The life and work of St. Paul

THE LAST JOURNEY TO JEEUSALEM. 527
bound to do all that the Law and the Rabbis required, yet neither did ho feel
himself precluded from any observance which was not wrong. His objection
to Levitiain was not an objection to external conformity, but only to that
substitution of externalism for faith to which conformity might lead. He did
not so much object to ceremonies as to placing any reliance on them. Ho
might have wished that things were otherwise, and that the course suggested
to him involved a less painful sacrifice. He might have boon gladder if the
Eiders had said to him, " Brother, you are detested here at ; any moment the
shout of a mob may rise against you, or the dagger of a Siearius be plunged
into your heart. "We cannot under such circumstances be responsible for
your life. You have given us this splendid proof of your own loyalty and of
the Christian love of your converts. The feast is over. 1
Retire at once with
safety, and with our prayers and our blessings continue your glorious work."
Alas ! such advice was only a " might have been." He accepted the suggestion
they offered, and the very next day entered the Temple with these four
Nazarites, went through whatever preliminary purification was deemed neces-
sary by the Oral Law, and gave notice to the priests that from this time they
must begin to count the eeven days which must pass before the final offerings
2
woro brought and the vow concluded.
If the Elders overrated the conciliatory effect of this act of conformity,
they had certainly underrated the peril to which it would expose tho great
missionary who, more than they all, had done his utmost to fulfil that Last
command of Christ that they ehould go into all the world and preach the
Gospel to every creature. The city was full of strangers from every region of
tho world, and the place where of all others they would delight to congregate
would be tho courts of tho Temple. Even, therefore, if St. Paul, now that
the storms of years had scarred his countenance and bent his frame, was so
fortunate as to remain unrecognised by any hostile priest who had known him
in former days, it was hardly possible that every one of the thousands whom
he had met in scores of foreign cities should fail to identify that well-known
face and figure.
It would have been far safer, if anything compelled him to
linger in the Holy City, to live unnoticed in tho lowly house of Mnason. He
might keep as quiet as he possibly could in that chamber of the Nazarites ;
i The Pentecost only lasted one day.
3 In some such way I understand the obscure and disputed expressions of ver. 26; but
even with the Talmudic treatise Nazir beside us, we know too little of the details to be
sure of the exact process gone through, or of the exact meaning of the expressions used.
Some take ayi/nrfVi? and ayvurub? to mean that St. Paul took on him the Nazaiite vow
with them (cf. Narab. vi. 3, 5, LXX.)- This seems to be impossible, because thirty days
is tho shortest period mentioned by the Mishna for a temporary vow. Mr. Lewin and
others have conjectured that he was himself a Nazarite, having taken the vow after his
peril at Epheaus, as on tha previous occasion after his peril at Corinth ; and that this
was the reason why he was BO anxious to get to Jerusalem. But if so, why did not St.
Luke mention the circumstance as he had done before ? And if so, why was it necessary
to pay the expenses of these four Nazarites when the fulfilment of his own personal vow
would have been a sufficient and more striking proof of willingness to conform to Mosaism
in his personal conduct ? Moreover, the proposal of the EHers evidently came to St. Paul
gnexpcctedly,