Acts 22

Acts 22:1-21

THE FROM Acts 22:1-21. OUR last chapter, like many chapters in the Bible, closed when it had no right to end. The chapters of the Bible, of course, are non-inspired. Man never does anything correctly. God never does anything incorrectly. Think of putting a chapter in where you can’t even introduce a period. The last word of chapter twenty-one is followed by a comma, because it was only a catching of the breath by the Apostle. It was not the concluding of a speech, nor even the end of a sentence. It left the Apostle standing with open mouth.

In fact, it would require quick work to thrust in a chapter heading without interrupting the speech itself. One feels like saying, “Quiet, please, don’t interrupt the Apostle; he is talking; can’t you hear?”“Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you”. When such a spokesman is in the middle of a sentence, it becomes all of us to be silent. It is annoying even to hear the scratching of the reporter’s pen, and it is more annoying still to know that some book-maker is writing the headlines for a new chapter, and there is no occasion for a chapter at all. It is a continuation; it is not even a pause. The striking thing about this speech is that it is not what one would expect.Paul is a born logician.

Paul is the product of the best schools. Paul is a linguist of note, and for his day a scientist and a philosopher.

If he speaks as a scholar we will expect from him a clear appeal to reason. If he speaks as a convert from Judaism, we will listen to an appeal to the Old Testament Scriptures. But he disappoints us in both, and defends himself as a Christian by relating his experience.The argument from experience is just now in the ascendent. Modernists, defeated at many other points, have taken refuge in this. When they are proven to be unbiblical and to teach contrary to the views of the Christ, they fall back upon the fact that they “once had an experience” of His saving grace, and that is their sufficient defense.You will find Paul’s method a bit different. He will recite his experience and then prove that it is in accordance with the Book, and in that recital of an experience in conformity with Scripture, he produces an unanswerable argument, and at the same time voices his Jewish loyalty, his personal salvation, and his clear commission.HIS JEWISH LOYALTYThis opening sentence is extremely suggestive.“Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you. “(And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence: and he saith,) “I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day” (Acts 22:1-3). Here his nationality is thrice announced. It is announced in the fraternal expression, “Men, brethren, and fathers”. He was speaking to Jews and he claims kinship with them. It is announced in the language employed. They “heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue”. It is affirmed as a fact. “I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city (Jerusalem, the Jewish center,) at the feet of Gamaliel (the great Jewish teacher,) and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, (the Jewish sacred book,) and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day”.The Jewish people are proud of their nationality.

I am grateful to God that I do not belong with them, but I readily admit that the descendants of Abraham have as good occasion of pride in ancestry as any people living. It was to this fact that the Apostle referred when he said,“If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: “Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel; of the tribe of Benjamin; an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; “Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:4-6). We believe it to be a fact that the Jew is the menace of the present and the hope of the future! Consequently, we are in perfect sympathy with all that the “Dearborn Independent” has had to say on the subject of that menace, and we hold it historically correct; but the “Dearborn Independent” view is not the final view. According to prophecy the Jew’s present ignoble part will eventually give place to nobility of action, and the nations that are now ruled in unrighteousness by the Jew, will yet be ruled in righteousness by Jesus, the Jew becoming the prime minister of His will. Whether, then, one considers the far past when Israel was the medium of Divine revelation, or the glorious Millennium yet to break in sweetness over a sin-stained and scarred world, the Jewish nation is the one in which any one might justly be proud.Paul’s enthusiasm knew no bounds. “I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women” (Acts 22:4). He never went about anything half-heartedly. When he was against Christ he was His deadly foe; when he becomes His convert he will prove an absolute devotee.In this fact we find indications of character.

There was nothing namby-pamby about Paul. What he believed he believed devoutly; what he attempted he did with enthusiasm.

It is not difficult to respect a man of that sort. You can respect him even when he is wrong and you can’t withhold your admiration when he is right. It is easier to respect the atheist or the Unitarian who openly declares his atheism or joins the Unitarian society, than it is to respect the infidel in the church, or the preacher who professes fundamentalism, but who votes always with modernists, who holds to the Virgin Birth himself, but does not believe it to be an essential doctrine, who says that he thinks the Scriptures are inspired, but hastens to tell you that inspiration is, after all, a mere definition, and may voice more than one view.Christ Himself never voiced any admiration for middle-of-the-road men. In fact, the middle-of-the-road more and more represents a vanishing point. Many of our roads are now striped in the middle— the plain suggestion that you are expected to take one side or the other. He that is not with Christ is against Him; he that gathereth not with Him scattereth abroad.

