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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 603. The Counsellor
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The Counsellor
The events which followed all tended at first to strengthen their position. The healing of the cripple in Solomon's porch; the bold speech of Peter afterwards; the unshaken constancy with which Peter and John faced the fury of the Sadducees; the manner in which all the disciples accepted and even exulted in persecution, if it came in the fulfilment of their duties; the power with which they witnessed to the resurrection of their Lord; the beautiful spectacle of their unanimity; the awful suddenness with which Ananias and Sapphira had been stricken down; the signs and wonders which were wrought by the power of faith; the zeal and devotion which marked their gatherings in Solomon's porch-caused a rapid advance in the numbers and position of the Christian brothers.
1. The popularity of the Apostles, and the enthusiastic admiration of the multitude, stirred the envy of the Sadducees. Annas the high priest, who was regarded as their leader, was too determined a man to brook with patience the hateful doctrine which seemed now to be always on their lips. Undismayed by his previous failure, he made up his mind to a second arrest; before, they had laid hands only on St. Peter and St. John; now they proceed to take all the Apostles, and instead of locking them up in the precincts of the Council chambers, they put them this time in the public prison.
The Sanhedrin met at dawn to try them; but when they sent for them to the prison they found that the Apostles were not there, but that, delivered by “an angel of the Lord,” they were calmly teaching in the Temple. In the deepest perplexity, the Sanhedrists once more despatched the Levitical officer to arrest them, but this time without any violence, which might lead to dangerous results. They offered no resistance, and were once more placed where their Lord had once stood-in the centre of that threatening semicircle of angry judges.
Their defence made a very strong and adverse impression upon the Council; something they said seems to have stung them to the quick. It is described by a remarkable figure, for which we have no English equivalent; every word they spoke went deeper and deeper, till “they were sawn asunder”; it is repeated in describing the effect of St. Stephen's speech, and in both cases the result was the same-it filled them with rage and fury.
A friend of mine was once talking to an old family butler about a son of the house who had lately taken Orders, and gone to be a curate in a colliery village. The old man said, “Mr. Frank has got himself into sad trouble by preaching against drunkenness; now 'e should 'ave stuck to the doctrine, sir. That would 'ave done no 'arm!”1 [Note: A. C. Benson, Along the Road, 128.]
2. The Council was upon the point of proceeding to extremities, when it was saved from the guilt of bloodshed by the interposition of Gamaliel. It was, no doubt, the weight of authority attaching to his name, combined with his great popularity, that gained him a hearing at a crisis when the whole Court was in a tumult of excitement and anger. What influenced him to stand up in the face of such opposition, and offer advice which went in the very teeth of his brother councillors' determination, we can only conjecture.
As soon as Gamaliel had calmed the excitement, he had the prisoners removed, and then began his condemnation of what the Court had resolved upon. Appealing to history in support of more moderate counsels, he pointed out how other pretenders had arisen, trading on the Messianic expectations which then existed all over Palestine, and especially in Galilee, and how they had been all destroyed without any action on the part of the Sanhedrin. He instanced two cases: Judas, who lived in the days of Cyrenius and the taxing under Augustus Cæsar; and Theudas, who some time previous to that event had arisen, working upon the religious and national hopes of the Jews, as the persons now accused before them seemed also to be doing. Here surely, Gamaliel argued, was sufficient encouragement to induce them to wait the order of Providence. If, like their predecessors, these men were mere revolutionary agitators, they would probably share their fate; if, however, they had right on their side, all opposition would certainly be useless, possibly it might recoil upon themselves with disastrous results. If the work were of men, it would fall to pieces; if it were of God, no human power could cause its destruction.
