and freedmen dispensing hospitality in the mansions of the ancient quirites! wherefore there is only one rare, unpurchasable charm--newness--and roman society speedily dulls the luster of that, if one stoops to flourishing socially. beware, my marsyas!" he remembered that she had always been concerned for his uprightness, in a strangely unspiritual way. he had heard of upright atheists; somehow she seemed to belong in that category with her moral, but irreligious chidings. now, she was bearing him welcome testimony that he had changed. "be neither frequent nor democratic. saith agricola, the pleb, 'brutus, the senator, is nobody; he speaks to me!' by castor! i had rather endure the contempt of the great than the approval of the small. wherefore, save thyself, as a rare wine, fit for only imperial feasts. and lest thou be lonely meantime, let me amuse thee." "how can i expect it, when thou wilt not tell me now what i wish?" he complained. "but this is trial of thy gallantry: i have as great a curiosity as thine. so thou wilt wait for me. thou hast been in rome four months. tell me what happened in that time." marsyas slipped down in his chair and clasped his hands back of his head. "none leads a droning life who associates with agrippa," he said. "i have not seen a restful hour since i met him in judea. nay, then; hear me. he landed at capri, on the invitation of the emperor, and repaired to the palace where, with the same grace that hath made me and others his slaves, he won back in a single audience all the favor that he had forfeited in twenty years. he came away radiant and under promise to return the following night, and dine with the emperor. but the next morning, who should drop anchor in the bay but herrenius capito, livid with wrath because he had been outwitted at every turn by agrippa. one would think it were he whom agrippa owed, so indecent his fervor in reporting him. what followed but that the same imperial hand which had been stretched in welcome to the prince one day, was, the next, extended in banishment over him." "what misfortune!" junia exclaimed, half in sympathy, half in irony. "ate, herself, must be the patron genius of the herod." "hot upon herrenius' heels came vitellius' contubernalis, with a warrant for me, but we, meanwhile, had taken ship and sailed for ostia. and hear me, when i say, that some rabid foe had dropped the information of our whereabouts, in judea! i repaired to rome, borrowed three hundred thousand drachmæ of antonia, the _univira_, and despatched messengers to cæsar and herrenius capito telling that the debt so long overlooked had been paid, before my pursuer reached rome. so we laid the ghost of our debts. but feeling unhappy owing no man, i immediately borrowed a million drachmæ of thallus, cæsar's freedman, repaid antonia, and established ourselves magnificently on the quirinal. hence, being in debt and in favor again, we have nothing to trouble us but the serious pursuit of our respective ambitions. but--!" he stopped abruptly. "o prescient contingent!" she said softly. "does the herod dally with his opportunities?" "worse: he affronts them! worse: those opportunities are not alone for him! part of them are mine!" her lips shaped an exclamation, but he went on. "listen; it is a proper sending on thee, for insisting on plunging me into narrative. an oriental story-teller and a circle make no end. even as thou saidst to me in alexandria so many weeks ago, rome looketh two ways for a new emperor. here is the little tiberius, drusus' son, and there is caligula, cæsar's grandnephew. now cæsar seeth in the little tiberius a successor. fatuous dotage! the prætorians are stubbornly attached to caligula, because forsooth he wore miniature boots like theirs when he tumbled about in the peplus of an infant. the reason is good enough to be a woman's! be it as it may, that lean, sallow, gluttonous caligula is brow-marked for the crown!" "_hercle_! but thou art as good an image-maker with words as phidias was with a stone!" "patience! on a certain day, agrippa and i went without the porta esquilina to get into our chariots and drive to tusculum. many were going, as many go every day. we had mounted our car, with eutychus--would he were at the bottom of the tiber!--as charioteer, when young tiberius came and mounted his, and caligula came and mounted his. after them directly followed a cohort of prætorians. their bright armor, their noise, their steady undeviating advance, frightened little tiberius' horses, which backed into caligula's chariot and frightened his pair. the four bolted at once; the chariots upset and both princes were spilled on the ground directly in front of the advancing cohort. "the tribune hastily brought up the column and tiberius and caligula were helped to their feet. the lad withdrew to the roadside, but caligula turned upon the soldiers and flung camp-jokes at them, so broad, so bold, so rough, that, at first chuckling, then roaring, the whole cohort burst into a great shout in honor of their favorite. "meanwhile, eutychus had permitted his horses by bad management to become unruly. agrippa seized the lines away from him and lashed him across the shoulders once or twice, to the great rage of the charioteer. i had in the meanwhile to alight and quiet the animals. agrippa then drove toward tiberius to offer him the hospitality of his chariot, while the slaves were pursuing the runaways. the boy saw him coming, understood the prince's intent and handed his cloak to a slave preparatory to mounting agrippa's car, when the cohort began to cheer caligula. "what did agrippa, then, but wheel his horses, drive over to the soldiers' favorite and take him into the car!" "what! did that thing openly?" "deliberately! the boy paled, flushed, and whirling about, stalked back inside of the walls, before i could invent an excuse to cover agrippa's slight. and after him rushed a crowd of senators and ædiles--his umbræ--to feed his hate of the herod!" "what did agrippa, then?" junia asked after a dismayed silence. "he was long gone up the road to tusculum with caligula by that time." "it is not hard to guess how he lost fortune before," junia declared. "he plays at legerdemain with cæsar's favor," marsyas said, annoyed at his own narrative. "tiberius, most solemnly commended the boy tiberius to agrippa's care and companionship. cæsar will hear of this!" "inevitably! tale-bearing is a fine art in rome and tiberius is its patron. and thus he conducts himself in the face of cypros' peril, who gave herself in hostage for him that he might succeed!" "cypros' peril!" marsyas repeated, with startled eyes. "of flaccus!" marsyas' astonishment was not pleasant. "why of flaccus?" he asked. "what! hath agrippa kept his counsel, thus long? dost thou not know that flaccus hath an eye to the timid cypros and agrippa, discovering it, all but killed flaccus in a passage back of the temple, on the night of the dance of flora?" marsyas looked at her steadily. "how much dost thou know of this thing?" he demanded. "can i know too much of it?" she asked plaintively. "no!" he answered penitently. "then i know all of it, cause, process and result," she declared. "tell it me, then!" "nay, then; flaccus was in love with cypros in rome, when she was sent here twenty years ago to marry agrippa. so much he loved her, that twenty years after, when next he met her, his old passion was revived--stronger, less submissive and more dangerous than that of his youth. whether or not he spoke of it to agrippa, or simply betrayed himself, the night of the feast, is not patent; nevertheless the proconsul was discovered half-killed, in an alley back of the temple of rannu, and the herod had sailed suddenly and without farewell to cypros, in the night." "how didst thou learn of this?" "o simple youth! is it then so common in judea for powers to be discovered with their hearts stunned, that no comment is made upon it? or perchance thou givest flaccus credit for suffering in silence? that is better. know, however, that he was discovered by the constabulary, and straightway such an outcry was never heard in alexandria. but the proconsul aroused and cut it off in full voice. and there he made an error. he was made to be a straightforward man; he is too cumbrous to be a knave. so speculation ran abroad in whispers, till the true cause was unearthed." "and cypros?" "cypros? now canst thou, knowing cypros, ask of her expecting any change? beautiful statues do not change. what they express when they are finished they express until they are broken. when she came from under the sculptor's chisel, she was made to love her husband, and her babes, to believe whatever is told her, be beautiful, simple and good." "so much the more flaccus must have distressed her!" "she does not suspect him!" "what!" "amazement, at times, gentle sir, is reproach; wherefore since i am the author of this device, thou wilt be less astounded and, so, more complimentary. i knew that cypros, being sweet, simple and guileless, would do no more than treat the proconsul with bitter disdain thereafter, and precipitate a climax, which in my opinion would entail twenty diverse calamities. i know flaccus, i have sent the plummet to the bottom of his oceanic nature. i also know that the lady herod is an anomaly in her family, clean, faithful and loving. so with agrippa out of reach, the proconsul may conspire all he pleases to alienate the princess from her arab, in vain. wherefore i permitted the good alabarch in all innocence to go in his magisterial robes to the proconsul's mansion and express his indignation, concern and anxious hopes, and to say that agrippa had taken advantage of favorable winds to depart for rome. i can see the smoldering eyes of the proconsul study the white old face of that perfect diplomat and discover no guile thereon. so apparent the alabarch's sincerity, that after due lapse of time in which the proconsul plucked up courage and front, flaccus resumed his visits to the alabarch's house. and for all outward signs, it was another and not agrippa that dinted the roman's chest!" marsyas leaned his elbows on his knees and a line appeared between his level brows, marking the growing change from the thought of youth to the thought of man. "lady," he said gravely, after a pause, "it was flaccus and not agrippa that did the bloodthirsty deeds back of the temple of rannu; and it was i--and not agrippa, that dinted the roman's chest!" "what?" she ejaculated, springing up to lay hand on his arm. "thou!" "flaccus led agrippa into a trap and stabbed him in the back," he went on, "and i struck the blow that laid flaccus low. and agrippa was taken aboard his ship that night, with a knife wound between his shoulders, wholly ignorant of the identity of his assailant--until i told him--three days out at sea!" after a long silence, she said softly: "and that was thine errand--for flora!" without a tremor he inclined his head in assent. "nay, then," she began again, after another pause, "what more dost thou know? how much of this tale thou heardest so deceitfully is incorrect history?" "enough of flaccus," he parried, smiling. "tell me of--classicus." junia leaned back in her chair and laughed a little at his evasion. "classicus? classicus is a knave, one lacking invention, but not executive ability--wanting cunning, not courage. now he leads us to believe that he examines a new religion--that same heresy for which he plunged thee into the rhacotis peril. some one put him up to it--mark me. thus, he hopes to recant his fault against thee, for which the little lysimachus was most unbending to him!" "and lydia?" he asked in a low tone. her softened eyes, steadily contemplating the yellow light on the leaves of a huge plantain growing near her, narrowed. "lydia?" she repeated thoughtfully. "oh, lydia dances and studies and makes ready for her marriage with classicus." one of those utter silences fell, which mark the announcement of critical news. after it, marsyas arose. "i have profited by my visit," he said, in that soft and silken voice which she had never heard before and did not understand. "i thank thee for thy counsel--and thy news." he extended her his hand, and she looked at him, feeling that it was not steady. "and thou wilt come again before i go?" she went on. "we are summoned to capri where my father hath been recently made a minister to tiberius. come again, and let me lead thee back to thine old self." "perchance," he said evenly, "i have uselessly troubled myself to change." he pressed her hand and passed out. at the threshold of her portals, he met agrippa. "perpol!" the prince cried. "hast thou supplanted me here, too?" but marsyas smiled painfully and went on. agrippa looked after him. "nay, now: the boy is as pale as ivory!" he ruminated. "that is an honest youth, and junia must let him alone." chapter xxiii a letter and a loss when agrippa returned to his house that night, he found old silas sitting in the vestibule, opposite the place of the atriensis, his hands on his knees, his dull face uncommonly animated and expressive. it was long past the hour when the household servants had retired, and the porter at the door was drowsy, but the instant agrippa set foot on his threshhold silas started up and bowed in excitement. "an evil day," he said. "thy wardrobe hath been entered and much fine raiment is gone." "but thou hast made an evil night of it, silas: thou shouldst have withheld thy calamitous recital until the morning. hast discovered the thief?" silas bowed again. "i have: yet, i have been restrained from taking him." "o pliable jew! none but cæsar can steal my wardrobe unmolested. who protects the thief?" "marsyas." "what! marsyas? save thou art too unimaginative to be a fictionist i should say thou makest thy story. why does marsyas protect my pillager?" "he says we are well rid of the knave." "not if he carried off so much as a sandal-lace. i am a jew and therefore jealous for my own property. marsyas, as an essene, is given to dividing without protest with thieves. i remember the greek who helped himself to marsyas' patrimony on olivet. but who is the thief?" "eutychus." "eutychus! by hermes, he could not help it with that face! but go on; what is the circumstance?" "he took," silas continued, "the umber toga, embroidered with silver, much of thy jewish vestments, the gazelle wallet which contained thy amulet, and drachmæ and bracelets of gold. he is rich!" "of a surety: the knave hath only the more attached himself to me. what a pity! otherwise we were well rid of him. and marsyas bade thee let him go?" "the young man was disturbed. according to instructions, he sent a messenger to thy stables, without the walls, to bid eutychus have thy car ready to-morrow for thy visit to tusculum. but the messenger presently returned with the information that eutychus had not been seen about the stables that day. at the same moment, i discovered the losses among thy apparel. and marsyas instantly suspected eutychus. he sent two slaves in search of him. they returned in an hour saying that he had been discovered in janiculum in a wine-shop, robed like an augustan in thy umber toga, and making merry with wine that could only tickle a samaritan's throat. when they tried to bring him, he objected, saying thou shouldst not miss him, seeing that thou hadst learned the pleasure of walking in thy less fortunate days." agrippa's forehead darkened. "even for that i should hand him over to the lictors!" he exclaimed. "it is not all. when the two slaves then tried to fetch him by force, they were attacked by him and the wine-shop keeper and others, and obliged to flee for their lives. i besought marsyas, then, to permit me to inform the authorities and have him taken, but he opined that the charioteer's insolence was new and sudden, wherefore full of meaning. seeing that it was eutychus' intent to enrage thee, thou wast better not enraged; to wash thy hands of him and bless the day that he departed." agrippa yawned. "to-morrow we shall search for him and have him taken. it is improvident to have so much philosophy as marsyas. but what had the knave of a charioteer against me? it is marsyas who hath enchanted drumah, and who took him by the throat in the alabarch's house. i shall speak with marsyas to-morrow." he took himself with increasing effort up the stairs along the corridor toward his rest. with the facility which characterized many of agrippa's troubles, the offender had already dropped out of his mind. he had fenced with caligula that morning, he had feasted with macro that night. at midday he had slighted piso, the enemy of both. caligula had had him draw a sketch of judea on the wax of the gymnasium floor and designate the possessions of the old herod; macro, in his cups, had asked confidentially if caligula approved him. altogether the day had been filled with tokens presaging success. he smiled sleepily, remembering silas' extravagant concern over the robbery. "calamity is all in the mark on the scale of fortune," he opined. "a year ago to lose a handful of drachmæ would have ruined me." as he passed marsyas' door, he stepped back suddenly and stopped. the long curtain dragged on the floor at one side had given him an interesting glimpse of the lighted interior. within, marsyas, seated at a table, had at that moment flung away his stylus and dropped his head on the writing. almost immediately he sprang up, and, seizing the parchment, thrust it into the blaze of the lamp at his hand. astonishment gathered on the herod's face. in the blaze the writing curled, the flame eating into the slow-burning parchment, burned low, but surely, reaching toward the fingers that grasped it. presently marsyas dropped it. then the night-wind, rising from the sea, swept in through the cancelli with a shriek, put out the lamp instantly and swept the long dragging curtain against the herod standing in the dimly-illuminated corridor. he got out of sight hurriedly. after the first gust, the wind dropped, sending long streams of impelling draft through cancelli, doorway and hall. before it, along the pavement, something came skittering out of marsyas' cubiculum. agrippa looked at it. it was a roll of parchment, charred and crushed by the tense grip of fingers. agrippa waited. after a slight movement within, silence fell again, and was not thereafter broken. the prince's eyes fell on the charred writing. it was almost at his feet. his fine head dropped to one side, then to the other; he put his fingers into his hair, smiled a little and picked up the parchment. a moment later, in his own apartment, he unrolled it by his lamp. only a word here and there, at the end held in marsyas' fingers, was legible, but agrippa gathered from these the tone, the purpose and the identity, as he thought, of the one addressed. "-me for loving thee -my punishment --. yet ---sin against my teachi ---willingly for thy sake -----but to pretend ---continue my ---against ---which threatens thee. have i lost -soul for a caprice ---and beseech levity -to lov -me? the pointing finger ---of sel -scorn! an outcast from heaven ---truant from hell, haunting earth in search of thee for ever!--syas." agrippa's eyes sobered. "junia is a brand of fire," he said to himself. "i shall make an end of this!" chapter xxiv the digged pit junia raised herself hastily. "call the slaves," she commanded the servant who had announced marsyas, and, in a moment, half a score of house-slaves rushed in from various openings leading into the atrium. "away with this and that and that," she exclaimed pointing to the statue of a bacchante, that had not been visible in the chamber on the occasion of marsyas' expected calls; a tray of wine and a tablet with a list of charms and philters sent recently from a haruspex. "bring me a shawl--close around my neck: curse thee for a blunderer, iste; thou shalt pay for that scratch! here, unwind the scarf about my hips and fold it less closely; the amulet, take it off! by ate! here: caligula's note, spread open! into the brazier with it. do i smell of wine? fetch hither--that fresco! the pursuit of daphne! draw the arras over it! quick! the unguentarium, i said, snail! the one with the attar. now, look about. is there anything in sight to disturb a vestal? if i find it afterward, twenty lashes for you all!" mistress and slave looked anxiously over the chamber, but nothing unseemly greeted their eyes. junia sank back on her couch, not now so recumbent, but at ease. "go fetch the jew," she said, the languor of her manner combatted by the fire in her eyes. a moment later marsyas appeared in the archway. she arose and came to meet him. when he took her extended hands, she led him to the light of the cancelli and inspected him. "sit," she said, drawing him down on the divan under the casement. "and speak first. only a word, so i may see if the prologue is indeed as tragic as the mask." "let the mask suffice," he answered, "the prologue might be insufferable." "_proh pudor_! thy friend the herod hath just been here with pagan oaths upon his lips about thy dullness. i tell thee it is hard enough to make him walk as he should, but a groaning comrade is a gravel in his shoe. if thou wouldst manage him, be merry. remember we have this herod to crown, though he stood on the tarpeian rock and sang sonnets in dishonor of cæsar." "by the certainty of death, i have," he said sententiously. she looked at him and waited for him to go on, but he seemed to forget her, in his preoccupation. "i am a generous woman, marsyas," she said softly. "i do not resent thy lack of confidence in me!" "nay!" he exclaimed. "my lack of confidence, lady? what meanest thou?" "in thy bosom, gentle sir, thou keepest thine own counsel, and wearest signals of thy self-containment on thy brow. wherefore, i am informed thou hast thoughts that i may not know!" "but i spare thee my sorrows, my cynicism, my hopelessness," he protested earnestly, "my disbelief in humankind." "o marsyas, wert thou not jewish, i should call thee unmanly. listen!" she laid a warm hand, colored like a primrose, upon his. "thou wast an anchorite; thou didst attain manhood's stature and mind as an anchorite; into the world thou camest with all an anchorite's slander of the poor world in thee. the eye is a spaniel; the tyrant prejudice controls even its images. i warned thee in alexandria. i confess that there is evil in the world, but it is more the work of an elementary impulse rather than calculation. flaccus is bad, but because he is in love. agrippa does foolhardy things, because he is ambitious. what? did the preachment afflict thee which i delivered the other day upon thy levity and riotous living?" he shook his head. "nay, but this moment's preachment crosses me," he said. "thou offerest pardon for all the wickedness in the world, and i, sworn to punish one evil deed, am thus constrained, if i harken unto thee, to hold off my hand." "now, thou approachest the deep-hidden secret which i may not know. whom wilt thou punish? flaccus or classicus?" he hesitated. his vital hate of saul of tarsus, his fear for lydia, his love and its deep wound, were things too close to the soul for him willingly to bring forth and display to this woman who acknowledged only a mind, and not a spirit. yet it seemed unfair to withhold anything, however sacred, from one who had unbosomed so much to him. "i lead a selfish life and an unhappy one. i am stricken in my loves; one dead, one a murderer, a third faithless; a fourth i use to speed me in mine intents concerning the other two. if i avenge the death of one, i displease his spirit! if i visit punishment on his murderer, i make it possible for the destroyer of my love-story to go on. if i withhold my hand, i give another, much beloved, unto death. and him i help, i help for mine own use. my life is at cross purposes; my right hand worketh against the left!" "thy love?" she repeated softly, with a question in her tone. but he did not answer it. "a hopeless tangle," she said at last, "from which our ruling philosophers, degenerate imitators of pyrrho, offer but one escape. turn from it, cease to trouble over it, leave it, cast off all thought and memory of it--and begin anew!" he shook his head, his eyes on the pavement, his hands clasped before him. but the primrose hand found his again. "thou canst not, by the choicest revenge, force thanatos to yield up thy dead; thou confessest the evil thou workest in revenge as equal to the satisfaction; thou complainest that thy love is faithless--what else? so many thy pains, i can not remember them all; but in them all there is not the worth of one of thy sleepless nights. if thou canst not be a spartan, be a stoic; if not an avenger, then a forgetter; if not a lover, then a gallant! above all things, harken unto a pagan truth: love's a lusty wight and can suffer forty mortal wounds and love again. none but an ostrich loves but once! perchance i was right at first; thou shouldst have begun thine education in the first of flora's celebration." he winced, but presently raised his head. "what didst thou when the procession carried me away that night?" he demanded, searching her face. "when thou didst go away with the procession?" she laughed. "i went with them--of a necessity." "and how didst thou escape?" "when they all departed after flora danced." thus beyond doubt assured that she had witnessed the dance of flora, he was afraid to inquire further, lest he betray lydia. but he wanted mightily to know if she had recognized the alabarch's daughter. the disturbing reflection diverted his line of thought. many of the night's events which the greater one had overshadowed came back to him. he saw again the miraculous dance of brahma on the roof of the temple of rannu, fled again with lydia in his arms into the musky shrine and thence into the city; strove hard to convince himself that if he, sharpened of sight by love, had not recognized lydia except for the bayadere's note and his acquaintance with lydia's apostasy and her former defense of the nazarenes, others could not have done so. again he fought with flaccus and discovered agrippa in the dark and abandoned street in alexandria. and now the image of eutychus became particularly distinct. his brow blackened suddenly and he sprang to his feet. "it is solved!" he cried, striking the palm of one hand with the other. "by the wrath of god, he is flaccus' emissary. he turned on agrippa in alexandria when flaccus ambushed the prince! he was part of the conspiracy! it was no blind blow that agrippa struck. and the soul in me nourishes a lie or he meditates more work for the proconsul in this!" throughout his intensely confident accusation, junia had watched him with changing eyes. she had had to feel her way frequently in this last hour. "what?" she asked finally. in a few and rapid words, marsyas told her of eutychus' theft and flight, but his ideas hasted from his narrative to more testimony in favor of his conclusion. he remembered eutychus' jealousy of drumah, his ruffian mistreatment of lydia when the prætor moved against the nazarenes, his attempt to expose her to justin classicus because, his jealousy of marsyas revived, he had no other way of retaliating; and finally of his humiliation at marsyas' hands before agrippa and drumah. "bitter fool that i was not to understand him in time!" he cried. "in my soul, i know that we follow him to a pitfall in this matter!" junia slipped her fingers along the gilt grooves in the arm of the divan. flaccus was a clumsy villain, of a surety! what overt conspiracies he evolved! a wild boar of the german forests would not make more clamor at its attacks! a wonder he had not exposed her, ere this. but for his influence, which made her a place in cæsar's house, she had given up his service long ago. her lips curled with disgust and perplexity. "forewarning," she said gloomily, "is a torture when forearming avails naught." he caught the depression in her tone and turned to her quickly. "agrippa hath been here, marsyas," she continued. "yet he was not to be stopped, i thought, then, that it was only the knave's playing for time!" "what dost thou mean?" he demanded. "tell me!" "agrippa was here. eutychus hath been caught, but piso notifies the herod that the prisoner hath appealed to cæsar, claiming to have information against agrippa which concerns cæsar's life and welfare!" marsyas seized her arm. "what sayest thou?" he cried. "and since thou hast uncovered flaccus' hand supporting the villain, agrippa is in greater peril than i had supposed!" for a moment the two looked at each other: junia with uneasiness on her face, and marsyas transfixed. he saw his plans against saul of tarsus tumbling; he saw the pharisee triumphing over lydia! "it may still be hoped," she ventured, "that the knave lies!" "junia, thou knowest agrippa! it is my terror lest the knave be armed with a truth!" "out with it all," she went on desperately. "the herod is convinced that he is innocent--this time--of any ill-will against cæsar, and he came here and spent the greater part of an hour, beseeching me to use my influence to hasten cæsar's hearing of eutychus!" "in god's name, answer! did you refuse him?" "i did! i besought him to let cæsar follow his own way, since the emperor is notedly slow in hearing charges in these later years. i assured him that cæsar might be more displeased, urged against his inclination to hear a stupid slave, than the slave's charge could make him. but the herod is more stubborn than the classic steed of judea. he demanded haughtily of me, if i expected him to treat with a slanderer or beg a truce with a lie. then i refused him my offices. wherefore he hath posted off to antonia!" "she will not harken to him--!" he cried with sudden desperation. "o marsyas, this day i should be exorcised as a fury, bringing evil happenings. but better the sorry truth than a fair lie. antonia hath lived out of the world for the last decade, as hast thou. but her seclusion hath achieved the opposite harm, that is hatched by solitariness. she retired, full of years and honor; the world, approaching her door, comes in fair garments, bringing tokens of esteem, talks of ancient triumphs, the virtues of antonia and the great respect cæsar hath for her. wherefore, kindly treated by the world, remembering nothing but the good of the old days and believing in her sweet dotage that she crushed evil when she crushed sejanus, her natural strategic sense hath been lost in a great, all-enveloping charity. her natural nobility hath outgrown the wariness which aids youth, and her dimmed sight sees things of stature, only, or of high relief. she will see in the prince's desire only a desire to clear himself of a charge and she will honor him for it! she will do his bidding!" marsyas snatched up his cloak and sprang toward the archway. "let me to her!" he cried. "wait!" junia cried. "be prepared against defeat, though it never come! what wilt thou do, if she be immovable, or already gone--for cæsar is in tusculum to-day?" marsyas stopped and his face grew ashen. he saw lydia again, among the stones of the rabble, and murder leaped into his heart. "kill eutychus!" he declared desperately. "it would be fatal for agrippa," she protested. his hunted ideas turned then upon cæsar. suddenly he rushed back to junia and seized her hands. "thou art close to cæsar," he said rapidly and with great supplication in his voice, "and thou art in cæsar's favor! beseech him and right agrippa's mistakes, i implore thee! help me, junia! be my right arm! promise me thine intercession!" her face suffused, and she waited a moment before she could trust her voice. "for thy sake, marsyas," she answered. "i give thee my word!" he pressed her hands to his lips and ran out of the house. she dropped back on her couch and put her fingers to her temples. "save agrippa, to kill saul, to save lydia, for this judean vestal's sake?" she speculated to herself. "and where doth junia profit? ah! i shall get him in debt, and extort mine own price! jew or gentile, he will not think it exorbitant, for under it all, he is a man! but to tusculum!" she clapped her hands and ordered her litter. chapter xxv the speaking of eutychus the imperial ruin drooped in the gilded lectica, now comatose, now animate. under the purple robe the long, old, wasted limbs vibrated and the gems, quivering on the gnarled fingers, scintillated incessantly. now that the rich winds from the gardens of tusculum breathed on him, he cursed and groped for his mantle; again, when the inimitable sun of the alban hills smiled on him, his face purpled with suffusions of heat. now that his wrinkled blue lids drooped half-way, euodus, who walked by his side, told himself that he looked on death; but when the sunken eyes unclosed, he had to say that the will therein was immortal. it was a great, withered, tall, old frame, diseased and fallen into decay. life seldom of its own accord clings with tenacity to so ancient and utter a ruin. mind stood in the way of the soul's egress and penned it into its dilapidated shell. it was a habit cæsar's mind had of blocking people, things and himself. a creature of contradicting impulses, affectionate, sensitive, soldierly, immeasurably capable, with harsh standards of uprightness for others, stoic, enduring, ruggedly simple for the time, he was on the other hand one of the bloodiest and most unnatural monsters that ever disgraced the throne of the cæsars. moody, taciturn, perverse, superstitious, unspeakably sensual and cruel, yet withal an admirer of honor, the inalienable friend of the inalienable servant, he was a roman emperor in every phase of his many-sided nature. it is not recorded that any ever loved tiberius; neither is it recorded that any ever failed to respect him. he was finishing his twenty-fifth year as emperor of the world, but of late, macro's capacities as prætorian prefect had been enlarged to those of vice-regent, and cæsar returned from capri, his retreat from the trying climate of rome, only on occasions. beside him walked eight prætorian guards, picked, not for appearance but for age and integrity. there walked gallus who had followed augustus, thirty years before; attius paulus, who had one hundred and thirty-nine wounds on his huge hulk; severus vespasian, who had been a soldier forty years and had twice refused to be retired; plautius asper who had been surnamed leonidas, because he and a handful had held a german defile in the face of a whole barbarian army--and lived to refuse to be knighted. if cæsar spoke to one, the answer came in monosyllables and with a touch of the helmet. flattery never passed their lips, but if one lent his arm to the tall old emperor it was done with a rude tenderness that even the most polished courtier could not have improved. and tiberius, being blunt and impatient of pretenses, walled himself away from the rest of his following with this bulwark of dependable ruggedness. after his lectica came another, borne by four georgian youths. within lounged the latest of tiberius' favorite ladies, euodus' daughter, the lady junia. they had passed the corner of cicero's villa when a litter approached from an intersecting avenue and was set down. a woman stepped out. white her hair, her dress the ancient palla and stola of white and purple, her jewels, amethysts. the rheumy emperor saw her imperfectly. "stop!" he ordered his bearers. the woman approached and made obeisance. "humph! antonia," he muttered in some disappointment. but he drew his old frame together and inclined his head respectfully. "greeting, sister," he said. "the gods attend thee." "thou art good, augustus. welcome to tusculum once more," she replied. she took the hand he extended and raised it to her lips. the old man gazed at her with a wavering eye. "come closer. art so gray?" he asked. "white, cæsar." he took the hand from hers and put back the vitta that covered her hair. there were the sorrows of seventy years, in its absolute whiteness, and the roman duskiness of skin was brought out very strongly in contrast. but her eyes were still full and bright, even tender, her thin lips lacking nothing of the color of her youth. age had not laid its withering touch on her stature or even on the fullness of her frame, but the hand, time's infallible tally, was the worn-out hand of seventy years. she was the noblest woman of her age, _univira_,--the widow of one husband, dead in her youth, the mother of statesmen, generals and emperors, a scholar and at one time a diplomat,--in all things, the ancient spirit of the first republic, solitary, rugged, irreproachable in the vicious age of the cæsars. "eh! white, wholly white," he assented, running his fingers through her locks with a movement that was almost tender. "and i am thine elder. yet," he drew himself up and defiance hardened his face, "i am not a dead man, antonia!" "nay, who says it, cæsar? and it is not age that hath blanched me. i was gray at forty--much more gray than thou art now." "no, no! not age! truly a woman's protest. but then, perchance not. thy husband's death undid thee. how thou didst love him! save for thine example i should say that eros himself is dead!" after a little he muttered to himself: "alas! what a name to conjure death! my son drusus, thy spouse drusus, and thy son drusus, the germanicus. dead! all! and in their youth. the very name hath a sinister look." the old man shook his unsteady head and knuckled his sunken cheek. the widow's saddened face wore also some surprise. "canst thou speak of thy son drusus, now?" she asked. "not in these many years have i heard thee name him." "no!" he answered shortly. "i speak of dreams; new dreams, which i mean to have the soothsayers interpret." "tell me of them, augustus," she urged. "there is one, and it comes nightly. it is a shade from thanatos, which approacheth. i put the ægis into its dead hands, crown its death-dewed brow, do obeisance before a pale ghost that melts again into the shades--and after it passes all rome, and the empire of the cæsars." the widow's eyes showed unutterable sadness, which was unrelieved by tears. the unanointed cæsars that had passed into the shades had gathered unto their number no nobler one than the gallant young germanicus, and the last remnant of the ancient glory of rome had passed with him. but she put off the encroaching lapse into retrospection. "one of the departed cometh to ask that his offspring be thine heir," she suggested. the old emperor nodded eagerly. "it may be, it may be," he assented. "i have been pondering long upon the matter." a silence fell and the two gazed absently across the shimmering vision of rome, below them, three leagues to the west. about them were spread the villas of the rich in retreat, the very essence of repose, the birdsong and the murmur of laurels in the breeze; in the distance was the apotheosis of power, but their thoughts overreached the things seen and questioned after things unknown. in their philosophy, life was all. after it was shadow, an inevitable obliteration in which the just and the unjust were immersed eternally. but no youth, looking forward to the long, eventful days to come, experienced the grave wonder that these expended on the time after things were expected to end. the awe of the unexplored hereafter--what a waste of universal, earth-old, intuitive awe, if there be no hereafter! tiberius muttered, as if to himself: "there is another--yet another dream. i cast dice with three; three grisly hags, and i lose, though the tesseræ were cogged. but let be, let be; the soothsayers shall read me that one!" he sat up. "came you of a purpose to speak with me, antonia?" he asked. "i did," she said, "but it seems that the time is not propitious." "any hour is propitious for thee, antonia." "thou art a kind man, cæsar. i came to speak of agrippa." "agrippa!" the emperor exclaimed, a sudden transformation showing in his voice and manner. the woman in the litter behind stepped out, but paused without advancing. she made no attempt to conceal her attention to the talk between the widow and the emperor. antonia studied the face of the old man; it was significant, when, after his lapse into the softened mood of retrospection, he should return to his old manner. she felt her way. "agrippa ceases not to be interesting. thou and i remember him as the faithfulest friend thy son drusus had; to this day of all who knew drusus it is only agrippa who still hath tears for his name." the emperor's wrinkled mouth was set, his face absolutely without telling expression. "he hath had years of want and humiliation," she continued. "he hath walked under clouds and suffered from ill report, until he is soulsick of it. now, the favor of his emperor and the peace of good repute restored to him, are things that he would not willingly let go from him again. the inventions of an enemy have risen against him in rome; even hath the ill-favored sire of the story been discovered, and agrippa, conscious of his integrity toward thee, is restive. he wants to be examined; his innocence proven and thy good will toward him firmly established." "well, well!" tiberius said. "i shall await your happier mood," she said, gathering her robes about her. "any mood is happy enough for the jew," was the retort. antonia unmistakably eyed the old man. "say on, good antonia," he urged uncomfortably. "i have not forsworn justice." "agrippa asks nothing more. his charioteer robbed him, and when he was captured and in danger of punishment, he claimed that he had information against agrippa which concerns thy welfare. it is simply a device to put off punishment. he hath appealed to thee and thou hast not yet heard him. the herod is eager that the matter be settled and begs that the slave be heard at once." "eh! what a fanfare of probity!" the emperor mumbled. "leave it to a jew to flourish his righteousness. if he is innocent, he can wait; if he is guilty, we shall overtake him soon enough. i owe him a sentence of uncertainty for his slights to my grandson, the little tiberius." "and thou hast but this moment said that thou hadst not forsworn justice!" antonia exclaimed. "jupiter, but thou art provoking!" he fumed. "hither, euodus!" junia made a slight movement as if she meant to step between her father and the emperor, but was suddenly reminded of her part. she stopped again. "how my sentimental heart cries out against my obligation to flaccus!" she said to herself. "here must i stand idly by, while this new penelope to a dead ulysses works the herod's ruin!" euodus bowed beside cæsar. "bring me the jew's slave that hath a charge for me to hear. bring him hither, and haste!" the old man turned to antonia. "go tell thy valiant herod that he shall have justice. justice! say that. it may not please him so much to have that message." the gilded lectica moved on. the widow went back to her litter and was borne away. junia remounted her chair and followed the emperor. "o lady," she said, looking after antonia's litter, "it may be very superior to live aloof from the world, and ignorant of its intrigues, but it is fatal for thy friends, i observe." at the brink of a precipitous descent into the valley west of tusculum, euodus returned with eutychus, whom piso, at agrippa's defiant instigation, had been forced to send to tusculum to be available in event of cæsar's summons. junia looked at eutychus, livid with fear in the presence of the unspeakable might of the emperor, and held debate with herself. she had not agreed that agrippa should be other than alienated from his wife. she was human enough not to wish the death of any man to whom she was indifferent, and for a moment she seemed about to alight from her chair. even flaccus' power over her for the time seemed to lose its effect, for a picture of marsyas' suffering was a more distinct image. but one of the causes of marsyas' concern, nay, the chief cause--the protection of lydia to be achieved by the herod's success--occurred to her in an evil moment. she turned her face away from the colloquy between cæsar and the charioteer and studied the summer-green alban hills that shouldered the sky behind her. eutychus collapsed to his knees at sight of the emperor. "speak, slave," euodus ordered. "o cæsar," the charioteer panted when his voice would obey him, "once i drove the herod and caligula, the roman prince, to the hippodrome in this place and they talked of the succession. and herod said that he wished that thou wast dead and caligula emperor in thy stead." the emperor's eyes glittered. "what else?" euodus demanded. "somewhat about the young prince tiberius which i did not hear," eutychus trembled. "and what said caligula to that?" "that the herod had his own making and not caligula's to achieve!" "a roman's answer," junia said to herself. "is there nothing more?" the questioner insisted. "nothing, lord!" euodus bowed to the emperor and waited. "give him ten stripes and turn him loose," tiberius said. two of the prætorians led eutychus away. "_eheu_!" junia sighed. "i could have stared the knave between the eyes and made him discredit himself in a breath! ai! owl-faced lydia! thou art a destroyed peril, but at what a price!" the bearers stood patiently under the glow of the morning sun, waiting their royal burden's humor to go on. but tiberius shrank into the relaxation of thought. he had outlived every plot to assassinate him; he held in his hands consummate might; he was surely approaching the shades; but the example of his infallible fortune, the fear of his merciless hand and the fact that he would not stand long in the way of ambitions, had not quieted the fatal tongue which bespoke him evil! he was sick of blood and torture, tale-bearing and intrigue, because he was surfeited with it all. but here, now, was this precarious herod, barely escaping disaster which had pursued him for twenty years, wishing brutally and incautiously that he might die! tiberius was at a loss to know what to do with the man. the thought wearied him. he wished now that he had ordered a hundred stripes for eutychus instead of ten. what an officious creature antonia had become! euodus folded his arms and waited; the patricians, approaching in chairs of their own, alighted, bowed, passed out of the path and went around, remounted their chairs and disappeared. the birds in the trees about, hushed by the talk below them, twittered and flew again. euodus, casting a sidelong glance at the emperor, nodded at the nearest bearer. "to the palace," he said. the slaves turned back up the slanting street and the motion of the lectica aroused tiberius. "whither?" he demanded irritably. "to the palace, cæsar," euodus answered. "did i command thee? to the hippodrome, slaves!" the bearers turned once more and began the ticklish descent of the paved roadway to the valley below, where the circus of tusculum was built. the huge elliptical structure stood out in the plain, alone and solid except for the low, heavy arch of the vomitoria which broke the round of masonry. the trees about it were dwarfed in contrast, the columns shrunken, the viæ, approaching it from all directions straight as arrows fly, curbed and paved with stone, were as mere taut ribbons. but in the great slope of the campagna, under the immense and sparkling blue of the italian sky, it was only a detail in rock. rome had long since outgrown her walls and ceased to contemplate them except as landmarks and conventionalities, useless but as significant as cæsar's paludamentum. inns and mile-stones along the viæ proved them once to have been things distinctly suburban, but the city crying for room had passed the walls and built its own characteristics--temples, tombs, villas, circuses, fora and arches as far as tusculum along the roads. lovelier beyond comparison than rome's loveliest spots, it was small wonder that to fill their augustan lungs with the freshness of the campagna, the idle were borne out of the contained airs of the city, which were of such seasonal peculiarities that temples in propitiation of mephitis and the goddess febris had been erected. so daily groups of patricians collected at the hippodrome of tusculum, with laughter and badinage, the flashing of jewels and the glittering of cars, the flutter of lustrous silks and the tossing of feathers, to spend the bright hours of the day watching the races that proceeded in the arena below. the races had not begun, the crowds had not assembled. the gilded lectica was borne through the tunnel-like entrance up the stairs, not to the amphitheater but to the arena. slaves with blanketed horses and clusters of betting patricians were here and there over the sanded ellipse within. the bustle of preparation slackened at the approach of the august visitor. the eyes of the emperor opened and closed dully. nothing was here to interest a man worn out with seventy years of change and excitement. nothing new could have aroused him, for his attention rebelled against the call. presently, during one of the intervals that his eyes were open, he saw, within touch of his hand, agrippa and caligula side by side, talking to a gladiator. the emperor scowled and looked away. the bearers plodded on, rounded the upper end of the ellipse and, passing down the side, neared the mouth of the cunicula. agrippa and caligula had moved from their position and were there, with a notary taking down the terms of a wager. apart from them stood a small but important man, frowning over a waxen tablet which a slave had cringingly handed him. tiberius looked at him, then at agrippa. his brows lowered more, this time with irritation. it seemed that action had been formulated by circumstance and that the emperor was not to avoid a tiresome prosecution. he put out his hand as the bearers bore him by and it touched the roman on the shoulder. the man turned on his heel, but seeing who was near bowed profoundly. if he meant to speak to the emperor he was not given opportunity. "bind that man, macro," cæsar said, nodding at agrippa. the lectica moved on. as it passed up the opposite side macro crossed to it and, puzzled and disturbed, bowed again. "cæsar's pardon, but whom am i to bind?" he questioned. "that man," tiberius replied irritably, pointing to the herod. "agrippa!" the astonished prefect exclaimed. "i have said." the lectica went on, up and around the curve of the ellipse, and back again to the cunicula. the few within the walls of the hippodrome had gathered there in an interested and excited group. in the center stood agrippa with manacles on his wrists and ankles. the charm and sparkle in his atmosphere were gone; even as tiberius looked, he saw the cold, evil, vengeful countenance of the asmonean slave, the terror of the orient, herod the great, appear, like a face putting off a mask, behind the graceful features of his grandson. tiberius was grimly satisfied; he felt the first interest in the arrest; he was always by choice a preferrer of noble game. on either side of the prisoner stood a roman soldier; aloof and passive was macro, but the earth had apparently opened and swallowed caligula. as the lectica approached, the crowd gave way and his captors permitted agrippa to come nearer the emperor. "at cæsar's command, i am arrested," he said evenly. "will cæsar grant me the prisoner's privilege and tell me why?" "thy charioteer hath spoken, agrippa," was the response. "the slave swears that on such and such a day he drove thee and caligula to this place. instead of horses you talked of kings, instead of bets, the succession. and thou madest moan that i was not dead so that caligula could reign in my place!" the jaws of many round about relaxed in horror. agrippa's muscles made an involuntary start, but his face retained its calm. but the emperor caught the start. "forgot that unctuous bit of tittle-tattle when thou didst make antonia bearer of thy boasts, eh?" he piped. "my words have been distorted," agrippa spoke, though he seemed to hate himself for offering a defense. "ah-r-r! wilt thou snivel and deny?" tiberius snarled. the prince's manacled hands clenched and a glimmer of hate showed in his eyes. cæsar nodded; that was better. [illustration: the prince's manacled hands clenched] "agrippa, the king-maker!" he went on, "late mendicant from judea; heir presumptive to the ax! eh? take him away! macro, come thou to the palace to-night, and i'll deliver sentence!" the gilded lectica moved on. twenty minutes later, marsyas, white to the lips, his eyes enlarged and dangerous, sprang from a clump of myrtle by the roadside, after the litter had passed up toward tusculum and, thrusting a hand into junia's chair, seized her arm. "see that tiberius forgets his audience with macro to-night," he said to her. "see that he yearns after capri, and returns to-morrow--or thou bringest upon me the pain of killing." terrified for the first time in her life, junia shrank under the crushing grip. "him or me!" she told herself. "i promise!" she whispered to marsyas. "but acquit me of blame. what could i do?" "i have shown thee, now!" he said intensely, and was gone. chapter xxvi the arm made bare lydia went up on the housetop into the shade of the pavilion with the writing her father had put into her hand, and drawing the hangings on the east side of the pavilion to shut out the morning sun, sat down to read how marsyas had revealed the evil tidings to the alabarch. it was the first moment of rest she had had since the messenger had arrived at daybreak with the letter which had flung cypros into paroxysms of suffering and desperation. now that the unhappy princess had yielded to the benign influence of a narcotic simple, lydia had time for her own thoughts. it was not the same lydia that had danced on the temple of rannu. spiritual change as infallibly marks the countenance as physical change. the last of the half-skeptical, half-philosophical tolerant equanimity was gone from her face; the self-reliance had been transformed into a look of faith and believing, and a certain tranquillity, no less sweet and unshaken because it was sorrowful, no less patient because its hope was faint, made her forehead placid. she read: rome, kal. jul. x, 790. "to the most excellent alabarch, alexander lysimachus, governor of the jews of alexandria, greeting: "it is my grief to inform thee that at the command of cæsar, my lord and patron, herod agrippa, hath been confined in the prætorian camp awaiting sentence for utterances pronounced treasonous to cæsar. "immediately after the prince's arrest, one of the ladies of cæsar's train was stricken by an illness, resulting from the malarious airs of the campagna, and the emperor ordered the immediate return to capri. "inquiry among the emperor's ministers discloses the fact that he left no explicit instructions concerning the execution of a sentence upon agrippa. it is noted in rome that, owing to the multiplicity of his duties and the weariness of his mind, the emperor forgets readily, and is not pleased to be reminded of that which he hath forgotten to perform. wherefore, if it please god to erase agrippa from his mind, it shall be seen to, here in rome, that no one recall the unfortunate prince to cæsar's attention. "canvass among the fellows of agrippa conducted by certain powers in the state reveals that the movement against the prince did not have its inception in rome; however, many were not unwilling to have it come to pass because of the prince's aggressive political preferences. but now that he is at the edge of ruin, the insignificant activity in the capital hath fallen inert; those who contributed to it are alarmed, for the accomplishment of agrippa's death will inevitably revert upon the heads of them who endangered him, should caius caligula be crowned. "the movement against the prince, consummated by the charioteer eutychus, had its inception, as i have said, not in rome. the man stole of his master's wardrobe and ran away. when he was apprehended he claimed that he had information against agrippa which concerned the life and welfare of cæsar. piso, city prefect, bound the man and sent him to tusculum, where, by the solicitations of antonia, who was commanded by agrippa, the emperor heard the charioteer's charge. "thou and i know, good my lord, that eutychus is too clumsy a villain, too much of a coward, to invent and push this bold work himself, without support. wherefore, i and others are convinced that he must have been inspired and aided by some secret and shrewd enemy outside of rome. if the proconsul of egypt is not yet informed of this disaster, do not trouble him with the information! "it may assist thee to know that eutychus, given ten stripes as earnest of cæsar's respect for him, and turned loose, eluded mine and caligula's vengeance and immediately took ship for alexandria. expect him in the brucheum. "know this, also. if cæsar forget and agrippa live on, this enemy will grow restive and bestir himself again, wherefore it is the duty of them who love the prince to watch for any coiling which prepares for the stroke. "for thine own comfort and for the comfort of his unhappy princess, i add here, though in peril to the prince's benefactor and to myself, that agrippa's prison discomforts are alleviated, and kind usage secured him by the generous distribution of gold among them who surround him. it is not a difficult matter to secure him comparative comfort. "silas and i daily come to him with fresh clothing, and abundant food: he hath his own bedding and his daily bath. through the influence of the prætorian prefect, obtained at great price by antonia, none is permitted to pronounce agrippa's name outside the camp, on pain of extreme punishment--a clever pretense at abhorring a traitor which aims only at his defense. "thy part is to quiet, within thy powers, any work in alexandria which may lead to cæsar's remembering agrippa. "i have closed the prince's residence, dispersed his slaves among the families of his friends, and with silas i am living under the roof of antonia, in whose care i am permitted to receive letters. the lady junia is at capri at my solicitation, pledged to do a woman's part in the protection of agrippa. "may the god of our fathers arm thee. "peace to thee and thine. "marsyas." lydia sighed and let the writing drop into her lap. "i can not hope, my marsyas," she said to herself, "if thou art schooled in the understanding of women by junia!" the roman tincture was patent in the letter, but the jewish manner, jewish penetration, and the essenic coldness were strong and unaltered. his well-beloved and unchanged hand had pressed all the surface of the parchment, but she did not lift it to her lips. there had been no word beyond the general greeting to her as the family of the alabarch, and proud, even in her sorrow and the new-found humility, she saved her endearments. after a moment of further thought, she was aroused by the rattle of wheels which came to an end before the porch of her father's house. she arose and going to the parapet looked over. justin classicus' chariot stood there. she caught the last flutter of his garments as he disappeared under the roof of the porch. she went back to her place and waited for a servant to announce the guest. but classicus lingered. the alabarch was not like to be telling him the account of agrippa's latest misfortune. she put away marsyas' letter and gazed at the synagogue immersed in the golden flood of egyptian sunshine. she had not ceased to love it, nor to attend it with all maiden fidelity since she had followed jesus of nazareth, but it seemed to love her less, to throw a shadow darker, but less benign, over her, as she approached its giant gates. saul of tarsus whom she had feared for marsyas' sake was a hidden menace now in its great angles, a threat in its rituals, a brooding danger held up only so long as she hid in deceit. she felt unutterably lonely and friendless. presently classicus came up unannounced. she knew at a glance that he had learned from some source of agrippa's misfortune, and wondered for a moment if her father had forgotten marsyas' charge. "alexandria hath heard of agrippa's disaster," he began, as he seated himself beside her, "and i came to offer my consolation and my aid." then flaccus already had the news! "i would thou couldst aid us, justin. not now is anything more precious than help, and nothing less possible." "and to say lastly," he continued, looking into her face, "that i deplore that haunted look in thine eyes, lydia. what does it mean?" "that i grow older, wiser, sadder--and less fortunate." "thou shouldst study the philosophy of the nazarenes," he declared. "i find that much of their teaching, stripped of its frenzy and reduced to the dignity of pure language, hath much comfort in it." "does it promise that sorrow will not come to them who espouse it?" she asked, looking away. "nay, but it preaches universal love. could i teach thee that, sorrow should never approach thee or me henceforth!" "i fear thou dost not understand them," she said dubiously. "not wholly," he admitted. "i have not yet been able to agree with them, that i, justin classicus, scholar and sadducee, should find it in my heart to love a crook-back shepherd that speaks aramaic, rejoices on conchs, relishes onions and is washed only when the rains wet him." he smiled, and justin classicus' face was helped by a smile. mirth possessed him entirely, cast up a transitory flush in his cheeks and lighted torches in his eyes. but lydia looked across the alexandrian housetops. "why dost thou seek this new philosophy, justin?" she asked. "to see if it be safe enough heresy to teach thee," he returned. "if it be, thou shall learn it, for in its creed of universal love, i put mine only hope that thou shalt come to love me!" "learn the universal love for thyself, justin: learn to love the shepherd and thine enemy--learn it in all truth, and thou mayest be content with that, and no more!" "the lord forbid!" he cried. "if that should come to pass, learning this new philosophy, i pause, even now!" "enemy?" he repeated, after a little in a gentler tone. "save another hath possessed thy heart, i have no enemy--the nazarenes recommending that one leave them out of one's catalogue of fellows!" "canst thou not hold off thy hand, even from an enemy? hath thy search after their philosophy taught thee so much?" he looked at her face, and saw thereon something to follow. "i can--be bought," he answered softly. she remembered his part in the ambuscade the night of the dance of flora, and her face paled a little. "it is not the nazarene way," she replied unreadily. "nay, but if the demand be great enough, any method must serve. shall i name my price?" his voice was clear and illuminating. she arose and moved over to one of the columns, and leaning against it gazed across toward the blue sparkle of the new port. she felt the strength of his fortification, the extent of his power over her. not any of the many things she had hidden from all but marsyas were unknown to him! she turned to him with appeal in her eyes, but he laughed very softly, and wrapped the kerchief skilfully about his head. his composure terrified her. he held out his hand. "think," he said, "and to-morrow or the next to-morrow, but soon, thou wilt tell me. meanwhile i shall tell thy father that i have spoken with thee." he took her fingers and kissed them. "farewell. and let the nazarenes persuade thee, if i can not!" a long time after she heard the wheels of his chariot roll away from before the alabarch's porch. then with slow, weary steps she went down into the house. she would seek out her father, and discover what to expect from flaccus and if disaster could be averted from the beloved head of marsyas and the unhappy herod. not until then would she entertain the suggested sacrifice which classicus had so deftly demanded. but when she reached the inner chamber, with the arch opening into the alabarch's presiding room, she saw within the proconsul. she hesitated, surprised and alarmed, but presently her father, raising his eyes, saw her and signed to her to enter. the proconsul stopped in the middle of a sentence to greet her, not from courtesy, but because she was a consideration. she took her place on an ivory footstool at the foot of the alabarch's chair and seemed to efface herself. lysimachus trifled with a stick of wax and heard flaccus to the end of the sentence. the old tone of assumed cordiality was gone. flaccus had ascended again to the plane of a legate speaking with a jew. "so i shall pay thee thy five talents and release the lady, that she may be sent to rome," he concluded. "the gossip of the lady's arrival in rome would work havoc, sir. she would be there engaging antonia's attention, which should be devoted without lapse, in other directions." "the herod's lady need not arrive with the blare of trumpets," was the cool retort, "and since thy talents are returned to thee, lysimachus, thou art not asked to carry thy concern into rome." the thin cheeks of the alabarch grew pink and lydia raised a pair of somber eyes to the proconsul's face. "it is not a matter of my loan," the alabarch answered without a tremor in his melodious voice, "but it is that i held her in hostage in the beginning." "at my suggestion. then thou canst release her at my suggestion--and if the loan sits roughly on thy conscience we shall call it a gift at this late day." "if it please thee, good sir, we have left the discussion of the talents. it is the lady who concerns us now. i would be plain with thee; i should reproach myself did i let her proceed out of my house." "call the lady," flaccus commanded. "we will lay the matter before her." "she sleeps," lydia said. "i bring her more relief than sleep," was the blunt reply. "bring her hither." "on one promise," lydia said. "what?" "that i and my servants alone shall accompany her to rome." flaccus gazed straight at the alabarch's daughter. lysimachus sat without movement. he knew that his daughter had seen at once that which he had instantly divined--that flaccus had no intention of sending cypros to rome. "bring the lady," flaccus insisted, "and we shall lay our plans thereafter." lydia sat still; she knew cypros' believing nature; that she would see nothing but a generous offer in the proconsul's intent; that to prevent the simple woman from consenting to destroy herself the whole villainy of the proconsul would have to be uncovered to her--doubtless before flaccus, with unimaginable results. the alabarch looked down on his daughter's fair head, away from flaccus' threatening gaze and waited for her answer. "my lord," she said composedly, "we have complicated our associations with thee and this unfortunate family long enough. perchance we erred. at best it may no longer be maintained. though the lady cypros is uninformed, i and others know why thou hast been tolerant of our people of late; what deed thou didst attempt in the passage back of rannu's temple on the closing night of flora's feast; what disaster overtook thee there; why agrippa, now, is undone and what thou meanest in truth to do with his princess." there was silence. then the alabarch's hand dropped down on lydia's curls. "daughter, thou art weaponed with testimony new to thy father; thou hast kept thy arms concealed. yet i will take them up, now." he raised his eyes to flaccus. "perchance thou wouldst explain to me my daughter's meaning?" after a dangerous dilation of his gray-brown eyes, flaccus seemed more than ever composed. "is my favor worth aught to the jews?" he asked. "jews," the alabarch replied, "do not purchase immunity at sacrifice of the honor of their women." "i am not enraged, alexander," was the reply. "i am only diverted. but the herod under sentence of death and the alexandrians loosed upon the regio judæorum, it seems that the lady herod will soon be without a protector or a roof-tree. she had much better go--to rome!" he strode out of the presiding-room and into the street before the alabarch could conduct him to the door. lysimachus and his daughter looked at each other. their thoughts reached out and gathered in for contemplation all the details and the results of the climax. then the alabarch opened his arms to his daughter and she slipped down on his breast. "tell me what thou knowest against flaccus, and why i have not learned of this?" he urged. it was a sore trial to lydia's conscience to leave out her own part in the story she told, but the alabarch was less attentive to the source of her information than to the information itself. "i did not tell it sooner, because, in ignorance thou wouldst not be constantly hiding from flaccus a distaste, distrust and watchfulness that infallibly would have controlled thee hadst thou known his hands were red with the blood of a man of whom he spoke fair and whom he pretended to love, before the world!" "what shall we do?" she asked after a long silence, for the press of many evils had stunned her resourcefulness. "tell the princess first," the alabarch responded. "and then?" "fight! he can invent twenty excuses to take cypros from me by law and against her will." "then we must hide her and speedily!" the alabarch thrust his old waxen fingers into his white locks. "now who will imperil himself by giving her asylum?" he pondered. lydia looked up after a little thought. "the nazarenes," she ventured timidly. "what! the apostates! the community is the most perilous spot in egypt!" "here in alexandria, of a truth," lydia hurried on eagerly, "but thou knowest by report that they have spread abroad among rustics and shepherds as a running vine. many are living about over the delta. one of them will shelter her, i know. she will go when we have told her what threatens, nor fail to flourish on their rough fare, since she hath made her bed by the roadways, and had her bread from the hands of wayside mendicants!" the alabarch arose and set her on her feet. "haste, then, lydia; no time is to be lost!" but before she reached the threshold of the archway she turned back and came slowly to him, closer and closer, until she raised her arms and put them about his neck. "father!" she whispered, "we need have fear of classicus." the pallor on the old man's face quivered like the reflection of a shaken light. "he is jealous," he answered, "of marsyas! hath he cause, my daughter?" lydia dropped her head on the alabarch's breast. "marsyas is an essene!" she whispered, and the alabarch smoothed her curls and was filled with pity. chapter xxvii the proconsul's deliberations before sunset that day, flaccus had received two messages. one was brought by a jewish slave. it read: "to flaccus avillus, proconsul of egypt, greeting: "i have departed. "cypros." the other came by a roman courier, who had landed an hour before from one of the swift-going triremes which had left ravenna three days later than the passenger boat that had brought marsyas' tidings. the message also was written in a woman's hand and was no less enraging than the other: "rome, kal. jul. x, 790. "this bulletin to tell thee, o my raging corybant, that thy cause hath ceased to prosper for the past three days. mine own part was well performed as was thine other minion's, the bewitching eutychus, but desperate work hath been done which bids fair to upset thee and me and preserve thine enemies. "first and above all things, thou wilt remember that it was not in the pact that i should do more than lead the herod out of the path of domestic uprightness and hold off my hands. this hath been already done, but the parcæ have grown weary of yielding thee favor, so read, here, following, disaster! "herod and his friend, the essene marsyas, who had become a dangerous roman, filled with a jew's cunning and the boldness of a wolf-suckled romulus, till misfortune cut him down--this same fallen herod and his friend have dropped out of sight, except as death may bare its arm and reach down to cut off the head of the one and the income of the other. this much in three days; but rome hath taught herself to forget in a twinkling. "but cæsar hath been for many days troubled of a dream. he telleth it thus, in no more words, no fewer: 'i cast dice with three; three grisly hags, and i lose, though the tesseræ were cogged!' his collection of soothsayers, the completest in the world, offered as many readings as there are numbers of them in the court. but tiberius drew his lip and bared his teeth at them and called them pea-hens and cockchafers. even thrasullus, he lampooned--thrasullus, whom once he feared. "whereupon, the store of haruspices and augurs that feed upon superstitious rome were brought in--only to furnish mirth for the court and victims for tiberius. "then macro, rummaging about in musty and alien-peopled corners of the imperial city, brought forth a wonder! "it--and would i could call the sex of the creature--came hither from the orient. on that naked fact, rome is left to build its biography, describe its looks and fathom its purpose. for it came before cæsar, and stood, a column in white--hooded, mummied, shawled, veiled in white! the court hath had spasms, since, fearing that it might have been a leper, but i say that there was no sick frame within those cerements! it had the stature and brawn of a man, but it managed its garments with the skill of a woman. it came, heard cæsar's dream, plucked off a husk of its wrappings, produced pigment and stylus and wrote thereon. "then it vanished quite away. "a hundred courtiers rushed upon the wrapping that it left, and cæsar, pallid even under his wrinkles, screamed to them to pursue the thing and fetch it back. but it was gone; vanished into thin air. "then macro plucked up courage and, taking up the cloth, fetched it to cæsar to read. "and cæsar, ashamed to show fear in the face of his court, snatched the linen away and read--to himself! "now, whether the writing assured tiberius that he was the comeliest monarch on the earth, or unfolded this scheme which is to follow, no man knows. but that which was written contained persuasion which worked on cæsar's mirth, for he smiled, as he hath not smiled since sejanus tasted death. "'go forth and search out that soothsayer,' he commanded macro, 'that i may give him whatsoever thing he would have!' but macro hath not discovered the soothsayer unto this day. "meantime cæsar cleared his audience-chamber, but despatched a slave to bring me back to him. "and when i came i was bidden in whispers to take caligula to the deepest hidden villa on capri, and entertain him until i was bidden to return. "an hour later, i met my father, the simple euodus, who told me after many charges to keep it secret, that he had been bidden to fetch at daybreak the coming morning, whichever prince, caligula or tiberius, who stood without the emperor's door to give him greeting. "and yet another hour later, the little tiberius' tutor was summoned to the imperial bed-chamber and came forth some minutes later with a face as blank as a tuscan sherd. "now, though i saw not the cloth of revelation, nor heard the emperor's plans, i knew then, as i know now, that the mysterious soothsayer wrote that the dream meant that cæsar and the destinies should choose the coming emperor, and bade him proceed by these means. "and i, dutiful lady to an engaging prince, took caligula, nothing loath, and went privately into the interior of the island to that small wasp-nest palace clinging to the side of the cruelest precipice in these bad hills of capri. "but in the night, while yet caligula lingered at the board, because forsooth the slaves had carried me away first, there came the thunder of hoofs without, sentries and servants, asleep or drunken or afraid, fell right and left, flying feet rang upon the pavement, and before any could resist, caligula was snatched up, rushed out and away into the night--and not any one saw the face of his abductor. "but when my father duly emerged from the emperor's bed-chamber there stood without, not little tiberius, but caligula, drenched as if he had been soused in a horse-trough to sober him, with immense dazed eyes and trembling like an aspen. "when he was led within, cæsar started up and glared at him with baleful eyes. "'i was sent by a dream,' caligula whispered. 'what wilt thou have of me?' "and tiberius, struggling with an apoplexy, fell back and made no instant answer. but presently he said, "'perpol! i cogged the dice for myself, but it was the destinies who threw them! oh, well, it was written, and had to come to pass!' "where was the little tiberius? being assured that naught should prevent his election, he lingered for his breakfast. o fatal appetite of lusty youth! he lost an empire by it. for cæsar, still afraid of the mysterious thing from the orient, ratified the choke of the destinies. "but caligula hath discovered the identity of the dream that fetched him; which being very substantial and human stands in high favor with the prince imperial. and so, through him as well as through the herod's own claim on caligula, agrippa's hopes are brighter. "wherefore thy campaign against the obstacle between thee and the maker of that twenty-year old wound in thy heart must be cautious, no longer overt, and above all things not of such nature as may recoil upon thee. hear for once a woman's reason. if thou accomplish the herod's end, remember that caligula succeeds tiberius and will not fail to visit vengeance on those who ruined his friend! "be wise, be covert, be wary! if thou hast made mistakes, correct them! make no new enemies, and turn old ones into friends. i will help thee, here, in rome, except to the point of exposing myself. "if thou wilt work, be rapid, for cæsar declines. we go hence as soon as he may be removed, to misenum. but it is only animal flight from death; he seems to turn like a wounded jackal and snap at his heels. matters of state, beyond the satisfying of a multitude of grudges, are entirely given up to macro. but daily the dullness on his brain shifts a little, so that the light of recollection penetrates to it, and he remembers forgotten animosities. herein lies thy hope. i will not suggest agrippa to him; caligula would cut my throat before daybreak, for the eaves-dropping macro would know what i did. "calculate for thyself; get others to do thy work and to shoulder the peril. "meanwhile venus prosper thee, and may the parcæ repent. "junia." "oh, well i know that mummied mystery, that dream, that unseen abductor!" flaccus raged, gnawing his nails. "it is that villain essene to whom i owe torture and death! he, to direct the imperial succession!" then he fell to considering his obstacles. caligula as prince imperial and friend to the herod would permit no persecution of the jews. that method of coercing the alabarch had to be abandoned. next, he re-read the single line from cypros. she had not gone to rome; she had hidden herself. that was what the line meant. they had told her, so she hated him. but he did not wince so much under her hate, as he raged over his bafflement. then he thought of classicus, and with the thought his hope revived. finally he sprang up, and, summoning slaves, scattered them broadcast over alexandria in search of the philosopher. he would go to rome! he would bear to cæsar an appeal from flaccus to command the alabarch to produce cypros, herod agrippa's wife, who had been abducted. the plan unfolded itself so readily and so helpfully, that the proconsul's face grew radiant with anticipated triumph. in an hour, a slave returned with justin classicus. chapter xxviii the strange woman cæsar left capri and roved along the italian coast in his splendid barges, or approached by land close to rome, even to spend the night just without her walls, or in tusculum, ostia, antium or baiæ. he dragged his court with him, by this time deserted of all upright men, and circling, slinking, making sorties and retiring, he brought up at last in the villa of lucullus on misenum with all his unclean party. macro in attendance upon cæsar had left a tribune in rome as a post of despatch from which necessary information could be communicated to the prefect in misenum. the tribune, a sour old prætorian, with more integrity than graciousness, charged to protect agrippa's interests for macro's sake, now that caligula was prince imperial, was empowered with not a little of the prefect's authority, which he administered with a kind of slavish awe of it. so, when a young alexandrian jew, giving the name of justin classicus, bearing a letter of introduction from the proconsul of egypt, applied for a tessera which would give him admission to misenum, the tribune refused, declaring that the visitor must be indorsed by a roman of rank and in good odor with the emperor. classicus took his departure, assuring the tribune that he would go to baiæ where young tiberius lived in his father's villa, and get the indorsement of the lad, to whom flaccus was notedly a partizan. as soon as classicus had departed, the tribune rushed a messenger to marsyas, with macro's signet which would command horses at posts between rome and misenum, and informed the young man what menaced the herod. marsyas did not tarry for preparation. he knew that classicus would go by the common route, by sea from ostia, and that the overland route was only, by the luckiest of circumstances, the speedier. before the messenger had returned to the tribune, marsyas was on the road to misenum. a day later, he passed the picket thrown out a hundred paces from the actual precincts of the villa of lucullus, but when he offered his tessera to the prætorian posted at its inner walls, the soldier did not lower his short sword. marsyas, who had come to know many of the prætorians, looked in surprise at the man. "turn back, good sir," the man said. "none enters the lines to-day." while he knew that it was useless to ask the sentinel why the arbitrary order was in force, the question leaped to his lips before he could stop it. his voice was eager. "what passeth within?" the soldier shook his head. marsyas drew away a space and thought. he knew that the little tiberius was an exception to every law laid down by cæsar; classicus could not have armed himself with a more potent name. caligula's friends, even macro's friends, might be barred, not the friends of the little beloved tiberius. the obstruction was dangerous. he knew that he had to deal with classicus. the bitterness in his heart rose up and smothered his distress: for the moment he lost sight of agrippa's peril, his hope against saul of tarsus and his fear for lydia, in the all-overwhelming rancor against the man who was setting foot upon all the purposes in the young essene's life. while he stood wrestling with a mighty impulse to kill classicus, a courier in a well-known livery bowed beside him. "the lady junia sends thee greeting and would see thee in her father's house." marsyas turned readily and followed the servant. he had come to look upon the roman woman as a counselor, of whom he had some serviceable ideas out of the many he had not adopted. he knew that if he crossed her threshold to find distressing tidings within, he was sure of finding an attempt at alleviation at the same time. he might come forth vexed with all his friends, hating more hotly his enemies, but less amazed at sin in general. he had not learned to apologize for the world, nor even to believe in it; he had simply come to accept it as a necessary and irremediable evil. the general condemnation of his skepticism had not left her untouched, but he felt, nevertheless, that no one was so bad that another much worse could not be found. junia, therefore, occupied a position of lesser blame. she was charitable and amiable, and whatever she had done that failed to measure up to his jewish standard of virtue had been overshadowed by her usefulness. he was led toward a little inclosure of lattice-work and vines on the summit of a knoll, from which the imperial demesnes were visible. between the screen and the brink of the eminence was earth enough for the foothold of an olive, and its dark crown reached over and shaded the space within. there was a single marble exedra with feet and arms of carven claws, and through the interstices of the vinery and the farther shade and foliage of the new spring, the insula of euodus arose white and graceful. the sunshine lay in brilliant mosaics over the thick sod, and above, lozenges of blue showed where the light had entrance. the breeze from the warm bay went soft-footed through the trees, and for the moment marsyas felt that all the friendliness which the world held for him had been caught and pent in the little garden. junia was there, luxuriously bestowed in the cushions of the stone seat. she made room for him beside her, but he took one of the pillows and, dropping it on the grass, sat at her feet. he looked at her with expectancy in his eyes. "o my junia," he said, "why dost thou wear that eager, uninformed look, as if thou wouldst say, 'tell me quickly what news thou hast!' when thou knowest invariably i bring no cheer!" "hear him!" she cried. "shall i look thus: 'here comes marsyas, bearing evil tidings and craving comfort, for he does not care for me except when i may do something for him?'" "of a truth, dost thou not say that in thy heart?" he insisted. "no! i say this: 'yonder young man is much in debt to me, but my requital when i ask it will be equal to his debt.' wherefore, i shall serve on till the sum is equal." "thou speakest truly when thou sayest i am in debt to thee, but if thou hast in thy heart something which thou wouldst have me do, command me now!" "perchance when i see what brought thee to misenum, to-day," she smiled. "if thou canst help me, junia, i shall owe thee a life!" "thy life, marsyas?" "no; agrippa's--or the life of justin classicus!" "how now!" she cried, and there was more genuine interest in her soft voice than she had previously shown. "what hath stirred thee against classicus?" at that moment an indistinct shout of great volume, as of many men cheering behind walls, interrupted him. he turned his head quickly in the direction of the palace. "what passeth within?" he asked; "why will they not admit me?" "nothing, nothing," she said hurriedly, "or at least only an important ceremony which none but cæsar can perform; macro does not wish him to be interrupted. go on with thy story!" "flaccus hath sent a messenger to the emperor--a messenger that commands the favor of the little prince tiberius." "who told thee?" she asked. "well?" she inquired. he studied the look on her face and felt that it was strangely composed for the assumed eagerness in her voice. "the tribune refused him the tessera which he must have to approach the emperor's abode, and required that he produce the indorsement of some notable roman before he return again. the messenger went away boasting that he would get it of the little tiberius." "he will!" she assented, "for little tiberius is not on the promontory to-day, and the sentries without dare not refuse the lad's signet!" marsyas frowned and looked down: he was perplexed that she did not help. "is there no way to shut him out of misenum?" he asked. "cæsar's passport is as much a command as cæsar's denial--when the little tiberius delivers it," she repeated. "but can i not reach macro?" "no," she said decisively. "macro's powers pale before the lad's." was she at the end of her ingenuity, or her willingness, he asked himself. "he will get to the emperor, then, if he start?" his desperation grew under the lady's easy irony. "unless thou or some other of agrippa's friends disable him permanently with a bodkin, or a storm deliver him up to the nereids." marsyas' hands clenched: he moved as if to rise, but she slipped her hands through the bend of his elbow and let them retard him, more by their presence than by actual strength. "is there something thou canst do?" he asked. she hesitated; something seemed to fill her eyes; her lids quivered and dropped; speech trembled on her lips, but the momentary impulse passed. after a little silence, she lifted her eyes, composed once more. "i told thee, once upon a time," she said, "of the world. i have counseled with thee for thine own good, and sometimes thou didst heed me, but on the greater number of occasions thou hast chosen for thyself. what hast thou won from thy long battle for the stern purposes which have engaged thee? what hast thou achieved in controlling this herod, or in working against saul of tarsus? what?" he frowned and looked away. "nothing," she answered, "save thou hast gathered perils around thee, forced thyself into sterner deeds, and there--" she laid a pink finger-tip between his eyes. "--there is a blight on thy comeliness." "dost thou urge me to give over mine efforts? if so, speak, that i may tell thee i can not obey!" he declared. "no? not even if thy work maketh another unhappy--whom thou wouldst not have to be unhappy?" he looked at her: did she mean lydia? or was she concerned for classicus? "art thou defending classicus?" he asked. "nay," she smiled, "but i defend myself!" this was puzzling, and at best irrelevant. he had come, burdened with trouble and concern for agrippa's life, and she was leading away into less serious things. it was not like her to be capricious. perhaps there was more in her meaning than he had grasped. "i pray thee," she continued, "mingle a little sweet with thy toil!" he arose and moved away from her. "o junia, how can i?" he demanded impatiently. "nay, but i am asking payment of the debt thou confessest to me!" "help me yet in this danger of classicus, and i shall be thy slave!" she arose and approached very close to him. her face was flushing, her hands were outstretched. he took them because they were offered. "marsyas," she whispered, her brilliant eyes searching his face, "i shall not cease to be thy confederate, but i would be more!" with a little wrench she freed her hands from his and drew a packet from the folds of silk over her breast. "see! i have here thy letter, which herod brought and bitterly reproached me for mine enchantment of thee. and i kept it, till this hour!" she put into his hands the scorched and broken letter that he had written to lydia and had believed that he had destroyed so long before. while he looked at it, stupefied with astonishment, she slipped her arms about his neck. "i do not ask thee to marry me," she whispered, a little laugh rippling her breath. "eros does not summon the law to make his sway effective. for thou art an essene, by repute, and no man need surrender his reputation for his character. wherefore, though ten thousand dread penalties bound thee to celibacy, they do not dull thine eyes nor make thy cheeks less crimson! be an essene, or a jew, cæsar or a slave--that can not alter thy charm! and i shall not quibble, so thou lovest me!" marsyas stood still while he searched her changing face. it was not a new experience for him who had brought picturesque beauty into rome, but the source was different, the result more grave. on this occasion the seductive enumeration of his good looks awakened in him something which was affronted; whatever thing it was, it possessed an intelligence which comprehended before his brain grew furious, and, flinging itself upon his soul, buffeted it into sensitiveness. with a rush of rage, he understood all that her act had accomplished for him. the world of helplessly-impelled children that she had pictured to him, the world of innocence and forgivable inclinations, little warfares and artless badness, play or the feeding of primitive hungers, or of building of roof-trees--all that with which she had partly enchanted him was suddenly stripped of its atmosphere, and the glare of realities, fierce passions, deadly hates, shamelessness and blood stood before him. in short, he had been instantly precipitated into his old essenic misanthropy now directly imposed upon the heads of individuals, which before in his solitary days had been heaped without understanding upon the heads of strangers. he did care because that the creature had simply betrayed her true self; more dreadful than that, she had wrested from him the charity his experience in the world had yielded him--for lydia! blind fury maddened him; her offense called for a fiercer response than a blush; she had robbed his heart wholly and was burning its empty house. he put forth his strength, undid her arms and flung her from him. for a moment he felt a bloodthirsty desire to follow her up and break her over the stone exedra, but remnants of reason prevailed. springing through the exit, he was gone without uttering a word in answer to her. junia heard the last of his footsteps on the flagging leading out of her father's grounds, and for a moment wavered between screaming for her own slaves to pursue him, or delivering him up to the prætorian guards. "for what?" discretion asked. "to have him tell, under torture, thy part in sheltering agrippa? at thy peril!" but he had flung her away; he had rejected her; he had escaped after all her pains, her pretensions, her plans! for him, she had left alexandria and endured cæsar. for him, she had forgone seasons of conquest in rome! for him, she had neglected caligula, and now caligula would be emperor. for him she had sacrificed everything and had lost, at last. he, a jew, a manumitted slave, a barbarian! she, a favorite of emperors and consuls, a manipulator of affairs, fortunes and families! and he had rejected her! there were muffled flying footsteps on the sod without, and caligula, pallid and moist with terrified perspiration, dashed into the inclosure as if seeking a place to hide. when he saw her, he sprang back, but halted, on recognizing her. "ate and the furies!" he said in a strained whisper. "what hath happened but that cæsar revived while the guards were hailing me as imperator!" a hater of pork, a wearer of gowns, a mutterer of prayers, a bearded clown of a rustic! and she, it was, whom he had rejected! "stand like a frozen pigeon!" caligula hissed, "while i tell thee of my death! he knew what the shouts meant! he showed his teeth like a panther, transfixed me with his dead eyes and signed for wine! when he hath strength enough to order it, and breath enough to form the words--" and she had not urged the herod's death for his sake, and thereby imperiled her own living with flaccus; she had sent him a passport to capri and one to misenum, and rescued him from the admiring eyes of other women, to make sure of him--and he had flung her away, at last! "he will starve me to death: drown me in the mamertine!" caligula raged under his breath. "starve me, i say! speak, corpse! what shall i do!" her rage by this time had so filled her that it meant to have expression or have her life. "kill him!" she hissed through her teeth. it was marsyas' sentence, but it fell upon tiberius. caligula ceased to tremble and stared at her with a strange look in his bird-like eyes. "how?" he asked. she seized one of the pillows and brought it down over the seat of the divan, and held it firmly as if to prevent it from being thrown off. "thus!" she said venomously. "but the nurses and charicles, the physician," caligula protested, fearing nevertheless that his protest might hold good. "put them out! will they dare resist the coming emperor? have macro aid thee, so he dare not tell upon thee." she was becoming cool. it would be good to vent her murderous impulses on something. caligula gazed at her with fascination in his face. "come, then, thou, and see it done! neither shalt thou talk," he said suddenly. she stepped to his side, but before she reached the exit of the inclosure, she stopped and looked squarely into his eyes. "herod hath a slave who hath wronged me," she said. "which one?" he demanded. "the essene!" "nay, take vengeance on some other, then, for he is my friend! i have vowed him favor!" "why?" she demanded. "nay; do not stop--thou art to see this thing done! why do i promise the essene favor? because, forsooth, he made an emperor of me! come!" chapter xxix in extremis marsyas left the promontory at once. he had hired one of the public passenger boats to cross from baiæ to misenum and the boatman had waited for the return of his fare. many went as he was going, but they were patricians singly and in groups that passed him, with sober faces and without a word to each other. he recognized senators, ædiles, consuls, duumvirs, prætors, legates all hurrying toward the landing. all noble misenum seemed suddenly to have determined on an exodus. an anxious and distressed company they were, and had marsyas' own brain been less hot with anger, he might have meditated on the meaning of it all. by the time he reached the bay, the sunset-reddened water was covered with light-running coasters, by the signs on aplustre or vexillum, a fleet of patrician craft making across the bay to neapolis, or scudding for the open sea and ostia. he saw one or two vessels approaching misenum, hailed by departing ones, and, after a colloquy, turned back. vaguely wondering whether cæsar's latest whim was to drive his court from him, marsyas got into his own highly-painted shell and told his oarsman to take him across to baiæ. as he sat at the tiller and moodily watched the italian night come up over the sea, the capes, the hill-slopes and finally cover the somber head of the unsuspected vesuvius, he was afraid that his long ignored essenic rigor would assert itself. he was ashamed of himself, and for the moment looked upon the life he had led in rome with revulsion. but he put off his self-examination with a kind of terror. there was yet much that was harsh and unlawful to be done, and he dared not hold off his hand. lydia's life and good name, the avenging of stephen, agrippa's life and cypros' happiness were weighed against classicus and his own soul in the other balance. he could not hesitate now. when he set foot in opulent baiæ the night had fallen and with his return to the city, which he knew sheltered agrippa's most active enemy at that hour, all his energies turned toward the purpose that had originally brought him to misenum. he believed that if classicus had insinuated himself into young tiberius' favor, doubtless the prince's hospitality had been extended to him. he turned his steps toward the range of villas built between baiæ and puteoli, overlooking the bay. he had in mind the method of his last resort, and he went as one goes when desperation carries him forward--swiftly and relentlessly. but, crossing the town by the water-front, he met a handful of slaves bearing baggage toward the wharves. with his old essenic thoroughness he halted to examine them to make sure that classicus had not outstripped him finally. by their particularly fine physique and diverse nationality marsyas knew them to be costly slaves of the familia of no small patrician. he heard the ramble of chariot-wheels on the lava-paved streets; the master was following. as the vehicle passed under a lamp a few paces away, marsyas distinguished the occupants as classicus and the young tiberius. he felt a chill creep over his heart; the hour had come. he moved after the slaves toward the wharf. baiæ's beauties extended out and waded into the waves. the landings of marble had to be fit masonry for the feet of the cæsars and their train when they asked the hospitality of the sea. luxury, not commerce, came down to the water's edge and gazed narcissus-like at its lovely image in the quiet bay. here were no algerian hulks with their lateen sails, no evil-smelling fishing fleets, or docks or warehouses, or city cloacas. baiæ was a city of dreams and warm baths, of idleness and temples and villas, of gardens and fragrance and beauty and repose. now, the velvet winds of the starry italian night rippled the face of the bay; the last faint luster of a set moon showed a bar of white light, low down in the southwest, and against that, blackly outlined, a splendid galley was driving like the wind into port. a dozen yards from the end of the pier lay a passage-boat, with a light on its mast and a soft glow in its curtained cabin, marsyas wondered if tiberius meant to accompany his guest to misenum. but while he thought, tiberius set classicus down, took leave with an apology and a reminder that guests awaited him at home, and drove rapidly back into baiæ. a small rowboat lay under shadow at the side of the landing and the two couriers loading the baggage awaited now their passenger. but marsyas emerged from the dark and stepped before classicus. a glance at the tidy countenance of the philosopher sent a rush of heat through marsyas' veins. classicus was not feeling the spiritual combat within him, for the work he meditated, that racked the young essene. that fact acknowledged helped marsyas in his intent. "a word," marsyas said. classicus stopped, a little startled. "who art thou?" "marsyas, the essene." the young man had not helped his cause by the introduction. "out of my path," classicus said coldly. "i have nothing to say to thee!" "i have somewhat to say to thee, classicus. if thou must be hard of heart, be not foolish and injurious to thyself." "suffer no pangs of concern for my welfare," the philosopher said. "preserve them, lest thine own cause find thee bankrupt in tears!" "my cause will not need them: thou mayest. i know why thou art here and whither thou art going and for what purpose. i know who sent thee, why and what thou wilt accomplish. i know how feebly thou art aided and how much imperiled. above all things i know what will happen to thee unless thou hearest me!" "what a number of door-cracks hath yielded thee information! stand aside before i call my servants to thee!" marsyas folded his arms. the green blackness of the bay threw his solid outlines into relief. the threat he had made suddenly appealed to classicus as ill-advised. "jewish brethren," marsyas answered, his voice dropping into the softness which was premonitory, "do not speak thus with each other. this was taught thee in the synagogue. if thy lapse into evil hath let thee forget it, i care enough for thy manner to recall it to thee. "first and above all things, know thou that i am not here to satisfy the hate of thee because thou hast wrested from me my beloved! next, that i am here to stop thee in order to save her life, more than any other's. now, for thyself. thou goest to accomplish a deed that would recoil upon thine own head. if thou be tired of living, classicus, choose another way than to perish for the entertainment of him who duped thee." "for thy peace of mind, o sage fool," classicus observed, "know that i come bearing a petition to the emperor to seek for agrippa's wife, who hath been abducted!" "if thou present a petition which in any way favors agrippa or his wife, tiberius will test the cord on thee to be sure it is strong enough to strangle agrippa. and i tell thee, classicus, the charon of the heathen shades will not push off with the herod; he will save himself a journey and await thy arrival!" "still threatening, still trembling for me! if i call these slaves to remove thee thou mayest tremble for thyself!" "i am large, classicus, strong and determined. i could kill thee before thy stupid slaves ran three paces!" classicus turned his eyes to the level line to the southwest. the luster on the horizon was gone. the great galley, broadside now as she hunted her channel, loomed large on the outskirts of the sheltered water. once, the deck-lights flashed on a bank of her oars, rising wet and slippery from the sea. "listen, brother," marsyas continued. "thou shall proceed with me to the maritime harbor at puteoli, and get aboard the vessel there which sails for alexandria. thou shall leave italy: thou shalt discontinue thy work against agrippa--or have the knife, now! decide!" the hiss and protest of plowing waters came now on the breeze; the regular beat of many oars, working as one, broke the hiss into rhythmical bars: an invisible pennant, high up in the helpless shrouds where night covered canvas and mast, was caught suddenly by a vagrant current of wind and fluttered with rapid pulsations of sound. long lances of light reached out on the water and began to stretch broadening fingers toward the pier. humming noises like blended voices came with the rattle of chains. marsyas knew that classicus was awaiting the arrival of the galley for the advantages of the interruption and to secure marsyas' arrest. the young essene stepped close to classicus. "i shall wait no longer for thy answer," he said softly. the philosopher's voice rang out, clear and unafraid. "hither, slaves!" marsyas was not unprepared. he seized classicus and forced him back into the black shadows of the clustered columns with which the inner edge of the landing was ornamented. the two couriers came running, but marsyas spoke authoritatively. "good slaves, if ye come at me ye will force me to kill this young man!" he said. "take him!" classicus cried. the two servants sprang forward, but marsyas, seizing classicus by the hair, thrust his head back and put the point of the knife at his throat. the two halted, tautly drawn up as if the point of the blade touched their own flesh. instinctively they knew that the silky quiet in the voice was deadly; marsyas had them. meanwhile the galley was delivering up her passengers to the land. the first ship's boat that touched the landing carried four patricians. the soft sound of heelless sandals on the pavement drifted down from babe. some one of the citizens was coming to meet the arrivals. the four stepped out, and the ship's boat shot back into the darkness. "ho! regulus," one of the four cried. "coming!" the citizen answered from the street. "what news?" "cæsar is dead!" classicus relaxed in marsyas' grip; the slaves stood transfixed; the young essene, holding fast, stilled his loud heart and listened. "old age?" the citizen ventured. "perchance; yes, doubtless," one of the four answered in a lower tone, for the citizen had come close and was taking their hands. "smothered in his silken cushions--died of too much comfort! dost understand? well enough!" marsyas' hands dropped from classicus. by the time the alexandrian aroused to his opportunity, marsyas had disappeared like a spirit into the night. chapter xxx the eremite in scarlet, and the bankrupt in purple lydia came upon vasti, the bayadere, returning to the culina with a flaring taper in her hand. the brown woman's eyes were fixed on the flame and she whispered under her breath, till the licking red tongue of the taper flickered and wavered back at her as if speaking in signs. "what saith the red brother?" lydia asked, in halting hindu, for she had begun to learn her waiting-woman's tongue. "he keeps his own counsel, who is fellow to the fire," was the answer. "thy neighbor, the philosopher, awaits thee within." lydia went slowly on. when she entered the alabarch's presiding-room, classicus arose from a seat beside a cluster of lamps and came toward her. "thy servant at the door tells me that thy father is not in," he said. "i came to speak with him of thee: but perchance it is better that i tell thee that which i have to tell, before any other." lydia sat down on the divan, and classicus sat beside her. "i come to submit to thy scorn or thy pity," he said, "either of which i deserve!" "what hast thou done?" she asked, feeling a vague sense of fear. "i have been flaccus' fool!" he vowed. lydia's eyes grew troubled. "what didst thou for him?" she asked in a lowered tone. "i permitted him to catch me up in the city and rush me to rome with a memorial to cæsar, beseeching the emperor's aid in seeking the lady cypros, who had been abducted." lydia's level brows dropped. "charging us with abduction?" she remarked. "charging no man with abduction, but declaring that she was missing from thy father's roof!" classicus' face filled with contrite humiliation under her gaze. "why so late with the story?" she asked. "why didst thou not come to us before thou wast persuaded to go!" "charge me not with more folly than i did commit!" he besought. "i was caught by his servants in the brucheum and haled before him, where, in all excitement, he told that the lady cypros was missing, and that i, as the safe friend of the alabarch and the proconsul, had been commissioned to enlist cæsar's interest in her cause! the vessel ready for puteoli waited only on the night-winds to sail! i was not given time to change my raiment, or to fill my purse from mine own treasure, much less to take counsel with thy father and learn the truth!" "and besides flaccus, we must now take cæsar into consideration in protecting this unhappy woman!" she exclaimed. "no!" he cried. "a friend of agrippa's, whom i met in rome, stopped me in time!" she looked away from him and he took her hand. "am i pardoned?" he asked plaintively. "thou didst no harm; but it should serve to awaken thee to the evil in this dangerous roman! if only agrippa would return, how readily the skies would brighten for us all!" "what wilt thou do if the herod returns not?" he asked after a little silence. "do not speak of it, classicus," she said hurriedly. "flaccus is desperate." "if agrippa abandon cypros," he offered, "she can divorce him, and simplify the tangle." "oh, no, justin! cypros is bound heart and soul to agrippa. even if he died, she would not turn to flaccus! the dear lord be thanked that we have a virtuous woman to defend!" "nay, then, thou strict little rabbin, what shall we do?" "how slow these ships! the last letter we sent to him can hardly have reached sicily!" "he hath had a sufficiency of letters by this time! what was it he wrote thy father, last: 'i come with all speed; but reflect that cæsar is master over me: his consent is needful!' ha! ha! caligula would give agrippa half his empire did he ask for it!" she leaned her cheek in her hand, turning her face away from classicus. "alas! i know why he lingers," she said to herself. "marsyas hath departed unto judea, and agrippa lacks his controlling hand!" "i appreciate the peril threatening thy father's house," the philosopher added after her continued silence, "and thou knowest thou shall have my help--blundering as it may be!" there were footsteps in the vestibule, and the alabarch stood in the archway. lydia sprang up. "what," she cried, unable to wait for his report, "what said the proconsul?" the alabarch came into his presiding-room with a slow step; he let his cloak fall on his chair, and stood in the lamplight worn and troubled. seeing classicus, he greeted the visitor before he answered lydia. "evil, evil; naught but evil," he sighed, "and threats. and the proconsul's threats are never empty!" "what does he threaten?" classicus asked. "me--and mine." "alas! our people!" lydia sighed. "no, daughter! thee!" "lydia!" classicus exclaimed. "why does he threaten me?" lydia cried. the alabarch shook his head. "flaccus betrayed only enough to show that he will concentrate his vengeance against me and thee, or me through thee, but thee of a surety, my lydia! yet, he was as dark and ominous as the wrath of god!" lydia came close to her father and he laid his arm about her shoulders. "lydia, that bat escaped from sheol, eutychus, is openly attached to flaccus' train; once, he abode under my roof, where he could learn many things. has he any information against thee which flaccus could use?" lydia's answer was not ready. it meant too much to tell that which the alabarch groped after. already she had surrendered until she was stripped of all but her father's confidence, and her people's respect. she could not cast off these ties to all that was desirable on earth. and classicus, silent and smug behind her, seemed to be a prepared witness awaiting a confession. conscience and human nature had the usual struggle, and when she replied she did not raise her head. "my father, eutychus will never be at a loss for information. what actualities he can not furnish, he may have from his imagination." "alexandria does not wait for charges against the jews," the alabarch said. "but what says flaccus?" classicus urged after a silence. "that i have abducted agrippa's wife; that i have been guilty of insubordination to him, my superior; that thou, my lydia, art amenable to him and all the people of alexandria, and that he will proceed as his information warrants, unless i produce cypros--between sunrise and sunset, to-morrow!" there was silence. "what wilt thou do?" lydia asked in a suppressed voice. "i can produce cypros," he answered, torn by the inevitable. "no!" lydia cried. "if agrippa cares so little for her--" the alabarch began, but lydia put off his arm and stood away from him. "this matter is neither thine nor agrippa's to decide! cypros is a good woman and she shall be kept secure--even against herself, if need be! thou shalt not bring her before flaccus!" "lydia, i am brought to decide between her and thee!" "thou canst suffer dishonor and peril, even as cypros," classicus put in, to lydia. "we are no less unwilling to surrender thee to the unknown charges flaccus brings against thee, than thou art to give up cypros!" "flaccus is no arbiter of the virtue of women! he is not cæsar, beyond whom there is no human appeal! let him remember that it is no longer the old man tiberius who is emperor of the world, but the young man caligula, whose warmest friend is a jew! let him touch cypros at his peril!" "daughter, why should cæsar defend a woman for whom not even her husband cares?" there was no ready reply to this, and lydia's face grew white. "is it like thee, my father, to abandon the wholly undefended?" she asked. the alabarch bit his lip and turned his head away. "granted, then," put in classicus in his even voice, "that we shall keep the lady in hiding and treat her to no ungentle usage! now, what will become of lydia?" the alabarch raised his eyes, filled with fire and desperation. lydia drooped more and more, and presently she put her hand to her forehead. "is there nothing to be done?" classicus persisted calmly. the silence became strained and lengthened to the space of many heart-beats before he spoke again. "lydia can be hidden, with the princess," he offered finally. lydia raised her head, and looked at classicus. not for her the refuge that was cypros', for if flaccus held in truth the secret of her conversion to the nazarene faith, she would only lead his officers straight upon the nazarenes all over egypt. whatever people sheltered her, she would bring disaster and death on their heads. as marsyas had been under the oppression of saul of tarsus, she had become as a pestilence! she wondered if classicus realized how thoroughly she understood him. his face did not wear an air of respect for his plan. "it can not be," she said quietly, and the alabarch looked startled at her words. classicus submitted to her objection at once. "then," he said, "there is but one other way that i can invent--and this i offer last, because it is dearest to me. i have lands in greece and favor with the legate there. flaccus' power can not extend beyond his own dominions. wilt thou not come to greece--with me, my lydia?" lydia's gaze did not falter throughout this speech; she had expected, long ago, that when classicus had hedged her about, he would offer his hand as her one escape. drop by drop the color left her face; her lips grew pale, and took on a curve of mute appeal; her eyes were the eyes of suffering, but not the eyes of a vanquished woman. the alabarch had turned hurriedly away. but classicus gazed, as if awaiting her reply, at his smooth, thin hands, now stripped of their jewels, incident to the shrinkage in his purse. the drip of the waterfall in the garden within came very distinctly upon the silence in the room. a cry from the porter, speaking in the vestibule, brought the alabarch up quickly. "master! master! the prince! the prince!" "the king, thou untaught rustic!" agrippa's tones, subdued but mirthful, followed upon the porter's cry. lysimachus sprang toward the vestibule, but lydia, transfixed by reactionary emotions, did not move. but before the alabarch reached the arch, two men appeared in the opening. except for the fillet of gold set so low on his head that it passed around his forehead just above the brows, agrippa might have been the same nonchalant bankrupt gambling with loaded tesseræ or hunting loans on bad security. the other was marsyas. classicus lifted his brows and arose to the proper spirit in which to greet a king. "count it not flattery, lord," the alabarch cried, extending his hands toward the new-comers, "that i say that abraham's radiant visitors were not more welcome than thou!" "better the unprepared alabarch," said marsyas, "than any host who hath expected his guests!" the prince laughed, and discovering lydia, bowed low to her. "no change in thee, sweet lydia," he exclaimed as she bent in obeisance to the fillet of gold about his forehead. marsyas stood a moment aside, his glance roving quickly from her to classicus. with an effort he put back the rush of feeling that crowded upon his composure and came to her. "hast thou not changed, lydia?" he asked. the hand closing over his did not belie the tremor in her voice. "a blessing on you both," she said. "you are the redemption of this house of trouble!" "we have been everything but heroes in our days," marsyas said. "welcome the opportunity!" "ho! classicus!" agrippa cried jovially, "hast thou failed to overthrow the tribute-demanding sphinx or the dragon?" marsyas gazed at the philosopher standing with inclined head, while he made felicitous answers to the prince, and said to himself: "happy phrase, my lord king! there standeth the tribute-demanding sphinx, even now!" agrippa addressed himself to the alabarch, and between marsyas and classicus there stood no saving obstruction. marsyas' nostrils quivered; he had fleeting but perfect summaries of the wrongs the man had worked against him. to find him now a guest entertained under the roof he had striven to injure, brought the essene's temper up to a climacteric point. but he felt lydia's presence, pacific, temperate and persuasive, restraining him. of all the many deceits he had used throughout his precarious life of late, none seemed so impossible of practice as to offer a dispassionate word to classicus. he was saved for the moment by an exclamation from the alabarch. "in all truth, that manifestation of cæsar's favor?" he cried eagerly. "a truth!" agrippa declared. "rome made a dandy out of marsyas. twelve legionaries, before he would stir a step to egypt! twelve! all armed; brasses so polished that one looks into the sun who looks at one. none short of three cubits in stature and visaged like mars!" marsyas cut off the prince's raillery with a direct and serious query. "how is it with our lady?" "still in hiding from flaccus," the alabarch replied. agrippa looked in astonishment from one to another. "surely," he said earnestly, "you have not carried this delusion to such an extreme!" "delusion, lord," marsyas repeated, facing him. "let those first speak who are not deluded. then thou shall apply the word to him it fits." "good friends," the herod protested, "all wise men cherish a folly. marsyas, being the wisest of my knowing, hath his own. he hath held fast against flawless argument and solid truth to the delusion that my honest, timid wife hath awakened passion in the heart of this proconsul, who hath all the beauty and wit of egypt and rome from which to choose." "wilt thou continue further, lord," marsyas said, "and tell them how thou hast explained this mystery to thyself?" "what, marsyas! make confession here, openly, of a thing which i blush to confess to myself?" the herod laughed. "never fear; thy audience hath already acquitted thee of blame!" "nay, then; so assured of clemency, i tell this behind my palms and with the prayer that the walls do not repeat it to my lady's ears! learn, then, for the first time, that junia is the cause of my disaster, because, forsooth, she is as fickle and capricious a woman as she is bad. until the unhappy herod was blown of ill winds to alexandria, his single haven, she was flaccus' mistress. when i appeared, for no other cause than the mightiness of her fancy, she dropped flaccus and precipitated all manner of disaster upon my head. there is the true story! cypros, forsooth! cypros is an upright arab, twenty years married and mother of three!" "junia!" the alabarch repeated irritably. "junia constructed more of flaccus' villainies than flaccus himself!" "and will nothing dislodge this wild thing from your brain?" agrippa cried. "name it what you will, lord," the alabarch answered, "but i have a further story to tell than all my fruitless letters told, when i stood in fear of their interception! thou hast not forgotten the attack on thee on the night of flora's feast; that, thou canst ascribe to flaccus' jealousy, but how wilt thou explain that when the news of thy disaster reached alexandria, flaccus put off his amiable front and commanded me to deliver cypros to him--" "commanded you to deliver cypros to him!" agrippa cried, the fires of anger igniting in his eyes. "what had she to do with this?" the alabarch drew himself up, ready in his dignity and authority to justify his deeds. "if it proceedeth to an accounting, i and mine will bear witness to her innocence and loving fidelity to thee! yet, remember, lord, she hath the first right to ask why she hath been left without thy care thus long!" agrippa flushed darkly, but marsyas stopped the retort on his lips. "let us not try each other! go on, good sir," he pleaded. "i refused, and he threatened to hurl the alexandrians on the regio judæorum. but in the meantime, fate or fortune, god knows which, ordered that tiberius should choose caligula to succeed him. the news reached alexandria and stayed flaccus' hand, for then he stood in wholesome fear of thy friend, the prince imperial. but thou didst tarry and tarry, and the more thou didst tarry, the more his hopes and his desires grew. no longer the regio judæorum dared he threaten, but me and mine--lydia, above all!" "lydia!" marsyas exclaimed. "and i tell thee, my lord agrippa," the alabarch continued, by this time a picture of refined indignation, "at this very hour i was brought face to face with a hard decision between my daughter and thy wife!" marsyas turned toward classicus, but the storm of denunciation that leaped to his lips was checked. what should he win for his exposure of classicus, but scorn from lydia, and a misconstruction of his motive? atavistic ferocity glittered in agrippa's eyes. "it is my turn!" he brought out between clenched teeth, "and i have a long score, a long score with flaccus! where is my lady? let her be brought!" lydia broke in before the alabarch could answer. "in hiding!" she answered quickly, and marsyas fancied that she feared a too explicit answer from her father. before whom was she afraid to disclose the princess' refuge, if not classicus? "take four of my prætorians, then," agrippa commanded, "and lead me to her hiding-place!" the alabarch bowed and summoned servants. "have we, then, delivered this house of peril?" marsyas asked of agrippa. "flaccus," said classicus, speaking for the first time, "may feed his thirst for revenge!" "get but my lady, first!" agrippa insisted. "flaccus hath played and lost! he shall pay his forfeit!" the servants were ready with the alabarch's cloak; the porter announced chariots waiting, and in an incredibly short time, marsyas was alone with lydia and classicus, in the presiding-room. "i shall return to the ship and prepare it for voyage," marsyas said, in the silence that instantly fell. "since i return to judea with the king, perchance i should say farewell!" lydia's lips parted, and her miserable eyes turned away from him. "await my father's return," she said in a low voice, "hath he far to go?" he asked. "yes--far!" classicus waited serenely for marsyas' answer. in that composure marsyas read unconcern, which the essene interpreted as hopelessness for his own cause. "so long as we abide in egypt, we are a peril," he replied. "even now we have delayed too long!" he extended his hand to lydia, and slowly, she put her own into it. the touch of the small fingers played too strongly upon his self-control. he released them hurriedly and strode toward the vestibule. but at the threshold, indecision and astonishment and acute realization of the meaning of the thing he was doing seized him. he whirled about. classicus stood beneath the cluster of lamps, his face alight with triumphant superciliousness. even under marsyas' eye the expression did not alter. lydia seemed to have shrunk; her hands clasped before her were wrung about each other in an agony of restraint, but the pitiful appeal in her eyes was all that marsyas saw. in an instant he was again at her side, his heart speaking in his face. "thou wearest yet the free locks of maidenhood," he said, in a voice so smooth and low that it chilled her, "perchance thou wilt tell me ere i depart if thou art to marry--this man?" for a moment there was silence; marsyas heard his mad heart beating, but if classicus felt apprehension, there was no display of it on his face. then lydia raised her head. "no," she said, in a voice barely audible. marsyas turned upon classicus, and between the two there passed the silent communication of men who wholly understand each other. then classicus took up his kerchief, and, with a smile and a wave of his hand, walked out of the presiding-room. but lydia was out of reach of marsyas' arms when he turned to her. crying and afraid, she motioned him back as he pressed toward her. he stopped. "am i still unacceptable to thee, lydia?" he asked. "o marsyas, thou returnest in the same spirit as thou didst depart from me--unchanged, unchanged! but striving to change--for my sake! do not so, for me! not for me!" the grief and pleading in the black eyes that rested upon her changed slowly. rebuffed and stung he threw up his head. "better the old essenic shape in which i was bound against thee and thou against me?" he said bitterly. "so! the essenes seem not to be wrong in their teaching of distrust in women!" if he expected her to retort, the compassion and gentleness in her answer surprised him. "not that, my marsyas," she said, coming nearer to him in her earnestness. "but change does not consist in the raiment thou wearest, nor in the claim to be altered. thou canst not in truth believe that i have done right! thou forgivest me for thy love's sake, but thy intelligence is no less critical! i can not, will not put away the faith of the master; i can not regret the spirit of the deed i did for their sake. and between us it is as it was the night i sent thee from me, so long ago!" "but i have changed," he protested hastily. "the world hath taught me much: i can understand; i can extenuate greater errors--i have done so; believe me, it is only for thy sake--" "but canst thou wholly acquit me--wholly justify me, marsyas?" he looked at her with pleading in his eyes, and made no answer. "no man should wed or worship with a single doubt," she said. fearing more than he dared confess to himself, he caught her hands and would not let her leave him. "lydia, i have not had the portion which god and women allot to most men," he said almost piteously. "there are delights that should be mine by right, but they are denied me! other men have their dreams, their moments of tender preoccupation. they can live again through hours between only themselves and one other. they can feel again the touches of a woman's hand upon them, the warmth of her cheek and the love in her kiss. no matter the evil, the sorrows that follow, these things are theirs, to hold in memory! no matter the time or the place, they can summon it all from a song, drink it from a goblet of wine, or breathe it in from a flower! it is twice living it; once, in the actuality; again, in the dream! but i--i have nothing! my teaching did not permit me to look forward to such a thing--and thou, lydia--lydia, thou dost not permit me to look back upon it!" her eyes filled with tears, and a rush of tender words trembled on her lips. his gaze, quickened by longing for the thing these signs typified, caught the softening in her young face. he seized upon the hope that it gave him. "dost thou love me, lydia?" he asked. "i love thee, marsyas." he drew her to him, put his arms about her and pressed her to his breast. she did not resist him, for she was tired of contention with herself, tired of distress, afraid of the menace the future showed her, and withal fainting in hope. she dropped her head on his shoulder, with her face turned up to him. marsyas' soul filled to the full with subdued, bewildering emotions. it was not the first time he had held this sweet child-woman in his arms, but fear, tumult, impetuousness and protest had claimed preëminence in his thoughts before. now in the quiet and shelter of the alabarch's deserted presiding-room, he found new experience, new feelings. under the low light of the clustered lamp, he looked down on the face turned to him, smoothed with soft touches the long, delicate black brows; passed light fingers over the bloom of her cheek and saw the faint rose color come again in the white lines the little pressure made; put back the loose curl fallen before her perfect ear and marveled at its silkiness; watched the quiet palpitation in the milk-white throat--sensed, somehow, the repose in herself, the command, even in this momentary surrender, the divinity in her womanliness. he was ashamed of his distrust, startled at his new sensations. perhaps she saw the passing of feeling over his face, for she stirred and would have raised herself, but the movement brought him back to reality, and a fiercer rebellion against it. "nay, nay, lydia; i love thee! it is my one