was the consolation which Jesus gave to Paul in his sorest need. Let us not doubt that he felt the joy of it when, a few days after, before Festus and Agrippa, he uttered his noble testimony for his Master, and experienced a loftier pleasure than Cæsar ever knew.

The consolation was needed, for Jewish malignity was awake with the early dawn; and forty of his enemies had bound themselves with a curse that they would neither eat nor drink till they had slain him. Such an extraordinary vow, so suddenly taken by such a number, measured the wide-spread and dreadful fanaticism of hatred to which Paul was exposed. It was in vain to think of turning it aside. Their plan was to induce the council to have Paul remanded for further examination, and then to spring upon him suddenly and kill him before the guard could rally in his defense.

The plan was defeated. Paul's sister's son heard of the conspiracy, and immediately resorted to the castle to advise him of the fact. Paul sent him to Lysias. Lysias listened, enjoined silence on Paul's nephew, and immediately sent Paul, at the third hour of the night, to Cæsarea, under a guard of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen. The rage against St. Paul must have risen to a great height to have made such a guard necessary. Lysias sent a letter to Felix, referring the case to him. The whole party escorted Paul as far as Antipatris, from whence he proceeded to Cæsarea, under the guard of horsemen. (Acts, xxiii. 12-35.)

After five days, the High Priest Ananias went to Cæsarea with the elders, and an orator named Ter

tullus. The charges brought against him were of the vaguest character. Even before the Sanhedrim, Paul could not have been lawfully condemned upon them; for they could not be proved. Paul stated truly that he had done nothing contrary to the Jewish law. Before a Roman tribunal they could not have been even properly entertained. They were not offenses which came within its cognizance. The Jews evidently expected by clamor to carry their point. They believed that for the purpose of conciliating them, Felix, without law, or against law, would not hesitate to sacrifice an obnoxious Jew to their violent and unanimous hatred. As in the case of the Saviour, they wished to make the Roman Government the instrument of shedding blood, which they were not permitted by the law to do. A pestilent fellow, a mover of sedition among the Jews throughout the world, a ringleader of the Nazarenes, and a profaner of the Temple,-these were the charges. Felix evaded them. His reply was: "When Lysias, the chief captain, shall come down, I will know the uttermost of your matter." (Acts, xxiv. 22.) He showed some interest or curiosity at least in Paul's views, for after some days he came with his wife Drusilla, who was a Jewess, and heard him concerning the faith of Christ. "And as he reasoned of temperance, of righteousness, and of judgment to come," Felix trembled, and answered: "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season I will call for thee." (Acts, xxiv. 25.) Temperance, or continence, and righteousness, and judgment to come, were topics well calculated to terrify one who was a gross libertine, living in adulterous union with a profligate Jewish princess, and who was in all respects pre

Their object was

Festus, a better He decreed that

eminently vicious in an age of vice. But this trembling was only the temporary effects of fear, produced on one who, in the graphic language of Tacitus, "exercised the power of a king with the temper of a slave." We are told that he retained Paul in custody in the hope that his friends and disciples would raise a ransom for him. (Acts, xxiv. 26.) Again the scene changes. Festus succeeds Felix in the government of the province. Proceeding immediately to Jerusalem, he was importuned by the Jews to send Paul there for trial. to have him waylaid and killed. man than Felix, at first refused.. St. Paul's accuser should appear before his tribunal at Cæsarea. On his return they went down, and laid many and grievous things to his charge, "which," adds the sacred writer, "they could not prove." Festus at length, in order to please the Jews, proposed to Paul to proceed to Jerusalem under his protection, and there be tried in his presence. The Apostle no doubt knew that a proconsul's proposal to his prisoner was equivalent to a command; and anticipating from this compliance with Jewish injustice but little firmness in an emergency, and knowing by experience the deadly hatred of his enemy, he uttered the memorable words which resulted in his voyage as a prisoner to Rome: "I APPEAL TO CÆSAR." The appeal could not be refused; it was the right of every Roman citizen, and it could not be disregarded with impunity. (Acts, xxv. 1–11.)

A few days after, Herod Agrippa II. King of Calchis, and his sister Bernice, came on a complimentary visit to the new governor of the province. Festus described to him the peculiar case of Paul.

Agrippa expressed a desire to hear from Paul himself an account of his doctrine. (Acts, xxv. 13-22.)

On the morrow, with great pomp, Agrippa and Bernice, and the chief captains and principal men of the city assembled in the audience chamber of the palace, and Paul was permitted to speak for himself. It was a most interesting audience, and a speech of singular felicity and power. He defended himself against the charge of heresy; described his own former fiery zeal against the Christians; his conversion and divine commission, and the consequent hatred of the Jews. Festus believed that long and enthusiastic study, on mysterious themes, had turned Paul's brain. Agrippa, a Jew, who could at least accept the premises which Paul laid down, either sincerely or in the way of compliment, declared that he felt almost constrained to yield to the Apostle's conclusion. "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian," was his declaration. He subsequently declared that St. Paul might have been set at liberty if he had not appealed unto Cæsar. (Acts, xxvi.)

The voyage of Paul the prisoner to Italy was replete with striking incidents. My plan constrains me to omit all notice of this memorable voyage, and to resume in the next lecture the history of St. Paul on his arrival at Puteoli.

In the incidents which we have so rapidly surveyed, we have a remarkable exhibition in the Jews of malignant, fanatical, persecuting zeal; and an equally striking exemplification in St. Paul of the manner in which it should be met. It is vindictive and wicked persecution encountering holy and loving zeal.

This spirit of fanatical and vindictive persecution

is a fearful and monstrous manifestation of our fallen nature. At the first view it seems simply an insane, absurd, illogical depravity. Men say to us, "We have the truth of God. You are in error. You hold and propagate wrong views of God and right and duty. They will ruin your soul and other souls.' What in this state of things should be their feeling toward us? It should, evidently, be affectionate interest. What should be their conduct? A loving effort to win us to the truth. What should be their conduct and their feeling if they fail? Profound pity, continued kindness, and still hopeful prayer. This is the legitimate and ordinary working of holiness in possession of the truth. It was the spirit and conduct manifested by St. Paul.

But instead of this loving spirit, false, fiery, fanatical, persecuting zeal exhibits perhaps the most deadly and awful hatred that ever takes possession, or can take possession, of a being who has not yet become a fiend.

It is a strange and hideous manifestation of human depravity. We shudder as we hear it howling about St. Paul in the daytime, as he stands in the midst of the infuriated rabble in the court of the Gentiles, and among the vindictive doctors of the Sanhedrim, or as we see it in the midnight conclave of forty Jews, who bind themselves by awful imprecations not to eat or drink until they shall have slain the Apostle. As this spirit is hideous in its full development, so it is repulsive in every form and degree of its manifestation.

Yet we must not forget that it arises from the perversion of the highest part of our nature, conscience. The true work of conscience is to reprove personal