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others," willing and purposed to do right, regardless of present consequences, nobly heedless of popular clamor, or court favor, contented in the consciousness of consistent rectitude, as the crushed hero on the field of Pavia, to lose every thing but honor; preferring the smile of God to the smile or sunshine of Caesar. In the great crisis of a country, a church or a race, these are the men "whose price is above rubies." Their position, in proportion to its perils and temptations, Posterity will approve, if a contemporary and perverted generation should condemn. Such a man was Andrew Marvel, in the corrupt age of Charles II; and such a hero was Marion, in the midnight of the Revolution! Such principled heroes, however, counter parts of Pontius Pilate in every point, are not formed on worldly maxims of carnal policy. The recognition of a higher power-an omniscient God-assimilation to a nobler model, even the mind of Christ, the sweet consciousness of a better inheritance and an amaranthine crown, and a steadfast appeal to an impartial final tribunal, are the elements, which enter into the composition of such a character. Against a man, entrenched in such fortresses the weapons of carnal expediency, wielded ever by Satanic cunning have no power.

"Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni,
Mente quatit solidâ."

The all-sufficing reply to all suggestions of temporizing, or tortuous policy, all appeals addressed to ambition and vain glory, is compressed in words of this kind: "How can I do this thing, and sin against God"-" Thou God seest me"-"Get thee behind me Satan." These are the shields of imperilled virtue, the talismans of its triumph. "As ever in the great Taskmaster's eye," such a man will do right, even at the loss of all things, nor do conscious wrong, were the whole world, and the kingdoms and the glory of it, conveyed to him, in fee simple, from its present usurped Proprietor!

Well were it for our country and our race, if the men to whom its guidance is committed, and by whose agency its destiny is influenced, were always men of this high moral stamp, and if no successors of Pontius Pilate were found in the Legislative, Judicial and Executive departments of influence in our world! Well-it is vain, simply to wish; it is not enough merely to say, that such may be the case. Every man, especially every christian man, is responsible to the extent of his influence, in all his relations, for shaping such a state of political morals, as will

make it the interest of all men, everywhere, to do right, even if higher motives are inoperative. Every christian, is at least obligated, when occasion is afforded on a lower or higher scale, to exhibit a personal exemplification of a character, in every aspect the moral antithesis of Pontius Pilate's! Christianity is designed, not only to qualify men for citizenship in glory after leaving "this present evil world," but to make them "the Light of the world and the Salt of the Earth," in their present interimistic relations. Other countries have failed in their struggles for inalienable rights, because, amidst the wild tempests of revolutionary fury, there was not enough of principled christianity infused and living, to counteract the violence of depraved passions or the meanness of personal aggrandizement. If ever our country perishes, which may Heaven in mercy forbid, not indeed as a succession of individuals, but for all the high purposes of a nation, it will be because the representatives of Pontius Pilate, men who prefer Barabbas to Jesus Christ, if such a course will subserve their sinister purposes, are placed in power, in the misguided exercise of our elective franchises!

Finally, the subsequent history and terrible catastrophe of Pilate's life, is fraught with warning and instruction. Authentic history informs us, that shortly afterwards he was superseded in office, accused before the Emperor, and banished to a distant part of the Empire, where he perished at length by his own hand! Such was "the end of Earth" to Pontius Pilate, who condemned "the Just one." A wild Irish legend tells us, that Ireland, was the place of his banishment, and one of its dreariest mountain deserts the theatre of his miserable and unsolaced suicide! The legend, goes on to say, that he is doomed to wander over the earth, a disturbed spirit to this hour. Enough is known to prove, that in his case" vaulting ambition, o'er leapt itself, and fell on t'other side." That, for which he surrendered truth and conscience, he after all failed to secure, he lived disappointed, died in despair, and is now and will forever be, in some world, reaping the bitter fruits of his earthly career.

An instructive picture is here presented to the men, who in any age, and for any consideration, crucify the Son of God afresh, or go against conscience, to secure some temporal interest or please some regnant party in church or state! Oh! how emphatically cheerless the old age, and grand climacteric of a worldling, who sold his conscience and was after all cheated of the promised reward. After the fever and strife of busy life is over, how pitiable is it, to have no good conscience to sustain, amidst the withering of earthly expectations, and the infirmities

and infelicities incident to old age under the most favorable circumstances. With no pleasing recollections of the past, and a fearful looking for of future and eternal gloom, how terrible the final struggle with "the king of terrors." Even the legendary punishment, to which Irish superstition consigns the legal Destroyer of the Son of God, is a faint picture of the actual doom of all, in after ages, that follow in his footsteps. Condemned, to wander," in the blackness of darkness," while cycles of ages, are rolling away, with a distinct consciousness of the past, a vivid sense of the present, and fearful anticipation of the future! "Better for that man, that he had never been born," a deeper damnation than Pilate's, on the principle announced by the Saviour, will belong to those, who, in our day, and with all the light now enjoyed, consent for paltry gain, or present popularity or fleeting pleasure, to crucify their consciences, sell their souls and abandon their Saviour. Halters between two opinions, palterers with principle, captives of Satan, deluded votaries, of a world passing away and perishing! Yet even such need not despair, and will not perish, if they do not persevere. Even for Pontius Pilate there would have been mercy and merit enough, had he repented and believed! For the murderers of Christ, who imprecated his blood on themselves and their children, that blood would have availed for pardon and cleansing. "The blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin." For the vilest and guiltiest there are provisions and proffers of pardon, and there is no absolute necessity now that any should perish, provided, they do not procrastinate too long, or finally grieve away "the Holy Spirit, by which we are sealed to the day of redemption." Pittsburgh, Pa.

D. H. R.

THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL.

[Translated from Schaff's Church History, by T. C. PORTER.]