virtue; my sinful soul hath been married to thee these many strange months. thou art become a necessity to my life, as needful as bread and drink, as blood and breath! thou art the essential salt in my veins--the world to me! nay, more! thou art love, for world is a word with boundaries! i have striven for thy sake and i have not failed. i am able now to obtain the quieting of thy chief enemy, the refreshment of the starved heart in me, thirsting for revenge, and of our own security henceforward in the world. yet, i am not going to judea with agrippa. i abide here with thee in alexandria, until i have won the immediate safety of thy body and thy soul!" she strove to stop him in his resolution, but he kissed her, and, leading her to the foot of the well-remembered stairs, whispered his good night. chapter xxxi the dregs of the cup of trembling by noon the following day, all alexandria roared with the news that agrippa had returned a king! the regio judæorum lost its repose. certain irrational of the inhabitants displayed carpeting and garlands in honor of the jewish potentate, within their boundaries. but others, instructed by instinct, closed the fronts of the houses and laid their treasure within grasp. by the advice of marsyas, agrippa had caused his ship to bring to, outside the harbor, and await the dropping of darkness before he came ashore. the few hours he spent in alexandria had been passed under cover, and none without the alabarch's household was aware of his presence in the city. the newly-crowned judean king found it difficult to repress his desire for ostentation, and when marsyas' plan for secrecy miscarried at last, agrippa was irritated because he had been deprived of a longed-for opportunity to astonish the alexandrians. "but who could have told it?" he asked, with ill-concealed satisfaction. marsyas' lips curled. "classicus," he said. before the porch of the alabarch's house groups of people came to stand and discuss the fortunes of the herod. the sounds, never congratulatory, began to change in temper. as the day grew, numbers began to accumulate and hang like sullen bees buzzing insurrection. though they themselves were mongrels cast out of twenty subjugated kingdoms and bullied into unspeakable servitude by the tyrant rome, prejudice, unarmed with argument and speaking in dialect, arose and rebelled at alexandria entertaining a jewish king. toward sunset a group of empty curricles and chariots came and stood before a certain house, the last in the jewish district, facing the gentile environs of the water-front. had any cared to remark, it might have been observed that this house could be reached from the alabarch's by abandoned passages and private walks, a series of jewish courts and stable-yards, without exposing any who went that way to the gentile eye. after a while, a body of roman guards emerged from nowhere and arrayed themselves alongside the vehicles. presently, groups of slaves bearing burdens, followed by a party of high-class egyptians, mounted the chariots and without hesitation the procession took up movement toward the harbor. but an angle in the streets brought them upon the gymnasium. it was built in a square of sufficient size to receive the crowds that usually attended the contests of the athletæ, and there thousands were assembled to do alexandrian honor to a jew. the daylight was still on the streets, and marsyas, in the guise of a charioteer, driving the horses of the foremost car, observed that each of the mass was busy with his own noise, and apparently unsuspecting the coming of agrippa. so he signed to the centurion in charge of the prætorian squad to make way with as little ostentation as possible. at the porch before the gymnasium, the crowd was most packed, loudest and most entertained. a naked, deformed, apish figure stood on a pedestal from which a statue had fallen and had not been replaced. a wreath of rushes had been twisted about the degenerate forehead, a strip of matting had been bound with a tow-cord about his middle; in his hand was a stalk of papyrus with the head broken and hanging down. on their knees about the base of the plinth were half a score of youths from the gymnasium, groaning in tragic chorus, the single syriac word: "_maris_! _maris_! lord! lord!" loudly the crowd roared its part, with voices raucous and hoarse from much abuse: "hail, agrippa! king of the jews!" agrippa's chariot, following the way the centurion had quietly opened through the crowd, attracted little attention and the half-light of the twilight did not reveal his features, which he had been led further to conceal by an egyptian cowl. a long white kamis covered his dress. but his eyes fell upon the idiot; he caught the mockery and its meaning from the crowd. a quiver of rage ran through his frame. laying hold of the egyptian smock, he tore it off and threw it fairly into the faces of those nearest him; the white cowl followed, and he stood forth like a new-risen sun in a tissue of silver, mantled with purple, his fillet replaced by a tarboosh sewn with immense gems. defiance and insult and daring could not have been embodied in a more effective act. the continuous tumult burst into a yell of fury. in a twinkling his chariot was hemmed in and blocked and the raving rabble reached out to lay hands on him. marsyas, seeing destruction in agrippa's recklessness, shouted to the centurion, who responded by hurling his prætorians, with broadsword and spear into the mob. the protection of cæsar, thus evidenced, beat back the astonished herd as a charge of cavalry might have done, but it fringed the lane opened before the royal jew and raged. thereafter every inch of the way was contested. not even a show of interference was made by municipal authorities. instead, here and there, soldiers of the city garrison could be seen, singly or in groups, as spectators and applauding. the riot began to take on the appearance of a holiday, for groups of upper classes began to appear on housetops, stairs and porches of houses, where they made themselves comfortable and listened to the demonstration as they were accustomed to watch contests in the stadia. below in the long way toward the harbor-front, the lawless of any class indulged their love of disorder and amused the aristocrats. the fugitives were almost in sight of the forest of masts which marked the wharves, when marsyas detected a change in the tone of the tumult. derision and revilement began to lose impetus, flagging in the face of a freshened uproar of another temper, beginning far behind and sweeping down the street after the fugitives. it was savage, bloodthirsty and menacing. out of the inarticulate volume he caught finally shouts about the jews and flora; next, about the dance of flora; after that the whole declaration, sent thundering, like a sea over winter capes, that the dancing flora was a nazarene and the daughter of the alabarch! marsyas' face, turned toward agrippa, was ghastly. the herod felt the first quiver of terror he had experienced in years. he reached toward the lines, meaning to give marsyas opportunity to return to the regio judæorum. but marsyas was shouting mightily to the centurion to charge the crowds before them. the prætorian heard and his men presented a double row of spears and rushed. the lesser mob ahead broke, and marsyas cried back to cypros' charioteer. the next minute with desperate mercilessness he had loosed a long plaited whip like a crackling flame upon the necks of his horses. the terrified beasts leaped; the car lurched and headlong they plunged into the mass before them. right and left the rawhide played, over faces, shoulders and lifted arms, searing and scarring wherever it touched. with grim satisfaction, the two within the chariot felt at times that the car mounted and toppled over prostrate rioters, like sticks in the roadway. the jam became panic and flight, and the horses took the free passage, mad with desire to get away from the stinging torment that harassed them. the driver of cypros' car closed in quickly with its following of curricles, and kept close behind the flying chariot, but the prætorians, out-distanced, contented themselves by following through short ways, and the riot was left behind. at the wharf the maddened animals could not be stopped until they had been circled again and again. but hardly had the wheels ceased to move, when marsyas leaped to the ground, and, flinging the lines to a slave, put up his hands to agrippa. "as the first debt to thy manhood and to the alabarch forget not this opportunity to help him! hear them! they want jewish blood; lydia's blood! there is none in alexandria to stay them! help, my lord! beseech cæsar in thy people's behalf, as i beseech thee now! answer, answer!" "i hear, marsyas," agrippa responded, "and by all that i hold sacred, i promise thee flaccus' end! god help thee! farewell!" pausing only for the word, marsyas turned and ran with frantic speed back into the city. he saw, at every step, that which made his heart chill in his bosom. the tide of the riot had turned, and that which was not already pouring in upon the nazarenes, was rushing into the regio judæorum. chapter xxxii sanctuary the cluster of vagabonds hanging before the alabarch's mansion stayed no longer after the breezes brought the first sound of tumult which announced a rarer sport elsewhere. in a twinkling the regio judæorum was silent and deserted. except for the gusts of far-off turmoil, the cooing of pigeons in towers, the clashing of palm-leaves, the creak of crazy gates in the wind, the casual calling of numidian cranes or the crowing of poultry were the only sounds in the quarter--lonesome, nature sounds, signals of a householder's absence. but it seemed as if the regio judæorum listened and waited. after agrippa's departure, the alabarch came into his presiding-room, without purpose and visibly uneasy. lydia followed him, and, at a look from her father, came close to his chair and mingled her yellow-brown curls with his white locks. the silence over the quarter had become oppressive and the slightest break would have been no less grateful than distinct, when it seemed that cautious footsteps pattered by without. the two stirred and listened. after a moment, they heard others, very swift and soft, as if many were running by a-tiptoe. there were whispers and rustlings, excited words cried under the breath. the two in the presiding-room looked at each other. had the vagabonds returned to their place for mischief, outside the alabarch's mansion? lysimachus stepped to the windows and listened. but lydia stood still, dreading without understanding that which he might hear. east and west, far and near, sounds were drifting in and passing toward the new port, sounds as if a multitude hastened in one direction. above these stealthy, fugitive, whispered noises, there came freshened uproar from pagan alexandria, swift, high, relentless and carrying like fire on a wind. as they stood thus, perplexed and alarmed, vasti appeared like a shadow out of the dusk and caught the alabarch's arm. "it is come!" she hissed with compelling vehemence. "to the synagogue! fly! for the hosts of siva are upon you even now!" lysimachus grasped the grill of the window, and turned slowly toward his daughter. "lydia?" he asked helplessly. the girl came to him, and vasti began to motion her toward the street. "what is it? what passeth?" the alabarch insisted, unable to act without perfect conception of the conditions he had to fight. lydia's eyes, fixed on her father's face, deepened with misery and widened with suffering. the hour had fallen! she was to be the outcast and the abomination at last. "they accuse me," she said, "of being a nazarene; that i committed sacrilege, to hold off the mob from rhacotis--that i was the dancing flora!" the alabarch put his thin hands to his forehead, as if to ward off the conviction, which all the fragmentary intimation against lydia, and her own words conjoined, threatened to establish in him. "is it so, my daughter?" he asked in a benumbed voice. cause was submerged in effect; she felt less fear of the confession than of her father's suffering. in the appreciable interval his figure shriveled; age and the encroachment of death showed upon him. the atmosphere of the magistrate, the courtier and the aristocrat dissolved under the anguish of a father and the horror of a jew. he had surrendered his two sons, tiberius and marcus, to paganism; in lydia, he had reposed the unwatchful faith, that had permitted his other children to apostasize under his roof. he had believed the more in her, and the shock was the greater, therefore. "let it be the measure of my conviction, my father," she said sadly, "that i did this thing in the knowledge that i might forfeit thy love!" he made no movement; his face did not relax from its stunned agony. lydia awaited its change with flagging heart-beat. but the thunder of menace from the gymnasium square rolled in again through the streets of the regio judæorum. the alabarch heard it. up through the mask there struggled not rebuke and condemnation, but the terror of love fearing for its own. he caught lydia in his arms and turned his straining eyes toward the windows. but the bayadere waited no longer for the arousing of his faculties. she seized his arm and thrust him toward the vestibule. "awake! get you up and be gone! will you wait to see her perish?" she did not stop until she had pushed them through the porch into the streets. "to the synagogue!" she commanded last, and disappeared as she had come. all the regio judæorum, as far as the brucheum on the south and the tumble and wash of the mediterranean on the north, was pouring through the streets toward the new port. the alabarch's own servants went hither and thither, knocking at doors, from which other servants presently issued to speed with the alarm over the yet unwarned sections nearer the synagogue. after a moment's waiting until the light airs cleared the daze that enmeshed his brain, the alabarch took lydia under his cloak and fled with his people toward their refuge. as he went, doorways about them were giving up households, bazaars and booths were emptying of their patrons and proprietors; workshops, their artisans and apprentices; schools, their readers and pupils; the counting-room, the rich men and the borrowers; the squalid angles, the outcast and the beggar. the oppression of terror and the instinct for silence weighted the darkening air; the twilight covered them, and hostile attention was yet far behind them. so they came: the slaves with marks of perpetual servitude in their ears, and ladies of the sadducees that had rarely set foot upon the harsh earth; figures in indian silks and figures in sackcloth; fugitives to whom fear lent wings and fugitives to whom flight was bitterer than death; families and guilds by the hundreds, hurrying together; companies of diverse people separated from their own; sons carrying parents and neighbors bearing the sick; friends forgetting attachments and foes forgetting feuds--until the streets became veritable rivers of running people. and so they went, crowding, pressing, contending, but passing as silently as forty thousand may pass, toward the synagogue, which was sanctuary and stronghold for them all. the keepers of the great gates were there, and the huge valves stood wide. the alabarch's old composure reasserted itself, as, amid the panic of his people, he realized their want of leadership. he stepped to one side of the nearest gate, and stood while he watched each and every jew rush into the darkness and disappear under the great pylons of the synagogue. lydia, whom he would have sent in at once, clung to him, and together they stood without. meanwhile, out of the distant brucheum, there came a snarl of monstrous and terrifying proportions. the mob was gaining strength. the last of the jews fled praying through the giant gates and pressed themselves into the shelter of the synagogue. the keeper looked at the alabarch. he lifted his arm, and lydia and the keeper and he, shutting away, as best they might, the noise of the threatening city, listened, if any belated fugitive came through the dark. the sound of footsteps approached; a body of people, strangers to the alabarch, appeared; lydia made a little sound, and moved toward them. "we also are beset," the foremost said, "can we enter into the protection of the synagogue?" "haste ye, and enter!" the alabarch answered. and after the hindmost, he and lydia passed into the sanctuary. the keepers swung the great valves shut, and the last sound they admitted was a ravening howl, as alexandria hurled itself into the empty streets of the regio judæorum. until this time, lydia had been a part of the unit of terror and self-preservation, but the hurry of the flight had ceased and the wait for events had begun. then ensued moments for individual ideas. thus far she had heard no murmur against her. fear of the alexandrians had outmeasured the jews' indignation, or else they had believed the informer to be the father of lies. there was the never-failing lamp on the lectern, but its light penetrated no farther than the immediate precincts of darkness. the interior was so vast that its great angles melted into shadow. the immense area of marble pavement was cumbered with an army of huddled shapes, and when portentous red light began to sift down through the open roof it fell upon uplifted faces, ghastly with fear, upon bare arms, white and soft or lean and brown, upstretched in supplication. but neither moan nor murmur arose among them who waited upon siege. meanwhile the roar of violence encompassed and penetrated all portions of the quarter. great lights began to mount and redden the sky as torches were applied to houses looted of their riches. the invasion had met no obstacle and the whole region was a-swarm. presently, close at hand, the full bellow of freshly-discovered incentive arose, mounting above all other noises until even the jews, imprisoned within walls of granite, heard it. "the jews! the jews! the synagogue!" involuntarily there arose from the lips of the forty thousand a great moan, muffled, unechoing and filled with terror. the alabarch stood by lydia, with his thoughts upon the strength of the synagogue and the hardihood of the prisoners. but the weight of culpability was heavy upon lydia; in her great need and longing for the comfort of his confidence, she crept closer to her father and clung to his arm. "naught but a ram or ballista can force these gates!" he said. "and we are forty thousand. alas, that the spirit of joshua the warrior was not mixed with the spirit of moses, who gave us the law!" the mob came on, now in distinct hearing of the imprisoned jews. tremendous trampling without on the stone flagging and dull, fruitless hammering on the valves announced the assault. the jews nearer the gates pressed away. without, indecision and tumult wrangled among innumerable voices. great bodies began to shout as one, with mighty lungs: "bring out the woman! give up the dancing flora!" lydia felt the alabarch tremble and presently the arm to which she clung withdrew from her clasp and passed around her, drawing her close. "_impius_! _insidiis_! _succuba_! _o dea certe_!" roared the mob. but work was doing at the gates. there arose blunt pounding, slowly and heavily delivered as if a multitude wielded a ram. but the reports were too solid to indicate any weakness in the gates, and the keeper of the one attacked watched the sacred stone with a glitter of pride in his eyes. presently the hammering ceased. "yield us the woman!" the mob roared in the interval. "give us the woman and save yourselves!" those about the alabarch, hearing the demand of the mob, turned great terror-strained eyes upon lydia, and she hid her face in her father's shoulder. the smell of burning pitch penetrated the interior; pungent smoke assailed the nostrils of the keeper, who smiled grimly, assuming that the mob hoped to burn the synagogue. but there followed an explosion of steam, split by a sharp report, and followed by a howl of exultation. the keeper with wild eyes sprang at the valve. immediately the hammering of the ram reverberated through the gloom. the alabarch understood. they were cracking the stone with fire and water and beating in the fractures with a ram. then the forty thousand within realized their extremity. the murmur increased to an even groan of terror, and here and there, as some more acutely realized the desperate straits, frantic screams would rive through the drone of misery. above it all the ram beat its sentence of doom upon the gate. splintering rock began to fall on the inner side of the assaulted portal. the keeper put his hands over his ears and turned away from the sight. let but a breach be made wide enough to admit a hand to undo the bolts and hideous death would pour in upon the shuddering captives within. without, above the noise of the ram, the roar of the multitude continued: "give up the woman ere it is too late!" under the light of fires falling from above, hundreds of white faces in the mad mass turned toward lydia. a lozenge of stone large enough to admit a man's body shaped itself in the gate under the ram, and the next instant shot out and fell near the keeper. with it came a hoarse roar of triumph, drowning a scream of despair. a dozen arms came through the opening and fumbled for the bolts. the keeper seized the fragment of stone and hurled it at the intruding arms. it struck fair and with vicious force. howls of pain went up. the limp arms were dragged out and as others came in the keeper bounded to the gate and catching up his missile beat madly upon flesh and bone until the besiegers abandoned their search for the bolts. the thunder of assault began again, for the gate could not hold long. the trapped victims shrieked and out of the mass fingers pointed at lydia. suddenly, she stood away from her father's arm. walking to one of the keepers of the unassaulted gates, she said to him: "i am she whom they want without! let me forth!" a tall spare old man, one of the strangers who had entered last, approached her. but the girl motioned him aside and he made the sign of the cross over her. her father, watching her, did not realize until the keeper undid the bolts which held the wicket, or subsidiary gate in the large one, that lydia meant to pass out into the night. with a cry, he sprang after her. a hush fell in the synagogue. chapter xxxiii the dregs of the cup of fury the great stars were further withdrawn into the immeasurable arch of blue night; the winds had fled away into the ocean; the bay was angry with fire for leagues. the space before lydia was open as far as the reader's stone of the proseucha, for the attacking party had demanded room for their proceedings. beyond that was the front of the besiegers, a sea of bodies lighted by torches, tunics bloody with murder which had been done, mouths open, teeth shining, and eyes filled with the fury of bloodthirst. as yet she was unnoticed, because the attention of the multitude was engaged with the assault upon the easternmost gate. lydia's mind did not direct her. it had sunk long ago under the stress of womanly terror. only an involuntary obedience to an impulse conceived during the last conscious suggestions of her nazarene faith, moved her toward the reader's stone, straight in the face of the multitude. she went as all young and tender martyrs have gone, with the spirit already lifted out of the body. she mounted the rock; the alabarch, unable to reach her in time, unable to make her hear him, gave up with a groan of despair, and followed her. then the multitude saw and understood. a yell of fury went up; a mass of innumerable heads and shoulders lurched toward her. even the assailants at the gate dropped their ram to come. then up and out of it marsyas leaped! lydia saw him, and a great light swept over her face. he had come to die with her, to sweeten the bitter martyrdom with the faithfulness of his love. after marsyas, the bayadere bounded, as if pitched from the front of the wave. between the murdering front and the three on the stone she interposed herself, a creature of primal fury, terrible and ferocious. a torch was in her hand, the badge of eligibility, which had let her to the forefront of this mob, that received none but destroyers. but the sibilant utterance of the crimson flame, raking the air, and taller by half than the screaming fury that whipped it before her, was turned upon them that had kindled it. she carried by its bail a great copper kettle filled with bitumen, but, as she planted feet upon the stone, she dropped her torch and, whirling upon the wave of fury, swept the full contents of the giant pot over every face and garment for yards about her. she caught up her torch; the looping flame uncoiled itself like a springing snake and shot down into the pack. instantly there was a running flash, the rip of explosive ignition, and the breast of the riot turned, each a great towering flame, and drove itself into the heart of the oncoming thousands behind! the rabble in cotton tunics had absolutely no defense against one another. the riot of bloodthirst turned instantly into panic and a revel of terrible death. the sound, the scene were indescribably awful. in the hideous uproar that ensued, events followed swiftly. vasti and her tall torch, in fearful fellowship, shrilled and spun on the rock in a frenzy of heathen triumph. marsyas, for the instant stunned and scorched, flung his arm over his face, to shut out the horror. but the jews, the instant the ram was dropped, realizing that their citadel was hopeless with breaches in its gate, and seeing a respite in the riot's attention upon lydia, broke from the sanctuary and poured like a sea in flight into the open. the miraculous intervention of the bayadere gave them the opportunity to save themselves. but when marsyas came to himself and sprang to take up lydia, the inundation of fleeing jews had swept over the reader's stone behind him, and lydia was gone! chapter xxxiv captives of the mighty the second night after the riot about the synagogue, one of flaccus' sentries, posted about the small cramped portion of the regio judæorum, into which the forty thousand jews had been driven, brought his spear at guard and called "halt!" but the object approaching spun on toward him noiselessly, passed the lines, and disappeared up the dark, sandy roadway, into the night on the beleaguered quarter. "ha, ha! ho, ho!" roared the next post, who had heard his challenge, "challenging sand-columns, sergius? flaccus should know of thy thoroughness!" the discomfited sentry muttered and shouldered his weapon. but the column of sand disintegrated before a hovel, and became a snaky woman-shape that disappeared into the dark door of the house. within, she stumbled over prostrate bodies, sleeping on the earthen floor, and, muttering in hindu against the darkness, stopped finally. "master!" she called softly, in her native tongue. there was instant reply. "thou, vasti! the lord god be praised! what news?" the woman felt her way to the voice, and, encountering the alabarch's outstretched hands, began at once, in a whisper: "i have come, but not to abide," she said. "the nazarenes took lydia, and fled with her unto judea!" "unto judea! away from me?" the alabarch said piteously. "nay, but egypt hath risen against her. the roman hath put forth all his soldiery to look for her. if she remained in alexandria she would surely die!" the alabarch moaned. the last of his fortitude had gone with lydia, and helpless, disgraced and old, he was beginning to surrender. the bayadere put her hands on him. "be of hope," she insisted, "for the white brother departed at sunset to seek for her, and to get protection from the herod!" "judea!" the alabarch repeated miserably. "there she entereth into equal danger, for there it is death to be a nazarene!" "but the white brother is sworn to kill the leader of the persecution," she said grimly. "speed him with thy prayers, for he is weighted with no little mission. i come unto thee with cheer. listen, and be of hope! the city of the jews, here, is all but destroyed, but i buried thy moneys, thy drafts, thy money-papers and thy jewels. though they burn thy house, thou art still rich!" "buried them?" he repeated. "in the earth of thy court-yard, ere the herod departed, for the flame on the altar of mahadeva burned crimson and murky! and i took certain of thy moneys and gave them to certain of the nazarenes and bade them be prepared to care for her, who had cared for them! they went unto the synagogue! they rescued her from the stone, after the sending of vishnu upon the rabble! they went unto judea with her--and i, vasti, i did it, as khosru, the mahatma, bade!" "be thou blessed, vasti; blessed be the day that i held up the hand that would have fallen on thee, in the markets of sind! but--but--marsyas--what manner of vessel carryeth him? how long! alas, how wide the sea!" "but the vengeance of the divine hand is loosed! sawest thou the destruction of the host, before thy people's temple? the bay was black with them this morning and the vultures come even from libya. knowest thou the evil mouth that spread sayings against lydia? i was in the city and beheld it! it was the charioteer, eutychus! him i kept in my sight, while i ran at the forefront of the riot with the white brother, and when we stood upon the rock, i saw him! this morning, i sought for him before the synagogue, and i found him!" she brought her teeth together with a click. "i burned incense for the purification of the fire, straightway," she said sententiously. "canst thou endure?" she asked after a silence. "all--so that lydia be saved!" "thy spirit may be tried," she said. "the roman hath commanded that ye be pent here until lydia is found, believing that imprisonment and hunger and torture may persuade the jews to give her up if she be hid among them. but i shall come to thee with comforts and such tidings as i may learn." she touched his hands to her forehead and moved away, calling back: "the time is not long; the jewish king will not lag in his own requital! be assured! i abide without these lines, since i can not help thee within! farewell!" at the door she stopped, but, reconsidering her impulse, went out without speaking. "it would not be seemly to tell, now, that i saw classicus' green and gold garment exposed in a usurer's shop." a sand-column passed before the wind, by the sentry at the upper end of the street; but he did not attempt to halt it. chapter xxxv the approach of the day of visitation marsyas sought through the nazarene settlements in joppa, anthedon and cæsarea, but the people could not tell him of fugitive alexandrians, who had with them a maid with yellow-brown hair. he went then to ptolemais, and there, after days of patient search, discovered that three strange women, two men and a maiden of gentle blood, who were children in christ, has passed through the city, from alexandria to jerusalem. he did not pause to inquire after his former master, peter the usurer, nor eleazar, his steward. instead he took the road, over which he and agrippa had come long before, and hastened toward the city of david. within sight of the tower of hippicus, and the glittering glory on the summit of moriah, he came upon a group, in abas and talliths, sitting on the soil while they ate. he would have passed around them, without speaking, had he not seen the elder among them lift his hands and beseech the blessing of christ upon the bread and water set before them. marsyas stopped, and waited with as much grace as possible until the meal was finished and the nazarene thanks returned, before he approached. "i behold that ye offer supplication to the nazarene prophet," he said to the elder, "and though i come unto you a faithful follower of the god of abraham, i pray you, remember the charity ye assume, and give me aid!" "we are children of christ," the elder responded, "and brethren to all; wherefore speak, and if we can help thee, we dare not deny thee." "i perceive that a bond of common acquaintance unites all of your belief; perchance certain alexandrian nazarenes with a maiden, who fled hither from the wrath of the proconsul of egypt, have come unto you for hospitality in jerusalem." "save for the few apostles of the church in christ, who have hidden themselves, there are no nazarenes in jerusalem," the elder answered. "no nazarenes in jerusalem!" marsyas exclaimed, remembering eleazar's estimation of the host of schism in the holy city. "yet, two years ago, they possessed the city from ophlas to bezetha." "they have been scattered into far cities by the oppressor, or have passed through the dust of the stoning-place into the kingdom of god!" he answered in awed tones. the young man made a gesture as if he drew his hands quickly away from blood-stains, and a look of intense horror passed over his face. "and saul continueth to rage, unchecked?" he exclaimed, his old impatience with the passivity of the nazarenes making itself felt once more. "in the lord's time, in the lord's time, my son," the elder said mildly. "i can not wait upon the lord!" marsyas cried. "the lord gave me heart, feeling, intelligence and invention, for me to use to mine own aid! i have labored for two years to this end, and herod, the king, will help me!" "not so, my son!" the nazarene said gravely. "build no hope for us, upon herod the king, for he hath joined himself with the pharisees, and he will not hinder the oppressor!" "what?" marsyas cried, growing black. "a truth, my son!" "but i crowned him!" marsyas cried, clenching his hands. "i held off the hand of death from him, and despoiled my soul for his sake! i sold myself for him! by the lord, if he help me not, i shall have back the life that i preserved to him!" the nazarene crossed himself quickly, and shook his head. "peace! peace! young brother. even the law, for which thou art zealous, forbids thee to kill! behold the vanity of laying up confidence in man! if thou hadst so built for the master's favor, thou hadst not been forsaken, to-day!" "neither the god of abraham, nor thy prophet has shielded thee from the oppressor," he declared passionately. "remember thy own words. but i will bring him down!" "build no hope upon herod," the nazarene continued, as if eager to stay marsyas. "whatever he promised thee, he knows that saul standeth high among the pharisees, whom the king would propitiate! he hath difficulty and prejudice to overcome, this grandson of an execrated grandsire--so build nothing upon the herod!" was it possible that, after all his months of patient work and long-suffering, he had brought up at the point at which he had left off two years before? was his punishment of saul to be done, at his own risk, at last? he would see this altered agrippa and learn for himself! "i shall see this king and discover!" he declared. "the king is not in jerusalem," the nazarene said. "he hath continued unto antioch to despatch a petition to cæsar!" the young man's rage changed into dismay, but he made a last appeal. "i seek my beloved," he said finally, in a helpless way. "she is a nazarene and pursued by the powers of rome! even besides her peril of saul, she is sought after by the mighty who would destroy her. if thou knowest of her--even where she might be in hiding, i pray thee, tell me, in the name of thy prophet!" "who is she?" the nazarene asked at once. "she is lydia lysimachus, daughter to the alabarch in alexandria." "i turned such a maiden, and her protectors, away from the gates of jerusalem, seven days ago. they were bidden to go to damascus." marsyas pressed the nazarene's hand to his lips, because his gratitude would not be expressed otherwise. safe, then, for the moment, and out of reach of saul of tarsus! "do ye fare thither? even now?" marsyas asked, eager to attach himself to the body of apostates, if they led him on to lydia. "nay, we are certain of the faith on watch, lest any ignorant of the peril besetting the brethren should approach the city." "ye are close unto the oppressor," marsyas said seriously. "we abide in the will of the lord." marsyas sighed. he had seen another, believing in the promise of the lamb, go down unto death. the recurring thought of stephen, never wholly forgotten, awakened in him another impulse. he would not go straightway to damascus, and continue to retreat from saul. the hand of the lord had led him unto the pharisee, and he would do that which lay nearest him. "and when i come unto damascus, how shall i find her?" he asked of the nazarene. "go unto ananias, a brother in the lord, and tell him thy story. lo, he is keeper of the lord's flock, and filled with the spirit. thou wilt not ask in vain!" "thou hast my thanks, and my blessing!" marsyas said. "and the forgiveness of the lord cover you all!" "peace, young brother, and the love of christ be with thee ever more!" marsyas went through the amber light of the late afternoon, toward the might of hippicus and the majesty of the city of david. he found, by inquiry among the jews, that agrippa had not lingered in judea, having passed through jerusalem to give commands concerning the preparation of his palace, to receive the homage of the people and to propitiate the pharisees, before he went on to antioch. it was readily told that the king was despatching messages to caligula craving the punishment of flaccus. "but could not the king have despatched these messages from jerusalem?" marsyas asked. the jews smiled and laid fingers alongside their noses. "he is a herod, and not ashamed of display. he was ill-treated in antioch, by the proconsul, there, in the days of adversity. wherefore, in his purple and gold, with the favor of cæsar behind him, he taketh advantage of an excuse to abash his old insulters!" it was like agrippa! but marsyas was glad, even in the tumult of his sensations, that the herod was pushing his work against flaccus! at least, alexandria should be safe for the alabarch. but to his mission! it was still night in the city of david and the watcher on the pinnacle of the temple had long to wait before the morning shone and the sky was lighted even unto hebron. the greater stars sparkled like jewels in the cold heavens, and there were already many people in the blue-misted streets below. they were of all classes, but of one nation, one direction. straggling numbers joined the main body from each narrow passage which intersected the marble-paved roadway leading toward the splendid tyropean bridge. it was a host, an army numbering thousands. but, foot planted on the solid masonry that accomplished the ravine by flying arches two hundred feet above the dark abyss, conversation left off. the company passed silent, except for the multitudinous and soft rustlings of garments and the chafing of feet upon rock. far ahead the foremost were rising, an undulating sea of heads and shoulders, as the cyclopean stairs, a cold bank of white marble, broad and gentle of slope, climbed toward the royal porch. as soon as the tyropean bridge was passed, the temple was shut off from view by the intervening cornices of the porch; and when the gate was reached, the stream of worshipers entered into the demesnes of the holy house. tunnel-like and drafty, the open gate revealed an immense length of gloom, raftered and roofed with beams and vaults of darkness, upheld by double rows of dim columns of enormous girth. this, the royal colonnade, cloistered the court of the gentiles, through which the worshipers fared next. it was a great quadrangle, paved with sun-colored marbles, open to the sky and having about it the characteristic exhilarating airs which inhabit the heights. herod the great spent princely sums upon this portion allotted to the gentiles, for the simple purpose of flattering the pagan. perhaps for no other reason than an expression of their displeasure did the jews commit the sacrilege of commercialism in this spot. here the money-changer, vender of sacrificial beasts, birds and wines made a busy market daily, for the indignation of the nazarene rabbi had driven them away for only so long as he watched. they returned when he had vanished, like flies to a honey-pot. here also awaited the temple servitors to receive the unblemished offerings, the shoterim to preserve order, the levites of the gates and perchance the priests of the killing-pens and of the wood-chambers. through the throng of attendants or venders, the worshipers continued, an uninterrupted stream of pilgrims, souls in distress, pharisees and souls under vows, and all the class and kind that would be diligent for the lord in the restful hours before daybreak. and the number was not large, in comparison to the host of israel, for the temple was builded to contain the voice of two hundred and ten thousand. north of the center of the court of gentiles, the temple stood. a rail set it off austerely from contact with the uncircumcised. its relentless command of exclusion and its threat were set forth on stone, forbidding the admission of a gentile on pain of death. but beyond, in mockery, rose the black bulk of roman antonia, the majesty of masonry upreared and prostituted to eavesdropping and espionage. yet none who visited the temple was instantly to be led away from its glory to meditate on its humiliation. the worshipers passed around the angle of the structure to the east where the gate beautiful was hung. there was a momentary slackening in the movement, for the gate was yet to be opened. but, preceding the foremost, twenty levites passed up the flight of steps, and under the direction of a captain, laid shoulder to the valves and threw all their strength against them. there was a flash as the light of the coming dawn, concentrated and intensified, shifted across the corinthian brass, and the gate beautiful swung inward. at the head of the column a young man, in ample robes, with his kerchief skirts hanging close about his face, stepped aside from the line of advance. the crowd took up motion and went on. marsyas had washed himself in obedience to the law; he had brought in his hand his trespass offering, and in his soul he was a jew. but he stood now, and watched the fours of people climb the steps abreast, with no mood in his heart that a man should carry into a sanctuary. series after series passed under his sharp scrutiny--extremes of rank, of reputation, of calling and of kind. minute after minute the long, silent procession tramped by him and was swallowed up in the gigantic gloom within. ever the alert gaze, bright even under the obscuring shadow of the kerchief, slipped from rank to rank, and never once lingered in doubt. no one looked at him; every eye was down, for though, since the eighth day after his birth, no man in the long stream of worshipers had been ignorant of the temple, it never failed to be a place of awe, half-love, half-terror. the hindmost appeared at the angle of the temple, moved in turn after their fellows, climbed the steps and disappeared. stragglers followed, in groups and singly, and finally marsyas turned up the steps and followed the last within. saul of tarsus, a pharisee, would have been among the earliest to arrive. perhaps by special dispensation he had entered before the multitude and by another gate. the keeper at the gate beautiful glanced at the young man's snow-white essenic garments and at the stamp of jewish blood on his face, and passed him without a word. the temple from the city had been a great glittering unit. but on approaching its details, they became bewildering. within was a tremendous inclosure, floored with agate, galleried with immense chambers which were screened with grills of beaten brass. the army of worshipers was reduced, in comparison to the space they entered, to a mere handful of pygmy, indistinct shapes, prostrate, kneeling, upright, silent, infinitesimal, moveless. at the extreme inner end of the men's court was a flight of fifteen semicircular steps which led up to the gate nicanor, now wide. it was hung in the middle of an open arcade--an altar screen no less a grace to the temple because it might have embattled a fortress. beyond it as the eye pierced the holy gloom, was a second tier of courts, less spacious than the first, but no less magnificent; after it, yet a third, and then a massive pile of ancient brass, stained and smoked, arose above all else before it. a tongue of clean blue unilluminating flame wavered in the center of its summit. beyond that, marsyas' gaze did not travel. spiritual subjection surrounded him; from behind the lattice which screened the women's court in the lofty galleries, there came no sound. the twilight of early morning and the hush of a sanctity were supreme. he crossed his hands upon his breast and let his head fall as the elders had taught him. others came to stand beside him, the order of worship proceeded, and the singing levites ranged themselves on the steps before nicanor, but he was plunged in his spiritual difficulty and oppressed by the care for himself and his own. finally there came a long, rich trumpet note above middle register; the voice of a brazen tongue singing through a horn of silver. it was not sudden. beginning as the sound of wind on a fine wire, it ripened in tone as it grew in volume till it achieved the color, the shape of harmony, the very fragrance of music. as it diminished, those who listened caught the sound of a second note--the voice of a twin trumpet, save that the tones issued in the molds of enunciation. it was one singing among the levites, as impossible to discover as to pick out the inspirited pipe in an organ. "the earth is the lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein--" it was the voice of a young enthusiast, with the faith and spiritual uplift of patriarchal years, housed in a frame of youth--the voice of a creature of trance and frenzy, a martyr-elect from birth. but as he clung to his final syllable in a vibrato of fervor, a second singer, duplicating the note in barytone, took up the second verse, and carried it with the ease and repose of one filled with content, health and the ripeness of years, of one who is the founder of a house, the possessor of goods and a power among his fellow men. and his voice was rich, level as the note of a 'cello, tender because it was strong, persuasive because it was believing: "for he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods--" wresting the word from him, the tenor again on his altitudes of ecstasy flung out the inquisition: "who shall ascend into the hill of the lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?--" he made answer to himself with the barytone, but there was a third now singing, and his voice arose out of their attendance as a great, white, solemn, night-blooming flower might rise out of leafage. "he that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully." the young fanatic might sing with the fervor of his bigotry, the contented man from the comfort in his heart, but this one, making answer, now, sang as one who was experienced and understood as the others could not. it was deep bass, too deliberate to be flexible, too profound to be hurried, and withal a great bell booming in a dome. and like a bell in travail under each stroke of its hammer, each word, in the full poignancy of its meaning, fell from the lips of him who had been tried by fire. the voice of the one hundred and fifty on the steps of nicanor, picked for beauty from a singing nation, burst about the trio, an eruption of great harmony, overwhelming the echoes of the temple, flooding the purlieus of the holy hill, mounting the morning winds to float across the hollow, reverberating ravines, to resound on the bosom of zion, to penetrate the dark vale of kedron, and to fail and be one with the reedy rushing of airs through the cedars of olivet. "he that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully; "he shall receive the blessing from the lord, and righteousness from the god of his salvation!" marsyas found himself coming under the influence of the psalm. it seemed that the modifiers, describing the elect, had become lofty, solemn attributes not to be assumed by a simple claim to them, not to be had after the commission of deeds not specifically interdicted, not to be obtained by the harkening to one's own will; nor yet to be had did one fix himself in a chrysalis of form, wrap his soul in clean linen, and bury it in a remote spot, and keep hourly watch over it to keep it white--white but wizened. he seemed to understand that he had not understood these things in the days of his essenism, nor in the days of his worldliness. and, remembering the meaning of his presence in the temple, he felt peculiarly accused in his soul. what right had he, who had brought with him the spirit of murder, in the holy hill? he could not shake off the self-accusation, but his resolution was unweakened. he would depart! the hand of one who stood beside him dropped upon his shoulder and lingered. he looked and saw beside him a great man, in the garments of an artisan, that covered him, figure, head and face against identification. but marsyas had known eleazar under more effective disguise; the rabbi was not concealed from him now. perhaps he could learn from eleazar the whereabouts of saul of tarsus, so he dropped his head again, and stayed. the sun blazed on the spear-points, finishing the pinnacle of the temple with glowing embers; the variegated marble of the court of gentiles was yellow as the gold of ophir, and the morning radiance trembled over the city of david, lying in the valley two hundred feet below or rising up the slopes beyond the ravine. the long winding stream of worshipers flowed from the gate beautiful, left, through the well of the stairs to the level where entered the gate of akra, down the long flight of steps into the vale of gihon, and, dispersing, lost itself in the crowded passages of the lower city. before they were out of the morning shadow of the giant retaining-wall, marsyas spoke. "where is our enemy?" "he is for a time gone hence, and my soul is escaped as a bird out of a snare of the fowlers. i can come now without much fear unto the holy house." "hence?" marsyas asked uneasily. "whither?" "i shall tell thee. know thou, first, that i am here, since several weeks, abiding among the weavers of bezetha, and laboring with them; for peter, the usurer of ptolemais, is dead and his servants scattered abroad. since jerusalem hath been purified of the heresy, there is little search after the nazarenes, so, as the robbed house is more secure than the one as yet unentered by thieves, i am unmolested in bezetha. yet, until this morning, i have not dared venture into the temple." "but saul?" marsyas urged impatiently. "i am coming unto saul. jonathan, the high priest, exhausted the patience of vitellius in ten months. the roman's endurance wore through and snapped on a sudden like an overstrained cord. on a certain day, in the feast of tabernacles, jonathan was high priest; ere nightfall some respected jew complained to the legate; the next day, theophilus, brother to jonathan, was clothed in the robes of aaron. "saul was brought up for the instant, but thou knowest that he is no cautious weigher of conditions. he did that which hath proven him not the unforeseeing time-server of a bloodthirsty man, but a follower of his own conscience and the servant of his own zeal. he went to the new high priest while yet the robes retained the shape of jonathan, and spake unto him: 'o ruler of my people, is the purification of the faith to be given over, seeing that it was the way of thy brother and abhorred of the roman? servest thou vitellius or jehovah?' it is not told abroad among the people what answer was given, what further asked, except that the chastening of the heretics was continued unabated, until all judea was cleansed. and yesterday, saul was given letters to jews in syria, permitting him to carry his examinations into damascus and--" "damascus!" marsyas cried, seizing the rabbi's arm. "yes; and to bring the offenders to jerusalem for trial." "is he gone?" marsyas demanded in a terrible voice. "he passed out of the damascus gate at sunset last night." "come! go with me! let us overtake him! he shall not go on!" "for revenge, marsyas?" eleazar asked mildly, but with reproof in his eyes. "to cut him off from desolating me wholly!" marsyas declared. eleazar looked away over the hollows and gentler hills covered with houses, toward the summit of olivet, golden in the sun. "then i shall not dissuade thee, marsyas; but i can not go with thee," he said. "why?" marsyas demanded, with a flush of feeling. "i have suffered from oppression in the name of the lord; it is the lord's will. i have changed in the days of my misfortunes." marsyas came close to him. "art thou a nazarene, eleazar?" he asked in a low tone. "nay, i am a good jew, a better jew, for i have become a jew, again, through understanding." but marsyas was not willing to wait for the rabbi's philosophy; he moved restlessly as he stood, and finally put forth his hand to say farewell, but eleazar held it. "wait, but a moment," he said, "and let me speak. thou sayest thou wouldst secure thyself from devastation at the pharisee's hands; since nothing can stop saul, and nothing stop thee, there is death at the end of thy doing. i do not know what moves thee now; perchance it is more than the vow sworn to avenge stephen. but thou goest to help thyself; and--to assist in convincing the heathen that israel is an oppressor in the name of god!" "it is!" marsyas cried passionately. but the rabbi went on patiently. "i did not go out after stephen," he continued. "i was not seen at the crucifixion of his prophet. i do not urge bloodshed or urge on the work of saul of tarsus. so, who is israel, o son of a shut house and of a hermit brotherhood? saul, who knoweth no moderation? certain feeble and forward speakers in the synagogues, whom even an apostate could overthrow in argument? or the witnesses whom they suborned in revenge? say, be these israel, or gamaliel who discountenanced the persecution? or the people among whom the minions of the high priest jonathan went cautiously to arrest the fathers of the nazarene faith, lest the people stone the shoterim? forget not, brother, that our lofty are the friends of rome; our lowly, tributaries of rome; our chief priests, dependent upon rome--and the greater israel is the unheard, the unrecorded, the unpampered, the innocent!" "but is it not just, then, that saul be overtaken, who hath cast obloquy on israel, having shed innocent blood and made judea to be fled by the righteous?" "defendest thou the innocent of israel, marsyas?" "by the lord, the innocent!" "wouldst trouble thyself, had the doom fallen on others, instead of thine own, marsyas?" the young man frowned and made no answer. "i shall not answer for thee," eleazar went on, "but thou and the world accuse the innocent of israel, when contempt is cast upon the race, as an entirety. but the slander of israel hath been accomplished, even before saul, and ye may not run down a lie. so thou and i and our kind have the hard task of upholding the glory of the people, a labor from which there can be no let nor easement! the multitude which crowns to-day and crucifies to-morrow establishes no standard. but they are witnesses to the evil-speaking of the enemy; they are a slander which may not be denied. if thou join thyself with them, marsyas, for thine own ends, in that much thou ungirdest israel!" "brother, saul of tarsus consented unto the death of stephen, and despoiled me of my one love, as an essene; he proceedeth, now, against my beloved, as a man of the world! i can not wait on conscience and the welfare of judea. she will not defend mine own; wherefore i must defend them, at whatever cost!" eleazar's face had grown inexpressibly sad during marsyas' words. his heavily-shaded eyes turned absently away from the speaker. he seemed to see beyond the invincible walls and towers of the holy city, even beyond the olive-orchards and the meeting of the earth and sky, into the time which would come out of the east. perhaps he saw waste and desolate places, lands of destruction and captives of the mighty, dregs of the cup of trembling and dregs of the cup of fury and the hostility of all nations. the sadness in his eyes became fixed. "verily," he said, as if speaking of his own visions, "thou art a god that hidest thyself, o god of israel!" marsyas heard him with a stir of emotion in his soul. he put out his hand to the rabbi. "if i and my like be wrong, thou shall prevail, when the day of the just man comes, in the lord's time!" "he called us his chosen people," eleazar continued, suffering marsyas to take his hand unnoticed, "even the appointed people, the marked people! marked for his own purposes, how hidden! but what knows the clay of the potter's intent that passes it through fire? chastening or vengeance, woe, woe unto them, by whom it cometh!" he turned away, and marsyas looked after him until the narrow winding streets had obscured him. quickly then marsyas continued toward the gennath gate; reared to the essenic habit of traveling without preparation, he was ready to journey from city to city in the dress he wore on the streets. he went by the cenotaph of mariamne, past phasælus, past the prætorium, out of the gate, past the might of hippicus, and on to the parting of the road, where he took the way to damascus. presently he met a horseman and, stopping the traveler, bought without parley the beast, and mounted it. he knew that saul would proceed by the slow mule, and the forbidden, nobler animal, the horse, would soon make up the distance the pharisee had gained. so, without relaxing from his fever of determination, marsyas sped on toward damascus. he knew that the hour had come! chapter xxxvi on the damascus road with the solid soil of the ancient roman road beneath his horse's feet, marsyas rode north, between the hills of judea, with the head of mt. ephraim before him. the early morning of the second day broke over him, fresh on the long straight road, leading over the border into samaria, past the well of jacob, and through the city of samaria. at noon the third day he turned at the parting of the ways, and rode east, along the southern edge of the plains of esdraelon, until, through a crevice in the hills, he saw the jordan sparkling in its valley below. it was an old familiar way, thence, north once more, fording a hundred mountain brooks that fed the river of the holy land. the narrow fertile strip that lay between the hills and waters of the sea of galilee, unto tiberias, he accomplished after night. at dawn he entered magdala, at mid-morning capernaum, and, leaving the margin of the beautiful lake, he passed north into the rocks, ridges and forests once more. through marshes and sedge, with the waters of the jordan in the heart of it, he forded the south arm of lake huleh and entered itrurea. the country changed but the road did not. it was still the same compact ribbon of stone and soil in the marsh as it was in the hills, as it was in the fertile lowlands. ahead of him, through the hills it stretched, through the oaks of bashan, under cliffs surmounted by castles, or hillsides marked by temples. and when the oaks left off, and the hills fell back and the streams dried into dead, sapless beds watered only by infrequent rains, the road continued on. the fifth dawn, he rode down a pass, through a rocky defile, and the syrian desert was before him. he had bought provisions for two days' journey at the last village in the fertile lands; his horse was freshened after a night's feeding on the herbage in the hills, and marsyas' heart was resolute. even the road no longer led him on, but he touched his horse with his hand and passed into the wilderness. at a huddle of huts for goat-tenders, he found that saul and his party had passed at noon the day previous. the arabs there besought him to remain until the evening, for none traveled under a syrian noonday and escaped evil consequences. but marsyas wrapped his head in his mantle, watered his horse and pressed on. he had no time to lose. the antilibanus, a glaring ridge of chalk, heightened at intervals into peaks that held up their blistering cold winds from the heat-blasted day, and swept them down by night to confound the stunned earth with ice. the shale from their easternmost slopes sprawled out on the desert and scarred it with rock and gravel until the blowing sands buried it. far to the east, the lap of the desert dropped down into emptiness, marked by a level of intervening atmosphere. beyond that were bald hills outlined against the horizon. between was a cruel waste, tufted here and there by gray-green, scrubby growth, half-buried in sand and rooted in gravel. there was color, but it was the dye of chemicals, not refractions; chalks, not rainbows. the drop of water has only the true range of the spectrum and its merging grades, but sands may be erratic, chaotic. thus, the wadies, sallow meanderings in the trembling distance, were bordered with dull fawn and dull lavender--ashes of scarlet and purple; wherever hummocks arose there were ground-swells of lifeless gray and saffron--burned-out blue and gold. over it all were sown burnished fleckings of myriads of mica particles, like white-hot motes from the face of the sun itself. the air was flame; the sky a livid arch that no man dared look upon. at high noon, marsyas hid from the deadly sun in a crevice in a narrow canyon; but pressed on while yet the scorching air burned his nostrils. at night, he rode through bitter winds, or broke his fast with the inky outlines of jackals squatting about the rim of the immediate landscape. he met no man, and had no desire for companionship with the burden of his stern thoughts to attend him. he did not have the murderer's heart in him; he did not go forward in a whirl of passion and fury; it did not once occur to him to ambush the tarsian; he did not ponder on a plan of action when the moment should arrive; not once did he strike the fatal blow, in his imagination, nor speak with saul, nor follow himself after the deed was done. his ideas were largely in retrospect, or centered upon the necessity of his work. his love of lydia, his love of life, his natural impulses toward generous things were put away from him with firmness, as things which had no place at such a time. his composure was almost resignation. he knew then, that which he had never been able to understand,--how men of great souls and previous noble lives could in all calmness kill another by design. a glittering white ridge had shaped itself out of the pale blue sky of an early morning, while yet he rode in the hills. it was hermon, with the unmelted snows of the winter covering its crown. opposite it, he came upon another miserable cluster of hovels, the abode of pestilence, want and superstition, and there found that saul had passed through the village at high noon that day. marsyas purchased water for his horse and rode on. saul was now only a half-day's journey ahead of him. he had come far, without rest. even now, with the crisis of his long journey at hand, he labored under prostrating weariness and a torturing desire to sleep. he had periods of mental blankness from which he aroused with a start. but as the night's cold deepened, after the day of withering heat, the sharp change added to the weakening influences. he meditated on the feast of junia and the succession of classicus, until his body became a column finishing the front of agrippa's palace, at which a mob at baiæ threw stones. he flinched, and the night on the desert of syria passed across his vision once more. but it was good to lie down on the couch at the triclinum of caligula, restful, indeed, if it were sinful. but not for long, because lydia was beside him, and he spent hours imploring her to give up jove and pour libations to jehovah instead, for since saul of tarsus was cæsar, she would be chained to a soldier under sentence in the prætorium. even now there approached a decurion with manacles thrown over his shoulder! again, he saw the drooping head of his horse before him in the dark, the pallid stretch of sand, and felt the sweep of harsh winds on his face. but lollia paulina had laid her sesterces on this worn-out animal, when she knew that cneius domitius' horses were the best in the circus! why did the woman insist on sitting with him, when she wanted so much to be with the roman? but nobody was good. even stephen had died in heresy, and lydia, for whom he had lost his soul, was an apostate! the multitude had her! classicus turned his back upon her! flaccus stood within twenty paces of her and leveled a pilum at her breast! and saul bound his arms! help! mercy-but a brambly desert shrub had caught at his garments, and its sharp dead thorns had pierced him. the next mid-morning he rode up a chalky ridge and saw the picture that had brought praise to the lips of the prophets of despair, when israel was a captive with no hope. it was a vale so enchanting, so perfect, so golden that he doubted his eyes and feared that it was an unreality the desert had fashioned to lure him on to destruction--or another but kindlier dream. yellow roadways, slender and winding, wandered hither and thither through emerald oceans of young grain, past ancient vineyards and orchards of olives, and citrons, and groves of walnuts. yonder was a cluster of palms, pilasters of silver with feathery capitals, and under it was builded a little town--a hive of soft-colored houses, half smothered in delicate green. beyond, the roads spread out again, from their convergence in the little settlement, and ran abroad once more between hedges of roses and oleanders, across the river pharbar, curving midway across the vale like a simitar dropped in the green, through crowding gardens, among low-lying roofs, past spreading villas of the rich, on to a glittering vision of towers, walls, cupolas, white as frost on the head of mount tabor in the morning. at his feet was caucabe the star; in the distance was damascus. marsyas drew up his jaded horse and looked, not at the beauty of the scene, for he did not wish to see it now, but down the roads. over every yellow ribbon his gaze passed until, beyond the limits of the white-towered town, he saw a cluster of small moving figures. "o rememberer of no wrongs," he said to his horse, "only a little way and thou shall rest and i shall rest!" he pressed on, past caucabe the star, down the hedges of roses between the emerald oceans of young grain and the odorous shade of orchards. the sun climbed higher, more heated, more merciless; the oleanders gave up their fast fragrance until the night fell again; the vineyards curled, leaf by leaf, the young grain drooped and wilted, the orchards pent in the heat under their boughs, the yellow roads became streaks of brass and the tyrant of the desert stood at its meridian. another stadium, and marsyas drew up his horse sharply. sixty paces ahead was a wayside pool, overshadowed by tall trees--an irresistible invitation to the traveler seeking refuge from the sun. a lean, bowed figure in rabbinical robes stood beside a mule that drank of the spring. half a dozen men in the garments of levites stood by their own beasts with rein in hand while they drank. marsyas felt in his belt for his knife, and curbing his thirsty horse lowered down on saul of tarsus. in his association with hardy pagans, athletæ and the exquisite herod, he had in a measure forgotten the feebleness of saul. "he is weak!" he said to himself. "but what mercy hath he shown the weak?" he recalled the terrible desert, remembered that saul had sworn to bring back the nazarenes to jerusalem for trial--back across that empire of death! and lydia, gentle and without hardihood, against whom he could not bear to think of the wind blowing strongly, was to go that way! the levites watched the pharisee narrowly; one of them, whom marsyas recognized as joel, made tentative movements toward unpacking the supplies from one of the burden-bearing beasts. but the pharisee drew up the bridle of his mule and led it to the roadside toward a stone by which he could mount. the eyes of the levites followed him in a troubled manner, and joel sat down as if to show that he believed the rabbi would not proceed in the noon. "up!" said saul calmly, "we shall continue to damascus." the troubled levites stared at him, and joel presently objected: "but--but it is the noon! and the heat is cruel!" "we can proceed, nevertheless," was the reply. the stupefied levite stumbled to his feet, and the party led their beasts out into the sun. marsyas with a fierce word dismounted and strode toward them. at his second step he faltered. silence dropped upon the blazing plain of damascus--silence so sudden, so absolute that his footfall startled him. he saw that the movement of saul's party had been arrested. arm lifted, or foot put forward, stayed in the attitude. the utter stillness seized them as a commanding hand. then all the noon grew dim, not from the abatement of the sun's light, but by the coming of a radiance infinitely brighter. descending from above, instantly intensifying as if the source that shed it approached as fast as stars move, a single ray, purer than the glitter on mount hermon, and more inscrutable than the face of the syrian sun, stood among them. its presence was not violent but all-compelling. the group at the pool fell down in the dust and lay still. silence such as never before and never again lay on the plain of damascus, brooded about them. out of it a single voice issued, low, trembling, filled with fear and reverence. it was saul of tarsus, speaking: "who art thou, lord?" presently he spoke again, eagerly, humbly, and still afraid: "lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" [illustration: "lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" (missing from book)] after a long time, the hot breeze made a whispering sound in the sand of the roadway; the leaves in the hedge at hand stirred and fluttered. joel, the boldest of the levites, cautiously raised his head, and presently got upon his feet. his fellows, taking heart, rose, one by one. a young stranger in the robes of an essene was kneeling among them with large dark eyes fixed in pity upon saul. the rabbi had made an attempt to raise himself, but had paused transfixed. humility made an actual light on his forehead; his pinched features were stunned with helplessness. the terrified levites crept closer to one another, but joel finally wet his dry lips and spoke in a half-whisper: "rabbi?" there was no answer in words, but slow tears rose, brimmed over the lids and crept down the sun-burned hollow cheeks. the young stranger came quickly and knelt beside the rabbi and laid a kindly hand on his shoulder. "brother saul?" he whispered. the face of the rabbi came round, but the gaze missed its mark and wandered over the men about him. there was no vision in the eyes. "he is blind!" a levite whispered. the young stranger slipped the hand from the shoulder around the bowed figure, and, supporting saul in his arm, looked down with infinite sorrow and concern at the darkened eyes. "we will abide here," he said at last, to the levites, "until the noon passeth." the levites looked in a little fear at the spot where they had been so mysteriously overwhelmed, but marsyas lifted saul and bore him back into the shade he had left to continue unto damascus. all of his own passion and purpose had been swept away, leaving his mind to the tenantry of the sweetest content he had ever known. though he had seen no man nor heard a voice, he knew that the lord had visited saul, and that the eye of the lord beheld saul's work. after that reverent translation of the supernatural event, he troubled himself no more concerning the vision. absolute relief possessed his soul; rest of spirit so all-comprehensive that it strengthened his body, peace so whole that it bordered on gladness, and confidence, new, delicious and simple, embraced all his being. the old restless ambition was so stilled and soothed that it seemed to have been fulfilled; the old essenic cynicism that had slandered all the world, tinctured his friendships with distrust and his love with fear, was dissipated like a distorting illusion; his hates, his thirst for revenge, his impatience with the deliberation of god, and his self-dependence were things unremembered. he did not understand his change and did not seek after its meaning; his feelings did not even hark back to the old love for saul. pity and filial solicitude, sensations that on a time he could not have believed possible as shown to saul, made the strength of his arm gentle and his service reverential. he thought now of lydia, with worshipful, marvelous homage, as if his soul knelt to her. he had ceased to be afraid for her or to fear that he would not find her. everything good became possible; the prospering of virtue, the fidelity of agrippa, the prevention of flaccus and the favor of cæsar, even the restoration of his beloved, seemed to be things absolutely assured. he did not say these things to himself; they were simple convictions that made themselves felt in a tender blending which amounted to perfect waiting on the lord. he did not know that his face had become beautiful, or that joel looked askance at him or that the other levites wondered if he had come to them in the great light. so when the sun stood three hours above the horizon, he raised saul from the shade of the walnut grove and passed on to damascus. the golden haze reddened over the glorious damascene plain, the distance became obscured; the purple triumphed; then the royal color over the world began to run out into plum shades, and the sudden night came up from the east. but before this hour at one of the north gates of damascus, the halting group of levites, the stricken man among them, and the silent, kindly young stranger appeared before aretas' wiry black arab sentry that held that post. they did not know the ways of the pearl of the orient, and they wished to find via recta--straight street. there judas, a pharisee of wealth and power, expected to entertain saul. though the cæsars possessed the city's fealty, exacted tribute, installed jupiter in the temples and the eagle on its standard, it was still the dominion of rimmon, vassal of nimrud, high place of the sons of uz. it had submitted to alexander of macedon as placidly as it suffered the wolfish roman, who would pass, likewise. it notched its calendar by the rise and fall of nations, and marked its days by the sway of kings. it had propitiated time, hence there was no death for damascus; it steeped itself in the oils of the orient and so was spiced against decay. there were romanized colonnades along the streets, but the winged bulls of the dromoes, the stucco-work and the tiles, the swaying of carpets from balconies obscured their influence. architects of cæsar's extravagances scowled at the giant structures that were old in baalbec's time and looked their defeat; chaldean philosophers contemplated the trenches worn in the rock pavements by the feet of men and held their peace; olives, as old as troy, cast their leaves down on the heads of greeks who shook them off impatiently, but the sons of abraham could point to a mound of clay and say: "this was a temple which our father builded unto god, before you all!" the jewish tincture had never been abated even, much less worked out. therefore, as the agitated travelers from jerusalem passed through the gate they went with their own kind by legions. the slow mule was there, outnumbering the arab's troops of horses, which were mettled, nervous creatures, caparisoned like kings; there were israel's camels, bearing howdahs, rich as thrones; tall stalking dromedaries in tasseled housings and tinkling harnesses, passing as ships pass over ground-swells, with undulations dizzying in their ease; and these, mounted by the sons of abraham, were more in number than the hindu palanquins, roman lecticæ, greek litters, and gentiles afoot. marsyas glanced about for the eye of a citizen whom he might approach and ask his way, but the turmoil for the moment confused him. into the gate or out of it passed wealthy travelers, faring in state; itinerant merchants; squads of aretas' soldiery, and through and among these, eddying and swarming, shouting, hurrying and trading were venders, beggars, carriers, slaves, citizens, jews in gowns, arabs in burnooses, greeks in chitons, romans in tunics, idlers, actors, scribes, notaries, priests and magistrates--of twenty nationalities, of every rank and age. marsyas met face to face a pharisee of erect and imposing figure, with flowing beard and aggressive features, who drew his spotless linen draperies away from contact with the ceremonially unclean horde at the gate. the man had stopped and was gazing from his commanding height over the rush of pilgrims flowing into the walls of damascus. marsyas approached him. "i seek judas, a pharisee, which dwelleth in straight street!" "i am he," the pharisee interrupted, examining the young man for some familiar feature which might justify the essene's initiatory. "thou art well-met, sir; we bring unto thee, thy guest, saul of tarsus, stricken by a vision on the roads and blind!" "even am i here, awaiting him," the pharisee exclaimed. "thou bringest me evil tidings! lead me to him, i pray thee." the levites stood with saul outside the path of the exit to the gateway, and marsyas led judas to the stricken rabbi. hebrew servants followed respectfully after their master. "brother saul," marsyas said, "i bring thee thy host; he will care for thee." the sightless eyes of the rabbi turned toward the speaker, and marsyas thought that a shadow crossed the forehead. "woe is me!" judas exclaimed, "that thou shouldst come thus afflicted, brother! but perchance the vision was a blessing on thee!" "he does not speak," marsyas explained. "i do not belong to his party. i joined them to offer aid." "then the god of abraham and of isaac and of jacob reward thee," judas said. he signed to his servants, who brought forward a litter in which judas had meant his guest should proceed to straight street. saul was lifted into it; judas climbed in beside him; the servants shouldered the litter, and, with the levites following, bore it away into the city. marsyas looked after it until the narrow ways between the high unsightly mud walls hid it. then he put his hands together and smiled. "the nazarene bade me ask for ananias!" he whispered. chapter xxxvii in the house of ananias but ananias was a favorite name among the jews of damascus. weariness and the desire for slumber after inquiries which brought him twenty diverse directions, sent marsyas to a khan when the night was old, and lydia still unfound. the next morning after refreshing and untroubled sleep, he began to search for ananias, carefully withholding the explanation that the ananias he sought was a nazarene, out of an impulse to protect the protector of his beloved. he found ananias, the wine-merchant, and ananias, the tanner, banished to the outskirts of the city, because of his unclean trade; and ananias, the priest; and ananias who was a native of antioch and of mixed blood, but unalterably a jew; and ananias, who was a soldier, drafted into garrison service by aretas, who had taken the city from antipas; and ananias, the steward of sidon who had robbed his master and was now too rich and powerful to be punished; and ananias, who was a reader in the synagogue. and for two other days, he sought ananiases patiently and with pathetic hope. at sunset on the fourth day, he saw a woman meet another woman in the street, and between the two there passed a communication with the fingers. to others, not associated with nazarenes, the sign meant nothing, but marsyas caught the motion and his heart leaped. it was the sign of the cross! he overtook the woman who had passed him. "i pray thee, friend," he said in a low voice, "canst thou tell me where ananias, the nazarene, dwelleth?" the woman raised, a pair of calm gray eyes to his face. she was a greek and fair, and her forehead was as placid as a lake in a calm. "art thou his friend?" she asked, with a touch of the caution acquired by the unhappy. "i am a friend to many who have departed into the nazarene way," he said. "i shall not betray him." "seest the house built upon the wall," she said simply, "that hath the white gate, at the end of the street?" marsyas assented. "knock," she said. he blessed her with a look and hurried down the darkening passage. with trembling hands, he rapped on the whitewashed gate, set deep in the thick clay wall, and presently the door swung open. a woman in the house-dress of a servant stood there; behind her was a walk lined with white stones; cooing pigeons were disappearing into a cupola on the house within; an ipomoea, pallid with bloom, shaded the step; irises were pushing through the rich mold just inside the gate. there was the rainy rustling of leaves from the olive trees at the property wall on each side. and there was a seat of tamarind with fallen leaves upon it. "does ananias, the nazarene, dwell here?" marsyas asked with a tremor in his voice. whither had his courage departed? "enter," the woman said. marsyas stepped over the threshold of the white gate, that was latched behind him against opening from the outside, and followed the woman toward the bower of ipomoea. within a hall, lighted by a single taper, she gave him a seat, and disappeared through a door at the end of the room. a moment later, the tall spare figure of the pastor of ptolemais and of rhacotis emerged from the interior. marsyas sprang up, but no sound came to his lips. he clasped his hands and gazed with pitiful eyes upon the nazarene. without pausing for the formality of a greeting, after the first movement of surprise, ananias reopened the door that he had closed behind him and signed to the young man to pass in. marsyas stood in a large chamber, with a spot of light in its center under a hanging lamp. there, with her head bright under the rays, sat lydia. her face was toward him when he entered. she flung down the skein of wool she was winding and sprang up. but the look on marsyas' face arrested her cry. one glance of supreme examination and her large eyes kindled with sudden triumph. she came to him as if more than distance between them and danger had been overcome. marsyas swept her into his arms and folded her to his heart. "no more, no more!" he was saying, "from this time for ever more mine own!" trembling and smiling, while tears perfect as pearls glittered on her lashes, she put her arms about his neck and drew his head down to her. "o my marsyas," she cried, "better to die in the light of thy trust than to live in thy love without it! blessed, thrice blessed the hour which gave me both!" "o my lydia, thou anointest me with thy forgiveness, and clothest me in the holy garment of thy love! blessed am i and consecrated!" "i believed in thy wisdom, love!" "i had no wisdom but love!" "the lord heard me, my marsyas, for i was near mine extremity, and i could not have endured much longer!" "i had reached my extremity, lydia, and then the lord gave me his hand." she turned him toward the light, and gazed up at his eyes with such earnestness, such penetration on her almost infantile face, that he pressed her closer to him and laughed a low laugh. her eyes flashed on him a light of new interest. "i never heard thee laugh till now!" she exclaimed. "i never was happy till now!" "why now, and not before?" she asked. there was silence; he could not tell her why he had changed, but he could tell what had marked it. he led her to the chair she had left, and when she had sat, dropped at her feet and crossed his arms upon her lap. "listen, and when i have done, know that the lord loved us, and hath joined us with his own hands." beginning at the time when he turned to find her gone from the reader's stone before the synagogue in alexandria, he told with simple directness of his wanderings, of his disappointments, of his growing fear that he would not save her from saul. he had her follow him to the temple, where he met eleazar and received the dire news that saul had departed for damascus; and thence along the old roman road through the length of the holy land, up past his native hills and the waters of the sea of galilee, and the marshes of lake huleh, into the desert, and on to the beginning of the beneficence of the pharbar and the abana, until he brought up within sixty paces of saul at the wayside pool. all these things she heard with the sympathetic interest which had won him to her from the talk in the dawn on the housetop in alexandria. but when he came to the supernatural visit of the great light, and the prostration of saul and his own arising a man of subdued and sweetened nature, her eyes shone with a repressed excitement that was not usual in her. "naught but a miracle could have stopped me then; naught but the same interference could turn me again into the old way!" she lifted his face and spoke to him with deep seriousness. "didst thou hear what the spirit said?" she asked. "we heard nothing, except saul's words, which i told thee." "and did saul make thee a promise that he would persecute no more, or beg thy compassion or thy forgiveness for his work against thy stephen?" "he did not speak; he did not know me, for he was blind, and as one in a trance!" "and thou hast withdrawn thy hand from him, and forsworn thine oath against him?" "i have done that thing, lydia." she held fast to her composure, but her face was transfigured. "wherein art thou different, then, from the nazarenes of ptolemais who showed thee their doctrine of peace, and refused thee when thou wouldst have hurled them against saul?" she asked. for a moment there was silence. then he arose on his knees and raising his hands clasped them on his breast, while the splendor of a divine enlightenment shone in his eyes. "i know who came unto us there," he whispered. "it was the christ!" she laid her fluttering palms over his clasped hands and held them there, while each in his heart kept the silence, which, in such a moment, is prayer. then marsyas withdrew a hand and took from the folds of his garment the little red cedar crucifix, and, kissing it, put it into her hands. the red cord was still attached to it, and, with solemnity on her face, she laid it about his neck and blessed him. when the ecstasy of exaltation had passed away, for they were young and the spirit of human love was strong between them, lydia bade him listen, while she told him one other surprising thing. "at the command of a heavenly vision, ananias went this day unto the house of judas the pharisee, and into the darkened chamber, where saul lay, blind and dumb. and by the gift of the lord jesus, ananias laid his hands on saul's head, and the blind man straightway had his sight. so he arose and followed ananias unto this house--" "here?" marsyas cried. "unto this house, where, when he had broken fast and taken strength, he stood up and glorified jesus of nazareth, and received baptism unto the church of the nazarenes whom he persecuted hitherto unto death!" marsyas was silent. more than wonder filled his heart. presently he said, as if speaking to himself: "is this thine hour, o my martyred stephen? art thou content? sleepest thou the better, knowing that i have followed thy testament for saul, rather than mine own oath against him?" lydia left his communings unanswered, but when he put his hands over his face and laid his head in her lap, her own tears fell with his. feeling presently her touch on his hair, he raised his head to take the hand. "give it to me, my love," he said, "for it hath shaped my life anew, pointed me to the way that even the sacred dead would have me walk, and the joy and the comfort of all time to come lieth in the hollow of it! let me serve it, now!" "and thou wilt not regret the peace of en-gadi, in the world that can not fail to be troublous, some time?" she asked, but with the smile of one who does not fear the answer. "i owe en-gadi a debt," he said, "for the brethren were as father and mother to me when i had neither. its teaching and its practices are pure, and its peace is good for them who fear the world. but with the help of him who made thee strong and stephen fearless, i shall not want pent-in walls to be happy and upright." "let ananias teach thee, my love; let saul show thee his heart; and then--" "send us back unto alexandria, with the faith of christ on our lips and the peace of his love in our hearts. tell me that i may go with thee, lydia!" "i have been waiting for thee since the day we met in the judean hills." chapter xxxviii the requital on the third day after his arrival in jerusalem, herod the king was in his privy cabinet arranging, with his own hands, the graven gems and articles of virtu, prizes brought from his trip to antioch. the door was dubiously opened, and agrippa, without turning his head, knew who stood there, for only one in the palace had been commanded to enter the king's presence without announcement. "well, silas?" agrippa said, contemplating the elusive tints of a jade goblet. the old man pulled at the gorgeous uniform of master of horse, that hung from the peasant shoulders and answered: "a friend of thy unfortunate days is without." agrippa's brows lifted and drew toward each other in a manner half-amused, half-vexed. "the friends of my unfortunate days are the friends of my fortunate days; wherefore, they would liefer be known as friends of agrippa the king, than of agrippa the bankrupt. give them their due and call them the king's companions. and silas?" "yes, lord." "the king would as lief forget that he ever had a misfortune." silas looked perplexed and rubbed his forehead. "but who is it that stands without?" agrippa continued. "the essene." "what! marsyas? by the nymphae--beshrew me! by the beard of balaam, i shall be glad to see him! fetch him hither!" silas nodded in lieu of a bow. "lord, there is one with him; shall she enter also?" "who?" "the alabarch's daughter." "nay! the little athene! terpsichore's best! not so; though, by bacch--balaam! she would be a fit jewel for this place. it shall be an audience hour. go, summon the queen, and have the essene and his priestess come to us in our hall!" the master of horse backed away, but, catching agrippa's smiling eye, turned his back, remembering his privilege, and hurried out, as if he expected an arrow between his shoulders. the king shut down the lid of the shittim-wood chest upon the priceless trifles still unpacked, locked it, and said the while to himself: "the essene hath heard of the pharisee saul's apostasy and hath come to demand his punishment of me. behold me grant it, with kingly gravity. it will attach the extremists to me all the more, for i hear the sicarii are wanting the heretic's blood! and he fetches the little lysimachus with him! aha! en-gadi hath lost--that which it never had, in truth." he looked at his hands and at his garments. "nay, it will be just as well if the lady sees me looking my best!" he slammed the door of his cabinet behind him, locked it and hurried away in the direction of the royal wardrobe. in an hour he ascended the dais in robes of purple velvet with the pharisee fringes in gold. cypros, filled with pleasurable anticipations, was beside him in the garments that mariamne had worn. the king cast an eye over the carpeting, the canopy and the gorgeous dressing of his throne and said to cypros: "perpol! the place reeks with the smell of newness! but be not conscious of it! perchance none will guess that the hands of the upholsterers are still warm on the fabric." the genuflexions of the series of attendants at the archway and beyond marked the coming of marsyas and lydia. a jewish chamberlain within the hall bent to the pavement and announced to the king that his visitors approached. agrippa relaxed even more comfortably in his throne and let his scepter fall into his lap. but cypros, more conscious of her debt to those who visited her now than of her state, smiled and moved forward and looked down the long chamber for the first glimpse of them. but it was not the marsyas and the lydia she had expected to see. even to one of her unready perceptions, the change upon the two was strangely marked. they came side by side, both in the simple white garments of the ceremonially clean, but marsyas' head was uncovered and lydia's locks were wholly unbound, after the custom of jewish brides. within a few paces of the throne-dais they stopped. with all her former grace, lydia sank to her knees, but marsyas, after the oriental salaam, stood beside her. cypros, with her eyes shining, and after an eager glance at her lord, arose and stepped to the edge of the dais. then agrippa got up, with his purple trailing effectively, and came down from his high seat, and approached his guests. "it is the one pain of mine exaltation," he said as he extended his arms to marsyas, "that mine old loves believe that they must approach me now with humility." "yet they no less expect that thou wilt raise them," marsyas said, returning the king's embrace. agrippa lifted lydia to her feet and kissed her. "there, by my kingdom!" he exclaimed. "i rejoice at thy wedding for the privilege it gives me! may joy be thy portion, and peace and abundance and years be multiplied unto you both! evoe! as the heathen say! but for your sanctified atmosphere, i would have the trumpeters blow you a fan-fare!" he handed lydia to cypros, who waited almost tearfully. "go, let the queen congratulate thee that thou hast wedded an upright man in the beginning and saved thyself of the pain of making him one--as she had to do! come up," he continued to marsyas, "and sit at our feet. and tell us of yourselves." with his arm over marsyas' shoulder, he went back to his dais, and sitting, had marsyas take the guest's chair at his side, while cypros bestowed lydia on a velvet cushion at her feet. "so much, so long my story, that i falter at its beginning, as one beginning a day's journey at sunset," said marsyas. "thou needest but to essay a beginning; let me lead thee," agrippa observed. "let me satisfy the questions in thee, ere i be entertained. first, of flaccus. i sent messengers to cæsar from antioch detailing the high offenses of the proconsul, hinting treason against the government of the emperor and other charges which excite caligula most, and ere i departed i had from cæsar's own hand the tidings that a centurion had been despatched to alexandria to arrest flaccus and bring him to rome for trial. and the further news, which will raise thee, sweet lydia, to calm content. the jews are to be restored their rights, the prisoners freed, and better times assured to thy people." lydia clasped her hands, and her eyes filled with relief. "and my father?" she asked in a low voice. "especially commended to cæsar's favor! the black days for the alexandrian jews are over, unless caligula force upon them his pet madness that he is a god and amenable to worship." "mad, at last!" marsyas exclaimed. "never otherwise," agrippa answered. "i hear that he has proclaimed junia to be athor, and hath set up a white cow in a temple to be propitiated in the wanton's name!" marsyas looked at the downcast lashes of lydia and loved her for the silence she kept. "will she--be--empress?" cypros faltered, in womanly fear of some unknown evil. agrippa laughed and dropped his hand meaningly on marsyas' arm. "if she should be, here is marsyas yet to protect me!" he said. but marsyas did not smile. "what!" agrippa cried; "still an essene?" "no," said marsyas, "but the lord forfend that the woman should ever become augusta!" "never fear! she is too poor. caligula, like any other mortal god, would prefer a dowry with his consort! and that, by janus--ah--er--jacob! brings me up to somewhat relative to our old fortune-seeking friend, classicus." "but," marsyas protested with a show of his old-time spirit, "i shall not agree that classicus sought lydia for her riches alone!" "the unhappiest remark, the crudest accusation thou didst ever force me to defend!" agrippa exclaimed, glowering at marsyas. "now, how shall i convince thy sweet bride that i had not meant that any man could love her less than her dowry!" but lydia smiled, first at marsyas and then at the king, and said: "let us hear of classicus." the king clapped his hands, and an attendant bowed to the floor in the archway. "bring hither the letter from alexandria, which my scribe answereth," agrippa said. in a moment a package was put into the king's hands. he unfolded it carefully. "it is fragile," he said, "reed paper--papyrus, of his own curing, and written with a quill. evil days for classicus; but observe, he hath not forgotten the latest fashion in folding it. listen: "to the most high and gracious prince, herod agrippa, king of judea, from his servant and subject, justin classicus, the alexandrian, greeting: "that thou hast come unto thine own, that thou hast triumphed and the day of fulfillment hath dawned, that the jews of the hallowed soil of canaan have again a king from among them, i give thee congratulations and god-speed, and offer thanks to the god of our fathers. "would to that same god who hath magnified thee, that the sway of thy scepter extended unto us, here, in alexandria. "our misfortunes are beyond words. particularly am i most unfortunate. because of my friendliness to the alabarch, and subsequent turning upon flaccus in thine own extremity, i am reduced to the utmost poverty, having neither food nor raiment beyond that which a faithful freedman supplies me out of his own little store. "since mine own people are imprisoned within a fourth of their territory, nor one permitted to come forth upon pain of dreadful death, i can not hope for help from them, much less from the gentiles, who take particular delight in my humiliation. "in thee i have hope. i pray thee number me among thy helpless ones and give me of thy bounty something to do to clothe and feed me, and sufficiently gentle that i may not be proscribed among my kind--" agrippa broke off and laughed aloud. "why read more? is it not enough?" "enough," marsyas said slowly. "but by thy leave, lord, we would know what thou wilt say to him." "a just demand; for thou and not i didst suffer at his hands. i shall tell him that i laid the matter before thee and that thou---" "nay, then, lord," marsyas broke in earnestly, "if thou carest in all earnestness for my suggestion, pray let me make it!" "but i believe that i anticipated it and commanded the answer so to be written." there was a little regretful silence, and agrippa leaned toward marsyas. "what abideth there, marsyas?" he asked, touching the young man's forehead. after a pause, marsyas raised his head. "the full length of mine own story leadeth up to the answer," he said. "nay, then, speak!" asking permission of cypros with her eyes, lydia arose from her place on her cushion, and came to marsyas' side. he put his arm about her and held her hand, and so she stood while he told his story. agrippa and cypros listened with ordinary interest until he began to tell of his ride across the desert in pursuit of saul. then agrippa's excitement-loving instincts stirred, and he sat up and contemplated marsyas with arrested attention. at the sighting of the pharisee far down the road beyond caucabe, the king's eyes sparkled; when marsyas rode upon the party at the pool, agrippa's hand on the arm of his throne had clenched. at marsyas' dismounting and approach, the king muttered under his breath. "but at that instant," the narrator went on, showing the effects of his own story, "a light, such as never before descended upon the earth and will not come again until the prince of light cometh, stood among us; at which we all fell to the ground as though stricken by a thunderbolt!" agrippa's brows knitted. "while we lay, thus unable to move or cry out, saul spoke and said unto the presence: 'who art thou, lord!' but we heard no answer. and again saul spoke, as if he had been answered, saying: 'lord, what is it that thou wouldst have me to do?' and yet there was silence. but when we took courage and arose, saul lay on the ground, helpless, blind and bereft of speech!" agrippa's face showed impatience and astonishment. this, from the lips of so sane a jew as marsyas! "we took him up," marsyas continued, after a moment's reflection, "and led him unto damascus, and to judas, the pharisee, who dwelleth in straight street. and there saul lay for three days. throughout that time, i sought for lydia, and at the end of the third day, i found her." he touched his lips to lydia's hand. "under the same roof with her i found saul of tarsus, broken and supplicating, changed, heart and soul, as was i. but he was not in ignorance of the fount of our transfiguration as i was. from lydia's lips, i learned that he had been visited by the lord; but from saul, i learned its meaning. if there is change upon my face, lord, i have told thee whence came it!" agrippa's eyes were no longer on marsyas; he had turned his head and was looking at cypros, as if curious to see if so impossible a tale would find credence in the mind of the simple queen. she looked disturbed and awe-struck, and agrippa's nostrils fluttered with a soundless laugh. "_quantum mutatus ab illo!_" he said, turning to marsyas. "that i can swear under a dread oath. and perchance, were i an essene and more than an adopted pharisee, i could have been visited and borne witness to miracles, also. but thou'lt remember, marsyas, that this saul consented unto the death of thy stephen?" "i remember, lord; neither hath he forgotten!" answered marsyas. "and that through him, great numbers of innocent people fled judea, among them one marsyas, that this same saul might not have their lives; that he pursued thee even unto thy refuge, put thy sweet bride in jeopardy, stained the whole world with persecution, and made an end by bringing up in heresy, after he had begun a journey to damascus with the avowed purpose of extending his persecutions--even unto the death of thy lydia! thou hast not forgotten these things?" "they are not to be forgotten!" "and on a certain night, while yet stephen was unburied, thou camest upon this saul of tarsus in bezetha, and swore to accomplish vengeance upon him; and that same night in the cubiculum in the prætorium thou didst make me swear to help thee to that revenge, if he should stumble in the law!" marsyas took his arm from about lydia and arose. "i am here, o king," he said, "to crave the fulfilment of that oath." agrippa smiled, in spite of the serene gravity on marsyas' face. "ask thy boon, marsyas," he answered. marsyas knelt at the king's footstool, and put up his hands as supplicants do before a throne. "thou hast remembered thine oath unto me, my king; thou hast published thyself as ready to fulfil thy promise, and hast yielded unto me the choice of the manner of my requital! thus assured and believing i make my prayer. lift not thy hand against saul of tarsus!" agrippa's brows dropped suddenly; his face was no less displeased than startled. he had meant to have a jest at marsyas' expense, to try the young man's claim to a change in heart, to bring to the surface human nature through its envelope of religion; but he had not looked for this thing! to behold so strange a perversion of the ancient spirit in a man like marsyas, and to submit to its demands against his own inclinations weighed heavily on agrippa's patience. saul's lapse into apostasy gave him an opportunity to attach to him the loyalty of that fierce party in judea, which were better propitiated than fought--the sicarii, anarchists, who would demand the putting away of the heretic. marsyas had asked him to sacrifice a potent piece of state-craft. he glanced at cypros, and saw resentfully that she was urging him with her eyes to submit. marsyas' face began to show an expression that compelled him, while it irritated the more. the young man wore the face of one who does not expect defeat, denies it so confidently that it hesitates to exist. agrippa shifted in his throne, frowned more, wavered, and finally said shortly: "as cæsar forgot me to mine own safety, i will forget saul!" marsyas' hands dropped softly on the king's, a token of brotherhood. "death intervened," he whispered, "to save thee from cæsar!" agrippa started and drew his hands away with a prescient terror in the movement. "i will not pursue the man," he said; "i will not search for him!" "thou hast kept thy word, lord," marsyas said, "and i go hence carrying trust in one more fellow man in my heart. may my god supply all thy need according to his riches in glory, by jesus christ!" agrippa's eyes which had all this time rested in fascination on marsyas' face, flashed now with understanding. marsyas was a nazarene! the admission reassured him; set aside the astonishment at the young man's unusual behavior; and lessened the fear he had felt in the suggestion that drew a parallel between cæsar's end and his own, to come. but lydia was now kneeling before him, with glistening eyes, to kiss his hand, and cypros was speaking. "but thou gatherest peril yet about thee, marsyas," she insisted. "is the hazardous life, then, so inviting that thou hadst liefer be wrong than be safe?" "no, lady; peace is no sweeter to my brethren, the essenes, than it is to me. so i have put out my hand and possessed it. think of us, henceforth, as the children of peace, not peril." agrippa shook his head. "it hath consumed two years to establish it," he said conclusively, "and not until the last moment is it revealed that thou art a dreamer, marsyas. thou hast been an essene, which is too strait an ambition to be practicable; thou didst cherish a love for a man, so deep that its bereavement engendered a hate that no man should feel, unless a woman were won from him or a fortune destroyed; thou wast urged by it into extreme acts--into selling thyself, into following me to the end of the world, into putting thyself between me and death--that i might help thee satisfy that hate! and now, the hour fallen, a new fancy hath engulfed thee, heart, head and soul--which bids thee forget thy rancor, defend thine enemy, and live in perpetual peril of destruction! thou art a dreamer--though thy front be jovian and thy steps like mars!" marsyas laid his hand on lydia's head, as she still knelt beside him. "in substance, i so accused her once, and stephen. perhaps, if thou followest me insomuch, my king, thou wilt walk even as i have walked--into the light at last!" agrippa made a motion of dissent. "i doubt, now, that thou couldst safely govern that pretty little city i had meant to make thee prefect over, here in judea," he declared. "thou hast said! for me there is a new earth, and a new law, and i go hence to alexandria to begin a new life, which will make me a lover of all mankind." "nay, sweet lydia!" herod exclaimed, once more restored to himself. "thou shouldst demand that he be less indiscriminate with his loves! but put off thy travel a space, and let us celebrate thy marriage with festivity!" "thou art most kind to us, king agrippa," lydia answered. "but my father is alone and uncomforted in alexandria; even thou canst not tell me of a surety that evil hath not befallen him ere thy punishment of flaccus could intervene. my heart is consumed with impatience and suspense. we can not tarry, though thy hospitality be most grateful--to us--who have found the world of late an untender place!" so, since they would not be stayed, agrippa summoned two stalwart palace servants to go with them, and calling his treasurer, ordered him to give into the hands of the servants six talents, five of which he owed to lysimachus for cypros, and one as a marriage largess. and when marsyas and lydia had kissed the hands of the royal pair, they went out and found, at the palace wall, a camel which should bear them in a white howdah to ptolemais. marsyas lifted lydia and set her under the canopy, but, before he went up himself, he saw borne past him, in a chair, a rabbi. he was a great man, grave, calm and preoccupied. three students of the college attended him reverently. marsyas caught his eye, and between the two passed a flash that was both understanding and congratulatory. but they saluted each other gravely, and eleazer passed on to his own place. before they departed herod sent out a chamberlain, who bowed low and handed a wax tablet to marsyas, on which was written: "since classicus would be in alexandria to harass thee, and thy wits are meshed in love and religion, i have bidden my scribe write him to come hither, where i can kill him conveniently, if he need it. if thou have any enemies here in jerusalem thou hast forgotten to bless, thou canst perhaps repair the misfortune by naming thy sons after them. "my love goes with thee--mine and the queen's, "herod." so, with their faces alight with content and love and hopefulness, marsyas and lydia took up the long journey unto alexandria. transcriber's note: italics are indicated by _underscores_. not paul, but jesus by jeremy bentham, esqr.,--the eminent philosopher of sociology, jurisprudence, &c., of london. with preface containing sketches of his life and works together with critical notes by john j. crandall, esqr., of the new jersey bar--author of right to begin and reply editor's preface. jeremy bentham, an eminent english judicial or jural philosopher, was born in london, february 15, 1748, and died at westminster, his residence for six years previously, june 6, 1832. his grandfather was a london attorney; his father, who followed the same profession, was a shrewd man of business, and added considerably to his patrimony by land speculations. these london benthams were probably an offshoot from an ancient york family of the same name, which boasted a bishopric among its members; but our author did not trouble himself to trace his genealogy beyond the pawnbroker. his mother, alicia groove, was the daughter of an andover shopkeeper. jeremy, the eldest, and for nine years the only child of this marriage, was for the first sixteen years of his life exceedingly puny, small and feeble. at the same time, he exhibited a remarkable precocity which greatly stimulated the pride and affection of his father. at five years of age he acquired a knowledge of musical notes and learned to play the violin. at four or earlier, having previously learned to write, he was initiated into latin grammar, and in his seventh year entered westminster school. meanwhile, he was taught french by a private master at home and at seven read telemaque, a book which strongly impressed him. learning to dance was a much more serious undertaking, as he was so weak in his legs. young as he was, he acquired distinction at westminster as a fabricator of latin and greek verses, the great end and aim of the instruction given there. when twelve years old, he was entered as a commoner at queen's college, oxford, where he spent the next three years. though very uncomfortable at oxford, he went through the exercises of the college with credit and even with some distinction. some latin verses of his, on the accession of george iii, attracted a great deal of attention as the production of one so young. into all of the disputations which formed a part of the college exercises, he entered with zeal and much satisfaction; yet he never felt at home in the university because of its historical monotony, and of all of which he retained the most unfavorable recollections. in 1763, while not yet sixteen, he took the degree of a.b. shortly after this he began his course of law in lincoln's inn, and journeyed back and forth to oxford to hear blackstone's lectures. these lectures were published and read throughout the realm of england and particularly in the american colonies. these were criticised by the whole school of cromwell, milton and such followers as priestly and others in england and many in the colonies in america. young bentham returned to london and attended as a student the court of the king's bench, then presided over by mansfield, of whom he continued for some years a great admirer. among the advocates, dunning's clearness, directness and precision most impressed him. he took the degree of a.m. at the age of 18, the youngest graduate that had been known at the universities; and in 1772 he was admitted to the bar. young bentham had breathed from infancy, at home, at school, at college and in the courts, an atmosphere conservative and submissive to authority, yet in the progress of his law studies, he found a striking contrast between the structural imperialism of the british empire as expounded by blackstone and others of his day, and the philosophical social state discussed by aristotle, plato, aurelius, the struggling patriots of france, and the new brotherhood, then agitating the colonies of america. his father had hoped to see him lord-chancellor, and took great pains to push him forward. but having perceived a shocking contrast between the law as it was under the church imperial structure and such as he conceived it ought to be, he gradually abandoned the position of a submissive and admiring student and assumed a position among the school of reformers and afterwards the role of sharp critic and indignant denouncer. he heroically suffered privations for several years in lincoln's inn garrett, but persevered in study. he devoted some of his time to the study of science. the writings of hume, helvetius and others led him to adopt utility as the basis of morals and legislation. there had developed two distinct parties in england: the radicals and imperialists. the radicals contended that the foundation of legislation was that utility which produced the greatest happiness to the greatest number. blackstone and the ecclesiastics had adopted the theory of locke, that the foundation of legislation was a kind of covenant of mankind to conform to the laws of god and nature, as interpreted by hereditarily self-constituted rulers. bentham contended that this was only a vague and uncertain collection of words well adapted to the promotion of rule by dogmatic opinions of the lords and king and ecclesiastics in combination well calculated to deprive the people of the benefits of popular government. he conceived the idea of codifying the laws so as to define them in terms of the greatest good to the greatest number, and devoted a large share of the balance of his life to this work. in 1775 he published a small book in defense of the policy of lord north toward the colonies, but for fear of prosecution it was issued by one john lind and extensively read. a little later he published a book entitled "a fragment on government." this created a great deal of attention. readers variously ascribed the book to mansfield, to camden and to dunning. the impatient pride of bentham's father betrayed this secret. it was variously interpreted as a philosophical treatise and a critical personal attack upon the government. but he persevered in the advocacy of his principals of morals and government. he hoped also to be appointed secretary of the commission sent out by lord north to propose terms to the revolted american colonies. but as king george iii had contracted a dislike to him, he was disappointed in his plan of conference with the colonies. his writings were, however, more appreciated in france. he was openly espoused as a philosopher and reformer by d'alimbert, castillux, brissat and others. but in the meantime some such men as lord shelbourne, mills and others became his friends and admirers, and encouraged him to persevere with his philosophical code of laws, largely gleaned from the ancient philosophers of liberty and equality which had been smothered and superseded by military and church imperialism. in 1785 he took an extensive tour across the alps and while at kricov on the dou, he wrote his letters on usury. these were printed in london, which were now welcomed by the people largely on account of his reputation in france as a philosopher of popular government. in the meantime, paley had printed a treatise on the principle of applying utility to morals and legislation. he determined to print his views in french and address them to that people then struggling for liberal government. he revised his sheets on his favorite penal code and published them under the title of "an introduction to the principles of morals and legislation." the principles enunciated in this treatise attracted the attention of the liberals in france, as well as england and america. mirabeau and other french publishers spread his reputation far and wide. meanwhile, bentham with the idea of aiding the deliberations of the states general of france, and encouraged by the liberals on both continents, and especially such men as franklin, jefferson and others, printed a "draft of a code for the organization of a judicial establishment in france," for which services the national assembly conferred on him the citizenship of france by a decree, august 23, 1792, in which his name was included with those of priestly, paine, wilberforce, clarkson, mackintosh, anacharsis, clootz, washington, klopstock, kosiosco, and several others. in the meantime, in his travels, he conceived an extensive plan of prison reform which he strenuously urged the crown officers and the english parliament to adopt. after several years of strenuous labors and the expenditure of a large part of the patrimony left him by his father, the enterprise was thwarted by the refusal of the king to concur with parliament in the enterprise. this scheme is fully set forth in the histories of the reign of george iii. but to avoid persecution under the drastic penal codes of england, bentham boasted that he was a man of no party but a man of all countries and a fraternal unit of the human race, he had come to occupy at home the position of a party chief. he espoused with characteristic zeal and enthusiasm the ideas of the radicals, who, in spite of themselves, were ranked as a political party. he went, indeed, the whole length, not merely republicanism, but on many points of ancient democracy including universal suffrage and the emancipation of all colonies. no matter how adroitly the contention was managed, the imperialists insisted that it was merely resurrecting the historic struggle of the days of cromwell and his "bare bones." the church establishment by way of the lords and bishops and bishop lords was the real foundation of the crown rule in all its ramifications. this superstructure was protected by all forms of penal laws against "lease" majesty and even the appearance of church creed heresy. the radicals always confronted by crown detectives were compelled to be very wary in their attacks upon this that they called imperial idolatry and were compelled to move by indirect and flank attacks. the upheaval by martin luther in the reign of henry viii at the council of trent and others over the divine authenticity of the athanasian creed never abated among the humanitarians of england or france. but in the presence of criminal inquisitions too barbarous to mention, the radicals were handicapped and were compelled to work strategically and by pits and mines beneath the superstructure of church imperialism. the church structure as established in europe is by common consent based upon the hypothesis of divinity in the life, works, and dogmas of one saul of tarsus, or as denominated paul, or the canonized st. paul. the substantial creed might well be denominated paulism. hence the legendary paul has been one of the points of attack by the rationalists of the centuries. while many of the contemporaries of bentham both in england, america and the continent denied the verity of the whole mosaic cosmogony and historiology, yet bentham seemed to ignore this task as superserviceable and unimportant. he and his school of radicals were devoted to the life works and teachings of jesus. jesus was the idol of his school and he heartily espoused the task of eliminating paul as the nemesis of jesus and his apostles, and a character invented and staged by imperialists to subordinate the toiling classes to the production of resources to subserve their personal luxuries. bentham began writing a philosophic analysis of the church's pretensions concerning the divine agency of paul. after several years of examination and study, and while he was writing his famous treatise entitled "the rational of judicial evidence" afterwards collected and published by mill, he finished the manuscript criticisms of paul and entitled them "not paul but jesus." for fear of prosecution for direct heresy or denunciation of the creed of the church, he evaded the use of his own name as writer of the criticism and used the name of conyers middleton, a cambridge divine, who by his writings had created a great deal of disturbance. he had been convicted twice for heresy. he had been dead fifty years when bentham introduced him in the first lines in the introduction to his criticisms herein published (see introduction). bentham, no doubt, intended to evade prosecution, as it will be seen that his name does not appear in the book, and yet at the same time used the name most obnoxious to the church in all its history. in 1729 middleton published his "letter from rome" in which he boldly essayed to demonstrate that the then religion of the roman church was derived from their heathen ancestral idolaters. he published other works on the uses of miracles and prophecy. but bentham's "not paul but jesus" did not long remain anonymous. it was read extensively in france and america. but this treatise formed a part of the labor of his life, which was to promote the theory of the social state based upon "the greatest good to the greatest number, and subordinate the whole to rational calculations of utility." these views he continually urged in the form of codification so as to eliminate all pretensions of hierarchical control by historical divine prophets, the faithful souls and agents of kings and princes. in the meantime, he was indefatigable in his attacks upon the english system of jurisprudence, which was being operated in america as a kind of paternal inheritance. dumont, in 1811, compiled from the manuscripts of bentham a complete code which was readily adopted in france, because it conformed so closely to the old roman procedure which was held tenaciously in france. in the meantime, by importunity of lord brougham and others, and particularly of his friends in america, such as adams, franklin and others, he wrote to madison offering his services to draw up a complete code of laws for the united states. mr. madison caused these ideas to be spread broadcast by pamphlets as pamphleteering was much in vogue for such purposes in those days. but on account of our dual form of government, and as the code would apply to the states separately, the scheme as a whole failed. but some of the governors, especially those of pennsylvania, virginia and new hampshire, got hold of the manuscripts and many of the provisions were adopted and still obtain. in the meantime, mr. mill had collected his manuscripts on "the rationale of judicial evidence" and published them in 5 vols. they shortly became a part of the libraries of the lawyers and statesmen of england, and especially in the united states. his manuscripts on "not paul but jesus" were extensively read and universally admitted to be rational and sound in point of rational jural demonstration. during this time, thomas jefferson had been writing on the same subject and after reading the prints of bentham, he abandoned the part directed to the criticism of paul, but he arranged chronologically all of the verses from the four gospels that pertain to the career of jesus, omitting, however, every verse or paragraph that to his mind was ambiguous or controversial, and every statement of fact that would not have been admitted as evidence in a court of justice. the original copy of what is denominated as "jefferson bible," is now preserved in the national museum at washington. it was purchased by the government as a memento of the author of the declaration of independence. this "the thomas jefferson bible" has lately been republished by david mckay, 604 s. washington sq., philadelphia. the treatise "not paul but jesus" was published in 1825. the printing art was not as well advanced as at present, and the division of subjects for discussion and correlation were not arranged strictly methodically, so the editor has rearranged some of the titles with a view to improve the order of sequence. with this change, every word has been preserved. it will all the time be borne in mind that the examination is judicial and the character paul had to be staged from many points of view and examination. jeremy bentham has revolved him in the limelight of inquisition with a thoroughness that commands the attention of all thoughtful readers. with this view the editor hopes to be justified in its republication by the reading and inquiring public. j. j. crandall. introduction. illustrious, in the church of jesus in general, and in the church of england in particular, is the name of conyers middleton. signal was, and is, the service rendered by him to the religion of jesus. by that bold, though reverend, hand, it now stands cleared of many a heap of pernicious rubbish, with which it had been incumbered and defiled, by the unhallowed labours of a succession of writers, who,--without personal intercourse with the founder, any more than we have now,--have, from the mere circumstance of the comparative vicinity of their days to those in which he lived, derived the exclusive possession of the imposing title of _fathers of the church_, or, in one word, _the fathers_. so able, so effectual, has been this clearance, that, as it has been observed by the edinburgh reviewers,--speaking of course of protestants, and more particularly of english protestants,--till one unexpected exception, which it mentions, had presented itself, they had thought that in no man's opinion were those writers any "longer to be regarded as guides, either in faith or morals." one step further was still wanting. one thorn still remained, to be plucked out of the side of this so much injured religion,--and that was, the addition made to it by _saul of tarsus_: by that _saul_, who, under the name of _paul_, has,--as will be seen, without warrant from, and even in the teeth of, the history of jesus, as delivered by his companions and biographers the four evangelists,--been dignified with the title of _his_ apostle: his _apostle_, that is to say, his _emissary_: his _emissary_, that is to say, _sent out_ by him: sent out, by that jesus, whose immediate disciples he so long persecuted and destroyed, and whose person,--unless dreaming of a person after his death, or professing to have dreamt of him, is seeing him,--he never saw. in the course of the ensuing examination, the subject of _miracles_ has come, unavoidably, under consideration. on this delicate ground, it has been matter of no small comfort to the author, to behold precursors, among divines of different persuasions, whose reputation for piety has not been diminished by the spirit of critical inquiry which accompanies it. such were mede, sykes, and others, whose ingenious labours were, in the case called that of the _daemoniacs_, employed in the endeavor to remove the supernatural character, from what, in their eyes, was no more than a natural appearance. on the success of these their labours, any judgment would here be irrelevant. not altogether so the observation, that in no instance does it appear to him that any such latitude of interpretation has been employed, as that which, on that occasion, was found necessary for the conversion of _devils_ into _diseases_. the _dissentions_ which, at all times, have had place among persons professing the religion of jesus, are but too notorious. the _mischiefs_, produced by these dissentions, are no less so. these dissentions, and these mischiefs--in what have they had their source? in certain words. these words, of whom have they been the words? of jesus? no: this has not been so much as pretended. of paul, and of paul alone: he giving them all along not as the words of jesus, but as his own only:--he all along preaching (as will be seen) in declared opposition to the eleven who were undisputedly the apostles of jesus: thus, of paul only have they been the words. that, by these words, and, consequently, by him whose words they were and are, all the mischiefs, which have been imputed to _the religion of jesus_, have been produced,--in so far as the dissentions, from which these mischiefs flowed, have had these words for their subjects,--cannot be denied. but, moreover, in these same words, that is to say, in the doctrines delivered by them, cannot but be to be found the origin, and the cause, of no small part--perhaps of the greatest part--of the _opposition_, which _that religion, with its benevolent system of morals_, has hitherto experienced. if this be so, then, by the clearing it of this incumbrance, not only as yet unexampled purity, but additional extent, may not unreasonably be expected to be given to it. it was by the frequent recurrence of these observations, that the author of these pages was led to the inquiry, whether the religion of paul,--as contained in the writings ascribed to paul, and with a degree of propriety which the author sees no reason to dispute,--whether the religion of paul has any just title to be considered as forming a part of the religion of jesus. the result was in the negative. the considerations, by which this result was produced, will form the matter of the ensuing pages. if, by cutting off a source of useless privations and groundless terrors, comfort and _inward peace_ should be restored or secured;--if, by cutting off a source of bitter animosity,--good-will, and peace from _without_, should be restored or secured;--if, by the removal of an incongruous appendage, acceptance should be obtained for what is good in the religion commonly ascribed to jesus;--obtained at the hands of any man, much more of many, to whom at present it is an object of aversion;--if, in any one of these several ways, much more if in all of them, the labours of the author should be crowned with success,--good service will, so far, and on all hands, be allowed to have been rendered to mankind. whosoever, putting aside all prepossessions, feels strong enough in mind, to look steadily at the originals, and from _them_ to take his conceptions of the matter, not from the discourses of others,--whosoever has this command over himself, will recognise, if the author does not much deceive himself, that by the two persons in question, as represented in the two sources of information--the gospels and paul's epistles,--two quite different, if not opposite, religions are inculcated: and that, in the religion of jesus may be found all the _good_ that has ever been the result of the compound so incongruously and unhappily made,--in the religion of paul, all the _mischief_, which, in such disastrous abundance, has so indisputably flowed from it. 1. that paul had no such commission as he professed to have;--2. that his enterprize was a scheme of personal ambition, and nothing more;--3. that his system of doctrine is fraught with mischief in a variety of shapes, and, in so far as it departs from, or adds to, those of jesus, with good in none;--and that it has no warrant, in anything that, as far as appears from any of the four gospels, was ever said or done by jesus;--such are the conclusions, which the author of these pages has found himself compelled to deduce, from those materials with which history has furnished us. the grounds of these conclusions he proceeds to submit to the consideration of his readers. plan of the work. the work may be conceived as divided into five parts. 