The life and work of St. Paul

156 THE LIFE AND WOKK OF ST. PAUL.
and the sole ultimate authority for this vision in the Acts, is the source of
both narratives, that we owe the hitherto unnoticed circumstance that the two
verbs "cleanse" and "profane" both in a peculiarly pregnant sense are
the two most prominent words in the narrative of both events.
While Peter thus pondered perplexed, indeed, but with a
dawning
new light
in his soul the circumstance occurred which gave to his vision
its full significance. 'Trained, like all Jews, in unquestioning belief of a
daily Providence exercised over the minutest no less than over the greatest
events of life, Peter would have been exactly in the mood which was prepared
to accept any further indication of God's will from whatever source it came.
The recognised source of such guidance at this epoch was the utterance of
voices apparently accidental which the Jews reckoned as their sole remaining
kind of inspired teaching, and to which they gave the name of Bath-Kol. 1
The first words heard by Peter after his singular trance were in the voices of
Gentiles. In the courtyard below him were three Gentiles, of whom one was
in the garb of a soldier. Having asked their way to the house of Simon the
Tanner, they were now inquiring whether a certain Simon, who bore the
surname of Peter, was lodging there. Instantly there shot through his mind
a gleam of heavenly light. He saw the divine connexion between the vision
of his trance and the inquiry of these Gentiles, and a Yoice within him
warned him that these men had come in accordance with an express intima-
tion of God's will, and that he was to go with them without question or
hesitation. He instantly obeyed. He descended from the roof, told the
messengers he was the person whom they were seeking, and asked their
business. They were the bearers of a "
strange message. Cornelius," they
said, " a centurion, a just man, and a worshipper of God, to whose virtues the
entire Jewish nation bore testimony, had received an angelic intimation to
send for him, and hear his instructions." Peter at once offered them the free
and simple hospitality of the East ; and as it was too hot and they were too
tired to start at once on their homeward journey, they rested there until the
following morning. Further conversation would have made Peter aware that
Cornelius was a centurion of the Italian band 2 that not ;
only he, but all his
"
that the generosity of his almsgiving and the earnest-
house, " feared God ;
ness of his prayers were widely known ; and that the intimation to send for
Peter had been given to him while he was fasting on the previous day at throe
o'clock. He had acted upon it so immediately that, in spite of the heat and
the distance of thirty miles along shore and plain, his messengers had arrived
at Joppa by the following noon.
The next morning they all started on the journey which was to involve
such momentous issues How deeply alive St. Peter himself was to the
consequences which might ensue from his act is significantly shown by his
1 Liffpf Christ, 1. 118.
2 The Italian cohort wa probably one composed of " Velones," Italian volunteer*.
" Cohors militum voluntaria, quae est in Syria" (Grater, Inter, i. 434 ; Akerman, Hum,
niustr. 34).
It would be specially required at Caosarea,