The life and work of St. Paul

144 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
THE RECOGNITION OF THE GENTILES.
CHAPTER XV.
THE SAMARITANS THE EUNUCH THE OENTUBIOH.
" Whenever I look at Peter, my very heart leaps for joy. If I could paint a
portrait of Peter I would paint upon every hair of his head ' I believe in the forgiveness
of sins.' " LVTHBK.
" Quel Padre vetusto
Di santa chiesa, a cui Cristo le chiavi
Kacommand6 di questo fior venusto."
DANTE, Paradito, xxxii. 124.
" Blessed is the eunuch, which with his hands hath wrought no iniquity, nor
imagined wicked things against God : for unto him shall be given the special gift of
faith, and an inheritance in the temple of the Lord more acceptable to his mind.
For glorious is the fruit of good labours : and the root of wisdom shall never fall
away." WISD. iii. 14, 16.
THE peace, the progress, the edification, the holiness of the Church, were
caused, no doubt, by that rest from persecution which seems to have been due
to the absorption of the Jews in the desire to avert the outrageous sacrilege of
Gaius. And yet we cannot but ask with surprise whether the Christians
looked on with indifference at the awful insult which was being aimed at their
national religion. It would mark a state of opinion very different from what
we should imagine if they had learnt to regard the unsullied sanctity of
Jehovah's Temple as a thing in which they had no longer any immediate
concern. Can we for one moment suppose that James the Lord's brother, or
Simon the Zealot, were content to enjoy their freedom from molestation,
without caring to take part in the despairing efforts of their people to move
the compassion of the Legate of Syria ? Is it conceivable that they would
have stayed quietly at home while the other Jews in tens of thousands were
streaming to his headquarters at Csesarea, or flinging the dust upon their heads
as they lay prostrate before him at Tiberias P Or was it their own personal
peril which kept them from mingling among masses of fanatics who indignantly
rejected their co-operation ? Were they forced to confine their energies to the
teaching of the infant churches of Palestine because they were not even
allowed to participate in the hopes and fears of their compatriots ? We may
fairly assume that the Jewish Christians abhorred the purposed sacrilege ; but
if the schools of Hillol and Shammai, and the cliques of Hauan and Herod,
hated them only one degree less than they hated the minions of Gaius,
it is
evident that there could have been nothing for the Apostles to do but to rejoice
over their immediate immunity from danger, and to employ the rest thus
granted them for the spread of the Kingdom of God. The kings of the earth
might rage, and the princes imagine Tain things, but they, at least, could kiss