1. in part the first, the five different, and in many respects discordant, accounts given of paul's conversion, which, in these accounts, is of course represented as being not only _outward_ but _inward_, are confronted, and, so far as regards inward conversion, shown to be, all of them, untrue: and, immediately after, the state of things, which produced, accompanied, and immediately followed, his outward conversion,--together with the time and manner in which that change was declared,--is brought to view. this part occupies the first two chapters. 2. part the second is employed in showing,--that, from the first commencement, of the intercourse, which, upon the tokens given of his outward conversion, took place at jerusalem between him and the apostles, acts 9:27, to the time when,--in consequence of the interposition of the roman commander, to save him from the unanimous indignation of the whole people, more particularly of the disciples of the apostles,--he was conveyed from thence under guard to rome, a space, according to the commonly received computation, not less than six and twenty years, (acts 21 and 23), no supernatural commission from jesus, nor any inward conversion, was,--either by those distinguished servants and companions of jesus, or by their disciples at jerusalem,--believed to have place in his instance. this part occupies eight chapters: to wit, from the 3d to the 10th inclusive. 3. in part the third, in further proof of the insincerity of his character,--in addition to an oath proved to be false, are brought to view two unquestionably false assertions:--each having for its subject a matter of prime importance,--each deliberate and having in view a particular purpose: the one, a false account of the number of the witnesses to the resurrection of jesus; 1 cor. 15:6; the other, a prediction of the end of the world before the death of persons then living; 1 thes. 4, 15, 16, 17. this part occupies chapters 11 and 12. 4. part the fourth is employed in showing,--that no proof, of his alleged supernatural commission from the almighty, is deducible, from any account we have, of any of those scenes, in which he is commonly regarded as having exercised a power of working miracles. for, that not only he himself never made exercise of any such power,--on any of those occasions, on which the demand for it, for the purpose of overcoming the disbelief entertained of his story by the apostles, was extreme,--but, neither on those, nor any other occasions, did he ever take upon himself to make reference, to so much as any one instance of any such proof of special authority from the almighty, as having been exhibited by him on any other occasion: that, for the belief in any such gift, we have no other ground, than the relations contained in the history called "_the acts of the apostles_," or, for shortness, _the acts_: and that such throughout is,--on the one hand, the nature of the occurrence itself, on the other hand, the character of the representation given of it,--that, to a disbelief in the exercise of any such supernatural power, it is not necessary that any such imputation as that of downright and wilful falsehood should be cast upon the author of that narrative: the occurrences in question being, mostly, if not entirely, such as lie within the ordinary course of nature,--but, upon which, either by the fancy, or by the artifice of the narrator, a sort of supernatural colouring has been superinduced. for this purpose, these supposed miracles are, each of them, separately brought to view and examined. this part occupies the 13th chapter. 5. part the fifth is employed in showing, that,--even if, on all these several occasions, the exercise of a power of producing supernatural effects had, by unequivocal statements, been ascribed to paul by the author of the acts,--such testimony, independently of the virtual contradiction given to it by the above-mentioned circumstantial evidence,--could not, with any propriety, be regarded as affording adequate proof--either of the fact of paul's having received a divine commission, and thereby, having become, inwardly as well as outwardly, a convert to the religion of jesus--either of that radical fact, or so much as of any one of the alleged achievements, which, upon the face of the accounts in question, are wont to present themselves as miraculous: for that, in the first place, it is only by error that the history in question has been ascribed to saint luke: it being, in respect of the account given of the circumstances accompanying the ascension of jesus, inconsistent with the account given in the gospel of saint luke, when compared with acts 1:3 to 12,--and as to those attendant on the death of judas, inconsistent with the account in saint matthew 27:3 to 10 and acts 1:16 to 20: and moreover, such being the whole complexion of his narrative, as to render it incapable of giving any tolerably adequate support to any statement whereby the exercise of supernatural power is asserted. this part occupies chapter 14. in part the sixth, to give additional correctness and completeness, to the conception supposed to be conveyed, of the character of paul and his attendant historiographer, jointly and severally considered,--a conjunct view is given of _five_ reports of his five trials, as reported in the acts. this part has been added since the publication of the above-mentioned summary view. it occupies chapter 15 of the present work. chapter xvi. and last, winds up the whole, with some general observations on the self-declared oppositeness of paul's gospel, as he calls it, to that of the apostles: together with an indication of a real antichrist, in compensation for the fabulous one, created by paul, and nursed by the episcopal authors and editors of the church of england, translators of the bible: and by chapter 12 of the present work, the imaginary antichrist is, it is hoped, strangled. at the time of the publication of the summary view,--for the more complete and satisfactory demonstration of the relative insufficiency of the narrative in question, a short but critical sketch was, as herein stated, intended to be given, of the parts not before noticed of the _history of the church_,--from the ascension of jesus, being the period at which that narrative commences, to that at which it terminates,--to wit, about two years after the arrival of paul at rome, acts 28: the history--to wit, as deducible from the materials which, in that same narrative, are brought to view: the duration of the period being, according to commonly received computations, about 28 or 30 years[a]: the author of "_the acts_" himself,--if he is to be believed,--an eyewitness, during a considerable portion of the time, to the several occurrences which he relates. on this occasion, and for this purpose,--the history in question had been sifted, in the same manner and on the same principles, as any profane history, in which, in a series of occurrences mostly natural, a few, wearing a supernatural appearance, are, here and there, interspersed: as, for instance, in livy's, and even in tacitus's roman history: on the one hand, the authority not being regarded as affording a sufficient foundation, for a belief in the supernatural parts of the narrative; nor, on the other hand, the sort of countenance, given to the supernatural parts, as affording a sufficient reason, for the disbelief of those, which have nothing in them that is unconformable to the universally experienced course of nature. in respect of _doctrine_, the conclusion is--that no point of doctrine, which has no other authority than that of paul's writings for its support, can justly be regarded as belonging to the religion of jesus,--any more than if, at this time of day, it were broached by any man now living: that thus, in so far as he is seen to have _added_ anything to the religion of jesus, he is seen to set himself _above_ it and _against_ it: that, therefore, if this be true, it rests with every professor of the religion of jesus, to settle with himself, to which of the two religions, that of jesus and that of paul, he will adhere: and, accordingly, either to say, _not jesus but paul_,--or, in the words of the title to this work, _not paul but jesus_.[b] footnotes: [a] to prevent, if possible, an embarrassment, which might otherwise be liable to have place on the part of the reader,--and therewith, the idea of inconsistency, as having place here and there in the work,--the following indication may be found to have its use. a cloud of uncertainty, to the length of one or two years, hangs over the duration of the period embraced by this work: namely, that between the point of time at which the conversion of paul is stated to have taken place, and the point of time at which the history, intituled the acts of the apostles, as therein declared, concludes:--a point of time, posterior by two years to that of his arrival at rome. [b] for making the requisite separation, between the two religions of jesus and the religion of paul,--an instrument, alike commodious and unexceptionable, has--for these many years, though, assuredly, not with any such view,--been presented to all hands, by doctor _gastrell_, an english and church of england bishop: namely, in a well-known work, intituled _the christian institutes_: date of the 14th edition, 1808. it is composed of a collection of points of faith and morality, and under each are quoted the several texts, in the new testament, which are regarded by the author as affording grounds for the positions indicated. if then, anywhere, in his composition of the ground, passages, one or more, from this or that epistle of paul, are employed,--unaccompanied with any passage, extracted from any of the four gospels,--the reader may, without much danger of error, venture to conclude, that it is to the religion of paul alone, that the point of doctrine thus supported appertains, and not to the religion of jesus. as to any of the epistles, which bear the name of any of the real apostles of jesus,--a corresponding question may perhaps be here suggesting itself. but, with regard to the design of the present work, scarcely will they be found relevant. for, when compared with the sayings of jesus as repeated in the four gospels, scarcely will they be found exhibiting any additional points of doctrine: never, pregnant with any of those dissentions, which, from the writings of paul, have issued in such disastrous abundance. only lest they should be thought to have been overlooked, is any mention here made, of those documents, which, how much soever on other accounts entitled to regard, may, with reference to the question between the religion of jesus and the religion of paul, be, as above, and without impropriety, stated as irrelevant. table i. outward conversion. _showing at one view, under the head of paul's conversion, the different accounts from which the inference is drawn that the conversion was outward only, not inward._ vision i. acts account. ch. ix. 1-9. 1.--but saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the lord, went unto the high priest, and asked of him letters to damascus unto the synagogues, that if he found any that were of the way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to jerusalem. and as he journeyed, it came to pass that he drew nigh unto damascus: and suddenly there shone around about him a light out of heaven: and he fell upon the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, saul, saul, why persecutest thou me? and he said, who art thou, lord? and he said, i am jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks: (1) but rise, and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. and the men that journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing the voice,--but beholding no man. and saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing; (old version "no man") and they led him by the hand, and brought him into damascus. and he was three days without sight, and did neither eat nor drink. ii. paul's first personal account. as per acts xxii. 3-11. i am a jew, born in tarsus of cilicia, but brought up in this city, at the feet of gamaliel, instructed according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for god, even as ye all are this day: and i persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women. as also the high priest doth bear me witness, and all the estate of the elders: from whom also i received letters unto the brethren; and journeyed to damascus, to bring them also which were there unto jerusalem in bonds, for to be punished. and it came to pass, that, as i made my journey, and drew nigh unto damascus, about noon, suddenly there shown from heaven a great light round about me. and i fell unto the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me, saul, saul, why persecutest thou me? and i answered, who art thou, lord? and he said unto me, i am jesus of nazareth, whom thou persecutest. and they that were with me beheld in deed the light, but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me. and i said, what shall i do, lord? and the lord said unto me, arise, and go into damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do. and when i could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of them that were with me, i came into damascus. iii. paul's second personal account. as per acts xxvi. 9-20. i verily thought with myself, that i ought to do many things contrary to the name of jesus of nazareth. and this i also did in jerusalem: and i both shut up many of the saints in prison, having received authority from the chief priests, and when they were put to death, i gave my vote against them. and punishing them oftentimes in all the synagogues, i strove to make them blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, i persecuted them even unto foreign cities. whereupon as i journeyed to damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, at midday, o, king, i saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them that journeyed with me. and when we were all fallen to the earth, i heard a voice saying unto me in the hebrew language, saul, saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the goad. and i said, who art thou, lord? and the lord said, i am jesus whom thou persecutest. but arise, and stand upon thy feet: for to this end have i appeared unto thee, to appoint thee a minister and a witness both of thee, to appoint thee a minister and a witness both of the things wherein thou hast seen me, and of the things wherein i will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people, and from the gentiles, unto whom i send thee, to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of satan unto god, that they may receive remission of sins and an inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in me. wherefore, o king agrippa, i was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: but declared both to them of damascus first, and at jerusalem, and throughout all the country of judea, and also to the gentiles, that they should repent and turn to god, doing works worthy of repentance. iv. paul's allusions. i. as per paul to corinth. i. xv. 8. and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me, also. ii. as per paul to gal. i. 12, 15, 16, 17. 12. for neither did i receive it from man, nor was i taught it, but it came to me through revelation of jesus christ. 15. but when it was the good pleasure of god, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, 16. and called me through his grace, to reveal his son in me, that i might preach him among the gentiles; immediately i conferred not with flesh and blood: 17. neither went i up to jerusalem to them which were apostles before me: but i went away into arabia; and again i returned unto damascus. ii. vision 2.--ananias's. _i. acts account._ ix. 10-16. 10. now there was a certain disciple at damascus, named ananias; and the lord said unto him in a vision, ananias! and he said, behold, i am here, lord. and the lord said unto him, arise, and go to the street which is called straight, and inquire in the house of judas for one named saul, a man of tarsus: for behold, he prayeth: and he hath seen a man named ananias coming in, and laying his hands on him, that he might receive his sight. but ananias answered, lord, i have heard from many of this man, how much evil he did to thy saints at jerusalem: and here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call upon thy name. but the lord said unto him, go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the gentiles and kings, and the children of israel: for i will shew him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake. iii. ananias's visit to paul. _i. acts account._ ix. 17-22. and ananias departed, and entered into the house; and laying his hands on him said, brother saul, the lord even jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way which thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mayest receive thy sight, and be filled with the holy ghost. and straightway there fell from his eyes as it were scales, and he received his sight; and he arose and was baptized; and he took food and was strengthened. and he was certain days with the disciples which were at damascus. and straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed jesus, that he is the son of god. and all that heard him were amazed, and said, is not this he that in jerusalem made havock of them which called on his name? and he had come hither for this intent, that he might bring them bound before the chief priests. but saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the jews which dwelt at damascus, proving that this is the christ. _ii. paul's account._ as per acts xxii. 12-16. xxii. 12. and one ananias, a devout man according to the law, well reported of by all the jews that dwelt there, came unto me, and standing by me said unto me, brother saul, receive thy sight. and in that very hour i looked up on him. and he said, the god of our fathers hath appointed thee to know his will, and to see the righteous one, and to hear a voice from his mouth. for thou shalt be a witness for him unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard. and now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on his name. not paul, but jesus chapter i. _paul's conversion._[1]--_improbability and discordancy of the accounts of it._ section i. list of these accounts, with preliminary observations. (_see_ table i., _in which they are confronted_.) in one single work, and that alone, is comprised the whole of the information, in which, in relation to this momentous occurrence, any particulars are at this time of day to be found. this is that historical work, which in our edition of the bible, has for its title _the acts of the apostles_; for shortness, let us say _the acts_. of this same occurrence, in this one short work no fewer than three separate accounts are visible; one, in which the story is related by the historian in his own person; two others, in each of which paul is introduced as giving his own account of it. of these three accounts, no two will be found agreeing with each other. by the historian, paul when introduced as speaking in his own person, is represented as contradicting not only the historian's account, but his own account. on each occasion, it should seem, paul's account is adapted to the occasion. on the first occasion, the historian's account was not exactly adapted to that same first occasion. by the historian's ingenuity, paul is accordingly represented as giving on that same occasion another and better-adapted account. on the second occasion, neither was the historian's account nor paul's own account, as given on the former occasion, found suitable to this fresh occasion; on this same fresh occasion, a suitable amendment is accordingly framed. here, at the very outset of the inquiry, the distance of time between the point of time on which the occurrence is supposed to have taken place, and the time at which the historian's account of it was penned, are circumstances that present a claim to notice. the year 35 after the birth of christ is the year which, according to the received accounts, is assigned to the occurrence. according to these same accounts, the year 63 is the date given to the last occurrence mentioned by the historian, acts 28: after which occurrence, two years are stated by him as having elapsed, at the time at which the history closes. here then is an interval of about 30 years, between the time at which the occurrence is stated to have happened, and the time at which these three mutually contradictory accounts of it were framed. in regard to this radical occurrence in particular, namely paul's conversion,--for the foundation of this his report, what evidence was it that the reporter had, or could have had in his possession, or at his command? one answer may serve for all; the accounts given of the matter by paul himself. with paul, then, what were this same reporter's means and mode of intercourse? in the year 59, and not before, (such is the inference from his own words) did it fall to his lot to be taken into the train of this self-denominated apostle. then it is, that for the first time, in the several accounts given by him of paul's migrations from place to place, the pronouns _us_, acts 20:5, and _we_ make their appearance. from 34 to 59 years are 25. at the end of this interval came the earliest opportunity, which, for anything that appears, he could have had of hearing from his master's own mouth, whatsoever account, if any, it may have been the pleasure of that same master to give, of an occurrence, in relation to which there existed not among men any other percipient witness. having accompanied his master during the whole of his progress from jerusalem, the historian speaks of himself as being still in his train on his arrival at rome. acts xxviii. 16, "and when we came to rome," &c. it is not precisely stated, nor can it very determinately be inferred, whether at the point of time at which the history closes, the historian was still at that capital; the negative supposition presents itself as the most probable. posterior to the closing of the real action of the history, the penning of it will naturally be to be placed. "paul, says the acts xxviii. 30, dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him," &c. when this last verse but one of the history was penning, had the historian been living with paul, he would naturally have given us to understand as much; instead of _dwelt_, he would have said _has been dwelling_. by the tokens of carelessness afforded by the omission of so many particulars, which in every work of an historical nature the reader will naturally expect to see specified; such as the name of the historian, the particulars, occasion and manner of his being taken into the company of the illustrious missionary, and the time of that event;--by these tokens, two inferences, how different soever their tendency, seem at once to be suggested. one is, the genuineness of the narrative. a writer, who was conscious that he was not the man he was thus representing himself to be, viz. the companion of the missionary, would hardly have slid in, in so careless a manner, the mention of so material a circumstance. the other is, the slenderness of the author's qualification for the task thus executed by him; the lowness of his station in the scale of trustworthiness, and consequently the smallness of the probative force, with which a mass of evidence thus circumstanced can reasonably be considered as operating, in support of any alleged matter of fact, which, (either by the extraordinariness of its nature, or the temptation which the circumstances of the case afforded for entire fiction or misrepresentation), presents itself as exposed to doubt or controversy. a supernatural conversion, and the receipt of a supernatural commission for the delivery of a fresh body of doctrine; such are the two events, which, though in their nature so perfectly distinguishable, were according to this narrative combined in one:--the conversion from an unbelieving, cruel, and destructive persecutor of the new fellowship, into a most zealous supporter and coadjutor: the body of doctrine such as if it amounted to anything, could not but have been--what the person in question declared it to be--a supplement to the religion taught by jesus while in the flesh;--a supplement, containing matter never revealed to, and consequently never taught by, his apostles. now then, of all these supernatural occurrences, which, by the nameless historiographer, are related to have happened to paul, if anything had really happened to him--on this supposition, (so many as were the different sets of disciples of his, inhabitants of so many mutually distant provinces, no fewer than eight in number); is it in the nature of the case, that in no one instance, in any of his numerous epistles, he should have felt the necessity of stating and accordingly have stated, to any of these his disciples, the circumstances attending the event of his conversion--an event on which alone all his professions were founded? circumstances to which, as stated in his historian's narrative, could not from their nature have been known to any human being other than himself? yet, in no one of all his epistles, to any one of these his disciples, of any such particular, either in the way of direct assertion, or in the way of allusion, is any trace to be found. of _revelation_, yes: of _revelation_--this one most momentous indeed, but at the same time most mysterious and uninstructive word, repetitions we have in abundance. but of the time and manner of the alleged communication, or of the matter communicated, nothing is anywhere said. in these considerations may be seen a part, though but a part, of those, on which, in due season, will be seen grounded the inference,--that at no time, in all the personal conferences he had with the apostles, was any such story told by paul, as is related by the author of the acts. on the supposition that the narrative, such as it is, is genuine,--taking it as a whole, a very important source of division, from which it will require to be divided in idea into two parts or periods, here presents itself. period the first, containing the portion of time _anterior_ to the historian's admission into the train of the supposed apostle: period the second, containing the portion of time _posterior_ to that event: this latter portion continuing, as far as appears, to the time at which the history closes. in this latest and last-mentioned period are comprised all the several facts, or supposed facts, in relation to which any grounds appear for the supposition that the historian was, in his own person, a percipient witness. in relation to all the several facts, or supposed facts, anterior to this period,--the best evidence, which, for anything that appears, ever came within his reach, was composed of such statements as, in the course of his service, it may have been the pleasure of the master to make to, or in the hearing of, this his attendant. whatsoever may be the grounds of suspicion that may be found attaching themselves to evidence passing through such a channel, or issuing from such a source; other evidence will, if taken in the lump, present itself as being in comparison much less trustworthy. all other evidence consists of statements, coming from we know not whom, at we know not what times, on we know not what occasion, each of them with we know not how many reporting witnesses, one after and from another, through so many different and successive channels, between the percipient witness or witnesses, and the last reporting witness or witnesses, from whom the historian received the statement in the way of personal intercourse. the period of _rumour_, and the period of _observation_--by these two appellations it should seem, may the two periods be not altogether unaptly or uninstructively distinguished. with reference to the period of rumour,--whether, it was from paul's own statement, or from a source still more exposed to suspicion, that the historian's conception was derived,--one consideration presents itself, as requisite to be kept in mind. this is, with what facility, especially in that age, upon an occurrence in itself true, and including nothing that lies without the ordinary course of nature,--a circumstance out of the course of nature, giving to the whole a supernatural, and to use the ordinary word a miraculous, character, may, in and by the narrative, have been superinduced.[2] fact, for instance, as it _really_ was--at the word of command, (suppose) a man, having the appearance of a cripple, stands up erect and walks: untrue circumstances, one or both superinduced by _rumour_--the man had been so from his birth; from his birth down to that same time he had been an inhabitant of that same place. in the chapter on paul's supposable miracles, about a dozen occurrences of this description will be found. on each one of these several occasions, the propriety of bearing in mind the above-mentioned consideration, will, it is believed, not appear open to dispute, whatsoever on each several occasion may be the application made of it. section 2. vision i.--dialogue on the road: paul hears a voice, sees nothing. i. account.--_as per acts_ ix. 1-9. ix. 1. and saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the lord, went unto the high priest,--and _desired_ of him letters to damascus to the _synagogues_, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto jerusalem.--and as he journeyed, he came near damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from _heaven_:--and he fell to the earth, and _heard a voice_ saying unto him, saul, saul, why persecutest thou me?--and he said, who art thou, lord? and the lord said, i am jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.--and he trembling and astonished said, lord, what wilt thou have me to do? and the lord said unto him, arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.--and the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, _hearing a voice_ but _seeing no man_.--and saul arose from the earth; and _when his eyes were opened, he saw no man_; but they led him by the hand, and brought him into damascus.--and he was _three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink_. ii. paul's supposed first or unstudied account.--_as per_ acts xxii. 3-11. xxii. 3. i am verily a man which am a jew, born in tarsus, a city in cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward god, as ye all are this day.--and i persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.--as also the high priest doth bear me witness, and all the estate of the elders: from whom also i _received_ letters unto the _brethren_, and went to damascus, to bring them which were there bound unto jerusalem, for to be punished.--and it came to pass, that, as i made my journey, and was come nigh unto damascus _about noon_, suddenly there shone from _heaven_ a great light round about me.--and i fell unto the ground, and _heard a voice_ saying unto me, saul, saul, why persecutest thou me?--and i answered, who art thou, lord? and he said unto me, i am jesus of nazareth whom thou persecutest.--and they that were with me _saw indeed the light_, and were afraid; but _they heard not_ the voice of him that spake to me.--and i said, what shall i do, lord? and the lord said unto me, arise, and go into damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do.--and when i could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of them that were with me, i came into damascus. iii. paul's supposed oratorical or studied account.--_as per_ acts xxvi. 9-20. xxvi. 9. i verily thought with myself, that i ought to do many things contrary to the name of jesus of nazareth.--which thing i also did in jerusalem: and many of the saints did i shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death i gave my voice against them.--and i punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, i persecuted them even unto strange cities.--whereupon as i went to damascus with _authority_ and _commission_ from the _chief priests_,--at _midday_, o king, i saw in the way a light from _heaven_, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me.--and when we were all fallen to the earth, _i heard_ a voice speaking unto me, and saying _in the hebrew tongue_, saul, saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. and i said, who art thou, lord? and he said, i am jesus whom thou persecutest.--but rise, and stand upon thy feet: for i have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which i will appear unto thee;--delivering thee from the people, and from the gentiles, unto whom now i send thee. on comparing the three accounts of vision 1st, the particulars will be found referable to twelve heads. under no more than two of the twelve, will the conformity among them be found entire. where disconformity has place it may be clear or not clear of contradiction. clear it may be of contradiction, when it consists either of mere deficiency or mere redundancy, or of both: deficiency or redundancy, according as it is this or that account, which, on the occasion of the comparison, is taken for the standard. on the occasion in question, such is the importance of the occurrence, that the proper standard of reference and comparison is that which is most ample: that which, if not strictly speaking complete, wants the least of being so. on the part of the historian, speaking in his own person, omission is in such a case without excuse. not so, necessarily, in the case of a person whom the historian speaks of as giving that person's own account of that same occurrence. what may be is, that in the nature of the occasion in which the person is represented as speaking of it, there is so much of suddenness, by reason of impending danger, or urgent pressure, that, of the quantity of time necessary for complete utterance, and even of that necessary for complete and correct recollection, more or less was wanting. on the occasion of that account of the matter, which is the first of the two on which the historian represents paul as giving an account of this momentous occurrence,--this justification for want of completeness, or this excuse for want of correctness, might naturally enough have place. for it was while pleading for his life at jerusalem, before a mixed multitude, no inconsiderable part of which were endeavouring at the destruction of it, that paul is represented as delivering this first of his two accounts:--call that _the supposed unstudied or unpremeditated account_. not so, on the occasion on which he is represented as delivering the second of these same two accounts. on this occasion, it is true, he is represented as pleading in his defence. but it is pleading in and before a regularly constituted judiciary, and after time for preparation in much greater abundance than he could have wished:--call this _the supposed studied or premeditated account_. in this view, the proper standard of comparison can not be dubious. the historian being himself, in all three accounts, the immediately reporting witness, and having had his own time for the forming of them all,--that which he gives in his own person, and which therefore naturally occupies the first place, should, in respect of both qualities, as well as in that of clearness, have been, (and, setting aside deceptious design, naturally would have been), as perfect as it was in his power to make it. to the others alone could any excuse be afforded, in respect of any one of those requisites, by any circumstance peculiar to the respective cases. what is above being observed--of the ten following instances of disconformity, seven will be found to be cases of simple deficiency, three of contradiction. in those which are cases of simple deficiency, it will be seen to have urgency for its justification or excuse; for the others there appears no justification or excuse.[3] of the twelve distinguishable heads in question, under two alone, viz. that of _place_ and that of _time_, will the conformity be found complete. _place_, a spot near to damascus, in the road leading from jerusalem to damascus: _time_, meaning time of _day_,--about noon. but, in the quality of trustworthiness deficient as all three accounts will presently be shown to be, it will be seen how little is contributed, by conformity as to the mere circumstances of time and place. now then let us see the subjects, in relation to which a want of conformity is observable. to save words, the shortest form of description possible will throughout be employed. {1. the light seen. {2. the dialogue. _omissions_ {3. falling to the ground. {4. language of the voice. {5. kicking against the pricks. {6. the lord's commands. {7. paul's companions' posture. _contradictions_ {8. paul's companions' hearing or not hearing. {9. if hearing, what they heard. {10. nothing seen but light. 1. _light seen._ between acts account and paul's 1st or supposed unstudied account, no disconformity worth remarking. in acts it is a "_light_," in paul 1st a "_great light_";[4] in both it is about midday. but in paul's 2d or supposed studied account, it is above the brightness of the sun at that time of the day. in acts the passage is simply narrative: in paul's 1st, the urgency of the occasion left no room for flowers. but in paul's 2d, time being abundant, flowers were to be collected, and this is one of them. in the ordinary course of nature there exists not upon earth any light equal in brightness to that of the sun; especially the sun at midday, and in such a latitude. supposing the light in question ever so much greater than the midday sun, neither paul nor this his historian could, without a miracle on purpose, have had any means of knowing as much. for a miracle for such a purpose, the existence of any effectual demand does not seem probable. for the purpose mentioned,--namely the bereaving of the power of vision every open eye that should direct itself towards it,--to wit, so long as that same direction should continue,--the ordinary light of the sun would have been quite sufficient. at the time and place in question, whatever they may have been, suppose it true that, though midday was the time, the atmosphere was cloudy, and in such sort cloudy, that without something done for the purpose, a light productive of such effects could not have been produced. still, for this purpose, a specially created body of light different from that of the sun, and exceeding it in intensity, could not be needful. the removal of a single cloud would have been amply sufficient:--a single cloud, and that a very small one. * * * * * but if the light was really a light created for the purpose, and brighter than that of the sun; of circumstances so important, mention should not have been omitted in the standard narrative. * * * * * here then is either a deficiency in the standard narrative,--and this deficiency, as already observed, an inexcusable one,--or a redundancy in the subsequent account: a redundancy, the cause of which seems sufficiently obvious: a redundancy--in that account which, being premeditated on the part of the historian, is given by him as being premeditated on the part of the speaker, whom he represents as delivering it: a redundancy,--and that in a word a falsehood: a falsehood, and for what purpose?--for deception: the hero represented by his historian as using endeavours to deceive. 2. _dialogue._ per acts, the dialogue contained five speeches: to wit, 1. the voice's speech; 2. paul's; 3. the lord's, whose voice, paul and his historiographer[5], from what experience is not said, knew the voice to be; 4. paul's; 5. the lord's. in paul 1st, speeches the same in number, order, and, save in one phrase about kicking against the pricks, nearly so in terms. but in paul 2d, the number of the speeches is no more than three: and, as will be seen below, of the last the import is widely different from that of any of those reported in the other two accounts. 3. _falling to the ground._ per acts and paul 1st, by paul alone was this prostration experienced. per paul 2d, by his unnumbered companions, by the whole company of them, as well as by himself. deficiency here on the part of the proper standard; so, in the case of the unstudied speech. in the studied speech it is supplied. 4. _language of the voice._ per acts and paul 1st, of the language nothing is said. deficiency, as in the case last mentioned; to wit, in the regular history, and in the unstudied speech. in the studied speech it is supplied. stage effect greater. agrippa, to whom it was more particularly addressed, being, under the roman viceroy, a sort of king of the jews,--what seems to have occurred to the historian is--that it might be a sort of gratification to him to be informed, that his own language, the hebrew, was the language which, on this occasion, was employed by that voice, which by paul, by whom it had never been heard before, was immediately understood to be the lord's; _i.e._ jesus's; _i.e._ god's. the character, in which paul was on this occasion brought by his historiographer on the stage, being that of a consummate orator, furnished with all his graces,--this compliment was among the rest put into his mouth. moreover, by jesus no language, for aught that appears, but the hebrew, having been ever spoken, hence the account became the more consistent or credible. 5. _kicking against the pricks._[6] "hard for thee to kick against the pricks." per acts, this proverbial expression is employed by the voice, as soon as it turns out to have been the lord's. in the supposed and hasty unstudied speech, it is dropped. this is natural enough. in paul 2d--in that studied speech, it is employed: it stands there among the flowers. 6. _the lord's commands._ commands delivered to paul by the lord. under this head there is a disastrous difference; a sad contradiction. per acts, the command is for paul to go into damascus: there it stops. follows immediately an article of information, which is, that at that time and place there is no information for him; but that, sooner or later, some will be ready for him. after he has arrived at damascus, it shall there, by somebody or other, be told him, it is said, what he is to do. so likewise in paul 1st, in the unstudied speech, he is, in like manner, to learn not merely what he is to do, but everything that he is to do. lastly comes, paul 2d, the studied speech. by the time the historian had arrived at this point in his history, he had forgotten that, according to his own account of the matter, no information at all had, during the road scene, been given to paul by the lord's voice; by that voice which was so well known to be the lord's. that the supposed studied speech, by the charms of which the favour of the king was so happily gained, might be the more impressive,--he makes his orator, in direct contradiction to the account which, on the former occasion, had by him (the historian) been given, enter, on the very spot, into all the details of the lord's commands. when the time had come for composing this supposed studied speech,--the historian had, it should seem, forgot ananias's vision, that subsidiary vision, which we shall come to presently, containing a further promise of the lord's commands and instructions; and which, after all, unless it is by this studied speech that they are to be regarded as given, are not given by him anywhere. 7. _paul's companions--their posture._ per acts, though he fell, they stood it out. per paul 1st, not said whether they fell or stood it out. per paul 2d, they fell. the supposed studied oratorical account is here in full contradiction with the historical one. 8. _paul's companions--their hearing or not hearing._ per acts, they not only saw the light, but heard the voice. per paul 1st, they did not hear the voice. in the supposed hasty and unstudied speech is the oratorical account made to contradict the historical one. in this particular, which of the accounts was true? if the historical, the haste must, in the oratorical, be the apology, not only for the incompleteness but for the incorrectness. in paul 2d, nothing is said about their hearing or not hearing. supposing the story in any of the accounts to have had any truth in it, there was a middle case, fully as possible and natural as either of these extreme and mutually contradictory ones. it may have been, that while some stood their ground, others fell. and the greater the numbers, the greater the probability of this middle case. but as to their number, all is darkness. 9. _paul's companions--if they heard, what it was they heard._ if they heard anything, they heard, as far as appears, whatever paul himself heard. per acts, it is after the order given to paul to go on to damascus,--with the promise thereupon, that there and then, and not before, he should receive the information he should receive; it is after the statement made of his hearing all this from the voice, that the further statement comes, declaring that it was by paul's companions also that this same voice was heard. but this same voice was, it is said, the lord's voice. that when the voice had answered to the name by which paul called it, to wit, the name of lord, it stopt there, so far as concerned paul's companions;--and that it reserved what followed, to wit, the above-mentioned order with the promise, for paul's single ear; true it is, this may be _imagined_ as well as anything else: but at any rate it is not _said_. if paul 2d--the studied oratorical account--is to be believed, all the information for the communication of which this miracle was performed was, as will be seen, communicated here upon the road: viz. immediately after the voice had been called by him _lord_. but, if this was the case, and, as above, paul's companions heard all that he heard,--then so it is, that the revelation was made as well to them as to him;--this revelation, upon the strength of which we shall see him setting himself up above all the apostles; himself and that gospel of his own, which he says was his own, and none of theirs. now then--these companions--was it upon the same errand as his that they went, to wit, the bringing in bonds to jerusalem all the damascus christians? if so, or if on any other account they were any of them in a condition to need conversion,--they were converted as well as he; or else, so far as concerned them, the miracle was thrown away. companions as they were of his, were they or were they not respectively attendants of his? attendants going under his orders, and on the same errand? unless, by the jerusalem rulers, on the part of the damascus rulers, both will and power were depended upon, as adequate to the task of apprehending the followers of jesus and sending them bound to jerusalem, such these companions ought to have been, every one of them--supposing always on the part of this about-to-be apostle an ordinary prudence: that sort and degree of prudence with which no ordinary police-officer is unprovided. some persons under his orders he must have had, or he could never have been sent on so extensively and strongly coercive an errand. these companions, if, on this occasion, any such or any other companions he had, had each of them a name. to this vision, such as it was, they being each of them respectively, as well as himself, whether in the way of sight and hearing both, or in the way of sight alone, percipient witnesses, their names, in the character of so many percipient witnesses, ready upon every proper occasion to answer in the character of _reporting_ witnesses, would have been of no small use: of use, were it only for the giving to this story a little more substance than it has in the form we see it in. as to ananias--the supposed principal actor in the scene next to paul--for him, indeed, supposing any such person to have existed, a name, it is seen, was found. but, with a view to any purpose of evidence, how little that name amounted to, will be seen likewise. in this vision of paul's, as it is called,--was any person seen, or anything but light--light at midday? no; positively not any person, nor as far as appears, the light excepted, anything whatsoever. per acts, chap. ix:8, when "his eyes were opened,"--so it is expressly said,--"he saw no man." this was after he had fallen to the earth; for it was after he arose from the earth. but, it was before he fell to the earth, and thereupon heard the voice, that, according to this same account, he saw the extra light--the light created for the purpose: and, forasmuch as at the conclusion of the dialogue with the five speeches in it--forasmuch as at the conclusion of it, such was the effect produced upon him by the light, as to render him at that time stone-blind, requiring to be led by the hand, it could not from the first have been anything less effective. per acts, in this state he continues all the way as far as damascus, and for three days after his arrival there. so likewise in the supposed unstudied speech, paul 1st. but in the studied speech, paul 2d, there is no blindness; the blindness is either forgotten or discarded. but the curious circumstance is, his being led by the hand--all the way to damascus led by the hand:--led by the hand by these same companions. now these same companions, how was it that they were able to lead him by the hand? all that he saw was the light, and by that light he was blinded. but all that he saw they saw: this same light they saw as well as he. this same light, then, by which he was blinded--were they not blinded likewise by it? was it a privilege--a privilege reserved for a chosen favourite--a privilege which it cost a miracle to produce--the being blinded when nobody else was blinded? blinded then as they were, how came he to be led by them, any more than they by him? can the blind lead the blind? let jesus answer. shall they not both fall into the ditch? oh! but (says somebody) it is only in paul 1st,--in paul's supposed unstudied speech, that the historian makes them see the light that paul saw. answer. true: but neither in his own person does he say the contrary. as to their seeing, all he says is, that _they_ saw no man, "hearing a voice but seeing no man." (ver. 7.) but by the same account, (ver. 8.) "when _his_ eyes were opened, he saw no man;" so that, though in what he says in his own person the historian does not mention this which he mentions, speaking in paul's person,--yet he does not contradict it. 10. _paul's companions. what part, if any, took they in the conversation?_ per acts, they stood speechless: and it is after the dialogue has been reported, that this is stated. in the unstudied speech, nothing is said about their speech. in the studied speech, with reference to them, no mention is made of speech; any more than of sight or hearing. but, forasmuch as, according to acts, whatever paul saw and heard, they saw and heard likewise; how happened it, that by no one of them, so much as a word, on an occasion so interesting to all, was said--or a question put? to be sure it was to paul alone, that by the voice, whosever it was, any address was made. it was his concern:--his alone, and none of theirs. so, indeed, some might think; but, others in their situation, quite as naturally might think otherwise. sooner or later, at any rate, they would recover whatever it was they lost: sight, if sight; speech, if speech. whenever recovered, speech would thereupon range with but the greater freedom, for the restraint which, for a time, had been put upon it:--range over the whole business, including whatever secrets paul had been put in possession of:--the commission, the sweeping and incarcerating commission he had been intrusted with by the rulers, and the unperformed promise that had been made to him by the voice, which being at midday, accompanied by an extraordinary light, was of course the lord's voice. these things would naturally, by these his companions, have been converted from secrets into town-talk. nay but (says somebody) though it _is_ said he saw no _man_, it is _not_ said, he saw not the lord: and elsewhere he may be seen saying--saying in the most positive terms, that he did see the lord[7]. and if he did see the lord anywhere, why not here as well as anywhere else? "_saw no man._" yes: so says the english version. but the original is more comprehensive:--saw no person, says the original: that is, to speak literally, saw no one of the masculine gender. no one what? no one person of this gender: this is what the word means, if it means anything. no person; and therefore no lord: no god; if so it be that, when applied to denote god, the word person means god, or as some say, a part of god. note, likewise,--that, when the companions are spoken of,--both in the translation and in the original, the object to which the negative is applied is expressed by the same word as when he, paul, is spoken of. section 3. vision ii.--ananias's. topic 1.--_ananias's description._ of the vision itself there being but one account, by this singleness discordancy is saved. but, of the description belonging to ananias there are two accounts. one the historical, as before: the other, the unpremeditated oratorical account supposed to be given by paul in the first of his two supposed speeches, as above; and, room being thus given for discordancy,--discordancy, as of course, enters--or at any rate a strong suspicion of it. per acts, ananias is a disciple: a disciple, to wit, a christian; a disciple immediately of jesus or his apostles: for, such is the signification attached to the word _disciple_ in the acts: such he would on this occasion be of course understood to be; for, otherwise the word would be uncharacteristic and insignificant. materially different is the description supposed to have been given of this same ananias by paul in that same supposed unpremeditated speech; so different as to be not without effort, if by any effort, reconcilable with it. he is now a disciple of jesus and the apostles; of that jesus, by whom the law, _i.e._ the mosaic law, was after such repeated exposure of its inaptitude, pronounced obsolete. he is now not only spoken of as being, notwithstanding this conversion, a devout man according to that same law; but, moreover, as having a good report of all the jews which dwelt there, to wit, at damascus. of the jews? yes; of "_all_" the jews. if, notwithstanding his conversion to a religion by which that of the jews was slighted and declared to be superseded, he was still so happy as to be the subject of this good _report_, which is as much as to say--of a correspondently unanimous good opinion; this, it would seem, would have been the man to preach to them that religion: especially if that part of the story were true, according to which he was distinguished by the same supernatural sort of communication; this man, who was already a christian, this man, and not paul, who of all opposers of christianity had been the most fierce and the most mischievous, would naturally have been the man to receive the supernatural commission. supposing his vision real, and the reports of it true, no difficulty, rationally speaking, could he have found in obtaining credence for it at the hands of the apostles: those apostles, at whose hands, from first to last it will be seen, never was it the lot of paul, with _his_ vision or visions, to obtain credence. the audience, before which this speech was supposed to be delivered, of whom was it composed? with the exception of a few romans, to whom it was probably unintelligible unless by accident, altogether of jews; and these--no one can say in what proportion, probably in by much the largest, jews not christianized. hence then the sort of character, which the occasion and the purpose required should be given, to this supposed miraculously formed acquaintance of the person who, upon the strength of this acquaintance, was to be numbered among the apostles. topic 2.--_mode of conversation._ by this vision is produced a dialogue. interlocutors, the lord and ananias. in the course of the dialogue, speeches five: whereof, by the lord, three; the other two by ananias. in and by the first pair of speeches the lord calls the man by his name: the man answers, behold, says he, i am here, lord. in the english translation, to atone for the too great conciseness of the greek original, the words "_am here_" are not improperly interpolated. giving to this supposed supernatural intercourse what seemed to him a natural cast--a cast suited to the occasion--seems to have been the object of the historian in the composition of this dialogue. but, upon so supernatural a body, a natural colouring, at any rate a colouring such as this, does not seem to fit quite so completely as might have been wished. on the road, when the voice,--which turned out to be that of the lord, that is, being interpreted, jesus's,--addressed itself to paul, this being the first intercourse, there was a necessity for its declaring itself, for its declaring whose it was; and the declaration was made accordingly. here, on the other hand, no sooner does ananias hear himself called by his name, than he knows who the person is by whom he is thus addressed. taken as it stands, an answer thus prompt includes the supposition of an already established intercourse. such intercourse supposed--in what way on former occasions had it been carried on? laying such former occasion out of the question--in what way is it supposed to be carried on on the occasion here in question? on the occasion of his visit to paul,--the lord, to whomsoever he may have been audible, had never, from first to last, as we have seen, been visible. on the occasion of this visit of his to ananias--was the lord audible only, or visible only, or both audible and visible? if both audible and visible, or even if only visible,--the mode of revelation was more favourable to this secondary and virtually unknown personage, than to the principal one. between mortal and mortal, when it is the desire of one man to have personal communication with another whom he supposes to be within hearing, but who is either not in his sight or not looking towards him,--he calls to him by his name; and in token of his having heard, the other answers. from man to man, such information is really necessary; for--that the requisite attention has place where it is his desire that it should have place, the human interlocutor has no other means of knowing. not considering, that the person to whom the information is supposed to be conveyed is a sort of person to whom no such information could be necessary, the historian represents his ananias as giving to the lord, as if to a mere mortal, information of his presence. behold, lord! i am here. topic 3.--_lord's commands and information: want of particularization a disprobative circumstance._ the conversation being thus begun, the interlocutors proceed to business. in speech the 3d, lord delivers to ananias, the devout jew, a command, and thereupon a piece of information. the command is--to repair to a place therein described, and find out paul: the information is--that at the time then present paul is praying; and that, at an anterior point of time not designated, he had seen a vision. in the command, the designation of the place wears, upon the face of it, the appearance of that sort and degree of particularity, the exaction of which is, in these days, in which genuine visions are never exemplified, matter of course, on every occasion on which it is the real intention, of those on whom it depends, that through the medium of personal testimony the truth should be extracted. on every such occasion, the object in question, whether it be an event or a quiescent state of things, is endeavoured to be individualized: and, for the production of this effect, the individual portion of space, and the individual portion of time, are endeavoured to be brought to view together. on the occasion here in question, towards the individualization of the portion of space some approach is made: the town being foreknown, to wit, damascus, the _street_ is particularized; it is the street called _straight_: as in westminster we have _long-ditch_, and in london _crooked-lane_. moreover, the _house_ is particularized; it is the house of judas. to this judas had any one of those marks of distinction been added, which in that age and nation we find to have been common,--as in the instance of the too notorious judas the iscariot, _i.e._, the inhabitant of iscara, and in that of judas barsabas, _i.e._, the son of sabas, or, as we should say, sabasson, not long after mentioned, acts 25:22,--it would have been something. but, destitute of such limitative adjunct, _judas_ of itself was nothing. in that age and country, even without reckoning notorious traitors, there was never any want of judases. not inferior in plenty were ananiases: in the acts we have three of them;--this private inhabitant of damascus: the high priest, whose seat was at jerusalem; and the husband of sapphira: and in josephus they vie in abundance with the johns and jesuses. but, on the occasion in question, and to the purpose in question, though a distinctive adjunct as above would have done something, it would have done very little. in the field of time,--seven-and-twenty years at least, and we know not how much more, according to the received chronology, was the distance between the event in question, and the report given of it in this history. neither in damascus nor yet in jerusalem was any such thing as a newspaper,--not even an enslaved newspaper, in existence; no, nor yet so much as a printing-press,--not even an enslaved printing-press. for writing, the materials were expensive; and handwriting was the only mode of copying. publication was not, as under the printing-press, promiscuous: unless by accident, for an indefinite length of time, into no other hand did any copy find its way, other than those of the author's confidential friends, or friends separated from the author by a greater or less number of removes, as it might happen; but all of them linked to one another by the bonds of amity, and unity of principle and practice. in such a capital as damascus, straight street might have been as long as oxford street; and, unless the style of building in those earlier days had much more of convenience and luxury in it than in these latter days, was much more crowded. conceive a man at this time of day, going to oxford street with the intention of finding the house, in which, thirty years ago, a man of the name of brown or smith had his residence,--to wit, on some indeterminate day, of the number of those included within the space of an indeterminate number of years; and this, for the purpose of ascertaining whether, on this indeterminate day, and by this smith or this brown, a vision, not seen by anybody else, had been seen. suppose a man in rome set out on such an errand--and then say what would be the probable result of it. topic 4.--_vision reported to ananias by the lord as having been seen by paul._ of the report then given of this anterior vision, the character is too remarkable to be given, as it were, in a parenthesis: it is therefore referred to a separate head. acts ix. 12. "and paul hath seen in a vision a man named ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him that he might receive his sight." topic 5.--_ananias's objection to the lord's commands to visit paul--he informs the lord what he had heard about paul._ by the two first speeches of this dialogue, we are given to understand that ananias had already held intercourse with the lord; an intercourse which, the nature of the two parties considered, could not have been other than a supernatural intercourse: yes, and on this very subject: for, if not on this particular subject, the subject of it, whatever it was, could not but have called for notice and communication. but, no sooner does this next speech commence, than we are given to understand that there had not--could not have been any such intercourse: for if there had been, what follows would have been rendered useless and needless. upon receiving the command, ananias's first thought is--to endeavour to excuse himself from paying obedience to it; for in this endeavour it is, that he gives the lord a piece of information; to wit--of what, in relation to paul's character, he (ananias) had heard. acts ix. 13: "then ananias answered, lord, i have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at jerusalem. and here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name." thus then, commands known to have been the lord's, having that instant been received,--the man by whom they have been received--so small is the confidence, reposed in the lord by this his favoured disciple--instead of paying obedience to them, answers them by an objection. this objection, prepared for it or not prepared for it, the lord, as might well be expected, immediately overrules. a question that here presents itself is--since it was from _many_, i.e. _many men_, that ananias had heard, not only what everybody had been hearing for weeks, or months, or years,--viz. of the evil that paul had been doing to the jerusalem saints, but of the authority that he had so lately received, to bind at damascus all the damascus saints he could find--since it was from so many, who then were these many? how was it, that in the compass of the three days (ver. 9), during which paul had remained without sight or nourishment, a commission,--to the execution of which secrecy was so obviously necessary,--had to such a degree transpired? suppose the secret to have thus transpired,--two results would, in any natural and credible state of things, have been among the consequences. the persons thus devoted to destruction would have made their escape; the commission by which alone the supposed proceedings against them could have found a justification or a cause, not having been delivered. on the other hand, hearing that paul was there, and that he either was, or pretended to be, in the house in question, or in some other, in the extraordinary condition above described,--the persons spoken of in the acts under the name of _the synagogue_, would not have left him there, but would have convened him before them, and, if he really had any such commission, have caused it to be produced, and read it: convened before them, not only paul with his supposed commission, but those companions of his that we have already heard of, if any such he had[8]. but of these there will be occasion to speak in another place. topic 6.--_the lord's answer, obviating the objection, and giving intimation of his designs in favour of paul._ this objection, no sooner has the lord overruled it, than he undertakes to answer it, and to explain to this his so singularly favoured old disciple the intentions he had formed in favour of his intended new convert, whose conversion is, however, as yet but in progress (ver. 14): "but the lord said to him, go thy way; for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the gentiles and kings, and the children of israel:--for (continues the lord) i will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake." being, and therefore at the time of paul's vision purposing to be, in relation to his designs for paul, thus communicative to this same ananias, who is a perfect stranger to this same paul,--to what purpose, on the occasion of his supposed visionary intercourse with paul, should _the lord_ have stopped short; reserving the communication, for the intention of giving it him at second-hand by the mouth of that same stranger? this is one of the swarms of questions which an account of this sort could scarcely fail to present to any inquiring mind. meantime, as to the lord's having thus stopped short, this we shall see is in full contradiction with the account which the historian makes him give in his supposed second reported speech, to wit, the supposed premeditated one, spoken before agrippa, who, under the proconsul festus, was king of the jews, and who, on that occasion, is spoken of as being assessor to the said proconsul festus. on that occasion the lord is represented as explaining himself more fully to paul himself, than here, for the benefit of paul, through ananias. section 4. ananias: his visit to paul at damascus. we now come to the visit, which, we are to understand, was, in reality, paid to paul by ananias, in consequence of this vision, in obedience to the command imagined to be given in it. note that, though, in the original--in _the including vision_, as it may be called--the command is given to inquire in the house in question for the person (saul) in question,--this is _all_ the command which, in that least visionary of the two visions, is delivered. in the first instance to make the inquiry, and in conclusion to go his way--this is all to which the commands given to him in the direct way extend themselves. to accomplish the object of this intercourse--to do anything towards it beyond the making of this inquiry--he has to take hints and to draw inferences:--inferences from the lord's speech, which is thus continued, acts ix. 12: "and (paul) _hath seen in a vision_ a man named ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him that he might receive his sight." from having been told what--in a vision, to wit, this _contained or included vision_--this same paul had been _fancying_ he _had_ seen him (ananias) do--from this he was to conclude that it was the lord's will that he (ananias) _should_ do _in reality_ that which paul had been fancying him to have done; though the only effect, for the doing of which it had so been fancied to have been performed, had never been produced. this was what he was to conclude was the lord's will; although the lord himself, who (if any person) should have known how to speak plainly and beyond danger of misconception, had forborne to tell him as much. on the occasion of this important visit--this visit of ananias to paul,--the double light--the light cast by the first of the two oratorical accounts--to wit, the supposed unpremeditated one, upon the historical one--recommences. follows now--and from both sources--the account of the interview, and of the cure performed in the course of it. acts' account.--ch. ix. ver. 17-22. and ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him, said: 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_.--and immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been _scales_: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and _was baptized_.--and when he had received meat, he was strengthened. then was saul _certain days_ with the disciples which were _at damascus_.--and straightway he _preached_ christ in the synagogues, that he is the son of god.--but all that heard _him_ were amazed, and said: is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests?--but saul _increased the more_ in strength, and _confounded the jews_ which dwelt at _damascus_, proving that this is very christ. paul's account.--acts, ch. xxii. ver. 12-16. 12. and one ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the jews which dwelt _there_,--came unto me, and stood, and said unto me: brother saul, receive thy sight. and the same hour i looked up upon him.--and he said: the god of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and _see_ that just one, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth.--for thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast _seen_ and heard.--and now, why tarriest thou? arise, and _be baptized_, and wash away thy sins; calling on the name of the lord. topic 1.--_on visiting paul, ananias's introductory speech--preliminary recital._ i. in the historical account, the speech has in it several distinguishable parts. i. "brother saul." first comes the address, in which saul, the future paul, is addressed by disciple ananias by the name of _brother_. if, as between jew and jew, this was a common form of salutation,--so far everything is in order. but, if it was only in consideration of his having been denominated a disciple, to wit, of jesus,--the salutation is rather premature: the conversion, supposing it effected, is, at any rate, not yet declared. not only in the historical account is this appellation employed, but likewise in the oratorical one. the attention of paul being thus bespoken by his visitor, mention is thereupon made of the purpose of the visit. i. in the first place comes a recital. "the lord (says he), even jesus, that _appeared_ unto thee on the way as thou camest, hath sent me".... unfortunately, according to the historian himself, this assertion, as we have seen already, is not true. in no manner or shape did the lord jesus, or any other person, make his appearance;--all that _did_ appear was the light--the light at midday: so he has just been writing, and before the ink, if ink it was that he used, was dry, already had he forgotten it. this, however, is but a collateral averment:--a recital, an episode, matter of _inducement_, as an english lawyer would phrase it. topic 2.--_declared purposes or objects of the visit._ purpose the first. "that thou mightest," says ananias, "receive thy sight." thus says ananias in the historical account: in the supposed oratorical one he is more concise. no supposed past occurrence referred to:--no purpose declared. "receive thy sight" are the words. purpose the second. that thou mightest "be filled with the holy ghost," says the historical account. but in a succeeding passage what is the purpose, which, in the supposed oratorical account ananias is made to speak of, in the design that it should be taken for the purpose which the lord by his commandment meant to be accomplished? not the being filled by the holy ghost; only the being baptized. "and now, why tarriest thou? (acts xxii. ver. 16) arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the lord." well but (says somebody) receiving the holy ghost, and being baptized,--by these two expressions, is not one, and no more than one effect--one and the same effect--to be understood? no, in truth, if the historian himself is to be believed. turn to another chapter--the very next chapter before this, acts 12 to 17, and there you will see, that the being baptized was one thing, the receiving the holy ghost another thing, and much more. for administering the ceremony of baptism, a single apostle, philip, was sufficient: whereas, for the causing the holy ghost to be received, nothing less was requisite than the cooperation of two apostles, and those two commissioned by the rest. so serious always, according to this historian, was the difference, that it was after he had been already baptized, and baptized gratis in a crowd, that for the power of conferring this benefit, whatever it was that it was composed of, sorcerer simon made to the two apostles, those offers--those pecuniary offers--which are said to have been no sooner made than rejected. acts 13 to 24. topic 3.--_actual effects of the visit, and the application in consequence made in the course of it._ effect 1. _scales fall from eyes, and sight is received in consequence._ in the historical narrative, the effect is as complete as it is remarkable. fall from his eyes a portion of matter of the nature or resemblance of scales: whereupon he receives sight forthwith. in the supposed oratorical account, whatsoever had been meant by scales, nothing is said of them. neither is the declaration made of the completeness of the case quite so explicit. one look he gave--gave to his wonder-working surgeon--and instead of its being given forthwith--to give this one look required, it should seem, if not a whole hour, at any rate so little less, that any time less than an hour could not--such, in this supposed unpremeditated speech, was the anxiety felt for correctness--could not be ventured to be particularized. the more closely these scales, or things resembling scales, are looked at, the more difficult will it be to find them amount to anything. in no cure, performed upon eyes in any natural way, in these our days--upon eyes that have lost their sight--do any scales fall off, or anything in any degree resembling scales;--in no disorder of the eyes, known to have place in these our days, do scales, or anything like scales, come over the eyes. by the taking of matter from the eyes, sight, it is true, is every now and then restored: but this matter is not matter, foreign in relation to the eye and exterior to it; but one of the component parts called _humours_ of the eye, which, by losing its transparency having suspended the faculty of vision, is let out by a lancet; whereupon not only is the faculty of sight restored, but the part which had been extirpated restored likewise; and without any expense in the article of miracles. on the supposition of falsity,--quere the use of this circumstance? _answer._ to afford support to the conception, that memory and not imagination was the source from which the story was derived. true it is, that, instead of support, a circumstance exposed to contradiction would be an instrument of weakness: if, for example, on the supposition that paul had no companions on the road, names indicative of really existing and well-known persons had been added, to the intimation given in the _acts_, of the existence of such companions. but to no such hazard was the story of the scales exposed: not to any great danger, on the supposition of the existence of paul's ananias: not to any danger at all, upon the supposition of his non-existence. but, upon this occasion, now again once more present themselves--present themselves to the mind's eye--paul's companions. that they were blinded at all can scarcely, it has been seen, be believed, if on this matter the historian himself is believed. for, per acts ix. 8, "they led him by the hand:" so, per paul 1st, acts xxii. 11, "when i could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of those that were with me, i came unto damascus." but if, notwithstanding so it was that _they_ too were blinded,--how was it with _their_ eyes? had _their_ eyes scales upon them? did these scales ever fall off?--if so, by what means were they made to fall off? _their_ evidence would have been not much, if anything, less impressive,--and it would have been much less open to suspicion,--than paul's evidence, supposing him to have spoken of these scales--which the historian, to whom, if he is to be believed, their existence is so well known, did not take upon him to represent paul as saying that he did. but if so it was, that, though rendered blind as paul's, no scales were superinduced upon, nor consequently made to fall off, the eyes of those nameless and unknown persons,--how came they to be superinduced upon and made to fall off from the eyes of their singularly favoured principal? if, for a length of time more or less considerable, they really were made blind,--it was, if the historian is to be believed, by the same cause by which, in the instance of paul's eyes, this same effect was produced:--the same cause, to wit an extraordinary light at noonday. if, whatsoever was the matter with them, the eyes of these ordinary persons could be set to rights without a miracle, what need could there be of a miracle for the producing the same desirable effect in the person of this their leader or master, extraordinary as this same leader or master was? topic 4.--_baptism--was it performed? when, where, by whom, &c.?_ the baptism thus spoken of--was it performed? yes: if you will believe the historian, speaking in his own person, speaking in his own historical account: "and forthwith," in the first place, "paul recovered his sight;"--then, when, his sight having been recovered, he was able to go about as usual,--he arose and was baptized: baptized--that is say, as from this expression taken by itself any one would conclude--baptized, as soon as he arose, to wit, as soon as water could be found for the purpose: that water, which his guest ananias, foreknowing what was to come to pass, and what was to be done to make it come to pass, might naturally be expected to have provided, and this without any supernatural foresight: in a word, without the expense of any additional miracle in any shape:--the water being thus ready upon the spot, and he in equal readiness to administer it. this, according to the historian, speaking in his own person: but, when the time comes for giving an account of the matter in the person of paul himself,--to wit in the supposed unpremeditated oratorical speech,--then, for whatever it was that stopped him, (whether the supposed urgency of the occasion on which the supposed speech was supposed to be made, or any thing and what else,) so it is, that he gives not any such information: he leaves the matter to hang in doubt:--a doubt, which, down to the present day remains unsolved. a command to this effect is spoken of as having been given: thus much is said. but, what is not said is--whether to this same command any or what obedience was paid. thus it is that, instead of an _effect_ which it seems desired that we should consider as being produced, what we see directly stated as being produced, is nothing more than a _command_--a command, by which, as by its cause, we are to suppose the effect to have been produced. what is more, in the same blind way, is intimation given us, of another and very different effect--_the washing away of sins_--as if produced by the first-mentioned physical operation;--namely, by that of a man's being dipped in, or sprinkled with, water: and thus it is, that from a mere physical operation of the most trivial nature, we are called upon to infer a spiritual and supernatural effect of the most awful importance; the spiritual effect stated as if it were produced by the physical operation, to which it has no perceptible real relation--nothing but the mere verbal one thus given to it; produced by it, and following it, as of course--just as if sins were a species of dirt, which, by washing, could as surely be got off as any other dirt.[9] and was he then really baptized? if so he was, then also if, speaking in the person of his hero, the historian is to be believed,--then also, by this ceremony, the name of the lord being at the same time called upon,--then also were his sins washed away; his sins washed away; the sinner, therefore and thereby, put into the same case as if the sins had not any of them been ever committed. how can it be understood otherwise? for if, in and by this passage, intimation--sufficiently perfect information--is given, that the ceremony was performed--then also is sufficiently perfect information given, that such was the effect actually produced by it. "arise" (ananias is made to say)--"_arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the lord._" this is no light matter: if so it really were, that according to the religion of jesus, by such a cause, such an effect was on that occasion produced;--that such effect could, in a word, on any occasion, in any case be produced,--that _murders_, or (not to embarrass the question with conceits of local jurisprudence) _killings_ of men--killings of men by persecution carried on, on a religious account--slaughters of christians by non-christians--could thus, as in paul's case, be divested of all guilt, at any rate of all punishment, at the hands of almighty justice;--if impunity could indeed be thus conferred by the sprinkling a man with water or dipping him in it, then would it be matter of serious consideration--not only what is the _verity_ of that religion, but what the _usefulness_ of it, what the usefulness--with reference to the present life at any rate, not to speak of a life to come: what the usefulness of it; and on what ground stands its claim to support by all the powers of factitious punishment and factitious reward, at the hands of the temporal magistrate.[10] topic 5.--_performance of the promise, supposed to have been made by the lord, in favour of paul, to ananias._ if the supposed promise is inadequate to the occasion, the supposed performance is still more inadequate with reference to the promise. in the supposed promise are two distinguishable parts, and in neither of them is the one thing needful to be found. of these two parts, the only one in which in any direct stage the matter of a promise is contained, is the one last mentioned: it is the promise to show him, (paul) what sufferings he will have to undergo in the course of the career, whatever it is, in which he is about to engage: to wit, in name and profession, the preaching the religion of jesus: "for i will show him," says the lord, according to the historian,--"i will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake." if so it was, that upon this promise, such as it is, performance never followed, the regret for the failure need not be very great. whatsoever were the sufferings that he was predestined to undergo, that which was _not_ in the nature of this foreshowing, was--the lessening their aggregate amount; that which _was_ in the nature of it was--the making an addition to that same afflicting aggregate; to wit, by constant and unavoidable anticipation of the approach of such sufferings. of this talk, vague as it is, about sufferings, the obvious enough object was--the giving exaltation to the idea meant to be conveyed of the merits of the hero:--an object, which, by this and other means, has accordingly, down to the present day, in no small degree been accomplished. so much as to sufferings: as to enjoyments, by any idea entertained of the enjoyments derived by him from the same source, this design would have been--not promoted, but counteracted. but, when the time arrives, whether the mass of suffering was not, to no small amount, overbalanced by that of his enjoyments--meaning always worldly sufferings and worldly enjoyments--the reader will be left to judge. here then we have the only promise, which in any direct way is expressed:--a promise which, in the first place would have been useless, in the next place worse than useless. topic 6.--_indirect promise, that paul shall spread the name of jesus._ in the whole substance of this promise, if there be anything, which, with reference to the professed end--to wit the giving extension to the religion of jesus--would have been of use, it is in the foregoing part that it must be looked for. in this part then, if there be any such matter to be found, it will be this: to wit, a promise that he (paul) shall bear, and therefore that he shall be enabled to bear, the name of the lord, to wit, the name of jesus, before the classes of persons specified, to wit, the gentiles, and kings, and children of israel: acts ix. 15. but, only in an indirect way is this solely material part of the promise expressed: "he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name," &c. _i.e._ when i chose him, it was my design that he should do so. but, in the case of the lord, according to the picture drawn of him by this historian, how very inconclusive evidence _intention_ is of _execution_, there will, in the course of this work, have been abundant occasion to see. bear the name of jesus? so far, so good. but for this function no such special and supernatural commission was necessary: without any such commission, the name of jesus had been borne to the people at large, if in this particular the gospel history is to be believed. luke ix. 49, 50: "and john answered and said, 'master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name: and we forbad him, because he followed not with us.' and jesus said unto him, 'forbid him not, for he that is not against us, is for us.'" how inadequate soever, with reference to the professed end, to wit, giving extension to the religion of jesus, the promise was perfectly adequate, and commensurate, to what we shall find to be paul's real design; to wit, the planting a gospel of his own, as, and for, and instead of, the gospel of jesus. the gospel of jesus was the gospel of jesus: and the gospel, which, availing himself of the name of jesus, it was paul's design and practice to preach, was, as he himself declares,--as we shall see him declaring in the plainest and most express terms,--a gospel of his own; a gospel which was not the gospel of the apostles, and which, for fear of its being opposed by them, he kept studiously concealed from those confidential servants and real associates of jesus, as may be seen in the following passages: gal. i. 9, 11, and 12; "as we said before, so say i now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you, than that ye have received, let him be accursed.--but i certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.--for i neither received it of man, neither was i taught it but by the revelation of jesus christ." gal. 2:2: "and i went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which i preach among the gentiles; but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means, i should run, or had run, in vain." in the course of paul's dialogue with the voice on the road--that voice which we are given to understand was the lord's, _i.e._ jesus's--the promise supposed to be made to paul, it must be remembered, was--the promise to tell him, when in the city, what he was to do. "what thou must do," says the historian in his historical account:--"all things which are appointed for thee to do," says the historian in the supposed unpremeditated oratorical account, which, in this so often mentioned first of the speeches, he is supposed by the historian to have delivered. among all these things,--one thing, which it is manifestly the design of the historian, as it was that of his hero, to make men believe, was accomplished: to wit, the satisfying them what was the religious doctrine, for the dissemination of which the expense of this miracle was incurred. this, moreover, is the promise; which, in the reading of the story everybody looks for: this too is the promise which in the reading of this same story, the believers in the religion of jesus have very generally been in the habit of considering as performed. not in and by this history, however, will they have any such satisfaction, when the matter comes to be looked into. for, in respect of this information, desirable as it is,--paul is, in this strangely supposed intercourse, put off--put off to another time and place: put off, for no reason given, nor for any substantial reason that can be imagined. further on, when a show of performing the promise comes to be made, then, instead of accomplishment, we have more evasion. instead of furnishing the information to paul himself--to paul directly--for, when the time and place for performance comes, performance--what the lord is not supposed so much as to profess to do, what he professes to do is--to make the communication to this man, who, his existence being supposed, was an utter stranger to paul--namely to this ananias. well, and for the conveying the information, in this indirect and inadequate way--for conveying it to and through this same ananias--what is done?--as we have seen, what amounts to nothing. when, for affording the information--had any information been intended to be afforded--the time and place are come; when ananias and paul have been brought together; what is it that, from the information afforded us by the historian, we are to understand, passed? _answer_, that, after the scales had fallen from his eyes, paul was baptized; that he ate meat, and that after he had eaten meat he was strengthened: strengthened, we are warranted to suppose, by the meat which he had so eaten. moreover, that somehow or other, in this large city he was certain days--number not specified,--with certain disciples--neither names nor number specified,--and preached christ in the synagogues, saying that he was the son of god. thus far then we are got; and, of the supposed revelation, in all this time nothing revealed. promises, put-offs, evasions--and, after all, no performance. among the purposes of this work, is the satisfying the reader--not only that paul received not any revelation from the almighty; but that, even upon his own showing, never did he receive any such revelation: that, on pretence of his having received it from the almighty by a special revelation, he preached indeed a certain doctrine; but that this doctrine was partly one of his own, contrary to that of jesus's apostles, and therefore contrary to that of jesus: and that, in the way of revelation, he never did receive anything; neither that doctrine of his own which he preached, nor anything else. topic 7.--_doctrine, supposed to be preached by paul at damascus in the synagogues._ straightway, if the historian is to be believed;--straightway after being strengthened by the meat;--and straightway after he had passed the certain days with the disciples;--then did paul preach christ in the synagogues--preach that he is the son of god. here, had he really preached in any such places--here would have been the time, and the best time, for telling us what, in pursuance of the supposed revelation, he preached. for, whatever it was, if anything, that he ever learnt from his supposed revelation, it was not till he had learnt it, till he made this necessary acquisition, that the time for beginning to preach in the synagogues in question or anywhere else was come. and, no sooner had he received it, than then, when it was fresh in his memory--then was the time for preaching it. but, never having received any such thing as that which he pretended, and which the historian has made so many people believe, he received,--no such thing had he to preach at any time or place. whatever of that nature he had had, if he had had at any _time_, damascus was not the _place_, at any rate at _that time_, for him to preach it, or anything else, in synagogues--in any receptacle so extensively open to the public eye. preach, in the name of jesus--in the name of that jesus, whose disciples, and with them whose religion, he now went thither with a commission to exterminate,--preach in that name he could not, without proclaiming his own religion--his own perfidy;--his own rebellion, against the authorities, from which, at his own solicitation, the commission so granted to him had been obtained:--his own perfidious contempt--not only of those jerusalem rulers, but of those damascus authorities, from whom, for that important and cruel purpose, he was sent to receive instruction and assistance. at some seven-and-twenty years distance in the field of time, and at we know not what distance in the field of space, probably that between rome and damascus, it was as easy for the historian to affirm the supposed preaching, as to deny it: but, as to the preaching itself, whether it was within the bounds of moral possibility, let the reader judge. topic 8.--_supposed amazement of the people of damascus at this paul's supposed preaching of christ in the synagogues there._ had there really been any such preaching, well might have amazement followed it. but there was no such preaching, therefore no such amazement. had there been real preaching, and real amazement produced by it--what would have been the subject of the amazement! not so much the audacity of the preacher--for madmen acting singly are to be seen in but too great frequency: not so much the audacity of the speaker, as the supineness of the constituted authorities; for, madmen acting in bodies in the character of public functionaries have never yet been visible. and if any such assemblage was ever seen, many such would be seen, before any one could be seen, whose madness took the course of sitting still, while an offender against their authority, coming to them single and without support,--neither bringing with him support, nor finding it there,--continued, at a public meeting, preaching against them, and setting their authority at defiance. topic 9.--_matter of the revelation, which, in and by the supposed unpremeditated oratorical account, is supposed to have been made._ forgetting what, as we have seen, he had so lately been saying in his own person--in the person of paul,--he on this occasion, returns to the subject: and more evasive is the result. on this occasion--this proper occasion--what is it that he, paul, takes upon him to give an account of.--that which the lord had revealed to him?--revealed, communicated in the supernatural way of revelation, to him--paul? no; but that which, according to him,--if he, and through him the historian, is to be believed,--the lord communicated to ananias concerning him--paul. the almighty having minded to communicate something to a man, and yet not communicating to that man any part of it, but communicating the whole of it to another! what a proceeding _this_ to attribute to the almighty, and upon such evidence! still we shall see, supposing it communicated, and from such a source communicated--still we shall see it amounted to nothing: to nothing--always excepted the contradiction to what, in relation to this subject, had, by this same historian, been a little before asserted. observe what were the _purposes_, for which, by this ananias, paul is supposed to be made to understand, that god--the god, says he, of our fathers--had chosen him. 1. purpose the first--"to know his will." his will, respecting what? if respecting anything to the great purpose here in question, respecting the new doctrine which, to this paul, to the exclusion of the apostles of jesus, is all along supposed to have been revealed. of no such doctrine is any indication anywhere in these accounts to be found. 2. purpose the second--"and see this just one." meaning, we are to understand, the person all along spoken of under the name of the lord; to wit, jesus. but, in the vision in question, if the historian is to be believed, no jesus did paul see. all that he saw was a light,--an extraordinary strong light at midday; so strong, that after it, till the scales fell from his eyes, he saw not any person in any place: and this light, whatever it was, was seen by all that were with him, as well as by him. 3. purpose the third--"and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth." oh! yes; if what the historian says in that other place is to be believed--hear a voice he did; and if the historian is to be again believed, that voice was the lord's. but, by hearing this voice, how was he distinguished? those that were with him, according to the historian's own account, heard it as well as he. and what was he the wiser? this also, it is hoped, has been rendered sufficiently visible--just nothing. purpose the fourth and last--"thou shalt be his witness (the lord's witness), of everything thou hast seen and heard:"--that is, of that which was nothing, and that which amounted to nothing. unhappily, even this is not all: for, before the subject is concluded, we must go back and take up once more the supposed premeditated and studied speech, which, on the second occasion, the self-constituted apostle is supposed to have made to the sub-king of the jews, agrippa, sitting by the side of his superior--the roman proconsul, festus. in the course of this long-studied speech,--to whom, is the communication, such as it is,--to whom, in an immediate way, and without the intervention of any other person, is it supposed to be made? not to ananias;--not to any such superfluous and unknown personage;--not to ananias, but to paul himself: viz. to the very person _by_ whom this same communication, supposed to have been made to him, is supposed to be reported (acts xxvi. 16 to 18): to this principal, or rather, only person concerned:--to this one person, the communication, such as it is, and to him the whole of it at once, is supposed to be made. here then is this ananias discarded:--discarded with this vision of his, and that other vision which we have seen within it: the communication, which, speaking in the first place in his own person,--and then, on one occasion, in the person of this same hero of his--the historian had just been declaring, was made--not to paul, but to ananias;--this all-important communication, speaking again in this same third person, but on another occasion--the discourse being supposed to be a long-studied one--he makes this same paul declare, was given--not to any ananias, not to any other person--but directly to him, paul, himself. let us now see what it amounts to. in the most logical manner, it begins with declaring the _purposes_ it is made for; and, when the purposes are declared, all that it does is done. ver. 16. "but now: rise, and stand upon thy feet; for i have appeared unto thee for this purpose."...in this purpose are several parts: let us look into them one by one. 1. part 1. "to make thee (says the lord) a minister and a witness, both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which i will appear unto thee." but, as to the things which he had seen, by this same account they amounted to nothing but a glare of light. here then was the light to _bear witness of_, if it was worth while: but, as to the _ministering_, here was nothing at all to minister to: for the light was past, and it required no ministering to, when it was present. had it been the light of a lamp--yes; but there was no lamp in the case. thus much, as to these things which he had seen. thereupon comes the mention of those things "in the which, the lord is supposed to say, i will appear unto thee!" here, as before, we have another put-off. if, in the way in question, and of the sort in question, there had been anything said, here was the time, the only time, for saying it. for immediately upon the mention of this communication, such as it is, follows the mention of what was due in consequence of it, in obedience to the commands supposed to be embodied in it, and by the light of the information supposed to be conveyed by it. "whereupon, says he, king agrippa, i was not disobedient to the heavenly vision..." part 2. the purpose continued.--"delivering thee from the people, and from the gentiles, unto whom i now send thee." this, we see, is but a continuation of the same put-off: no revelation, no doctrine, no gospel here. as to the doctrine--the gospel--that gospel which he preached, and which he said was his own, no such gospel is on this occasion given to him; and, not being so much as reported to have been given to him on any other occasion, was it not therefore of his own making, and without any such supernatural assistance, as christians have been hitherto made to believe was given to him? as to the deliverance from the people and from the gentiles, this is a clause, put in with reference to the dangers, into which the intemperance of his ambition had plunged him, and from whence in part it had been his lot to escape. here then the sub-king and his roman superior were desired to behold the accomplishment of a prophecy: but the prophecy was of that sort which came after the fact.--"unto whom now i send thee..." in this they were desired to see a continuation of the prophecy: for, as to this point, it was, in the hope of the prophet, of the number of those, which not only announce, but by announcing contribute to, their own accomplishment. part 3. the purpose continued.--"to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of satan unto god..." still the same nothingness: to his life's end a man might be hearing stories such as these, and still at the end of it be none the wiser:--no additional doctrine--no additional gospel--no declaration at all--no gospel at all--here. part 4. the purpose continued and concluded... "that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me." good. but this is not doctrine; this is not gospel; this is not itself the promised doctrine: but it is a description of the effect, of which the promised doctrine was to be the cause. now it is, as we have just seen, that paul is represented as commencing his preaching, or sallying forth upon his mission; preaching, from _instructions_ received in a supernatural way--received by revelation. yet, after all, no such _instructions_ has he received. thrice has the historian--once in his own person, twice in that of his hero--undertaken to produce those instructions. but by no one, from first to last, have they anywhere been produced. truly, then, of his own making was this gospel which paul went preaching; of his own making, as well as of his own using; that gospel, which he himself declares to his galatians was not of man, was not, therefore, of those apostles, to whom the opposition made by him is thus proclaimed. when, after having given in his own person an account of a supposed occurrence,--an historian, on another occasion, takes up the same occurrence; and, in the person of another individual, gives of that same occurrence another account different from, and so different from, as to be irreconcileable with it; can this historian, with any propriety, be said to be himself a believer in this second account which he thus gives? instead of giving it as a true account, does he not, at any rate, in respect of all the several distinguishable circumstances in which it differs from the account given in his own person--give it in the character of a fable? a fable invented on the occasion on which the other person is supposed to speak--invented in the intent that it shall promote the purpose for which this speech is supposed to be made? yet this account, which in the eyes of the very man by whom it is delivered to us, is but a fable, even those to whom in this same character of a fable it is delivered--this account it is that _christians_ have thus long persisted in regarding, supporting, and acting upon, as if it were from beginning to end, a truth--a great body of truth!--o locke! o newton! where was your discernment! on such evidence would any judge fine a man a shilling? would he give effect to a claim to that amount? yet such is the evidence, on the belief of which the difference between happiness and misery, both in intensity as well as duration, infinite, we are told, depends! section 5. vision iii.--paul's anterior vision, as reported by the lord to ananias. by the nature of the acts which are the objects of it, the command, we see, is necessarily pregnant with information: but now comes the information given as such--the piece of information with which the command is followed. this information--in and by which another, an antecedent vision, is brought upon the carpet, and communicated--has been reserved for a separate consideration. this information is in its complexion truly curious: to present a clear view of it, is not an altogether easy task. the information thus given by the lord--given to this ananias--this information, of which paul is the subject, is--what? that, on some former occasion, neither time nor place mentioned, he, ananias, to whom the lord is giving the information, had been seen by this same paul performing, with a certain intention, a certain action; the intention being--that, in relation to this same paul, a certain effect should be produced--to wit, that of his receiving his sight. the lord declares, acts ix. 12, to ananias, that paul "had _seen in a vision_ a man, ananias himself, coming and putting his hand on him, that he (paul) might receive his sight." well then--this action which the lord thus informs ananias that he, ananias, had performed,--did he, at any time and place, ever perform it? oh, no; that is not necessary: the question is not a fair one; for it was only in a vision that it was performed. well then--if it was only in a vision that it was performed, then, in reality, it was never performed. the lord said that it had been performed; but in so saying the lord had said that which was not true. the lord had caused him to believe this--the lord knowing all the while that it was not true. such is the deed, which, according to our historian, the lord relates himself to have achieved. but the _intention_, was that true? oh, no; nor was there any need of its being so: for the intention, with which the act was supposed to be performed, was part and parcel of the divinely-taught untruth. the effect, the production of which had been the object of the intention, was it then--had it then been--produced? wait a little; no, not at that time. but the time was not then as yet come; and now it is coming apace. but this effect--what is it? a man's receiving his sight; this same paul's receiving his sight; this same paul, of whom ananias knew nothing, nor had ever heard anything, except what he had just been hearing--to wit, that, by a man of that name, he, ananias, had once been seen--seen to do so and so--he, all the while--he, the doer, knowing nothing of what he was doing--knowing nothing at all about the matter. however, only in a vision did all this pass; which being the case, no proper subject of wonder was afforded to him by such otherwise somewhat extraordinary ignorance. but this sight--which, at the hands of this seer of visions, to whom this information is thus addressed, this stranger, whose name was still _saul_, was to receive--how happened it that it was to him, ananias, that he came to receive it? this faculty--at his birth, was he not, like any other man, in possession of it? if he was, what was become of it? in this particular, the information thus supposed to have been given by omniscience, was rather of the scantiest. supposing the story to have any foundation in truth,--such, to ananias, it could not but have appeared; and, supposing him bold enough to ask questions, or even to open his mouth, a question, in the view of finding a supply for the deficiency, is what the assertion would naturally have for its first result. no such curiosity, however, has ananias: instead of seeking at the hands of omniscience an information, the demand for which was so natural, the first use he makes of his speech, or rather would have made of it, if, instead of being imagined in a vision, the state of things in question had been true, is--the furnishing to omniscience a quantity of information of a sort in no small degree extraordinary. for, hereupon begins a speech, in and by which ananias undertakes to give omniscience to understand, what reports, in relation to this same paul, had reached his (ananias's) ears. what he is willing thus to _speak_ is more, however, than omniscience is willing to _hear:_ the story is cut short, and the story-teller bid to "go his way." "then ananias," says the text, acts ix. 13. "then ananias answered, lord, i have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at jerusalem. and here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name. but the lord said unto him, go thy way; for..." &c. but, though thus cut short, he is far from being in disgrace. so far from it, that he is taken into confidence. then comes--still in a vision, and the same vision--information of the till then secret acts and intentions of omnipotence in relation to this same paul: he had actually been "chosen" as "a vessel to bear the lord's name before the gentiles, and kings, and the children of israel:" and the determination had been taken, says the lord in this vision, "to show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake." "for i will show him," says the acts, ix. 16, "how great things he must suffer for my name's sake." and, with the announcement thus made of this determination, the historical account, thus by the historian in his own person given, of this same vision, closes. thus highly distinguished, and favoured with a confidence, equalling, if not surpassing, any which, according to any of the gospel accounts, appears ever to have been imparted to any one of the apostles, how comes it that ananias has never been put in the number of the _saints?_ meaning always the calendar _saints_--those persons, to wit, who, as a mark of distinction and title of honour, behold their ordinary names preceded by this extraordinary one? still the answer is: aye, but this was but in vision: and of a vision one use is--that of the matter of which all that there is _not_ a use for, is left to be taken for false; all that there _is_ a use for, is taken, and is to pass, for true. when, by the name of ananias, who, humanly speaking, never existed but in name, the service for which it was invented has been performed--to wit, the giving a support to paul and his vision,--it has done all that was wanted of it: there is no, further use for it. supposing that thirdly mentioned vision really seen, at what point of time shall we place the seeing of it? in this too there seems to be no small difficulty. between the moment at which paul is said to have had his vision, if a vision that can be called in which, the time being midday, he saw nothing but a glare of light,--between the moment of this vision, of which a loss of sight was the instantaneous consequence--between the moment of this loss of sight and the moment of the recovery of it, the interval is mentioned: three days it was exactly. acts ix. 9, "and he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink." the time during which, in verse 9, he has just been declared to have been the whole time without sight,--this is the time, within which he is declared--declared, if the historian is to be believed, declared by the lord himself--to have seen this introductory vision--this preparatory vision, for which it is so difficult to find a use. and thus it is, that in a vision, though _vision_ means seeing, it is not necessary a man should have sight. meantime, of all these matters, on which his own existence, not to speak of the salvation of mankind, so absolutely depends, not a syllable is he to know, but through the medium of this so perfectly obscure and questionable personage--this personage so completely unknown to him--this same ananias. three whole days he is kept from doing anything: during these three whole days the business of the miracle stands still. for what purpose is it thus kept at a stand? is it that there might be time sufficient left for his learning to see, when his sight is returned, this preparatory vision, by which so little is done, and for which there is so little use? section 6. visions, why two or three instead of one. as to the matter of fact designated by the words _paul's conversion_, so far as regards _outward_ conversion, the truth of it is out of all dispute:--that he was _converted, i.e._ that after having been a persecutor of the votaries of the new religion, he turned full round, and became a leader. whether the so illustriously victorious effect, had for its cause a supernatural intercourse of paul with jesus after his resurrection and ascension, and thence for its accompaniment an _inward_ conversion--in this lies the matter in dispute. from those, by whom, in its essential particular, the statement is regarded as being true, a natural question may be--if the whole was an invention of his own, to what cause can we refer the other vision, the vision of ananias? to what purpose should he have been at the pains of inventing, remembering, and all along supporting and defending, the vision of the unknown supposed associate? answer.--to the purpose, it should seem, of giving additional breadth to the basis of his pretensions. among that people, in those times, the story of a vision was so common an article,--so difficultly distinguishable from, so easily confounded with, on the one hand the true story of a dream, on the other hand a completely false story of an occurrence, which, had it happened, would have been a supernatural one, but which never did happen,--that a basis, so indeterminate and aã«rial, would seem to have been in danger of not proving strong enough to support the structure designed to be reared upon it. on the supposition of falsity, the case seems to be--that, to distinguish his vision from such as in those days were to be found among every man's stories, as well as in every history,--and which, while believed by some, were disbelieved and scorned by others,--either paul or his historian bethought himself of this contrivance of a _pair_ of visions:--a pair of corresponding visions, each of which should, by reference and acknowledgment, bear witness and give support to the other: a _pair_ of visions: for, for simplicity of conception, it seems good not to speak any further, of the antecedent vision interwoven so curiously in the texture of one of them, after the similitude of the flower termed by some gardeners _hose in hose_. of this piece of machinery, which in the present instance has been seen played off with such brilliant success upon the theological theatre, the glory of the invention may, it is believed, be justly claimed, if not by paul, by his historian. with the exception of one that will be mentioned presently[11], no similar one has, upon inquiry, been found to present itself, in any history, jewish or gentile. the other pair of visions there alluded to, is--that which is also to be found in the acts: one of them ascribed to saint peter, the other to the centurion cornelius. paul, or his historian?--the alternative was but the suggestion of the first moment. to a second glance the claim of the historian presents itself as incontestable. in the case of peter's pair of visions, suppose the story the work of invention, no assignable competitor has the historian for the honour of it: in the case of paul's pair of visions, supposing _that_ the only pair, the invention was at least as likely to have been the work of the historian as of the hero: add to this pair the other pair--that other pair that presents itself in this same work of this same history--all competition is at an end. in the case of even the most fertile genius, copying is an easier task than invention: and, where the original is of a man's own invention, copying is an operation still easier than in the opposite case. that an occurrence thus curious should find so much as a single inventor, is a circumstance not a little extraordinary: but, that two separate wits should jump in concurrence in the production of it, is a supposition that swells the extraordinariness, and with it the improbability, beyond all bounds. section 7. commission to paul by jerusalem rulers--commission to bring in bonds damascus christians--paul's contempt put upon it. per acts, in the historical account, is stated the existence of a commission:--granters, the jerusalem rulers; persons to whom addressed, paul himself at jerusalem; and the synagogues, _i.e._ the rulers of the synagogues, at damascus: object, the bringing in custody, from damascus to jerusalem, all christians found there: all adult christians at any rate, females as well as males; at paul's own _desire_, adds this same historical account (ix. 2.); "for to be punished," adds paul 1st supposed unpremeditated oratorical account, xxii. 5. in the supposed premeditated oratorical account, paul 2nd, the existence of authority and commission granted to him by the chief priests is indeed mentioned, xxvi. 12: but, of the object nothing is said. in the unpremeditated oratorical account, such is the boldness of the historian, nothing will serve him but to make the orator call to witness the constituted authorities--the jerusalem rulers--whoever they were, that were present,--to acknowledge the treachery and the aggravated contempt he had been guilty of towards themselves or their predecessors: towards themselves, if it be in the literal sense that what on this occasion he says is to be understood: "as also the high priest doth bear me witness, and all the estate of the elders, from whom also i received letters," &c., acts xxii. 5. in the premeditated oratorical account, the boldness of the orator is not quite so prominent; he says--it was "with authority and commission from the chief priests" at jerusalem, that he went to damascus; but, for the correctness of this statement of his, he does not now call upon them, or any of them, to bear witness. in respect of the description of the persons, of whom the jerusalem rulers, exercising authority in their behalf, were composed,--the conformity, as between the several accounts, is altogether entire. in the historical account, it is the authority of the high priest, and the high priest alone, that is exercised: in the unpremeditated oratorical account, it is that of the high priest and all the estate of the elders: in the premeditated account, it is that of the chief priests: nothing said either of high priests or elders. neither, in the supposed unpremeditated oratorical account, is it stated--that, at the time and place of the tumult, the rulers thus called to witness, or any of them, were actually on the spot. but, the spot being contiguous to the temple--the temple, out of which paul had been that instant dragged, before there had been time enough for accomplishing the determination that had been formed for killing him,--the distance, between the spot, at which paul with the surrounding multitude was standing, paul being under the momentary protection of the roman commander--between this spot and the spot, whatever it was, at which the question might have been put to them, or some of them, could not be great. on the part of the historian, the boldness, requisite for the ascribing the correspondent boldness to the orator, may be believed without much difficulty. the materials for writing being at hand, there was no more danger in employing them in the writing of these words, than in the writing of an equal number of other words. not so on the part of the orator himself. for, supposing the appeal made, the multitude might have saved themselves the trouble of putting him to death: the constituted authorities whom he was thus invoking--those rulers, against whom, by his own confession, he had committed this treason--would have been ready enough to proceed against him in the regular way, and take the business out of the hands of an unauthorized mob. the truth of the story, and for that purpose the trustworthiness of the historian, being to be defended at any rate,--by some people, all this contradiction, all this mass of self-contradiction, will of course be referred to _artlessness_, or, to take the choice of another eulogistic word, to _simplicity:_ and, of trustworthiness, this amiable quality, whatever may be the name given to it, will be stated as constituting sufficient proof. no such design, as that of deceiving, inhabited, it will be said, his artless bosom: no such design was he capable of harbouring: for, supposing any such wicked design harboured by him, could he have been thus continually off his guard? but--by all this self-contradiction, the quality really proved is--not artlessness, but weakness: and, with the desire of deceiving, no degree of weakness, be it ever so high, is incompatible. by weakness, when risen even to insanity, artfulness is not excluded: and, in the fashioning, from beginning to end, of all this story, art, we see, is by no means deficient, how unhappily soever applied. but the story being such as it is, what matters it, as to the credence due to it, in what state, in respect of probity, was the author's mind? being, as it is, to such a degree untrustworthy and incredible, as that, in so many parts of it, it is impossible it should have been true, the truth of it is impossible: what matters it then, whether it be to the weakness of the moral, or to that of the intellectual, quarter of the author's mind, that the falsity is to be ascribed? not only in the whole does this history, anonymous as it is, present satisfactory marks of _genuineness_,--that is, of being written by the sort of person it professes to be written by, namely, a person who in the course of paul's last excursion was taken into his suite; but in many parts, so does it of _historic verity_. true or not true,--like any other history ancient or modern, it has a claim to be provisionally taken for true, as to every point, in relation to which no adequate reason appears for the contrary: improbability, for example, of the supposed facts as related, contradictoriness to itself, contradictoriness to other more satisfactory evidence, or probable subjection to sinister and mendacity-prompting interest. but, under so much self-contradiction as hath been seen,--whether _bias_ be or be not considered, could any, the most ordinary fact, be regarded as being sufficiently proved? meantime, let not any man make to himself a pretence for rejecting the important position thus offered to his consideration;--let him not, for fear of its being the truth, shut his eyes against that which is presented to him as and for the truth;--let him not shut his eyes, on any such pretence, as that of its being deficient in the quality of _seriousness_. if, indeed, there be any such duty, religious or moral, as that of _seriousness_; and that the stating as absurd that which is really absurd is a violation of that duty;--at that rate, _seriousness_ is a quality, incompatible with the delivery and perception of truth on all subjects, and in particular on this of the most vital importance: seriousness is a disposition to cling to falsehood, and to reject truth. in no part has any ridicule _ab extra_, been employed:--ridicule, by allusion made to another object, and that an irrelevant one.