CHAP. I. PERSECUTION BY CALIGULA. 373 basket, the gates being carefully guarded by the command of the Arabian governor. Among the most distinguished of the first converts was Barnabas, a native of Cyprus, who had contributed largely from his possessions in that island to the common fund, and whose commanding character and abilities gave him great influence. When Paul, after his escape from Damascus, arrived at Jerusalem, so imperfect appears to have been the correspondence between the more remote members of the Christian community (possibly from Damascus and its neighbourhood having been the seat of war, or because Paul had passed considerable part of the three years in almost total seclusion), at all events, such was the obscurity of the whole transaction, that no certain intelligence of so extraordinary an event as his conversion had reached the Apostolic body, or rather Peter and James, the only Apostles then resident in Jerusalem." Barnabas alone espoused his cause, removed the timid suspicions of the Apostles, and Paul was admitted into the reluctant Christian community. As peculiarly skilled in the Greek language, his exertions to advance Christianity were particularly addressed to those of the Jews to whom Greek was vernacular. But a new conspiracy again endangering his life, he was carried away by the care of his friends to Cæsarea, and thence proceeded to his native city of Tarsus.a of the Jews About this time a more urgent and immediate danger than the progress of Christianity occupied the Persecution mind of the Jewish people. The very exist- by Caligula. ence of their religion was threatened, for the frantic Caligula had issued orders to place his statue in the z Acts ix, 26. a Acts ix. 30. 374 DEATH OF JAMES. BOOK II. Temple at Jerusalem. The historian of the Jews must relate the negotiations, the petitions, the artful and humane delays interposed by the prefect Petronius, and all the incidents which show how deeply and universally the nation was absorbed by this appalling subject." It caused, no doubt, as it were a diversion in favour of the Christians; and the temporary peace enjoyed by the churches is attributed, with great probability, rather to the fears of the Jews for their own religious independence, than to the relaxation of their hostility against the Christians. A.D. 39-41. This peace was undisturbed for about three years.d The Apostles pursued their office of disseminating the Gospel in every part of Judæa, until Herod Agrippa took possession of the hereditary dominions, which had been partly granted by the favour of Caligula, and were secured by the gratitude of Claudius. Herod Agrippa affected the splendour of his grandfather, the first Herod; but, unlike that monarch, he attempted to ingratiate himself with his subjects by the strictest profession of Judaism. His power appears to have been as despotic as that of his ancestor; and, at the instigation, no doubt, of the leading Jews, he determined to take vigorous measures for the suppression of Christianity. James, the brother of St. John, James. was the first victim. He appears to have been summarily put to death by the military mandate of the king, without any process of the Jewish law. The Death of b Joseph. Ant., xviii. 8. History of the Jews, ii. 145, 150. Benson (Hist. of First Planting of Christianity) and Lardner take this view. e e Hist. of Jews, ii. 157, 160. f Blasphemy was the only crime of which he could be accused, and stoning was the ordinary mode of execution for that offence. James was "cut off d Acts ix. 31. From 39 to 41, the by the sword." year of Caligula's death. CHAP. I. PERSECUTION. 375 en Jews rejoiced, no doubt, that the uncontrolled power of life and death was again restored to one who assumed the character of a national king. They were no longer restrained by the caprice, the justice, or the humanity of a Roman prefect, who might treat their intolerance with contempt or displeasure; and they were couraged in the hope, that at the same great Festival, during which some years before they had extorted the death of Jesus from the reluctant Pilate, their new king would more readily lend himself to their revenge against his most active and powerful follower. Peter was cast into prison, perhaps with the intention of putting him to death before the departure of Herod from the capital. He was delivered from his bondage by supernatural intervention. If the author of the Acts has preserved the order of time, two other of the most important adherents of Christianity ran considerable danger. The famine, predicted by Agabus at Antioch, commenced in Judæa, in the fourth year of Claudius, the last of Herod Agrippa. If, then, Barnabas and Paul proceeded to Jerusalem on their charitable mission to bear the contributions of the Christians in Antioch to their poorer brethren in Judæa, they must have arrived there during the height of the persecution. Either they remained in concealment, or the extraordinary circumstances of the escape of Peter from prison so confounded the king and his advisers, notwithstanding their attempt to prove the connivance of the guards, to which the lives of the miserable men were sacrificed, that for a time the violence of the persecution was suspended, and those who would inevitably have been 8 Acts xii. 1-23. A.D. 44. h Acts xi. 30. History of the Jews. 376 DEATH OF HEROD. BOOK II. its next victims, obtained, as it were, a temporary respite. Death of The death of Herod, during the same year, delivered the Christians from their determined enemy. Herod. In its terrific and repulsive circumstances they could not but behold the hand of their protecting God. In this respect alone differ the Jewish and the Christian historian, Josephus and the writer of the Acts. In the appalling suddenness of his seizure in the midst of his splendour and the impious adulations of his court, and in the loathsome nature of the disease, their accounts fully coincide. CHAP. II. CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM. 377 CHAPTER II. Christianity and Judaism. Chris CHRISTIANITY had now made rapid and extensive progress throughout the Jewish world. The Progress of death and resurrection of Jesus; the rise of a tianity. new religious community, which proclaimed the Son of Mary to be the Messiah, taking place on a scene so public as the metropolis, and at the period of the general concourse of the nation, must have been rumoured, more or less obscurely, in the most remote parts of the Roman Empire, and eastward as far as the extreme settlements of the Jews. If the religion may not have been actually embraced by any of those pilgrims from the more distant provinces who happened to be present during the great festivals, yet its seeds may have been already widely scattered. The dispersion of the community during the persecution after the death of Stephen, carried many zealous and ardent converts into the adjacent regions of Syria and the island of Cyprus. It had obtained a permanent establishment at Antioch, the chief city of Syria, where the community first received the distinctive appellation of Christians. Christianity however, as yet, was but an expanded Judaism; it was preached by Jews; it was addressed to Jews. It was limited, national, exclusive. The race of Israel gradually recognising in Jesus of Nazareth the promised Messiah; superinducing, as it were, the ex |