You can’t be friends of Christ and enemies of Christ at the same time. Saul opposed Christianity, but Paul, who is Saul converted, blazed with its proclamation and defied its every foe.

Be one thing or another! There are hybrids in nature now; their number multiplies, but they are commonly the product of man’s manipulation. They are seldom or never a Divine creation. Hybridism has no place in religion and no kinship to Christianity.The fact of his faith was well and widely known.The high priest was his witness and the whole council of the elders would bear testimony that before his conversion he was a persecutor of the faith. They had given him the letters conveying authority to bring believers bound unto Jerusalem for to be punished. They could not, they dared not deny that he was a Christ-persecutor and the sworn opponent of Christianity.Paul illustrates the radicalism of regeneration. In truth it is a new creation. Old things pass away; all things become new.

The Christian still dwells in the same body that was occupied before his conversion, but he is another man. He has the same mind, and yet, paradoxical as it may sound, he has another mind. His is altogether a new spirit; and, after all, spirit dominates body and mind. It was that fact of which Paul was thinking when he wrote,“What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. “And be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:7-9). But Paul moves to a definite report,HIS The record of that salvation is in Acts 22:6-13, inclusive.It came in a most unexpected moment. There are people who do not believe in sudden conversion. Such must then contend that Saul was never converted at all. What could be more sudden than for a man on his way to persecute Christians to be changed in a moment, or at the most, in a few minutes, into a disciple of the Christ?Time is not a necessary element in Divine transactions. There are men who seem to think that the universe is of necessity billions, trillions, quadrillions, quintillions of years old. They come to this conclusion because they believe they know exactly how God made the same, and can even measure the growth of worlds and suns.

If they admit a God at all, they make Him so much like themselves that an eternity is demanded for His accomplishments. Such men ignore the fact that God is God and that it is as easy for Him to speak a universe into existence in a second as it is to spend an eternity in constructing the same.Paul wrote to the Hebrews, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3).

When the time of true knowledge comes, in all probability the scientist will stand astounded to discover that God did, in a minute, what they supposed it took Him an eternity to accomplish. These same reasoners— self-confessed scientists—do not believe in a sudden conversion; they demand time. Conversion to them is education, and months and years are essential to its success.Evidently Paul did not so believe. His education had taken years of time, but his conversion required only an increment of the hour.It is our judgment that regeneration is a matter of only a moment. The light that dissipates darkness can break “suddenly”. When God speaks, it is done; whether it is a new world or a sidereal system brought into existence, or a soul saved, it is all the same!This change came in an equally unexpected manner. “About noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me”.

How strange to have a great light burst upon one “at noon”! How can you have anything “above the brightness of the sun”, and especially a noon-day sun?

If this had been a light at night, it would not have surprised us. “The light shineth in darkness”, but here is a light that even made the light itself seem as darkness. What light was it? It was “the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world”, and that is the only light that ever changed a man’s heart. Neither the light of the sun, nor of all suns combined, could accomplish it; nor does the light of reason, the light of philosophy, the light of science, suffice. These are the lights that you would expect to be effective with Saul. Saul was a scholar and we commonly imagine that scholars can only be saved by superior scholarship; can only be shown a better way and convinced that they ought to walk in it, by the man of higher scientific attainments—the man of more eloquent logic—the man of pure reason.Our arguments in this matter are not without historic basis.

Charles Spurgeon’s mind was a superior one. It was a text of Scripture that convicted him.

Henry Ward Beecher’s mind was a superior one. It was the testimony of a colored man that brought him light. Frederick W. Brown, the famous editor of the “Ramshorn”, was a superior man, but it was a Biblical verse that brought him low. B. H. Carroll of Texas was an intellectual giant, but it was the flash of truth from quoted Scripture that resulted in his conviction and in his conversion.We are all wrong in supposing that the scholarly man can only be saved by scholarship. Scholarly men can only be saved by a revelation from heaven that puts his wisdom out of commission, that humbles his pride of intellect, that convicts his heart of its known iniquity.

