The life and work of St. Paul

176 THB LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAT/I*.
against the followers of Christ, and would have been an eager instrument in
the hands of Herod. When such allies were in unison, and Agrippa in the
very plenitude of his power, it was easy to strike a deadly blow at the Nazarenes.
It was no bold Hellenist who was now singled out as a victim, no
spirited opponent of Jewish exclusiveness. James, as the elder brother of the
beloved disciple, perhaps as a kinsman of Christ Himself, as one of the earliest
and one of the most favoured Apostles, as one not only of the Twelve, but of
the Three, as the son of a father apparently of higher social position than the
rest of the little band, seems to have had a sort of precedence at Jerusalem ;
and for this reason alone not, so far as we are aware, from being personally
obnoxious he was so suddenly seized and martyred that no single detail or
circumstance of his martyrdom has been preserved. Two words 1 are all the
space devoted to recount the death of the first Apostle by the historian who
had narrated at such length the martyrdom of Stephen. It may be merely due
to a sense of inadequacy in this brief record that Christian tradition told how
the constancy and the harangues of James converted his accuser, and caused
him to become a voluntary sharer of his death. 8 But perhaps we are meant to
see a spiritual fitness in this lonely and unrecorded end of the son of Thunder.
He had stood by Jesus at the bedside of the daughter of Jairus, and on the
holy mount, and in the agony of the garden ; had once wished to call down fire
from heaven on those who treated his Lord with incivility ; had helped to urge
the claim that he might sit in closest proximity to His throne of judgment.
There is a deep lesson in the circumstance that he should, meekly and silently,
in utter self-renouncement, with no visible consolation, with no elaborate
eulogy, amid no pomp of circumstance, with not even a recorded burial, perish
first of the faithful few who had forsaken all to follow Christ, and so be the
first to fulfil the warning prophecy that he should drink of His bitter cup, and
be baptised with His fiery baptism.
It was before the Passover that James had been doomed to feel the tyrant's
sword. The universal approbation of the fact by the Jews an approbation
which would be all the more conspicuous from the presence of the vast throngs
who came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover stimulated the king, to
whom no incense was so sweet as the voice of popular applause, to inflict a
blow yet more terrible by seizing the most prominent of all the Apostles.
Pet'er was accordingly arrested, and since there was no time to finish his trial
before the Passover, and the Jews were not inclined to inflict death by their
own act during the Feast, he was kept in prison till the seven sacred days had
elapsed that ho might then be put to death with the most ostentations publicity.
8
Day after day the Apostle remained in close custody, bound by either
arm to two soldiers, and guarded by two others. Aware how irreparable would
be the loss of one so brave, so true, so gifted with spiritual fervour and wisdom,
1 Acts xil. 2, di/iX . . . paxcupf.
9 Clem. Alex. ap. Euseb. H. E. ii 9. The Apostle, it to said, looked at him for ft
little time, and then kissed him, with the words, "Peace be with you," just before they
both were killed.
Acts xii. 4,