The life and work of St. Paul

558 THE LIPS AND WOEX OF ST. PAUL.
As no accusers were present, and this was not in any respect a judiei&l
assembly, Agrippa, as the person for whom the whole scene was got np, told
Paul that he was allowed to speak about himself. Had the Apostle been of
a morose disposition he might have despised the hollowness of these mock
proceedings. Had he been actuated by any motives lower than the highest,
ha might have seized the opportunity to flatter himself into favour in the
absence of bis enemies. But the predominant feature in his, as in the very
greatest characters, was a continual seriousness and earnestness, and his only
desire was to plead not his own cause, but that of his Master. Featus, with
the Roman adulation, which in that ago outran even the appetite of absolutism,
had used that title of "the Lord," which the later Emperors seized with
avidity, but which the earliest and ablest of them had contemptuously refused.*
But Paul was neither imposed upon by these colossal titles of reverence, nor
daunted by these pompous inanities o reflected power.
There is not a word of his address which does not prove how completely
he was at his ease. The scarlet eagum of the Procurator, the fasces of the
lictors, the swords of the legionaries, the gleaming armour of the ChiliarcLs,
did not for one moment daunt him, they were a terror, not to good works,
bat to the evil ; and he felt that his was a service which was above all sway.
Stretching out his hand in the manner familiar to the orators whom he had
often heard in Tarsus or in Antioch, 2 he began by the sincere remark that
he was particularly happy to make his defence before King Agrippa, notwhich
would have been false for any special worth of his, but because the
prince had received from his father whose anxiety to conform to the Law,
both written and oral, was well known an elaborate training in all matters
of Jewish religion and casuistry, which could not fail to interest him in a
question of which he was so competent to judge. He begged, therefore, for
a patient audience, and narrated once more the familiar story of his conversion
from the standpoint of a rigid and bigoted Pharisee to a belief that the Mes-
sianic hopes of his nation had now been actually fulfilled in that Jesus of
Nazareth, whose followers he had at first furiously persecuted, but who had
won him, by a personal revelation of His glory, to the knowledge that He had
risen from the dead. Why should that belief appear incredible to his hearers?
but how could he resist the eye-witness of a
It once bad been so to himself ;
noonday vision P and how could he disobey the heavenly voice which sent
him forth to open tho eyes both of Jews and Gentiles, that they might turn
from darkness to light, and tho power of Satan unto God, that, by faith in
Jesus, they might receive remission of sins and a lot among the sanctified P
He had not been disobedient to it. In Damascus, in Jerusalem, throughout
all Judaea, and subsequently among the Gentiles, he had been a preacher of
repentance and conversion towards God, and a life consistent therewith.
This was why the Jews had seized him in tho Temple and tried to tear him
1 Suet. Oct. 59 ; Tiber. 27 ; Domit. 13.
2 Plut. Caa., p. 729; Appul. Mttam. 11., "porrigit dsxtrain ct td inatar oratoruas
eonformat articulum."