Chapter 25 of Paul the Dauntless. CHAPTER XXV. LONE ON THE LAND AND HOMELESS ON THE WATER. Paul lived on in Corinth for many days after Galio had driven the Jews from his judgment seat. He worked there through all the blazing summer when the hills beyond the gulf shimmered in a blue haze. He saw the men and women go out to gather the grapes from the vineyards on the hillside to reap the yellow harvest of the plain, and to garner the olives and citrons from the groves of the Isthmus. He stayed on through the winter when the snow-covered mountains of Hellas were outlined in white against the gray sky, till spring came again and all the plain was gleaming with yellow, red, and blue anemones, and the black oxen dragged the wooden plows through the brown soil to break it up for the sowing. Through all that time, the more he thought about Galio's judgment that he, Paul, the Jew, and Roman citizen, had the right to preach as he would and where he would in the Roman Empire, the greater seemed the meaning of the decision. For it meant that, so long as he did not teach men to rebel against the power of the Emperor Claudius, Paul could carry his adventure into Rome itself. Priscilla, whose name suggests that she was a Roman lady of high standing, and Aquila, her Jewish husband, would fill Paul's mind with their remembrances of the greatness of Rome, the queen of cities, the mistress of the world, set upon her seven hills by the yellow tiber. The thought of Rome never left Paul's mind from that time onward. Paul had now drawn together in Corinth men and women, with their sons and daughters, into a house church. Among his friends who worshipped together with him were Titius Justice, the Roman, and Crispus, Erastus, a great man who was treasurer of the city of Corinth, and Achaus, Fortunatus, Gaius, and Chloe with her household. It may even be that Sosthenes, who had been his enemy in dragging him before Galio, the new leader of the synagogue, had joined him. For a few years later, at the beginning of his first letter to the Christians at Corinth, Paul says that a Sosthenes from Corinth was actually with him when he wrote it. Paul now felt that, having as a wise master builder laid firm foundations at Corinth, he must go forward with his work in other places. When the spring time came, and even before the ships hoisted their brown sails, and had begun to cross the great sea, Paul bestirred himself to go back to Antioch in Syria, the place that had first sent him out on his journeys, but he went back by a route on which he had never traveled before, and he started with new companions. Aquila and Priscilla decided to cross with him over the Aegean Sea to Ephesus. To these Roman travelers this did not seem, as it does to us, like sailing from Europe to Asia, for Ephesus was almost as Greek as Corinth, and it seemed nearer to Athens than did many inland cities among the hills of Greece itself. All the shores and islands of the Aegean were one to the Greek. All the harbors of Greece except one look out over the Aegean Sea, so that really Troas, Ephesus and Smyrna were like cousins to Athens and Philippi and Thessalonica. Paul, with Aquila and Priscilla, having said along good-bye in justice's house, gathered their goods and set off down the road under the shadow of the acro-corrent hill to Sincrea. Paul's luggage was always light, his cloak and staff, his wallet for food, and perhaps a few rolls of manuscript tucked into his tunic. Aquila and Priscilla would have their tools, and some rolls of goat's hair and camel hair canvas and rope for tent-making. They would stay a night at the house of Phoebe at Sincrea, for Paul says that she often tended him. Taking their passage next dawn on a sailing ship for Ephesus, they saw the hills of Greece slip past them, and the boat nosed her way out past the island of Salamis toward the open sea. With no compass to steer by and sailing in a sea of rocky islands, and especially so early in the spring, the ship would be bound to look for anchorage under the lee of an island before sundown each day, and hoist sail at dawn to make the most of each day's light. So for day after day they sailed, till about the sixth day they would sight the island of Salamis, and in an hour or so, with sails furled and sweeps out, were threading the winding channel of the river Kastor and the canal toward the harbor of Ephesus. Swinging round under the lee of the fortified hill that guarded the port, they found themselves in a landlocked harbor busy with all the life of spring. Paul went ashore, and from the stone pier walked up the portway that ran straight as a dart between its marble pillars from the harbor to the heart of the city. There the theater of Ephesus, cut out of the mountainside, and the busy marketplace faced him. As he went round by the theater, through the magnesium gate, he saw on the plain, within groves of trees, that seventh wonder of the world, the temple of Artemis of the Ephesians, rising all one glory of golden carving and white marble, with cool shadows where the worshippers went in under the great roof to lay their gifts on the altars. Turning back he went with Priscilla and Aquila to the quarter of the city where the Jews lived. On the Sabbath he walked with them to a building where no images of gods could be found, where, indeed, the only carving was of a bunch of grapes and vine leaves over the entrance. He entered the cool darkness of the synagogue and spoke with the people, as he was wont to do, of the coming at long last of the promised prince, the messiah. They leaned forward as he spoke and drank in his words eagerly. His good news seems too wonderful to be true, if what Paul said was true, all ought to hear it.  Say with us and tell us more, they pleaded. No, replied Paul, I must hasten to the feast at Jerusalem. I will come again to you, if God wills. The pilgrims' ships were now hasting on their voyages from all parts of the Great Sea to Caesarea, which was used as a port for travellers to and from Jerusalem. So Paul went down to the port way again to the harbour, and saying farewell to Aquila and Priscilla and to his newfound friends in Ephesus. He went aboard a ship which swept down to the open sea for the long sail of over six hundred miles. In those times, without the mariners' compass, sea captains did not like to lose sight of land, and especially in those early spring days in the Aegean Sea, when storms might leap upon them from the north and the clouds would hide the sun. So the ship in which Paul sailed would hug the coast, leaving Patmos to starboard, running past Miletus and through the strait between Caes and the gulf where Halacarnassus lay. They would surely run into the great harbour at Rhodes and then come past the mountains of Lycia, and taking courage in both hands, sail southeast past Paphos and Cyprus, where Paul had sailed with Barnabas those years gone by. The ship's deck was crowded with pilgrims with their rolled-up matbeds, their staves and cloaks, their water-bottles and wallets stuffed with raisins and cheese and flat bread. Great men were there taking their last long journey to the city on its hills, and boys who would remind Paul of the day when he had started with his father on his first pilgrimage to Jerusalem. At last the towers of Caesarea and the sturdy, sickle-shaped breakwater-hove insight. The great sail was furrowed and the sweeps put out to row the ship into the harbour. Once ashore Paul lost no time in joining the throngs of pilgrims who strode out past the stadium and theatre of Caesarea, and up the Roman road which breasted the low hills and climbed the Judean heights. Then the golden pinnacles of the temple broke the skyline. Paul's sandals again trod the pavements of the city where he had trained at the feet of Gamaliel, that marvellous brain which now had proclaimed the good news of the risen Christ in a score of cities from Antioch to Corinth, across a thousand miles of the Roman Empire. Paul joined with his friends in the Passover feast, but the narrowness of the Christian brethren in Jerusalem jarred terribly on his spirit. Even now they could not all see that Christ had come with a message for all men and all nations, a salvation that broke through the myriad details of the law to that flaming higher law of love which was freedom indeed. Paul turned his back on Jerusalem and sped northward to Antioch, city by sea from Caesarea to Seleucia. It must have refreshed him to meet again at Antioch the old friends who had sent him out to run his great adventurous course across the seas and in the cities of the Roman Empire. They too would sit around him, Black Simeon, Lucius from Cyrene, Maneon and the others, with eyes shining with alternate joy and sadness as he told the great story of his adventures and those of Silas and Timothy. Now they listened to the very tale of the call to Macedonia, the beating and the prison in Philippi, and then the earthquake and the coming of the Roman praetors to take them by the hand and beg them to leave, the long tramp over the Ignatian Way, with the riot in Thessalonica and the threatenings at Berea, the sailing to Athens where the learned philosophers jeered, though Dionysius and Demaris stayed to listen and to worship, and then the great days in Corinth. Surely the Antiochian brethren could not help smiling as they heard how Sostanese, who had dragged Paul before Galio, was himself beaten by the people. Yet they would love still more to hear Paul say that Sostanese himself had, after all, entered the Way of Salvation. The mother church at Antioch had sent Paul out on two great missionary journeys, each stranger and more wonderful than they had imagined in their wildest dreams. There had been built, through the splendid quest of Paul and his companions, outposts of the faith, churches garrisoned by brave Christians who held the line in the great strategic centers halfway across the Roman Empire. From Antioch the line now stretched across the Syrian mountains of Amanus, over the Cilician plain and through the Cilician gates to the cities beyond Taurus, Derby, Lystra, Iconium, Antioch and Pisidia, down to Ephesus, and across the helispont to Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, and even to Athens and Corinth. The hearts of the friends of Paul at Antioch would burn within them as they listened to the story and looked into the brown face of their dauntless pioneer. He would be sure to share with them his plans for the future. Of these we know that he had too on which his heart was at this time specially set. He was afraid that the churches in cities across the Empire might grow narrow and be simply interested in their own little affairs. So his first plan was to give them a work to do for other people far away from themselves. He meant to set them all to collect money for the help of the poor who were in Jerusalem. This would do great good to the churches who gave the money, by widening their outlook, giving them a more imperial vision, and the feeling that they belonged to a great church which embraced all who held the faith in the unity of the Spirit. It would also greatly stir the hearts of the people in Jerusalem, who were in danger of feeling that the far-off churches were hardly truly Christian, to receive a gift from those in the far-flung battle line of Paul's missionary adventure. That was the first plan in the far-seeing brain of Paul, who was a statesman, a wise master-builder, as well as a heroic pioneer. Another great ambition of Paul at this time, one that he knew might cost him his life, as indeed it did, was to carry his Gospel into the very heart of the Roman Empire, that is, to occupy the very center of the world of his day, Rome. To bring into being a church that felt itself to be one throughout the whole empire, and with a center at the capital of the empire itself, that was the daring, the tremendous scheme of the wise and undaunted master-builder. It was now summer. Paul wished to carry out part of his first plan before winter set in, and at the same time to fulfill his promise to his friends at Ephesus. He therefore left Antioch, and went out once more across the Orontes, with his feet on the open road and his face toward the mountain heights. Simeon and some of the others would be sure to go out the first miles of the road with him.  