WE enter now on the history of one, who, as a thinker, is no whit inferior to the most profound philosophers, or, as a hero, to the greatest conquerors of the world, while, as a man, he towers far above them all,-who, as a Christian, by his activity, yea, by his mere conversion, bears more powerful witness to the divinity of the Gospel than whole volumes of scientific argument, -who, as an apostle, unfolds, in by far the most spirited and weighty manner, the peculiarity and catholicity of the Christian religion, as the absolute world-religion, the deliverance of which from the fetters of Judaism and its victory over heathenism had been by him chiefly determined,-who, finally, as a benefactor of mankind, is entitled to the next place after the Saviour of us all, in whose humble service and true fellowship even he found his highest glory and his purest joy.

Saul (after the Hebrew), or Paul (after the Hellenistic form)1

'It was a custom of the Jews to have two names, and, in their intercourse with foreigners. to use one either from the Latin, or the Greek, e. g. John, Marcus (Acts xii: 12, 15), Simeon, Niger (xiii, 1), Jesus, Justus (Col. iv, 11). This best explains why the name Paul, appears immediately from that point of time, when he comes forth as the independent apostle of the Gentiles, whilst before and in the first period after his conversion, where Luke followed Palestinian documents, he goes by the name of Saul. But probably he had already used the Græco-Roman form, during his earlier residence in Tarsus. From the more ancient view of Jerome (de vir. illus. c. 5), which has lately been defended by Olshausen and Meyer, that Paul assumed this name in thankful remembrance of the first-fruits of his apostolic ministry, the conversion of the Roman Proconsul, Sergius Paulus (Acts xiii, 7), (apostolus a primo ecclesiæ spolio, Proconsule Sergio Paulo, victoriæ suce trophæa retulit. erexitque vexillum, ut Paulus ex Saulo vocaretur), we must dissent for the following reasons: 1. The new name appears before the conversion of Sergius, namely, in Acts xiii, 9, whilst one should wait for its first assumption till c. xiii, 13, to which Fritzsche has justly called attention (Epist. P. ad Roman. tom. 1, p. xi, note 2). 2. It was indeed the usage of antiquity, to name the scholar after the teacher, but never the reverse (see Neander Apostel gesch. 1, p. 135, note). 3. Paul had doubtless before this converted many heathens, even if it be not expressly men tioned in the Acts of the Apostles (comp. nevertheless xi, 25-26), since almost nothing is said of his three years' sojourn in Arabia, and his abode in Tarsus is but briefly alluded to. At all events, there is no conceivable reason why the conversion of this proconsul should seem to the apostle worthy of commemoration by a change of name.-In homiletic and practical discourses, it is still usual to refer the double name of the apostle to the great religious contrast of his life, just as the new name of Simon dates

was descended from Jewish ancestors, of the tribe of Benjamin (Phil. iii: 5, 2 Cor. xi: 22), and born a Roman citizen (Acts xxii: 28, xvi: 37), probably only a few years after the birth of Christ, at Tarsus, the capitol of Cilicia in Asia Minor, and a celebrated seat of Grecian culture (ix: 11, xxi: 39, xxii: 3). Although set apart for a theologian, he yet learned, according to Jewish custom, a trade, that of tent-making, by which, when an apostle, with noble self-sacrifice, he for the most part earned his own living, so as to maintain his independence and avoid being burdensome to the churches. In his birth-place he enjoyed an excellent opportunity of making himself early acquainted with the Greek language and nationality, which proved of great moment in his subsequent career. And yet, it is not at all likely, that he there received a proper classical training, since the Jewish educational element largely predominates in his writings. He quotes, indeed, several passages from the heathen poets, from Aratus (Acts xvii: 28), from Menander (1 Cor. xv:

itself from his confession of the Messiahship of Jesus, and by its meaning indicates his importance in the history of the church. So, for example, Augustine (Serm. 315) draws a parallel between Saul, the persecutor of the Christians, and the persecuter of David (Saulus enim nomen est a Saule, Saul persecutor erat regis David. Talis fuerat Saul in David, qualis Saulus in Stephanum,) and finds in the new name, which he derives from the Latin adjective, paulus, the idea of humility (quia Paulus modicus est, Paulus parvus est. Nos solemus sic loqui: videbo te post paulum, i. e. post modicum. Unde ergo Paulus: “ ego sum minimus Apostolorum" 1 Cor. xv, 9). Still more capricious and ungrammatical is the play, referred to by Chrysostom (de nominum mutatione), but at the same time decidedly rejected by him, which makes Saul come from σαλευειν SC. ἐκκλησίαν, and Paul from πάυσασθαι SC. του διώκειν, so that the first name shall denote the persecution of the Christians and the second its cessation!! Now Saul is confessedly a Hebrew word and means rather, the longed for, the prayed for. All these and similar allegorical interpretations are effectually cut off by the fact that Paul, after his conversion, frequently receives from Luke the name of Saul Acts ix: 8, 11, 17, 19, 22, 26, xi: 25, 30, xii: 25, xiii: 2, 9.).

* Because when the Epistle to Philemon was written, about the year 63, at the time of his imprisonment in Rome (v. 9), he was an old man, πpeσBurns, perhaps over sixty.

Strabo, the contemporary of Augustus Caesar, in his Geography xiv, 5, places Tarsus, as to philosophy and literature, even before Athens and Alexandria,

Tents were anciently used in various ways, in war, in navigation, by shepherds and travellers, and were mostly made of goat's hair, which in Cilicia was particularly coarse and well suited for this purpose (hence KOS тpayos also signified, a rough man). Comp. Hug, Einl. in's N. T. II, p. 328, 3d ed.

i

Only from the Christians in Philippi, with whom he stood connected by ties of peculiar friendship, did he accept presents, Phil. iv: 15.

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