In this speech of Gamaliel there is one thing which seems to call for special remark. There is an apparent discrepancy between him and Josephus as to the insurrection of Theudas. A person of that name is spoken of by the Jewish historian as having headed an insurrection; but, then, the date of his rising was some years subsequent to that of the events which we have now been reviewing. Hence, many would infer that the account given in the Acts is erroneous. But that is far from being a just conclusion; for, apart altogether from the consideration of the question of Luke's inspiration, Josephus was just as likely to be wrong as he was. Nay, the history of Josephus, as Alford remarks, “teems with inaccuracies”; so that we have no right to argue that, because he says one thing and Luke another, therefore Luke must be wrong. Moreover, Josephus himself, speaking of a time which might very well accord with that referred to here, says, “Now at this time there were ten thousand other disorders in Judea, which were like tumults, because a great number put themselves into a warlike posture, either out of hopes of gain to themselves or out of enmity to the Jews.” Once more, the name Theudas was by no means uncommon; and it may very well have been that a person called by it may have been the leader of one of those tumults to which, in the passage which I have just quoted, the historian has referred.1 [Note: W. M. Taylor, Peter the Apostle, 224.]
3. Gamaliel's plea was not so much a plea for systematic tolerance as for temporary caution. The day of open rupture between Judaism and Christianity was indeed very near at hand, but it had not yet arrived. His advice was due neither to the quiescence of Pharisaic fatalism, nor to a “fallacious laisser aller view of the matter, which serves to show how low the Jews had sunk in theology and political sagacity if such was the counsel of their wisest.” There was time, Gamaliel thought, to wait and watch the development of this new fraternity. To interfere with it might only lead to a needless embroilment between the people and the Sanhedrin. A little patience would save trouble, and indicate the course which should be pursued. Gamaliel was sufficiently clear-sighted to have observed that the fire of a foolish fanaticism dies out if it be neglected, and is only kindled into fury by premature opposition. Let those who venture to arraign the principle of the wise Rabbi remember that it is practically identical with the utterance of Christ, “Every plant, which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up.”
Gamaliel's argument, based as it was upon prudential principles pure and simple, was unanswerable; and it appears that the Sanhedrists thought so, for they agreed to act upon his advice. It was necessary, however, that their dignity should be maintained, which they feared would hardly be the case if the trial issued in nothing; accordingly it was proposed as a compromise, which Gamaliel accepted, that the prisoners should be flogged and then released, with a strict admonition to be more careful in future.
Fools rush in through the doors; for folly is always bold. The same simplicity which robs them of all attention to precautions deprives them of all sense of shame at failure. But prudence enters with more deliberation. Its forerunners are caution and care; they advance and discover whether you can also advance without danger. Every rush forward is freed from danger by caution, while fortune sometimes helps in such cases. Step cautiously where you suspect depth. Sagacity goes cautiously forward while precaution covers the ground.1 [Note: B. Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, 46.]
4. We see from the numerous notices of Gamaliel in the Talmud, and from the sayings there ascribed to him, that he was a man of exactly the character which we should infer from the brief notice of him and of his sentiments in the Acts of the Apostles. In both these sources we see a humane, thoughtful, high-minded, and religious man-a man of sufficient culture to elevate him above vulgar passions, and of sufficient wisdom to see, to state, and to act upon the broad principles that hasty judgments are dangerously liable to error; that there is a strength and majesty in truth which needs no aid from persecution; that a light from heaven falls upon the destinies of man, and that by that light God “shows all things in the slow history of their ripening.”
(1) Gamaliel was a man who believed in God. This was not a mere faith about God; he believed in God. To him evidently surrounding all that man does-behind it and before it and working through it-there is God. And with God are the final issues and destinies of things. Work as man will, he cannot make a plan succeed which God disowns; work as man will, he cannot make a plan fail which God approves. That is a noble and distinct faith. It is stepping across the line between fear and courage, between restlessness and peace, between intolerance and charity, when a man thoroughly, heartily, enthusiastically enters into that faith, when he comes to believe that with all his heart and soul.
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.
O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life-that in me has rest,
As I-undying Life-have power in Thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.
