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 To this man was sent the first heavenly call, which ended in
bringing in the Gentiles to the knowledge of the truth revealed by
Jesus. After having fasted all day, he was employed in his regular
devotions, at the usual hour of prayer, (three o’clock in the
afternoon,) when his senses were overwhelmed by a vision, in which
he had a distinct view of a messenger of God, in shining garments,
coming to him; and heard him call him by his name, “Cornelius!”
Looking at him as steadily as he was able in his great alarm,
Cornelius asked, “What is it, Lord?” The heavenly visitant replied, in
words of consolation and high praise, “Thy prayers and thy alms
have come up in remembrance before God. And now send men to
Joppa, and call for a man named Simon Peter, lodging with Simon, a
tanner, whose house is by the sea-side. He, when he comes, shall
tell thee what it is right that thou shouldst do.” When the surprising
messenger had given this charge, he departed; and Cornelius,
without delay, went to fulfil the minute directions he had received. He
called two of his domestics, and a devout soldier of the detachment
then on duty near him, and having related to them all that he had just
seen and heard, he sent them to Joppa, to invite Peter according to
the order. The distance between the two places is about thirty-five
miles, and being too great to be easily traveled in one day, they
journeyed thither during a part of two days, starting immediately
when they received the command, though late in the afternoon.
While they were continuing their journey, the next day, and were now
near to the city of Joppa, Peter, without any idea of the important
task to which he was soon to be summoned, went up, as usual, to
the Alijah, or place of prayer, upon the house-top, at about twelve
o’clock, mid-day. Having, according to the usual custom of the Jews,
fasted for many hours, for the sake of keeping the mind clear from
the effects of gross food on the body, and at length becoming
sensible that he had pushed himself to the utmost limits of safe
abstinence, he wished for food, and ordered his dinner. While the
servants were preparing it, he continued above, in the place of
prayer, where, enfeebled by fasting, and over-wrought by mental
effort, he fell into a state of spiritual excitement, in which the mind is
most susceptible of strong impressions of things beyond the reach of
sense. In this condition, there appeared to him a singular vision,
which subsequent events soon enabled him fully to interpret. It
seemed to him that a great sheet was let down from the sky, to
which it was fastened by the four corners, containing on its vast
surface all sorts of animals that were forbidden as food by the
Mosaic law. While the apostle gazed upon this vast variety of
animals, which education had taught him to consider unclean, there
came a voice to him, calling him by name, and commanding him to
arise, kill, and eat. All his prejudices and early religious impressions
were roused by such a proposal; and, resisting the invisible speaker
as the agent of temptation to him in his bodily exhaustion, he replied,
in all the pride of a scrupulous and unpolluted Jew, “By no means,
Lord, because I have never eaten anything improper or unclean.”
The mysterious voice again said, “What God hath cleansed, do not
thou consider improper.” This impressive scene having been twice
repeated, the whole was withdrawn back into heaven. This
remarkable vision immediately called out all the energies of Peter’s
mind, in its explanation. But before he had time to decide for himself
what was meant by it, the messengers of Caesarea had inquired out
the house of Simon, and, coming to the outside door, they called to
learn whether Simon, who was surnamed Peter, lodged there. And
while the mind of Peter was still intently occupied with the vision, he
received an intimation from the unerring spirit, that his presence was
required elsewhere. “Behold! three men are seeking thee, but rise up
and go with them, without hesitation; for I have sent them.” Thus
urged and encouraged, Peter went directly down to the men sent by
Cornelius, and said, “Behold! I am he whom ye seek. What is your
object in coming here?” They at once unfolded their errand.
“Cornelius, a centurion, a just man, fearing God, and of good repute
among all the Jews, was instructed by a holy messenger, to send for
thee to his house, that he may hear something from thee.” Peter,
already instructed as to the proper reception of the invitation, asked
them in, and hospitably entertained them till the next day, improving
the delay, no doubt, by learning as many of the circumstances of the
case as they could give him. The news of this remarkable call was
also made known to the brethren of the church in Joppa, some of
whom were so highly interested in what they heard that evening, that
they resolved to accompany Peter the next day, with the
messengers, to see and hear for themselves the details of a
business which promised to result so fairly in the glory of Christ’s
name, and the wide enlargement of his kingdom. On the next day,
the whole party set out together, and reached Caesarea, the second
day of their journey; and going straight to the house of Cornelius,
they found quite a large company there, awaiting their arrival. For
Cornelius, expecting them, had invited his relations and his intimate
friends, to hear the extraordinary communications which had been
promised him, from his visitor. The kindred here alluded to were,
perhaps, those of his wife, whom, according to a very common
usage, he may have married in the place where he was stationed;
for it is hardly probable that a Roman captain from Italy could have
had any of his own blood relations about him, unless, perhaps, some
of them might have enlisted with him, and now been serving with him
on this honorable post. His near friends, who completed the
assembly, were probably such of his brother officers as he knew to
possess kindred tastes with himself, and to take an interest in
