He also laid down the proposition, which agreed with what Christ had himself taught, that Israel had not attained to righteousness; but that an elect remnant had attained to it in Christ, and the rest were blinded.

It is very noticeable that S. Paul, though so strongly opposing the Judaizers, never dissociates himself from the true Judaism, from the hope and calling of Israel. When in his Roman lodging he spoke to the Jews of the Roman synagogue, he declared that because of the hope of Israel, he was bound with that chain. In his view the religion of Christ had not divorced the past, but had absorbed it; the forms of Judaism must die, but its spirit lived in the gospel of Christ.

But it was not till Christ sent forth His armies to destroy those murderers, and to burn up their city; it was not till the end of the age was consummated, and Christ came in the clouds of heaven, and the elements of Judaism melted with fervent heat, and the heavens passed away with a great noise; it was not till the Temple and the Temple service were swept away, that the Christian Church stood out before the world as the future universal religion, the Catholic Church.

CHAPTER VIII.

S. PAUL BEFORE KINGS AND RULERS.

HEN the Lord appeared to Ananias and bid him go and seek out Saul of Tarsus, He said of him-" He is a chosen vessel unto me to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel."

We have already seen how he had borne his Master's name before the Gentiles, and before the children of Israel; let us now enquire how he bore that name before kings and rulers.

At the outset of his first missionary journey he stood before the Proconsul of Cyprus, and proclaimed his Master's Gospel with such effect, that this highly placed official of the Empire, Sergius Paulus, believed, even if he did not become a disciple of the Crucified.

He stood before the would-be Roman prætors at Philippi, who shamefully treated him, scourging him uncondemned in defiance of all law and justice, and casting him into an inner prison.

He stood ready to plead his cause at Corinth before Gallio the Proconsul of Achaia, when the indignant Roman drove the Apostle's accusers from his judgment-seat.

On his last visit to Jerusalem he had pleaded his cause before the Sanhedrim, of which in former years he had been a prominent member.

He pleaded before Felix the unjust judge. He spake before Felix and Drusilla, when he reasoned of righteousness, and continence, and the judg

ment to come. He pleaded before Festus for life and liberty; and proclaimed the faith of Christ before Festus, Agrippa, and Bernice. And finally, after an acquittal before some unknown judge at Rome, he again stood for the last time before an earthly tribunal, and pleaded his cause, it may be in the hated presence of Nero himself; and then passed from the blood-stained tribunal of Rome to the judgment-seat of Christ, from the presence of the AntiChrist to the glorious presence of Christ his Lord.

S. Paul's last journey to Jerusalem was undertaken with full knowledge of the dangers that awaited him. To the presbyters of the Church of Ephesus, whom he had summoned to meet him at Miletus, he said,

Acts xx. 22: And now, behold, I go bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there save that the Holy Ghost testifieth unto me in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But I hold not my life of any account as dear unto myself, so that I may accomplish my course, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.

And again, when they arrived at Cæsarea, S. Luke tells us that,

Acts xxi. 10: There came down from Judea a certain prophet named Agabus. And coming to us and taking Paul's girdle, he bound his own feet and hands, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. And when we heard these things, both we and they of that place besought him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, What do ye, weeping and breaking my heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done.

S. Paul and his companions were well received by the elders and brethren of the mother Church. At their suggestion S. Paul adopted a plan to show publicly that he himself was still a loyal son of Israel. "The plan they recommended was, that S. Paul should take charge of four Jewish Christians, who had taken temporarily the vow of a Nazarite, accompany them to the Temple, and pay for them the necessary expenses attending the termination of their vow." It must have seemed at first as if the warnings of Agabus would be falsified: but the event. turned out as the indications of the Holy Spirit had led him to expect. His old enemies the Jews from Asia, who had persecuted him from city to city, caught sight of him, and with piercing yells for help rushed at him, and dragged him out of the Temple. Every moment the crowd increased, yelling and shrieking and casting dust into the air, after the fashion of an oriental mob. But soon the heavy tread of the ever watchful Roman legionaries was heard, as they rushed down the steep causeway which led down from their barracks in the fortress of Antonia to the Temple court, and forced their way through the crowd to the spot where S. Paul was like to be struck down by the repeated blows that were aimed at him. Once in the hands of a Roman officer he was safe, safe at least from lawless violence, for his Roman citizenship secured him from outrage. Then battered, bleeding as he was, with torn clothes, to all appearance a care-worn, feeble-bodied Jew, with the Chief Captain's sanction he stood upon the stairs and addressed the raging multitude. They heard him with unexpected patience, till he spoke of his mission to the Gentiles, which Christ had given him.

The mention of the Gentiles was enough, they knew what was coming, and they would not hear

it. They rent the air with their cries, Away with him, away with him, it is not fit that he should live.

The next day a meeting of the Sanhedrim was held, and Paul was brought down under a guard of soldiers, and set before the council.

It must have been with strange feelings that S. Paul stood before this council, of which sixteen years before he had been a prominent member. His eye passed along the familiar benches, and scanned their occupants, recognizing one and another, and then he began," Brethren, I have lived before God in all good conscience until this day." This bold assertion of innocence, and the manly, uncringing form of his address, was too much for the high priest Ananias, who presided; he ordered one of the officers of the court to smite this blaspheming apostate on the mouth.

S. Paul was naturally a hot-tempered man, and such an insult, such a gross contempt for the dignity of the law, was more than he could bear with patience. The Apostle's sight was defective, but he saw opposite to him the president in his raised chair, and in his white robes; the blood rose to his face, and the words rushed to his lips-" God shall smite thee, thou whited wall and sittest thou to judge me according to the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law?" If the words were strong, the provocation was great. This Ananias was one of the worst, if not the very worst of the worldly dissolute Sadducees, who disgraced the Jewish priesthood. "The Talmud describes him as a rapacious tyrant who reduced the inferior priests almost to starvation by defrauding them of the tithes, to glut his insatiable avarice." Though we cannot blame the Apostle for being indignant, and for thus expressing his indignation, we cannot but contrast with it