From dawn to dark he rode, leaving the great Mount Sulpius behind him, passing now the shore of a lovely lake and there a stream running down from the Amonus Mountains. He would talk by the wayside with the leaders of the camel caravans that swung along the great road, up the now deepening gorges of the mountains, and through the dark shadows of the Syrian gates, the paths that led into his own native Sulisian plain. Along the great road, it was the ancient road down which Alexander the Great himself had come with his armies, Paul traveled till he rode across that bridge from which as a boy he had watched the boats go down to the harbor of Tarsus. Here and among the other churches of the plains, he spoke to the Christian folk, strengthening their courage and helping them to meet the arguments of their enemies. He went along the old streets down which he had run as a boy to school and would see the booth where he had sat at the loom and had thrust his first needles through the goat's hair tent canvas. Then Paul turned his back on Tarsus and went out northward across the plain to the Taurus Mountains. As the traveller rested the ass at the foothills and gazed back down the road to the roofs and orchards of Tarsus and saw the silver ribbon of the river curving down to the harbor, he took his last look at that no-mean city whose chief glory after all is not that Alexander the Great bathed in its river, or that Antony entertained Cleopatra in its palace, or that Athena Doris taught in its university, but that Paul himself was born within its walls. So Paul passed forever from that plain up the Cilician Pass, where the tinkle of the camel bells and the music of the mountain stream filled the gray gorges. Paul climbed up and on by the Roman post road till he passed through the shadow of the Cilician Gates, out on to the high table-land of Cappadocia. He came out on to the dry road on which the summer sun shimmered, and the very camels were glad to get out of the rays of the noonday under the shelter of a wayside inn. He reached Derby, going in by the gate through which some three years earlier he and Silas had entered. Here as everywhere on this journey he told the Christian folk of the needs of the poor of the church in Jerusalem, and they promised their gifts. So he passed from Derby at dawn, when the sun threw the long shadow of the mountain of black rock along the path that he was to follow up the low hills. Through the day he walked till he reached the bridge near which the oxen quenched their thirst at sunset in the shallow stream that ran over its bed round the Acrolistra. At Listra we can well believe Grandmother Lois and her daughter Eunice would want to know all the adventures that had fallen to their boy, Timothy. They would be proud to hear how he helped Paul, carrying his cloak, writing his letters, and bearing them to far-off cities, facing the scourge and the rods, and the peril of sea and land for Paul's sake and for the gospel. Starting from Listra, perhaps before dawn, to get as much journeying as possible done before the mid-summer sun was high in the heavens, Paul took the caravan road over the low ridge of hill-country, and down to where the gushing river from the mountain watered the orchards and cleansed the homes of Iconium. The orchard farmers of Iconium would be busy scaring the birds from the growing fruit in the days when Paul cheered the church there with stories of the wonderful victories their Lord had won in the cities of east and west. So he passed on his unresting travel, and though the gray was now beginning to tinge Paul's beard and his hair, and the fiery sun made journeying a toil, and though friends desired him to stay and warned him how the brigands of the Pasidian mountains lay and wait ahead, Paul never stayed his course. The fire of his passion for the Christ whom he had met on that blazing day on the road to Damascus so many years ago burned on him always. Let no man think that sudden in a minute all is accomplished and the work is done. Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it, scarce were it ended in thy setting sun. No could, never at even, pillowed on a pleasure, sleep with the wings of aspiration furled. So with staff and water-bottle and mat-bed, and with his satchel stuffed with fruits and cheese and bread, he got out on to the road again, till he once more joined in the new military Roman road that led him to Pasidian Antioch, where the aqueduct brought the water from the mountains in whose gorgeous the robbers hid. All's friends there would remember how Barnabas and he had first come to them from the fever-stricken Pamphylian plain five years before, and they would be full of joy at seeing him now for the third, although it was the last, visit among them. We do not know what he said to them, but he would be likely to say things as he was leaving them, like those great words that he wrote to these churches of Galatia later on. Brothers, you were called to be free. Only do not make your freedom an opening for the flesh, but serve one another in love. For the entire law is summed up in one word. You must love your neighbor as yourself, whereas if you snap at each other and pray upon each other, take care in case you destroy one another. I mean, lead the life of the spirit, then you will never satisfy the passions of the flesh. The harvest of the spirit is love, joy, peace, good temper, kindness, generosity, fidelity, gentleness, self-control. Make no mistake, a man will reap just what he sows. He who sows for his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, and he who sows for the spirit will reap life eternal from the spirit. Never let us grow tired of doing what is right, for if we do not faint we shall reap our harvest at the proper season. Paul's friends would go with him through the western gate with the dawn at their backs, as he set out on the last great part and in some ways the most dangerous part of this journey. At the beginning his road lay on the track that Timothy and Silas had trodden with him three years earlier. He was on the great Roman road. Down from the northeast and across this Roman road came the trade road, along which the camels brought the fruits and silks of the plateau to Ephesus or the Aegean coast. Paul was going to Ephesus, but he did not take this safer caravan route with its regular ends and companionship. He struck ahead on the hillier and more dangerous road, where fewer men went, and he traveled straight for Ephesus. Up and down the hills and dales of Asia he passed, gradually dropping from the table land to the river valleys, crossing the streams that ran from the hills to the meander river, then over the moorland to the upper waters of the case-store. Down the valleys of the case-store from Highland to Lowland, he rode, only drawing bridle for needed rest and shelter at Noontide and at night. For the autumn was drawing on, the vineyards were purple with grapes and the olives hung thick on the trees. The cries of the harvesters sounded on the hillsides, and the laughter of the maidens as they trod the grapes with their bare feet in the wine-press. At last one day, as Paul came round a curve in a valley, he felt a fresh breeze on his cheek, and saw a blue gleam on the horizon. The word of the soldiers of Greece when they saw the eucscene would leap to his lips, the lasa, the lasa, the sea, the sea. Before him like a map unrolled lay the mouth of the case-store, the shining marble temples and theater and stadium of Ephesus, and on the edge the harbor with its still masts and crowded shipping. Only that very spring he had sailed from that harbor out into the great sea, and had braved the storms of March to worship at Jerusalem at the feast. He had gone over mountain pass and plain and plateau, had seen a thousand faces lighten at his coming, and had quickened to new courage hearts that were failing in facing hard tasks. Now he had to face the battle afresh in this new city, but he did not quail or tire, yes without cheer of mother or of daughter, yes without stay of father or of son, lone on the land and homeless on the water, pass eye in patience till the work is done. His pace would quicken, and as he entered the great Smyrna gate of Ephesus he would look eagerly for the familiar faces of Aquila and Priscilla. CHAPTER XXVI The defiance of Artemis Paul when he had passed through the gateway in those great walls four miles long which surrounded Ephesus and entered the busy streets would hasten to the house where his old Corinthian friends, Priscilla and Aquila, were living. After telling them the adventures that had fallen to him by sea and land during his six-months journey, he would listen to all the story of the work in Ephesus in his absence. There came to us from Egypt, they would say, from the city of Alexandria a Jew named Apollos. He was one who believed all that John the Baptist preached on Jordan, and he had learned about Jesus and his message of the kingdom of God. This he preached here in Ephesus. He is a man of power and of deep scholarship, and he spoke in the synagogue most vehemently, explaining to the people the way of Jesus.  Alexandria on the northeast coast of Africa was the greatest place of learning for the more liberal-minded Jews in Paul's day. Paul was very glad to have a powerful orator with an educated mind like Apollos to help in the work. But where is Apollos now, he would ask. He desired to go over to Greece, so the brothers here wrote a letter to the Christians in Corinth telling them to welcome Apollos and make him feel at home among them, so he has sailed across there and is helping them splendidly. He is publicly contesting with the Jews with might and main, showing them from our scriptures that Jesus is truly the Messiah. Paul immediately set to work to follow up the work that Aquila and Apollos had done in Ephesus. He went straight to the synagogue. There he spoke out fearlessly, explaining how Jesus had come to bring in the reign of God in the world. Many of the men who squatted there, fingering their beards as they listened to his glowing words, and many of the women who sat hidden behind the screen, yet were all ears to these startling new things, believed that what Paul said was true. They became disciples of the Christian way. But others disagreed and grew more and more stubborn in their views. They began to raise their voices in argument against Paul and said everything that they could against Paul's teaching. Paul made an agreement to hire a hall named, after its past or present owner, Tyrannus. So withdrawing his disciples from the synagogue, he used to teach them and all who cared to hear in the school of Tyrannus, probably during the afternoons. The business life of the cities of the east ended by middle day, so that handicraftsmen and officials, lawyers or shopkeepers, were free to attend. Timothy, Titus, and Priscilla and Aquila would also be there listening and taking down notes. The work of Paul in the quiet of that room is less thrilling to us than his adventures in prison at Philippi or before Galio in Corinth. Yet that work was one of the most fruitful and farsighted of all his acts. As Paul sat there on the summer afternoons at Ephesus, in the lecture room with his disciples grouped round him, listening and taking notes, the eyes of his mind were gazing far beyond them. He saw all that province of Asia, of which Ephesus was the glittering and splendid capital, like the palm of a hand of which the valley in which Ephesus lay was the wrist and the rivers were the fingers. There ran the fingers of the Lycus, the Meander, the Castor, the Hermas, and their tributaries, and on them the busy trading cities of Laodicea, Colossae, Philadelphia, Hierapolis, Smyrna, Sardis, and Thyatira, covering Asia, the richest province in the Roman Empire, which it was now Paul's daring plan to capture for his lord. No wonder that he wrote from Ephesus to his friends in Corinth, I have wide opportunities here for active service. He looked over that province like a general officer commanding, planning to win it for his king. The disciples who sat with him learning were the officers whom Paul was training. He planned to capture that fair province from Taranis's lecture room, and he succeeded. Timothy, Tichicus, Epaphros, and other men went out from that room and from the presence of Paul up those river valleys, aflame with enthusiasm and strong with his courage. In synagogue and marketplace, in all those cities, they declared to Jew and Greek, Roman and Asian, scholar and merchant, scribe and soldier, gymnast and gladiator the unsearchable riches of him whom Paul had brought to them. Thus it was doubtless that the Gospel reached Colossae and Laodicea, Colossians 2-1, and other cities in the Roman province of Asia where the churches had not seen Paul's face even to the time when he wrote to them from Rome the open letter we know as Ephesians. So wonderfully did Paul's splendid and daring strategy succeed in working from that room, the school of Taranis, that Luke was able to write. Paul carried on his discussions and teaching every day, perhaps from eleven to four, as a later note added to some local copy of Acts has it, in the lecture room of Taranis. This went on for two years so that all the inhabitants of Asia heard the word of the Lord. There were mysterious people among those whom Paul taught, magicians, wonder-workers, hypnotists. Some had roles of parchment and papyrus with strange drawings and signs, like the bear, the ram, the heavenly twins, the goat. They would ask your birthday and work out the star under which you were born, and then declare whether you would be shipwrecked or become a great general. They would make you gaze in a crystal ball to see things happening far away. They would make an image in wax in the shape of your enemy and then burn it or stick pins into its heart as a magic way of killing him. They would mutter spells to cast out demons and mix magic potions or burn charms in mystic fires. There were more of these magicians in Ephesus than anywhere