religious matters. Such was the meeting that Peter found sitting in
expectation of his coming; and so high were the ideas which
Cornelius had formed of the character of his visitor, that, as soon as
he met him on his entrance into the house, he fell down at his feet,
and paid him reverence as a superior being;――an act of
abasement towards the inhabitant of a conquered country, most rare
and remarkable in a Roman officer, and one to which nothing but a
notion of supernatural excellence could ever have brought him, since
this was a position assumed not even by those who approached the
emperor himself. Peter, however, had no desire to be made the
object of a reverence so nearly resembling idolatry. Raising up the
prostrate Roman, he said, “Stand up: for I myself am also a man.”
Entering into familiar discourse with him, he now advanced into the
house, and going with him to the great room, he there found a
numerous company. He addressed them in these words: “You know
how unlawful it is for a Jew to be familiar, or even to visit, with one of
another nation; but God has taught me to call no man vulgar or
unclean. Wherefore, I came at your summons, without hesitation.
Now, then, I ask with what design have you sent for me?” And
Cornelius said, “Four days ago, I was fasting till this hour; and at the
ninth hour I was praying in my house;” and so having gone on to
narrate all the circumstances of his vision, as given above,
concluded in these words, “For this reason I sent for thee, and thou
hast done well in coming, for we are all here, before God, to hear
what has been imparted to thee, from God.” And Peter began
solemnly to speak, and said, “Of a truth, I perceive that God is no
respecter of persons; but that in every nation, he that fears him and
does what is right, is approved by him.” With this solemn profession
of a new view of this important principle of universal religion, as a
beginning, he went on to satisfy their high expectations, by setting
forth to them the sum and substance of the gospel doctrine, of
whose rise and progress they had already, by report, heard a vague
and partial account. The great and solemn truth which the Spirit had
summoned him to proclaim, was that Jesus Christ the crucified was
ordained by God the judge of both living and dead, and that through
him, as all the prophets testified, every one that believed should
have remission of sins. Of his resurrection from the dead, Peter
declared himself the witness, as well as of his labors of good will
towards man, when, anointed with the Spirit of God, he went about
doing good. Thus did Peter discourse, excited by the novel and
divinely appointed occasion, till the same divine influence that moved
his heart and tongue was poured out on his charmed hearers, and
they forthwith manifested the signs of change of heart and devout
faith in Christ, as the Son of God and the judge of the world; and
made known the delight of their new sensations, in words of
miraculous power. At this display of the equal and impartial grace of
God, the Jewish church-members from Joppa, who had
accompanied Peter to Caesarea, were greatly amazed, having never
before imagined it possible for the influences of the divine spirit to be
imparted to any who had not devoutly conformed to all the rituals of
the holy law of old given by God to Moses, whose high authority was
attested amid the smoke and flame and thunder of Sinai. And what
change was this? In the face of this awful sanction, these believing
followers of Moses and Christ saw the outward signs of the inward
action of that Spirit which they had been accustomed to
acknowledge as divine, now moving with the same holy energy the
souls and voices of those born and bred among the heathen, without
the consecrating aid of one of those forms of purification, by which
Moses had ordained their preparation for the enjoyment of the
blessings of God’s holy covenant with his own peculiar people.
Moved by that same mysterious and holy influence, the Gentile
warriors of Rome now lifted up their voices in praise of the God of
Israel and of Abraham,――doubtless too, their God and Father,
though Abraham were ignorant of them, and Israel acknowledged
them not; since through his son Jesus a new covenant had been
sealed in blood, opening and securing the blessings of that merciful
and faithful promise to all nations. On Jehovah they now called as
their Father and Redeemer, whose name was from
everlasting,――known and worshiped long ere Abraham lived.
Never before had the great partition-wall between Jews and Gentiles
been thus broken down, nor had the noble and equal freedom of the
new covenant ever yet been so truly and fully made known. And who
was he that had thus boldly trampled on the legal usages of the
ancient Mosaic covenant, as consecrated by the reverence of ages,
and had imparted the holy signs of the Christian faith to men shut out
from the mysteries of the inner courts of the house of God? It was
not a presumptuous or unauthorized man, nor one thoughtless of the
vastly important consequences of the act. It was the constituted
leader of the apostolic band, who now, in direct execution of his
solemn commission received from his Master, and in the literal
fulfilment of the prophetic charge given therewith at the base of
distant Hermon, opened the gates of the kingdom of heaven to all
nations. Bearing the keys of the kingdom of God on earth, he now, in
the set time of divine appointment, at the call of his Master in
heaven, so signally given to him both directly and indirectly, unlocked
the long-closed door, and with a voice of heavenly charity, bade the
waiting Gentiles enter. This was the mighty commission with which
Jesus had so prophetically honored this chief disciple at Caesarea
Philippi, and here, at Caesarea Augusta, was achieved the glorious
fulfilment of this before mysterious announcement;――Simon Peter
now, in the accomplishment of that divinely appointed task, became
the Rock, on which the church of Christ was, through the course of
ages, reared; and in this act, the first stone of its broad Gentile
foundation was laid.