Let’s be done, then, with sending scholarly men after scholarly men, and with teaching young ministers that unless they are acquainted with all the sciences they will never have any success with soul-winning. Let’s rely upon the Holy Spirit, the administrator of light, and upon the sacred Scriptures, the Spirit’s sword. The Sauls of the world will not be saved without them.This experience suddenly conquered his whole being. The record is, “And I fell unto the ground”. The old pride was gone. He was on his face now before God. He was humbled to the dust; and the further record is, “And I answered, Who art Thou, Lord?” How strange that he should shift from denying the Lordship of Christ to its instant acknowledgment! And yet, such is the experience of salvation!

When He conies, his conquest is complete, His triumph is eternal!We may oppose men, but who can oppose God? We stand up against the sons of men, but who will stand against the Son of God? We may answer the arguments of Reason, but who will reply to Heaven’s revelation?But we take a further step in our study, and in taking it we come uponHIS CLEAR The name of this convert was changed by his own question, and the very first question that passed his lips after “he fell to the ground”, was, “What shall I do, Lord”? That question revealed the change that had been wrought—the utter conversion, or turning about. It voiced, also, his instant acceptance of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, who had been revealed to him in answer to his first question, “Who art Thou”?And now note in the answers to this second question the instant and evident effects.He was clearly sent to a certain teacher.“Arise, and go into Damascus; and there it shall he told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do. “And when I could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of them that were with me, I came into Damascus. “And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there, “Came unto me, and stood, and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same hour I looked up upon him” (Acts 22:10-13). God has various ways of converting men to his Son Jesus Christ. With some it is the silent voice of the Spirit speaking in the language of the Scripture learned in youth; with others it is by the plea of a friend who beseeches in Christ’s Name. With some it is by a providential dealing, possibly in mercy or in judgment; with others it is through the preaching from the pulpit or the teaching in the Sunday School. But while God has various ways of bringing men to His Son, He has one specific way of building them up in knowledge of the truth, and that is by the teacher of the truth. Every new convert requires an Ananias—a devout man who knows the way himself and can reveal that more perfectly to this new-born soul.It isn’t every Christian who can teach, but God has always had His special instructors who can do for the inquirer what Philip did for the Ethiopian eunuch—open up the Scriptures and reveal Jesus; call attention to the ordinances and explain their spiritual significance; make clear the meaning of the Word and point the feet into the Christian walk.He was clearly told the Divine intent. “Thou shalt be His witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard”.Personal obedience is an essential to effective leadership. No man may expect to bring others into the Christian way until he himself has walked therein.

Paul’s baptism, therefore, must precede his attempted ministry. Even the Christian outside of the church will never be effective in getting other people into it, and the man who is himself disobedient in the matter of baptism will have no influence in bringing others to prove their friendship for Christ by doing what He has commanded them.His commission to the Gentiles was from the Lord.

Verses seventeen to twenty-one introduce another and a new conversation. Paul no longer talks to Ananias, or listens to what Ananias has to say. In a trance the Lord reveals Himself again as He had shown Himself in the blinding light, and commissions this new convert to quit Jerusalem (Acts 22:18), and to set out for the remote Gentiles.After all, that is the only commission that is binding. There is but one Head of the Church and one Administrator of its servants. All appointments are with Him—the risen and ascended One. He alone can give“some, Apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-15).

Acts 22:22-30

THE FURY OF Acts 22:22 to Acts 23:5OUR introduction of a chapter at this point is like the placing of many of the chapters of the Bible. It was without other occasion than convenience. The twenty-second chapter could easily have been treated in its entirety. In very truth, the remaining portion of this Book of Acts involves so continuous a narrative, that chapters were not only non-needful to the sense, but rather an impertinence. However, the average reader is short-breathed and demands many pauses or resting places, and to that fact we accommodate ourselves in this whole series. Furthermore, there is a profit in the introduction of paragraphs, and that is in the profit of more thorough study. It is better to abide over a few verses until they have surrendered up their secrets and borne their adequate testimony, than to skim over a whole volume, sounding its depths at no point.The verses we elect to treat here will compass a complete presentation of our theme, The Fury of Prejudice, and their proper analysis shows The Fury Excited, The Sufficient Defense, and The Farce of a Hearing.THE FURY EXCITEDIt was roused by the use of a word.“And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live. “And as they cried out, and cast off their clothes, and threw dust into the air, “The chief captain commanded Him to be brought into the castle, and hade that he should he examined by scourging; that he might know wherefore they cried so against him” (Acts 22:22-24). The opening phrase is extremely suggestive, “And they gave him audience unto this word”. “This word” is not the Bible in this case. It is not even the speech in which the Apostle Paul had rehearsed his personal experience, but it is the single word with which he concluded what he had to say. “Gentiles” is the word. That word was to the Jew what a red flag is to a bull. It infuriated. He did not believe that any true apostle or prophet could be sent to the Gentiles. He hated the Gentile.