in the world. Some were cheats and charlatans, others believed sincerely in the power of their charms. All as they came under the higher spell of the power of Christ, under Paul's teaching, would come to him and confess to him the magic spells that they used, and say that they were going to give them up. At last there were so many who used to practice magic arts and had now decided to be Christians, that all brought together the parchment rolls on which their spells and star readings were written. Placing them in a great pile they set them in a blaze and made a great bonfire of them. They reckoned up that day that two thousand pounds worth of books were burned. The crowds of people who stood around with wandering eyes as the flames leaped up, even those who before had not really listened to Paul's preaching, felt awestruck by the power of his work. One day some men sailed across the Aegean from Sincrea and landed at the harbor at Ephesus. Coming up the portway into the city they inquired where Paul lived. When they found him he was very glad to see them, for they were from the home of Chloe in Corinth, and he looked forward to having news of how his beloved people there were doing. His face, however, became very grave and a little stern when he heard that the Christians in Corinth had been quarreling among themselves, and had also fallen into just those horrible sins of unclean living that made the name of Corinth a byword all over the Roman Empire. On the second of these matters he had already heard from Corinth before, and had replied at once in a letter which has not survived. Now he sat down and dictated a second and longer letter to them. He spoke the words, and they were written on the long roll of parchment, perhaps by Sostenes or Titus or even Luke. We can imagine how, when these words were read out to the people gathered together at Corinth, their faces would flush with shame as he uprated them for their quarreling and foul living, and then glow with joy as he showed them the true ideal for their lives. Brothers, he wrote, I beg of you, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ to drop these party cries. There must be no cliques among you. You must regain your common temper and attitude. For Chloe's people inform me that you are quarreling. By quarreling I mean that each of you has his party cry. I belong to Paul, and I to Apollos, and I to Cephas, Peter, and I to Christ. Has Christ been parceled out? Was it Paul who was crucified for you? With jealousy and quarrels in your midst, are ye not behaving like ordinary men? When one cries, I belong to Paul, and another I belong to Apollos, what are you but men of the world? Who is Apollos? Who is Paul? They are simply used by God to carry his gospel, each as the Lord assigns his task. I did the planting, Apollos did the watering, but it was God who made the seed grow, so neither planter nor waterer counts, but God alone who makes the seed grow. We work together in God's service. You are God's crop from his seed, God's house being built up. So you must not boast about men, for all belongs to you. Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life, death, the present and the future all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ to God. Then lest they should say that it was all very well for Paul to write so when he himself was at his ease, he explains to them that to this very hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad and knocked about, we are waifs, we work hard for our living, when reviled we bless, when persecuted we put up with it, when defamed we try to conciliate, to this hour we are treated as scum of the earth, the very refuse of the world. Even apart from the fresh news as to the length to which party strife had gone in the Corinthian church, Paul was intending to answer its own questions, partly in reply to his recent letter and partly on other points, which had reached him by special messengers, probably bearing them in writing. The messengers may have included Sosthenes, a leader of the church at Corinth, whom Paul associates with himself as agreeing in the council given in his letter. He goes then, carefully over the points they had raised, mingling profound instruction in Christian principles with his censures on their shortcomings. Incidentally he shows them in one sentence what will make them all feel one, not people who can be divided and think themselves better than each other. By one spirit we have all been baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or freemen, we have all been saturated with one spirit. Many prided themselves on their special spiritual gifts, Charismata, and used them in a selfish, egoistic way. Paul corrected this by the idea of a single body with its many different members, the eye, the hand, the foot, all working for the common good of that body as a whole. All its special functions are due to the same God, who works in and through each and all its members. But there was a yet simpler and more direct way of appeal for self-forgetful cooperation, instead of pride and competition for glory. Paul glowed with a new fire as he broke out into that wonderful praise of love which men will read and reread in all languages till speech perishes from the earth. Yet I will go on to show you a still higher path. I may speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but if I have no love I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. I may prophesy, fathom all mysteries and secret lore. I may have such faith that I can move hills from their places, but if I have no love I count for nothing. I may distribute all I possess in charity. I may give up my body to be burnt. But if I have no love I make nothing of it. Love is very patient, very kind. Love knows no jealousy. Love makes no parade, gives itself no heirs. It's never rude, never selfish, never irritated, never resentful. Love is never glad when others go wrong. Love is gladdened by goodness. Always slow to expose, always eager to believe the best. Always hopeful, always patient. Thus faith and hope and love last on, these three. But the greatest of all is love. How the very being of those men and women at Corinth must have tingled as the bearer of this letter read out these words straight from their glorious author. So Paul came toward the end of his great letter and sent across the Aegean Sea from Ephesus to Corinth, his ringing challenge and command. Watch! Stand firm in the faith! Play the man! Be strong! Let all you do be done in love! Paul bent over the letter and with his own hand penned its clothes. Then it was rolled and covered with an outer case to protect it from damage and traveling. The messenger, probably his trusted Greek friend Titus, would thrust it into his tunic and go down the port way to the harbour, to carry across the water to Corinth words that will be read till the end of time. In that letter Paul said that he hoped to start on a journey around the coasts of the Aegean Sea, visiting Philippi and Thessalonica and Berea, till he came to them in Corinth itself, but a great riot occurred which threw all his plans out and hastened his journey. It came about thus.  With them came merchants and shopkeepers, officials and students from the cities of Lycus and Meander and Casteur valleys, while the ships that crept into the port brought pilgrims from all along the coast and even from Greece and Macedonia across the Aegean Sea. The whole country made holiday in honour of Artemis, the goddess of wild nature, now partly Asian and partly Greek in character. The people crowded to see the chariots race round the stadium on the hill, drawn by horses frenzied by the cracking whips of the drivers and the shouts of the crowd, wrestlers, their bodies glistening with oil in the blazing sun, and boxers with iron-studded gloves on their knuckles strained and struggled. Men ran the foot races for the prize of a wreath, hungry beasts, lions from Africa and tigers from the east, were let loose on the sanded arena of the stadium to fight with gladiators standing with their short swords drawn. In the theatre actors played comic plays of Aristophanes before the hill of faces that surrounded them, the audience which crowded the seats that rose tier above tier in the vast auditorium. Paul heard the blare of trumpets and the clash and boom of cymbal and drum, and saw the multitude press out toward the magnesium gate of the city. The priests and priestesses of Artemis came in procession, with some slaves playing the music and others bearing aloft under canopies, statues of the great goddess. As these passed by, the people waved their arms and gave a shout that surged to the very skies, and Artemis, great Artemis of Ephesus! Through the streets the goddess in cymbal made her triumphal way to the theatre, where play was made in her honour. She came out again and was born forward on the shoulders of men above the shouting crowds, toward the gate by Mount Choresis, and back through the groves of green trees, above which could be seen the broad ridged roof of the wonderful temple built for her worship. As the procession drew nearer to the Artemisian, the people saw a lovely white temple. Its wide roof and portico rested on row behind row of marble pillars whose carved capitals were overlaid with gold and whose vast size was made graceful and light by their exquisite proportions. Climbing the marble steps that surrounded and raised the temple, the worshippers went barefoot out of the blaze of the sunshine, through the massive carbon doors of cypress wood, into the cool, dim quiet of the great hall of the temple with its many statues, beyond which lay the inner holy place, with its roof of golden cased cedar resting on priceless pillars of green jasper, its carven altar, its embroidered curtain behind which was concealed the goddess Artemis herself, who had fallen, they said, from heaven. She was never shown to the people a dark, roughly carved image with no beauty. Out into the city, however, Paul could see men were buying little graven or terracotta images of Artemis in her shrine, some to take back to their homes to worship, others to present as a votive offering at the Artemisian, the temple itself. For four days the great festival of Artemis was celebrated each Maytime, and then the crowds melted away, going back along a score of roads and across the sea. But all through the year, in the booths in the market place, sat men who were molding and carving and hammering. They were making the little shrines, Nayoi, of Artemis, sitting in a niche, with her lions couched by her side. Here the sculptor carved the figures in pure marble from Mount Caressus. By his side a man with agile, clever fingers molded them in clay that was put into the furnace and baked. Some of the finished terracotta shrines stood beside him, in the silver smith's guild, men sat by their tiny forges with little hammers and anvils, on which they tapped the gray silver and molded it to beautiful little images of Artemis. Many men in Ephesus made their living by these handicrafts, and sold their shrines not only in Ephesus and on the feast day, but all up the Lycus, Kastor, and Meander valleys, and at places like Sardis, Philadelphia, Pergamus, and Thyatira, Tyrapolis, Laodicea, and Colossae, for all Asia worshiped Artemis of Ephesus. A leader among these silver smith's was named Demetrius, as he saw Paul, with his helpers Aquila and Timothy and Erastus, Gaius and Aristarchus and others, spreading through Asia their new religion, which said that handmade images of gods had no power and ought not to be worshiped, Demetrius saw that his income from the shrines would fall in proportion as Paul succeeded. He did not stop to ask himself whether what Paul said was or was not true. He only saw that these new worshipers of the God whom they called Christ were growing in numbers and in power all over the city, and that men who had in the old days bought shrines of Artemis, now bought them no longer. Swiftly, one winter day, he drew the leading craftsmen together, the silver smith's, the sculptors in wood and marble and clay, perhaps in the guild of the silver smith's where he was a leading employer. When they were met together, he stood up and spoke. My men, he said, you know this trade is the source of our wealth. You also see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but almost all over Asia, this fellow Paul has drawn off a considerable number of people by his persuasions. He declares that handmade gods are not gods at all. Now the danger is not only that we shall have our trade discredited, but that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will fall into content and that she will be degraded from her majestic glory, she whom all Asia and the wide world worship. Demetrius, by thus artfully playing both on their trade interest and their pride in Ephesus as the center for Artemis worship, roused the meeting to fury against Paul. They poured out into the street, shouting in their passion of enthusiasm for Artemis and rage against the new way. Great Artemis of Ephesus, they shouted as they crowded into the street. The people leapt from their shops and houses, sailors ran up