On duty about him.――This phrase is the just translation of the technical term
προσκαρτερουντων, (proskarterounton,) according to Price, Kuinoel, Bloomfield, &c.

Of all the honors with which his apostolic career was marked,
there is none which equals this,――the revolutionizing of the whole
gospel plan as before understood and advanced by its
devotees,――the enlargement of its scope beyond the widest range
of any merely Jewish charity,――and the disenthralment of its
subjects from the antique formality and cumbrous ritual of the Jewish
worship. And of all the events which the apostolic history records,
there is none which, in its far-reaching and long-lasting effects, can
match the opening of Christ’s kingdom to the Gentiles. What would
have been the rate of its advancement under the management of
those, who, like the apostles hitherto, looked on it as a mere
improvement and spiritualization of the old Mosaic form, to which it
was, in their view, only an appendage, and not a substitute? Think of
what chances there were of its extension under such views to those
far western lands where, ages ago, it reached with its benign
influences the old Teutonic hordes from whom we draw our
race;――or of what possibility there was of ever bringing under the
intolerable yoke of Jewish forms, the hundreds of millions who now,
out of so many lands and kindreds and tongues, bear the light yoke,
and own the simpler faith of Jesus, confessing him Lord, to the glory
of God the Father. Yet hitherto, so far from seeing these things in
their true light, all the followers of Christ had, notwithstanding his
broad and open commission to them, steadily persisted in the notion,
that the observance of the regulations laid down by Moses for
proselytes to his faith, was equally essential for a full conversion to
the faith of Christ. And now too, it required a new and distinctly
repeated summons from above, to bring even the great chief of the
apostles to the just sense of the freedom of the gospel, and to the
practical belief that God was no respecter of persons. But the whole
progress of the event, with all its miraculous attestations, left so little
doubt of the nature of the change, that Peter, after the manifestation
of a holy spirit in the hearts and voices of the Gentile converts,
triumphantly appealed to the Jewish brethren who had accompanied
him from Joppa, and asked them, “Can any one forbid the water for
the baptizing of these, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as
we?” Taking the unanimous suffrage of their silence to his challenge,
as a full consent, he gave directions that the believing Romans
should be baptized in the name of the Lord, as Jesus in his parting
charge had constituted that ordinance for the seal of redemption to
every creature, in all the nations to whom the gospel should be
preached. Having thus formally enrolled the first Gentile converts, as
the free and complete partakers of the blessings of the new
covenant, he stayed among them several days, at their request,
strengthening their faith, and enlarging their knowledge by his
pastoral instruction; which he deemed a task of sufficient importance
to detain him, for a while, from his circuit among the new converts,
scattered about in other places throughout Palestine, and from any
immediate return to his friends and converts at Joppa, where this call
had found him.