The Gentile was to him a dog, and dogs are not proper subjects for a gospel. The only religion they could possibly have would be the Jewish religion, and the only way that they could come into that was already prescribed in the form of Jewish ceremonials, and to speak of such a thing as getting them in another way was a flagrant offence.It is a marvel how far prejudice can carry a man and what fury the use of an offensive word can excite. “Fundamental” is a good word.

It is doubtful if there is a better one in the whole dictionary. That is true whether you take its original meaning—“the foundation or ground work”, or its historical employment—“indispensable, primary, essential, basal”—and it is even more true when you apply it to the great underlying facts of revelation. And yet, how many men there are that grow red in the face the moment you pronounce the word “fundamental”, and their fury knows little or no balance!Prejudice is, of all mental attitudes, the most blinding, the most deafening, the most deranging. It has eyes but sees not, ears, but hears not. Such hearts “have waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted” (Matthew 13:15). No man is in healthy mental or spiritual condition when the use of a word flings him into a frenzy.This fury voiced itself in a threat. “Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live.

And they cried out, and cast off their clothes, and threw dust into the air”. There are some states of mind that a true Christian cannot understand.

If he ever had such, regeneration so effectually removed them that even their memory is obliterated, and chief among them stands this mental attitude that would murder the man who does not speak an acceptable shibboleth.Christianity is not a non-controversial, compromising, easy-going religion. It has been polemical from the first. It has stood ever ready to resist falsehoods, even unto death; but Christianity has never persecuted or sought to crucify its opponents. In all those cases where church men have been parties to martyrdom, we have a positive proof that they were members of the visible body only, and not members of His body.Paul is supposed to have been beheaded at Rome. Peter is reported to have been crucified with head down. Jesus Himself hung on Calvary’s Cross.

Few of His direct Apostles fared any better, but there is no record that any one of them ever sought the imprisonment, scourging or crucifixion of his opponent. In this connection we want to calm the fears of modernists.

They are constantly saying that, as the church in olden time killed men who did not agree with it, so the fundamentalist movement of the present day will yet imprison and otherwise persecute those who deny the validity of the Word and the Deity of Christ. Their speech is without occasion, their fears are utterly groundless.The fundamentals of the Christian faith demand another attitude entirely. Paul, Peter, John, James and Jude all joined their pens in defending the fundamentals of the Christian faith against the skeptics, atheists and rationalists of their day, but not one of them ever drew the sword against skeptics, employed a prison with which to silence their speech, or even asked a civil government to condemn or even call it into court. Threats then, as now, emanated from the opposers of the Gospel and the enemies of Christ, and not from the defenders of either. It still remains so and so it will be till the end of time.There are many persecutions taking place today. Faithful men are being removed from pastorates by ecclesiastical superiors, or driven from the same by local celebrities.

Ministers’ families are being left without food and clothing. By an ingenious ecclesiastical system church doors are being shut in the faces of those who have been forced to seek a change.

But practically every bit of this emanates from the enemies of Christ and the opponents of the Gospel, who, like the high priest of the text, have secured controlling positions in the modern church, but who give little or no evidence of ever having been regenerated by the Spirit of God, or having any vital relationship to that spiritual Body —His True Church.These opposers accomplished Paul’s arrest. “The chief captain commanded him to be brought into the castle, and bade that he should be examined by scourging; that he might know wherefore they cried so against him” (Acts 22:24). An arrest is an easy thing to accomplish. With courts constituted as they are now, an unjust condemnation is often secured; but that’s a thousandfold more seldom than an unjust arrest. The people of America would be amazed if they kept tab on their county prisons. A political revolt would be born if police records were an open book and the public studied them. There are not scores, but hundreds of cases every night in the year of men arrested, flung into prison without charge and dismissed the next morning. Their officer had a suspicion and this gave him a chance to confirm it, if possible, and failing, he quietly told the jailer to let the individual go, and in nine cases out of ten, being men and women of little or no means and few friends, no disturbance follows.

