Acts 26 - Introduction

Excursus A.

On the Use of the Hebrew Language.by the Glorified Messiah.

Bengel's remarkable words, ‘The Hebrew tongue, Christ's language on earth; His language too when He spoke from heaven,' a comment which at first seems quaint and even fantastic, is, when examined, singularly correct. We will very briefly review the data we possess on the subject, (1) We may assume that the Eternal who spoke to Adam in the garden, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Moses and Samuel, of David and Solomon, the ‘Lord' of the prophets, was no other than the Second Person of the blessed Trinity, whom we know and worship as Jesus of Nazareth, our adorable Redeemer. For not only did this Divine One on almost innumerable occasions speak with and to one or other of His servants, but several times we are distinctly told He appeared in one form or other visible to mortal eyes; for instance, to Abraham before the destruction of the cities of the plain, Genesis 18; to Moses in the tabernacle, Exodus 33:9, on the rock, Exodus 33:23: see especially Deuteronomy 34:10; to Joshua before Jericho, Joshua 5:13-15; to Isaiah in the temple, Isaiah 6:1-5; to Ezekiel by the river Chebar in the land of the Chaldeans, Ezekiel 1:4-28; to Daniel, Daniel 7:9-14. But this Divine and Adorable One whom these holy men saw and worshipped, could not have been the First Person of the blessed Trinity; for of the Father we read, that no man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him (John 1:18).

Thus the Divine One, who on numberless occasions spoke to the patriarchs, judges, kings, and prophets of the chosen people, the God of Israel, Jehovah or the Eternal, was that Being whom, after His incarnation, we know as Jesus of Nazareth. Now (2) in what language were these repeated communications from the days of Noah to the time when Malachi, the last of the prophets, lived and taught in Israel made to the servants of the Most High? In reply, we urge that all the sacred records are written in one tongue; the slight variation of language in the later written books are just what we always find as a language grows older, and has been many centuries in use. It becomes often rougher, fuller of new words which express strange thoughts of other lands and peoples. Thus, to use well-known instances, the Greek of the Athenian poets and philosophers became the Greek of the Alexandrian writers. The Latin of the age of Cæsar and Augustus deteriorated into the Latin of the later Empire, and then became what we term Italian. So the Hebrew of the Psalms and Isaiah became the rougher Chaldee-tinged Hebrew of Daniel; and later, the so-called Hebrew or Aramaic of the Targumist.

But to return to our earliest records, there is no trace that even Moses, who no doubt compiled those most early Genesis Chapter s, partly from family registers and partly from oral tradition, ever translated. He seems, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to have copied down what he found written or preserved in well - authenticated oral tradition. It therefore seems hardly fanciful to assume that the language in which Moses found the few scattered memoirs of the earliest days of the race, was the tongue spoken by the two when they dwelt alone and conversed under the shadow of the trees of Paradise with their eternal Friend and Creator. Must not this have been Hebrew, the language of all the writings of Moses, the language evidently of all the records written and oral which he possessed of the dim past?

That God spoke to Moses, that He wrote with His finger on the sacred tables, in Hebrew, is indisputable. It is equally clear that all the communications, from the days of Moses to Malachi, made by the Eternal to the favoured sons of men, who from time to time were privileged to hear the voice of the Divine One, were in Hebrew. There is not the faintest trace of any language other than their own treasured sacred tongue being even of partial use among the chosen people at any time before the captivity. Even during the captivity they still held to it, spoke to one another in it, thought in it, wrote in it. The traces, though, of that sad time, are marked indelibly in their language, which, dating from the hour of the captivity of Babylon, assumes that Chaldean colouring which has so powerfully influenced it ever since. In what may be termed the last age of Israel's existence as a separate nationality, the people scattered now in many lands were compelled to use the language of the nations among whom they dwelt and with whom they traded. Thus Greek, which was then spoken commonly in all those many countries washed by the Mediterranean water, became a language in this last age, known and used by the large majority of the Jewish race, alongside with their own loved Hebrew, which then had become a rougher Chaldee-coloured language. Hence it happened that the New Testament was written in Greek, a tongue understood by the chosen race, and also by those Gentile peoples to whom Messiah wished to speak.