Meanwhile, this mighty innovation on the established order of

sacred things could not be long unknown beyond the cities of
Caesarea and Joppa, but was soon announced by the varied voice
of rumor to the amazed apostles and brethren at Jerusalem. The
impression made on them by this vague report of their great leader’s
proceedings, was most decidedly unfavorable; and there seem to
have been not a few who regarded this unprecedented act of Peter
as a downright abuse of the dignity and authority with which the
special commission of his Master had invested him. Doubtless, in
that little religious community, as in every other association of men
ever gathered, there were already many human jealousies springing
up like roots of bitterness, which needed but such an occasion as
this, to manifest themselves in decided censure of the man, whose
remarkable exaltation over them might seem like a stigma on the
capacities or merits of those to whom he was preferred. Those in
whose hearts such feelings had been rankling, now found a great
occasion for the display of their religious zeal, in this bold movement
of their constituted leader, who herein seemed to have presumed on
his distinction and priority, to act in a matter of the very highest
importance, without the slightest reference to the feelings and
opinions of those, who had been with him chosen for the great work
of spreading the gospel to all nations. And so much of free opinion
and expression was there among them, that this act of the chief
apostle called forth complaints both deep and loud, from his
brethren, against this open and unexplained violation of the holy
ordinances of that ancient law, which was still to them and him the
seal and sign of salvation. Peter, at length, after completing his
apostolic circuit among the churches, of which no farther account is
given to us, returned to Jerusalem to meet these murmurs with the
bold and clear declaration of the truth. As soon as he arrived, the
grumblers burst out on him with open complaints of his offensive
violations of the strict religious exclusiveness of demeanor, which
became a son of Israel professing the pure reformed faith of Jesus.
The unhesitating boldness with which this charge of a breach of
order was made against Peter by the sticklers for circumcision, is a
valuable and interesting proof, that all his authority and dignity
among them, did not amount to anything like a supremacy; and that
whatever he might bind or loose on earth for the high sanction of
heaven, he could neither bind the tongues and opinions, nor loose
the consciences of these sturdy and free-spoken brethren. Nor does
Peter seem to have had the least idea of claiming any exemption
from their critical review of his actions; but straightway addressed
himself respectfully to them, in a faithful detail of his conduct, and the
reasons of it. He distinctly recounted to them the clear and decided
call which he considered himself to have received from heaven, by
which he was summoned as the spiritual guide of the inquiring
Gentiles. And after the honest recital of the whole series of incidents,
and of the crowning act of the whole, the imparting to them the
outward sign of inward washing from their sins, he boldly appealed
to the judgments of his accusers, to say whether, in the face of such
a sanction, they would have had him do otherwise. “When the Holy
Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning, then remembered I the
word of the Lord, how that he said,” (when parting from us, on the
top of Olivet, to rise to the bosom of his father, prophetically
announcing a new and holy consecration and endowment for our
work,) “John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized
with the Holy Ghost.” This peculiar gift thus solemnly announced, we
had indeed received at the pentecost, and its outward signs we had
thereby learned infallibly by our own experience; and even so, at
Caesarea, I recognized in those Gentiles the same tokens by which I
knew the workings of divine grace in myself and you. “Forasmuch,
then, as God gave them the like gift as to us, who believed on the
Lord Jesus Christ, what was I, that I should withstand God?”――This
clear and unanswerable appeal silenced the clamors of the bold
assertors of the inviolability of Mosaic forms; and when they heard
these things, they held their peace, and, softened from their harsh
spirit of rebuke, they, in a noble feeling of truly Christian triumph,
forgot all their late exclusiveness, in a pure joy for the new and vast
extension of the dominion of Christ, secured by this act, whose
important consequences they were not slow in perceiving. They
praised God for such a beginning of mighty results, and laying aside,
in this moment of exultation, every feeling of narrow Jewish bigotry,
they acknowledged that “to the Gentiles also, God had granted
repentance unto life.”

herod agrippa.

At this time, the monarch of the Roman world was Caius Caesar,
commonly known by his surname, Caligula. Among the first acts of a
reign, whose outset was deservedly popular for its numerous
manifestations of prudence and benevolence, forming a strange
contrast with subsequent tyranny and folly, was the advancement of
a tried and faithful friend, to the regal honors and power which his
birth entitled him to claim, and from which the neglectful indifference
at first, and afterwards the revengeful spite of the preceding Caesar,
Tiberius, had long excluded him. This was Herod Agrippa, grandson
of that great Herod, who, by the force of his own exalted genius, and
by the favor of the imperial Augustus, rose from the place of a
friendless foreign adventurer, to the kingly sway of all Palestine. This
extensive power he exercised in a manner which was, on the whole,
ultimately advantageous to his subjects; but his whole reign, and the
later years of it more particularly, were marked by cruelties the most
infamous, to which he was led by almost insane fits of the most
causeless jealousy. On none of the subjects of his power, did this
tyrannical fury fall with such frequent and dreadful visitations, as on
his own family; and it was there, that, in his alternate fits of fury and
remorse, he was made the avenger of his own victims. Among these
numerous domestic cruelties, one of the earliest, and the most
distressing, was the murder of the amiable Mariamne, the daughter
of the last remnants of the Asmonaean line,――