[12] section 8. companions--had paul any upon the road? meantime, if all these miraculous visions and other miracles must needs be supposed,--a cluster of other miracles, though not mentioned, must be supposed along with them: miracles, for the production of which a still greater mass of supernatural force must have been expended. here, their existence being supposed, here were those companions of his, who, unknown in names and number, saw or saw not all or anything that he saw, and heard or heard not all or anything that he heard. these men, at any rate, if so it be that they themselves, blind or not blind, led him, as it is said they did, into the city, because he could not see to guide himself,--must, in some way or other, have perceived that something in no small degree extraordinary had happened to him: so extraordinary, that, in the condition in which he was, and in which, if they saw anything, they saw him to be--no such commission, as that, for the execution of which, if, as well as companions, they were his destined assistants, they were put under his command,--could, in any human probability, receive execution at his hands. if they were apprised of this commission of his, could they, whether with his consent or even without his consent, avoid repairing to the constituted authorities to tell them what had happened? this commission of his, so important in itself, and granted to a man of letters by men of letters, could not but have been in writing: and accordingly, in the form of letters we are, by the historian, expressly informed it was. of the existence of these letters, on the tenor of which their future proceedings as well as his depended,--these conductors of his, if _he_ did not, with or without his consent would of course have given information, to the rulers to whom these same letters were addressed. not being struck dumb, nor having, amongst the orders given by the voice, received any order to keep silence, or so much as to keep secret anything of what little they had heard, they would scarcely, under these circumstances, have maintained either silence or secrecy. the historian, knowing what he (the historian) intended to do with his hero--knowing that, at three days' end, he intended not only to make scales fall from his eyes, but to fill his belly,--might not feel any great anxiety on his account. but paul himself, if he, in the condition he is represented in by the historian,--was, for three days together, with scales on his eyes, and nothing in his stomach: and, at the end of the three days, as ignorant as at the beginning, whether the scales would, at any time, and when, drop off, and his stomach receive a supply: in such a state surely, a man could not but feel a curiosity, not unattended with impatience, to know when and how all this was to end. under these circumstances, by some means or other, would all these tongues have been to be stopped: otherwise, instead of the house of judas in straight-street, paul might have had no other place, to receive his visitor in, than the town jail, or some one other of those strong places, into which visitors do not always find it more easy to gain entrance, than inmates to get out. these tongues then--paul's tongue, his companions' tongues--this assemblage of tongues, all so strongly urged to let themselves loose--by what could they have been stopped? if, by anything, by a correspondent cluster of miracles--nothing less. that, from jerusalem, about the time in question, paul went to damascus,--and that it was with some such letters in his possession,--seems, as will be seen presently, altogether probable;--also, that when there, he acted in the way his historian speaks of, betraying the confidence reposed in him by the constituted authorities, and joining with those whom he had solicited and received a commission to destroy;--that these were among the circumstances of his alleged conversion, seems probable enough:--though he, with all the need he had of miracles, if any were to be had, gives not--in what he himself, writing to his galatian converts, says of his conversion--any of the slightest hint of them. as to his conversion--meaning his _outward_ conversion, which was all that was necessary to the production of the effect so notoriously produced by him--to _that_, it will be seen, no miracle was necessary: nothing but what belonged to the ordinary course of things. as to companions on the journey--whether he had any or not; and if he had any, whether they were attendants on his orders, or acquaintances of his not under his orders; or mere strangers into whose company accident threw him--all this we must satisfy ourselves, as well as we can, under the ignorance of. that, for giving effect, by his means, to the sort of commission he went entrusted with, the power of local authorities was trusted to, is a supposition altogether natural. for bringing to jerusalem "bound, for to be punished (acts ix. 2. xxii. 4), all the christians that could be found in damascus, both men and women," if the damascus rulers were favourable to the persecuting design, no large force from jerusalem could be needful. even a small one would be superfluous: and, by a force, great or small, sent from the one set of constituted authorities, a slight would be shown to the other. section 9. in paul's epistle to his galatians,--by his silence, acts' accounts of his conversion are virtually contradicted. of paul's _outward_ conversion--conversion from the character of an authorized persecutor of the religion of jesus, to that of a preacher of a religion preached in the name of jesus--such, as we have seen, is the account given in the acts; given by the author of the acts, and by him alone. for, what ought never to be out of mind, if instead of two different accounts--declared by him as having been, on different occasions, delivered by paul--he had given two hundred, still they would have been his:--not paul's, but his. all this while, now for little less than 1800 years, from paul's own pen we have an account of this his conversion: and, of any such story as that of its being effected through the instrumentality of visions,--in this account of his, not any the slightest trace is to be found;--not any the slightest allusion to it. at the time of his giving this account--supposing this story of the mode of his conversion true--supposing even that, though false, it had been got up and propagated--at the time of his giving the account which bears such unquestionable marks of being his, was the occasion such as to render it probable, that he could thus have omitted all allusion, to an occurrence at once so extraordinary and so important? if not, then so it is--that, by the silence of paul himself, the story related by his historian is virtually contradicted. the occasion here in view is--that of his writing the so often mentioned, and so often about to be mentioned, epistle to his galatian disciples. at the time of his writing this letter, so we shall have occasion to see over and over again in the tenor of it, he was acting in opposition--declared and violent opposition--to the apostles: struggling with them for the mastery; declaring that to them he was not beholden for anything;--that the gospel he preached was not their gospel, but a gospel of his own, received by him directly from jesus;--declaring, that in jerusalem itself, the seat of their authority, he had preached this gospel of his, which was not theirs; but confessing, at the same time, that when he did so, it was in a secret manner, for fear of the opposition, which he well knew, had they known of it, they could not but have made to it. in this state of contention--supposing any such miracle as that in question wrought in his favour--was it in the nature of the case that he should have failed to avail himself of it?--to avail himself of the account which the truth--the important truth--would have so well warranted him in giving of it? supposing it true, had there at that time been witnesses to it--any percipient witnesses--the supposed ananias--the supposed companions on the road,--would he have failed making his appeal to their testimony? supposing even that there were none such left, the truth of the occurrence--of an occurrence of such momentous importance, would it not have inspired him with boldness, sufficient for the assertion of it, with all that intensity for which the case itself furnished so sufficient a warrant, and which the vehemence of his character would have rendered it so impossible for him to avoid? supposing even the story an utter falsehood, yet, had it been at this time got up and promulgated, could he, if he saw any tolerable prospect of its obtaining credence, have failed to endeavour to avail himself of it? no, surely. yet, in this his address, made to his galatian disciples, and to all such inhabitants of that country, as he could see a prospect of numbering among his disciples--in this address, written under a sense of the necessity he was under, of making for his support against the apostles, the most plausible case his ingenuity could enable him to make,--not any, so much as the slightest, hint of any such miracle, does he venture to give. _revelation! revelation!_--on this single word--on the ideas, which, in the minds with which he had to deal, he hoped to find associated with that word--on this ground, without any other, did he see himself reduced to seek support in his contest with the apostles. revelation? revelation from jesus? from the lord, speaking from heaven? from the almighty? on what occasion, in what place, at what time, in what company, if in any, was it thus received? to no one of these questions does he venture to furnish an answer--or so much as an allusion to an answer. why?--even because he had none to give. he had been a persecutor of the disciples of jesus--this he confesses and declares: he became a preacher in the name of jesus--this he also declares; a preacher in the name of him, of whose disciples--the whole fellowship of them--he had been a persecutor--a blood-thirsty and blood-stained persecutor. his conversion, whatever it amounted to, how came it about? what was the cause, the time, the place, the mode of it; who the percipient witnesses of it? to all these questions, _revelation_; in the single word is contained all the answer, which--in this letter--in this plea of his--he, audacious as he was, could summon up audacity enough to give. why, on so pressing an occasion, this forbearing? why? but that, had he ventured to tell any such story, that story being a false one, there were his opponents--there were the apostles, or men in connection with the apostles--to contradict it--to confute it. had he made reference to any specific, to any individual, portion of place and time, the pretended facts might have found themselves in contradiction with some real and provable facts. but, time as well as place being left thus unparticularized,--he left himself at liberty, on each occasion, if called upon for time or place, to assign what portion of time and place the occasion should point out to him as being most convenient;--best adapted to the purpose of giving lodgment to an appropriate falsity;--and without danger, or with little danger, of exposure. at distinct and different times, _five_ interviews we shall see him have, with the apostles--one or more of them: the first interview being,--according to his own account, as given in this very epistle,--at little if anything more, than three years' distance from the time of his quitting the occupation of persecution. then, says he, it was, gal. i. 17 and 18, that "i went up to jerusalem to see peter, and abode with him fifteen days." in all these days, is it possible, that, if the conversion miracle had really taken place as stated in the acts, with the companions on the road and ananias for witnesses,--he should not have related to peter, and, if not spontaneously, at any rate in answer to such questions as a man in peter's situation could not fail to put, have brought to view, every the minutest circumstance? this then was the time--or at least _one_ time--of his trial, on the question, _revelation or no revelation_. here then, when, with such vehemence, declaring--not his independence merely, but his superiority, in relation to the apostles--and _that_ on no other ground than this alleged revelation, was it, had the judgment in that trial been in his favour--was it possible, that he should have omitted to avail himself of it? yet no such attempt, we see, does he make:--no attempt, to avail himself of the issue of the trial, or of anything that passed on the occasion of it. altogether does he keep clear of any allusion to it: and indeed, if his historian--the author of the acts--is to be believed,--with very good reason: for, whatever it was that, on that occasion, he said, in the acts it is expressly declared that, by the disciples at least, he was utterly disbelieved. acts ix. 26: "he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple. but barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles," &c. why it was, that, after the disciples had thus unanimously declared him and his story unworthy of credit, the apostles gave him notwithstanding a sort of reception;--and that, by no countenance, which they on that occasion gave him, was any ground afforded, for the supposition that any more credence was given to him and his story, by them than by the disciples at large,--will be explained in its place. table ii.--paul disbelieved. table--_showing, at one view, the passages, from which the inference is drawn, that paul's inward conversion was never believed, by any of the apostles, or their disciples._ _explanations._--the interviews here seen are between paul and one or more apostles. number of interviews five,--of visits the same: whereof, by paul to peter, four,--by peter to paul,--one: besides the one supposed fictitious. of the accounts, paul's as far as it goes, is taken for the standard. of paul's epistles the genuineness is out of dispute: acts history is anonymous. paul's evidence is that of an alleged percipient witness. his historian's,--as to these matters, mostly that of a narrator,--narrating--but from hearsay, probably from paul's. interviews, a.d. 35 (i); a.d. 52 (iii). as per paul, gal. a.d. 58. 1. _introduction._ gal. 1:1. "paul, an apostle, not from men, neither through man, but through jesus christ, and god the father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of galatia: grace to you and peace from god the father, and our lord jesus christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of our god and father: to whom be the glory for ever and ever. amen." 2. _independence declared._ gal. 1:6. "i marvel that ye are so quickly removing from him that called you in the grace of christ unto a different gospel; which is not another gospel: only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of christ. but though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema. as we have said before, so say i now again, if any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema. for am i now persuading men, or god? or am i seeking to please men? if i were still pleasing men, i should not be a servant of christ. "for i make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man. for neither did i receive it from man, nor was i taught it, but it came to me through revelation of jesus christ." 3. _conversion spoken of._ ver. 13. "for ye have heard of my manner of life in time past in the jews' religion, how that beyond measure i persecuted the church of god, and made havock of it: and i advanced in the jews' religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. but when it was the good pleasure of god, who separated me, even from my mother's womb and called me through his grace, to reveal his son in me, that i might preach him among the gentiles; immediately i conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went i up to jerusalem to them which were apostles before me: but i went away into arabia; and again i returned unto damascus." 4. _account of interview i._ ver. 18. "then after three years i went up to jerusalem to visit cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days. but other of the apostles saw i none, save james the lord's brother. now touching the things which i write unto you, behold, before god, i lie not. then i came into the regions of syria and cilicia. and i was still unknown by face unto the churches of judea which were in christ: but they only heard say, he that once persecuted us now preacheth the faith of which he once made havock; and they glorified god in me." 5. _account of interview iii. ii._ gal. 2:1. "then after the space of fourteen years i went up again to jerusalem with barnabas, taking titus also with me. and i went up by revelation; and i laid before them the gospel which i preach among the gentiles, but privately before them who were of repute, lest by any means i should be running, or had run, in vain. but not even titus who was with me, being a greek, was compelled to be circumcised: and that because of the false brethren privily brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in christ jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: to whom we gave place in the way of subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you. but from those who were reputed to be somewhat (whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: god accepteth not man's person)--they, i say, who were of repute imparted nothing to me: but contrariwise, when they say that i had been intrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision, even as peter with the gospel of the circumcision, for he that wrought for peter unto the apostleship of the circumcision wrought for me also unto the gentiles." 6. _partition treaty._ ver. 9. "and when they perceived the grace that was given unto me, james and cephas and john, they who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the gentiles, and they unto the circumcision; only they would that we should remember the poor; which very thing i was also zealous to do." 7. _jealousy, notwithstanding._ ver. 11. "but when cephas (peter) came to antioch, i resisted him to the face, because he stood condemned. for before that certain came from james, he did eat with the gentiles: but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing them that were of the circumcision. and the rest of the jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that even barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation. but when i saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, i said unto cephas before them all, if thou, being a jew, livest as do the gentiles, and not as do the jews, how compellest thou the gentiles to live as do the jews? we being jews by nature, and not sinners of the gentiles, yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, save through faith in jesus christ, even we believed on christ jesus, that we might be justified by faith in christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. but if, while we sought to be justified in christ, we ourselves also were found sinners, is christ a minister of sin? god forbid. for if i build up again those things which i destroyed, i prove myself a transgressor. for i through the law died unto the law, that i might live unto god. i have been crucified with christ; yet i live; and yet no longer i, but christ liveth in me: and that life which i now live in the flesh i live in faith, the faith which is in the son of god, who loved me, and gave himself up for me. i do not make void the grace of god: for if righteousness is through the law, then christ died for nought." interview i. a.d. 35. _paul's jerusalem visit i._ reconciliation visit. (_departure from damascus._) acts 9:23-30. "and when many days were fulfilled, the jews took counsel together to kill him: but their plot became known to saul. and they watched the gates also day and night that they might kill him: but his disciples took him by night, and let him down through the wall, lowering him in a basket." (_arrival at jerusalem--results._) ver. 26. "and when he was come to jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: and they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. but barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how at damascus he had preached boldly in the name of jesus. and he was with them going in and going out at jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the lord." (_departure--cause._) ver. 29. "and he spake and disputed against the grecian jews; but they went about to kill him. and when the brethren knew it, they brought him down to cã¦sarea, and sent him forth to tarsus." interview i. a.d. 35. _departure--cause._ in paul's first account. acts 22:17-21. "and it came to pass, that, when i had returned to jerusalem, and while i prayed in the temple, i fell into a trance, and saw him saying unto me, make haste, and get thee quickly out of jerusalem: because they will not receive of thee testimony concerning me. and i said, lord, they themselves know that i imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them that believed on thee: and when the blood of stephen thy witness was shed, i also was standing by, and consenting, and keeping the garments of them that slew him. and he said unto me, depart: for i will send thee forth far hence unto the gentiles." interview ii. a.d. 43. _paul's jerusalem visit ii._ money-bringing visit. acts 11:22-30. "and the report concerning them came to the ears of the church which was in jerusalem: and then sent forth barnabas as far as antioch: who, when he was come, and had seen the grace of god, was glad; and he exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the lord: for he was a good man, and full of the holy ghost and of faith: and much people was added unto the lord. and he went forth to tarsus to seek for saul: and when he had found him, he brought him unto antioch. and it came to pass, that even for a whole year they were gathered together with the church, and taught much people; and that the disciples were called christians first in antioch. "now in these days there came down prophets from jerusalem unto antioch. and there stood up one of them named agabus, and signified by the spirit that there should be a great famine over all the world: which came to pass in the days of claudius. and the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren that dwelt in judea: which also they did, sending it to the elders by the hand of barnabas and saul." interview iii. a.d. 52. _paul's jerusalem visit iii._ deputation visit. as per acts xv. 1-21. acts 25:1-23. "and certain men came down from judea and taught the brethren, saying, except ye be circumcised after the custom of moses, ye cannot be saved. and when paul and barnabas had no small dissension and questioning with them, the brethren appointed that paul and barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question. they therefore, being brought on their way by the church, passed through both phoenicia and samaria, declaring the conversion of the gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren. and when they were come to jerusalem, they were received of the church and the apostles and the elders, and they rehearsed all things that god had done with them. but there arose up certain of the sect of the pharisees who believed, saying, it is needful to circumcise them, and to charge them to keep the law of moses. "and the apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider of this matter. and when there had been much questioning peter rose up, and said unto them, "brethren, ye know how that a good while ago god made choice among you, that by my mouth the gentiles should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. and god, which knoweth the heart, bare them witness, giving them the holy ghost, even as he did unto us; and he made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. now therefore why tempt ye god, that ye should put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? but we believe that we shall be saved through the grace of the lord jesus, in like manner as they. "and all the multitude kept silence; and they hearkened unto barnabas and paul rehearsing what signs and wonders god had wrought among the gentiles by them. and after they had held their peace, james answered, saying, "brethren, hearken unto me: symeon hath rehearsed how first god did visit the gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. and to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, "after these things i will return, and i will build again the tabernacle of david, which is fallen; and i will build again the ruins thereof, and i will set it up: that the residue of men may seek after the lord, and all the gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the lord, who maketh these things known from the beginning of the world. "wherefore my judgment is, that we trouble not them which from among the gentiles turn to god; but that we write unto them, that they abstain from the pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from what is strangled, and from blood. for moses from generations of old hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath." interview iv. a.d. 52. _peter's visit to antioch._ acts 15:22-33. "then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to chose men out of their company, and send them to antioch with paul and barnabas; namely, judas called barsabbas, and silas, chief men among the brethren: and they wrote thus by them, the apostles and the elder brethren unto the brethren which are of the gentiles in antioch and syria and cilicia, greeting: forasmuch as we have heard that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls; to whom we gave no commandment; it seemed good unto us, having come to one accord, to choose out men and send them unto you with our beloved barnabas and paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our lord jesus christ. we have sent therefore judas and silas, who themselves also shall tell you the same things by word of mouth. for it seemed good to the holy ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which if ye keep yourselves, it shall be well with you. fare ye well. "so they, when they were dismissed, came down to antioch; and having gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle. and when they had read it, they rejoiced for the consolation. and judas and silas, being themselves also prophets, exhorted the brethren with many words, and confirmed them. and after they had spent some time there, they were dismissed in peace from the brethren unto those that had sent them forth." interview a.d. 52. _paul's visit._ as per acts xviii. 19-23. (_supposed fictitious._) "and they came to ephesus, and he left them there: but he himself entered into the synagogue, and reasoned with the jews. and when they asked him to abide a longer time, he consented not; but taking his leave of them and saying, i will return again unto you, if god will, he set sail from ephesus. and when he had landed at cã¦sarea, he went up and saluted the church, and went down to antioch. and having spent some time there, he departed, and went through the region of galatia and phrygia in order, stablishing all the disciples." interview v. a.d. 60. _paul's jerusalem visit iv._ invasion visit. (_visit proposed. a.d._ 56.) acts 19:20-21. "now after these things were ended, paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through macedonia and achaia, to go to jerusalem, saying, after i have been there, i must also see rome. and having sent into macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, timothy and erastus, he himself stayed in asia for a while." (_visit again proposed. a.d._ 60.) acts 20:16. "for paul had determined to sail past ephesus, that he might not have to spend time in asia; for he was hastening, if it were possible for him, to be at jerusalem the day of pentecost. "and from miletus he went to ephesus, and called to him the elders of the church. and when they were come to him, he said unto them, "ye yourselves know, from the first day that i set foot in asia, after that manner i was with you all the time, serving the lord with all lowliness of mind, and with tears, and with trials which befell me by the lots of the jews: how that i shrank not from declaring unto you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly, and from house to house, testifying both to jews and to greeks repentance toward god, and faith toward our lord jesus christ. and now, behold, i go bound in the spirit unto jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there: save that the holy ghost testifieth unto me in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. but i hold not my life of any account, as dear unto myself, so that i may accomplish my course, and the ministry which i received from the lord jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of god. and now, behold, i know that ye all, among whom i went about preaching the kingdom, shall see my face no more." acts 21:7-9. "and when we had finished the voyage from tyre, we arrived at ptolemais; and we saluted the brethren, and abode with them one day. and on the morrow we departed, and came unto cã¦sarea: and entering into the house of philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, we abode with him. now this man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy." (_visit opposed. a.d._ 60.) ver. 10. "and as we tarried there many days, there came down from judea a certain prophet, named agabus. (see acts xi. 27.) "and coming to us, and taking paul's girdle, he bound his own feet and hands, and said, thus saith the holy ghost, so shall the jews at jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the gentiles. and when we heard these things, both we and they of that place besought him not to go up to jerusalem. then paul answered, what do ye, weeping and breaking my heart? for i am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at jerusalem for the name of the lord jesus. and when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, the will of the lord be done." interview v. a.d. 60. _paul's jerusalem visit iv._ invasion visit--results. _arrival._ acts 21:15-36. "and after these days we took up our baggage, and went up to jerusalem. and there went with us also certain of the disciples from cã¦sarea, bringing with them one mnason of cyprus, an early disciple, with whom we should lodge. "and when we were come to jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly." _test, proposed for riddance._ "and the day following paul went in with us unto james; and all the elders were present. and when he had saluted them, he rehearsed one by one the things which god had wrought among the gentiles by his ministry. and they, when they heard it, glorified god; and they said unto him, thou seest, brother, how many thousands there are among the jews of them which have believed; and they are all zealous for the law: and they have been informed concerning thee, that thou teachest all the jews which are among the gentiles to forsake moses, telling them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs. what is it therefore? they will certainly hear that thou art come. do therefore this that we say to thee: we have four men which have a vow on them; these take, and purify thyself with them, and be at charges for them, that they may shave their heads: and all shall know that there is no truth in the things whereof they have been informed concerning thee; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, keeping the law. but as touching the gentiles which have believed, we wrote, giving judgment that they should keep themselves from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what is strangled, and from fornication." _the test swallowed._ "then paul took the men, and the next day purifying himself with them went into the temple, declaring the fulfilment of the days of purification, until the offering was offered for every one of them." _indignation universal._ "and when the seven days were almost completed, the jews from asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the multitude, and laid hands on him, crying out, men of israel, help: this is the man, that teacheth all men everywhere against the people, and the law, and this place: and moreover he brought greeks also into the temple, and hath defiled this holy place. for they had before seen with him in the city trophimus the ephesian, whom they supposed that paul had brought into the temple. and all the city was moved, and the people ran together: and they laid hold on paul, and dragged him out of the temple: and straightway the doors were shut. and as they were seeking to kill him, tidings came up to the chief captain of the band, that all jerusalem was in confusion. and forthwith he took soldiers and centurions, and ran down upon them: and they, when they saw the chief captain and the soldiers, left off beating paul. then the chief captain came near, and laid hold on him, and commanded him to be bound with two chains; and inquired who he was, and what he had done. and some shouted one thing, some another, among the crowd: and when he could not know the certainty for the uproar, he commanded him to be brought into the castle. and when he came upon the stairs, so it was, that he was borne of the soldiers for the violence of the crowd; for the multitude of the people followed after, crying out, away with him." footnotes: [1] of the word _conversion_, as employed everywhere and in all times in speaking of paul, commonly called saint paul, the import has been found involved in such a cloud, as, on pain of perpetual misconception, it has been found necessary, here at the outset, to clear away. that, from being an ardent and destructive persecutor of the disciples of the departed jesus, he became their collaborator, and in _that_ sense their ally,--preaching, in speech, and by writing, a religion under the name of the religion of jesus, assuming even the appellation of an _apostle_ of jesus,--_apostle_, that is to say, special envoy--(that being the title by which the twelve most confidential servants of jesus stood distinguished), is altogether out of dispute. that in this sense he became a _convert_ to the religion of jesus, and that in this sense his alleged conversion was real, is accordingly in this work not only admitted, but affirmed. few points of ancient history seem more satisfactorily attested. in this sense then he was converted beyond dispute. call this then his _outward conversion_; and say, paul's _outward conversion_ is indubitable. but, that this conversion had for its cause, or consequence, any supernatural intercourse with the almighty, or any belief in the supernatural character of jesus himself; this is the position, the erroneousness of which has, in the eyes of the author, been rendered more and more assured, the more closely the circumstances of the case have been looked into. that, in speech and even in action, he was in outward appearance a convert to the religion of jesus; this is what is admitted: that, inwardly, he was a convert to the religion of jesus, believing jesus to be god, or authorized by any supernatural commission from god; this is the position, the negative of which it is the object of the present work to render as evident to the reader, as a close examination has rendered it to the author. the consequence, the practical consequence, follows of itself. in the way of doctrine, whatsoever, being in the epistles of paul is not in any one of the gospels, belongs to paul, and paul alone, and forms no part of the religion of jesus. this is what it seemed necessary to state at the opening; and to this, in the character of a conclusion, the argument will be seen all along to tend. [2] see ch. 15. paul's supposable miracles explained. [3] in regard to the matter testified, that is, in regard to the object of the testimony; it is, first of all, a requisite condition, that what is reported to be true should be possible, both absolutely, or as an object of the elaborative faculty, and relatively, or as an object of the presentative faculties,--perception, external or internal. a thing is possible absolutely, or in itself, when it can be construed to thought, that is, when it is not inconsistent with the logical laws of thinking; a thing is relatively possible as an object of perception, external or internal, when it can affect sense or self-consciousness, and, through such affection, determine its apprehension by one or other of these faculties. a testimony is, therefore, to be unconditionally rejected, if the fact which it reports be either in itself impossible, or impossible as an object of the representative faculties. but the impossibility of a thing, as an object of these faculties, must be decided either upon physical, or upon metaphysical, principles. a thing is physically impossible as an object of sense, when the existence itself, or its perception by us, is, by the laws of the material world impossible.--hamilton's logic 460.--ed. [4] "_light_,--great _light_."--it will be noticed that this "light" is presented first objectively as a phenomenon, a thing, but what is "light"? the universal answer is "that force in nature which, acting on the retina of the eye produces the sensation we call vision." this vision is the total of the subjective effect of that agency of nature, the subjective realization through the functions of the cerebellum. but functions are accomplished through agencies called organs. the retina is one of these organs. through the operations of these organs and cerebellum subjective apprehension is produced as an effect, but in some cases of very forcible apprehensions they are interpreted as a diseased condition of the organs of sense. ideas sometimes acquire unusual vividness and permanence and are, therefore, peculiarly liable to be mistaken for their objective prototypes and hence specters, spectral allusions which are very common in cases of emotional excitement. further, it will be noticed all the time that the reporter, luke, wrote what paul, or some other person or rumor had previously communicated to him. now luke, was accustomed to pen these wonders, these superhuman chimerical prodigies. take the example of the trial of stephen, acts 7. after the charges of the complainants, ib. 6-9, "libertines" and others had been heard by the high priest, he inquired of stephen personally as to the verity of the charges, and luke reports his responses, and then to make sure of portraying fully the emotional conditions of the witnesses and the spectators, he reports, v. 54. "when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart and they grabed on him with their teeth; but he, stephen, being full of the holy ghost looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of god and jesus standing at the right hand of god, and said, behold i see the heavens opened, and the son of man standing on the right hand of god. then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet whose name was saul." this saul, now paul, must have acted as overseer or umpire. paul, is by chronologers reckoned to have been about 12 years of age; but it will be seen that luke, the narrator, is just such a superserviceable witness as wholly impairs his credibility. he says first, stephen was in fact filled with the holy ghost, saw the glory of god, for he evidently was gloriable, and jesus standing on the right hand of god; and that in addition thereto he states that stephen, said he saw the same wonders--with the addition that the heavens were opened, &c. if he had been cross-examined and asked whether little paul, did not behold all these wonders, he no doubt would have answered in the affirmative and volunteered the statement, that they all saw these wonders, the high priest, the accusers, by-standers, and human canines that gnashed their teeth upon stephen. consult any author on psychology on the subject of emotions, exstatic illusions, &c. but in the assembly inquisitors of stephen, paul and others before the high priests, what special law or cannons were they accused of violating? answer, one cannon is quite conspicuous, to wit:--ex. 22:28. "thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of the people." when the inquisitor the high priest found the accused guilty, he was delivered over to the witnesses for execution. the detectives enjoyed the luxury of doing the stoning. if christ's limitation had been in use, to wit:--that none but the guiltless should throw stones, the accusing sleuths might have been less zealous.--ed. [5] historiographer is used purposely by the author to denote a specialist for the occasion. [6] "goad" is the word used in the douay testament and in the late revisions of the protestants. [7] cor. 15:8--"as unto one born out of due time, he appeared unto me also." [8] another question that here presents itself is--how could it have happened that, jerusalem being under one government, and damascus under another (if so the case was), the will of the local rulers at jerusalem found obedience, as it were of course, at the hands of the adequate authorities at damascus? to the question how this _actually_ happened, it were too much to undertake to give an answer. for an answer to the question how it may be _conceived_ to have happened, reference may be made to existing english practice. the warrant issued by the constituted authorities in jerusalem expected to find, and found accordingly in damascus, an adequate authority disposed to back it. in whatsoever gentile countries jews, in a number sufficient to compose a synagogue, established themselves, a habit naturally enough took place, as of course, among them--the habit of paying obedience, to a considerable extent, to the functionaries who were regarded as rulers of the synagogue. few are or have been the conquered countries, in which some share of subordinate power has not been left, as well to the natives of the conquered nation as to any independent foreigners, to whom, in numbers sufficient to constitute a sort of corporate body, it happened from time to time to have become settlers. after all, what must be confessed is--that, in all this there seems nothing but what might readily enough have been conceived, without its having been thus expressed. [9] it is well known that this dogma of original sin--a disease that the human family enjoys by sad inheritance, christ treated with negligible indifference. he dealt with the problems of man in a social state, as socially conditioned only. a human being conditioned as isolated from neighbors, friends and society, he did not as he scientifically could not deal with, he discoursed upon social duties, however sublimely, n.b. acts 18:15, "but if thy brother shall offend against thee, go and rebuke him between thee and him alone, if he shall hear thee thou hast gained thy brother. but if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. and if he shall neglect to hear them then tell it unto the church. and if he neglect to hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican, amen i say unto you, whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven." now without quibbling about the translation this scheme of social arbitration contains the ultimate of justice, it contains the only working hypothesis within any social condition of mankind. there is no such thing as justice in the abstract or concrete, it is like heat and electricity, a mere mode of motion, a form of action. and when a controversy between citizens is fairly submitted to the judgment of normal men the voice of their consciousness, being the ultimate organ of nature's creator, must be "binding" so far as man is concerned socially. and as there does not appear to the natural man any appeal to heaven, the arbitrament of man in the special case carries the seal of the eternities and forecloses all further controversy. the speech of the honorable consciousness of man is the voice of the creator of his personality.--ed. [10] since what is in the text was written, maturer thoughts have suggested an interpretation, by which, if received, the sad inferences presented by the doctrine, that misdeeds, and consequent suffering that have had place, could by a dip into a piece of water be caused never to have happened, may be repelled. according to this interpretation, the act of being baptized--the bodily act--is one thing; an act of washing away the sins--the spiritual act--another. the effect produced is--not the causing the misdeeds and sufferings never to have had place, but the causing them to be compensated for, by acts productive of enjoyment, or of saving in the article of sufferings, to an equal or greater amount. [11] see ch. xvii. â§. v. 4. peter's and cornelius's visions. [12] see bentham's _church of englandism examined_. chapter ii. _outward conversion--how produced--how planned._ section 1. motive, temporal advantage--plan. how flourishing the state of the church had at this period become, will be seen more fully in another place. long before this period,--numbers of converts, in jerusalem alone, above three thousand. the aggregate, of the property belonging to the individuals, had been formed into one common fund: the management--too great a burden for the united labours of the eleven apostles, with their new associate mathias--had, under the name so inappositely represented at present by the english word _deacon_, been committed to seven trustees; one of whom, stephen, had, at the instance of paul, been made to pay, with his life, for the imprudence, with which he had, in the most public manner, indulged himself, in blaspheming the idol of the jews--their temple.[13] of that flourishing condition, paul, under his original name of saul, had all along been a witness. while carrying on against it that persecution, in which, if not the original instigator, he had been a most active instrument, persecuting, if he himself, in what he is made to say, in acts xxii. 4, is to be believed,--"persecuting unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women;"--while thus occupied, he could not in the course of such his disastrous employment, have failed to obtain a considerable insight into the state of their worldly affairs. samaria--the field of the exploits and renown of the great sorcerer simon, distinguished in those times by the name of _magus_--samaria, the near neighbour and constant rival, not to say enemy, of jerusalem;--is not more than about five and forty miles distant from it. to paul's alert and busy mind,--the offer, made by the sorcerer, to purchase of the apostles a share in the government of the church, could not have been a secret. at the hands of those rulers of the christian church, this offer had not found acceptance. shares in the direction of their affairs were not, like those in the government of the british empire in these our days, objects of sale. the nine rulers would not come into any such bargain; their disciples were not as cattle in their eyes: by those disciples themselves no such bargain would have been endured; they were not as cattle in their own eyes. but, though the bargain proposed by the sorcerer did not take place, this evidence, which the offer of it so clearly affords,--this evidence, of the value of a situation of that sort in a commercial point of view, could not naturally either have remained a secret to paul, or failed to engage his attention, and present to his avidity and ambition a ground of speculation--an inviting field of enterprise. from the time when he took that leading part, in the condemnation and execution, of the too flamingly zealous manager, of the temporal concerns of the associated disciples of that disastrous orator, by whom the preaching and spiritual functions might, with so much happier an issue, have been left in the hands of the apostles--from that time, down to that in which we find him, with letters in his pocket, from the rulers of the jews in their own country, to the rulers of the same nation under the government of the neighbouring state of damascus, he continued, according to the acts ix. 1; "yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the lord." of these letters, the object was--the employing the influence of the authorities from which they came, viz. the high priest and the elders, to the purpose of engaging those to whom they were addressed, to enable him to bring in bonds, to jerusalem from damascus, all such converts to the religion of jesus, as should have been found in the place last mentioned. in his own person the author of the acts informs us--that, by saul, letters to this effect were _desired_[14]. in a subsequent chapter, in the person of paul, viz. in the speech, to the multitude by whom he had been dragged out of the temple, in the design of putting him to death, he informs us they were actually _obtained_[15]. it was in the course of this his journey, and with these letters in his pocket, that, in and by the vision seen by him while on the road--at that time and not earlier--his conversion was, according to his own account of the matter, effected. that which is thought to have been already proved, let it, at least for argument's sake, be affirmed. let us say accordingly--this vision-story was a mere fable. on this supposition, then, what will be to be said of those same letters?--of the views in which they were obtained?--of the use which was eventually made of them?--of the purpose to which they were applied? for all these questions one solution may serve. from what is known beyond dispute--on the one hand, of his former way of life and connections--on the other hand, of his subsequent proceeding--an answer, of the satisfactoriness of which the reader will have to judge, may, without much expense of thought, be collected. if, in reality, no such vision was perceived by him, no circumstance remains manifest whereby the change which so manifestly and notoriously took place in his plan of life, came to be referred to _that_ point in the field of time--in preference to any antecedent one. supposing, then, the time of the change to have been antecedent to the commencement of that journey of his to damascus--antecedent to the time of the application, in compliance with which his letter from the ruling powers at jerusalem the object of which was to place at his disposal the lot of the christians at damascus, was obtained;--this supposed, what, in the endeavour to obtain this letter, was his object? manifestly to place in his power these same christians: to place them in his power, and thereby to obtain from them whatsoever assistance was regarded by him as necessary for the ulterior prosecution of his schemes, as above indicated. on this supposition, in the event of their giving him that assistance, which, in the shape of money and other necessary shapes, he required--on this supposition, he made known to them his determination, not only to spare their persons, but to join with them in their religion; and, by taking the lead in it among the heathen, to whom he was, in several respects, so much better qualified for communicating it than any of the apostles or their adherents, to promote it to the utmost of his power. an offer of this nature--was it in the nature of things that it should be refused? whatsoever was most dear to them--their own personal security, and the sacred interests of the new religion, the zeal of which was yet flaming in their bosoms, concurred in pressing it upon their acceptance. with the assistance thus obtained, the plan was--to become a declared convert to the religion of jesus, for the purpose of setting himself at the head of it; and, by means of the expertness he had acquired in the use of the greek language, to preach, in the name of jesus, that sort of religion, by the preaching of which, an empire over the minds of his converts, and, by that means, the power and opulence to which he aspired, might, with the fairest prospect of success, be aimed at. but, towards the accomplishment of this design, what presented itself as a necessary step, was--the entering into a sort of _treaty_, and forming at least in appearance, a sort of junction, with the leaders of the new religion and their adherents--the apostles and the rest of the disciples. as for _them_, in acceding to this proposal, on the supposition of anything like sincerity and consistency on his part, _they_ would naturally see much to gain and nothing to lose: much indeed to gain; no less than peace and security, instead of that persecution, by which, with the exception of the apostles themselves, to all of whom experience seems, without exception, to have imparted the gift of prudence, the whole fraternity had so lately been driven from their homes, and scattered abroad in various directions. with the christians at damascus, that projected junction was actually effected by him: but, in this state of things, to return to jerusalem was not, at that time, to be thought of. in the eyes of the ruling powers, he would have been a trust-breaker--a traitor to their cause: in the eyes of the christians, he would have been a murderer, with the blood of the innocent still reeking on his hands: no one would he have found so much as to lend an ear to his story, much less to endure it. in damascus, after making his agreement with his new brethren, there remained little for him to do. much had he to inform himself of concerning jesus. damascus--where jesus had already so many followers--damascus was a place for him to _learn_ in: not to _teach_ in:--at any rate, at that time. arabia, a promising field of enterprise--arabia, a virgin soil, opened to his view. there he would find none to abhor his person--none to contradict his assertions: there his eloquence--and, under the direction of his judgment, his invention--would find free scope: in that country the reproach of inconsistency could not attach upon him: in that foreign land he beheld his place of quarantine--his school of probation--the scene of his novitiate. by a few years employed in the exercise of his new calling--with that spirit and activity which would accompany him of course in every occupation to which he could betake himself--he would initiate himself in, and familiarize himself with, the connected exercises of preaching and spiritual rule. at the end of that period, whatsoever might be his success in that country, such a portion of time, passed in innocence, would at any rate allay enmity: such a portion of time, manifestly passed, in the endeavour at any rate to render service to the common cause, might even establish confidence. at the end of that time, he might, nor altogether without hope of success, present himself to the rulers of the church, in the metropolis of their spiritual empire: "behold, he might say, in me no longer a persecutor, but a friend. the persecutor has long vanished: he has given place to the friend. too true it is, that i was so once your persecutor. years spent in unison with you--years spent in the service of the common cause--have proved me. you see before you, a tried man--an ally of tried fidelity: present me as such to your disciples: take me into your councils: all my talent, all my faculties, shall be yours. the land of israel will continue, as it has been, the field of _your_ holy labours; the land of the gentiles shall be mine: we will carry on our operations in concert; innumerable are the ways in which each of us will derive from the other--information, assistance, and support." to arabia he accordingly repaired: so, in his epistle to the galatians, gal. i. 17, he himself informs us: in that little-known country, he continued three whole years--so also, in the same place, he informs us. there it was, that he experienced that success, whatever it was, that went to constitute the ground, of the recommendation given of him by barnabas to the apostles. from thence he returned to damascus: and, in that city, presenting himself in his regenerated character, and having realized by his subsequent conduct the expectations raised by his promises at the outset of his career[16]; he planned, and as will be seen, executed his expedition to jerusalem: the expedition, the object of which has just been brought to view. "then," says paul himself, "i went up to jerusalem to see peter, and abode with him fifteen days." gal. 1:18. there, says the author of the acts, acts 9:27, 28, "barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles ... and he was with them coming in and going out of jerusalem." section 2. at damascus, no such ananias probably. this same ananias--of whom so much has been seen in the last chapter--paul's own imagination excepted, had he anywhere any existence? the probability seems to be on the negative side: and, in the next section, as to whether paul's companions on the road are not in a similar predicament, the reader will have to judge. but let us begin with ananias. at damascus, at any rate--with such power in his hands, for securing obsequiousness at the hands of those to whom he was addressing himself--with such power in his hands, paul could not have had much need of anything in the shape of a vision:--he could not have had any need of any such person as the seer of the correspondent vision--ananias. for the purpose of aiding the operation of those considerations of worldly prudence, which these powers of his enabled him to present, to those whom it concerned,--there might be some perhaps, who, for yielding to those considerations, and thus putting themselves under the command of this formidable potentate, might look for an authority from the lord jesus. but, forasmuch as, in this very case, even at this time of day, visions, _two_ in name, but, in respect of probative force, reducible to _one_--are so generally received as conclusive evidence,--no wonder if, at that time of day, by persons so circumstanced, that _one_ vision should be received in that same character. at damascus, therefore, on his first arrival, there could not be any occasion for any such corroborating story as the story of the vision of ananias. at damascus--unless he had already obtained, and instructed as his confederate, a man of that name--no such story could, with any prospect of success, have been circulated: for the purpose of learning the particulars of an occurrence of such high importance, the residence of this ananias would have been inquired after: and, by supposition, no satisfactory answer being capable of being given to any such inquiries,--no such story could be ventured to be told. such was the case, at that place and at that time. as to any such evidence, as that afforded by the _principal_ vision, viz. paul's own,--perhaps no such evidence was found necessary: but, if it _was_ found necessary, nothing could be easier than the furnishing it. as to the _secondary_ vision, viz. that ascribed afterwards to a man of the name of ananias,--at that time scarcely could there have been any need of it--any demand for it; and, had there been any such demand, scarcely, unless previously provided, could any such correspondent supply have been afforded. in other places and posterior times alone, could this supplemental vision, therefore, have been put into circulation: accordingly, not till a great many years after, was mention made of it by the author of the acts:--mention made by him, either in his own person, or as having been related, or alluded to, by paul himself. even the author of the acts,--though in this same chapter he has been relating the story of ananias's vision,--yet, when he comes to speak, of the way, in which, according to him, paul, by means of his protector and benefactor barnabas, obtained an introduction to the apostles, viz. all the apostles, in which, however, he is so pointedly contradicted by paul himself,--yet speaks not of barnabas, as including, in the recommendatory account he gave them, of paul--his vision, and his merits--any mention of this supplemental vision:--any mention of any ananias. acts 9:27. at damascus, howsoever it might be in regard to the christians--neither to jews, nor to gentiles, could the production, of any such letters as those in question, have availed him anything. such as had embraced christianity excepted, neither over gentiles nor over jews did those letters give him any power: and, as to jews, the character in which--after any declaration made of his conversion--he would have presented himself, would have been no better than that of an apostate, and betrayer of a highly important public trust. to men of both these descriptions, a plea of some sort or other, such as, if believed, would be capable of accounting for so extraordinary a step, as that he should change, from the condition of a most cruel and inveterate persecutor of the new religion, to that of a most zealous supporter and leader,--could not, therefore, but be altogether necessary. no sooner was he arrived at damascus, than, if the author of the acts is to be believed, he began pleading, with all his energy, the cause of that religion, which, almost to that moment, he had with so much cruelty opposed. as to the story of his vision,--what is certain is--that, sooner or later, for the purpose of rendering to men of all descriptions a reason for a change so preã«minently extraordinary, he employed this story. but, forasmuch as of no other account of it, as given by him, is any trace to be found;--nor can any reason be found, why that which was certainly employed afterwards might not as well be employed at and from the first;--hence comes the probability, that from the first it accordingly was employed. section 3. on damascus journey--companions none. in the preceding chapter, a question was started, but no determinate answer as yet found for it: this is--what became of the men, who--according to all the accounts given by paul, or from him, of his conversion vision--were his _companions_ in the journey? at damascus, if any such men there were, they would in course arrive as well as he, and at the same time with him. this circumstance considered, if any such men there were,--and they were not in confederacy with him,--the imposition must have been put upon _them_: and, for that purpose, he must, in their presence, have uttered the sort of discourse, and exhibited the sort of deportment, mentioned in the above accounts. to this difficulty, however, a very simple solution presents itself. _he had no such companions._ neither by name, nor so much as by any the most general description,--either of the persons, or of the total number,--is any designation to be found anywhere:--not in the account given in the acts; not in any account, given by himself, in any epistle of his; or, as from himself, in any part of the acts. in the company of divers others, a man was struck down, he says, or it is said of him, by a supernatural light: and, at the instant, and on the spot, has a conversation with somebody. instead of saying who these _other_ men are, the credit of the whole story is left to rest on the credit of this _one_ man:--the credit, of a story, the natural improbability of which, stood so much need of collateral evidence, to render it credible. not till many years had elapsed, after this journey of his were these accounts, any one of them, made public: and, in relation to these pretended companions--supposing him interrogated at any time posterior to the publication of the account in the acts,--after the lapse of such a number of years, he could, without much difficulty, especially his situation and personal character considered, hold himself at full liberty, to remember or to forget, as much or as little, as on each occasion he should find convenient. section 4. flight from damascus: causes--false--true. acts ix. 19-25. and when he had received meat he was strengthened. then was saul certain days with the disciples which were at damascus.--and straightway he preached christ in the synagogues, that he is the son of god.--but all that heard him were amazed, and said: is not this he that destroyeth them which called on his name in jerusalem; and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests?--but saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the jews which dwelt at damascus, proving that this is very christ.--and after that many days were fulfilled, the jews took counsel to kill him.--but their laying await was known of saul. and they watched the gates day and night to kill him.--then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket. the conception, which it was the evident design of this passage to impress upon the mind of the reader, is--that, as soon almost as he was arrived at damascus, paul not only went about preaching jesus, but preaching to that effect openly, and without reserve, in all the synagogues: and that it was for this preaching, and nothing else, that "the jews," thus undiscriminating is the appellation, purposely it should seem, employed, "went about to kill him:" that thereupon it was, that he made his escape over the wall, and having so done, repaired immediately to jerusalem. in this conception, there seems to be evidently a mixture of truth and falsehood. that he addressed himself, in a greater or less number, to the disciples,--must assuredly have been true: to the accomplishment of his designs, as above explained, intercourse with them could not but be altogether necessary. that, when any probable hope of favourable attention and secrecy were pointed out to him--that, in here and there an instance, he ventured so far as to address himself to this or that individual, who was not as yet enlisted in the number of disciples,--may also have been true: and, for this purpose, he might have ventured perhaps to show himself in some comparatively obscure synagogue or synagogues. but, as to his venturing himself so far as to preach in all synagogues without distinction,--or in any synagogue frequented by any of the constituted authorities,--this seems altogether incredible. to engage them to seek his life; to lie in wait to kill him; in other words, to apprehend him for the purpose of trying him, and probably at the upshot killing him,--this is no more than, considering what, in their eyes, he had been guilty of, was a thing of course: a measure, called for--not, for preaching the religion of jesus; not, for any boldness in any other way displayed; but, for the betraying of the trust, reposed in him by the constituted authorities at jerusalem: thus protecting and cherishing those malefactors, for such they had been pronounced by authority, for the apprehending and punishing of whom, he had solicited the commission he thereupon betrayed. independently of all other offence, given by preaching or anything else,--in this there was that, which, under any government whatever, would have amply sufficed--would even more than sufficed--to draw down, upon the head of the offender, a most exemplary punishment. in this view, note well the description, given in the acts, of the persons, by whose enmity he was driven out of damascus; compare with it what, in relation to this same point, is declared--most explicitly declared--by paul himself. by the account in the acts, they were the persons to whom he had been preaching jesus; and who, by that preaching, had been confounded and provoked. among those persons, a conspiracy was formed for murdering him; and it was to save him from this conspiracy that the disciples let him down the wall in a basket. such is the colour, put upon the matter by the author of the acts. now, what is the truth--the manifest and necessary truth, as related--explicitly related--by paul himself? related, in the second of his letters to his corinthians, on an occasion when the truth would be more to his purpose than the false gloss put upon it by his adherents as above? the peril, by which he was driven thus to make his escape, was--not a murderous conspiracy, formed against him by a set of individuals provoked by his preaching;--it was the intention, formed by the governor of the city. intention? to do what? to put him to death against law? no; but to "_apprehend_" him. to apprehend him? for what? evidently for the purpose of bringing him to justice in the regular way--whatsoever was the regular way--for the offence he had so recently committed: committed, by betraying his trust, and entering into a confederacy with the offenders, whom he had been commissioned, and had engaged, to occupy himself, in concert with the constituted authorities of the place, in bringing to justice. "in damascus," says he, 2 cor. xi. 32, 33, "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 i let down by the wall, and escaped his hands." and on what _occasion_ is it, that this account of the matter is given by him? it is at the close of a declamation, which occupies ten verses--a declamation, the object of which is--to impress upon the minds of his adherents the idea of his merits: viz. those which consisted in labour, suffering, and perils: merits, on which he places his title to the preference he claims above the competitors to whom he alludes:--alludes, though without naming them: they being, as he acknowledges therein, ministers of christ, and probably enough, if not any of them apostles, persons commissioned by the apostles. greater, it is evident, must have been the danger from the ruling powers of the place, than from a set of individual intended murderers:--from the power of the rulers there could not be so much as a hope of salvation, except by escape: from the individuals there would be a naturally sufficient means of salvation; the power of the rulers presenting a means of salvation, and that naturally a sufficient one. note here, by the by, one of the many exemplifications, of that confusion which reigns throughout in paul's discourses: the result, of that mixture, which, in unascertainable proportions, seems to have had place--that mixture of nature and artifice. it is at the end of a long list of labours, sufferings, and perils, that this anecdote presents itself. was it accordingly at the end of them that the fact itself had taken place?--no: it was _at_ the very commencement: or rather, so far as concerned preaching, _before_ the commencement. only in the way of allusion--allusion in general terms--in terms of merely general description, without mention of _time_ or _place_, or persons concerned,--are any of the other sufferings or perils mentioned: in this instance alone, is any mention made under any one of those heads: and here we see it under two of them, viz. _place_ and _person_: and moreover, by other circumstances, the _time_, viz. the _relative_ time, is pretty effectually fixed. immediately afterwards, this same indisputably false colouring will be seen laid on, when the account comes to be given, of his departure for jerusalem: always for preaching jesus is he sought after, never for anything else. according to this representation, here are two governments--two municipal governments--one of them, at the solicitation of a functionary of its own, giving him a commission to negotiate with another, for the purpose of obtaining, at his hands, an authority, for apprehending a set of men, who, in the eyes of both, were guilty of an offence against both. instead of pursuing his commission, and using his endeavours to obtain the desired cooperation, he betrays the trust reposed in him:--he not only suffers the alleged malefactors to remain unapprehended and untouched, but enters into a confederacy with them. to both governments, this conduct of his is, according to him, matter of such entire indifference, that he might have presented himself everywhere, as if nothing had happened, had it not been for his preaching:--had it not been for his standing forth _openly_, to preach to all that would hear him, the very religion which he had been commissioned to extinguish. in such a state of things, is there anything that can, by any supposition, be reconciled to the nature of man, in any situation,--or to any form of government? three years having been passed by him in that to him strange country, what, during all that time, were his means of subsistence? to this question an unquestionable answer will be afforded by the known nature of his situation. he was bred to a trade, indeed a handicraft trade--tent-making: an art, in which the operations of the architect and the upholsterer are combined. but, it was not to practise either that, or any other manual operation, that he paid his visit to that country. when he really did practise it, he took care that this condescension of his should not remain a secret: from that, as from everything else he ever did or suffered, or pretended to have done or suffered, he failed not to extract the matter of glory for himself, as well as edification for his readers. in arabia, his means of subsistence were not then derived from his trade: if they had been, we should have known it:--from what source then were they derived?[17] by the very nature of his situation, this question has been already answered:--from the purses of those, whom, having had it in his power, and even in his commission, to destroy, he had saved. and now, as to all those things, which, from the relinquishment of his labours in the field of persecution to the first of his four recorded visits to jerusalem, he is known to have done, answers have been furnished:--answers, to the several questions _why_ and by what _means_, such as, upon the supposition that the supernatural mode of his conversion was but a fable, it will not, it is hoped, be easy to find cause for objecting to as insufficient. section 5. arabia-visit--mentioned by paul, not acts. not altogether without special reason, seems the veil of obscurity to have been cast over this long interval. in design, rather than accident, or heedlessness, or want of information,--may be found, it should seem, the cause, of a silence so pregnant with misrepresentation. in addition to a length of time, more or less considerable, spent in damascus, a city in close communication with jerusalem, in giving proofs of his conversion,--three years spent in some part or other of the contiguous indeed, but wide-extending, country of arabia--(spent, if paul is to be believed, in preaching the religion of jesus, and at any rate in a state of peace and innoxiousness with relation to it)--afforded such proof of a change of plan and sentiment, as, in the case of many a man, might, without miracle or wonder, have sufficed to form a basis for the projected alliance:--this proof, even of itself; much more, when corroborated, by the sort of certificate, given to the church by its preeminent benefactor barnabas, who, in introducing the new convert, to the leaders among the apostles, for the special purpose of proposing the alliance,--took upon himself the personal responsibility, so inseparably involved in such a mark of confidence. in this state of things then, which is expressly asserted by paul to have been, and appears indubitably to have been, a real one,--considerations of an ordinary nature being sufficient--to produce--not only the effect actually produced--but, in the case of many a man, much more than the effect actually produced,--there was no demand, at that time, for a miracle: no demand for a miracle, for any such purpose, as that of working, upon the minds of the apostles, to any such effect as that of their maintaining, towards the new convert, a conduct free from hostility, accompanied with a countenance of outward amity. but, for other purposes, and in the course of his intercourse with persons of other descriptions, it became necessary for him to have had these visions: it became necessary--not only for the purpose of proving connection on his part with the departed jesus, to the satisfaction of all those by whom such proof would be looked for,--but, for the further purpose, of ascribing to jesus, whatsoever doctrines the prosecution of his design might from time to time call upon him to promulgate;--those doctrines, in a word, which, (as will be seen), being his and not jesus's--not reported by anyone else as being jesus's--we shall find him, notwithstanding, preaching, and delivering,--so much at his ease, and with unhesitating assurance. a miracle having therefore been deemed necessary (the miracle of the conversion-vision), and reported accordingly,--thus it is, that, by the appearance of suddenness, given to the sort and degree of confidence thereupon reported as having been bestowed upon him by the apostles, a sort of confirmation is, in the acts account, given to the report of the miracle: according to this account, it was not by the three or four years passed by him in the prosecution of their designs, or at least without obstruction given to them;--it was not by any such proof of amity, that the intercourse, such as it was, had been effected:--no: it was by the report of the vision--that report which, in the first instance, was made to them by their generous benefactor and powerful supporter, barnabas; confirmed, as, to every candid eye it could not fail to be, by whatever accounts were, on the occasion of the personal intercourse, delivered from his own lips. "but barnabas (says the author) took him and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had _seen_ the lord by the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at damascus in the name of jesus." acts 9:27. when in the year 57, paul,[18] to so many other boastings, was added the sufferings he would have us think were courted and endured by him, while preaching in the name of jesus, that gospel, which he proclaims to have been his own, and not that of the apostles, little assuredly did he think, that five years after, or thereabout, from the hand of one of his own attendants, a narrative was to appear, in which, of these same sufferings a so much shorter list would be given; or that, by an odd enough coincidence, more than seventeen centuries after, by a namesake of his honored patron, doctor gamaliel, the contradiction thus given to him, would be held up to view. in the second of his epistles to his corinthians, dated a.d. 57,--the following is the summary he gives of those same sufferings. speaking of certain unnamed persons, styled by him false apostles, but whom reasons are not wanting for believing to have been among the disciples of the real ones,--"are they," says he, 2 cor. xi. 23, "ministers of christ? i speak as one beside himself, i am more: in labours more abundant: in _stripes_ above measure: in prisons more frequent: in deaths, oft.--of the jews five times received i forty stripes, save one.--thrice was i beaten with rods; once was i stoned: thrice i suffered shipwreck: a night and a day have i been in the deep." thus far as per _paul_. add from his former epistle to the same in the same year, battle with beasts, one. "if, after the manner of men, i have fought with beasts at ephesus, what advantageth it me," continues he, 1 cor. xv. 32, "if the dead rise not, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." let us now see how the account stands, as per _acts_. on the part of this his panegyrist, whether any such habit had place as that of cutting down below their real amount, either the sufferings or the actings of his hero, the reader will have judged. of both together, let it not be forgotten, the acts' account comes some five years lower, than the date of the above tragical list: in it are included those sufferings and perils which we have seen, namely, those produced by the voyage to rome, and which, at the time of paul's list, had not taken their commencement. now then for the acts' list. stripes, nine-and-thirty in a parcel, none: difference five. beatings with rods, saving one possible one, of which presently, none; difference, three. stoning, one[19]. shipwreck, as yet none: the accident at malta being three years subsequent. "night and day in the deep,"--according as it was _on_ or _in_ the deep--either nothing at all, or an adventure considerably too singular to have been passed over. _diving-bells_ are not commonly supposed to have been, at that time of day, in use; but whoever has a taste for predictions, may, if it be agreeable to him, see those same scientific instruments or the equivalent in this gospel of paul's predicted. as to the parcels of stripes, the self-constituted apostle takes credit for, they would have been,--supposing them administered,--administered, all of them, according to law, meaning always the law of _moses_: for, it is in that law, (namely in deuteronomy xxv. 3) that the clause, limiting to nine-and-thirty, the number to be given at a time, is to be found. of these statements of paul's, let it not pass unnoticed, the place is--a formal and studied epistle, not an extempore speech: so that the falsehood in them, if any, was not less deliberate than the temple perjury. of all these same boasted bodily sufferings, eight in the whole, when put together,--one was, at the outset, reserved for consideration: let us see what light, if any, is cast upon it by the acts. one beating, the acts informs us of: and it was a beating by order of magistrates: and accordingly, a beating according to law. but the law, according to which it was given, was not jewish law: the magistrates, by whose order it was given, were not jewish magistrates. the magistrates were heathens: and it was for being jews, and preaching in the jewish style, that paul, and his companion silas, were thus visited. it was at philippi that the affair happened: it was immediately preceded by their adventure with the divineress, as per acts 16:16; 34, chap. 13: and brought about by the resentment of her masters, to whose established business, the innovation, introduced by these interlopers, had given disturbance: it was followed--immediately followed--by the earthquake, which was so dexterous in taking irons off. whether therefore this beating was in paul's account comprised in the eight stripings and beatings, seems not possible, humanly speaking, to know: not possible, unless so it be, that paul, being the wandering jew, we have sometimes heard of, is still alive,--still upon the look-out, for that aã«rial voyage, which, with or without the expectation of an aã«rostatic vehicle, we have seen him so confident in the assurance of. remains the battle with the beasts. what these same beasts were, how many there were of them,--how many legs they respectively had--for example, two or four--in what way he was introduced into their company,--whence his difference with them took its rise,--whether it was of his own seeking, or by invitation that he entered the lists with these his antagonists,--how it fared with _them_ when the affair was over,--(for as to the hero himself, it does not appear that he was much the worse for it);--these, amongst other questions, might be worth answering, upon the supposition, that these antagonists of his were real beings and real beasts, and not of the same class as the arch-beast of his own begetting--antichrist. but, the plain truth seems to be, that if ever he fought with beasts, it was in one of his visions: in which case, for proof of the occurrence, no visible mark of laceration could reasonably be demanded. meantime, to prove the negative, as far as, in a case such as this, it is in the nature of a negative to be proved,--we may, without much fear of the result, venture to call his ever-devoted scribe. to this same ephesus,--not more than a twelvemonth or thereabouts, before the date of the epistle--he brings his patron,--finds appropriate employment for him,--and, off and on, keeps him there for no inconsiderable length of time. there it is, that we have seen, chap. 13, â§. 7., his handkerchiefs driving out devils as well as diseases: there it is, and for no other reason than that _he_ is there--there it is, that we have seen so many thousand pounds worth of magical books burnt--and by their owners: there it is, that with a single handkerchief of his,--which so it were but used, was an overmatch for we know not how many devils,--we saw a single devil, with no other hands than those of the man he lodged in, wounding and stripping to the skin no fewer than seven men at the same time. if, then, with or without a whole skin at the conclusion of it, he had really had any such rencounter, with one knows not how many beasts, is it in the nature of the case, that this same historiographer of his, should have kept us ignorant of it? to be shut up with wild beasts, until torn to pieces by them, was indeed one of the punishments, for which men were indebted to the ingenuity of the roman lawyers: but, if any such sentence was really executed upon our self-constituted apostle, his surviving it was a miracle too brilliant not to have been placed at the head of all his other miracles: at any rate, too extraordinary to have been passed by altogether without notice. the biographer of daniel was not thus negligent. after all, was it really matter of pure invention--this same battle? or may it not, like so many of the quasi-miracles in the acts, have had a more or less substantial foundation in fact? the case may it not have been--that, while he was at ephesus, somebody or other set a dog at him, as men will sometimes do at a troublesome beggar? or that, whether with hand or tongue, some person, male or female, set upon him with a degree of vivacity, which, according to paul's zoology, elucidated by paul's eloquence, entitled him or her to a place in the order of beasts?--where darkness is thus visible, no light can be so faint, as not to bring with it some title to indulgence. of the accounts, given us by the historiographer, of the exploits and experiences of his hero while at ephesus, one article more will complete the list. when any such opportunity offered, as that of presenting him to view, in his here assumed character, of a candidate for the honours of martyrdom,--was it or was it not in the character of the historiographer to let it pass unimproved? to our judgment on this question, some further maturity may be given, by one more law-case, now to be brought to view. under some such name as that of the _ephesian diana_, not unfrequent are the allusions to it. _church of diana silversmiths versus paul and co._ is a name, by which, in an english law report, it might with more strict propriety be designated. plaintiffs, silversmiths' company just named: defendants, paul and co.; to wit, said paul, alexander, aristarchus, alexander and others. acts, 22:41. action on the case for words:--the words, in tenor not reported: purport, importing injury in the way of trade. out of the principal cause, we shall see growing a sort of cross cause: a case of assault, in which three of the defendants were, or might have been, plaintiffs: cause of action, assault, terminating in false imprisonment. in this exercetitious cause, defendants not individually specified: for, in those early days, note-taking had not arrived at the pitch of perfection, at which we see it at present. that which,--with reference to the question--as to the truth of the beast-fighting story,--is more particularly material in the two cases taken together,--is this: in the situation, in which these junior partners of paul found themselves, there was some difficulty, not to say some danger. pressed, as he himself was afterwards, in his invasion of jerusalem,--pressed in more senses than one, _they_ found themselves by an accusing multitude. what on this occasion does paul? he slips his neck out of the collar. so far from lending them a hand for their support, he will not so much as lend them a syllable of his eloquence. why? because forsooth, says his historiographer, acts xix. 30, 31, "the disciples suffered him not:" _item_, v. 30, "certain" others of "his friends." when, as we have seen him, spite of everything that could be said to him, he repaired to jerusalem on his _invasion visit_,--he was not quite so perfectly under the government of his friends. on the present occasion, we shall find him sufficiently tractable. was this a man to be an antagonist and overmatch for wild beasts? now as to the above-mentioned principal case. plaintiffs, dealers in silver goods: defendants, dealers in words. to be rivals in trade, it is not necessary that men should deal exactly in the same articles:--the sale of the words injured the sale of the goods: so at least the plaintiffs took upon them to aver: for, in such a case, suspicion is not apt to lie asleep. the church of diana was the established church, of that place and time. to the honour, the plaintiffs added the profit, of being silversmiths to that same excellent church. to the value of that sort of evidence, which it is the province of silversmiths to furnish, no established church was ever insensible. the evidence, furnished by the church silversmiths of these days, is composed of _chalices_: under the pagan dispensation, the evidence furnished by the church silversmiths of the church of the ephesian diana, was composed of _shrines_. when, with that resurrection of his own, and that gospel of his own, of which so copious a sample remains to us in his epistles,--paul, with or without the name of jesus in his mouth, made his appearance in the market, plaintiffs, as we have seen, took the alarm. they proceeded, as the pious sons of an established church could not fail to proceed. before action commenced, to prepare the way for a suitable judgment,--they set to work, and set on fire the inflammable part of the public mind. the church was declared to be in danger, ver. 27: the church of diana, just as the church of england and ireland would be, should any such sacrilegious proposition be seriously made, as that of tearing out of her bosom any of those precious sinecures, of which her vitals are composed. in ephesus, it is not stated, that, at that time, any society bearing the name of the _vice society_, or the _constitutional association_, was on foot. but, of those pious institutions the equivalent could not be wanting. accordingly, the charge of _blasphemy_, it may be seen, ver. 37, was not left unemployed. so the defence shows: the defence, to wit, made by the probity and wisdom of the judge: for, by the violence of the church mob,--who, but for him, were prepared to have given a precedent, to that which set birmingham in flames,--the defendants were placed in the condition of prisoners: and the judge, seeing the violence, of the prejudice they had to encounter, felt the necessity, of adding to the function of judge, that of counsel for the prisoners. but it is time to turn to the text: not a particle of it can be spared. acts xix. 22-41. 22. so he sent into macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, timotheus and erastus; but he himself stayed in asia for a season.--and the same time, there arose no small stir about that way;--for a certain man named demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen;--whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth.--moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at ephesus, but almost throughout all asia, this paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying, that they be no gods, which are made with hands:--so that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all asia and the world worshippeth.--and when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, great is diana of the ephesians.--and the whole city was filled with confusion: and having caught gaius and aristarchus, men of macedonia, paul's companions in travel, they rushed with one accord into the theatre.--and when paul would have entered in, unto the people, the disciples suffered him not.--and certain of the chief of asia, which were his friends, sent unto him, desiring him that he would not adventure himself into the theatre.--some, therefore, cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly was confused; and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together.--and they drew alexander out of the multitude, the jews putting him forward. and alexander beckoned with the hand, and would have made his defence unto the people;--but when they knew he was a jew, all with one voice, about the space of two hours, cried out, great is diana of the ephesians.--and when the town clerk had appeased the people, he said, ye men of ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess diana, and of the image which fell down from jupiter?--seeing then that these things cannot be spoken against, ye ought to be quiet, and to do nothing rashly.--for ye have brought hither these men, which are neither robbers of churches, nor yet blasphemers of your goddess.--wherefore, if demetrius, and the craftsmen which are with him, have a matter against any man, the law is open, and there are deputies: let them implead one another.--but if ye inquire anything concerning other matters, it shall be determined in a lawful assembly.--for we are in danger to be called in question for this day's uproar, there being no cause whereby we may give an account of this concourse.--and when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly. the _judge_ by whom the principal cause was tried, and the plaintiffs non-suited, is styled, we see "_the town clerk_:" the more appropriate and respected title would not on this occasion have been ill-applied to him. except what we have here been seeing, we know nothing of him that is _positive_: but, seeing thus much of him, we see that he was an honest man: and an honest man is not ill portrayed by negatives. he had no coronet playing before his eyes: no overpaid places and sinecures for relatives. he had not been made judge, for publishing a liturgy of the church of diana, with an embroidery composed of his own comments,--or for circulating, with anonymous delicacy, a pious warning, never to be absent from the shrine of diana, when the sacred cup was, proffered by the hands of holy priests. accordingly, when the charge of _blasphemy_ was brought before him,--being a heathen, he found no difficulty in treating it, in that gentle and soothing mode, in which, when, from the bosom of an established church it enters into a man, the spirit, which calls itself the spirit of christianity, renders him so averse to the treating it. if, when his robes were off, he spoke of diana what we now think of her,--he did not, when they were on, foam or rave, declare--that all, who would not swear to their belief in her, were not fit to be believed, or so much as fit to live. by him, one man was not robbed of his rights, because another man, when called upon as a witness, refused to perjure himself. by him, a man was not refused to be heard as a witness, nor refused protection for the fruits of his industry, nor deprived of the guardianship of his children, because he waited to see diana, before he declared himself a believer in her existence. in the open theatre was pronounced the judgment we have seen. he did not, by secret sittings, deprive men of the protection of the public eye. he did not, we may stand assured--for we see how far the people of ephesus were from being tame enough to endure it--he did not keep men's property in his hands, to be plundered by himself, his children, or his creatures, till the property was absorbed, and the proprietors sent broken-hearted to their graves. he did not--for the people of ephesus would not have endured it--wring out of distress a princely income, on pretence of giving decisions, declaring all the while his matchless incapacity for everything but prating or raising doubts. he did not display,--he could not have displayed--the people of ephesus could not have endured it--any such effrontery, as, when a judicatory was to sit upon his conduct, to set himself down in it, and assume and carry on the management of it. he would not have sought impunity--for if he had sought it in ephesus, he would not have found it there--he would not have sought impunity, in eyes lifted up to heaven, or streaming with crocodile tears. thus much as to his negative merits. but, we have seen enough of him, to see one great positive one. when, from the inexhaustible source of inflammation, a flame was kindled,--he did not fan the flame,--he quenched it. the religion of diana having thus come upon the carpet, a reflection which could not be put by, is--spite of all efforts of the church silversmiths, in how many essential points, negative as they are, the religion of diana had, on the ground of usefulness, the advantage of that, which _is_ the religion of paul, and _is called_ the religion of jesus. diana drove no men out of their senses, by pictures or preachments of never-ending torments. on pretence of saving men from future sufferings, no men were consigned by it to present ones. no mischievous, no pain-producing, no real vice, was promoted by it. it compelled no perjury, no hypocrisy: it rewarded none. it committed, it supported, it blessed, it lauded, no depredation, no oppression in any shape: it plundered no man of the fruits of his industry, under the name of _tithes_. for the enrichment of the sacred shrines,--money, in any quantity, we may venture to say, received: received, yes: but in no quantity extorted. one temple was sufficient for _that_ goddess. believing, or not believing in her divinity,--no men were compelled to pay money, for more temples, more priests, or more shrines. _as to the religion of jesus, true it is, that so long as it continued the religion of jesus, all was good government, all was equality, all was harmony: free church, the whole; established church, none: monarchy, none; constitution, democratical. constitutive authority, the whole community: legislative, the apostles of jesus_; executive, the commissioners of the treasury: not lords commissioners, appointed by a king herod, but trustees or _stewards_; for such should have been the word, and not _deacons_,--_agents elected by universal suffrage_. in this felicitous state, how long it continued--we know not. what we do know, is--that, _in the fourth century_, _despotism_ took possession of it, and made an instrument of it. becoming _established_, it became noxious,--preponderantly noxious. for, where _established_ is the adjunct to it, what does _religion_ mean? what but _depredation_, corruption, oppression, hypocrisy? _depredation_, _corruption_, _oppression_, _hypocrisy_--these four: with delusion, in all its forms and trappings, for support. so pregnant is this same boasting passage--1 cor. xv. 32, the labour it has thrown upon us, is not altogether at an end. by what it says of the resurrection, the memory has been led back, to what we have seen on the same subject, in one of paul's epistles to his thessalonians: brought together, the two doctrines present a contrast too curious to be left unnoticed. of the apparatus employed by him in his trade of _disciple-catcher_, his talk about the resurrection, was, it may well be imagined, a capital article. being, according to his own motto, _all things to all men_, 1 cor. ix. 22, whatever it happened to him to say on the subject, was dished up, of course, according to the taste of those he had to deal with. to some it was a _prediction_: for such, we have seen, was the form it assumed when the people to be wrought upon were the thessalonians. to others, when occasion called, it was a statement concerning something _past_, or supposed to be past. on an occasion of this sort it was, that the name of jesus, another article of that same apparatus, was of so much use to him. true it is, that to the doctrine of the _general_ resurrection in time future, he had, it must be remembered, no need of declaring himself beholden to jesus: at least, if on this point, the acts' history is to be believed: for, of the pharisees,--the sect to which paul belonged--of the pharisees, as compared with the other sect the sadducees, it was the distinctive tenet. but, of the then future, the then past, as exemplified in the _particular_ case of jesus, could not but afford very impressive circumstantial evidence. of this momentous occurrence, there were the real apostles, ready to give their accounts,--conformable, it may be presumed, to those we see given, as from them, by the four evangelists. these accounts, however, would not suit the purpose of the self-constituted apostle: in the first place, because they came from the real apostles, with whom, as we have so often seen, it was a declared principle with him not to have had anything to do: in the next place, because the apostles were too scrupulous: they would not have furnished him with witnesses enough. his own inexhaustible fund--his own invention,--was therefore the fund, on this occasion, drawn upon: and, accordingly, instead of the number of witnesses,--say _a score_ or two at the utmost--he could have got from the apostles,--it supplied him with _five hundred_: five hundred, _all at once_: to which, if pressed, he could have added any other number of percipient witnesses whatsoever, provided only that it was at _different_ times they had been such. so much for explanation: now for the announced contrast. whoever the people were, whom he had to address himself to,--they had contracted, he found, a bad habit: it was that of _eating and drinking_. reason is but too apt to be seduced by, and enlisted in the service of her most dangerous enemy--_appetite_. not only did they eat and drink; but they had found, as it seemed to them, _reason_ for so doing. they ate and drank--why? because they were to die after it. "let us eat and drink," said the language we have seen him reproaching them with, 1 cor. xv. 32. "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." the case is--that, in pleasure, in whatever shape they see her,--all men, to whose ambition supernatural terrors supply an instrument of dominion, behold their most formidable rival. against such a rival, wonderful indeed it would be, if their hostility were not proportionable. no morality accordingly do they acknowledge, that does not include, with or without other things, hatred,--with or without contempt, of pleasure. such, too, as is their morality, such is their law. death is scarce severe enough, for a pleasure, which they either have, or would be thought to have, no relish for. so at least says what they teach: but, teaching how to act is one thing; acting accordingly, another. thus we all see it is, in so many instances: and thus, without much danger of injustice, we may venture to suppose it may have been, in that of the self-constituted apostle. not so jesus: no harm did he see in eating and drinking, unless with the pleasure it produced greater pain. with this reserve, no harm,--for anything that appears in any one of the four histories we have of him,--no harm did he see in anything that gives pleasure. what every man knows--and what jesus knew as well as any man--for neither in words nor in acts did he deny it--is,--that happiness, at what time soever experienced,--happiness, to be anything, must be composed of pleasures: and, be the man who he may, of what it is that gives pleasure to him, he alone can be judge. but, to return to eating and drinking. eating and drinking--he gives his men to understand--even he, holy as he is, should not have had any objection to, had it not been for this same resurrection of his, which he was telling them of: eating and drinking--a practice, to which, notwithstanding this resurrection of his, and so much as he had told them of it, he had the mortification to find them so much addicted. so much for his _corinthians_. it was, as we see, _for want_ of their paying, to what he was thus telling them about the resurrection, that attention, to which it was so well entitled,--that _they_ still kept on in that bad habit. but his _thessalonians_--they too, as we have seen, had got the same bad habit. well: and what was it that gave it them? what but their paying too much attention to this same resurrection of his, dished up in the same or another manner, by the same inventive and experienced hand. in conclusion, on laying the two cases together, what seems evident enough is--that, in whatever manner served up to them, his resurrection, whatever it was, was considerably more effectual in making people eat and drink, than in weaning them from it. section 6. gamaliel--had he part in paul's plan? gamaliel--in the working of this conversion, may it not be that gamaliel--a person whose reality seems little exposed to doubt--had rather a more considerable share, than the above-mentioned unknown and unknowable ananias? gamaliel was "a doctor of law" acts 5:34--a person of sufficient note, to have been a member of the council, in which the chief priests, under the presidency of the high priest, acts 5:24, took cognizance of the offence with which peter and his associates had a little before this been charged, on the occasion of their preaching jesus. under this gamaliel, had paul, he so at least is made to tell us, studied, acts 22:3. between paul and this gamaliel, here then is a connection: a connection--of that sort, which, in all places, at all times, has existence,--and of which the nature is everywhere and at all times so well understood--the connection between _protegã©_ and protector. it was by authority from the governing body, that paul was, at this time, lavishing his exertions in the persecution of the apostles and their adherents:--who then so likely, as this same gamaliel, to have been the patron, at whose recommendation the commission was obtained? of the cognizance which this gamaliel took, of the conduct and mode of life of the religionists in question,--the result was favourable. "let them alone," were his words. acts v. 38. the maintenance, derived by the _protegã©_, on that same occasion, from the persecution of these innoxious men--this maintenance being at once odious, dangerous, and precarious,--while the maintenance, derivable from the taking a part in the direction of their affairs, presented to view a promise of being at once respectable, lucrative, and permanent;--what more natural then, that this change, from left to right, had for its origin the advice of this same patron?--advice, to which, all things considered, the epithet _good_ could not very easily be refused. false pretences employed. to the self-constituted apostle, false pretences were familiar. they were not--they could not have been--without an object. one object was power: this object, when pursued, is of itself abundantly sufficient to call forth such means. but, another object with paul was money: of its being so, the passages referred to as above, will afford abundant proofs. a man, in whose composition the appetite for money, and the habit of using false pretences are conjoined, will be still more likely to apply them to that productive purpose, than to any barren one. in the character of a general argument, the observations thus submitted, are not, it should seem, much exposed to controversy. but, of a particular instance, of money obtained by him on a false pretence,--namely, by the pretence of its being for the use of others, when his intention was to convert it to his own use,--a mass of evidence we have, which presents itself as being in no slight degree probative. it is composed of two several declarations of his own,--with, as above referred to, the explanation of it, afforded by a body of circumstantial evidence, which has already been under review: and as, in the nature of the case, from an evil-doer of this sort, evidence to a fact of this sort, cannot reasonably be expected to be frequently observable,--the labour, employed in bringing it here to view, will not, it is presumed, be chargeable, with being employed altogether without fruit. first, let us see a passage, in the first of his epistles to his _corinthians_, date of it, a.d. 57. in this, we shall see a regularly formed system of money-gathering: an extensive application of it to various and mutually distant countries, with indication given of particular times and places, in which it was his intention to pursue it: also, intimation, of a special charitable purpose, to which it was his professed intention to make application of the produce of it, at a place specified: namely, jerusalem. first then comes, 1 cor. 16:1-8. a.d. 57. "now concerning the collection for the saints, as i have given order to the churches of _galatia_, even so do _ye_.--upon the _first day of the week_, let every one of you _lay by him in store_, as god hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when i come.--and when i come, whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will i send to bring your liberality unto _jerusalem_.--and if it be meet that i go also, they shall go with me.--now i will come unto you when i shall pass through macedonia; for i do pass through _macedonia_.--and it may be that i will abide, yea and winter with you, that ye may bring me on my journey whithersoever i go.--for i will not see you now by the way: but i trust to tarry a while with _you_ if the lord permit.--but i will tarry at _ephesus_ until pentecost." at ephesus, where he becomes an object of jealousy, as we have seen, to the church-silversmiths; and, from his declared business at those _other_ places, some evidence surely is afforded of what was his probable business in _that_ place. next let us see a passage in his epistle to his _romans_: date of it, a.d. 58. here, in two instances, we shall see the success, with which this system was pursued by him: as also a maxim, laid down by him--a maxim, in which the existence of this same system, on his part, is acknowledged: a maxim, in which his hopes of success in the pursuit of it, are declaredly founded. rom. 15:24-28. a.d. 58. "whensoever i take my journey into _spain_, i will come to you; for i trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first i be somewhat filled with your company.--but now i go unto _jerusalem, to minister unto the saints_.--for it hath pleased them of _macedonia_ and _achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at jerusalem_.--it hath pleased them verily: and their debtors they are. for if the gentiles have been made _partakers of their spiritual things_, their _duty_ is also _to minister unto them in carnal things_.--when therefore i have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, i will come _by you_ into _spain_." in the instance in question, money (we see)--of the quantity of course nothing said--is mentioned by him, as being actually in his hands: the purpose, for which it was there,--and to which he would of course be understood to intend applying it,--being also mentioned by him:--applying it, at jerusalem, to the use of the poor saints. so much for _professed_ intentions. now then for _real_ ones. answer, in his own words: that those gentiles, who by him had been made partakers of his spiritual things, might, as in "_duty_" bound, "minister" to him, so much the more effectively "in carnal things:" that he, who preached, what he called the gospel, might, as he had been preaching to his corinthians also (1 cor. ix. 14) be enabled so much the more comfortably to "live by" it. "the poor saints which are at jerusalem:"--_the_ poor saints--to wit, not here and there a saint or two, but the whole christian population living together on a common stock--if now, a.d. 58, they were living, as a.d. 53 they were (acts ii. 44; vi. 1) and, in this particular, from the beginning to the end of the history, no change is mentioned--in jerusalem--was it in the nature of man, in that state of men and things,--was it in the nature of men and things, that any man, who had any knowledge of their situation, and of the terms on which paul, from first to last, had been with them, could for a moment have thought of lodging, for _their_ use, any the smallest sum of money in _his_ hands? as well might it be said, at this moment--a man, whose wish it was to convey money to spain, for the use of the cortes, would choose the hand of the duc d'angouleme to send it by. all this time, _there_ were the apostles of jesus--patrons of those same saints: and, anywhere more easily than _there_, could he be. that, with this money in his hands, among his objects was--the employing more or less of it in the endeavour to form a party there, may not unreasonably be supposed, from what we have seen of that _invasion visit_, by which his designs upon jerusalem were endeavoured to be carried into effect. for, according to acts 19:21, already when he was at ephesus, as above, was it his known design, to try his fortune once more in jerusalem, and after that in rome. this may have been among his designs, or not. be this as it may, this would have been no more than a particular way, of converting the money to his own use. not that, if at this time, and for _this purpose_ from even the quarters in question, money had come, as he says it had, there was anything very wonderful in its so doing. as to _us_ indeed _we_ know pretty well what sort of terms he was on, from first to last, with the community in question: _we_ know this, because his historiographer has made us know it. but, as to the people of those same countries respectively,--at their distance from jerusalem, what, in their situation, might easily enough happen was,--not to have, as to this point, any adequate information till it was too late to profit by it: and, that such would be their ignorance, is a matter, of which he might not less easily have that which, to a man of his daring and sanguine temper, would be a sufficient assurance. one thing there is, which, on the occasion of any view they took of this subject, may perhaps have contributed to blind their eyes. this is--the fact, of his having actually been concerned, in bringing money to jerusalem, for a similar purpose, though it must be confessed, not less than fourteen years before this: to wit, from antioch, as stated in chapter v., speaking of _that_--his second jerusalem visit, by the name of the _money-bringing visit_. but,--what may easily enough have happened, distance in time and place, together considered, is--that to those particulars, which composed no more than the surface of the business, _their_ knowledge was confined: while _we_, though at the distance of more than seventeen centuries, know more or less of the inside of it,--let into it, as we have been, by the author of the acts. as to their arriving sooner or later, at the suspicion, or though it were the discovery, that the money had not, any part of it, reached the hands it was intended for, nor was in any way to do so,--what bar could the apprehension of any such result oppose, to the enterprise, systematic, as we see it was, of the creator of antichrist? when, to a man, who occupies a certain situation in the eye of the political world, calls for accounts are become troublesome,--scipio might have informed him, if he had not well enough known of himself, how to answer them. when a charge made upon you is true--evidence full against you, and none to oppose to it,--fly into a passion, magnify your own excellence--magnify the depravity of your adversaries. this mode, of parrying a charge, is perfectly well understood in our days, nor could it have been much less well understood in paul's days. as for _his_ adversaries, paul had a storm _in petto_ at all times ready for them: for the materials, turn to any page of his epistles: whatever, in this way, he had for rivals,--_that_ and more he could not fail to have for accusing witnesses. to the creator of antichrist--sower of tares between pharisees and sadducees,--whatever were the charges, defence, the most triumphant, could never be wanting: arguments, suited with the utmost nicety, to the taste of judges. he would warn them, against false brethren, and liars, and wolves, and children of satan, and so forth: he would talk to them, about life and death, and sin and righteousness, and faith and repentance, and this world and that world, and the lord and resurrection: he would talk backwards and forwards--give nonsense for mystery, and terror for instruction: he would contradict everybody, and himself not less than anybody: he would raise such a cloud of words, with here and there an _ignis fatuus_ dancing in the smoke,--that the judges, confounded and bewildered, would forget all the evidence, and cry out _not guilty_ through pure lassitude. as to us,--the case being now before us, what shall be our verdict? obtaining money on false pretences is the charge. guilty shall we say, or not guilty? obtainment on a certain pretence, is proved by _direct_ evidence--his own evidence: proof, of falsity in the pretence, rests, as it could not but rest, on _circumstantial_ evidence. one observation more: for another piece of circumstantial evidence has just presented itself: it consists of the utter silence, about the receipt of the money or any particle of it,--when, if there had been any such receipt, occasions there were in such abundance for the mention of it. a.d. 57, in his first to his corinthians,--there it is, as we have seen, that he urges them to lay by money for him, declaring it is for the saints at jerusalem; and that on this same errand it is, that he is going to macedonia,--and that in his way to jerusalem he will give them another call, to receive, for that same purpose, the intermediate produce of these proposed _saving-banks_. in his letter to the romans, written the next year, a.d. 58--written at corinth,--then it is, that he has already made the said intended money-gathering visit, and with success:--with success not only in macedonia, as he had proposed, but in achaia likewise: and, with this money in his hand, and for the purpose of delivering the money to those for whom he obtained it;--for this purpose (he says) it is, that he is at that moment on his way to jerusalem--the place of their abode. this is in the year a.d. 58. well then: after this it is, that he takes up his abode at ephesus. and when, after his contests with the church silversmiths there, he departs from thence, whither does he betake himself? to jerusalem? no: he turns his back upon jerusalem, and goes for macedonia (acts xx. 1.) then into greece, where he stays three months; and purposes, acts 20:3, to return through macedonia. a.d. 60, it is, that, for the first time, acts 20:16, any intention of his to visit jerusalem is declared, he having coveted no man's silver or gold, as his historian, acts xx. 33, makes him assure us. when, at length he arrived there, what his reception was, we have seen. had any of the _money_ been received there, would such as we have seen have been the reception given to the _man_? when, by the christians at jerusalem, agabus was sent to him, to keep him if possible from coming there,--is it in the nature of things, that they should have already received any of it, or been in any expectation of it? in what passed between him and the elders, headed by the apostle james, is any the slightest allusion made to it? when, in cã¦sarea, all in tears, acts 21:12, 13, his attendants were striving, might and main, to dissuade him from going to jerusalem,--did he say anything about the money--the money he had been so long charged with? oh no; not a syllable: to jerusalem he is resolved to go indeed: oh yes: but not the shadow of a reason can he find for going there. when arrived at jerusalem, the brethren, says the acts 20:17, received him gladly. the brethren: yes, what adherents he had, would of course receive him gladly, or at least appear to do so. but the money? on their side, was anything said about the money? not a syllable. either at this time by his own hand, or any time before, by other hands, had they received this money, or any considerable part of it, could they have received him otherwise than not only gladly, but gratefully? all the time, the hero was thus employed in money-craving and money-gathering, the historian, let it never be out of mind, was of the party: four years before, a.d. 53, had he been taken into it; yet not any the least hint about these money-matters does he give. so far indeed as regarded what was avowedly for paul's own use, neither could the receipt nor the craving of the money from their customers, have been unknown to him; for this was what they had to live upon. but the letters his master wrote--wrote to their customers everywhere--letters, in which the demand was made, for the so much more extensive purpose,--of these, so many of which have reached these our times, the contents may to him have easily enough remained a secret: little reason had he to expect, none at all to fear, the exposure,--which now, at the end of more than seventeen centuries, has, at length, been made of them,--confronted, as they may now be, with the particulars he himself has furnished us with. footnotes: [13] acts vii. ver. 47. speech of st. stephen. "but solomon built him an house. howbeit the most high dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the lord: or what is the place of my rest?" in itself, perfectly comfortable all this, to the dictates of reason and the instruction of jesus: but not the less clear blasphemy against the mosaic law. [14] acts ix. ver. 1 and 2. "and saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the lord, _went_ unto the _high priest_,--and _desired_ of him letters to damascus to the synagogues, &c." [15] acts xxii. ver. 5. "as also the high priest doth bear me witness, and all the estate of the elders: from _whom also i received letters_ unto the brethren, and went to damascus, to bring them which were there bound unto jerusalem for to be punished." [16] yet, for even at the outset, after certain "days spent with the disciples," and employed of course in receiving from them the necessary instructions, he preached jesus with such energy and success as not only to "confound," acts ix. 19 to 24, the unbelieving among the jews, but to provoke them to "take counsel to kill him." [17] paul, says--2nd cor. 11:6--"for though i be rude in speech yet am i not in knowledge nay, in everything we have made it manifest among all men to you-ward, or did i commit a sin in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because i preached to you the gospel of god for naught? i robbed other churches, taking wages of them that i might minister unto you; and when i was present with you i was in want, i was not a burden on any man; for the brethren, when they came from macedonia supplied the measure of my want, and in everything i kept myself from being burdensome unto you and so i will keep myself. as the truth of christ is in me no man shall stop me of this glorying in the regions of achaia, &c." when ever we get a temperamental and psychological view of paul, we see verified the deductions of the author of this treatise, that he was a transparent imposter. an unscrupulous adventurer. with talent well adapted to dogmatically command the attention of the ignorant and especially those of organized hereditary idolatry, the extreme vanity, the vain glorious pretensions of this new priest was well adapted to obtain obsequious complacence from such people. he always presents himself in a controversial spirit of self-exaltation. his egotistic diction could hardly be made more manifest than in the terms above quoted, to wit:--"i robbed other churches taking wages of them that i might minister unto you, &c." it presents a striking contrast to the benevolent and fraternal spirit of christ and his disciples. [18] n.b. the editor at this place inserts pages of discussion--which the author exhibited by way of an appendix. at the expense of a little redundancy and incongruity the editor inserts it in this place.--ed. [19] according to the acts' account, this same stoning, if it was the same, was much in the style of that same resurrection of eutychus, which we have seen in chapter xiii. â§. 10. as to paul, when this martyrdom had been suffered by him,--"some" says acts xiv. 19, were "supposing he had been dead:" and on that supposition, "drew him out of the city." paul, on the other hand, thought otherwise: he supposed himself alive, and, on that supposition, he walked off, as if nothing had been the matter with him. "certain jews ... say verses 19 and 20, having stoned paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead. howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city: and the next day he departed with barnabas to derbe." chapter iii. _paul disbelieved.--neither his divine commission nor his inward conversion ever credited by the apostles or their jerusalem disciples.--source of proof stated._ section 1. to paul's conversion vision, sole original witness himself. void, as we have seen, of all title to credence, is the story of paul's commission from jesus:--void may it be seen to be, even if taken by itself, and without need of resort to any counter-evidence. who could have expected to have found it, moreover, disproved by the most irresistible counter-evidence--by the evidence of the apostles themselves? yes: of the apostles themselves, of whom it will plainly enough be seen, that by not so much as one of them was it ever believed: no, not to even the very latest period, of which any account has reached us: namely that, at which the history of the acts of the apostles closes, or that of the date of the last-written of paul's epistles, whichsoever of the two may be the latest. in regard to the story of his conversion, its cause, and manner,--it has been seen, that it is either from himself directly, or from an adherent of his, the author of the acts,--who had it from himself, unless ananias was a person known to the author of the acts, and heard by him,--it is from paul, and paul alone, that all the evidence, which the case has happened to supply, has been derived. in regard to the degree of credence given, to his pretence to the having received a commission from jesus, still the same remark applies: still, either from himself, or from the same partial, and, as will be seen, not altogether trustworthy, narrator, comes the whole of the evidence, with which the case happens to have furnished us. section 2. counter-witnesses, the apostles. by them, the story was probably not heard--certainly not credited. jerusalem, according to the acts, was the headquarters of the noble army of the apostles: the ordinary residence of that goodly fellowship:--a station, which they none of them ever quitted, for any considerable length of time. in the course of the interval, between the date assigned by paul to his conversion, and that of the last particulars we have of his history,--mention, more or less particular, may be found of four visits of his--distinctly four related visits, and no more than four,--to that metropolis of the new church. on no one of these occasions, could he have avoided using his endeavours, towards procuring admittance, to the fellowship of the distinguished persons, so universally known in the character of the select companions and most confidential servants of jesus: of that jesus, whom, in the flesh at any rate, he never so much as pretended to have ever seen: _from whom_ he had consequently, if they thought proper to impart it, so much to learn, or at least to wish to learn: while _to_ them he had nothing to impart, except that which, if anything, it was only in the way of _vision_, if in any way, that he had learned from jesus. that on three at least of these four occasions, viz. the 1st, 3d, and 4th, he accordingly did use his endeavours to confer with them, will be put out of dispute by direct evidence; and that, in the remaining one, namely that which in the order of time stands second,--successfully or not, his endeavours were directed to the same purpose,--will, it will be seen, be reasonably to be inferred from circumstantial evidence. in the character of an additional occasion of intercourse, between him and one of the apostles, namely, peter, the chief of them,--will be to be added, that which will be seen taking place at antioch; immediately upon the back, and in consequence, of the third of these same visits of his to jerusalem. as to the mode of his conversion as above stated,--the _time_, for him to have stated it to them, was manifestly that of the first of these four visits;--say his _reconciliation-visit_: and that, of that first visit, to see them, or at any rate the chief of them, namely, peter, was the object,--is what, in his epistle to the galatians, we shall see him declaring in express terms. after all--that story of his, in which the supposed manner of his conversion is related, as above,--did he so much as venture to submit it to them? the more closely it is examined, the less probable surely will be seen to be--his having ventured, to submit any such narrative, to a scrutiny so jealous, as theirs, under these circumstances, could not fail to be. one of two things at any rate will, it is believed, be seen to a certainty: namely, either no such story as that which we see, nor anything like it, was ever told to them by him; or, if yes, it obtained no credit at their hands. section 3. in proof of this, so much of the acts history must here be anticipated. for proof, of the disbelief, which his story will, it is believed, be found to have experienced, at the hands of those supremely competent judges,--the time is now come, for collecting together, and submitting in a confronted state to the reader, all the several particulars that have reached us, in relation to these four important visits. between the first-recorded and the last-recorded of the four, the length of the interval being so considerable as it will be seen to be, namely, upwards of 17 years at the least,--and, in the course of the interval, so numerous and various a series of incidents being to be seen comprised,--the consequence is--that this one topic will unavoidably spread itself to such an extent, as to cover the whole of the chronological field of the history of the church in those eventful times. a sort of necessity has thus been found, of taking a view of the principal part of all those several incidents, in a sort of historical order, in a succeeding part of this work: hence, of that which, for the proof of what has just been advanced, will here be necessary to be brought to view,--no inconsiderable portion will be an anticipation, of that which belongs properly to the historical sketch, and, but for this necessity, would have been reserved for it. section 4. topics under his several jerusalem-visits. thick clouds, and those covering no small portion of its extent, will, after everything that can be done to dispel them, be found still hanging over the field of this inquiry. but, if to the purpose of the present question, sufficient light be elicited; in whatever darkness any collateral points may remain still involved, the conclusion will not be affected by it. as to the credibility of paul's story,--taken in itself, and viewed from the only position, from which we, at this time of day, can view it,--the question has just been discussed. that which remains for discussion is--whether, from the church, which paul found in existence--the church composed of the apostles of jesus, and his and their disciples--it ever obtained credence. on this occasion, to the apostles more particularly must the attention be directed: and this--not only because by their opinion, that of the great body of those disciples would, of course, on a point of such vital importance, be governed; but, because, in the case of these confidential servants and habitual attendants of jesus, the individuals, of whom the body is composed, and who are designated by one and the same denomination, are always determinable: determinable, in such sort, that, at all times, wheresoever they are represented as being, the eye can follow them. to judge with what aspect paul with his pretensions was viewed by them, always with a view to the main question--whether, in any particular, the alleged supernatural cause of his outward conversion, and thence of his presumable inward conversion, ever obtained credence from them;--one primary object, which requires to be attended to, is--personal intercourse; viz. the sort of personal intercourse, which between him on the one part, and them, or some of them, on the other part, appears to have had place. of this intercourse, the several _interviews_, which appear to have had place, will form the links. correspondent to those _interviews_ will be found to be so many _visits_: all of them, except one, visits made by him to the great original metropolis of the christian world--jerusalem:--the scene of the acts and sufferings of the departed jesus:--the ordinary abode of these his chosen disciples and successors. if, to these visits of paul's is to be added any other interview,--it will be in another city, to wit, antioch: and, in this instance, between paul, and not, as in the case of the other visits might naturally be expected, the apostles in a body; but one, or some other small number of members, by whom a visit to that place was made, in consequence of their having been selected for that purpose, and deputed by the rest. of the interviews corresponding with these visits, the real number,--and not only the real number, but the number upon record,--is unhappily, in no inconsiderable degree, exposed to doubt; for, considering the terms they were upon, as we shall see, at the interviews produced by paul's first jerusalem visit, it does not by any means follow, that, between the persons in question, because there were two more such visits, there was, on each occasion, an interview. two of them, however, at any rate, if any degree of credence whatever be given to the documents, remain altogether clear of doubt: and whatever uncertainty may be found to attach upon any of the others, may be regarded as so many fixed points: fixed points, forming so many standards of reference, to which the others may in speaking of them be referred, and by reference to which the reality and time of those others, will be endeavoured to be ascertained. for the designation of the visits which produced these two unquestionable interviews, the terms _reconciliation visit_, and _invasion visit_, will here be employed: the former being that which gave rise to the first-mentioned of the two interviews, which, after the conversion, appear for certain to have had place between the rival and contending powers; the other, to the last. 1. by the _reconciliation visit_ is here meant--that visit--by which was produced the _first_ interview, which, after the conversion of paul, had place between him and any of the apostles. its title to this appellation is altogether unquestionable. after these proceedings of paul's, by which the destruction of so many of the christians had already been effected, and that of all the rest was threatened,--it was not possible, that, without a reconciliation,--if not an inward at any rate an outward one,--any interview, on both sides voluntary, should have taken place. of the apostles, peter was the acknowledged chief: that it was for the purpose of seeing peter, that a visit of paul's to jerusalem--the first of those mentioned by him--was made,--is acknowledged by himself: acknowledged, in that epistle of his, to his galatian disciples, of which so much will have to be said, gal. i. and ii.