b1uely escaped with his !He, but not without many blows. He had heard his namo given to execration, held up to detestation as the author of blasphemies and sacrilege, and as the enemy of his race. And now he was a. prisoner in the hands of the heathen masters of bis unhappy country. His hands were loaded with cha.ins, and he knew not what dangers were before him. And yet, when he had scarce recovered breath after the struggle for life, we find him with the cha.ins on his wrists, but with unruffled spirit, and admirable composuro and self-possession, delivering to his enemies and would-be murderers a speech as gentle, as firm, as cairn, as collected, and as logical, as if he had composed 1md prepared it at leisure in the stillness of his own study, and was addressing it to a congregation of friends and admirers. Must it not have been given to him in that hour what to speak, and how to say it? The great force of this defence lay in its simple statement of facts. The apostle's conduct at each successive stage had flowed naturally 1md almost inevitably from the circumstances which surrounded him. He had nothing to conceal. Indeed, the circumstances of his early life were well known to his hearers. If his statement was true, how could he have acted differently? He appealed to his fellow-countrymen, his fathers and brothers of the Jewish people, to hear with impartiality the apology which he made. Had he stopped here, maybe bis defence would have been accepted. His Hebrew speech, his thoroughly Jewish attitnde, his high-minded earnestness, his splendid courage, seem to have wrought to some extent upon his volatile and mobile hearers. But he could not stop there. He had a further message to deliver, and it must be delivered at Jerusalem, the mother Church, not only of the circumcision, but of the whole Gentile world. That message was that Christ was to be preached to the Gentiles, and that Jews and Gentiles were to be hence- forth one in Christ. And that message he delivered with chains on hie arms, from the midst of a Roman cohort, to the angry crowd beneath him, having obviously one single purpose-to speak the truth, and to do his duty both to God and man. One other remark is called for by this apology. The nature of the case, a de/ena under false accu- sation, made it absolutely necessary that the defendant should speak of himself. But in the course of the twenty verses in which he details the several passages in the history of his life which bore upon the accusation, it is impossible to detect one particle of vain- glory or of egotism. There are no boastings, nor are there any expressions of an affected humility. '!'here is absolute simplicity, He speaks of himself because he must. And in the same spirit of genuine humility, when it was not necessary, he did not speak of himself. In the remarkable absence of details in all those parts of the Acts of the Apostles where St. Luke does not write as an eye-witness, we have strong evidence that St. Paul did not make his own doings the subject of his conversation with his familiar friends. Had he done so, St. Luke's narrative might have been richer and fuller, but St. Paul greatness would have been diminished, as that of all vain men is, by the desire to appear great. As it is, the apology enables us to enumerate the great apostle's virtues as combining in an extraordinary degree, courage, gentleness, calmness, vigour, humility, high-mindedness, determination, honesty, truth, patriotism, self-forgetfulness, wisdom, eloquence, and a pasuionate zeal for the glory of Christ and for the salvation of men. (For an illustration of some of these features in the apostle's character, see also 2 Cor. xi. ; xii.; Gal. ii. 6, 11; Eph. ill. 7, 8; 1 Tim. i. 12, 13, 16; and throughout the Acts of the Apostles.)
HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vere. 1-22.-Argument and prejudic& We have here- I. AN ADMmABLE ABGUMENT. Paul, at the inspiration of the moment, made a powerful defence of his position. He showed: 1. That no one could enter into their feelings more perfectly than himself. Was he not a Jew by birth (var. 3)? Had he not received a thoroughly Jewish education, at the feet of a Jewish master (var. 3)? Had he not been absolutely possessed by a devotedness to the Law, and a corresponding hatred of the new" Way" (ver. 4)? Had they not the evidence in their own hands of the bitter and unrelenting persecution of which he had been the eager and active agent (ver. 6)? If, then, he was found advocating this hated" Way," it was not because he did not understand Jewish sympathies, nor because he had always been one of its votariea; 198 THE A0TS OF THE APOSTLES. [CB, Hll, 1--SO.