“Herself the solitary scion left

Of a time-honored race,”

which Herod’s remorseless policy had exterminated. Her he made

his wife, and after a few years sacrificed her to some wild freak of
jealousy, only to reap long years of agonizing remorse for the hasty
act, when a cooler search had shown, too late, her stainless
innocence. But a passionate despot never yet learned wisdom by
being made to feel the recoil of his own folly; and in the course of
later years this cruelty was equalled, and almost outdone, by a
similar act, committed by him on those whom her memory should
have saved, if anything could. The innocent and unfortunate
Mariamne left him two sons, then mere children, whom the
miserable, repentant tyrant, cherished and reared with an
affectionate care, which might almost have seemed a partial
atonement for the injuries of their murdered mother. After some
years passed in obtaining a foreign education at the imperial court of
Rome, these two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, returned at their
father’s summons, to his court, where their noble qualities, their
eloquence and manly accomplishments, as well as the interest
excited by their mother’s fate, drew on them the favorable and
admiring regard of the whole people. But all that made them
admirable and amiable to others, was as powerless as the memory
of their mother, to save them from the fury of the suspicious tyrant.
Those whose interests could be benefited by such a course, soon
found means to make them objects of jealousy and terror to him, and
ere long involved them in a groundless accusation of conspiring
against his dominion and life. The uneasiness excited in Herod by
their great popularity and their commanding talents, led him to
believe this charge; and the miserable old tyrant, driven from fear to
jealousy, and from jealousy to fury, at last crowned his own
wretchedness and their wrongs, by strangling them both, after an
imprisonment of so great a length as to take away from his crime
even the shadowy excuse of hastiness. This was one of the last acts
of a bloody life; but ere he died, returning tenderness towards the
unfortunate race of Mariamne, led him to spare and cherish the
infant children of Aristobulus, the younger of the two, who left three
sons and two daughters to the tender mercies of his cruel father.
One of these was the person who is concerned in the next event of
Peter’s life, and whose situation and conduct in reference to that
affair, was such as to justify this prolonged episode. He received in
infancy the name of Agrippa, out of compliment to Marcus Vipsanius
Agrippa, the favorite and minister of Augustus Caesar, and the
steady friend of the great Herod. This name was exclusively borne
by this son of Aristobulus in childhood, nor was it ever displaced by
any other, except by some of the Jews, who, out of compliment to
the restoration of the Herodian line of kings, in place of the Roman
sub-governors, gave him the name of his royal grandfather, so that
he is mentioned only by the name of Herod in the story of the Acts of
the Apostles; but the Romans and Greeks seem to have known him
only by his proper name of Agrippa. The tardy repentance of his
grandfather did not extend to any important permanent provision for
the children of Aristobulus; but on his death a few years after, they
were left with the great majority of the numerous progeny of Herod,
to the precarious fortunes of dependent princes. The young Agrippa
having married his own cousin, Cypros, the daughter of a daughter
of Herod and Mariamne, sailed to Rome, where he remained for
several years, a sort of beggar about the court of Tiberius Caesar,
through whose favor he hoped for an advancement to some one of
the thrones in Palestine, which seemed to be prizes for any of
Herod’s numerous descendents who could best secure the imperial
favor, and depress the possessors in the Caesar’s opinion. Passing
at Rome and elsewhere through a romantic variety of fortune, this
adventurer was at last lucky in securing to himself the most friendly
regard of Caius Caesar, then the expected successor of the reigning
emperor. This afterwards proved the basis of his fortunes, which for
a while, however, were darkened by the consequences of an
imprudent remark made to Caius, expressive of a wish for the death
of Tiberias, which was reported to the jealous tyrant by a listening
slave, and finally caused the speaker’s close imprisonment during
the rest of the emperor’s life. The death of Tiberius, followed by the
accession of Caius Caesar to the throne, raised Agrippa from his
chains to freedom, and to the most intimate favor of the new
monarch. The tetrarchy of Iturea and Trachonitis, then vacant by the
death of Philip, was immediately conferred on him; and soon after,
Herod Antipas having been exiled, his territories, Galilee and
Peraea, were added to the former dominions of Herod Agrippa, and
with them was granted to him the title of king, which had never yet
been given to any of the descendents of Herod the Great. In this
state were the governments of these countries at the time of the
events last narrated; but Herod Agrippa, often visiting Rome, left all
Palestine in the hands of Publius Petronius, the just and benevolent
Roman president of Syria. In this state, affairs remained during all
the short reign of Caius Caligula Caesar, who, after four years mostly
characterized by folly, vice and cruelty, ended his days by the
daggers of assassins. But this great event proved no check to the
flourishing fortunes of his favorite, king Herod Agrippa; who, in the
course of the events which ended in placing Claudius on the throne,
so distinguished himself in the preliminary negociations between the
new emperor and the senate, sharing as he did the confidence and
regard of both parties, that he was justly considered by all, as the
most active means of effecting the comfortable settlement of their
difficulties; and he was therefore deemed well deserving of the
highest rewards. Accordingly, the first act of Claudius’s government,
like the first of Caligula’s, was the presentation of a new kingdom to
this favorite of fortune,――Judea being now added to the other
countries in his possession, and thus bringing all Palestine into one
noble kingdom, beneath his extensive sway. With a dominion
comprising all that the policy of his grandfather had been able to
attain during a long and active life, he now found himself, at the age
of fifty-one, one of the most extraordinary instances of romantic
fortune that had ever occurred; and anxious to enjoy something of
the solid pleasure of visiting and governing his great and flourishing
kingdom, he set sail from Rome, which had been so long to him the
scene of such varied fortune, such calamitous poverty and tedious
imprisonment,――and now proceeded as the proud king of
Palestine, going home in triumph to the throne of his ancestor,
supported by the most boundless pledges of imperial favor. The
emperor Claudius, though regretting exceedingly the departure of
the tried friend whom he had so much reason to love and cherish,
yet would not detain him from a happiness so noble and desirable,
as that of arranging and ruling his consolidated dominion. Even his
departure, however, was made the occasion of new marks of
imperial favor; for Claudius gave him letters by which all Roman
governors were bound to acknowledge and support him as the
rightful sovereign of Palestine. He arrived in Palestine shortly after,
and just before the passover, made his appearance in Jerusalem,
where he was received with joy and hope by the expecting people,
who hailed with open hearts a king whose interests would be
identified with theirs, and with the glory of the Jewish name. His high
and royal race,――his own personal misfortunes and the unhappy
fate of his early-murdered father, as well as his descent from the
lamented Mariamne,――his well-known amiability of character, and
his regard for the holy Jewish faith, which he had shown by exerting
and even risking all his favor with Caligula to prevent, in co-operation
with the amiable Petronius, the profanation of the temple as
proposed by the erection of the emperor’s statue within it,――all
served to throw a most attractive interest around him, and to excite
brilliant hopes, which his first acts immediately more than justified.
The temple, though now so resplendent with the highest
♦ achievements of art, and though so vast in its foundations and
dimensions, was still considered as having some deficiencies, so
great, that nothing but royal munificence could supply them. The
Jews therefore seized the fortunate occasion of the accession of
their new and amiable monarch to his throne, to obtain the perfection
of a work on which the hearts of the people were so much set, and
the completion of which would so highly advance the monarch in the
popular favor. The king at once benignantly heard their request, and
gladly availing himself of this opportunity to gratify his subjects, and
secure a regard from them which might some day be an advantage
to him, immediately ordered the great work to proceed at his
expense. The satisfaction of the people and the Sanhedrim was now
at the highest pitch; and, ♠ emboldened by these displays of royal
favor, some of the sage plotters among them hoped to obtain from
him a favorable hearing on a matter which they deemed of still
deeper importance to their religion, and in which his support was
equally indispensable. This matter brings back the forsaken narrative
to consideration.