[20] without the assistance of some mediator, scarcely was it in the nature of the case, that, in any way, any such reconciliation could have been effected. in the person of barnabas,--a most munificent patron, as will be seen, of the infant church,--this indispensable friend was found. according to the received chronology, the time of this visit was a.d. 38. in the account, given in the acts, acts 16:6, of the conjunct missionary excursion made from antioch by paul and barnabas--an excursion, the commencement of which is, by that same chronology, placed in the year 53,--galatia stands fifth, in the number of the places, which they are spoken of as visiting. of any visit, made in that country, either before this or after it, no mention is to be found in the acts, except in acts 18:23: on which occasion, he is spoken of as revisiting galatia, "strengthening the churches."[21] of what passed on the occasion of this visit, the account, given as above by paul, will be seen receiving explanation, from what is said of this same visit in the acts. acts ix. 26 to 30. 26. and when saul was come to jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.--but barnabas took him, and brought _him_ to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at damascus in the name of jesus.--and he was with them coming in and going out at jerusalem.--and he spake boldly in the name of the lord jesus, and disputed against the grecians: but they went about to slay him.--which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to cã¦sarea, and sent him forth to tarsus. 2. by the _invasion visit_ is here meant--that visit of paul to jerusalem, by which his arrestation, and consequent visit to rome in a state of confinement, were produced. _invasion_ it may well be termed: the object of it having manifestly been--the making, in that original metropolis of the christian world, spiritual conquests, at the expense of the gentle sway of the apostles: spiritual acquisitions--not to speak of their natural consequences, temporal ones. it was undertaken, as will be seen, in spite of the most strenuous exertions, made for the prevention of it: made, not only by those, whose dominions he was so needlessly invading, but by the unanimous remonstrances and entreaties of his own adherents. the date--assigned to the commencement of this visit, is a.d. 60. interval, between this his last recorded visit and his first, according to the received chronology, 22 years. neither of the occasion of it, nor of any individual occurrence which took place in the course of it, have we any account--from any other source than the history of the acts. paul's account is all in generals. 3. paul's jerusalem visit the second.--according to the acts, acts 11:30, "which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of barnabas and saul," between these two indisputable interviews of paul's with the apostles occurs another visit, herein designated by the name of the _money-bringing visit_. under the apprehension of a predicted dearth, money is sent from the antioch to the jerusalem saints. barnabas, and with him paul, are employed in the conveyance of it. time, assigned to this visit, a.d. 43. of this visit, not any the least trace is to be found in any epistle of paul's. yet, in this epistle of his to his galatians, he will be seen undertaking in a manner, to give an account, of every visit of his to jerusalem, in which, with reference to spiritual dominion, between himself and the apostles, anything material had ever passed. by this silence of paul's, no counter-evidence is opposed, to the account given of this visit in the acts. what may very well be is,--that he went along with the money, and departed, without having had any personal communication with any apostle, or even with any one of their disciples. 4. _deputation visit._ paul's jerusalem visit the third--say his deputation visit. according to the acts,[22] paul being at the syrian antioch, certain men came thither from judea, teaching, that mosaic circumcision is necessary to christian salvation. dissension being thus produced, paul, and barnabas as usual with him, are dispatched to confer on this subject with the apostles and the elders--time, assigned to this visit, a.d. 52. interval between the first and this third visit--years 15. in addition to the first jerusalem visit, mentioned as above by paul, to wit, in the first chapter of his epistle to his galatians,--in the second, mention is made of another. of the incidents mentioned by paul, as belonging to this other visit, scarcely can any one, unless it be that of his having barnabas for a companion, be found, that presents itself as being the same with any incident mentioned in the acts, in the account given of the above named deputation visit. but, between the two accounts, neither does any repugnance manifest itself: and, forasmuch as, in a statement, the purpose of which required that no interview, in which anything material passed between him and the apostles, should pass unnoticed,--he mentions no more than one visit besides the first,--it seems reasonable to conclude, that it was but one and the same visit, that, in the penning of both these accounts, was in view. as far as appears, it is from the account thus given by paul of the second, of the two visits mentioned by him as made to jerusalem, that the received chronology has deduced the year, which it assigns to the deputation visit, as recorded in the acts. in paul's account alone--in paul's, and not in that in the acts--is the distance given in a determinate number of years. according to one of two interpretations, 17--the number above mentioned as adopted in the current chronology--is the number of years mentioned by paul as intervening between those two visits. but even in this place, a circumstance that must not pass altogether unnoticed is,--that, according to another interpretation, to which the text presents itself as almost equally open, the length of the interval would be considerably greater. galatians i. 17: "neither went i up to jerusalem to them which were apostles before me: but i went into arabia, and returned again unto damascus. then after three years i went up to jerusalem to see peter, and abode with him fifteen days." after what period?--after that of his conversion? or after the expiration of this his second visit to damascus? reckoning from this latter period, the interval may be ever so much greater than that of the three years: for, to the three years may be added an indefinite length of time for the second, and even for the first, of his abodes at damascus. but, as we advance, reason will appear for concluding, that, being in the eyes of the damascus rulers, as well as the jerusalem rulers, a traitor--in the highest degree a traitor--his abode at damascus could not, at either of these times, have been other than short as well as secret. gal. ii. 1: "then, fourteen years after, i went up again to jerusalem with barnabas, and took titus also." this being supposed to be the deputation visit, these fourteen added to the former three, make the seventeen. 5. _peter's antioch visit._--in paul's epistle, addressed to his galatians, as above,--immediately after the mention of his own second jerusalem visit as above, comes the mention of an interview, which he says he has at antioch with peter: "peter being come," he says, "to that place." gal. ii. 11. in the acts, 15:22, immediately upon the back of the accounts of the deputation visit, as above,--comes an account of what may be called a _counter deputation visit_. of the former deputation visit, according to the acts, the result is--from the apostles, the elders, and the whole church, a _letter_, concluding with a _decree_: and "by men chosen of their own company," this letter is stated as having been carried to antioch: and, with these men, so chosen, paul and barnabas are stated as returning to antioch, from which city, as above, they had been deputed. as and for the names of "chosen men," those of judas, surnamed barsabas, and silas, are mentioned: "chief men among the brethren" is another title by which they are, both of them, distinguished. to these, no other names are added: in particular, not that of peter. thus far the acts. as to paul, in the account _he_ gives, of the discussion, to which, after--and apparently, as above, in consequence of--his _secondly mentioned_ interview with peter at jerusalem,--no mention is made either of judas barsabas, or of silas: of peter--and him alone--it is, that, on this occasion, any mention is made. peter comes, as it should seem, to antioch from jerusalem; which last city seems to have been his ordinary abode. but, on this occasion likewise, in addition to this visitor, mention is again made of barnabas, of whom, as far as appears, from the time of the reconciliation visit down to this time, antioch was the ordinary abode. in relation to each of these several visits, a brief preparatory indication of the topic or topics, which will be brought to view, when an account comes to be given of it, may in this place have its use. i. _reconciliation visit._--on this occasion, a difficulty that naturally presents itself--is--if the relation is in substance true, and the occasion is the same--how it can have happened, that if peter was at antioch--peter, the universally acknowledged chief of the apostles--no mention should be to be found of him in the acts: instead of him, two men as yet unknown--this _judas barsabas_, and this _silas_--neither of them of the number belonging to the goodly fellowship of the apostles,--being the only persons mentioned. but, for this difficulty, conjecture presents a solution, in which there is nothing either in itself improbable, or inconsistent with either of the two accounts--that of paul as above, and that in the acts. this is--that those two were the men, and the only men, deputed in the first instance: but, that after them, at no long interval, came thither to their assistance that chief of the apostles. whether the importance of the question be considered--to wit, whether, upon being received as christians, gentiles should be obliged to submit to mosaic circumcision--whether the importance of the question, or the strenuousness of the debates to which it is spoken of as having given rise, acts 15:2, be considered--the visit of the chief of the apostles at jerusalem, to the scene of controversy at antioch, presents not any supposition, to which any imputation of improbability seems to attach. acts xv. 1 to 34. 1. and certain men which came down from judea taught the brethren and said, except ye be circumcised after the manner of moses, ye cannot be saved.--when therefore paul and barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that paul and barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.--and being brought on their way by the church, they passed through phenice and samaria, declaring the conversion of the gentiles, and they caused great joy unto all the brethren.--and when they were come to jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that god had done with them.--but there rose up certain of the sect of the pharisees which believed, saying, that it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of moses.--and the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.--and when there had been much disputing, peter rose up, and said unto them, men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago god made choice among us, that the gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.--and god which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the holy ghost, even as he did unto us:--and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.--now therefore why tempt ye god to put a yoke upon the necks of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?--but we believe that through the grace of the lord jesus christ, we shall be saved even as they.--then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to barnabas and paul, declaring what miracles and wonders god had wrought among the gentiles by them.--and after they had held their peace, james answered, saying, men and brethren, hearken unto me.--simeon hath declared how god at the first did visit the gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.--and to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,--after this i will return, and will build again the tabernacle of david which is fallen down; and i will build again the ruins thereof, and i will set it up:--that the residue of men might seek after the lord, and all the gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the lord who doeth all these things.--known unto god are all his works from the beginning of the world.--wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the gentiles are turned to god:--but that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.--for moses of old time hath in every city, them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath-day.--then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to antioch with paul and barnabas; _namely_, judas surnamed barsabas, and silas, chief men among the brethren.--and they wrote letters by them after this manner; the apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the gentiles in antioch and syria and cilicia.--forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, ye must be circumcised; and keep the law; to whom we gave no such commandment:--it seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you, with our beloved barnabas and paul;--men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our lord jesus christ.--we have therefore sent judas and silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth.--for it seemed good to the holy ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;--that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. fare ye well.--so when they were dismissed, they came to antioch: and when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle.--which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation.--and judas and silas, being prophets also themselves, exhorted the brethren with many words, and confirmed them.--and after they had tarried there a space, they were let go in peace from the brethren unto the apostles.--34. notwithstanding it pleased silas to abide there still. galatians ii. 1 to the end. 1. then fourteen years after, i went up again to jerusalem with barnabas, and took titus with me also.--and i went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which i preach among the gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means i should run, or had run in vain.--but neither titus, who was with me, being a greek, was compelled to be circumcised.--and that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in christ jesus, that they might bring us into bondage.--to whom we gave place by subjection, no not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.--but of those, who seemed to be somewhat (whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me; god accepteth no man's person) for they who seemed _to be somewhat_, in conference added nothing to me.--but contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto peter:--for he that wrought effectually in peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me towards the gentiles.--and when james, cephas, and john, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.--only _they would_ that we should remember the poor; the same which i also was forward to do.--but when peter was come to antioch, i withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.--for before that certain came from james, he did eat with the gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew, and separated himself, fearing them _which were_ of the circumcision.--and the other jews dissembled likewise with him, insomuch that barnabas also was carried away by their dissimulation.--but when i saw that they walked not uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel, i said unto peter before them all, if thou, being a jew, livest after the manner of gentiles, and not as do the jews, why compellest thou the gentiles to live as do the jews?--we _who are_ jews by nature, and not sinners of the gentiles,--knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of jesus christ, even we have believed in jesus christ that we might be justified by the faith of christ and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.--but if while we seek to be justified by christ we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore christ the minister of sin? god forbid.--for if i build again the things which i destroyed, i make myself a transgressor.--for i through the law am dead to the law, that i might live unto god.--i am crucified with christ. nevertheless i live; yet not i, but christ liveth in me: and the life which i now live in the flesh, i live by the faith of the son of god, who loved me, and gave himself for me.--21. i do not frustrate the grace of god: for if righteousness _come_ by the law, then christ is dead in vain. of the falsity of his story concerning the manner of his conversion,--one proof, that has been given, has been deduced from the inconsistency, of the several accounts which we have of it--all of them originally from himself--as compared with one another. of the erroneousness of the notion of his having ever been in the eyes of the apostles what he professed himself to be--of this, and at the same time of the want of correctness, and trustworthiness, in every account, which, by him, or from him, is to be seen rendered, of his proceedings, adventures, and dangers--proof will, on the ensuing occasions, be afforded, by evidence of this same kind: by similar instances of inconsistency, which will be all along brought to view. on the occasion of his _first_ visit to jerusalem--to the metropolis of christendom--will be to be noted--1. the cause and manner of his arrival. 2. the circumstances of his abode--its duration, and business. 3. the cause and circumstances of his departure. 4. the general result of this his expedition. 1. of the cause of his visit, and manner of his arrival, we shall see two different accounts: namely, one, given by himself directly, in an epistle of his to his disciples in galatia; the other, by a man, who afterwards became his adherent and travelling companion--namely the author of the acts. 2. of the duration and business of his abode, we shall see, in like manner, two different accounts, delivered respectively by those same pens. 3. so, of the cause of his departure;--from the same two sources. 4. so, of the circumstances of it. 5. of the general result of this same expedition of his, we have no fewer than three different accounts: namely, the same two as above; with the addition of a third, as reported, in the acts, to have been given by paul himself, in the course of the speech he made, at the time of his fourth visit, to an assembled multitude, headed by the constituted authorities among the jews:--when, after having been dragged by force out of the temple, he would--had he not been saved by a commander of the roman guard--have been torn to pieces. on this occasion, we shall find, that, by his own confession, made for a particular purpose--for the purpose of saving his life--under an exigency which allowed no time for the study of consistency, and recorded by the blindness and inconsiderateness of his biographer;--we shall find, that the account, whatever it was, which, on the occasion of this his first visit, he gave of himself to the apostles, failed altogether in its endeavours to obtain credence. section 5. topics under visit ii.--money-bringing visit. of the occasion and particulars of the second of these four visits, we have but one account: viz. that which is to be seen in the acts. compared with what belongs to the other visits, that which belongs to this is but of small importance. the information, to be collected from it, will, however, be seen to be this: namely, that this was the second, of the attempts he made to join himself to the apostles: and that it succeeded no better than the first. it did not even succeed so well: for, notwithstanding the claims which the business of it gave him to their regard--it was to bring them a sum of money, the fruit of the liberality of the church at antioch--he could not so much as obtain admittance into the presence of any one of them. without much hesitation, this may be affirmed. if he had, he would have made mention of it: for, it will be seen, that, whatsoever apparent countenance he ever succeeded in obtaining from them, it was his care to make the most of it. section 6. remarks on visit iii.--deputation visit. of the occasion, and particulars, and termination, of the _third_ of these four visits, we have two, and but two, accounts: one--that given in the acts; the other--that given by paul himself, as above, in his letter to his galatians: that in the acts, the only one which goes into particulars; and which must accordingly be taken for the basis of the narrative, and in that character be brought to view in the first instance: that given by paul himself confining itself to generals; but, as far as it goes, much more to be depended upon, and affording much more instruction, than that given in the acts. among its immediate consequences, this third visit appears to have had some sort of intercourse between paul and saint peter at antioch--the next most considerable seat of the new religion after jerusalem; at antioch, to which city, paul,--who, with barnabas, had been settled there,--was on his return: peter being then on a temporary visit, made to that place, for the final settlement of the business, by which the last preceding visit of paul to jerusalem had been occasioned. at the time of this visit, the residence of paul was at this same antioch. the occasion of it was--the dissemination there, of a doctrine, which, by certain persons not named, had been imported thither from jerusalem: a doctrine, according to which it was taught to the brethren--"except ye be circumcised after the manner of moses, ye cannot be saved." for the settlement of this important matter,--barnabas, with paul for his companion, besides other companions not named, was, by the brethren at antioch, now, for the second time, sent, as a delegate, to the brethren at jerusalem. on every one of these three visits, it was under the protection of this barnabas (it will be seen) that paul had presented himself:--on the first of them, for the purpose of making known his conversion, and, if possible, forming a connection with the brethren there;--the second, for the purpose of bringing them money, the fruits of the respect and affection of the brethren at antioch;--the third time, for the settlement of this important point of doctrine. as for barnabas, he was a _cypriot_, who, as will be seen, had an establishment at jerusalem: and who, by his indefatigable zeal, added to his unrivalled munificence, appears to have obtained an influence not exceeded by any but that of the apostles. of this same deputation visit, being the third of the recorded visits of paul to jerusalem,--followed by, and coupled with, one of peter to antioch--gal. ii. 11, the place of paul's residence,--two most important results, or alleged results, are mentioned: the first, mentioned by the author of the acts alone, the decree, of a council, composed of the apostles and certain other persons, by the name of elders, at jerusalem;--which decree, together with a letter, was from thence sent by the hands of judas barsabas and silas, to the brethren at antioch; paul and barnabas being of the party, on their return to that same place: the other result, mentioned by paul alone, a sort of _partition treaty_, by which the field of doctrinal labour, and thence of spiritual dominion was divided between him, (paul), on the one part, and the apostles on the other. the _jewish world_, for a less ambiguous designation would hardly find a sufficient warrant, to remain with the apostles; the _gentile world_, to be left free to the exertions of the declared convert and self-constituted apostle. as to the _decree and letter_, reasons for questioning the authenticity of these documents will be hereinafter brought to view, ch. 6. of the _partition treaty_, the reality presents itself as altogether natural and probable--and, by circumstantial as well as direct evidence, sufficiently established: by direct evidence supported, by circumstantial evidence confirmed. section 7. topics under visit iv.--invasion visit. of the occasion of the fourth and last of these four visits--call it _paul's invasion visit_--we have, though but from one immediate source, what may, to some purposes, be called two distinct and different accounts, included one within another: to wit, that which the historian gives as from himself, and that which he puts into the mouth of his hero, whose adventures he is relating. on this subject, from the mouth of the hero, the historian has not given us, and probably could not give us, anything but mystery. from the circumstances, it will be seen, whether the appellation _invasion visit_, by which this last of his recorded visits to jerusalem is here distinguished, is not fully justified. neither, of the occurrences which took place during the course of it, nor of the mode in which it terminated, have we any more than one account; viz. the account which, speaking in his own person, is given of it by the author of the acts.[23] but, upon one part of this account--and that a part in itself in no small degree obscure--light, and that such as, it is believed, will be found to dispel the darkness, will be seen thrown, by an article of the mosaic law: upon which article, light will be seen reciprocally reflected, by the application here recorded as having been made of it. this regards the _temple scene_:--an expensive ceremony spun out for days together only to produce the effect of an _oath_. on the occasion of this visit, in spite of a universal opposition on the part of all concerned--his own adherents and dependents, as well as his adversaries of all classes included,--paul, for reasons by himself studiously concealed,--and, if brought to light at all, brought to light no otherways than by inference,--will be seen making his entry into jerusalem, as it were by force. in the hope of freeing themselves, as it should seem, of this annoyance, it is,--that the rulers of the christian church, insist upon his clearing himself from certain suspicions, in the harbouring of which the whole church had concurred.[24] section 8. self-written biography--its superior value and claim to credence. on the occasion of this portion of history, it seems particularly material, to bring to view an observation, which, on the occasion of every portion of history, it will, it is believed, be of no small use to have in remembrance. in comparison of self-written biography, scarcely does any other biography deserve the name. faint, indeterminate, uninstructive, deceptive, is the information furnished by any other hand, of whatsoever concerns the state of the mental frame, in comparison of what is furnished by a man's own. even of those particulars which make against himself,--even of those motives and intentions which he would most anxiously conceal,--more clear and correct, as far as it goes, if not more complete--is the information given by him, than any which is commonly afforded, even by an impartial hand. by a man's own hand, not unfrequently is information afforded, of a sort which makes against himself, and which would not, because it could not, have been afforded by any other hand, though ever so hostile. he states the self-condemnatory mental facts, the blindness of self-partiality concealing from his eyes the condemnatory inference: or, even with his eyes open, he lays himself under the imputation: bartering merit in this or that inferior shape, for the merit of candour, or for the hope of augmenting the probative force of his own self-serving evidence, in favour of every other merit for which it is his ambition to gain credence. footnotes: [20] gal. i. 18. "then after three years i went up to jerusalem to see peter, and abode with him fifteen days." [21] of any mention made of galatia, in any of the books of the new testament, the following are, according to cruden's concordance, the only instances: 1 cor. xvi. 1. "... have given order to the churches at galatia." times, assigned to these epistles, a.d. 59. 2 tim. iv. 10: "crescens is departed to galatia." a.d. 66. 1 pet. i. 1: "to the strangers scattered in galatia." date a.d. 60. [22] acts xv. 1-4. 1. "and certain men which came down from judea taught the brethren and said, except ye be circumcised after the manner of moses, ye cannot be saved.--when therefore paul and barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that paul and barnabas and certain other of them should go up to jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.--and being brought on their way by the church, they passed through phenice and samaria, declaring the conversion of the gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren.--and when they were come to jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that god had done with them." [23] be this as it may, that he must have been in the way to hear, from various persons present, accounts, such as they were, of what was said by paul,--seems to follow almost of course. this seems applicable even to the _latest_ of the two occasions; for, though the place, cã¦sarea, was some distance from jerusalem, 56 miles,--yet the distance was not so great, but that the persons, who were attached to him, might, for the most part, be naturally supposed to have followed him: and in particular the historian, who, according to his history, continued in paul's suite till, at the conclusion of this his forced excursion, he arrived at rome. but, on the subject of _possible materials_, one concluding query here presents itself. on a _subject_ such as that in question, on an _occasion_, such as that in question, for a _purpose_ such as that in question, a _speech_ such as either of those in question, might it not, by a person in the historian's situation--not to speak of other situations--be just as easily made without any special materials, as with any the most correct and complete stock of materials? [24] between paul's third visit, and that which is here reckoned as his fourth, another is, by some, supposed[i.] to, have been taken place; on which supposition, this concluding one, which is here styled the fourth, ought to be reckoned the fifth. but, for the support of this supposition, the grounds referred to for this purpose do not seem sufficient:--not that, if the supposition were true, any consequence material to the present purpose would follow. for this supposition, what ground there is, consists in a passage in the acts:--acts 18:20, 21, 22. 20. when they, the jews at ephesus, desired [him] to tarry longer time with them, he consented not; but bade them farewell, saying, i _must_ by all means _keep this feast that cometh in jerusalem_; but i will return again unto you, if god will. and he sailed from ephesus. and when he had _landed_ at cã¦sarea, and _gone up_, and saluted the _church_, he _went down_ to antioch. there we have the grounds of the supposition. but, what is the support they give to it?--declaration, affirming the existence of an intention, is one thing; actually existing intention is another. even supposing the existence of the intention in question,--intention is one thing; corresponding action, another. jerusalem is not mentioned. cã¦sarea being on the sea-coast, jerusalem is indeed in the interior: and therefore, it may be said, is a place, to which, if a man went from cã¦sarea, he would "_go up_:" but, from cã¦sarea, it being on the coast, a man could not go to any place in judaea not on the coast, without _going up_. so much for _place_:--and now as to _time_. the time mentioned as the object of the _intention_, is the _passover_; but, that the time, at which, being _gone up_, paul "_saluted the church_"--this being all which, upon this _going up_, he is here stated as doing--that this time was the passover, is not stated. as to the _salute_ here stated as given to the _church_,--at the conclusion, and as a material part of the result, of this inquiry, it will appear plain beyond all doubt, that, if by "_the church_" be understood any member of it at jerusalem, besides two, or at most three, of the apostles,--according to this interpretation, from the time of his conversion visit to damascus antecedently to his first visit to jerusalem, down to the last visit here reckoned as his fourth--there never was a day on which the _church_ would have received his salute. what will also be rendered manifest is--that it was an object with the author of the acts, to induce a belief, that paul, before the conclusion of his first visit, was upon good terms with the church, and so continued to the last: and that, to this end, a purposed misrepresentation was employed by the historian. not that, in regard to the visit here in question, to the purpose of the argument--it makes any sort of difference, whether it had place or had not. if it had place, neither the conclusion, nor any part of the argument, will be seen to require any variation in consequence. [i.] wells's _historical geography of the old and new testament_, ii. 271. ch. 5. of saint paul's travels and voyages into asia. "st. paul" (says wells very composedly) "_having kept_ the passover at jerusalem, went thence down, &c."--and for this the acts are quoted as above: but the acts, it will here be seen, say no such thing. chapter iv. paul disbelieved _continued_.--_first of his four visits to jerusalem after his conversion_; _say_ jerusalem visit i. _or_ reconciliation visit.--_barnabas introducing him from antioch to the apostles._ section 1. paul's proceedings between his conversion and this visit.--contradiction. per paul, it was not till after three years spent in arabia; per acts, immediately. already on another occasion, and for a different purpose, have the two accounts, between which this self-contradiction manifests itself, been brought to view: viz. on the occasion of the accounts, given or supposed to be given, by paul, of the cause and manner of his conversion:--accounts given in the first place, in writing, and consequently, with all requisite time for deliberation, in his epistle to the galatians:--given, or supposed to be given, in the next place, by a speech spoken, namely, that which, in the acts is reported as spoken by him, on the occasion of his trial, to festus and agrippa:--festus, the roman proconsul, agrippa, the jewish king. in the whole account of this matter, as given by paul in his epistle to the galatians, how much of truth there probably was, and how much of falsehood or misrepresentation,--has been seen already in some measure, ch. ii. i. 5, and will be seen more fully as we advance. as to his motive for this visit, he has endeavoured to keep it to himself: but, by the result, according to the account he himself gives of it, it is betrayed. it was--to effect the so much needed _reconciliation_:--his reconciliation with the apostles:--the apostles, in relation to whom his disregard is professed, the need he had of them, no otherwise than virtually, nor yet the less effectually confessed. without an interval of considerable length between his conversion and this visit, all such reconciliation would have been plainly hopeless. from this circumstance, the length, as alleged by him, of his abode in arabia, receives obvious and highly probative confirmation. the confirmation is, indeed, reciprocal. the nature of his situation, proves the need he had, of an interval of considerable length, before any hope of reconciliation could be fulfilled, or, naturally speaking, so much as conceived: by this circumstance, his abode in some other country is rendered probable to us: and this other country may, for aught we know, as well have been the country mentioned by him--to wit, _arabia_, as any other: and, thus it is, that this assertion, of his having been three years in arabia, between the time of his departure from jerusalem to damascus, and his return to jerusalem to see peter, is confirmed:--confirmed, by the natural length, of the interval, requisite to the affording any, the least chance, that peter could be induced to meet upon terms of amity and intercourse a man, in whom he beheld the murderer of a countless multitude of human beings, linked to him by the closest bonds of self-regarding interest, as well as sympathy and brotherly love. as to contradiction, contradiction cannot easily be much more pointed, than it will be seen to be, between the account in respect of time, as given in this instance by paul, and the account given of it by his historiographer in the acts. on a double ground, it is paul's account that claims the precedence. of _his_ account, such as it is, the rank, in the scale of trustworthiness, is that of _immediate_ evidence; that of his historiographer, no higher than that of _unimmediate_ evidence:--evidence once removed; having, for its most probable and least untrustworthy source, that same _immediate_ evidence. paul's evidence is, at the same time, not only more circumstantiated, but supported by the reasons which he has combined with it. not till three years after his alleged miraculous conversion, did he go near to any of the apostles.--why?--because, though, _at_ that time, for reasons which he has left us to guess, he had regarded himself as having considerable need of them,--_till_ that time he did not regard himself as having any need of them. and, why was it, that, for so great a length of time, he did not regard himself as having any need of them?--the answer he himself gives us, gal. i. 10: ... "do i seek to please men?--i certify to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me, is not after man.--for i received it not of man, nor was i taught it but by the revelation of jesus christ.--when it pleased god, who called me by his grace,--to reveal his son in me, that i might preach him among the heathen, _immediately_ i conferred not with flesh and blood:--neither went i up to jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but i went into arabia, and returned _again_ unto damascus.--then after three years i went up to jerusalem to see peter, and abode with him fifteen days.--but other of the apostles saw i none, save james, the lord's brother." thus far paul himself. let us now see, what is said in regard to the time, by his subsequent attendant and historiographer. acts ix ... "as he (saul) journeyed, he came near damascus, and, suddenly there shined round him a light," &c.--ver. 8. "and saul arose from the earth, and ... they led him by the hand, and brought him into damascus.--and he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink.--and there was a certain disciple at damascus, named ananias; and to him said the lord in a vision...--...go into the street called _straight_, and inquire in the house of judas for one called saul of tarsus...--17. and ananias ... entered into the house, and ... said, brother saul, the lord ... hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight ...--and ... he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.--and when he had received meat, he was strengthened. then was saul certain days with the disciples which were at damascus.--and straightway he preached christ in the synagogues,...--22. ... and confounded the jews which dwelt at damascus,...--and after that many days were fulfilled, the jews took counsel to kill him.--... and they watched the gates day and night to kill him.--then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket.--and when saul was come to jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were _all_ afraid of him, and _believed not that he was a disciple_.--but barnabas took him, and brought him to the _apostles_, and declared unto them how he had seen the lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at damascus in the name of jesus." with what the historiographer says in his own person, agrees, as to the particular point now in question, what, in the studied oration, he puts into paul's mouth. in that account likewise, immediately after the mention of what paul did at damascus,--follows, the mention of what he did at jerusalem: and, as to everything done by him among the gentiles, not only does the mention of it come after the mention of what was done by him at jerusalem, but, between the two, comes the mention, of whatever was done by him, in any of the coasts of judea. acts 26:19. "whereupon, o, king agrippa, i was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision:--but showed, first unto them of damascus, and of jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of judea; and then to the gentiles, that they should repent and turn to god, and do works meet for repentance." here then, according to paul's own account, after his visit to damascus from jerusalem, he visited arabia, and moreover damascus a second time, before he made his visit to jerusalem to see peter: before this visit did he make both those other visits; and, in making them, pass three years, with or without the addition, of the time, occupied by his first visit to damascus,--and the time, occupied by his abode in arabia. according to paul's own account then, between his second departure from, and his arrival at, jerusalem from thence, there was an interval either of three years, or of so much more than three years. on the contrary, according to both the accounts given of the matter by his historiographer in the acts, there was not between the two events in question, any interval other than such as the journey from the one to the other--about 130 british miles as the crow flies, say about 160, allowance made for turnings and windings,--would require. now, as between jews and gentiles, _alias_ heathens:--to which of these two descriptions of persons, were his preachings addressed in the first instance? according to his epistle to his galatians, preaching to the heathen being his peculiar destination, this accordingly is the vocation upon which he proceeded in the first place: and we have seen how probable it is, not to say certain, that, in this particular, what he asserted was true. his appointment being to "the heathen," he conferred not with flesh and blood: _i.e._ with the apostles, their immediate disciples, or other flesh and blood of the christian persuasion: for, of any such conference--of any assistance or support from any such quarter, he has, in this same epistle, been declaring and protesting--most vehemently protesting--that he had no need. neither then for the purpose of conference with "those who were apostles," as he says, "before him," nor for any other purpose, went he up to jerusalem: no, not till either three years after his conversion, or three years, with the addition of another term of unmeasurable length. now then, how stands this matter according to the acts--according to the speech put into paul's mouth by the author of the acts? instead of the gentiles being the description of persons, to whom, in the first instance, he applies his labours,--it is the jews. what he _shows_ is "_shown_," in the first place, to those "of damascus;" then "at jerusalem;" then "throughout all the coasts of judea;" and, not till _then_--to the gentiles: of his abode in arabia--of any visit of his to arabia--not any of the slightest mention, or so much as allusion to it. but, all this while, for anything that appears to the contrary, arabia was completely open to him: whereas, after the offence he had committed against the authority of the ruling powers at judea, it was not, morally speaking, in the nature of things that he could have continued in any place coming within that description--have continued, long enough to make any sensible impression: and, in jerusalem in particular, in this same epistle to the galatians, from which the above particulars are taken,--it was, as he himself declares, only in secrecy, that, even fourteen years after this, he ventured to disseminate those doctrines, whatever they were, that were peculiar to himself, 2nd gal.: 1, 2. "then, fourteen years after, i went up again to jerusalem with barnabas, and took titus with me. and i went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which i preach among the gentiles, but _privately_ to them which were of reputation, lest by any means i should run, or had run, in vain." thus stands the contrariety:--the contrariety, between paul's own account of his own proceedings, and the account, which, by the author of the acts, he is represented as giving of them, on another occasion. says paul _himself_, in his own epistle to his galatians--after my conversion, it was to the gentiles that i applied myself first: to the jews, not till afterwards; nor then, to any considerable extent. says the author of the _acts_, in a speech, which he puts into the mouth of paul--it was to the jews that he applied himself first, and _that_ to a great extent: to the gentiles, not till afterwards. thus stands the contrariety, taken in itself. as to the _cause_, it will neither be far to seek, nor dubious. in the differences of situations, occasions, and purposes in view--in the differences, that had place in respect of all those particulars--it will be found. on the occasion, on which paul himself speaks, what was the persuasion which it was his endeavour to produce? it was--that, for a number of years, commencing from the moment of his conversion,--with no persons, who, to this purpose, could be called _jews_, had he, to any such purpose as this, had any intercourse: for, this being admitted, it followed, of course, that, if, on the subject of the religion of jesus, he had really received the information he declared himself to have received, it was _not_ from the apostles, that he had had it, or any part of it. "on them (says he) i am perfectly independent: to them i am even superior. with jesus _they_ had no communication but in a natural way; with the same jesus _i_ have had communication in a supernatural way:--in the way of '_revelation_.' my communication with him is, moreover, of a date posterior to theirs--to any that they can pretend to: in so far as there is any contrariety between that i teach and what they teach, it is for theirs, on both these accounts--it is for theirs, to yield to mine. from god is my doctrine: in opposition to it, if either they, or any other men presume to preserve, let the curse of god be on their heads. ver. 8. accordingly, at the time of my first visit to jerusalem after my conversion, no communication had i with them, for, no such communication, teaching as i did from revelation, could i stand in need of, i had already passed three years at least in arabia, teaching to the gentiles there my peculiar doctrine. this peculiar doctrine, as i made no scruple of teaching it to those gentiles, as little, on the occasion of that visit of mine to jerusalem, did i make any scruple of teaching it to jews as well as gentiles. true it is, i did not then teach it publicly:--i did not teach my peculiar doctrine, so publicly as they did theirs. but, as to this comparative secrecy, it had for its cause the advantage of being free from opposition; for, had the fact of my teaching this doctrine so different from theirs--been known to them,--they might have opposed it, and thus my labours might have been lost." whether, in the representation here given of what he says to his galatians, there be any misrepresentation, the reader may judge. on the occasion, on which _his historian_ represents him as speaking, what now, as to this same matter, was the persuasion, which the nature of his situation required him to endeavour to produce? it was, that jews were the sort of persons, with whom, during the period in question, he had, to the purpose in question, been holding intercourse: jews, even in preference to--not to say to the exclusion of--gentiles: so far is he from being _now_ represented, as stating himself to have held converse with gentiles, to the exclusion of jews; which is, that of which he _himself_ has been seen taking so much pains to persuade his galatian disciples. yes: as far as competition could have place, jews, on this occasion, in _preference_, at least, to gentiles: for, on this occasion, what he was labouring at was--to recommend himself to the favour of his jewish judge, king agrippa, acts 26:8-21, by magnifying the services he had been rendering to the jews, his very accusers not excepted: services, to the rendering of which, close and continued intercourse, during that same period, could not but have been necessary. on this occasion, being accused of--his historian does not choose to say what,--his defence was--that, of the persecution he was suffering, his preaching the _resurrection_ was the only real cause: that, having been born and bred a pharisee,--in preaching that doctrine, so far from opposing, he had been supporting, with all his might, the principles maintained by the constituted authorities: adducing, in proof of the general proposition, the evidence furnished by a particular fact, the resurrection, that had place in the case of jesus, acts 25:19: that when, in his conversion vision, jesus gave him his commission, the principal object of that commission was--the instruction of the gentiles: to wit, by informing them--that, to such of them as would believe in the resurrection, and repent of their sins, and do works accordingly,--the benefit of it would be extended: that to this mandate, it was true, he did not ultimately fail to pay substantial obedience: yet, such was his affection for his brethren the jews,--that it was not till, for a considerable time, he had been conferring on _them_ the benefit of his labours, that he betook himself to the gentiles. acts 26:19. "i was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision:--but showed first unto them of damascus, and at jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of judea; and _then_ to the gentiles, that they should repent, &c.--for these causes the jews caught me in the temple, and went about to kill me." the repugnancy (says somebody), the repugnancy, is--not between paul and paul--but between paul and the author of the acts; and, since the facts in question are occurrences in which paul himself was either agent or patient, to the author of the acts, and not to paul, is the incorrectness, wherever it be, to be imputed. be it so: for the purpose of the argument at least, be it so: but, if so it be, what are we to think of the author of the acts? take away the author of the acts, what becomes of paul? take away the authority of the acts in the character of an inspired writer--writing from supernatural inspiration, after an immediate and continued intercourse, in some unexplained and inexplicable manner, with the almighty,--what remains, then, of the evidence, on the ground of which the mighty fabric of paul and his doctrine has been erected? a man, who is thus continually in contradiction--sometimes with himself, at other times with the most unimpeachable authorities--what credence can, with reason and propriety, be given to his evidence, in relation to any important matter of fact? at any rate, when any purpose, which he himself has at heart, is to be served by it? of such a man, the testimony--the uncross-examined and uncross-examinable testimony--would it, of itself, be sufficient to warrant a verdict, on a question of the most inconsiderable pecuniary import? how much less then, on questions, in comparison of which those of the greatest importance which the affairs of this life admit of, shrink into insignificance? even, suppose veracity, and every other branch of probity, unimpeached and unimpeachable,--if such confusion of mind, such want of memory, such negligence, in relation to incidents and particulars, of too immensely momentous a nature, to escape, at any interval of time, from the most ordinary mind;--if such want of attention, such deficiency, in respect of the most ordinary intellectual faculties and attainments, are discernible in his narrative,--what solid, what substantial ground of dependence can it furnish, or even leave in existence? of this sort are the questions for which already no inconsiderable warrant has, it is believed, been found; nor, if so, throughout the whole remaining course of this inquiry, should they ever be out of mind. section 2. grounds of paul's prospect of reconciliation on this occasion with the apostles and their disciples. on this head, in addition to, and in explanation of, the sort of narrative given in the acts,--information, of the most instructive and impressive stamp, may be seen furnished by himself: at the head of it, may be placed that, which may be seen in his epistle to his galatian converts. at jerusalem was the board-room in which sat the council of the apostles: of those men, to whom their bitterest enemies would not, any more than their disciples and adherents, have refused the appellation of constant companions and selected disciples of the departed jesus. to them was known, everything that, in relation to jesus, was known to any one else: and moreover, in unlimited abundance, particulars not capable of being known by any one else. as to paul, let us suppose him now a believer in jesus; and, on this supposition, note what could not but have been the state of his mind, with relation to those select servants of jesus. in them he beheld the witnesses--not only of the most material and characteristic acts and sayings of their master, but of his death, and its supernatural consequences--the _resurrection_ and _ascension_, with which it had been followed. in them he beheld--not only the witnesses of his _miracles_, but a set of pupils, to whom such powers of working the like miracles--such miraculous powers, in a word, as it had pleased him to impart,--had been imparted. in their labours, he beheld the causes of whatsoever prosperity, he found the society, established by them, in possession of. in himself, he beheld the man, who, with such distinguished acrimony and perseverance, had done his utmost, for the destruction of that society, into which, for the purposes, indication of which has been so clearly given by his own pen, he was preparing to intrude himself. to form an ostensible cause for his intrusion,--in addition to such information, as, by means of his persecution, it had happened to him to extract from those whom he had been persecuting, what, on his part, had he?--he had his own learning, his own talents, his own restless and audacious temper, and the vision he had got up:--the baseless fabric of that vision, a view of which has just been given. of the representation thus given of the matter,--whether we take his own account of it, or that of the acts,--suppose the truth to rest upon no other ground than this vision, with or without that other vision, which has been seen so slenderly tacked to it, and so strangely inserted into it,--thus slender is the ground, on which we shall find him embarking upon his enterprize,--assuming to himself, without modification or apology, the name of _an apostle_,--thrusting himself into the society, and putting himself altogether upon an equality, not to say more than an equality, with the whole company of the men, whose title to that appellation was above dispute:--those of them who, among the chosen, had been the most favoured, not excepted. galatians i. 11-23. 11. but i certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.--for i neither received it of man, neither was i taught _it_, but by the revelation of jesus christ.--for ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the jews' religion, how that beyond measure i persecuted the church of god, and wasted it:--and profited in the jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.--but when it pleased god, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called _me_ by his grace,--to reveal his son in me, that i might preach him among the heathen; immediately i conferred not with flesh and blood,--neither went i up to jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but i went into arabia, and returned again unto damascus.--then after three years i went up to jerusalem to see peter, and abode with him fifteen days.--but other of the apostles saw i none, save james the lord's brother.--now the things which i write unto you, behold, before god, i lie not.--afterwards i came into the regions of syria and cilicia;--and was unknown by face unto the churches of judea which were in christ.--but they had heard only, that he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed. thus, however indistinctly and incoherently stated, stands the matter, on the surface of both these accounts. on the surface. but, by a little reflection on the nature of the case--the obvious and indisputable nature of the case--as collected from all accounts, as already brought to view in a preceding chapter ii, we shall be led to another conception, and the only tenable one. the plan of worldly ambition--that plan by which we have already seen his outward conversion produced--had been not only formed, but acted upon:--acted upon, during a course of at least three years: of three years, employed at damascus in preparation,--in arabia in probation. what remained, and was now become necessary, was--some sort of countenance from the apostles: from the apostles, and thence, if possible, from the rest of the then existing church. necessary altogether was this countenance for his support: for, to this plan the _name_ of jesus was essential. it was in that _name_, that all his operations were to be carried on:--in that name, from the use of which it was to be universally understood, that it was according to directions, and with support, from the departed jesus, that by this, his newly-enlisted servant, everything was said and done. in damascus--yes:--in damascus, where were the only persons, with whom, for the purpose of his dominion, he could with safety communicate: that is to say, persons, whom his commission from the jerusalem authorities had placed under his power. in arabia--yes: where, though he had made no progress of which he saw any advantage in giving any account--he at any rate had not experienced any opposition, of such a sort as to engage him to drop his scheme. in those comparatively distant countries--yes. but, in jerusalem--the birthplace of jesus and his religion,--in that metropolis, within which, or the near neighbourhood of it, all the witnesses of its rise and progress--all the proselytes, that had been made to it, were collected,--and from whence, and to which, the votaries of that religion, out of which it had sprung, would be continually flocking from all quarters;--in this place, for a man, known so notoriously to them all as a persecutor, in whose scheme of persecution they had all of them been involved,--for such a man to have, all on a sudden, begun preaching and acting, in the name of that jesus, whom, to use his own language, he had persecuted--such an enterprise as this, which, even with the utmost support which it was in their power to give, would have been audacity, would, without some sort of countenance from them,--have been downright madness. to perfect success it was necessary, that not only these shepherds of the church pasture, but, through them the whole flock, should thus be brought under management. so far as regarded those same _rulers_, we shall find him, in a certain degree,--and even, with reference to his purpose, in a sufficient degree,--successful. but, with reference to the disciples in general, and to all those rulers but three,--it will be seen to have completely failed. circumstanced as he was, to those rulers alone, was it possible for him to have addressed himself, with any the smallest hope. to any assembly of the faithful at large, to have repaired with no better recommendation than his vision story,--even with barnabas, ready, as we shall see, to take him by the hand,--would have been plainly hopeless. not less so would it have been--to present himself to the apostles,--if, in support of such proposition as he had to make,--nothing more apposite, nothing to them in their situation more credible, than this same vision story,--had been capable of being produced. on them, therefore, the case seems already pretty well ripe for the conclusion, that, no such story was ever attempted to be passed. but, setting aside that aã«rial argument,--inducements of a more substantial nature, such as we shall find brought to view by paul himself, were neither on this occasion wanting,--nor could, at any time, have been out of the view of that same barnabas, whom we shall see appearing so often, in the character of his generous patron and steady friend. "on this plan, might barnabas say to them,--on this plan, which he has chalked out for himself, he will be acting--not only not in opposition to, but even in furtherance of, your wishes and endeavors. grecian as he is,--skilled in that language, and that learning, which serves a man as a passport through the whole of the gentile world,--it is to that world that his labours will confine themselves; a field surely ample enough for the most comprehensive views. to you he will leave,--and leave certainly without privation, and therefore naturally without regret,--that field, of which you are already in possession,--and, by the boundaries of which, your means of convenient culture are circumscribed." "on this plan,--not only will your exertions remain unimpeded, but the influence of the name of jesus--that name, on the influence of which those same exertions are so materially dependent for their success,--will, in proportion to paul's success, be extended." in a discourse, to this effect, from the generous and enlightened mediator,--may be seen the natural origin of that agreement, which, further on in its place, under the name of the _partition treaty_, there will be occasion to bring, in a more particular manner, under review. but, what is little less evident, than the propriety and prudence of this plan, viewed at least in the point of view in which it might not unnaturally be viewed by barnabas, is--the impossibility, of coming forward, with any tolerable prospect of success, with any such plan in hand, in presence of a vast and promiscuous assemblage. to engage, on the part of any such assemblage, not to say any steady confidence, but any the slightest hope,--that, from an enemy even to death, the same man would become a partner and assistant,--would require a most particular and protracted exposition, of all those facts and arguments, which the requisite confidence would require for its support:--a detail, which no such assembly would so much as find time to listen to, were it possible for it to find patience. even in the case of the apostles themselves,--taking the whole council of them together, the nature of the plan, it will be seen, admitted not of any successful negotiation. accordingly, to the chief of them alone, to wit, to peter, was it so much as the intention of paul to make any communication of it in the first instance: and, in the whole length of the intercourse, such as it was, that he kept up with, them--in all the four visits, in the course of which that intercourse was kept up--being a period of not less than twenty-five years, to wit, from the year 35 to the year 60,--with no more than three of the eleven, will he be seen so much as pretending to have had any personal interview: _they_ not seeing him, except when they could not avoid it; and _the others_ never seeing him at all. section 3. occasion of this visit, as per paul's own account. after his conversion--after the time at which, if he is to be believed, he saw that first-mentioned of his visions--that vision, by which the most strenuous opponent of the new religion was changed into one who, in profession, was the most active of its supporters,--what was the course he took? did he repair immediately to jerusalem from whence he came? did he present himself to the eleven apostles--to the confidential companions of the departed jesus, to lay before them his credentials? to report to those by whom everything about jesus that was to be known to man was known--what had been experienced by him?--by him, paul, by whom, till the moment of that experience, nothing of it whatever had been known? not he, indeed. behold what he says himself. instead of so doing, off he goes, in the first instance to arabia; from whence, at the end of a length of time not specified, he returns to damascus. at length, however, to jerusalem he does repair: at length, into the presence of those against whose lives he had so long conspired,--he now uses his endeavours to intrude himself. at length? at the end then of what length of time? at the end of three years? yes: but from what point of time computed? from the time of his conversion on the road,--or from the last day of his stay at damascus, upon his return thither from arabia? by that man, let an answer to these questions be given--by that man who can find grounds for it. thus much, however, may, at any rate, be said:--of the length of this interval three years is the minimum. in what view did it occur to him to seek this conference? in what view to make the attempt? and in what view delay it? 1. as to his view in seeking it,--it must be left to inference:--to conjecture, grounded on circumstances. 2. being engaged, as he was, in the plan of making converts to a religion, called by him the religion of jesus,--and this among the nations at large--among others besides those in the bosom of whose religion the founder of the new religion had been born;--feeling, as it seemed to him, the need, of information in various shapes--concerning the acts and sayings of jesus;--not having, for the purpose, had, as yet, access, to any of the persons, to whom the benefit, of an interview with jesus, upon terms of peculiar confidence, had been imparted;--he was desirous, of taking this--his only course--for rectifying the misconception, under which, to no small extent, he must probably have been labouring,--and filling up the deficiencies, under which he could not but be labouring. 3. obvious is the need he had, of countenance from these universally acknowledged chiefs, of the religion professed to be taught by him. good, says some one: but, having, from the first, been thus long labouring, under the need of information,--how happened it, that he so long delayed, the exertions he made at length, for the obtaining of it? the answer is surely not unobvious. had the time, of his presenting-himself, been when the memory of his conversion was fresh,--when the memory, of the vision, by which it was to be stated as having been effected, would, supposing it really experienced, have been fresh also,--in such case, the narrative, true or untrue, would have found, opposed to its reception, all imaginable repugnance, in so many ulcerated minds: and, on the supposition of its being untrue, he--the supposed percipient and actually narrating witness--he, who knew nothing about the subject of his testimony, would have had to submit himself to the severest imaginable cross-examination, at the hands of those, to whom everything about jesus was matter of perfect knowledge. thus the matter would have stood, in the first instance. on the other hand, as time ran on, several results, favourable to his design, would naturally have taken place. 1. the exasperation, produced by the experience of the persecution suffered at his hands, would have been diminished. 2. his own recollection, of the particulars, might be supposed less vivid. 3. the curiosity, respecting them, would have become less eager. 4. time might have given admission to behaviour on his part, of a sort, by which distrust might be lessened, confidence strengthened. well; now we have him at jerusalem,--and for the first time after his conversion. when thus, at jerusalem,--of those whom he went to see, whom did he actually see? answer, peter for one; james, whom he styles the lord's brother, and who, according to him, though not literally a brother, was, however, a kinsman of jesus:--these two, according to his own shewing; these two, and no more. "then after three years i went up to jerusalem to see peter, and abode with him fifteen days. but of the other apostles saw i none, save james, the lord's brother." gal. 1:18, 19. section 4. occasion, as per acts account compared with paul's. such as hath been seen is paul's account of the matter:--paul's own account, of the interval that elapsed, between his conversion, and the first of his subsequent visits to jerusalem:--to the residence of the christians, whom he had been persecuting, and of the rulers, under and by the authority of whom, the persecution had been carried on. such, loose as it is, is his account, of the interval between these two events: and of the place, in which, either almost the whole, or at any rate the greatest part of it, was passed. such was paul's own account of his own proceedings,--at the distance of twenty-five years and more. compare with it, now, the account, given by his historiographer--given, of the interval, that, according to him, had place, between these same two events. acts 9:19-29. here, no three years' sojournment in arabia: no visit to that country: no notice, of any place, other than damascus, as being a place, in which the whole, or any part, of the time in question, was passed. in a position, with respect to each other, scarcely different from that of contiguity,--are the two events brought together. the blood of their disciples scarce washed from off his hands, when, with barnabas for his introducer, he presents himself to the apostles! at the very time, when the jerusalem rulers, would have been expecting to receive from him, the proofs of his punctuality, in the execution of the important plan, of official oppression, of which, at his own instance, he had been solemnly constituted and appointed the instrument; when, after going over to and forming a league with the criminals, for such they must have been called, whom he had been commissioned by these rulers to bring to justice;--at this very time it is, that he returns to the seat of their dominion:--to the place in which, at that very time, his return to them, with the intended victims in captivity, could not but be the subject of universal expectation! let any one now judge, whether, in any state of things, natural or supernatural, the sort of conduct thus supposed is credible. at damascus, instead of presenting himself to the damascus rulers, to whom the commission of which he was the bearer was addressed,--the first persons, whom, according to this account, acts 9:19, he sees, are "the disciples," _i.e._, the persons whom, by that commission, he was to arrest: and, with them, instead of arresting them, he passes "certain days." these certain days ended,--does he thereupon, with or without an apology, present himself to these same rulers? not he, indeed. not presenting himself to them, does he, by flight or otherwise, take any measures, for securing himself, against their legitimate and necessarily intended vengeance? no such thing:--instead of doing so, he runs in the very face of it. he shows himself in the jewish synagogues, in the public places of worship: and there, instead of preaching moses and his law, he preaches christ,--that christ, whose disciples he was commissioned to extirpate. this breach of trust--this transgression, which, however commendable in itself, could not but,--in the eyes of all those by whom, or for whom, he was in trust,--be a most flagitious and justly punishable act of treachery,--could it even from the first, for so much as two days, together, remain unknown? not it, indeed: if, in this particular, to this same conversion story, as related by this same author, any credit is due. for, according to this same account,--in this same journey, and at the very time of his conversion vision, was he alone? no; he had companions: companions, who, whatsoever became of him, would, at the very time of his entrance, unless any cause can be shown to the contrary, have entered thither in due course. well, then--ask the men in authority,--"this paul, in whose train you came,--where is he, what has become of him?" such would of course have been the questions put to these, his companions, even on the supposition, that by these same companions, no visit had, of their own accord, been paid to these same rulers, under whose authority they went to place themselves. at length,--and the days which by this time had elapsed were "_many_,"--he finds it expedient to quit damascus. he is driven from thence: but by what force? by the exercise of the legal authority of the offended rulers? in a word, by public vengeance? no: but by a private conspiracy--nothing more: for, to these rulers,--so different are they from all other rulers,--whether their authority is obeyed or contemned, has, all the while, been matter of indifference. acts ix. 19-30. 19. and when he had received meat, he was strengthened. then was saul _certain days_ with the _disciples_ which were at damascus.--and straightway he preached _christ_ in the synagogues, that he is the son of god.--but all that heard him were amazed, and said, is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests?--but saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the jews which dwelt at damascus, proving that this is very christ.--and after that _many days_ were fulfilled, the jews took counsel to kill him:--but their laying await was known of saul. and they watched the gates day and night to kill him.--then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a _basket_.--and when saul was come to jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.--but barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at damascus in the name of jesus.--and he was with them coming in and going out at jerusalem.--and he spake boldly in the name of the lord jesus, and disputed against the grecians: but they went about to slay him.--30. which, when the brethren knew, they brought him down to cã¦sarea, and sent him forth to tarsus. in the above account--a remarkable incident is presented, by the occasion and manner of his escape from damascus. in part, it has for its support an assertion made by paul himself; but, as usual, as to part it is scarcely reconcileable with the account he gives of it. in respect of the adventure of the _basket_, the two accounts agree: and thus the occasion is identified and fixed. it is in respect of the description of the persons, by whom the attack upon him was made or meditated, that the accounts differ. according to the acts, the hostile hands are those of the jews, who are spoken of as so many unauthorized and criminal conspirators: but, according to paul, they are those of the constituted authorities--a governor acting under a king. 31. "in damascus"--says he, in 2 cor. 11:32-33--"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 i let down by the wall, and escaped his hands." now, supposing the adverse force to have been that of a band of conspirators, it was natural for them to watch the "city gates": a more promising resource they could scarcely have had at their command. but, suppose it to have been that of the governor,--what need had he to watch the gates? he might have searched houses. by the reference made, to a matter of fact, which, supposing it real, must in its nature have been notorious--to wit, the existence of a king, of the name in question, in the country in question, at the time in question--a comparative degree of probability seems to be given to paul's account. a curious circumstance is--that, in this epistle of paul's, this anecdote of the basket stands completely insulated; it has not any the slightest connection with anything that precedes or follows it. in the acts' account, as already observed, chap. 4, it looks as if it was immediately after the adventure of the basket, that he went on this his first visit to the apostles at jerusalem: for, as we see, it is immediately thereupon that his arrival at that city is mentioned. if so, the abode he had _then_ been making at damascus, was probably _after_ his return from arabia: that return from arabia, which we have seen him speaking of in his epistle to the galatians, gal. i. 15. "when it pleased god ... to reveal his son to me, that i might preach him to the heathen; immediately i conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went i up to jerusalem, to them which were apostles before me; but i went into arabia, and returned again unto damascus. _then after_ three years, i went up to jerusalem, to see peter." &c. "after three years?"--three years, reckoning from what _time_? here we see the ambiguity, and along with it the difficulty. if reckoning from his conversion,--then we have the three years, to be spent--partly in damascus, partly in arabia: in damascus, in obtaining, perhaps, from the christianized jews--in return for the impunity given to them by the breach of the trust committed to him by the jerusalem rulers--money, for defraying his expenses while in arabia. if, reckoning from his escape from damascus in a basket, then we have three years, during which not so much as any the faintest trace of him is perceptible. all, therefore, that is clear is--that according to his account of the matter, there was an interval of at least three years between his conversion, and this first of his subsequent jerusalem visits--this visit of his to jerusalem, to see the apostles. between the two interpretations,--in respect of length of time, observe here the difference. according to one of them, between the conversion and the first jerusalem visit, we have an interval of three years, and no more: and, in this interval, three lengths of time--one passed in damascus, another in arabia, a third, terminated by the basket adventure, passed also in damascus, are all included: the entire interval determinate: but its parts, all of them, indeterminate. according to the other interpretation, we have also three lengths of time: the first, indeterminate, passed in damascus; the second, as indeterminate, passed in arabia; the third, passed in damascus, and this a determinate one--namely, the three years. thus, upon the first supposition, the interval consists of three years, and no more: upon the second supposition, it consists of three years, preceded by two lengths of time, which are both indeterminate, but one of which--that passed in arabia--may have been to any amount protracted. upon either supposition,--it seems not unlikely, that it was immediately after his escape from damascus, that this first visit of his to jerusalem took place. and, the greater the preceding interval of time, whether passed in arabia or damascus, the less unpromising his prospect, that the resentments, produced by the provocations given by him to the christians, by his persecution of them,--and to the jewish rulers, by his treachery towards them,--should, both, have to such a degree subsided, as to render even so short a stay, as that of fifteen days which he mentions, consistent with personal safety. yet, as we see in the acts, are these two events spoken of as if they had been contiguous: at any rate, it is in contiguity that they are spoken of. uncertainties crowd upon uncertainties. at the time of paul's conversion,--had damascus already this same king, named aretas, with a governor under him? if so, how happens it, that, of this state of the government, no intimation is perceptible, in the account given of that conversion in the acts? was it--that, at that time, there existed not any such monarchical personage? but that, before the adventure of the basket, some revolution had placed him there? according to paul's account,--the state of things, produced in damascus by his exertions, was somewhat curious. on the face of this account, in ordinary there was no _garrison_ in damascus: it was only by special order from the monarch, and for no other purpose than the bringing to justice--or what was called justice--the person of the self-constituted apostle,--that a garrison was put into the town, with a governor for the command of it. what a foundation all this for credence! and, with it, for a system of religious doctrine to build itself upon!--religious doctrine--with the difference between eternal happiness and eternal misery depending upon it! section 5. cause of the discordance between the two accounts. between these two accounts, such being the discordance--where shall we find the _cause_ of it? answer: in the different views, in which, at the time of writing, the two accounts were penned: in the different objects, to the accomplishment of which, at the time of penning their respective accounts, the endeavours of the two writers were directed. the author of the acts--what, then, was _his_ object? to obtain for his patron--his chief hero--alive or dead--a recognition, as universal as possible, in his assumed character of an apostle. the more complete the recognition, bestowed upon him by those most competent of all judges,--the more extensive the recognition he might look for, at the hands of all other their fellow-believers. sufficient was this--sufficient for the general purposes of the party--in the eyes of a person other than paul, even though that other person was a protegã©, a retainer, a satellite. sufficient this was not, however, to the arrogance of the head of the party--paul himself: at least, at the time of his writing this his letter to his galatian converts. think you, says he, that any relation, i have ever borne to any of those who were apostles before me, had, on my part, anything in it of dependence? think you, that i ever stood in need of anything at their hands? think you, that i had ever any more need of them, than they of me? not i, indeed. the gospel, which i have always preached--neither from them did i receive it, nor from them, in preaching it, did i ever seek or receive any assistance. gal. i. 11, 12. think you, that i stood in any need, or ever supposed myself to stand in any need, of any acceptance or acknowledgement at their hands? not i, indeed. when my revelation had been received by me, did i present myself to them, for any such purpose as that of remuneration and acceptance? not i, indeed. i went not to them: i went not so much as to jerusalem, where they then were: i conferred not with flesh and blood:--off i went to arabia; and when my business in arabia was at an end, even then, did i repair to jerusalem? not i, indeed. i returned again to damascus. true it is, to jerusalem i did go at last.--but when?--not till three years afterwards. well--and, when i was at jerusalem, how many, and which of them, think you that i saw? think you, that i put myself to any such trouble, as that of seeing them all together? the whole herd of them? no. peter was naturally a chief among them: with him i had accordingly some business to settle:--him, accordingly, i saw, as also james, whom, as being a brother, or other near kinsman, of jesus, i had a curiosity to see. paul himself wrote at one time; this his disciple at another: each of them pursued the purpose of the time. not on this occasion, at any rate,--perhaps not on any other, was there anything, that either wrote, concerted between them.[25] of this want of concert, what has just been seen is one of the consequences. reserved as we have seen him, in regard to time and other circumstances,--one circumstance more there is, for which our curiosity is to no small amount, debtor, to the author of the acts. this is--information, of the means--of the channel, through which paul obtained the introduction, which, without mention made of the object, we have seen him acknowledging that, so far as concerned peter, he was desirous of: and _that_ to such a degree, as to undertake a journey from damascus to jerusalem, some 120 or 130 miles, for the purpose. repugnancy, so natural, and naturally so vehement--even at the end of three years, or the still greater number of years--by what means could he remove it, or so much as flatter himself with a prospect of being able to remove it? to this question, it is to the author of the acts that we are indebted for an answer: and that answer a satisfactory one:--it was by the assistance of barnabas, that the object, so far as it was accomplished, was accomplished. to the religion of jesus, after as well as before this,--to the apostles in particular before this,--barnabas was a supporter of no small importance. at the time when the financial arrangements were for the second time settled;[26]--when, from the substance of the opulent among the faithful, enough was collected for the support of all the indigent;--among those, by whom, on this second occasion, lands and houses, were for this purpose sold, particular persons are, on this second occasion, for the first time mentioned. the first place is occupied by this barnabas: and not till after him come ananias and sapphira--the unfortunate pair, of whose fate mention will have to be made in another place. joses was, it seems, the original name--the proper name of this beneficent protector: barnabas, the _son of consolation_, acts 4:36, was no more than a title of honour,--a token of gratitude. a title of honour? and by whom conferred? even by the apostles. by barnabas, therefore, whatsoever thereafter comes to be reported as done,--it is by _the son of consolation_ that we are to understand it to have been, and to be, done. as to the arguments, by which this son of consolation succeeded,--in prevailing, upon two, and, if we are to believe paul, no more than two, of these so lately persecuted or threatened servants of jesus,--to be, for a few days, upon speaking terms, with him, who so lately had been their deadly, as well as open enemy,--it is from imagination, with judgment for her guide, that they must, if at all, be deduced from the surrounding circumstances of the case. as to these arguments, however,--whatever were the rest of them, of two of them a hint is given by the author of the acts: these are,--the story of the conversion,--and the boldness of the preaching, which at damascus was among the first-fruits of it. those which, under the guidance of judgment, imagination would not find much difficulty in adding, are,--the evil--that might result from his enmity, in case the advances then made by him were rejected,--and the useful service, which, by the blessing of god, might be hoped for at his hands, if admitted in the character of an ally and cooperator: at any rate, so long as the whole field of his exertions, and in particular the geographical part of it, continued different from theirs. with peter, on whatever account, it was paul's own desire to hold a conference:--so we have seen him declaring to the galatians. to this peter, whom he was desirous of seeing, and whom at length he succeeded in seeing,--to this peter did he then himself tell the story of his vision, of his conversion, and the mode of it? if at any time he did,--at any rate, if the author of the acts is to be believed,--it was not till barnabas, the son of consolation, had told it for him. had it been by himself that his story had been to be told in the first instance,--he would thereby have stood exposed to cross-examination: and, among those things, which barnabas might in his situation say for him,--were many things, which, if at all, he could not, with anything like an equal prospect of good effect, have said for himself. to any asseveration of his own,--in any promises of future amity, it was not in the nature of the case, that from his own mouth they should give credence. but, when by barnabas, of whose zeal in their cause they had received such substantial proofs--when from this son of consolation they received assurance, that paul had actually engaged himself in that line of service, which he professed himself desirous to embrace;--that he had engaged so far, that no prospect of safe retreat could reasonably be in his view;--then it was, that, without imprudence, they might, venture to hold at least a conference with him, and hear and see what he had to say for himself. as to the account, given on this occasion by barnabas, of the famous vision,--had it been but preserved, it would probably have been no less curious than those which we have been already seeing. though we cannot be precisely assured in what way,--we may be pretty well assured, that, in some way or other, additions would have been to be seen made in it, to the list of _variations_. but, the great advantage,--producible, and probably produced, by the opening of the matter, as performed by barnabas,--was this: in company with those arguments, by which the sincerity of paul was to be demonstrated,--would naturally come those, by which intimation would be given, of the advantage there might be, in forbearing to apply too strict a scrutiny, to this important statement. the interests, which, in the character of motives, pleaded for the acceptance, of the advance made towards reconciliation and mutually advantageous cooperation,--would, in this manner, prepare the way, for receiving, without any troublesome counter-interrogation, the important narrative: or, perhaps, for considering the matter, as already sufficiently explained, by the son of consolation,--in such sort that, to the new apostle, the trouble of repeating a narrative, which he must already have so frequently found himself under the necessity of repeating, might be spared. the greater was the importance, of the service thus rendered to paul by the son of consolation,--the more studiously, in giving the account, as above, of the intercourse with the apostles at jerusalem,--the more studiously, would he avoid all mention of it.[27] section 6. length of this visit--paul's employment during it. fifteen days, if paul is to be believed--fifteen days, and no more,--was the length of time, during which his intercourse with peter continued: gal. i. 18, that same length of time, and no greater, it may without much rashness be inferred, was his stay at jerusalem. these fifteen days,--or whatever, if anything longer, was the duration of his stay in that seat of their common religion,--in what occupations were they employed? it is in the acts, if anywhere, that this question will receive its answer. it was in "disputing against the grecians." acts 9:29. that such should have been his occupation, is in his situation altogether natural. of a sort of _partition treaty_, as having, at one time, been entered into between himself and peter,--paul, in his so-often mentioned letters to the galatians, informs us in express terms. as to the time, which, on that occasion, he has in view,--it was, according to appearance, not the time of _this_ his first visit, but of the third. at that third visit, the treaty was, at any rate, either entered into for the first time, or confirmed: receiving, at the same time, what was on both sides agreed upon, as an amendment requisite to add to it, in respect of clearness, correctness, or completeness. but, at this visit, it seems altogether natural, that, with more or less of these same qualities, a treaty of this sort took place. by the sort of relation, produced between them, by the state of interests,--the existence of an agreement of this sort seems sufficiently probabilized: and, from the few words, in which, by the author of the acts, mention is made of the grecians, and of paul's disputes with them,--the inference receives the confirmation afforded by _direct_ evidence. with the grecians then it was, that these disputations of paul were held. why with the grecians, and no other? the reason is no mystery. greek was the language of paul: greek, for anything that appears, was not the language of peter, or of any other of the apostles. applying himself to the grecians, and to them alone,--paul might, to any amount, have given additional extent to his own dominion, without subtracting anything from theirs. not productive, it should seem, of much fruit,--was this portion, of the new apostle's labours. no sooner are we informed, of the boon thus offered to these grecian gentiles, than comes, moreover, the further information, that some there were, that "went about to slay him. which when the brethren knew, they brought him," it is added, "to cã¦sarea, and sent him forth to tarsus." acts 9:29. meantime, those men, who went about to slay him,--who were they? possibly they were grecians, if by the disputation in question, the annoyance produced was so intolerable to them, as to be productive of a wish and enterprise thus flagitious: and, if the evidence afforded by the rules of grammar be in this case regarded as conclusive,--the pronoun _they_ having for its last possible antecedent the substantive _grecians_--these, and no other, must have been the intended murderers. on the other hand, among the heathen--the philosophical disputants of this nation,--disputations, having any such abstractions for their subject, were not wont to be productive, of any such practical and flagitious consequences. among the heathens, moreover, it appears not, that, antecedently to his conversion, the zeal of paul had led him to put any to death: on the other hand among the christianized jews, his fellow-religionists, the number of persons, of whom he had put to death some, and in other ways plagued others, was unhappily but too great. by the religion _into_ which they had been converted,--revenge, it is true, was not (as in that which they were converted _from_) magnified, but prohibited: but, the influence of it has never been equally efficient upon all minds. be this as it may,--upon his leaving jerusalem, it was to the region of syria and cilicia, that, at this time, he betook himself. so, in his letter to his galatians, he himself says, gal. 1:21; and, by what is said in the acts, he is not contradicted, but confirmed. by himself what is mentioned is--the _region_, viz. syria and cilicia: by the acts what is mentioned is--the _cities_, viz. cã¦sarea and tarsus. cã¦sarea,--whether at that time it was in syria or not,--was, at any rate, little, if anything, out of the way, from jerusalem to tarsus. cã¦sarea was a town upon the coast:--one among those maritime towns, which, whether parts or not of syria, are in the way between the inland city, of jerusalem, and the coast of cilicia: with which coast, by a river,--tarsus, marked in the map with the mark of a capital town, appears to communicate. in speaking of this change of place, the terms employed by paul, are general terms,--"_i came._" by what _means_ he came, he does not mention: nor does there appear any particular reason why he should have mentioned them. in the acts, the account is more particular:--he was, in a manner, forced from the one place to the other:--he was, at any rate, _escorted_: it was by "_the brethren_," he was so dealt with. "which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to cã¦sarea, and sent him forth to tarsus." acts 9:30. by the brethren?--yes.--but by what brethren? by the general body of the christians, or any that belonged to it? no:--for, it was from their wrath, that he was making his escape. no:--not by the justly exasperated many; but by such few adherents as, under such prodigious disadvantage, his indefatigable artifice and energy had found means to conciliate. section 7. mode and cause of its termination. in relation to this subject, we have two, and no more than two, accounts,--both from the same pen,--that of the historiographer in the acts; and these two accounts, as usual, contradictory of each other. the first, in the order of the history, is that given by him in his own person: acts 9:27, 28, 29. the other, is that given by him in the person of paul: namely, in the course of his supposed first-made and unpremeditated speech,--when, on the occasion of his last visit to jerusalem--his invasion visit, he was pleading for his life before the angry multitude. acts 22:17, 18, 19, 20, 21. now then, let us compare the two accounts. speaking in his own person,--it is to the fear of certain grecians, that the historiographer ascribes paul's departure for jerusalem. in disputing with them, he had been speaking "boldly in the name of the lord jesus": and _thereupon_,--and as we are desired to believe, _therefore_,--came certain designs and endeavours to slay him. designs? on the part of whom? answer:--on the part of those same grecians: cause of these designs and endeavours, irritation, so it is intended we should suppose,--irritation, produced in the breasts of those same grecians;--and produced by the dispute. now, as to the words of the historiographer, speaking in his own person. it is immediately after the mention of paul's transactions with the apostles and the other disciples, that after saying, acts 9:28, that "... he was with them coming in and going out of jerusalem," the narrative continues thus: ver. 29; "and he spake boldly in the name of the lord jesus, and disputed against the grecians, but _they_ went about to slay him: ver. 30; which when _the brethren_ knew, they brought him down to cã¦sarea, and sent him forth to tarsus." such is the account given, of the departure of paul from jerusalem, on the occasion in question--given by the historiographer, speaking in his own person, of the manner of the departure, and at the same time of the cause of it. behold now how different is the account given, of the same matter, by the same historiographer, in the same work, when speaking in the person of his hero. nothing now as to any disputes with grecians: nothing now of these, or any other human beings, in the character of beings who were angry with him, and _that_ to such a degree, that, to save his life, it was deemed necessary by his adherents,--styled on this occasion "_the_ brethren," to take charge of him, as we have seen, and convey him from jerusalem to cã¦sarea and elsewhere. the case seems to be--that, between the time of writing the account which has just been seen, and the time for giving an account of the same transaction in the person of the hero, as above,--a certain difficulty presented itself to the mind of the historiographer: and, that it is for the solution of this difficulty, that he has recourse, to one of his sovereign solvents--_a trance_. the difficulty seems to have been this: the class of persons, whom, on that first visit of his he had exasperated, were--not "_grecians_," or any other gentiles, but christians: christians, the whole body of them--apostles and disciples together: the same class of persons, to which belonged those who, on the occasion of this his last visit--the _invasion visit_--were to such a degree exasperated, by this fourth intrusion of his, as to be attempting his life. how hopeless any attempt would have been, to make them believe, that it was not by themselves, but by a set of heathens, that his life was threatened on that former occasion, is sufficiently manifest. here then comes a demand, for a substitute, to that cause, which, distant as the time was, could not, however, be altogether absent from their memory: and which, so far as it was present, could not but heighten their exasperation:--this substitute was _the trance_. the cause of the departure is now--not the fear of any human being, but the express command of "_the lord_":--a command delivered in the course, and by means, of this same _trance_. moreover, as if, from such a quarter, _commands_ were not sufficient of themselves; on the present occasion, it will be seen, they came backed by _reasons_. was it that, as the historiographer has been telling us in his own person, certain grecians were exasperated? no: but that the persons, to whom, with barnabas for his supporting witness, acts 9:27, he had been telling his story, gave no credit to it: so that, by a man with his reputation in this state, nothing in the way of his business was to be done. but now let us see the text. it comes immediately after that passage, in which paul is made to speak of ananias, as giving orders to him, in the name of the lord: orders, concluding in these words: acts 22:16: ... "arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the lord." this said,--his story, as told to the multitude, continues thus: "and it came to pass that, when i was come again to jerusalem, even while i prayed in the temple, i was in _a trance_: and saw him saying unto me, make _haste_, and get thee _quickly_ out of jerusalem: _for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me_. and i said, lord, they know that i imprisoned and beat in every synagogue those that believed on thee: and when the blood of thy martyr stephen was shed, i also was standing by, and consenting to his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him. and he said unto me, depart: for i will send thee far hence unto the gentiles. and they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices and said, away with such a fellow from the earth; for it is not fit that he should live." it may now be seen, how useful and convenient an implement this same trance was: how well adapted, to the occasion on which it was employed. taken by itself, this story about the enraged grecians might serve to impose upon readers in general: but, to the knowledge of the really enraged christians, whose wrath he was endeavouring to assuage,--it was not only too palpably false to be related to them, but too much so, to be even for a moment supposed to be related to them: hence came the demand for the supernatural cause. nothing, it is evident, could be better suited to the purpose. the assertion was of the sort of those, which, how palpably soever untrue, are not exposed to contradiction by direct evidence: and which, supposing them believed, ensure universal respect, and put all gainsayers to silence. an incident not unworthy here of notice, is--the sort of acknowledgment contained in the words--"for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me." in this may be seen--a confirmation of the important fact, so fully proved on the occasion of the first or _reconciliation visit_: and we see--with what consistency and propriety, the mention of it comes in, on the present occasion: namely, in a speech, made to a multitude, of which, many of those,--by whom he had been disbelieved and rejected on that former occasion,--must of course have formed a part. such is the fact, which, after having communicated to us, in his own person, acts 9:26, "they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple," the historiographer is frank enough to communicate to us a second time, through the mouths of paul and "the lord," the one within the other. _true_ enough this information: and, moreover, at jerusalem, as well when the historiographer was writing, as when paul was speaking, _notorious_ enough: or we should hardly have had it _here_ and _now_. but, what a truth to put into the mouth of paul, whose title to credence for his claim, is so effectually destroyed by it! to return to what, on the occasion of the first visit, is said by the historiographer, in his own person, about the grecians. that it was false, as to the main point,--namely, that it was by the fear of those same gentiles that he was driven out of jerusalem,--is now, it is hoped, sufficiently evident. but, as to his having held disputation with them,--in this there seems not to be anything inconsistent or improbable: and this part, supposing it true, might, in so far as known, help to gain credence for that which was false. a circumstance--not altogether clear, nor worth taking much trouble in the endeavour to render it so, is--on the occasion of this dialogue, the change made, of the supernatural vehicle, from a _vision_ into a "_trance_." whatsoever, if any, is the difference,--they agree in the one essential point: namely, that it is in the power, of any man, at any time, to have had as many of them as he pleases: hearing and seeing, moreover, in every one of them, whatsoever things it suits his convenience to have heard or seen.--"i saw a vision:" or, "i was in a trance": either postulate granted, everything whatsoever follows. this _trance_, it may be observed, is of a much more substantial nature than any of the _visions_. by paul in his _road vision_,--vision as it was,--neither _person_ nor _thing_, with the exception of a quantity of light, was seen: only a voice, _said to be the lord's_, heard. in this trance, the lord is not only heard, but seen. in those visions, that which is said to have been heard, amounts to nothing: on the present occasion, what is said to have been heard, is material to the purpose, and perfectly intelligible. not that there could be any use in paul's _actually_ hearing of it: for what it informed him of, was nothing more than that which, at the very time, he was in full experience of. but, in a situation such as his, it was really of use to him, to be _thought_ to have heard it: and therefore it is, that, in the speech ascribed to him, he is represented as _saying_ that he heard it. footnotes: [25] in the current chronology, this epistle to the galatians is placed in the year 58; on the part of the author of the acts, the first mention of his being in the company of paul is placed in the year next following, to wit, 59. note, that at the end of the epistle to the galatians, it is stated to be written from rome: yet, according to the current chronology, his arrival at rome, in custody, from jerusalem,--at which time unquestionably he had never as yet visited rome,--did not take place till the year 62. [26] first time, acts ii. 45. second time, acts iv. 34. [27] "i conferred not with flesh and blood." (gal. ii. 16.) "of those who seemed to be somewhat, whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me." not till "after three years" did i go "up to jerusalem to see peter." with language in this strain, it would have harmonized but indifferently, to have added, "nor should i have seen him then, had it not been for barnabas." chapter v. _paul disbelieved_ continued.--_jerusalem visit ii._ _money-bringing visit._--_barnabas accompanying him from antioch._ section 1. at antioch, agabus having predicted a dearth, money is collected for the jerusalem saints. at his own house it was, that we last left our self-declared apostle: at his own birthplace--tarsus: what we have next to see is--what drew him from thence. all this while there were other disciples that had not been idle. to the new religion, already was antioch, antioch in syria, become a new jerusalem. upon the dispersion of the jerusalem christians, occasioned by the judicial murder of the sainted trustee of the poor's fund--stephen,--some of them, among whom were some natives of cyprus,--in which island was situated the property of the son of consolation, barnabas,--had betaken themselves to that same island, others to that same city of antioch in syria. acts xi. 19-24. 19. now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about stephen, travelled as far as phenice and cyprus, and antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the jews only.--and some of them were men of cyprus and cyrene, which, when they were come to antioch, spake unto the grecians, preaching the lord jesus.--and the hand of the lord was with them; and a great number believed, and turned unto the lord.--then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in jerusalem: and they sent forth barnabas, that he should go as far as antioch.--who, when he came and had seen the grace of god, was glad; and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the lord.--for he was a good man, full of the holy ghost and of faith: and much people was added unto the lord. of these, some addressed themselves exclusively to the _jews_: others ventured so far, as to make an experiment upon the _grecians_. unfortunately, these terms are, neither of them, wholly free from ambiguity. by the word _jews_, may have been meant either jews by _birth_ and _abode_, or jews by _religion_: by the word _grecians_, either jews who, born or dwelling within the field of quondam grecian dominion, used the greek as their native language,--or greeks, who were such, not only by language, but by religion. in this latter case, their lot was among the gentiles, and much more extraordinary and conspicuous was the importance of the success. "they which preach the gospel, should live of the gospel." such, in his own words, 1 cor. 9:14, is the maxim laid down by paul, for the edification of his corinthian disciples. to save doubts and disputation, he prefaces it with the assurance--"even so hath the lord ordained." no great need of support from revelation, seems to attach upon a maxim so natural, and so reasonable: from the time of the first planting of the gospel, it appears to have been, as indeed it could not fail to be, universally acted upon; saving such few exceptions as a happy union of zeal, with sufficient pecuniary means, might render possible. how, under the apostolical aristocracy, it had been acted upon in jerusalem, has been seen already. the time was now come,--for its being established, and acted upon in antioch. at jerusalem, under the spiritual dominion of the apostles, lived a man of the name of _agabus_. among the endowments,--of which, in the character of _qualifications_, a demand was by some understood to be created, by the business of propagating the new religion,--qualifications, a list of which, according to his conception of it, paul, 1 cor. 12:10, has given us,--was one, which, among these endowments, was called the "_gift of prophecy_":--a gift, under which, as under that of speech in general, particularly when applied to occasions of importance, the faculty of _prediction_--of forming correct judgments respecting future contingencies--would, if not necessarily, very frequently at least, come to be included. in the instance of the _prophecy_ here in question, this same prospective faculty, it should seem, was actually included. the _fact_, for the purpose of predicting, or giving information of which, this useful emissary was, on the present occasion, sent from jerusalem to antioch,--was--that of signifying, that there should be a great dearth: an _inference_ deduced from it, was--that, at this same antioch, for the relief of the brethren at jerusalem, _contributions_ should be collected, and sent to jerusalem. acts xi. 27-30. 27. and in these days came prophets from jerusalem unto antioch.--and there stood up one of them named agabus, and signified by the spirit that there should be a great dearth throughout all the world; which came to pass in the days of claudius caesar.--then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in judea:--which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of barnabas and saul. in the calamity of _dearth_ may be seen one of those events, of which--especially if the time of it be not predesignated with too rigid an exactness--a prediction may be hazarded,--and even by any man,--without much risk of falling under the disgrace attached to the appellation of _a false prophet_. of this observation, an exemplification seems to have been afforded, in the present instance. with not unaccustomed prudence,--"the spirit," by which, on this occasion, the calamity was "signified," forbore, as we see, from the fixation of any particular year--either for the prophecy, or for the accomplishment of it. "the days of claudius caesar" are mentioned as the time of the accomplishment. by agreement of all chronologists,--the duration of his reign is stated as occupying not less than thirteen years. whether this same reign had then already commenced,--is not, on this occasion, mentioned: from the manner in which it is mentioned, the negative seems not improbable; if so, then to find the time which the prophecy had for finding its accomplishment to the definite term of thirteen years, we must add another, and that an indefinite one. according to the situation, of the individuals by whom the word is employed,--_worlds_ vary in their sizes. of the dearth in question, the whole world, "all the world," is, by the author of the acts, stated as having been the afflicted theatre: "great dearth throughout all the world." acts 11:28. as to the rest of the world, we may leave it to itself. for the purpose then and now in question, it was and is sufficient--that two cities, jerusalem and antioch, were included in it. the calamity being thus universal,--no reason of the ordinary kind is given, or seems discoverable--why, of any such contribution as should come to be raised, the course should be--from antioch to jerusalem, rather than from jerusalem to antioch. inquired for, however, on religious ground,--a _reason_ presents itself, without much difficulty. what rome became afterwards, jerusalem was then--the capital of _that world_, which now, for the first time, received the name of _christian_. according to one of the sayings of jesus--if paul, his self-appointed apostle, is to be trusted to--of them it was pronounced "_more blessed to give than to receive_":[28] but in the eyes of the successors of st. peter at all times,--and at this time, as it should seem, in his own--it was _more blessed to receive than give_. section 2. barnabas and paul dispatched with the money to jerusalem. of the _amount_ of the eleemosynary harvest, no intimation is to be found. as to the _consequence_ of it, barnabas, we see, is the man stated as having, with obvious propriety, been chosen for the important trust: barnabas--of whose opulence, trustworthiness, steadiness, and zeal, such ample proofs, not to speak of those subsequent ones, which will be seen in their place, had already manifested themselves. in consequence of the information, already received by the mother church in jerusalem, of the prosperity of the daughter church, acts 11:20, 21, planted, as above, in the capital of syria,--this most active of all christian citizens had been sent to give increase to it. but, of the talents and activity of paul, his indefatigable supporter and powerful patron had had full occasion to be apprized. accordingly, without the aid of this his not less indefatigable helper, still was the strength of the rising church, in the eyes of the patron, incomplete. "a prophet," says a not ill-grounded proverb, "has no honor in his own country." in his native city, among the witnesses of his youth, paul had indeed found _safety_: but, as the nature of the case manifests, in a circle, from which respect stood excluded by familiarity, safety had not been accompanied with _influence_: and, in eyes such as those of paul, safety without influence was valueless. under these circumstances,--the patron, going to tarsus in person in quest of his protegã©, could not naturally find much difficulty in regaining possession of him, and bringing with him the so highly-valued prize, on his return to antioch. "then," says the acts, 11:25, 26, "departed barnabas to tarsus, for to seek saul: and when he had found him, he brought him unto antioch." at this place, with their united powers, they had been carrying on their operations for the space of a twelvemonth, when the petition for pecuniary assistance was received there. as for paul,--from the moment of his conversion, notwithstanding the ill success of his first attempt,--the prime object of his ambition--the situation of president of the christian commonwealth--had never quitted its hold on his concupiscence. occasions, for renewing the enterprise, were still watched for with unabated anxiety:--a more favourable one than the one herein question, could not have presented itself to his fondest wishes. the entire produce, of the filial bounty of the daughter church, was now to be poured into the bosom of the necessitous mother. for the self-destined head of that rising church, two more acceptable occupations, than those which one and the same occasion brought to him, could not have been found:--first, the collection of the contributions;--and then the conveying of them, to the place of their destination. of the labours of such agents, in such circumstances, the success, we are told, they found, was a natural result. "then," says the acts 11:29, 30, "then the disciples, every one according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in judea:--which also they did; and sent it to the elders by the hands of barnabas and saul." thus much as to the _public_ purpose. very different was the lot of paul's _personal_ project. what the elders could not have any objection to the receipt of, was--the money. but, what they had an insuperable objection to, was--the receipt of the yoke of this their outwardly-converted, but once already rejected, persecutor. this second enterprise,--though still under the same powerful leader, and produced by such flattering prospects,--succeeded no better than the first. five-and-twenty verses after, we are told of the _termination_ of this their second jerusalem visit; and this is all we hear of it: "and barnabas and saul," says the acts 12:25, "returned from jerusalem, when they had fulfilled their ministry, and took with them john, whose surname was mark." this same john mark they got by their expedition: and this, for anything that appears, was all they got by it. between the mention of their arrival at jerusalem, and the mention of their departure from thence,--comes the episode about peter:--his incarceration and liberation under herod; and the extraordinary death of the royal prosecutor,--of which, in its place. as to the interval,--what the length of it was, and in what manner, by paul, under the wing of the son of consolation, it was occupied,--are points, on which we are left altogether in the dark: as also, whether the _time_ of these adventures of peter, the _mention_ of which stands inserted between the mention of the two occurrences in the history of paul, was comprised in that same interval. footnotes: [28] acts 20:35. it is in the parting scene--when about to break from his dissuading disciples, and enter upon his invasion project--that paul is represented as saying to them: "remember the words of the lord jesus, how he said, it is more blessed to give than to receive." whence this self-appointed and posthumous apostle of jesus got these words of jesus--if such they were--must be left to conjecture. in the works of the four received biographers of jesus, with _cruden_ and his _concordance_ for guides, all search for them has been fruitless. chapter vi. _paul disbelieved continued.--his third jerusalem visit.--paul and barnabas delegated by antioch saints, to confer on the necessity of jewish rites to heathen converts to the religion of jesus._ section 1. occasion of this visit. we come now to the transaction, on the occasion of which, the grand object of paul's ambition received, in part, its accomplishment: namely, that, by which,--though without any such popular election as, in the instance of matthias, had been necessary to constitute a man an associate to the apostles,--he was, in some sort, taken by them into fellowship, and admitted, with their consent, into a participation of their labours. this occasion was--the dispute, which, in the syrian antioch, took place, according to the author of the acts, on the question--whether, under the religion of jesus, circumcision was necessary to salvation: a question, in which,--whether explicitly or no,--was implicitly, it should seem, and perhaps inextricably, understood to be involved, the so much wider question--whether, under that same new religion, the old ceremonial law should, in any part of it, be regarded as necessary. on this same occasion, two important subjects present themselves to view at the same time: the one, a question of _doctrine_ relative to circumcision, as above; the other, a question about _jurisdiction_, as between paul on the one part, and peter, with or without the rest of the apostles. as to what concerns the debate about circumcision, we have no other evidence than the statement of the author of the acts. as to what concerns the jurisdiction question, we have the evidence of paul himself, as contained in his letter to the galatian converts: and an original letter, howsoever dubious the correctness of the author in respect of matters of fact, is more trustworthy than a multitude of anonymous narratives.[29] in respect of the progress made by the religion of jesus,--antioch, it has already been observed--the syrian antioch--had become a second jerusalem; and, so far as concerned the gentiles at large, its maritime situation gave to it a convenience, that was not shared with it by that inland city. at the time here in question,--the gentiles had received more or less of instruction, from three different sets of teachers:--1. from the disciples who had been driven from jerusalem by the tragical death of saint stephen; 2. from saint peter, principally on the occasion of the excursion made by him to lydda, saron, joppa, and cã¦sarea; and 3. from paul and barnabas, on the occasion, and by the means, of the long tour, made by them for that special purpose, as above. at this maritime metropolis of the faith, the new religion was spreading itself,--and, as far at least as depended on exemption from all disturbance from without, in a state of peace and tranquility;--when, by a set of _nameless_ men from judea,--if to the author of the acts credit is to be given on this point, for by him no mention is made of any one of their names,--the harmony of the church was disturbed. converts as they were to the religion of jesus, yet,--in their view of the matter, if the author of the acts is to be believed, without circumcision, no salvation was to be had. by paul it is said, "they came from james," gal. 2:12, which is as much as to say that they were sent by james: and accordingly, when james's speech is seen, by him will these scruples of theirs be seen advocated. if the gospel history, as delivered by the evangelists, is to be believed,--nothing could be more inconsistent, on many occasions with the practice, and at length with the direct precepts, of jesus, than this deference to the mosaic law: if human prudence is to be regarded,--nothing could be more impolitic--nothing more likely to narrow, instead of extending, the dominion of the church. on this principle, no man who was not born a jew, could be a christian without first becoming a jew, without embracing the mosaic law; and thus loading himself with two different, and mutually inconsistent, sets of obligations. from paul, this conceit,--as was natural,--experienced a strenuous resistance. no recognition as yet had paul received, from the body of the apostles. in jerusalem, for anything that appears,--though this was at least seventeen years after the death of jesus--they remained alive--all of them:--at any rate the two chiefs of them, if paul is to be believed, who, gal. i. 19, says he saw them, namely, saint peter "and james, the lord's brother": which two, he says, he saw, out of a number, the rest of whom, he studiously assures his galatians that he did not see: though by his historiographer, acts 15:4, by his all-comprehensive expression, "_the apostles_," we are desired to believe, that he saw all of them.[30] whichever be the truth,--at jerusalem, the metropolis of judaism, no employment could, under these circumstances, be reasonably expected for paul: whereas, _out_ of judea,--wherever the language of greece was the mother tongue, or familiarly spoken,--the advantage, which, in every address to the gentiles, he would have over those unlearned jews, was universally manifest. such, however, were the impressions, made by these unnamed manufacturers and disseminators of scruples, who, if paul is to be believed, came from james the brother of our lord--that, by the whole church, as it is called, of antioch, a determination was taken--to send to jerusalem, to the apostles and the elders that were associated with them, a numerous mission, headed by paul and barnabas, who are the only two persons named. accordingly, out they set, "after having been brought on their way," says the author of the acts, 15:3, "by the _church_," which is as much as to say, by the whole fraternity of christians there established. section 2. the delegates how received.--council of apostles and elders. against the pretensions of a man thus supported, vain, on the part of the original and real apostles, would have been any attempt, to resist the pretensions of this their self-constituted rival: they, barnabas and paul, were received, says the author of the acts, of the church and of the apostles and elders.[31] arrived at jerusalem, paul and barnabas told their own story--related their adventures and experiences--declared, to use the language of the acts 15:4, all things that god had done unto them. * * * * * notwithstanding the utmost exertion of paul's ever-ready eloquence,--some, it is stated, there were, who, believers as, in a certain sort, they were in the religion of jesus,--were not to be persuaded, to give up so much as a single tittle of the mosaic law: these were, as it was natural they should be, of the sect of pharisees. "there rose up," says the acts 15:5, "certain of the sect of the pharisees which believed, saying that it was needful to circumcise them (the gentiles), and to command them to keep the law of moses." * * * * * of these private discussions, the result was--the convocation of an assembly of the managing body, in which, associated with the apostles, we find others--under the name of _elders_. how, on an occasion, on which the proposed subject of determination was a question of such cardinal importance to the religion of jesus;--how it should have come to pass, that the apostles, to whom alone, and by whom alone, the whole tenor of the acts and sayings of jesus had been made known--made known by an uninterrupted habit of exclusive intimacy, and especially during the short but momentous interval between his resurrection and ascension;--how it should have happened, that, to the apostles, any other persons not possessed of these first of all titles to credence and influence, should have come to be associated,--is not mentioned. upon no other authority than that of this author, are we to believe it to be true? on the supposition of its being true,--there seems to be, humanly speaking, but one way to account for it. that which the apostles, and they alone, _could_ contribute to the cause, was--the authority and the evidence resulting from that peculiar intimacy: what they could _not_ contribute was--money and influence derived from ordinary and external sources: to the exclusive possession of these latter titles to regard, will, therefore, it should seem, be to be ascribed, supposing it credited, the circumstance of an incorporation otherwise so incongruous. "received," say the acts 15:4, they were.