The apology.
It was a very remarkable promise which our Lord made to his apostles, when, forewarning them that they should be delivered up to councils, and brought before kings and rulers for his sake, he added, "But when they so deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye; for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost" (Mark 13:9-11). It is impossible not to see a fulfillment of this promise in St. Paul's apology delivered from the castle stairs at Jerusalem to an infuriated and bloodthirsty mob. A Jewish riot had something terrific in it, something dreaded even by the iron-minded Romans. The features all contorted with passion, the large eyes starting out of their sockets, the savage grinding of the teeth, the fierce cries, the wild throwing of handfuls of dust into the air, the tossing and waving of their garments with an unbridled violence, gave a demoniac aspect to such rioters. Paul had just come out of the thick of such a mob. He had barely escaped with his life, but not without many blows. He had heard his name given to execration, held up to detestation as the author of blasphemies and sacrilege, and as the enemy of his race. And now he was a prisoner in the hands of the heathen masters of his unhappy country. His hands were loaded with chains, and he knew not what dangers were before him. And yet, when he had scarce recovered breath after the struggle for life, we find him with the chains on his wrists, but with unruffled spirit, and admirable composure and self-possession, delivering to his enemies and would-be murderers a speech as gentle, as firm, as calm, as collected, and as logical, as if he had composed and prepared it at leisure in the stillness of his own study, and was addressing it to a congregation of friends and admirers. Must it not have been given to him in that hour what to speak, and how to say it? The great force of this defense lay in its simple statement of facts. The apostle's conduct at each successive stage had flowed naturally and almost inevitably from the circumstances which surrounded him. He had nothing to conceal. Indeed, the circumstances of his early life were well known to his hearers. If his statement was true, how could he have acted differently? He appealed to his fellow-countrymen, his fathers and brothers of the Jewish people, to hear with impartiality the apology which he made. Had he stopped here, maybe his defense would have been accepted. His Hebrew speech, his thoroughly Jewish attitude, his high-minded earnestness, his splendid courage, seem to have wrought to some extent upon his volatile and mobile hearers. But he could not stop there. He had a further message to deliver, and it must be delivered at Jerusalem, the mother Church, not only of the circumcision, but of the whole Gentile world. That message was that Christ was to be preached to the Gentiles, and that Jews and Gentiles were to be henceforth one in Christ. And that message he delivered with chains on his arms, from the midst of a Roman cohort, to the angry crowd beneath him, having obviously one single purpose—to speak the truth, and to do his duty both to God and man. One other remark is called for by this apology. The nature of the case, a defense under false accusation, made it absolutely necessary that the defendant should speak of himself. But in the course of the twenty verses in which he details the several passages in the history of his life which bore upon the accusation, it is impossible to detect one particle of vainglory or of egotism. There are no boastings, nor are there any expressions of an affected humility. There is absolute simplicity. He speaks of himself because he must. And in the same spirit of genuine humility, when it was not necessary, he did not speak of himself. In the remarkable absence of details in all those parts of the Acts of the Apostles where St. Luke does not write as an eyewitness, we have strong evidence that St. Paul did not make his own doings the subject of his conversation with his familiar friends. Had he done so, St. Luke's narrative might have been richer and fuller, but St. Paul greatness would have been diminished, as that of all vain men is, by the desire to appear great. As it is, the apology enables us to enumerate the great apostle's virtues as combining in an extraordinary degree, courage, gentleness, calmness, vigor, humility, high-mindedness, determination, honesty, truth, patriotism, self-forgetfulness, wisdom, eloquence, and a passionate zeal for the glory of Christ and for the salvation of men. (For an illustration of some of these features in the apostle's character, see also 2 Corinthians 11:1-33.; 12.; Galatians 2:5, Galatians 2:11; Ephesians 3:7, Ephesians 3:8; 1 Timothy 1:12,1 Timothy 1:13, 1 Timothy 1:16; and throughout the Acts of the Apostles.)
HOMILIES BY W. CLarkson