♦ “achievments” replaced with “achievements”

♠ “emboldenened” replaced with “emboldened”

Herod Agrippa.――All the interesting details of this richly romantic life, are given in a
most delightful style by Josephus. (Antiquities, XVIII. v. 3,‒viii. 9. and XIX. i‒ix.) The same is
more concisely given by the same author in another place. (Jewish War, II. ix. 5,‒xi. 6.) The
prominent events of Petronius’s administration, are also given in the former.

the peaceful progress of the faith.

The apostles, after the great events last narrated, gave

themselves with new zeal to the work which was now so vastly
extended by the opening of the wide field of the Gentiles. Others of
the refugees from the popular rage, at the time of Stephen’s murder,
had gone even beyond the boundaries of Palestine, bringing into the
sphere of apostolic operations a great number of interesting
subjects, before unthought of. Some of the bold, free workers, who
had heard of the late changes in the views of the apostles,
respecting the characters of those for whom the gospel was
designed, now no longer limited their efforts of love to the children of
the stock of Abraham, but proclaimed the faith of Jesus to those who
had before never heard his name. The gospel was thus carried into
Syria and Cyprus, and thence rapidly spread into many other
countries, where Macedonian conquest and Hellenic colonization
had made the Greek the language of cities, courts, commerce, and,
to a great extent, of literature. The great city of Antioch soon became
a sort of metropolis of the numerous churches, which sprang up in
that region, beyond the immediate reach of Jerusalem, now the
common home of the apostles, and the center of the Christian, as of
the Jewish faith. Grecians as well as Jews, in this new march of the
gospel, were made sharers in its blessings; and the multiplication of
converts among them was so rapid as to give a new importance, at
once, to this sort of Christians. The communication of these events
to the apostles at Jerusalem, called for some systematic action on
their part, to confirm and complete the good work thus begun by the
random and occasional efforts of mere wandering fugitives from
persecution. They accordingly selected persons especially fitted for
this field of labor, and despatched them to Antioch, to fulfil the duties
imposed on the apostles in ♦ reference to this new opening. The
details of the operations of these new laborers, will be given in their
lives hereafter.

