“I call God to witness that my only crime hath been my firm faith in the deliverance of his people through the Messiah, foretold and promised by the prophets of old. I am set for the defence of the gospel, not by envy and strife, but through love and good-will, that it may abound unto all nations and to you-ward. Behold the covenant which the God of glory made with our father Abraham, and the testimony to Moses while in the wilderness to raise up a Prophet unto us, and the Holy One spoken of by Isaiah, all are fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth! As foretold, he was put to death, and opened not his mouth against his enemies. I beseech you, do not vainly continue to look for a warlike Messiah, who, through garments rolled in blood, shall restore only a seen kingdom, whereby the things of this world prevail! Behold in due season a spiritual dominion cometh which shall fill the whole earth! Carnal weapons must give place to the sword of the Spirit, until all nations shall be brought under the mild sway of the Prince of Peace. The Prophet of Nazareth laid the foundation for an Universal Kingdom, but its coming will be without observation.
“I might persuade you by arguments without end, drawn from your own Scriptures, of the truth of the spiritual faith which I proclaim! I could fill your ears with the warnings, promises, and inspirations of the ancient patriarchs, law-givers, singers, and prophets that have arisen among our own people. I beseech you, therefore, to lay aside every prejudice, and no longer dwell in dead forms and ceremonies. I would that ye be transformed by the renewing of your minds through [pg 490]the power of the Holy Ghost. I beseech you to give heed unto the words I have spoken, and declare unto you that it is for the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain!”
Instead of bringing peace, the earnest appeal of Saulus increased the dissensions among his auditors.
It was ever thus. Truth, when launched into the midst of error and prejudice, unfailingly stirs them up, and brings their bitter dregs to the surface. There is far more hope of winning an honest sceptic than a self-satisfied bigot. The Gentiles, or heathen, finally proved much more accessible to the New Faith than the Chosen People themselves, although the number of Hebrew Christians somewhat increased.
After a heated discussion, the larger part of the audience withdrew, and a formal separation took place between them and the “Apostle to the Gentiles.”
During the two years that the trial of Saulus, for various reasons, was delayed, he remained in his own hired house, and was permitted much liberty in proclaiming the power of the gospel to all who came to him. He also wrote important letters to the churches of the East. But he was still a prisoner, chained by the arm, both night and day, to a Prætorian. Many of the rough soldiers who guarded him were moulded by his influence, and thoroughly transformed in life and character by the spiritual righteousness which he awakened within them. Even some of the household of Cæsar and a few patricians were touched to the heart by the halo of the divinity which shone out through the personality of the great Apostle.
As fair white lilies sometimes shoot up from the foul black slime at the bottom of a pond so that their fragrance is wafted abroad by the breezes of heaven, so the seed of a spiritual tree was scattered in the great seething morass of corruption on the banks of the Tiber, which would yet spring up and overspread the nations with its branches.