the port way from the harbor, smiths threw down their tools, boys left their games to find out the cause of the uproar. They could only discover that the worship of their goddess was threatened, so they all joined in the cry. There was a shout of, to the theater! The dust rose in the air above the many-colored moving mob that pushed and jostled and yelled its way to the theater, which was close by the marketplace. As the leaders headed the throng they caught sight of Gaius and Aristarchus of Macedonia, two of Paul's principal helpers, who had been busy spreading the faith in Asia. There are two of the ring-leaders, one would cry away with them! They rushed at Gaius and Aristarchus and dragging them by their arms and pushing them along. They surged down the street and crowded like a full flowing tide into the theater, clambering up the marble steps and over the seats till the place was alive with faces of all nations, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Cretans, men of Asia, even Jews. Paul heard the uproar and found that his friends Gaius and Aristarchus had been dragged into the theater. Immediately he started to go to the theater himself to face the raging mob, regardless of the peril. Some of his disciples at once came round Paul and held him back. We can imagine their argument. Do not go! You are our leader. All the churches depend upon you, and you must keep yourself for the sake of us all. Besides that, what good would come if you went in among those raging beasts? The sight of you would only sting Demetrius and all his men to a wilder fury, which the excitable mob of an Ionian coast city like this would wreak on Aristarchus and Gaius as well as on you. As Paul was hesitating, messengers came running to him from some of the Asiarchs, the great officials who were the high priests for all Asia, of the worship of the Divine Majesty of Rome itself, in the persons of Emperor and the whole line of Caesars. These great Roman-spirited officers were friends of Paul and did not wish any harm to come to him. Given that Paul never cared for his own safety and fearing that he would rush into the theater and be torn to pieces, they sent to him, saying, Do not imperil your life by coming into the amphitheater. Paul at last reluctantly gave way. In the theater, den and chaos ruled. Everyone was shouting, some yelling one thing, some another. The majority had no idea why they had met. At last the Jews, fearing that the mob would turn against them as the class known to be opposed to all carving of graven images, pushed to the front Alexander, a leading Jew. He stood on the stage, beckoning with his hand to get silence, so that he could defend himself against the cries of the people. For a few seconds there was quietness. Then the mob discovered that the speaker was a Jew, and a roar broke out from them all, so that not a word that he said could be heard. Great Artemis of Ephesus! They shouted, turning a prayer into a rallying cry. Great Artemis of Ephesus! For two hours that cry echoed from the theater across the city to the harbor. At last when they were exhausted, the secretary of state of Ephesus, the ruling official who was in close touch with the proconsul from Rome, stood up, and at last got complete silence. Men of Ephesus, he began with a touch of flattery that secured their hearing. Who on earth does not know that the city of Ephesus is warden of the temple of the great Artemis and of the statue that fell from heaven? All that is beyond question. So you should keep calm and do nothing reckless. Instead of that, he continued, pointing to Gaius and Erestarchus, you have brought these men here who are guilty neither of sacrilege nor of blasphemy against our goddess. If Demetrius and his fellow tradesmen have a grievance against anybody, let both parties state their case. The assizes are held, and there are such persons as proconsuls to give judgment. Any wider claim must be settled by the legal assembly of the citizens. Indeed, he concluded, there is a danger of our being charged with a riot over today's meeting. There is not a single reason that we can give for this disorderly gathering. Now go your ways. At this the people began to pour out from the theater. Arguing, laughing, angry and ashamed by turns. When the tumult in the city had quieted down, Paul called his disciples together round him. In the quietness he talked with them about the work that lay before them in Ephesus and other cities of Asia. He had been with them now for over two years, speaking daily in the philosophy school called after Tyrannus, writing letters, sending his helpers out into other cities. Until now there were not only many churches among the cities, but there were men who could lead and carry forward the work that he had opened up. He had intended to stay till that spring, and then to sail in the late spring at Pentecost, going round by Philippi and Thessalonica to Corinth, as he had promised them in his letter. But the riot made his own work in Ephesus impossible for the time. Paul had never since his call from Tarsus stayed so long in one place as Ephesus, and in no place had the opportunity been so wonderful. But he felt the spirit of the pioneer stirring in him, the thrill that stung him on to run the full course onto his goal. It was winter, with the mountains and hills above Ephesus etched in white snow against the dark sky, and away to the west the pearly sea of islands. The great sea was not open for journeying, but venturesome sailors could run the gauntlet of the storms in short voyages from port to port up the coast. Paul, therefore, went down to the harbour and took passage in a coasting vessel. She was rode down river, then the sweeps were drawn in, and with sail hoisted she leapt out over the grey waste of waters with her bows northward. CHAPTER XXVII. As the ship clove her way northward through the wintry waves of the Aegean Sea, Paul's own heart was grey and stormy. The riot at Ephesus had broken his work for the time, work that was more to him than life. As he looked back he could see that the more wonderful his success became, the hotter was the fury against him of those who stood for the old ways, thrust out of Poseidon, Antioch, and Iconium, stoned in Lystra, beaten and imprisoned in Philippi, threatened with death in Thessalonica, scorned at Athens, dragged before the proconsul in Corinth, and now howled at by tens of thousands of Ephesians. Paul knew that he, like his master, must expect death if he was to run the straight race in defiance of all. But on this Paul the Dauntless had long made up his mind. I am ready, he said, to be slain for Christ's sake. He had shown also a score of times in face of deadly peril that what he said he was ready to do. The ship at sunset swung round the jutting headland and sailed into the great harbor of Troas. The city behind looked from its hillside over the sea. Paul again saw the Daunt come up over those immortal mountains which had looked down on the fights of Achilles and Hector and all the heroes of the Trojan Wars. There in Troas he waited for a time with some of his friends who lived there. He had thought that there he might meet one of his closest comrades Titus, the brave Greek who was on the way back from Corinth with the reply to a letter, our first Corinthians or another, that Paul had written from Ephesus and as to the effect of which he was in great anxiety. But to his disappointment Titus had not yet returned. At Troas, writes Paul, I could not rest because I found not Titus my brother, so I said good-bye and went off to Macedonia. Going aboard another ship, Paul sailed north-west across the narrow seas past Samothrace Island and once more made the harbor of Neapolis. As he looked up from the harbor toward the city of Philippi on the heights behind the Macedonian coast, he could not but remember the strange adventure of the rods, the prison, and the earthquake. We do not know what happened on this occasion when he reached Philippi. We only know that winter was still in his heart. When I reached Macedonia, he confided later to his friends in Corinth, it was trouble at every turn, wrangling all round me, fears in my own mind. Then there came to him a sight and the sound of news that wreathed his face with smiles and made his heart dance. He saw a figure coming toward him, his brave, buoyant comrade Titus, with glad news from Corinth that the people there had received his letter in a good spirit and had repented of their quarrels and their light thoughts about deeds of lust. Titus told Paul how delighted he was with the Christians at Corinth, how they had received him with great respect, and did all the things that he told them, as Paul wrote to them later on in that same spring, I am indeed proud of you. You are a perfect comfort to me. I am overflowing with delight amid all the trouble I have to bear. Titus gave me such a report of how you longed for me. How sorry you were, and how eagerly you took my part that it filled me with joy. I told Titus of my pride in you and have not been put to shame, I am glad to have full confidence in you. But there was still a cloud on the sky which needed clearing away. Some men there were who questioned Paul's authority to write to them, telling them how to behave and to live as Christians. They were largely egged on by certain interloping Judaizers from Judea, who styled themselves apostles and denied the title to Paul. Who is this Paul after all, they asked. Paul put forward in reply a claim that indeed must have made those very eminent apostles, as he calls them in irony, wints. When they came to ask whether they had ever done anything that touched the dauntless courage of Paul, he asks are these critics of his really ministers of Christ and replies, Yes, but not as much as I am, with all my labours, with all my lashes, with all my time in prison, a record longer far than theirs. I have been often at the point of death. Five times have I got forty lashes, all but one, from the Jews. Three times have I been beaten by the Romans, once pelted with stones. Three times shipwrecked, adrift at sea for a whole night and day. I have been often on my travels. I have been in danger from rivers and robbers, in danger from Jews and Gentiles, through dangers of town and desert, through dangers on the sea, through dangers among false brothers, through labour and hardship, through many a sleepless night, through hunger and thirst starving many a time, cold and ill-clad and all the rest of it. Then Paul told how the brethren at Philippi were getting together a gift for the poor at Jerusalem, and how he was asking Titus to return with this letter to Corinth and stir them up to do the same at once, for he wished a year hence to go on to Jerusalem, with delegates from Achaea, Macedonia, Asia, and Galatia bearing the gift. This was what he had been aiming at ever since he had left Jerusalem nearly three years before. While Titus was hurrying back to Corinth, Paul spent the whole of that spring and summer first in Philippi, then going along the Roman road to Thessalonica, and in the autumn he reached Berea. He was not alone now, for before Titus left his own loved Timothy had joined him in time to share in the letter Titus was to carry back. Titus probably returned from there before Paul left Ephesus. When winter came on Paul went southward from Berea, and sailing up the gulf past Berea, he landed at the port of Sincrea, and once more walked in the busy streets of Corinth. During that winter spent in Corinth the last of his mission work in Greece, Paul wrote the greatest of his epistles, that to the as yet unvisited church in Rome. Paul was proud to say, I am a Roman citizen, freeborn. Young Nero was on the throne of the empire, but he had not yet shown himself to be the blood-thirsty, boasting unnatural monster that he later became. Paul knew that it was the wonderful Pax Romana that gave him safe passage across the seas, and along those Roman roads which linked the whole empire together from Damascus to the Pillars of Hercules, and from Tarsus even to London. It was more and more burning itself in on Paul's mind that all roads lead to Rome. I must see Rome, he said, and what is more he had made up his mind to press on, beyond Rome, even into Spain. As Paul had sat through those mornings in Corinth and Ephesus, sowing and weaving to earn his own living, Aquila, at work alongside him, would talk of the greatness of Rome, and of the men and women there who had already gathered together into a Christian church. Some of them were friends of Paul, such as Epinetus, who had gone to Rome from Asia. There were in the church at Rome his kinsmen in the flesh, probably fellow Jews, Andronicus, Junius and Herodion, and young men like Rufus, with dear old women like Rufus's mother, his mother and mine, as Paul affectionately calls her. Paul wished to help all those people in Rome to glory in the greatness of their faith, and to forget in one burning flame of love for Jesus Christ and for one another everything that divided them. Through more than one winter day, then, when even the waters of the narrow gulf of Corinth were whipped to rage by the gales that tore down from the