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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 663. The Man of Good Intention
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The Man of Good Intention
Three days after his arrival at Cæsarea he went up to Jerusalem, when at once the high priest and the chief of the Jews informed him against Paul. Their resentment was kept alive by the continued diminution of the funds sent from the Hellenistic synagogues. Festus ordered the accusers to come down to Cæsarea and there lay their accusation against St. Paul.
After a stay of eight or ten days in Jerusalem, he proceeded to Cæsarea, and, on the day after his arrival, took his seat in the procurator's court and summoned the prisoner to his presence, where his accusers, who had in the meantime also arrived from Jerusalem, repeated the charges which they had already formulated against St. Paul before Felix. Once again he was accused of being guilty of offences (1) against the law of the Jews, (2) against the Temple, and (3) against Cæsar, all of which charges he emphatically denied, and in support of which the prosecution was unable to produce any evidence. The character of the charges seemed to Festus, who showed no tendency to treat his prisoner with any degree of injustice, to be more suitable for consideration by a Jewish than by an Imperial tribunal, seeing that they were concerned principally with questions of Jewish law and religion. He therefore suggested to St. Paul that the case should be transferred to Jerusalem, where he could be tried before the Sanhedrin, while his own presence at the hearing would guarantee that justice should be done to him. It is manifest from this suggestion that he attached but slight importance to the charge of treason to the Empire, which would have been much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the decision of an inferior court.
St. Paul declined to go to Jerusalem, and appealed to Cæsar.
Paul knew that Festus, honest as he might be in the intention to secure him a fair trial, would be powerless to save him from being murdered by the way, and, besides, it was altogether illegal to refer to a Jewish court a case which had been already brought under the Imperial jurisdiction, by being transferred to Cæsarea. Sent to Jerusalem, the dagger awaited him; sent to Rome, he must, as he rightly believed, be set free.1 [Note: C. Geikie, Hours with the Bible: Life and Epistles of St. Paul, ii. 451.]
The root of honesty is an honest intention, the distinct and deliberate purpose to be true, to handle facts as they are, and not as we wish them to be. Facts lend themselves to manipulation. Many a butcher's hand is worth more than its weight in gold. What we want things to be, we come to see them to be; and the tailor pulls the coat and the truth into a perfect fit from his point of view.
Oh, to get life out of our sinful and selfish desires, and “walk in the light as he is in the light,” not wishing merely, but “willing to live honestly!” 2 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 32.]
2. Shortly after Festus had assumed the reins of government as governor of Judæa, a ceremonial visit was paid to him by Herod Agrippa the Second, accompanied by his sister, Bernice. Festus had been placed in a somewhat awkward predicament by St. Paul's appeal to Cæsar, which necessitated the formulating of a legal statement of the case to the higher Imperial court. He had been unable, in the course of the inquiry that he had held, to discover evidence of any crime charged against the prisoner which could be construed into an offence against Roman law, and, as far as his information went, Paul's condemnation was sought by his accusers on grounds connected entirely with their own law and custom. His ignorance of all that pertained to Judaism was such that he was unable to distinguish the relevancy of the charges, and to state a case to the court of Cæsar was, therefore, a matter of considerable difficulty.
Herod, on the other hand, was a Jew by birth, and had a wide knowledge of Jewish law and custom, and was conversant with questions of Jewish theology. His official connexion with the Temple had also brought him into close contact with the ecclesiastical authorities, and gave him an opportunity of becoming acquainted with all the minutiæ of ritual and ceremonial. It would, indeed, have been difficult for Festus to meet with a person who, by position and knowledge, was better fitted to extricate him out of his present predicament. He, therefore, lost no time in laying before Herod a complete statement of St. Paul's case, explaining to him the dilemma in which he was placed by the prisoner's appeal to Cæsar, and requisitioning his assistance in the matter. The king's curiosity was aroused by the procurator's statement, and he expressed a desire to have the prisoner examined in his own presence, a request which was readily granted.
There is a mean curiosity, as of a child opening a forbidden door, or a servant prying into her master's business;-and a noble curiosity, questioning, in the front of danger, the source of the great river beyond the sand,-a nobler curiosity still, which questions of the source of the River of Life, and of the space of the Continent of Heaven,-things which “the angels desire to look into.”1 [Note: Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, § 29.]
