NOTES ON THE INTERNATIONAL LESSON.
Paul's Speech on the Stairs.
"BRETHREN and fathers, listen to the defense I have now to make to you!" The sound of their own language, showing that the speaker was at any rate no mere Hellenist, charmed their rage for the moment, and produced a still deeper silence. In that breathless hush Paul continued his speech. It was adapted to its object with that consummate skill which, even at the most exciting moments, seems never to have failed him. While he told them the truth, he yet omitted all facts which would be likely to irritate them, and which did not bear on his immediate object. That object was to show that he could entirely sympathize with them in this outburst of zeal, because he had once shared their state of mind, and that nothing short of divine revelations had altered the course of his religion and his life. He was, he told them, a Jew, born indeed in Tarsus, yet trained from his earliest youth in Jerusalem, at the feet of no less a teacher than their great living Rabban Gamaliel; that he was not merely a Jew, but a Pharisee who had studied the inmost intricacy of the Halacha; and was so like themselves in being a zealot for God, that he had persecuted "this way," to the very death, haling to prison not only men, but even women, in proof of which he appealed to the testimony of the ex-high priest Theophilus, and many still surviving members of the Sanhedrim who had given him letters to Damascus. What, then, had changed the whole spirit of his life? Nothing less than a divine vision of Jesus of Nazareth, which had stricken him blind to earth, and bidden him confer with Ananias, who had healed his blindness, and told him that it was "the God of our fathers" who foreordained him to know his will and see "the just One," and hear the message from his lips, that he might be for him "a witness to all men" of what he had heard and seen. He then mentions his baptism and his return to Jerusalem, and comes to the point that, while he was worshiping—now twenty years ago—in that very temple, he had fallen into a trance, and again seen the risen Jesus, who bade him hurry with all speed out of Jerusalem, because there they would not receive his testimony. But so far from wishing to go, he had even pleaded with the heavenly vision that surely the utter change from Saul the raging persecutor—Saul who had imprisoned and beaten the believers throughout the synagogues—Saul at whose feet had been laid the clothes of them that slew his witness, Stephen—the change from such a man to Saul the Christian and the preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ—could not fail to win credence to his testimony. But He who spake to him would not suffer him to plead for a longer opportunity of appealing to his fellow-countrymen. Briefly but decisively came the answer which had been the turning-point for all his subsequent career. "Go, for I will send thee far away to THE GENTILES!"71That fatal word, which hitherto he had carefully avoided, but which it was impossible for him to avoid any longer, was enough. Up to this point they had continued listening to him with the deepest attention. That word "GENTILES," confirming all their worst suspicions, fell like a spark on the inflammable mass of their fanaticism. No sooner was it uttered than they raised a simultaneous yell of "Away with such a wretch from the earth; he ought never to have lived!" Then began one of the most odious and despicable spectacles which the world can witness, the spectacle of an Oriental mob, hideous with impotent rage, howling, yelling, cursing, gnashing their teeth, flinging about their arms, waving and tossing their blue and red robes, casting dust into the air by handfuls, with all the furious gesticulations of an uncontrolled fanaticism. Happily Paul was out of the reach of their personal fury. It might goad them to a courage sufficient to make them rend the air with their cries of frenzy, and make the court of the temple look like the refuge for a throng of demoniacs; but it hardly prompted them to meet the points of those Roman broadswords. In great excitement the commandant ordered the prisoner to be led into the barracks, and examined by scourging; for, being entirely ignorant of what Paul had been saying, he wanted to know what further he could have done to excite those furious yells. The soldiers at once tied his hands together, stripped his back bare, and bent him forward into the position for that horrid and often fatal examination by torture which, not far from that very spot, his Lord had undergone. Thrice before, on that scarred back, had Paul felt the fasces of Roman lictors; five times the nine-and-thirty strokes of Jewish thongs; here was a new form of agony, the whip—the horrible flagellum—which the Romans employed to force by torture the confession of the truth. But at this stage of the proceedings, Paul, self-possessed even in extremes, interposed with a quiet question. It had been useless before, it might be useless now, but it was worth trying, since both the soldiers and their officers seem already to have been prepossessed by his noble calm and self-control in the midst of dangers so awful and so sudden. He therefore asked in a quiet voice, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a Roman who has not been tried?" The question was addressed to the centurion who was standing by to see that the torture was duly administered, and he was startled by the appeal. This was evidently no idle boaster, no man who would invent a privilege to escape pain or peril. Few under any circumstances would ever venture to invent the proud right of saying Civis Romanus Sum, for the penalty of imposture was death; and the centurion had seen enough to be quite sure that this prisoner, at any rate, was not the man to do so. He made the soldiers stop, went off to the commandant, and said to him, with something of Roman bluntness, "What are you about? This man is a Roman." This was important. If he was a Roman, the Chiliarch had already twice broken the law which entitled him to protection; for he had both bound him, and, in contravention of an express decree of Augustus, had given orders to begin his examination by putting him to the torture. Moreover, as being one who himself placed the highest possible value on the jus civitatis, he respected the claim. Hurrying to him, he said— "Tell me, are you a Roman?" But Lysias, as he looked at him, could not help having his doubts. He was himself a Greek or Syrian, who had bought the franchise, and thereupon assumed the praenomen Claudius, at a time when the privilege was very expensive. Whether Paul was a Roman or not, he was clearly a Jew, and no less clearly a very poor one; how could he have got the franchise? "I know how much it cost me to get this citizenship," he remarked, in a dubious tone of voice. "But I have been a citizen from my birth," was the calm answer to his unexpressed suspicion. The claim could not be resisted. Paul was untied, and the soldiers dropped their scourges. But Lysias was not by any means free from anxiety as to the consequences of his illegal conduct. Anxious to rid his hands of this awkward business in a city where the merest trifles were constantly leading to most terrible consequences, he told the chief priests to summon next day a meeting of the Sanhedrim in order to try the prisoner.—Life and Work of St. Paul, by F. W. Farrar.