snow-covered heights to the north, Paul, in the house of his friend Gaius, dictated to young Tertius a long letter to the Romans. Tertius's reed-pin scratched and moved on the parchment as Paul, his eyes glowing with concentrated fire of brain and heart, spoke high and deep thoughts that make this letter not easy to understand when we first read it, yet thoughts that have made a difference to the world ever since. And although the letter was so lofty, Paul took up many lines of writing at the end, sending his greetings to his friends, each one by name. Probably his friend Phoebe of Sincrea carried this letter to Rome, where she now lived. But last the long winter was over, the anemones began to spring through the brown earth and the swallows to come back from Egypt. The collection that had been made in the churches all around the Aegean Sea and up on the Plateaus was being brought to one place, so that Paul and his friends could together carry the gift to Jerusalem. Paul had arranged to go by a pilgrim-ship to Jerusalem, picking up the others on the way, so that they might arrive in time for the feast. One night, however, a friend came to Gaius's house with a startling rumour. The strict Jews, who had never forgiven Paul for going over from the Pharisees to the side of Christ, and who saw in him the great enemy, had worked out a plot for killing him on the journey. They hoped, perhaps, on the great sea, to have him stabbed in the night and his body dropped overboard. Paul never flinched from danger, but death at that hour would ruin all his scheme for taking the gift to Jerusalem and going on thence to Rome. Slowly he changed his plans. He arranged with his friends to meet them in Troas in the second weekend, April, on route for Jerusalem. He himself took journey through northern Greece. His enemies were foiled. Paul celebrated the Passover with his friend Luke and a number of the others at Philippi. Then they got on board another ship at the port, Neapolis, in the following week. The winds were contrary, for it took five days to cross from Neapolis to Troas, a two days run. There they met their friends with whom they were to sail for Jerusalem. The whole group of friends was made up, in addition to Paul their leader and Luke, of Sopater, the son of Pyrrhus, who had traveled from Berea and his Macedonian friend Aristarchus, representing Thessalonica, Gaius from Derby with Timothy of Lystra, representing the churches up on the plateau of Galatia, while the province of Asia sent Titicus and Trophimus. Paul and his company stayed for a whole week at Troas. Paul having been prevented from reaching Jerusalem for the Passover, which he had now celebrated in Philippi, was determined to reach Jerusalem for Pentecost, our Witzentide. Pentecost fell that year, 57, on May 28, and, as Passover week began on April 7, it was April 19 when Paul reached Troas. He had just under six weeks in which to cover the journey down the Aegean Sea, across the Great Sea to Caesarea, and on foot to Jerusalem. He found, as the week wore on at Troas, a ship that was taking a coasting journey with cargo down the coast of Asia and round past roads to Patara, where he was sure to find a ship sailing eastward. The ship would not run into the Gulf of Ephesus, but would wait for some days at Miletus beyond the Gulf to discharge and take up cargo. This would give Paul an opportunity for saying farewell to his close friends of Ephesus. He therefore decided to go aboard that ship. Paul with his friends, on the last day of their stay in Troas, on the first day of the week, April 25, went together to a large house three stories high. Going up by the stone stairs outside the house they opened the door of a large room at the top of the building where they could, disturbed and uncrowded, hear the great leader, the fame of whose work and adventure in many lands and on the waters was known to them all. The evening waned, as the swift darkness came on servants brought little lamps, and soon the flickering lights from many wicks cast soft lights and shadows over the thoughtful faces of those who listened while Paul spoke to them. The stars came out, the night wore on, it was midnight, and still Paul, full of the glory and wonder of the story of God's power and love and holiness shown in Jesus Christ, spoke on, and still the people, lost to all thought of time, listened. A lad, Uticus, sat on the windowsill, gazing long with reverence at the daring pioneer, who stood there with glowing face and with hands gnarled with work, the hero of a hundred adventures in travel. But now midnight was past, Uticus was very tired. He drowsed and nodded and then fell fast asleep. He drooped perilously in the window. Suddenly there was the sound of a cry and sickening thud, Uticus had overbalanced and had fallen headlong from the window three stories high. He lay on the ground in the dim starlight, horribly still and white. Paul and Luke rushed down. Luke, the physician, looked for breathing or heartbeat. He was sure that the young man was dead.  Paul threw himself down and held the body close to the warmth and the breathing of his own body. Do not lament, he said. The life is still in him. Paul went upstairs again to the room where the Christians of Troas were waiting. Then long before dawn he broke bread and with the others ate it, and drank from the cup together in memory of their Lord. Paul had already two years before, when writing from Ephesus to the people at Corinth, said what was in his mind when he taught them in every place to join in this sacred meal. I passed on to you, he wrote, what I received as from the Lord himself, namely that on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took a loaf, and after thanking God he broke it, saying, This means my body broken for you, do this in memory of me. In the same way he took the cup after supper, saying, This means the new covenant ratified in my blood, as often as you drink it, do it in memory of me. For as often as you eat this loaf and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he come. Paul, when they had broken bread, continued his talk with his friends till the first faint light of dawn from beyond Mount Eda, beyond Troas, dimmed the light of the lamps. By this time the lad Uticus had recovered consciousness, though the shock still made it impossible for him to walk, but his friends were greatly relieved to be able to carry him home alive. Meantime Luke, with Aristarchus and the others, had gone down to the harbour, and had before dawn gone aboard the ship, which was obliged to make an early start to take advantage of the morning breeze from the north. When the morning came they were already out on the sea with the boughs of their ship rounding the cape on the way to Assoce, though Paul, just as he was, not waiting for sleep or rest, went out on the road in the dawning light with resolute face to join the ship of adventure which was to carry him where his enemies thronged. CHAPTER XXVIII. Paul was tired with his strain of the long night's work, and he hurried out so that he should not miss the ship at Assoce. If we may guess at his reason for wishing to go thither by land rather than by sea, it is most natural to suppose that he wanted the solitude of a long walk in which to face alone with his master all the peril that he knew lay in ambush for him in Jerusalem. So Paul footed it out through the south gate of Troas and along the street through the suburb. He would pass the beautiful buildings where hot springs of healing water gushed from the earth into the marble baths, to which in the afternoon the dandies of the city would lounge and the slaves would carry the Roman ladies. Soon Paul's feet were on the open paved road. With the sun rising above the green mountains on his left and shining upon the plain, the headland, and the gleaming sea on his right, Paul travelled swiftly through the open country. He had gone twenty miles when the roofs of the town of Assoce came in sight. Going straight to the port he found, sure enough, that his friends had already sailed into harbour. He went aboard the ship and by dawn of the next day she had cast off from the quay and was threading her way through the harbour shipping. Rounding the end of the stone pier she ran before the breeze all day, till at sundown she anchored in the port of Middleene, beyond the island of Lesbos. The harbour faced the rising sun, looking from the island across the narrow waters to the coast of Asia. By the time the light of morning had touched the hills of Lesbos, the sail was unfurled again, and the ship swept southward past the mouth of the gulf and by the dark mass of the island of Chios, which lake houched like a lion guarding the gate to Smyrna. Paul was eager to go forward to Jerusalem, and his spirit may have chafed at the need to stop each night at ports so close to one another. Luke, however, a Greek living near the shore of the Aegean sea, loved the ship and the sea, and reveled in her making a new harbour each night, for he tells us of each one as they reached it. It was still April, the early summer of the Aegean Sea. The ship stopped each evening because the wind in the Aegean at that time of year generally blows from the north from before sun rise through the day, the cool air from the mountains rushing down across the seas to fill the place of the hot air that rises from the African desert. The breeze from the north dies away as the afternoon wears on, falling to a dead calm at sunset, after which a wind from the south blows gently through the night. So again they cast anchor in the afternoon near Cape Argenum on the mainland opposite Chios. In the morning they were away before dawn across the entrance to the gulf of Ephesus and swinging under the lee of Samos. They had not passed Cape Trogilium when the wind fell again and the captain anchored his ship there, running early the next day across the gulf between Samos and the mainland. The next morning they stood across the gulf and by noon the vessel was made fast alongside one of the wharves of Miletus, where she was swiftly boarded by the porters who started to unload her cargo, keeping up a sing-song chant as they went to and fro with jars of oil and wine and loads of grain and hides. This would take some days for the unloading and to ship a new cargo. One of Paul's friends, therefore, started for Ephesus as swiftly as sail and beast could carry him. The messenger, taking advantage of the southerly breeze of the late afternoon, the imbat, could land at Pryin, climb the hills on the following morning, and drop again to the coast road, reaching Ephesus by the following afternoon. No sooner did the friends of Ephesus know that their great companion and hero was at Miletus, than they were all agogged to see him, and swiftly shod and girded themselves for the journey back with the messenger to see Paul. If they made good journeying they would reach him on the last day of April, and may have spent May first with him. They had not seen him since the great riot, when all Ephesus was filled with the shouting, Great Artemis of Ephesus! In a room they gathered round Paul, waiting to hear all that he would say, but most of all to see the loved face of the man. He talked to them. Luke sat quietly listening, perhaps writing a note quickly on a role taken from his tunic, so that he should be able to tell the very words to the people who had never seen Paul. You know quite well, Paul said, how I lived among you all the time ever since I set foot in Asia, how I served the Lord in all humility, with many a tear and many a trial, which I encountered owing to the plots of the Jews. The men would nod their heads in agreement. Then Paul continued, you know how I never shrank from letting you know anything for your good, or from teaching you alike in public and from house to house, bearing my testimony both to Jews and Greeks of repentance before God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Now here I go to Jerusalem under the binding force of the Spirit. What will befall me there I do not know. Only I know this, that in town after town the Holy Spirit testifies to me that bonds and troubles await me. Their faces would be sad at this, but would glow with admiring hero worship as they heard their leaders say just what those who knew his fearless spirit would expect. But then I set no value on my own life compared with the joy of finishing my course and carrying out the commission I received from the Lord Jesus to attest the gospel of the grace of God. I know, he said, amid a hush of awe, I know today that not one of you will ever see my face, not one of you among whom I moved as I preached the rain. I know that when I am gone fierce wolves will get in among you and they will not spare the flock, so be on the alert. Remember how for three whole years I never ceased night and day to watch over each one of you with tears, and now I entrust you to God, he is able to build you up. Their heads would not agreement again as Paul went on to say with his work-stained hands held out, you know yourselves how these hands of mine provided everything for my own needs and for my companions. Silver, gold, or clothing I never