--but by whom received?--by the church, by the apostles, by the elders, says that same history in that same place. by _the_ apostles: to wit--so as any one would conclude--by _all_ the apostles--by the whole fellowship of apostles. * * * * * whether in any, and, if so, in what degree that conclusion is correct, we have no determinate means of knowing. * * * * * if, however, it was so to the utmost,--nothing appears in favor of the notion, that between paul on the one part, and the apostles and their disciples on the other, there existed at this time any real harmony. for, in what character was it that he made his appearance? in that of a commissioned envoy, from the whole body of the church, established in that station, which was next in importance to jerusalem, to which he was sent. and who was it that, at that time, as on both the former times, he, paul, had in his company? still his constant patron and associate barnabas--the munificent friend and patron of that church which he was visiting--the indefatigable barnabas. by paul himself, in his epistle to the galatians, 2:9, 10, 11, the idea of any such extensive cordiality,--say rather of cordiality to any the smallest extent,--is pretty plainly negatived.[32] on that occasion, it was that of the partition treaty, what his interest required was--that, on the part of the apostles and their disciples, the concurrence given to it, should appear as extensive as possible. if then they had all of them, really and personally concurred in it,--or even if the contrary had not been notorious, this is the conception which he would have been forward to convey and inculcate. no such notion, however, does he venture to convey. when speaking of them in general terms--of no affection on either side, more kindly than that of ill humor, does he give any intimation. gal. 2:6. "of those who seemed to be somewhat, whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: god accepted no man's person: for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me." when, again, he comes to speak of the sort of intercourse, such as it was, which he had with the apostles,--who are the persons that he speaks of? all the apostles? the body of the apostles in general?--no: james, cephas, the hebrew name of which peter is a translation, and john: these three, and no more. these are the men, whom, to him paul and his protector barnabas in conjunction, he on that same occasion speaks of, as "giving the right hand of fellowship:" to wit, for the purpose of the partition treaty, the terms of which immediately follow. and, even of these men, in what way does he speak? as of men "who seemed to be pillars:" so that, as to what concerned the rest of the apostles, he found himself reduced to speak no otherwise than by conjecture. and this same "right hand of fellowship"--what was their inducement for giving it?--it was, says he, that "they perceived the grace that was given unto me": _i.e._, in plain language, and ungrounded pretension apart,--the power, which they saw he had, of doing mischief:--of passing, from the character of a jealous and restless rival, into that of a declared enemy: into that character, in which he had originally appeared, and with such disastrous effect. immediately after this comes the mention of the visit, made by peter to antioch: and therefore it is, that, no sooner is peter--that chief of the apostles of jesus--mentioned,--than he is mentioned, as a man whom this paul "withstood to his face, because he was to be blamed." gal. 2:11. peter was to be blamed: those other jews that were come to antioch from james--they were to be blamed. barnabas, under whose powerful protection,--by the church at jerusalem, her justly odious persecutor had, at three different times, been endured,--he too was to be blamed. he too was, at that time, to be blamed; and, as will be seen presently after, openly quarrelled with; and, if on this point the acts are to be believed, parted with. acts 15:39. "and the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other: and so barnabas took mark, and sailed unto cyprus." section 3. debates--course carried by james against peter. of what passed at this assembly, the only account we have--the account given to us by the author of the acts--is curious:--curious at any rate; and whether it be in every particular circumstance true or not,--in so far as it can be depended upon, instructive.[33] we have the persons mentioned as having spoken: they are, in the order in which they are here enumerated, these four:--to wit, peter, barnabas, paul and james. of the speech of peter, the particulars are given: so likewise of that of james: of barnabas and paul, nothing more than the topic. against the mosaic law _in toto_, we find peter; and such contribution as he is represented as furnishing to this side of the cause in the shape of argument. on the same side, were barnabas and paul: what they furnished was matter of fact:--namely, in the language of the acts, "what miracles and wonders god had wrought among the gentiles by them:"--in plain language, the success they had met with among the gentiles. on this question, on the side of the chief of the apostles, were--the manifest interest of the religion of jesus as to extent of diffusion,--the authority derived from situation,--the express command of jesus as delivered in the gospel history,--and jesus' own practice: not to speak of the inutility and unreasonableness of the observances themselves. yet, as far as appears from the author of the acts,--of these arguments, conclusive as they would or at least should have been,--it appears not that any use was made: the success, he spoke of as having been experienced by himself among the gentiles,--in this may be seen the sole argument employed in peter's speech. thus,--in so far as this report is to be believed,--thus, upon their own respective achievements, did,--not only paul but peter,--rest, each of them, the whole strength of the cause. spite of reason, religion, and jesus, the victory is in this account, given to james--to jesus' kinsman, james. the motion is carried: the course proposed, is a sort of middle course--a sort of compromise. at the hands of gentile proselytes, in deference to the mosaic law, abstinence from four things is required: namely, meats offered to idols, blood, things strangled: these, and the irregularities of the sexual appetite,--whatsoever they were, that were meant by the word, rendered into english by the word _fornication_. if any such decision were really come to,--by nothing but necessity--necessity produced by the circumstances of place and time--will it be found excusable. abstinence from food killed in the way of sacrifice to heathen gods, on the occasion of public sacrifices: yes; for, for such food, little relish could remain, on the part of persons devoted to the religion of jesus: from fornication, yes; for, for a sacrifice in this shape, even among the gentiles, some preparation had been made by stoicism. but, as to blood and things strangled,[34] that is to say, animals so slaughtered as to have more blood left in their carcasses than the mosaic law would allow to be left in them--animals slaughtered otherwise than in the jewish manner,--thus forbidding teachings of the religion of jesus, to eat a meal furnished by gentile hands,--this, as above observed, was depriving them of their most favourable opportunities, for carrying their pious and beneficent purposes into effect, by adding to the number of believers. altogether remarkable is the consideration, upon the face of it, by which, if the historian is to be believed, this decision was produced. "for moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in synagogues every sabbath day," acts 15:21. may be so: but what if he has? what is that to the purpose? good, if the question were about the jews: but, it is _not_ about the jews: the gentiles, and they only, are the subjects of it. and the gentiles--what know or care _they_ about moses? what is it that is to send _them_ into the synagogues, to hear anything that is "read in synagogues"? by this imaginary abstinence from blood,--for, after all, by no exertion of mosaic ingenuity could the flesh ever be completely divested of the blood that had circulated in it,--of this perfectly useless prohibition, what would be the effect?--not only to oppose obstacles, to the exertions of christian teachers, in their endeavors to make converts among the gentiles,--but, on the part of the gentiles themselves to oppose to them a needless difficulty, in the way of their conversion, by rendering it impossible for them, consistently with the observance of this prohibition, to associate with their unconverted friends and families at convivial hours. thus much as to what concerns the gentiles.[35] since, and from that time, the religion of jesus has spread itself:--we all see to what extent. spread itself: and by what means? by means of the decision thus fathered upon the apostles? upon the apostles, the elders, and the whole church?--no: but in spite of it, and by the neglect of it. charged with a letter, containing this decision, did paul, together with his friend barnabas, return from jerusalem,--if the author of the acts is to be believed,--to the society of christian converts, by which he had been sent thither: charged with this letter, carrying with it the authority of the whole fellowship of the apostles. paul himself--he paul--what sort of regard did he pay to it? _he wrote against it with all his might._ no more jewish rites! no more mosaic law! such is the cry, that animates the whole body of those writings of his which have reached us. section 4. result, supposed apostolic decree and letter to antioch, which, per acts, paul circulates. of a decision, agreed upon and pronounced to the above effect--a decision expressed by a decree;--and of a copy of that decree, included in and prefaced by a letter addressed to the saints at antioch,--were paul and barnabas, along with others who were associated with them, on their return to that city, the bearers:--that is to say, if, as to these matters, credence is given, to the statement, made by the author of the acts; by whom the alleged decree and letter are given, in words, which, according to him, were their very words:--these words are those which follow: acts 15:22 to 32. 22. then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to antioch, with paul and barnabas, and silas, chief men among the brethren.--and they wrote letters by them after this manner: the apostles and elders, and brethren, _send_ greeting unto the brethren which are of the gentiles in antioch and syria and cilicia.--forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, ye _must_ be circumcised, and keep the law: to whom we gave no such commandment:--it seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you with our beloved barnabas and paul,--men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our lord jesus christ.--we have sent therefore judas and silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth.--for it seemed good to the holy ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;--that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. fare ye well.--so when they were dismissed, they came to antioch; and when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle.--_which_ when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation.--and judas and silas, being prophets also themselves, exhorted the brethren with many words, and confirmed _them_. supposing it genuine,--a most curious, important and interesting document, this letter and decree must be allowed to be. supposing it genuine: and, in favor of its genuineness, reasons present themselves, which, so long as they remain unopposed, and no preponderating reasons in support of the contrary opinion are produced, must decide our judgment. not long after the account of the acceptance given at antioch to this decision,--comes that of a conjunct missionary excursion from that place made by paul, with timotheus, and perhaps silas, for his companion. at the very commencement of this excursion--if, in the decree spoken of, this decree is to be understood as included; and there seems no reason why it should not be, they are represented as taking an active part in the distribution of it. acts 16:4. "and says the historian, as they" (paul, &c.) "went through the cities, they delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders that were at jerusalem." that, by paul, this token, of association with the apostles, should at that time be exhibited and made manifest, seems altogether natural. it affords a further proof, of the need, which, at that period of his labors, he regarded himself as having, of the appearance--the outward signs at least--of a connection with the apostles. true, it is, that the persuasion of any such need is altogether inconsistent with that independence, which, in such precise and lofty terms, we have seen him declaring in his epistle to his galatians,--is sufficiently manifest. but, in the current chronology, the date, ascribed to that epistle, is by five years posterior, to the date ascribed to the commencement of this excursion: date of the excursion, a.d. 53; date of the epistle, a.d. 58: difference, five years: and five years are not too great a number of years, for the experience of success and prosperity, to have raised to so high a pitch, the temperature of his mind.[36] even before this time, we find him even outstretching the concessions, which, in that decree, in the case of the gentiles, in compliance with the scruples of the jewish disciples they had to deal with, we have been seeing made by the apostles, in favor of the mosaic law. abstinence--from meat offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication--composed all the mosaic observances exacted in that decree. to these, he, in his practice, at this time, added another, and _that_, in respect of extent, in a prodigious degree a more important one: to wit, the submitting to circumcision. for, to this painful observance,--in which a submission to all the other mosaic observances was implied,--he had already subjected his new convert timotheus, whom, in this excursion, in addition to silas, he took with him for a companion. born of a greek father as he was,--adult as he was,--he took him, says the historian, and circumcised him. circumcised him--and why?--"_because of the jews, which were in those quarters._"[37] footnotes: [29] acts xv. 1 to 4:--"1. and certain men which came down from judea, taught the brethren, _and said_, except ye be circumised after the manner of moses, ye cannot be saved.--2. when therefore paul and barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that paul and barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.--3. and being brought on their way by the church, they passed through phenice and samaria, declaring the conversion of the gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren.--4. and when they were come to jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders; and they declared all things that god had done with them." [30] gal. i. 18, 19. "then after three years i went up to jerusalem to see peter, and abode with him fifteen days.--9. but other of the apostles saw i none, save james the lord's brother." acts 15:4. "and when they were come to jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of _the_ apostles and elders; and they declared all things that god had done with them." the cause of this contrariety lies not far beneath the surface. paul had one object in view; his historiographer another. in the two passages, they wrote at distant times, and with different purposes. in his address to his galatian disciples, paul's object was to magnify his own importance at the expense of that of the apostles: to establish the persuasion, not only of his independence of them, but of his superiority over them. the generality of them were not worth his notice; but having some business to settle with them, peter, the chief of them, he "went" to see, and james, as being "the lord's brother," he vouchsafed to see. on that particular occasion, such was the conception which paul was labouring to produce: and such, accordingly, was his discourse. as for the historiographer, his object was, of course, throughout, to place the importance of his hero on as high a ground as possible. but, in this view, when once paul had come to a settlement with the apostles, the more universal the acceptance understood to have been received by him--received from the whole body of christians, and from those their illustrious leaders in particular,--the better adapted to this his historiographer's general purposes would be the conception thus conveyed: accordingly they were received, he says, "of the church, and the apostles, and elders." [31] acts xv. 4. "and when they were come to jerusalem, they were received of the church and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that god had done unto them." [32] gal. ii. 6. "but of those who seemed to be somewhat, whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: god accepteth no man's person: for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me.--and when james, cephas, and john, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.--only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which i also was forward to do.--but when peter was come to antioch, i withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed." [33] acts 15:5-21. 5. "but there rose up certain of the sect of the pharisees which believed, saying, that it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of moses.--and the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.--and when there had been much disputing, peter rose up, and said unto them, men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago god made choice among us, that the gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel and believe.--and god, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the holy ghost, even as _he did_ unto us;--and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.--now therefore why tempt ye god, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?--but we believe that through the grace of the lord jesus christ we shall be saved, even as they.--then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to barnabas and paul, declaring what miracles and wonders god had wrought among the gentiles by them.--and after they had held their peace, james answered, saying, men and brethren, hearken unto me:--simon hath declared how god at the first did visit the gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.--and to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,--after this i will return, and will build again the tabernacle of david, which is fallen down; and i will build again the ruins thereof, and i will set it up:--that the residue of men might seek after the lord, and all the gentiles upon whom my name is called, saith the lord, who doeth all these things.--known unto god are all his works from the beginning of the world.--wherefore my sentence is,--that we trouble not them, which from among the gentiles are turned to god:--but that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.--for moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day." [34] after the word blood, the mention made of things strangled seems to have been rather for explanation than as a separate ordinance. of strangling, instead of bleeding in the jewish style,--what the effect would be, other than that of retaining blood, which the mosaic ordinance required should be let out, is not very apparent. [35] another observation there is that applies even to the jews. by moses were all these several things forbidden. true: but so were a vast multitude of other things, from, which (after the exceptions here in question) the prohibition is, by this decision, taken off. these things, still proposed to be prohibited, as often as they entered a synagogue, they would hear prohibited: but, so would they all those other things, which, by this decision, are left free. [36] in the account of this excursion, galatia--now mentioned for the first time in the acts,--is mentioned, in the number of the countries, which, in the course of it, he visited. it stands fourth: the preceding places being derbe, lystra, iconium and phrygia. acts 16:1 to 6. in acts 18:23, "he ... went over [all] galatia ... strengthening the disciples." [37] acts 16:1 to 3. then came he to derbe and lystra: and behold, a certain disciple was there named timotheus, the son of a certain woman, which was a jewess and believed: but his father was a greek:--which was well reported of by the brethren that were at lystra and iconium.--him would paul have to go forth to him, and took and circumcised him, because of the jews which were in those quarters: for they knew all that his father was a greek. chapter vii. _paul disbelieved continued.--after his third jerusalem visit, contest between him and peter at antioch._ partition treaty: paul _for himself_: peter, james _and_ john, _for the apostles_. section 1. contest and partition treaty, as per acts, and paul's epistles. galatians ii. 1 to 16. 1. then fourteen years after i went up again to jerusalem with barnabas, and took titus with _me_ also.--and i went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which i preach among the gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means i should run, or had run, in vain.--but neither titus, who was with me, being a greek, was compelled to be circumcised:--and that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in christ jesus, that they might bring us into bondage.--to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.--but of those who seemed to be somewhat, whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: god accepteth no man's person: for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me;--but contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, _as the gospel_ of the circumcision _was_ unto peter;--for he that wrought effectually in peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the gentiles:--and when james, cephas, and john, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.--only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which i also was forward to do.--but _when peter was come to antioch, i withstood him to the face_, because he was to be blamed.--for before that certain came from james, he did eat with the gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.--and the other jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.--but when i saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, i said unto peter before them all, if thou, being a jew, livest after the manner of gentiles, and not as do the jews, why compellest thou the gentiles to live as do the jews?--we who are jews by nature, and not sinners of the gentiles,--knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of jesus christ, even we have believed in jesus christ, that we might be justified by the faith of christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. so much for the question about jewish rites. we come now to the state of affairs between paul and peter. concerning this, we have little, as hath been seen, from the author of the acts: from paul himself, not much: but what there is of it is of prime importance. on this occasion, to judge from the account given in the acts,--between paul and peter, all was harmony. in their principles, in their speeches, they may be seen pleading on the same side: arguing, and arguing in vain, both of them against the superior influence of james: of that james, of whose written works, in comparison of those we have from paul, we have so little. but presently, on one side at least,--we shall see contention--preserving contention--and rival ambition, for the cause of it. in this pregnant and instructive letter,--paul's second letter to his galatians,--the authenticity of which seems to be altogether out of the reach of doubt,--among the particulars, that bear relation to this the third visit, the following are those, by which the greatest share of attention seems demanded at our hands. in the first place, let us view them in the order in which they _stand_: that done, the degree of _importance_ may determine the order in which they are _considered_. 1. fourteen is the number of years, between this third visit of his to jerusalem, reckoning either from the first of his visits made to that same holy place after his conversion, or from his departure from damascus after his return thither from arabia. 2. on this journey of his to jerusalem, he has with him not only barnabas, as mentioned in the acts, but _titus_, of whom no mention is there made. 3. it is by revelation, that this journey of his was undertaken. 4. the gospel, which he then and there preaches, is a gospel of his own. 5. private at the same time, and for reasons thereupon given, is his mode of communicating it. 6. titus, though at his disposal, he leaves uncircumcised. 7. _false brethren_ is the appellation he bestows upon those, who, on this occasion, standing up for the mosaic law, give occasion to this debate. 8. elders, apostles, kinsmen of jesus,--be they who they may,--he, paul, is not on this occasion a man to give place to any such persons: to give place by _subjection_: say rather in the way of _subordination_. 9. unnamed are the persons, on whom the vituperation he discharges, is poured forth. thus much only is said of them: namely, verse 12, that they "came from james," the brother of our lord. contemptuous throughout is the manner in which he speaks of all those persons whom he does not name. quere, who are they, to whom, in everything that goes before that same verse, he is alluding? it seems from thence, that it was with james, from whom they received support, that those scruples of theirs, out of which sprung these differences and negotiations, originated. 10. leaving the jews to peter--he claims to himself as his own the whole population of the gentiles. 11. to this effect, an explicit agreement was actually entered into; parties, he and barnabas of the one part; james, peter, by his hebrew surname of cephas, and john, of the other part. 12. of this agreement, one condition was--that, of such pecuniary profit, as should be among the fruits of the labors of paul among the gentiles, a part should be remitted, to be at the disposal of peter. 13. paul, at the time of this visit, stood up against peter. 14. the cause, of his doing so, was--an alleged weakness and inconsistency in the conduct of peter, and his gaining to his side--not only jews of inferior account, but barnabas. 15. the weakness and inconsistency consisted in this: viz: that whereas he himself had been in use to act with the gentiles, yet after the arrival at antioch of those who came from james at jerusalem,--he from fear of the jewish converts, not only ceased to eat with the gentiles, but to the extent of his influence forced the gentile converts to live after the manner of the jews. 16. on the occasion of this his dispute with peter, he gave it explicitly as his opinion,--that, to a convert to the religion of jesus, jew or gentile,--observance of the mosaic law would, as to everything peculiar to it, be useless, not to say worse than useless, gal. 2:16, "for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." 1. as to his place in relation to the apostles. his was not inferior to anybody's: upon terms altogether equal did he treat with the apostles: in and by the first partition treaty,--he, with barnabas for his colleague,--barnabas, from whom, according to the acts, he afterwards separated,--obtains the whole of the gentile world for the field of their labors. thus elevated, according to his account of the matter, was the situation, occupied by him on the occasion of this his third visit to jerusalem, in comparison of what it had been at the time of his first,--and, to all appearance, at the time of the second. at the time of his first visit, the apostles,--all but peter and james, upon which two barnabas forced him,--turned their backs upon him: upon his second visit, none of them, as far as appears, had anything to do with him: now, upon his third visit, they deal with him upon equal terms: and now, not only peter and james, but john, are stated as having intercourse with him. 2. of this partition treaty, important as it is, no mention is to be found in the acts. from first to last,--in the account given in the acts, no such figure does he make as in his own. in the acts, of the speech of peter, and even of that of james, the substance is reported: of paul's, nothing more than the subject: viz. his own achievements among the gentiles: against paul's opinion, as well as peter's, the compromise, moved by james, is represented as carried. 3. as to the cause, or occasion, of his third visit to jerusalem. in the account given in the acts, it is particularly and clearly enough explained. it is in conjunction with barnabas that he goes thither: both of them, to confer with the apostles and elders, on the subject of the notion, entertained by numbers among the jewish converts, that, by conversion to the religion of jesus, they were not set free from any of the obligations imposed by the law of moses. of this commission,--creditable as it could not but have been to him,--paul, in his account of the matter, as given to the galatians, makes not the least mention. no: it is not from men on this occasion nor on others, it is not from men, that he received his authority, but from god: it is by revelation, that is, immediately from god, and by a sort of miracle. 4. what, in obedience to this revelation, he was to do, and did accordingly, was,--the preaching of a gospel of his own; a gospel which as yet he had not preached to any body but the gentiles. preaching? how and where? in an assembly of the whole body of the believers in jesus, the apostles themselves included? no: but privately, and only to the leading men among them: "to them which were of reputation." a gospel of his own? yes: that he did. further on, it will be seen what it was: a gospel, of which, as far as appears from the evangelists, no traces are to be found, in anything said by jesus: especially, if what, on that occasion, he, paul, taught by word of mouth at antioch, agreed with what we shall find him teaching in his epistles. 5. "false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in christ jesus, that they might bring up into bondage." liberty? what liberty? evidently that liberty which consisted in exemption from the ceremonials of the mosaic law. who then were these false brethren, these sticklers for the ceremonial law? if the account in the acts is to be believed,--they were the greater part of the fraternity of christians in jerusalem: a party so considerable, that peter, the chief of the apostles, though in his sentiments on this subject so decidedly and completely opposite to them, was obliged to give way to it: and, as to several of the obligations,--by which, as above stated, no small obstacle was opposed to the progress of the religion of jesus,--the whole body of the apostles found themselves under the like necessity. if he himself is to be believed, gal. 2:12, the men in question were men, who, if they continued in those scruples in which they went beyond the brother of our lord, had, at any rate, in the first instance, received from that highly distinguished personage their instructions. and shortly after this, acts 16:3, in deference to this party, paul himself "took timothy, a gentile, and circumcised him." but, supposing the public transactions, thus reported in the history of the author of the acts, to have really had place;--namely, mission of paul and barnabas, from the christians of antioch to jerusalem,--mission of judas barsabas and silas, from the apostles and elders, with paul and barnabas in their company, to antioch,--letter of the apostles and elders sent by them to the christians of antioch,--all this supposed, how erroneous soever in their opinions, in affirmance of the obligatoriness of these ceremonials,--this majority, to whose scruples the whole body of the apostles saw reason to give way,--could they, by this self-intruded convert, be considered as persons to whom the epithet of _false brethren_, would be admitted to be applicable? 6. does it not seem, rather, that this story, about the deputation of paul and barnabas to the apostles and brethren at jerusalem from the apostles at antioch, and the counter deputation of judas barsabas, and silas, to accompany paul and barnabas on their return to antioch, bearing all of them together a letter from the apostles at jerusalem,--was an invention of the anonymous author of the acts? or else a story, either altogether false, or false in great part, picked up by him, and thus inserted? 7. mark now, in this letter of paul, another circumstance: and judge whether it tends not to cast discredit on what is said of peter in the acts. in the acts account we have seen peter in the great council, supporting, in a sort of speech, the liberty side--of the question,--jesus against moses,--supporting it in the great council, in which, in that same account, paul, though present, is, as to that point, represented as silent: in that same account, shall we see peter, five years before this time, addressing himself to the gentiles,--using this same liberty,--and, when called to account for doing so, employing _his_ pair of visions, his and cornelius's, acts 10:30-41, in and for his defence: we shall see him in this new part of his career,--in this part, for which he was by both education and habits of life so ill qualified,--we shall see him so much in earliest in this part of his labors, as to have expended miracles,--a supernatural cure, and even a raising from the dead,--for his support in it. had any such facts really happened--facts in their nature so notorious,--would paul, in this letter of his to the galatians, have spoken of peter, as if he had never made, or attempted to make, any progress in the conversion of the gentiles? speaking of the sticklers for moses, as well as of peter,--would he have said "when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was to peter?" gal. 2:7, "for he that wrought effectually in peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the gentiles?" that, in some way or other, peter had tried his hand upon some persons who were gentiles--in this there is nothing but what may well enough be believed: provided it be also believed--that, in the experiment so made by him, he had little or no success:--for, that after the expenditure of two such miracles of so public a nature, besides a pair of visions,--he had after all made so poor a hand of it, as to be content to give up to paul the whole of his prospects from that quarter,--does it seem credible? 8. as to the partition-treaty itself,--whatsoever were the incidents that had brought it about, nothing could be more natural--nothing more probable--nothing more beneficial to the common cause--to the religion of jesus, meaning always so far as the religion taught by paul was comfortable to it. each retained to himself the only part of the field, for the cultivation of which he was qualified: each gave up no other part of the field, than that, for the cultivation of which he was _not_ qualified. 9. gal. 2:12. "for before that certain came from james, he did eat with the gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew, and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. 10. "but contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto peter. 11. "and when james, cephas, and john, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision. 12. gal. 2:10. "only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which i also was forward to do. 13. "but when peter was come to antioch, i withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. 14. "for before that certain came from james, he did eat with the gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew, and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.--and the other jews dissembled likewise with him: insomuch that barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. 15. "but when i saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, i said unto peter before them all, if thou, being a jew, livest after the manner of gentiles, and not as do the jews, why compellest thou the gentiles to live as do the jews?" 16. "knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of jesus christ, even we have believed in jesus christ, that we might be justified by the faith of christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." note, in this same letter, the mention made of peter's eating with the gentiles. "for before that certain came from james, he, peter, did eat with the gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision." note here, an additional reason for discrediting the whole story of peter's expedition,--_miracles_ and visions included,--as reported in the acts. in regard to the _visions_,--from this circumstance it may be seen, that either no such visions were, as stated in the acts 11:1-13, related by peter, on his defence against the accusations preferred against him on this ground,--or that, if any such relation was given, no credit was given to it: for, it is after this, and, according to appearance, long after,--that, according to the acts 15:1-33, not less than five years after, the meeting at jerusalem took place; that meeting, at which, at the motion of james, the adherence to the mosaic law was indeed in part dispensed with; but, so far as regards the practice charged upon peter as an offence,--namely the eating with the gentiles, insisted on and ordained. if paul's evidence was good and conclusive evidence in support of paul's visions,--how came peter's evidence not to be received as good and conclusive evidence in support of peter's visions? paul's evidence, with the visions reported by it, was not better evidence, in support of his claim to the apostleship,--than peter's visions, if the account in the acts is to be believed, in support of the abrogation of the mosaic law. yet, as, according to the author of the acts, by paul's account of his visions, the apostles were not any of them convinced; so here, according to paul, by peter's account of his visions, if ever really related to the fellowship of the apostles, and to the elders,--their associates,--that same goodly fellowship was not convinced. section 2. partition-treaty--probability given, by the financial stipulation, to paul's account of it. of this important treaty, mention may have been seen above. in the financial stipulation which may have been observed in it,--may be seen a circumstance, by which an additional degree of credibility seems to be given, to paul's account of the transaction; at the same time that light is thrown upon the nature of it. paul alone, with his adherents, were to address themselves to the gentiles: but, in return for the countenance given to him by peter and the rest of the apostles, he was to _remember the poor_; which is what, says he, "i also was forward to do." now, as to the remembering the poor, what is meant by it at this time of day, was meant by it at that time of day, or it would not have been meant by it at this:--supplying money, need it be added? for the use of the poor. whatsoever, in relation to this money, was the intention of the rulers,--whether to retain any part in compensation for their own trouble, or to distribute among the poor the whole of it, without deduction;--in other words, whether profit as well as patronage,--or patronage alone, and without profit,--was to be the fruit;--human nature must, in this instance, have ceased to be human nature, if, to the men in question--apostles as they were--the money could have been altogether an object of indifference. according to a statement, to which, as above, ch. ii., though contained in this anonymous history, there seems no reason to refuse credence,--community of goods--a principle, even now, in these days, acted upon by the moravian christians--was a principle, acted upon in those days, by the jewish christians. the property of each was thrown into one common stock: and the disposal of it was committed to a set of trustees, who--it is positively related--were confirmed, and, to all appearance, were recommended by,--and continued to act under the influence of,--the apostles. on neither side were motives of the ordinary human complexion--motives by which man's nature was made to be governed--wanting, to the contracting parties. by peter and the rest of the apostles, much experience had been acquired, of the activity and energy of this their self-constituted colleague: within that field of action, which alone was suited to their powers, and within which they had stood exposed to be disturbed by his interference, within that field to be secured against such interference,--was, to them and their interests, an object of no small moment. such seems to have been the consideration, on the part of the acknowledged and indisputable apostles. not less obvious was the advantage, which, by the stipulation of this same treaty in his favour, was in a still more effectual manner, secured to paul. that, when the whole transaction was so fresh,--all that paul was able to say for himself, with all that barnabas was able to say for him, had not been sufficient, to induce the apostles to give credence to his story about the manner of his conversion,--in a word, to regard him in any other light than that of an impostor,--is directly asserted by the author of the acts. so again, in his unpremeditated speech to the enraged multitude, acts 22:18, "they will not receive thy testimony concerning me," is the information which the acts make him report as having been communicated to him by the lord, when "while i prayed in the temple," says he, ver. 17, "i was in a trance." should a charge to any such effect happen to encounter him in the course of his labours;--should he, in a word, find himself stigmatized as an impostor;--find himself encountered by a certificate of impostorship;--a certificate, signed by the known and sole confidential servants, as well as constant companions, of that jesus, whom--without so much as pretending any knowledge of his person, he had thus pretended to have heard without seeing him,--and at a time and place, in which he was neither heard nor seen by anybody else;--it is obvious enough, in any such case, how formidable an obstruction of this sort was liable to prove. on the other hand, so he were but once seen to be publicly recognized, in the character of an associate and acknowledged labourer in the same field,--a recognition of him in that character--a virtual recognition at least, if not an express one--would be seen to have taken place:--a recognition, such as it would scarcely, at any time after, be in their power to revoke: since it would scarcely be possible for them, ever to accuse him of the principal offence, without accusing themselves of the correspondent connivance. note, that, of this treaty, important as it was--this partition-treaty--by which a division was made of the whole christian world--no mention, not any the least hint, is to be found in the acts. thus much for this third visit of paul's to jerusalem, reckoning from the time of his conversion: thus much for this third visit, and the partition-treaty that was the result of it. in and by his fourth visit to that original metropolis of the christian world,--we shall see how this same treaty was violated--violated, without any the slightest reason or pretext, or so much as an attempt, on the part of his anonymous biographer,--either by his own mouth, or by that of his hero,--to assign a motive. violated--that is to say, by and on the part of paul: for, of peter, no further mention is, in all this history, to be found. the truth is--that, instead of "the acts of the apostles," the history of paul--namely, from the time of his conversion to the time of his arrival at rome--would have been the more proper denomination of it. of any other of the apostles, and their acts,--little, if anything, more is said, than what is just sufficient, to prepare the reader, for the history of paul, by bringing to view the state of the christian world, at the time of his coming upon the stage. as to saint peter,--the author's chief hero being all along saint paul, in whose train, during this last-mentioned of his excursions, he represents himself as being established,--what is said of saint peter and his achievements, stands, as it were, but as an episode. and though, by this historiographer, no mention is made of the _partition-treaty_, it has eventually been of use to us, by serving to show what, at the time of entering into that engagement, was the situation of st. peter; and how good the title is, which the transaction presents to our credence,--as being so natural, because so manifestly for the advantage of both the contracting parties, as well as of the religion of jesus, in so far as that of paul was conformable to it. section 3. time of the partition treaty, most probably that of visit i. the time, at which this partition-treaty took place, appears involved in much obscurity, and presents some difficulties: question--whether it was at the first, or not till the third, of these visits--of these four visits of paul's to jerusalem. the consideration, by which the assigning to it the time of the first visit has been determined, is--that it was at this first visit, that the demand for it, in respect of all interests concerned, namely, that of the religion of jesus--that of the existing christians in general,--as well as that of the individuals particularly concerned on both sides,--took place: that, from that time, so, as far as appears, did the observance of it: and that it was not till a long time after, that either symptoms, or complaints of non-observance, seem to have made their appearance. 4. among the conditions of the treaty, the financial stipulation has been brought to view:--party to be remembered, the poor--then under the gentle sway of the apostles: party, by whom they were to be remembered, paul--their recognized, though, for aught appears, no otherwise than locally and negatively recognized, associate. in and by the deputation visit, on the part of paul, with the assistance of barnabas,--we see this stipulation actually conformed to and carried into effect. from the christians at antioch to the apostles at jerusalem,--for the benefit of the poor, at that metropolis of the christian world, by the conjoined hands of paul and barnabas,--money, it has been seen, was actually brought. on the other hand, an observation which, at first sight, may seem to shut the door against this supposition, is--that whereas in his letter, to his galatians, gal. i. 18, 19, after saying, "i went up to jerusalem to see peter, and abode with him fifteen days," and adding, "but other of the apostles saw i none, save james, the lord's brother"; he, not more than fourteen verses afterwards, gal. 2:9, in the verse in which his account of this important treaty is continued,--speaks as if it was at that very time that he had seen--not only the above two apostles, on this occasion designated by the names of james and cephas--but john likewise: and that this must have been his third jerusalem visit, because it is after _mention_ made of that same third visit, which, in a passage intermediate between these, namely, gal. 2:1, is stated, in express terms, as being by fourteen years posterior to his first visit,[38] that this circumstance, of his seeing john likewise, is mentioned as having had place. but, in neither of these considerations, is there anything, that presents itself as conclusive, against the supposition--that whatever treaty there was, took place at the first visit. 1. as to the first, at that time it is, that for giving intimation of the treaty, _giving the right hands of fellowship_ is the expression employed: and that if this union were to be taken in a literal, and thence in a physical sense, as an agreement in which, as a token of mutual consent, the physical operation of junction of hands was employed,--here must have been an actual meeting, in which john was seen as well as the two others--and, consequently, on the supposition that the account thus given by paul, is, in this particular, on both occasions correct,--this must have been a different meeting from the first: on which supposition, on comparison with the account given in the acts of paul's second visit,--there can be no difficulty in determining that this visit cannot have been any other than the third. but, so evidently figurative is the turn of the expression,--that, even in the language used in this country at this time, slight indeed, if it amounted to anything at all, would be the force, of the inference drawn from it, in favour of the supposition of mutual presence. to signify an agreement on any point--especially if regarded as important--who is there that would scruple to speak of his having given the right hand of fellowship to another, although it were known to be only by letter? or, even through the medium of a common friend, and without any personal intercourse? 2. as to the other consideration, whatsoever might be the force of it, if applied to a composition of modern times--after so many intervening centuries, during several of which the arts of literary composition have, with the benefit of the facilities afforded by the press, been the subject of general study and practice;--whatsoever on this supposition might be the force of it, applied to the style and character of paul, little weight seems necessary to be attached to it. of the confusion--designed or undesigned--in which the style of this self-named apostle involves every point it touches upon, not a page can be read without presenting samples in abundance, to every eye that can endure to open itself to them: in this very work, some must probably have already offered themselves to notice; and before it closes, many will be presented in this express view: the point in question belongs to the field of chronology: and, of the perturbate mode of his operation in this field, a particular exemplification has been already brought to view, ch. 2, in a passage, in which, of a long train of sufferings and perils,--some real, some to all appearance not so--the one first undergone is last mentioned.[39] from the order in which two events are mentioned by this writer, no argument, in any degree conclusive, can be deduced, for the persuasion, that that which stands first mentioned, was so much as intended by him to be regarded as that which first took place. in the very passage, in which the giving the right hands of fellowship to him and barnabas is mentioned, and immediately after these very words,--it is said--that "we _should go_ unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision." thus, then, the conjunct excursion of paul and barnabas--an excursion, not commenced till about ten years after this same first visit, acts 13 and 14, is mentioned, as an incident at _that_ time future. true it is, that the word directly expressive of the future is, in the english translation, but an interpretation, and as such marked. but, had any prior excursion of this kind taken place before, there seems no reason to suppose, that the event, which, by the context, would surely have been taken for an event then as yet to come,--would, had the intention been to represent it as no more than a repetition of what had taken place already, have received a form, so ill adapted to its intended purpose. but, two verses before, stands that, in which mention is made of the circumstance, by which, according to paul, the course taken by the apostles, in respect of their entering, into this treaty, is brought to view. "but contrariwise," says he, gal. 2:7, "when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as _the gospel_ of the circumcision was unto peter:" 9. "and when james, cephas, and john, who seemed to be pillars, _perceived_ the grace that was given to me, they gave to me and barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we _should go_ unto the heathen," ... &c. now these _perceptions_--the perceptions thus ascribed by him to the apostles--when was it that they were obtained? evidently at no time whatever, if not at the time of his _first_ visit: for, these were the perceptions--say rather the conceptions--the conveyance of which is beyond dispute manifest, not only from the whole nature of the case, according to the accounts we have of it, but from the account expressly given by the author of the acts; and that account, in some part confirmed, and not in any part contradicted, by paul himself, and in this very epistle.[40] to conclude. that, at the time of the deputation visit, visit iii., the treaty in question could not but have been on the carpet, seems, it must be confessed, altogether probable, not to say unquestionable. but, that at the time of the reconciliation visit, visit i.,--it was already on the carpet, seems, if possible, still more so. for, without some understanding between paul and the apostles--and that to the effect of this same treaty (the impossibility that paul's conversion story should have been the cause, having, it is believed, been hereinabove demonstrated) without some understanding of this sort, neither the continuance ascribed to the reconciliation visit, nor the existence of either of the two succeeding visits, to wit, the money-bringing visit, and this deputation visit, seem within the bounds of moral possibility.[41] footnotes: [38] gal. 2:1. "then fourteen years after, i went up again to jerusalem with barnabas, and took titus with me also." [39] 2 cor. 2:32. "in damascus, the governor under aretas the king kept the city of the damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me," &c. namely, on his conversion. [40] to this same partition treaty, allusion seems discernible in paul's epistle to his roman adherents. romans 15:15 to 22. "nevertheless, brethren, i have written the more boldly unto you, in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of the grace that is given to me of god,--that i should be the minister of jesus christ to the gentiles, ministering the gospel of god, that the offering up of the gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the holy ghost.--i have therefore whereof i may glory through jesus christ in those things which pertain to god.--for i will not dare to speak of any of those things which christ hath not wrought by me, to make the gentiles obedient by word and deed,--through mighty signs and wonders by the power of the spirit of god, so that from jerusalem, and round about unto illyricum, i have fully preached the gospel of christ.--yea, so i have strived to preach the gospel, not where christ was named, lest i should build upon another man's foundation:--but, as it is written, to whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand.--for which cause also i have been much hindered from coming to you." [41] from this passage in paul's epistle to his galatians[ii.], compared with a passage in his first epistle to the corinthians[iii.]--the bible edited by scholey, in a note to acts xv. 39, (being the passage in which the rupture between paul and barnabas is mentioned), draws the inference, that, after this rupture between paul and barnabas, a reconciliation took place. [ii.] gal. ii. 9. "they gave to me and barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision." [iii.] 1 cor. ix. 6. "or, i only, and barnabas, have not we power to forbear working?" from the passage in question, if taken by itself, true it is that this supposition is a natural one enough. for, according to all appearances, the date of this epistle to the corinthians is posterior to that of the rupture: and, from the conjunct mention of the two names, if there were no evidence on the other side, it might naturally enough be supposed probable, how far soever from certain, that the intention was thereby, to report the two persons, as operating in conjunction, and even in each other's company. but, to the purpose of the argument no such supposition (it will be seen) is necessary. labouring they both were herein represented to be, and to all appearance were, in the same field, viz. the field of the gentiles: labouring, after and in conformity to this same treaty--the agreement made by them with the apostles--the partition treaty so often mentioned. but, from this it followed not, by any means, that they were labouring in the _same part_ of that field. for the purpose of the argument, the question was--what was the sort of relation, that had taken place, between these two preachers on the one part, and their respective disciples on the other? it is of this relation that it is stated by paul, and stated truly, that as between him and barnabas, it was the same: both being actual labourers in their respective parts of the same field: both being equally at liberty to cease from, to put an end to, their respective labours at any time: not that both were labouring in the same place, or in any sort of concert. "or i only, and barnabas, have not we, says paul, power to forbear working?" thus inconclusive is the argument, by which the existence of a reconciliation is inferred. against evidence so weak, the contrary evidence seems decisive. after mention made by him of the rupture,--had any reconciliation ever taken place, within the compass of time embraced by his history, would the author of the acts have left it unnoticed? that, among his objects was the painting every incident, in colours at least as favourable, to the church in general, and to paul in particular, as he durst,--is sufficiently manifest. by a rupture between two such holy persons,--a token, more or less impressive, of human infirmity, could not but be presented to view: and, to any reflecting mind--in those marks of _warmth_ at least, to say nothing worse, which, from first to last, are so conspicuous, in the character and conduct, of this the historian's patron and principal hero, ground could scarce fail to be seen, for supposing--that it was to _his_ side rather than that of barnabas--the generous and ever-disinterested barnabas--that the blame, principally, if not exclusively, appertained. chapter viii. _interview the fourth.--peter at antioch.--deputies to antioch from jerusalem, judas and silas.--paul disagrees with peter and barnabas, quits antioch, and on a missionary excursion takes with him silas. what concerns the partition treaty, down to this period, reviewed.--peter and the apostles justified._ section 1. paul's account of this interview quoted.--acts account of what followed upon it. we now come to the last of the four different and more or less distant occasions on which a personal intercourse, in some way or other, is recorded as having had place, between paul on the one part, and the apostles or some of them on the other, antecedently to that, on which paul's history, so far as any tolerably clear, distinct, and material, information has descended to us, closes. of this interview, the scene lies at antioch: peter having, for some consideration no otherwise to be looked for than by conjecture, been led to pay a visit, to that place of paul's _then_ habitual abode, after, and, as seems probable, in consequence of, paul's third recorded visit to jerusalem--his _deputation visit_. let us now cast an eye on the documents. respecting paul's disagreement with peter, the only one we have, is that which has been furnished us by paul himself. it consists of the following passage in his epistle to his galatians. galatians 2:11 to 16. but when peter was come to antioch, i withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.--for before that certain came from james, he did eat with the gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.--and the other jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.--but when i saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, i said unto peter before _them_ all, if thou, being a jew, livest after the manner of gentiles, and not as do the jews, why compellest thou the gentiles to live as do the jews?--we _who are_ jews by nature and not sinners of the gentiles,--knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of jesus christ, even we have believed in jesus christ, that we might be justified by the faith of christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. let us now see the account, given in the acts, of what passed in antioch, in relation to paul, barnabas and silas,--during a period, which seems to be either the same, or one in contiguity with it, probably antecedent to it. acts 15:35 to 41. paul also and barnabas continued in antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the lord with _many others_ also.--and some days after, paul said unto barnabas, let us go again and visit our brethren, in every city where we have preached the word of the lord, and see how they do.--and barnabas determined to take with them john whose surname was mark.--but paul thought not good to take him with them, who departed from them from pamphylia, and went not with them to the work.--and the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other: and so barnabas took mark and sailed unto cyprus;--and paul chose silas and departed, being recommended by the brethren unto the grace of god.--and he went through syria and cilicia, confirming the churches. with regard to paul's separation from barnabas, departure from antioch, and taking silas for a companion,--we have nothing from paul himself: nothing, from any other source, than, as above, the acts. in paul's account, however, may be seen a passage, gal. 2:13, by which some light is thrown upon the breach of paul with barnabas. in the acts, though the _"contention" is said to be "sharp,"_ no cause is stated for it, other than a difference respecting the choice of a companion: namely, on an excursion, which they are represented as having agreed to make, in the company of each other, as before. but, according to paul, he had had cause of complaint, against his old friend barnabas, on another account. barnabas had sided with the apostles: barnabas had been "carried away with their dissimulation"; by the dissimulation of those apostles of jesus, the virtuous simplicity of the self-constituted apostle, so he desires his galatian disciples to believe, had been foiled. section 2. paul disagrees with peter--and barnabas--quits antioch, taking silas from the apostles. in no place can this man exist, but to exercise hostility or provoke it: with no man can he hold intercourse, without acting towards him, if not in the character of a despot, in that either of an open and audacious, or in that of a secret adversary, or both. against peter, at jerusalem, in his deputation visit, he is intriguing, while he is bargaining with him. with the same peter, when arrived at antioch, he quarrels: for, at antioch, peter was but a visitor--a stranger; paul, with barnabas for his constant supporter, was on his own ground: no betrayed rulers _there_ to fear--no persecuted christians. he quarrels--so he himself informs his galatians--he quarrels with the chief of the apostles: he "withstands him to his face." why? because, forsooth, "he was to be blamed." in conclusion, to such a pitch,--by the degree of success, whatever it was, which by this time he had experienced,--to such a pitch of intemperance, had his mind swelled--he quarrels even with barnabas: with barnabas--in all his three antecedent visits to jerusalem, his munificent protector, and steady adherent: with that barnabas, in whose company, and under whose wing, one of his missionary excursions had already been performed. acts 11:19-27; ib. 2:37-40. at antioch, the number of his competitors could not but be considerable: at antioch, the number of years, which he appears to have passed in that city, considered,--the number of his enemies could not be small. he accordingly plans, and executes, a new missionary excursion. he stands now upon his own legs: no barnabas now,--no necessary protector, to share with him in his glory: to share with him, in equal or superior proportion, in the profit of his profession: in that profit, the image of which, in all its shapes, was flitting before his eyes,--and which we shall accordingly see him gathering in, in such unequalled exuberance. he now looks out for a humble companion--an assistant: he finds one in silas: that silas, whom, with judas barsabas, we have seen come to antioch, deputed by the apostles and their disciples, to conclude, in that second metropolis, the negotiation, commenced in the first metropolis of the new christian world. deserter from the service in which he was sent, silas enlists in that of the daring and indefatigable adventurer. thus much, and no more, do we learn concerning him: for, in the picture drawn in the acts, no character is given to him, except the being found in company with paul, in some of the places which paul visits: except this exercise of the locomotive faculty, nothing is there to distinguish him from the common stock of still-life. from this fourth recorded epoch in the intercourse between paul and the apostles, we now pass to that which stands fifth and last, to wit: that which was produced by his fourth and last visit to jerusalem:--his _invasion visit_, a.d. 62. in the interval, come four years,--occupied by a series of successive excursions and sojournments,--in the course of which, all mention of silas is dropped, without remark: dropped, in the same obscure and inexplicit manner, in which the historian affords to the reader, supposing him endowed with the requisite degree of attention, the means of discovering, acts 16:10, that not long after the commencement of this same period, the historian himself, whoever he was, was taken into the train of the self-constituted apostle. to the reader is also left the faculty, of amusing himself in conjecturing, about what time, and in what manner, this latter event may have taken place; an event, from which such important consequences have resulted. of these portions of paul's life, some view will come to be taken, in a succeeding chapter, under another head:--under the head of paul's supposed miracles: for, it is in the account given of his achievements and adventures, and of the transactions in which, in the course of this period, he was engaged,--it is in the course of this account, that we shall have to pick up, the supposed accounts of supposed miracles, which, in this part of the acts history lie interspersed. this review must of necessity be taken, for the purpose of placing in a true light, the evidence, supposed to be thus afforded, in support of his claims to a supernatural commission. to this change of connection on the part of silas,--from the service of the apostles of jesus to that of the self-constituted apostle,--the character of _defection_ on the part of silas,--_seduction_ on the part of paul,--may here be ascribed without difficulty. by the apostles, one gospel was preached--the gospel of jesus:--we see it in the evangelists. by paul, another and different gospel was preached:--a gospel, later and better, according to him, than that which is to be seen in the evangelists:--a gospel of his own. if, even down to this time, mutual prudence prevented an open and generally conspicuous rupture,--there was on his part, at any rate, an opposition. if, to men, whose conduct and temper were such as they uniformly appear to have been,--any such word as _party_ can, without disparagement, be applied, here were two _parties_. he, who was _for_ the self-constituted apostle, was _against_ the apostles of jesus. in a word, in the language of modern party, silas was a _rat_. section 3. the partition treaty, and the proceedings, in relation to it, down to this period, reviewed. in regard to the partition treaty,--taking the matter from paul's first, or reconciliation visit, a.d. 35, to his departure from antioch, on his missionary excursion, after the interview he had had at that city with peter,--the state of the affairs, between paul and the apostles, seems to have been thus:-1. on the occasion, and at the time, of his first jerusalem visit--his reconciliation visit--a sort of reconciliation--meaning at least an outward one--could not,--consistently with the whole train, of what is said of his subsequent intercourse and interviews with the apostles,--could not but have taken place. 2. of this reconciliation, the terms were--that, on condition of _his_ preaching in the name of jesus,--_they_ would not, to such persons in jerusalem and elsewhere, as were in connection with them,--_speak_ of him any longer in the character of a persecutor: for, by his disobedience and breach of trust, as towards the jerusalem constituted authorities,--such he had put it out of his power to _be_ any longer: not speak of him as a persecutor, but, on the contrary, as an associate:--he taking up the name of jesus: and preaching--never in his own, but on every occasion in that holy, name. 3. on this occasion,--it being manifest to both parties, that, by his intimate acquaintance with the greek language, and with the learning belonging to that language, he was in a peculiar degree well qualified to spread the name of jesus among the gentiles in general;--that is, among those to whom the jewish was not a vernacular language;--whereas their acquaintance with language was confined to their own, to wit, the jewish language;--on this occasion, it followed of course, from the nature of the case, and almost without need of stipulation, that,--leaving to _them_, for the field of their labours, jerusalem, and that part of the circumjacent country, in which the jewish alone was the language of the bulk of the population,--_he_ should confine his exertions, principally if not exclusively, to those countries, of which greek was, or at any rate hebrew was not, the vernacular language. to him, at that time, it was not in the nature of the case, that absentation from jerusalem, or any part of the country under the same dominion, should be matter of regret. within that circle, he could not, for any length of time, abide publicly, for fear of the legal vengeance of the constituted authorities: nor yet among the christians; although from their chiefs he had obtained, as above, a sort of prudential endurance; considering the horror, which his persecution of them had inspired, and the terror, with which, until his conversion had been proved in the eyes of all by experience, he could not as yet fail to be regarded. whatever was the object of his concupiscence,--whether it were the fund--and we have seen how attractive the bait was--which, at that time, in that metropolis of the christian world, offered itself to an ambitious eye,--still, though his opportunities had as yet confined his exertions to the _second_ city in that increasing world, his eyes never ceased looking to the _first_. twice, accordingly, between the first of his visits,--his reconciliation visit--and this his last interview with peter,--we see him visiting that inviting spot: each time, protected and escorted by the munificent barnabas and his influence--to make him endurable: each time with a public commission--to make him respected:--the first time with money in his hand--to make him welcome. that, all this while, neither _good faith_ nor _prudence_ were capable of opposing to the violence of his ambition, any effectual check,--is abundantly manifest. that _good faith_ was not, we learn distinctly from himself. for though, from the very nature of the two correlative situations, it is out of all question, as above, that, without some agreement to the effect above mentioned, he could not, even with the benefit of every possible means of concealment, have been preserved for two days together from the vengeance which pressed upon him, from _below_ as well as from _above_; yet still was he, by his secret intrigues, gal. 1:11, violating the treaty, at the expense of those upright, patient, and long-suffering men, to whose observance of it, he was every day indebted for his life. section 4. peter and the apostles justified as to the financial stipulation in the treaty, and the succeeding missionary labours of peter among the gentiles. of the financial stipulation, the account we have has been seen:--an account given by one of the parties to it--paul:--the other party being--the apostles. in the instance of paul, in the demonstration, supposed to be given of it, the worldliness, of the motives which gave birth to it, has in a manner been taken for granted. well, then, if in the one instance such was the character of it,--in the other instance, can it have been any other? the question is a natural one; but not less so is the answer. for note, the stipulation is express--that, by paul--by paul out of the profits of his vocation--the poor, meaning the poor of jerusalem--the poor among the disciples of the apostles--should be remembered. remembered, and how? remembered, by payment of the money--into the hands, either of the apostles themselves, or, what comes to the same thing, some other persons, in connection with them, and acting under their influence. now, then, once more. of the man, by whom the money was to be _paid_--of this man, the motives, you say, were worldly: is it credible then, that they should have been less so, in the instance of the men by whom they were to be _received_? answer. oh! yes, _that_ it is. between the two cases, there is this broad difference. whatever paul might receive, he would receive for himself: whatever, after payment made, under the treaty, to the use of the jerusalem poor, he retained,--he might retain for his own use. but the apostles--that which, if anything, they received, in the name of the poor, and as for the use of that same poor,--would they--could they, for their own use, retain it, or any part of it? not they, indeed. not in their hands were the poor's funds: not in theirs, but in a very different set of hands:--in the hands of a set of trustees--of the trustees already mentioned in this work, ch. 2--of those administrators, whose function, to every reader who has not the greek original in view, is so unfortunately disguised by the word _deacons_. and these deacons, by whom appointed? by the apostles? no; but, by the whole communion of the saints--by the whole number of the members of the christian commonwealth;--and in the way of free election,--_election, on the principle of universal suffrage_. monarchists and aristocrats! mark well!--_of universal suffrage_. so much for the treaty itself. now, as to the subsequent conduct of the parties, under it, and in relation to it. as to the partition--paul to the gentiles, peter and his associates to the jews--such was the letter of it. such being the letter--what, at the same time, was the spirit of it? manifestly this: on the one hand, that the field, to which paul's exertions should apply themselves, and confine themselves, should be that field, for the cultivation of which, with any prospect of success, he was exclusively qualified: on the other hand, that the field, to which their exertions should apply themselves and confine themselves, should be that, for the cultivation of which, they were--if not exclusively, at any rate more peculiarly, qualified. in a word--that, of all that portion of the world, that presented itself as open to the exertions, of those who preached in the name of jesus,--they should reserve to themselves that part which was already in their possession, to wit, jerusalem, and its near neighbourhood, together with such parts of judea, and its neighbourhood, of which their own language, the hebrew, was the vernacular language: this minute portion of the world reserved, all the rest was to be left open to him: over every other part of it he was to be at liberty to cast forth his shoe. judea--the country of the jews? say, rather, the jews themselves:--the jews wherever found: for, revelation apart, it was in _language_, that paul's pretensions--his exclusive qualifications--consisted. the apostles spoke nothing but hebrew: paul was learned, and eloquent, in a certain sort, in greek. in regard to the interpretation to be put upon this treaty,--suppose any doubt to have place,--in the word _gentile_, would obviously the seat and source of it to be to be found. suppose, on the one hand _persons_ to be the objects, of which it was meant to be designative,--then, let there be but so much as one single uncircumcised man in jerusalem, or elsewhere,--to whom, in the view of gaining him over to their communion, the apostles, or, with their cognizance, any of their disciples, addressed themselves,--here would, on _their_ part, be a breach of the treaty. suppose, on the other hand, _places_ to be the objects, of which it was meant to be designative,--on that supposition, within that tract of country, within which alone, the necessary means, of communicating with the bulk of the population, were in their possession,--they might apply themselves, to all persons without restriction: and this, still without any real breach of the agreement--of the spirit and real import of the agreement. in respect either of _persons or places_, by the agreement, according to this--the obvious sense of it--what was it that paul gave up? in truth, just nothing. had his mind been in a sober state,--strange indeed, if the field thus afforded by the whole heathen world, was not wide enough for his labour: in all parts of it he could not be at once; and the most promising parts were open to his choice. cessation of paul's hostilities excepted, what was it that the apostles gained? not much more. as already observed--what was not gained by it, is what is above: what was really gained by it, is what follows. what paul gained was--exemption from the annoyance, which otherwise he would everywhere have been exposed to have received, by being designated as the quondam notorious persecutor, and still unreconciled enemy, of the apostles and their disciples:--in a word, of all others who preached in the name of jesus. that which the apostles actually gained, was--that confirmation and extension of their influence, which followed of course, upon every extension, received by that field, within which the influence of the name of jesus was extended. that which, besides what is above, they _ought to_ have gained, but did not gain, is--exemption from all such annoyance, as could not but be inflicted on them, in proportion as paul, preaching to persons, to whom _they_ had access, a gospel which was his, and not theirs,--should, while in pretence and name an associate, be, in truth and effect, an adversary and opponent. this is what--though they not only should have gained, but might also reasonably have expected to gain--they did _not_ gain. for, not to insist any more on his secret intrigues in jerusalem itself, and his open opposition in the second jerusalem, antioch, as above; we shall--when we come to the next and last of his interviews with the apostles on the occasion of his invasion visit--see, to what lengths the madness of his ambition carried him, in that birthplace and metropolis of the christian world. by the sort of connection, which, notwithstanding such obvious and naturally powerful principles of discrimination, have on each occasion, been visible, as between the undoubted apostles, and this self-styled one--three distinguishable questions cannot but, from time to time, have been presenting themselves:--1. the sort of countenance--partial, cold, and guarded as it was--shown by the old established and goodly fellowship to the ever-intruding individual--is it credible? 2. can it, in fact, have been manifested, in conjunction with a disbelief, on their part, of his pretensions to a degree of supernatural favour with the almighty, equal or superior to their own? 3. and, if not only possible, but actual--was it, in point of morality, justifiable? by a few obvious enough considerations, an answer--and, it is hoped, a not altogether unsatisfactory one,--may be given to all these questions. as to whatever was natural in the course of the events, barnabas was necessary to the rising church: and paul was, all along, necessary, or, at least, was so thought, to barnabas. 1. barnabas was necessary to the church. already, it has been seen, how preeminent was the support received by it from his munificence. in him, it had found at once the most liberal of benefactors, and, unless peter be an exception, the most indefatigable of agents. on the part of no one of even the chosen servants of jesus, do proofs of equal zeal and activity present themselves to our view. in an ensuing chapter, we shall see peter trying his strength among the gentiles. yet, from the direction thus given to his apostolic zeal, no violation of the treaty, it will be seen, can with justice be imputed to him, if the interpretation above given to the word _gentiles_ be correct. 1. in the first place,--according to the acts, the date of this excursion is _antecedent_ to that third interview, which took place on the occasion of paul's third jerusalem visit--his deputation visit: that is to say, to the time, at which, and not before, though, if the above reasoning be just, in a sort of general terms the preliminaries had been agreed upon, the general preliminary arrangements were followed, confirmed, explained, and liquidated, by more particular ones. 2. in the next place--of all the places,--which, in the course of this excursion of peter's, are mentioned as having been visited by him,--there is not one, that paul is mentioned as having ever visited: whereas, in the first of them that is mentioned, the apostles are mentioned as having already a band of disciples.[42] 3. in the third place,--the date, assigned to this excursion of peter's, is, by several years, antecedent even to the first, of the several excursions of paul's, of which mention is made in the acts. in the received chronology--date assigned to the commencement of peter's excursion, a.d. 35; date assigned to paul's first excursion, a.d. 45. while peter was thus occupying himself, paul was still at tarsus:[43] at tarsus--his own birthplace--whereto,--in consequence of the danger, to which his life had been exposed by his first jerusalem visit, his reconciliation visit,--he had taken his flight.[44] 4. in the fourth place,--notwithstanding the perpetual hostility of paul's mind, as towards peter and the rest of the apostles,--on no occasion, on the score of any breach of this article in the partition treaty, is any complaint, on the part of paul, to be found. when dissatisfaction is expressed, doctrine alone is mentioned by him as the source of it: doctrine, the ostensible; dominion, the original and real source. spite of the treaty,--spite of the manifest interest, of the only genuine religion of jesus--the gospel taught by the apostles,--still in places to which they had access--in places in which, in consequence, they had formed connections,--he persisted in intruding himself: intruding himself, with that gospel which he says himself, was his, not theirs--and not being theirs, was not jesus's:--intruding himself, in places, in which, even had his gospel been jesus's, _their_ connections being established, there existed no demand for him and _his_. can this be doubted of? if yes, all doubt will at any rate be removed, when,--spite of all the endeavours that could be employed, either by them or by his own adherents, to prevail upon him to desist,--we shall see him entering jerusalem on his invasion visit: as if, while, for preaching the religion of jesus, all the world, with the exception of the jewish part of it, was not enough for this intruder,--the apostles of jesus--eleven in number, with their elected associate, matthias,--were not, all together, enough, for that small part of it. the _name_ he preached in, _that_ indeed not his own, but jesus's: but the _doctrine_ he preached--the gospel, as he called it--not _jesus's_, nor anybody else's, but his own. all this, as he has the assurance to declare,--all this did he preach without their knowledge. and why without their knowledge? because, as he himself has the still more extraordinary assurance to _declare_--for _confession_ is the result not of assurance, but weakness--because, as he himself acknowledges,--if so it had been, that this gospel of his had come to the knowledge of the apostles--of those associates, to whom he was all along holding out the right hand of fellowship, this gospel of his could not have been listened to--this preaching of his would have been in vain. already, however--for in this he may be believed--already, throughout this _first_ intercourse, though the expression is not used till he came to speak of the _third_,--already must the right hand of fellowship have been held out, and on both sides: and, what followed of course,--and was not only affirmed by his statement, but demonstrated by the result,--on this last occasion was the treaty again brought upon the carpet and confirmed, after such modifications as it may naturally have received, from the consideration of intervening incidents. footnotes: [42] acts 9:32. "and it came to pass, as peter passed through all quarters, he came down also to the saints which dwelt at lydda." [43] acts 11:25. "then departed barnabas for to seek saul." a.d. 43. [44] acts 9:30, "which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to cã¦sarea and sent him forth to tarsus." chapter ix. _paul disbelieved continued--the fourth and last jerusalem visit. the purpose concealed: opposition universal; among his own disciples, and among those of the apostles._ section 1. motives to this visit. of this momentous visit to say what were the real objects, must in a great part be left to conjecture:--to inferences drawn from the known circumstances of the case. by himself, as will be seen, they were concealed with the most persevering anxiety. but, in default of direct evidence, the point may without much danger of error be settled by circumstantial evidence. the common objects of political concupiscence--money, power and vengeance--were all before his eyes: _money_--in no less a quantity than that of the aggregate mass of the property of the whole church:--that fund, for the management of which, the apostles' seven trustees, under the name of deacons, were not more than sufficient:--that fund, by which the repulsed concupiscence of the sorcerer of samaria had so lately been excited:--_power_, that which was exercised by the direction of the consciences of the whole number of the faithful, some time before this, not less in number than three thousand: _vengeance_, for the repeated rebuffs, by which, at the interval of so many years from each other, his endeavours to supplant the apostles had been repelled. in a general point of view, ambition,--rival ambition,--the same motive which sent caesar to rome, may be stated as having sent paul, at this time, to jerusalem: to jerusalem--the metropolis of the christian world, by design; and thence, eventually and undesignedly, to the metropolis of the whole civilized world. by two opposite desires--two antagonizing but correspondent and mutually explanatory desires--desires, in both parts intense and active, the external marks of which are sufficiently visible in two different quarters,--the nature as well as prevalence of this motive, will, it is believed, be found sufficiently proved:--a desire, in the breast of the self-constituted apostle, to establish himself in the original metropolis of the christian world:--a desire on the part of the apostles--of the apostles constituted by jesus--to keep him out of it. section 2. the visit announced by paul and deferred. ephesus, at which place he had arrived not long after his departure from corinth, where he had made a stay, as it should seem, of more years than one,[45] touching in the way at cenchrea, where he shaved his head for the performance of a vow--ephesus is the place, at which, by the author of the acts, paul is for the first time made to speak of himself, as harbouring, having in mind the making of this visit: and on that occasion, the visit is spoken of, as being the subject of a settled determination, and in particular as being the time fixed upon by him for the execution of this design. acts 18:20, 21. "when they, the jews at ephesus, desired him to tarry longer with them, he consented not; but bade them farewell, saying, i must _by all means keep this feast_ that cometh in jerusalem: but i will return again to you if god will." as to the keeping of this or any other feast at jerusalem or at any other place--if it was under any such notion as that of contributing to his own personal salvation by any such mosaic work, it was an object inconsistent with his own principles--with his own so repeatedly and strenuously advocated principles:--and the like may be said of the head-shaving and the vow, performed by him, at cenchrea, in his way to ephesus from corinth: and moreover, in this last-mentioned instance, more particularly in contradiction with a precept so positively delivered by jesus, namely, _swear not at all_,--if, under swearing, the making of vows is to be understood to be included. of this design, the next intimation which occurs in the acts, is in the next chapter, acts 19:21, "when these things were ended," namely, the discomfiture of the exorcists, and the burning of the books of curious arts at ephesus,--"paul, it is said, _purposes in the spirit_, when he had passed through macedonia and achaia, to go to jerusalem, saying, after i have been there, i must also see rome." fortunate it is for the credit--either _of the spirit_, or of paul, or of the author of the acts, that it was on this second occasion only, and not on the first, that it was _in the spirit_ that he proposed to go to jerusalem by the then next feast: for, notwithstanding the "_must_" and the "_by all means_,"--so it is, that between those his two determinations as above, no less a space of time than two years is stated as elapsing, on one occasion, at one and the same place.[46] and this place--what was it? it was ephesus: the same place, at which, on his departure from it, the first determination was declared: after which, and before this his second visit to ephesus,--he is represented as having visited cã¦sarea and antioch. the next mention, is that which occurs in the next chapter, chapter 20:16. "paul," we are there told, being then at miletus, "had determined to sail by ephesus, because he would not spend the time in asia: for he hasted, if it were possible for him, to be at jerusalem the day of pentecost." at miletus it is, that he sends for, and receives, from ephesus, a number of his adherents in that place. upon their arrival, he is represented as making a formal speech to them: and now, he not merely proposes in the spirit, as before, but is "_bound in the spirit_," to go thither.[47] vain would be the attempt to ascertain, with any approach to exactness, the interval of time, during which the operation of the spirit remained in a sort of suspense between _purpose_ and _obligation_: it may have been months, only: it may have been years. while, by one spirit, paul was thus urged on, every now and then, towards jerusalem;--by the same spirit, or by another spirit, he was pulled back.[48] in the very next verse, acts 20:22, in which he speaks of his being "bound in the spirit unto" that place, not knowing, as, in his speech, he thereupon adds,--"not knowing the things that shall befall me there,"--he goes on, and says: "save that the holy ghost witnesseth in every city, saying, that bonds and afflictions abide me. but none of these things," says he, ver. 24, "move me, neither count i my life dear unto myself, so that i might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which i have received of the lord jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of god." to raise, in the breast of paul, the expectation, that of his proceeding in the course it was his way to take in preaching that religion, to which, from a persecutor, he had, in appearance, become a convert, affliction, in a variety of shapes, might prove to be the fruits,--needed no information from the spirit; if, by receiving information from the spirit, he meant any communication of a supernatural kind--anything beyond information in the ordinary shape;--be the effect--be the purpose, good or bad,--such is the lot, that awaits innovation in the field of politics--the spiritual part included, as well as the temporal--at all places, and all times. a passage, which now presents itself, helps to show how easily and copiously, out of a few words, written in ancient times, mysteries and miracles have been manufactured in modern times. in acts 20:22, we have seen paul, "_bound in the spirit_," as he is made to assure us, to go unto jerusalem. in the next chapter, 21:4, we find disciples ... who said to paul, "_through the spirit_," that he should _not_ go up to jerusalem. oh! what a useful word this word _spirit_! let a man say plainly and simply, i shall go, or be going, to jerusalem--or, don't go to jerusalem,--his words go for no more than they are worth: in either case, with a proper proposition to introduce it, add the word "spirit," the matter becomes serious. out of a word or two, you thus add to the godhead a third person, who talks backward and forward for you, and does for you whatever you please. at so small a price, even to this day, are manufactured, every day, a sort of _verbal_ miracles, which, as many as are disposed, are welcome to improve into real ones. to reconcile men to this expedition of paul's, the spirit was the more necessary,--inasmuch as it was not in his own power, or even in that of any one of his numerous attendants and dependants, to assign so much as one ostensible reason for it. that, to the advancement of religion--of the religion of jesus--no such presence of his was necessary;--that no good could result from it;--that much evil could not but result from it;--was obvious to all eyes. of the original number of the apostles,--for aught that appears, not less than eleven were still remaining on the spot: men, to every one of whom, all acts and sayings of jesus were, by memory, rendered so familiar:--men, on the part of some of whom, and, at any rate, on the part of the chief of them, peter,--there was no want of zeal and activity. while to these men a single city, or, at the utmost, one small region--composed the whole field of exertion--the whole earth besides is left open by them to paul: still, such is the ravenousness of his ambition, nothing can content him, but he must be intruding himself--thrusting his restless sickle into their ripening harvest. section 3. the design indefensible. all this--is it not enough? well then, take this one other--this concluding proof. in the teeth of all their endeavours, and among them, some that will be seen extraordinary enough, to prevent it,--was undertaken the fourth and last of his four recorded visits to their residence--jerusalem. but, in the first place, in the utter indefensibility of the design, shall be shown the _cause_, of the opposition so universally made to it. tired of a mixture of successes and miscarriages,--disdaining the conquests he had been making in so many remote, and comparatively obscure regions of the world,--he had formed--but at what precise time, the documents do not enable us to pronounce--the determination, to exhibit his glories on the two most illustrious of theatres:--in the two capitals--jerusalem, of the jewish, and now of the christian world; rome, of the whole classical heathen world:--and in the first place, jerusalem, now, for the fourth time since his conversion. it was at ephesus, as we have seen, this determination was first declared. to rome, he might have gone, and welcome: namely, in so far as his doctrines could have confined themselves within the limits of those of jesus: which, however, it will be seen, they could not: but, success being moreover supposed, nothing but good could such visit have had for its result. but, by a visit to any place other than jerusalem, various were the points of spleen and ambition, that could not have been satisfied. nothing would serve him, but, over that edom jerusalem, he would, in the first place, cast forth his shoe. unless the eleven most confidential servants, selected by jesus himself to be the propagators of his religion, were altogether unworthy of the task thus allotted to them,--nothing to the good purposes of that religion could be more palpably unnecessary, nothing to the purposes of peace and unity more pernicious, than the intrusion thus resolved upon. that the number of these legitimately instituted apostles had as yet suffered any diminution, is not, by any of the documents, rendered so much as probable. neither in the works of paul himself, nor in that of his historiographer, is any intimation to any such effect to be found. in their own judgments, had there been any need of coadjutors--any deficiency of hands for the spiritual harvest,--they well knew how to supply it. of the sufficiency of such knowledge, they had given the most incontestable proofs: the election of matthias was the fruit of it. they showed--and with a disinterestedness, which has never since had, nor seems destined to have, any imitators--that, in the christian world, if government in any shape has divine right for its support, it is in the shape of democracy;--representative democracy--operating by universal suffrage. in the eye of the christian, as well as of the philosopher and the philanthropist, behold here the only legitimate government: the form, the exclusion of which from the christian world, has been the object of that league, by which, by an unpunishable, yet the most mischievous--if not the only mischievous--sort of blasphemy, the name of christian has been profaned. this method of filling offices, was no more to the taste of paul, than to that of a napoleon or a george. he determined to open their eyes, and prove to them by experience, that monarchy,--himself the first monarch--was the only legitimate form of government. the difficulties of the enterprise were such as could not escape any eyes:--least of all his own: but to die or conquer was his resolve: so he himself declares.[49] what, in case of success, would have been the use made by him of it? the fate of the apostles may be read in the catastrophe of saint stephen: the vulgar herd would, in his eyes, have been as declaredly foolish as the galatians. gal. 3:1. "o, foolish galatians!" who did bewitch you, etc. the invasion was not less inconsistent with good faith, than with brotherly love, peace and unity. it was a direct violation of the _partition-treaty_: that treaty, of which he gives such unquestionable evidence against himself, in the boast he makes of it to his galatians. gal. 2:9. "when james, cephas (peter), and john, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision." section 4. opposition made to it by his own attendants and other adherents. to find so much as the colour of a reason for this perfidy, was too much for the ingenuity of his attendant panegyrist. in the eyes of the whole body of his attendants, of whom the historian was one, so completely unjustifiable was his design in every point of view,--they joined in a remonstrance to him, beseeching him to give it up. acts 21:12 to 14. and when we heard these things, both we, and they of that place, besought him not to go up to jerusalem.--then paul answered, what mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for i am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at jerusalem, for the name of the lord jesus.--and when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, the will of the lord be done. at no such loss, however, was paul himself: for this, and for everything else it was his will to do, he had a reason ready made. it was no less concise and economical than convenient: a word, and no more than a word, was the price paid for it:--_revelation_ was that word.[50] so he assures his "foolish" galatians: and if they were foolish enough to believe it, these, though first, have not been last, in the career of foolishness. allow a man but the use of this one word, so it be in the sense in which paul here uses it--admit the matter of fact, of which it contains the assertion,--the will of that man is not only sufficient reason, but sufficient law, for everything: in all places, and to all persons, his will is law. the will of this man is the will of that god, by whom this revelation of it has been made to him: the will of god, what man shall be audacious enough to dispute? the motives, which gave birth to this act of perfidy and hostility, will now be visible enough, to every eye, that dares to open itself to them. at the time in question, they were too manifest to need mentioning: and at the same time too unjustifiable, to bear to be mentioned by his dependent historian, when speaking of the opposition, which, even on the part of his own dependents, it produced. they besought him--with tears they besought him: but, as to the reflections by which these tears were produced, they could not bear the light: it was not for a declared adherent to give them utterance. the sort of colour, put upon the project by paul, with the help of one of his phrases--this was the only colour that could be found for it. it was for the _name_ of the lord jesus, acts 21:13, that he was ready--"ready, not to be bound only, but also to die." for the name? o, yes, for the name at all times; for, in the name of jesus, he beheld from first to last his necessary support: and of the lord jesus, nothing, as we shall find,--nothing from first to last, did he ever employ but the name. but, to be bound at jerusalem--to die at jerusalem--to be bound--to die--supposing this to take place,--where--to the religion of jesus--would be, where could be, the use of it? there, at jerusalem, the apostles--the real apostles of jesus:--executing, without either dying or being bound for it, the commission, which to them had been really given by jesus. section 5. opposition made to it by the apostles and their disciples. thus indefensible and deplorable, in the eyes even of his own dependents,--it may be imagined in what light the invasion presented itself at jerusalem, to those who found themselves so cruelly menaced by it. at the first place, at which, after a voyage of some length, they landed on their way to judea,--they found the alarm already spread. this place was tyre: there they found "disciples," acts 21:4, "who said to paul," and "through the spirit, that he should not go up to jerusalem." it was through _their spirit_, that they bade him not to go; but _his revelation_, as we have seen, bade him to go, notwithstanding:--his revelation was too strong for their spirit. if it was from the _lord jesus_, as he all along informs us, that his revelation came, while their spirit was the _holy spirit_, otherwise called the _holy ghost_,--already another schism was produced: a schism, in a council still higher than that of the apostles. at ptolemais, on the road from tyre to jerusalem, they stayed but one day: acts 21:7, not long enough, it should seem, for any fresh marks of opposition to this enterprise to manifest themselves. continuing their approach to the metropolis, the next day they came to cã¦sarea, acts 21:4, "the house," then "entered into," was that of philip, there styled the evangelist, one of the seven trustees, who, under the name, rendered in the english translation by that of deacon, at the recommendation of the apostles, had been chosen by universal suffrage, for the management of the pecuniary affairs of the church. here they took up their quarters: and here a fresh scene awaited them. in the person of a man, whose name was agabus, the apostles and their associates had found, as we have seen, an agent of approved talents, and usefulness: to him they had been indebted, for the most important service, of a temporal nature, which the history of the church in those days furnishes:--the supply of money already received, as above mentioned, from the first-born daughter of the church--the church of antioch, in syria. at this place, cã¦sarea, as a last resource, this same agabus, or another, was, as it should seem, dispatched to meet--at any rate did meet--the self-appointed apostle in his way; and, in the character of a _prophet_, for so _this_ agabus is styled, strained every nerve, in the endeavour to divert the invader from the so anxiously apprehended purpose. whoever he was, employed on this occasion, but employed in vain, were all the treasures of his eloquence. the holy ghost was once more, and by name, set in array against paul's lord jesus. the powers of verbal and oral eloquence were not thought sufficient: action--and not only of that sort which, in the eyes of demosthenes, was an object of such prime importance, but even pantomime--was employed in aid. acts 21:11. as to argument--fear in the bosom of the church, for a life so precious, was the only one, which the skill of the orator could permit him to employ: as to fear for their own sakes, and resentment for the injury which they were predestinated to suffer,--these were passions, too strongly felt to be avowed. "he took paul's girdle," acts 21:11, "and bound his own hands and feet, and said, thus saith the holy ghost, so shall the jews at jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the gentiles." supposing the agabus mentioned on this occasion, to be the same agabus as he who was mentioned on the occasion of the apprehended dearth--supposing this to be he--and no reason presents itself in favour of the contrary supposition--well known indeed must he have been to paul, since it was by his means that paul was indebted for the opportunity of paying, to jerusalem, that second visit of his, from which, as we have seen, so little fruit was reaped. the singular circumstance here is, the manner, in which, on this second occasion, mention is made of this name--agabus: "a certain prophet named agabus," acts 21:10. whether this was, or was not, the same as the former agabus,--this mode of designation presents itself as alike extraordinary. if he _was_ the same,--in that case, as, by the addition of the adjunct "a certain prophet," a sort of cloud is thrown over his identity,--so, by so simple an expedient as that of the non-insertion of these redundant words, the clouds would have been dispelled. if he was _not_ the same,--so expressive being the circumstances, by which identity stands indicated--namely, the quarter _from_ whence the same; the quarter _to_ which the same; the importance of the mission, and the demand for talents and influence, in both cases so great; on this supposition, to prevent misconception, no less obvious than urgent was the demand, for some mark of distinction, to be added on this second occasion: in a word, for that sort of mark of distinction, which, on other occasions; may, in this same history, be seen more than once employed: witness _that john_, twice distinguished by the name of _john, whose surname was mark_. acts 22:25, _ib._ 25:37. hence a suspicion, nor that an unnatural one--that, in this history, the part, in which the name agabus occurs for the first time, and the part, in which that same name occurs for the second time, were not the work of the same hand. with or without the assistance of the holy ghost, with the like importunity, though in a tone corresponding to the difference of situation, was a dissuasion, to the same effect, added, with one voice, by the adherents, of whom the suite of the self-appointed apostle was composed, and by all the other christians then present. "and when we heard these things," says the author of the acts, "both we, and they of that place, cã¦sarea, besought him not to go up to jerusalem." acts 21:12. the holy ghost, whom all the rest of the church had for their advocate, was no equal match for the holy ghost whom paul had for his adviser. "what mean ye," says he, "to weep and to break mine heart? for i am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at jerusalem for the name of the lord jesus." acts 21:13. to a holy ghost so highly seated, submission from a holy ghost of inferior rank, was the only course left. "when he could not be persuaded, concludes the historian, we ceased, saying, the will of the lord be done." paul die at jerusalem, for the name of the lord jesus? he, paul, this self-constituted apostle, who, upon his own showing, had never seen jesus? for the name of jesus, forsooth, die at jerusalem? at that jerusalem, at which the indisputable apostles had been, and continued to be, living and labouring, in the service of that same holy name, each of them, or they are much misrepresented, not less ready and willing, both to live and upon occasion to die for it, than he could be? was it then really to die for the name of jesus? was it not rather to live? to live for his own name, for his own glory, for his own profit, and for the pleasure of depriving of their flock those shepherds of souls, by whom his pretensions had been disallowed, his glory disbelieved, his advances received with that distrust and jealousy, for which the long and bitter experience they had had of him, afforded so amply sufficient a warrant? men, in whose eyes, though in the clothing of a shepherd, he was still a wolf? what was he to die for? by whose hands was he to die? by no danger, since he had ceased to be their declared persecutor, had any christians, in their character of christians, whether disciples or preachers, then, or at any time, been menaced;[51] of no such danger, at any rate, is any, the slightest, intimation ever to be found: if any danger awaited him, it was by himself, by his own restless and insatiable ambition, by his own overbearing and ungovernable temper, that it was created. had he but kept to his agreement; had the whole of the known world, with the single exception of judea, been wide enough for him: no danger would have awaited him:--he and jerusalem might have remained in peace. what service that _they_ could not, could _he_ hope to do to the cause? for doctrine, they had nothing to do but to report the discourses; for proof, the miracles which they had witnessed. to this, what could _he_ add? nothing, but facts, such as we have seen, out of his own head,--or, at best, facts taken at second hand, or through any number of removes from _them_,--and, in an infinity of shapes and degrees, travestied in their passage. in this account, the curious thing is--that upon the face of it, the holy ghost of prophet agabus is mistaken: nothing happened in the manner mentioned by him: for, in the same chapter comes the account of what did happen, or at any rate is, by this same historian, stated as that which happened:--by no jews is the owner of the girdle bound: dragged by the people out of the temple,--by that same people he is indeed attempted to be killed, but bound he is not: for, with his being bound, the attempt to kill him is not consistent: binding requires mastery, and a certain length of time, which killing does not: a single blow from a stone may suffice for it. as to the jews delivering him unto the hands of the gentiles,--it is by the gentiles that he is delivered out of the hands of the jews: of the jews, the endeavour was--to deprive him of his life; of the gentiles, to save it. section 6. plan of the apostles for ridding themselves of paul. in this important contest, the holy ghost of agabus was predestinated to yield to the irresistible power of paul's lord jesus. he made his entry into jerusalem, acts 21:17, and the very next day commenced the storm, by which, after having been on the point of perishing, he was driven, at last, as far as from jerusalem to rome, but the particulars of which belong not to the present purpose. what _is_ to the present purpose, however, is the company, which, upon this occasion, he saw. james, it may be remembered, was one of the three apostles--out of the whole number, the only three who, on the occasion of the partition treaty, could be prevailed upon to give him the right hand of fellowship. into the house of this james he entered: and there what he saw was an assembly, met together for the purpose, of giving him the advice, of which more particular mention will be made in its place. it was--to clear himself of the charge,--a charge made against him by the jewish converts,--of teaching all the jews, which are among the gentiles, to forsake moses, and of inculcating that doctrine by his own example, acts 21:20-24. well! at this assembly who were present? answer--the elders--all of them: of the apostles with the single exception of james, at whose house it was held, not one: not even john,--not even peter:--the two other apostles, by whom on their part, the treaty had been entered into:--peter, the chief of the apostles;--john "the disciple," john 19:26; 20:2; 21:7-20, whom jesus loved. the nerves of james it appears, from other tokens besides this, were of a stronger texture than those of either of these his two colleagues; he alone stood the brunt. as for peter, he had been so "withstood to his face" by paul on the occasion of his first visit, that he had no stomach to be so withstood a second time. james, it may be remembered, was the apostle, at whose motion, against the opinion and speech of peter, the resolution insisting upon certain jewish observances, on the part of heathen converts to the church, was carried. here then, in support of the proposition maintained, by james,--here, was an assembly of the rulers of the church convened: the elders--the elected coadjutors of the apostles all of them present: of the apostles themselves, not one: james excepted, whose presence, it is evident, could not, on this occasion, be dispensed with. of this assembly, the object, and sole object, was--the insisting upon paul's taking, for the sake of the peace of the church, a certain measure. now, the measure thus insisted upon, what was it? the clearing himself of a certain charge then mentioned. and this charge, what was it? a charge--of which, consistently with truth,--of which without such direct falsehood, as if committed would be notorious,--he could not clear himself. in this case, one of two things would absolutely be the result. either he would be rash enough to commit the falsehood,--in which case his reputation and power of disturbing the peace of the church would be at an end; or, shrinking from the summons, he would virtually confess himself guilty: in which case likewise, he would find his situation, in the midst of an universally adverse multitude, no longer tenable. for this clearance, a ceremony was prescribed to him:--a ceremony, the effect of which was--to declare, in a manner, beyond all comparison, more solemn and deliberate than that of anything which is commonly understood by the word _oath_,--that he had not done anything, of that which he stood charged with having done, and which it could not but be generally known that he had done. witness those epistles of his, which in another place we shall see, ch. 12:--epistles in which he will be seen, so frequently, and upon such a variety of occasions, and in such a variety of language, not only proclaiming the needlessness of circumcision--its uselessness to salvation,--but, in a word, on all points making war upon moses. no course was so rash, that paul would shrink from it, no ceremony so awful, or so public that paul would fear to profane it. of the asseveration, to which he was called upon to give, in an extraordinary form, the sanction of an oath, the purport was universally notorious: the falsity, no less so: the ceremony, a solemnity on which the powers of sacerdotal ingenuity had been exhausted, in the endeavour to render is efficaciously impressive. place of performance, the most sacred among the sacred: act of entrance, universally public, purpose universally notorious; operations, whatever they were, inscrutably concealed from vulgar eyes: person of the principal actor occasionally visible, but at an awful elevation: time, requisite for accomplishment, acts 21:27, not less than seven days: the whole ceremony, effectually secured against frequent profanation, by "charges" too heavy to be borne by the united power of four ordinary purses.[52] with all the ingredients of the most finished perjury in his breast,--perfect consciousness, fixed intentionality, predetermined perseverance, and full view of the sanction about to be violated,--we shall see him entering upon the task, and persevering in it. while the long drama was thus acting in the consecrated theatre, the mind of the multitude was accumulating heat without doors. the seven days necessary, were as yet unaccomplished, when indignation could hold no longer: they burst into the sacred edifice, dragged him out, and were upon the point of putting him to death, when the interference of a roman officer saved him, and became the first link in that chain of events, which terminated in his visit to rome, and belongs not to this place. thus much, in order to have the clearer view of the plan of the apostles, and of the grounds of it, from which will be seen the unexceptionableness of it, it seemed necessary for us here to anticipate. but such rashness, with the result that followed--the apostles, in their situation, how could they have anticipated it? baffled, in their former endeavours to keep the invader from entering the holy city--that holy city, with the peace of which his presence was so incompatible, such was the course which they devised and embraced from driving him out of it. for the carrying of this measure into effect, a general assembly of the governing body of the church was necessary. at this assembly had no apostle been present, it could not, in the eyes of the church at large, have been what it was necessary it should appear to be. though, of the whole number of the apostles, no more than one was present,--yet, his being the house at which it was held, and the others, whether summoned or no, being expected of course, by the disciples at large, to be likewise present,--the elders being likewise "_all_" of them present,--this attendance was deemed sufficient: as to the other apostles--all of them but the one whose presence was thus indispensable,--abhorrence, towards the man, whose career had in their eyes commenced with murder, continued in imposture, and had recently been stained with perfidy,--rendered the meeting him face to face, a suffering too violent to be submitted to, when by any means it could be avoided. on this occasion, the opinion, which, as we have seen, cannot but have been entertained by them, concerning paul and his pretensions to revelation, and to a share equal to their own in the confidence of jesus,--must not, for a moment, be out of mind. the whole fellowship of the apostles,--all others, to whom, at the time, anything about the matter was known, believed his story to be, the whole of it, a pure invention. in their eyes it was a fabrication: though we, at this time of day--we, who of ourselves know nothing about it, take for granted, that it was all true. for proving the truth of it, all we have are his own accounts of it: his own accounts, given, some of them, by himself directly: the rest ultimately, his being the only mouth from which the accounts we have seen in the _acts_ could have been derived. bearing all this in mind, let us now form our judgment on the matter, and say, whether the light, in which the apostles viewed his character and conduct, and the course pursued by them as above, was not from first to last, not only conformable to the precepts of their master, but a model of patience, forbearance, and prudence. footnotes: [45] acts 18:11. "he continued there, at corinth, a year and six months."--18. "and paul tarried there yet a good while, and then took his leave." [46] acts 19:10. "and this continued by the space of two years; so that all they which dwelt in asia heard the word of the lord jesus, both jews and greeks." [47] acts 20:22. "and now, behold, i go bound in the spirit unto jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there." [48] acts 20:23. "save that the holy ghost witnesseth in every city, saying, that bonds and afflictions abide me." [49] acts 20:24. "but none of these things move me, neither count i my life dear unto myself, so that i might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which i have received of the lord jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of god." acts 21:13. "then paul answered, what mean ye to weep and to break my heart? for i am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at jerusalem for the name of the lord jesus." [50] gal. ii. 2. "i went up by revelation." [51] in acts 12:1, king herod is indeed spoken of as having "stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church, and he killed," it is said, "james, the brother of john, with the sword." then comes the story of peter's imprisonment and liberation. but the cause of these inflictions had nothing to do with religion: the proof is--nor can there be a more conclusive one--to no such cause are they attributed. [52] acts 21:23, 24. "we have four men, say the apostles and elders, we have four men which have a vow on them:--them take, and purify thyself with them, and be at charges with them." chapter x. _paul disbelieved continued.--his fourth jerusalem visit continued. his arrival and reception. accused by all the disciples of the apostles, he commences an exculpatory oath in the temple. dragged out by them--rescued by a roman commander--sent in custody to rome._ section 1. at jerusalem, paul is received by the elders and james, but by no other apostle. spite of the opposing holy ghost,--spite of the apostles, and their prophet,--there he is at jerusalem. now comes an incident--or say, rather, a relation--which is altogether curious. at "jerusalem," says the history, "the brethren received us gladly," acts 21:17. the brethren? what brethren? the brethren, by whom agabus, with his stage-trick, had been sent some sixty or seventy miles' journey, in the endeavour to keep him at a distance? the thousands of jews thereupon immediately mentioned? those jews, who, though believers in jesus, are not the "less zealous of the law," and enraged at saul for those breaches of it, with which he is charged? that, by such of them, if any, by whom--by the appearance he made, with his suite, it had happened to be more or less overawed,--that by these, an appearance of gladness was assumed, seems credible enough: look for those, by whom he could have been received with real gladness--they will not, it should seem, be very easy to be found. not, till the next day after his arrival, do paul and his suite present themselves to any in authority in this spiritual commonwealth. the first person, to whom, on this occasion, he presents himself, is james: that one of the apostles, who, with the exception of peter, is the person, and the only person, with whom paul has, on the occasion of any of his visits, been represented as holding converse. not with this james--not with any settled inhabitants of jerusalem--has he had his lodging: only with mnason,[53] a man of cyprus, whom, lest lodging should be wholly wanting, they had brought with them from cã¦sarea. of this so extensively apprehended arrival, there had been full time for ample notice: among the rulers, those, who, as well as james, chose to see him, were all present. who were they? the elders--"all the elders." of the apostles, not so much as one, besides james. let it not be said, that, under the word _elders_, the apostles were meant to be included: on other occasions, on which elders are mentioned, acts 15:4; 6:23, the apostles are mentioned, as forming a body, distinct, as they naturally would be,--distinct from these same elders. salutations performed, he addresses the assembly in that strain, which was so familiar to him: boasting upon boasting, and, above all things, boasting that he does not boast: "declaring," says his historian;--declaring? what? declaring what was his business at jerusalem? declaring what service, in his eyes the cause stood in need of, at his hands? not he, indeed: to any such effect, declaration might not have been altogether so easy. what he declared, and that "_particularly_," was--what "things god had wrought among the gentiles by his ministry." exactly on this, as on his last preceding visit,--when all, but himself, were speaking to the question before him--peter on one side; after him, james on the other side--nothing, is either he, or his companion barnabas, represented as saying, that belongs to the question; nothing, but "declaring what miracles and wonders, god had wrought among the gentiles by them." between what is represented, as having been said on the two occasions,--one difference, and no more than one, is visible. on the former occasion, "miracles and wonders"; on this latter occasion, no miracles no wonders:--nothing more than _things_. supposing any of them particularized--neither miracles nor wonders had, it should seem, been fortunate enough to obtain credence: for that reason, it should seem, that, on this occasion, all mention of them is dropped. hearing of these _things_, what did these elders? being things that "god," as they were informed, "had wrought," they could do no less than glorify "the lord." acts 21:19-20. as in paul's epistles, so here, in the acts,--by _the lord_, it is jesus, who, as far as it appears, is the person, all along meant to be designated. here, _god_, it may be observed, is the person, by whom everything good, that is done, is done: jesus--the lord jesus--the person, who is _glorified_ for it. to make his boasts, was _his_ business with _them_: but, to subscribe to those same boasts, was not _their_ business with _him_. their business was--to inform him, of the storm of unpopularity, which by his audacity he had brought upon himself: to inform him of the storm, and to point out the only course, which, in their view of the matter, presented a chance for his escape from it. "thou seest,"--say they,--"thou seest how many thousands of jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law. and they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the jews which are among the gentiles to forsake moses; saying, that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after their customs," acts 21:20. "what is it, therefore?" add they, "the multitude must needs come together: for they will hear that thou art come." section 2. low tone assumed by him on this occasion. on more accounts than one, remarkable,--and not a little instructive, is the account we have of this last recorded visit: and, in particular, as to what concerns the reception he experienced from the ruling powers of the church. it is, in some particulars, more especially to be depended upon,--inasmuch as, at this important meeting, the author of the acts--if he is to be believed--was himself present. the first remarkable circumstance is--that, on this occasion, paul, the self-elected apostle--instead of taking the lead, and introducing his companions--keeps behind, and is introduced _by them_: such was the pliancy, with which--even on this expedition, of invasion and projected conquest,--an expedition,--undertaken, in spite of everything that could be done, both on the part of the intended objects of the conquest, and on the part of his own adherents--such was the pliancy, with which this man, among whose boasts was that of being all things to all men, could bend himself to circumstances. acts 21:15-18. "and after those days, we took up our carriages, and went to jerusalem. there went with us, also, certain of the disciples of cã¦sarea, and brought with them one mnason of cyprus, an old disciple, with whom we should lodge." at jerusalem, not so much as a house, to harbour them, could they have been assured of, but for this old disciple--fellow countryman, of paul's old patron, the son of consolation, barnabas. not even with him could they have been assured of this token of friendship, had he not either been already of their party, or detached himself to meet them, and afford them the assurance: although, at cã¦sarea,--from some cause, of which, while the effect is brought to view, no intimation is given,--they were fortunate enough to obtain a hospitable reception, acts 21:8, at the house of philip. this, however, be it observed, was not philip, the apostle, whether it may have been philip, styled here the evangelist:--one of the seven trustees, or directors, acts 6:5, to whom, with his six colleagues, under the name, so inexpressively rendered, in the english, by the word _deacons_,--the management of the common fund had, by the suffrages of the disciples, been committed, must be left to conjecture. 