Whether the Lord Jesus in His ordinary dealing with men during the two and a half years of His public ministry on earth, spoke and used Greek, is a disputed point. It will probably never be determined. It is most likely that, in common with many others of His time in the Holy Land, to Him both Greek and Hebrew were equally familiar; that now He would use one tongue, now another. Still, brought up in a purely Jewish household, in remote Nazareth, amidst the cherished traditions belonging to the royal house of the people, we may in all reverence conclude that He thought in Hebrew, and perhaps more commonly communicated His blessed teachings in the same holy tongue. Certain it is, in this perhaps solitary instance of His speaking face to face with a mortal after His ascension to His glory-throne in Heaven, He used the Hebrew language, though addressing one who was a polished Greek scholar. Paul evidently thought and wrote in Greek from preference. We speak of this appearance to Paul on the Damascus road as a solitary appearance of the risen and glorified Redeemer, for we have no other definite account of the glorified Lord after His ascension speaking to any mortal save in a dream or in the course of a trance or rapture.

The Apocalypse of St. John requires a few words. The apostle relates what he saw and heard when he was ‘in the Spirit' on the Lord's day. These words evidently point to some state of rapture or trance into which John had fallen. But the whole of these Revelations, the thought and imagery, as well as the language, is so purely and exclusively Hebraistic, that the Greek record which we possess is apparently an account in one language of the words heard in another. St. John, for the sake of the countless Gentiles who believed (he wrote late in the first century), told his grand story in a tongue which he knew they could comprehend; but it is indeed more than probable that the Revelation came to him in Hebrew. Thus, Bengel's conclusion, that Hebrew was the language of the ever blessed Son of God, used in His dealings with men, whether speaking in His robes of humiliation on earth or from His glory-throne in Heaven, is supported by a mass of evidence supplied by a careful examination of the inspired Scriptures of the Old Testament compiled in different ages. The Scriptures of the New Testament, although written in Greek, complete the ample witness borne by the more ancient Divine writings.

Excursus B.

The Messiah of David and the Prophets contrasted with the messiah of the Jewish Writers who lived two or three hundred Years before the ‘Incarnation.'

‘The Book of Genesis,' writes Professor Westcott, ‘connects the promise of redemption with the narrative of the fall. At each crisis in the providential history of the world this promise was brought within narrower limits, and illustrated by fresh details. After the flood, one of the sons of Noah was especially connected with the future triumph of God. Abraham was called, and the assurance was given him that the blessing of the earth should spring from his seed' (Introduction to Study of the Gospels). With the promise of redemption was bound up the sure hope of an eternal life beyond the grave. The thought of Messiah, and the endless life after death, were ever inseparably united in the hearts of the covenant people.

In the writings of Moses himself [Genesis was probably merely a compilation of his from earlier records], a nearer view is given of the coming Messiah. David and the other writers of the Psalms supply many more details of the person and office of the coming One; and the prophets, especially Isaiah, paint a picture so closely and even minutely resembling Him whom the so-called ‘Christian' peoples have acknowledged as the ‘Anointed One,' that their descriptions would have been certainly branded by unbelievers as a transparent imposture written after the life of Jesus of Nazareth, had not these descriptions of the prophets been guarded by the bitterest enemies of the Christians as their most precious treasure.

Now David and the various writers of the Psalms, Isaiah, and the other prophets of the old covenant, who speak with detail of the Messiah who was to come, of His person, His work, and His office, not obscurely point out that in some mysterious way suffering and self-sacrifice was to be the means by which He was to accomplish His mighty task of restoration. It was the misfortunes of the chosen people misfortunes brought on alone by their own wilfulness and hardness of heart which changed completely their view of the expected Messiah. In the days of the monarchy, they were content, as we learn from the teachings of the Book of Psalms and the prophecies of Isaiah and his brother prophets, to look forward with loving trust to another life, after the fret and fever of this was passed, when under the rule of Messiah they would look on the face of the Eternal and be satisfied. But after the terrible calamities they endured at the hands of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, and last of all Roman oppressors, when the glory of their race seemed hopelessly dimmed, then, sore, discontented, burning for a change, they merged the hope of a calm, joyous eternity with God into a feverish longing for immediate revenge; and the restoration of the human race was forgotten in the intense desire for the restoration of the nation; while the scene of the future kingdom of King Messiah was laid no longer in heaven, but on earth.

