sins. Its right action is within. It is not to be wounded by the sins of others. Love may suffer because of them, and conscience prompt love to work for their removal and their forgiveness. Conscience, guided by love, takes truth and goes forth to win others by it away from sin, and its companion sorrow, and its doom, death. If it fails, it is not turned into hatred. If it withdraws, it is because it has ceased to hope. It does not scowl, but it weeps when it retires.

But in the case of fanatical and persecuting zeal, conscience performs a different function. Not being an enlightened and sanctified conscience, it does not perform its appropriate work. It does not act on personal sins. It is wounded by the sins and unbeliefs of others. It works itself out from under the mountain load of its own iniquities, by which it might be crushed into humility, and be made to bleed in contrition, and it rushes against the sins of others, and is thus maddened into pride and resentment and fierce self-assertion, which it sanctifies with the holy name of zeal. In this misdirection of a perverted conscience, it does not abandon love, for love was never with it; but it takes with it the whole dread sisterhood of the malignant passions, and it is these which it drives on to the work of converting, coercing, persecuting, and destroying. The true definition of fanatical persecution then seems to be that it is a perverted conscience employing hatred to do the work which love alone can do. Then it is a Jehu in his chariot, from whom not alone the enemies, but the friends of God must flee if they would live. And that which is most awful in this portentous wickedness is that it considers itself eminently

UNIVERSITY

righteous. Never are the malignant passions IL

horrible as when driven on by conscience. When men persuade themselves that it is their duty to be vindictive, to let loose their evil passions, to hate, and persecute, and torture, then will there be such fiendish developments of humanity as are never elsewhere witnessed.

It is to be observed that it is not often the truth which is thus used in the service of persecuting zeal; but it is some perversion of truth, or half truth, or single truths separated from those, without which they are errors; or it is simple error and falsehood which are thus employed. Holy truth refuses to be used except by holy love. The spear of Gabriel cannot be fitted to the hand of Lucifer. This persecuting fanaticism is Phariseeism, destroying the spirit of the law by the letter, and imposing upon men human traditions in the place of divine laws. It is Judaism, ignorant of the spirit and yet clinging to the forms of an abrogated economy. It is Mohammedanism, with its false prophet, its flaming sword, and its impure heaven. It is the zeal of the Jews that assailed Paul in the Temple, and raged around him in the Sanhedrim. It is the zeal of the Inquisition, the zeal of Alva, the zeal of Philip of Spain and Louis XIV. of France, the zeal of those who followed the saints of Savoy with fire and sword to their mountain fastnesses, and drove the Huguenots, noble martyrs and confessors, into the wild glens of the Cevennes.

"Oh, my soul, come not into their secret: unto their assembly mine honor be not thou united." It is an utterly hateful and horrible spirit. Let us be far from it. There is no danger that Prot

estant Christians should exhibit it in its full development. But it has its beginnings and its partial manifestations in all hearts and in all churches. It is to be found in its germ in all those manifestations of zeal in which the consciences of the righteous are more troubled by the sins of others than by their own. It is seen wherever there is excessive zeal in imposing particular dogmas upon others, and in making individual convictions of duty the standard for the churches, rather than by a loving effort to develop holiness of heart and life in others, chiefly by the beautiful and winning exhibition of it in themselves. Man is capable of such singular contradictions and inconsistencies, that we may not, perhaps, say that he who has most of truth will manifest the most of love; but we may say that he ought to do so, and may add, that he who has the most of love will be likely to learn the most truth; and that when he shows himself not lovingly zealous, but fanatically intolerant and persecuting in behalf of any doctrine, it is likely to prove either a complete error or but a partial truth.

St. Paul's conduct when exposed to this fiery fanaticism teaches us in what spirit and with what holy prudence it should be met. Nothing can be more calculated to stir up a spirit of resentment and indignation. However these may have been excited, and however just they might have been, they were overcome by love and holy zeal for his deluded brethren in the flesh. Very touching is the declaration which he made to his brethren whom he called together at Rome: "Not that I have aught to accuse my nation of." To us it seems as if there were much cause to accuse them; but he, remembering his journey to

Damascus, and how recently he had shared their views and feelings, felt that it was not for him to accuse his nation, although they had thirsted for his blood, and driven him to Rome in chains. In all his speeches there are no words of denunciation. He vindicates himself. He endeavors to convince and propitiate his enemies, in order that he may present to them the hope of Israel, and persuade them to accept the great salvation. And when it becomes evident that his words will be unavailing, he bows to the storm, and remembering the Master's assurance that he must testify of him at Rome, avails himself of the facilities which providence supplied to enable him to escape from their hands.

How beautiful in contrast to the persecuting zeal of the Jews is the loving zeal of Paul for his persecutors!

We shall miss the moral of this instructive history if we learn only to abhor the one, and do not learn to love and imitate the other.

LECTURE III.

ST. PAUL'S JOURNEY TO ROME FROM PUTEOLI.

And from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium: and after one day the south wind blew, and we came to Puteoli: Where we found brethren, and were desired to tarry with them seven days; and so we went toward Rome.

And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and the Three Taverns; whom, when Paul he thanked God and took courage.

saw,

And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard; but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him.-Acтs, xxviii. 13-16.

RESCUED from shipwreck, and beaten by storms, Paul at length reached Italy. At no part of that stormy voyage could he have doubted that he would be saved; for the Lord had appeared to him when a prisoner in the castle of Antonia, with the assurance that he should testify of him at Rome; and again, at the height of the storm, before his shipwreck upon the island of Melita, (now Malta,) he had repeated the assurance: "Fear not; thou must stand before Cæsar."

The ship called Castor and Pollux, the names of the saviors of Rome, and the patrons of sailors, anchored at Puteoli, (now Pozzuoli, near Baii.) Puteoli divided, at that time, with Ostia the commerce of the sea, between Rome and the provinces. It was the chief port of the corn vessels of Alexandria. The amount of corn transmitted from Egypt to Italy at this period was immense. The commerce