The life and work of St. Paul

50 THE LIFE AND WOBK OF ST. PAUL.
1 with Old Testament analogies and Jewish custom, 2
prayed
3 would appoint the one whom He chose. The names were written on
to God that Ho
tablets and dropped into a vessel. The vessel was shaken, and the name of
Matthias leapt out. He was accordingly reckoned among the twelve
Apostles.*
We are told nothing further respecting the events of the ten days which
elapsed between the Ascension and Pentecost. With each of those days
the yearning hope, the keen expectation, must have grown more and more
intense, and most of all when the day of Pentecost had dawned. 6
It was tho
first day of the week, and tho fiftieth day after Nisan 16. The very circumstances
of the day would add to the vividness of their feelings. The
Pentecost was not only one of the three great yearly feasts, and the Feast of
Harvest, but it came to be identified and quite rightly in Jewish consciousness
with the anniversary of the giving of the Law on Sinai. 6 The mere
fact that another solemn festival had come round, and that at the last
great festival their Lord had been crucified in the sight of the assembled
myriads who thronged to the Passover, would be sufficient on this solemn
morning to absorb their minds with that overwhelming anticipation which was
a forecast of a change in themselves and in the world's history of a new and
eternal consecration to the service of a new law and the work of a new
life.
It was early morning. Before "the third hour of the day" summoned
them to the Temple for morning prayer/ tho believers, some hundred and
twenty in number, were gathered once more, according to their custom, in the
upper room. It has been imagined by some that the great event of this first
Whit-Sunday must have taken place in the Temple. The word rendered
B, E), see Lightfoot, HOT. Hebr., ad loc. There is a Judas Barsabbas in Acts xv. 22.
Matthias is said to have been martyred (Niceph. ii. 60), and there were apocryphal
writings connected with his name (Euseb. H. E. lii. 29 ; Clem. Alex. Strom, ii. 163).
1 Numb. xxvi. 55, 56 ; Josh. vii. 14 ; 1 Sam. x. 20 ; Prov. xvi. 33. 8 Luke i. 9.
8 araStifov, " appoint, " not "show": Luke x. 1, /neri 5 TOVTO. oWSfifrv 6 Kvpiot , irtpovs,
ijSSofiTjKovra. The word is peculiar in the N.T. to St. Luke. For eft/u'fw, see Acts i. 2,
rots an-o^ToAoi* . . . . ofls efeAefaro. I need hardly notice the strange view that the
election of St. Matthias was a sheer mistake made before the gift of the Spirit, and that
Paul was in reality the destined twelfth Apostle ! (Stier, Reden d. Apost, i. 15. )
* The method in which the lot was cast (see Lev. xvi. 8 ; Ezek. xxiv. 6) is not certain,
but the expression Kwxav, rather than tfiaXov jeA^pous avrofc i goes against the notion of their
casting dice as in Luke
"
xxiii. 34. The lot/eW on Matthias " is a common idiom in all
languages (Horn. II. v. 316 ; Od. E. 209 ; Ps. xxii. 18 ; Jon. i. 7, &c. ; ut cujusquc sors
exciderat ; Liv. xxi. 42). From the use of the word KArjpos in this passage, in ver. 17 and
in viii, 21, xxvi. 18, is probably derived the Latin clerus and our clergy, clerici, (cXJjpos =
TO ovanjfia r&v SIOKOVUV na.1
irpevpyrepiav, (Suid.) (Wordsworth, ad. loc.)
6 This is the obvious meaning of ' '