The life and work of St. Paul

THE CLOSING DATS. 675
the life of utter self-(sacrifice, and the life of unfathomable self-indulgence :
the representatives of two religions Christianity in its dawning brightness,
of two theories of life the
Paganism in its effete despair : the representatives
simplicity of self-denying endurance ready to give up life itself for the good
of others, the luxury of shameless Hedonism which valued no consideration
divine or human in comparison with a new sensation : the representatives of
two spiritual powers the slave of Christ and the incarnation of Antichrist.
And their respective positions showed how much, at this time, the course of
this world was under the control of the Prince of the Power of the Air for
incest and matricide were clothed in purple, and seated on the curule chair,
amid the ensigns of splendour without limit and power beyond control ; and
he whose life had exhibited all that was great and noble in the heart of
man stood in peril of execution, despised, hated, fettered, and in rags.
But Roman Law was still Roman Law, and, except where passions of
unusual intensity interfered, some respect was still paid to the forms of
justice.
For the time, at any rate, Paul was rescued out of the lion's mouth.
There was some flaw in the indictment, some deficiency in the evidence ; and
though St. Paul well knew that it was but a respite which was permitted him,
for the time at any rate he was remanded to his prison. And Nero, if indeed
he were "the lion" before whom this first defence had been pleaded, had no
further door for repentance opened to him in this life. Had he too trembled,
as Paul reasoned before him of temperance, righteousness, and the judgment
to come ? Had he too listened in alarm as Herod Antipas had listened to
the Baptist P Had he too shown the hue of passing shame on those bloated
features so deformed by the furrows of evil passion as, at the Council of
Constance, the Emperor Sigismund blushed when John Huss upbraided him
with the breach of his pledged word P The Emperor, who stood nearest to
Nero in abysmal depravity, and who, like him, being himself unutterably
impure and bad, had the innermost conviction that all others were at heart
the same, used to address grave men with the most insulting questions, and
if the indignant blood mantled on their cheeks, he used to exclaim, " Erubuit,
salva res est." l " He blushed ; it is all right." But of Domitian we are
expressly told that he could not blush; that his flushed cheeks were an
impervious barrier against the access of any visible shame.2 And in all
probability Nero was infinitely too far gone to blush. It is far more probable
that, like Gallic, he only listened to the defence of this worn and aged Jew
with ill-concealed impatience and profound disdain. He would have regarded
such a man as this as something more abject than the very dust beneath his
feet. He would have supposed that Paul regarded it as the proudest honour
of his life even to breathe the same atmosphere as the Emperor of Rome.
His chance of hearing the words of truth returned no more. '
About this time
he sailed on his frivolous expedition to Greece ; and after outraging to an
extent almost inconceivable the very name of Roman, by the public singings
i
Heliogabalvu.
* Tac. Aync. 45 ; Suet. Uwn, 18 ; JPiin. I'anqj- 48,