17. "and when we were come to jerusalem, the brethren," acts 21:17, "received _us_ gladly." what _brethren_? the apostles, or any one of them? no: the elders? no. who then?--who, but such of the members of the church, as, notwithstanding the general repugnancy,--as testified at tyre, and afterwards, by prophet agabus, at cã¦sarea,--could, by the influence of the cypriot mnason, or otherwise, be prevailed upon to see them. and, _to_ whom was it, that this sort of reception, whatsoever it was, was afforded? was it to paul? no: it was to _those_, who, on other occasions, were with _him_; but, with _whom_, on this occasion, his prudence forced his pride to submit to be. witness the next verse, acts 21:18; "and the day following," not till the day following, "paul went in with us unto james." _with them_--with these his attendants--did paul, then and there, go in:--not _they with him_. at the house of james--mark well, now--who were the persons present? answer--"all the elders." but, forasmuch as these elders were, _all_ of them, present,--notice, within the compass of the two fragments of two days,--notice, to and by all of them must have been given and received: for it has just been seen, whether, between any of them, on the one hand,--and paul, or, so much as any one of his attendants, on the other,--there could have been any such sort of good understanding, as to have produced any the least personal intercourse, but at, and on, the occasion of the general and formal meeting:--a meeting, which--as will be seen presently--had, for its sole object, the imposing upon him, in the event of his continuance at jerusalem, an obligation: an obligation--to a man in his circumstances--it has been seen, of how perilous and repulsive a nature. such, then, was the notice, as to have brought to the place, all the elders--all the elders?--good. but, these _elders_--elders among the _disciples in ordinary_,--on an occasion such as this, what were _they_ in comparison of the apostles--the only known chosen servants, and constant companions of jesus? well, then, while--at this meeting--this formally convened meeting--those elders were, every one of them, present--what was the number of _apostles_ present? answer--besides james, not one. and--why james?--manifestly, because it was at _his_ house, that the meeting was held. and--why at _his_ house? because, on the occasion, and for the purpose, of the _partition treaty_,--that treaty, so necessary to the peace of the church,--on the one hand; and, to the carrying on of paul's scheme of dominion, on the other hand;--james was one, of the only three, who could ever endure the sight of the self-declared apostle: peter and john, as hath been seen, being the two others:--and, because, when, for the purpose of investing the meeting, in the eyes of the disciples at large, with the character of a meeting of the ruling administrative body--the apostles,--less than that one, if there were any, there could not be. this one, james--under the pressure of the present emergency--prevailed upon himself to be: and, to be so irksome an intercourse--notwithstanding the obviousness of the demand for as great a number, as could be collected, of that primarily influential body--of no other of the apostles, could the attendance be obtained: not even of peter, who, on a former occasion, had brought himself to endure the hateful presence. section 3. posterior to all his supposed miracles, his silence proves them unreal. now, then, as to _miracles_. had paul, really and truly, ever received from jesus, any such preeminent and characteristic appendage and mark of apostleship,--here, of all others, was an occasion, on which it concerned him to make proof of it. here was an occasion, on which, with the design, and for the purpose--the palpable, and almost universally and so strenuously opposed design and purpose--of constituting himself the superior of the apostles, he was presenting himself--though in circumstances of such humiliation--in the character of an equal, with whom they had treated on equal terms. here--in order to impose silence on all gainsayers--here was the occasion, for his bringing to public view, this most important of all items in the list of his credentials. the apostles, to whom--without any exception, by jesus, if the evangelist, mark 16:15-18, is to be believed--this power had, previously to his ascension, been imparted,--these, if any, were the men--not to say the only men--qualified to form a judgment on the question--whether, by any other individual, and, more especially, by the individual before them, namely, by this their self-declared colleague, any such extraordinary power had, on any, and what, occasion, been exercised or possessed. of all imaginable occasions, this was the one, on which he had most at stake, in the being able to make proof of so matchless an endowment:--of an endowment, which in the character of a proof, in support of all his claims, would, in the very nature of it, have been so perfectly irresistible. well, then: this proof of his title--did he use every endeavour, or make any offer, to produce it? no: not so much did he venture upon, as, in any the most general terms, to assert, or, so much as insinuate, the existence of it. according to his own statement, what was the general description of the tokens brought forward by him, for the purpose of obtaining acceptance? were they _signs and wonders_? oh, no! his historiographer, indeed--in that, or any other such indeterminate, and conveniently ambiguous phrase--his historiographer, at some twenty or seven-and-twenty years' distance, might venture, acts 14:3, to speak of his exploits--of the effects produced by his exertions: in the like terms, in writing to his corinthian disciples, he might, even himself, venture, for once, to speak of his own exploits.[54] but, before an assembly, so composed, was this boast, loose, and conveniently ambiguous, as it was,--in his eyes, too much to venture. acts 21:19--behold here the passage: "and when he had saluted them, he declared particularly"--what? what--signs and wonders? no: but simply--"what _things_ god had wrought among the gentiles by his ministry." had he hazarded so much as the general expression of signs and wonders--well, and what were these signs and wonders? give us, at any rate, something by way of a sample of them? in any one of them, was there anything supernatural? anything--beyond the success, the extraordinary success--we are to understand, your exertions were attended with? questions, to some such effect as this, which, in an assembly, so composed, had he ventured upon any such expressions, he could not but have expected to be annoyed with. the occurrences which, in the course of it, in the character of _miracles_, he has ventured to present to view, will have been seen in their place and order. yet,--notwithstanding the mention there respectively and severally made of them--no mention of them does he, in the account given by him of the meeting, venture to put in his leader's mouth. why? because--forasmuch as, by paul himself, no such pretence was ventured to be made--the meeting was too important, and too notorious, to render it safe to advance any such matter of fact; the face being false; or, that any such pretensions were really made. but, hereupon come two questions. 1. had any such miracles been really wrought--was it in the nature of things, that, on this occasion, paul should have omitted all mention of them? even so much as the most distant allusion to them? 2. if any such intimation had really been given, by the historian himself, is it in the nature of the case, that, on this occasion,--he having been one of the witnesses, in whose presence they had been performed,--all mention of such intimation should have been omitted? well, then--suppose that to both these questions, let it but be a negative answer or the true one, the consequence is plain--no such miracles were wrought. yet, in his narrative, has this man--exhibiting himself, at the same time, in the character of a _percipient_ witness, in relation to them--ventured to assert the existence, one after another, of the whole list of these particularized miracles, not to speak of the cluster of unparticularized ones. section 4. accused by the disciples, he commences, at the recommendation of the apostles, an exculpatory oath in the temple. such being in their eyes the danger; now comes their expedient for the arresting of it. it is an altogether curious one: and among those persons styled _elders_--all the elders--to every sincere and pious christian it will naturally be matter of no small satisfaction that no one of the whole fellowship of the apostles is to be found. according to the description here given of it, the expedient is of such a sort, that--but for the occasion on which it is represented as being proposed,--scarcely would it be possible to divine what is meant; what it was that was proposed to be done; or, whatever it was, what could be the use or effect of it? "do therefore this," acts 21:23, continues the speech attributed to these elders, "do therefore this that we say to thee: we have four men which have a vow on them:--them take, and purify thyself with them, and be at charges with them, that they may shave their heads: and all may know that those things, whereof they were informed, are nothing; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the law.--as touching the gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood and from fornication.--then paul," it is added, "took the men, and the next day purifying himself with them entered into the temple to signify the accomplishment of the days of purification, until that an offering should be offered for every one of them." in the terms of the historian, the matter of the accusation in question is this: namely, "that thou," speaking to paul, "teachest all the jews which are among the gentiles to forsake moses": it then divides itself into two branches: one is--that "they ought not to circumcise their children"; the other is--that "they ought not to walk after the customs":--_i. e._, conform to any part of the habitual observances--acts and forbearances together--prescribed by the mosaic law. such is the accusation: such the act charged upon him, in the character of an offence:--the teaching of the doctrine in question. in regard to the question--whether the doctrine he is thus said to have taught, had really ever been taught by him,--much will depend upon the difference between simple _permission_ and _prohibition_: in english, upon the difference between _need not_ and _ought not_. if,--in the doctrine, the teaching of which is thus charged upon him as a crime,--simple _permission_ was included--if, in speaking of the converts in question, the saying was--that they _need_ not circumcise their children--that they _need_ not walk after these customs--this and no more;--in this case, that the charge, such as it is, was true, is altogether out of doubt:--if, on the other hand, the act he was charged with, went so far as to the teaching that they _ought_ not to circumcise any of their children, or that they _ought_ not to walk after the customs prescribed in the mosaic law--on this supposition, the truth of the charge will at any rate not be quite so clear as in the other case. according to the english translation, that which is charged as an offence, was not committed, unless, in the doctrine taught, a direct _prohibition_ was contained: to a doctrine importing nothing more than a simple _permission_ to abstain from the acts and forbearances in question, the charge would not have any application. not thus unambiguous, however, is the greek original; either by prohibition, or by ample permission, might the doctrine charged as criminal have been taught. such is the description of the obnoxious practice, with which paul is here stated as having been charged: the practice by which the odium is stated as having been incurred. but this imaginary guilt, in what view do they mention it as imputed to him? in this view evidently, viz., that at their recommendation he may take that course, by which, in their view, he will escape from the wrath of which he had become the object. the effect thus aimed at is,--that the indignation of which he is the object, may be made to cease. how made to cease? in one or other of two ways: for the nature of the case admits not of any other: either by proving that _that_ which he had been supposed to have taught, had not in truth ever been taught by him, and thus, that no such offence as he was charged with, had, in fact, ever been committed by him; or that, if any such offence had been committed, the practice recommended might be accepted as an _atonement_: or rather as an assurance, that whatever in his past conduct had given them offence, would not be repeated by him in future. when the supposed remedial practice has been explained,--then immediately after comes, we see, a more particular indication of the good effects, for the production of which it is recommended. these are--in the first place, that, whatsoever were the doctrines he was charged with having taught it, it will be generally known that no such doctrines were ever taught by him: in the next place, that it will in like manner be known, that by himself no such habitual offence as that of an habitual violation of the law in question was committed. such are the effects, stated as resulting from his performing the ceremony, the performance of which was thus recommended to him. this ceremony we see: and what we see at the same time is--that it could not be, in the nature of it, productive of any such effects. here is a certain doctrine, which he had been charged with having taught. if the case was, that he had taught it; let him have purified himself ever so purely, whatsoever was meant by purification,--let him have purified himself ever so completely, let him have paid ever so much money, let him have shaved his head ever so close,--by any, or all of all these supposed meritorious acts, how could that be caused, not to have happened, which in fact had happened? by what means could they afford proof of his performance of any ceremony, other than those very same purification ceremonies themselves? as to the purpose of furthering the temporal interest of the individual in question; namely, by removing the load of odium, with which at that time it seems he was burdened,--how far, in relation to this object, the expedient promised to be an effectual cure, is more than at this time we can find any ground for saying: as to any good purposes of any other kind, that it was not in the nature of it to be productive of any, may be pronounced without much danger of error. here at any rate was a ceremony--a ceremony the object of which was--to apply, to the purpose of ensuring obsequiousness, the power of the religious sanction. the object, to which it was meant to apply that form, comes, it may be seen, under the general denomination of an _oath_. an oath is either assertory or promissory: if it be an oath of the promissory kind, it is called a _vow_. an oath which is not a vow cannot respect anything but what is past: upon that which is past, no human act can any longer exercise any influence. a _vow_ has respect to something future--to the future conduct of him by whom the vow is taken: and to this conduct a man, in and by the taking of the vow, engages to give the form therein mentioned. whatsoever, therefore, these ceremonies were in themselves,--thus much seems plain enough, respecting the immediate effect they were designed to answer: namely, either the delivery of a certain species of _evidence_, or the entering into an _engagement_ to a certain effect: the evidence being a denial of the act charged: the engagement, a promise not to practice any acts of the sort in question in future. whatsoever was the effect looked for, and intended, by the ceremony,--thus much we know, if the historian is here to be believed: namely, that, in conformity to the advice, paul betook himself to the performance of it. but, in so doing, thus much also we know: namely, that he consented to, and betook himself to one of two things: an act of perjury, if the effect of the ceremony was to convey an assertion, that he had never taught, that a jew, on being converted to the religion of jesus, _need_ not circumcise his children, or walk after the mosaic customs: an act of apostasy, if the effect of it was an engagement never to teach this same doctrine in future: an act of apostasy--and for what? only to save himself from the displeasure entertained towards him on unjust grounds by a set of ill-advised and inconsistent disciples. under the general head of _paul's doctrines_, particular title _faith and works_, it will be seen what pains he had taken, on so many occasions, to weed out of men's breasts, gentiles and jews together, all regard for the mosaic law--to cause them, in the words of the charge, _to forsake moses_. "by the works of the law," says he in his letter to the galatians, gal. 2:16, "by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." in this same letter, and in the same paragraph,--he speaks, of a speech which he had made, of a reproof which, at antioch, he had given to peter:--given to him, at a point of time long before the time here in question, namely, that of his last preceding visit--his third visit to jerusalem,--this being the fourth. let us see, once more, on what occasion, and for what cause, this reproof: we shall thereby be the better enabled to judge--how far, supposing the ceremony to have the effect of an assertory oath,--how far that oath can have been conformable to the truth. speaking of peter, "time was," he says, "when he did eat with the gentiles: but at antioch, as above, certain persons came from james": gal. 2:12, 13, and then it was that "he, peter, withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.--and the jews," continues he, "dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation." of his return to judaism, or at any rate of the dissimulation which accompanied it, what is the judgment which, if he is to be believed, he pronounced? answer, that in so doing "they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel." thereupon it is, that he charged peter with inconsistency, and reproved him for it: "because," says he, "he was to be blamed." gal. 2:14. "when i saw that they walked not uprightly according to the gospel, i said unto peter before them all, if thou, being a jew, livest after the manner of the gentiles, and not as do the jews, why compellest thou the gentiles to live as do the jews?" before me lies a book by thomas lewis, m. a., in four 8vo volumes, entitled _origines hebraicae_. in this book, under titles _vow_ and _purification_, my expectation was, to find some explanation of this matter: as also of the other _vow_ taken by paul at cenchrea, acts 17:18, in the interval between his third visit to jerusalem, and this fourth: but no mention is made of either: nor does anything appear, by which any light can be reflected upon either. on the four men, whom, in pursuance of the recommendation in question, paul is said to have taken, that he might "purify himself along with them," the intended effect of the ceremony in question is said to be--the making or performance of a _vow_. but, from the circumstance of its being a vow in their case, it follows not absolutely that it may not have been an oath--an assertory oath, in his case. at jerusalem, for the taking or performance of a vow, a man was received into the temple:--a district more extensive by far, it appears, than the district called _rules of the king's bench_ at london: from the account given by lewis, as well as by this,--it appears that, on every such occasion, fees were taken by the priests. as to the four men here in question--having already, as it is stated, a vow on them, but nothing as yet done in consequence,--it looks as if it had been by poverty that they had hitherto been kept from the accomplishment of their purpose: on which supposition, paul being the head of a considerable party, and as such having a command of money,--part of the recommendation seems to have been--that, to acquire the reputation of liberality, he should open his purse to these his proposed companions, and pay their fees. on the occasion here in question, whatsoever was the purpose and intended effect of the ceremony, what appears from verse 27, acts 27, is--that seven days were regarded as necessary for the accomplishment of it: no mention of this in lewis. on this occasion, by the author of the acts, once more is mentioned the conciliatory decree of the apostles and elders. still, not a syllable about it is to be found in any epistle of saint paul, or in any other of the apostolical epistles that have come down to us. humanly speaking,--in what motives, in what circumstances, in what considerations, shall we say, that the causes, final and efficient, of this temperament--this _mezzo termino_--this middle course--are to be found? the answer that presents itself is as follows: two stumbling-blocks were to be steered clear of:--the scruples of the jewish converts, and the refractoriness of the gentiles. so far as regarded abstinence from idolatrous feasts, and from meat with the whole blood in it, killed and dressed in a manner other than that in practice among the jews,--conformity, it was judged, need not be dispensed of, at the hands of the gentiles: and, so long as they would be content with meat killed and dressed after the jewish mode,--the jewish teachers might, without giving offence to their jewish converts, have the convenience of partaking of the tables of the gentile converts. as to the rest--the endless train of habitual observances, by which so large a portion of a man's life was occupied and tormented, neither these permanent plagues, nor the initiatory plague of circumcision, though the affair of a minute, and performed once for all, were found endurable: neither upon himself nor upon his children would a man submit to have it practiced. after all, if the author of the acts is to be believed,--it was by the jews of asia, and not by those of jerusalem, that, at jerusalem, the tumult was raised, by which this purification of paul's was rendered incomplete, and his stay at jerusalem cut short: he being removed for trial to rome; at which place the history leaves him and concludes. of the behaviour observed by the jerusalem christians, on that occasion--apostles, elders, deacons and ordinary brethren all together--nothing is said. yet, of these there were many thousands on the spot, acts 21:20: all of them of course informed of the place--the holy place,--in which, at the recommendation of the elders, paul had stationed himself. by the jews of asia were "all the people on this occasion stirred up," acts 21:27: yet, among so many thousands, no protection, nor any endeavour to afford him protection, for aught that appears, did he experience. yet asia it was, that had been, to the exclusion of judaea, the theatre of his labours: from asia it was, that the train of attendants he brought with him, were come--were come with him to these brethren--"the brethren,"--as if it had been said, _all_ the brethren,--by whom, according to the author of the acts, they were "received so gladly." at this period ends all that, on the present occasion, it will be necessary to say, of this last recorded visit to jerusalem. of the two inconsistent accounts said to have been given by him of his conversion--one to the jerusalem mob, the other to king agrippa--full notice has been taken under the head of his conversion: of the miracles ascribed to him at malta, mention is here made, in the chapter allotted to the history of his supposed miracles. of any other subsequent acts or sayings of his, no notice will require to be taken in this place. the matter here in question has been--the sort of relation, stated as having had place, between this self-constituted apostle, and those who beyond controversy were constituted such by, and lived as such with, jesus himself: and to this have incidentally been added the causes, which have continually been presenting themselves, for suspicion, in respect of the verity and authenticity, or both, of the history, which, under the name of the acts of the apostles, has come down to us, connected by the operations of the bookbinder, in the same volume with the several histories of the four evangelists, and the epistles--not only of paul himself but of others among the apostles; and with the work styled, as if in derision, "_the revelations_." section 5. the design of this recommendation justified. but the apostles--says somebody--what are we to think of the apostles? if by paul a _perjury_ was thus committed, were they not--all of them who joined in this recommendation--so many _suborners_ of this same perjury? the answer will, it is hoped, by most readers at least, have been anticipated.--yes or no, if so it be, that it was their expectation that he would commit it: no, assuredly; if it were their expectation--their assured expectation--that he would _not_ commit it: that, even in his person, even after all they had witnessed in him, the union of profligacy and rashness would never soar to so high a pitch. the necessity they were under, of ridding themselves of his presence was extreme:--of ridding _themselves_--and, what was so much more, their _cause_. stay in the same town, and in the same company with them, he could not,--without being either their known _adversary_, or their known _associate_. their known _adversary_ he could not be, without either continuing himself to be an object of universal horror, or else rendering _them_ objects of horror, to the whole body of their disciples. their _associate_ he could not be, without involving _them_ in that odium, with which he himself was, by the confession of his own adherent and historiographer, covered. under these circumstances, not to speak of the cause of mankind, for saving _themselves_ and _their_ cause from destruction,--what course could they take, so gentle, and at the same time, to all appearance, so surely effectual, as the proposing to him this test?--a test, which no man could rationally expect, that any man in his circumstances would take. section 6. dragged out of the temple by jews or christians, he is saved by a gentile, namely, a roman commander. with this occurrence concludes so much of paul's history, as,--for the purpose of perfecting the demonstration given, of the disbelief manifested towards his pretensions to a supernatural intercourse with the almighty,--it was found necessary here to anticipate. in the matter of the chapter--the 13th--in which paul's supposed miracles are brought to view,--his history is, as to all those particulars which seemed necessary to be brought to view for the purpose of the present inquiry,--deduced to very near the time, at which the historian of the acts, having conducted him to rome, leaves him there: leaves him there, and with no other notice, than that of his having, at the time, at which the history closes, passed two years at that capital, in a sort of ambiguous state between freedom and confinement: waiting to receive, at the hands of the constituted authorities, the final determination of his fate. meantime, lest anything should be wanting, that could have contributed to the elucidation on a point of such supreme importance, follows in the next chapter a concluding and more particular view of the grounds, on which, on the occasion of his visit to the temple, the intention of deliberate perjury was found necessary to be imputed to him. footnotes: [53] acts 21:16. "there went with us also _certain_ of the disciples of cã¦sarea, and brought with them one mnason of cyprus, an old disciple, with whom we should lodge." [54] 2 cor. 12:12. "truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds." not that, by the words assigns and wonders, when used by paul, anything more was meant, than what, but a few years after, was, according to him, doing, or about to be done, by antichrist. 2 thess. 2:9. "even him, whose coming is, after the manner of satan, with all powers, and signs, and lying wonders." _lying_ is, indeed, the adjunct prefixed, in this instance; but, lying or not lying, if paul be believed, they failed not to produce the effect intended by them. signs and wonders being such equivocal thing, no great wonder if--writing at corinth to nobody knows what disciples of his at rome, a.d. 58, rom. 15:18, 19,--he could venture, if this was venturing, to speak of what he had been doing in jerusalem and illyricum, in the same terms. "for i will not dare to speak, says he, of any of those things which christ has not wrought by me, to make the gentiles obedient by word and deed.--through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the spirit of god; so that from jerusalem, and round about, unto illyricum, i have fully preached the gospel of christ." chapter xi. _paul disbelieved continued.--paul's fourth jerusalem visit continued.--perjurious was the purpose of the exculpatory oath commenced by him in the temple._ section 1. general proof of the perjury from the acts. we have seen the indignation produced by paul's invasion of the dominion of the apostles: we have seen it carried to its height, by his commencement of, and perseverance in, the exculpatory ceremony, for the purpose of which he made his entrance, and took up his lodgment in the temple. we have seen the fruits of that same indignation: we have seen the general result of them. what remains is--to give a clearer and more explicit conception, than can as yet have been given, of the _cause_ of it. this was--neither more nor less, than an universal persuasion--that the assertion,--to which, on his part, this ceremony had for its object the attaching the sanction of an oath,--was, to his full knowledge, false: the oath employed being, in its form, beyond comparison more impressive, than any that has been known to be at any time in use, in this or any other country: and that, accordingly, the confirmation given to the falsehood, in and by means of that most elaborate and conspicuous ceremony, was an act of _perjury_: of perjury, more deliberate and barefaced, than anything, of which, in these days, any example can have place. that, on this occasion, the conduct of the self-constituted apostle was stained with perjury, is a matter, intimation of which has unavoidably come to have been already given, in more parts perhaps of this work than one. but, for a support to a charge, which, if true, will of itself be so completely destructive of paul's pretensions--of all title to respect, at the hands of every professor of the religion of jesus--no slight body of evidence could have been sufficient. for this purpose, let us, in the first place, bring together the several elementary positions, proof or explanation of which, may be regarded as necessary, and at the same time as sufficient, to warrant, in this case, a verdict of _guilty_. to these charges, is immediately subjoined such part of the evidence, as is furnished, by the account of the matter, as given in the acts: in another section will be brought to view the evidence, furnished by paul himself, in his epistles. the evidence from the acts is of the _circumstantial kind_: the evidence from the epistles is _direct_. 1. to paul was imputed as a misdeed, the having recommended the forsaking of the mosaic law. recommended, namely, to such disciples of his as, having been born and bred under it, were found by him settled in some gentile nation. proof, acts 21:21, ... "they," 'the jews which believe,' ver. 20, "are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the jews which are among the gentiles to forsake moses, saying, that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs." 2. to a great extent, the imputation was well grounded: for, to a great extent, it had been his practice, to give the recommendation thus described. of this position the proof will follow presently. 3. by paul, the truth of this imputation was utterly denied: denied by the opposite denegatory assertion: and, the imputation being as above well grounded,--in so far as any such denegatory assertion had been made by him, he had knowingly uttered a wilful falsehood. 4. in proof of the sincerity of this denial, it was proposed to paul, on the part of the apostles and elders, to give a confirmation of it, by the performance of a certain appropriate ceremony. 5. the ceremony thus proposed, was one that was universally understood, to have the effect of attaching, to any assertion, connected with it for the purpose, the sanction of an oath. 6. knowing such to be the effect of the ceremony, he gave his assent to the proposition, and determined, by means of it, to attach the sanction of an oath to such his denial, as above: and thereby, the assertion contained in that denial, being, as above, to his knowledge, false,--to commit, in that extraordinary solemn and deliberate form and manner, an act of perjury. 7. in pursuance of such determination, he accordingly repaired for that purpose to the temple and had his abode therein for several days: the completion of the requisite number being no otherwise prevented, than by the irruption of the indignant multitude, assured as they were of his being occupied in the commission of a perjury. proof of charges 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. acts 21:23, 24, 26, 27, 28. 23. "_we_, the apostles and the elders, or at least the apostle james, ver. 18, have _four men_, which have a _vow_ on them; 24. "them take, and _purify thyself with them_, and be _at charges_ with them, that ... _all_ may know that those things, whereof they were informed concerning thee, are _nothing_; but _that_ thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law. 26. "then paul took the men, and _the next day purifying himself with them_ entered into the temple, to _signify_ the accomplishment of the days of purification, until that an _offering_ should be offered for every one of them. 27. "and when the _seven days were almost ended_, the jews, which were of asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the people, and laid hands on him. 28. "crying out, men of israel, help; this is the man, that teacheth all men everywhere _against_ the people, and _the law_, and this place: and further brought greeks also into the temple; and hath _polluted_ this holy place." of the perjuriousness of paul's intent, a short proof, namely of the circumstantial kind, is thus already visible, in the indignation excited,--its intensity, its immorality, and the bitter fruits of it. will it be said no? for that the indignation had, for its adequate cause, his being thought to have spoken slightingly of the law in question--it being the law of the land,--and that, to this imputation, the ceremony, it being, as above the performance of a _vow_, had no reference? assuredly no: no such interpretation will be found tenable. true it is, that, by the persuasion, that he had thus been dealing by the mosaic law,--by this persuasion, without need of anything else, the indignation may well have been produced: but it could only have been by the knowledge, that, upon his having been called upon to confess the having so done, or to deny it, he had, in this most extraordinary and universally conspicuous mode, given continuance and confirmation to his denial--it could only have been by _this_ knowledge, that the excitement was raised up to so high a pitch. for, what was it that the information had charged him with? it was the forsaking moses. what was the purpose, for which the recommendation was given to him--the recommendation to perform this ceremony? it was the _purifying_ himself, "that all might know" that the information was groundless. "that those things," say the apostles with the elders to him, "whereof they," the thousands of jews which believe, ver. 20, "were informed against thee were _nothing_:"--"to _purify thyself_," says the official translation: more appositely might it have said _to clear thyself_: for in that case, the idea of an _imputation_ would clearly enough, though but implicitly, have been conveyed: whereas, to some minds, the idea conveyed by the word _purify_ may perhaps be no other than that of some _general_ cleansing of the whole character, by means of some physical process, to which, in so many minds, the psychological effect in question has, by the influence of artifice on weakness, been attached. such then, namely, the clearing himself of the imputation by so solemn a confirmation of the denial of it,--such was the purpose, for which, in the most unequivocal terms, his performance of the ceremony was recommended: such, therefore, was the purpose for which it was commenced; such, accordingly, was the purpose for which it would have been consummated, but for the interruption which it experienced: experienced not from his hands, but from hands among which, there seems sufficient reason to believe, were the hands, if not of the very persons by whom it had been recommended, at any rate of those who till that time had been in use to be guided by their influence. to this interpretation, what objection is there that can be opposed? if any, it can only be that which to some minds may perhaps be suggested by the word _vow_. but the fact is--this word _vow_ is a mistranslation: the proper word should have been _oath_. by an oath everyone understands at first mention an _assertory_, not a _promissory_, declaration: by a _vow_, a _promissory_, not an _assertory_ one. but an _assertory_ declaration, as every one sees, is the only sort of declaration, that admits of any application to the case in question. by nothing that, in paul's situation, a man could _promise_ to do, in addition to the performance of the ceremony, could any evidence be given, of a man's having, or not having, done so and so, in any time _past_. that by that which was actually done, that which was essential was considered as having been done,--is proved, by what is put into paul's mouth in relation to this subject, in his defence against the accusation brought afterwards against him, before the roman governor _felix_, by the spokesman of the jewish constituted authorities, _tertullus_. there it is, that, beyond all doubt, what he is speaking of, is his clearance, as above: for there also, the word in the official translation, as well as in the greek original, is _purified_: in the past tense, purified. this being assumed, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that either in the course of that part, which at the time of the irruption, was already elapsed of the _seven days'_ ceremony, in the temple; or, what seems more probable, antecedently to the commencement of it, a denegatory declaration--a declaration denying the fact charged in the accusation,--had been made: for, that the ceremony itself was never accomplished, is what is expressly stated:--of the term of seven days stated as necessary to the accomplishment of it, no more than a part, it is said, had elapsed, when the final interruption of it took place. to return to the time of paul's entrance into the temple. thus, as hath been seen, stands the matter, even upon the face of the official english translation. but in verse 26, the word employed in the greek original, removes all doubt. "then," says the translation, "paul took the men, and the next day _purifying himself_ with them, entered into the temple." purifying himself, in the present tense, says the translation: and, even this alone taken into consideration, the purifying process, whatever it was, might be supposed to have been but commenced before the entrance into the temple, and as being thus as yet in pendency, waiting the exit out of the temple for its accomplishment. thus it is, that, in the translation, the verb is in the present tense, _purifying himself_: but, in the greek original, it is in the past tense, _having purified_ himself: so that, in the original, the purification, whatever it may have been, is in express terms stated as having, even before his entrance into the temple, already accomplished. note that, if the historian is to be believed, he had on this occasion, the fullest opportunity, of being, in the most particular manner, acquainted with everything that passed. for, when, as above, the recommendation was given to paul, on his appearance before the apostle james and the elders,--he, the historian, was actually present, "and the day following," says he, acts 21:18, "_paul went in with us unto james_; and all the elders were present." supposing _that_ the true interpretation,--of what use and effect then, it may perhaps be asked, was the ceremony, of which the temple was the theatre? the answer has been already given. it cannot have been any other than the attaching, to the declaration that had been made, the sanction, of an oath. without the ceremony performed in the temple, the declaration was a declaration _not_ upon oath, and as such not regarded as sufficient evidence:--evidence, in the shape which, the historian says, had been actually required for the purpose: when the ceremony, of which the temple was the theatre, had been gone through, and the last of the number of days, required for its accomplishment had been terminated;--then, and not before, it was regarded as having been converted into the appropriate and sufficient evidence. thus it was, that this seven days' ceremony was no more than an elaborate substitute to the english ceremony of kissing the book, after hearing the dozen or so of words pronounced by the official functionary. on this occasion, the greek word rendered by the word _vow_, is a word which in its ordinary sense was, among gentiles as well as jews, exactly correspondent to our word _prayer_. but, the idea denoted by the word _prayer_, applies in this case with no less propriety to an _assertory oath_ than to a _promissory vow_. directly and completely, it designates neither. in both cases an address is made to some supposed supernatural potentate: in cases such as the present, beseeching him to apply the sanction of punishment to the _praying_ individual, in the event of a want of sincerity on his part: in this case, in the event of his not having done that which, on this occasion, he declares himself to have done, or, what comes to the same thing, his having done that which he declares himself _not_ to have done: in the other case, in the event of his not doing that which he has promised to do, or doing that which he has promised _not to do_.[55] all this while, it is not in a direct way, it may be observed, that this word _vow_ is employed, and application made of it to paul's case: not in speaking of paul himself in the first instance, but after speaking of the _four other men_, whom it is proposed he should take for his comrades, on his entrance into the temple. "we have four men," james and the elders are made to say, acts 21:23, 24, "we have four men which have a vow on them: them take, and purify thyself with them ... that ... all may know, that those things, whereof they," the multitude, ver. 22, "were informed concerning thee, are nothing": no otherwise, therefore, than by the case these four men were in, is the case designated, in which it is proposed to paul to put himself. as to the case these four men were in,--no otherwise than on account of its connection with the case paul was in,--is it in anywise of importance. as probable a supposition as any seems to be--that of their being in the same case with him: accused, as well as he, of teaching "jews to forsake moses:" for, between their case and his, no intimation is given of any difference: and, as the _"purifying himself"_ is what is recommended to him, so is it what they are stated, as standing eventually engaged to do on their part. if then, in _his_ instance, purifying himself means--clearing himself of a charge made against _him_,--so in their instance must it naturally, not to say necessarily, have meant--clearing themselves of some charge made against _them_. moreover, when, as above, he is, in the greek original, stated as having actually purified himself, before his entrance into the temple, so are they likewise; for it is "_with them_," that his purification is stated as having been performed. this being assumed, it might not be impossible to find a use for the word _vow_, even in its proper sense--its _promissory_ sense: for, what might be supposed is--that before the entrance into the temple, at the same time with the _denegatory declaration_, a _vow_ was made--a solemn _promise_--to enter into the temple, and back of the declaration with the sanction of an oath, by going through the ceremony. but, forasmuch, as, in the import of the greek word, no such idea, as that of a _promise_, is comprised,--the only use of this interpretation would be--to save the translators from the imputation of an impropriety, with which it seems rather more probable that they stand chargeable. all this while, of paul's conduct on this occasion, to what part was it that the blame belonged?--surely, not to the endeavour, to wean men from their attachment to the mosaic laws: for thus far he copied jesus; and in copying did not go against, but only beyond, the great original. true it is, that, in so doing, he served his own personal and worldly purposes: not less so, that, in this subserviency, he found the inducement by which his conduct was determined: for, by how much stronger men's attachment would continue to be to the dead lawgiver, by so much, less strong would it be to the living preacher. but, in so far as a man's conduct is serviceable to mankind at large, it certainly is not rendered the less serviceable, or the less laudable, by his being himself included in the number. the blame lay then--not in teaching men to forsake moses: for, thus far, instead of being blame-worthy, there was nothing in his conduct, that did not merit positive praise. what there was amiss in his conduct--in what, then, did it consist? plainly in this, and this alone: namely, that, on being taxed with having so done,--instead of avowing and justifying it, he denied it: and, having denied it, scrupled not to add to the falsehood the aggravation of such extraordinarily deliberate and solemn perjury, as hath been so plainly visible. and, to what purpose commit so flagrant a breach of the law of morality? plainly, to no other, than the fixing himself in jerusalem, and persevering in a project of insane and selfish ambition, which, in spite of the most urgent remonstrances that could be made by his most devoted adherents, had brought him thither: for, he had but to depart in peace, and the apostles of jesus would have remained unmolested, and the peace of christendom undisturbed. an article of evidence, that must not be left unnoticed,--is the part taken, on this occasion, by the historiographer. nowhere does this eyewitness take upon himself to declare,--nowhere so much as to insinuate--that of the charge, thus made upon his hero, there was anything that was not true: nowhere does he so much as insinuate, that the declaration by which he says paul had cleared himself of the charge, and, as we have seen, _before_ his entrance into the temple for the purpose of enforcing it by the sanction of an oath,--was anything short of a downright falsehood. after this, he makes a defence for paul before felix;[56] he makes a defence for paul before festus;[57] he makes a defence for paul before festus and agrippa;[58] and, on no one of all those occasions, is the defence anything to the purpose. he, indeed, makes paul declare, that he, paul, had always been a strict observer of the mosaic ordinances. this may have been either true or false: but, true or false, it was equally foreign to the purpose. not improbably, it was, in a considerable degree, true: for if, while he gave to other jews his assurance, that the operations in question, burthensome as they were, were of no use, he himself continued to bear the burthen notwithstanding,--the persuasiveness of his advice would naturally be augmented by the manifestation thus given of disinterestedness. it may accordingly have been true: but, false or true, it was equally foreign to the purpose: the question was--not what he had done himself; but what he had recommended it to others to do. thus--from everything that appears, by all such persons as had the best means of information--the charge made upon him was _believed_,--let it now be seen, whether we should not be warranted in saying, _known_,--to be true. as to "_the jews of asia_,"--and the mention made of this class of men, as the instigators of the tumult--can any support be derived from it, for the inference, that it was by something else in paul's conduct, and not by any such perjury as that in question, that the vent, thus given to the indignation, was produced?[59] no, assuredly: altogether inconsistent would any such supposition be, with the main part of the narrative. whoever were the persons with whom the manual violence originated;--whatever were the reproaches cast upon the invader on other grounds;--the purpose--the sole purpose--for which he entered upon the ceremony, is rendered as plain as words can make it. it was the clearing himself of the charge of teaching jews to forsake moses: and, supposing the fact admitted, everything, in the way of justification, being, before such a tribunal, manifestly inadmissible,--of no such charge was it possible for him to clear himself, without denying the truth of it. but, according to the historian, to confirm this denial, by the solemnity, whatever it was,--was the purpose, and the sole purpose, of it: of this, the negative assertion, contained in the denial, being untrue, and, by him who made it, known to be so,--confirming such denial, by the solemnity,--call it _oath_--call it _vow_--call it anything else,--was committing an act of perjury: and, to believe that such his denial was false, and yet not believing him guilty of perjury--at any rate, on the supposition of the accomplishment of the solemnity--was not possible. how numerous so ever may have been the other causes of provocation, given by him--how numerous so ever, the different descriptions of persons to whom they had been given;--no disproof could, by all of them put together, be given, by this solemnity, to the denial in question,--supposing it false. to the present purpose, the only question is--whether, by paul, on the occasion in question, an act of perjury was, or was not, committed? not--what was the cause, whether that, or any other, of any indignation of which he was the object. even therefore, might it be allowed, that a _vow_, in the sense of which it is contradistinguished from an _oath_, was performed by him, or about to be performed,--still it would not be the less undeniable, that it was for the purpose of converting the simple declaration into a declaration upon oath, that he entered upon the solemnity: and that, therefore, if in the simple declaration there was anything to his knowledge false, the consequence is--that by his converting it into a declaration upon oath, he rendered himself guilty of perjury. the observation, thus applied, to what is said of the "_jews of asia_," will be seen to be applicable, and, with equal propriety, to what is said about his being charged with "bringing _greeks into the temple_:" and, in particular, about his being supposed to have brought in "_the ephesian trophimus_:" and moreover, what may, in this last case, be observable, is--that this about the greeks is expressly stated as being a _further_ charge, distinct from the main one: nor yet is it so much as stated, that, by any such importation, to what degree so ever offensive, any such effect, as that signified by the word _pollution_ was produced. not altogether destitute of probability seems the supposition, that these two circumstances--about the jews of asia, and about trophimus--may have been thrown in, by this adherent of paul's, for the purpose of throwing a cloud of confusion and obscurity over the real charge: and if so, the two circumstances, with the addition of the three different defences, put into the hero's mouth, on the three several occasions of the endeavour,--must be acknowledged to have been employed, not altogether without success. here then closes that part of the evidence, which, to the purpose of a judgment, to be passed at this distance of time from the facts, may be considered as so much _circumstantial_ evidence: in the next section may be seen that part, which comes under the denomination of direct evidence. section 2. proof from the epistles. we come now to the _direct_ evidence: that evidence--all of it from paul's own pen:--all of it from his own epistles. it consists in those "teachings to forsake moses," which will be now furnished, in such unequivocal terms and such ample abundance, in and by those fruits of his misty and crafty eloquence:--in the first place, in his letter to the disciples, which he had made, or hoped to make at rome:--date of it, according to the received chronology, about four years anterior to the time here in question:--in the next place, in two successive letters to the disciples, whom, it appears, he had made at corinth:--both these addresses, set down, as belonging to the same year as the one to the romans. moreover, in his so often mentioned epistle to the galatians, matter of the same tendency is to be found. but, this last being, according to that same chronology, of a date posterior by some years to the time, at which the charge of having preached the sort of doctrine in question was, on the present occasion, made,--it belongs not to the present question, and is therefore left unemployed. and, in the same case, is some matter that might be found in his epistles to the thessalonians. 1. first then as to the mosaic "law and customs," taken in the aggregate. on this subject, see in the first place what the oath-taker had said to his _romans_. rom 15:14. "i know, and am persuaded by the lord jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean."--17. "for the kingdom of god is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the holy ghost." rom 3:20. "_by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified_ in his, god's sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin." rom. 3:27, 28, 29, 30, 31. "where is boasting then? it is excluded. by what law? of works? nay; but by the law of the faith.- therefore, we conclude, that _a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law_.--is _he_ the god of the jews only? is _he_ not also of the gentiles? yes, of the gentiles also:- seeing it is one god, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.--_do we then make void_ _the law through faith? god forbid: yea, we establish the law._" rom. 10:9. "... if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the lord jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that god hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.[60]--12. for there is no difference between the jew and the greek: for the same lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.--for whosoever shall call upon the name of the lord shall be saved."[61] rom 14:2. "... one believeth that he may eat all things: another who is weak, eateth herbs.--let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth; for god hath received him.--_one man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike._[62]" 1 cor. 6:12. "_all things are lawful unto me_, but all things are not expedient:" or _profitable_ margin, "all things are lawful for me, but i will not be brought under the power of any.--_meats for the belly_, and _the belly for meats_; but god shall destroy both it and them." 1 cor. 8:8. "but _meat commendeth us not to god: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither if we eat not, are we the worse_.--wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, i will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest i make my brother to offend." 1 cor. 9:19-23. 19. "for though i be free from all men, yet have i made myself servant unto all, that i might gain the more.--_and unto the jews i became as a jew, that i might gain the jews_; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that i might gain them that are under the law:--_to them that are without law, as without law_, being not without law to god but under the law to christ, _that i might gain them that are without law_.--to the weak became i as weak, that i might gain the weak: i am made all things to all men, that i might by all means save some.--and this i do for the gospel's sake, that i might be partaker thereof with you." 2 cor. 3:12 to 17. "seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech.--and not as _moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished_.--but their minds were blinded; for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in christ.--but even unto this day, _when moses is read, the vail is upon their heart_.--nevertheless _when it shall turn to the lord, the vail shall be taken away_.--now the lord is that spirit; and where the spirit of the lord is, there is liberty." now as to _circumcision_ in particular. rom. 2:25, 26, 27, 28, 29. "for _circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.--therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?_--and shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law?--for he is not a jew, which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh:--but he is a jew, which is one inwardly: and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of god." rom. 3:1, 2. "what advantages then hath the jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?--much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of god." rom. 4:9, 10, 11, 12. "_cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also?_ for we say that faith was reckoned to abraham for righteousness.--how was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision. not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.--and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which _he had yet_ being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also:--and the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father abraham, which he had being _yet_ uncircumcised." rom. 15:8. "now i say that jesus christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of god to confirm the premises made unto the fathers." 1 cor. 7:18. "is any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. _is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised.--circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of god._" from any one individual, who, in either of these distant cities, had seen any one of these same epistles,--let it now be seen whether information of their contents, supposing it credited, would not have sufficed to produce those effects, the existence of which is so unquestionable. not but that the same rashness, which suffered him to furnish such abundant evidence against himself in those distant regions, could scarce fail to have given birth to credence in abundance, of various sorts, and of a character, which, on that occasion, would be much more impressive. footnotes: [55] on this occasion, supposing the purpose of this ceremony to be, as here contended, no other than that of applying, to a declaration concerning a matter of fact, the supernatural penal sanction, by which it was converted into an oath,--a natural enough subject of inquiry is--to what cause is to be attributed the extraordinary length thus given to it?--seven days at the least; to which, upon examination, would be found virtually added, as much greater a length of time, as the holy person, to whose custody the oath-taker consigned himself, might be pleased to prescribe. answer, without difficulty,--the affording time and pretence for the exaction of his _surplice fees_:--namely, those established by law,--with the addition of others, to as large an amount, as the need which the oath-taker had of the accommodation thus to be afforded to him, could engage him to submit to. as to the length of time,--in the passage in question, the translation exhibits some obscurity: nor is it altogether cleared up by the original. a determinate number of days, to wit, seven, is indeed mentioned, ver. 27, but immediately before this, ver. 26, comes a passage, from whence it seems unquestionable, that, whatever were the time a man had been thus detained, he was not to be let out, until, over and above what good things it had been made necessary he should bring in with him, a further payment, and as it should seem, in a pecuniary shape, had been made: "to signify," says ver. 26, "the accomplishment of the days of purification, until that an offering should be offered for every one of them." "and when _the seven_ days were _almost_ ended," continues ver. 27: immediately after which comes the account of the tumult, by which they were prevented from being _quite_ ended. as to the phrase--"_to signify the accomplishment of the days_," what seems to be meant by it is--to make known when the number requisite for the completion of the train of operations had been _accomplished_. but, to make known when that number had been _accomplished_, it was previously requisite to make known when it had _commenced_: and, for making _this_ known, the act, probably a public one, of making entrance into the temple, was employed. as to the origin, as well as particular nature, of the ceremony,--though no such word as _nazarite_ is here employed, on turning to the book of _numbers_, chapter the sixth, it will be manifest, that the ceremony here in question is the same as that, by which, according to the receipt there given, any man whatever, whether, and any woman also, must be left to conjecture, might be converted into a _nazarite_. _nazarite_ is from a hebrew word, which meant originally neither more nor less than a person _separated_. a person consigned himself to the custody of "_the priest of the congregation_:" or, as we should now say, the _parson of the parish_. the ceremony accomplished, the patient was thereby put into a state of appropriate sanctity: and, from this metamorphosis, as the priest and the nazarite could agree, any inference might be drawn, and any purpose at pleasure accomplished. neither to the _extent_ of the inference, nor therefore to the _purpose_ designed, were any limits visible. everything depended upon the priest: for, though of certain particular operations made requisite, a most particular list is given, all of them of the most insignificant character in themselves, yet so thickly and so plainly sown are the seeds of _nullity_, that, when all the appointed fees, of which there is also an enormous list[iv.], had been paid, it would still lie at the option of the priest, to pronounce the whole procedure null and void, unless, and until any such final compliment as he chose to expect, were paid to him. among the most obviously, as well as extensively convenient purposes, to which it was capable of being applied, is this of which the present case affords an example: namely, the manufacturing of evidence: could he but find means to satisfy the priest, a man might, to all legal purposes, and even to the satisfaction of all appropriately disposed minds, prove, and with conclusive effect, any thing to be false, which everybody knew to be true. by fabrication, falsification, or suppression of evidence, what is the right that may not be usurped? what is the wrong that may not, with success and impunity, be committed? in the mosaic law, immediately before _this_ institution numbers, chap. 5., comes another, by means of which every man, who was tired of his wife, might, in another way, with the assistance of a priest--and, for aught that appears, any priest--clear himself of that incumbrance. all the man had to do was--to _say_ he was "_jealous_" of her: the priest thereupon took charge of her. if priest and husband were agreed, "_the water of jealousy_" did its office: if not, the woman remained imprisoned. against the superhuman evidence, afforded by the purifying process here in question, no quantity of human evidence was to be available. in like manner, to warrant this poisoning process, not any the smallest particle of human evidence was necessary: the case in which it is to be performed, is "_if there be no witness against her, neither she be taken_," says the text, _numbers_ 5. 13. verily, verily, not without sufficient cause, did jesus, from first to last, take every occasion, to weaken the attachment of the people, to a system of law, of which those institutions afford two, among so many samples. yet, while in the very act of depreciating it, is he represented as declaring his purpose to be the _fulfilling it_: matt. 5. 17. for, such was the verbal veil, which the prejudices he had to encounter, rendered it necessary to him at the moment, to throw over the tendency of his endeavors. fulfill the very law he was preaching against? yes: but in one sense only: namely, by fulfilling--not the real purpose of it,--the establishment of the corrupt despotism of the priesthood,--but the professed purpose of it, the good of the community: in regard to the law, fulfilling, in a word, whatever there was that was good in it, whatever there was that deserved to be fulfilled. jesus, in whose opinion death was too severe a punishment, for a wife, in the case of a breach, on _her_ part, of a contract, the breach of which was by the _other_ contending party practised with impunity--jesus, who accordingly, in saving the offender, exposed to merited disgrace the sanguinary law--was doubtless still further from approving, that parish priests, in unlimited numbers, should poison innocent women for the accommodation of their husbands, or sell licenses to commit every imaginable wrong by perjury. _vow_ is _oath_: this is not the only occasion, in which the self-constituted apostle, if his historiographer is to be believed, took the benefit, whatever it was, of this ceremony. in acts 18:16, he "_shaved his head_," it is said, at cenchrea:--why?--"for he had a vow upon him." what the vow was, we are not told; this, however, we know, as well from acts 21:26, as from numbers 6, he could not have got anything by it, had the parson of the parish of cenchrea been otherwise than satisfied with the "_offering_" that was made. [iv.] in the bargain between vow-maker and vow-sanctifier, the following list of fees, provided for sanctifier, by _excellent church_ of that country, in those days whatever they were,--may serve to show the use of it to one of the contracting parties. to complete our conception of the nature and effects of the arrangement, nothing is wanting, but that which so unhappily must for ever remain wanting--a history of the _purposes_, to which from the commencement of the government to the dissolution of it, the solemnity had been applied on the vow-maker's side. of these purposes, we must content ourselves as well as we can with the sample, for which we are here indebted to the author of the acts. the table of fees is as follows: it is extracted from the book of numbers, chapter 6:1 to 21. fees to be paid in all cases: fees liquidated in quantity, and thence in value. { 1. he lamb of the first year, one. i. { 2. ewe-lamb of the first year, one. { 3. ram without blemish, one. fees, not liquidated in quantity, and thus left to be liquidated in quantity, and thence in value, by the will of the priest. { 4. basket of unleavened bread, one. { 5. parcel of cakes of fine flour mingled with oil. ii. { 6. parcel of wafers of unleavened bread anointed with oil, one. { 7. meat-offering, one. { 8. drink-offerings--numbers and respective quantities not liquidated. fees payable, on a contingency: a contingency not describable without more time and labour, than would be paid for by the result. iii. { 9. turtle-doves or pigeons, two. { 10. lamb of the first year, one. iv. mysterious addition, the liquidation of which must be left to the hebrew scholar. ver. 21. "besides _that_ that his hand shall get:" (whose hand? priest's or vow-maker's?) "according to the vow which he vowed, so he must do after the law of his separation:"--probable meaning, according to the purpose, for which he performed the ceremony--the advantage which he looked for from it. moreover, by any one whose curiosity will carry him through the inquiry, causes of _nullity_ may be seen as sedulously and copiously provided, as if by the _astutia_ of an english judge, or pair of judges, to whose profit the fees were to be received: effect of the nullity, of course, repetition; necessity of repeating the process, as in case of _new trial_ or _arrest of judgment_, with the fees. religion was thus no less aptly served at jerusalem, under mosaic institutions,--than justice is to this day, under matchless constitution and english institutions, at westminster. [56] paul at the suit of tertullus, a.d. 60. acts 24:1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 11, 18. "and after five days ananias the high priest descended with the elders, and with a certain orator named tertullus, who informed the governor against paul.--and when he was called forth, tertullus began to accuse him,--saying, we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the nazarenes:--who also hath _gone about to profane the temple_; whom we took, and would have judged according to our law.--and the jews also assented, saying, that these things were so.--then paul, after that the governor had beckoned unto him to speak, answered,--thou mayest understand, that they are yet but twelve days since i went up to jerusalem for to worship.--whereupon certain jews from asia _found me purified in the temple_, neither with multitude nor with tumult." [57] paul before festus alone, a.d. 60. acts 25:7, 8. "and when he was come, the jews which came down from jerusalem stood round about, and laid many and grievous complaints against paul, which they could not prove:--while he answered for himself, neither against the law of the jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against caesar, have i offended anything at all." [58] paul before festus and agrippa, a.d. 62. acts 26:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 20, 21. "then agrippa said unto paul, thou art permitted to speak for thyself. then paul stretched forth the hand, and answered for himself:--i think myself happy, king agrippa, because i shall answer for myself this day before thee, touching all the things whereof i am accused of the jews;--especially because i know thee to be expert in all customs and questions which are among the jews; wherefore i beseech thee to hear me patiently.--my manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own nation at jerusalem, know all the jews;--which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straightest sect of our religion, i lived a pharisee.--and now i stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of god unto our fathers:--unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving god day and night, hope to come. for which hope's sake, king agrippa, i am accused of the jews.--20. but showed first unto them of damascus and at jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of judea, and then to the gentiles, that they should repent and turn to god, and do works meet for repentance.--for these causes, the jews _caught me in the temple_, and went about to kill me." [59] "and when the seven days were almost ended," says acts 21:27, "_the jews which were of asia_, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the people, and laid hands on him." [60] a cheap enough rate this, at which salvation is thus put up. of what use then morality? of what use is abstinence from mischievous acts, in what degree so ever mischievous? "oh! but," says somebody, "though paul said this, he meant no such thing:" and then comes something--anything--which it may suit the defender's purpose to make paul say. [61] another receipt for making salvation still cheaper than as above. not so jesus. matt. 7:21: "_not every one that saith unto me, lord, lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven_; but he that doeth the will of my father which is in heaven." [62] behold here the degree of importance attached by paul to _sabbaths_. chapter xii. more falsehoods.--resurrection witnesses multiplied.--world's end predicted.--to save credit, antichrist invented. section 1. resurrection-witnesses multiplied. after what has been seen of the seven days' course of perjury, proofs of simple falsehood will be apt to appear superfluous. to make certainty more sure, two preeminent ones shall, however, be brought to view. they may have their use, were it only as examples of the palpableness, of those falsehoods, which, for so many hundreds of years, and through so many generations of commentators, are, under favourable circumstances, capable of remaining undetected. the extravagance of the addition, made by the audacious stranger, to the number of the resurrection-witnesses, as given by themselves:--the predicted end of the world in the prophet's own lifetime,--and the creation of antichrist for the purpose of putting off that catastrophe,--may even be not altogether unamusing, by the picture they will give, of that mixture of rashness and craftiness, which constitutes not the least remarkable, of the ingredients in the composition of this extraordinary character. moreover, antichrist being in the number of the bug-bears, by the images of which many an enfeebled mind has not yet ceased to be tormented;--putting an extinguisher upon this hobgoblin may have the serious good effect, of calming a mass of disquietude, which how completely soever groundless, is not the less afflicting, to the minds into which it has found entrance. first, as to the resurrection-witnesses. in relation to a fact of such cardinal importance, the accounts which have reached us from the four biographers of jesus are not, it must be confessed, altogether so clear as could have been wished. but, on so ample a subject, howsoever tempting the occasion, anything that could here be offered, with any promise of usefulness, would occupy far too much space, and be by much too wide a digression from the design of the present work.[63] sufficient to the present purpose will be the observation, that nothing can be more palpably or irreconcileably inconsistent with every one of them, than the amply and round number, thus added by the effrontery of this uninformed stranger, to the most ample that can be deduced from any of the accounts, thus stated as given by the only description of persons, whose situation would give to their testimony the character of the best evidence. behold now the account of the number and of the persons in paul's own words. it is in the fifteenth chapter of the first of his two letters to his corinthians. "moreover, brethren," ver. 1, "i declare unto you the gospel, the good news, which i _preached_ unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand.--by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what i preached unto you unless ye have believed in vain.--for i delivered unto you first of all that which i also received, how that christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures:--and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures:--and that he was seen of cephas, then of the twelve:--after that, he was seen of _above five hundred brethren at once_; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.--after that he was seen of james, then of all the apostles.--and last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.--for i am the least of the apostles, which am not meet to be called as apostle, because i persecuted the church of god."[64] as to the five hundred brethren at once, with the additions _in petto_, the more closely the gospel accounts are looked into, the more entire will be a man's conviction of the extravagance of this account. in addition to the eleven apostles that remained after the death of the traitor judas, it may be matter of question, whether so much as a single individual can be found, who, in any one of the gospels, is stated as having, after the death of jesus, received from the testimony of sense, the demonstration of his presence. of the percipient witnesses in question, not to waste space and time in needless discussions, taking a round number, and including both sexes taken together, no number approaching to twenty can be made out from any one of the four gospel accounts, nor from all of them taken together. to what end then substitute, to less than twenty, more than five hundred? to what, but to supply by falsehood the deficiency left by truth. the thing to be done was the coming up to the expectations, whatever they might be, of his corinthians. number twenty,--said he to himself,--may perhaps fall short: well then, strike out the twenty, and set down five hundred. thus did the self-constituted apostle take a leaf out of the book of the unjust steward. luke 16:1-20. now then as to mutually contradictory numbers--that given by the four evangelists, and that given by this one stranger,--to which shall we give credence? as to the evangelists,--whether, in the situation in which they were, and writing for the purposes for which they wrote,--these most intimate of the associates of the departed jesus, and percipient witnesses of the several facts in question,--all of them spoken of in the same narration, all of them so fully apprised of the whole real number--could have been disposed, any one of them, to get down a number _short_ of the truth,--may be left to anyone to imagine. but, according to paul's calculation, the truth would not come up to his purpose:--to his particular purpose: a number, such as could not fail of doing so, was therefore to be substituted. _five hundred_ was as easily written as _twenty_. had jerusalem, or any place in its neighbourhood, been the place, to which this letter of his was to be addressed, some caution might have been necessary. but corinth--a place so remote from the scene of action--being the abode of the disciples, to whom this letter of his was addressed,--and the letters themselves, not destined to be seen by any other than devoted eyes,--invention found herself at ease. meantime, while jesus was thus magnified, paul was not to be forgotten. insufficient still would be the cloud of witnesses, unless himself were added to it. "last of all," says he, 1 cor. 15:8, "he," jesus, "was seen of me also." seen by him paul? at what place? at what time? at the time of his conversion, when hearing a voice and seeing light, but nothing else? but the whole constellation of his visions will here be crowding to the reader's view, and any more particular reference to them would be useless: suffice it to observe, that on no other occasion, either does paul himself, or his historiographer for him, take upon himself to say, that he had ever seen jesus any otherwise than in a _vision_, whatsoever may have been meant by this so convenient term. on no occasion is it so much as pretended, either by him or for him, that _in the flesh_ jesus was ever seen by him. by no fingers of his murder-abetting hand, had ever been so much as pretended to have been probed, the wounds of jesus. yet, what are the terms employed, by him, in speaking of the _sight_, he pretended to have had of jesus? exactly the same, as those employed by him, when speaking of the evidence, vouchsafed to the apostles. section 2. false prophecy,--that the world would end in the lifetime of persons then living. the unsatiableness of paul's ambition meets the eye at every page: the fertility of his invention is no less conspicuous. so long as, between this and the other world, the grave stood interposed,--the strongest impression capable of being made by pictures of futurity, even when drawn by so bold a hand, was not yet sufficient for stocking it with the power it grasped at. this barrier, at whatever hazard, he accordingly determined to remove. the future world being thus brought at both ends into immediate contact with the present,--the obedient, for whom the joys of heaven were provided, would behold the troubles of _the middle passage_ saved to them, while the disobedient would see the jaws of hell opened for their reception, without any such halting-place, as might otherwise seem to be offered by the grave. in particular, by a nearer as well as smoother road than that rugged one, he would make his way to heaven: nor would they, whose obedience gave them a just claim to so high a favour, be left behind. his thessalonians were the disciples, chosen by him for the trial of this experiment. addressed to them we have two of his epistles. in these curious and instructive documents, the general purport--not only of what had been said to the persons in question on a former occasion, but likewise of the observation of which on _their_ part it had been productive,--is rendered sufficiently manifest, by what we shall find him saying in the first of them. "good," said they, "as to _some_ of us, whoever they may be: but, how is it to be with _the rest_? in particular, with those who have actually died already: not to speak of those others who will have been dying off in the meantime: for you do not go so far as to promise, that we shall, all of us, be so sure of escaping death as you yourself are." "make yourselves easy," we shall find him saying to them: "sooner or later, take my word for it, we shall, all of us, mount up together in a body: those who are dead, those who are to die, and those who are not to die--all of us at once, and by the same conveyance: up, in the air, and through the clouds, we shall go. the lord will come down and meet us, and show us the way:--music, vocal and instrumental, will come with him, and a rare noise altogether there will be! those who died first will have risen first; what little differences there may be are not worth thinking about. comfort yourselves," concludes he, "with these words." assuredly not easily could more comfortable ones have been found:--always supposing them followed by belief, as it appears they were. but it is time we should see more particularly what they were. 1 thess. 4:10 to 18.--"and indeed ye do it," viz. love one another, ver. 9, "toward all the brethren which are in all macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more;--and that ye study to be _quiet_, and to do _your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you_;--that ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.--but i would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are _asleep_, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.--for if we believe that jesus died and rose again, even so _them also which sleep in jesus will god bring with him_.--for this we say unto you by the word of the lord, that _we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the lord shall not prevent them which are asleep_.--for the lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of god: and _the dead in christ shall rise first.--then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds_, to meet the lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the lord.--wherefore comfort one another with these words." hereupon, without any intervening matter, follows that of the next chapter. the division into chapters,--though, for the purpose of reference, not merely a useful, but an altogether necessary one,--is universally acknowledged to have been a comparatively modern one. 1 thess. 5:1-11. "but _of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that i write unto you_.--for yourselves know perfectly, that _the day of the lord so cometh as a thief in the night_.--for when they shall say, peace and safety, then _sudden destruction cometh upon them_, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.--_but ye, brethren, are not in darkness_, that that day should overtake you as a thief.--ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.--therefore _let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober_.--for they that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that be drunken, are drunken in the night.--but let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of _faith_ and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.--for _god hath not appointed us to wrath_, but to obtain salvation by our lord jesus christ.--who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.--wherefore _comfort yourselves_ together, and edify one another, even as also ye do." an ingenious game was the one thus played by paul, if ever there was one. of this prophecy,[65] what when once mentioned, is plainly enough visible, is--this is of the number of those predictions, by which profit is put in for, and no loss risked: for such is the shape given to it. so long as the predictor lived, it would remain good and undisfulfilled: at the end of a certain time--namely, at the end of the life of the longest liver of the aggregate number of individuals in existence at that time,--the disfulfillment would indeed take place. but if, by that time, the predictor had made his exit,--as, in this case, being already of a certain age, it is tolerably certain he would,--the reproach of false prophecy would not have reached him: and, even, supposing it to have reached him, as it would do if he survived the last of them, still the speculation would not be a very bad one. his _prophecy_, his _purposes_ would have been fulfilled. not altogether without claim to observation, is the manner, in which, by the adroitness of the soothsayer, the anxiety of questioners is evaded. that he himself does not know, nor ever expects to know,--that is what his prudence forbids his telling them. "the day of the lord so cometh as a thief in the night:" this is what, in answer to former importunities, he had at _that_ time told them. "for you yourselves," says he, "know this perfectly;" that is, in so far as they could know from _his telling_: this being, in this instance, the only source,--of that _delusion_, to which he gave the name of _knowledge_. this he had told them _then_: and more, he takes care not to tell them _now_. "of the times and seasons, brethren," says he, "ye have no need that i write unto you." meantime, their hopes and fears, and therewith their dependence upon his good pleasure, are kept still alive: in the first place, the hope--that, knowing already more than he as yet desires to disclose, he may by ulterior obsequiousness be prevailed upon to disclose it: in the next place, the hope--that, though not as yet possessed of the information, he may at some future period be able to obtain it, and in that case give them the benefit of it. to a speculation of this sort,--in how particular a degree favourable the mode of communication by letter was, is sufficiently visible. writing, was an operation not quite so prompt, in those days as in these. between thessalonica and athens,--from whence, as they tell us, these epistles were written,--there was not, it may be affirmed without much danger of error, any established letter-post: and, even if there was,--to this or that question, which a man sees in a letter, he makes or does not make answer, as he finds convenient. not exactly so, when the questioner is at his elbow. section 3. disorder and mischief produced by this prediction. we have seen the prophecy: let us now see the effects of it. they were such as might have been expected. they were such as had been expected: expected, as may have been observed, at a very early period. but there was rather _more_ in them than had been expected. of the confusion, which, by an expectation of this sort, in a state of society, so much inferior, in the scale of moral conduct, to any, of which in this our age and country we have experience, was capable of being produced,--it can scarcely, at this time of day, be in any man's power, to frame to himself anything approaching to an adequate conception. so far as regards peaceable idleness, of the general nature of it, some faint conception may under modern manners be formed, from the accounts of the effects produced by a similar prediction, delivered first in france, then in england, about the time of queen anne:--so far as regards a mixture of idleness and positive mischief in a time of terror, under ancient manners,--from the accounts, given by thucydides, of the effects produced at athens, by the near approach of death, on the occasion of the plague;--and, from that given by josephus, of the effects produced by the like cause, on the occasion of the siege, which, under his eye, terminated in the final destruction of jerusalem by the romans. according to each man's cast of mind, and the colour of the expectations that had been imbibed by it,--terror and self-mortification, or confidence and mischievous self-indulgence, would be the natural result: terror and self-mortification, if apprehensions grounded on the retrospect of past misconduct predominated--mischievous indulgence, if, by the alleged or supposed all-sufficiency of faith,--of faith, of which the preacher was the object--the importance of morality had, even in the imagination of the disciple, been thrown into the back-ground: confabulation without end, in the case of terror; cessation from work, in both cases. had he been somewhat less positive on the head of _time_,--the purposes of those announcements of his might have been completely, and without any deduction, fulfilled. the terror he infused could not be unfavourable to those purposes, so long as it made no deduction, from the value of the produce of their industry! it was his interest, that they should "_walk honestly_," lest they should be punished for walking otherwise:--punished, capitally or not capitally--and, in either case, bring his teaching into disgrace. it was his interest, that they should _work_, in such sort, as to earn each of them the expense of his maintenance; lest, by abstaining from work, they should, any one of them, impose a burthen upon the charity of the others, or be seen to walk dishonestly, to the prejudice of the common cause, as above. it was his interest, that they should, each of them, gain as much as could be gained without reproach or danger; because, the greater the surplus produced by each disciple, the greater the tribute, that could be paid to the spiritual master, under whose command they had put themselves. thus far his interest and theirs were in agreement. but, it was his interest, that, while working to these ends, their minds, at the expense of whatever torment to themselves, should be kept in a state of constant ferment, between the passions of hope and fear; because, the stronger the influence of the two allied passions in their breasts, the more abundant would be the contributions, of which, to the extent of each man's ability, they might reasonably be expected to be productive. here it was, that his interest acted in a direction opposite to theirs: and it was by too ardent a pursuit of this his separate interest, that so much injury, as we shall see, was done to all those other interests. of the disease which we shall see described, the description, such as it is, is presented, by the matter furnished by the practitioner himself, by whose prescription the disease was produced. this matter we must be content to take, in that state of disorder, which constitutes one of the most striking features of the issue of his brain. in speaking of the symptoms,--addressed as his discourse is to nobody but the patients themselves by whom these symptoms had been experienced,--only in the way of allusion, and thence in very general terms, could they naturally have been, as they will actually be seen to be, presented to view. as to details,--from them to him, not from him to them, was, it will readily be acknowledged, the only natural course. in the same epistle,--namely in the second, which is the last, but, in a passage which does not come till after the announcement, which, as will be seen under the next head, was to operate as a remedy,--stands the principal part of the matter from whence we have been enabled to collect the nature of the disease. the chapter is the third and concluding one:--the words that add nothing to the information, are here and there omitted. 1. "finally, brethren, pray for us ...--that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men; for all men have not faith.--and we have confidence in the lord touching you, that ye both do and will do the things which we _command_ you.--and the lord direct your hearts ... into the _patient waiting for christ_.--now we _command_ you, brethren ... that ye _withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly_, and not after the tradition which he received of us.--for yourselves know how ye ought to follow _us_: for we _behaved not ourselves disorderly among you:--neither did we eat any man's bread for nought_: but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you.--_not because we have not power_, but to make ourselves an example unto you to follow us.--for _even when we were with you_, this we _commanded_ you, that _if any would not work, neither should he eat_.--for we hear that _there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies_.--now them that are such, _we command_ and exhort by our lord jesus christ, _that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread_.--but ye brethren, _be not weary in well-doing_.--and if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed." by anything we have as yet seen, the symptoms of the disease, it may be thought, are not painted in any very strong colours. but, of the virulence of it there is no want of evidence. it may be seen, in the drastic nature of the remedy:--a remedy, for the invention of which, we shall, in the next section, see the ingenuity of the practitioner put to so extraordinary a stretch. section 4. paul's remedy for the disorder, and salvo for himself.--antichrist must first come. we have seen the disorder: we had before that seen the causes of it. we now come to the remedy--the remedy provided by the practitioner for a disease of his own creating. of the shape given to this remedy, the ingenuity will be seen to be truly worthy of the author of the disease. it consists in the announcement made, of an intermediate state of things, of the commencement of which, any more than of the termination, nothing is said: except that it was to take place, antecedently to that originally announced state of things, by the expectation of which the disorder had been produced. of the _time_ of its commencement, no: except as above, on that point no information is given. but of its _duration_, though no determinate information, yet such a description is given, as suffices for giving his disciples to understand, that in the nature of things, it could not be a short one: and that thus, before the _principal_ state of things took place, there would be a proportionate quantity of time for _preparation_. satisfied of this, they would see the necessity of conforming themselves to those reiterated "_commands_," with which his prediction had from the first been accomplished; and to which he had so erroneously trusted, when he regarded them as composing a sufficient antidote to the poison he had infused. that the warning thus provided for them would be a very short one, he left them, it will be seen, no great reason to apprehend. a sort of spiritual monster,--a sort of an ape of _satan_, a rival to the almighty,--and _that_ by no means a contemptible one--was to enter upon the stage. what with force and what with fraud, such would be his power,--that the fate of the almighty would have appeared too precarious, had not the spirits of his partisans been kept up, by the assurance, that when all was over, the almighty would remain master of the field. the time, originally fixed, by him for the aerial voyage, was too _near_. by the hourly expectation of it, had been produced all those disastrous effects which had ensued. after what had been said, an _adjournment_ presented the only possible remedy. but this adjournment, after what had been said, by what imaginable means could it be produced? one only means was left by the nature of the case. 2 thess. 2:1-12. "now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our lord jesus christ, and by our gathering together unto him,--that ye _be not_ soon shaken in mind, or be _troubled_, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor _by letter as from us,[66] as that the day of christ is at hand_.--let no man deceive you by any means; for _that day shall not come, except_[67] there come a falling away first, and _that man of sin be revealed_, the son of perdition;--_who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called god, or that is worshipped; so that he as god sitteth in the temple of god, showing himself that he is god_[68]--remember ye not, that when i was yet with you, i told you _these things_[69]--and now ye know what withholdeth, that he might be revealed in his time.--for the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.--and _then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the lord_ shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and _shall destroy with the brightness of his coming_.[70]--even _him, whose coming is after the working of satan,[71] with all power and signs and lying wonders_[72]--and with all _deceivableness of unrighteousness_ in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.--and for this cause god shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:[73]--that they all might be _damned, who believed not the truth_,[74] but had pleasure in unrighteousness." to this rival of his god--god and rival--both of them of his own creation, the creator has not, we see, given any name. by this omission, he has, perhaps, as perhaps he thought to do, rendered the bugbear but the more terrible. the deficiency, such as it is, the church of england translators of the english official translation of the bible, have filled up: they have taken it in hand--this bantling of paul's--and christened it _antichrist_. "he," paul, "showeth," say they, "a discovery of _antichrist_, before the day of the lord come." such is the discovery, communicated in the _heading_, prefixed to the second chapter of the second of the two epistles: and, of the readers of this so abundantly and gratuitously distributed bible, how few are there, by whom any such distinction as that between the headings and the text is borne in mind! the right reverend divines in question,--were they the first authors of this discovery, or was it ready-made to their hands?--made by that church, from the errors of which their own has been so felicitously purified? to this question, let those look out for, and find, the answer,--in whose eyes the profit is worth the trouble. not a few are the divines, who have discovered antichrist sitting in st. peter's chair, with a triple crown on his head. in the chair of luther, or in that of calvin, would the triple monarch be disposed to discover the hobgoblin, if he thought it worth while to look for him. has he ever, or has he not, made this discovery already? "oh, but," says somebody, "_we_ does not here mean _we_ only who are alive at this present writing; it means, _we_ christians of all ages:--any number of ages _after_ this, as well as this, included. in the designation thus given, neither the individuals he was addressing, nor he himself, were necessarily comprehended." this accordingly, if anything, must be said, or the title of the self-constituted apostle, to the appellation of _false prophet_, must be admitted. oh, yes! this may be said, and must be said: but what will it avail him? in no such comprehensive sense did _he_ use it; for, in that sense, it would not have answered his purposes: not even his spiritual and declared purposes, much less his temporal, selfish, and concealed purposes. why was it that these disciples of his, as well as he, were to be so incessantly upon the watch! i thess. 5:6, 7, 8. why, but because "you yourselves," says he, ver. 2, "know perfectly, that the day of the lord cometh like a thief in the night." who, on that occasion, could be meant by _we_, but himself and them? in no such comprehensive sense was it understood by _them_: if it had been, no such consequences as we have seen following, could have followed. after the experience he and they had had, of the mischief produced by the narrow sense put upon the all-important pronoun, would he have continued thus to use it in that same narrow sense, if it had not been his wish that in that same sense it should continue to be understood? would he have been at all this pains in creating the spiritual monster, for the declared purpose of putting off their expectation of the great day, if, but for this put-off, it would not have come on?[75] in what part of all his preachings can any distinct ground be seen for any such supposition, as that any portion of the field of _time_, beyond that by which his own life was bounded, was ever present to his view? in the field of _place_, yes: in that field his views were of no small amplitude: for in that field it was by his ambition that they were marked out: but in the field of _time_, no symptoms of any the smallest degree of enlargement will anywhere be found. but, on this occasion, suppose other ages, and those others to any extent, included in his views: from their including such future ages, would it follow that they had no application to the age then present?--but, supposing them understood to apply to that age, thereupon in comes the mischief in full force. any man that has been reading these epistles,--let him suppose, in his own breast, any the most anxious desire to raise an expectation, such as that in question: and then let him ask himself, whether it be in the power of that desire to suggest language, that would afford any considerably better promise of giving effect to it. of the _nature_ of the _disorder_, as well as of the cause of it,--the persons, to whom the world is indebted for the preservation of these remains of the self-constituted apostle,--have given us, as above, some conception. of the _effect_ of the _remedy_, it would have been amusing to be informed: unfortunately, this portion of his history is not comprised in the labours of his historiographer.[76] footnotes: [63] the account given by luke of the resurrection and ascension of jesus is contained in the last chapter, chap. 24:53. according to this account, by no men was jesus seen in the interval between those two events, besides the eleven apostles and a few others, all together not more than enough, to sit down together at meat, in one of the houses of a village. luke 25:9, 28, 29, 30. number of the occasions on which jesus was seen by the apostles, two: the company the same without addition, and both occasions having place within twenty-four hours. between these two occasions it is that paul sticks in the one of his own invention, in which jesus was seen by above five hundred brethren at once. point-blank on this head is the contradiction given to this story of paul's, by his own attendant and historiographer: namely, in the account put into the mouth of peter, speaking to centurion cornelius, acts 10:39 to 42. expressly is it there said, ver. 40, "him" (jesus) "god raised up the third day, and showed him openly;--not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of god even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead." when in the year 62, or some posterior year, the author of the acts was writing his history, nothing, it will be inferred, did he know of the contradictory account given by his hero, in writing in a letter written in the year 57. [64] follows a sample of paul's logic wrapped up as usual in a cloud of tautologies and paralogisms, the substance of which amounts to this:--jesus resurrects; therefore all men will do the same. admitting the legitimacy of this induction, what will be the thing proved? that every man, a few days after his death, will come to life again, and eat, drink, and walk in company with his friends. [65] by the word _prophecy_ the idea meant to be conveyed in jewish language seems to be very generally misconceived. it is regarded as exactly synonymous to _prediction_. nothing can be more erroneous. in new testament language in particular, it is no less applicable to past events than to future. witness, "prophecy who is it that smote thee." luke 17:64. in the greek, the word is occasion, it meant evidently neither more nor less than _speak out_. hence it came to signify speaking in public: hence again, speaking as a statesman: hence again, writing as a statesman, as well as speaking. not that a statesman could ever or can ever be a statesman, and in the above sense, _a prophet_, without being a _predictor_ likewise: as often as any proposed measure is on the carpet, such he must be, or what he says must be nothing to the purpose. merely by uttering a prediction concerning future events, paul would not have included, in his prophecy, any such pretension, as that of a supernatural communication received from the almighty: but, the one here in question was one which, supposing it true, could not have come from any other source. [66] here we have a sort of retractation. this shows how he was frightened. [67] here he gives the intermediate warning; thence the respite. [68] here we see the rival of paul's god: and we see how dangerous an one. [69] like enough; but in the same unintelligible style, in which he tells all men all things. [70] all's well that ends well: the friends of the almighty may now dismiss their fears. [71] here we see the rival of the almighty sunk into the ape of satan. what if he and satan had made an alliance? happily they could not agree, or time was wanting for settling the conditions. [72] all power, with _lying_ to boot. but for the above-mentioned assurance, who would not have trembled for paul's god? [73] this was fighting the ape of satan with his own weapons. but--this god of paul's creation--in what, except an ultimate superiority of power, is he distinguishable from satan and his ape? those, who have been so quicksighted of late in the discovery of blasphemy, and so bent on punishing it,--have they ever found so clear a case as this which is before us? would not they have begun at the more proper end, had they begun with the editors of these epistles? [74] for this damnation,--on the present as on so many other occasions, those who are so eager to believe, that all who differ from them on a question of evidence, will be consigned to everlasting torments, are indebted to the right reverend translators: the original says _condemned_. this may be understood to mean--_damned_ in the ordinary sense of the word _damned_, or whatever less unpleasant result may be more agreeable. [75] of this child of the self-appointed apostle's brain, it seems not altogether improbable, that, in case of need, some further use was in contemplation to be made: with the skin of this bugbear, might, upon occasion, be invested, any person, to whom, either in the character of a declared _adversary_, or in that of a _rival_, it might happen, to have become in a certain degree troublesome: a _declared adversary_,--that is, either a gentile or an unbelieving jew: _a rival_,--that is, one who, believing in the religion of jesus, adhered to that edition of it, which had the apostles of jesus for its publishers, or followed any other edition which was not _his_: one of those, for example, upon whom we have seen him making such bitter war in his epistle to his galatians. of the two, the believing rival would of course be much more troublesome, than the non-believing adversary, from whom, if let alone, he would not experience an annoyance. of this rival class were they whose "_unrighteousness_," 2 thess. 2:10, had recourse to "_deceivableness_:" for as to non-believers, no need could they have of _deceivableness_; to foil him, they had but to turn aside from him, and stand as they were. those men, whose unrighteousness had recourse to deceivableness, who could they be, but the men of the same description in this respect as those, whom in chapter third of his epistle to his galatians, he complains of as having "bewitched" them; and _that_ in such sort, as to have made him so far lose his temper as to call them "_foolish_:" and that _they_ were rivals, is a matter altogether out of doubt. in a word, rivals were the only troublesome sort of men, who, at the writing of this epistle, could, with the nameless monster since named _antichrist_, be yet to come. [76] as for that "_helmet of faith_," which, in the passage first quoted, he has been seen commanding his disciples to put on--of that faith, which is the everlasting object of his so indefatigably repeated "_command_," and which is always faith in _paul_,--for of jesus scarcely is so much as a word, except the name, to be found in any of his epistles,--as to this helmet, it is the sort of cap, which a man learned how to put on, when he had made himself perfect, in what may be called the _self-deceptive exercise_, or in a word _the exercise of faith_. it is composed of two very simple operations: at the word of command, the recruit turns its face _to_ the arguments on one side; at the word of command, it turns its back to those on the other side. the test of perfection is--its being able to hold in its embrace, for any length of time, both parts together of a self-contradictory proposition; such as, that three _man's-persons_,--to use the german word, or if any _other sorts of persons_ there are three others,--are but one. when the helmet sits close enough on his head to enable him to do this, there is no fear of its falling off. holding fast to improbabilities, how absurd and extravagant soever, is thenceforward but child's play to him:--for example, belief in the future existence of paul's antichrist: including, the coming on of those scenes, in which that _raw-head and bloody bones_ is to be the principal performer. to this, as to anything else, the mind of man is capable of being brought, by assurances of infinite enjoyment, in case of his having made himself perfect in this exercise, or of infinite torment in case of his neglecting it: of course, still more effectually, by both assurances put together; and, considering the facility of both operations, easier terms could not very easily be imagined. a capital convenience is--that, for producing faith in this way, not a particle of anything in the shape of evidence is necessary: the place of evidence is supplied by assurance:--by the intensity, real or apparent, of the persuasion, to which expression has been given, by what the preacher has said or done. the more intense the apparent assurance on the one part, the greater the apparent _safety_, obtained by yielding to it, on the other: and thus it is, that no absurdity can be so flagrant, that the side on which it is found may not be embraced, under the notion of its being the _safe_ side. when paul, with his accustomed vehemence, was preaching the world's end, so many of his thessalonians as believed in it, believed, that believing in it was being on the safe side. on the part of the preacher, the more vehement and impudent the assurance, the greater on the part of the disciple, the apparent _danger_ on the disbelieving, the apparent _safety_ on the believing side. by this means are produced the signs and wonders we read of in the epistles of our modern missionaries; for, how conclusive soever the evidence may be, which the assertions they employ might call in for their support,--conclusive to every reasonable mind by which it was received,--assuredly it is not by the evidence, but by the unsupported assertion, that, on the occasion of those exploits of theirs,--whatever credence has place, is produced. chapter xiii. _paul's supposable miracles explained._ section 1. objections, applying to them in the aggregate. but, it may be said, paul's alleged commission from god was certainly genuine; for it is proved by his miracles. look at the acts, no fewer than twelve miracles of his you will find. if then taken by themselves, for want of that accurate conception of the probative form of evidence, to which maturer ages have given birth, the account of the miracle by which his conversion was wrought fails of being completely satisfactory,--look at his miracles, the deficiency will be filled up. the man, to whom god had imparted such extraordinary powers--powers so completely matchless in these our times,--can such a man have been a liar--an impostor? a liar for the purpose of deceit--of giving support to a system of deception--and that a lucrative one? an imposition so persevering as to have been carried on, from youth to death, through, perhaps, the greatest part of his life? the observation is plausible:--the answer will not be the less satisfactory. the answer has two branches: one, _general_, applying to all the alleged miracles in question, taken in the lump: the other _particular_, applying to the several miracles separately considered. observations applying to the whole together are, the following: 1. not by paul himself, in any one of his own epistles, is any such general assertion made, as that he had received from god or from jesus,--or, in a word, that he was in possession of, any such power, as the power of working miracles. 2. nowhere in the account given of his transactions by the author of the acts, is he in any of his speeches represented as making reference to any one act of his in the character of a miracle. 3. nowhere in that same account, is he represented as stating himself to be in possession of any such powers. 4. not by the author of the acts, is he spoken of as being in possession of any such power. 5. nowhere by the author of the acts, is he in any general terms spoken of, as producing any effects, such as, in respect of the power necessary to the production of them, approach to those spoken of as having been produced by simon magus; by that declared impostor, in whose instance, no such commission from god is represented as having been received. 6. neither on the occasion of his conversion, nor on any other occasion, is paul stated to have received from jesus any such power as that of working miracles:--any such power as the real apostles are--in mark 16:15, 16, 17, 18--stated to have received from jesus. was it that, in his own conception, for gaining credence to his pretension of a commission from jesus--from jesus, styled by him the lord jesus--any need of miracles, or of a persuasion, on the part of those with whom he had to deal, of _his_ having power to work miracles? by no means. of the negative, the story told by him of the manner of his conversion is abundant proof. of the efficient cause of this change in his mind, the account given, is plainly given in the character of the account of a miracle. but of this miracle, the proof given consists solely in his own evidence: his own statement, unsupported by that of any other person, or by reference to that of any other person: his account, of the discourse, which on the occasion of the vision, in which nothing was seen but a flood of light, he heard from the lord jesus: his own account, of the vision, which he says was seen by ananias: his own account, of that other vision, which, according to ananias, he, paul, had had, but of which paul himself says nothing. in the work of his adherent and sole biographer, the author of _the acts_,--we have five speeches, made by him, in vindication of his conduct, in the character of a preacher of the religion of jesus; and, from his own hand, epistles out of number: yet nowhere is any reference made, to so much as a single miracle wrought by his own hand, unless the trance which he falls into when he is alone, and the vision which he sees, when nobody else sees anything, are to be placed to the account of miracles. miracles? _on_ him, yes; _by_ him, no. true it is, that, on one occasion, he speaks in general terms of "signs and wonders," as having been wrought by him. but vague, in the highest degree, is the import, as well as wide the extent, of those general terms: nor is it by any means clear, that, even by himself, any such claim was meant to be brought forward, as that of having exhibited any such manifestations of supernatural power, as are commonly regarded as designated by the word _miracles_. in the multitude of the persons, whom, in places so widely distant from one another, he succeeded in numbering in the list of his followers--in the depth of the impression, supposed to have been made on the heart of this or that one of them--in all or any one of these circumstances, it was natural he should himself behold, and, whether he did or no, use his endeavours to cause others to behold, not only so many sources of wonder, but so many circumstances; all conspiring to increase the quantity of that confidence, which, with so much industry, and, as far as appears, with such brilliant success, he was labouring to plant in every breast: circumstances, serving, in the minds of his adherents in general, in the character of a sign or proof, of the legitimacy of his pretension, as above. but, of any such supernatural power as that which is here in question, could any such loose and vague expressions be reasonably regarded as affording any sort of proof? no:--unless whatsoever, in the affairs of men, can justly be regarded as _wonderful_, ought also to be regarded as a miracle. in one passage, and one alone, either in the acts or in his own epistles, is he found laying any claim, how distant and vague soever, to any such power, as having ever been exercised by him. and, in this instance, no one individual incident being in any way brought to view or referred to, what is said will be seen to amount absolutely to nothing, being nothing more than, without incurring any such interpretation as that of imposture, is at the present time continually averred by christians of different sects. he who makes so much of his _sufferings_, had he wrought any miracles, would he have made nothing of his _miracles_? in the next place, although it must be admitted, that, on several occasions, by his sole biographer and professed adherent, viz., the author of the acts, a sort of colour of the marvellous seems endeavoured to be laid on; laid on over the incident itself, and over the part, which on that occasion was taken by him; yet on no one of these occasions, unless perhaps it be the last--of which presently,--does the account, given by him of what passed, wear any such complexion as shall render it matter of necessity, either to regard it as miraculous, or to regard the biographer, as having on that occasion asserted a complete and downright untruth. section 2. supposable miracle i.--elymas the sorcerer blinded.--_acts_ 13:6 to 12. 1. of these supposable miracles, the first that occurs is that which had for its subject elymas the sorcerer. at paphos, in the island of cyprus,[77] paul and his associate barnabas are sent for, by "the deputy of the country," sergius paulus, who desires to hear the word of god. but at that same place is a certain jew, of the name of barjesus, alias elymas,--a sorcerer by profession, who "withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith." to this man, it is not said, either where or when, paul is thereupon represented as making a short speech, at the end of which, after calling him a child of the devil, and so forth; he says to him, "_thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season_. thereupon," continues the story, "immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand. then the deputy," it concludes, "when he saw what was done, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the lord." supposing this story to have had any foundation in fact,--of the appearance of blindness thus exhibited, where shall we look for the cause? in a suspension of the laws of nature, performed by the author of nature, to no other assignable end, than the conversion of this roman governor? at no greater expense, than that of a speech from this same paul, the conversion of a king,--king agrippa--if the author of the acts is to be believed, was nearly effected. "almost," says agrippa, "thou hast persuaded me to become a christian." so often as god is represented, as operating in a direct--however secret and mysterious--manner, upon the heart, _i.e._, the mind, of this and that man,--while the accounts given of the suspension of the laws of nature are comparatively so few--to speak in that sort of human language, in which alone the nature of the case admits of our speaking, if the expense of a miracle were not grudged,--might not, in the way above mentioned, by a much less lavish use of supernatural power, the same effect have been produced? viz., by a slight influence, exercised on the heart of governor paulus? whatsoever may have been the real state of the case,--thus much seems pretty clear, viz., that at this time of day, to a person whose judgment on the subject should have, for its ground, the nature of the human mind as manifested by experience,--another mode of accounting for the appearance in question will be apt to present itself as much more probable. that is--that, by an understanding between paul and elymas--between the ex-persecutor and the sorcerer--the sorcerer, in the view of all persons, in whose instance it was material that credence should be given to the supposed miracle,--for and during "_the season_" that was thought requisite, kept his eyes shut. the sorcerer was a jew:--paul was also a jew. between them here was already one indissoluble bond of connection and channel of intercourse. elymas, by trade a sorcerer, _i.e._, an impostor--a person of the same trade with simon magus, by whom so conspicuous a figure is cut in the chapter of this history--was a sort of person, who, on the supposition of an adequate motive, could not naturally feel any greater repugnance, at the idea of practicing imposition, at so easy a rate as that of keeping his eyes shut, than at the idea of practicing it, in any of the shapes to which he had been accustomed:--shapes, requiring more dexterity, and some, by which he would be more or less exposed, to that detection, from which, in the mode here in question, it would be altogether secure. but paul--was he in a condition to render it worth the sorcerer's while to give this shape to his imposture? who can say that he was not? yes: if to a certain degree he had it in his power, either to benefit him or to make him suffer? and who can say but that these two means of operating, were one or other, or both of them, in his power? as to the sorcerer's betraying him, this is what he could not have done, without betraying himself. true it is, that, by acting this under part,--this self-humiliating part,--so long as paul stayed, so long was the sorcerer, not the first, but only the second wonder-worker of the town. but no sooner did paul's departure take place, than elymas, from being the second, became again the first. section 3. supposable miracle ii.--at lystra, cripple cured.--_acts_ 14:8 to 11. second of these supposed miracles,--cure of the cripple at lystra. this miracle makes a bad match with the before-mentioned one. seeing a man at lystra, neither man's name, nor place's, except in that general way, nor time, in any way mentioned,--seeing a man in the guise of a cripple, "_stand upright on thy feet_," says paul to him with a loud voice. "and," continues the story, "he leaped and walked, steadfastly beholding and perceiving that he had faith to be healed." chorus of the people thereupon, "the gods are come down to us in the likeness of men." to the production of an appearance of this sort, what was necessary? a real miracle? no, surely: so long as a vagrant was to be found, who, without any risk, could act a part of this sort for a few pence, in an age so fertile in imposture. true it is, that this same man, whoever he was, is represented as being "impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother's womb, who never had walked." but these words, how much more than any other words, of the same length, in the same number, did the writing of them cost the author of this story? as to the correctness of his narratives,--of the self-contradictory accounts given by him of paul's conversion, a sample has been already given. as to detection, supposing this circumstance false,--detection is what the account thus given of it renders impossible. for--this same cripple, what was his name? from birth to this time, where had he been living? of this nothing is said. that, at lystra, or anywhere else, the account was ever made public, is neither affirmed, nor so much as insinuated: not but that it might have been published, and, at the same time, though as to everything but the scene that exhibited itself to outward appearance, false,--might not have found any person, at the same time able and willing to contradict the falsity, and thus naturalize the miracle. section 4. supposable miracle iii.--divineress silenced.--_acts_ 16:16-18. while paul and his suite,--of whom, according to the author of the acts, he himself was one,--were at philippi,--a roman colony, and capital of a part of macedonia,--among their hearers, is lydia--a purple-seller of the city of thyatira. being converted, she receives the whole party into her house. from this house, on their way to prayers,--probably in a jewish synagogue,--they are met by a certain damsel, as nameless as the lame-born cripple, who, being possessed of a spirit of divination, or of python, brings to her masters, for masters it seems she had more than one, much gain by soothsaying. here then is a female, who, by being possessed by or with a spirit,--a real spirit, whether devil or a spirit of any other sort,--is converted into a prophetess, and, doubtless, in the main a false prophetess. in the present instance, however, she is a true prophetess: for, following paul and his suite, she runs after them, saying, "these men are the servants of the most high god, which show unto us the way of salvation. and this did she many days." if, instead of a demon, it had been an angel, that took her vocal organs for the instrument of his communications, it is difficult to say, in what manner he could have deserved better at the hands of these "servants," real or pretended, "of the most high god." yet, from some cause or other that does not appear, so it was it seems,--there was something about her with which paul was not well pleased. "being grieved, he turns and says,"--not to the damsel herself, but to the spirit, which _possessed her_, or rather, since for the benefit of her masters, it brought her so much gain, which _she possessed_,--"i command thee, in the name of jesus christ, to come out of her." amongst the superstitions of that and other ages, one was--the notion of a property, possessed by such and such words--possessed, by these mere evanescent sounds--by the air of the atmosphere, when made to vibrate in a certain manner:--a property, of working effects in endless abundance and variety, and those, too, supernatural ones. in some instances, the wonders would be wrought by the words themselves, whatsoever were the mouths by which they were uttered. in other instances, they required, for the production of the effects, a person, who being possessed of a particular and appropriate power, should, for the purpose of giving exercise to such his power, give them passage through his lips. of this latter kind was the present case. the command issued as above, "he," for it was a he-spirit, "came out of her," the damsel, "the same hour." when the devil that josephus saw expelled, came out of the man, the channel at which he made his exit, being manifest, it was accordingly specified: it was the man's _nose_. this was something to know: especially, in relation to an occurrence, the time of which was at so great a distance from our own. at the same time, however, other particulars present themselves, by which curiosity is excited, and for want of which, the information thus bestowed must be confessed to be rather imperfect. what the shape of the devil was? what the substance? whence he last came? to what place, to what occupation, after being thus dislodged, he betook himself, and so forth: not to speak of many others, which howsoever instructive and satisfactory it would have been to be acquainted with, yet now that all acquaintance with them is hopeless, it would be tedious to enumerate. in the present instance, not only as to all these particulars, has the historian,--eyewitness as it should seem he was of everything that passed,--left us in the dark; but, neither has he vouchsafed to afford us that single article of information, scanty as it was, for which, as above, in the case mentioned by josephus, we are indebted to josephus: to josephus--that most respectable and instructive of the uninspired historians of his age. in relation to this story, as well as to those others, the same question still presents itself:--if told of the present time,--if spoken of in some newspaper, as having happened in the present year,--exists here any person, even among the most ignorant populace, with whom it would obtain any permanent credence? but, a reported state of things--which, if reported as having had place in the present century, would, by its disconformity to the manifest state of things, and the whole course of nature, be regarded as too absurd and flagrantly incredible to deserve to be entitled to a moment's notice,--what is there that should render it more credible, when reported as having happened in this same world of ours, at any anterior point of time? section 5. supposable miracle iv.