The life and work of St. Paul

A MABTYBDOM AND A BETEIBtJTIOtf. 177
the Christians of Jerusalem poured out their hearts and souls in prayer for his
deliverance. But it seemed as if all would be in vain. The last night of the
Feast had come ; the dawn of the morning would see Peter brought forth to
the mockery of trial, and the certainty of death. It seemed as if the day had
already come when, as his Lord had told him, another should gird him, and
carry him whither he would not. But in that hist extremity God had not forsaken
His Apostle or His Church. On that last night, by a divine deliverance,
so sudden, mysterious, and bewildering, that to Peter, until he woke to the
sober certainty of his rescue, it seemed like a vision, 1 the great Apostle was
snatched from his persecutors. After briefly narrating the circumstances of
his deliverance to the brethren assembled in the house of Mary, the mother of
John Mark the Evangelist, he entrusted them with the duty of bearing the
same message to James, the Lord's brother, and to the other Christians who
were not present, and withdrew for a time to safe retirement, while Herod was
left to wreak his impotent vengeonce on the unconscious quaternion of soldiers.
It might well seem as though the blood of martyrdom brought its own
retribution on the heads of those who cause it to be spilt. We have seen
Agrippa in the insolent plenitude of his tyranny ; the next scene exhibits him
in the horrible anguish of his end. It was at the beginning of April, A.D. 44,
that he had slain James and arrested Peter ; it was probably the very same
month which ended his brief and guilty splendour, and cut him off in the
flower of his life.
Versatile and cosmopolitan as was natural in an adventurer whose youth
and manhood had experienced every variety of fortune, Agrippa could play the
heathen at Csesarea with as much zeal as he could play the Pharisee at Jerusa-
lem. The ordinary herd of Eabbis and hierarchs had winked at this phase
of his royalty, and had managed to disintegrate in their imaginations the
Herod who offered holocausts in the ^Temple from the Herod who presided
the Herod who wept, because he was only half
in amphitheatres at Berytus ;
a Jew, in the Temple at the Passover, and the Herod who presided at
Pagaa spectacles at Caesarean jubilees. 2 One bold Pharisee Simon by
name did indeed venture for a time to display the courage of his opinions.
During an absence of Agrippa from Jerusalem, he summoned an assembly, and
declared the king's actions to be so illegal that, on this ground, as well as on
the ground of his Idumaean origin, he ought to be excluded from the Temple.
As it was not Agrippa's object to break with the Pharisees, he merely sent for
Simon to Csesarea, made him sit by his side in the theatre, and then asked him,
gently, " whether he saw anything there which contradicted the law of Moses P"
Simon either was or pretended to be convinced that there was no overt infrac-
tion of Mosaic regulations, and after begging the king's pardon was dismissed
with a small present.
It was in that same theatre that Agrippa met his end. Severe troubles
had arisen in the relations between Judaea and the Phoenician cities of Tyre
' Acts xii 9.
2 Jos. Antt. xix. 7, 4.