The life and work of St. Paul

EARLY PERSECUTIONS. 59
outpoured by that same Jesus of Nazareth1 whom they had nailed to the cross,
but whose resurrection aud deliverance from the throes of death were foreshadowed
in the Psalms of His glorious ancestor.
The power with which this speech came home to the minds of the hearers ;
the force aud fearlessness with which it was delivered by one who, not two
months before, had been frightened, by the mere question of a curious girl,
the insight into Scripture which it evinced in men
into the denial of his Lord ;
who so recently had shown themselves but ' fools and slow of heart '
to believe
2
all that the prophets had spoken concerning Christ the ; three thousand who
were at once baptised into a profession of the new faith were themselves the
most convincing proofs proofs even more convincing than rushing wind, and
strange tongues, and lambent flames that now indeed the Promise of the
Paraclete had been fulfilled, and that a new ceem had begun in God's dealings
with the world.
CHAPTER VL
EABLY PERSECUTIONS.
" It fills the Church of God ;
The sinful world around ;
it fillB
Only in stubborn hearts and wills
No place for it is found." KEBLE.
THE life of these early Christians was the poetic childhood of the Church in
her earliest innocence. It was marked by simplicity, by gladness, by worship,
by brotherhood. At home, and in their place of meeting, their lives were a
perpetual prayer, their meals a perpetual love-feast and a perpetual eucharist.
In the Temple they attended the public services with unanimous zeaL In the
first impulses of fraternal joy many sold their possessions to contribute to a
common stock. The numbers of the little community increased daily, and the
mass of the people looked on them not only with tolerance, but with admira-
tion and esteem.
The events which followed all tended at first to strengthen their position.
The healing of the cripple in Solomon's porch; the bold speech of Peter
afterwards ; the unshaken constancy with which Peter and John faced the fury
of the Sadducees ; the manner in which all the disciples accepted and even
3 exulted in persecution, if it came in the fulfilment of their duties the ; power
1 Acts ii. 22, Naupaiof , the Galilzean form of 2
Naopato.
Luke xxiv. 25.
It is a very interesting fact that on the first summons of Peter and John before the
Hierarchs, they were dismissed, with threats, indeed, and warnings, but unpunished,
because the Council became convinced (KaroAo^djuci/oi ) that they were "unlearned and
ignorant men " (Acts iv. 13). The words, however, convey too contemptuous a notion to
English readers.
'Aypa^aroi simply means that their knowledge of Jewish culture waa
confined to the Holy Scriptures ; iStuTcu, that they had never studied in rabbinic schools.
The word Htdioi (^(unj?) occurs frequently in the Talmud, and expresses a position far