The life and work of St. Paul

THB 8AMABITAN8 THE EUNUCH THE OENTUBION. 165
had been surreptitiously put into a box and drawn up the walls of Jerusalem,
the Jews declared that a shudder of earthquake had run through four hundred
parasangs of the Holy Land.1 Yet this filthy and atrocious creature, which could
hardly even be thought of without pollution, was not only the chief delicacy
at Gentile banquets, 2 but was, in one form or other, one of the commonest
articles of Gentile consumption. How could a Jew touch or speak to a human
being who of deliberate choice had banqueted on swine's flesh, and who might
on that very day have partaken of tho abomination P The cleansing of all
articles of food involved far more immediately than has yet been noticed the
acceptance of Gentiles on equal footing to equal privileges.
And doubtless, as such thoughts passed through the soul of Peter, he
remembered also that remarkable " parable " of Jesus of which he and his
brother disciples had once asked the explanation. Jesus in a few words, but
with both of the emphatic formulae which Ho adopted to call special attention
to any utterance of more than
"
ordinary depth and solemnity Hearken unto
me, every one of you, and understand '' "
; If any man haih ears to liear, le,i
him hear," 3 had said, " There is nothing from without a man entering into
him which can defile him." What He had proceeded to say that what
truly denies a man is that which comes out of him was easy enough to
understand, and was a truth of deep meaning; but so difficult had it been
to grasp the first half of the clause, that they had asked Him to explain a
" parable " which seemed to be in direct contradiction to the Mosaic Law.
Expressing His astonishment at their want of insight, He had shown them
that what entered into a man from without did but become a part of his
material organism, entering, " not into the heart, but into the belly, and so
passing into the draught." THIS, HE SAID as now for the first time,
perhaps, flashed with full conviction into the mind of Peter MAKING- ALL
* MEATS PURE as ho ;
proceeded afterwards to develop those weighty truths
about the inward character of all real pollution, and the genesis of all crime
from evil thoughts, which convey so solemn a warning. To me it seems that
it was the trance and vision of Joppa which first made Peter realise the true
meaning of Christ in one of those few distinct utterances in which he had
intimated the coming annulment o the Mosaic Law. It is, doubtless, due to
the fact that St. Peter, as_the informant of St. Mark in writing his Gospel,
1 Jer. EeracMth, iv. 1 ; Derenbourg, Palest. 114 ; Gratz. iii. 480. (The story IB also
told in Babha Kama, f. 82, 2 ; Mcnachoth, f. 64, 2 ; Sotah, f. 49, 2.)
*
Sumen, in Plaut. Cure. ii. 3, 44 ; Pers. i. 53 ; Plin. H. N. xi. 37.-
Mark vii. 14, 16.
* Mark vii. 19. This interpretation, due originally to the early Fathers being found
in Chrysostom, Horn, in Matt. li. p. 526, and Gregory Thaumaturgus was revived, forty
years ago, by the Rev. F. Field, in a note of his edition of St. Chrysostom's Homilies
(iii. 112). (See Expositor for 1876, where I have examined the passage at length.) Here,
however, it lay unnoticed, till it gained, quite recently, the attention which it deserved.
The true reading is certainly Ka.0api&v not the KaBapifrv of our edition a reading due, in
all probability, to the impossibility of making KaiBaplfrv agree with a^ejpira. The loss of
the true interpretation has been very serious. Now, however, it is happily revived. It
has a more direct bearing than any other on the main practical difficulty of the Apostolic