What wonder is it that the lineaments of the picture of the glorious King as painted by David and Isaiah were changed? He whose visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men; He who hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, emphatically the Man of Sorrows; the righteous servant of earlier and happier days, who through bearing their iniquities should justify many, passed out of sight, and only the glorious conqueror from Edom, red with the blood of His enemies, who were the enemies of His people, was the Messiah now passionately looked for by Israel.

We possess no contemporary literature of the days of David, Solomon, and Isaiah, like those works to which we are going to refer as representing the tone of public feeling among the Jews during the two or three centuries which immediately preceded the advent of Jesus of Nazareth. It is highly probable that, if we could now study the poetry, the religious meditation, the Apocalypse, even the historical portraiture composed in the days when David had established order and prosperity in the Land of Promise, in the glorious reign of Solomon, even in the later days of the divided monarchy, we should see that the idea of a suffering Messiah, of One who through self-sacrifice would redeem the people, perhaps, so it would seem from Isaiah, a people far more numerous than the covenant race, was by no means unknown or even unlooked for by the children of Israel.

We do, however, possess some precious relics of the literature of the later period, of those two centuries which preceded the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, of that sad and gloomy period when the Jew, sore, disheartened, embittered, looked only for a Messiah who should restore him, and at the same time avenge his cruel wrongs. A brief examination of some of these writings will throw a strong light on the Jewish state of mind which led them to reject the Lord Jesus, and after the furious burst of passion which led to His crucifixion, to persevere, as a nation, coldly, but at the same time with a strange, unnatural strength of purpose, in their rejection of His message in the face of the most overwhelming evidence in its favour, so powerfully delivered by His chosen apostles. We shall see what was the spirit of the nation which bade them stone Stephen and hunt down Paul to the death, those most distinguished preachers of the suffering Messiah. Of the writings belonging to the two centuries immediately preceding our Lord's corning, we possess, as has been stated, some important fragments. [In Professor Westcott's Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, chap. ii., will be found a most interesting and exhaustive description of many of these writings.] A few brief extracts from these will give us some insight into the general tone of thought which characterised the more earnest and patriotic sections of Jewish society in that age. The Jewish Sibylline writings date from 160-140 B.C. The following striking prophetic passage well illustrates the hopes and expectations of the Jews for themselves, and sharply contrasts their own happy future lot with the doom of their Gentile persecutors. It concludes with a kind of solemn chorus of the Gentile nations in praise of the Jews who had won such love from God! God is to send from the sun a King (Messiah). Among the results of His advent among men, we read: ‘The people of the mighty God shall be laden with noble wealth, with gold and silver, and with array of purple; and the earth shall bring forth to perfection, and the sea teeming with blessings... But, again, the kings of the Gentiles with gathered might shall assail this land, bringing fate upon themselves; for they shall wish to ravage the fold of the mighty God, and to destroy the noblest men... But swords of fire shall fall from heaven, and on earth great flames shall come... and every soul of man, and every sea shall shudder before the face of the Immortal... And then shall the foes of His people recognise the Immortal God, who brings these judgments to pass, and there shall be wailing and crying over the boundless earth, as men perish... But the sons of the mighty God around His temple all shall live in quiet... for the Immortal is their defender, and the hand of the Holy One. And then shall all the islands and cities say, How does the Immortal love these men, for all things strive with them and help them...!'

The Fourth Book of Esdras, composed probably early in the century preceding the birth of Jesus Christ, contains passages even more intensely ‘Jewish' in character than the one above quoted. Terrible signs and awful calamities and woes are to usher in the blessings of Messiah's kingdom, but these blessings are reserved exclusively for the Jewish people. ‘Now, O Lord,' asks the writer, ‘if this world be made for our sakes... how long shall this (state of things) endure...? The Most High hath made this world for many, but the world to come for few...'