coveted. I showed you how this was the way to work hard and care for the poor, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus who said, to give is happier than to get. With these words Paul fell on his knees and poured out prayer. As he ceased, their voices broke out in lamenting. They fell on Paul's neck and kissed him fondly, sorrowing chiefly because he told them that they would never see his face again. They all went down to the harbor together. At last the captain of the ship gave the order to hoist sail. Paul tore himself away from his friends, who, grown men as they were, could hardly see him through the mist of their tears as the ship gathered way and went out on the southward trail. Await to starboard, in the light of the morning, lay Patmos, screened by lesser islands. On the port side the coast faded away into a deep, full gulf, and then shot out again in a wild riot of rock. The breeze drove the ship on till they sighted Koss Island to the starboard, and ran in under her lee, before the wind had sunk to a calm or the embot arisen to drive her back in her tracks. In the morning they were away before the gleam of the sun had flushed to life the white columns of the temple behind the little harbor of Koss. Tacking east into the gulf of Halakarnasses they swung west again round the southern cape, and threaded the channel among the islands till the great island roads loomed ahead of them, her rolling hills and rich valleys covered with the spring-green of olive trees and vines. Long before Paul sailed into the deep, safe harbor of roads the mighty brazen Colossus, which had once straddled from pier to pier across the harbor, had crashed into the sea under the shock of earthquake. Yet eye and ear were filled with the sights and sounds of roads, the glorious hills, the noble temples, the forests of masts, the cries of sailors speaking every tongue from Phoenicia to Spain, the hammering and sawing in the ship-building yards, the flitting of small boats across the harbor among the ships, and behind all on the horizon to the northwest lay the Lycian coast. From the sea the hills lifted themselves, rising past deep mysterious valleys to the high mountain ridge of the Taurus range, that caught the sun's first rays as Paul's ship next day sailed westward for Patara, the end of the ship's voyage. As the vessel made fast alongside the wharves of Patara harbor in the afternoon, Paul saw behind the port the city of Xanthus breasting the foothills of the Taurus. Paul and his friends had to change ships here, and may have gone up into the city through the gates into the colonnaded chariot way, flanked by foot-walks leading up to the theater, and beyond that to the temple of Apollo, the sun-god. But none of them would stay long, for time pressed, and a large ship that could face the longer voyage across the Great Sea, away from coast and the ports, lay waiting to sail to the Phoenician harbor of Tyre. Going aboard they took passage on her, and next day were out on the Great Sea, running southeast. Over the sea, like a dim cloud, came the distant coast of Cyprus. As it drew nearer, Paul would be able to point out to Luke, as they stood on deck, the little harbor of Paphos, away over the port bow, between those breakwaters Barnabas and he had sailed into these same seas ten years before. The next afternoon they sided the high bluff of Carmel glittering in the May sunshine, and the ship put in alongside the breakwater which made a wharf for Tyre, this island city by the coast. There the ship was to unload her cargo. They had still a margin of time before Pentecost, so they went up the narrow streets of Tyre, and searched for the Christian disciples who lived there. For a whole week they stayed there, while Paul would speak with them in the cool dimness of some room away from the glare of the summer sun, and the bustle and dust of the traffic. Do not go up to Jerusalem, said the friends at Tyre to Paul. They knew the peril that he ran, but he had set his face toward the city, with his friends who, with their splendid gift, were the living evidence of the love which should bind all Christian folk together, whether they were Jews, or Greeks, or barbarians. At last the ship was ready, the time was up, and they set sail. The Christians in Tyre, women, boys, and girls, and all, came down the streets of the town to the beach. The porters, the sailors, and passing loungers would stare as this group of men and women and children knelt down, and one with a strong eager face poured outwards of prayer. Then they said good-bye to one another, and Paul, Luke, Aristarchus, and the others went aboard. By noon the ship had covered the miles between Tyre and Ptolemaus, and had again made fast at the wharf in the sandy bay, where they all hurried ashore to greet the brothers there, and then went aboard again for the last hours of sailing. Skirting the coast past Carmel, here, hilly, there a confusion of sand dunes, fringing the lovely plain of Sharon, where the flowers were now shriveling in the sun, they sighted the brave, sickle-shaped breakwater that made the splendid artificial harbour of Caesarea, dominated by the square, strong Roman citadel. Paul had passed through Caesarea again and again, so he could lead his friends straight to the house of his friend Philip, who welcomed them all gladly to his home. There they listened to all that Philip had to tell Paul of the happenings in the homeland, how Felix, the Roman governor, had paid assassins privately to slay the high priest, and had crucified many rebels on Olivet, how the zealot Jews with a burning passion for the Jewish law were on the qui vive, and were ready to stab or stone any Jew who violated the holy temple court by allowing the foot of a foreigner to tread its marble pavements. They plotted to kill me on the ship from Corinth, Paul would tell Philip. Then Paul would remember again that those Jews who were aflame with the lust of his blood had sailed on ahead of him and were now in Jerusalem waiting for him. In their minds, too, the old words which had once beaten like hammers in Paul's own Pharisee brain now rang like a command.  As they sat talking there came in a man from the hills whose eyes glowed with the look of one who saw strange tragic visions. He came in among them, and going up to Paul took hold of the girdle of his mantle and loosened it, and then took it in his own hands. Luke and Philip and Timothy and the others gazed at this man, whose name was Agabus, wondering what he would do. Agabus stooped, then twisting the girdle round his own feet and fastening it, he said, as he stood erect again, Here is the word of the Holy Spirit, so shall the Jews bind him who owns this girdle at Jerusalem and hand him over to the Gentiles. Paul was not startled. He had himself all along in this journey more and more come to believe that this would be. But it brought the peril home swiftly and with agony to his friends. How could they bear to see their hero leader taken like a criminal and perhaps beheaded? The horror of it gripped them. It filled Timothy, who had walked these hundreds of leagues by Paul's side, over the plateaus and the mountains and had faced death with him on sea and land, Luke, who would willingly have died for Paul and the others who owed all the glory and joy of their being to the new life that Paul had brought to them. Do not, do not go up to Jerusalem, they cried, and men as they were, their eyes filled with tears. Do not put your life in peril, stay here! Paul was touched to the quick. He could for a moment hardly control his own heart. Then with firm-set face he spoke to them. What do you mean, he asked, by weeping and unnerving me. Then followed the dauntless words which would soon be put to the uttermost test. I am ready, he said, not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing could daunt that great heart, nor could even the love of friends turn him aside. This his friends now saw. They agreed to his going to Jerusalem at whatever cost. The will of the Lord be done, they said. The clatter of horses hoofs on the flagged street called Paul and his friends out at dawn for the canter across the rolling plain and the climb among the hills of Samaria and Judea. Guided by some of the friends from Caesarea they turned their faces to the rising sun and rode along the chariot way, passing the ends from whose courtyards the grumbling camels were striding out and skirting the empty stadium till the short tunnel of the gateway in the city wall led them out to the freshness of the open country. Through the day they travelled, climbing the hills, resting in the blazing summer noon day, and at sundown they came to the home of an old man who with glowing face welcomed the great leader Paul with his friends to his house. The old man's name was Nassan. He had been a disciple of Christ for long years, and like Barnabas he was a native of Cyprus. Next morning they said farewell to Nassan and breasted the hills again, till at last as the shadow began to fall across the brook Kidron they came out under the walls of Jerusalem. Paul found himself again in the city where he had dreamed dreams as a student. He forgot even the enemies who plotted against his life when he saw the faces of the brothers in Jerusalem light with joy as he came among them. He would be glad too to see his nephew, the son of his sister, who lived in Jerusalem. Going along the familiar streets on the following morning Paul saw the harvest thanksgiving preparations, the little sheaves of corn, the huts of branches on the rooftops recalling the old, old days when the Jews wandering across the desert from Egypt had neither harvest nor house. He entered the doorway of a house where in a large room the elders of the church in Jerusalem had already come together, with the Lord's brother James presiding. Paul courteously saluted them, then he began to tell much of the story that we have read in this book. Imagine the glory of hearing it at first hand from the man to whom these adventures had really come. Quiet, conventional, stay-at-home men as they were, the elders were transported to a new world as they leaned forward with parted lips, gin on hand, listening to this flaming torch of a man, Paul, who had sped over sea and plain, through mountain pass and robber valley, beaten and stoned and starved, slaving with his hands before dawn and declaring his glorious message till after midnight. Singing in prison, rejoicing at the hard knocks of the world, the quickener of life in a score of cities and across half the known world, the untiring Jewish traveler, the free brave Roman citizen, the blazing Greek orator, the glad slave of Christ. Then Timothy of Lystra and Gaius of Derby came forward with their gift from the churches upon the plateau of Galatia, Tichicus and Trophimus of Ephesus with the gift from Asia, and Aristarchus and Secundus from Macedonia with Sopater of Berea handed in their offering. As Paul ceased speaking and the gifts were offered, the elders broke out into thanks, glory be to God, they cried, for these wonderful works through his servant Paul. Then the glow of the wide vision faded, and Jerusalem was about them again and the church in Jerusalem, still in many of its members trying to cramp Christ within the iron hoop of a single nation's destiny. Brother, they said to him, you see how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, all of them ardent upholders of the law. Now they have heard that you teach all Jews who live among the nations to break away from Moses and not to circumcise their children nor to follow the old customs. What is to be done, they went on, they will be sure to hear you have arrived. So do as we tell you, we have four men here under a vow, associate yourself with them, purify yourself with them, pay their expenses so that they may be free to have their heads shaved. These men had taken the Nazarite vow that they would not shave their heads till they had performed certain acts and purified themselves. If you do that, said the elders to Paul, everybody will understand that there is nothing in these stories about you, but that on the contrary, you are yourself guided by reverence for the law. As for these believers among the nations, we have already sent out through you in the letter signed by James, our decision that they must avoid food that has been offered on altars to idols, the taste of blood, flesh of animals that have been strangled, and unclean vice. Paul knew that the forms of ceremony in the temple were not the heart of worship of God, they were the ceremonies of one temple. Yet with that all-embracing sweep of his passion for winning men, Paul consented to do as the elders suggested. On the very next day he began to carry out the act of purification for himself, along with the four men. Paul went into the temple courts with the men. I wish to join these men, he said, and to pay their charges, till the vow is accomplished until they can be freed from it. Day after day, and at Paul's expense, they each offered gifts of money and oil, a ram, a lamb, and cakes. On the seventh day they would have fulfilled all the ceremonies, but that seventh day never came for