3. Festus opened the court proceedings by repeating in public what he had already explained to Herod privately, how, on his first visit to Jerusalem, he had been assailed by the whole Jewish community, leaders and people, with accusations against St. Paul, who had been declared unfit to live. He then proceeded to describe how he himself had examined him in their presence and could discover no evidence of any crime committed against Roman law, and how, on his proposing to hand over the prisoner to the Jewish authorities to be tried on an issue having reference to Jewish law, St. Paul had appealed to Cæsar, and how to Cæsar's court he had decided to send him. He had now summoned the prisoner to give an account of himself in the presence of the king and the assembly, in order that Herod, with his intimate knowledge of all that pertained to Judaism, might assist him in framing the charge which must accompany the prisoner when he appeared before the Supreme Court. When Festus had completed his introductory address, Agrippa expressed the desire of the court to hear what the Apostle had to say for himself.
It has always seemed to me, as the Saints say, that self-defence, though not advisable ordinarily, is a duty when it is a question of faith.1 [Note: W. Ward, The Life of Cardinal Newman, ii. 128.]
4. As St. Paul made his defence, the patience of Festus broke down. It broke down on two points. First, he did not care for the “preaching” part of the Apostle's speech. As long as St. Paul stood on his defence, or attacked the Jews, the thing was entertaining enough; but the forgiveness of sin and the call to repentance was out of place in court circles, and sounded trivial to men of the world.
The other distasteful element in St. Paul's address was the story of a risen Jesus-visions, personal convictions, sects, prophets, and all that-such a mixture as Festus had never heard in his life; quite unintelligible and visionary-so it seemed to him. Not unkindly, or even discourteously, did he at last exclaim, hoping to bring so able an orator back to reason and common sense, “Paul, thou art mad; thy much book learning doth turn thee to madness.”
With unruffled calm and dignity St. Paul brushed aside the exclamation with a simple affirmation that his words were true in themselves, and spoken by one who had full command over his faculties; and then he turned away from Festus, who understood nothing, to Agrippa, who, at any rate, did understand a little. Indeed, Festus has to take the second place throughout, and it may have been the ignoring of him that nettled him. For all his courtesy to Agrippa, he knew that the latter was but a vassal king, and he may have chafed at St. Paul's addressing him exclusively.
Oh, blessed fervour that glowed in the heart of Paul! Oh, most admirable infatuation! Oh, most wise ecstasy! A story runs of some formal old officer disparaging General Wolfe to the King, and insinuating that he was mad; on which the King shrewdly answered, “If he be mad, I wish he would bite some of my generals, that they might be mad also.” If Paul was mad, I wish we were all affected with the same mania.1 [Note: Autobiography of the late Donald Fraser, 242.]
Then it seems to me as if my heart would break in pouring out one glorious song that should be the gospel of Reform, full of consolation and strength to the oppressed, yet falling gently and restoringly as dew on the withered youth-flowers of the oppressor. That way my madness lies.2 [Note: W. H. Hudson, Lowell and his Poetry, 42.]
5. How could such an one as Festus understand a man like St. Paul? A man, Festus probably thought, of natural intellectual vigour and force of character-for his whole tone and bearing indicate that-who has permitted himself to pore over old Jewish records till his brain has been heated by some mystical visions, some contemptible vaticinations of Hebrew superstition. The healthy balance between imagination and sense, the world of thoughts, fancies, speculations, and the world of material realities, has been disturbed, and this clever man, of whom better things might have been made, has become a morbid dreamer and enthusiast.
Yet Festus has caught the point of St. Paul's gospel, as many Christians have not. Like the Athenians, who thought Anastasis a new goddess-so frequent was the mention of Resurrection in the stranger's address-Festus, too, has seen that the question between Christianity and Judaism was a certain Person's life after death, and that the real crime of his prisoner was, not an assault upon the traditions of Moses, the sanctities of the Temple, or the prerogatives of Cæsar, but the assertion, in opposition to the ecclesiastical authorities and the religious world of his countrymen, of a fact about which he was positive, in testimony of which he had suffered the loss of his all, and was prepared to endure any torture and a degrading death.
Gibbon, among historians, is typical of that wisdom of this world which is blind to the spiritual facts and forces of life; his story of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, brilliant and majestic in its march of events, stumbles and falters, is darkened and diminished, when it confronts the factor of Christianity in the rise and fall of men and nations. Its chapters on this new power in history are a pitiful endeavour to measure the infinite by finite standards; it is as the effort of a blind man to explain colour, of the deaf to appraise music. Sight without insight, view without vision, cannot read aright either the tale of past ages, or the scene of the present hour.1 [Note: A. Rudman, in Notes on the Scripture Lessons, 1916.]
Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the Highest
Cannot confound nor doubt him nor deny:
Yea with one voice, O world, tho' thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.2 [Note: F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul, 50.]
Livingstone when found dead upon his knees in Central Africa, had his diary open before him, and the last entry was “My Jesus, my Saviour, my Life, my all, anew I dedicate myself to Thee.”