‘There be many created, but few shall be saved.' ‘For you is paradise opened, the tree of life is planted, the time to come is prepared... And, therefore, ask no more questions concerning the multitude of them that perish;' nay, rather ‘inquire how the righteous shall be saved, whose the world is and for whom the world is created.'

‘When the cup of iniquity shall be full, then shall Messiah come.' ‘The rest of My people shall He deliver with mercy, them that have been preserved in My judgments,' and ‘He shall make them joyful until the coming of the day of judgment, whereof I have spoken unto thee from the beginning.'

The ‘Book of Jubilees' was put forth in the first century of the Christian era, at the very time when some of the events recorded in the ‘Acts' were taking place. Not improbably the activity of Stephen and later of Paul called out this expression of national feeling. The spirit of exclusiveness which possessed the people during the two centuries which preceded the advent of Jesus of Nazareth is intensified. The hatred of the stranger and the alien is tenfold more bitter now that the new sect who asserted that Messiah had come, and had offered a share in His kingdom to the dwellers in the isles of the Gentiles was becoming a power in the world, and was beginning to gather into its ranks vast numbers of recreant Jews, who were content strange madness as it seemed to these bigoted and fanatic zealots to share their exclusive privileges with the accursed Gentiles.

It is intensely interesting for us to read such passages as the following, written perhaps by members of that very Sanhedrim who closed their ears at the blasphemy of Stephen with the ‘angel face,' and asked the Roman Procurators Felix and Festus for the life of the hated Paul, and even condescended to use the Sicarii (assassins) as instruments to carry out their deadly purpose! See how this strange writing magnifies what Paul, in the Roman and Galatian Epistles, sets aside as having done its work, and tries to surround the worn-out and dying Law with a halo of glory it never possessed even in those stern days when it was ushered in amid the awful splendours of Sinai. ‘The Sabbath, in this Book of Jubilees,' writes Westcott, ‘appears as no earthly institution, but as ordained first for angels, and observed in Heaven before the creation of man. The very object for which the people of Israel was chosen was, that they might keep it. The eating of blood is an offence on the same level as the shedding of blood. The cruel deed of Simeon and Levi is blessed; and precedence over all men is given to Levi and his seed, and that they should “be as the angels of the presence.” It is taught that the Mosaic ordinances were not only observed by the patriarchs, but written in heavenly tables and binding for ever.'

The resurrection from the dead, and an eternal life after death, evidently, as we have before asserted, formed part of the Jewish hopes in connection with Messiah; and no doubt, in the earlier and happier period of their history, these onlooks to the life beyond the grave with God were dwelt upon with joyful certainty (see below, on the testimony of the Psalms and Prophets); and even in these later times, as St. Paul repeatedly reminded them, they still formed part of the Jews' dearest hopes, although the passionate longing for revenge on the Gentiles, and the expectation of a brilliant earthly restoration, to a certain extent in these latter days (i.e. just before and after the coming of Jesus of Nazareth) obscured the hopes of a blessed eternity. In the Jewish Sibyl, for instance, we read how, after that fire shall have consumed land, and sea, and the firmament of Heaven, ‘then no longer shall the laughing globes of the (heavenly) lights (roll on. There shall be) no night, no dawn, no many days of care, no spring, no summer, no winter, no autumn. And then shall the judgment of the mighty God come in the midst of the mighty age when all these things come to pass.'

In the Book of Henoch, written about 107 B.C., occurs this passage: ‘And in those days the earth shall give back that which has been entrusted to it, and the kingdom of death shall give back that which has been entrusted to it, and hell (Sheol) shall give back that which it owes. And (Messias) shall choose the righteous and holy among them, for the day is come that they should be delivered.'

Again, in the Fourth Book of Esdras we meet with the following remarkable statement respecting the resurrection and judgment: ‘And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her, and so shall the dust those that are in silence, and the secret places shall deliver those souls that were committed unto them. And the Most High shall appear upon the seat of judgment, and His mercy shall come (i.e. to the distressed faithful), and His clemency shall cease, and His long-suffering shall have an end; but judgment only shall remain, and truth shall stand, and faith shall bud, and the work shall follow, and the reward shall be showed, and justice shall watch, and injustice shall not slumber. For “ the day of doom shall be the end of this time and the beginning of immortality for to come, wherein corruption is past.”'