Paul. With crafty eyes his enemies watched him. They had seen him walking in the streets with trophemous from Ephesus, to them a sinner of the Gentiles, a man without the law. They saw Paul go up the steps to the marble parapet where the great stone stood which said, Let no foreigner enter within the screen and enclosure surrounding the sanctuary. Whoever is taken so doing will himself be the cause that death overtaketh him. Paul crossed the line and went through the opening. His bare feet were upon the marble of the Holy Court. The hour had come. The Jews from Asia were there, possibly some of those who had plotted his death two months earlier, when Paul was starting to sail from Corinth and had been balked. They would not be foiled again. They dashed at him, gripped his mantle, and raised a cry that thrilled the heart of Pharisee and Zealot alike. To the rescue, men of Israel, help, help! Here is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against the chosen people, against the law of Moses, against this holy place. Help, help! To every quarter of the temple the cry rang out. The cry rang dashed in from all sides to join in the defense. The cry rang across the roofs to the Roman castle by the temple, where the sentinel stood like a statue on the turret of Antony's tower. He has brought Greeks inside the temple and defiled this holy place! cried the Jews from Asia, to the rescue, men of Israel, help! Up the streets of the city the cry ran like wildfire. The Jews dashed into the temple, but they would not defile the sacred place by killing him there. Out of the temple with him came the cry, dragging, pushing, shouting, waving. The whole mob surged toward the gates and into the open place without. The gates of the temple enclosure swung to with a clang and were bolted. Kill him! Kill him! cried the fanatics, some of them, the men who had cried before Pilate, as Jesus Christ stood on trial thirty years earlier. Crucify him! Crucify him! Men had yelled, Stone him, Stone him! in the hour of Stephen's death.  But the sentinel on Antony's tower had already taken action. He sent downward to the commander of the garrison regiment, who wrapped out an order, and in a few minutes, with officers and men was hurrying to the spot, dashing aside the mob the company marched to the center. The cry, The soldiers are coming! was raised. The staves were dropped and silence fell. Who is he? asked the commander, Lyceus. What has he done? Some of the crowd roared one thing, some another. He could not learn the facts for the uproar. Chain him! ordered Lyceus. Two chains were clasped on his wrists. At that moment Paul left the world of freedom. He never moved for years to come without the sound of the clank of his fetters in his ear. Lead him to the citadel! ordered Lyceus. Among the front of the temple and out under the shadow of the Roman tower they moved. The Jewish mob raging and yelling behind and around. They thronged upon Paul, clutching at his robe till the soldiers had actually to carry him. Away with him! Away with the fellow from the earth! Away with him! At last the soldiers reached the steps of the citadel. They were about to lead Paul to the cells in the barracks when he turned to the commander. May I say a word to you? He asked Lyceus, speaking in Greek. You know Greek, said the astonished commander. Then you are not the Egyptian, who in days gone by raised the four thousand assassins and led them out into the desert. I am a Jew, said Paul, with quiet dignity. A native of Tarsus in Solicia, a citizen of no mean city. Pray let me speak to the people. Paul, bound as he was and bruised, stood forward on the top of the steps before the mob, and began to speak to them in Hebrew, their own tongue. Something in the presence of that undaunted figure, and in the sound of that vibrant voice which had won the hearing of men in many lands, swept over that seething mob. A deep hush came on them, like the whisper and the silence that come over a field of corn, as it sways to the breeze and then is still. Brothers and fathers, he said, listen to the defense I now make before you. When they heard him speaking in Hebrew, they were all the more quiet. So he went on, I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Solicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel in all the strictness of our ancestral law, ardent for God as you all are today. I persecuted this way of religion to the death, chaining and imprisoning both men and women, as the high priest and all the council of elders can testify. It was from them that I got letters to the brotherhood at Damascus, and then journeyed thither to bind those who had gathered there and bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment. Now as I neared Damascus on my journey, suddenly about noon a brilliant light from heaven flashed round me. I dropped to the earth and heard a voice saying to me, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you? I asked. He said to me, I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting. I said, what shall I do, Lord? And the Lord said to me, Rise up and go into Damascus. There you shall be told about all that you are destined to do. As I could not see, owing to the dazzling glare of that light, my companions took my hand, and so I reached Damascus. Then a certain Ananias, a devout man in the law, who had a good reputation among all the Jews there, came to me and standing beside me said, Saul, my brother, regain your sight. The crowd of Jews with uplifted faces listened in silence to the wonderful story. Paul went on. The same moment I regained my sight and looked up at Ananias. Then he said, the God of our fathers has appointed you to know his will, to see the just one, and to hear him speak with his own lips.  And now, why do you wait? Get up and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name. When I returned to Jerusalem it happened that while I was praying in the temple I fell into a trance and saw him saying to me, Make haste, leave Jerusalem quickly, for they will not accept your evidence about me. But, Lord, I said, they surely know that it was I who imprisoned and flogged those who believed in you throughout the synagogues, and that I stood and approved when the blood of your martyr Stephen was being shed, taking charge of the clothes of his murderers. But he said to me, Go, I will send you afar to the nations. At that word the silence broke into a thunder of rage. That was the root of all Paul's offence, that he had gone with his message to the nations beyond. And now he dared to blaspheme by saying that God, the God whose chosen people the Jews were, had told him to do so, and had told him in the holy temple. Away with such a creature from the earth, they yelled, He is not fit to live. They tore off their clothes in a frenzy of angry grief, and like mourners grabbed the dust of the roadway and flung it into the air. Lyceus was mystified. What made the Jews foam with such hysterical rage? They were too wild to tell him intelligibly. Paul must. Take him into the barracks, said Lyceus to his officers, examine him under the lash and report. They saluted and marched Paul away. They took him to the thrashing post and strapped him to it, so that he might not struggle. When he was thrashed and his spirit cowed, they would make him confess his crimes. Paul spoke to the officer who was standing by giving orders. Are you allowed to scourge a Roman citizen, he asked, and to scourge him without trial? The officer was aghast. Lyceus, he knew, would be degraded from his rank and severely punished if he beat a Roman citizen and word of it reached Rome. It was bad enough even to have bound him. He hurried to Lyceus and said to him, What are you going to do? This man is a Roman citizen. Lyceus rose at once and went out to where Paul stood strapped to the post. Tell me, he said, Are you a Roman citizen? Yes, replied Paul. I had to pay a large sum of money to buy my citizenship, said the wandering commander. But I was born a citizen, replied Paul with pride. He was loosed from his bonds at once and led away. In that hour the three threads of Paul's life, the Jewish, Greek, and Roman, had all stood him in good stead. The Greek when he spoke to Lyceus, the Jewish when he quelled the uproar, the Roman when he was bound. Paul lay down to sleep that night a prisoner, yet freer than all the hide-bound fanatics who had tried to take his life. But Lyceus was still puzzled as to what Paul had done to infuriate the Jews. The next morning, therefore, he sent an order down to the temple that the high priests and the Sanhedrin, the highest authority in the Jewish world, should come and meet with Paul. Lyceus, when the Sanhedrin had come together, brought Paul down and placed him in front of them. Paul looked at them with a steady gaze, entirely fearless of their anger. Brothers, he said, I have lived with a perfectly good conscience before God down to this present day. It was too much. Ananias, the high priest purple with rage, shouted to those near Paul, smite him! He cried, strike him on the mouth! Paul lost his temper and, swinging round toward the white-robed Ananias, he burst out, you whitewashed wall! God will strike you! You sit there to judge me by the law, do you? And you break the law by ordering me to be struck! What? said some of the bystanders to Paul. Would you rail at God's high priest? Brothers, said Paul, I did not know that he was high priest. At this point Paul, realizing that the Sanhedrin was made up as to one half of Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection of man, and as to the other of Pharisees who did believe in the resurrection, shouted to them, I am a Pharisee, brothers! The son of Pharisees! It is for the hope of the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial! At once a quarrel broke out. Lyceus could make no sense of all this wrangling and clamor, the Sadducees urging Paul's death, the Pharisees forgetting in their defense of their own teaching their hatred of Paul. Scribes of the Pharisees rose up, and the court listened. We find nothing wrong about this man, said the Pharisee. Scribes, what if some spirit or angel has spoken to him? The uproar redoubled, the Sadducees stood and shouted and pressed toward Paul as though to tear him to pieces. Lyceus ordered the troops to be brought from the citadel, and they formed a bodyguard to protect Paul. The soldiers took him, driving the maddened Jews back, and led him into the barracks. But Lyceus was no wiser as to the cause of all the uproar. Paul, as he lay that night with all the future black before him, was conscious of the real presence of his Lord by him. Courage, said the presence, as you have testified to me at Jerusalem, so you must do at Rome. The Jews who saw their arch-enemy Paul snatched from under their very hand by the Roman power were determined that, even now, he should not escape. Between forty and fifty of them came together at dawn on the next day in secret. They formed a plot for an ambuscade. Standing together they took a most solemn oath that they would not taste food till they had killed Paul. They went, then, down to the temple, and gained audience with the high priests and elders. We have, they said, taken a solemn oath to taste no food till we have killed Paul. Now, you and the Sanhedrin must let the commander know that you propose to investigate this case in detail so that he may have Paul brought down to you. We will be all ready and will kill him on the way down. A young man overheard men talking about the plot. He was Paul's nephew. He hurried up to the citadel, got entrance to the barracks, and was allowed to see Paul, to whom he told the whole story. Paul called to one of the officers. Take this young man, he said, to the commander, for he has some news to give him. So the officer led Paul's nephew to Lyceus. The prisoner Paul, he said, has summoned me to ask if I would bring this young man to you, as he has something to tell you. The commander took Paul's nephew by the hand and led him aside and asked him in private, What is the news you have for me? The Jews have agreed, he answered, to ask you to bring Paul down to the Sanhedrin, on the plea that they propose to examine his case in detail. Now do not let them persuade you. More than forty of them are lying in ambush for him, and they have taken a solemn oath neither to eat nor to drink till they have murdered him. They are already at this moment awaiting your consent. Lyceus paused to think, then he dismissed the youth. His mind was swiftly made up. He knew the anger of Rome if a Roman citizen, even a prisoner, suffered death by murder when in the charge of a Roman official. Tell nobody, he said, that you have informed me of this. As Paul's nephew went out, Lyceus called the two officers who stood before him awaiting orders. Get ready by eight o'clock tonight, two hundred infantry with rations, to march as far as Caesarea, also seventy troopers and two hundred spearmen. CHAPTER XXXIX By the wild glare of torches seventy horses were led out from the garrison's stables, their hoofs clattered up the stone way under Antony's tower. File after file of footmen gathered there till two hundred soldiers with their broad swords and the bosses of their shields reflecting the yellow torchlight, and two hundred spearmen, together with seventy horse soldiers, stood ready for the night march out on to the Judean hills. They were a host of men to guard Paul, but the band of fierce Jews had vowed to slay him before they ate or drank, and such a vow meant that he must be prepared for a swift and violent attack. The captain of the guard knew that in any gateway cloaked and armed figures might be standing, hidden in the shadows, men who would gladly die to kill the man whom they knew to be the greatest enemy of the narrow Jewish belief. The captain knew also that to allow the Jews to slay a Roman citizen who was in his charge would bring on himself the punishment of Caesar. It was for these reasons that he made ready this guard of four hundred and seventy soldiers for Paul. Paul swung himself astride his horse. There came the sharp word of command, followed by the rattle of arms as the men moved forward through the darkness to the city wall of Jerusalem. The gates swung slowly open and the shod feet of the horses on the flagged road echoed under the vaulting of the great archway. They were out on the open road. The men who plotted to kill him were balked.  