Perhaps it is some terrible family scene that made Paul so keenly alive to the duty owed by a father to his children. Probably nothing in family life makes a more awful and lasting impression on a sensitive mind than a scene where a respected and beloved parent makes a demand beyond what love or duty permits, and tries to enforce that demand by authority and threats. If Paul had to face such a scene, we can appreciate the reason why he lays so much stress on the duty of parents to respect their children's just feelings : " ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath ; but bring them up in the education and admoni- tion of the Lord " (Eph. VI 4) : " fathers, provoke not your children, lest they lose heart" {Col. Ill 21). Not every person would think this one of the most important pieces of advice to give his young societies in Asia Minor. But, according to our conjecture, Paul had good cause to know the harm that parents may do by
Sec 2. Paul's Family. yj
not reasonably considering their children's desires and beliefs. At the same time he strongly emphasises in the same passages the duty of children to obey their parents, and sets this before the duty of parents to their children. That also is characteristic of one who had been blameless as touching all the commandments {Phil. Ill 6), and who therefore must have gone to the fullest extreme in compliance with his father's orders before he announced that he could comply no further.
3. PERSONALITY. While Luke is very sparing of personal details, he gives us some few hints about Paul's physical characteristics as bearing on his moral influence. As an orator, he evidently used a good deal of gesture with his hands ; for example, he enforced a point to the Ephesian Elders by showing them " these hands " (XX 34). When he addressed the audience at Pisidian Antioch, or the excited throng of Jews in Jerusalem, he beckoned with the hand ; when he ad- dressed Agrippa and the distinguished audience in the Roman governor's hall, he " stretched forth his hand ". This was evidently a characteristic and hardly conscious feature of his more impassioned oratory ; but, when more quiet and simple address was suitable (as in the opening of his speech to the Ephesian Elders, before the emotion was wrought up), or when a purely argumentative and restrained style was more likely to be effective (as in addressing the critical and cold Athenian audience, or the Roman procurator's court), no gesture is mentioned. On the other hand, in the extreme excitement at Lystra he " rent his garments " ; and in the jailor's critical situation, XVI 28, Paul called
38 The Origin of St. Paul. Chap. II.
out with a loud voice. Wherever any little fact is mentioned by Luke, we can always observe some special force in it, and such details must have had real importance, when an author so brief and so impersonal as Luke mentions them ; and they are very rare in him. Alexander tried to obtain a hearing from the Ephesian mob by such a gesture ; and the din, as they howled like a lot of dervishes, is set before us strongly by the fact that speaking was impossible and gesture alone could be perceived. Peter, when he appeared to his astonished friends in Mary's house after his escape, beckoned to them to make no noise that might attract attention and betray his presence. Otherwise such gestures are mentioned only where the hand is stretched out to aid or to heal or to receive help.
Two of the most remarkable instances of Paul's power over others are prefaced by the statement that Paul "fixed his eyes on" the man (XIII 9, XIV 9, cp. XXIII 1); and this suggests that his fixed, steady gaze was a marked feature in his personality, and one source of his influence over them that were brought into relations with him. Luke frequently notes this trait. Peter tells that he fixed his gaze on the heavenly vision, XI 6 ; and he fixed his eyes on the lame man, III 4. Stephen turned his fixed gaze towards heaven, and saw it open to disclose the vision of glory to him. In these cases the power of the eye is strongly brought out. The same trait is alluded to where intense astonish- ment or admiration is involved, as when the bystanders gazed at Peter and John after they had healed the lame man, or Stephen's auditors stared on him as they saw his face suffused with glory, or the disciples gazed