[Reference has been made above to the testimony borne by the Psalms and the Prophets to the general belief of the Jews in a resurrection and in a future life, which belief necessarily was closely connected with their Messianic hopes. Among the passages which bear with great distinctness on this subject are Psalms 16:11, a Messianic psalm; Psalms 17:15, where the joy of the beatific vision is unmistakeably referred to; Psalms 23:4; Psalms 23:6, where death and what happens after the dread moment are spoken of in words of the brightest, surest trust (see also Job 19:23-27); Isaiah 56:5; Isaiah 65:17-25; Isaiah 66:22; Ezekiel 37:1-10; Daniel 7:13-14; Daniel 12:2-3, etc.]

The advent of Jesus of Nazareth found the covenant people, as the Gospels those faithful pictures of Israel during the first thirty-two years of the first Christian century tell us, divided roughly into two great divisions, Pharisees and Sadducees. The first rigidly adhering to a law they misunderstood, and clinging to prophecies the burden of which they misinterpreted; the second, the rationalists of the first century, disbelieved much in the old story of Israel, and put aside the prophecies of the future, and probably only professed a partial belief in the loved story, because they felt that the fable, as they evidently considered it, was a powerful instrument for them to wield in their government of the masses. To the Pharisee party, however, belonged the majority of the people, perhaps the lower ranks and orders almost in their entirety. The Sadducees were few in number, and although consisting of families great and powerful in the state, never represented in any way the real mind of the people. At the time of the advent of Jesus of Nazareth, the Pharisee spirit was dominant in Israel. The Twelve, the holy women, the very brethren of Jesus according to the flesh, were in heart and training Pharisees. They looked on with, we may say, the greater part of Israel, to an avenging Messiah, to One who, in the face of Rome and the East, with a mighty outstretched Arm, should assert the solitary majesty of the people. And when the Master told those nearest to Him of His coming bitter sufferings and awful death, we read how they were exceeding sorry (Matthew 17:23), and were even afraid to ask Him what He meant (Mark 9:31-32; Luke 9:44-45). Cleopas told the risen Lord how he and others had trusted that their Master had been He which should have redeemed Israel; but all their hopes had been disappointed when Jesus of Nazareth chose rather to suffer than to reign.

The marvellous success of the early Christian preaching had the effect of hardening the hearts of the people, who with each succeeding year, after the events of the first Pentecost related in Acts 2, clung closer to their own unhappy hopes. The Pharisee became a Zealot, and the last mad war with Rome was the natural result of the cherishing these false, unreal hopes. After the fall of the city and the temple, crushed and broken up, though not destroyed, in well-nigh all the great world cities, the dispersed of Israel, in sullen, despairing silence, waited for the long-hushed voice of Him who once loved them. But it came not. Their teachers still spoke of Messiah's coming, but only when the cup of the world's wickedness and misery should be full. Some Rabbis even declared that they wished not to behold the advent, so awful and widespread would be the misery which would herald the presence of the Deliverer.

Wilder and ever wilder, and more despairing, as time went on without a sign, grew the Messianic teaching among the old covenant people. Strange fancies took the place of prediction, and hope seems to have given place to despair. Some said He came to His own on the day of the destruction of the temple (A. D. 70), but was carried away again, to be revealed at his own time. Others said, ‘He is with us now, sitting among the poor and wounded at the gates of Rome, and men knew Him not.' [Compare Westcott's Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, where more of these later traditions are given, chap. ii., ‘The Jewish Doctrine of Messiah.']

All this explains how it came to pass that Jesus of Nazareth was rejected as Messiah by the Jews, to whom He presented Himself; and tells us, too, why He was not only rejected, but even thrust aside with fiery indignation as positively contradicting the cherished hope which had buoyed up their fainting hearts through many a long and weary year of oppression and indignity. All this throws a strong, fierce light on the crucifixion of the Lover and Friend of man, whom blinded Israel hated as a blasphemer of God and a traitor to Israel, and explains the murder of Stephen, and their relentless hatred of Paul.