They quietly slip away, glad to be out of the lockup and free from the sight of the threatening face of an officer.One might imagine that this antique method of examining, by scourging, belonged to a period twenty centuries dead; but not so. It goes under a new name now—the third degree—and there are literally thousands of men and women treated after the same manner in our supposedly Christian civilization.

The third degree seems to be growing in favor with policemen. By keeping their suspect awake three and four days at a stretch, plying him with questions confusing in character and multitudinous in number, smiting him with the open hand, or cracking him over the head with a billy, or beating him with a broad strap, they bring from their victim confessions that are pure fabrications, given only because they were demanded and in the interest of escape from further suffering.Time moves, but civilization does not necessarily improve. The philosophy of evolution fails to find an illustration anywhere. The state employs more veneer now than it did in Paul’s day, and the religiously bigoted and intolerant are more careful in conduct and in speech. They both bring forth after their kind; the species does not change.Let us turn now toTHE DEFENSE“And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned? “When the centurion heard that, he went and told the chief captain, saying, Take heed what thou doest: for this man is a Roman. “Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea. “And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born. “Then straightway they departed from him which should have examined him: and the chief captain also was afraid, after he knew that he was a Roman, and because he had bound him” (Acts 22:25-29). His first defense was on the basis of citizenship. “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned”? Christianity, then, does not deprive a man of the rights of citizenship, else Paul would not have appealed to his Roman birth. How strange that good men are so often and so easily deceived! Present vendors of infidelity have had a triumph at this very point. In a dozen states of the Union very recently Christian citizens have sought to save their children from being steeped in a philosophy false to nature’s facts, inimical to Christianity itself and a growing menace to good government, and in every instance they have been practically told that a Christian had no citizenship rights. To be sure, the phraseology has not followed that exact form.

They have said to him: “Don’t mix church and state; don’t try to compel by law any peculiar views; don’t use physical and political means to obtain mental and spiritual ends; don’t seek to correct society by mere legislation; don’t try to convert the state into an advocate of your personal philosophy.” And, strange to say, this fallacious argument has seemed sound to thousands of superficial thinkers.It is a fact that a Christian is a citizen of Heaven, and that, in the truest sense, he is a stranger and pilgrim in the earth; but it is also a fact that his heavenly citizenship does not deprive him of his earthly citizenship, and that when earthly powers seek to oppress, persecute and impose upon, he has a perfect right to appeal to the State. The law is intended for his defense; legislation is enacted in his behalf.There are those who would have every man in the state made safe by law except the Christian, and leave him to the mercy of any civil criminal or destructive critic.

But the motive of such is easily understood. They are out to secure a triumph for their particular philosophy and they care not on whose rights they trample if only their atheism triumphs. The faithful of today have an obligation to Paul for the example here set of employing his citizen’s rights.He caused the chief captain instant concern. “Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea. And the chief captain answered, with a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born” (Acts 22:27-28).There are many political appointees who have no respect for the church and no regard for a Christian profession, but who are very sensitive to the will of the state.

These men feed at the state table and are gowned at state expense, and their families are looked upon as state favorites, and their station in life is determined by state religion, and what the state says concerns them. Very promptly and quite seriously, “Tell me, art thou a Roman”?The apostle’s answer ended the opposition. “He said, Yea”.

Mark the result. “Then straightway they departed from him which should have examined him: and the chief captain also was afraid, after he knew that he was a Roman, and because he had bound him” (Acts 22:29).There are many occasions when the enemies of the truth strike a snag. More than once the Master Himself silenced critics. When they brought the woman taken in adultery to Him for condemnation and demanded her stoning, he suddenly confused the whole company of them by asking that the sinless one should “cast the first stone”. He looked, and lo, they were gone.There are fair propositions that make further procedure difficult and render retirement hasty. There are apparent successes which prove to be signal defeats. It is one thing to howl against a Christian and to affirm that he is unfit to live, but it is another thing to unjustly scourge an honorable citizen.

Thousands have done the first and only suffered in their sordid spirits for the same. But hundreds have attempted the second to discover themselves legally entangled and justly endangered.

