The life and work of St. Paul

538 THE LIFE AND WOfcK Otf S!t. PAUL.
intense, so kindling, that in the heat of it the iron chains of the Romans
should be as tow ? But was this to be the climax ? Was a trance to be
? Was this evil soul to be
pleaded in defence of the apostasy of the renegade
allowed to produce holy witness for his most flagrant offences P Were they
to bo told, forsooth, that a vision from heaven had bidden him preach to
"
sinners of the Gentiles," and fling open, as he had been doing, the hallowed
privileges of the Jews to those dogs of the uncircuineision ? All that strange
multitude was as one ; the same hatred shot at the same instant through all
their hearts. That word " GENTILES," confirming all their worst suspicions,
fell like a spark on the inflammable mass of their fanaticism. No sooner was
it uttered x than they raised a simultaneous yell of " Away with such a wretch
" a
from the earth ; he ought never to have lived !
Then began one of the most odious and despicable spectacles which tho
world can witness, the spectacle of an Oriental mob, hideous with impotent
rage, howling, yelling, cursing, gnashing their teeth, flinging about their arms,
waving and tossing their blue and red robes, casting dust into the air by hand-
fuls, with all the furious gesticulations of an uncontrolled fanaticism. 3
Happily Paul was out of the reach of their personal fury.* It might goad
them to a courage sufficient to make them rend the air with their cries of
frenzy, and make the court of the Temple look like the refuge for a throng of
demoniacs ; but it hardly prompted them to meet the points of those Roman
broadswords. In great excitement, the commandant ordered the prisoner to
be led into the barracks, and examined by scourging; for, being entirely
ignorant of what Paul had been saying, he wanted to know what further he
could have done to excite those furious yells. The soldiers at once tied his
hands together, stripped his back bare, and bent him forward into the position
for that horrid and often fatal examination by torture which, not far from that
very spot, his Lord had undergone. 5 Thrice before, on that scarred back, had
Paul felt the fasces of Roman lictors ; five times the nine-and-thirty strokes of
Jewish thongs ; here was a new form of agony, the whip the horribile flagellum
which tho Romans employed to force by torture the confession of the truth. 6
But at this stage of the proceedings, Paul, self-possessed even in extremes,
interposed with a quiet question. It had been useless before, it might be
useless now, but it was worth trying, since both the soldiers and their officers
seem already to have been prepossessed by his noble calm and self-control in
1 xxii. 22, TIKOVOV i avrov a\pi TOVTOV rov Xoyov, xal tinjpav Ti)i> faovrjv avruv Aryoxrtf c.r.A.
,
1 Ver. 22, ou KOJ^MV. , A, B, C, D, E, G.
8 xxii. 23. On the sudden excitability of Eastern mobs, and the sudden calm which
often follows it, see Palest. Explor. Fund for April, 1879, p. 77.
4 St. James had spoken of the "many myriads " (Acts ixi. 20) of Jews who, though
zealots for the Law, had embraced the faith. How came it that not one of these "many
myriads " lifted an arm or raised a voice to liberate St. Paul from the perils into which
he had been brought by religious hatred greedily adopting a lying accusation ?
5
xxii. 25, irpoereifev avrov rot? i/iao-iv "stretched him forward with the thongs" to
prepare him for examination by being scourged with fumy. The word ijxT seems
never to mean a scourge.
See Life of Christ, I 187 IL 380.
;