The above brief dissertation on the state of the Jewish mind at the time of, and for some two hundred years before the advent of the Lord Jesus, is not intended in any way as an apology for the rejection and crucifixion of the blessed Son of God, but simply to show that what happened was precisely what the state of public and private feeling among the people at that time would have led us to expect. The whole history of the chosen people leads up to Calvary. It is not for us to extenuate, still less would it become us to cast our stone at that strange, unhappy people. We have only to tell the story, and leave the rest to that Master who, ‘when Israel was a child, then He loved him,' and, we are persuaded, still loves, and from His glory-throne in heaven still watches over the fortunes of that wandering erring race, who left Him to die on His cross, but who in the ages will again return to Him, and with mourning no pen can write, and with joy no stammering tongue of earth describe, will look with adoration forever and for ever on Him whom they pierced. But this is still to come. Messiah's words are yet in process of fulfilment. ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate' (Matthew 23:37-38).

Excursus C.

On the Three Accounts of St. Paul's Conversion.

In an Excursus above, on the two accounts of the conversion of Cornelius, it was remarked that in that case, as in this, we have before us something more than a mere repetition of the same facts for the sake of emphasis. If indeed there were, in these instances, mere reiteration on the part of St. Peter and St. Paul, in important speeches, of narratives previously given, we should have no ground for feeling difficulty or for casting any imputation upon the authenticity of the Acts of the Apostles. But, in fact, there is much more than reiteration in these cases. The same story is indeed, in each instance, told more than once; but it is so re-told as to have in the re-telling a distinct relation with both the speakers and the audience. Thus we gain, in the most lively manner, additional information through this restatement; while a comparison of the speeches with the circumstances under which they were delivered, supplies us with a test, by the help of which we can judge of the natural truthfulness of these parts of the Book of the Acts.

In the accounts given of St. Paul's addresses in the Temple Court at Jerusalem, and before the Roman governor at Cæsarea (chap. 22, 26), as when St. Peter spoke before the apostles and brethren at Jerusalem (chap. 11), we find him speaking under apologetic conditions. He himself (Acts 22:1; Acts 26:2) terms those addresses ‘defences.' Hence we might expect that on these occasions certain things would be omitted which, though important in the direct narrative, have no apologetic value; and, on the other hand, that certain things would be added likely to be specially persuasive to the audiences respectively addressed. And this we find to be the case. Thus, in St. Paul's speeches, nothing is said of the sensation of scales, as it were, falling from his eyes,' when Ananias was sent to relieve him of his blindness. Such a point of detail is quite after St. Luke's medical manner, and has great interest for us on this account; but it would have been out of place in a defensive address, spoken under difficult circumstances. Similarly we find in the speeches no mention of the ‘Straight Street,' or of ‘the house of Judas.' Such local details, as in the case of Peter speaking at Jerusalem, would have been of no special value in Paul's speeches in the Temple Court, or at Cæsarea. Again, St. Paul does not tell the Jews or Festus that he was ‘three days without food;' and once more we may refer to St. Peter's omitting such particulars when he is defending himself before his brother - apostles. And now, to turn from omissions to additions, we observe that it is only from the apologetic speeches that we learn that ‘ the light from heaven,' which suddenly shone upon St. Paul on the way to Damascus, was a ‘great' light, ‘about noon' (Acts 22:6), ‘above the brightness of the sun' (Acts 26:13), and that ‘he could not see for the glory of that light' (Acts 22:11). It was of the utmost consequence that he should impress his hearers with the miraculous nature of that which had occurred to him, whereas St. Luke wrote simply and calmly on this aspect of the case; and thus it is that we obtain most interesting particulars which otherwise we should not have known.