There is no room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou-Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.1 [Note: Emily Brontë, “Last Lines.”]
(2) And yet we want to know what it is to believe in God and to trust Him for the great results of things. It is not to rest in idleness. Gamaliel worked. Nobody can doubt that Gamaliel went back from the Sanhedrin meeting to teach with all his might that Christianity was wrong. He had his thoughts, and he upheld them. He said, “This is the truth”; only, as he said that, he must have said also to his scholars-“There are some men here in Jerusalem-earnest, brave, enthusiastic, woefully deluded, as I think-who are asserting that not this which I tell you about the Messiah, but something else quite the opposite is true. They are asserting that the Christ has come, and that His reign has begun. I think these men are wrong. I give you my reasons. By and by you will see their fanaticism wither and dry up because no life of God is in it. But now let them alone. Believe your truth, assert it, prove it, live it: so will you do your best to kill this folly.” That was Gamaliel. That is the true spirit always. To hold your truth, to believe it with all your heart, to work with all your might first to make it real to yourself and then to show its preciousness to other men, and then-not till then, but then-to leave to God the question of when and how and by whom it shall prevail; that is the true life of the true believer.
Belief in God is only made our very own by our meeting the work of daily life trusting in what we believe, trying it, proving it and finding by proof that the facts we have known as bits of history which belonged to us became, when acted on, bits of our own lives, certainties inseparable from ourselves.1 [Note: E. Thring, Teaching, Learning, and Life, 58.]
God will not have His work made manifest by cowards. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the Divine Providence has found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men and must accept in the highest mind the most transcendent destiny.2 [Note: Emerson.]
(3) Gamaliel believed that God was the only life of this world, that all which did not live in Him must die. We do not know whether he became a Christian before he died, whether, in this life, he ever saw that the light which these poor prisoners adored was the true light, and gave himself to Christ. The legends say that he did. History seems to say that he did not. But at least we know that, if we have rightly read his character and story, he made the Christian faith more possible for other men, and he must somewhere, sometime-if not here, then beyond-have come to the truth and to the Christ Himself.
Ye, that the untrod paths have braved,
With heart and brain unbound;
Who ask not that your souls be saved,
But that the Truth be found;
Whose fiery cross is borne unseen,
Whose meek brows, bleeding but serene
With only thorns are crowned;
Who, still and steadfast, stand for Right,
Though none acclaim and none requite:
Who learn how little is the sum
Of all that Truth can teach,
And where the serried boundaries come
That bar your utmost reach;
For whom no sage, no saint, can find
A clue to aught that lies behind;
For whom the preachers preach
Only to leave ye at the door
That opens to their knock no more:
Who, listening in the trackless night,
Hearing no bugle-call,
Still fight, undaunted, the good fight,
And never fail or fall;
Who, standing on an inch of ground,
Feel the Infinities around,
Yet dare to face it all,
And keep the life ye hold in trust
Safe from besetting moth and rust.
Life-tragic mystery of Man-
Strange tale of joy and grief!
Chaff for the errant winds to fan,
A bubble bright and brief,
That floats and shines and bursts unseen,
And leaves no trace where it has been;
Like thistle-down and leaf,
That in soft airs of autumn dance,
The helpless sport of Fate and Chance.
Ye, who can see the case so clear,
And scorn to cringe and moan,
Who follow humbly, without fear,
The soul's behest alone;
Content to suffer for the sake
Of faithful manhood, and to make
A loftier stepping-stone,
A straighter way, a smoother street,
For tread of unborn children's feet.
Ye, whom the children's sorrows rend,
And who despise the smart,
Who walk uprightly to the end
With an undoubting heart,
To take the guerdon of your pain-
Death, with no hope to live again-
Ye have the better part,
Salt of the world, that keeps it sound!
Kings that shall yet be throned and crowned.1 [Note: Ada Cambridge, The Hand in the Dark, 63.]