♦ “refereuce” replaced with “reference”

In performing the various offices required in their domestic and

foreign fields of labor, now daily multiplying, Peter and his associates
had continued for several years steadily occupied, but achieving no
particular action that has received notice in the history of their acts;
so that the most of this part of their lives remains a blank to the
modern investigator. All that is known is, that between the churches
of Syria and Palestine there was established a frequent friendly
intercourse, more particularly between the metropolitan churches of
Jerusalem and Antioch. From the former went forth preachers to
instruct and confirm the new and untaught converts of the latter, who
had been so lately strangers to God’s covenant of promise with his
people; while from the thriving and benevolent disciples of Antioch
were sent back, in grateful recompense, the free offerings of such
aid as the prevalence of a general dearth made necessary for the
support of their poor and friendless brethren in Jerusalem; and the
very men who had been first sent to Antioch with the commission to
build up and strengthen that infant church, now returned to the
mother church at Jerusalem, with the generous relief which gratitude
prompted these new sons to render to the authors of their faith.

roman tolerance.

These events and the occasion of them occurred in the reign of

Claudius Caesar, as Luke particularly records,――thus marking the
lapse of time during the unregistered period of the apostolic acts;
which is also confirmed by the circumstances of Herod Agrippa’s
reign, mentioned immediately after, as occurring “about that time;”
for, as has been specified above, Herod Agrippa did not rule Judea
till the reign of Claudius. The crucifixion of Jesus occurred three
years before the death of Tiberius; and as the whole four years of the
reign of Caligula was passed over in this space, it could not have
been less than ten years after the crucifixion, when these events
took place. This calculation allows time for such an advance of the
apostolic enterprise, as would, under their devoted energy, make the
sect most formidable to those who regarded its success as likely to
shake the security of the established order of religious things, by
impairing the popular reverence for the regularly constituted heads of
Judaism. Such had been its progress, and such was the impression
made by its advance. There could no longer be any doubt as to the
prospect of its final ascendency, if it was quietly left to prosper under
the steady and devoted labors of its apostles, with all the advantages
of the re-action which had taken place from the former cruel
persecution which they had suffered. For several years the
government of Palestine had been in such hands that the Sanhedrim
had few advantages for securing the aid of the secular power, in
consummating their exterminating plans against the growing heresy.
Not long after the time of Pilate, the government of Judea had been
committed by the emperor to Publius Petronius, the president of
Syria, a man who, on the valuable testimony of Josephus, appears
to have been of the most amiable and upright character,――wholly
devoted to the promotion of the real interests of the people whom he
ruled. On several occasions, he distinguished himself by his
tenderness towards the peculiarly delicate religious feelings of the
Jews, and once even risked and incurred the wrath of the vindictive
Caligula, by disobeying his commands to profane the temple at
Jerusalem by the erection of that emperor’s statue within its holy
courts,――a violation of the purity of the place which had been
suggested to his tyrannical caprice by the spiteful hint of Apion, of
Alexandria. But though Petronius, in this matter, showed a
disposition to incur every hazard to spare the national and devotional
feelings of the Jews so awful an infliction, there is nothing in his
conduct which would lead us to suppose that he would sacrifice
justice to the gratification of the persecuting malice of the Jews, any
more than to the imperious tyranny of Caligula. The fairest
conclusion from the events of his administration, is, that he regulated
his behavior uniformly by his own sense of justice, with hardly any
reference to the wild impulses, either of popular or imperial tyranny.
A noble personification of independent and invincible justice; but one
not beyond the range of the moral conceptions of a Roman, even
under the corrupt and corrupting rule of the Caesars;――for thus
wrote the great moral poet of the Augustan age, though breathing
the enervating air of a servile court, and living on the favor of a
monarch who exacted from his courtiers a reverence truly idolatrous:
 Justum et tenacem propositi virum,