Turning now to the speeches as compared with one another, we must remember that, though both were apologetic, they were apologetic under very different circumstances. If they were true to the occasions on which they are alleged to have been spoken, and true also to the character of the speaker as a man of good judgment and fine tact, they must exhibit corresponding variations. Now, speaking to the angry Jewish mob in the Temple Court, it was essential that St. Paul should be conciliatory, by presenting his subject as much as possible on the Jewish side, and keeping back as long as possible that mention of the Gentiles which was peculiarly offensive to them. He does this with remarkable skill. His speaking in the Hebrew tongue (Acts 21:40; Acts 22:2), instantly after speaking to the Roman officer in Greek (Acts 21:37), is to be noted, in the first place, as a mark of his ready versatility. He addresses his angry hearers as ‘brethren and fathers.' He tells them that, though born in Tarsus, he was educated in Jerusalem (Acts 26:3). Were it not for this speech, we should never have known that St. Paul was ‘brought up at the feet of Gamaliel.' He calls the law which he had been taught ‘the law of the fathers;' and he says that he had been zealous ‘as they all were that day.' He says that ‘all the estate of the elders,' some of whom were doubtless present, had sanctioned his persecuting journey to Damascus. He describes those to whom he took these letters as ‘brethren' (Acts 26:5). When he comes to the mention of Ananias, he describes him not (as in Acts 9:10) under the designation of a Christian ‘disciple,' but as ‘a devout man according to the law;' and he adds, just as in Acts 10:22 the messengers to Peter make a similar addition regarding Cornelius, that ‘he had a good report of all that dwelt there' (Acts 26:12). The coming of Ananias and his standing over him, and his own looking up into the face of his visitor, should be noted as specimens of the vivid language of one who is telling his own story. The words in which Ananias is quoted as saying, ‘The God of our fathers hath chosen thee,' is, once more, an indication of the conciliatory skill with which the apostle speaks, as is his withholding the express mention of the Gentiles, when Ananias says, ‘Thou shalt be His witness unto all men' (Acts 26:15). But especially we must mark his introduction of his vision in the Temple, of which, but for this speech, we should have known nothing (Acts 26:17). In that very same sacred place where he was now speaking, God had spoken to him, and had given him his commission to the Gentiles (Acts 26:21). At that detested word the uproar began again, and they would hear him no longer. But he had gained his point. He had told the story of his conversion to those who were most unwilling to listen. It is needless to observe how much this speech adds to the story, as given in the ninth chapter, of-that great charge and its collateral circumstances, and how all these additions arise naturally out of the occasion taken in conjunction with the character of the man.

If now we turn to the speech before Festus and Agrippa, we find the story of the conversion told with what might be termed a strong Gentile colouring; and this was in harmony with the occasion, and quite according to the tone and habit of St. Paul's mind and character. He easily adapted himself to the circumstances of the moment. He can now speak calmly and deliberately, and without any of that urgent pressure which caused so much difficulty in the Court of the Temple. He has the religious interests of Festus, too, to consider; and it is his duty so to speak as to persuade him, if possible, as well as Agrippa. Thus he says that he was ‘accused by Jews' (Acts 26:2), accused by them, too, for promoting ‘the hope' which their ‘twelve tribes' had always fostered (Acts 26:6-7). He speaks of them as hostile to him, not as friends. He places them, as it were, outside of the position in which he himself stands. He describes the Christians whom he persecuted as ‘saints' (Acts 26:10); he says that he endeavoured to force them to ‘blaspheme' (Acts 26:11). No such language would have been possible before the Jewish mob; or, at least, if he had used it, the interruption and uproar would have been hastened. He makes no mention here at Cæsarea of the vision of Ananias at Damascus, or of his own vision in the temple of Jerusalem. Such statements would have been of no use in his argument, and they might have provoked derision. Throughout we observe that his mission to the Gentiles is made conspicuous (Acts 26:17; Acts 26:20; Acts 26:23); and to close this imperfect comparison of the two speeches by noticing one particular, which at first sight is very trivial, but which really contains a great deal of evidential force, he says here (Acts 26:14) that the voice on the road to Damascus spoke to him ‘in the Hebrew tongue.' He did not state this while addressing the mob in the Temple Court; and for two reasons this difference is entirely natural. He was then speaking in Hebrew; he is now speaking in Greek. This unfolding of the difference which subsists among the three accounts of St. Paul's conversion, and of the undesigned evidence of truthfulness which those differences involve, is by no means exhaustive. But the reader may be tempted to follow the same course of comparison more minutely for himself. See, for a further treatment of the subject, the Hulsean Lectures for 1862 (third edition), by the writer of this note, and likewise his Second Appendix to the edition of the Horae Paulinae recently published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.