It was Gaius Julius Paulus, a full-fledged Roman citizen of Jewish descent, who had first recognized the possibilities of the new doctrine as a religion for all the world. The story of his suffering tells us how bitterly the Jewish Christians had been opposed to the idea of a universal religion instead of a purely national denomination, membership to which should only be open to people of their own race. They had hated the man who dared preach salvation to Jews and Gentiles alike so bitterly that on his last visit to Jerusalem Paul would undoubtedly have suffered the fate of Jesus if his Roman passport had not saved him from the fury of his enraged compatriots.
But it had been necessary for half a battalion of Roman soldiers to protect him and conduct him safely to the coastal town from where he could be shipped to Rome for that famous trial which never took place.
A few years after his death, that which he had so often feared during his lifetime and which he had repeatedly foretold actually occurred.
Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. On the place of the temple of Jehovah a new temple was erected in honor of Jupiter. The name of the city was changed to Aelia Capitolina and Judaea itself had become part of the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. As for the inhabitants, they were either killed or driven into exile and no one was allowed to live within several miles of the ruins on pain of death.
It was the final destruction of their holy city which had been so disastrous to the Jewish-Christians. During several centuries afterwards, in the little villages of the Judaean hinterland colonies might have been found of strange people who called themselves “poor men” and who waited with great patience and amidst everlasting prayers for the end of the world which was at hand. They were the remnants of the old Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem. From time to time we hear them mentioned in books written during the fifth and sixth centuries. Far away from civilization, they developed certain strange doctrines of their own in which hatred for the apostle Paul took a prominent place. After the seventh century however we no longer find any trace of these so-called Nazarenes and Ebionites. The victorious Mohammedans had killed them all. And, anyway, if they had managed to exist a few hundred years longer, they would not have been able to avert the inevitable.
Rome, by bringing east and west and north and south into one large political union, had made the world ready for the idea of a universal religion. Christianity, because it was both simple and practical and full of a direct appeal, was predestined to succeed where Judaism and Mithraism and all of the other competing creeds were predestined to fail. But, unfortunately, the new faith never quite rid itself of certain rather unpleasant characteristics which only too clearly betrayed its origin.
The little ship which had brought Paul and Barnabas from Asia to Europe had carried a message of hope and mercy.
But a third passenger had smuggled himself on board.
He wore a mask of holiness and virtue.
But the face beneath bore the stamp of cruelty and hatred.