He lifted the boy in his arms, and he gazed long.
‘Is that the Christian?’ he said. ‘Yon man does not look like an enemy of the gods, or an eater of children’s flesh.’
The Apostle heard him, and turned towards him with a soft light of blessing in his eyes.
‘I should not mind being like thee,’ said the boy, ‘and I will not go to see thee killed.’
Fifty years later he remembered that gentle glance when in a later persecution he, too, was led out to die.
At the scene of execution a high scaffolding had been erected so that many thousands could be gratified by witnessing the new form of death. On the summit, on ten rows of bricks, had been kindled a fire, and over this was placed a huge caldron of iron, full of boiling oil. Not blenching in a single feature, with a step of perfect dignity, without assistance, without the slightest tremor, the Apostle mounted the wooden steps and stood in the sight of all, the fire flinging its red glare over him as the executioner tore off his outer robe.
But meanwhile the storm, gathering into its bosom the fierce heat of that day in late August, had begun to burst over Rome. The thunderclouds passed from threatening purple into midnight blackness, and roll after roll of thunder throbbed and crashed as though to menace the guilty city with the doom of its congregated iniquity. Then blazed forth the lightning, and filled the air, and ran along the ground. So tremendous were the explosions of sound, whose rending, cracking, and splitting outbursts settled into a long, continued roar, and so vivid were the flashes of forked lightning which gleamed like dazzling dagger-stabs aimed at an enemy who must at all costs be slain, that the soldiers and the executioners and the spectators grew livid with dread. Women shrieked and cowered, and clung to their husbands, and men looked round them uneasily, and some began to hurry away, and the hearts of all were benumbed as with some strange misgiving.
An exceptionally terrific crash of the artillery of heaven, a flash of levin which seemed to wrap them all in a white robe of dazzling flame, a shriek from hundreds of voices! And when the crash ended, the Christians were murmuring together in awestruck voices, Maranatha! Maranatha! and there arose scattered cries from the multitude. ‘He is a sorcerer! Stay the execution! We are all dead men! The wrath of the gods is upon us!’ The ancients, from ignorance combined with superstition, were far more terrified than the moderns by thunderstorms. It was evident that they were in the centre of the storm. The scaffold and the caldron formed its inmost focus, having attracted the electric fluid by their woodwork and iron. The decurion himself and his soldiers and the executioners were terrified. They dared not disobey their orders, yet amid the general terror they seemed paralysed into helplessness. Aliturus, hoping that he might in some way render some kindness, had asked to be one of those spectators, of higher position than the mob, who were allowed to stand on the scaffold. Seizing his opportunity, he hastily whispered, ‘The executioner has untied your hands. You have friends in the crowd. Escape! Fear not the lightning—this skin of a seal which I brought under my robe, expecting a thunderstorm, is an amulet against lightning.’
‘I thank thee, my son,’ said the Apostle; ‘unless the will of God be clearly manifested, I cannot fly. And if we trust in God we need no amulet, for neither the pestilence nor the arrow can hurt us.’
Again the thunder roared, again they were wrapped in a blinding flash. Hardly conscious what he did, the Apostle uplifted his right hand. It became the nucleus of the electric phenomenon known as St. Elmo’s fire, and at once appeared to burn like a torch with lambent flame. A cry of fresh terror rose from the heathen multitude. ‘Fly, fly!’ they exclaimed; ‘he is a sorcerer or a god. He lifts against us his flaming hand, tipped with the fire of Castor and Pollux.We shall all be killed by fire from heaven. The spot is accursed. It is a bidental.’[103]