So they bound him. But Paul at once vindicated his exemption from the degrading punishment by saying, "I am a Roman.' No Roman might be beaten; he must be tried by his country, he must not be degraded. It was the glory of the Roman name that the very mention of it was protection to all that bore it, in every part of the globe. "And when the centurion," that is, the chief officer, "heard that, he went and told the chief captain, saying, Take heed what thou doest: for this man is a Roman." The chief captain, startled at this, having supposed he was a mere contemptible Jew, who had no citizenship in Rome, came to him and said, "Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea." Then the chief captain said, How is this? "With a great sum obtained I this freedom." Under the reign of Claudius Cæsar the rights of Roman citizenship were exposed in the market and regularly sold; and there is no doubt that this chief captain had purchased the dignity and the immunity of a Roman citizen for money. "And Paul said, But I was free born." This has perplexed some; because, first, he was born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia. Tarsus at that time was not strictly a Roman colony, with all the dignity and prerogatives of a colonia; nor is there any evidence, though it has been asserted by some commentators, that Tarsus at any time, either before that or even subsequent, was raised to a dignity like this, that every one born in it had all the rights of a Roman citizen. But the supposition is, that Paul's father had purchased the privilege of a citizen of Rome; and Saul or Paul inherited the dignity or the immunity from him. It is quite plain that his mere birth in Tarsus could not have entitled him to this right. That he had it is plain; how he obtained it is

not here asserted. But we see here a very interesting thought come out; a Christian may plead his rights as a citizen. When we become Christians, we do not cease to be citizens; but our citizenship becomes sanctified, ennobled, inspired. A citizen is called upon to vote for a magistrate, for a member of parliament; every citizen has the solemn and grave responsibility of that vote in his hands. As a mere citizen, he may give that vote after the dictates of patriotism, or expediency, or party. But a Christian does not lay aside his right, nor surrender his vote; but he gives it no longer on the grounds on which he gave it before, but on new and loftier grounds: glory to God, honour to the Saviour, the advocacy, support, and extension of the Gospel throughout the world. These are the prime, the supreme motives that govern a Christian citizen; his Christianity consecrating, not extinguishing, his rights and privileges as a citizen.

Then "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." In the next Chapter, we have Paul's great apology before the council.

CHAPTER XXII. 10.

REMARKABLE CONTRAST-THE BIGOT THE HUMAN HEART-FALSE RELIGION WORSE THAN NONE-SAUL CONVERTED INTO PAUL-EVIDENCES OF DIVINE ORIGIN OF GOSPEL IN PAUL'S CONVERSIONFANATICISM---PAUL'S SOBRIETY-PAUL NOT DECEIVED-NOT MISLED BY NATURAL CAUSES-PAUL NOT A DECEIVER-REGENERATIVE GRACE.

I HAVE selected verse 10, not so much for the exposition of its clauses, as the ground of some remarks upon the striking contrast between Saul, the persecutor of the saints of God; and Paul, the impressive and successful preacher of the Gospel to the Gentiles. The change from the one to the other is so remarkable that nothing but grace can have done it; and an examination of the possible grounds on which the change is asserted or assumed by some to have been made irrespective of Divine influence, will form the substance of the topics I will here endeavour to bring before you. First of all we have Saul, the bigoted and exclusive Pharisee. The portrait is sketched, not only by himself in fragments, but by our Blessed Lord at length. Pharisee was one that bound heavy burdens grievous to be borne-laid them on men's shoulders; while they would not touch them themselves with their little finger. They loaded their auditors with ceremonies; crushed them to the earth with difficult and laborious rites; feasted themselves whilst they prescribed fasts for their people; enjoyed the good things of the

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world in abundance whilst they proscribed and forbade them to those that were subject to them; laid loads, arbitrary and intolerable, on the shoulders of the people, whilst they themselves enjoyed more than the freedom, immunity, and indulgence of their own exalted position.

The Pharisees did all their works to be seen of men; made broad their phylacteries, loved the uppermost rooms at feasts, the chief seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted, "Rabbi, Rabbi." In other words, they believed that the people were made for the priest, and the priest was made for his own unlimited enjoyment. They coveted honour, pomp, éclat; and they were the most religious, in the estimate of a Pharisee, who gave the greatest deference to the priests and scribes in the synagogue. And not only so, but they shut up the kingdom of Heaven against men; did not enter in themselves, neither suffered them that were entering in. They themselves had no religion; and them that had any religion they disgusted. They devoured widows' houses, and for a pretence made long prayers; standing in the synagogue, at the corners of the streets, that they might obtain credit with the superstitious, and be pointed out as the prominently devout and holy of the land. They had intense zeal. "They compassed sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he was made, he was tenfold more the child of hell.”

What an awful trait is here!—it is possible to be an intense propagandist, and yet to propagate what is not true. The missionary spirit only proves the zeal of him that has it; it does not prove the truth of the cause of which he is a missionary. Who a more devoted missionary than Francis Xavier? Who more untiring and

zealous, as a propagandist, than Ignatius Loyola? And yet the creed they taught and the tenets they spread were not true because they so intensely and zealously promoted them. Our Lord tells us, too, that the Pharisees counted swearing by the gold of the temple binding; but swearing by a greater than the temple they disregarded. They preferred the gift to the altar that sanctified the gift; and they that swore by the gift they held to display a greater piety, and to be more solemnly bound, than they that swore by the altar itself. They displaced the economy of God; they put ceremony in the room of religion, and the outward rite in the room of the law; and made more of things circumstantial and subordinate than of things vital and essential. They never omitted to pay tithes of anise and cummin, but they neglected the weightier matters of the law.

What a picture is here! In ceremony rigidly exact; in real morality conveniently lax. They preferred tithes to sacrifice; ceremony to justice, morality, and truth. They could not forgive the least violation of a rubric; they connived at the transgression in their own persons of the holy and righteous law of God Our Lord says,

that they were like whited sepulchres, which appear beautiful outside, but within are full of dead men's bones and all corruption. Outwardly they seemed most holy; inwardly they were most corrupt. They appeared in the sight of men the very saints of heaven, come down on an embassy to mankind; but to the Great Searcher of hearts, this outward beauty only gilded the inward corruption, and made them not the less but the more hateful in the sight of a just and a righteous God. And lastly, they persecuted the prophets; some of them they killed and crucified, some they scourged in their