The life and work of St. Paul

534 THE LIffE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL.
no undistinguished city, 1
and, I entreat you, allow me to speak to the
people."
It was an undaunted request to come from one whose life had just been
rescued, and barely rescued, from that raging mob, and who was at that
moment suffering from their rough treatment. Most men would have been
in a state of such wild alarm as to desire nothing so much as to bo hurried out
of sight of the crowd. Not so with St. Paul. Snatched from his persecutors
after imminent risk barely delivered from that most terrifying of all forms
of danger, the murderous fury of masses of his fellow-men he asks leave
not only to face, but oven to turn round and address, the densely.thronging
thousands, who wore only kept from him by a little belt of Roman swords. 2
Lysias gave him leave to speak, and apparently ordered one of his hands
and taking his stand on the stairs, Paul, with uplifted arm,
to bo unfettered ;
made signals to the people that he wished to address them. s The mob
became quiet, for in the East crowds are much more instantly swayed by
their emotions than they are among us ; and Paul, speaking in Syriac, the
vernacular of Palestine, and noticing priests and Sanhedrists among the
crowd, began
"Brethren and Fathers,* listen to the defence I have now to make to
you!"
The sound of their own language, showing that the speaker was at any rate
no mere Hellenist, charmed their rage for the moment, and produced a still
deeper silence. In that breathless hush Paul continued his speech. It was
adapted to its object with that consummate skill which, even at the most
exciting moments, seems never to have failed him. While he told them the
truth, he yet omitted all facts which would be likely to irritate them, and
which did not bear on his immediate object. That object was to show that
he could entirely sympathise with them in this outburst of zeal, because
he had once shared their state of mind, and that nothing short of divino
revelations had altered the course of his religion and hia life. He was,
he told them, a Jew, 6 born indeed in Tarsus, yet trained from his earliest
youth in Jerusalem, at the feet of no less a teacher than their great living
ilabban Gamaliel ; that he was not merely a Jew, but a Pharisee who had
6 studied the inmost intricacy of the Halacha ; and was so like themselves in
being a zealot for God, that he had persecuted " this way " to the very death,
1 o< d}fiov *4Aei*f (Eur. Ion. 8). It 'wut a-jro'vo^o?, &nd & p^rpoiroXi?, and had a famcua
university.
2
Knox, who thought that Paul did wrong to take the TOW, says, "He was brought
into the most desperate danger, God designing to show thereby that we must not do
evil that good may come."
8 Ver. 40, MweVeicre T$ x pu Cf. xii. 17 ; xix. 33 ; xxi. 40. Of. Pers, iv. 5, "Calidm
fecisse silentia turbae Maj estate mantis."
4 See St. Stephen's exordium (yii. 2).
6
xxii. 3, into 'lov&uot. To Lysias he had used the general expression &v6p*s*ot 'lav-S.
(xxl. 39).
*-xxii. 3, KO.TO. oicpt/3etav rov warpifov vfiov. Cf. xxvi. 5; Jos. B. J. it 8, 14; Th3e
"accuracy" corresponds to the Hebrew tsedakaJt, End the Talmudic dikdukty ('pnpi),