The life and work of St. Paul

334 THE LIFE AJTD WO&K OF ST PAUI
many Gentiles espoused his views. They thought it intolerable that Jews
should try to trump up charges against one who in some measure belonged
to themselves. The opportunity to show these Jews what they thought of
them, and give them a lesson as to the way in which they should behave in
the future, was too tempting. Accordingly they seized Sosthenes, and gave
him a beating in the actual basilica in front of the tribunal, and under the
very eyes of the Proconsul. An ancient gloss says that he pretended not
to see what they were doing, 1 but the text implies that he looked on at the
entire proceeding with unfeigned indifference. So long as they w*r& not
guilty of any serious infraction of the peace, it was nothing to him how
they amused themselves. He had been familiar with similar disturbances in
Borne. The Jews were everywhere a turbulent, fanatical race. What was
it to him if the Greek gamins liked to inflict a little richly-deserved castigation
? It would be so much the better if they taught this Sosthenes and
any number more of these Jews a severe lesson. They would be more likely
(he thought) to keep order in future, and less likely to trouble him again
with their meanness and their malevolence, their riots and their rancours. 2
There is one thing that we cannot but deeply regret It is that Gallio'a
impatient sense of justice has deprived us of another speech by St. Paul
which, delivered under such circumstances, and before such a judge, would
have been of the deepest interest. But Gallio dismissed the whole scene
from his mind as supremely unimportant. Had he ever thought it worth
alluding to, in any letter to his brother Seneca, it would have been in some
such terms as these
"
: I had scarcely arrived when the Jews tried to play
on my inexperience by dragging before me one Panlus, who seems to be an
adherent of Chrestus, or Christus, of whom we heard something at Rome.
I was not going to be troubled with their malefic superstitions, and ordered
them to be turned out. The Greeks accordingly, who were favourable to
Paulus, beat one of the Jews in revenge for their malice. You would have
smiled, if you had been present, at these follies of the turba forensis. Bed
haec hactenus."
But the superficiality which judges only by externals always brings its
own retribution. It adores the mortal and scorns the divinity ; it welcomes
the impostor and turns the angel from its door. It forms its judgment on
trivial accidents, and ignores eternal realities. The haughty, distinguished,
and cultivated Gallio, brother of Seneca, Proconsul of Achaia, the most
popular man and the most eminent litterateur of his day, would have been
to the last degree amazed had any one told him that so paltry an occurrence
would be for ever recorded in history ; that it would be the only scene in bis
life in which posterity would feel a moment's interest ; that he would owe
1 "Tune Gallio fingebat enim non videre" (MS.