The life and work of St. Paul

AT ErHESTJS. 365
seven itinerant impostors 1 visited a man who waa evidently a raving maniac,
but who had those sufficiently lucid perceptions of certain subjects which
many madmen still retain. Addressing the evil demon, they exclaimed, " We
exorcise you by Jesus, whom Paul preacheth." In this instance, however, the
adjuration proved to be a humiliating failure. The maniac astutely replied,
" Jesus I recognise, and Paul I know ;
2 but who are you ?" and then leaping
upon them with tho superhuman strength of madness, he tore their clothes
off their backs, and inflicted upon them such violent injuries that they were
glad to escape out of the house stripped and wounded.
So remarkable a story could not remain unknown. It spread like wildfire
among the gossiping Ephesians, and produced a remarkable feeling of dread
and astonishment. One result of it was most beneficial. We have had re-
peated occasion to observe that the early Christians who had been redeemed
from heathendom, either in the coarsenesses of slave-life or in the refined
abominations of the higher classes, required a terrible struggle to deliver
themselves by the aid of God's Holy Spirit from the thraldom of past cor-
ruption. The sternly solemn emphasis of St. Paul's repeated warnings
the actual facts which occurred in the history of the early churches show
conclusively that tho early converts required to be treated with extreme for-
bearance, while, at the same time, they were watched over by their spiritual
rulers with incessant vigilance. The stir produced by the discomfiture of the
Beni Sceva revealed the startling fact that some of the brethren in embracing
Christianity had not abandoned magic. Stricken in conscience, these secret
dealers in the superstitious trumpery of " curious arts " now came forward in
the midst of the community and confessed their secret malpractices. Nor
was it only the dupes who acknowledged the error. Even the deceivers came
forward, and gave the most decisive proof of their sincerity by rendering
impossible any future chicanery. They brought the cabalistic and expensive
books 3 which had been the instruments of their trado, and publicly burned
plained by an unutterably silly story as to the means by which He possessed himself of
the Shzmluimephoresk: or sacred name. Witchcraft had in all ages been prevalent among
the Jews (Ex. xxii. 18 ; 1 Sam. xxviii. 3, 9 ; Mio. v. 12) ; it continued to be so at the
Christian era, and it was necessary even to warn converts against any addiction to it
(Gal. v. 20 ; 2 Tim. iii. 13, yd^r).
1 In verse 16 the reading a^^oT.'po* of N> A, B, D, is almost certainly correct. They
were actuated by exactly tho same motives as Simon Magus, but had shown leac cunning
in trying to cany them out.
Acts SIX. 15, To* 'h}ffoC> yiypwericu Kail rw IlaOAov^tirurrafiai; Vulg., "Jesum novi t)t
Paiilum scio."
3 On these < ypafj^ara see the illustrations adduced by Wetstein. Some of them
were copies of the mystic words and n.vnos engraved in enigmatic formulae (