SPIRITUAL HEROISM.

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as if he had committed a crime, and sought in cowardice to avoid the penalty. His sincerity was tried, but he wavered not; the strength of his convictions was put to a hard and sudden test, but he stood it. Henceforth he might be used for any service the Master required -to do or to suffer; for the one or the other he was alike prepared, for into both he had been thus early initiated. Men may, by shifting sides, get greater popularity and a higher reputation for honesty. They may become leaders in the new warfare, or from a lower pinnacle they may be lifted to the summit, and the feeling that they are first may compensate them for any odium or satire which their change may have provoked. But Saul had no cheering prospect of this nature; for he was scorned by the Jews, then assaulted by the Judaizing Christians, and perhaps never fully trusted by the original apostles. His life was but a battle and a march, and a march and a battle, doing and suffering, suffering and doing. He was weak in every man's weakness, and burning with every man's offence; "in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness;" his heart oppressed and broken by "the care of all the churches." We who know the worth, wisdom, and devotedness of his life, are apt so to idealize him, that we cannot see these privations in their literal existence. We associate dignity and authority with the great preacher, and cannot picture the poor pinched stranger-insignificant, in "bodily presence," weary and footsore, ragged, hungry and shivering—coming into a city like a shiftless vagabond who had spent all, and was in want-the livid ring on his

limbs so scantily clad, revealing his acquaintance with the stocks, and the scar of the whip on his back espied through his tattered mantle as he is seeking out a lodging in the meanest streets, where dwelt some pious Jews or proselytes amongst "the offscourings of all things." There he lived and fared, and thence he issued to preach "the unsearchable riches of Christ." And this was usual with him. Luther in knight's armour, Calvin in the garb of a vinedresser, Tyndale in a blouse, or Bunyan in a smock-these were but disguises assumed for a brief period to escape peril, but the apostle's normal state was one of privation and suffering. Never, except in the instance of his Master, had appearance and reality been in such contrast. That mind had insight little less in clearness or in reach than that of "the living creatures full of eyes." That heart had more than man's firmness, and more than woman's softness; and that life was devoted to his species with an aim that never wavered, and a self-feeding ardour which was never damped, and which could not be extinguished save in the blood of him who felt and cherished it.

II-SAUL AT JERUSALEM.

ACTS ix. 26-30; xxii. 17-21. GAL. i. 18, 19.

THE humble stratagem by which Saul had escaped those who were "desirous to apprehend" him, was neither a matter of shame to the inspired historian nor to the apostle himself, for both have referred to it. The wit of a woman had done a similar exploit in the olden time; Rahab let the spies " down by a cord through the window, for her house was upon the town wall." The apostle tells us that he had a special motive in going at this time to Jerusalem, for "he went up to see Peter," or make his acquaintance. He had formed this intention, but the conspiracy of his foes hastened his departure, and, when the basket touched the ground, he did not make for some safe and obscure retreat, but set his face toward the metropolis. It was night. It was in blindness that he had first entered Damascus-he "could not see for the glory of that light"—and now he is forced to flee from it under the friendly cover of darkness. As he left Damascus and proceeded to Jerusalem, he could not pass the scene of his conversion without a holy shudder. Every turn of the road during these hundred and twenty miles, must have reminded him of his eastward journey. But he hurries westward a changed man, dead to his former self, and to all

previous impressions, aspirations, and hopes. And he must have sometimes wondered how he should meet the zealots of his nation, his instigators in his days of cruelty and ignorance, and he must also have surmised how they would shrink from his presence, or hurl against him the fierce curses which their eloquent fury could so copiously supply. But he was too brave to fear human opinion; he had "seen Christ Jesus the Lord," and heard His voice, and what cared he either for scowls or anathemas? And if he entered the city at the gate by which he had left it, or passed the place of Stephen's martyrdom, his soul must have trembled in its gratitude to sovereign mercy; for all such past things were severed by a great gulf from his present being. The bigot had become a Christian; the persecutor an apostle. His arrival at Jerusalem must have created as much doubt and wonder as it had done at Antioch, for we are told that "when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple." He had been a long time away from them; first rumours had subsided; he had been absent, too, from Damascus for a season, and tidings did not then travel very speedily from land to land. He assayed to join himself-made several earnest but ineffectual efforts. He did not attempt to take them by storm, and parade the glory of his conversion before them. "Less than the least of all saints," he humbly sought admission, but he was refused; his veracity was questioned "they did not believe that he was a disciple." Indeed "they were afraid of him;" they deemed him to be a wolf in lamb's clothing, and would not credit him that

PETER AND PAUL.

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his old heart was gone, and that he was a Nazarene who had been "a persecutor, and a blasphemer, and injurious." Yes, Saul was denied Christian fellowship-no small trial, in his present condition, for one who had done and suffered so much under his new convictions. His discipleship, gained by such a miracle, was disallowed, and, as he had left Damascus in haste, he had brought with him no credentials. But Barnabas kindly interfered and vouched for his sincerity, telling "how he had seen the Lord in the way and had been converted, and how he had laboured so courageously on the very scene of his intended havoc. Then was he admitted to fellowship, and "he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem." He met at this time with only two of the apostles, James and Peter, and he resided with Peter. The apostle of the circumcision and the apostle of the Gentiles dwelt for "fifteen days" under one roof. What conversations, discussions, and projected enterprises from two minds so unlike in structure and discipline, and yet so very like in zeal and courage! The one flamed, but the other burned; the one was fitful and forward, the other was patient and uniform; the one was a creature of impulse, the other glowed with a steady enthusiasm. Peter loved Palestine, yet Paul loved it none the less that his heart embraced the world. The former felt at home in the sphere of the Old Testament, the other stretched beyond it while he did not forsake it. To the one, a Gentile was a man to be converted; to the other, a brother also to be won. Peter did what he knew to be his duty in repairing to the house of Cornelius, but he did not feel at perfect liberty to repeat such deeds; while the