--at philippi, an earthquake: paul and silas freed from prison, a.d. 53. the passage, in which these events are related, is in acts 16:19-40, inclusive. on this occasion three principal events are narrated;--the incarceration of paul, an earthquake, and the liberation of paul. between the earthquake and the liberation of this prisoner, what was in reality the connection? in the answer there is not much difficulty: the same as that between the earthquake and any other event that took place after it. but, by an answer thus simple, the purpose of the narrator would not have been answered: the purpose was--to induce, on the part of his readers, the belief--that it was for the purpose of bringing about the liberation of the self-constituted apostle of jesus, that the earth was made to shake. as to the liberation, by means altogether natural was that event produced: so he himself has the candour to inform us. of this quasi-miracle, or of the last-mentioned one, philippi, capital of macedonia, was the theatre. by order of the magistrates of that town, paul and his attendant had been beaten one evening, and thrown into prison: next morning, came to the jailor an order of these same magistrates, and in obedience to it the prisoners were discharged. that, in the minds of these magistrates, there was any connection, between the earthquake and the treatment they had given to these adventurers, is not so much as insinuated. the purpose, which it had in view, was answered: it was the ridding the town of a pair of visitors, whose visit to it had produced disturbance to existing institutions. acts 16:20-40. be it as it may with regard to the historiographer,--that it was an object with his hero to produce a notion of a connection between the stripes and the imprisonment he had undergone on one hand, and the earthquake on the other, is manifest enough. the person, in whose mind the prisoner had endeavoured to produce the idea of such a connection, was the jailor: and, for its having in this instance been successful, there seems little difficulty in giving credit to the historiographer. everything that appears to have been said, either of paul or by paul, tends to show the wonderful strength of his mind, and the facility and promptitude, with which it enabled him to gain the ascendency over other minds. in the language of the place and time, he had bid the fortune-telling damsel cease her imposture, and the imposture ceased. acts 16:18. committed to prison he formed a project for making a proselyte of the keeper: and, in this too, and in so small a compass of time as a few hours, there seems reason to believe he was successful. in his presumption, in daring to execute the sentence of the law upon so holy a person, the keeper saw the cause of the earthquake; and, whether by paul any very strenuous endeavours were used to correct so convenient an error in geology, may be left to be imagined. paul, when introduced into the prison, found no want of comrades: how then happened it, that it was to paul's imprisonment that the earthquake, when it happened, was attributed, and not to any of his fellow-prisoners? answer: it happened thus. of the trade, which, with such brilliant success, paul,--with this journeyman of his,--was carrying on, a set of songs with the name of god for the burthen of them, constituted a part of the capital, and, as it should seem, not the least valuable. when midnight came, paul--the trader in godliness--treated the company in the prison with a duet: the other prisoners, though they shared in the benefit of it, did not join in it. while this duet was performing, came on the earthquake; and paul was not such a novice as to let pass unimproved the opportunity it put into his hand. the historiographer, if he is to be believed, was at this time in paul's train, as well as silas; for so, by the word _we_, in the tenth verse of this same chapter, he, as it were, silently informs us. the beating and the imprisonment were confined to the two principals; by his comparative insignificance, as it should seem, the historiographer was saved from it. from the relation, given to him by paul or silas, and in particular by paul,--must this conception, formed by the historiographer of what passed on the occasion, have of course been derived. it was coloured of course in paul's manner: and in his colouring, there was of course no want of the marvellous. by the earthquake, not only were "foundations shaken" and "doors opened," but "bands loosened." the "feet" of the two holy men had been "made ... fast in the stocks," ver. 24: from these same stocks, the earthquake was ingenious enough to let them out, and, as far as appears, without hurt: the unholy part of the prisoners had each of them bands of some sort, by which they were confined; for, ver. 26, "everyone's bands were loosed:" in every instance if they were locked, the earthquake performed the office of a picklock. earthquakes in these latter days, we have but too many, in breaking open doors they find no great difficulty; but they have no such nicety of touch as the earthquake, which produced to the self-constituted apostle a family of proselytes: they are no more able to let feet out of the stocks, or hands out of hand-cuffs, than to make watches. these elucidations being furnished, the reader is desired to turn to the text, and lay before him: to reprint it would require more paper than he might choose to see thus employed. as to the name of god and the name of jesus, the two names, it should appear, were not--on the occasions in question--used at random. when the fortune-telling damsel was the subject of paul's holy labours, she having been in some way or other already gained, ver. 17, the case was already of a sort, in which the name of jesus christ, the name under which the self-constituted apostle enlisted all his followers,--might be employed with advantage. when paul and silas were committed to prison, no such name as that of "jesus christ" would as yet have served. of "jesus christ" neither had the keeper as yet heard anything, nor had the other prisoners. but, of god, in some shape or other, they could not but have heard all of them: _god_ accordingly was the name, by which at this time the sensibilities of the persons in question were to be worked upon. when the earth trembled, the jailor trembled likewise: he "came trembling and fell down," ver. 29, before paul and silas. and brought them out, ver. 30, and said, "sirs, what must i do to be saved?" now then was the time come for the enlistment--for the enlistment in the spiritual warfare against the devil and his angels: in the as yet new name of "the lord jesus christ" were these recruits accordingly enlisted, as now, for the purpose of carnal warfare, in the name of king george. "and they said," continues the narration, ver. 31, "believe in the lord jesus christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." section 6. supposable miracle v.--at corinth, paul comforted by the lord in an unseen vision, a.d. 54.--_acts_ 18:7-11. a vision, being a species of miracle, could, no more than a pantomime, have place without some expense. in the present case, as in any other, a natural question is--what was the object to be accomplished, upon which the expense--whatever it was--was bestowed? the answer is--the keeping his attendants, whoever they were, in the necessary state of obsequiousness: for no other is perceptible. to the dependants in paul's train, it was no very uncommon sentiment to be not quite so well satisfied with the course he took, as he himself was. corinth was at this time the theatre of his labours: of the men, whoever they were, who had staked their fortunes upon _his_, some,--the historiographer, as it should seem, of the number,--there were, whose wish it was to change the scene. in that gentile city,--the chief ruler of the jewish synagogue, crispus by name--this man, besides another man, of the name of justus, "whose house joined hard to" that same synagogue, had become his converts: "and many of the corinthians hearing, believed and were baptized." eyes, however, there were, in which the success, whatsoever it was, was not yet enough to afford a sufficient warrant for his stay. a vision was necessary, and a vision accordingly, or at least a something, which was called by that name, made its appearance. "thus spake the lord," says the historiographer, ver. 9, "thus spake the lord to paul in the night by a vision, be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace.----for i am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee; for i have much people in this city." nor was the vision without its effect; for, as the next verse informs us, ver. 11, "he continued _there_ a year and six months, teaching the word of god among them." that which, on this occasion, may be believed without much difficulty is, that the word thus taught by paul was paul's word: and, that which may be believed with as little, by those, whoever they may be, who believe in his original conversion-vision, is--that it was god's word likewise. from paul himself must the account of this vision have been delivered to the historiographer: for, unless at the expense of a sort of miracle, in the shape of an additional vision at least, if not in some more expensive shape, no information of any such thing could have reached him. in these latter days, no ghost is ever seen but in a _tete-a-tete_: in those days, no vision, as far as appears, was ever seen but in the same degree of privacy. a vision is the word in these pages, because such is the word in the authoritative translation made of the historiographer's. that which paul is related to have heard, is--what we have just seen as above: but that, upon this occasion he saw anything--that he saw so much as a flash of light, this is what we are not told: any more than by what other means he became so well assured, that the voice which he heard, supposing him to have heard a voice, was the lord's voice. in these latter days,--inquiries, of some such sort as these, would as surely be put, by a counsel who were against the vision,--as, in the case of the cock-lane ghost, which gave so much exercise to the faith of the archlexicographer, were put by the counsel who were against the ghost; but, by a sort of general understanding,--than which nothing can be more convenient,--inquiries, such as these,--how strictly soever in season when applied to the 19th century of the vulgar ear, are altogether out of season, as often as they are applied to the commencement of it. as to the speaking by a vision, the only intelligible way, in which any such thing can really have place, is that, which under the pressure of necessity has been realized by the ingenuity of dramatists in these latter days. such is the mode employed, when the actors, having been struck dumb by the tyranny of foolish laws, and consequently having no auditors, convey to the spectators what information seems necessary, by an appropriate assortment of gold letters on a silk ground: whether the lord who, on this occasion, according to paul, spoke to the eyes of paul, came provided with any such implement, he has not informed us. without much danger of error, we may venture to assert the negative: for, if such was the mode of converse, there was nothing but what might happen without sign or wonder: and, on this supposition, no addition was made by it, to those signs and wonders, which, as has been seen, it was his way to make reference to, in the character of evidence. section 7. supposable miracle vi.--at ephesus, diseases and devils expelled by foul handkerchiefs.--_acts_ 19:1-12. at ephesus, paul makes a stay of between two and three years; for "two years" together, disputing "daily in the school of one tyrannus," "so that all they which dwelt in asia heard the word of the lord jesus, both jews and greeks. "and god," continues the history, "wrought special miracles by the hands of paul." these "_special_ miracles," what were they? of the whole number, is there so much as a single one particularized? no; not one. _special_ as they are, the following is the account, and the only account given of them. "so that," continues the history, "from his body were brought unto the sick, handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them." no circumstances whatever particularized, name of the person, name of the place, description of the time--nothing, by means of which, in case of falsity _in toto_, or incorrectness in circumstance, the misstatement might have been exposed,--to what degree of credence, or so much as consideration with a view to credence, vague generalities such as these, can they present so much as the slightest claim? if allusions such as these are to pass proof, where is the imposture, to which proofs--proofs sufficient in number and value--can ever be wanting? opposed as paul was, wherever he went,--by gainsayers or persecutors, or both--sometimes successful, sometimes altogether unsuccessful,--sometimes in a slight degree successful--in so much as any one occasion, either in this history, or in any one of his own numerous epistles, do we find so much as a single one of these "_special miracles_," any more than of any other miracles, brought to view by him, or so much as alluded to by him, in the character of proofs of the commission to which he pretended? answer: no, not one. diseases cured, evil spirits driven out, by handkerchiefs and aprons!--by handkerchiefs and aprons brought from a man's body! diseases cured and devils seared away by foul linen! by jesus--by any one of his apostles--were any such implements, any such eye-traps ever employed? no; never. as to diseases, if by such means a disease had been _propagated_, the case would have been intelligible enough. but what was wanted was a miracle: and this would have been no miracle. the price, received by the holy wearer for any of these cast-off habiliments--the price, of the precious effluvia thus conveyed--by any such little circumstance, had it been mentioned, some light might have been cast on what was done. one thing, indeed, may be stated with some assurance: and this is--that, after a man, well or not well, had received one of these same dirty handkerchiefs, or of these same dirty aprons, no evil spirit in him was visible. one other thing may also be stated with no less confidence:--this is that, infection out of the question, and supposing paul free from all contagious disease, if, without handkerchief or apron, the disease would have had its exit,--by no such handkerchief or any such apron was the exit of it prevented. note, that all this time, according to this man, the author of the acts, he himself was in paul's suite. yet, taking credit for all these miracles--taking credit thus for miracles out of number, not so much as one of them all does he take upon himself to particularize.[78] section 8. supposable miracle vii.--at ephesus, exorcists scevas bedeviled.--_acts_ 19:13-20. thus it is that, as under the last head has been observed, of all these alleged successful exhibitions, not so much as a single one is particularized. in lieu, however, of these successes of paul's, something of a story to a certain degree particularized we have. but this is--what? a successful performance of paul's? no: but an unsuccessful attempt of certain persons,--here termed exorcists,--who took upon themselves to act against him in the character of competitors. well, then: when the time came for demonstrating supernatural powers by experiment, these exorcists--these impostors, no doubt it was intended they should be deemed--made a very indifferent hand of it. good: but the true man, did he go beyond these same impostors? not he, indeed: he did not so much as attempt it. but, let us hear his historiographer, who all this while was at his elbow. acts 19:13-20. "then certain of the vagabond jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits, the name of the lord jesus, saying, we adjure you by jesus, whom paul preacheth. "and there were," continues the narrative, ver. 14, "seven sons of sceva, a jew, and chief of the priests, which did so." thus far the narrative. the sons of the chief of the priests? such men styled not only _exorcists_ but _vagabonds_? if they are not here, in express terms, themselves styled _vagabonds_, at any rate, what is here imputed to them is the doing those same things, the doers of which have just been styled, not only _exorcists_, but at the same time _vagabonds_. but let us continue, "and the evil spirit," ver. 15, "answered and said, jesus, i know, and paul i know, but who are ye?--and the man, in whom the evil spirit was, leaped on them and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded." thus far the narrative. to whatsoever order of beings the hero of this tale may have belonged;--whatsoever may have been his proper appellative,--a man with two natures, one human, the other diabolical,--a man with a devil in him, a madman,--or a man in his sound senses counterfeiting a diabolized man or a madman,--the tale itself is surely an eminently curious one. of these human or superhuman antagonists of his--of these pretended masters over evil spirits--the number is not less than seven: yet, in comparison of him, so feeble and helpless are they all together, that he not only masters them all seven, but gets them down, all seven together, and while they are lying on the ground in a state of disablement, pulls the clothes off their backs: but whether one after another, or all at the same time, is not mentioned. be this as it may, hereupon comes a question or two. while he was stripping any one of them, what were the others about all that time? the beating they received, was it such as to render them senseless and motionless? no: this can scarcely have been the case; for, when the devil had done his worst, and their sufferings were at the height, out of the house did they flee, wounded as they were. "jesus i know, and paul i know," says the mysterious hero, in the fifteenth verse. hereupon an observation or two calls for utterance. supposing him a man, who, knowing what he was about, counterfeited the sort of being, who was half man, half devil,--one-half of this speech of his, namely, _paul i know_, may without much difficulty be believed. but, upon this supposition, forasmuch as he acted with so much effect against these rivals of paul's,--a supposition not less natural, to say the least of it, is--that to paul he was not unknown, any more than paul to him: in a word, that on this occasion, between the evil spirit and the self-constituted apostle, a sort of understanding had place. be this as it may, how extraordinary a person must he not have been, to undertake the complete mastery of seven men at once! seven men, all of them young enough to have a father, not only living, but officiating as a priest: and at the same time, all of them old enough, if not to exercise, mastery over evil spirits, at any rate to undertake it! in paul's suite, all this time, as far as appears, was the author of this narrative. the scene thus exhibited--was he then, or was he not, himself an eyewitness of it? on a point so material and so natural, no light has he afforded us. another circumstance, not less curious, is--that it is immediately after the story of the unnamed multitudes, so wonderfully cured by foul clothes,--that this story of the devil-masters discomfited by a rebellious servant of theirs, makes its appearance. turn now to the supposed true devil-master--on this score, what was it that he did? just nothing. the devil,--and a most mischievous one he was,--_he_ was doing all this mischief:--the man, who had all such devils so completely in his power, that they quit possession, and decamp at the mere sight or smell of a dirty handkerchief or apron of his;--he, though seeing all this mischief done,--done by this preã«minently mischievous as well as powerful devil,--still suffers him to go on;--and not any the least restraint in any shape, does he impose upon him; but leaves him in complete possession of that receptacle, which, according to the narrative, he wanted neither the power nor the will to convert into an instrument of so much mischief. was it from paul himself, that, on this special occasion, for this special purpose, namely, the putting down these presumptuous competitors, this mysterious being received so extraordinary a gift? this is not said, but not improbably, as it should seem, this was the miracle, which it was intended by the historian should be believed. occasions there are--and this we are desired to believe was one of them--in which the impossibility of a thing is no bar to the knowledge of it. "and this was known," continues the narrative, ver. 17, "and this was known to all the jews and greeks also dwelling at ephesus: and fear fell on them all, and the name of the lord jesus was magnified." now, supposing this thing known, the fear stated as the result of it may without difficulty be believed:--fear of being treated as those sons of the chief of the jewish priests had been: fear of the devil, by whom those, his unequal antagonists, had been thus dealt with: fear of the more skilful devil-master, under whose eye these bunglers had been thus dealt with. but the name here said to be _magnified_--the name of the lord jesus--how _that_ came to be _magnified_: in this lies all the while the difficulty, and it seems no small one. the _name_, on this occasion, and thus said to be employed, whose was it? it was, indeed, the lord jesus's. but was it successful? quite the contrary. it made bad worse. in the whole of this business, what was there from which the name of jesus could in any shape receive magnification? yes: if after the so eminently unsuccessful use, thus made of it by those exorcists, a successful use had, on the same occasion, been made of it by paul. but, no: no such enterprise did he venture upon. madman, devil, counterfeit madman, counterfeit devil,--by proxy, any of these he was ready to encounter, taking for his proxy one of his foul handkerchiefs or aprons: any of this sort of work, if his historiographer is to be believed, he was ready enough to do by proxy. but, in person? no; he knew better things. "and many that believed," concludes this part of the narrative, ver. 18, "came and confessed, and showed their deeds." yes; supposing there were any, by whom all this or any part of it was believed,--that they spoke and acted in consequence, may be believed without much difficulty: and, with this observation may the story, and the sort of elucidation endeavouring to be given of it, be left to close. section 9. supposable miracle viii.--magical books burnt by the owners.--_acts_ 19:19, 20. such as it was, the supposable miracle last mentioned was not without its supposed fruit: destruction of property, such as it was--destruction of property, and to an amount sufficiently wonderful for the satisfaction of any ordinary appetite for wonders. but let us see the text. it follows in the verse 19, next after that, in which mention is made, as in the last preceding section, of what was done by the "many who believed." "many of them also," ver. 19, "which used curious arts, brought their books together, and burned them before all men; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver." "so mightily," ver 20, "grew the word of god, and prevailed." and there ends the story of the books of curious arts. as to the sum total, nothing can be more precise: as to the items, could the list of them be but produced, this would be indeed a treasure. as to the denomination _magical_, given in the title of this section to those books, styled books "_of curious arts_,"--in the text, short is the only apology that need be made for it. of the number of those _curious arts_ could not, most assuredly, have been any of the arts included at present under the name of _fine arts_; of the character of the _arts_ here designated by the appellation of _curious_, a sufficient indication is afforded by the story, by which the mention of them is, as above, immediately preceded. they were the arts, by which effects were undertaken to be produced, such as the self-constituted apostle undertook to produce by so much more simple means. how vast soever were the collection, what would be the value of it,--the whole taken together,--when so much more than could be done by everything which it professed to teach, could be done by about a score or a dozen words, on the single condition, that the lips by which they were uttered were properly commissioned lips, not to speak of the still more simple operation of the touch of a used handkerchief? of the state of art and science in the wake of the great temple of diana, the representation here given is of itself no small curiosity. books of curious arts--all of them arts of imposture--books, employed, all of them, in teaching the most secret of all secrets--books of this description, so well known to all men, as to bear a market-price! a market-price, so well known to all men, as if it were the price of bread and butcher's meat: and, in the single town of ephesus, these books so numerous,--such the multitude or the value,--or rather the multitude as well as value, of them taken in the aggregate, that the price, that had been given for such of them as were thus given up, and which are only part, and, as it should seem by the word _many_, not the larger part, of the whole number, of those, which, at that same place, were at that same time in existence,--was, upon summing up, found actually to amount, so we are required to believe, to that vast sum. of the aggregate, of the prices that had been paid, we are told, for this smaller part of the aggregate number of the books, then and there existing on this single subject,--inadequate, indeed, would our conception be of it were we to regard it as not exceeding the value of the whole library collected by king george the third, and given by his successor to the english part of his subjects. _data_, though not for numeration, yet sufficient for conception, are by no means wanting. to consult arbuthnot, or any successor of his, would be mere illusion; in so far as the value of money is unknown, prices in money serve but to deceive. history--and _that_ the most appropriate history--has furnished us with much surer grounds. thirty pieces of silver, matt. 28:3-10, was the purchase-money of the field, called _the potters' field_, bought for a burying-ground, with the money received and returned by the traitor, judas, as the reward for his treachery. suppose it no more than half an acre. what, in english money of the present day, would be the value of half an acre of land in or close by a closely built metropolis? a hundred pounds would, assuredly, be a very moderate allowance. multiply the hundred pounds by fifty thousand, you have five millions; divide the five millions by thirty, you have, on the above supposition, 166,666_l_. and odd for the value of these books. look to the english translation, look to the greek original, the pieces of silver are the same. section 10. supposable miracle ix.--at troas, eutychus found not to be dead.--_acts_ 20:7-12. in this story may be seen another example, of the facility with which, when men are upon the hunt for miracles, something may be made out of nothing: the most ordinary occurrence, by the addition of a loose word or two, metamorphosed into a miracle. paul, one evening, was treating his disciples with a sermon: he was at the same time treating them, or they him, with a supper. the architecture of the house was such, that, under favourable circumstances, a fall might be got from the top of it, or thereabouts, to the bottom, without much difficulty. if any difficulty there was, on the occasion in question it was overcome. according to circumstances, sermons produce on different minds different effects: from some, they drive sleep; in others, they produce it. on the occasion in question, the latter was the effect experienced by a certain youth. his station is represented as being an elevated one:--so elevated that, after the fall he got from it, it may be believed without difficulty, he lay for some time motionless. paul "went down" to him, we are told, and embraced him. the youth received the embrace; paul, the praise of tender-heartedness:--this is what may be asserted with a safe conscience, though it be without any special evidence. trifling, however, is the boon he received from that congregation, in comparison of what he has been receiving from so many succeeding ones--the reputation of having made so brilliant an addition to the catalogue of his miracles. by the accident, whatever may have been the interruption, given by it to the festivity, no end was put to it. sermon and supper ended, the rest of the congregation went their way: and with them went the youth, to whom had anything serious happened, the historian would scarcely have left us uninformed of it. on this occasion, between the hero and his historian, there is somewhat of a difference. the historian will have it, that when paul reached the body he found it dead. paul's own account of the matter is the direct contrary: so the historian himself informs us. here then the historian and his hero are at issue. but, the historian, having the first word, makes, if we may venture to say so, a rather unfair advantage of it, and by this same first word gives a contradiction to what he makes his hero say in the next. "he was taken up dead," says the historian, who was or was not there: "his life is in him," says the preacher, who was there beyond dispute. but let us see the text. acts 20:7-12. 7. and upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, and continued his speech till midnight.--and there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together.--and there sat in a window a certain young man named eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.--and paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him, said, trouble not yourselves, for his life is in him.--when he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed.--and they brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted. at this time of day, any such contrariety might produce some embarrassment; but, when it is considered how long ago the thing happened, no such uneasy sensation is experienced. a supposition, by which all embarrassment is excluded, is so immediately obvious, as to be scarce worth mentioning. when paul reached the body, the soul was already in the other world; but, with the kisses goes a whisper, and the soul comes back again. whether from indolence or from archness, there is something amusing in the course the historian takes for enlivening his narration with these flowers: he sketches out the outline, but leaves it to our imaginations to fill it up. section 11. supposable miracle x.--on shipboard, paul comforted by an angel. acts 27:20-25. and when neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be preserved was thenceforth taken away.--but after long abstinence paul stood in the midst of them, and said, sirs, ye should have hearkened to me, and not have loosed from crete, but have prevented this harm and damage.--and now i exhort you to be of good courage: for there shall be no loss of life among you, but of the ship, _there shall be loss_.--for there stood by me this night an angel of that god, whose i am, and whom i serve, saying,--fear not, paul, thou must be brought before caesar; and lo, god hath graciously given to thee all who sail with thee.--wherefore, sirs, be of good courage: for i believe god, that it will be as it hath been told me. the sea being stormy, the crew are alarmed. the storm, however, is not so violent, but that paul is able to make a speech, and they to hear it. to keep up their spirits, and, at the same time, let them see the sort of terms he is upon with the almighty, he tells them a story about an angel. the angel had been sent to him upon a visit, and was but just gone. the business of the angel was to quiet the mind of the apostle. the matter had been settled. the precious life was in no danger: and, not only so, but, out of compliment to him, god had been pleased to grant to him the lives of all who were happy enough to be in his company. in the situation, in which so many lives are represented as being placed,--no very severe condemnation can easily be passed upon any little fraud, by which they might be saved. but, is it really to be believed, that this angel, whom, in a deckless vessel, for the vessels of _those_ times were not like the vessels of present times, no person but paul either saw or heard, was really sent express from the sky by god almighty, on such an errand? if not, then have we this additional proof,--if any additional proof can be needed,--to help to satisfy us,--that, where a purpose was to be answered, falsehood, or as he would have called it _lying_, was not among the obstacles, by which paul would be stopped, in his endeavours to accomplish it. section 12. supposable miracle xi.--at malta, a reptile shaken off by paul without hurt.--_acts_ 28:1-6. a fire of sticks being kindled, a reptile, here called a viper, is represented as "coming out of the heat," and fastening on paul's hand. on beholding this incident,--"the barbarous people," as the inhabitants are called, whose hospitality kindled the fire for the relief of the shipwrecked company, concluded that paul was a murderer: and were, accordingly, in expectation of seeing him "swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly." nothing of this sort happened, their next conclusion was, _that he was a god_. as such, did these barbarians, as did the civilized inhabitants of lystra, sacrifice to him, or in any other way worship him? no: these conceptions of theirs reported, there the story ends. of this story, what is to be made? at this time of day, among christians in general, what we should expect to find is, that it passed for a miracle. but, if by miracle is meant, not merely an accident, somewhat singular and extraordinary,--but, by a special act of almighty power, an effect produced, by means disconformable to the uniform course of nature,--it might be too much to say, that even by the reporter himself, it is for the decided purpose of its being taken for miracle, that it is brought to view. if, however, the design was not here, that the incident should be taken for a miracle,--the story amounted to nothing, and was not worth the telling. but, if it _is_ to be made into a miracle, where is the matter in it, out of which a miracle can be made? the reptile--was it really a viper? neither the barbarians of malta, nor the reporter of this story, nor in a word, at that time of day, any other persons whatever, were either very complete or very correct, in their conception of matters belonging to the field of natural history. at present, reptiles are crawling creatures. at this time of day, when _leeches_ are excepted, to fasten upon the part they have bitten is not the practice with any reptiles that we know of. if, instead of _viper_, the greek word had been one that could have been translated _leech_,--the story would have been probable enough, but, were it only for that very reason, no miracle could have been made out of it. shaken down into the fire, that is, into the burning fuel,--a small reptile, such as a leech, how brisk soever in the water, would be very apt to be overpowered by the heat, before it could make its escape: with a reptile of the ordinary size of a viper, this would hardly be the case. be this as it may, "he felt,"--so says the story,--"he felt no harm." how came it that he felt no harm? because the almighty performed a miracle to preserve him from harm? so long as eyes are open, causes out of number--causes that have nothing wonderful in them--present themselves to view before this. "the beast," as it is translated, "was not a viper":--if really a viper, it happened, at that moment, not to be provided with a competent stock of venom: it had already expended it upon some other object:--by some accident or other, it had lost the appropriate tooth. not to look out for others,--any mind that was not bent upon having a miracle at any price, would lay hold of some such cause as one of these, sooner than give itself any such trouble as that of torturing the incident into a miracle. to bring under calculation the quantity of supernatural power necessary to the production of a given effect is no very easy task. at any rate,--without more or less of expense in a certain shape, nothing in that way could ever be done. in the case here in question, what could have been the object of any such expense? was it the saving the self-constituted apostle the pain of a bite? the expense then, would it not have been less--the operation, so to speak, more economical--had a slight turn been given to paul's hand, or to the course of the reptile? but, in either case, neither would the name of the lord, nor--what was rather more material--that of his apostle, have received that glorification which was so needful to it. any such design, as that of giving an unequivocal manifestation of almighty power, such as should stand the test of scrutiny, testifying the verity of paul's commission to the end of time,--any such design could the incident have had for its final cause? a more equivocal,--a less conclusive,--proof of the manifestation of supernatural power, seems not very easy to imagine. here then comes once more the so often repeated conclusion:--the narrative began to be in want of a miracle, and the miracle was made. in those days, among that people, miracles were so much in course, that without a reasonable number of them, a history would hardly have obtained credence: at any rate it would not have obtained readers, and without readers no history can ever obtain much credence. section 13. supposable miracle xii.--at malta, deputy publius's father cured.--_acts_ 28:7-10. "in the same quarters," says the story--it follows immediately upon that of the viper. "in the same quarters were possessions of the chief man of the island, whose name was _publius_, who received us and lodged us three days courteously.--and it came to pass, that the father of publius lay sick of a fever, and of a bloody flux, to whom paul entered in and prayed, and laid his hands on him and healed him.--so when this was done, others also which had diseases in the island, came and were healed.--who also honoured us with many honours, and when we departed, they laded us with such things as were necessary." of the fevers, which, within the compass of any given spot, and any given space of time, have place, it almost always happens, that a certain number go off of themselves. of, perhaps, all sorts of fever,--at least of almost all sorts at present known, thus much is agreed upon by all physicians:--they have at least two regular courses, one of which terminates in death, the other or others in recovery. supposing the person in question to have had a fever,--what is pretty clear is--that, if _of itself_, it would have taken a favourable termination, there was nothing, in the forms employed by paul, viz., utterance of prayers and imposition of hands, that could have any natural tendency to _cause_ it to take an unfavourable one. but--the course afterwards taken by the fever, was there anything in it to distinguish it from the ordinary favourable course? if not, in that case, so far from miraculous, there is nothing that is so much as wonderful in the case. note here two things--the narrator one of the party; the narrative so loose and uncircumstantial. but _to see_ is one thing; _to narrate_, another. three days, it seems, and no more, did paul and his suite stay at the house of this publius. was it during that time, or not till afterwards, that paul performed on him those ceremonies, of which healing is represented as having been the consequence? was it within that same space of time, or not till afterwards, that the healing is supposed to have taken place? as to the english word _healing_, it cannot be accused of being indecisive. but in some languages they have words, by which a very convenient veil is thrown over the result. in the languages in question, for the endeavour to heal, whether successful or unsuccessful, the word employed is the same. the latin affords one of these convenient words, _curo_. the greek has another, _iasato_, and in the greek original of this history, this is the word employed. in a case where a ceremony and nothing else is trusted to, it being supposed that the patient really has the disease, the safe and prudent course is, so to order times and seasons, that between the time of performing the ceremony, and the time at which restoration to health is expected to take place, the time shall have come for the practitioner to have shifted quarters; for, in this case, this is an interval more or less considerable during which it being taken for granted that the desired result will take place of course, reward, in the shapes of profit and honour, will pour in upon the scientific head. here, as elsewhere, not only no _symptoms_ are particularized, but no _place_ is mentioned: no _time_ is particularized, no _persons_ are mentioned as _percipient witnesses_: even the individual who was the subject of the cure is not mentioned by name. as to the givers of the supposed honours and presents--persons are indeed mentioned:--mentioned, but no otherwise than by the name of _others_. one individual alone is particularized: particularized as having received the benefit of these ceremonies. this is the father of publius. this man, to use the phraseology of the passage, was _also healed_. but--this man who was he? he was no less a person than the father of the chief man in the island. well then, what are the honours, what the allotment of "_such things as were necessary_?" what were the proofs of gratitude, afforded by this man, who was so much better able to afford such presents, than any of those other persons cured? by such proofs of remuneration, some evidence--some circumstantial evidence,--supposing them exhibited at a proper time, would have been afforded, in proof of the reality of the service. but, neither by the person thus spoken of as healed, nor by his son--the chief man in the island,--is it said that any such proofs were afforded. for such a silence when the case of an individual was brought to view, coupled with the express declaration made, of gifts presented by persons unnamed,--three cases cannot but present themselves, as being any one of them more probable, than that, on this occasion, a real miracle was performed. one is--that there was no disease, perhaps no such person: another is, that though there was a disease, it went off of itself: the third is, that it never went off at all. one thing may be asserted without much fear of contradiction: and that is, that in this country, if in terms such as these, accounts were inserted in the public prints;--accounts of diseases cured without medicine;--diseases cured by nothing but words and gesticulations;--though the accounts given were ever so numerous, not the smallest notice would they be thought worthy of,--not the smallest attention would they receive from anyone, unless it were for the joke's sake. what is more,--numerous are the publications, in which, encompassed with circumstantiality in all manner of shapes, not only the names of the fortunate patients are mentioned, but under the signatures of those patients declarations made, assuring the public of the reality of the cure,--and yet, when at the same time, by competent persons, due inquiry has been made, it turns out after all that no such cure has been performed. accounts, which would not be believed were they to come out at a time of so widely diffused knowledge, are they to be believed, merely because the time they belonged to,--facts and accounts together,--was, as to all such matters, a time of universal ignorance? the less a man understands the subject, the more firmly is he to be believed, as to everything he says of it? or is it that, between then and now, _men_ and _things_ have undergone a total change? and, if so, when did it take place? section 14. conclusion: the supposable miracles classed and summed up. inferences,--conveying more or less of instruction,--may, perhaps, be found deducible,--at any rate our conception of the whole series taken together, will be rendered so much the clearer, by bringing the same supposed marvels again under review, arranged in the order of time. for this purpose, the time may be considered as divided into three periods. in the first are included--those, which are represented as having had place during the time when at the outset of his missionary expedition, paul had barnabas for his associate. of these there are two, viz. 1. at paphos, a.d. 45, sorcerer elymas blinded. 2. at lystra, a.d. 46, cripple cured. of this part of the expedition, the commencement, as in the current account, placed in the year 45. in the second period are included--those, which are represented as having had place, during the time when paul, after his separation from barnabas, had silas for his associate, and the unnamed author of the acts for an attendant. this ends with his arrival at jerusalem, on the occasion of his fourth visit--the invasion visit. in the current accounts, this event is placed in the year 60. within this period, we have the seven following supposed marvels: 1. at philippi, a.d. 53, divineress silenced. 2. at philippi, a.d. 53, earthquake: paul and silas freed from prison. 3. at corinth, a.d. 54, paul comforted by the lord in an unseen vision. 4. at ephesus, a.d. 56, diseases and devils expelled by paul's foul handkerchiefs. 5. at ephesus, a.d. 55, exorcist scevas bedeviled. 6. at ephesus, a.d. 56, magic books burned by the owners. 7. at troas, a.d. 59, eutychus found not to be dead. in the third period are included--those which are represented as having had place, in the interval between his forced departure from jerusalem for rome, and his arrival at rome. in the current accounts, this event is placed in the year 62. within this concluding period, we have the following supposed marvels: 1. on shipboard, a.d. 62, paul comforted by an angel. 2. at malta, a.d. 62, a reptile shaken off by paul without his being hurt. 3. at malta, a.d. 62, deputy publius's father cured by paul of some disorder. year of all these three last marvels, the same as that of paul's arrival at rome. total number of supposed marvels, twelve. to the first of these three periods belong two supposed marvels, which, supposing them to have any foundation in truth, present themselves as being, in a greater degree than most of the others, exposed to the suspicion of contrivance. a moderate sum, greater or less according to the state more or less flourishing of his practice, might suffice to engage a sorcerer, for a few minutes or hours, to declare himself struck blind: a still more moderate sum might suffice to engage an itinerant beggar, to exhibit himself with one leg tied up, and after hearing what was proper to be heard, or seeing what was proper to be seen, to declare himself cured. this was the period, during which paul had barnabas, or barnabas paul, for an associate. in these cases, if fraud in any shape had place,--it is not without reluctance, that any such supposition could be entertained, as that barnabas--the generous, the conciliating, the beneficent, the persevering barnabas--was privy to it. but, times and temptation considered, even might this supposition be assented to, on rather more substantial grounds, than that which stands in competition with it: namely, that for the production of two effects,--comparatively so inconsiderable, and not represented as having been followed by any determinate effects of greater moment,--the ordinary course of nature was, by a special interposition of almighty power, broken through and disturbed. is it or is it not a matter worth remarking--that, of all these twelve supposed occurrences, such as they are,--in not more than four is the hero represented,--even by his own attendant, historian, and panegyrist,--as decidedly taking any active part in the production of the effect? these are--the blinding of the sorcerer, the cure of the cripple, the silencing of the divineress, the curing of deputy publius's father: the three first, at the commencement of this supposed wonder-working part of his career; the last,--with an interval of fifteen years between that and the first,--at the very close of it. in the eight intermediate instances, either the effect itself amounted to nothing, or the hero is scarcely represented as being instrumental in the production of it. these are--the being let out of prison after an earthquake had happened--being comforted, whether by god or man, in a vision or without one--having handkerchiefs, by which, when he had done with them, diseases and devils were expelled--being present when a gang of exorcists were beaten and stripped by a devil, whom they had undertaken to drive out of a man--being in a place, in which some nonsensical books were burned by their owners--being in a house, in which a youth said to be dead, was found not to be so--being comforted by an angel, who had the kindness to come on board ship uninvited--shaking off a reptile, without being hurt by it. whatever store may be set at this time of day upon all these marvels, less cannot easily be set upon them by anybody than was by paul himself. for proof, take the whole tenor of his own epistles, as well as the whole tenor of his visions, as delivered by his attendant. numberless as were the scrapes he got himself into,--numberless as were the hosts of enemies he everywhere made himself,--open as all ears were to everything that presented itself as marvellous,--unable as men were to distinguish what could be done from what could not be done,--pressing as was at all times the need he had of evidence, that could arrest the hands of enemies,--on no occasion do we find him calling into his aid, so much as a single one of all these supposed irrefragable evidences. footnotes: [77] _and they had also john to their minister_, 13:5. what _john_ was this? answer, see chap. 15:37 to 40. this appears to have been that john, whose surname was mark, who was the cause of the angry separation of paul from barnabas. [78] another branch of his trade, already mentioned in this same chapter, as having been carried on by him in this same place, namely, ephesus,--and which, where circumstances created a demand for the article, appears to have been more profitable than that of expelling devils or diseases,--is _that_, of which the holy ghost was the subject. this power of conferring--that is to say, of being thought to confer--the holy ghost,--such, and of such sort was the value of it, that simon magus, as there may be occasion to mention in another chapter, had, not less than one-and-twenty years before this, offered the apostles money for it. acts 8:18-24, a.d. 34. this power, two preceding verses of the same 19th chapter, namely the 5th and 6th, represent paul as exercising: and, whatsoever was the benefit derived, twelve is the number of the persons here spoken of as having received it. acts 19:5-7. after "they," the above twelve, v. 7, disciples, v. 9, "were baptized, v. 5, in the name of the lord jesus;" when paul, v. 6, "had laid his hands upon them, the holy ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied." here then, if, by thus laying on of hands, it is by _paul_ that any operation is performed, it is the conferring of "the holy ghost." but this power, whence had paul received it? not from jesus, had the self-constituted apostle received this gift, whatever it was, any more than he had baptism, by which ceremony, as appears from acts 8:16, it was regularly preceded: as in the case of the magician it actually had been. not from jesus: no such thing is anywhere so much as pretended. not from the apostles, or any of them; from two, for example, by commission from the rest--as in the case of peter and john, acts 8:14-19:--no such thing is anywhere so much as pretended. in no such persons could this--would this--their self-declared superior, have vouchsafed to acknowledge the existence, of a power in which he had no share. on this occasion, as on every other, independently of the apostles did he act, and in spite of the apostles. as to the "_speaking with tongues and prophesying_," these are pretensions, which may be acknowledged without much difficulty. _tongues_ are the organs most men speak with. as to _prophesying_, it was an operation that might as well be performed after the fact as before the fact: witness in luke 22:64, "prophesy, who is it that smote thee?" read the bible over from beginning to end, a _prophet_, whatever else be meant, if there be anything else meant, you will find to have been _a politician: to prophesy_ was to talk _politics_. make a new translation, or, what would be shorter, a list of _corrigenda_, and instead of _prophet_ put _politician_,--a world of labour, now employed in explanations, will be saved. chapter xiv. _acts, part false, part true: author not saint luke._ section 1. by the false parts, the gospel not affected: most parts true. in regard to the acts, a notion, generally, not to say universally, received, is--that it had saint luke for its author: and that, accordingly, it may with propriety be regarded as a continuation of the gospel of that evangelist, written by the same hand. were this conception a correct one, whatsoever shock were given to the credit of the acts, would unavoidably extend itself to the gospel history: at any rate, to that part of it which bears the name of luke. before this chapter is at an end,--the reader, if the author is not much mistaken, will not only be convinced that that opinion is untenable, but see no small ground for wondering, how by any person, by whom any survey had been taken of the two objects in that point of view, any such notion should ever have come to be entertained. another memento, of which, if made before, even the repetition may in this place, perhaps, be not without its use, is--that, from nothing that is here said, is any such conception meant to be conveyed, as that the history called _the acts_, is from beginning to end, like that of geoffrey of monmouth's _history of britain_, a mere falsity. in a great part, perhaps even by much the greatest, it is here looked upon as true: in great part true, although in no inconsiderable part incorrect, to say no worse: and, in particular, on every point, on which the colour of the marvellous is visible. as to the sort and degree of evidence due to it, one general assumption there is, by which the whole of this inquiry has, from first to last, been guided. this is--that, in relation to one and the same work, whatsoever be the subject of it, credence may, without inconsistency or impropriety, by one and the same person, be given and withholden: given, on this or that occasion; withholden, on this or that other occasion: given, in so far as the truth of the contents seems probable; withholden, as far as it seems improbable. for the support of this assumption,--all that, on the present occasion, can be offered, is--an appeal to universal experience. as to the general foundations of the law of evidence,--for any excursion into so wide an expanse, neither this chapter nor any other part of this work would, it has been thought, be generally regarded as a proper place. what had been written on that subject has accordingly been discarded. section 2. time between resurrection and ascension--acts contradicts luke. in the first place then, saint luke cannot have been the author of the acts. the reason is very simple. in respect of the time between jesus's resurrection and his ascension,--the one of these narratives gives one account, the other, another account: and, so wide is the difference between the two, that by one and the same person they could not have both been given. according to saint luke, the time during which, after his resurrection, and before his ascension, jesus was seen by his disciples, extended not beyond _one_ day: according to the acts, it extended as far as _forty_ days. by saint luke, that the time was not more than a day, is not indeed said in so many words; but upon examination of the text, it will be found, that, consistently with the particulars given, no longer duration can be assigned to it. in the acts, that the time, during which he continued showing himself after his _passion_, acts 1:3,[79] to the apostles, was "_forty days_," is affirmed in those very words. the point here in question, be it observed, is not _truth_, but _consistency_: not the truth of either of the two accounts; but their consistency, the one with the other: and, instead of consistency, so palpable is the inconsistency, that the conclusion is,--by no one man, who did not, on one or other of the two occasions, intend thereby to deceive, can both of them, morally speaking, have been penned. now for the proof. first, let us hear saint luke: it is all of it in his last chapter--the 24th. in verse 10, mention is made of certain women, three named, others not named. in verses 2 and 3, "they entered into," it is said, "the sepulchre," ver. 2, "and found not the body of the lord jesus." in ver. 9, "they returned," it is said, "from the sepulchre, and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest." thereupon it is, that, of all them, "two" ver. 13, of whom cleopas, ver. 18, was one, "went _that same day_ to emmaus, which was from jerusalem about sixty furlongs: and while they communed together," it was that "jesus," ver. 15, "drew near, and went with them," whereupon between him and them a conversation therein reported, ensued. the conversation,--the same conversation, as reported in verses from 16 to 27,--continues till their arrival at the village, ver. 28, namely, emmaus, as per ver. 13. according to the next verse, ver. 29, "the day," namely, that same day, "being far spent," at that same place, "he went in to tarry with them," they having "constrained him." then also it is that, ver. 30, "he sat at meat with them:" and, ver. 31, "they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight." moreover, "at that same hour" it is, ver. 33, that "they returned to jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, saying," ver. 34, "the lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared unto simon." then it is also, that, ver. 36, they reporting what had passed, "as they thus spake, jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, peace be unto you." thereupon follows a conversation, reported in verses from 37 to 49, in the course of which he, ver. 43, "did eat before them." then it is, that, immediately after the last words, which, in ver. 49, he is stated to have uttered, come these words, ver. 50, "and he led them out as far as to bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. and it came to pass," says the next verse, ver. 51, "while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. and they worshipped him," continues the next verse, ver. 52, "and returned to jerusalem with great joy." and, with the next verse, which says, "they were continually in the temple, praising and blessing god,"--the chapter, and with it the gospel, ends. so much for saint luke. now for the author of the acts, chapter 1, ver. 3, "to whom," says he, namely the apostles, ver. 2, "he," namely jesus, ver. 1, "showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them _forty_ days..." thus while, according to the author of the acts the time--during which jesus was seen by the persons in question was not less than _forty_ days,--according to saint luke, the whole time, during which this same jesus was seen by those same persons, was not more than _one_ day. and who was this historian, who, on the supposition of the identity, speaking of this all-important scene, on one occasion says, that it lasted no more than _one_ day; and, on another occasion, professing, acts 1:1, to be giving continuance to such his former discourse, declares, in so many words, that it lasted "forty days"? it is saint luke, one of the apostles of jesus;--one, of the eleven, before whose eyes, everything of that which has just been read, is stated as having passed. with all this before him, does the editor of the edition of the bible, called scholey's bible, in a note to the commencement of the acts, very composedly assure us, that "from its style, and other internal marks, it is evidently the production of luke": quoting for his authority, bishop of lincoln's _elements of christian theology_, vol. 4. who this same bishop of lincoln was, by whose elements of christian theology, instruction such as this is administered, let those inquire, in whose eyes the profit of the inquiry promises payment for the trouble. from any such particular inquiry, the profit will perhaps appear the less, the greater appears the probability, that, in the minds of all bishops,--from the first that ever committed his instructions in theology to the press, down to those by whom the christian world is illuminated at this present writing,--the same sort of discernment, or the same sort of sincerity, has all along had place. when 20,000_l_, a year--or though it were but 20_l_, once told--or, though it were but salvation from everlasting torment--is to be gained; gained, by the perception, that two men, the one of whom writes in point-blank contradiction to the other, are one and the same man,--the task is not, naturally speaking, of the number of those, by the performance of which much wonder need be excited. the sort of improvement, made by the author of the later history, upon the account given in the earlier, has now been seen. would anyone wish to see the inducement? he will not have far to look for it. for making the impression, which it was his desire to make,--the _one_ day, allotted to the occurrence by one of the company, was not, in the estimation of the anonymous writer, sufficient. to render it sufficient, he calls in the powers of arithmetic: he multiplies the _one_ by forty; and thus, to the unquestionable satisfaction of a host of mathematicians,--barrow, newton, and so many other mathematical divines, not to speak of locke, of the number--thus is done what is required to be done: thus, by so simple an operation, is the probative force of the occurrence multiplied forty-fold.[80] section 3. as to ascension, acts is inconsistent with luke. thus far, the embellishments, made by our anonymous artist, have had for their ground the work of the original hand: meaning always saint luke, with whom the common error has identified him. here comes an instance, in which the whole is altogether of his own workmanship. this is the story of the "two men in white apparel," by whom, what, in his eyes, were the deficiencies in the instruction offered by jesus to the witnesses of his ascension, may be seen supplied. still the same delicacy as before: by his own hand no miracle made: only a quantity of matter, fit for this purpose, put into the hands of readers; and to their imagination is left a task so natural and so, agreeable. scarcely, after finishing his instructions to his apostles, has jesus ceased to be visible to them, when, if acts is to be believed, "two men in white apparel"--two men, _to_ whom none of them were known, and _by_ whom none of them were known, make their appearance, and from nobody knows where. but these same two men in white, who are they? "oh!" says _imagination_, for the hints we have already seen given to her are quite sufficient, "oh!" says imagination, "they were angels. think for a moment, and say what else they can have been. had they been men, could they have been thus unknowing and unknown? could their appearance have been thus sudden? not less sudden than the vanishing of a spirit? not to speak of the beautiful white clothes you see they had,--and would they have been thus dressed? to believe them men, would be to believe in direct contradiction to saint luke; for, in his account of the matter, as you may see, from first to last, not two men were there in the whole party, that were not in the most intimate manner known to each other. but though, by saint luke's account, so decided a negative is put upon all men-strangers, yet nothing is said about angels. angels, therefore, they may have been,--you may venture to say they _were_: and the report made by all persons present, remains nevertheless uncontradicted." "another proof, that they cannot have been men, and that therefore they were angels. of these beings, who were then unknown to all the company, what was the errand? it was no less than the giving to the whole company of the companions of jesus,--of that jesus, by whom, after giving to them such instructions as he thought fit to give to them, they had but that moment been left,--the giving to them some _other_ instructions, which he had not thought fit, or else had forgot, to give to them. but, as by no men-strangers could any such conceit have been entertained, as that, by the party in question, any such instructions would be listened to,--so, by no men-strangers can it be that any such instructions were given:--an additional proof that they cannot have been anything but angels." thus readily does the imagination of the reader, answer with her logic, the call given to her by the imagination of the author. angels if they were, they appear not to have been very knowing ones. sent, for the purpose of giving information,--and such information, nothing of that which was known to all those, to whom they came to give it,--nothing, if they themselves are to be believed, was known to them. addressing themselves to the company--the company whom jesus had but that moment left,--"whom saw ye going up," say they, ver. 11, "into heaven"? then comes the information, which jesus, on his departure, jesus, we are expected to believe, has not thought fit, or else had forgot, to give. "this same jesus," say they, ver. 11, "which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." here we have the information and--they to whom it was given,--what can they have been the better for it?--"shall so come." yes: but when and where, and to what end, and what to do? points these, as to all which, the information is altogether mute. one other proof is yet behind. what has been seen as yet is in the first chapter. the tenth of his eight and twenty chapters is not finished, where, speaking in agreement with saint luke, he now disagrees with himself. on this occasion, it is by the mouth of peter that he speaks. "god," he makes peter say, acts 10:41, "god showed him," jesus, "openly."--showed him, let anybody ask, and to whom? "not," says he, "to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of god, even to us who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead." thus again it is, that for any men-strangers, not a particle of room is left. but, for angels, considering the materials they are made of, no quantity of room can be insufficient: therefore, once more, nothing can these men have been but angels. footnotes: [79] as to the word _passion_, that by this word could not have been meant the same event as that denoted by the word _resurrection_, cannot but be acknowledged. but, with regard to the alleged inconsistency, this distinction will not be found to make any difference: for, as will be seen, it is not till after his resurrection, that, by saint luke, jesus is represented as having begun to show himself. [80] in chapter xii. of this work, section 1, notice has already been taken, of a similar operation as having been performed by paul himself: of the improvement made in _that_ case, the subject was the number of the witnesses: according to the real apostle, who was one of the company, the number, as we have seen, was eleven, and a few more: this number, whatever it was, the self-constituted apostle, who knew nothing about the matter, took in hand, and multiplied till he had raised it to five hundred. thus, with or without concert, with like effect,--and it is almost needless to say, with the same object, and from the same inducement,--may be seen the master and the journeyman, working on different occasions, but with well-matched industry, at the manufacturing of evidence. add now together the results of the two operations, and note the aggregate. number of witnesses, according to luke, say,--for the sake of round numbers,--twenty; though there seems little reason to suppose it so great: addition made to it by paul, 480. number of days,--during which, as above, they continued seeing and hearing what they saw and heard,--according to saint luke, but one: according to paul's attendant, 40. multiply together the two improvements, that is to say, the 480 by the 40, you have 19,200 for the sum total of probative force, added by the arguments of the author of the acts to the amount of the original quantity, as reported by saint luke. chapter xv. _law report.--jews versus paul: trials five, with observations._ section 1. introduction. on the occasion of what passed at the temple, the report of a great law-case,--to speak in modern and english language,--the case of _the jews against paul_, was begun. the judicatory before which he underwent that trial,--partly before the jewish multitude, partly before the roman chief by whom he was rescued,--was a sort of mixed and extempore judicatory, something betwixt a legal and an illegal one: for, as has been seen in the case of saint stephen, and as may be seen in the case of the woman taken in adultery, and moreover, in the body of the law itself, a sort of mob-law might, not altogether without ground, be stated as forming part and parcel of the law of moses. to this sort of irregular trial, succeeded, before the definite judgment was pronounced, no fewer than four others, each of them before a tribunal, as regular as any the most zealous supporter of what is called legitimacy could desire. in execution of this definitive judgment it was, that paul was sent, on that half-forced, half-voluntary expedition of his, to rome: at which place, on his arrival at that capital, the acts history closes. of the reports of these several trials, as given in the acts,--follows a summary view, accompanied with a few remarks for elucidation. section 2. trial i. place, jerusalem temple.--judicatory, the mixed multitude.--_acts_ 22:1 to 21. scene, the temple. judges, prosecutors, and--stated as intended executioners, a jerusalem multitude. sole class, by whom any declared or special cause of irritation had been received, the christianized jews, provoked by paul's preachings against the law of the land, to which they as yet maintained their adherence; by his intrusion upon their society, by which, were it only for his former persecution, he could not but be abhorred; and by the notorious perjury he was at that moment committing, having chosen to commit it, rather than cease to obtrude upon them the object of their abhorrence. of the particulars of the accusation nothing is said: but, the above circumstances, and the subsequent charges made upon him the next day by the constituted authorities,--who immediately took up the matter, and carried on a regular prosecution against him,--sufficiently show, what, if expressed, would have been the purport of them. by the preparations made for execution, we shall see broken off the defence, before it had come, if ever it was designed to come, to the substance of the alleged offence. points touched upon in it are these:-1. defendant's birthplace, tarsus; parentage, jewish; religious persuasion, pharasaical; education, under gamaliel, verse 3. 2. part, borne by him, in the persecution of the christians, when stephen was stoned: his commission for that purpose stated, and the high priest and elders called to witness, verses 4 and 5. n.b. time of _that_ same commission, according to the received chronology, not less than 26 years before this. 3. story, of that first vision, of which so much has been seen: namely, that from whence his conversion was dated: occasion, his journey to damascus, for the execution of that same commission, verses 6 to 16. 4. story of his trance: for this see chapter iv. â§. 7. in this state, "the lord" seen by him.--_lord to defendant._ "get thee quickly out of jerusalem, for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me." _defendant, to lord._ informing or reminding said lord of the details of the part borne by said defendant in the persecution of saint stephen.--_lord to defendant._ "depart, for i will send thee far hence unto the gentiles." note, defendant cut short: lord's patience no match for defendant's eloquence. _judges and executioners._--at the word _gentiles_, exclamation:--"away with him ... he is not fit to live":--clothes cast off, as in stephen's case, as if to prepare for stoning him.[81] "dust thrown into the air." present, chief captain claudius lysias, who commands him to be "brought into the castle," and "examined by scourging." while, for this purpose, they are binding him, on defendant crying out, "_i am a roman citizen_," the binding ceases, no scourging commences: the next day he is released, and the "chief priests and all their council" are "sent for," and defendant is "set before them." section 3. trial ii. judicatory, jerusalem council-board.--_acts_ 23:1 to 10. judges, chief priests in council assembled: present, the high priests. prosecutors, the said judge: other prosecutors, as far as appears, none. in modern rome-bred law, this mode of procedure, in which the parts of judge and prosecutor are performed by the same person, is styled the _inquisitorial_: in contradistinction to this, that in which the part of prosecutor is borne by a different person, is stiled the _accusatorial_. charges or questions put, not stated. _defendant._ "i am a pharisee ... the son of a pharisee. of the hope and resurrection of the dead i am called in question." thereupon, ver. 9, "great cry" ...--"great dissention." "chief captain, fearing lest," defendant, "paul should have been pulled in pieces of them," inuendo the said judges, "commands soldiers," who take him back into the castle. "cry? dissention?"--whence all this? acts has not here been explicit enough to inform us. as to defendant's plea, that it was for believing in the resurrection that he was prosecuted,--what could not but be perfectly known to him was,--that it neither was true, nor by possibility could be so. among said judges, parties two--pharisees and sadducees: pharisees the predominant. "the sadducees," on this occasion, says ver. 8, "say there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but the pharisees confess both." prosecuting a pharisee for preaching the resurrection, meaning always the general resurrection, would have been as if a church-of-englandist priest were indicted in the king's bench, for reading the athanasian creed. accordingly--it was a stratagem of the defendant's--this same misstatement: such it is expressly stated to be:--when defendant "_perceived_," ver. 6, "that the one part were sadducees, and the other pharisees,"--then it was that he came out with it: and, already it has been seen, how effectually it answered its purpose. enter once more the history of the _trance_. note here the sudden termination of defendant's first jerusalem visit, alias his _reconciliation visit_, and turn back to chapter iv. â§. 7, cause of it,--historian speaking in his own person--"grecians," acts 9:29, "went about to slay him," for disputing with them:--historian, speaking, to wit, here, in defendant's person, christianized jews' disbelief of his conversion, and of that vision story of his, that he produced in evidence of it. it is on the occasion of the just-mentioned temple trial, that defendant is made to come out with it. on that occasion, as hath been seen, it was of no use: but, in this second trial, it will be seen to be of prime use. that it was told over again at this trial is not indeed expressly said: but, that it was so is sufficiently manifest. this and no other is the handle which his supporters in the council lay hold of: and this they could not have done, had he not, as will be seen presently, put it into their hands. "the scribes," says ver. 9, "that were of the pharisees' part, arose, and strove, saying, we find no evil in this man; but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against god." well then--this spirit, or this angel, who was he? who but that spirit, whom defendant had so manifestly told them of, and who was no other than that "_lord_" of his, whom he had seen in the trance: in the trance, which, while the multitude were beating him, invention had furnished him with for the purpose. mark now, how apposite a weapon the pharisees found, in this same trance, in their war against the sadducees. as to jesus,--though from first to last, so far from being recognized by their sect, he had been the object of that enmity of theirs under which he sunk,--yet, so far as, in general terms, he preached the _general_ resurrection,--his doctrine not only agreed with theirs, but was of no small use to them: it was of use to them, against those political rivals, whose opposition to their sect was the sole cause of everything that was troublesome to it. as to paul,--had he confined himself, to the speaking of jesus's _particular_ resurrection,--this indeed was what no pharisee could be disposed to admit: but if, by paul or anyone else, jesus, or any other person, was at any time seen in an incorporeal state,--here was a piece of evidence on their side. with relation to any interview of the _apostles_ with jesus after his resurrection, nothing that paul had to say--to say with truth or colour of truth--was anything more than _hearsay_ evidence: but, as to that, which on this occasion, he had been relating about the lord, whom he had seen in his trance,--this, how false soever, was not only _direct_, but _immediate_ evidence: evidence, in the delivery of which, the _relating_ witness stated himself to have been, with relation to the alleged fact in question, a _percipient_ witness. that, on this occasion, paul dwelt, with any particularity, on the appearance of jesus in the flesh after his resurrection, is not said: and, as it would not have contributed anything to the purpose, the less particular the safer and the better. _lord_ or not _lord_, that which appeared was at any rate a _spirit_: and for the war against the sadducees, a spirit was all that was wanted: no matter of what sort. section 4. trial iii. place, cã�sarea.--_acts_ 24:1-23. scene, "governor" felix's judicatory. judge, said governor. prosecutor, orator tertullus: present, his clients,--the "high priest" and "the elders." procedure, accusatorial. time, "twelve days," ver. 11, "after trial 1; eleven, after trial 2." i. counsel's speech--points touched upon in it, these:--verses 1-4. 1. opening compliment to governor judge.--his "providence" and "clemency." ii. 1. vituperative surplusage, of course, as if in b. r.: though not paid for, in fees and taxes, by the sheet.--defendant, "a pestilent fellow." charges three. to make the matter more intelligible, had the proceeding been by writing in the first instance, they might have been styled counts. 2. charge 1. defendant "a mover of sedition among all the jews throughout the world." 3. charge 2. said defendant "a ringleader of the sect of the nazarenes." 4. charge 3. defendant "gone about to profane the temple." 5. statement made of trial 2, and the termination given to it by roman chief captain lysias, taking said defendant out of their hands, and commanding accusers' appearance in this court: verses 7, 8. 6. _viva voce_ evidence accordant: witnesses, neither quality nor number stated. "and _the jews_ also assented, saying that these things were so." ver. 9. iii. defendant's defence: verses 10-21. points touched upon in it, these:-1. defendant's confidence in this his judge. 2. at jerusalem "to worship" was his errand. the ostensible one, yes: of the real one,--supplanting the apostles,--of course nothing said. 3. in the temple, defendant was not "found by _them_," by whom? "disputing with any man." disputing? no. it was to take the oath--the seven-days-long false oath,--that he went there:--this, and nothing else. the priests, in whose keeping he was, and on whose acceptance the validity and efficacy of the ceremony depended, were not men to be disputed with. 4. defendant not found by them "raising up the people, neither in the synagogues, nor in the city." ver. 12. no: neither was any such raising charged upon him: nor would it have suited his purpose. seditious _acts_ are one thing; seditious _discourses_, another. from seditious acts he had nothing to gain; from seditious discourses everything: to wit, in so far as the effect of it was to weaken men's attachment to the law of the land, and engage them to transfer it to the schism he had raised in the religion of jesus. 5. general denial: but not amounting to _not guilty_. "neither _can they prove_ the things whereof they now accuse me." ver. 13. 6. in verses 14, 15, 16, matter nothing to the purpose. orthodox his belief: among the objects of it, the resurrection: void of offence towards god and man, his conscience. 7. false pretence--object of this his visit to jerusalem--of this his _invasion visit_--falsely stated. "now after many years i came to bring alms to my nation, and offerings." ver. 17. 8. when defendant was "found purified in the temple," it was "neither with multitude, nor with tumult." true: but nothing to the purpose: the priests, in whose boarding-house he was, while the _purifying_, that is to say, the eating and paying, process was carrying on, were not a _multitude_: nor would _tumult_ have been either profitable or practicable. 9. the men, who so found defendant there, were "certain jews from asia," and, if they were accusers or witnesses, ought to have appeared in that character on the present occasion. "who ought," says ver. 19, "to have been here before thee, and object, if they had aught against me." ought? why ought they? defendant called no witnesses: by non-appearance of witnesses, if against him, so far from being injured, he was benefited. the proceeding, too, was _inquisitorial_, not _accusatorial_: it required no accusers. jews of asia indeed? as if there were any jews of asia, to whom any more natural or legitimate cause of indignation could have been given by his misdeeds, than had been given by them to all the jews in jerusalem, not to speak of the rest of the world, or the christianized jews. 10. by defendant's saying to the judges in trial 2, that it was for preaching the resurrection that he stood accused by and before them--by this, without anything else, the indignation thereupon expressed by them against him had been excited. "or else," say verses 20, 21, "let these same here say, if they have found 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." follows the judge's decision, "when felix," says ver. 22, "heard these things, having more perfect knowledge of that way, he deferred them, and said, when lysias the chief captain shall come down, i will know the uttermost of your matter." such is stated to have been the decision of the judge: and, so far as regarded what passed on defendant's trial before jerusalem council, it was clearly the only proper one: a more impartial, as well as, in every point of view, suitable witness, the case could hardly have afforded: and, as to the main question, nothing could be more natural, than that what it had fallen in lysias's way on that occasion to observe, might afford instructive light. interlocutory order. defendant recommitted: but access to him free for everybody. "and he commanded a centurion," says ver. 23, "to keep paul, and to let him have liberty, and that he should forbid none of his acquaintance to minister, or come unto him." in this state continues paul for "two years": at which time, says ver. 27, "porcius festus came into felix's room: and felix, willing to show the jews a pleasure, left paul bound." in verses 24, 25, 26, this interval of delay is filled up with an account, such as it is, of certain intrigues, of which the defendant was the subject. the roman has a jewess for his wife. the prisoner is sent for, and wife shares with husband the benefit of his eloquence. self-constituted apostle preaches: heathen trembles: trembling, however, prevents not his "hoping" to get money out of the prisoner, if this part of the history is to be believed. "and after certain days," says ver. 24, "when felix came with his wife drusilla, which was a jewess, he sent for paul, and heard him concerning," what is here called, "the faith in christ." faith _in christ_ indeed? after the word _faith_, the word _christ_ costs no more to write than the word _paul_: but in whatever was said about faith by paul, which would be the most prominent figure,--christ or paul--may by this time be imagined. as for any faith which it was in the nature of the case, that the roman heathen should derive from the greek jew's eloquence, it must have been faith in paul, and paul only. paul he had seen and heard, christ he had neither seen nor heard; nor, for aught that appears, anything concerning him, till that very time. "and as he reasoned," says ver. 25, "of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, felix trembled, and answered, go thy way for this time, when i have a convenient season, i will call for thee. he hoped," continues ver. 26, "that money should have been given him of paul, that he might loose him: wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and communed with him." section 5. trial iv. place again, cã�sarea.--_acts_ 25:1-12. scene, cã¦sarea judicatory.--judge, new roman governor, festus. accusers, "jews," not named, sent by the high priest and his colleagues from jerusalem to cã¦sarea for the purpose. defendant still in the prison at cã¦sarea: roman judge, at jerusalem. prosecutors, the council there--petition to have defendant brought thither. judge chooses rather to go to him at cã¦sarea, than thus send for him to jerusalem. according to the _historian_, it was for the purpose of causing defendant to be murdered, in the way to the judicatory, that the prosecutors were so earnest as they were to obtain the _habeas corpus_: according to _probability_, it was for any purpose, rather than that of committing any such outrage upon the authority of their constituted superior, with an army at his command. be this as it may, instead of sending for defendant to jerusalem, the judge returned himself to cã¦sarea. "now," says ver. 1, "when festus was come into the province, after three days he ascended from cã¦sarea to jerusalem.--then the high priest and the chief of the jews informed him against paul, and besought him.--and desired favour against him, that he would send for him to jerusalem, laying wait in the way to kill him.--but festus answered, that paul should be kept at cã¦sarea, and that he himself would depart shortly thither.--let them therefore, said he, which among you are able, go down with me, and accuse this man, if there be any wickedness in him.--and when he had tarried among them more than ten days, he went down unto cã¦sarea; and the next day sitting on the judgment-seat commanded paul to be brought." charges, not particularized: said of them, not so much as that they were the same as before. "many and grievous complaints against paul, which they could not prove": ver. 7--such is the only account given of them. defence--points contained in it. as before, no offence, says ver. 8, against the law--no offence against "the temple." one point added, "nor yet against caesar." good. but how comes this here? here we have a defence, against what, it is plain, was never charged. _festus_--judge, to defendant, ver. 9: "wilt thou go up to jerusalem, and there be judged of these things _before me_?" defendant to judge, ver. 10: "i stand at caesar's judgment-seat, where i ought to be judged": meaning, as appears from the direct words of appeal in the next verse,--by a roman, not by a jewish judicatory, ought i to be tried. against the being judged at cã¦sarea, instead of jerusalem, he could not naturally have meant to object: at least, if the historian speaks true, in what he says about the plot for murdering the prisoner on the road. 2. "to the jews," says ver. 10, "have i done no wrong." thus far nothing more is said than _not guilty_. but now follows another trait of that effrontery, which was so leading a feature in paul's eloquence, "as," continues he, "thou very well knowest." now what anybody may see is,--that festus neither did know, nor could know, any such thing. witness the historiographer himself, who, but eight verses after, (18, 19, 20,) makes festus himself, in discourse with king agrippa, declare as much. but the more audacious, the more in defendant's character; and the greater the probability, that, in the conflict between the law-report and the narrative, truth is on the side of the report. 3. conclusion: ver. 11, defendant gives judge to understand, that if he, the defendant, has done any of the things he has been charged with, he has no objection to be put to death: but in the same breath ends with saying, "i appeal to caesar!" submitting thus to festus's judgment, whatever it may be, and at the same time appealing from it. festus judge: ver. 12, "when he had conferred with _the council_," whoever they were,--"hast thou appealed unto caesar? unto caesar thou shalt go." here ends trial iv. section 6. trial v. and last.--place, still cã�sarea. this requires some previous explanation. a few days after the last preceding trial, came to cã¦sarea, says verse 13, _agrippa and bernice_: festus being still there: agrippa, sub-king of the jews under the romans: bernice, it may be presumed, his queen: saluting this their superior, their only business mentioned. follows thereupon a conversation, of which defendant is the subject, and which continues the length of fourteen verses. defendant having appealed to caesar, judge has determined to send him to caesar accordingly. but, considering that, by the emperor, on the arrival of a man sent to him in the character of a prisoner, some assigned cause, for his having been put into that condition, will naturally be looked for; and, as the only offences, the jew stands charged with, are of a sort, which, while to the heathen emperor they would not be intelligible, would to a jew sub-king, if to any one, be sufficiently so;--thereupon it is, that he desires his sub-majesty to join with him in the hearing of the cause, and by that means put him in a way to report upon it. speaking of the accusers, "they brought," says festus to agrippa in verse 18, "none accusation of such things as i supposed.--but had certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one jesus, which was dead, whom paul affirmed to be alive.--and because i doubted of such manner of questions, i asked him whether he would go to jerusalem, and there be judged of these matters.--but paul...had appealed to be reserved unto the hearing of augustus..." such, as above noticed, is the declaration which the historian puts into the mouth of festus: and this, after having so recently made paul tell festus, that his, paul's, having done no wrong to the jews, was to him, festus, matter of such perfect knowledge.[82] now then comes the trial, acts 26:1. scene, at cã¦sarea, the emperor's bench. lord chief justice, roman governor festus; puisne judge, jew sub-king agrippa. present, "bernice...chief captains and principal men of the city." special accusers, none. sole speaker, whose speech is reported, the defendant. points in defendant's speech, these: 1. verses 2 and 3. patient hearing requested, acknowledgment of agrippa's special confidence. 2. verses 4 and 5. protestation of phariseeism. 3. verses 6, 7, 8. same false insinuation as before,--phariseeism the sole crime imputed to him. 4. verses 9, 10, 11. confession or avowal, whichever it is to be called, of his proceedings six-and-twenty years before, against the christianized jews, shutting them up in prison, in pursuance of authority from "the chief priests," down to the time of his conversion-vision. see table i. conversion table. 5. verses 12 to 20. account of this same vision. see that same table. 6. declaration. "for _these_ causes the jews caught me in the temple, and went about to kill me."--for these causes? for what causes? if for being a pharisee, or preaching the general resurrection, or even the particular one,--assuredly no. but, if for the breach of trust, in joining with the state offenders, the christianized jews, whom he was commissioned to apprehend;--joining with those state offenders, and then bringing out the vision-story for an excuse;--if telling everybody that would hear him, that the law of the land was a dead letter;--and, if the denying he had ever done so; and, for giving himself the benefit of such mendacious denial, rendering the temple an instrument of notorious perjury;--if it was for all this, that they "went about" indeed "to kill him,"--but to kill him no otherwise than in the manner prescribed by that same law,--jewishly speaking, they were not to blame in what they did,--humanly speaking, nothing can be seen that is not altogether natural in it. 7. conclusion: namely, if not of what he would have said,--at any rate, of what, according to the reporter, he was permitted to say:--it is formed by a passage, in which, in continuance of his plan for keeping up his interest with the pharisee part of the council, his ingenuity employs itself in strengthening the connection between the particular resurrection of jesus, and the general resurrection maintained by the pharisees. "having therefore," says verse 22, "obtained help of god, i continue unto this day, _witnessing_ both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and moses did say should come:--that christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should show light unto the people, and to the gentiles."--lord chief justice festus, "with a loud voice, as he," the defendant, "thus spake for himself--paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning hath made thee mad." in the mouth of a roman, and that roman so high in rank, the notion thus expressed had nothing in it but what was natural enough. as to the _general_ resurrection, _that_ was one of the above-mentioned "questions about their own superstition," which he therefore left to the jewish judges: as to the _particular_ resurrection, of this he had heard no better evidence than the defendant's: and what, in discriminating eyes, _that_ was likely to be worth, the reader has by this time judged. 8. defendant in reply, ver. 25: not mad, but sober:--for confirmation, appeal to the jewish sub-monarch, then and there present. "i am not mad, most noble festus; but speak for the words of truth and soberness.--for the king knoweth of these things, before whom also i speak freely; for i am persuaded, that none of these things are hidden from him; for this was not done in a corner." here would have been a place for the five hundred, by whom, after his resurrection, jesus was seen at once--see above chapter--but, upon the present occasion, the general expression, here employed, was deemed preferable. "king agrippa," continues verse 27, "believest thou the prophets? i know that thou believest." king agrippa to paul, ver. 28. "almost thou persuadest me to be a christian." paul to agrippa: "i would to god, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day were both almost and altogether such as i am, _except these bonds_." no bad trait of polite oratory this exception. assembly breaks up.--"and when he had thus spoken, the king rose up, and the governor and bernice, and they that sat with them. and when they were gone aside, they talked between themselves, saying, this man doeth nothing worthy of death or of bonds. then said agrippa unto festus, this man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto caesar." observation. in this observation, something of the obscure seems to present itself. for, paul himself being the appellant, and _that_ for no other purpose than the saving himself from death or bonds, he had but to withdraw the appeal, and, supposing a judgment pronounced to the effect thus mentioned, this was everything he could have wished from it. but, paul having already, to judge from his epistle to the romans, laid the foundation of a spiritual kingdom in the metropolis of the civilized world,--it looks as if he had no objection to figure there, as we shall find him figuring accordingly, in the character of a state-prisoner, for the purpose of displaying, and in the eye of the caesar of that day, a sample of his eloquence, in a cause so much greater than any in which that of the first caesar could ever have displayed itself. reason is not wanting for the supposition, that it was by what passed at the council, that the idea was first suggested to him: for "the night following, the lord," says 23:11, "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 rome." the lord has commanded me so and so, is the sort of language in which he would naturally make communication of this idea to his attendants. the circumstantiated and dramatic style of this part of the narrative, seems to add to the probability, that, on this occasion, the historian himself was present. on this supposition, though in the greek as well as in the english, they are represented as if they had quitted the justice-room,--any conversation, that took place among them immediately after, in the street, might not unnaturally have been overheard by him. in chapter 24, ver. 23, stands felix's order of admittance, as above, for paul's acquaintance, to minister or come to him. one other attendant has appeared, in the character of his sister's son, acts 23:16; by whom information was given to felix, that the men there spoken of were lying in wait for him to kill him. on the occasion of this invasion of his, it would have been interesting enough to have had a complete list of his staff. here ends trial fifth and last: and in the next verse it is, that, together with other prisoners, and the historian at least for his free attendant, he is dispatched on his voyage. acts 27:1. "and when it was determined that we should sail into italy, they delivered paul and certain other prisoners unto one named julius, a centurion of augustus' band.--and entering into a ship of adramyttium, _we_ launched..." footnotes: [81] if in any former part of this work, in speaking of this scene, the persons in question have been spoken of as having actually proceeded to acts of manual violence, it was an oversight. as to the examination by scourging,--singular enough will naturally appear this mode of collecting evidence: declared purpose of it, "that he," the captain, "might know wherefore _they_," the jews, "cried out against him," meaning the defendant. a simpler way would have been to have asked _them_; and, as to the scourge, what use it could have been of is not altogether obvious. to begin with torturing a man, and proceed by questioning him, was, however, among the romans a well-known mode of obtaining evidence. but, then and there, as now and everywhere, unless the united states form an exception, "whatever is--is right," provided always that it is by power that it is done. [82] acts 25:12-27. "then festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered, hast thou appealed unto caesar? unto caesar shalt thou go.--and after certain days king agrippa and bernice came unto cã¦sarea to salute festus.--and when they had been there many days, festus declared paul's cause unto the king, saying, there is a certain man left in bonds by felix:--about whom, when i was at jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the jews informed me, desiring to have judgment against him.--to whom i answered, it is not the manner of the romans to deliver any man to die, before that he which is accused have the accusers face to face, and have license to answer for himself concerning the crime laid against him.--therefore, when they were come hither, without any delay on the morrow i sat on the judgment-seat, and commanded the man to be brought forth:--against whom, when the accusers stood up, they brought none accusation of such things as i supposed:--but had certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one jesus, which was dead, whom paul affirmed to be alive.--and because i doubted of such manner of questions, i asked him whether he would go to jerusalem, and there be judged of these matters.--but when paul had appealed to be reserved unto the hearing of augustus, i commanded him to be kept till i might send him to caesar.--then agrippa said unto festus, i would also hear the man myself. to-morrow, said he, thou shalt hear him.--and on the morrow, when agrippa was come, and bernice, with great pomp, and was entered into the place of hearing, with the chief captains and principal men of the city, at festus' commandment paul was brought forth.--and festus said, king agrippa, and all men which are present with us, ye see this man about whom all the multitude of the jews have dealt with me, both at jerusalem and also here, crying that he ought not to live any longer.--but when i found that he had committed nothing worthy of death, and that he himself hath appealed to augustus, i have determined to send him.--of whom i have no certain thing to write unto my lord, wherefore i have brought him forth before you, and specially before thee, o, king agrippa, that after examination had, i might have somewhat to write.--for it seemeth to me unreasonable to send a prisoner, and not withal to signify the crimes laid against him." chapter xvi. _paul's doctrines anti-apostolic_.--_was he not anti-christ?_ section 1. paul's doctrine was at variance with that of the apostles. if paul's pretensions to a supernatural intercourse with the almighty were no better than a pretence;--his visit to jerusalem, from first to last, an object of abhorrence to the apostles and all their disciples; in a word, to all, who in the birthplace of christianity, bore the name of christian, and were regarded as belonging to the religion of jesus;--if, not only to _their_ knowledge, but to that of the whole population of jerusalem, he was a depraved character, marked by the stain,--not merely of habitual insincerity, but of perjury in its most aggravated form;--if it was no otherwise than by his having declared himself a roman citizen, that he escaped from the punishment--apparently a capital one--attached by the law of the land to the crimes of which he had been guilty; if, in a word, it was only in places, in which jesus--his doctrines, and his apostles--were alike unknown, that this self-declared apostle of jesus was received as such;--if all, or though it were but some, of these points may be regarded as established,--any further proof, in support of the position, that no doctrine of his, which is not contained in some one or other of the four gospels, has any pretension to be regarded as part and parcel of the religion of jesus, might well, in any ordinary case, be regarded as superfluous: and, of the several charges here brought to view, whether there be any one, of the truth of which the demonstration is not complete, the reader has all along been invited to consider with himself, and judge. if thereupon the judgment be condemnatory, the result is--that whatever is in paul, and is not to be found in any one of the four gospels, is not christianity, but paulism. in any case of ordinary complexion, sufficient then, it is presumed, to every judicious eye, would be what the reader has seen already: but the present case is no ordinary case. an error, if such it be, which notwithstanding all the sources of correction, which in the course of the work have at length been laid open and brought to view, has now, for upwards of seventeen centuries past, maintained its ground throughout the christian world, cannot, without the utmost reluctance, be parted with: for dissolving the association so unhappily formed, scarcely, therefore, can any argument which reason offers be deemed superfluous. for this purpose, one such argument, though on a preceding occasion already touched upon, remains to be brought to view. it consists of his own confession. confession? say rather avowal: for--such is the temper of the man--in the way of boasting it is, not in the way of concession and self-humiliation that he comes out with it. be this as it may--when, speaking of the undoubted apostles, he himself declares, that he has received nothing from them, and that he has doctrines which are not theirs, shall he not obtain credence? yes: for this once, it should seem, he may, without much danger of error, be taken at his word. to see this--if he can endure the sight--will not cost the reader much trouble, table ii. _paul disbelieved table_, lies before him. under the head of _independence declared_, in paul's epistle to his galatians, chapter 1, verses 11, 12, he will find these words. "but i certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was _preached of me is not after man_: for _i neither received it of man_, neither was _i taught, but by the revelation of jesus christ_." thus far paul. if then it was not received by him by the revelation of jesus christ--this gospel of his; nor yet, as he assures us, "_of man_,"--the consequence is a necessary one--it was made by him, out of his own head. section 2. of conformity, use made of the name of jesus no proof. of the name of jesus, whatever use he may have made--made (as it was seen) without authority--can any use, made in contradiction to this his own confession, afford any the slightest ground for regarding _his_ gospel, whatever it be,--his gospel, or any part of it,--as belonging to the religion of jesus? if so, then are all impostors the persons they falsely pretend to be--all counterfeit productions of any kind, genuine ones. while preaching to gentiles at a distance from jerusalem, from any use he could have the assurance to make of so revered a name, it is almost superfluous to observe, how much he had to gain, and how little to lose. in a case of this sort, how much soever there may be that is offensive in the demeanour of the pretended agent eulogizing, no part of it is ascribed to the pretended principal eulogized: and, in such his eulogy, the pretended agent is not hampered by any of those considerations, by which he would stand precluded from all prospect of advantage, had he the effrontery to lay it in equally strong colours on himself. thus, in the case of paul, from putting in the foreground where he did, the name of jesus, there was this great advantage to gain: and, the pretended principal being never present to disavow him, the consequence was--that, so long as no accredited and credited agents, of that same principal, were at hand to contradict his pretensions,--the mere name of this principal would be no obstacle, to the preaching of doctrines, ever so decidedly at variance with his. if, on the other hand,--in a company, in which he was preaching doctrines of his own, which were not jesus's,--men should happen to be present, to whom, by reason of their personal acquaintance with jesus, or with any immediate disciples of jesus, these same doctrines of paul's should be perceived and declared not to be jesus's, here would be an inconvenience: and, on this account,--wherever, without using the name of jesus, or any other name than his own, he could be sufficiently assured, of obtaining a degree of confidence sufficient for his purpose,--this course, supposing it successful, would, on several accounts, be more advantageous. here then, on each occasion, or at any rate on some occasions, would be an option for him to make: namely, either to preach in the name of jesus, or else to set up for himself:--to set up for himself, and, on the strength of a pretended revelation from the almighty, without the intervention of jesus, preach in no other human name than his own. from a passage, in the first of his two epistles to his corinthian disciples, it looks as if an experiment of this kind--an experiment for adding nominal independence to real--had actually been tried: but that, the success of it was not such as to be followed by continuance. for this suspicion--for it is but a suspicion,--any reader who thinks it worth his while may see the grounds in the subjoined note.[83] section 3. paul, was he not antichrist? a child, of paul's ready and fruitful brain--a bugbear, which the officious hands of the english official translators of his epistles, have in their way christened, so to speak, by the name of _antichrist_,--has been already brought to view. see chap. xii. â§. 4. if there be any persons, to whose religion,--in addition to a devil, with or without horns and tail,--with or without other spirits, in no less carnal howsoever unrepulsive forms,--an antichrist is necessary for the completion of the polytheistical official establishment; and if, in place of an ideal, they can put up with a real antichrist,--an antichrist of flesh and blood,--they need not go far to look for one. of saul, alias paul, the existence is not fabulous. if, in his time, a being there was, in whom, with the exception of some two or three attendants of his own, every person, that bore the name of christian, beheld, and felt an opponent, and that opponent an indefatigable adversary, it was this same paul: yes, such he was, if, in this particular, one may venture to give credence, to what has been seen so continually testified,--testified, not by any enemy of his, but by his own dependent,--his own historiographer,--his own panegyrist,--his own steady friend. here then, for anybody that wants an antichrist, here is an antichrist, and he an undeniable one. antichrist, as everybody sees, antichrist means neither more nor less than that which is opposed to christ. to christ himself, the bugbear, christened by the english bishops _antichrist_, was not, by its creator, spoken of as opposing itself. to christ himself, paul himself could not, at that time, be an opponent: the jesus, whom he called christ, was no longer in the flesh. but of all that, in the customary figurative sense--of all that, in any intelligible sense, could on this occasion be called _christ_--namely, the real apostles of jesus, and their disciples and followers,--paul, if he himself is to be believed, was an opponent, if ever there was one. paul preached the resurrection of the dead. agreed. but did not all pharisees do so, too? and was not paul a pharisee? and jesus--had he not in all pharisees so many opponents? and the real christians, had they anywhere in his lifetime, any other opponent so acrid or so persevering as this same paul? paul preached the resurrection of the dead. agreed. but _that_ resurrection of the dead which he preached, was it not a resurrection, that was to take place in the lifetime of himself and other persons then living? and--any such resurrection, did it accordingly take place?[84] footnotes: [83] "were ye baptized," says he, speaking to his corinthians, 2 cor. ii. 13. "were ye baptized in the name of paul?--i thank god," continues he, "that i baptized none of you but crispus and gaius,--lest any man should say that i had baptized in mine own name.--and i baptized also the household of stephanas; besides, i know not whether i baptized any other." for an experiment of this kind, it should seem from that epistle, that motives were by no means wanting. for, among these same disciples, in the preaching of his doctrines, he had found himself annoyed by divers names more or less formidable: there was the name, though probably never the person--of _cephas_, the real hebrew name, of which, in the four gospels, written as they are in greek, _peter_ is the translation: there was the name, and not improbably the person--of _apollos_, whom, about three years before, acts 18:18-26, two female disciples of paul's, aquila and priscilla, had at ephesus enlisted under his banners: there was, according to him, _the name of christ_, though assuredly, never the person of _jesus_. "for it hath been declared unto me of you, brethren," says he, 1 cor. i. 11, "that there are contentions among you,--now this i say, that every one of you saith, i am of paul; and i of apollos; and i of cephas; and i of christ." thereupon follows immediately a short flourish of paulian eloquence:--"is christ divided? was paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of paul?" and so forth, as above. "division," says he, "among you:" in this phrase may be seen the style of modern royalty. towards a will so intimately connected with the divine as the royal, no such temper of mind, so intolerable as opposition, is ever to be supposed: were it on all occasions equally known--known to all, and alike interpreted by all, no division could have place: but, some put one interpretation upon it, some another: in some eyes, this course is regarded as best adapted to the giving effect to it; in others, that: hence that division, to which, on every occasion, it is the duty of all to put the speediest end. now then as to paul. this same assumed fatherly affection, under the name of elder-brotherly--this desire of seeing concord among brethren--what was it in plain truth? answer, love of power. would you have proof? take in hand this same epistle of his to his corinthians, or, if at verse the tenth, it will be to this purpose early enough, and read on, till you come to chapter iv. verses 15, 16. "now i beseech you, brethren, by the name of our lord jesus christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you: but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment.--for it hath been declared unto me," and so forth, as above. read on, and at length you will come to the essence of all this good advice, 1 cor. 4:15. "for, though ye have ten thousand instructors in christ," says he, "yet have ye not many fathers; for, in christ jesus, _i have begotten you_, through the gospel.--wherefore, i beseech you, _be ye followers of me_." at this time, it should seem that, on the occasion of this his courtship of the jews of corinth, not only was the name of peter an object of his declared rivalry, but the name and person of his own sub-disciple apollos, an object of his jealousy. "for, while one saith," 1 cor. iii. 4, "i am of paul; and another, i am of apollos; are ye not," says he, "carnal?--who then," continues he, "is paul, and who is apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the lord gave to every man?--i have planted, apollos watered; but god gave the increase.--now he that planteth and he that watereth are one; and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour." fifteen verses after comes a flourish, in which apollos is spoken of for the last time. "whether paul, or apollos, or cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours;--23. and ye are christ's, and christ is god's." at the word _cephas_ ends, it may have been observed, common sense: what follows being dust for the eyes: dust, composed of the flowers of saulo-paulian eloquence. as to apollos, if so it was, that, at one time, in the mind of our spiritual monarch, any such sentiment as jealousy, in regard to this sub-minister had place, it seems to have been afterwards, in some way or other, removed: for, in his epistle to titus, bearing date about seven years after, namely a.d. 64, the devotion of the subject seems to have been entire. speaking to titus, tit. 3:13, "bring with you," says paul, "zenas the lawyer, and apollos, on their journey diligently, that nothing be wanting to them." [84] paul must have thought that he had the church at corinth under complete control of his hypnotic suggestion or otherwise so much under his control as to assume the exalted office of clairvoyant oracle without question. he says, 2 cor. 1-7, "i must needs glory, though it is not expedient; but i will come to visions and revelations of the lord, i know a man in christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body i know not; or whether out of the body, i know not, god knoweth). such a one caught up even to the third heaven. and i know such a man (whether in the body, or apart from the body, i know not, god knoweth); how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. on behalf of such a one will i glory: but on mine own behalf i will not glory, save in my weakness. for if i should desire to glory, i shall not be foolish; for i shall speak the truth: but i forbear, lest any man should account of me above that which he seeth me to be, or heareth from me. "and by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations--wherefore, that i should not be exalted overmuch, there was given to me _a thorn in the flesh_, a messenger of satan to buffet me, that i should not be exalted overmuch. concerning this thing i besought the lord thrice, that it might depart from me. "and he has said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee." it would require a swift, dryden, pope, milton or knowles to stage the above so as make appreciable objective quantities out of the above verbal terms. they might create characters and give them the plumage of angels, nymphs, spirits, heathen gods, etc., and so feast the imagination into paranoia. "thorn in the flesh." this phrase has baffled the ecclesiastics. the earlier commentators interpreted it to mean paul's great disappointment in all his schemes to subordinate the apostles of christ to his personal dominion of which so much has been disparaged by the author. end. index to contents. table i-xxii chapter i. paul's conversion. improbability and discordancy of the accounts of it 1 1. list of these accounts, with preliminary observations. table in which they are confronted 1 2. vision i. dialogue on the road: paul hears a voice, sees nothing 8 3. vision ii. ananias's 21, 34 4. ananias: his visit to paul at damascus 26, 57 5. vision iii. paul's anterior vision, as reported by the lord to ananias. _acts_ ix. 12 62 6. visions, why two or three, instead of one? 64 7. commission to paul by jerusalem rulers--commission to bring in bonds damascus christians--paul's contempt put upon it 69 8. companions--had paul any upon the road? 72 9. in paul's epistle to his galatians,--by his silence, acts accounts of his conversion are virtually contradicted 77 table ii chapter ii. outward conversion--how produced--how planned 89 1. motive, temporal advantage--plan 93 2. at damascus, no such ananias probably 97 3. on damascus journey--companions none 100 4. flight from damascus: causes--false--true 101 5. arabia visit--mentioned by paul, not _acts_ 108, 113 6. gamaliel--had he part in paul's plan? 125 chapter iii. _paul disbelieved_.--neither his divine commission nor his inward conversion ever credited by the apostles or their jerusalem disciples.--source of proof stated 135 1. to paul's conversion vision, sole original witness himself 135 2. counter-witnesses, the apostles: by them, the story probably not heard--certainly not credited 136 3. in proof, so much of the _acts_ history must here be anticipated 138 4. topics under his several jerusalem visits: _viz_. i. reconciliation visit 139, 143 5. topics under visit ii.--money-bringing visit 153 6. remarks on visit iii.--deputation visit 154 7. topics under visit iv.--invasion visit 156 8. self-written biography--its superior value and claim to credence 159 chapter iv. _paul disbelieved_ continued. _first_ of his four visits to jerusalem after his conversion--say _jerusalem visit i_. or _reconciliation visit_.--barnabas introducing him from antioch to the apostles 160 1. paul's proceedings between his conversion and this visit.--contradiction. per paul, it was not till after three years spent in arabia; per _acts_, immediately 164 2. grounds of paul's prospect of reconciliation on this occasion with the apostles and their disciples 171 3. occasion of this visit, as per _paul's_ own account 177 4. occasion, as per _acts_ account compared with paul's 180 5. cause of the discordance between the two accounts 188 6. length of this visit 192 7. mode and cause of its termination 197 chapter v. _paul disbelieved_ continued. _jerusalem visit ii._ _money-bringing visit._--barnabas accompanying him from antioch 203 1. at antioch, agabus having predicted a dearth, money is collected for the jerusalem saints 203 2. barnabas and paul dispatched with the money to jerusalem 208 chapter vi. _paul disbelieved_ continued.--_jerusalem visit iii._ _deputation visit._--_paul_ and _barnabas_ delegated by _antioch_ saints, to confer on the necessity of jewish rites to heathen converts to the religion of jesus 211 1. occasion of this visit 211 2. the delegates how received.--council of apostles and elders 215 3. debates--course carried by _james_ against _peter_ 220 4. result, supposed apostolic decree and letter to _antioch_, which, per _acts_, paul circulates 224 chapter vii. _paul disbelieved_ continued. after his third jerusalem visit, contest between him and _peter_ at antioch. _partition treaty_: _paul_ for himself: _peter_, _james_ and _john_ for the apostles 228 1. _contest_ and _partition-treaty_, as per _acts_ and _paul's epistles_ 228 2. partition-treaty--_probability_, given by the _financial stipulation_, to paul's account of it 238 3. _time_ of the partition-treaty, most probably that of _visit i_ 242 chapter viii. _interview the fourth._--_peter_ at _antioch_.--deputies to antioch from jerusalem, _judas_ and _silas_.--paul disagrees with _peter_ and _barnabas_, quits antioch, and on a missionary excursion takes with him _silas_. what concerns the partition treaty, down to this period, reviewed.--peter and the apostles justified 249 1. _paul's_ account of this interview quoted.--_acts_ account of what followed upon it 249 2. paul disagrees with _peter_ and _barnabas_; quits antioch, taking _silas_ from the apostles 252 3. the _partition treaty_, and the proceedings in relation to it, down to this period, _reviewed_ 255 4. peter and the apostles justified, as to the _financial stipulation_ in the treaty, and the succeeding missionary labours of _peter_ among the _gentiles_ 258 chapter ix. _paul disbelieved_ continued.--_jerusalem visit iv._ and last _invasion visit_. the purpose concealed: opposition universal; among his own disciples, and among those of the apostles 266 1. motives to this visit 266 2. the visit _announced_ by paul and _deferred_ 267 3. the design indefensible 272 4. opposition made to it by his own _attendants_ and other _adherents_ 275 5. opposition made to it by the _apostles_ and their disciples 277 6. plan of the _apostles_ for _ridding themselves_ of paul 282 chapter x. _paul disbelieved_ continued.--_jerusalem visit iv._ continued. his arrival and reception. accused by all the disciples of the apostles, he commences an _exculpatory oath_ in the temple. dragged out by them--rescued by a roman commander--sent in custody to rome 288 1. at jerusalem, paul is received by the _elders_ and _james_; but by _no other apostle_ 288 2. low tone assumed by him on this occasion 291 3. posterior to all his supposed miracles, his silence proves them unreal 295 4. accused by the disciples, he commences, at the recommendation of the apostles, an _exculpatory oath_ in the temple 298 5. the design of this recommendation justified 308 6. dragged out of the temple by _jews_ or _christians_, he is saved by a roman commander 309 chapter xi. _paul disbelieved_ continued.--paul's _fourth jerusalem visit_ continued. _perjurious_ was the purpose of the exculpatory ceremony commenced in the temple 310 1. general proof of the perjury from the acts 310 2. proof from the epistles 327 chapter xii. more falsehoods.--resurrection-witnesses multiplied.--world's end predicted.--to save credit, antichrist invented 333 1. resurrection-witnesses multiplied 333 2. false prophecy, that the world would end in the lifetime of persons then living 338 3. disorder and mischief produced by this prediction 343 4. paul's remedy for the disorder, and salvo for himself. _antichrist_ must first come 347 chapter xiii. paul's supposable _miracles_ explained 354 1. objections, applying to them in the aggregate 354 2. supposable miracle i. elymas the sorcerer blinded.--_acts_ xiii. 6-12 358 3. supposable miracle ii.--at lystra, cripple cured.--_acts_ xiv. 8-11 361 4. supposable miracle iii.--divineress silenced.--_acts_ xvi 16-18 362 5. supposable miracle iv.--at philippi, an earthquake: paul and silas freed from prison, a.d. 53 365 6. supposable miracle v.--at corinth, paul comforted by the lord in an _unseen_ vision, a.d. 54--_acts_ xviii. 7-11 369 7. supposable miracle vi.--at ephesus, diseases and devils expelled by foul handkerchiefs.--_acts_ xix. 1-12 372 8. supposable miracle vii.--at ephesus, exorcist scevas bedeviled.--_acts_ xix. 13-20 373 9. supposable miracle viii.--magical books burnt by the owners.--_acts_ xix. 19, 20 380 10. supposable miracle ix.--at troas, eutychus found not to be dead.--_acts_ xx. 7-12 382 11. supposable miracle x.--on shipboard, paul comforted by an angel.--_acts_ xxvii. 20-25 385 12. supposable miracle xi.--at malta, a reptile shaken off by paul without hurt.--_acts_ xxviii. 1-6 386 13. supposable miracle xii.--at malta, deputy publius's father cured.--_acts_ xxviii. 7, 8 389 14. conclusion: the supposable miracles classed and summed up 393 chapter xiv. acts, part false, part true: author not saint luke 397 1. by the false parts, the gospel not affected: most parts true 397 2. time between resurrection and ascension--acts contradicts luke 398 3. as to ascension, acts inconsistent with luke 403 chapter xv. law report.--jews _versus_ paul: trials five, with observations 406 1. introduction 406 2. trial i. place, jerusalem-temple.--judicatory, the mixed multitude.--_acts_ xxii. 1-21 407 3. trial ii. judicatory, jerusalem council-board.--_acts_ xxiii. 1-10 409 4. trial iii. place, cã¦sarea.--_acts_ xxiv. 1-23 413 5. trial iv. place, again, cã¦sarea.--_acts_ xxv. 1-12 417 6. trial v. and last.--place, still cã¦sarea 420 chapter xvi. paul's doctrines anti-apostolic.--was he not antichrist? 426 1. paul's doctrine was at variance with that of the apostles 426 2. of conformity, use made of the name of jesus no proof 428 3. paul, was he not antichrist? 432 * * * * * transcriber's notes: punctuation corrected without comment. original spelling retained with the exception of the following apparent typesetting errors: pg iv "d'unning's" changed to "dunning's"--"dunning's clearness" pg xxiv "stright" changed to "straight"--"street which is called straight," pg 13 "read" changed to "road"--"in the road leading"; "was" changed to "what"--"but what is" pg 14 "superservicable" changed to "superserviceable"--"such a superserviceable witness" pg 75 "proveable" changed to "provable"--"real and provable facts." pg 79 "he" changed to "the"--"uprightly according to the truth of the gospel" pg 81 "casearea" changed to "caesarea"--"down to caesarea" pg 82 "cladius" changed to "claudius"--"in the days of claudius" pg 83 "gentile" changed to "gentiles"--"among the gentiles"; missing word "brethren" added "unto the brethren" pg 84 "the" changed to "they"--"when they were dismissed"; "casearea" changed to "caesarea"--"landed at caesarea" pg 119 "pourtrayed" changed to "portrayed"--"is not ill portrayed" pg 120 "woud" changed to "would"--"ephesus would not"; "coud" changed to "could"--"could not have endured" pg 142 and 226 "galacia" changed to "galatia"--"galatia stands fifth," and "over [all] galatia" pg 178 numbering corrected. original had two 1's. pg 179 "narative" changed to "narrative"--"in such case, the narrative" pg 222 "cosideration" changed to "consideration"--"is the consideration, upon" pg 251 "saled" changed to "sailed"--"mark and sailed unto" pg 261 "has" changed to "his"--"had his mind been" pg 262 "unsatifactory" changed to "unsatisfactory"--"not altogether unsatisfactory" pg 273 "probably" changed to "probable"--"so much as probable."; "ligitimate" changed to "legitimate"--"the only legitimate government:" pg 275 "attedant" changed to "attendant"--"of his attendant" pg 280 "distiguished" changed to "distinguished"--"distinguished by the name"; "dissuation" changed to "dissuasion"--"was a dissuasion to the" pg 292 "and" changed to "an"--"an old disciple" pg 296 "irrestible" changed to "irresistible"--"so perfectly irresistible." pg 318 "previoulsy" changed to "previously"--"it was previously requisite" pg 319 "chcarge" changed to "charge"--"took charge of her." pg 337 "be to" changed to "to be"--"not to be forgotten." pg 363 "in" changed to "on"--"on their way" pg 365 "absurb" changed to "absurd"--"too absurd and flagrantly" pg 366 "succussful" changed to "successful"--"instance been successful" pg 376 "epirits" changed to "spirits"--"masters over evil spirits" pg 386 missing word "be" added--"purpose was to be answered"; "their" changed to "theirs"--"conceptions of theirs reported," pg 415 numbering corrected, ii changed to iii; 13 changed to 10. pg 438 "galations" changed to "galatians"--"in paul's epistle to his galatians" 