As Paul felt the night air on his cheek, when they came through the gates he would pass the place where, as a young man, he had stood guarding the clothes of those who stoned Stephen. It would be strange if, in the darkness of the night, the memory of that day did not flood across Paul's thought and flush his cheek with shame, mixed with a strange joy that now he himself was among the persecuted Nazarenes. His horse breasted the hill. Surrounded by the guard of soldiers, he pressed on along the north road over the rocky shoulder of the Judean hills, bearing westward through the dark defiles. They all knew that the enemy might leap out from behind some boulder. If any ambush had been prepared, however, the plotters remained hidden, overawed by the force guarding Paul. Did the ancient spirit of the proud little tribe of Benjamin leap in him, as they passed by Gibbia, where his great namesake, King Saul, had lived? By the time the dawn came up they had outdistance all probable danger of ambuscade, for the hill country was past and the plain lay before them. But the force of soldiers went on, dropping gradually toward the plain by the Roman road. Then, crossing the valley of Agilon, by the road which ran parallel with the Mediterranean coast, they came out to the fortress and town of Antipatris, where a halt was called. Both because all serious danger of attack was gone and for the sake of greater speed in traveling, the four hundred foot soldiers turned here and marched back to the castle at Jerusalem. The seventy horse soldiers with Paul trotted forward more swiftly than before, along the northern road, with the hills of Samaria rising on their right and on their left the slopes dropping to the Mediterranean plain. At last turning west, they left the rocky hills and gained the soft land. To their left lay the shining yellow of the sand dunes and beyond the sand the glittering ripples of the Mediterranean. Cantering over the ridge they came in full sight of Caesarea, with its theater and stadium, its white marble temples and, beyond, jutting out into the Mediterranean itself, the square grim mass of the citadel. Headed by the captain of the troop, they rode straight to the house of the Roman governor. When Paul was ushered into the presence of Felix, the representative of Nero himself, the captain felt in his tunic and brought out the role on which Claudius Lysius, the chief captain at Jerusalem, had written his letter to the governor, to whom he now handed the parchment. Felix read the letter which ran, Greetings from Claudius Lysius to the most excellent governor, Felix. This man was taken by the Jews, who would have killed him, but I came with soldiers and rescued him, for I had been given to understand that he was a Roman citizen. Wishing to know what charges they brought against him, I took him before there, the Jews, counsel. I found that he was accused of breaking their law, but that he was not charged with having done anything that called for punishment by death or even imprisonment. When I was told that the Jews were lying in wait for this man, I at once sent him to you. I have also instructed his accusers to lay their case against him before you. Farewell. Felix read the letter through, and looking up, scanned with curiosity this man, who, though a Jew himself, had fired the Jews with such hatred, and who was also a citizen of Rome itself. Do what province of the empire do you belong? he asked. To the province of Cilicia, answered Paul, I will hear your case, Felix announced, when your accusers have come down from Jerusalem. Then turning to his officials, he said, keep this man in Herod's judgment hall. Paul waited and watched for five days. Then another cavalcade rode into Caesarea from Jerusalem, headed by the High Priest of Jerusalem himself, the greatest man among the Jews, and Paul's most powerful enemy. A skillful barrister named Tertulus rode with him. Paul was led into the great hall. Felix was seated there in his marble chair of judgment on a raised platform, and beneath him were his secretaries. There stood the Lictors carrying the axes of authority. Soldiers guarded the judge. The bearded High Priest in his robes sat in dignified silence. When Paul was led to his place behind a marble balustrade, Felix signaled to Tertulus to open the case for the prosecution. Tertulus, with the subtlety of the oriental orator, began his speech by attempting to flatter the judge and then to prejudice him against Paul. Most noble Felix, he began, we always and in all places live under your rule with thankfulness, for it is through you that our nation enjoys great quiet, and it is by your forethought and provision that great boons come to us. We can imagine that Felix, who was used to this kind of pleading, would wave his hand impatiently as though saying, Get to the business before us. So Tertulus hastened on. Nevertheless, in order that I may not weary you, I pray that in your clemency you will listen to a few words from us. Then turning and pointing with scornful finger to Paul, he began his attack, saying, We have found this man a pestilent fellow, a mover of rebellion among all the Jews throughout the world, and, he sneered, a ringleader in the party of the Nazarenes. He has also gone about to profane the temple, so that we took him and would have judged him according to our law, and not the chief captain Lysius come, and with great violence rested him away out of our hands.  Felix asked the other Jews there whether the accusations brought by Tertulus against Paul were true, and they all nodded their heads and said yes. Felix now turned to Paul and beckoned to him to speak. Paul began with an art even more skillful than that of Tertulus, by suggesting that the long experience Felix had of the Jews of Judea, and especially Jerusalem, would have taught him the lengths to which their fierce religious jealousy would carry them. I answer for myself all the more cheerfully, he began, because you have been a judge for many years over this nation. It is even now only twelve days since I went up to Jerusalem to worship. They did not find me disputing in the temple with any man, nor raising the people into ferment, either in the synagogues or the city itself. They have no proof whatever of the charges they bring against me. But this I confess to you that I worship the God of my fathers, believing all the things which are written in the law and the prophets, sweeping his hand toward his accusers, and adding with a touch of scorn after the way that they call heresy, and I hold the same hope that they do toward God, believing that there is resurrection of the dead, and I am always most careful in these matters to avoid offense toward God and men. I have been away for many years, and came bringing gifts and offerings to my nation, when some Jews from Asia found me in the temple. I had cleansed myself and done all the acts of purification. I was with no mob nor any tumult. These men ought to have been here to bring charges if they had any against me.  Felix could see that the evidence against Paul was altogether too flimsy and vague to make it possible to condemn him. Accusation and denial were pitted against one another, so he deferred the case till an impartial witness like Claudius Lysius of Jerusalem should come down. He called a centurion to him and said, God, Paul, but give liberty for his friends to come to visit him. Seeing how poor the evidence was against Paul, it is possible that Felix would have found him not guilty of the charges brought against him and would have set him free. But he was not a strictly just man, and like many other governors of Roman provinces, he wished to be bribed with money before he would set prisoners free. His wife, too, was a Jewess named Drusilla, and he may have kept Paul from going free in order to please her. One day Felix and Drusilla sent for Paul to go to their house, as they wanted to hear from him more of what he believed. Passing the Roman sentry at the gate, the guard led him through the courtyard, where reflections from the sparkling water gleamed on the marble pillars to the governor's hall of audience. Before Paul, prisoner as he was, spoke boldly and with fiery eloquence and strong reasoning. He laid before Felix and Drusilla such a picture of pure, temperate strength and such a splendid ideal of manly straightness. He spoke with such awful power about the punishment of the unjust and the unclean, that it seemed as though he were the judge and Felix the man at the bar of judgment, and Felix trembled.  For two whole years Paul was kept at Caesarea, waiting the pleasure of Felix. He would wander, guarded in the busy streets among the jostling throng of people coming and going. He could see men of many nations in this Roman town on the Mediterranean seaboard of Syria, Romans from Italy walking with all the proud confidence of conquest in their bearing, brisk Greek merchants dignified Arabs of the desert in cloaks of orange and red and brown, bringing merchandise down from the east on the slow stepping, soft-footed camels, bearded Jews looking out at their Roman conquerors from under their bushy eyebrows with ill-concealed hate, and swarthy Egyptians from the Nile. As an educated Jew, born in a city whose university was famous for its school of Greek philosophy, trained under the greatest tutor in Jerusalem, yet also by birth a citizen of the whole Roman empire, Paul, with that loved companion and strong physician Luke, who stood by him through these hard days, may well have been the only men in all Caesarea at that time whose mind and experience were broad and deep enough to take all these varied people into their sympathetic understanding. The great citadel stood with its foundations on a sea- smitten rock, as though it would rule the waves as well as the land. On either side of it is a bay where the sea runs over yellow sands. Paul, as a prisoner guarded, would pace these sands north and south out to the rocky headlands, while the Mediterranean rippled at his feet, or in the winter its breakers boomed on the great curving breakwater, which almost enclosed the harbor. The ships of the empire came there, and as he watched them set sail again out of the harbor into the shining seas bound for Rome, the resolution that had held Paul for a long time became fixed. He too would go to Rome, even though it were as a prisoner, and carry his burning message to the very heart of the world. At last his opportunity of doing this came. At the end of two years Felix was recalled to Rome, and a new governor, Porcius Festus, sailed into the harbor at Caesarea. In three days of landing Festus rode up to Jerusalem. Immediately the high priest and the chief men among the Jews, striking swiftly at Paul, went to Festus, told him their story, and pleaded with the governor to get rid of Paul by sending for him to be tried in Jerusalem. Their plan was to place an ambush among the hills behind rocks on the way, and have Paul slain. Festus however refused. He said, I am going down to Caesarea shortly, and will try him then. Let those among you who are able to leave go down with me, and bring your charge against this man. Within a fortnight's time Festus went back to Caesarea, and on the very next day took his seat in the judgment hall, and ordered Paul to be brought before him. Again the Jews laid their charges against him, but could not prove them. Then Paul said, I have not broken at all the laws either of the Jews or the temple or Rome. Will you go to Jerusalem to be judged by me? asked Festus. Paul saw the peril from the Jews in Jerusalem. He trusted the Roman justice. His opportunity of reaching Rome had come. He seized it swiftly. I stand, he said, pointing to Festus at Caesar's judgment seat, where I ought to be judged.  If there are none of these things of which I am rightly accused, no man may deliver me into their hand. I appeal to Caesar. End of chapter 30.