NOTES ON THE INTERNATIONAL LESSON.
A ROMAN judge to whom a prisoner had been sent with an elogium was bound, if possible, to try him within three days. Felix, however, had to send a message to Jerusalem, and fix a time for the case to come on, in order that the accusers might be present; and as the journey took nearly two days, it was the fifth day after St. Paul’s arrival at Cesarea that he was brought to trial. The momentary diversion in his favor, of which by this time the Pharisees were probably ashamed, had settled into a unanimous hatred, and the elders, probably of both parties, hurried down to accuse their adversary. Ananias in person accompanied them, eager for revenge against the man who had compared him to a plastered sepulcher. It must have been intensely disagreeable to these dignified personages to be forced to hurry on a fatiguing journey of some seventy miles from the religious to the political capital of Judea, in order to induce a Gentile dog to give up an apostate mesith to their jurisdiction; but the Sanhedrists, smarting under defeat, would not be likely to leave any stone unturned which should bring the offender within reach of vengeance. They wished to make sure of the extradition of their victim, and being little able to plead either in Greek or Latin, and more or less ignorant of the procedure in Roman courts, they gave their brief to a provincial barrister named Tertullus. Tertullus was evidently a practiced speaker, and St. Luke has faithfully preserved an outline of his voluble plausibility. Speaking with politic complaisance, as though he were himself a Jew, he began to assure his Excellency of the quite universal and uninterrupted gratitude of the Jews for the peace which he had secured to them, and for the many reforms which had been initiated by his prudential wisdom. The real fact was that Felix was most peculiarly detested, and that though he had certainly suppressed some brigands, yet he had from the earliest times of his administration distinctly encouraged more. He then apologized for intruding ever so briefly on his Excellency’s indulgent forbearance, but it was necessary to trouble him with three counts of indictment against the defendant, namely, that, first, he was a public pest, who lived by exciting factions among all the Jews all over the world; secondly, that he was a ringleader of the Nazarenes; and thirdly, that he had attempted to profane the temple. When the oration was over, since there were no regular witnesses, the Jews one after another “made a dead set” against Paul, asseverating the truth of all that Tertullus had stated. Then the procurator, already impatient with the conviction that this was, as Lysias had informed him, some Jewish squabble about Mosaic minutiae, flung a haughty nod to the prisoner, in intimation that he might speak. St. Paul’s captatio benevolentiae was very different from that of Tertullus. He met the first and third counts of the indictment with a positive contradiction, and challenged the Jews to produce any witnesses in confirmation of them. As to the second count, he was quite ready to admit that he belonged to what they called a sect; but it was no more an illegal sect than those to which they themselves belonged, since he worshiped the God whom, as a Jew, he had been always taught to worship—frankly accepted their entire Scriptures—and believed, exactly as the majority of themselves did, in a resurrection of the just and unjust. In this faith it had always been his aim to have a conscience void of offense towards God and towards man. He had now been five years absent from Jerusalem, and on returning with alms for the poor of his people, and offerings for the temple, they found him in the temple, a quiet and legally purified worshiper. For the riot which had ensued he was not responsible. The case had evidently broken down. St. Paul’s statement of facts directly contradicted the only charge brought against him. The differences of doctrine between the Jews and himself were not in any way to the point, since they affected questions which had not been touched upon at all, and of which the Roman law could take no cognizance. Of this fact Felix was perfectly aware. He therefore postponed the trial. Paul was remanded to the guard-room, but Felix gave particular instructions to the centurion that his custody was not to be a severe one, and that his friends were to be permitted free access to his prison. St. Luke and Aristarchus certainly availed themselves of this permission, and doubtless the heavy hours were lightened by the visits of Philip the evangelist, and other Christians of the little Cesarean community to whom Paul was dear. On his return to Cesarea with his wife Drusilla, Felix once more summoned Paul into his presence, and bade him discourse to them about his beliefs. Right nobly did Paul use his opportunity. Felix was a Gentile, and was moreover his judge, and it was no part of St. Paul’s duty to judge those that are without. Had he assumed such a function, his life must have become one incessant and useless protest. And yet, with perfect urbanity and respect for the powers that be, he spoke of the faith in Christ which he was bidden to explain, in a way that enabled him to touch on those virtues which were most needed by the guilty pair who listened to his words. The licentious princess must have blushed as he discoursed of continence; the rapacious and unjust governor as he spoke of righteousness—both of them as he reasoned of the judgment to come. Whatever may have been the thoughts of Drusilla, she locked them up in her own bosom; but Felix, less accustomed to such truths, was deeply agitated by them. As he glanced back over the stained and guilty past, he was afraid. He had been a slave, in the vilest of all positions, at the vilest of all epochs, in the vilest of all cities. He had been an officer of those auxiliaries who were the worst of all troops. What secrets of lust and blood lay hidden in his earlier life we do not know; but ample and indisputable testimony reveals to us what he had been—how greedy, how savage, how treacherous, how unjust, how steeped with the blood of private murder and public massacre—during the eight years which he had now spent in the government, first of Samaria, then of Palestine.119There were footsteps behind him; he began to feel as though “the earth were made of glass.” He could not bear the novel sensation of terror which crept over him, or the reproaches of the blushing, shamefaced spirit which began to mutiny even in such a breast as his. He cut short the interview. “Go,” he said, “for the present; I will take some future opportunity to summon you to a hearing.”—Farrar’s Life of Paul.