One conscience-free man, knowing his rights, can fling fear into the heart of both court and crowd and compel them to search for the way of escape. Such a search here results inTHE FARCE OF A HEARING“On the morrow, because he would have known the certainty wherefore he was accused of the Jews, he loosed him from his bands, and commanded the chief priests and all their council to appear, and brought Paul down, and set him before them” (Acts 22:30).“And Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.“And the high priest Ananias commanded them that stood by him to smite him on the mouth.“Then said Paul unto him, God shall smite thee, thou whited wall; for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law?“And they that stood by said, Revilest thou God’s high priest?“Then said Paul, I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people” (Acts 23:1-5).Analyze this record and your interest will center further around Paul and the high priest, into whose hands he is committed.There was a time and place set for Paul’s trial.That act constituted a show of fairness, but in nature it was foul. The chief captain knew that the charges against Paul were forged and should have set him free, but with an eye to political preferment, he feared to do that lest Paul’s enemies should not support him in his next candidacy. Officials pushed into a corner often pretend fairness by the calling of a council. A little investigation will show that in nine cases out of ten it is a shadow pretense. When the council convenes it will be an ex parte one.

It will be made of men whose predisposition is known, whose judgment is prejudiced and fixed.How seldom has a minister of the Gospel ever had a fair hearing! In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred his trial was brought about by his enemies, and the object from the first was not to find out the truth, but to effect a conviction.

To this end they will do what was done in the case of the Master’s ministry, suborn witnesses, and, as in His case also, trump up charges, and the findings of the court will not express justice, but voice a predetermined judgment.The minister may be the equal, or, as in this case, the infinitely superior of his judges. But if so, he dare not so much as refer to the fact that he dwells on a plane of equal social level with them, equal mental acumen, equal spiritual attainment, for if he do, they will smite him as one guilty of an assumption, as they smote the Apostle when he addressed them “Men and brethren”.It is always interesting, and almost ludicrously interesting, to see the man who gets into an ecclesiastical or political position of judgment, take on an air of superiority. There never was a policeman so ignorant or so gross that he did not resent every word of defense that “the highest citizen might speak, in case that gross officer has decided to criticise or arrest him.Paul’s retort is that of a true man. “Then said Paul unto him, God shall smite thee, thou whited wall; for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law” (Acts 23:3)?We love that flash of anger, that burst of righteous indignation. There are people who think that a Christian is never to know anything other than soft words or cringing spirit. We do not believe with them. God is angry.

Anger under certain conditions is a positive virtue. It is a proof of character.

It is the voice of righteousness itself. The man who can permit one of his fellows, who happens to be an official, to perform an outrage against him, to play the hypocrite and pretend to represent the law, and yet, in the very pretense violate the law itself and say nothing, is not a man. He is a mouse.Beyond all doubt, Peter made a mistake when he drew his sword and smote off the high priest’s ear, but what red-blooded man does not admire Peter a thousand fold more in that moment of his error, than he admires him, when, a few hours later, he is cringing in the presence of the high priest and friends, and with a mock modesty meekness is saying, “I do not know the Man”.It is a fact that Jesus rebuked Peter for the use of the sword, but it is also a fact that when Peter’s repentance came, it was not that deed that grieved him most. It was his cowardly conduct, his cringing behavior. Aye, that is what sent him to his knees broken in heart, and left him for hours and days without God and without hope.And yet, that Paul was not a mere fire-brand is proven in what follows. “And they that stood by said, Revilest thou God’s high priest? Then said Paul, I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people” (Acts 23:4-5). This was the Apostle’s respect for authority. A man has a right to respect authority, a right to regard office, a right to see in the individual official the state itself, and respect it as such. But there is often a difference between the office and the official. The governor’s office is a good one and an honorable one and should be respected. But when you have a governor in the office who is a charlatan, you may, at one and the same time, condemn the official and respect the office.A worthless president does not prove that the state should know no such an individual. Paul is here conforming his conduct to what he will later voice in one of his Epistles. “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves” (Hebrews 13:17).

And again, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil” (Romans 13:1-3). The difference between a first-class Christian citizen and an anarchist is at this point. .A Christian citizen will in his heart condemn the hypocrite in office and seek to fill the same with another and a better man, while the anarchist would abolish the office itself and leave the people without government, just as the Christian citizen believes in a ruler of the universe, and the spiritual anarchist prefers a universe without God.