The life and work of St. Paul

THE LAST JOTmWEY TO JERUSALEM. 531
Four thossand of these poor deluded wretches seem actually to have accompanied
him to the Mount of Olives. There Felix fell upon them, routed them
at the first onslaught, killed four hundred, took a multitude of prisoners, and
brought the whole movement to an impotent conclusion. The Egyptian, however,
had by some means or other made good his escape was at this moment-
uncaptnred and, in fact, was never hoard of any more. But the way in
which followers had flocked in thousands to so poor an impostor showed the
tension of men's minds.
Such was the condition of events in so excited a state were the leaders
and the multitude at the very time that St. Paul was keeping himself as
quiet as possible in the chambers of the Nazarites. Four days had already
passed, and there seemed to be a hope that, as the number of pilgrims began
to thin, he might be safe for three more days, after which there would be
nothing to prevent him from carrying out his long-cherished wish to visit
Rome, and from thence to preach the Gospel even as far as Spain. Alas ! he
was to visit Rome, but not as a free man.
For on the fifth day there were some Jews from Ephesus and other cities
of Asia perhaps Alexander the coppersmith was one of thorn in the Court
of the Women, and the glare of hatred suddenly shot into the eyes of one of
these observers as he recognised the marked features of the hated Shaul. He
instantly attracted towards him the attention of some of the compatriots to
whom Paul's teaching was so well known. The news ran in a moment through
the passionate, restless, fanatical crowd. In one minute there arose one of
those deadly cries which are the first beginnings of a sedition. These Asiatics
sprang on Paul, and stirred up the vast throng of worshippers with the cry,
" Israelites ! help ! This is the wretch who teaches all men everywhere against
the people, and the Thorah, and the Temple. Ay, and besides that, he brought
Greeks into the Temple, and hath polluted this holy place." Whether they
really thought so or not we cannot tell, but they had no grounds for this mad
charge beyond the fact that they had seen the Ephesian Trophimus walking
about with Paul in the streets of Jerusalem, and supposed that Paul had
taken him even into the holy precincts. To defile the Temple was what every
enemy of the Jews tried to do. Antiochus, Heliodorus, Pompey, had pro.
faned it ;
and very recently the Samaritans had been charged with deliberately
polluting it by scattering dead men's bones over its precincts. Instantly the
rumour flew from lip to lip that this was Shanl, of whom they had heard?
Paul, the mesttTi Paul, one of the Galilaean Minim one of the believers ia
"{he Hung %-Paul, the renegade Rabbi, who taught and wrote that Gfeutiles
were as good as Je'ws -the maa who blasphemed the ThoTai the man whom
the synagogues had scourged in vainthe man who went from place to plaea
getting them into trouble with the Romans ; and that he had been caught
taking with him into the Temple a Gentile dog, an uneircumcised ger. 1 The
1 Had he done thia he would have incurred the censure in Ezek. xlir. 7; cf. Eph. ii.
14. The following remarkabletpasBage of the Talmud is a self-condemnation by the Jewish
teachers .'"What," it is asked, "was the cause of the destruction of the first Temple"