Non civium ardor prava jubentium,

Non vultus instantis tyranni

Mente quatit solida. * * *

The moral energy of the Roman character made the

exemplifications of this fair ideal not uncommon, even in these latter
days of Roman glory. There were some like Petronius, who gave life
and reality to this poetical conception of Horace,――“A man just and
resolute, unshaken from his firm purpose alike by the wild impulses
of popular rage, and by the frown of an overbearing tyrant.” And
these were among the chief blessings of the Roman sway, to those
lands in which it ruled,――that the great interests of the country
were not subjected to the blind movements of a perverse public
opinion, changing with each year, and frustrating every good which
required a steady policy for its accomplishment,――that the majority
of the people were not allowed to tyrannize over the minority, nor the
minority over the majority;――and that a mighty power amenable to
neither, but whose interest and glory would always coincide with the
good of the whole, held over all a dominion unchecked by the
demands of popular caprice. But, alas! for the imperfections of all
human systems;――among the curses of that Roman sway, must be
numbered its liability to fall from the hands of the wise and amiable,
into those of the stupid and brutal; changes which but too often
occurred,――overturning, by the mismanagement of a moment, the
results of years of benevolent and prudent policy. And in this very
case, all the benefits of Petronius’s equitable and considerate rule,
were utterly neutralized and annihilated by the foolishness or
brutality of his successors, till the provoked irritability of the nation at
last broke out with a fierceness that for a time overcame the
securities even of Roman dominion, and was finally quieted only in
the utter ruin of the whole Jewish nation. But during the period of
several years following the exit of Pilate, its beneficial energy was
felt in the quiet tolerance of religious opinion, which he enforced on
all, and which was most highly advantageous to the progress of the
doctrine of Christ. To this circumstance may justly be referred that
remarkable repose enjoyed by the apostles and their followers from
all the interference with their labors by the Roman government. The
death of Jesus Christ himself, indeed, was the only act in which the
civil power had interfered at all! for the murder of Stephen was a
mere freak of mob-violence, a mere Lynch-law proceeding, which the
Roman governor would not have sanctioned, if it had been brought
under his cognizance,――being done as it was, so directly in the
face of those principles of religious tolerance which the policy of the
empire enforced every where, excepting cases in which sedition and
rebellion against their dominion was combined with religious
zealotism, like the instances of the Gaulanitish Judas, Theudas, and
others. Even Jesus himself, was thus accused by the Jews, and was
condemned by Pilate for his alleged endeavors to excite a revolt
against Caesar, and opposing the payment of the Roman
taxes,――as is shown by the statement of all the evangelists, and
more particularly by Pilate’s inscription on the cross. The persecution
which followed the murder of Stephen was not carried on under the
sanction of the Roman government, nor yet was it against their
authority; for they permitted to the Sanhedrim the punishment of
most minor offences, so long as they did not go beyond
imprisonment, scourging, banishment, &c. But the punishment of
death was entirely reserved to the civil and military power; and if the
Jewish magnates had ever formally transgressed this limitation, they
would have been instantly punished for it, as a treasonable
assumption of that supreme power which their conquerors were
determined to guard with the most watchful jealousy. The
Sanhedrim, being thus restricted in their means of vengeance, were
driven to the low expedient of stirring up the lawless mob to the
execution of these deeds of desperate violence, which their religious
rulers could wink at, and yet were prepared to disown, when
questioned by the Romans, as mere popular ferments, over which
they had no control whatever. So they managed with Stephen; for his
murder was no doubt preconcerted among the chief men, who
caused the formal preamble of a trial, with the design of provoking
the mob, in some way, to this act; in which scheme they were too
much favored by the fiery spirit of the martyr himself, who had not
patience enough with their bigotry, to conceal his abhorrence of it.
Their subsequent systematic and avowed acts of violence, it should
be observed, were all kept strictly within the well-defined limits of
their penal jurisdiction; for there is no evidence whatever that any of
the persecuted Hellenists ever suffered death by the condemnation
of the Sanhedrim, or by the sentence of a Roman tribunal. The
progress of these events, however, showed that this irritating and
harassing system of whippings, imprisonments and banishments,
had a tendency rather to excite the energies of these devoted
heretics, than to check or crush their spirit of innovation and
denunciation. Among the numerous instances of malignant assault
on the personal rights of these sufferers, and the cruel violation of
the delicacy due to the weaker sex, there must have been, also,
many occasions in which the ever-varying feelings of the public
would be moved to deep sympathy with sufferers who bore, so
steadily and heroically, punishments manifestly disproportioned to
the offense with which they were charged,――a sympathy which
might finally rise to a high and resistless indignation against their
remorseless oppressors. It is probable, therefore, that this
persecution was at last allayed by other causes than the mere
defection of its most zealous agent. The conviction must have been
forced on the minds of the persecutors, that this system, with all its
paltry and vexatious details, must be given up, or exchanged for one
whose operations should be so vast and sweeping in its desolating
vengeance, as to overawe and appal, rather than awaken zeal in the
objects of the punishment, or sympathy in the beholders. The latter
alternative, however, was too hopeless, under the steady, benignant
sway of Petronius, to be calculated upon, until a change should take
place which should give the country a ruler of less independent and
scrupulous character, and more disposed to sacrifice his own moral
sense to the attainment of favor with the most important subjects of
his government. Until that desirable end should be attained, in the
course of the frequent changes of the imperial succession, it seemed
best to let matters take their own course; and they accordingly